twenty thirteen

I'm not writing goals for this year.  I want to write goals so I can have a plan, so things are measurable, so I can feel like I've done a good job.  But enough of my constantly doing.  I'm taking the year off.  

This year I want fresh air.  I want deep cleansing breaths.  I need daily bread.  

I was thinking health as the word for this year.  I want to be healthy.  

I'm not thinking of a specific thing that needs healing.  Sometimes though, when we've had a previous injury, maybe it was a long time ago, yet because it hurt, we adapted, we compensated, maybe we picked up a new way of walking.  Or living.  But the pain is long gone and yet we're still walking with the limp.  It's become what we do.  
This year, I hope I leave behind the limps I've picked up along life's journeys and simply run.  

My prayer is that my lungs are filled with fresh air.  Physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally.  I'm asking for daily bread in every area of life.  I plan to feed my soul.  And come back again tomorrow to do it again.  Deep drinking from God, the source of my life.  [I printed this Bible reading plan, as a start.]

Breathe in life.  Exhale life.  So that I am truly living and welcoming life into everything around me.  Maybe I'll even be surprised at the end of the year that goals were reached in a free, flowing, surprisingly good way.  

It's Corrective

Our toddler is sporting a cast.  I dreaded it, thinking she would hate it.  She is the girl who freaks out if she gets a drop of oatmeal on her hand.  But I was wrong.  Addie doesn't mind her cast.  She hasn't fussed about it once.  She wore her first cast (she picked a purple one) for two weeks.  She marched right out of the doctor's office, waving and saying thank you.  I think she has realized she's cute because she really knows how to work it, cast or no cast.  


We are now on to the second cast for another two weeks.  This time around she picked a pink one with glitter.  She seems excited about the whole experience. 

It looks like she will have a third cast for a total of six weeks of casting.  This is to help with straightening her left foot which is c-shaped [a condition called Metatarsus Adductus]. This was a good diagnosis to hear because doctors initially wondered whether she had neurological problems. 

The cast attracts attention and people say: "Ohhhhhh, you hurt your foot?"  "What happened?  How did you get your owie?"  Addie obviously hears all this conversation and our answers to people because last night I was talking to her about the cast and Addie says to me: "It's corrective."  Me: "What?"  Addie: "It's CORRECTIVE.  It doesn't hurt."

This girl makes me smile every day.  

A Real Stretch [pilates]

I went to the gym.  Now maybe that doesn't sound like anything to you.  For me, it's nearly unbelievable.  It's like another [foreign] world. 

Over a decade ago I dabbled in working out at my work facility's gym with some co-workers.  Mostly I remember toning my arms.  That's about the extent of my lifelong relationship with athletics.

My 16 year old sister visited us this spring and we had a jump rope face off [in front of our cheering family].  Her movements were so graceful, fluid, and beautiful to watch.  Next up: me.  I got the job done.  Very efficiently too, I might add.  Nothing graceful about it.  "Flailing" is the term I heard to describe my movements.  [awkward]

I digress, back to my workout.  This week I went to Pilates class!  I wasn't really sure what is was but it seemed like something good for me when I read the description:

"Improves muscle strength, core stability, posture, flexibility, and provides relaxation techniques." 

I sat on this mat in a room full of strangers.  Mostly women.  One man as old as my grandpa.  Another guy, intellectually like a young child, who freely communicated his thoughts and feelings throughout the hour. 

We did many exercises.  At one point, the instructor had us lay on our backs and point our leg(s) straight at the ceiling.  Sounds easy, right?  My leg was nowhere near straight.  So the instructor brought me a strap to pull my leg straight.  I didn't expect it to be as difficult as it was or maybe I didn't expect my muscles to be so tight.  Many times I looked at the [pretzel like] instructor and thought, oh yeah, I can do that...and then after trying thought...you've got to be kidding, that is really hard!  

[this is not my silhouette just in case you, by chance, thought it was.]

Yet it was relaxing and definitely stress relieving.  I loved the pace and the atmosphere.  The music would have put me to sleep if it wasn't for the crunching of my abs.  It's not a fast paced, sweat dripping routine, but, oh, it creeps up on you...this morning when I woke up I was sore.  But I can hardly wait to go back for more.  


~Kate

Eat Food

Just finished reading In Defense of Food . One of my goals for 2012 was to read at least one book a month and, so far, I'm doing well with this one.  I've also read quite an assortment.

I got a little bogged down with all the facts, history, science, studies...but the author provides a very thorough explanation and argument for his approach to eating.  He recommends returning to traditional ways of eating real, well-grown and unprocessed foods.  He elaborates on how all of the processing of food is depleting them of nutrients.  As a result of eating a diet of processed foods, we are overfed but undernourished.  From the book...

A loaf of bread is one of the traditional foods that everyone knows.  Bread is traditionally made using a remarkably small number of familiar ingredients: flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt.  But industrial bread has become a far more complicated product of modern food science.  As an example, he lists the complete ingredients list for Sara Lee's Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.  It lists over forty ingredients, many unfamiliar [ethoxylated monoglycerides?] and unpronounceable ingredients [azodicarbonamide]. 

 

The main point is to return to eating whole foods.  The type of foods, according to the author, that your great-grandmother would recognize as food.  In summary, return to eating food, and enjoying food, not food products.  Not eating things that are incapable of rotting might be a good place to begin.  Eat food.  Not just to be healthy but to bring pleasure back to eating.  

~Kate