How many calories?

A friend of mine forwarded an e-book she got full of recipes of 300 calorie meals. The idea is to eat 5 times a day but then only up to 300 calories per take.

Flipping through the pages I was struck on how limited my diet has been so far. Greek yogurt? Nope. Cod? Nope. Asparagus? Nope. Quinoa? Uhm Nope. Now peanut butter! Finally something I can handle! 

You’d think it’s based on my ‘not-adventurous’ inclination towards food right? Well to a point yes, because there are certain things I just will NOT eat. This for example. That just goes too far. But I’ll be happy to try out this for example. And in the research I stumbled on this gem: edible vegetables. Seems nice!

So back to the meals – some of the items (ok, many!) are simply way too expensive for me to handle at this moment. Made me think – planting your own vegetables might not be a bad idea after all! The only hiccup would be time – when?!

My goal of staying on track with the food and exercise including the how many calories I intake might be quite difficult. I will try it out for the coming month to see if it’s doable. I’ll report back in four week’s time!

Now – this concludes the personal category. And also concludes me writing this way as it has remained difficult to talk about something specific. Back to chaos then yay!

Happy weekend, see you next week!

Probabilities

What are the odds for a piano falling on my head at this point in time? Seemingly zero! But more importantly, seemingly you can calculate that too!

.

Of course using real figures instead of just putting in “piano falling on my head now” as I originally used it for! 😀

This got me thinking – how do I live my life in general? Do I consider probabilities before making decisions that are important? Or do I just do what feels right and wing it? Unfortunately for the mathematics in me, I wing it more often than not. Which means that I’m more willing to take risks than would be considered safe or healthy in ‘normal’ situations. 

Why am I talking about this? Because I heard a podcast yesterday from Erwin McManus and he indicated that when you die, how would you want to be remembered? As the guy (or girl in this case) who played it safe in everything that you did? Or as the person who did things ‘recklessly’ as it appeared on their path? He then explained that he heard some of his coworkers discuss how they entered into the most dangerous parts of countries with Erwin, while they both lived in before and have never ever ventured there on their own. Their conclusion was that the reality was way less dramatic than they were expecting.

There are things that I’m naturally not inclined to do, and therefore I won’t either just because I heard the podcast. But, on opportunities that come on my path – even when they are disguised as challenges and difficulties – I will not bow down and just grasp them as they come. Because let’s face it: who wouldn’t want an adventurous life?

So let’s go people – take that risk and feel alive even for that moment. You WILL thank yourself later. (NO! Do not jump off that bridge or life endangering things please! SJEEZ, context please! :D) Leave your comments below!

Food and exercise

Should actually leave the food out of the equation don’t you think? Food and exercise? Well no, can’t leave food out and just focus on the exercise. Because they both go together. Or so experts say.

I have a different theory though. And that theory is based on the fact that I love cooking. And of course, I love eating the food too! Am not laboring in the kitchen and then don’t eat, right?

So now where am I on the exercise bit of the equation? I just heard a podcast where the guy (note! guy!) was saying that you have to make something a priority if you want it done. And, he is 100% correct. If something doesn’t get the attention it deserves, then nothing will happen. Simple. 

Now let’s balance a few things, shall we? This is a small compilation of current priorities, and maybe you can help me shape them somehow in order to fit the exercise in there. There are actually only three things that take up most of my time. God (developing relationships take time and effort), taking care of the house (cooking, cleaning and washing clothes for the family), taking care of the businesses (ADG, PoF and PP). 

I have no idea how to fit exercise in there. So to level things off a bit (level the love handles for example), I started to walk the kids to school 2 or 3 times a week. That added around 2000 steps to my day, which isn’t all bad seeing that I am living a sedate life style. Now I’m looking for other ways to add more exercise which doesn’t put me in a position of having to get up at 3:30. Cus 4:30 is early enough thank you very much.

Any ideas or comments? Drop them below s’il vous plait!

The news

Confession time again! With all the corona virus media drama, I’ve come to understand and appreciate the WHY I don’t watch the news.

My goodness gracious! All the drama! Don’t think I’ve seen posts of people before where you can clearly taste the fear due to all the ‘what if’ scenarios! By the way, as I am NOT a medical professional, I ain’t uttering a single word about the disease itself. I am only talking about the reaction people are having to this disease.

Now something totally unrelated, to illustrate my point. Last weekend I had the pleasure to speak to an older lady (she’s in her 90’s) and she told me that when she was strolling around her block, listening to the news on her portable radio, she didn’t see a banana peel on the street. What happened? Just like in the cartoons, she fell when she stepped on the banana peel! Guess the news caught her too much off guard for her to not look at her surroundings. If you hear her tell the story though, it reminds you like the cartoons of the 80’s! 😀

And that is exactly why I’m not bothering much with the news. I’ve been told countless times that I am ignorant and that I should.. no MUST watch the news to be informed. Informed of what exactly? That the museums in Rome have been closed? Or an almost calamity on the internet? Or embarrassment for Curacao about Venezuela? 

Unfortunately I would fail to see how that could contribute to my overall well being. When the news is big enough, people talk about it and you hear it anyways.

So unless there is something I haven’t heard yet, I’ll stick to my way. No news is good news. Happy Tuesday! As always, feel free to leave your comments down below!

Last Friday I got the mail that was delivered at my old address and lo-and-behold: three tax letters were awaiting me. 

I do not like receiving tax letters, as things are quite messy at the moment and a humongous clean up is underway. So with mixed feelings I opened up the letters, and see that they are letters informing me that I have 2 months to appeal to their decision.

Great! I thought, more paperwork underway. Not when I noticed that the deadline for these letters is Monday, March 9th, 2020.

So is God good or what? I now can spend my beautiful morning creating objection letters and wanted to share my inner joy with y’all. So – tax Monday morning fun! Enjoy this new week and we’ll c what tomorrow will bring shall we?

Some laughter to keep you:

Connections

Yesterday I had the pleasure of translating something where the topic was instructing a person on how to ride a horse. Now not just ride, but riding with half-passes and I learnt what a bit was and a wither and that pirouette is not just for ballerinas but also for horses. Who knew?

As a side note: translation has always brought me things to learn and even though I do not like translating, the learning-new-things-thing DOES prove nice.

Back to the horse story. It amazed me to no end, how many times the word “connect” was used in that instruction manual. Seemingly, to get your horse to follow you and your commands with ease, you need to connect to that horse.

How in the world does one make a connection to a horse? As I have no previous nor any future knowledge on horseback riding, I am transposing this question to: how do connections in general work? How do you connect to someone else and become friends? Is it just shared experiences, showing attention/care, or what is it exactly that makes you like one person but dislike the next?

Researching through duckduckgo has given me some perspective, but it didn’t talk about connection. Guess I found one thing that’s not really “research-able” what do you think?