Helloooooo 2015

Shamelessly stolen from my cousin off Facebook. Thanks for the daily inspiration, Lori!

This completely sums up the extent of my resolutions for this new year.  I toyed with the idea of having actual resolutions, but they are just a repeat of what I hoped to accomplish the previous year and all the previous years before.

Even as I type this, I am envisioning myself pedaling 3000 miles on my bike, killing it in the gym, writing like a fiend, and turning back time and genetics until I’m 5’10”, blonde, built like a brick shit house and author of a best seller.  Damn!  I look goood!

The gal on the left is Zuzka – she has FANTASTIC workouts – seriously – check her out at zuzkalight.com

A girl can only take so much reality before breaking out the chocolate cake.

Speaking of, we had some tonight for Dave’s birthday.  Homemade – my mom’s recipe she used to make for us when we were kids.  Homemade frosting too.  Yeah, I rock.

It really is as good as it looks.

My point is – I tend to over blow things.  Knowing this about myself does not keep me from doing it.

So this year, my only resolution is to be grateful in all circumstances.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  Even when I want to shake my fist and scream at God.  Because this is my life, and while I may not always get to choose what happens to me, I do get to choose how I will react to it.  Yeah, I know – I sound like a cliche, but I am learning that this is the only way to have peace in the midst of turmoil.  To have joy in the midst of pain.  God is good.  All the time.

So that’s really all I got today.  Plus, remembering to write “2015” really will take up most of my bandwidth for the first three months.  We’ll talk again in March.  Ha!

The cake queen,

Sue

 

Roller Coaster…of Love…(Say What?)…(sing it with me!)

Happy 2014!

It’s that time of year again!  The time where we look back on the past and forward into the future.  It’s like being at the highest point on a roller coaster – that pin-dropping moment of silence after a ponderous, rickety climb, where your heart gained momentum faster than the roller coaster car.  And then as the car pauses – you hold your breath and you see your future ahead of you, and you begin praying that your harness holds you firmly in your seat and that you won’t derail on the hairpin curves.

Did I ever tell you I hate roller coasters?  I don’t trust the harness, I don’t trust the course, and I don’t trust the person who built it that insists it’s safe.  This is exactly how I feel about life.  God loves me but I must really test His patience.  I see the course He has set before me, but I am already arguing with Him that the harness He provided is going to give out, hurling me into space.  He knows I’m going to have a death grip on Him, eyes squeezed shut and screaming all the way down that first hill.

These last few weeks have had some unexpected twists and belly droppers and I can’t say I was overly appreciative of the final moments of the 2013 ride.   And now we are back at the top of the coaster and as I look down to the coming journey that will be 2014, I see a lot of question marks and unknowns, and it’s making me a little crazy.  I wish I could see the course ahead of time, to plan for each turn and belly drop.  To be prepared and know exactly how I will handle each situation.  I want the security of the KNOWN, of the quiet, mundane day-to-day living, that stretches no faith nor spirit.   God doesn’t see it that way.  He knows without stretching my faith, I won’t grow.

So God and I are having a talk.  He’s going to keep me secure in my harness, wrapped in his love and strength, and I’m going to try to keep my eyes open and enjoy the ride without barfing up my Slushie or screaming for the ride to stop.  I actually did that once – scream for the ride to stop, not barf up my Slushie – on the Matterhorn at Disneyland.  In my defense, I was only 9, and I was riding with my mom who was also screaming.  Gotta love those mother/daughter bonding moments.

I know I will be a stronger, smarter, wiser version of myself when it all shakes out.  The process is the tough part for me.  But like I said in my Christmas blog – life is precious and it’s important to live in the moment – even the crappy moments.  In a nutshell, that is my main goal for this year.  To embrace every second of joy, anxiety, fear, happiness, sorrow, humor, and love.

Therefore, besides learning to live in the moment, one day at a time, on the things of 2014 that I won’t be able to control, here is a list of the more mundane things I have a little more control over and hope to accomplish.

• Mental Survival for this Sunday’s Packers’s/Niners game. I know I am being overly dramatic, but all my fellow Cheeseheads will agree that watching the Green Bay Packers play lately is enough to make you go running to your doctor for a prescription of Xanax.  At least the game will be at L-L-L-Lambeau, and it will be c-c-c-cold!
• Increase my blog posts to twice a week.  I am planning on keeping Thursday, and then probably adding Monday – hopefully something humorous because Lord knows we need a reason to laugh on Mondays.
• Pull my pal Joey Christensen on the Titletown Tour in another mTT (My Team Triumph) event – this time cycling.  As you may remember, I was one of his angels in the Bellin last year,and I would like to continue that relationship by doing the Titletown Tour cycling event with him in 2014.
• As part of my involvement with mTT and hanging out with the Joe-meister – attend, learn and pass with flying colors the American Sign Language class that I signed up for thru St. Norbert College.  Gotta be able to communicate with Joe while I am pedaling him around this summer.  Hopefully I don’t crash when I am turning around to sign to him.
• Clock 2000 miles on my bike.  No clue how I am going to find time to ride more than I already do with everything else on my plate but I’m darn well going to try.
• Running the Fox Cities Half Marathon with my bestie, Dawn.  Although this is really her goal, I am along for the ride to provide motivation and encouragement.  Of course, I haven’t ran long distance in over two years, so she may be the one cracking the whip on me instead!

And that’s about it for now.  As a good friend of mine just emailed to me:  It takes less time and energy to pray than to worry.  I am hoping to pray more than worry in 2014, for all of our benefit!

May you all have a blessed new year!  And stay warm!

Sue

Back In The Saddle

Hi Folks!

Haven any of you made New Years resolutions? I usually don’t, because I hardly ever keep them, but this year I had a bug up my butt and decided to make a few.

This is just a bug, and not a bug up my butt. Aren’t you glad?

The “bug” in question has been an increasing dissatisfaction with my weight and my BMI (body mass index). Okay, really it’s just my weight, because I am to chicken to do my BMI. I don’t need to hear that I am “obese”. Getting on the scale was hard enough, although the overall results not as bad as I thought.

I really, truly hate this chart. I have never made it to yellow! Ever!

I know that weight is just a “number” (or so I have been told) but it’s a number that can be used to gauge overall trends in a person’s health. So in my case, the number has gone continually up the last three years. And although I have worked out during those three years, my fuel intake has been more than my energy output, and that equals weight gain, my friends. I can’t really work out anymore than I already do, so it’s time to evaluate the intake.

About 7 years ago, I was very out of shape and overweight. Probably hit ‘morbidly obese’ on the BMI Richter scale. I was saved by my sister, who invited me to a group that helped me recognize my unhealthy relationship with food, and provided a food plan that actually worked for me. However, it involved cutting sugar, wheat and flour from my diet, and adding a lot of fresh veggies and fruits, true whole grains like brown rice and millet, and lean protein. It was really hard but once I got in a routine, it became easier. I lost a lot of weight, felt great almost all the time, and was hardly ever sick. I cruised along for about 4 years this way.

So what happened? I fell off the wagon, that’s what. At some point, I decided life was too short to be so restrictive. Plus I was participating in longer runs like half marathons where I had to refuel, and the easiest thing to carry was sugar. Gradually, I began to allow more sugars and flours in my diet, and now here I am 40 pounds heavier.

Starting January 2nd, I started the first step of my first goal of 2013, by cutting out sugar, flour, and most processed foods. I will be honest with you too – I don’t plan on being a freak about it. Last Saturday was date night, and I allowed myself to have something off-plan – a New Glarus Moon Man. That’s a fancy schmancy beer, if you were wondering. It was pretty tasty. Not as good as a Spotted Cow, mind you, but worth the experiment. You may wonder why I treated myself to a beer, and not a piece of cheesecake. Simple – I can stop after one beer. Not so much on the cheesecake.

It’s been going surprisingly well. I expected more bumps in the road, more nights of agonized wailing and foot stomping (I NEED A FREAKING COOKIE!!), more “a few chips won’t hurt me” moments. And it’s not that I have any super human willpower either. I think it’s more because I have a specific goal, and I know this is the first step to reaching it.

WHERE’S ME COOKIE???

Now here is the funny part. I know I mentioned being unhappy with my weight in the beginning of this post, and you would think that weight loss would be the goal that is driving me, but it isn’t. I do hope it’s a by-product, but my real goal involves something else. My post is much to long already, so I will address it next time. I will leave you with this hint though: It’s the reason I started this blog.

Pray Hard. Dream Big.

Sue

I’m Back!

It’s been a while since I posted.  The last couple of months have been fraught with distractions, like eating Thanksgiving pies, Christmas cookies, Marge’s homemade angel food, Dave’s birthday lasagna, cheese cake, Christmas ham, Lucy’s yummy chocolate truffle cookies, and assorted dips, cheeses and crackers.  Not to mention half of the tin of homemade cookies my mom gives us every year that I assured her I would leave entirely to Dave (I cannot be trusted to promises made when it comes to baked goods).

Mmmmmm….cookies!

I have also been distracted by a game on my iPad, introduced to me by my nephew.  My adult nephew, who is 30 years old and expecting his first baby and whose care-free video game playing days will soon be coming to a crashing sleep-deprived halt.  Excuse my cruel chuckle as I experience the empty nest days of doing whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want to, as long as it doesn’t break any laws, interfere with my job, breach national security, or send us spinning into bankruptcy.

The game in question is The Simpsons Tapped Out.  First, let me say that I don’t even watch The Simpsons.  I think, in the entire 500 years it’s been on the air, I may have watched 3 episodes.  I have paid enough attention to pop culture to know who Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart and Lisa are, but that’s really about it.  I would never have looked for this game on my own, because I wouldn’t have cared enough to even think it might exist.

So, when David showed me the game on his iPhone, I thought it was in complete innocence, one gamer to another.  No.  He was seductively trying to suck me into the vortex so he could add another friend to his game and fulfill a quest.  I watched in fascination as he clicked on people and buildings, collecting cash and making Bart go to church and Ned Flanders take power walks.  My eyes dilated and my finger reached tentatively out towards his phone.  Then he said the magic words…”It’s free, Aunt Sue”.

This is not a game for those afflicted with OCD.  I became obsessed with rebuilding Springfield and fulfilling quests.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner were soon filled with the sounds of my finger spastically tapping on glass.  I started bringing my Ipad to work to sneak extra game play during the day, where I hunched over my iPad, tapping furiously while casting furtive glances over my shoulder.  I needed to buy more land and build more buildings!  I needed more cash!  More Halloween Treats!  More Christmas coins!  More friends!  I visited Tapped Out forums to find strangers to add to my ‘friend’ list and forced my friend’s 12 year old son to “add me”.  I almost went as far as buying fake donuts with real cash, just to be able to build the mad scientist volcanic lair.  Oh yeah.  I was hard core.

This baby cost 200 donuts.

Somewhere between Christmas and New Years, we ran out of the Christmas cookies that I was using to feed my gaming frenzy, and I realized I needed to get my life back.  The dogs were picking thru garbage and hanging out on the street corner, harassing the neighborhood collie (Hey you.  Yeah, you!  Look at you behind your fence, pansy boy!  Oh yeah?  I dare ya!  I triple-human dare ya!). The cat was cooking ‘nip in the basement and selling it to unsuspecting kittens.  The boys were mixing lights with darks in the laundry room while surviving on Hot Pockets and Tina’s frozen burritos.  I had 10,679 unread emails just from Kohl’s alone (Save 30%!  Free shipping!  Get Kohl’s Cash!), and was so far behind on Facebook that I didn’t recognize any of my friends.

“Pssst. Little kitten! I have some candy for you!”

So I quit.  Cold turkey.  I don’t recommend this to the faint of heart.  First came the shakes.  Then then the delirium.  I cried.  I giggled maniacally.  I sobbed in hysterics.  I beat on my Ipad, shouting “WHY?  WHY?” And then I crashed.  It was the worst ten minutes of my life.

And now I’m back to my barmy old self, ready to motivate the hell out of you  to work out, eat right and pray your socks off in 2013.  Are you ready?  Let’s ride!!