This house hates me

I'm really hoping things in this house come in threes, because the third thing to break this year has now happened and I need things to stop breaking. We can't keep pouring money into this damn house when we're selling it in a few months!

The soffit that came down in a storm has been fixed and the window that suddenly cracked (inner pane of a double-glazed unit, so it's still weather-tight) is being measured for repairs on Friday.

So yesterday the freezer stopped making things cold.

I've got a big upright freezer because when mum was picking out a fridge for the kitchen, the one she liked has a freezer that's barely big enough for two small tubs of soup and a loaf of bread. To stop me living off eggs and toast, I like to cook food and freeze it in single portions that I can defrost and quickly reheat later. There's really no point to making a chili or a stew for one or two portions, and that's all I could do if I had no freezer space. So my upright freezer usually has portions of various things, plus bread (homemade bread goes stale fast, so the only way to handle that is to slice and freeze it) and whatever other odds and ends of baking I couldn't eat in one go and opted to portion up for freezing.

It's not that my entire life is ruled by having freezer space, but I'll be eating a lot more eggs on toast and a lot less homemade healthy meals without my freezer. Even storing the ingredients for home made meals without a freezer will be hard: most stuff is sold in such huge quantities that I have to freeze a lot of it (meat etc.) and I'm not exactly in a location where I can 'pop to the shops' to pick up food every couple of days, even if food was sold in small enough quantities for that to be feasible.

I've transferred what I can to the tiny freezer and I'm going to see if a neighbour can take some of the rest for a few days. I'm resigned to losing a fair bit. I'm prioritising the homemade stuff - anything that was bought from a supermarket can be ditched if I have to, because it's easier to replace than the homemade stuff.

The earliest repair date I could get is Thursday. Mum has authorised me to spend up to $200 on repairs, so if it's more than that, I'll have to make do without a freezer for the final few months here.

If we can't (or mum won't let me) repair the freezer, I predict a diet focused around eggs, eggs, and eggs for the next few months *sigh* And probably spending a lot more on food, because I'll be throwing more away and/or buying super-expensive small portions of things frequently.

Lenten planning

I usually do the 'fasting' part of Lent by giving up food things I think of as bad habits. Most people who follow a Lent fast do, I suspect. In the past I've given up pizza, chocolate, cakes/cookies, after supper snacking...all things that I feel like I "should" give up to improve my health.

And it's worked on one level. It's felt like a sacrifice and even though I don't give up those things forever, the reset button of Lent has brought me back to a moderate level with all of them that kept going.

The down side is that I always end up losing weight.

(Maybe the pizza year didn't involve weight loss. Maybe.)

That's despite the other part of the sacrifice being to replace what I'm giving up with something healthier. I lose weight. It's mostly because as soon as I'm faced with the idea that I should give up something, I go overboard, get overly rigid, and end up eating way fewer calories than I should. Carrot sticks and rice crackers will never really replace a bit of chocolate.

Most of my friends would agree that right now, I can't afford to do that. My weight is the lowest it's ever been and there's no weight I can safely lose. So this year I'm going to try doing something different for Lent. I'm going to try adding something to my life.

I'm currently having a bit of Being Sad time. It's happened before (most of 2014 was a Being Sad time) and I know I'll break out of it eventually. Maybe it's depression, maybe it's just me getting overwhelmed, but whatever it is, my mood is low and everything feels like too much right now. Small set-backs are magnified and I feel like the lowest worm that crawled the earth.

Clearly, giving up any food for Lent is only going to make me spiral further into that, because when I feel like this, the first thing I try to do is control and restrict what I eat, skip meals, you get the picture.

So this year's Lenten activity is focused around making better choices for my mental health, which I'm pretty sure God will be okay with:

1) During Lent, I will eat three meals every day and one small evening snack, minimum. No skipping meals because I'm "too busy" or "can't think what to make" or "it's too late" or whatever other excuse I give myself, there will be three meals + snack at a minimum. I'm breaking this particular spiral.

2) I'm going to put a box on the sofa table and every day through Lent I will write down a happy thing on a piece of paper and put it inside. It can be a thing that happened, a reminder of how cute my cats are, a fun plan I'm making...I have to find one positive good thing every day, write it down, and put it in my box.

I'm hoping the second one will have two outcomes: a reset helping me to focus on the good rather than the bad, and a box of happy things I can go back to if/when I feel overwhelmed later in the year. The first one is probably the healthiest thing I can do for myself right now, much healthier than giving up foods. Let's not discuss how often I've skipped meals over the last few weeks!

So there's my Lent thing. If you're also doing Lent this year, what are your plans?