Starting from Here

Don’t have much for you today. The rutabagas turned out good–I can now add that veggie to my repertoire. Worked out with my trainer and did cardio, so I’m pleased with myself. And depending on which you want to go by (and I always go by the first-thing-in-the-morning-after-I-pee-and/or number 2), I have lost ten pounds since Saturday, so I’m pretty happy about that. Let’s see if I can keep the momentum going.

Ugh. Gotta go peel some parsnips before I completely pass out. Later everyone!

Whew! Almost didn’t make it here; spent most of the night chopping, peeling, cooking and putting away. Earlier this week I joined a food coop, so now I’m getting my veggies (organic, no less!) for way less than I’d get at the supermarket. I pick up every two weeks, and the variety is always different, so I get to try a bunch of different things for not a lot of cash.

This week, among all the usual suspects–apples, bananas, romaine lettuce, strawberries, blueberries, beets, sweet potatoes and spinach–I got rutabagas, beet greens, tangelos, parsnips and fennel, none of which I have tried before. For tomorrow’s meals, I sauteed a couple of chicken breasts, then wilted the beet greens with some garlic in a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I peeled and cubed the rutabagas, coated them in a cinnamon spice mix and drizzled them with a touch of olive oil, then roasted the cubes in the oven until tender. Normally I could tell you how that all tasted, but I was a good girl and didn’t have any before I cooled it all down and packed it up for tomorrow. I’ll let you know then if it was any good.

Tomorrow I will hunt down some fennel recipes and see what I can do with that. It has a nice licorice smell, so I hope I can find something that will work with that. So tired now; it’s been a long day. Thank God I did cardio this morning, ’cause I’m not feeling my elliptical right now, since my bed is calling to me. Good night all!

Hey, I’m back for like the second day in a row–didn’t think I would be, did ya? Well, let’s see how long I can keep this streak up; I’m trying to make this a habit, so hopefully it’ll stick. So what’s up?

Well, to start off my poetry challenge, I fired off three of them last night, two of them just before I drifted off to sleep. I had to force myself out of bed to capture them and everything. Normally I’m so lazy I just let them drift back into the ether than have to get up and catch them, but this time I had both a notebook and a pen handy, so I said ‘what the heck?’ I’m glad I did. I really like them. They’ll need some tweaking, but I am pleased with what I created. Twenty-nine (maybe more!) poems to go!

On the fitness front, had my workout today with my trainer today, and he finally noticed some progress. As is always the case with superfat chicks like me, you have to lose what is like massive amounts of weight for some people (in my case, around 30 pounds) before people notice a difference. Considering that is only 1/6 of what I need to lose (no, I’m not doing the math for you; figure it out), I can’t say as I blame them. Well, at least I feel infinitely better than I did three months ago, and that counts more than anyone will ever know for now.

Time to get ready for bed–trying to get my hours up since they say it helps you lose more weight. Until next time!

Wow. Has a quarter of the year flown by already? Geeze, I gotta keep on top of this time thing. Actually, I came back to this blog because of another rather important date that is meaningful to me, and I thought I’d share about it. This week marks the one year anniversary of my being literally kicked out of my old life and starting the journey to fashion myself a new one. And while I still have a lot of work to do, I can honestly say that I’m very happy with how far I’ve come.

I still have a lot of work to do — and I mean a lot– but the progress I have made still amazes and pleases me to no end. Number one, and this is a biggie, I have learned to like myself again, and enjoy the process of self-discovery that I all but abandoned more than a decade ago. I had grown to so hate the Gollum of a being I’d become that I took refuge in hiding from the world, all the better to slowly kill the monster I’d become with loathing and unhealthy food. Thank God I was too stubborn and too much of a chicken to die. I just couldn’t be that lady that was discovered weeks later dead on the floor, having been eaten by my cats. Neither a cute nor dignified way to go, as a sad anecdote on the evening news, if that.

Nine months with the freedom to rediscover myself led me to reconnect with my fearless, vivacious self, who in turn lead me to meaningful work I can feel good about, and where I am appreciated for my talents, as well as on a path of self care that will bring me to a place where I can look as good as I’m starting to feel. I have started on a roll that will hopefully snowball into the kind of success that will do my newly sassy self proud.

So in celebration of my progress, I will be sharing with you a couple of challenges that I have started this month. In honor of my progress in starting a fitness program that has changed my life (if not my weight too much) in terms of strengthening my body and spirit out of lethargy and immobility, I have joined a fat-loss challenge at my gym to see if I can achieve the lofty goal I have set for myself (30 pounds in 30 days). At the end of the month I will post the results, including before and after pictures, along with regular posts of my progress along the way. Achieving that goal will be an awesome way to celebrate my birthday and the anniversary of this blog, and one you will hopefully share with me.

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will also dedicate time to my first, too-long-abandoned love, and write a poem a day for the next thirty days. Be it free verse or haiku, pentameter or limerick, epic in length or short and sweet, I will tap into my muse each day and see what she’ll give me to play with, and I’ll post the ones I like the most at the end of the month. I will also allow myself the chance to create with other forms as the muse allows, and have that well of words I almost let dry up start flowing again.

Wish me well and cheer me on; for the first time in a long time, I’m anticipating to the process, and feeling more alive with each step forward.

Been a while, but I’m back to blogging. Got a lot to talk about; will elaborate tomorrow when I can get to my computer — it’s hard to post from my phone, no matter how smart it is. Just wanted to wish everyone a happy New Year to everyone; here’s to a chance at new beginnings on your life journey, no matter where you’re starting from.

That took a while, didn’t it? Sorry about that; I let time get away from me, and then stuff happened, and then stuff wasn’t happening and I was getting depressed about it, and I started thinking ‘screw it, just let this die with all the other thousands of fledgling blogs that don’t make it in the blogoshpere–it’s not like anyone was reading it, right?’

But then I thought, ‘Nope I ain’t gonna do it; I ain’t gonna quit it just yet.’ I started this thing as a place to throw out the random stuff rolling around in my head, and I still really need that in my life, now more than ever. And in one of my not-often-enough flashes of brilliance, I gave this blog the perfect title for this stage of my life, one that enables me to keep coming back to it, regardless of the length and number of hiatuses that may arise in its evolution.

Every day you wake up and take that first whiff of the morning breeze, your pillow, your sweetie’s neck or the furball that parked itself on your face in search of breakfast, is a another chance at being better, doing better, knowing better. It’s a chance at a brand new start. And that’s how I want to treat this little digital record of mine, with every post being a record of the start of something, or the next stage of something, whether it’s good, bad, or even boring (well, maybe not so much the last one).

I’m glad to be back, and I’m ready to get this going again. I’ll fill you in a little bit on what I’ve been up to soon–for now I’m gonna grab some sleep so I can face a new day (hopefully without a mouth full of fur!).

During the holiday weekend, one of my oldest friends invited me to enjoy her and her young daughter’s hospitality (along with some great curry chicken) while her husband was away on a trip.  So I grabbed one of my best buds and we headed up to her place for a lovely evening of good food and even better conversation.

While her three-year-old daughter had expressed interest and excitement at the idea of our visit, by the time we actually arrived, the reality of our presence left her reception of us rather less than enthusiastic.  Whether it was because she had never met my friend before, or she was missing her daddy, her initial response to our presence was resentful silence as she periodically pouted at us from her perch in her mom’s lap.  Her mom casually apologized for her “fussiness” as she cradled her lanky body and started to carry on a conversation of polite pleasantries over her distressed little head.

Since we were all from a generation when children were still only seen and not heard, we were all prepared to carry on with our interaction, grateful that even if the little one had decided she wouldn’t participate, she wasn’t going to throw a fit about it.  But when I took a look at her face and saw how dejected and left out she looked, I decided to see if I could find a way to draw her into the good time we were having, and make this visit fun for her too.

I spied the little plastic toy she clutched in her hand and asked her if she could show it to me.  After a moment’s hesitation, she noted the genuine interest in my face and slowly slid off her mom’s lap to bring me the noisy little plaything.  After I asked her a few questions and showed my enthusiasm to her answers about the toy, the cloud lifted from her mood and she blossomed like a sun-starved flower.  For the rest of the visit she remained an active and utterly charming participant, enabling us to enjoy her precocious and exuberant personality as she shared her thoughts, ideas and the contents of her toy box with us during our stay.  It also freed her mother to be the gracious host she wanted to be, since she didn’t have to split her attention between entertaining her guests and comforting a cranky child.

That small act of acknowledging her little girl as a person, rather than an obstacle to endure or ignore, resulted in a pleasant and enjoyable evening for everyone, and made me glad I made the effort.  It reenforced the lesson I try to practice with everyone I meet, that if you make yourself open to experiencing others as people, rather than just focusing on and reacting to their actions, you can gain so much more than maybe a new acquaintance.  If you’re lucky, you can build upon your understanding of human connections, and through them gain an even better insight into yourself.