June 30, 2014; So Relaxed!

Oh, alone time, I treasured your every second!  Back on Friday I had begged off of going motorcycle gear shopping with Ray and his son so that I could spend a couple hours alone.  At 9am I took Furface into the trail for an early morning, sweaty walk and by the time I got back, Kyle had come and picked Ray up and they were gone.  I spent the morning taking a long bath, cooking up some protein for the week ahead, drinking (and getting addicted to) bone broth while sitting on my rocking bench outside reading a book.  I had lunch alone, poured myself some tea and then realized that my body was asking for some rest.  A glorious hour later I woke up, did some laundry and then fiddled around outside in the garden.  Ray and Kyle got home around 4 and then we all went together to Andrea’s to pick something up (and check out the newly painted nursery) and then we went out to Maple Ridge to see George.  George is Ray’s ex-wife’s boxer….and before she got together with Jamie, we babysat him on most weekends and taught him how to sleep in our bed with us!  Turns out that George has bone cancer and is approaching his end time.  As soon as we found out on Saturday, there was no question we would go out to see him right away.  He seemed in good spirits and was happy to see us all, including Gracie.  I got some solid snuggles in with him and gave him the world’s supply of soft snout-kisses and ear whispers.  He’s ten years old and they’ve decided (rightfully) that they won’t be aggressively treating him.  When he’s no longer comfortable or in good spirits, he’ll head for the Rainbow Bridge to hang with Brandy, Mattie, Rhysa, Sierra, Snoopy, Paris and all the other pets that our family has loved and lost.

Sunday morning was another up-early and we did some errands and then it was time for me to bite the “don’t like new things” bullet and go on my own to a town an hour away and do some one-on-one motorcycle training.  I was nervous and apprehensive to say the least.  The ride out was cold and a bit drizzly and I had every bad thought and phrase about myself going through my head.  Ugly, stupid, can’t do it, don’t bother, useless, loser.  Once I met the guy (VERY nice, VERY knowledgeable, VERY calming) and we started the training, I put all those shitty thoughts out of my head and replaced it with “I can do it!”.  Honestly, at first it seemed sort of lame and cliché….but it opened up my mind to be able to hear what he was saying and then carry out the instructions….and lo and behold, I COULD do it!  The guy is retired Vancouver Police Department Motorcycle Unit member and has won medals in motorcycle handling and skills courses.  And he teaches you to ride…..like an officer; professionally, confidently and completely in control.  He had a perfect combination of in your face motivation, logical explanations and continuous praise and encouragement.  And the first time that I successfully pulled off a trickier maneuver, I looked in my mirror and he was jumping up and down with his hands in the air cheering. It was so genuine and passionate that it made me even more confident.

Unfortunately halfway through our 2 hour session, my clutch cable jammed and I had to get Ray to come and get me and my bike on the flatdeck.  While we were waiting for him to get there the instructor had me ride his bike through the maneuvers….his 2014 H-D Limited.

I nearly frigging died…..but………..he had enough confidence in what I had learned and he wanted me to prove it to myself.  Crazy!  I ended up doing some tight u-turns and other maneuvers through the cones for a while and then we called it a day.  Fortunately when we got it home, Ray had my bike basically fixed (still needs an $80 part to finish the job but I rode it to work today) and the next lesson is booked for mid of July.  It felt amazing to challenge my fear/anxiety and then have a really awesome result (not the breakdown…that sucked…the part before the breakdown).  Very empowering.

Throughout the weekend I tried to put my critical voice away and focus on how I was feeling and that I am enough just as I am.  I didn’t put makeup on for my alone day on Saturday or my riding school on Sunday, I didn’t heat-straighten my hair and I put on clothes that were comfortable and fit with what I was doing.  And to be truthful, I felt better overall in confidence and self-awareness!  Even this morning I feel still calmer and more at ease and generally accepting of myself.  It’s kind of nice!

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Walkin’ my Path

Long live the Easter Bunny!  Mostly because he will not be appearing anywhere near our house!  Hop on by, you chocolaty devil, you.  Every Sunday when we go on our little mall date, Ray buys me one chocolate from Purdy’s.  I always get the dark chocolate Himalayan sea salt caramel.  Sometimes I think I would like something different but I feel like if what I get isn’t as good then I’m going to be disappointed and thinking about the stupid thing to distraction until the next Sunday!  I read somewhere today that going through a realistic imagining of eating a tempting item is enough for your brain to believe that you actually ate it and therefore you can stop jonesing for it.  Unfortunately in a different study, I read that if your imagination is vivid enough your body can have the same physiological reaction as if you actually consumed the item….right down to actually gaining weight.  So…..think about the item just vividly enough not to eat it but don’t think about it so vividly that you trick your body into reacting to it.  😉

 

I’ve been thinking about thinking quite a bit lately.  Mostly about how powerful the brain is and how, once you get a thought in there, it can be nearly impossible to rid yourself of it.  Self-fulfilling prophesy, anyone?  I’ve been trying to tell myself I’m happy here…where I’m expending as much time and effort as I have to expend while still balancing the rest of everything.  I think back on when I was the most successful and I came to that “most successful” place when I was single…when I lived alone during the week and I had nothing but time on my hands.  I continued along that path after I moved in with Ray because I was already on it.  I continued doing “things” whether it was walking, running, spinning or lifting.  I had enough foundation built that I could get away with not spending as much time on it as I did previously.  And….as time goes on and things happen, a little less time is spent on it.  And then…more time passes and more things happen and a little more time is chipped away.  And so it goes.  And as those bits of time are chipped away, my foundation was also being slowly chipped away.  And now I’m here…..and I think I’ll never get back there…..not because I’m negative or I don’t want to be there…but because I am not willing nor do I have the kind of time to expend on that goal.  Maybe if I wanted it badly enough I could do it again….it would certainly look different though.  It was 7 years ago.  And that was 7 years of life….ups, downs, coasting and working at it.  I don’t want to relive those 7 years.  I don’t want to try and force myself back into the life that got me to 165 pounds.  I’m sorry…I just don’t.  I want to live forward and new and fresh and if that means that all I can do is what I can do……then that brings me to wherever it brings me.  I welcome myself to that place….that place of balance and health and acceptance.

I’ve been having great enjoyment in logging walking kilometers this month.  The weather has been great for it and I love seeing my routes and totals start to line up.  I’m so fortunate that I have an endless variety of walkable routes and destinations right outside my door.  I can make innumerable combinations of hills, stairs, forests, urban trails or lovely manicured residential areas and quiet side streets.  I can’t say I’ve noticed any particular change in my body but I have noticed a huge improvement in my physical ability since April 1^st.  The walk I did yesterday after work with Gracie was one I’d always wanted to try but was scared of/intimidated by (what I thought was) the huge hill right in the middle of the route.  Turned out to be nothing but a blip on the radar, all the kilometers I’ve put in walking home uphill from work conditioned me for that hill, I guess!

When Gracie and I got home from our walk, I sat in the driveway in the setting sun, chatting with my hubby until it was time to go and make dinner.  I made the Tod Mun Chicken Cakes from Well Fed 2 (processed the “batter” on the weekend so I just had to cook them) with the cucumber relish, a side salad and a lovely quartered tomato.  It was very refreshing and flavourful, definitely a winner!  The cucumber relish makes the cakes, don’t skip it!

Today is a drive home day….I got quite the blister on my foot during our trek last night and thought I would give it a bit of a rest….and I’ve logged over 23 kilometers in the last 4 days so a rest seems like a nice thing to do.  I’ll still take my dog for a walk when I get home, just nothing epically long or hard.  That’s all for me…..to summarize: no chocolate, find happiness in where I am, loving walking, eating chicken cakes.  When I put it like that it seems really dull!

If you’re on MapMyRun and want to connect, my username is “ladyshanny”

Fighting Spirit

I’ve walked home two days in a row this week, Tuesday and Wednesday. Total of 14km, 10 of which are 12% incline or more and the rest are either flat or slightly up. I’ve also marched up 206 steps along the way! I feel SO happy with this, a happiness that I did not feel with biking. Don’t get me wrong, I was pleased with biking in that I was getting to and from work without a car and I was proud of myself for doing something totally different and out of my comfort zone. But all four times I did it, I had apprehension and a bit of fear and when I first decided to commute by bike it’s not something that I took into consideration. When I was walking home for the first time, as steep as it is, all I kept thinking is, “THIS is what I wanted, this right here!”.   Music and fresh air and sunshine and exertion!

 

Even though it’s only been two days, I am feeling better about myself overall and I almost think I even look better! Better hair, happier eyes, skin evening out. Is that possible? Or it’s simply the veil of disappointment with myself lifting and I see the good things instead of the bad? Whatever, I’ll take it. I’m also feeling the uphill climb and stairs all over my lower body and that makes me very happy. That’s something I did not experience when pedal-commuting….hard as it was while it was happening, I felt absolutely nothing when I was done and that was slightly disappointing.

I guess I could have at least SMILED!

 

I’ve been debating whether or not to “sign up” for Tara’s April Century Challenge.   In order to complete the Century via walking home alone, I would have to walk 14 days out of 21 working days. Because I’m debating it, I know that I’m leaving myself room to cop out because walking home 3-4 days per week is a big deal to me. It’s a commitment to myself and lately I’ve been really hesitant to make any promises to myself. What is that bullshit all about??

I’M IN. I hereby declare that I will achieve 100 kilometers walked by midnight on April 30^th. I recognize that I may find this difficult or tiring and that there’s a good chance I need to buy new shoes. I might get wet and dirty and some days I’ll be crabby about it and that’s alright. Asking myself to make this commitment of 100 kilometers walked is less about the distance I’ll travel and more about making a goddamn commitment and then actually keeping it through thick and thin. It’s about insisting on keeping promises to myself and it’s about doing something hard and not quitting when it gets difficult. It’s about finally grabbing onto my fighting spirit that has been lingering just outside of my grasp.

June 1^st is 9 weeks away and the start of the middle of the year. I’ve done so much good for myself mentally in these first months of the year, I’ve set and achieved goals, I’ve formed new habits, I’ve driven the passion back into my life and driven out the seeds of depression. I’ve made peace and made change. The only thing I haven’t really done is put myself through my paces physically. And I haven’t done that in quite a while. I’ve been playing it safe, for various reasons and that comes to an end here and now. 9 weeks…..to shake myself up and make things hard and do what feels right. I don’t want to feel any regret or disappointment with myself when June 1^st arrives.

There’s a part of me that wants to binge eat her way through the Easter aisle in the drugstore and grocery store and who wants to delete this blog and hide away and watch television and forget about having to work hard or be accountable. But then there’s the part of me who likes going to bed at night knowing that things got done right, who likes looking in the mirror and seeing someone worth respecting, who likes taking downtime and knowing that she earned it. That’s the part of me I’ll be focusing on for the April Century Challenge and the next 9 weeks.

Change of Plans

It’s the first of April and that should mean that the snowy days are behind us, right? It’s all daffodils and baby bunnies from here on in!

Before I forget, you can go and check out our Weekend Away complete with pictures on the blog that I share with my sister.

It is gorgeous sunny and warm weather here for the first part of this week and I’ll be walking home tonight. The last day I rode my bicycle, the day I fell into traffic and ended up bailing and having Ray’s son come and get me, made me nervous for riding. I really want to enjoy this gorgeous sunny weather and I want some quiet time on the commute home and unfortunately the bicycle isn’t providing that right now. It is SO hard…..45-53 minutes of only uphill pedaling and also traffic to contend with and to be a bit honest, I’m truly not in decent enough shape right now to do the ride home safely. With walking, I’ll leave my car down here, put all my stuff (lunch bag, tea cup, purse) in it so I don’t have to carry it home, put on some music, eat an apple and walk home. It’ll take about an hour, I think.

I feel kind of fail-y in admitting that the bicycling didn’t work out (right now) but on the other hand I don’t think there is anything wrong with shifting and shimmying and trying different things to get the result you want. If I drive to work and walk home I get the sunshine, the air, the exercise and the alone time but I don’t get the crashing, the traffic, the having to get ready at work, the missing breakfast/coffee with my hubby. So more of the “pros” that I was looking for when I undertook biking and less of the “cons” that I ended up with.  After work I’ll walk the 8 kilometers home. I did drove to work this morning so we’ll just run down and pick my car up after dinner…it’s a 6 minute drive so that shouldn’t be too cumbersome. I’ll let you know how it goes!

We made the decision last night that the garden on the side of the house that I was going to do this year is not going to get done fully this year. We’re going to take some measurements and possibly build the beds but we won’t be filling them with dirt this year….at least not all of them (dirt is expensive!!!!!!!). Instead, I’m taking the money that I had set aside for that and we’re going to properly finish the basement gym….proper flooring (not bare concrete), a mirrored wall, some paint, a rower and a dumbbell rack (we already have the equipment). We used to work out together down there many moons ago and really enjoyed it…..and even if we don’t do it together in the mornings (which is when I would use it), I still want the gym downstairs done properly. I want to stop paying over $60/month for gym fees and it would be great if Ray would lift again, he loves it and he wants to put muscle on (he’s an awesome gainer too, the bugger!).

So…..now I’m pricing rowers and mirrors and imagining paint colors (I’m thinking a soft buttery yellow?). We figure with the floor, the mirror, the rack, the rower and the paint etc….it will be about $1500 – $2000 to get it done. And if there’s leftover money I want a big punching dummy and a pair of gloves!

So that’s my update for today. Trip recap over on Half A Pear, bicycle is being benched in favor of walking shoes and we’ll be working on the downstairs gym. I’m trying not to feel too badly about how short lived my bike-commuting career was…..but I wildly over-estimated nearly everything about both it and me. As I’d mentioned, I want everything I do in April to be self-respecting and self-valuing and I think this change to walking shoes over cycling shoes is the best decision right now on several levels.

My Passion Experiment – Week Two Summary

Today marks two weeks into My Passion Experiment.  You can catch up with the project here, Day Two, Day Four and Day Seven if you like.  I’m feeling pretty good compared to a couple of weeks ago.  Here are the things I’ve noticed last week:

1. For me, becoming complacent or thinking I know what’s going to happen or how I’m going to feel robs me of the ability to actually experience each day.  This one is très difficile but incredibly important for me to prevent feeling like I’m trapped in my own routine! Getting up and going through the same motions day after day; shower, cook breakfast, make coffee, feed dog, eat/drink, wash up, watch news for 11 minutes, drive to work, make tea, find something to do until noon, eat lunch, find something to do until 430, drive home, walk dog, start dinner, eat, cleanup, bed between 8 & 8:30, read for 20 minutes, sleep.  Repeat.  Can you see how that would get depressing?  But what if each day could feel different?  I’m trying to do small things that change how each day feels in order to avoid monotony and cultivate some passion for The Everyday.  Playing tuggy with Gracie for 11 minutes in the morning instead of watching the news, turning Ray’s alarm off and waking him up with kisses and cuddles instead (I like that more than he does, LOL!).  Doing a lemon sugar facial/upper body scrub before getting in the shower once a week, taking Gracie on a longer walk after work instead of rushing home to start dinner, having an after work drink in the driveway on nicer days, of course, biking to work, turning on music in the morning instead of the television, having a water-only day, going tanning in the evening instead of couch-time, floor stretches during my lunch break when no one is around. Anything to make the day feel a bit different.

 

1. Passion grows on itself.  You put a little teensy seed down on a welcoming foundation, cover it up and then spend time cultivating it. You can’t see anything yet.  Nothing looks different….but you keep watering and you keep letting the sun’s warmth get to it.  You don’t lose faith.  And eventually a teensy little speck appears.  You rejoice that the little guy is alive and then you just keep doing what you were doing.  Watering, protecting, feeding and allowing it to grow. Some days it seems as if it’ll never get any bigger….and then poof, new leaves!  Everything that it is and everything that it will be comes from that first tiny seed and the faith that it would grow in time.

 

1. Letting the past go is still a work in process.  A couple of times this past week I’ve had to gently (and then not so gently) tell Ray that I don’t want to talk about the plant or what might be happening there and that I sure as hell (that was the not so gently part) do NOT want to go for a drive and see what’s going on over there.  Not.  I also bumped into a former customer last weekend whom I knew outside of work before I knew of them as the customer….so I completely forgot that we had both associations.  Until she started grilling me about what had happened and what was going on and how could she contact someone there now.  I was so blindsided and not expecting that discussion that I nearly fainted.  So this part is still a work in process.  Although it has been successful by some measure as well in that I have not used the past as an excuse to do or not do something.  It’s simply irrelevant now.  I’ve stopped using the word “anymore” (eg, I don’t get four weeks of vacation anymore) or the word “now” (eg. I work 8 – 4:30 now).  I did that because if I drop those two qualifiers, what’s left is just a true statement.  I don’t get 4 weeks of holidays and I do work 8-4:30.  “Anymore” and “now” are those little tentacles trying to hook onto the past and keep pieces of it in the present.  I also try to avoid starting sentences with “I used to” and instead I say “When I” because I feel like starting with “I used to” makes it too regretful sounding and saying “When I” is more positive and more of a statement of fact. (eg. “I used to have an amazing boss” vs “When I worked at ABC, my boss was amazing”).  Maybe this is all BS as far as “professionals” are concerned but I find it useful for myself in staying current and closing that door.

So that’s the summary of Week Two.  Week Three should be more of the same, and instead of dreading the next 5 days of life, I’m going to be excited about it and try to wake up every day looking forward to what may come.

In other news, I rode my bicycle to work today and have revised my “scaling in” plan.  Since today is only Monday and Thursday & Friday are supposed to be nice days this week, I don’t see any real reason why I can’t ride on both those days as well, especially since the weekend is right there for recovery afterwards.  I’ll judge how I feel after riding on Thursday but this morning felt great even though I did 30 minutes of hill training on the indoor trainer on Saturday.  Bicycling is such a low impact activity that I don’t feel I have to recover my joints, ligaments, tendons after every ride; so far I haven’t been in any pain or discomfort.  I feel fantastic when I’m done and I look forward to the next outing so I’m going to keep letting my body run the show.  Going out in the morning and smelling that damp air and breathing hard; I know it’s where I’m supposed to be right now and I love it.

Well. That’s Disappointing.

Let me come right out and say it, “I failed at meeting my Century goal of 100 kilometers by March 1.”.

I missed it by around 20 kilometers.  I say “around 20” because it’s not yet March 1st and I’ll still get one more dog walk in tonight.  But finishing on time is, at this point, unachievable.

I’m disappointed in myself, to be quite honest.  I missed a lot of gym mornings and after work walks that would have certainly propelled me over the finish line with little effort.  But….I didn’t do it.  I slept in when I shouldn’t have, I let Grace go for a walk with someone else instead of insisting on taking her myself (or going alone).  In simple words, I didn’t make my goal a priority and it stalled, faltered and died.  Simple as that.

I was thinking this morning about ultimately having failed and how I should put a positive spin on it and that I got 78km done and that’s better than nothing and I was injured and life happened and I still deserve to feel good about the result, blah blah blah.  But honestly, that’s bullshit.  I set a goal, I could have achieved the goal and I didn’t put my energy into it.  Fail.  So having been realistic about the failure and my feelings about it, now I will be positive (and realistic) about what to do next.

I piddled away February.  I gave a half assed (and sometimes no) effort and I am experiencing the results of that.  I feel crappy, my mood is crappy, my spirit is low.  I hear negative words in my head and I talk myself out of nearly everything without even trying to fight back.

I am so grateful though, that I am awake and aware enough to admit to wasting the month of February and that I can look at what happened, where I got stuck and get moving again.  Yesterday my sister said that she thought that I was tough and that I was a fighter.  Sometimes fighting and being tough takes a shit-tonne of energy though, both mental and physical.  Sometimes that energy just isn’t there….and it wasn’t in February.

In order to help myself be more successful in March, I’m scaling back on the goals list and am going to focus my attention on the things that really bring a lot of added value for me.  Painting my nails would be nice, organizing my cupboards would be great….but what I really need to do is refocus on the “SELF” goals and push away the noisy little stuff that can cloud my vision.

Strangely complimentary to my blog post is the one that my sister wrote today, go check it out:  http://onelittlelifestory.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/not-making-a-choice-is-a-choice/

In the same vein as my post above and the one I just linked to, I am making the choice to choose to let the rest of February go.  I’ve been trying to figure out ways to salvage the month and with three days left to go, it’s not saveable and that effort to keep pumping life into it is just reminding me of everything that I didn’t do. 

Century

After I declared this morning that my body wants me to exercise more, I felt a sense of….I don’t know….correctness?  A sense that I had put my finger on a big part of my current issues and that things were going to improve from here.  That’s a nice feeling!  If you know me at all, you know I like a challenge….anything that I can work on or toward that has a goal and a finish line/date.  If you do know me, you would also know that I believe that things open up in the world as we are ready for them; the window I jumped through 7 years ago when I decided to shake up my life, the window 6 years ago when I decided to quit smoking, the window when I quit my job and moved into a new phase of my life.  I think it’s always important to be striving for things but I really feel like certain windows open up as you become ready, you just have to be aware enough to notice them.

So, today I declared “more exercise” and what my plan was to do it.  Then, later in the afternoon I clicked through to a blog and found someone doing a “100 Miles Challenge” and a lightbulb went off in my head, that is exactly what I need!  Now, being Canadian, I can’t do a 100 MILE challenge because, well…..we’re metric and I enjoy my metricocity.  But I’m going to do a 100 KILOMETER challenge, a “century”.  Technically a Century is a 100km bicycle ride but I get to make my own rules so I’m going to refer to my challenge as:

“Century” because it’s one hundred kilometers and “Life Ride” because it’s going to be any combination of rowing, running or walking (indoors at the gym or outside on the road/trail).  Whatever activity that I do (with purpose) that propels me forward gets logged as relevant kilometers.  The finish line is 100 Kilometers before March 1^st.  That’s 45 days from today, January 15^th, and works out to an average of 2.3 kilometers per day.  I would like to think that I’ve given myself a pretty achievable goal but I wasn’t absolutely positive how this would work out so I didn’t want to make it unattainable.  The reward for achieving the goal is a reflexology foot treatment (make sense, right, my feet are mostly going to be the ones getting me there!).

Does anyone want to join in?  Leave a note in the comments so that we can check in with each other along the way!  If you’re in the US, it’s 62.13 miles in the 45 days…. same overall measurement.  There are no real rules, just start logging your distances for any walk, run or row and then report back on March 1^st!

I’m excited about this!

Keep Going

I would not normally put up a post that’s this short and I do not normally share these sort of pics.  But…I’m not feeling it right now; I feel awful physically (Alien?), I’m exhausted (boring job with no stimulation or human interaction?) and I needed to remind myself that it’ll be alright.  I ran my “intake” numbers this morning to ensure that I am eating enough and not shortchanging myself on carbs.  It’s all good so I really just need to keep going.  Just put one foot in front of the other, wait for sunnier days and just keep doing the things that I know are right and wait for the results that I know will come.

 

 

 

Things I Love – Tuesday

Morning!  I have a new post up on 90 Seconds of Real; four of us post there daily, short videos (less than 2 minutes) encompassing anything from cooking, nutrition, weight loss, exercise, dealing with depression/anxiety, Whole30 or whatever we’re feeling or dealing with at the moment while trying to live balanced, healthy lives.  If you think you can relate, we’d love to see you over there, take a look around (the About tab tells about each of our backgrounds) & watch a couple videos.  Click the “FOLLOW” link in the top right corner to join our little community!

 

This morning I was at the gym and did mile-row-mile (run a mile as quick as you can, get off and row 2000 meters and then run another mile….supposed to be for time, I usually am just happy if I don’t puke).  At 0.6 of my second mile I realized I’d taken in too much water after my row and I felt like I was going to be sick.  Since my current feeling is that I do a little every day and build on it, I stopped at 0.6 for the second mile and went to the weight room instead.  There I did assisted pullups, straight arm lat pulldowns, shoulder press, dumbbell flys, chest press, abs and stretching.  There were two other women in the area as well working on different programs and I took a minute to watch each of them and appreciate how we were all doing something different.  I was doing some fairly traditional exercises, another woman was doing some more advanced full body work and then the third woman was….well….flopping about like a landed fish, really….but she was super lean and fit so whatever she’s doing obviously is working for her.    None of our workouts looked like they’d particularly been designed by anyone and that got me to thinking that we all just do the best we can with what we have.  We read and research, assess ourselves and our goals and then try to do the things that will be effective with all of that in mind.  Really levels the playing field, doesn’t it!  It was also nice to see lots of new faces in the gym this morning, women that are trying to push themselves forward, shed weight and baggage and create something for themselves that is better and healthier.  So nice to see!

 

When it was epically hard to get out of bed this morning I reminded myself that A) you can’t move forward if you don’t take a step and B) the large amount of work that I do and money & time that I spend feeding us as well as I do…well….I sort of felt like that was a wasted effort if I don’t get to the gym. It’s a package deal for maximum success.

 

So…moving on, I went to the Dr last night after work, had no wait to see her (yay!) and had a nice little chat with her.  I told her about my iron issues and she’s giving me the iron panel again but adding in a B12 test for pernicious anemia as well as a test for celiac.  I do NOT think that I have celiac disease but it’s the number one cause of poor iron absorption so it makes sense to test for it.  In doing my own research I also think I would benefit from taking a Vitamin C supplement with my iron supplement as C assists with absorption of the iron.  Now I just have to find time to pop in and get my blood drawn.

 

When I got home last night I finished the process of making Well Fed “Best Chicken You Will Ever Eat”.  It was…..alright.  The seasoning mix and the morrocan dipping sauce was great but I found there was absolutely no difference between brined and unbrined meat.  It was a little dry and definitely benefitted from the sauce as well as a little drizzle of WellFed mayo.  It’s possible that since I brined on Saturday and then let it sit in the fridge that it wasn’t as good as it could have been….but she says right in the book that you can brine and then store raw for 2-3 days.  The seasonings & cooking method were definite winners but since this was a brining test for future turkey brining, it wasn’t a winner.  I will try it again though on a day when I can cook the chicken immediately after the brining process is complete.

 

Well Fed – “Best Chicken You Will Ever Eat”

Tonight I’m going to turn my car over to the body shop for repair for a few days (courtesy car) and then go home, put the stew on the stove to heat up and take Gracie for a walk in the rain.  I have my new snazzy coveralls that Ray bought me for Christmas, they are reflective, waterproof, windproof and flame retardant.  With the addition of polar fleece tights underneath, they are roasty-toasty and I love them!  I may consider wearing them for the “Chilly Chase” run on January 26!

 

I think that’s all for me today, this blog post originally started out as Things I Love Tuesday….but sort of went another direction!  In order that the title doesn’t make zero sense, here are some things that I love right now:

Ginger Citrus Body Butter by Arbonne. I actually won this, I never would have purchase it myself. My legs and arms are so silky soft and it doesn’t stay “wet” so you can easily get dressed after applying. Has a gentle fragrance also.

The now-obsolete Gingerbread Rooibos tea from David’s Tea. I bought two large cans of it in clearance because I can’t imagine not having it!

My Libre tea thermos and I do not spend any time apart. It’s self straining through the lid so you just drop your leaves in, add water and go! Absolutely love it!

Elements Botanicals sugar scrub….I use it on my face a couple times a week and my skin is So Soft!

They say you’re supposed to black out your sleeping environment completely. I can’t do that for various reasons so I have this…and I LOVE IT! I’ve been sleeping solidly every night since December 25th!

 

Golden Egg

Wouldn’t it be great if you got your slate wiped clean every single day?  If, every day, you got to start again with a gold star or an A+ in your chart?  I don’t think this is an original idea by any stretch but it’s been on my mind lately.  As a person who is on a seemingly endless quest for balance, I feel like this “New Day” idea is going to factor greatly in to where I go this year and how I get there.  I feel, for the first time ever like what happened yesterday doesn’t matter. I think that this is one of those clichés that everyone “says” but that you have to grow into understanding and really believing.

What I did yesterday, last week or last year doesn’t count.  I drank too much over the holidays and previous to that, ate too many chocolate almonds when I was going through my work transition.  Doesn’t matter.  I used to be a weight-room regular and had the physique to prove it (*).  Doesn’t matter.  Good or bad, it really doesn’t matter.  You wake up in the morning and start wherever your actions dropped you at the end of the day before.  If you ate crap and drank too much then your starting point is behind bloat and guilt.  If you ate your veggies and went for a walk then your starting point is in the light of self-respect and self-love.

I keep reading these articles that say that as you get past your early 30’s, certain hormones slow down and this changes and that changes and the things your body did before don’t happen as easily now and it was starting to get kind of depressing….like, through whatever circumstances I experienced or perceived, I missed the window on ever getting “there”.

Since “there” doesn’t really exist and there is no official road map to navigate to “there” and I’ve already made the declaration that I cannot wage war on myself anymore, what’s a woman to do?

I’ve put some goals down on paper and shared them here but I kept trying to fill in a long term goal.  My pie in the sky, golden egg, mystical rainbow, dream destination.  I realized that I don’t have one.  I’m not going to run a marathon, I have no tropical vacation planned, I’m not getting married….I just have my regular life and I want to love living it.   So my desire is to wake up each morning in the light of self-respect and self-love.   I would like every morning to be the achievement of my long-term goal.  Did I live my life in the balance of health, happiness, activity, relaxation, reward and discipline?  If the answer is yes?  That’s my mystical-rainbow-dream-destination-golden-egg.  It’s immeasurable and never ending and I’ll never “get there”…but with the right decisions I can go there every day.

(*) I only realized by recently looking at a picture from almost two years ago that I was in pretty decent form!  Since I had no balance and nothing was ever good enough, I never even noticed the excellent shape that I was in and that’s a crying shame.