Laura Loving Life

I had 7 hours off yesterday, free from kids, responsibilities (other than a little laundry), and everything. I was sick, sure, but the 7 hours were so sweet. Lupin was my companion, and he is absolutely the best for lying around doing nothing with. He totally approves of it, and seems to be perplexed why we ever do anything but lie around--except when it's his breakfast or dinner time. 

I started the day by going back to sleep. Then I needed breakfast and came ever so close to skipping out to Tudor's Biscuit World (one block away) to get biscuits and gravy for $0.99. I mean, I was soooo close, too. I told Lupin, "Lupin, I'm going to Tudor's to get biscuits and gravy. I'll be back." I put on a big floppy hat so nobody would see my sick hair, and threw the change on  the dresser into my pajama pants. It was enough for THREE biscuits and gravy. I was already contemplating what specialty biscuit I would get to go along with my 1lb of gravy-biscuit. 

Well, then I finally did something smart. I quickly (before my brain could catch up with me) tweeted to YumYucky, who has been gracious enough to become my sponsor of sorts. I stated what I was getting ready to do, threw in "there's no good food in the house," and "Help me!" ... As you can imagine, after tweeting that cry out for help, I couldn't allow myself to go through with it. 

I had to re-assess: there were no eggs in the house, and that's what I really wanted. The other problem was that I had gotten too hungry by going back to sleep instead of eating. I decided since I had been about to scrape the bottom of the barrel for breakfast, anything remotely healthy with fiber in it would do now. Decided on a whole wheat english muffin, not toasted (I wanted some FAT), but buttered conservatively and fried on the skillet. And with TWO tablespoons of all-fruit jelly. Caution to the wind!!! 

While it was frying up, figured I better decide on second breakfast too before another crisis was on the verge. I'd been wanting to make granola for... let's admit it, YEARS... so the day had finally come. Got out everything granola-y we had in the cupboard: oats, leftover pack of Wendy's pecans from a salad, dried cranberries, dried "tropical mix" (mango, pinapple, coconut), and flax. It was a lot of fun making up the recipe, and I added cinnamon, salt, and put 4oz honey, vanilla, and 1oz of warm water into a bowl to dissolve the honey. This way I figured the sweetness would get more evenly distributed, and the water would bake out anyway. Threw it in the oven at 275 and went to eat my Breakfast #1 in bed. 

The smell was tremendous. It was all I could do not to eat it half-done out of the oven door. I waited, but did eat it while still hot. And if you've never had hot granola, you gotta try it. It'll make you wanna go throw your arms around the nearest tree, I promise. 

With hot granola in my belly, and after tweeting a half dozen more times, I went back to sleep for TWO HOURS. It was awesome. By then it was 1, and I was down to 2 hours of freedom left. I figured it was time for a glorious shower, with nobody poking their head in to ask me to wipe their butt or anything. Ahh. 

I made sure that I was folding laundry when the family came home, so it didn't look like I layed around all day (while sick) and slept (imagine!). I was back to my old self that evening too, getting the kids to clean their room, do homework, read to me... It's truly amazing what 7 hours to yourself can do for a mom.

You'll have to bear with me here, Bryan and I are making big-time life-changing moves here in the next few months, and Cleveland has a lot to do with it. Just gotta talk it out...

So, in addition to my last post outlining stuff we love about Cleveland and job situations here in Beckley, here's another reason why we want to move to Cleveland:

We love Cleveland. --And we figure, not many people love Cleveland. We further figure that if someone does happen to love this dirty, cold, windy city with failing professional sports teams, they ought to at least have the decency to move there if they aren't already living there. There are enough people who hate Cleveland, within and without it, so it's a Cleveland-lover's obligation to obtain a job and some real estate there.

Seriously though, we want to live in a place where our kids someday might choose to come live near us, and not only because they love us, but because they love where we live and can find good jobs there. There are plenty of kids in West Virginia who come back home to live, usually right in their parents basements for awhile, and often start meth labs down there... but that's neither here nor there. They come home because they love home and they love their parents, but they usually end up working in the food service industry, as sales representatives, at call centers, in the mines, or not at all. And if they do get a cool job that they love--like Bryan's sister Jamie did when she first finished college--it doesn't pay a living wage. Bryan and I were very lucky that I found such a cool, profitable, kushy job in this area. And we loved living close to his parents (but that's for the next post...).

Also, houses are cheap in Cleveland. We can get a really nice, large house in a great neighborhood for the price of a small dinky house in a bad neighborhood here. --And believe me, that's saying something, because Southern West Virginia is one of the cheapest places in the country to live.

Final reason we want to move to Cleveland: Tremont. (check out its Wiki Page)

We love Tremont, and want to live in it. It houses many of our favorite places in Cleveland, like Lilly's Chocolates, Lolita's, and Lucky's Cafe (all eateries). There are also many art galleries, restaurants, bars, and shops that we've never tried there, including Farenheit, a very happening upscale restaurant. Tremont has a lovely Montesorri school, grades K-8, which I am in the process of getting in contact with to talk to its principle about what they offer to extra smart kids like ours. Tremont also has monthly art walks, and I just found out that it has a weekly farmers market, even through the winter.

There's one house in Tremont that's for sale, and across the street from it is a little local book shop. (Beckley now has absolutely NO book stores, except a Christian book store. If we want books, we can just go to the book section of WalMart. I'm not kidding). Tremont also has a quaint little community pool, several playgrounds, several beautiful Gothic cathedrals, and Lincoln Park, which is just a big rectangular green space for walking.

Next post will be the reason that makes it very hard for us to move to Cleveland... stay tuned!

Bryan and I started going to Cleveland regularly just over two years ago when we decided to go to the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute to see what they could do for his eyes. Long story short, they did miracles for his eyes, and he can now drive safely, watch TV normally, not get nose paper cuts when reading, and see our kids' faces.

But long story long, we started to fall in love with Cleveland. Here are just a few places we love to visit when we go:

• Lilly's Chocolates in Tremont
• Lolita's in Tremont
• Big Fun East and Big Fun West
• Melt Bar and Grilled
• The West Side Market
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Whole Foods and Trader Joe's
• Monroe's Apple Orchard in Hiram
• The A Christmas Story House
• The Lights at Nela Park
• Rockefeller Park and Cultural Gardens MLK Blvd
• and many more, but my list is getting too long

I'm sitting here sleepy tonight, feeling some delicious blue-ribbon biscuits in my belly, and watching Black Swan in the background. Natalie Portman, bless her heart, lost a lot of perfectly healthy fat/muscle/whatever to do that movie. I was just watching and not being able to imagine what someone would have to go through to get to the tiny size she was in that movie. And dancers have to do this all the time, not only when they're preparing for a potentially Oscar-winning role.

I could never be a ballerina. Thankfully, it's not something I ever ever wanted to do; in fact, I have a hard time even getting through a Zumba class without feeling like a total square. But aside from the dancing thing, I could never change myself into a person who would never, ever eat a blue-ribbon biscuit... and gravy... and scrambled eggs... fried potatoes. And that was all in one meal tonight! It's just not me.

It's important to know who we are, at the core, and not try to change that. I mean, I'm all for making constant improvements to one's self, but you can't change who you are. And I'm a person who loves to eat good food. So you go, Ms. Portman. You were awesome in that movie, and I can't believe you can dance like that. But I hope you went and had a big fat juicy In-N-Out burger when that was all said and done, and thanked your lucky stars that you were only a ballerina for a short time.

I think it's important to count your accomplishments wherever you can get them. Like my dad, for instance. He's signed into MyFitnessPal.com for 159 days in a row!! I'm sure he's had some up days and down days, but he continues to check in every single day, log some food, log some exercise, and just let us know that he's still out there doing his best.

Well, I have an accomplishment to report too. I vowed back in November, when they decided to close our lab, that I would go to the exercise room every single day for as long as they still want me to come to work and pretend I have a real job to do. Our exercise room is very small and quaint. We have an elliptical, treadmill, stair-stepper, bike, and Bowflex. We also have a few yoga mats and ball. We have a men's and women's changing room complete with a shower. We also have a tv with built-in VHS player (It's been really fun collecting VHS tapes to watch in there). I started using the exercise room like... gosh, about 8 years ago. Some times I was going 3x a week, and other times I didn't visit for many months.

This is the first time I've endeavored to go strictly 5x per week (except for holiday weeks, of course). There's a sign-in sheet in there, and I changed the sheet back in November and looked at all those empty spaces, knowing that I was going to fill them all in. Well, here's the sign-in sheet now... Yeah, it's unfortunate there's nobody else on there. I guess shutting our lab down has depressed the few others who used to sign in sometimes to the point of not wanting to work out. I understand that.

But anyway, here it is! I did it. I only skipped 2 days: one because I had a stomach bug, and the other because I was feeling lazy. Other than that, I have been in that gym every day that I've been at work, doing a variety of elliptical, running, walking, Bowflex, and Nike Training from my iPhone app. It's been great, and now it's just a habit. Even on days that I'm not very much looking forward to it, I get up, grab my gear, and go anyway.

So, count your accomplishments, no matter what they are! After you count them and feel great about what you have been doing right, add one more thing that you intend to improve. After awhile, that'll be added to your list of successes.

And Dad, keep up the great work!! I always look forward to that announcement of how many consecutive days you've signed in!

Promises promises... My mom used to tell me when I was a kid not to swear, because God doesn't like it. I think the lesson was left over from her rigorous Catholic school training. As I grew a little older, I was like "You mean 'swear' like to say a bad word, right? Not like "I swear..." Nope, she actually meant that I shouldn't say "I swear I will..." I remember being really surprised that God supposedly didn't like this. It seemed to me like promising to do something is something he would want us to do.

I still don't actually understand why God would have a problem with me "swearing" to write a blog post every single day for a week, but I do kinda get now why it is a problem. It's because we just do what we can do. We can't determine the future, so how can we promise that we will absolutely do something in it? For me, promising to do something and then failing to do it just adds to my never-ending guilt, and believe me that's the last thing I need in my life.

Guilt has been racking my mind and body my whole life, and it seems to have only gotten worse as I've aged. I decided in late 2011 that 2012 would be the year of "Guilt Free" for me. I feel like I should clarify, however, that this doesn't mean that I'm going to go hog wild doing things that I know are wrong and not atone for them. Rather, I'm just going to do what I can, and not freak out and kill myself with guilt over the things that I can't do, the situations that I can't control, or the people that I can't please every single time.

I have thought about guilt a lot in the last few years, actually, and I've come to the realization that

1. God doesn't want me to feel guilty
2. Guilt keeps me from doing things that are good for me 
3. Guilt cultivates within me horribly negative thoughts about myself and my abilities

Today was a fun day. We woke early and got on the road to Granny and Pap's. Bryan and I got to go on a daytime date to meet lil baby Jude, go to a WVU basketball game, hang with Andy and his friends, then have a great dinner with friends. Now we're chillin' at Mom and Dad's (aka Granny and Pap's) watching Flatt and Scruggs episodes from the '50s... of all things!

When you're planning for fitness and weightloss, days like this don't really get taken into account. Still, I did the best I could with what I had... for the most part. Breakfast was responsible, snacks were wise, and dinner was small. A few beers have been had, but it's Saturday night, and we're vacating.

I'll check in again tomorrow... it'll be another crazy day of traveling and visiting with friends/family. Looking forward to it!