Death and Push Ups

So a little while back Shannon mentioned to me that she wants to work on getting healthier. "Great!" I said. "Skip the ice cream after supper today."

That didn't go over well. We all bandied suggestions around, and after some deliberation we decided as a family that we're all going to do 50 pushups a day, for a month. Today is day three.

I'd really rather not say how sore I am right now, and I haven't done my push ups yet today...in fact, I haven't done anything at all today except consume an inordinate amount of carbohydrates. I'm trying not to feel guilty about it but I must confess that the guilt is setting in. Which is a clear sign that it's time to open a bottle of wine.

Just kidding. Sort of.

See, in the dark hours of this morning, I got into the car to go to work like it was any old Tuesday. I pulled out of our driveway and onto the street, and I hadn't gone 50 feet before I drove past a cat on the road, lying dead in a pool of blood. It took about a second before I realized that it looked like our cat. My heart in my stomach, I did a crazy u-turn and parked the car amisdst irritated honks from the cars around me. I jumped out of the car to take a closer look at it, and sure enough it was our Sallah, who had been playfully head-butting me and tromping up and down my sleeping form only an hour before. The only coherent thought I've had all day is that a dead cat is oddly heavier than a live one...

Needless to say it's been a rough day. Every time I think about it I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. We were going to celebrate his birthday next week.

I gave myself permission to do some wallowing today, but tomorrow it's back to life as usual (except that no playful feline is going to come be a shithead at 5am just because he wants some company - sniff) which means that if I don't hit the deck and get some push ups done tonight I'm going to have a cool hundred to do tomorrow.  It also means that I'm going to have a hell of a food hangover and getting back on track will take some mental toughness, cause we all know what happens the day after we eat too much crap:

So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get my dratted push ups done, then I'm going to drink some wine while I get my meals prepared for tomorrow. Then I'm going to bed and tomorrow will be a better day. Gotta keep on truckin.

Fun things to do on a Friday night

It's 9:47pm on Friday night and you know what I'm doing? Scrubbing the feces of some unidentified large animal off the sides of my bathtub. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...

Today started with a lot of high school kids. I do a lot of work with our local high schools with health and phys ed programming for kids who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead getting exercise, so it seems like a lot of my days lately are spent with that demographic. I absolutely love those kids and would never complain about spending time with them. BUT: what is with their fashion sense? Anybody have any answers here? cause if I must continue to stand in line for coffee with a bunch of teenagers in high-waisted acid-washed Jordache mom-jeans that bunch up at the bottom and have to be cinched with a leopard-print belt around the wearer's navel, I swear something really weird is going to happen. Slouch socks are going to make a comeback and we'll have to start doing the 'fan bangs' thing again...

So I gave up on cafeteria coffee and wandered out to my car, mulling this over this strange phenomenon as I went. I tried to justify it: high-waisted jeans actually are more comfortable if you can get used to the moose-knuckley feeling. But as far as I can tell, the onus for wearing hideous 80's knock-off clothing comes from the same place that made me love poofy peasant blouses, tie-dye, and embroidered freakin' everything. So I can't hold it against them.

Speaking of high school, the other freaky thing that happened today was that I got added to a Facebook group dedicated to tracking down people I went to high school with, because our 20-year REUNION is NEXT SPRING. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Would I go? I was kind of a reclusive band geek in high school and I'm still in contact with the people I really want to be in contact with. But I confess I have a strange voyeuristic urge to see where life has taken all my old classmates. Tricky.

I drove home with high-school-y thoughts whirling around in my brain-cave, and decided that I'd make my decision while I went out to our local off-leash area and mapped out a good 5km loop with some stairs and some hills to use for training. I got home, snarfed some food down, grabbed my favorite hoodie (which just happens to say, in large letters across the back "SHOW THE WORLD WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE") and my dog and off we went. The off-leash ravine is maybe a seven minute drive from our house.

Now, under normal circumstances, Valley is a stellar workout buddy. In spite of having way more steam than I do, she kindly hangs back while I drag my butt up and down the hills and stairs on our favorite trail. She amuses herself by chasing squirrels, sniffing and peeing on whatever gross stuff is lying around, and she knows where she should and shouldn't jump into the river for a drink and a romp in the water. So when we came across a ginormous #2 in the middle of the trail, I hardly gave it a second thought when Valley, who happened to be maybe ten feet ahead of me, paused to sniff it.

I have to pause here and stress that this was the grandaddy of all piles of shit. No little lavender-scented poop baggie was going to touch this; it had to have come from an animal that was 150lbs PLUS that had chugged its coffee in record speed so as to not even make it a safe distance from the trail. This was a wookiee-with-the-cold-sweats ass-blasting baby mountain.

So you can imagine my horror when instead of peeing on it and moving on, Valley mushed her pretty face into the massive heap and gleefully rolled over in it. I shouted "Valley, NO!" and ran past it so that she'd run to keep up with me. Which she did...for a minute. But the temptation was too great and a moment later she bolted back to Shit Mountain and this time, despite my protests, made good and sure that she was thoroughly coated in it.

Gaaaah. Well, there wasn't much to do but finish our trek, and according to my phone we had a good 3k to go, which was good because I needed to formulate a game plan to NOT get wookiee shit all over my vehicle when we got there. So on we pressed. We arrived presently at the opposite end of the trail, where it exits out onto perhaps THE MOST affluent road in the city, a candyland of privelege, exclusivity, and luxury 4x4's. I turned in the direction that I imagined would lead us back to our car, and eventually found a path that went between the backyards of these multi-million dollar estates and the top of the river bank. Perfect!

Except suddenly the path ended, and now I was a crazy woman with leaves in her hair and a hoodie with a big ol' F-bomb on the back, accompanied by a shit-coated mutt, bushwhacking creepily along the back fences of these gorgeous estates. We walked and walked and walked and walked. My phone's battery died. Finally we came out of the woods...

...at the exact spot where we'd left the street. We'd gone in a circle. Dammit! We turned and went the other way. The road twisted and turned and we walked and walked and walked, not really sure which way we were going. Eventually we came to a road I recognized, but we were a long way from the car. Like, easier to walk straight home than to double back for the car - and this also eliminated the need for a strategy to keep wookiee crap off the car seats.

We arrived home nearly three hours after we left, and just in time to be home for the children to arrive home from school. Valley went straight into the bathtub where I spent the next half hour shampooing the poop out of her fur...which is why I am spending my Friday night washing mystery excrement off my bathroom walls.
And I still haven't decided on the high school reunion.

It's EYFOH Season!

 Is it terrible of me to say, on Thanksgiving Monday, that I can't really get behind holidays that seem to be about eating your face off? I mean, Thanksgiving is one, but Christmas and Easter are pretty much the same: at their epicentre is a ginormous meal where the tradition is to eat until you have to undo your pants. Now, I know lots of people would argue that these holidays are wonderful times where one should surround oneself with family and friends and enjoy the abundance of good company and good food. I wouldn't profess to knock that tradition if it's something you look forward to and thoroughly enjoy...

My family and I elected to stay home and have a quiet little Thanksgiving this year. One reason for that is because we are all reclusive trolls in our hearts, but that's for another post. What I want to take a closer look at today is the anxiety that surrounds the food aspect of the Eat Your Face Off Holidays. For anyone who has struggled with their weight, the EYFOH's are about success or failure, and as such there is a lot of anxiety: you're going to war with yourself and a lot of careful planning and preparation and strategizing has to happen in order to come out on the other side without needing therapy.

Ok, you think, how am I going to approach the EYFOH? What will I eat the day before? How will I prepare myself on the day? Maybe I should just starve myself beforehand. No, that won't work because I'll have no willpower and I'll eat a hole in the fabric of the universe when I see all the food. I'll just have a light breakfast. I won't go too hungry. I'll have a snack beforehand too. I won't obsess about it. I won't feel guilty. I'll skip the bread. I'll load up my plate with salad. I'll just have a little bit of the things I really love. And then I won't feel bad about myself later. I'll work out beforehand. I'll work out after. I'll do an extra hour of cardio for the next week. And how will I get around the (insert aging female relative) who will tell me to eat more? I won't feel guilty when I tell her no. I'll just take it and leave it on my plate. I won't pour more wine when (insert whatever offensive person) comments on my weight, lifestyle, parenting, etc. I will eat and I will enjoy it and I will not feel bad and I will not let all the other garbage affect me. I will not FAIL AND EAT TOO MUCH.

 Anyone else ever felt like that? I've been fighting with weight problems long enough that the anxiety over EYFOH's starts weeks or even months in advance. Talk to me in July about Christmas dinner and my blood pressure will go up and I'll start wondering how I'm going to get out of it. And I'll tell you one thing: it's a piss-poor way to celebrate the abundance and beauty and love in our lives! Because honestly: I am not a Gratitude Grinch, really I'm not. I try to cultivate gratitude on a daily basis. I love that we have a special long weekend for it just before the snow flies and it's all gorgeous and colourful outside. I'd just totally rather go for a hike or something than spend three days preparing the approach, the strategy, the fail-safes, and finally the battle.

So I'm not playing that game anymore. I prepared a delicious but simple and healthy meal for my immediate family, and we talked about the things we are grateful for over dinner...and it was wonderful. Best Thanksgiving ever.

Also, incidentally, my family is still speaking to me after I made the cheesecake crust out of cricket flour.

Okay team, I haven't done a crazy nutrition experiment in a while and I think it's time. Lately there has been a lot of research bubbling to the surface about artificial sweeteners and gut health. I have been a staunch defender of artificial sweeteners (in moderation of course! FFS) for a good long while now so believe me when I say it hurts a little bit to say this: it looks like they really aren't very good for us. Now, before you laugh at me and run to the store for some Coke, allow me to just stress for a moment that too much sugar isn't good either. When I first started hearing and reading this new information, my first thought was "well, I hardly get any of that stuff so it doesn't affect me much." I drink maybe one or two cans of coke zero a week and I've never had cause to feel too guilty about it...but then I started thinking: I have a Quest bar for breakfast every day. There is sucralose in greens powder and protein powder, pre-workout, intra-workout, and post-workout drinks (not that I use any of those on a regular basis but, you know, sometimes). Maybe my guts could stand to improve if I ditched that stuff! So I waited until my last box of Quest bars was empty (had my last Quest bar yesterday - and you know what I found in it? Like, actually IN the bar? A big-ass chunk of cardboard. Made it not so hard to say goodbye and good riddance to them!) and starting today I will be artificial sweetener-free for thirty days. Should be interesting.

If you'd like more info on the artificial sweetener/gut health correlation, here's some recommended
reading:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/artificial-sweeteners-linked-to-obesity-epidemic-scientists-say-1.2769196
http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/artificial-sweeteners-diet-soda-affect-gut-bacteria-and-weight-gain
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140917-sweeteners-artificial-blood-sugar-diabetes-health-ngfood/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140917131634.htm