Today, I went to lunch to study and eat yummy food that I didn't have to make at On the Border. This is a restaurant that I REALLY like. It's also a place where I often eat badly and sometimes avoid in order to eat well. But today was a success! Here's what I ate:
Guacamole (I asked them to add jalapenos and tomatoes to their regular stuff)
red and green pepper strips (instead of chips) to dip in the guac and the salsa
2 tacos (yes I ate the shells)
The tacos weren't perfect, I know, but this was so much better than what I usually eat there (a million chips) that I am very proud and uplifted. I know I can eat there without feeling overfull and lethargic, and next time, I think I will see how I do with the fajitas instead of tacos!
And I also went to the eye doctor today, another step in the direction of taking better care of my health. Yippee for me!
Showing posts with label resolutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resolutions. Show all posts
Friday, February 3, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Making Taking Care of My Body a Priority in the Craziness that is Grad School
This semester has been SO crazy. I am loving it, doing all the things I love most (reading, writing, reading about writing, writing about reading, you know the super fun stuff), but I am busier than I have ever been with Livy and Aaron and ATLOS to think of on top of school and work.
Somehow in all the insanity, my healthy habits have gone away. I am never home during the week, so I don't cook. Instead, I've been eating fast food in the car and bar food at school WAY too often.
Instead of my long walks of last semester, I have been sitting on my behind, writing and writing and writing. When I have a break, instead of getting outside, I find myself frantically checking things off my to-do list. I'm getting about the same amount of sunlight as Aaron, for god's sake, and he's a computer programmer.
I've gained weight, and I feel yucky. I am pushing myself harder than ever before, and I am not fueling my body properly or exercising to relieve stress or sleeping enough.
So, I am making a change. I am unable to make a big change because I have way too much to do. But I am making small changes to get back on a healthier track.
I started a yoga class, which is active and also gives me some much needed stress relief (thanks, Tori!). I've been going one day a week for 3 weeks and like it so much that I am thinking of adding an extra day a week. As soon as Aaron sets up the DVD player in the new introvert-proof living room, I will add some weekend yoga with Livy.
I am going to start taking some shorter walks during my school breaks. Walks that I can do in 30 minutes. Walks that I can do in nice slacks or a dress. I do not have to walk for hours to make it worthwhile to do it. The perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to walks (as in so much else).
I am going to start packing food for the day. Today I brought a cooler with lunch and dinner in it, simple stuff that doesn't require cooking. I may have to live with less variety if I am not willing to cook, but at least it will be healthy food that can fuel the pace of this semester. Today, I have ham, cheese, veggies and hummus, a frozen hamburger patty, and a salad. Not perfectly paleo, but a lot better than Taco Bell.
I am going to try to get more sleep by going to bed earlier on Mondays and Wednesdays (the days before my earliest days). It's hard to do that and still see Aaron much, but even an hour would help.
I'm trying not to focus on the weight I've gained or how I want to look or how I want my clothes to fit. Those things are fine, but not the most important. In a semester this busy, I only have time to think about the things that I value most and ruthlessly cut out the other. So body image issues have to go. Instead, my focus will be on giving my body the food, exercise, and sleep it needs to make me the brainiest, most energetic teacher and scholar that composition theory and writing center studies has ever seen.
Somehow in all the insanity, my healthy habits have gone away. I am never home during the week, so I don't cook. Instead, I've been eating fast food in the car and bar food at school WAY too often.
Instead of my long walks of last semester, I have been sitting on my behind, writing and writing and writing. When I have a break, instead of getting outside, I find myself frantically checking things off my to-do list. I'm getting about the same amount of sunlight as Aaron, for god's sake, and he's a computer programmer.
I've gained weight, and I feel yucky. I am pushing myself harder than ever before, and I am not fueling my body properly or exercising to relieve stress or sleeping enough.
So, I am making a change. I am unable to make a big change because I have way too much to do. But I am making small changes to get back on a healthier track.
I started a yoga class, which is active and also gives me some much needed stress relief (thanks, Tori!). I've been going one day a week for 3 weeks and like it so much that I am thinking of adding an extra day a week. As soon as Aaron sets up the DVD player in the new introvert-proof living room, I will add some weekend yoga with Livy.
I am going to start taking some shorter walks during my school breaks. Walks that I can do in 30 minutes. Walks that I can do in nice slacks or a dress. I do not have to walk for hours to make it worthwhile to do it. The perfect is the enemy of the good when it comes to walks (as in so much else).
I am going to start packing food for the day. Today I brought a cooler with lunch and dinner in it, simple stuff that doesn't require cooking. I may have to live with less variety if I am not willing to cook, but at least it will be healthy food that can fuel the pace of this semester. Today, I have ham, cheese, veggies and hummus, a frozen hamburger patty, and a salad. Not perfectly paleo, but a lot better than Taco Bell.
I am going to try to get more sleep by going to bed earlier on Mondays and Wednesdays (the days before my earliest days). It's hard to do that and still see Aaron much, but even an hour would help.
I'm trying not to focus on the weight I've gained or how I want to look or how I want my clothes to fit. Those things are fine, but not the most important. In a semester this busy, I only have time to think about the things that I value most and ruthlessly cut out the other. So body image issues have to go. Instead, my focus will be on giving my body the food, exercise, and sleep it needs to make me the brainiest, most energetic teacher and scholar that composition theory and writing center studies has ever seen.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
New Year's and 33rd Birthday Plans for the Future
Right now, I am sitting on a train on my way to Canterbury,
eating ham, cheese, double cream, and carrots and drinking champagne. Not a bad
picnic to kick off my birthday! Since my birthday comes so close to the beginning of the new
year, this time is doubly reflective for me. It’s not just the start of a new
year; it’s the start of MY new year. I’m 33 today, so I am starting off my 34th
year. That sounds like a lot. J
My 2011 in Review post reminded me of how amazing last year
was, how many adventures I had, how much progress I made in school and work,
and how much I have grown and changed (for the better). Thinking about and
writing this post is my chance to imagine the coming year and to make plans (I
won’t say resolutions because that makes me feel all bound in by rules and
laws.) for adventures to come.
Here are some of the adventures I intend to pursue this
year:
The assistant director of the writing center job may come open this year, and I want it. I have been working toward that goal for the past semester as well, and I intend to keep learning how to be a better tutor, a better manager, and a better researcher to make myself more qualified.
Aaron and I are planning two big trips next year, and we are taking Livy with us (assuming she wants to go and is willing to get the required vaccinations for the second one).
This summer, we are traveling in the Northwest, probably through the Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, and a bit of Northern California. Livy has been a part of planning that trip, and I am sure she wants to go. We want to do a lot of hiking and stay mostly in the country in National Parks, but we’ll see a few cities too (Seattle and Portland are places I have always wanted to visit).
Over next Christmas break, we are planning a trip to Costa Rica, Bolivia, or Chile. All three destinations have been on Aaron’s list for years. This is the trip that Livy and I will have to discuss. I think she’ll want to go, but will she want to go enough to get a bunch of shots? I sure hope so because I am dying to take her with us! I think she will love the kind of outdoorsy vacation Aaron wants instead of the looking-at-musty-books kind of vacation I really love. J
I want to memorize poetry. The few poems that I have memorized bring me a huge amount of joy, and I want to increase that store this year. One poem a week may be too ambitious, but I’m going to try that out and see what happens. If I don’t get that many done, no worries. These are not resolutions of things I have to do; they are pleasurable visions of what I want the future to hold. If they stop being pleasurable, I’ll get a new plan.
I bought a wonderful little pocket-sized
anthology called The Ruins of Time:
Antiquarian and Archaeological Poems at Blackwell’s Bookstore in Oxford.
Doesn’t that sound like the perfect poetry collection for me? A quote from the
introduction: “The distant past is brought to life in the brilliant mimicry of
Kipling or Auden, or brooded on elegiacally by Housman or Larkin.” So, in honor
of this new book and its contents that seem specially selected for me, I think
my first new poem to memorize will be “Ozymandias” by Shelley. It is the poem
in the collection I am most familiar with and the one I often desperately try
to remember when thinking over “Dust in the Wind” and human mortality. (Yes, I
do that often. No, not in a morbid way. No, it doesn’t make me sad.)
In preparation for our trip to Costa Rica or another Spanish-speaking country in about a year, I want to brush up my Spanish and see if I can reach a new level of proficiency. I’ll be using Rosetta Stone and trying to find native speakers to talk to, and I hope I can convince Livy to learn some Spanish along with me.
After hearing Evensong so many times on this
trip, I have decided that I need to get back into singing in some way this
year, and in a pretty good choir. Singing in college in a great choir pretty
much spoiled me for groups who just sing for fun and aren’t that great; I can’t
stop hearing the wrong notes! I know of a good summer chorus, but I am going to
look for something sooner than that. At the very least, I will go to more
Sacred Harp singings until I can do the summer chorus.
Finally, I don’t want to let the feeling that Ihad in Blackwell’s Bookstore slip away; I want to be more diligent about
serious study outside of my research and classes. I am very busy, and when I am
in school, it can be hard to add more reading and writing to my life. But I want
to continue to read some classics (perhaps more ancient and medieval ones), do
a bit of Latin (Greek will probably have to wait for its brush-up until I am
out of school), and write consistently on my blog (particularly travel
narratives, stories about my past, and things I want to ponder from books,
school, conversations, etc.).
I love that I have finally found a career and a relationship
that make me look forward to the new year with so much pleasure and so much
hope. I have gotten so much better at saying no and not doing things that don’t
make me feel great, and, finally, my life is full of things that I love and only
getting fuller.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Lots of Excitement and a Musing
Well, I'm back to normal life (for two weeks anyway until our next trip). I'm very very very glad. Aaron's parents visited, my mom visited, and we went on a roadtrip to Washington, D.C. Just to shock and amaze you, here is a list of all the things I have done and seen since my last post:
And here is my musing:
At the aforesaid party, a friend of mine, a lovely attractive woman who would be admired by any man with any sense, mentioned that she was upset by her boobs sagging. It got us talking about changing bodies. Here's my two cents: There is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty and attractive, but there is something wrong when we don't accept the reality of being 30ish and 40ish. Our boobs are gonna sag. Our faces are gonna get wrinkles. We'll probably all gain a few pounds as we age and our metabolisms slow. I think that's okay. If a man wants to date a woman with maturity and experience, he's gonna have to accept that those women have wrinkles and boobs that sag a bit. If he wants perfect boobs and flawless skin, he's gonna have to choose a person who hasn't lived and loved and learned sex techniques and made progress on career goals and traveled and has lots to teach him. The thing is, I don't think most of the pressure really comes from men. I've spent most of my life on the heavier side of our society's ideal, and yet, I've never hurt for very wonderful men in my life. My boobs that sag a bit have been greeted by men with that stupid (yet lovable) smile that they always get when faced with breasts of any size or age. I think that men (in general) are much kinder to our bodies than we women are ourselves.
Earlier this year, I made the resolution that this year, I was going to stop resolving to be something other than I am and making myself miserable. I've kept that resolution by ending my obsessive and dangerous dieting cycle and by practicing talking nice to my body and the bodies of other women. I'm trying to think more about other things about me and the women I know and less about our looks. There is nothing wrong with noticing someone's looks, but I, and many other women, focus on looks way too much.
So, my final word on this is: I am not a mannequin, not a teenager, not a Barbie doll. I am real 30 year old woman who has had a baby. I can't be bothered about stretch marks, sagging, and my first wrinkle. I have way too much living to do for that. :)
- Atlanta Botanical Gardens
- walk through Piedmont Park
- High Museum of Art
- fancy lunch at the museum restaurant, where Livy was served iced tea in a real grownup glass without us having to ask, which made her whole lunch and (I think) got her to eat pickled beets because they are grown up too
- the library
- Greenville, SC to have dinner with an internet friend, now known in the flesh
- drove up the Blue Ridge parkway into Virginia (absolutely lovely!!)
- Monticello, Jefferson's home
- National Air and Space Museum
- Holocaust Museum (gruesome and graphic, but very wonderful museum, nonetheless)
- National Portrait Gallery
- American History Museum (for a minute only, we didn't like it)
- walking tour of the Mall and surrounding monuments (Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korean War, World War II, Washington monument)
- party to welcome a friend who is visiting our Atlanta Objectivist group
- 6 hour float down the Chattahoochee River on blow up rafts
And here is my musing:
At the aforesaid party, a friend of mine, a lovely attractive woman who would be admired by any man with any sense, mentioned that she was upset by her boobs sagging. It got us talking about changing bodies. Here's my two cents: There is nothing wrong with wanting to look pretty and attractive, but there is something wrong when we don't accept the reality of being 30ish and 40ish. Our boobs are gonna sag. Our faces are gonna get wrinkles. We'll probably all gain a few pounds as we age and our metabolisms slow. I think that's okay. If a man wants to date a woman with maturity and experience, he's gonna have to accept that those women have wrinkles and boobs that sag a bit. If he wants perfect boobs and flawless skin, he's gonna have to choose a person who hasn't lived and loved and learned sex techniques and made progress on career goals and traveled and has lots to teach him. The thing is, I don't think most of the pressure really comes from men. I've spent most of my life on the heavier side of our society's ideal, and yet, I've never hurt for very wonderful men in my life. My boobs that sag a bit have been greeted by men with that stupid (yet lovable) smile that they always get when faced with breasts of any size or age. I think that men (in general) are much kinder to our bodies than we women are ourselves.
Earlier this year, I made the resolution that this year, I was going to stop resolving to be something other than I am and making myself miserable. I've kept that resolution by ending my obsessive and dangerous dieting cycle and by practicing talking nice to my body and the bodies of other women. I'm trying to think more about other things about me and the women I know and less about our looks. There is nothing wrong with noticing someone's looks, but I, and many other women, focus on looks way too much.
So, my final word on this is: I am not a mannequin, not a teenager, not a Barbie doll. I am real 30 year old woman who has had a baby. I can't be bothered about stretch marks, sagging, and my first wrinkle. I have way too much living to do for that. :)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Resolutions (and Why I Am Chucking Them Out)
It's almost summer for me. This is to be a summer of leisure. I won't be working. I won't be in school. I will just be soaking in the sun, playing in the garden, doing homeschooly things with Livy, hiking, reading books for fun, and slowing down a bit from the pace of this spring semester.
I will miss my gymnasts, but not as much as I have missed having free time. As my finals are winding down, I'm starting to find myself with these blocks of time that are not spoken for. I am vowing to fill them, not with housework, but with fun. I guess I'll get the basics done; the kitchen must be cleaned. But I'm not going to make resolutions like I usually do. I am not going to clean out the garage. I am not going to fix the hole in the bathroom wall. I am not going to do anything I don't want to do. I am going to pretend I am 10 years old again and spend the whole summer wandering and feeling time pass by slowly.
Have you noticed how every year time seems to move faster? I think it is because there are so many things I have to do as an adult, so many deadlines and markers of time that I must look forward to. Well, no more looking forward for me. For these three months, I am going to look right down at the ground at my feet, not ahead or behind.
My resolution is to be unresolved. I'm just going to float through the days and weeks, blowing where the breeze takes me.
I will miss my gymnasts, but not as much as I have missed having free time. As my finals are winding down, I'm starting to find myself with these blocks of time that are not spoken for. I am vowing to fill them, not with housework, but with fun. I guess I'll get the basics done; the kitchen must be cleaned. But I'm not going to make resolutions like I usually do. I am not going to clean out the garage. I am not going to fix the hole in the bathroom wall. I am not going to do anything I don't want to do. I am going to pretend I am 10 years old again and spend the whole summer wandering and feeling time pass by slowly.
Have you noticed how every year time seems to move faster? I think it is because there are so many things I have to do as an adult, so many deadlines and markers of time that I must look forward to. Well, no more looking forward for me. For these three months, I am going to look right down at the ground at my feet, not ahead or behind.
My resolution is to be unresolved. I'm just going to float through the days and weeks, blowing where the breeze takes me.
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