The Moment

A soft cat gently settling upon my lap,
The rain coming down in sheets,
Refreshing the earth,
Refreshing my soul.

A single strawberry, so sweet upon my tongue,
The warmth of an August evening,
Putting on shorts and a t-shirt
And going for a walk in the air
Which envelopes me
In softness, warmth,
Summer.

Blessings in the rain,
Blessings in the sun.
A ripe tomato, juicy and light.
A spicy red onion,
A touch of fresh basil.

Experiencing life.
How could I have missed it?
These precious days,
These precious moments.

A frosty fruit smoothie
As I meander down the street
Taking in the sights,
The people,
The energy,
The lightness.

And later, the light dimming softly,
The cool evening breeze
A child giggling in pleasure
As the swing slowly swings,
Back and forth,
Back and forth.

A little boy throws a ball
It goes into the bushes.
Laughing, smiling,
Happiness.

This is happiness.
Dollar bills?
No.
Fancy meals?
No.
Expensive cars?
No.
A humongous house?
No.

The moment?
Yes.
That’s all there is.

Actual Conversation Had At Two In The Morning at the Best Western in Maysville, Kentucky

Miss Healthypants (video taping Iwanski, who’s lying down on the bed): Are you drunk on wine?

Iwanski (drunk on wine for the first time in fifteen years): Turn the video off.

Miss Healthypants: Just tell me—are you drunk on wine?

Iwanski: Shut up, you know I am. I just stumbled into the bathroom wall.

Miss Healthypants: So would you say that you’re a Stumbly-Wumbly?

Iwanski: If there’s Wumblies, I’m one of the Stumblies.

Miss Healthypants: Say “I’m a Stumbly-Wumbly.”

Iwanski: If there is a Wumbly population, I am one of the Stumblies of such.

Miss Healthypants (laughing): Say “I am a Stumbly-Wumbly.”

Iwanski: There’s a chance…I don’t believe in labels.

Miss Healthypants: Come on, be a Stumbly Wumbly!

Iwanski: Let’s say I’m a Blue Dog Stumbly.

Miss Healthypants (laughing): Is that like a Blue Dog Democrat?

Iwanski: It’s better. Hey, you’re not going to blog about this, are you?

Miss Healthypants: No, of course not.

Miss Travelpants Has Returned!

Iwanski and I are back from a road trip through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania…and oh, what a trip it was! We had so much fun, and took so many pictures, that it was hard for me to decide what pictures to share with y’all. (I love the word “y’all”—definitely my favorite word in the Southern dialect. At least I like it as long as the person saying it has more than two teeth—but more about that later.)

Anyway, without further adieu, I hope y’all enjoy the following road trip pictures.

As we approached our first hotel room in Kentucky, we saw this scene.



Hot air balloons! There was a race going on in the town where we were staying. I never thought I’d be into hot air balloons at all, but it was quite an awesome sight!

The next day, it was my first time in West Virginia!



Here's the New River Gorge in West Virginia—one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.



This was also my first time in rural Virginia! (I was in urban Virginia—in Arlington—during our Washington, DC trip.)



Here's a view from the George Washington National Forest in Virginia:



Finally, we made it to our main destination—the beautiful Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains.



Here’s Iwanski standing on an abandoned railroad in the Blue Ridge Mountains.



We saw several deer hanging out in the forest. They seemed very unafraid of people.



Then, to our delight, we saw one of these fellas on the side of the road! The next day, we even saw a mother bear and her little cub. It was too cool!



Apparently this is how the Shenandoah residents know what time it is.



And of course, to have the whole John Denver experience (“Almost heaven, West Virginia…Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River…”), I had to see the Shenandoah River. (I just like how these chairs look next to the river.)



We had an amazing walk through the Luray Caverns in Luray, Virginia.



We also visited Harpers Ferry (the site of John Brown’s famous “attack on slavery”) and saw this very old building.



Gettysburg National Military Park and Gettysburg National Cemetery were amazing places to visit.



Here is the view from our hotel room in Virginia, overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park.



We absolutely loved our Southern/Shenandoah road trip!

Miss Healthypants is Outta Here!

Hi to all my blog buddies!

I will be away from my computer for several days. (I don’t know how I’ll survive, but somehow I will have to manage!)

In the meantime, I hope you all have a fabulous weekend, and enjoy these summer days that are going by so fast!

Looking Forward to September

Two weeks ago, I went clothes shopping at Target.

The next day, I began day one of a half-hour a day exercise program.

Coincidence? Not in the least! There’s just nothing like clothes shopping to make you realize how much weight you’ve gained.

Truth be told, Miss Healthypants has been steadily becoming less healthypants over the past several months. Oh, I still eat an outrageous amount of salad every day, and my high fiber nuts and twigs cereal in the morning…but all of the sudden I found myself polishing off a huge cylinder of caramel corn in the span of three days with hardly a second thought, and a McChicken sandwich (with a side salad and a chaser of Oreo cookies), had become one of my favorite cheap dinners.

Then, about a month ago when I injured my arm (that blasted tendonitis!), my morning exercise sessions quickly turned into “let me get another ½ hour of sleep” sessions.

So the lack of exercise and the inhaling of sugar and grease both added up to me standing in the Target dressing room, trying to squeeze into a pair of pants that only a year ago, would have been really big on me.

So for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing a walking/running program for 30 minutes a day. I just take half my lunch hour at work, change into workout clothes, and get outside and run! Well, to be fair, it’s more like jogging a couple of blocks, getting completely out of breath, and walking several more blocks—then lather, rinse, and repeat. But still, I know I’m getting a good workout. Then when I get back to work, I walk up the six flights to my floor and stagger over to my cubicle, sweating profusely. It’s fun!

But it’s really not that bad, especially because when I get home from work, I don’t have to even think about exercising. I’m done for the day! All I have to think about is what healthy meal I can eat, so as not to render my daily workouts useless.

Tonight’s meal was a turkey sandwich from Arby’s (hold the bacon), and of course, a large salad.

But while I was in line at Arby’s, I couldn’t help but notice the big sign, advertising “Wednesday Freebies.” Apparently Arby’s is offering a free item every Wednesday in the summer, if you buy something cheaper (i.e. you get a free sandwich, if you buy a small soda).

Anyway, I started checking out the posted list of which items were free on all the Wednesdays coming up, and I noticed that on September 23rd, if you buy a small soda, you get a free Roastburger—which I have been dying to try. It’s basically Arby’s version of a hamburger—a “burger” made with roast beef instead of a hamburger pattie—and oh my GOSH, it looks so good on the sign!

Now you might be saying, “Well, Miss Cheapskatepants, why don’t you just buy a Roastburger?”

“Well,” says I, “because if I buy it and it sucks, then I will feel like I was ripped off.”

It’s bad enough to feel unhealthy; I don’t want to feel cheated, too.

So anyway, as I stood there drooling at the sign, I grabbed my cell phone and called Iwanski to tell him all about the Arby’s Freebies.

“So on September 23rd,” I told him, “I’m going to get a free Roastburger.”

He laughed. “Are you serious? You’re already planning what you are going to eat on a Wednesday in September? And you called me to tell me this?”

“Yep!” I said. “I want that Roastburger.”

Hell, I can’t be Miss Healthypants ALL the time.

Lucky Duck

For the past hour, I’ve been reading the blog of a former coworker who joined the Peace Corps and has been living in the Ukraine for the past couple of years. The Ukraine! Can you imagine thinking “I’m going to go live in the Ukraine”? And oh my gosh, it is absolutely fascinating to read about all the differences between living there and living here in America. It sure makes me feel lucky to live here.

Here in America, unless you’re homeless or very, very poor, your home is heated warmly in the winter. Apparently not in the Ukraine! My former coworker says that heat is incredibly expensive there, and that during the winter, she wears basically three layers of clothes and two pairs of socks all the time. Plus, they have no hot water to shower in—and even if they did, she said she’s not sure if she’d even want to, because it’s too cold to get undressed to shower!

Brrrr…I don’t think I could handle that.

I can barely handle not having the normal Chicago summer 90-degree temperatures and have been remarking to people lately that it’s been a “cool” summer (temperatures have mostly been in the 70’s and sometimes low 80’s). I am so damn spoiled!!

She also wrote about buying fruit in the Ukraine, and that you really have to watch out for worms in the fruit. She wrote, and I quote:

“If you watch a Ukrainian eating fruit, they take very little bites and look at the fruit in detail with every bite. When was the last time you picked up a piece of fruit and ate it while reading, driving, or working on the computer without thinking twice? Yeah… worms…. So, that is probably my biggest fear. Pray for my tummy.”

WORMS in my FRUIT?! I don’t think so!!!! I inhale blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, or peaches on a daily basis, without giving a second thought to how safe they are to eat. I am absolutely cringing at the thought of having to watch out for worms while I eat my berries.

And there were so many other differences between the Ukraine and America, that made me so grateful to be living where I am today.

And particularly, I feel very lucky to be living in a city where I can walk out on the street and have trains and buses and taxicabs all within less than a block of my apartment. I live in an apartment with a kick-ass heater and air-conditioner, with a swimming pool, laundry room, and exercise room on the 7th floor, accessible by elevator. I even have a little grocery store (7-Eleven) on the ground floor of my building, which sells NON-WORMY fruit.

I have a doorman in my building who keeps us safe from unwelcome intruders, and twenty-four hours a day, I can order a pizza to be delivered right to my door. I also have over 30 fast-food restaurants in my neighborhood—ten in my building alone!—not to mention the countless other sit-down restaurants within a couple of blocks of home-base.

And even if I do eat at home, I have a dishwasher that washes all the dishes for me.

I have a job about a half-mile away that I can walk to every day, which mostly involves talking to people on the phone (no manual labor there), and which pays me a good salary.

I can get a prescription filled at any time of the day, and can do my entire grocery shopping, birthday gift shopping, and Christmas shopping within the privacy of my own home—thanks to the lovely interwebs.

I am one damn lucky girl.

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of that.

Things I Have Just Learned In The Past Two Weeks

1. If a smoke detector starts making random, annoying beeps, pressing the button on it for a few seconds will not work. Instead, you will have to stand on a chair and weave your way through a labyrinth of wires in the smoke detector to find the battery and disconnect it. This will likely happen at about 4 a.m.

2. You should probably make sure you always have a replacement smoke detector battery on-hand.

3. If your dog freaks out during a thunderstorm, try rubbing water on his/her back. Since dogs are very sensitive to the static electricity in the air during a storm, this will help eliminate some of the electricity and therefore, some of their anxiety. (Thanks, Christy, for this great tip!)

4. Cans of tuna-flavored cat food attract bees. This can be useful in keeping bees away during a family gathering.

5. A sump pump is a pump used to prevent flooding in your basement. (I used to know this, but forgot it over the years.)

6. People who grew up in Texas didn’t have a basement and don’t know about sump pumps.

7. To keep bugs from eating your tomato plants, post yellow disposable plastic cups with vaseline rubbed on them in your yard. (The bugs will be attracted to the cups and get stuck on them and die.)

8. My sister-in-law Anna knows A LOT about houses and gardening.

9. I’m not sure that I’d ever want to live in the suburbs.

10. Watering plants in a garden can be very, very relaxing.

11. If I owned a house, I’d get a dog. But only ONE dog.

12. Dogs are disgusting creatures who sometimes eat poo or feminine products. (Ewwwww….)

13. Feeding a dog a half a banana a day will likely prevent him from eating his own poo. (I’ve been told that it’s really the potassium they crave.)

14. I still have so much to learn!