Home » Archives for Jessica Marie » Page 55

Author: Jessica Marie

Professional copywriter, NASM certified personal trainer, mom of 2

Wabi What-y?

Turns out my love of imperfect things dates back to ancient Japanese tradition. Who knew? You see, I had this doll when I was in third grade. I remember how all of our backpacks were lined up on pegs outside the third grade classroom. With the scarcity of homework back in those wee days, my backpack often held other schoolgirl treasures. For awhile, I carried this plastic doll with me everywhere. I was so worried that one of my arch nemeses would weasel their peanut-butter fingers into my bag and out me and my closet doll fetish.

You see, I found this plastic doll in the little attic offshoot of my bedroom. She was a bit bedraggled. Her hair not as luscious as Barbie’s. Her moving eyes were a little creepy and she sort of had that musty antique doll style to her. But those little worn patches on her skin and the permanent dirt on her knees endeared me to her even more. She and I together made a complete package of misfits. A little off-kilter, a little sloppy, a little defective in manner, if only to the naked eye. She belonged with me.

Turns out there’s this ancient philosophy called Wabi Sabi that celebrates the imperfections, the worn-out places, the dirt in the cracks. This Whole Living article turned me on to the whole idea and it completely clicked with me. It makes sense that I was repelled by perfection. Nothing bothered me more in school than copy-cats who strove to be closer to the cool girl’s idea of perfect. The pretentious, the trite, the mainstream–all of these things bothered me to no end. And for good reason. Perfection is delusional and denotes a lack of character. Striving for perfection is a fruitless endeavor, while celebrating flaws encourages us to take pure delight in our own and others’ idiosyncrasies.

Now I have an excuse to not get rid of my little teapot with the crack through the lid. Oh happy day! XOXOXO Baby Doll.

Sentimentality is Never Stationary

I bought me some stationery yesterday with that bonus check I was talking about.

I just love the sentimental glamor of having a stash of expressive stationery on-hand on which to pen personalized “correspondence” like someone out of a Jane Austen novel. I’m a sucker for handwritten notes that actually come in the mail. A tactile demonstration that someone was thinking enough about you to break out the pen, ink, and stamp. Something that can be returned to with reminiscent pleasure.

Now, I’m trying to think of who the first lucky recipient will be. I know of a few folks who would raise their eyebrows at the old pen-and-ink way to communicate. I know of a few more to whom I talk quite frequently online and to whom it makes no sense to drop a letter in the mail.

But at least I have the pretty, graphic, delicate stationery to start with.

Past Tense

I went through a phase in my life where I couldn’t quite understand how the world could be a whole different place when my parents were young. I wanted badly to travel back in time and watch how they interacted with their high school friends and hear their groovy child voices. I’d watch Brady Bunch reruns and wonder if my mom wore her hair like Marsha or Jan or if her feet walked on mustard-colored shag carpeting. I envisioned my dad living in a wood-paneled Main Street apartment, listening to Journey, surrounded by latch-hook wall decor and macrame pot holders, and getting around by hitchhiking.

Nowadays, I’m so far behind on technology, I might as well be frolicking with the Partridge family. As a copywriter, I sometimes have to write product descriptions for technological gadgets that leave me feeling a little uneasy. Have I used some ancient terminology? Do I even know what all those abbreviations stand for? My husband and I just bought the original Mario and Pacman games, do I look like I know anything about Bluetooth technology?

But I’m learning. I find updating my personal hard drive an asset to society. There are so many advantages to being instantly connected and accomplishing tasks much more quickly. Sometimes, when I sneak peeks of other peoples’ flat screens in their open lit windows, I think we should get one as much as my deep-seated nostalgic sentiments want to balk in opposition. I don’t want to grow up to be old and afraid. I want to be energized by advances, not intimidated by them.

I, however, solemnly swear that I will never relinquish my love for Three’s Company, paisley patterns, shirt dresses and gaudy hair flowers.

On another subject, here is a list of some of my favorite things today:

Licking the yogurt off the cover.
The Contemporary Folk station on Pandora.
Bonus checks that allow you to spend on girly pleasures like shoes and face cream where the family budget doesn’t comply.
Reading A Streetcar Named Desire in the sun on my lunch break.

Cuz I Eats Me Spinach

Is it rough for you to squeeze enough roughage into your diet? I’ve compiled a list some of the helpful tips that I’ve accumulated from various magazines, news outlets and other sources. These pointers make obtaining your five-a-day quota of fruits and vegetables as simple as possible:

1. Start at the Beginning: Begin each meal with a fruit or vegetable. When you fill up on salad or fruit cocktail, you’ll be less likely to eat as much of the heavier fare that follows.

2. Snack Attack: If you need a snack, start with a piece of fruit or a serving of vegetables. If you need more, move on to something else. But always start here. Training yourself to grab ripe produce when the hunger pangs strike is a much better habit to form than reaching for any chip bag that’s within reach.

3. Supper Solution: Consider vegetables to be the main course of dinner with a side of meat. In fact, conventional wisdom dictates that your plate should be divided into 1 part whole grain, 1 part low-fat meat/protein and 2 parts vegetables.

4. Seeing Clearly: Research shows that storing food in see-through containers in the fridge will make you more likely to eat it. Chop up some of your favorites into bite-size pieces on Sunday and graze on them throughout the week. Place less healthful options in opaque containers.

5. Jump in Fruit First: Store those fresh picks in the front of the fridge, freezer or pantry and bury junk food in the back to make yourself more likely to nosh on better nourishment.

6. Color Wheel: Challenge yourself to put a new fruit or vegetable on your shopping list. Incorporating a larger variety of colors and tastes into your diet gives you a more well-rounded dose of vitamins and antioxidants.

7. An Apple a Day: A study I recently read about from Penn State said that people ate about 200 calories less at lunch when they ate an apple 15 minutes prior than when they didn’t snack on anything.

8. Drink to Your Health: Some low-sodium veggie drinks provide you with an extra serving of vegetables without even trying! Protect your ticker. Duh, you could have a V8!

9. When making frozen dinners, whether personal-sized or family-sized, bulk them up with extra servings of complementary frozen vegetables. Simple and cheap! You can do this with canned soups, homemade soups or other dinners as well. Train your mind to pick out places where vegetables can be snuck in. Ever tried cauliflower in your mashed potatoes or applesauce in your muffins? Shhhhhh. They’ll never know!

Backyard Healthcare Reform

I watched a small blip on the news (the news isn’t TV, right?) about a movement for the reform of school lunches, spurred by Michelle Obama. Flashback to 1990-something and memories of cheese globs, Cheetos, and fake pizza runs through my mind. Lunch came with a main dish, two sides, chips, a drink and dessert. I mean, seriously? The chips and dessert alone were enough to quiver at, let alone the “side” choices (i.e. fries, Ranch-drenched salad…you get the idea). Do you really think I chose the heated canned peas? Um….I’ll pass. I literally still cringe when I think about how I ate a bag of Cheetos every.single.day! This foundation of childhood obesity not only carries a red flag, it features flashing red lights, glows in the dark and bellows at decibels that can be heard across the country.

Jump ahead a few years to an angst-ridden college student with weight problems faced with all-you-can-eat buffet-style cafeteria food. I can’t even go there because the memories are too painful. Obviously, Houston, we have a mightily enlarged problem.

Needless to say, I whole-heartedly back this healthy school lunch movement. In fact, my mind also rolls back to the greenhouse in my high school and the surrounding school grounds–aka, fertile grounds for vegetable planting accompanied by horticulture, botany, and biology lessons. A huge money-saving win-win! I mean there’s something so meaningful about a student growing tomatoes with their own hands and seeing them being served in their very own cafeteria, tasting them with each bite of said salad and developing healthy habits that will hopefully stick with them for a lifetime. Perhaps healthcare costs would be reduced by a much-healthier upcoming generation. Why haven’t we thought of this/done something sooner?

Carrying it All

So, I started ink sketching again. Something I haven’t done since…oh, my college days. I’m not really sure why I ever abandoned it, but some new sources of inspiration have rekindled my desire to put pen to paper. I can even be productive in front of the tube. Wait, did I just say that? I’m not watching TV anymore remember? Anyway… I’ve been going in several other directions lately too, such as a paper bag tag project, the novel-in-progress, word bits and pieces that will one day form a poem, collage art, and so much more.

So, what’s an artist to do? Sometimes on my work lunch breaks I feel like sketching and sometimes I want to write. Reading by the water is another favorite past time. Magazines tell me to keep a gratitude journal, an exercise log, a food tracker and a memory keeper. Writers like to keep journals to stay in the practice of writing and artists carry around sketchbooks whenever the mood strikes. Gurus and life coaches preach the powers of visualization and vision boards. What should an artist/writer/grateful human/dreamer/runner/healthy eater do? Carry around a backpack full of journals that weigh them down instead of lift them off? I think this is why artists always appear fragmented, disheveled and disorganized. It must be!

I can feel the invention wheels rolling in my head again. Something to reel in the restlessness yet fulfill all those roles.

I Love you Again and Again

We should be able to marry again and again and again.

There is so much anticipation, so many loved ones in one place, so much love radiating from the pews, so much fun to be had dancing with little tykes and all the uncles, and so much thought into every thread that graces the stage on that ceremonious day (and so little of it afterwards) that it should never have to stop. And the look in each other’s eyes and those magical words “I do” could never lose their magic.

Besides, it can be so hard to narrow down a theme that it would be fun to be able to pick a different one every five years or experience an elopement, try a non-traditional dress, make room in the wedding party for new friends in your life, or give out party favors that convey something from each set of years you’ve spent together.

Oh, I could definitely live without the familial friction and the staggering bills, but I would desperately love to relive that enchantment that lasts only hours for one short miraculous day.

We evolve in our love for one another. And we could use a way to truly express that love beyond such trivial means available to the already-married. A way to renew that bond and celebrate something of such significance. To feel that raw love anew.

Swearing off the Boob Tube

I wrote a letter to a chronically late friend some time ago explaining how this momma needs to take stock of what she’s spending her time on and extinguish all the pesky places where time seems to be meaninglessly burned. In this case, it was waiting around for hours for her. Another huge time-sapping activity for me is watching television.

So, I watched a movie this weekend and sort of felt robbed afterwards. I couldn’t believe I spent those golden hours while my child napped engrossed in something so stupid, meaningless, unauthentic, and ridiculous. So I feel that I need to consciously rearrange the agenda a bit and zap television from my day-to-day playlist.

Not only does television provide constant reminders of what we don’t have it also diminishes bodily health. There is a direct relationship between time spent watching TV and the weight of the person watching. The more hours you watch, the fatter you get. It’s blunt, but it’s the gosh-darn truth.

In an effort to be more productive, energetic, and healthy; to be a positive role model for my son; and to pursue my passions much more rigorously than I have been, I am taking a sabbatical from the boob tube. I’d much rather:

*Make music like the two delightful young girls we saw at the coffee shop open mic, playing cellos and singing sweetly to their own worthy lyrics.

*Shop for beautiful antiques saturated with stories like quilts and old-time storybooks and dainty hors d’oeuvre forks.

*Cook exquisite Gordon Ramsay-worthy food beside my husband

*Make acoustical noise around the fire

*Fill sketchbooks with musings and colored pencil drawings

*Cut pretty pictures from magazines to collage into vision boards

*Make musical instruments from stuff we have just laying around the house and jam away with my talented two-year-old

*Perusing the farmer’s market with friends who actually cherish their time with me

*Hone my flexibility and feelings of inner peace with yoga

*Honoring my legs and lungs with a sprint around the neighborhood

Creating Peace at Home


images courtesy of AarinFreePhoto.com

Ask me what’s wrong with the medical system I’ve been dealing with lately, and I can list off dozens of things and their myriad of negative effects. Ask me what’s going right in my home, and I’ll be stumped to give any examples. This is when you know something is off-kilter.

In an effort to find my way back to Optimistic, a friend I’ve been avoiding like leprosy, I’ve decided to force myself to feel grateful, hoping that that old adage that if I act happy I’ll be happy really works. And I have lots of hope that it does.

1. Singing someone to sleep
2. Foundational faith
3. Fresh scents
4. Inspiring colors
5. New green growth
6. Gratitude from someone else
7. Connections with depth
8. Giving old things new life
9. Skipping unabashedly
10. Sticky lollipop fingers: these can either be seen as a complete nuisance or a sign of completely immersing oneself in a sweet experience. I choose the latter.
11. A scrubbed-clean home
12. Colorful glass in the windows
13. A checked-off to-do list
14. Advice and encouragement from someone who knows, really knows
15. Central air, electricity, a steady job and creature comforts
16. A brand-new SUV that looks so “me”
17. An abundance of ideas and creative spirit
18. Discovering a new magazine: Living Crafts Magazine. Now, I’m not the bead, scrapbook, fake wreath type of crafter. I was looking for something modern, nature-inspired, inspiring in itself, and do-able and this is it!
19. Two little boys, one with amazing blue eyes and the other with shiny copper penny hair, splashing away in a kiddie pool
20. Discovering a new radio station that never bores: The Avenue.

Oh, and the Perseids. I almost forgot. I need to get out there tonight and see if I can see any last stragglers because I forgot to last night.

What Have You Got to Lose?

Picture courtesy of Sunipix

A lot!

I was thinking about what might make someone motivated to lose weight when they’re sort of apathetic about their size…as in, their potentially-failing health, neutral body image, pleas from children, etc have not been enough of a push to get them to lose weight. These were some of my ideas:

1. Reproduction: Research shows that obesity is related to a host of reproductive problems. Planning to have a family–and a healthy one at that–can be a huge force toward leading a healthier lifestyle. I’ve also read that obese women are at higher risk for early and recurrent early miscarriages. It is highly advised that women get their weight under control to prevent this truly heartbreaking experience.

2. Insurance rates: I have seen instances where health insurance rates doubled as a result of health assessment reports. Talk about reason to lose weight!

3. Monetary incentives: Money, in general, is a good incentive for a lot of people to do anything. I see a lot of games popping up in area gyms and workplaces offering the “biggest loser” a pool of money or other great incentives. Perhaps stats on what they’d save money on if they’d lose weight such as grocery bills, clothing, airline seats (in some cases), gas, the obvious doctor bills and much more would assist in motivating.

4. Altruistic motives: How about encouragement to commit to running a race in honor of a friend with cancer or perhaps “dedicating” a few pounds to premature babies in the NICU (in the form of pledges per pound).

5: Success Stories: Motivational stories have always inspired me personally. When I see someone in my daily life begin to lose weight, I want to know everything about how they did it. It’s almost a stroke of jealousy that stirs up the desire in me. If someone larger than me (and whom I know personally or see in real life) can do it and look great, I want to!

6: I am also highly motivated to “show ’em” when people make rude comments or tease me about my weight or even another aspect of my life. When I came back to visit from my first semester in college, someone made a comment about my more-than-freshman-15 weight gain. That was a wake-up call. Someone else told me to revel in the weight I was at for my wedding because that was the lowest I’d ever be. Well, well, well. Today, after having a baby even, I weigh 15lbs less than I did the day I said my vows. I don’t appreciate being labeled, judged or pressed into a self-fulfilling prophesy of someone else’s. So there!