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Fabric Covered Binders

Since I'm not able to do my three hour workouts this month, I've decided to tackle some of the 2016 Personal Challenges . This one w...

Monday, March 11, 2013

I Bring The Pain

So, I've always been a bit of a task master, if only in my mind.  I yell at myself sometimes:  MoveMoveMove!  Sometimes I listen...  Sometimes I roll my eyes like a teenager and acknowledge that the Drill Instructor tactic is annoying.  This soldier don't play that.  Also, I'm not a soldier.

A few years ago, some friends and I decided to start working out and try to embarrass the local teens with our rockin' beach bods.  Since I was a workout queen beforehand, the roles of 'exercise picker' and 'yeller' went to me.  I had the experience to know that if you wanted to spot reduce, your only solution was to go under the knife...otherwise, do what I say!  Do it!  Do it!  No whining!  *giggle*

Oops.  I'm reliving some moments...

Anyway, recently I made a deal with my sister to do the Insanity challenge for 63 days.  I'm currently on day 29, and this, people, is why I spend my day sleeping instead of blogging.  Shaun T yells at me daily and I don't have the energy to yell back.  I do whisper my hate to him, and I do this more than once per workout.  I can't deny the results, though.  I also can't deny that I can now put  myself in the position of my friends from those days past.  There is a love/hate relationship with that freak yelling at you to do things that make you sweat and breathe with a whine.  You hate them for how they make you feel, but then you love them for how you look or perform later.

So, in the spirit of this realization, I'm changing my tactic, at least with one person!  I'm training with a buddy to run a half-marathon, and she's seeing a nicer trainer.  I encourage her and don't employ the yell/giggle combo.  The fact that we're starting our training a year ahead helps.  We're doing all kinds of things, including high knees and butt kickers, and after the kinder (see fingers on the left) took photos of me doing those thing this morning, I now understand why my friends refuse to do them when they see cars coming down the road.  I look like a dork. Officially.  Judge for yourself...

Butt Kickers.  I refuse to post my High Knees pics as I surpassed 'dork' and went straight into 'freak' mode.
See, I now also have a new appreciation for those models who run and look normal for photos.  I'm learning something new every day.  What did you learn today?  This week?

Monday, February 11, 2013

An Empty Box

I'm not proud about this...but I will try to explain myself.

So...for the last few months, my diet has consisted mainly of apples and eggs.  Apples and eggs, apples and eggs.  Not together, you see.  I ate just those two things, in random moments and prepared various ways.  The apple ways:  sauced, whole, sliced.  The egg ways:  scrambled, over-easy, hard-boiled.  I added spoonfuls of hazelnut spread to the diet mix for fun, since my body could handle it.  Yay!

Christmas came along and I got sick with 'the funk.'  'The Funk' was ruthless and mean, and I don't think I ate for a few days.  I was miserable and whiny.  Anybody else feel the need to whine a little when you have the flu, even if you're alone in the house?  I verified this with a neighbor, so I'm pretty sure this is universal.  She just whines.  I have a long, drawn-out 'nooooooo' to offer up to the flu gods.  I whined a lot when my eyeballs were hot.

Let's get to the empty box, shall we?

One fine day, the husband was going to the store and asked if I wanted anything.  I said I wanted junk, because I was sick and tired of eggs, apples and nothing!  He brought me a box of pure sugar and sin, and this is how I opened it:
See how not proud I was, ripping the poor box open?  I was a beast!  I had no self-control, inhaling the entire box in three days!  Maybe two...  I forget.  Okay, I didn't inhale the box, since I was able to photograph the evidence of my loss of control.  The fact remains:  This chick barely unwrapped these wicked nuggets before gulping them down.  

After that episode -- which I thoroughly enjoyed, by the way -- I re-kicked junk out of my life.  I'm convinced Oatmeal Creme Pies give me bug-eyes...and make me grind my teeth.

Two questions:  Do you do funny stuff when you're sick, and is there a food that makes you bug-eyed?

Monday, February 4, 2013

A Jar Full of Honey

One of my friends is a beekeeper.  He's very zen and witty, but a wild man on a djembe.  It's the truth.

Another friend and I decided to get our hands dirty [and sticky] and help him jar some honey.  It was a unique experience, topped off with a knock to the head (a box literally fell on my head -- and I won't go into the details, but I will say that I feel a slight bit smarter these days because of it.  Sense restored, people).

My friend and I are giggly girls anyway, but get us near something interesting, and we turn into guffawing goofballs.  After we cleaned up from a busy afternoon, we decided to take lovely pics of me fakely filling up a honey jar.  Check out my fabulously snooty little finger sticking out, too.
I like the honey, and my beekeeper friend sells it at a local farmer's market.  I interviewed him, or tried to, a few months back and will eventually post it.  I'm horrible at interviews.  I'm not a roving reporter -- I'm a Southern girl with a drawl...and that's a fact, y'all.  I have more interview ideas, so I guess I'd better improve on that front.  Any pointers?  Tips?

Anyway, if there is a take-away point to this post, it's that raw, unfiltered honey is the way to go.  Enjoy!

Monday, January 28, 2013

Ten At A Time

There's just something magical about finding something you forgot about, isn't there?  Well, most of the time, anyway.  Money in a coat you haven't worn for almost a year is fabulous.  A potato in the back the pantry?  Not so much...

The beginning of the year brought a realization that, to be honest, has been 'realized' by me for a while:  I have way too much paper in this house.  I set a goal to rid myself of just about as much paper as would make a local move easier, and that translates to...all of it.  Okay, that's ridiculous, because I still need post-it notes and books -- but the books are a whole 'nother issue.

But I digress...

While I was searching one particular drawer for paper to purge, I came across treasure:  nail polish!  Here is a small sample of the awesomeness contained in that drawer!
As most of us know, nail polish can turn on us at various times, so I sidetracked myself and decided to have a weekly test of at least ten polishes, just to see if they are still viable products.  This proved very exciting for the kinder (painted toenails!!), and this is the result of week one:
Kinder painted all of these tootsies, so the quality is not up to spa standards, but I think it looks really great, and the rainbow pattern on the right would have been perfect if the purple polish had actually looked purple.  The result this week is that we are keeping all the polish we tried.  Next week, we'll try pink polishes, and apparently, that's lame. This isn't the '80's.  Like, gag me.

Any resolutions out there that involve throwing a bunch of stuff out?

Monday, January 21, 2013

Is This It?!

Photo by zacchaeus
I had an epiphany the other day.  I was thinking about what I wanted to learn this year, and it struck me, as a question:  Is this my mid-life crisis?  Am I taking classes instead of buying a new car and getting nipped and tucked?  Or, am I getting back to what I love after taking a break?
Photo by Dominic Morel
I am currently taking drumming lessons, which is a blast.  Music has been a part of my life since I was little, so, although the drum never was (save for the pencil-and-table solo during a random Journey song), it's still music.  Will I keep going until I have knowledge and abilities on a wall full of percussion instruments?  Well, I'd be the coolest mid-lifer in town, wouldn't I?  Mouth Harp, anyone?  Skills, y'all.

Next on the agenda is a whole array of lessons:  sewing, jewelry-making, drawing (something I'm fairly good at, from a historical point of view), photography, welding, sculpture, etc.  All of these things will perhaps turn me into a busy little mama, and that's great, because I currently feel like I'm not doing anything.  I don't know that I would expect fame and fortune from learning to sew, but I want to channel my creativity -- and I do have it.

What are some of the things you want to learn right now?

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Step In a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day

Today is a day set aside for splashing friends if they happen to get close enough to your puddle.  I sometimes take things literally, so I shake my head when I see 'step in a puddle' as you really can't splash anyone when you step into a puddle.  You have to stomp, either with one clown foot or with two feet together, combining the latter with a cute sideways hop.  Dudes cannot be cute, so you are left with the clown foot method.  Good luck with that...

Awaiting rain
Sadly, we have no puddles about.  I think this day would be more fun than Talk Like a Pirate Day (Septemberrrr 19th), if we had puddles.  There should be a movement where we ask for funding for a puddle park.  That would be a fairly easy park to build -- wavy concrete and retracting sprinkler heads, and probably some additive to prevent slips, because someone always has to run on wet concrete, don't they?

On another note entirely, avoid this 'funk' that has invaded this nation.  I was down for two weeks, and I'm still coughing.  I'm getting a great ab workout, however, so there is a bright side.