Former Fashion Designer, Mom, Underperforming Perfectionist, Fitness & Diet Schizophrenic
I remember as a child my father always telling us that our PawPaw had a hard time around the Holidays because he had lost his brothers. I thought this was sad, but I didn’t appreciate the gravity of this statement until walking that same road became part of my story. I had one sister (Kari) [...]
The passing of the years has sharpened my aesthetic eye, but it also has increased the amount of "stuff" I own for tablescaping. Over this past year I have been trying to streamline and clean out … that includes the discipline of not buying more stuff.
I have spent my entire life thus far searching for the magic bullet to becoming skinny, healthy, and beautiful. You name it and I have tried it:
It finally feels like Fall is here after a very hot and sticky early Fall. Now that the cooler temps are kicking in you may be starting to pull out some of your past Fall looks, some of them inevitably eliciting a groan. I know I do: I think, “well, they look so cute on [...]
Honestly, moms, it is so hard to get away but so valuable to your mental health and gives you time to reflect on all the many blessings you have in the everydayness of your family.
The pantry always aggravated me with its constant clutter (clearly its own fault, not ours!). We don't eat packaged foods regularly, so that pantry was more of the junk drawer than anything else. The location is also smack dab in the center of the house.
There is a part of me that thinks: pick your battles and don't worry about it, they won't hate common foods forever. But then I glance over at my husband and my resolve is cemented once again. He was even more stubborn than I was and he remembers his parents only standing their ground on a few things (one of which was grilled chicken and he still eats it today). On the other foods however (the list is too long to cover), they just let him not eat those things and to this day he has not gained a taste for them. Now he is the drill sergeant for burger boot camp and other foods, hopefully we will not continue the great tradition of family pickiness.
After a summer of great ice-cream (I still ate dairy) in New Hampshire and lots of food, I decided it was time to start working out. I knew all the paleo people talked about CrossFit, so that is what I would try and much to my surprise that first day, my husband was right by my side even though he had not exercised in even more years than I had. That first day was rough: everything was foreign to me. The warm up was jumping rope. Umm, I think I can remember when I jumped rope in elementary school, but we were not doing a leisurely double dutch.
My commute was progressing as usual: at each stop more commuters sardined themselves into the subway car on the 1/9 line headed downtown. At 51st street, just 10 blocks from my work and 1 subway stop away, a woman entered the train in an absolute panic. A few of the jaded commuters glanced up at her. Frustrated, she started screaming loudly,
If only I could go back and talk to the younger, much more stressed out me. I would remind that Pinterest-informed mamma of what she preached but fell short of practicing: those are all things that really don't matter. If anything, they’re more counterproductive than helpful: trying to have everything perfect stresses you out, and (even worse) can be a stumbling block for other moms, fueling feelings of inadequacy and intimidation.