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Thoughts on Turning 29

Today I turn 29.

That’s 1 year away from 30, folks.

Uhm, wow.

Knowing that 30 is just around the corner has forced me to reflect a lot (like, a LOT a LOT) this week.

Some days I feel like I’m where I should be: good job, good home, awesome cats, awesome husband.

Some days I feel like I’m so far behind: I struggle to know where I want to be in 3 years, I waver on whether or not I want kids, if I want to stay living in Calgary, if we want to move to the US, so many things.

I wonder, shouldn’t I have this figured out by now?

And, I guess the answer is, No.

Maybe, if I was supposed to have it figured out, it would be. But…..it isn’t.

Moving towards the be three-oh, I want to be 29 with intention. I find a lot of times I just “do” without much of an intention behind it. I don’t always know where I want to be in 6 or 12 months, and, so, I just go.

Not this year.

This year I want to be sure I have an intention behind what I’m doing so I can be the best me at 30 that I can possibly be.

• Focus on fitness. In 2013 (after turning 30) I’m going to run a marathon. Leading up to this I want to focus on fitness and really and truly being healthy
• Focus on work. I’m not sure if I want to stay at my current job (lack of work-life balance for months on end kinda sucks) but I also like the opportunities it gives me. This year, I’m going to give my job my all. I received a bad review this year and instead of beating myself up for it, I’m going to take those points and be better. I’m interested to see where that will take me.
• Focus on being a wife. I can be selfish. Really, super selfish. It’s not always fair to The Cowboy. This year I want to work on putting us first, not just me. If I do one day decide we want little Cowpokes running around, I want us to be the best us we can possibly be.
• Focus on forgiving myself. I beat myself up a lot. Over little things. Over not saying the right thing. It needs to stop. People make mistakes. I really need to accept that and just move on.

Posted by Ange | 4 Comments

What I Ate Wednesday: Week 4

Golly. I can’t believe it’s been nearly a MONTH since I last posted one of these.

Yikes.

Breakfast

Cup of coffee with coconut milk enjoyed while reading some blog posts prior to getting ready for work.

Like many of you, I read a bazillion blogs in my Google Reader daily and am TERRIBLE at commenting on posts.

Pot, meet Kettle…

0% honey greek yogurt with strawberries (I put frozen strawberries in the yogurt the night before so they’re thawed by morning) eaten at work before heading to an 8:30 meeting.

Lunch

Osso bucco left over from The Cowboy’s birthday dinner on Sunday. So, so yummy!

Lunch is by far my least favourite meal of the day, but I sure enjoyed it yesterday!

Cup of white tea on the side……I pretended it was lunch dessert

Fitness

Before cooking dinner I threw on some run gear and headed out for a 5km run. My body sure isn’t used to warm weather. It was 25 degrees out and it totally KILLED my stamina!

Dinner

Mmmm. Enjoyed while cooking, and eating.

The Cowboy and I are planning on visiting this brewery when we’re in Vancouver in a few weeks – we can’t wait!

Super, duper yummy dinner. Crispy tofu with sweet chili sauce (if you want to know how to cook the most AMAZING tofu, you need to follow Emily’s method from Daily Garnish), pureed cauliflower, broccoli and some french bread.

So, so yummy!

Movie Night tea from David’s Tea (with a splash of coconut milk) as a dessert treat.

***

You can find more WIAW posts here

Posted by Ange | 14 Comments

A comment about comments

One thing I’ve noticed over the past while is the number of visitors to my l’il place on the interwebs here.

Daily, I have around 115 visitors on the site.

Isn’t that awesome?!

Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’m severely lacking in the comments department.

Now, I’m not fishing for comments here, but I truly am interested in why or why not you’d consider leaving a comment.

• Do you hate the comment interface?
• Not relate to the content?
• Want more pictures of cats?
• Less pictures of cats?

Whatever, I’d like to know.

If you just read, enjoy and move on, I want to know that too.

So, if you wouldn’t mind, can you spare 30 seconds and drop me a little note?

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Weekly Plan

In light of the fact that I’m a month (a month!) behind in my fitness goals, I’m going to post my fitness goals for the week today and will re-vamp and catch up on my 6 month fitness plan in a few days…

According to my plan, I’m supposed to be running 9km on Sundays…..I managed to (barely) run 4km on Saturday. I have a 10km race in 5 weeks, so I definitely need to step on it!

Monday: 6km run. My 4km was okay with my cold and cough, so I’ll see how I do with a 6km run

Tuesday: 60 min RIPPED class

Wednesday: 60min Spin class OR 6km run

Thursday: 6km run then dinner out with The Cowboy

Friday: 60 min RIPPED class followed by a massage and a relaxing birthday day

Saturday: all day wedding shoot

Sunday: 60 min RIPPED class OR slow 10km run

Looking at the above, I’ll need to start working in some speed work and longer runs in the next few weeks. Thankfully I’m not terribly concerned about time for the 10km race, I’m just using it as a bit of a warm up before starting my half marathon clinic at the end of June. The race I really want to focus on is the half marathon in October. I’ll be running it with my dad, so I’m sure it’ll be super fun!

I’m also going to hope back on the tracking my food every day bandwagon. I feel off while in Houston, but it’s time to get my arse back on!

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Farmer’s Market Saturday

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April Goals Wrap-Up

Yikes.

Mid-May and I haven’t got around to posting about my April goals. Eek.

That probably tells you how the last half of April/first half of May went for me, doesn’t it?!

Instead of dragging this out any longer, let’s take a look at how well I did on my April goals…

1. Re-vamp our monthly budget. We’ve been doing really, really well, but want to save more for vacations. We initially set up our budget a year ago, so it’s definitely time for a re-look. Done! And completed by the mid-month check-in, even!
2. File our taxes! They’re due by April 30, so they’ll definitely be DONE by the end of this month! As predicted, done on April 21 before flying to Houston. I had to pay a buttload of money (grrr) but they were DONE!
3. Clean and organize 1 room each weekend in April. The first 3 months of the year were pretty much disastrous, so I’m encouraged to clean, tidy and organize; heck maybe I’ll even blog it! This started out well, but then fell off. Being out of town for 2 weeks didn’t help things, but the condo IS cleaner than it was!
4. Meal plan! No more dinners out! It’s time to budget and meal plan, this will help with goal #1 above AND with my fitness goals. Again, this went really well for 2 weeks until I went away, but there really wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it……
5. Go on a spend hiatus. I tried no spend Lent, but given I don’t have the time to appropriately meal plan and grocery shop, it went out the window pretty quickly. I should be able to be more organized in April and save save save! Well, Houston affected this a bit, since The Cowboy and I did a bit of shopping, but I’m okay with it
6. Wake up early to work on the business and the blog. Currently, my blogging is done in the evenings and I stay up WAY TOO LATE, so a few mornings a week, I want to wake up early and get caught up on everything business related. I’m sure you can tell by the lack of content on the blog that this didn’t go so well. At all. Again, I blame Houston
7. Write out a blogging schedule for this blog AND the photo-blog. I like ad-hoc blogging, but having a semi-set schedule should make it easier in the mornings and to make sure I have quality content on each site on a regular basis. Uhm, see above? Everything went seemingly well for 3 weeks and then pretty much fell off the rails. Same with my entire life *sigh*
8. Set aside some time to get sexy with The Cowboy. Ridiculous hours put sexy time on the back burner. NOT COOL. So it’s time to get our sexy back. This went well, but it certainly could be better
9. Only drink booze on weekends. I didn’t drink a lot during the week during busy season, but I sure did indulge on vacation, so now it’s back to sparkling water with the SodaStream during the week and 1 or 2 fun drinks on weekends. Once again, good until Houston. Back on the wagon now!
10. Home cooked meals. Sure, eating out is fun and relaxing, but we’ve definitely been eating out WAY too much. Even on weekends I’d like to make sure we’re planning and have healthy, yummy food on hand. Starting by cleaning out the fridge! Broken record here….

So, only 2 goals were 100% accomplished, but given work travel was pretty much out of my control, I’m rolling with it.

I’m working on some May/summer goals and will be revamping my fitness schedule/goals for the rest of the month since getting sick means I haven’t done a darn thing in nearly 2 weeks. Not good!