Feb 9, 2010 Amy in the Morning Leave a comment
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Thanks very much to my Disney Social Media Moms sponsor, Juice Box Jungle.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Feb 8, 2010 Politics 3 Comments
Sometimes you’re just in the right place at the right time.
I spent the last four days in Nashville at a blogging conference, Blissdom, and as luck would have it, our conference was in the same hotel as the National Tea Party. Right next to it, in fact. So, there was some comical mixing of bloggers and Teabaggers.
The weather was shitty – about the same as NYC – but it didn’t really matter, since the Opryland Hotel was gigantic and gorgeous, with indoor areas so huge I felt like I was outdoors, only better, since there was no weather or bugs.
I had finally left the hotel on Saturday, to go across the highway to Cooter’s Place. I was raised on The Dukes of Hazzard, so this was something of a pilgrimage for me.
On my way back to my conference I went past the ballroom where Sarah Palin was about to give her keynote address. I saw a bunch of cameras and reporters huddled around a blond dye-job in bright red and from a hundred feet away – from the back – I knew I had struck gold: Orly Taitz was talking. It wouldn’t really matter what she was saying, it’s always entertaining.
There was a lot of background noise, so I’ll sum it up for you: She predicts that the democratic party will ask President Obama to step down before the next presidential election, to help the party. I didn’t get a chance to ask her if Heidi Montag would win a Nobel prize.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Feb 3, 2010 Weight Loss Leave a comment
I’ll be out of town for most of the next two weeks. That’s a little scary for me right now. I panic when I’m in situations where I can’t count calories, say “screw it” and go crazy. I also have a hard time passing up free food and buffets, and the next two weeks will be filled with both. But I’ve laid a good foundation over the past few weeks and hopefully I’ll be able to stay on track. I have no illusions about losing weight with all this travel though – if I come out even I’ll call it a win and be thrilled. I lost less than a pound this week, but I’m not surprised. It’s that time of the month, you know what I’m talking about. I’m only not naming it so as not to attract weird googlers.
So this past week, the third week of the Your Shape Challenge, has been really good. I did manage to get in three 30-minute Your Shape workouts, which was my goal. I also went ice skating last week, which worked some leg muscles that hadn’t been worked in a while. However, I’m going to be without my Wii for five out of the next seven days. If I can get in two 30-minute Your Shape workouts in the next week, I think that will be an accomplishment. I’m going to try to get in a little exercise on the road, but it’s never happened before so I’m trying to manage my expectations rather than set myself up for failure. In other words, I’m setting the bar low in the hope that I can leap over it with ease.
I made my water goal three days this week, and not coincidentally it was the same three days that I worked out. I need to stop thinking about drinking water (and yes, by that I mean Crystal Light) only when working out. I feel better when I drink more water. It’s such a no-brainer I don’t know why I struggle with it. But I’m going to bring my little “On the Go” packets of Crystal Light with me. Don’t worry, I won’t take them in my carry-on. I don’t want to be arrested at the airport for carrying a suspicious red powder.
The Your Shape challengers have a new challenge this week, and that’s to walk as many steps as possible each day. To help us keep track we were each sent a pedometer, and I’ve been wearing mine faithfully for the past two days, despite a few close calls where I almost dropped it in the toilet. It’s going to happen eventually. Whether or not I rescue it depends on what it lands in. 
Yesterday I walked just a few hundred steps shy of 10,000 steps, which is the magic number that’s always thrown around about how active a person should be. I almost got there even though the only time I left the house yesterday was walking the kids to school and picking them up. At home, I’m always going up and down the stairs and all over the place, so it was pretty easy. Today was even easier. I went into the city with the kids, and we did a good deal of walking. I’m over 14,600 steps right now and not quite done yet – hoping to hit 15,000 before I fall into bed.
So, things have been going well. Pretty easy. I’m really glad that this all started during a really busy, crazy time for me. If I had more time to pay attention to the challenge, I’d probably over-do it in the beginning and then flame out. Instead I took things slow, and I’m still going strong. At the end of the day My Food Diary tells me when I will reach my goal if I ate the same way every day. Today it told me that I would reach my goal on my birthday, which is in October. Far off, yes, but I really feel like I could keep this up until then. What a great birthday gift that would be.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Feb 2, 2010 Product Giveaway 6 Comments
***The contest is now closed. I’ll be announcing the winner shortly.***
Don’t worry, I’m not giving away dry skin. Although I could. I have the driest skin I’ve ever come across. In the winter if I don’t slather lotion on all day, my palms look like I colored in the lines with White Out. And my feet? Forget about it.
I was sent a bottle of Skin MD Natural to try and while I haven’t been using it long enough to know whether or not it will solve my dry skin problems, it does feel fantastic going on. I’ve used a lot of heavy-duty lotions that go on like spackle, but this lotion is smooth and silky, and feels completely un-greasy.
According to the Skin MD site this is a “shielding lotion,” which helps my own natural oils moisturize my skin. I’m not sure I have any natural oils left! But we’ll see. This is directly from Skin MD:
“Skin MD Natural is a shielding lotion that helps the skin restore its integrity and enhance its protective functions so that the skin is able to heal naturally and regain its youthful appearance. Skin MD Natural works by bonding with cells of the skin’s outermost layer to form an invisible shield. This layer of protection prevents environmental irritants and pollutants from penetrating the skin, while locking in the skin’s own natural oils and moisture, helping heal dry skin, leaving skin feeling silky and smooth. It is dermatologist recommended and hypo-allergenic. It is also fragrance, colorant and paraben free, so it is safe to use for the whole family.”
I have a bottle to give away as well. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment about your worst dry skin area. For a second entry, you can tweet about this giveaway (don’t forget to leave a separate comment linking to your tweet or it won’t count; instructions on how to link to your tweet can be found here). Just make sure to mention what the prize is and link back to this post, or you can just copy and tweet this:
Win a bottle of Skin MD Natural lotion to help your winter skin. Head over to @SelfishMom’s giveaway: http://bit.ly/9J0PvS
So, that’s a maximum of two entries per household, please. The comments will close at noon-ish on Monday, February 8th and random.org will draw the winner. Shipping available in the continental U.S. only. For complete rules, please see my Giveaway Rules page. Good luck!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level 10. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Shop Amazon
Jan 29, 2010 What's Going On 7 Comments
Believe it or not, this isn’t a post about eating, or weight loss, or cravings. It’s a post about environment, and relaxation, and ritual.
I made sauce today, for the first time since before we moved into this house, over three-and-a-half years ago. My kitchen still isn’t done, but it’s almost there. And after years of using a kitchen so disgusting I hated going in there, then six months of using a thrown together, awkward, temporary kitchen, I’ve got a beautiful new space that was just begging to be cooked in.
Before we were married, back in North Carolina, The Ass and I would make these huge Italian dinners, with homemade pasta, sauce, meatballs (for him), salad, and garlic bread. After we had kids we skipped the homemade pasta – too much trouble when packaged Buitoni is so good – but I still made sauce regularly. It was like spending the day on the beach for me, a relaxing ritual that slowed me down and kept me in one place. The sauce simmers for hours as the smell creeps into every crevice.
But then we moved here, and I didn’t want to be in my kitchen for hours. I didn’t even want to be in my kitchen for minutes. I know people who can bake and cook in any circumstances. I used to watch my mother turn out hundreds of cookies in whatever kitchen was available to her. No matter how crappy the oven was, her cookies were perfect. It wasn’t about her comfort or her experience, it was about the final product. I admire that.
But for me, cooking and baking are about the journey. Sure, I want the end result to be tasty and beautiful, but even if the food doesn’t turn out exactly as I wanted it, I still got to spend hours cooking. And over the past few years I really missed that. I barely made any special meals, and I hated baking. I would turn out brownies and cupcakes for birthdays and bake sales but hated doing it.
Then today, finally, we had a working kitchen. I had been up until 2am washing dishes, and continued washing for most of today (almost every single thing had gotten covered in sawdust in the past week). Once I was done, once everything was clean, you’d think I’d want to get out of the kitchen. Instead, I got myself to the store on this frigid day and got my supplies. And spent the next few hours working on my sauce, relearning how to make it.
With a pot of sauce comes an automatic slow-down. Time to work on a project with Jake between stirs. Time to tell the kids stories about cooking with daddy before he was daddy. Then, later, after they’re in bed, time to sit down to the first thought-out, not thrown-together, meal the two of us have had with each other in a while.
The sauce isn’t even cool enough to put away yet, but I’ve already decided that chili is next. And after that, a hearty soup. And after that, something else that will give me an excuse to hang out in the kitchen for hours, and stir, and savor. It’s a real luxury to have the place and the time and the opportunity, and after missing it for so long, I’m going to try not to take it for granted.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Selfish Mom is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache
