Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Two days remain until a new month begins. My month. March. I'm a Pisces, and on Thursday of next week, I will officially turn 45 years old. Yesterday, in anticipation of my birthday, my son, using his IPod Touch, calculated when I might die. According to the little contraption in the palm of his hand, I have lived 55% of my life, and I can look forward to dying when I am 82 years old. I'll take that. Eighty-two seems like a nice, long life. So, I guess that means I better get busy living. I'm on the downhill slide, and the ride is only going to get going faster the farther away from the top of the hill I get. With the approach of March comes spring break. Because my kids' spring break is after my own, I'll have the week at home alone during the day. I always look forward to this week as it offers me a chance to do things during the day that I normally don't get the chance to do. Like going to the bookstore and taking as long as I want without someone pulling on ...

A good weekend is one when no papers litter my desk, waiting for me to finally turn my attention to them, reading them and stamping a grade on them. All last week I spent hours reading journal entries, Comp I and Comp II papers. When Thursday afternoon rolled around, I sighed with relief at having a couple of days with no reading to do. At least reading I didn't really look foward to. I have been reading--about container gardening, which I hope to do lots of this summer. All of us are beginning to get antsy with these cold days seeming to be never ending. If the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, putting the wind chill into single or minus zero digits. We're ready to get out of the house, but the wind keeps chasing us back inside. I have been out long enough to stand on the back deck, looking over our small patio area behind the house and contemplating how to arrange the pots of plants. We don't have a lot of room, but from what I've been reading, I can have quite a f...

Well, the numbers show the juicing weekend worked. The numbers this morning showed 3.1 pounds lost since last Tuesday. I am quite happy about that. The juicing along with the P90X are a great combo meal (LOL--I made a pun). Even though I had to modify the approach a bit and couldn't make the weekend a complete juicing adventure, having two meals comprised of juice rather than the regular solid foods definitely made a difference on the scale. Another difference I've noticed is I just can't eat as much as I used to. I get full after only a few bites of a sandwich or a couple of bites of whatever it is I am eating. Getting that full feeling quickly means a lot of food is left on the plate. I'm okay with that. I'll just have to start making less for me.

The kids were out of school today for Presidents Day, so I decided to take a personal day to spend some time with the them. We wanted to go see a movie, one wanting to see Taken , one wanting to see The Unvited , and the rest of us not really sure what we wanted to see. Because the youngest is only 10, we finally agreed we would all go see Coraline. Once settled in, it took just a matter of seconds for me to find myself marvelling at the imagination that went into the creation of the movie. Having never attended a 3-D movie before, I was enthralled with how the images floated off the screen. At one point, a couple of dragonflies even flew past my ear. It was magical. I was Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, in awe over the world I had just entered. I envy people with the imagination to bring to fruition something like Coraline . I so want to be like them. I've always loved to read, and along with the reading, I've always loved to write. It seems I've been doing both fo...

I found out immediately how difficult it was going to be to do a juice fast all weekend. Almost as soon as I posted about doing this, my husband walked in and said, "Hey, let's go to lunch." I told him I needed to go somewhere that offered juices (which is everywhere, but the juices are full of sugar--not a good way to go). So I compromised and had a salad as well as an orange juice that I asked be half juice half water. The server sort of smiled at this but made sure to let me know she did follow my directions. She even asked if I'd like a second one free of charge since I only had half the normal glass of juice in the first place. That was quite nice of her. I declined the offer. I figured only half the sugar was all I needed. Friday evening, we had the pizza party for the boys' basketball team. What to do? I had a piece of pizza. There was nothing else I could do. I could have not eaten, I guess. Or I could have thought ahead and made a juice to take with me. I...

For around 40 days now, I've been doing an in-home workout routine to get into shape. Over the past 5 years, I've gained about 20 pounds, and while I knew I was gaining weight, I wasn't really bothered by it until this past Thanksgiving when we were in Flordia for vacation. I could really tell, more than ever, that my clothes didn't fit well. My hair was starting to look stringy and dingy. The energy just wasn't what it used to be several years ago. I really wanted to start a better approach to eating and exercising right then and there, but I resorted to excuses: three kids who needed to eat what they like, a husband who constantly undermined my efforts to eat healthfully, work, etc. One of my excuses really is a problem--my husband is difficult to deal with when it comes to food. He loves to eat, and he eats anything and everything, which shows. He could stand to lose 70 pounds easily. So I let the excuses continue to keep me from changing my bad habits. Finally, ...

My work schedule this semester is really nice. I don't teach on Mondays and I don't teach on Fridays. But Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are busy, busy, busy. By Thursday afternoon, I'm ready to flop on the couch and not move until Burn Notice is over. I can't really do that since I have three kids, a husband and a dog to take care of, but I can dream of flopping and not moving. Makes for a wonderful dream. This evening I've vowed to do my P90X workout from 8-9 then write for awhile. I started P90X the first week of January, thinking I wouldn't be able to do any of the workouts, but I've actually done pretty well. The first workout kicked my butt, no doubt about it, but last night, doing that same workout, I noticed I can do most of it now. Only one part still gets to me--the superman/banana minute. I can't keep my lower back on the floor yet, so the strain makes my lower back really sore. I do as much as I can, though, and I can tell I've improve...

Even with the best of intentions, I'm finding so little time to blog. Since I work with writing and reading all day, other people's writing and reading, sometimes when I have some down time I use it to do other things. Like playing basketball with my sons. Like going to the mall with my daughter. Like getting a workout in since that was one of my New Year's resolution. In any case, blogging gets pushed to the side. Some time will open up next week. Basketball will be over. And it is with both happiness and sadness for me that the season is ending. On one hand, the boys have come so far, and I'm thrilled with the skill level I see some of the fourth graders playing. On the other hand, our season has been less than stellar. Our record is like 3-9. For the third year we've had a losing season. Is it me? Is it the boys? Both? I don't have any answers. Maybe between now and October I can figure something out to help the boys end on a better note next season. With mor...