New Journeys, Updates and Epiphanies

I looked over my posts lately and noticed I have not said anything about running or the gym.

That is because a.) I have done absolutely no running, and b.) I have not been to the gym in ages.

There.

Rather, I have been quite a fantabulous couch potato, valued online shopper to J Crew and trusty chauffeur.  

This is Wesley's last week of football  and I am terribly excited about it.

I am pretty much over eating dinner at 9 p.m.

Chris is completing his first stint as assistant Pop Warner coach to a mess of squirrelly  8-10 year olds.

All of the practice is all for naught because every Saturday it has been a veritable slaughter on the football field for the boys.

Our parents have begun standing and applauding for first downs as if they were touchdowns.   Yep, they are that bad.

Their last game is this Saturday.

They are playing another team that has won not one game.  This may very well be the most  interesting game of the season to attend by far;   I may even show up on time.

I have thrown caution to the wind with the diet and exercise program.  

I thoroughly enjoy my salads, so I have been still been eating those, but I also have been drinking my wine, eating regular pepperoni and cheese and have discovered that whole milk mixed with Hershey's syrup makes delightful chocolate milk.

In short, I'm sort of over myself.   And something interesting happened when I got over myself...when I got over obsessing about the diets, the running, the exercising, the gym:

I lost some weight.

Not a lot, but enough for people to notice.

I might be onto something...

I also started reading again.

I used to read a book every couple of days which now is virtually impossible with the bigger house and bigger family to take care of (not very well, but I try...sort of~).

I began a new series that I really like:

I finished the first in the series and have the second waiting in a huge PILE of books waiting to be read by my bed.

I am in the middle of a slower paced, yet interesting book that is taking me longer to get through.

I am becoming active on Paperbackswap.com again.

It is a WONDERFUL website that I encourage you to check out.

It is a great way to recycle your books if you have a lot lying around.

It's basically a book trade.  You pay for postage to send a book out if someone requests a book FROM you (about 2.50 to send a book) but if you request a book from some, they pay for postage to send it TO you.  So...it all evens out in the end.

I'm also becoming inspired by personal blogs that I am reading and am wanting to learn more about how to sew and create things...

I follow Bromeliad and I love her blog.  She has such interesting pictures and ideas and sees things in a way that I don't.   I want to learn how to make these cloth flowers to add to my t-shirts!

And isn't this an adorable Halloween flower planter???

 It is from the FlowerGardengirl blog, who has such awesome flower/pots/plant ideas.

I have also recently discovered The Good Life blog, too.  This is one of her newest Anthropologie projects:

There are so many fun ideas and inspirations out there and it is really amazing to me that I virtually have the world at my fingertips via the internet.  I have no excuse to be a boring, uninspired person.   There are ideas upon ideas....so many so that it is mind-boggling!

I have never really had a challenge for myself other than diet and exercise.

I know, beyond shallow.  Right?

At my age, though, I think it is time to think about things a little differently.   Maybe if  I do so, the other stuff (weight/health/family) will fall into place, too.

Is this what is called an epiphany?   Perhaps other people have them at earlier ages and I am a late bloomer.  Late bloomers run in my family.  Hell,  my brother is almost 40 and not married.

For me, I'm going to try a different direction.  I think that first step is going to be fixing my sewing machine.  I bought a second-hand sewing machine a couple years ago and jammed it the very first time I tried to put random cloth through it to "test" it.

There are "crafters" at our church ~ i.e. a bunch of sweet ladies ~ who would probably love to tell me how to use a sewing machine.

So, I think that this will be my first goals this week:

FIRST GOAL:  UN-JAM THE SEWING MACHINE and LEARN HOW TO USE IT (BASICS).  

Except, I am not sure where the sewing machine is because it has been moved twice since I bought it.  So technically #1 should be "find the sewing machine, then #2 should be "un-jam the sewing machine and learn how to use it (basics)."

But whatever.

Semantics.

I'll keep you updated on my new journey.