30K in 2015

Yeah, that would be a nice bonus, but I'm not talking about money. I've set a goal to participate in at least six 5K events in 2015. No biggie. Walk 30 kilometers, or actually just under 20 miles, 3.14 miles at a time.

If you've seen me lately, you know how ambitious this is. That little hobble that is worse some days than others. That almost permanent addition to my wardrobe of the knee brace. The expanding width of my ass.

I was SO excited in that picture up there. I was the last one to cross the finish line (even those who had run the half-marathon), but it didn't matter. I walked the 10K and I finished. The encouragement along the way brought me to tears every time. The runners would pant "good job" as they passed me. There were still several people at the finish line cheering when I crossed. I was sobbing - in fact, I'm getting choked up with tears in my eyes right now remembering it.

I quit smoking a week later.

I maintained my weight until the arctic blast hit us at the beginning of 2014. I tried to blame the first 5 pounds on quitting smoking. I had quit working out, cancelling my gym membership because we weren't going - I hated the philosophy. I did not want a personal trainer - I had one I slept with every night. I would get phone calls asking when I was going to make appointments and was told: "Well, yeah, we have the equipment but we are primarily a personal training studio."

By May, I was at the heaviest weight of my life - again. I had reached what I weighed when Elliot was born. He was my biggest motivation in 2013. I wanted to be around as he grew up. Now I have three grandchildren and I want to stick around to dance at all of their weddings - many years in the future!

I know where my problems lie. It's not so much the food, even though (like everyone) I'm not perfect with what I eat. I don't move enough - period. I wrote an article way back in the day. The simple things I know to be true about losing weight and keeping it off, I just don't follow.

Then, I hurt my knee. Would it have happened if I weighed less? I can't answer that. Maybe it's just age, All I know is I've lived in pain in my right knee every single day since June 22. Some days are now better than others. I feel that I'm at about 95% most of the time. When I know I'm going to be on my feet for awhile, such as a marathon session in the kitchen, I wear my knee brace.

I know it's hard to believe by looking at my dewy complexion, but I'm going to be 50 this year. In fact, as of this writing, I will be 50 in less than two months. If the women on both sides of my family tree are any true indication, I have a lot of years left in me.

And I hate the fact that at nearly 50 years old, I have a hard time getting down on the ground to play with my grandson because I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back up again.

So, I have a plan. Walking to build up my endurance is obviously part of it. If the weather is too craptastic here (as it usually is in January), I have a mall that is open to walkers at 8:00 a.m. about 20 miles away. I also started my belly dancing classes last night. I loved it when I took them a couple of years ago. I felt stronger and more flexible. After last night, I've got some burn in my thighs, but it's a nice burn.

What I can't do after those belly dancing classes is what we did last night. Harry suggested a pizza and I said "Great - and I can get a salad!!!". Yeah, this pizza shop believes a salad is shredded iceberg lettuce topped with cheese, pepperoni, a couple of slices of nasty winter tomatoes, and olives. Not exactly what I was looking for. So, Thursdays will be slow cooker nights for the next few months.

AND!!!! I've already registered for my first event. I'm going to do the Pi Day 5K 2015 on March 14, 2015. (Pi Day - 3.14 - get it???) It will be just 10 days after my 50th birthday. Less than two months from now. But you know what?

I've got this.

A wedding and a baby...and a conference

This year is going to be busy. I learned in November that I'm going to be a Gramma for the first time! So many things to do, so little time to do it - so much money to earn! We don't know the sex of my soon-to-be-grandbaby yet, but there's still time before the end-of-June arrival.

In the meantime, I have wedding reception to plan! Trey and Nicole will be getting married on May 5 at a super-secret location. The reception site, however, won't be a secret - they want it here, at the cabin and they want the theme to be Cinco de Mayo. I've been surfing the Web, looking for ideas for food and decor. We're talking a truly small gathering - maybe 40-50 people. I can do that - foodwise - with my eyes closed. I've found a few workable ideas and have them pinned on my board over at Pinterest. Do you need an invitation? Leave a comment but I warn you - it can be addicting!

Almost as soon as I knew the baby was on the way, my fingers started itching to crochet again. It makes me feel pretty good because I haven't had the crafting urge in a long time. My friend Marie Anne over at The Crooked Yarn has created some beautiful patterns and I'm using one of hers for my first baby afghan. I might run into a little trouble at first. She designed the baby blanket using worsted weight and I, of course, bought baby yarn. I'm confident I'll be able to work it out. I'm going to play along with her Work in Progress Wednesday on this blog to keep myself moving on the baby blanket.

I love the color combination - yellow, peach and a veriegated aqua/lemon and the main color will be white.

I'm looking to fall just a bit short of my goal toward saving for my trip to Blogher Food in June. I still have time and should get very close. But, I'll be able to buy my place ticket by mid-February, which is my main concern. I'll fill in all the details once I get my confirmation - it's going to be an interesting round-trip!

Distractions, diversions, disgust, disgruntled, DSL

I know my own limitations and distractions. I fight them everyday but sometimes things are completely out of control. Right now, I’m disgruntled because on a day I’d like to do a lot of work online, my Internet is out. Yes, I’m typing this in Word to copy into the blog later.

This is an ongoing comedy of disgusting errors. I actually received a credit on my bill for April’s Internet service because CenturyLink (fka Embarq fka Sprint fka United Telephone and possibly fka Centerburg Telephone Company) finally recognizes that they are not delivering the DSL bandwidth I am paying for. The tech actually told Harry to call again on May 1 for another credit if it isn’t fixed.

Hey, I’m not doing to look a gift horse in the mouth. That money - $25 – is a couple of articles a month. Of course, then there’s the base telephone service I pay for a land line I rarely if ever use. They like to use a diversion tactic of “only” $12.99 for local service. But, by the time they add on their required bundle of services I don’t use in order to provide an overall discount, I’m up to about $80.

So, with CenturyLink deciding that I needed a distraction from the Internet today rather than writing news commentary, I’m going to write whatever comes to mind. It worked out rather well when it happened two weeks ago to the day.

Happy blogging!

C is for Considering...

The name of this blog took quite a bit of time to figure out. Harry and I would talk about it, tossing names about. I wanted someplace general, someplace that wasn't about promotion or a specific topic - just whatever I happened to think was a good fit.

Even though I am very passionate and outspoken about some things, I care about many others. Sometimes I really do think "didja ever wonder?" I'm fortunate to have several outlets for those things that make me go hmmmm.

C & C Music Factory (yeup, C) had a great dance hit with this song. I remember dancing to it with my friends in the early 90s. Neither club started with a C though - Sir James and Michael J's. Although I'm pretty sure I visited Club Dance a few times.

Beauty, Blessings and Beer

Quite the combination, huh? When I think of the letter B these are the first three words that come to mind.

What is beauty? I don't think of it in terms of people's looks. I think of beautiful souls. I've known Bonny Buffington (catch those Bs?) since I was a little girl. Her family lived next door to Gramma and Grampa (just up the road from where I live now!) and I can remember swimming with them in their above-ground pool. Over the years, Bonny has taught my children. I remember a particular day. I knew Bonny had been battling cancer. The windows were open and I heard singing. I looked outside and saw Bonny walking by, singing. That's a beautiful soul.

I see beauty everywhere around me. A brilliant sunrise or a blinding red sunset. I'm captivated at watching the hummingbirds in the summertime. The snow on the branches of the pine trees. I appreciate the brilliance of Earth Mother for giving us all these gifts, if only we choose to accept them.

I am truly blessed. Yeah, I've had bad times and I'm certain there will be more. I've raised two beautiful souls to adulthood. Every day, I wake up beside the love of my life and enjoy the relationship we have built. I have brothers and their families who I love very much. I have a huge family thanks to Mom & Dad that I appreciate and enjoy.

I'm blessed with friendships that I can never properly explain. A balance of love and trust, even some I've never had the opportunity to hug.

I really have to thank Barley's Smokehouse & Brewpub. In addition to providing the platform to build Rent-A-Party and subsequently, the Sewing Circle, they taught me to appreciate beer. No - not Budweiser (which tastes better in Canada than it does in the US, by the way) or Blatz (which does taste remarkably awesome when it's ice cold in a can and you're in a cabin in the Hocking Hills). Barley's taught me to appreciate real beer. Craft-brewed British-style ales. Belgians from other places.

An appreciation for the beauty in real beer led to the path I'm on today. I appreciate small business. I appreciate craft wineries. I appreciate slow food (but not turtles or snails). Being able to appreciate all those things led me to where I am today. A writer, a baker, a food blogger, a small business-owner.

April and Arizona...

At the very last minute, I decided to join the A to Z Blogging Challenge with this blog. I've not done very well getting this general catch-all blog off the ground and decided this was the kick in the butt I needed. While I will still write and schedule the posts for Debbie & Harry's Kitchen each Sunday morning when I wake up at stupidly ugly hours, I'm going to do this one on the fly!

April - so many new opportunities came my way in March. I have a bit of anxiety that I might be overextending myself a bit but I'm gonna keep on truckin'. In addition to the daily articles, I have every intention of having the two cookbooks done by May 1. I also have a lot of work to do to get ready for the market season.

Arizona, how I miss you. It isn't just my friends...I miss Arizona! From the tears I experienced when I first learned of the beauty to be found in brown to the debauchery that can only be found at a Sewing Circle meeting, I do miss it all.

Arizona in April is gorgeous! One of my inventory trips was in April - I was laying by the pool at 9 AM. It also coincided with Shawn's 35th birthday - has it really been that long? - so I was able to extend my visit for his party. April 9 will bring the Tsunami's (or Satan, depending on whose description you listen to!) 40th birthday. It's been a tough winter and it kills me that I can't be there to share it with my dear friend.

But...I have memories and I might even learn to text for the occasion...

Yeah, that's right - we have matching tattoos. My characters are Laugh, love, live - Shawn chose love. We didn't get these in April though - Harry got us drunk in May and led us into that den of iniquity in Scottsdale.

Guaranteed Weight Loss - Get Sick!

I was so full of determination on New Year's Day. I measured. I weighed. I kept track of every single thing I ate - which was no small task.

We went to Mom & Dad's for New Year's dinner. In our family, that means pork & sauerkraut. This year the pork was BBQ Baby-back ribs! On diet day. Might as well face the challenge head on. I checked the calorie counts before I went to Mom's to get an idea of how much meat I could eat, to know what I was going to put into my body before I put it there. I actually did really well and even had room in my chart for a glass of wine before I went to bed.

Sometime during the night, the evil germs from my daughter's cold snuck through the house and attacked me! I woke up on Sunday feeling like absolute hell. And I'm starting to show minor improvements each day. I probably shouldn't blame it on Allison. I have writer friends all over the country with many of the same symptoms. I think we should all check our computer filters.

Being sick is a positive for losing weight. I didn't feel like eating because I couldn't taste anything. I'm drinking tons of water because I'm so dehydrated. That's the other problem - I'm drinking so much water that by the time I'm thinking about going to bed, I have to pee every 10 minutes!


A special shout-out to Marie Anne St. Jean! She's keeping us together with Fess Up Friday! over at her blog Marie Anne's Missives. Go visit her, subscribe, be inspired. I'm working on my blog roll over at the side this weekend. A lot of my friends who have taken on the challenge this year have blogs dedicated to their journey.

Over at Weight Shedding Freelancers, I saw mention of some song lyrics that brought inspiration to someone. I agree with them. But, I'm going to use this space for a video of what I consider to be my most ass-kicking inspirational song of all time.

And I shall write...

I entered the world of freelance writing for PAY! in July 2008. While I didn't think about it at the time, it was actually July 8 - my ex-husband's birthday. So now that date is stuck in my head every time I look at my AC profile.

Wait - it's not AC anymore. It's the Yahoo! Contributor Network. What a journey it's been. My discipline sucks, always has. I'm the worst boss I've ever had unless you take porch breaks with cocktails into account. But I learned something this morning - I have a total of 401 pieces of content across the Yahoo! family of websites. Only one is a poem - a haiku I wrote for a contest over the summer. Out of that 401, I wrote 208 of them in 2010. That's an average of just over 17 articles a month. Considering that I wrote 40 articles at Y!CN in November I realize that I've got the skills if I just apply myself.

November was an interesting month writing-wise. I had a lot of great assignments, try-outs for some regular Yahoo! TV positions - I scored the 4 shows I watch regularly! I also started writing for Bright Hub at the end of October and was still on probation through November and did 5 articles for them. I didn't do as well at BH in December but I've got a lot of external factors weighing on me right now. I was also accepted into the Gather Socialwrite program and I was really excited about it. Now - they've changed the platform and I'm just not sure I'm as excited as I was originally.

So here it is - my writing goals for 2011 based on what I really accomplished in 2010.

1) 540 articles. This is realistic because I did write 45 articles in November without hurting myself too much. I plan to spread this over each of the sites I write for.

2) Achieve Hot 500 status each month at Y!CN - I hit it for the first time in November and my December was a bit better with really no hot news. My 2-year old Christmas articles carried the weight and are testimony to the power of residuals. I'd love to be Hot 100 but I tend to set realistic goals.

3) Improve my news writing so that I can score some Yahoo! News assignments. Sadly, I have a local murder trial to cover but it will be a first person perspective.

4) Work on my local work to hopefully score a Yahoo! Local beat.

Simple, achievable goals. I can do this.

A New Year with a lot of changes to be made

I've got to clear a lot of things out of my life!

This isn't just about losing this fat ass. My office has once again made me insane. After four summers of a licensed home bakery, we're ready to pack it in - 80 man-hours a week for a $250 net is just not working. That means I've got more pans of every sort possible to banish to other bakers along with a lot of other sundry items like a tall-boy rack and packaging materials. I have craft supplies I've collected over the years just taking up space with the "oh, I'll get to that this winter!".

I will confess: I'm a book hoarder! I love to see books all around me and the pile next to my side of the bed is obscenely high. I've run out of room on all my shelves. This is after I left 5 boxes of books in the basement that I didn't have room to display upstairs when we moved in over 2 years ago. The other problem is the cookbooks. I think a safe estimate is over 500. A lot of them are magazine-type, the smaller Pillsbury series that you pick up at the checkout and I received Gramma's collection when she died.

A lot of these books have got to go. So, my first call Monday will be to the Centerburg Senior Center to see if they have room in their library. I guess another option would be Centerburg's Interchurch Social Services to see if they could sell them to buy food. Trey said that Half-Price Books pays well for hardbacks - sometimes he would get around $15 for a box. But, that involves driving to Columbus for a "maybe" shot at a few bucks plus interfering with my writer's morals about no royalties for 2nd-hand books. The cookbooks? I love to look at the pretty pictures! But, I plan to especially sort through the smaller books and magazines and open up a word program and type up anything I might be especially interested in.

I've got to start moving more often. I don't mean physically moving residences, I mean getting off my ass. I was cleaning out one of the basement refrigerators the other day so we could sell it. I hurt so bad the next day from the bending and reaching and that has got to end. Winter-time is a pretty bad time in Ohio to start to think about walking. But, there's a young lady that lives somewhere near us who runs every day she's home from college. We watch her all through the summer and I've seen her every day over the last two weeks, even when the temps were in the teens. I figure I've got a lot more insulation than she does - I should be able to do this.

There's more changes to come but wow. It seems like we can all give great common-sense advice but when it comes to following it? I've got a long way to go!

But honestly...and a lot of thoughts.

Anyone who has been on the web for the last week has probably heard of the Judith Griggs/Cooks Source cluster. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because it's easy to find.

Freelance writers work their tails off and battle every single day against those who think "it's on the web so it's fair game". No, it's not. The actual odds of something being in the public domain are smaller than something being protected by copyright.

While I never posted anything to the "fake/not fake" Cooks Source Facebook page - because I'm just not that witty on demand - I enjoyed the show. The freelance writers banded together to champion on of our own. We may be in competition with each other on some level, but in the end we will fight for everyone's right to get paid for their work.

The Cooks Source hullabaloo will die down and be replaced by another social media call to action. But, I don't see Judith Griggs et al riding off into the sunset of anonymity anytime soon. If the large companies with expensive attorneys decide to pursue action against the alleged theft of THEIR property? Cooks Source is a small mag with a small staff and no articles of incorporation on file that anyone has found. While I like to think that small businesses are successful, I don't think the coffers of Cooks Source are deep enough to handle the statutory penalties for copyright infringement.