For my Poppy

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dad-jess

I have two significant memories of my dad when I was really young, probably  4 or 5. One was a hot summer day in Saskatoon and the boys were all out in the back yard working on my mom’s extensive garden. My older dad peeled off his shirt, my older brother peeled off his shirt and my toddler brother was just in his diaper anyways. I was left the only shirted person there and I started to do the same when my older brother said, “NO! You can’t take off your shirt, you’re a girl!”

I didn’t even understand how those two things were at all related. It was hot out. I looked at my dad, “Dad? Can I take off my shirt?” and he replied “Go ask your mother.”

I learned how to deflect tricky parenting situations from him. Actually, my mom was pretty good at it, too.

There were a few things my dad taught me about consistency. He came home from work every day at 5:30 and we ate supper more or less right away. He would walk in the door and whistle (twice high, then lower) to let us know he was home. This whistle eventually evolved to him just calling out “foo foo” because this was easier than whistling I guess. (Few things in our family stayed one way ever, we had this always evolving language based on English what French my parents remembered from High School/Dutch/our childish misunderstandings of what the words actually were.). Every morning when I was young enough to wake up at 6AM, I would find my dad stretched out on the couch with a Bible in his lap. He would get up at 5:30 every morning to read the Bible and pray. As a very little girl when I watched him do that with probably more consistency than I saw him do anything else, I learned two very important things:

1) When my daddy says he’ll pray for me I know he will, and I know he will even when he doesn’t tell me he will.

2) Our children watch us and pick up on our habits whether we intend for them to or not.

dad-jess-wedding

Update on my New Years’ Resolution to Read

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So this morning it occurred to me, I don’t think I’ve read any books since the beginning of May. So I sat down to think about it. I was doing so well up until our regular routine was interrupted by leaving Montreal for the month of May. I managed to do tons of reading in April. Reading became easier and easier and as I picked books that interested me more and more, I was reading more and more. If you take a look at my Books in 2013 page, you’ll see that I went above and beyond my 2 books a month/a book every 2 weeks goal. I read 5 books in April!

Actually, now that I see the list again, I did read 2 books in May. It just didn’t feel like it because I read one book in one day and another book another day. They weren’t spread over a few weeks. Also they were both short novels, but that still counts as reading!

I need to get reading back on my list of things to do. I’ve been more into fiction lately which is a switch from almost everything I’ve read in the last year and a half.

I’m just a better person when I read. I’m nicer, happier, a better conversationalist. I’m all around better. Yet, sometimes, I still need to coach myself to make reading a priority, and this month that is what has to happen.

“Two Frayed Strands” on Medium

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mediumHave you guys heard of Medium yet? It’s the brainchild of Ev Williams and if you’ve been following his career, everything he touches turns to gold. Blogger, Twitter, and now this. You can find the link over on my social sidebar, it’s the M.  I’ve decided it’s a good spot to publish some writing that doesn’t fit within the boundaries of this blog. The following is the first paragraph from my first post “Two Frayed Strands.”

I knew something was very wrong the moment I woke up. This morning, I sort of wished I hadn’t woken up. It wasn’t that I wanted to die per se but that the well of my soul was so parched it was as if it had been millenia since water filled its walls. Anxiety filled me where a sense of self should have. I made a mental check-list of what I was supposed to do that day and the rest of the week. It all needed to go, save studying for my University finals. I would skip my classes, cancel meetings. I had nothing to give.

I was too thin of a strand to support any weight. I was too limp, frayed, too wispy and frail to even count as a whole thread, a real human being.

I rolled over and went back to sleep……

Read the rest here.

I’m terrible at running.

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I’m really bad at running, guys. Last week I finally hit Week 5 of the Couch to 5K program. I started last fall and got to about week 3 or 4 before the snow hit the ground and running felt unsafe. I restarted in the spring and basically had to start all over again. I went back to week 2 and started again back in April. I haven’t gotten into a rhythm yet where I’m doing the three runs religiously each week yet. Part of it is because it’s not fun anymore. I keep thinking back to last fall when I loved my runs. Back when they were easy and I felt great.

Last week I did the beginning of Week 5. Week 5 is walk 3 minutes, run 5, walk 3, run 5, walk 3, run 5, walk 3. I felt sick to my stomach at the end of the first 5 minutes. I couldn’t make it through the second without major consequences. Last time I ran so hard I felt sick to my stomach I had a gargantuan headache the rest of the day. No amount of water, salt, protein, carbs, Advil or anything would make it go away. It was awful. So I walked and ran my way home, ignoring the cues of the C25K podcast.

I decided to hit the treadmill instead, since my in-laws have one and that’s where we’re staying right now. The treadmill feels like a cop-out because it’s so much easier, so I ramped up the speed. Again, I couldn’t finish the second 5 minute running set. So again, I walked and ran as I saw fit until 30 minutes was over.

The third set of Week 5, I just found a slower pace and stuck to that. I completed the whole thing!

Today, I started Week 6. I kept that same slower running pace (my husband would probably call it an almost-walking pace) and I managed to finish the whole set. I’ve decided that I will keep going even if it means I’m “running” really slowly. Once I’m able to run for 30 minutes straight at that pace, then I’ll aim for 5k total. Or something.

At this rate, I will never make it to my marathon. Like, ever. Although it’s frustrating, it’s nothing new. My body doesn’t seem to be made like other people’s bodies. Last week I ate a brownie full of real sugar and it gave me fever in the night and a vomiting spell. I’m not normal (though my doctor seems to think I’m fine. ugh.) and that’s OK. It just might take me twice as long to train for a 5k and I’ve decided that I’m OK with that.

I want to reach my goals my way, not your way or her way. I basically just want to get there. Getting there is more important to me than how, although it wasn’t always that way. I used to want to do it and be among the best. My pride hung on the fact that I arrived in decent standing compared to the best. Now, I’m at a place where I just want to arrive. I don’t want to give up because it’s hard or because it’s embarrassing that I’m kind of an athletic loser. I want to say I did because I wanted to, and I did it on my own terms. That’s more of a medal to me than any Olympic standing.

I’m growing up, people.

To the things that scare us into inaction

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keep calm

“Do not fear what is frightening.”

I’ve been thinking about this statement a lot this past week. It comes from a passage in the Bible the encourages women to trust God. What I deeply appreciate about this sentence is that it doesn’t say “don’t fear because it’s not all that bad” or “you’ll be fine so stop being afraid.” It acknowledges that sometimes things are legitimately frightening and that a decently normal response would be to be afraid.

Sometimes good things are frightening. Things like:

  • giving your spouse the blessing to make a financially risky business decision, one that you know also know will breathe life into their weary soul.
  • going back to school for something you love at the cost of a big fat student loan you’re not sure you’ll actually succeed at it.
  • getting married or having kids.
  • signing your fat self up for your first marathon and going public with the news.

In most cases, the reason to fear real and palatable but somehow we need to move past the actual fearing and lean into the fact that maybe we’re meant to move forward on This Scary Thing if we’ve come this far and we should just trust God who knows all and is perfect.

So I made this print as a reminder to myself to not let fear rule my heart.

The End of the Smoothie Challenge

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20-smoothies

The Smoothie Challenge is over. I can’t believe I got as far as I did! Did I manage to get through the full month? For those of you following on Instagram, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting smoothies lately. Tuesday of last week we rolled into the in-laws’ place and I just found it a lot harder to put together a smoothie there. I technically ‘won’ if you count a week’s worth of Bolthouse Farms Smoothies, but I’m pretty sure that’s missing the point a bit.

How did it go?

It went like a lot of 30 day challenges do: fun at first, and then around day 10-15 it got hard. Some days I was doing them at 9:30PM just to say I did it for that day. But hey! I managed to get pretty far that way. In the end, I did 22 out of 31 days. Not too bad!

Some days the smoothies were super good. Other days, my concoctions were revolting. I learned I should never put apple or cucumber in my smoothie. It makes it thick and chunky. All in all, I think I had more good smoothies than bad smoothies and I learned some good things about hiding greens in a drink.

What did I learn?

veggies

1. I think I actually felt better when I was having the daily smoothies. This last week my gut has been less happy and a bit stiff. Like I’ve said before, I wouldn’t win the Olympic medal for vegetable consumption. As you can see from my Lift progress, I don’t even eat them every day! So basically I should keep doing smoothies because they’re a good way for me to get fruits and veggies.

2. They’re pretty easy to put together. Spending 5-7 minutes on a smoothie is pretty reasonable when I consider that it’s a pretty easy way to get a range of fruits/veg into my body.

3. It doesn’t take that much planning. Once it becomes normal, you can get it done pretty quickly, especially with an immersion blender which is what I used every day. It makes it easy for clean up. I mostly used spinach, beet greens and kale for my greens and a mixture of fresh oranges and various frozen fruits.

Got recipes?

I managed to save my recipes and pictures as I went on Evernote and early on people started requesting recipes. If I remember correctly, most of them I randomly put together (except for the Sun Kissed Smoothie, which was probably THE BEST. There’s a link in the note) although some of those recipes are so easy to put together there’s no way I can really claim intellectual property on them.

You can get the recipes here. Some of those recipes are not that great. Just a warning.