Don't Get Used To It

I'm working on editing a five-post series about our recent adventures in west Texas. I haven't posted anything in about a month so I wouldn't expect this to be a regular thing. I also don't typically have five hour drives in which to type up posts. So there's that. Justin's already day dreaming about the next trip out there.

Hunger Action Month

Did you know that September is Hunger Action Month?

Now you do. In 2013, 20% of American households participated in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. A household qualifies for assistance when the household is at or below 130% of the Federal Poverty Level, at this time 100% is at $11,670 for a household of one person.  Working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year equals less than an hourly minimum wage ($5.6/hour).

I knew about Hunger Action Month but I'll admit I'd never really educated myself until this year because The Junior League of San Antonio is partnering up with The San Antonio Food Bank to eradicate childhood obesity in San Antonio.

In the spirit of this partnership, Junior League of San Antonio is going orange (the symbolic color of Hunger Action Month- #JLSAGoesOrange) and challenging it's members and the community to participate in the SNAP Challenge. 

Obvious question: What's the SNAP Challenge? 

Answer: It's a challenge to live on $4.50 a day for food. This is per person, not household. Why the $4.50? It's comparable to the daily food budget of a snap participant $1.50/meal. 

Of course I got Justin to join me, partly cause I wasn't sure I could shop for one person for $22.50 for 5 days worth of food for just me. I'm pretty sure I spent that much at happy hour in the last month. On drinks alone. 

So $45 seemed more manageable for 30 meals. Read that again. 

Turns out there are pros and cons to buying for two. One loaf of bread is enough for 8 lunches, but I needed enough for 10, so I needed another loaf. How do I stretch that loaf out so that I'm spending my money efficiently? We're having sausages for dinner this week. All week long. So things like that would pop up while shopping.

I ended up spending $45.48 on food.  I feel pretty good about that.  I did a lap around the grocery store to assess my options because, honestly, I rarely pay attention.

And I came home feeling pretty good.

My Receipt:

What all those lines translate into:

 

 The fixings for our chicken salad sandwiches:

What we'll be seeing more of this week for lunch:

The menu for the week will basically be...

Breakfast: 2 eggs and 1/2 banana (Justin will likely have coffee that we already have in the house. I can go without)

Lunch: Chicken salad sandwich made with canned chicken breast, celery, almonds (I bought almost 60 cents worth from the bulk organic section) and mayo.  The sandwiches also have some mustard we already had in the fridge, a slice of swiss cheese and spinach. And a half a green apple!

Dinner: A sausage or bratwurst that will be cooked on the grill and likely wrapped in a slice of bread.  We'll split one of the containers of chopped broccoli pieces and maybe each get 1/2 slice of swiss melted on our portion.  I also have butter in the fridge, but I feel like the mustard is already a "cheat" of sorts. 

Snacks: I used the tiniest pieces of celery for the chicken salad so there's enough piece left over for us to enjoy with a tablespoon or two of peanut butter. And we have the yogurt which can be a daily snack or maybe dessert. 

I have stuff going on in the evenings on Wednesday and Thursday and then a friend coming in to visit on Friday, so I will likely eat dinner out of the house, but I went all in when it came to the grocery store trip and already know what I could have done to cut the 48 cents. I bought two 8-packs of yogurt and could have just bough two individual yogurts, but the bulk mentality that usually resides prevailed and so it goes.

While I'm excited about these tiny successes, I have to admit that thinking that hard about every grocery trip seems like a daunting task. But let's see where the week takes us. 

Did I say 500 words a day...

I meant I would do some number of words a week, thus posting to my blog on at least a weekly basis. 

Cause yeah 500 words is a lot. 

Daily is a lot too. 

Especially when you spend all day at work on a computer and the latest episode of America's Next Top Model is on (Cycle 21!! Yeah I can't believe it either, but I'm still watching.) and you just discovered #OITNB and you have Words with Friends games to catch up on and are reading books before they disappear from your iPad cause they were checked out from the library. 

I mean evenings are packed. 

And mornings? Well those are spent hitting the snooze button because we'll get up early tomorrow and work out cause that ain't happening today. 

Except today is Saturday and we did get up and workout. In fact we did five miles. I did the dishes. I worked on a project for a friend's baby shower. I did some stuff for Junior League.  I caught up on the latest episode of Project Runway and even watched that awful Below Deck show on Bravo (bad TV is my opium).  

Currently, I'm cheering on the Gators while sipping a craft brew at our favorite local hangout, Freetail Brewing.

And while doing the above, I wrote this post. 

Laboring on Labor Day?

Labor came at us fast and furious this year.  Not only was it the first Monday of September, it was the first day of the month too.

This means summer is basically over that many days sooner.  Yes, technically summer isn't over until September 22nd, but Labor day is typically considered the death knell for sunshiny fun.  Unless of course it's college football.

Fall means full days of collegiate gridiron action and this year is no exception, even if your team doesn't get to play because of lightening. In fact over 8,800 strikes were recorded all over Florida between 7pm and midnight last Saturday.

Even though the Gators didn't get to play we still had fun hanging out with friends and rooting for other teams to make their season openers successful.

Yesterday was a fabulous Sunday Funday and then we had today- Labor Day.  The Barbour's didn't slack off just because it was supposed to be a day of rest though. We made sure to make the most of the day off, while also trying to balance the need to get work done.

Is Labor Day a day of no work for you?  Or is a day to catch up on work that needs to get done?

This year I was doing some Labor Day social media posts for work and my social media position with JLSA and somewhat shamefully realized I didn't really know the history of Labor Day.

This holiday is meant to be a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. First proposed as a holiday in 1882, President Grover Cleveland signed Labor Day into law as a national holiday in 1894, just six days after the Pullman Strike. #TheMoreYouKnow

This post is 294 words (as of the end of the above paragraph), but I don't think anyone wants to know the minutiae of our entire weekend in 206 words or more. Like the fact that I got to play two board games (Clue! and King of Tokyo) with two of my favorite people last night. It was a blast and it told me I need more game nights in my life. When was your last game night?

500 Words a Day

What does 500 hundred words a day look like?  Is this challenge something that's easy to accomplish when it's extracurricular?

So it's not just an email or a Facebook status. And it most definitely is not just a tweet (this would be a lot of tweets!). 

I want to write more, though you wouldn't know it from the neglected state of my blog. 

Is 500 hundred words too obnoxious a length for a yelp post?  Cause I want to do more reviews for yelp, I just don't do it, but if that could count... Game on. I'd of course cross post to my blog cause it feels sad and lonely and my life has not been sad and lonely.

Life is full of good times. Even watching the most depressing episode of HBO's The Leftovers is a good time because I am watching with Justin. 

By the way, the above sentence ending with the word Justin is only 145 words. 

And the above sentence counts in my word count as does this one. 

I know this because of Google. I searched for and found an online word counter tool (because I started writing this on my phone in the car while Justin was driving). It's a nice basic tool: http://www.wordcounter.net/

A short break was taken in the writing of this post for lunch at an awesome,local joint called The Cove. They are known for their fish tacos but I think their burgers and sweet potato fries are better. The Cove prides itself on serving food from sustainable (and mostly local) resources. So when you eat local it's paid forward many times over to their vendors and so forth and so on. They have "Eat well, live well" written on the wall. 

#LicenseToEatSweetPotatoFries #TheyServeThem. 

While at The Cove we enjoyed some live music and a few bottles of brew. If you haven't had a Shiner Premium in a while, or ever, I would say it's time to pop one open. Drink it straight from the bottle and remove the pretentiousness of using a glass. It's the only way to truly enjoy this beverage that touts itself as being "behind the times."

The live music was also fun, an artist by the name of Ashlee Rose. Her voice had the depth and slight roughness one wants from a soulful singer and her accent had the perfect Texas twang.

Justin made a joke that her wind machine was working overtime. Her wind machine was simply a fan. 

We are at 417 words people. 

 If you've read this far in the post then I am much obliged. I don't know if I would've read this far if you had written this much. #honesty

I think part of the challenge is that you can't cheat by writing ahead of time and stockpiling words. It's about taking the time each and every day to do this. That said, if this goes the way other 30 day challenges have gone for me...  Let's just say I'm great at throwing myself into little self improvement projects but when it comes to seeing it through to the end, not so much. 

I'm now over 500 words!  Now you know what it looks like. And now I know what it takes. (It takes more than I thought it would, but I also wrote the whole thing on my phone.)

Be Anything

"We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving. We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins. We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’"

Courtney Martin

A friend shared this with me today and I found it to be very poignant, as I am at a point in my life where I find myself full of questions regarding what I want to be in my life. Career, home, socially, you name it. And with the word "anything" hanging out there in space as though it opens up all of these doors, it leaves me feeling like there so so much space to fill in.  Hence the bullseye that is hit with "everything" because that is what fills up the space in the effort to be anything in life.

We hear about leaning in and it at first feels awesome and empowering like you can really be everything! But then you go back to the grind. You make it from point A to point B and back to point A. And then you go to sleep and you wake up and do it again tomorrow.  Like an album on repeat. And that's when you're lucky. 

Insanely Bad

I love to eat.

You want proof? I've got proof. Just check out my Instagram feed. That's what I've been doing instead of blogging the past few months. And yes that beef rib is as big as my head.

It's been insane.

Insanely tasty.

Insanely fun.

And insanely bad for me.  

I know this because even though I've been doing p90X 3 for about 3 weeks, I feel like I haven't majorly increased my fitness (and definitely haven't lost weight) and I'm apparently so dehydrated from all my fun that my arms (actually they do look pretty good) hurt so badly I can barely put on the support garments that are much need by most any woman in her day-to-day routine. 

Houston, we have a problem. 

We had a problem. 

Yesterday, during a simple walk with Wookie!, Monday became THE day when I stopped the insanity (I winced too). For the next 30 days I am going to treat every day as a day to look back on and be proud of and a day that will not require a restart the next morning. 

All I ask of you is that you not offer to buy be a drink or tempt me with any other sort of deliciousness until around the 4th of July.  Cause who's gonna want a slice of cake on the nation's 238th birthday. This girl. 

Any changes you're trying to make? Maybe it's going to bed earlier, watching less TV or maybe even watching more TV?! (Summer can mean the perfect time to binge watch those shows everyone else is talking about- Mashable tells you exactly how much time to block off.)

And now enjoy this blast from the past: