Some Answers for Cee

I had a look at Cee’s Share Your World questions for this week and when I saw the first question, I just knew I had to participate! Feels a bit like, oh I don’t know, Karma maybe? 😉

In what do you find the simplest of joys?
Great question Cee – and what I am striving to find as often as possible. I shared a couple simple joys in this post. Here are a few more:

Butterflies on my butterfly bush in the summer

My toes in the sand, any season of the year but winter

A tomato grown in my garden

Snow on a funny collie face

Jello or Pudding? And what is your favorite flavor?
I’d have to go with pudding, and the darkest chocolate flavor.

Is there a language you would like to learn?
I’ve had a long-standing love affair with the French language, as I chronicled once in this blog post. I took it all through school and for a year in college. I can still read some of it, but my skills are definitely slipping. I’d love to be able to understand it as I once did.

Do you prefer juice or fruit?
Fruit for sure and just about any kind! This is a difficult time of the year for finding decent fruit here in New England. A couple weeks ago I got some strawberries from Florida that were pretty good and that was a little thrill!

While searching for fruit photos to add to this post, I realized I’ve done a lot of posts about fruit. Add that to my simple joys, Cee, and thanks again for the questions!

Day 60

Today is Day 60 since I decided on a new fitness commitment for myself. My blogging assistant and I have crunched a few numbers to share.

Blogging assistant

I’ve logged 2,410 minutes of exercise since I started paying attention to what I’m doing.

That comes out to just over 40 hours of moving this body beyond its normal daily routine.

Newly added goal of drinking about 80oz. of water daily – been meeting that for about a week now.

Grams of protein suggested for woman of my size for maintaining muscle: 100. Not easy to do! However I’ve been really bumping up my breakfast protein content lately. Here’s today’s:

That’s turkey bacon on my plate, by the way. Not bad tasting but a little dry in my opinion. It looks really weird before you cook it:

Pounds lost: maybe 5? Hard to say with all the normal fluctuations in body weight, day to day. Not really a goal of mine anyway, but it has been interesting to watch the numbers on the scale.

So far, I still feel motivated. I exercise 5 days a week and rest 2, generally following an exercise 3 days, rest 1, exercise 2, rest 1 routine. My energy has been good for the most part and my attitude has been better. I’m enjoying seeing the small changes: looser clothes, stronger feeling muscles. I have no idea what me and my 44-year-old body are capable of accomplishing, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Missing Her Already

Meghan went back to college today. It was great having her home for Christmas break. The three and a half weeks she was here flew by. Much of the time she was home was spent out and about with the boyfriend and such, but I was happy for the time she was here and our home felt complete again.

A la Robin of Breezes at Dawn and my New Year’s post, I may share some of the joys I find in the every day from time to time. Here are two from my visit to the grocery store today.

At the entrance to the store:

I was tempted to take one home, but I didn’t want to push the little water-filled glass all over the store with me, then I forgot about them when it was time to pay and leave.

In the parking lot:

Usually I feel a little sad when I see a dog in a car, but today the temperatures were mild and this fuzzy guy just looked so cuddly. He or she wasn’t barking at the passers-by, just taking in the scenery while waiting for its owner to finish shopping. I know better than to do so to a strange dog but it was difficult to resist giving this big teddy bear a hug.

New Snow, New Things

It is snow day number two of the 2013-14 school year. We were supposed to head back to school from the holiday break yesterday, January 2nd, but the timing of slow-paced winter storm Hercules conspired to extend our break by two days. Normally I prefer to go to school and get out earlier in June, but for these couple days I like staying home. It just feels like an uninterrupted vacation. Since the hubbub of Christmas has passed, I’m enjoying the lazy morning routine of breakfast and coffee at the computer. I’m exercising without worrying about what time I have to get a meal on the table. When she’s actually home, I’m enjoying Meghan’s company (her break from school lasts another week). For day 3 of the new year, that’s a good amount of enjoying so far.

The winter storm that caused these extra days off really has not been that bad. I’m guessing there is somewhere in the ball park of 6 inches out there.

It is frigidly cold so the snow is very light and fluffy.

The leaves of the rhododendron-azalea have been curled tight.

As much as Teddy would love for me to come outside and play, it is a bit too cold for me to want to venture out.

I’ve been puttering inside, with some new things to puzzle out.

As some of you know, we purchased a new lap top to replace our slowly dying 5-year-old one a few days ago. I love the quick responsiveness of this new machine, but I’m also having to learn the ways of Windows 8. It hasn’t been too bad so far, but some things have surprised me. Some things are not as intuitive or automatic as I would have expected them to be. After owning a Kindle Fire for the last year and as a new iPhone 5 user, I feel like everything should be so easy to navigate!

Another new thing in that photo is Adobe Lightroom 5 – new photo editing software I was given for Christmas. I know absolutely nothing about Lightroom. If anyone knows some good resources you would like to point me in the direction of, please do so. I’m thinking I may purchase Scott Kelby’s book about it – he has been an excellent resource in the past.

I’m still trying to decide about a new theme for this blog as well. Would you share your opinions with me about how it looks to you? I’m not as crazy about this theme on my new 17″ screen, and I’ve had it for a while now anyway. Maybe it is time for another change! If you are so inclined, tell me in the comments what size computer screen or mobile device you usually do your blog reading on, and whether there is a lot of visible empty space on this blog.

Changes and joy – they continue!