Dear Friends,

This hasn’t just been a Monday, it’s been “one of those days.” It started this morning when I was in the bathroom curling my hair before work, and I heard the sound of metal crashing into the wood floor in Hunter’s room. I knew without looking what it was. Hunter is the king of the teenage hissy fit, stomping his feet and slamming his door every time he gets annoyed with something. We have lever-style door handles in our house, and he’ll slam his hand down on his handle before flinging the door open during his little temper flairs. I noticed a while back that his door knob was starting to feel loose and I’ve been riding him about not being so rough on it. Well this morning, it finally met the fate that I knew was imminent.

Another damaged item to repair. One more expense piled on top of a growing trash-pile of unforeseen expenses since the first of the year…bed bug treatment, doctor visits, a hospital bill that I thought insurance would cover 80% of but didn’t, new bikes for the boys after theirs were stolen, repairing a wheel on Hunter’s new bike when he wrecked it a month after he got it (I don’t know how much that will cost yet, but we are so lucky to have an awesome friend who had a spare wheel laying around and not only leant it to us for the time being, but even put it on for us and is helping us get the damaged one repaired).

I finished my morning routine, got the kids dropped off at school, and made it in to work where I sat alone at my desk and the pressures of a rushed morning subsided. With too much time on my hands to sit and think, all of the complications of 2018 started gnawing at me. The expenses, the parenting challenges, the stress…it all finally came to a head.

The only thing that kept me from completely falling apart, with the tension of the last few months building up and finally bubbling over due to a broken door knob, is the fact that I work in a public place where I’m basically forced to keep my sh*t together. I’m emotionally drained, my bank account is exhausted, and I’m hoping and praying for an end to the madness sometime soon.

It’s a fact of life that tough times will come, and as the saying goes, “this too shall pass.” It’s just the process of the passing that can be tough to bare. Eventually we hit that point where we just need a break, and I reached that point today. All I really wanted to do was come home and crawl straight into bed, but I’m a mom and that means being a responsible adult and acting like I’m fine even when things are a steaming pile of poo. So I sucked it up, picked up a few groceries and came home to throw together some spaghetti, which was Logan’s requested dinner for this week.

I could barely swallow a bite at dinner, but the call for a glass of wine and comfort food was strong. So after dinner was done and the kitchen cleaned up, I poured myself a glass of wine and made myself a chocolate mug cake. That was basically my dinner, and I’m not even sorry! The silver lining to this whole day is that my chocolate mug cake was actually healthy, so I was able to indulge without regret!

I found the original recipe on Pinterest, and then I made some tweaks to make it guilt-free. I swapped out the all-purpose flour for wheat flour, the sugar for stevia, the milk for almond milk, and the vegetable oil for applesauce. It took a little experimenting to get it just right, but I mastered it and it’s now my go-to sweet tooth satisfier.

Here’s the Recipe:

3 tbsp. wheat flour
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
3 packets of stevia
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3 tbsp. applesauce
3 tbsp. almond milk
splash of vanilla
1-2 tbsp. chocolate chips

1. Lightly spray the inside of a coffee mug with olive oil spray.

2. In the mug, mix the first five dry ingredients together.

3. Add the next three wet ingredients and mix together well, leaving no dry powder in the bottom of the mug.

4. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top.

5. Put in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, depending on the power of your microwave. I’m not sure how many watts mine is, but 2 1/2 minutes is perfect for mine. I would just start with two minutes and go up from there.

Maybe it’s the chocolate mug cake or maybe it’s the wine, but I’m feeling a little more relaxed and looking forward to getting back on top of things tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to YouTube how to change a doorknob!

Love,
Loren