As many of you know by now, I am a woman of extremes. One day I’m letting it go, and the next, today, I’m reining it in. What is up with my karma, Gorgeouses? I have some major, major karma to deal with. I mean, obviously, it could be worse — like, Oedipus (dude had some bad Karma), Anne Boleyn or George Costanza…. But this is definitely a karmic situation. And I’m not talking this Situation, for the record….

Looove. Seriously. Not in a Clive Owen kind of way.

I just struggle. I really struggle with the day-to-day stuff. My problem is that I just want to do whatever I want. Period. I struggle between my intense desire to do whatever I want and my severe desire to live an ideal life. I get completely overwhelmed by the idea that there may be a balance between these two extremes — freedom and restriction — but, I know, there is freedom in restriction, and that there is so, so much restriction in, erm, gluttony….

Woahh, this is getting to heady for us.

Take my puppy Betty White, for example. She knows exactly what she wants or needs to do. She’s perfect at it if you think about it — running in the yard, eating when she’s hungry, attacking me with kisses while I’m driving…. She’s definitely one of my idols when it comes to my karmic situation. Not this Situation, for the record….

Looove. Seriously. Not in a Javier Bardem kind of way.

Before we continue our very important conversation here, can we talk about Mr. Bardem’s serious hotness in Eat, Pray, Love for a second? Omigosh, SWOON. Hold on a sec, here….

Paaaaaaauuuuuse………

Sure, I’m one lucky woman. Not as lucky as Julia Roberts, who got to spoon Javier Bardem….

But she did it. Or, her character, Elizabeth Gilbert did it, or at least wrote the book about it. Elizabeth Gilbert — the same woman who reminds me that no woman, none of us, really knows what she’s doing these days. We have oodles of choices, and, having no oodles-of-choices predecessors, we struggle with what to do with these oodles. Here, let her say it herself….

No wonder, amid a sea of Eat, Pray, Love haters (I know you’re out there), I love Elizabeth Gilbert. She and I are, like, the same person: neurotic and struggling among the extremes of pleasure, restriction and relationships, and we are a wee bit obsessed with yoga, writing and eating. Fast forward to the last few minutes of the video….

Oh, heady again.

…When all I meant to write about was Betty White at the dinner table….

(Underbite.) She’s out of control!

(Tongue. Also chili.)

And he! He stole my favourite lip gloss!

(Bottom-teeth gap.)

And this. Between me and my macbook….

(Withkerth.) — You have to say that one out loud to understand it.

Out of control. Or, in Canadian speak, OOT of control. I’m starting to talk like that, Gorgeouses. For real life, eh? (“For real life” is actually Monkey speak for “For real” — FYI.)

Sighh. Anyway, I think I’m going on a diet (ish). And I’m doing Ashtanga yoga again — an hour or so every day but Saturdays and moon days.  Because it’s one or the other for me. I just feel like there’s freedom in it. In not having to choose all the time…. Dammit.

One day I’ll write the book on my karmic roller-coaster journey among extremes. And I’ll call it Dogs at the Dinner Table. It has a ring to it, right? On the cover, a picture of me and Betty White in downward-facing dog pose…. You can read it on your Kobos (my latest obsession. see twitter).

I had an aha moment as I was walking down the hallway at work the other day on a little scenic route past Flare Magazine‘s steamers, stylists and clothing racks — the novelty of which remains untarnished, especially because I’m a huge fan of MTV’s….

On the recommendation of Caroline Dupont and Oprah, I’ve been reading Geneen Roth‘s bestselling book Women, Food and God: an Unexpected Path to Almost Everything.

The book came so highly recommended that I just had to make sense of it. And I’ve been working really hard to apply the great lessons in this book to my life; but, in the meantime, I’ve been eating when I’m not hungry and, mostly, the wrong foods. It made sense to me that one’s relationship with food could be, as the subtitle of the book says, “An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything,” but only theoretically. I couldn’t quite pin down how it could apply to me practically.

But here’s the thing. You know how I’ve been waking up 2 hours early every day to do my rigorous Ashtanga yoga practice — sweating it out on the mat and pacifying the Rascal, pushing couches out of my face while in shoulderstand (seriously), or tearing growling, screaming cats and dog away from each other while trying to breathe deep, long ujayii breaths in forward bend? Well, you know, some things just don’t work. As much as I wanted to do everything right, to practice real, authentic yoga every single morning except Saturdays and “moon days”, it just wasn’t feasible. Waking myself up every morning to basically restrict myself for 2 hours was doing harm. And it was causing me to lose control in other areas. I was eating more. Running to Starbucks a sweaty mess, straight from the hot studio. Can I please have a grande soy no-water tazo chai? *glargh*

It was the food, that dang chai addiction, that showed me what’s really going on with me. A sweet, cinnamony looking glass….

Walking down that long hallway past the pretty people and posters and amazing clothes, I realized: The more I restrict myself the more out of control my diet gets.

So the yoga was getting too hard. Too forced. Everything, motherhood, was getting too hard. Too forced. And the old ways were coming back: the TIRED, the chai lattes, the cookies…the cookies.

Then I realized, just as I passed the fashion rack — AHA! The “doorway” that Geneen Roth talks about isn’t that one eating meltdown. No. It’s the patterns. The fall after fall after fall off the wagon. When do they happen? What’s going on when I fall?

When I eat poorly — really poorly — it MEANS I’M RESTRICTING MYSELF TOO MUCH. It means it’s time for a break. Time to crawl back into my shell and give myself permission to rest.

REST.

So, instead of trapping myself on the mat for two hours first thing in the morning, I’m waking up a little later and going for a walk with Betty White. I’m taking the kids for hikes, which are usually colossal epic FAILS (for another blog post), but beautiful….

I’m going to the yoga studio (two yoga studios — one for rigor and one for…rest) to practice when I can, and fitting fun yoga into some afternoons. It’s healthier for my kids to see me actually enjoying this healthy passion of mine, rather than struggling to get through it.

My eating is the key. The “doorway.” It tells me when I fall into those patterns of restriction, when I’m being too hard on myself, when I need to take a break, sit back, and enjoy life…. Enjoy life. #Concept.

So, as Roth recommends (read it!), I’m going back to my body, becoming aware of my breath and giving myself permission to chill. Oh, man, PERMISSION. Allowing Permission herself to melt over me like a like warm glinting maple syrup….. Mmmmm, syrup…. I don’t have to do anything. Anything. I don’t even have to please you right now….

But, love….

Tonight I made a lentil soup and this fabulous green bean dish (recipe to come). I tasted everything, and I felt something warm and bright and ray-like in my belly — happiness?

Love!

xo Haley-O

Keeping up with my blog now that I have a full-time writing job is proving très challenging — mostly because, by the end of the night, when my day-writing is done, and the kids are finally in bed, I’m wiped, and my brain is mush.

Plus, I’ve been getting up early in the morning. I mean, really early. Before I started working at Today’s Parent I used to drag myself out of bed as late as humanly possible — I was exhausted from writing late, I mean, really late, into the night. Now, I’m dragging myself out of bed as early as humanly possible. Why? The answer is threefold (I just said that with a Spanish accent, FYI):

The First. Because I want to get to work by 8:30am.

The Second. Because THE RASCAL slows me down — he’s beyond stubborn and demanding in the morning. I sense the beginnings of lower-back pain because, you know, he sleeps on top of me, and, then, the minute I wake up to start on The Third, he’s up, too….

The Third. Because I’ve decided I want to get in shape, I’ve been walking for half an hour every day before work. Only the complications around this fold are twofold:

The First. The Rascal freaks out when I leave the house so early. He needs to drink from his sippy cup and rub my back for at least half an hour before we get out of bed. (So, I wake up even earlier…for the back rub…the awesome back rub.) #highmaintenance

The Second. The dog. I have to take Betty White with me on the walk, or else I have to walk her again later, and there’s no time for that, as you can see…. But, the problem is, she’s a reluctant walker. The vet who lives down the street has never seen such a thing — a puppy who doesn’t want to go for walks. Of course, it deserves pictorial elaboration….

Betty White at the beginning of the morning walk:

Betty White during the walk:

She basically runs as fast as she can to get home the entire time. I know this because she gets even faster on the way back. Silver lining? Makes for an awesome pacer….

And it’s not just the morning walks. Here’s Betty White at the beginning of our family walk later that day….

Underbite.

When we came home from Toy Story 3 that same night, it was pouring rain. Josh had to drag her outside, of course. Imagine that. I don’t have a great picture of Betty White refusing to walk in the rain. But I DO have a picture of Josh-O carrying the only umbrella we could find (which is even better)….

I know once I get used to this routine, and the morning “swamp smoothies” (that my co-workers were gagging at this morning) start kicking in, I’ll be able to do this, or to do more, or be less mushy — inside and out.

Oh, and I’m on Day 2 of quitting chai lattes…, again. At this point in my chai-quitting career, quitting alone is enough to turn my brain to mush. A thousand fold.

Goodnight!

Love! xo Haley-O

I haven’t been around much lately, I know. All this not-sleeping at night has caught up with me. I’m sick. Again. This time it’s some sort of sinus thing that, I swear, might as well be vertigo the way I’m falling all over the place. I’m a bit of a hot mess. I’ve spent the past two days — two DAYS — in bed. And I thought, instead of eating dinner (the mere notion of which I can’t stomach), I’d attempt to write a blog post about how sick I am. FUN, I knowww!

And to think I made myself a list of new “commitments” just the other day. I decided it’s (that) time (again) to make a change. Because I made a deal with myself back in September (my birthday), and then three weeks before New Years, that I would make concrete changes, and nothing has changed. And I keep beating myself up — I do! — for not making changes. Maybe my expectations have been too high, I don’t know: quitting Starbucks — too high? I want to feel and look good, nay fabulous. I really do.

In my haze, I’ll attempt to remember my new commitments and share them with you here. They’re sitting upstairs in a brand new 100% recycled notebook. They’re not too lofty, I don’t think….

1. I commit to eating nutritious food.

2. I commit to sitting (meditating) 5 minutes a day.

3. I commit to doing my breathing exercises (or pranayama) 5 minutes a day.

4. I commit to doing yoga 5 minutes a day.

5. I commit to walking outside 20 minutes a day.

The idea is that if I commit to 5 minutes — I may just want to do MORE. Anyway, there are other commitments, too. I can only remember the diet and exercise ones with this splitting headache I’m sporting. The idea is, just, to COMMIT to switching things up, finally. I spend way too much time futzing around at Starbucks. I love getting out of the house when the kids are at school, sure, but it seems I need to spend a wee bit more time here on my yoga mat and outside. I definitely need to take better care of myself. And, let’s see, 35 minutes a day taking care of myself? Sounds reasonable to me. And from the way I’m feeling these days — sick, like, every other week? — sounds necessary to me. I could even take Rascal with me for my 20-minute walk. He’ll love that.

There you have it. As soon as I feel better, it’s on, baby. Actually, I have my yoga class tomorrow — which means at least half an hour of pranayama, ten minutes of meditation, and an hour of yoga. I adore yoga, the poses, philosophy, psychology. It’s absolutely my passion. This doesn’t mean that I act like a yogini or anything (whatever that means). I’ve been SO negative lately, what with this awful cold. It just might mean that I recognize and work with that negativity, and accept it as part of myself. Blah blah. My eyes are burning. And Brett Michaels is on Celebrity Apprentice. And Rascal’s up again……

Love!

xo Haley-O

I can do this.

I just drank a mug of vegan hot cocoa out of my “Heaven-Knows-It’s-Surely-True-That-Mothers-Need-a-Time-Out-Too” mug. Watching a little TMZ. Which may come as a surprise to some of you because, of course, I only watch CLASSY TV shows, like The Bachelor (did you see this season’s premier OMG — even *I* was embarrassed, it was so embarrassing), and my latest favourite, The Real Housewives of, well, all of them — Atlanta, Orange County, New York (in no particular order). NENE!!!

I love NeNe — partly because she hates brilliantly on a certain someone (KIM) whom I can’t stand because she smokes in her house, in her children’s faces.

I can TOTALLY understand if people can’t quit smoking — it took me YEARS to quit chai lattes (I’m still not out of the woods, but let’s pretend). But, I CAN’T understand knowingly exposing your young children to secondhand smoke. Seriously, WTF!? Who DOES that? Does anyone DO that? Anyway, don’t get me started on KIM. Where were we? Oh yes, LOVE NENE. But doesn’t EVERYONE?

I actually liked Anderson Cooper better when he was the host of The Mole — partly because I only watch classy TV, and not CNN. I prefer TMZ….

Where was I? Oh yes. I can do this.

I can write a blog post tonight, and I can get a good few hours of work done (egad) EVEN though I’m exhausted. Yes, exhausted. But, not whiny “WOE IS ME, MY KIDS DON’T SLEEP” exhausted. More like “DAY 15 OF JILLIAN MICHAELS’ HELL VIDEO,” as I like to call it. Level 2, baby. My feet are starting to hurt….

No, seriously, my feet are really hurting. Well, foot. It’s throbbing as we speak, Gorgeouses. I’m sure a good night’s sleep will help (but, ALAS, my kids still aren’t sleeping — WOE! is me). Yoga helps.

Oh GOD. I’m watching GLEE now, and Matthew Morrison is singing Bust A Move. OH! He’s dancing! And now he’s singing the THONG SONG — MOVE OVAH, Justin Timberlake. I’m telling you! And I am telling you!

In conclusion, I am in love with

Matthew Morrison….

and

Harvey Levin….

“I’m a lawyer!”

By the way, I’m also exhausted because the Monkey has a new imaginary friend, “Julia,” and Julia’s sleeping over tonight. Also, the Rascal’s been saying “f*ck” all the time, over and over again. Also, according to the Rascal’s nursery school “Feeling Table,” the words he likes to use are “hard” and “soft.” He needs to build on others, like “bumpy, scratchy, etc.”

LOVE! xo Haley-O