Primal Blueprint- Day 3

What a happy fruit bowl! The fennel actually lives the fridge, but wanted to have it's picture taken. Oh, and the pineapple is from the grocery store, not the farmer's market.

Today, Froody and I went to the farmer's market. The author of Primal Blueprint is big on organic, locally grown foods. (As are a lot of other authors and environmentalists, etc. We think it's a pretty good way to go. Of course, it helps that we live in California where we grow everything.) We're definitely fortunate to live in a place that has a few farmer's markets a week with lots of variety. Ours also has folks who sell locally caught wild fish and locally raised chicken, eggs, and beef. We brought our full (reusable canvas) bags home and managed to find a place for all that produce. Our large wooden bowl looks awesome, full of luscious, colorful fruits and vegetables. Don't you feel healthier just looking at it?

The next step is....what to do with all that stuff! We bought some veggies we don't normally eat, like the fennel bulb, bok choy, and some rainbow chards. So for lunch I did our fallback cooking method: throw everything in a pan and cook it up. I heated up about 2 tsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of butter, and some pine nuts. Chopped up a fennel bulb and a couple of baby bok choys and some swiss chard for color (another "new" veggie, from last week's purchase). Tossed them all in. Once they softened up I added in some chopped garlic and a couple of tsp's of seasame oil. Then, I chopped and threw in the leftover pork tenderloin from last night's dinner. And, some salt and pepper. Froody and I really liked it.

Man, is there anything olive oil, butter, and garlic can't do??

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Ok, so if I'm going to follow the Primal Blueprint, I have to do this right, right? That meant getting on the scale and calculating my lean body mass. I'll tell you right now, it's not pretty. But, if you want to at least have a guideline as to how much you should be eating, you need to know. Mark does say to leave it to your own appetite to tell you what's what, but I know from personal experience that that will only make me fatter. :( It's hard for me to eat only when I'm hungry. I just like food too much. :)

Anyway, according to the Primal Blueprint, since I want to lose weight, my goal is to eat less than 100g of carbs a day (from fruit and veggies, no grains, bread, pastas, etc.) and about 100g of proteins. I'll admit that I don't eat nearly that much protein in a day, so while I'll be eating less produce, I'll be eating more meats and healthy fats. I'm going to try it for January and let you know how it goes.

Modern Cave Girl

For the past couple of years, Froody and I have been improving our diet by eating more fruits and vegetables and proteins- more real foods- and less breads, rice, grains, pastas, and fake foods. Believe me, in this modern day and age it's real hard to buy food that doesn't contain chemicals or high fructose corn syrup. You have to be careful and it requires "constant vigilance."

Anyway, during our trip it was even more challenging, so we just ate what the locals ate (with the occasional trip to McD's and etc.). But, now that I'm back home and settled, it's time to get serious. The signs are all there telling me that now is the perfect to get back in that cave! (so to speak):

1) Look Better (Almost) Naked challenge at the gym
2) Froody buying the book "The Primal Blueprint" (and me reading it)
3)New Year's Eve- day of making resolutions!
4)Blue Moon tonight

I mean, come on, who can ignore so many messages from the great beyond? And, besides, tonight is the night to live it up with wine, champagne, snacks, etc. In fact, I'm going to have a nice bowl of granola (hey, this is how I live it up) today, because as they say: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we (primal)diet!

In a nutshell, the primal blueprint is all about diet and exercise in a way that promotes a healthy lifestyle. As far as food goes, I'm supposed to eat stuff that Grok and his mate ate about 10,000 years ago, before the agriculture explosion. Today I'm excited about it, as it seems like the natural next step to what I've already been trying to do: eat real food.

But next time I'll be ready to bitch and moan about the few non-food foods I still eat that I'll have to give up. :(

Lordy, Lordy, I'm 40

I read this blog and how she's getting ready for her mid-life crisis to begin at 40 and since I'm already there, maybe I need to get started on it.

I'm very happy with my private-life, just not with my work-life. Teaching is hard and thankless, as every teacher will tell you. I'm teaching a class I can't teach (it feels more like I'm "showing"math rather than "teaching" it). Also, seems like the district wants to increase the number of students per class. I don't know about you, but 32 teens in one room seems too many to me already! I'm sure next year will be better for me in the classroom, but not good enough.

Anyway, I keep thinking of finding something else to do. But...what? There's the whole "do what you love" thing. What do I love doing? I love sitting in front of the TV. I love knitting. I like painting and writing. I love my ratties. Can't imagine anyone giving me money to watch TV and knit. Also, my paintings and writings aren't good enough to inspire anyone to give me $$ for them. Rat-breeding is also out. At $30/rat, I'd have to sell a lot of rats to make a living out of it!

Mainly I just want a job that I can "leave" when I leave, you know?? Not put in all these at-home hours. Not be stressed out and graying over it. Not losing sleep about it. It's just not worth it sometimes.

I keep thinking I could work for Trader Joe's. I like food. Or maybe I could be a librarian. I like books. Pretty much anything I could do for about $40K/year. Traveling would also be awesome, as long as I could take Froody with me.

What Are You?

So, all month-long NPR's weekend edition has had this series called "Beyond Black and White" about people and race and ethnicity in America. I've actually enjoyed listening to it, as it features people who have been dealing with a lot of the same questions I've been trying to answer for years. As a kid growing up in America (well, in Southern California) you do get asked the question, "What are you?" fairly regularly: signing up for anything, going to school, meeting new people, etc. I've tried answering this question several different ways.

Racially, I'm brown. I know, I know, that's a color not a race, but I can't hide it, not even if I wanted to. OK- racially I'm mixed, but it's pretty complicated. According to the information I've gathered from my grandmothers, I'm: Spanish, French, Afro-Cuban, (probably also Mexican-Indian but grandma wouldn't admit it), Iranian, Italian, Jewish, and Japanese. So, racially, I look like anyone and everyone. If you've been following this blog (bless you!), then you know that in the Middle East and India people thought I was a local, until I opened my mouth.

Ethnically, I'm American-Mexican. I totally identify with being American. In fact, when I was a teenager/early twenties and people would ask, "What are you?" my answer was, "I'm American." *sigh* Sadly, this made things more unclear because then they'd ask me what tribe I belonged to or how many hundreds of years my family has been in California. So, I quickly gave that up.

Culturally, I'm Mexican-American, but I don't speak Spanish so for some this doesn't make me "Mexican" enough. When my family emigrated to the US, the attitude back then was, "We're in America now, so let's be American," and they embraced the language and a lot of traditions like Independence Day and Thanksgiving. They still kept some bits of Mexican culture like the food and music, piñatas on your birthday, and they all speak Spanish. But my cousins, siblings, and I didn't grow up bilingual.

Anyway, part of me thought that being back in America would make this question moot, 'cuz I'm back home. But, I got hired at a school where I am one of two brown people. Now, that doesn't mean that the other teachers aren't culturally mixed (which they are) but they have asked, "What are you?"

My answer? I figure if they ask, then they are going to get my big, ol' list of races that I already gave you. To me, being mixed in any way is fairly American.

Library Gossip

So, I went back to the library today. It was good; got 3 hours of grading done! The science tests are all graded, which means I can give the kids back their tests tomorrow. It also gave me some time this evening to plan out the next project and get a start on tomorrow's power point lecture.

But, what I really wanted to share with you all are some things I noticed about the library. For starters, it is very popular with the several homeless people who live here in Menlo Park. ( No surprise.)So much so that the library staff posted a sign in the bathroom prohibiting bathing and laundering, with the location of the nearest shelter where they can bath and wash clothes.

Also, the library is full of adults. I'm more used to seeing tons of kids at the library, but this weekend it was full of grown-ups doing quiet, grown-up stuff: reading the paper and magazines, computering, looking for books, and even using Skype. I guess kids have more to do on the weekends than adults.

But the strange thing I witnessed yesterday and today was the interaction between a math tutor (an older guy, probably in his mid- to late- 40s) and the tutee, a woman in her 30s. Man, she would argue with him, rant, demand explanations, and she even cried once. All over calculus. He just sat there, not really saying much. He let her do things her own way, and when they didn't work out then he'd step in and show her another way to solve the problem. There would be these periods of quiet, then she'd start in on him about why the equations didn't graph the same, and she'd seem to get more and more angry while he just sat there. Then, there'd be periods of concern, when she'd ask him how he was, what was wrong, did he want to go outside for a break. He pretty much responded to these queries in a quiet, calm voice, saying as little as possible. Today ended by her asking when they could get together again and offering to give him a ride home. Which he declined.

Anyway, it was weird. She would get totally aggro with him. I've never seen or heard of tutees getting all mad at their tutors on a regular basis.

Library Marm

Today i went to the library to grade some papers. i've never been in my neighborhood library, so i was grateful to find it large and quiet. being saturday, it thought it would be full of kids doing weekend stuff- animal show, read-aloud, etc. but, it was full of adults on their laptops or doing math with their tutors. i got a table to myself and graded one class-worth of tests in record time- 1hr 15 min.

on an unrelated note, my arms are tired already from typing! yesterday we did a great/hard workout and my muscles are still recovering. i'm sure white wine is very good for tired arm muscles.

Endophorins! Yeah!!

Just a quick post. Froody and I worked out this evening and I feel pretty good. I felt so good after the workout that I wished I could get paid to workout!

Today I did my first ever, all-by-myself, against-the-wall handstands! My trainer and I were so proud of me. :-) Also, I think I found my "sweet spot" for doing deadlifts. Today I DL'd 52 kg (that's like 115lbs to you).

At the end of the evening I felt that life was pretty good, and if I can do handstands and deadlifts, then I can handle pretty much anything.