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Author: Jessica Marie

Professional copywriter, NASM certified personal trainer, mom of 2

A Very Merry Un-Birthday to Me

I hosted a wine and cheese party for some of my favorite people last Saturday. I’ve mentioned this idea before, but I finally put it together and did it and enjoyed every minute. We had quite the spread of cheeses, a tub full of wine bottles, and a choice assortment of dried fruit, figs, olives, chocolates, crackers and nuts.

My grandma recently bestowed me with my great-grandmother’s china, and I couldn’t have been any giddier to showcase it and put it to good use. My great-grandma bought the set for herself while she worked outside the home for a short time. You see, my great-grandparents owned a farm and didn’t have a lot of money left over after getting the necessities for frivolity. So, it just makes me feel all tingly knowing she did this one nice thing just for herself.

We also broke out our Tiffany candle holders that have been protectively wrapped up in tissue inside the familiar blue box. These were a wedding gift from almost five years ago that I am always afraid to bring/leave out. We joke that they’re some of the only refined things we own, aside from the china now.

I put up a fun tinsel/streamer wall with a set of props and charades-like cards for picture-taking. With a little encouragement, almost everyone got their mugs captured. Even my husband tried his best Rockette’s pose. Oh boy!

We watched a comedy collection of four Independent Films and rated Best Picture, Best Performance, and Best Original Story. We chatted. We broke out the Wii. And a few of us went out to a lounge afterwards to catch a cover band, featuring a friend of one of the girls.

I am truly honored and grateful to have such wonderful friends. Sometimes, winter seems to turn us into such impersonal, stagnant beings. We only see our neighbors if we both happen to be outside shovelling at the same time. Everyone’s hibernating in their own homes, there’s not a whole lot to do, and we can start to feel quite bored and lonely. This party sure broke up some of the winter doldrums and made my heart feel all warm. I think I might start a new tradition and try this again, once every year.

Putting a Little Love in My Heart

abstract heart
Picture from Zen on Flickr

I know it’s a few days late, but my heart was peeled open on Valentine’s day by a quick scan through an old journal I kept. I found the pages where my husband and I became an item. And the date–May of 2003! The story isn’t overly interesting, there is no plot climax, no sparkling lift-off. It’s all pretty tame. But the feelings I felt after reading it tell another story.

I could practically feel the butterflies again. I was reliving some of the conversations and critical moments. I was laughing about how he always tried to surprise me with things and the uncanny ways it never worked out. I was laughing at all the people on the roster that wanted us to start “going out.” I read aloud some of the sappy and funny things to my husband and we both enjoyed the good-humored reminiscing.

The next day, I woke up feeling like someone had hit the “refresh” button. There were emotions stirred up inside me that had long been forgotten. I looked at my husband like he still had some charm left:) Ha! But anyway, I felt very different. On a small high, if you will.

This got me thinking even further into using writing as cheap therapy. Writing down five things that were great about your day or nice things people said to you is rather healthy. I found some compliments in this same journal that gave me a bit of an emotional lift even this many years later, but I know I wasn’t thinking about that when I wrote them down. Write them down today and who knows what sort of joy they’ll bring in a year or five. I know exactly where I’ll turn when I need a little boost about the feelings of my marriage.

Too Many Ideas Boun-Sing Around

Disclaimer to those who know me: Sometimes I have so many ideas, thoughts, analyses, observations and deductions rolling around inside my head that when I talk to an actual person, I sometimes come off as sounding a bit vapid. Those thoughts overtake my conscious capacity to the point where I am completely consumed and there is no extra room for spoken word. I sometimes feel disoriented when leaving my head to engage in conversation. I am a master multi-tasker, so you can’t accuse me of this shortcoming. I have, however, always been able to say it better in writing than in vocal form. Just thought you might like to know, in case you can’t get much out of me today.

Cutting the Cable

I don’t know what I’m going to do when we have to cancel our three-month trial of our extra cable channels. We originally got the extras specifically for FitTV (now called Fit & Health), by my request. And at around $5 for the first few months, it’s soooo worth it!

Now I don’t know what’s going on with FitTV these days, but I seem to remember seeing a lot more workouts than there are now. Anyhow, I had to wait two full days before there were any actual workout videos playing after work. I got all suited up and into position, ready to change the channel promptly at 5:00. “FitTV is currently unavailable.” Excuse me?

I was not a satisfied customer when the only channel on the whole tube that I care about was currently unavailable. My husband saw the look on my face and dutifully started dialing. The fastest they could send a technician was on the weekend. After several unsatisfactory phone transfers, the lady on the line pointed us to ExerciseTV On Demand. Oh brother!

Handfuls and handfuls of fitness videos I can turn on as I please? I don’t have to do the same workout twice? Hallelujah! Those videos I bought a month ago will be collecting dust for three months because I won’t waste them (and risk growing tired of them faster) until On Demand is gone. Believe you me I am going to squeeze every last drop of potential out of those channels until our time is up.

That’s a Total Crock-Pot

The crockpot has got to be the single most important diet invention ever. Especially for the working gal who only has a passing interest in “cooking.” You can make anything in there. Oh yes, you can. Lasagna, enchiladas, meatballs, barbecue chicken…every.thing.

Type in “crockpot” on the SparkRecipes website and you get 200 recipes, many of them saying they’re “the easiest recipe ever!” Now that’s what I like to hear. Since the site is affiliated with SparkPeople, most of the recipes are going to be rather healthy.

People, this is easier than cruising to the drive-through. Dinner arrives just in time, while pizza can be expected to arrive 30-45 minutes after you’re already starving. You place your chosen meat, packet of seasoning and can of cream-of-something soup in there and it cooks for you while you’re busy at work.

And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I miss the smells that came from my mother’s kitchen. But when I walk into my house after a day of work, a simmering crockpot emits a smell that could rival a restaurant. That onion soup-drenched roast smells almost as good as mom’s.

The Effects of Music on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

I cannot stop playing Mairi Campbell’s version of Auld Lang Syne from the first Sex and the City movie. You can watch the clip here. I’m completely moved and I can’t quite put my finger on why. So, this journal entry is dedicated to sorting it out. Please, indulge me.

The melody is a bit melancholy, as though accompanying a video montage you’re watching years later and reliving those joyful moments, as one might with old reels of childhood footage. Mournful and joyful at the same time. There’s also something about your friends getting out of bed, picking their way through the snow, and going all the way across town just to keep you company for a few hours that’s very touching. There are festivities going on all over town, but not everyone is involved. And the viewer is sort of an outsider, peeking in on all the beauty and glamour, wanting to be there. Or at least desiring the beautiful clothes and parties.

The juxtaposition of a Scottish folk song with an all-American blockbuster fashion movie is endearing and brings some of the over-the-topness down to Earth. Plus the words themselves are heartwarming and haunting at the same time. They’re about celebrating long-standing friendships for old time’s sake, but they’re also about realizing that there are years and years of stories separating you (seas between us). Most of the time Auld Lang Syne is sung with celebratory inflections with a group of people, arm’s around each other, raising their glasses. This time, it’s very melodramatic. There’s happiness, uncertainty, loneliness, comradeship, celebration, restlessness, peace and dejection all rolled up into one scene. It’s hard to process, it’s so affecting.

Michael Polan Rules

If I were to recommend one book in this entire world for healthy eating, it would be Michael Polan’s Food Rules. This is the best non-diet diet book I’ve ever come across. When you establish a healthy eating plan, you should pick something you can stick with for…well, for your entire life. Diets that are only temporary are usually inefficient and sometimes unhealthy. Changing your diet for the better should be something you can establish for a lifetime. That sounds daunting, but it’s really not. Consider the three easiest diet rules you’ve ever seen:

Rule Number One: What should I eat? Eat food.
Rule Number Two: What kind of food should I eat? Mostly plants.
Rule Number Three: How much should I eat? Not too much.

1. For the most part, try to eat real food, not processed food. The more “pure” a food is, the better. It’s not adulterated, altered, tainted with additives or ground into an unidentified substance. It still provides optimal levels of vitamins and antioxidants.

2. According to the pyramid, the things you should be eating the most servings of are fruits and vegetables. Whole grains are also high on the list. Sprinkle produce all throughout your day and you can hardly go wrong.

3. Pare down your serving sizes. Everything should be eaten in moderation. Pay attention to serving sizes. Don’t eat the whole pie, but certainly don’t forget to savor your sliver!

I would add Rule Number Four: Never lose an entire food group! Sure, eat food and eat mostly plants, but never do this to the exclusion of carbs, fats or any other portion of the pyramid. You’ll miss out on essential nutrients, among so many other things.

What a Nightmare

My little bambino has been mighty sick lately. He’s on his way to the doc right now. But the thing that concerns me most is his apparent nightmare two nights ago. I mean, the Lion King hyenas are a little scary and sometimes daddy watches something questionable, but it seems odd that a child with a pretty limited vocabulary and teeny tiny set of experiences could have such a harrowing nightmare that he picked his way in complete darkness to our bedside. He usually doesn’t leave his bed until someone goes to get him. Finding him whimpering next to my bed was probably just as scary to me as it was to him to have such a nightmare, because it just kills me when he experiences such angst. Poor little guy.

So, knowing me, I had to Google “toddler nightmares” the next day because I had no idea how to approach this uncharted territory. I don’t like to just ignore seemingly arbitrary things like this and I’m all about making things better for my family. The best advice I found is to ask your toddler briefly what’s going on, and then change their thoughts. Go downstairs and get a glass of milk and read them another story. I like to check for monsters and pretend to eat them if the little guy suspects there are any lurking under his bed. This seems to reassure him. But there’s nothing worse than being short with a toddler, so a little empathy and back-stroking go a long way. We now have a night light for his room and leave his door open so that he feels more secure.

There’s a lot of irony with being a parent. While we’re busy reassuring our little people that everything is OK, we’re secretly worrying about upcoming bills, strange vehicle sputters, the health of our elders, our work relationships, and then some. Those petty nightmares seem to pale in comparison to real encounters with death and poverty. However, it is because of a toddler’s lack of experience that those worries derived from nightmares feel just as potent as our biggest adult fears. It really puts things into perspective, as they say.

This incident also provides a lesson in thought re-patterning. I like the idea of acknowledging bad feelings and then redirecting thoughts to other more pleasant and productive things. In the real world, empathy and active listening go a long way too. It’s amazing what you can learn from raising a child. More and more, these experiences reiterate the things I’ve learned in my own life.

This is also a lesson in the active imaginations of children. When we think they’re not looking or paying attention, they’re really actively absorbing more than we realize. We’re going to have to be much more proactive about screening our television and word choices. My husband and I might just have to start playing the quarter game pretty soon too. Our potty mouths might get us into trouble one of these days…

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Well, today marks the first year anniversary of my first post in the blogosphere and it feels truly inspiring. Not only am I, myself, another year stronger, but so are my words. Sometimes just getting into the habit of writing can be a struggle. But this personal place allows me to explore ideas in an informal, yet sometimes informative way. And once I get into that routine habit of writing, the ideas swirl around in my mind much more freely which, in turn, enriches my life and my writing and the momentum continues to forge ahead.

This coming year, I plan to get a little bit more technical with this blog stuff. I know, I know. I need pictures. I need Technorati to pick me up. I need to learn a little bit more about html coding and such so that I can deck these walls with extra emphasis. This is a whole new world to me. That’s goal number one.

Goal number two is to blog more frequently. As I said above, the more I write, the more I start to piece things together in my head and the more receptive I am to my environment and world. It’s good for the blog and it’s good for me. And hopefully it’s good for someone else out there.

I blog because I love the freedom of expression it gives me. It’s cathartic in some ways and soul-enriching in others. I also love the outlet this blog offers me to express what I’ve learned to everyday people with similar interests and concerns. I am a complete fitness junkie, devoted momma and writing fanatic among many other things. And my passion is for my words and I to reach out and to make connections with people. So, we move into this second year with abundant anticipation and enthusiasm.

Take a second to peruse some of my favorites from this past year:

1. Add more roughage to your diet with these tips.
2. A personal tidbit about motherhood
3. My Ultimate Thrifty Guide to getting fit
4. My best advice for getting into a fitness habit is writing a note like this to yourself.

You Know You’re a Fitness Junkie When…

…You spend over $100 on Amazon in one fell swoop. All on workout DVDs and Yoga decks. No sweat though (well, for the cost anyway). This was my attempt to spend my hard-earned Christmas money (I’ve been a pretty good girl this year) and capitalize on some wellness moola at work. Score!

On the menu are Ellen Barrett’s Barefoot Cardio, some good ole Quick Fix and 10 Minute Solution DVDs, a Bollywood dance workout, Shape Magazine’s bikini body workout, a ballet-inspired Reach workout, some Iron Yoga, a small bit of capoeira, and some Shiva Rae. Ooooh. Aaaaaah. Endorphins, my drug of choice.

And as you can tell, I despise workout monotony. I have to refresh every once in awhile or my motivation wanes. I love trying all different types of movements, as you can tell. And if I can multitask while working out, all the better (i.e. learning new dance moves, practicing meditation while I move, getting strength and cardio done in one shot).

Now, I eagerly wait by the mailbox…