Posts Tagged ‘surfing’
And then I Fell off the Wagon
Remember the good ole days, surfing in the Pacific, Flying on the Trapeze, and –oh yeah, swearing off desserts and alcohol for 40 days?
Me neither.
It was all wiped from my memory last week, as I drove away from Trader Joe’s with three different desserts on the seat next to me – mini chocolate cheesecakes, dark chocolate pretzels, and shortbread chocolate cookies. Each box opened, each dessert shoveled into my mouth as rapidly as I could manage while keeping the other hand on the steering wheel.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I still don’t really drink alcohol, because – quite simply – I can’t drink alcohol without throwing up or feeling completely shitty the next day, or both. So I get my ‘alcoholic’ sugar the next best way – or the old fashioned way, via ‘actual sugar’ sugar.
Like last night, when it was “my husband’s birthday,” (there’s always an excuse for an addict to get her fix, isn’t there?) and I ate a cupcake. Or two.
Or the day before, when I had chocolate cake and flan because my guests brought it over for lunch. Or the night before that, when I had a slice of disgusting chocolate non-dairy cake because my child was eating it and it looked good, and I couldn’t reconcile the disgusting taste in my mouth with how yummy it looked, until I had already eaten the whole thing.
Pathetic.
I haven’t gone back to my days of ‘chocolate every day,’ but I’m close. I keep thinking I’ll go off desserts again in January – isn’t that what everyone does? New Year’s Resolutions, yada, yada, yada. The truth is… it feels like I don’t want to miss out on all the delicious baked goods of this holiday season, but in my heart of hearts, I know what it REALLY is –
I don’t want to miss out on stuffing my feelings of anxiety (financial, career, life) back into a dark corner while I wait for things to go a little more “my way.”
And a very merry Christmas to you, too!
Sigh…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Evil. Pure, unadulterated, delicious, mouth-watering, chocolate-y, creamy, evil.
ME-cation
What exactly is a “ME-cation,” you probably didn’t ask yourself as you (hopefully) read my last blog, since you probably already sussed it out that it was the brilliant product of combining those two familiar and yet – for parents – often contradictory words, “me” and “vacation.”
Well, since you asked…
A ME-cation is a vacation you take in your own home, with your own kids (some of them, at least). The main two stipulations for a ME-cation are the following: 1. Husband must go out of town to a place where he will be having a great time (so you will not feel guilty on your ME-cation), and 2. You must have a trustworthy nanny and/or babysitter you can hire to work extra hours during the time he is gone.
That’s it! Simple, right? Here are some more great tips:
1. Take private Pilates lessons, twice a week. I recommend Stacey Zimberg, she is incredible.
2. Go to a movie with girlfriends (or, more precisely, with the one girlfriend who sticks by you after the other two bail because the movie is later than you originally thought it would be and they are already tired. It’s okay, I wasn’t mad. They weren’t on a ME-cation, I was!)
a. Make sure that movie is Crazy Stupid Love or at least a fun action adventure or a feel-good romantic comedy, ideally starring Ryan Gosling.
3. Dream about Ryan Gosling. No, seriously, I did have a dream about him. Like, in the morning, while I was still sleeping. Don’t worry, it was G Rated, I love my husband!
4. Talk to your husband (and, in my case, your son) lots of times throughout the day and night on the phone. Feel happy for him/them that they are having a blast, and feel happy for yourself that you are too.
5. Stay up until 1, 2, maybe 3:30am watching Grey’s Anatomy. BECAUSE IT’S CRACK.
6. Go out to drinks and a late dinner at a cool Abbot Kinney restaurant with three awesome girlfriends who you never spend enough time with.
7. Take your daughters on special trips to ice skating, ice cream, and kids’restaurants, for fun “girl time.”
a. Make sure to bring a “mommy friend” or meet friends there so you can have ‘grownup’ talks while the kids have fun! (I told you, this is your ME-cation, woman, who are you, the babysitter??)
8. Don’t cook. Allow your friend to make a full meal for your kids and you, and don’t feel an ounce of guilt as they eat two entire dinners worth of her food in one sitting and remark that it’s “The best food they’ve ever eaten.” Feel the warm glow that happens when your children are well-fed. Who cares who fed them! They ate, and they liked it!
9. Impose upon your excellent cooks/nice/have kids the same age as yours neighbors to host you for two Shabbat lunches in a row.
10. Take a nice long nap after lunch on Shabbat, and don’t worry about your five year old daughter who is playing by herself the whole time you nap. She’s fine.
11. Take the girls swimming in the neighbor’s pool.
12. Make sure your husband’s garden is watered and cared for properly every day (AKA have the nanny do it on all days you are ‘unavailable’).
a. Pick the cucumbers that are ripe and get prickly fuzz all over your arms and be happy about it “because it’s not always easy taking care of things while he’s gone.”
13. Go surfing!
That’s about it, folks! Now go book your spouse that flight…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Long Live the Go-Go's!
SURFING AND A NEW RESOLUTION
WOW. This past Monday. What a day. I was blissed out, flying high…
The day didn’t start out fantastic. In fact, I was criticized by an authority figure (who will remain anonymous here) whose opinion greatly matters to me in front of a large group of people (whose opinions also matter to me). And he didn’t just criticize, he used a biblical reference as a METAPHOR to criticize me.
If you must know, he likened me to one of the spies who Moses sent to Israel to check things out & who came back & reported to Moses that Israel was a dangerous & negative place (NOT one of the righteous people Moses sent (like Joshua) who came back seeing only Israel’s potential).
Ouch.
That afternoon, in an arguably related incident, I wolfed down a foot long mayonnaise SUBWAY sandwich (okay, fine, technically it was tuna, though I challenge you to actually find the tuna swimming in all that mayo), followed by a chocolate brownie AND a chocolate cupcake, neither of which I was really into, and all of which, gave me heartburn. Fantastic.
But.
Then I went surfing. Or, to be more precise, I went for my first surf lesson. This has long been a dream of mine – to be able to skateboard and to be able to surf. I still can barely even navigate on a scooter – my son’s scooter, I might add, which he can basically do upside-down blindfolded wheelies on, and I practically topple over the minute I’m two feet off the ground.
But… the ocean… I’ve always loved the ocean. Love love love it. And although it’s true, I live in Los Angeles… I also live in Los Angeles. Meaning, I technically live in a beach city, yet for all practical purposes I’ve probably been in the ocean once in the entire past year. What? That’s how we roll, over here in the City of Angels.
So when an acquaintance – actually one of the “Fitness Experts” who writes for the online magazine I oversee (www.NetworkTalentCommunity.com) – offered to teach me to surf, I jumped. Plus my husband was still out of town (translation: Me Time). The waves were small (and perfect for a beginner), the crowd was just a smattering of a few surfers (again, perfect), and Blue (my Expert, Blue Benadum) had even invited his photographer friend John to come along & shoot photos of my attempt to learn to surf.
All in all, I found paddling harder than standing up. There is a lot of paddling in surfing. Let’s face it, “surfing” means “paddling” with a few lucky ‘standups’ in between all the paddling. Which actually was fine with me, until Blue let it slip that the “cool” way to paddle on a longboard wasn’t to lie on your tummy and stroke with your arms (what I was comfortable doing) – it was to be up on my knees and to blade the water with my arms.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Once I was in the right position, though, the “standing up” part came pretty quick. (Though perhaps I should add “staying up” to that list of what is hard.) I actually managed to stand up twice, and considering there weren’t so many ‘usable’ waves within the hour+ that we were out there, I was pretty stoked!
The. Coolest. Day. Ever.
Um, yeah, the surfer language rubbed off on me too. As did the inspiration of the ocean. Because…
While I was out there, sitting in my wet suit on my surfboard in the vast beautiful ocean, I made up my mind to stop eating sugar – ALL PROCESSED SUGAR – for the next 40 days. Yup, that includes chocolate. Alcohol too BTW, just because my body seems to hate it; I have a half glass of wine and the next day my stomach is bloated like I’m 5 months pregnant.
It made sense to me – 40 days is the amount of time, Kabbalistically speaking, it takes to get over an addiction or a pattern of behavior. Plus that amount of time would be enough to really show me if the sugar does or does not affect my body, my moods, and my energy levels.
PLUS, I could write about it. And struggle on those days that all I want and all I obsess about is a bite (or more) of cake/cookie/chocolate.
Because sometimes struggling is good for the soul.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)