Rookie Mistake

“I haven’t been to a fitness class since the holidays started,” I admitted to no one in particular as I picked out my locker before Wednesday’s kickboxing class. “I’m about to get my butt kicked.”

How right I was.

I made the mistake of jumping back in full throttle, at the same level I’d been participating before I took my little two-month exercise sabbatical. I was so looking forward to kickboxing, and I was also looking forward to my first non-treadmill workout with my new Fitbit Charge 2. I went for it HARD.

Two days later, I can certainly tell I was a little too aggressive with my bob-and-weaves and my jab-cross combinations, among others. My upper arms and the backs and insides of my thighs are stiff as hell.

So, of course I continued my sub-par decision-making by opting out of my previously planned treadmill walk, and choosing instead to spend today’s lunch break querying my WordPress MySQL database in preparation for my annual Year In Review post.

Being muscle-sore has the added bonus of always causing me to weigh in heavier than I would expect, presumably from inflammation and water retention. Add that to a late-night fatigued eating binge (more poor decisions!), and my weight this morning sailed right past Oh Shit and bordered on Jesus Fuck.

Kickboxing is scheduled for Monday of next week. My official Weight Watchers weigh-in is Tuesday, department lunch on Wednesday, then a Barre Sculpt class on Thursday. No matter what the scale says, no matter how I feel physically or mentally, my health — my fitness, physical and mental — has to come first. No more skipping workouts, no more late-night binge eating.

I’ve had a couple of years to stabilize at this weight (or thereabouts). 2017 is the year when I buckle down and take it to the next level.

Whatever that means. I’ll know it when I see it.

Connor’s “Sord”

Connor's Sord

Today was Show And Tell at Pre-K, where all the kids brought in a toy they got for Christmas. Connor decided to bring one of his three “space swords” that his uncle gave him.

(He doesn’t even care that they’re knock-off light sabers. He even calls them space swords. We won’t get off this easy in years to come.)

After Connor went to bed tonight, I went through the mountain of papers he brought home from school and happened upon this gem near the bottom of the pile.

Gonna have to save this one.

Inheriting Cast Iron

When my father-in-law passed away unexpectedly five years ago, one of the things we inherited from the estate was my late mother-in-law’s set of cast iron cookware: two small 8″ and 9″ skillets, one large 12″ skillet, and a dutch oven (wire handle, no lid). They had clearly not been used in some time, and each had varying degrees of rust and general grime collected on them.

I was afraid to clean and reseason them for the longest time, mainly because my one experience with seasoning cast iron involved a friend from college smoking up her apartment by using an excessive amount of shortening while seasoning her own cast iron. I also didn’t want to ruin them by doing it wrong.

As it turns out, it’s really hard to ruin cast iron cookware.

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50 Recipes in 2017

In addition to posting daily to my blog, I also resolve to make 50 new-to-me recipes in 2017. This shouldn’t be too tough, honestly, because my husband bought me an Anova sous-vide appliance for Christmas.

Chicken breasts cooking sous vide

This week’s recipe — more research and cobbling-together of ideas than an actual recipe, really — was sous vide chicken breast with balsamic reduction.

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