Ladies who lunch.

I had such a crazy busy, yet delightfully fun week this week.
I daresay I wasn't home but to sleep, something that usually makes me a bear, but I loved every second of it.

The week was capped off with a day off where I took a delicious little daytrip to Jim Thorpe with Adrianna, my best gal pal from college.

If you've never been to Jim Thorpe, you are missing out.
It is the quaintest, prettiest little town in Northeastern Pennsylvania I've ever seen. (Click here for info: http://www.jimthorpe.org)

There's tons of little shops, a few restaurants (I highly suggest the pork quesadilla at Mollie Maguires Pub) and lots of gorgeous historic buildings.

They call the town "America's Little Switzerland."
{Don't quite know who "they" are, but they are so right!}

We had such a great day being Ladies Who Lunch, Shop and Wine Taste ... and try on hats fit for old ladies.
{Yes, I will be uploading pictures soon!}

I got a bottle of tasty, locally made wine, four gorgeous green glass pieces to add to my collection, earrings, a surprise for Mommalah and treated myself to three pieces of chocolate that I savored the whole way home.
{Never you mind that they were gone before I even went 10 miles on the turnpike!}

It is so refreshing to know that Adrianna and I still have just as much fun as we always did way back when. After reconnecting for the first time last month, we decided to do a monthly Girls Get Together. Next month, we're thinking about a spa day, which excites the hell out of me because I've never had a complete spa experience.

Not only is it great to rekindle a great friendship, but it's also a great way to give myself a non-food reward for being such a stickler on The (New) New Regime.

Pretty sneaky, huh sis?

A pearl of wisom was supposed to be in this spot.

I had all these ideas of things I wanted to blog about - things not related to diet and exercise for once - and as I stared at the black canvas in front of me, my mind just went completely and utterly blank.

Naturally this would be the first time in eons Blogger loaded* right quick for me and here I am with egg on my face.**

Oh well.
Some days you step in it, some days you don't.***

*You'll recall, I'm sure, that I still have dial-up, which is going to change within the next two weeks because I almost had an aneurysm of rage Sunday morning when I tried to blog. I need to get with the rest of the millennium already methinks.
**I love this saying and have no idea how it even started (and God forbid I try to open another window to Google it. My question is Why egg? Why not pudding? Ketchup, which seems so much more normal? Egg makes me think of an egg salad sandwich which makes me vomit a little bit in my mouth, even though I adore eggs. Egg salad. Eww.
***My evil grandmother had a magnet that said this, and it had a cartoon of a cow that stepped into a metal milking bucket. Anecdote has ended.

When does a resolution become a lifestyle change?

I'm two weeks in on The (New) New Regime, and I'm still going strong!!
I've exercised 13 of the 15 days that have passed since I began on Sunday, Jan. 3.
Some of those days were nothing more than 15 minutes on the Air Climber, some I did dozens of squats, lunges and abs, some I even worked out in the morning and evening.

I know T(N)NR is still in it's infancy - it's only been two weeks for heaven's sake - but I can't help but wonder:
When does a resolution become a lifestyle change?

Is in when you're excited about getting up in the morning to exercise?
Is it when you restructure your day to include some sort of movement, whatever you can do because it all counts?
Is it when you stop stuffing yourself when you eat, even if you're still a little hungry?
Is it when you mentally put the "Closed" sign on the kitchen?
Is it when you automatically seek out healthful items on a menu instead of going for what you really could go for?

Whenever a resolution becomes such a change, I'm ready for it.
Finally.

If you struggle to make those changes you vowed to do two weeks ago - which seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it? - here are some things that I found are really getting me closer to the lifestyle change:

- Every night, I put my workout clothes at the end of the bed so they're already at the ready for my morning workout.
- I set my alarm for super early so if I hit snooze like I usually do, I still have more than enough time to get some sort of movement in.
{Being a night owl/insomniac like I am, this sometimes sucks, but I try to have lights out by 11 p.m. during the week.}
- I keep a food diary religiously. More importantly, I keep an honest food diary.
{I'm not helping myself at all if I keep mum about the two links of hot sausage I just popped in my mouth because I was feeling peckish.}
- LOTS AND LOTS OF WATER.
{While I've always loved drinking water, I finally understand how much of a difference drinking the correct amount makes. I'm still hungry a lot of the time, but it's definitely more manageable because of making sure I get at least my eight glasses in.}
- I keep nothing tempting in the house. Nothing.
{For my daily dessert, I've stocked up on Skinny Cow mint ice cream sandwiches, which are horribly expensive but necessary giving my penchant/weakness for chocolate.}
- Moderation, moderation, moderation.
{I finally learned that "diet" isn't "die" with a T. It's something manageable that I can still enjoy everything I love on sometimes, but without stuffing myself sick.}
- Mix it up.
{I'll do my Air Climber most days because it's convenient. Sundays are my walk days, weather permitting, and I clock in 2-3.5 miles, depending on my route. Some mornings I do yoga or Pilates so I don't get bored. Food wise, I generally eat the same things for lunch to keep myself in check (and because I enjoy my "usuals"), and try to have a different dinner each night.}

What works for you?

The klutz strikes - or trips - again.

While this week has been good (knock wood!), it's been one pickle after another.

For starters, I have a horrendous toothache that's been on-and-off for the last few days. I've never actually had a toothache before, so this kind of pain is new to me (and very uncomfortable).

As if that's not bad enough, yesterday I stopped at a local UPS store to mail something, and as I walked to the counter, I completely biffed and fell flat on my face.

Both leopard-print heels flew off and my purse went flying.
I. Was. Mortified.

The guy behind the counter started freaking out because he thought I killed myself.
{No, I just killed my ego for the entire duration of my transaction.}

By the time I got back to the office, my knee was throbbing so bad, I had to go home to put ice on it.

The silver lining of the whole damn Incident was I got to see a truly amazing hot dog show on The Travel Channel, so it was very nearly almost worth it.

Naturally, I wore flats to work today.
(and naturally, I hated it almost as much as Samson hated getting his hair cut ...)

Addendum to my previous post.

I am happy to report that when I got dressed this morning, the belt I usually wear with one of my favorite dresses was ...

... wait for it ...

loose!!!!

So much so, in fact, that it kept slipping down throughout the day!

Talk about a Pick Me Upper - and Diet Success!!

Disappointed, trying not to be discouraged.

I'm trying not to be upset.
Today was my first weigh in since starting The (New) New Regime and after exercising every day but Saturday and eating really, really well and in moderation and some days not even hitting my points allotment I only lost two pounds.

What the [loudly shouted expletive]?

I know I know I know two pounds is a commendable loss.
I know it is a safe per-week loss according to all those reports from doctors I've been reading about in my health magazines all these years, but
that's it?

It's better than a gain, so there's that.

My plan is to continue on the same eating course I've been on, up my exercises - shooting for twice a day if possible - and upping my daily time on the Air Climber, even if I have to get up even earlier to do so.

This is that important to me - and my health.

Plus, like the good Joan Baez said,

"Action is the antidote to despair."

I'm sure the "despair" she speaks of is a lot worse than the "despair" I'm feeling this morning, but I'm sure she'd be glad to know her words came into my e-mail inbox at precisely the right moment.

Books of 2010: "The Thorn Birds"

I finished my first Book of 2010 tonight.
I reread - probably for the fourth time since discovering it as a young teen on Mommalah's bookshelf - Colleen McCullough's "The Thorn Birds."

This tale of a priest - Father Ralph de Bricassart - who falls in love with Meggie Cleary, who he's known since she was a young girl in the early-1900s Australia is sordid, heartbreaking and one of those books that Takes You There.

The book spans 54 years - 1915-1969 - and three generations of the Cleary clan, and takes place in the continent's sheep country. It's a hard life for Meggie, as the only female aside from her emotionally unavailable mother Fee. Ralph is her one bright spot, her one talisman that keeps her going, even when he leaves her for the priesthood's big show: The Vatican.

Though she marries Luke, a slight doppelganger of Ralph, the real love of her life will always be Ralph, who eventually fathers her beloved son Dane, who goes into the priesthood himself and tragically drowns soon after becoming ordained.
{Luke fathered Justine, the daughter Meggie never got along with.}

McCullough's writing is effortless to read and even though you know the love and attraction between Ralph and Meggie is morally wrong, is true love ever really wrong?

I don't think so.

Especially when the cover image is from the ABC mini-series and features Richard Chamberlain as Ralph and Rachel Ward as Meggie.
{I mean, Richard Chamberlain as Ralph de Bricassart? Who wouldn't?}

The series aired in March 1983 and was the second highest-rated mini-series behind "Roots." I saw parts of it as a teen, but never in its entirety.

Now, of course, I desperately want to rent it, not only to see Richard as Ralph, but to see if the translation from page to screen was a worthy translation because the book is that stellar.

When Ralph and Meggie finally consummate their years of passion, your heart almost bursts for them because, really, is anything really as horrible as unrequited love?

No.
So when they finally are able to act on this love that has built and boiled under the surface, Ralph must leave to go back to Rome, never to be Meggie's again.

There's no happy ending for the two of them. Their passion-filled tryst at a beach side cabin is to be enough, no matter the pain that follows.

The book is brilliantly named after a mythical bird which is said to search from the moment it cracks through its egg for the perfect thorn to impale itself. Just before it dies, it sings the sweetest, most beautiful song.

"... One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain ... or so says the legend."

Like that bird, Meggie and Ralph had their one chance to sing their beautiful song, and that was it.

It'd be a horrible book because of how tragic it is ... if it wasn't such an incredible, breathtaking story.

"The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough.
Copyright 1977.
692 pages, paperback.