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.

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Chicken?

Oh, Monday….be kind to me today!  I’m suffering quite a bit with my Alien this morning, I’ve had the dropsies all weekend and smashed my head against A) a cupboard door, B) an oven hood fan and C) a cutting board (don’t ask).  I’m cranky and feel quick to tears this morning.

None of this is helped by what Gracie did on the weekend.  Let’s just say that 4 pounds of frozen solid, bone in, skin on chicken thighs mysteriously went missing.  We discovered the culprit when she squeezed back in through the dog door with a huge frozen mass in her gut and her fur on so tight that it looked it was three sizes too small.  So….we were on dog watch duty all weekend while she fidgeted, cried, waddled and sweated through the digestion process.  Brutal.  And if you’re wondering, it’s not that the chicken was easily accessible, it was IN the kitchen sink.  Where it always goes.  I didn’t even think she was tall enough to get her head in there. I was obviously very wrong.  (she’s fine now)

Anyway, Friday afternoon I was very excited to finally receive delivery of my Great Lakes Gelatin!!!!!!  It really is completely flavourless and odourless and dissolves perfectly in cold water (I bought the hydrolyzed version).  I’ve been putting my tablespoon in my morning coffee….you’d never know it was there!  There were some cautions online about a bit of a detox process when you first start taking it but neither of us have noticed anything unusual.  The comments were “viscious headaches” and nausea and the runs.  No reaction from us…I guess we are already detoxified!

What else……my Century.  Last week I had been wondering if I should keep trying to achieve it……and I think I’m going to move forward with it.  It’s still achievable, if a little more difficult.  Tara suggested that I add on the amount of days that I was laid up for…..and I may do that if I have to….but I’m really going to try to get it within the original goal period so that I can happily go and buy myself a hot tea and turn myself over to someone else.  Really looking forward to that, so the final push is on.

I’m hoping that this coming weekend weather holds out because I really want to ride my bicycle down to work and back to gauge the time and route.  March should have at least a couple days a week in it that I should be able to cycle to work…..but only if I know how long it takes and how to get here!

Overall I think I’m feeling pretty content with life right now (stupid, boring job notwithstanding).  Of note, I’ve cut back on my fat intake substantially….once I started actually measuring I realized that I was going way over board and I’ve pulled the measuring spoons out again.  I know that the idea is that we’re just supposed to eat intuitively….but that does not work 100% for me.  They say that no one overeats pork chops and roasted Brussels Sprouts and I fully agree with that.  I definitely don’t measure out food in that aspect….but I can be known to drink my coffee with nearly the same volume of coconut milk as coffee.  Or eat an entire avocado in a day or a batch of homemade mayo in a week after I’ve just polished off a double batch of sunshine sauce.  I can be an egg-eating-machine and don’t even get me started on almond butter.  So I’m measuring for a while…..and yes, restricting my fat intake somewhat.  I’m also throwing out my “food-clock” and again, making a conscious effort to judge my hunger vs “it’s time to eat”.  I’m pretty happy with how I feel both mentally & physically after a week of having done all of this.

We had a major windstorm with super heavy rain last night so I’m curious to take Gracie through the park after work and see what the damage is in the forest.  And tomorrow is gym…..which I want to be excited about.  But I’m not really.  I still can’t go back to lifting and pullups and dips, my shoulder is still not 100%…..so I’m going to get some much needed Century mileage and then go from there.  I actually thought my shoulder was fine…until Sunday when I was in the backseat of my mom’s car and she had to slam the brakes to avoid getting us killed by a bus and my shoulder smoked the seatbelt pretty hard….so I was back with the ice yesterday and the Advil today.  Nothing serious though, just a bit tweaky.

Anyway, that’s it for me today.  I hope your Monday is treating you well…..I’ll be here, bored….with cramps….and fighting crushing cravings for lemon meringue pie and puffed wheat squares.  Seriously.  Shoot me.

Cute Shoes…And Other Things

Happy Wednesday, Internet!  Did you have a good sleep?

I was in the gym again this morning working on some rowing and my legs.  I hate leg day because I don’t like leg exercises but I love leg day because it’s a faster workout for me so I get home sooner and get to have almost a half hour to myself to ice my legs and drink coffee.  Tomorrow is a FULL ON REST DAY (no gym, no century mileage) and because of that I’m kind of looking forward to tonight, staying up an hour later and laying on my couch watching my shows while Ray goes over to his buddy’s house (I took back Wednesday evenings to be mine, all mine, more on that another day).  Friday will be another upper body day at the gym and then only century mileage on Saturday and Sunday I’m doing a community run with my Seestah!

I was so excited this morning to be feeling a bit slender-er so I put on a top that Ray’s daughter bought me for C’mas that was….err…..much too tight at Cmas time.

I’ve been really nervous about stepping onto the scale next Friday (Jan 31) because I’ve been working really hard and feeling really good (finally) but felt that nothing was really changing and not seeing that scale drop down to at least near my goal would be heartbreaking.  But this morning I can tell based on this outfit that something has changed even if I’m not quite sure yet as to what that is.

And….I’m wearing these awesomely cute shoes to go with it.  I bought them in December and could not WAIT to wear them….this morning they seemed like they would go really well with my outfit win…even if it is still a bit chilly out to be wearing them.

I just wanted to talk quickly about my eating at the table thing.  It is definitely still a struggle to get Ray to naturally head for the table three nights per week and to be honest, sometimes I completely forget that we’re supposed to be sitting there.  So why am I so stuck on it? It has a little to do with enjoying the food and really compartmentalizing meals. But my ultimate goal was to get us talking to each other more, spending more face to face time with each other every evening.  Last night I thought maybe it’s working.  Dinner was in the oven when Ray got home and I don’t turn on the TV when I’m home first.  We stood in the kitchen and talked and laughed and pestered each other and then we moved into another room, sat down and went over my weights routines to make sure that they are balanced.  It was SO nice to be together with no background noise and no distractions.  Ultimately, our chatting and whatever led to a LOT of time passing and we didn’t sit down to dinner until nearly 7pm….so I acquiesced on the dinner table in favour of watching a show together while we ate.  People get into a rut…..we got into a rut.  A dull, quiet, boring rut….and my firm insistence on focusing on just each other for the duration of a meal in the evening is, slowly but surely, getting us out of it.

I have me a splitting headache right now….I’m glad that the tea I picked out for myself last night was a peppermint based one since peppermint is good for a headache….but it doesn’t seem to be helping at all!  I’m off to throw myself into the incredibly, brain-bleedingly dry world of pricing high voltage electrical maintenance.  As if that won’t make me want to put my head through the wall!

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.

 

 

 

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.

Goals and a Shameless Plug

I’ve read a couple of good blogs over the weekend and I’ll be damned if I can find them now.  The gist was….what you would expect at this time of year.  Get your head straight, get your house in order and, if you want to see change you have to actually make change.  That part was my favourite.  It’s the hardest for us, sometimes, to remember that just wanting something isn’t enough to make it happen.  That just believing in something isn’t enough to inspire change.  That just envisioning it isn’t enough to bring it to life.  Sure, those are all good things and they help but the reality is that if I want to run a race I have to go outside and train for it.  The reality is that if I want to lose a few pounds I have to stop eating crap food.  The reality is if I want to change my relationship with food I have to make changes in my encounters with it.

I’ve written my monthly weight goals down on a sheet of paper in my day planner where I can see them.  During the Christmas cleanup though, our scale went missing.  So….for the better, I can weigh myself once a month at the gym!  Anyway, although some of these goals don’t necessarily meet all the SMART (specific, measureable, actionable, realistic, timely) criteria but they’re close enough.  And…although I said earlier that I wasn’t making resolutions, I don’t believe that monthly goals fall under that category.  I think it’s important to have goals and to put them out there in the world!  So here they are for January:

• Reduce food budget to $130/week
• Reduce eating out to once this month
• Adopt friend’s idea of “No Spend Month” and do not spend money on anything that is not critical for survival.  Wine is not critical.  Cry.
• Eat at the dinner table at least 3 nights per week, no TV, no technology.  Be willing to encourage by example if Ray is not yet on board (ie, do it alone)
• Participate in 1 community/charity run
• Get new Video Blog up and running and promote it
• Limit fruit to 1/day max (includes whatever is mixed into a salad)
• COMPLETELY EXCLUDE:  dairy, added sugars or grains of any sort
• Limit Alcohol to only Friday and/or Saturday
• Meet gym dates, three per week
• Work to meet weight goal for January
• Practice making decisions consciously

I was going to highlight the ones that I thought were the most important….but then the whole list was highlit so I nixed that idea!  These are the goals that I have for January (starting now).  Nearing the end of January I’ll review the list and reassess and see what will continue on to February and what I’ll change.  There is no point in making decisions now for June, or now for November or even now for March.  I know that there are things that will change and things that will happen between now and a month from now and instead of trying to wedge my goals around my life or cram my life into these goals, I’ll make conscious goals that will work with everything else I have going on.

A long time ago a blog friend made a statement, I can’t remember if it was her original statement or copied from somewhere.  “Do The Next Right Thing”. That’s it and it will be my motto for January 2014.

 

Let me know what you’re doing in the next month that will improve your life?  Giving up alcohol?  Exercising more?   

 ____________________________________________________________ 

I encourage you to click on over to “90 Seconds of Real” and take a look around.  We have four women at the moment who are going to share their ups, downs and sideways.  Below is the description of the project from the website.  We hope to have a new video every day (or pretty close to) and we would love a “FOLLOW” or a “LIKE” or even the most cherished of internet communications, a “COMMENT”!  Check out the videos that are up there now as well as the brief biographies and pictures of the contributors under the “About” tab.

 

The goal with this project is to relate to, reach out to and appeal to other women who are trying to live a strong healthy life in today’s world of convenience, inactivity, instant gratification and a to-do list that just won’t quit.  It’s not an easy road to travel and sometimes when you’re walking down it, you can feel like you’re all alone.

Meet the women of the “90 Seconds of Real” project and know we’re all walking down this road too and we get it!  We’re charging on and powering through and screaming into a pillow right along with you.  We’re cooking Yet Another Paleo Meal for the billionth time and dragging ourselves out of bed to get to the gym and turning down cookies and trying to stand behind our choices and our values.   We hope that you can relate!

Enjoy All The Things!

It’s no secret that I have long enjoyed writing, I’ve had a few blogs over the years that can attest to that.  Sometimes people even tell me I do a pretty good job of it!  What I have never had, is anyone comment on my photography skills.  Mostly because I only really take pictures, on my iPhone, of food, alcohol and my dog.  Not much there to praise.  You can imagine my complete surprise when I received an email from the coordinator of a food feature in our provincial and city newspapers telling me that they’ve seen my photos and want me to contribute!  What the WHAT?   I went and did a little research and discovered that there are large number of people that participate in this spread every week and so, while flattered that they came to me about it, anyone can sign up online to request to play along.  I responded to the email and said “sure, sign me up”, since she offered to do the process for me instead of my having to go online and do it.  When I submitted my first picture for the spread this week, I was shocked once again to hear from the coordinator that they appreciated my entry but that they want me to be a FEATURE contributor.  The feature contributors have larger portions of the layout every week with a pencil-sketch headshot, links to twitter and Instagram and a food bio!

I’m quite certain that they make sure they have a LOT of feature contributors in their files to pull out and use, so I’m not under any impression that I’m one of a kind (besides the fact that obviously I’m one of a kind, just like everyone else!)….but I thought it was really cool to be “found” and then solicited to participate in this thing! The week’s spread is published for the Saturday newspapers and then they post it online, once they do I’ll find it and post it here!

In the meantime, this year, considering that I’m not really pulling a full workload at the moment, I wrote a Christmas newsletter to send out to a few people. It’s being printed right now (so much cheaper to send it out and print than to use up the ink in our little desktop printer!) and I’ll go and pick it up tonight.  I’ve attached shots of each page if you’re interested in taking a look at it!

On the fitness front I can sure feel my arms this morning and I’m not really sure why…except perhaps supporting myself during the sprinters and the donkey kicks yesterday?  Or was it the hour of snow-shovelling that I did yesterday?!  Tomorrow is the next gym date on my calendar; I’ll be doing a 25 Minute Treadmill sprints/intervals workout that I found online and then an upper body weights workout.  Good times.

In reading this blog post, it occurred to me to reassess my own….err….volume of food.  We really do only eat whole, healthy foods for 90% of our meals and treats and wine are limited to one or the other and only one per night.  Unfortunately I have maintained my weight for the past month and maintaining it is not where I want to be.  I am determined to lose the 10-15 pounds that I harvested in this past year and my “healthy whole foods” attitude is screwing me up!  Why?  Because I’m still eating too much!  Sure, going to the gym will help…..but…..it occurred to me that I’m eating for someone who is laboring outside all day long, not someone who is sitting at a desk for 8 hours and then hanging out at home in the evening.  Too. Much. Food.  Even if it is veggies roasted in good fat and clean ground meat turned into sausages and nuts and oranges and scrambled eggs and pecan chicken and mashed garlic cauli and spiced pork tenderloin.  All healthy and whole.  Just too much.  And considering that I am nearly never hungry, that’s probably a decent sign that I’m experiencing too much volume!

Soooo…..scaling back a bit starting today. Not enough to re-form any of my old habits of beating myself up and hawkeye’ing the scale.  Just….eating less food.  Sounds fairly safe, right?  Could help going into the holiday season (which, for me, blows up starting tomorrow) in enjoying all the things…..in less volume.

 

Tonight I think we’re heading out after dinner to get a coffee at a favourite spot and then go look at Christmas lights!  I’m totally excited about it!

 

 

Chat

Before I forget, I wanted to point out to you that along the top of the webpage there is now a tab called “FEED ME”.  This page will have my photos of various delicious recipes that I make.  Because they are my pictures but not my recipes, I set it up so that if you click on the picture you should be taken to that recipe on the website where I originally found it.  There are a couple on there already!  I’ll try to remember to put up a little note when I add something!

Now that I’ve gone and poured my coffee, let’s have a chat!

I ventured out into the snowy tundra at 4:12am this morning to hit the gym.  I will admit that last week when it was -17C windchill (1.4F), I did not go.  I truly didn’t think it was necessary and ya, I felt a little guilty at the end of the week when I’d missed those days but staying warm in bed when the wind was howling was more valuable to me.  Now that it’s just snow, I was game this morning!  I won’t pretend that it was easy to leap out from under a pillowy mountain of down softness….but….it’s not about being easy.  So since I’d made a three workout cycle, this morning was my first time trying it out.  And?  I nearly broke my ankle.  Sort of.  I was doing “mountain climbers” which I also call “sprinters”.  Here’s a picture of the general idea.

 

So ultimately you’re in a plank type position and you are rapidly doing a running in place motion.  Only…..when you get tired and your legs start turning to rubber, if you don’t pick your feet up high enough, your toes catch on the rubber flooring and you jam your ankle.  THEN, when you start doing donkey kicks and you’re kicking both feet up into the air behind you and SLAMMING them back down onto the floor, it makes you remember that you just jammed your ankle!  I guess the gym-angels were smiling down on me this morning though because I didn’t actually hurt myself, thank heavens!  So the gym felt good this morning and resolidified my goals and the fitness aspect of my balance.  Next date is either tomorrow and Friday or Thursday and Friday.  Or….given that my birthday weekend is this weekend, perhaps it should be all four days! Meh, we’ll see.

Tonight we’re having Ray’s son over for dinner and since it’s snowing and our house is all Christmassy and we’ll have a fire, I’m really looking forward to it, it’s very cozy!

In other Christmas news, as people who recently lost their jobs, gained new jobs (that pay less) and are still trying to recover financially, the sheer volume of requests for money and donations is overwhelming.  My new boss is very involved with his church and since he happens to own the business that we work for, he inundates the 15 employees with requests for time, money, goods etc.  Easily there’s an email every day when we get in asking us to buy tickets or come to an event or sponsor something or someone.  If I did everything that he’s emailed to us in the last month I would be down nearly $300 already!  The one thing that the company employees have committed to is sponsoring a family.  Only….after we all agreed, Boss has decided that we 15 people are going to put together not one hamper but TWO.  One for the family of 5 and one for a man recovering from some sort of addiction living in a residential facility.  It seems like a nice gesture….until you read the list of things that are on the “need” list.

NEED:  winter jacket, 2 pairs of jeans, techie gadget (eg. Ipod)

Don’t get me mistaken, I’m all for charity and Ray and I donate to lots of causes over the year that are important to us.  But a 45 yearold man recovering from addiction, living off the generosity of others needs an IPOD for his hamper??  Aside from how ridiculous that request even is, jeans are $40 Per Pair, a winter jacket is easily $100 and then we’re also supposed to provide toiletries, socks/underwear and also create a Christmas breakfast (pancakes, eggs, bacon etc) and a full Christmas dinner including a turkey or a large ham.  That’s for the ONE GUY.  Forget that we also have to put together the same two meals, toiletries and gifts for 3 teenage girls and their parents.  Seriously, I’m stressing out, who has this kind of money?  It’s absurd!  The smart decision would have been to offer ONE hamper, get each staff member to donate $20 and we would go and spend the $360 for One Family.   It is also somewhat distressing that at the end of the email about the hampers from the Pastor at the church that is organizing this, they have requested that each hamper gets “rounded out with a gift card so that the recipient(s) can buy something special.”  Theoretically this hamper donation thing could end up costing me more than I’m spending on members of my own family!  It makes me feel uncomfortable and like I’m stingy or uncharitable.  But I’m not going into debt on my credit card to help put an iPod into a recovering drug addict’s stocking.  Sorry, I’m just…not.

 I’ll leave you with a bit of a funny today.  These are two phone conversations that I had yesterday, back to back.

 Shannon:  Hi, Customer, we tried to mail you a Christmas card and it came back saying you’d moved.  The address I had was 1234 Marinaside Crescent.

Customer:  Oh, ya, we moved to a new building.

Shannon:  OK, great.  Could I get your address then?

Customer:  My email address?

Shannon:  Err….no……not your email address…………..

 

Shannon:  Hi, Customer, we tried to mail you a Christmas card and it came back saying we were missing the unit number portion of the address.

Customer:  Oh, I’m just the receptionist.

Shannon:  Err….OK…..do you think you could tell me the unit number of the business so I could mail the card?

Customer:  I don’t have the unit number.  How about if I just give you the address?

Shannon:  OK, let’s try that.

Customer:  OK, the address is Unit 1730, 10355 King George…….

Shannon:  OK….so Unit 1730 then?

Customer:  I’m not really sure.

 

Happy Snow Day, Beautiful People!

Dessert For Dinner

OK, great start to the morning so far, the boss’s son just pointed out to me that I might want to untuck the hem of my skirt from the back of my pantyhose.  Grrrreat.  At least he told me before I went outside and crossed over into our other unit….although I may have noticed myself when I felt the cold breeze up my backside!  This on the heels of locking myself in the bathroom yesterday and then later, completely losing one of the days of the week.  I swear, there’s a part of me that still has an intermittent brain injury caused by the events of the last year.

Anyway.

If you follow me on Instagram (ladyshanny) you’ll already know that I made and served a grain free apple crisp as our dinner last night. Don’t gasp, if you think about it, a grain free apple crisp isn’t bad!  Apples:  good.  Coconut:  good.  Pecans:  good.  Almond flour:  good.  A small amount of maple syrup:  not the worst thing in the world.  All baked up and warm and fragrant on a cold, dark night:  perfect.  Eaten in front of a roaring fire with the Christmas tree lit and 70lbs of dog on my feet:  too much good to talk about!

Tonight I have to do Costco (really starting to hate doing it by myself).  And, I just cancelled some Friday evening plans which is a bit disappointing.  My mom, sister and I were supposed to go to the Christmas Market in Vancouver.  It’s an outdoor event and it’s going to be extremely cold tomorrow night.  Add a Canucks home game and the annual tree lighting festival to the first-Friday-in-December Christmas market and you have a recipe for insane crowds, packed trains and long lines.  So…..while it would have been festive (and freezing), we have decided to nix the idea.  I was really looking forward to buying some hand crafted soap, kind of bummed.

In happier news though, my sister will be taking the train to my house on Saturday morning and we have a day of Christmas festivities planned including a wee bit of Christmas shopping, decorating the banister, looking at old (and apparently hilarious) photos and maybe a bit of baking.  We also plan to head over to the forest near my house and see if we can take some (or get Ray to take some) sister-pictures.  And then, after we’re frozen?  This:

We’re planning to make coconut milk hot chocolate with whipped coconut cream and candy cane stir sticks!

Happy early weekend, beautiful people!  The sun is shining beautifully here and if you turn your heater on you can almost pretend it’s not winter!

Feeling Chattier (or Typier) Now

I’m going for a drink with someone from my past tonight.  I’m not overly jazzed about it, it’s one of those situations where I was “friends” with him because it was more conducive to overall peace in the workplace than to not be.  And in fairness, he has an amazing ability to coach and help you draw out solutions to your own issues.  The trouble is that he’s not overly trustworthy and he flips and flops and power trips. He texted me the other day and asked if I wanted to meet him for a drink to catch up.  And…I sort of do, if only out of curiosity to find out what’s going on in his life….and I know he wants the inside scoop on all that has gone on at my previous workplace.  So ya, I agreed to go.  And then I invited my hubby to meet me there when he gets off work because I won’t have time to make dinner and the pub is on his way home (it’s mere blocks from our house, too) and we like any opportunity to go there.  Yesterday when I texted Old Acquaintance to confirm we were still on for today, I also mentioned that I’d invited Ray to meet me there on his way home from work.  This means that the total amount of “catching up” time that we have is about an hour before Ray gets there.  And Old Acquaintance was annoyed.  I felt a bit bad because he’d invited me for this visit and he is coming all the way out to my neighborhood to meet up and I’ve gone and truncated the visit.  But then I gave my head a shake!  This whole thing makes me slightly uncomfortable anyway, I see Old Acquaintance less than once a year, we have a bit of a rocky past (in that he wanted to fire me during the 7 months that he was my boss) and to be honest?  I want to have dinner with my hubby at our favorite pub!  Why do I care so hard whether some nearly-random person from my past is upset with an adult decision that I’ve made?  So, instead of dreading the visit and feeling bad about anything, I’m going to give all the gossip he wants (what do I care, I don’t work there anymore) and then have a delicious meal with my man.

So, moving on.  Now that I’ve been back to the gym successfully for two weeks, I feel like it’s time to make things a bit more interesting.  Not stupidly difficult or obsessive or the way that I’ve been in the past.  No, I want some new things, things to make me excited and to get new “skills”.  So, below I’ve noted the workouts that I’m going to do for the next three weeks, three days a week (since that’s my commitment for now).

Day One

• 10 minute warmup jog
• 1000m row
• BW – 3 x 20 – sprinters (that’s not what they’re called….I think they’re called mountain climbs but it uses the pre-sprint posture)
• BW – 3 x 10 plies (this is a type of squat fm ballet….basically heels together, toes pointed out, butt tucked under (instead of bum way back like a normal squat)
• BW – 3 x 15 two leg donkey kicks
• 3 x 10 machine ham curls
• 3 x 10 machine leg press
• 3 x 10 machine inner thigh press
• ABDOMINALS (I’ve been using the gym’s ab machine circuit and it just brutalizes my abs, I love it!)

Day Two

• 25 minute treadmill sprint program (smthg I found online)
• 3 x 10 machine lat pulldowns)
• 3 x 10 dumbell tricep kickbacks
• 3 x 10 reverse barbell curl
• 3 x 10 machine seated rows
• 3 x 10 dumbell shoulder raise
• ABDOMINALS

Day Three

• Mile-row-mile (this is basically run a mile as quick as possible, get off and row 2000M as quick as possible and then get back on and run another mile.  It’s one of my favourite things…that I also hate!)
• 3 x 15 weight-plate squat press
• 3 x 8 weight-plate lunges (these lunges and squats last Friday nearly crippled me….in the best possible way, I could barely get out of bed on Saturday morning!)
• ABDOMINALS

So there it is….three weeks of workouts which pretty much brings me through my birthday and just about onto Christmas’s doorstep.  It’s only 3 days per week and each workout is just a little over 85 minutes including warmup & stretching. I’m excited about it, I’m looking forward to trying some new things and working out in a slightly different way than I have before.  I have treadmill sprints combined with an upper body day, some dynamic full body moves combined with a lower body day and then a good met-con combined with some full body exercises.  And……because I’ve always lamented that I’ve never had abs, I’ll be doing abdominals every visit! Seems dumb in hindsight that I would complain about not having abs when I have never, not one time, ever concentrated any significant effort on them!

Maybe in the New Year, depending on making sure that I maintain the nice balance that I’m cultivating here, I might try one of the programs that’s out there online, maybe Jamie Eason’s Live Fit program (minus the crackpot, completely fat free nutrition plan).

I think it is possible, with a bit of practice to maintain calm and balance while also wanting improvement and success.  I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. So I’ll work hard at the gym every time I go….and then leave it there.  Won and done.  And I’m going to make sure to re-evaluate regularly to make sure….because this whole “balanced life” thing is all new to me, remember?