Five Happy Things

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

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!

Five Happy Things

 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. And at this time of year here along the coast, I don't really have to look very far to encounter happy things - so here we go:

Five Happy Things

1)  This sign, which I saw for sale recently at a pop-up boutique I walked by, and stopped to purchase. Firstly, it was handmade by the seller, who I enjoyed chatting with. Secondly, I could visualize exactly where I would place it in my home - on the bookcase in my home office, where I'd be able to see it each day. And thirdly, it is 100% correct in it's statement - whether I'm gazing at it, paddling atop it, walking alongside it, or gazing at it while sipping or eating, life always feels a bit easier afterwards.

2)  This adorable jalopy, which I trailed recently while driving through Laguna Beach.

3)  These July 4th tees, which I picked up recently at Target for my soon-to-be-here granddaughters, for just $7.00 each. And the necklaces, from The Dollar Store, were just $1.25 each.

The 4th of July here where I live is wild fun. Our day will begin with a massive water fight over at the harbor, a long tradition here, transition to swimming at our HOA pool, then a BBQ back here at home, and end, finally, with a fireworks show that we can either watch from our balcony, or walk over to enjoy, depending on the energy level our granddaughters still have by nightfall!

4)  This view, which is what greets me when I get to the end of the beach trail I/we walk multiple times a week from our home. Including today. 😊

5)  This wine, the hands down favorite of everyone at the recent wine tasting event we held. It was deemed the perfect Chardonnay by most everyone, and at $32 a bottle, is definitely affordable as compared to other high end Chardonnay's.

I'm currently hard at work trying to identify a boxed wine - a Malbec - that was also a crowd favorite. It was poured into generic bottles for judging, so there is no label on the bottle I brought home, just a bare bones competition label. But, I expect it to be very reasonably priced once we determine who produced it, because boxed wine 😊, and I'll be sure to share that here as well!

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What's made you happy recently? Please share!

Weekend Wrap Up

 Weekend Wrap Up

This was one of those weekends where we were on the go from pretty much morning until night - so today, Monday, I have zero plans save going for a nice, long, leisurely beach walk!

Seriously, our pace this weekend was close to frenetic, but we knew it was coming and prepared as best we could, both mentally and physically.

So, here we go:

Friday - Haircut appointments for us both back in our prior town, about a 45 minute drive, because it continues to be that much cheaper to get our cuts there, in north Orange County, than down here in south Orange County. We pay $80 total for two haircuts, vs closer to $175 or so that it would cost to get them cut down here. 

After returning home, I had time for a quick lunch before heading out to a routine doctor's appointment. After returning home from that, I started setting up for our Sunday wine tasting party here, then made dinner.

Saturday - Out the door bright and early at 7:00 AM to report for volunteer duty at an all day wine competition. We dried hundreds and hundreds of wine glasses as delicately yet quickly as we could (I think each of us volunteers broke at least one glass from handling them a bit to hard, oops, before learning just how much pressure to apply). A lot of chatting occurred as we dried, so that was fun, as was the really nice lunch we were served.

The primary reason we all volunteer for this it must be said, is that we all walk away with a case of wine, the result of about 1,000 bottles being lightly poured out for judges' rating, leaving a good 20 oz or so of quality wine in each bottle.

The volunteer bottle selection that occurs at the end of the day is always a lot of fun. We all select two bottles at a time, each 'round' if you will, until our wine boxes are full, 24 bottles of wine in our case, since there were two of us.

Prepping the work room for all of us volunteers to go 'wine shopping' at the end of the day.

We returned home at about 6PM, I made a couple of quick but tasty grilled turkey cheese sandwiches, plus some fruit, after which we cleaned up, watched one episode of a TV drama, then poured ourselves into bed.

Sunday - Spiritual services followed by a luncheon and presentation to say farewell to one of the longtime members, then home to set out food for our neighborhood wine event. We had 16 folks in total, and it was a blast. I enjoy our new neighborhood so very much!

The wine

The spread

The tasting cards

All departed by about 6PM, with us pressing as much wine and food on them as they were willing to take, 😄. We spent an hour or so cleaning up, then pretty much did a repeat of Saturday evening - a quick bite, one episode of 'whatever,' then off to bed.

We are equal parts exhausted and elated by how well the event went, and we've already committed to holding it again next year.

Today, though, Monday, we have zero commitments, hooray!

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How was your weekend???