Happy New Year! 2013

It’s resolution time!

Last year, I didn’t do so well on my resolutions.  The ones I accomplished, I mostly knocked out of the park.  I also was a bit unrealistic about the amount of stuff I could get done with a new baby in the house.  But now that I have an almost one year old who is content to play by herself for a few minutes at a time, and we’re streamlining our routine, hopefully my “production” will go up this year.  We’ll see.

I’ve decided this year that I’m not going to call them resolutions.  It kind of implies that you’re doing something wrong, which, I guess, for some of them, that’s true.  But for a lot of my resolutions, they are things I just want to do better, or things that I want to focus on more.  Some aren’t even quantifiable, really, and that’s okay.  Only I will be able to decide if I gave it my best.  But since the time after Christmas really seems to be the perfect time to reflect on the past year, and look forward to the coming year, it’s a perfect time to assess the situation and set some new goals.

2013 New Year’s Resolutions Goals

1.  Run a marathon.

I’m signed up for the Little Rock Marathon in March, and I’m going to be an official, in-person member of Team Mercy Project for the Scott & White BCS Marathon in December.  I’m going to try to squeeze a half marathon in sometime during the year, and I’m going to enter the lottery for the Peachtree Road Race.

2.  Work more on my running base.

I’m kind of glad that my first marathon will be out of the way at the beginning of the year, and I won’t have another one to do until the end of the year.  A few weeks ago, I told Bill that I wanted to run at Disney World, just to say that I did.  But, me being, well, me, I want to do Goofy’s Challenge, which, for those of you who don’t know, is a half marathon one day and then a full marathon the next day.  I only want to run there ONE time, so I might as well knock out both races in one weekend, right?

Yes, I realize that I’m slightly deranged.  But I like to aim high.  I’ve never been known for thinking conservatively.

My cousin has a failed Goofy’s Challenge under his belt, and lives in the Orlando area, so he is going to give it another shot with me.  We’re trying to talk my brother and my dad into coming down for the weekend (to babysit the kids on half marathon day, because I have Bill talked into running that one with me) and we’re just going to rent a vacation home for a week or so and do Disney and Universal.

On extremely tired legs.

Which brings me back to the goal of working on my running base.  I’ve got a year to train for this back to back business, and some people would say that that’s not really enough time.  But a year really shouldn’t be enough time for an extremely overweight, just-gave-birth, never really a runner woman to be able to do a marathon, and yet, here I am, gearing up to do a marathon.

3.  Work on my general strength and endurance.

Bill and I saved up our Christmas and birthday money from my dad and bought a home gym last week.  I can’t wait for it to get here, on it’s own special truck, and can’t wait to spend nine hours putting it together after the poor delivery man tries to figure out how the heck to get it down our driveway.  (According to the Amazon reviews, it comes in one big box.  Including the weight stack.  We have a very steep driveway.  This should be interesting.)

I’d be lying if I didn’t add that part of the strength training is to help me get off this stubborn weight.  I’m still nursing Baby Ellie, and I’m donating pumped milk to a stranger-turned-good-buddy, and I have always said that nursing tricks my body into hanging onto weight.  It stinks.

We’re also going to get a spin-type bike, since I read up on Rich Roll’s training methods for the Ultraman, and I think that will help my knees while still helping my endurance training.

4.  Expand the garden.

On a non-exercise-related note, I’ve negotiated my way into a fancy new tiller for Christmas.  Except that it’s over a week since Christmas and I still haven’t picked it out yet.  Regardless, Bill doesn’t like mowing grass and I want more fresh, organic veggies and a cut flower garden, so I’m tilling up a good chunk of the front yard.  Some of our trees may need to go, but we have four acres, most of which is wooded, and I want to see how much of it I can put to use.  We eat entirely too many veggies for me not to be growing more of them.

5.  Limit eating out to once a month.

This is going to be a hard one.  I am queen of the random cravings for Red Robin’s steak fries or Olive Garden’s salad.  Couple this with the fact that we live a minimum of a 20 minute drive from most restaurants, and 45 minutes away from places like Red Robin, and it just isn’t good – for our wallet or our health.  So, with the caveat that eating out doesn’t count when we are out of town for trips, all regular eating out will be limited to once a month.

6.  Nix the gluten.

My brother went gluten-free last year, and recommended that I read Wheat Belly.  I did, and, like watching Forks Over Knives and reading Tomatoland, I’m ruined forever.  One of my very favorite meals in the entire world is an onion bagel slathered with cream cheese and topped with smoked salmon.  I gave myself a pass on the vegan business to indulge in cream cheese and salmon once or twice a year.  Now I have to lose my bagel too.  I have to admit, I’m a little bit sad, but it is what it is.

The toughest part is that the kids ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches practically every day for lunch.  I mean, I bought a 3-gallon BUCKET of natural peanut butter from Azure Standard because we went through so much of it.  That’s going to be the toughest part.  We warned them ahead of time, and on New Year’s Eve, they ate the last of their PB&Js.  Yesterday, we had black eyed peas and rice for lunch.  Today, we did veggie stir-fry.  But I know I’m not going to be up for cooking every single day for both lunch AND dinner, so we’ll have to feel this one out and see where it goes.

Now, as I am with the vegan “thing” and eating out, I won’t be strict when we’re eating out.  We generally look to eat at places that are vegan friendly, or will ask the local pizza place to go easy on the cheese, for instance.  I still won’t eat meat (I will have the occasional seafood) but the cheese and butter and oil, well, it’s tough to find places that will work with you on that, but we have found them.  I’m not going to go nuts on the kids if, at their one meal out a month, they choose to have a – gasp! – grilled cheese sandwich or macaroni and cheese.  (On a sidenote, hey restaurants, it’s really not THAT hard to get creative with the kids’ menu.  Seems like at every place, if you don’t eat chicken fingers or burgers, you’re stuck with grilled cheese or mac and cheese.)  We’re big fans of our local Mojo Burrito and it’s not-as-local-cousin Moe’s, and I’ll still indulge in my flour tortillas there.  Another local favorite, Taco Mamacita, happily switches out flour tortillas for soft corn, and that – along with their ridiculous sweet potato fries – is enough for us to choose it over something else.

7.  Read and comment on at least three blogs a day.

I stole this resolution from someone else, another blogger whose blog I didn’t comment on.  I can carve out enough time to comment on the blogs I read, particularly the ones with the smaller followings but they have great content.  Along those lines…

8.  Blog more.

I get caught up in the picture hosting and resizing thing.  So I do need to find a solution for that.  But I blog in my head a lot, and I’m not sure why I can’t just sit down and type it out and hit Publish.  I read The Happiness Project last month, and Gretchen resolved to blog six days a week.  That’s a heady goal for me, but I WILL give it a shot.  I’m kind of sad that I have pictures and stories about places we went and things we did from the past year and they never got blogged about.  This blog is more for me than for anyone reading it.  It’s nice to have a place to go back and look at the things we’ve done.

9.  Get this house in order.

We moved into our house in May of 2011.  I was pregnant with Baby Ellie, we started homeschooling soon after we settled in, and it was enough for me to be functioning as a human.  Then last year, I was dealing with a clingy baby.  We still haven’t figured out what is going to go where, we’re trying to figure out the bedroom situation to work out best for everyone, and Bill and I have decided (multiple times) that we just have way too much stuff.  Getting rid of the clutter is a process, and I’m vowing to focus more on it this year.  A bigger chunk of that is to stop bringing more stuff INTO the house in the first place.  I’m also trying to set up some kind of schedule to deep clean each room at least once every two weeks, because I spent two hours the other day on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor and cabinets and I don’t ever want to have to do that again.

10.  Have more fun.

Reading The Happiness Project and Cold Tangerines back to back ruined me.  Doing acts of kindness for Advent ruined me.  I want my kids to remember me as the mom who ran marathons and laughed hard and had dance parties with them for no reason at all.  I want to make people smile with a random bouquet of flowers, picked from my garden for the sole purpose of giving them away.  I want to go on road trips to places I’ve never been, with the goal of running a race, but getting to explore a new place at the same time.  I want to let the stupid stuff go and stop giving people with nothing to add to my life any time in my day.  I want to work hard, play harder, and love the hardest.

Because, really, should there be any other real goal in life?

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