A Moment of Un-Hotness, or What Facebook Taught Me

Girls, I don't feel very hot right now. It happens. We all have our moments. Our un-hot moments. I'm confident that the hotness will come back sometime soon, probably around about the time I'm halfway through tomorrow morning's tall nonfat pumpkin spice latte (yum!), but right now, not so much. And you should know that I've just completed a 30 minute cardio toning workout dvd.

That workout was hard. Way harder than I expected it to be. This is a dvd that I've done dozens of times before, and for some reason tonight I was just dragging myself through it, and getting frustrated because my balance sucked and my muscles were shaking. Yes, there are no doubt several contributing factors -- lack of sleep, lack of water, etc. But they still all added up to me feeling completely off my game and, since this revolved around exercise, like a giant, lard-ass, I can't hack it through a dvd that used to be easy, un-hot mama.

Poo.

I took a shower and decided I would turn in early tonight so that I would have more energy tomorrow. And while in the shower, something a good friend of mine said came back to me. To paraphrase -- keep pursuing your dreams, even when you don't want to.

Actually, she posted it on Facebook. And it came to my rescue. Because it's one of the smartest things I've heard lately. Sometimes, even things we want really badly -- losing baby weight, publishing novels, getting out of debt, becoming wildly famous for whatever particular talent you're secretly harboring -- can start to seem like chores, like one more thing that needs a chunk of time carved out of our crazy busy days. So even though it sounds counter intuitive, sometimes you really do have to force yourself to keep on pursuing that one thing that you want, deep down, in the oubliette of your soul (Labyrinth reference? Yes.) To get up off the couch and get to dance class, or go for a run, or keep plugging away at that novel. Whatever it is. Don't let your goals get pushed aside.

So even when I feel like a hippo who will never fit into my size 10 super hot dark wash skinny jeans again, I will go to bed early to get up and do it all over again tomorrow, because Facebook told me too.

Me and said smarty-pants Facebooking friend at Disneyland, being our fabulous selves.

My Love for Italian Cheese

If you're anything like me, you have a giant sweet tooth that needs to be checked. If I'm ever to get down to my goal weight, I must must must learn to avoid every chocolate covered seductress that leers at me from the grocery and convenience store shelves. The candy aisle at Safeway is my red light district, no joke. Thankfully, I have discovered a pure and sweet path to the straight and narrow. That's right, the key to my soul's sugar salvation summed up in two words -- ricotta cheese.

Ricotta cheese is like, the greatest thing to happen to my own personal dessert menu ever. It's like the tofu of the dessert tray -- it can become anything. Unlike tofu, it tastes fabulous. (Sorry tofu lovers. I am not one of you.)

The glorious thing about ricotta is that, in the part-skim variety, it has a fraction of the cals and so on that any other dessert base (hello, dense chocolate cake, I'm looking at you) can claim, and a bunch of fab calcium and protein and yadda yadda. And because of it's lite and fluffy texture, I'm for surely eating way less of it than I would some other super rich dessert (eyeballing chocolate cake as it tries to sneak out the door...)

But the best part is that it can taste like apple pie AND tiramisu and that's just the beginning.

Despite it's name, it does not, in fact, taste like the cheese your brain is no doubt conjuring up. It tastes very much like nothing until you add delicious somethings on top of it. I've included a couple of recipies here for my most favorite ricotta concoctions, but if you want to experiment, these are my tips:

• it's smooth and creamy, so always add something crunchy or hard for a lovely contrast
• always serve ricotta concoctions in pretty dishes meant for fancy desserts, or something like (I like to use one of Shawn's scotch tumblers. They look fancy.)
• the fresh fruit you bought at the farmer's market is begging you to arrange it on top of some ricotta. BEGGING. With honey on top. Literally. 
• use cinnamon and honey for your sweeteners. But just drizzles and sprinkles, you really won't need much.
• these desserts are fantastic to make in layers. It fancies them up even more!

RECIPES ~ there are no measurements for the ingredients because I'm not Rachel stinkin' Ray. I made these up while standing in my kitchen, and everything is sort of just to taste. I trust all you ladies to adjust your portion sizes according to how much you want to eat and through trial and error, like I did. These are just some ideas for how to use ricotta to your advantage. Also, I'm not a dietitian or anything official like that, so none of this is gospel.

Enjoy!

Ricotta Concoction #1 ~ Fake Out Apple Pie

• part-skim ricotta
• pears, sliced (I used a can of pears in lite juice that I had in the pantry)
• cinnamon spice (I used my Pampered Chef Cinnamon Spice blend, I heart that stuff)
• honey
• granola

Lay down a fluffy white bed of ricotta in your eating vessel of choice. Drizzle with honey. Artfully arrange sliced pears. Sprinkle pears with cinnamon and top with granola. You're welcome.

Ricotta Concoction #2 ~ Tiramisu Triffle

• part-skim ricotta
• cinnamon spice
• honey
• sliced almonds

Again, take a scoop of ricotta and make a nice foundation for your dessert in your pretty dish. Drizzle honey, sprinkle cinnamon, and add enough sliced almond to cover. Repeat. I did two layers, so that I ended up with a layer of almonds on top. 

Ricotta Concoction #3 ~ No Fire S'more Delight

• part-skim ricotta
• honey flavor graham cracker
• Hersey's chocolate syrup (yay, fat free!)

Full disclosure, I haven't tried this yet, but my mouth is already watering. Plan ~ crumble half of the graham cracker into the bottom of my fancy dish, and layer with a scoop of ricotta and a drizzle of chocolate and repeat until chocolate is the top layer. 

My To Do List

Hello, gorgeous!

Yes, you.

If you’re anything like me this week, you can use the encouragement.

You’re gorgeous, your house is like a spread in Martha Stewart Living, your baby is a textbook model of perfection, you’ve lost all your baby weight and your hair is clean.

Now, please pass the giant steaming mug of coffee so I can stay awake to finish writing this.

I’ve never had a meltdown before, but I wonder if I’m getting close. I have so much on my plate and so little time, never mind energy, to get it all done, that it’s a daily battle not to just throw in the towel, sit with my baby on the couch and pretend that nothing else exists.

I am feeling less than hot this week. Unless a hot mess counts, in which case I’m ahead of the game.

I’ve been late to work every day this week. Now that school is back in session, the traffic has suddenly picked up again – I’ve been leaving home progressively earlier every morning, and every morning there is a worse traffic jam than the day before to compensate and suck up all my extra time, so that I’m just as late as the day before. And annual reviews are coming up, so, that’s awesome.

Once I’m at work, I’m sucking down coffee and trying to focus on the 500 or so tasks on my desk. At some point soon into that battle, I’m distracted by thinking about the phone calls I need to make/emails I need to send out/ads and info I need to post for my Scarlet Girl Pleasure Party business, to keep parties coming in and commission checks in the bank. Yay for paying off bills. Speaking of bills, I’m also distracted by the number of subscriptions to call and cancel, the snafu with the baby’s insurance that I need to get sorted out, the car insurance issues that need dealing with asap, and so on.

Somehow, I make it to the end of the day. If I’ve had time to pack a gym bag, I head out of the office for a run, which is blissful and all too infrequent.

Arriving home at a little before 7, I am handed baby, who is ready for nursing and mommy cuddles, maybe a bath, and then bedtime routine, and finally, asleep by 8:30pm. During all this, I hopefully find time to eat my own dinner, make some of those phone calls/send some of those Scarlet Girl emails that I’d thought about earlier in the day, and maybe get a few moments to relax watching Survivor or The Simpsons or something.

Once the baby is asleep, it’s a decision of what to devote the next 2 hours to, until she (lately) decides to wake up again promptly at 10:30, or I have to hit the sack myself – keeping up this blog and corresponding Twitter account (@one_hotmomm); reading the novel I want to finish; finishing the novel I’m writing; doing a workout DVD if I haven’t gone running that day; keeping the house from sinking into disaster; doing laundry; planning my friend’s baby shower; planning my own wedding; or some superhuman combination of two or more of those things. Not to mention at some point taking a shower, repairing my chipped pedicure, shaving my legs, or doing my nails. Pipe dreams, I know.

Just writing it all makes me want to take a nap.

Well, being awake makes me want to take a nap, but let’s not split hairs.

How to keep up with it all?

More to the point, how to avoid the depression that looms when all of this seems completely un-doable and too much for any normal person to reasonably attempt?

For one, I am harnessing the power of To Do Lists.

To Do Lists are best used for the umbrella tasks that all the little, chaos-causing jobs fall under. For example, all the memberships and subscriptions I need to cancel, the insurance payments I need to sort out, the bills I need to pay, fall under the Get The Family’s Financial Life Back On Track umbrella. It’s that kind of shifting, roiling, black cloud of a Thing That Needs Doing that can easily be the downfall of a Hot Mama’s sanity. It’s so big, and so important, and yet where does one even start? When looked at as one big black thing hovering there on the horizon, it’s likely to swallow you up and just rain all over your fancy parade.

Enter the To Do List.

We make these kinds of lists at work, to make sure our deadlines are met and the projects we get paid for stay on track. And that’s for someone else’s business. So why not use them for our own? My financial To Do List consists of every single item, no matter how small, that I had dancing around in my brain that needed to be done. For example:

·        Call gym and cancel membership

·        Call medical insurance and figure out why they don’t have baby on coverage

Cancel Netflix membership online 
Return outstanding Netflix DVD

·        Deposit Scarlet Girl commission check

·        Mail check for parking ticket

·        Mail check for Power bill

·        Drop off check to eye doctor

And so on. Writing out the list not only eased my brain by allowing me to have it all in black and white rather than having to rely on my overtaxed memory, but it also allowed me to itemize the chaos. Now, instead of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start, I can look at my list and, each day or each week, pick an item that my sanity and stress level that day is able to handle; deal with that item; and then cross it off the list.

And we all know how satisfying that is.

Suddenly, despite the fact that I still have a lot of things to deal with and accomplish, I feel in control of the situation, which is absolutely key in maintaining that slippery grip on sanity. Feeling as if we’re not in charge of the situation is what leads us to that desire to put on sweatpants and give up on hygiene for days at a time. Once we’re back in control, anything seems possible.

So, having seen just how lovely the To Do List was for my financial life, I decided to write-up similar lists for other areas. Some of these lists reset themselves weekly or even daily. To Do lists for losing weight, for example, start fresh every day, and include things like, Use the bathroom downstairs at work, every time (to sneak in extra stair climbing); Drink at least 3 giant water bottles by the end of the day; Eat a healthy lunch.

Perhaps, once some things quiet down a bit, I won’t need as many lists to keep it all straight. But then again, I’m just controlling enough that I’ll probably wield this tool like my own personal Excalibur for a long, long time.

Fitness Goals

Sunday night. After a pretty successful weekend as far as diet and exercise are concerned (and otherwise, really. A good weekend all around) I find myself once again motivated for the week to come. I've been making too many excuses for not exercising, and it's time to get into gear. Because we're going to the baseball game tomorrow night, I know I have to do my working out in the morning. I have workout clothes laid out for myself, and a dvd prepped and ready in the player. All I have to do is get dressed and hit play.

I've been using DailyMile.com to track my fitness progress, and since it's meant to tracking your running mileage, it's making me want to get back into running again in earnest. Since I know that, once I get home for the night after work, it's impossible to leave again, I have to work around that -- bringing gym clothes to work so that I can go running straight from the office, packing healthy lunches, and so on.

I made a goal to be back down to shape by this Christmas. Supposedly, it's 9 months up, 9 months down. Well, Baby Violet just turned 5 months, and I'm not sure I'm on track to have lost all the weight in the next 4 months. So it's time to go crazy!

A Few Words on Babies

It seems like only yesterday that I was traipsing off to my first week of college, moving into my dorm, exercising all my new-found freedom by spending too much money and taking up smoking, eating too much. And waking up to the alarm on my clock radio one morning, thinking it must have been a joke, to hear the dj announce in somber terms that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.

It doesn't seem like it's been ten years. I can't summon up much to say on the subject that won't sound cliched, and in truth I'm not sure an anniversary like this doesn't really deserve a moment of silence instead of more words.

I will say this -- of all the memorials and tv specials that have been on in the last several days, it has been my fate to only catch the ones which center around parents remembering children who died on that day. First responders, flight attendants, passengers, workers in the buildings.

Not to mention all the men and women of the military who have died since then, battling to make sure it never happened again.

All of them were somebody's baby.

I had promised myself I would start working on getting Baby Violet to put herself to sleep in her bassinet this weekend. I think I'll put it off until next week. I'd rather rock my baby to sleep in my arms, and smell her hair, and feel her chubby little legs and diaper booty, and sway with her in the darkness.

Beautiful, Hateful Money

In the last ten years, I can’t remember ever feeling really secure about my finances. First, there were the college years, during which I was working a work study job for something like $500 a month, and I embodied the starving student to a T. Then I was out of school and working as a receptionist, paying my own bills for the first time and trying to figure out how to budget. And, seemingly just as I got to a place where I was making a decent salary and staying on top of bills with money leftover for fun, I shack up and get knocked up all within the same year, and I’m now juggling family finances on what should really only support a single gal.

As recently as two years ago, the whole being broke thing didn’t bother me as much. It’s almost glamorous, in your early and mid-twenties, to be living on the edge of one’s paycheck, finding creative ways to eat and entertain oneself, commiserating with other about who’s got less money. It's the whole single person lifestyle, you're having fun and being reckless and hooray!

But with a baby and a fiancé, now being broke just kind of sucks.

My priorities have changed. I’m not looking to live in cheap apartments for the rest of my life, or even the near future. I want a nice home for me and my family, a car that was manufactured in this century, the ability to take family trips and money in the bank in case of emergencies. I want to put money away for the baby’s education, and lay a financial foundation for her future.

Oh, and a wedding. Did I mention wanting to have a wedding at some point in, oh, the next year?

And on top of that, I’m just getting sick and tired of feeling like crap because I have no money. I’d like, for once, to read a magazine and not have to fantasize about buying a $25 tube of lipstick. I would like to feel as though it’s not a complete pipe dream to buy a new Coach bag, provided I’ve salivated over it for long enough to make the purchase justifiable. I’d like to bargain hunt because I want to, not because I have to.

I’d like to feel like a grown-up who can afford nice things, basically.

Step one is to get myself back to square one. I’ve started using Mint.com, a very nifty budgeting website, to help me keep my spending in check and put money towards the things that need to be paid down. I’ve canceled my gym membership in favor of the beach trail outside my house and the many dvds I own. I’m looking at cutting a lot of things, actually, memberships I don’t use or items I don’t really need to buy.

I’ve never been super great at sticking to a budget. I’m hoping that Mint, with all its lovely graphics and alerts and colorful tools, will crack the digital whip and keep me honest. 

What tricks do you mamas use to manage your family finances? I will gladly and shamelessly steal all your ideas!

The First Time in A Long Time

I know it's been way too long since my last post, and I hope to make it up to you now with some juicy details about my sex life. Read on...

I've always been very in touch with my sexuality, and considered myself a very sexual person. Sex always seemed like a pretty cool thing, and that's probably a large part of why I'm also a Senior Sales Consultant for Scarlet Girl -- sex is fun!

While I was pregnant, however, things changed. (All around drastic understatement? Yes, yes it is.) Shawn and I had sex 3 or 4 times during that entire 9 (10) month period, and we'd been on a pretty steady diet of 3 to 4 times a week before that, if not more. Which, as you  can imagine, bugged me -- I just no longer had any thought for sex whatsoever, I had become an asexual being. I was all about the nurturing instincts, and the sex drive was gone.

To his credit, Shawn was great. He never pressured me, and always let me know he was okay with it, that it was just the hormones and it would come back when my body was all back to normal. Small comfort at the time, but, of course, he was right.

Things did change. The day she was born, I kissed my hunny with the first romantic affection I'd felt in months. But is was still 4 months before we tried to do the deed again. Even after my body had no doubt healed, learning to breastfeed effectively and adapting to the rigors of having a newborn in the house, I still wasn't much interested in sex. Plus, I had (have) an extra 50 or so pounds still clinging to me, making it difficult to get into the headspace of the sex goddess I'd once been.

It happened spontaneously. The baby was sleeping. Shawn was getting ready to leave for work. I'd been having horny little inklings for the past several days, my sex drive idling in the background. When he came to kiss me goodbye, I held the kiss longer, and suddenly it was something more, and we were rearranging the couch cushions because the baby was asleep in the bedroom.

I was a little scared, of the unknown, really. My girly parts had gone through some pretty serious trauma since the last time they'd seen any pleasure, and all the thoughts of what had gone on down there ran through my mind. What if I tore something? What if I was too sore to enjoy myself? And a host of other nameless worries.

Shawn, as always, was fantastic. He went slow and careful, we used a lot of lube -- something I'd never needed to use before but now, with breastfeeding and so on, I find I am extremely grateful for -- and even though there was a little bit of discomfort, I did, in fact, enjoy myself. (Another drastic understatement? Yes, most likely.)

Recently we scheduled a date and had a deliberate night of canoodling -- a shower, wine, and foreplay (for which I was also extremely grateful). And the sex was even better than the first time, almost like it had been before, with all the inhibited passion -- I'm still not sure if it was my fault that the baby woke up in the other room.

I'm learning, then, that while my sex life will always be different from what it was a year and a half ago, it's still there, and still satisfying. It just needs a little help these days.