Winter Wellness Series #3 - Water and other fun ideas!

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to the conclusion of our Winter Wellness Series for 2020! I've enjoyed this little foray into a topic that I've become much more interested in over the past 6 months or so, and I hope that you enjoyed sharing it with me!

*hug*

I thought this week we could chat about other ways we try to stay fit and healthy, outside of our nutritional goals and exercise. Please do drop your suggestions in the comments! For me, I try to drink more water. Water flushes your body out in a healthy way, and helps you to feel fuller, longer. I've also wanted to try and experiment with protein shakes, especially in the mornings when I tend to eat sugary breakfast cereals, but that hasn't really gone anywhere. Let's start with water!

I've always kept a water bottle chilling in the refrigerator for when I want a cold drink (it's always enticing for me when it's super cold and waiting like that!), and I'm pretty good about drinking water every day. But I knew that I could improve. So I bought a new bottle water with a new goal in mind. Never one to take the easy road when the impossible road will do, I purchased this:

Bottled Joy 1 Gallon Water Bottle

Yeah. That's a gallon jug of water. When it's full, I can hardly lift it. 😂 Maybe if you're going to be hiking through the wilderness for days at a time, you'd need this water bottle, but this suburban librarian does NOT need one. I'm curently keeping it in my office for ease of using my Keurig machine and calling it a day.

I reapproached Amazon, and then settled on this cute little number:

Bottled Joy 32 oz Water Bottle

Now this is a good water bottle. It's 32 oz, and has a little timeline along the side so that you can track your intake throughout the day. If you fill it up twice a day, you'll drink a half gallon of water, which is a very worthy goal. It's much more manageable to carry with me throughout my day, and I love it.

*heart*

Then, when Anne and I were out shopping one day, I found these guys:

Fruit Slice reusable ice cubes

I mean, did you ever? These are reuseable ice cubes, and I love them so much I can hardly stand it. They really perk up your water, and keep it colder longer when you need to take your bottle on the go!

Isn't this SO ADORABLE?!

I'm just in love. I drink way more water now, and overall I feel much better throughout my day.

So, as I mentioned, I really want to experiment with protein shakes to take the place of the breakfast cereal I tend to quickly eat in the mornings. This experiment has not really gotten off the ground, but I had some protein powder leftover from a previous experiment, so I decided to use that instead of buying anything new until I found whether or not I liked it or not. Previously, I had just mixed with water and put shook it together in a regular water bottle. The result was: 😷

Oh my. It was not good. :-0 So, in an effort to further explore this topic, I bought this little guy:

BlenderBottle Classic Loop Top Shaker Bottle, 28 ounce, Clear/Blue

This comes with one of those wire balls that help to mix and distribute your powder and liquid better. I also used milk this time. I mean...

It was somewhat less pukey. But I have to say, it was still pretty chalky. I think the key is actually blending everything in a real blender, and also adding fresh fruit or other produce to add texture and taste. I have my eye on a little Magic Bullet thing for my birthday, I'll keep you posted. ;-) Does anybody drink protein shakes regularly and have products and/or recipes to share?

Also, I'd love to hear other wellness tips and ideas! Our little series of talks has really energized me as me move closer to spring, yay!

Next week, I'll be posting about some ideas for Lent and see if anyone would be interested in joining me for a fairly informal read or pray -along, or something of that nature. Stay tuned!

Winter Wellness Series #2 - Fitness!

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome back for week 2 in our Winter Wellness series! Today we are talking about exercise and fitness!

*streamers!*

What I'd like to do is chat about our workouts or other ideas to stay active, and then talk about how the rest of the month will run here on the blog in terms of topics. Sound like a plan? :-)

So, I'm a pretty physically active person, but I have a confession: I hate gyms, and I also hate running. These are, of course, two big ways in which many people work out and stay active. 😂 Here, though, is something that I think is of utmost importance - when it comes to exercise, you should do what you know you will do. In other words, there's no use in trying to force yourself to do something that you loathe and have little chance of following through with longterm. If you like to take walks, you should do that, and challenge yourself to up your game a bit by adding distance and more challenging hiking paths. If you enjoy dancing, you chould try a Zumba class or other dance fitness. If you're not usually very active, try some different things to ferret out what you like best!

I really do hate running, btw. I hate how long it takes to build up endurance, and I hate the constant risk of injury doing something that I don't like doing anyway! If I get injured dancing, well, at least I'm doing what I love. :-) When I have tried running in the past, I would dread doing it, get frustrated when all of my hard word would get derailed by a single cold or something that kept me from running for a short stretch, and eventually I'd give up in a huff. This is what we don't want, for sure!

While it's true that I don't like the gym, I do like group fitness classes (which are often offered at gyms, I will grant). I love the community spirit, it keeps me motivated, and I so prefer a class format to lifting weights or toiling away on a treadmill (again with the running). I am a huge fan of Zumba dance fitness, and have a class in my regular rotation. I also take Piyo two times per week, which I LOVE. This is a yoga/Pilates fusion that works your entire body with your own natural resistance (no weights involved), and it is amazing and you will SWEAT! I've been wanting to challenge myself to try new things, and so this winter I have also added in a HIIT class (high intensity interval training). While it's not love like with the other ones (exercises involving running *snort* and jumping are not the best fit for this body with a bladder that has experienced multiple pregnancies 😨) the instructor is amazing and incorporates strength training with hand weights, and that part I do like!

In addition to specifically fitness classes, I also dance two times per week, and I walk when I can with friends or my husband. :-) Check out your town's community education class schedule, there are often new things to try in there in terms of dance, martial arts and other types of fitness classes. It's a great way to find new things, and try them out for a manageable and limited time frame so that you can see if if you like them! Community ed. is actually how I first discovered belly dance!

Planning a fitness routine is key, in my experience. For me, the best time to work out is during my lunch break at the campus gym/recreation center. For a lot of people, that time is right after work. Again, it just should be a time that is convenient for you, that you know you can stick to with some regularity. For walks, those are in the evening or on the weekends if I have Mike with me. Whatever works!

I also think a lot depends on what your goals are. Working with a personal trainer can really aid in establishing and working towards these, and that's something I'm interested in trying! If you're looking to build muscle and tone up, they will likely suggest a different track for you than for someone who is looking to lose a set amount of weight. I'm in my 40's, and looking to build muscle and generally get in the best shape of my life. I'm excited. 😁

So I'm going to keep trying new classes where I can, and look into the personal training thing. It's good to have goals, and to encourage each other!

What are your fitness goals? I'd love to hear about them! Next week, we're going to wrap up the wellness series with a talk about water intake, protein shakes, and anything else I can think of that we haven't covered already. ;-) Then the week after that is just before Ash Wednesday, so we'll be doing some Lent planning, can't wait! 😀

Winter Wellness Series #1 - Meal planning and prep...

Happy Friday everyone! Last week we had a fun chat about wellness goals for the year, and I was inspired to start a series to run for the end of January and into February on related topics. Here we have our first official post in the series, and today we're tackling meal planning and prep!

*praise hands*

Caveat: I don't have a background in nutrition, or any experience with specialized eating needs involving allergies or other food sensitivities. I'm just going to lay out what works for me, and new things I'd like to try. Obviously, we are all different, and what works for one will not work for all! But I think that sharing experiences provides ideas and inspriation in any number of ways, and that that is always a good thing. :-) With that said, let's get started!

Whenever I come to a place wherein I want to increase my overall physical health, the first thing I do is examine the fuel that I'm providing my body. If I'm not feeling as good as I have in the past, it's often because I'm not balancing my eating as well as I used to, and in my case, that *always* comes from a lack of planning.

When I meal plan, I provide structure for balanced family dinners, but also for the lunches I pack to take to work, because I use the leftovers as my lunch 90% of the time. For lunches, here's the key: put the leftovers you plan to use for this purpose into convenient to carry, lunch-sized containers RIGHT AWAY, as you're cleaning up from dinner that night. If you don't, the chances of you using your awesome leftovers become significantly reduced. Ask me how I know this. ;-)

If we don't have leftovers for lunch, I'll pack a salad, or what I call An Assortment, which is usually cheese, crackers, fruit, and whatever else I can scavenge from our fridge and cupboards. Having this Plan A and B for lunches helps me to feel organized, and to be better about planning dinners. And planning dinners is ever so important to our physical health goals. Here's how I do it:

Magnetic dry erase menu

Yep, I am a nerd, and I use a dry erase board. You can see that Anne has penned her very own meal ideas in the Groceries section of the board. ;-) I am a huge fan of this system, and have been doing it for years. When I slack off, things go bad quickly. This particular type of menu requires liquid chalk markers, not traditional dry erase, and I get those easily on Amazon:

Liquid chalk markers available from Amazon

I plan the meals over the weekend, usually Saturday or Sunday morning, for the entire week ahead. Sometimes, things don't work out as planned (we don't have enough leftovers on a day I have planned leftovers for dinner, or we're missing a key ingredient for a meal that I thought we had), and so I'll just shuffle things around, or add something new in mid-week, no biggie. The key is not to be too hard on yourself. We all try to be organized, and sometimes things don't work out as planned. We try again!

I meal plan using a variety of sources. I have a cookbook collection that I love, and I'll select things out of there. When I pick something, I add it to the menu, and I also added needed groceries to our grocery list. This cuts down on the Missing Key Ingredients, although it isn't 100% fullproof. ;-) One of my favorite series of cookbooks is 100 Days of Real Food:

I highly recommend the 100 Days of Real Food blog and cookbook series!

I also have a slew of recipes that I print out from blogs, or recipes that someone gave to me, and I keep these in folders divided into meal categories. You can really tell that a librarian is in charge of this operation, yes? :-0 These are usually family favorites, and I'll try to insert one of those into the weekly menu alongside the inevitable healthy, vegetable-laden new things that I'd like to try, but that the children will hate. ;-)

I also use recipes from a service that I subscribe to called Prep Dish. Prep Dish is an awesome company, owned and operated by a professional chef, that provides you with weekly meal plans, shopping list, and a plan for prepping the food for the entire week, so that each weekday your work to prepare the meals is minimal. The meal plans focus on a gluten free situation, or a Paleo eating philosophy, neither of which totally apply to me, *however* the meal plans are based on using whole, fresh produce, meat and fish (if you're a vegetarian, could easily eliminate these), and are just generally very healthy and flavorful. I use the Paleo recipes, and am always finding new ideas, seasonings, cooking methods, and general inspiration from them to try new things. I personally do not do all of the advance prep, but this is obviously another fantastic idea that you might want to try! I also don't use every meal idea on the weekly plan, but each week will simply select a few to try. Even though I'm not using all of the capabilities that this service provides, I still consider it VERY worth it to have built-in seasonal, healthy ideas every single week! I am an annual premium subscriber, and consider this an essential renewal every year.

Another recipe source for me is our local CSA (community support agriculture, a farm share of local fruits and vegetables, essentially), and this gets into an important point about meal planning: having fresh and healthy food in the house means that you are much more likely to use it in your meals, or snack on it when you feel hungry between meals. We have an awesome CSA that provides recipes for the produce that is included in that week's box, and they deliver it right to our door. They also have a webstore wherein you can add in a slew of other locally made goods such as dairy products, meat and fish, pasta, bread, jams and jellies, pickles, etc. I'm often adding yogurt and granola to my order, and sometimes chocolate milk that my children devour like they've never seen liquid before. I find having fresh fruit and veggies essential to my lunch options too, so if I'm out of leftovers, I'll cut up carrots, toss whatever fruit we have in there, etc.

I LOVE belonging to a CSA. I spend a little more than if I purchased the items at the grocery store, but the convenience, and the fact that we're supporting local farmers, makes it so worth it to me. Ours even runs all winter with root vegetables and hydroponic lettuce and tomatoes!

So for meal planning, that's all I got. :-0 I don't track what I eat, even if I'm trying to lose a few pounds, I just try to focus on balancing my meals with lots of healthy, whole food, and to not snack between meals aside from fruit or vegetables, and a protein, if needed. I know that a lot of people swear by tracking their food, so this might be something that works for you! I know there are tons of great apps for that out there now.

To me, it is SO, so essential that we enjoy our food, and have a healthy relationship with food. We shouldn't deny ourselves less healthy food that we enjoy, we can just try to control our portions of it and balance it out with healthier options. And sometimes if that doesn't happen, it's ok. We should treat ourselves sometimes, and be kind to ourselves. The fruits and veggies will be waiting for us Monday morning. ;-)

What are your meal planning ideas and/or system? Do you have tips that have worked for you in terms of healthy eating? I'd love to accrue some new ideas!

New year, new wellness aspirations...

Thank you to you all for the love on last week's post about how I'll continue to blog!

*beams*

I really appreciate it, and it's good to know that the content I produce here is meaningful to others. Besides, you know, just me. ;-) I'll put up posts when I can, and just allow myself to be write about whatever is inspiring me that week or that season. That's how I work best, and I'm glad to know that this still brings value to all of you.

*group hug*

Right now, it still be January, I'm still in resolution mode. I wrote earlier this month about faith/family and dance goals, which I think fit into the larger picture I'm about to get into. Wellness encompasses a lot of different component parts, I think, and those are:

(1) physical,
(2) emotional,
(3) spiritual

Right? My birthday is in mid-February, and each year that goes by it causes me to re-examine a lot of different aspects of my life. Faith and family wise, I'm very happy. I'm hard at work on my list of goals for the year, and it's going pretty well. Not perfect, but pretty well. Dance is omnipresent in my life, also quite happily, and that's also heading along on it's steady course. Within that larger physical wellness realm, I've been thinking that I'd like to make some changes. I'm not at all unhappy with my physical form, but there are ways in which I'd like to do better.

I used to meal plan quite diligently, and the stress of the fall combined with the holidays has led to a complete meltdown in planning and preparing healthy meals. This affects not only me, but the entire family. Now, would the kids prefer if it stayed this way? ;-) Yes, they would be very happy without me pushing fresh fruits and vegetables on them on a daily basis, but they don't have the broadest of perspectives on this! I've gotten back into meal planning and prepping, as well as weekly deliveries from our CSA, and perhaps I'll devote a whole post to this coming up, as I have a number of methods that I combine that work quite well for us. But that's definitely a good first step!

I've also become much more interested in physical fitness. I'm pretty active, that's where dance fills part of this category, but I also enjoy walking and taking fitness classes. Although I'm not looking to lose weight per se, I'd like to tone up and become a bit stronger. I have some specific things I'd like to achieve, and things I'd like to try to mix things up in my fitness routine.

You know. I'm being inspired, Holy Spirit moment here. 😂 Let's make this a wellness series that I'll continue throughout the end of January and February, leading up to Lent. This is sort of the intro post, and I can write separately about mealing planning and prep, fitness classes/gym stuff, and dance. I've even become more into increasing my water intake, so there will be a water post. And the aforementioned chalky protein shake experiments. YES! I'm very excited about this!

*delighted face*

If there is anything specific within these wellness topics I've mentioned you'd like me to touch upon, just leave those ideas in the comments, and I'd be happy to include them. I'd also love to hear about your own wellness goals this winter if you'd like to share them. Yay!

Feeling inspired with meal planning...

If your experience is anything like mine, your children have developed some eating habits that are, let's delicately say, less than ideal. Before I had my first baby, I didn't really think about this issue at all. I figured I would breastfeed for a year, and then my child would eat nothing but homemade applesauce and exotic gourmet meals that I would suddenly find time to make.

*hope springs eternal* 😇

Well.

The breastfeeding part worked out, but the rest went into the Giant Fanciful Idea Receptacle In The Sky. My toddlers ate exactly what I swore would never happen: vast amounts of Goldfish crackers, those weird little puff things, an obscene amount of macaroni and cheese, and a proclaimed love for pepperoni pizza. The most "exotic" thing they ate was french fries. Now, my kids are 6 and 11. While they no longer eat puffs, they are still quite reluctant to try new foods. They do like fresh fruit, but the "v word" makes their faces pinch up like someone has very indelicately relieved a gas situation.

I've tried for many years now to get them to be more adventurous in their eating. It's a slow process, to be sure. But Anne now likes shrimp and Henry has tried Roast Beef on Weck (it's a Buffalo thing).

#VictoryisMine

We're getting there. But the only way they try new things is if they have no choice via what I make for dinner. And making something healthy and exotic for dinner means that I have to plan it. I need to make the menu over the weekend, procure all necessary groceries, and have things ready to go for the week. This does happen, but not always. It can be exhausting. :0

While I was visiting my sister over Memorial Day weekend, she introduced me to Prep Dish.

This is a subscription website whereby you get a menu for the week of 4 dinners, a salad, a breakfast, a snack and a dessert. The other days, of course, you can have leftovers and other stand by's, go out to eat, etc. You get a big grocery list for the week, broken down into categories (Dairy, Fruit, etc). Then, you have a "prep day" in which you are guided through preparing each of these meals, and storing the prepared ingredients away into your refrigerator. As you move through the week, you pull out the necessary prepped items, and have only a few steps to complete the meal. This is very handy during the work and school week, as you can imagine. The food is based on either a gluten free approach or Paleo. We as a family do not need to use either of these restrictions, so I simply use the gluten free menu and just include an ingredient we would normally use rather than it's recommended gluten free counterpart. The meals are mainly based upon a whole food and fresh ingredient approach, which is of course universal. And it's delicious, truly.

This isn't an affiliate post, I'm gettin' nothin' for writing this. :0 I just signed up for the free trial, and I have to say that I love it. The grocery list is THE BOMB. The categorization made it infinitely easier to find things at the grocery store. It's fun trying new things, and the food tastes wonderful. Monday we had a citrus marinated chicken with pineapple salsa, and tonight we're having a ginger/soy sauce stir fry with beef and bell peppers. Friday is an egg fritatta with mushrooms and kalamata olives. I brought in the snack with me to work today, which is a yogurt dill sauce for dipping fresh carrots and zucchini.

I'm enjoying having someone else do the planning for me. Has anyone else tried a menu planning subscription like this? I'd love to hear about it!

Trying to tone up, both physically and spiritually...

So, with the arrival of spring, I've been thinking more about getting into better shape. I still have the perpetual 8-10 lbs I'd like to lose to get to my ideal weight. But more importantly, I do want to just generally improve my physical fitness. I eat pretty well, and I'm fairly active, but I've slacked off really exercising in depth. I walk and dance weekly, but runs have been pretty sparse in recent months, and strength training downright unheard of. I feel a bit out of shape, and I'd like to remedy that, and drop a few unwanted pounds in the process.

So, now what? Sigh. I work full-time outside the home plus I have a small child, so time is at a premium. I'm not a gym person (don't have the money, or the inclination). I've been trying to renew my power walking at work during my lunch hour, which is when it's easiest for me to exercise. I also dragged my hand weights back out in the hopes of getting that in 2-3 times per week at home. I'm going to try that tonight, with Hank. We'll see how that goes. I hope we don't break anything.

I'm going to try and report in weekly on my progress, perhaps this will motivate me. I won't be saying what I actually weigh, not that it's atrocious or anything, I'm just way too vain for that. I can admit that openly :) All I'll say is that I have an average build and I've never been a size 0, nor will I ever see two 1's put together in my weight ever in my life. And I never will. I think my *bones* weigh more than that. We'll use my secret weight from yesterday as my starting point. *makes mental note* As of this morning, I've lost 2 ounces. Ugh. We'll get there. By the end of the summer I'd like to be at my ideal weight. I think that's reasonable. It's about 8 lbs. away.

In terms of spirituality, I've been trying to pray more. God is always in my thoughts, but I wasn't actively praying as much as I should. I've renewed my efforts in my morning offering, my daily rosary (at least 2 decades), spontaneous prayer throughout the day, and evening devotional time with my Bible.

I've been wanting a small purse-sized New Testament so that I could have that for anytime I wanted or needed the scriptures. Yesterday, on my way home from work I stopped off at the local Christian bookstore to peruse. They had lots of small New Testaments, but only 1 of the Catholic variety, the St. Joseph New American Bible, Vest Pocket Edition. It was exactly what I wanted, though a few dollars more than I'd planned on spending. It has a leather cover, instead of the paperback I was expecting. I ended up getting it, figuring the sturdier cover was better for getting stuffed in my purse anyway, and it's working out well. I already used it this morning when I arrived at work.

In other devotional news, my fellow (and favorite!) Catholic blogger Cam is having a rosary giveaway in honor of her new etsy store over at her blog. Enter A Woman's Place... rosary giveaway by leaving a comment, and/or check out her etsy store, Full of Grace Creations! She has some beautiful rosaries and rosary bracelets for sale.

Sleepy, but good, and Ode to my Storm Chasers...

I'm doing a bit better handling work stress since Monday. I've been keeping up with my daily devotions with renewed fervor (morning rosary, Living Faith readings) and that seems to be helping.

Relatedly, over the course of the past month, I've been battling what I'm pretty sure is a pinched nerve. At first, I thought it was simply a stiff neck. I woke up with it, which happens to everyone at some point. No big deal. Well, by the end of the day I thought I may never be able to move the entire upper half of my body ever again. This was the stiff neck from the very pits of hell. I applied heat, left work early, rested... I went to bed hoping it would magically disappear by morning, like they usually do.

No such luck. By the next afternoon, I had to take some ibuprofen so that I could concentrate on other things a bit. Finally, the day after that, it started to subside. But I noticed a lingering stiffness in that side of my neck and shoulder. Even now, 5-6 weeks later, that side of my neck is slightly stiff when I warm up for bellydance. But the more worrisome part is that for about 3-4 weeks now, the hand on that side gets a pins and needles sensation on and off all day. That's where my pinched nerve hypothesis comes into play. I made an appointment with my doctor, just to be sure, so we're all good.

But at any rate, I'm pretty sure I'm aggravating the situation with my poor posture at work. I'm a librarian, so I'm sitting in front of a computer for a large portion of my work day. Yesterday, I started noticing that I don't sit all the way back in my chair and tend to slump my back over as I work at my desk. I then started noticing that the pins and needles sensation started up almost exclusively when I was slumped in such an aforementioned manner. And for the first time, my overall back felt sore yesterday. So, since then, I've started sitting up straight in my chair, and my hand and back feel a lot better. I googled 'pinched nerve' (the librarian thing, I can't help it) and found that getting proper rest, good diet and exercise can all contribute to helping a pinched nerve heal faster. With my stress at work, I've slacked lately with my daily walks, and I haven't been sleeping well. I've resolved to make things better. I started walking again, and last night I psyched myself up for a good night of sleep. It actually worked, I was pretty surprised. I still feel tired, but I think that's a cumulative effect from the past week.

Overall, I'm doing better. I shouldn't take my health for granted. Striving for physical and emotional betterment in the world of the Catholic Librarian...

And...*drum roll* yesterday I came home to my brand new Storm Chasers. *angels sing* The instant I got home, after kissing Hank and Mike, I sliced open the box, picked up the boots, and slipped them on my feet. They fit like a dream. And the new design is SO cute, even Mike said so. I wore them on my commute this morning, and on my daily walk this afternoon, and they performed superbly. They're adorable, comfortable, and keep my feet toasty and dry. They're resting comfortably right now over by my coat and I keep peeking there to admire them. Storm Chasers, how I love and adore you. Let us never be parted again...

Morning stuff and weight update...

I will try to make time later to comment on Bridezillas from this past Sunday. It was a doozy :) Otherwise, I'm just having a busy morning. I just got back from a meeting with a faculty member about an information literacy assessment plan we're conducting with his class. Not exactly light stuff for 9 am :) The farmers market is today, so I'm plotting my pasta purchases. I've lost another couple pounds. *halo* I'm very pleased. I feel a lot better, both mentally and physically. It's a combination of eating more nutritiously, and being more physically active. I've started running again twice a week, and I try to get a walk in once a day. I've actually been enjoying cooking more, a first for me. So if you have recipes, let's share :)

Weight loss update...

So, things have improved slightly since that fateful morning this past Saturday. In retrospect, I suppose it would have looked pretty funny to an outside observer. I reached for my old faithful pair of jeans (that I fit into at 12 weeks of pregnancy; they sit nice and low on the hips) and attempted to pull them up. The vicious obscenities that came from my mouth are normally not things you would hear come from the Catholic Librarian. But your Catholic Librarian is not a girl to be dissuaded easily. Oh no. Those babies were comin' on. I *refused* to accept that they may not fit. I yanked them up, and by nearly asphixiating myself, got them buttoned. However, the muffin top that resulted made me tear up. NOT a good look.

So, since then, I've eaten with a halo perched firmly atop my head, and have run or walked every day. To date, I've lost 2.8 pounds. *Angels Sing* I still have a ways to go to get to my goal, but I'm making steady progress, and I'm pleased. I'm headed for the farmers market at 11, healthy foods at the forefront of my mind. Goodness, do I miss wine...

Susannah's Garden...

Feeling fairly uninspired at work right now. Just printed out some pasta recipes in preparation for the Farmers Market tomorrow. A specialty pasta place has a table that sells dynamite, home-made pasta. I've been trying to cook more lately (instead of relying on chicken salad and Campbell's soup to be the main course, three nights a week) and to generally eat healthier. The Catholic Librarian needs to lose a few pounds...I got on the scale Saturday morning, and nearly felt my heart stop. I swear it, I saw stars. It was the most I've weighed since I gave birth to Hank nearly three years ago. In fact, I recall (oh so clearly and painfully) that at *5 months* pregnant, I weighed two pounds less than I weighed Saturday morning. Life with a toddler can be difficult (while also working full-time, taking care of a house...you get the picture) and it seems I lost track of my eating and exercising, and generally taking good care of myself. So, this week I'm trying to get back into a healthy rhythm.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with Susannah's Garden, the book by Debbie Macomber that I just finished reading. The book was a very simple, sweet romance, but it made me reflect on things in my own life a bit in a way that means the book was quite good. One thing I liked about the book is that the female lead was a fifty year old woman, rather than a young, "just discovering herself" twenty year old that is often the heroine. Something different, something that appeals to the "definitely older than twenty" Catholic Librarian :) Susannah returns to her childhood home to nurse her elderly and ailing mother after the death of her father. She experiences a powerful resurfacing of painful memories regarding her father from her early life, and as the story progresses, begins to see them in a new light as her rocky relationship with her own daughter takes some unexpected turns. Susannah left home thinking that her marriage was stale, and that her father keeping her from her first love, Jake, was the biggest injustice of her life. She embarks on a risky and deceitful search for her old flame and uncovers some things she didn't realize thirty years prior. She comes to realize that a teenagers' view of things cannot be held onto through adulthood unexamined. Her memory of her father, her relationship with her mother and daughter, and her marriage all come out more positive and refreshed after her realization.

Overall, an uplifting read that turned out to have a thoughtprovoking and deep message.