Starfish Envy

Practice Makes Perfect?

(Yogini Cowgirl, this one's for you!)

Now that my trainer is on maternity leave (her beautiful baby girl arrived two days ago!), I needed someone to be accountable to (sorry, Grams, for ending that sentence with a preposition, although I didn't REALLY, because I'm ending it with this long parenthetical).

So, in lieu of finding another trainer for the interim, I decided to take private lessons with a yoga instructor.  

I find yoga classes seriously intimidating.  I always love them when I can force myself to go, but I can't work up the gumption all that often.  My hope is that as I learn more and feel more comfortable with the poses, I'll be more inclined to add classes to my practice.

Y'hear that?

I said "practice!"

Which is what I'm hoping to build.  Not just a couple hours a week following my teacher's instructions, but a genuine practice that includes awareness and intention and movement and connection and whatever else practices include.

So far, it's going well.  My teacher is fantastic, I'm learning a lot, and I feel kind of amazing.  After my class this morning, I literally felt high.  Verging on giddy.  Floating.

Only lasted about an hour.

But that's about an hour more of high giddy floating than I feel on every other day.

So I'll take it.

Breakfast of Champions

Champions of fertility, anyway.

That's oatmeal with fertility-friendly goji berries.  Eight hundred million vitamins.  The last banana of the bunch (lookin' raggedy).  And a special IVF-prep tonic from my acupuncturist.  Not included in this shot is my special twice-daily fertility tea... that every now and then makes me nauseous.

Ah, the things we do for love.

The Plan. (I Hate The Plan.)

I had McDonald's for dinner tonight.

I had McDonald's for dinner because starting tomorrow, I am ALL HEALTHY ALL THE TIME.  

One of the many crap-fest things about trying to get pregnant the not-old-fashioned way is that I haven't been able to keep up my regular exercise routine.  At all.

I've also been stressed and grumpy for six months, which is the worst possible combination for an emotional eater, which I am.  In a big way.  

So now my super-loose jeans are starting to be my fit-just-right jeans, which sucks.  I worked pretty darn hard to get them to be super-loose jeans, and it's frustrating to have to do it all again.  

But I'm going to.  Dammit.

Starting now, I'll be taking the next couple months off from trying to get pregnant.  All the energy I've been funneling that direction, I will instead be funneling into getting healthy again.  Emotionally and physically.  

I'll also be finding a new doctor, this time a fertility specialist.  I'm meeting with one in the morning, in fact.

So here's the plan:  I will be exercising one hour a day, five times a week.  Six if I can manage it.  And I will not be putting one bad-for-me thing in my mouth for the next two months.  Period.  Because I am an abstainer, not a moderator.  So if I'm doing it, I have to do it 100%.  

Except for my birthday, which is coming up.  

On that day, I'll let myself have one "bad" thing.  Just one.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward a huge diet coke from McD's.  But it could also be a cupcake.  

I'm not yet ready to commit.

Bawling My Eyes Out

Well.  So.  I just watched the end of Season 4.  

I'm talking about Friday Night Lights, of course.

And since I can't stop crying, that's about all I have to say about that.

In other news, I think I'm going to give up refined sugar.  Again.  

Which sucks.  But I think it's necessary.  My life could not be in more of a rut at the moment, which is when eating crappy foods is most tempting.  I have someone cooking most of my lunches and dinners, and I have oatmeal pretty much every day for breakfast, so my only downfalls tend to be of the sugar-y persuasion.  

And since I know that I'm an abstainer, not a moderator (thank you, Gretchin Rubin), I know the only-eat-sugar-on-Sunday sort of plan won't work.  I have to quit completely.  

Just to be clear, I mean refined sugar.  Not carbs in general.  And I'm cool with agave and honey and all the natural-type things that I hardly ever use anyway.

Which means that now I have two things to cry about.

They Do Run Run Run, They Do Run Run

I woke up this morning to the sound of helicopters... which is not totally unheard of in my neighborhood.   Usually the thudding chopchopchop is accompanied by sirens and deep voices booming through megaphones.

This morning, however, the helicopters were up there for an entirely different reason: the L.A. Marathon started in my neighborhood!  

Then it wove through Downtown, and back up through my neighborhood again, before heading all the way west to Santa Monica.  Just before the start of the race, I headed down to Sunset to cheer on the runners.  

You can (barely) see a helicopter between the trees on the left, hovering right over Dodger Stadium. 

Before I even got to Sunset, the roads were blocked off.    (Quick aside:  I'm so used to seeing abandoned grocery carts, I DIDN"T EVEN SEE THIS ONE when I took the picture. Seriously.  Didn't notice it until I got home and downloaded my pictures.  Hello, observant.)

   

Before the race even started, people were lining up along the route.  How often do you get up early and go stand on the street to cheer for people you don't even know?  Pretty darn cool.

And before I knew it, the first wheelchair racer came flying down Glendale...

That guy was MOVING...

And the front pack of women runners wasn't far behind...

 Some of the most elite runners in the world, right in front of me!

 For just a moment...

 And then they were gone...

Soon to be followed by the men...

LOOK AT THEIR LEGS.  All lean muscle mass.  I had some of that once.  

And there they go...

Did I mention the circus at Mile 6?  

Spending a morning on stilts seems almost as hard to me as running a marathon...

After the lead packs, only a slow trickle of runners came by for awhile...

The trickle slowly picked up...

... and eventually turned into a stream...

And I just have to throw in this picture.  The woman on the right looks Photoshopped, doesn't she?

... and then a river...

... a river with a weird, red-caped guy.  Which is right about when I decided to casually stroll down to my favorite neighborhood joint for a yummy breakfast.

Yeah.

I will never run a marathon.  But I will happily watch and cheer every chance I get.

To Live and Diet in L.A.

Today, as I complained about how my personal trainer is trying to kill me, and contemplated switching from my meal-delivery service to a personal chef that my friends have been using, my assistant accused me of being "so L.A."

Ouch.  Right?

I mean, that's low.

Just because I have a dog walker, and a gardener, and my dog and I both get weekly acupuncture (from different people) and I do Pilates and yoga and, truth be told, I've been contemplating taking meditation lessons from my friend's guru and OHMYGODIAMSOLA.

Crapfest.  

Because, and I swear this is true, really and truly, I am SO NOT L.A.  

I'm a mid-western girl, through and through.  I like barbeque, and nice people, and I have a super intense work ethic, and I'm an idealist, and although I don't currently own a skort (shorts/skirt), I have and probably will again.

And yet, somehow, after twelve years here, I sort of am so L.A.

How did this happen?  And when?  

Was it the first time I pulled an all-nighter on a script and realized SOMEONE had to let my dog out?  Was it after I gained forty pounds on "The Shield," where we ordered in lunch and dinner almost every day, and realized I was going to gain a million more if I didn't find an easier way to eat healthy?

Ultimately, at least for me, all of these L.A. adaptations center around my job, and how unhealthy it makes you-- the hours, the stress, the general insanity.  And being single doesn't help.  There simply isn't anyone else to do all of the things that need to be done. No one else is going to help carry the load.  

So I hire people.  And spend a great deal of time and money working on maintaining a basic level of health in an exceedingly unhealthy environment.

I dunno.

The truth is, there are many things about my job that I love.  And the things I do to make the bad parts bearable... well, there are worse things than having to hire someone to make healthy meals for you.

Part of me-- as I'm sure you can tell-- totally rejects the idea of being "so L.A.," even as I know that the things that make me a cliche are also the things that keep me sane.

One thing is certain.  My love-hate relationship with this city continues to be one of the most complicated relationships in my life.  

L.A., if only I could quit you.    

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This whole "so L.A." issue brings up a question.  Or, rather, several.  As many questions as there are cities, really.  What does it mean to be "so New York?"  Or "so Wichita?"  Or "so Detroit?"  Or "so Memphis?"  Wherever you are, are you "so" that city?  And is that a good thing or a bad thing?  

70,000 Hits, 1000 Comments, and Poached Eggs

We here at Starfish Envy-- and by 'we' I mean me -- are so very happy to announce that over the weekend we surpassed 70,000 lifetime hits (which seems pretty good to me, since we've only been around about six months), and we got our one thousandth comment!  

One thousand comments!

Which, come to think of it, means that by 'we' I don't actually mean me.  I really do mean WE!  And that makes this the perfect opportunity to thank you all very, very much for being here.  

Since I'm all about numbers today, here's the number I've been thinking about lately: eighty.  

Eighty, according to something I read, is the number of days it takes to ripen eggs. (The ones in my ovaries.  Not the chicken ones.)  

And that means that the eggs I'm ripening RIGHT NOW are the ones I'm going to be trying to hit with DonorSicle (which, for better or worse, is what I'm calling my frozen donor sperm).  

Thus, all the healthy eating and the exercising and the radical self-care.  

Except that I haven't been eating so healthfully because I've been on set for two weeks. (There's a reason craft service people always get thanked in awards speeches. It's called a nacho cheese dispenser.)  Also, I haven't been exercising because I've been incessantly sick, and now it's supposed to rain all week, and remember that post I did about how great it is to exercise now that I meet my trainer in the park?  Yeah.  Doesn't happen when it rains.  

And then, today, I think I poached my poor eggs.

Here's what happened: my acupuncturist INSISTED I get a massage this weekend.  (See how I did that?  It's not like I was being self-indulgent or pampering.  My acupuncturist MADE ME do it.  I had NO CHOICE!  She comes at me with needles!)

So I figure, hey, I'm gonna be there anyway, might as well do a nice soak.  Which is basically sitting in a jacuzzi for half an hour while milk whey and eucalyptus work some kind of magic on your skin.

Only the room was kind of like a sauna, and the water was super-hot, which is great unless you hate heat, and I could feel myself turning bright red, and my body temperature rising, and all I could think was that WP's doctors wouldn't let her get in a hot tub when she was pregnant because it's bad for the fetus, ergo heat can't be good for my little eggs, and AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

I cut my soaking short.  

And then my poached eggs and I thoroughly enjoyed a fantastic massage and a facial.

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Have you hit any milestones lately?

Stretching... and Breaking

Yoga.  Kicks my ass.

Not so much the two hour class New Years Day, which was challenging, but good challenging.  More the SECOND class, Saturday, when my muscles were already exhausted and my downward facing dog was closer to a wobbly plank, and my plank was verging on cobra, and my cobra was pretty much me flat on my face on the floor.

Fun.

No, really.  It was.  Seriously.  

For real.  Mostly.

And the best part about the classes is that before we got all upside down and stretchy, the teachers gave a little... I want to say 'lesson,' but it was more in the vein of 'something to mull quietly in your own way.'  

The first day, the teacher talked about being rigorous in our thoughts and actions.  

Now, rigorous is a word you don't hear very often.  I can honestly, and ashamedly, say I haven't given rigorousness any thought whatsoever in... forever?  Maybe because I've always leaned toward a slightly negative take on rigorousness, which can have an implied strictness and inflexibility that makes me uncomfortable.  

But in the context of a yoga class, the notion of rigorousness instead meant maintaining awareness and focus, and not letting myself off the hook.  Which is an excellent way to start the year, and is probably responsible for my decision to sign up for that second, ass-kicking, class.

What was I thinking?  My palms hurt, and my shoulders were shaky, and I felt whiny and wished I were anywhere else but there... and then it was done, and I have to admit I was glad I'd been rigorous.

I was also exhausted.  And then my nose started running.  And I realized that for the FIFTH TIME in three months, I'm sick.  Again. 

And this is what I have to say about that: 

WHO PASSES OUT GERMS IN THIS TOWN?  STOP COMING TO MY HOUSE!  I DON"T LIKE YOU.  I DON"T WANT YOU HERE.  GO. AWAY.  

Okay.  Sorry for the tantrum.  

So now I am rigorously in bed, where I am rigorously blowing my nose, and soon I will be rigorously asleep.

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What are you rigorous about?  Is rigorousness a state-of-being you've put much thought into?

   

Tradition Makes Me Annoying

Traditions depress me.  

I didn't realize this when I brought them up.  Obviously.  Or I would've skipped the subject all together.  

Or maybe I wouldn't have. Because I really have loved hearing about your traditions-- you've given me some wonderful ideas for when I have my own future family.  New PJ's every Christmas Eve is probably my favorite.  (Although a new Christmas book every year is a close second.)  I also love one of WP's family's traditions: each person is responsible for doing one other person's stocking. Every year I'm amazed at the thought and care and love and joy that WP puts into that stocking.  

Anyway.  All of this thought on the subject of traditions has made me realize how few I have.  And how many I've lost.  And that kinda sucks.

When I was a kid, we had traditions.  I was always in charge of setting up the manger, a collection on ceramic figurines my mom painted when she was in her twenties.  And at my mom's house we had a large Christmas tree on every floor, which meant three full trees to decorate, and then a couple smaller trees for good measure.  And every year my grandmother made Swedish cookies, and my mom and step-dad had a big dinner on Christmas Eve.  We opened presents Christmas morning, and then I went to my dad's for Christmas with his side of the family.  There were always Christmas cookies and egg nog and, every now and then, caroling.  Once or twice we went to church.  And then we didn't anymore.  And when my step-dad died, Christmas got very small-- just me, my mom, and my grandmother.  And then all of my grandparents died, and that was that for the Christmas cookies.  And pretty much every thing else. 

And then my mom re-married, which was great for her.  But meant that I was plugged awkwardly into other people's Christmas traditions.  Not even plugged in, really.  More like, standing there watching.  (I am compelled, at this point, to briefly recount my first Christmas with my step-dad's family.  They're all wonderful, and though I only see them once every year or two, I like them all very much.  But they have seriously tradition-heavy holidays, including dozens of extended family members, and hours of rounds of gift opening.  And on that first Christmas, my introduction to the whole clan, I sat through three hours of gift opening during which I had one gift to open-- a pretty bronze pin from my soon-to-be-step-sister.  My mom got me nothing.  For Christmas.  Neither did anyone else, but it's hard to blame them, since they'd never met me.  Which is a great way to spend Christmas, by the way, watching people you've never met open lots and lots of presents.  Never occurred to my mom that the whole thing might be, y'know, kinda painful or difficult or awkward for me.  But whatever.  I'm over it.  Clearly.) 

It's hard to find your place within other people's traditions.  Because they have a whole language, a whole set of common experiences, not mention a history and bond that I just won't ever share.  And since I alternate Christmases with my dad's side and my mom's side, I'm not even consistently around for the holidays, so there's no real foundation for growth.  I just don't fit.  I'm not necessary.  My presence doesn't detract, I hope, but it certainly doesn't add.  

Can't say it doesn't suck.    

So, on alternating years, Christmas at my dad's house is a relief.  Mellow.  Stress-free. Familiar.  Fun.  And I think it makes a difference when I'm not there.  

I am SUCH a whiner.  Seriously.  I'm about to make myself vomit.  This is what Christmas does to me.  It makes me maudlin and self-pitying.  Which breaks Rule 1.    

ARG!  I suck.

Anyway.  All of this is why, a couple years ago, I decided that I was never going to be on my own for the holidays again.  I knew I wasn't going to meet a guy, since that is apparently an utter impossibility for me in this lifetime.  So I was going to have a kid IMMEDIATELY.  Partly because the holidays are always more fun and meaningful when there are kids around.  And partly because I'm just so tired of being the one who's always alone.  

It's exhausting.  

I'm tired of standing on my own two feet.  I want someone to lean on.  If I can't have that, I at least want someone who leans on me.  Someone I belong to.  Someone who belongs to me.

Which is not a reason to have a child.  

So I didn't.  I waited until I was actually ready.  I waited until now.  

And maybe, by next year, if I'm very, very lucky, Christmas won't be about me at all.  It will be about some new little being... a new little being who will have a brand new set of pajamas every Christmas Eve, and who will settle into bed Christmas Eve night with a brand new Christmas book, and wake up Christmas morning to special stockings and caroling, and an ornament all his (or her) own...

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Also, I ate a cupcake.  With sugar.  

   

Take Yourself to Lunch Day... Preferably Someplace Great

I am not a restaurant critic.  I can’t even in good conscience call myself a foodie.  But I know a good roasted chicken when I see one, and I’m awed by one when I taste it.

Today, I had a good roasted chicken. 

Because today, I had lunch at Bouchon. 

Bouchon is Thomas Keller’s other restaurant in Yountville, CA.  You know.  The one that’s not The French Laundry.  The one that only has one Michelin star.  (Come to think of it, I’m not sure why I even deigned to eat there, what with the paucity of stars.  But I suppose a girl can’t be fancy all the time.)

I should preface this by saying that my Big Wedding Weekend started somewhat horrendously… with me wiping away tears on the train from the San Francisco airport to the rental car garage, all while forcing myself to yawn repeatedly in the hopes that the other train passengers would think my eyes were watering because I was tired, and not that I was crying like a baby because my plane to San Francisco had been delayed three hours, causing me to miss the wine tasting I’d taken the whole day off work to attend, and sending me into a spiral of self-pity about how much it sucks to travel alone when things go wrong because there’s no one to commiserate with or bitch to or make laugh. 

Plus, going to a wedding alone.

So then I decided I would eat sugar.  I was already planning to eat sugar for Thanksgiving.  (There’s no way I’m not having chocolate pecan pie.  Not unless my hands fall off and my teeth fall out, and even then, that’s what blenders and straws are for, my friends.  Blenders and straws.)

And I must say, the sugar decision perked me right up.  So over the course of the last four days, I've had a bar of chocolate, half a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and a rice crispy treat.  Plus two little pastries at the wedding.  And then, today, I had profiteroles at Bouchon. 

They were perfect.   

(Lest you feel I’ve turned into a complete and utter slob, I also went for a long walk/jog in Calistoga, took a Pilates class, and did two, count 'em two, sessions with the personal trainer.) 

This is all to say that ending my trip at Bouchon was a perfect button.  Or maybe a perfect arc.  Friday was rotten, Saturday started moving things in the right direction (I’ll write more about that tomorrow), Sunday delivered the most wonderful wedding ever created (also more about that coming), and today the roasted chicken at Bouchon brought it all home.

I haven't quite figured out what's so special about roasted chicken.  It's so simple, at least on the surface, and yet so easy to get horribly wrong.  

Which, now that I think about it, is a lot like life.

And it must be said: if the rest of my life were as good as Bouchon's roasted chicken, I would certainly die happy.

Is there a better way to start a meal than bread and butter?  I'm gonna go with no.  And can't you just HEAR the crust of this bread crunch? 

And then this beet salad with persimmon...  

Yum.  Big, big yum.  And the chicken...

Ah, the chicken.  The opposite of tears.  

And it didn't make one bit of difference that I was eating alone.

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On a totally different topic, with the exception of one black blouse and a silk sheath, I wore everything I packed!  Meaning I will be a hopeless over-packer forever and ever.

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Do you enjoy eating out by yourself?  (If you haven't done it in awhile, I recommend it!)