It Came From Outer Space…

I’ve been recycling our soda cans and other household items such as that since the first of the year; but I’ve come to realize I’ve been doing other sorts of recycling for a while and just hadn’t thought about it.

I routinely look on Craig’s List for items, such as moving boxes when we’ve needed them, and have sold our items through there to other people. When Mum was moving last year I gave her our old computer desks to use; and she’s in turn passing them on to other people given we don’t have room for them any more. When we had our mega clean out last month I put several things up on FreeCycle including the munchkin’s old car seat (given it was accident free and fairly new it was still good). So, here I thin I’ve not been recycling and I have, just not as much as I could have been!

To all those of you who celebrate the Christian tradition, Merry Christmas for today.

I hope that you’re having a great time with your families and loved ones. To all those who celebrate different things at this time of year, such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa I hope you are also have a good time, and if you don’t celebrate anything at all, even so, may the new year bring you good times and bright blessings.

I know that some of you may be lucky enough to get new technology, as we have in the past, Wiis, PS3s, Sony Vaio notebooks (ah, how I secretly wish that could be me), but the main point of this time of year is to be able to spend fun times with those you love and those who love you, and so for everyone everywhere may that be true.

I like to go camping every once in a while and one of the last times I did that a couple of friends came with me, and one of them has allergies to bee stings. She told us first thing where her epi-pen was and how we should help her if she was stung.
I used to have a medical id myself for the fact that I’m O-Negative blood type. However because it was etched by hand and not machine it’s worn out and I keep forgetting to replace it. I have this idea that it’s not as important as other issues because it’s not as deadly. But there are many different reasons to wear a medical id, and it’s nice to see that there are less clunky options than there used to be. I had mine etched on dog tags and wore it beneath my clothes so that no one would see, and I hear from a lot of other mothers that they have problems getting their children to wear there’s because it’s not trendy or they’re afraid they’ll get picked on for having a condition that they don’t want to advertise.

Lately I’ve felt like I’m greatly in need of a turbocharger for myself, but really I just need to pace things. My “good” days have been a bit missing over the past week, so on days where I’ve been feeling good there’s been a danger to overwork myself and make things so much worse.

I was reading a good article the other day that reminded us that the ideal of having everything in balance is more of a myth and detrimental to us. If we try all our lives to get to this balance we’re doing ourselves a disservice. Our role in life is to juggle things, and in order to be able to do this juggling it’s important that we take care of ourselves first and foremost, and try to be in tip-top condition.

That being said it’s not an easy thing to do. I know a good many people are trained or become of the mindset that everything and everyone else is important and we’re secondary. I find myself doing that a lot. I do all these things for my son all through the day, and when he’s napping I spend my time trying to clean or make food or catch up on work (all in a very short space of time). Even when I was on bed rest while pregnant it was hard for me to just do nothing. Unfortunately for my thighs and waist line a lot of my busy work involves the computer…which isn’t so good.

Then again, the way I’ve been feeling lately…it’s good for my overall health even if it isn’t good for my weight. We’ll get there. In order to take care of myself so that I can be a good juggler I need to start doing some exercise, even if it is just boxing and playing tennis on Wii Sports. Build up gradually.

Maybe I’ll find myself re-energized yet.

I go through in cycles about this, and it’s silly. I know that I need to exercise more, but that’s tough because I’m overweight. There’s so much bombarding me daily from things that I see, saying oh it’s simple just take Leptovox and you’ll drop the weight, but I realize that’s not going to help because it’s a symptom. I need to make so many changes in my life itself so that I’ll live better overall instead of just taking a magic pill. Why is that so hard to comprehend?

I was reading an article that I saw on Lupa’s livejournal, and thought that I would share it. America’s Waste Habits are Scary.

I had to think that I contribute to this. There have been so many times recently that I’ve thrown out things, the other day from our fridge, pantry and freezer I threw out a whole helping of Pizza Hut cheesy bread that had dried out, half a tub of cantaloupe pieces, half a bag of grapes, 5lbs of potatoes which had gone rotten, and about a cup of stale milk and some sour orange juice.

Why?

Because they get forgotten in our fridge, and in the case of the potatoes they’d gone rancid. That was the third bag of potatoes I’d thrown out in as many weeks, because I was being lazy and using mix-mash or french fries instead of potatoes, so they would sit in the bag in the pantry until they went soft and exploded.

We’ve come up with better ways to handle that. I’ve stopped getting french fries altogether, which also saves space in our freezer, and when I get the potatoes I take them out of the bag and sit them on the wire shelves in our pantry so that they don’t squash each other, or sweat in the bag. My husband commends my home made french fries, which are actually baked to be more healthy over the frozen ones any day, and I’m happy that my son is going to know what potatoes look like instead of thinking they come in a box.

Real food! And it’s BETTER for you too, who knew? LOL.

But seriously. I am ashamed about how much we’ve been throwing out. I get this stuff with the goal of eating healthy and then it gets ignored in favor of snack food that we bring in or that our friend’s bring over when they come over to game. It’s not good for many reasons. I’m debating starting a compost heap for those times that we have to throw something out, but in the mean time I’m trying to inventory what we do have so that we can engage in better purchasing and disposing habits, and hopefully use more than we have been.

It doesn’t seem like much for just us, at times, but it sure does add up.

It’s hard some times to feel that you can still exercise when you don’t have and can’t afford a treadmill or a stair master; but there are many things you can do.

I do try to walk around our neighborhood but as the Florida weather creeps towards unpleasantly hot it’s hard to be able to do that. So, I’ll do mini stair climber things on our stair case, and step aerobics on the bottom step. I’ll chase the munchkin around the yard.

Just cutting out soda is a big help with losing weight because of all the sugar and junk that’s in there. When I really started studying labels on things I was so surprised as to everything that I’ve been putting in my body. The caffeine reduction has been taking it’s toll on my mood, but I’ve found that lying in the yard for a few minutes really helps me to center and get back in the proper frame of mind to continue the day.