Breathe right: 48 hours plus

What I could do with the money I save this month from NOT SMOKING

Make a six year olds dream come true and take her to the Taylor Swift concert happening the week of her birthday ($89 for two tickets) AND still be able to afford for all the boys to do their annual guy time at Monster Jam ($81 for four tickets). Plus have enough money for souveniers. Leaving $130 for me to blow on myself like this:

($99)

and $30 to blow at Sephora

Keep going girl....you can do this!!!!

Breathe right: 48 hours

Quitting effing sucks. I hate quitting. I love smoking. I love the excuse to go outside with my mancub and get a break from the kids. I hate that the kids all scream "mommy don't smoke!" as I walk out the front door. I hate that they watch me fail everytime I've tried to quit. I hate that I'm showing them that even though I talk about how bad this habit is, I still do it. It doesn't matter to the kids that I need one. It doesn't matter to the kids that I feel on edge. Hell, it doesn't even matter to them that I'm a royal bitch when I'm quitting and they end up helping me clean the entire house top to bottom. What matters to the kids is a mom they can look up to. A mom that is alive. A mom that they won't have to take care of when I'm 70 and dying from lung cancer. When it comes down to it, a year from now they will forget about how grumpy I was when I was quitting but they will remember how I quit. How I said I was going to do something and I did it. How I told them to stay away from bad things and I lead by example.

Because I'd rather be OCD than have COPD

Two years is a damn long time to be filling my lungs with nicotine.
Two years is a damn long time not to write.
Two years is a damn long time to be unhealthy and so far from my natural eating habits, that they are no longer habits.


I don't do resolutions. Since I'm always in a constant evaluation of my life and looking to weed out the unnecessary and get one step closer to my goals, January is usually a natural starting point for assessment and re-evaluation.

We have a tradition at our house. Every night at the dinner table, each person shares a smash and trash of their day. Throwing the breaks on this mental locomotive, I'm taking a day to look through my life's smash and trash.

Trash
I Smoke, cough, hack and have a family history of COPD
Devour processed foods
Normally have about one glass of water a week. A WEEK
I Don't excercise
I don't have any time just to myself

Smash
Regular date nights and an awesome marriage
We do lots of fun things as a family
Regular date nights with each kid
I know what type of foods are healthy and where to get them.

The Plan
January- Breathe right: Stop smoking
Get moving: Nightly walks as a family
February- Start shopping at the farm for meat and produce.
March- Zero refined sugar and processed foods
April- Start working out three times a week

....hmmm that about does it....that's super encouraging. I can totally do this! This month is going to be the hardest. I hate quitting smoking. Kids beware!

Tattoo Tuesday: Shoulder

Human beings are not bacteria

Last night we had Thanksgiving dinner with some of our friends. As I sat down to list out my gratitudes, I realized my gratitudes were made up mainly of "I'm thankful Chris could do the work on my car" or "I'm thankful we weren't evicted at that time." All of them seemed to be dependant on something that had gone wrong.

What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right? I'm not so sure. Is it really the trials that make you stronger, or were you strong to begin with and without a worthy opponent?

The reason we think trauma may be transformative is that we see variants of this process around us. Bacteria that are not killed entirely by an antibiotic will mutate and become resistant to it. People who go through the hardship of training tend to improve their performance. But human beings are not bacteria, and good training is not a traumatic event. Now it is true that, in an evolutionary sense, those who survive a calamity are by definition the fittest. But it is not the calamity that made them so. For our minds, however, the leap is short between seeing the strong emerge from a calamity and concluding that they are strong because of the calamity.Our brain is a meaning-making machine, designed to sort vast and varied sensory information into coherent, orderly perception, organized primarily in the form of narrative: this happened, which led to that, which ended up so. When two things happen together, we assume they are meaningfully linked, and then we rush to bind them in a quite unholy cause-and-effect matrimony.

Noam Schpancer, Phd
excerpts from published journal
August 2010, Psychology Today

Soooo, psychological research pretty much squashes the school of hard knocks theory and shows that if you are stronger after hardship it is probably despite, not because of the hardship.

Let me welcome to the conversation my belief that God and my determination are the source of that strength. What if I didn't have either?

We all know people that have crossed our paths that don't seem to have that Umph. They just stagger through life, blinking and unable to thrive. Why are they that way?

Yet another multi-tiered, bullet point to file away in my journal under: Predetermination

Yes I'm still talking about Halloween

Seriously though, Halloween was the funnest thing ever! It ended up lasting two weekends. The first weekend was the Adult Scare Fest and the second one was all about Cute Little Dressed Up Family.



Adult Scare Fest

First off, let me just say, Halloween Horror Nights was so not worth the money. The lines were horribly long. Try 2 1/2 hours for one house before we gave up and got out of line. And, there were a ton of really annoying teenagers. Some parts were cool though. Like the time I jumped, screaming, into Chris' arms, leaving my still laced up shoes, on the ground beneath me. Which left me thinking, with a little tweaking HHN could be really awesome next year.



Mary and Chris' checklist for Halloween Horror Nights 2011:

1. Everyone rides together in one car/limo. Hooray for not waiting for the last. car. full. of. people. with. a very. very. slow. overly cautious. (slow) (very slow). woman. driver. at . the. wheel.

2. Getcha' drink on in the limo instead of the park.

3. Get R.I.P passes so we can actually see all of the houses and don't have to wait in line. Hooray for no more beng trapped in line with obnoxious teenagers!



We wrapped up Adult Scare Fest with going to some radio station parties and some nights at home with all the lights off, watching SAW in the dark. I think Chris really enjoyed the clingy, jumpy girlfriend, because he has downloaded all of the SAW movies for us to watch.





Cute Little Dressed Up Family

So much for Buddy being Spiderman and Maddie being Strawberry Shortcake. No one gets to pick costumes when you find 50 cent costumes at the flea market. But, they did ge to choose the little nuances of their costumes, and since we went to a different event each day of the weekend, their outfits were a little different each time. Mostly it depended on what they were willing to wear.

Tattoo Tuesday: Trees