Update on the state of the Tikiera

My mother's husband is very close to getting his weight loss surgery.   His son has had a son, and his daughter has had a son, so my mother is often watching little ones.  She is still working a minimum wage job.  They are still struggling.  When she talks about getting food from food pantry, I feel like a failure, because I can't help them.   She's now upbeat and happy, because things are going better for them, they are just... I want more for her.  She's worked hard all her life.

My father is still not getting the tests he should get, still working so many hours to pay off medical debt, and still being a jerk re: my diet.  He thinks all my problems would be solved if I just ate the certain combination of veggies and mushrooms that he saw on tv from someone who he says was a doctor.   I have tried to tell him that there is no magic combination of foods, and that I hate broccoli, am getting enough green veggies, that broccoli is not something I eat with my thyroid not being happy, and that i eat 1 cup of spinach and 1 cup of green and red lettuces per day work day, and that's way more than the recommended servings of green veggies for the week.  I don't get enough orange/red or purple, and he wanted to bug me about that, I could understand.  Still wouldn't be happy, but it would make sense.

The argument over broccoli is long, stupid, and I can't keep him from starting it again.  I love my father, I do, he just has gone out in the wackiness of holistic medicine beyond the point where I am willing to follow.  Yes,  I have used herbs to treat medical conditions.  You know, when the medicine I had to take had side effects that made me not take them.  After I had exhausted my options.

His partner's death is still making him... less than fully together.  I am trying for loving patience.  I am.

I am married, and so very happy.   I have changed my name.  It makes me so very happy.  I had to go through all the expectations that I would keep my name, and so many explainations of why that was stupid (my last name was adopted father's name, who to this day thinks I abandoned him when I was ten, that I chose to leave him, and that I knew it would hurt him and did it on purpose..  There are... issues.... there). 

Still working for the university.   We got raises this year - less than cost of living, and after 3 out of the last five years not getting any raises.

Have been eating healthy.  Moving to southern orange county city means farmer's market makes eating healthy less painful and less unpleasant.  We have been walking half an hour after work each day.  Knee is bothering more, thus proving all the 'exercise more and it will hurt less' opinions of doctors wrong.    Oh, well.

Lunch

Today's lunch resembles tomorrows and so forth -

1 cup spinach (1 serving veggie)
1 cup mixed lettuces (1 serving veggie)
11 blueberry almonds (1 serving protein/healthy fat- I can't stand them plain, so sadly this adds sugar to my diet)
1 low fat mozzarella cheese stick (1 serving dairy)
1 no added sugar applesauce (1 serving fruit)
1 cup no added sugar pomengrante cherry juice (1 serving fruit)

1 serving of graham crackers (I can't cut added sugar out entirely, I have a sweet tooth.  This at least has the least sugar of all of the cookie/cake options).

2 (or less) tbsp thai peanut sauce for salad dressing.  I run the fork through the dressing so I use less of it.  I normally have about half the dressing left.  3tbsp is considered a single serving.