Category — Mind

photo by blw photography

We’re going to do something different today. I like to keep you all guessing and using your brains because, well, it can prevent Alzheimer’s and that’s probably something we all want to avoid. Like how I snuck that health tidbit in there? That was me helping you. Which brings me to today’s post…

Instead of going on and on and telling you all about the latest stress-related study, I thought I’d ask for your help. Because what’s a blog for if not for getting advice minus the therapist’s bill? (And don’t consider billing me. I won’t send a check.)

Here’s the deal: I’m stressed. I’m fairly certain there’s a great conspiracy going on where the earth has been pushed into warp speed and we’re now circling the sun so fast that we’re left with 12-hour days. I know this is true not because I hacked into NASA computers, but because my days have been cut in half. How else would you explain all the time that’s missing?

While The Man is loving his new job*, I’m not loving the hours. Getting up at 5:45 a.m., starting work at 7, and plugging away until 6:30 p.m. is draining the energy from me. Since I would like to get to bed by 10:30—any later and the next morning I resemble A. an insomniac, B. a hung over frat boy, C. Night of the Living Dead, or D. all of the above—that leaves me three and a half hours to go to the gym, eat, clean up the mess we created while cooking dinner, make tomorrow’s lunch, and get ready for bed. Hence the stress. Because that schedule leaves zero room for de-stressing. And that fact stresses me out. (See where I’m going? It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. If you don’t watch out, it’ll tear your arm off or do something equally as gruesome.)

So what do you all do to de-stress when life gets so crazy you can’t even remember the last time your discussion with your spouse didn’t sound something like, “OK, you get the dishes. I have the lunches. And break!”

*I’d like to get on the record saying I’m ecstatic that The Man loves his job. I’m not a horrible wife, I swear. Just tired.

Can you believe that this:

Is 28 today?

Me neither. I’m celebrating today (you know, by going to work all day and fun stuff like that) but I’ll be back (and older and wiser) tomorrow.

While I’m off partying like it’s 1982 over in cubicle 10, entertain yourselves:

These tips for going local on a budget are particularly useful since The Man and I are vowing to spend less.

Just in time for summer, a seriously simple guide to cutting a mango without wasting most of the flesh. Not that I do that or anything.

We’re back to not stretching, at least before workouts. I’m assuming a post-workout stretch is still a-OK. At least until the next study comes out.

Britney Spears has been turned into an airbrushed Barbie, and her “before” isn’t that bad. But that airbrushing was totally, 100 percent, absolutely, without a doubt necessary.

Disappointed you didn’t make the team, get the guy, win the bet, or whatever else it is that makes you curl up in the fetal position and suck on a chocolate bar? Here are seven surprisingly helpful tips for getting over it.

Which story do you find most interesting? And are you with me: The Briney Spears ad is unnecessarily photoshopped?

photo by jeremyok
Only we weren’t blonde.

I was just about to tell you to mark this day down when I realized its importance is meaningless to every single one of you. Except The Man. He generally agrees with me when it comes to ranking things in order of importance. (For instance, he wholeheartedly agrees that bread pudding is the best dessert ever, even counting chocolate cake which is pretty amazing. He also agrees that the apple tart we had twice on our honeymoon was the only non-bread pudding dessert to ever take the No. 1 spot.)

So where was I before I got off on that amazingbestestever apple tart tangent? Oh, right, today. And how it’s really important because it’s the first time in all of my years living in the DC area that my younger sister has visited. No, she’s not a hermit. No, she’s not afraid of driving or flying. Yes, she works retail and doesn’t get weekends off. Yes, I’ve been up to visit her a bunch of times even though she never set foot on Virginia soil. (Yes, I’ll be rubbing this in the entire weekend.)

I’m not sure yet what we’re all going to do this weekend. What with my gimpy can’t-walk-anywhere knees and my sister’s funky can’t-eat-anything stomach we’re like a really, really, like ridiculously good-looking geriatrics ward. (And yes I love Zoolander and quote it abundantly and often.) It might involve a lot of sitting around hungry. Or her running laps around me while I eat. We’ll see.

So now, before we go have so much fun you’ll be jealous—unless you’re doing something like going to the beach, in which case I’m jealous—I’ll leave you with the Craziest Thing I Heard All Week. Straight from the mouth of my mother, who called me while packing for the trip.

MOM: Do you have eggs and cheese?

TRACEY: Yes.

MOM: You sure? Because we can bring ours.

From Massachusetts. Five hundred miles. Oh, Mom.*

Let’s skip the routine “What are your weekend plans?” question today, shall we? Just for the sake of total randomness, tell me a silly childhood memory.

*No, she didn’t travel with the eggs and cheese. My sister and I talked her out of it.

photo by foshydog

Contrary to what the title of this post would have you believe, this isn’t a philosophical discussion about whether we actually weigh anything since we’re weightless in space and earth is in space, so… You get the idea. But that’s not what I meant.

I’ll preface my question by telling you about my childhood. Zzzz… No, wait! Don’t fall asleep just yet. I promise this will be a quick jaunt down memory lane and not a meandering road trip.

Growing up, our house was a no-scale zone. I remember my mother telling me at a very young age that Those of Which We Do Not Speak were pure evil and had no place in a home. Aside from my yearly checkup, I never knew how much I weighed. That was fine with me since I was always thin.

When I moved out, it didn’t even cross my mind to buy one of Those of Which We Do Not Speak. I have a pretty good grasp on my weight based off how my clothes fit. And I never really saw a need to fixate on numbers every day. And then. [Read more →]

photo by foundryparkinn

You can’t see me, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I write these posts hunched over my laptop. If you stare hard enough, I’m sure you can see a lopsidedness to my shoulders. That, my friends, is due to the twisted knots in my muscles.

I wouldn’t say I look like Quasimodo, but that’s how I feel. You see, while I’m at work I’m multitasking. I’m building great big knots in my shoulders and back and neck. It’s not an easy task, but if you work at a desk long enough you pretty much become an expert.

When the knots get big enough, you can try to massage them out. That works for a little bit, but nothing—nothing!—beats an honest-to-goodness massage. I should know. I grow shoulder knots like I’m getting paid for it.

The first time I got a massage, I thought I died and went to Heaven. Now that I’ve gotten a bunch more, I know that’s exactly what happened. So I can totally understand why researchers who analyzed a bunch of studies found that massage can relieve symptoms of depression. It’s. That. Amazing.

(In all seriousness, it’s hard to really determine the effects of massage in studies because you can’t really blind the participants. There’s no such thing as fake massage.)

Though it has nothing to do with the study, I’m pretty sure massage can also relieve the symptoms of stress. I conducted a study with me, myself, and I and lemme tell ya, I felt muuuch better.

Since I’ve had a lot of massages in the past, I thought I’d impart some massage wisdom. And then I’ll take up a donation for my next rubdown. (I have no shame, people. No shame.)

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photo by thumeco

We all aren’t created equal. (What? You really thought we were? Nah, my knees prove otherwise.) I’m generally OK being a gimp, but sometimes I wish there were a few skills I could add to my resumé.

Like resisting chocolate. If I possessed this skill, I could stare down a warm molten chocolate cake and not feel the sweet taste on my tongue without even opening my mouth.

Or maybe making lunch with my mind. That way I could 100 percent relax every night without knowing I’d have to make my lunch some time before I went to bed. Because that some time is usually 11 p.m. right about when I start getting exhausted.

And of course, karate-chopping skills. Just because it’d be so super cool.

What skills do you wish you could pick up?

photo by reynys

I’m going to take a stand on this soapbox here for a minute. One, because I feel a lot taller than you all and that makes me feel more important. Two, because it’s my blog. And three, because there’s something that irks me and deserves a post. And entire post.

(Disclaimer: If what I’m about to say applies to you, I in no way mean you’re a horrible person. You’re not even a bad person. You’re really nice. I mean that. So don’t take it personally. Consider this rant a live-and-learn moment. Or read one of my other posts. Your choice.)

I thought that I’d take on smokers today. Because why not? The longer I’ve lived in apartments, the lower my tolerance has become for cigarettes. Since this is really a health blog, I’ll start with the fact that smoking kills. Big surprise. (And if you thought that was a big surprise, you may need to go back to school. Or watch TV. Or talk to other humans.) It also harms the health of innocent bystanders in the form of secondhand smoke. And even the little grubby particles left on furniture and clothing are no good for our lungs. So, yeah, in a nutshell it sucks for all parties involved.

Now that we’ve cleared up the obvious, let’s move on to logistics.

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photo by shaletann
By the way, how pretty is that photo?

First, a brief note:

Daylight Savings, I curse the day George Vernon Hudson—devil that he is—created you. Sure, an extra hour of sunlight at night is kind of nice. And I do like being able to see my own feet when I wake up (winter’s darkness at 7 a.m. isn’t such a great idea for klutzes like me who make a habit of stubbing their toes on bed frames). But this spring forward stuff? Not cool.

The trickery that was this Sunday morning? You know, me waking up at 10:30 feeling frazzled and lazy and still exhausted? Deceitful! And this business of 9 p.m. coming faster than I could eat dinner? Not fair.

So here’s the deal: You can still do your thing every fall, when we’ll gain an hour of sleep. But leave spring alone. Capiche? Good.

Back to the regularly scheduled programming:

As you can tell, I’m still a little off from this whole time change. I feel like my mother when we used to travel cross country. She’d spend the whole vacation reminding us what time it was at home. And when we got back home, she’d remind us what time it was where we just came from. Well, I keep feeling like I’m just a little behind. (But that could be due to the fact that I got sucked into Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and time kind of raced by.)

That’s not all I did this weekend.

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photo by specialkrb

Thanks for all of your great comments on yesterday’s funny gym post. I’m thankful I don’t go to the same gym as some of you. Scary things happen.

In other news, I had all intentions of planning out my meals for the week and sticking to the list strictly—like my life depended on it. But you know what? When you’re only a mildly good cook (or a mildly sucky one, depending on how you look at things) you can’t count on not screwing things up. Like the night I burnt the roasting eggplant. Or when The Man and I got home at 8 p.m. one night and just felt like a bowl of cereal.

I’m telling you this because despite my planning and my lack of follow through, we’ve actually used up all of our groceries without throwing away some vegetables that had started to decompose in the far reaches of our fridge. Sounds like no big deal, right? Well, maybe for you. But for The Man and I things seem to spoil in warp speed. (OK, we might settle for cereal too many nights a week. I swear that will change as soon as I quit my job and become a professional socialite. I’m right on that…)

Though we didn’t fail at our stick-to-the-grocery-list plan this time, we didn’t 100 percent succeed either. But here’s the best part: We’re going to try again and again and again until we get it right. Don’t you love how life is like that? You don’t get thrown out for messing up or being lackluster. And as The Man told me a few nights ago: The world isn’t going to end if the eggplant burns. (Though I did spend a good deal of time arguing that it might.)

Here’s where I turn this food-related post into a life lesson (marvel at my cleverness): If you fall flat on your butt and fail, so what? Pick yourself up, throw out the blackened eggplant dust yourself off, and give it another go.

I’m logging off wonderful blog readers (did I ever tell you how super you are?). The Man has some work to do and since we’re one computer short—no, it didn’t die. It’s just in the hospital getting some diagnostics done—he gets dibs on it.

What’s your burnt eggplant moment? And, no, it doesn’t have to be related to food. I have many failures in other areas of my life. But we don’t have to talk about that here. Cough, knees. Cough, cough.

photo from cute overload
This makes me happy. Very happy.

By now you know that eating healthy foods—think whole grains, fruits, and veggies—exercising, and not smoking can keep your ticker tocking. Well, scientists say there’s another way you can lower your chances of getting heart disease: Be happy.

In a 10-year study of 1,739 men and women, researchers learned that happier folks were less likely to develop heart disease. They measured participants’ joy on a five-point scale and learned that for every point that measured happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, or contentment the risk of heart disease dropped by 22 percent. So unhappy people had a 22 percent higher risk of heart disease or chest pain than people who were somewhat happy. And those so-so people had a 22 percent higher risk for heart disease than moderately happy people.

The researchers say there are a few reasons people who wear rose-colored glasses may avoid heart problems. They may sleep more, have heart-healthy behaviors, have less stress or better handle stress, or they might just be physiologically different than their glum peers.

According to the researchers, people can significantly reduce their risk for heart disease if they do things that make them happy. So that’s the catch. See, making ourselves happier is easier said than done, isn’t it? I mean, when I’m down in the dumps, the last thing I want to do is purposefully make myself happier. (Yeah, that sounds depressing.)

So in case you’re feeling down but fear its ill effects on your heart, I’ve created a list of things that make me happy. You’ll probably have your own happy triggers (list ’em in the comments), but these always cheer me up…

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