CrazySexyFit

"It JUST happened, you guys!"

2011-09-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Eno River, y'all.

The Eno is Durham's river, running (among other directions and places) between downtown and the northern suburbs and country area. I live north of the river, but quite close to it. Because of this, whenever I have some time to burn on a nice day (or a rainy one, for that matter!) I often head out to one of the many hiking trails along its length. Sometimes barefoot.

This time of year the woods by the river are just about as close to heaven as I can get. Everything is absolutely bursting with verdant life. There are tiny little toads the size of your pinky nail - no, really! - hopping around everywhere, and I caught a frog in a water-filled crevice in the rock today. And when the sun slants down and hits it just right, the whole forest just glows.

The best part about trekking around the woods right now is that, even though our September days are still pretty sticky-sweaty, you can always just dunk in the river and cool right down. Matter of fact, it's a Durham County ordinance that you have to at least wade every time you go to the Eno. Totally true fact.

So I usually end up immersed whenever I go there. I don't have a bathing suit that fits and if I did I doubt it would be very comfortable to hike in. Solution: I just swim in my clothes and keep a towel in the car. In this case, I had on the normal uniform: high-cut black sports bra, ankle-length loose black pants and a ratty shirt that doubled as a foot-towel so I wouldn't have to re-shoe with muddy feet. Walking back from my swimming hole (some distance upriver from the adorable but loud children), I wore everything but the shirt, which should be understandable.

Let me clarify that I was by no means in the running for the Most Skin Showing award. It's a holiday weekend, which means lots of people. Lots of shorts. Lots of bathing suits. And I swear I saw a miniskirt (which, in the woods, just kinda makes you go bwuh?). But it should be clear that I'm more covered up than the majority of these people.

So I'm walking back, right? I see these people coming the other way - a group of a couple families, with two sets of parents each walking a dog, and three boys of approximately 10 years of age following a little ways behind. I say hello to the parents, let the dogs sniff me and smile at the boys as I go past. And then I hear, in a low tone that is pure holy-shit-you-guys-someone-pinch-me, the following:

"I just saw. A naked woman. Walk past me."

Oh, little anonymous boy in the woods. I'm not sure whether to congratulate you on your admirable imagination, ask you how I can get my own pair of x-ray contacts, or just call you a creeper.

In other news: OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THE MAN IS FINALLY IN THIS STATE!!! He and his fam went straight to his aunt's house down south a ways, but he is LESS THAN 100 MILES FROM ME!!! I'm making a list of all the fun Triangle-based activities I'm looking forward to sharing with him and his family:

go to the Eno to hike and swim and catch tiny toads and then let them go again
and also to go kayaking
and probably camping at some point
toss paleo to the winds and take them for lunch at Cosmic Cantina, with dessert at Locopops
catch some music downtown at Motorco on a night when all the food trucks are there so we can get tater tots fried in duck fat
stroll around Duke Gardens
head over to Chapel Hill to see the always jaw-dropping Paperhand Puppet Intervention, if we can schedule it soon enough

Any other ideas? Leave them in the comments!

-N

Update part 2: Time crunch

2011-08-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

I left off right when we were headed up to Ohio. Unfortunately I don't have any photos to illustrate this next portion, but I hope my wittily sparkling prose will make up for that.

The reason we were headed up to the frozen North in the first place was a mini-convention about Mrs. Murr's exercise methodology of choice, T-Tapp. Anyone heard of it? I hadn't. From the teeny little bit I read about it beforehand, most of which mentioned core stability and activation, I'd imagined a series of Pilates-esque balancing sorts of movements. Well...not quite. There's a lot of standing in one place and moving in various directions and ways, focusing on activating whatever muscle group you're working on despite the lack of actual resistance. The deal is that you "become your own weight machine" by doing this. A few of the moves I remember are very slow shallow lunges (decent), a move that approximates that machine where you rotate your arms to pull the levers together in front of you - don't know what it's called (I could only do this one-armed) and the "hoe-down," which can only be illustrated with a video.

The magic really starts at about 39 seconds.

I think it might be the fact that I don't actually like real weight machines, but this didn't float my boat too much. It's obviously worked for Mrs. Murr and the other attendees of the event, and they're all immensely happy with it, and I wish them mountains of continued success. But I think this just illustrates the fact that it's really not the methodology that matters - it's whatever works for you and with you to get you to the point, both in physical health and happiness, where you want to be.

(That said, as for me and my house, we will lift heavy things and run around barefoot.)

While in the Land of the Burning River, I also got to stay with The Man & fam for a little while, and the two of us met up with my lovely friend Liz for lunch, conversation and a perusal of an awesome little vintage store, "The Funky Hippie." Check it out if you're ever in Akron. Here's my haul:

I eyed this gorgeous long dress as soon as we got in the door, but didn't actually think to try it on until The Man suggested it. It's a stretchy velour-type fabric, but not at all scratchy on the inside. Even better: it fits me like a glove. As in, I don't need to wear a bra with it. Given, I've only tried it on for brief stretches, but I think I could do a few minor alterations to ensure the comfy fit and coverage stay indefinitely.

The super-fantastic owner of the shop (whose name I unfortunately didn't catch) talked to me about swimming in ponds and driving to/through North Carolina and other bits of randomness, and then threw these earrings in for free when I bought the dress. They are made of pure sparkle and reach to my shoulders, and swing every which way whenever I turn my head. I'm wearing them right now and I keep swishing them back and forth.

And zomguh look at the BACK! It's obviously sheer (which makes the lack of a need for underpinnings even more serendipitous) and just holy gods look at it, it's so PRETTY! It makes me smile :)

By the way, the reason I talk about the dress and other trivial things so much is mostly that I actually have pictures of it, unlike The Man or Liz or the ridiculous amounts of 50-cent McDonald's ice cream cones I ate, paleo be damned. I need to change this - it's so much easier to remember events when there are images to spark the memory - but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to be so caught up in actually having the fun times that you forget to document them for posterity.

Here's a little tidbit I do remember pretty well, though. So Liz, The Man and I were all in the same computer science classes and labs during one year at Hiram. Liz and I were totes buds, but for some reason The Man and I never actually hung out then, just occasionally worked on lab papers together. I remember one long night the three of us spent writing our papers in the computer lounge, with us girls on one side and him on the other, and he kept zooming across the room backwards in his rolling chair to compare notes. We were reminiscing about that very night, and then everyone paused just to remember it. Then I started to ask Liz,

"Did you ever thi-"

"Noooo. Nope. Never." (she said, in the sweetest way possible).

Honestly, neither did I. It's not that I thought about and scoffed at the possibility, it's just that I didn't even consider it. And now, I realise that of the years since that day, we've been together for the majority. And...well...let's just say that my collection of pond creatures is growing.

Gosh, we are just too saccharine for words.

Next up: my triumphant return (sans sling!) to the Land of the Pine, various experimentation with fermentation (delicious!), a big huge pile of old drawings (flying squirrel dragon, anyone?) and...preparations for the first day of school. Which is this coming Monday. That's right, bitches. I'm back in the world of higher education, and I'm gonna totally destroy it. Wish me luck.

-N

PS: Caitlin, I an a mega stupid-head for not seeking you out on this latest visit to Ohio. As soon as I can manage another trip, I'd really really love to see you, if you can spare the time. And hopefully we can have cakes and ale and bonfires, if you catch my drift :)

Update part 1: Army of Chickens

2011-08-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

OH EM GEE! I'm back again, from another ridiculously long absence! Please don't throw anything at me.

I have been zipping all over the place! As you know, I've been beslinged of late, and unable to do necessary things like, say, drive myself to get food. So, since my parents were going out of town (to the Isle of Wight for their 30th anniversary, yay them!) I got shuffled off to Wake Forest, NC to spend some time getting taken care of by my godfamily, the Murrs, a couple of whom (Laura and Eamon) I introduced y'all to way back at Christmas. I spent most of my time there eating. Mrs. Murr is a fantastic cook, and plied me with (among varied delectables) mountains of homemade sauerkraut, rivers of happy milk and the thickest cream I've ever tasted and fresh eggs from their army of chickens. Take a look:

just a few

my favorite one!


the delicious output

The birds are locked in an enclosure with a small yard and a henhouse at night, but during the day they have the run of the whole yard - which, as you can tell, is mostly pine forest. There are about five different kinds: little white ones, slightly bigger black, red and striped ones and then the beauty you see above. She's the biggest of the whole flock, and she has these gorgeous ruffles of feathers all the way down her legs, like fancy lace pantaloons. She struts around like a big-bosomed aunt from a P. G. Wodehouse book, usually with a couple of the little white hens following her.

Apart from the two Murr boys, Eamon and Liam, I encountered only a couple more beasties: first, the Murr's positively liquid cat, Luna:

...and a tiny kitten that Eamon brought home from a trip, named Ollie and threw into my arms, where he promptly fell asleep.

yes i know he's not asleep here

He fell asleep pretty much everywhere else, too.

I was squealing like an idiot the entire time I took these (and many more) pictures. I mean, really. Kitten. Sleeping. I can't not squeal.

During my stay, the eldest and sole Murr daughter, Laura, returned from a school trip to Mexico, bearing a real Mayan sleeping hammock (so cool!) and a sketchbook crammed with pictures of Mayan runes and temples and spouting crazy stories of beautiful female vampires who live in trees during the day and come out to feed at night. She had only been home for a few days when she, Mrs. M. and I all packed up and took off again, heading north to Ohio...which is what the next post will be about. Stay tuned!

For now, I'll leave you with more chickens:

-N

How to heal

2011-07-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

I got to stop by CFD yesterday, and it was so amazing! I didn't stay for a very long time, just enough to say hi to a bunch of people and show off my shoulder and how it's hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, so I can make it twitch.

Seeing all the lovely active sweaty people made me realise I need to stop sulking about being a one-armed wonder and start living the "wonder" part while making the "one-armed" part as short and impermanent as possible. So here's my game plan. Some of these points I'm already following; others I'm going to start incorporating. As always, any and all comments and suggestions are welcome!

DIET
With a few exceptions that I'll note below, I'm going strict paleo until I'm healed enough to use my arm again. The reasoning is pretty simple: it promotes reduction/avoidance of inflammation, which in turn helps avoid infection and speeds healing. I've also been using an ice pack and occasional doses of ibuprofen, as my shoulder still seems to me to be a little swollen (no redness, oozing or other signs of infection, though).

I've also been keeping half an eye on portions, though I'm not actually counting calories. Reason is that I know my BMR is about 1500 cals/day when I don't factor in any activity, and I haven't been very active at all lately. This isn't too much of an issue, since the sudden and dramatic decrease in exercise and activity means my appetite dropped to almost nil. However, I do tend to binge-eat when I'm bored, and ennui has been the main emotion of late. The times I have caved, I've kept it pretty paleo, though, so that's a semi-victory. A better fix is finding something to erase the boredom, and I'm working on that.

My exceptions to the paleo rule are mostly driven by the fact that I'll be staying with my godparents for a couple weeks while my parents are on vaycay and I'm still pretty helpless. They keep chickens in their backyard! I'm also expecting to encounter

delicious homemade fermented things (like sauerkraut, not beer), as well as
happy milk! that is, not all cooked and nastified, just as pure as Bessie intended (wink wink)

In addition, I'm fully planning to deviate from strictitude when I just want some goddammn chocolate already.

EXERCISE

So far, this has consisted of one leisurely two-mile stroll around the neighborhood a few days ago. I attempted some squats and one-arm push-ups against the arm of the couch the same day, but I was still pretty shaky from the meds and it didn't work out very well. Since then, however, I've focused on cutting down severely on the meds, and I think I'm finally close enough to myself again to attempt another try. Besides walking, which I intend to do at least once a day, I've come up with

squats
pistols, once I'm up for it
one-armed push-ups off the wall or the arm of the couch
side plank holds
front one-armed plank holds, once I'm up for it
sit-ups
one-armed kettlebell stuff

As soon as I can do more than just slow controlled movements (I don't know how long that'll be), I'll start working bouts of slow running into my walks, preferably barefoot, as well as jumps onto low objects, like stairs. At the moment, any movement that causes me to tense up my body and thus my shoulder involuntarily or quickly is fairly painful.

For my right arm: officially I'm still not supposed to take it out of the sling unless I'm showering or doing the only prescribed exercises, which consist of straightening my elbow and bending my wrist, 20 reps at a time, 3 times a day. I've been taking it out of the sling and letting it rest on a pillow in my lap as much as I can, working my wrist and hand, as well as bending and straightening my arm when I'm standing with it hanging by my side. There's little to no pain associated with these movements, or with slow isolated shrugs (of which I'm still doing VERY few, just to be safe), mostly just joint stiffness. I'm pretty worried (read: totally paranoid) about losing muscle mass, though, so in my eyes it looks like my arm's already transformed into this shrunken blobby thing from a week of disuse. Meh.

MEDICATION/MEDICAMENTS

Like I've mentioned before, I'm been prescribed some pretty serious meds for the pain, which all the doctors told me numerous times was going to be quite considerable. The first several days it was bad enough that I was popping pills like a toddler eating jelly beans off the floor of a movie theater. Side effects included being awake for like 4 hours a day, not wanting to eat anything at ALL and getting seriously backed up in the ol' GI department (tmi, sorry! but something you should definitely be aware of if you ever have to take these), as well as being super shaky and out of it whenever I was awake. Now the discomfort has shrunk to more manageable levels, so I'm trying to do without the scrips as much as possible, relying more on ibuprofen or my handy dandy shoulder electrifier during the day, then taking meds at night if I need the help to get comfortable enough to sleep.

To help with the anti-inflammation, I'm taking between 6 and 9 capsules of fish oil every day. I'm also drinking a couple glasses of Metamucil+water and at least 4 6-oz cups of fully caffeinated coffee every day to help combat the aforementioned particularly unfortunate side effect, and it is totally working. The more you know...

REST

At this point I'm just trying to get back into a normal awake-during-daylight-hours schedule, and get between 8 and 10 hours of sleep at night. But sometimes naps are an awesome way to pass the time.

So there you have it! My genius plan to ~~take over the world~~ be a total badass again as soon as possible. What do you guys think?

PS: Here's me being extremely pouty a day or two after the surgery:

...and here's me right after I was finally able to take a SHOWER! And put on REAL CLOTHES! And a BRA! I tell ya, bathing never felt so good.

(btw yes I know my clothes don't match at all. it was the first thing I could put on after over 72 straight hours of that damn hospital gown, and I wanted some COLOR!)

-Nelly

Surgery is not nearly as fun as it sounds

2011-07-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

So. I'm out of the hospital and fairly lucid, despite this heavy-duty shit I'm taking every four hours. (PS: I'm gonna say that's the reason I might be a little more foul-mouthed in my writing than usual. So far I've managed to hold myself back from howling "FUUUCK!" every time I tweak my arm, seeing as my mother's nearly always in earshot, but I need some kind of an outlet.) I'm waiting for the latest dose to kick in so I can try and catch a couple winks, so I figured I'd share all the loveliness with you.

Honestly, it wasn't all that bad an experience. Every single one of my doctors and nurses were totally spiffy. Even the intern who bruised me up trying to get the IV in was a very sweet girl - it seems, however, that my veins shrink under stress. There are FIVE needle holes from failed attempts in my hand and arm, with varying degrees of bruised-ness around them, including a real shiner that takes up a good patch of my forearm. Finally the nurse took over and got it in fairly quickly. That was probably the worst part of anything that happened there, though.

Once the IV was in and the anesthesiologist was done chatting with another patient (very nice man and very good at his job but that dude could TALK! Quote from the nurses: "Where's Dr. So-and-so?" "Oh, he's off somewhere talking." They both laugh.), I got a little something in the IV to calm me down and the doc administered a block on my right shoulder. That's basically a numbing injection put in just below a nerve cluster so it spreads through my arm. My thumb and first two fingers numbed up pretty quickly, but I could still feel the rest of my arm. The other meds kicked in very quickly, though, so I was slightly past caring. This was about when I lost all sense of time.

After a while, they rolled me into the OR. I was still pretty content-feeling, but a lot more alert than they were expecting. The surgeon noticed that my shoulder wasn't marked at all, so he quickly scribbled something on there, which I definitely felt. "Is my shoulder supposed to be numb yet?" Pause. Some confused glances. "Um...yes. We'll fix that for you. Don't worry, you'll be asleep for it." Surgeon, anesthesiologist and one nurse rush around purposefully. Two other nurses help me onto the table and give me a breathing mask. "This is just oxygen. Just take some deep breaths..." Well, as it turns out, it wasn't actually just oxygen. That's the last thing I remember before waking up.

I don't remember what I dreamed about, but I know it was all very vivid and seamlessly woven in with drifting into consciousness and seeing blurry nurses check my stats or just rush past before I dozed off again. Finally there was more of the blurriness than the vividness, so I figured I was awake. Everything was still flowing together pretty well, though, so I can't tell you at what point my mom came in to sit with me, or how long it was between then and the time we left. I do remember saying very vehemently that if I ever had a kid, it would not be in a hospital. Okay, semi-conscious self, whatever you say...

I do remember the conversation the people in the "room" (they're just separated by curtains) next to me were having...a little more specifically than I'd really like to. As far as I could tell, it was an elderly lady who'd hurt one of her legs, accompanied by one or more daughters, all with very heavy, rather refined Southern accents - you know, the kind who actually still drink mint juleps. At some point, she stood up with the aid of a walker, and immediately started pissing herself lavishly. She was nowhere near shy about it, and neither were her daughters. Some gems I remember: "Oh lawdie, it's all in my shoes! They're just full of it!" "Well now we're gonna have to rinse them out, Momma! Don't let's forget now!" And this one, a good five minutes after she started: "Are you still peeing now, Momma?" "Yep, it's still just comin' and comin'!"

From ghoulies and ghosties and piss-covered old ladies, good LAWD, deliver us!

That's all for now, folks. I've got the deets on this fancy sling to share with y'all, as well as the pretty pictures they took of my insides while they were stitching me up. For now, though, here's my flower. They gave it to me when I left.

-Nelly

And I'm off again...

2011-07-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for my surgery in about 15 minutes.

I am very scared.

For at least the first 10 days I'll be hopped up as all hell on two different kinds of very heavy-duty meds. I might blog while on them, and if so it should be pretty hilarious. But the bad thing is that I'll really need them. The docs have warned me several times that once the injections they'll do for the actual procedure wear off, this will hurt. A lot. Constantly.

*deep breath*

This will fix my arm...this is the right thing to do...I can get through all the pain and rehab to get back to where I was the other day, when I maxed out the day's lifting schedule at 3x195 deadlift. Even though it'll take a while.

But you better believe I'll come back stronger than ever. My goal? Bodyweight snatch by 18 months from this day. Snatch Bost, you're my inspiration for this.

Arg. I'm still super scared though. Wish me luck, guys.

Be back at CFD as soon as possible! If I say anything particularly ridiculous you have to remember it and tell me about it later.

Catch y'all on the flip side!

-Nelly

I'm back! Did you miss me?

2011-07-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Last Monday I got up at some god-awful hour like five am (it didn't really matter, because I'd been too excited to sleep most of the night) to drive to the airport and catch an early plane to Ohio. Why? Because I got to go stay with The Man for a whole week! (During which I opened my laptop maybe once. So no blogging.) And it was absolutely AMAZING.

Did I stick to paleo? Hell no. I wasn't even remotely primal. I ate grilled cheese sandwiches and potatoes and corn cooked with bacon and cookies from Subway and marshmallows whenever I felt like it, and I drank coffee with milk (and sometimes cocoa mix) all day long. And I didn't even try to think about calories. I just ate what I wanted of what was there, when I felt like it. And I focused more on the people I was dining with than the food itself.

Did I exercise? Hrmm...well, yes. Sometimes several times a day. But...how shall I put this...I wasn't really focusing on burpees and air squats. Well, not solo ones, at any rate. Hee hee! I kill me!

I did, however, get impromptu lessons on how to ride on of these:

via

It's like a skateboard with two wheels, and the fore and aft sections rotate individually. I'm terrified of falling and freeze up as soon as both feet are on it, but I managed to go about two feet down the road a couple times. I consider that a success.

Was I blissfully happy the entire time? Well, no. 500+ miles is a lot to get over on a regular basis, but we manage. And when it's suddenly shriveled down to nothing, it can be a bit of a shock to be so close, so soon, after months and months of distance. Emotions run high and low and everywhere in-between before they finally level out (which usually takes just a few days) and the bliss does take over. Sitting close together on an old bench, looking out over a perfect lake winking in the sun and letting the flood of feelings just rush out is a good way to speed up the process, too. Especially if it ends with a whole bunch of kisses.

There weren't too many pictures taken - I didn't put on a shred of makeup or bother with my clothes save for the one day we went to a wedding. Here's one pic from that day. Please ignore the fact that I look like I'm about to eat the world and The Man looks (so he says) like he's shyly working his way up to strangling me. That just gives us character.

Yep. There we are. Two adorably awkward, beautifully flawed, regular ol' people who managed to stumble into each other one day and never wanted the moment to end. Funny how things work out like that. And it's taken a hell of a lot of effort on both our parts to pull each other along this far - but now it's been just about three years since that first day, and hopefully we'll both keep on pulling for three score more. Because you know what they say...

...slow and steady wins the race.

-Nelly

CFD Lady Bloggers Unite! Self-Love Edition

2011-06-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

So one of my readers is also a coach at CrossFit Durham, and a friend of mine. I like to call her Coach Actually. Ask her about it sometime.

Remember when I did that post last week about eleven fitness- and appearance-based goals I have? It got more comments than average (and a lot of them focused on the topic of butt dimples. which i still think are sexy, so there). The general gist (and something I should have realised) was that some of them were attributes that, it seems, people are "just born with;" you either have it or you don't, and there's not much you can do body-recomposition-wise, to deal with that. Ashley brought up the fact, in her comment and in the subsequent email convos we had on Facebook, that we (as ladies, even supercool athlete ladies) find it so easy to spout off lists of what we don't like about our bodies, or what we'd like to eventually attain, relating to both looks and abilities. And it's not an argument for complacency or contentment with mediocrity, but we really need to be able to talk about what we do like about our bodies and current abilities in just as much glowing detail. The point is that, regardless of future plans or goals, we are anything BUT mediocre right now. We are freaking awesome. Here's the proof:

1. I love my feet
They're little (smaller than almost all of my family's feet, even counting some of the chilluns). They're kinda weird-looking (super-high arches that have fallen a bit, short scrunched-up toes, some crooked toes. and they can get hairy). But they're strong and flexible and, best of all, useful. I can point them - maybe not a perfect practiced balletic "en pointe" pose, but it looks pretty to me! I can take off my shoes and scramble up rocks at the river, using not just my toes but my whole foot to grip and climb. I can run barefoot over smooth ground, and today I walked some unknown but long distance through the woods over gravel and roots and dried holly leaves, and it was the leaves that hurt my feet the most.

2. I love my squat(ting ability)
I am really good at squats. We did so freaking many of them all throughout my...1.5 years? of bootcamp that I consider myself kind of a pro. I figured out how to avoid the "butt wink" (your lower back rounding out at the bottom of the move) pretty well, which allowed me to get my back squat up to 185 so far. And I can sit in the bottom of a squat so well that when we were all doing it for like 5 minutes straight in mobility class, some jealous person who shall remain unnamed pointed at me and said "that is not normal!" Nope, it's not. It's awesome.

3. I love my tattoo
It's on the back of my neck, which has caused some people to point out that I'll never be able to see it without a mirror or camera. True, but I still know it's there. It's in the shape of an apple star - the five-pointed floret of seeds that you see if you cut an apple in half horizontally. It's known as the Star of Knowledge, and is said to have been the symbol of King Solomon, Pythagoras and other such smarty-pantses. It's also become connected with the pentacle in that they are both five-pointed stars, so it's known (among witchy people, at least) as a "secret" symbol for paganism. To me, it represents the magic, beauty and perfect geometry inherent everywhere in nature, if you only know where to look.

4. I love my burpees
I've never seen myself doing them, obvs (anyone wanna hold the video camera and help me fix that?) but apparently I kick my feet way out and up, and bring my chest to the ground faster. Like the beginning of "the worm." Amy says "donkey kick." Jed says "balletic." I just think it's fun!

5. I love my eyes
I get SO many compliments on my eyes. They're large and dark and my eyelashes have been known to elicit cries of wonder and jealousy from friends, make-up artists and several random customers in various restaurants I've worked in over the years who just walked up and told me how gorgeous they were. The Man tells me that they are two-toned: the insides are a golden brown and the outsides are light hazel-green. But you can only see that if you get really close :)

6. I love my ability to enjoy the hell out of swimming even though I'm bad at it
I took swimming lessons as a kid. I distinctly remember it. Our instructor was named Sheila and, nerdy little rugrats that we were, we called her Shelob behind her back. That's the huge spider from Return of the King, in case you have a life. But now I can barely dog paddle, although I only halfway suck at lying on one side and scooting along. I really don't care. Being in the water - lake, river, ocean; even a pool or bathtub in a pinch - just puts me at the purest ease I've ever experienced. I especially like twirling around like an otter.

7. I love my hands
There's probably not a square inch of skin on my hands that doesn't bear at least a fading scar, handy as I am with the chef's knife. But they're long-fingered and thick-skinned where it counts. My hands aren't white or soft or "pretty," but they're strong and graceful, allowing me to write and sign and lift and climb and caress and poke and anything else I want to do with them.

8. I love my old ballet skills
I took ballet for a good 8 years when I was younger, and while I can lo longer do a pirouette without falling over (but still having fun), I've held on to a number of skills I gleaned from that stint. I can rise up on my toes in demi-pointe and balance there on both or just one foot, which is apparently not something everyone can do. I'm fairly flexible, even without a great deal of intentional upkeep. And, although I don't see it, people tell me I'm graceful, with what seem like normal movements to me appearing as very dancer-like to others. And graceful people are fun to watch. So that's cool.

9. I love my belly button
It's just so darn cute! Even with the scar from the time I pierced it myself with a needle when I was 15, before my sister convinced me that it would go gangrenous and I'd slowly die of omphalic rot, but not before she told our parents, who would of course disown me. It's still cute, though.

10. I love my friends
You might be thinking "no fair! cop-out!" but bear with me on this. My friends are an amazing group of people. They're smart, funny, motivated and interesting, and the fact that they're all damn sexy is just a bonus. I am friends with them because I think they'll make my life better. As such, I've got a pretty high regard for their opinions. And their opinions include the fact that I am amazing enough for them to be friends with me. Therefore, I'm pretty amazing. If I do say so myself.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Although, reading back over this list, I'm struck with a desire to get pictorial or video evidence of each of these things. Hmm...more post ideas....

Check these ladies out! They're all writing about how awesome they are along with me.

Ashley has the funnest laugh ever. Just thinking about her impression of "laughter yoga" has me giggling to myself.
Bea is equal parts adorableness and badassery in a fun-size package. I kind of want to be her.
Lindsay is the main reason that the Sartorialist needs to come visit Durham. Even in her workout clothes. Especially in her workout clothes.
Melinda is not only kicking cancer's ass in a major way, but she's also got one of the most beautiful, authentic smiles I've ever seen.
I don't know Colleen too well, but I do know that she's got legs like yeah whoa and I've never seen her not smiling.
Amy. Oh, Amy. I would KILL for your ass. I might not even kill to actually have it, just because its hypnotic power compelled me to do so. You have a great gift. Never use your powers for evil.

-Nelly

Big changes

2011-06-23T17:10:00.000-07:00

So remember all those times I complained about my bum shoulder?

Well, as it turns out, I had a fairly good reason to be doing so. After over a decade of simply whining and trying to deal, I went to Triangle Orthopedic on Monday for an arthrogram and MRI, and I just got the results back yesterday. Two days ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you anything about the labrum, and now I know exactly where it is, what it's supposed to do, and how mine is not doing what it should.

via

Here's a drawing of a labral tear. Mine is in the back of the shoulder, and there's also a chance that the tendons in the front are overly loose(possibly contributing to or as a result of the injury), which won't be known for sure until they go in there, but will be an easy-ish fix if that is the case.

The doc told me that there's basically two options. Number one is basically just keep doing what I have for the past decade and a half - there's nothing included in conventional injury-specific physical therapy that I haven't already tried. I've done stretching and strengthening of all kinds, periods of immobilisation, chiropractic adjustment, and on and on. And I can still never tell you if today will be the day that I'll be doing a pull-up, or shifting the baby from one hip to the other, or even taking off my shirt and suddenly the joint will slip and I'll gasp in sudden, intense pain and probably drop whatever I'm holding. Note that I have dropped myself off the pull-up bar before but I have never, ever dropped a baby, and I never plan to.

And...option number two is surgery.

Apparently the surgery itself is nothing to worry about. There wouldn't be any metal pins or the like inside me - the only foreign substances would be sutures and this polymer stuff that would eventually melt and be replaced by my bone. I wouldn't even have to stay in the hospital overnight. But I'm still scared as hell for everything that comes afterwards: according to my awesome doc (Dr. Silver at Triangle Orthopedics, if anyone's looking for a nice dude to fix what ails ya, joint-wise), it would be a month with my arm in a sling to start. Then 2-3 months relearning how to do everyday things - driving springs to mind. And THEN it would be a good 6-8 months (I was unsure and forgot to ask if this was cumulative or not) before I could think about doing any kind of lifting or semi-serious upper body exercise again. Read: no CrossFit.

So this is why I'm most scared. Assuming the worst, that each of those specified times are on their own, not cumulative, that adds up to a full year of not being able to lift or do CrossFit. The reason this scares me so much is that before I started any of this, I was fat and sad and had no direction whatsoever in my life. Each one of those things has been reversed as a direct result of doing this stuff. So I'm terrified that without the ability to keep doing it, I'll change course again and head inevitably back to where I started, which was not a fun place to be at all.

I know I really need to get this done, and it's really not that big a deal, considering what some people go through. I'm just worried and scared (I've never been put under before, another point of stress) and bleargh.

People who have had operations that require a lot of recovery time (especially athletes/CrossFitters): how do you cope? I'd really like to know.

-Nelly

Eleven Goals Not Based On Weight (slightly NSFW)

2011-06-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately about my renewed resolve to ignore the scale. I don't care to tie my view of my health to a number that's so wildly variable. And as much as I try to focus on other markers, the feelings associated with specific numbers are insidious - I can't ever seem to forget that the proper "healthy" weight for a woman my height is somewhere around 135-142, even though I know I'm carrying a hell of a lot more muscle than average and the number's probably skewed to start with. I don't like feeling gross when I realise that my weight is nearly the same as my 6-foot tall male friend, when I should be reminding myself of the fact that my bench press is considerably closer to that number than his is.

So the scale is out. Problem is, it's probably the easiest marker of progress to track with any objectivity* - I can go just by how my clothes fit, but it's hard to quantify that. Solution: come up with other goals. I tried to make a mix of both appearance/body-based goals and ones based on awesome things I want to be able to do. Which is of course all that matters in the end. But I'd kind of like to look hot while doing them. These are very roughly in reverse order of want, meaning #1 is definitely #1 but the rest are just thrown about.

11. Have guns like Batty

...meaning not only totally beasting it, but also sporting pretty pretty tats. If you haven't read Batty's blog, you need to go over there and do it like NOW. I yoinked this particular pic from this post, which I absolutely love and advise everyone to bookmark the page. This is the one I used to convince a beautiful healthy teenage employee of mine that she really did not need to lose 20 lbs, nor should she ever shy away from being strong and capable for the sake of some twisted, narrow image of "beauty." And it worked. Yay Melbell!

10. Do a muscle-up

Useful for climbing walls, escaping the bad guys and generally being a ninja. Impressive as all hell. What's not to love?

9. Get to 22% body fat
No matter what my size, I've always been proportionally bigger in the regions of T&A (the former more than the latter, but both overall). I figure 22%, mixed with the fact that a lot of that is going to stay with Ralphie and Louie, is probably low enough to give me abs while staying totally healthy.

8. Do a cat pass/kong vault/whatever you call it

Again with the getting-away-from-bad-guys. This one's an especial dream of mine, as it was the one move in the Fundamentals of Parkour class with Colin that I really couldn't even begin to do, reason being that my shoulder slipped out of joint the first time I tried it. That's an ongoing problem that I'm finally taking care of - I actually got the arthrogram and MRI of my shoulder done today...which is why I'm inside writing instead of at CFD doing presses.

7. Have that line down the middle of my abs

I'm not asking for a full-on six-pack, but I think the look of this is really nice. Plus, it's Maggie Gyllenhaal in Agent Provocateur. No one loses here.

6. Run a 7-minute mile. Preferably barefoot.
I've always been a distinctly "meh" runner. Not too great at either speed (except for really, really short bursts) or distance (I doubt I've ever gone more than about 3 or 4 miles at one time, ever). But it's useful. And fun. And apparently we're all designed to do it. So yeah.

5. Have dimples of Venus

via

You cannot tell me that's not hot as all hell. Even with the plumber's crack. Or maybe even more so because of it, depending on your taste. Right now, I can feel where those are supposed to be but I can't quite see them yet.

4. Do a freestanding handstand

via

...unless my spotter is a young, shirtless Sean Connery.

3. Have a perfect 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio

via

Simply put, it's the universal, evolutionarily-ordained marker of human feminine attractiveness. For a bonus, try and name all the ladies shown above. I got three.

2. Deadlift 300 lbs

via

That's a hell of a lot. Almost twice my bodyweight. For a lady, that's pretty damn decent. It's also an enormous number that I can brag about.

And the number one thing I'm working towards...

THIGHS THAT DON'T TOUCH!
Partly to look good. Mostly so I can actually buy nice jeans and pants and not have my monster thighs shred the insides of them within months. This has happened to every single pair of real pants I've ever had, and some of the stretchy ones too. When I'm pantsless, I love my thighs and what they can do (just ask The Man, wink wink nudge nudge). But any other time, they are literally Why We Can't Have Nice (leg-covering) Things. And they chafe. Ow.

And there's my list. Hope you enjoyed it. Comments? What would you use for your own?

-Nelly
*since I still can't find the damn tape measure.

IF = meh, plus cheat-day madness

2011-06-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

So I've been following the IF (intermittent fasting) eating template for just about two weeks now. I've got some mixed feelings about it.

CON: I feel really kind of restricted by my meal times. The way my schedule works out, I break my fast after I get back from work, around 1pm or so. Because of this, I can't really stop off anywhere on my way - no more river swims or library visits, unless I want to go out later - because I feel like I absolutely have to eat then. I'm sure I could actually go longer without food if I wanted to, but I'm frickin' hungry and really don't want to wait.
PRO: I can see a difference. It's a little one, and I can't give any concrete proof of it, as I've stopped weighing myself again (reasons why in this post), haven't gotten my body fat tested since the follow-up of Bonesetter Stew's cleanse dealio, and can't find my damn tape measure. But the difference is there, if (so far) slight. My waist is a little less puffy and my arms are a little more defined. Inner thighs, I'm still waiting on you.
CON: I'm almost certain I am more irritable. Maybe Shirtless Man #1 was right, and I should either eat the first meal sooner (putting it right in the middle of the time I'm usually feeding Baby Bug his third breakfast) or have the last one at...11pm. Um, maybe not. Anyone wanna weigh in, especially ladies who've tried IF? Coach TCTH aka Mike K, I know Paul Po would include you in that category, but feel free to offer advice as a dude.
PRO: It's fairly easy to follow. There's no weighing or measuring or figuring out blocks, and although Coach TCTH is all finicky about counting calories and I'd probably see results even faster if I did too, I don't think it's entirely necessary. The very act of eating everything within a smaller window means that you unconsciously restrict a bit, or else you'd just be constantly stuffed to the point of discomfort during that time. And that restriction gives me a little leeway to not stick completely to paleo - if I want some cream in my coffee, I'll have some, and not worry about it.

So there you have it. It's decent enough, even if the scheduling gets a little annoying. Maybe I should just quit whining and pack lunch. Which I could then eat at the river. I know, I know. Sometimes I astound even myself.

But enough talk about healthiness. Today was Saturday, and that means I get to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. And today was, in general but especially in that regard, AWESOME.

6:00am: went running around the Duke Wall with Vivian. Afterwards, we drove to Guglhupf and sat in the parking lot until it opened at 7:30. The cream puffs came out literally five seconds before I got to the counter. Loaded up with delicious flaky sugary goodness of various kinds, we left feeling supremely satisfied, an emotion that only increased when I devoured said cream puff (the size of my palm!) in the car on the way back to my house.
9:00am: buckets of coffee with cream, plus a chocolate croissant and a butter croissant (the rest of my haul from the bakery; each one larger than my hand). And then a good-sized plate bacon and liver fried up together. And then I realised that was a hell of a lot of food to eat within an hour of working out. Whoops.
10:00am: got to CrossFit, feeling only slightly stuffed. Completed the WOD without puking. I consider this a major accomplishment. Stayed for mobility and then the shoulder health seminar, finally leaving around 2.
2:30pm: a good cup of blueberries (3 for 1 at Harris Teeter!) swimming (and I do mean swimming) in whipping cream. Some leftover salmon. A plum.
6:00pm: a small piece of chicken. Losing steam here. I think I need the mother of all cheat dinners here. Any suggestions? It has to be supremely non-paleo. Chinese takeout is a possibility if I feel like driving and spending more money.

Updates to come when I eat some more. For now, here's a picture of a cream puff:

via

-Nelly

Why I Wear Short Shorts

2011-06-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

Full title that was too long: Why I Wear Short Shorts, Even Though I Don't Particularly Like My Thighs All That Much.

This post brought to you by the Sunday funny papers.


one of my favorite strips. official site here

I got up early this morning to run the Duke Wall with my friend/client Vivian, and although I was certain I'd want to collapse right back into bed once I returned, there's something about watching the sun rise while running outside that invigorates you enormously. So I brewed up some chicory coffee with a little local cream and sat down to get my early-morning giggle fix. (Pearls Before Swine was especially funny to NPR listeners today, bee tee dubs).

Amidst the chuckles, though, I got a hefty dose of introspection. Check out what Opal's saying in the third and fourth panels there. In case you can't read it, she's looking at an old photo album and muses "It's amazing. At the time these photos were taken, I hated how I looked in them. But looking at them now I think, wow, I wish I still looked that good!"

Um. Hello, soulmate? Well, with me and every other grown-ish woman rich enough to have the luxury of dissatisfaction with looks.

So high school, right? It's generally accepted, even with long years and large amounts of nostalgia separating us from it, that it sucks. Everyone is trying to figure out who they are and getting it wrong a lot on the way to doing so. And, at least for the girls, a lot of that process is about looks. There are those lucky, lucky few, both boys and girls, who seem incredibly self-assured and even proud of who they are and what they look like. They walk tall and don't seem to focus too much on appearances, which makes them even more appealing. They don't seem to have to worry about what they look like or who they are, they just are.

I was not one of those people.

High school was not a happy time for me, at ALL. I got good grades, but only because I had no friends. Well, that's not entirely true. By the end of senior year, I had about five people I talked to on a regular basis, in school, nothing more. I practically never spoke, unless it was on stage* or required when answering questions in class. And most of that intense introversion was because of the view I had of myself.

I hated myself, and that's really not hyperbole. I hated my body, so I wore layers of old and baggy clothes constantly. I hated my face, so I covered it up with full-face makeup (just foundation and powder, no color - that would just call attention to me) every single day. I hated my teeth, so I didn't smile. I honestly thought I was the ugliest thing walking the planet, and I abhorred anything that might capture that for posterity.

Here's an incredibly rare picture of that hideous creature actually smiling, rather than cringing away from the camera, taken right around the time of my high school graduation.

When I look at this picture, it makes me want to cry. Not from the shame I felt upon viewing pictures of myself back when I was that age - wow, I was so stupid! - but out of the intense compassion and love for that poor, sad, broken little girl who refused to live her life as she should have simply because she had absolutely no idea that she was a complete stunner. I mean, I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I think seven years gives me enough separation to say, DAMN!

Now let's talk about today. I don't hate myself anymore. I heave a healthy appreciation for all the cool things my body can do, and I think I can honestly say that I like it. But I still don't think I'm good-looking, apart from a favorably-angled glimpse in the mirror now and then.

Here's the difference: now I KNOW I'm being a god damn idiot. Mathematical proof, paraphrased from Red vs. Blue: I take my current age and subtract 10 (or even seven) years from it. Was I smart at that age? Of course not! I was a god damn idiot! And the fact of the matter is, I'm just as big an idiot today, it's just going to take me 10 more years to realise it.

Go watch this video real quick. I'll wait here. Yes, I'm a huge nerd.

But yes. So, even though I still have a lot of the same ridiculous psychological hang-ups about my body and my looks, if I continue to let it affect how I live my life as I did back then, I will be just as heartbroken in 10 years, thinking about the girl I am right now. And I don't want to make Future Me sad. So that's why I'll cheese it up for the camera, even if I'm completely un-made-up and even though I still haven't gotten braces. And I'll pull on those short shorts and rock the hell out of them, as I run miles in my bare feet and lift well over 200 pounds. In fact, I'm on the search for a pair with "BAMF" written on the ass.

Love yourself now, because if you don't you will smack yourself later.

-Nelly

*Theatre was the only exception to this rule. It's much easier to be yourself when you're someone else.

The Caveman Ninja Strikes Back

2011-06-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

This is part two in a 3-post series on the Fifth Ape Fundamentals course I took with Colin. Here's part one, and here's the write-up of the first class I took from him.

So I had this dream the other night.

You know how sometimes you'll have a "flying" dream? Where suddenly, by some miraculous mechanism, you find yourself floating a few inches off the ground, then higher and higher and before you know it you're soaring, miles high. And it always feels so incredibly effortless and natural - you were born to fly, it couldn't be any other way! - that when you first wake up, the action of remaining tethered to the earth is the one that seems more unnatural.

Well. I had a parkour dream.

I can't remember all the details, but there was definitely some insane intrigue going on. At some point I had to chase someone through an airport terminal that was also somehow a grocery store. But that's not important. The important part is, while chasing this unremembered foe, I had to get myself over a lowish obstacle (I think it was a turnstile. yes I know there are not normally turnstiles in airports or grocery stores). And I vaulted.

like this. via

When I woke, everything else about the dream faded fairly quickly. But that feeling - of effortless almost-flight through no miracle but the work of my own body - has stuck with me. So it's in dedication to that awesomest of dreams (and in hopes of eventually making them reality) that I'm writing this now.

This class covered sessions 3 and 4 of the course, and took place during two consecutive hours on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, in the Forest Theatre in Chapel Hill. It was a good deal lower-key than the previous sessions - where the first two classes were a little intense physically, these focused much more on correct posture and positioning, and a little less on constant movement. After warming up (squats, push-ups and crawling. would you expect anything else?) we started to work on fighting form.

That might sound a little off-kilter for a parkour/natural movement class, but bear with me. As it turns out, everything flows together (surprise!), and learning how to move when someone is throwing a punch at you is closely tied into the way you move when someone else, namely you, throws a wall at you by running towards it. It's all about efficiency of movement. Anything that's too grand a motion will just waste energy. You have to learn to expend just enough, no more.

So proper fighting stance, the way Colin teaches it, differs slightly from my previous experience in martial arts, but the core is the same. Feet slightly staggered and not too close together, knees bent, pelvis tucked a little for stability, hands up protecting the face, chin down. That's the 3-second version. There's a ton of tiny little adjustments and things to focus on, and for a good while we just concentrated on getting the right form and getting into stance at short notice from a relaxed stance. Then we started to move around with it - staying in that stance and moving to the front, back and sides, then circling each other. The trick here is to keep your feet from crossing over each other - that makes you much less stable and thus more vulnerable to falling if you are pushed from that position. Falling, unless you're trying to do it, is generally bad. The more solid your position, the better off you are.

Feet nicely loosened up, we then moved on to moving the rest of the body, still from, and always returning to, that basic posture. We started with blocks, which were vastly different from the way I was taught them before. My sensei's brand of jiu-jitsu was much more aggressive than the stuff Colin teaches, and less..."round," I guess. Less of a flow. Still very effective, but Colin's way is decidedly more gentle on the practitioner, and thereby a lot more sneaky, which is a very good thing. His blocks, relative to the ones I remember, are the tiniest of movements - barely even a shift in position. Instead of bringing your arm up and out and striking back at the other person as they try to hit you, you simply (for a blow to the head) slide your hand up and back, tucking your head into the crook of your arm and leaning in slightly, cushioning more than counter-attacking. Blows to lower on the body are handled the same way - tucking yourself in and cushioning the blow, with the smallest movement you can manage. Deflections, which we worked on next, are handled in much the same way: the smaller the movement you can make to get out of the way and push the attack off to the side, the more energy you have reserved for the eventual counter-attack.

As we'd already gone over a lot of the other planned movements in the first class I took with him, Colin decided that this would make up the bulk of the day. So for a good long time, we just practised this: I'd try to maintain correct stance and respond to the attacks he'd throw my way; he'd just keep throwing (soft, non-serious) strikes. And I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but it was actually very difficult. The physical part wasn't too hard - this stuff is mainly muscle memory, so repetition will improve it, period - but I was surprised how taxing it was mentally. There's something very visceral about protecting yourself from a constant rain of blows, whether the severity is pretended and imagined, as here, or if it's real. All the switches are on full, and it can be a bit of an overload. More than a few times, I flinched and missed the block, then had to step back and apologise - it just gets to you, and brings out emotions and reactions that are usually hidden, even if you don't have much of a historical reason for that.

And then Colin was all like "No, don't apologise! I am a bad person trying to hit you and you just LET me! Ha HA!"

Yes he really did.

It is, however, much easier to hit someone else (with pads. actually hurting someone would be even more mentally painful), and that's what we did next. This didn't take too long - we just repeated a drill that went over deflecting a blow, then going in to clinch (read: capture) the opponent and start whacking him in the balls - er, pads - with knee strikes. It was pretty fun.

After that we had some time left to work on rolling, falling and running - pretty much exactly what we went over in the first class I took with him. Except this time we ran not only on the road but also through the woods. On the gravel-covered path. It kind of hurt a whole freaking lot.

Stay tuned for part 3, which will contain the actual vaulting!

What superpowers do you have in your dreams or daydreams?

-Nelly

So many shirtless men (part 1)

2011-06-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

SO many. They're all doing something right. And they're all doing something different. It's maddening.

Shirtless Man #1*: Martin Berkhan

Not gonna lie, this guy frightens me just a little. But he gets insane results and backs up everything he says with exhaustive research and scientific studies. He also seems to be the most widely-cited authority on intermittent fasting, heretofore referred to as "IF." The general gist is that you have a window of time in the day during which you eat all of your meals, and outside of which you abstain from anything with more than a few calories, preferably sticking to water.

His method is the one I'm trying first. It seems to be a bit of a magic bullet - that is, if it really works. I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that consuming the same amount of calories in a smaller time span could actually work as well as (if not better than) basic calorie restriction, which is what Berkhan puts forth on his site. But it meshes perfectly with my existing schedule - basically, all I'm doing is skipping breakfast, then making my first meal of the day that which I eat after getting back from work at about 1pm. Berkhan mentions that, while men seem to do best on an 8-hour window, women have a little more leeway: a 10-hour window is recommended for us of the fairer sex. Why? Because it makes us less irritable. No, seriously. We'll see about that one. Still, I'm starting with that window and seeing where it takes me.

There's also a note in Berkhan's guide regarding consumption of...well, edibles, if not necessarily food, around training. He's not a fan of completely fasted training (despite a study quoted about Muslim athletes followed during Ramadan - apparently the fact that they consumed nothing at all, not even water, during the day had no real effect on their athletic performance). Instead, he recommends taking a smallish amount of a mixture (powder or tablets) containing branched-chain amino acids, or BCAA; alternately, a little whey protein powder mixed with water could stand in. The purpose of this seems to be to get some of the benefit of eating a little protein pre-workout (as Whole9 recommends in the form of real food, and which I'm used to) without the actual calories. I don't really make it a practice to take regular supplements of any kind (exceptions include Omega 3 fish oil, when I remember it), so I'm a little iffy about this, but the way that my schedule is set up, I doubt I'll even need to consider it very often - most of my workouts are later in the day, and so would fall within the feeding window, negating the need for (according to the forums, pretty damn nasty-tasting) fake-food powdery shit.

This is the end of day one for me, and I think the first things I need to learn from are:

I eat way too much fruit (or at least far too high a ratio of fruit to veggies)
I eat way, way too fast. I don't even know how I choke stuff down so quickly. Even (especially) the delicious food I should be spending as long as possible on!
DO NOT, under any circumstances, pound back the raw carrots. HOLY BLEARGH. It's like you just chugged a smoothie full of shaved lead. Just don't.

CrossFit!

This week is "back to basics." We're spending time reviewing all the simplest movements that everyone tends to get sloppy on, and making sure we can do them perfectly. Today's programming:

Skill: Push-ups

5 perfect-form push-ups on the minute for 10 minutes. "1-Mississippi"-count hold at the top and bottom; chest to deck; straight plank all the way through.
Tababa push-ups: 20 sec on/10 sec off for 8 rounds, or 4 minutes total. The lowest number of reps that you hit is your score. I got 8 on this, which was tied for the best score of the day!

WOD

Run 400 m

50-30-20 reps of

Russian kettlebell swings (35lb)
Double-under jump ropes (or 3x single unders, which was what I did)

Run 400 m

Finished in 14:41. I really need to get cracking on the DUJRs - it's time I had them perfect already, for serious. But then Coach Phil told me I had the most beautiful KB swings of the whole day. Aw shucks, I ain't all that. But I certainly don't mind hearing it :D

-Nelly

*He's not the number one shirtless man in the world. (That honor belongs to a certain caramel-colored cutie up by Cleveland.) I just happen to be testing his method first.

Good for what ails ya

2011-06-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

Last night was an absolute BLAST, thanks to the incomparable Ms. Amy Scott, the hostess with the most-ess. Watermelon (which I have been devouring like a fiend lately), guacamole and grapefruit juice + pineapple vodka to start the night, and cornhole, hula hooping, impromptu tango and swing dancing (not to mention the Cleveland Shuffle) as well as 90 push-ups and 20 burpees by the end of the whole shebang.

Side note: apparently I have "balletic" burpees. Who knew? But thanks, Jed :)

And that is why CrossFit parties rock harder than any others. Although next time we try to film the process, we might want to have a couple more of the classic filming essentials. Like, you know, light. Yes, Ashley Thompson Denton, I just called you out.

Here's the link to see the vid on Facebook. If you can't see it you might have to friend me; just drop a note about why you're doing so along with the request so I know you're not a random creeper.

And then today we all got together and did this crazy WOD. Check it out:

15 minute AMRAP* of

3 power cleans (75 lbs)
6 push-ups
9 air squats

Rest for 5 minutes

15 minute AMRAP of

5 pull-ups
10 burpees

The deal was that you'd team up with one or two other people, and you'd complete an entire round, then rest and cheer while your teammates did their rounds
I teamed up with Amy and Jonathon Johnson, aka JJ, and we killed it. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how dead it got because I neglected to write down how many rounds we got. Amy or JJ, wanna fill me in if you remember?

Then we all got our mobility on. Coach TCTH** and I chatted about IF - he does it and likes it, because he says it helped him stop being fat. Which he never was. So we'll see how well it works for someone who's actually got something to lose.

And then...I went home. And I made myself THE BEST post-WOD/hangover recovery meal of all time. OF ALL TIME, ladies and gentlemen. Check it out:

Can't tell what it is? Look closer...

First I chopped up some bacon into little pieces and cooked it. Then I set it aside, dropped the heat, added a little coconut oil and cooked a whole onion, chopped into strips, for about 20 minutes on low. Then I dropped in a little EVOO, sea salt and some chicken livers, fried that shit up for a few minutes, added the bacon back and HOLY GODS. Yes, all of them. It was just that amazing.

Moral of the story: I LOVE LIVER. And I had no idea. Try new things, people. Worst case scenario, you'll have a cool story to tell at parties.

Upcoming posts: thoughts and research on IF, which I'm probably gonna try starting in the next few days. Also, wrap-ups of the other two parkour etc. classes I took with Colin.

Yay comments!

-Nelly

*As Many Rounds As Possible
**Too Cute To Hate, aka Michael Kelley

HAPPY F#@KING BIRTHDAY, TROIE!

2011-05-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Troie is this crazy dude who I see about once a week in the gym, because he generally comes in at the 615am WOD on weekdays. He likes to parade around shirtless and be-Vibramed, and it's very, very rare to see him when he's not either totally beasting a WOD or air drumming (sometimes both at once). My nickname for his is Little Jacked Drummer Boy, or Clark Kent when he's in his work clothes. And he's now 27! So we did the following:

4 rounds for time of

27 jumping air squats
27 plyometric push-ups
27 bodyweight (hah) deadlifts
27 ab mat sit-ups
27-second hold at the top of a pull-up

I freaking ROCK at jumping air squats. It seems like they go by a lot faster than regular squats. I don't know if that's actually the case, but I just like jumping, so that makes it awesome.

So, plyometric push-ups, right? They're rather akin to the jumping air squats, in that you go through the regular movement, but instead of letting gravity stop you at the top of the move, you just ignore that bitch and keep going. So, regular push-up, but you push up extra hard and leave the ground slightly at the top. When I saw this move on the board, I kind of chuckled to myself and then waved Coach Ryan (who doesn't have a nickname yet) over to discuss scaling. He said I could either go to my knees or do them off of an elevated surface, so I planned on the knees. And then the WOD started and I got to them...and...I didn't need to scale. I can do plyo push-ups, and not just a couple at a time, either! (I eventually went to my knees for 5 at a time in-between regular ones later, but only when I was close to failure). So yeah. I am a rockstar.

DLs ended up being 135lbs for the first round and 95 for the rest. I could have gone higher than 95 but that's a hell of a lot of reps, and I'm already slow. And I went up to 200lbs for 4 reps the other day. Still a rockstar.

The pull-up holds were meh...they're really, really hard, and apparently I ripped my hands up, so that kind of hurt. I subbed as close as I could get to the same position on the rings, using a false grip with my feet on the ground, after the first or second round.

Truth be told, I only did 3 rounds of this. I am currently experiencing hormone poisoning, which helps with the rage and adrenaline, but also makes me all woozy if I go too hard. I got really dizzy partway through the third round, so decided to call it after that. Still took me 31:34. So...not too much a rockstar, after all. I want to try this one again when I'm not indisposed.

And then we did mobility! I hadn't seen Coach Too-Cute-To-Hate in seriously a month, so it was awesome to see him, even though he laughed at me pretty much as soon as he saw me. It's ok, though. I told him the really funny thing was that my hair was shorter than his and his voice was higher than mine.

On a last note, we were all stretching by one of the walls and Dave decided to saunter on over and touch up a patch low on the wall right beside ME - nowhere else that wasn't 8 feet in the air! - so that I put my hand right in the wet paint. Next time I will high-five your FACE, Dave.

-Nelly

And then I ate it all

2011-05-26T11:04:00.001-07:00

You know what the only thing better than finishing up your strictly acetic cleanse-y type dealio and being able to eat chocolate again is?

Finishing it up just in time for the monthly hormone poisoning. Holy gods. The stomachache and sugar coma are SO worth it.

So I finished Bonesetter Stew's cleanse thing! Yay me! I don't have new pictures yet but here are the numeric stats:

Weight: Stew ran the numbers with 155. This was higher than what I actually weighed in at (159). He's running the numbers again because I'm anal like that, but here are the ones gleaned with 155.

BMI: 24.28, a drop of about 3/4% to put me just under the cut-off for "overweight." Did I mention that I upped my max deadlift to 220? Damn skippy :)

Body Fat Percentage: 24.9%, a drop of 1.4%. Not too shabby! With the weight of 155, this means I've got 38.6 lbs of fat and 116.4 lbs of lean mass. Boo on the slight loss of muscle but yay on the greater loss of fat! Now, more lifting!

Stew & I postulated that a decent overall goal might be 20-21% body fat, so this is a really good first step. Note that I'm definitely not tying myself to that number. If I keep cutting it down and start to really lose my boobs, you can bet your ass I'm reevaluating my goals. Having really nicely-cut abs would be cool, but not at the expense of Ralphie and Louie.

Total Body Water: A solid 45L/64%, up from 43L/59.7% last time. Yay hydration!

Basal Metabolic Rate: 1518 kCal, down from 1540 before. Merh. I wqs hoping for a move in the opposite direction, but I guess that goes along with the slight drop in muscle. Bring on the steaks and heavy weights!

Daily Energy Expenditure: 2278 kCal, up from 2002. Joanne, you told me what this meant before. Does the increase just mean that I'm doing more during the day? If so, how can they tell that? It seems an awfully complicated and variable thing to measure so precisely.

I forgot to measure my waist and hips. And now my waist is like ba-FWOOOM! from the aforementioned hormone poisoning so I'm not really inclined to want to whip out the ol' tape measure.

So, overall, decentish results, at least from my perspective. Honestly, though, I kind of hated it while it was going on. My self-esteem and mood dropped pretty low, and my trichotillomania started acting up again...a lot. As in, I had a dream about shaving my head two nights ago and now I really want to act on it. I also had these batshit insane cravings for stuff like skim milk (I can't stand the taste anymore, but wanted it like crazy) and butter (not on anything, just by itself). And when I roasted my weekly chicken, I saved the fat as normal for use in future cooking. But I got this incredibly strong urge to get a spoon and just drink the liquid fat right there. I was simultaneously nauseated and absolutely drooling for it. Mindfuck.

All said and done, I don't know if I would do this again. Like I said, the results are decent, and I don't know how much of the weird thought processes were because of other things and just coincided, but the coincidence is enough to give me pause. I don't like cringing when I look in the mirror. I don't like ripping at my hair and skin enough so that I'm sore and bleeding. And I really don't have any desire to drink straight fat. Just ew.

Has anyone else done this dealio? Ashley, I'm looking at you. Are my experiences just a fluke? I'd really like to hear that they are.

-Nelly

Return of the Caveman Ninja

2011-05-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Alternate title that was too long to use: "I'm covered in bruises and too sore to move. GIVE ME MORE!"

Yep, you guessed it! Colin's back! I'm signed up for his Fundamentals of Parkour series of classes, but since I wasn't able to make the first session last Sunday (because I was watching The Man strut his bad self across the stage while wearing a funny hat and a dress), we met up this afternoon at the Forest Theater in Chapel Hill.

via

If you live in the Triangle or ever visit this area, try and stop by there - it's just lovely! However, it's also entirely made of stone and hard-packed sand - not so easy on the ol' bod. It's amazing how much the awareness of pain disappears, or at least significantly lessens, when you're having an absolute blast. Yeah, it hurts when I launch myself headlong into the abyss, only to crack my shins on the edge of a solid stone step. But feeling pain is a lot less interesting than trying the leap again, so it gets pushed aside.

We started (and eventually ended) with jumping. Well, landing first, and then jumping. You might think that you can't land before you jump, but apparently if you just kinda shove yourself over the edge of something and then land, it just counts as falling, not jumping. The way you land is on your toes, slightly bent over, in what's called the cannonball position. If you need to, you can also continue the momentum forward and put your hands down, but never your knees. The worst thing to do when falling, apparently, is to land on your toes and then let your knees fall forward. Then they go crunch. Ow.

So once my landings were looking decent-ish, we moved on to the actual jumping and then landing part. It's crazy technical, and absolutely maddening how completely naturally it seems to come to Colin. You have to fling your arms forward at the same time as you extend your hips and take off at a 45-degree angle to the ground and pick your feet up and not overshoot and also land on your toes. Yeah.

This is where we jumped. Ending point is the step where the red X is. I started from the gravel ditch just a couple feet away, then tried backing up until I went from the step with the green X, which is at the same height as the other one, maybe 5 feet away? I'm not sure. Colin kindly helped out by letting me know that the floor was now a pit of lava filled with spikes and I would die a horrible, fiery, impaled death if I didn't make the jump. Thanks, Colin. You're a real card. For everyone else: the primary rule of doing anything at all with this guy is that the floor is ALWAYS lava. And when it is not, CRAWL!

So after I hove myself over certain peril enough times to satisfy, he had me step up. Just one step. Not even a foot back or 6 inches up, just to where the blue X is. But damn if the vapors from the lava didn't make me absolutely sick. I have this thing about falling...and just that little tiny difference made me freeze up completely. Sooo we moved on.

To the normal person, walls are annoying. They're always getting in the way! Not for the caveman ninja, though! He just runs at them headlong and ~~hopes for the best~~ bounces right on up there, catching/pushing with his arms but doing most of the work with his legs. If the wall's higher than about nose-height (the one we practised on was about a foot over my head), the trick is to take a final step on the wall itself, propelling yourself even higher and pulling yourself forward with your arms so you don't just fall backwards. From there it's just a quick twist to get your foot (NOT your knee; that hurts like a bitch and I am bruised) on top of the wall and then stand up. Piece of (paleo) cake! This was probably my favorite section because I could actually do it without too much pain or terror.

So when the wall is too tall for you to scale that way, the aim is to jump as high as possible in the way just mentioned (by pushing off, or "tacking," with your foot) and try and grab the top of the wall so you can pull yourself up. The fact that you need extra height means you need to start off with more speed. Which means that you RUN STRAIGHT AT THE (10-foot high, solid stone) WALL. This is just a little unnerving, not to mention difficult. You have to push off while you bring the opposite knee up as high as possible, keeping the same hand in front of your face (so you don't kiss stone if you miss) and reaching the opposite hand up to grab...or in my case, just kinda slap at the wall. I got up to the very edge of the top but couldn't actually transition to grabbing it. Next time...

Then we picked up and dragged around some big huge fallen trees for a while. Fun and useful but not particularly noteworthy.

And then...it was back to the jumping spot. Colin really wanted me to at least attempt a jump from the farther starting point. I did too, but I also didn't want to trip and break my head open on the stairs and die in a pool of mashed brains. So I jumped down to the (molten) gravel a few times first, burning my feet off in the process. Then I jumped from the lower step to the opposite one without doing any serious damage. Then I shut my brain off and leapt...

...and I made the hell out of it. Had to catch myself on my hands but I stuck it. And then I did it once more (or twice, if you ask Colin, who is too nice) before my brain woke up again and I started freaking out. So that was it for the day.

Next session is on Sunday and I CANNOT wait. Stay tuned for more tales of the Caveman Ninja! What's a good sidekick/student/minor character name for me? Let me know in the comments!

-Nelly

PS: Two direct quotes from Colin today: "Oh, excuse me, Mr. Ant!" (as he stepped sideways to avoid crushing the insect in question) and "Oops! Sorry, Plant!" (as he accidentally dropped a log onto a shrubbery). Need any more proof that he is not only a trip and a half but awesome as all get out? I didn't think so.

Smoothie, deconstructed (plus CF update!)

2011-05-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

Isn't this lovely?

I know I've blathered about this before, but seriously though. Good food is just so nice to look at.

Frozen strawberries and peaches, nuked for a minute or two, plus one perfectly ripe avocado. I've found that just a pinch of sea salt added when I blend the thing up with protein powder makes it even more spectacular.

I'm going to save you the picture of the finished product because it looked like vomit. But it was still delicious :)

So breakfast today marked the last meal of the first week of this cleanse dealio I'm doing. Honestly, it has kind of sucked monkey balls so far. Up until yesterday, I was dealing with these nagging headaches and enormous stomach bloat that made me feel about as sexy as a maggot-filled drowned rat, as well as all kinds of physical and mental "meh." But I stuck with the damn thing because Bonesetter Stew said it would get better. And hey presto, it actually did! I'm feeling much more human, and I notice my skin (which wasn't too bad to start with) is actually noticeably better. Cool! No updates on stats yet, as that won't come till I finish the whole thing. I feel pretty damn good, though. And that's mostly what matters. Plus, I GET TO EAT CHICKEN TODAY! It's a little ridiculous how excited I am.

CrossFit Update!

I think Sunday was my first honest-to-god rest day since...damn, I don't even know. That's probably a bad thing. But usually, if I do have to take a day off from lifting, I like to spend it hopping around on the rocks at the Eno River. Here's some highlights from the last week (you can take a look at all the programming if you want, I just didn't want to put it all here):

May 2: PAINSTORM. Max unbroken reps ground-to-overhead to start, then 15 rounds (3 handstand push-ups, 6 American kettlebell swings, 9 air squats) followed by the same number of GTOs.
So THAT'S what a painstorm is. This was kind of a bitch, as if you couldn't guess. I used 75lbs and clean&jerks for the GTOs (15 reps), then scaled to kneeling on a box for the HSPUs but went Rx with 35lbs for the KB swings. I wasn't last! But I wasn't first either. But I had fun.

May 3: 15-min AMRAP* (run 400m, 50 sledgehammer swings)
I think I got about three and a half rounds out of this. But but BUT! I did it barefoot. That's right. Barefoot sprints on the road (except when I had to leap out of the way of cars onto the sidewalk). Also, I just love sledgehammer swings.

May 4: 5 rounds (9 clusters, 9 pull-ups)
Clusters are SO MUCH FUN. They consist of a squat clean into a thruster, two of my favorite moves EVER. Rx at 65 lbs on the barbell for these babies. I'm thinking these might play a major role in Quarter-Life Crisis, Partie Deux next year...

May 5: Push-up pyramid! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 push-ups.
Pyramids are like ladders except better. Everyone did these together on Ashley's count, and in-between we got to watch her rendition of "laughter yoga." I'm still giggling :)

May 6: 10-min AMRAP (18 KB goblet lunges, 5 push-ups, 3 pull-ups)
This was the community WOD taught by Paul (first one I ever attended with him as coach), to which I dragged Babysis! And she loved it! And she's coming back next Saturday! Success!

That's pretty much it. I did a bunch more stuff, but those were my favorite things. Also, it turns out that I missed 1RM** deadlifts on Sunday. Now I'm sad. But, on we go anyways!

-Nelly

*as many rounds as possible
**one-rep maximum (weight)

CrossFit will destroy my face

2011-05-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

So I've had my share of injuries attained in the box before. Sprains, strains, stubbed toes, ripped hands, etc etc. There have even been a few times when I hit myself in the mouth with a barbell (I do not recommend trying that one out at all). But in the past two days I reached a new level of insanity: I actually managed to bruise my face. Twice. Yesterday doing clusters (squat clean the barbell, then push it overhead) I whacked myself a good one in the chin and got a nice little blueish dot there. And today I managed to conk my cheek with a dumbbell while doing push presses. Here is the aftermath:

right there below my cheekbone!

It's hard to photograph. You can see it better in person, I swear. And it's the beginning of the end. Before you know it, I'll have missing teeth and cauliflower ears and a nose that goes sideways. But I'll have abs like yeah whoa. Will it be worth it? Only time will tell.

-Nelly

Here goes my dignity...

2011-05-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

Alternate title for this post: The One Where Nelly Strips. Just get it all out there.

First off, the method: I'm doing this 21-day cleanse-y type dealio, coached through it by Stew, one of the dudes who teaches at CrossFit Durham. On Monday he measured all the stats I'm about to share and gave me the wherewithal to do the diet. There's a series of capsules to take along with a couple huge tubs of protein powder to replace what I'm no longer getting from bacon *tear* It works like an elimination diet - get all the possible bad stuff out all at once, then slowly introduce it back and see how you feel. Which means for the first week, I'm pretty much vegan. The shakes* aren't too bad yet, but I honestly think I might murder someone for an omelette by Saturday. For a steak...I don't even want to speculate.

Now, the stats.

Weight: 160. Higher than I thought it would be, but not too bad.

BMI: 25.06. This is classified as overweight. I can lift over 200 pounds, jump over 30 inches and I did barefoot sprints on the road today. 'Nuff said.

Body Fat Percentage: 26.3. This means I've got about 42 pounds of fat and 118 pounds of lean mass. That's definitely a little higher than I'd like, which is one of the reasons I'm doing this. The tricky part is getting the abs and keeping the T&A.

Total Body Water: 43.3L/59.7%. Stew says this should be closer to 70%; I guess I'm a little dehydrated.

Basal Metabolic Rate: 1540 kCal/day. One of the goals is to raise this, which is done by gaining muscle. Yes please!

Daily Energy Expenditure: 2002 kCal. I don't know what this one means. Anyone?

Waist: 30.5 inches

Hips: 41 inches. So I've got a waist-to-hip ratio of right about 0.75. Which, biologically speaking, means I'm sexy. Awesome.

And now the pics. Warning: although Bea is the most amazing photographer ever, she couldn't disguise my post-WOD sans makeup glory. View at your own risk.

why hello there! no, i don't tan much. why do you ask?

whatever you do don't look at my weird little toe

ass like a BAMF

I guess it says a little something about my body image that the first things to go through my mind when I saw these were "wow, I need some braces like yeah whoa" and "damn, I want some more tattoos!" Rather than a blench and shudder, I mean. Getting better...but I will say I kinda like my ass :)

I've come a long way in the 2.5ish years I've been in the box (and the one before this one, too!). I'm pretty damn strong, and I'm getting stronger. And now I want the abs to prove it. I've got a plethora of methods to try (this cleanse, another Whole30, a bout with IF, 4-Hour Body, etc) that I'm pretty excited about. And I'm not ashamed to admit that yeah, I love being strong and I'm gonna keep working at that, but my main motivator (at least right now) is to be drop dead sexy. And then I'm gonna get some fuck-me heels and a tiny little miniskirt and OWN that strut. And then lose the shoes and do some bodyweight snatches. Hell yeah.

-Nelly

*when I first wrote that I was actually referring to the shakes you get when you go through withdrawal. but the protein shakes aren't that bad either. try cucumber+avocado+kiwi, a la Finn. NOM!

Be patient.

2011-05-02T19:12:00.000-07:00

That title is mostly an admonition to myself, as I'm still waiting on Bea to send the boudoir photos she shot of me the other day before I post (she's got internet issues). I got almost all my other stats done, though. Any CF Durhamites wanna help me out with measurements tomorrow evening?

-Nelly

Eleven Things About Me You Probably Don't Know

2011-04-30T13:48:00.001-07:00

Hi guys! Yes, I'm still alive. Life got crazy and I got into kind of a funk...and not the good kind with a lot of bass and horns. I got all sad and grouchy and nothing I wrote, not even the simplest little post on dinner, seemed to be enough to pass my good-enough-for-the-internet test. What do you guys do when you really want to write but everything just seems blah?

Anyways, I've got an ulterior motive for writing random little tidbits about myself at this particular time. You see, I've decided to take that one step every health blogger takes eventually and start posting stats and progress photos of myself. Meaning, if you check this blog on Monday, you will be seeing pictures. Of me. Mostly nude. Hide the kiddies.

But, since I'm gonna be putting my external self out there (so very, very out there) for all the internet to see, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the internal stuff as well; a few of the things, bad and good, that make me me.

1. I'm named after a character in Lord of the Rings. No, really. Sam's daughter Elanor the Fair, although my parents used the more normal spelling of "Eleanor" and then just called me "Nelly" all the time. I kind of love how nerdy that is. And if you haven't read far enough to know where she comes into the story, get cracking or we can't be friends.*

2. I'm pagan. Solitary (my friends and I had a circle when I lived in Ohio, but I haven't joined one down here) and ecclectic (although I favor the Celtic pantheon, Brigid in particular). I don't pretend to know everything (or even anything) about the way the universe works, but I do feel like there are more things in heaven and on earth that are dreamt of in any philosophy. And this particular method helps me feel closer to the earth, my fellow man and that un-nameable force that ties everything together. Also, yes I plan on jumping over a bonfire tomorrow night (probably not naked though) and no I don't do love spells.

3. I have trichotillomania. Generally speaking, it's the compulsion to pull your hair out. Some people bite their nails down to the quick; I've pulled bare patches on my scalp before. For me, it also manifests as picking at any imperfection on my skin - if I have a scab or a zit or an ingrown hair, I will literally tear the skin from my face and body to get it out. It really sucks. If I didn't have it, I'd have about a tenth of the scars that I do and my hair would actually be long (about a year ago, things got so bad that I just buzzed it and started over). So if you ever see me in the gym with my hand up to my head, I give you free rein to come up and body check me. Totally serious. Or just a hug. Whatever.

4. I have an amazing ability to memorize and retain songs. At my current job, taking care of an adorbz little monster who loves to be sung to, I've found that I can sing most if not all of the songs my parents used to play and sing for me when I was a wee one, even the ones I haven't heard in years. I used to be able to do the same thing with playing the piano, just because I could never really read music so I just memorized everything right off the bat.

5. I save all my bacon grease and chicken fat and use it later to cook with. It's AMAZING. Do it.

6. If I could have any superpower, it would be the ability to insert myself into people's dreams. Mostly just to talk. Sometimes to mess with them. Now I'm giggling to myself.

7. I own very little furniture, but I have 7 bookshelves, all full. I think people without books in their house, or even without books in view as soon as you walk in the door, are kind of weird.

8. There was a brief period the summer after I left college that I was homeless. The friend I was staying with at the time had personal dramas unrelated to me that got her really, really depressed and she went all hermit for a while, which involved closing her door to me. I had a job, but no place to stay in that town, so I ended up sleeping under a bridge for a couple nights until I bought a cheap tent, camping just outside of town during the week and then hiking the 20 or so miles to another friend's house on the weekends to shower and eat. The main thing I noticed? You really do become invisible. People don't want to see you, so their eyes just skip you. You know that bit in Harry Potter (think it's the first book) when Hagrid explains why the Muggles can't see that one building because they don't expect or want it to be there, and Harry sees their eyes just sliding past it without actual recognition? That's what it's like.

9. As part of the progress stats, I'll be weighing myself for the first time in 4 months, and I'm a little scared. I've never been really seriously tied to the scale, but like pretty much every other non-third-world adult woman, I've definitely had some level of a disordered relationship with it in the past, and I really don't want to go back to that. I'm also getting stats like body fat and other more medically sound ones taken, though, and I'm hoping I can focus on those more.

10. I still sleep with my two favorite toys from childhood. One is a teddy bear named "Teddy." She wears a blue-and-green tartan nightgown; I used to have a matching one that I wore until it started choking me when I tried to button it. The other is "Baby Eleanor," a baby doll with only one foot, because when I was about 7 I left her in the yard and the neighbor's dog got ahold of her and chewed the other foot off. She's also a black baby doll. Yes, she's named after me. Is this why it seemed perfectly natural to date a black man? Perhaps :D

11. If I could live off only 5 food for the rest of my life, they would be 1. steak, 2. bacon, 3. cherries, 4. brussel sprouts and 5. decaf coffee.

-Nelly

*Ha ha! Just kidding!**

**Not really kidding.

My bra is full of sand.

2011-04-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

There's dust and dirt coating my skin, in my hair and my eyes, crunching in my teeth and between the waistband of my pants and my skin. My knees are covered in bruises. There's also a nice one blossoming on my back, right in the middle of my spine. My forearms, shoulders, upper back and pretty much every other exposed piece of skin is sporting a lovely shredded look from slamming into the gritty ground over and over. And I cannot wait to do it all over again.

Ok, ok, I'll explain.

Yesterday I spent one of the most amazingly fun (G-rated) hours I've had in years, here:

via

with this dude:

via

Don't be jealous, ladies. He charges by the hour and you can schedule a lesson or six at his site.

For this past Christmas, my dad got me caveman/ninja/parkour/ape lessons from Colin, to be used whenever I could fit them in. The group lessons always seemed to fall at a time when I couldn't make it, so we finally decided to use part of my dad's gift towards a one-on-one lesson just to get things rolling (so to speak) and use the rest up whenever I can. And omgz it was SO worth it.

Surprisingly enough, there was no crawling in this day's warm-up. There were, however, squats and high knees and butt-kickers and skipping and broad jumps, which WOW do I ever suck at and I felt like a total fool doing them. But now I know kind of what to practice to not look quite so foolish.

When Colin and I discussed what we wanted to cover in the lesson, I told him running and falling, as those seem to be my downfalls (hah!) for most of my big exercise failures. We started out with break falls, which I kind of remembered from my jiu-jitsu days, but the way he teaches them are aikido-based, so much less focus on heavy impact and "just get used to it, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." His method is much softer, rounder, gentler, working with the ground as opposed to fighting against it. Not what I'm used to, but much less pain than I was expecting. So, good.

Then we moved on to rolling. Now, let me say this. When I was doing jiu-jitsu, rolls were pretty much the one major thing I could never get. No matter how much I practiced, it just never clicked. I think most of that is due to an intense visceral fear of being upside-down, which causes me to block out the time between the entry into and exit from the roll - I remember going into it, and I remember coming out of it, but that moment in the middle is a total blank. If I can neither focus on in the moment nor remember after the fact anything about my position, I can't improve on it. So I thought.

Well, apparently all those hours of practice, even as they were filling me with despair and pouty feelings, instilled some kind of muscle memory, because I didn't totally suck at rolling. I still kind of sucked. And I can't roll straight. But I can roll. What's more, I can roll on my left side. Actually better than the right side, probably because my brain won't handle the switch at all so I have to just turn it off and go. It was amazingly exhilarating and I'm still grinning just thinking about it.

After rolling, when I was finally completely covered in dirt, we had a little while left to focus on running. I'd worn my crazy awesome toe shoes for most of the time, but when you're getting barefoot running lessons from an actual caveman ninja, you kind of have to go completely barefoot. I really really should have gotten a picture of this because I want to show you Colin's feet compared to mine. You don't think about posture of the foot very much, but there are very noticeable differences once you look. Even my feet, which are relatively flexible and strong from my dancing days, look practically newly-unbound next to his. And no, Finn, I don't have a foot fetish. At least, not a sexual one. I'll get a picture. Then you'll understand.

We started this bit out with just plain walking. That is, normal old heel-toe walking, across the stage area of the theater. Even when going barefoot, as we both were, you can hear a soft but distinct crunching thud as the heel comes down with every footfall. Then we walked back, this time going toe-heel, or "fox-walking." The difference is more noticeable than you'd think, even at a similar pace. This was repeated several more times, slowly getting into a very quick short stride, almost a shuffle. At this point it's hard not to break into a soft run, which is what we moved to next.

There's so many different points to think about when your body's not used to this type of movement - land on outer-ish forefoot and push off middle-ish forefoot but don't run on your toes and don't really push off, just pick your feet up; keep your body a stacked column but a leaning stacked column, like the Tower of Pisa; move your arms but not like that; keep your ankles relaxed (bwuh?); don't flex your foot all the way (as I do every single time); etc etc zomguh! I think I kind of got it a couple times, when we moved out of the theater and were running up and down the road for more room. Trouble is, I get all Zen'd out and want to just close my eyes and float along whenever I get into that zone. Not quite the best thing to do when running near moving cars.

And then we were done. I stayed a little bit and we chatted about feet and posture and how the dawn of agriculture was really where it all started to go downhill and maybe we shouldn't have come down from the trees at all. That kind of thing. And I left covered in dirt and sweat and bruises and rashes on my arms from throwing myself face down on the sand so damn many times, but positively bouncing with excitement for the next time I get to do it all. I'll keep you all posted on my gradual but inevitable evolution into a sexy bad-ass cavelady/ninja/traceuse!

Also you all really need to check out Colin's site. He has a whole lot to say about nearly everything, and almost all of it makes sense.

-N

Caught between "bwuh?" and "...ow."

2011-04-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

So new weirdest search query leading to my site.

Ready for it?

Ok.

"5 guys to bugger me."

Um.

Yeah.

Internet, you are crazy.

-N

EDIT: I forgot to say that it came via google.fr. Oh, you crazy French people.

WOD=Workout Of Death (plus a recipe!)

2011-04-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

So Joanne mentioned in a comment that she was under the impression that "WOD" stood for "Workout Of Death." I think that's actually amazingly apt, especially when applied to yesterday's ridiculousness.

Colin the Caveman Ninja led the workout, so we warmed up by crawling, obvs. Then there was about 15 minutes of "climbing onto and over things" which was mostly just muscle-up practice on the pull-up bars. The whole deal with swinging around and flipping over the bar and being approximately 25 feet above the ground does not agree with me, so I just watched this part. Crazy Tom is crazy amazing at these, by the way. Next time you see him in the gym, tell him I said to show off his mad skills!

So then we got down to the actual workout. Here it is, in all its lurid glory:

For time:

70 burpees
60 sit-ups
50 overhead kettlebell swings (35lb KB)
40 pull-ups
30 handstand push-ups

For the happily uninformed, these are burpees.

The first 10 passed fairly quickly. The second 10 weren't too bad either. I think it was somewhere around 40 that I started to significantly slow down (relative to myself, that is). I think that took a good third of my total time. I got a good pace going on the sit-ups, so they were actually a decent rest from the burpees. KB swings started out solid, but my shoulder started to bug me so I switched to one-armed face-height swings with a 30lb KB for the last 20 reps, all with my left arm. The last two movements were also scaled: instead of pull-ups, I did one-armed ring rows (got the right arm going just for balance on the last 10) and instead of HPSUs I did regular push-ups. And I was the slowest at 25:something. But I can crank out 30 push-ups with relatively little effort at the end of a crazy workout with a busted shoulder. So that means I'm awesome. :D

And here's the food!

mise en place ftw!

I used Coach Too-Cute-To-Hate's recipe for chicken faux mein, tweaking it a little because I'm just cool like that. I didn't measure out the chicken, just used what I had left over from the last one I roasted. I also didn't have fresh ginger or gluten-free soy sauce, so I subbed ginger powder and regular soy sauce, and I added the optional honey, so it wasn't really paleo. Also, 8 cloves of garlic is a hell of a lot for normal people. I used 4 large ones and it gave a nice kick, so I'm a little worried about how twice that amount would be. I added it in at the beginning, going along with the recipe, but I wish I'd stuck with my gut and waited til the end, as you're supposed to do with garlic. I did wait til the very end to add the green onions so they'd stay bright and delicious-looking, and it totally worked.

the delicious outcome

There was one major but very simple change I made to the recipe that turned it from delicious to your-head-asplode-with-delight*. And that was to stir in a spoonful of Sunbutter (sunflower seed butter, you could probably use another nut butter) directly before consuming. ZOMGUH. Try it, you guys. Especially those people who frequent Mike's mobility workouts. This will make all the pain go away.

-N

*yes, this is a reference to both Strongbad and Monty Python.

To everyone who commented on my last post (updated 3Apr11)

2011-03-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

via

You guys are amazing. Seriously. I was all like "blog blag blarg bleah" and you were like "no but yay, see?" And it helped a lot.

Phil: Thank you! It's especially nice to be told by someone I consider a total badass that we're in the same boat/tent/other containment device. If we're ever in the gym at the same time again, we need to have a WOD-off. I bet you I'll be slower than you. Loser (of the bet) buys the winner a burger at King's. Sound cool?

John: Thank you! You can emulate me any day :) And it really means a lot to be counted in that description, of "people who seemed to be having the most fun. The people who greeted me and the people who seemed get the most joy out of each WOD. Especially by those who seemed driven by love of exercise and not ego." Awesome. You always have the best things to say. And you are a total badass.

Emily: Thank you! That's so true about the quality of work being the most important - I need to remember that even though I might be slow, I look damn good. I'm talking about my form, of course. Also, Recovering-Fat-Kid powers, activate: form of a TOTAL BADASS! Also, those bacon-wrapped almond-stuffed dates on your blog look kind of amazing.

Maggie (who emailed me): Thank you! It's more myself and my silly thought process than "the CrossFit thing" that gets me down, but having wonderful people like you around to provide happy thoughts makes everything get whole lot better a whole lot faster. And you are the baddest of all the asses because you are my seester and I love you.

Amy: If you suddenly appeared in my living room right after I read your comment, I would go in for a full-contact body-check-esque high five that would then turn into a hug. Thank you! You are an amazing athlete (without any quotation marks at all because it's TRUE, so fucking ACCEPT it already) and a total badass, and any admiration you have for me is returned tenfold.

Lindsay: I think all the self-proclaimed slowpokes need to have a WOD-off for reverse time. For serious. And then Dave can do a feature on the winner, something like "I'm the slowest person at CFD and I can still (deadlift 300 lbs/throw a 20lb wallball over the wall/scare small children with my shoes/blah de blah)." Eh? Eh? Anyways, thank you! I don't see you in the gym nearly as often as I'd like to, because you're kind of awesome (and also a total badass). Also, I have no idea why you weren't in my bloglist before. That has been remedied.

Joanne: You know, "Workout Of Death" is actually a MUCH better way of putting it. I like your style. And also, aw shucks I ain't all that *shuffles feet*...but thank you :) As for being 30 minutes behind everyone else...I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you're probably much more of a total badass than you think. I know that was true for me. And if you're ever down in NC, give me a holler and I'll give you a chance to realise that!

You guys make me smile like crazy. Thank you all :)

-Nelly

Last

2011-03-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

So I've noticed an interesting phenomenon lately.

That is, I've noticed it lately, and realised that it's been in effect for quite a while now.

Here's the deal:

I go to Crossfit. I get suited up in my toe shoes and my gi pants. I sip some water and fill up my bottle for easy access during the workout. Maybe I eat an egg. Stretch. Squat. Sprint. Push ups, downward dog, Sampson stretch, and so on and so forth.

Time for heavy lifting. Awesome! Usually I feel like a total beast at this point. Grr, arg, hooah, etc etc.

Time for the WOD. (Workout Of (the) Day, for the non-insane people). Get out the boxes and rowers if the CrossFit gods are pleased with me; get out the jump ropes and wall balls if they are wrathful. Must remember to get a fatter calf next time.

Start the WOD.

Breathe. Pace. Don't smash yourself in the mouth with the barbell like you did yesterday. Avoid the nose as well. Keep shoulders firmly in joints. Breathe. Don't double over. Ignore the cramps. Don't you dare double over. It's just 15 minutes/4 rounds/whatever it is today, significantly shorter than forever. You can do that much without dying. Or puking. Or crying. Keep going. Breathe.

"You can do it, Nelly!"

Wait. That wasn't my mind.

I'm just last again. Everyone else has already finished and is sitting and resting and cheering me on.

Here's where I get torn. On the one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled to be counted among a group of people who care enough to cheer and yell and keep me going until I finish, even though they have no particular personal interest in my times and PRs. On the other hand...I'm last. Again. Even though I pace myself. Even if I scale the movements down. Even back in my bootcamper days. Even when I rejoin the bootcamp now, for old times' sake. Literally, almost every single time.

Merh. Arglebargle. Fuck.

I can lift heavy (210 lb deadlift, at last count). I can jump high (30 inch vertical). I can run fast (in brief spurts). But throw anything resembling an endurance-style, just-keep-going workout at me and I turn into Jabba the Goddamn Hutt. Never mind the fact that I've been doing this for over two years, not once missing a bootcamp session or more than a week of regular WODs.

It irks me.

That's all.

< /wordvomit >

-Nelly

I knew this would happen eventually

2011-03-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

Some wonderful person has finally combined my two loves of CrossFit and window (browser window...) shopping for clothes I'll probably never buy to create this amazing blog:

The 11th CrossFit Skill: Coordinating Outfits For Time

Every day, a new workout outfit. Simple as that. But they're pretty! Sometimes they have themes...

via

...or ridiculous/amazing/ridiculously amazing shirts...

the hoodie shows a woman lifting a barbell over her head while riding a unicorn. via

it's a unicorn puking rainbows! via

the front of the shirt says "shut up!" via

...and sometimes they're just badass as all hell, while still being undeniably feminine.

the back of the shirt says "trained hard." via

Of course it's geared towards XFitters, which means a lot of the outfits feature knee socks (where did we get that fad from???), but that doesn't make them any less wearable for people who are not crazy. And there are links provided with each entry for every item featured! Love it. Check them out! Now!

Also, I really, really want this shirt.

via

-N

Money Monday 21/3

2011-03-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

Wow, haven't touched this tag in a while. Before we blow the dust from it all over the place, here's some food:

Two eggs and two tomatoes, all fried in bacon grease that I've started saving. Avocado for some more fat. Mmmm, fat. Part of a grapefruit the size of my head. And coffee. Nom.

This week's questions (original post here):

1. The most I've spent this last week was on PAYING OFF MY STUDENT LOAN IN FULL! Yes I know. I am just that awesome. That's an extra $150/mo I have to play with now, and I'm probably going to put it towards rent. Yep, I'm looking for a new place. Anyone know of a cheap-but-not-crappy 1BR/1BA in a safe neighborhood somewhere around downtown Durham? Let me know. Hardwood floors and fireplaces droolworthy but not necessary.

2. Today I feel slightly abashed towards money. I've been sadly neglecting my budget plans and my ledger for a month or so now, and while it was nice to just have fun without obsessing too much (among others, by taking off for the Outer Banks for a few days), it's time to kick it back into high gear. I'm thinking about enacting an envelope system for the paying of bills and such, but I'm torn. On the one hand, it's nice to literally see exactly where all your money is going; on the other, I'd like to set it up so I can pay my bills and rent online. And even with checks, the money would still have to be in my account, not an envelope. So maybe just sticking with virtual budgets for bills and rent, and doing the envelope shuffle for variables like food and gas (hopefully going to go down soon!)? We'll see. Any tips?

3. Money can't buy happiness. One free thing I did last week was to go on a riverwalk! For the uninformed, this is when you go to a river, normally one in a wilderness park with a hiking trail next to it, and then ignore the trail and just walk in the river. It was a gorgeous warm day but the water was freezing! Still amazing, even when it got up to my armpits. I think I scared some hikers with my squawking.

4. I will consider this week a success if I stop slouching! My back hurts like a mofo. Also, total paleo at least 5 days. I've been lax lately and I'm noticing the results.

5. I am thankful for this boy right here:

-N

Back from heaven, again

2011-03-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

Heaven can be, and certainly has been for me, a lot of different places. Some of the memorable ones don't seem overly special at all - a porch flooded with morning sun but warmed mostly by coffee and conversation; the soft grass under a tree and the stars on a warm summer night; the couch beside a blazing Christmas tree, the only light in the house. And now I get to add another one to my list. I'll let The Man present it to you, because he does it so very well:

tada!

We went to the Outer Banks! He and a friend took a Spring Break road trip from Ohio down to Georgia for a few days to see the sights and chill with his family there, then they hopped over to my place for the rest of the time. Now, I don't know if you know this, but if you are ever in North Carolina with a car and some spare time, you must see the Outer Banks. Seriously. It's written into our state constitution.

They got in late on Tuesday night. I don't think I slept a wink the night before, and the day was spent in rushing around trying to get everything ready for the visit. I told them (two over-6-foot black men with big appetites) that I'd have dinner waiting when they got there, and decided on roasted chicken and vegetables. Apparently there's some kind of private joke about black people loving chicken; I had no idea of this. But it was the first tome I'd ever cooked meat for The Man (last time I saw him, at Thanksgiving, I was still pescetarian!), so I wanted to do it right, and not to brag or anything but I am kind of the queen at roasting chickens.

I was so excited I forgot to take any pictures of this, but you guys have to try it! Joanne, I'm looking at you here. Followed this recipe from the indefatigable Mark Sisson, and holy gods is it ever worth the trouble. The secret is in smothering the bird with herbed butter - it's spectacular. The men got in just as everything was finishing up, so I turned off the heat, ran outside and performed my signature greeting-the-boyf move (I call it the run-and-jump; from his perspective it's probably the grab-and-spin. yes, so stereotypical rom-com, I know), then herded them inside to nom on delicious tender thyme-flavored bird and wash it down with this amazing $3 wine I found at WF. And there's another piece of heaven you guys need to visit as often as possible - homemade food and cheap wine consumed at the kitchen table around 10:30 pm, with good friends and plenty of laughter :)

So the next day, we went grocery shopping to stock up for the trip, then hit the road. Our friend Ellison had never been to NC before, so we stopped along the way to check out Duke Gardens and Duke Chapel, some more must-sees if you're ever in Durham. And then it was off to the coast, stopping only once to briefly stretch our legs. My baby Lucille is good for a lot of things, but I have to admit that she isn't big on leg room if the passengers are over 6 feet tall. We finally got to the motor lodge where we'd reserved a room, but the office was closed and we had to call the owner several times before she finally picked up - a bit of an annoyance, as it was cold and crazy windy, but she'd just gotten a new cell phone with an unfamiliar ring and literally ran from her house to the inn office to let us in! AND, on top of that, when we discovered that our room hadn't been cleaned from the previous guests, we got upgraded at no charge to one of the best rooms on the lot: oceanfront, with two queen beds and a full kitchenette.

And then, for the next day and a half, it was pure bliss. It was too cold (and part of the time, even stormy) to go swimming, but there were long walks on the beach and romantic dinners and an omelette-off between The Man and me (I won, hands down :D) and more cheap wine and LOTS more laughs. And there was the best way of all to hear "I love you:" first thing in the morning, with the sky barely beginning to glow and the sound of the surf in the distance, and the softest kiss on your forehead. (Whether or not this was to avoid morning dragon breath, I will not speculate).

the only full day we had there it was stormy and freezing

The day we left, it was brilliantly sunny and we had a ton of fun playing with the waves. I was behind the camera most of the time, so here are some shots of the boys having fun:

chillin like they do

uh-oh...

run!

runnnn!

I am not ashamed to admit that my photo-taking style depended heavily on lining them up to pose, then waiting til the waves were just about to hit them before snapping the pic.

Hey, if it gets me great shots like this, then I say it works :)

Bottom line? You've heard that quote about how "hell is other people," I'm sure. Well, as it turns out, the reverse is just as true.

-N

Laundry day conversation

2011-03-08T05:34:00.000-08:00

You know the day I mean. You look into your closet or dresser, pull out the very last outfit you can possibly put together without resorting to knee socks and cocktail dresses, and think "Yep." Then you suit up as quickly as possible and tiptoe out of the room, trying to avoid eye contact with the teetering mountain of fabric as it sits there, looming at you.

In my case, the laundry-day outfit usually isn't too crazy. I have a ton of old tee-shirts from high school and college - for plays I've been in, concerts I went to, the sorority I was in for about a week, etc. - but the lower half is slightly more difficult to clothe. My thighs have this awesome power to eventually shred the inner thighs of every single pair of jeans I've ever owned. I've got about four pairs of these sad sacks - they're actually starting to look more like chaps than jeans, except the ass isn't worn off (yet) - in my dresser, dreaming of the day when I will be handy enough with needle and thread to fix them up. For now, I mostly just wear them anyways and keep my knees together.

Today, however, I'm going to my chiropractor. Something tells me he wouldn't be amused if he got me all twisted up, trying to snap whichever part of my body defies me today into place, and suddenly my pants decided to finally give out all together. Well, at least I hope "amusement" wouldn't be on the list of emotions.

But anyways. I reached for a pair of pants that are still somehow intact, but which I almost never wear anymore, because they fit so oddly. They're trouser pants in this really thin, kinda stretchy pinstripe material, and they're almost tight on my quads but really loose everywhere else. As in, I don't have to unzip or unbutton them to put them on. So they just look weird. But they cover the naughty bits, so they'll have to do.

So I wandered down to the kitchen, grabbed a frying pan and started chatting with Amam as it heated up. I looked down at my pants. "You know," I said, "these pants used to be my skin-tight go-clubbing-in pants." No really, it's true! I can't even picture how that worked now, but I used to only be able to button them without discomfort on a "skinny" day.

She nodded. "You've made a lot of strides!"

I smiled a self-satisfactory little smile, confident in the fact that damn, that is true. I gloated for a moment, but only in the cute way. And then I thought...

"I think the biggest stride I've made is the fact that my "weight goal" is now something that I want to LIFT, as opposed to something I want to BE."

I think I amazed myself a little bit with that statement - I've been pondering on it ever since. That difference - the complete 180 mindset shift - really is the biggest and most wonderful change I could have hoped for, in this entire quest for health I've been on for gods know how long. Of course I'm not immune to the bad-body-image demons - there are days when I entertain thoughts of going on a crash diet and losing the few bits of pudge that still drive me crazy...but then I go to CrossFit, and remember how important and awesome it is to fuel yourself with clean, delicious food. The more I take the time to fuel myself correctly, the better I feel, the more I can lift and do, and the stronger I am. And I LOVE that.

And then I ate three eggs cooked in butter for breakfast. True story.

Lurkers: Tell me something you love about yourself.

-Nelly

What's for breakfast? PALEO SEX MUFFINS (recipe!)

2011-03-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

Do you read Finn's blog? If not, you should. Like right now. He has no hair, he swears more than I do and he is infinitely sexable. And he made a muffin recipe just for me, because he's awesome. Here it is!

Ingredients:

1 cup coconut flour
1 cup almond flour
1 tsp each ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, honey and baking powder
2 eggs
about 1 to 1.5 cups of Medjool dates, de-stoned

I ground my own flour for these. It's super simple - I have a heavy-duty spice/coffee grinder that I use solely to grind nut flours and the like. Just fill it up (not too full), pulse til the desired fineness is reached, dump out and repeat.

Sift all the dry ingredients together. This part is mostly to get the baking powder completely mixed in. Near the end, there were a bunch of gritty almond pieces that wouldn't go through the sifter, so I just dumped them on in for more texture.

Whisk the eggs and honey together. This might be difficult. Just do what you can. I didn't have acacia honey, so I used good ol' Blue Ridge Parkway deliciousness.

yay!

Dump the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix together until everything has the same consistency. Then add the dates and mix until they're thoroughly combined. Using your hands is best here, really. It's a little messy, but it works.

Grease a muffin tin (I used coconut oil) and go to town. These don't rise too much, so make them as big as you want them to end up.

At this point, if you are reading Finn's recipe too, remember that he uses Celsius. It would take a really, really long time to bake these to doneness at 180 Fahrenheit, as I realised after about 10 minutes. The proper temperature here is about 325-350 for 15ish minutes, baked in the lower-to-middle section of the oven so the tops don't scorch. Keep an eye on them, changing the time and temperature as you see fit.

Enjoy!

-Nelly

Six inches can seem like a lot more than it is

2011-02-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

...and I'm not even referring to the naughty context!

Finally, a CrossFit Update! I've been out of the gym with the flu of death for the last week and a half, so it was awesome to get back into the swing of things. Here's what I've been doing:

Tuesday

Strength

50 strict GHD machine back/hip extensions (the third move shown in this video. Turn your sound down before you hit the link; it's got loud screamy music). These kind of terrify me - as does anything where I'm in an upside-down-ish position - especially as the machine has the tendency to wobble a lot. Coach Peter Parker (aka Rich) helped out by holding my ankles while I did the move. Don't laugh. It helped a lot. Thanks, Rich :)

WOD: Birthday WOD for Coach Too-Cute-To-Hate (aka Mike). Yay!
AMRAP for 9 minutes:

9 deadlifts
6 squat cleans
3 jerks (I did split jerks for the first round and then push jerks)

Got 5 full rounds and 5 more deadlifts out of that, with 65lbs on the bar. Then, after 3 minutes rest:

AMRAP burpees for 3 minutes. I totally lost count here and have no idea what I did.

The "six inches" thing comes into play here: for each burpee, we had to jump at least 6 inches high. After a dozen of these, you kinda start to feel it.

Wednesday

Strength: 20ish minutes of L-sit progressions/practice. I can only get about 10 seconds, but it's pretty solid.

WOD: freaking insane, and I kind of sucked at it.
4 rounds for time of:

500m row
3 rounds of "Cindy:" 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats

So for every round there's a total of 500m row, 15 pull-ups, 30 push-ups and 45 air squats. Monster bitch. I had to sub out one-handed KB snatches for push-ups on the last round because my shoulder slipped, but other than that it was straight. Took me 40:33, which is kind of ew. Better next time!

Thursday (today!)

Endurance WOD

Allison actually had us do barre exercises (sans barre; just held the wall). Hold the leg for 10 seconds at waist height, followed by 10 grand battements (controlled straight-leg kicks to waist height or higher), doing each leg to the front, back and side. We repeated the whole deal 3 times, although I only did it twice because I came in late.
Rowing, rowing, rowing. 12 rounds of 1 minute on, 30 seconds rest, pacing to keep the speed as steady as possible all the way through. I started out at a pace of 2:00/500m and kept pretty closely to that to the end.

Strength

Warm-up: used a PVC pipe for shoulder pass-throughs and around-the-worlds, then worked on snatch progressions for about 10 minutes
5 sets of 5 snatches, as heavy as possible. This is the hardest of the lifting moves for me because it's incredibly technical: you have to think about your feet coming out (but not too much) and your knees staying in and your hips being extended and your elbows coming up and about 50 other things all at once. I'm starting to get a bit of a flow, though...and I no longer fall down EVERY time. Made it with 33lbs for the first two sets, followed by 43, 53 and 63, which is a PR :D

WOD:

Tabata sledgehammer swings, 20 seconds on/10 seconds off for 4 minutes. My official score (lowest number of reps in any round) was 11; got up to 14 on a couple though.

Tomorrow we're doing deadlifts. I'm ridiculously excited.

I also found out tonight that Coach Peter Parker has a motorcycle. I seriously had no idea until I saw him all suited up and carrying his helmet. He's all cool now! You're a lucky lady, Bea ;)

-Nelly

Beautiful

2011-02-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

Good food is just gorgeous. All these pictures were taken sporadically, and each time I was just struck by how positively artful real, natural food is. Not even artful - it is art! Take a look:

Plain omelette with the most perfect yellow bell pepper strips and brussel sprouts, roasted and then tossed around in a hot pan for a minute. The darkest, sweetest cherries.

My lunch right now: red cabbage, brussel sprouts and onion, roasted til fragrant and flaky. Just look at that cabbage! It's like a gem!

Photographic evidence of the best chicken soup ever, for the nonbelievers. The stock turned out so rich that I cut it about half-and-half with water to make this, and it was still exploding with flavor.

Disclaimer: I use a free photo-editing program called PicSay (link is to the "pro," paid version) on pictures taken with the coolest phone in the world. All I do is heighten the saturation just a little, until the picture on the screen more closely matches what I see. Still learning how to use it but I think I do ok for now.

What is your favorite-looking food?

-Nelly

Vicious cycle

2011-02-17T19:07:00.000-08:00

So last time I posted in any real length, I had just finished my first Whole30, and was absolutely thrilled with the results - significantly increased energy, mental acuity, the avoidance (for the most part) of SAD and trichotillomania, general feelings of health and vitality and of course the slightly-more-visible abs in the mirror. I considered it a huge accomplishment and was immensely proud of myself. And, as a reward for "being good," I was going to stop "denying myself" all those treats I'd been avoiding.

Yes. I would reward myself. With food. (But in moderation, of course.)

Well...it just didn't work. It never has. And I'm ashamed at how many times I've performed that same routine, thinking that it would turn out better this time. Because at the very core of how I want to view food is the complete avoidance of seeing certain foods, especially ones that I know are bad for me, as "rewards," and seeing good, healthy, clean eating that makes my body work like it's supposed to as some incredibly tough act that I have to cajole myself into doing, and then praise and treat myself like there's no tomorrow when I actually do it.

But every time I do feel accomplished enough to treat myself and ease off slightly from strictly clean eating, that treat inevitably leads to a backslide. At first I am the very soul of moderation: just a dash of cream in my coffee on one day, then a square of dark chocolate another, then a glass of wine a few days later. And then my brain starts to warp, and I think, if I can handle this much "bad food" and still feel pretty good, what's wrong with a little more hedonism? I start to have sugar in my coffee a little more often, or duck in the back at work for a handful of chocolate chips just because I'm stressed and annoyed, or steal a few handfuls of my employee's fries even though I know there's delicious healthy food waiting for me at the house. Meals start being based around cheese and fruit (and chocolate) instead of meat or eggs and veggies. I start to feel worse and I have less energy, meaning I'm more likely to skip workouts, meaning I'm more likely to feel even crappier. My sleep and mood start to suffer. And then it all just goes to hell, by which I mean the breakfast of nothing but 6 cups of fully-caffeinated coffee with cream that made me (and my poor bowels) realise that it's high time to clean up the act.

I have to stop seeing clean eating as a finite act. If it's just a "bout" that I go through, whether it's for 30 days or a year, it ends up culminating in one brief shining moment of glorious accomplishment, followed by far too long a period of doing the one thing I should NOT do when it comes to eating, which is eating crap that I know will make me feel bad for no other reason than it tastes good right now and I feel like I earned the right to reward myself.

...wait. You know what this makes me think of?

There is no occasion whatsoever where a Bill Cosby quote (or even a full routine) is not totally apt.

But anyways. My biggest issue here is learning to see clean eating as not just something that I have to complete. It should be the means to an end: I should eat well so I AM well (and fit and happy), plain and simple. Is there room in that scheme for cookies and wine? Absolutely, as long as it's based on an event or something I'm sharing with a friend, and never just because I want to, or think I deserve it.

I'm gonna wrap this up here. I've got some other stuff (in particular, this photo-dieting fad and what I think of it) to talk about, but I think this is enough for now.

In other news, I made chicken soup from complete scratch this morning, with my own homemade stock, and I bet it was even better than Colin's. So there!

-Nelly

Super-quick update

2011-02-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

So at today's WOD (which was aMAZing, sledgehammer swings are the best!), we worked on deadlifts for the strength portion, figuring out a new 1-rep max. If you guys remember, my last 1RM was 185 and I was very very proud of it. Also, I made it one of my 101 in 1001 goals to lift over 210, which is about 1.5 times my bodyweight (as far as I can guess; haven't weighed myself in almost two months now!).

Welllll...considering the fact that 1001 days is several years, I ~~may have~~ definitely did severely underestimate myself. My final lift today was 210. Next goal? Break 300. Hopefully that'll keep me working for slightly longer. Maybe. :D

-N

I finished Whole30! Here's some stuff I learned

2011-02-01T14:50:00.000-08:00


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I did it, you guys! I went an entire solid month (barring one insanely small piece of eggnog fudge) with

no sugar
no grains
no dairy
no alcohol
no processed foods
no legumes

Check out the site if you want to read about the whole dealio.

Not gonna lie, this was hard, especially at first. Going cold turkey on anything is never fun, whether or not it comes with actual physical withdrawal symptoms. But honestly, it's a hell of a lot easier to practice total abstinence than to exercise truly sensible moderation - and if it's something you need to completely quit, doing it all in one fell swoop really is the way to go. (Case in point: if you have trichotillomania, shave your head.)

But once you get past the "paleo flu" period caused by your body relearning how to burn fat for fuel instead of carbs, and recovering from the hangover caused by all the crap you were eating before...it starts to work. Really. I promise. All that stuff about the endless stores of energy you get, able to go for days at a time? Well, it's not true 100% of the time, obvs. You need sleep too, and as a very wise young woman told me recently, "everyone has off days."

Overall, however - and forgive me if I start to wax poetic here - life just seems a little bit fuller. I'm not sluggish, dragged down by all the crap and fake food in my system. I'm more awake, more alert, and because of that I'm more alive. I feel like I am experiencing life more richly - not just from the weird (but cool) increase in my senses of taste and smell, but in general, life just seems...more. I wouldn't make such a big deal of this, except for the fact that it's winter, and I have SAD, and it's barely shown up at ALL. That's ENORMOUS.

But on to the lessons!

Having absolutely no recourse for "cheating" kinda sucks.
I can't even count the number of times I wished, really really hard, for just a tiny nibble or drop of something - chocolate, a couple french fries, a tablespoon of cream in my coffee - that was disallowed while on Whole30.

Having absolutely no recourse for "cheating" is awesome.
Whole30 is a built-in excuse, for both yourself and everyone else. My wonderful employees are being incredibly sweet when they offer me a slice of pizza or a cookie. They really are doing it to be nice. But it's bad for me and I should not eat it, period. And it's a lot easier to say no when I've got a solid reason to point to: "sorry, absolutely none of that right now!" It's harder to make excuses now.

Fat is delicious.
It's recommended, on the meal plan, that you have 1-2 thumb-sized servings of two different kinds of approved fats per meal. That's a LOT. And I LOVE it. Sometimes if whatever I'd cooked for the main portion didn't require cooking grease (yay, nonstick skillets!), I'd just scoop some coconut oil out of the jar with a spoon. Yes. I literally eat pure fat with a spoon on a regular basis. And I am healthier now that I have EVER been.

Meat is delicious.
All those times through the years (more than a decade!) that I was vegetarian that meat-eaters would say "you don't know what you're missing" to me and I'd get incredibly annoyed? They were actually right. Tofurkey, not dogs and fakin' bacon just don't compare.

Chocolate is still delicious, but...So the day after my Whole30 ended, I went into work. I opened the store, did all the prep and then had some time to burn. So I made myself a pot of coffee and sat down with a steaming cuppa...and a big ol' lump of chocolate chip cookie dough. And I ate it all. And it tasted good. Not great, but good. I don't know why I was so wild about it before, but I suspect I was putting a lot of mental energy into believing in the magical healing powers of sugar and cocoa. Now? Unless it's absolutely spectacular 85% dark mixed by gnomes in a volcanic laboratory, I'll have a Larabar, thanks.

Black coffee is delicious, as long as it's good coffee.
A lot of the time, putting cream and sugar in your coffee is done to mask the actual taste of coffee. With a light hand, it can accentuate it instead, but if you get high-quality coffee and brew it to the right strength for your tastes, you really shouldn't need that much. Also, coconut cream in french vanilla coffee is a thing of pure beauty.

Mere words cannot fully convey the intensity of my passionate love affair with all things coconut.Are there any makers of coconut products out there reading this? If you send me free samples I will extoll the virtues of your company from the highest peak with golden trumpets and cherubim. From a totally unbiased and discerning viewpoint, of course.

I don't know how much I weigh, and I really don't care.
One of the important parts of Whole30 is that you don't weigh yourself at all while doing it. That wasn't a huge deal for me - I've never been obsessive about weighing, but I had got semi-used to checking where I was at my weekly support group meetings, and kind of liked having that benchmark. Then again, there were some weeks that I'd get more than a little upset because of the number on the scale (just ask The Man, he had to be on the receiving end of all my teary, disgustingly needy "do you still think I'm pretty because I gained two pounds?" phone calls). And let's just not get into the ugly kettle of fish that is denying myself water after more than one hard workout because I knew was going to get weighed in and didn't want the extra pounds. I know, I can be incredibly stupid sometimes.

So at first, when I started seeing visible differences in my body, I was all excited about how my weight was going to be omgsomuchlower! when I finally checked it again after the month was up. But then I thought about it more. Honestly, what's the use? Other than to have a number to use when figuring out other information, like my body fat percentage or comparing my deadlift to my bodyweight (almost at 1.5x!), there's no good reason to weigh myself on a regular basis (by which I mean more than once or twice a year), and no information about my health I can't get from just looking at my body: how it feels and moves; how it fits into my clothes.

IT WORKS.

It really, really does.

-Nelly

...and then a WIN

2011-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

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So the last time I attempted to find my max weight for the back squat, we were doing the CrossFit Total workout. It's entirely lifting: overhead press, back squat and deadlift, as heavy on each as you can go. I got a solid 165 for the back squat that day (also when I hit my standing deadlift max of 185), but when I tried to go higher (I can't remember if I tried for 170 or 175), I slipped at the bottom of the squat and rolled the bar down my back, leaving some very pretty bruises all the way down my spine. Not so much the fun times.

Today, however, was much better. Warmed up with a 45-lb bar, then did 3 reps each of 85, 100, 115 and 130, followed by 1 rep each of 145, 152.5, 160 and then attempts at a new 1-rep max. . For this move (as with all squats), it's super important to go below parallel - that is, your hips need to be below your knees - at the bottom, so your glutes engage and take the strain off your quads and knees. I was sharing a rack with Katja i.e. Awesome Tall Yoga Lady, and something we both noticed was that the higher the weight, the easier it was to get lower (duh, I know) but the less it felt like you were going so low. I started to worry that I really wasn't going low enough on the heavy lifts, but Dave said it looked just fine, so I tried not to worry or force it too much.

So 160 seemed heavy, but not too heavy. Katja and I both hit 165, my previous max, without too much grunting, so we moved it up to 170 and stuck that one just fine too, which is her new 1RM, so yay Katja!. We were running out of time, so I tried once more for 175 and...made the hell out of it :D I'm even sure I could have done a little heavier!

I can lift things that weigh considerably more than I do.

I just love saying that.

:D

-Nelly

FAIL

2011-01-26T05:03:00.000-08:00

Crossfit killed me last night.

All said, it wasn't an insanely difficult workout. There was 15ish minutes of freestanding handstand practice for which I helped spot; anything more than a very slow and controlled tuck into a headstand, by the wall, with my eyes screwed as tightly shut as I can get them tends to evoke primal fear and the feeling of imminent death. But I'm good at spotting them! And the ladies I was teamed with (not sure of their names) were great at actually doing them, so that all worked out.

Then, the WOD was as follows:

500m row
20 burpees
15 bent-over rows with 25-lb kettlebells in each hand

5 rounds for time. This shouldn't have been that hard. Pace yourself on the rows and take the burpees 5 or so at a time and you're golden. But...I couldn't.

I noticed it pretty quickly. After the first round of rowing and about 10 burpees, I already felt completely sapped. I kept going for as long as I could, but eventually gave up after only 4 rounds...which took me 30:55 (including several minutes in child's pose thinking about how I might be able to blend into the floor mats long enough to sneak out the door). That's ridiculous and pitiful and I'm more than a little annoyed with myself.

It's not that I felt overly exhausted, or sick, or anything like that. My muscles didn't hurt, they just felt incredibly weak - like they were constantly on the point of failing me all together, leaving me to collapse. And my body - and my muscles in general - are one of the very few things in my life that I feel like I do have control of. I can't get back the years I lost to being stupid in college, without which I'd have had my degree years ago. I can't, with my current job, make enough to support myself without working over 50 hours a week (I did the math). I can't snap my fingers and have The Man's family financially set and stable enough for him to be free to move to NC, so we can actually be a real, geographically-together couple after almost two and a half years of being 600 miles apart. But I can (or should be able to) master my own body enough to make it get through a tough-but-not-impossible workout that really shouldn't have taken longer than 20-25 minutes, tops.

Blarg.

But now I'm gonna eat this poached egg, put on a shirt and my game face, get back in there and do better. Because sometimes that's the only thing you can do. And poached eggs are delicious.


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-Nelly

PS: I did in fact do a whole lot better at today's workout: very solid on the presses, focusing on form, with 70lbs as the max weight for today, and then finished the WOD (3 rounds of 10 deadlifts with 115 lbs (which should have been 135 at least) and 150 single-under jump-ropes) in 7:51. Not bad.

Eleven Things I Can't Wait To Consume Once I Finish Whole30

2011-01-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

So I have one more week to go before January is over, along with my first attempt at the Whole30. Overall, I'm really happy with it. Yes, it absolutely feels restrictive sometimes, and it's really not that fun going through the Lady Times of Grr and Arg without any chocolate whatsoever. But I feel...good. Really good. Lighter, somehow. Slightly more awake, even with the simultaneous effort to switch to decaf. And it's not my imagination anymore, my tummy is definitely flatter and there is significantly less fluff between my skin and actual muscle.

Speaking of fluff, I tested my body fat the other day with a hand-held gadget thing of my mom's. I had to guess at my weight, as I'm not weighing myself till February either, but I think I guessed pretty well. The result was 20.0% body fat, which (according to the Internet, bringer of all truth and light) is on the low side (21%-30% recommended) for a "normal" healthy woman, and on the high side (10%-20%) for an "athletic" healthy woman. Which is about what I'd expect. I still want to get it tested professionally, but this is a fine benchmark to start from. It's also the first item on my 101 in 1001 list that I can consider kinda-sorta-halfway done! Go me!

But even with all the awesomeness that Whole30 is, there are still definitely some foods I dream about. Here's the short list, with only the ones that actually make me salivate when I think about them:

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1. Turkish coffee. Equal parts ground coffee and sugar; one tablespoon of each per cup of water, which makes two servings. Bring to a rolling boil in a very small saucepan, then lift the pan off the stove so the boiling stops; repeat this twice more. Pour into espresso cups, leaving behind as much of the dregs as possible. Best when combined with animated discussion about art, philosophy or politics.

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2. Heavy cream. Raw, pastured heaven. Either dribbled into the above or just sipped on its own. Also, a big ol' glass of plain whole milk that I will chug like there's no tomorrow.

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3. Miso soup. Nothing but miso, water, vinegar and a minced chive or two.

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4. Nanny's zucchini bread. Recipe to follow as soon as I make it!

these were disappearing like crazy until I wrote that

5. The chocolate-covered cherries that The Man sent me for Christmas, which didn't make it here until right after I started Whole30 and have been sitting in the cupboard crying out to me ever since. Yeah.

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6. Halava. Pudding-style dessert made from shredded carrots cooked for a long time with honey, cream, butter, raisins, nuts and cardamom.

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7. Greek yoghurt. With or without vanilla and a little honey.

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8. Squash soup made with cream. It's the bestest!

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9. Cheese. Brie with almond crackers, crumbled Bleu mixed into salad dressing, Vermont cheddar or Gruyere melted into soup, Wensleydale with cranberries all by itself...

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10. BOOZE. Thick, malty beer with a head that takes up half the glass. Woodchuck's holy-mother-of-god-wonderful pear cider. Irish coffee (with whipped cream, of course!). Hot cocoa with a shot of raspberry vodka. Steaming cinnamon tea with honey and peach brandy. A big healthy glug or two of red wine poured into beef stew, and also in a glass when I eat the stew, and also out of the bottle while I am cooking the stew.

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11. Fresh french fries from the fast food dive next door to my store, dipped in so-many-preservatives-it'll-outlast-the-cockroaches honey mustard dressing. It's so, so gross and bad and unhealthy, and I love it.

Which is your favorite? Think I left something out? Let me know!

-Nelly

Another reason I love CrossFit

2011-01-22T04:33:00.000-08:00

They are so awesome they give me a WOD for my birthday!


I AM SO HAPPY

^^This was my face when I saw the post. Before coffee. That's how cool it is.

Here is the link! Go check it out!

Also, just because I thought it was awesome and I doubt Dave will include it, my idea for the warm-up was for everyone to do 5 minutes of double-under jump-ropes (which are basically self-flagellation for me) and then anyone who didn't trip on the rope and lash themself painfully at least twice would have to do 20 burpees. I thought it was apt. Muahahahaha :D

-Nelly

CrossFit questions

2011-01-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

And then, if the "problem" happens to be CrossFit, the second step seems to be buying shoes of questionable aesthetic appeal that come in many bright colors. Cases in point, the Inov-8 shoes I'm seeing on everyone and their grandmother in the gym right now, as well as the already classic Vibram Five Fingers (the name of which, my sister thinks, sounds like it should belong to a product of slightly more personal use).

Note that I haven't actually bought a pair of either yet, I'm just lusting after them like yeah whoa. Just something to go on the list of what to do with my tax refund...

But I digress.

I'm addicted, you guys. I've swallowed the red pill; I've downed every last drop of the kool-aid (can you even make paleo kool-aid?). I may have constant bruises and torn hands and even red, swollen whip marks from those damn double-under jump-ropes, but it's absolutely worth it to be able to do something that is slowly (but faster than I realise it) and surely turning me into a totally bad-ass goddess of CrazySexyFitness.

The question is, where do I go with it?

Part of that question is for you guys. I know that not everyone who reads this blog is as head-over-heels gone as I am for CF, or has even tried it yet. I'm assuming that the regular CFers would be at least marginally interested in me posting my stats for WODs and lifting, but what about the rest of you? Would you prefer that I keep it in a different section or page, or just update once in a while? I've also been toying with the idea of adding videos/pics of myself and other CFDurhamites (if they want) working out. What do you think? Let me know!

The other part of that question is a deeper and much more personal one. As it stands, being fit and healthy is currently an almost entirely personal pursuit of mine, and the day job revolves around...well, to be honest, pretty unhealthy food. It's started to nag at me rather a lot lately - I put so much emphasis on having the best health I can for myself, but my livelihood still consists of literally feeding people stuff that I won't even eat. Now, don't get me wrong - I love working there, but it's mainly because of the people I work with. The more I learn about true health and the more I apply that to my own life, the more it bothers me that I'm supporting myself by doing exactly the opposite for other people - it's kind of a "sleeping with the enemy" thing, only I get paid for it. Which makes me a...well, you know.

So many things to ponder. For now, what do you think? I'd love to hear what you'd like to see on this blog, any ideas you have for what I should do with my life, what you had for lunch today, how much you are loving your new baby puppy (Haleigh, I'm totally calling you out here!) and anything else you feel like commenting on.

-Nelly

Eleven Things I Am Wishing For Right Now

2011-01-16T18:20:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy bi-OH MY GOD I'M A QUARTER-CENTURY OLD! Wow. That's just craziness.

It's gonna be a pretty quiet day this time around. The Man and I both woke up early to make our coffee and whisper sweet nothings to each other while watching the sun rise, which was pretty amazing. Let's hope that next year we won't have to do it over the phone! The 'rents also slipped me a nice wad of cash, along with a gift certificate for a haircut. Gentle hint much? (I kid; it's for a super nice salon downtown and I did express interest in exactly this). Thank you, 'rents!

Here's my birthday breakfast: eggs, brussel sprouts, half a baby apple, macadamia nuts (these things are seriously amazing) and coffee with coconut. And the funnies. Couldn't get much better.

However, if it could get better, these are the things that would make it so.

1. A Cuisinart! Yes, I'm pretty good at the chopping and dicing and all that (being literally a pro), but it gets tiring. And you try making macadamia nut butter by hand!

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2. A Handful bra. I'm not even sure it would contain my mammaries of insanity, but they are just so cute! They don't make them in bright blue, so I'd have to go with the pink.

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3. Closet space. Just look at these. UNF. LUST. Someday...

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4. This house.

5. Or this one. I'm not terribly picky.

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6. A backyard flock of chickens!

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7. An all-expenses-paid (including lost income, babysitters, maids, etc) trip for The Man and myself to rural Italy to live on an old but well-established farmstead ~~for a month~~ screw that, if I'm just wishing I'm gonna say indefinitely!

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8. Barring that, the time and funds to take two weeks and road trip it over to Cali and check out the wine country. Almost as good, right?

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9. Every single flavor of Taza Chocolate Mexicano. I haven't even tasted any of it yet but just looking at the site made my mouth water.

10. Everything in this song:

11. Also, just because: PONY!

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-Nelly

Halfway done!

2011-01-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

Can you believe we're already halfway through the first month of the new year? It's insane how time keeps on speeding up the older I get. Which, by the way, with be exactly 25 years old in about 38 hours and 35 minutes. Yes, I was born exactly at midnight. Ask my dad, he was watching the clock! I'd say ask my mom but she was otherwise occupied.

So we're halfway through the month, and I'm also halfway through my first Whole30 bout. I didn't make a big deal about it when I started, as usually when I have some kind of food or life revelation and get all gung-ho about a particular method enough to blog about how I'm going to omgztotallyRAWKit, I end up failing within the first week or so. But...I haven't failed this one yet. And I don't foresee a scenario where I'd have to completely abandon it, and after this much effort, even the iffy, possible scenarios (forgot to pack lunch for work, don't have the cash to buy it) don't outweigh the desire to finish this goal.

hope i'm not jinxing myself with this picture!

The Whole9 style of eating isn't all that far off from what I was doing before - no grains, no added sugars, no processed foods - with the addition of no alcohol and no dairy, which is the toughest area for me, as I am normally a milk fiend. The biggest difference is that it allows absolutely no room for cheating - no beer or wine with dinner once in a while, no half-ounce of chocolate chips after a 10-hour shift, not even a drop of cream in coffee (I use coconut cream, so I don't miss that TOO much). I never really realised how much I do take those little tiny sidesteps off the path of real, clean eating. I firmly believe that it's okay to enjoy sweets and treats and things you wouldn't have every day...as long as you don't have them every day. And I wasn't having them every day, but it was a lot closer than I'd like.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll tell you that I did "cheat" once, just a few days after I started the whole deal. The Man's holiday box of goodies finally arrived in the mail, containing all kinds of sugary deliciousness that tempted me sorely, all of which he spent a long time picking exactly which gift would be perfect for each member of the family, or which would mean something extra to me. One of the things included was a little block of eggnog fudge from White House Chocolates in Middlefield, Ohio (if you're ever in that area, you MUST stop there. period). They make it once a year and, it being super-good quality without many preservatives, it would have gone all stale by the time February rolled around. So I cut a little chunk off the corner, just enough to taste, and then called up The Man to tell him merci muy mucho and yo te iubesc, and then put the rest of the goodies out of sight and mind until Feb.

But anyways. It's been really interesting, at the very least, to try out a deal that's both very stringent and at the same time feels can feel ridiculously decadent, based on what you can have. I've also realised that left to my own devices I will eat any coconut product - dried flakes, coconut cream, coconut butter, coconut oil, any of the last three dipped in the first... - out of the jar with a spoon. Which is not always a good thing. But for the most part, my meals look something like this:

This was breakfast yesterday. Roasted brussel sprouts, a couple orange and grapefruit pieces, macadamia nuts, a palm-sized hunk of cow and coffee with coconut cream. Note that I don't have coffee with every meal, although I wish I could. But yeah - there's so much awesomeness here that I barely miss things like sugar and dairy (although I'm daydreaming about the raw milk I'm going to get when I finish this up...but that's another story :D)

Lurkers: did you change your diet (by which I mean all the stuff that you eat, not an action you undergo) for the new year? What's your take on food/diet "challenges?" Are you a coconut fiend as much as I am? What do you think I should eat on February 1st?

-Nelly

Magic soup (recipe!)

2011-01-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

So thus far in my Epic Meat Quest, I've tried a number of different ways to cook the stuff: broiling, semi-roasting (for only 15 minutes but not right under the heat source), pan-frying, and making a burger. That's kind of a lot for just over a week after going almost 12 years without the stuff (at least I think so), but in flipping through my copy of How To Cook Everything, it became clear that there's a WHOLE lot more ways to do the deed - namely, stewing/braising, or cooking it in varying amounts of water or other liquid. It being a totally gross and cold day filled with gray skies and slush, I figured it was the perfect time to try my hand at a nice warming beef stew.

I bought about a week's worth of meat yesterday at the local Whole Paycheck, and so far I've chosen stuff by price ($4.50/lb? that one, please), which means that most of the stuff I end up getting is...not spoken very highly of by the various cookbook authors I consult. I used a chunk of rump round, cut into smallish pieces, which Mark Bittman says is only good for stewing, with "good" being relative to the fact that it's "bad" for anything else. Meh. Tastes ok to me! But on to the procedure:

Almost all the recipes I saw said that the way to start a really nice stew is to brown the meat first. The recipe I started from suggested heating a crushed garlic clove in olive oil for a minute or so, then removing the garlic and adding the meat to brown slightly on all sides. That's about how far I followed the recipe, because I was impatient and hungry. Once the meat was...well, brown, if not perfectly browned, I went ahead and added the veggies I'd chopped (half an onion and a handful of carrot coins) along with the water and sea salt. Left it to simmer for about 15 minutes before my sense of "I wonder how that would taste in here!" took over.

Besides the salt, I thought a little pepper would go nicely. Then a splash of red wine vinegar, and a little balsamic as well, because I'd heard it might help soften up the meat (which was fairly tough by now). Let it cook a little more, which did indeed help the meat soften and let off this maddening smell. So I started tasting the broth, and it was...good, but not great. Kinda watery. It might have been better if I just let it keep cooking away, but patience is not for the Nelly! Let's see if I can add anything else to the mix...

Guess what I added.

You'll never guess.

COCOA POWDER

That's right. Just about a tablespoon, whisked in as quickly as I could manage so it didn't clump. I know you all think I'm crazy but holy gods it was the most amazing thing ever. It thickened the soup just enough so it wasn't gravy-like but definitely not watery any more, and gave it this incredible, tangy, almost-bitter undernote that played perfectly off the other flavors. It. Was. MAGICAL.

And then I ate it all in like five minutes. The end.

-Nelly

Money Monday 10/1

2011-01-10T17:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday, you guys! The house in the picture is an absolutely breathtaking hand-built creation of Simon Dale and Jasmine Saville, detailed in this site right here. I want it. Ok, maybe with an indoor toilet and a few more delineated rooms inside. But still. There is serious home-envy going on.

This week's questions (original post here):

The most I’ve spent this last week was on groceries. Meat is expensive! But it also takes less to satisfy me, and I think I'm getting closer to the perfect steak with which to show The Man how much I lurve him. I know he likes it medium-rare. I'm not exactly sure what that is but I know it's somewhere between bloody and rubber. Also, I hardly ever cook it to the rubber stage anymore, go me!
Today I feel just okay towards money. I'm still waiting to get my last paycheck from the old restaurant owner (yes, that's fron November). I call every few days and leave a message but no dice yet. One of my employees actually had to get her father to call him and threaten legal action to get her money, and it was a lot less than what I'm trying to squeeze out of him. Arg, I say. Also, I researched IRAs and it turns out that the one I'd like best to get requires a minimum balance of $10,000, which I can definitely not spare right now. Meh. I think I'll decide to just get the highest-interest savings account I can right now, and keep on building it up.
Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was get told by both my sisters that I was "wise" and gave good advice. I win at sisterhood! :D
I will consider this week a success if I plan ahead far enough in advance that I don't have to run over to the grocery store to buy lunch for work days.
I have pictures of myself as an adorable toddler eating snow directly off the ground.

The best way to start the day

2011-01-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

...would actually be waking up next to that 6'2" better-than-an-electric-blanket heat mass I call The Man, but this'll have to do.

Coconut-crusted tomatoes, a few slices of Honeycrisp apple, and MEAT. I've decided that trial and error (mixed with some book larnin' for when I just have NO idea what to do) is the way to go when it comes to figuring out how best to char the previously-living flesh. That said, this bout was kind of error.

I bought London broil (what the hell does that mean?) from WF, sliced it thinnish and then pan-fried it with coconut oil til it was brown on the outsides and still pinkish in the middle. Unfortunately, I figured out that this particular cut is pretty damn tough when it's sliced with the grain (as the piece above is). Lots of gnawing ensued. But it still tasted fine! Coconut oil is the BEST. Maybe next time I'll slice it against the grain and even possibly broil it, as the name suggests. I don't think I've ever broiled anything, except possibly by accident. Thankfully, I have Irma Rombauer on my side. I will prevail!

The tomatoes were actually pretty awesome, although the recipe definitely needs some tweaking to be really perfect. All I did was slice them thick (index-finger-width), dry them off a bit, dip them in dried, unsulphured, unsweetened coconut (swish them around to make sure all the crevices get filled) and fry them for a few minutes each side (in coconut oil. don't you know me by now?). I also added a little sea salt to one side as they were cooking.

I think I was subconsciously craving fried green tomatoes when I made this. Compared to that, it's meh, but in its own right, it's not too bad. I think I want more weight to the "breading" next time, and a little more savor - maybe mix it with a little almond flour, with herbs and salt added right in instead of as an afterthought? Maybe bake them, so the crust doesn't all fall off in the pan (which it actually didn't nearly as much as I thought it would)? And if I can find real green tomatoes (not for a while yet) it would pretty much be heaven.

Lurkers: Coconut and tomatoes is a really strange food combination that causes people to look at me askance. What's a combo you like that's not necessarily "normal?"

-Nelly

Money Monday 3/1 (now with awesomeness!)

2011-01-05T06:29:00.000-08:00

...which is super, SUPER belated this week. But I'm a sucker for alliteration, so the tag stays.

This past week has been pretty fantastic. We started the new year off with a bang and a good deed: my friends and I went to Raleigh (our capital city) to dance our patooties off and had loads of fun, then on the way back to the car (amidst a whole lot of craziness) saw a girl sitting barefoot on the side of the sidewalk, sobbing. Turned out that she and her boyfriend, both slightly sloshed, had a tiff which ended in him storming off into the wilds of downtown, which neither of them knew very well, and leaving her sans keys (with which she simply would have taken a cab home). My wonderful friend Martha, who can be incredibly intimidating in the friendliest way ever, got on the phone with the girl's boy and persuaded him to come on back, giving him directions on how to do so, while I provided a sweater and hugs until he finally did, which took a good half-hour or so. But they ended up safely together, and we got the warm fuzzies, and all was good.

I also had a couple fitness/weight related successes this week. First, I measured my waist for the first time in years. In high school, I was about 29-30 inches; in college, that jumped to 32 or so before I didn't want to see it keep growing anymore. A week ago (before starting Whole30) I measured at 28 inches. YES, Tony, WITHOUT "sucking it in!" :P I also managed, just yesterday, to do TWO completely unaided pull-ups (still kipping, though). I AM SUPERGIRL!

This week's questions (original post ~~here~~ whoops, looks like Miss MPP took a day off! Good on her. I'll just make up my own last question then):

The most I’ve spent this last week was on the Whole30 Success Guide, $39. It was a total impulse splurge, and while it's got a lot of good information on the little finicky parts of implementing Whole9 (detailed shopping lists, for one), I probably would not have paid that much for it if I'd gotten to flip through it first. Maybe $15 or $20, keeping in mind that I'm normally pretty cheap. But it's still quite useful.
Today I feel FREAKING AWESOME towards money. Why is that, you ask? Because I got a major, totally unexpected windfall in the form of a LOT of savings bonds that my grandparents got for me over the years and my mom just told me about. How much is a lot? Well, with all of those plus my latest paycheck and some Christmas money, I just about doubled my net worth. It'll be into 5 figures by April, and that's thinking conservatively and taking into account my tax refund. I've decided to use most of this to open an IRA (Roth, natch), drop a nice chunk on my student loan and then go shopping with my sister, who's promised to give me comprehensive wardrobe help. Yay!
Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was TWO UNAIDED PULL-UPS IN A ROW!!! That kept me grinning...well, I'm still grinning now :D.
I will consider this week a success if I do THREE unaided pull-ups in a row.
One of my goals for the year ahead is to do 20 unaided dead-hang pull-ups in a row (no kipping!).

Lurkers: Tell me something awesome. Anything at all. My definition of "awesome" is pretty broad.

-Nelly

Oh hey look at that interesting headline right there!

2011-01-03T06:18:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm not so crazy after all...

Breakfast FTW!

coffee with coconut cream (intense!!)
a bunch of pretty boring lettuce
1/4 avocado
2 eggs (nom)
homemade salad dressing over everything

I've started to rediscover my intense passion for avocado paired with something sour (in this case, vinegar in the dressing) and pepper. Alone it's just kinda meh. But these other two tastes mixed with it just makes it explode! Try it, you guys!

We're doing Fran tonight at Crossfit. I haven't done this workout before, and it's one of the worldwide benchmark ones that everybody and their mother do. Kinda nervous...

-Nelly

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I ATE MEAT

2011-01-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

omgzzz!

Yes. That's right. For the first time in well over a decade. It was grass-fed local ground beef that I (at Amam's advice) mixed with egg and made into a hamburger-kinda-thing. I think I overcooked it like yeah whoa but it was still pretty tasty (the coconut oil I used to cook it probably helped. stuff smells aMAZing). With it: avocado with paprika and leftover spinach, fried up in the same pan as the burger.

It's...strange. I'd thought it through over and over and convinced myself that I was ethically and morally ok with it (which I really am), but it's just...almost a little bit of a letdown. Maybe that's just my cooking, though.

It's ok, though, because I have this book to help me out! Joanne et al, I promise to try out all your delicious flesh-filled recipes as soon as I master the hamburger. It might take a while. I've got a lot of lost time to make up for. But I've promised The Man a homemade steak dinner the next time he visits NC, and it needs to be PERFECT. So naturally I will have to practice a LOT.

Lurkers: any tips, tricks, hints or recipes to give me? I need a lot of help here so give me whatever you got! :)

-Nelly

35640 x 8000! No, wait...

2010-12-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

...that would be the display resolution of the HIPerSpace. We're talking a different kind of resolution here.

not this one (source)

Even though we've not quite reached the new year yet, Blogland is already starting to be all atwitter on the topic of New Year's Resolutions. Off the top of my head, Dianne Sylvan, Holly the Everythingtarian and Al Kavadlo have all weighed in recently, and I'm sure there are some others I've missed, as well as plenty more in the coming couple of weeks. Everyone's got something to say about this one.

From the little I've seen so far, there does seem to be a general consensus that the word "resolution" is totally taboo. Sylvan's calling them "Sacred Intentions," which the witchy part of me adores (she's got a whole series going on about hers, if you fancy a good read) and Holly's got a list of "Things I Will Do In 2011," after having a lot of success with her "*ditto* In 2010" list last year. Al just doesn't like them at all. Seems like over the many years during which the New Year's Resolution List has emerged as a tradition, the Mid-February Screw The Resolution List celebratory drink/burger/rest-day-that-turned-into-a-week/what-have-you has become an inextricable part of the ritual, giving all kinds of nasty, failure-is-inevitable connotations to the poor word, which should mean "things about which one is resolute, or standing firm and determined."

I'm still pretty torn on the issue. On the one hand, I'm in complete accord with Al in his vilifying of the "normal" resolutions people make:

"...they’re either overly vague (I’m going to get fit in 2011!) or unrealistically rigid (I’m cutting out all grains and simple sugars for 2011!). These types of resolutions are problematic because they don’t hold you accountable and/or they set you up to fail."

On the other hand, I love a good benchmark. I am the queen of "to-do" lists (even if they rarely actually get done). And Sylvan speaking about how she's going to do things really resonates with me:

"...I'm taking a different approach; instead of resolutions, I’ve developed five overall intentions for the year, and each will require a series of smaller goals or ideas to complete them. Some aren’t even fully formulated yet, but the to-do list will change as the year progresses. Some are not difficult, but some will require a lot of me. There won’t be a definite pass/fail, as the goal itself is not the prize; the prize will be what I learn and what I change in my life and in my heart as I work through them."

But then again, I really, really suck at deadlines. Just ask T - I promised to make him felted slippers for Christmas...2008. Yeah...still kind of need to cast on for those. So I'm really liking Al's words on time-frames:

"[T]he calendar is just something WE MADE UP. We made it up so we can know to meet at a certain time on a certain day and keep track of history to the best of our abilities (and it’s very helpful for those things) but it’s not real. Days and months and years are based on the actual cycle of the planets and stars, yes, but we made up the details.
Every day is just a day, but it’s also a new opportunity, regardless of whether it’s January 1st or December 27th.... Focus on the process and take it step by step instead of looking ahead an entire year."

But I can't deny that feeling Holly talks about in her original Will-Dos of 2010 post:

"Isn’t it funny how the a new year really makes you feel like so much is possible? It is also my goal to try to hold onto that feeling all year long and remember that EVERYDAY is a chance to do whatever the hell I want."

Yes, the action of literally turning over a new leaf (on the calendar, that is) absolutely makes me more motivated. And there are definitely both things that I want to do (brush up my French, learn decent Spanish, finish the garden, deadlift 200lbs) and that I need to do (start an IRA, get my own health insurance, finish my degree, get a place of my own), regardless of how long it takes me but preferably soon, which is where the deadline thing comes in.

So I think there's going to be some variety of a list of goals/wishes/intentions for the new year (and beyond) coming soon. I'm still toying with format, though (fairly-well-defined, check-'em-off-the-list-and-keep-going will-dos, like Holly? big, sweeping, detailed intentions, like Sylvan? 101 in 1,001? or something completely different?). But I think I need to proclaim some kind of goal list, regardless of how. As much fun as enjoying the journey of life one day at a time is, it wouldn't be a journey if there weren't some kind of a destination in mind.

Lurkers: what's worked for you, ~~resolution~~ goal-wise? What hasn't?

-N

"My touring...what??"

2010-12-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

Hey guys! Just a quick note on something that is so random it'll make you all squint up your eyes and go "whuh?" as soon as you read it. So apparently one of the search keywords used to reach this site in the past week was as follows:

"my touring wagon is badassery"

That's right. All aboard, beeyatches! We're going off the rails on the Crazy(SexyFit) Train to METALVILLE!!!

-N

PS: If the person who used this phrase to get here is reading this, you're the awesomest. Please don't explain yourself. I just love the mental image as is.

We wish you a merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T20:43:00.000-08:00

From all the Tobs and our friends to everyone out there in Blogland...

Jessie, moi, Babysis, Maggie and Laura

another Laura!

the traditional Christmas pickle

gorgeous Babysis wearing the hat I made!

Maggie, ~~Eamon~~ Motel Kamzoil, Laura and Babysis

...we wish you all a very merry Christmas (or Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali or whatever your personal favorite is), and pray that the coming year brings you nothing but good food, good wine, good friends, good conversation, and too many laughs to count.

To start you out on the "laughs" bit, here's an outtake from a profile photo shoot Babysis was doing for me. I feel it's high time to let you all know that I am, in fact, part velociraptor.

-N

Money Monday 20/12

2010-12-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

Happy belated Monday, everyone! And also Blessed Solstice and omg did everyone see the total lunar eclipse last night?

source here

I was up at 3 trotting around my house with the cat stuffed inside my coat for company and warmth (she was fine; she eventually went to sleep) to watch it. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much but it was still pretty cool - we're not going to get this particular type of eclipse again for 19 years, and I think that one will be on the day before the solstice instead of directly corresponding. So this was a pretty special event, and I'm glad I got to be conscious during it, even if the actual viewing part was difficult.

This week's questions (original post here):

The most I’ve spent this last week was on presents again! I am SO excited for Christmas!.
Today I feel optimistic towards money. I think I've done a good job of managing it in the past year, and I'm excited for all the ways I can make that even better in the upcoming one.
Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was helping T with his big huge semester-ending school project, and the finished product is pretty awesome, meaning there's a lot less stress on his end, which always makes me happy.
I will consider this week a success if I wrap everyone's present before Christmas morning!
My favorite holiday movie is well, I was going to say "A Christmas Story" before I read Miss Pretty Pennies' reasons why she loves "It's A Wonderful Life," which brought back all the lovely mushy sentimentalism that goes with watching that one (even though I do hate the fact that he never gets to travel). So I'm gonna say it's a toss-up between those two, with "The Star Wars Holiday Special" rounding out the list for a complete marathon. If you've never seen that last one, DO. Even if only to make a drinking game (nog, glogg or wassail) based on it. It's just that spectacular.

-N

Ew.

2010-12-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was delightfully sunny and gorgeous, and didn't seem so cold (even though it was right around freezing) simply because it was so beautiful outside. Today, however, is a different story.

EW.

There was a mixture of snow and freezing rain falling all night, still depressingly spattering down on occasion. We didn't even get the thick coating of ice on everything that NC does so well - at least that would have some aesthetic appeal to it! - but just damp, drippy sleet all over everything, and a sky that's a blank, gray, too-low ceiling. Ick.

So what else could I do but make myself an omelette!

YAY!

There's feta and smelly mystery cheese (which melted beautifully) inside it, and the broccoli is steamed in the micronuke and then sauteed in a butter-and-white-wine-vinegar mixture. And coffee, natch. It's decaf, though!

Crossfit update!

Monday: Bootcamping it up with Bea leading the class, as Colin's off gallivanting around in NY for the holidays.

Warm-up: 5 minutes of jumping rope.
15 minutes of 8 sit-ups and 8 back extensions (both with an abmat) on the minute, every minute, but I switched to 10 of each after...4 rounds? 5? Somewhere around that.
10-9-8...3-2-1 reps of air squats and push-ups.
No crawling... :(

Tuesday:

Warm-up: double-unders for several minutes. Welt marks ALL over my legs. ow.
Practiced ring dips for the strength portion of the workout - 75 reps total, scaled however we needed them. I did about 10 unaided and the rest with a box or a giant rubber band.
The WOD: 2 minutes of each movement for max reps, with 1 minute of rest in-between each station. The movements, in the order I did them: box jumps (20inch box), single-under jump ropes (199 reps), American kettlebell swings (25lb), deadlift (115lbs, 22 reps). I'll fill in how many reps I did for the jumps and KBs when I remember what they were...

this is a split jerk. source here

Wednesday:

Strength: Clean and Jerks (using the split jerk), 12 reps total. I made it up to 78 lbs, a personal best! :D
WOD (as it were): 12 minutes long, 3 power cleans on the minute. I started with 65lbs but moved up to 75 and then 85 within a few rounds, and finished it out with that weight.

Today we're going to be doing the Filthy Fifty. Check it out here and wish me luck!

Lurkers: how do you lift your spirits when it's gross outside?

-N

Money Monday 13/12

2010-12-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

...even though it's no longer Monday! Whatevs, yo.

It's cold and crisp and brilliantly sunny today! No more snow since that last dusting, but the woods are just screaming to be tromped around in, so that's where I'm headed soon. First though, the update:

This week's questions (original post here):

The most I’ve spent this last week was on presents presents presents!!! :D
Today I feel pretty cool towards money. I've been staying right on track with all my spending for a couple months now, even considering that I'm waiting on several checks that I should have gotten by now (namely, the repayment of that last worthless paycheck and an insurance check). And once all that finally comes in, it'll be like a small windfall...that'll go directly into savings, of course.
Money can’t buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was...well, it's not free (and barely inexpensive, considering how much I go), but Crossfit makes me happy. Really, really happy. Better-than-chocolate level of happiness. It's definitely a good investment.
I will consider this week a success if I make good goals and stick to them! I'm referring to my 2Sexy goals, to be decided at the meeting tonight.
My favorite holiday treat is maple sugar candy! We almost always get some in our stockings (yes, the seesters and I still get stockings. yes, we're all legal adults) and I try to make it last as long as possible - just breaking a tiny corner off at a time and letting it melt on my tongue. But then when I get down to a smallish lump, I just nom the whole thing in one go. It is marvelous.

-N

Questions, questions...

2010-12-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

So I've been thinking a lot lately about food.

image source

Yes, I know. You've heard it all before. But the fact is, it's a big, tough issue for me, and a constantly ongoing one, too. Lately it seems like every new day shows a different facet of my complicated relationship with food. Will today be straight-up Spartan Athlete Nelly, where food is fuel and all eating and exercise is simplified to "calories in, calories out"? Or will it be Anti-Orthorexia Nelly, where the mindset is "obsessing over health and food too much is just unhealthy. and everything in moderation! so I'm just going to have this chocolate now, mmkay?" Or even Just Plain Burnt Out Nelly, whose mantra is "f*ck it all, i'm going to have two pots of coffee and a half-cup of cookie dough for breakfast, french fries for lunch and top it off with deep-fried tofu soaked in mystery sauce for dinner!"

(this last one is especially not fun and invariably leads to bloating and general feelings of ickiness. and I even know it while it's happening, which means I don't really enjoy it, so it can't even be classified as hedonism.)

I think a lot of the problem is that I haven't yet found a truly healthy eating plan that I can work with as well as I can with Crossfit, for exercise. Crossfit has been an absolute miracle for me, mainly because I stuck with it long enough to grow to absolutely adore it. It's been almost two years since I started and I haven't missed a single session (6-week for the bootcamp or by months for the regular class) in all that time. It's just perfect - the activity, the camaraderie, the entire mindset is just so appealing to me.
Eating is an entirely different story. A lot of the draw of Crossfit is that you do it together with a whole bunch of other similarly-minded people who, if they're not in there with you sweating away shoulder to shoulder, will cheer you on until you finish. Eating, however, is (at least for me) almost always a solitary act. No one to tempt me with the bad foods, but no one to help keep me from temptation, either.

image source

And that's another thought - the bit about "bad foods," I mean. After a terrifying (and still difficult) bout with anorexia (not myself but someone I love), I've always tried my hardest not to label foods as "good" or "bad;" not to see healthy, "clean" eating as a morally good but vaguely unpleasant act that had to be done to atone for my past sugary transgressions, and neither to reward myself for good behavior with edibles, especially if the "good behavior" was partially avoiding those very same foods. But now I'm coming to the conclusion that yes, there are good and bad foods. There's still a lot of grey area, but there are absolutely some things that I should eat a whole lot of, and others that I should eat very, very infrequently, if ever at all, as they are basically poison to my body. Period.

But...I love chocolate! And I love milk and cheese and cream and butter! And pie, and Wasa bread, and yoghurt, and pretty much any kind of cookie that doesn't contain peanut butter, and Nutella, and beer, and on and on, ad nauseum (really!). And I really really really love coffee (with cream)! So the question becomes, do I take enough pleasure from all these things to balance out the benefits to my health (which I think is already pretty damn decent, and certainly above average) that I would gain if I gave them all up?

image source

Big questions.

I'm also pretty seriously considering ending my decade-plus stint of veg*nism (the star is there for everything from vegetarianism to straight veganism to my current pescetarianism). At this point I think it's healthier for my body to start eating real meat again, and my ethics have evolved to the point where my mind agrees with that fact. The only step left is the last one, to actually start consuming the stuff again. I think I'm going to wait til Christmas dinner, when Maggie's promised to roast a nice happy farm-raised chicken for me.

Ok, I think this is a good place to leave all these ramblings. What do you all think? Let me know!

-N

Money Monday 6/12

2010-12-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

Happy December, everyone!

It snowed this weekend! I was at work when it started and it made the whole mind-numbingly boring and exhausting day worth it. The one employee who was with me at the time and I took turns going outside just to stare up at the sky and grin like idiots. Nothing really stuck too much in Cary (where I work), but 30 miles north in Durham/Bahama (where I actually reside) can make a lot of difference. Here's my front yard the next morning, when it was just starting to melt:

oh em gee snow!

I know all the Yankees reading this are just going to scoff at how little it is, but it made me insanely happy :D

This week's questions (original post here):

The most I've spent this last week was on car insurance. I paid my premium in full a couple of days ago, and it was...more than I'm used to dropping at one time. A LOT more. But now I've fully covered for 6 months, so that's a weight off.
Today I feel oddly excited about money. Or, more specifically, about the fact that I am planning to (temporarily!!!) throw my budget out the window and have a lot of fun buying gifts for everyone. I've saved up a really nice chunk by being smart all year, and this is one of the reasons I did that. Spent most of the down time at work today making lists of what I'm going to get everyone. So much fun!!! :D
Money can't buy happiness. One free thing I did this past week was to grin like an idiot while dancing in the falling snow!
I will consider this week a success if I stop eating so much damn chocolate at work. I can't even blame it on my uterus right now.
My favorite holiday drink is oh man, I couldn't pick just one. Hot chocolate (real hot chocolate, with bitter cocoa powder and whole milk and honey), with or without peppermint schnapps or raspberry vodka, hot cider (spiced as all get out), fake hot cider (apple cider vinegar, honey and spices in hot water), teas and tisanes of all varieties...I'm also planning on trying to make glogg this year, in honor of my Viking ancestors! We'll see how that one goes.

Right now, though, I'm sipping on one that's probably too weird for most of y'all, but I love it. Heat up a couple cups of whole milk (I nuked this batch but it's probably better to use a saucepan) till it's very hot, then add one tablespoon of dried dandelion root per cup of milk. Let it sit for a while (15 minutes?), whisking every now and then until the roots swell and sink to the bottom of the cup. Heat it up again if necessary, then strain it and add honey to taste (the dandelion makes it a little bitter so this is usually necessary, even if you normally don't sweeten your drinks - I'm looking at you, paleo-ers! it's just a tad anyways). Sip slowly and revel.

-N

PAIN. And tea.

2010-12-02T07:50:00.000-08:00

So after a good week of not really working out at all (and spending a lot of time curled up in cars, which is murder on flexibility), I have returned to the fold like a little lost lamb. And by fold I mean Crossfit and by lamb I mean someone who seriously needs to step it up, because I'm hurting like a bitchmonster now.

Monday:

Colin-style warm-up, which means lots of crawling and grunting and general apish behavior. I'm kidding about the grunting but not the other stuff. He just crazy.
150 medicine ball cleans for time. Which is basically the equivalent of 300 weighted squats. AND every time we broke momentum doing the cleans, we had to do 5 box jumps (or steps), 5 push-ups and 10 jumpropes. I did about 50 on the first batch, then broke and was getting between 12 and 20 every other time.

thorlos ftw

Tuesday:

Pull-up practice! I'm pretty solid when using the two weakest bands (red and purple, I think?) together, but kinda give out with anything less helpful than that. I'm getting better though. Think I can do it unaided by the new year?
WOD: AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) for 15 minutes of 7 deadlifts and 7 box jumps. I used a 17-inch box because my quads were still pretty frozen from Monday, but tried to up it with a 105lb barbell, about 60% of my max. Got 9 rounds out of it, which wasn't too shabby. Also massive shin and knee bruises >>

Wednesday: I looked at the CF website and saw that the WOD for that day involved about 180 double-under jumpropes with some sprinting. Now, I'm really not great at those at the best of times, and with two leg-heavy workout from the last two days I just didn't want 180 new welts on my legs from missing the damn rope every time. So I went to the bootcamp.

Warm-up with Colin, hopping around and doing high-knee and butt-kicker jogs
Sprints outside. FSCKING COLD. We did 6 100-m sprints, with the first two being untimed, everyone starting at once and the last four being timed with people starting in reverse order of finishing.
Tabata wallballs. I made it through the first two rounds (10 reps and 9 reps, respectively, with a 10-lb ball) and then got cramps and couldn't finish. That kind of sucked.

Dinner! Salmon, collard greens from a very Southern friend and avocado all mushed together into a big delicious hash, and also grape tomatoes sauteed in EVOO until they popped. Not shown: some tinned fishy stuff. Not sardines, something bigger. It was delicious, whatever it was.

This tea is incredible. Anyone else tried it? It's mainly peppermint...but also kind of sweet and has almost a chocolatey undertone to it. Makes me think of hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps (which is aMAZing, if anyone wants to try it) but without all that sugar and booze and stuff that is bad for me but so delicious.

Today's breakfast: I wasn't too hungry, but had some almonds and warm no-sugar apple sauce with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg just to have something in my stomach to balance those pills. That's right, I took drugs. Without them I would not be walking right now, I swear. I don't really like relying on stuff that treats the symptoms and not the cause, but now I have to get dressed like a normal person and go do errands and chores, so I can't be stumbling around zombie-like scaring people. So, bring on the meds! :D

Lurkers: What is your favorite tea or other comforting hot drink?

-N

Back from the holidays!

2010-11-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

...and what a trip it was! We only had a few days to see all the family and friends that we possibly could, so it was a tight schedule.

Wednesday: we (parents, Babysis, T and myself) went to see my mom's dad at his care facility. I always remember Thanksgivings on that side of the family the most, because we always made just a huge thing about it - big centerpiece on the table with fruit and nuts, everyone gathered around reading some poem or another (we're all English dorks), coffee and dessert (and slowly demolishing the centerpiece) fueling conversation for hours after the dinner was done. We tried to approximate that as much as possible in this new, small space - we made a little impromptu centerpiece, and my mom had a dinner catered from a local restaurant and set the table with all our old china and silver and fancy linens. We read this one certain RLS poem together and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is but as soon as I do I'll edit it in. The whole deal was...a little bittersweet, but the love was still there.

Thursday: This:

My dad's (that's him at the right) side of the family is huge and loud and damn but we love our celebratory events. We had 14 people at the table at some point or another (if you count all the little cousins who were up and down and all around), and we're even missing a few! Maggie, next year you WILL be there!

Cousin Andrew with his girl Chelsea (aren't they cute with their matching hipster glasses?) and Babysis

My aunt Becky with her husband David and their little monster Thomas

Cousin Sarah. She looks like this most of the time.

Jack attack FTW

We are a musical family. My dad's played and performed guitar for decades, his brother used to perform piano, all his siblings have done vocal performances (bands, chorales, musicals, etc) at some point, one of my cousins is a music therapist and even the grandparents have sung in the church choir for as long as I can remember. So at some point at every family gathering, the evening evolves into a jam session that includes everyone...even my cousin Jack, who is pictured here as a one-man band (his phrase and entirely his idea)! Those are cymbals tied to his knees and a kid-sized guitar. No shouldered-harmonica contraption yet but give him time to perfect the act.


Babysis, Little Cousin Hankry, Grandma Tob

So the evening was filled with music and singing and food and drink

and adorable children (the Tobs are kind of known for their ability to pop out good-looking babies, even if they get kind of weird-looking with age. that's SELF-deprecating humor, any Tobs reading this! don't hurt me!) .

...unless they are strapped down

Children are hard to capture on film

and crazyawesome cousins doin' what they do! And it was awesome and family-filled and just fun

oh and did i mention PIE.

apple crumble AND pumpkin pecan crumble. with fresh whipped cream.

-N

Lurkers: I'm playing around with blogger's new picture-adding tools. Did I overdo it? Also, what's your favorite kind of pie?

AWESOMENESS

2010-11-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hey you guys.

So today at Crossfit we were working at establishing a 3-rep max for deadlifts.

As far as I can remember (because I was silly and didn't write it down), last time I did deadlifts I was somewhere around 120ish for the max, without trying terribly hard, but I hadn't done them in forever. So today I teamed up with this one woman (don't know her name, but she's awesome - smaller than me but crazy strong!) to work together on the same bar. We started at 75lbs, which was pretty easy, and moved up fairly fast through 95, 115 and 125, then she maxed out at 135 (which was definitely more than her bodyweight, so w00t!) and I kept going.

So I did pretty well at 145. And then 150. And then 155. I was only aiming for anything over bodyweight, so I felt pretty happy with this. And then Rich (who was the trainer that day) came around and looked at me sideways and then at my bar and then back to me, and he put a whole bunch of weights on. Like, ALL of the ones I had lying there. So I went ahead and tried that one.

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS for a 1-rep max.

Right now, I weigh between 145 and 150. Way back two years ago when I started all this glorious insanity that is Crossfit, I weighed approximately 180 with no muscle tone whatsoever.

So I just lifted my old sad fat self. And it felt GOOD.

^_^

(I also got a 3-rep max of 165 and a total time of 6:20 for today's WOD with rowing, but the other news was cooler.)

Lurkers: show yourselves! Tell me about a time when you were just in awe of your own incredibleness.

-N

Three things that are weird

2010-11-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

1. My dinner tonight was CRAZY.

Tonight, it was "Throw all kinds of random shit in a pan and see how it turns out." No...really. Sauteed celery in EVOO, mixed with a can of sardines and some chopped up roasted red peppers, with two eggs scrambled in, topped with muffaletta (sundried-tomato-and-olive relish stuff) and 1/4 avocado. Skim milk to drink. It was AMAZING. Practically a religious experience. You don't even KNOW.

2. Noises affect me in really. weird. ways.

image via mentalfloss.com

I remember as a kid going through these bouts - maybe 10-30 minutes? - where every sound I heard became what I described then as "the same sound, but the loudest and meanest one possible." I think they were sometimes brought on by loud noises, but I honestly can't remember. You know how, in horror movies, when they're trying to up the tension and they focus on the clock or the dripping faucet or something similarly innocent and the sound just builds and builds upon itself, echoing and beating and vibrating louder and louder? Yeah. I'd go to my room and turn out all the lights and hide under the covers, but sometimes even the blood beating in my ears and rustling just a little bit against the blanket with each beat would be too loud. Even now, if there's a noise that's very loud, or sudden, or of a certain pitch, I'll jump or flinch or (if it's VERY loud and close) I'll start to collapse a little - my knees will give out and my vision will get starry and blurred, and I'll have to catch myself. It's very strange and not at all fun.

Tonight at Crossfit, part of the WOD was pushing these metal "sleds," shown below We were supposed to get down as low as possible and shove them across the parking lot, making this horrible, mind-wrenching screech of metal on asphalt the entire time. It's bad enough hearing it from inside the building when other people are doing it, but actually pushing the thing and having that sound up close, vibrating through each of your bones is, quite literally, torture.

image via crossfitwilmington.com

Oddly enough, while doing the image search for the sled, I came across this one here:

image via crossfithanover.com

That's how I felt. Like someone was reaching into my body through my ears with both hands, rending and ripping at my brain and spine and throat and ears and tearing the shreds out through them. It's faded now but for a long while I felt like there was blood pouring out of my ears - literally, could feel it dripping out.. I finished the WOD but just barely, and had to go hide behind the cars and cover my ears and shake for a while before I was ok. Usually I try and tough it out through workout parts that are uncomfortable or painful because of something weird about me, but NOT this one. Never doing those sleds again, except with some seriously heavy-duty ear protection. Period.

WOD: 21-15-9 reps for time of:

med ball cleans (20lb ball)
pull-ups (blue/violet bands for the first round, blue/black for the second two)
push that invention of pure evil back and forth across the parking lot once (not 21 times!)

And then we did Tabata squats, and I got a score of 15 (squats in 20 seconds, as the lowest number in 8 rounds).

3. My cat likes AVOCADO.

She just crazy.

-N

My stupid joints

2010-11-16T07:15:00.000-08:00

It seems like the entire right side of my body has decided to rebel against me. Ok, so not the ENTIRE side. Just a couple of key contributors: notably, my ankle and shoulder. The ankle is kinda-sorta-maybe my fault for not babying it enough the first time I sprained it badly (like, 5 years ago) and then repeating the mistake every subsequent time.

But the shoulder is just out to get me, I swear. It just randomly slips out of joint - a couple weeks ago I was sitting on the floor, leaned on both hands to get up and it went. Yesterday we were doing ring rows as part of the WOD and it gave out, making me fall and yell. It always goes right back in, and only hurts for a minute (and is sometimes sore afterwards), so I always feel ridiculous for calling attention to myself. Still finished the WOD, though, just with a few

modifications noted below:

Warm-up: Colin found some lumber and decided we were going to mess around with it. Yay for impromptuity! He laid out a 10ft board on the floor and had us walk along it, like a balance beam in gymnastics (or, as Susanna and I figured out a little later, like "the floor is lava!"). Walking, walking while keeping eye contact with him, walking and kneeling down, walking backwards, and pivoting. I should have been a gymnast :D Also, some squats, push-ups and practice with Sumo Deadlift High Pulls (with a 55lb KB)
WOD: 6 rounds for time of 10 SDHPs, 20 ring rows and 200m run/row. I ran the first and last times and rowed the rest; when my shoulder went on the 5th round I finished up with 20lb KB snatches with the left arm for the SDHPs and one-armed ring rows (which are kinda fun!)

It took a while. I think my time was at least 20 minutes. Meh.

Dinner!

Leftover Shrimp Provencal with a little wild rice; applesauce with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg; Fage Total; salad; milk. Nom.

Stay tuned for the Shrimp Provencal recipe later! It's an old family one and is DELISH.

-N

Money Monday 15/11

2010-11-15T04:33:00.000-08:00

...and this time it's actually being posted on the correct day, omgz!

Just last week, almost everything was still green down here. Then we had a little bit of a cold snap (that term is relative, so people in Northern states, we got down to your springtime temps) and this happened:

...and I suddenly realise how much I want a REAL camera. Sigh.

Anyways, here are this week's questions, original post here:

The most I spent this last week was on groceries, $37.67 for milk, yoghurt, sardiney things and veg. And some sushi but just a little box.
Today I feel kinda meh towards money. I've been really big lately on paying ALL of my own way, even living with the 'rents as I am. I just got the car insurance switched over to my name, been shopping around for health insurance (if I can get it...fingers crossed that the GOP doesn't repeal that bill before I do), trying to buy most to all of my own food (besides Chinese and salmonburgers, which amam gets at Sam's Club), already paying my own gas and other necessities. But the more I pay for myself, the more I realise that I'm REALLY gonna have to get another job, probably in addition to the one I've got, if I want to really be on my own. Either that or hang on and hope for a hell of a raise/Christmas bonus.
Money can't buy happiness. One free thing I did last week was to go for a nice long walk through my woods, a la Sarah Running-To-Slow-Things-Down's gorgeous picture post here, except I did mine sans lens.
I will consider this week a success if I make it to Crossfit at least 4 times and run/walk at least twice. Last week I was all plague-y and weak and hacking up my lungs too much to work out. So let's change that now.
I am afraid of losing people suddenly. It's happened a couple times in my life and now I get really paranoid whenever I stop hearing from someone close to me without warning.

-N

Gratuitous cat pictures!

2010-11-13T06:35:00.000-08:00

So this morning, I woke up with a short and fat but still incredibly handsome man sitting on top of me.

[Greyson finally slowed down long enough for me to get a picture!]

Scattered throughout the rest of the house in various states of sloth and disarray were two more fine-looking young lads of the hirsute persuasion...

Blue. Look at his eyes!

Sarge, doin' his own thang

...and this lovely little lady here!

Maya usually looks like she's scowling but she's really a sweetie

Right now I'm house- and cat-sitting for my friend Red Jen, who's travelling this weekend on family business. It's only 20 minutes from my work instead of the normal 45, which is nice, and even though I miss my own fuzzy baby, these guys have been distracting me pretty well :)

Greyson is the "OMG GIVE ME PETTINZ" type and is all over me every time I walk in the door, but point a camera in his direction and he suddenly has very important business with the dust motes. Blue will sit still but will NOT look directly at me so I can capture his pretty eyes. Not even for a second. Maya is the queen of the house and she knows it. And Sarge is the scaredy-cat who still won't let me pet him when he's awake, but for some reason loves to pose. Here he is again:

Hope you guys enjoyed that! Jen, your babies miss you and we all hope your trip is going as smoothly as possible!

-N

Hungering for hunger

2010-11-11T06:44:00.001-08:00

So about a month ago, or a little more, I was at my weekly weight-loss support group meeting (2Sexy, for the interested). The topic that night was how to deal with emotional eating. At the time, I'd been doing pretty strict paleo/primal eating for a good while, keeping up with Crossfit 4-5 times a week, and picking up running again. I felt fantastic, and all the personal details of my life (job, stuff with T and my fam, etc) were going pretty swimmingly as well. So when the discussion came around the circle to me, I blithely said that I didn't have any issues with emotional eating anymore.

Now, I'm just a little bit of a superstitious person in general (case in point: the GM swept up a penny when we were closing the shop last night and I wouldn't pick it up because it was tails-up), but for some reason I didn't even stop to think that I might be jinxing myself (or, for the scientific-minded, just speaking way too soon, at the best). However you think of it, the fact remains that directly after I made that remark (literally; it was only a couple days before shit started happening), the various factors in my life combined to make me remember exactly what emotional eating was. I sprained my ankle pretty badly and couldn't exercise for a while, which got me in a funk; drama started happening with my job and wages, which got me really on edge; and things got not-so-great with T, which I'm totally not going to detail here. And in response to all that, I ate.

Pinches of cookie dough and slices of the kids' pizzas at work, along with "healthy" salads slathered in dressing instead of bringing lunch from home. Doubling up on portions of normally healthy fare like sardines, and going back for seconds (and thirds) on Family Chinese & Movie Night. Coffee every day, all day, and not nearly enough water to make up for it. Just crap in general, and way too much of it. Not because I was hungry, but because I wanted to be full. As a result, I've put on somewhere between five and ten pounds in just that short time, while ostensibly trying to move in the other direction.

So I picked up this book, "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan, during my latest library run. Here's the book as described on Pollan's site, and here's the Amazon page for it. It's mainly about the industrialization of the "Western diet," and how it's led to so many of the most common illnesses and medical problems in our society (and that part is fascinating in itself). But in the last few sections, Pollan lays out a series of rules for eating (what and how) that, while terribly exhaustive, is also pretty inspiring, and most of them are sensible (obviously not everyone has the room for a freezer big enough to store an entire hog in). And these three I've picked, along with one of my own, are especially what I'll be aspiring to follow in an effort to shake myself out of this poor-health funk and back into something closer to my normal state. Here they are:

Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as food (also: don't eat anything incapable of rotting).
Avoid foods containing ingredients that are A. unfamiliar, B. unpronounceable, C. more than five in number or that include D. high-fructose corn syrup.
Do all your eating at a table (a desk does not count).

And my own:

Don't eat unless you are actually hungry (i.e. stomach rumbling).

This last one (which I used to stick to religiously) seems like it makes all the sense in the world, but it's the one I've ignored most often recently. Things taste better when you're hungry, and if you're not, you will feel like you need more of them to satisfy you. So today, this was my breakfast:

No coffee. Nothing solid, either - I wasn't hungry, and I respected that fact. Just a big ol' glass of water and the puzzle section. The water helped with any caffeine withdrawal, and now, hours after this picture was taken, I feel hungry enough to actually enjoy what I'm about to eat, which is this:
Raspberries, almonds, organic milk and oysters (just 3 ingredients on the can :D)

Wish me luck, you guys!

-N

Money Monday 8/11, plus soup and tea recipes!

2010-11-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

...yes I know I'm late again. To make up for it, here's a picture of the view from my back door. Fall is still slowly sneaking up on us, but it's just warm enough to leave the windows open.

This week's questions (original post here) (btw Miss Pretty Pennies herself is late this week too, so hah!):

The most I've spent this last week was on an eye check-up and new contacts, $149 total but it's all reimbursable! In other news my prescription went up for the first time ever that I can remember and I am sad :(
Today I feel pretty good towards money. I got a couple of nice-sized checks this week, from work and from a friend who I'm doing housework for, so my accounts are pretty happy right now. And aside from the medical stuff (and one small coffee on Ninth Street one day that I wanted to be all hip and do the Indie crossword while sitting outside of Bean Traders), I've only bought gas and necessary groceries/pharmacy stuff this whole month! I'm not jumping the gun and putting anything in savings just yet, as I like to schedule all my big recurring bills on the 15th, but I think I'll be able to put in more than I'd planned, which is awesome :)
Money can't buy happiness. One free/inexpensive thing I did last week that made me happy was...this past week was a tough one (due to more late nights at work as well as having the plague), and kind of boring to talk about as a result. But one night at work I was there with two awesome hardworking teenage employees who deserved cookies, so I used my managerial privilege to free food and made us all a batch.
I will consider this week a success if I get well again asap! Time to break out the honey-lemon-garlic tea.*
My go-to recipe is mermaid-with-a-farmer-boyf soup. Vegetable or fish broth base (usually Better than Bouillon); chopped carrots, onions, maybe some potato or celery; big chunks of whitefish of some sort along with clams or oysters if I have them, and loads of seaweed (usually Atlantic wakame or dulse), as well as anything I have on hand and feel like experimenting with (random root vegetables, lox pieces, apples...). It's seriously pretty awesome.

*Honey-lemon-garlic tea sounds terrible but it is the best stuff in the world for sore throats, persistent coughs and icky plagues in general (and I happen to like the taste!). In college, I relied on this stuff all through flu seasons when I had classical solos to sing and it never let me down. You need:

one or two whole lemons (preferably organic, and scrubbed well)
several cloves of garlic (I use 3 or 4)
between 1/4 and 1/2 c of honey (preferably local and raw, from a farmer's market if you can get to one). don't buy any honey that says it's "USDA organic" because...the USDA doesn't actually have an organic qualification for honey, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to rip you off.

Juice the lemon(s) into a saucepan as much as you can, then scoop out the pulp and dump it in there too. You can save the peel to grate or zest into the finished product (which is why the scrubbing is important).

Smash or roughly chop the garlic - easiest way is to get a big flat knife, put the blade on top of the clove, then pound your fist down on it to loosen the skin and break it into chunks at once. Don't cut yourself. Then dump all garlic bits (other than the peel) into the pan.

Pour in some water, probably around 4 cups for these proportions. Start heating the water and once it's warm enough to dissolve the honey easily, go ahead and dump that in too. Bring it to a simmer and then lower the heat so it's barely moving, then pop a lid on it and let it stew for like 20 minutes. Strain it well (unless you want to chew on the garlic pieces along with your tea...which actually might help more, come to think of it) and sip it hot throughout the day. For an extra kick and if you've got especially nasty sinus problems, I'd also add a dash of cayenne pepper.

Hope everyone's weeks are going well!

-N

Money Monday 1/11, a day late

2010-11-02T07:23:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was exhausting. That's true for almost anyone in the food biz every weekend, but this particular time around it was pretty bad, even by my standards. I worked later than scheduled every day, and ended up staying to close twice, with one of those times being entirely single-handedly. My back hurts and my eyes hurt and I have dishpan hands and my feet and calves are still in utter agony, so much that I actually skipped Crossfit last night to hobble home and eat bowl after bowl of amam's fish stew (with plenty of seaweed chucked in for good measure). And then I watched videos on Youtube and cuddled with the cat and read a book in bed and I did not blog or even think about money because I just didn't want to. Because sometimes that's what you have to do. However, now I am back and in better spirits (meaning the second pot of coffee is on the brew) and I'm totally ready to think and talk about finances. First, this week's questions! Original post here.

The most I've spent this last week was on...well, it technically wasn't me spending it, but the biggest transaction was a bounced check for $375.50. Let me specify that this was a bounced paycheck from my old employer, who just sold the store and decided to close his bank account at the same time as he gave us all our (worthless) last checks from him. Other than that, I was able to transfer $200 to my savings account in spite of that fiasco, which I consider a HUGE accomplishment.
Today I feel unexpectedly okay towards money. I'm still flaming pissed that this man (Bill Holt, who owns (owned?) Red Hot & Blue in Raleigh, NC, in case anyone wants to boycott it/him) thought he could pull this stunt - which, by the way, made my accounts go negative for just long enough (before I caught it and fixed it) to get slapped with a fee. But Mike, my friend and the GM at the store, says it is being taken care of, and I trust Mike. And even with that considerable amount being snatched away from me unexpectedly, I was still able to cover all my bases and even save a good chunk. Which means I'm awesome.
Money can't buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was go to the LIBRARY!!! :D
I will consider this week a success if I don't let craziness at work get me down and stick to a sensible eating/exercise routine.
If I could grow one thing, it would be an everbearing fig tree in my room, right next to my bed. I don't think that needs any explanation.

As a treat for you guys (and by treat I mean incredibly nerdy and boring thing that I think is pretty cool), I'm gonna show you the system I use to keep track of my money. I use mint.com and my bank's website religiously, but I also like to have something physical that I can have with me at all times. For your viewing pleasure, I present the two black books that run my life:

They're both Moleskine notebooks - the ledger (on the left) is a hardcover graph-paper one and the planner is a softcover, because I keep the pencil tucked inside it. I like to be a pretty impromptu person in general, but I've come to realise that when it comes to certain grown-up things like scheduling responsibilities and planning finances, I need to be absolutely solid in my routine, right down to the writing implements. Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil for the planner and Pilot G-2 07 pen for the ledger. Period. Although I am thinking about getting a red pen to use in the ledger for negative amounts. Wow, I'm boring.
Here's the start of November in the ledger. I write out what I'm planning to spend in each of my budget categories, with spaces beside that to fill in what I actually spent and the difference between the two figures at the end of the month. I also write down the starting and ending balances of all my accounts. (By the way, you can see the craziness that ensued from that bouncing check in the last of the October transactions on the left there. I had to cut out the explanations for those because they were all waxing poetic about what Bill could do to himself and what implements he could use.)

Some transactions from last month. I was still working on the kinks in my recording method, which is why some things are a bit off, but the general gist is this: on the utmost left, there's the date. Then, an explanation of the transaction. The two columns beside that are labeled "from" and "to" at the top of the page - that is, money is being taken from one account and going to another. With every transaction, I update the running total of both the account the money is coming from and the amount I still have left in that budget category. Amounts in parentheses are negatives (which will be just written in red as soon as I get that pen!)

And that's about it! I'm still working on the whole system (which I've just been keeping since last month) so I'd love any tips or input if you see a way you think I could improve it. And as thanks for making it through this tidal wave of text, here's proof that fall has finally come to NC...kind of. Sweet alyssum in my garden (usually a spring flower) beautifully juxtaposed with autumn leaves. It made me happy :)

-N

Breakfast, the half-assed way

2010-10-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

So today I woke up feeling intensely UN-hungry.*

Which kind of sucks because it's the first day of the Breakfast Bonanza!

But I tried my best.

Coffee with whole milk, Fage with fresh nutmeg, a baby apple (so tiny and cute!) and the puzzle section. Today's sudoku is killing me.

Question for the lurkers: sudoku or crossword?

I'm off to find out what the "Bea"hive is...wish me luck!

-N

*probably because I stumbled home from a very long day at work and decided that dinner was going to be a tin of sardines and a big spoonful of Nutella. yes i know don't judge me!