A Healthy Perspective

…you gotta brand new key

It’s a known fact that you can never be too old for a good old fashioned slumber party.

My three closest friends since childhood came into Brooklyn for a sleepover Friday.  It was a perfect night of junk food, movies, and the kind of comfort that only comes from being with the people you love most in life.  Saturday we walked around Brooklyn and celebrated the first almost warm day in months, and had the best cheeseburger I have ever had in life.  It was just such an easy happiness.

I had recently read a chapter in The Happiness Project about buying happiness.  The idea that there are things that can actually add happiness to your life.  I can honestly say that since I bought my KitchenAid Mixer I truly have every thing I really want in life.  Not everything, but certainly every object.  The things I still aspire to have tend to be more about achievement and experiences, not so much something I can own and hold.

This is not  a rant on materialism.  I like stuff, but I generally don’t covet stuff.  So, I thought pretty hard about the idea of buying happiness.  I was so happy when I bought my mixer.  Quite a few times have I looked at it and thought “I’ve made it”, yet I hardly use it.  So, Saturday morning I woke up before my friends, because well, I wake up before everyone as a general rule, and used my mixer to make pancake batter.  I could have had way less cleanup had I used my handmixer, but I wanted to enjoy my money.  Money can buy happiness, especially when it allows you to do something you love–which for me is to cook for other people.

I’ve been thinking about what other purchase could make me happy in the future.  I still put away $10 a week toward splurges and have a decent amount of money in there now, with no real thought on what to use it for.  I think I’ve decided…

I’m going to buy a pair of roller skates.  Not now, perhaps when it gets closer to  summer.  When I was a kid I loved roller skating and my family used to go to a rink near our house all the time.  A few years ago, as I was looking through childhood pictures I noticed that my dad was in almost all of them…skating behind me.  It’s not something I ever noticed as a kid, but when I asked my mom about it she said that he used to skate behind me to make sure no one knocked me down.  I think that’s both hilarious (because my dad is kind of a big burly fellow) and just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.

Just thinking about roller skating makes me smile.  So, for my next happiness related purchase I’m going to invest in a pair of skates.  Who knows, perhaps it’ll become my new favorite exercise.

Speaking of exercise…Monday is generally yoga class night in my schedule, but tonight I really just didn’t want to leave home.  For the time being I am lucky enough to have an almost empty room in my apartment that serves as my office and exercise room.  Instead of class I set up a yoga studio at home: turned down the lights, lit candles, and played my favorite yoga DVD.  The best part…I could make savasana last as long as I wanted.  It was glorious.

Do you have any purchases, either made or intended, that are geared solely at making you happy?

Breakfast

Kashi Heart to Heart with strawberries and 1% milk

Snack

Babybel Cheddar

Lunch

Salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, kalamata olives, feta and lite Caesar dressing
2 clementines

Dinner

Grilled chicken (marinated in Soyaki sauce), brown rice, and brocolli

wine

Kim

The simple things

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Woops, bad blogger!  I’ve had a busy couple of days.  Good busy, but busy and had to put The Kim Challenge on the back burner for a minute.  I don’t want to sound completely insane, which often I do, but I really feel like when you decide what you really want, the universe sort of helps you get it.  There’s definitely something to positive energy.  I’m not going to go into specifics, but there are just a lot of little things in my career and personal life that have just started to fall into place in the last week and it feels good.

I’ve been working on the big things in my life: career, outlook, getting to that happy-body place, but there are all these other things that make me happy that I don’t ever really cop to.  I’m not sure why, perhaps because they seem simple, or self indulgent, but why not?  So, whenever my mind is about to go to a dark place I start thinking about what I want, what makes me happy for no other reason than it just does.  Here’s the list I’m working with so far:

• I love cardigans. They’re like the security blanket of clothes.
• I prefer local trains over express.  More seating and more reading time.  I’ve given up my express train in the morning and opted for a less stressful ride into work.
• I love sleeping alone; all the pillows, all the blankets, the ability to sleep diagonally.  Now that I’m single again I don’t have to feel guilty about hogging the blankets.
• I actually need to be the center of attention sometimes.  I’m going to stop fading into the background when I need the spotlight.  Luckily, one of my editors helped me a long with that this week by publishing this.  Seeing everything I’ve done in the last couple of years made me feel really confident.
• If it were socially acceptable I would wear a towel or robe all the time.  It’s not socially acceptable but since I currently live alone I can lounge around in a towel to my hearts content.

What little things make you happy that you never really think about or tell anyone?

As per usual for me, my fridge was lacking which made for quite the hodge-podge of eating Thursday:

Breakfast

Whole grain bagel with reduced fat cream cheese
Tea

Lunch

A motley lunch of refrigerator strays:
Activia peach yogurt
Babybel Cheddar
Hard boiled egg

Dinner

Tonight I decided to splurge on some of my favorite unhealthy takeout items.
Wanton soup and chicken wings.
So bad, but soooo good.

Kim

Stop…Puppytime

And now it’s time for a completely random memory: A couple of years ago I was walking around lower Manhattan on my lunch break thinking about puppies.

Yes, that is lame, but it’s true.  I like puppies, they’re cute.

This isn’t a regular habit I’m in, but on this particular day someone had sent me some sort of adorable video of puppies playing and I was thinking about it and smiling uncontrollably, I may have even laughed a little.

A man came up to me and actually commented on how nice it was to see someone smiling.

I internalized that moment, probably because it was both heartwarming and a little sad.  I thought about the fact that I spend much of my life walking around with bitchface on.  Bitchface is sometimes necessary but I’d prefer it weren’t my default face.

Today I decided to ditch bitchface and get my puppyface back on.  I decided to smile for the sake of smiling, not a creepy toothy grin that encourages to people to cross the street to avoid the crazy lady, but just a little upturn to my mouth.

Don’t you know I was really happy today.  I genuinely felt more optimistic.  I’m not going to say it was easy to keep up the facade, I had to consciously remind myself to get smiley but by the end of the day, I was actually thinking happier thoughts and it wasn’t so much work any more.  Also,  I felt like people were nicer to me in general.  And…my appetite finally started to show it’s  face.  I think I may be on to something.  Or, I’m crazy.

Tonight I’m breaking one of my monthly resolutions not to work at night, but only tonight.  I have an assignment I’ve been procrastinating on finishing for weeks and well I just need to get it done…so tonight I’m forgoing my previously scheduled jog to get this nagging interview off my conscious.  I guess I can’t smile my way out of my responsibilities…

Breakfast

Smoothie with almond milk, strawberries, banana and protein powder

Snack

Babybel Cheddar

Lunch

Salad with mustard greens, cucumber, tomato, avocado, tuna
Lemon vinaigrette
Orange

Dinner

Udon noodles soup with baby bok choy, and shrimp

Kim

The Happiness Project

Oooh, oooh, look at me I’m famous!  Okay, not really, but I was interviewed for a piece on time management for Shine.

Yesterday was one of those days where it felt like the entire world conspired to tell me something, or perhaps I was just ready to listen.  Over my lunch break I picked up a new book, to go with this month’s resolutionary theme. I picked up The Happiness Project.  I’m only 70-pages in, but so far, I’m in love with it.  On my way back from yoga last night I hit the section where the writer, who was once a lawyer, talked to her sister about giving up law and pursuing a career in writing.

She says she’s always struggled to feel legitimate, to seem legitimate and writing isn’t really legitimate. I totally get it, I’ve always felt this inner battle with myself to prove to the world that I’m a highly educated, intelligent, capable person yet my passion has always been in the creative…a realm not entirely appreciated for those aspects.  I’m with the author, while I didn’t go to law school, I was very close to going, weeks away actually when I was offered the job hosting The Daily Special.

I guess, the truth is, I don’t know who I’m trying to be legitimate for, my family and friends have always supported my pursuing creative careers and really, does anyone else matter?

The book is great, I recommend it so far and it made me want to add a few more resolutions to the month:

• Sleep
• Smile
• Do it (meaning, get things done instead of procrastinating).

I hit up my yoga class, which was probably the best yoga class of my life.  It felt amazing and the theme of the night was about taking our biggest flaw and finding the positives in it.  I like to harp on my flaws so this seemed to fit in well with my personality.  So as we breathed through hard positions, we thought about the positives behind our own personal demons.

One of my biggest flaws has always been my never ending ability to make everything my fault.  Whenever I’ve been hurt emotionally, or something bad happens to me or the people around me I somehow morph the situation into my fault.  This drives my mother crazy because she’s pretty sure she gave birth to a perfect specimen.  And well, honestly, as all-powerful as I am, things aren’t always my fault, sometimes other people are to blame…intellectually I know that, emotionally I’m still working on it.

As I meditated, literally, on it I realized that this fault comes from my desire to always see the best in other people.  I want the world to be good and for people to be good. That’s actually not a terrible fault.  Of course, it can be detrimental to my mental health, but I’m working on it.  It’s actually quite selfish to take responsibility for everyone else’s shortcomings.

On to the food:

Breakfast

Oatmeal with reduced fat sour cream

Lunch

Leftover kale & white bean soup (finally, the end of it)
Orange

Dinner

1/4 cup mixed nuts

This wasn’t intended to be dinner, it was intended to be a snack pre-yoga, but when I got home from class I was too tired to eat.  I understand I haven’t been eating enough lately.  I’m working on it, I’m just battling one of those “no appetite” periods.  They don’t happen often in my life but when they do I have a lot of trouble eating enough.

Kim

March Resolutions

I just love it when the first of the month starts on a Monday, it always feels like a double whammy in the fresh start department.

I’m feeling good about March.  If February was the month of Body Love, well then March is the month of life luvin’.  As is the general theme of my blog these days, I’ve decided to do away with those things in my life that make me unhappy.  Life is too short to spend it wishing you were being a different version of yourself.  That doesn’t make it any less intimidating though; taking any sort of big life gamble is always scary.  So, this month I’m splitting my resolutions between immediate gratification happy-times and those things that will help me achieve my ultimate goals.

Before we get  to March, here’s a recap of February.  All in all it was pretty successful:

I ended February 10lbs lighter than I started it; not in the most healthy of senses but I look damn good naked now so I’ll take it.  My goal is to take the craptitude of my appetite at the end of last month and turn it into a positive jump start on a happier place with my body for the rest of 2010.

I slept, a lot, maybe more than is healthy but let me just say my skin looks fabulous…this sleep thing is pretty awesome.

I definitely upped my mileage and time and the gym in anticipation of my March 28^th 4-mile race in Central Park.

I cut the sugar, this one took a little longer than I intended to get a hold on, but by the end of the month even sour gummy worms (my kryptonite) were of no interest to me.

As for protein, I have no idea if my quantities were higher, but I certainly don’t think they were lacking.

February, good month, now on to an even better month March.

• Book my dance card.  No more putting work before life.  Why work so much if I’m not going to enjoy the life I’m living.  I’ve been working pretty hard at filling up my calendar with time with friends and family.
• Get serious about saving.  My plan to quit my job may not happen till Summer time.  I’m trying to do things the smart way and pad my savings before taking the leap.  Of course, the sooner I save up oodles of cash the sooner I can say sayonara to my jobby-job.
• Transition to outdoor running.  I’ve made this a resolution before and I NEVER do it.  I just really, really like treadmills, they’re so soft and bouncy.  Seeing as how I’m running a race at the end of the month that does not happen on a treadmill I need to start conditioning myself for the great outdoors.  This may not happen till mid-month, NYC is still an icy tundra right now. Okay so this isn’t ‘Happy Times’ but it’s necessary.
• Get pretty.  Okay, that’s not self-depreciating,  I think I’m of the fairly attractive sort, what I mean by this is put a little more effort into my appearance on a daily basis.  I’ve always been a bit lazy about things like make-up and hair but when I do them I feel a million times better about myself.  I think it’s time I start arming myself with that sort of confidence on a daily basis.
• No more working at night.  My schedule has been insane lately; I get up way before dawn, work, go to work, come home, work and go to the gym.  It’s way too much.  From now on, I’m going to schedule my mornings so that I get everything I need done in the A.M. so that when I leave work at night I’m free to sleep, vegetate, workout or hang out with friends.  No more living without down time!

Of all my monthly resolutions I think this month is one of my more ambitious.  It’s always hard to put oneself first, but I’m determined to find an equilibrium.

What are you resolving this month?

Kim

What are “letil gairles”?

Well it looks like someone, somewhere was getting a lot more action than I am.  Yesterday, someone stumbled upon my blog by Googling:

“strang sex with letil gairles sex tube”

I don’t even know what that means but it sounds very adventuresome.  It always amuses me the keyword searches that lead people to this little blog of mine.

Friday was a snow day for me, and it was spent like any good snow day should be spent when not having “strang sex with letil gairles sex tube”.  Which probably won’t happen for a while…or well, ever.

I spent the morning curled up on the couch watching as much Jane Austen themed movies I could get my lovelorn hands on.  Sigh, that Jane Austen sure knows how to woo  a girl.  Seriously swoony.  I totally recommend Lost in Austen, for those Pride and Prejudice fans.  Except of course, that I just read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and kept expecting the Bennett girls to break into roundhouse kicks.

I’m a total closet romantic.  Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone I have a reputation to protect.

Once I got word that the trains were working a-okay I headed out to visit the family for some good ole fashioned family bonding. My dad, who works for the school system, had a snow day too!  It felt like being a kid again.  I had a little friend bonding time with the BFF and then headed home for some TLC.

Yay for work getting cancelled.

Here’s the food rundown:

Breakfast

Whole grain & reduced

Lunch

My new favorite food combo:
Avocado, veggie burger, fried egg doused with hot sauce

Dinner

My mom made my favorite soup:
Homemade French onion soup

Happy weekend everyone!

Kim

Wishing Chelsea Handler were my BFF

Happy Birthday Chelsea Handler.  Today is her birthday, I know this because I was internet stalking her today.

This all started yesterday when I hit up my local book store to trade in books.  I had been reading a ginormous book about the intricate and oft contradictory relationships between Israelis and Palestinians.  This just needed to go.

You see…I work for an Israel based non-profit, that I hate.  I just broke up with an Israeli man, that I don’t hate but certainly don’t have any interest in being reminded of on my commute to and from work everyday, and it is exactly one year since I went to Israel and have been getting emails and pictures all week from my Israel travel companions who are all super psyched and can’t wait to go back!

In a word: done.  I have reached my Holy Land threshold.

So, off to Border’s I went in search of a book that would neither remind me of Israel, work, or anything to do with romance, I stumbled on Chelsea Handler’s memoir about her extremely active sex life,  My Horizontal Life.

I’m in love with her.  I have always had a little girl-crush on her and when producers of the Daily Special and I would get together to talk about what the show could become I would often reference her show ‘Chelsea Lately’.  Truth be told though, I could never be like her.  I’m just not crass enough.  My humor, while a special-snowflake, is of the more self-depreciating nature while she is just delightfully uncouth.  She’s also way more promiscuous than I can ever imagine being, or well, have time for…and I think it’s kind of awesome.

The book I’m reading has nothing to do with love, but has everything to do with sex.  I am so enthralled with her, I keep chuckling aloud on the subway which always inspires confused looks by strangers.  What is that strange sound she’s making?!

Anyhoo, I take it as a sign that I was Googling Chelsea Handler on her birthday (which is silly because of course people Google her everyday–including her day of birth).  A sign that I need to get focused on getting back in the comedy scene, so while I’m still over-employed I’m going to sign up for more improv classes, it’s time to dust off those comedy chops.  I have a friend, a stand-up,  who has been trying to get me to give stand-up a whirl for well over a year now, he wrote to me earlier this week about grabbing dinner next week–maybe it’s time for a some buffalo wings and brain picking.

Mmm.  Buffalo wings.  My stomach was way better today.  I could eat meals!  Real ones, with food!

Breakfast

Smoothie with kefir, banana & peach slices

Lunch

Yup, still eating that soup.
Kale & white bean soup.

Dinner

Steamed zucchini
Strip steak with blue cheese (I had left over cheese, it seemed like a good idea and it was).

Kim

From the mouth of a babe

Cuteness Alert: On the subway home from work today there was a 4-year-old-ish girl who used “inadvertently” correctly in a sentence, which made me smile uncontrollably.  Then, as we left the station she held the door for like 15-people until her father said she didn’t have to hold it for everyone, just the next person after her.  I’m not usually an “awww, cute kids” type of girl, in fact, I’m not 100% sure that procreation is in my future, but if I do have kids one day, I want them to be just like her.  I’m a sucker for an impressive vocabulary.

Okay, I just had to share that, it MADE my day.

While I have acknowledged that it will take me a few months to kiss my day job goodbye (being responsible is such a drag) the whole place has become much more bearable now that I know that it’s not a permanent part of my life.

Today, as it was told to us that we were going to be more micro-managed than we already are (and believe me if they could send someone to accompany us to the ladies room and wipe for us without getting sued, they would), I just laughed.  My poor co-worker on the other hand almost started crying.

I told her we could quit together, but alack, she likes the security of having a steady income.  From this moment on I have to keep a log of my work, every minute of everyday.  Who knew there were billable hours at non-profits?  A sure sign a company is going down the tubes is when they start looking for people that aren’t working every second of every day.  Who doesn’t take a little Facebook break once in awhile?

Is it wrong that I secretly hope that I get laid off?  Ahhh, unemployment checks, those were the days.

I remember back in the day (this summer) while I was on unemployment the state made me go to an employment counselor who told me I should be a Kindergarten teacher.  I tried to explain that I’m not really a kid person to no avail.  Week after week this guy would try and convince me a career in early childhood education was my mission in life..until he looked at my blogs.  Then, very surprisingly, he told me that I need to keep doing what I’m doing and find a way to make it work.

A very smart man that unemployment counselor (minus the Kindergarten teacher thing), I should have listened to him from the get-go.

My stomach wasn’t awesome today, but it was a lot better than yesterday.  I was going to go to the gym, but I figured I’d wait till tomorrow to test my luck.

Breakfast

Apple sauce

Chocolate milk

Lunch

Brown rice California roll

Dinner

Left over kale and white bean soup

Kim

Doppelgänger Stomach Flu

Oy.  Yesterday.

I ended up staying home from work yesterday with tummy issues.  Seriously, between breakup-belly and the stomach flu I’ve lost 9lbs in the last week.  This is not healthy, do not try this at home.  I do not condone eating like me at this particular moment in life.

I woke up yesterday, ate breakfast felt sick immediately and forced some apple sauce down my throat later in the day so I wouldn’t pass out at my audition.  The audition was fun, easy-peasy.  It was more commercial than theatrical.  I was labelled “attractive girl” and had no lines (I didn’t know that until I got there and looked at the sides), I was partnered with “stalking girl” who was supposed to look at me all creepy and make me uncomfortable, then come up to me and say “Have I got a guy for you!”

Ha, I told my mom and she said “Did you lose it?”  I’d just been going on about how I need to actively take a vacation from the dating world.  I needed to deal with whatever guilt/anger I felt about Achilles, and not rebound.  I have this habit of rebounding immediately when a relationship ends because it’s nice to feel pretty and wanted, it’s bad, I’m not doing it this time.   So, the fact that my first audition in a while was about a woman coming up and saying “Have I got a man for you!” was kind of ironic.  The universe definitely has a sense of humor.

Did I get it?  Who knows?  It went well, but this was way more about look than acting skill, we shall see.  Honestly I’m more psyched to get back in the game.

So yeah, my day yesterday consisted of me sitting around feeling sorry for myself, not eating.  Then putting on a little black dress I had bought for a date that didn’t happen a few months ago, and I looked AMAZING in it.  Even one of the girls at the audition said “You should wear that dress everyday.”  That made me feel good, I guess the stomach flu is good for something.  Then I came back home and went to bed at 5pm!   I’m so lame, and so hungry…why won’t my body let me eat things?

In my boredom I decided to do my doppelgänger composite shot.  A couple of weeks ago on Facebook everyone was posting their celebrity look alikes, mine was Jacinda Barrett (from Real World London and Bridget Jones’ Diary 2).

I thought it was a pretty good choice, even though no one knows who she is.

Breakfast

Whole grain toast with 1/2 avocado and egg

Lunch/Dinner

apple sauce

Kim

It’s all about perspective…and soup

Today is a day of renewed perspectives.

I found out this morning someone I know passed away this weekend.  He was more an acquaintance than a friend; a good friend of friends that I knew and liked and saw in the circles we both circulated in fairly often.   It’s really sad.  He was only a couple of years older than I am.  I guess in a way it reinforced this sense in me that I need to start living the life I want.  Life is too short to spend it being unhappy.

I firmly believe that the world gives back to you what you put into it, and I will be honest when I say that since my mother has been sick I have really lost a lot of my sense of self.  The whole experience really crushed me, and while my mom has been slowly recovering, I don’t know that I really have…until now.

I feel like, actually quite suddenly, I’m feeling a lot more like me.  Maybe all it took was the permission, figuratively of course, to let go of all that anxiety and start focusing on all the good things in my life, as opposed to walking through every day with this overwhelming feeling of dread.  I was putting out some seriously depressing mojo these last few months!

Things are changing though.  I’ve decided to be pleasantly selfish and spend more time focusing on me, my needs, and what I want.  One of those things is to get back to my roots, back to the stage/screen.  Which is why it’s so exciting that I have an audition tomorrow!

Now, I won’t get into the probabilities of me getting the spot as opposed to not getting the spot, I’m just really excited that I have an audition.  It’s my first audition in a while, once, not so long ago that was as normal a part of my life as breathing now it’s something to celebrate.  It feels like my life is coming back to me.  It feels good.

I made the executive decision to shake up my fitness routine tonight.  Instead of going to my oh-so-centering yoga class tonight I hit up a spin class, I needed something  energetic to get me going.  Yoga always makes me sleepy.

Speaking of exercise we have a Rockin’ Body Giveaway Winner…Emily!

Emily was chosen at random with the Random Number Generator.  Emily, expect an email from me asking for your mailing information.

Okay, now onto the food:

Breakfast

Smoothie with kefir, strawberries and peach slices

Snack

1/4 cup mixed nuts

Lunch

Banana, Greek yogurt, Granola

3 carrots sliced

Dinner

I came home from spin class and made one of my favorite soups

Kale & white bean soup with chicken sausage

Mmmm. Comfort.

Kim

Next Page »