Of course, little things like the iced coffee I have sitting here on the desk are not helping. I used about half a cup of whole milk and some real sugar when I made it. In the past, I would have used Splenda or Truvia and skim milk. It’s not that hard to make smart choices, I just have to want to do it.

I have very thick hair. The strands are each quite thin, very fine and silky. I just have a lot of them. A lot. So, I had the hairdresser thin out my hair and you should have seen the pile on the floor. And still, the hair left on my head looks thicker than most people’s.

It helps to find a hairdresser you like. I have a hard time with that. Often, it takes me years after a move to find someone to cut my hair that I feel is skilled and confident enough to meet my expectations. I had a phenomenal hairdresser when I lived in Morgantown, WV (Spa Roma). Here in Florida I have only found one hairdresser I really loved in the 11 years I have been here, and he was up in Gainesville. So, finding Jennifer up at my corner salon was a surprise and a blessing.

I feel like a new woman. Please please please remind me to never neglect having a good stylist on hand ever again.

A lot of people spend great amounts of money to turn back the clock, so to speak. I know there are cosmetic procedures that would slough off a few years, but since I am ahead of the game anyway (I look younger than I am), I figured I would avoid spending the money and taking the health risks and just make sure I keep up with a good skincare regimen.

Still, I never said I wouldn’t do while kicking and screaming all along the way.

My mother has cancer. She has been fighting hard for over 14 years now. Mom living this long with the sort of cancer she has is a miracle. It is nearly unheard of. And still, if cancer wants to win — it will. I suppose that’s the reality that makes me feel so out of control when it comes to understanding my mother’s illness. She tries every day to live life as though nothing is wrong. After all these years, I have to believe that her ability to keep on living and to not give in to the cancer by giving up onn a normal life is why she is still with us.

I have Farrah’s family in my heart today. I know they must have all had a similar outlook after watching her fight so hard. They must have been focused on life as usual and the reality that we can often beat cancer. In the end, cancer won, but I am convinced that Farrah and everyone around her learned a lot about love and faith along the way.

I want to jump back on the train soon, though. I will not be going back to a weight loss doctor, because I can no longer afford it. Now that the school district has given my job to someone with more seniority, I am in a position where I have to wait and see. I need to wait and see if any positions open up this summer and I need to wait and see what sort of instructional positions will be posted for the upcoming academic year. I have to wait and see, and in the meantime I am without a paycheck and moving quickly into a situation where I will need to pay COBRA fees out of pocket in order to maintain my health insurance.

So my plan is to start back on the menu my doctor gave me and look into reviews to find the best weight loss pills that are available over the counter. I was getting a prescription at the office where I went for weekly check-ins, but I know there are medications more readily available that are just as safe – if not safer.

I had one friend tell me that I should continue seeing the doctor I was seeing; that I should consider it a financial sacrifice worth making. I told her that even when was working it WAS a financial sacrifice. I made poverty level wages in the position I had with the school district. Now I am making nothing, so it’s a sacrifice beyond reason.

Still, my cravings for sweets and carbs are as yet an issue in my life. I am eating the sweetened ricotta I mentioned earlier, but I’d love a little chocolate one night. When I am working to maintain my weight, I find I actually can eat some candy and bread and pasta. When I am actively working to lose with, though, I need to absolutely cut out those foods.

So, I am still just down the 40 pounds I lost when I started the diet. I took off about two months, because I was just plain wearing of dieting, I maintained during that period and did not gain. Now, I need to start back up and make this diet work for me. I would like to lose another 40 before I take another maintenance break.

I am so very ready to go back to normal eyes. My eye allergy season generally lasts about a month, but it has been longer this year. I have a hard enough time wearing my contacts when my eyes are swollen from pollen. Adding mascara or eyeliner just makes my yes even worse – and when made to choose, I choose contacts.

My depth perception is way off when I wear my glasses and that just leads to overall mental fogginess. Mental fogginess is decidedly not a good thing when you are working with high school kids all day. They are lovable, but you need to be on your toes at all times.

Somehow, not wearing makeup on my eyes makes me feel more like I blend into the crowd. I have always thought that adding a little eyeliner has quite a dramatic influence on my face. It’s night and day, so to speak.

On top of the makeup issue, my yes just plain hurt. They are sore and sensitive, weepy and red. It’s across the board uncomfortable.

Even when I try to explain to people that I can eat cooked apples, but not raw apples (and peaches, plums, pears, cherries, etc.) I get looks of disbelief. My own family struggled to understand. I went through years of assuming it was due to pesticides. Then, I finally figured out it was due to enzymes in the fruit — or proteins if that makes more sense to you.

 CNN is currently running the most concise explanation I have read to date:

Have you ever experienced itchiness or hives in your mouth area after eating raw fruit or vegetables? Do you also have seasonal allergies?

If so, you may have oral allergy syndrome, whose symptoms occur because the proteins in some fruits and vegetables are similar to proteins in some pollens.

“They’re not identical proteins, but they’re similar enough to confuse the immune system to have these reactions,” said said Dr. Robert Wood, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

That’s not to say that everyone with pollen allergies has oral allergy syndrome. A person may sneeze all spring long and not have any obvious food sensitivities.

But oral allergy syndrome may help explain why some people have seemingly mysterious reactions to certain foods — for example, raw apples but not cooked apples. That’s because there are proteins in raw apples that are very similar to the proteins in birch pollen, experts say.

Cooking the offending fruits and vegetables will “denature” or change the shapes of these proteins, so people with oral allergy syndrome will usually be able to eat them without a problem, said Dr. Stanley Fineman, allergist with the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma Clinic.

Some people find that the peel of a fruit has more allergens than the meat, so peeling first helps, Wood said.

Because the reaction is usually localized to the mouth area, including lips, tongue, and throat, some people will choose to ignore the symptoms and continue to eat offending foods, Wood said. For people with reactions confined to the mouth, this is a “reasonable” choice they could make.

“Patients will typically decide on their own, without any discussion with a doctor, whether they enjoy the apple enough to put up with an itchy mouth, or whether they hate the itchy mouth enough to avoid the apple,” he said.

But in rare cases people with oral allergy syndrome experience anaphylaxis, a life-threatening reaction that may include blocked airways, hypertension, anxiety, vomiting and diarrhea. The most severe reactions require the use of an injection of epinephrine to subside, which is why many people with food allergies carry auto-injectors for emergencies.

Over-the-counter antihistamines alleviate symptoms of reactions for some people, experts say.

Studies have shown that some people who undergo allergy shots for pollen allergies will experience relief in oral allergy syndrome, Wood said, but at this point no one should get shots just for that reason, since they don’t work on most people’s food allergies.

“If you are a good candidate for allergy shots otherwise, this may be a side benefit,” he said.

While other kinds of food allergies present in the first two or three years of life, pollen allergies that contribute to oral allergy syndrome develop more slowly, Wood said, peaking in the teenage and young adult years. Some people may develop allergies even later in life, he said.

A person who moves to a new part of the country, having never been exposed to the native pollens there, may become allergic to those pollens and have some spill-over into food allergies, Wood said.

Typically, once people start to react to some foods, they will also react to other foods in the same group. People may find that their allergies to raw fruits and vegetables subside during the season when the associated pollen levels are low. For example, a person may react to raw apples from March to October, but feel fine when eating them from November to February, when birch pollen is low, Wood said.

About half of people with pollen allergies have improvement from puberty through adulthood, which correlates with associated food allergies, Wood said.

“The better the pollen allergy gets, in most people, the less the food allergy will occur,” he said.

SO, I have considered giving the supplements and diet pills a break until this summer. Or, maybe just another month. I need to mentally and emotionally allow myself a break so I can start back over and approach weight loss as a “new” adventure again. I’ve proven I know how to eat to maintain now. It’s just a matter of putting myself back in the mindset of actual weight reduction. It’s work, yes, and I I need to approach it wholeheartedly.

I do stop and wonder sometimes if I am not just being lazy. Yes, it is easier to grab a sandwich at home with my daughter than it is to plan out several trips a week to the produce market and to keep gulping down high protein foods like lean meat and low-fat cheese. I like those foods, but a little variety is nice as well. I am looking food boredom right in the face and I am pretty sure I am losing the staring contest.

I found some flu medicine and fever reducer and talked my mother into staying home with her so that I could still go to work. While the fever reducers kept her temperature down, it shot back up every time the meds were ready to wear off. By the time I got home from work, I could tell I needed to get Gigi in with our pediatrician. It’s never good to start out sick on Friday and have to risk the walk in clinic over the weekend.

When we reached the peds office, my daughter’s temperature was up to 104.4 ºF. The first order of business was to get the temperature down. Once we accomplished that, we were able to rule out a lot of things and settle on either the flu or a sinus infection. I walked out with a lot of good advice and a prescription for a heavy antibiotic.

Also, even though we always use a saline mist before blowing our noses in the morning, the doctor talked to us about full our sinus irrigating. It’s a good idea, really, and I have considered it a lot in the past. We take on a lot of illness that we would not have had to if we could all just maintain a healthy sinus cavity.

Wish us well. On top of the fact that my daughter and I are already pretty physically taxed from fighting off the severe pollen level sin Florida right now; the flu is making rounds in our area. I have a sneaking suspicion that the rest of the family will be sick by Monday.