You Capture - Happy

There are a lot of things that make me happy: my husband, my kids, a new book, chocolate, sunsets, the beach, chocolate...

Lately, though, I've been thinking that what would make me really happy would be to see some green outside instead of all this white. Seriously, why in the WORLD did the Pilgrims come all the way over here and say to themselves, "Wow, this looks like a really great place to live in the middle of December even though we don't have any houses or any other kind of shelter"?

There is so much snow here. Just piles and piles of it. And it's not just snow. It's a couple layers of snow, a layer of ice, another layer of snow, a layer of ice, some more snow. I'm sure there is a summer of some kind up here in the Arctic, but I kind of see these piles just sticking it out through the summer...trying to get a head start on next winter.

Anyway, there are a million more inspiring, more important things I could photograph that define happiness for me, but honestly, the thing that made me the happiest on a snowy day like today was stopping by Starbucks to pick up my favorites: An Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea and some Scones.





And, yes, I realize that I'm probably the only one in this frigid land who goes in on a day like today and orders an iced drink, but when you're hooked, you're hooked.

Good to Wow: Good Morning Edition, SOOC

I don't like coffee. When I was a teacher, I tried my very best to acquire the bitter taste of coffee. I did it because the other teachers seemed to find so much purpose and calm in their daily routine which took them to the cafeteria to fill up their coffee mugs. Of course they always complained about the cafetera coffee, but yet they returned day after day. Despite my attempts at coffee acquisition, I still find the taste repugnant. The smell is delicious, though; it's just one of those strange enigmas of life.

What I do love first thing in the morning is a cup of delicious, aromatic hot tea. In fact, I have become quite a tea snob. My husband spoiled me with a beautiful cast iron tea pot from Teavana for Christmas.



My new dragonfly tea pot has a mesh infuser insert, and that is where the magic happens. Along with my tea pot, my husband presented me with a fragrant tea blend: Apple Lemon Pomegranate Rooibos. DELICIOUS!



Since then, I have made a couple of trips to the local Teavana to begin my collected assortment. All of my choices so far have been refreshing and soothing.

Besides collecting actual tea, I have quite a collection of mugs. I typically pick up a mug when I am traveling somewhere new. One of my favorites is one I picked up on one of our Disney trips. I love it because I'm a little bit of a Disney freak, and I have so many great memories of our times there. (Already counting the days 'til Disney 2011!!)



Besides mugs, I have an eclectic collection of tea cups and porcelain tea pots. Unfortunately, most of those are still packed away. I did leave out two cups, however, because my mother-in-law prefers tea cups over mugs when she visits.



If you aren't a tea drinker, why not give it a try? Tazo is a delicious brand of tea bags you can pick up at any grocery store. (It also happens to be Starbucks' brand!) Tea is not only enjoyable to drink, but it is very good for you too!

Stats: Days 1-3

Day 1

Weigh-in: Target weight + 11.2 pounds

Breakfast: Eggs and toast with butter. Because it didn't say I can't have butter.

Lunch: Salad

Dinner: Chicken with veggies

Snack: I admit it. I am weak. I was supposed to have 11 almonds, but I cheated. With a sweet, moist, delicious pumpkin muffin. Pumpkin is healthy, right? You really can't expect me to give up sweets cold turkey.

Hmmm...turkey sounds good. Pumpkin muffin sounds better.

Exercise: Does vacuuming count?

Day 2

Weigh-in: Target weight + 9 pounds

Breakfast: Eggs and toast. This toast would taste a whole lot better smothered in Nutella.

Lunch: Chicken wrap

Dinner: Steak & green peppers

Snack: 11 almonds. These almonds would taste a whole lot better atop a mound of coconut, smothered in chocolate.

There was also one minor indiscretion today. My husband came home from work with an Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea with Sweetener from Starbucks because he's sick and tired of hearing me whine so sweet and thoughtful. He also handed me a Hershey's Cookies and Cream candy bar. But I only ate 2 squares. And only a teeny, tiny sliver of the Boston Cream Pie he picked up at the store.

Exercise: Huh?

Day 3

Weigh-in: Target weight + 8 pounds

Breakfast: Cereal. The healthy kind that tastes like cardboard. Not the kind with delightfully bright-colored marshmallows, or crispy miniature cookies, or sweet and airy chocolate puffs.

Lunch: Steak wraps

Dinner: Mediterranean Pork Chops, broccoli, quinoa

Snack: 1 mini Babybel cheese wheel. These remind me of France. France is in Europe. Europe makes the best CHOCOLATE!

Exercise: So I finally decided it's time to get on the treadmill because I know diet lifestyle and exercise go hand-in-hand.



Even the makers of those magic diet pills you see advertised on TV know this. Not a one of them says, "Lose 10 pounds a week while you sit on the couch vegging out to your favorite soaps with a bag of chips beside you and a soda in your hand." No, they same something along the lines of, "For effective results, use with a balanced diet and regular exercise. Oh. And may cause excess gas, kidney failure, and possibly death."

So there's really nothing magical about those pills. And there is really no easy way out of dealing with the consequences of having eaten too much chocolate. I don't know how much longer I can go on feeling like I'm cheating whenever I sneak in some chocolate without chocolate.

Annual Cliche Blog Post

I know. It's so cliche. But if I am to be held accountable, it must be shared: I have a New Year's Resolution. I've put on a couple of pounds since we moved to the Arctic. And by a couple, I mean several. Something must be done.

Now, before I start getting hate mail about how, even with several added pounds, I am not that fat, let me explain. After all of the hats, gloves, scarves, coats, jackets, mittens, long underwear, socks, snow boots, and regular boots we have purchased for Life in the Arctic, quite honestly, there is not enough left in the clothes budget for me to buy larger-sized britches. And larger-sized britches are where I'm headed if I don't do something.

In so doing, I do not intend to toss the D word about. That would just add cliche to cliche. So I am going to stick with the word lifestyle. Better, right? I am going to follow Dr. Connie Guttersen's The Sonoma Diet Lifestyle. I have loosely followed this book before because I like it. I like all of the science behind the food she offers. I like the foods she uses. There are no avocado (blech!) and tofu (double blech!) smoothies I have to make to start the day. Instead, her recipes are sensible and use ingredients any picky eater would like.

The only thing that is kind of odd/funny/comical is the snacks. On Day 1, my snack allowance is "11 almonds". I am not sure what would happen if I ingested 13. Perhaps I would bloat up like a beached whale (there's another cliche for you) and finally bust right out of my Levis. I'm not going to chance it; I'll stick with 11.

The d-, I mean, lifestyle is divided into 3 waves. The first wave is the hardest because it does not include even a teaspoonful of sugar. Even fruits are forbidden. This phase lasts for 10 days. Without chocolate and Starbucks, this phase will be the H word for me.

Wave 2 technically lasts only until you reach your target weight, but there are 14 days of menus provided. I intend to follow the 14 days. Wave 3 has no menus; it is the phase where lifestyle truly takes over. I haven't figured out yet what I want that to look like for me, but I do know I want us to be healthier as a family, so I'll give it some serious thought while I am enduring Sugar De-Tox.

So that is it. Now that it's out here, I have to stick to it. I'm not starting 'til Monday, though. In the meantime, I will be grieving the departure of many of my best friends: Betty Crocker brownie mixes, Christmas chocolate, baking chocolate, everyday chocolate, Starbucks. And I'll be shopping for things that don't contain chocolate.

And since I haven't started yet, I'm afraid I'm going to have to eat some more of my Christmas chocolate. It's for my own psychological health because good-byes are simply too difficult.

A Frozen World

After lunch today, I ordered my regular Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea Sweetened at the nearest Starbucks. I sipped it down to the halfway mark by the time we got home where I left the kids and my husband and went out to do a little secret shopping. I sat in my car in the Target parking lot for a few minutes enjoying the beauty of watching snow flurries fall even as the sunshine shone brightly on the lot.

I was in Target for a good hour, enjoying a peaceful shopping trip that did NOT involve any breaking up of quarrels, any whining, any trips to the little girls' room to potty a princess who can't seem to catch on to the concept of emptying the bladder at HOME instead of in the nasty public bathroom, no standing around waiting for little people to look longingly at the newest Lego set/video game/Barbie Doll/Nerf gun for the thousandth time. Nope, just me, wandering the aisles looking at whatever I wanted to look at, lingering in the aisles that interested me.

So all this time in Target my Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea Sweetened was sitting out in the car. When I got back to the car, there it was, same as I left it, half of my tea still waiting for me, not a cube of ice melted. And why would it be melted when the weather outside is 27 degrees? In the sun.

I'm really not complaining. Not yet anyway. In fact, I check the 10-day forecast at least two hundred times twice a day looking for that first predicted snowfall. It seems all of my Facebook friends across the country are enjoying some of the white stuff but us. And I was under the impression I had moved to the Arctic. Or, at the least, not-so-far-from-Canada.

The snow has been there in the forecast. In fact, when I checked last Monday, it was on the docket for today. But the very next day, the little snow picture was replaced with sunshine. At least there were some snow flurries thrown in with the sunshine. Now the forecast has snow flurries forecast for the next few days and snow on the plan for next Sunday. I know these meteorologists don't know what they're talking about half the time, so I won't hold my breath, but I really would like to see some of the snow I was promised when I moved to the Arctic.

Until the snow comes, I will just enjoy watching the world freeze over. I know on the way home from Target today the line of cars behind me probably got a little perturbed by my slowing down every time I saw a frozen puddle. I'm not sure what is wrong with these northerners. Does it not fascinate anyone else to see water that is not in the freezer--water that is outside--freezing? You can bet that to this African/Southern Californian/Georgian girl, that is fascinating indeed.

I know my kids are also quite taken with it because they spent hours the other day leaning over the edge of the above ground pool hauling out pieces of ice that have begun to form on the water that has collected in the cover. And today? It was reported that while I was enjoying my peaceful time at Target, they were out on the side of the street chopping up the frozen puddles with a mallet.

Don't ever think that we southerners can't have a good ol' time up here in the Arctic!