Five Happy Things / A Clean Bill Of Health

Five Happy Things

I very much appreciate and enjoy the focus that looking for life's small and not-so-small happy things brings to my daily life - so here we go:

Five Happy Things

1)  A Clear Mammogram Re-do. This is the biggest Happy Thing, without question - I had to do a follow up mammogram yesterday, after a slightly questionable mammogram earlier in the month. I was reassured that the follow up was likely not going to bring up anything, but just to be safe . . .

So yesterday was it, along with an ultrasound of the breast in question. As the radiologist finished the ultrasound, she smiled and said I'd receive an official notification by mail, but she could tell me with confidence that there was nothing there.

Whew!

2)  You're so thin! While undergoing the first of yesterday's procedures, the follow up mammogram, the female technician kept commenting on how thin I was, and how did I do it?

OMG, did I or did I not love that???  😄

I told her it was as simple as not eating a lot, and just as hard. So, so hard on some days!

3)  I bought a ukulele. And I can already play a song on it!

I bought a ukulele and ukulele chord chart, and after spending just a few minutes with the ukulele chord chart relearning some of the basic guitar chords, began working on Somewhere Under The Rainbow. And after just a few minutes of effort, I have to say it started to sound pretty good! The chord revisions I started with were pretty simple - G, C, Em, Am, and F - and the strumming pattern changes (a bit faster, and more pronounced, for ukulele) came along pretty much organically.

I'll next begin working on some of the suggested songs the ukulele group I'm looking to join suggests that newcomers learn. I'm thinking by September I should be ready to raise my hand and give the group a try - and vice versa of course!

Update:  I went ahead and joined the ukulele group! They welcome beginners, and summer practice sessions begin next week. 😄

I learned while shopping yesterday that there are three types of ukuleles - soprano, tenor, and baritone.
I liked the sound of the tenor ukulele the most, so that is the one I decided to go with.
It looks so small and cute next to my guitar!

4)  Summer Cherries.  Cherries are beginning to come into season, and are on sale just in time for the upcoming 4th of July holiday. My supermarket sales ads this week are featuring cherries at $1.99 a pound, so a whole of them will be coming home with me tomorrow when I do my weekly grocery shop.

5)  Free Symphony In The Park event tonight. This is the first free concert of the 2025 summer season we're able to attend, so I'm feeling particularly happy and excited. I'm making a Mediterranean tuna salad, plus baguette slices with cheese, grapes, and some sparkling wine. It should be a lovely, though possibly still slightly cool evening, so I'll try and remember to throw in some sweaters in addition to some sun hats. June is our month of transition here, with the heat generally not reaching us until July.

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What's made you happy recently? Please share!

Weekend Wrap Up / Why Yes, It Involved Wine

Weekend Wrap Up

This was one of those weekends that I might not believe if I hadn't actually lived it. I'm sitting here on Monday morning with a clear calendar, which I am desperately in need of after the last three days!

Friday - We woke up and got ready early in order to drive to Temecula, about a 90 minute trip, and attend a winery event being hosted by one of the entities we do personal business with. It began with a tour of the winery's growing and production facilities, then moved into a private room for a series of wine tastings paired with charcuterie. 

One of the wines we tasted was a Cabernet sauvignon that we both loved. So we knew it was going to be pricey, lol. And it was, at $90 a bottle. However, if we found someone to go in with us on a case, the price dropped to $55 a bottle. We chatted with the business contact that had invited us, and he said he and his wife would love to share a case with us. 

Then they ended up comping us our six bottles. Totally unexpected, but very, very, very much appreciated!

From there we returned to Orange County, and headed to a new steakhouse near us that was getting rave reviews. We were primarily interested in their Happy Hour menu, not one of their pricier full blown meals, and had read that we needed to get there early if so, right at or before their 4:00 PM opening. So we got into line at 3:40PM, and were first to do so. However, by 4:00 PM, as they opened their doors, the line was long, and every table in their beautiful bar area, where Happy Hour was held, quickly filled. 

We ordered the wedge salad, and then their house made burger, both to share. The salad was lovely, but the burger blew our minds. The restaurant compile their burgers using leftover trimmings from the various prime sides of beef they cut on site, including Wagyu. Plus the burger came with a generous smear of truffle aioli. And the total bill, including a beer for my husband, plus tax and tip, came to just under $50, which I was super pleased with. See later for where I am happy to spend money, large quantities of food just not being it for reasons of my scale. 😊

The beautiful bar area. We were happy we were able to snag a private table,
but the folk sitting directly at the bar seemed happy as well.

Saturday - My mom came over to spend the morning walking the beach and visiting a surfing festival with us. The walk was lovely in that the skies were just clear enough for a little sun to come through on an otherwise brisk morning. The festival was a lot of fun, with oodles of vintage surf boards, a classic Woodie car show, and live music that included a ukulele band . . . the later of which I loved, and have decided to join after chatting with some of the musicians!

Although I don't currently own or play a ukulele, the group encourages and welcomes new players. And because I do already own and play a guitar, I've read that the transition should actually be fairly easy.

So, another fun activity to dive into, which makes me quite happy!

After returning home, my husband and I got cleaned up and then headed to a Hawaiian themed dinner at a cooking school we both much enjoy. As usual, we had a lot of fun with the chefs and our fellow students, all couples this particular evening, and made lots delicious food. The chefs seat us at a long table after we cook the meal components, and then serve us, which is also so much fun. My favorite item of the night (they always ask) was the sweet potato and ginger soup. My husbands was the Luau fried rice. Both remakes here at home for sure, once they send out the recipes a little later this week.

Sunday - Spiritual services, then off to the ballet to see Swan Lake. And here is where I can state that I am happy to spend money! We had front row seats, and to me they were worth every penny. The ballet was absolutely gorgeous, and we were close enough to feel the passion and energy coming from the performers on stage. 

Gosh, I just loved it so much. We'd seen Swan Lake in Russia when we visited St. Petersburg some years back on a cruise. However, not only were we not even close to being in the front row, we realized after seeing the full four act production on Sunday, that what we'd seen in Russia was simply a sampling of Swan Lake. It wasn't remotely the full length version. It was apparently the Russian tourist version!

We returned home to a simple dinner of Curry Vegetable pot pie that I'd bought and frozen last week from the Pop Pie Co, plus salad.

Today, Monday, I'm thrilled that my weigh-in this morning indicates I didn't gain any weight over our fairly food centric weekend, meaning my daily calorie planning on where to cut back calories early in the day, in order to enjoy more later in the day, appeared to work. I'm thus fired up to dig deep this week, in order to be back in the 'teens' by Friday. 

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How was your weekend???

Friday- Weekly Weigh In & Movement

Weekly Weigh In & Movement

Goal Weight:  115

June 20 Weigh In:  120.2

Weight Lost This Week:  +1 pound

Weight Left To Lose:  5.2 pounds

I have been giving thought to how hard losing these last few pounds has become, and in doing some research, came across this article from the Mayo Clinic, discussing how each plateau reached (119-120 for me currently) may necessitate creating a whole new diet plan.

Getting Past A Weight Loss Plateau

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- None  (Left at 8 AM for an event)
• Sat- 7 mile walk
• Sun- 3 mile walk
• Mon - 6 mile kayak
• Tue- 5 mile walk
• Wed- 5 mile walk
• Thur - None, though I did do about an hour of yardwork.
• TOTAL FOR WEEK:  26 miles
• TOTAL FOR MONTH:  53.5 miles + 1x weight training

Many of my miles this week occurred at our local harbor.
I am so enjoying all the children now there, many taking sailing
lessons, such as in the yellow-masted sailboat in photo.

No Sugar and Less Food Efforts

I had one night of mild sugar compulsions, the first in many weeks. I'm not sure why, exactly, other than overall general hunger perhaps.

It was a bit rough, but I managed to silence the sugar compulsions by eating a half cup of frozen berries (comprised of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and cherries) at about 40 calories. I really enjoy this as a treat - it requires patience to allow the berries to soften. I enjoy them slowly, one at a time, and the flavors range from mildly tart to mildly sweet. 

I admit I'm a little frustrated to have stalled a bit this week, in that I track my calories and know I'm not exceeding 1200 on any given day, inclusive of exercise calories. So, I'm going to try something a tad radical, since I happen to have all the ingredients here in the house already, the Pink Salt cleanse.

I'll let you know next week how it goes!

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!

Five Happy Things / Kayaking Perfection

Five Happy Things

I very much appreciate and enjoy the focus that looking for life's small and not-so-small happy things brings to my daily life - so here we go:

Five Happy Things

1) A perfect kayaking day. My girlfriend, who is ahead of me in the photo below, and I meet to go kayaking once each month. Our most recent get together was this past Monday, when the weather was gorgeous, the winds calm, and the current in our favor. We are both deeply appreciative that we prioritize our monthly get togethers, as you never know what nature is going to deliver.  This time (thank you!), it delivered perfection.

2)  We pulled out at the halfway point on Monday, in search of coffee. As we walked down Marine Avenue, on Balboa Island where we'd stopped, we passed display after display celebrating the upcoming 4th of July holiday, and this one in particular caught me eye. Not only did I love the curated display of pillows, I had to laugh at the less-than-friendly call-out the store owner had had printed at the bottom of the chair.  

3)  These beautiful hydrangeas that a neighbor gave to me as a 'thank you' for our recent wine tasting event. I've been happily enjoying them for days.

4)  Finding this on the Lucky Day table at our library last week. The Lucky Day table in our library is where one copy of extremely popular books are sometimes placed for same day checkout.  Sometimes you walk in and, lucky day, a copy of a book with an otherwise very long wait list is available for immediate checkout.

I read this nonstop in pretty much three days, and have already returned it to the library to be enjoyed by some other lucky reader.

I learned so much about the Vietnam War, in that I was just a child while it was occurring. And so much about the sacrifices of the men and women involved.

5)  Walking randomly into this surf board shop while searching for coffee one afternoon. I myself never did more than boogie boarding while growing up in California, but since moving here to coastal S. Orange County eight years ago, I have become acutely aware of the history and overall beauty of surfing, and I love that it's such a big part of the culture here.

Last summer while visiting us here, I gifted my older granddaughter with a one hour private surfing lesson, and she fell in love - 'Nana, I did it!' So we will see if it takes over time, and we end up with our first official family surfer.

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What's made you happy recently? Please share!

Friday - Weekly Weight In & Movement

Weekly Weigh In & Movement

I hit the teens at long last!

Goal Weight:  115

June 13 Weigh In:  119.2

Weight Lost This Week:  .8 pound

Weight Left To Lose:  4.2 pounds

I am so pleased to finally have dropped out of the 120's and into the teens, even if barely! It's such a mental victory!

Keep in mind I have short legs, lol- I’m only 5’3” 😗

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- None (Left at 7AM for a series of events)
• Sat- None (Left at 7AM for an all day event.)
• Sun- None (Left at 8AM for a series of events)
• Mon - 8.5 mile walk
• Tue- None, though I did 2 hours of heavy gardening at my volunteer job
• Wed- 5 mile walk
• Thur - 2 mile walk + Weight training
• TOTAL FOR WEEK:  15.5 miles

It was a super busy week, so my social interactions went way up even as my mileage went down. But I didn't overeat, so it was still a big win. 

Which reminds me yet again that while the movement is critical for my mental health, along with, of course, all the physical benefits it delivers, at the end of the day it's what I put into my mouth that really drives weight loss.

From Wednesday’s walk- gorgeous public land in the foothills of Irvine.

No Sugar and Less Food Efforts

I'm no longer giving much thought or effort to remaining sugar free, as it's now pretty much a habit.

With regard to food, I'm now in the habit (again!) of having a generous lunch, and very little, if anything, at dinnertime. I would imagine this will be one of the things I can adjust once I hit my goal, in that I can begin to have a modest amount of food again at day's end, which will make my husband happy. Currently we chat while he eats and I sip sparkling water.

Yep, such is my weight loss journey!

Oh, and I/we joined a really nice fitness center! Our old one closed about two years ago, and we've been gym-less since. But, we visited a gym earlier this week that had a great campus of activities, including a small cafe to enjoy coffee or other after working out, and decided to join it. I went yesterday and really, really enjoyed it. Although I tend to do less cardio, time wise, because I get bored doing it indoors, I definitely do it with more intensity, so there is that. I cranked up the treadmill's speed and incline more so than my long walks generally deliver.

And the weight room was welcoming! The machines were all newer, and people chatted as they worked out, which of course my extrovert self loved.

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!

Weekend Wrap Up / Everything Wine

Weekend Wrap Up

It was another wild and crazy fun weekend! What is it about June? I find it second only to December with regard to packed activities.

Anyhow, this is not a complaint - I loved it all!

Friday - Left the house bright and early with my mom to get in line at the DMV for her Real ID card. Which turned out to be a bust when we discovered her US Census Bureau issued birth registration certificate wasn't acceptable. It had to be from the County office in the state she was born in, not the federal government version. Sigh. 

From there, I took her shopping for summer clothes, clothes shopping being one of the things that makes her 8O-something year old self extremely happy. We had a specific dollar amount to adhere to, and we did great! For $350 we bought her 4 pair of flowy summer 3/4 length pants, six tee-style blouses to wear with them, two summer dresses, two over the shoulder scarves for cooler summer nights, and a straw hat. 

Afterward, we enjoyed a shared pulled pork sandwich at a bbq cafe we both enjoy.

Returned home to a sparkling clean house (I love our husband/wife cleaning team and their monthly service visits!). I was pretty exhausted by that point, so after enjoying a glass of wine and some jazz with my husband, I simply heated up leftovers (yummy Mediterranean meatballs with lemon rice) along with some freshly prepared vegetables, for our at-home meal, then went upstairs to read a bit before turning in.

Saturday - Another weekend, another wine competition! This weekend's event, where I did data scoring input all day, was for home winemakers. There were over 200 volunteers from our club, and it was a long but so-fun time. The day started off with breakfast for the volunteers, then we all worked our respective jobs until about 1:00 PM, when we all were served a fabulous lunch - BBQ tri tip, also chicken, and all kinds of delicious side fixings. 

We worked another few hours, including a group effort to wash and dry about 2,000 wine glasses. The wines sampled by the judges' were then opened up to all for tasting. Which of course we did, finding ourselves pretty impressed by some of the home winemaker efforts.

 

No free wine came home with us this time around, even though we could have if we wished because, well, home winemakers. 😊

Anyhow, we did make a quick stop on the way home to load up on some fantastic savory pies from Pop Pie and Company, because we were in the area.

I popped one into the oven when we got home, Curry Vegetable, and placed the rest in the freezer. After eating, then cleaning up, we pretty much poured ourselves into bed. We are definitely not as young as we used to be!

Sunday - Spiritual services followed by annual fiscal meeting. We then headed out to yet another wine club event, this time to taste and compare flawed wines from last weekend's commercial competition against their non-flawed replacement bottles.

We'd previously learned that a small percentage of all wine becomes flawed during the fermentation process. Often times due to a corkage failure, but also for a variety of other reasons. Wine judges are able to detect these flaws, and will ask for a replacement bottle of the same wine when that occurs. So that's what we tasted - small pours from the rejected, flawed bottle against a small pour of the unflawed replacement bottle. So hard to determine which was the flawed pour for many of us, which created so much fun and laughter as we all tried to come to a group consensus. 

From there we met up with a couple of fellow attendees at our favorite Mexican restaurant in all of Orange County, El Farolito. Great food, great conversation, plus we bumped into former neighbors we hadn't seen in eight years.

We returned home to, yet again, pretty much pour ourselves into bed. 

Great day, great weekend, but today, Monday, I'm tired! (Even though I'm leaving shortly to go walking, then to lunch, with a friend. 😊 )

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How was your weekend???

Friday- Weekly Weigh In & Movement

 Weekly Weigh In & Movement

Goal Weight:  115

June 6 Weigh In:  120 

Weight Lost This Week:  1

Weight Left To Lose:  5 pounds

I'm almost embarrassed to share how few calories I can ingest in order to lose weight, even at my current rate of just about a pound a week, So the mental battle is real, but I'm in it until I get there . . . or at least that's the plan at this point!

Weekly Mileage/Movement

• Fri- None
• Sat- 2 mile walk
• Sun- None
• Mon - None
• Tue- 5 mile walk
• Wed- 1 mile walk
• Thur - 4 mile walk 
• TOTAL FOR WEEK:  12 miles

I have to laugh a bit at my low mileage for the week - my husband is temporarily out of walking commission due to a sore back, and my extrovert self really misses him! I can come up with a hundred distractions when left to my own devices, but give me another person to walk/hike/kayak with, and I'm there!

So, now I know that I'm much better off making hard dates with confirmed groups and not just 'me' when my preferred activity partner is laid up, whomp whomp. 😒

No Sugar, now No Food plan

The no-sugar effort is close to being hardwired now, at 10 weeks in. I do still have to occasionally remind myself that, no, actually, I can't have just a smidge, lest I quickly return to where I was 10 weeks ago. But I can say that its a relatively small effort at this point, so I now think its time to focus on my food plan going forward as I continue to fight through the last few pounds.

As in, I'm working daily to be comfortable with feeling slightly hungry in the evening, my biggest pre-weight loss snacking danger time.

I still feel minor compulsions to snack after dinner, but so far a couple of crunchy 5 calorie pickles have worked at getting me over the compulsion hump. As has a small amount of frozen berries.

However, I like the way I look and feel at this lower end of my personal weight bell curve much more than I miss the food, and I look forward to meeting my goal in just a few more weeks. At which point I'm going to go shopping for some of the new wider leg jeans that are trying so hard to push my beloved skinny jeans off to the side, lol.

I like all three of these looks below a lot. I have all of the non-pants components in my closet already, so it's just the pants I'm looking to add to my wardrobe.

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If you are likewise on a quest to improve some aspect of your dietary or fitness life, please feel free to share here. The more we can work to support and encourage each other the better!