10,457 Pages

Last night I finished my 25th book this year, crossing off another Life List item.  I am thinking I have one, maybe two, more in me for the year.  Immediately picked up Book Three from the Song of Ice and Fire series after finishing Book Two last night.  These are not exactly quick reads, with 1,000+ pages in each book and a lot of characters to keep up with.

My favorite books this year:
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese - This book really stuck with me on so many levels.  The compelling story and characters, the medical slant, just the whole thing blew me away.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - I actually read this twice, back to back, just to see how the benefit of hindsight changed the experience of the book.
The Wild Trees by Richard Preston - Need to climb a tree or at least visit the redwoods (new life list item!)
Stones into Schools by Greg Mortensen - Was really saddened by the 20/20 'expose' on Greg Mortensen earlier this year.  He remains an inspiration to me despite any doubts cast by the show and ensuing articles.
Bonk by Mary Roach - Stiff was amazing, Bonk just as much - just love this woman's writing style, subject matter, candor.

Emily's bookshelf: read

Emily Peterson's favorite books »

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things i never want to forget

i did not keep a baby book and i regret it like crazy.  'when did caleb start crawling?' Umm - oh - hmm.  hang on, let me sort through the enormous digital photo library (conveniently tagged with photo taken on information) and see when the first crawling photo shows up.  it should only take me, well, 20 or 30 minutes and we can assume plus or minus a week from that date.

in hindsight, i would have written down much much more than i did.  so here are just a few things that have been said recently that i just never never want to forget.

while flipping through halloween costume catalog:
"I could be a B.F. Newton Ninja Turtle"

on what people were doing 2000 years ago (specifically the Shaolin monks):
"was that, like, in the 80's?"
"no caleb, the 80's were only 20 years ago, not 2000"
"well, what are we in now, the twooties?"

on new kindergarten friend kevin:
"he looks like he is from china, but really, he is from charlotte"
side note:  kevin portillo is, in fact, clearly hispanic

first day of kindergarten at Shamrock Gardens Elementary:

Primal Challenge

I'm going on 3 months now.  3 months and about 20 pounds down (I haven't weighed in for over a week.  Because I haven't been to the gym in...over a week.  Tonight I will go to Sandy's class and weigh in - hoping to cross that next Life List item off!).  So yeah, feeling pretty great - people are taking notice which is as much a motivator as anything else (like sleeping better, having more energy, dropping a size, maybe more).  But over the past couple weeks, I have found myself more tempted than ever - and I'm cheating (just a little bit).  Skipping the daily walk/workout, indulging more on Trader Joes Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Covered Almonds, not planning the week's meals, and even going to Dairy Queen (it was really really delicious).

  
All this said, I'd like to reach my ultimate goal of 30 (hmm - 40?) pounds down by the end of the year and these indiscretions, while not as bad as say, eating doughnuts for breakfast every morning, are going to make it harder to reach that goal.  Just in time, Mark Sisson is launching the 30 Day Primal Challenge on September 12 which should be just the thing I need to get back in the swing of things.  Looking forward to Monday!

feel better life list

opened up and updated the life list today.  all of the items checked off were in the 'feel better' category so i suppose that is my super focus right now.  among the items that have been checked off:

• attend regular exercise class (wednesday nights with sandy) - 6 consecutive weeks
• go primal - 2 1/2 months

items that i hope to check off in the next 7-10 days

• lose 10 more pounds (I am 17 total pouinds down - 3 more to check this guy off)

items that are in other categories that are seeing real progress:

• read 25 books in a year (I've read 19 so far - 12% ahead of schedule)
• volunteer regularly (Shamrock PTA - 3 projects so far and school hasn't started yet)

item that nags me every day:

• draw up a will

item I most wish I can achieve:

• buy a beach house

A case of the Mondays

things have not gone as planned today.
woke up at 8:15 - that's over an hour later than usual
i felt disgusting due to non-shower sunday + general swampiness
forgot to rinse conditioner out of hair
dropped caleb off for summer camp - in a church sanctuary instead of regular room (which wasn't great to begin with) - i hate that camp
spilled entire glass of iced coffee all over desk/office floor
sprang booby-trapped freezer items while making 2nd glass of iced coffee
skipped gym
lost all internet connectivity to wireless printer
misspelled muskrat
restarted computers multiple times in hopes to restore previous blissful state
cursed at computers and technology in general (first world problem)
looked down and it is 11:36 and i have accomplished next to nothing

On a scale of...

after a recent trip to the RISD art museum, i was inspired to think what i (an un-artist for the most part), would create that would be something completely original, something that really spoke to/about me.  after a few days with this in the back of my mind on vacation, i kept coming back to the image of a scale.

i struggle with the scale in so many ways - weight of course being the most nagging.  i don't own a scale, but instead weigh in when i happen to chance upon one.  The last chance i had was yesterday on an unfortunate trip to the pediatrician to stitch up a little head wound.  i snuck onto the kids scale, hoping it wasn't calibrated to calculate only kids, not fat moms (that thought really did cross my mind, how ridiculous).  i snuck on and off quickly, unbeknownst to any of the nurses around me.  they also didn't know that they were (un)witnesses to me crossing off a LIFE LIST item, and one of the ones I am most excited to complete.

then:  LOSE TEN POUNDS
now:  LOSE TEN POUNDS

i did it.  Ten down.

now:  LOSE TEN MORE POUNDS

the other scale related struggle i have is finding balance in my life - work/family/friends/self.  i do not believe that i will ever have the time to be the emily i want to be for all the people/things in my life.  which is pretty disappointing.  i found some hope in this great interview with gabrielle hamilton, who basically says, fuck the balance, or rather, she puts it a bit more eloquently:  'balance is elusive.'  Here's the clip:

Fall Into Chaos

a mighty life list

one of the blogs that i follow someone occasionally is Mighty Girl, who happens to be a list girl like me (and i strive to be mighty). i have had life lists before - none of which i can find at the moment, which is so very disappointing because i think i have even completed several items off that last one (took photography class, sewed something, started a college fund). happened to check in on Maggie today and was inspired to start a list again. i've broken my list down into some categories:

• money matters: aka shit i hate to deal with like drawing up our wills. which i am 5 years overdue on. this particular item needs to move from the life list to the daily to-do list because it has GOT to get done. soon.


• wanderlust: places to go see and one special place to return to (i had a fahm...in ahhfrica).


• delicious things: all things food & beverage related - some of which qualify in the wanderlust category and vice versa.


• feel better: aka stop being so damn fat. lose 10 pounds is the first goal and i've got to say, i think i am pretty close! in other words, the primal diet is working.


• vanity: i am not especially vain but there are days i wouldn't mind turning heads.


• the abode: things i want to do for my house. also, purchase a second house that is on a beach (see money matters).


• my cub: things i want to do and share with caleb specifically. laughing about the toilet and farts and such not included because we do that DAILY.


• do some good: i am fortunate and others are not and i should take some time to help other people.


• for the brain: i am smart and want to keep it that way.


• i like ahht: arts & culture type things like purchasing a museum membership and using it more than the one time when you bought the membership

going primal

i am the heaviest i have ever been and not at all happy about it. i resist writing about this because, quite frankly, i don't want to write a weight loss/diet blog. but also, i resist out of pure fear. fear that i have committed these thoughts to somewhere permanent and in the event of failure it will only serve as a painful reminder that i quit. so i am just going to go ahead and put it out there in the hopes that this will become part of my motivational arsenal. this and the box of clothes labelled "too small but i love them."

so quickly, after an expensive trip to the naturopath (another motivator - someone i have to report back to!) i am working on resetting my metabolism to address thyroid and glucose/insulin issues. on strict ten day diet that is pretty much part atkins, part paleo (if a caveman ate it, so can i) and totally without sandwiches.

so that's it. there it is. i'm admitting that i started a diet and i hope to hell i look back at this while wearing that cute white linen top with the black piping and say I DID IT.

that december resolution

i completely crushed it! since that posting i have not only finished Oishinbo (great) but have finished seven (7!), SEVEN books since then! oddly enough and not really by design, just coincidence, the last six have all happened to be non-fiction. just when i was in to the last 20 pages or so of my last book (The Wild Trees) a package arrived from a friend with a couple books he enjoyed. Both non-fiction and so, the trend continues. does it make it more meaningful when a book is 'real?' when i think back at some of the books that have left me with a real call-to-action, go-out-and-do-something feeling it certainly seems that way. after my last read i am rady to go climb a tree FOR SURE.

as for january resolutions, pshaw. i continue to be on an on 3 days, off 4 sort of rotation. gotta find something habit forming. to replace my bad habits.

SO - the books - I started a GoodReads account in 2008 yet have updated it for the first time just today. adding a widget to keep up with books i've read and a handy list on my phone of things I plan on reading. i think i can add some sort of widget here - which i will do right now.

december resolution

so that whole posting every day, err, every OTHER day in november thing. well, yes.

tomorrow is a brand new month - december. this one promises to be chock full of anxiety - i can't wait! i am going to try to set up some mini goals for myself periodically throughout this month to get ready to not make new years resolutions. first on the list for this week: going to turn off the computer/tv/phone at 11pm every night and read a damn book. first I need to finish Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine and then i have no idea. 47 minutes to search the interwebs for good books before it is lights out.

The Monocle

What I meant to say is that I am TOTALLY on board NaBloPoMo on the EVEN days of the month. So today's food for thought prompt from them is: Would you rather be wealthy and ugly, wise and sickly, or beautiful and stupid?

No, I didn't think so either.

Instead I will take one from October 22nd: Do you have any scars? How'd you get them?

Yes - I have scars, three of which have stories I like to tell. My favorite is from 2nd Grade.

In 2nd grade I had these 2 big hardcover science books that were prized possessions, constant companions. I can still visualize them quite clearly, but not clearly enough to get a good google search result. One book had a light blue cover (I can't recall the photo), the other was orange with a baby seal who kind of looked like this:

So I brought the books to school pretty much every day. During an arts & crafts project which may or may not have involved a pine cone and/or macaroni, a drop of glue fell on the orange book - smack dab on top of one of the baby seal's eyes. I did not realize it right away so when I discovered the drop it had already hardened into a perfectly round shallow dome - an opaque eye patch if you will.

It was rainy that day, so morning recess was inside - a perfect opportunity to restore the book. I held the book firmly in place on my desk with my left hand, palm down, fingers spread. In my right hand, a pair of open scissors. I proceeded to scrape the glue spot using a jabbing motion with one of the scissor blades. One of those jabs made less than perfect contact and the scissors soaredover the small milky dome in straight in to my hand - the point jammed in to that soft spot at the bottom of your thumb that you are supposed to squeeze when you get a headache.

It started to bleed pretty much immediately so I quickly formed a bowl with my right hand to catch the dripping blood and ran out to the hallway to find Mrs. Baker, the teacher on duty who in turn sent me to the nurse, etc. etc. Those details are not interesting at all.

When I returned to my desk, someone had cleaned everything up - wiped up the floor, the desk, the book - apart from my bandaged hand, you would have never known the incident had occurred. Of course the first thing I did was inspect the book. The eye patch was gone (?!), but replaced with a monocle - a perfect ring of dried blood surrounding that poor baby seal's eye. Sort of like this:

I don't REALLY know how or when the glue spot popped off, leaving just the thin ring of blood. I don't know what happened to those books - likely replaced by Beverly Cleary as it was right around this time I entered the Ramona phase. But I do know that it was an ill conceived method of removal and that little memento on my left hand will always to remind me.

NaBloPoMo

So it's National Blog Posting Month and I am totally signed up for this thing. And I am already behind a post - off to a great start!

So is everyone talking about Halloween? That's what I thought. Or maybe that was yesterday (but I missed that day).

So instead let's talk about the jewelry thing that is suggested for today and THEN I will get to the Halloween bit where I tried to talk Caleb in to giving me the Whoppers (unsuccessfully).

About four years ago I purchased my very favorite piece of jewelry EVER from a couple who was exhibiting with the American Craft Council. Actually, I didn't purchase it - my sister and I discovered them together and gave the pieces we selected to each other for Christmas presents (this is some sort of buyers rationale). In any case - I wear this necklace almost daily - so much so that on more than one occasion, someone has said "oh! i thought that was a tattoo!" (i have none but that would be a good one!)

so here is a photo - brand spanking new. mine is delightfully faded and well worn. sadly i have lost the match to 2 sets of earrings from them so I just wear the mismatched ones together and it works (look at me! SO quirky)

So I give you the amazing talent at M.A.D.E. and the link to their Etsy Store.

Insert Link - Insert Link - Insert Link

I'm not a huge blog follower, but do have some voyeuristic tendencies for a few people that I find humorous for a quick mid-day distraction. So a new one for me is that of Danielle - I found her blog through another that I pop in to from time to time - FUSSY. Now, about Fussy - she did these amazing action figure yoga classes - if you haven't read them, time to get to it by going HERE - so brilliant!

SO...Danielle. She's funny! I wish I could write like her! But then she CRUSHED me with her internet pet peeves - see HERE. Maybe we can't be internet friends after all.

Farmer's Market haul? GUILTY. Posting every week of our CSA to my Picasa site. But in my defense, I intend to make a little Mac photo book to give to my farmer as a little thank you for an amazing season of veggies! Isn't that a great idea?

Hipstamatic? Now granted, I am not nearly as overzealous as I was when I first got this app - but I DO like it! And not everything is green - look at this!



Kate Beaton - so I'm not ALL that in to comics but a good friend of mine REALLY is (check him out at DHARBIN) and he is always going on and on about her on Twitter. So this just gives me another reason to follow Kate more regularly because I think I might be missing out on something!

The fourth item - well, this is a new one for me. I am certainly guilty of using technology at inappropriate times (but never dinnertime) but I don't need an app to tell me so. But yes, I need to power the fuck down much more often. Thanks.

And finally, following that many people on Twitter? Now that's just plain silly. And downright sad.

june 2010

eesh - what happened to june? i'll tell you what happened...one week at the beach, one fundraiser, one trip to charleston, one long weekend of birthdays + father's day, one week of the craziest of crazy weeks at work and one week in spain.

highlights:
tanned, not burned
feel good feeling of doing some GOOD work for those less fortunate
mccrady's pork duo
star wars birthday cake
all things birthday related, except for the cleaning up part
seeing best college friend for five crazy hours
and of course spain...more on that later

bartender

the other night we were at our favorite sushi place and Caleb's favorite all time restaurant - Cuisine Malaya - or 'Robert's.' because the sushi bar seats were full (didn't they know it was Tuesday? And we almost always come on Tuesday after swimming??), we sat at the real bar. on these occasions, caleb is usually allowed to have a sprite or a gingerale and because of where we were sitting, he even got to see them pour it in to his cup. So this my friends? THIS is what Caleb has decided he wants for his birthday:

stuff white people do

when erik was a little boy, he thought what most little white boys thought - all asian people knew karate and all black people knew each other. such innocence, such hilarity.

so the other night we rented the animated Clone Wars movie for Caleb and at one point during the action the character Mace Windu is introduced. and Caleb quietly turned to me and said, "is that Barack Obama?"

dinner woes

kids are inevitably going to like and/or dislike something that you love and/or abhor. when caleb was born, we wondered what it was going to be - boys bands and a hatred for metal? that was our best guess.

should have known all along it was going to be food related. but this is not the common rant that he will only eat chicken nuggets (in fact he has never had one and maybe we should keep it that way). it is sort of a no vegetable eating thing, though every now and then he will surprise us be announcing he wants brussel sprouts (yes, really...) so i can't even complain about that.

what it is - is baffling. one day he will scarf something down, just weeks later he won't touch that very same thing. all of the sudden he doesn't like popcorn? and eggs? yet that boy will eat $30 of sushi NO PROBLEM. and not sissy sushi - I'm talking ikura, nigiri - the real deal. please don't let it happen to butter beans - my go-to veggie.

and SO - the battle tonight was over pasta with red sauce (as he requested). nary a green vegetable on that plate (also requested). and NOT the green noodles, the white - no YELLOW - ones. and sausage because he hasn't really met a pork product he doesn't like. and yet - we battle. thankfully we ended up with a clean plate - eventually and reluctantly.

oh, and i bribed him with a lollipop.

week one - csa

we did it! we used almost every bit of our first week's delivery. for people with great eating habits, time to plan meals and an unconditional love for vegetables - a CSA is for you. We, however, have not-perfect habits (but in the grand scheme of things I would say they are 'quite good'), little to no time for planning and well, more often than not i end up composting the last quarter or so of the veggies we have bought. so wasteful. i do love veggies - but i love pork more. and ice cream - it NEVER goes bad.

i vowed to change once we got on the new town CSA (after a 7 year wait). so this week:

pick up was tuesday so we made a delicious green salad that night with the lettuces and arugula. it was a clean out the fridge meal using some things that would be of questionable use the rest of the week and in a few cases the following day. basil with brown spots, last 2 eggs in the carton, leftover grilled beets from last week, some bendy carrots. put it all together with a quick mustard vinaigrette and viola! a perfectly tasty - in fact delicious - salad. caleb even proclaimed it a 'feast' - but of course ate nothing green.

so then the bin of veggies sat in the fridge - I put it front & center so every time I opened the fridge there was the constant reminder and ensuing guilt. but still - wednesday & thursday went by with life getting in the way of my best intentions. and then friday. we HAD to use them saturday. so i picked through - admittedly i had to sacrifice some - but ended up with some of the tastiest cooked greens I have ever had. here is how it was done:

we had kale, turnip greens and what i think was swiss chard - in terms of quantity, it filled up the salad spinner. started by sauteeing about a half package of bacon until it was pretty crispy - took that off and dumped in a diced onion and cooked until it just started to brown/caramelize. added quartered baby white oriental turnips and sauteed until all had nice color. piled in the greens, flipped them around with the tongs until they were just barely cooked down. I was supposed to finish the greens with some salt & pepper and apple cider vinegar. but i forgot all of those things and I am sort of glad i did because it needed nothing!

so tonight - the eve of our next delivery - you will find me chomping on the last of the radishes (try them with a bit of butter) and hoping to salvage the last few pieces of bok choy and we will have had a completely successful week one!

operation primal cut

so what started as a very casual pipe dream type idea has taken on a life of its own - and I couldn't be more excited or more terrified. so - a butcher shop. that's the idea and i think it could be amazing. so we've started our research and hope to head out on a few field trips in the upcoming weeks. in the mean time, the right side of my brain is in overdrive swimming with potential names, the overall look - the fun stuff. unfortunately the not-at-all fun part of developing the business plan and working on the financials looms.

caleb's favorite joke

what are you eating under there?

UNDER WHERE?

also, he likes to tell a 'secret' - which is the word 'underpants' whispered (sort of) in to your ear.

i have a feeling four years old is going to be AWESOME