Confessions of a Kin Major

5 AM Phone Calls

2012-01-22T14:17:00.003-05:00

(image from: http://thetwors.blogspot.com/2011/04/sleeping-in-and-saving-environment.html)

I'm tired today.

Currently, I'm not feeling it. Adrenaline and all that. You know how you get so tired you just can't help but function on overdrive?? That's how I feel at the moment. But my need to overdrive is currently finished for the day - we're having family snuggle on the couch Sunday (except for Little Miss, who is mimicking Pete's skipping in the movie we're watching, Pete's Dragon. So I'm sure the adrenaline will pass in a bit and I'll crash.....

The past few nights have not been good sleeping nights for me. Which is honestly, really weird, because when I lay down at night, I fall asleep, and then I am OUT until Little Miss bombs me out of bed in the morning. I would sleep until the afternoon every day if I could, I kid you not, and still be able to sleep at night. I LOVE sleeping. sigh

Thursday night I realized how insanely busy Friday was going to be, rushing to fit everything in we needed to get done and get to my SIL's to surprise the nieces after school, so stayed up late crafting the birthday presents I wouldn't otherwise have had time to make.

Not ideal, but no BIG deal or anything. I watched silly tv on Netflix and made oodles of earrings and necklaces for the 8-year-old dear to accessorize with now that she's got pieced ears. It was fun!

But then Friday morning around 5 Little Miss decided she needed to come crash my sleep for some snuggles.

Fine, no big deal. I love snuggles.

Then Friday night we slept away from home, which again, I don't usually have a hard time with. When it's time for me to sleep, that is that! I'm lucky that way, I guess.

But I stayed up a little bit late blogging about the epic fail and by the time I got to bed Mr. Man was definitely asleep. And laying on his back. Which for me, means a NOISY night. MAN can he snore.

And then my nieces all wake up at like, I don't even know - some hour of the morning I've never seen before! hahaha So I didn't really sleep in yesterday either.

Okay, but LAST night. Really. UGH.

Mr. Man knew I was getting tired going a couple of days without ideal amounts of sleep - some people function just fine and dandy, but I'm one of these for whom a lost hour's sleep equals a disproportionately huge shift in mood, so it's usually in his best interest I'm well rested ;-) - and so insisted that we get to bed at a decent hour last night. He made me go to bed BEFORE 11 even. I mean, REALLY!!

But then I couldn't fall asleep! WHAT??

I finally fell asleep sometime after 1 AM, after listening to his slow, NON-snore for EVER, and fighting the urge to get up and do ANYTHING other than lay there like a useless lump... if I'm awake I may as well be productive and DO something, right??

Anyway, I finally, eventually fell asleep. Yay for me.

5 AM. FIVE IN THE MORNING. Mr. Man's cell phone, out in the dining room, rings. Mr. Man's cell phone. Mr. Man's cell phone NEVER rings. Not EVER. I don't even call it. He has this pay-as-you-go plan where texts are unlimited and phone calls are limited, so no one EVER calls him 'cause he won't answer it anyway! hahaha Sometimes my brother forgets and calls Mr. Man's cell phone, but that's it. It NEVER rings.

It rang. At five o'clock in the morning.

Did he hear it??

Gosh, no, of course not.

And so I lay there, having been aroused by someone ELSE'S cell phone probably having been accidentally drunk-dialed or something stupid at 5AM, with a wandering, wide-awake mind.

And then I thought, gee, you know, the only person who ever really calls Mr. Man's cell phone IS my brother. I wonder if it was him calling. I wonder if everything is okay. I wonder if everyONE is okay. I mean, why do people ever call other people at five o'clock in the morning? Not ever for anything except to say that someone's died or something other such fabulous news. I wonder who's DEAD?! Why didn't I run and grab the phone? Did Mom get in a plane crash coming home from Florida? Even though she's not flying home until Friday??

Wait. Wait a second. If someone's dead then whoever called will call again. They won't call once and not get us. When you call people at 5 in the morning you expect that they're asleep and you'll have to call again. They'll call again.

...........

Then MY cell phone rang.

Ohmigoodness, someone IS dead! WHO'S DEAD?!?!

I GRABBED my phone, looked at the caller ID to see: "unknown caller," and frantically pushed the button to answer the phone.

Except I pushed the wrong button.

I PUSHED THE WRONG BUTTON!!

I accidentally pushed the lower right button instead of the upper right button to answer my phone. Now, I totally understand why I did it - my phone really doesn't ring very often either; as popular as I am people just don't call me (it's okay - I don't call anyone either. Phone chat isn't really my thing). So I don't have oodles of practice on automatically pressing the 'answer' button. When my phone does ring I have to look at it and register which button is answer. And in the pitch-black of 5:05 AM I hit the wrong button.

NO! NO NO NO NO NO! Someone's DEAD and I just DIDN'T answer the phone!! OHMIGOODNESS! PLEASE call back! Please call back!! I'm sorry! I know which button it is now! I know! CALL ME BACK!!

I lept out of bed with my cell in my hand and raced to the living room to grab the portable off of the charger - we have a charger in the bedroom, too, and keep a phone in there for just such an occasion, but of course it's migrated to somewhere else in the house so was of now use to me this morning.

With my cell phone in one hand and the house phone in the other - obviously someone who wants to get us badly enough at 5 am to call both our cell phones will next try to rouse us with the landline, right? Right?? - I headed back to my bedroom. Where I proceeded to turn the ringers way down so as not to wake up Mr. Man before necessary when one of the phones inevitably rang again. And then sat there. One phone in each hand.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And imagined what the news was. WHO called? Maybe Mom was coming home early for something and the plane went down? Maybe my dad's cold this week wasn't just a cold and he succumbed during the night?? WHO IS DEAD?!?!

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And WAITED.

Finally around 5:30 I put the phones down on my side table - if I heard Mr. Man's cell phone in the dining room I'd hear the land line from the other rooms and the turned-down ringer by my head.

And I lay down and waited. Waited for the phone to ring. Waited to fall back to sleep.

Back to sleep. HA! HAHAHAHAHA! As IF!

I was SO worked up.

No one ever called. To the best of my knowledge all my family members are alive and well. Mr. Man checked his phone when he got up and the only missed call was a 'blocked number,' whatever that means on his phone.

I don't know who it was, what was going on. Was someone trying to get a hold of us to tell us something? We were both pocket-dialed by someone, one after the other? Were we both wrong-numbered at 5 in the morning? That's happened to us before.

NO IDEA.

But, promise me something, please.

If you ever accidentally pocket-dial, wrong-number dial, or WHATEVER to someone at 5 in the morning and you don't talk to an actual person? LEAVE A MESSAGE and say "SORRY! Wrong number!!" so that at 5:01 AM when the poor unsuspecting, used-to-be-sleeping-and-is-now-going-insane-with-worry soul can say "Oh. MORON!" and then go back to sleep!!

I'm going to go take a nap.

Detox Days 8-11 & the epic FAIL

2012-01-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

Howdy, folks!

So, the past week has been fabulous. I've eaten great foods, lots of variety, lots of yummy things. Eggs in the mornings, meat & veggies and snacks in the non-mornings.

And as I've gone I've even taken photos of some of my favourites so I can share them with you.

But, today, I have to confess.

And every time I have to confess, I feel like it's OKAY, because, this IS "Confessions of a Kin Major," and while I may have graduated my Kin degree and have moved on to....more school....I still make "mistakes" and have things to fess up.

So, here's what happened.

I have four nieces. They are spectacular. And today the oldest one turned 8. And Little Miss had a day off school today - is it PA or PD day now, I don't even know - soooo we decided to trek up to visit the family and surprise our nieces with a Happy Birthday visit and sleepover.

HUZZAH!

So after a morning kickboxing class (I got four classes in this week! Including what Sensei G calls an "F-U Day," and yes, F & U stand for....exactly what it sounds like. hahaha The idea is that by the end of it everyone in the class should be yelling that particular expletive at him or he's not worked us hard enough... it's a brilliant workout) we ran around like mad and got ourselves organized, and out of town. To surprise the girls getting off the school bus, play some games, craft some jewellery, make birthday dinner, and then eat said dinner.

Dinner was chicken parmesan with whole wheat spaghetti, shrimp, escargot with bread for dipping in the garlic butter, caesar salad with homemade croutons (I made them!), broccoli, & sparkling grape juice.

I did NOT eat that. Promise. My darling SIL kept a hunk of chicken from being smothered in cheese for me, and I didn't eat bread dipped into melted garlic butter. I didn't eat the croutons in my salad, nor the escargot (um, ew?), and I had water to drink.

Dinner was delicious!!

Then we cleaned up, gathered gifts, and the celebratory birthday dessert started coming out of the kitchen. Including a rousing version of "Happy Birthday To You" from everyone, of course!

So, the birthday girl, for her 'cake,' requested the following:

brownies

vanilla ice cream

whipped cream (the icky kind in a can, that tastes deliciously like whipped butter.....drool)

chocolate sauce

jujubes

Oh. My.

And for some reason, the brownie 'cake' which was decorated with jujubes, ended up right in front of myself and my other SIL at the table. Just sitting there.

Taunting me.

..... I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden an orange jujube found its way into my mouth....

And since the detox is kind of ruined with a jujube....it seemed a little pointless to bother keeping up with it after that point!

Yes, those white flecks all over the table are from my liberal application of whipped cream to my, uh, mountain of dessert.

I swear it didn't look that big from where I was...nom nom nom...oh, never mind!

So... I totally caved. I just gave in. I WANTED brownies, ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce! I mean, who in their right mind WOULDN'T want those things??

And you know what? I'm totally FINE with the fact that I ate that giant mound of dessert. IT WAS YUMMY. It was a special occasion. I haven't eaten dessert since Christmas. I AM back into the pants I busted out of over Christmas, with a little bit of wiggle room. I went to four kickboxing classes this week instead of 'just' three. I've learned how to eat properly for MY body.

And except for the GINORMOUS zit that's taken up residence on my face at the moment, I look fabulous.

So, I'm good.

Tomorrow I won't have dessert. Or bread. Or crepes (which is the planned breakfast - I'll think of my last delicious outing with crepes over Christmas and then whip myself up some eggs). And in another few days or so, maybe I'll have 'earned' my next splurge/cheat. But I'm good with today's.

It was delicious.

Detox Days 5, 6 & 7

2012-01-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

Hi!

Sorry for the weekend hiatus, but I had a fabulous weekend and kind of kept away from the computer a bit.

Saturday we actually had NOTHING on. NOTHING! It was FABULOUS. All three of us lounged around the house in our pjs until about noon, playing games, chill axing, eating breakfast.... huh - totally drawing a blank on what we ate. hahaha PROMISE I didn't cheat, though. Okay, chatting with Mr. Man I think I had a couple of boiled eggs. Oy, how we forget such monumental moments! ;-) Snacked on nuts, crab meat...don't remember if I grabbed any veggies....probably not, WHOOPS! Anyway, we ran some errands, cleaned the house, played some more, and then Mr. Man and I, get this....WENT ON A REAL DATE!!

I KNOW, right? CRAZY!!

We got a baby-sitter and the whole nine yards!

Dinner AND a movie!!

We went to Jack Astor's for dinner - there is ONE detox-friendly salad on the menu, and it was DELICIOUS. AND I didn't have to make it! And, because we were dining out and having some fun we even splurged and had SPARKLING water. hahaha OOOOOOooo CRAZINESS!

Then we FINALLY went to see the new Sherlock Holmes flick. I, personally, LOVE the first one, and got a big kick out of reading one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's collections near the end of last year. I find Holmes to be just a hilariously delightful character and LOVE Robert Downey Jr in the role. So yeah, basically it was the perfect evening.

We even TALKED over dinner.

GASP

And then Sunday I was off to class for the day! Ate some eggs and nuts for breakfast, took some leftover spaghetti squash and sauce for lunch (it's yummy cold, too!), and then came home to a house full of family! My in-laws trekked down for the afternoon/evening to celebrate Mr. Man's turning even OLDER, and spoiled us with a fabulous, detox-friendly meal of flank steak, asparagus, cauliflower, and a scrumptious salad (and for non-detoxers, potatoes, cheese sauce for the veggies, escargot & bread, plus black forest cake). Another FABULOUS detoxing meal I didn't have to prepare.

See? TOTALLY spoiled over the weekend. FABULOUS.

Today, I weighed myself, just to see where I am, post Christmas eats (for the record, it was NOT my mother's fault that I totally binged on cinnamon buns. I did it willingly and knowingly...and even made myself a pair of elastic-waistband pj bottoms so I had pants that would grow with me as I gorged on...everything in sight! Whoever said 'nothing tastes as good as thin feels' has NOT eaten at my mother's house!) and with almost a week of detox and back to kickboxing, and I was happy to see that I'm not imagining feeling better - I'm 5 lbs down from my last weigh-in before Christmas. Which was great to see!

Then, tonight, at kickboxing, I thought, what the heck, let's see where I'm at since last Monday night, 'cause I was weighed to start off our 'biggest loser' challenge at the club.

I'm down 5 lbs from last MONDAY.

Holy COW.

So...there are multiple reasons.

1 is definitely the detox, no question. I feel fabulous. And it's funny, as much as I LOVE all the stuff that's proven to be not great for me, when I'm cooking for myself now I don't WANT it, you know? I want a giant plate of veggies with some sort of meat. Dinner tonight was a chicken breast smothered in Epicure's Italian sansel (I prefer the Red Garlic for sure) with carrots and green beans. It was DELISH.

2 is definitely...I was being visited by my, uh, monthly 'FRIEND' last Monday. hahaha And that usually, honestly, puts about 5 lbs on me each time anyway.

3 - I'm working like crazy at kickboxing. It's kicking my butt but I'm kicking back. MUAHAHAHA!

Anyway, that's the weekend re-cap. Detox goes 'till next Monday, then I'll be reporting on Cheat Meal Tuesday (BOOyah! ...unless I do it Wednesday 'cause I teach piano on Tuesdays and it's hard to make dinner....so if I hold off a day and do it Wednesday I can spend ages in the kitchen prepping my feast...which will totally include a giant cookie, by the way.)

Okay, I have some chillaxing to fit in before falling asleep tonight! Happy Monday, everyone!

Oh, and check out my post on Crafty Betties today, if you're into crafty stuff - we post Mondays and Thursdays about all sorts of different things! It's very Holly-Homemakerish, and very cool. ;)

Cheers!

Detox Day 4

2012-01-13T22:59:00.004-05:00

Today, I was lacking. I don't know. I got my to-do list and then some done today, but I lack....zest. hahaha It's all good, I'm fine and dandy, I just had a bit of a meh-feeling day.

SO... we went pretty easy for food.

Boiled eggs, snap peas, and a few cashews for breakfast.

Crab meat for snack (yum!)

Leftover pork stirfry for lunch with a salad on the side - romaine lettuce, snap peas (they're so easy to prep), and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds.

Dinner we ordered pizza from the place around the corner - I had wings (they're not breaded - win!) and another nice big salad - iceberg lettuce, green peppers, onions.

I watched people eat giant cookie & ice cream, wept a little bit inside, and drank a huge glass of water. hahaha

On to the rest of my meh-feeling night! Maybe I'll fold more laundry... :-D

Cheers!

Detox Day 3

2012-01-12T17:55:00.001-05:00

Today is Mr. Man's birthday! He's OLD. hahaha Yikes. Keeps freaking me out.... oy vey.

This morning I made Mr. Man and Little Miss special birthday french toast for breakfast...then I rinsed out my egg dipping container thing and whipped myself up some scrambled eggs with chopped up onion and a wee bit of ham. It was yummy, and extra quick because everything was already out for my sweeties' breakfasts. :-)

Lunch was teriyaki salmon with beans - Mr. Man okayed the menu and even chose the vegetables for lunch. I cheated and used Epicure's teriyaki mix again (it's SO FAST and ALMOST as good as my homemade... I USUALLY cheat and use it if I have any around) and marinated my salmon for about 15 minutes each side, then popped the whole thing under the broiler on HI for a few minutes on each side - I've taken to just cooking my salmon in the marinade for the little bit of extra flavour without constantly basting or anything like that.

Yes, I am a lazy cook. :-D

For dinner I made spaghetti - it's delicious, everyone likes it, including Little Miss (though tonight she sure gave us a run for our money - OY!) and with all my birthday cooking it was nice and easy. AND used up some of the ground chicken we got at the store the other day ($2 for a 1lb-ish pkg! BAZING!)

Now, when I make spaghetti sauce I use 1lb of some sort of ground meat - usually beef, but second-most often, chicken, and occasionally, turkey. My dad made it once with ground sirloin or something....drool It really doesn't matter, just some ground meat. Extra lean, of course, if you can swing it.

Cook up your meat, drain it, then add 1 chopped up onion. Heat that until the onion turns a bit clear, and add about a teaspoon each basil, oregano, and garlic powder. Mix that up, and add 2 cans of tomato/spaghetti sauce (whatever brand is on sale that week for a buck! hahaha)

All you have to do is heat it through, but if you can leave it on lo for about half an hour it gives all the flavours time to mix and get yummy. Totally depends on how much time I have whether or not I bother with letting it hang out on my stove or if I just start dishing it out onto plates!

Now, you may recall that I'm not eating PASTA and be wondering how in the heck this works with my making spaghetti for dinner.

I made noodles for Mr. Man and Little Miss (who decided to wait for dessert instead of eating her sgetti - argh!)

Let me introduce you to my fabulous friend, Monsieur Spaghetti Squash:

YUMMY and easy easy easy.

First, I chop the thing in half, lengthwise (or as in the last couple of cases, I have Mr. Man do it for me because my hand hurts too much to grip the knife as ridiculously hard as I need to - it's akin to cutting through a pumpkin.)

Then, scrape out the crap from the inside (just like when you're scraping out your to-be jack-o-lantern!)

Crap inside

All scraped out!

Then I put a wee bit of water on a cookie sheet, turn my oven on nice and high, like 425 degrees, and put the squash halves open-side down in the water on the cookie sheet. Put them in the oven (I don't usually bother waiting for it to heat up - they'll cook as it heats), and then leave them for 25-30 minutes, ish. I don't know exactly how long I leave them in - I do them first and put them in the oven so when I'm done everything else they're ready!

When they're done, flip them fleshy-side up and attack it with a fork - the squash like, falls out and, surprise, looks like spaghetti!

It's a delicious side-dish, but I love mine slathered in spaghetti sauce.

YUM!

So, that's what I ate tonight.

Cravings today??

Giant cookie cake. hahaha Because Little Miss and I made one for Mr. Man. I mean, tell me this is NOT super tempting:

And while the finished product has a bit of an ew, yuck, disgusting factor and should absolutely be featured on Cake Wrecks, that factor was achieved with liberal application of icing and sprinkles......

OH how my tummy ACHES to partake of this horribly ugly dessert concoction!

If I weren't detoxing I would totally be splurging on this with my family. sigh OH well!

Okay, that's my blogging for today's food. Thankful Thursdays will hopefully return after the detox is over and I can think about something other than food during the day. hahaha

I have dessert and birthday presents to serve. Cheers! Happy eating!

Detox Day 2

2012-01-11T21:33:00.002-05:00

Today, I did groceries. hahaha

For breakfast I made egg-in-a-frame using peppers as the frame - I saw this in a commercial on TV last week and have made it a couple of times and it's YUMMY! I don't know what exactly they did in the commercial, but I slice a pepper NOT the long way, so I end up with 'round' bits of pepper, then plop them in the frying pan and crack an egg in the middle.

Easy peasy and supper yummy.

Lunch was for Mr. Man and myself again, and right after my groceries run, so I had more options! hahaha We went for minute steaks with onions & mushrooms and a side of peas - I love me some frozen peas! SO quick and SO tasty!

So we sliced and diced our vegetables (and by WE I mean Mr. Man - he sliced and diced while I put groceries away and prepped the pan and cheered him on - thanks darlin'!)

And I've taken to buying up meat when I'm at the store that has this FABULOUS little orange sticker on it! So eating this was has actually proven to be much CHEAPER than my groceries before, which I am constantly surprised and thrilled about. Huzzah cheap meat! hahaha

So we fried up the veggies for a while, then painted some BBQ sauce onto the minute steaks, and plopped them down in the pan with the veggies. Cooked the whole kit n' caboodle for a couple minutes, turning the steaks, and voila:

LUNCH!

It was super yummy.

Dinner was pork tenderloin cut up and cooked in a yummy teriyaki sauce (using Epicure's Teriyaki Seasoning) with frozen stir-fry veggies and I felt like cauliflower, so cauliflower. :-D I made rice for Mr. Man and Little Miss as well to go with their stir fry, but I just ate the cauliflower and stir fry. It was yummy. And another super quick one to make.

Sorry the picture's so much worse - the sun was WAY down by dinnertime, it being winter and all, soooo my natural light LEFT me! hahaha BOO! Don't they know I'm taking photos of food?!?!

Snacks - as I didn't have any nuts at breakfast I've had a handful to snack on, and bought myself some sugar peas for crunching on when the need arises. Maybe tomorrow I'll mix it up and have nuts and veggies at ONCE and call THAT a snack!

So, sorry this is a boring post for those looking for the ins and outs of life, but nothing much happened today, really. I chatted with my mommy on the phone, firmed up plans for Mr. Man's birthday (tomorrow) celebrating on the weekend aaaaaand cleaned the kitchen! Yay me!

Until tomorrow, then! Happy eating!

Detox Day 1

2012-01-10T22:47:00.000-05:00

Today, was a good day. It really was. I tidied up, vacuumed the bedrooms (yes I vacuumed. I know, right? Win!) Went outside of my comfort zone a little and uh, 'applied' for a wee teeny tiny little bitty 'job' I really wanted, had a fabulous lunch, practiced singing for this production I'm participating in in March, helped Mr. Man work out some of his work woes, GOT the teeny tiny no-big-deal-but-HUZZAH job (more on that later, I promise. It's not actually coming up for a while, so don't get your knickers knotted wondering/guessing about it. I'll tell you when it's time!) watched a tv show, fell asleep on the couch for a bit, taught piano lessons, played lego, ate dinner prepared by my Mr., and went to an awesome kickboxing class.

See? It really WAS a good day. :-D I TOLD you!

Detox day 1.... I need to do some groceries. hahaha AND I need to place an Epicure order! Oy! I'll have to put that on tomorrow's to-do list...

Anyway, there has been some interest not only in what I'm eating, but recipes and ideas, as well. So, I figure I'll just tell you what I ate each day and if there's a recipe involved I'll share it, sound good??

I most often start my mornings now with eggs - I have been cautioned against eating the same thing every day because you can develop food sensitivities, BUT I'm just not that creative and I really LIKE eggs. And on busy mornings I have boiled eggs - I pop a couple of eggs in a pot, NEARLY cover them with water, pop them on the stove, and then get back to my everything-that-needs-to-be-done in the morning. It's easy, it's yummy, it's not cereal. Which I now haven't eaten in months - weird! Anyway, I also eat a small bunch of nuts. Right now, usually cashews (they're my favourite - I don't actually like nuts very much so this is one of the hardest things about detoxing I find) or pistachios, neither of which are technically nuts, I know, but we're ignoring that 'cause they totally count. And when I say a small bunch of nuts I'm talking like, 5 or 6 cashews.

I'm going to show you my lunch today - it's the only "recipe"-able thing I ate today, really! And it's not really a recipe - I throw whatever's laying around into my salad. Yum! Today I had romaine lettuce, some cabbage, some broccoli-slaw, crushed pecans and sunflower seeds. I cleaned and chopped and threw it all together with a couple cut-up chicken breasts (Mr. Man was home - salad for two!) that I cooked in olive oil (this isn't the best oil for cooking, but it's what I have. I've been looking for coconut oil or something that's more stable than olive buuuut I really can't be bother popping from store to store to store getting different parts of my grocery list. If I can't get it at one store then I probably won't get it. hahaha) and sprinkled liberally with Epicure's Red Garlic Sansel. Then I use just a wee bit of an oil-based dressing - ideally I would make my own olive-oil based dressing but I'm often too lazy to bother so get some balsamic vinaigrette or something from the store, aaaand the DELICIOUS combination ends up looking like...

This is SO SO SO yummy. Usually I put in diced up mushrooms, but I didn't have any today.

Yes, salad without tomatoes or cucumber. I HATE tomatoes and cucumbers. Ick. Ick ick ick. And don't tell me that cucumber has no taste. It TOTALLY does and ruins EVERY SINGLE BITE I accidentally (or out of courtesy, purposefully....shudder) choke back.

And then dinner I was GOING to do this yummy pork stir fry, buuut as I mentioned I totally fell asleep and then had to dash off to teach piano, so when I got home Mr. Man offered to make us all bacon and eggs (WIN - this is TOTALLY MEAT so edible on detox days! BOOyah!) and I took him up on it. I almost NEVER eat eggs for other meals when I have them for breakfast, but today was, obviously an exception. And my dinner was DELISH. (Thanks, Mr. Man! MUAH!)

Snacking today? Just chipping away at my bag of broccoli-slaw. I have to replenish my veggie stash, hopefully tomorrow, so I have a bit more variety tomorrow.

What am I craving?? An ORANGE. I found not eating fruit the hardest part of detoxing last time I did it, too. I LOVE fruit. I LOVE sitting on the couch at the end of the day, zoning out to something stupid on Netflix, and chowing down on a giant orange. Drooling. Last time the hardest thing was not eating apples. The difference is probably that I had a big bag of BEAUTIFUL apples when I started last time, and this time, there are four giant, fabulously juicy bright orange navel oranges taunting me in the kitchen.

Sigh

And now, I'm off! Hope your Tuesday was as fabulous as mine! Happy detoxing! :-D

Detox time!

2012-01-09T23:09:00.001-05:00

Just a quick one tonight!

I'm back from my first kickboxing class of the year and I've signed up for the club's annual 'biggest loser' contest. Well, I actually have no idea if it's a contest, but whatever. hahaha I'm not too concerned about what the scale says, but you know I let myself have some serious fun over the holidays and I'm ready to be accountable and behave myself.

Anyway, step one, tonight, was to get weighed and measured and whatever.

Next step.... tomorrow we all start the detox....which wowzers do I need to do. I've been trying to talk myself into it again the past week or so but I haven't been able to turn down cheese or greek yogurt! hahaha BUT 14 days - been there, done that, can totally do it again. :-D

So, for the next 14 days I'll check in, let you know how it's going, what I'm eating, and what I'm ACHING for - I'm thinking this might be easier because I'm not eating as many carbs as I was when I did it the first time, but I could be totally kidding myself.

Starting tomorrow morning back to meat, nuts, and vegetables for 14 days. C'est tout!

(Time to start planning the cheat meal, folks! WAHOO! hahaha)

Until tomorrow, then!

Cheers

Abdominal Massage

2012-01-08T22:59:00.000-05:00

(image from: http://ishellneville.com/maya-abdominal-massage/)

So, apparently, I have a bit of a phobia. Or something. SOMETHING.

I mean, I guess there were maybe SOME clues.... I dunno, maybe when Mr. Man snuggles up close to me, draping his arm across my tummy results in his very swiftly being elbowed in the face and yelled at I should have seen the signs.

Maybe when I was pregnant and strangers (sometimes it's people you know who really are just STRANGE) placing their appendages on my distended belly immediately and without fail caused my blood to boil, I should have GUESSED.

I HATE having my abdomen touched.

I HATE it.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE it.

I don't know if it's totally 100% an insecurity thing - that definitely doesn't HELP, I'll admit, ESPECIALLY my post-baby belly. Even 4 years later and skinnier than high-school...ICK - or if it's just...I dunno, my weird thing (I don't have any other idiosyncrasies, right? RIGHT?? .... come on people back me up, here...)

Whatever it is, though, I hate having my tummy touched.

So, today, at school, when we talked about doing abdominal massage and how fabulous it is for this and that and the next thing.... MY abdomen was busy flip-flopping around as my horribly overactive imagination skipped ahead to the part of class where we strip down and practice on each other.

Oy. Oy freaking vey.

Anyway, I get myself partnered up with Sensei D. Which is fine and dandy; we've partnered before and it's fine. A bit funny sometimes because we know each other outside of class - it's a bit weird to see someone at kickboxing that has also seen and massaged my glutes, I'm not going to lie - but he's a good guy and we have fun. And my other friend, Zinds (blog names are tricky sometimes! I like this one. At least how I created it - muahahaha!) currently has a blood clot in her arm so CAN'T massage, really, so she tagged along with us.

Now, one of the best ways to get over discomfort with massaging a uh, sensitive area, is to have that area worked on yourself. So with this theory in mind my partners (and instructors) suggested I hop on the table first to get it over with and get comfortable with it.

Ohmigoodness.

To have your abdomen done first you have a towel placed over your chest, and then you, the patient, hold on while the therapist pulls the blanket and sheet down from underneath the towel. It's very neat, very discreet, proper, conservative, whatever. Highly appropriate uncovering, you know? Maybe you don't - I'm finding out it's weird for the general public to be as laissez-faire about body parts as most health care professionals are.

So, Sensei D gives me my itty, bitty, wee teeny tiny towel, FOLDS IT IN HALF and places it carefully where it goes. Then asks me to hold on so he can undrape my belly.

I was dying. DYING. I think I was holding on so tight it made it SUPER hard for the poor guy to get the blanket to move! hahaha I couldn't NOT hold on for dear life, though! I mean, what the heck?? I have kickboxing tomorrow! Hey, Sensei! How WEIRD was that when my boobs fell out in class yesterday?? Yeah, NO! that was TOTALLY not going to happen!! Soooooo, yeah, I kinda' crossed my arms and held on.

Then, finally, he got to undraping my tummy. Boobs safely covered and tucked, nothing anywhere it shouldn't be.

Except wait a second, my belly is HANGING OUT, just sitting there.

I was dying. I can't even tell you. I know, because Zinds told me, that Sensei D started to do my abdominal massage and then offered it to Zinds, who having never done it before decided to ignore her serious health issues and give it a shot. She worked on me for about ten minutes, during which time I had to continuously be reminded to breathe, my instructor kept trying to get my shoulders out of my ears, and I could NOT perform proper diaphragmatic breathing, which is generally pretty easy, to have my diaphragm treated.

Honestly, I think I would have preferred Sensei D to have been practicing breast massage on me. That, I mean, I KNOW is going to be awkward for everyone involved, then we're going to get out our giggles, get over it, and move along. My abdomen?? BLECH.

It was torturous.

NOW, IF/when you go for a massage to release the serious serious serious tension in your body HAVE ABDOMINAL MASSAGE - it's fabulous and amazing to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, WHICH is the one you want working when you're looking to chill. Also, it will unconstipate you, which is faboosh 'cause you're probably are constipated - who knew, right? There are 20 people in my class and I was the ONLY one having a spazz attack on the table, so...there's at best a 20 to 1 chance you'll react like me. And, frankly, I haven't given up hope that I WILL RELAX and be able to RECEIVE this treatment and then be awesome at performing it in my own practice.

But today? Was freaking BRUTAL.

So what have we learned??

Stay the heck away from my tummy! hahaha

Cheers!

Where'd I go?

2012-01-05T22:33:00.001-05:00

image from http://www.moxiebird.com/2011/11/does-talking-about-your-diet-undermine-your-success.html

Okay, so I'm a day late - my apologies. I had a friend emergency yesterday during my would-have-been blogging time. Everyone and everything is hunky-dory, but there's my excuse. ;-) Am I forgiven?

I thought today I would tell you about the thing I'm sure was one of the more interesting things I mentioned on Tuesday (even though, yes, it is Thursday and I should probably get back into the habit of Thankful-Thursday posts, 'cause they're a blast to write so... do be doo...) AND even has to do with the supposed SUBJECT of my blog here: 20lbs down in kickboxing!!

WAHOO!!

So, here's how it went down. It being the number on the scale, and definitely my pant size. (Muahaha!!)

You may or may not know about me - I can't for the life of me remember if I've ever written about it on here before or not - that I occasionally suffer from fabulously debilitating bouts of depression. It's just a blast. I totally shut down, stop being able to function properly, if at all - really depends on the day - usually eat a lot... part of my not functioning is my fun inability to get myself motivated to exercise on a regular basis. So, when I throw ridiculous amounts of binge eating together with life on the couch instead of out pounding the pavement with my runners....I pack on the pounds. And the uh, extra-fluffy appearance. It's super nice. And helps me feel just fabulous about my uber-depressed self. sigh Vicious cycle and all that jazz.

I don't know this time around what my trigger was, but I'm thinking it had something to do with all the ridiculous change that happened when I graduated university (which was amazing, by the way. I totally freaking have a degree. BOOyah!) So for like, a year and a half I'm over here, floundering beyond belief, and I packed on...about 40lbs, give or take. First time I hit 198lbs without being pregnant. ;) (Though when I was pregnant my high score was 225 - beat THAT! hahaha)

Anyway, through a series of events and circumstances, I ended up trying a kickboxing class at the dojo where Little Miss started taking jim jitsu in September - she picked jiu jitsu over dance.... is she related to me, you think? And when I say kickboxing, I don't mean an aerobics class with sports-bra Barbie bouncing at the front of the room, I mean boxing gloves, kick the bageezies out of your partner, hitting things kickboxing. I went to class a couple of times and fell in love with the intensity, the fabulous sound of a roundhouse kick smashing into a bag.... and I KNEW I was never going to get better without some assistance, so I took the plunge and committed myself to attending minimally twice per week - I'm paying for it, and people will notice if I'm not there. Two big motivators for me.

So fine, so I take up kickboxing. La dee dah.

Some nights are better than others - I still have serious anxiety - the first class I showed up for I was practically having a panic attack out in the waiting area and Sensei had to literally come, grab my hand and drag me into the room.... - but all in all I LOVE it. And I generally, now, try to make 3 classes per week - class runs minimally an hour and fifteen, we work our BUTTS off, learn stuff, and have a blast.

Anyway, in October Sensei started announcing that he had arranged for some amazing someone to come down and teach interested parties about nutrition blah-de-blah-blah aaaand after some coercion he convinced me to sign up for the seminar.

So one Saturday in November I toddle over to the dojo to meet the guru and learn all about what the heck is wrong with the way I eat.

It was amazing.

Ah. MAZE. ing.

Have you ever had your body fat percentage calculated by skin-fold measurements? Someone takes callipers to all your flabby spots and tells you how fat you are?? Being a KIN major this is a normal occurrence in my experience buuuut I'm learning it's not necessarily so for the general populous. Anyway, THIS technique uses a FABULOUS...I think theory? I don't know if it's a proven whatever, yet... where each skin-fold measurement site is associated with various hormones in the body - increased "fat"ness at a site is an indication of an imbalance. So, for example, a large number at the umbilicus (by the belly button - belly fat) is indicative of elevated cortisol levels: cortisol is a stress hormone so you're probably overstressed (or in the case of athletes overtraining). There's a thyroid site, I think your patella (knee cap) is related to your growth hormone - if you don't have enough of that you're not going to increase your muscle mass very easily - there were ten. It was cool.

On ME, my initial measurements indicated that I may have some trouble with insulin i.e. an insulin resistance. That means when I eat oodles of carbs, as I TOTALLY do, all the time, and my body secretes insulin to deal with all the excess blood sugars....nothing happens. Well, relatively nothing, anyway. Not like, diabetic nothing, but less happens than should, ideally.

The first thing suggested to me seemed a bit radical, but I thought, what the heck, let's give it a try. For 14 days I did a detox - I totally eliminated wheat, oats....pretty much everything from the 'grain' category, fruits (fructose), dairy.... I ate, literally, nothing but eggs/meats, nuts & seeds, and vegetables. And oil-based dressings. It was an interesting experiment, as I am the pickiest eater I know.

By the end of two weeks my jeans were literally falling off.

At the end of two weeks I had a cheat meal - as allowed by the 'plan' - one meal after the detox that lasts as long as you're sitting a the table - once you stand up meal is over. (We had shrimp pasta, cheesy garlic bread, caesar salad with bacon and homemade croutons, cheesecake, cookies, and ice cream - it was divine).

Then there was another week - another week on the detox-type plan and another cheat meal. Chicken parmesan, alfredo sauce.....drool. Heaven on the dinner table.

Anyway, I was having some serious success on this detox plan and actually finding myself able to DO it, which is new for me. Oh, and somewhere along the way I started back up on antidepressants so, the drugs, and the regular exercise with some major health victories.... I was doing great.

So then we had a second seminar - more measurements to see almost what had happened to us on the detox, you know? Like, get the after measurements. I was down 11lbs, 2 sizes, much more capable at kickboxing - no longer having to sit down before the end of class with my head between my knees... it was weird and awesome. And my second set of measurements indicate yes, that my stress hormone levels are high (um, I have a four-year-old, an out-of-work husband, and am in school.... DUH), AND that I have a genetic predisposition for this fabulous insulin resistance.

Translation?

No more bread. Pasta. Flour. Oatmeal (yay - I hate oatmeal - was trying to eat it to be healthy! BOOyah!) It's in my waistline's best interest for me to avoid like the plague wheat, oats, and spelt.

And you know what? It's CRAZY. I spent most of December basically following those guidelines - I eat mostly meat/eggs veggies and nuts most of the time, some fruit now, and yes I eat dairy (Greek yogurt? Who knew? YUM!) I got into my jeans I both when I was my skinniest ever while running... I looked awesome, even if I do brag on my own behalf... O:-) And I FELT amazing. SO cool.

Aaaaaand....then we went to my mom's for Christmas. hahaha I knew we'd be going - I specifically ordered homemade cinnamon buns for over the holiday and there was bread and spaghetti one night.... We arrived on a Thursday and I kid you not, by the TUESDAY I had already started, visibly, to put fat back on around my midsection/lovehandles. It was INSANE. In one week I went from fabulous to being, literally, an inch away from being able to line up the button of my jeans with its hole to do them the heck up! Yes, I overate a couple of days - Christmas dinner and all that jazz - but seriously? I put on INCHES, INSTANTLY!

Wild. Wild wild wild.

So, now we know, like, exactly, what happens when I eat carbs!! hahaha So now I'm home, aaand I'm back to not eating carbs. Been home since Tuesday. Already feeling svelte-er, which I wouldn't think possible exactly except I watched it go SO FAST the other way. I swear you could watch it happen!!

Anyway, so that's the skinny with my skinny. I'm still eating, just totally DIFFERENTLY. Better for ME. It's fantastic. And makes SO much sense that each individual person has different nutritional needs - everything else about interpersonal health issues depends on each individual person, why would our dietary needs not vary slightly person to person??

I can't recommend that you try what I did - it's such an individual thing, and you need whatever measurements to know what your imbalances are. But wow, knowing mine, and being able to tailor my food accordingly.... and I feel like I have total control of it now - if I want to eat a cinnamon bun, that's totally fine and dandy, I just don't want to do it daily because, hot dang it sticks. Like glue.

I'm kinda' half-watching "Men In Black" as I type this, so if this is the worst, most half-butted posting ever, sorry - we had gifts cards for HMV from Christmas, Mr. Man and I, and went and blew them today. :-) $100 between us plus $16.36 over and we scored 13 movies, 1 tv season, a CD, and a $3 points card. Sheer shopping brilliance.

But that, my friends, is the very lengthy, complete tale, of how the heck my waist got back to where I want it so quickly, how it ballooned back out a wee bit, aaaand how I plan to get it back in the next little while. Kickboxing starts back up again after a 2 week hiatus on Monday - I can't wait!

Cheers, all!

(FYI the guy who came to do the seminar was from a relatively local SST location - http://www.sportsspecifictraining.com/ I think they're super-dee-duper expensive, but check it out!!)

The end of 2011 in a nutshell

2012-01-03T22:09:00.000-05:00

Hiya!

It's me. Yes, me. The one who let her blog totally fall to the side.

Even with SO much going on and fabulous would-be blog posts rattling around in her head.

Yup. THAT me.

I'm back. Well, today, at least. No promises, 'cause I don't want to upset anyone (cough, cough, HEATHER, cough cough)

Anyway, as I said, OODLES has been up over here and oodles of it has been rattling around in my brain itching to get out soooo I'm HOPING to get back to it!

So, here it goes!

Life, in a nutshell:

Sept: Little Miss started jim jitsu and I started kickboxing. We both LOVE our respective uh, martial arts. She has since graduated from white to yellow belts (she's SO proud of herself, and has set her sights on her orange belt! Go munchkin, go!) Also, it was both my and Little Miss' birthdays. And school (yup, that's right - did I mention I'm in school again? I THINK I did....) kicked my butt.

Oct: More kickboxing, jiu jitsu. School for Little Miss & I. Mr. Man lost his job (BOO!!!) Yeah, that one SUCKED. Also, my mom made Little Miss the GREATEST Batman costume for Hallowe'en EVER. And when people would see her costume and say "Hey, it's Batgirl," she'd get all upset, Little Miss, and correct them: "No, I'm BatMAN!" hahaha LOVE her to bits and pieces. School really kicked my butt this month - I was a little distracted with the whole husband-out-of-work thing. Oy.

Nov: More kickboxing. Crafting for Christmas. School kicking my butt. Nutrition seminar that gave me some serious pointers and lessons about how I need to eat for ME, that included a 14-day detox - I got a cold right as I was starting my detox, so missed a week of kickboxing, but still shed 11lbs. It was crazy.
Uuuummmm.... can't think of any other big things that happened in November. Learned some awesome stuff at school - even while it kicks my butt I'm LOVING it and learning oodles. I'm going to be an awesome massage therapist.

Dec: Second nutrition seminar. Apparently I have been eating wrong for my body like, my entire life. Changing my eating and I'm down about 20lbs since starting kickboxing in September, the majority of which is since detoxing in November. Also down 2 sizes and am back into my 'skinny' jeans - huzzah! Also, a wickedly HUGE amount of crafting, my baby brother's 26th birthday, painting at my parents' to earn some cash, and hello CHRISTMAS.

So there you are, all caught up!

Mr. Man is patiently waiting for me to chillax and tune into some TV as we unwind after all our Holiday Vacating (we just came home today), so I think for now I will leave it at that, and PLAN to be back tomorrow (leave threatening comments if I'm not) to give some more details about some of the interesting stuff. :-D

2012 is going to be a great year. I can't wait.

It's Thursday. So sue me.

2011-09-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

Hiya!

I know it's Thursday. But I'm not here to write about that. You know, the whole Thankful Thursday thing. WHICH I fully intend to continue...someday...

I've sort of realized lately, my uh, "life" fell apart once I graduated, I think, because I have NO STRUCTURE. No structure does not make for a happy me. I just totally flounder.

So, we've been working lately on having some more structure.

And when I'm back up and fully functioning I'll blog more.

So for now, I'm going to stop feel bad about being such a sporadic blogger and just go with the flow. When I have a moment, and something to say, you'll hear about it. Yes? Fabulous.

AND I kind of want to do something with my Thankful Thursday posts so YES they'll be back. Eventually. Promise.

Right now I'm focusing on getting better, liking me again, getting back into my groove, structuring life such that I can actually succeed in it, and just...whatever.

Today? TOTALLY my birthday. Bazing!

It's weird, though. I swear, the past four years, being a mom, it's like, I really couldn't care less about my birthday. Little Miss' birthday is like, exactly two weeks before mine, and so all the September build-up for birthday is about HER - as it should be, she being a whopping 4 years old now - aaaaaaand coming off of that I'm exhausted and birthdayed-out! I mean, we did some seriously AWESOME stuff for HER birthday...what are we going to do for mine? Meh!

And it used to be that this kind of non-observance of my birthday would really bother me. But it so DOESN'T now.

Which has my poor family scratching their heads and worrying that I'm LYING, that my feelings really ARE hurt if they don't hire the entire Barnum & Bailey Bros circus to appear and perform for me on Sept 22nd... and trying to figure out just what the heck we can/should DO for my birthday.

Yes, I used to be a birthday bitch.

Sorry for the language, but there really IS no other way to describe it. AND to use a horrible, non-fabulous, terrible cliche... IT IS WHAT IT IS.

Today, for my birthday:

I spent most of the day fawning over a sick, ornery, cantankerous version of Little Miss
I did homework
I did work work
I fought with Little Miss about what movie she wanted to watch because she's too out of it to pick a movie for herself but refuses any title I offer
I lost the battle in the kitchen (for the first time this week - and hey, the day isn't done!)
I had leftovers for lunch

It truly, has been an unremarkable day. Complete with cancellation of our dinner plans because Little Miss is too sick. SO I'm thinking I'll probably pack it in shortly after Mr. Man gets home from work, read a bit of my book, and then head off to my (new) kickboxing class to get beat up by Senseis G & D for an hour in the ongoing effort to fit back into my fabulous clothes.

And that sounds fabulous to me.

OH, also, I almost forgot. Two FABULOUS pics Mr. Man has shared with me in the last little while that I just LOVE!

1) This one today, sent with: "For you on your birthday"

(from: http://imgur.com/aFvuu - absolutely LOVE it. Kudos, random person who's jpg this is!)

SO ABSOLUTELY TRUE, you sentimental fool, you. Thanks for the laugh.

And
2) The lazy-man's six-pack.


(from http://i.imgur.com/KmwNL.jpg - I do not know how Mr. Man found it in the first place, but I'm sure if we ask he can retrace his steps. Apparently reddit was involved.)

Absolute. Brilliance.

The chest hair and giant pecs aren't hurting either!

AAAAAND my Mr just walked in the DOOR, so that is that for NOW and I'm OUTTA' here! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Ciao

First Day of School

2011-08-24T20:41:00.000-04:00


(image from http://www.letstalkbabies.com/2009/08/19/first-day-of-school-jitters/)

So, I told you I'd tell you about my first day of school.

It was...thrilling, horrifying, humiliating, and fabulous all rolled into one.

Now, you may or may not realize right of the bat, that being in school for massage therapy means that one is going to spend some time being massaged (oh horror of horrors). Which is...a clothingless experience. There are sheets, everything's covered, it's very tasteful and modest, and whatever, but you know. You're not clothed. Except for knickers - knickers can absolutely be left on and will almost never be, um, 'in the way' unless you actually need your glutes worked on or something. So fine. Lots of almost-but-not-quite-naked. No big deal. Right?

In fact, I've been told it's better to be fully nude when getting a massage - again, EVERYTHING is covered and fabulously tasteful, but underneath the sheets I'm usually in my birthday suit. (Sorry for the TMI. Stop now if you're getting fidgety...)

Did you know that on the first DAY (at least in this accelerated post-graduate program) you strip down and hop on the tables?? Not going to lie, didn't know we'd be moving into things THAT quickly....

So I went to school, well, let's just say NOT PREPARED, alright? And I had NO IDEA. I'm not going to lie, my regular every day underwear makes 'granny panties' look like a lacy Victoria's Secret thong in comparison, okay? And we don't have to get into what the heck, why, whatever - be they control top, boy shorts, just weird freak things, religious, whatever, that's my regular knicker M.O., okay? Can I just say, panties down to your knees does NOT work for uncovering legs for massage. Another reason I tend to strip all the way down.

We're sitting in class and the instructors, who are a HOOT and instruct the class as though they're addressing a room full of already-very-qualified adults - which they are - and not a room full of school children (it's a weird teacher/student dynamic but I'm very much enjoying it), are talking about clinic etiquette during class. Basically what to expect and what to do when we get into the clinic room in five minutes, so we're not all standing there going, duuuuuhh.... what?? So fine.

And then the instructors, after telling us to pair up, find a table, pick one of us to be ON the table, pull the curtains, and strip down....

....tell us to leave on our underwear. 'Cause, you know, we're first-timers and don't want to accidentally flash anyone's anything to anyone and whoopsies-did-I-just-see-your-THAT-ohmigosh-I'm-SO-SORRY is just a situation we want to avoid. Really the underwear itself should never be seen, but again, we're first-timers, so who knows??

...and I feel my breathing constrict a bit as my anxiety level bumps up a notch... 'cause, well, you know, I usually take my knickers off....

...and THEN these fabulous instructors start in on this hilarious, horrifying tale of one class' "Creepy Bob" who no matter what they did was just so dang comfortable in his skin he didn't care who was where or saw what, and definitely never left his knickers on. Which in turn totally freaked out his classmates who were still getting used to and comfortable with the idea of having their hands all over another person's naked body for an extended period of time and har dee har har the whole thing was very uncomfortable and makes for a hilarious story now.

...well, hot freaking dang, what am I supposed to do? I'm bloomin' CREEPY BOB because MY KNICKERS GO TO MY KNEES.

My heart rate is through the roof, I'm sure my face was flushed as it gets when my anxiety sky rockets, I'm fidgeting, and trying to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to DO because I didn't BRING massage-appropriate panties to the first day of class because WHO THE HECK KNEW I'd NEED them five minutes in??

So fine, you know what? I'm just going to tell my partner. Hey, partner, this is awkward, but my knickers go to my knees and I'm thinking, unfortunately, I need to pull a creepy Bob on you and go commando. And you know what, she was GREAT. She was GREAT!! So, crisis averted, fabulous, we've acknowledged that I'm Creepy Bob and we're working around it. Fabulous.

I don't remember how she ended up on the table first, but she did, which was fine, and after I got over the initial shock that we were pulling the curtains all the way open after everyone was on the tables (so yes, half of the 20-person class is laying naked, face down, under sheets, in a room full of other naked people and onlookers so everyone can see everyone and everyone's business and everything that's going on, 'cause you know, that in itself isn't horrifying) I got to work practicing draping and undraping various parts of her anatomy - back, legs, arms - when, get this, the instructor, in the interest of promothing class cohesion, yells "ROTATE!"

ROTATE! Rotate?! ROTATE?!?!?! Away from my PARTNER? Who knows all about my horrific panty problem??

And, wouldn't you know, the next table contained a mostly-naked BOY who was in my university class. The ONLY other person in the room I kind of know a little bit. Aaaaaaaaand by the way, he's friggin GORGEOUS.

OhmigoshIwanttodie. OhmigoshIwanttodie. OhmigoshIwanttodie.

ROTATE!!

Please, someone. Anyone. Have mercy. Please don't make me keep touching naked strangers and can I get a fairy-godmother to wave a wand and fit me a pair of bikini bottoms, please? PLEASE?? Just breathe, just breathe, just breathe.....

FINALLY, thank goodness, the rotating stopped. And it's time to switch, so the naked folks on the tables are to get dressed and it's my turn to be....CREEPY BOB.

So exciting.

Obviously, if we're rotating, telling my new partner of my predicament isn't sufficient. So I spoke to one of the instructors quickly and she LAUGHED and said "It's FINE! It's usually better to be fully naked for massage anyway!" PHEW!

Anxiety over Creepy Bobiness subsides a wee wee wee little bit.

And I speak briefly to my new partner. Who, ohmigoodness was SO good about it.

So, we pulled the curtains, I stripped down to NOTHING, and then tried my DARNDEST to cover up on the table before announcing the curtains could be opened for the entire universe to see me.

And then the instructors announce we're running a bit short on time so we won't be rotating.

WIN!

....and then they decide they're going to teach us how to turn a patient....

...and the instructor comes to me.

On my table.

Laying completely NAKED under a sheet and a blanket.

Oh my dear me.

If I were wearing one of those beeping heart rate monitors that day, oy vey.

And she proceeds to teach the class how to turn a person over.

THANK GOODNESS we have to learn how to do it such that no one can see ANYTHING and not in the lift-the-sheet-up-high-and-look-the-other-way method that I've experienced in massages in the past (the examiners don't really appreciate it when you fully expose your test-body, apparently, when you take the registration exams - who woulda' thunk it?) but can I just tell you, moving around under a sheet being held in two places by a woman leaning over you...doesn't leave you feeling much of anything BUT exposed to the universe.

But then, it was over. I survived. I was eventually allowed to get up OFF of the table (with the curtains closed so NOT the whole class could look). I managed to get dressed, pack up my things, and even drive home that evening.

And you know what, other than the first day's shock-and-horror factors, as I said before, I am LOVE LOVING this program and loving massage. DEFINITELY made the right choice doing this. I'm excited.

And I take massage-appropriate knickers with me to class now so I don't have to stress about being the class' Creepy Bob. :-)

What to write about?

2011-08-22T23:06:00.000-04:00

So...a (very) few of you lovely folks out there have started bugging me because, well, it's been since MAY since I posted anything here on my lovely blog. (hangs head in shame)

But I gotta' tell ya'... today, and yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and so on and on and onnnnnnn I've just thought, well gee golly what on Earth WOULD I write about today??

NOT that I have nothing to say. That's never the problem. Just ask my poor poor poor Mr. Man about my ridiculous skillz in the art of the jibber and the jabber. WOWZERS. (You think my blog posts can be long and rambling? You should hear THE LIVE VERSION!)

Oh, I just had an idea! I could write about my first day of school! That was GREAT!

But, see, it's been so long since I wrote, did you even know I'm BACK at school?? Yeah, that's what I thought. So maybe I should just, you know, fill you in a little bit, yes??

We're HERE! We're all alive and well. We were at the BEACH for a couple of weeks (Me & Little Miss & my parentals -> Mr. Man, RaeDawn & TheKidWhoHasABlogNameThatI'mBlankingOnRightNowCauseIt'sBeenSoDangLongSinceIWrote, and my baby bro Bravo came up for the second week - FUN!!) and have been home for a whopping, I dunno, 37, almost 38 hours now?? Can I just tell you, plugging back in to technology and regular, every-day life schedule SUCKS!! blech I should move to a coast somewhere where beaches aren't such a big deal... sigh Anyway

BEFORE vacation... hmmmmm... well in June I started back at school for a post-graduate Massage Therapy program that should, by next year, have me qualified and passing my registration exams (fingers crossed!! GAH!) to be a Registered Massage Therapist.

Can I just tell you how much I am LOVING this program. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Massage is the COOLEST thing I think I've ever done in school, and despite the assignments, the stress, the self-inflated-egotistical professors I LOVED school. Getting my Kin degree was one of the hardest, funnest things I've ever done. Massage? Harder and I love it even more.

So that takes up....a lot of my time. I'm not actually in class very often, but boy oh boy I have a lot of reviewing to do - I had previously been out of school for a year AND haven't had hard-core anatomy classes since second year... oy - lots of new material to learn and master, and OH yeah, LIFE keeps going on, so there ya' go.

Mr. Man has been working around the clock trying to finish up this huge project at work - we haven't seen much of him, honestly, since May when the company kicked into like, minimum 10-hr days plus weekends.... (yeah, he REALLY earned his holiday - he was home for dinner tonight. It was REALLY weird!!)

Little Miss and I tried our hands at soccer this year - I coached the CUTEST team of 2-4 year olds EVER (no, I am NOT biased) and learned that as excited as my daughter is/was at the CONCEPT of playing soccer, being number 10 like Mommy, and playing with the other kids, she didn't so much like the actual GAME time. Which was hilarious, and way too much fun. ALSO, she's not such a big fan of watching MOMMY play soccer.... kinda' boring. And watching Mommy was pretty blaaaaaaah this year, too, as I injured my kicking leg in the second game of the season and haven't REALLY played since then. It's been very very very very VERY frustrating. I THINK I'm mended after vacation, though, and am REALLY REALLY looking forward to playing this week - fingers crossed everything stays together. For pity's sake, I'm not THAT old yet! My body should NOT be falling apart!!

What else can I tell you? Injuries kept me from running as much as I'd hoped this summer but I did great up at the beach so as long as I can keep the swing in motion now that we're home that's going well. I'm still chunky, but, whatever. If I could stop SHOVELING food into my mouth that might change. But I'm trying to arrange an all-you-can-eat sushi dinner for tomorrow night, so obviously it's not too ridiculous a priority right now... O:-)

And see? This is why I've been putting off writing 'cause I'm boring mySELF writing this nonsense!! I figure I gotta' start somewhere, though, to get back into the habit. Hopefully on Thursday I'll remember to be grateful and write a Thankful Thursday post - they're fun and actually quite challenging. In the meantime, if I feel like writing tomorrow I'll HAVE to tell you all about the first day of school at an accelerated post-graduate massage therapy program in a classroom full of "health professionals" (bunch of athletic therapists, a chiropractor, some kinesiologists, and stay-at-home-mommy ME! It was...brilliant).

Alright, those of you who have been jonesing for a blogpost, here ya' go! Sorry it's a lousy one, but it's done. I'll write something worth writing some other time, when I care more. hahaha Until then,

Ciao!
Red

Let me tell you about a friend of mine...

2011-05-11T11:37:00.002-04:00

Yes, my darling friend, I stole this picture from your blog. O:-)

I have a friend. (Okay, okay. Don't be so SHOCKED! Sheesh! I DO!) And she's fantastical. hahaha This girl cracks me right up. She sorta' stumbled upon my family and I when she and a bunch of other nuts were hanging around with my brother (or he was hanging around with them? I don't know) playing intramural sports, and we fairly quickly fell in love with this girl. Honestly I don't think I've ever ever EVER come across someone with as much vivacity as she.

She runs marathons for fun, literally rode her bike across Canada last year for kicks and giggles - people asked her why she was doing it, and she would answer...because I want to! She embraces her spelling and grammatical, um, shortcomings with flair and blogs her heart out anyway... she works two jobs, plays ultimate frisbee, soccer.... I'm telling you, VIVACIOUS!

Steph has never really talked to me about it but I do know that a little while ago she and her family went through a pretty rough patch, as unfortunately so many families do, when her mother was diagnosed with cancer and started that horrific battle against the odds for her life. Hers, thankfully, is one of the happy stories, and Steph's mom is still around, and I know at some point in the last couple years she's even outdone me in my running goals and run a half-marathon! YAY STEPH'S MOM! hahaha

Anyway, there's a bit of a story, and you can read it on Steph's blog, but instead of dedicating her running or her cycling or jumping rope or any of those things most of us associate with raising money for a cause, Steph is, basically, auctioning off her HAIR. hahaha HILARIOUS! I love this girl. She wants to cut at least ten inches off her hair, as that's the amount required to donate for a wig, but she's cutting her hair based on donations - for every $150 she raises she'll cut off an inch. SO she needs to raise $1500 to 'earn' her wig. But it gets better - if she can raise $2500 she's going to shave it all. Like Britney Spears but without the momentary insanity. The money is going to "Run To Live," a marathon-a-day run by Scott Cannata for cancer research. I guess Scott's thing is to raise $2/Canadian. So, of course Steph says, two dollars? How about two THOUSAND? And goes for it.

I love this girl.

To read about Steph's goals, why she's doing this, what she's doing, click here to read her post "Chopping it off for a good cause.........." and then, at the bottom of the post CLICK THE LINK TO DONATE! I'm not going to lie I would LOVE to bump into a bald Steph in the end of June!

Okay, and after you've done THAT...spread the link like wildfire! The more people we can get to give $2 the closer we get this girl to shaving her head. LOVE it!

Love you, Steph! Good luck!

Red

Fatter than ever and still kickin'!

2011-05-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

Mornin'!

So we've been having a good laugh all weekend+ at just HOW much weight I've put on. A dinner out with my parents had me perusing the menu chanting onehundred-and-ninety-five-pounds-onehundred-and-ninety-five-pounds-onehundred-and-ninety-five-pounds.... Once I got over the initial SHOCK of seeing just where my destructive tendancies from the past year have gotten me....well, it's kinda' funny! I mean, REALLY!

Anyway, the Food Addict needed to go shopping for some clothes for work and invited me to come along to give opinions. And after some serious vetting of my clothes and realizing, you know what, NONE of this stuff fits ANYway, I decided to shop, too.

So Saturday was shopping day. I haven't shopped for clothes in about a year. And ohmigoodness the SALES we stumbled upon! Huzzah! So buying myself some awesome fat clothes was a blast. I finally got some pants that are comfortable, don't make my muffin top any WORSE, and then a bunch of shirts and blouses that I'm sure are going to promt a whole new slew of ohmigoodness-are-you-pregnant queries buuuuuuuut the gelatinous belly is contained and well covered. So I'm a little uber thrilled with my purchases. And even though I'm the heaviest non-pregnant EVER - I never ever ever ever ever ever in a million years thought I'd ever let myself get to 197.8lbs (yesterday's weigh-in - huzzah! Bring it on!) - I'm dressed well and feel a bit better. AND I can give Mr. Man some of his pants back... O:-)

And my mom has decided enough is enough! hahaha SHE'S been talking, honestly, for as long as I can remember, about losing weight and getting on top of her health. Me getting so uber chunky, maybe, was the kick in the pants she needed? So she's asked me to be her "buddy," even though we live over an hour's drive from each other, we are to check in every day and report our activities for that day. Exactly what I used to use this blog for every day, but this way my Mom gets in on it, too! Yesterday she said she wasn't feeling great, but she went to the basement and pounded out a leisurely 20-minute walk because she knew a) she could do that much and b) I would be calling to check up on her. BOOyah! YAY MOM!

And she has outlawed my weighing myself for another month. hahaha 'Cause when I weighed yesterday and had gained 2.9lbs over the weekend I kinda' flipped - WHAT the heck! And she reminded me how much I hate scales, weighing yourself, and that while I've been making some serious efforts to ONLY eat until I'm not hungry anymore (I have a hard time stopping eating....I eat until it hurts and then I keep going for a while. I've been known to collapse on my bedroom floor in agony because I couldn't make it the extra two feet to my bed... seriously. People think I'm kidding about food addiction and all the trouble I have turning down a ginormous bowl of ice cream - those stupid little 100-calorie 'perfect portion' things are a joke; that doesn't fill the enormous void inside! I have to eat 10 of them!) we did eat out Saturday night and I do sometimes REALLY retain water. And maybe I'm just on the upswing of my cycle. Whatever. I did NOT put on 3 pounds of FAT over the weekend I am CERTAIN, and so, I'm not 'allowed' to weigh myself 'till June. hahaha

Love you, Mom!

And that's that for now, I guess. Yesterday I did my current favourite workout, the Biggest Loser's Last Chance Workout aaaaaaaand this morning I ran for about 20 minutes on my treadmill before breakfast. I'm working through a great article in an old Women's Health magazine on how to get my scrawny little arms able to do pullups so I can finally really take advantage of my pullup bar, so have to hang from that for a while later today - I'll have to see if I can find the article online to post it, but I have laundry and groceries screaming my name today! Oh yes, and yesterday was serious-yard-work-day so I was outside working all day, too. So I moved, huzzah. ;)

I've been thinking in addition to getting back to Thankful Thursdays I may want to add another one or two weekly 'specials' .....I'm just working on corny alliteration and coming up with what I want to do.

And that, I think, is all the disjointed blah blah blah blah blah blaaaaaaaah I have for you lovely folks today. hahaha Gotta' hang my laundry on the line, make the meal plan, get the groceries, have lunch, and then take the kid to the park with her friend.

Loving this insanely beautiful weather.

Cheers!

Wait, What?

2011-05-06T12:05:00.001-04:00

Holy cow! I only posted twice in April! Geeze, did THAT get away from me.

April had the last-minute rehearsals leading up to performances of the lovely lovely play, which took me more or less totally out of comission for two weeks, and of COURSE with that lovely stress level I succumbed to yet another illness (it's passed - let's put it behind us and move on!) which accounted for the better part of another week..... aaaaaaaaaaand believe it or not the CLEANING HAS BEGUN! I've had two, um, "crews" come so far to help, and WHOA what a difference. And you know what? The areas we've done ARE STILL CLEAN AND ORGANIZED! I'm thrilled about this - usually when I clean a space, the next day, you'd never know I'd cleaned it. But Mr. Man and I are making extra special effort (read: nagging the bageezies out of each other) to put things away, hang up coats, throw it out if we're not using it, etc. It's AH-MAZE-ING. And has been taking a bit of priority, not going to lie.

STILL TONNES AND TONNES OF WORK TO DO, but... five rooms done. Huzzah! (Will post pictures....later. hahaha)

No, today, besides being shocked when I saw how little I'd written in April - wait, what? - I needed to confess. I'm in SHOCK. I'm horrified and SO embarassed and just, disgusted with myself. AAaaaaand this is where I come to blab that kinda' stuff to the entire universe (what the heck is WRONG with we people who blog? I don't even know.... oy).

The last few months, in my sporadic posts, I've lamented about how horrendously I've let myself go this year and how sick of feeling fat and blah blah blah blah blaaaaaaaah blah blllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh whatever. I think I'm sicker of writing about it than I am feeling about it, honestly. I mean, what? Every other post I get around to is about my expandabutt lately? Geeze. Say it with me now: "Get a GRIP, lady, and get it the freak together already!!"

NOTHING fits. Even the pair of Mr. Man's jeans I've been wearing....almost every day for the last few months? O:-) Even THOSE are starting to get tight - they're uncomfortable right out of the wash. What the HECK.

So today, I FINALLY did it. I FINALLY powed up my wii fit balance board - had to change the batteries and everything - and WEIGHED myself.

I've been talking, inwardly, about needing to do this for months. Like, okay, seriously, WHAT is the damage. I know nothing fits, HOW MUCH WEIGHT have I really put on??

But finding out has TERRIFIED me, I think. 'Cause I'm not going to lie, after I weighed myself today and got SLAPPED in the face with THAT reality, I had to sit down on the couch and get my mojo back together to keep the tears back.

What the HELL have I done to myself? And WHY??

Today I weigh 194.9lbs and have a BMI of 31.32.

Wait. WHAT?!?!

Now, you may recall how I feel about the validity of BMI and what garbage it is as a measure of fatness. But.....to the best of my knowledge if I were to go into the doctor's office today with that information she would go by her BMI chart.

And tell me that yes, I am in fact, 100% very well, full on OBESE.

I mean, that is how obesity it defined, by a calculation of height & weight. And while I may not agree with the practice it's how things are done.

I am, currently, textbook obese.

That's a tought one to swallow, not going to lie.

So, I don't know if that's the kick in the pants I need to turn myself around so I can stop feeling humiliated every time I walk out of my house - true story - or if the ridiculous, constant-binge state I've been in for the last year is going to just continue - is it called a binge if it never ends?

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I know I am not this person. I am not obese. I'm active, fun, silly, and run around with all the kids at parties. I don't live off of chocolate or pick movies over workouts. I don't hate running.

I am lost inside a ginormous layer of bubbly, dented, flabby lard and can't get out.

TODAY:
did the Biggest Loser "Last Chance Workout" which I LOVE and highly recommend - constantly changing interval workout. It's HARD by the end, holy crow. I think it's about 35 minutes.
Next: giving up waiting and getting rid of my clothes that don't fit. If I ever lose the weight again I'll just get to go shopping. I think I'm ready to live with that.

Thankful Thursday - Sickness

2011-04-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed in my last post that yes, again, I have a cold.

Yes, I am one of the most sickly persons EVER.

But I can tell exactly when I'm GOING to get sick, soooo.... it's never a surprise. Well, I guess there's the odd time I'm all, wait, what? But usually, there's a I'm-going-to-be-sick formula:

lack of sleep + close vicinity to a sick person = one out-of-commissioned me

If I meet up with a sick person and I'm NOT run-down tired from not sleeping, I won't get sick. If I'm run-down tired and manage to not run into any sick people, I won't get sick.

I went to the doctor about it once - WHY the heck am I SICK all the time? But there's nothing weird about me, I just come up against something I haven't the immunity for for whatever reason - exhaustion, ex-mono-patient, or because it's H1N1 or something intense - and then I'm downed.

LATELY, I've really NOT been sick much. I mean, I was sick for about three days last month, and then, obviously, this month have been felled (I babysat a little girl with the vestiges of a cold last week because Little Miss was in need of a playmate and the little girl's mother was in need of a serious break due to a little brother not sleeping through the previous night - follow it up with a sleep-lacking night for me and here I am). BUT in previous months I've NOT GOTTEN SICK. Which...was weird. There were a couple of times, even, when both Mr. Man and Little Miss were sick and I nursed them back to health without getting ill myself.... I know. FREAKY.

Anyway, so I'm a sick person. Whatever. I'm over it.

WHAT does this have to do with Thankful Thursday? Well, I hope more than last week's ode-to-V tangent!

Thankful Thursday

the illness edition

yes, that's right.

1) TISSUES

(from: http://scottdesignworks.com/portfolio_toro.html which is NEAT! Take two seconds and read about this guy's 'tissue ring' - I'd buy that!)

Okay, so. I'm sick. And, as goes with being sick, full of.....gunk. Which is pretty gross.

Imagine life BEFORE tissues? I mean, how many times is too many to REALLY blow your nose in a handkerchief? Catching the odd dribble or whatever in it and shoving it back in your pocket, fine. But ohmigosh, if I had to do that repeatedly with my I'm-sick-and-in-the-process-of-EMPTYING nose-blows? shudder And then HAND-WASH it on a washboard? All the dried crusties? Ew, no THANK-you! I'd probably go through hankies like they were disposables....

THANKS FOR TISSUES!

2) SICK DAYS

(from: http://health.slides.kaboose.com/133-top-ten-sick-day-movies-for-grown-ups)

Okay, so I'm a stay-at-home Mom at the moment, so I don't have a boss to call in to or a desk full of paperwork that I'm leaving undone (actually.....) BUT occasionally, I get to take a sick day anyway. Sometimes Mr. Man is home (i.e. a weekend) and sometimes I'll send Little Miss to the (uber-fantastical, can't-live-without-her) neighbour for the day. Which is brilliant, because, even though I'm SICK, which isn't ideal, I have the ENTIRE DAY to do ANYTHING I WANT.

Of course, being sick, the only thing I want to do is nothing. But honestly, who doesn't NEED a day of nothing every now and then?? When I'm sick I hunker down in bed or on the couch with a giant drink, a remote, a box of tissue, a phone (so I don't have to get up to see it's a telemarketer I don't want to talk to), a book (sometimes I'm so sick I'm not up to reading - ever had that? Oy)...... you get everything you might possibly need within arms' reach of you, dive under a snuggly blanket, and spend your ENTIRE DAY there.

Because is there really a better remedy for anything other than rest?

Sick days I get to watch favourite movies, movies I've been wanting to watch but haven't had a chance before. Or this week, I organized my many many partially-started/finished scrapbooks and worked in Studio J to fill in the blanks (did 10 two-page layouts of Little Miss' un-scrapped baby pictures the other day. FROM MY COUCH while watching episode after episode of Angel on Netflix). Sometimes I read books when I'm sick...you may recall I love to read. I nap on sick days.

Sick days rock my socks.

You know, except the being sick part.

Thanks for sick days, Mr. Man & awesome neighbour! And whoever else has ever given me a day off to just be sick.

3) MEDDLESOME GET-BETTER SUGGESTIONS


(from: http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2008/02/natural-cold-remedies-for-children.html)

Soooooo you MAY remember that I don't ALWAYS feel grateful for this... AND, depending on how close we are and how out-of-it-ill you were the day you gave me a suggestion on how to get better, you may have EXPERIENCED the the non-grateful side of me - SORRY!

My body does NOT respond to home remedies for the common cold. Not herbs, spices, blends, vapours, whatever. Generally a cold takes about 14 days to fully come and go, aaaaaand it will take my body 14 days with or without all the poking, prodding, and trying. So that's fine.

But you know what? As much as it drives me absolutely bonkers and I, in my sick-not-thinking-straight-gross-induced haze of thought can sometimes be OFFENDED by the obvious assumption that I'm a moron....

...I'm GRATEFUL.

No, really!

I mean, to be THAT annoyed by near CONSTANT suggestion of oh-do-this-oh-try-that-oh-this-gag-inducing-crazy-upside-down-dangling-witch-voodoo-remedy-WORKS...

...I MUST be surrounded by people who love me and care about me and want me to get better quickly.

And THAT is not an annoying thought. It's ridiculously humbling, really. Securing, really. With the bombardment of unsolicited advice that comes my way when I'm ill it seems highly unlikely that I'll be able to fly under the radar if anything really serious ever came my way. Did you ever see that video of a guy in NYC saving a woman from a mugging and being stabbed in the process, and then he was just left there to bleed out and die? People walked by, some even stopped and looked at him, but no one helped HIM. No one who passed him stopped long enough to assess that hey, this dude is DYING. (Not going to go looking for it to post because it SUCKS)

I hope it's obvious that I'm not naive enough to think that something horrific could happen to me at any moment of any day. But being barraged by well wishes and well-meaning advisers sure makes me confident that there is a MASS of people who WOULD stop for me. And that in itself is comforting.

Though I don't think it will speed up my cold... ;)

4) DRUGS


(from: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cold-and-cough-medicine-dangerous-for-children/)

So, this is along the vein of the tissue thinking. Even though I RARELY use them there are times when I really need to be functional even though I'm sick, and I pop an Advil cold & sinus or a Tylenol flu to get me through. They usually clear me up just enough to do what I gotta' do without passing out aaaaaand then I can go back to wallowing in my sickness.

And really, as often-sick as I get, I hardly ever ever use these. USUALLY don't feel it necessary.

But man oh man.... ever read your history books about way-back-in-the-days-of-only-hankies when one nasty cold was the end of a person? A cold just escalated and escalated until it became life-threatening pneumonia or something? And how many people DIED from that??

Thank GOODNESS for medicine.

5) HEALTH

(from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/chronic_disease.asp)

YES, health. Yes, I am one of the sickest people you know. I know I know.

But it's JUST A COLD!

I DO NOT currently have really anything 'wrong' with me. You know? I don't have any compromising condition that I have to monitor or deal with day in and day out - unless you count marriage? BOOM! JUST KIDDING, Mr. Man! LOVE you! O:-) - I don't have to stick myself with needles or test my blood or have specific, restrictive diet requirements like my diabetic, factor-5 lyden (spelling? Anyone?), GD, or another-thing-I-can't-remember friends do. I'm not confined to a wheelchair or scooter like my friend CP from class, or that little boy with MD is going to deteriorate to. My coughing fits are either tied to my head colds or the fact that I sometimes scarf up my food too fast and choke on it, unlike that new little baby with CF is going to experience in her life as her parents are taught how to POUND on her back to loosen the mucous in her chest so she can breathe again. I'm not even asthmatic like the neighbour-boy for whom common colds quickly become bronchitis and who has to have puffers to open a constricting airway. I haven't been hospitalized for gallstones like two girlfriends of mine. I'm not currently battling crippling mental illness like depression (been there, done that. Won that fight...for now, anyway), anxiety, ADHD, or the unbelievably horrific schizophrenia (ohmigoodness, have some time? Read this - Jani's Journey - ShopGirl shared it about a week ago aaaaaand it's unbelievable).

I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not. Sure, I have a cold and I get sick sometimes. But I'm healthy.

And what a blessing.

The Game Plan

2011-04-06T10:53:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make.

Which is okay, right? Since this IS "Confessions of a Kin Major" I'm SUPPOSED to have deep dark secrets to share with the world here, right?

Obviously, if I were perfect, as I know you all like to think (haaaaaaahahahahaha) I'd never have anything wrong about myself to report.... but then I would have named the blog something else. Booyah, chalk one up for logic!

Okay, ready? Here it goes:

I haven't been running.

(from: http://hyunjunra.glogster.com/)

And you know what, when I HAVE fit running into my day, or week, or whatever lately.... I suck at it. Like, REALLY bad.

I'm looking back on the last few years in my head and trying to figure out how I got into running in the first place, and how I managed to get "good" at it - I've never been good, but for ME I've been awesome. But lately, the last few months lately, I just....can't get INTO it. I just can't! It's SO WEIRD. So yes, I ran further the other week than I ever had before in a week, but that was an anomaly week. Which, you know, stop-and-start type regular-exercise-behaviour is exactly what we're looking for.

The first time I ever ever ran 5K without stopping I was just trudging along trying to see if I COULD do it, paying no attention to speed. It took me 38 minutes. Last week I ran 5K on my treadmill trying to give it my all.....and it took me 38 minutes. Which is MORE than 10 minutes slower than my personal best, at LEAST 8 minutes longer than it 'should' take me even on an 'off' day aaaaaaaand.... yeah. It's just not good.

I can't break through my mental block when I'm running lately. And it's driving me nuts. And it's not FUN.

So I haven't been running.

So I haven't been losing any of the oodles-of-weight I packed on last year. Which is unfortunate because it's slowly getting warmer aaaand all my warm clothes are currently size 8 and I'm pretty sure I SHOULD be wearing at least a 12 or 14 at the moment.

Brilliant.

But I have an idea, I'm actually excited about... I just got a chest cold like, the day after we mapped out the idea (we - the Food Addict, Mr. Man and I had an actual sit-down meeting last week with note-taking and commitment making and blah blah blah.... it was silly, fun, and hopefully helpful. All three of us made our plans, and having the others there - at least FA and I - have someone to keep accountable to. Anyway) aaaaand have been doing oodles of RESTING trying to get rid of all signs of this cold before the play starts next weekend - SO glad I'm sick BEFORE the play and not DURING it this year, BY the by.

Anyway, after my brief stint of waking up at 6 for daycare we KNOW that I CAN get up in the mornings. So now it's just making our nighttime habits and realigning my own thought-patterns such that they encourage earlier mornings. Mr. Man and I have instituted a bedtime, whereas previously we were staying up too late watching tv we just make sure to get our together-time in earlier and get to bed! And now, when I wake up at 7 (or before) I'm AWAKE.

It's weird.

(Except the days since I've been sick - I sleep a lot more when I'm sick).

With getting up at NORMAL morning times there's enough time for me to exercise before the day gets going, which is AWESOME! So during the week I'm going to sort of play it by ear and "rotate" through a bunch of things, so I don't get BORED, get my cardio & resistance in, and keep my body guessing. Here's the current list:

P90X Plyometrics - my FAVE of the P90X workouts, and it will be AWESOME in prepping for soccer season.
Biggest Loser "Cardio Max" dvd that I've had for ages - has options on it so workout can be anywhere from 30 - 50 minutes long, which is great. Aaaand Bob used to kick my butt like crazy when I tried this before.
a NEW (to me, anyway) Biggest Loser dvd I found in a three-pack at Costco with Jillian called "Last Chance Workout" which is a circuit training workout - 35-55minutes long depending on the options I pick
Running - NO I don't want to run all the time, but getting in one or two runs a week to keep me mobile will be essential for soccer, as well.
Yoga/yogilates - I NEED to get back to this. My posture is so bad lately it's painful, and that's always in the past been the first thing I've noticed gets better when I do yoga. But trying to figure out how to fit this in regularly AND get in my cardio etc was making my head hurt - my yogilates videos are 45min and 60min respectively. BUT my new BL 3-pack has a yoga dvd in it with 2 different 30min yoga workouts, so YAY for variation in the yoga options, too! This excites me. hahaha
Oh yeah, and P90X chest & back. This workout is intense, especially for an upper-body weakling like myself, but I LIKE it! Aaand while it specifically targets, obviously, the chest and back, by virtue of those being key, core muscle groups, everything else is hit while doing it - can YOU do a pushup/pullup without engaging your triceps and biceps? How about those abs for stabilization (excellent practice for runners, by the by)?

So, to the Food Addict, who has taken our meeting and run with it (no pun intended) and has been making some awesome strides in the last few days with HER plans, I'm SORRY I haven't joined you yet and have been derailed by this cold, but I'm still on board.

Maybe one day I'll get my 5K back down to -30 minutes where it belongs, but in the meantime, I'm just going to play around and do whatever feels like what I want to get done that day. But SOMETHING. :-) If I remember I'll have to finish posts with a short report on the day's activities.

Thankful Thursday - Music

2011-03-31T11:17:00.002-04:00

Well, it's that time again! It's Thursday. Thursday is the day to think about things that I'm thankful exist.

(I know, I'm not always as good at allitteration as I would like. I think my favourite-ever allitterate thing is the character V's introductory speech to Evey in V For Vendetta:

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Brilliant. And SUPER not-on-topic...)

So there are SOME things I've specifically avoided including in previous Thankful Thursdays because, they're just too OBVIOUS, you know, but then how do you sum up everything you're thankful about in that one thing in a blog post about five things? Like, how do you write one-bullet-point-worth on your family or something. So I skip those. For now, anyway. O:-)

Today, I want to write about one of those things I've been holding back on. I want to write about music . And so, without futher ado, or tangenting onto fantastical, lengthy movie quotes, I give you:

Thankful Thursday

The Music Edition

Let me just preface my list with a reminder that I AM a Kin grad, and do NOT have oodles and oodles of formal music training, so this is a VERY VERY amateur list/opinion/whatever. I love, dabble in and appreciate music, but leave the being-amazing-at-it stuff to other people. Who, you know, know what they're doing.

1) My Stereo & The iPod dock


(from: http://www.oaktreevintage.com/Sony_Stereo_Parts_Unit.htm)

When it's quiet in my house, like, there is no noise, and I'm NOT reading a book, I get twitchy. Or at least, I FEEL twitchy. It just feels wrong. My days rotate between Little Miss' movies or specific, Little-Miss friendly music options from my iPod as far as background noise. Sometimes if she's watching a movie in the livingroom and I'm cleaning in the kitchen I can keep both the tv and the tunes turned down low enough that the sounds don't overlap each other and make me overloaded-with-aural-stimulation twitchy.

I can't NOT turn on music.

Anything and everything.

Though, on Little-Miss-free days the music is different, and definitely louder - she doesn't care for Josh Groban yet - horrors, I know - and I save cranking Amy Lee's insane vocals for kid-free time - I dunno if she's ready to appreciate the hardish-alternative-rock genre yet. She (Little Miss) loves Michael Buble, anything by "Finn & Rachel" (thank goodness Glee keeps putting out albums or Don't Stop Believing may have become the death of me...just have to skip the odd song so I don't have to worry about my kid busting out into "do you want to touch me, there, where!?!" in the middle of church), the "green baby" (Wicked soundtrack. She LOVES how in the beginning there's a baby and it's GREEN -makes her laugh every time.).... anyway, we have a pretty good playlist, I'd say.

That wasn't the point. Wasn't I going for a tangent-free Thankful Thursday post? Oy!

If I didn't have my stereo, we wouldn't have our constant tunes. And you know what? IT'S BROKEN. My stereo isn't working. One of those things you don't realize how important it is until it's gone. It's a great stereo, great sound, cd player iPod dock that CHARGES the iPod so when I take it off to go for a run or something my battery is all ready to go....

and it's BROKEN!

You know what, though? We have a backup! OH am I grateful for our backup! Because, you know, my stereo's broken, and in this house that means we'll get around to getting it looked at or replacing it in like, a year or two (we really have to figure out what makes us tick and tap into that... hahaha we'll function much better...) and I would have been dying going music-free. Or putting cds into the DVD player and listening via the tv - have you ever tried that? Ugh. Even if you have a great-sounding tv usually it's just not the SAME.

Anyway, the backup doesn't play cds, and doesn't charge my iPod, but it PLAYS my iPod, and it sounds decent, and it's a lifesaver.

2) My Piano

This picture is old, from our last house, like, the day after we got the piano, or something. I was pretty dang excited. It even made our Christmas letter that year. I'm a nerd, I know.

I don't get to play it as often as I would like - there's so much to do, and SOMETIMES when I sit to play Little Miss hollers "STOP PLAYING!" hahaha, and it's not the fantastic, best-piano-ever I grew up with and learned on, but it has a nice rich sound, not one of these horrid tinny pianos, it's pretty, we spent a whopping like, $200 or something on it....I think?? Don't remember, but it was a steal. And I LOVE being able, occasionally to sit and flood the house with music.

Thanks for my lessons. Thanks for whatever the heck it was you did to get me through the every-kid-wants-to-quit part of music lessons and getting me to a point where now, as a 'grown up' I'm proficient enough to be able to enjoy myself.

3) Singing

Last year's production of "Saviour of the World" - singing "Alleluia" with the women's chorus behind us. Such an amazing experience. Though I hope none of these ladies kill me for posting this...I think I look the scariest with all that ridiculous stage makeup on!

I LOVE to sing. LOVE it. And I can carry a tune, which in some circles makes me a fantastical singer. hahaha Which idea cracks me up, honestly. I'm a sporty gal who learned to sing belting out tunes in the car, I guess. I don't know. But I can sing some things. I know my boundaries - I am definitely an alto hahaha

Anyway, I don't know even how it happened that I got labelled as a "singer." I don't know if I'll ever see it, because it's just not me! hahaha I mean, I've always sung in choirs and whatever, but sometime after I was married and living down here someone up and decided I can sing. And that was that. Weird, right?

Sometimes they're right. Other times....oy. hahaha Which obviously means I'm NOT a singer, I just get lucky.

But I love it. It feels GOOD to sing - I heard something about singing for 15 minutes a day boosts your happy-endorphins some oodles-ish amount.... it's pure awesomness, really.

So I don't remember who it was or what happened that lead up to it, but whoever it was who decided I'm a singer, I still think you're wrong, but THANKS for all the fun and happy-endorphins I've gained since then.

4) Shuffle, iTunes & Playlists

(from: http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/16599/apple-ipod-classic/)

Remember when you didn't want to listen to just one cd so you listened to the commercial-ridden radio all the time to get the variation you wanted in that moment of musical need? REMEMBER that?? Ugh, or having to sit, with a blank tape in the deck, listening ever-so-carefully to the beginning of each song in case it was the one you were hoping to tape so you didn't have to go buy an entire album just for the one awesome song?? Or....maybe I'm the only one who ever did it....wanting to spend an evening listening to a certain list of songs and having a pile of cds beside your player and putting in one, listening to the song, taking it out, putting in the next, listening to that song, and on and on and on until you made it to the bottom of the pile and had your this-type-of-song fix??

THANK YOU, APPLE, FOR MASSIVELY SIMPLIFYING MY MUSIC LISTENING LIFE!! I can shuffle through my iPod and it's like commercial-free radio of all my favourite music. WIN! I can go to iTunes and purchase the one song off the album I can't get out of my head 'cause it's so brilliant. WIN! And I can MAKE a playlist of all those songs from those cds I have that are all alike in some way and I want to listen to together in a string. I LOVE MY IPOD.

And thanks for my iPod, which I totally found at the bottom of my Christmas stocking one year - yeah, that was a stunner of a stocking stuffer!

5) Musicals

(from: http://amaliehoward.com/wicked-the-musical-a-new-take-on-a-classic/)

I have loved musicals for as long as I can remember. Back in the day before dvd players in cars Mom & Dad would keep my brother and I quiet on the long trekk to Florida in the car with the soundtracks from Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. We listened to other neat tapes like Beethoven Lives Upstairs, Mr. Bach Comes to Call, Mozart's Magic Flute (the kid-dramatized version with a little girl navigating her way through the musical trying to stay out of the clutches of the evil queen... and the birds falling in love.....)....what else? Some mystery with Vivaldi's tunes set in Italy....I don't even remember. But I LOVED it. Loved loved it. For my birthday I saw Les Mis when I was 9, and Phantom when I was 10. I LOVED them.

Phantom became my favourite. There was a lengthy period where I tried desperately to wear out our cassette copy of the soundtrack, as I listened to it every. single. night at bedtime to fall asleep to. And the one time in our basement I had a sleep over and felt it necessary to, along with the soundtrack, re-enact the entire production for my two girlfriends. (shaking head - oy the horrors of remembering one's childhood - what was I THINKING??)

Anyway, as an adult I've seen both these musicals again. And while Phantom will always have that childhood-special-spot-in-my-musical-heart I have come to the obvious realization that Les Mis has WAY more heart. hahaha I was disappointed with Phantom last time we saw it. I've never been disappointed by Les Mis.

I LOVE musicals. The good ones, anyway. I've seen some pretty lousy ones and some phenomenal ones, and some mediocre in-between-y ones. I LOVED Fiddler on the Roof. LOVED Billy Elliott for the absolutely mind-blowing DANCING, ohmigoodness. Something Happened on the Way to the Forum....not so much love.

Wicked? Oh. My. GAWSH. I could do an entire dissertation on my love of this musical. It is unbelieveable. It was another birhtday present, though I was 28 and not 10, and I purposefully went into it knowing nothing about it except it was the Wicked Witch's back story. And that I've always been a big Wizard of Oz fan.

Elphaba is incredible. And having now read the three Wicked books, I can say as great as they are, the musical's version of Elphaba's story is unfreakingbelieveable. I ADORE it.

I can't write enough about this. hahaha THANKS, Mom & Dad, for instilling an appreciation for musicals in us, letting us be entertained by live theatre and the soundtracks, encouraging (or maybe just allowing? hahaha) our fixations on characters.....

Thanks, folks, for putting the shows out there. Thanks for adapting great stories into amazing stage productions, and adding music so I can be that much more transferred into the world of the envelopping story.

See? I told you I couldn't sum up "music" in one bullet point - I don't even think I've done a good job in an entire, really really long blog post! But the menu-tune on "Tangled" is calling me over to press play and hunker down to enjoy Disney's latest release with two little girls who aspire to be princesses. I'm just watching to enjoy the singing... ;-)

Crafty Computing

2011-03-30T21:12:00.000-04:00

I am just way way too in love with this not to tell you about it. So get over it. hahaha

You MAY or may not know about me, I'm a scrapbooker. I know, I know. Sports and kin and phys-ed, it all SCREAMS crafty, but there you go. (I also make jewellery. Do not judge. Or label....I'm allowed to be a crafty tom boy - there are still giant holes in the knees of the man-pants I stole from Mr. Man's drawer this morning, and I wear them with great comfort and pride!)

Okay, but, with my fantastically disgustingly disorganized house you can imagine how much space I have to do this. AND that when I DO bust out the papers, inks, stamps, and photos the ginormous MESS that lingers until I get around to putting it all back "away".... Yeah, really, just the finished paper-crafted product is pretty. The rest is not.

So with so many stupendous deterrants in my life lately I NEVER scrapbook. Which is kinda' bad 'cause, oh yeah, I'm actually supposed to be selling the stuff - I'm so into it I'm a consultant for Close To My Heart, and MAYBE I'm biased, but hot dang this is an FANTABULOUS company. Just sayin'! And yes, I went to a scrapbooking convention in Washington DC last July. It was absolutely FAB.

Anyway, what? Oh yeah! Through a series of whatever events I found myself sitting at my computer saying to myself, okay, I HAVE GOT TO GET ONLINE and try out this online-studio-scrapbooking thing we've got, because I hear it's amazing, SEE it's amazing, and though I have time to blog, tweet, stay current on Facebook and all whatever, I haven't ventured into the faster, simpler, easier, LESS MESSY way to scrapbook.

Holy crap.

I. Am. In. LOVE.

You just login, upload your pictures, pick your "paper", pick your layout, drag and drop, boom bang baby, and you've a fantastic 2-page 12x12 layout to sneak into your "classic" scrapbook. Friggin' brilliant.

I've done OODLES more (I did 6 two-page layouts yesterday. And of OLD pictures, too, that have just been sitting on the computer for YEARS waiting for me to do SOMETHING with them) and am totally addicted. Today I've been chipping away at our 400+ wedding photos which I've always WANTED to put in a pretty album but never gotten around to. Yes, it's been 7.5 years. (Do you need to go back and see my house pictures again? I'm not always uber motivated...)

You do them, you add them to your cart, you click buy.... and after buying 7 layouts yesterday I got an e-mail that they were shipped today. SO my fantastic purolator guy is on his way to bring me COMPLETED SCRAPBOOK PAGES!

Yeah, really, I can't tell you how ridiculously giddy this makes me. It's kinda' sad....

(You can check it out here for free - you don't have to pay for anything unless you want to buy the layout - BUT I'll warn you now, it IS my CTMH website sooooo any purchasing or whatever is absolutely supporting [one of] my little side-business[es]. Sorry for the shameless plug, I'm just, GAH, SO excited about it! hahaha)

Thanks for letting me nerd-out for a minute. I have wedding pictures to "scrapbook" now... (and a kitchen to clean? What?)

The Response

2011-03-29T15:03:00.001-04:00

Well, wow! hahaha

Sometimes a blog post of mine generates some interest and I get comments - actually in the 'comments' section, on Facebook, the odd ohmigosh-I-read-your-blog phone call (that one is USUALLY my mom - Hi, Mom!), or people stop me when we're out and about (I find this the weirdest way, just 'cause, I dunno, what do you say in person to someone who reads your blog and has something to say about something you said? Aye aye, cap'n, and thanks for the insight? Don't NOT do it, I just....feel funny sometimes! hahaha)

Yesterday's post was one of these. I dunno, I just felt all ICK about stuff at the moment and had to write it out - my favourite part about blogging, I think.

Almost as soon as I posted the link to Facebook I started getting feedback, and at least over the last couple of months that I've been back to writing yesterday's was the most visited post on my blog by dinnertime.

My mom, true to fantastic form (don't never call me again because of something I wrote on my blog, okay, Mom??) CALLED me as soon as she read the post. With this FANTASTIC advice:

get a ziploc bag IMMEDIATELY and put the nuts and bolts sitting on the end table inside. Then take it downstairs with a piece of tape and tape it to a wooden section of the toddler bed from which they come.

I did that. The end table is STILL covered in junk, but not those nuts and bolts anymore! BOOyah!

Thanks, Mom!

One gal lamented she doesn't live closer to help me get on top of things - my darling girl, when I go to your ridiculously beautiful home I HATE it because I can't DO that! hahaha I would absolutely take you up on the offer if you could in fact offer it!

Another, who I can't envision in a million years having a problem similar to mine, cracked me up with her comment: "You're brave posting all those pictures. You should totally use those to enter one of these HGTV shows where they come and give you a free home reno. Who wouldn't love a free home reno?" hahaha I LOVE that. I can't tell you how many times I've wondered if my house is 'bad' enough to qualify for one of those shows! So yeah, seriously made me grin!

A lovely gal I knew back in the day in school THANKED me on Facebook for posting about our disarray - they have a similarly difficult time clearing the junk out of their home.

My one SIL, who last week came for a visit and asked about the nuts-and-bolts stuff on the end table "what are these for?" was ecstatic for me that we figured out what they belonged to! (Did you see? They're in a BAGGIE taped to the bed they belong to! WAHOO!)

My local friend commented about her sheer adoration for tidying and organizing.... but she's wickedly allergic to my cats. Boo.

Another laughed and said if I had dogs it could be worse - yet another point AGAINST dogs in my cats vs. dogs mental log (dogs don't fare too well, and I am proud to say I'm a cat person hahaha)

A friend I haven't talked to in forever recommended a book she finds helpful in managing her scattered-living-lifestyle, introducing me to the fantastic phrase: C.H.A.O.S -> Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. LOVE this.

And then today my MIL phoned. It was funny, because she opened up with how sad she was for me, buuuuut I wrote that yesterday and am totally fine today so I'm all...what?? hahaha (Don't worry, my house is still a mess. We didn't rehabilitate that quickly.)

So, my mom is working out how to get down and help me tackle my problem. My MIL and SIL and darling nieces are mobilizing after Easter, coming armed with bins (they're on sale at Giant Tiger this week - win) and gosh DARN it I WILL CONQUER THIS HOUSE!!

I just know for absolutely certain I CANNOT do it by myself.

And I won't have to. :-)

(ALSO, the shelf beside the bed that ate a chunk of my shoulder? Yeah, WITHOUT having read yesterday's post Mr. Man up and decided to take it down last night. It was eerie.... same-wavelength kinda' thing. shudder )

THANK-you, everyone for your love and support, and bearing with my downer moments.

Disorganized

2011-03-28T11:47:00.000-04:00

If you've ever been to my house you know that as a family we are totally disorganized. We're all over the place.

I was a slobby kid, for sure. Mom used to have to really coerce me to clean my room, and it always took me FOREVER. I've just never been good at seeing the mess, seeing each item's home, and putting them all away.

Except when I lived in Utah for a while. I dunno. Maybe because I was SUPPOSED to be studying at school? But I cleaned all my and my roomates' dishes and tidied the kitchen like, daily, and YES my room would be a disaster, but I would self-motivate and clean it SPOTless before I could sit down and focus on my homework. That room of mine would glisten.

No mommy to make me do it, either!

....I kinda' flunked out, though.....

Yup, balance is one of my super-strong points. oy

I don't know remember when in our married life it became a problem. I feel like we've been having the same issue, fight, conversation, whatever, since the day we got married, but looking back there must have been a START, you know? One of us was the first to not put something away and then the other would have followed suit until the craziness that is us fully reared its ugly ugly ugly head. And we can sit and talk and strategize until we're both blue in the face - me from talking and Mr. Man from holding his breath waiting for me to STOP talking? KIDDING - but we never get on top of it.

It's really really disheartening.

I KNOW it's a clutter problem. There's just TOO MUCH STUFF.

But after a several-hundred-dollar-costing pick up from the junk company of a ginormous pile of stuff we threw into the backyard, it didn't get better. Like, the day after the pick up you couldn't tell we'd gotten rid of anything.

Regular piles of donations and trips to Goodwill doesn't cut it down.

Most recently we donated 7 garbage bags PLUS to Canadian Diabetes Association in their neighbourhood pickup.

Not even a dent in the problem.

Which I find REALLY REALLY disheartening, because we don't bring a lot INto the house - we can't afford it! hahaha We're not out constantly adding to our collection because we haven't any money with which to do so, so when we oust something that should be that, right?

Which means we're REALLY just super-dee-duper slovenly.

And it's not a habit I know how to break.

And it SUCKS because this is my JOB. I'm the MOM, currently a stay-at-home Mom, soooooo my job description includes all this everything-in-the-house. Not going to lie, housekeeping has never ever ever ever eeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvver been my dream job. Ever. And I'm terrible at it.

Livingroom

Front entrance, closet side

Front entrance, window-side. Pretty sure that green thing is mostly full of literal garbage. AND there's crap piled in the window-sill.

Livingroom from entrance. Children's place bag full of hand-me-downs I have to sort through (I love hand-me-downs, except all the additional work they mean).

Sit at your own risk!

At least there's more than a pathway of floor, but man does it need to be de-crumbed. View from livingroom to diningroom.

Every single surface in my house looks like this.

Top of the piano.

That painting of Little Miss' on the left is the top sheet of a pile of papers including umpteen paintings of hers, epicure ordering information, and sheet music. The file on the right is the file about our bathroom renovation.

Surfaces, nooks, crannies.... can't get in to de-dust-bunny 'cause of all the stuff, wires, etc.

This is where I'm currently sitting. I tried to clear it the other day but got in trouble for un-organizing the organized mess of bills..... we lose stuff here daily.

Hide it behind the curtain in the windosill. You CAN see these piles from outside. There's a laptop in one corner that was diagnosed DOA probably close to a year ago.

The view to the kitchen from the diningroom. Don't you just itch to eat food from here?

And here?

The view of the playroom from the kitchen.

The playroom looks like this after Little Miss & the daycare kiddies from last week decided to dump all the toys from the giant bin we keep in there - the bin is better to use as a car, bathtub, boat, hiding place, etc etc than a place to store toys - aaaaand Little Miss went on a paper-cutting frenzy, sitting in the playroom with her scissors chopping up everythnig in sight. Great for fine-motor-skill development, not so great for cleanliness.

One side of Little Miss' bedroom.

The other side. Stickers falling off the wall (any suggestions for how to get those things to STAY ON? They're SO CUTE but becoming the bane of my home's decor) aaaaand an explosion of the in-the-bedroom toy bin onto the end of the unmade bed. Apparently there was a party after lights-out last night.

With the bathroom reno finished we've been working, for weeks now, on the paint job. So the bathroom extras reside in the hall. Tight space to fit through to get to our room.

Bagged and boxed bathroom stuff waiting for me to finally finish painting.

The unfinished bathroom paint job. It WILL look amazing when I finally get it finished, I've decided, but oy it's a lot of work.


Our hoarders-esque bedroom. Note you can't see the tops of dressers, the shelf on the wall over there that's been in a need-to-move-that spot for about a year - I have a scar on my shoulder from running into it getting into bed.

So before you freak on me and go all-clean-the-dang-house-why-are-you-BLOGGING, hear me out. I will clean it today. I've already supervised Little Miss cleaning up her playroom (there IS a floor under all that, all the toys are back in the bin, the paper pieces are in the garbage, the puzzles back on the shelf....), run the dishwasher, put away some of the clean dishes that were out from a party we went to on the weekend.... I will get it to a tolerable state today. At least, parts of it. The livingroom, diningroom...hopefully I'll get a few more stripes painted in the bathroom tonight after Little Miss goes to bed.

But I have been trying my darndest since I graduated last year and being a mom became my full-time employ to get on top of this house. And I can't. I. Can't. Do. It.

I don't know WHY.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I don't know why I work so hard and clean and tidy and organize and get on top of one room and every single other corner of the house has become uninhabitable (don't even get me STARTED on our basement, which I did NOT go on a photo-frenzy with). And YES I know it doesn't have to be perfect - mess means lived in and sometimes indicates a healthy prioritized household, but come on. Did you SEE the pictures?? There's a line, and we're WAY WAY WAY over it. And this is the more-normal-than-not state of our house.

I couldn't even hire a maid to come in and clean and help me because there are no friggin surfaces to be found for all the piles of crap everywhere!

So I'll work at it today. I'll find the counters in the kitchen and get the dishes put away. But I won't get the stickers back up on the wall in Little Miss' room or clear the floor in our bedroom. Again. I'll tidy and dust around the tv and in the livingroom, but I'll never find a 'home' for the stinkin' nuts and bolts sitting on the end table by the couch that held Little Miss' old toddler bed together. And maybe I'll tidy the computer desk, and then none of our bills will get paid because I'll have totally knackered the piles.

The only thing I know for sure about my house is that I am absolutely 100% incapable of fixing this by myself, but have no alternative. It's discouraging to know that forever and always you are destined to spend your life spinning your wheels getting nowhere.

Back to the useless grind I go!

Thankful Thursday - around the house

2011-03-24T23:01:00.000-04:00

As I was sitting pondering my Thankful Thursday topics for today, and thinking about maybe doing another 'themed' version (I really don't know how long I'll be able to keep up themes - I'm just not that bright!) aaaaaand I found myself inspired by my house! hahaha SO, without further blah blah blah blah blaaaaaaahhh....

THANKFUL THURSDAY

the "around the house" edition

(things to do and/or sitting on the floor or put away in their place around my house as I sit at the computer wondering what things to write about today....)

1) DANCING


(from: http://blog.wfuv.org/?m=201001)

So, I don't think it's weird to love dancing, right? Everyone loves to bust a move now and then, yeah? Some of us are, you know, actually GOOD at it, and thennnn...there are the rest of us. Who, when we launch into the groove adopt the white-man-overbite, the side-step shuffle, John-Travolta-hand oooooooorrrrrrr one of my personal favourites, the shopping cart!

I believe I am one of these. When I dance, except for the purple, I think I probably look kinda' like this little guy:

(from: http://baristamagazine.com/blog/?category_name=retailing)

But I'm not going to lie: I REALLY DON'T CARE! I know I look silly soooooo why not have some fun with it and look even sillier? The sillier you make it the more loose you can be and the more fun I have, at least!

DANCING! It's just....pure awesomeness. Has got to be one of my absolute most favourite things ever. And I don't know, could you ever really credit ONE person with creating it, being responsible enough for my knee-jerk-to-the-beat movements that there's someone I CAN be grateful to for it? I mean, it SEEMS to be almost an innate reaction to awesome tunes - Little Miss has ALWAYS bopped to music; she ADORES dancing. I'll put on a tune and she'll be in the middle of something and it's like she can't HELP but bop her head or waggle her butt in time to the song.

Did I mention it's exercise? HOLLA!

Have you seen this video yet? (sorry, embedding is unavailable sooooo click the link. For real.) I love it. I love what the surprise-special-guest-superstar-dancer says at the end about dancing: "...everyone should do this; it's SO much fun."

Maybe I'm grateful that I grew up with some experience dancing and bopping around and that it's totally normal, okay, and EXPECTED even for some of us to bust out into crazy jives when we crank the tunes.

(There may or may not have been an impromptu dance party in my kitchen this afternoon. Well, what do you think happens when you mix a 28-year-old. 13-year-old, and 3.5-year-old with a room full of dirty dishes and the newest Glee album featuring Justin Bieber ditties? I HOPE someone saw us 'cause there was some serious fun going on!)

2) PHOTOGRAPHS

I've been working on getting some older photos scrapbooked lately and...I'm just so grateful I HAVE them!

2005 trip to a HOJO in Toronto with visits to the Ontario Science Centre, Metro Toronto Zoo, Tim Hortons and the movies!

2006 trip with my family to Florida, including golf, swimming, being cramped in a rental, lots of mozzarella sticks, and Disney World.

Trying to take pictures of ourselves in California in 2007. Mr. Man was getting up to see if the camera was working....

Very pregnant. 2007.

Later in 2007. She's so huge now!

Always a class act! At our wedding, obviously, in 2003.

Grandma.

Love this lady!

Behind the scenes of a wedding BBQ!

Straigtening out for pictures.


Not every kid can rock a Pebbles hair-do latched onto a neon-green suckie AND hold a ferret! Feb 2009

Cue: Barbara Streisand... "Meeeeeeeeemoriiiiiiiieeeeeeeessssssssss......." (although, I know the song is really "Memory".... just got with it).

3) MY KNIFE SHARPENER

(from: http://blog.asseenonpcnetwork.com/?p=521, and no, neither my knives or my knife sharpener look as fantastically scary as in the picture I choose - I just like the intensity of the picture....) O:-)

So, one day, I "grew up" (HA! hahahahahahaha Oh, THAT'S FUNNY!) got married, and moved into a "house" of my own.

With some knives.

And I didn't notice it happen, but I eventually discovered how really displeased I was with my knives! I'd go home to my Mom's fantastic kitchen and her fantastic kitchen things and I'd cut with her knives, and then trudge home to my tiny kitchen with my not-so-fantastic kitchen things (some of my stuff is fantastic, some of my stuff is young-married-ish. I mean, it happens, right?) and I'd really really notice how much I hated my knives.

Then one day my MIL, knowing I hated my knives, found a whole SET on sale somewhere, and picked them up for me as a gift!

HOORAY! New knives! They work, they're great, they're wonderful! I love my knives!!

But then I'd go home and use my mom's stuff and then trudge home to MY stuff.... and my knives weren't so great.

I mean, the grass is always greener, right??

.....THEN one day my Mom and Dad were cleaning out the extras from their house.

And they offered me their no-longer-in-use knife sharpener.

Wait, WHAT?

Soooooo.....my knives are STILL not as great as my mom's - she just got a really fancy-schmancy super-dee-duper professional-and-then-some holy-mackeral-knives-cost-HOW-much set for her birthday last October....that grass is like, unbelievable. I can't imagine ever needing knives like my mom has, (they're probably kinda' crazy intense like the one in the picture that mine aren't like?) ;) buuuut I LOVE MY KNIVES!

So, THANKS MIL for my knives, and THANKS SO MUCH to MY parents for cluing me in on how the heck to get my great knives to actually cut things after they dulled.

shaking head

Yeah, I know. Sometimes I'm a moron....

4) KRAFT DINNER


(from: http://starktower.blogspot.com/2010/08/theres-always-kraft-dinner.html)

Today, I went to Costco. And bought a ginormous box of Kraft Dinner for less than $10.

I know, I know. There are MANY evils to Kraft dinner. Like, empty-caloric white pasta, POWDERED cheese (really, yeah, 'cause THAT sounds all-natural), aaaaaand a heck of a lot of 'orange-number-whatever'....

BUT IT'S SO GOOD!

For a few reasons:

EVERYBODY loves it.
ESPECIALLY Little Miss, aaaaaaand I'm not going to lie, I LOVE making that kid happy.
It's so darn EASY
It's so darn FAST
It's inexpensive
It really DOES taste good
.....you can add your own twist and make it even ~~less healthy~~ yummier! (Like, sometimes, instead of mixing in milk and butter we use whipping cream and butter....droooooll... OH and finish it off with some freshly-grated-into-the-pot old (strong) cheddar - creamy, sharp, delicious KD taste. Ooooooooooohhhh yeaaaaaaaahhhh.....
One pot to clean!

So I KNOW that there is little to no nutritional value to this meal, ESPECIALLY when we make up the extra-fattening version above. But I'm sure glad it's around 'cause it's such an easy meal, it's a treat, and it makes us all happy.

And don't worry. The giant box will last us a while. .....at least until next week.....

5) SPLURGES
..........I dunno. I don't buy myself a lot - or at least it feels that way; Mr. Man may have another thought on this statement, but... this isn't his blog! - buuuut today, I splurged. A whopping $13.49 I spent on absolutely nothing but myself. I saw it, I wanted it, and I only debated with myself for a moment and then said, you know what? I'm BUYING it.

You know how many people CAN'T DO THAT?? Aaaaaaand really, probably, I really shouldn't do that. I mean, we have some serious financial things going on being ex-students-new-workers-with-not-humongous-paycheques, and a house to keep up, a family to look after....

But I splurged. Today, I can splurge, and I did. And it feels a little like a well-deserved pat on the back and I'm okay with that today. And unbelievably grateful that I live in a place where and with people for whom that is a-okay.

AND my splurge may or may not have been the thing that instigated the rockin' dance party mentioned before.... just sayin'. :-)

And THAT, my friends, is this week's Thankful Thursday.

Snooze

2011-03-21T07:19:00.000-04:00


(from: http://365daystoahealthierme.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/i-cant-sleep/)

Back to 6am wake ups. groan

I know that 6 REALLY isn't that early and that there are lots of ~~crazy-demented-overachievers~~ people who DO routinely get up at 6 without any problems or headaches.....

....but man oh man, I am NOT one of them.

Mr. Man and I have been having a hard time adjusting to daylight savings time, actually, the last week. Our nightly routine instead of landing us in bed around 11 or midnight just continued as normal, except the clock changed, so we've been landing in bed around midnight or 1 all week. I know, I know. GENIUS move.

So we've been a little bit fatigued this week. Totally self-inflicted, that's fine, but there it is.

So yesterday, knowing that I had a 6am wake-up today (which my ill-adjusted body still thinks is 5am) I planned to just hunker down for the afternoon, get through the day AWAKE, and get to bed by 9. Because I was so tired I knew I could fall asleep quickly and figured an extra hour or so at night would be just fantabulous to helping me adjust and recover from the week of stupidity.

I made it nap-free 'till about 4:30. Then, I just DIED.

I didn't even sleep a full hour! It was one of the shorter naps I've ever laid down for AND interrupted with a phone call....

....so why the HECK did it take me over three hours to fall asleep when I went to bed last night?? I did NOT nap long enough to make up for previous zombie state, and USUALLY when I go to bed, that's it! I'm down, I'm out and I SLEEEEEEEEEEP! (Have I mentioned lately that sleeping is one of my most favourite things to do? It's just, such a TREAT to sleep snuggly, comfortably, uninterupted-ly, deeply...mmmmmmmmmmm......... visions of pillows and blankets wrapping around me in my head.....)

Yeah. Couldn't sleep.

So now, at 7:09am, after having been up for over an hour, with a lovely daycare child playing happily in the playroom.... I WANT MY BED!! I am so TIRED! My head feels swollen - you know that not-quite-a-headache uncomfortable feeling? I have THAT - my eyes have that ever-so-slightly burning, NOT refreshed feeling to them.... and I've been up for over an hour AND IT'S STILL DARK OUTSIDE!

That is just wrong.

I tried counting sheep last night. It went something like this:

Okay, count sheep. That will focus you on something so menial your mind won't wander. Okay, great. One, two.... wait, is that a sheep or just a white blob? Okay, PICTURE a sheep. What does a sheep look like. Yeah, that's a silly animated-looking one. What about the sheep at the petting zoo. Okay. But that sheep doesn't look like a jumper, I can't picture it jumping a fence. Why the heck when we count sheep are they jumping fences anyway? That's stupid. I should just count them grazing grass. Okay, a bunch of sheep. One, two, three, wait, did I count that one? How do shepherds DO this? They all look the same....

(from: http://mychinaconnection.com/english-slang/counting-sheep/)

Yeah, it was one of my more brilliant internal dialogues.

So I will stumble through yet another day, longing for bedtime. Hopefully I will be able to discipline myself this evening and GO TO BED at a decent hour and then, without resorting to the apparently ridiculous task of counting leaping lambs fall asleep, ready for TOMORROW'S pre-dawn hours.

YAWN

Thankful Friday?

2011-03-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

So...yesterday I was working on my Thankful Thursday post wheeeeeeeen.... I totally fell asleep. hahaha I think between using every spare second to paint my bathroom, covering the daycare, visiting with my SIL and three wonderful nieces and trying to keep the regular we're-starting-to-get-on-top-of-our-house housework done, oh yeah, and being SICK.... I just had it! hahaha

Don't worry -there were no children in the house when I dozed off. Well, except my own. She was watching Sesame Street. And she didn't let me sleep long because the show ended and I got smacked in the face with an exclamation of "AGAIN! Sessmeeee Sweeet again, pwease, Mom!"

Yeah, that'll wake you up.

Anyway, so I missed my few minutes of blogging time and did NOT get Thankful Thursday posted.

So let's just pretend today isn't Friday (except I'm SO excited it is! HUZZAH end of the week!) aaaand:

THANKFUL THURSDAY

the "spare time" edition
(yes, that's right, I went with a bit of a theme this week - things I'm grateful for having during my spare time. I know, I know, it's pure awesomeness.)

1) BOOKS

(from: http://www.artsjournal.com/bookdaddy/2008/07/)

I LOVE me some books. LOVE them. Which, I know, isn't an anomaly or even all that defining but man oh man do I love to read. I've read 12 books so far this year - my thirteenth is going a little slower, I think, with the drive to get the bathroom painted aaaaand a lot of times, when I'm sick, I curl up on the couch in front of the TV (yay Netflix!) and zone out...and I've been sick this week. hahaha Anyway, lately I've been through a book or two a week, depending on the length, my interest, and whatever all else.

But enough about my reading habits! This is THANKFUL "Thursday". I'm THANKFUL for books. I've never been much of one for tearing stories apart looking for themes, lessons, what-is-the-author-trying-to-say kinda' garbage (have you seen Finding Forrester with Sean Connery? LOVE it! He plays this author who wrote "The Great American Novel" and then never writes another book because he's so P.O.ed with everyone for ANALYZING the thing to death! He's like, WHY the heck did it have to mean anything more than what it says?!?! LOVE LOVE LOVE it! hahaha) but all that aside...

...I love getting lost in a book. I love the creative license left in the medium for my brain to be totally enraptured in its own understanding of the story. I love being able to read the words, picture it, and FEEL like it's happening to me.

I spend so much time reading I can't imagine life BEFORE books! Isn't that a horrid thought? That only the richest of the rich and elitest of the elite COULD even read? And then were very selective about what books who got when? Geeeeeeeze..... can you imagine not being ALLOWED to have a copy of the Bible, even? Goodness forbid anyone be able to use their own mind and understand things.

THANK you, Gutenberg! Thanks world, for evolving to a place where I CAN read, anything I want to, whenever I want to. Sometimes I read classics (Austen, Mark Twain, Dickens, Bronte), sometimes I read YA (Twilight, Blue Bloods, The Hunger Games), sometimes chick lit (Sophie Kinsella, anyone?), sometimes the latest craze (The DaVinci Code, The Host, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)....

Thanks for writing and thanks for letting me read.

2) NAPS

(from: http://ashleysfunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/02/everything-is-bigger-in-texas.html)

Do I really need to say much more than this, especially the day I'm writing Thursday's post LATE BECAUSE of an accidental nap?

Naps are one of my most favourite things.

Aaaaaaaaaand I couldn't take them without lots of help. USUALLY by one, poor, nap-deprived Mr. Man (alTHOUGH, he doesn't LOVE naps as much as I do - sometimes when we BOTH have opportunity to nap and I dive right into bed he paces around and then lands on the computer playing video games.... which is TOTALLY fine, but makes me feel a little extra justified in the I-take-advantage-of-him-and-nap-on-the-weekends-more-than-he-does bit of our marriage).

Proper naps, on a bed, with snuggly blankets everywhere and a fantastic pillow..... blisssssss

(from: http://www.zazzle.ca/consciousness_that_annoying_time_between_naps_tshirt-235748040862746940)

3) SPORTS

(from: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2006/06/soccer/soccer-text.html)

I think maybe in one of my classes in school it was (? memory, where art thou?) where I (we) was (were) asked to identify the MOST FUN THING EVER. Like, what is the one thing that you do that you'd rather do any time than anything else, that is just the best. And I thought and thought and thought about what is invariably the GREATEST thing.

And I decided, for me, it's sports.

I have more fun playing sports, running around, laughing, exerting and competing with friends than just about anything else. That doesn't mean I DON'T LOVE OTHER THINGS or other people or that I can't have fun playing Blockus with my family (if you've played board/card/any games with me, you KNOW I have fun!) but SPORTS, for me, are invariably, my favourite most fun thing to do.

If there's a pickup game going on somewhere, of ANYTHING, I want in. If there's a chance for a regular game of anything? I want in.

And as much as I enjoy individual sporting - running, swimming, cycling, etc. - where the only real competition is with myself, there's that added oomph about being with and playing with friends that brings extra awesomeness to the whole thing.

How lucky am I that my parents saw that I was a sporty kid and let me follow my childhood best friend around the soccer leagues growing up. That I was supported in swimming, in 6am hockey practice in high school, in my high school wrestling stint (I made it to OFSAA, the provincial competition! ....hahahahaaaaa yeah, that's a story in itself), that I was driven to soccer games in and outside of town, allowed to participate on the select league teams and travel to tournaments. That we had some sport activities at church where we got to get together with a totally different group of people and have fun with in volleyball and basketball tournaments. That I have been permitted to understand and define myself and my femininity on my own terms, without the bars of illegal female activity. That I had an awesome highschool PE program and got to try and fall in love with sports like broomball, curling, squash, floor hockey, badminton, tennis....

Thanks, world, for giving me sports.

4) MOVIES

(from: http://www.peoplejam.com/blog/7591/why-america-needs-its-superheroes)

Okay, so in addition to reading, sleeping, and exercising...I'm a movie person. hahaha A little while ago Mr. Man and I were getting some advice on togetherness from a wonderful guy who said that he and his wife watch a movie together every single night. And we were like, wait, WHAT? 'Cause we just couldn't SWING that! He then went on to explain that they put on a movie, sit together, and pay half attention to the movie, half to the newspaper or magazine they're reading, and are just...TOGETHER.

Which is SO great, I'm SO glad that works! But Mr. Man and I got out of the conversation and were like, yeaaaaah.... no. hahaha

Movies, on the couch or at the cinema, movies are EVENTS! They are planned for and around, and EXPERIENCED. (Often with popcorn! hahaha)

At least that's how it is for me. And Mr. Man, I think, too.

So why am I grateful for movies? Well, it's an adoration that Mr. Man and I both share, so it goes a surprisingly long way in our "similarities" checklist in our happily-married column. ;) We even like a lot of the same TYPES of movies - can I just say how through-the-roof excited we both were when we first saw this trailer? YEEEEEEEHaaaaw does that look like a great time or WHAT??

And THAT is why I'm grateful for movies. We ENJOY them. It's fun to borrow someone ELSE's vision for a couple of hours and escape into whatever reality is operating to make the movie plausible. It's the escapism of my books with less effort with bird's eye view. 'Cause lemme tell ya', as great as my imagination may be, I don't think in a million years I could have dreamed up anything similar to what James Cameron had going on in his head with Avatar. Or Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Aaaaaaand although we've always been Batman fans (hello, Adam West, anyone?) our undying devotion to the greatest "super"hero ever was definitely sealed by Christopher Nolan's brilliant Batman Begins, which is absolutely (for the moment) my favourite movie of all time. (Joss Whedon doesn't like it and is AGAIN rebooting the series? Really? Should be interesting 'cause.... I generally really like Whedon's stuff.... hmmmm....)

5) BABYSITTERS

(from: http://welcometomysoapbox.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-much-should-i-pay-my-babysitter.html)

AND, as I mentioned, briefly, in NAPS, where on EARTH would any of these wonderful spare moments even COME from if it weren't for people OTHER than me lending a hand and keeping their eyes on my kid for a few minutes.

I couldn't read books at night while Little Miss is getting ready for bed.

I couldn't take naps on Sunday afternoons after a too long week or a too late Saturday.

I couldn't go out and play sports without a team of willing friends on the sidelines watching until Mr. Man makes it from work, or Mr. Man already taking that one for me so I can leave for a bit.

I can't go to the movies with Mr. Man without someone watching the kid. My parents, his mom, our friends... SOMEONE takes that kid! Unless it's a kid movie (she LOVED Tangled, as did we) then she comes with us... :-)

I can't go to the movies with FRIENDS unless Mr. Man can be home and is willing to be in charge for the evening.

Babysitters. I am SO lucky to practically have an ARMY of ready, willing, able, and cost-effective O:-) friends and family to turn to so I CAN enjoy my spare-time activities. And that's huge.

Thanks, babysitters!

Okay, time to make lunch. :-)

Stoked

2011-03-16T10:55:00.000-04:00

So, I'm just a wee little bit excited today.

I finally got around to getting my registration done for summer soccer this season.

Booyah!

Not playing last year was, well, honestly? A really stupid move on my part. hahaha I don't know what I was thinking. And then this year I've been sort of back and forth about it - starting fresh with new people and a new team and all the craziness that goes on during a game on a pitch full of estrogen.... I've been in such a fantastically good place lately the negatives that come along with my favourite sport seemed to be vastly outweighing the positives.

But I haven't found that THING that I can do to replace my favourite thing. I've tried to find a squash partner I can regularly go and play with - I LOVE squash - but don't get responses when asking, directly, HEY-wanna-be-squash-partners of someone. I tried for a running partner once, who was a boy, and his first question was "...ummm... what do you wear when you run?" Which OBVIOUSLY meant he was SUPER comfortable with the idea. hahaha Anyway, just, my attempts thus far have been foiled.

THEN, mid hemming-and-hawing I got a message on Facebook from an old teammate, looking to get as many of our team back together as possible for this season!

IT'S A SIGN!

hahaha And THEN another old friend from the team AGES ago now messaged and said she wants to get back into it this summer, so I of course told her to piggy-back on the first messaging gal's initiative....

and we're all signed up.

I have a team! I have a sport! I have my Friday nights all summer planned!

I'm excited. :-)

A little perspective?

2011-03-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

So, not wanting what happened last week to happen again this week - only post on Thankful Thursday? What? - I opened up blogger this morning with an attempt to fill this "compose" box with...something. Anything.

After going months without contracting any illness (come on, if you've read me for any length of time you KNOW how weird it is for me NOT to be sick every other week - it's been brilliant) I finally, this weekend, succumbed to a cold/sinus....botherment.

And I find so far I'm the absolute WORST in the mornings. By evening I feel fairly fine, almost human... my head spins a bit, but the throbbing in my sinuses dies down, my throat isn't raw, whatever. I can make sense of the world from a vertical perspective instead of aching to die under the covers in my bed.

So with all this rattling around in my head this morning I sat and stared at the blank screen. I felt really really whiny and like I really had nothing to tell you about today other than how I'm sick again.

Then, in my sick-induced-wasting-time-today haze I stumbled across this video (that this morning I couldn't find to embed here and this evening found embedded on another blog after the video had been posted to YouTube - not that I'm saying I saw it FIRST 'cause I have no idea.... but I just wanted you to know I wasn't TRYING to steal your blogpost for today, promise! hahaha - thanks for posting it so I could find the youtube link so I could embed it! I DID earlier post it on Facebook, where you can also find it.)

If you have not already seen this, holy freak you HAVE to watch it. For goodness sake, who CARES if I have a little sniffle. This is unreal. Absolutely mind-boggling.

I keep seeing all this stuff going on in the world and wondering how the heck much longer before it's finally my turn. Not that I'm asking for a turn, what a tremendous BLESSING that so far I've been SPARED much worse than blackouts, mild portions of massive ice storms, and general life hardships, but hot dang these incredible DISASTERS? I can't be immune forever!

My heart aches for those who are less fortunate than I. Un. Real.

Thankful Thursday

2011-03-10T20:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's later. Sorry for no posts all week and then two in one day. As I always say, I'm a work in progress! O:-) (At least I'm cute, right? Well, at least Mr. Man thinks so....)

5 Things I'm Grateful For

1) RAIN

(from: http://iplumbinc.ca/collect-rain-water-and-save/)

So, I don't ALWAYS feel grateful for rain. Especially on a cold afternoon walk in early March with Little Miss in tow in her snowsuit on our way to pick up another child from school to then trudge back home through the muddy puddles, slush, ice, and snow...because I spend MOST of the walk trying desperately to encourage Little Miss to stay out of the really really deep puddles, keep moving forward to we can get home out of the wet and increasingly cold, not get pneumonia.....

But I LIKE rain. I mean, sometimes it ruins my nicely-pin-straightened hair, gets my clothes all wet when I'm without rain coat and/or umbrella...

But I LIKE rain.

Rain means spring, and while I LOVE winter and the cold - can't get snuggly warm when it's already too hot outside - I'm ready for spring. I'm ready for rainbows, rain puddles, rain storms, rain clouds. I'm ready for rain to make things green, to melt what's left of the snow and ice. To was the crud off my car, my porch, my house. Rain makes my garden grow without me having to remember to water it. It gives stay-inside-and-snuggle-on-the-couch grey days. It pit-pit-pats on the roof creating wonderful, lulling background noise....

Yup. I love rain. Even if I have to walk in it for tomorrow morning's daycare dropoffs and pickups from school, it's great.

Thanks for raining!

2) IMAGINATION

(from: http://imielvisser.com/2010/10/03/imagine-spirit-within-and-without-by-osho-a-guide-to-your-imagination/)

I think this was the predominant cause of my younger-self's bossiness towards my poor younger brother, as our play games always consisted of my imagining myself in a position of power over him i.e. the bossy teacher at school, or bossy parent, or bossy boss..... Anyway. What was I talking about?

In the last couple of days I have watched imagination make toilet paper rolls into a sword, which then turned into a telescope, making my darling Little Miss a pirate sailing the open seas grunting "ARRRRRRRR!" and searching for treasure. Today, she became a cat and spent an hour or so on hands and knees, picking her toys up in her mouth and making requests by meowing and pointing. When she has similar toys the toys automatically become a family and she plays happily for ages imagining mom giving time outs - "no! Go to your room!" - to the babies. Her naked cabbage patch doll regularly has a poopy bum to show off. I'll call out "Little Miss! Don't do that, please!" and hear back, "I'm just pwetending, Mom. I'm just pwetending to draw on the table." "Don't draw on the table." "I'm not! I'm just pwetending!"

Pwetending rocks my socks and keeps us entertained for hours.

3) PONYTAILS

(from: http://beautyzap.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-jennifer-anistons-tacked-pony.html)

Is there a simpler, more fantastic, acceptable hairstyle out there? I mean, I LOVE LOVE having short short short hair, but even then I have to at least wet my head down each morning, shake the water off, and place the odd stray before I get going in the morning. With my hair a bit longer, as it is at the moment, I get up, I grab a hair elastic, pull the night's rat's nest behind me in the elastic... VOILA I'm fit to be seen in public. BRILLIANT.

AND...I don't spend all day fiddling with my hair! Pushing it out of my eyes, behind my ears, holding it up off my neck in hopes of a passing cool breeze... it stays out of my face while running, playing sports, tickling Little Miss, doing housework.

Ponytails. Gotta' love 'em!

(And yes, I know I don't rock a ponytail as well as Ms. Anniston. Who does? But LOOK at it! SO functional and TOTALLY hot. Yesssssssssss!)

4) SUPPORT

(from: http://www.raw-food-repair.com/raw-food-support-groups.html)

Ever try to do something (like exercise and eat right? For an on-blog-topic example) aaaaand NOT have anyone behind you, backing you up, helping you out, keeping you strong? Yeah, how much harder is that??

Generally, I don't have that problem.

What a blessing.

Thanks, team! (You SHOULD know who you are, though your numbers and members have changed over the years, you're all amazing, and have played a remarkably humongous part in making me and my life who I am and what it is. YOU ROCK like a rock-solid supporter should. BOOyah and MUAH!)

5) "NEW" FURNITURE

(from: http://www.myspace.com/57941151)

Sooooo... we're young(ish? I mean, Mr. Man DID just have the big 3-0 - OY!), in debt, impoverished, overly educated for our pittance paycheques, and we have a LOT of hand-me-down furniture.

Which, honestly, is amazing. Amazing. THANKS for handing things down so we could furnish our home 'cause it probably wouldn't have happened otherwise!

BUT, recently.... we bought some 'new' used furniture.

We went from old, crummy, ugly, literally falling-apart-at-the-seams and horribly "covered" up with slip-covers living room furniture (couch & loveseat) and we graduated to, beautiful, comfortable, squishy, slouchy-but-supportive-enough, inviting, easy-to-clean and even room-matching LEATHER couch & armchairs. WHAT a difference - slouchy, constantly-needs-to-be-straightened-there-that's-better-NO-DON'T-SIT-LIKE-THAT slip covers are A THING OF THE PAST and I can without a thought now plop myself down on my living room furniture with a good book, and get up without having ruined the decor of the entire room.

Say it with me now: WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Best house upgrade yet.

THANKS for selling us your used furniture and ending my HATE HATE relationship with my old couch. Which I totally watched get thrown into the garbage truck and crushed by the garbage crusher.... there was cracking, splintering wood.... it was epic.

And THAT, my friends, is this week's Thankful Thursday post.

What? It's been a week?

2011-03-10T07:43:00.000-05:00

Holy cow!

So, the intention was TOTALLY not to ONLY write Thankful-Thursday posts, I swear! This week just ended up being a LITTLE bit more insane than, well, I'd ever ever ever imagined..... which makes it the perfect blogging week, really, 'cause holy COW is stuff going on, but hot dang just NO TIME!

Well, I guess that's not totally true.... I could have been blogging last night after I totally and completely crashed (yeah, it was like, 8. I died a little) on the couch with Mr. Man and LAUGHED and LAUGHED and LAUGHED at the funniest website EVER (BEFORE you click here just know that not everything is, um.... "appropriate." Let's just say I have a new adoration for the iPhone, a device I have never ever ever used, nor will I, I don't think, after seeing its fantastic autocorrect).

Anyway, it's so friggin early in the day I figured I'd write and tell you what's up and then LATER, when I'm less groggy (oh how I loathe 6am) I'll do Thankful Thursday. :-)

So on Saturday my darling friends' house had a rather crazy flooding happen in their basement. Which is kinda' normal for basements in the spring. I mean, as much as it sucks, it HAPPENS, right?

Well, this wasn't just a flood. This was some city-sewer-malfunction that backed up into their townhouse complex through the DRAIN (isn't water supposed to, by definition, go OUT the drain and not up it?) in the basement. Yes, that's right. The sewer.

As in sewage.

As in, there was a lake of excrement and all whatever else is mixed into that lovely water in the basement.

Man oh man did THAT smell fantastic or what??

So we all purchased rubber boots (can I just say how much I ADORE my very ugly, very functional rubber boots? Wore them to shovel snow - feet stayed warm and dry. Wore them to walk in the rain yesterday - feet stayed warm and dry. Wore them in a lake of poop - feet stayed warm, dry, and poop free! BOOyah! Best $15 EVER SPENT!) and spent the afternoon wading through the ankle+ deep lake. Trying not to make too many waves and knock things over, nor to get the wet all over as we hauled salvageable items up and out of harm's way.

LOVEly.

Saturday night, the three ladies of the house moved into ours for sleeping, showering, relaxing - they'd lost heat, hot water, SPACE, breathable air.... forget about the toxicity levels of the drying poop (it drained eventually, Saturday evening).

(Last night was the first night they were back home.)

Sunday, Little Miss was sick. She'd been sick with a cold before that, but Sunday was the worst day. So she and I skipped church, and had a snuggle day, which, honestly, was much needed after a sleepless night.

Monday....Monday was just WEIRD. I don't normally GET the "Mondays" but hot dang, they came out battling HARD this week, and totally won. NOTHING went as planned on Monday, and I was totally run off my feet. I had one planned task for the day, to get my upstairs cleaned and tidied in preparation for taking over my neighbour's daycare starting the next day (she went on vacation - the audacity!) aaaaaaaaaand didn't even get that task STARTED. Not even STARTED. Monday sucked.

Also on Monday Mr. Man and I had an appointment with the admissions department at a "local" college to look into different post-graduate opportunities for me (the appointment did not go well. Wow. And it was LONG!)

Tuesday? Tuesday started the 6am wake ups so I'm ready to receive a darling sweet 5-yr-old boy at 6:30 each morning. Then after I delivered said charge to school Little Miss and I headed back over to the flood house to clear the basement of garbage and EVERYTHING ELSE, so the magic cleaning crew could get in there and sanitize the walls and floors. (Little Miss spent the day two floors about the flood site, and was immediately disrobed and bathed when we got home to nix any ick that may have floated its way upstairs. So far, we've both survived).

We SLAVED Tuesday. I haven't done physical labour like that for a good while. Probably since my SIL/BIL moved last summer?? Then I had to get home, change my clothes, shower, and get my butt to school to pick up a different daycare kid.

Yesterday? Another 6am wake up, 6:30 kid receiving (oh yeah, don't forget the extra women in the house, which was SO not a big deal, but I think freaked the poor 5-year-old right out - WOW there are a lot of people in this tiny house!), 8:50 school drop off.... and I'm not going to lie, I DIED yesterday. At least except cleaning the kitchen, feeding the family, and an afternoon trip in the rain with Little Miss to pick up yet a different daycare kid - WOW was Little Miss SATURATED by the time we got home or what! Snowpants do NOT hold up against puddles. Oh yes, and there was a knock at the door - a different daycare mom who isn't scheduled to send her 1-year-old to me stopped over to see if there's any way I can take her bambino from 12-5 today because, get this, her husband is in the hospital. So, today, which started at 6, will include what I'm sure will be a pathetic attempt at baby-proofing to then be followed by chasing a very active baby around the house making sure he doesn't kill himself, and OH yes....DIAPERS!

Can't friggin' wait.

One more 6am wake up this week....then.... MARCH BREAK!

Yeah, I think it's safe to say I need to do Thankful Thursday today..... I'm DONE this week. And I have to survive tomorrow including 6am, 2 daycare kids, and a mad dash to Orangeville for a Leifayre Jewellery open house (joint with Scentsy, with a consultant who won't be there because she's busy at Disney in Florida. Guess who's middle man on THAT one? taking a bow I'm absolultey BRILLIANT sometimes).

Okay, so, unless I pass out later (totally possible) I'll be back for Thankful Thursday later this evening.

Introducing: THANKFUL THURSDAYS!

2011-03-03T17:17:00.000-05:00

Ha! Soooo... Shop Girl gave the green light, and I'm a sucker for alliteration so.... Thankful Thursdays are here!

Say it with me now:

"CORNY!"

Well, I LOVE corn sooooo pooh on you!

Ready for my first Thankful Thursday list of 5 things I'm grateful for?? (Yes, just five. I'm too through-my-fingers-verbose to do ten at one go). Okay, here it goes:

1) CORN
I know, right? Stupid, but I DO love corn. Whoever first saw the stuff growing there on the stalk and said, hot dang, let's peel this back and see if it's edible, THANK you! I love it on the cob, from the can, from frozen, popped, caramelized, candied, mixed with vegetables, smothered with butter and salts & spices... mmmmmm......

(from http://soilcrop.tamu.edu/photogallery/cornsorghum+/pages/corn%20ears.htm)

(from http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/home/popcorn.html)

Yeah, that's right. You know you're suddenly hankering for some fresh-popped buttery goodness. MMMMmmmm.....

2) CHOICE

(from http://www.torontoprepschool.com/GuidanceFinal.html)

(See? I'm not always totally, only a dunderhead!)
This kinda' blows my mind, especially reflecting on history and how things used to be, especially for women. But me? I can do WHATEVER THE HECK I WANT, and that's a-okay. I mean, obviously within reason. My choices should be what's good (best!) for my family.... but even being at THAT state, where I have to consider my husband and daughter when making decisions, that was a CHOICE, or a series of choices. I had/have options. I can be who I want, when I want, where I want, how I want, and do what I want. I can choose to wear PANTS for goodness' sake - and who wouldn't, really? I mean, I dunno about you, but even at my super-dee-duper skinniest the very tops of my thighs kinda' slap together when I walk soooo even when I'm wearing a skirt or a dress for some reason I'm wearing shorts underneath; the slapslapslapslap HURTS after a while!!

I can choose to be educated or not. I can choose to work or not - seriously, WHAT a blessing to have CHOICE on that matter! CRAZY! I can choose to stay home and raise my kid, pursue my career while raising my kid, let someone else raise my kid, I could have chosen to not HAVE a kid. I can choose to have more kids.

I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HECK I WANT TO, and that is absolutely AMAZING.

(Don't worry - just because I CAN choose something, doesn't mean I HAVE to... that's the beauty of it! LOVE it!)

3) BLANKETS

(from http://www.alibaba.com/buyofferdetail/103339214/Plush_Mink_Blankets.html)

One of my favourite things is to be freezing cold, land myself on the couch or the bed, and pull up a nice, fluffy, warm blanket - within moments I'm cuddly, toasty, content.... bliss... and I don't know what's the difference between that crummy blanket I have over there that doesn't warm an inch of me and some of my most favourite snuggle blankies, but hot dang, whoever knows the difference and makes the good kind - THANK YOU!

(Ummm.... CRAZY I found that picture, because Mr. Man and I actually have this blanket on our bed! hahaha I KNOW it's kinda' ugly...and weird - seriously? a panther on the bed? COME ON - but he got it when he was in Korea, and it is the ultimate comfy, snuggly blanket, and perfect for freezing winter nights overtop of our duvet.... ALSO...world's greatest NAP blanket)

4) LAUGHTER

(from http://gnightgirl.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html)

I don't know about you, but laughing is a big part of my life. O:-) Some of my best and favourite family memories are of my mother and I cackling in tandem at some ridiculously hilarious thing the boys had done/said. Or, more recently, I was venting and exaggerating about something that was bothering me while she was driving.... we were laughing so hard we were both definitely tearing up, and Mom's ability to stay on the road was greatly compromised.....

What are some of the best sounds in life, though? Seriously. I LIVE to hear Little Miss laugh, a good Earth-shaking belly laugh. It's adorable, delightful, it makes ME laugh, smile.... laughing together makes all the problems in the world go away and floods us with happiness. Even if just for that moment, laughter rocks.

Think about it - some of the best paid people EVER make oodles of money MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH! That's it, that's all! You're funny? BOOyah! Here's a job, do your thing.

And I'm totally okay with that.

It shares, it bonds, it relieves tension. It's medicine, exercise, enlightening, fun. It's common, binding, ice-breaking, all-inclusive, transcendent. It's the best way to end an argument.

Thanks for all the laughs, my family, my friends, you funny people out there, my favourite funny websites, my LIFE..... thanks.

5) PAINT
It's an easy space lift, addition, change, refresher.... communicates bits of personality, tastes, idiosyncrasies..... and it's FUN.....

....especially with a helper as awesome as this!

Voila! 5 things I'm thankful for. See you next week for another Thankful Thursday!

Week in review. ish.

2011-02-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

So I wanted to check in and report on my week. Another post JUST for me, that means, I know. But...you'll get over it. ;)

Tuesday-Friday went exactly as I'd planned, INCLUDING the wonderful book-club-Italian-feast food dalliance I had been counting on......and LOOOOOOOVED!! DELICIOUS chicken-breast lasagna, scrumptious caesar salad (by yours truly), garlic bread, chocolate mousse cake.... mmmmmmmmmmm......... I even drank gasp POP! OH it was DIVINE! hahaha

The rest of the weekend, I sort of resigned myself wold be another food-weekend-from-delicious-empty-calorie-ridden-fantasy-land. My parents were over (my mom's first book club attendance equaled a fun family sleepover!) aaaand we had delicious, healthy smoothies for breakfast Saturday morning....coupled with my dad's famous "Daddy eggs" - delectably fried eggs in....bacon fat!! And YES we ate the bacon, too. And toast with butter... hahaha Lunch we did all-you-can-eat Sushi, and for "dinner" I took my darling pal, for her 13th birthday, to the movies to see the fantastical Justin Bieber in documentary/concert movie 3D splendor, which was obviously coupled with popcorn, hot dogs, and nibs! O:-) Her BIRTHDAY dinner the next night consisted of delicious chicken parmesan with....perfectly too much cheese, another caesar salad, and polished off with ice cream cake.

So yeah. Talk aBOUT some straying from the path there! But you know what? I ran 30K last week, which I know isn't much for SERIOUS runners, but it's the most I've ever done in a single week, and I'm STOKED about it, and I KNOW I can do it, and I plan to do it again this week soooooo.... whatever. Weekend was a throw away. I can survive that. BOOyah!

Feeling a wee bit like I can do anything THAT regards tonight, so YAY for that! hahaha A WELCOME, refreshing change!

Now, I JUST READ on my darling Shop Girl's blog a great post about gratitude. She ends the post with a plan to post every Sunday 10 things she's grateful for. I LOVE this idea, and as soon as she gives me the green light (no pressure, my friend!) I'm TOTALLY STEALING IT!! I oh so DESPERATELY need some positive focus in my life right now and this is just such a great exercise. Like Oprah's gratitude journal or something. hahaha I'm currently beyond excellent at seeing all the hum drum, la dee dah, and blech in my life - yeah, I'm a real peach to be around at the moment - and committing to reflecting on ten different things I'm grateful for each week just seems brilliant. ...I haven't assigned myself a check-in-day yet, though. Shop Girl's doing Sundays, but I don't know if that will be realistic for me as I'm NOT currently in the habit of posting every day and rarely post on Sundays soooo... I'll get back to you on that, along with posting my first list!!

Be excited.

And that, I think, is that for now. I'm reading "The Princess Bride" at the moment and am finding it much funnier now than I remember it being last time I read it - oh the surprises of a maturing humour! aaaand it's sitting here near me calling my name soooo.... into my bed and Florin I dive for the balance of the evening!

Until next time!

MMMMMmmmm....chiiiiilli.....

2011-02-25T09:38:00.000-05:00

I know, I know. Another boring food post. I KNOW!

But, you're keeping me accountable, so get over it. hahaha

And I HAD to tell you....

I don't really like chili. Never have. Every time I go to a big event where they're promising food and surprise, surprise, they're serving CHILI.... well, I stock up on the rolls. I mean, I eat the chili but it's never ever been a favourite.

Hot dang, did I make delicious chili last night! hahaha MMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm!!! I think this recipe I stumbled upon is for SURE going in our collection of favourites! AND it's another crock-pot wonder, so BOOYAH easy to make!

Once again, from Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes, I present to you.... Vegetarian Chili With Pasta

1 15oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas) rinsed & drained
1 15oz can red kidney beans, rinsed & drained
2 14oz cans diced tomatoes
1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 large onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
1/2 cup chopped green or yellow sweet pepper (I used red 'cause it was on sale)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 to 3 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
1/4 tsp ground red pepper (optional)
1 cup wagon wheel or elbow macaroni (I used whole wheat bowties)
(optional - we opted out) shredded cheddar cheese

In a 3 1/2- to 4- quart slow cooker combine beans, undrained tomatoes, tomato sauce, onion, sweet pepper, garlic, chili powder, oregano, and red pepper, if desired.

Cover; cook on low-heat setting for 4 to 5 hours or on high-heat setting for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain. Stir cooked pasta into bean mixture. Serve in bowls, and, if desired, sprinkle with cheddar cheese.

Nutrition Facts per serving (makes 5 servings): 273 Cal, 2g total fat (0g saturated fat), 0mg chol., 868mg sodium, 53g carbs, 10g fibre, 14g protein. Daily values: 57% vit C, 13% calcium, 22% iron.

Day 2.5

2011-02-24T12:07:00.000-05:00

Wanted to tell you how it's going, a whopping not-even-three-days-later. hahaha

So Tuesday, before I posted, I did all sorts of searching for some new, yummy, 30-day-plan-to-lifestyle-kickstart meals. And HUZZAH I found some!!

Here's a quick run-down of the plan/mindset behind everything (which you can find in full detail here) - BASICALLY, you eat HUGE amounts of produce. hahaha Aaaaaand that's about that! No, really, though. I was SUPER skeptical when we were talking about it and planning...the plan hahaha, BUT then I thought about it - what's the recommended daily intake for fruits/vegetables per person per day? Like, oodles, right? 6-7 or something like that? (I really don't know off the top of my head.... Oh, nope! I just looked it up here: 7-8 for females, 8-10 for males (unless over 51 then you just need 7 servings). Alright, fine, so yay. 8 servings.

Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh......I LIKE fruit & veggies. I, regularly, do NOT eat 7 servings per day. No way. Maybe 2-3? Maybe? I mean, if I remember to grab an apple out of my fruit bowl and ingest it in a day I'm having a super-good healthy day, right? Now I have to remember to do that SEVEN TIMES????

So, basically, the PLAN teaches you how to make doing that EASY, and in so doing you get better portion control of everything else in your healthy diet!!

For 30 days you eat...LOTS of vegetables, fruit, legumes. White meat/fish once per day, red meat ONLY once a week, and at least once in the week you have a meatless day. GASP HORROR! What about PROTEIN! Um, hi. Chickpeas are one of my "new" FAVOURITE things. Just for an example. :)

At the end of 30 days your body, taste buds, whatever, is adjusted to this fantastic way of eating, and if nothing else you've added a bunch of delicious, vegetable-rich meals into your repertoire, making it easier to stay properly balanced.

OH yeah, and your body's a little busy going WHAT-the-heck-are-you-doing-to-me, and you shed some fat mass. Huzzah bonus!

Okay, so Tuesday, I did up the meal plan and kicked off with a new meal we'd never tried before. DELISH! Loved it! And I'm not going to lie, I was kinda' skeptical about this one.... (sorry the picture's not like, pro-quality. I took it partway through the bowl when I realized just HOW MUCH I was enjoying my dinner)

Recipe from "Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes" (yes, that's right - it's a crockpot meal, so you dump it together HOURS before dinner, smell it all day, and then VOILA delicious dinner! HOORAY!)
Eggplant-Tomato Stew with Garbanzos - garbanzo beans and chickpeas are the same food. Usually they are stocked along with canned beans or in the Mexican foods section of grocery stores.

1 medium eggplant, peeled, if desired, and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 cups chopped tomatoes
1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1 15oz can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 15oz can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup sliced celery
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth
1 6oz can Italian-style tomato paste
1/2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
1/2 tsp dried basil, crushed
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf

In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker combine all ingredients. Cover; cook on low-heat setting for 8-9 hours or on high-heat setting for 4 to 41/2 hours. Discard bay leaf.

Nutrition facts per serving: 227 Cal, 3g total fat (0g saturated fat), 0mg chol., 1,231mg sodium (depending on your broth - mine would be less 'cause we used Epicure's vegetable soup base), 44g carb, 12g fibre, 13g protein. Daily values, 176% vit A, 38% vit C, 8% calcium, 18% iron.

YUUUUUUMMMMM!! And it made OODLES (6 servings) so...I'm definitely eating it for lunch today.

Bore you with more later! :)

Finally!

2011-02-22T12:21:00.002-05:00

I have started writing this post so many times and just never got around to finishing it, posting it, whatever. hahaha AND I just finished writing a friend who was kind enough to check in with me and realized, OHMIGOSH, I just finally wrote my blogpost! hahaha Soooooooo here's the not-so-skinny:

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting via Skype with this gal pal of mine who I just think the WORLD of - I aspire to be her. hahaha At least outwardly, this gal has got it ALL together AND she's absolutely stunning. She's one of those girls everyone wishes they could hate because she makes the rest of us look bad, but you can't hate her because she's too darn friggin awesome. ;) Whoa, tangent much?

Anyway, we were chatting and I don't even remember what was said but something about taking to her and not being who I want to be or doing what I want to be doing made me feel ridiculoulsy self-concious, embarrased, whatever.

So, here's what I've written to her the last couple of weeks. Cheers!

Subject: So, I'm fat.

hahaha APPARENTLY chatting with you last night was the kick I needed. I don't know.

Anyway, I'm DETERMINED to get on top of my eating problems. Spent the morning planning the week's meals, all to fit in the 30-day plan, and got back from a very successful 30-day-plan grocery shop.

Mr. Man and I have been saying for weeks we need to get back at it, need to get back at it, need to get back at it......

Soooo thanks for letting me vent for a minute 'cause, this week at least, I'm back on board. I WANT TO FIT MY PANTS!!!

Cheers!
Me
________________________________

You're hilarious. Thanks for the kudos, but I'm sure they're undeserved - I've been battling with myself for, well, long enough that I've gotten nice and chuuuubby! hahaha

I may use you, I haven't decided yet. O:-) I'm trying to get back into blogging, but when I went to blog about this after chatting with you it just didn't get done - had to make the meal plan, grocery list, do the groceries, and then chase my kid around! By the time I got a moment we were already STARTED and I missed the blog post. hahaha Maybe tomorrow??

Fast Sunday, though? KILLING me! But I have a 30-day-challenge recipe "broccoli & red pepper soup" simmering on the stove waiting for me!! ....dunno how I missed trying this one last time around - it looks and smells GREAT!

I think I'm just so awed by YOU, you gorgeous thing, that talking to you when I'm NOT at or looking my best is, quite frankly, HUMILIATING. hahaha Just like, hot dang, I SHOULD have this together.

Anyway, thanks again! For sure chat soon!
A super-starving ME!
________________________________________________

(In response to her question to me - "so, how's it going? Still eating the 30-day Fit-to-life plan?")

Ugh.

hahaha

Last week it was like everything on the planet was conspiring against me...including my evil inner daemons! Grrrrrrr... I've done a couple 10K runs to try to compensate... O:-) And because I wanted to get back to being somewhat comfortable with that distance, but OY oy oy the FOOD!

So we were great for about a week... and then it was time-to-go-to-groceries afternoon, and my darling girlie thought putting her teeny hand on a burning-hot stove was a good idea, so instead of me doing groceries for my awesome meal-plan I got stuck at home all afternoon with a screaming invalid! (She's totally fine, just her first real burn - ouch!)

The NEXT day I had rehearsal (I'm doing this play again... glutton for punishment or what? hahaha) but Mr. Man agreed to brave Saturday grocery-shopping and get the list for me. Which was great. Hooray!

Except he forgot that WW in front of pasta = whole wheat.

And I needed a small bag of marshmallows to make fudge for a YSA activity, but he was afraid to get too few so got the giant-sized costco-pack of marshmallows.....

....just a few the-man-did-the-groceries quirks that were disheartening. (I have BIG issues with marshmallows. Weird, I know.)

That night we had tickets to go to see "Billy Elliot" in Toronto with my parents, and every time we go to the theatre we get Hagen Daz at intermission, so I KNEW that was coming up, and ate pretty vegetarian-healthy in preparation! hahaha But Mr. Man's darling mother, who came down to our house to babysit for us for the night, showed up with a huge box of icing-doused cinnimon buns for Sunday breakfast.......and dinner with my parents was a huge helping of chicken with butter/sugar-doused vegetables.

Then the NEXT day, at church, after succumbing to the oozing icing for breakfast by my oh-so-kind-and-horribly-tempting-MIL, the RS president mentions to me, oh-you're-having-the-elders-for-dinner-tonight-right? WHAT?! I'd already put a new squash+lentil soup in the crock-pot in the morning, and there DEFINITELY wasn't enough for four adults plus Little Miss AND we'd just had them a few days earlier and served...wait for it... LENTIL SOUP! I mean, COME ON!! So I frantically ran around when I got home to see what I could make to satiate the Elders, and came up with my mom's hommade mac n' cheese recipe - which is DELICIOUS, but definitely not 30-day-plan friendly. So we had that and the lentil/squash soup on the side.

Then what? OH yes! Then Monday was VALENTINE'S day, which, honestly, is SO not a big deal at our house. AT ALL. But Mr. Man and I have recently been called as the YSA advisors in our ward and so were preparing for our first YSA FHE...so Little Miss and I got to baking - the fudge mentioned earlier and icing-laced sugar cookies.

There's a lot of icing left over when you make cookies.

And there are a lot of cookies left over when you only have three YSA come to your first event.

AAAAAaaand by that time my perfect week's meal plan was totally thrown out the window - we were so off what we were supposed to be eating when and where and with whom and whatever it was just let's try to use up these groceries week. :(

WHY is it so HARD?!

SO I'd kinda' decided to throw in the towel and forget it - I'll just work up to running 10K 5 or 6 times a week, and then who gives a crap if I eat the extra marshmallows by the handful everytime I wander through the kitchen?? I mean, really.

THEN I got your message yesterday.....

So today I will be hitting the grocery store to fill our kitchen with the things we need for the following to get us through 'till Saturday:

tonight's dinner: Eggplant-tomato stew

Tomorrow
breakfast: oatmeal & an orange
lunch: scrambled eggs with veggies (30-day recipe)
dinner: Sweeny Todd Stew (30-day portabella mushrooms & beans recipe)

Thurs
Breakfast: banana & orange (I love this breakfast combo!)
Lunch: spinach/lettuce salad with nuts, seeds, chick peas, etc.
dinner: vegetarian chili with whole wheat pasta

Friday:
Breakfast: Kristen's smoothie recipe (30 day, obviously)
Lunch: More yummy salad, possible dip into leftovers
Dinner: vegetable stew
Friday night - book club meeting will include Italian foods i.e. lasagna, caesar salad, bread.... it's my planned food dalliance

Saturday:
Breakfast: yummy smoothie recipe from Epicure (DELISH! Similar to yours, but with some epicure seasoning)
Lunch: leftovers
Dinner: 30-day rolled eggplant...but we've adjusted it into a pasta sauce - it's SSOOOOOOOO yummy!

I ran 10K yesterday, and am currently planning to run 5 tomorrow, 10 Thursday, and then 5 on Saturday.

....fingers crossed....

Sorry for such a long response, but there it is. AAAAAAND I may just steal this whole thing and post it on my blog, because I've been MEANING to post it all for some time now.

THANKS for checking on me! I need it! hahaha
ME

I've been HACKED!

2011-02-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

So, a couple of hours ago I got this rather alarming e-mail from lord Google.

Dear site owner or webmaster of [my business site]

We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.

Here is a link to a sample warning page:
http://www.google.com/interstitial?url=http%3A//leifayre.ca/store/

We strongly encourage you to investigate this immediately to protect your visitors. Although some sites intentionally distribute malicious software, in many cases the webmaster is unaware because:
1) the site was compromised
2) the site doesn't monitor for malicious user-contributed content
3) the site displays content from an ad network that has a malicious advertiser

If your site was compromised, it's important to not only remove the malicious (and usually hidden) content from your pages, but to also identify and fix the vulnerability.

Once you've secured your site, you can request that the warning be removed by visiting
[crazy google support site]
and requesting a review. If your site is no longer harmful to users, we will remove the warning.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

Yeah. How do you like THEM apples, huh?! GEEZE! I read the first line, got confused and lost - is this even for REAL?? - called Mr. Man over aaaaaaaaaand.... there's definitely something going on. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! And I spent TIME on it today, getting things updated and new stuff posted!

I feel like a cyber criminal. The owner/operator of a malicious website. sigh .... but I HAD NO IDEA!! Apparently some smart guy who's a complete and total ~~jackass~~ meanie (does my mommy read this?) is sitting around with nothing better to do than to exploit little glitches in people's shopping cart software, so when people visit JEWELLERY websites, of ALL things, they're at risk of being infected by Google only KNOWS what!

Gotta' tell ya', my heart rate sped up a few notches reading through that. It sounds so official and scary, right? And even when Mr. Man gets it all fixed and straightened out Google doesn't take down the warning until we APPLY for a REVIEW.

Oy.

IN the meantime.... the website has been deactivated, so typing http://www.leifayre.ca will NOT give you a virus, but will in fact redirect you to our FACEBOOK PAGE! Hooray! Where you can still view everything, 'like' the page, even, and then EASILY share it with all your friends! Come on! You know you want to! It's been a tough battle against the evil-cyber-bots hell-bent on destroying our little corner of the internet and hitting 100 'likes' would be fantastic. hahaha (You'd think with 400+ facebook super-close-pals I'd be able to find a quarter of them who like handmade jewellery, eh? Geeze.....)

On a HAPPIER work note, wanna see what I made today?:-)

Huzzah!

I think it's time to call it a night. At least, productively speaking. Cheers!

Angry Much?

2011-02-01T21:28:00.000-05:00

(From http://dwellingintheword.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/35)

Do you ever just get so mad you want to scream? Throw things, stomp around, slap the offender or just, just....really rub in how ARRRRRGH the whole thing is to make sure IT NEVER EVER HAPPENS AGAIN? And then when you're a bit calmer and you're thinking back to Sunday school and that dang 70 times 7 lesson about forgiveness and you're a bit chagrined for having behaved like a fool, so you chill and apologize for blowing your top but then discuss why you blew your top and what events led up to your feeling so ridiculously helplessly out-of-control-ly FURIOUS??

.....and then it happens again??

Mad. Calmer, but upset. Forgiving, understanding, emotion sharing... crisis over.

....and then it happens AGAIN.

......and again....

.....and again.....

And it's not always the EXACT same thing, or situation, it's just the same pattern, the same...disappointment, frustration, hurt.... leading to the same anger at the sense of betrayal.

And you get to the point where as much as you NEED to SCREAM to release the pressure that's building up there's just not point anymore because it's not like anyone's listening, or that they care. Or at least not that they care enough to do anything about it. Nothing big enough to make a difference, anyway.

So, eventually it will blow over. You will be perceived as being a holy terror, a tremendous over-reactor... time will "heal" and you'll get over it. And the cycle will just keep going on and on and on and on.

When people totally SNAP, like, flip their lid, lose grip on reality, give up, whatever.... I wonder how many gazillion times they've been through the cycle before it's too much.

I wonder how many times I have in me....

(In lieu of screaming my head off and waking up my Little Miss let me just say: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Hum drum and la dee daaa

2011-01-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

So, TRYING to get back in the swing of things over here..... I've just deleted a bunch of aimless rambling that bored me to WRITE sooooo... yeah.

I feel like hooey today, which is thrilling. It's like, I'm not sick, but I'm not not sick. I'm fine and functioning, but just aaaaacccccccchhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnngggggggg for my bed. But it's not [just] that I'm tired, I'm just....blech. It's also, very very very boooooooooooring.

Sooooooo...

let me take you to some of my favourite places on the interweb! hahaha WAHOO! I know, right? SO exciting!

CAKEWRECKS
THIS BLOG is, I think, the only thing ever, EVER, I've read on the internet that had me doubled over with laughter. These people are BEYOND funny. OH. MI. GAWSH. I can only imagine if you have any inclination for baking cakes that it would be about a trillion times funnier, but what do I know? Past chocolate chip cookies (which I have absolutely, 100% MASTERED, by the by) I'm not a baker. At all.

My most absolutely favourite two posts I've found on Cakewrecks so far? This one and this one. Read them. Love them. Laugh. Aaaaaaaand, actually, maybe make sure you go pee BEFORE you go visit the site, JUST IN CASE. ;)

Alright, well, that's enough today. I know I said "places" a minute ago, buuuut my couch and book are calling to me as Little Miss is busy stuffing her face with "gabwana" - she totally just ran over and said "trick or treat! I want some candy." She then settled on asking for a banana... - and watching Go Diego Go.

sneeze Ugh. Excuse me.

I know. I suck. ;)

2011-01-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to lie, I missssssss blogging. But I just don't have anything interesting to say lately! hahaha Well, assuming anything I had to say ever was interesting in the first place - I've heard bloggers accused of being very egocentric thinking that anyone would give a crap to stop by and read whatever doldrums come rambling out through their fingers that day.... (shrug) Whatever.

I've had some GREAT run-ins with baby-making/planning questions lately, which have been a blast, but as that topic apparently offends some I feel I can't write about it. Though I will say that I was recently told that the longer a woman waits between children the lazier, and consequentially worse and worse a mother, she becomes. Followed up a week later by someone doing a water evaluation in my home asking me if we're planning on having another one anytime soon. Yeah. The water evaluation guy. 'Cause you know, we're tight like that. (rolling eyes)

What else can I tell you?

I was in a fairly crippling funk the better part of last year, I'm not going to lie. Made for some pretty interesting goings on over here AAAAAAAAAnnnnnnnnnddddd all the weight I lost and then some has come RACING back on. Which I think I may have said at some point - who knows? My blogging has been nothing if not sporadic the last year or so. Anyway, I put on so much weight that a couple of months ago I actually got into an argument at church, with a lovely busy-body who, by the way thinks Little Miss is small because she doesn't get enough exercise - if she's getting enough exercise then she'll sleep well at night and she'll grow when she's sleeping, so the fact she's petite OBVIOUSLY proves she's not getting enough exercise (rolling eyes. Again) - in a choir practice I was directing. In front of actually, like, our full choir that day. It rarely happens, but we finally have a good crowd and she up and says "are you pregnant?"

"No."

"No, you are. You're pregnant."

"No, I'm really not."

"No, Little Miss needs a sibling. I know. You're pregnant."

"I assure you I'm NOT pregnant."

"I'm sure you're pregnant."

"I'm NOT pregnant. I've put on about 20 or more pounds in the last few months. Thank you for noticing and pointing it out to everyone."

"No, you're pregnant."

"I am not pregnant. I keep peeing on the sticks and they keep saying 'no' so I'm pretty sure, I just got really fat."

"I'm sure you're pregnant."

I promise it went down just like that. Just like in the movies when a KID asks a fat lady when the baby is due, but it wasn't a kid, and she wouldn't DROP it!

So...that, and my MOM admitting how fluffy I'd gotten.... yeah, it got pretty out of hand.

It happens to me sometimes. I just get out of my groove and lose control. I hardly EVER have control of my eating habits, but I'm fairly good at staying on top of the exercise. It's a pain, now, 'cause I'm much better, and back to it - I've been exercising/running frequently probably for at least a couple of months, now - but I have SO MUCH WORK to do to get back to where I'd already worked so hard to get! hahaha And it's not even 'yo-yo' dieting, just.....yo-yo funkifying? Anyway, whatever. I'm a work in progress, what can I say?

Aaaaaaaaand, now that I'm boring ME I'm going to call it quits for the day (week? month? months? WHO knows?) aaaaaaand see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get outta' bed again in the morning and fit a 5K in before Mr. Man heads off to work. I like that schedule.

Cheers!

Getting off my Arse?

2010-10-14T14:51:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, I HAVEN'T exercised today, no. Sorry.

BUT...I DID dig my weight bench & paraphernalia out of the back CLOSET where it's been sitting for...ever? And THAT took some SERIOUS cleaning and reorganizing of my basement. Which isn't done. And, apparently, never will be.... it's been an ongoing process since we moved in about 4.5 years ago. Yeah, apparently it's just not meant to be usable space down there. Which frustrates the heck out of me. But that's another story all together.

I figured, though, I should check in. I want to get back to this blog's original purpose - to keep me motivated, honest with myself, and keep track!! So hopefully, if I don't forget (no promises) I'll hop on my Wii Fit later tonight and see just HOW bad the damage is after so many months of idleness aaaaand, I dunno. We'll have the new starting point? Sure. Sounds good.

Well, on THAT note, I need to get back up off my giant rear and get back to cleaning this dumping zone we inhabit. I wonder if I'll find the floor in the bedroom before going to bed tonight. Huh.

Remember when....

2010-10-12T22:05:00.000-04:00

Hey, it's me!

Remember way back when in August I said I'd be back to blogging?

Remember when I used to use this blog to confess my I'm-a-kinesiologist-in-training-and-absolutely-know-better trespasses against my athletic physique?

Remember back in the spring, when I was practically SKINNY??

Remember when I qualified as a "runner"?

Remember when it didn't hurt to wear pants that don't belong to Mr. Man?

Remember when I used to fit a bra without that horrid my-boobs-are-too-big-for-this-but-I-apparently-like-to-look-like-a-hootchie-with-the-boob-bulge-over-this-line thing going on? Because I had fantastically SMALL boobs????

Remember when I could do the 300 workout in under an hour, and found some definition under all my post-baby belly fat??

Remember when I used to love Yogilates??

Remember when I did the 30-day-challenge with some friends to test if we had any idea what we were talking about trying to help people with weightloss goals??

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I have been itching to blog for...well, months, now. But I've been WAY too embarrassed. My CLOTHES do NOT fit, and I'm not even only talking about my fantastic, new-within-the-last-year-since-I-ACTUALLY-hit-the-impossible-Gap-8 clothes (which, by the way, are excruciatingly painful, if I can get them on at ALL...). I saw my reflection the other day while cooking in my mom's kitchen for Thanksgiving - I'm HONESTLY starting to look like a fat girl - my thighs come so so soooooooo together WAY too early at what should be the top of my legs, but is really around my knees... it makes each movement look like one leg is going to have to go through the other in order to take a step forward. I mean, I have giant, soccer-playing legs to begin with, but then there's all this...this.... GROSSSSSSSSSSSS around it and it's busting out of my pants. And let's not even get INto my muffin top. I mean, muffins? PLEASE! This is an entire CAKE busting out of not just the top of my pants (belt is like the cruelest word EVER right now - I fold over and cry in pain at the thought of attempting to cinch around this monstrosity). And not only my pants, but my shirts, blouses.... If I'm not wearing a pair of my husband's baggy jeans and a sweatshirt I can guarantee you I am agonizingly uncomfortable, and super overly conscious of every jiggle, wiggle, waggle, and cellulite-loaded flapping-in-the-wind.

I. Feel. Disgusting.

My treadmill is STILL broken. That thing has turned out to be the biggest joke on me, EVER. And I KNOW the weather's actually PERFECT for running right now, because it's just cool enough without being biting, to keep a run a very comfortable affair.... but I'm so FAT and my running clothes, OBVIOUSLY are not MEANT to be worn by someone as chunky as me. I feel like taking this thing out, dressed in THAT, is just cruelty to the world... and I can't seem to get myself past that mental hurdle and out on the street to go for a run. I feel like I NEED my treadmill operational or I'm just going to keep expanding until I explode....which could be very soon because, SERIOUSLY, my clothes don't fit. (Cautionary note: if you're hanging out with me any time soon, you MAY want to wear safety goggles to protect your eyes from sky-rocketing buttons flying from my overtaxed apparel...)

Please please, don't post that I'm silly, that I look great, and you don't know what I'm talking about. YOU'RE silly if you can't see the difference between now and back when school ended and I was on top of things. School ended, my routine got off, and it's just never gotten back on. I'm NOT crazy. I may slightly overstate the problem, but it is a problem. When your mother will (grudgingly - she's still my mom! I'm always gorgeous to her) admit to you that your weight is ballooning you KNOW there's a problem.
I can tell every morning when I open my drawers that there's a problem....

Though I know that I haven't been pregnant I was kinda' hoping that maybe by NOW I'd be pregnant and I could kind of excuse myself my holy-super-fatty transgressions and aim for slower-weight-gain pregnancy this time around. BUT, of course, as in keeping with the year, I am NOT. Big surprise there.

So... I can keep wallowing in my expand-a-butt glory...which has honestly been going on for months. And, really, may continue. Or I can do something about it. I hope I do something about it - I'm tired of feeling like this. My brother's perfectly petite, dwarf-of-a-girlfriend came for Thanksgiving, ate reasonable amounts of food, and after her ONE splurge the entire weekend says "oh, I workout." Well, congratulations, and hooray for you. Even when I HAVE a really long, good go of on-the-wagon working out, I NEVER have and never WILL have the obvious success YOU have, so please, yes, rub that in my chipmunk-cheeked face again.

You know what else is just ironic about the whole thing?? I'm currently growing my hair out. hahaha Okay, so I know I'm the only person on the planet who would ever find that funny, but last time I cut it short, before I got pregnant and had Little Miss, I always said I'd never ever grow it out long again unless I lost a tonne of weight and actually hit size 8. Which I NEVER thought would be possible. But I just think I look so extra CHUNKY with long hair, and I should keep it shorter unless my face was thin enough to pull it off.... Anyway, so I LOSE all the weight, do that silly play (remember when I was in a play?) and then decide life will be easier if my hair is longer NEXT year when we do the play again..... so I'm growing my hair out. And I'm probably the fattest I've been in the last three years, barring immediately after giving birth.

Mom thinks my waist size is directly linked to my happiness level.

I just think I need to figure out this stupid food problem. I hate food.

I need some popcorn.

Summer Lovin'

2010-08-17T08:06:00.000-04:00

Alright. So you have to admit, that even in the heat of the moment when I was as ill, exhausted, and ticked off as i was that I KNEW I'd be back. I mean, the title of the last thing I wrote WAS "The Blog's End............at least for now."

Anyway, after I flipped my lid, which I absolutely did, and re-read through everything I though, huh, maybe a TEENY bit of an overreaction? hahaha But I DO plead the I-was-ill-and-sleepy-and-couldn't-sleep-torqued-up, so for the sake of my falling asleep it had to be done. ;)

THAT said, even with this absolutely nothing going on or to write about, I'm back. (Oh, please, you can all stop your cheering. No, seriously, stop. Thanks, but.... No really. Stop.) O:-)

It's been a good summer! Little Miss and I keep busy chillaxing with our neighbourhood friends (yeah, she still goes to daycare just about every day, except now her mommy goes with her! HA!) some days in the backyard, some at one of the city's wading pools (those are GREAT! Little Miss can run around the whole thing and the deepest section comes up to her chin! Deep enough for us grownups to get wet and cool off but shallow enough to not kill the children (when supervised properly, of course). It's GREAT.

Currently Little Miss and I are hanging out at a cottage my parents rented for the bunch of us for a couple weeks up by the beach. We're on day two of our vacation and just having a blast. One of my darling dearest best pals and her sister (who I also love) were already up here so came yesterday (the lazy bums are still sleeping - psht!) to hang with us. Anyway, the long and short of it is that we're having a blast. The waves on the lake yesterday were absolutely insane - I don't recall ever seeing them so huge! QUITE the undercurrent, which, when we stayed in the shallower-ish water (instead of traipsing out until both the water and waves were crashing over our heads and we were sputtering for air... eh, B? hahaha) was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!

And, in addition to my love and business for scrapbooking I've fallen head-over-heels in love with jewelry making! I know, right? All these very-ME-ish rough n' tumble activities of mine.... oy! I LOVE making jewelry, and have way too much soooooo I'm dragging a couple friends of mine with me into business selling it, so I can make more and more and more! hahaha (You can check us out on Facebook - Mr. Man has been researching website options for me but in the meantime our Facebook page will be it! hahaha) So I'm sitting up at the cottage with my beads and my paper crafting and feeling like one of the biggest nerds ever and absolutely LOVING it.

Anything else I can bore you with?? Oh yes. I need to update you on my expanding girth, UGH, but I'll save that for another day.

Little Miss is awake! Gotta go!

The blog's end. (For now, at least).

2010-06-21T23:38:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging, anywhere, at all, lately. I would love to be, but there are so many things I would love to be doing and they're not getting done either soooo... MEH.

Initially the blog started to help me with my health goals, and keeping myself responsible to the void that is the internet universe instead of just my inner daemons about my exercise habits. And while that's currently a constant struggle since school's end with either Little Miss or my near constant state of illness, I have, obviously, ceased using this for that purpose.

I'm once again ill, surprise surprise, and while I lay in bed tonight longing for the fatigue that will lead to sleep and help bolster what's left of my shoddy immune system, I find I cannot shut the last anonymous comment I got on my blog out of my head.

I have been accused of many things and of being many things. But when I'm attacked by commentators too chicken to put a face to their criticisms I have a hard time letting it go. Does sitting safely behind your screen typing insults at people make YOU feel better? I certainly hope so and suggest you man-up and sign your name.

I've been accused of being selfish, stubborn, and rude. I'm FULLY aware of my grade A bitch streak. I whine more than my 2 year old. I am about as far away from negligent of my many, many flaws as one can get. So come here, where I take slight pleasure from sharing scholastic information, posting family pictures, suggesting tips and techniques to make your exercise more useful and letting out VERY carefully edited and cautious rants on occasion and JUDGE me? Whatever. Tonight, I DO care, and that's a deal breaker for me. I'm done with this. Maybe if I ever get better from being sick I'll see fit to post again, but for now, you critical anonymous authors (don't worry, last-anon-commenter, though you were the straw you have certainly not been the first, though if I had an opportunity right now I'd love to take your holier-than-thou assumptions about me and, well, I'm sure you can dream up some BITTER end to that thought) have ruined this.

Maybe now that I've said my piece my brain will shut off and I'll be able to sleep.

Why I'm NOT pregnant.

2010-05-26T23:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, so this is one of those hot-under-the-collar topics that really has nothing to do with anything. hahaha It just drives me ABSOLUTELY BONKERS, and so OBVIOUSLY needed to be written about.

But people, I do not care WHO THE HECK you are, you do NOT get to have an opinion as to whether or not it is time for Mr. Man and I to have another baby. NO ONE gets to decide that, and for FLIP sake none of you are even allowed an OPINION, okay?? GEEEEEEEEEEEzzzzzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeee.........!!!!!!!!!

I swear I can't go a day without being asked by someone when we're having another baby, or worse, TOLD it's TIME. Really? REALLY? You think it's time? REALLY? Do you?? Huh, that's interesting. Would YOU like to be in my family and a part of this marriage? Because THEN you can have an opinion. And, oh WAIT! I'm pretty sure even THEN it's not 100% up to Mr. Man and I but hugely to do with whether or not the Lord thinks it's time, too - if it had been up to me do you really think I would have chosen 9 months of discomfort followed by squeezing a human being out of you-know-where to get Little Miss?? ABSOFREAKINGLUTELY NOT.

What is it about EVERYONE that makes them the expert? Or that entitles practical STRANGERS to xeroxed copies of my life's plan?? WHY does small-talk at church with EVERYONE ALWAYS go from what-are-you-doing-now-that-school's-over (with some you-evil-career-pursuing-sinner, oh-what-wait-you-want-to-stay-at-home-with-your-offspring? Wasn't-school-a-waste-of-time-then? You-must-be-the-dumbest-person-on-Earth [yeeeeeeaaaahhhh.... I have that conversation A LOT]) to when-are-you-having-another-baby??

I ABSOLUTELY understand when my FRIENDS ask. When I look at my friends and wonder about their plans, desires, or possibly lack-of-success trying to procreate YES I will ask. But ohmigosh, if I've EVER asked you or teased you about expanding your brood consider yourself one of my absolutely most adored persons EVER because it is just WAY WAY too personal a topic to broach with ANYONE else.

Why do we think it's okay to ask strangers about it?? I have one friend who was married for 8 years in which she had at LEAST that number of miscarriages becoming increasingly devastated with every failed pregnancy only to be reminded and looked down on every week she went baby-less to church. What the hell IS that?? "When are you going to start having kids, do you think?" Good grief, what if she'd miscarried YESTERDAY when you asked her that question. Is her agony really worth your filling the air with gut-wrenching "small-talk" so you're up on the latest gossip?

I've lately taken to just discontinuing conversation with ignoramuses who ask if, or tell me it's time for another bun in the oven. OR I'll spill the gory details of why I'm not. And frankly, I'm tired of repeating it day in and day out.

No. I am NOT pregnant. Little Miss will be at least well over 3 years old before she becomes a big sister, and who knows how much older.

No, I would NOT love to be pregnant. It's uncomfortable, tiring, vomit-inducing, and I have a ridiculously active 2.5 year old to keep up with. I figure that attitude comes from not having loved being pregnant the first time around, but I do absolutely recognize it is a means to a WONDERFUL end, and yes, do absolutely hope to get pregnant again in my future, at least one more time.

Mr. Man and I had been hoping to get pregnant by Jan/Feb of this year. Which is ridiculously difficult to do during your last insane semester of an undergraduate degree with a husband commuting 3 hours a day. I know, I've tried. AND since I've been suffering from amenorrhea since February, I don't imagine I'm going to GET pregnant in the near future, until that sorts itself out, at least.

So, with our stated desire to get pregnant and the apparent cessation of my menstrual cycle, including the oh-so-important ovulation, it seems quite obvious to ME that NOW is NOT the time, despite what you may think. Pretty sure that Mr. Man and I decided, were overruled, and it's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. I was disappointed to keep peeing on sticks and getting one instead of two lines, sure. But it's not going to happen now, so what's the point in getting all bent out of shape about it?? Except for our air conditioner failing to respond to the flicking of the ON switch, I have had a glorious two weeks staycation. Little Miss and I are absolutely loving finding our groove and figuring out how the heck the whole mommy's-home-all-the-time-now thing works (no, she is not emotionally ruined or scarred for life, thank you, my critics, for THAT vote of confidence.) And when we've found our groove, if my cycle hasn't regulated with the reduced stress and new-found level of NORMALCY in my life then YES I WILL get to the doctor (please for goodness' sake do not leave a comment telling me to go to the doctor. I WILL. It's NORMAL for me to have amenorrhea-ic episodes - I went all last summer with no period. And no, I am NOT anorexic. I just wrote a paper on that, and got an A+, so that should tell you I learned a little bit of SOMETHING about it - seriously, the things I've been asked or accused of the last few weeks astound me). When Mr. Man, myself, and the Lord are all in agreement that it's time for baby number two I'm SURE it will happen. Maybe it will be tomorrow, maybe it will be another 3 years from now. Maybe we're done having kids and going to adopt. WE don't know, so why should you?

So THAT is WAY too much information about THAT, and if any of you ask me in the future I reserve the right to smack you up the side of your head.

And when you DO ask someone, PLEASE for the love of anything and everything, be TACTFUL, and maybe reserve that question for someone who WANTS to tell YOU what's going on, and not just as it's-my-Christian-duty-to-check-on-your-obedience-to-Mormon-doctrine-as-a-concerned-Relief-Society-sister-who's-never-spoken-to-you-before-in-my-life.

I'm sitting on a really uncomfortable non-chair, and I can't imagine having anything constructive to add, so now you know.

Trying to find my head

2010-05-14T09:58:00.000-04:00

Well, it's over. It has been for a bit, now, actually. Well, a week, I guess. hahaha I e-mailed the final copy of the paper to my prof. last Friday morning. Crazy.

Then Friday night through Saturday I went to a women's conference (Time Out For Women) in Toronto with my mom. Then when that was over my mom and I rushed out so that Mr. Man and I could go to Mi's wedding (CONGRATULATIONS, MI! LOVE you, girl!). THEN it was Mother's Day, which is a story in itself - lots of tears and a happy ending! hahaha THEN this week....I've kind of just....died.

It's like my head just turned off and I haven't been able to totally turn it back on yet. I still have OODLES to do and get done..... but I've shut down.

Which, as it's been a whopping week, I'm not too worried about. I'm sort of relishing in this new-found I-have-no-schoolwork state of being. It's WEIRD. I can sit and read a (super cheesy) Nicholas Sparks novel in a day (at least this one I could tell who was going to die within the first couple of chapters, and it WASN'T one of the love-interests! HOORAY! I find his tragedies so......ugh. Tragic. hahaha) without feeling GUILTY for not studying something or reading a text book... siiiiiiiiiiiigh

It's WONDERFUL.

Anyway, I'm also trying to not really dive into anything too quickly, because, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a little bit insane. So we're trying to make sure I/we take like, a month, to just get USED to life. I don't remember - did I tell you about Mr. Man getting a new job that's literally within walking distance from our house? So....we just gained back his 3-hours commuting each day....and he's been some days coming home for lunch, even. So yeah. A WHOLE whack of whoa....what happened to our life? We're trying to figure out the whole oh-yeah-we're-MARRIED-not-roommates thing. hahaha It's weird to suddenly have time together....

So yeah. I have different options available and different things presenting, but for NOW I'm going to try my hand at jack squat! See how I do. Honestly, I need some time. Oh, and to clean my house....that's going to be quite the job. I can't wait. hahaha This is going to be a spring clean like you've never seen!

But right NOW?

I'm packing for an over-nighter scrapbooking event with my mom and some of the gals. My gal Spo is picking me up this afternoon, then we're driving an hour to pick up Mom, then we're off another hour north to the Inn. We're going to get there early, unpack our clothes, go SWIMMING (I'm going to relax in a POOL today!!!) and then go paper craft until the cows come home. I'm SOOOOOOOOO excited. I get such a kick out of creating these things. I got started a little early and made a card with a friend last night.... bring it on.

So this has turned into a long rambler with no direction. I've been asked a few times lately when I'm going to update the blog, so wanted to write SOMETHING so you'd at least know where I'm hiding out. I have every intention of re-becoming a half-decent blogger, but it's one of those things I'm letting slide at the moment during the figure-myself-the-freak-out time! hahaha My APOLOGIES, but there it is.

Okay, and on THAT less-than-riveting note, I'm signing off!

Almost over. For real this time.

2010-04-27T18:40:00.000-04:00

image from http://blog.runalong.se/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/finishline.jpg

So, I probably should have posted something, but a while ago I decided to put a moratorium on blogging until I finished writing my paper. A few times since I've logged into my blogger dashboard and clicked on "new post" and then remembered OH yeah.... creative juices are to be saved for the time being.... which is maybe silly because blogging can, at times, be such a fantastic outlet for me, and writing this thing.... oy. But I think it was a good thing. Sitting here now writing this dribble feels like a REWARD and isn't accompanied by the sometimes sheepish feeling I get when I'm blogging instead of doing my homework.

Draft 1 of the paper..... IS FINISHED. I can't BELIEVE how amazing it feels. I'm not even DONE DONE done yet - still have to e-mail it to my prof, who will read it and give feedback, and then I'll have until next Friday for revisions - but the huge project is finished. It's done. I can actually see the finish line. I can take tomorrow to spend with my family and not feel a moment's guilt for not opening a text book or reading a scientific article.

On the other hand, I have SO much information rattling around in my brain about eating disorders and possible familial risk factors I'm a little useless in...just about everything. hahaha I was on the phone a couple of hours ago with just a great gal I work with in Yoli who has this great strategy for our marketing campaigns and I could barely get out "uh, duh, yup - sounds good. Um, okay." hahaha it was BRUTAL.

So when my head's back on straight and reconnected with LIFE I'll write and fill you in on some of the super exciting things that have been going on in our house lately, my training progress, my complete and absolute FAILURE in some things (oh holy cow am I ever a stress eater. And I'm DANG GOOD at hiding it from people. I'm so glad I have HERE to come and confess my wrongdoings, geeeeeeeeeeze. Keeps me accountable, and lets me get it out there.

Anyway, while I'm coasting on boring-old auto-pilot I wanted to send you over to a few of my favourite blogs; some are older and well-established, and some not so much.

First: Reflections of a Recovering Food Addict. I ADORE this blog. I know, I know. It's only 4 posts in, but what she lacks in longevity she makes up for in honesty. When you get to her page scroll down and read from the beginning so you can take the whole journey with her. I LOVE it. Leave her a comment, follow her blog, whatever you can do to give her the support she needs and help keep her on track. This gal is incredible and I love her to bits!!

Second: Healthy Families. This blog's done by a recent acquaintance of mine who is an absolute peach. While I don't agree with EVERYTHING she posts (there's at least one post mentioning a magic way to reduce cellulite - I hate to break it to you guys, but "cellulite" is totally made up - it's JUST FAT. Adipose tissue is lumpy and dimply, and when it's subcutaneous like we find around the tops of our thunder thighs it looks gasp lumpy and dimply. Rubbing cream on it or using a brush on it isn't going to make it go away. Eating right and exercising will help, but almost everyone has at least a little bit SOMEwhere - sorry, was that a tangent??) I absolutely ADORE what she's doing. She just LOVES health and being healthy, and decided to blog about it to maybe help someone else love it as much as she does. I don't even think she has AdSense on her blog, so she's not getting ANYTHING out of it except satisfaction of writing awesome health-tip posts. Read her, follow her, and love what she has to offer.

Third: Run Faster, Mommy! I found this blog listed on someone else's - this gal definitely does not know I exist, but I love reading her posts. She's much more hardcore into running than I am, but has TWO bambinos, a husband, and is working on HER undergraduate degree in exercise science, I think. I love her descriptions of races, her rationale for running, reading about her reaching personal bests, having horrible training days, and everything else. I think I just relate to her so much I find her a great read.

And that is that for now. Little Miss needs cuddling, and I could use some myself.

I can't believe I really really am almost done school. Wow.

Coming up...

2010-04-04T23:02:00.003-04:00

This week:

Monday:
8am group presentation on case study. (Finished powerpoint this afternoon during first session of General Conference - huzzah multitasking).

Wednesday:
Written portion of "practical" exam for athletic therapy class. (Studying not started)
Submit part 2 of independent study paper. (Part 2 not started)

Thursday:
Practical exam for athletic therapy class (as long as I pull "ankle taping" from the pile I'm good to go. Yeah...studying not started).

Friday:
HUGE deadline for awesome, amazing, I'm-so-excited-it's-killing-me project for Yoli (information forthcoming). Deadline USED to be Tuesday but got pushed due to rushing. (....BARELY started this...technical stuff involved so could be super quick and easy or, with my luck, will take the entire week all on its own).

Friday night?
TOTALLY VEGETATING.

Running 5K with my dad.

2010-04-03T00:09:00.002-04:00

So it's Easter weekend. Which, at least last year, was a total write-off. I'm pretty sure I didn't even attend any Easter dinners really last year, even though I was at my parents' house for the weekend, but I was holed up in a room by myself studying and doing homework. I was so so so frantic with schoolwork last year at Easter I even sent poor Mr. Man and Little Miss off to my in-laws BY THEMSELVES.

I know. I'm a horrible person.

Maybe this school-is-life approach should have been in full force today, but I will admit: I definitely took a "vacation day."

On this vacation day my dear, darling dad had expressed interest in joining me for a 5K run. Now, my dad is not (currently) a runner, though he's been tossing the idea around for over a year now if memory serves correctly. He seems to like the IDEA of running, but just hasn't got into it yet, I guess.

My dad is also 62.

And HILARIOUS. Which has nothing to do, really, with my story today, but it needs to be said. My dad is usually said to be one of the funniest people that anyone who knows him knows. (hahaha follow that?)

So, my 62-year-old non-runner dad, after some rather lengthy discussion about diet and exercise and increasing activity levels decides to run 5 kilometres.

Which, really, I REALLY think he could have done. OBVIOUSLY we would have taken our (very sweet, sweet SLOOOOOOOOW) time to make sure he didn't have a heart attack or injure himself in some way, and gosh darn it, the first time I ran 5K that's exactly what I did. I just did it. I wanted to see if I could and so I did. (It took me 38 minutes. hahaha W.O.W.)

My mother is ALSO hilarious, but for different reasons. She's just adorable, which the horribly cynical, sick, and twisted members of the family (like...all the rest of us?) find quite amusing. Anyway, Mom was CONVINCED that Dad was NOT going to make it back alive if he tried to run 5K with me today. Which I have to admit I took a LITTLE bit personally - I mean, I'm going to SCHOOL for this stuff - I'm not an IDIOT! I know all about progression and injury prevention and blah blah blah - I was NOT going to push him hard, just move him far, you know?? And I was going to MAKE him walk up the hills 'cause while he thinks it's nothing I KNOW they're hard.

Anyway, Mom thought Dad was going to die, and made me take one of our cell phones. Which, I'm sure you can imagine, just looked and felt RIDICULOUS bouncing around in one of the useless pockets in my running shorts. I had to tie the drawstring like, EXTRA tight so I didn't feel, whether in reality or not, like my shorts were falling down!

So Dad and I head out the front door. And he says, okay, let's go! AAaaand I said...NO WAY! We have to warm up (and by WE I mean specifically YOU, Mr!) So I made him walk for a few minutes. We walked to the end of the street - not the longest warm up but not TOO too short, and he was chomping at the bit to get going....

We're sauntering along the road chatting and laughing at how silly Mom is and how awkward and huge the cell phone felt in my pocket.... we talked about some rude kids not saying "please" when yelling to their mother for something from inside the house.

We got to the end of the road, and I suggested we cross to the other side where we would then start our run. We cross the road. All is well. Beautiful, sunny day, HOT (I think it feels way hotter today than it is because it was winter like, last week? Why were the neighbour kids in bathing suits playing in a sprinkler today?? It DID get to 77 degrees on the inside thermostat - I was DYING) PERFECT day and weather for a good run.

I suggested to Dad that since he's the beginner (not that I'm anything to brag about with this sport, please!) he set the pace. And so he takes a few strides.

And then he teeters.

And he starts laughing.

And I SWEAR it was in slow motion, and yet all of a sudden he was curled up in a ball on the ground.

WHAT the heck just happened??

And WHY the heck am I LAUGHING???

My dad FELL DOWN! SERIOUSLY, like, FIVE STEPS INTO THE RUN!!

Ohmigoodness, if I hadn't been laughing so hard I might have been seriously concerned, but I thought he'd just tripped and he'd get up, brush off, and away we'd go!

So he got up, didn't brush off, turned to find the evil culprit that had tried to take his life (darn ROCK! And honestly it WAS a big one, I PROMISE!) tried to walk to it and REALLY limped. Like, a LOT!

Dad? Are you OKAY??

Honestly, I don't even remember his answer, but I DO remember that I didn't know WHAT to do.

We're thirty seconds from the house - do I call for someone to bring the car? Do I just give him my shoulder to lean on and we'll hobble back up the road?

All the while killing myself laughing.

As he was, too, between winces of pain.

I offered to help, asked repeatedly if he was okay, and eventually we had made our way, slowly, back to the house. Where I of COURSE burst through the door in GALES of laugher, walked into the kitchen where the food preparation for dinner was happening, and tried to explain what had happened.

Only to be followed in by my dad, lots of blood, and the rock that made it all happen.

Seriously, TOO funny. My POOR dad!!

He sat down and took off his shoes and socks. And his one ankle was definitely looking swollen.

Thank goodness I'm in an athletic therapy class right now and the ONE THING I feel I've learned really well in it this semester is how to tape an ankle. :) So we checked his ankle compared to the other, checked for fractures or breaks, checked to make sure he'd inverted it (like, stepped down on the "outside" of the foot)....and we're like 100% sure he's actually sprained his ankle.

As the day wore on the pain grew worse. I sat him with his leg up and lots of ice.... and when he was feeling the need to be more mobile I taped him up (I'm an AWESOME ankle taper! Need something else done...maybe get someone else! hahaha But ANKLES I'm your gal!)

Anyway, long and short of it is that my dad is currently out of commission. He's going to try to see someone about it tomorrow to make sure I'm not missing any busted bones or anything, and to get working on rehab as quickly as possible so he doesn't lose any range of motion in it, but he's DEFINITELY not allowed to come running with me again for a few months, at least.

(I ended up running 5K on the treadmill downstairs while he watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - you know, the gross one that makes me queasy all the time with all the bugs and voodoo.... ick! But MMMMmmmmmmmm........Harrison Ford....)

Sorry, Dad. Better luck next time. :)

No time to write...

2010-03-31T23:04:00.003-04:00

...because I've been busy WRITING! hahaha

Have I mentioned that for one of my three final classes (HOORAY!) this semester I'm doing an independent study? So, it's me, a professor, and whatever the heck I want to study.

I'm super excited about it. I've spent the semester so far reading anything and everything I can get my hands on about eating disorders. I've learned SO much. Like, have you ever heard of EDNOS or binge eating disorder? I know, right? What? And did you know you can't be both anorexic and bulimic at the same time but you can SWITCH BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN ILLNESSES! AND that anorexia has the highest mortality rate for a psychiatric illness - 10% of those diagnosed will die within 10 years of first presentation either from starvation or suicide.

Seriously, this is intense stuff.

Anyway, I've spent WAY too much time today writing a whopping THREE PAGES (double spaced, no less, hahaha!) introduction for my paper on the family dynamic and it's correlation to development, treatment, and prevention of eating disorders.

And prior to today I've been busy collecting, sorting thoughts, etc. etc. Oh yes, and acting/singing in a play (which I have to write about, I know, I know), trying to find my house under all the mess, keeping up with business (boy do WE have exciting things going on THERE!) and OH yes, the two-and-a-half year old who lives in the house.... what? I have a husband? DARN IT! I KNEW I dropped a ball SOMEwhere!

So I wanted to SHARE with you some of the spoils of my labours thus far... this will be TWEAKED before the full paper is submitted at the beginning of May, but I wanted to post what I have so far.

Read it, love it, and HOLY COW keep coming back because I'll be working on it all month long! :D

In today's North American society there is perceived a huge pressure for individual persons to constantly portray their best selves to the world. This best self encompasses many ideas including attitude, temperament, humour, and most easily and immediately presented, appearance. Unfortunately human nature appears to have many using the means of inter-individual comparison to define their best selves in these manifold aspects of life. Persons of all ages compare themselves to their neighbours, friends, co-workers, famous personalities, and family members. Social ideals for appearance have shifted from full figures, indicating nourishment and affluence, to a preference for “a slender, long-legged, and flat-chested look” (Dumas & Nilsen, 2003, p. 312) leaving persons with larger stature ever envious of their surrounding leaner counterparts, embarrassed that they too do not fit the perfect, slender mold.
“This preoccupation with slimness has continued to increase in recent decades. By the 1990s, middle-class European American girls described the 'ideal' body size as 5'7” tall and 110 pounds. Today, the average weight of fashion models – who are seen by many as standards of American beauty – is lower than the weight of over 95% of women!” (Dumas & Nilsen, p. 313).

Interestingly, over the twentieth century as the aesthetic ideal for female appearance has shifted to thinness the occurrence of eating disorders has dramatically increased (Dumas & Nilsen, 2003, p. 311). This is not to say that the increasingly prevalent ideal of thinness as a cultural norm is the only or even main catalyst causing eating disorders; some “non-Western cultures indicate...patients voluntarily reach an emaciated weight for a variety of psychological reasons” outside of body image disturbances (Cash & Pruzinsky, 2002, p 300). Even with these cultural differences it is near impossible to ignore the apparent dramatic correlation between socially driven thin ideals and the increasing development of eating disordered behaviours associated with body dissatisfaction in local society.
The National Institute of Mental Health (2009) defines an eating disorder as:
“...serious disturbances in eating behaviour, usually in the form of extreme and unhealthy reduction of food intake or severe overeating. They are not due to a failure of will; rather, they are real and treatable medical illnesses in which certain patterns of behaviour get out of control.”

Usually it is expected to see these disorders develop in adolescence and/or early adulthood, but with severe cases documented in patients as young as four (Bar-Or & Rowland, 2004 p.__) it is imperative to understand not only the disease but any potential underlying issues causing it that may be used for prevention in future susceptible cases.
Eating disorders are generally categorized under three headings: anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS). While eating disorders are not bound by sex they are found to be much more prevalent in females: it is approximated that only 5% to 15% of AN or BN patients are male (NIMH, 2009). And while AN and BN are believed to afflict a seemingly small percentage of the female population in Western culture, approximately 1% and 1.5% respectively (National Eating Disorder Information Centre, 2008), these percentages translate to 170,074 Canadian women with AN and 255,111 Canadian women struggling with BN during their lives. Both disorders together give an astounding 425,185 Canadian women fighting a life-threatening disease largely characterized by incredibly strong negative body image (numbers calculated based on estimate of approximately 17 million female Canadians in 2009 by Statistics Canada).
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) diagnostic criteria for AN and BN as reported by Dumas and Nilsen (2003) are listed as follows:
Anorexia Nervosa
Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height.
Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
In postmenarcheal females, amenorrhea, i.e. the absence of at least three consecutive menstral cycles.
Bulimia Nervosa
Recurrent episodes of binge eating
recurrent inappropriate compensatory behaviour in order to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting; misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications; fasting; or excessive exercise.
The binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviour both occur, on average, at least twice a week for 3 months.
Self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight.
The disturbance does not occur exclusively during episodes of AN.

Both AN and BN are severely detrimental to one's overall well-being, causing manifold problems for patients of either disease, including, but not limited to: irregular heart rhythm, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, constipation and bloating, brain and nerve damage, seizures, tooth decay, dehydration, and kidney failure (Katz Group Canada Inc., 2006; National Institute of Mental Health, 2009). Both illnesses if left untreated are life threatening and do result in death. AN also has “the highest mortality rate for any psychiatric illness – it is estimated that 10% of individuals with AN will die within 10 years of the onset of the disorder” (National Eating Disorder Information Centre, 2008) either from starvation or suicide (Shaffer et al., 2002, p 175).
Eating disorders have been shown to stem from a multitude of causes, a fact which appears to hamper the effective treatment and prevention of these insidious diseases in current and potential patients. Available literature on the subject of causation appears to unanimously cite genetic predisposition as a factor, with research of family histories of eating disorder presentation from mothers to daughters and/or twins upholding this theory. Although it is accepted that genetics play a huge role in determining one's susceptibility to eating disorders le Grange et al. (2010) state that “the idea that genes alone account for the development of eating disorders seems implausible.” Cases such as that previously mentioned, with patients presenting AN pathologies as young as four years of age lead to questions about environment and social settings of these children. Many studies have been done investigating the incredibly complicated dynamic of family and its potential role in aiding either in the development or prevention of disordered eating behaviours, and while it seems impossible that family be the main catalyst for AN and BN (le Grange et al.) it is also impossible to ignore the tremendous influence that parents, siblings, and other family members have on a child's developmental psychology and social understandings.

"Lots of rest, liquids, and take your vitamins!"

2010-03-24T16:45:00.004-04:00

PLEASE do not let me offend anyone here - this is NOT my intention! Just HAVING been sick the last week and a half and having so much WONDERFUL advice by WONDERFUL people trying to help me get better has maybe left me a little sensitive to the topic? AND I just noticed something on facebook and HAD to comment on it! hahaha

But WHAT THE HECK is it about us that makes us HAVE to fix something if it's broken? But really, that's not even TRUE! HOW LONG does it take you to get around to changing that burnt out light bulb, tightening that screw, rotating your tires or goodness...any NUMBER of things that need to be fixed? And then as soon as it's a PERSON who's broken....

EVERYONE IS AN EXPERT!

And that person MUST BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY.

So there's been a LOT of back and forth over Facebook this week so far about me being sick and how so many others in the cast are coming down with various ailments (I REFUSE to take credit for ALL of them - they canNOT possibly ALL have stemmed from MY sniffles!). And it's been HILARIOUS - these people are absolutely fantastic and I LOVE that I've had this amazing chance to not only meet but get to know so many of them! What a treat!!

So we're posting back and forth and inside out and backwards and all this lovely stuff and listing off everyone who's sick. And my one fantastic, new pal posts a LIST of everyone she knows who's sick in the cast.

And gets this comment:

"just like a virus - extra Vitamin C, liquids and rest"

Dear woman who posted this response:

DUHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

I mean COME on, REALLY? REEALLY?? Do people REALLY think that I (or anyone else) REALLY don't know how to take care of a cold? Do you think that a prescription of liquids, rest, and overdosing on vitamin C is a NOVEL idea?? I mean, come on!! We've all been downing extra orange juice (and now YOLI! hahaha), taking chewable orange-flavoured vitamin C tablets, and getting as much extra rest as possible since we were all KIDS following our mothers' how-to-eradicate-a-cold regimen.

And I don't know about everyone else, but it sure as heck doesn't make any difference for me! I'm going to be sick for as long as I'm going to be sick for, and I'm sick often enough to know that this is true! It doesn't matter if I overdose on vitamin C, drink Niagara Falls, or sleep all day. Doesn't matter if I'm downing Buckley's or sucking on Halls. It doesn't matter if I start taking echinacea before, after, or during my symptoms, standing on my head, or hanging out the window. Oil of oreganol does nothing but make me want to gag and sting my sore throat a little going down. Ginger tea is soothing on its way down, but THAT'S IT! When I'm sick I'm sick and I'm sick so there's nothing to be done about it. Doesn't matter if the good ol' doc swabs my throat and puts me on some pricey medication, or if I get a chiropractic adjustment to stimulate my immune system, or I dance the hokey pokey and turn myself about. My cold's going to last as long as my cold's going to last.

SOMETIMES I'll get a new suggestion, like I didn't know you can take ColdFX once your cold has already HIT (though I need to do some research and find out what the heck is IN that stuff before I decide if I'm going to try it next time around) and have learned you can take it while you're sick and for some people it helps clear it up faster. I'll be GOBSMACKED if it makes a difference in me but there ya' go.

So WHY oh WHY do we all ALWAYS offer this ridiculous, everyone-already-knows-it, USELESS advice?? I'm SURE I do it, too!! "Oh, you have H1N1? Dance a jig while singing a sea-chantey and it'll clear up A-Okay just as quick as can be!"

My FAVOURITE, though, was at the dress rehearsal, where I didn't participate, I just sat in the back, feeling like death, and watched. There was a friend I don't see all the time at the rehearsal to take some pictures and I went to say hello, keeping my distance just in case I was contagious, and another woman upon overhearing my ridiculously weakened "hello" said, "Oh! You have strep throat! Have you been to the doctor? That sounds like strep throat." Like there was NO question.

Ohmigosh, seriously? And where's YOUR medical degree? From the university of voodoo witch-doctor hearing diagnoses? PLEASE!

PLEASE, again, I hope not to have offended anyone - I REALLY REALLY do appreciate the care and concern - I just think I'm a bit hypersensitive to it at the moment being so engrossed in it and I got to thinking about...what the heck is it about us and our society that makes us DO that? hahaha And SOME of it really is that ridiculous. hahaha

When you get sick be on the watch for my "drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest, and drink some Yoli!" suggestions! ;) I'm sure they're forthcoming!

Where's the Romance?

2010-03-22T20:00:00.003-04:00

Today the Jedi and I got in an argument. WHICH is absolutely normal for us - our very strange friendship THRIVES on arguing. Goodness, if we didn't argue...what would we do? hahaha We argue about EVERYTHING!

Anyway, today's argument was about romance. I don't even remember how it started - Jedi! How the heck did we get ON this discussion? OH, I remember! And I won't tell you the details but we were talking about using poetry as a romantic tool.

The Jedi thinks it's a great idea and very romantic.....

...and I laughed him under the table. hahaha

I've always HATED poetry when it comes to being romantic. I think it's one of the most cheesy, ridiculous, romantic-comedy-type prescribed things you can do. I dated a guy once when I was a teenager who loved to write me poems and I would just DIE when he would read them to me. I couldn't look him in the face, I was so embarrassed FOR him!

I think my possibly twisted view on poetry is one of the many reasons why I am and forever shall be absolutely taken with Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet:
Elizabeth Bennet: And that put paid to it. I wonder who first discovered the power of poetry in driving away love?
Mr. Darcy: I thought that poetry was the food of love.
Elizabeth Bennet: Of a fine stout love, it may. But if it is only a vague inclination I'm convinced one poor sonnet will kill it stone dead.
Yeah. I REALLY can't say it any better than that.

So then the conversation with the Jedi turns to like, romance in general, how important it is, and I FELT like I was being accused of not having any in me or in my relationship with Mr. Man. Which isn't what was going on, but you know when you're in a situation and you're not being attacked but you feel attacked??

The Jedi asks me when is the last time Mr. Man bought me flowers.

Mr. Man, I'm sorry. I HONESTLY don't remember. Part is DEFINITELY because it's been SO long and part because apparently, as ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL a gesture as it is...that's not the be all and end all of romance for me soooooo...

YES I love a bouquet of flowers. I love it more when it's a bouquet of Gerber Daisies.

YES I love jewelry. I love it most when it's something unique, different, not overly glitzy so I can wear it on a regular basis.

But why are flowers, jewelry, poetry, and boxes of chocolate all "romantic"? I mean, that's so....cliche! It's like that movie (and book? I haven't read it...) "He's Just Not That Into You" (LOVE this movie! LOVE LOVE it!) where girls all WISH they were "the exception" but in reality we're all "the rule." Sure, ABSOLUTELY, yes. In a relationship, YES!

But I'm IN my relationship. We're happy. We're done with the dating drama and all the garbage about reading signs and figuring the other person out.... I'd challenge anyone to say they know me better that Mr. Man...I mean, there's a good chance my Mom might beat him BUT he's for the most part been very much with me and a huge part of my life for the past 7 years (holy cow - can you believe we've been married 6.5 years? Me either! CRAZY!). He's seen every which side of me and THEN some! (The poor guy! hahaha!)

So in MY relationship I want to be the exception. I don't WANT to be the flowers-poetry-and-chocolates rule of romance. I want REAL romance.

I want help with the dishes.

I want help with the laundry.

I want to not have to ask for the garbage to get taken out.

I want to never feel the need to clean the toilet because it's always already done.

Occasionally I want a night away from my house, with an evening fully planned for me, even if it is the cop-out-date of dinner and a movie, because I LOVE chatting over dinner and I LOVE LOVE going to the movies.

I would rather Mr. Man come home with some money in an envelope labelled "new running bra" than a bouquet of flowers. I really would. I should go out and get one but it feels like an extravagance and so I keep putting it off. I want my Mr. to KNOW that about me and when he can afford it to not waste our hard-earned money on some flowers that are going to wilt.

I'd prefer getting GLEE on DVD to a bouquet of flowers, a limerick about my eye colour, or a candlelight dinner for two (though if I didn't have to cook the dinner that would definitely be welcomed!)

I'd love to come home one day and have all the Christmas lights down from the front of the house.

I'd rather some free time away from being the main caregiver for Little Miss so I can go for a nice long run.

YES flowers can be romantic. And Jedi, I'm sorry to say it but for me, poetry NEVER is. That doesn't mean it isn't, it's just REALLY not for me. AND there are many many many many things I would prefer to a bouquet of flowers, even the Gerber daisies.

What things do you find romantic?

The Lost Voice

2010-03-21T17:44:00.002-04:00

Sooo I've been wrestling a bit with whether or not to write about my cold, opening night, and all the events leading up to it because, really, NONE of this has anything to do with the "subject" of the blog, except perhaps my being sick and the anti-health that is... AND because I don't think I can talk about it without bringing religion and my beliefs into it and I think I've managed quite well to like, NEVER be preachy or whatever. hahaha Anyway, so JUST warning anyone who might care to be warned. hahaha

So yeah. I wrote before about the play and the ridiculousness that has me a pretty darned important role in the play. And then earlier this week I wrote, surprise surprise, about me being sick. I KNOW that me being sick is NOT a novel topic for this blog - I get sick ALL THE FREAKING TIME. (I asked my doctor about it once, like, WHAT the heck is up with my immune system or the complete and utter lack thereof, and she just aid I keep coming up against stuff that I'm not immune too! So...there ya' go. If you've got something I WILL catch it, so please stay the heck away! Seriously, I'm like, the most sickly health-fanatic I've ever heard of.)

Okay, so. I got sick on Monday. Dress rehearsal was scheduled for Thursday, opening night on Friday, etc. etc. Sooo yeah, I spent a little WAY too much time this week stressing out about whether or not I'd be able to sing.

I'm a HUGE believer in God, in His power over everything. I believe there's a PLAN and while I do NOT believe in fate I do believe that He is in control of everything, knows exactly what's going on where, everywhere, with everyone, and even the BAD stuff happens for some reason that He has.

So on a scale of bad stuff happening me getting this cold is like, a zero. This is SO not a big deal. Except that I'm in this play, and there are OODLES of people who have put in RIDICULOUS amounts of ridiculously hard work, and there are OODLES of people coming to see the play.....aaaaaaand even though there are oodles of people involved there aren't enough of us with enough time for there to be understudies for the parts.

Right. So no understudy. Sick with a cold.

I spent a LOT of time on my knees this week. BEGGING the Lord for a miracle. I KNOW that all He has to do is, whatever it is that He does and in an INSTANT my cold can be completely and totally eliminated. Just, POOF, gone. BUT that while that may be what I'M begging for, it may not be exactly how it's going to work. He CAN make me better in an instant, or for some reason that only He will ever know...he'll leave me with my cold through opening & second shows. So I find Ihave to be careful what it is that I'm asking Him for, you know? 'Cause I don't want Him to have to say NO! hahaha So instead of asking (or demanding?) specifically HEAL ME NOW! I'd phrase it something more like..."thou canst heal me in an instant....please just bless me that I'll be able to get through the song on Friday night!" Right? 'Cause maybe, for WHATEVER, WEIRD reason, I'm supposed to be sick right now. Sure, why not. Right?

So it's Thursday night. I, feeling like death and having little to no voice to even SPEAK with, hop in the van with my carpooling buddies to head to dress rehearsal. I figure I can at least put on my costume and stand like a prop or something.

But by the time we get to the venue I've had it. RaeDawn is with me and helps me track down the Director to apprise him of the situation. That man was great - didn't even bat an eyelash. Asked if I could put on my costume and stand around for blocking, and was absolutely CERTAIN I'd be able to sing the part the next night.

Then he went and round up an understudy for me. With about 15 minutes notice this darling woman grabbed a script, practiced the song, was given a few very brief instructions about the acting, and dove in.

I got to sit in the back of the auditorium with my box of tissue and a garbage pail to collect the snot-filled ones in, and watch the show. (It's pretty good! Hooray!)

Right before the play started I ran into two missionaries who have been acting as ushers for the performances. I was like, OH, great! We ran to get Mr. Man and one of the Elders (what we call missionaries) helped Mr. Man give me a healing blessing (okay, if you DON'T understand that just...leave it for now. hahaha!) My blessing said Heavenly Father's aware, loves me, is proud of me, and I'll recover quickly from my cold.

By the end of the show that night I felt actually pretty good. Still little to no voice, but with additional prayers from I swear, every single cast member (at least it seemed!) FRIDAY came and I could sing.

Now don't get me wrong - it was NOT my best. I definitely sounded like I had a cold, but at least I could get the notes OUT and stay in tune. ;) It WAS my miracle. INSANE. Apparently backstage was the quietest when I went to sing because everyone was itching to hear if I'd be able to or not after all that praying!

Huzzah! Faith: 1. Adversary: 0.

SATURDAY MORNING I get up. Voice still isn't back. I feel great but the voice...yeah. Not good. But I leave it for a while. I don't want to test too early and strain it and not be able to sing that evening. But even if I have no voice all day I'll be fine, right? I mean, HELLO miracle?

I tested the voice briefly in the late afternoon.

Bad news.

Definitely can't sing.

Definitely can't sustain that high note (which on a regular day is SO not a high note! UGH!) DEFINITELY sound like garbage.

Oh. Mi. Gosh.

After some slight panic I'm all, oh it'll be fine. The Lord got me through last night, He's not going to leave me stranded tonight. But just in case I got BACK down on my knees to BEG for assistance. hahaha 'Cause OBVIOUSLY I wasn't going to be able to do it on my own.

Spent the WHOLE first act, sitting, waiting. Not feeling anything different in my voice. Definitely still sounding like a man when responding to questions (and constantly being told to not talk - so STOP TALKING TO ME so I CAN stop talking! GAH!) Then I got called up to be fit for my microphone (they tape them to our faces - it's weird and doesn't like staying put for me!). Then intermission was ending and I headed backstage. Then I was onstage, but it's a silent scene. Then it's the scene before my "big" scene. Then, it's my scene. Moment of truth.

I've been sucking on lozenges, eating honey, drinking Yoli and water, TRYING to keep the talking, at least DOWN if not to a minimum (I'm sorry - I'm one of these horrible people who when someone speaks to me I usually acknowledge them and speak back to them. I KNOW, I'm horrid).

Song starts.

I start singing.

Or..honking? What WAS that sound? UGH! Missed the first note, got back on, tried to move to another note, voice cracked, wheezed, broke....hit another note, screeched one for a split second before disappearing....

It was AWFUL. AWFUL. I just COULDN'T get the sound out. Couldn't do it. I was TRYING.

So here I am in front of a couple hundred people (maybe a few? venue's not huge, thank goodness, but we have all the cast and crew, too...) making a complete fool out of myself, TRYING to sing this incredibly beautiful song meant to portray Mary Magdalene's anguish that not only has Christ been killed but now that His body's gone missing. And I'm RUINING it. RUINING it.

I honestly started crying between breaths and croaks and the odd good note. I mean, the show must go on, right? Even though it's not really, it just keeps on going regardless of whether you're ready or not.

The final part of the song has me sitting at the edge of the stage, about 3 or 4 feet from the folks in the front row, and I can totally see them and I'm bawling, trying to squawk out some semblance of a melody. I think part of me was feeling a bit betrayed and let down - I sang it last night, Lord, where did You GO? I need HELP! WHY WHY aren't You with me tonight? What did I do? In the grand scheme of things this is SO not important, but here, right now, for these people, and those who've put in ALL this work, this is IMPORTANT and I'm TRYING and HELP ME PLEASE!

It was humiliating.

I trudged back to the tomb at the end of the song and for the first time on stage literally wept. And I thought, well, she's supposed to have been weeping, so that's fine.

We finish the scene - Mary Magdalene sees the resurrected Saviour and leaves to tell the brethren. I dash offstage, which is normal for the end of that scene, but ohmigosh, I couldn't get off fast enough.

I got behind that curtain and just BAWLED. I sobbed and sobbed - oh it was HORRIBLE. I just felt so horribly disappointed in myself, let down...i was SO upset. But we had to snap me out of it quick and fix my tremendously ruined stage makeup (MAN does it run when you're wearing it that thick! hahaha YIKES!) so I could get back out there and try to choke out "Peter! Oh Peter," and the rest of my lines.

When I was finally finished for that performance I was SO relived.

But then I had some time to think about it. And some wonderfully supportive people and feedback helped, too. Everyone backstage just said my lack of voice helped ADD to it, and it sounded like I had been crying and that added so much to the spirit of the song. Of course, they couldn't see backstage that I WAS sobbing my way through the disaster, but in retrospect they're totally right - she WAS weeping. When Christ showed Himself to her at the tomb He DID ask, "woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?" And having the complete and utter inability to sing that song the way I wanted to made ME weep and made it look like I was actually able to channel some of her feelings. So no, it wasn't an amazing spiritual moment for ME while it was going on, but I guarantee that someone in that building who could hear or see what was going on last night needed to see Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb, abd because the Lord DIDN'T answer my prayers the way I had begged Him to I was able to do that.

That doesn't mean I'm not hoping with everything I've got that my voice isn't 100% better and back to normal for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday's performances coming up. ;) But maybe that's just because I have a limited earthly perspective on life.

Figures.

2010-03-16T18:11:00.003-04:00

image from http://www.oursalvation.com/ralph_and_loretta/sick-in-bed.gif

So, of course. Right? I mean, of COURSE. I have homework piled UP TO HERE, my house needs tidying and cleaning, and, oh wait, it's opening night of the play on Friday.

I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO sick. Uuuuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhh......... And it's ALL in my throat. All of it. Which, of course, the best place to get hit with illness days before having to bust out the voice for solos on the very top of my comfortable range. Oh how I HATE to sing through a cold. It's SO hard and often impossible... it takes ALL the fun out of it.... aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

So, this really, is just a whining post. RaeDawn graciously took Little Miss off my hands for a couple of hours so here I lay, in bed....just....just PRAYING that this is unlike every single other cold/throat-type illness I've ever had and just...vanishes by Thursday afternoon so I'm 100% and back at it for dress rehearsal. THANK-YOU, my dear friend.

Alright. That's enough of that for today. BORING post, I know. I'm just....gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.............

Psychology works, right? Placebo effect? So...I'm laying in bed resting, which should help. So YUP, I'm better..... nope, didn't work. sigh Ouch. That hurt. :(

Worst casting ever?

2010-03-12T21:02:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow we have an 8 hour rehearsal for the play. Which opens a week from TONIGHT.

Can I just tell you one thing about it? I am not ready.

Well, I've been mentioning it for a while and I'm sitting here with nothing to write about so why don't I finally tell you about this hilarity that is me participating in a musical! HA!

Soooooo...at church sometime last year there were announcements that some guy in one of the wards (congregations) in Hamilton was putting on this "sacred musical drama" called Saviour of the World. Auditions were to be held whenever and blah blah blah. I didn't REALLY pay much attention, I'm SO into musical theatre.

Okay, so, I LOVE the theatre. LOVE it. Last show we saw was Fiddler on the Roof in Toronto and I LOVE LOVE LOVED it. LOVED it. And EVERY TIME I see something like that, a stage or movie musical (stage is SO incredible, no??) I think, THAT looks like fun, I could TOTALLY do that.

Well, SOTW auditions came up and I thought....meh! I didn't really think anything of it, I guess. I would have NEVER auditioned, that is for sure.

And I didn't. Not my thing. Though I think I wish it were...

La de dah, life goes on.

Nope. Not so much.

I'm at church one day minding my own business of running the behind-the-scenes of the children's primary between jumping on and off the piano for their singing time, and somewhere in that hustle and bustle I'm TOTALLY cornered by a USUALLY very sweet little old gal who basically TELLS me I HAVE to do the play. HAVE to. She's ratted me out to the director, they need to fill a few roles, and I HAVE to do it - no is not an answer because she'll babysit.

Yeah right - I'd LOVE to see her try to keep up with MY insane kid! PLEASE!

I think I must have said I'm insanely busy but I'd think about it.

Sometime later I get an e-mail from the director.

OFFERING ME A ROLE.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is that how these things normally work?? I don't think so.... I KNOW there were auditions?? Geeeeeeeeezzzzeeeeeeee

So I was ratted out and this man went to town, did his homework to find out if I actually can sing, decided from whatever source that was apparently good enough for him that I CAN, and offered me the role.

Okay, so get this, right? The play's called Saviour of the World. It's about the birth and resurrection of Christ.

Yeah, I'm totally Mary Magdalene, of ALL people! I'm the woman who FIRST saw Him after he rose from the dead. Who SOME hypothesize He was MARRIED to, while others think she was a harlot.... THAT Mary Magdalene.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh........

Is this man CRAZY?? HELLO?? I can't play Mary Magdalene! I mean, isn't part of being in a musical play that whole...that ACTING thing???

Okay, so I'm pretty sure I looked at my schedule initially and more or less said THANKS for the amazingly flattering offer, but no thanks. Can't do it.

And he wrote back, addressing all of my concerns.

We went back and forth for a bit, and while I started to feel he was more or less BEGGING it was working - I WANTED to do it! Heck, I gave up soccer last semester so I'd have five minutes with my family in between my five courses, but THIS semester I only have three and STILL no soccer sooooo why not throw this in the mix, right?? (Oh, Director-man, if you're not in sales, you should seriously consider it... you got me hook, line, and sinker!)

And that was that. I was cast as Mary Magdalene.

I got my music, had a panic attack, and hunkered down to make sure that this poor, deluded man wouldn't be disappointed when I started turning up for rehearsals. I practiced and practiced and practiced and PRACTICED!

hahahahahaha Did you know that acting is HARD?? Never THOUGHT to practice THAT! hahahahahahahahaha OH boy.

So I get to my first real rehearsal, totally ready to belt out my songs and blow everyone away - to prove that even though I shouldn't be there I absolutely belonged.

Except we weren't singing.

We were reading through the script and "blocking."

"Okay, so I don't have to act, right? Just read it?" "Right." "Okay, I can do that."

shaking head Yeah...definitely couldn't do it. I could NOT READ my whopping TEN LINES without BUSTING into gales of laughter.

When Mary Magdalene sees the Resurrected Lord at the tomb after weeping and turns to say "Are you the gardener here" I managed to say "Are you...the...BAhahahahahaha!!!!!!" When she's invited forth by Mary to tell Peter and John about what she saw and she is so overcome with joy and emotion my masterful mouth comes comes out with "Peter, oh pfffffttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhbbbbbbbbbbbbbhahahahahahah HAhahahahaha - he's LOOKING at me funny!"

Yup. D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R.

So a couple rehearsals later those not on stage are sequestered into another room to work on music, and after a few minutes the director stomps into the room, looks at ME, points and says "I need to hear YOU sing."

Yeah. I think everyone there knew what he REALLY meant was "I need to know that you CAN sing this song in such a way that there won't be a dry eye in the house so I can be certain that I didn't make the worst casting call of my LIFE asking you to play this part."

Thankfully, I'd been practicing. :)

SINCE those few opening weeks, and a few Legally-Blonde-esque versions of Mary Magdalene's exclamation of "Rabonni!" I have gotten MUCH better. I'm still giggling through my "Peter, oh Peter!" line most of the time, and I have a hard time figuring out how not to sound woodenly-ridiculous when I say "Yes! Come, we'll find him," BUT, thankfully, the MOST important parts I seem to be getting through....as well as I'm going to. And I CAN sing, which is a serious bonus.

Mr. Man is in the play, too - he's playing...hahaha a whole HOST of angels! We have limited folks in the play and he's been cast as an angel....who's kinda' being used and recycled a few times throughout where there's not a SPECIFIC angel called for, like Gabriel. He's the angel to the shepherds in the first act, announcing the Saviour's birth, he rolls the stone away from the tomb, and he says something I can't hear to the 12 apostles near the end...there's a lot of music at that point and we haven't had the microphones yet sooooo...yeah. He LOOKS like he's doing an amazing job! hahaha I KNOW it's better than me, because he never ONCE laughed while on stage.

Anyway, it's been an adventure. I'm having a BLAST, I'm learning lots, I'm actually figuring out how to "get into character" although it only stays with me for that one scene (I'm in just a few more than ONE scene....hahaha GAH!) I'm meeting some new people, even making FRIENDS with some of them (I think I've had and have added at LEAST 5 new friend requests on Facebook from this whole thing - yay popularity!) ;) And desPITE the fact that we have an 8 hour long rehearsal tomorrow I'm SUPER glad we decided to participate.

Now if only I can NAIL it in these last couple of rehearsals...because opening night is next Friday....

cringe

The countdown, the break-up, and..who knows what else?

2010-03-08T10:38:00.005-05:00

My last final (ever?!?! Sure is the PLAN!) is on April 21st. April 21st.

Ohmigosh, that's so...so.... SOON!!

That's only 44 sleeps from now. (I totally just pulled up my Google Calendar and counted with my finger bouncing from day to day on my computer screen. I'm sitting in the hall in the PhysEd/Kinesiology wing of the school near the entrance to the gym, counting days. That's right, I really AM this cool.)

Yeah. I'm just a little excited. AND although I'm hitting crunch time for this semester (how crunched can it really get with 2 classes + 1 independent study, I mean, REALLY?) I'm looking forward to it - crunch time is when I have no life, no time to breathe hardly, I alienate friends/would-be friends/nice people who may have otherwise wanted to say hello to me, my house gets lost under dust bunnies and ridiculous amounts of clutter, we stop eating properly (and I sometimes stop eating 'cause there's only enough food in the house to feed Little Miss... hahaha) but it's ALSO the time where I learn the most, I'm the most productive, I re-discover WHY I'm still in school, WHY I love this major program, how smart I really AM beneath all my disorganization and insanity, and really EARN my grades.

Crunch time, I wish I could figure out how to exist properly without you, but oh how I heart thee for so many other reasons.

BRING. IT. ONNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!

Okay, on a totally different note, not school related at all, I'm OFFICIALLY OFF SUGAR again. I told you about my downfall with those wonderful dark-chocolate-covered Polish marshmallow goodies The Jedi gave me during a study session last semester, yes? And then...the bandwagon...it just took off without me! I just COULDN'T catch back up to it to hop back on!! PHEW! BUT after it's lapped me a few times around now I've CAUGHT it and I'm ON BOARD.

I know I know some of you think I need to be less drastic, but I really find this the most effective for myself. I'm so horrendously...UNABLE to turn it down once I've tasted it.... I just keep eating. Like, coming home from rehearsal a few weeks ago with RaeDawn we stopped at a corner store to get the KIDS in the car a snack....and we bought ourselves a box of flakies to split. On the 40 minute carride I downed two flakies without batting an eyelash, and had my third almost the instant I walked into my house, as soon as Mr. Man was out of my line of sight.

See...when I wrote this post about losing control the other day...it wasn't SUPPOSED to be funny! hahaha I got some feedback about it being a good laugh or whatever but I'm like, DUDE! That was like, me spilling my eating-disordered innards all over my keyboard! Which is totally fine - I'm learning about myself that I'm at least viewed as a constant jokester (come on people, I don't laugh ALL the time!)

Anyway, so as I was saying, it's EASIER to just cut it out completely, for me, than to treat myself occasionally. The occasional TREAT turns into the occasional ridiculous BINGE session and they become less and less occasional and more and more FREQUENT. The more I allow myself to binge the more I CRAVE a binge session and it's just not WORTH it.

(Gaaaaahhhhhh.... as I'm writing I'm sitting here with my iPod plugged in and turned up way too loud listening to the soundtrack to GLEE and I just got some wicked chills - these are like, the BEST CDs EVER! Okay, sidenote over. Okay, not over - I'm having a wicked-difficult time not busting out singing....HELP!)

SO....here's how my "sugar fasts" work - I just...STOP. I don't eat it. EXCEPT "big" events which are to be celebrated with the addition of sweet food at my discretion, but usually should ONLY include birthdays...and Christmas, but that's a good ways off at this point. Now, I recognize that sugar is EVERYWHERE and in SO many things and there are natural sugars in fruits and vegetables and blah blah blah.... I'm not NEARLY that crazy with this - I just won't eat like, DESSERT type sugar. Or candy. Or THAT kind of stuff, okay?? Raisins and dried fruit, apple sauce and regular fruit and whatever is totally allowed. Candy, ice cream, icing, cookies, fruit-snacks, baked goods, whatever - totally NOT allowed. Juice? Pop? ABSOLUTELY not allowed!! (shudder - haven't learned about it yet?? CLICK HERE or contact me and you'll never give your kid apple juice again!)

Okay, is that it? I think that's it for now. Let me know if you have questions about my...not eating stuff. hahaha I can totally eat anything else - I don't often have the same PROBLEMS with other food. SOMETIMES I'll go for a total binge on something if I absolutely LOVE it, but it's more a wow-this-is-so-good-I-don't-WANT-to-stop-eating-it-even-though-my-belly-is-killing-me (happens with some of my mom's cooking and a few of my signature pasta dishes - mmmmmmmm......) but I'm still in CONTROL then soooo not as worrisome. And if I need to re-evaluate later and expand the scope of my plan then I absolutely will. At the moment I'm back to regular running and doing 300. Keep your fingers crossed life stays more or less normal so we don't run into any further scheduling complications and I can keep THAT aspect of stuff on track.

Aaaaaaaand...what else?? OH! Any of you who pray?? PLEASE put Mr. Man in your prayers! He's doing FINE, but he has a job interview this week for HIS DREAM JOB which I am just WAY too excited about - he currently commutes about 1.5 hours from home.... this one would literally be a 10-20 minute WALK from home (depending on if there's snow on the ground! hahaha) and, well, it's what he dreams of doing.... sooooooo.......... yeah. I'm trying REALLY REALLY hard not to put the cart before the horse, but him getting this job would just be, unreal. Amazing. AMAZING. Anything that will give him a leg up, including random folks' prayers, I'm ABSOLUTELY doing it.

I don't want to tell you all about the job unless he gets it - seems a bit of a bother, frankly. hahaha And that's cart-before-horse type behaviour soooo if he gets it I'll tell you about it.

Cross your fingers for us!!!

I'm done for today. (Thank goodness, eh??) I'm going to eat my sandwich and go get changed for my next lab, and then a run with Steph. Good day so far. :)

ewwwwwww

2010-03-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

Do You Really Know Who Made That Juice?

www.blastyourhealth.ca

A Thank-You

2010-03-02T21:00:00.002-05:00

So my friend posted this thank you note to Canada from Brian Williams... I think Canadians swell with pride about our amazing country often, but I know we're all feeling a little extra-inflated at the moment after such a wonderful showing at the Olympics.

And so I steal this letter to us, and post it for your reading pleasure, JUST in case you haven't seen it yet somewhere else. :D

After tonight's broadcast and after looting our hotel mini-bars, we're going to try to brave the blizzard and fly east to home and hearth, and to do laundry well into next week. Before we leave this thoroughly polite country, the polite thing to do is leave behind a thank-you note.

Thank you, Canada: For being such good hosts. For your unfailing courtesy. For your (mostly) beautiful weather. For scheduling no more than 60 percent of your float plane departures at the exact moment when I was trying to say something on television. For not seeming to mind the occasional (or constant) good-natured mimicry of your accents. For your unique TV commercials -- for companies like Tim Hortons -- which made us laugh and cry. For securing this massive event without choking security, and without publicly displaying a single automatic weapon. For having the best garment design and logo-wear of the games -- you've made wearing your name a cool thing to do. For the sportsmanship we saw most of your athletes display. For not honking your horns. I didn't hear one car horn in 15 days -- which also means none of my fellow New Yorkers rented cars while visiting. For making us aware of how many of you have been watching NBC all these years. For having the good taste to have an anchorman named Brian Williams on your CTV network, who turns out to be such a nice guy. For the body scans at the airport which make pat-downs and cavity searches unnecessary. For designing those really cool LED Olympic rings in the harbor, which turned to gold when your athletes won one. For always saying nice things about the United States...when you know we're listening. For sharing Joannie Rochette with us. For reminding some of us we used to be a more civil society. Mostly, for welcoming the world with such ease and making lasting friends with all of us.

Where did the groove go?

2010-03-01T12:40:00.002-05:00

So...I'm sitting here, at my computer.

Amidst papers from studying for a midterm I wrote this morning, boxes of cereal from yesterday morning, music from practicing for a) a "performance" tomorrow night and prepping for a production I'm in at the end of the month (I still haven't told you about that, have I? Remind me....). There are Yoli bottles sitting around, free-weights on the floor, the kitchen needs to be cleaned, I NEED TO EXERCISE.....

aaaaaaaaand... I'm sitting here. On my computer.

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

In my defense, the laundry's going, Little Miss' stuff is all folded....

And now it's time to get off my butt and do 300.

Yup. It's one of THOSE days.

Pride

2010-02-28T21:33:00.002-05:00

Reality sets in.

2010-02-27T00:43:00.002-05:00

So, here it is, 12:46am the last "night" of reading week. What a great week we've had. You may remember last year we went to Ottawa for the week to visit friends. Well, this week we opted for a full-on "stay-cation" which we just....NEEDED! And LOVED! It has been SUCH a wonderful week being home, all three of us. We've been as busy as ever - I don't think we've yet had a free night? PHEW! But we've gotten so much done that we've been putting off...it's just been great!!

And now I'm feeling the staying-up-too-late exhaustion, and looking at my list of schoolwork and preparation to get back in the groove by Monday morning at 8am, when I have my first midterm, and my 10am meeting with my professor advising my independent study...and I'm having a bit of a panic attack.

UH oh!!!!!

And I'm thinking, oh, it's okay, I'll just get to work like mad tomorrow night and we'll get done what we get done.

Except I'm WORKING tomorrow night! hahaha

WHOOPS.

Anyway, it will all be fine. I'm an expert "fritter-er" and actually perform amazingly well under wicked self-imposed amounts of pressure to make up for it soooo while I may miss the A for Monday's midterm I have to admit....I DON'T CARE!

It's been a WONDERFUL week and I wouldn't have changed a moment of it for a higher mark if I HAD had a little more foresight.

On the other hand...these next couple of days are going to be pretty interesting... hahaha

Wish me luck! ;)

The Ins and Outs of the blog hiatus

2010-02-25T22:44:00.002-05:00

So it feels more and more frequent that I go on these huge hiatuses from my beloved blog. Which is ridiculous because I do so enjoy writing down random nothings here and degrading my attempts and occasional successes with exercise..... Since posting the LAST post about my sugar addiction I can't even BELIEVE the number of great "blog posts" I've started in my HEAD that have just never made it over to the keyboard!! I have learned SO MUCH about sugar lately and it's enough to make your mind explode!

No, FOR REAL! ;)

Anyway.

I think we're just still really having a hard time getting in the swing of this semester! Which is ridiculous because it's halfway over. But Little Miss has been sick on and off (now is an off time - she's delightful as ever!), my lightened class schedule has me working with probably not ENOUGH structure so I'm a little flighty with some of my academic responsibilities (don't let my parents read that one! hahaha Don't worry! I AM graduating in the spring! hahaha PROMISE!), the house is in uproar, I can't always remember Little Miss' schedule with the sitter, Mr. Man still works 1.5 hours from home, etc. etc. etc.

Maybe it's just because it's my last semester? Maybe I'm just SO checked out and that's why I'm not functioning? My exercise "routine" is even....let's say OFF to put it nicely....at the moment. I'm SO much less than consistent. Which, I will tell you right now, is not doing anything to help this waistline of mine.

I miss hitting the gym regularly with The Jedi hollering at me "Up! Down. Up! UP! Down." Gosh, frankly, I miss the Jedi! And I was looking forward to getting some running in with Mi this semester...that hasn't happened.

It's just been a WEIRD couple of months. I don't know why, I don't know what to attribute it to, I don't know exactly what I need to change to fix it. In the meantime... I'm going to try when I have an awesome (or at least, a me-voted-awesome) blog post kicking around in my head to actually GET IT TYPED OUT so you're not left with....NOTHING. Aaaaand...maybe we'll get in the groove of this semester by finals??

I am SO SO SO ready to be finished school. SO ready. I even have the JOB I want and it's going GREAT and I LOVE it and I LOVE my kiddo and I can't wait to REALLY be home with her... siiiiiiiiigh

Today.... I did NOT run. I did NOT do 300. I DID eat too much ice cream, and some (some? HA! LOTS!) cookies, and I did enjoy our super-speedy celebration of Brown Mom's birthday before heading out to rehearsal. (Oh yeah, that's a WHOLE other story. hahaha I'm in a play. I know, right? Who in their right mind would put ME in a play??)

...please start leaving nasty comments if I don't post again by....Sunday. And something actually INTERESTING that people care about. hahaha THANKS!

Losing control

2010-02-08T10:38:00.003-05:00

I don't remember if I've ever told you about my falling off the sugar-wagon - did I? I may not have mentioned my attempt to get back on it after my last downfall. I was doing great. I was feeling great. I looked great - seriously, I was wearing some things that I generally don't love how I look in and I LOVED how I looked in them. The combination of my sugar-less life and the Jedi's kicking my BUTT with 300 was FINALLY working wonders. The secret, honestly, seemed for me to be the sugar. When I eat sugar I eat a LOT of it.

Then, one night (and my dear friend, please don't ever take it that I'm BLAMING you, I just know this is when it started again...) the Jedi came over to do homework, and being the super sweet wonderful friend that he is he brought with him.....

....CHOCOLATE

And not just any chocolate. No no. This was authentic Polish dark chocolate-coated marshmallow.....

And I wasn't due to break my sugar-fast until the next birthday, but I rationalized. I rationalized that if my army-dictator-type-'trainer' was sharing chocolate with me that it MUST be okay for me to reunite with my nemesis for just a moment. Just one moment.

Right?

But then I didn't just eat one. I ate most of the top flat. Mr. Man and the Jedi ate a couple each, and I polished it off.

So fine. So I binged on chocolate. So what??

I've never STOPPED EATING!! I've been stuffing food in my face ever SINCE! I just...can't stop! (I'm eating "cool ranch" Doritos as I type this...they're SO GOOD).

I went to a girlfriend's house to watch "Glee" one night, and she had oodles of cake in her freezer left over from an event at work....and I said let's go GET it and then ate....at least 3, probably 4 pieces. Always cake-first to save the icing for last. (MMmmmmmmmm.....iciiing.... give me a 'tub' of Betty Crocker with a spoon....)

Somewhere in all the eating Christmas happened, which was pretty intense as far as food goes. Christmas Eve and Day dinners, fudge, oodles of the marshmallows that should have been going into the fudge.... OOOoooooooooo.....maaaarshmalllllooows.... drooling

And I've just...never recovered.

I was telling Mr. Man last night. I almost got caught in a marshmallow thieving-moment this weekend at my mom's. I was in the kitchen, dumping mini marshmallows out of the bag onto the counter for me to wolf down when Mom walked in. I am SO good, she didn't see me stash the bag under the counter, tuck the massive pile of marshmallows behind the card on the counter - counter's white, marshmallows are white, hallelujah camouflage - nor did she notice me quickly close up the bag and kick it behind the cheerios box on the ground while she popped popcorn for our Glee-a-thon. (I put the marshmallows back in the cupboard the next morning, when only Little Miss and I were in the kitchen).

When I was a kid I used to make up butter cream icing while my parents were busy doing...whatever, wrap the whole recipe's worth in saran wrap, and keep it in my underwear drawer. Then I had access whenever without having to put the money out on Betty Crocker. Which is an issue for a middle school kid. (And, actually, a 27-year-old student & mom....huh.)

When I think about food, which is often, I often like, day dream about food. And when I think about eating a doughnut I think about eating the whole dozen doughnuts. I can taste and feel the various Krispy Creme flavours on my tongue and feel the remnants making their way down my esophagus to my stomach. I can easily put away that whole box in one sitting. I can literally FEEL the food inside me. The picture at the top of this post? Is PAINful to look at - I can feel it, taste it, smell it, just sitting here looking at it. I like, NEED a doughnut!

I ate most of a bag of Miss Vickies at my mom's the other morning watching Glee (we had a fantastic FANTASTIC leisurely weekend, for like, the first time EVER it feels like! ....we watched a lot of Glee. I LOVE Glee.)

When I think about quitting sugar (again) I'm in agony - I think about and can taste and feel all my favourites (is anything not my favourite?) and think that I can't do it. Can't do it. I LOVE ice cream doused in corn syrup (there weren't any other "toppings" in the house....I ate that combination in abundance the other week... SO good. Little Miss kept asking what I was eating and I lied and told her it was yogurt so I wouldn't have to share with her.....)

So I think I have to do it. I HAVE to do it. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep eating like this.

And I know I don't only binge on sugar, but it's my HUGE downfall. I don't mind eating the occasional over-sized bag of Doritos if I'm NEVER drinking corn syrup.

.....and I'm wondering if I should look further into this, which I stumbled upon doing research for my independent study on body image and eating disorders. The more I learn about it the more I worry I have it...but then the fact that I'm self-diagnosing negates my concerns. sigh

I have to go get my once again increasingly large stomach tucked into my gym clothes for my Therapeutic Applications of Exercise lab, which is super exciting. I won't eat a doughnut.

I'll let you know when I swear off sugar again for sure. Mr. Man offered to do it with me this time when we were chatting last night. I wonder if that will help.

I need help.