Idle hands are the Devil's playground...at least when it comes to my diet. I can handle eating well up until that late night movie watching time when Gene's in bed and my insomnia's running rampant. My body has gotten used to a 1am chow time from working nights and even though I don't go nuts on nights at home that I stay at home, even a couple hundred calories when you're not doing anything but wanting to go to bed is a couple hundred calories more than I need to take in.
I remembered the old sage advice about dieting and/or not gaining weight when you quit smoking about keeping your hands busy. It's true. When you keep your hands busy you don't think about eating or smoking as much. I used to cross stitch a lot but that was 20 years ago when it was more popular and I could actually see close up out of these glasses (I refused to get bifocals this year and will continue putting it off as long as I can). I enjoyed cross stitch and embroidery work but you have to pay more attention to it than I wanted late at night and since it does kick in my pseudo-Turrettes more than other needlework, I decided to take up knitting again. My mom knitted all of our hats, gloves, scarves, ponchos, and sweaters when I was growing up and since she was the 4-H knitting instructor I was the one kid in my class who didn't get to show up and say "Mrs. Haggard, I didn't have time this week to complete my project. I had too much homework." As an adult I now realize she knew they were fibbing but they weren't her kid and she couldn't smack them on the back of the head and tell them to quit embarrassing her to motivate them to work up the houseshoes or headband or whatever was the weekly assignment.
Now I'm glad I know how to do it and I find it relaxing. Knitting is something that up to a point, once you're familiar with the pattern and it's relatively easy, you can just let your fingers do the walking while you watch a movie or carry on a conversation or just let your mind drift off so it's a perfect evening activity that keeps me from wandering into the kitchen for something packed with sugar or salt and no nutrition that I shouldn't have bought at the grocery in the first place.
I've begun working on Christmas gifts. This year I'd like all my gifts to be hand-made. I've always wanted to do that. I made a few hand-made gifts last year and they were my favorite to give away. There's something special, if you'll excuse my use of an overused word, about picking out a pattern, the perfect hued yarn, and working for several hours thinking about a person that makes that gift much more of a pleasure to give. And since life is all about me (did I say that out loud?) this year I'm going to make gifts that give me as much pleasure as I hope the receiver gets.
In between family gifts, I started these little baby hats with matching bears for our NICU. I had read in our company magazine that our nurses made all of our preemie baby hats, and since then, have found out online that there are groups of knitters or individuals who regularly knit (or crochet) preemie hats for NICU's all over the country. I LOVE that. Talk about a warm fuzzy... Carol showed me where we keep the big plastic bin of hand-knitted caps and told me that we always have a need for them since we do send babies home with them sometimes. I love that too. The teddy bears are my addition. I found a cute pattern that's easy to make and I like the idea of them after seeing all the home-made quilts and blankets knitted, crocheted, and sewn that adorn the beds in our unit.
So here are my first additions: the mint, lavendar, and yellow bear with it's matching caps that will fit a 3-4 lb preemie, and then just because I only saw traditional baby colors in the cap box and thought we needed some camo to represent the fact that we are, indeed, living in The Ozarks, the little camo bear and cap will fit a 1-1 1/2 lb micro preemie. I laid a regular tablespoon from the silverware drawer next to the cap to give you perspective. That cap is only 3" tall, it fits INSIDE the palm of your hand, which is what their little heads do too. The little micro preemie twins I took care of my first couple of days in the unit are less than a foot long and weigh a little over 800 grams. They're SO cute! They're like frogs with little old man wrinkly butts.
Okay, you sort of have to see them to get a true appreciation of how much cute and personality can be packed into a tiny body the size of LESS than HALF of a 4lb bag of sugar. Think about it the next time you buy sugar or flour. Their little arms are not much bigger than a pencil in diameter and the tubes to their ventilators are smaller than a drinking straw. Actually, quite a bit smaller than a drinking straw, maybe half that size. The numbers and sizes amaze me after working the last few years in the adult world. I constantly laugh out loud at stuff when I see the "equipment' like the blood pressure cuff for a micro preemie is the size of a band-aid. I'm not kidding. Their tidal volume on the ventilator is 2-5 ml, not 400-700 ml like an adult. The smallest diapers commercially manufactured are still so large they'd come up to their little nipples if they weren't folded in half on both ends.
If that's not cute, I don't know what is.
So this is my latest diet achievement: keep my hands busy doing something good for both me and hopefully for someone else.
Note for all of you who have requested the enchilada casserole recipe from Cinco de Mayo: Yes! I hear you and I want that recipe too. Kim (and Dirk who is also being trained) with Carol and I in the NICU tonight so I promise I will find a time during that 12 hour shift to make her write down the recipe for us. Cross my heart and promise.
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