Category Archives: I get by with a little help

Labor Day: A return to basics

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You know ear­lier when I posted about how we need to stop seek­ing joy and ful­fill­ment in far off places? Men­tioned in that post was see­ing the joy and won­der in all we have right here in our hands. Remem­ber? Oh, you didn’t read it yet?

Yeah, yeah. I know it’s Labor Day week­end and you’re behind on your Inter­net surf­ing a go-go.

Go on. Back track to “World of Won­der.” I’ll wait. I can lis­ten to the free­bie down­load I picked up today by Night Ranger from amazon.com.

OK, did you dig what was pre­sented in that blog post? Even if it didn’t strike a chord with you, please con­tinue to read this one.

I had THE BEST day with my son Sun­day and it wasn’t even planned! The only thing I knew was that I didn’t have to report to work. The only day off on what is com­monly a long week­end for the worker. It is Labor Day, after all. **harumph**

The humid­ity and extreme heat finally broke with intense rain storms that beat on us for a few hours Sat­ur­day night. Sun­day wasn’t cloud­less, but they were big poofy ones scat­tered in front of a beau­ti­ful azure sky. Man­cub and I had gone out to buy a pen­cil sharp­ener (he requires insists upon hav­ing super pointy pen­cils). As we were dri­ving along my stom­ach growled. With only a few bucks to my name, I scram­bled to think of what we could eat at home. Then, I remem­bered that I’d bought some super sav­ings coupons for Bull’s BBQ in Kankakee.

BLAHBLAHBLAH! We ate cheaply but the boy didn’t want to go back home. He’d sug­gested going to a gor­geous spot in the area with walk­ing trails that are miles long. The trails fol­low the Kanka­kee River. With the pleas­ing tem­per­a­tures, I said, “maybe.” He’s so accus­tomed to me lack­ing enthu­si­asm, that he didn’t argue. He just smiled and said, “OK.”

Rather than let such a beau­ti­ful day go to waste, we set off in the direc­tion of Perry Farm. Not sur­pris­ingly, it was crawl­ing with fam­i­lies pic­nick­ing and doing what fam­i­lies do on a splen­did hol­i­day week­end. Peo­ple on bikes, babies in strollers, dogs with own­ers bip­ping along the man-made paths. Our lack of proper footwear made it clear we hadn’t intended on walk­ing for long, but nature beck­oned us to explore and keep walk­ing in spite of the mild pain in my feet caused by wear­ing san­dals. Part way into the walk it dawned on me that I had a pair of walk­ing shoes and socks in the trunk of the car. Fear that our momen­tum and verve would be lost, we kept walk­ing forward.

Photo oppor­tu­ni­ties were plen­ti­ful. Pan­dora pro­vided back­ground music for our stroll. I cracked Man­cub up by say­ing my butt was singing for nature … With that came a bounty of fart jokes. For the record, I’d pressed play on my Frank Sina­tra Radio sta­tion. It seemed an ideal sound­track for a Sun­day walk. Man­cub keeps me gen­uinely amused. When “Beyond the Sea” came on, it should not have come as a sur­prise that he’d start singing along and walk­ing to the beat as if he was in a musical.

I give you evi­dence that my son is the most amaz­ing per­son ever!

 

The great­est reward of our walk that resulted in sore bot­toms of our feet was on the drive home. Man­cub turned to me and stated, “For some rea­son I feel really happy. It’s been awhile.” You see, although I am home in between my shifts at work, resid­ual aggra­va­tion often fol­lows me home or work man­ages to con­tact me in my off hours. You’d think I had the key to the secu­rity and sen­si­bil­ity of all that light touches some­times. Addi­tion­ally, due to increased stress I am dog tired. Not only do is my son robbed of qual­ity time, I am stripped of my sense of fun.

PHOOEY! Enough of that bullshit.

Today was the bril­liant bea­con that I needed. The smack-me-in-the-face wake up call that rein­stated what I am truly grate­ful to have in my life. Yes, employ­ment to feed my charm­ing and delight­ful son is manda­tory, it is NOT that which con­trols me. I am a mom first and foremost.

Also men­tioned by Man­cub on the drive home was that it was a real switcha­roo for HIM to want to spend the day out­side. Usu­ally he is con­tent loung­ing on the couch watch­ing movies or play­ing video games while I am plead­ing for us to get out and about to enjoy the gor­geous weather while it lasts.  Is it pos­si­ble that I have made an impact?

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    Thank you John Hays

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    You’ve read about my Team Beach­body jour­ney as a weight loss par­tic­i­pant, as well as, a coach. Some of you have been gra­cious enough to tell me I’ve been an inspi­ra­tion and moti­va­tor in your own jour­ney. That touches me deeply and pro­pels me to keep on my path to be health­ier than ever.

    Los­ing weight is NOT EASY. Any­one who tells you dif­fer­ently is lying. It is a com­bi­na­tion of hard work through exer­cise and food con­sump­tion con­trol. End of story. And a sup­port sys­tem is needed. If you think you can go it alone then you are lying to your­self. When I try to be my own wing­man I fail mis­er­ably. It takes some­one to kick me in the arse and insist that ask­ing for advice and help is not only accept­able, it is appre­ci­ated. There are peo­ple out there who get a charge in their life by being able to offer assis­tance and be that pil­lar of strength when it seems you’ve been dimin­ished to a giant pud­dle of use­less goo.

    I met such a per­son on Mon­day, June 13, 2011.  Despite my efforts to push this person’s help away he refuses to give up on me. It’s not that other such peo­ple aren’t in my life. It’s just that this guy had never met me in per­son. Our rela­tion­ship started through get­ting to know each other via a blog we both read. Even­tu­ally, it evolved to our emails being less triv­ial or the sub­ject mat­ter revolv­ing around said blog. As time pro­gressed, he would be instru­men­tal in help­ing me kick myself in the butt to lose weight. But it is more than that. He man­aged to help me gain health both phys­i­cally and men­tally. Now, THAT is HUGE!! ha.

    It was incred­i­ble to finally hang out with this per­son who seems to know me so well and to do so with­out pre­tense. See, he lives in Dal­las and I’m here in America’s Armpit. His pho­tog­ra­phy brought him to Chicago. Per­fect weather in an amaz­ing city cre­ated the ideal day. It felt like I was hang­ing out with some­one I’ve known for­ever. I guess that is what defines amaz­ing friend­ship. Being at ease. Noth­ing awkward.

    JohnMeBean 300x199 Thank you John Hays

    An added bonus to the day was meet­ing one of Beachbody’s found­ing coaches, Melanie Bolen. She’s so down to earth. Plus, she gave me a Team Chicago Beach­body t-shirt!! I’ll wear it proudly, Melanie. Danke!

    What have I learned from this expe­ri­ence? In the past, I found it dif­fi­cult to put myself out there and meet new peo­ple and live through myself rather than vic­ar­i­ously through oth­ers. Hop­ping on the north­bound train alone wasn’t painful at all. As I tell my friends when they are embark­ing on a new phase in life, once you take the first step the rest seems easy.

    On a per­sonal note to John: I don’t know if you real­ized when you took me on as a TBB coach that you’d also end up being a life-coach. Thank you from the bot­tom of my heart for see­ing through the bitchy veneer. Even more so, thank you for forc­ing me to look in the mir­ror to see what you and oth­ers see.

      May is m-m-m-masturbation month

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      Who knew this? I didn’t until a friend posted an arti­cle about it today on Face­book. I will keep this brief because, if you’re like me, you’re behind about 18 days in cel­e­brat­ing. Hey! I’ve been a busy girl, but not a get­tin’ busy girl.. If this is just too PG for your likes, then … well, I won’t apol­o­gize. I con­sider this a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. Stop gig­gling, cheese head.

      “National Mas­tur­ba­tion Month was cre­ated by the Good Vibra­tions retail store in San Fran­cisco fol­low­ing the fir­ing of U.S. Sur­geon Gen­eral Dr. Joyce­lyn Elders in 1994 for sug­gest­ing that infor­ma­tion about mas­tur­ba­tion should be included in sex edu­ca­tion courses”

      Is it coin­ci­dence that May is also National Men­tal Health Month? I don’t think so. There’s cos­mic con­nec­tion. Trust a girl who is expe­ri­enc­ing a boyfriend drought of Bib­li­cal pro­por­tions that doing what comes nat­u­rally helps main­tain what gos­samer thread of san­ity she has left. Gone are the days of Catholic guilt telling me I’ll burn in hell for self satisfaction.

      OK, time for me to ‘watch Mr. Bean.’ Have a good day! Get healthy **nudge nudge: wink wink**

        10-Minute Trainer

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        The other day my son grabbed a pair of Levi jeans from his closet. These are den­ims he hasn’t worn in months. He declared that he’d for­got­ten about them. Typ­i­cal to my child’s rou­tine, he car­ries his clothes down­stairs and dresses in the liv­ing room. The ham­per is in the bath­room. To him, it makes more sense to remove sleep attire clos­est to (the tv) and said dirty ham­per. Groovy.

        Those jeans would not but­ton. To see the dis­gust on my six­teen year old son’s face was heart­break­ing.  What kind of mom am I?

        This school year, due to other classes tak­ing prece­dence, he does not have phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion. Lit­tle did I real­ize that 43 min­utes of move­ment made a huge dif­fer­ence in Mancub’s physique!

        Just last night he was sit­ting on the couch with his shirt pulled up. He was pok­ing at his mid-section. I asked him if he was OK. To which he replied, “I’m get­ting too fat.”

        Now, I believe that peo­ple should accept them­selves ‘as is,’ but if it’s weigh­ing on their psy­che, then action must be taken.

        I’m a Team Beach­body Coach and my own son feels like a gooey shlump. Action, mom. Action.

        At any given moment of the day you’ll find an infomer­cial pre­sented by Beach­body. The pro­grams avail­able are count­less. Truly, your home can be your gym. I had all the answers at my fin­ger­tips via my TBB web­site, yet it took watch­ing an infomer­cial for it to truly click. My son needs my help and I believe the answer is Tony Horton’s 10-Minute Trainer. One of the rea­sons my son doesn’t want to work­out with me is that it’s either too long of a work­out or the rou­tines are just beyond his coor­di­na­tion. Tony to the res­cue! Less than 20 min­utes ago I ordered the pro­gram for my teen. It’ll be a nice switch up for me, too.

        This is an excuse buster for E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y! Tony has essen­tially bro­ken down the excel­lence of P90X and put it in 10 minute man­age­able incre­ments. In less time than it takes to gather up your work­out gear, get in the car and drive to the gym you can be done with your work­out. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

        TMT 125x125 10 Minute Trainer

          Burning Biscuits

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          Burn­ing bis­cuits isn’t about cook­ing. It’s about scorch­ing the flub­bery goo off my butt and thighs! There’s a new craze sweep­ing through Face­book and it is called Poke 4 Fit­ness. If you’re on Face­book and you want to make me work it, then let’s do this thing! You can find me in two ways. My per­sonal pro­file page (you’ll have to friend request me to make it hap­pen. Send a mes­sage along with the request) or the offi­cial Maris­sol­ogy Fan page. Click ‘like’ and then just post to my wall the word POKE!  Once I com­plete the exer­cise I will poke you back.

          Sun­day: 10 squats per poke
          Mon­day: 2 (l,r,l,r turn l,r,l,r) sets of lunges per poke
          Tues­day: 10 jump­ing jacks per poke
          Wednes­day: One Dreyarol          l per poke
          Thurs­day: Plank hold for 1 minute per poke
          Fri­day: 10 wacky jacks per poke
          Sat­ur­day: Bowler’s lunge 5/leg per poke

          All of that is in addi­tion to my reg­u­lar work­outs. This is a fun way to be account­able. Plus, for a food addict like myself, it will keep me occu­pied and away from the refrig­er­a­tor and cupboards.

          poke 231x300 Burning Biscuits

            Chalene Johnson’s 30-Day Challenge

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            This morn­ing came knock­ing early.  It was exactly 4:17 AM when my body told me to wake up.  After doing what neces­si­tated my way-before-sunrise wak­en­ing, sleep was attempted once more. Silly me.  I should know me bet­ter than that. At pre­cisely 4:59 AM, reluc­tantly throw­ing in the towel for more slum­ber, I felt around for my cozy sweater and fuzzy slip­per socks.  It’s astound­ing what super pow­ers one pos­sesses in the dark. Rather than sit with my cof­fee perus­ing the count­less paid programming/infomercials avail­able, I decided it was time to put fin­gers to key­board and write some­thing.  I’d thought about just slap­ping up the video I made and posted on youtube yes­ter­day.  This post is really an expan­sion of what is touched on in the nearly 5 minute video. It’s avail­able for view­ing after the text.

            It won’t be long and the new year will have been rung in.  For some of you it’ll be a fond farewell to a year that didn’t deliver what you’d hoped it would.  For oth­ers, like myself, you’ll look back fondly on the count­less bless­ings.  But not for long will you look back because it will hin­der your abil­ity to look ahead.

            As 2010 was being sung in with Auld Lang Syne, my per­sonal res­o­lu­tion was to get healthy — how often had that been my promise? While the rest of the world was div­ing in head first on their quests to stop smok­ing, eat health­ier, exer­cise, etc, … and ulti­mately set­ting them­selves up for fail­ure or quit­ting within a month or so, yours truly was not budg­ing.  It took until March to begin that res­o­lu­tion.  At that point can it still be thought of in those terms?

            Here I am 45 pounds lighter and show­ing no signs of quit­ting.  Sure, there have been hur­dles, stum­bling blocks and a full gainer off the wagon.  What’s dif­fer­ent is that there was never a sense of defeat or fail­ure.  Throw­ing up a white flag of sur­ren­der was never an option.  So, with that being said and sta­tis­tics about new year res­o­lu­tions being con­sid­ered, what has tran­spired is a change and not a res­o­lu­tion. What’s the dif­fer­ence? From my per­spec­tive a res­o­lu­tion is null and void if you don’t back it up with per­sonal account­abil­ity. Just say­ing it out loud isn’t enough. Every sin­gle day you have to hold your­self account­able for the change you want to see.  Write it down in sev­eral places.  Set reminders of what your goals are in your fancy shmancy phone.  Make a pop up reminder on your com­puter.  It’s easy to let things go to the way­side if it isn’t in our face.  Enlist a squadron of sup­port.  Don’t ask the per­son who enables your bad habits to be your buddy. It’s dif­fi­cult when your enabler lives with you, but BE STRONG! I’ve found so much sup­port online for my endeav­ors to be healthy.  Peo­ple who’ve never shared the air space I breathe have cham­pi­oned me.  Don’t dis­count the value of social net­work­ing.  Remem­ber, while our fam­i­lies and close friends love us uncon­di­tion­ally, they are also com­fort­able with us ‘as is’ and shift­ing their per­sonal per­cep­tion of us is not always a pill they are ready to swal­low.  So, do not give up on your­self based on what peo­ple close to you feel or say.  Ignore the naysay­ers and cut out your own thoughts of self-sabotaging ridicule.When you piss and moan about every­thing you don’t have or con­stantly toss neg­a­tiv­ity into the cos­mos, it will even­tu­ally be flung right back at you. Mis­ery does love company.

            Change is not easy. The first quest on my agenda is to get orga­nized. Between my pro­mo­tion to lab man­ager and devel­op­ing my Team Beach­body busi­ness, it’s an absolute neces­sity to keep order in my life.  Rather than make some lame attempt to go it alone, I’m turn­ing to a pro.  The guru-ess of social media and orga­ni­za­tion: Cha­lene John­son.  Again, this is all about account­abil­ity. There’s that dog­gone word again. Dagnabit! But it works. If you’re inter­ested in get­ting orga­nized so you can achieve your goals in 2011, then I strongly urge you to take advan­tage of Cha­lene Johnson’s 30-Day Chal­lenge. Hurry! Time is tick­ing away.

              Vlog you!

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              My appear­ance is pretty rough in this one.  Part of my devel­op­ment and pur­suit to hap­pi­ness is being com­fort­able with myself.  Van­ity is an ele­ment that I must face.  So, here I am post Turbo Fire Sculpt 30 work­out.  My hair is thin­ning on the front and sides. I’m aware of it and typ­i­cally do my hair in a man­ner which hides the tell-tale signs.  A few days ago the split ends pestered me each time I looked down at the hair lay­ing across my shoul­ders.  Like an 11 year old the day before pic­ture day, I took mat­ters into my own hands. Armed with cheap bar­ber scis­sors … snip. snip. snip­snip­snip.  The fol­low­ing day all the crooked sins were evi­dent.  Snip­pity snip again.  It’s just hair, after all. Mine grows back at an alarm­ing rate. It may be thin, but it grows like weeds.  While I’m on the sub­ject of my hair, I have stopped col­or­ing it.  Well, I’ve dis­con­tin­ued using a per­ma­nent hair color.  Instead, I use an ammo­nia free wash out for­mula.  At some point the true color of my hair will lurk beneath the rins­able color.  That’s when I’ll just let it all hang out.
              Speak­ing of let­ting it all hang out … I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in Boobie-thon again — click the icon in the upper right mar­gin.  When Thelma and Louise are bared on the site I’ll let you all know.   The idea is to get peo­ple to donate funds for breast can­cer research while enjoy­ing the pho­tos of women who shed them­selves of inhi­bi­tions (for a good cause).  Guys, you can con­tribute your awe­some pecs, too!  Some­thing for everyone. 

                “I can see in your face that you’re a loser!”

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                The title of this post is a com­ment that a friend sent to me on Face­book. I started a Maris­sol­ogy fan page and sent out invites for peo­ple to join. I sus­pect this friend saw new pho­tos of me. The play on words caused me to laugh my ever decreas­ing tushy off. I won’t call him out on it since he did send his thoughts in a pri­vate mes­sage, but it was just too cute for words not to share.

                I do have­some BIG! Ginor­mous!! HUGE-GANTIC!! news to share. Kind of ironic con­sid­er­ing the gar­gan­tuan news is about some­thing get­ting smaller.  Yes, another weight loss update.

                *cart­wheel*

                Today, August 29, 2010 I stepped up on the scale to have it remain for a week solid on .…… never mind the num­ber.  It tells me that I have lost FORTY POUNDS of back fat, booty slap, jig­gling cot­tage cheese and BINGO! wings since my deci­sion to get healthy began with three shakes a day for 3 days with Shake­ol­ogy on the 3-day Cleanse.

                It has not been easy.  There is absolutely no sense in try­ing to make this jour­ney seem more like glid­ing across ter­rain not met with obsta­cles.  Plus, it’s been a joint effort of mak­ing healthy food choices (not per­fectly, mind you) and work­ing out dili­gently.  I make an appoint­ment with my work­outs as if they are the most impor­tant job inter­view of my life.  They are non-negotiable.  Period.

                The incred­i­ble thing about not turn­ing to the lat­est magic pill that might help me lose weight but destroy my organs in the process offered up from Big Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal A-Z is that I know it’s all me. My hard work and the encour­age­ment of friends and loved ones brought me here.  Lit­tle ol’ me who never thought she’d return to the ener­getic, glo­ri­ous, fit per­son liv­ing deep within.