Current Obsessions

My newfound dancing craze has also led to some large jumps on the scale. I was down 5 pounds in one week when I weighed in on Saturday. I typically check my weight every other day (first thing in the morning) just so I can get a semi sense of how things are going... and I am down another 4 pounds since Saturday. At this point I'm hoping that these large jumps even out a bit, because it's not great for the body to lose weight so quickly. At the same time though, it does feel good to be able to see such obvious results from such an amazing new workout obsession. I want to shout from the rooftops, "It's working AND I love it too!" Nerd that I am.

The other thing that has changed since my newfound dancing craze is that I am hungry all of the damn time. I've been using all of my anytime points each week and I'm still finding myself feeling like I'm starving. This is not typically the case while I'm on weight watchers, so I know that it can be attributed to the 34 activity points I earn from just two workouts. Last week I actually earned 77 activity points in total (the most I've ever earned in a single week). Needless to say, I've had to start experimenting with what I'm eating to see if I can find the right carb/protein combinations that leave me feeling satisfied in general and definitely less like I need to eat everything in sight. This, of course, has led to some new food obsessions. And they are...

-Hardboiled Eggs with Garlic Aioli Mustard (My breath is bad all day long and I don't care)
-Bulking up my tomato and red pepper soup with kale and canned beans
-Bananas before and after dancing sessions
-Fiberful Fruit Bars from Trader Joes

Other things I'm digging... the Gluten-Free "Oreo" cookies from Bot Bakery, mixing Cardamon Rose Water into my coffee, and finding ways to add fruit or veggies to every meal (including snacks and desserts).

According to my Saturday weigh in, I have lost a total of 62.8 pounds. Technically I'm down even further as of this morning, but I know better now to wait to announce numbers until after WW makes it official (you never know how the week is gonna go). When I hit 75 pounds lost I will be about halfway to my total weight loss goal (give or take a few pounds). My actual goal is to comfortably fit into a size 14 jean, whatever weight that will end up being for my frame I'm not really sure. I have an idea from when I was a 14 last time, but my body has changed since college. Anyway, when I hit 75 pounds (halfway baby), I will be going all out and getting myself a rather large reward in the form of a new fancy bicycle! I already have it picked out, but I'm going to go look at it today in store to see if it's actually as great as what I've seen online. Plus being able to actually touch it I think will motivate me to keep going.

All right. I know no one reads this, but at this point I am pretty much writing for posterity's sake. So... have a good week, she says to herself. :)

Taking Time

Her'e's the thing. I'm in grad school full-time and I work about 30 hours a week. I am a freaking busy lady. It's no joke. Last semester I took the time to work out and eat well along with everything else I needed to get done. And it felt good and in one semester I lost 29 pounds (total of 57 now and counting).

But here's the thing. It's really frustrating to be focused on a bunch of things that feel like work. And when you're really busy, even the things that are good for you can feel like one more thing you have to do. So this semester I am trying to adjust my attitude. Why? Because I'm busy. Because it's cold outside. Because I'm broke and could easily have a bad attitude. But I'm not going to have one because I decided something awesome: I'm going to do things for me. Because they make me feel good, empowered, happy, in the moment. Because they make me feel strong and wise and focused and calm and fill me with good energy. That is what this semester is about.

What does this look like? Or rather, what has changed? Well, for starters most of my exercise happens walking back and forth to work because it fits into my life and gives me time to listen to my podcast. That's how I'm getting it done. When I get home from class three nights a week I am lifting weights, because it makes me feel really empowered. On the weekends my walks are with Dan because it's our time to chat with each other. If it's too cold I do the wii fit. And I've yet again increased all the hearty healthy food in my diet. Here's what I'm eating during the week:

Gluten-Free Oats with Berries

Greek Yogurt and Pretzels

Red Pepper and Tomato Soup with Kale

Pineapple & Mango

Gluten-Free Sandwich with Peppers, Cucumbers and Cheese

Pecans and Chocolate

And then there is this other thing. This thing that feels like a secret, except I am shouting it from the rooftops. For two hours a week I do exactly what I want. Exactly what makes me feel happy, empowered, strong, confident, and like I can kick some serious ass. I dance dance. I party party. It has already changed my life and I suspect it's going to be the key to weight loss over the winter months. But even if it doesn't make a difference - I found something that makes me totally zen and full of joy all at the same time. It's exciting.

Instead of resolutions this year, I decided to start making a list of everything I want to accomplish. Some are short term, some are long term. Some I'm already working on, some I won't likely accomplish for years to come. But these are the things that make sense to me to lead a happy, healthy life.

Things I Want to Accomplish:

MY BODY/MY MIND
Practice Inner & Outer Strength

Take long walks

Practice Yoga

Dance regularly

Make "wholesome living" choices
Eat more fruit & veggies

Drink more tea

Attend a Buddhist service

MY BRAIN

Take a pottery class
Take a painting class
Take a screen printing class
Take a crocheting class
Take a writing class

Read more about the arts, politics, and education policy

MY CAREER
Create a diverse classroom library
Get my masters degree
Earn a science endorsement
Focus in on the arts

MY FAMILY
Have a baby
Live a cozy lifestyle
Have a small, well tended garden
Express Daily Appreciation for my husband
Immerse myself in my community

Active

I guess the last post was a lie, because now that I'm blogging for Columbia I somehow am thinking about posts for this blog all the time. And am in fact blogging right now. So.

I was thinking of words that describe me today (for a project) and a new one occurred to me that I haven't used before: Active. Right now in this period of my life, I am damn active. I mean this in a couple of ways.

First off, lately I seem to be always in motion. I walk the dogs twice a day, I bike back and forth to work, and I stroll with the babies for an hour each day. While working, I am either on my feet or bending to lift and carry babies about. I also climb up the staircase to our 3rd floor apartment a minimum of 4 times a day, plus the stairs at the CTA 2 times a day, plus I take the stairs at school (4 flights). And then there are the weekend walks I take with my husband and the general strolling about my neighborhood that occurs each weekend as well. I am almost always in motion. Pretty cool.

The second way I am currently very active: I am wearing a lot of hats right now professionally. I am a Graduate Ambassador, a full time graduate student, a part time nanny, a part time teacher for Scientists for Tomorrow, a monthly puppeteer for open books... And soon I'll be adding monthly podcaster for Transistor, a fashion consultant for Milya's, and a member of the recently created Traders Row Neighborhood Association. I mean... Full Time graduate student is already a lot of work. But I am passionate about all this (and need money), so I'm going for it here.

The third way I'm feeling active is in friendships. I've very recently been making new friends (grad school related mostly), but I've also been reconnecting with old friends... In addition to spending time with my regular crew. Socially, I'm feeling a little "cup runneth over." It's great. It's maybe the only thing on this list that's a tad overwhelming to me, as on top of this I have husband, family, and dogs to focus a lot of love on too.

Anyway. Active man. Damn active.

Postcards from the Edge...

Sad to say that this blog is likely to go away soon. Not that I update it much, but I fear it will be even more neglected in a couple weeks.

The cool news that comes with this is that I'm the Graduate Ambassador for my program. I am tasked with blogging once a week about my experiences, plus the inclusion of at least one photo, plus uploading up to 50 photos per week to Flicker. I completed my first assignment recently - a profile of myself plus a self portrait. I'm not sure which one they'll select (I sent them three), but the one above is my favorite. It was supposed to represent what I'm studying and I'm eating an apple! Get it? GET IT? Cause I'm gonna be a teacher!

I had orientation for my program yesterday. The day started off with a meet and greet of all the graduate students. Everyone I met is going back full time like I am, is fully immersed in their area of study, is interesting and excited and passionate and... and. It was a good feeling. The first girl I met is in Creative Writing Nonfiction and lives at Addison and Southport, so I imagine we'll be fast friends.

After the meet and greet they showed us a documentary that a current student submitted to a bunch of competitions (and has been winning all of them). It was 20 minutes long and so beautiful and moving that the moment felt almost like an out of body experience. Like... holy shit. I'm here. There are creative people all around me who want to work and make genius things.

They also showed us videos of Manifest and the Graduate Arts Project called PGA (Please Generate Art). It's an 18 hole fully interactive golf course and they build full sets, lighting and install various kinds of art installations. Including performance art. I'm likely going to apply to be involved and see if I can sponsor a shadow puppet hole. They said they had over 2,000 people attend the show last year (it's inaugural show) and it will also be a great way to meet more people across departments.

The meeting with my personal program was very intensive, but exciting. We will be starting to think about our student teaching experience starting this fall and will immediately start doing field observations with tasked objectives. There is also a new program called, "Scientists for Tomorrow," which is an after-school program focused on teaching students about sustainability and alternative sources of energy. They received a grant to run it and no science experience necessary, so they are calling all education students to get involved immediately. I guess the students who were involved with it last year (before they got their grant) all got teaching jobs right out of the gate because of the science teaching experience on their resume. None of them are teaching science or pursuing it, but schools want people with science experience. I'll likely sign up for one day a week.

That means with my classes three days a week (10 hours), the grad ambassador hours I gave as my availability (3 hours), nannying (30 hours), and the science teaching job (an hour and a half)... I will be running back and forth between class and jobs for about 44 hours per week. And that doesn't include the field experience I'll be assigned each week (who knows how many hours) and all of the homework I'll have. So. I guess I should get my affairs in order and say goodbye to all of my friends now.

So this fall, winter and spring will be busy. Next summer I won't be nannying or any other type of job - I'll just be focused on school. And next fall I'll likely line up a tutoring gig, hopefully keep the ambassador gig, and if I like the science job hopefully get more hours doing that. All of that leading up to my 14 weeks of student teaching. And yes, I know it's crazy to be thinking about what jobs I'll have next fall.... but at this point I HAVE to have a plan for how I'll be bringing in a bit of an income while garnering sweet cred for my resume.

I feel like this week will be my farewell to summer. I'm lucky that this summer has been so sweet to me. It's easily been the best summer of my life. I've never had more fun, felt more independent or confident in my choices. It's been really excellent. We leave for Minnesota on Thursday night and I'll get to spend my last weekend of freedom with my best friends Annie and Brian. I don't think it could get much better than that.

Oh. Also. I won't be able to blog about my weight on my other blog, so... I've lost 29.6 pounds since I started this journey in June. I feel pretty good about that. I intend to keep on trucking through my graduate program. Honestly, I won't have time to eat anyway. :) I do have a very specific plan that I've laid out and Dan knows about because it feels like it's going to have to be that way if I want to continue to be successful. Luckily, the nanny job does give me time to exercise, either with the babies on a walk or while they sleep to an exercise tape. I'm glad that I'll have that built in time in my schedule. It seems like it's going to be necessary.

Okay. Here we (almost) go!

I've been meaning to blog what I typically eat each week, so don't read on if you don't care. here goes...

For breakfast:

non-fat Greek yogurt with fruit from the farmers market, plus one slice of brown rice bread with nut butter if I'm extra hungry.

For lunch on the weekdays:

tuna salad. Dressing made with reduced fat mayo, mustard & pickle juice. Salad part made with Broccoli, carrots, green and red cabbage, jicama, bell pepper, radish, celery & onion.

Lunch on weekends:

Two egg omelet with whatever veggies are left in the house.

Dinners:

Thai shrimp salad with edamame, peanuts, broccoli & carrot slaw, spicy peanut dressing, cilantro and green onions.

Spaghetti & Turkey Meatballs with zucchini, squash, onions and spinach.

Chicken corn tortilla tacos with refried and black beans, onions, avocado, left over squash, peppers, and salsa.

Chicken salad with spinach, carrots, peppers, avocado, onions, and cilantro dressing.

Dessert: fruit peach freezes.

Sucesses

I've lost about 16 pounds in 7 weeks and am feeling really good. Here are some of the things I'm doing to continue to succeed each week:

1. Really treating this as a lifestyle change and not as a diet. A lifestyle change means permanence and taking the time to think about what I choose to put into my body at every meal.

2. Setting small, manageable goals for myself. This means celebrating as the amount lost goes up, but also celebrating when the number go down on the scale. It feels like I'm meeting goals much faster because of this.

3. Instead of purchasing different produce for each meal (so only planning to use it once) I plan all my meals for the week by what produce is in the fridge. This means I'm consistently using everything in my fridge and I'm also getting in 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies per day.

4. Tracking everything I eat. It's simple, but I am making much smarter choices because of this.

5. Tracking all of my exercise and participating in 30/30 and now the 45/30 challenge. I have exercised almost every day since June and it is starting to become routine.

It feels good that this is going so well and I am happy I've found something that works before school starts up. I have long term dates/goals in mind to help me move forward, but I'm trying mainly use my small goals as motivation.

Procrastination

This is my first procrastination blog of the summer. I feel like I've "made it." I'm really a student again! :)

Another really excellent Chicago weekend. Dan took me to see Horrible Bosses on Friday. It was a pretty decent flick, especially if you are a Charlie Day fan. There were a few too many female rape jokes for my taste, but I guess I already knew it was a part of the premise so what can you do.

Saturday we raced around our neighborhood in an attempt to do everything this city could make available to us. We started with lunch at the Folk and Root Festival while listening to this killer Latin band (unfortunately I didn't catch their name). It was hot as hell so we sat in the shade and watched all the early drunks dance in the sun. From there we walked back down to our hood for the North Center Carnival. It was in an area of North Center we'd never visited before and it quite seriously felt like stepping into another dimension. There was no one on the street (not even any cars) and all of the houses had this same creepy shape. It got really quiet too, especially for Chicago. Anyway, so as we are walking in "other Chicago" we start to see this giant Ferris Wheel up over the trees. The Carnival was giant - probably the largest one I've ever been to (including the mammoth carnivals I attended in Minnesota). It kept getting more surreal though - we got there right when it opened so we were the first people to wander through. All the rides were going and creepy music... it was amazingly intense.

After one too many rides, we headed home for a brief siesta. Then I jumped on my bike and pedaled back up to Folk & Root to meet Lydia for a Mambo lesson in the dance tent followed by an evening of Rockabilly music by Rosie Flores. Lydia bought me a couple sangrias and by the end of the night I was floating around the park.

Sunday was equally awesome. We decided to walk to the Neo-Futurists despite the blazing heat (not the smartest choice I'll admit). By the time we got to Ashland and Foster we were covered in sweat, so we ducked into Konak for some cold alcoholic beverages. I can't drink beer so I asked for a "goes down like a cold beer substitute" and was given Makers Mark with ginger ale. Best. Drink. Ever. We then stumbled over to the Neo-Futurists for TMLMTBGB with our friends Joe and Renee. They asked us how many times we've been to the show and honestly at this point I've lost count. Anyway, they gave us our name tags (I was Jesus!) and we grabbed my favorite seats in the house for the show. The scripts were largely excellent. I always think that one of the scripts was the "funniest I've ever seen," but last night took the cake with a script called "Deja Shit Fit." There was a new cast member (second time we've been there for a new cast member's first performance) and although she stumbled a bit, she was pretty damn good.

This week I started my kids on shadow puppetry and it was a huge hit. We spent probably 30 minutes of each class with the lights off, flashlights in hand, doing shadow puppet ceiling dancing to the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack on Monday. The puppet show is going to be to the song All is Love and when I asked them to describe what they saw in their heads while listening to the song, one of the students said, "It makes me feel all of the love in my heart." Awesome teaching moment. Wednesday we started building shadow puppets for the song and they are incredible. I'm hoping to record the performance because I have a feeling the video might cement any future teaching job down the road. I mean, these kids are K-3 and they have clouds on wires soaring across the shadow puppet stage. It was also one of my student's birthdays and he LOVES vampires, so I brought in the Juno soundtrack and had them do a shadow puppet ceiling show to the song Vampire. They kept saying, "this song is too happy to be about vampires Miss Danielle." And then they would chase after me while making scary noises.

Other things: this weekend Dan and I were talking about all the travelling we've been lucky enough to do over our first five years as a couple. We've been to Disney, OBX, Emerald Islad, Amelia Island, Wisconsin Dells (multiple times), Spring Green (multiple times), Minneapolis, Michigan, London (just me) and Ohio. Anyway, I was sort of lamenting to Dan that after going to London I realized that my image of foreign travel had changed a lot. I was happiest when I was on my own walking around Annie's neighborhood and completely unenthused by any of the "sites" that we visited. I also started talking about feeling a little sad that travel for us is going to become very strictly Minnesota, Ohio and OBX until I finish school. Then I sort of flashed back to the "the trip," the backpacking dreams I had for senior year of undergrad and how they never came to fruition. So I was talking about that... for a long time. And telling Dan how I still want to do it, but once we have kids it's definitely out of the picture. And he just looked at me and said, "Would you want to do this on your own?" And I said, "Yeah, to do it the way I'm imagining and to avoid European tourist trappings I think I'd have to." And he said, "Ok. I know you have the savings for it, so why don't you go over your school's spring break?" And that was that. I looked at Columbia's spring schedule and I would have nine full days of travel (plus two for the flights back and forth). I don't think that's enough to do a huge backpacking trip, but luckily eventually Dan would like to see Italy, Greece, Ireland and Scotland with me (so I can save those for another day). So right now I am planning a trip that would look like this: Fly into Paris (I've already been to London and it's the most centralized for the trip I'm planning), then 2 days in Bruges, 3 days in Amsterdam, 2 days in Luxembourg, and end back in Paris. I might swap out a day in Amerstam and a day in Paris to visit Ali's aunt and uncle on the southern shore of England... I just have to make sure it works with their schedule and that it will be an easy jaunt to add to the trip. Things also might change - I might decide to fly into Spain instead and then fly up to Amsterdam, then to Bruges, then to Luxembourg, then fly home from Paris. I know flights around Europe are cheap, but what I'm really worried about is doing a one way flight to Spain and a one way flight home from Paris. Many of the deal sites online are typically roundtrip excursions. So that's sort of a dream addition and will purely depend on what types of flight deals I find.

Anyway. It's been fun to think about. Recently Dan's office has been tossing the "furlough" word around though... so if he is given a bunch of forced days off I would likely put this trip aside for 2013 and take him on our dream American trip instead (rent a convertible, drive from San Francisco to San Diego along US Highway 1).

Okay... HAVE to finish studying for this exam and HAVE to start writing these two essays. Yikes.