Well, well, well – Day 3 I felt terrible – I had a headache from the time I went to bed on Day 2 until I FINALLY gave in and took ibproufen (sp?) around 7:15 p.m. Could have been caused by many things – weaning from caffeine, not enough water, blood pressure out of whack, and the list goes on!

For today’s challege we had to limit dairy and eggs. I had my last hoorah with milk in my cereal, the sprinkle of cheese that was served on my lunch (i’ll tell you what that was in a sec) and the cream that was probably in my tomato soup from lunch and dinner.

What did I eat all day?
Breakfast – only about 5 spoonfuls of Kashi cereal with dried strawberries and a little honey (the rest vanished by way of M. O.)
Lunch – NOODLES & COMPANY – this could possibly be my first or second favorite fast food – it’s a toss up between this and Qdoba. Anyways I had my usual – whole grain tuscan linguine with tofu and tomato bisque soup! HMM MMM GOOD!!!
Snack – Some sort of pretzel bread from Trader Joe’s
Dinner – Panera Bread – You Pick Two -Half of the Mediterranean Veggie Sandwhich (was not as great as it sounds they were stingy with the veggies) and tomato soup.
Drinks – green tea, ginger & mint tea, water, water and mo water!

My family and I spent about 2 hours grocery shopping to stock up for the next two weeks. We bought tons of produce for eating and juicing at Costco! They have the best non-local produce in large quantities and good prices!!!! We then ventured to Trader Joe’s to get all of the other things that I couldn’t get. (oh yeah – i did try their sparkling cranberry juice – it was SOOOOO GOOOD!)
When were finally checked out the cashier asked it we were buying anything new! I had to think and look – why yes we were! I hope to incorporate most of the items as regulars including my rasberry sorbet for my sweet habit, and several soup purees – he said the Black Bean one was great – I can’t wait! *NOTE TO ALL BUSINESS OWNERS – good customer service goes a LONG WAY!!!!!!

For those of you saying well dang I can’t afford to go to THAT place and I don’t have a Costco’s membership – you can do this exact same thing with some substitutions at Marsh, Kroger, Meijer or even Super Target! For instance Frozen veggie are 77 cents each, you can get 5 avocadoes for $5 and 5lbs of pears?apples?(one of these) for $5 with your fresh idea card this week!
Being healthy doesn’t have to be expensive like most people think – especially if you catch deals and shop local! Check out Indy Winter Farm Market on Saturdays!
Okay – this is getting too long for all text – so i’ll catch you later for a post on Day 4 and other randomness. For those of you that joined in – TODAY AND TOMORROW ARE TOTALLY VEGAN – DITCH THOSE ANIMAL PRODUCTS!!!!

Email forwards just get better and better!

So this one gets me thinking about urban-black-ghetto-”special”-creative-ethnic-cultural names. Now let me first state, that I do not believe that a person should be discriminated against or judged based on their name. I believe parents can name their kids whatever they’d like but me – myself , I like to keep things SIMPLE!! (in case you haven’t gotten that point on this blog yet)

But in the spirit of uniqueness and in this instance not-so uniqueness (i think I made that word up) here’s today’s best e-mail forward!

“Think simple” as my old master used to say – meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.
Frank Lloyd Wright

It’s funny – you know he’s an architecht but what else? I read a bio on him on the net and learned that he had about 3 wives and at one point lived a somewhat double life balancing two seperate families and his career. Sounds like drama to me – it is no wonder he was thinking about keeping things simple. 

Some of his work can be found at www.wrightontheweb.net (in case you aren’t familiar)

So I like this one – it goes with the cliche “getting back to basics”.  So I like to keep things in life simple and drama free.  I think that my quest for this peace gets more and more difficult with each coming day. Whether work drama, family drama, and normal hustle and bustle – it is increasingly harder to accomplish the basic things that I feel would make my life more complete and balanced. 

If When, I get this balance ( I estimate february 2009), I will look to have these parts that make my life whole:

• REAL food – meaning not fake bs but real fruit, real veggies, real ish! I know I will feel better.save some money and probably lose some lbs.
• put first things first – okay I stole that from Franklin Covey’s 7 Habits – but it’s true - my ideal “firsts” are God & Family(my kids)
• Clear Clutter – while this includes actually doing the things I see being done on Clean House rather than just watching, this is a neccessity for my dwelling and my relationships – everything toxic HAS to go – even my bad attitude!

If all goes well, I will be back on a more focused track so I can focus even MORE energy on what matters most – God, Family and fulfilling my passion!!!

So on my quest to define and reflect on the happenings of my life in a simple way – things started to get complicated.  I am thankful to be back on track!  In celebration of the comeback, the remainder of this week I am celebrating those who had something profound, interesting or just plain fun to say about simplicity!

One of the first quotes that I found was from Charles Mingus!  I was actually listening to his music just yesterday. You can here one of his most famous pieces, Haitian Fight Song here for free: http://www.last.fm/music/Charles+Mingus/_/Haitian+Fight+Song

This is what he had to say about the simple things in life:

Making the simple complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
-  Charles Mingus

MAKES SENSE TO ME – Thanks Charles