It’s hermetically sealed…

So since our house just got put on the market we have been living in a hermetically sealed environment.  Every night is filled with cleaning (bleah) of every surface and living pretty sparsely.  Let me tell you, it’s getting pretty old.

Even though I’ve done more cleaning in the last 2 weeks than the last 4 months combined (that reads really badly – but we’re not that messy anyway) I am finding that I really like the super spartan appearance of every room…although I’m sure 13yo and 11yo are not digging the fact that all their Legos have been boxed up in the garage for the last few weeks.  Oh well…can’t have a potential buyer seeing stacks of legos and a million little put together scenes or stepping on those crystal clear ones like I usually do.  Yee-ouch!

Even with all the hectic’ness with the new job, traveling to So Cal every other week, getting the house ready to sell and being a mom and partner to HunBun…I am sticking to a pretty healthy approach to life.  Although I will admit that I am pretty pooped at night and it gets pretty hard to drag myself out of bed for that morning workout.

I’ve gone back to the Tone It Up plan as that seems to be the easiest to understand and the most motivating to me.  I mean have you seen the bodies on Karena & Katrina?  Wicked hot!  Anyhoo – enough salivating on those girls.  It sure has helped me drink more water every day and to make sure I’m mindfully choosing healthy snacks and filling up with high volume veggies.  One thing I’ve noticed is that when I put in my meals into myfitnesspal.com I am certainly not eating the amount of calories I should be – usually only ranging about 1100-1200 calories for a full day of eating.  So I may need to add more protein or some whole grain carbs to get to my “recommended” 1520 calories.  I could add more fruit, but then there’s the sugar.  Augh…the difficulties of eating healthy.  LOL  😀   They also have some really cute workout plans which make it fun to do toning workouts.  I’ve been posting my workouts and food up on Instagram which makes me accountable to make the right choices for me.

I will admit that the cruise HunBun and I are going on in July is really motivating me.  I’d love to sport some super cute outfits that I can show off my toned arms & legs…and ABS with.  I still gotta find those abs, but a girl can have a goal right?!?  🙂

Well gotta get to work so I’ll….

See ya later!

Cathy

Who is this?

I know right!   It’s been ages…I don’t even want to scroll back on my calendar to see when the last post was.  Bleh.

If I have to make an excuse on my own blog I really do have a good one.  It’s been super crazy town around here for the last few months.  I got a promotion with my company and as a result we are relocating the entire family to Southern California!  I had been balancing 2 jobs for almost a month and am now fully into my new role.  I’m SUPER excited about new position and more excited that I’ll be working in the same building as the people who work on my team.  I’ve been leading virtual teams for the last 6 years – it’ll be so nice to talk to people face to face, to grab them when I see them in the hall, or to have chit-chats at the coffee bar – rather than scheduling conference calls on everyone’s booked up calendar. 🙂

So with work all twisted…we’ve also been busting hump getting our house ready to sell.  You don’t realize how much you just live with until you start looking at your house as a potential pile of money.  😀  We are looking to put it on the market on Monday…so it’s the last weekend of cleaning and straightening before hordes start traipsing through here.  (HunBun is NOT looking forward to that at all).

The posting will be hit or miss for a while…but I’ll do my best.

See ya later!

Cathy

UGH. Darn internet connection!

I was almost done with my post and our donkey internet went down while I was saving it in draft form.

Bleah.  I’m going to bed.  😦   I’ll regroup and write up the week tomorrow.

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

Daylight savings. I guess it makes sense.

I was born and raised in Hawaii and we don’t have daylight savings time there.  It’s just Hawaiian time all the time, HA!  What that usually means is people just roll on in when ever they get to it.  I didn’t really follow that rule – even though I’m half Hawaiian….must have been the Dutch side of me.  🙂

Back to the topic.  Last night I did what I’ve been reminded to do from all sources, which was move the clocks in the house forward an hour so that when we woke up this morning we would be on time.  I need to do 13yo and 11yo’s alarm clocks, the clock in the office and the clock on the coffee machine.  I’m trusting HunBun can move his own alarm clock forward, I guess I’ll see when I go back and check.

I think daylight savings makes more sense the further into the “savings” we go.  Right now it’s still dark in the am and dark in the pm – but I know how quickly that will switch.  One morning I’ll wake up and be like “dang did I oversleep?” and at night I’ll say “dang, is it 9 o’clock already?”.

This week I’m prepping to be running around like a nutter.  I’m headed off to So. Cal this week for work.  For someone who didn’t plan any meetings I’ve sure booked up my calendar.  It was my good friend Ann’s birthday last week so we are celebrating Tuesday night when I come in.  I’ll be taking her to Natural Café for a celebratory dinner – see we’ll eat a healthy dinner so we can go find us a not so healthy treat for dessert.  We’re smart like that.

Today I was very productive.  I hit the treadmill for an iFit run through Solvang, CA.  I tried the Beta version of the map feature – it worked fine for the first half mile then got hung up on the rest.  So I just stared at my route without seeing the street view as I would have liked.  Bleah.  I hope iFit get’s its technical issues fixed soon.  It’s been a real pooter.

Solvang is a bit hillier than I thought.  I was able to maintain the 6.0 at 6% incline – but when that sucker kept scooting up to 10% incline I had to punch my speed down to 4.0.  Every now and again I have a fear of flying off the edge of the treadmill – usually when my thoughts start wandering and I forget I’m on a moving belt.  Whoops.  That would be no bueno for sure.

After getting my healthy on I decided to get my spring cleaning  on – by tackling the office.  We have one of those 5×5 shelves from Ikea.  I love the clean lines but also the volume of space it has for us to fill.  I went through and put a bunch of stuff into 2 shred piles – a personal shred for our home shredder and a business shred for the shred bins at the office.  I also tossed a bunch of stuff into the recycle bin – you know magazines that I had been saving for years (oh, yes the date was from 2009) and some Dummy books for Visio & Excel that I had bought for work.  Those?  Oh, those were from 2008.  Good Gravy!

I also have a lot of books which I rarely part with.  I did a double shelf on some of those just to not spread them through the entire 5×5.  I found some old photos of HunBun and I when we first started dating.  Man I dressed like a schlub – Gee Whiz!  I mean I’m no fashion plate but Yikers.  We have a lot of new photos from our many Disney vacations (hee hee – planning for another this Summer, if I can get him to agree – which I will, Bwahahahahaha) and in those I think I’m looking ok.  Sometimes clothes just don’t fit like you think they fit while you’re wearing them – it’s only when you see a photo you say “is that how that shirt hangs…eeps”.

My plan was to clean the whole office – desk and file folder and stuff on the walls.  I was only able to get through the 5×5.  It seriously is a lot of work to go through all these boxes and see all the stuff that I’ve been hoarding for no reason.  HunBun was pleased.  Whee.  He’s the clean freak of the couple – so for him to be happy about how much I threw away was a gold star for me.

 

 

Oh and my weekend started with a great success – I finished the hardest (worst) puzzle we have ever done.  HunBun gave up weeks ago.  Yes, you read that right – WEEKS AGO!  We started this puzzle before our trip to Florida and I just finished it Saturday night.  UGH!  It was one of those puzzles that is a picture made up of teeny tiny pictures.  So each piece was made up of 4 individual pictures.  Geesh!   I made it my mission to finish it this weekend.  We had not eaten on the dining table for so long that I had had enough.   See that piece of paper at the top?  That was my best friend during this puzzle-palooza.  It was a picture of the completed puzzle and I literally folded and unfolded that thing so often to find where these darn pieces would fit.  The easiest were the pieces with people on them…then after that it was a bunch of rockets and shuttles…then I had to deal with just splotches of blue, green, yellows, pinks, purples and black/whites.  Oh my!  So glad I finished it.  This is NOT one that I will redo.  It’s going into the “To Donate” pile.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night….  Now it’s off to bed – to start a week with more daylight in it!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

Running faster. That’s my goal

So I really want to run faster and as usually happens, I just read this itty bitty article on exactly what I want to do.

Running Makeover: How Do I Get Faster For My Next Race

Then I read it and it’s like “to run faster, train harder”… Uh, I’m pretty sure I could have figured that bit out.    I’ve read a bunch of articles in magazines, emagazines, blogs, books and this and that.  I have ripped out 8 or 9 different Half Marathon training plans where one is pinned up on my cork board, another framed in the garage next to the treadmill, another on a clip on the magnetic white board, one in the suitcase I use for business travel and the rest in a folder in my desk drawer.  They all pretty much say the same thing.  I just have to get my head in the game and stop jerking around.  As inspiration for myself…and any of you readers – here’s some motivational images – sayings – whatever’s to get me to my goal.

This one’s just because HunBun thinks I’m becoming “one of those ladies” because I wore yoga pants on the plane to and from Florida for our recent vacation.

I ask you “does this really look bad?”.  My arms are actually not long enough for once – this photo angle is super awkward…and not just because I was in the middle of the Vegas airport during our lay over.

Are you inspired?  I am pretty sure I am….actually I KNOW I am.  HA!!

See ya later

Cathy

 

Spring Cleaning, Body edition

So not only is my plan to clean the house from North to South to East to West before Easter (which this year is March 31st!  I know right!!!)  But I am also re-re-committing myself to healthy living.  *I probably should add a couple more re-re’s on there since I’ve committed many times already.  Like I’ve said before I’m not completely unhealthy – but I do like to snack and my snacks are usually in triangular salty form…  Hee hee.

My nemesis…

I mean I can’t help myself…I say they are for HunBun but do you think that HunBun actually eats those Hint of Lime Tostitos?  Heck no…that’s all me!

Anyway.  I’ve renewed my quest for a balance of living healthy and healthy living.  I am really motivated this year to get my 2:00 goal time at my next half marathon (Disneyland in September).  I’ve been working on speed intervals on the treadmill combined with weighted & body weight exercises.  This morning I did 8 sprints at 7.0mph with 5.0mph rests between with a 7.7mph on that last one.  I did each sprint/rest at 1 min each.  My plan is to do that for a week then increase those sprint/rest times to 1.5 min and up and up until I’m running at 7.0mph for long stretches of time.  I think that gradual approach will get me used to turning my feet over faster and keeping that speed consistent.

To support my running/toning plan I’ve returned to my blended approach to eating.  I use the Tone It Up plan for both eating and exercise.  I also refer to a great book I read, S.A.S.S. Yourself Slim by Cynthia Sass, which helps with balancing each meal with healthy elements.  Both are super easy plans and don’t ask you to give up anything – which I like a lot.  Here’s what I’ve been eating the last 2 days (Oh, I didn’t take photos of the 2 handfuls of peanut M&Ms I shoved in my piehole after dinner, HA!).

Protein pancake and fresh fruit

Yesterday’s snack – blueberries & coffee

Bought something new for quick lunches…and Gluten Free to boot!

Rice & Bean Veggie bowl for Lunch

Tuesday’s breakfast. Oh yeah, that is a green pancake.

So I’m doing pretty good and feeling pretty good too.

Later today after work I’ll be doing a crafty project to get all my race bibs out of the drawer and on display.  I’ll post the finished product when it’s all done(hopefully this week  🙂  ).

Crafty project for later

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Disney World’s 2013 Princess Half Marathon recap

I should have just saved this until tomorrow then it would have been a 7 day anniversary of completing the race.  I didn’t get a PR…didn’t even stay close to my existing PR.  I even gained a minute from my pooty performance at the Tinkerbell Half this January.  BLEAH!  Guess I need some motivation –

You gotta love the creativity behind those eCards.  Not sure if I totally need to have the bloody knife – the clown alone would freak me enough to make my legs keep moving while my brain kept telling them to slow down.  I did get my Coast to Coast medal at the end, pretty dang cool.

I promised you all a photo montage of the race and our family trip to Florida – so here it is.  Enjoy – we sure did.  🙂

This was the first trip to Disneyworld for 13yo and 11yo.  Sometimes it was hard to figure out if they were having a good time or not.  Teen & Pre-teen boys are on their own communication wave length.  HunBun gets more out of 13yo than I can…11yo likes to talk about randomness all the time so I have the patience to figure my way through and out of conversations with him.  😀

13yo’s favorite park was Epcot.  He loved the countries and Living with the Land.  He wants to be a scientist of some sort when he grows up.  I keep reminding him that Disney has really cool intern opportunities, so maybe when he’s old enough he’ll get into Disney (so I can reap all the benefits of 13yo being a future employee – WHEEE!)

11yo’s favorite park was Animal Kingdom and Epcot too.  They both loved visiting all the countries – although we didn’t get to all of them even with being at the parks for 5 days.  Weird.

We spent a day and a half at the Magic Kingdom.  There is a lot of similarity between Disneyland in California and the MK in Florida.  We do like the Haunted Mansion better in MK – the entrance is super cool and we totally loved the Escher-esque stairwells.  We took the boys to the Hall of Presidents – HunBun and I think that’s a great “ride” that has a great place to wait when you’re trying to escape the parade crowds.

Yes.  That’s me and the 13yo at MK.  Sometimes I can’t even believe how tall he is.  I have to remind myself he’s still my baby.  🙂

It was a great mini-vacation for us.  If you go to Disney World be sure to download the Disney My Experience app for your phone or iPad (although I think lugging an iPad around would be annoying after a while).  It’s like a lot of apps where you can see ride wait times and places to eat – the bonus is that if you sign in you can make dining reservations.  It was really helpful since the first time we tried to eat in France (Epcot) we were told we needed a reservation – DOH!  So I used the app and got us a reservation for the next night, much to 13yo’s great satisfaction.

Anyhoo…that’s about it for our trip and my race.

See ya later…

Cathy

 

I’m back…. I hope

For real….

It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I could give you a whole bunch of blah blah blah about why I haven’t posted anything and it may be interesting to some – but would require me to actually stop & think about why I haven’t been posting.  To sum it up – I had a lot going on at work…We were getting ready for a family vacation to Florida so I could run at the Disney World Princess Half Marathon… Life was busy.

I have a whole bunch of photos I am going to post up from the trip we took.  It was a great time spent with the kids in Disney World.  Their first trip, my 3rd, HunBun’s 2nd.  The weather held out for us until the last day we were in the park – when it started raining in the afternoon while we were in the Magic Kingdom.  The rain didn’t last long nor was it very heavy but people sure whipped out their ponchos like they were going to melt.  Of course everyone in the family had hats on their heads except for me…so I just trudged through the drizzle.  Good think I wasn’t wearing a white shirt that day – HA!

Although I didn’t get my PR at this race I didn’t do too badly – and I still had fun.  It was nice to run in a different place this time and I will say I did have to adjust a bit to the heat & humidity.  The one thing nice about running in Florida was that I was not cold during the long wait for the start.  I did decide that I am going to get more serious about my training plans for these runs.  I have renewed my commitment to speed drills, tempo drills, fartleks and what ever else I read up on in the running magazines and blogs.  I’m also doing more about my approach to eating.  Although it is relatively healthy, I am going to expend more control over my snacking.  I love me some salty chips….so am going to explore the variety of flavors of homemade Kale chips and store bought crunchy nori sheets.

Anyhoo.  Got a lot of work emails to get through – only did about 1/2 yesterday and I got a lot of planning to get through for some organizational changes I’m instituting in my team (doesn’t that sound exciting? 🙂  )

One nice by product of our family trip to Florida?  12yo has been getting up at 6am – instead of his normal 640am…so he’s been on time to leave for school and I’ve not had to pester him to get a move on.  Sweet!

I’ll post those pictures up as a wordless montage…

See ya later

Cathy

 

Deja Vu Thursday

I know that doesn’t really go together, but it sort of does.  It was a deja vu kind of work day.  Conference calls – Email – Excel files – Word documents – Instant Chats…  yada yada yada.  It’s probably the same thing that every employee in corporate America does one day or another.

This morning I did not wake up to exercise.  Boo on me.  I didn’t sleep well and was just plain tired…physically tired.  So I decided to do what people always say “listen to your body” and my body said Stay in Bed.  So I did….and an hour and 15 minutes after the alarm went off at 5am I got myself out of bed.

Started the work computer – my data transfer was still going…day 3 – but it was saving all my work from my dead work computer so I wasn’t going to bother it at all.  First thing I do every day is check my calendar to see how many conference calls I had for the day – only 4 today.. YAY!  There are days where I have 6+…Yikes!

My food has been really good this week…I’ve been patting myself on the back as an affirmation of my good choices.  Tonight was a slight deviation with our Hillshire Farms chicken sausage sauté – so good!  On to the foodie foto’s..Yeeha!

Big ole breakfast pancake…eaten with my hands. MMMmmm

Snack today was 2 Cuties and 2 Apricot Date balls… looks so zen. Ohmm

Homemade chicken salad in a Flat Out wrap on a bed of spinach.

A spoonable smoothie!

Hillshire Farms sausage, leeks, red potatoes and celery. YUM!

I ended dinner with a healthy cocoa – cocoa powder + protein powder with hot water.  Sounds weird but tastes really creamy and chocolaty.  You don’t even have to add any sweetener at all.  Oh, one picture I didn’t take was the piece of Black Bean Brownie I ate after lunch – decadent and healthy!

All this healthy eating is making me feel really great about my recent personal choices.  I’ve got a biggee I’m making at work – but I’m not stressing on that at all.  Must be all these positive endorphins from exercise and healthy eats.  🙂

See ya later

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

What up Wednesday!

I don’t really have a whole lot to say.  It’s been a lot of the same thing every day this week.  Waking up early to bust out an early sweat session…eating healthy meals to stay on the TIU plan…powering through a work day…zooming off to yoga…cooking dinner…trying to chill out…falling asleep.  B-O-R-I-N-G.  😦  Routine is usually what I fall into – be it eating or slogging through the day.  There are so many demands on our every waking minute that you become immune to enjoying life.

I mean who can believe that it’s already February?  I certainly can’t.  I’ve got too much to do at work, for my family, for myself that sometimes I just turn inward.  I retreat into myself – disengaging from everything on the inside while maintaining the outward appearance of full participation.  Is that a protection mechanism?  So I don’t completely drain myself?  Maybe…who knows.  Blah.  That’s usually my statement whenever I don’t want to talk or can’t talk.  🙂

Anyhoo…who signed up to read a decompression session?  Not me – so let’s move on to my favorite topic – EATING!  For all those who think eating healthy is boring and hard – you’re right.  HA!  It can be both of those things if you don’t inject a level of creativity and planning into it.  I do think that healthy eating requires a lot more prep work than not so healthy eating.  That means figuring out what you are going to eat during the week because all that healthy food tends to go bad – certainly doesn’t have the shelf life of say Hamburger Helper.  😀  You also need to cut, pack and organize your healthy eats in an easy to see and grab way.  The easier to grab – the more likely you will eat it.  I’ve learned that the hard way (hard way being throwing out hundreds of dollars of veggies that went bad because I didn’t eat it fast enough – Boot!)

Enough blah blah blahing….  on to the pictorial – Wheee!

Tuesday breakfast. Oh yeah, I eat my pancake with my hands!

Tuesday snack was a juicy pear

Tuesday Lunch – Double wrapping it!

I forgot to take a photo of my super tasty smoothie I had before yoga.  I followed a TIU recipe – Mango, Banana, Almond Milk, Coconut…whir it up and drink. 🙂

After yoga I whipped up a Mexican shrimp sauté and served it along with some lime cilantro rice.  Of course I forgot to take a picture.  More because for some reason we didn’t eat until 730pm…we’re usually done eating and kitchen cleaned by 7pm.  Not sure what happened.  So I was rushing all around and then rushed that food right down my piehole.

Wednesday’s eats were almost an exact duplicate…I think I’m falling into my rut.  Ick.  😦  But it was still tasty – so whatever, right.  🙂

Wednesday Breakfast. What else but a giant ole pancake.

Wednesday Snack: Balls!

For snack I had another pear and 2 of these awesome Apricot-Date balls.  Easy to make, although they are a little sticky to roll into balls.  YUM YUM.

Wednesday Smoothie. Kiwi, berries and spinach.

No photo of lunch…that’s because I was running late to a conference call and had to shove my wrap into my mouth as quickly as I could.  Not the best thing to do.  Also had 2 Cuties along with my lunch.  Sweet treat!

I was smart today and put some ribs in the crockpot for HunBun and the 12yo so that cooked all day and made the house smell SO GOOD!  I put some rice in the rice pot so it’d be ready for them to eat before I got home from yoga since I had to run to CVS to pick up a prescription.

Wednesday Dinner. Chicken and Kale wrap

I may eat a couple Apricot-Date balls as a treat…or have a piece of the Black Bean Brownies I just made.  Hmmmm.  Which would you pick?  😀

See ya later

Cathy