My Life. Medication Optional.

Okay, so my husband and I have this game where we have some letters on the fridge and we leave each other messages. The thing that makes it fun and weird is that we don't have all the letters, so you have to be creative with the spelling and the letters themselves. It's kind of awesome at times, so I'm going to document it for you.

After a two months of running and tracking my progress (in miles and in pounds lost) I was down ten pounds. On days I didn't run, I used the elliptical or the treadclimber at the gym, instead of walking. After running, trying to walk for an hour was boring and felt pointless. I liked being able to move faster and feeling stronger. I also started lifting weights. I found weightlifting moves and tips in magazines and books and adapted what I could for myself. I started keeping a log of when I exercised, what lifts or cardio I did, how many sets, reps and weight of each. I had a notebook I took to the gym and I tracked everything online at SparkPeople.com. It makes things in to graphs and charts so you can see your progress and you can share your info with other people.

Here are some of the things that helped me change my ideas about fitness and to become more involved in my lifestyle change.

SparkPeople.com, which I briefly mentioned above. SparkPeople is a free website that has everything you need to make substantial lifestyle changes. It has a calorie tracker, fitness tracker, goal setting tips and charts for your progress, an option to create your own SparkPeople page, forums, articles and a lot more. The best part for me was being able to chart what I was eating and how much I was really working out.

Oxygen Women's Fitness. It's a fitness magazine for women, but it's not boring diet tips and endless crunches like you'd get from Shape or Fitness. This has serious diet plans geared towards women who want to push the limits of what their body can do and who are willing to work hard to do it. I learned amazing moves for lifting, saw women who had transformed their figures and got more practical, useful tips than I ever got in any other magazine.

Roni's Weigh (http://ronisweigh.com/). Roni is a fitness success story. She shed 60 lbs and ran a marathon last year and held a fit blogging conference this year. Not only is she a great fitness role model, but when she blogs, it feels like she is talking to you, honestly. Roni is the real deal. (Plus she is sweet enough to answer some of my questions on Twitter and to give support. Thanks Roni!)

Body for Life. Mys sister talked me into doing to Body for Life challenge, which is taking the book's exercise and eating principles and following them for twelve weeks to see results. The workouts are based on intensity and utilize cardio and weights. The eating plan was the best part for me. I learned about planning food in advance and to eat a protein and a carb together at every meal. It was a great way to find foods that are good for me and that will help me achieve my fitness goals.

I'm not perfect about what I eat or working out. I try to hit the gym six days a week. Some weeks I make it, some I don't. Some days I get 40 minutes of intense cardio, some days a moderate 20 minutes is all I can handle. You have to be flexible and listen to your body, but you also have to remember not to sell yourself short. Sometimes my not wanting to go to the gym isn't about the gym, it's about my emotions or laziness or a million other things. Usually by the time I get to the gym and get changed, I remember that I didn't want to be doing this, but by then it's too late, so I do it anyway. That's pretty much my philosophy. Acknowledge my feelings (good and bad) then do it anyway.

Can't think of anything outstandingly original to post, so I'll just go with a life update.

Back to watching my nephew full-time.  It's nine pm and he's whining about being tired but still wanting to take a shower. *sigh*

I've been really restless and funked lately, so much so that today I hit the gym twice.


Man, I've got nothing.

On thing I love about my job is that I get a lot of time to think. I put groceries away and it's pretty mindless, so I have a great deal of things going on in my head during the day.  During most of my shift I thought about what I should say about Parenthood.

Character-wise, it's strong but not perfect. Adam (Peter Krause, who I recognize, but I don't recall anything of his I have watched before.) is the oldest of the Braverman siblings and looks to be the solid, go-to guy. He works a nice corporate job, has a nice house, a nice wife, nice kids. On paper, he's perfect.  In life, he cusses out the ref at his kids' baseall game, forgets his other kids' soccer match, has an obsessive streak and has to come to terms with his sons' Asbergers diagnosis.  Adam's wife Kristina is trying to hold her family together and take care of her son.  She's both vulnerable and forceful.  Monica Potter can get a little heavy-handed with it, but for the most part she's great.
 
I'm not sure which sister comes next, but I'm going to say Sarah (Lauren Graham, of Gilmore Girls fame) since she has the kids that are older.  (Plus, and absolutely no offense to Lauren Graham, who is perfect, but Erika Christensen looks younger.) Sarah's an ex-bartender who has to move back to Berkley to live with her parents.  I actually relate less to Sarah than I thought I would. My kids are younger and I hope they will always be much less smart-mouthed than her kids are. I loved her plot line that had hooking up with Jim the barista (Mike O'Malley, who I will always fondly remember as the host of Nickelodeon's GUTS).  I also like the dynamic between her and Julia, the younger sister.

Julia (Erika Christensen,Traffic and Swimfan) is the conflicted working mom. She's a high-powered lawyer and her husband Joel stays home with their daughter Sidney.  She seems to love her job, but she feels the pain of what feels like missing her daughter growing up.  It's a familiar story and in other hands it might be boring and trite, but the writing is strong and Christensen is convincing as a woman who loves working and wants to enjoy her child.  The plot steered towards Julia's husband spending a lot of time with a mother from Sidney's school, which is cliche, but gave Christensen a chance to bring out the bitch-face, which is where she is at her best. Joel is Julia's husband and he's got no personality at this point. He's either oblivious or pretending to be oblivious to the woman interacting with him inappropriately and he's not a great communicator. Also, he's boring.

The last of the Braverman kids is Crosby. Who names kids Adam, Sarah and Julia, then busts out a Crosby? That's the least believable thing so far. Anyway, Crosby is the rebel, the drifter, the unreliable one. Dax Shepard is getting a lot of flack for being cast, but I like his laid-back approach with Crosby.  I find him sincere, but mischievous.  His plot line is stupid and the 'hey, you have a kid I never told you about' is boring and not something I've seen happen five years later to anyone I know. It also has about a million holes in it.  It's easily the weakest storyline of the show.  Still, I like Crosby. He reminds me of how sometimes you think about how easy and free it was before you had kids and then you remember is was great and it wasn't, just like now.


The mother has no plot at this point and just wanders in and out of scenes.  The dad (Craig T. Nelson from Coach) is the grumpy, the world-is-a-war patriarch.  He's irritated and irritating, but I have a fondness for him.

The kids are all fine actors.  The stand-out is obviously Max, who is AMAZING as a child with Asbergers. He gives a really nuanced portrayal of a child who just isn't normal, and it never feels forced or coached.  This kid is going to win awards.  (Which I never would have guessed from watching him in Daddy Daycare.)


Plot-wise, it's solid and well-written for the most part. The dialogue is believable.  All of the characters have fairly relatable issues, with the exception of Crosby.  The biggest issue seems to be trying to cram major storylines for each of the siblings into every episode. It can seem like a really full show, even when nothing happens.

The best thing about this show for me, is hands-down, the sibling interaction. I have a sister I am very close to, and we have conversations like that.  I have two brothers as well, and while we don't get together as often as this clan does, when we do it's full of the laughing, and the inside jokes and the sharing of gossip, just like with this group.  The strongest scenes are the four siblings hanging out, such as the scene at Adam's where all the sibs show up, or the smoking scene outside the elementary school.


This show is definitely worth DVRing. The first two episodes were solid, the third a little weak, but better than most things you could be watching.

he first two photos are me at 175lbs. I last weighed that much in Jan. 2009. The last is me November 2009,  running my first 5k at 135 lbs.

I've been thinking about starting an adjacent blog for book and TV reviews.

When I was a kid I wrote reviews of every Clarissa Explains It All episode in a notebook and in college I started a journal of every book I read.  (I made it to fifty before I got bored of it.)
 

Now that I think about it, I'm not posting here as much as I had planned, so dividing my attention would be dumb.  Maybe I'll try a few reviews/recaps and see if I like it first.

FYI- Right now I'm reading 'Columbine' by Dave Cullen and I'd probably review Parenthood as my first TV review.

Baby TWoP Fan

I am a big believer in saving money and using a budget wisely.  One way I could save money is in the grocery store.  I am really bad about going in to pick up a few things.  I also work in a store, so it's really tempting to grab one or two things on my way out the door.

I did a detailed budget last week and decided to see if our little family of three could spend $200 on groceries for the month.  Here's my plan to make it work.

1. I'm going to actually write down what I have on hand, in the pantry and freezer. Usually before I shop I skim the cupboards to give myself an idea.  This time I'm taking notes.  (I love notes.)

2. Instead of making a meal plan specific for each day, I'm going to write out a list of meals we like and plan to have the ingredients for 14 meals at a time.  (Lunches are usually leftovers for Jeff and soup for me.) Breakfast is oatmeal for the both of us.  And I am going to use the list in the previous step to use up what we already have.

3. I'm going to cash.  I'm going to take the grocery money out of the bank and envelope it.  The debit card stays home.  I'll take a calculator and paper to make sure I'm not overbudget.

4. I will shop alone and use my coupons!  (I love coupons.) Only use coupons if the price per ounce is cheaper than the store version. 

5. From now on, the debit card stays home when I work.  If I have some spending cash I can use that, but that's it.

6. I'm going to save every receipt in an envelope and see how we do at the end of the month.

How do you save money at the grocery store?