While fitness is one of my highest priorities, I haven’t given up my sweet tooth. Luckily I have found the Holy Grail: a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that are both tasty and SLIGHTLY less harmful than the normal processed white flour crap you’d find on the shelf at the grocery store. It can’t be brown rice and vegetables 24/7. You need to have a little fun.
Continue reading “Chocolate Chip Cookies for Your “Cheat” Days…or Every Day”
Check out this guest post I wrote for BookMartialArts.com: “What to Do When Your Martial Arts Practice Feels Stagnant”
BookMartialArts.com is the world’s leading martial arts travel company. It is a unique travel site that appeals to martial artists, yoga enthusiasts, fitness buffs, and anyone who wants to challenge their minds and bodies while visiting another part of the world. Search the site to find destinations near or far that will help you make your martial arts dreams a reality.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,100 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.
The two people who inspire me the most to stay active and healthy aren’t professional athletes or models. They aren’t yogis or taekwondo black belts.
They are two women with life threatening illnesses.
I’ve been writing about health a lot on my blog lately, and lately I’ve come to appreciate the saying, “When you have your health, you have everything.” The concepts of prioritizing health and taking it for granted both occupied my mind today. It all began with Tejano music…
Continue reading “My Health Heroes Aren’t Athletes”
“It’s January and February right now. Spring will come.”
My dad was offering me some words of comfort the other night as I sat curled up in my bed, sobbing and dredging up one ridiculous worry after another: regrets of things I did long ago, a reopened wound from a bitter breakup, letting go of pieces of me that I couldn’t get back. I felt lonely, vulnerable, and hopeless. I didn’t really have a rational reason to be upset, but it felt like the flood gates had been unleashed. Damnit, I was going to give myself something to cry about.
Continue reading “The Inevitable Slump”
I’ve been nominated for a Liebster Award by my the fabulous Miss B at Laugh, Love, Prosper. Much love and gratitude to you, darlin’! She was very helpful in explaining the rules and answering my questions. If any nominees need clarification see her post by clicking here.
Now, I am a thirty-five year old woman who fought Twitter for 30 minutes just to get a damn widget, so we’ll see if I did this right…
Continue reading “I’ve Been Nominated For a Liebster Award!”
Somehow I ended up being one of the guys. My closest friends in both rounds of graduate school were men. I’m the only woman on my work team. All but one of my taekwondo instructors and 80% of my classmates are male. My only sibling is a brother. Even my yoga teacher is a man. I love watching UFC, I know every single Led Zeppelin song by heart, I can out-quote any man on “The Godfather” movies (except my father, and he’s not even the Italian parent), and as a bonus, I do a pretty good Eric Cartman impersonation. And yet, I love purses and shoes, have long hair and delicate features, and am not even close to being a tomboy other than the secret delight I get at how bruised up I am after a night of sparring. How did this happen?
Continue reading “It’s Raining Men…or, How I Became an Honorary Dude”
I was raised Catholic and still consider Catholicism to be my faith of choice even though I don’t regularly attend church and disagree with the Holy See on just about every political and social issue. (But Pope Francis seems like he’d be really fun to hang out with on a road trip, doesn’t he?) Every year around this time someone will ask me what I’m giving up for Lent.
My reply: “Nothing. If I did I’d be a hypocrite.”
Continue reading “Why I Ate Meat on Ash Wednesday”
Today I’m taking a break from my usual taekwondo posts to share my other passion–the law of attraction. I’ve been a believer for a long time and have had too many instances of proof to be a skeptic. Without trying very hard I experienced the power of visualization. Some of you may think it’s a coincidence, but I fall more on the side of manifesting my own reality.
Continue reading “The Universe Has a Sense of Humor – And is an Omnivore”
Smoking looks cool. I’m sorry, it does. In my fantasy life, after I’ve gunned down human traffickers without getting any blood on my sleek black trench coat and before I head off to a gig with my Led Zeppelin cover band I lean up against my black Ducati…and light a cigarette. It just wouldn’t have the same effect if I, say, bit into an apple or patted a kitten or posted a double rainbow meme on Facebook.
Continue reading “Having an Attitude of Gratitude When Cynicism Is So Much Cooler”