English Muffin Withdrawals and Then I Get All Sappy Motivational On You

So I’ve already raved about loving the new gym situation here in Cali. It’s not a secret either that the BIGGEST draw for moving back to the Sacto area was to be around these folks…

…the fam bam. I’m also kinda hoping some of that style and good looks rubs off on me, but let’s be honest I think after 25 years I’m really just a lost cause.

That said there are some things that I’m missing from the Portland area. The weather, duh, I’m not a fan of smoking hot summers. Upon hearing that I grew up in CA the first thing most people assume is that 1) I’m a surfer 2) I eat sushi by the poundage and suck down wheat grass shots and 3) I grew up on the coast…sorta ties into the first one I guess. The fact that I do actually love sushi is not going too work its way into the post…oops. Well, I still have never tried wheat grass, okay?!

My response to this is, “Okay, no, I grew up in Roseville, it’s in the Sacramento area and really, Sacto is the armpit of California.” Yes, it’s the capital, and for a while we did get to boast of having a governator who could rip you apart and beat you to a bloody pulp if he wished…unless you were a house maid in which case he’d ravage you in another way. Sorry, that was s bit dirty…I digress.

Sacto summers are hot as heck and really super smoggy. In high school it was not uncommon to hear over the loud speaker: “Today is a spare the air day due to the toxic air quality. All sports practices are canceled…football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, cheer…oh, wait, but cross-country is still meeting.” Actually all us distance runners took some glee in the fact we were the only ones dedicated enough to still get out there and burn our lungs to a blackened, smoggy crisp all in the name of the sport.

So yes, I miss P-town’s cooler temps and even the rain. I’m not a person who found it depressing, it was all fine by me, except the times we were getting snow. Now, today I’m realizing two BIG things I’m really going to be missing. I didn’t know they wouldn’t be available when I crossed the border…

Alpenrose Fat Free Cottage Cheese and Franz Blueberry English Muffins!!! Egads, I’m about ready to throw a duel funeral or find a way to smuggle myself some of these in bulk quantities. Not gonna lie I’ve contemplated calling up a store and seeing if they would order these for me special or even the companies directly…I’m only quasi-joking here.

The thing is, I eat much of the same shiznit and I eat a lot of it. If I find something I like I’m pretty dang loyal and it has to be my thing, my brand. I then take full ownership and wrath will befall any fellow customer who dares to snag the last of said item on the shelf before I get to it…I totally called dibs and they knew it!

The cottage cheese, I didn’t realize how much of a difference taste-wise there is between brands. All are not created equal and here it’s super evident…I got some Knudsen’s the other night and nearly just spit it out. I couldn’t even force the rest down. Oh, Alpenrose, how I miss you so! I’d go through a 16 oz carton a day, that stuff has got some awesome protein stats and the tub along would clock me in at 48 g’s total.

Now the blueberry English muffins, if you think I’m wonk for listing these things and think they are boring you are dead wrong….dead wrong! These are really the equivalent of a healified regular blueberry muffin, no joke. They even flipping smell amazing, I mean they make anything in about a 4 foot radius smell all blueberry and yummy. They don’t have these ANYWHERE here and nothing even to substitute them with, like a different brand. There are always those cinnamon raisin ones but no other fruity ones…I’m sad. And PS- I would eat a full 6 count sleeve a day too (umm, carbs are good peeps!)…so really I think logistically I should be able to warrant some kind of bulk shipment, right?!?!

I feel a bit like Julia and Christina should they not be able to get their Puffins fix. So Franz and Alpenrose, if you are reading this I LOVE YOU and I miss you. Please come back, I feel like a jilted lover, you broke up with me so fast, I didn’t even get a chance for closer. Maybe I’ll write some kind of Taylor Swift-esque song a la her Joe Bro phone break-up.

I jest, but apparently because Oregon is really into supporting local businesses and both Franz and Alpenrose are Oregon based, that’s why they were easy to snag up there and non-existent here. Ugh.

In other news, I wanted to thank YOU all for your awesome show and movie suggestions. I have a gift card to Borders and what am I going to buy? If you guessed a ton of smarty people books that will no doubt help enlighten me and make me a better, more well rounded person, you’re wrong.

Though maybe I should because I have a potential cartoon gig that is for a financial business. They want some cartoons for their newsletters…do you ever have an assignment that you just feel too stupid for? Haha. But I think we all have those times where we feel out of our element but you have to just fake it til you make it and play along. I mean of COURSE I’m gonna work my tail off and Google like a demon to provide the best material I can for these folks, I want the gig, and darn it this girl may not be smart but I’ll pretend I am anyways! All in the name of art! 😛

But seriously, how do you handle situations like that? They come in different forms, you’re new to a class and don’t want to be the dork doing the dance moves in the opposite direction as everyone else. You meet up with a new running group, turns out they are a bit faster than you, but you do your best to keep up and pretend you’re not totally dying…and you hope they don’t notice that as the miles progress you are contributing less and less to the conversation.

It comes down to this though, how important is it to you? How bad do you want it? Are you going to let the fear of looking like a doof or not being able to achieve something stop you from ever trying? Or from giving it your all? I want this cartoon assignment so dangnamit I’m going to do what I have to to make it the best that I can and pretend that I have a smarty-top-financial-business-world savvy bone in my body. (I hope that one wasn’t broken in the car wreck…haha.)

With the fitness thing, lots of people just take themselves out of the game by putting limits on themselves. They are the ones who build their own ceiling, but if they were to just not look up and instead look straight ahead, keep putting one foot in front of the other, they’d eventually realize that the looming ceiling they had isn’t there. Or maybe it’s a glass one and all they have to do is shatter it.

You don’t think you can run a 5k? Well, take it mile by mile, or minute by minute and work up to it. You don’t think you can do a 10k? Reference last bit of advice…and so on. Ya, the speed thing, and getting those times faster is tricky, not gonna lie there, and to a certain point I guess you could say there are physical limits…I mean they don’t have those fun little record books for nothing!

But just tell the fear of at least trying to take a U-Haul back to where it came from. But would you ask it to pick me up some Alpenrose Fat Free Cottage Cheese and Franz Blueberry English Muffins if it happens to find any?!?!

1) Are you pretty brand specific? Name a certain food item that you HAVE to have your way, and would beat down a fellow shopper if they snagged the very last one before you got to it.

2) Are you one of those smarty pants who can talk politics and World finances with the best of them?

No. I try to keep it to the important stuff like Seinfeld references and celeb news.

3) How do you handle tackling goals that you sometimes feel might be unobtainable? In moments of doubt what keeps you going?

In the past, when I was racing, my coach would be the one to tell me that they thought I could do something. Often times I thought they were crazy and I’d never be able to do ‘X’ but the thing is, I trusted THEM enough that I forced myself to believe it was possible. When I would doubt it I just thought, “Well, if my coach says I can do it, I can.” And the crazy thing is that whatever they said I could do usually ended up happening. Eventually maybe we all have to be able to take ownership I think and set the goals ourselves, but maybe not though because having someone else push you just that little bit more is a good thing, just so long as we keep moving forward and do chase those big dreams.