March Diet Quality Card

So far, so good. All bases covered, and this is as easy a meal plan as any. It's three-fifths food that you can scoop into a bowl: yogurt and apples, peanut butter apple, cereal and almonds. Baked chicken is just as easy as slow cooked and I'm sorry to say that I was getting tired of the texture of slow chicken, something to solve when it comes up again. I will have to see how the pasta goes, pasta with sauteed vegetables is sort of single occasion. Not like pasta with veg pesto that you make a lot of and eat for a week. I could probably make do with sweetie man leftovers for dinners. Then I would only have to actually cook once a week. I wonder if I'm just going into a cooking lull, or if I'm winding down on cooking for the rest of my life.

The sweetie man doesn't cook, you know. I mean, he cooks for me once a week. Otherwise though, he eats, like, all apples and carrots. Like a horse!

Avoid Social Comparison

This was "Avoid over-thinking and social comparison," but I'm editing it down to just Avoid social comparison to make it tighter. A hilarious thing I learned in my personal trainer manual was "avoid setting negative goals," which is a little bit of a fail, but I really do appreciate the sentiment. One of the things that attracted me to this list of twelve things that happy people do differently was that it wasn't the list of thirty things not to do, gah, that is just asking to get doored. So I toyed with turning this around, but then felt like it was missing the point because the point of this really is DON'T.

Comparing yourself to someone else can be poisonous. If we’re somehow ‘better’ than the person that we’re comparing ourselves to, it gives us an unhealthy sense of superiority. Our ego inflates – KABOOM – our inner Kanye West comes out! If we’re ‘worse’ than the person that we’re comparing ourselves to, we usually discredit the hard work that we’ve done and dismiss all the progress that we’ve made. What I’ve found is that the majority of the time this type of social comparison doesn’t stem from a healthy place. If you feel called to compare yourself to something, compare yourself to an earlier version of yourself.

I'm not real worried about my inner Kanye West. I don't run in those circles. The people I hang out with pretty much exclusively deal with the underside of this equation, by which I mean I hang out with pretty accomplished people who worry more than you might think about not being good enough.

Ahhhhh it's awesome to be able to play a competitive sport as an adult, but it's also awesome not to play sports as an adult. Because when you were getting picked last on the playground, you knew that you were going to grow up and leave this behind. Apart from having to work for a living and clean all the things, adulthood is a softer world with a lot more breathing room. A lot more things matter when you're an adult, more chances to win! Childhood is a much smaller world, where fewer and less important things, like sports, matter a lot. And the world of a sport is a very small world with very few things that matter to that world. Which is awesomely focusing and a great privilege to participate in, but it's easy to forget when you're in such a small world that there's more world.

It occurs to me that I'm imagining the more world as a place where everybody is self-actualized and has mastered the seven deadlies. It's like that, right? Out there?

Anyway not to be a vagueasaurus, you know what I'm talking about. I tried out for the league and didn't make it, and those girls did. I got passed over for four drafts, and that girl got picked up in her first draft. I hardly got rostered for two home seasons, and that girl was in the regular rotation in her first season. I didn't make the B team, and my two best friends did. This could be anybody talking. It could be me. I mean, it is me. If I talked like this. Anymore.

Here's two things that you have to know:

1. if you imagine that everybody's life is a ball, you can never see the whole ball
2. and not only is everybody's life a ball, it's a ball on a wheel that keeps turning

With these two brilliant statements, I win for all time at self help.

Everybody's life is a ball

You must accept that you can never know anybody's whole ball. In all likelihood, you don't know your own whole ball. I mean, you probably know enough of your own ball and the balls of the people you're closest to. I'm guessing though that you don't know near enough of the ball of that person you're comparing yourself to. That's practically how it works, you only compare yourself to people you don't know that well. You can only make yourself properly miserable by picking out their nicest piece and taking that for whole. Consider enough of somebody else's pieces, and the urge to compare goes way down. If it comes up in your head to compare yourself to anybody else at all, it's a sign right there that you have no basis for comparison and to stop right there. Stop comparing, I mean. If you want to fully imagine and empathize with that whole person, go right ahead.

Everybody's life is a ball on a wheel that keeps turning

"Wheel keeps turning" is my favorite quote from the Whedonverse, I feel like it comes up a lot. I only know for sure that Mal says it on Firefly. Dude, it is true. Good news, bad news, who knows. You never know how that person who is up now will come down, and how hard. If you are down now, you will surely be up soon.

In short, social comparison is not real. Keep it real. In fact the real is not going to make you happy all the time, but at least it's real. Maybe it isn't what you want, but it is what it is. Which is to say, it isn't "what if" which is impossible to do anything with. So now you can do something with what is. If you live in the real, you adapt to the real soon enough. Always going for the shiny object distracts you from adapting properly, just like in derby. NO SHINY OBJECT.

The Buyer's Guide to Skates: Riedell Torch alla Poppy

New skates!!!

This is the Riedell Torch package, except not really. It's the new 495 boot but instead of the Revenge plate, I got Reactors. And I put on my Juke 97s with Bones Swiss bearings, and my Snyder toestops.

I love them! Let me count the ways.

Boots
If I had gotten new skates last year, I would have gotten Sirens and I'm glad I didn't. The 1065s, and also the 965s, have a toe box that I think would have given me problems. The 495 laces all the way down the toe, like the 265, and which I need because of my hella wide feet. As it was, Steve still had to put the right boot in the oven to mold out the hard counter on that side; and it felt so much better he did the left boot, too. And this is my first D/B width boot, it is amazing. It doesn't feel like I'm wearing a boot, I played better the second I put them on. I think in my old boots, there was always this pre-step when my foot would shift in my boot and then I would go. Now I step and I'm there.

Unlike the 265, the 495 doesn't have a heel. I always suspected that heel pitched me forward a little bit, good riddance.

Plates
I was sticking to nylon plates until I could afford Reactors, so that's what I got.

Cushions
I had been on the orange middleweight magic cushions, but Steve put on the red featherweights. And I'm not a featherweight, I'm getting to 150 pounds. They're fine, though!

A lot of times when girls get new plates, they have to relearn their agility and I don't know if it's the plates or the cushions or some combination thereof. It only took two or three practices to get my plow stop back, and I'd say I'm eighty percent back to my hockey stop.

Bearings
My good old Bones Swiss bearings, still spinning.

Wheels
Juke 97s, actually these are a new set with alloy hubs that fell into my lap. I don't feel a lot of difference between the nylon and alloy hubs, which is more like an alloy hubcap and nylon inside? On my own dime, nylon is fine.

Toestops
2" Snyder toe stops.

Shoes So Far

So I am trying to build a shoe collection, four pairs of shoes per season. That will be sixteen pairs of shoes, though right now I am still working up to twelve pairs of shoes since the same shoes can serve for spring and fall. In my dreams I would like to have entirely different sets of shoes for the seasons. Which means I will own four pairs of Crocs eventually, just you wait. Not just yet, though. I don't have that much money to buy shoes, and also I just spent it on skates.

In the meantime, some shoes work across seasons and across, um, my work/play taxonomy. Which is how my shoes are organized. WHAT. So for winter I had huntress boots for work, fleece-lined crocs for hobby, hiking boots for play and also pastime because I only ever wear my snowsuit when I go out in winter and I always wear my hiking boots with that. Though I have plans to mend my old hiking boots and turn them into glitter boots, which I don't know how they would do in snow...

So now it's spring. Not the usual lingering winter, though. Like hello, summer. I had planned to stretch my huntress boots into a few more months, but it's just too hot. I had a less wintery knee high boot bookmarked, that might have worked for sixty degrees. Is it going to be sixty degrees ever? I tried my ankle boots from last fall for a day and decided that day that I'm done with heels. They're cute, but they hurt. I'm serious about reducing unnecessary stress in my life, hurty shoes are right out. That leaves the small stress of feeling like I have stumpy-looking legs. But hey, less stress doesn't mean none. So I guess I need a short, flat boot. I think this is also known as a "shoe." Maybe I will get a Dansko clog.

For hobby, my same old crocs. For play, my running shoes. I wonder if I will ever be so decadent to have a different pair of running shoes for every season. I learned an interesting thing about running shoes, lots of people keep their old running shoes to wear around; but the support's gone, so it can mess up your posture. I have a couple of really old pairs of running shoes stashed in different workout locations, I should probably retire them.

For pastime, my fatboy boots! I love them. Last year I was wearing these to work, but I think they're too fun for work. I like to look down at my feet and know if I'm supposed to be having fun or not.

Looking at this picture, I'm thinking that really those hiking boots are pastime shoes and really running shoes are extraneous to this collection. So maybe I just need three pairs of shoes per season, and just a pair of running shoes for the year. So all I need to get is a pair of clogs. And another pair of Crocs.

Baked Eggs in Sweet Potato

This goes better if you have a baked sweet potato already on hand. Like bake four of them all at once and put them in the fridge, then you can just grab them out of the fridge all week.

Eggs in an actual sweet potato are pretty cool but if you don't engineer your sweet potato quite right, the egg whites leak out; eventually I settled on scooping the cooked sweet potato into a ramekin, which works better.

a cooked sweet potato
two eggs
Parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Put the sweet potato in a small baking dish, make a hole and crack in two eggs, then top with Parmesan cheese.

Bake for twenty-five minutes.

Spring Food Plan

Ahhh, it's spring! It's very spring, like almost summer. Like it's nice to see that the screenplay I wrote where the girl is freaking out about global warming is still au courant. Anyway time to change my menu, there was a moment where I thought I would just keep on eating the same old winter menu because what's going to be easier to cook than slow chicken. But I was thinking that because I was depressed! Even though I was depressed, I knew that eating the same old winter menu was going to make me even more depressed. I have this whole system, of course I do, where I try to make life more manageable by making certain tasks, like cooking, as rote as possible. Which means that I eat basically the same five recipes for thirteen weeks, which isn't as terrible as it sounds because there are a lot of variations. And at the end of the thirteen weeks, I always think I'll just keep going like this. Which is just inertia talking, and which is always a recipe for disaster. Because a couple weeks later, I'll start to ideate that life has lost its flavor. Which hello, it has, literally, which I always use correctly, but it'll take me another week to figure out, yes, literally, it must be the foodz. Like it's not weltschemrz, and thank god for that. Because food you can do something about, you can change your menu every thirteen weeks to remind yourself that you're alive. I mean, your mileage may vary.

Basic guideline for eating around workouts:

BEFORE complex carbs & light protein

IMMEDIATELY BEFORE simple carbs

WORKOUT

IMMEDIATELY AFTER simple carbs & light protein

AFTER complex carbs & heavy protein

BETWEEN complex carbs & heavy protein

Immediately before/after means within 45 minutes, before/after means within 1-3 hours, and between means more than 3 hours before or after workouts.

In fact I am working toward a year-round menu and once it's perfected, I will presumably eat those twenty recipes for the ...rest of my life. Let's see how that goes.

Spring is going to be:

• Dinner - complex carbs with light protein - pasta with sauteed vegetables
• Workout Drink - simple carbs - CocoOJ2O
• Post-Workout Snack - complex carbs with light protein - raisin bran with sliced almonds
• Breakfast - complex carbs and heavy protein - greek yogurt with baked fruit
• Lunch - complex carbs and heavy protein - baked chicken with curried veg stew
• Snack - complex carbs and heavy protein - peanut butter apple

I was eating some really good things at the end of winter, though. And you never know with the weather, it might drop forty degrees and I'll be too cold to eat yogurt or cold cereal. So I'll be throwing in the last of my winter recipes for the next few weeks.

Spring Fitness Plan

Also this is my fitness plan for the next two, three weeks.

SUN	MON	TUE	WED	THU	FRI	SAT
SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP
HOBBY	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY	PLAY League
HOBBY	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY study	HOBBY
PLAY Leag/Ref	PLAY Fury	PASTIME	HOBBY jumprope	PLAY Scrimmage	HOBBY jumprope	PASTIME
PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME
SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP

I'm being very firm about Sunday being recovery practice, I just lead practices. For myself I do Monday team, Thursday scrimmage, and Saturday league as my three onskates practices. I stopped doing kettlebells for the time being. It wasn't feeling good, I just learned that you need 72 hours to fully recover from strength training. So like you should strength train the same muscle group only every three days and I was doing my fairly intense kettlebell workout on Monday and Wednesday, which is, you know, two days, because that's where it fit in. And also, how do you count onskates practices—that's a lot of lower body work, too. I switched to jumproping, really mainly for some study breaks. Maybe also for a little burst of power and foot speed, and it's more shin and calf muscles than the usual quads, glutes and hamstrings.

Spring Chart

This is my chart for the next... two, three weeks? In three weeks I take my personal trainer certification exam. I don't know how long it takes to find out if you pass, I suppose that I can take a week or two break after the test. During which I will be planning the league postseason schedule, so not taking a break.

It would be so weird to be lying on a beach.

If I don't pass, it's back to studying. I won't be too disheartened, it's a lot of material that I can just keep crunching on. Actually if I do pass, then I don't know. What I will do. It's still a lot of material that I want to keep crunching on. I want to have everything organized, like, in a binder; so if I were your trainer, I would pick out the right pages for you and make you your own divider and everything.

SUN	MON	TUE	WED	THU	FRI	SAT
SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP
PASTIME	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY	PLAY League
HOBBY	HOBBY	WORK	HOBBY study	WORK	HOBBY study	HOBBY
PLAY Leag/Ref	PLAY Fury	PASTIME	HOBBY jumprope	PLAY Scrimmage	HOBBY jumprope	PASTIME
PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME	PASTIME
SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP	SLEEP

These charts, man, this is me learning how to do what I feel like everybody just knows how to do, how to live. Figuring out the rhythm of wake up, get out of bed, put your eggs in the oven, drink your water, write your morning pages until the pomodoro rings in twenty-five minutes, which also means your eggs are done. Eat your eggs, read your reader, share things on facebook. Make your bed, pick your clothes off the floor, do the dishes, wash up. Feel tired. Eat lunch. Feel better. Sit down to study. What would I even be doing if I wasn't studying? Would I be writing something amazing and creative? Would I be lying on the chaise, staring into the final frontier? Would I actually have to get a job? I can't think of those things. I have to study.

If you're just joining us now, the game is to get the same number of pink and blue squares on the grid. Also the same number of grey squares. Do you know what my least favorite saying is, I'll sleep when I'm dead. If I don't sleep, I wish I was dead. It's sad. It involves emo music and my hair hanging in my eyes. Or you may have just grudgingly accepted that you need to sleep for a third of your life for it to be worth living; and now I'm telling you, you need another third to put yourself back together from doing whatever it is that you're Doing With Your Life. Those are the blue squares, they include planning your schedule and paying your bills and making the bed and doing the dishes and making the grocery list and sorting the laundry and also lying around like a rubber chicken watching Monk, which is what I'm into now.

I really wish it wasn't ungrammatical to say laying around. Laying around is what it feels like. Lying around isn't floppy enough.

Really the amount of time that you have to Do Something With Your Life is not a lot. When you really realize this, you all of a sudden discover your ability to say no. Maybe in a few years you won't feel bad about saying no, baby steps...

Anyway, my Monk side wishes it was all even with two greys, two blues, and two pinks every day of the week. My master of the space-time continuum side knows that a mix of short and long rhythms moves better, like it feels better to push after work through scrimmage Thursday night. You make up for it later by punching out a Saturday morning workout and then turning into a rubber chicken alllll Saturday afternoon and evening. The trouble with turning into a rubber chicken is turning back. So you go out for breakfast Sunday morning, which is how you get a rubber chicken to cross the road, and when you get back from breakfast, it feels okay to study for the rest of the afternoon until ref practice.

String Neckwarmers

Mein gott, tempus fugit. That break went by in a hurry, and also I am back a day early to show you my string neckwarmer project. I am going to be demonstrating this at the Make and Take table this Saturday at my sponsor Urban Folk Circuit's March market at Reggie's Rock Club.

You can check out the whole set on Flickr, or you can come to Reggie's and I will explain it in person.

Whatcha Gonna Do

p: you know what i hate?

m: nazis.

p: nazis are very bad.

p: ...

m: what do you hate.

p: i hate when people call food "bad boys."

m: ...

m: like "i'm going to eat this bad boy?"

p: or like "i made these tofu slices, look at these bad boys."

Bout Day Breakfast TF vs XX

Fried eggs and sweet potato black bean cakes with OJ and coffee.

More bout day breakfasts!

West Loop Story and Reservoir Manics