Average Jane

Blog

  • Average Jane Gets Results

    IMG_2202It's only been a few weeks since my new doctor suggested that I radically overhaul my diet to address my various health issues, but I'm already noticing huge improvements in the way I look and feel.

    Basically I'm going with clean eating, which means that every food I eat should ideally still look the way it did when it was harvested. That means processed foods are out (I'm fudging things a little with canned beans and tomatoes). Dairy is also a no-go, which I'd already figured out on my own except that I had to be forcibly separated from my last holdout: cheese. I've discovered the joy of kale (why didn't anyone ever sit me down and explain how wonderful kale is?) and I can whip together an amazing soup or salad at the drop of a hat these days.

    It took me about a week to figure out how much food to bring to work. I have my usual Shakeology shake in the morning, then my main lunch at 11:30 and a smaller meal (usually a salad or a veggie smoothie) around 2:30 p.m. My company recently bought a Vitamix blender for us all to use and they provide fruit and vegetables for smoothies. What great timing!

    Did I mention I gave up caffeine? For whatever reason, it was completely painless this time. Now I drink the juice of a half lemon mixed with water every morning and it's fully as energizing as coffee without the mid-afternoon withdrawal period.

    I lost ten pounds pretty much immediately. All of my allergy symptoms vanished within a week. By the end of the second week, my heartburn was gone. It's really been quite amazing.

    My energy levels have also bounced back. I was really in the doldrums when I started, but now I'm going to two yoga classes a week and walking as much as I can. I'm looking forward to taking a running clinic in a couple of weeks to see if I can make improvements there as well.

    I know this all sounds kind of fringe-y and granola, but it's working so incredibly well that I can't fault it. I'm getting plenty to eat and I'm not getting tired of it at all despite the fact that I haven't even started consulting the cookbooks I bought at the beginning.

    I'm looking at this as a permanent lifestyle change rather than a diet. Whenever it occurs to me that I might have eaten "x" for the last time, I'm perfectly okay with it. If that's what it takes to feel and look healthy, it's worth it.

    My husband is not joining me in my new eating habits except when something I make for myself smells really good and he decides to have some. That's probably going to remain somewhat of an inconvenience indefinitely, but as I mentioned when I first brought up these changes, this is something I need to do for me.

    I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. It's pretty exciting so far!

  • Average Jane Cleans House

    The countertops are junk magnetsIf my mother were still alive, she would be horrified by this post. (Possibly by my blog in general.) I was always the kid blithely telling everyone at the school carnival that the cake she brought was from the grocery store, while she was constantly cautioning me not to talk about "private family business." 

    Well here's some private family business: I'm a terrible housekeeper.

    There was a time when I had someone come in every other week and clean my house. It was wonderful because I hate house cleaning, but it got to be awfully pricey and so when my longtime cleaning lady moved on to other work, I decided to see what I could do on my own.

    It turns out that it's really tough to keep up with housework when you're almost never home. However, I had more free time than usual last weekend, so I decided I needed to tackle cleaning the bathrooms and floors.

    Damn, that's a lot of work!

    It took me almost all day and I didn't get to the basement or manage to tidy and dust the surfaces in my dressing room, but I accomplished my quarterly deep clean. That's right: quarterly. That's pretty much the schedule I've been on so far. Heh.

    Here are some of the stats:

    • Amount I would have paid to have the house cleaned twice a month for the last quarter: $420
    • Different floor types that require different cleaners: 3
    • Number of cats I made into the bed when I changed the sheets: 2
    • Length of time it took before the dog peed on one of the clean floors: <12 hours
    • Approximate number of kittens' worth of cat fur emptied from the ShopVac: 5

    So yes, my house is disgusting until it isn't and then it gets disgusting again.

    Where is my husband in all of this, you might reasonably ask? Why don't you not ask. That would be best. The last time we had that discussion, he was very proud that he cleaned the house once. ONCE! In the past 20 years that we've been together. So yeah. The work of the feminist movement is never done and all that.

    But at least I have the satisfaction of a clean house that smells like Method squirt + mop floor cleaner (mmm, almond-y!). It won't be long before the cat hair tumbleweeds start forming in the corners again, but for now I feel I can take a little break. Perhaps until summer.

  • Why Average Jane Loves the BlogPaws Conference

    IMG_2584One of the best things about blogging is finding and building communities. When I first started blogging, I used to make it a point not to talk about my cats too much, but I've since overcome my crazy cat lady shame. It's a good thing, too, because it turns out that the BlogPaws community suits me very well, despite the fact that I still blog about plenty of other stuff besides my pets.

    Communities are about friends and finding new blogs to read, yes, but they're also about learning. BlogPaws does an excellent job in that regard. Their annual conference features top social media professionals teaching the ins and outs of multiple social outlets and mediums. There are beginner, intermediate and pro tracks for any blogger, as well as some specialty tracks aimed at the pet health and welfare professions.

    The speakers are top-notch. Last year Laurie Ruettimann spoke on monetizing your blog. This year Susan Getgood is presenting on monetization and Toby Bloomberg is speaking about Twitter for business. Triberr founder Dino Dogan will be presenting again this year on the future of blogging.

    That's just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it's a great representation of how seriously BlogPaws handles core social media topics. There might be eight dogs, a cat and a ferret in the room during any given session, but all of the humans are learning useful information to advance their blogging goals.

    Now you may be asking, "But is it fun?" Yes, it's fun! There are social activities built into every mealtime, receptions each night, a red carpet walk the last evening leading to a blog awards ceremony, and lots more. That doesn't count the expo hall, Catification Lounge, dog parks, craft projects and other BlogPaws-specific activities. There will even be BlogPaws Karaoke this year. I don't know exactly what that will entail, but it sounds intriguing.

    Want to know more and see some photos? Check out my recaps from 2011 and 2012. 

    The 2013 conference starts a week from tomorrow in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. It's not too late to register! Use my discount code BlogPaws2013-POPS-Lindell-20 and you'll get 20% off. Hope to see you there!

    Disclosure: My opinions are my own. As a member of the BlogPaws Paws on Patrol team, I attend the conference at no charge and am compensated for helping to promote it.

  • Average Jane’s Thoughts on Mother’s Day

    Roses

    My mother died in 1998, so time has smoothed the sharp edges off the pangs of sadness I used to feel every year when I'd start getting email suggesting where I should take my mother for Mother's Day or what kind of gift she would want. Still, this time of year makes me wistful because of all of the hype around a holiday that has nothing to do with me at all.

    Mother's Day advertising is everywhere right now, which may be why I had a dream about my mother last night. I dreamt that I was on a shuttle bus going to meet her at a hotel in another city so we could have a vacation together. The problem was, I didn't know which hotel it was and I kept wracking my brain to think of her cell phone number, but I couldn't come up with it.

    When I woke up, it occurred to me that of course I didn't know my mom's cell phone number. She never had a cell phone when she was alive. 

    I'm happy that there's a holiday to honor mothers even though I'm not one. I'll probably spend it playing with my kid subsitutes, a.k.a. our cats and dog. Maybe I'll score a flower or a little box of candy if I go out to eat someplace where they have a scattershot Mother's Day to-do that includes every woman who looks like she could possibly be a mom. That's pretty much all I can do.

  • Average Jane, Lonely Walker

    Self portrait of the lone walkerYesterday I did the two events I mentioned in my last post. I started the day with the Trolley Run, which was a four-mile route that wound through a truly lovely part of the city. Before the race started, I ran into two different teammates, but apparently I was the only person on my team who planned to mostly walk rather than run. Therefore I was alone the whole way.

    Despite the fact that four miles is longer than I usually walk, it isn't that much longer. I did pretty well (57:51 – a pace of 14:28, which isn't bad if you consider that there was a bathroom break in there) except that there was something irritating the side of one foot. I thought I might have a tiny rock in my shoe but it turned out to be a blister.

    Everyone else was going to brunch afterward, but because I'd signed up for March for Babies, I got in my car and headed downtown to do the second event. When I got to the staging area I looked around for that team, but couldn't locate anyone I knew. I started the walk and my foot pain kicked in again to the extent that when the course divided and I realized that one branch led right past the garage where I was parked, I turned that way, peeled off from the group, and went home.

    If I had it to do over again, I would have done several things differently:

    1. Not signed up for two events in one morning, obviously.
    2. Gone to brunch with my teammates, even if it meant skipping the second event.
    3. Emailed the whole team in advance to find out if anyone else was signed up for the walking wave. If I'd had just one person to talk to, it would have been considerably more enjoyable.

    Today I have some pleasantly sore muscles and a piece of moleskin over the blister, so I'm doing well. I think the yoga class I took on Saturday helped me prepare and I'm planning to start going to class at least once a week.

    The main thing this taught me was that I'm much happier with an exercise buddy. When I'm walking the dog through my neighborhood, he counts as my buddy even though he really doesn't interact with me on a walk. For other events, I'd like some human company. That will be my goal going forward for future events.

  • Average Jane on Aging

    FlowerDespite all ancestral evidence to the contrary, I always pictured myself in middle age as one of those women from the vitamin commercials: lean, with beautiful salt-and-pepper hair, digging in the garden and running a nice 5K from time to time.

    I have the digging in the garden and 5K running walking part going on, but I've turned out to be too chicken to let my hair go grey and over the past few years my weight has gone from "it would be nice to lose 10 or 15 pounds" to "holy crap, when did I get so fat?!?"

    Add to that the list of physical maladies that seems to increase with every passing year and it's become clear that I need to make some pretty substantial lifestyle changes if I hope to still be 5King and gardening by the time I'm old and stubborn enough to own the grey hair.

    On the recommendation of my doctor, I'm cleaning up my diet A LOT. This past weekend I allowed myself two final days of at least partial indulgence, but starting today I'm getting serious. I'm not going to go into the boring details of what I'll be eating, but I am certain it is going to seem NO FUN AT ALL, especially to my husband. However, I need to do this for myself.

    I've noticed that even a little bit of exercise feeds into more exercise (kind of the same way that laziness seems to breed more laziness). Yesterday I took the dog on a 3.4 mile walk in the morning and not only did it energize him all day, I noticed that even this morning I was still feeling motivated. I got up much earlier than I have been lately, got a good amount of housework done, showered, and still made it into work at a decent hour.

    Once the weather settles down, I'm going to start doing the walks every other day at first and then work up to daily again. Last year I ended up having some foot problems and I'm hoping that a slower build might head them off this year.

    That said, I'm signed up for a 4-mile walk this Sunday followed almost immediately by a 1-mile walk. Those are fundraising links, by the way. The first walk supports the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI) and the second is for March of Dimes. I welcome donations to either!

    My husband and I talk a lot about getting older, particularly because he is ten years older than I am. Our main conclusion has been that it's important to take advantage of each day. That's why I'm starting this now and I hope it makes a noticeable difference to the way I feel and the amount of energy I have. If it makes me look better, that'll be nice as well.

    Photo credit: K. Kendall

  • Average Jane’s Foster Failure

    Kaylee knows a couple of suckers when she sees them.I recently mentioned in passing that we'd adopted our foster cat, but I hadn't really told the full story. It actually happened a couple of months ago, but I was honestly a little embarrassed to admit it to the internet until now. Go ahead and say it: "I told you so."

    Kaylee, who was renamed after one of my favorite "Firefly" characters, is a rather unlikely addition to our household. When I first encountered her (then named Tinkerbell) and her sister Twire in the course of volunteering with my animal rescue group, they were unequivocally the oddest cats I'd ever met. They were both clearly quite fearful, but in an incredibly passive way. I later learned that they were the only two surviving kittens of a neglected and malnourished mother. As babies, their physical growth was stunted and it's safe to say that their mental and emotional development suffered as well.

    Together the two girls fed on each others' fear and they didn't start behaving halfway normally until they were separated. Still, when Kaylee came to my house she hid for a full week and didn't come out until she got lonely enough to overcome her trepidation.

    Then we moved her up to my husband's recording studio. That meant he spent all night with her every day. When Kaylee decided she needed attention, she would start by winding around his feet while he worked, progressing to little nips of his ankles if he didn't take the hint. She learned to enjoy belly rubs and cuddling and now she'll put her paws up on the arm of his chair when she wants to be picked up.

    My conversations with my husband started to change in tone. At first it was, "I hope she finds a family that will do thus and so for her." Then they became, "I don't want her to go to anyone who doesn't do this and this and this and this for her." It was clear that he didn't want to let her go, and so I went ahead and made it official as an early birthday gift for him.

    She's not the perfect cat: she makes a huge mess playing in her water and I'm still trying to figure out the best solution for that. I did solve one problem by investing in a Modkat litter box, which completely prevents her from throwing litter all over my office. (I actually loved her new litterbox so much that I bought another one for the kitchen, which prevents the dog from getting into the box. They may be expensive—and I did save some money by getting a discontinued color—but I am a die-hard Modkat fan now.)

    For now, Kaylee still lives in the studio alone, which means she doesn't get quite as much people time as the other cats. We've tried introducing the "nicer" cats (Dr. Jones and Velvet) to her, but they've been rather hostile. She is very interested in other cats, so it's sad that we haven't been able to find a match. We haven't tried either of our downstairs enemy combatants, Trillan and Xena, yet. Perhaps one of them would get along with Kaylee even though they hate each other.

    Will we be fostering again? Uh, no. No, we will not. The menagerie is more than large enough, thank you. Going forward, I plan to confine my volunteer efforts to website and Facebook updates. It's safer for everyone.

  • Average Jane Goes Outside

    IMG_3812I know it's been spring for a while, but it hasn't really felt like it until now. As soon as I opened the blinds this morning and sunlight flooded in, I knew it was time to get some yard work in.

    Naturally, I didn't get started right away. I lazed around with the pets for a bit until I got hungry, then I went out to breakfast and treated myself to pancakes and coffee. I'd brought a magazine to read, but I ended up spending the whole meal chatting on Facebook and Twitter.

    When I went to pay, I discovered that my debit card was missing. I called the restaurant where we'd eaten dinner last night and they had it. I put off my chores a little longer so I could drive out and retrieve the card.

    Finally it was time to get serious. This year I'm putting in a couple of small raised beds for vegetables, but I decided that I would save that for tomorrow and do some other yard maintenance first. I still need to decide exactly what I want to plant.

    First on the agenda was a trip to the local hardware store to drop off my loppers for sharpening and purchase some grass seed. Last fall I tried to grow grass in the area where our big, dead locust tree had been, but nothing ever came up. I figured it was worth raking and sowing seed there one more time to see what happens. If it fails again, I'll consult a master gardener. 

    With the lopper in the shop, I used a small handheld pruner to trim back dead fronds from last year's peonies, snip off the first shoots from our chronic volunteer trees, and remove the dead parts from last year's mum plants. All of my mums are coming back, which is great. I gave them a little drink of Miracle-Gro to encourage them further.

    Being outside gave me the opportunity to talk to my next door neighbors for the first time in a while. Turns out they have a baby now. I am a terrible, terrible neighbor, in case you hadn't figured that out.

    My last accomplishment of the day was to take my big tub of recyclable glass and drop it off at a Ripple Glass bin. Then I went to the liquor store because that tub isn't going to refill itself.

    Our lawn guy hadn't been by yet this year, so I texted him and told him we were ready whenever he was. By the time my husband and I got back from supper, the lawn was mowed. All the better for my raised bed project tomorrow!

    I'll be spending my evening playing canasta, which will be a lovely way to cap off a day of light manual labor. We'll see if I can be equally productive tomorrow.

  • Average Jane Reads

    KidsreadingstatueThe Kindle app is one of my favorite things about having an iPad. I spend so much time reading stuff online that I don't mind the appearance of the black words on the white screen at all. In my pre-iPad days I borrowed my sister's actual Kindle and read several books, but I just couldn't get used to its interface at all.

    I have the Kindle app on my iPhone 5 as well, which is incredibly convenient. The two devices will sync back and forth so you can always catch up when you switch from one to another.

    I've turned into a rather rabid series completist. To be honest, I've probably always been like that, but it seems more noticeable when I start reading a series that already has lots of books in it and then I am driven to read them all. Right away!

    My participation in my various book clubs has dropped off a lot. I'm still nominally in three of them, but I've started to turn into the person who didn't read the book by the time the meeting date arrives. I usually read (or finish) the books eventually, but of course that doesn't matter much when the discussion has already taken place.

    I'm still reading a lot of actual paper books, despite the convenience of ebooks. However, these days most of my Amazon packages are filled with dog treats and other miscellaneous items rather than books.

    Just for fun, here's a list of all of the things I've read on the Kindle app so far. The ones with a single asterisk were book club selections; the ones with two asterisks were book club selections that I absolutely hated:

    • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
    • The Magician King by Lev Grossman
    • Scarp Stonebreaker: Hammer of the South by Andrew Lyon
    • The Hidden Hand and Capitola's Peril by E.D.E.N. Southworth (Whoo! Forgot how racist these were until I read them again!)
    • The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger
    • Thanks for Killing Me by Bill Barol
    • Rules of Civility by Amor Towles* (didn't ever finish this one)
    • A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg*
    • Speed Shrinking by Susan Shapiro** (we all hated this one)
    • A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin (I had the rest of the series in paperback form)
    • Emma by Jane Austen* (this almost deserves two asterisks because it was such a slog, but I'll give it the "Clueless" pass)
    • Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps by Robert Rodi
    • Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James**
    • Crazy Enough: A Memoir by Storm Large*
    • Crossroads Road: A Novel by Jeff Kay
    • Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher*
    • The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
    • Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
    • A Howl in the Night by J.K. Brandon
    • Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher*
    • Shut Up and Give Me the Mic by Dee Snider
    • Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim*
    • Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul*
    • Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling*
    • Sharp Objects: A Novel by Gillian Flynn*
    • How To Live Safely in A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu* (This was my selection. I liked it; everyone else hated it.)
    • Dresden Files books (all except the first six, which I have in paperback) by Jim Butcher
    • The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
    • Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story by Evan I. Schwartz
    • Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
    • Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn*

    See? That's not very many in less than two years.

    Here's the scant handful of ebooks I've bought but not yet read:

    • Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer
    • Oh Myyy! (There Goes The Internet) by George Takei (just started it last night)
    • The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch and Lee Chadeayne
    • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

    My physical to-be-read pile, which usually sits on the coffee table in my living room, is considerably beefier.

    How are you reading these days? Ebooks, real books, library books?

  • Sleepy Average Jane


    Does this look like the face of someone who is sorry to have woken you up? No, it does not.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    I love my dog. LOVE him! But. He's like the snooze alarm I never wanted. 

    Sometime between 4-5 a.m. every day – Toby creeps out from under the covers and does a nice ear-slapping shake, standing right next to me. If I don't look awake right away, he proceeds to paw at me with his feet, throw his body over me and poke me in the face with his damp nose. He has to pee. I get it.

    I get up, dish out some mild verbal abuse that he neither understands nor cares about, put on my robe and slippers, pull his harness up into his hot little armpits, clip on the leash, and take him out to the front yard. He doesn't waste any time, fortunately. I give him his "thanks for not peeing in the house" treats and go back to bed without bothering to take off my robe. He jumps up, waits for me to lift the covers, curls up under my right arm and we both to back to sleep.

    Sometime between 6 and 6:30 a.m. every morning – Toby crawls out from under the blankets and gets in another good shake, followed by a repeat of his tried and true methods of making me get up. If those don't work he might actually bark because he is starving—STARVING, I TELL YOU!—and cannot be made to wait another moment for his morning scoop of kibble.

    We sometimes go back to bed after Toby's breakfast time, but we really shouldn't.

    The whole routine played out this morning as usual, but it was especially painful because I was awakened at 1:00 a.m. by a hellacious hailstorm that pounded on the bedroom windows so loudly that it woke me up even over the sound of my bedside fan. 

    I'm actually okay with the two routine morning sleep interruptions, but add one more and I'm over my limit for sleep disruption. 

    As tempting as it was to take a little nap at my desk today, I'm happy to report that I resisted. But I will not be staying up late today, that's for sure.