Welcome October

Just Thinking about my Blog

I cannot be the only one...who sometimes thinks about their blog and isn't really sure what it is. I question: is it informational, is it anecdotal, is it funny, or is it even relevant? I can't help but wonder sometimes, just what it is I am trying to accomplish here.

What exactly is my blog about?

I write about what goes on in this little life of mine. Sometimes I write about being a Mama and the trials and tribulations that come along with that title. I love to write about my yoga tales and jogging woes. I can't help but spill my guts about the moments of friendship that aren't the friendliest and, of course, I am obligated to share my reviews of the latest and greatest products I have found, but are any of these thoughts that I offer the world really necessary?

When I start down this rabbit hole of "what exactly is my blog about," I try to think of what it is that draws me back to certain blogs that I enjoy reading, and the list usually looks like this:

Pros:
-Honest
-Humorous
-Relatable
-Conversational
-Topical

When reviewing the reasons I keep coming back to read certain blogs, I generally come to the conclusion that those are also the reasons I feel compelled to write.

Ultimately, I write to let some of the thoughts that swirl around in my noggin' out and to hopefully connect with other people. Making that connection helps me to  realize, at last, I am NOT the only one who thinks and feels the way I do.

Is what I write here important? Nah, probably not, but if it makes one other person feel like they have stumbled upon a kindred spirit then I consider it a job well done.

Happy Blog Reading

Well....Hello Fall

St. Ives Even and Bright Facial Scrub Review

I cannot be the only one...who is always on the lookout for the next great skincare product that cost less than ten bucks...well, less than five is even better. When I find a product that is terrific and inexpensive I feel as though it is my DUTY to share my good news with the rest of you, so here is my latest bargain skincare LOVE.

I purchased this lovely tube of St. Ives Even and Bright Facial Scrub via my Amazon Prime account. I just couldn't get a trip to a mega store (think Target) to fit into my busy schedule, so I let my fingers do the shopping and ordered the St. Ives Scrub alongside some sunblock, facial lotion, and the necessary mala bead bracelet (a really cute one, actually).

My Amazon Prime box arrive as promised, in two days, and I was pretty excited to go through all the things that I had ordered (even though I knew exactly what was going to be the box, I guess I am still like a kid in that sense), and was even more excited when I saw the bright and fresh label on the St. Ives Facial Scrub.

I threw the scrub in the shower and didn't think twice about it. The next morning after my jog, sweaty and in need of some serious cleaning, I hopped in the shower and was pleasantly reminded about my new scrub waiting for me looking cheery on the shelf.

I flipped open the lid and gave the St. Ives Scrub a quick sniff, the scrub smelled fresh and citrusy, I squeezed a dime size dollop on my fingertip and loved the consistency of the white and pink scrubbers. So far really good.  I started to scrub the St. Ives across my forehead and I was very pleased at the not-to-rough scrubbing of it.  I took it one step further...I added my exfoliating brush and the citrus scrub took on a whole new level of wonderful.

I gave my face a thorough rinse (be sure to do a good rinse, you don't want any little scrubbers left on your face), I dried off, and took a glance at my skin in the mirror and was very happy to find that my skin tone did in fact look even and had a pretty nice glow to it to boot.

I LOVE this St. Ives Even and Bright Pink Lemon and Mandarin Orange Facial Scrub, it is the highlight of my shower. Not only does this St. Ives scrub smell and look great, it delivers on it's advertised promise, and it only cost $3.39, YES $3.39.

If you are in the market for a mild, inexpensive, effective facial scrub I recommend giving the St. Ives Even and Bright Pink Lemon and Mandarin Orange Facial Scrub a go.

P.S.: This review is completely unsolicited, also note I am not including an Amazon Affiliates link, I just truly love to share great affordable products with you!

The Verbal Sideswipe

I cannot be the only one...who has been having a perfectly fine day only to be verbally sideswiped by a friend (yes, a friend, not acquaintance) and was left wondering, "What just happened?!"

My day started like any other, brisk jog through the neighborhood, breakfast with the fam, and then off to school right on time. Things were going great and it was only 7:25 in the morning.

Then things took a turn.

With Sonny Boy safely tucked away in his second grade classroom, I started making my way to my car with my Mama friends walking by my side discussing the usual mundane weekday topics (you know, tooth brushing trauma, too much homework, or hectic schedule complaints). This is when it happened, this is one of my friends tattled on my son on behalf of her son.

The details are pretty typical kid drama, it was more of a sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones-but-words-will-never-hurt-me type of misbehavior,  but instead of only dealing with the infraction made by my kiddo, my blood was boiling from the tattling on him by my friend.

I returned home to get myself ready for work, still reeling over the discussion with my "friend" outside of the school. I tried to put on a brave face and focus on the details of my day, but it just wasn't working. The conversation played over and over, on a constant loop, in my head.

I left the house in a daze.

I was feeling like a bad mother whose child doesn't know how to behave when I am not around, I felt like a bad friend for being so defensive when the other mom told me about my son's wrong doing, and I was probably not the greatest wife, daughter, runner, or yogi while I was listing my shortcomings.

Things were piling up and I was in a state. I had to do something about it.

I decided what I needed to do was confront my friend about the tattling and let her know what it had done to my day. I was hoping that she had also thought about it and was in the same frame of mind that I was, that there was nothing that could have been done and that the information could have been kept to herself...boy was I wrong. She was NOT in the same frame of mind and when I confronted her...she cried.

Here I am, a full-grown adult making people cry outside of our children's elementary school, I didn't even know who I was anymore.

This day was a loss. I needed to go home, stay inside, avoid phone calls and text messages and hope that when the sun came up the next morning I would wake with a new state of mind. This verbal sideswiping in the form of tattling on my son by a friend was something I was not prepared for. I truthfully don't exactly know how I feel about it. Have you ever experienced this, if so please share with us your way of handling a similar situation...please, because I am still not sure how I was supposed to handle it.

Yoga: It Just Seems to Click

I cannot be the only one...who has found themselves surprisingly enjoying something that didn't really click with them when they tried it before. I don't know if it is a change of environment, my dire need for some serious "me" time, or my extensive Mama patience, but I have recently found myself enamored by my new yoga practice.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I ventured into a Vinyasa Flow yoga class with a friend a couple months ago and have been hooked ever since. While this particular Vinyasa Flow class was new to me, I wasn't exactly a stranger to yoga. I had taken a smattering of classes here and there in my twenties, but it wasn't until now, in my late thirties, that the practice of yoga really spoke to me.

Besides the obvious challenges that yoga presents to me; the postures, the balance, the shaky and sore muscles, there is something else that calls me back to the mat each time.

I noticed this magnetic pull to the yoga studio at the end of class late one Friday afternoon. This particular yoga class had me sweating my way through many a chaturanga and I was feeling well deserving of the impending savasana. As I lay on my back in corpse pose, the instructor, in her soothing cadence, asked her students to surrender to gravity and only focus on being in that moment.

I did.

I surrendered and I let the stresses of Mamahood go, even if just for that moment. In that moment I felt fantastic and when I stepped outside the studio, into the gym where sweaty guys wearing tank tops were grunting while lifting absurdly giant weights, I felt lifted, I felt refreshed, and I felt ready to do the rest of my Mama chores with a smile on my face.

That was it for me, I was a yoga-goner. From that day on, as soon as I said namaste at the end of practice, my mind went right into planning mode. I needed to know when I would be able to find my sitting bones back on that mat. I would stop at the posted yoga schedule at the front desk of the gym, iPhone in hand pulling up my calendar to plan my next drishti gaze before I even had time to put my flip flops all the way on.

I think that finding a place as a Mama that you can focus on doing something good for your mind, body, and spirit without dodging Legos, thinking about the lunches that need to be made for the morning, or the dryer reminding you with it's ridiculously obnoxious buzz that there is laundry that needs to be folded, is rare. My brain is stretched pretty close to it's limit on a regular basis, maybe that's why the sweet relief of yoga has cozied itself up to the limbic lobe in my brain and keeps me coming back for more.

Be it the relief of the days stresses, the physical challenges of balance, or even the community of those who step into that studio to work on being a better version of themselves all while smiling and supporting each other, yoga has me smitten and it just seems to click with me.

Taking it for Granted

I cannot be the only one...who has come to realize that I take the easy, smooth, and uneventful days of family life for granted. I don't take the time to appreciate the flow of good moods and our ability to laugh out loud regularly...I don't see how lucky we are until I am staring down the barrel of a full fledged hurricane of an ultra bad day.


My little family of three was having a bad day. 

It should not have been as shocking to us when the storm of a bad day made landfall. There were a multitude of factors out on the horizon (back to school quickly approaching, returning home from a weekend away, and a little something the doctor liked to refer to as: pink eye), but regardless of the signs, when the bad day hit, it hit us hard and left all three of us in a bearish state.

I am talking about one of those bad days that leaves you wondering how you will ever get past it, the words that are hurtful can never be unsaid and the punishments that were doled out are going to have to be followed (yup, even that "no video games for a month" one...the begging will eventually stop, right?).

After the hubby left to cool off, the boy was in his room attempting to gain control of himself, and I was sitting in my chair by the window, I started to reflect on the glory that was yesterday. Yesterday, a day of easy going, submarine sandwich eating, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 watching bliss.  How I allowed the serenity of yesterday to go unnoticed and unappreciated...what I fool I was.

I decided I was going to take the slings and arrows of the bad day and rather than try to forget them I was going to use them as a reminder of how GREAT a normal day around the old homestead really is. So while my little family of three was still hurting from the drastic measures and sore words of the that abysmal day, I was already looking forward to the gratitude I would feel for the next good old boring day to come.

PS: We did make it through to the other side of that bad day and listening to the begging for video game time was pretty rough (lesson learned on my part: really think about punishments before giving them...really, really think).

What's Up With My Shoulders?

I cannot be the only one...who has heard, "relax your shoulders," so many times during a yoga class that you have felt the need to check that it's not on a loop alongside the soothing chanting and wind chimes soundtrack, but rather it is in fact the instructor repeating it over and over.

While looking through my knees to the wall behind me, in downward facing dog, attempting to walk my feet closer to my hands and finally get those heels to touch down on the mat, the yoga instructor comes by and gently reminds me, "release your shoulders".  I make an adjustment.

I am standing feet wide on the mat, arms extended out reaching for the front and the back of the studio in my best rendition of Warrior II, trying to keep my chest lifted and my legs strong, when the teacher nudges the class, "drop those shoulders".  I make an adjustment.

Here's one now: The Shoulder

All of these benevolent reminders about the position of my shoulders started me to wonder, what in hell is up with my shoulders?

I began to notice that it wasn't just during yoga that my shoulders felt the need to reach up to the sky, it was happening all the time. I would be driving in my car, listening to satellite radio, enjoying the air conditioning, when I notice my shoulders are squeezing together making my neck tight. Watching t.v. with my husband, maybe even possibly holding a chilled glass of chardonnay, and here they were, shoulders fighting gravity reaching for my earlobes. And, most painfully, towards the mid-point of my morning jog, I could feel that cramp across my collar bone as my shoulders ascended to the clouds.

Early in the year I had a pesky bout of shoulder pain.  In fact, I had received a giant cortisone shot (which didn't work) and an MRI (which showed zero damage to my shoulder), both of which left the doctor puzzled, finally diagnosing me with a shoulder impingement (unprovoked, I hadn't suffered an injury). Although now, after the numerous reminders from my yoga instructor to loosen up my shoulders, I started to suspect that my impingement could be from the subconscious storing of stress in my shoulders- causing their tensing up ALL DAY EVERYDAY.

When I first started practicing yoga my shoulders would be sore, not impingement sore, but sore all the same (along with sore arms, legs, hips...you name it). But now that my practice of yoga has taken on a regular schedule, I have noticed these rascally shoulders of mine are not climbing the ladder of stress towards my ears as much and the pain has almost completely subsided.

As a matter of fact, thanks to my practice of yoga, I can recognize much easier when my shoulders begin their tour of tensing, and I can hear my yoga instructor's calm reminder to relax my shoulders, and I make an adjustment.

Comfort Zone...What Comfort Zone?

I cannot be the only one...who has realized that as a parent you find yourself outside the confines of your comfort zone quite often. Often enough that being in situations that you find yourself learning something new or experiencing new feelings has ironically become part of your comfort zone.

While riding in the back seat of my friend's car the other day, on our way to play a spirited round of laser tag (I'll explain more later), my friend's husband said, "We don't step outside our comfort zone enough as adults". I thought about that statement for a moment, this is an idea you hear pronounced quite a bit as an adult, but I had to disagree, at least for myself (I also lumped in my friend who was sitting in the passenger seat).

My friend and I have been pretty active at trying new things as of late.  I am talking about the friend that I joined the gym with and we have been attending a multitude of group fitness classes that we are not generally subscribers of.  I'm talking Mat Pilates, Vinyasa Yoga, Gentle Yoga, Ballet Boot Camp, and Zumba just to name a few (trust me, my muscles have definitely been feeling outside their comfort zone).

Also, on a girls night out recently, we sipped a wine or three and decided we weren't ending our Mama's evening out on the town without joining in with the young crowd to offer our voices to the Karaoke that was happening.  Everyone in that bar sang Karaoke, everyone including the bartender between pouring drinks, I was not going to let us leave that place as the two old broads that didn't join in (I am not sure people thought we were necessarily "old broads" but when I put it that way to my friend she was ready for that microphone, comfort zone or not).

Laser Tag Photo credit: Ultrazone Laser Tag

And what about the fact that were in the car heading to a laser tag place? My friend was hosting an adults only laser tag party, where we were going to run around a black light lit maze-like room, wearing kind-of stinky vest that sported flashing lights on them, using laser guns with goofy names like "inferno" and "boomer", and destroy the other teams bases all while trying to not get shot with lasers, this was a prime example of us stepping out of our comfort zone.

Later that evening, I was thinking about our conversation in the car, and I started wondering why I have become rather comfortable stepping outside my comfort zone.  I think that as a Mama you can't help but see the world through your children's eyes, their fears that can seem so silly, their apprehension about new things that are truly only new for a moment, their lack of confidence over situations that if they just could muster a bit of bravery they would soar right through, and you start to realize that the same is true for most new situations as an adult.

I don't worry about looking like I don't know what I am doing in the midst of a new situation because I how can I help it, I don't know what I am doing.  I am not afraid of asking questions if I don't understand something because that's how you learn and I trust that I am not being judged by anyone but myself, so if I treat myself kindly most likely others will too. All those thoughts make my comfort zone more like guidelines rather than areas of discomfort.

Going with the Vinyasa Flow

I cannot be the only one...who knows how hard it is as a Mama to try something new.  The reasons I find expanding into new realms are boundless; no time, not in the budget, fear of failing, etc.. The list could go on and on, but that feeling that I could be doing more, or be more for myself, also goes on and on. Recently I had the opportunity to purchase a one month membership to one of our communities more pricey gyms at an extreme discount and I thought, "This will be fun, my friend and I could drop the kids off at the kids club and we could work out or take a class or two." Little did I know that that "class or two" I was envisioning would become a personal challenge in trying new things.

I workout, I have a routine, I have a schedule and I stick to it. For years I have woken up before the sun crest our roof top and tied on my Brooks running shoes to hit the pavement for a jog, followed by sit ups and push ups to round it all off.  I have never been one for workout classes, instead believing I was some kind of reveler in my solo fitness institution.  But this newly purchased gym membership included over a hundred group classes a week and I was feeling ready to dive into those classes and see what I was missing.

The very first class we took was Vinyasa Flow, described as dynamic yoga with continuous dance-like movements. As my friend and I stood outside the darkened studio we joked about how we hoped this class wasn't too difficult because we weren't really looking for an intense workout. What I did find in the yoga studio was a place of personal challenge, a reason to breathe deeply, and time to be self involved sans guilt (a rarity for any Mama).

Moments after entering the yoga studio I was quickly out of my comfort zone, taking to the mat and laying in Savasana (corpse pose), arms away from the body with your palms up and legs hip width apart is not the normal way I begin a workout.  Although, as many of you may know, that quiet moment of relaxation evolved quickly into my arms and legs shaking as they attempted to hold balance in a pose my body was not used to. I started to sweat, I had to make adjustments to where my feet or hands were on the mat often, and I had to check in with the instructor just to make sure I wasn't the only one still standing in warrior two. It was a busy hour for me on that bamboo wood floor breathing lavender scented air.


An hour later, as we emerged out of the studio, I commented to my friend from the side of my mouth, "That class sort of kicked my butt," and we agreed that it was an intense workout.

That Vinyasa Flow class ended up giving me more than what I had expected, not just in the physical sense because it was more than that, I connected with something within myself and I have been back to the mat more than just a few times since that afternoon that I thought I would try something new.