title in Another Open Diary refugee

Thanks to female hormones going full-tilt I feel like compete and utter crud today... sometimes I think menopause can't come too soon - since I wasn't ever able to have a kid and use the female parts of my body the way it was intended, the whole process of being female is a complete waste of time. Only one good thing about feeling utterly awful today - hopefully I'll be fine on Saturday. Saturday night we're supposed to go down to Fort Lauderdale to go to the Ken Medema concert at our old church... it's a very long drive, but he's an awesome entertainer. And as a bonus, they lowered the ticket price by half since they first announced it - I think somebody must have decided to subsidise the event... as a brilliant Christian entertainer, he doesn't come cheap. Anyway, hopefully we'll both be feeling up to spending four hours in the car on Saturday. If not, I guess we don't get to go...

John hasn't been feeling good lately. He's got a doctor's appointment on Friday to see if there's anything going on that can be fixed/helped... You have to laugh at typical male behaviour though - yesterday he brings home a box of 24 krispy kremes because he was working right near the store... and then he puts them on the counter and says 'I think my sugar's misbehaving and we're going to have do something about what we eat...' You'd think he might possibly have thought of that BEFORE spending all that money on pure sugar and fat? This morning he says that he's decided he's not going to eat any more and the donuts are all mine - I put the remaining dozen into the freezer to pull out in time of desperation. (and if he really means it about the food thing, then I guess I'll just have to go along with it... but it's so much extra work for me I'm groaning at the thought - we won't be able to call for a pizza or pick up subway and call that dinner, I have to cook two hot meals a day and pack a lunchbox for the third, EVERY DAY, and try to put stuff in them that he'll actually agree to eat... he was super-good about eating low-carb and having lots of veggies for a whole year, but at this point in time he's back to his time-honoured habits of treating half a cup of vegetables as his ration for the week. If he wants to cut the carbs, he's just going to have to suck it up and eat the broccoli...) I know it makes me a bad wife, but I want to cry at the thought of all the extra work... the best meal so far as I'm concerned is the one I don't have to think about. I don't have the energy to play around in the kitchen every day, and I've only been cooking two or three times a week - I usually make enough for two meals, or leftovers that can be easily transformed, John doesn't eat lunch unless he's home (in which case I cook our dinner at lunchtime) and we have yoghurt and/or peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast. If we're going to do this right, all of that has to go. :(

Speaking of going, last Sunday we went to the nine am contemporary service at the Episcopalian church, and we both loved it... it was very refreshing. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in the endless ritual of their ten o'clock service, to the point where I'm not actually getting anything out of it apart from Communion, and I'm wondering why I'm bothering to go to church at all. John liked the service a lot too, enough that he's willing to make the effort to try to get up early enough to go again... it's a lot simpler and more direct, and they had a really talented guitarist to lead the music. I just hope they have enough people going that they don't decide to can the service. There were only 12 people there on Sunday, as opposed to the 80 or so at 10am (attendance is down all round for the summer - before Easter there were over 100 at a service and 20-30 for the Contemporary, but now everyone's on holidays and the Snowbirds are gone so the congregation is much smaller...) Admittedly, John also liked the length of the service - because it was such a small group and a lot of the ritual is stripped out of it, the whole thing only took 45 minutes from go to woe... we went to church, went to brunch, and went to the store and were home by midday.