Wow, this is post #501 on The Writing Mother... and I'm here to tell you that I'm moving... 

You can find my new blog at www.RedWritingHood.ca

Soooo excited!

Changes coming soon... new platform (Wordpress) and new blog design coming soon from Mamikaze....

WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE IT! :)

Keeping Promises

One of the reasons I've never committed to an "exercise program" is because I could never figure out how to PLAN my program. See, I'm kind of a planner. And when I mean I'm kind of a planner it's kind of like saying Eminem is kind of inappropriate.

I'm a planner. I want to see 12 steps ahead at all times. I want to know that doing XYZ will result in 123. It's taken me a long time (9 years actually) to realize that now that I have kids.... things will never follow my plan again.

Oh, I will try. Still I will try. I will make my plans, I will grit my teeth when they go wrong and pat myself on the back when they go right.

And I am trying to change. Just by degrees. Not even my inches but possibly by millimeters... I am in Canada, afterall.

My exercise plan is one example. It's not so much a plan as it is a promise to myself. I promise that I will try find a half hour to exercise every day. I used to think that wasn't enough. And maybe it isn't as much as I should do, but it's what I can do.

Today I left the office with 45 minutes until I had to pick up my son from camp. I ran home, jumped in my work out gear and ran to the gym... which is in the same facility as the camp. I ran for 15 minutes, walked for five and left... red-cheeked and sweaty, to pick up my son.

Not much... but enough so that I can say I'm a step closer to my goal. I can run for 15 minutes and make it 1.26 miles. That's about a 5 miles an hour... all I need to do is keep taking one little step at a time and make it to 1.5 miles in 15 minutes. Next time I'll try 5.1 miles an hour.

But that's not all... I also managed to walk about 5km (I'm totally mixing up my miles and kilometers... hope you can keep up!) which I think is 3ish miles (I know 1.5 miles is 2.4km...) after the kids headed to grandma's.

And I got the living room clean.

I feel productive. I feel good.

And I did it without a plan. I just kept my promise to myself.

Camping - A Photo Essay

Nothing in the closet fits me....

... says my blog.

And so, we're going to go out and get something new!

Details to come! :)

Sign #593 that my daughter is meant to be IN CHARGE.

Emily: Mommy, can you draw me a picture?

Me: Sure sweetie, what do you want?

You got Balls? No. SHE has Balls.

Sorry for the radio silence there... I had what we'd call a Catastrophic Event. aka...  Mama was sick... I hate the flu but for whatever reason the greater the intensity of the flu, the shorter the duration... and this one was just a day. But a LONG day it was.

I'm sure the reason that it was so intense was the stressed out ball of hell I became on Wednesday and Thursday. Part of my JOB (the one I never blog about) involves getting things to a place on a deadline (kind of sums up a lot of jobs!) and this was an important place and an important deadline and Things Were In Danger Of Missing Deadlines.

So there was crying and pleading and some more crying (mostly on the phone to UPS, some of it may have been fake) and angry words (all definitely not fake) and a speeding ticket for $129 but Lord love a duck the eagle landed and I got them to their destination.

And the next day the flu got me. Blech. I will spare you the details but I will tell you that the next day I was three pounds lighter. I do not recommend this method of weight loss.

But I will digress no further. Have you all met NakedJen? I received a lot of positive comments when I posted the bikini pictures, but NakedJen did THIS. I don't even have words for THAT.

I do have words. Brave. Beautiful. Courageous. Wonderful. Awesome.

I am still investigating the meaning of "own your own glitter"... I think that phrase could find its way into my vocabulary if I could determine the proper usage. And I want to teach it to my daughter. Which will be easy because Glitter is her thing.

The Bikini Dare .... who's with me? ...... *crickets*

I did something tonight. Something horrible. It wasn't eating the last two sugar cookies, though that was pretty horrible ... with a side of stupid.


I put on a bikini.

And took a picture of myself. Three pictures actually. Front, side, back. And I did not suck it in. I let it hang all out.

My intention was to print them off and hang them on my fridge. Except what's even worse than that? Yep, putting them on my blog. The back shot is SO AWESOME with the back boobs.

Are you ready? Have you cleared the room of small children? Whalers?