Health | BulgingButtons

June 16, 2014
by BulgingButtons 4 Comments

Why I Detest Grocery Shopping

Ok, I lied. I don’t detest the actual shopping part of grocery shopping, at least not most of the time. Pushing the cart around the store and filling it up with tantalizing goodies isn’t really all that awful, if that is, in fact what you’re doing. Most of the time, however, that is not what I’m doing.

Usually I’m carrying on a rather lengthly and somewhat intense inner conversation while I grocery shop. It usually starts within about 30 seconds of hitting the store. The first internal hurdle is which cart to take, and whether wiping it down with one of those stinky wet wipes is worth the potential savings in germs. I’m lazy. I take my chances.

Next I roll over to the produce aisle where I have this stupid little exchange with myself EVERY SINGLE TIME. I tell myself I should be eating more fruits and veggies. I agree with myself, and start to choose delicious fresh fruit and vegetables. No big deal, right? Until I remember that there are shrivelly grapes in the fridge and I just threw away 3 greasy black bananas. I HATE throwing away food, but not as much as I hate food poisoning, so anything even remotely suspect goes straight into the trash.

Unfortunately most of the stuff that ends up in the trash is way beyond suspect. For some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, stuff just kind of sits around at our house. We start something, but never seem to finish it. You can find old cereal, ancient tea bags, mummified frozen raviolis, and other strange and terrifying wonders at my house. It’s not that my home is a breeding ground for experiments, it isn’t. It’s just that some things lose their appeal faster than others. Oreos, for example, rarely occupy cupboard space for more than 2 to 3 days max. Often their stay is considerably shorter. But I haven’t been buying Oreos. I’ve been buying fruit and beans and low fat yogurt and sandwich thins. For some reason those items seem to linger.

The trip to the grocery store just underscores the futility of my efforts. I try to buy things that are good for me, but I don’t really enjoy them, so far too often I end up eating out and throwing them away. There’s a great deal of guilt involved with the whole exercise. I waste food, I waste money, and I don’t eat what I know I ought to. Yet, I do it again and again, because you have to buy food, right?

I need to take a step back, plan out meals again (yes, I do have this skill, and I also have months worth of e-meals if I don’t feel like doing it myself), and shop accordingly. But man, that’s a lot of work! And like I said, I’m lazy.

Enough ranting for one night. Time to suck it up and start that grocery list. Tomorrow I go in, and I want to be prepared.

June 1, 2014
by BulgingButtons 7 Comments

Happy June

I don’t have a cute alliteration for this month as it relates to selling my house. I guess “Just Buy It, Already!” is the closest I’ve got. People keep coming to look, but nobody wants to buy. Oh, someone did, but they cancelled their contract. Ugh. I know it’s a great house. I know it will sell eventually. Maybe even today.

On to other things for the month of June. Tomorrow I start teaching a writing workshop for students entering grades 4 to 8. I have three boys and six girls. I have been preparing lessons for them, hunting down YouTube videos of spoken word poets, gathering picture books to use as mentor texts, and generally stressing about how the whole thing will come together. Yesterday my family took a ride out to the site and we walked the campus, mapping out the relationships between the drop off site, the bathrooms, and the classroom. This is all important information. I’m really excited to start working with these young writers. I know we’re going to learn a lot from each other.

In other news, I’ve finally started exercising again! My pool has finally warmed up and with daily temperatures over 100 degrees I’m glad to get in it and get moving. Since I started Weight Watchers a month ago I’ve lost 15 pounds. This addition of exercise can only help that loss along. I’ve done Weight Watchers before, but this time they have something called “Smart Start” where you don’t start tracking and counting points right away. You start by eating certain foods that they refer to as power foods. It’s all common sense really. Eat fruits, vegetables, lean protein, non-fat dairy, whole grains, etc. It’s not that difficult, and there’s room for “indulgences,” the foods and beverages that make life worth living. This is what I’ve been doing, and it’s working for me, so I’m not switching over the all the crazy point counting as long as it keeps working.

I’m not down on the point counting, but for me it makes me focus way more on food and eating than I normally would. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how many points this or that food is, and how many points will I have left for the day after I eat something, and will I end up hungry? This way works better for me. At least so far.

The move into June has also brought into sharp focus the many items on the 47 for 47 challenge that I have yet to accomplish. The year is up on July 3, so I have just over a month to get in gear and see if I can knock a few more items off the list. I know it’s too late for some of them, but maybe I could sneak in a Zumba class in the next month? I have to revisit that list and see what I can get done.

What are your goals for June? In a nutshell mine are 1. Sell this house 2. Run a successful Writing Camp 3. Continue to eat well 4. Continue to exercise 5. Write! 6. Revisit my 47 for 47 Challenge and complete a few more items.

In the meantime, please enjoy Sarah Kay, a remarkable Spoken Word poet. The video is about 18 minutes, as it’s a Ted Talk, but the poem is just the first three and a half minutes. I believe it is worth your time.

May 28, 2014
by BulgingButtons 11 Comments

All or Nothing Has Got to Go

I don’t know where we get the “all or nothing” attitude. I suppose it stems from perfectionism. If we can’t do it all, why bother doing anything? But that thinking is flawed, and it keeps us stuck.

I’ve been thinking about this as a negative, but let me turn it to the positive for a moment. I’m a “big picture” kind of person. A while back I had a principal who provided the whole staff with Strengthsfinder 2.0 books, and we all took the test to find our strengths. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that my strongest came out as “ideation.”

According to the Strengthsfinder folks, “People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.” In other words, I see things as part of a whole, and can envision how they all connect together. This is very helpful when I’m planning lessons and units in school, when I’m renovating parts of my home, or when I’m designing a quilt.

The flip side of this, for me anyway, is that I sometimes get lost in the details. I know what I want the whole thing to look like and how I want it to function, but all the little bits and pieces of making it happen sometimes trip me up. That’s where I get stuck.

Instead of writing a whole novel, I need to start with an outline. Instead of cleaning the whole house, I need to wash the dishes. Instead of losing 100 pounds, I need to go for a walk. Breaking down these big goals into smaller, more manageable ones, isn’t hard, it just doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. I want to do it all, and I want to do it now. I know that’s not realistic for large goals, so I tend to do nothing instead. How crazy is that?

I have to stop myself and make myself hear how ridiculous I’m being. I would never expect a student to get an idea for a research paper then turn in that finished paper the same morning. I wouldn’t expect my son to take up a new sport and be and expert at it in the same week. I wouldn’t expect my dog to master a new behavior the first time she tries it. So why do I expect so much of myself?

I CAN lose a hundred pounds. It will take a long time and I will get tripped up along the way, but I have to expect that and forgive myself and keep moving forward. I CAN be a published author, but not if I don’t hone my craft and submit my writing to publishers. I CAN keep my home neat and tidy, but not if I don’t spend 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there to keep up with it.

Many imperfect steps in the correct direction will lead me far further down the path I wish to travel than just a few perfect steps. I have to keep this in mind and just keep moving. Living in a state of inertia, while easy, holds no rewards. With risk comes reward, and with work comes success. Wish me success and I try to learn this lesson over and over again.