This Post is So Boring

Like, so boring, I'm not even sure why I'm pushing Publish.

But not every post can be a zinger, right? And not every day is an exciting day. Sometimes life is just, life.

Happy Earth Day, y'all.

Mostly, symbolic, I know. Doesn't have a lot of "meat" around it, but its a nice reminder to look around and think, What am I doing to love my surroundings and/or myself a little better these days?

At least that's what we've been trying to do. Trying to fill the time between now and the future with some basic tasks, some mindfulness. Some distractions.

All is fine on the surrogacy front so far. We've completed our draft of the contract, now its in the hands of our gestational surrogate and her attorney to see what they like/don't like. Then it will go back to ours. We'll tweak (hopefully not too much) and probably tweak again. It's all moving forward, but it is a process. And one that doesn't happen overnight. So, we've got some time on our hands.

So with that time, we've decided to:

1. Plant the garden, and by garden I mean the boxes and pots on the balcony that eventually take over and vie for space with M as he sits and does his puzzles out there. It's a love/hate relationship. I love the plants, he hates nearly toppling over the side every time he maneuvers to his chair with coffee and book and pen in hand. But he's a limber guy, and I think the fresh greens and herbs are worth it. (added challenge: I'm starting tomatoes and peppers from seed this year, which I've never done. As you know, I suck at thinning, so we'll see how this goes.)
2. Chill on the happy hours - yes, we have a happy place and yes it happens to be a bar and yes, everyone does know our name, but here's the thing - we realized last week that drinking a fancy beer can often be the caloric equivalent of eating a piece of chocolate cake. Yikes. And we wouldn't think of doing that more than once a week, M doesn't even eat cake (so annoying). Yet somehow...
3. Eat better. We don't eat poorly. In fact, we're pretty damn healthy. But we eat a lot. With gusto. While we're entirely meat and dairy-free at home, we have been known to lapse and get the occasional  large cheese pizza on the way home from previously mentioned happy place. And then eat the whole. damn. thing. We're trying to erase that habit from our routine completely. Luckily (for us, not him) our favorite pizza guy got into a fight with his boss and quit, so the temptation isn't as tempting as it once was. We're also trying to do a little better with portion control, which is actually easier now that we've...
4. Started p.9.0.x. Holy. Shit. The pain. It's better now. As in, it's good that we can now stand up and sit down without yelping. The first days were brutal. Now, it's just a dull, but kind of satisfying (?) ache. Week one is officially complete. We've worked out at least an hour every day. Sometimes more. We're sweating like fiends. And seriously, feeling kind of smugly great. It's fun to spend the morning with M. It's great to have a partner in the pain. I don't know how long we'll last. The timeframe is a little daunting. But every day we finish the routine is one more day of sweat that wasn't there before. It's easier to eat better in concert with this because for everything I put into my mouth I now consider the amount of this ridiculous, contortionist shit I will need to do to burn it off. I'm waiting for the rain to stop to see if this has any impact on my running - good, bad, indifferent. I mean, its not like I can get any slower....

On the Earth Day front, we've started to try to do more around the apartment to minimize impact. One huge piece of this is water. We seem to have the opposite problem of most of our house-owning friends. Our water pressure is actually too strong. So strong that faucets drip and there's nothing you can do about it. No tightening of bolts, no calling the landlord will stem the steady drip drip....(wait for it) drip. So we started to collect the drips and use the water that would have dripped down the drain to water the garden, the house plants, make the tea...We rack up at least a gallon from the kitchen sink alone. I cringe to think of how much water is running through our apartment building wasted, but at least there's one less tenant who's adding to that. And who knows, maybe there are others in the building that have figured this out well before us.  It's not rocket science.

So, there you have it. A boring, mundane, everyday post about everyday things that are happening in and around our household these days. Lots of cleaning house. Getting our bodies and heads right. Trying to be solid, and calm and strong and ready for whatever comes our way in the coming months.