When Did This Happen????

You know you are getting older when you go to the doctor and instead of asking you the date of your last period they ask you if you still get your period. 

What Do I Do Now?

Today...I am alone.  A rare moment that I am alone all day into the night while DH is away with my Stepson, Daughter is at her dad’s, and of course Son is away at school.  I have so much to do, I should be working but I haven't been. 

I did go on a nice ride.  My first ride out of the neighborhood and across the major, major intersection on the corner all my myself.   I have never crossed that one alone.  Either DH is with me or Son has been with me and they always look out for me.  This time it was just me.  And that big intersection is scary.  There is always somebody who pulls into the crosswalk, always somebody making a right on red into the lane as I am crossing.  I have learned to be so defensive and careful.  It is funny how much of my fear I have lost since I started riding again a year ago.  Now my only fear really is falling!

I rode down to the zoo, about 3.5 miles, and enjoyed an orange and Primal Strip vegan jerky on a bench under a tree.  I was just going to ride around and get some mileage in, but on the way into the zoo my stomach started to hurt and I suddenly realized I was starving!  It was nearly 1 o’clock by this time and I had only had fruit all day.  Glad I had grabbed the orange on my way out  just in case...and I always keep a couple of  Primal Strips in my bike bag.

After I finished snacking I rode around the zoo's large parking lot, then got bored just riding in big circles, so I rode back towards home, stopping at Publix to buy some organic tofu for my dinner tonight.  

The man in line in front of me was an enormous man, both in height and build with those extra, extra-large bodybuilder muscles.  He was buying orange juice and had another bag with a big tub of protein powder that bodybuilders use.  He looked over at me with my biking shorts and shirt, helmet in hand, and  backpack and then looked down and scanned my purchases of organic tofu, organic dried cranberry and nut mix, and tempeh.  He looked up and smiled.  It was so funny...we both had that awareness and acknowledgment of how into health and fitness we both were, yet in such different forms. 

Coming home to the empty house I parked the bike and set up my tofu on my repurposed George Foreman Tofu Press to press out.  Oddly, I am alone all the time during the week, but between the school runs, meetings, produce pickups and everybody coming home at dinner time I am not always so alone.  Or my alone time is broken up into small chunks punctuated by stuff I have to do, mostly for others in between periods of frantically working to catch up.

On this weekend  when there is a major scouting event and I didn't go, I am alone the weekend....into the night, with meals on my own and all my time my own.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Part of me feels so lonely.  Part of me is enjoying the rare taste of freedom with nobody to have to do things for except me.  Part of me wonders how the time is flying by so fast and I haven't accomplished much of what I set out to accomplish with all my alone time this weekend.

At least I got out and got some exercise in.  I have been mourning the fact that all I do is sit and I was determined to get out riding this weekend and get over my fear of riding out in the community alone without the protection of somebody stronger.  I have an outing planned for tomorrow as well. 

The pictures have been scarce lately.  I had gotten a new camera last Mother’s Day but I unwisely chose a bigger bulkier one that doesn’t fit on my bike so easily!  I will have to borrow DD’s camera that she doesn’t use so I can get some good updates on here!

I do have a great dinner planned for tonight for me and me…a vegan version of Tom Kha, the Thai coconut soup.  So Yum!!!  Hopefully I will be motivated enough to share the pix…and the recipe.

And Life Gets In The Way

One day I was blogging and the next I was not.  And the next, and the next, and the next, and then before long it was nearly two years before the next post popped up.

Sure, the blogging urge never went away and I thought about blogging, at least weekly, composing blogs in my head as I rushed through my days.  Still seeing life through my bloggie lenses…as life unfolds always thinking about how I would write that in a post. 

But between kids getting older and my now or never realization I needed to spend as much time as possible with them before they moved out, and work getting more demanding, and so many outside activities, and dealing with lots of life stuff…the actual time for sitting down to write never happened. 

And before I knew it nearly two years of unblogged, undocumented life had flown by.

So here I am, trying to get back, hoping this isn’t an isolated post that I manage to crank out in the midst of all my busy-ness. 

And nearly two years later life is so much different.  So much has happened.

My son has graduated and has gone off to college.  Big adventures for him, pride yet heartbreak for me.  I miss him a lot.

My daughter is in high school now, forging her independence fiercely, working at growing up and pushing away much harder than her brother did in a way that is common I guess for most teenage girls. 

Hard again for me as I reel from the one-two punch of my two kids stepping out on a ledge of their own at the same time.

And in another huge, life-altering event, in September 2010 we did an experimental 21-day challenge with the PCRM and tried going vegan for a three-week period.   That three-day challenge showed so much promise in how we felt that here in March 2010 we are still living a 100% plant-based lifestyle.  And feeling great.  A healthy lifestyle is now the theme of our lives, not only from the way we eat but extending to the smaller, greener footprint we have and very active lifestyle we have gravitated towards as we now lean towards being a car-lite cycling family.  Needless to say in many ways we are feeling and looking great.

And so that is where I am today.  A little update to let the world know I am older, but still finding my way to fit and fabulous and even closer than I was when I was last here.

Looking forward to getting back on the path.