Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

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Sunday Contentments – 4th of July

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Contentment is a backyard barbeque/pool party with your best friends and their kids. When I arrived at the party this afternoon, I realized, Pixie has never celebrated 4th of July anywhere else but at this particular party in this particular backyard. She was only a month old the first time we went, and Princess was 3 1/2. Every year, the hostess (the mother-in-law of one of my best friends) says the same thing. “My goodness! Look how big they’re getting!” It was a lazy afternoon, full of splashing in the pool and chatting in lounge chairs while we ate burgers and dogs. Fireworks will come later tonight, in the form of some sparklers that we picked up at a roadside stand. Kids have never had sparklers before. Running around in the twilight, chasing fireflies and waving these brilliant wands of shimmering light – that’s one of the strongest, most colorful memories I have of summer, when I was Princess’ age. There is no better way to spend the 4th, in my opinion. Hope you guys all enjoyed yours.

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Move It Mama Monday! Does the new EASA work?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

It’s been over four weeks since I got the new EA Sports Active for Christmas. Since then, I’ve started the 6-Week Challenge (at medium intensity level) and am now half-way through that. Am I seeing any results?

Yes. Since Christmas, I’ve lost four pounds and I can definitely see more muscle definition. Even better, the new EASA doesn’t seem intent on destroying my knees like the old version was. A lot of the exercises that caused me so much pain have either been removed from the game or modified. So yes, this game definitely seems to be working for me.

However, I don’t believe I’m getting those results through EASA alone. Keep in mind, we are now past the holidays, which means I am also past the holiday eating. All those cookies, cakes, pies, candies, plus meat heavy meals are now three weeks behind me. I’ve since switched to eating two vegetarian meals a day, plus I’m drinking a lot more water. I’m not perfect at following these two rules, but I do them often enough that I think they’ve also had an effect on my health and weight. Plus I continue to take water aerobics classes and karate classes, both twice a week.

I think what’s worked more than anything is that I’m settled back into my old routine, with a little more emphasis on eating healthy and getting more exercise. Not being able to determine how the day would go over the holidays often meant I had no idea when or what I would be eating, so I ate a lot of junk and high fat meals as a result. I’d love to have more control over my schedule next year, if only so I could control my eating better. To do so, however, will probably mean I’ll have to make some changes to my schedule over all. Celebrating the holidays, in many ways, is like taking on an extra part-time job from October through December. To do all the things I’d like to do for the holidays – baking, decorating, sewing, parties, concerts, etc. – I’d have to cut back on my regular work during those months. It’s something I’ll have to think about before next October rolls around.

In any event, I’m enjoying the new EASA and the new eating habits. So far, I’ve cooked three vegetarian soups that did not suck, which means I’d cook and eat them again. In fact one of those soups, the carrot puree soup, was so good I’d make that any time and enjoy it.

So there you go, the secret to weight loss; healthy eating, plenty of water, regular exercise and a normal, livable schedule. Am I a genius for figuring out the obvious or what?

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Sunday Contentments – Why I hate the holidays

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

I’ve been trying so hard this week to find my warm happy spot in the midst of all the chaos. I’ve failed, miserably. There is no contentment for me today, only angst and stress and all the usual emotional crap that attends the week before Christmas. Here’s what’s wrong with my life right now:

I have two small children who are hopped up on Christmas specials and sugared goodies, in spite of my best intentions to see that they get limited amounts of both. Does EVERYONE they know have to throw a frickin’ party, complete with candy, cake, ice cream and other junk? Apparently yes, and as a result, the kids are driving me up the wall.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time bellowing at the aforementioned children because they are so damned hopped up. It’s like their tiny little ears have been blocked with sugar, requiring me to scream at the top of my lungs, repeatedly, to be heard. And even when I am heard, their attention span has shrunk to zip, so they’re not doing anything I ask them no matter how loudly and how repeatedly I ask.

The Hubster is home. You know I love that man. In fact, yesterday was the 19th anniversary of our first date. But he’s home, so he’s underfoot, and no matter how hard he tries not to, he’s completely disrupting my schedule just by being in the house during hours when I would normally have it to myself. It’s these little things he does like suggest, “Hey, let’s have lunch!” that keep throwing a monkey wrench in my otherwise perfect schedule. Speaking of which…

Ah, the schedule. It’s broke, meaning I am staying up too late and not getting out of bed as early as I should. When my schedule is off, getting work done because difficult. I have several articles to write, a book to read, a novella to get started on, two book covers to create, a podcast to record and produce, blog articles to write… and gifts to buy.

Oy, shopping for presents. If I had been smart, I would have started back in November, but nooooooooo! I had to wait until this month, THE month of Christmas, to do my holiday shopping. Doing all that holiday gift buying on top of my usual workload with both screaming children and the Hubster underfoot is seriously putting me out of whack.

And this is just a short list of what’s going wrong right now. Honestly, it’s stupid to complain, I know, especially when I do have so many things going right. I have paying work coming in, I have a husband and children in good health, I have family I love coming to visit this week, and I have a warm bed and a roof over my head and the promise of a lamb dinner on Christmas night. Yes, there’s a lot going right in my life right now, and just as soon as my own sugar-induced holiday angst starts to clear up, I’m sure I’ll see it again.

Have a good week, folks. I’m about to go soak my head in some egg nog.

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Writing Wednesday – The best gifts for writers

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Today’s topic is gifts for writers, but we’re not talking about word processing software or fancy pens or Kindles or gift certificates to book stores or anything like that. The best gifts you can give a writer are the ones that don’t cost a damn thing. What I’m talking about here is two things most writers never get enough of – feedback and support.

Is there a writer out there who’s work you really enjoy? Send them an e-mail, or if you’re so inclined, an actual letter letting them know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a lousy day turn into a good one just by getting a message from someone saying they enjoyed something I wrote. Feedback means a hell of a lot, especially to those of us writers who are still working in the minor leagues, who don’t have the fame and fortune that go along with being a Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. To folks like us, the words “I really loved your book” are worth their weight in gold.

Do you personally know a writer? Then be prepared to give them your support. If they’ve got a book signing coming up, show up for it! And bring as many of your family and friends as possible. There’s nothing more abysmal than having a book signing and then no one shows up. Unless it’s writer’s block. If the writer in your life is having problems with a nasty case of writer’s block, sit and listen to them hash out their story lines. Even if nothing they say makes any sense to you, the act of talking about what they’re writing may help them get through that block. Hell, the Hubster usually has no idea what I’m babbling on about, but he always listens when I’m trying to figure out how to make a story work.

Other things you can do – recommend your favorite writers to other folks. Don’t pirate their books, but if you’ve got a copy of a book to loan or give away, then go ahead and do that. No, we don’t make any money that way, at least not at first. But maybe the person who reads that borrowed or second-hand book will then go out and buy the rest of our books, and bingo! We’ve got a little financial love coming our way.

Pass on links to blogs, retweet announcements, post honest reviews of a writer’s work. These are all things you can do for the writers you love, and they don’t cost you a thing. Heck, if you love me, send folks over to the Heat Flash Erotica Podcast, or get them to listen to the Good Parts podcast. Both are free for download, so your friends get no-cost entertainment, I get new listeners, and you get brownie points for spreading the love. Win all around!

Seriously, this holiday season, think about the writers you love and find a way to let them know. We’d all really, truly appreciate it ;)

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Move It Mama Monday! Holiday exercise

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Do you or don’t you? Exercise during the holidays, that is. I have to admit, it’s getting to be a struggle to find the time to do everything I would normally do, and I’ve missed a couple workouts and I know I’m going to miss a few more in the upcoming weeks. But still, I’m trying to fit the exercise in wherever I can. I’m afraid if I don’t, I won’t fit into any of my clothes come New Year’s Day. That and the fact that taking time off and having to dive right back into exercise after the holidays are over is just a real bitch to do.

Right now, I’m keeping up with 2 days a week of water aerobics and 2 days a week of karate. On top of that, I’m doing mini-workouts, about 15-30 minutes long, in the evenings a couple times a week. It’s still not enough to fight off the holiday flab, but it’s enough to ensure I don’t spin completely out of control healthwise over the next few weeks. And I have to admit, it also helps me stay calm. When the holiday stress really starts to get to me, I can just work up a real sweat and then be too damned tired to care.

I’m curious to know what other folks are doing, exercise-wise this holiday season? Are you cutting back, or putting more time in the gym? Are you being ultra-super-careful to eat healthy, or like me have you already given yourself a nasty case of heartburn by eating too much greasy fatty food? (You folks have no idea how much I miss my gall bladder at times like that.) Let me know what you’re up to!

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Sunday Contentments – Cookies

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

I know this is going up late, but I just got back from Mary’s a little while ago. She and I spent most of the afternoon baking cookies and making fudge while the kids rampaged through the house and the husbands watched football and watched the kids rampage through the house ;)

I love holiday baking and I love my friends, so I’m very grateful I took a day off today to just bitch and bake with one of my best friends. We ended up making almond toffee sandies, sugar cookies, mint chocolate fudge, and something I think we’ve decided to call Christmas puffs. The Christmas puffs were Mary’s idea. She figured the kids needed something they could do with minimal supervision, so she melted some chocolate and set that out with big marshmallows and crushed candy canes. The kids dipped the marshmallows in the chocolate and then in the candy canes and then set the results aside to cool. Very simple and we only had minor squabbling about who’s turn it was to dip marshmallows next.

We split all the cookies and treats between the two families before I grabbed my brood and headed home. Tomorrow’s task will be to portion out all the goodies into small packages and deliver them to our neighbors. We’ll save a few for ourselves, obviously, but only a few because it’s not even Christmas yet and I’m already having problems fitting into my jeans. As the Pixie is wont to say, “Mama haff a big butt!”

And that’s pretty much it contentment-wise this week. Just baking and bitching with Mary while the rest of the family kicks back. Not really sure how I could top that, except maybe to have had a couple more friends with us to help bitch and bake and add to the general chaos.

Have a good Sunday night!

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Freaky Friday – Food Porn!

Friday, November 13th, 2009

It’s started.  Harry and David… Swiss Colony… Hillshire Farms… All those glossy holiday food catalogs are just bursting out of my mailbox with their sensuous, tempting images of sinful, seductive food, all of it crying out, “Eat me!  Eat ME!”

What, you’ve never heard of food porn before?  Let me tell you why these naughty little catalogs are really nothing more than hard core XXX porn!

  1. Glossy, airbrushed images of tantalizing treats, complete with strategic lighting.
  2. Everything in those pics is plump, ripe, fresh, steaming, hot… Speaking of hot, is it me, or did someone just turn up the thermostat in here?
  3. Twelve inches of summer sausage on special sale this month.  Need I say more?
  4. More nuts than you can stuff in your mouth, just in case you didn’t get enough summer sausage.
  5. And finally, the centerfold in just about every one of these damned catalogs is… CHEESECAKE!!

This has been your moment of freakiness for the week.  Enjoy.

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Freaky Friday – Homemade Halloween!

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Well, this is being posted late, but it can’t be helped. I’ve been tinkering with the new blog over at www.cynicalwoman.com and hopefully this post makes it over there tonight. Also, I was a little busy this afternoon finishing up a special project, namely some homemade Halloween decorations. You see, it is my goal to have a Halloween display just as cool and impressive as the one my neighbors set up in their yard. In case you missed the previous Freaky Friday post, their Halloween decorations look like this…

And at night, it looks like this…

And like this…

And like this…

Not to be outdone, the girls and I sat down and worked up a few decorations of our own. They look like this…

And this…

Ummmmm… Okay, so maybe we have a few years to go before we catch up with the neighbors. But you have to admit, the mummy looks pretty neat! Anyway, I hope you have a Freaky Friday (what’s left of it anyway)!

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.

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What I want to do this year.

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

I had meant to post my New Year’s resolutions the very first day of the year, but I’m still sort of stuck in 2008 thanks to a project I’m working on that won’t be over until next weekend. I hate this project, and can’t wait to get past it. It’s been taking up so much of my time at a point when I really need to be working on other things. I won’t say what said project is, but those of you that know me well know what I’m talking about. It’s something I volunteered for and I will never volunteer for this particular project ever again. Nope, no sir, couldn’t pay me to suffer through this misery another year.

Any way, let’s take a moment to look past next week and into the time when 2009 will finally start for me. I’ve been thinking about what I really want to do this year, things I’d like to change, things I’d like to start, things I’d like to finish, and here are some of my goals.

  • I want to work less and spend more time with my family. I spent several weekends in the library slaving away over this project I hate so much and missed a lot of time that I could have spent with my husband and kids. I don’t want to do that this year. Plus having a kid in school has turned out to be more demanding of my time than I thought, and I have no choice but to quit working at 3PM so I can focus on the kids.

  • I want to lose 10 lbs. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone thinks I’m skinny and I’ve got nothing to complain about, but I’m starting to get that middle-age creep in my weight, and I swear, I don’t want to be 40 this year and be 10 lbs. over weight. I can lose the weight if I make a few changes, so that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m going to reward myself with a new summer wardrobe because for once, I’d really like to have something to wear in the summer that I can enjoy.

  • I want to read more. I got the mini-laptop for Christmas and promptly bought two erotica e-books. I was enjoying the first one very much, but the dreaded project I hate reared its ugly head and ate up all my reading time in addition to my work and family time. So after next weekend, when the dreaded project finally dies– er, I mean is finished, I want to go back to reading half an hour a night before going to bed. Just today I bought three more e-books through Fictionwise.com, and I can’t wait to sit and read them. Plus, I want to go to the library once a week as a family so we can all have a chance to browse and pick out books to read. I love the library. When I was a kid we used to go there every Friday night, and I want to start doing that again.

  • I want to play more games. We spent a week over the holidays with Michael’s family, and those guys play a lot of games! Cassie is old enough now to sit in a lap and play with someone, and on ocassion, she can even play a game herself (she’s not bad at Uno). I want to pick up some games to play with the kids and then some games I can play with Michael and other adults when they come over (I’m looking at you, Mary, John, Patricia, Vince, Patty, Lloyd, Rick, Cindy…). Games would be good!

  • I want to watch more TV. Not kidding on this one. I watch almost no TV these days beyond the ocassional half-hour of kids programs during the day. I had to give it up to do some of this work I’ve had all year, and it sucks. I miss watching all the cool sci-fi shows, and I’d really like to start watching some of the history and science programs that show up on PBS, Discovery channel, etc. I love those things. Plus I’m way behind on watching ‘Coupling.’ That show is such a scream! So yeah, I’d like to get in a little more tube time, just a couple of hours to vegitate and enjoy myself each week.

  • I want my hobbies back, at least one or two of them. I want to get back into sketching again, and maybe either beading or polymer clay again. I’m thinking polymer clay is more likely, since I can sit with the kids on a Friday afternoon and make little figurines with them (with Cassie anyway; Sam could make beads). It would be fun to have a hobby again.

  • I want to take the kids out to play more – swimming at the Y, hula-hooping in the backyard, long walks, hiking, working in the garden, etc. We don’t get outside nearly often enough, and I want to change that. I’m thinking I want to surprise Cassie and Sam by picking Cass up for school and then taking the three of us straight to the pool for an afternoon swim. That would be fun! And it wouldn’t take a lot of work either, just grabbing the swimsuits, towels, and shower stuff and tossing it in the car before Sam and I head down to the bus stop. I think we’d all really enjoy that.

Anyway, so those are my ideas for this year. More fun, a little less work. I still need to sit down and figure out the work schedule, because I do have things I need to accomplish writing-wise and art-wise this year, but I won’t be taking on anything that eats up all my time again, and I’ll work on just one project at a time, so this could work. One more week until I can get started. I can’t wait.

Cynical Woman is the creative property of Helen E. H. Madden.
Be sure to visit www.cynicalwoman.com for Cynical Woman cartoons.

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Episode 24 – Happy Holidays, You Perverts

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

It’s 12:30AM, Christmas day. I’ve been up since 5AM, and refused to go to sleep until this sucker was finished and posted. That’s how much I love all of you. Really!

Aside from the web comic and the book I’m currently editing (Future Perfect, due out in February 2009 from Logical Lust Publications), I decided to take it easy this week. My parents are here, along with my sister. I had one day where I buried myself in editing, and I missed out on making the gingerbread house, so that was the end of my daytime work hours. Since then, I’ve played Twister, made fudge with the kids, gone book shopping (our extended family overwhelmed the cafe in Barnes & Nobles!), wrapped presents, gone to church (yes, my family dragged the only Buddhist they know to church, and I had to stand through the whole mass, it was so dang crowded), and tossed naughty story ideas back and forth with my good friend Kathleen Bradean. We want to write something super-naughty, kind of like that cartoon up there.

Anyway, I need to hit the hay, because I know the kids are going to yank me out of bed at any minute, screaming, “Santa came! Santa came! And he left presents!” Here’s hoping Santa hits your house too and leaves you something fun.

Merry Christmas and happy Boddhi Day ;)

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