The Day The Universe Wanted Me To Slow Down

Last week the universe sent me signs that I needed to slow down and I was happy to take them!

While absolutely amazing, Fringe was incredibly busy and hectic. I spent a lot of time seeing other shows (11 in fact!) and spent a lot of time with old (and new) friends at the beer tent. In the midst of all this I was still going to work and school and trying to eat, sleep and breathe!

On Wednesday I headed up to school to start my new class, Sports & Fitness nutrition. I had just finished an assignment for our previous class and was looking forward to starting something fresh for the summer. I arrived in class right at 10 and there was no teacher in sight. 5 minutes went by and still nothing. 10:10, 10:15 passed and we all started to get a little anxious. Someone finally went to speak with our administrator and a phone call to our teacher revealed he had gotten the dates for our class wrong! There were a lot of groans in the class, but I was happy to take advantage of the beautiful, sunny, day!!

So I did. With a picnic in the park with the lovely Ashley. Super fresh salad with spinach, romaine, avocado, green beans, cucumber, red pepper, sunflower seeds and marinated tofu cubes (tamari & apple cider vinegar) topped with flax oil and balsamic. We followed the salad with some amazing watermelon, raspberries, strawberries & blueberries.

It was a gorgeous day and Ashley and I had a lot of fun laughing and eating and taking advantage of the sunshine!

Later in the day I was supposed to work, but that ended up getting cancelled too. Once again, I was angry or upset, just happy to enjoy the day! I checked out the Farmer’s Market at Queen’s Quay and picked up some amazing rainbow chard and summer squashes which I turned into a stir fry  Simple sautéed summer squash and rainbow chard with millet and tempeh. Once fuelled I headed back to Fringe madness where I spent time with some amazing people including another lovely Ashley. Now some people would have been frustrated that everything had been cancelled in their day – not me!! I took the hint from the universe and I loved having the opportunity to see some beautiful friends, eat delightful food and take advantage of a free day!

Have you had any free time to frolick in the sunshine? Have you found anything delightful at a farmer’s market this season?

My New Pie Of Life

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post about the effect of being part of Generation Y and the various components of my life. I used a pie chart to illustrate the main segments of my life and alluded to some of the changes that I was looking ahead to in the future. At that time I still believed I would wait for more than a year to go to school rather than quit my job in November and start school in January. I can’t believe that I thought I would wait so long AND do it in the evenings and miss out on performing for two years.

In the last 6 months I’ve come to realize how amazing it is to have a balance of things that you love in your life. Quitting my job was one of the best things I ever did and every day I am so thankful for this dream life that I am living. My new pie of life goes something like this:My job no longer consumes half my life and my new work doesn’t usually feel like work because it’s Weight Watchers and I adore it! I am so pleased with the balance between work, school and play. I also have more time to perform, audition and be on stage which makes me really happy!! For the first time since musical theatre school I really feel like I’m thriving in this regard and have time to actually work on my craft (rather than squeeze it in between everything else that I’m doing)

My new pie of life was demonstrated on Friday within a chaotic, but successful day. Normally on Fridays I lead 1 meeting in the morning and then have the rest of the day to myself. This Friday was an exception due to the fact that I had a one-off Friday class and one night only show in the evening. Add to that some pretty amazing people and some yummy food, and it meant that basically everything I love was wrapped up into a single day!!

With everything going on, I went prepared with breakfast, lunch and snacks Quinoa flakes with apple & cinnamon for brekkie, spinach salad with tempeh & balsamic/flax dressing plus a banana, orange, blueberries & carrots with hummus.

I led a great little meeting and then rushed off to school for my second to last class of Advanced Nutritional Research. I was stoked when we got our marks back for the test we had written on Wednesday and when our teacher let us out early – success! It meant that I had more time to get down to Buddies in a Bad Times theatre for the tech rehearsal for Cabaret for a Cause 11. Tech went off without too many problems and it was good to sing through the group numbers with everyone. We were singing some great group songs like “All the Men in my Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons” from Evil Dead the musical, “Seasons of Love” from Rent, and Lilly Allen’s “Not Fair”. Once everything was good to go we all went for sushi. I shared some edamame and veggie rolls with Lindsay and our musical director.  I loved the little mushroom ones – so good!  With our tummies full of sushi goodness we were ready for a great show.  For my solo I sang a really fun song called My Party Dress. (Seen here performed by the lovely Jenni Barber) It went over really well!! Lindsay and I also performed the super fun duet “What is this Feeling?” from the musical Wicked. Lindsay sang the Elphaba role and her witches’ hat made me laugh so much. She is such a good friend, it was really hard for us to hate one another!! The whole evening was a great success and I had a lot of fun being onstage with an amazing group of talented people AND finally having an opportunity to sing with Linz. I practically fell into bed at the end of the night (especially since I was getting early up to lead 3 meetings in the morning) but it was such a wonderful day that I didn’t really care. It was a great reflection of my new pie of life and I couldn’t be happier that it contained so many of my favourite things.

So far this year I’ve realized that having such a balance of things in my life makes me really happy. It shouldn’t be rocket science, right? Do things that you love. Cut out the stuff you don’t. Live in the moment and pursue things that you feel passionately about. My pie of life kind of rocks and I look forward to continuing to live it on a daily basis.

Have you examined your pie of life lately? What’s there that makes you really happy? What’s missing? What can you do to change that?

What Do You Mean I Don’t Have To Be At The Theatre?

It’s been strange (and also lovely) getting back to “normal” post-show and having some time to just be. My life is usually pretty hectic, but it’s nice to be able to go and come as I please and spend time with the people who are important in my life.

On Friday I grabbed some yummy lunch at Camros Organic Eatery before heading to the Total Health Show to volunteer at the IHN booth. It seems like only yesterday that I was at that show a year ago, dreaming of attending the school. It’s amazing how much difference a year can make as I spent a few hours singing the praises of the school to prospective attendees as a student! It was great to chat with other students as well as Jennifer, who is an IHN graduate, has her own practice and is also the school’s Trade Show Manager. Very inspiring!

I bounced around the show checking out the other vendors and picked up a few goodies including some Taste of Nature samples raw chocolate sweetened with alternative sweeteners (like dates and agave) and some goodies from Living LibationsI opted for the Lavish Abundance spray and Healthy Gum Drops. So far I am in love with both of these products. It was especially interested to talk with the sales gal as I had just taken a workshop in essential oils, so I had a new appreciate for their super high quality products. So happy to add to my collection!!

I then headed up to Fresh to grab some dinner with my sweet friend AshleI love this girl! We became friends during musical theatre school, but our friendship really blossomed once we had both graduated. We’ve both been incredibly busy as of late, so it was wonderful to close down the restaurant chatting about everything under the sun whilst munching of delicious food! I opted for the macro greens bowl over brown rice with some vegan caesar dressing, which I really enjoyed.

On Saturday I had planned to go to a cottage with my roommates, but thanks to the rain we opted to stay home. I ran some errands with Matthew and returned to find Drew cooking and an impromptu feast was born! On the menu: 2 curries (1 Ashley friendly), spinach salad with lots of veggies and some tempeh, roasted red peppers with JD’s secret 7 herb blend, roasted purple yams with mango chutney and rice. Not bad for something that was totally unplanned and thrown together. It was delightful! So much delicious food with really great company and conversation. I have to say that I’m loving my apartment and my roommates. I feel really comfortable and living with 3 guys is a lot of fun (especially good considering it’s been more than 12 years since I’ve lived with girls!) The resident kitties Judas and Jesus are pretty hilarious as well. I can’t wait to bring Iris home early this week so I will feel completely settled and ready to move forward. Much discussion was had about feasts to come in the future, which will definitely be posted on the blog. Stay tuned!

How was your weekend? Did the rain put a damper on your plans?

I’ve Always Dreamed of Going to Hogwarts…

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I love Harry Potter, so it was awesome to feel like I was taking Herbology on Monday as I started Herbal Medicine.

 
The cold infusion smelled and tasted like corn.
We even talked a bit about the mandrake!

And in very Hermione-like fashion I received my grades from Nutrition and the Environment. After getting doing very well on test#1, I got an 81% on test #2 and 96% on my essay – giving me an 88% in my first class. It feels amazing to be studying things that I’m truly interested in!

First Test, 89%

There was definitely a dance of joy that went along with this!!

Farewell Cubicle…

Hello new life!!

Wow, after I wrote that post last week, things got even crazier!! I wasn’t feeling awesome physically on Wednesday and figured I would head over to my doctor on Thursday afternoon. That plan was squashed when I woke up at 5am with a horrific pain in my right side. I walked around a bit, took a hot bath but remained in constant pain and wasn’t sure what to do. So I called the telehealth nurse.

She told me I needed to go to the hospital. Oh goody.

I made a quicky phone call to lovely Lindsay to lead my Thursday morning meeting and sent an email off to my manager and headed to the hospital around 6:30am. I was there for about 6 hours, running tests, a CT scan and answering lots of questions. Because of my Crohn’s, and the location of the pain, the doctor thought that I might have stones of some sort – yuck!! After going through the urine analysis a second time though, it showed that it was only a bladder/kidney infection.

Did I mention that I was stoned on Percoset for the latter half of my stay? I picked up a prescription for some antibiotics and painkillers and headed home to nap it off. The pain came back in the evening, but I felt 100 times better in the morning. I’m working through the course of antibiotics, taking lots of probiotics and supplements to keep up the health of my system, drinking cranberry juice and tea and will be taking a heavy duty probiotic once I’m finished the antibiotics. I honestly think this was my body’s way of telling me to slow down. The last couple weeks have been quite stressful, but with my last day of work on Friday, that all ends now!

My last day of work was a busy one (which was awesome, because I was still a little worn down, but there was no way that I was prolonging my stay!) We had a board meeting which means that I was running around the office setting up conference lines, setting up catering and doing massive runs to Starbucks. I have to say, one special skill I acquired as an executive assistant was the ability to order up to 10 specific drinks at Starbucks and carry them all single-handed back to my office.

Some of the lovely ladies from the Accounting Department had made a lunch date with me and asked where I wanted to go. I chose FRESH.

I started off with a creamy vegetable pesto soup – delish!!My body was so happy to have the greens after feeling so crummy and not eating very much on Thursday. For my main I had the black bean burrito, over salad. I probably ate 1/2 as it was quite big and I underestimated the impact of the soup on my tummy. It was such a nice lunch and wonderful to spend some quality time with the girls. Thanks, ladies!!

I spent the remainder of the afternoon finishing up some training with my replacement and doing the obligatory mingle around the office. I felt like everyone wanted to tell me their deep, dark secrets – which was actually really fun!! I was told that I must go back and visit, and my boss gave me the a-ok to resurrect the bake sale I had last year in support of my CCFC fundraising efforts. While it was sad to say goodbye, I’m so excited about what lies ahead and I know I will always be welcome to visit.

I cleaned off the remaining things on my desk, and took down the quote that has gotten me through the last few months. FREEDOM!!! I truly feel like my dreams are coming true and it’s absolutely wonderful. The fact that I’m no longer an executive assistant hasn’t really sunk in yet, but I’m sure it will when I’m not getting up early on Tuesday to trek downtown.

On Saturday I led three insane meetings. It was so busy!! Thank you to all of my members who waited so patiently. We are working on a solution, I promise! After WW I headed to rehearsal to run Act 1. (Hey look, we’re on Wikipedia!) I grabbed some lunch on the run and enjoyed a take-away RAW spaghetti from Live. It was so delicious!! I’ve never had spiralized zucchini and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it, but it was so refreshing. I definitely want to make something like this at home. I loved the sauce, and the toppings. Such a yummy lunch. Being the classy gal I am, I enjoyed it in the back of a cab en route to rehearsal.

Got some great rest and studying in on Saturday night because I have my first test on Monday. Think positive thoughts for me as you read this post!! I haven’t written a test like this in years, so I’m a little bit nervous. Given my office background, I actually made my study notes into a powerpoint presentation. I think I’ve reached a new level of geeky. But I love it!!

Looking forward to my extra special day on Friday and enjoying the luxury of being a student this week! Things will slow down and I will absolutely be taking some time to rest.

How do you prepare for tests? Do you get nervous? Do you have any effective study tips to share?

Nutrition School: Day 1

Ohmygosh I LOVE IT!!

I started of the morning feeling a little excited…. Okay, maybe a lot excited!Because I’m a total nerd, my beautiful new Lululemon bag had been packed and ready to go by the door for days. Full of books, paper, pens, daytimer, water bottle and my lunch.Spinach salad with 1/2 avocado, baked falafels and some tahini. I enjoyed some fresh juice before running out the door.Carrot-beet-spinach-celery-ginger – yum! And threw a banana in my bag for later. I was too excited to eat! I hopped on the bus and was on my way. I picked up my remaining books when I arrived I found my classroom (there are only 3, so it wasn’t rocket science), got a seat near the front and started chatting with some of my new classmates.

Everyone was so nice and excited to be there – wonderful!! We talked a little bit about why we chose the school, what brought us there and our previous educations/life experience. There seems to be a mix of full and part time people and a girl:boy ratio of 9:1. Everyone comes from all different educational backgrounds and there’s a wide range of ages. One of the girls thought I was 19 – I’ll take it!

Because I’m doing part time, I will be taking one class at a time, twice a week. My first class is Nutrition and the Environment and I sincerely enjoyed every minute. We talked about the course outline, test & assignment schedule, required reading and then got right into it. Throughout the class we watched segments from Diet for a New America and discussed the impacts of the “Standard American Diet” (SAD) including our health, treatment of animals, land & water. Over the next 4 weeks we’re going to be discussing topics including our ecological footprint, approaches to agriculture, genetically modified foods, food processing and pollutants in the home and office. So much to think about.

In the few spare moments I had today, I couldn’t believe that I ever doubted my decision to go to nutrition school. It feels so right. I’m at a place in my life where I can really appreciate being in school and feel an incredible hunger for learning. I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge and applying it to this new career path I am on. I couldn’t stop smiling all the way home and responding to friends’ text messages inquiring about my day with “I f-ing love it!!”

Then as if my day couldn’t get any better, I saw this on Meghan’s blog:

“And the Student Becomes the Teacher” I had Meghan & Nicole over for dinner before the holidays, but forgot to take pictures and then ended up getting to busy to blog about it. It was a bit of a mess trying to figure out what to make for her (especially since I use her recipes all the time), but everyone really enjoyed the meal and it was lovely to see them, as always. I really am so lucky to have such a great friend, mentor and cheerleader in Meghan!!

I was beaming from ear to ear for the rest of the day, but it was so busy (with Weight Watchers and rehearsal) that I looked like this by 11:00 Still smiling, but exhausted. Is it Friday yet?

I promise I’ll write a post about something other than school soon. For now I’m a little ball of excitement and can’t hold it in!!!

Having a Plan & Sticking To It

Happy New Year lovely readers!

I hope the first few days have been good to you. Have you set some juicy goals? What steps have you taken to work towards your goals so far? I’ve been anticipating these first week of January for quite some time now as I’m starting school on Wednesday! I can’t believe that it’s actually happening. I will be doing a post on Wednesday about my scholarly preparations. It would be easy if I were just starting school, but instead I’m also:

• Training my replacement at my office job during a very busy time in the office (my last day is January 15-yay!)
• Beginning rehearsals for my new show. Read through is on Tuesday, followed by rehearsals on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday
• Leading 6 Weight Watchers meetings

Ahhhhhhhhhh!

I’ve been a bit of a stress case to say the least. It’s been challenging to wrap my brain around it and to ensure that I don’t fall apart I’ve reunited with an old friend: my Time.Mine planner I bought one last year on one of my excursions to Buffalo and absolutely fell in love. I used it daily to keep track of my life. I listed appointments, meetings, budget info, rehearsals, dinner dates, blog ideas and whatever else I needed. I loved all the space for me to write, the full sized monthly calendars and the fact that it was normal paper and not glossy so that I could use pretty pens. When the new year was approaching, I tried to find a new TimeMine, but realized that they weren’t available in Canada. I searched other stores looking for a comparable day timer and was unable to find one that could compare to my previous love and I was not about to settle!  After tweeting to the TimeMine folks about my inability to find one in Canada, they offered to send one to me – score!! I was thrilled when I got it in the mail. I’ve already defaced my planner with details of school, rehearsals, WW meetings and work info. It’s such a great way for me to keep track of my life and I would definitely be lost without it! I’ve tried using online day timers, but I really like having a hard copy and find that I used it more.

Knowing that things were going to be really busy this week, I made a comprehensive meal plan, and dragged Joey out in yesterday’s snow to do a big grocery shop. I’ve just taken to doing my grocery list and meal plans in excel now that we have a home printer (to print schoolwork – yaaaaaaay!) I made a master list (similar to the ones Meghan gave us in her cooking classes) and then a new file for the week. Here is the menu for this week:

Clean Eating Minestrone soup w/ quinoaBaked falafels w/ kugel and asparagus
Squash chickpea lentil stew
Warm rice & lentil salad
Marinated tofu salad
Curried chickpeas, cauliflower & spinachGoing with some old favourites, simple salads and a slow cooker recipe. Many of these recipes will make lots of leftovers giving me things to stock up my freezer with as well as pack for lunches. I made the minestrone soup for supper last night and it was amazing. I used zucchini and omitted and fennel. It’s one of those soups that gets better with every bite and I really liked the white beans and the quinoa. Tonight I’m going to be making some muffins and pick up a few snacky things at a different bulk store, and then I feel like I’ll be set for the week. It’s such a relief for me when my food is taken care of!

My last couple strategies include getting enough sleep and taking some time for myself. I’ve been getting into the habit of getting up early in the morning to do my morning pages, and so far I’m 4 days in and it’s a lovely way to start my day. Amid everything I am committing to working out twice this week. I already had one awesome workout yesterday with Kate. We went to BodyFlow and Zumba together and it was awesome! I can absolutely make it to the gym one more time this week, so it will feel great to accomplish that goal.

I’ve been waiting patiently for school and my show to begin and with a plan and some great tools in my pocket – I feel ready. EEEEEEEEEEEE – I’m a teensy, tiny bit excited… can you tell?

What does your plan for the first full week of January look like? Am I the only person who is totally crazy about what type of planner they have?