With the end of 2009 looming and the beginning of the new year nearly here, many people start scrambling to make resolutions to improve their lives somehow, some way. Resolving to do something different — or just smarter — seems like a terrific idea. So why do so many resolutions get broken?
Out with the old, in with the new (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/optical_illusion/4219923214)
The answer, perhaps, lies in the fact that most people throw their resolutions out there with one motion: Umph, it’s out there. Now what?
The results from two studies have been combined to rank each of the states in the United States according to the happiness of its residents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Louisiana nabbed the top spot.
The constant flow of music fills the air in New Orleans' French Quarter (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/howieluvzus/2178581152/)
The holiday season is in full swing and people are scurrying around, trying to cross names off of their gift-giving lists. But what to buy? For those looking to not only give a present but enrich their loved ones’ lives, a gift that emphasizes good health shows the recipient how much they are loved; for what says “I love you and want you to be around for a long time to come” better than a present that proves it?
So what do you get for the young and the young at heart? For the relative with relatively nothing and the family member who already has everything? No matter your budget, you can surprise friends and family with gifts from the heart that are, well, for the heart. Here, some ideas to get started:
$500+A yearly membership to a gym. For example, the Wichita YMCA costs $37.70 per month for one person, with a $50 sign-up fee — that’s just over $500 a year, and less if you work for a company that has a discount with the YMCA. A family membership runs $49.90 per month (also eligible for a corporate discount) and the YMCA offers reduced sign-up fees during certain times of the year. It’s a one-time gift that lasts all year long.
$200–$500A global positioning system (GPS) watch. The sports watch with a GPS function measures speed, distance, pace and calories, as well as including typical watch functions. Garmin makes several variations of the Forerunner that are popular among Wichita runners. A GPS watch makes a great, if a bit expensive, stocking stuffer, but it also wraps nicely for an under-the-tree surprise.
$100–$200A boxing bag and gloves. What better way to break a sweat and get out post-holiday aggressions than taking it all out on a boxing bag? Heart rates will sore and muscles will get defined with this terrific form of exercise. Make sure to include proper boxing gloves to protect your love one’s wrists. The only caveat is that the bag may be difficult to maneuver (i.e., heavy gift) and wrap.
A punching bag is a terrific cardio and strength-building gift for males and females alike (photo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/08girlfight02.jpg)
$50–$100A new pair of athletic shoes. Whether you are buying for an aerobics guru, a walking queen or a running fool, your friend or family member probably needs new shoes. Check out First Gear (111 N. Mosley St. in Old Town) if you’re in the market for running shoes. If you don’t know which shoes to buy, pick up a gift certificate, because the recipient can take his or her old shoes to First Gear, where the fine folks who work (and live) there will check out the shoes’ wear and evaluate the runner’s gait on a treadmill; they know their stuff. If online shopping is your game, RoadRunnerSports.com is the name. It has a gazillion shoes and, if you’re lucky, free shipping.
$25–$50A gift basket with healthy goodies. Really, this could go for less than $25, but an overflowing basket will probably run a little more. Visit any of the local health food stores, such as Green Acres (8141 E. 21st. St., in Bradley Fair), Food For Thought (2929 E. Central Ave., west of Hillside) or Whole Foods (6574 E. Central Ave., 2172 Amidon St. or 10555 W. 21st St. N.). These specialty stores have a huge variety of organic, pure and interesting items, including foods, cosmetics and gifts. Even the mainstream grocery stores, such as Target, Walmart and Dillons, have a health food section.
$1–$25 Lots of goodies fit into this category:
• Athletic socks that wick moisture away from those hard-working feet make terrific stocking stuffers (think socks inside of a sock). • Workout shorts that work as hard as the socks do at wicking moisture are an always-useful item. • A bottle of red wine is festive and heart healthy — one glass at a sitting. • Dark chocolate is the healthier choice if chocolate is a must-give gift. • Gourmet artichokes or hearts of palm are yummy in salads or with pasta and are a healthy alternative to loading the stocking with chocolate bells. • An iPod clip or armband allows the athlete in your life to work out hands-free. • A cookbook highlighting yummy vegetarian or healthy cooking options introduces tasty suggestions. • Movie passes are a terrific way to offer a night of relaxation after the craziness of the holidays is over.
The list is boundless. Have fun shopping for your friends and loved ones, knowing that you’re doing a little something to keep them around that much longer. Happy, healthy holidays to you all.
I recently went up to Kansas City to see some friends, have some amazing food, catch a few comfy Z’s and see a football game. I did all that, but I also came home with a nice little surprise: a new topic for a Bloody Well Write entry.
First, a quick mention about the food. If you’re ever in Kansas City and are looking for a fantastic Italian meal in a quaint, romantic little ristorante, look no further than Carmen’s in Brookside. Ask to sit downstairs — I prefer the intimate atmosphere — and request some Italian Butter to start; it’s their version of olive oil and herbs, but I tell you that it is absolutely like none you have ever had.
I order off the menu, à la “When Harry Met Sally,” combining the cheese ravioli from one dish with the vodka tomato cream sauce from another, with a little fra diavolo thrown in to spice things up a bit. And ba-da-BING! It’s the tastiest, smoothest Italian around. No lie.
OK, so back to the grammar bit of this entry. So I’m in the hotel room — the one with the lush, fresh-white bedding and soaps the shape of leaves, with the cool city view — and I am piddling around, waiting until it’s time to go meet our friends. And I pick up this water bottle hang tag, with one word on it, for emphasis: revitalize.
That’s pretty cool. Decent marketing, colors fading from blue to snow white (very spalike), with some smallish print across the bottom: Westin® Hotels and Resorts. Nice little water logo. Then more words:
Nestle Pure Life Eco Shaped Bottles
Less Plastic. Better Enviornment.
So — reread that. See how many mistakes you can find in those two little lines.
By my count, I’d say that there are, at the minimum, five mistakes. There are more if you want to keep the lowercase consistency set by the headline (revitalize). And the periods? Don’t get me started. (OK, get me started. the headline doesn’t use a period, and neither does the first line, but the second line has two. Go figure.)
So what are the five mistakes?
There is no ® after Nestle.
There is no hyphen between Eco and Shaped.
The S in Shaped, since it should follow a hyphen, should be lowercase.
If there are two periods in the second line, there is no excuse why there shouldn’t be one at the end of the first line. (None of those groups of words are complete sentences.)
Enviornment. Seriously? This is for a national chain, for Pete’s sake. I know that it’s a four-syllable word, but my silly spell-checker caught it, so come ON.
I just checked out Nestle’s site to make sure that it uses a registered trademark (®) and, unbelievably, the site does not have one on the main page, even though products (such as Nestle® Cheerios®) have one next to the name. That sort of thing happens all the time. It blows my mind, especially on these enormous accounts.
I’ll end this little study in proofreading by saying that, despite this crazy hang tag, I had a really, really good time in Kansas City. And I’d even recommend the Westin Crown Center hotel to any friend or acquaintance. Just don’t plan on any solid ultra-light reading in the room.
So I’m a word gal; this much is true. I find it quite difficult to read books (adult books, anyway) for relaxation or enjoyment because the majority of my day is spent either writing my own words or editing someone else’s words, so I don’t think reading a few chapters at night sound like a whole lot of fun. I guess I’m not the typical word hound, then, since most do tend to like, um, books and, er, reading.
Fine. I’m OK with that.
I do, however, enjoy reading to my two kids at night. Their books are fun, rhyming, colorful short (short!) stories with cool illustrations. And since it’s the holidays, we’re reading a few books that I grew up with — “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer” and Christmas in Many Lands” — as well as a few new ones, such as “Elf on the Shelf” (we named ours Leo and today he’s perched on top of our refrigerator) and “Olive, the Other Reindeer.”
Ah, Olive. If only your creators knew the difference between every day and everyday, reading would be ever-so-slightly more enjoyable for me, the word dork.
You see, “Olive, the Other Reindeer” starts out by botching the very first word, which means that I have to put on my tattered editor hat throughout the rest of the reading. It’s just innate for me. I can’t get through the book now without cringing on the very first page.
(Technically, it starts off even earlier than the first page: The title has punctuation in it. Ugh. A period is tacked on. Not sure why, it just is. Weird.)
Anyway, the story begins, “Everyday, Olive took her daily dog walk ….” In this instance, everyday should take the adverb form (two words) because it is expressing a manner of time. Were it meant to be an adjective, it would be modifying a noun of some sort. Alas, that is not the case at the beginning of this story.
To keep the adverb-adjective relationship straight, I like to (still) think of the Schoolhouse Rock snippets:
• Adverb — “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, get your adverbs here. … How, where or when, condition or reason — these questions are answered when you use an adverb.” If it ends in ly and the ly isn’t a regular part of the word (as in family), then it’s probably an adverb. The phrase every day answers the question of when, so it’s an adverb.
• Adjective — These handy, little words “describe the people, places and every last thing” and “are often used to help us compare things. … We hiked along without care. Then we ran into a bear. He was a hairy bear. He was a scary bear. We beat a hasty retreat from his lair.”
Cool, huh?
Back to “Olive, the Other Reindeer” for just a second. The book, written by Vivian Walsh and J. Otto Seibold, is a fun children’s book. The story is cute; it’s about an industrious little dog who thinks that she’s a reindeer, so she goes to the North Pole to help Santa out. The pages are filled with quirky, fun illustrations by Seibold; I especially love the two pages that show the reindeer navigating around the Eiffel Tower. Despite the everyday blunder, this book’s worth the read.
Perhaps known best as the 1980s quintessential mom from “Family Ties,” Meredith Baxter went on national television Dec. 2, 2009, to announce that she is a lesbian. Although not an expected topic for healthy living, Baxter’s outing is, indeed, an exercise in living life as it should be: uninhibited by social norms and stereotypes.
Baxter should be commended on several levels. Her bravery in talking publicly about a much-debated topic, despite her desire to live a private life even as a celebrity, was apparently brought about because of the threat from a tabloid to expose her story without her consent. On the morning television show “Today,” she talked with anchor Matt Lauer about the inevitable political slant that comes along with any announcement of being gay—and the responsibility to stand up for herself and everyone else who has come out of the proverbial closet. She wanted to tell her own story, rather than have it twisted in the media.
Meredith Baxter at the 1992 Emmy Awards (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-light/252472589)
At the interview’s conclusion, Lauer asked Baxter how she felt now that the news was officially out. Baxter was visibly nervous and joked about it, but she was happy to not have to hide her sexuality anymore. She said that she has been able to live a relatively normal life in Los Angeles, but the implication is that she could be herself anywhere now.
Why is this integral to healthy living? Because it underscores the point of living life free of secrets—secrets that weigh the soul down. Keeping secrets of any sort—birthday presents and surprise parties are obvious exceptions—wear down a person’s psyche and are difficult to maintain; one seemingly innocuous lie leads to others, which end up being too complicated to maintain. In the meantime, the psyche’s turmoil can lead to physical issues:
Stress
Irritability
Headaches
High blood pressure
Mood swings
Eating disorders
Inability to concentrate
Nervous tics
The truth eventually comes out, so why not just get it out there immediately? Doing so will clear the conscience and help alleviate a lot of the physical ailments that often follow secrecy.
One other note about Baxter: On “Today,” it seemed obvious that she has not had any plastic surgery performed on her face, even though she has probably been approached about it due to her acting career—a profession that notoriously encourages a youthful appearance.
Baxter looks fabulous. She looks her age, with some facial wrinkles, but not like a plastic, stretched version of her former self. So many famous people—men and women alike (no names mentioned here, but you can probably think of a few)—who have been in the camera’s eye are now plasticized, and each example is more questionable than the next.
Yet here is an undeniably pretty woman who has chosen to age naturally. It’s refreshing to see. Again, Baxter looks lovely as ever. And that’s a lesson that needs to be taught more often: Living naturally while taking good care of yourself is very, very good.
Traditionally the biggest meal of the year, Thanksgiving seems to equate to stretching one’s stomach out just as far as humanly possible. This is, of course, not the healthiest of practices, especially considering the fattening fare that tends to take over the table. What with gravies, sauces, creams and fried onions—not to mention eight kinds of pie—it’s no wonder that diets crash and scales tip the following days and weeks after Thanksgiving.
Making smart choices that allow for all the interesting tastes of the season is a good move; such choices include maintaining portion control, exercising throughout the season and creating healthy side dishes. Choosing foods that please the taste buds while giving the waistline a break is easy with a stable of yummy ideas:
Sweet potatoes add fiber, color and flavor (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maggiejane/4111471354)
• Sweet potatoes—Also called yams, sweet potatoes are antioxidant-rich and anti-inflammatory powerhouses, as well as a good source of vitamins A and C and manganese. Substitute white mashed potatoes with sweet potatoes that have been either baked, roasted or mashed.
• Cranberries—These bright, red nuggets are antioxidant ninjas, cholesterol kickers and cancer fighters. Instead of smothering them in whipped topping, try boiling them with orange juice, minced fresh ginger and orange zest and cinnamon before adding in crushed pineapple and honey.
• Green beans—While the classic green bean casserole is an annual favorite, it’s also heavy on calories. Try lightly sauteing green beans with slivered almonds or with lemon and garlic.
• Veggies—Many a Thanksgiving table has been flanked with creamed corn, cheesy cauliflower and fried potatoes—all quite tasty but gut-busters nonetheless. Offer sizzling roasted vegetables, using only a drizzle of olive oil, a hint of salt and pepper and a smidge of Parmesan cheese for a gorgeous and nutritious side dish.
• Rolls—Doughy rolls fill you up without adding much in the way of nutrients. Fresh-baked whole wheat rolls are a better choice.
• Pumpkin pie—Seriously? Absolutely. Feel free to find a low-fat recipe for this holiday staple, but also feel free to have a slice of the real stuff; just be sure to have a smallish slice with the tiniest of whipped cream dollops, and pass on seconds. Enjoy every bite!
