Green Smoothies and Growing Up

Despite the New Year celebrations (or lack thereof – I never make it to midnight anymore), I never really feel as though the year has begun until school starts again. Bubba went back to work on January 2, but the girls didn’t start back until yesterday, so we had a few aimless days of laziness interrupted by spurts of organizing and not much else.

I also signed up for a 30-day green smoothie challenge with a group of friends that started on January 5 which added to my confusion about when this “new year” was really supposed to get going.  I don’t really know what the ‘challenge’ portion of the program is about since the goal is simply to drink one green smoothie every day for 30 days and see if you feel different.  There are no dietary restrictions (although they highly recommend that you eat as few processed, high-fat, high-salt foods as possible) and send you a new recipe every day.  So far I’m not hating it, despite the fact that there are things like kale and spinach in my daily drinks.  I love most all vegetables, but I like some things to remain distinct in my life.  Drinks should be liquid, food should be chewed.  It’s a little odd to get chunks of raw vegetable in your mouth when you drink something, so I’ve learned to peel the toughest strings from the celery rib and discard them before blending and to buy pre-pulverized ginger so I don’t get the fibrous strings stuck in my teeth when I drink.  Other than that, the drinks are tasty and filling (although those people who swear drinking one keeps them full all day? I don’t know who those people are. I’m still hungry for lunch at lunchtime).

The girls are happy to be back at school with all of their friends and Bubba begins his grueling travel schedule next week. As for me, I am enjoying the peace and quiet around the house and appreciating my newfound antipathy towards anything that resembles a New Year’s Resolution.  For some reason, I am completely sanguine about the state of my life at this point, knowing that at some point I will feel compelled to change or improve something about myself, but for now I am happy to just take it day by day and plug along doing the things that feel good to me for the most part. There are, of course, things that I do which don’t fit into that category (like walking the dog for the fourth time in one day in the pouring rain or cleaning the litterbox or scheduling a dental cleaning), but generally by the time I am either immersed in doing those things or have successfully accomplished them, I am at least pleased that I am able to cross them off my list.

I have lined up three great book reviews in the near future that I am excited about and, while I often feel a tad bit guilty about curling up on the couch with a book in the middle of the day, it is all I can do to stop soliciting more reviews. I know that reading makes me a better writer, or at least it makes me want to be a better writer, and I often end up with pages of scribbles of inspiration or exclamation at a particularly beautiful phrase I just read.

It’s a pretty damn good life.  Hope your year has kicked off in a positive way!