Birthday Month + Being Thankful

Happy March!  March is my birthday month and it’s exciting and a little terrifying at the same time, at my age!  Of course I try to remain positive about aging, but the train of time doesn’t stop and keeps on rolling.  In honor of my birthday month, I made an appointment for my annual wellness check with my doctor.  I had been putting it off since December… for stupid reasons.  One of them being that I probably put on a few pounds since my wellness visit in December 2017.  That time my doctor did mention that I’ve put on a few pounds the last three years.  I had promised myself in my head that I would eat better and exercise more, neither of which happened in the last six months.  So I guess I felt a little bit ashamed and disappointed in myself.  But I realized that’s not a good reason to not get my annual wellness exam, so here we are.

Because of this being my birthday month and the upcoming visit to the doctor later this month, I thought it would be a good month to kick off a regular exercise plan again.  Starting today I’m doing the six-week Jessica Smith Walk Strong DVD series again. 

I did this program twice during my “Summatical” in 2017 and really loved it.  I talked about it in-depth here on my blog.  I love Jessica Smith’s approachable and can-do encouraging style.  And for the most part the DVD series isn’t too difficult, although some days are more challenging than others.  I like how well-rounded it is, with a mix of cardio, strength, HIIT, stretching, etc.

I’m also going to try to fit in as much yoga as I can.  Yoga with Adriene has a calendar of yoga videos up for March.

And you can find her March playlist on YouTube here. 

As I get older, I realized that when I think of things I’m thankful for, there are more and more things that I’m thankful for because I DON’T have them.  Things like health issues, health issues of loved ones, big heavy financial burdens, career stress and worries, etc.  It’s kind of weird to be thankful for things you don’t have, but because I have experienced some heartbreak and stressful things in the past, I know full well that they could happen again.  (Those things being my mom’s illness and eventual passing, and Todd having a mysterious cerebral spinal fluid leak that kept him bedridden for two months.)  Over the two years that these two things happened, I thought I made it through rather unscathed until three months after my mom passed away.  One day in May 2007, I had a sudden anxiety attack while running on the treadmill.  I was not particularly stressed or anything, so it came on suddenly and I was so surprised.  My body just decided it held up long enough under duress, and it broke.  I went on medication for a year to control the anxiety attacks.  Those things happen.  And I’m fully aware they could happen again.  Therefore I’m always thankful for the calm and boring days.

I love the first photo in this blog post, as well as this one.  Noodle “helping” Todd with the puzzle, ha ha.  Too cute!

Todd has been really busy this past week at work.  He worked long hours and also the entire weekend.  His months’ long project at work went live as of 6pm last night.  He is on call for “hypercare” for any urgent issues that come up with the new system going live.  On early Sunday morning he got called at 3am and got up and worked from 3-5am.  He’s so excited that the project has finally gone live though.  This is the project that kicked off when he went to India last year. 

Fun things this past week:

On Wednesday night we went to check out a newly opened Taiwanese shaved ice dessert place that opened in San Diego called Meet Fresh. 

This is the kind of street dessert that I ate in Taiwan as a kid.  Grass jelly, taro balls, shaved ice with syrup or milk, red beans, etc.  (I lived in Taiwan until I was nine, when we moved to the USA.)  It really brings back the childhood dessert memories!

On Thursday I went to lunch at Rice Chicken to check out their Korean fried chicken.  It’s brand-new and soft opening for them.  I had the regular fried chicken with garlic chili dip.  I thought it was decent but not as good as Furaido Chicken inside the Atlas Market.

And a funny thing happened later that evening.  I was checking out the Instastory of a local account that I follow, and he had gone to Rice Chicken that same afternoon for lunch.  I thought, oh, what a coincidence!  Then I looked closely and look who is sitting there on the left side of his photo?  It’s ME!!!

I thought that was hilarious and messaged his account.  Imagine you’re just perusing things on Instagram and find yourself in someone else’s Instastory, LOL!

Todd had to work on Saturday, but we met up for lunch at Tofu House.  It was a rainy day and we love going to Tofu House on rainy or cold days for some reason.  It was delicious, as usual.

Yesterday I made a cream clay cleansing balm, just for fun.  It has coconut oil, grapeseed oil, castor oil, emulsifying wax, stearic acid, vitamin E, kaolin clay, vanilla FO, and valencia orange EO. When it set up it has a balm texture. Smells like a coconut orange creamsicle. It’s a solid oil facial cleanser. The emulsifying wax allows the oils to rinse cleanly off the skin.  I tried it last night and also made Todd use it.  I really like it!  And I LOVE the smell.  I put this up on Facebook yesterday for an edition of “Food or Skincare?”, because a lot of bath & body or skincare things I make look like creamy food, LOL.

I’ve gone done the rabbit hole of reading about alpha hydroxy acids (glycolic acid, fruit acid, lactic acid), niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, panthenol, hydrolyzed silk proteins, etc.  It’s really fun and I’m learning a lot!

That’s all for today!  If you haven’t noticed, I am blogging on Mondays and Thursdays now.  It is a good amount of blogging to aim for these days, and I’ve got them set up on my Google calendar.  Come back Thursday for my thoughts on being a newbie first-time housewife!

And just because Noodle looks so cute in this photo.  He got tuckered out after “helping” Todd with the puzzle.