cookies

i started to make banana bread, since there are some just-a-tad-old-for-eating bananas on my counter. then i got to the part where i should have added 2 eggs. oops. there would still have been 2 eggs had shaggy not made himself an egg for breakfast before i woke up (i'm not complaining that he did that - i'm suggesting that i should have counted eggs before i creamed any butter and sugar). so i went flipping through the cookbook for something using similar amounts of butter/sugar and only 1 egg. the end result was chocolate chunk/cappuccino chip and pecan cookies, which are currently cooling. i don't think the proposed diet will happen this week. this is an ongoing struggle - i've been lucky so far and always had a job/lifestyle that kept me active and at least relatively thin. however, for nearly a year now i've driven to work, and sat at a desk all day (as opposed to biking 3 miles, unloading trucks and moving furniture for 8 hours, and biking 3 miles home). the result being roughly 23 additional pounds by last count. not so fun. i can still fit most of the clothes, but i'm finding much less need for belts lately. so either a diet, or exercise, or both had better figure prominently in my near future. my trouble is going to sound crazy - i don't know where to begin. my husband is a personal trainer/fitness instructor, and yet i'm too stubborn to let him help, so i'm basically trying to motivate myself. it goes like this:
"okay, it's late tonight, but i'm going to get up early tomorrow and run on one of the treadmills at the y before work" then the alarm goes off at some ridiculously early hour (shaggy has already left on his marathon-training run by this point). i turn off the alarm and chuckle myself back to sleep. i snooze until the last possible second, and generally get myself to work on time, albeit a tad disheveled (the wet hair and all). i generally don't give myself time to stop for coffee on the way in (that last "snooze" really makes a difference...), so thank goodness the office has a coffee maker that actually works now. of course, by the end of the work day, i'm ready to GO! i do NOT want to stay here another second (here being the ymca, also where the workout facilities are...) once i am home there is food to make, kitties to snuggle, books to read, a latchhook that i'm working on (for no reason i can discern, nor do i have any idea what i'll do with the thing once it's finished, and yet i plug away). no really active stuff besides walking hobbes to the mailbox and back.
so this is why i am gaining pudge.
i did just start a soccer league, which sounds like it would help, except that i'm the goalie so i mostly just stand around, yell encouragement to team members, and occasionally flail wildly at a ball as it comes whizzing past me into the goal (hey, i didn't say i was any good). today we lost 13-2.
some kind of challenge would probably be good - there was a time (on a weeklong trip) that i said i was going to run every morning i was gone, and someone had the nerve to scoff. i ran 2 miles a day that week, and improved my running time by a total of 4 minutes. lately though, i say oh, i'll work out and get in shape, and they say, really, good for you, and then i don't.
so, enough with the working out stuff- on to the dieting stuff. shaggy is on the "runner's diet" which means he eats all the same stuff i do, then adds black beans, salad, salmon or chicken, and snacks of oranges, dark chocolate, almonds, and protein bars throughout the day. i tried to get into it - i got myself some dried fruit for snacks, got juice instead of "juice-drinks" and picked up some power and balance bars... i also quit starbucks (unless someone else was buying). i did great for about a week and a half. then, halfway through a balance gold bar (triple chocolate, and not too disgusting) i made the mistake of reading the ingredients label. notice to the world:
THERE IS FISH IN BALANCE BARS!!!! yep, fish. as in the vegetarian in my office who had also been eating balance bars is PISSED! and i'm none too pleased myself. i DON'T eat fish- at least not knowingly. i don't know why, but i had assumed that energy bars were vegetarian in nature... so, i'm down to powerbar prias since they're the only bar i can stomach that does not contain dead animals. and they only come in 2 flavors. and i can only handle so much dried fruit. and starbucks is calling. so perhaps i'll sue balance bar and get money for expensive healthy food that tastes good (all the organic stuff and whatnot). yeah. or find my gloves and pull out the punching bag. i love my punching bag, yet somehow i never feel like beating on it until about 10:30 or so at night, and it does make a bit of noise...
just for fun, i bought a kids-ish book "once upon a more enlightened time" (the sequel to "politically correct bedtime stories". it's a riot! hansel and gretel meet a wiccan, who convinces them to be eco-friendly, and they change their names to heathdweller and gaia and join forces with the wiccan to fight their father the tree-butcher... and "sleeping persun of better-than-average attractiveness" slumbers for 100 years only to be woken by a student of enlightenment who thinks she will teach him meditation...i especially love the politically correct alphabet:
A is an Activist itching to fight
B is a Beast, with animal rights
C was a Cripple (now differently-abled)
D is a Drunk who is "liquor-enabled"
fantastic! not too challenging of a read, but very, very entertaining.
yay - i did a book review!
speaking of books - i finally started mine! i have "completed" two chapters and realized that i have a LOT of research to do (it's historical fiction, based on the lives of some of my ancestors, set in a david mamet's oleana sort of frame - two opposing characters tell the story in alternating first-person chapters. and it's set in missouri and illinois in the mormon settlement era, and yes, it involves polygamy and the surrounding conflict). so yeah, a bit complicated, but man, this is going to be fun! i don't know of anyone having tried to bridge the gap before between staunch support and ardent denial of polygamy being okay. not that i sway completely either way. yes it sounds messed up, but in the culture of the time, there were many, many widows, and back then it was pretty tough for women to take care of themselves. so i can see why it may have made some sense. on the other hand, not so many people know about the women who secretly had more than one husband, so that's got to factor into the fairness issue. and then there's the religious stuff. mormons were still figuring out their own religion, and then it got all mixed up with the freemasons, and then they split into a bunch of factions... it's definitely interesting to see how mormonism today is not much like what it was back in the day - except that the meetings were still super long. but yeah, lots of research. i googled a bunch of stuff and downloaded a bunch of stuff, and i'm putting together a list of books i'll need to read, and eventually i should probably visit the places i'm writing about.
this isn't going to be done any time soon.
and i think that's it for the blog tonight.