So THAT'S How You Make Vegetable Soup!

Take 6 cups of vegetable broth. A cup of chopped onions. A cup of chopped zucchini. 'Nother cup of chopped carrots...a cup of canned stewed tomatoes...frozen sweet peas...a chopped potato...baby pasta...oregano, parsley, salt, pepper.

And ta da! Lunch for the week. This coming on the heels of also preparing my favorite, butternut squash soup. In between all that veggie chopping, soup cooking, hiking on Crowder's Mountain, watching A PERFECT GETAWAY with Milla Jovovich, I finally squeezed in time with my newest hero & heroine, Rick Tremain and Kelly Castillo. My new WIP, with the working title WHAT THE HEART REMEMBERS, my newest romance novel, is about a third of the way done.

It's actually moved pretty quickly ever since I spilled tea on my laptop for the second time. (Yes, I know--BRILLIANT move!) Something I've learned is that tea and laptop keyboards don't go well together. In addition to having to get an external mouse and keyboard, basically rendering the laptop a desktop, I also somehow managed to make a total mess of the Internet's capability.

Lucky for me, my hubby won't let me near his laptop with a cup of tea, so his Internet still works. And good thing, too, since I'm addicted to YouTube. But one good thing to come out of this is that, unless I hook up the laptop to the actual modem, I can't be distracted by web-surfing. Once I'm in the story, I can't be headed out for the 97th time to check my email, Drudge Report, Facebook, or any of the other distractions that keep writers from meeting with their story.

But vegetable soup IS good for you, as well as hearty for autumn, so...not all distractions are bad, eh? ;D

Flowers: My New Obsession

Don't get me wrong: I love flowers. Back when I worked as a magazine editor, our office was located within walking distance of the flower district. Going out for my walks at lunch time, you would have thought you were somewhere else other than New York, when you passed those florists that would have their gorgeous wares on display right outside of their shops. My walks were often adorned with the most beautiful, most whimsical works of natural art, straight from God's hands.

I love flowers. I just didn't always necessarily love taking care of them. There was always something else to do, and gardening was so time-consuming, besides I didn't have that legendary green thumb, etc. My hubby and I have had an arrangement: He takes care of the outside of the house, and that would include our rosebushes and palm trees (yes, we have palm trees! Two of them! LOL!), and I clean & pretty up the inside of the house.

But then Bill had to have surgery last week. That left me with the task of babysitting the flowers, some of which I've bought but he usually tends to. Since I took off a couple days from work to take care of Bill during his recovery, I had time just to water the flowers and the rest of the garden at my leisure.

And that was the beginning of my brand-new obsession. Over the weekend I added MORE flowers, which I potted myself. You can see them above, where they're beautifying our deck! There's something peaceful and centering about caring for a garden, even one like ours which is spread out, some of it in the backyard, some of it in the front (here's a shot of our front yard, with the azaleas that greet you when you first arrive at our home). Then there are the pretty annuals in hanging planters lined along our porch.

So when I'm not writing, I can spend time with my cheerful dahlias and those sassy gerbera daisies that just fascinate me! Suddenly now I'm on a search for flowers that show off, that catch your eye, that make a little corner of our deck remind me of those folks in the City who would take a tiny patch of yard and totally transform it with the colors and fragrance of wonderful, wonderful flowers.

I like to think of home now as our OWN flower district!

Celebrating 6 Months of Intuitive Eating

Yep, SIX months! I said I'd revisit the subject in a few months, so here I am.

It started even earlier, but this book really put it in perspective for me. Since then I've read other books, including the wonderful HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE by Linda Bacon, PhD. But it was INTUITIVE EATING by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, two nutrionists, who started me on the path of making peace with my weight. I could hug those ladies!!!

But I don't want to give the impression that this been easy, either. There've been times when I thought, "Maybe I shouldn't trust myself to eat right and exercise without dieting." And of course, "I'll probably gain all this weight unless I diet stringently, blah blah blah." And let's not forget the old, "Wasn't I a lot happier when I weighed 117 - 120???"

Okay, now, here are only some of the changes that eating intuitively--that is, when you're hungry, stopping when you're full, honoring your health and your hunger, and making room for those "play foods" (i.e. chips and my beloved M&Ms!)--have wrought:

1. I rarely weigh myself now, but the times that I have I notice my weight has stabilized around 133 - 136 pounds. That's what I weigh now NATURALLY, without starving myself or overeating. And I'm just as happy as when I weighed 117 - 120 because over these months I've come to realize that happiness (and the even more valuable "joy") come from sources other than a machine called a "scale".

2. It has been months--scratch that, let's just say I can't remember the last time I binged. There are days when I eat more than others, days when I eat less. Now that I gave myself permission to eat potato chips, I'm satisfied with a portion of chips rather than half the bag.

3. I have attended parties and get-togethers, plus a church dinner, all places where there was food, and each time I stopped when I was full. If I did have more than that, I didn't waste time beating myself up over it. I can trust myself around food and food is not an "enemy". Both are VERY empowering revelations!

4. I've learned that I have a terrific, supportive family doctor who agrees that it's not about diets, it's about moderation.

5. Though I don't go to the gym excessively anymore, I still go...when I'm not walking out in the sunshine or at my belly dance class. I am now moving from the beginners' class to the advanced class! AND I'm learning the choreography for my first belly dancing performance. This isn't exercise; this is TRUE LOVE. :D

6. Dieting and beating yourself up for not being 10 pounds (or more) thinner takes up a LOT of time and energy. That's time and energy that is better spent paying attention to your spiritual needs, and just enjoying those you love, and throwing your whole heart into your creativity.

7. Finally, intuitive eating has allowed me to be gentler to myself.

So for me, thank you, Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch and Linda Bacon. It's been an inspiring, eye-opening and wonderful 6 months. Here's to never dieting again!

BIAM, School, and Belly Dancers--OH, MY!

Maybe I should sign up for school/work on a BIAM more often. Seems to make me more consistent with blogging. Hmmm. Anyways, just checking in to say...

158 pages to go until I can write THE END on my current WIP. That's not bad, considering the past couple of days have been crazy with running around, trying to get into school in time for this semester. I haven't been in school since I was a mere lass of 20, so I'm starting with one class right now which will start on February 2. I am now OFFICIALLY a college student! This class is *online* too. Now that's something you didn't see back in 1979!

But back to my BIAM: This weekend I'm planning on spending some time in my home office. A few straight hours of getting out of the way and letting the hero, heroine and the characters who people their world take over will hopefully get even more of the story underway. After all these years I've learned that once you get that momentum, you just gotta keep that laptop fired up and see that baby all the way through the end. Besides which, I'm really enjoying the ride.

Oh--and I'm hoping to fit in a belly dancing class sometime next month, too! Yes, I'm serious. I've always thought that was such a lovely, womanly dance and it's great creative movement. These past few days have been too cold to walk or hike much and sometimes you need something besides the gym for movement, something creative or fun.

Geez, being 20 years old was never this hectic!

My January Book in a Month!

Benjamin Franklin said: "You will find the key to success under the alarm clock."

I took that man quite literally this morning. It's winter, and even here in North Carolina it's been cooooold and dark in the mornings. But I got up earlier than usual, showered and threw on a heavy sweater, tossed my notebook and pen into my new tote and headed out to McDonald's for breakfast.

That was something I used to love to do in my New York days. Just to find a quiet corner in a restaurant or cafe, making sure that you show up at the page. The muse comes when you do that, it's almost like you're meeting each other for a date--but you gotta show up at the page! By the time I was done with my breakfast and coffee and it was time to zip off to work, I'd gotten down just a little under 500 words. That might not sound like much, and I'm not a math major, but 500 is a lot more than zero.

That brought me 500 words closer to my goal of writing my 50,000-word Book in a Month.

It's not going to be easy...that's okay, though. Tomorrow I'm going for my college placement test. Hopefully, I'll be registering for a class this week, marking my return to school after 30 years. Those are two tall orders, writing my first Consuelo Vazquez novel in a decade AND going back to school. But Chapter 4 is now well underway, with GOODNIGHT, MY LOVE (working title) now 39 pages long. And the thought of signing up for a class, even if I'm late and can only get an elective, just adds to the electricity.

Writers have crazy little favorite places to write. For me, The Tea Spot in Greenwich Village used to be a special writing nook. Starbucks--that goes without saying. There's a coffee spot, a wonderful little underground place, in Greenville, South Carolina where I'd love to meet the muse with my notebook or laptop sometime.

Actually, ALL of Greenville, SC looks like it'd be conducive to writing!

For now, though, McDonald's did very nicely. The coffee and egg, bacon & cheese biscuit weren't bad, either.

And now there's...161 pages to go...

Happy New Year!

FELICIDADES!!!

You know you're getting old when you fall asleep (or almost fall asleep) before you watch the ball descend in Times Square from the comfort and warmth of your bedroom's TV.

That's what happens when the kids grow up, though. Joey, who came to visit with us over Christmas, greeted the new year with his very cool girlfriend Iris in New Jersey, while Brandon ushered it in with his lovely wife Yesica, his daughter Aubrey (aka "Mamita Frita") and Yesica's family. Both boys called, but otherwise it was a quiet night, falling asleep with Bill while the winter night became chillier outside.

Today, more awake, I'm writing this post in between working on my WIP. I have a confession to make: It's not that I write slower now, although that's true, too, but the older I get, the more critical of my own work I get, too.

But I realize that, if I continue like that, I'll never get anything done. So I'm doing a Book in a Month, hopefully getting this baby done by January 31, 2010. The first draft, anyway. I can always clean it up later, but for now I'm taking the backseat, letting my characters take the wheel, and going for a nice, long spin!

You could say I'm riding the "high" that comes with this time of year. People look to every new year with excitement and anticipation and hope. A new year holds possibilities for dreams to come true, besides the chance to reflect on what transpired in the outgoing year. They make resolutions, or if you're like me, you plan goals instead.

My goals are different this year. I can tell you that one of them is NOT to lose weight. In 2009 I started a journey to take good care of myself and to also accept myself as I am, to be gentle with myself. Let's face it: Weight loss is a full-time job. Um, hello, I already have one of those. Now I'm free instead to work on other goals, like going back to school finally and working on my writing. My only writing goal is this--to write EVERY SINGLE DAY. It doesn't matter if I write 100 words or the whole book in one sitting. (Ha! Good luck with that!)

And my other writing goal is to go to uncharted waters...for me. My first project for the year, my WIP, is a period piece that takes place in 1960s northern New Jersey. I'm planning this to be a 50,000 word novel and I'm already three chapters deep in it, and already I'm falling in love with the hero and heroine.

I hope you will, too!

Again--HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Diet, Interrupted

Remember my blog back in February, where I said that's it, I'm done with dieting for good?

Well, firstly...has it really been 8 months since I posted that?? Wow. I hadn't realized that much time had passed. Just wanted to share my little journey with any woman who's ever had a love/hate relationship with food, who's ever had body image issues, and--yes, I'm gonna go there--ever let a number on a scale ruin your day while obsessing over whether you had enough points/calories/carbs left over to eat a small salad for dinner.

Maybe it helps to go back further. I suspect my mom, easily one of the sweetest people I've ever known, had an eating disorder. They didn't call it that back then; you were just fat because you lacked the self-discipline to do anything about it. Back in the 1960s, well-meaning "friends", coworkers and even family members thought they were doing their part to help Mami by pointing out her compulsive eating so that she would be shamed into losing weight. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Over the years I watched my mom do things that today would send up red flags to any medical professional. My mom would actually hide food in strange places, including our dresser drawers. She would go against the advice of her doctors--including, in her later years, her cardiologist--and eat food that was unhealthy for a young woman who was already battling heart disease. When I was in my late teens and her closest confidante, Mami would tell me that food was to her what the bottle was to the alcoholic, and that people just didn't understand the control it had over her.

At the age of 47, my mother suffered a massive heart attack. One year later she had a stroke that cruelly took her life.

Suffice to say, besides the heartbreak of having lost my wonderful mother at a young age (I was 24), I inherited some of her food and weight issues. The media is a major culprit for most of us women, too. Apparently, according to the genuises in TV, the movies and marketing in general, a woman approaching 50 is supposed to be able to easily slip into the skimpy bikini that you'd find in a 20-year-old's closet. Because you can never be too rich or too thin, and everybody is supposed to be the perfect size 2, blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately there comes a point when you realize, You know, I think I'm opening my 5,000th can of diet soda, and I still haven't lost those pesky 10 pounds? That's sobering. Guys, come on, all that aspartame can NOT be good for you. There also comes a point where it finally dawns on you that maybe God didn't mean for us to count every single calorie or point or carb we put into our mouths FOREVER. And most of all, there comes a point when you decide that you are worth so much, much more than just a stupid number on a scale says you are.

So I've fallen off the wagon over the past 8 months. I started point-counting and relying on diet soda again.

But then I got serious again. I'm not dieting anymore; I'm just learning to trust myself to take good care of the person that I am, not who Madison Avenue thinks I should be. I am allowed to eat whatever I'd like, whenever I'd like to eat it, but I can't live on a diet of junk food when what I need is fuel, aka proper nutrition.

Instead of that once-a-week, oh-my-God-please-let-me-have-lost-something weigh-in, I started weighing myself every day. First of all, the pressure's off. There's no, "Oh, rats, I screwed up today, let me just keep nibbling for the rest of the week." There is no "rest of the week," it's just one day at a time. As I've done for many years, I continue to go to the gym and on my walks, bikerides and hikes, because I enjoy exercise, not because it'll make me look like the latest underfed waif on People magazine.

Something very interesting has happened: My weight has stabilized. It hasn't gone up; it hasn't gone down. It fluctuates between 128 and 130. Which, after all, is not fat. It may not be the number I'd like to see on the scale, the number I saw a few years ago. But it's a number I can live with. It sure seems to be the number that this 49-year-old body feels comfortable and healthy at.

I drink a soda--the real thing, not diet--three times a week or so rather than the 3 or 4 diet sodas I'd have daily. But who wants soda when you can have juice, which I drink more often now. Yes, there's natural sugar in juice. I wish that was my biggest problem in life, don't you??? Snacking can consist of a "normal" size bag of Raisinettes--and I refuse to feel guilty over that--or a small fat-free yogurt. Whatever I'm craving or need at the moment.

The best part? It's like I'm free. For the first time since I was a kid, when I equated being skinny with self-worth, I can devote my mental energy to other things besides stressing over having eaten one lone, evil cookie for dessert.

To keep things honest, I'll revisit this subject in a few months, just to see how this newfound freedom is going. For now, I'm grateful that I'm no longer Girl, Interrupted.

That 20-year-old can keep her size 2 bikini. It's so much more comfy in this, my own skin.