Author: Cynical Woman

Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.
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Move It Mama Monday! Wii, My Weight, Everything

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Oy! I’ve been busting ass lately, trying to lose those LAST 10 POUNDS, and have had no success. In fact, the scale is actually tipping in the opposite direction. I weigh more now than I have in a while. However…

My clothes still fit fine. And I can see more muscle definition in my legs, arms, and pretty much everywhere else. AND, most importantly, Hubster says I look goooooooooood.

I know, that last part is pretty shallow. I shouldn’t depend on someone else’s opinion of how I look to validate that I do look good. But the fact is, I can’t see my own ass without a 3-way mirror and I know he stares at it all day when he’s home, so I consult with the expert on that matter. If he likes it, it’s fine.

But the not-losing-weight thing. What’s going on there? I’ve increased the amount of water I drink, hoping to stave off excess water weight gain at those certain times of the month. I’ve upped my intake of fruits and vegetables, in an effort to fill up on healthy stuff and prevent me overeating meat and other not-so-good for me things. I’m certainly doing more activity around the house. I spent a few hours this week scraping the old vinyl linoleum off the kitchen floor, and let me tell you, that ain’t no picnic. That activity alone should have caused me to sweat off a few pounds, but no, it didn’t. I’ve put in over four hours at the dojo this week, 2-3 hours on the Wii (EASA and Wii Fit). I’ve spent two hours on yard work, three hours on dedicated house cleaning. I’ve been pretty much go, go, go all week.

And yet my weight has gone up, up, up. Huh.

One thing I’ve also notice is that I’ve been getting some seriously rough, dry patches of skin on my forehead. One minute, my face is fine, the next it looks like it belongs to a monitor lizard in molting season. This leads me to think that something is going on with my hormones, and since my weight fluctuation seems tied to my menstrual cycle, I’m wondering if that’s what’s going on here. It could be. Or I could be sneaking in a few too many bits of chocolate, that extra soda here and there, dinner out last week…

I dunno. All I know is, I don’t want to starve myself, I do want to keep exercising, and I still fit into my favorite pair of jeans. Oh, and Hubster says I look gooooooooooood.

On to other things. I’ve found the more I play with EA Sports Active, the better I like it. Now that I’m no longer chained to that bloody 30 Day Challenge, I feel free to create my own routines. Remember how I said you couldn’t get a decent cardio workout from EASA? Well, it turns out you can. What you do is create a new workout and fill it with the cardio activities and all the sports activities. I’ve made up three of these workouts already, mixing and matching the dancing, running, boxing, and other sports together. The workouts I make range from 18-30 minutes, burning from 90-140 calories. I find I tend to burn more calories than EASA predicts, which is good, though the workouts also run a bit longer than EASA predicts (not a huge problem there unless I’m tight for time that day). I’m usually sweating like crazy after one of these cardio workouts, so that’s a good sign.

As for the strength training exercises in EASA, I’ve found I have to limit how much of the lower body exercises I do per workout. I can fill up a workout on upper body with no problem, cranking out reps of biceps curls, shoulder presses, etc. But do one too many sets of lunges and I pay for it the rest of the day, and probably the next. So, to make sure I get a lower body workout, I’m going to make some workout routines that mix just a few of the lunges and squats and jumps with the sports and cardio. It’ll work like this: cardio/sport, cardio/sport, lunges, cardio/sport, cardio/sport, squats, etc. That’s two aerobic exercises for every lower body exercise. And keep in mind the roller blading exercises in EASA count as lower body exercises, not aerobic.

Final thought for the day — I wish someone would make an adventure exercise game. I recently got Wii Sports Resort, and I love it, but only a few of the mini-games offer any sort of exercise, and those, not as much as I’d like. I’d love to see someone come up with a Wii game that combines exercise with an adventure or game of some sort. Like say, an ancient Olympics game, where you represent one of the original Greek city states in a competition. You have to out run, out lift, out throw yourr opponents to win medals. Or something along the lines of the Lego Star Wars or Indiana Jones games, where instead of operating your character via a remote while sitting on your assets on the couch, your character only runs when you run, fights when you fight, etc. Isn’t that what the Wii was supposed to do in the first place anyway?

Okay, that’s it for me today. I’ll be in Chicago next week, so I don’t know if there’ll be a Move It Mama Monday blog post or not. Will depend on my schedule while I’m there.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Recipe – Western Egg Strata

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I tweeted about this meal this morning and promptly got five requests for the recipe, so here it is. This one is made the evening before and cooked in the slow cooker. It comes from Campbell’s Slow Cooker Recipes, a little digest of recipe cards my mom picked up in Wal-Mart. Don’t know if it’s still available, but she just got it, so you could check the magazine stands at your local stores to find out. There are several recipes in there I’m going to try. Anyway, here we go.

Western Egg Strata

  • vegetable cooking spray

  • 8 slices sandwich bread, cubed

  • 3 cups frozen diced potatoes (hash browns)

  • 1 pound maple-flavored ham steak, cubed

  • 1 large onion, chopped (about 1 cup)

  • 1 large green pepper, chopped (about 1 cup)

  • 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese about 16 oz)

  • 1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup (regular or fat free is fine)

  • 8 eggs

  • 2 cups milk

  1. First, spray the inside of a 4 1/2 – 5 quart slow cooker with cooking spray (this is a large meal, so you do need a large cooker). Layer **half** the bread cubes, potatoes, ham, onion, bell pepper and shredded cheese in the cooker. Repeat the layers.

  2. Beat the soup, eggs, and milk with a fork in a medium bowl (I used an electric beater and it still came out fine). Pour over bread mixture in slow cooker. Press down the bread mixture into the soup mixture to coat (I didn’t get everything completely coated, especially the top layers, and it still came out just fine).

  3. Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours or until set.

I set this up last night around 11:30 PM, and had breakfast waiting for me at 8AM. Nice! I also programmed my coffee maker to brew a pot of joe around 8AM, so the only thing I had to do when I got up this morning was set the table, pour some juice, and cut up some fruit. This was a very easy breakfast, and I’m likely to do this more often. In addition to the egg strata, the Campbell’s book also has a Cinnamon Breakfast Bread Pudding, a Chocolate Almond Bread with Dried Cherries, a Harvest Fruit Compote, a Raisin Cinnamon Bread Pudding, and a Tropical Pudding Cake, all of which sound like good ideas for a Sunday morning breakfast.

Let me know if you try this recipe, and if you liked it. Personally, I thought it was great, and best yet, we’ve got enough to last the entire week! WIN!!

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Sunday Contentments – A Body That Works

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It’s about 9:45AM this Sunday. Hubster has taken off with the kids for Busch Gardens. I can’t stand Busch Gardens — I worked there for two summers and have more bad memories than I can count about that place — but I feel sort of wrong about not being there with them right now. It’s a family thing, and I’ve elected to stay behind. Not without reason though. We leave for Chicago in a week, and I’ve got a ton of work to get done between now and then. So rather than indulge my sense of bad-mama-guilt all morning, let’s look at the good things in life instead. Here’s this Sunday’s list of Contentments:

Making the conscious decision to sleep late. I try to get up at 5AM most mornings, and I hate it when I over sleep. But ya know, sometimes I could use a few extra hours of shut eye. I decided last night that I would sleep in this morning, until around 8AM. I even made it part of my schedule for the day, working the rest of my to-do list around it. It felt really good.

Waking up to a two-kid pile on. Both girls got up a few minutes before I did and climbed into bed on top of me to lay down again. We were snug, cozy, and content. This must be what it feels like to be at the center of the puppy pile — sheer bliss.

Waking up to breakfast already made. Before I hit the hay last night, I set up my slow cooker with a breakfast casserole — eggs, ham, bread, cheese, potatoes, etc. I also programmed the coffeemaker, something I haven’t done in ages. Breakfast was nice and hot and waiting when I came downstairs. That’s a huge WIN!

As always, a good cup of joe. I’m on my second cup right now, sipping it while I sit on the back deck and type. Eight O’clock coffee, in my favorite yellow flower mug, given to me by one of my best friends. I love it.

Dinner out. Earlier this week, Hubster suggested we go out to dinner. I seriously turned around and asked him, “OK, who the hell are you and what did you do with my real husband?!” That’s how infrequently we go out to dinner. We ate at the Castle, a wonderful little place that serves the best Greek food I’ve ever had. I had moussaka and spanikopita and some gyro meat. I could have died happy that evening.

Leftovers!! The meal at the Castle was big enough I had to take some of it home. Had enough for lunch and dinner the next day. Then yesterday, a good friend brought over homemade Pad Thai. We’ve still got some sitting in the fridge. AND there’s a ton of the breakfast casserole sitting in the fridge to eat the rest of this week!

My favorite pair of jeans. I pulled on my favorite pair of jeans yesterday. They’re snug, hugging me tighter than my own mother, but they’re still comfortable and I look damn good in them. I paired them with one of my favorite shirts, a grey and white striped snug fitting polo. I love my favorite outfits, and I love that they fit good. I have a hard time finding clothes that fit right, given that I’m sway-backed.

Body weight, shmody weight. The scale and Wii Fit both agree I’m putting on the pounds, but the mirror and the Hubster (and my favorite pair of jeans) tell me I look good. I think I’m at that age where weight loss is an elusive holy grail. I should be more concerned about making sure I exercise and eat right so that I feel good, and maybe worry not so much about the weight anymore. So long as those jeans fit…

Karate class with my favorite instructor. I go to class twice a week, each class lasting two hours or longer. It’s pretty grueling, and I walk out of there completely sweat soaked. But I don’t mind the hard work so much when my favorite instructor is there. He connects with karate at a much deeper level than anyone else I’ve ever seen, and he’s not stingy about sharing what he knows. I always come out of his class knowing I’ve learned something.

Knees that work. Hell, a body that works! I’ve started doing my physical therapy again, and my knees feel better for it. They’re not completely pain-free yet, but I know if I keep up with the therapy, I’ll be doing much better. Just like if I keep up with the exercise, I’ll feel good in spite of not losing those few extra pounds. What matters is that I can move and play and do the things I want to do.

There’s a ton of other contentments I could list for today, like the comfy beach chair I’m sitting in or the knitting I’m doing now, but I think I’ll sign off with one last item. Kissing the Hubster. It doesn’t even have to be a big lip lock, tongue tangle sort of thing. Just being able to come up behind him, wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his neck is enough to make my day a good one.

And with that,. I think I’ll go enjoy my morning to myself. Have a content kind of day.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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What Price Peace (and Quiet)?

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I’m trying to work, but both kids just came running into the room.

“Mama! Mama! Pixie wants a piece of chocoloate!” Princess screams.

Pixie dances around, something small and most likely chocolate clutched in her tiny hands.

I look at the pile of work on my desk and sigh. “Do you two know what *I* want?”

Pixie gets a funny look on her face as she cogitates this. “Um, world peace?”

“Exactly,” I say. “When I get what I want, you can have what you want.”

Princess bobs her head. Pixie keeps squealing and spinning in circles, smooshing chocolate in her hand.

“So does that mean we can have the chocolate?” Princess asks.

**If that’s what it takes to get some peace and quiet…**

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Cooking Crisis – Yellow Squash!

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It’s Monday evening, almost 5:30PM. I have entrees already prepared – spaghetti, steak. But I have no side dish. Hubster bought an armload of yellow squash this weekend. I’m supposed to do something with it. However, I have no canned tomatoes and no bread crumbs, so that effectively kills my two best ideas. I do have a HUGE can of spaghetti sauce, but I don’t want to crack that open just to cook the squash (it’d be too much sauce, and I’d have to store it and remember to use it later, only to end up forgetting about it until I find a tupperware container of fuzzy green spaghetti sauce several weeks from now). I thought I had an onion, but I sliced it and it smelled funny. Not like an onion, but more like an onion that died, rotted and came back as a zombie onion and now I have to blow off its stinky onion head with a shot gun.

What to do? I’ve already sliced the squash! Hmmm…

I know. I have a big unopened tub of salsa sitting in the fridge. Unlike the spaghetti sauce, there is no way I’ll forget I have salsa in the fridge. And get this! It’s labeled “Italian Rose” salsa. I think the cooking fates are trying to throw me a clue.

I’ve got the sliced squash simmering in a pan with a cup of the salsa. The only other ingredient I added was a little olive oil. We’ll see how this works.

*****

Update: It’s 7:30PM. The salsafied squash was a success, at least in my opinion, and that’s the only opinion that counts. Nyah! It was spicy, but tasty. WIN!

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Move It Mama Monday! Off Kilter and Out of Sorts

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I had thought last week was going to be a better week. After last Monday’s post about getting more sleep, I had promised myself I would do exactly just that – get to bed early, get up early, get my work outs in, be productive, etc. In fact, the week started off pretty good.

Then the rest of the week went to hell in a handbasket. Unexpected stress from an unexpected source showed up and knocked me completely out of that good groove I had going. I ended up staying up way too late on Monday night, and then suffered through insomnia most of that night, which completely screwed my getting up early Tuesday morning. I was so frazzled from this stress that I was out of sorts the rest of the week. Determined to somehow get back on track, I dragged myself and the kids to the dojo on Tuesday morning. I wanted to get there early rather than late, so I spent all morning packing lunches, gear, weapons, etc. and we headed out as soon as I had the car loaded up. Well, we were early all right… 45 minutes early! We stayed and worked out and Cassie got her class done, but I was so tired and out of it by the time my class started that I headed home. The rest of the day wasn’t much better. To decompress, Hubster and I stayed up to watch Stranger Than Fiction. We loved the movie, but once again were up way to late. I slept late the next morning too. By then my whole routine was in shambles, so I spent the next few days scrambling to get stuff done. I wore myself out Thursday scraping vinyl linoleum off the kitchen floor, then chiseling away the glue and backing left behind. I was so sore after that, I slept way late Friday morning.

I decided to force myself back on schedule Saturday, and have done well since then. I’ve been more productive this weekend than I was all last week. But I still feel the effects of being off kilter. It showed up in my karate class Saturday morning where I suddenly developed three left feet and several extra (and quite useless) thumbs. I felt like my body was fighting itself the entire class. Then my knees ached so badly the rest of that day that I pretty much retired to bed for the afternoon, slathering on the Ben Gay and popping the Alieve like no one’s business. Yesterday morning, I got up early again, felt better, but still wasn’t back to my old self. After 40 minutes of Dance Dance Revolution, I tried to do some Wii Fit Yoga. I’ve never had worse scores. I was just completely off kilter.

So this week wiill be dedicated to getting myself back on schedule and getting back in tune with my center of balance and coordination. I’ve reworked my daily schedule and my exercise plan to help with that, making sure I get enough, but not too much, exercise. Meanwhile I’m going to start back up with my physical therapy to see if I can fix my knees. I really don’t want to suffer through another afternoon like I did on Saturday.

So that’s where we’re at right now, just trying to get our act back together. We’ll see how I’m doing next week.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Sunday Contentments – Early Mornings

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Thinking more today about things that make me content. It’s 1:30 PM right now, and I’ve had an extremely productive, yet relaxing, Sunday so far. Here’s what’s made my day full of contentment.

  • Getting up at the crack of dawn and having the house to myself

  • Working in peace and quiet

  • Finishing a project early

  • Working out without interuptions

  • DDR

  • Wii Fit yoga

  • Sleeping babies (especially when they’re so chubby and cute!)

  • A cup of coffee, eggs on toast, and a fresh peach for breakfast

  • Clean laundry

  • Clean house

  • Time to read the Sunday newspaper

  • An afternoon free to do a little light work

  • An evening of dinner and conversations with good friends

  • Time to knit (I’m working on a belt now!)

  • Books to read

  • A cup of hot Darjeeling tea

It really doesn’t take much to make me happy. Just a quiet life at a pace I can handle. I’ve been up since 5AM this morning, gotten in my workout and housecleaning, and I’ll probably sleep like a rock tonight. And it’s all good.

What do you want out of life? Where do you find your contentment?

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Fiction Friday – The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery

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Like the icon? It’s supposed to be a book wyrm, i.e. a dragon that devours books by the scores. I would love to be a book wyrm like this guy. In fact, when I started the Fiction Friday posts, it was with the intention to do a weekly review on what I was reading. Unfortunately, I don’t get to read as often as I would like. I still intend to keep doing Fiction Friday, but I can’t guarantee it will be every week (unless I somehow magically get my act together).

Having said all that, I did recently read that I wanted to talk about – The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery. I actually happen to know the author, Tee Morris. Not know know, like in that sense of “Oh yeah, Tee! I’ve known him for years! We’re best friends!” But I do know him in the sense that Tee’s the one who got me started podcasting.

I first met Tee at RavenCon three years back, where he did a weekend-long workshop on podcasting. Tee also wrote the fantasy books Morevi and Legacy of Morevi, as well as some technical books including Podcasting for Dummies (which I refer to often for my podcast), Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, and his latest book All a Twitter. The man definitely knows what he’s talking about when it comes to podcasting and social media. But what caught my attention about Tee’s work was that he was podcasting his fiction, making his novels available a chapter at a time for free in audio format. I was desperate for some good books, but with a toddler and a preschooler on my hands, I couldn’t find time to sit down and read. So after RavenCon, I went home, bought myself an iPod Shuffle, and downloaded Tee’s novel, The Case of the Singing Sword: A Billibub Baddings Mystery.

This was the first Billibub Baddings mystery, a story about a dwarf from a fantasy realm who falls into the heart of Prohibition Era Chicago and becomes a private eye. This story quickly became a favorite of mine, and I looked forward to downloading a new chapter every week to listen to. At that rate, it took me a while to get through the book, but I didn’t mind. I had something fun to listen to while I exercised and did chores around the house. This was a win for me.

Then last August, the second Billibub Baddings book came out, The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant. Both this book and the first centered on the mysterious appearance of magical artifacts from Billi’s world appearing in Chicago. Such articles in the wrong hands, like say, Al Capone’s, could prove more than disastrous, so it’s up to Billi to find the items in question and put them safely away. Along the way, he ends up dealing with gangsters, the FBI, the Chicago Police, various femme fatales, and more shady characters than you can shake a stick at. The books aren’t Raymond Chandler, but only because there’s a good deal more humor in them. Billi is a hard working detective with some unusual skills at his disposal, and he goes all out to solve the cases presented to him. The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant opens up in Chicago, following the disaster of Black Thursday. Everyone is struggling to survive, including Billi, but the love for baseball, the national past time, still runs strong. There’s a new baseball team, though, the Baltimore Mariners, who play far better than they should. When Chicago Cubs manager Joe McCarthy shows up in Billi’s office, asking him to look into things, the dwarf takes on the case. It’s a dream job for Billi, who’s a big fan of the game, but then things take a nasty turn when two murders, apparently unrelated, occur. And when Al Capone shows up, things just get that much more interesting.

I read The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant in just a few days, which says a lot. For me to read that quickly, I had to shove some other things off my busy schedule, like sleep. But I was too busy enjoying myself to really complain. I love detective novels. I love seeing gumshoes put together a case, piece by piece, and Tee let’s the reader put the pieces together on their own as well, providing a few clues to what’s going on without bludgeoning you over the head with a lot of wasted exposition. The setting for the story is spot on, exactly what I would imagine Chicago in 1930 to be. And while I’m not a fan of baseball (honestly, I’m not a fan of any team sport), my lack of knowledge on the subject wasn’t a problem. Tee wove in enough background on the sport and its history so that I could understand what was going on without feeling like I was drowning in an info dump. In fact, Tee made everything about the story engaging, with the right mix of fantasy, history, humor and mystery to keep me up late three nights in a row.

So yeah, I would definitely recommend The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant, and The Case of the Singing Sword. The latter you can listen to for free if you like, over at http://www.teemorris.com/billipodcast/. And if you’re interested in The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant, you can pick it up on Amazon.com.

But don’t try to borrow my copy or the Book Wyrm will get ya!

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Drama vs. Contentment

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I recently had a brush with someone else’s drama. It was not the natural disaster sort of drama, nor was it the death-in-the-family sort of deal where the tragedy that happens in unavoidable and there’s no way out but through it. Rather, this was a sort of self-inflicted sort of thing, many years in the making, that was brought about by bad decisions, refusal to communicate, and an unreasonable expectation that everything, especially the people you love, should be perfect or at least better than they are.

I hate this kind of drama. First, it’s sad to see people’s lives combust right before your eyes. But second, it really is self-inflicted, and it’s mainly because of that mindset that everything in life should be without flaw. People, jobs, relationships are not perfect. They never will be perfect. And when you get involved with any of these things, when you make a long term commitment to someone or to something, you ought to understand at the start that there will be mistakes and rough patches and even a little outright misery.

And you know what? That’s okay.

Seriously, this is where the Buddhist in me comes out. When Buddha said “Life is suffering,” I think what he meant was, “There are tough times in life, and there’s no way to avoid them.” And that’s true enough. But I also think he meant that people want things to be perfect no matter what, and they get upset when things turn out to be otherwise. Things, people, and situations are all impermanent. They CHANGE. What was perfect one day will be flawed and blemished then next. And that’s okay. It’s the natural state of things. Nothing lasts forever. But people refuse to see that, refuse to accept that the job they took on now has additional or different responsibilities, the person they made friends with has picked up (or probably always had) annoying bad habits, that the house they bought has bad plumbing, etc., etc., etc. And that refusal to accept always leads to anger and strife and worry and misery.

And people wonder why they’re suddenly so unhappy with their once perfect lives.

I figured out a long time ago that nothing was ever going to be perfect in my life. I have a husband I love. He’s handsome, smart, responsible, kind, generous, and good with kids. He also drives me nuts with his coupon clipping, his budgeting, his technobabble, the way he riles up the girls right before bedtime, the way he leaves his shoes lying around, his mile-wide streak of perfectionism. We’ve had more shouting matches and head butting over these things than I can recall. And somehow, we’re still married after 16 years.

Then I have these two beautiful daughters. They’re smart, funny, loving, healthy. They fight non-stop some days and drive me batty with endless questions and attitude and tantrums, not to mention their refusal to eat a meal I made because they specifically asked for it, and oh, did I mention the youngest scribbled on my freshly painted walls, and the oldest can’t focus on her homework to save her life some days? The whining and the fussing and the fighting never end. Yet somehow, I look at them and think, “I want a third. One more baby would make this family complete.”

I love my parents. They’re far from perfect. I love my friends. They don’t hit that goal of perfection either. And you know what? Neither do I. I nag, I bitch, I get angry, I yell. I’m rude, obnoxious, a loud-mouth. I’m carrying around an extra 10 lbs I can’t seem to lose no matter what and my oldest child tells me my butt jiggles funny when I run.

No, nothing is ever perfect. But there’s plenty in life that’s good enough, and I want to appreciate those things as much as I can. Case in point. Hubster and I were rather shell shocked after being hit by the shrapnel of someone else’s drama (and that’s my biggest bitch about drama; it doesn’t just affect those directly involved, it takes out the bystanders too). Feeling nervous, upset, out of sorts, we deliberately decided to take stock of what we had. We had dinner as a family, laughing and joking with the girls. We ate fortune cookies and giggled over the ludicrous fortunes we got. We read comic books together and tucked the girls into bed with kisses and songs. Then we curled up together on the couch to watch a movie. Before we went to sleep, we made love.

None of it was perfect. Pixie wouldn’t eat her dinner and threw a tantrum when she only got one fortune cookie because of that. Princess pouted and whined over not getting extra stories or being allowed to stay up late. Hubster and I argued over how good the movie was when it was over, me rolling my eyes yet again at his elitist standards for cinema. And the sex? It was comfortable, not earth-shattering.

And I’m good with all of that. Really, I am. It’s a quiet life with minor issues, and I don’t set out to make mountains out of molehills by digging up every little thing that goes wrong. And I think that’s good, because when the mountains do come along, the real ones like a natural disaster or a death in the family, I know I’ll still have the solid ground of a contented life to keep me steady on my feet.

*****

Helen’s list of contentment’s for today:

  • Two little girls who love singing along to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons

  • Waking up with a half-decent story idea in my head for today’s writing

  • Cheese and onion pie with fruit salad and iced coffee at the Briar Patch Tea room

  • Running into an old friend at lunch and reminiscing about the days I used worked at the newspaper

  • Reading Bone by Jeff Smith to my girls

  • Having time to do random doodling on in my sketch book

  • Picking up an old paperback I’ve had for years and finally starting to read it (Gojiro by Mark Jacobson)

  • Summer dresses and nice weather

  • Long phone calls with my friends

  • Learning how to knit a potholder

  • Watching Stranger Than Fiction with the Hubster and discovering Will Ferrel can really act

  • Sleeping late, curled up with the man I love. He smelled too good and felt too comfy for me to get out of bed.

Really, what more could I want than all this?

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.
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Move It Mama Monday! Early To Bed, Early To Rise?

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Today’s post takes a look at some aspects of health beyond just exercise. In particular, sleep.

Last week, I had a couple of good days where I got everything on my to-do list done. However, the very next day I was dead on my feet and couldn’t drag my ass out of bed at my usual butt-crack of dawn wake-up time.

Coincidence? I think not!

My to-do list tends to be pretty full, and I’m getting to the point (hell, I’m past the point) where I’m tired of trying to get it all done. For the past year, I’ve been shedding certain activities and being very choosy about what new stuff I will do. But it seems I still need to trim a few things from my daily grind (if only to make it less of an actual grind).

What to cut though? One of the things I added to my to-do list was 15 minutes of house cleaning a few days a week. The house definitely looks better. I mean amazingly better, like better to the power of 10! And I only invested maybe 2-3 extra hours of cleaning time. But I didn’t take anything else out and that’s probably why I was wiped out the day after I did any house cleaning.

What can I ditch? I have to (read want to) keep up with the podcast and the cartoon. I must keep up with e-mail. I really want to keep up with my exercise. And the kids need my attention through out the day. Is there anything I could drop?

One thing I’m going to try is re-instating the bed time rule. This is the rule which states I must be in bed no later than 10PM, no matter what. I’ve learned from hard experience that if I don’t go to be at least by 10, I can’t get up at 5AM the next day. And getting up at 5AM is what allows me to get a jump on my day and actually be productive.

I’m also thinking of assigning certain major tasks to certain days. Like take one day just for cartooning, and one day just for recording and producing the podcast. In fact, I’ve already started on this plan by taking Sunday to write as many blog posts as I can for the week. Yep, this post was written yesterday, and I’m hoping to knock out one more before I go to bed.

Unless 10PM comes first. Then I’m going to bed no matter how much work I have left to do today.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
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