Recently I had the opportunity to try the new Fabletics yoga line of workout gear. No, I didn’t get it for free, I had to pay like everyone else, but I was pleasantly surprised. Now mind you that there is a membership catch which is how they sucker you in, but I’ll go through all that and give you some tips on the good, bad, and ugly.

I found Fabletics via a Facebook promoted post (oooh those pesky things) but it’s designed by/with Kate Hudson and I just adore her. I have to admit, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her on set in NYC years ago and she’s every bit as lovely in person as she is in the movies, and she’s pleasant to talk to as well. So I click through the ad, and go to the site and take a look around. Entire yoga outfits for half off? As low as $30? Sounds too good to be true.

Well, it is. The catch is that by ordering, you agree to join their club and subscribe for a $50 charge to your card towards new outfits every month. Wait a second…a new yoga outfit every month? I haven’t bought myself new clothes in years, forget about workout stuff. Who the hell can afford new yoga gear monthly? Well, Kate can I’m sure but the irony of all of this is that she likely gets it all for free anyway. Blech.

So now I imagine I’ll look like this very soon..

But there’s a really cute outfit, and it’s cheap, and it’s going to sell out soon so I just have to have it. Yes, I work in marketing, and yes I fall for the same gimmicks I regularly write. Don’t judge. It’s been a long few weeks/months. And I work from home, so now I have a reason to get out of my pajamas – new yoga gear! Yay!

Of course as soon as the order was processed, I went online to cancel the subscription but it won’t let you. You have to call in and they have limited business hours. I made sure to put a million and one appointments and reminders in my calendar and fortunately it worked. I remembered to call and cancel. That was easy enough, took less than 5 minutes on the phone, and I still got my half price outfit.

When it arrived, I have to say I was thrilled! It looked great, felt great, and fit really well. I’m usually between a med and a large (I need to lose weight…who doesn’t these days…) but the mediums fit really comfortably without making me feel like a whale or stuffed sausage.  And they are even nice enough that I’d run to the store like this. Then again I do live in a rural area and would probably run to the store in my PJs. But hey, I got out of PJ’s to work from the couch, and it’s about time that maybe I actually DO some yoga in this new yoga gear of mine haha!

Have you found any great deals you love lately? Share them in the comments below! Okay, time for a yoga break for me.

Well it’s been one hell of a week, that’s for sure. Last Friday I worked til 2AM, and this week I don’t think I’ve made it to be before 1:30AM even once. Last night I was woken up on my couch by my cat wanting to know when we were going to actually go to bed. I have no idea what time I feel asleep, but I know it was after 2. All in the name of working for myself!

There’s a big conference this weekend (AETA) in the horse industry that I’m going to, and on top of getting ready for that, I’ve had a ton of client work to do as well as picking up some new work so that I (hopefully) won’t be as broke as I’ve been.

I’ve forgotten to eat more times than not, and at the present I’m eating the super healthy combination of scrounged from the upstairs fridge microwave mac and cheese mixed with a can of some of the worst chili you can imagine. Yes, I make home made versions of both, but considering it’s after 10PM and I’m just eating now, I went with the easy lazy option. Mixed together they normally taste great, but the cheap version…notsomuch. Oh well. I’m going to have heartburn for days, I can feel it already. Hey, at least I don’t have to blame it on the wine! Which I may have been drinking like it’s my job. To stay sane, of course. Only I’m out tonight. Sad for me. Drive through, maybe?

So I leave you with this – dinner the other night. I actually did stop long enough to make whole wheat pasta with chicken breast and kale in a light olive oil sauce and a dusting of parmesan romano cheese. YUM! And wine. And that’s water in the moonshine jar, mostly because I was being hopeful (and it was the biggest glass I had).

I’m taking Monday off, because the conference runs through the weekend. So for a change, I’m saying, “Is it Monday yet?”. Of course I’ll probably be spending the day splitting and stacking wood so I have heat, but who knows, maybe I’ll figure out just how to veg out on the couch and even nap or something. Ooooh…sounds delightful! And now – last minute touch-ups before bed then off to AETA in the morning!

Things that keep me sane at 6:45 on a Friday night when I’m still frantically working with no end in sight, have killed the battery on two of three phones I own from all day conference calls, and still haven’t made it out of my pajamas. On a positive note, when I went outside to bring in wood for the stove, the hay guy was here and saw me and since I was in my John Deere pj’s, he just waved and thought nothing of it. Thank goodness for #lifeouthere.

Yes, that is a very large bottle of cheap wine in a Flying Dog beer glass with wine up to the beer fill line. And cheese and crackers served on a ziplock bag. Don’t judge. #fuckthisfriday Yup. That’s about where I’m at…

AKA cats. And all this time I thought it was short vampires leaving fang marks in the toilet paper. I should have known it was a cat appropriately nicknamed Fang. 

The end result. Thanks, Caspian.

What funny things do your critters do? Share your stories in the comments and we can all make this grey Monday a little funnier!

The weather here has been insane. Sunday it was 57 degrees, and dropped to 0 with wind chill of -20. Yes, you read that right. Mother nature needs some wine for herself. Fortunately, I have some for her, though I’m reconsidering sharing thanks to the ice that she left for me on my doorstep.

There was some Facebook fitness challenge, so I edited it a little. Also I may have started writing this right after Thanksgiving. Yeah, so there’s the first fail haha.  Then I had to change a few things because crunches on the floor hurt my back, and I have a kettlebell so why not use it?  I’m going to see if I can be determined enough to do this 2x a day to make up for missing Thanksgiving, but we will see.  So far today I did:

6 sets 10 reps each w/kettlebell lifting upwards from a semi-squat, palms up
Repeat the above, palms down
6 sets 10 reps each side to side
3 sets 20 reps each crunches on yoga ball
3 sets 10 reps each side to side sway/crunches on yoga ball (where you move your butt from side to side on the ball as it rolls and stay centered/balanced, anyone know what this is really called?)
60 sec plank

I’ll try to repeat this at least 1x a day for the next 2 days (so 3d in a row) then rest 4th day, then add a set to each for days 5 – 7, and we see how this goes.  If I’m feeling like being an over-achiever, I’ll try for 2 workouts in a day (AM & PM) but if you know me, you know that’s being REALLY ambitions.  I’m not a morning person – not even close. Though I did get up at 6AM today and out of bed by 7:30 (yes I just sat there with kitties and pretended to motivate for a while…) and I have to say I got a ton done!  Of course none of it was work-related, so here I am working late. What does that say about you when you take a break from working to work out?  Sheesh…workaholic much? And it’s not like today was all fun and games until now.  Nope.  This morning was spent doing a super-clean on my apartment.

Cori trying to figure out this yoga thing

Update: so none of the above has happened since whatever day I started writing this and forgot to blog it. I’ve been doing yoga every weekday since last week thanks to Chromecast and www.doyogawithme.com, and I wanted to add back in some aerobic exercise and weights so I did this workout today before doing some yoga.

Well if you know me, the 1-2x a day for 3-4 days in a row is just laughable. I must have been delusional when I wrote that. Or drinking a lot of ine. Seriously it’s amazing that I’ve done yoga 4 times now (last Thursday and Friday and yesterday and today). Although I do have to admit, since doing yoga, my back and neck and shoulders feel a lot better, and things I didn’t realize even hurt like my hamstrings and forearms are starting to feel looser too. Took a few days though. After the first two days, I think I was more sore than when I started. Yoga may look easy, but I was a lot more like an awkward unbalanced twisted pretzel than anything close to what the instructor looked like. Hey, you gotta start somewhere right!

Maybe I can do the kettlebell / core workout 3x a week and yoga 5? Too ambitions? I may be drinking wine again…

Wow, I’ve been a slacker. Again. With the holidays and all it’s been a while since I’ve even had the time to think about blogging. But hey it’s a new year and you know what that means, right?  Partying and drinking! Resolutions! Yeah those…

I normally don’t make resolutions, but I think there are a few things I need to change, and it all started with me doing some yoga today, or as I prefer to call it, the twisted pretzel workout. Because that’s what I feel like when I try to do it. Before I get into that, I want to start by saying Merry Christmas and all that jazz. And Happy Hanukkah, but seriously that was during Thanksgiving and is already older news than my lack of blogging since…almost Thanksgiving. For me, Christmas is a time to get cozy in the house, decorate and celebrate the winter to come, and give thanks for the year prior. And gifts. Of COURSE it’s about gifts. For me though I like giving gifts because I love the look on people’s faces when they get the perfect gag gift item they love.

I had a great Christmas. My brother turned 30 in mid-November, and right before that he got engaged to his wonderful girlfriend (yes, I’m older. yes I’m still single). And my sister came home to visit from New Zealand (yes, she lives on the other side of the world). And we got to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas all in the same week since she was only here until the first week of December. In reality, I think we were just making up for the fact that Jewish people get a week of Hanukkah and my family isn’t one to be outdone, so we had to top that by cramming as many holidays into a week as we could…which included as many family parties as one could tolerate while attempting to not down too much wine.

I digress. So back to twisted pretzel exercising. I’ve got a bad back from getting run over by a horse several years back, and I tend to not take care of it the way I should, so I decided that for the New Year, one resolution was to do some yoga. I’m not saying how much because some could mean one day, and since I did yoga today, that means I’ve already kept my first resolution! Or it could mean more than one day. But that means if I do yoga tomorrow too, I’m golden. See where I’m going with this? Well anyway, I was contorted like a pretzel and no where near what the instructor looked like, writhing in pain and curled up like I was made by Aunt Annie all thanks to my brother getting me Chromecast for Christmas so that I could (thankfully!) torture myself in the comforts of my own home.  I do have to admit, my dogs and cats all looked at me like I was out of my mind. I can only imagine the looks I’d illicit if I was in a gym. Well, day 1 down. Let’s see how many ore I can go.

Then yoga got me thinking. Once I was unwound from being a pretzel, I realized that even more than the stretching and the breathing was the thinking it makes you do. Or rather focusing and letting go of thinking, which is something I rarely do. I’m a chronic multi-tasker. The kind of person that feels that if I’m not doing 23423567 things at once, I’m not working hard enough. Always go-go-go-go-go, often it feels like I do everything in a rush and fail to stop and smell the roses. So in addition to yoga, I’ve decided to make a big resolution all based around being present in the moment, and not multi-tasking so much.  Here goes.

Cut the umbilical cord to my laptop and cell phone on more than just weekends/times when I am in the barn. Fortunately I am good about leaving the phone in the house and turning the laptop off all weekend for the most part, but during the week, I have one if not both of those near me 24/7. As soon as I wake up, I check my cell phone for email and news. When I go to bed, after turning off the laptop I check my cell for weather and updates…it’s got to stop.

Mind you, I’m ADD or ADHD or whatever you want to call it to the max. No, I’m not on meds, and I haven’t been diagnosed. I’m 37. When we were kids, if you were too hyper or easily distracted, you went outside and did something like playing stickball in the streets or red rover (remember that game? I LOVED that game!). But as an adult that makes a living online in digital marketing, it’s like the constant bombardment of distraction. I have a Lifeproof case for my phone (awesome!) and can even take my phone in the pool in the summer, or in the shower. I have even answered business calls in the shower. Yes, yes you read that right. IN THE SHOWER. You know you multi-task too much when a shower is no longer sacred.  Sheesh.

So there’s that. For real. I’m doing it.  No more watching TV while playing on the internet and doing work, and checking messages on my phone. Okay, well maybe I’ll have the TV on for background noise, but from now on, I am taking time for me. Starting with pretzel contortions, and continuing with being able to do stuff, any stuff, without always needing my cell phone 3 inches away or less.

On a positive note, I lost my cell phone 3 times when I was distracted doing other things so far today. Off to a good start? Chime in with your resolutions. Or don’t. Or just make fun of mine. Hey, does anyone want to do a 30-day cleanse? I know of this great diet. No, really. Haha!

In other news, I’ll get back to the Not So Ok Cupid saga in the next few days. I’m back online and have more stuff to share, and maybe I’ll even go ahead and join Farmer’s Only just to make you folks happy. Yeah yeah, we’ll see.

SERIOUSLY HORSING AROUND: My Favorite Things (Equine Style) at I Sell Tack.com

Seriously, you guys. Think about what you are asking me to do. You really want me to join Farmer’s Only????  What, am I your personal guinea pig?

So what do I get out of the deal? (Will work for Jack, will work extra for Limited Edition 2013 Holiday Jack.) And let’s make sure we’ve thought this through. Because I live on a farm, and because there’s no way of meeting any really decent people up here (see post from earlier this week about my not so Ok Cupid experiences…) we’ve decided that somehow downgrading to an even worse dating site makes sense? 

Apparently as of 2012, they had over 200,000 members. I don’t know if I’m impressed or creeped out. I mean, what are the chances that there’s even anyone remotely normal on there if I’m batting a thousand on Ok Cupid which has a bazillion members? Maybe we go with the logic that smaller pond means less sharks. Hmmm, that could work.

Of course you guys do realize that there’s always a chance that 90% of the people on there are from Nebraska eating fried mayonnaise balls, and if you want to know how I feel about that, well just watch this: 

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, what exactly do you guys propose? 

I give up. After a bit of a dry spell (I’m really picky, honest), I decided I’d give it a shot and reactivate my Ok Cupid profile and see what’s out there. I mean hey, I live in a rural area that’s somewhat remote and it’s not like there’s tons of successful eligible bachelors near me. Sure there’s bachelors, some have kids by multiple baby mama’s, others are missing teeth, and others have no job and still live at home with mom – well into their 30s!  I am sure you can understand why I’ve chosen to pass on much of the local crowd. 

With all you hear about how many people find their “true love” (gag) online, how bad could it really be? There certainly wasn’t a plethora of eligible, single, unencumbered yet gainfully employed men in my area. So I reactivated my account.

Within minutes I was chatted up by someone who seemed relatively normal, had a dog, loved the outdoors, and even split wood and had a wood stove, like me. Wait, what? Someone normal? We exchange numbers and day 1 is fine. Day 2 is going okay. Not too many texts, but decent convo. Then evening rolls around and it’s like once sundown comes, the freaks come out to play. Here come the fun questions!  I shit you not – these are all real things asked by people I met via Ok Cupid this past week. Enjoy, laugh, choke on your milk (why the fuck are you drinking milk? Go get some Jack Daniels like a real adult, will you?), go ahead. It’s okay. I totally understand.

Random guy: Is that a pink log splitter you have there? 
Me: It’s red.

Random guy: What kind of chainsaw do you have?
Me (what I wanted to say): That’s your idea of a pickup line? Really?
Me (what I actually said): The kind that cuts wood…
Random guy: Wise ass.
Me: Ask a stupid question…

True Story

Random guy: What’s your favorite body part on a guy?
Me (what I wanted to say): Oh, penises of course, because clearly I’m just out to meet guys because I love giving BJs more than anything else in the world…
Me (what else I wanted to say): Is this a “how much of a whore can I meet on an online dating site” test?
Me (what I finally actually said): Are you fucking serious?!
Random guy: Eyes, smile, you know…
Me (what I very nearly almost said): Brain. Because you clearly don’t have one.
Me (what I actually said): Brain, because it’s where the personality comes from.

Random guy: What’s your favorite color?
Me (what I wanted to say): Are we in the 3rd grade? Can I share your crayons after recess? Pretty please?

Random guy: Hi love ur eyes care to chat
Me (in my head): Oh hey spelling and sentences are totally optional. As long as you have the IQ of mayonnaise, we can totally date screw. It’s okay, I have no standards, and your line about my eyes really struck me as honest and caring and sincere.

Random guy: how are you aren’t you the prettiest lil girl
Me (in my head): oh thanks, do you wanna be my daddy-o?

And the list goes on. I may just stay on there for fodder for my blog because come on, really! I can’t believe people say this shit and actually end up getting dates! Maybe that’s my problem, I’m going about this all wrong. What with being relatively normal and all. Hey, I did say relatively. Let’s keep that in perspective.

My friend (you know who you are!) wants me to join FarmersOnly.com because I live on and own a farm. Have you seen those commercials? Really? But hey we may do it because we’re bored and I bet that would give me enough bad online pickup lines to write about for years! 

My take on FarmersOnly.com. Thanks, but I’ll pass!