Any and all personal goals notwithstanding, for my birthday I am making this recipe no matter what. THIS is what I want for my birthday, barring another Melting Pot visit for the “Dark Chocolate and Dulce de Leche with Sea Salt” fondue.

Hips, you have been warned.

Chocolate Dulce de Leche Lava Cake

Ingredients:

113 g (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus a little more for melting and brushing
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
168 g (6 ounces) dark chocolate (70 percent cacao), chopped
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
Pinch of salt

Jar of good quality dulce de leche (you can also make it yourself, learn how to here) (you can also just substitute regular caramel)
Flaky or coarse sea salt for sprinkling
Confectioners’ sugar for sprinkling

Directions:
1.    Preheat the oven to 425°. Brush four 6-ounce ramekins with melted butter. In a small bowl, whisk the cocoa powder with 1 tablespoon of the flour; dust the ramekins with the cocoa mixture, tapping out the excess. Transfer the ramekins to a sturdy baking sheet.
2.    In a medium saucepan, melt the  stick of butter with the chocolate over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Let cool slightly.
3.    In a bowl, using an electric mixer, beat the granulated sugar with the eggs and salt at medium-high speed until thick and pale yellow, 3 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the melted chocolate until no streaks remain. Fold in the 1/4 cup of flour.
4.    Spoon two-thirds of the batter into the prepared ramekins, then spoon 1 heaping teaspoon of dulcet de leche into each ramekin. Sprinkle with sea salt (if using coarse salt 2 granules is enough) and cover with the remaining chocolate batter.
5.    Bake in the center of the oven for 16 minutes, until the tops are cracked but the centers are still slightly jiggly. Transfer the ramekins to a rack and let cool for 5 to 8 minutes.
6.    Run the tip of a small knife around each cake to loosen. Invert a small plate over each cake and, using pot holders, invert again. Carefully lift off the ramekins. Dust the warm cakes with confectioners’ sugar and serve immediately.

So, Pinnacle Fitness Bootcamp would like to invite me to a free class at their Decatur location. Now that the weather has cooled off, my months old plea for an indoor bootcamp venue has finally materialized (again, actually, since Operation Bootcamp opened their indoor place this spring, but alas the request was still out there in the ether I guess). They want almost as much as the 5-day a week bootcamp I used to go to for only 2 days a week at this coveted indoor location, too. $120 a month is ridonculous to me. $40 a session, essentially.

Of course, now I have to go to the one free class to see what is so amazing that they want $40 a class for it. I only hope that it isn’t genuinely so amazing that I would really want to keep going, because I’m so not paying that.

Why wait? Tomorrow, 6:45-7:45AM, PINNACLE FITNESS BOOTCAMP Decatur is located inside Leapin’ Lizard’s Inflatable Center @ 185 Sams St., Decatur GA 30030. I hope we get to play on the inflatable stuff!

Ooh, according to their website, anybody can request one free class. If it’s awesome, I’ll pass it on.

2011 Longest Yardsale, a set on Flickr.

Today I sat in the medical center parking garage and cried because the thing I knew, they said.

Confessions:

1) I have been wearing out my phone battery checking CNN constantly for updates on debt ceiling negotiations, throughout the day and night

2) I spammed the crap out of my few twitter followers promoting Stephen Colbert’s Super Pac, because it coincided with a plea from the President to tweet your feelings to Congress

3) I was frustrated enough to write to congressmen about the debt ceiling negotiations

4) I have been actively seeking out daily news programming versus just reading headlines and watching Stewart and Colbert

5) I have donated money to Stephen Colbert’s Super Pac, even though I don’t know what he’ll do with it, and the opportunity to see our names scroll across the screen on his show was a mitigating factor.

6) If I’ve been doing other things during these debt ceiling negotiations that didn’t involve me following the updates voraciously, I was probably acting like an  addict jonesing for a hit — or secretly checking my phone, see number 1.

What I want to know is, has the political system in this country gone insane or is this just me finally accepting life as a grown up? For 30 I went to Hawaii. I guess for 40 I’ll go to the hospital for my ulcers.

Use it or lose it:  Pretty common adage. How about Keep It Simple, Stupid? You’d think these were common sense. It’s interesting to me that beyond these adages, as much as I have made an effort to learn about staying healthy and being fit, actually understanding how things work and what I should and shouldn’t do, how little I actually spend the time to practice that knowledge. As such I’m never really surprised when I try something on and it fits tight again because I know the score.

For those who really don’t seem to “get it” as to how to be healthy, there can be a bit of shock when things don’t work out.  I probably shouldn’t be surprised when I hear about things they’re trying or how they’ve hurt themselves, and this is usually either endeavors of my mother or of my aunts as related by my mother. They remind me that I’m not getting any younger — hello “Project 40″ is running out of time. Mostly, though, they are a  ”wake-up call” to remind me that staying healthy really isn’t that hard, and the cost of poor health and injury can be high.

Eat consciously. Move more. Stretch. Sleep.

That is not to say “overcomplicate things with diet or calorie plans, logging, or stressing out about every bite, and then beat yourself up everytime you go off plan until you just give up and wallow in chocolate.”

Nor is that to say “rely on workout classes that you might ditch is work is hectic or you just don’t find the right workout outfit that you feel presentable in that day.”

Mostly, though, don’t try to go from zero to sixty in 4 seconds and injure something. Every step can be a positive step, and you just need to take one step at a time. Stop worrying about doing a certain thing, and just do something. Then do something else.  Everyday, just a little something. Soon you’ll feel like a little something more.

Keep it simple, but keep it going…or else

I know all this seems pretty general, but I’ve thought of all this because of mom’s latest injury. She’s made great strides in the past couple years at changing her diet and exercising more, even if it was motivated by lack of money and boredom. She’s lost a lot of weight and lowered her blood pressure a lot with walking. Fairly recently, however, she’s been “limping” because of a problem with her heel. A doctor visit told her it was probably a bone spur and to keep off it when she could.  Undaunted by this, she went from walking her trail to using the recumbant bike in front of the tv — no weight on the heel and perfectly comfortable to do.

The problem is, in all this, she wasn’t really eating great nutritionally — though she would sometimes take vitamins when she could afford them. Mostly her meals were fruit & vegetables, bread, and sweets she’d bake herself. Occasionally she’d buy meat, but mostly when she craved meat she went for fast food — fried fish, french fried, hot dogs, and big greasy burgers. Again, though, rare due to fundage, but even so, eating bad is actually pretty cheap.

Also, in all this, she wasn’t really stretching. At her age she’d already lost a lot of flexibility, but once the trail walking had to stop, she wasn’t getting much a stretch on the recumbant bike at all. She has always done all her own yardwork, which is a lot in her yard, not just to mow but plenty of trees and shrubs to trim and maintain — or cut down, cut up and haul off. The woman uses a chainsaw without a second thought.

Recently, though, her lack of flexibility caught up with her as she managed to rupture her Achilles tendon on a simple walk to the mailbox. It snapped and her foot just stopped working. No pain, but no walking either. Now she’s in a restrictive boot, waiting to see if she has to have surgery or whether it will heal on its own. From my reading about this type of injury, it is common in both weekend athletes and the elderly, and can sideline you up to six months. Recovery has to include flexibility exercises to build up a range of motion again.

The whole concept of this type of injury was foreign to mom. Strangely, she’s never even broken a bone to have to be in a cast before, though she was my mother and had to deal with mine as a child. Wearing the boot allows her to walk, if slowly, so she’s good to go on with her business as usual. She’s already driving with it on the gas pedal and using the riding lawn mower. The fact that there is no pain makes her think it can’t be that bad of an injury — her foot just won’t work so it’s frustrating.

There’s a lesson here somewhere.

Thus it can all just go downhill so fast. Let things slide, especially as you get older, and the harder you may have to work to regain that ground. And if you stay in that habit, you may end up with an injury that really sidelines you. And then you’ve just lost that much more ground.

Don’t wait for tomorrow. Do something for yourself and your health today. Right now, even. Or else I hope you were reading this while you walked at your treadmill desk!

alcantara528:

Hubby & I at our wedding – May 28, 2011, Cape May Point, NJ

Feeling better. Damned if those “soft” antibiotics didn’t pull it off on the last day, and my earache is better. I, however, am a big old pile of mashed potatoes now, without any activity for so long. Zero energy. Zero motivation.

I did begin my Sunday afternoon belly dance class with Laura, however. It was crazy and fun and much harder than I thought, and I’m so glad it’s all girls and no spectators. There is a lot of me to jiggle, so it was quite a new experience. And my shoulders have been killing me since from the posture and holding my arms up.

In other news, I’m both swamped with work and terrified of being out of work, which has led to a lot of desk time. This means I can feel my ass expanding from all this sitting and stressing. It is so far beyond time to get back into a groove.

So, this week I’m starting with massive house-work duties. Maybe this weekend I’ll add in some weights or a class. One day at a time right now, but always on my mind.

I’m on day 8 of antibiotics, but at last I feel like a person again. Here’s hoping I’m beating this stuff with my drugs and resting.

Strangely, I’m getting tons of muscle cramps, which at first made me think lack of water or some vitamin, but I’m starting to now think are from just complete and total laziness. I’ve been so doped up on benedryl that I just wanted to sleep all the time anyway, so who could be bothered to move much. Now I stretch out and things go” OW! Why are you moving that! We just got comfy!”

As such, I’m fairly certain that I’m going to have to ease back into regular activity to avoid injury. I’m still planning on hitting the Belly Dance open house and starting a class on Sunday, so maybe that will be a good first effort. Just the notion of 60 minutes of Jazzercise causes me to feel faint, so I think I might just have to start walking the treadmill again first.

But, wellness is the goal, and if taking it easy while on these meds has helped me finally shake this persistent sinus thing, then hurrah. One step at a time.

Work is sporadically crazy, and I’m gearing up to be out of town for more than a week, but all I can think about today is getting my life and schedule back to normal. I’m really looking forward to it, in fact.

First, the status update: Haven’t climbed in over a week now, and no Jazzercise since before Philly (Memorial Day). I have been using the treadmill desk during the day some, to the tune of about two miles twice a week, so nothing big. Mostly I’ve been sitting on my butt in the driver’s seat of a car traveling the land. I’m about to do it again tomorrow. Then a week from tomorrow we come back, to turn around and go a different directly the next day for four days. Many miles to go before I get back to normal.

Things I love:

• my big jug of snack mix (almonds, pistachios, dried cherries & cranberries, sunflower seeds and cinnamon life cereal)
• mia drink mix and my 2-quart water jug. Working in the Alabama heat I’m making sure to refill and drink that water jug at least 4 times, on top of anything else we may drink during the day. So far it’s really helped with dry skin and sinuses.
• mcdonald’s fruit smoothies – looking forward to trying the new mango pineapple
• smart portion sizes – when i’m with the group and the choices are limited to none, at least I’m reigning it in. drink first to make sure i’m not stuffing my face from what is actually thirst.

The 100 degree Alabama heat and humidity is not my friend, but we’ll be out in it for long hours over the 4th of July holiday as we work our three remaining fireworks shows. Last Saturday’s show was only a preview, since it was so small. It practically spoiled us, but the preview of all the road construction and the long drive wasn’t fun.

Things to do:

• My Nazeem Allayl Belly Dance studio certificate for 6 free classes expires July 24, so I have to go turn it in for a punch card before then. If it doesn’t work out to take a class with Laura, I can just go solo. Must remember to look at their weekend schedule especially for some options.
• Kit & I both have certificates for 6 Fast Fit 1000 classes, which expire Oct 18. We have to schedule a fitness evaluation before we can show up for a class, so that needs to be done ASAP when the traveling is done.
• I’ve picked up the TurboFire dvd workouts, which has a 90-day workout schedule to follow. I’m hoping to start that program around July 17th on top of whatever else we’ve got going on.
• When we get back and I’m around for evening Jazzercise again, I sure would like to up it to 3 days a week.
• Then there’s that pool membership we just got! I know James wants to use it mostly to cool off on the weekends, but it’s always there for laps on a really hot day. Just have to remember the new hair rules I’m supposed to follow after this keratin treatment, and use the danged swim-cap.

You’d think a person with this many options to workout would be skinnier, no?