2. Still smoky. And that's all I have to say about that. We had a spectacularly beautiful July! Positive thinking!
Not the greatest picture and she wasn't happy about posing
but I couldn't call this "dog days of summer" without a dog photo, right?
3. I've become a PB&J snob, of all things. I grind my own peanut butter at a health food store, and I find small-batch all-fruit jams and preserves. Lord knows why, but gourmet PB&J is making me happy at the moment. If I keep the serving size reasonable, it's actually a relatively healthy choice, especially since I'm trying to eat more plant-based foods.
4. I took the University of Pennsylvania Authentic Happiness Inventory after reading about it in The Week. It's available for free but you have to create an account with your email address. I listed myself as a homemaker since I'm not working at the moment and I don't really feel retired. Based on the wording of the questions, I suspect that we don't entirely agree about what constitutes "happiness," so I knew I wasn't going to come out in the upper echelons of happiness. But what surprised me is that even with my unremarkable score, I still scored above most homemakers. FFT.*
*food for thought ;-) In fact, I've had lots of food for thought on the happiness topic recently. I've been hesitant to post too much about it because if there's anything worse than only presenting your best self (one of the main gripes you hear about social media), it's only presenting your worst self. I'm working on finding the balance. If you want to chime in on what works for you as a reader, I would love some feedback.
5. If you want to be really depressed about how much you've aged in the past ten years, go get your passport renewal photos. GAWD. They're horrible. I thought the ones from ten years ago were bad, but these are way worse, because surprise! we're ten years older. MadMax was trying to make me feel better by telling me, No, it's a great picture, and it was all I could do not to yell at him: DO NOT TELL ME I LOOK LIKE THIS. In spite of the fact that it is photographic evidence that I do look like this. *sigh*
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| mug shots of Ma and Pa Kettle |
The rest of this is about my current round of working on health/fitness/weight loss so stop now if that's a topic that doesn't interest you.
6. I told you at the beginning of the summer that I had gained back some of the weight I lost when I did Weight Watchers a couple of years ago, but I really did not want to get back into WW. So I was going to wing it over the summer and do my own program. I've been fairly active, but for the most part I've eaten whatever I wanted, so I was avoiding weighing myself because it was bound to be scary. But I finally did it last week, and to my surprise, I hadn't gained any weight (which is what I was afraid of), but I hadn't lost any either. Not the outcome I wanted, but I was so relieved that I hadn't gained even more weight that I'm counting it as a win.
7. So now I'm looking around for something, some kind of app or real-life program or whatever, that isn't too onerous but that will both help me keep track of how I'm doing and maybe nudge me a little to be more active. I tried an app called Noom, but it required too much time on my phone--there were daily motivational videos and quizzes, check-ins with your coach, being part of a support team, and logging food and exercise. I'm currently trying Verv. So far I'm happier with it, but it's been less than a week. One thing I know: I don't want to track every bite of food I put in my mouth. (And after eight days on Noom, I remembered why-- because after a few days, I get so annoyed I just stop doing it.) If you have any suggestions, let me know.
That's it for me. Have a great weekend!
(p.s. the rest of the "Types" posts are still coming, but I've been too busy this week to write them out.)
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