Monday Musings

Welcome to the last edition of Monday Musings for 2018! It’s hard to believe we sit poised on another brand new year full of possibilities and adventures.

I promise this isn’t gonna be any kinda “new year, new you”  post nor will it be full of cliché end of year rhetoric.

Just yours truly with some random musings to end the year with and perhaps a little sass thrown in the mix just for fun.

The holiday season has been great

OK I don’t know how it goes for everyone, but my holidays have been good.

Busy? Yes.  Controlled chaos at times? Yes. Food? Ugh more than enough. Family? See “controlled chaos” ha

Seriously though, I’m blessed to have my tribe together and everyone is happy and the kids play and drag toys everywhere to which I find pieces of things tucked in my sofa till summer time and Nerf darts in odd places but it’s all good stuff, ya know?

There’s been a plethora of food and sweet treats and really at this time of year I’m officially getting sick of food.

I’ve been cooking and baking since… well… Thanksgiving.

I’m ready to get back to easy meals and I’m ready to take a break from sugary treats. I guess it’s good I’m used to eating healthy most of the time because it doesn’t take long for me to realize it’s not my comfort zone.

The Snake Oil People Are Coming

Oh I have a good time with all of the “health and wellness” leeches out there.  I don’t have a voice here for no reason, and having a blog and my social media is the perfect platform for speaking out against some of the craziness.

I wrote a post on it.. find it here….https://sassyfitnesschick.com/2017/10/24/snake-oil-diets-and-more-wizardry/

The tv ads have started. The stores have begun to set up huge displays of “meal replacement shakes”  with athletic wear in the front of store and my social media feeds have all the DM people hawking their wares for weight loss.

Tricks and gimmicks abound.

Yeah, yeah we all ate cookies at Christmas and maybe to much of grandmas pie.

Whatever.

Here’s the deal, you don’t need their wizardry to lose weight, honestly, you don’t. Keep your money, buy healthy, real food and smaller clothes with it.

You don’t need to be cleansed, detoxed, purified, or any of that other nonsense. ( remember you’ve got a liver and kidneys to do all that 😉 )

I’m not gonna go crazy in this post about this topic but I WILL leave you with a great article that clearly defines all the “lingo” these companies use so you’re a little educated.

https://qz.com/quartzy/1510840/a-handy-guide-to-the-toxic-language-of-diet-culture/?fbclid=IwAR2pCvjN_m6ZaQb_FwQKbQzKKD2hQmg5X1oLmOdnbLHKDeaK2MfTDdmZOPo

Let’s not forget exercise….

I have not gotten in the amount my body craves these past few weeks. I came off months of training, did the duathlon at the end of November, and headed into a busy month working and preparing for the holiday season.

I did get out the other day for a ride… of course it was one of the coldest mornings we had this week….

I  hope you have found time to get out and enjoy some purposeful movement.  I hope that as you move into the year ahead, you are already planning to make it a part of your daily routine.

I enjoy other less “active” activities…

The day after Christmas found me with my first “free” day in quite awhile. And by that I didn’t feel totally task oriented with a to-do list in my face.  So I trolled the local stores for any after Christmas items I couldn’t live without then I went and got coffee and just spent some time… reading….

I started a book  ( One Bridge To Life) before Thanksgiving and it got set aside ’cause I just didn’t seem to find extra time to lay down and leisurely read.

I was able to attend a public meeting  at a local church and the speaker was a 92 year old man who had survived the Holocaust.

There is something very humbling about sitting there listening to someone recount horrors from ages ago, yet watching his face at times, it was like he was seeing it all very clearly in his minds eye. That got me more than anything… seeing his look become distant as if he were seeing it all over again… and he most likely was.

Of course his time to talk went all to fast so, what do you do to fill in the gaps?

You buy his book of course.

This one is his personal recollections of his life before the invasion, during his time as a prisoner, and then his liberation.

I read and then have to walk away at times as I’m dealing with the truths that these were real people. The horror is almost like todays graphic horror except I know this was real life.

I keep reading and I start to get involved with a “character” and I want them to make it… to get out…to escape…so many never made it to survival.

I’ve had to set the book down and walk away for awhile more times than I should admit.

I just cannot wrap my mind around the horrible, ghastly, inhumane treatment of human beings done by other “human beings”.

Yeah, not light reading I know.

I believe like so many others, these stories, the lives of those who went through this monsterous atrocity, must always be remembered. I guess educating myself further is a way for me to “not forget” such a horrible point in the history of mankind.

Boy that got heavy….

I finished my weekend up by working at the shop. If you remember I shared in previous posts, I took a space in a Vintage store in town to house all my creativity and to keep some of it out of my house 😛

You can find my post on it here… https://sassyfitnesschick.com/2018/07/25/the-journey-of-opening-a-vintage-business/

Anyway, a slow afternoon let me re-work my space and take down Christmas, and overall be a bit productive.

Speaking of taking down Christmas

I will admit to feeling like… HUH? when people whip their tree  and decorations down the day after Christmas.

Like what’s up with that?

I guess ’cause I put so much into my decorating I just love to enjoy it for as long as I want. My tree has stayed spectacular this year, for a live tree, now past Christmas, it’s not even dropping needles.

Considering how big it is, and how much work it took to make it look so gorgeous, I’m in no hurry to pull it down.

I jokingly tell my kids it may have Valentine hearts on it.

And with that I’ll leave you with this weeks question to ponder…

Do you take your decorations down soon after Christmas? Or do you enjoy leaving them up for awhile?