The Rural Princess

Wedding, work, sushi, shopping and steak.  That about wraps up Saturday.  Spent the morning in the Green Chair, well deserved after last week’s chaos, then picked up my 10 year old niece and hit the road to Portland.  We spent a few hours in my office, stopping first at Starbucks for some frapuccino fuel.  I worked while she took on her first task as an intern and totally rocked the reorganization of my bookshelves and filing.

When deciding where to go for a late lunch she immediately chose sushi.  I love that my niece is fearless when it comes to trying food and has decided that sushi is one of her very favorite foods.

We decided on Fuji in the Old Port so we could do some after sushi-shopping and hit Standard Baking all in one trip.

We shared a spicy tuna rolls, cucumber/avocado rolls and salmon/avocado rolls (her pick!).  Jordyn declared it delicious and she commented that she would rather have sushi than McDonalds.  I LOVE that I am able to help her discover real food she loves.  She also had a Shirley Temple, I had a sip and its sweet grenadine mixed with gingerale reminded me of being 10 years old and going out to grown-up restaurants with my Dad.

After lunch we walked the Old Port, watched tourists and finally found ourselves at Standard Baking.  Lucky for us the baguettes were still plentiful and we walked out with a baguette, two granola bars, a chocolate cork and a chocolate chip cookie for Jordyn to share with her brother when she got home.

On the way home we tuned Ipod to some Lady Gaga & Katy Perry and sang at the top of our lungs all the way.  No formal exercise, no diet food, just a great day with my favorite 10 year old of all time.

Walking up this morning to cloudy skies and rain in the forecast made me immediately think about what I was going to cook up for the day.  The weather here has been so fantastic all summer that there hasn’t been a lot of incentive to turn on the oven or event he stove top.  But as the rain began to fall so did the ideas.

Tom kicked it all off with some great banana bread.  I followed up with some semi-healthy oatmeal raisin bars and threw a most delicious turkey stoup, spicy and rich with some stout beer, beans, and spinach.  Then I got really creative with Dad’s tomatoes.  I twisted a tomato pie into something even my tomato averse husband would enjoy.  Putting down some Arnold thins in an 8×8-baking dish I covered them up with a mixture of ricotta, cream cheese and shaved Parmesan.  Layered on some fresh basil, the tomatoes and then whole mozzarella.  It turned out to be delicious, gooey, warm and fresh tasting.  Tom loved it.

All this cooking was complemented with a 10-mile recumbent bike ride.  A personal high mileage.  I pedaled through the Real Housewives of DC and part of Flipping out.  I focused on increasing my speed and have been pedaling at a higher resistance these last couple of weeks in order to try to burn more calories.

I’m not excited to start the workweek by any means, but I am excited to get back into my normal Pure Movement schedule.  Last week was funky and the week before that was Pennsylvania with Pilates pushed to the side.

Now to sample an oatmeal raisin bar and get some rest before another Monday rockets me into this week.

I didn’t want to go but being there was all my fault.

Thursday morning Mom called me to try to cancel our standing Thursday evening Healing Yoga and dinner date.  She tried to beg off with excuses like having to change her sheets, organize her clothes and nap.  I countered her excuses with reminders of how stretching is good for her, the classes are paid for and a woman exactly her age was walking into Pilates right now and if she could do it so could Mom.  She hemmed and hawed and then I brought it home with a line she could not argue with  “Sometimes the things you want to do the least are the things you need to do the most.”  She paused for a moment, agreed and promised to meet me before class.

After I hung up I wondered why I fought so hard for her to attend class.  Part of it is that I truly believe that taking this class will help keep her healthy and active, part of it is that I really enjoy our time after class when we explore the Old Port looking for a new restaurant to try and sitting down chatting and sipping wine.  The class itself?  Well I don’t love healing yoga, but I do need healing yoga and sometimes I need to hear Luca tell me (and the class) that it is time to connect with myself and let go and listen to my body.

But Thursday I was wondering more why I didn’t accept her excuse and move on with my week of suckage.  Work is chaotic, I missed three pilates classes this week and had two Starbucks venti non-fat vanilla lattes this week.  So my week of fitness already felt shot and I was feeling pressure from all angles at work.

By the time Mom showed at the office at 4:45pm my day was whirring like a top set free on an ice rink.  I barely found time to put my yoga ensemble on and then found myself furiously typing missives and fielding phone calls right up until the moment  we began our walk over to the class with only 5 minutes to spare.

Walking into Pure always gives me a sense of calm, but this time I just felt anxiety over being late and regret over leaving work so early (5:25pm).  Seeing Leslie and Eva was a welcome relief but walking into the healing yoga room and seeing 8 other people sprawled on their mats brought me right back into my anxiety.

Mom and I found spots for our mats and began the stretching.  I found myself not wanting to close my eyes or stretch very much.  I was in essence fighting myself.  Luca’s words were great he always reminds us to let the outside go and listen to ourselves for the moments we are in the class, but my mind was saying “yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got 100 e-mails and 5 reports and 3 projects that need my attention, my heart/kidney meridian can stay closed today.

At one point Luca even called me out for not going as deep as I could.  I may have pouted in my mind but I grudgingly agreed and tried harder and in that moment that was an almost imperceptible change.  No, I wasn’t immediately able to do a complete forward fold or even touch my toes, and I certainly did not let go of all the crap rolling around in my head.  The change was slight but I just felt better about the stretch and more confident in my bodies ability to hold the stretch.  We ended the class with a lot of back work and my very favorite healing yoga pose – inversion!  I love the idea of my legs up in the air all floaty.

I left class feeling better than when I went in and one walk in the Old Port later and a glass of wine later I realized my own epiphany that the things I want to do the least are the things I need to do the most.

Epiphanies don’t have to be huge moments of change.  Sometimes they are tiny little moments of stretching followed by cold sips of wine shared on a warm Summer evening with my Mom.

So I’ve decided this business trip will be different.  Not the topics, the location (Pittsburgh, always Pittsburgh.  No not the normal detritus surrounding business travel, but different I mean in the food I eat, the choices I make.

Pittsburgh feels like a carb to me.  My business trips here typically revolve around breakfast at Panera, then the hunt for a healthy corporate shared lunch which always includes lots of bread and usually French fries on top of a salad and a dinner that must involve wine due to the stress of the day.

It is no wonder that every time I come to Pittsburgh I find myself with traveler’s tummy.  All those carbs in one place plus the weird eating times and items all conspire to tempt me far outside of my food zone.

I also find myself with work out woes. The hotel has an inadequate at best gym that has two treadmills and an old fashioned stair stepper and that is it.  There is a pool and I have spent time in its cool embrace, but I’d rather be able to get in a good workout without getting my hair wet.

I worked out last night on the treadmill and found myself able to walk at a faster speed than every before, however part of me thinks this is due to a malfunction on the treadmill.  It couldn’t be that I am more fit could it?  J  Tonight I worked through some Pilates moves, including the hundreds.  Earlier I made it my goal to walk all around the outlets we visited so there was some light (very light) cardio thrown in as well.

Back to the food… this trip I committed to taking a different approach to my food.

A couple of trips ago V made me start a healthy Pittsburgh tradition of hitting the grocery store for healthy snacks, bananas, seltzer, oatmeal.  I think it was her effort to stop me from whining to her about my stomach trauma and it does help.   This time I purchased my usual bananas but instead of buying a bunch of sugary granola bars and chocolate bars, I selected some Lara Bars and fruit for snacking and some Kashi Oatmeal and yogurt for homemade breakfasts – which keep me away from the Panera bagel selection.

So far my new plan is working ok, it is day 3 and while I have experienced the stomach trauma I have also been able to stay pretty trauma free.  Making my own breakfast and only purchasing a latte has made a big difference, I know exactly my calorie intake in the morning and I think that not filling up on bagel carbs has let me have more overall energy until lunch.  Lunch and dinner are all about portion control.  Tonight I had veggie sushi and an avocado salad and I feel good about it.  Room snacks include some snackwells, and Annie’s cheddar bunnies.

This food thing is always a work in progress.  My travel food has progressed this week, not perfect by any means but there were no French fry salads or Panera carb overload.

Wal-Mart Motivation

Here is a truth that anyone who has met me knows:          I am not a Wal-Mart girl.  I am most definitely a Target kind of a chick.  I like Target’s use of flattering lighting, placing a lovely appealing glow on all of the cute cheap-chic household goods and trendy tops.  I like to browse the bright, clean aisles pushing my festive red card ahead of me.  In contrast Wal-Mart always seems so dank and dusty to me and in Super-Wal-Mart I feel like I can hear the echoes of the cows and chickens lead to slaughter just to bring me more processed meat products.  I feel at home in Target.  In Wal-Mart I feel like a kid that escaped my hometown and is now a visitor in my processed past.

Despite my inner Wal-Mart displacement feelings which are only one of many reasons I avoid the place I found myself wandering the cavernous Super Wal-Mart in Scarborough the other night (purchasing snacks for my work-team and sports bras for me) and what I saw there just might  keep me visiting on a regular basis.

Let me say up front that I have no illusions about my body type, butt size or the amount of space I take up in any given situation.  However, I also know that I exercise more than the average American, have given up fast food, real soda and cheese nips and I can rock a truly lovely short-spine AND both my legs stay in the air during teaser.  I do not mock fat people I AM a fat person.  I do however judge because that is my nature.  I judge with empathy, but still I judge and the judgment is all related to how I feel about myself.

This trip to Wal-Mart was like walking through images of my past.  There were women who were so large they could barely push their carts between the giant tubs of frozen corn syrup ice cream and the sodium-ful hamburger helper aisle.  Their outfits were concealment chic – stretchy baggy sweats paired with a shapeless t-shirt that didn’t hang far enough to cover the stomach apron.  The ensemble colors were the strange colors of plus size clothing, just a little right of crayola and way left of anything in style.

Their carts overflowed with 20 ounce bottles of Pepsi and giant bags of salty potato goodness.  I found myself staring, not in horror but in my own fascination and understanding of their grocery choices and the feelings associated with placing those items in the cart.  It is a mix of delicious satisfaction of having the foods you literally feel addicted to piled in your cart and the equally strong shame at needing to put that food in the cart and ultimately into the body.

Watching their choices (yes I admit to following at a stalker-lite distance) helped me realize that every day I get up and decide to challenge myself by sweating a little and depriving myself of just one processed food moves me a tiny bit further away from a Wal-Mart cart full of ‘nips and Coke.

There was a time in my not so distant past when I had begun to think of myself as handicapped because of my size.  I avoided movie theatres, assessed chairs for sturdiness and arm rest width and at one point had to pay Peggy Lutz $400 for a dress because I could not fit into any ready to wear dress available for sale in the New England area plus size stores.  I keep that dress and sometimes I try it on to remind myself of how far I have come and to see how far I have to go.

Watching the Wal-Mart women made me sad for who I used to be and gave me the infusion of motivation I needed to keep moving toward who I want to be, a Target shopping, healthy, fit and processed food free (or ok, processed food light at least, I don’t think I can really live in a processed food free world) chick.

I always, always struggle with my food and I suspect I always will, but seeing others who are so deep in the struggle inspires me to keep facing down the reformer and conquering condor despite the fact that even with all of my enlightenment and sweat I am still 30 or so BMI points higher than the person next to me on the reformer.

Healthy is hard.  Processed apathy is easy.  I pick healthy.  I also pick Target but will stop by Wal-Mart every once in a while for my own reality check and check-in.

Reason for not blogging number 25:  my lack of a maid.  Seriously I walked through the door tonight to a funky smell in the kitchen and the remains of last night’s dinner still soaking in the sink.  As I limped up the stairs, slightly sore and completely tired from an amazing Pilates Mat workout I found myself confronted with yesterday’s discarded workout clothes and some of Tom’s gnarly cast-offs spilling out of the laundry room.

As I contemplated my less than perfect housekeeping abilities it dawned on me that I have been letting these pesky life details take over and become my excuse for not writing.  So here I sit typing away with Oliver snuggled in close and my workout clothes still decorating my laundry room floor.

This blog is important to me and I need to maneuver it to a higher place on to-do list.  It is for sure my accountability check, the place I can put down my healthy and not so healthy habits, where I can admit to the craving for McDonalds and the almost breath taking fear of never eating another cheese nip again.

So what has been blog worthy lately in my world?  There have been some fun new developments and a lot of the same old; same old… here are a few:

v     My Mother has her very own Pure Movement Class Card!  She is taking Thursday night healing yoga with me.  She is self-conscious about her lack of flexibility, but with every class she grows more comfortable.  As for me I am joining her and am trying very hard to enjoy healing yoga.  My body does not bend and conform to the healing yoga poses, most of the time I feel myself choking on my bulk.

v     Tree climbing, teasing and stomach massaging.  In other words lots of reformer classes which have lately been consistently full of Tree, Teaser and stomach massage (which as I have stated before has NOTHING to do with massage and EVERYTHING to do with my own inner awkward pain.

v     Bike Riding!  Yes, more bike riding is afoot.  Tom bought a bike and we rode together a few weeks ago.  This weekend we are scooping up our favorite little people and taking the bikes to the city to find a few good trails.

v     Parties!  This has been the summer of parties, super fun times spent with friends.  However that also means overindulgence in yummy foods.  I have been working on my calorie consumption but admit it has been tough, my friends happen to be fabulous cooks (Jason’s grilled pizza is a highlight of the Summer), and I enjoy my own brownies.  Sigh.  But on the party side it has been great to spend so much time with my peeps.

v     Counting Crows!  Tom surprised me with tickets to see the Counting Crows traveling medicine show at the South Shore Music circus last weekend.  The music circus in located in Cohasset, MA where I was a tiny girl and then spent most summers until I was 13 or so years old.  It was a great show and touring the area was a strange mix of catharsis and nostalgia, my memories of Cohasset are not all pleasant, but my weekend away with the husband was sublime.

So that is an update on all my happenings for now.  The clothes on the floor are now beginning to mock me and I do believe Oliver just shared a hairball.  So back to the details of everyday life for now.

I’ll be back soon, maybe with an all pictures post!  My big goal for the rest of 2010 is to master the consistent picture-taking thing and then uploading and using said pictures.

Sometimes you have to seek out inspiration and sometimes inspiration smacks you in the face.  I am definitely having a seeking moment as I can’t think of anything witty or amusing to write about and it is even a challenge to type coherent sentences.

I put the blame for my lack of creative energy squarely on corporate America and its creativity sucking ways.  It was a very long week full of the same false drama as every other week, but this time with a seminar twist.  I spent three days learning how to coach effectively and provide immediate feedback.  Good times, good times.  Useful information but taking 24 hours out of the workweek to gain this knowledge put me 24 hours behind all of my other tasks.

As I finished writing the above, an article I read somewhere on the Internet flashed through my head.  It was about our new culture of “overworked and overwhelmed.”  Everyone these days is lamenting over their stress level and the incredible amount of work THEY have to do every day.  The article struck home with me because I know I fall into this habit and I have blamed my Mother for doing the exact same thing for years!

My Mother (love her dearly) has always told me much she does and how she just has too many things on her plate.  If I mention how busy I am at work she chimes in with her own full plate story.  She is not alone though, over the last few years I find myself increasing the amount of times I complain about my workload and I hear the same story from colleagues and friends.  It feels like being overworked is the new corporate badge of honor.  A full to overflowing plate is justification that we are valued by our organization.  To have too much to do is a sign that we are productive, contributing members of the world.

Full plate syndrome feeds our ego and self-worth.  It also gives us handy excuses for the things we don’t really like to do – like exercise and choosing healthy, leafy foods for our meals.  The badge of busy gives us false permission to fall back on our full schedules as excuses for eating poorly, consuming too much caffeine and not making time to exercise.  “I’m too busy…” can also remove us from social obligations we dread.

My own Badge of Busy is my shield from writing more (and maybe discovering that I am not as clever as I think…) eating in a way that complements my exercise regimen, and reading good for me books.  It is a convenient excuse for not pursuing passions.  The badge keeps me from spending more time with my family and is my defense for spending most Sundays preparing for and dreading Monday.

Wearing the Badge of Busy doesn’t mean you aren’t busy, for me the start of the work week is like diving into an Olympic size pool; Monday morning I dive in and start swimming only to come up for air on Friday around 7pm.  I get having a full plate with foodstuffs dripping off the side – what I don’t get (and what I am working on) is making the busy who we are and letting the badge become our defining factor.

What will happen is we rip the badge away and dump some of the plate back into the chafing dish?  Will our value be lessened?  Will our corporate strategy grind to a halt?  Or will we just gain some mental (and physical) freedom?  Removing the badge means the sturdy excuse between us and eating right, working the body and facing those more challenging social obligations is gone.  No excuse not to put fingers to keypad and create something.  Ripping away the badge ultimately means taking back our selves gaining the opportunity to become something more than just a plate balancing badge wearer.

So my goal for this week is to rip a tiny corner of the badge and maybe for a few minutes put the plate down.  Just to see what happens when I let go for a few minutes.  Maybe that inspiration I seek will slap me in the face and maybe, just maybe I’ll end the week a little less stressed and with a little more leafy greens in my diet.

I have been thinking a lot about reinvention lately and this morning stumbled across an article on True/Slant by J. Maureen Henderson called Aging Sex bloggers and the art of Career Reinvention. I vehemently disagree with Henderson’s assertion that:

There may still be second acts in American lives, but that doesn’t mean you get to re-write the script during intermission. The show must go on – both for aging sex bloggers and for those of us who unwittingly set the course of our lives on not much more than a whim while filling out college applications at 17.

I believe we can rewrite the script, even during the middle of the play, but only if we are willing to break free from the confines of our comfort zone.

I’ve always been a big fan of change.  I love it, even the act of simply moving a piece of furniture is invigorating to me and gives me new perspective.  I believe wholeheartedly in reinvention and think that without it we become stagnate and smelly inside our comfort zones.

Growing up we all have a perception of who we are and what we will accomplish and then one day we wake up all grown up and sometimes realize that those goals aren’t ours anymore.  The person looking back at us isn’t the one we thought we would see.  Sometimes we wake up and realize that we lost sight of who we were meant to be and all that we wanted to accomplish.

So after waking up and realizing the life we created doesn’t quite fit why can’t we reinvent ourselves?  Reinvention at age 40 (or anytime) may not be as easy as changing your college major when you are 20 or packing up your futon and wardrobe at 24 but I do not believe it is impossible no matter what your age or circumstances.

Reinvention isn’t just about changing your career path or your hair color.  It is also about looking in the mirror and deciding that you are going to find your abs once and for all or trade in your snoopy slippers for running shoes.  It is;Being willing to surrender what you are for what you could become. (Anonymous)

There is really only one step to reinvention but it is a doozy of a step.  It is all about breaking out of the comfort zone.  Reinvention is impossible within our zone of comfort, real change happens when we break free and learn to live outside the familiar.  There is nothing easy about it.  Leaving behind the couch and cheese nips or a steady (and sometimes generous) paycheck is a daunting task.  Daunting but not impossible.

It takes effort and the payoff may not be what was expected, for example, I may not end up as America’s favorite author or on the cover of HEALTH magazine.  But the payoff does exist whether it is realizing that your body can run (or do short spine) and survive without cheese nips or that you can break free of your current career for one of your own making.

The sacrifice involved in reinvention and breaking out of the comfort zone may not seem worth it as you look outside the bubble of comfort so my advice is to start small, poke a tiny hole in your zone and stick a pinky through.  The simple act of poking through a little bit and sampling something new (whether it is a walk instead of another reality tv show or perusing college programs in your field of choice) is sometimes all you need to take that comfy chair you are sitting in and throw it through the zone and let the change embrace you.

Don’t worry – you can always retreat back to your comfort zone, repair the hole and continue on, the cheese nips will still be there.  But I bet you will be different and the old comfort zone won’t feel as good as the new comfort zone.  The point is reinvention is possible regardless of the act in your play.

Before I decided to find my inner athlete I had already discovered my inner root vegetable (as in couch potato)

Uprooted from the couch I discovered that pedaling is almost as much fun as Reality TV and playing Bejeweled

Is anyone every really ready for vacation to end?  I am not ready to open up my in-box tomorrow morning and start making decisions.  I am grateful to have this bonus Monday to rejuvenate and ready myself for the mayhem of back to work.

Vacation time this year did make me realize that I really do need to take more vacations in order to reconnect with the important things and not lose sight of who I am outside of an e-mail box and insurance contract.

This weekend was full of socializing and reconnecting with friends.  Dinner Friday night with K & her sister in law D was fun, we laughed and I sipped on a glass of white at her house and later a Pear Martini at the Main Street Bistro where we dined.  It was an ok dinner – nothing comparable to some of the better places in Portland, or even local great places like Krista’s, but it was decent and the service was good.  I ended up ordering roasted chicken with grilled peaches and poblano peppers, a dish that had a great description but sadly had only a couple of peaches and bits of poblano – I just felt that the description did not live up to the execution.  The chicken was moist though – but the accompanying roasted potatoes were overcooked.  K ordered her favorite bread pudding for dessert and it was so tasty I was inspired to find my own bread pudding and whipped some up on Saturday.  Mine ended up tasting a lot like French toast, but it was still definitely bread puddingesque and tasty.

Saturday night my BFF Jenn stopped by and we proceeded to catch up over a bottle (ok two…) of cold white wine and cheese nibbles.  It was a fun night, we started on the porch but were driven to the cool interior by the mosquitoes and big horseflies buzzing around our heads.  We ended the evening listening to the San Francisco playlist (my ipod playlist full of bands that played in and around San Francisco in the mid-90’s).  We hydrated like the 40-something chicks that we are in order not to feel the impact of the wine on Sunday morning.

Sunday brought a BBQ at John and Lee’s place where we got to meet Lee’s parents and catch up again with some old friends.  July is full of wonderful social events with friends, our summers are so short in Maine that everyone tends gather to enjoy the warm weather.

Tom and I kind of maybe, sort of, killed our neighbor’s plants so we hit Lowe’s earlier today to try to replace a couple.  They did not have the same kinds – this was confirmed by showing the Lowe’s worker the digital pictures Tom took of the plastic insert things – the poor plants were so brown and dry they were unrecognizable.  So instead of being able to replace her plants with the same, we bought her a couple different ones and will go on the hunt for the exact matches.  We only went one extra day without watering the plants, but the weather here has been hot and dry – with today peaking at 92 degrees at one point!  So the plants were fried like an egg on Sunday morning.

I also got into the planting groove – a whole new thing for me as I am NOT about dirt and have never been able to keep anything alive (except for tiny humans, I may be able to kill a cactus but I am quite talented at caring for children…).  I read an article that said mint; rosemary and lavender are great natural bug repellents so I wanted to get a few to put in pots.  Well, apparently mint is in short supply but rosemary and lavender are readily available.  I also picked up some sweet basil and this afternoon for the first time ever potted plants!  I am very hopeful they stay alive and will attempt to care for them per the instructions.  I still don’t think I will ever get into gardening, but I am happy to have some lovely smelling pots to walk by as I get into my car.

Now some green chair time and in a bit time to gather up all the items I need for corporate reentry.  Not only is it a return to work day but also it is a return to organized Pilates day.  I’m looking forward to picking up the quest to find my abs but I will miss the freedom to pursue the quest at my leisure.

Below are some pictures of my very talented potting skills (read loads of sarcasm here…).

Potted all by myself...

Vacation has been everything a vacation should be, lazy mornings, lots of coffee and snuggle time with the husband and Oliver.  Not to mention a fabulous side trip to Boston with the niece and nephew.  I know most people would not think that taking their niece and nephew to Boston to celebrate their 9^th anniversary the epitome of a romantic good time but it was the thing Tom and I decided we wanted to do most.

We have been promising the kids for a very long time that we would go down to the Aquarium and Science museum and it just seemed that this week was the perfect week to make good on the promise.

Our hotel was in a prime location, I love the Marriott chain and the Marriott Long Wharf did not disappoint.  From letting us check in early (11am!) to the Starbucks in the lobby it was perfect!  We could see the Aquarium from our room’s window and Fanueil Hall was only a short 5 minute walk away.

The kids had never spent the night in a hotel so they were super excited and had many questions about how a hotel works.  Nate asked the most obvious questions like:  Should I bring my own towels and what time does the hotel close? Jordyn is older and a bit more savvier so she didn’t have as many questions, but did spend quite a bit of time rhapsodizing about the pillows and the wonderful night’s sleep she had on the pillows (which it turns out are feather and so scrumptious that she is now plotting how to get these feather wonder-pillows for her own bed.

We enjoyed a family anniversary dinner at Kingfish – a Todd Oliver restaurant chain in the middle of Fanueil Hall Marketplace.  It was good, my Wasabi Tuna was delicious and the kids had fish and chips while Tom dined on steak and grilled asparagus.  I have to say though the highlight of my meal was the delicious gin, lime, mint w/a sugar rim Kirkland cocktail.  It was just what was needed after a full day of Aquarium, driving, hotel fun.

Later we all (even me!) donned swimsuits and hit the hotel pool and hottub.  Here is how I deal with being in a swimsuit:  I don’t think about what my body looks like and instead I focus on the wonderful feeling of water and buoyancy.  I love being in the water, gliding through the water with the power of my arms and legs, it is instantly cathartic to me and I always wonder why I don’t swim more often.  The kids loved the pool and were brave enough to paddle over to the 5ft area (under the super-paranoid eye of Auntie and Uncle!).  Tom and I took turns enjoying the hot tub.  We were all in bed and asleep by 10pm.  It was a big, big day in our world.

Yesterday we hit the Science Museum, Trader Joe’s, Kelly’s Roast Beef and then home!  So glad to pull into the driveway last night and crash on the couch for a few hours.  The kids are amazingly good but so incredibly tiring.  I am convinced that with having children you are also issued an energy boost.  I wonder if I can convince the powers that be to extend that boost to Aunties and Uncles ‘cause I need it.

We have semi-busy holiday weekend on tap.  Party on Sunday and Monday will be all about prepping for the return to work Tuesday.  I could be on vacation indefinitely – I am good at relaxing.  I do miss my Pilates schedule though and have been on what feels like an exercise vacation this week, only logging two workouts this week, Biking on Monday and a 20 minute Pilates class via exercise tv and some recumbent bike on Tuesday.

Now I must go get ready for cocktails and inner with K – kicking off the weekend in style we are having a girl’s night Friday.

Let the holiday weekend celebrations commence!

Vacation Breakfast, Strawberries andnot pictured, Standard Baking Granola Bar and Coffee

The thing about blogging is that you have to do it regularly in order to keep readers interested.  Right?  So my lack of blogging for almost two weeks is doing nothing to entice those of you who are reading this to keep coming back.  Now, I know you are patient with the lack of pictures thing, and the sometimes-poor editing skills and grammar errors, but no posts?  That is unforgivable!

I am not sure why no postings have happened.  My best excuses are these:

• Getting ready for vacation caused me to work unnatural work hours leaving my typing fingers tired and my mind all corporate cranky.
• The media class I’m taking has sucked up the remaining amount of time I have for blogging.
• My creativity took an early vacation leaving me feeling blocked like my tummy after too much cheddar.
• My tendonitis is acting up again and I am really starting to get peeved at myself and my lack of forward moving with my fitness and weight loss goals.
• Oliver (the wonder kitty) has been needier than usual and required more Mommy/kitty time than expected.

All of the above are excuses for sure but true none-the-less.

The good news is that this is the start of my vacation so there will be more time for posting and perhaps I can include photos with my posts.  I am also hoping for a resurgence in my creativity.  I spent the day writing a paper on the wasteland that is TV and as I typed I could feel some mojo return, but it feels very tenuous right now.  The only sure fire way to cure creative writer’s block is to write so that is what I shall do this week.

Exercise History for last week was funky at best.  I completely screwed up my schedule and had to switch Pilates times all over the place.  I ended up with Monday, Thursday & Friday classes and augmented with cardio on Tuesday and Wednesday with a bonus cardio on Monday night.  I guess it was a good exercise week until Saturday.  I did not formally exercise either Saturday or Sunday this weekend.  Not formally moving has made me feel out of sorts all day.

I can’t even write about my food, it is just all over the place.  At this point I’m looking at seeing a nutritionist for some tips on not feeling so hungry all the time.

Let’s round out this post with some positive news.  Vacation days 1 and 2 have been fabulous.  Sushi for lunch yesterday with the husband, niece and nephew, then a walk around the Old Port to check out the tourists and pick up dessert at Standard Baking, then later grilled pizza around the fire pit with great friends.  Today has been all about sanitizing the house, hanging out and watching repeats of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  A terrific start to a week without conference calls, corporate e-mails and the stress of making decisions.

Firepits are mesmerizing and are great excuses for a toasted marshmallow!