Life is precious!

I'm sorry for missing two days of blogging! I've been around, just fairly busy (and spending WAAAYY too much time hanging with my boyfriend!) A quick recap of the past two days: Yesterday is my longest teaching day each week. I have gotten 3 new students in the past 2 weeks, so I am now teaching from 3:30 to 9:15pm plus driving time. No breaks! It's hard to teach for that long straight through, but it's WONDERFUL! I LOVE my students. Like seriously, I want to be the best teacher for them; someone they can look up to, but still relate with. One of my new students had been diagnosed with leukemia last year. In one way, I'm sooo proud of her for fighting and being strong enough to come back to the violin, but at the same time it BREAKS MY HEART. I cannot imagine what her parents and she have gone through! It was a good reminder to me that life is PRECIOUS! Good health is a gift and not something that we can take for granted. I was instantly reminded of those affected by EDs. We (formerly was myself, too!) work so hard to lose weight, in the process lose health, happiness, time (years!), and occasionally even life. This is the most wretched, horrible, EVIL thing I can imagine, especially when there are other women, men and children in the world losing their own health and lives to other, perhaps "less preventable" diseases. In all cases the children (and adults!) are bright, unique, creative, wonderful people with so much to offer the world! And that's what breaks my heart!

On a related note, by the way, I watched a documentary from Britain on an 8 year old anorexic girl. Speaking of HEART-BREAKING, I cried several times while watching this two part documentary. I am going to post the link, but please know that it could be a trigger and DON'T watch it if you feel you may be at risk of being triggered. That being said, I do feel like it had a lot of good things to say and it was fascinating to watch.


Watch Dana: The 8 Year Old Anorexic [Part 1] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I'm also starting to pack because I am going to have to move in a few weeks! I'm not moving too far, but my current lease is up at the end of June and I would have either had to find a new roommate (she's moving out of the state!) or find somewhere else. Plus my insulation is terrible (old house) so the heating bill is astronomical in the winter! So I've been sending out a ton of emails to try and find a place

I had a lovely bowl of oatmeal yesterday morning:

Full, fantastic breakfast:

1/2 oatmeal
trail mix, 1 fig
1/2 C (?) cottage cheese
1 TB (?) sunflower seed butter
1 pear cut up
coffee

I had a really delicious bar from Mi on Sunday afternoon between church and teaching.




I'm not going to make this post too long because I have to practice and I'd like to work out before teaching today.

Sorry for not leaving comments. I've really barely been around blog land. I've tried to read a few blogs, but I feel like I had been spending too much time on them and I needed to cut back a bit, so I'll try to keep up the best I can, while still having time for other things.

Have a great Wednesday!

MIA blogger has returned!

I've missed you all (shout out to Mariposa, with your adorable comment! Thank you!), but I had a fantastic weekend and VeggieGirl had the right idea in her great video post on blogging about when you want to, versus out of obligation and I totally agree with her. I love you all, but I also enjoyed being out and about this weekend (and yesterday!) and spending time with my friends, mainly my boyfriend. *Roll eyes at me here* :)

As such, I am going to have to re-cap the weekend fairly quickly since I have a lot to do this afternoon before teaching all evening. Let's start with my amazing breakfast today.


With coffee. Currently drinking Komodo Dragon Bold roast from Starbucks, given to me by my wonderful boyfriend, who knows just how important coffee is to me! I had specifically mentioned to him that I had tried this roast and really liked it, so he brought me an entire pound!


The usual oats, pumpkin, flax, and noni juice topped with:

-goji berry trail mix (from WFs--this stuff is amazing!)
-soy nuts
-0% Greek Yogurt
-chocolate covered ginger!!! (From TJs; if you like ginger, this stuff will greatly contribute yumminess to your life! So incredible, melted over hot oatmeal!!)

(I have been snacking on small handfuls of this stuff all weekend! It's so addictive! Let's just say that I finished the container almost entirely by myself in about 5 days, which has 11 servings. Haha, oops.)

My breakfast yesterday was similar, with added blackberries, and no trail mix:

I went to TJs and WFs on Friday night while waiting for my boyfriend to finish a show he was playing. (Yes, he's another musician and composer! And he wrote a piece and dedicated it to me! It's a fantastic piece and I'm not biased at all! ;-) Anyway, I picked up quite a few things but only got pictures of some of it.
Most of it's pretty self-explanatory. I bought the feta which I'm excited about, but I'm coming up short on suggestions of what to do with it. What are your favorite ways to eat feta cheese? Any recipes you love with it?

I made a bunch of veggies on Saturday as they were starting to go bad in my fridge. I just boiled some green beans and brussel sprouts and sauteed a pan of red kale, white onion, cilantro and red pepper.


I also baked a sweet potato and ate a bit of it before I remembered to take its picture. :)

So now that you've seen my healthy food, here are the treats from this weekend. Only some of them! There were actually quite a few, unphotgraphed things, mostly eaten while out with friends! I think you all know my food philosophy by now, of never denying myself yummy food simply because it's not healthy. In fact, during my years with DE, I'm pretty sure I would have qualified as orthorexic (an obsession with healthy food) as I NEVER ate ANYTHING made without 100% whole grain flour, anything with more than 4 grams of sugar per serving, absolutely no fried foods, and quite a few other highly restrictive rules placed upon myself. Like I've mentioned before, I missed out on quite a bit of life, and I don't want to do that anymore. The treats I had all in the past 4 days included: 2 slices of chocolate cake (on different occasions), 3 martinis at a swanky martini bar downtown (I had a blueberry martini, a tropical martini and a blackberry-ginger martini! Yes, I know they were probably 300 calories each! Oops!), a couple random beers here and there, and a couple pieces of unphotographed chocolate here at home. I had an amazing dinner on Saturday night with my boyfriend after the wedding I played, which went really well! I got to play with my first choice violist which made it a pleasure, knowing he was so solid musically and my cellist is great, too! We went out and I had a grilled chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomato pesto on a whole grain ciabatta with rosemary fries on the side. And a Yuengling to drink! What a great meal!

So on a related note, here's some chocolate that did make it onto the camera, all of which was mightily enjoyed by MOI! :)


A couple random bars eaten to and from teaching on Saturday:

Plus I dumped this into a bottle of water.


And some snacks from way back on Friday, since they were on my camera:


This is a small piece of ww bread topped with a soy sausage link, FF cheese and homemade hummus!

Broccoli topped with more homemade hummus!

These were blooming in my back yard! I love them!


OK, I've got to go do laundry, go to the bank, get gas, workout and shower before teaching, so I've got to end here. I'll try to comment on your blogs tonight after teaching. Hope everyone's weeks are going fantastically well!