Terrific Quote From a Smart Blogger, organic share pick-up day--and a coop recommendation for South Florida peops--plus assorted pics from Saturday's "Dali Miami" outing (and a flashback to the Goya outing in 2007 for comparison), and sort of not "there" yet where I need to be on "get recommitted" week...but I will get there...

I've been sluggish and dozey. I think I need to go through this quieter time, which means fewer blog comments from me, sorry. I need this introspection right now. Untangling knots, as it were (you'll see when you read the quote).

I like energetic and UP better. But quieter, pondering, prayerful is needful some weeks.

I have to shower and get dressed to get my organic goodies, and I'm sitting here unshowered and sort of dragging my feet about cleaning up. How pathetic, right? Well, I know that I'll feel better when everything is clean and sweet-smelling. :D I have to remember that draggy and sweaty is not normal, and clean and bright is better. Some days, the grooming is as hard a chore as a workout.

I only did a quickie grocery shopping thing this past Saturday, so protein sources are scarce. I need to hit Whole Foods, or at minimum Publix (not as good in the meat/poultry, sigh). Hubby eats 4 protein heavy meals a day and 2 to 3 lighter more carb/fat type snacks a day, so I gotta go shop for his goodies. I am fine with eggs, cheese, whey protein (on lazy days). He's not.

This is what my share includes today:

• Strawberries
• Blueberries#
• Mangos
• Gala Apples
• Bananas
• Local FL Cauliflower
• Local FL Broccoli
• Local FL Curly Kale
• Local FL Celery#
• Local FL Green Cabbage
• Russet Potatoes
• Roma Tomatoes
• Romaine Lettuce
• Watermelon Radish
• Fresh English Peas!

Plus I add a share of extra fruit:

• $10 Fruit:
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Valencia Oranges

Last week, the strawberries and blueberries were wowarrific! I mean, crazy good. I hope it's a repeat. Hubby loves strawberries chopped on top of sugar free ice cream for his nite treat. I'm not a big ice cream person. I usually use yogurt or eat the fruit for dessert after supper.

Annie does a great job. And she's a really involved and caring person when it comes to responsible food supplies and eating whole and ecological stuff. So, if you're local in South Florida, consider Annie's Buying Club.  I've bought organic goodies from Annie since 2007 (back when she had a delivery service, which was great when I was sick a lot and couldn't always go to the grocery store.)  If you coordinate the weekly shares, you get your share as payment for your time/trouble.

Next subject: the artistic outing

On the way there...in car...

Interior of Moore Building

I wasn't up to my usual vim last Saturday, but we headed to the Dali Miami exhibit anyway. I'd say it was good, not great. A few pieces really appealed to me. It needed some big, notable paintings to anchor it. The lighting was a fail in some spots (like DARK, could not make out details). But the venue was cool. A historic (for Miami, which is a "young" city) '20s edifice, the Moore Building, in the design district.

Mir in walled courtyard dining at Mandolin

Middle sis and hubby at Mandolin

It turned out to be a lovely afternoon, and me, my middle sis, and hubby enjoyed the outing. I wore my green Onitsuka Tigers for comfort and we parked a couple blocks from the building.

After 2 hours of art-seeing, we walked about 3 blocks to Mandolin restaurant, where I pretty much went a little wild with the veggies and yogurt. (Except for a piece of hubby's chicken kabob, I had a vegetarian meal, cause Greek/Turkish fare...man, they know how to make veggies numsy.) Sis and I split a village salad (a bit of feta, but mostly these really ripe amazing tomatoes). Then we split this veggie stew with yogurt on top thingie whose name I forgot. A Turkish item. And I had as my entree a stuffed zucchini (stuffed with a mixture of veggies, feta, and ground almonds with tomato sauce). And Turkish coffee sans sugar and iced tea to drink. I ate too much. Even vegetarian fare can add up, calorically. Um, yeah.

Then the 4 blocks or so back to the car. I'm glad we didn't valet it--the brief walk was nice, as it was breezy.

I looked kinda crappy in the lighting within the Moore Building--look at the "in the car on the way" photo and Mandolin photos versus the exhibit ones--but here are a few with a bit of the exhibit:

Surrealistic and windblown-frizzy!

Yeah, the sculpture's reaction to my unflattering top--what
was I thinking!-- is pretty much mine seeing the photo.
Top goes to Goodwill.
The bosom is not flattered.

Comparison time: the Goya exhibit in Oct of 2007, a mere 5 months after I started blogging to find a way to lose weight~~

Differences: Glasses (I had Lasik)
3x top, versus L/XL now
Blown out hair, versus natural curls now

Way bigger than middle sis back then.

Five years younger, nearly 100 pounds fatter...

My Prince back then, a bit shaggier and heavier,
but still handsomest guy on EARTH!!!!

Hubby and I both agreed that the third floor would make a great venue for a stylish 30th anniversary party, should we hit the Lotto or something. ; ) But we'll look like crap in the photos! hahah (We "mature" gals need good lighting!)

Next subject: Exercise

Monday I did my Pilates session and walked 35 mins. Yesterday, I only walked 15 mins. I may resort to a DVD tonight, after all the errands are done. I didn't wake up until 2pm, so things are piling up.

The recommitment is still on shaky ground. BUT...I have not quit and every day, I do focus on goals and work on it, just don't have that fire burning yet.

Last matter, and please read to the end:

I will share this terrific quote from a blogger I only discovered in the last couple months, but who has fast become one of my top faves. She's eloquent. Smart. And has been down this same road we have in the fatfighting journey. She just puts the struggle into words better than most, her nimble brain able to capture stuff and verbalize it. I leave you with her words and my total desire for all of us to work on this and be well, be very, very well:

It has taken me many decades of my life to get to where I am now and I continue to pick at and untangle knots in the web I was trapped in. I still feel stuck to it in spots and occasionally feel sucked back in and trapped, but most of me is free most of the time. The one thing that I implore anyone who is trying to lose weight to do is to stop oversimplifying and talking in Yoda-isms ("there is no try, do"). There's a reason most people regain weight after they lose it and I absolutely believe it is this oversimplification and denial of the complex psychological issues that go into changing ones relationship with food. You can't do it forever with the mental tools of brute force, abuse, pat and trite mantras, a stick-to-it attitude, etc. Eventually, for most people, the psychology that got them fat in the first place will re-assert itself and they will regain.

Make it as complicated as it is and take the time to understand that it's just not so simple for most people. You didn't get messed up in a day, week, or even a year. You got messed up over a lifetime. It isn't a short-term problem and it can't be fixed with a short-term solution (and I count dieting culture as a part of "short-term"). 

Get A Personalized, Unique Avatar--And $5 Goes to Japan Relief: FlipFace

I got one last year for my "natural hair" persona (I went natural in 2009, letting my curly freak fly). But/ before that, I had several pieces of quickie art done by Len Peralta (at the time, it was his enterprise to help pay for his wife/baby's maternity-medical expenses.) He does fun zombie, vampire, monster, etc art. See him creating my Botticelli Venus Zombie on youtube.  Now, see him creating my Tormented Alien Novelist on South Beach . Cool, right?

More recently, he does avatars (flipfaces).

Here's my curly one:

If you want your own flipface/avatar by Len, you can help towards Japan Relief while getting your own bit of artsy goodness.


Go here to order one. It's easy. Give him your instructions. Upload a pic. Pay via Paypal. Voila!

I just ordered one in anime-style.

I'm off to do stuff. later....

UPDATE: man, Len is fast today! I ordered my FlipFace/anime-style/Japan-Relief version late this morning. Got it a few minutes ago:

I sent this following pic from Valentine's day, from which he got the pose/hair/red lips:

I love it!

Day 24 of P5: Busy and Blogging took a back seat, but fear not, I'm Drinking the water, Eating at 1200, Exercising, and Waiting for my body to let the fat go (yes, another stasis phase)...visiting the Vatican Splendors Exhibition, Learning Japanese, and Keeping my Mouth Busy! How do you keep yours busy so you don't eat?

Scale...the same, though no overeating/binge-ing going on...

Exercise: Good. Walking/Pilates/Jackie Warner exercises (well, the ones my body is capable of).

Sleep: Spent two days pretty deprived (3.5 hours one night, 5 the next).

Food: Good. Had a small bobble on the weekend (stuff not on my plan) cause we ate out, but there it is. My decision and no excuses.

Mood...pretty good, now that I caught up on some lost sleep.

Monday was fabulous...such fun. Went to see the Vatican Splendors exhibition in Fort Lauderdale and spent 3 hours enjoying the offerings. My most fave were the mosaics/paintings and seeing the actual handwriting of MichelAngelo and Bernini. I got such a thrill, I felt it all up and down my body. My gosh. MichelAngelo's own letter/signature/calipers....

Spent a long time on some particular objects of interest and chatted up some strangers, pointing out particular items of note in some of the works (ie, the exhibition's weakness, even with an audio tour, is not pointing out some of the significant symbols/meanings, imo. Fortunately, I was able to decipher quite a bit on my own and for hubby and some strangers who were going at a similar pace to me.)

I thought of Allan with one painting (the angel appearing to some animals, people to announce the birth of Jesus) cause the only one paying attention to the angel was a cute doggie. He was "kneeling" and looking up and listening intently...and so the light of Heaven showed on his doggy face. How cute...

After the exhibit, since it was deep So FL rush hour, we headed to the nearby Fort Lauderdale beach strip and parked...and walked. :) Chose a lovely patio restaurant to have a meal. Our seats/table had a perfect view of the beach across the street. Tourists, para-sailers, joggers, kids running. The patio was elegant with jazzy music. Nice. Got to be there during sunset....watching the stars emerge...

Been reading and started my cd Japanese lessons yesterday, so didn't feel like blogging AT ALL.

Appetite is calm. On days when I go out and have to be in the car a lot, I cut back on drinking water until I get home. This means I have to cope with more appetite. I will never give up drinking the water afer 50 years of my life eschewing water. Why? I have seen it. I have seen the enormous difference it makes when I drink a lot, drink consistently, and drink BEFORE eating. I'm less hungry. I think less about food.

It is not theory to me anymore. It's not a fad. It's what works. Water/fluids works. Period. On days when I delay water (due to errands/driving in dense traffic--when I can't pee no matter what), I get hungry. On days I do my water drinking according to my system/level, I suffer very little hunger. I get fewer cravings.

So, call me a mermaid and throw water at me. :D I will open my mouth and drink it!

I love the sound of Japanese, and I've gotten better at pronunciation watching anime/dramas/listening to JRock. But I got the cds to learn the language more formally. I have smatterings of words and phrases, and I kick butt on the Japanese "o" and "u" and "f" and "r" sounds (which are not really exactly the way we say it, just like letters are different in Spanish, my original language). I love the Japanese "u" sounds. I kid to my husband that I want to adopt and bunch of kids and name them Kaoru, Noboru, Ryuu, Satoru, Hikaru, Shuuhei, Touru, and such just to pronounce the sound. heh.Now, every time my hubby notices a "u" name...he goes, "There's another one for the name list."

The "f " is interesting. It seems like more an exhalation of hair with the lips and mouth "just so"...a certain way that stops short of of how we say the F in English or Spanish. I remember the lightness of "h" in Greek when we were playing around with that in Bible Study, and the "hi" in Japanese has that lightness.

Nothing sexier than a man with a beautiful voice going all out in Japanese. Num. Manly!  If you haven't heard a great male voice using this language, behold he sexiness of Aizen (powerful BLEACH anime villain, recently defeated).  And Ulquiorra (my fave Espada from BLEACH and I felt sad when his character, though an adversary to the good guys, turned to ash in his death). He doesn't speak until about 45 seconds into this clip (death scene), but man, you don't need the subs. The voice. The voice.... with all those hard t's and k's and the soft s and sh sounds. Love it.

One of the benefits of doing this beginner's language course is that, well, you can't eat if you are busy pronouncing a foreign language. :)

Feel a binge coming on--hurry, go put on a language tape (pick your faves, natch) and go to it. Or head to youtube or online for a course. Keep your mouth busy.

Or sing. I do that, too, to keep mouth busy in the face of temptations.

If you like jazz, learn to scat. If you like antiques and stuff, learn to be an auctioneer (practice that super fast talking). If you like poetry, recite it.

Or, if you are hipper and younger or if you're just into hip-hoppy stuff, you can keep your mouth unbinge-y and buy doing this:


First saw this guy more than a year ago, and now he's been on tv shoes and has fans and has lessons on youtube. :)   For lessons in English by a cute Asian dude in his car, check out this one (and its follow-up lessons). Easier to do. He gives good tips.

Do you have "keep the mouth busy and not eating tricks like this? :)  They can be fun, right? (And I will not go into detail on one of my alternate "mouth busy" tricks that is only possible when hubby is home. Ahem. That one works REALLY well, as it's very, very, very distracting. Hmmm..there's one way of making your life partner very happy you're dieting. teehee)

So, while I wait for my body to release --and it will, as one thing I've learned from Allan and the Challenges is that consistency pays off. Eat less, move more, it will budge-- I'll be practicing my rudimentary Japanese lessons and watching more fun anime and reading more fun manga and visiting more museums and doing more walking and just refusing to stop until I get to where I wanna be....in all sorts of ways....

Happy new month to everyone. SPRING IS ALMOST HERE...become new!