Living better? Challenge accepted

Did you know there's something called referring spam? I don't understand the whole of it, but from my experience so far it makes it look like you have a ton of pageviews when really NO ONE is looking at it. My ego burst when I realized that, no, it's very unlikely that so many people in Russia and Germany would give a shit what I'm writing about and all these "pageviews" I was suddenly getting were probably due to this random website that kept showing up as a traffic source.

Fuck you referring spam. Instead of 600-plus pageviews, I probably have something closer to like 300. I'm guessing. I hope it's more than that, but truly have no idea because there are rarely comments and I have a grand total of three public followers.

I'm done letting something as ridiculous as pageviews get me down, because that's exactly what happened. Considering my livelihood once came from a byline, I have a tendency to thrive on and feed off of the knowledge someone is reading what I write.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I feel better.



I've been keeping myself busy during my blog hiatus. The girls and I have been getting the yard cleaned up, my hosta are growing, the hyacinth are in bloom, buds on the trees are getting greener by the day and most of my vegetable seeds are now very small versions of the plants they'll become over the next several weeks before I get them in the ground. This is one of my favorite times of the year. It's a new season. It's the rebirth of nature. It's time to shed the winter blues and the weight that came with them.

Along with all this growing and rebirthing and shedding, I've been able to drop a few more pounds by adding more raw veggies and fruits to my diet, and more regular exercise to my week. I truly forgot how amazing salad for dinner can be. It's even more delicious now that I've discovered kale and the rich flavors it adds to a meal. It's officially a staple on my grocery list.

Last week I also discovered one of our local Wegmans stores has a trail mix bar. Heaven for $5.60 a pound. I loaded my little plastic container up with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and almonds. It's turned out to be a great way to snack without that addictive feeling carb-heavy products give me and I have something to put on my salad! While wandering the store I also located chia seeds — one product I was fearful I might have to venture out of my comfort area (ie: the suburbs) to locate. Thank you, Wegmans, for being so awesome all the time. Now, if we could just get a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods in the area ...

While I'm busy pigging out on sliced sweet peppers and various seeds and nuts, my kids have realized they really like smoothies. It started as an experiment. The babies were calm and I was bored, so I grabbed out the Baby Bullet and tossed some frozen fruit in with a fresh banana. Voila! Healthy snack, no preservatives or artificial junk ... and they loved it. I get asked like four times a week for smoothies when I ask the girls what they want for breakfast. I've started adding Greek yogurt, have added frozen spinach (would probably be way better with fresh), some chia seeds. The possibilities are pretty much endless.

I love coffee as my "go to" breakfast because I really don't like food first thing in the morning, but there are a lot of mornings these days that I've gotten half a cup in me and then opted for warm water with half an organic lemon, sliced. It tastes like unsweetened lemonade. Totally in love with the flavor. Warm lemon water is good for detoxifying your body. It's also (when strong enough) really good at helping to open your sinuses. My mom is a hot lemonade drinker when she gets sinus pressure and a lot of times it helps to relieve it before it gets too bad.

My mom was actually drinking hot lemonade yesterday while we were trying to put down some new-to-me carpet. Sometimes I think my parents are super human. Here she was battling the sinus crud when there's man work to be done, and she was happily doing it. We tore out the carpet in the dining room, my dad fixed a hole that was in the floor at the entrance to our bathroom — we've had some serious issues, to say the least, and the more recent of those was the day my still new linoleum in our bathroom tore at the threshold and my foot went through it and damn near into the basement. I haven't exactly been in the best mood since that happened and we just haven't known how to fix it. It's fixed now. And I have graciously repurposed padding and carpet from my parents house.

I kind of like my dining room now. I'm going to paint it, though, because I want to like it more and I could potentially have mad decorating skills hidden deep in my being. I'll consider this a challenge, one I'm ready to tackle.