- Live the life you're meant to

Eating Like a First Grader

February 6, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

With Connor in Grade 1 this year, we’ve entered the world of making school lunches. Rich was excited about this on the first day of school and insisted on making Connor’s lunch, and I happily allowed that to turn into the new routine. But I’ve started doing them lately in an effort to make mornings easier, and it helps with my own plan to not feel like crap anymore. If I’m making lunch for Connor it’s easy to put together two containers of veggies and two of fruit and two of crackers and hummus (and give myself a pat on the back for eating healthy while I’m at it too).

Connor, of course, has a cool lunch kit with coloured containers that all fit nicely in his Batman lunch bag (which even has a cape), but now I do too, because I got a Rubbermaid LunchBlox set.

This has been awesome for a few reasons. For one, it encourages the above-mentioned healthy eating. We have a great market in the building I work in, but it’s a little too easy to wander down and get some chocolate banana bread when the 3:00 hunger hits. I’ve swapped that habit for a different one – filling the orange container with veggies and the green with hummus. My veggie intake (definitely the hardest part of healthy eating for me) has gone way up.

The blue section can be used as one big container, or there are a couple of inserts you can use to split things up as well. I’ve been taking a salad mix to work, so this works well for that, and I can add salad toppings (nuts, seeds, cranberries) to the other containers and mix it all together at lunchtime.

The containers snap together, and the whole lot snaps onto a layer of Blue Ice, which is handy when I don’t feel like putting my lunch in the fridge.

I’ve struggled for a long time to get in the habit of taking a lunch that has more things that are good for me than things I like. (Hi, my name is Robin and I’m a carbaholic.) I don’t know why this helps (maybe it’s similar to how fun-coloured pens always made doing homework seem easier), but it does.

Got any lunch tips for me? Sooner or later the carrots and snap peas are going to get boring, and I’d like to find ways to keep things interesting.

Disclosure: I am part of the Rubbermaid Blogger Campaign with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.

Filed Under: Stuff I like · Tagged With: I was paid for this but it doesn't mean I'm not genuinely interested, wellness

Hello, Inspiration {4}: It’s a Breeze

February 1, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

I’m not big on resolutions, but I am big on opportunities for self-renewal. January is peak self-renewal time for me and this year I took extra advantage of it.

By the end of last year, after an illness-plagued fall, I was feeling rough. I hadn’t been eating well and my last good workout was becoming a distant memory. I could have acted on that nagging suggestion to change my habits in mid-December, but mid-December is a pretty ridiculous time to start making those kinds of changes, wouldn’t you say? So I planned for January and its brimming potential instead.

January 1 found me working up a sweat and feeling much better for it. I got a new phone for Christmas and spent some time browsing for apps that would keep me going; I ended up downloading a whole bunch intending to stick with the ones that worked best.

A lot of the healthy-habits type apps were either annoying or not especially motivating. Many of them, as well, seem to attempt to do everything, as if a major overhaul is the only way to make health goals succeed. (Maybe that’s the case for some people, but it doesn’t work for me.) I did find one I really like though – enough that I thought I’d share it.

It’s called Breeze and it’s made by Runkeeper (which I also use). It popped up as a suggestion on my phone and since I like Runkeeper I figured I’d give it a shot. It’s really simple – it just tracks the steps you take each day using the tachometer in your phone.

I think I like it because it’s friendly, and it offers motivating comments as you go throughout your day.

It gives a goal each day, based on your own activity level rather than suggesting the unattainable-for-the-average-person 10,000 steps. And when you reach your goal, it gives you confetti. I like confetti.

It also assigns you a spirit animal. I’m not sure exactly what the point is, but I think it’s cool. (I started off as a lion and then became a fox, evidently due to my short bursts of activity. See? Walking down to the Starbucks in my office building does have its benefits.)

In any case, now that January is nearing an end I figured some people might be looking for a bit of inspiration to keep going. This is one of mine.

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: favourite activities, living life, running

Hello, Inspiration {3}: Fat Snowflakes

January 20, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

Last weekend, one night after the boys were in bed, my dog came up from the basement and asked to be let outside. When I opened the door to let him back in a few minutes later, I looked outside and realized it was snowing – big, soft flakes, the kind that accumulate quickly and muffle the world.

It doesn’t often snow that way here, but it’s one of my favourite things. We mostly get the kind of snow that shoots rather than floats past the streetlights; it looks nice once it settles but it’s not nearly as romantic when it’s coming down.

At that point in the evening I had mostly settled in and was enjoying the quiet, but that snowfall was not to be missed. I snapped a leash on the dog and out we went.

It was perfect. Pure joy. We walked through the snow, which was already almost to his tummy and over my boots, and listened to it squeak beneath our feet. At the field near our house, with no one else in sight and nothing in view but pure white, I let him off his leash. He bounded away, running large circles around me, as I cut a path through the deep snow. He was happy and I felt at peace.

I highly recommend this. The next time you notice your equivalent of fat snowflakes, get out there and breathe it in. It’s worth it to stop and notice joy, whether it falls from the sky or presents itself a different way.

Just breathe it in.

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: favourite activities, living life

Just as they are

January 14, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

I cherish this photo. The photo session that produced it was a total freaking gong show but I barely remember that when I look at this picture. What I see is Connor’s laugh and his sense of humour in this moment that actually captured what he looks like when he thinks something is funny (rather than his goofy photo face). And I see the absolute joy that is Ethan.

I was talking to a colleague and friend at work a couple of weeks ago, and she mentioned that when her kids go to school on picture day she lets them go however they are – messy hair, weird clothes, the whole deal. And if the proofs come back and they have goofy expressions she buys them up, figuring that she’ll have a record of just who her kids were at the time.

I’m not sure I have quite embraced that approach. If we had purchased the proofs from this session that showed just who my kids were as demonstrated by their behaviour at the time, we’d have photos with Connor’s sour expression indicating just how much he didn’t want to be acting nice for the camera and Ethan with a soother in his mouth, probably crying after we tried to remove it for a picture. We’d probably have a photo of Connor hitting me and body-slamming Ethan, and one of Rich sitting with Connor to try to calm him down. We’d have one of me looking frustrated and possibly trying not to cry.

Needless to say, the family photo sessions we have done were nightmares. We did one resulting in the photos above and an earlier one when Ethan was six weeks old, and I remember them both as horrible, barely-worth-it experiences (except for the part where newborn Ethan pooped on Rich). But after both sessions we looked at the proofs (and I mostly looked past how terribly unphotogenic I am) and I saw my kids just as they were at that time. Not the cranky, goofy sides of them but the happy, full-of-joy sides of them and how they look like Rich and sort of like me, and I was glad to have them.

For a while now I’ve wanted a canvas print, so I chose this photo and got one made and hung it on the wall opposite the foot of our bed. Now those joyful faces, already looking younger than they do now, smile back at me every night and, nightmare or not, that’s all I ever really wanted out of those photo sessions anyway.

Disclosure: Canvas Factory gifted me this print but my love for it is my own.

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: family, photos

Hello, Inspiration {2}: One Word

January 11, 2015 by Farewell Stranger ·

I had a revelation on December 29 about the one word I had chosen for 2014. It took me 363 days to get there, but once I did a whole bunch of things made sense.

Early last year, I intended to choose another word to focus on for the year. Having done it in 2011, 2012, and 2013 with what I considered satisfying results, I figured it would be a no-brainer. The problem was I put too much of my brain into it.

The first time I did this in 2011, someone suggested I let the word come to me. Sort of hokey, I thought, but was open to it. And came it did. Same with the next two years. And then last year my funk got in the way and I didn’t just sit with it as I had previously and instead I chose a word Penile exercises this is considered the very best by many of bigger penis for sex. But their choice and yours may vary. For this being the very best the foundation is its personality that is completely organic and even can make your penis bigger. That you don’t require additional item or any help to complete extending and the prolonging of one’s manhood. What’s needed of anyone is perseverance and dedication. The theory behind penis-enlargement is based on escalation in the blood circulation within the manhood along with a requirement for improve of problems that are erection therein. Theoretically, than it normally is with the capacity of when the erection cells may support additional bloodstream, subsequently this method may cause the manhood to truly have a larger dimension – in thickness as well as longer. Workout that is manhood may stimulate amount of bloodstream; may improve therein to outcome regarding a.. It was a word that was connected to things I wanted to do – mostly self-centred things that had less to do with what I needed and more to do with what I thought would make me happy.

I never revealed the word here because it didn’t stick. And I was disappointed that it didn’t stick but I was also unmotivated and never actually considered why it didn’t feel right. And then, two days before the end of the year, I was talking to a colleague and friend at work who also, I discovered, happens to do this one-word thing and it all made sense. Suddenly I was back in the same headspace from the beginning of the year and I realized that my deliberately choosing the word rather than being open to whatever might come to me had thoroughly defeated the purpose.

Funny how something you didn’t realize you weren’t aware of can suddenly make a lot of the unarticulated frustrations from the past year dissipate.

So this year, I went back to letting my word identify itself to me.

I tried to force one with a particular meaning (act? choose?) but I realized that was me layering expectations onto a sentiment that I needed to just accept. I don’t need the pressure of being on the hook for certain things I think I should do. I need to do what I feel is right and let come what may.

Soar.

We’ll see where it takes me.

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: living life, One word