“When hope is fleeting, stop for a moment and visualize, in a sky of silver, the crescent of a lavender moon. Imagine it — delicate, slim, precise, like a paper-thin slice from a cabochon jewel.
It may not be very useful, but it is beautiful.
And sometimes it is enough.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
I needed somewhere to talk to myself. Nothing else fit. This is where I am now.
I’m in a state about the world, and work, and the future, and the past.
But I also want to talk about working out, and how I’m getting into tarot, and how I miss my mom, and how I want to remodel my house (but I’m pretty lazy).
Blogging seems weird, but life seems weird too. Maybe it fits.
We’ll just see how this all plays out.
Life just keeps on moving along. Cancer still sucks. Mom is still fighting/surving/living/loving. Currently I’m sitting outside watching the sunset; which is my favorite, right after the sunrise.
Usually we run on Saturday mornings but we decided to shake things up and run on Sunday morning this week so it’s wine on Friday night, which is a little different.
Someone on my Twitter feed posted earlier that there was so much hate and that it is so hard to love. But there’s also so much love and I keep trying to remember that.
I bought a new domain, but I probably won’t use it. I honestly debated spending over $2,000 to re-purchase the first domain I had in 1999. But I wouldn’t use it either, so I didn’t. I tried installing some old school blog software but it sucked more than I remembered.
I don’t know how so much time has passed. I don’t know how everything is so different and so the same. I think not having kids fucks with your sense of time. You lack those milestones which become metrics by which to judge the passing of time.
Nothing productive is going to come out of this post, I just wanted words on the screen.
Other things I’ve meant to blog about but never did:
For lack of composing my thoughts in any real way, here’s what’s up in my world.
Reading: Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles #1) I picked up this book on the recommendation of a coworker and though I was pretty skeptical at first (doubly so when I saw there was a pronunciation guide at the front), I am about 2/3 through and am really loving this book so far. I’m excited it’s part of a still ongoing series!
Watching: We watch a lot of things. We watched Crimson Peak (imdb) this weekend. It was fine. The only thing notable about it was how boring and non-shocking it was. So much wasted potential. We also watched two episodes of Battle Creek (imdb) and gave up on it for the same reason. Not even Dean Winters was enough to make me keep watching. That’s just sad.
Listening: The Wolves by JJ & the Pillars (spotify). It’s a good running song. It’s a good everything song.
Eating: We ate at a Kerby Lane Cafe for the first time in our 5 years in Austin today. 5 years is about my average lag time, so I’m right on track.
Exploring: Hiking at Turkey Creek Trail. It was a drive to get there, but totally worth it. Let’s close this post out with my Instagrammed pics from the experience.
I think I’ve said this before, but I often write blog posts in head – in the shower, on runs, while commuting. But they so rarely make it to the page, and I then I forget what brilliance I was going to share with you.
I am currently working on self-care. More running, more yoga, more music, more routine. I also need to work in better work focus, more blogging, more socializing. But I’m getting there.
We’ve been sort of half thinking, half talking about getting a new car, but I think we’re leaning towards more serious exploration now. Hopefully we’ll go this weekend and check out a few options. It would be more exciting if it wasn’t such a pain in the ass. Someone make Amazon for car-buying (oh wait, I think I read about a guy who tried that in the hey-day of the bubble and got laughed off the internet).
Anyway, this is boring, but that’s life sometimes. I’ll try to come back when I have something more interesting
P.S. wtf with new WP making my sideway smiles into emojis with no way to disable?! ugh.
P.P.S technology is great, but there are some things I’m never going to be down with, and reformatting my smilies is one, and if you know me at all, webfonts are another (even though this theme uses them [cause I’m lazy], and there are more instances of good use of them lately; in general, I still say, ‘get off my lawn’).
“August, relax your neck.” “August, relax your face.” “August, this isn’t an academic problem for you to solve.” These are things my yoga teacher admonishes while I attempt to ‘hold’ or ‘relax into’ a pose.
I’m not sure if I’m an easy read, or she just has my number. But glob flabbit are these are things I need to remember outside of yoga.
(I never thought I would do yoga seriously, or have a yoga teacher. The reasons I resist it are the reasons I need it. Ugh.)
I know quite a few people have talked about the new WeightWatchers SmartPoint system, but I’ve been following it since Christmas day and I feel like weighing in (hah!).
If you’re not familiar, I’ve been successfully maintaining a 50lb weight loss that started with WW in 2010. Whatever combination of eating and running I have been doing over the past 5 years has worked pretty well for me. But winter and stress and a bunch of trips to Florida were slightly eroding my happy weight cushion, so I freaked out a little and joined WW again on the spur of the moment on Christmas day. I knew they had a new points program that wasn’t sugar-friendly and I was okay with that. In fact, I welcomed it.
However, after a month on the program, I think it may be time for an early break-up, despite my 3-month pre-payment.
There are so good things about the program for sure: I really like that fruits and veggies are now ‘free,’ even in recipes. The ‘points’ vs calories mentality works for me. There is a really lovely community and some great blogs that focus on WW-friendly food.
But for me, there are a few negatives that I can’t seem to overcome. Mainly that the way the points are weighted, I cannot eat even close to my normal diet without going over points for the day. And those are on days when I eat in a way I consider to be healthy and balanced. Like today (not today, but the day I wrote this).
I mean, it’s certainly not a perfect diet, and I could use a little more fruit and veg in there, but it’s not bad for me.
However, the thing that I find untenable is that if I eat this way, I’m going over my daily points by a few, meaning there is very little wiggle room for something like a big lunch out or a margarita (or two). And that’s not sustainable for me.
I’m also under 1000 calories for the day and while I try not to get super caught up in that, if I’m eating decently and feel full, but that’s on the low end, even for weight loss. And I’ve tracked my points vs my calories over a few days, and it generally shakes out this way.
I’m currently down a few pounds and back into my happy zone and maintaining. I would still like to lose a bit more, so maybe I should try to eat WW’s way, but honestly, I’m probably not going to.
So there you go, the most boring WW/calorie comparison review on the internet today.
Somehow I can always sleep on the flight ‘to’ somewhere, but hardly ever on the flight back home. I meant to blog from Florida, but we see how well that went, heh. There is just too much other stuff to do, and I spent any time online trying to do some bits of work. Anyway, not sorry.
Florida was lovely. Mom and I went shopping – like shoes and clothes and housewares and ooh look at this stuff on clearance shopping. It was fantastic. And we also watched the Minions movie together. And we solved a bunch of sodukos together and we are out and ate in and visited my granny and ran out of time for all the stuff we wanted to do. But I’m scheduling my next trip already which makes it a tiny bit less painful to go.
And Melanie came! And we had fancy beach view brunch with mom and she got to meet more of my family and everyone just adores her which makes me so happy. After being BFF for such a long time, and not even meeting til like year 12, it’s been nice to see her twice in the past year.
I said on Instagram this morning “No matter which direction I’m going, I always hate to leave.” But that also means that no matter which direction I’m going, I love coming back.
I mean to post, and then I don’t. Sharing is strange because I used to share so much that I forget I don’t actually share that much anymore.
I’ve had a couple of really good runs lately, which I’m incredible grateful for.
Today, along with the rest of the world, I learned of David Bowie’s passing and it hurt my heart. If David fucking Bowie can’t beat cancer what chance do the rest of us have?
But I listened to Blackstar while I ran today and while I felt sad I also felt comforted.
We come and we stay a while and we join the stars and we live on in the hearts of those that loved us.
And that’s not so bad, really. Right?
