Switching to Formula

The choice of how to feed your new human is one of the most fraught choices in a life that is suddenly full of them. The options are to breastfeed or to use formula. There are pros and cons to each. There are people who have strong opinions about both and are eager to share those opinions with you. Even if you haven't asked for them. Even if you've specifically asked them not to share.

This is true of every decision you make as a new parent, of course. Which stroller is the best? How do you pick a car seat? Is it actually necessary to pay more for the special laundry detergent? How many toys is too many toys? But the breast milk vs formula decision is harder. It's much more personal and gets tied up with all sorts of body image issues and what it means to be a good mom. Which is probably why so many moms are so quick to defend their own choices. Kevin has been absolutely wonderful and a partner in every way during this whole process, but there is a point where this becomes my decision and my struggle and he simply can't be there with me the way he was when we picked a stroller.

On some level it's been similar to the natural child birth vs cesarean section decision we faced early on. Gavin is big, and he has a big head, and we suspected from the beginning that this would be true. Even before I got pregnant I was mentally preparing myself for the possibility that I would need to have a c-section. I got push back from any number of surprising places, and it contributed to my nightmares the night before I was induced. But ultimately the decision was placed in the hands of my doctor, and my labor was relatively quick and easy as these things go.

There are two key ways in which feeding my kid has differed from birthing him. First, there's no doctor who's going to be the ultimate authority on this. There shouldn't be. It makes it hard to wash my hands of responsibility, even though I know there isn't a wrong decision. Second, the breastfeeding vs formula has proven to be a much more ongoing source of stress. It's not a decision I could push off into the future, actively engage with for a few hours, and then move past with hardly a second thought.

No; this conversation has been happening for weeks, both in my head and with Kevin. Strangers are quick to offer their opinions, and doctors have been reluctant to say anything definitive. I have opinions and feelings of my own, as does Kevin. And then there's Gavin, who is now old enough to have and express opinions but not old enough to argue or reason.

But perhaps the hardest thing of all is that this dilemma and my reaction to it have taken me completely by surprise. I really thought I'd be above it. My brother and I were both formula-fed and we turned out fine, so I know there's nothing wrong with feeding my son formula. Back when I was pregnant I told myself and Kevin that I would try breast-feeding but I wouldn't kill myself over it. I said that if the process of breast-feeding ever reduced me to tears I would switch to formula then and there, because it wasn't worth it.

Kevin gently reminded me that I would be hormonal and susceptible to crying in the first few days, and that this was probably not the best metric to use.

Breast-feeding was hard in the beginning. Gavin's mouth was too small for my nipples, and sometimes it felt like I needed three hands to wrangle both him and my boob. But it was actually one of the few things that didn't cause tears in those first few days when I cried at the drop of a hat. Every problem that came up had a solution, and those problems came up one at a time. I used a nipple shield. I fed him every hour until my milk finally came in. I dealt with chapped nipples and bleeding nipples, with clogged ducts and milk blisters, with a lopsided milk supply and a baby who occasionally ate for an hour straight.

By the time Gavin was six weeks old, I looked back at everything I'd dealt with and told myself that if I'd seen those problems looming six weeks earlier, I'd have gone with formula from the beginning. But we made it through, and breast feeding became easy and convenient and wonderful.

And now we come to the beginning of the dilemma. Breastfeeding is amazing, and pumping is arguably the worst thing in the world. At some point, the bad outweighs the good.

I would like to continue to breast feed my son until he is a year old at least.

I would like to never pump again.

My brain is at war with my heart, and it's taking all I have to muddle through this transition without tearing myself apart. And of course it's not even as simple as that.

Breastfeeding is so convenient, especially in the middle of the night. Preparing a bottle of formula adds time to the feeding, precious minutes when I could be sleeping. On the other hand, Kevin can give him the formula, allowing me to get even more sleep than I would otherwise. Moreover, the formula takes longer to digest, which should result in Gavin sleeping longer, making this a moot point.

I want to get my time back. I currently plan my life around the fact that I need to either feed Gavin or pump every three hours, both of which take roughly 20 minutes during which time I can't do anything else. I'd like to attend a 5 hour work event next week without having to leave to pump halfway through. I'd like to go to my friend's bachelorette party in a few weeks (and her wedding a few weeks after that) and leave my son with a sitter and not spend the whole night obsessing about how much milk he's drinking while I'm gone and whether I'll be able to replace it before he goes to daycare. I want this part of my life back, and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to want, but I still feel selfish for wanting it.

Every reasonable argument points to transitioning my song to formula. That's why we're doing it. The problem is all the unreasonable arguments, many of which are tied to how I relate to my body.

Before I got pregnant, it seemed like I was losing control of my body. I started gaining weight around my 23rd birthday, and there was nothing I could do to lose it again. I could stop gaining weight for a few months if I went to the gym religiously, but I could never lose any. I did okay with strength-training, but I always struggled with balance and flexibility. My weak ankles and knees and back (souvenirs from a decade of ballet lessons) kept slowing or halting my progress.

But then we decided to have a kid, and I got pregnant almost immediately. For the most part I enjoyed being pregnant and my labor was easier than it had any right to be, considering the size of my kid. Finally, my body was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. I've wanted kids for my entire life, and my body's cooperation in this (when it seemed to fight me on everything else) was incredibly affirming. Even at my largest, I felt like a goddess. I felt like a mother.

Breast-feeding was easier than I expected it to be. I was going to be one of those mothers who breast-fed until the 12 month mark and then easily transitioned to a diet of solid foods. It didn't hurt that, for the first time since I'd been on a liquid diet, I was losing weight. Effortlessly! Not quickly, but steadily, the number on the scale kept going down. I weigh less now than I did when I got pregnant, less than I did on my wedding day, less than when Kevin proposed.

And so the feeling of failure is twofold. That I can no longer provide enough milk for my son goes to this primal part of my brain and says that I'm not as good a mother as I thought I was. Which is completely untrue, but you can't argue with a feeling. There's also a nebulous fear that I will stop breastfeeding and immediately put on all the weight I lost and then some.

At least one facet of this is anger that my body is taking this decision out of my hands. A sense that I am once again losing control, that my body and I are no longer united in a common goal. It's like the opposite of when women talk about getting their bodies back after pregnancy.

After much back and forth, we've reached a compromise. We'll be giving Gavin formula instead of breast milk once a day for the foreseeable future. I'll still have to pump. I'll still get to breastfeed. But it's a step I can't take back. The less I feed him, the less I'll be able to feed him. Before I know it, breastfeeding will be in our past entirely. I feel like I'm losing something that I can't quite articulate. I didn't expect the sense of loss to be quite so profound.

Weight Loss

For the first time in my life, I managed to achieve a weight loss goal I set for myself. Which is to say that I've dropped back down to my pre-pregnancy weight, 11 weeks after giving birth. And since I've been wanting to write about this achievement for years now (as I steadily gained weight), it was the kick I needed to return to this blog. I never meant to neglect it to this degree. But it's so easy to let days or weeks slip by without getting on the computer. There's so much else going on, and my precious free time has mostly been devoted to reading (I also need to catch up on my book blog).

But this is about losing weight and what finally worked for me. It turns out that the key was breastfeeding a baby. Not only am I burning a ton of calories producing his food (he eats ~500 calories/day, which means I'm burning at least that much making milk for him), I have less time to eat. It can take me two hours to make and eat a sandwich. So even though I'm still getting enough to eat, I'm more okay being hungry, which makes it easier to eat a little less. I'm not dieting so much as readjusting after being pregnant and eating everything in sight.

All this has added up to shockingly rapid weight loss. For the first few weeks, I was losing a pound a day. Eventually it slowed down to something more reasonable. Then when I was 5 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight, it seemed to stop altogether. I held steady there for a couple of weeks. And just when I I'd given up hope of ever getting back down to where I was, Christmas ended. Once I stopped eating a feast every night with a different group of family member, plus filling up on cookies and sweets between, the last few pounds melted right off.

I'm still hoping to lose some more weight. I'm trying to not set a specific goal, to just be happy with any weight I do lose. And I'm trying to be okay with not losing more weight if that happens, too. But I'm optimistic that I'll be able to lose some more weight in the coming months. I know I'll plateau eventually, I just hope it's at a smaller size than what I've reached in the past several years.

Yoga Wrap Up

I made it through the 30 days of yoga challenge. Sort of. It took me about 40 days to get through, because it turns out that I can't commit to 30 minutes of yoga every single day. Fridays are especially hard. If I go out after work, I won't be home for long enough to squeeze in the 30 minutes. But I kept chugging along and eventually made it to the end of the series.

Then I put on the video for the 30th day and it was introduced as a freestyle, do what you want treat for the final day. And that's the opposite of what I want. I started watching the videos so that someone else would tell me what to do. I need that structure. I'm awful at coming up with my own routine. Even if I know all the pieces. I just can't put it together into something reasonable, and I always stop after about half a workout.

After that, I just lost momentum. I tried another video, but I'd taken off for long enough that I was back to all the old aches and pains from my first forays into yoga. It was frustrating. Especially since some of the poses had started to come easier. And the cure is obviously to keep doing it every day. Or 5 days a week at least, which I can manage easily. But once you stop it's so hard to get started again. Especially when your husband just wants to watch TV and work on the puzzle and you know you ought to treasure the time together since he's leaving soon.

But he is leaving soon. Monday, in fact. At which point I'm bound and determined to get back into a routine. And stick with it this time. Even after he comes home. I will figure out how to make this work. And I will touch my toes before the year is out.

Looking Forward

I don't have a list of goals for 2016 like I did for 2015. There are things I want to do, projects I'm working on. But things will come as they come. Instead, I have a bigger, more nebulous goal in mind. It's the closest I've come to having an actual New Year's resolution in years.

In 2016 I want to learn to be more flexible.

This started on the yoga mat (oh god, I'm turning into one of those people). Physically, flexibility is something that has always eluded me. I took ballet classes for ten years and only did the splits once. I could barely touch my toes in all that time. If I'm honest, a lot of that is because I just didn't care that much. Now I do. And I'm seeing enough improvement to keep myself motivated. I'd like to be able to touch my toes, to fold in half, to splay out my legs and put my elbows on the floor. So I'm working at it and improving bit by bit.

It extends beyond the physical, though. I like my routines. I rely on them. I get stuck in them. As nice as it is to have them to fall back on, especially when I'm sick or exhausted or stressed, they can occasionally become a hindrance. It's been especially difficult dealing with Kevin's ever-changing and last-minute travel schedule. I'm hoping to figure out how to get better a this in the new year. I want to be able to go with the flow a little more, to not have my entire day thrown off when plans change or something unexpected happens.

Maybe this doesn't really count as a New Year's Resolution. It's been on my mind, and it's something I've been actively working on since mid November. But I'm still working on it. If I'm honest, I'll probably be working on it for my entire life. In this time of looking forward and setting new goals, this is the one I want to focus on.

Here's to a new year and a more flexible me. See you on the other side.

Looking Back

Coming up on the end of the year, and I thought this would be a good time to go back and see how I did with my resolutions. Without further ado:

• Plant some herbs. I'd love to have fresh basil and mint and maybe thyme available in my kitchen. And I think I can handle a small, indoor herb garden.
• I tried this! I had an herb garden for several weeks. Then the cat got mad and ate the entire thing and threw up all over the bathroom. At least he did it in the bathroom. No more herbs for me.
• Plant some tomatoes. Tomatoes are supposed to be easy, and it'd be great to have some nice, fresh ones available to eat. Especially since I just found an easy marinara sauce recipe.
• Man, I didn't even attempt this one after the disaster of the herb garden
• Learn to make jambalaya. Last year I conquered risotto and the year before that it was soup. This year: jambalaya. (My first attempt was a little too soupy. Next time will be better.)
• I did this! I made jambalaya several times. Each was better than the last, and I now have go-to recipes for a quick jambalaya-tasting dish (~25 minutes) and a more involved version. Yay!
• Bake some bread. We've got this lovely stand mixer that I never, ever use. I want to use it more. Bread could be fun, right?
• Nope, this didn't happen at all. Maybe next year? But it's so much easier to buy.
• Make pasta from scratch. See above, re: stand mixer. With pasta making attachment
• We did do this! Several times. We even did ravioli once. It was fun and delicious but also lots of work considering pasta is usually around $1/lb
• Cook more new things in general. I already moved the cookbooks out of the cupboard to help with this. If I see them everyday, I'll be more likely to actually use them.
• I think I did this? It's hard to quantify. I cooked some stuff, though
• Learn to knit? I mean, probably not. But also it could be fun. And something to do while I'm watching TV
• Definitely did not do this.
• Start building up a home gym. I want to start small: a foam roller, a mat, a set of dumbbells. Eventually I'd like to be able to cancel my gym subscription. I just need to get in the habit of working out at home first.
• I have a home gym! Mostly I use it for yoga, but those dumbbells still sit there and mock me.
• Lose some weight. It's such a cliche. For real this year, though 
• Actually I think I gained 5 pounds? Whatever
• Bike to work at least once. I'm doing decently on the exercise bike, and my office really isn't too far away. I'm planning to buy a bike in March or April and get out more. Especially if this summer is as gorgeous as last summer was. (I hope I didn't just jinx it.)
• I rode my bike to work a ton last Spring. For three months I was biking to work at least twice a week. Then it got hot. Then it got dark. But come April I should pick this up again.
• Reorganize the library/living room. I want to get a couple more bookcases for the living room and start moving some books down there. Because my library is actually overflowing.
• I did this, and I love it. But now it's time to reorganize yet again Or maybe get rid of some books?
• Pay off my student loans. This is definitely happening this year. It's barely even a goal. Still you have to put down something that's guaranteed. It makes the rest of the list easier.
• I did this, too! Goodbye student loans. Now we just need to pay off the car. And the house. 

 As for my reading goals, well I think that was an utter failure. I did complete Wheel of Time, which was well worth my time. I'm really glad that I read that series, and also that I waited until it was finished to read it. And while I did inject some diversity into my reading habits, I still mostly read books by white men. I guess that all I can do is keep trying.

I also failed to read less. As of this writing, I've read 110 books so far this year and will likely complete two more by Thursday (yeah, I know). Four of those 110 books were the Vorkosigan omnibuses, each of which contains 2 novels and 1 novella. Though that's probably balanced out by the graphic novels I included in my count. The point is that I read an absurd number of books this past year, and it did occasionally cut in to other things I could have been doing. As proud as I am of reading 100 books in a single year - it is a pretty great accomplishment - I'm once again hoping to read less next year. If only there weren't so many books that I want to read.

Then there's the writing goal. I didn't even try that hard. I half considered a few ideas, and I even came across a request for posts from a blog I frequent that I could have written something interesting for. But ultimately I didn't write anything with the intent of getting it published somewhere other than my blog. On the other hand, I now have three blogs. Maybe that counts?

Even though I didn't do everything I said I wanted to, 2015 was pretty successful. I did some cool things, read a ton of books, and generally had a pretty awesome year.

Yoga Check In

I'm about halfway through the 30-day yoga challenge, and it this point it's looking like I will make it all the way through. I'm planning to start over again once I finish. Or maybe start doing some other yoga videos? Mostly I just want to keep this up. I like the way I'm feeling. I like that I can see myself improving, almost day to day. And I like the control I'm gaining over my body.

I still struggle with some of the poses. But others come much easier, which helps me stay motivated. And even the ones that I'm having trouble with, I'm already noticing improvements on. The nice thing about starting over from the beginning is getting to go back through and realize that I'm already stronger and more flexible than I was a month ago. I may still have trouble touching my toes, and I may continue to fall over, but I'm holding poses longer and sinking into them deeper.

It's also leaking out into my life a little bit, too. I know it's easy to roll your eyes at people who really embrace yoga as a lifestyle, I know I have in the past, but I'm starting to see how it can happen. When I find myself stressed about something at work, I can now slip pretty easily into a couple of deep breaths or a moment of grounding myself and get back on track much quicker. I don't know how far I'll really go with this, but for now it's working great.

Recommiting to Yoga

Predictably, I did not make it through the entire thirty days of yago. Though I actually did pretty well, all things considered. I made it fourteen days into the challenge, and the only day I missed was one on which I was not home long enough to do yoga. 

But then Thanksgiving happened. I was being too optimistic in thinking that I'd find a time and place to do yoga while surrounded by family and wine. Oh well. After I got home, I was planning to jump back in. But a few 12-hour work days got in the way of that. I was too exhausted to even think about yoga. Then again, part of the exhaustion was from my stress-fueled insomnia. I was maybe sleeping 6 hours a night, and I'm sure that if I'd managed to do some yoga, I'd have been relaxed enough to actually fall asleep. It's a vicious cycle.

So now I'm back to it. I decided to start back at the beginning of the 30 day cycle i was watching, rather than pick back up with day 15. This way it'll be a little easier to track that progress this time around.

I also like that I can already tell that a few things are coming easier. I still struggle mightily with downward dog. I think my biggest problem is that I have no idea how to modify it so that I can improve. But I've noticed improvments in other areas. I can touch my toes occasionally. I can hold lunges a little longer. It's heartening to see these little improvements. And with no travel in the foreseeable future, I ought to be able to make it through all 30 days.

Redesign

I've decided to make some changes to the way I blog. Specifically, I'm splitting this existing blog into two blogs and then adding a third. Because one blog just isn't enough.

This blog (Geeker Joy) will remain my personal blog. I'll talk about the stuff I'm doing and goals I have. I might try some other things, along the lines of that 17% post from 2014. Who knows, really. Basically, this will remain the catch-all blog, where I can write about whatever enters my head. It will mostly be about my life. I'm toying with the idea of making this one private, but I'll let you know before I do that. And I'll make sure friends and family know how to get on the white list.

I'm splitting all of my book reviews off into a dedicated book review blog. It's called Bookish Thoughts and you can find it at caitsbookthoughts.blogspot.com. I'm in the process of porting everything over to it now. It's taking me longer than I expected, because it turns out that Blogger enforces a 50 post/day limit. But I'm chugging along and should have that all set up within another week.

I'm hoping that the new book-only site will be somewhat more navigable. To that end I'm going back through and adding a bunch of tags to my old posts. You should be able to zero in on stuff by author, series, or genre, and I'll try to pull as much of that out as possible to make it easier. Doing that is creating some work for me now, but it should all run nice and smooth with minimal effort on my part once it's up and running. If you're one of the people who cares what I have to say about all the books I read, you can check out that site (which will remain public). If you don't, the personal blog will now be less cluttered for your enjoyment.

The third blog I'm setting up is a writing blog. It's called Paper and Ink Dreams and you can visit it at paperandinkdreams.blogspot.com. I'm hoping to post some short stories and writing challenges over there. Mostly I want to get in the habit of writing for some amount of time every day. I want to hone my story-telling abilities. I want to start producing a mountain of work in the hopes that I will get better at writing fiction. I want to see where this goes.

For the time being, I'm revisiting some old projects. In high school, I was given an assignment to write a short story for each letter of the alphabet, memoir style. Those are currently being posted as a sort of baseline for me to see where I can improve and where my strengths are. And for you all to have a good laugh at 16-year old. Some of these stories are pretty melodramatic. It's fun.

Once that's all up, I'm going to dive back into my companion project - the college alphabet. I started this years ago when I first started the blog. I posted five stories and wrote drafts for six more before it all fell by the wayside. I'm going to start polishing those up and writing new ones. They'll start going up after the high school alphabet finishes posting. Depending on how far along I am, they may or may not be in alphabetical order.

At some point I'll look into daily writing prompts or creative writing challenges or something and start posting based off those prompts. Maybe I'll come up with another project for myself. Maybe I'll start writing actual short stories (as opposed to what I've been writing, which I believe qualifies as "flash fiction" or "drabbles"). We'll see where this goes.

30 Days of Yoga

I'm now three days in to a 30-day yoga challenge that I sort of fell into accidentally.

Since I quit going to the gym and paying for a personal trainer, I've been intending to work out more at home. This worked great for a little while. I was riding my bike to work and going for long rides on the weekends. But then summer happened and my desire to go outside went away. I lifted weights in our basement a few times, but nothing ever really stuck. It's too easy to have a beer with dinner or spend the night watching TV or reading instead.

With the house to myself, I decided to start looking into exercise videos available online. The thing I liked most about my personal trainer was that I had someone telling me what to do. I'm not great at putting together workouts for myself. It's too easy to decide halfway through to skip that extra set or just blow off legs completely. But with a video, there's a fixed time and routine, and it's easier to have someone doing it along with you.

There used to be a ton on Netflix, but they seem to have all been removed as part of Netflix's changing business model. So I ended up on YouTube looking at yoga videos. I found a series called Yoga with Adriene that had a promising looking challenge. It's aimed at beginners, and she offers tons of modifications and encouragement. The routines are all different and range in length from 10 to 30 minutes.

This isn't about getting into super shape right away. It's about baby steps. Establishing a routine. I want to get in the habit of doing ~30 minutes of yoga every day, and this seems like a good way to do that.

I've had a contentious relationship with yoga in the past. I think it's mostly the group classes, where everyone seems leagues ahead of me. As soon as I fail a pose, I get embarrassed and half the time that leads to me leaving early. Then I don't go back. And it's just a stupid cycle. But in the privacy of my own home, that embarrassment is gone. I can wobble and fall and get right back up and try again without getting strange looks from anyone.

It would be nice to have a mirror to check my body, but the truth is that my ballet training is kicking in pretty nicely. I can tell pretty easily when my hips are square, when my legs are too far apart, when I'm not standing up straight, when my weight isn't properly distributed. I'm still unsure about some poses, but I think that has more to do with my lack of flexibility. I'd really like someone to help me figure out Downward Dog, especially since it's such a popular pose. I'm not at all convinced I'm doing it right.

Still, I'm doing better with these videos than I expected to. I don't quite have the core strength needed for standing on one leg for an extended period of time or the flexibility necessary to actually flow into and out of lunges. But I'll get there. In the meantime the exercise has been a nice mix of relaxing and strenuous. Which is to say that I'm always nicely relaxed while I'm doing it and pleasantly sore the next day.

At this point I'm thinking that when I finish the 30 days, I may just go back to the beginning and start over. Hopefully I'll do better on some of the earlier exercises. For now I'm just taking baby steps towards strength and flexibility. Not that I have high hopes. If ten years of ballet didn't give me the ability to touch my toes, I doubt yoga will. At least I know I'll get stronger.

Comfort Food

Kevin is away on a business trip that's going to last nearly six weeks. It sounds like a long time. It is a long time. But I'm honestly looking forward to having the house to myself for a while. I'm going to miss him, obviously, but it will also be nice to have my own space. I'm hoping to be able to establish some routines around exercise and writing that will be firmly in place by the time he returns. Not that I can't establish those routines when he's around, but it's harder.

It's hard to diet or cut out alcohol when you share meals. It's hard to treat the basement as a gym when he's using it to play video games. Not that there has been even the smallest bit of friction when I have asserted those desires. This is more about me, me being aware that the space is shared, me being unable to get past certain mind blocks and just do it. When it's just me, there's less pressure to perform (and it's all internal pressure, to be clear) so I can really prioritize some of these wants and desires.

Hopefully those routines will carry over once Kevin gets back. Like I said, he's going to have no problem with me taking over the basement for half an hour a day to work out, or eating smaller portions, or turning down the beer/wine. It's just a matter of asserting that. Which means it's a matter of me getting completely comfortable with it.

But I digress.

Knowing that Kevin would be leaving on an extended trip, we spent the last weekend getting in some quality time. I was a little surprised to realize how much of this centered on food. Not that I should have been. Food is so central to so many things, in ways you don't even entirely realize. So we ended up eating a bunch of delicious meals in anticipation of our separation.

Since Kevin will be missing Thanksgiving this year, we decided to do a smaller version with just the two of us. On Friday we roasted a mini-turkey (also known as a chicken) and ate it with some rice pilaf and glazed carrots and a very strange Western Kevin had been wanting to watch. On Saturday I made a casserole that I discovered last year that basically tastes like an entire Thanksgiving dinner in a single dish. It's one of my favorite meals, but it's way too much food for just one person, so I had to sneak it in before Kevin left. Sunday morning was bacon. We'd bought two pounds of bacon for Hallowiener that we forgot about, so Kevin cooked all of it and we've been eating it ever since. Then it was time for football, beer, and pizza.

It was something of a last hurrah for me, too, as I'm hoping to use this time to go on a diet. Sort of. I'm not really planning to change what I eat. I like food too much to ever successfully change my eating habits in the long term. No, my goal is to eat less. Portion control has been a struggle for me ever since I moved in with Kevin. He eats a lot, and it's hard not to match him. So that's a habit I'm hoping to establish while he's gone.

There are some other goals I've set for myself in the last two months of the year. Old-year resolutions, I guess? But more on those in the coming days. Expect some changes, though! And keep your fingers crossed that I'll be able to stick with all of them.

2015 Goals

Two years ago I found myself in a position of instability and purgatory when the new year rolled around. I was waiting to hear about a new job, and the uncertainty had me off balance. Even though the change was completely for the best, it took a bit of getting used to.

Last year, I was planning my wedding and honeymoon. Scheduling meetings and making decisions was taking up all of my free time.

This year, I'm in a really stable place. Everything is going well, and I'm where I want to be right now. Which means that I'm finding myself with all this extra energy. So I'm spending a lot of time thinking about things I want to do this year. I already posted about my reading resolutions. These are the other goals that have been bouncing around in my head.

• Plant some herbs. I'd love to have fresh basil and mint and maybe thyme available in my kitchen. And I think I can handle a small, indoor herb garden.
• Plant some tomatoes. Tomatoes are supposed to be easy, and it'd be great to have some nice, fresh ones available to eat. Especially since I just found an easy marinara sauce recipe.
• Learn to make jambalaya. Last year I conquered risotto and the year before that it was soup. This year: jambalaya. (My first attempt was a little too soupy. Next time will be better.)
• Bake some bread. We've got this lovely stand mixer that I never, ever use. I want to use it more. Bread could be fun, right?
• Make pasta from scratch. See above, re: stand mixer. With pasta making attachment
• Cook more new things in general. I already moved the cookbooks out of the cupboard to help with this. If I see them everyday, I'll be more likely to actually use them.
• Learn to knit? I mean, probably not. But also it could be fun. And something to do while I'm watching TV
• Start building up a home gym. I want to start small: a foam roller, a mat, a set of dumbbells. Eventually I'd like to be able to cancel my gym subscription. I just need to get in the habit of working out at home first.
• Lose some weight. It's such a cliche. For real this year, though
• Bike to work at least once. I'm doing decently on the exercise bike, and my office really isn't too far away. I'm planning to buy a bike in March or April and get out more. Especially if this summer is as gorgeous as last summer was. (I hope I didn't just jinx it.)
• Reorganize the library/living room. I want to get a couple more bookcases for the living room and start moving some books down there. Because my library is actually overflowing.
• Pay off my student loans. This is definitely happening this year. It's barely even a goal. Still you have to put down something that's guaranteed. It makes the rest of the list easier.

I think I can get started with one or two of these this weekend. As for the rest, we'll see how the year goes. Hopefully I can maintain this productive "I want to do new things" energy for a while.

Reading Resolutions

This entry is coming a little late. In all the excitement of the holidays and subsequent near-hibernation levels of relaxing I enjoyed, I ended up abandoning my blog for a bit. And now I have a bunch of things to write to get caught up, including entries about several books that I finished a while ago.

But this post is about looking forward and setting reading goals for the new year. Last year I joined Goodreads, set a goal of 52 books, and attempted a couple of reading challenges. I flew past the book goal, clocking in at 90 books read in 2014. But I ultimately abandoned both challenges.

This year I've set my goal for 75 books. I don't want to push myself too hard, and I want to have some room to rest in case I do hit a slump this year. I'd also like to spend some time doing things other than reading and obsessing about all the books I haven't read yet. Things got a little crazy last year, especially since I was paying more attention to new releases and various book blogs. I'm hoping to take a step back and just enjoy whatever I'm reading at the moment with less pressure to get to the next book.

I also don't think I'll do an official reading challenge this year. Though I did come across a few interesting ones, especially Book Riot's Read Harder challenge. But mostly I just want to increase the diversity in what I read while still making room for books I enjoy. To that end I'm going to do my best to seek out books written by authors from other countries. Books that are set in Africa and Asia and Latin America, and also books set in America written by African-American, Asian-American, and Latin-American authors. There's a few on my list already, and I'll be keeping my eye out for more.

At complete odds with this goal, I've also started reading Robert Jordan's 14-book epic The Wheel of Time series. Classic high fantasy written by a white dude. But it's good so far, and I'm hoping to make a big dent in it this year.

In addition to these reading goals, I'm setting myself a writing goal. I'd like to get something actually published this year. Nothing too big, just a small article on par with some of my blog posts. I've written a couple of things that I'm pretty proud of, and I'd like to see how I measure up against a bigger audience.

So those are my big 2015 resolutions. Read a little less, but in ways that expand my horizons and get something small published somewhere. Wish me luck.

Running Again

I hate running. But as cardio goes it's basically the least bad of a series of options. The bike hurts my butt and the elliptical makes my toes go numb and the stair climber can only be used for, like, ten minutes max. At least I like the way I feel after I run.

Intervals make this all easier. And as I am determined to become a runner (for some foolish reason) I have developed a new system that makes heavy use of them.

This all started when my trainer added the intervals to my weekly session. I alternate 30 seconds jogging with 30 seconds of walking for somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes before lifting. I decided to extend this on my own time.

The ultimate goal is to run for an entire episode of the Gilmore Girls, during which I think I would travel somewhere between 3 and 4 miles. Walking I cover just over 2.5 miles, and with my intervals I haven't managed to go farther than 2.7 miles. But this is baby-steps. And a long-term goal will help keep me motivated an on-task. The seven seasons of Gilmore Girls should also help.

The problem is that I'm super out of shape (when it comes to running, I'm actually in pretty decent shape generally). My calves do not like all of this running and they complain loudly after just a few intervals. So I made a deal with myself. I can always take a minute off from the intervals if I increase the incline during that rest minute.

This ultimately results in me running with the incline set at 5 or 6. Or, if I really can't run one day, I end up walking up a rather steep hill for ten or twenty minutes instead. Which is certainly better than nothing, and probably nearly as good as running.

I'm hoping to stick to doing this 2-3 times a week moving forward. Once I can do intervals the whole way through, I'll start lengthening the running portion and shortening the walking portion. Like my own custom "couch to 5K", but on a longer timescale. I don't want to injure myself again by pushing too hard too fast, so I'm giving myself room to go slow. And I'm staying on the treadmill. Partly because it's getting cold and wet outside, but also because I'm way less likely to twist my ankle on the flat surface.

Let's see how long I can stick with this. It'd be great to get to a point where I can run a mile again. Or even further, if my ankle cooperates. I should probably start doing some ankle exercises more frequently, too.

Progress Report

Who could have guessed that the week I committed to getting better at step-ups, my trainer would go and modify them on me. On Wednesday, she had me doing shoulder presses during the step-ups. It turns out the added weight/movement forced me to slow down and focus, which in turn basically eliminated the wobbling. And I really like being able to exercise multiple muscles at once. It makes me feel more efficient.

I also added dead lifts to my personal routine, which made my hamstrings scream in protest the first time but became much more reasonable the second time. The only problem is that the body bars the gym provides are all old enough that the weights have been rubbed off. I'm going to have to switch to dumbbells so I know how much I'm lifting.

As for the push-ups, I was able to do one set of ten followed by a set of eight over the weekend. I could probably do more if I started fresh, but I thrown them in a cycle with a bunch of arm exercises, which leads to faster fatigue. It's still nice to see improvement, though.

I have made very little progress on pull ups. These are hard enough that I basically have to do them first thing, or I won't be able to do them at all. So if someone's on the machine, I end up skipping them and doing other things to work out my back and arms. I'll keep plugging away at them, though.

And I still probably want to buy a bike. Though that's a little lower priority than a new oven, a new mattress, and possibly even a new fridge. Damn, expensive home ownership.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I've finally gotten back to going to the gym regularly after my injury. To be honest, the holidays delayed this more than anything else. With all the build up to Christmas, the travel, and celebrating the new year in the middle of the week, it took a while to get back to a normal schedule. But things are finally leveling out.

I went to the gym three times this week. Each time I walked on the treadmill at an incline for the duration of a Friday Night Lights episode. I've done away with the idea of intervals now, instead keeping the incline at about 3, then increasing it every ten minutes until it's time to cool down. This helped me reestablish my routine without putting too much strain on my knee.

Today I decided it was probably time to start lifting again. I decided to take it really slow for the sake of me knee. So even though I can lift over 100 pounds on the leg extension and similar machines, I dropped the weights way down, to 30 or 40 pounds. Then I went slow, focusing on my form, and held the various positions for counts of 3 or 5. It still felt like I was working out, but it definitely wasn't as much as I had been doing. It's really hard to balance the fear of hurting myself with wanting to lift more and get stronger. And, to be honest, to get skinnier faster. Hopefully walking uphill so much will help with that.

I was also frustrated to discover that, after two months away from the gym, pushups have gotten a lot harder. I struggled to do five in a row today. Though that could also be because I was going slower and lowering myself all the way to the floor. Yeah. That's what I'll go with.

I'm restarting my sessions with my personal trainer this week. Actually, I'm starting with a new trainer. And since I only have three sessions left on the contract, I dom't really know how this will work out. At this point my only goal is to not injure myself before the wedding. I'd hate to spend the honeymoon hobbling around.

And maybe I can get a flatter stomach by then, too.

Wish me luck.

Fall Goals

Back in the Spring I set myself a goal of running a 5K. It didn't end up panning out, although things went really well for the first several weeks. I liked having something to work towards. Partly because it gave me something to write about other than books. So I've decided to set myself a goal for the Fall that will hopefully give me fodder for this blog. And it's something else I've been wanting to do for a long time.

I'm going to learn how to make soup.

I bought a Dutch Oven back in March, because I felt like we needed one. Since then I've used it less than five times, which is a shame. That thing is not only awesome; it was expensive. I really want to get some more use out of it. Making soup seems like a pretty perfect way to do this.

Soup is perfect when the weather cools down. It fills you up and makes you warm. And as easy as it is to buy the Campbells cans, it has to be even tastier when it's been made fresh. The fact that it should keep for several days is another plus. I love having leftovers during the week.

There's a bunch of different kinds I want to make. I'll probably start with a basic chicken-noodle, since that seems easy. But then I want to graduate to the ones that you have to run through the blender. Creamy potato or tomato soups. I already found a recipe for a bright orange curry-carrot-squash soup that looks both delicious and festive.

I'm hoping to have time to cook a batch of soup every week or two. We'll see how that plays out with the million other things I have scheduled for the fall. But even if I only do this a handful of times, I'll consider it a success. Assuming the soups taste good, that is.