I like to move it, move it

Did some shoveling yesterday (thank goddess for our neighbor and his snowblower!) and we did go sledding. What a blast, and what a good workout. I climbed the hill at least half-a-dozen times.

Had made vegan shepherd's pie for dinner - it was a tad dry. Need to get a good vegan recipe for gravy ;-)

I premade dinner for tonight. Whole wheat fusilli (corkscrews) with pumpkin sage sauce, using rice milk instead of cream. I hope the kids eat it!

No yoga tonight - haircuts instead. Hope to get elliptin' tomorrow night. Have lunch offsite today, so hoping they have a veggie option...

Random thoughts from my kwazy head

1. Snow days rock! Can't wait to sled with the kids and come in for hot cocoa. Made with rice milk and dairy-free chocolate, of course.

2. Veganism. It's becoming easier, but I'm very aware of how much dairy/egg "sneaks" in, especially when eating out. Hence, I need to eat out less! Save $$! My family is slowly accepting this "experiment". My bf's mother wasn't too upset the other night when we went for fish casserole for bf's bday, but I'm sure she wasn't pleased since she made so much of the casserole. I decided to call it an experiment, that way if I go back to vegetarian or meat, it won't be so difficult to explain myself. Right now, it's actually easier to explain that it's an experiment instead of set in stone - people don't seem to be disapproving of it. Maybe they wouldn't anyway. I do get the protein question. Lots of beans and nuts/seeds, my friends.

3. Tofu. *sigh* I don't think I can avoid it. I can only eat so many beans/nuts/seeds, har har har. I bought soy creamer instead of half/half. I hate the difference! Maybe this will help me get off coffee more quickly. Maybe not.

4. Bf & VD (no, he didn't give me one - I'm referring to Valentine's Day) - he's very sweet. I was woken up at 5:45 by the automatic phone call broadcast that school was cancelled, and got up to use the facilities, and the bf also woke up (from the call), so he rushed into the bathroom with me and presented the package for my valentine's day gift - a tinkerbell comforter! It was still in the dryer - he didn't want me to see it, just wanted to wash/dry it and then put it on me while I was sleeping. So thoughtful! And no chocolate, 'cause I'm vegan and don't like dark chocolate. Very sweet. Oh, and skeleton hand gloves. I'm a goth poser at 36, what can I say?

5. Went to yoga. Have been thinking off and on that I was much more flexible at Kriplau last year, and am now wondering if it had to do with the lovely fact that I was in the hot tub whirlpool EVERY DAY. What glorious bliss! I swear it had something to do with keeping me limber (not to mention all the yoga, bodywork, and danskinetics (fun dancing))....I miss it. We did another headstand prep/wall-assisted last night, very fun!

6. Vegan, part II. I love how calm I feel about my choice to try this eating style out. There's no rush, no desperation to lose weight by it, plenty of forgiveness around not being perfect. I love the way I am being with myself - forgiving, loving, curious, willing to try new things, willing to set aside previous beliefs and assumptions about myself. I'm almost ready to try brussels sprouts!!! Long story short, my mom made them when we were kids, probably didn't flavor them in any way since we didn't have them at all before, and then made me sit at the table until I ate them all, at which point they were probably cold. Ick. Very mommy dearest, eh? *snort*

7. Weight-wise, I am still around 194-195, but not panicking yet. Feeling much more toned, just need to do cardio more often. This is my life, not a 12-week plan.

Still here!

Food: ok, could be worse, could be better

Vitamins/iron: pretty good, actually, except for the evening Floradil

Water: pretty good, and doing the Feb. challenge helps

Exercise: off/on - got to yoga Saturday (OMGoddess, I forgot how intense that day's instructor is!!!!) and Sunday but not yesterday. Plan to go tonight before we get buried in snow. If we get buried, most likely getting exercise shoveling and probably sledding with the kiddies.

Food tracking: um, gee, not really happening. Yet.

Toe-ing the line

Yeah, I'm pushing it today, and pushed it last night, with eating. French fries, pizza, a chocolate chip cookie, chocolate bar today and too much coffee. WTF is up, hmmmm?

No exercise since Tuesday, and I have TOM so don't feel like exercising tonight. Need to meet the kids' dad halfway and back (almost 90 minutes roundtrip), so I will have to decide what's important to me.

I need to get some practice in for school, or I'm wasting my time and money. I have 2 scheduled for tomorrow, but couldn't get my roaster pan since waldoworld didn't HAVE them, WTF???? I may have to improvise w/my crock pot in the meantime. That's professional, eh? Maybe I can make some Hot Stone soup, hardee-frickin-har.

At least my water intake has been fairly consistent, mostly because of the Feb. challenge. Whatever it takes!

Slacker

That's me. I haven't done *squat* for school homework/practice hours yet. Methinks I am perhaps afraid of having this be the final push and then I can be certified. Which means I need to then find a part-time job. Which is scary and exhilarating and more demands on my time, not to mention my ticket for getting out of my current career. It's hard to be a perfectionistic overachiever and then not do any of the work for my class, and somehow not look bad in front of my classmates/teacher...

I did go to yoga last night, yeah! My tight hamstrings annoy the hell out of me. At least my hips are kinda loose.

And I made a healthy dinner for the fam/me. Red beans with kale, butternut squash cubes, and sason (sp?), which is a spanish word for the sauce my ex-mother-in-law adds to almost everything. Surprisingly, and happily, it's "all natural". You take onions, fresh cilantro, garlic, green peppers, and a little water, and blend it up in a blender. Store in a glass jar (and it will expand if kept for too long - I don't know if everything ferments naturally and builds up pressure) in the fridge, and I usually use a generous glop of it when I'm cooking beans, etc.

I'm glad to be backing away from the precipice of backsliding into trouble with my eating/self-care. It's not a fun place to be, and I'm proud of recognizing and hopefully turning away.

Feb. challenge - 4 glasses/water/day....down to the wire, before bed last night, but I did it!

I need to get started on today's water. I usually drink a bunch during school, which I have tonight. I also need to get to the grocery store and stock up on fruits & veggies!

Blip

I can feel myself slipping into "who cares" mode, so I need to snap out of it before I backslide full tilt into no-self-care-let's-binge-instead mode.

Have some ideas about why, but can't go into them here.

Vegged out on couch last night, haven't been to yoga since last week. Need to go tonight!

Food not actually terrible, just too many cookies and bowls of cereal.

Ok, moving forward.

ZZZ

Well, I slept yesterday away. I definitely overdid it on Saturday night - 3 drinks and numerous clove ciggies. I wonder if my body is more sensitive to those now that I am eating better and not drinking/smoking much (not that I ever did, but even once/twice a month vs. more than a month in-between)? Either that, or I'm coming down with something, although I don't feel "bad" in any other sense.

I keep "re"learning that I can't have trigger foods present in the house, or I eat them until they're gone. Case in point, a whole bag of n3wman ging3r cookies gone from Friday to this morning :-(

Other than the occasional egg/dairy ingredient, I've been doing pretty well being meat-free. I made that yummy casserole previously mentioned, and it was delish! The bf was upset when I had to divvy it out for my lunches this week -he was hoping for more. That's a good sign, and clearly I should make it again. I should also try making it with son-friendly beans (no lentils or pigeon peas) and force-feed it to the kids in small doses. Actually, they're pretty good about eating their veggies, but they only willingly eat a limited selection (broccoli, baby carrots - cooked, different colored peppers, cukes, cooked sweet potato) - not that I'm complaining.

It's that time again for me - I need to start tracking my food. I'm tracking my water this month (4 glasses/day, which I have done since 2/1 except for yesterday, when I probably needed it the most!) over at Pair Up/Pare Down for their February Challenge. I originally used FitDay for my food tracking, then tried out SparkPeople. Until I get the core foods in there, it's a PITA to record food (I guess that's true of any online db). For a time, I was just tracking in a little notebook that I had, but it wasn't tracking calories/protein etc.

Informally for today: no vitamin/iron (oopsies!); breakfast was shr3dded something-or-others with almond milk, coffee with agave nectar & 1/2 & 1/2. 2 oranges for snack. 2 glasses of water already! Oh, and the last cookie. Lunch is planned as a small avocado w/some nori granules & pepper, and my lentil/pumpkin/veggie casserole. Cl1f bar for afternoon snack. Dinner is mixed greens with something, I haven't figured that out yet.

Ahh, that's better!

My house is returning to normalcy. We threw out the 5+ bags of trash generated by my son's room cleanup, in addition to a huge box filled with cardboard of various shapes and sizes, again from my son's room. Plus we have 6 trashbags ready for donating. *whew*! We're still not completely done, but I'd say we're 95% there. I hope he's doing ok with it - it was a tough weekend.

I didn't exercise last night, but I didn't think I would be anyway. My left thigh muscle (despite my A&P, I can't figure out which muscle it is) was very twinge-y when I walked - I was kinda limping around the house last night. So maybe it was good to take a night off. Tonight I plan to ellipt in the usually-empty-gym-thank-goddess and lift some weights.

Talked with the ex-husband - nicely done. Talked with the daughter - also nicely done, and she even was more pleasant to her bro, nicely done!!! Had some chopped avocado & mango w/S&P and a little lemon juice for dinner, very yummy! I chopped up my remaining collard greens/eggplant/zucchini/parsnips, sauteed them with some lentils and a LOT of curry powder (and some garam masala), threw 'em in an oiled baking dish, and topped with pumpkin-from-a-can mixed with a lot more curry, sprinkled some pumpkin & sunflower seeds on top, and baked for 30 minutes. Adapted this from Healthy Bites. Can't wait to try it tonight!

Weekend plans - another insane one: plan to workout tomorrow late morning/early afternoon (ellipt/lift) and yoga on Sunday. I also need to get to a beach and harvest my hot stone massage stones, poor xena!

In a mood

And not a good one! Actually, I feel better than I did this morning. The daughter doesn't really speak very nicely to the son (he's younger than she), and it really gets on my nerves. Despite numerous attempts to correct this behavior, she continues to do it. It brings up all kinds of crap about my relationship with my younger sister, who was/is the more volatile of the two of us. I was the peacekeeper and wouldn't confront her about the way she treated me, which wasn't very nice, and I got to the point of having a wariness (sp?)/almost fear of her. You never knew when she was gonna blow. Anyway, I know that is part of the reason it pisses me off when my own kid is doing it, although she is nowhere near as volatile, just condescending. Not to mention that this is not how we treat other human beings.

Any-hoo, I ended up eating about 7 cookies for breakfast, since I didn't have time to lecture her yet again, and although I knew I was doing it, didn't stop. However, I decided that I need to sit down with her and talk about what it was like for me to be on the receiving end of the nastiness growing up, and the damage it did to my relationship with my sister; to consider how her brother feels when she treats him that way. I hope it helps.

I also need to have an unpleasant conversation with her dad (unrelated, but similar in nature), so I know that's eating at me too, and I'm choosing to eat to numb it.

I made coffee, and felt like either crying or going back to bed or sitting on the couch and vegging out. I pulled it together and showered/dressed, and had no other breakfast. I almost forgot my fruit on the way out, trying to juggle everything I was carrying, and I managed to get another paper cut (got one yesterday on my thumb that was killer!) and knock something off the baker's rack. GRRR!

I tried to get perspective as I was driving to work, since this other stuff was pretty silly. But the feelings aren't, and I cannot continue to ignore them. Yes, I've made great progress over the years, but there is still more to learn.

I think I'm going to take the night off exercising since my house is trashed, we have 4 different school/sport/scout activities converging at once, and I haven't done a single practice hour of massage. Not to mention I have no idea what I'm making for dinner, and meat is sounding so good today. I'll see how I feel, but I'm thinking that I need some inner peace restored before I go off track completely.