But weight, there's more ...

Look, I don't want to frighten anyone but you know how when you are growing up and into your, say, 30's all the slightly older-than-you friends like to make ominous warnings about how you just wait, age is going to slap you silly one of those days? No? That only happens to me? Okay, note to self: you run with a bad crowd. Anywho, if you  have friends like this, or just the vague notion that despite your best intentions, delusions, and flat-out denial you are, probably, going to succumb to aging, have I got news for you?

 Aging bites! Seriously. I turned, ahem, 40 last November. And whereas I thought my friends were kidding when they said the metabolism takes a nose dive - they were so not kidding. Why did they not take me? Shake me? Force me to subsist on spinach and endive alone? Come January I hopped on the scale to figure out why the heck all my pants were shrinking? What was that about? And lets just say the numbers were not kind. I normally am a big fan of rising numbers - stock values, bank accounts - but high numbers are not your friend when it comes to debt - or your backside. I'm just sayin' 


So I embarked on a little healthy-diet revamp. It's worked before right? Except, this time after eating healthy - whole grains, healthy fruits and vegetables, and so on and so forth - I have to date lost two pounds. Maybe. That's if I remember to remove my wedding rings - and socks.

So I am now on a quest to figure out why weight loss is so much HARDER these days? WHY??? And, if one is going to carry extra weight, why that weight doesn't plump out the wrinkles? It seems the least age could do?

This one's for the yaysayers ...

This is the most excellent article EVER espousing a skill that far too many of us (particularly of the female, mother variety) simply do not utilize enough - the power to say "no" (or, more graciously "no thank you.")

OnSimplicity.net is sharing an amazing primer on How to say "No."

Now showing ...

Since this week's column is all about a boy and his barn turned movie-plex I thought a visual aid of the awesome was in order.

Behold the work in progress! Here the children are being menaced by a giant "Sharpay" from High School Musical. Good times or therapy of the future? You be the judge.

Tragedy - in perspective

So I'm already lazy as sin and prone to sloth and the news that poor Natasha Richardson has died following a bump on her head in a skiing accident is doing nothing to inspire or motivate to do more with my life activity-wise.

It is just so sad - how a person can be merrily living a pretty great life one moment - and boom - gone, the next. Particularly from something like a bunny slope bump. Tragic.

Watching the news today I was struck, however, by how parenthood changes a person. Seeing that Ms. Richardson leaves behind a husband, fellow actor/superstar Liam Neeson and two sons ages 12 and 13 -  my heart just seized up.

As a mother I no longer think of the loss of the life of the mother from the mother's perspective. Of the loss of promise and the fulfillment of her life's dreams. No. I think of those poor boys left without her - and of her not living to see how it all played out. Not getting the happy ending (or at least happy middle) to the story we all dream for our babies from the moment we know of them.

Hearing things like that kind of puts the "tragedy" of AIG bonuses or our own 401k balances into perspective doesn't it though?

Of Satisfaction and Succulence

So today's weekly column
is all about how you have to learn to embrace what you have - the
things that matter. Home, health, family. While I am not your "go to
girl" for anything related to health (God forbid - I think gummy bears
are a fruit-based food group in and of themselves) I am able to share
how I keep my love of hearth and home alive on approximately
seventy-six cents - per month.

I keep the fabulousness that is this falling-down-Old-House from reducing me to tears with the help of great web bloggers like Chatting at the Sky and The Nesting Place.
Both provide real-life inspiration to work pleasure and happiness and
warm feelings of fuzzy goodness into your home - without breaking the
bank.

You know you want to go there. Really, you do.

The Nester is decorating with succulents today and really now? How can you not want more succulence in your life?

Cheery no.

Is it wrong of me, as a parent, to say I won't attempt to influence my child in any way, shape or form in her choice of extracurricular activities?

To claim that I won't allow my own hopes, dreams, and dread-fear-of-rabid-pee-wee-football-types to influence my child's choices?

To insist that I absolutely will not attempt to live vicariously through my child?

And then to come straight home and say to my nine year-old daughter,  "Mommy will buy you a car AND a pony if you promise me you won't pee-wee cheerlead this year?"

Bringin' home the bacon, fryin' it up in a pan ...

The only downside to a lazy Sunday morning enjoyed at home with loved ones and a husband who whips up a delicious breakfast of eggs and bacon is the lingering smell, hours later, of bacon.

The bacon I loved with wild abandon (and no thought to the size of my hips) at 10:00 a.m. has become the bacon that haunts and nauseates me some three hours later.

Da@# an old house with no rangetop vent hood!

Hugs to all who are struggling out there and may we all begin the economic recovery personally - and globally - and begin bringing home mega-bacon again posthaste!