I just have a single quote for today but as before, check out Toni’s blog for more Quotable Sunday contributions.

"Bad habits are easy to start, but they make your life miserable. Good habits are hard to start, but they make your life wonderful."
     — Joel Osteen

I’ve joined the Shredheads and have been paired with the wonderful (but blogless) Laura. Our jobs are to workout and to encourage each other. I’m rooting for Laura (and she for me) but I’m having a hard time rooting for myself. I think that’s partly (mostly?) because I know my history with exercise. I also think that other areas of my life are very much playing into my attitude about my health and exercise. For example, my sewing room is unusable. It is packed full of things - items moved there from the living room while the laminate was being put down and the numerous large clear plastic tubs full of fabric and yarn which have already been purged once yet need it again to further reduce the volume. This room needs to be restored to a usable state for a few reasons (maybe for sewing?), including the fact that I will be having a closet added to the back entrance, which will require a wall being built straight across the end of the sewing room about two or three feet deep. This is stressing me a little. Or a lot. It seems overwhelming to get it from the state it’s currently in to the state it needs to be in. And then there’s the kitchen, which is currently still in a state of disarray (though I did get the bottom cabinet doors on tonight). There’s so much to do in there and it won’t get better for a few weeks yet (new paint on the walls, building a wall, and the building of the closet adjacent to the kitchen).

There is also another area where there is much need for organization and prioritizing: meals, specifically the way that I eat. I don’t eat badly but nor do I eat great. My cupboards are essentially free of junky and unhealthy foods, however that doesn’t mean that I make smart choices. I still find myself ordering in Chinese and pizza when I wait to eat supper with my boyfriend when he gets off work. I still grab subs and Chinese at work on my night shifts. And I still give in to the chocolate bar basket at work (proceeds of the sales go to local charities) when I find myself bored with what I’m doing. I need to change my eating. I have all the makings of clean eating in my cupboards, what I need is the drive and stick-to-it to carry it out. Tomorrow, I plan to pick up one of the clean eating books sitting with my cookbooks and begin reading from the beginning.

That is the plan for tomorrow. To begin, with one step, the journey of decluttering my life and finding a balance instead.

Last night I decided to make my mom’s beef stew for supper tonight so on my way to bed I sat some stewing beef out of the freezer. This morning I browned the meat, chopped the veggies, and threw it all in the slow cooker. I didn’t have a can of soup on hand so I used a small can of tomato paste instead and roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of Diana Sauce brand barbeque sauce. I had planned to have my boyfriend and his daughter over for supper but his parents came into town today to do a bit of shopping and my mom was over here painting baseboards (thanks, Mom!) so I had my boyfriend pick up some cobs of corn and a salad and we all sat down to a dinner of stew, corn, salad, fresh bread (we ate the entire loaf), and some wonderful-good blueberry-cherry cobbler (I traded the raspberries for cherries) made with fresh fruit. I was quite the little Suzy Homemaker today.

Photo recycled from a previous post

After preparing the cherries for the cobbler, I kept going while waiting for the corn to cook and chopped up the rest of the cherries in preparation for a small batch of Cherry-Raspberry Jam. The recipe says it yields eight jars but I only ended up with five and one that isn’t quite full. The part jar will go in my fridge tonight to be tested out at breakfast.

As I was posting today on Facebook, a friend commented that my food posts always make her hungry and "I love your lifestyle". She’s previously commented similarly on my "lifestyle" and it made me wonder today, along with feeling very good and very humbled, what exactly is my lifestyle. There are definitely people that I admire who practice or aspire to practice frugality, simplicity, and responsibility with the things around them in their journey here on earth but  to have someone comment on me and say that they admire my lifestyle… It rather blows my mind. I’m nowhere near where I’d like to be or where I feel I should be.

This week’s contribution to Quotable Sunday (hosted over at Toni’s blog) relates to having an impression on others:

"Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent."
     — the Dalai Lama

"A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed."
     — Henrik Ibsen

"Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like."
     — Will Smith

"I’ve reached a point in life where it’s no longer necessary to try to impress. If they like me the way I am, that’s good. If they don’t, that’s too bad."
     — Corazon Aquino

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means."
     — Calvin Coolidge

Another Sunday, another Quotable Sunday hosted by Toni. Head on over and read up on some great fun, though-provoking, and inspirational quotes. On this, the first day of several with a forecast of rain (and as I head to the couch for a nap before night shift), I offer up a few rain-related quotes for your reading pleasure.

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.
     — Frank Howard Clark

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger.
     — Saint Basil

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps for gladness.
     — Anonymous

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
     — Hugh Latimer

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
     — John Updike

The sun is shining in a brilliant blue sky here today and, knowing I had to nap this afternoon for night shift, I took advantage of the weather this morning and topped up my potato bed. This is my first year planting potatoes here and I created a semi-raised bed framed on all sides and sunk into the ground to house the plants. I mentioned before (here and here) about the bed and how I wasn’t sure how it  would do but it seems to be quite happy. It sits in shade for the morning, getting dappled sunlight around noon and early afternoon and then receives a bit more sun mid and late afternoon into early evening. I have three plants that are really taking off, poking up within a day or so through each new layer of growing mix that I put down (I’m using this method). Today I noticed four new sprouts with tiny leaves and was loathe to cover them but I’m optimistic now that all of the potatoes planted will send up shoots that find their way to the surface and become healthy, happy plants. I had previously been worried that only the three thriving plants were going to grow as they were the only ones I could see. If I gently dug down into the dirt I was able to find sprouts from other potatoes but nothing that looked promising. Now I just have to sit and wait.

The rhubarb patch is also thriving. This spring I moved it from a full sun location just inside the fence by the driveway and placed it at the back of the yard, also against the fence, in a location that, like the potato bed, only starts receiving sun partway through the day. I moved the frame that had been around the patch in its original location and took it to the new spot. I also took some of the soil but filled in most of the new patch (which I dug deeper and sunk the frame into the ground a little) with the same mix as my raised gardens and the potato bed, equal parts of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost/manure. My rhubarb bed was happy last year but this year he is ecstatic. I think I have a batch of blueberry-rhubarb jam calling my name and begging to be made. Strawberry-rhubarb would be wonderful but I have a bag of frozen blueberries as well as two containers of fresh. (That’s a jar of blueberry-rhubarb jam in the middle of the trio in my header.)

For all the thriving being done by my potatoes and rhubarb, however, my beans are not faring so well. There are a few plants in the garden that are going to need some attention (from me, not the bugs who are already paying attention to them) and some re-planting, but the beans are what I noticed today.

I have two rows of 10 plants, I think, and it’s only the 5x2 block closest to the side of the bed that seems to be affected. So far. I noticed a dead ladybug-looking insect on the dirt right between the two plants shown above. Is he the culprit? He was a darker red, almost brown, with dark orange spots that looked more like o’s (they weren’t solid circles). When I google, it’s highly likely that he’s some type of bean beetle. Maybe I’ll have to move one of my borage plants closer to the beans and also a rosemary, since those are supposed to help. And marigolds can’t hurt either. I also have something that is lopping off my bok choy leaves at dirt level (a cut worm?) and just leaving them laying there. And something is eating a hole out of my watermelon leaves, leaving just a rim all the way around. Gardening is such a frustrating learning experience.

It’s Sunday and therefore Quotable Sunday over at Toni’s blog. Today’s quotes are garden-related because it’s only fitting.

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
     — Hanna Rion

Weather means more when you have a garden.  There’s nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.
     — Marcelene Cox

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence.
     — Benjamin Disraeli

It is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about gardening.  You have got to love your garden whether you like it or not.
     — W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, Garden Rubbish, 1936

It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience.  It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn’t a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong?  Maybe nothing.
     — Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981

The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.
     — Author Unknown

As I consider moving B and I to an almost entirely whole foods and made-from-scratch diet, eliminating the remaining things in our current diet like breakfast cereal and bottled salad dressings, I’ve been doing some reading on the subject. My quotes tonight for Quotable Sunday reflect that.

"Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these."
     — Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.
     — La Rochefoucauld

"Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food."
     — Hippocrates

Off to bed. Lots to do and think about tomorrow. I’ll be over to Toni’s blog in the morning to check out the other quotes posted.

Over the past two years, I have accumulated and maintained an extra 15 pounds on my frame. My normal and healthy weight for my small frame is around 110 pounds. These 15 extra pounds feel absolutely awful on me and the look of my stomach, butt, and thighs (which is where the majority of my weight goes) makes me feel even more awful. I cannot squeeze into my "old" clothes at all and feel awful in the clothes I do have. I do not like my body as it is and I do not want to learn to like it. There is no good reason for it to be the way that it is. About a year before the first pounds started creeping up, I spontaneously quit a 3-day-a-week gym habit. I did not enjoy the gym but it had become routine - on my days off I would drop B at daycare for the morning, go to the gym at work, do my workout, and be back home within an hour or an hour and a half. And I felt great once I was done - energized and healthy. And the things it did for my body - I loved that about it.

I have tried to maintain a workout routine at home a couple of times since then but have always let it slide until I had given it up entirely. I posted a few weeks ago on my Facebook that I would love to find a trainer. Not at the gym since I don’t want to get another membership; I wouldn’t be able to go often enough or regularly enough to make it worth the cost, especially considering that I’m trying to cut expenses and save money. I know a trainer would be expensive. I haven’t looked into it yet though to see just how much it will cost. I’m thinking of someone that I could meet with once or twice a week for help and accountability, someone who will meet me at the park or waterfront or in my own backyard to do walking lunges, dips on a bench, sprints up the hill, and that sort of thing.

In the meantime, I’m planning to embark on a journey of better eating. I don’t eat junk food for the most part and don’t stock any in the house as B can’t handle artificial colours, flavours, or preservatives but there are still less-than-healthy choices in my cupboards. I do try to cook from scratch using whole foods and on any given day it is difficult to open a cupboard and grab a ready-to-go snack. Which is good. I like that if I want to eat from boredom I usually have to prepare something. What I’m planning (that word sounds a little more decisive than "hoping") to do is eat more salads and measure (whether physically or by eyeballing) portions since I know that I, and we as a society, eat portions that are grossly beyond what they should be. In the past I have brought lettuce and salad fixings home from the grocery store and had them sit until they rotted. I’m planning to have carrots julienned or chopped, cucumbers on hand, grape tomatoes at the ready (and once my garden yields fruit, cherry tomatoes too), so all I have to do is grab a romaine heart and chop it into a bowl. More salad, less main course. I also plan to use more recipes from my Clean Eating magazines and cookbooks.

I will say honestly that I’m not sure how this will go. Will I do well for a week or two or even three and then peter out? It’s possible. Do I plan to try anyway? Absolutely. One day at a time towards a better body image and a healthier me.

To want to be, that is not enough. To know how to be, that is too little. To want, to know how, to determined to be, that is the way of all successful men. Primary to all of these is self-honesty You can cheat others, now and then. You can rarely cheat yourself. You can never cheat nature.
     — John B. Lust

When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no "I’ll start tomorrow." Tomorrow is disease.
     — V. L. Allineare

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
     — John F. Kennedy

If you’re interested in some other great quotes, head over to Toni’s blog and check out Mr. Linky.

Simple thoughts on happiness, today, for Quotable Sunday:

"The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being happy except that they are so."
        ~ Dr. David Ralph Inge 

"Act the way you want to feel."

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."
        ~ Helen Keller

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine."
        ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is a choice.

I’ve just finished reading the book, The Explosive Child, by Ross Greene. If the whole book could be summed up in a single sentence, it would be this:

"Children do well if they can."

Short, simple, and accurate. And something that is very close to home tonight. I love my child, I love my child, I love my child…

Enjoy Quotable Sunday by heading over to Toni’s blog and checking out a few more blogs.

Today’s quotes come from a friend’s Facebook profile, where she has them posted. I love them and have added them to my iGoogle page.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
     ~ Goethe

Happiness is a choice. Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

As I strive to live a more simple and aware life and as I seek to be more responsible with what I have been blessed with, both of these quotes speak to me. Such simple and beautiful truths, that I would do well to remember in everything.