Tag: exercise

From sh*t list to hit list

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, He and me, local fun, movies

I have recently written about my evolving taste in movies. That got me thinking about some other things that I like now that I used to hate.

Here are a few:

  1. Fish. With the exception of canned tuna, I hated fish. This may have stemmed from when I was young and mom made fish sticks for supper, which I tried to decline. No way. Food on the plate? We ate it. Whether we liked it or not was not even a consideration. We were a family struggling to get by on food stamps. Anyway, she made me sit at the table for hours, telling me I couldn’t get up until I ate it all. I got it down drowned in a quart of ketchup, while sitting on the floor under the table in protest. After I moved to Maine, my husband told me I had to start eating fish, because, you know, it’s the law. I have heard you have to try something you dislike 17 times before your tastes change and you actually like it (“He likes it! Hey, Mikey!). Now I love fried whole clams, haddock, cod, calamari, and I’ve even been known to eat some of Gorton’s crunchy fish sticks (without ketchup!) on occasion.
  2. Margaritas. I used to make fun of women who went out for a drink and chose a margarita. Hello? Classic cliché! And then I tried a strawberry hibiscus margarita at Pedro’s in Kennebunk. Oh. My. God. May I just say that now I am a cliché–I mean a fan?
  3. Christian music. I never paid any attention to my friends who said, “Hey, you should listen to it. I bet you’d really like it!” And then my daughter started putting KLOVE on in the car. And I started listening to it. Guess what? I really like it! Hey Mikey!
  4. Exercise. No, wait. I still hate that.
margarita
Pineapple Coconut Margarita at Side Street Cafe

I will leave you with this look back at Mikey. Enjoy!

 

Back in the saddle again. Not.

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, Karen's Kitchen, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, no fear

I was thinking that now that the kids are back in school, I should resume my walking routine. I used to walk 3 miles or so every morning around 6:45am, before I did anything else…even before I went to the gym or yoga class. I did it every day just like clockwork.

Until I stopped.

Why did I stop? Or why did I tell myself that I stopped?

  1. Because it was too cold.
  2. Because it was too dark.
  3. Because I was too Goddamned tired.
  4. Because skipping one day couldn’t hurt, right?
  5. Because it was hunting season and my husband (well, most of the time) didn’t want me to risk getting shot by an idiot hunter who mistook my white mittens for a deer’s tail. This really did happen to someone (thankfully not to me).

The real reason, though, is this: I just hate to exercise, pure and simple. There are long spans of time when I convince myself to forget this, usually in the summer and early fall, when I can distract myself by looking at the ocean while I walk.
This time of year? Not so much. Like today, for example. I drove to the beach with good intentions. I was going to walk for 30 minutes or so. When I got there I realized that I had not worn my sneakers, plus it was high tide right up to the wall.

I mean, what could I do? I ask you.

Good thing I brought my book and a small baked good (of the pumpkin variety) to ease my disappointment over not being able to get that walk in after all.

Maybe tomorrow…

Betrayed

by Karen, posted in fitness, health, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50, Work from Home

So, my 3 mile, 30 minute morning walking route? It’s really only 2.14 miles and takes me 34 minutes to walk it. How do I know this? I downloaded an app to my iPhone called RunKeeper (and NO, I NEVER run but it tracks lots of activities in the free version) and walked my usual route.

OMG.

I had originally tracked the route I walk on my car’s odometer, but there was an error in there somewhere, apparently.

Shoot.

So, I had to keep going past my usual ending point to get a 3 mile walk in. The thing is, I signed up for a walking challenge at work and have committed to walking 10 miles per week.  I thought it would be easy enough to manage, if i just resumed my now long abandoned morning routine of

  1. Putting child on school bus
  2. Walking

but hey, guess what?  My half hour morning walk morphed into a 51.47 minute walk.

May I just take a moment to say “UGH”.

Another first

by Karen, posted in fitness, health, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, the beach, Turning 50

When I turned 50 this year, I decided to try to do things for the first time, since this is my first year in a new decade. Today, I went swimming at the beach all by myself.

This is no small undertaking, to which anyone who wears glasses and is severely myopic will attest. The problem is this: what to do with the glasses? Leave them on, and risk losing them to the ocean, or leave them in a bag with your stuff on your chair, and risk losing yourself?

If I go swimming at the beach with others (who, you know, can see), they can guide me back to our place in the sand, no problem. When faced with the prospect of trying to find my way back without guidance, I have always balked, then caved. In other words, I’ve never done it.

Until today. I brought my red canvas bag, hoping that I would be able to detect the bright color, if nothing else, when it was time to leave the water and find my stuff. I put my chair right at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the parking lot. I walked in a straight line to the ocean, which was at medium-low (not low-low) tide, so I didn’t have to go too far to get back to square one. I hoped for the best.

My Plan B was this: to depend on the kindness of strangers. “Excuse me, but I’m lost…” wouldn’t sound very convincing coming from the mouth of a 50-year-old, so I fervently hoped I wouldn’t have to go this route.

I am happy to report that I didn’t! I swam in the ocean for 20 minutes, came out (just to prove to myself that I could find my stuff–and to get away from the teenage boy who wouldn’t stop taunting his sister with talk about the sharks getting us), then went back in for another 20 minutes.

Life was good today.

Movie free association

by Karen, posted in friends, Midlife Crisis, movies, yoga

I was in yoga class (small group, all women) last week and someone (okay, it was me) started talking about how Sleepless in Seattle had been on TV the night before.

Soon, everyone was mentioning their “go-to” movies, the ones that you have to watch whenever they are on TV, even if you have the DVD already, and even if it’s on Netflix.

Here’s the master chick-flick list:

  1. Sleepless in Seattle
  2. You’ve Got Mail
  3. It Could Happen to You
  4. The Wedding Planner
  5. Must Love Dogs
  6. The Bridges of Madison County
  7. Something’s Got to Give
  8. While You Were Sleeping
  9. When Harry Met Sally
  10. Say Anything
 
The men: George Clooney, Jack Black, Hugh Jackman, Matthew McConaughey, John Cusack…
Who’s YOUR favorite?
What are the movies that you have to watch whenever they come on TV (even if you already own the dvd/blu ray/video)?

Losing my mind

by Karen, posted in Midlife Crisis, my one word

Here is just a small sampling of the fruits of my distraction over the past couple of weeks.

  1. Went to my hair appointment, got out of the car, looked for my pocketbook, realized I’d left it at home. I could clearly see it in my mind’s eye hanging over the back of the kitchen chair. I was sure I’d taken it off the chair and brought it with me to the car. I had not.
  2. Got up early, got dressed in my gym clothes, got to Planet Fitness, got out of the car…and realized that I was wearing my winter boots and had not brought my sneakers. Fail.
  3. Ran the dryer for 45 minutes, went to remove the clothes, and discovered that they weren’t in there. I’d never taken them out of the washer and put them in the dryer in the first place. Even though (once again) I clearly remember doing so.
  4. Told my daughter, “Go get the rest of the bags out of the trash,” after I returned from food shopping. Oh, didn’t I say “trunk”? I was sure I’d said “trunk”…

And these are just the things that I remember. Needless to say, I’m not making great progress with “my one word” for 2012.

Scary.

The honeymoon is over

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, health, local fun

Well, the vacation may have just started but….the party? It’s definitely over. What am I talking about?

I got off the scale a minute ago. It wasn’t pretty.

After I got over being mad at myself (you know, for getting on it in the first place) I decided to (try to) get real. I did a quick review of what I ate yesterday (vacation day 1; ice cream twice?? And one of those times I used it to dress up an enormous and amazingly good piece of strawberry rhubarb pie).

Pie a la mode

Steps:

  1. Start counting (ugh) Weight Watchers points again. I never did pony up the cash to re-join so that I could learn the new Points Plus system, so either I rejoin (joining fee is no longer being waived, of course) or use the old system as best as I can remember it from 4 years ago. UPDATE: Just saw an ad in the WW magazine that starting 8/28 they will be waiving that $29.95  joining fee again (for Weight Watchers Online, at least)…guess I got a week’s reprieve!
  2. Go back to getting up early and walking for 30 minutes every morning (maybe I’ll wait till after my vacation to start this one, since I’ll already be up early every day at 5:45AM when school resumes August 30). I stopped doing this after a particularly vicious horse fly attack.
  3. Stop wearing my cupcake necklace for a while . Hmmmm…I wonder if they make a carrot stick necklace?? Just in case there’s something to “the power of suggestion”.
  4. Drink more water, yada yada.

Note: It’s going to be a bumpy road; I still have 2/3 1/3 of that pie left.

Vacation week (continued, day 2)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, movies, tweens

Saturday (Day 2) was a full day.  Yoga in the morning at Windsong Yoga with my favorite yoga teacher Kristen. Then stopped in at Fetch’n Fun for their fundraiser for The Lucky Pup Rescue.

Chicken Parm made by the tweens

Then my daughter and I picked up her friend Madi for a tween day. Library first (the girls did a scavenger hunt and got a prize), then The Smurfs movie at the Wells Five Star Cinema. The movie was much less annoying than I thought it was going to be. I was even asked by my daughter to stop laughing so loudly, so there you go. The nice surprise of this movie was that I knew and liked some of the actors: Hank Azaria (where’s he been?) and Jayma Mays (Glee).

Next, we headed down to the Wells Harbor for the All Together Now concert. The bugs were out in full force so we left halfway through it (no reflection on the band; they were great!) and stopped at Big Daddy’s for ice cream, right on the way home. Good day. Got to do lots of stuff on my (vacation) wish list.  At the end of the day, I read an email from my cousin Kathy (who’s two weeks and two days older than I) asking me if I’d made a “Bucket List” for the second half.

Nope. Not yet.

(Just put that bucket list on my to-do list).

Then a quick stop at the grocery store to buy the missing ingredients for the Chicken Parmigiano recipe that the tweens wanted to make for dinner. Home to play some Wii Just Dance 2, then cooked dinner, which turned out to be wonderful (worth putting the oven on in the heat of the summer for).

Oh, and did I mention that I did two rounds of dishwasher filling and emptying and 5 loads of laundry as well? And my online class that I had hoped to do on the day it posted (Friday) is still not done. Here’s hoping for a Sunday completion.

Summer Vacation: What I actually DID do

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Date night, local fun, relationships

You know how they say, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” to paraphrase John Steinbeck? Well, true that.

Half Pecan Banana Bread, Half Cherry Vanilla Chocolate Chunk cone

Day 1: Friday:  The entire day did not end up being wasted waiting for the fridge to be delivered (and the accompanying emptying out and filling back up thereof) that I anticipated when the delivery window was given as “Between 2:30PM and 4:00PM” that day. Bright and early we got a call asking if they could come at 9:00AM instead. Hel-lo? Duh! Of course we said  yes. Bonuses: 1) I was on my way to the gym and got to–er, had to turn around and go back home.  2) My husband and I were both able to attend our daughter’s Culinary Camp presentation at YCCC which was scheduled from 3:00PM-4:00PM.

We also got to go out for dinner to Pedro’s in Kennebunk, noticeably missing from the planned vacation agenda. Later we got an ice cream cone at Arundel Ice Cream Shop, which was very definitely on the agenda! We popped in our Netflix movie when we got home: Take Me Home Tonight~Pass on this one; it was pretty awful.

A word about Pedro’s: it’s great place to go. Simple, straightforward menu without too many choices to bog you down. Nice atmosphere. We sat outside on the patio this time (the first time we went there a few weeks ago we ate inside). We ordered the Flautas (which are great for sharing: an order contains two) and the Nachos Grande. The food was excellent (sorry, no pictures; my husband is getting sick of the food getting cold while I’m snapping pictures for the blog) and reasonably priced.

It was a fairly good start to my vacation. 🙂

Anyone else on vacation?

Working from home, week one

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Life in the cube, Work from Home, writing

At the end of my first week working from home, I thought I’d reflect a little on how it’s all going. There were several things that I knew would be different, but my days are shaping up to be much different from how I envisioned them. One of my friends said that she was worried that she’d be too isolated if she worked from home, since she lived alone. I never thought for a minute that I would feel that way, but it is sort of an isolated feeling to be sitting in your office alone all day, interacting with no one face to face. I mean. there are certainly people in the house sometimes while I’m “at work”, but I’m not a part of their activity, their day. I am APART.

What I thought I’d be doing once I started working from home:

  1. Exercising more, since I would have more time in the morning (you know, that part of the day before you talk yourself out of exercising?).
  2. Writing more. After all, I would be gaining more than 2 hours a day of not commuting and not getting meals packed and unpacked.
  3. Gaining weight. There is actually some walking involved in getting to and from Portland every day, parking the car, walking from the parking garage, taking a few sets of stairs…that would not be part of working from home.
  4. Seeing my husband and kids more.

What I actually am doing now that I am working from home:

  1. Turns out, I actually am exercising more. It will be 4 (maybe even 5!) days that I’ve done some form of excercise (yoga, beach walk, gym) by Saturday, versus the 1 or 2 days in a commuting week.
  2. Turns out, I’ve actually lost 2 lbs. Go figure.
  3. Turns out, I’m actually writing less. I really don’t have much downtime. I’m getting up later in the morning (which will end of course, when my daughter goes back to school in September) and pretty much going to bed shortly after I finish working at 9PM.
  4. I am seeing my family more, which is good. If I could only be right about one thing, I’m glad it was this one. 🙂

I’m missing a few things: seeing my friends at work,  the Wednesday Farmers Market in Monument Square, my audio books, the cupcake stores, Micucci’s pizza…

Pretty much, I’m still working on getting it together here, finding a new rhythm to my days.