City Champs!

Daniel's soccer team, The Neon Storm, won the city tournament today! They beat Fairmont, the only team to beat them this year, 4-2. It rained the whole time, so I didn't get the camera out. Daniel came close to scoring twice - the first one went too far right, and the second one just didn't get enough foot on it. But it was all good - we still won!! Go Neon Storm!!

What I'm Reading Now

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy.

I was so pumped about this book - I love Pat Conroy. It's been something like ten years since Beach Music came out. A new book is long overdue.

What can I say? He should have taken more time. I'm about halfway through, and I hate it. Really. Hate is probably too strong a word: hate implies that it has sparked some strong feeling in me. And this book has sparked nothing. NOTHING. It's just a lot of witty banter, and questionably witty banter at that. There is no plot to speak of, which is not nearly as surprising as the lack of well-developed characters.

I was so disappointed in The Hour I First Believed, I was really, really wanting a good book to read. Sadly, this isn't it. I may not even finish it. It's that bad.

Time Travel

OK, so despite my love of the time travel concept in books/movies/tv, I don't really think it's possible. Fun to talk about, fun to think about, fun to theorize about, yes. But possible? No. Not so much.

But isn't it interesting how certain things seem to transport us back in time? Smells can remind us of grandparent's houses or holidays. Finding old clothes in your closet can take you right back to where and when you bought it, or some special day that you wore it.

The biggest transporter for me is music. Nothing takes me back to another place and time faster than the soundtrack I associate it with. Just this week, the transporter was Elton John's The One.

I moved to Johnson City in the fall of 1992. I bought The One sometime that fall, and I associate the purchase with my brother (apart from the Charlie Peacock incident, he has always been a great recommender of sweet tunes.) I don't know if he bought it for me, or just recommended it , or maybe just had it playing in the truck during visits and I liked it. Whatever the reason, I associate this album with Paul. But I digress.

I was living in an apartment in south Johnson City, and working as a help desk agent. Mark and I were not dating at the time, but he was my supervisor and I had a major crush.

At some point that fall, the fam met up at some place in western North Carolina for a weekend getaway. The hotel we stayed at was reminiscent of the hotel from The Shining: very nice, but just a wee bit creepy. Paul and I went out one of the nights that weekend to see Dracula (Gary Oldman/Winona Ryder) at a local theater. I bought a cool black hat at a general store-type place (The Mast Store maybe? Is there such a place?)

Mom also came up for a visit that fall. She took me to Kroger and taught me all she could about grocery shopping and cooking for one. She also took me clothes shopping and bought me two wool blazers (one bright purple and one with purple/black/red checks). They were so cool. I wore them with jeans and black cowboy boots and (a few weeks later) the black hat.

And while all these things were happening, The One was playing in the background. Because as soon as I heard it again this week (I bought the remastered version from iTunes last weekend), all of those memories came back. Like they had just happened. Like I was back in 1992 again. The One, The Last Letter, Dark Street: all of the songs took me right back to 1992. I remembered exactly how it felt to to be single, to be young and clueless, and to be independent. I wouldn't want to go back, but it was nice to be able to visit for just a bit.

Maybe time travel is possible after all.

What's for Dinner?

Chicken Scallopine with Saffron Sauce.


I indulged my inner foodie a couple months back and bought some saffron. Saffron is actually the stamen of crocus flowers. It is picked by hand. It ain't cheap. But I bought a smidge from my friends at The Spice House and have used it here and there, mostly with fish.

But tonight, I went with chicken. I used a Giada recipe that I found on the food network web site. I didn't call mine Chicken Scallopine with Saffron Cream Sauce, because I subbed one percent milk to save some fat and calories. It was still tasty.

Saffron is a really unusual flavor. It is very light, almost not there. I think it adds more color than flavor. The color is awesome. And we talked about who might have hand-picked the saffron threads we were having, which livened dinner conversation considerably.

I served it over rice, and had baby spinach salad on the side. Mark proclaimed it excellent.

Fall Recap

I have accepted George's call to arms. I, too, have been a slack blogger. I, too, will do my best to blog better in the future. To blog better, stronger, faster. Well, maybe not faster. But more frequently. And I'm gonna start right now.

We have had a whirlwhind fall so far. I thought it would be easier to recap in pictures. This is what we've been up to, that I haven't blogged about. Enjoy!

My Perfect Health Storm

Something monumental happened to me last week. I'm talking really, really monumental. I'm talking really, really, really huge-on-all-sorts-of-levels monumental.

I weighed myself. I weighed myself and for the first time in a long, long, LONG time, I was not overweight. According to the BMI calculator, I was normal. NORMAL.

Last January, according to the same BMI calculator, I was obese. OBESE. And now? I'm not. Normal. Feels good to say. Feels even better to be. I've lost 37 pounds this year. I worked my way off medication for high cholesterol, and am working my way off medication for high blood pressure (I've gotten my dosage cut in half, but I'm still working on it.)

So what happened?

Honestly, a lot of things happened at once. I had a perfect storm of sorts that motivated me to get my health back. I've been wanting to blog about it for a while, but the timing never seemed right. But last week's shift into normalcy seemed like the time to stop and reflect. Here goes - here's my perfect health storm:

Storm Front #1: I turned 38. Not your typical threshold kind of a birthday. It's not like I turned 30, or 40, or 50. Just dumb old 38. But here's the thing: I turned 38 and felt like crap. I was fat, my back hurt, my joints ached, I had no energy. And I was only 38. I started thinking about what it would feel like to turn 40 in two years, and feel worse than I already felt. I'm young. My kids are young. They don't need an old lady for a mom. It got me thinking.

Storm Front #2: I learned how to cook. This one was a couple years in the making. But in the last few years, I've learned more about food than I ever knew before. And I discovered that the more good food I cooked - really GOOD food, really GOOD ingredients - the less I could tolerate bad food. Little Debbies, chips, fast food - all of it lost it's appeal. It just stopped TASTING good. I didn't start giving up junk food because I felt like I had to, I gave it up because it didn't taste good anymore. I still have a sweet tooth, but mostly for treats I make myself. And I can now properly appreciate the taste of a good peach. Or a good apple. Or a good tomato. Or a good....well, you get it. I've learned that eating is all about balance. I've learned to eat food because of what it has, and not because of what it doesn't have. I've learned that if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't make sense to eat it. And I don't starve myself - I eat well. But with a little education, I now know what I should be eating a lot of, what I should be eating in moderation, and what I should have on rare occasions. And it's working for me.

Storm Front #3: I started walking. One of my new year's resolutions was to walk more. And I did a lousy job of walking early in the year. So when Lent rolled around this year, I decided to make a promise to walk thirty minutes every day. And I did it. But when Lent was over, I was afraid I would fall back into old habits. At exactly the same time, the company I work for issued a "Walk for Health" challenge. They issued pedometers, and challenged us all to start walking. The people logging the most fitness steps could win prizes, and everyone logging at least 100,00 steps would get a shirt. I'm a sucker for a free shirt, so I started walking. There are three sessions, two months each. For the first session, not only did I get over 100,00 steps, but I finished in the top ten overall with 260K. That got me thinking that I could actually win! So in session two, I logged 459,965 steps. And I came in second. Bummer. But wait! The winner (by 45K) was the director of the program, and was not eligible for the prize! So I won a $150 gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods. We are now deep into session three. So far, in all three sessions, I've logged over a million fitness steps. That's 500 miles. That's like walking from my house, to my parent's house in Florence, and back as far as my brother's house in Greenville. That's a lot of walking.

Storm Front #4: The Big C. Not me, but in a year's time, a lot of people that I know were diagnosed with cancer. Many of them children. Many of them in perfect health. And I got really tripped up over it. Because here I was, unhealthy because of choices I was making. And all these people were handed this disease when they didn't deserve it, when they had done nothing to bring it on themselves. It was so unfair. And I started praying about the unfairness of it. But you can't really talk to God about "unfair", because he just makes you talk to Jesus about "unfair" and, well, you're just not going to get anywhere with that one. But because I was praying, I started hearing that small voice - you know the one. The one that tells you what you already know. The one that told me that the only way for me to make it even close to fair, was to stop talking my own health for granted. Start taking care of myself. Not just for me, but for my kids and my husband.

And so here I am: eating well and exercising. I feel great, and there's a lot less of me. I don't know when the weight loss will plateau, but as of now, I'm still losing, slowly but surely. I'd like to get a little more of a buffer zone between "normal" and "overweight", but time will tell. I feel like I finally have eating and exercise habits that I won't move away from (like going off of a diet). It feels like this is me now. I hope so. I like normal me.