by Joey | Feb 28, 2023 | Food
When I transitioned from a work-full-time-in-the-office-job to a full-time-wfh job, I pulled my toddler son from daycare and keep him with me full-time now, too. So, yeah. All of that together makes for one busy mama. For some reason, one area I tend to struggle is food for myself during the day. It’s enough just having to think through 3 meals and 2 snacks for the little. So when I stumbled across this delicious little bowl, I was pumped.
I guess it’s worth noting that I’ve also been on a bit of a mission lately to properly fuel my body. As someone who loves food, I can accidentally go off the rails occasionally. And let’s just say the train was fully derailed over the holidays. And as a postpartum woman who is getting older (hello, late 30s), the good old metabolism just doesn’t work like it used to (RIP abs).
That being said, I’ve been on the hunt for meals that are 1) quick and easy 2) offer nutrients and fuel 3) pack in some protein and 4) are delicious (because what’s the point if it isn’t?).
I’ll be honest, cottage cheese has always freaked me out. I use it in pasta recipes sometimes. But eating it on its own? Yeah, I’ll pass. Thanks. I remember growing up my mom used to eat it with cantaloupe.
My first dip into the cottage cheese world, I opted to swap it out for the mayo in my tuna salad. Again, hunting ways to add in extra protein. While I can’t say it was a perfect dupe, it definitely wasn’t a noticeable enough difference for me to care.
So I finally mustered up the courage to just try a spoonful of plain old cottage cheese. And y’all. It’s totally unoffensive. It just tastes like a mild, light cheese. The texture wasn’t as offensive as I thought it’d be either. So with that, I launched into the realm of trying out cottage cheese bowl recipes.
The one I have for you today I’ve actually modified a few times since the first time I tried it. But we’ll get into that in a moment because they way I initially tried it was super delicious on its own.
COTTAGE CHEESE | AVOCADO | CUCUMBER | TOMATO LUNCH BOWL
1/2 cup Cottage Cheese | I used 4% small curd
1/2 Cucumber diced
~5 Cherry tomatoes quartered
1/2 avocado diced
Everything but the bagel seasoning
This bowl on its own was really, really good. I was really surprised if I’m being honest. I thought for sure it would be one of those things that “does the trick” but isn’t actually super satisfying. But I was wrong. I will say I’ve since added pistachios to the bowl and that brought it to the next level — to the point that I’ve actually eaten this for lunch every single day since I first tried it over a week ago. I’ve also done it with just cucumber, avocado and pistachios when I ran out of tomatoes and that was just as good, too.
Would definitely recommend adding it to your rotation!
by Joey | Dec 9, 2022 | Mom stuff, Real Life
It was almost exactly a year ago when I wrote this post about how it’s not enough. I remember how I felt in that moment. I could hardly pull myself together. The thought of leaving him, my two month old son, actually hurt. I felt the pieces of my broken heart, the sharp, shattered pieces floating through my whole body. But I was committed. I had a job I loved. And it wasn’t lost on me that that very job is what allowed for my life to look exactly as it did. My home. My family. Those things wouldn’t have been impossible without that job, but they were certainly more attainable because of that job. And because of that, I was loyal. Even though it hurt.
I returned to the job I loved only to find it wasn’t the same. I don’t know what exactly changed — me or the job or some combination of both, but it didn’t feel like it once did. But my family was there, the people I’d grown to love and rely on. I could do anything for them, and I would. So I did.
I got up every day, tiny pieces of my heart, broken and sharp, stabbing every which way. It’ll get better, I’d tell myself. It’ll get easier. But it didn’t. I was different. The job was different. And nothing felt right.
And yet, I stayed. Countless breakdowns. I must have cried myself through seven tubes of mascara this year. I can do it all I told myself. And I would. So I did. I didn’t know anything was wrong until the people that loved me whispered softly, gently. Something seems off.
It was me. I was off. Broken. Shattered. Everything felt heavy, even the happy things. I didn’t have intrusive thoughts. And I didn’t want to harm my baby, so it didn’t register. I’d slipped through the cracks. The questionnaires at the pediatrician missed it. But those who love me? They didn’t. They caught me. They held me up. They stood in my corner while I got help.
My battle with postpartum anxiety made 2022 really hard. My job made it even harder. Those two things together just about took me out entirely. Not physically, I never wanted to hurt myself. But mentally. I was checking out. It was all too much, and I found myself struggling to muster the energy to enjoy the enjoyable things because I was spending all my energy on just trying to survive.
And then something snapped. And everything started to fall into place. But it had to break first. Remember that. It has to break first.
One strange thing after another, I found myself with a dream job offer working with and for a dream company. It came out of nowhere, completely out of the blue. Designed perfectly for me. A soft place to land. I see you, God.
So I left. After working a month’s notice, I locked the door to an office I once loved and walked out. It wasn’t the same. I wasn’t the same. It was time.
But something still didn’t feel right. I was tired of crashing into brick walls. We had a routine, one that worked. I didn’t want to disrupt my son’s day-to-day when I left my job for the remote position. But then I had to observe his classroom a couple of times for biting. And it was during those observations that a sobering realization came to me. He shouldn’t be here.
It’s been almost exactly a year since I wrote the post about how it’s not enough. I wish I could wrap that broken, exhausted, terrified new mom into my arms now. I’d squeeze her tight and whisper this will be the hardest year of your life. But it will get better.
One year later, I am a full-time WFH SAHM. It will be hard. It will be worth it.
Breathe.
by Joey | Nov 3, 2022 | Advice, Real Life
I was scrolling TikTok, and for some reason my For You will sometimes serve up artist content. Painters. Sculptors. That sort of thing. I’ve always enjoyed art, but I don’t have one artistic bone in my body. I loved drawing as a kid, but the talent…woof. Just not there. The same is true for singing. I love to sing, but double woof. I feel for my kid. I really do.
But back to the TikTok, this particular post was someone painting very simple circles grouped together. Simple, yes. But perfect. Perfect. If I’d seen only the finish product, I would think they were some type of artistic wizard (or that they used a stencil). But watching it from start to finish, a thought occurred to me.
They were using a technique.
One they probably learned when they invested in the thing that was interesting to them. Growing up, they probably liked art, too. Maybe they had talent. Maybe they didn’t. But either way, they probably started to study it in some capacity — whether officially with money changing hands or independently. And along the way, they learned techniques that helped them improve.
The number of hours I invested into learning how to properly do my nails back in 2013 is nauseating if you think about it. The motives were simple: 1) I was interested 2) I was broke 3) I wanted nice nails. I watched countless hours of YouTube videos, picking up one technique after another. I practiced religiously. I enjoyed every minute of it — but I failed a lot, too. While my Instagram at the time was nothing but one nice manicure after another, there were hundreds that never saw the light of day.
I’ve been on a mission for years to make chocolate chip cookies that come out like my sister’s. In fact, I spent my entire maternity leave making one batch after another. One failure after another. The recipe is simple. But for some reason, mine kept coming out all wrong. I made a disastrous batch for my son’s first birthday that required my sister to swoop in and save the day. “I don’t know how yours come out perfect every single time!” And that’s when my niece spat the real truth: because you never see the batches she throws away.
Oof. Truth.
We all have things we’re invested in. And when you invest in something, you improve it. But we get to do the work quietly, privately. We only show our best work. We show the results of what we’ve learned, the techniques we’ve picked up.
Some people are good at painting, others at drawing. Some are great singers. Maybe you’re a great writer. Some people are excellent salesmen. Others are brilliant teachers. Typically, what sets people apart, what earns someone their adjective is passion and investment.
It’s so easy to get discouraged when what you have to show doesn’t look anything like what you’re seeing online. But please, just know that what you see online is the result of investment. Time and energy. Passion and practice.
Investment = improvement
Just keep going.
*Oh, and by the way. I finally made a batch of chocolate chip cookies last week that looked and tasted like my sister’s. #improvement
by Joey | Aug 17, 2022 | Real Life
I couldn’t sleep. 3:30 and wide awake. I laid there for a while trying to will the sleep to come. It is not lost on me that for months I wished for the opportunity to sleep. And here it is and my body is literally rejecting it. But the truth is, I couldn’t quiet my mind.
I’ve always been acutely aware of seasons. You know, those moments in time that define you — a before and after, a then and now. Chapters. Sometimes you know you’re in a season while it’s happening. Sometimes you don’t realize it until it’s ending. But we’re in constant movement. From one season to another. Evolving. Changing. Growing. Learning.
If you’re lucky, you become a sponge. You soak it all in knowing how temporary everything really is. Good. Bad. All of it. Temporary.
But changing seasons, even welcomed change, always feels especially bittersweet to me. A beginning. An ending. Excitement and sadness completely entangled, impossible to separate.
The truth is, sometimes we resist that change. We cling to comfort long past its expiration, filled with discontented hope. I’ve learned that God will always move you in those moments. When you can’t choose, the choice always comes. One way or another.
I think about the final weeks of high school often. Big moments wrapped in ordinary life. We knew everything was about to change, approaching the seasons end like a much anticipated television series finale. Eager to see how it would all play out. Sad it was ending. A definitive chapter coming to a neat and tidy end. Pivotal.
None of us chose to close that chapter. It closed for us, launching us into the next season of life. But seasonal change is more complex as we grow. We’re tricked into believing we have some say, that we’re the author of this story. And relinquishing control when you’ve been fooled into believing it’s all up to you feels impossible.
I know how lucky it makes a person that they were gifted a sweet season that feels painful to close. And I know how terribly unthinkable it feels to make the choice to close it. There is no guidebook. There is no definitive beginning and end to seasons in adulthood like we had as children. Our childhood was seasonal change with training wheels. And now that balancing act feels a lot riskier.
It offers me great comfort to know that despite how unsettling a season of change might feel to us, nothing is a surprise to God.
So if you’re joining me in this phase of life, where you feel like big choices are up to you — when you feel like you’re being lead to big change, let me leave you with this.
Thank God that nothing comes as a surprise to Him; he knows the plans he has for you — plans for your welfare and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
by Joey | Jul 29, 2022 | Real Life
I didn’t know it would feel like this.
We spent a lot of our marriage moving around, reinventing, re-establishing. It’s exhausting, honestly. Fun, sure. Exciting, absolutely. But exhausting. I saw my friends buying houses, having babies, establishing families. We were happy just us two. We longed for that, to be just the two of us for our entire dating relationship. Happy.
We always knew we would expand our family some day. Both with a heart for those pesky teenagers, we plan(ned) to foster to adopt older children in the future. I liked that it gave us time. I liked that it gave children who would otherwise have no home base to carry into adulthood a soft place to land. This is certainly still part of our journey, I believe. We also get to experience a lot this satisfaction in our line of work. Officially or not. Called.
I don’t know what prompted me to ask. To say the words out loud. I had confessed them earlier that year to my best friend. A baby had just been on my heart. Not in any kind of certain way. Just sort of…there. I felt the traditional clock ticking. If a biological child was something we actually wanted, well, we needed to know sooner rather than later at that point. I was fully convinced I wasn’t able to get pregnant. And I’d reached the point that if that was actually the case, I needed biology to tell me that so I could officially let the thought go.
We went on a trip with our friends in December of 2020 — and somehow, it just sort of came up one night. He was on the same page, and shockingly, within 4 weeks, there I was. Pregnant.
I know…
This part is hard for me now — but my first reaction when I realized what was happening (I knew before I took a test — maybe I’ll share someday how), was panic. I’m told that’s normal. But I actually had the thought OMG, what did we do?
Selfish. That was the word I kept chewing on. I was too selfish to be a mom. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t give the child what they deserved.
Oh. My. Gosh.
I wish I’d known. I wish I knew then what I know now. Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
My friends, thank God, offered constant reassurance. Knowing me better than I knew myself, apparently, they were my constant cheerleaders through those nine months.
And then he was here. In the most dramatic way possible, I became a mom. J became a dad. And then there were three. And everything came screaming into focus.
I didn’t know it would feel like this. I didn’t know that it is scientifically impossible for me to be too selfish to be his mom. He wakes, and I run into his room, excited for another day. I’m collecting my stuff and grabbing my keys at 4:59, rushing out of work excited to grab him at the end of the day.
All of it. The screaming cries. The vomit. The sleepless nights. The sleeping in the crib (yes, I’m crazy). All of it. I’m just so thankful for it all. I’m so glad he’s here. I’m so glad we get the chance to experience this kind of love.
I didn’t know it would feel like this. I’m glad I know now. So thankful I know now. So. Very. Thankful.
