Ah, Winter

I love winter, the snow on the ground is beautiful,
I just need to remember how to stay warm

Time to get out the long underwear and thick socks,
Time for footy pajamas (I do love those!),
hot tea, long workouts,
baking in the oven more,
flannel sheets under thick comforters.
A warm kitty-cat on my lap..

Thanksgiving Salad & Workout

One thing I am extremely thankful for this Thanksgiving is my health.

This time last year I was at least 20 pounds, maybe 30 pounds heavier.   The year before that, even more so.  I will no longer use the Holidays as an excuse to become unhealthy.

I had salad and fruit for my Thanksgiving meal, and it was delicious.  I might have eaten just a slice too much watermelon, though!  Now I am thinking about my workout tonight.  Since I just started Dr. Fuhrman's 6 week holiday challenge, I thought about maybe doing Jillian Michael's Ripped in 30 dvd all the way through, but having knee issues,  I find some of the exercises hard on my knees when doing them every single day.  I am thinking about alternating "Ripped in 30" with 6 week 6 pack every other day and doing some yoga either afterwards or in the morning.  I love the cardio, but I also love the stretch that yoga gives me, especially on my leg muscles.

Soapbox:

I find that many people often don't care enough about their health to throw away their unhealthy habits.  Maybe it is because they don't think they are worthy enough to live the wonderful, healthy life they should be living.  I know this may have been the case for me, the more weight I gained the less I cared about my appearance.  I dressed sloppier, and continued to eat junk.  I guess one day I just woke up, looked in the mirror and quit lying to myself.  I would say, "it's so hard to lose weight", "I don't know how".

There IS a quick fix to losing weight.  It doesn't come in expensive pills and surgeries.  It comes in eating healthy and exercising.  It comes from not lying to yourself about what foods are healthy.  It comes from educating yourself about eating healthy, and it comes from living that life day in and day out.  Sure, it means you can't have a candy bar every time you go through the check-out line at the grocery store.  But its worth it, I am worth it, you are worth it.

Dr. Fuhrman's Challenge

Its the holidays again and Dr. Fuhrman is hosting his 6 week Holiday Challenge.

Basically the challenge is to eat healthy for these 6 weeks during the Holidays.  You can check out more about the challenge at his website: http://www.drfuhrman.com/events/holiday-challenge/

I have already been eating this way, but joining Dr. F's Challenge is going to help keep me on the straight and narrow.  I also love being able to join up on his website and forums to get advice, give advice and converse with others that are making healthy change in their lives, as I normally can't afford the subscription right now.  And the recipes are wonderful!

Here's to health!

Don't forget the meaning of the Holidays... of Life.

As this holiday season is upon us, 

I realize, I would like to make this a different sort of Holiday season, a non-stressful one.

Amidst all of the hustle and bustle there is something more important.. the FUN!

It is easy to get caught up in the day to day grind.  Sometimes the holidays bring extra worries of finding the right present and putting out the decorations, sending out christmas cards.  

I say, forget these things if they are not fun!  Do something fun this holiday season!  

When I was a child I loved decorating for Christmas with all the various Christmassy nic-nacs.  I also enjoyed watching all of the popular Christmas shows.  It was, indeed a fun, time.  My favorite decoration were the thin metal angels that dangled around in a carousel above a set of candles, circling them when lit.  Mom would put old Christmas records on the "Hi-Fi"and we would put all the different decorations out on the end tables and various surrounding furniture and the fire mantel. 

I remember waking up Christmas morning,  the stockings were full and I could see toys sticking out the top, but I knew I wasn't supposed to touch anything until everyone was up and ready.  The wait before opening presents was excruciatingly long, particularly when we didn't go to midnight christmas church the night before, forcing us to wait until after morning church to open presents.  I could never fully understand why it was so important to ruin a fine Christmas morning with something like boring old church, anyway.

This Christmas I'm not going to worry about the perfect gifts, I am going to put out a few more decorations (inside, I don't like to spend a lot of time in the cold). I'm not going to let the shopping crowds stress me out, I will try to smile more often, I will take 11 straight days off work, I'll dance in footy pajamas and I promise I won't ever go to church.  I will make sure to enjoy spending time with my family, however, on these fine holidays that come around and remind us to "let your spirit be light".  

Kitty Cat Bath

Kitty cat bathing,

One leg raised in the air,  

Tongue smack,

Jingle collar,

Content.

What do I want with 90 Meat Sticks!?!

My son is in Kindergarten.

I recently learned that they have a wrestling league for the youth in our area.

There aren't a lot of sports and activities for 5 year old children so we thought it might be a good idea to get my son active and doing something that might be fun for him too.

So, we went to the wrestling sign up meeting at one of the school's libraries.  

What a culture shock!

We walked in (My husband, my son, and myself) and were greeted and handed paperwork.

There were several parents there; one of them was wearing a WWF Wrestling T-Shirt.  

We sat down to fill out the paperwork and a high school girl comes over and hands us 3 boxes of meat sticks (similar to Slim Jims) for a fundraiser.  I am a strict vegetarian, therefore an instant sense of panic overcame me and I said, "um, I don't think I can sell those, I am a strict vegetarian", to which the girl replied in a dismissive tone, "oh, just take them to work".  I looked at my husband, then I looked at the meat sticks, then I looked at my son sitting there looking a little clueless about the whole situation and I said, "Are you sure you want to do this?".  He said passively, "Yeah, sure".  The next table over, there was a two year old girl crying and a father saying in a overly macho voice, "what are you crying for, do you see anyone else here crying?".  As I was reading my son the rules on the sign up sheet about the 4 day a week training schedule and what is expected, I could tell he wasn't paying attention.  I looked at the meat sticks again, and then looked back at my husband, who was looking annoyed. We heard the meat stick girl giving someone their meat stick fundraiser as she was saying, "they are non-returnable".  My husband and I looked at each other again and he said, "do we want to be stuck with these meat sticks, especially changes his mind in a couple weeks and doesn't want to do this anymore?". "No", I replied immediately, "I am not paying $90 for Meat Sticks!".  I turned to my son and said, "you know what, why don't we do this when you are older and understand it better".  He looked a little upset, but not devastated, after all, earlier he didn't want to come to the meeting because he wanted to play instead, how easy is it going to be to get him to all the practices?  "I think you can make a more informed decision in a year or two", I said, "besides, I am not sure how well you will fit in here".  

I had my husband return the meat sticks and tell them we changed our minds.

I was thinking "you know your a redneck when..."  you have Meat Sticks as your sport fundraiser.   

The Mix Tape

My car and my husband's car are both in the shop.  Because of this, we have been driving my mother-in-laws car.  Its a 1992 car (but only has 120,000 miles on it) and comes fully equipped with am/fm and cassette player. I like having my own choice of music to play in my car, so, finally, this morning I decided to grab a cassette tape I had seen in a jewelry box.  I grabbed the tape on my way out the car, and held my breath as I stuck it into the tape slot.  I had no idea if the cassette player or this old tape even worked.  I immediately pushed rewind to wind the tape to the beginning, as it looked left somewhere in the middle.  After it finally rewound, the tape made a funny chipmunky-scratchy sound, so my finger shot out to the eject button.  Phew, the tape popped out!  It looked okay, so I thought I would give it one more try. TADA!, Jim Morrison's voice sang "Come on Baby Light My Fire".. WOOHOO!

I was off down the road and down memory lane.  I remember this mix tape, a construct of two Twenty-Something girls that hadn't quite found the love they were looking for.  My best friend and I listened to this tape A LOT.  We would listen to it quite often while we worked out with our "Body by Jake" Ab machine, "Body By Jake" Thigh Machine, stepper, hula hoop, twist board rotation.  We called it the "sexy tape", primarily, because of the Paula Cole song "Feelin' Love".  If I recall, it was constructed to play from beginning to end like a story that starts with longing and desire and ends with, well, conquest, I guess.

Since I haven't had a LOT of driving to do today I am only through side one of the tape.  It's in the real lovey mushy section right now.  Though we used songs from different time periods, there are a lot of mid-late 90's songs in there, so the tape is dated.  I can also tell we really wanted to put one Phish song on it because there is a very misplaced "Water in the Sky".

My husband and I were discussing the lost art of the mix-tape.  Though it is easier to make a CD/MP3 mix on the computer, anymore, there was this proud feeling of accomplishment that came with the time and effort of a mix tape.  You had to listen to all the songs while you made it, pause the tape and wait for the perfect time to un-pause it.  I remember the CD/Cassette recorder that we made the tape on, I remember our deliberations on the ensemble, and the boy, girl, boy, girl song fashion.  So far, it is still a very enjoyable tape!