Sunday, January 31, 2016

January GTD Review

Yokey dokey, January GTD review slightly adjusted for new considerations:

January picks:

HOME: Cleaning and decorating

3. 2016 means ASSAULT ON THE FRONT ROOM. Make it nice :|

Ha well, der schweetums has been doing most of the assaulting. An entire short wall of boxes has been removed! This month I was mostly letting the mail pile up because tax forms are coming in and I was avoiding them, which was ever so healthy. But, I have an accountant now! So I eventually went through the mail and started a little pile for him. And I finally opened all my Xmas cards, there were a couple quite funny ones:

lol! i have not opened my mail for, uh, a while.

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

Sorry I'm such an asshole and didn't open my cards until the middle of January, friends.

I also finished putting the plastic on the windows, and I cleaned the bathroom. I know, I am awesome.

BODY: Healing my body

Really the main thing in this regard is that I actually committed to healing my body as a project, I'd had it in my head that I would be done with bodywork and onto something new in the new year, turn the page and all, that's sooo overmind of me. Well, 2015 is done but my body is ...not done. Stop looking at the calendar, Munt. You are not a calendar. Be present with your body, yourself.

and a little bit of SYSTEMS

4. Aagh get up to speed with this phone...

Yatta! At first I hated my phone (all thumbs) but now I love it, but I think I don't love it too much. Only time will tell, but I think I missed some window for really imprinting on a phone and instead I imprinted on just being present while riding the train (or reading the RedEye, my real guilty pleasure, or my Fitness Journal), I look at my phone sometimes in transit, if I'm in the middle of a conversation on the way out, but I don't have that twitchy need to always check what's going on. Yet, anyway. Right now my phone is being a good servant and I am being a good master. As you can see, I have discovered embedding Instagrams! Plus now I can text emojis to der schweetums. Which he loves, I knowww.

PLAY: Studying muscles

5. TBD.

I'm going to call this done, because what what determined was what place to mise studying muscles en. Which is very much not nothing.

PASTIME: Writing for my two blogs

6. Whatever gets written for aP...
7. Start writing Nom!

What got written for alla Poppy was circumspicere! Okay I have a semi-plan, certain things are set in my "editorial calendar" and then they pop up in my powergrid and I do them: my 52 Lists project, which will come around quarterly or whenever it comes up; my TLC reviews, which will be monthly in the middle of the month, and my GTD reviews, which will be monthly at the end of the month. I feel like these three projects will inspire more than enough material for me to keep up with.

I mean, qqqq: is this too long? Do I give this the Joel Runyon treatment and break each of these into a separate post, like I'm thinking about doing for my TLC reviews? Kinda how I imagine it could work is, this structure provides, what, at least eight jumping-off points for stuff to write about. Idk. Suddenly it's a lot of writing. I don't want to blog more than I, you know, actually live.

Nom-wise, I THINK I have all the photo assets I need to start writing everything up. I have thought that before, though, way more than once, and then there's something else that has to be cooked and photographed.

Going out, seeing people

8. New Years Day chez Problem, maybe I will take pictures with my phonnne
9. Reschedule King Spa?

Yes and yes! New Years Day I went to Problem's. Guys, her house is SO NICE. That's partly what pushed me over the edge to pick cleaning and decorating to GET DONE. King Spa we went to for A-Bomb's birthday weekend, me and A-Bomb and Hausa, rub a dub dub, three Fury in a tub. And I think that was all? Oh, I went to my work's holiday dinner for the first time since like 2010 I think. I'm so much less of a jerk at work now that I'm retired and more rested. And the Fury went to Frozemont, truthfully I was scared about the tubing but it was fun. And I am not so up to speed with my phone that I have that picture- or video-taking instinct when I'm out. And even more importantly, the iFly was right there and we watched the fliers for a bit—flying is part of me and der schweetum's love story—and we are sort of dying to go, I am keeping my eye peeled for Groupons starting right now.

Staying in, Netflix and chill

0. Find something to replace Cosmos, or start from the top...
1. Eeeegh I guess I'm watching Arrow
2. Ash vs Evil Dead to finish, after that TBD

For sleeping, I have settled on The Blue Planet, which turned out to be not as upsetting as Planet Earth and has proven very effective. Now Netflix is going hogwild recommending nature shows to me, so I think I'm set for a while.

If you look at the chart, I watch Type 1 stuff when I'm resting before Tuesday and Thursday clients, if I have time and inclination. I generally need less of this because I'm less depressed and don't need TV to drown out my busy mind, and am generally less patient with, say, everybody on Arrow not operating at 100% capacity; so, I have mostly abandoned that. I know it's not fair, it's not like everybody on Hawaii Five-0 is a super genius. Welp, nobody said life was fair. That was a different moment. I caught up with Foyle's War, which I love, and finished Poirot, which I also loved but I do NOT approve how that show ended >:( and now I am taking a peek at Person of Interest, eh.

We finished season one of Ash vs Evil Dead, il est okay. We also watched season one of The Man in the High Castle, I actually thought that was good!

February picks:

3. Big clean front room!
4. Continue bodywork.
5. And prep taxes for Elliott to finish! This month! I'm serious!
6. Start studying muscles.
7. Start writing up Nom for realz.
8. Felting workshop at Maul's new space, I want to go to that.
9. Few Red Hots bouts coming up, we might go to those.

0. Maybe try NDT on SoundCloud...
1. Person of Interest
2. X-Files!

Thursday, January 28, 2016

January GTD Preview and Chart

Okay so, blabbly blabbly life is balance between TLC and GTD, still working on that, will always be working on that. On the TLC side it's about mise-en-place, everything in its place and that's how it gets done, and on the GTD side it's also about mise-en-place but differently. TLC is the same things in the same places, rinse and repeat. GTD is the first step of a journey of a thousand miles here, then see you next week for the second step, same bat time, same bat channel, week after week in the general direction of the thousand miles. I suppose what I have going in these monthly reviews are roughly four thousand-mile journeys going at the same time, each thousand-mile journey in its place. Where clearly it's about the journey and not the destination. Clearly. It's like the sloths at the DMV in here. The destination just gives a little gravity to the journey, gives it something to orbit ...er, around. I just blew my own mind: we're going in circles, we're not going anywhere! It's allllll rinse and repeat, maaan. You know what, that's fine. Circles is somewhere. Circles is good enough for Mother Earth. Circles it is.

A big piece of what I've been doing in January, GTD-wise, is setting my four thousand-mile journeys in their orbits. Settling on which four thousand-mile journeys to send ...into space, since I seem to be going with a space metaphor. I love space. Because there were way more than four journeys to choose from, let me tell you. I sort of have a feeling that I was supposed to choose ONE journey but that is so fundamentally not how I do. Sorting it down to four is serious personal development for me.

What I had to choose from

I have, have had, my life divided into four areas: WORK, HOME, PLAY, PASTIME. One from each area was a good place to start:

0 - Work

I was turning over in my head picking up an extra day at work, but I think I'm going to close the door on that and see how I can do with just MWF. I can work an hour late on M and F if need be, because no derby. I love how being retired from derby means that working late is a fun concept, not even kidding. WORK vis-a-vis this blog is generally behind closed doors, what happens at work stays at work. I generally like my work and would like to keep it that way.

So ha, that still leaves me with four to choose.

1 - Home: cleaning and decorating

HOME actually is broken down thusly, imagine what I'm about to tell you as Russian nesting dolls: the largest doll is home, which contains my body, which contains my systems. Maybe home is like the hardware, body is the firmware, and systems is the software. Whatever. All of it has to be in a certain working order to produce whatever the software is supposed to produce, Stephen Covey calls this "sharpening the saw" so now we're talking Russian nesting saws. Really this is uber-TLC, but at the end of the day it's all TLC (see above).

Anyway I choose home as my first journey, which fundamentally says so much about me I can't even. I dimly remember a time, back when I was married, when the Thing to Do with Your Life seemed to be remodeling or at least redecorating your home. Which I was, by the way, really crap at. Which I may still be pretty crap at, but I think the problem before was that I had no... life, you know, to put in the home. Where form follows function? I have a new-to-me theory that the software you want to run will inform how your hardware needs to be set up, I have no idea if actual software and hardware are like that. Pretend that it is, I have more of a sense of my software now; so, maybe I will do better with my hardware.

As you know between then and now there was a long six-year period when I was doing derby and derby is pretty all-consuming, so I really consciously shut down all those thoughts of homemaking. Which is a totally valid thing you can do, I highly recommend it when there are priorities afoot. Now though, I'm going for a little more balance. I don't want to be that Suzy Homemaker where all of me goes into making my home, just a little bit of me.

HOME for me actually has three areas: Cooking, Cleaning, and Clothing. Cooking under the aegis of Nutrition has always gotten the long shrift. Is that a thing, the long shrift? So I'm talking about Cleaning, I made a decent cut at it last year with a little turn down for depression. 2016 is going be the the year of cleaning and decorating, I made a Pinterest board, so it's official. We... shall... see. Said the sloths at the DMV. I actually made a big cut at Clothing a few years back and that's been running itself... into the ground, by now. A lot of the clothes that I've been wearing straight up have holes in them. So I might borrow a little time for my clothes here and there.

2 - Body: healing my body - and a little Systems

I choose Body as my second journey, the current journey I'm on being bodywork with Maul. I may have a lot more to say about this TK.

this is my comfort zone *and* where the magic happens, so there! #structuralintegration

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

But also I need to keep checking in with my PCP, still in the tail of that stroke. I feel bad about saying this because I'm sooo much better recovered than probably anybody's image of having had a stroke is. I'm not incontinent. I haven't had to relearn to walk or talk. Those are things that could have happened but didn't, knock wood or whatever you do when you thank God. But just to name what is: I'm jumpy about falling depressed again. I have this globus that is supposedly an anxiety output and certainly an anxiety input, though I'm mostly over being anxious about having throat cancer and mostly just anxious about having anxiety. That's all, it's not much. You know what they say about God only giving you as much as you can handle, sooo... thanks God, this is a good amount! Portion sizes are getting out of control, amirite? That root canal was a nice touch. Just to round things out, I need new glasses like woah and Biggie is helping me grow out my hair. Oh and, Biggie and I have a few more lipstick dates planned.

Oh and one more thing, I need to renew my passport. I had that on my list of things to do last year. I will squish that in here. And, taxes; it is that time of year.

3 - Play: second pass at studying muscles and movement

So I started the beginning of the year with 1) having to cancel a week of appointments because I had a cold, 2) losing a client, and 3) wrestling with availability of the squat rack at my gym. I had just gotten my remaining clients settled down in their new bat times and was planning to calm my tits for a while, then literally the next day I ran into Nina at Maul's and now I have six clients again. And I actually have room for a seventh client, but I would actually like to calm my tits now.

While my tits were in an uproar and I was thinking that my cute little personal training phase was going end with a whimper, I had a lot of thoughts about why I want to do what I do. TK, maybe. The upshot for now, I want to take a second pass at studying muscles and movement layered on top of now four years of experience working with actual bodies and, bonus, getting my body worked on.

4 - Pastime: writing for my two blogs

Last but not least, I always wobble back and forth on whether my blogging is a thing that is done as an end in itself that is an end in itself (PASTIME) OR a thing that is done as an end in itself that is a means to an end (PLAY). I went so far as signing up as allapoppy on Instagram and changing my Facebook URL to allapoppy, now I have an empire lol. I actually think I have an allapoppy Twitter, but I stay away from Twitter because of the comprehensive doctrines. But I still think that, in general, that way lies madness. Something changes in my head when I think about writing to draw people in. The blog has always worked best for me as a mental health mechanism, a sort of pensieve. When it's internally motivated by my needing to organize my teeming thoughts. Not so much externally motivated, looking out at the teeming masses and what do they want.

A man, a plan, a canal, a chart!

SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP
HOME
Cooking
WORK
 
PLAY
GTD 3
WORK
 
BODY
GTD 2
WORK
 
HOME
GTD 1
PASTIME
GTD 4
WORK
 
PASTIME
rest
WORK
 
PASTIME
rest
WORK
 
SYSTEMS
appts/bills
PASTIME
 
PLAY
Train
PLAY
Train
PLAY
Train
PLAY
Train
PASTIME
 
PASTIME
 
SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP SLEEP

So you can see, that leaves three blocks that I can use for Netflix and chill (no really, Netflix and chill) or "going out" and "seeing people" o.O

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Purse Essentials

So, wacky, this lady wrote to me out of the blue:

My name is Samantha and I'm the Community Manager at Glossier, a modern beauty brand creating essential products based on what we learn from insiders, like you. We like to look for the stories behind the products - stories that are informed and inspired by you.

Here at Glossier, we believe in "skin first, makeup second, smile always". We'd love for you to put together a post on your blog that features some of your purse essentials that allows you to highlight (instead of hide) your natural beauty. From face mists to skin perfecting tints, we want to see how you give life to your products and achieve that natural glow on the go!
Which at first I lolled:
i just got this email inviting me to write for some something, idk what, whose motto is "skin first, makeup second, smile always," sooo which of my posts did you like, the one where i fuck up taking a shower or the three months of depression?
Second I looked up Glossier, looked at the prices of everything and lolled again. But, I am curious. I wrote her back and after I straightened out that I'm not at all interested in writing sponsored posts, the deal seems to be:
Glossier loves to learn from the beauty community and use that in guiding our next move, whether it's creating a new product or inspiration for a new piece of content. This project [is] a way to introduce Glossier to the beauty community, as well as connect with influential members of that community, such as yourself.

Lol again, but okay. Just for the record, my motto is skincare first, makeup sometimes, smile sometimes. If I feel like it!

Her project is working, though: at this point I've drilled into Into the Gloss, which I actually love and have added to my feed. Which is what provides a good amount of fodder to my scintillating facebook conversations. And when I add something to my feed, well, my feed is my reality tunnel. So like in my reality tunnel, everybody is Paleo (except I myself am not Paleo) and when I stick my head out of my tunnel into, like, actual reality and see people eating so much bread, it's a shock to my system. So now in my reality tunnel, it's all skincare first, makeup second in here. I already had Michelle Phan in here, though lately she has been going off book and talking about, like, space, which I got comically territorial about. Let's be clear: you are beautiful. I am nerdy. You can't be nerdy, too! Then what am Iiiiii.

I'm wordy, is what I am. The point, Poppy, are you getting there?

We'd love for you to put together a post on your blog that features some of your purse essentials that allows you to highlight (instead of hide) your natural beauty. From face mists to skin perfecting tints, we want to see how you give life to your products and achieve that natural glow on the go!

One last LOL, ookay, here's my truth: my project for the better part of last year for highlighting instead of hiding my natural beauty was, you know, getting out of bed.

But, also truth! I have been using skincare first, makeup second to get myself out of bed. Like a carrot on a stick, only MAC Russian Red. Here's the thing though, I swear I'm getting to the purse essentials part, apparently I'm a branch of House Greyjoy whose words are "We Do Not Reapply." I was never one of those derby girls who wore great makeup, I sweat like a banshee. I always figured whatever, people can just look at my ass. So really the Russian Red is the first makeup I've worn in a while that actually wants reapplying, and for a hot minute it was in my purse and by purse I mean backpack. And then I put it back on my bathroom shelf and said the words: we do not reapply. I don't wear it to work anymore, I can get out of bed on my own these days.

When I wear lipstick to go out I'm working this trend for all its worth. Because it's crystallized in my mind that I put on makeup to paint an picture of myself in the mirror—i.e., for myself—a little selfie for my mind instagram that runs in the background of the rest of my day or night. Because I have other things to do in the foreground. I'm not saying that skincare and makeup or looking good aren't important, just not anything I want to keep checking all day and night; they're actually very, very important, for those 5 minutes that I'm registering my face in my mind before I sally forth. My current project is waking up a half hour earlier so I can fit in that 5 minutes, which you know is saying something if you know how I feel about waking up earlier. I may have a post about that TK.

That is not this post, though. This post is about Purse Essentials. Without. Further. Ado.

eos

My one and only purse essential.

Lololololol, I am sorry. Essential means something you actually need, and I need lip balm throughout the day and night, enough to override we do not reapply. Hell yeah, I reapply lip balm. Lip balm you can reapply without looking. And Eos, the best lip balm applicator ever invented. I don't know why it look so long. Sticks, yuck, I hates them, everything about them is pinched. I like pots okay, but I can't stand when they get less than full and then some of the balm gets hghghhghgh under your nail. Freddie says use your knuckle, then you get a bonus moisturized knuckle. But the ball shape is also great for swiping my cheekbones for when I'm riding home on my bike. The only thing the ball shape isn't great for is putting in your pocket. Apart from it looks like you're happy to see everybody, I wrecked my winterval Eos like that, that close to my body temp was too much for its structural integrity, saddest day of my life. In truth I don't love the flavors, the flavors are a little too wacky for me. The shape outweighs the flavors, though.

And I guess some people are horribly allergic to Eos? I am not. YMMV! Don't sue me!

You know what would be great, Burt's Bees in the shape of Eos. But it would be a hive, and honey-flavored. Somebody make that for me!

ETA 1/25/16: OMG!

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on

It's mint, though, what, you get all the way to making the pot look like a hive, then you turn left at mint? Also, it's green :\ back to drawing board.

Friday, January 15, 2016

January TLC Review

Okay so, I have this other thing going on besides the 52 lists project, last year it took the forms of monthly reviews and Power 30. Where Power 30 was about self care and where monthly reviews were about getting things done but not Getting Things Done (tm). When I was rolling around in my head how I wanted to use this blog going forward, I thought sure, these monthly reviews are helpful for keeping me on track, I'll keep those. But what got me out of my depression was the self care, really specifically telling GTD to talk to the hand while I got the self care—or TLC, if you will— under control. And then getting the GTD back up again, and seeing how that pushed back on the TLC, and actually developing some compassion about why it's so hard to "eat better" or "exercise more," more than compassion, actually respect, that most of the rest of the world has been getting shit done while I've been fine-tuning how many times I get to get refined carbs in a week. Life is choices, it's all good. And thanks for what you do, everybody. This is what I've been doing and you're very welcome to it, if you think it might help you.

If you're keeping track of what I'm saying, I think what I'm up to is: if shit's going down in your elevator, tell GTD to talk to the hand and get your TLC under control.

Right.

The other thing that I think besides Life Is Choices is Life Is Balance. In this case, balancing GTD with TLC.

Which means, TWO sets of reviews. And without further ado, this is the January TLC review.

Sleep

"Good" (remember, a technical term in the muntverse) sleep means undelayed and uninterrupted, there was a week in the middle of Winterval where that got wobbly, but I fixed that and now I'm good again. Sleep is everything, y'all. When I don't sleep I get depressed and I'm pretty sure vice versa.

How did I fix that. Remember when the doctor put me on statins and a low-cholesterol diet ::mad face emoji:: and then I fell into the abyss? I found some stuff about statins and low cholesterol being correlated to low serotonin and, hey oh, depression. Yes, I know I am a poor scientist and Dr Internet has a fool for a patient, but you see this is what I do when you will not help me, this is me "being my own advocate," my least favorite self-help phrase of 2015, so fuck you. I regard myself as having pulled myself out of depression with therapy and Power 30, but also I stopped taking the statins and once my cholesterol numbers came back hella low went back to eating the way I eat. And the depression stopped, and sleep was good, and after a time I got a new doctor who tested my cholesterol again and was fine with my LDL at 114. Because that's normal!! But being the goody two-shoes I so fundamentally am, I thought, woop, maybe I should get that below 100 and cut out eggs again. I did learn an actual foolproof technique for cooking chicken breast, so there's that. But then the wobbles came in, and that's when I read about the low cholesterol and depression. And put back eggs, moderately.

Anyway. Sleep is good. Undelayed. Uninterrupted.

I have this whole other idea brewing about how self-care really comes in two parts: Showing Up For The Thing and Doing The Thing. For sleep, showing up for the thing is really what's under your control and then if all is well, doing the thing does itself. TK, perhaps.

Hygiene

I'm sorry to say that this one area is where I have really improved, I'm not sorry that I've improved but that I needed improvement. But, I never don't brush my teeth before bed now. Even if I'm somnambulating toward bed high on muscle relaxants I stop by the sink and floss and brush like a zombie, a zombie with good dental hygiene. I never don't wash and moisturize my face either. I'm trying out Aveeno's Positively Radiant brightening facial cleanser, so maybe also a radiant zombie.

Okay after this I'm going to stop apologizing for my previously bad hygiene.

Hydration

Hydration fell a little by the wayside during the wobbles, but it's back on track again. That's another thing I almost never don't do, fill my water jar before I go to bed (except those times with the muscle relaxants) and now that it's winter, there's also a little humidifier routine.

Nutrition

Weirdly throughout the whole depression to present, nutrition has been pretty much on point. Or not that weird, it's what I've worked on the most, and apparently productively, because a lot of "work" on nutrition is what my technical term for is drama—i.e., unproductive Strung und Drang, you may have seen me refer to this as the opera about the bagel. The point of this self care work is to work, to set things up to do themselves so that you can get to the business of GTD. Not judging, though! We are not helped by our environment; it is a Gotterdammerung of drama out there, swords slashing at you and clashing with each other and just everything. It's really hard to find a quiet place to build a little fire, I get that.

See also above, about the chicken and the egg. I have another idea brewing about how all these TLCs support each other, and how they can motivate each other. Also TK, also perhaps.

Movement

So let me tell you about the state of movement in my life: I don't do shit. That is, I don't do anything that I think you would regard as a "workout." Maybe my twenty minutes of sun salutations two times a week, though I think that's much closer to ten minutes now that I know what I'm doing and am not taking long pauses to look up poses on the internet.

This is what I do:

  • Two mornings a week - a little at a loss for what to do, still figuring this out, one of those walking to the bus to bodywork
  • Three mornings a week - walk to the train to work
  • Two mornings a week - do yoga, the aforementioned sun salutations
  • Almost every afternoon - get out and walk just a little bit, even just around the block
  • Three evenings a week -  train clients, two of those loading up to 45# plates for my strongsters
  • Almost every evening - a little series of stretches in bed that end with a headstand also in bed (not recommended). Not when I'm on muscle relaxants, obviously.

Three days a week I sit on a stability ball and stand at a standing desk, really more of the former than the latter, and two mornings a week I'm on my feet cooking and cleaning. And one morning a week I get bodywork done, that's an actual thing.

But that really is all!

And you know what, I'm leaner than I was. My abs and upper back are more defined, just saying, and I'm stronger than I was. "The way I was" being B.S., before stroke, when I was skating 4x/week. I have no idea how I would deal now with a two-hour on-skates practice, but I know that I can run full speed up two flights of stairs and it barely registers as effort. I can just about curl a 45# plate without momentum. I can easily do chatarunga. Maybe I will have more to say about this later.

Meditation

Meditation apparently operates on the same positive feedback loop as hydration, where when you're in a good hydration routine, you love, you need, you crave water, and when you're dehydrated, you hatesss water ::hiss:: my beautiful wickedness. So yeah, that happened. I took to 15 minutes of meditation like a duck to water, went right up from three to five to seven days a week, went up to 20 minutes, that went well, went up to 30 minutes, and then things fell apart. Then meditation no days a week for a time ::hiss:: whose idea was this?? Why isn't it that you're thirsty when you're dehydrated?

Ooh, but anyway. I'm back on it, new year and all, starting with 15 minutes again. I think maybe 30 minutes was pushing too hard on GTD, and GTD pushed back. But, I have this smartphone now! For one hot meditation, I used the Insight Meditation Timer app. Very pretty, very nice bell sound. I thought I could ignore the other bells and whistles like I do on 750 words, I don't need anybody setting meditation goals for me (lol, where do I even begin with that). But then I used it again and there was this big stat saying that I had done one meditation, when I had just done two. Then I learned how to uninstall an app. I mean, I'm sure they're nice people. Now I just use the timer on my phone, which was actually one of the main reasons I wanted a smartphone in the first place. It works just like I imagined.

This post is entirely too long. I just read this thing on Joel Runyon about building one function per app, I think maybe it should be one topic per post. Maybe I write about each of these in their (gender-neutral singular, hey oh) own post, over like a week. Like Shark Week, but TLC.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Winterval Epiphany
 HATS OFF and intro to the 52 lists project

winterval epiphany

My curio calendar, set for the new year. Tomorrow, go!

Somewhere in the middle of last year's Power 30, I got The 52 Lists Project: A Year of Weekly Journaling Inspiration and then I set it aside because it's all aligned with the seasons, and I wanted to start it in the new year and be aligned with the seasons, and now it's the new year. And now I'm trying to decide, do I keep pace with one list a week? Because I'll tell you about me, you already know, I drill deep. I am thorough. Right off the bat I easily output over 2000 words on List #1, that's a lot of material for me to process and could keep me busy maybe all winter if not all year. But, maybe the exercise here is to go with the flow. It's right on the edge for me, by contrast I also got Tiny Buddha's 365 Love Challenges and they're actually deepish challenges, she invites you to reflect on every one of them, and that is right out for me. I'm not that big on daily anything and then for deep reflection, I need more than a damn day. I pretty strongly feel that a reason why people don't progress sometimes (speaking now as a profesh trainer) is because what's the rush.

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feelin groovy
Ba da da da da da da, feelin groovy

Which I think is extra funny to feel about a book on Buddhism, not that I don't love it. That one, though, I'm taking right apart for my own nefarious purposes; I do that a lot, maybe with 80% of the stuff I stumble upon. This 52 Lists book, though, it's right on the edge of the 20% of the stuff that I think the discipline is to use as is, as an exercise in trying something someone else's way (like with some recipes, I make myself try at least once the way they're written. Though others I immediately cannibalize for parts.)

So, one vision is: pick a list, blurt back to the list, see what you blurted, divide and shape that into bite-size blog posts. Big bites, obvi. I do most of my writing in my 750 words, in bed before I start the day, and now that I'm back on a normal sleep schedule that's only four days a week or less (because work three days a week, and on those days I like to spend a little time putting on my eyebrows); so writing a thing stretches out over the days, and what I really like is to to stay with a thing until it's done. It's imaginable that I could produce one list per month in this fashion. Except for this first list, which is a monster. This list I could be writing about all year. LOL, the 1 List project.

Welp, what of it. I feel some tiny regret because some of these other lists are pretty fun. I have FOMO about my own 52 lists project. What if I try to write one list every quarter, that way I start every season with a list. Then next year I can start winter with List #2, and so on through the years. Boy in thirteen years, a) will I be 61 and still blogging, and b) this will either be my favorite thing ever or I will be real sick of this project or I will have abandoned it like I did pizza quest.

A man, a plan, a canal!

I am pleased with my curio calendar. 2016 is a really new year to me, not my first year without derby—well actually yes, my first entire year without derby, but more significantly my first year without any idea of derby. I had planned all along to retire after IKC last year, but before the stroke it was in my head that I would keep on as a league trainer; but, the stroke sort of killed that so I gotcher silver lining right here. I used to use my curio to lay out my bout schedule, I was thinking welp I guess this year's curio is going to be blank. But no, I mean I have my usual health and beauty appointments up, and birthdays, always striving to be less of an asshole about that—Shanna and Biggie are ON THE BOARD, I've only been friends with them for eight years—and for my greens, back to the silver lining, not being a league trainer really opened me up for being the aforementioned profesh trainer and this year I want to start doing things like recognizing my clients' anniversaries, and birthdays too, I still have to put those up. The blues are all, lol, superhero movie release dates.

Microwave-Toasted Slivered Almonds

microwave-toasted silvered almonds

The best and easiest almonds are sliced, I use them right out of the package as a topping for greek yogurt and fruit. But, Jewel doesn't always have them. And, I had a jar of slivered almonds that I wasn't eating because... they sort of were hurting my teeth? Or I imagined they were hurting my teeth? Idk, then I read somewhere about toasting almonds and toasted slivered almonds didn't hurt my teeth (if slivered almonds ever did hurt my teeth) and did taste a lot more, uh, toasty, and almondy. This was about when I stopped needing jam in my yogurt, I was actually going to the trouble of toasting my almonds for yogurt in a pan on the stove. Which is so not me! They're that good, though. Okay then, I read this article in Serious Eats about toasting nuts in the microwave, and hello it works! Though I had to adjust the times for my microwave. So easy, sometimes I make them even when there are sliced almonds on hand.

a handful of slivered almonds, or however much you want to eat

Toss the almonds in a small dish and microwave on high for thirty seconds, stir, microwave for another thirty seconds, stir, microwave for another thirty seconds, stir, and depending on how impatient I feel, I call them done at this point or I do another thirty seconds and then I'm definitely done. YMMV, all microwaves are different, just know that once the almonds start to change color, a) it goes pretty quick and b) burnt almonds taste really terrible.

Friday, January 1, 2016

New Years Day
 LIGHTS OFF

A photo posted by Pauline Pang (@allapoppy) on


The aforementioned Problem. ETA 1/28/16: Weeee, just learning how to embed from Instagram!

Problem had everybody over for New Years Day, but I only have a picture of Problem because I still feel shy about taking pictures with my phone. Good times with good friends, good way to start the new year.

Greek Yogurt with Jam and Sliced Almonds, Banana, and Cutie

greek yogurt with jam and sliced almonds, banana, and cutie

LOL what, were you too tired to slice that banana?

I'm perfectly confident that you can put together a bowl of greek yogurt and fruit without a recipe from me. These bowls are just here as a starting point (actually literally where I started with greek yogurt bowls, they have since evolved. If greek yogurt bowls can be said to evolve, it's not like they're ever going to be capable of advanced mathematics) and as a general reminder about which fruits are good in which seasons.

Cuties, or whatever they're called now, are in season November–April, which means fresh fruit in winter.

I have since dropped the banana for no particular reason, it remains here like a record of how people used to have tails, and also that dab of jam that was helping me out. I'm good on my own now, with just fruit. I might go back to banana in winter now and again, banana is okay to have in the house in winter.

a cup of greek yogurt
a teaspoon of jam
a handful of sliced almonds
a banana
a cutie

I mean, what, you put the yogurt in a bowl, add a spoon of jam, and top with sliced almonds. Plate with a banana and a cutie.