Forty Old

I turned 40 in April, so technically I am already 40 and a half. More than half if you want to be super technical. No one wants to be that technical, right? I don't feel much different, at least my mind doesn't, and I know you hear that all the time from "older" people, and yes, since I am 40, I am old now. When I was 20 I thought people who were 30 were old. You will always be older to someone, and younger to others, but it seems like there gets to be a point in life where there are more younger people verses older people than you. I think I am at that point.

I don't mind being 40. I have had a wonderful 40 years of life so far, I can only imagine more wonderful things are going to happen before I die.

When you think about it, getting old is really just something your body does. Your mind doesn't feel any older. Mentally you really don't age! But, there is no doubt my body looks and feels older. The extra lines on my face, the aches in my knees, the resistance in my back, all signs that I am getting older old.

I took some new selfies yesterday. My former selfie photo was a dark halloween inspired photo and I needed something lighter. I always edit my photos and put a "glamour" effect on them, you know, I smooth out the face and remove any blemishes. And yet after doing all that, I still don't see myself and looking that much older. Do I really look 40? Am I really 40? What the heck have I been doing for the last 10 years? I guess I see the wrinkles around my eyes and my mouth. But only when I smile! And I have a lot to smile about :)

Random Thoughts for a Sunday Morning on Pinterest

As I am sitting there drinking my coffee looking at Pinterest hoping to find a delicious recipe to make for a get together on Tuesday and for a party on Friday I have random thoughts about some of the things I see.  I will share those with you now.

1) Why does it look so easy to wing eyeliner. It is not easy, and it does not stay, at least on me, my wings eventually become crazy black smudges.

2) Scarves look so cool and stylish. Unfortunately, they make me feel like I have something huge wrapped around my neck that wants to smother me. I wonder if anyone has ever choked on their scarf. I bet someone has.

3) Who has time to make those or do that? You know what I am talking about - half the stuff they show on Pinterest!

4) Why did they change the "pin" it to "save" it. Honestly, the whole reason it is called Pinterest is so you can PIN the stuff you find, not save it, otherwise it would be called Saverest and that sounds crazy.

5) Why did my coffee get cold so fast. I have been sitting here drinking it. I can't drink cold coffee. Not even a little bit cool. Oh well, I guess I was done anyway.

6) Pumpkin seeds. While the idea sounds appealing, being able to use something from the poor huge orange fruit you are about to destroy makes me feel better but the outcome never works out like I envision. Does anyone actually like pumpkin seeds? Is it because I am a sunflower seed eater that I have a strong desire to crack open the pumpkin seed to get the softer more chewable morsel inside? Am I somehow baking the seeds incorrectly? Are some seeds just not as edible as others? I don't even try now.  It sounds good but doesn't even look good anymore! Spiced Honey Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

and Yes, I have switched over to the food and drink section on Pinterest still hoping to find that perfect recipe. Of course I am mostly seeing a ton of desserts.  I am trying not to look at them but it is hard because there are so many.

7) Chicken and Dumplings. Every single recipe sounds so simple. I have tried about five recipes in my life and they have all completely failed. True, I haven't tried a recipe in the last 5 or so years and my skills in the kitchen have improved, but I am just so afraid of failing yet again at a delicious chicken and dumpling recipe! Does anyone have a good one that will not fail?

minutes later ...

I hate food sometimes. I think I go through stages, sometimes I like all food sometimes I don't like anything. Nothing sounds or looks good today, and the same for yesterday. I want to go get dressed and give up, once again, and finding the perfect recipe. Until I feel like looking again :)

Folding Shirts

Earlier today I watched a video on Hip2Save's Facebook page - How to Fold Clothes to Save Space. You can watch it here, it's not very long.

I decided that I am totally OCD enough to go try and see if it really works. I discovered a few things.
1) It takes a long time to re-fold all your shirts.
2) I only needed to fold the shirts in three's instead of two double folds that the video shows. Maybe because I am folding smaller girl size shirts (size 5-6 and size 10-12). I also didn't have sleeves to work with.
3) I need a flat surface to fold the shirts so I threw all the shirts on the floor and folded them there.

Here are the before and after photos.

This first picture is Pepper's drawer. I usually get her clothes for her so the top layer of shirts were still folded nicely from the last time I put her clothes away. The bottom shirts were crazy and not at all folded. Her shirts were also completely to the top of her drawer and there wasn't really any room for more unless I wanted to stuff them.  As you can see after I tried that fancy folding method I ended up with a lot more room and look how pretty! I was also doing laundry during the same time and folded four more shirts after I took the photo and they fit in the last little row, and they stayed standing up. I kind of thought they might fall.

Summer has a lot more clothes, or maybe it just seems like it because her shirts are just bigger. She usually get dressed herself and as you can tell she doesn't understand the concept of folding. She is 9 and I figure if I can get her to put her own clothes away I am doing good. It took some time getting all those shirts out and folding them into squares but I will say I am impressed with how it looks. You can see every shirt and there is still a little bit of room for more. I even had 4 long sleeve shirts in the drawer for some reason, they do tend to take up a little more room, but hey, we live in Vegas, and we don't ever have that many long sleeve shirts, even in the winter.

After liking the way their shirts turned out I decided to try it on my tank top drawer. Normally I just fold those in half, sort of, and push them down into the drawer. I don't spend much time "folding" them at all. Here is how it looked before and after.

I will say my tank tops are strange, not quite a real shape, but obviously from the picture it does look a lot better and there is a lot more room. They almost didn't fit in the drawer because they are almost too tall. I also only had to fold them in thirds and not forth like the video shows, probably because they don't have any sleeves.

Overall I am happy with the results, it did take some time folding all the shirts but I am hopeful that I can continue folding everything from here on out and add it to the drawer nicely and neatly. That's the plan anyway.

Did you watch the video I made that showed how I do laundry? You can watch it here. This new way of folding shirts should still work fine with my current laundry procedure :)

Now to find a way to fix the pants, skirts, and shorts drawer ...

Beets, the forgotten chunk of red burning love

If the title didn't get your attention, nothing will! I have this thing for beets. I don't know why. I don't love beets. They don't make me crazy. But I like them and I don't feel like I eat them enough. Plus who doesn't like changing the toilet water color? Right?!? So after I posted s recipe on Facebook for some roasted beets, three different people told me how much they enjoyed the beets that way.  I felt like I should try to make beets again in a different way.

Let's be honest, Las Vegas gets hot, and you don't want to use your oven in the warmer weather unless you have to, so I figured I would try to find a recipe I could make on the stove. I also wanted to try to make a recipe using leeks. Why? Because, who eats leeks? What are leeks anyway? They just look like big overgrown green onions right? I figured it wouldn't hurt to try to cook beets and leeks together for a few reasons, mostly because they sound alike, but also because it seemed like a good match. Guess what? It was a good match!

We all liked it. I sat some in front of my husband and walked away wondering if he would eat it. A few seconds later, seconds ... not minutes. Ok maybe a minute, he walked out carrying the bowl. Ah, he didn't like it, at least that's what I thought. Nope, he loved it! He ate it all and he went back to get more. There was no more :( He said it tasted like potatoes and onions.

If you are in the mood to try something new and you want to give beets another change, I suggest frying them in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and I added season salt. SO GOOD! Check out the recipe video I made with my youngest. I said pee!

Beets & Leeks

I also make radishes the same way, you can check out my video recipe for radishes here! And feel free to check out all my other videos :)

Love Yourself and Lose Weight

Like most people, losing weight is something I have thought about most of my adult life. Even though I have never been considered "overweight" or even "big" I have still struggled with having too much fat in this area, this area here, and right here. It has occurred to me that the problem might not even be my weight, but instead with society. I have also come to realize that the solution to losing weight has nothing to do with actually losing weight.  Let me explain.

In 2002 my husband decided to purchase Power 90. It was a Beach Body program, he probably saw a commercial late one night. Soon after it arrived we were waking up and working out 6 days a week. We also used the food guide to change the foods we ate. We both worked during the day and at night we played video games. We did not eat the same foods.

I can't remember exactly what I ate but I am pretty sure this is what I ate during the 90 days we did Power 90.

Breakfast: Rice Krispies, Whole Milk, Banana
Snack: Granola Bar (not a healthy one either)
Lunch: Ham or Turkey Sandwich, Wheat Bread, Cheese, Mayo and a Yogurt (and not Greek)
Snack: Peanuts
Dinner: Spaghetti Sauce (no meat) with pasta (white, not wheat)

I remember getting on that scale, taking measurement and pictures and loving the results. I think lost about 10 pounds, which is pretty amazing considering I also gained a lot of muscle.

Day 1, 30, 60 and 90 days using Power 90 back in 2002

I am pretty sure that I didn't eat a single vegetable in 90 days, unless you want to consider the tomato in the spaghetti sauce as a vegetable. 

I had amazing results, I ate small meals. I drank water because that's all I ever drink. I had energy, I was happy, I was also in my 20's.

My goal was losing weight and watching the numbers on the scale go down, watching the numbers on the tape measure change, seeing the sides of my thighs shrink. And they did. And in 90 days, I was happy. 

But I hadn't learned anything. Since I had no more goals I eventually reverted back to my old ways. I stopped working out, I went back to eating larger portions and the muscles shrank and the weight came back. At that time I really didn't care, life was good.

Spring forward 15 years. Now in my late 30's I find myself gaining more weight. Still not "fat" but just overall not happy with how I look. In June 2015 I joined a Facebook group with the goal of losing the last 10 pounds. I worked out a few days a week, I ate much better, adding vegetables in my diet and getting rid of the unhealthy white carbs, and I learned to drink a lot more water. I stepped on the scare every other day and was encouraged with the numbers would go down. Not only did I lose 10 pounds, I kept losing. After losing an amazing 15 pounds I had won, again. There was one slight problem. When I looked in the mirror, I wasn't any happier with what I saw!

I realized that it didn't really matter what I looked like because I didn't want to look like me, I wanted to look like a supermodel! I still felt like I had fat thighs! I lost all that weight and I didn't have more to lose, I had no more motivation, no more scale to encourage me each morning. 

So, I decided to start building muscle. Prior I had been doing zumba classes 2-4 times a week. I loved zumba and dancing. Maybe if I had muscle, maybe I would like the way I looked then! One weekend I took a zumba class at a new studio and the studio had mirrors. It was the first time I had really seen myself and what I saw shocked me. I thought I looked too thin!

How was it possible to look too thin yet still have too much fat? I even felt self conscious in the room with all the other normal looking women. I felt like I was probably being judged by how small I was. What must they think of me? I bet they think I am anorexic. Maybe they wonder if I am sick. All my hard work for the past 6 months and I felt worse than before!

I decided it was time to try something new. I would start taking a body pump class at the gym. Twice a week I would build muscle so I wouldn't look so thin. This would make me happy! I had new goals, something else to work for.  It didn't take long to start building muscle on my small frame. 6 weeks? I was looking good in pictures!

But guess what! Yep, I still didn't like how I looked! In December I became self depressed. I stopped eating healthy, started eating crap. I didn't care anymore about my weight. I didn't care if I had muscles. I didn't like myself and I realized I was never going to look like the model that I envisioned.

Slowly I starting having some issues. My anxiety was coming back. My digestion issues were once again bothering me. My face was breaking out. My fingernails were brittle. My guilt was insane. When I ate bad, my kids ate bad. I hated myself for being so weak and my family and I were suffering for it.

In April I created a 5 day event and invited everyone on Facebook to join me. It focused on clean eating. I didn't know if I could really do it but I wanted to try. For me, for my kids, and to encourage others.

It was a huge success and a small failure. I learned so much about myself and about food. I discovered I had been addicted to sugar and I had horrible withdrawals from it! Eating clean was an eye opener and I learned something I will never forget. I could do it. It wasn't easy but what in life is?

I also recently starting vlogging. Watching the videos of myself made me realize a few things. I don't really hate myself. Surprise! Somehow seeing myself on video has made me realize that I look ok. Even without makeup and having my hair fixed, I still look ok! And slowly, somehow, I have learned to love myself. ??? How did this happen? Maybe turning 40 last month had something to do with it. Maybe I am finally there. I don't know what happened but I am happy it finally did.

Since I am no longer hating myself I realized I love myself. My body is mine. I only get one. I have to take care of it! I can't keep hating it, poor thing, what has it ever done to me except allow me to live! It works perfectly most of the time, even with all the abuse I give it. 

Oh, back to the point of losing weight, guess what, I don't care about weight anymore! Losing weight should never be a focus. Loving yourself should. If you love yourself you will take care of yourself. You will put healthy food into your body because that's what your body needs. You will work out because you want to be stronger and you will drink water because you are thirsty. You will stay out of the sun and wear sunscreen because you don't want to end up with wrinkles or skin cancer. You will get plenty of sleep so your body has energy. You will take time for yourself because you are worth it! 

If you truly love yourself and you take care of yourself, your body will respond. You will look good, you won't have extra weight, you will be happy, you will have energy. And your positivity will reflect on others. You will make others happy. You will encourage others to love themselves because you know how good it feels to finally accept who you are.

How many years have I spent trying to change things about myself. My hair, my nails, my skin, my shape, my attitude. Well, I am always working on my attitude! 

Do you want to lose weight? Guess what, just love yourself and take care of yourself. Learn how to eat healthy. Learn to eat small portions. Learn to eat mostly clean. Learn what benefits your body. When you eat something, think about what your body is using the food for. Give your body exercise. Make it fun. Make your body stronger. Drink lots of water! Keep your body flushed out and refreshed. Exercise your brain! Don't forget your brain! Don't harm your body, too much sun, too much alcohol, too much coffee ... and get enough sleep. 

Wow this was longer than I realized but if you made it this far I hope I have somehow encouraged you to love yourself completely! Look at you, you special thing you!

Vlogging & Blogging

I have decided to start vlogging along with blogging again. Mostly because I haven't been taking any photos (bad bad mom) and because videos are just easy! Feel free to subscribe, follow on, like, share, etc.

Here is a video I took of the girls yesterday :)

Egg Prank Girls

And I did this one today.

Monday Morning - It's Cold in Las Vegas!

Enjoy!

My Two Valentine's

Willow Creek

Willow Creek in Arizona was just an hour and a half away and the perfect place to go boating for the day! It was Valentine's Day and the whole family was excited to try something new. We woke up around 6 AM and headed to Willow Creek to get our boat. We forgot about the hour change :o( and we had to fill out paperwork so we didn't get in the boat until 10 AM. We had to have the boat back by 3 PM and we did, but we easily could have stayed longer!

We saw so many cool things and played on two sandy beaches. The water was only 50 degrees but it was so nice and warm out the girls had no problem getting in a little ways.  Everyone had such a great time I bet we do it again soon.

Corn Creek Oasis

There is a little oasis just north of the city across from the mountains called Corn Creek. I guess they call it a hidden gem, I don't think I would go that far but we decided to check it out and have a picnic and explore the area.

It was very dry, and a bit windy, and a lot dusty.  It was mostly dead looking and had a pond and a spring. There were 5 trails, most were easy but pretty boring. Unless you like looking at desert and dead trees, we probably didn't pick the best time of the year to visit. Then again if you wait too much longer it would probably be too hot.

Fine, I am being negative but I didn't like this place. I would probably not go back. But, at least I went once! And we did see a duck. One single duck. Maybe some birds.

This is what the web has to say about the place:

The Corn Creek Spring is the largest of 34 springs that can be found on the Refuge. Corn Creek is fed by a deep, underground aquifer. Here, water welling from deep within the earth has sustained an amazing diversity of plants and wildlife – and people – for thousands of years. Generations of people have come to Corn Creek, drawn to the beauty, tranquility, and richness of its resources. This was and still is an especially important place for the Nuwuvi (Paiute) people.

Some people think the desert is beautiful I guess :) but we did have fun, we all brought picnic food to share and had a great time visiting!

It was the end of the road

A few weeks ago I found out I only had a short time left to live. It was scary and confusing and a million different thought went through my head. As I went to see the doctor that Monday morning I looked around my room and into my closet and wondered what would happen with all of my stuff. Who would even want my clothes and my shoes and my books? I knew as soon as the doctor took a look at my test results that I had taken the Friday before that I would be admitted into the hospital never to leave again. I debated writing letters to the girls and composed them in my head, but I hoped I had enough time to write them while I was in the hospital.

In retrospect I was happy with how my life had played out. I didn't have many complaints and had so much to be thankful for. If I ever had to be ready to go it was as good as time as any. I was sad to think about all the things I would miss, mostly with the girls. Watching them grow up is something I really wanted but wouldn't get to have. I guessed I had a few weeks at the most and wondered what I should spend my time doing. I figured I would have access to a computer and that gave me a lot of options.

In the days leading up to my doctor appointment my condition was quickly getting worse. I went about 2 hours out of town on a BBQ with family and friends and worried the whole time I was there. The nearest emergency room was so far away I hoped I could last the day. All I could think about was what if, what if, what if. I did not enjoy myself at all. When we finally left I thought maybe we should just head to the emergency room and once they saw my results they could keep me then, but I decided to go home and did feel a little bit better once there.

Headache, shakiness, overall just a bad feeling. When I made it to finally see the doctor I admitted I was having a lot of anxiety. When he told me my blood work all came back fine, quite healthy actually, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Tumor. Rapidly growing tumor somewhere in my body slowly destroying me. The doctor went over the "what it might be" with me and when I mentioned tumor he knew that I had also been researching the condition on my own. Thank you google for allowing me to do that at home.

Then he told me he didn't think I had a tumor. He went ahead and put in a request for one more blood test and sent me home for two weeks to monitor my condition.  As I left his office I was more confused than ever. Could this really just be anxiety again?

In 2001 I had a panic attack that put me in the emergency room. After a quick work up and evaluation I was sent home with valium. Over the next several months I struggled with nightly anxiety attacks. Eventually I went on Paxil and things were much different. I was calm. I was not anxious. I also didn't feel much of anything anymore, which is good and bad. I didn't stress, not that anyone would have knows I was stressing, I kept in I guess. I started collage and joined a gym. I felt calm. After 8 months on Paxil I decided I was better and weaned myself off a bit too fast. Don't do that, you have strange reactions when you come off of mediation like that. Afterwards the anxiety and panic were controllable and I was mostly fine.

Mostly. I am a hypochondriac now. but I am not longer scared of dying, I have come to accept that it is going to happen at some point. I deal with it but I still have some issues most people don't. I can't take medications without worrying, even simple things like tylenol. I worry that I will get the side effect. It is just easier not to take anything, luckily I rarely have conditions that warrant medicine.

I worked myself up that weekend and the doctor sent me home with a test kit to monitor myself, which I have never used. What was wrong with me? Well, I had low blood sugar. I checked one morning after eating because I felt shaky and I was pretty sure my blood sugar was high, but it wasn't, it was low. 82 to be exact. When I googled blood sugar it seemed way too low. The next day around the same time I felt shaky again and when I tested it was 78. Now I was worried. I was eating and still getting really dangerously low readings, or so I thought. I was also drinking coffee, and looking back I have always known to be sensitive to caffeine. One cup a day usually causes me to get jittery. Was it just the coffee? I don't know but just incase I don't drink it anymore.  Well, I drink decaf now.

The doctor also sent me home with a bottle of Xanax. Do you want valium or Xanax, he asked, and I didn't know, I don't remember what worked better back then because I rarely took them, you know, because of the issue I have with taking medications and all. The bottle of Xanax is still sitting in the cabinet above my chair and it hasn't been opened. At least it is there if I need it. It helps just knowing it is there, unopened, in case I ever need it.

Weeks have gone by, the jitters have stopped and slowly so has the anxiety. I could probably even drink coffee and deal with the caffeine jitters again. Well, not quite yet, but maybe soon. Or not, maybe I will just switch to decaf, or tea. I am still trying to decide. In the meantime I am reminded how fear is the worse thing I have to deal with. Fear itself is scary. Anxiety will always be a part of me, a part that I have to fight with to keep under control. I guess I don't mind a good fight every now and then.

I guess I was never really dying. I guess. Sometimes I still wonder if the doctor didn't notice something. Maybe the numbers are really too low and maybe there is a tumor slowly killing me. Maybe I am not being overly sensitive and maybe I am wasting time not getting treatment that might save me. Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe, all a part of having anxiety. I worry that one day something will be wrong and I won't find out because I will just write it off as having anxiety. Luckily everything so far has been just anxiety. Nothing has been wrong. Well, I DID have a cancerous mole on my ear cut off, but I wasn't anxious about that. Funny how that works.

What set me off this time, everything was going great? I have no idea. I know a friend's daughter was recently diagnosed with diabetes and I was pretty upset about it. Initially I thought I had diabetes only to find out my number was not at all high, which turned into having a low number, so I was hypoglycemic, except that is really rare and unlikely, unless you have a tumor, so that had to be it. I also, during this short weekend, had headaches so I was pretty sure I had high blood pressure only to test and ind out it was actually low105/70 and therefore I self diagnosed myself again and determined I was just dehydrated.

It was an interesting weekend and the crazy thoughts that went through my head make me question and lack of sanity I pretend to have. One thing I do wonder ... it amazes me how the body mentally controls things. I had several physical ailments, headaches, jitters, dizzy spells. If I can cause my own body to physically react it should be possible to mentally control my body all the time right? If something ever does go wrong I would have to assume that I am in control of my body, well, when I am in control of my sanity, and therefore I should be able to heal myself, mentally and physically. Just food for thought.

The President

Lately I have seen a lot of negative posts about our current president. I am not going to bother to name him because it does not matter who he, or she is, so we will just refer to the person as president.

America is a great country. We have a president and the president does what they can to make our country better. Americans get to vote for the president. The president is the president because they won an election. Once they win the president has 4 years to do a job they won. Or they have 8 years if they were won two times.

I had a job before. I had a boss. He was hired to do a job. I was hired to help him do his job. If I didn't like my boss, which happened before, I still had to do my job and I still had to help him do his job. If I didn't like my boss, or my job, I could leave.

The president is doing a job. Your job is to help them do their job. Complaining is not helping. I don't care if you like the president or not. Do I like our current president? It doesn't even matter! Complaining never helps anything. If you don't like the president and you are going to continue to complain you should leave!

In summary, the president is the president and will be the president until a new president wins. Do you like how many times I said president in that sentence?  You complaining about the president does not do anything except make you look like an annoying complainer.

Stop being an annoying complainer! I don't like annoying complainers, in fact no one likes annoying complainers because they are annoying!  You don't have to like the president, but if you aren't going to do anything positive and just continue to complain - well, I am going to probably call you an annoying complainer.  Not behind your back either.

Redstone at Lake Mead

Not far from Las Vegas is a wonderful little lake called Lake Mead. Fine, it isn't little, it is really big, but if you haven't heard of it you have probably heard of the Hoover Damn. Anyway Lake Mead has more than just a lake if you can believe it! There are roads that go around the lake and a bunch of neat hidden spots.

Kris really enjoys Roger's Spring, which is a hot spring out in the middle of no where! Because the area is smaller and because they warn that scary amoebas live in the water, we really don't visit it much. Plus, the area around the spring is uneven and not as much fun to hike around. Check out this video Kris took that shows some of the fish that live in the water.

One area that we all love to hang around is Redstone.

Redstone has a short 1/2 mile trail but that's not what I like best, I like the small sandstone rocks that are perfect for kids to climb all over. It reminds me a lot of the rocks in the Valley of Fire. These rocks have houses, windows, rooms, caves, or areas that look like it anyway.  The rocks aren't that steep in most areas, and children can easily get all over the place.

Besides having some of the best climbing rocks, the site also has 4 picnic areas. 3 are smaller and close together and it has a larger area for a bigger group.  We went out and had a BBQ a few weekends ago and it was really a lot of fun.

We have seen a lot of animal tracks from some larger animals, like deer, and smaller animals, like mice and lizards. This place is only 45 minutes away from our house and is usually deserted. I have never seen else anyone else using the grill/tables. If you have a chance to explore I recommend this place, it is great for families and dogs!

Heading to the fun sandstone rocks at Redstone Lake Mead 

One of the many cave / house / tunnel looking areas at Redstone Lake Mead

The three small picnic areas - looking back from the big rocks

Looking back toward the main road from the picnic area

Redstone Lake Mead

Playing in the sandstone rocks

more playing inside the cool areas

just posing after a short climb up on the rocks 

Awesome hiking/climbing on the sandstones for kids