Girl in a Whirl

Scary surgery (and tomatoes).

2011-11-06T18:53:00.000-08:00

To help get in the mood for Halloween, we took the kids to the local "Pumpkin Plunge". They throw a million pumpkins in the pool, and the kids play with them, then get to pick one to decorate. I saw water dodge-pumpkin, pumpkin catch, and kids using the pumpkins like water wings.

We had a bumper tomato harvest this year, but the difference is this year I have a new toy to play with to save them: the (drumroll please) EXCALIBER 9 TRAY. I know --sorry to shout, but I've wanted this dehydrator for so long!

The tomatoes came out so beautiful with their different colors, and they taste GOOD just by themselves.

Ari went to the hospital on the 28th to get the surgery done for her cochlear implant on the other side.

She started getting a little nervous before the anesthetic, so Jeff pulled up backgammon on his phone to calm her down.

They just finished the surgery and were bandaging her up, and she woke up. They quickly finished and wheeled her into the waiting room where major pain meds were administered. We were told originally that this would be a far less invasive surgery than the first time, but it turned out the same. They still had to make a huge incision, and hollow out a place in her skull for the processor to sit in. She still has recovered very well, although as of today still needs some ibuprofin or tylenol a couple times a day.

It didn't stop her from dressing up and going trick or treating though. I made her pirate costume and Tia's and my black and white swan costumes. Kai had his heart set on this alien costume he'd seen online. Fine with me. One less thing to sew.

We had a happy Halloween!

I've been busy.

2011-10-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Remember me mentioning heading up the school carnival? That kind of took over my brain the last month of summer. It turned out fine. I shamelessly stole pictures off the PTA blog to show you. I was too busy to shoot pictures myself. Although at times I wanted to shoot myself.

The Blowups. We get sponsors to help cover these.

Concessions. we had snow cones, cotton candy, and popcorn.

Basket auction. We also had a raffle of a BYU basketball signed by the team. Yes Jimmer too.

We served dinner.

And had plenty of carnival games. It looked like rain but it didn't. Perfect weather. I was pretty happy with the results, but last week I went to a PTA meeting where they raised twice as much money doing a Walk-a-thon. Huh. Oh Well.

jeff and I went to Park City for an anniversary trip right after the carnival was over. We were able to stay right in a big resort for a week. The condo was beautiful. I felt like I was staying in Pinocchio's house.

It looked like a little alpine chalet with all of this carved wood and European fixtures.

We hiked to the top of Timpanogos Peak our first day (only 4 hours to the top! Most people take around 6. I felt very speedy).

We also did a hot air balloon ride. I loved it. We've been going to look at the balloons on the 4th of July for years, but this was the first time we went up in one.

We spent one day riding the lifts up to the top of the slopes and then riding down on mountain bikes, but I'm not going to tell you about that because a thunder storm started and it didn't end well :) The rest of the time we were running, shopping, and eating at some fabulous restaurants. Try the Mustang if you're ever up there. We also bought some olive oils and balsamic vinegars at the Mountain Town Olive Oil Company

So fun in there. We tried just about every kind, then bought the Tuscan herb olive oil and the lemon (delicious); and then bought the wild blueberry balsamic, and the blackbery ginger. Oh.My.Gosh. I can't describe how yummy.
Anyway you know how I said the acupuncture cured my graves? It didn't last. I might be getting radio-iodine after all. I'm not too happy about it. I'll come back and write about that, Ari's new cochlear implant (on the other side!), some canning and dehydrating projects, and of course, our Faaaaaaabulous Halloween costumes.

Running up City Creek.

2011-07-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Jeff and I won a free hotel weekend. It was Jeff's birthday in June and he asked for free babysitting from my parents for his present. I don't know if my mom is snowballing me, but she said they just read the whole time so it was easy. One of the big attractions of staying with Gramma and Grampa is going to their library. Can I just say in passing that it doesn't speak well for Mapleton that we've GOT no library? I know we've got the Utah county bookmobile housed here but pickin's are SLIM there. Scores of multi-million dollar houses but we can't spring for a decent library? Rant over.
When Jeff plans the weekend in Salt Lake it goes a little differently than mine does. His big goal is to veg in front of TV and movie screens. Mine is to see and eat as much cool stuff as possible. We hit up Starbucks for breakfast oatmeal and that was the extent of our eating out. Oh well. We saw a couple of cool movies, more on that in a sec. One thing we always agree on is the workouts. We had a 9 mile run scheduled on our training plan for Saturday, and jeff suggested running up the City Creek trail. It was honestly hard to believe there WAS a trail right near downtown, but what as cool run! We started out running up west temple past the salt palace and art center.

We turned up north temple where you first see the creek as part of the landscaping in front of the "meganacle"

Soon the creek enters "City Creek Park" which is beautiful by the way,

and through a really neat historical district. Sorry for the blurry pics, I didn't really stop to take them with my phone, just slowed down.

Then the real trail started, and the creek got big and scary.

Up through a canyon, and onto the Bonneville Bench trail.

Here's Jeff up ahead of me (he's much faster usually, but especially when I'm taking pictures). Then my camera shut down on my phone because it was supporting my audiobook at the same time and freaked out. oh well.

The first movie was Potter. Fabulous. Just fabulous. I'm a major Potter nerd, and have read all of the books multiple times, AND listened to the audiobooks --all of them -- multiple times. I was so excited for this movie. Usually when this happens, the movie can't live up to your expectations, but they pulled out all the stops on effects. The best part by far though was watching Snape's memories. This is probably my favorite part in the whole series, but watching it on the screen, I was sobbing. I felt so stupid while I was doing it, knowing these are fictional characters, and telling myself that over and over didn't help one bit. I was completely drawn in. Jeff kept patting my arm (probably hoping I'd stop embarrassing him).

The next movie we saw was Captain America. Can I just say, the photoshop/CGI stuff was amazing! Never again will I watch a movie and lament that an actress is so skinny --impossibly thin. It IS impossible! Look what they did to Cris Evans! Plumps when you cook 'em. :)

Good show, classic superhero movie. It was done by the guy that did the Rocketeer, and it felt like that. Corny, old-fashioned fun. Stick around after the credits, there's an Easter egg you'll be excited to see after.

Fireworks.

2011-07-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

Checking out at Ream's, the teenage bagger asked me if I was going to go watch fireworks tonight.

"I don't know," I said. "Are there fireworks tonight?"
"Oh yeah -- over at Ira Allen Park," he answered as he put my cherries in a plastic bag, not on top of the bananas (I watched). "It's huge! Bigger than Stadium of Fire, and it's all set to music. You just park your car there, and sit right under them".
He lost me at "park your car". I've been in more than one traffic jam on the 4th of July or 24th of July (we celebrate a fireworky pioneer day in Utah) that's lasted hours, and has left me with visions of myself in a tank running over cars in my path with a maniacal laugh. Bad traffic's not a good situation for someone like me with little patience. Dutiful mother that I am, I came home and told Jeff anyway, and we thought about it while slogging through the usual Saturday chores (sometimes I hate my yard). 9:00 hits and it's decision time. "Why don't we go up Whiting canyon to that path we sled on in winter, and head south instead of north?" he asks. "I'll bet we get a great view of them from there".
I'm a little dubious when I look on the map and notice how far south the park is, but then, I'm often dubious with new suggestions so I keep my mouth shut instead of being a jerk. Kai lays on the couch pouting. "I thought we were going to get close to the fireworks. I don't want to go far away to see" he whines.
"It'll be great" I answer --the cheerleader now. "Get in the car".
The kids grab saltines, cream cheese, soynuts, raisins, and honeydew chunks. I'm not exaggerating. "Do I need my water bottle?" Tia asks? "Jeez." Jeff says under his breath. "It's not going to be that long". She grabs it anyway, making us wait for her again. Lately, every time we go somewhere this seems to happen. Ominous foreshadowing for the rest of her teenage years.
When we get to the horse trailer parking lot, Kai doesn't want to get out of the car. "What about wolves?" he says in a small voice. "Aren't there wolves up here?"
"Yeah" Jeff says ("shut-up Jeff" I think), "but not right here".
"We'll walk with Daddy in front and you kids go in the middle and I'll be in the back" I say. "If wolves come they'll eat us up and you'll be fine. Seriously, Dad and I run and walk up here all the time. There aren't any wolves". Are there? I wonder. They're endangered and stuff, so I'm pretty sure there aren't...
We walk in the dark, and every other minute, we see a firework explode in a different part of the city spread out below us. I'm pretty sure none of them are from Ira Allen park. There's not a real path, just little mini clearings we thread our way through, trying to get near the edge of the mountain to get the best view.
Ari asks if she can wear my headlamp once we stop to wait, sure now that we're just too early, and the "real" fireworks will start any minute.
"No I say, we're going to leave it off now until it's time to walk back." I'm always shutting her down, and feel slightly guilty until she asks if she can wear it on her head anyway and I hand it over. I doubt I'm the best mother for her. I turn on my phone and surf food blogs (mother of the year I know) while waiting for the start of the show. Jeff walks off to see if he can find a better spot, and a few minutes later we see his headlamp bobbing back through the dark towards us. No luck. It's after 10:00 now and I'm pretty sure they've started and we're missing them, but I don't say anything. Jeff says he's going to try the other direction, and Kai goes with him, which I can tell cheers Jeff up a little. We all eventually migrate over to where they stand, but don't see much, and Ari's started shivering in the breeze.
"Well, should we go?" Jeff asks. "Yeah" I say, "maybe we can still find them if we go over by Brandie's neighborhood". I lead the way without any real idea of where I'm going, just a general direction, but get lucky, and we stumble back to our car.
"Are we going home or are we still trying?" Jeff asks as our headlights sweep a circle around the edge of the parking lot and turn down the mountain.
"Let's still try" I say, typing a new blog address into my phone. It doesn't take even a quarter mile before we start seeing big flashes off to the left.
"There they are! Kids! Look!" Jeff says, passing an open field. Huge sea anemones of pink and purple, and jets of white light fill the sky. The bagger was right. These are some serious fireworks.
"I'm tempted to just stop right here to watch" Jeff says, and slides the car over to the side of the road. We watch for a while.
"That kind" Ari says. "That's the kind I mean that's my favorite".
"This must be the grand finale" I say as flower upon flower explode right on top of each other in the sky. A few minute later I say it again. Then later I think it finally must really be the grand finale. I can't believe the money they put into this show.
"I'm ready to go home" Kai says. "Aren't you liking it?" Jeff asks. "yeah, but I'm getting sick of it now" he answers. Jeff laughs. "Man I love you bud" he says. Kai's a crackup sometimes. The sky goes dark, and through the open car windows we hear clapping from the dark front yard of the house next to our car. I had no idea anyone was there. "woooo!" I yell --just so they know we're there too. "woo hoo!" they yell back, still clapping. "Wooo hoo hoo!" I say, and Jeff laughs as he pulls the car away from the curb. "I'm so glad I'm married to you" he says. "You're so fun".

"Fruit and Veggies" (or "How much suffering can a fruit tree take?").

2011-07-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

I've many fruit and veggie plants throughout the yard alongside the flowers. We're getting quite a few raspberries right now --including some black and golden varieties.

Here are the onions and beans. Anyone know why my onions are going to seed the first year? A couple did this last year too. I don't get it.

Carrots, beets and sweet corn...or is that Indian corn? I can't remember where I put the two kinds. I guess we'll open it up and look at it when the tassels turn brown.

Here's my poor poor mulberry tree. This is also a big mystery to me: every year this tree loses a big section -- I guess to wind. Why would this be? I think I'm going to trim it down to a bush next year and then we can sing and dance around it.

Look at my callouses jeez! No, this is one of my mulberries. They got huge this year and so sweet. I wish I had the other two thirds of the tree that broke off. Those branches were full of berries. :(

I've got this other stupid mulberry tree that I bought from Cook's, but the berries aren't as big, sweet, or as easy to pick. Annoying that this isn't the tree that breaks!

Aren't these pretty flowers? Not worth a cherry tree though. They grow right underneath my cherry tree, and last year I noticed it wasn't doing so well. I thought it had a bug and tried to get it diagnosed, but nobody knew what was wrong. I suspected these guys but thought ..naaah.

Here's the tree this year. Notice it's only dead on the side with the flowers? Sigh.

We should get plenty of white peaches this year though.

...and Italian plums.

...and tomatoes.

we'll have plenty of tomatoes!

My squash may not produce though (I'm starting to realize at this point how boring this post must be to a non-gardener --sorry!). I could tell it looked like they weren't getting enough water, but the box said they were getting three hours. I finally figured out my schedules were overlapping and cutting off these guys before they got all of their water. I hope I get a few kabochas at least before frost. They don't take as long to mature.

My grapes quickly overwhelmed the support we made for them last year and are seriously out of control again.

As is my herb garden. Time to cut down the tarragon, lemon balm, and mint. Maybe I can make some new pestos! Has anyone tried that before?

Garden tour --flowers and living spaces

2011-07-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

Wanna' see my flowers? One of the reason I want bees is I see hundreds of SOMEONE ELSE'S bees all over my yard all summer. Why shouldn't I get some of the honey? These first couple of pictures are of my "park strip": the area between the sidewalk and the road. Grass never does super well here with our hot, dry Utah summers, so I planted some stuff that could withstand drought a little better.

This is the front of the house. I love the contrasting foliage colors.

Here's my little retreat in the backyard. This is where I can put pink flowers without anyone knowing. It's on the mid to lower level of the back so it feels really private with rock walls and fence all around it.

Hollyhocks against the back fence.

Oriental lilies.

perennial sweet peas

On the very lowest level, there is a little tiny patio opening out of the basement rooms (our home gym). It gets pretty hot here, so I put in a little fountain to help you "think cool", and some little succulents that won't dry out and die in an afternoon.

Aren't they cute?

Coming back up the stairs, we run into a big old section of tansy (tanacetum), mums, daylilies, and yarrow.

(this is the tansy up close)

Finally we get to the main patio off of the kitchen. I finally got the patio set I wanted this summer. It's aluminum so it's lightweight (but looks beautifully heavy), and has no glass or tile to crack and break. We can at last eat together on the patio as a family. My in-laws loved it too while they were here since the table can easily accommodate 8-10 people. The shades pull down to the west and south to block sun, but the pergola on top only provides filtered shade. I think I'm going to bribe Jeff to move it around to cover the top instead of the south. Hmmm. I need to run through my list of husband incentives...

Simple Italian Dinner

2011-07-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

I went to the health food store today and found this really fun vegetable pasta. My kids all wanted it tonight for dinner so I created a simple Italian themed meal to go with it.

You gotta have your veggies first, so I sprayed some broccoli in a little olive oil, and sprinkled it with garlic and lemon pepper before roasting at 400 for 30 minutes.

Next I worked on the protein. I was using my Flavor Bible (that's how I thought of lemon with the broccoli too), and picked out a few components recommended to go with white beans.

I mixed in a bowl: 2 T. molasses, 3T. Italian seasoning, 1T. mustard, 2 T. soy sauce, 1 T. olive oil then poured it over two cans of navy beans rinsed and drained. With just a quick warmup in the microwave, and added split cherry tomatoes it was a really yummy main dish. Super easy too.

So for the dinner menu we had the noodles with marinara, the balsamic herbed beans with cherry tomatoes, and the lemon garlic roasted broccoli. Let me know if you try it!

Eating strategies

2011-07-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

I've gone back and forth about posting something on this, in fact I did a post and deleted it before.   I wanted to put down a little bit on my diet. I've found that it's really easy for me to lose control and overeat. When you're a 5'3" woman in her late (OK, VERY late) 30's, you don't have a lot of leeway with your eating. One normal restaurant meal a week can easily add up to a pound gained a month. On Sundays I don't exercise, which also makes a big difference in my calorie burn (on Saturdays I'm usually near 3000, on Sundays near 1800).

You can see I have a pretty good idea of what I burn. This is from my Bodymedia fit armband. I don't know what I'd do without it at this point, although I'm hoping to break myself of it eventually. It records my burn automatically, and I enter my food in. I started weighing stuff too, to get a better idea of how accurate I am. Putting butter or honey on toast? How do you know how much you're really putting on? Anywhere from 3-7 grams of butter looks the same to me. Anyway, I track calories and weigh food. I know this sounds OCD, but it's really freeing because I then pick whatever food I want to eat and eat it. Pretty much anyway. I don't bring things like chips and cookies and most kinds of crackers in the door because I don't look good wearing them (on my butt). I don't do juice usually or drinks besides water or herb tea, because who wants to track calories that don't make me in the least bit full? I let my kids make cookies when I go out on a date with Jeff. Perfect time because I'm not there :).   Sometimes I let them make some for the neighbors, but usually that ends up with me eating 1-2 cookies worth of dough, so flowers are a better choice for gifts.

Here's my plan:

For breakfast I shoot for around 400 calories including a protein, greens, and a whole grain. With the protein and grain together I stay full. Sometimes I do the grain first, work out, then do the protein after.   For lunch, I do some sort of grain (usually bread or tortilla), a protein, and then fill in with fruit or veggies up to around 550 calories. In the afternoon I shoot for a 350 calorie snack, usually a protein shake and a fruit, or a piece of toast with nut butter. Dinner is around 600, with a big salad being part of it. I try not to eat after dinner. I do at least two quarts of water in the evenings to rehydrate for the rest of the day, so that's how I think about it: my time to get in the rest of my water. At least half is a big ol' thing of herb tea. It's wonderful sitting on the couch with Jeff watching a show if we've got a free evening.

So you see I get in around 1900 on most days. I go a little lower on Sundays to make up for the no exercise thing, and Friday nights when I go out with Jeff, I plan on going about 1500 calories over maintenance. On Saturdays when I burn a lot with long training runs and yard work I usually have a 1000 calorie deficit easy so that helps to make up for those Friday night treats. When all goes well I lose 1/2 pound to 1 pound a week. Why haven't I lost a ton of weight then? Well... when I go off of my plan I REALLY go off.

I went on vacation early in the month to a camp for kids with cochlear implants (my second daughter has one), and they had a cafeteria with a big long buffet for every meal. I kept thinking I was doing OK, and then I sat down with twice as much food as I needed. They also had treats a few nights there, and I stayed with my in-laws for a night on the way there and the way back and they know my weaknesses in ice cream. Since I couldn't plug in my arm band, and had no good way to track calories (I'm very dependent on the computer), I fell off of the wagon with a thump. All of those disadvantages might have been nullified by exercise, but when I get discouraged or extra tired I just start eating like a crazy person. I get a book or a movie, and just eat and eat as an escape. That happened a couple of times while I was gone. I've been working on spiritual solutions to this, since I feel like it's an emotional/spiritual problem. I'm feeling really good again now, but it was discouraging that I fell into the trap again there for a while.

I've looked around in my psyche, and I don't think there are any deep seated issues I'm ignoring, except that I've been deficit eating for a long time --probably too long --, so my body rebels when I let my guard down. Overall, over the past 5 years, I've dropped my maintenance weight down 6-7 pounds. Not a huge difference, but I'm still pleased with it most of the time. I hate to say it, because everyone does, but if I could just lose 5-10 more pounds..... anyway, I'm still lifting, which makes me a lot happier with how I look than I used to --even at a higher weight. If I didn't lose any more but dropped bodyfat I'd probably be happy, but I'm not willing to give up more carbohydrates and replace them with protein powder or engineered vegan "meats" (I try to do mostly vegan), so I doubt that's going to happen. I got really close to hiring a bodybuilding specialist dietitian until I realized I finally have found a plan I can feel truly satisfied on (except on vacation!), so I hate to change anything.

Daughter of a beekeeper

2011-07-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

Guess what I brought home today? Yay Yay Yay! My Dad had bees for years in San Diego while I was growing up. While we didn't eat any processed sugar, we went through a LOT of honey with six kids all with sweet teeth (do you say sweet teeth or sweet tooths?). I never remember being nervous around them, and feeling instead kind of special that we had them. There was one time a bee got caught in my 80's hair....

and there was also the time my cousin threw rocks at the hive, and my little brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time...

Poor little guy.

But other than than that, with years of keeping bees we didn't have any problems. I hope my neighbors don't freak out. Consider this fair warning if you're a neighbor :) Anyway, my friend Sharlynn, who's kept up to 40 hives at a time, gave me my two starter boxes, and the use of her equipment, and most importantly, free consulting! My boxes lost their residents from what she thinks was Varroa, so I've got some cleaning up to do. That's OK because I can't order the bees until next spring. It was so mysterious at the time she said. She went outside to check on them and they'd just disappeared. No holocaust of bee bodies around, nothing. From what I've read that's typical of Varroa --they fly away and then die. She's got a supplier she uses in Salt Lake, but I've been looking around and found this Beeweaver company that claims high mite resistence, and high genetic diversity in their bees. I may try them.

On the lifting front, I finally felt recovered enough to do a good workout today, and got within 5 pounds of my PR for back squat. What a relief. I didn't know if I'd ever get back my strength. I've been so broken down lately with running, that high rep program, vacation (missed workouts), and a hamstring injury. My friend/inspiration April also posted her bench press weight giving me permission to not beat myself up over mine. I find it's easy to let ego get in the way deny where I'm really at.

When I certified as a personal trainer, my instructor told us to tell people to bench press only from where their elbows are even with their shoulders --does that make sense? So if you were lying on the floor, you come down to your elbows touching the floor and no further. Behind that place is the "danger zone" for shoulders. The shoulder could get injured there because the rear deltoid muscles are so much weaker than the big pectorals, and theses deltoids take all of the weight when you go behind parallel. That's what I was doing after he told me that, until I found out that in powerlifting you DO go down until the bar touches the chest. Sigh. My pecs had gotten much stronger, but my rear delts had atrophied quite a bit. Bummer. From 150 to 75? waa. I still have to watch out because even when I go all of the way down, I lift my hips from the bench, effectively doing a decline press instead of flat press. Today I kept it clean, and got a few reps out at 85 --like 3 :) but got 5 reps at 80. That's OK I decided. My squat got a lot weaker when I started going all of the way down, and came back up after a while. So it'll come back, it'll come back...

4th of July Balloonfest and Freedom 10k

2011-07-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

We followed our family tradition and went to the Freedom Festival Hot air balloon liftoff. This means waking my family up at 5:30 am, and every year I try to roll them out of bed, I wonder why we do this.

They're still not awake and happy by 6:15.

But then we saw the Darth Vader balloon complete with storm troopers and other...random characters I didn't know!

We always love seeing the fire as they're blowing up the balloons.

A lot of beautiful balloons along with the novelty ones. I love how we can walk around between them all.

Once the balloons lift off they do these races and games "Fox and Hares" I think, but we always leave then. The best part is lift-off.

Today we ran the Freedom Run 10K. Tia's first 10K. I was so proud of her! She stopped and walked for 2 second intervals before I convinced her to "just go slow". She really did great! I think average we were at about 11 minute miles (that's up from her 15 minute mile average when she started running :) ). She's training for the Hobble Creek Half marathon in August, so you'll see more of her on here. I think we made a runner out of her.

Acupuncture worked!

2011-06-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Hey just popping in to say that those acupuncture treatments took effect within a week. I did have a little relapse after a week of girl's camp for my church (you try getting 15 teenage girls to follow a detailed schedule from 7:30-11:00 and not get stressed!), but went back for one more treatment, and got back on track.

I know it may not make any scientific sense, but worked is worked.

I also got my copy of NROL. I've heard it raved about on forums and other blogs, and couldn't wait to try it. Although it had a ton of great information, I've been through a whole cycle of the program now and just feel like I've lost strength. I'm not saying this would happen to everyone. I teach a weights class on Tuesday and Thursday morning that ends up being a little bit high rep, and I think low rep workouts for my personal progression just make more sense. This cycle started out at I think 3 sets of 15, and through a few weeks went down to 8 reps. This is still pretty high and I think by doing this three times a week and teaching another 2 times at high rep it just broke me down. My squat, deadlift, and bench have all gone down. I'm going back to a modified 5 by 5. I also like the flexibility of using my own program because sometimes I'm sore from other activities (i.e. running with my daughter, pulling trees and bushes out of the yard, a hard teaching day etc.).
Last night I knew my legs were sore, and instead of doing a crappy job on a full body NROL workout, I just did upper body and really felt like I got somewhere. I think this is a wonderful program for someone just starting out though, and there is lots of info I'll use over and over again.

Here's hoping I can get back to posting regularly again. Sorry for the stops and starts.

Hula hoop relays,moxibustion, and hip flasks.

2011-05-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm really hoping I won't get sued by one of my girls for posting these pictures, but I thought it was so fun I had to share the idea. When I was teaching at BYU, I went into the equipment office to get the BOSU's for class, and was surprised by all of the equipment they had stored in that room. "There must be some fun ways to use that stuff" I thought. They had cones, beanbags, a parachute (!), basketballs, hula hoops -wait HULA HOOPS! They turned out to be great for relays. I always do at least one plyometrics segment in my class, and a relay makes the jumping a little more fun. When I started my class in Salem we had a bit fewer options equipment-wise (to say the least). I have been known to make my class use the structural beams for pullups, the baseballs in the pitching machines for glute isolation exercises, and the chairs for all kinds of stuff. With summer though, the dollar store got in dollar hula hoops. Yay! I have some partner two hoop options, but we get bogged down for space (maybe we'll go outside when it's warmer!), so I just have them take a single hoop, and jump in it and in front of it, swing it around in front again, and jump again. Their partner waits doing toe touch jumps back at the start until their partner runs back and they're tagged.

So fun. I've also used our family's collection of basketballs and soccer balls, used tennis balls, taped up the floor, and done lots of hopscotch type stuff. If anyone reading this has new fun ideas for jumping, send them my way.

I wanted to show you the moxibustion stuff remember? I had my first appointment this week and snuck some pictures for you all --tummy picture coming up below, so shield any eyes that need it :) I've got to say up front, I got a Masters of Science in Zoology (--kind of like biology --in fact the departments have now combined at BYU : all the premed students were in my major as an undergrad), and I'm used to the scientific method. Chinese Traditional Medicine does not usually follow the scientific method format. It's different -just -different. I did a paper trying to compare Western medicine, and CTM in college, and it was really apples to oranges. However, they've been doing the things they do with countless recorded successful anecdotes for thousands of years --way before Western medicine had the bright idea of using leeches to help people recover. I've been dealing with this stupid Graves disease for 6 1/2 years, and have been following everything my Dr. has told me short of having my thyroid obliterated by radiation (because that makes no sense to me. It would make me hypothyroid and I'd still have to take medication -see this article ). and I'm going up and down with my levels all of the time. I heard that CTM has a procedure to treat the autoimmune side of the disease which makes more sense to me --whatever that procedure might be.

Now, why burning stuff at certain points on my skin, or poking needles into other points works? NO idea. My CTM Dr. makes these little "cookies" (the dark brown things) out of one kind of herb, and then makes little cones (light brown) on top out of another kind of herb, and sets the top stuff on fire. Really. She goes through 5 cones of herbs on each point, and that's it. Sounds witch doctory, but hey -whatever.

Here they are burning. See the smoke? I could smell it on my skin the rest of the day. Luckily I had the needles in me in other spots so I was all relaxed. I also liked the sound the flame made as she lighted it -like a bird's wing. I'll let you know if it all works. I do know a little about qui/chi, -- the energy channels through the body these things are supposed to affect, but not much. Here's a page to go to that gives some basics.

Next story. Does this bother anyone else? We stopped in ICING --a teen -preteen accessory store right before our movie, and saw this display of flasks right by the register.

Sorry the pic is blurry --but the sign says they don't support underage drinking. How does your sign make this OK I'm wondering? Amazing.

Quinoa salad, vegan pesto, and getting my behind back in the weight room.

2011-05-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

So...last night for dinner I made a quinoa salad. Oh it was good. My only thing with grain and bean salads is that they're usually so dense calorically. Maybe it's not fashionable to state that you care about calories but I do --not gonna' lie, that's my main weight management tool. On the plus side, these were all quality calories. The worst part of cutting calories is if you're not careful, you can trick yourself into eating sugar free syrup and 100 calorie packs all day and starve your body of the nutrients it needs, not to mention wanting to GNAW YOUR ARM OFF from hunger by 4:00. This is not that kind of calorie dense. Very filling. When I ate it for dinner though I threw it on top of a big bed of greens so it would take longer to eat, get a boost nutritionally, and fill me up even more with the calorically cheap food. Here's the recipe I followed with a few tweaks: I didn't have avocados that were ripe, so I added a few chopped toasted walnuts to mine, and the kids added a little cheese. I also didn't have the red quinoa, just the blond. Still yummy.

Vegan pesto. I grow a ton of basil every year. That's not usually the plan, I just miss fresh basil so much by summer, that invariably I raise too many plants. By the end of summer they're bushes as tall as my waist but even bigger around. The best way I've found to preserve all of that bounty is pesto. Pesto is easy --you just throw everything into a food processor, package it up, and throw it in the freezer if you're not going to use it right away. I used to use the standard Better homes and Gardens recipe, which calls for Parmesan, but wanted a veganified version because my kids literally use this stuff every day. Even if you don't believe the China Study claims, walnut or olive fat is much better for your heart than dairy fat. When I make it in the fall I have 50-75 of these little half cup containers when I'm done.

Now, you'll see recipes out there that use all basil as the base ingredient. I tried that once or twice when I was first married, thinking the more basil essential oil you have the tastier it will be. However basil turns black when it oxidizes, which makes for a black pesto and nothing kills the appetite like black food. I use part spinach now to help keep the bright green color. The secret ingredient for veganization of pesto? (My spell checker is going crazy with all of my made up vegan words!) Balsamic vinegar. Here's what you throw in your processor:

2 cups basil leaves --packed
1 cup spinach leaves -packed
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
1 cup pine nuts or walnuts (I usually use walnuts for cheapness --they're fine)
2 cloves garlic
1 t. salt
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 T. water (depending on what you need to make the food processor keep going)
1/2 T. balsamic vinegar

You throw it in the processor and whirl away. I think it makes about 2 cups, which means 4 of those little 1/2 cup containers. Talk about calorically dense! But when you need a sandwich spread, this is better for you than mayo or ranch. When you need a little "oomph" for your pasta, or something to dip carrots in, this is magic stuff.

OK on to the gym. I skipped some workouts to rest up for that race on Saturday. That makes sense right? But my self confidence starts to go quickly and I really doubted I could pull the same weight I did last week. So I brought the camera into the weight room as extra motivation. Yep. Still got my 175 lb. deadlift. My form really sucks towards the end (I didn't know I was rolling my chest back that high!), but I got in the 5 reps I was hoping for. Stupid wrist straps slipped at 3 --don't ever start the wrist strap thing. I wish I hadn't. They're a pain, and a crutch I wish I didn't use.

115 lb. squats. I got my little block there to touch down on so I know I went below parallel. I sure wish I could say I squat my bodyweight...but no, this isn't it. :)

You've got to forgive my lame music too. Any suggestions for great motivating songs? I'm running dry lately.

Listening to the "Born to Run" guy.

2011-05-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

Our local running store has a running guru that everyone in the valley who knows anything about running comes to for advice. He's run and competed for years, and coached many national level runners. When he started telling my brother in law about minimalist shoes, and the book "Born to Run" we all read it. Last night he hosted the author Christopher McDougall at his store, and we made the trek with three patient kids (kind of) to listen. McDougall and his book is the reason barefoot/minimalist running has gotten so much press lately.He was pretty entertaining, but didn't give out very much new information. I highly recommend reading the book though, and going to Hawk's (local guru guy's) website for info about injuries, technique etc. What the author did say that I didn't distill very well out of the book, was that it's all about technique, there's a correct way to run, and lots of incorrect ways. Just like in lifting, technique can make or break you. My boss at the gym said once she wasn't sure about getting heavy weights for class because she didn't want anyone to get hurt, and I replied with this technique argument. Same thing goes for running.

The shoes can mess you up though. If you put a big heel on your running shoe, and narrow up the toes, and live with an arch crutch your whole life, you're going to screw up your feet or legs no matter what technique you try. The store manager rolled out this big banner during the discussion pimping their own minimalist shoe line. I thought the blatant advertising was pretty funny.

So McDougall's premise is that we're evolutionarily meant to run long distances as humans --use our big brains and lungs to run down prey --exhaust them to death. I don't know about that for sure, but during McDougall's question and answer session this guy gets up (the one holding the book) --and tells about how he ran down a deer. Everybody was cracking up at his story, but it made you think. If he can do that, and a farmer named Cliff Young can show up in work boots and run 100 miles straight with no training or plan, maybe it IS a basic part of us --part of our destiny. Maybe I shouldn't fight those running urges so much.

Surprise Half-Mary!

2011-05-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

Well...I wasn't planning on it, but I'm glad I did it. I've slowly weaned myself off of every day cardio through the last year, but then my daughter's friend ran the "Princess Half" at Disneyworld with Zero training and gave my daughter the bug --now Tia wanted to do a half! I ran Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon last year and had a great time -even though I originally signed up just to help get ready for the Ragnar. Tia was too young to sign up for Thanksgiving, so we planned her to do the Hobble Creek Half in August instead. I tentatively agreed to do it with her provided my feet didn't act up.

Suddenly I found myself in the middle of this crowd on Saturday. Seriously --it was like that. I bought myself some more minimalist type shoes which has helped me build up to a piddly 3 mile/3 mile/4 mile training week so far with Tia. Then on Wednesday afternoon, our neighbor told us his wife was going out of town (to London --during the royal wedding --poor her!) and couldn't run in Thanksgiving this year then he asked me if I wanted to run it. Temptaaaation! I hauled Jeff out on a 7 mile test that night, realized no wheels had fallen off my chassis by Friday morning, and Saturday morning drove up with my neighbor for the race.

This is NOT what I pictured for a "Tulip Festival" race! I was so apprehensive about slipping, and even about finishing! I hadn't done a long run like that in a long time. Thank goodness for facebook! I posted saying I was doing it so I couldn't back out without eating a lot of crow.

Here's my neighbor rockin' the trashbag raincoat. I wished I'd brought one to be honest. It looked scary and cloudy. The first mile it snowed on us.

But then the sun came out! The tulips were still pretty with snow on them. Hey --a note about pictures: I hate stopping when I run. I don't stop for water, for fuel --anything. So I just took a ton of pictures on the run, and then deleted most of them because they turned out to be random pictures of the sky or someone's elbow. :)

I also didn't get a pic of the pivotal moment of the race for me: I'm running along, and decide I'm too warm for my hat thingy, so I take it off and go to stuff it in my sweatshirt pouch, and while I'm looking down RUN OVER a TRAFFIC CONE. How you may ask? It's as tall as my shoulder, bright orange, and has reflective tape on it. Chalk it up to my native klutziness I guess. Luckily I was wearing gloves so I only tore up my glove and not my hand. The cool tech fabric Nike pants Jeff lent me didn't even sneeze at the crash, although I've got a bruise on my leg the size of a saucer. Did I tell you the story about when I fell off the stand at church? Remind me not to.

The family came up to see me come in. I know I look 78 years old in this picture! I was COLD! (and apparently more interested in my bagel than the camera).

Easter vegan-ish sandwich bar

2011-04-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

I had to put the "ish" because we had to use some hard-boiled eggs up, and we got mayo and cheese out for my brother and sister-in-law, but it was an amazing spread. My dad made sun-dried tomato and chickpea hummus. I don't know what recipe he used, but knowing my Dad I think he probably winged it. We had fresh veggies and baked sweet potato fries, a simple olive tapenade I made using black and green olives and sun-dried tomatoes, my vegan pesto --sorry, I need to post that recipe it's awesome, maybe tomorrow. Also, roasted garlic cloves mashed with olive oil into a spread, and homemade 12 grain bread with flax, chia, sesame, etc. --I also need to post that recipe --eesh.

I made Mama Pea's grilled tofu --but used barbeque as a flavoring instead of her marinade --awesome! So good. I'm with her: if you don't like tofu you haven't had it cooked right.

Then I roasted a ton of veggies: red bell peppers in the oven so I could char and peel the skin, and also red onions, asparagus --oh yes it CAN go on a sandwich, zukes, and yellow summer squash. I should have taken a picture of Jeff's sandwich. It was HUGE. Then we did strawberries with a leeetle bit of ice cream for dessert. Then I went back and ate a second bowl. Then I ate some of Kai's Easter candy. Sigh. At least Easter's only once a year.

John Updike at Easter

2011-04-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks go to my sister for sharing his poem with me.Sorry --the first time I posted it, Blogger "fixed" the stanzas for me into one big long mush without me noticing.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas At Easter,” 1964

Acupuncture and cornbread "quiche"

2011-04-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

I went to the acupuncturist yesterday. I've been fighting this stupid Graves stuff for so long, and still go into remission, and come back out. She said there's a procedure in Chinese medicine for treating it, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's hoping. Although she did an acupuncture treatment on me yesterday (-like a free sample!), she's going to be doing moxibustion treatments on me instead. The needles? Didn't hurt. I always thought people had to be lying about that, but I'm serious. They were in my ears, feet, hands, neck, I don't know what all actually because I kind of got really relaxed and stopped paying attention. Weirdest thing--I was talking to her about my symptoms and history and stuff as she started, and then I stopped being able to think about it --it was like I was going to sleep. I just lost focus and let go. Huh. Go figure. Here's the link to the clinic I went to. I'm hoping to get some cool pictures of the moxibustion treatments because I think that will look cool. Then I'll explain what the heck it is.

I came home and made this cornbread quiche for dinner. I got the idea of of Healthy Tipping Point, but then went my own way. I crumbled up leftover vegan "meatloaf" (from Oh She Glows), wilted down some spinach and chopped it up and squeezed it dry, added a tablespoon or so of Italian seasoning, and mixed two free range eggs (from our neighbors!) and three egg whites together. That was the top (except for some sprinkled cheese for the kid's half --they'll eat anything with a little cheese). For the bottom I used my standard cornbread recipe:
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 T. sugar or honey (our new honey still needs to be opened and brought upstairs so I cheated)
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
3 egg whites
1 cup almond milk
2 T. oil

Mix together your dry ingredients, add your wet, put it in a greased pan and bake for 20 minutes at 400, then pour the egg/spinach mixture over the top, and bake some more --try 15 minutes. I can't remember to be honest, just checked until a toothpick came out clean.

With a dense main dish like this, I usually do a salad, and then top it with the main dish. That's what I did last night, and used home-bottled marinara for my "dressing".

Jeff and I also recently splurged on this vegan parmesan--here's the link. It's a little pricey, but way yummy topping the whole thing!

Let's this garden started/ birthday downtown.

2011-04-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

I promised pictures of my garden starts quite a while ago. Here's what looks the best: my wheat grass. Too bad I'm too scared to juice it. It looks pretty, but I've got too deeply rooted memories of doing wheat grass juice shots with my mom --and struggling not to retch --to actually USE the wheat grass. Maybe I'll pony up before it actually grows seed heads on it and attracts a threshing machine...

Here's my real garden starts. They were looking fantastic, but then I got a little carried away with the liquid fertilizer, and think I choked my tomato plants with the salts. The peppers look like they love it though. These are just the stuff I start early. All of my squash, corn, beans, I put in later, as seeds, and the lettuce and spinach and peas, and onions, are already in! Look at my onions !(OK --but don't look at my weedy raspberry patch next to it.)

For my birthday my mom and Jeff asked me what I wanted, and what I really wanted was another weekend downtown. Salt Lake City may not be the biggest, most cosmopolitan city in the world, but it's got a great deal of international influences because of the Mormon church headquarters there, and has a great feel to it. We were going to go about a month ago, but my husband got second degree burns all over his hand trying to help a little girl last month --I'll write about that some other time --so we couldn't really go. Anyway, my mom took the kids for us, and Jeff covered hotel as my present, and the rest we put into our date budget (yay!).

We stayed at this beautiful Marriott. I was pushing for the "category 5" one because they had great pictures of their weight room online, and this one only showed cardio machine city. I know it's nerdy of me to always choose hotels based on their weight room. But eventually I realized I was making Jeff annoyed, so gave in to the "category 4". Guess what? BEAUTIFUL weight room! No free barbell, but hey, they had a Smith machine at least, and dumbbells, and and and... I was vindicated for being nice.

They even upgraded us to the Vice Presidential suite which was gorgeous with a big screen TV, separate bedroom, and dining room.

We talked about going to a movie, but decided to go to the planetarium for a dome show because we can't do that here. We saw Led Zeppelin (which was a little before my time musically, but U2 was sold out). Honestly? I think these shows are where graphic artists go to practice and figure out screen savers. BUT, we were sitting next to a group that had had a few beers, and knew all the words to all of the songs. They kept saying "I LOVE this song" and singing in little quiet voices and cheering and they made ME have a good time! It was like being with my friends in high school at parties where I was drinking sprite and they were a little goofy on alcohol. Funny that I'd be nostalgic about that sort of thing.

We also finally went to "The Melting Pot" for dinner. I voted to skip the entree, and just share an appetizer and dessert, because why do you go there? For the cheese and chocolate of course! Who are we kidding? We got the Artichoke Spinach Cheese, and the Dulce de Leche and Dark Chocolate with sea salt (the iodine of which had me buzzing all night --I didn't even think about it duh!). I highly recommend this place. Unless you're vegan. Then avoiding the cheese would just make you sad. Hooray for free night!

OK, it kind of turned into free weekend, and I have the extra pound and a half to prove it. Worth every ounce. We went to Red Iguana the next day for lunch. Not the prettiest place, but then, that's kind of the charm. Think Frieda Kahlo meets Tijuana.

The best thing --and I mean the BEST, is their selection of "Moles" (say it mo-lay. I'm not talking about small furry animals here.) I could eat anything with these sauces. I could drink these sauces. The only problem was that after I tried the sampler plate, I wanted all of them with my dinner. The waiter broke down and weaseled me two different sauce cups --so nice of him. We didn't box up our leftovers, but I took every drop of that stuff home to my mom as a thank you. Kind of a wrench to give up :), but I'm going to try to recreate them at home. They use so many cool ingredients: pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, golden raisins, pine nuts, tomatoes, chiles....

We also went to the University of Utah's Museum of Art. I really didn't care for the Smithson exhibit as he was "obsessed with the idea of entropy". Really? Entropy? There were pictures of him pouring glue down a hill, and piles of dirt on the floor as art. Right. I was much more interested in the Helen Levitt photographs, and the ancient Chinese dishes and vases (did you know they thought bats were beautiful decorative animals?), and the old European holy family paintings. I always love those --where they make the infant Jesus look like a tiny man instead of a baby --and sometimes there's the infant John the Baptist too carrying a cross 5 times the size of him. Fascinating.

But yeah, I came home quite a bit more ummm-- substantial --if you will. Silver lining? PR on deep back squats of 115 for 5 reps when I got home!

100 grams of spinach. Or, how to use up 10 pounds of cocoa powder in three months.

2011-03-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple of friends ask me about my green smoothie. There are a lot of great recipes out there, but I wanted one that had exactly what I was looking for: something super yum with a full scoop of protein powder, low calorie, and using enough greens to make it worth my time (I use about 100 grams, which looks like the blender above --about 3 big handfuls).

Enter my best frienemy: cocoa powder. Love it, but the caffeine isn't super good for my Graves. When it kicks in, I use carob powder which I must confess isn't half as satisfying. I use 14 grams or so (about 2 T.)

My other secret weapon: Flavor oils (extracts). I've collected a ....few. You can find them in candy making stores. My favorite for this shake is a small drop of peppermint oil. I've got a great mint bed growing behind my house, but at 7 in the morning, I never want to trek out there to pick some. If you use fresh --which is also really good, just do 3-4 leaves. Mint is strong. My other favorites are coconut flavor --a whole dropperful, or a drop of almond.

Add a scoop of protein. Here are the ones I use --except for the soy. I buy the soy isolate in bulk at the health food store, and don't pay for the sugar and flavoring. I just use this jar thingy to put it in. Hemp protein is the best for you, and tastes the worst. I still use whey a lot. I know to avoid casein protein for the cancer studies linked to it, but whey I'll do. I then add 1 3/4 cup water, a dash of salt (I salt everything for balance. I lose a lot of salt in exercise)about 4 ice cubes, and some Nunaturals stevia (although I've forgotten it on ocasion and I swear it still tastes good). Blend it up and slurp it up. So yummy. I literally look forward to it as a treat.

Here's the recipe in a nutshell:
1 3/4 cup water
3 ice cubes
14 g. (2 T.) cocoa powder
100 grams spinach (about 3 packed handfuls)
scoop protein powder --25 grams protein
stevia to taste
drop of flavor -try peppermint, coconut, almond.

Stats: 28.3 grams protein, 9.8 grams carb, 4.1 g. fat, 161 calories (using the eas whey protein).

A short history/update of nearly everything

2011-03-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been slacking lately in the blogging department. I've been writing a lot for myself at night, and somehow it takes away the need to blog as much I guess. I've had a lot of birthdays around here, hence a LOT of cake!! My brother's birthday was in February --ergo the caramel frosted carrot/coconut cake.

My neighbor's birthday --thus an orange chocolate cake with chocolate dipped orange slices, dark chocolate drizzle, and citrus cream cheese filling (I went a little crazy on that 'cause it was a birthday present. then I pirated the picture from my friend's blog because I suck :) ).

Finally Tia's birthday cake which was a banana cake with homemade whipped cream frosting, and strawberry sauce and filling.

With all of that cake making, I've been getting some intense workouts in luckily. Upped my deadlift again (!) to 165, and I got 5 reps in instead of a shaky one rep. I also started rotating in Chad Waterbury's workout that's made for people wanting to lean down without a strict cutting diet --just to minimize damage. It's kind of a HIIT program mixed with some heavy weights. I'm still doing my heavy lifting days, but just use these on days when I teach a weights class and want some cardio (cake cake cake!!!) and a little lifting to keep my muscles stimulated. I'm loving it (no that's not a McDonald's endorsement).

I'm letting go of my BYU classes after this semester because I'm starting to get a few clients to train in my home gym, and it's getting to be a little much. It makes me sad to let them go, but I think it's a good decision.

OK, me me me --I know I've got other people in my family too right? For Tia's birthday she just wanted clothes. We gave her a budget, and I thought we'd have to go shopping at least three or four times to spend it. Nope. All gone the first night, and the first store. Sigh. I wonder who that girl's mother is. Ari got up in church today to speak for the first time and did fantastic. I was so proud of her. Kai is getting a little crazier and more rambunctious every day. I hope the weather warms up permanently soon so he can GO PLAY OUTSIDE!

OK, that's all for now, but next post I'll show you my garden plans and seeds (yay seeds! little tiny packets of possibilities!) . Also, I should say that my DREAM garden plans for this year would involve a full time gardener, and a ton of concrete. Oh well, I'll suck it up like I always do.

PR deadlift! ....and still working on those squats.

2011-02-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Had some major carb loading last night ---unplanned, but hey, might as well use it the next day right? Anyway, I had a great workout this morning!

The video above is from my back squats, and dang if I'm still not going below parallel! In subsequent sets I turned my toes out and got down lower --according to my husband who was watching me, but no video --I was too tired to balance my phone on the leg machine again.

Here's what I did today:

Assisted Pullups (I'm getting really close on these!) 5 sets of 5
Squats: 95 lbs (down from my fantasy land 155 --it makes a difference with a fuller range of motion!) 5x5
Deadlifts (conventional and from the floor) :115 --5 reps; 135 --5; 155 --4; 160 (!!!!) --1 (with my husband behind me yelling at me to go go go!) sooo proud of that deadlift. Usually I can do about 140 and I whine and cry about it.
Shoulder press: 20's/5 reps; 25's 5,5,5,5.
Barbell rows: 70/5; 90/5; 90/4; 85/4; 85/3 --I'm also proud of this, because obviously it was right on with the weight. I always tell my clients/students, if you fail you win. I kept pushing to my limits here.

Last week I did 3 sets of ten for my lifts, and I think changing it up a little pushed me through some barriers. I have to state here too, that i know these aren't super heavy lifts for some girls, but the whole point of weight lifting is to get stronger, not compete with anyone else (although some girls have really inspired me to know I could do more than I ever thought I could). I'm getting stronger and it makes me happy!

Catering a winter party.

2011-01-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

I did a wedding lunch last summer, and decided that was my last catering job. I love the creativity, and the sense of accomplishment, but it seems like my Graves disease gets really bad whenever I have a job. It really is a high stress situation where the forgetting of one tiny detail, or the mis-scheduling of half an hour can ruin an event. However, I've got a friend that can talk me into anything, and she asked me to do her husbands work party. I did their last party and posted about it here.

They did this party instead of a Christmas party, but we obviously couldn't use Christmas decor, so decided on a winter wonderland-type theme. I'd done this as part of a party at the University of Utah years ago with my sisters. I've got a big curly willow tree in my neighborhood that I was able to beg branches off of, and we painted them silver, stuck them in hurricanes filled with salt, and poked a mini flashlight into the middle to shine up into the branches. Then I took a bunch of glittery fabric and sewed table runners for all of the tables. Sigh. I was covered in glitter for a week and my floor still looks like the silver brick road, but it looked pretty nice anyway.

We probably could have used a little garland or something between the chafing dishes too, but it slipped my mind. At least all of the chafers were silver :)

Pork medallions with apples, cranberries, and cherries.

Tuscan rolled chicken with feta, sun dried tomatoes, pinenuts, and fresh basil.

Garlic-rosemary roasted red skinned potatoes.

Balsamic roasted vegetables.

Strawberry - Wonton salad with strawberry balsamic vinaigrette.

Dessert! Raspberry White Chocolate cheesecake, and Chocolate Caramel Decadence layer cake.

I split this job with my catering partner and we each took half the work. This made a HUGE difference in being able to handle this job, but I still had a bad week or two with the Graves. I bought a Bodymedia Fit --which is kind of like a bodybug (it tracks the calories you burn all day and night ), and the day before the party I burned 2900 calories. That's not a typo. Granted, I was working pretty hard, but that's kind of outrageous a calorie burn for someone my size. Day of, I burned 3349. Luckily, I'm getting back to normal quickly. I taught my weights class, and moved all day yesterday cleaning dishes and the house after a week of neglect, and although I had 200-300 more steps than Thursday (the day before the catering job) I burned 300 calories less. That tells me I'm getting back on track which is good. I have an appetite that goes through the roof when I'm Gravesy and I'm a lot more impulsive in my eating, not to mention the heart stuff and anxiety. I finally feel a little calmer this morning.

I have to say though that Friday night was so fun! It was hard work (did I mention 3200 calories!?), but I just love doing that stuff. Maybe someday when I get completely healthy I can take catering back up again regularly.

Sick.

2011-01-14T08:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted. I got sick. If you don't know me very well, I have hyperthyroidism --Grave's disease. This is where my immune system goes crazy, starts attacking my thyroid, and makes it hyper --just like a six year old boy on red 40. The only good thing about it is that I burn calories like crazy. That also happens to be the bad thing. My body likes to burn muscle as it's first fuel when I'm sick, so all of my strength gains kind of go down the toilet. My body fat percentage goes up, and my muscle goes down. I also can't sleep, have a resting heart rate of around 100 beats per minute, and I feel anxious and dizzy all of the time.

The bummer is that I've been in remission for months --almost a year. I've had little flareups, but nothing that's made me go on meds for over a week. I'm pretty sure it's diet. My diet has been really clean since last year's competition, and my body has rewarded me with good health. Then Christmas hit, and with it extra treats and extra stress, and down I go. I'm also guilty of not taking care of it right away. I should have gone on my anti-thyroid pills when I felt the first symptoms, but in the back of my mind I think I wanted the extra leeway with calories. Isn't that awful? It's like I was slitting my wrist to get lower blood pressure. It doesn't make sense. Now my metabolism drops because I have less muscle, AND I'm used to eating more because the Graves dialed my appetite through the roof, not to mention the possible damage to my heart. My only excuse is when I'm sick I'm more impulsive and don't think things through as well. It's a common symptom and I'm claiming it.

So then about two weeks ago, I got sick sick with a cold/laryngitis thing and then I've been really suffering. I've shown up to teach my classes in street clothes to keep me from doing it with my students, and I've kept myself from doing personal workouts because I've felt like I just wasn't recovering. I couldn't kick it. It's been so frustrating! I've felt like a big fat disgusting slug. Isn't that funny how quickly your personal identity can change in your mind? Just a month ago, I was at Jeff's goal weight (Ok. little explanation here --I have a goal weight 4&1/2 pounds lower than what Jeff thinks is healthy for me --he'd be just as happy with me 10 pounds heavier or whatever, but I asked for help in reaching a goal so we bet a big screen tv against clothes shopping money that I'd get there. He says "there" is 4.5 pounds higher than where I say) and now I'm back up 3 more pounds. Sigh. I know when I go from maintenance calories to deficit I lose 3 pounds in water right away, but there's some muscle loss there too, so once I start lifting again it will go up anyway. Does that make sense? 3 down with water, 2-3 up with water back in my muscles and literal muscle fiber growth.

But, last night I slept with no coughing fits, and the thyroid thing is slowly coming back to normal, so I'm LIFTING TODAY!!! I'm so excited. Wish me luck in getting back to normal please?

Jeff and I sneak out snowshoeing

2011-01-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

On the district calendar it said that Tia and Kai weren't going back to school until the 4th. For some reason that calendar was wrong? and everyone seemed to know that except for us. Whatever. Anyway Jef and I were happy because he still had the day off work and we could go snowshoeing together. All y'all that live here in Utah take this kind of stuff for granted, but where I grew up it looked like this in summer:

This in spring:

This in fall:

...and this in winter.

After 20 years living here, I'm still not used to this in winter:

The sun was shining, and Jeff and I didn't even wear real coats. We used poles, a lot of the trail we went on hadn't had anyone on it before us, and the poles helped with balance. Most of the time it was just us and the snow. We did run into Karla and her crazy dogs, and one other couple, but that was over the course of almost two hours.

I still can't believe all of that beauty was real. Do you know when you're experiencing something -say you're eating a piece of cheesecake, and it's so good, you're afraid you're not experiencing it deep enough? That's what it was like for me. I kept trying to memorize and internalize how beautiful it was. To "drink it in" as Anne of Green Gables would say.

Clean slate.

2010-12-29T17:02:00.000-08:00

I took down the Christmas tree and village today. What a letdown. I like the clean feeling in the house, but now the festive feeling is gone.

However, maybe it will stop me from eating cookies as one of my meals every day? I hope so.

Too good to wait.

2010-12-27T07:09:00.000-08:00

I really was hoping more people would see my last post because I had such a good time last week --and there's pretty pictures :) But I can't wait to put this up here --I've been saving it too long already. We drove up to Jeff's parents' house for a few days later last week, and we have to drive through some pretty small towns (and LOTS of desert) to get there. We see this billboard, and I literally make Jeff turn the car around so I can take a picture.

After you look at it for a while, you can tell the people are standing on a couple of hands, but I swear I thought it was a giant exploded colon with people popping out.

Merry Salt Lake City Christmas

2010-12-25T11:12:00.000-08:00

Jeff and I got to go for a night away this week courtesy of my brother and sister-in-law who watched our kids for us. We love to go to a certain Hilton downtown because of the great gym. The problem is the rooms aren't super nice. Nice, but not fantastic. I wish I had a picture of that gym. The hotel website only has a picture of the cardio machines --which as we all know are the LAME part of a gym (but they do have tv's on them (yay). Anyway, we decided to go to the other Hilton this time because the gym looked pretty good (are we nerds or what?) and the rooms looked much better.

The cable machine was gone when we got there, and some of the free weights were missing, but we got in some great workouts anyway. I'm voting for the old Hilton next time. We were a bit further away from the city center, and so we got some nice walks in. I've always lived in the suburbs, except for a brief time in South America, and so I love walking in the city because I feel like I'm in a romantic comedy. Have you noticed they all seem to take place in New York City? Except "While you were sleeping" -Chicago. Last time we stayed downtown, we witnessed a drug deal within a few feet of us. That wasn't so romantic comedy-ish.

Every year the LDS church lights up Temple Square in the center of downtown Salt Lake, but this was the first time in a few years I got to see it. Can you see me? I'm the little dark shadow in the foreground. That's the big LDS temple on the left --all made of hand carved granite. They light up all of the trees, running the lights up and down each branch. I think I'd kill myself if it was my job to light up all even one tree. Look:

Can you IMAGINE?!? Hours and hours.

I've got the crappiest digital camera in the world, but I wanted to show you a little of our walk downtown. This is Main street. All of the sidewalks are made of granite, and there are these cool clocks, and the trees are lit up too. I could almost imagine the jazz soundtrack in the background.....

What do you think?

2010-12-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

How do you feel about wrist straps? weight belts? arch supports and good running shoes? spf 30?

Mixed feelings on all of them for me. I can deadlift 40 more pounds for higher reps with wriststraps, and the only things not working harder are my hands and forearms. Not super excited about getting bigger hands or forearms.

Weight belt? Never use it, but then I've had a couple of times I maybe should have when my lower back has had a weird twinge for a couple of days after a heavy lift. However I haven't had anything like that for over a year -so maybe I've built up the strength I need in that area.

I ran ran ran for years as my main form of exercise and was ALWAYS careful to wear arch supports and good shoes, and never had an injury. I started training for some races this last summer, and granted, this was the first time I've tried to increase distance AND speed at the same time (a big no no in running), but trying to do a few barefoot training runs and getting lighter shoes gave me my first injury -plantar fasciitis, and later tendinitis. I thought I had built up my foot strength with barefoot kickboxing for a year or so first, but maybe it wasn't enough.

What about wearing sunscreeen everywhere, all of the time? Have you heard about the big vitamin D buzz going around right now that says vitamin D can reduce cancer risk? Do you wear the sunscreen all of the time to not get cancer, or do you get lots of sunlight and avoid sunscreen because it can block vitamin D absorption/production?

Jeff and I talk about this a lot. It's the use a crutch/be safe conundrum and it applies to a lot of things in life. Do you protect yourself, or do you expose yourself in order to build up your strength? Do you never do external rotator cuff shoulder exercises because it's so easy to injure those little muscles, or do you do them specifically BECAUSE it's so easy to injure those little muscles, and so they need to be strengthened? Do you jump in and "save" your kids when something bad is going to happen to them, or do you step back a little in order to let them solve problems themselves?

What do you think?

Christmas crazies. Or, how to make your own snowflake cookies.

2010-12-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

Yep. I did them again this year, but it's the laaaaast time. We ended up making 12 batches of gingerbread dough, and I didn't bother counting how many cookies this year for neighbors. They're all done (although not all delivered). Sigh.

I couldn't find any more white nonpareils this year, so we were a little skimpy on those kinds. On the plus side, I was finally able to figure out how to keep my blue flood icing glossy --but not until the second day. See how shiny my blue ones look? They're dry and everything!

I also found these cute gable boxes to pack them in. We had some fun doing them this year --mainly because Tia helped (and Wendy for an hour or so -Thanks!). But yeah, this is the last time. Hopefully Jeff gets a million dollar an hour job before next Christmas's neighbor gifts and I can give everyone their own pony instead. Haven't you always wanted a pony?
So I decided I ought to share my recipes so you can make your own cookies -since I'm giving out ponies from now on.

First, the equipment. I bought a set of snowflake cutters here. ;a good rolling pin; a good mixer (-I recommend a Bosch since I burned out my Epicurean Kitchenaid twice before I gave up and switched over), cake decorating tips and bags (you need a #2 size, and maybe a six, or a flat one -like a 101) three cookie sheets; powdered sugar (try to get C&H --when I get the bargain brand I regret it when I taste it), meringue powder, lemon juice,chocolate sprinkles (Guittard are the best. I eat them by the handful when I'm feeling weak -made of real chocolate; White non-pareils (I should have ordered them there -I forgot to and looked in Funfinity --they usually have them, but DIDN'T this year), sanding sugar, and blue food color (this is me --I like the light blue with the chocolate sprinkles).

OK, here goes: the recipes. for the cookies I use a version of Mrs. Field's but add a little more spice.

3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 T. ground cinnamon (I buy the cheap cinnamon though, maybe that's why Mrs. Fields only uses a t.)
3 t. ground ginger
1/4 t. ground cloves (I really do about 1/2 t. --but try this first, since I really like it spicy)

Mix all of this together in a bowl. In your Bosch add:

1 cup softened, salted butter
3/4 cup DARK brown sugar (packed)

Cream it together. Add:

1 large egg
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses.

Add your dry ingredients, and mix just until moistened.

There's your dough. Now do that twelve times if you're me :). Roll out using more flour if needed, to 1/3 an inch, cut out, and bake at 350 for 8 minutes. check them, and if they still look wet, put them in for another minute or two, but they should be really soft when you pull them out --and NOT browner around the edges. If you're fast enough, you can roll and cut out a pan's worth in 5 minutes, and then rotate three pans around between the racks of your ovens and the counter.

For the drawing icing:
1/4 cup meringue podwer
1/4 cup cold water
1/4 cup lemon juice

beat together in a bowl (with your Bosch --see how handy they are?) until soft peaks form --just like egg white soft peaks, and add:

1 lb. powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time until medium to stiff peaks form. I really like a lemony-icing on gingerbread, but if you don't, you can use all water.

For the flood icing:
Take 1 cup of the icing you just made, and add 2 T. water, 6-8 drops blue food color, and 2 T. corn syrup (hence the glossiness), and mix together well. You might add half of the water and half of the syrup first and see if you have the right consistency (draw a knife through the icing, and if it comes back together between 7 and 10 seconds. If it takes longer, and more water/syrup, if it's too fast, add more powdered sugar).

For both of your icings, keep them covered with plastic wrap right up against the icing, and in the fridge. If it dries out even a little around the edges, those edges can get into your decorating tip and cause you to curse and run around breaking things.

Use your drawing icing in your decorating bag with a #2 tip for making outlines of the things you want to "flood" or fill in. Do these first, as they need to dry before you can flood. You can also do the snowflakes you want to just draw on at this time, and then dip them in sanding sugar, nonpareils, or sprinkles right away before the icing dries. Just fill a saucer with your topping, and turn the cookie upside down in it. Sprinkling on top DOESN'T work. Brush off excess.

Outlined, and then not flooded --design instead.

When your outlines dry, you can fill in with your "flood". Use the #6 or #101 tip, and fill in the outlines, using the tip to spread it around. Don't do too much in there, or it will spill over the sides. Let it dry all of the way --it takes a while-- then you can do another design on top if you want. I love the look of a chocolate sprinkle design on top of the blue.

Flooded without design.

Flooded and design on top with sanding sugar.

For design ideas, I use these books:

Or look at this blog (but you're really not allowed to compare my skill with this lady's. She's amazing).

Good Luck! (And bring me a few while you're at it.)

Full body compound workout.

2010-12-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

I found a couple of new blogs to follow and it's funny how my tastes have changed. I used to follow religiously a girl that taught cardio classes and talked about what she ate all of the time, then I followed a runner/triathalon girl, now there are a few lifting girls I'm following. One isn't too careful about swearwords so I won't post her link here ( although I think she's just young or something), but here are the other three: Foods of April, Mother Fitness and Nia Shanks (and yes, that is the author down the side of the page on Mother Fitness) . So this Nia lifts HEAVY --girl can deadlift 300 pounds (and she weighs 122), and bench 145. She advocates doing full body compound exercises only --not focusing on and burning out specific muscle groups. Think pull-ups versus biceps curls, or squats versus quad extensions. I'm not positive about doing this exclusively, but it's VERY interesting --and makes good sense to me. These are functional movements for the most part. You're always going to want to pick things up off the ground for example (actually --I think Nia USED that example ). So I've done two workouts so far like this, and I'm FEELING it. Here's Wednesday's:

Barbell squats 135 pounds (a small note here: I "thought" I was able to do a lot more weight squatting, but I wasn't going all the way down. It's so easy to trick yourself! This is down to where I can feel the tops of my thighs touching up against my pelvic girdle): 6 reps, 6 reps, 6, 8 (I got the hang of it here).

Deadlifts 95 pounds (note --these aren't "straight leg deadlifts" --they are conventional deadlifts) 8,9,9,7

Pullups (note --I was doing assisted by putting my feet on the bar and trying to do as much as I can with upper body, but I never felt like I was making any progress. I tried "negatives", but found I ended up doing assisted without noticing --like I'd trick myself. Finally, I asked Jeff to spot me, and finally I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to doing them on my own. He says he's only pushing up about 20 pounds worth of me and I don't know about that, but I really feel like I'm maxing out finally.) 3 1/2, 3, 2 1/2, 3

Shoulder Press -25 pounds each arm: (note: standing is what Nia recommends. I usually would do these sitting and one arm at a time so I could spot myself with the other arm -- and I could do 35's this way. Standing, with both arms at once, your whole body is working to stabilize. Much more "neuromuscular stimulation" --core, shoulders, legs, etc.) 7,7,5,4

Inverted Row: (here's a link in case you don't know what these are --I didn't, and they aren't on bodybuilding.com ) 10, 10, 10, 8

That's it. I did another workout today, (Nia advocates three times a week, but I didn't see her program until Wednesday) substituting "step-ups" for the squats. These (I think --I asked her to send me a link to a video) are where you start on a step --like 4 inches --with a barbell, and step back down into a lunge. So hard to keep balance and form! I started with 115 for the first set, and had to go down to 95 to keep the form without Jeff holding my torso. I'm the kind of lifter who always seems to start out heavier than I can really do!

Anyway, here's some tips if you want to train like this for a few months. Pick 4-6 compound exercises, and do somewhere between 3 and 6 sets. Pick a weight that you can do for 5-10 reps, but that should be all you can do by the last set. Go until your muscles give out. Be safe! Have a spotter there, or make sure you have a place to drop the weight safely if you need to. If you can do more reps at the end, do them, but pick a heavier weight next time. You need to get adequate rest in between workouts, and get enough protein into you: 20-25 grams within 45 minutes after your workout, and 100-200 grams every day. This doesn't have to be meat or dairy! Good sources include beans, nuts (higher in fat, so watch these a little), quinoa, oats, and protein powders like rice, hemp, soy, or yellow pea. This allows your muscles the rest and raw materials to rebuild stronger after you break them down working out. That's the whole point of your workout!
Do this three times a week if you can, or at least twice, until you can build up to three. If you notice that you aren't able to increase reps or weight every couple of workouts, it's time to change things up. Either change the number of sets, the number of reps (or both), or the exercise. This is how you push through a plateau, but make sure first that it isn't an issue of not getting adequate fuel or rest.

If you find that you'd like some help, feel free to contact me, I'm a trainer, and would love to work with you. You'll find that you get addicted to the feeling of lifting just like you did with cardio, and I really believe it does more things, and better things for your body (although I'm not above getting an extra kickboxing session after a cookie ~~binge~~ party!).

That's why they call them skullcrushers.

2010-12-06T07:54:00.000-08:00

So, I finally got around to doing bi's tri's, and shoulders on Saturday. All last week I focused on big muscle groups, because I know that they will work things like shoulders and arms anyway, and I felt like I've lost some muscle mass in the last couple of weeks. But then toward the end of the week I noticed some definition and mass loss in my arms too, so decided to hit them up.

I like to superset everything because time is always of the essence for me, so I did a cool rotation between the three:

bi curls with triceps overhead press (dumbbells for both)
shoulder press with preacher curls (dumbbells again)
(shoulder) dumbbell side raises with triceps kickbacks
biceps cable curls with triceps cable extensions
shoulder front raises with biceps hammer curls (dumbbells)
internal and external rotators on shoulders (i've had injuries in the past and I'm trying to build them up) with Skullcrushers for triceps ---and here's where I had a problem (so glad it was the last superset)

We've got a bench that has a pin that only goes halfway through the adjust holes. That's how it's made. There's a plastic sleeve that fits inside to keep it from shifting from side to side and letting the pin drop out if its hole, but that plastic sleeve has been broken for10 of the 14 years we've had the bench. I guess I didn't double check the pin, and when I was a couple of reps into my skullcrushers (see the link if you don't know what these are), the pin shifted out and the bench collapsed. Taken off guard, my arms must have given way, and one20 lb. dumbbell hit me in the head (thank goodness it was a high-rep lower weight rotation!). Here's a shot of it 2 days later:

No biggie right? It was scary looking at the time. You know how head wounds bleed a lot? Yeah. My ten year old ran downstairs when she heard me yelling for my husband and started screaming "I don't want my mom to die!!" That was encouraging. My husband did a spontaneous Jacob Black imitation and ripped off his shirt to hold to my head, but it was completely lost on me and he was a little disappointed I think. "How come you didn't say 'I'm sort of beautiful'?" Riiiight. Just so everyone knows, when you're bleeding and hurting, you don't CARE how anyone looks. Jeff didn't let me finish my last sets or let me do the Christmas tree that day. I just laid in bed until his work Christmas party that the devil and all his angels couldn't keep me from (someone else cooks for me? I'm there). It was still oozing blood at the dinner table, but was so worth it for that dinner. Plus, I got to wear my sequin fancy top.

Two Thanksgivings...so I went running again!

2010-12-01T08:23:00.000-08:00

My last sister in Utah moved to Washington this month. Sigh. I've got my brother left here, and a great sister-in-law he's married to, but now, of my three sisters, one's in Boston, one's in California, and the last one's in Washington. Pretty lame for family get-togethers from now on: only 30% of the family is left. Anyway, we had our family Thanksgiving (before she left) at my house so I could be "the hostess with the mostest". Really, I love to host(ess). We had a great table set-up (which I didn't get very good pictures of),

A great meal (which I didn't get very good pictures of), favor bags with Thanksgiving quotes and pumpkin pie spiced truffles (which I didn't get good pictures of), ....and pies which I DID get pictures of! (priorities friends. priorities.)

French crumb apple pie.

Two layer chocolate-orange cream cheese pie with Oreo crust, chocolate bark, and intense orange coulis.

Sweet potato pie ---per request from my Dad, who's birthday we were celebrating.

Raisin-sour cream pie, which I'd heard about in old novels, and wanted to try. The sour cream is cooked into a type of custard with egg yolks and sugar, and then there's a brown sugar meringue on top (which I almost mastered this time; one more pie should do it). It pulled away from the edge, and I had to add a garnish of cream and raw sugar.

On Thanksgiving-Thanksgiving, we went to my in-laws. I have to tell you, my mother-in-law is famous for keeping you well fed and coddled. However, the last few years have been kind of hard on her taking care of her mother --who lived in the house, was 100 years old, and was bedridden until she passed away last summer. I came still expecting the worn-out mother-in-law, and was prepared to cook everything. We got there, and she already had everything done and the table set. She did let me mix up the sweet potatoes so my feelings wouldn't be hurt. :) What a sweet, sweet lady.

I was stuffed over the course of two and a half days with thick cream, pie, Parker-house homemade rolls, hand dipped chocolates, homemade waffles.... anyway, I was dying for a good workout.

My in-laws live in Redlands, a part of Grand Junction Colorado, and it is one of my favorite places to run. So....after a hiatus of 5 (?) months, I RAN again and it felt pretty dang good. I purposefully left my Garmin at home so I wouldn't be tempted to pace fast, and just did an easy, maintainable pace --I'm guessing 9 1/2-10 minute miles, and and enjoyed myself so much I ended up going for about 70 minutes. I was a little cold to start, but it warmed up a bit, and the scenery was breathtaking.

Right down the street from my in-laws' house is Rigg's hill, where a paleontologist discovered a brontosaurus (or something) a hundred years ago. We took the kids out there for a hike late Friday evening.

It got kinda dark and cold. OK, really really cold.

The reason I like that hill is because it's where Jeff and I did our engagement pictures. Isn't he cute with his longish blond hair? I always thought he looked like Brad Pitt in "A river runs through it" (although I never did like Brad Pitt's mouth). Now my guy's even cuter --aged like a fine wine....not that I've tried a fine wine or any wine for that matter, and not that he's even aged that much. You know what I mean.

Christmas Romance

2010-11-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

(source)

I took a personality test last night and was SURE I'd be the "romantic". I was really sure. Nope. I was the "helper". What "the helper" sounds like is a person that would do anything for people to love them. Kinda pathetic? that's what I thought. Sigh. Oh well. I've known for a long time that I really like approval from those around me; not that I'd sacrifice my principles (that showed up in the test too). ANYWAY, back to the romance. I'm not talking Harlequin here, I'm talking about a way of looking at things --everything --and seeing things with rose-colored glasses. I'm talking about finding the "romanticism: an exciting and mysterious quality (as of a heroic time or adventure)" in everything. It's like taking the world, and finding the Disney in it. That's what I like to do.

So what's my favorite time of year? Of course. What other time of year do you decorate your whole house and city, and stylize everything from sweaters to Oreos (did you know they have Christmas Oreos)? What other time of year are you allowed to go all goopy-eyed over movies, and songs, and faith-promoting rumors and people just say you have "the Christmas spir't"? This is the time of year, when I can make almost three hundred 6" gingerbread snowflakes --covering every inch of my counters and no-one thinks I'm crazy (except Jeff --and frankly, he's probably right).

(source)

So I wanted to tell you where I always go with my best Christmas fantasies. England. When I was little (OK, and again many times as a teenager and young mom) I read a book called "The Children of Greene Knowe" and it is still influencing me now. There is a scene in the book where the little boy goes to midnight mass with his grandmother in the local church, and travels back in time to the church's glory days when the original family that owned the manor house was alive, and had a boy singing in the choir, the building was decorated with greenery, and there were candles.... can you see it? The picture above is of the village church near the house the book is based on. It's not midnight, but can you picture it anyway? I always wish I had big tall stone walls decorated with greenery, and the Vienna Boy's Choir singing the Messiah as part of my personal Christmas decorations.

(source)

The Messiah has always been a big part of my Christmas fantasies. What a stunning piece of music. Growing up in San Diego, and when I lived in Tooele (I KNOW!), they had a big community production of this piece every year. I scored a solo of some sort three different years, and even now, thinking about it makes me tear up. There is so much FEELING in that music. I sang with everything I had in me --everyone does because It's part of the piece and you really can't go halfway.

(source)

One year BYU decorated their bookstore with streamers of what looked like sheet music for Christmas decorations, and maybe you wouldn't think it appropriate, but for me it looked exactly right. The carols and songs --especially the Messiah, are a big part of the romance of Christmas for me; especially the English ones --or OK, European ones --I just picture them all in England. I don't get into "rocking around the Christmas tree" so much, but "Deck the Halls", or "Greensleeves", or "The Angel Gabriel's Message" really speak to me. Sometimes I wonder if it's my ancestry from that part of the world, my roots, calling to me, but I know it's probably just the same thing as always. The romance.

Halloween Party

2010-10-24T20:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome to wonderland! Friday we co-hosted the neighborhood Halloween party. My biggest regret was that we couldn't invite everyone I wanted to. My house just isn't big enough. My only consolation is, I can always do another party. Wanna come?

We played the game "Curses" for part of the night, and I thought I was going to lose it at one point. We had one neighbor that just couldn't help herself setting off another neighbor --who was SUCH a good sport.

Sorry this picture is blurry, but it was the only one I had. Leslie had to say "You're always after me lucky charms" whenever someone touched her. Oh my gosh --Kelli probably poked her 20 times. I kept thinking she had to stop, but she didn't and we just kept laughing.

We had some scary treats too. Goblin boogers and eyeball cake....

And a hot chocolate bar on the back patio. We also had some great costumes!

Fancy Nancy


The black-eyed......guess?

The Super Mario Brothers family minus a few...

A couple of Katniss's

We did a bunch of games and crafts including a skeleton bone naming competition, cookie decorating, and the funnest photo opp: Donut Races!

My favorite picture: Jeff had to work really hard for this one, but we finally figured out Sierra's strategy for winning --it was her prehensile tongue!

Girls' weekend in Moab

2010-10-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late and need to do two posts today. I went with a group of girls to Moab last weekend to do some hiking. I really only had a couple of people in the group I knew pretty well, and the rest were just acquaintances or people I'd never met before. You'd think that would be a recipe for an uncomfortable weekend, but it was just the opposite. I feel like I made some really good friends --especially with the people I rode down with. They were so much fun. We discussed crazy family stories, politics, college boyfriends, you name it.

The thing about Arches national park? A lot of arches. I thought there were one or two that the park was named after, but there are HUNDREDS. It was UEA weekend, so it was too crowded to do the hike we were planning on, so we did three other short ones instead. I couldn't believe the colors. My camera doesn't do justice to the bright red against the bright blue. Yum. Breathtaking.

We stayed overnight in Green River (that's how you know it was a girls' weekend --no camping, hotel. Great breakfast too by the way --let me know if you need a good hotel there. Really good breakfast. Worth staying for.) and the second day we went to Goblin Valley. We planned on hiking Little Wild Horse Canyon which I was a little skeptical of since I'd never heard of it. Oh my gosh! Go! So beautiful.

Don't go when it's raining though. We kept thinking about how that canyon would fill right up to the top within minutes. We passed some grown men hiking through there, and I wondered how they fit. They must have turned sideways for their shoulders to make it through.

We had a little trouble coming back, we started the drive, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, we were in Capitol reef national park. Not really on our way. We took a wrong turn (or two). We estimate we drove through seven counties in Utah trying to get back. Luckily I was with the funniest mother/daughter team on the planet, and another lady from South Africa that was a REALLY good sport. So I THINK I could find my way back again if anyone (Meesh and the boys?) wants to go back, but we won't be going through Hanksville that's for sure.

Butternut Squash Tortellinis and Whole Steamed Artichokes

2010-10-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

So I wanted to tell y'all about a yummy dinner we made the other night. We had 4 artichokes from my sister that I was excited to eat. I think the last time I ate artichokes whole was in college. I went and bought a 5th one so we'd all have our own, and steamed them. Just get a big old stock pot and put about 6 inches of water in the bottom, cut off the bottom of the artichoke stems, and throw them in to steam for about 1/2 an hour. You know they're done when you poke a fork into the base, and it's soft.

Along with the artichokes we made butternut squash tortellinis. I had a big butternut squash I roasted the other day to make these with, but I've been sneaking half cups into my morning protein shakes with cinnamon and nutmeg. I figured I'd better make the tortellinis before it was all gone. I mixed a little chicken boullion and a little brown sugar into it, then dropped 3/4 teaspoons worth of puree into the center of a wonton wrappers (talk about easy peasy homemade pasta!), folded and sealed the edges, then gave them a quick boil. Served with sage and melted butter.....heavenly, and so quick.

I put one artichoke on each kid's plate and they all said "hey! I can't eat that big guy!" The thing with artichokes is that you don't eat most of it. You pull off a leaf, dip it into butter-lemon-garlic sauce (yeah! go vegans! We could have purchased "Earth Balance" for this, but what's the point? You're artificially hydrogenating vegetable oil to make that stuff, and so I'm doubting it's any better for you and you gotta have that butter flavor. Huh. I wonder how they'd be with a good quality olive oil? That sounds pretty good actually!) and scrape off the bottom of the leaf with your teeth. Notice the scraped leafs in the picture? When you get to the purple leaves, you stop and get out your knife. That's the "choke" and you don't want to eat it. You carefully cut it off, angling your knife downwards and to the center making a circle. If you see little hairs on the base that you missed, cut those off too. Then you get to eat the "heart" the best part. On good artichokes, the stem is just as good, but a couple of ours had some stringy stems.

So turns out that the kids liked them. They almost always like things you "dip". It was a lot of butter for one meal --I'm estimating we each had 1 1/2 to 2 T. , but it was worth it for a splurge, and really? that's probably still less fat than a dish of ice cream or slice of pie. Mmmm. Pie. Thanksgiving is COMING!

Pleasant heat.

2010-09-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

Have you tried this? You should. Just one teensy square....I may regret letting this bar come over to my house to play, but Oh my gosh. Yum. Not a real strong taste of pepper, just a warmth in the back of your mouth to go with the warm fuzzys chocolate always gives you. Speaking of Chocolate (yes it IS capitalized in my world), I'm trying to round up some of the usual suspects to go to a chocolate tasting class at Tony Caputo's in Salt Lake. Here's the schedule. So it would have to be a way out at the end of November --the 29th, or October 11th. 25 bucks. But have you ever tried the chocolate they've got up there? Holy spumoni. I'll drive.

OK, here's the picture I should be sharing with you. This is my last week of the CSA produce thing. It didn't turn out at all how I planned, their produce overlapped all of my own garden's bounty, producing some waste --like I made spaghetti sauce out of heirlooms for crying out loud. They should each and every one be eaten sliced on olive oil toast with fresh basil chiffonade, but there's only so many I can eat myself! Anyway, look at the colors there: red orange yellow, green and purple. No blue food. Didn't I have a conversation about that with someone recently? Have you read the Lightening theif? Have you ever tried Coldstone's cotton candy ice cream? Blue food is sometimes amazing --but not as amazing as that chocolate. Takers on the class?

Personal Trainer

2010-09-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd give an update on the personal trainer thing. I passed (yay!), and now I'm trying to get the business thing up and going. I've got some forms I need to get copied, but at least I found them all, and I'm ordering some equipment, but I've got one (count 'em one!) official client (my sister-in-law), and one other potential client (my OTHER sister-in-law).

It's a little hard to give Training the time it needs because I'm teaching 6 classes a week, and I take a lot of time preparing them (this last week I taught 7 classes). Tia and Ari are doing classes after school, and once again we have speech twice a week up at BYU.

I gotta tell you though, I REALLY like it. I've put together a few programs for people so far and I'm loving it. I do the same kind of thing for 4 of my classes, looking for new ways to work your muscles, and researching safety and things, and I just love it.

Also, after that comment from my brother "you're crazy", I realized I was. I stopped being so strict and regimented with my diet, and went back to tracking calories online. It is sooo working for me. OK, I'm not losing 10 pounds a week, but I'm able to control my eating a lot better with a little more leeway in my choices. I am glad I did the other diets just to help train me to make better choices, but now if there is a fun-size butterfinger offered to me in my YW class, and I'm starving, I eat the dang thing and just enter it in when I get home. My only guidelines are that I try to get in at least 100 grams of protein a day, avoid junk food for the most part, and I try to get in a lot of vegetables at every meal. If I do those three things, I usually do pretty great in my eating. No comments from girls on my bowling team!! :0 We had some treats there at our Friday tournament, and I swear --I had close to 900 calories of stuff that left me hungry in a half an hour!! That's rotten. I did some extra exercise, but then didn't beat myself up when I didn't make my calorie goal. I just tried to go a little lighter the next day, and I was OK.

I plan on counseling clients to use the free calorie counter I'm using, but if they want a nutrition plan, will work with a dietitian from the Utah clinic to develop one for them. I know it was helpful in training me to figure out good choices . It's just that when my diet's too restrictive, I binge. I guess that's a common problem with restrictive diets.

Do you let people make mistakes?

2010-09-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

Made a mistake last night. Kinda a biggie. I had 4-5 of my young women in the car, and went to change lanes to the left, and someone was in my blind spot. To say I didn't see him is putting it mildly. I checked my mirror more than once, and was focused on the car behind him. I must not have turned my head at all. The sun was going down on that side, so maybe that was why? Sun in my eyes? The poor guy moved into the turning lane and stopped completely, while I moved into a construction zone, and was trapped between cones for a mile. I must have RUINED his day. I didn't hit him --no thanks to me. My young women were a little traumatized, but bowling at BYU for an hour or two and they seemed fine. So, here's my question: we all screw up right? How do we move past it?

I did this catering job with my friend a few yeas ago, and screwed up the planning. We ran out of two side dishes and a salad. We blamed the hogging vegetarians, but I know it was my fault, because the numbers I gave to my friend to prepare were just plain wrong. I hadn't done anything but reception catering for years, and a dinner is a different animal. I swear I had post traumatic stress syndrome for a couple of weeks over that one. I kept looking in the oven that night, but there was just no more food in it. I ended up going to Macaroni Grill and buying some pilafs, and salads and serving those. I kept crying in church even, because it seemed like forgiveness from Heavenly Father wouldn't even help. At least when you sin, you can get forgiveness and be clean, but a screw-up?

One way that helps me to get past these times, is to let everyone else make mistakes. I had another catering job last summer, and wanted to use a local bakery for the pitas. They couldn't get them right, but I remembered my mistakes and kept giving them the chance to get it right. I kept bringing in examples, and asking them to try different things, and had high hopes, but have to admit, finally the day was upon us, and when I picked them up I was disappointed. they worked, but just barely. Still, it helps me feel better knowing I gave them the chance to make it right. I don't know if my client agrees....but I REALLY want people to succeed after they've made a mistake. I really want to believe it can make you better at what you do. I feel like I became a very careful caterer after my fiasco, and I hope I can become a much better driver after last night.

I read an article last year in Time about Hillary that profiled some huge mistakes she'd made as Secretary of State (I hope I finally got the right link) doing probably the hardest job in the world --negotiating middle east peace talks. They kinda jumped all over her and it made me sad. I didn't vote for her, but I've gotta say I've always admired her. Sue me. Anyway, the headlines this morning looked so good --she had a great sound bite: "This is the time, these are the leaders". Maybe she's pulling something off over there. I'm rooting for her.

The Hugest Bestest Aquarium in the World.

2010-09-12T13:46:00.001-07:00

Hey! What's that little swirly green thing to the left? Is it a piece of kelp? Is it an alien? No it's a SEA HORSE! Click on the picture to see up close. I know I say my favorite animal is the giraffe, but these little guys may be a close second. Sea horses have their own big room in the Monterey Bay Aquarium and no wonder, they are so fascinating. These "Leafy Sea Dragons" were the star of the show. With their tank in the very back, like a centerpiece for the exhibit, you really had to push a little to get space to see them. People would stand there forever watching. Did you know it's the boy sea horses who get pregnant? They had some pregnant males there. It made me really happy in a mean sort of way.
Here's feeding time in the kelp forest tank. The diver under water had a microphone inside his "helmet" to talk to the docent standing outside the tank, and a bone conduction listening device to hear the docent talk back. I'd heard of these bone conduction things before when we were fitting Ari with her hearing aids. Here's a link to the hearing aids, and I'd guess they'd work similarly to what he was using.
These are the same jellies we saw outside in the bay. The ones that hunted Jeff down.

Barnacles. They really do look like that with their little feelers poking out. We had a guy in college (I studied Marine biology) that could do a great barnacle imitation. Remind me to show you what it looked like sometime.

I had to include at least one blurry picture of this guy. He was bigger than Jeff. Bigger than I. Bigger than Jeff and I together. He also seemed to want to make friends since he kept coming over to the side of the tank to say Hi. That, or maybe he was hungry.

Road trip, a French Bakery, and The Marine Mammal Protection Act

2010-09-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and laugh foodie friends. It's typical that the first highlight of my time in Monterey was a little French bakery where we went a couple of times for sandwiches, bread, and the finally for some amazing pastries. This was only about half of their selection. We got a nice healthy (healthy sized!) sampling our last day there.
One of the reasons I wanted to go back to Monterey (I lived there for a semester in college) was my memory of diving around the bay accompanied by seals and sea lions. They're just like dogs: friendly, playful and curious. Every time I talk about playing underwater hide-and-seek with them though, someone always brings up the scary "Marine Mammal Protection Act" and how you're not supposed to bother them etc. etc. We paid "Dave" to take us out in his little boat to go diving, and guess who followed us out there and swam around with us the whole time? I swear they LIKE to be around people.

I could write a whole post on my crazy brain and how it kept telling me a sudden storm was going to come up and swamp the boat (not a cloud in the sky), how a sneaky current was going to sweep me out to sea, or worst of all, I'd panic underwater ("am I panicking yet? am I panicking yet?") and accidentally kill myself with compressed air. But I won't. Suffice it to say, I did the dive, and I'm proud of myself. If only there were some sort of pill I could swallow to shut my brain up at those times.

Ummm...my sister tells me they DO have pills to quiet voices in your head....I hope I'm not to that point yet.
Isn't she beautiful? This is a sea lion not a seal (sea lions have ears). They don't play as much, but they seem to be great at flopping all over docks. They had to put barriers in all over the dock so the sea lions wouldn't take them over.

If you look close, you'll see a bunch of jellyfish. These ones were brown and white, but we also saw light blue and clear ones. We weren't too worried about being stung, because the water was so cold we had on 7mm diving suits covering every square inch of skin except for maybe an inch around the mouth where your regulator goes in. So on our second dive, Jeff gets a killer attack jellyfish that goes right for his face, and he got stung above the lip. (not really --they randomly drift) What're the odds of that?

This is the other thing about Monterey: it's incredibly romantic. It's so beautiful and picturesque. It looked like Pirates of the Caribbean could come sailing right out of the harbor any minute. Cold and foggy in the mornings until the sun burned it off, the mist only made it more mysterious and endearing.

Jeff really wanted to see the Redwoods, so we took a day trip up through San Francisco to Muir woods. I REALLY wanted to see Chinatown though, so we drove around and around San Francisco for close to 2 hours looking for it. I saw some great views and learned how to run the GPS thing on Jeff's phone, but by the time we found Chinatown I just wanted to move on.

We got to the Redwoods so late, they let us in for free. That was cool, but it made the woods "lovely, dark, and deep". We didn't see the banana slugs either because it was pretty dry there by that time of the year.

Don't they look like flowers? Huge huge flowers.

I still have to tell you about the aquarium, so come back tomorrow (or maybe the next day if I don't pull it together in time).

First day : Park City and the Hotel Monaco

2010-09-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

Jeff and I have been saving up our sky miles for --forever and finally decided to cash in for our anniversary. First we were going to go to Costa Rica. Then we realized we had to set our sights a little bit lower, looked at swimming with the whale sharks in Cancun or Isla Holbox, then decided with hotel and everything, continental U.S. was going to have to do it for us.

I spent a spring semester in Monterey studying marine biology when I was about 20, and have wanted to go back ever since. It's been a long time! This was my opportunity. I planned our trip out with 4 nights in a hotel there, with a day in Park City and a night in Salt Lake right before we left.

Jeff and I got some deal off of KSL to try the two Park City ziplines, and the alpine slide. Soooo fun! here's a link showing some grandpa going down the zipline (it was drizzling a little so we didn't get pictures or video) and here's the info on all of the rides up there. Jeff wanted to race, but I knew (from my Jr. High physics class) that if he weighs more, the momentum is going to be on his side so I didn't agree. Yeah, then I beat him both times. No, I don't weigh more than him!
After Park City, we spent the night in the Hotel Monaco. What a beautiful building!! The top picture is from the foyer right where you walk in. These two are from the main lobby. Jeff said he didn't feel really comfortable there, and I think the decor was geared more towards women or gay men. Secretly I didn't feel hip enough for that place either but kept it to myself. Does it mean anything to anybody when I say it seemed like Rocky's (the old SLC mayor's) crowd there? Later we walked to the Gateway for dinner, and coming back, watched a drug deal in progress on the corner by the hotel. I think we're going back to the Hilton next time.

Remember Deja's post about matching? Here's a question for that crowd. How do these all prints match in one room?? But they did. This was our room and it was beautiful.

Two queens. No king rooms left. That was a bummer. I need to say how grateful I am that they upgraded us from the "two fulls" room we were first put in. We just messed one bed up, and then the other since we wanted our money's worth! I'll post about Monterey tomorrow, so come back.

New rotation

2010-07-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

So I started the third diet rotation on Sunday; and by coincidence it is a three-day rotation plan. I have to say though, my stomache has been bothering me since Friday night. I don't know if the seitan (gluten) is finally getting to me, or the stevia is adding up with all of the shakes, or what. Maybe it was something I ate Friday that just won't go away? Yuck.

Day 1

¼ cup oatbran, soy protein shake

5 oz. Seitan ; 1 cup vegetables

1 large grapefruit (or 1 cup fruit) 1 T. omega butter

¼ block tofu with 1 cup peppers, cucumbers or tomatoes, balsamic as dressing

salad with ½ cup beans, whey or hemp protein shake

Brown rice protein shake with 2/3 cup mixed berries.

Day 2

¼ block tofu with mushrooms, peppers, onion ; ½ cup oats

whey protein shake with 3 large strawberries or ¼ cup blueberries 1 T. omega butter

5 oz. Seitan 1 cup vegetables

Apple with 1 T. omega butter

brown rice protein shake, salad, tahini dressing, 2 rice cakes

hemp or soy shake ; 1 cup green veggies (can add spinach to shake)

Day 3

soy shake with spinach; ½ cup oats

4 oz. Seitan with 1 cup veggies

whey shake with 1 T. omega butter

double brown rice shake ; 1 cup beans

salad with ¼ block tofu, hemp shake

Apple with 1 T. omega butter

I think this is doable once again for bodybuilding, but I don't feel like I'm really giving it a fair shot like i did the diets last summer. I'm not as motivated not to cheat maybe? When I thought I was doing the show it was a great motivator: someone was going to be seeing all of these cheat days in a couple of months on my thighs! I think I need a new goal. Anyone want to do a show with me this fall?

In other news, I'm learning how to swim (again)! I had swim as part of P.E. in High School (I grew up in San Diego), but I swear I forgot how to freestyle. I can still dog paddle.... Anyway, Jeff and I went to the Cayman Islands a few years ago, and if you're a snokeler or scuba-er, it's the place to go. Yum. Plus, on the diving side of the island we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. We decided to swim out to the reef one afternoon. On the Grand Cayman Island, a reef surrounds the island all of the way around making for a beautiful, sheltered place for viewing fish and coral. We thought though, that there must be a ton of stuff out ON the reef so started making our way out. When we got a ways out, I realized I was being PULLED out. There was a huge hole they had blown in the reef to allow ships to pass out and in, and we didn't know it was there. I found I couldn't make any headway against the current and panicked. I told Jeff to bring me in. I tried to keep my mask in the water and kick, and not look up to see our lack of progress. About 200 yards back, we hit a sort of boulder/sandbar we could stand on a nd rest. Jeff later confessed he didn't know if he could have brought us in if it hadn't been for that boulder. We literally could have not come back home to our kids if that boulder hadn't been there. We would have been swept out to sea. Ever since then I've been terrified of waves, and how weak I feel in the ocean. In Hawaii, I was fine scuba-ing because it was under the water and didn't feel the same, but snorkeling I kept having panic attacks, and couldn't go out past where I could touch the bottom. Does that even make sense? Fear doesn't always make sense (but it sure helps me be more compassionate with my kids when they're afraid). Anyway, my friend Pam is a swimming teacher, and started last night to teach me technique. I'm going to go Mondays and Thursdays to learn, and Wednesday mornings to practice on my own. Yay me! I already feel more secure in the water. Thank you Pam already for your patience with my flailing arms....

Flowers and food

2010-07-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd do a post and tell y'all what I've been up to. The coolest stuff I don't have pictures of. I went with our young women to Girl's camp last month down near Capitol Reef and Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. We did two major hikes: Calf creek, and Sulfur Creek. I was telling my sister about them, and she said maybe her boys would like to do one of them when she came up to visit from California. So this weekend, we loaded up all seven (!) of our kids, and went down sans husbands to do the Sulfur Creek hike. We spent the night in The Cowboy Homestead Cabins which were cute, but a little cramped with seven kids and two Mom's. That's what we get for doing it on the cheap. I was pretty nervous about driving to the area, and then a little nervous about actually doing the hike carrying her baby in a backpack carrier the whole way because some of it is pretty technical. You're hiking down a riverbed the whole time, and you need to cross small waterfalls. I was pretty sure we could pass the baby along OK, and we did. It was a little nerve wracking though. One cool thing about this trip was that we found a number of geodes. I cracked one of mine open already, it was small, and the crystals were plain white (not purple or anything really cool --but still neat) and I'm saving the rest to do with all of the kids.

I've gotten a few striking bouquets out of my garden recently. The one above was for a family friend who had a stroke. I love that purple and gold color combination.

Buddlea, Yarrow, Tansey, and Canterbury bells.

The other thing I've been working on has been veganizing the diets from my personal trainer from last summer. I really liked where my body ended up last fall, and I felt pretty confident I knew how to eat to maintain it, then I read The China Study and decided I needed to go as vegan as we could in our daily fare for long term health. THAT threw me for a loop! We're not perfect by any means. My kids sprinkle cheese on their burritos, I'll throw an egg white into muffin batter, and it seems like at family parties the kids are always begging chicken off of someone (annoying). If I'm somewhere I can't get any other protein, I go for the leanest meat I can, but, day to day, for our family meals, mainly dairy and meat free.

I've been maintaining my weight at about 7-8 pounds above where I was at last fall, but I'd really like to get back down. I thought, well, I paid for those diets, maybe I can use online calorie/macro calculators to figure out a similar menu that's all vegan. It took some work, but I've translated two rotations so far, and it's doable. Wanna see?

My Diet rotation number 1

Low Carb Days (Mon. Tues. Fri.)

Wake up drink 16 oz. Water

Cardio

Meal 1 1/3 c. oatmeal, 2 T. cocoa, 1 T. omega butter; 25 gram protein shake

Train

Meal 2 25 g. shake with ½ grapefruit

Meal 3 6 oz. Seitan, and 1 cup green beans

Meal 4 1 ½ servings protein shake with 3 cups spinach

Meal 5 2 cups tvp 2 cups vegetables

Meal 6 protein shake

Meal 7 25 gram protein shake with 4 cups greens

High carb days (wed. thurs. sat. sunday)

Cardio

Meal 1 ¼ c. cream of rice, protein shake

Train

Meal 2 1/3 cup oats, 2T. Cocoa, 1T. Omega butter, 25 g. protein shake

Meal 3 8 oz. Seitan ½ cup green veggies, whole wheat tortilla

Meal 4 50 g. protein shake, 3 oz. Yam or pumpkin, 10 asparagus or cup of green veggies.

Meal 5 Salad with 1 cup tvp

Meal 6 25 g. protein shake

Meal 7 4 oz. seitan

For the shakes, I mixed protein powder with water, and rotated between soy, brown rice, hemp, and whey (I kept whey when going more vegan, as it didn't show up in the studies as a major cancer or heart disease contributor.) Tvp you can buy in bulk in any health food store, and for an easy seitan recipe go here . I know it's fashionable to be gluten free, and soy free, but personally, I never have had digestive problems with either. Give me cabbage in any form or too many nuts, and my stomach is toast, but grains and soy? never. I depend on both.

Here's my current rotation:

Cutting diet rotation #2

Meal 1: ¼ block tofu with slice toast, 2 tablespoons salsa; green drink:3 cups spinach, ¼ lemon juice stevia

Meal 2: 4 oz. Seitan, cup green beans, 1/3 cup oats

Meal 3: Apple& cinnamon (or 1 cup berries), 1 T. almond butter (or omega butter)

Meal 4: Protein shake w/ 1 T. omega butter

Meal 5: Salad, w/ 1 cup beans, 2 brown rice cakes, 15 g. protein shake

Meal 6: Chocolate tapioca pudding and ½ c. raspberries

Meal 7: (if you need it) 1 whole grapefruit

Recipe for chocolate tapioca pudding:

1 c. almond milk

1 T. tapioca

1 T. cocoa

stevia and salt

So I'm really liking the second rotation better. It's about 700 calories less, but the higher carb content, and variety of foods is a lot easier on me mentally. When I make the seitan, I finish it, slice it thinly, dredge in whole wheat flour, and cook in a nonstick skillet coated in cooking spray. I do the whole weeks worth of meals at once, and pack them up so I'm ready to go. I also mash up the portions of tofu, and cook them with a chopped onion, and turmeric, chili powder, curry, etc. so they are like a tofu scrambler and ready to go. The tapioca is all made at once in the beginning of the week too. The other night, everyone had cake at a family party, and I wanted some so bad! i was able to come home and have that chocolate fix, and be OK. It really worked. Sometimes it doesn't work, I'll be honest, but it's a good weapon.

Am I green??

2010-06-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

(baby spinach)

Jeff and I watched "Food Inc." a couple of months ago. It talked about food as "big business" in the United States and was actually a little scary. No, it didn't say everyone should be vegan, but it did say that the fact that our food comes from only a handful of sources that are HUGE and have major lobbying power in Washington D.C. is something to be concerned about. If one of these mega-businesses decide that some sort of quality control issue isn't important to them (or isn't as important as their profit margin) their customers are probably the ones that will take the hit health-wise. That's all I'm going to say, but it's an interesting movie. If you decide to watch it you won't get bored that's for sure. Anyway, they mentioned CSA'a : Community Supported Agriculture. Right afterwards (it seemed like the next day, but probably not) my sister-in-law came over and told me about Jacob's Cove . This is an organic farm located right in Orem that sells "shares". You buy a "share" in the beginning of the season, and then get produce every week for three months. This isn't "Bountiful Baskets" which frankly is probably a better deal for more produce but gets its produce from a distributor (google it and look it up if you're in the area though --everyone I know that's done it has been very happy). The point of this is that it's all locally raised, for sure is organic and sustainable practices, and you're directly supporting the farmer.

(collards)

When this farmer brings you his produce, you know it was picked this morning and didn't spend a couple days on a truck, and a couple days in the distributor's cooler. Think vitamins and flavor. Here's another reason I'm doing this: I was at Ream's the other day and picked up a bunch of asparagus and whistled at the price: "2.99 a pound?" geez. An older gentleman next to me said, "how much would they have to pay YOU to go out and cut asparagus for an hour?". He had a point. We've all got a budget to worry about, but it seems like we're willing to make the farmer take a little less and a little less to compete with farmers in Chile and New Zealand (which bugs me that that they're getting the shaft anyway), or to compete with the lower quality soy or corn-based processed product that gets government subsidies for its huge mega-producer. Sorry, I wasn't going to get more political --I just lost control. :)

(lettuce mix)

Anyways, we bought a couple of shares this year, and then we had a cold, wet wierd spring, and everything is behind season, the farmer is struggling to organize his pickup sites and contact everyone (his messages keep getting lost in spam) and basically we're the guinea pigs this first time around for him. He sent out an email last week (which I didn't get by the way) saying the greens were ready now although nothing else is yet, and if you want some to come on up and cut them. OK, greens are my diet mainstay, so I was all over it as soon as my sister-in-law told me. I was prepared to kinda give this guy a tongue-lashing when I got there with all of the mistakes going on, but once I met him it shut me up right away. He's just this nice guy who seems swamped. His "office" looks like a snowstorm hit it (with paper), and he seemed pretty distracted (kind of like a chicken with its head cut off). I did tell him he needed to get someone to help him, and he said "there IS no one else". Well maybe the bugs will be straightened out by next season. when I went outside though, you could tell this guy was a farmer.
(beautiful red-speckled lettuce)

(Lola Rossa --Sam's front lawn)
Me and the kids got a little hack saw from the barn, and walked out to the field with bags to cut us some greens! We wish we had more bags. There were gorgeous rows of lettuces, collards, kales, chards, mixes, you name it. We went crazy. When we got home, I split it with my neighbor who is also signed up, and washed it up, put it in the frisge, and then immediately took it out again for a big salad dinner.

I peeked in the greenhouse to see how the tomatoes were coming along, and it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen! If you close up on the picture, you can see that each tomato plant has a little rubber collar around its vine, and is tied up with twine to trusses in the ceiling. It was so cool! You'll notice he grows the plants directly in the ground though (none of that water-slurry base crap) for extra flavor and nutrients. He just built the greenhouse on the ground, and the sides are a soft plastic to roll up in warm weather, and roll down for protection in cool. The greenhouses cover 1/3 acre --the size of my whole lot. There were also cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplants, and lots more. These greens are the freshest, crispest I've ever had (except out of my own garden!). I can't wait to taste the rest.

The Ragnar Post

2010-06-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm finally going to write the Ragnar post. It took a while because I was a real slacker in the picture taking department, and only snapped a couple with my phone, and the lost my download cable :( so Carolyn, one of my teammates, hooked me up with her pictures. So nice of her. I wish I had pictures of the other teams and their vans. My neighbor summed it up for my husband: "your wife may think it was just hard now, but she'll look back on it and see how fun and crazy it was later" It DOES seem better and better the further away it gets.

I found my download cable! But this was the only picture I got worth saving, and even this one is kinda lame. Do you see the viking on the front of the car, and all the writing on the windows? Almost every team decorated their vehicles, and dressed up in some sort of "costume" (hence the sweatbands and tube socks for us in our team picture). There were over 1,000 (no typo --I'm serious) teams of 12 people (except for some ultra-crazies who split up the legs between only 6 people). It was a MADHOUSE. There were teams of superheroes, a "where's waldo" team, a "viagra" team (don't ask me about the stuff written on THEIR van --but it was hilarious), bunnies (they ran in full fur suits), gorillas, a devil van with lit-up traffic cone horns, and my favorite: The Bone Crushers: "Trample the Weak and Hurdle the Dead" --they played heavy metal music from loudspeakers mounted on the roof of their vans, so we always knew they were coming. A couple of their guys were really nice to us (one with a 2 foot mohawk, and the other with a couple of facial piercings).

Our team then had two vans with 6 people in each of them. The other van had the first 6 "legs" of the race, and then handed off to the first of our runners. Each van had three sets of legs for a total of around 24 hours race time. The baton is more like one of those "slap bracelets". Here I am getting the hand-off from our team captain Darelyn.

My first leg was my easy one. It was supposed to be 3.5, but was closer to 3.75 miles by the Garmin. I had a really good run (for me) since it was so hot --about an 8:29 minute mile pace.

So fast I was blurry. See Mom? It doesn't matter what you look like when you're fast enough. Nobody can see through the blur :)

Yeah --I wish this was me. It is Olivia my niece. Isn't that beautiful form? My form didn't look super great, it was more of a hobble, since my foot was of course acting up. After the first leg, when I was starting the second, I honestly didn't know if I'd make it it hurt so bad. My Dad's words " crippled for life" kept going through my head. After a mile it started loosening up, but then I got a sharp, hot pain under my heel. Uhoh I thought, that can't be good. I started doing some serious praying, and it just "went away". Whatever --I can't understand it. Before the third leg I figured out the miracle of icy hot :) It got me through at least. I'm still hobbling today.

This is me on the hill of death: The Ragnar leg. This is arguably the hardest leg in the race. 4 miles uphill. The climb is over 3,000 feet. I wasn't so fast I was blurry HERE obviously; I just wanted to make myself keep going. At this point in the race, I had already done my first leg, and an 8 mile leg at around midnight, all on a total of 1 1/2 hours of sleep. I was really hoping to do this whole hill without walking at all, but there were two times I stopped. I told our van to go halfway and see how I was doing when I got there. They went about a mile, and honestly I was doing fine until I looked at the garmin and saw we were at 1 mile instead of two. Killed me. I had a really tough pull just then, and bagged it and walked for 100 feet or so. I picked it up again, and stayed steady until about 1/4 mile from the end (I KNOW! why? when I was so close!) when there was some photographer lady sitting under her umbrella TAKING PICTURES of the runners as they came up the hill. I want a picture of myself when I look the worst I've ever looked in my whole life? I didn't ask a photographer to join me when I was in labor with my babies, so why would I want a picture now? Threw off my groove, and I took a short walking break again. As disappointed as I was, I was happy to say I "roadkilled" 5 people on that hill, four of them being men. Yay! We chalked up our kills on the side of our van just like most of the teams (except for some team that said kill counts were for communists?) . Kills are passing someone.

At the end, everyone had to take a tram or gondola up to The Canyon's Resort to meet the last runner. We all got in costume and ran in with Carolyn --our "anchorman" to cross the finish line together. "Run Sweaty Chix Run" ,our team, ROCKED the Ragnar. Out of 127 all-woman teams, we came in 25th, and 16th in our division.

Here's the fam and me at the end. Kai wouldn't face into the sun for the picture --little baby.

I took the sweatband off for the picture with Jeff --he said it was scaring him. Little baby. :)

Sandy wedding luncheon.

2010-06-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

This is a week late being post, because as soon as it was over last Saturday, I had to pack up and leave for "Girl's Camp" with my church congregation. I was in charge of the food, and basically it was really stupid of me to take on both right on top of each other. You know me though, and the chance to make beautiful food for a beautiful event is too much of a temptation to resist.

The bride and groom are a young couple; he is the son of a friend of mine, and she is just a lovely girl from the next city over --think Audrey Hepburnesque. They were married in the temple right near my parents' house which was nice for me to have a last minute prep station near the venue.

We started out with an appetizer station for everyone (picture above), because as per usual with these sorts of things, the bride, groom, and photographer arrived quite a bit later than everyone else, and people were ready to eat their hats. Great idea from the groom's mother. Of course being extra hungry always makes the food go over better with a group:)

I did my little crudite basket with Tuscan roasted pepper dip, and also a hot artichoke cheese dip with torn French bread cubes,

But this was the hit. It was an "Italian Torte" which had layers of sun-dried tomatoes, a type of cream cheese mixture, and pesto from my own basil. I pressed fresh herbs around the outside for pretty. That platter was scraped clean.

The main luncheon was then served when the bride and groom arrived. The colors were mauve (ashes of roses ) and burgandy. It's hard to tell with my cheap camera, but the topper on the table is a sheer pink.

We started with Strawberry-wonton salad with candied cashews and strawberry balsamic dressing, and a variety of fresh rolls.

The centerpiece was from my perrenial garden, where my irises were at the height of bloom. I had some the perfect color: a mix of mauve and burgandy.
We also did balsamic roasted vegetables, and a herbed wild rice which I stupidly didn't get a picture of.
Main dish was Lemon-Rosemary Chicken with preserved lemon slices, and a Lemon Rosemary Cream sauce. I thought when I made it the other night it could really use some sort of sauce, and so used some marinade as a starter for this sauce. I think it went over much better.

We waited to put out the brownie assortment until the last minute, because people were eating them before lunch started, and so I didn't get any pictures. I'm so bummed because they turned out really cool! I did Raspberry White Chocolate (raspberry jam and white chocolatew chunks baked into the brownie, and topped with the same, and fresh raspberries at the last minute); Andes mint (chopped Andes mints baked into the base, and topped with from scratch chocolate icing, and more Andes mints); Turtle Pecan (pecan brownies topped with chopped chocolate, pecans, and from scratch caramel sauce); and Pecan Coconut Blondies topped with pecans, and caramel. Just imagine for me OK? I made myself sick eating edges and toppings, so I can assure you they were good.

I just got back from girl's camp Friday afternoon, and Jeff and I took a night together in a hotel. We got back this afternoon, and I'm thinking I could use a good long break from everything. I do have the race coming up this weekend, but until then, you can find me puttering around in my garden. Yum.

Meet my Hill.

2010-06-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

OK, it's not nine I'm supposed to do today, it's six of hills. Yay --I'm tapering! Makes me feel a little better about NOT DOING IT. The last two days, my feet have felt worse and worse. I'm on my feet a lot lately for catering prep (I'll have to post my practice flower arrangement later), and yesterday late afternoon, it started to turn into a sharp pain at my heel which scared me. I taught a bootcamp - type class yesterday morning, and did some jumping, and calf raises which could have aggravated it. It made me start thinking, I wonder if it's just tightening up too much. I haven't been stretching it out lately. This morning, I did this stretch (I tried to crop out as much of my butt as possible --sorry):

Just leaning forward and letting my heels get as close to the floor as they will. It hurt, but everything felt so much better afterwards, I was able to do my 60 minutes on the stairclimber --my pretend hill. At least there was no pounding on the joints.

16 on Saturday, none today.

2010-06-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I pushed it a little hard Saturday. It's Tuesday and I'm still feeling the effects. I went to a Wasatch Back meeting last week and met some girls there who were running up Squaw Peak to train for the Ragnar section of the race, and on my team that's my job. We were supposed to meet at 7:20 or so, and they would leave a car at the top so we could ride down. I got there at 7:09, and there are three cars at the bottom of the road, and no girls in sight. I figured maybe they were a little early and decide to start on my own and try to catch up. About 1.5 miles into it, I had 4 girls pass me going downhill that must have been them. I got to the top (4 miles total at a 7.5% grade) and no car. To say I was disappointed would be understating things. It was really hard for me to get up there. 12:05 was my average pace over the 4 miles, but my goal was to just not stop, which I met. I turned around and went back down the mountain (not so good for the joints); later in the day I did my last 8 miles.

My knees and foot are still feeling it.

Sunday was rest of course, and I spent yesterday with family, so the biggest workout I did was about a 2 mile walk, but I did carry my 5 year old on my shouldersabout half of the time. So I woke up today, hoping to get in the 8 miles of hills on my schedule, and no dice. I was all set up and started walking my block as a warm-up to start, and it hurt so bad I just didn't feel good about tearing my foot up anymore. I did 80 minutes on the spin bike instead. I really hope I can just maintain my levels until the race. I think, if I tear up that fascia any worse, I will perform worse the day of. It's uncomfortable for me to make these decisions on my own. I really want a coach, trainer, Jeff, or someone to tell me --here is where you stop, here is where you suck it up. I'm realizing more and more though that I'm the only one who can make these decisions for me. I'm the only one who really knows how I feel, and what I think my body can handle.

SO anyway, I did my 80 minutes, and did a great green drink from my garden today!

I didn't have my usual spinach left in the fridge, and originally thought I would have to pick the lettuce out of the leftover salad, and just have a mini shake instead of the green monster I was hungry for. Then I remembered....GARDEN! All of that hard work is finally starting to pay off. I cut 3-4 cups of butter lettuce leaves,

Stole a few "Nero de Toscana" Kale leaves,

and pulled some handfuls of parsley, and lemon balm (from the top picture). Finally, I added a full bunch of cilantro from the fridge drawer (it's green right?), some Sun Warrior protein,

and a scoop of this that Jeff bought and keeps pushing for me to use. He bought the lemon flavor, which went better with the lemony greens anyway. It's an NO2 supplement, that is supposed to help with muscle recovery, and red blood cell production (which I'm going to need since the race is at altitude I'm not used to). That shake was a little....exotic tasting, but (I apologize for my enthusiasm), I was so excited anyway since I'd grown all of those greens.
Maybe by Thursday I'll be up for my nine miles....I hope so. What a roller coaster this training has been.

Funktionslust!

2010-05-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

It's a German word meaning “pleasure taken in what one can do best.” I like to think of it as pleasure taken in physical movement ---just the joy of being alive and being able to move, to feel my heart beat fast, to sweat, use my muscles. I felt it tonight running. I feel like I have to do a follow-up post to the last one where I struggled so hard with that last run. They're not all like that. After that run, I tell myself I never have to run again after this race. SCREW IT!

I felt back on top tonight, and had the thought cross my mind that I've got to talk my kids into coming on runs with me long enough to feel this. What a high. I've felt it in Tae Bo often enough, where the music hits just right, and you push through that last set, beyond what you thought you were capable of, but being outside... it brings one more dimension to the pleasure.

I ran to books on MP3 a for a long time. Nothing like it to keep from getting bored, and getting lost in a story instead, but I'm glad i finally figured out how to do the music thing on my Zen. My taste is eclectic to say the least. Right now I've got:

Eminem
Judy Garland
Big&Rich
The Cult
XTC
Ke$ha
B.O.B.
Black Eyed Peas
Muse
Cake
Celine Dion
Green Day
Jackson 5
Cage the Elephant
and some others. My only requirement is that the song has to get my blood pumping when I hear it. So yeah, Judy Garland singing "C'mon get Happy" does it, "Firewoman" from the Cult does it, and "American Idiot" from Green Day does it all equally as well. It feels like cheating to borrow energy from these performers, but that's what we pay them for right?

My time is back down too! Last week was pretty bad because I had my hyperthyroidism acting up, and lost some muscle. I'm fast again compared to that "herd of turtles" I was last week anyway. I'm so grateful my body is working right again.

Gina from "Choosing Raw" did a post a few days ago on body image (there's also a part two you can get to from there if you're interested) that was fantastic. This girl thinks before she writes (unlike my blabbering). I thought it was so interesting the changes noticed in womens' journals after the 1930's. There was a big shift in focus towards body image. Before then, it was more common to express personal goals which were more spiritual in nature. It's easy for me to fall into this trap myself, and pick this most trivial of focal points.

Athleticism helps me maintain that balance. Although I'm no elite athlete, making sure my legs stay strong helps me let go (some of the time!) of the desire for thin thin thighs. Those thighs do a lot for me! Let 'em live! Pushing a little further each time lifting weights helps me appreciate my arms even though they will never be the willowy, graceful appendages of a supermodel. I'm short and stubby all over, and I can't change that much. But I'm grateful for functionality.

No big conclusion, thanks for listening to my rambles. --Amara

Friends for dinner --and training update.

2010-05-23T15:58:00.000-07:00

We had a great dinner party Friday night. There's a family in our neighborhood that has let us adopt their daughter on school mornings, since both parents have crazy work schedules, and their older daughter is one of my young women. They treated us to the best restaurant in town a couple of weeks ago as kind of a thank you --which was far to much thank you for the joy of getting to know their girls better. We had THEM over to thank them back on Friday. There are some recipes I've been wanting to perfect for a catering job coming up, and they were graciously my guinea pigs for my latest iteration of Lemon-Rosemary chicken with preserved lemon slices, and also a wild rice-pecan pilaf. I'm thinking of a few minor changes for when I make them again. We also had fresh wheaty rolls with last summer's strawberry jam (from my yarden berries!), roasted purple, green, and orange veggies (I liked that color combo), and a Fresh Blueberry, Feta and Candied Cashew Salad with Spring Greens and a Blackberry virgin olive oil vinaigrette. For dessert, I made Lemon Tres Leches cake (kind of a knock off of the Macaroni grill Lemon Passion ) with lemon mousse, heavy whipped cream, and fresh raspberry homemade ice cream on the side (--which was a great tart balancer). Yeah. We may be doing that dessert again for every dinner party I ever have in the future. Heaven on a plate.

The salad minus dressing. I used EVOO in the dressing which you could really taste. I like that flavor, but you could use a milder oil and it would still turn out fine.
Here's the chicken. I used a tried and true marinade of my sister's , but added lemon zest and fresh rosemary, and grilled it, which on my barbeque is similar to cooking over a camp fire. It's the oldest, most uneven grill still working in the continental U.S. I just move things around a lot. The lemon slices I preserved last spring when I had a case of them, and couldn't bear to throw them out. I like to eat them plain like candy. But maybe that's just me... They're pretty as a garnish.

I promised a training update. This isn't me. Y'all know I've got fatter calves; it's just a visual aid. I finished a 16 mile run yesterday. That's the longest I'm going to do in training for the Wasatch Back. I've got one more 16 miler in pieces like I did Monday, and a solid 15 the next week, but I never have to run that long again. Yay!
It was a beautiful run in parts. Jeff drove me to the top of Hobble Creek canyon until there wasn't any more road, and I had to do 4 more miles of trail up and back to make it 16. About a mile from the end of the road, there was a meadow, where a flock of what we think were turkey vultures (they were bigger than hawks, and had white patches under their wings, and red on their heads) were swooping around. They reminded me of the hang-gliders at Point of the Mountain, just messing around on the air currents for fun. They swooped low over me a few times. I'd be craning my head to get a good look at one passing over me, and another would be right in my face when I turned my head back around. It was amazing. Later on in the trees, I saw some other raptor with light tan feathers swoop from one tree to another. I saw claws, and a huge wing span. If it were night I'd say great horned owl, but I don't know. The tree he landed in was positioned looking straight into the sun. I couldn't tell anything about his shape after he landed.

I brought along 3 smarties packets to try to refuel on the run, thinking they would quickly dissolve, and would be easy sugar energy. Bad idea. It's easy to choke on small round tablets while running. I had to stop for a restroom at mile 5, and ate the last two, and got a drink of water, and started up my timer again. Then at mile 12 or so I got the worst stomach cramp I had in years. I don't know if it was the smarties (ironic name), or the water, or the Lemon Passion cake the night before, but it was like a knife in the abdomen every time I put my right foot down. Funny it was on the right side, and not the left. My left foot was already bothering me on this run pretty much the whole time (remember that plantar fasciitis? I ended up getting inserts from a podiatrist to try to rest the fascia while I trained, but they weren't working so well yesterday) so when the wind kicked up and a storm started blowing in it was really hard to keep going. Jeff came by to check on me, and it was all I could do to keep myself from jumping in the van. By that time though I only had 2 and a half miles to go, so I pushed it through.

I don't know about you guys, but when things look bad like that outside, I have to fight panic a little bit. Something about cold and dark and wind kind of freaks me out. I remember my scuba instructor years ago having to talk me down on my first open water dive because it was cold and dark. It kind of felt like that. I was also discouraged because my pace was so bad with this cramp. You know what though? I finished. I got back and Tia said --"16 miles? I couldn't run three." Isn't it funny how different everyone's breaking point is? This was my limit, but the guy down the street did 22 miles on the same day, and those ultra marathoners can do 150 miles.

I don't know why I always look at other people to decide how much I can take on; how much I am capable of. If my running level is so different, why not my level of tolerance for trials or work or stress? I get so disappointed in myself when I don't live up to my own expectations, that I've often arbitrarily imposed based on someone else's accomplishments. For example there's a lady in our ward that serves, serves, serves. I wonder sometimes why I can't handle doing more like she does. When I was visiting her the other day though, she was talking about ANOTHER woman, a leader in our church, that does so much, and how she could never measure up to her. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we be happy that we just went 2 more miles than last week?
150 milers aside, coming home, I got right into a hot bath to try to loosen up my muscles a little before I iced my feet, knees, hips, you name it. I started to black out and had to lay on the bathroom floor in a towel to keep from losing it. I fought nausea all afternoon and could only drink my spinach green drinks without getting sick. Everything else hurt my stomach or brought on nausea. I'm glad I pushed it though. I'm glad I know I'm capable of succeeding when it's so hard for me. I can feel this experience becoming part of me, becoming part of who I am. That's a big part of confidence for me, knowing what I'm capable of. This race isn't going to be a picnic. We figure with our team, it's going to be 31 hours or so total that we'll be in a van riding from exchange to exchange. At least one of my legs is going to be in the middle of the night. I've got an 8 mile leg that goes uphill, and another 4 miler that goes straight up a mountain. It's all going to take place at a higher elevation than I'm used to, and it may be super hot, or it may rain on us. Both have been known to happen. But this run has prepared me just a little bit more for that race. The race will prepare me just a little bit more for the rest of my life. My limits will be pushed just that much further along.

"I want a carnival birthday!"

2010-05-16T15:44:00.000-07:00

If you ever hear those words out of your child's mouth, drop what you're doing and IMMEDIATELY run the other way. Or, instantly make up a rule that they can't have a party on their ____ (fill in the blank) birthday. Or, burn the house down. Become an astronaut. Do SOMETHING so you don't have to deal with the huge chaos that is now in your current future path. I did try to tell her she'd need to choose between a party and a present, but the party won. No dice. Needless to say, the party cost way more than what I'd ever spend on a present.

I had one thing going for me. I'm the second counselor in our youth group organization, and there is nothing those girls like more than a party. I had one big handful of enthusiastic volunteers. In fact, Tia (who's in the group) is the one whom I need to blame for talking Ari into picking the carnival party. So we gave out tickets, and had 8 different "booths" for the kids to go to. The picture above was from the "photo booth" where they got a picture of themselves with Ari in a carnival frame. I was a little worried Ari wouldn't dress up like a clown. I don't know WHY I worried....how long have I known her? She was all over it.

This was our balloon animal booth. We started out thinking one of my girls would make them an animal, but it was fun for the kids to learn how to make their own too. We got some pretty crazy hats too.

Here's the top of our fishing pond....

...and here's the bottom. Kai nabbed this job before anyone else could.

Of course Tia wanted the face painting. She made up a sign with all of the options to pick from first. In fact, Tia made all of our signs. I kept thinking about the posters I made in High School to run for Sophomore class president (which I won only because nobody ran against me) and they SUCKED compared to what Tia could do freehand at age 12.

Pig Trough. You find a piece of gum in a plate of whipped cream, and blow a bubble to win. The only catch was half of our guests had braces. So we modified it to say you could find a saltine and whistle a tune instead if you were braced up.

My girls had a little too much fun with the whipped cream. You should have seen their shirts after their whipped cream "fight" Their moms probably hated me yesterday...

This was the big expense: the cotton candy machine. I was originally planning on renting, but it was the same price to buy this small one from Bed Bath and Beyond. it worked fine...but needs some supervision. It was a little bit of a prima donna. It worked if everything was exactly right. It got a little frustrating for my helpers though.

The popcorn popper was free --borrowed from my catering partner Audrey. What a mess to clean up! I found out later my girls were adding some extra oil to flavor it up. Ah. That explained some things. Audrey, I can get you some more oil
.
Can you see the beautiful rainbow my girls drew me? This was a penny pitch "over the rainbow". Fun and cheap to do. My Mom in Law took charge of this one. (My father in Law was taking pictures of the whole thing for me!)

Here's everyone waiting for cake. Look at those cool hats! The cake turned out to be a lot more trouble than I thought it would be, but turned out pretty cute I guess. Not like the google images I WANTED it to look like....
It's a carousel. Here's the top canopy, which was card stock frosted to match the bottom.
Here's my little horsey. I started out thinking I'd just put animal cookies on there, but they looked like amoebas. They went on the sides instead.

Here's the whole thing. If you squint......not too bad.

Training?

2010-05-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

So I went back to yoga this morning. Man I love being there. It's so hard to make that drive that I can't do it as often as I'd like. However, as good as that class feels, I was supposed to do 5-6 miles running today. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I've been doing a lot of stretching since my heel first started hurting about 5 weeks ago, but I'm adding ice. I did a circuit class yesterday morning, and then just 24 minutes of hills on the treadmill at a 6, along with all of the weight lifting I usually do. It felt great at the time, kind of an easy workout, but then it was really hard to hobble out of bed this morning. That was after icing, and Jeff massaging my feet and rubbing aspercreme into them last night. Once I get going I'm OK, and the yoga with the 23,785 downward dog poses really felt good. But but... it was so hard to work up to my pathetic gains in speed and distance I don't want to lose them by cutting back. My dad gave me a great site for Plantar Fasciitus that I'm studying, but do you think I can just do my thing for another month and then take time to heal? This sucks.

Feet.

2010-05-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Ummm. I went to the Dr. yesterday just to check on my heel that bothers me periodically. I wanted to make sure it wasn't something like a stress fracture because I'm getting into the next round of training for my race in June --the Wastach Back relay. He thinks plantar fasciitus. Not good. He said it should be fine if I cut way back on mileage. Right.

Acting on vs. Hearing the word (LDS post with lots of jargon --beware!).

2010-05-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

How do you teach spirituality with a language barrier?

A couple of weeks ago, after the stellar April General Conference, I realized I needed to do a little more with teaching my children about the spirit and cultivating their own testimonies. I was in charge of the lesson for Family Home Evening, and decided that this time, I was going to share how I got my testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith. I got out a couple of pictures of him, and after a nice song and prayer, spoke about my experience in the MTC. I had a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon already, but during the course of study there in the training center, found I could use a little more assurance about Joseph Smith himself. I shared the subsequent experience I had with my family, and really felt the Holy Ghost as I was speaking. Maybe it was just because it brought back the feelings I'd had before. At any rate I felt like it was a good lesson. It seemed like Tia and Jeff were touched. OK Kai was a little young, but when I asked Ari some questions, I could tell that next to none of it had gotten through. I don't know if she really heard or understood what I had said. I'm pretty sure that a LOT of what happens in Primary goes right over her head. This was so discouraging to me. I felt like I had really given all I had and it didn't work.

I have to give Ari credit. When she understands a rule she tries so hard to be obedient (--and make everyone else around her obedient too!). She wants to please and do what is right. She seeks and wants approval from authority. However, when teenagerhood hits, limited personal experience tells me this will probably go by the wayside for a few years as she figures out who she is. "We are not in the business of giving our children fish --but teaching them how to fish" Elder Eyring said in conference, and I think this is why. I know the only thing that will get her through teenagerhood clean and unscathed will be the few principles that she's internalized and is willing to fight for completely independantly.

This happened on my mission too, I vaguely remember (I tend to vividly remember only the good experiences or shockingly bad ones). I would bear my testimony to an investigator pouring my whole soul into it, only to have them say --thanks for coming over. Here's your book back. I have to assume that some of those experiences happened because my accent or grammar was so distracting they couldn't pick up on the message I was trying to convey. Other times we'd be reading a powerful section of scripture with them, and they would feel nothing, because their reading skills were so primitive they simply couldn't understand. I know the spirit is supposed to communicate directly to the heart when someone speaks by the spirit, but I also know that with myself, my body gets in the way sometimes and I'm distracted with worry for the people around me, or the room I'm in is too hot or too cold, or I'm tired and just can't push through the accent or language choices of the person speaking to get to the spirit of the message. I think this happens to most of us under certain circumstances.

We got our ward newsletter yesterday, and there was a message from the Primary president in there that gave me some hope. In the message she also mentions Elder Eyring's talk and how important it is for our children to gain spiritual strength early in their lives. Then she gives an alternate idea for teaching it. This is the Faith in God program for Primary and Personal Progress program for Young Women. These programs are sets of small goals to help kids learn to act on the gospel. The scriptures mention this too: testimony comes from hearing the Word of God (Alma 31:5); but Jesus also says testimony comes from acting (John 14:21) on the word. This might work out better for my little girl. I have a hard time communicating feelings and principles to her through words, but acting on those principles may bring the spirit to her in a way I can't.

We haven't been great about helping her with her program in the past, mainly because Tia's spoiled us, and done it completely on her own (just like she gets up on time, showers, makes her bed...who's child is this anyway?). I'd be interested to hear how any other family sets aside regular time to work on personal progress, faith in god, duty to god etc. instead of just hit and miss once in a while times. Bedtime won't work for us, Sundays are a little tricky but we may be able to squeeze something in there, family home evening doesn't work: I tried that for a while, but it's hard to make time for one or the other let alone both in one evening. Maybe at the dinner table? What do you do?

Seder with our Young Women

2010-04-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

I help out with our church's youth group --with the girls 12-13 years old. We do an activity every Tuesday night. In the beginning of the year, we sit down with them and plan what we are going to do with them for 12 months, and one of the ideas we had was to do a "Jewish cultural night" with my friend in our congregation who was raised Jewish. We thought passover time was appropriate, and decided to do a Seder. My friend's son agreed to host, and did a terrific job, giving a rich historical background for our girls first so they'd understand what a lot of the symbolism meant. I don't think anyone on earth knows all the depths of the symbolism as this is a tradition with layers and layers of meaning. Along with performing the script, providing some of the food, and giving explanations, our hosts also brought an array of objects from the Holy Land including a Menorah, Hanukkiyah, Dreidel, and a small clay oil lamp (like in those paintings of the parable of the 10 virgins). The Seder plate for each girl contains an egg (representing new life), sprig of parsley (representing the sweet and bitter time), Charoset (a fruit and nut compote representing the mortar used by Hebrew slaves), and horseradish (again representing the bitter). There were bowls of salt water in the middle of the table representing the tears of the slaves, and then the matzo.
The Seder feast centers around the matzo --the unleavened bread. This is supposed to be made of special "matzo meal" which is flour supervised by a rabbi from the time it is harvested until packaged to ensure no moisture or leaven has come in contact with it. Once the water has touched the flour, it must be completely cooked within 18 minutes. They have decided in the tradition that after that time, the flour will start to ferment, and will be in a sense "leavened" which is against the seder (or law for the passover feast). I went all over town looking for matzo or even matzo meal and couldn't find it. I finally went ahead and made it with regular flour, doing my best to stay within the 18 minute thing, working in small batches. Yeah, it was a little stressful.
I also made some macaroons for dessert --a traditional Jewish treat. I was worried about the whole not mixing meat and dairy thing, so used a recipe that didn't include condensed milk, but it turns out chicken's eggs are "pareve" or neutral, so I needn't have worried. I guess the big deal is to again not use flour, which macaroons don't --or at least my recipe didn't.

Here are our girls down the table, with our host, and his mother -my friend at the head of the table. We ended up having a big group with some classes joining us at the last minute, which made it really fun.

Here's one of the leader's sons wearing the Yarmulke. He looked so cute I had to snap a picture.

It's also traditional for the girls and women to wear head coverings as a sign of modesty and respect. Our hosts told us that the Jewish girls in Israel get really good at twisting up their hair inside of a fabric scarve so it doesn't move or come undone as they go about their daily business. Here is one of our girls modeling the technique. I thought she looked beautiful with it. But then this girl always looks beautiful.

I thought I'd throw in a couple of pictures from our Young Womens group's trip to Temple Square to hear the broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word. This is a radio broadcast with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that's been going on for over 80YEARS! Can you believe that?

The girls were all excited because David Archuleta was there --he's in the picture somewhere down there. The prophet and president of our church Thomas S. Monson was also there, but guess which one the girls told their parents about?

Thanksgiving Point Half

2010-04-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

(before shot --this was all I ate of this dry toast by the way. I was so nervous I left it at home next to my coat.)

OK bear with me, because this was a big deal for me. I've never been a fast runner --my mom and I always were of the theory that the closer your feet were to the ground, and the shorter your steps were the better time you had on your run. I used to tell my mom when I was in Jr. High that my idea of hell was a bunch of tracks. When high school hit though, we were jogging together. Funny how that puberty weight gain changes your perspective (did i just say puberty? sorry.). Anyway, running (I really should say jogging) was my method of choice for exercise for years. When I moved to Mapleton though I met Wendy's Tae Bo class and it KICKED MY BUTT. And it was more fun. And my friends went. No more running. Then the class decided to enter the Wasatch Back Relay, and I needed to train and couldn't make myself, but my friend Kelli had a great idea --let's enter this half marathon together. One word about Kelli: major foot surgerieS (more than one) less than a year ago. She wasn't even WALKING a year ago. So we entered and started training. I want to get to a 8.5 minute mile pace for the Wasatch Back, and so I've been really trying to push my time and speed. I decided if I did 13.1 miles anywhere between 8.5 and 9 minutes I would be happy. Istarted out at the back of the pack thinking I would feel better if i passed a few people than if they all passed me.

So the pack really annoyed me by about 3 minutes into the race. The path was pretty narrow and there were all of these people running together (Kelli and I decided that running is like reading --it's an individual pursuit. You don't go up to someone and say "wanna read books?" --unless you're Meesha :) ). So they would spread out and roadblock the whole path. A little annoying. But I have to say narrow paths and all it was a beautiful beautiful course. See Kellis's blog for pictures along the way. I didn't want to lose those 23 seconds. We went through the gardens, past the biggest manmade waterfall in North America (can that be right?), and then along the Jordan River. I saw a pair of Canada geese land together on the river. I'm in the picture above, the girl slightly behind the other girls. This was right near the end of the race. Those girls picked it up for the last mile, and I told myself I'd keep up with them. Haha -I passed them (woohoo --told you you had to bear with me). See that guy out in front?

Here he is going "heeeey!" as I smoked him (hee hee). I don't think people usually care about sprinting and passing people at the end of a half marathon --it's not that kind of a race. But it made me feel good. I'm sorry I sound like such a jerk. So guess what my finish pace was? 8:57 minute miles. Yay! Just under the 9 minute mark so I'll take it. Jeff DID say "what --did you go to the bathroom a few times along the way?" but then said he was just mixed up with his numbers....yeah yeah whatever. I love him still.

So tenth in my age group, which doesn't sound very impressive, but that means I beat 60 other people in my age group right? And I was 158 out of 583 people. I was happy with it. I've still got some work to do before Wasatch Back. This was a flat flat course. No downhill really, and no uphill. The Ragnar Relay will have legs of straight up where I've clocked myself at a speedy 12 minute mile. Oh well. That's life --always a new goal.I was FREEZING after it was over. I promised myself a big ol' Iceberg shake when it was done, but all I wanted was hot chocolate. I got it. I love my sweet husband.

Bruschetta night and being paranoid.

2010-04-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

I had a great idea for dinner last night courtesy of a recipe I saw in vegetarian times and some input from my sister. We did a bruschetta night with al kinds of toppings for little crisp whole wheat baguette toasts. I'm sorry for the quality of these pictures. I had to take them with my phone because my camera's battery was dead and I couldn't pass up this dinner as a post.

I know I used to do more interesting, personal posts, but frankly, I got a little gunshy about criticism and and so for now I'm sticking to recipes and menu ideas. Maybe if I take it off of facebook I'll get braver again. I've got a lot of things going on in my life, but I'm nervous about sharing with everyone. How do other bloggers get past that? I don't know.

So for some of the toppings I grilled a bunch of veggies. I marinated in lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, honey, and evoo (lighthanded on the last two ingredients), with lots of garlic and Italian herbs. We had eggplant slices, red bell pepper rings, zucchini, yellow summer squash, asparagus (so cool it's in season and cheap), and red onion. Can I just say that the jarred roasted bell peppers have got nothing on fresh charred and grilled ones? I put both on the table and "nada que ver" --they were nothing alike.
The little toasts were easy --just sliced and broiled a minute or two on each side with a light coating of vegetable oil spray.
I also did a butter bean hummus. I saw cans of butter beans at the store the other day, and remembering my B-52's, knew they had to be good. I added lemon, garlic, and fresh basil. This was a great hummus.

The last two things were an easy olive tapenade, and a fresh Italian salsa. The salsa I know will be twenty times better in the summer with good garden tomatoes, but it was still a hit with my family last night with crappy grocery store ones. Tomatoes, bell pepper, red onion, fresh basil, fresh oregano, parsley, and rosemary (I always feel so rich with my own herb garden --the only thing I had to buy was the basil since it doesn't kick in until later in the summer).

Of course I just made a big old beast of a salad for me with all of the toppings and some spring mix. Man this satisfied. I guess it was the hummus and the olives, but it filled me up for almost 3 hours which is a record for me. I'm usually hungry again at two.

Here's Ari doing her thing. Anyway I CAN tell you all (without getting too nervous) that I'm doing a half marathon next weekend, and the big Wasatch Back Relay (Ragnar relay) in June. My goal is a 8.5 minute pace for the Wasatch Back, and this morning for a 5 mile run with hills I was at a 9.06. That's really great for me. Something about running and I don't push myself as hard as I do in a class. Maybe it was the episode of This American Life I was listening to. Verrrrrry Interesting. It'll make you mad. Here's the link in case you're brave.

What else am I brave enough to post about? I'm gonna stretch a little. Got my front yard weeded, and the peas, 3 kinds of spinach, kohlrabi (has anyone eaten this? it looks like turnips but I've never seen it for sale), beets, carrots, daikon, and parsnips planted. Now how do I keep them wet until the irrigation is turned on? I bought a new hose sprayer. Sigh. Just what I need, another daily chore.

One more thing (see how brave I'm being?) my oldest child has been abducted, and in her place is myself at 13 years old. I got my first eye roll out of this child last night. Middle child? She's given me the eye roll for years --but not my oldest. Honeymoon is over I guess. Time for parenting graduate school: the teenage years.

Soba with Mushroom Broth, Cabbage and yams.

2010-03-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

I've been going through my back issues of Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines the last few months, pulling out recipes I think I'd actually make and putting them in my recipe scrapbooks. Sometimes I feel kind of guilty because I'm great at scrapbooking recipes, but my kids' pictures are all in a box molding downstairs. Well, the pictures don't keep multiplying in piles that we trip over in our living room like the cooking magazines do. The latest pictures are all multiplying tidily on the computer now.

Anyway, there was a recipe that looked great to me in a Bon Appetit. Looked great is the pivotal phrase. The picture was so beautiful: Udon with mushroom broth, cabbage, and yams.
I wanted to tweak it a bit -I had purple cabbage instead of napa, and wanted to use buckwheat soba just for the whole grain factor, and I also had those Chilean porcinis I wanted to use for the broth instead of the shitakes they suggested. It still turned out yummy, and the purple cabbage turned a stunning bright blue when blanched.
You blanch all of your vegetables, noodles, and tofu separately and then add them to your broth at serving time. If you decide to make this though, I would encourage you to salt your blanching water really well. The vegetables need that little seasoning it gives.

The broth is the masterpiece though. With those mushrooms simmering in it for an hour, and the lemon grass, and coriander and ginger, it makes the whole house smelled wonderful. I started with a good vegetable boullion for the base since I didn't have vegetable stock made, and it turned out just fine. The mushrooms and ginger are so flavorful, I don't feel like I missed much by not starting from scratch. The recipe suggests serving with a chili sauce like Sambal oelek. We didn't use it because I didn't think the kids would like it, but I kind of think now it would have been a good idea to have a little kick like that.

When we went out to a Japanese restaurant a few weeks ago, each plate of food served to us was like a still life -so artfully presented, that it brought extra pleasure to see it as well as taste it. That was what atracted me to this dish, and it didn't disappoint. All the kids ate it up and I felt like I put one over on them. Once again it was "just vegetables" with some noodles, but I guess a little extra showmanship pays off.
I also wanted to tell you guys I've tried two of the Choosing Raw vegetable based dressings and they were fantastic. I tried the Curried Tomato, and the Butternut Squash (which I made with the last of my garden grown pumpkin instead --those queensland blues really produced last sumer!). I can't even tell you which is my favorite, they are both good. Of course I did switch them up a little -using lemon juice instead of vinegar because I like it better, and adding a little more water because my pumpkin was pretty dense to start, but they are great starting place recipes -just like all recipes. I've found when cooking, I've always got to change things up a little based on the ingredients I've got, how my family is feeling, and our background. I used to worry about it more, and sometimes it still results in disaster (remind me to tell you about the cucumber pie I made one time because I had a ton of cucumber but no apples --yeah. Not Tasty.), but usually it just makes the recipe, whatever recipe it is, feel like mine. It feels like I've helped in the creative process instead of just followed directions.

What's for dinner mom? Vegetables?!?

2010-03-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Every night's vegetables in some form at our house, but the kids (all four of them) had fun eating them last night. I picked up some rice paper wrappers in the Asian store, and they got to make their own spring rolls.
I gave them each a finger bowl for dipping sauce.

and provided a big pot of hot (not scalding!) water to dip their papers into to soften them.

For filling we had cucumbers, lettuce, red bells, tomatoes, chopped fennel fronds, cilantro, curried chickpeas, and roasted green beans.

These little packs cost only a dollar or two, (are pretty low calorie if you care) and they made the whole "vegetables again!" thing fun . Everyone liked the exotic package, and the papers that soften and become magically stretchy.

I got the guts up to go to the primo yoga

2010-02-28T20:05:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I went to yoga with a friend of mine at this really nice place up in the Riverwoods. It's a cute boutique with clothes I could never afford to buy, and then in the back is a beautiful yoga studio. I've got some pictures here, but not pictures of the actual class, because that, of course, would make me a really annoying nerd. People all doing these focused movements to clear their head, and then "click click" --yeah, didn't do that.

This class though, part of the time I just looked around with my jaw dropped at the stuff people were doing. Think handstands with the splits in the air, twisting around with your arms wrapped around your back and stuff.... but hey --I did a headstand that I held for a really long time, totally controlled. If you know me in Tae Bo classes, I'm not the balance girl. I run over and hold onto the wall for balance stuff, so one of the reasons I really need yoga. I hadn't done a headstand like that in a decade. I just had my focus for the first time in forever.

Here's the cute dressing rooms --there are hand painted flowers inside. Back to the class. The teacher uses all Sanskrit names for things, so I had to peek at other people to figure out what to do most of the time, but I started to recognize down dog, and up dog, and warrior poses --no I can't tell you the names, the dog ones sound like "luka", but I recognize them when I hear them. Good enough. The music? She's playing U2 and Pearl Jam along with the exotic world music stuff you usually hear in yoga. That really resonates with me --I know I'm dating myself. Whatever.

So I wanted to tell you, my friend went to do a century bike race this weekend, and guess what? I went by myself! I did it. Even though I really am pretty sure I'm not cool enough for this class or this studio, I still went. I was so excited, I ran out of the house without my mat. Nerd. They had some to borrow, and they were frankly much better quality than my Wal-mart special (sigh), but when I went to put it back and looked for the sanitizing wipes? There weren't any. Not even an empty canister. Yuck. This isn't your waltzy schmaltzy yoga, you really sweat on those mats. Also I've been reading about gym equipment lately on some bodybuilding sites and all the stuff you can catch...eeew.

Here's where you enter the actual studio from the shop. There are some big puffy brightly colored round cusshions you can sit on, and some rattan couches, and pictures of yogis....why don't I decorate my house like this? It makes me so happy. I guess people might think I was a freak. I'm serious though, I love it--it reminds me of gardens in San Diego.

So this time I had the borrowed mat, and it was turquoise with little squares on it, and my eyes kept going out of focus weird, and the squares popped out like I was wearing 3-d glasses. Why do you think that was? Do you think I was tapping into my inner psychadelic self? Or do you think it was maybe too early in the morning? hmmmm. Anyways, I did OK this second class. I missed a couple of moves because I couldn't figure out what I was doing soon enough, but the teacher came over and spotted me in a "feathered peacock pose"at least that's what it looks like, but I wasn't (noone was) against a wall. That was cool. But for the real inversion time, I needed to go against a wall.

There's the shop (it's like I take time out for commercials huh?). So the only spot against the wall was over in the corner, in kind of like a little annex part of the room, and then I kind of felt like a little add on part of the class...that felt a little pathetic. I did the handstands though. Suddenly I discovered that handstands are HARD! There is some serious shoulder strength needed to maintain it. I really thought it was just a balance issue, but I think now, that if I keep practicing, my shoulders will build up, and I'll be able to control it eventually, just like standing up and walking around. This may sound like a bummer, but it's an encouraging thing for me. Strength --I can do strength. So, the night yoga classes aren't working for me anymore, because I'm gone tues. and wed. already, and it's the last thing I want to do to leave the family again on thurs. nights. Maybe once a week yoga on Sat. (with the occasional podcast) isn't going to get me very far, but I figure it's better than nothing, and I'm loving it. I'm hoping Jenny will get some day classes at Omega someday. I'd be all over that.