Reading People

People are so hard to figure out sometimes.

I tend to be a pretty friendly, chatty person, but I understand -- completely -- the desire to want to be quiet, keep to yourself, and just not talk for a while. I have those moments as often, if not more often, then I have my chatty periods. And I'm good at reading people; or, at least, people's current emotional state of being. It's one of the gifts of a Pisces -- we can sense the emotions of others.

Sometimes, though, I encounter someone who mystifies me.

I've recently had a person enter my life who I just can't get a read on. I see this person every day, and I see her being chatty and friendly with others. And she's been chatty and friendly with me, too. But when I try to engage her, make some of my trademark silly remarks or just some attempt at bonding through speech, it's suddenly very awkward, as if I'm the only person really interested in the conversation. There are two explanations for this fighting for prominence in my brain.

1. This gal just doesn't like me. Although why, I could not say. I haven't known her for that long. And since, due to the situation in question, we've barely exchanged the equivalent of what could be called a full conversation, I don't know what she could have to go on. But let's be honest, sometimes we don't like people for no reason at all.

2. She's just not a big chatter. I don't really buy this, since, like I said, I've witnessed multiple leisurely conversations between her and other folks, so it can't be that chit-chatting in general is against one of her rules.

It's very odd to be solicited for some light convo one moment, and then sort of brushed off and ignored the next. Is this some queen-bee, girl-drama issue? Am I confused because I am inherently unwilling to believe that a person could be so openly rude? Or am I over-thinking this and turning it into an issue when it's not? I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt, so much so that I try to correct for that by sometimes being overly suspicious, to make sure I'm not letting myself get taken advantage of or stepped on, etc.

Thoughts?

No More Stress!

I had a little mini revelation over the weekend. It was about my life in general, but running and working out played a part. 

I've been overloading myself, spreading myself too thin with favors for other people, or saying yes to too many things. Turning 30 recently has given me a much stronger sense of what my priorities are, and what I want to spend my time on and vice versa. I spent the last couple of days sending emails and making phone calls to cull a lot of the unnecessary things from my life, and it has made me a lot less stressed and happier already.

One of the biggest committments I had made for myself was the training for the half marathon this summer. Having trained for a halfie before, and knowing that I have knee issues, and not wanting to hurt myself by running too far too soon, I knew I needed to be very strict about sticking to the training schedule, and increase mileage gradually. There are only a certain number of weeks before the big race, and I didn't have any time to flub the schedule or I would end up hurting later.

Well, finding time to fit in long runs, even on the weekends, just isn't always possible for me right now. Yes, most days at work I have time to go for a short run on my lunch break. But sometimes meetings get scheduled, sometimes I have to work through lunch. And feeling like I was screwing up my training schedule was stressing me out.

Two weekends ago, I ran a 5K with a friend just for fun, and it occurred to me that I can do these shorter races, have a blast participating, and keep up with my running in a way that is *gasp* enjoyable and not one more thing that is an item on my to-do list. Running was becoming one more chore to get through every day; working out in general, it was just something else I HAD to do, more work, and so rather than relieving any stress it was making me more miserable, and so I was skipping it often and then feeling guilty.

Ugh, Enough!!

So, the half marathon is scrapped. I hadn't registered yet anyway, so good. There are a TON of super-fun looking 5K and even 10K races in the San Francisco area all the stinkin' time, and lots of great trails and paths to run on where I live. I do enough work and I have enough stress. I want running, and working out, to be a fun thing that I do, I need more fun things in my life. And once I ditched the self-imposed pressure and stress, suddenly, it seemed that way again.  

Oh, the Horizon...

Two of the mommies who were in my graduating class of mommyhood -- that is, who all had their first babies around the same time -- are now pregnant with their second kids. I'm happy for them, in that crazy-lady ridiculous happy way I get happy these days when I find out someone I know is pregnant. I love it. One of my favorite people from high school just announced she is pregnant with her first. It's like a cult. Once you're in, you want everyone else in too.

But, I admit to a twinge of jealousy. There were things I thought I'd have done by now that still haven't materialized, and certain parts of my life still feel like I'm on hold. I've had the bug for a second baby myself for a while now. But, I also know that I'd be happier waiting for a while, so that I can have my wedding and honeymoon and then have another baby.

But the wedding is postponed indefinitely, until there is less debt and more money.

Which means that baby #2 is just somewhere out there on the distant horizon, as well.

I hate that someone else's good news makes me slip into a funk of depression. Like, what kind of horrible friend am I? Slash, horrible person, that I can't just be happy for their good fortune without a) slipping into a funk of depression, or b) making it all about me?

Sick Baby = Sad Mama

Little Miss Pants has had the flu this week, which makes Mama very sad. Luckily, there was no vomiting involved, but she had a high fever and has been congested and sad. We took her into the doctor when she peaked at 105.6, but the Doc said that she looked okay, and to keep giving her Tylenol and Motrin, and to watch. The fever broke yesterday and we've been running the humidifier almost non-stop. She's not sleeping the best and so she's cranky, but is otherwise starting to get back to herself again.

What has made this extra hard is that on Wednesday morning, as it became suddenly clear that she was sick, Shawn was on his way out the door for a trip to Anaheim with his band until Monday. He felt really guilty leaving, but her being sick wasn't an emergency and his trip had been planned for months. It's been stressful to not have him here to help, but his mom has been amazing, coming over during the day to help me with Violet so that I could get some work done from home and not have to go into the office.

She insisted on holding the medicine bottle. Thank goodness for child-proof caps. We had a Caillou marathon this week.

The upside was that I got some baby-cuddles at night, because the only way to get her to sleep long stretches was just to take her in bed with me, because she needed the comfort. So that was nice and snuggly.

What this has also meant is that my fitness plans have been derailed by a week. I didn't get to do any exercise for a week, and when I finally got into the gym yesterday afternoon and went for a run, I could feel the absence.

I haven't blogged much about it here, but I have been on a quest to return to my pre-baby weight before I hit my 30th birthday in March. Which means not taking a day off until then and losing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 lbs a week. Honestly, not an unreasonable goal. But kicking oneself in the pants to get the snowball rolling on motivation and good habits can include the occasional misstep, and those become all the more frustrating when I can hear the clocking ticking away to March 11.

But I had one of my revelations this morning -- the number on the scale matters less than the ability to fit back into my old clothes again. So perhaps I should measure my success by what fits instead of that digital readout every morning. That thought was the bump I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and refocus on target training my trouble spots, toning up, getting in shape.

I want to be a fit, happy, healthy mama, sexy and confident and excited about life, because Violet will learn my attitudes, and the last thing I want is my own personal struggle with body image, occasional bouts of semi-depression, and just that adult disenchantment with life to negatively affect her world view.

I'm sure she'll develop her own neuroses in time, she doesn't need any of mine. :)

Hot Times in the Kitchen

Recently, I have been attempting to expand my prowess in the kitchen. The reasons for this are many.

1. I like good food.
2. It stimulates the domestic goddess within me. 
3. Broke.
4. Hungry.
5. Trying to lose weight.

Am I the only one who sort of dies a little bit every time I need to spend money at the grocery store? I mean, I do love to eat delicious food (see #1, above), but damn if it doesn't seem just a little bit sad to watch money going away that I won't even have anything to show for in a couple of days. At least when I part with money in exchange for a new purse or boxed set of fantasy novels, I've got something tangible that I can enjoy forever after. Once food is in my belly, well, that's the end of it. 

On top of which, I've been doing my darnedest lately to turn over a new leaf where my finances are concerned. There are just too many things I want and want to do to allow multiple weekly $30 trips to Safeway, when at the end of the week, my cupboards, somehow, are still bare. So to that end, I've lately been trying to get creative with the things I do have on hand, and to be smarter about stocking up on staples that will go a long way.

Plus, after busting my hump at the gym during the day, I'm really a bit loath to stuff my face with frozen pizza or other pre-made entrees, however economical they might be. 

Witness tonight's culinary genius.

As I've learned, the first step in all this is to start pondering dinner just after lunch.What do I have in my cupboard? What can I do with it? Do I need any small items to make a full meal out of it? This afternoon, I remembered I had frozen chicken breasts, two zucchini, a head of broccoli, leftover chopped onions from the turkey chili we'd had a night or two before, plus some butter and olive oil and parmesan, which are staples I always keep on hand. 

Let me take a moment here and sing the praises of a bag of frozen chicken breasts. A package of regular chicken breasts will run you something like $8 or $9, and you get 4 good sized breasts in there, enough for one meal for two, and leftovers for lunch. The Safeway brand 3lbs bag of frozen chicken breasts cost about $10, and while each individual breast is a bit smaller than what comes in the fresh pack, this bag is enough to last me for a least a week's worth of dinners, they defrost in the microwave in less than 10 minutes, and they make eating healthy a breeze.

Infomercial over.

After the baby was fed, I defrosted my chicken, cut up my veggies, and dumped the lot into a casserole dish. I drizzled on the olive oil, and added my personal favorite spice, garlic powder, in a relatively generous portion (because I love it), and a tiny dash of cayenne for heat. I drizzled a bit more oil on top, and three thin pats of butter to help crisp up the veggies as they baked. Plus a little pinch of salt.

I baked for 40 minutes altogether at 375 degrees.

Let me tell you, it smelled delicious.

The veggies were perfectly done, the dish as a whole had the perfect amount of flavor, and I topped mine off with some Parmesan cheese, which has like, 25 calories in a tbsp and is amazing on just about everything.

It was glorious. 

And I'm telling you, the more I just play around with ingredients, or cook from a recipe, I start doing more things like tonight, just sort of throwing a bunch of stuff in a dish and putting it in the oven and hope for the best. Which is good, because after I've done it once, it seems easy, and I begin to have fewer and fewer excuses for picking up drive-thru or falling back on the cheap and fattening option, because I know how little time and effort something better takes, and how much better I feel afterwards. Winner!

The Harvest Festival

Much as I dislike crowds and waiting in lines, I really wanted to take Violet to the Harvest Festival at Ardenwood Farm this year. This second round of the holiday season with her is going to be so much more fun, because she's so much more aware of everything than she was at this time last year, so I was excited for the pumpkin patch and the petting zoo, etc.

And I think she did have fun. What I realized, though, is that I should have brought my stroller, first of all, and second of all, that we probably could have gone to a park for free and she would have had just as much fun. But, mommy and daddy wanted photo ops. Hehe. 

Piggy!

Piggy!

We started out at the animals. Bunnies and cows are animals she's seen in her books, but never up close. She kept calling all of them piggy, though. Ironic that we didn't see any actual pigs.

Piggy!

   

We did some wandering about and eventually met up with two of my mommy friends and their little ones, both of whom seemed better equipped to handle a full day at the farm -- a 9 year old and a baby in a stroller. I felt very unprepared. I finally put Violet on my shoulders, which seemed to keep her happy for the longest amount of time. She really just wanted to run loose and get in everyone's way. In theory, I didn't mind, but it was just crazy busy and there was all kinds of farm equipment and stuff laying around. And she's too full of energy to want to be constrained for very long.

So we soon parted ways with out friends again and headed over to the pumpkin patch, again, largely for the photo op, since we didn't want to take a pumpkin home just yet. Charmingly, her first instinct was to try to pick up the biggest pumpkin she could find. 

This one looks good!

I'll just sit here for a minute.

We did have to convince her to sit on one, and because I was following behind her and daddy, I kept only getting pictures of her back. Oh well, it's still cute.

The haystack was a big hit. She loves climbing things. Going up was relatively easy, though Daddy did have to help her get her footing on the less-than-stable hay. Going down was a bit more dangerous, and definitely required help.

Going up...

Trying to take the down step at a run, note the look of panic on Daddy's face.

She had such a fun time picking up rocks and sticks and falling in the dirt that Shawn and I were both commenting on what a little tom-boy she was. But she kept holding out her hand for me to brush off the dirt, so, clearly still a princess after all.

Dirty. Clean me, please.

On Milestones and so forth

After a long absence, a milestone has urged me to post once again. And you'll no doubt be gratified to know that I've roundly scolded myself for not posting in an age. Cardinal sin of blogging, really.

Milestone -- 18 months. 

I don't know quite why that's a milestone in my brain, other than that it's the next size up in baby clothes? From 12 months to 18 months. The next will be the big 24 -- or 2 years old. But also, I've started referring to her as being "a year and a half," rather than how many months old, and that's different. Soon she'll be two. Gulp.

*sob*

We're already seeing signs of the feisty little 2-year-old she is going to grow into. "No" is a common word in our house already. She gets little attitudes when she doesn't get her way, when Calliou isn't on for long enough, etc. (Sidebar -- much as I try to interest her in Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes, et al., she stubbornly refuses anything but cartoons.)

But she's also more and more her own person, and that's a fun thing to watch and be a part of. She's learning new words by the day, picking up new skills like climbing onto laundry baskets and unlocking my iphone. Which has got me thinking about getting her enrolled in classes of some kind, baby tumbling or even just taking her to a play place to interact with other kids. She's so much more outgoing than I ever was as a child, eager to make friends with everyone and check out all the new stuff. I was the shy kid who wanted to stay in my room and read books. So I want to foster that spirit in her, get her out into all kinds of different activities, sports, music, girly stuff and tom-boy stuff, and wait to see what sticks. So whether I'll be a (hot) soccer mom or a (hot) gymnastics mom or a (hot) piano recital mom, or all three, remains to be seen.

But seriously, I'm in no rush to find out. All this growing and getting bigger business really needs to stop.

With Grandma

Watching Calliou, one of her favorite pastimes

Already sneaking into Mama's wallet

Such a big girl, eating at the table