Thursday, May 30, 2013

Have it Your Way, they say!


How in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks did I end up at Burger King? Why did I eat Burger King? What excuses did I make up in my head for it to be okay? How was I feeling?




So yesterday, I mapped my whole day out. I had a long evening with my doctoral class. I wouldn’t see home until about 10pm. I packed breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack (maybe?) I pretty much accounted for everything regarding food, even had my cleansing tea and green tea packed.  What I did NOT account for was my emotions, we can’t plan our emotions right. Anyway I had worked all day, multi-tasking between monitoring state testing with my students and completing my doctoral class work. So how did I end up at Burger King? It’s 3pm and I was finished for the day. I made it up in my mind that I wanted something good, something comforting, something rewarding for my hard work. I did not want the grilled jerk chicken breast I packed paired with a tasty spinach salad. 

What I wanted was something fat and salty. I was going to drive home (class begins at 5pm) to put a hot sausage on the grill and French fries in the oven but as time would have it, there wasn’t enough of it. So I figured if I went to the university library (another thing I was rewarding myself for) I would stop at Burger King on the way.  All of this happened in a matter of less than 7 minutes (the rationalizing in my head). While in the drive thru, there was a plethora of choices, semi-healthy and the ultimate but seemingly delightful sins to a fat 2 fit transformer.  An oreo milkshake was being debuted, it was like the small NEW label under the shake, said (try me I’m new).  Believe me, I’ve had my fair share of oreos and ice cream in my lifetime but at the time I wanted to try it, simply because it was.. ahem *NEW*.. So the server asks, small, med, or large? I opted for a small because well ya know I’m transforming, a small can’t be that bad. “Will that be all she asked?” Ummmm.. I began uttering.. a small fry, 4 piece nuggets, and a bacon cheeseburger all from the value menu. The fries paired with the milkshake was the perfect sweet & salty combo (matter of fact Chick-fil-a has a combo with shake & French fries now, they know!) In my head I was like here you go, binging again.. who needs a burger & nuggets.. The fries well you know how that goes, once you pop a fry in your mouth, the fun doesn’t stop. I was semi-satisfied though the sweet, creamy milkshake with the salty, fat fries was comforting enough. 

But what about the nuggets and the burger? Hmm.. lemme taste one nugget I convinced myself, eh ok, I thought and kept eating til the 4th one I was like this is gross. So I bit into the burger, gross again and didn’t return for any bites.  The thing is I don’t feel guilty about the choices, I feel informed. Informed enough to know that I don’t have to eat that kind of food anymore. I need to better control my emotions and it wasn’t worth it. The weird thing is it’s been awhile since I ate BK or any fast food of that sort and it tasted fake. I’d much rather make my own versions at home than to succumb to over-processed, cheap drive thru food.  It’ll be awhile before I do that again.  It’s like when you stop eating that kind of food, the taste becomes foreign, but if it’s an everyday occurrence it becomes a preference, an addiction. Food addiction is real and the food industry knows.

Choose wisely friends.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Life is a journey.

Life is a journey. Each step, each day, each time you cry & laugh is all apart of thee beauty of life. Each valley and each peak is designed to create a better you. I find myself so caught up in accomplishments that I forget to appreciate each day as apart of the journey. I get so caught up in the hecticness. I am taking time to appreciate every moment, every picture, and every person. There is beauty in life everywhere and in everything. There is everlasting life.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Your Parents are Your Teachers

"He who finds a good thing, finds a wife..." I listen to countless stories of those who are married and have married.  Happily Married, Unhappily Married, or Happily Divorced.. pick your choice..pick your sin..pick your reason for marrying. My parents never married each other. My father never married my mother. After creating life twice, two children...his first daughter and his first son (who carries his whole name) that wasn't enough for my father to marry her. Instead my father chose to play the game.

My mother
Like the strong woman, my grandmother raised my mother to be...my mother "moved on" and created a life for her children that she always wanted and never had. She eventually got married to a man who now she is unhappily married to.

My father
Like the independant man and thinker his father taught him to be, chose to marry another woman...who sought after him (and who I'm sure my father entertained) during my mother's pregnancy with my brother. My father married and had my little sister and youngest brother with this woman, which whom he is now divorced from. She sent him divorce papers.

I give you some history of my parents because they are my first teachers. By loving me, they taught me how to love others. And who taught them to love as children, their parents. I am blessed to still have all four of my grandparents still alive and who are very proud of me. Their marital status are divorced, remarried, widowed, and single. All four of them embody so much wisdom, but happily married forever is in neither of their fortés.

If God created woman for man, why are relationships so hard? Why aren't marriages forever?