The votes are in, and my greatest dessert weakness has been identified - good, old fashioned Magic Cookie Bars. Also known as 7 Layer Bars. Also known as Little Bites of Heaven.  That's right. Turns out, I can't resist them. Not even a little bit.  I now know this penchant for MCBs goes back to my childhood. But I didn't remember that until I made a batch recently, and my family and I devoured three quarters of them instantly.  Maybe it's because it was the first dessert my mom taught me to make.? Maybe it's the addictive combination of chocolate, coconut and sweetened condense ..read more

This post is a reminder to take your medication.  Personally, I've been lax about taking my vitamin D over the last couple of months. Not completely negligent. Just not 100% consistent. And I ignored the doctor's suggestion to start taking a B12 vitamin for energy. In fairness, she said I didn't have to start the B12. Only if I felt like trying it.  And I didn't feel like trying it.  So I didn't. But it turns out it's beneficial.  And both supplements help my fatigue and energy. Not so much that they eliminate the need for my nap (if only!), but they do make a difference. T ..read more

It's not chocolate or coffee, per se - it's caffeine!  Okay, hold up. Let me provide some context.  Earlier this year, I was trying to determine if a food or beverage was causing the persistent, but not entirely constant, redness across my cheeks and nose. It had been present for about 6 months, and then escalated to include a breakout/rash. That rarely happens these days (thank you, old age, and vitamin c face oil), so I knew something was up. I did a mini elimination diet, which you can read about here, which was helpful, but not entirely conclusive. I also considered the ..read more

Remember that extra level of fatigue I was fighting during the previous school year? Mostly due to getting up an hour earlier for my high schooler? It's back.  It was over. The moment school let out in June, my need for extra daytime sleep subsided. I had a summer to sleep, and it was glorious!  But now, school's back in session. And so are my 2-3 daily naps. Ugh.  But I vow not to get as frustrated as I did last year. Here's what I know from having gone through it once before. Hoping I can apply all I've learned to craft a new school year sleeping pattern!  1) Long naps (9 ..read more

In my quest to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, I tried another new recipe last week.  And it was a fail.  Not a complete fail. Just one that yielded flat, thin, cookies with heavy notes of caramel and not enough chocolate. They're not awful...but they were predicted to break the internet. So I mean, come on.  And they're definitely not as good as my chocolate chip cookies, which, if I don't mind saying, are mildly famous around these parts. Or used to be, back when they were highly requested at school pitch-ins and bake sales.   Compared to the Nestle T ..read more

It's not chocolate!! Woohoo! ??? (Insert chocolate victory dance here.) After a week of eliminating coffee and chocolate from my diet, I saw major improvements in my skin's tone and texture. Then, after about 10 days, I slowly added chocolate back in  I waited a couple of days to call it, because I learned that sensitivities can take up to two days to appear. (This is opposed to an allergy, which would cause an immediate or fairly immediate reaction.) But now, I can confidently say that chocolate is not the primary cause of my skin redness. Woohoo!!!  I'm not ready to try coffee just ..read more

One little pill. That's all it takes sometimes.  I've told you I've been fighting an extra level of fatigue recently.  I chalked it up to an earlier wake-up call because of Deirdre's new high school schedule. When I didn't adjust to getting up an hour earlier, I added a morning nap. You can read about me being resentful for the nap here, and learning to cope with it here. The path to living well with lupus is rarely a straight line!  I also thought maybe it was just time to join the rest of the world in needing a cup of coffee to get through the day. But my skin didn't appr ..read more

Welcome to Day Four: No coffee or chocolate. That's right. We're doing a mini food elimination diet over here. Be glad you're not around.  I have to admit, though - I am pleased with the results, even if I'm not super enthusiastic about cutting those two things out of my diet permanently. ?☕ Sigh.  Here's what led me to this experiment:  As September and October rolled around last year, I noticed that, on my face, the reddish sun-kissed look I'd had all summer wasn't fading.  Had I gotten too much sun over Labor Day?  Was I continuing to get too much sun exposure at th ..read more

 I just discovered the use of a "distraction list", and I am blown away at how effective it is!   A distraction list is kind of like the opposite of a to-do list, but not quite. Instead of a list of things TO do, it's a list of things not to do NOW, but to do LATER.  It's designed to help with focus, improve productivity, and reduce multi-tasking. (As a life-long multi-tasker, I've come to agree with experts that doing several things at once isn't as effective as we tell ourselves!) Here's how it works:  When you sit down to start working on a project, or set out to wo ..read more

Earlier this year, I felt like writing a post titled " Why Teen Girls Take their Frustrations Out on their Moms".  But I didn't.  If that blog post exists, though, I'd like to read it.  And takes notes.  And memorize the top three reasons so I can remind myself the next time a hypothetical teen is hypothetically taking it out on me.  But all of that seems to have moved to the proverbial back burner, as our family has made MAJOR progress in the teen health and wellness department in the last couple of months, and I'm so excited to share.  My oldest daughter has bee ..read more