Here is just a summary of things that happened within the past 4 months that kept me from blogging. This is the super short version:

1. I lost my job.
2. I’ve started online dating, met a few guys (each one after the other!), and have a new boyfriend.
3. I started to downsize and save money.
4. I moved.
5. I lost 11 pounds.
6. I found a new job.
7. I lost my old gym and pool, but found a new gym.
8. I have a new car (well, new for me).
9. I have a new dentist.
10. I’ve got a new look (somewhat accidentally, oh, well).

Now that I’m looking at what I just wrote, I’m thinking this is a pretty amazing list. The good thing is that I feel great about all those changes–now, looking back, not so much when I had just lost my job. But I always believe that there must be a reason why this is happening to me. And in the end it’s usually for the better.

By the way, paradise might not be cheap, but being happy doesn’t cost much either!
Love,
Maya

In my private life, I got caught up in a cloud of not-so-positive thoughts, which is unlike me, but I guess every blue sky sees some clouds every once in while, sometimes more, sometimes less. I got caught in that silly I-wish-I-had-a-boyfriend cloud—stupid, really. I have been in even worse I-wish-he-would-love-me clouds before. It’s still a bit cloudy around me right now, but I do see blue skies, as I’ve managed to stick my head out.

I remembered that Phil Collins song “You can’t hurry love” and found it on YouTube. I keep playing it and humming it in my head. I thought I’d share it with those of you who are in their own love cloud right now.

What music do you listen to in a situation like this? Any recommendations?

[Video "Phil Collins ft. Roger Taylor - You Can't Hurry Love" by rikov022, YouTube]

I water my plants regularly, but not extensively. However, after watering, little sprouts of fungi are appearing in the soil of some of my plants. First, there are just a number of tiny little yellow dots. Then the dots grow into finger-size objects, and the next day, the whole pot looks like one big mushroom plantation. They are an appalling yellow in the beginning, and then they open up and turn into whitish umbrellas. It is scientifically amazing how fast they grow, literally over night, but in the house and with my plants, it’s gross at the same time.

I have no idea what to do. If I water my plants any less, they start wilting (I’ve tried that). I really don’t want mushrooms in my plants. I’m rather worried if they might be just as bad as mold. In the beginning, I used to dig the little suckers out when they were still tiny, and I scraped off a good amount of the soil around it too. I wonder if the soil that I bought already came with traces of fungi (although it was supposed to be good quality, not the cheap stuff) or how else I could have attracted those unwanted house guests.

Anyway, if anybody has any idea if these things are poisonous (or otherwise bad for humans) and/or how to get rid of them, please let me know. I’d appreciate a comment here or a tweet (@mayasplace).

I am not a swim freak. I’m not a sports freak or fitness junkie either. (Sometimes I wish I was, but on the other hand I don’t like the addiction aspect of “junkie”.) It is more that I do sports because I know it is good for me, because I want to be healthy and fit, not because I actually love the swimming or running itself. I do it more for the great feeling AFTER I’m done. And that is less of a physical, but more of a mental thing. It is this great feeling that I’ve done it. I got up early on a Sunday morning, although I could have slept a little longer. I went swimming when nobody else did. I walked back home and had a fresh fruit salad for breakfast (and my three cups of Darjeeling tea, of course). And I felt great, healthy and fit for anything to come.

It is this feeling of success, even if the only real success is that I managed to tame my inner gremlins. The gremlins had tried their hardest to keep me down. “You are still tired, it is Sunday morning, you are not a sports person, you can stop after 10 laps, you want a big, hearty breakfast,” they had been yelling. But I showed them. And that felt really good.

I also realized something else while I was gliding through the pool. (Well, maybe it didn’t look like gliding, but it sure felt like it.) I noticed it when I looked up at the surface of the water from underwater. First I just thought that I love that view. Then I also noticed the palm trees and the blooming lilacs and how pretty everything looked. And then I realized how great it is that I can go swimming in a nice pool like this and how much I do enjoy this (once I’ve defeated my inner gremlins and actually made it into the water). And finally I realized that sometimes I just forget to count my blessings.

I came home from the pool thinking more positive than before. I guess this means that it doesn’t matter why I’m working out or that I’m not a super athlete by nature, but whatever I do to break those little gremlins will have some positive effect on me. I had a great Sunday.

I should make a mental bookmark to my own post so the next time I’m struggling I’ll remember to do something to tame the gremlins and count my blessings instead.

What about you? Any similar experiences? What are your inner gremlins trying to tell you? How do you fight them?

[Picture 1: © Petr Kratochvil, publicdomainpictures.net, other pictures: © Lenssen Media, mayasplace.com]

How I have suffered with Jack Bauer, cheered for him when he “showed it to them”, adored him for his loyalty, his courage, his righteousness. How I have loved Tony Almeida, until he was suspected to be a terrorist and turned out to have his own agenda. How I have come to love Chloe O’Brian, although I had to get used to one of her facial expressions that always tricked me into thinking she might have to throw up, but that was not important, as she was Jack’s most reliable and trusted friend. And not to forget Renee Walker, who meant business and was so tough and at the same time so sexy.

Jack Bauer is my favorite TV show character of all times, although I did have a hard time actually understanding him. Of course, he is always in action, but it seemed to me that Kiefer Sutherland has made a habit of mumbling under his breath. Anyway, now it’s over, but at least there is hope for a 24 movie. Can’t wait!

LOST was another great show, although I probably liked the first season the best and found that there was no consistent train of thought from season 1 to the end. I didn’t mind the surreal and imaginary aspects of the show, or I should say I got used to them. I remember when the first polar bear appeared on the (tropical) island, I wanted to stop watching, but in the following seasons I could easily take The Black Smoke, extremely strong magnetism, and other forces.

I really wished everything we saw had been explained and resolved somehow at the end, but that was not the case. And that made me a little angry. You cannot tell a story that is getting more and more complex, have the audience wonder (who is good?, who is evil?, who will survive?, who will not?, what is real?, what is imagination?, what will happen when they get off the island?) and then just have it all end without answering those questions. I understand that the TV business is a tough business, that writers come and go, and that there are only so many episodes outlined at the beginning of a production. I just wish I wouldn’t feel somehow cheated at the end.

Well, I loved the characters no matter what, especially Jack, Kate and “Sawyer”. And I always liked them better on the island than in the “real world”. Matthew Fox as Jack was “easy on the eyes” and looked definitely his very best in the last season, and Evangeline Lilly looked consistently stunning throughout all seasons.

Two Positive Effects of the Absence of 24, LOST, and FRINGE
As sad as it is that there will be no more 24 or LOST, this has a positive side too, believe it or not:

1. I’m losing weight.
2. I’m reading more.

Yes, “Lost without LOST” actually refers to my weight loss. I have lost 2.5 pounds since the 24 and LOST finales, which makes perfect sense considering that I used to snack while watching my favorite shows. Mixed nuts, all kinds of chips, salsa, cheese, chocolate—you name it. The urge for snacking seemed to be triggered by the sound of the TV or the coziness of my couch. Only the worst torture scenes (I think in season 1 of 24) or the close-ups of some gross medical phenomena in FRINGE would make me stop snacking for a while.

So now I can get rid of my snacking habit, eat healthy, and I have almost three more hours per week for reading. When Olivia Dunham is back on screen with FRINGE, I will have lost a few extra pounds and I will be a happy, non-snacking FRINGE fan.

[Pictures: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in 24 (FOX), Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austin in LOST (ABC), Matthew Fox as Jack Shepard in LOST (ABC), Anna Torv as Olivia Dunham in FRINGE (FOX). All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.]

Since I am in my mid-thirties and single, I write about dating and relationships. But I’m also interested in healthy eating and cooking, fitness, inspiration and motivation for the mind and soul, fashion and style as well as media—or most of the things other girls (and guys, by the way) are more or less interested in too, which then wouldn’t make my blog unique, but it is, because it’s written by me, from my very special own perspective, based on my very own crazy thoughts and my very own kind of humor.

As I you may have read earlier, I am currently on a mission to lose 10 pounds. So nutrition is definitely a topic that attracts my attention. Therefore I looked at some foodie and health blogs today. I decided to mention the following bloggers and blogs that I stumbled upon today and that I liked. I’m also adding their twitter names (provided I found them) in case you would like to connect there. So here they are:

• Carolyn: @lovinlosing lovinlosing

• Bobbi: @nhershoes nhershoes

• Katherine: What About Summer?

• Rebecca: How the Cookies Crumble

• Andrea: @StayForDinner Can You Stay For Dinner?

I found great recipes, yummy looking food pictures, amazing weight loss stories and shared experiences with running and working out. It is nice to see how others are finding their way, tackled their problems, are following their dreams, turned their lives around… I guess that’s what makes blogging and being part of the Blogosphere so special. We’re all sharing something.

But looking at all the yummy food made me really hungry. My tummy actually started growling really loud. I might have to rethink this. Maybe I can only go on foodie sites after I have had a healthy and satisfying dinner… Well, I’m glad I managed to make myself a delicious salad, and then looked at the blogs a little more. The pictures you see here will certainly not win a prize in food photography, but this is actually the salad that I made for dinner tonight.

It is somewhat related to a Salade Niçoise, but I just made it from scratch and with what I had and did not follow a recipe. Or I should say, I followed my own recipe, as I’ve made that kind of salad (or a very similar one) more than once before. (I did not put any anchovy filets, olives or salad leaves in, which would “belong” into a real Salade Niçoise, but added some avocado.)

Maybe I should call this Salade Mayoise. :-) Here are my ingredients:

balsamic vinegar, oregano, basil, salt, pepper, olive oil,
onion, boiled egg(s), tuna (from a can), capers, avocado,
tomato(es), green beans, potato(es)

As many salads, Salade Niçoise looks great in pictures when nicely decorated and not mixed, but I like my salad best after it has been mixed and allowed to sit a little.

A BMI of 18.5 – 24.9 is considered normal. My BMI has never reached 22 or over, so no worries there. I do realize that the BMI tends to naturally increase with age, especially for women. And I’m not in my early twenties anymore. So I am very realistic here and not the “need to be extremely skinny” type. But I do feel better without those extra pounds that I gain over the winter.

To make a long story short, I had started to eat healthier and had planned to work out more a month ago. I bought lots of fresh fruit and veggies, made meal plans, decided to eat more raw food like carrots, salads, less bread and pasta, have dinner earlier, drink a lot more water or herbal ice tea and so on.

The first weekend was great. It was fun to make salads with lots of fresh herbs (LOVED my salad with tomatoes, corn, Mexican crumbling cheese, onion and cilantro!, recipe to follow), create new dressings—that alone always makes me feel better without even actually losing weight yet. ;-)

I also had a good start of the week and brought a yummy lunch to the office (avocado and cheese sandwich, 2 carrots and a little yogurt). I even cleaned the house after work and probably sweated off a few pounds doing that. (You’d believe it if you’d seen my bathroom before I cleaned it and if you knew that I couldn’t really tell when I had done that last. That might be TMI in a health article like this, but now it’s out, oh, well, at least now you know.)

But then the next day I broke my toe. Owwww, that hurt!!! There is a part of the wall in my bathroom that just does not belong there. Really! It has no purpose at all. The architect must have made a mistake or something. However, the wall IS there, and my little toe, believing herself (despite her size) to be mighty and powerful, experienced a rude awakening when confronted, head on, by the vastly greater density and, above all, immovability of the wall.

I yelled, I limped, I cursed, I cried. On one foot, I hopped to the kitchen and got an ice pack. My toe swelled to to the size of a tomato (well, approximately). It hurt bad for several days, and it changed color to blue, purple, dark purple, and eventually black.

Guess whose workout regimen went from “kind of regular” to zero? Yup. I couldn’t wear running shoes (not that I could have run with that pain anyway), it was even hard to find any shoes to wear at all the first two weeks. It took another two weeks to feel like I could go to the gym again.

When I broke my toe, I thought I would definitely gain weight, now that I couldn’t work out anymore. But to my great surprise the opposite was true. I kept losing pound after pound. 7.5 pounds in four weeks. Now, while this might not be something you see in some weight loss product ads (“I lost 30 pounds in 3 weeks!” or similar), it is still a lot to me, and it has been a good motivation for me to try and reach my goal of losing 10 pounds in all.

Someone in the office asked me if I had lost weight (smile), and I said,

“Yeah, it’s easy, just break a toe.” :-)

Well, I know that my healthy eating has contributed a lot to my weight loss, not the limping. And I might have lost some muscle mass, too, from not working out. Currently I’m up 1.5 pounds again, but a few ups and downs are normal and OK, if the general trend is down.

By the way, I have bought a new bikini, and it was a much nicer shopping experience than usual.

I started working out again yesterday, with a happy and healed toe, and I’ll keep you updated on my weight loss. If I report it here, I feel committed. Now I have to lose those 10 pounds (four more to go) and keep that weight (!), because you’re watching. And one of you will ask me in a while, if I made it, and what if I have to say no? So thanks in advance to all of you for keeping me on track.

[Picture 1: © Petr Kratochvil, publicdomainpictures.net,
picture 2: © Lenssen Media, mayasplace.com]

So here is my next step:

Dating Strategy #3

• I will keep my eyes open when I go shopping.

Of course, Dating Strategy #3 provides various possibilities, which depend on what I am shopping for, where I go shopping, who I go shopping with, if I really go shopping or just pretend to be going shopping. Well, let’s see.

#3a. Grocery shopping
Grocery shopping is the best start, as this is something that I do frequently. Most of my groceries I get once a week, and then sometimes I go twice a week to get some more fresh stuff, like fruit or veggies.
Here are some reassuring facts:

• Guys need to eat too.
• That’s why they need to buy food, too.
  (I’m pretty sure the I-eat-out-every-day type would not be a good match for me.)
• Now I just need to be in the same store at the same time AND somehow get their attention, probably actually talk to them.

Now the questions are:

• How do I find out where Mr. Right goes shopping?
• What can the contents of his shopping cart tell me about a guy?
  (How likely is it that he is single if he buys those flowers?
  Can one guy really it that much peanut butter, or does he have a family of 5?
  Are there really no good men’s razor blades for sensitive skin, or why is he buying those in the pink glittery pack that says “for all curves”?
  Does he not care about the high-fructose corn sirup in that juice?
  Are the two bottles of vodka and 5 bags of chips indicating that he’s an alcoholic, or is he just having a birthday party?
  Is the fact that he’s getting stuff from the “ethnic food” aisle a sign that he loves to travel and see the world as much as I do?)
• What will I say to Mr. Right when he’s in the same store?
• Is running into him with my cart a good idea?
• Is it too obvious if I pretend not to be able to reach something in the top shelf with my 5’9”?

#3b. Bookstores
I was also wondering about where I would like to meet a guy. And the first thing that came to mind was a bookstore. This might be the more romantic approach, I admit, but there’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s just one of many options. When you think about your Mr. Right, you probably can think of some things that would be nice about him.

I know we 30-something single women are rumored to have long lists of must-haves for Mr. Right, but I really don’t think I am like that. Although if you asked me, I would like someone who reads rather than someone who doesn’t. Someone who can make a meal rather than someone who can’t. A bookstore is a good place to check out guys, because whomever you meet there will at least be able to read or consider a book a nice gift. That’s a good start.

#3c. Going shopping in guys’ territory
I could, of course, go shopping in stores that have a higher guy frequency. Car stuff, all kinds of tech stuff, music, movies, etc. The thing is, in those kinds of stores, I’m usually done shopping in five minutes. Sure, I’ve bought new windshield wipers, blank DVDs, a USB stick or a phone, and if it is something like a phone, I do take my time because I care about the functionality and what it looks like. But, in contrast to guys, I don’t look at stuff that I don’t need, like “ginormous” plasma TVs if I have a working TV at home. But maybe I should…

I guess I’ll be doing a lot of shopping from now on. Too bad I can’t go shopping for Mr. Right, literally, I mean, if a store had a “men aisle” between the bread aisle and the laundry detergent aisle. No, just kidding, that wouldn’t be good, especially since I can only go to the store between 7 pm and 9 pm, and by then all the fresh ones would be gone…

… to be continued …

[Picture: © Katherine Squier, flickr.com, katherinesquier.com]

The last time I had to go through this ordeal, I was visiting my friend Skye in California. I should have bought some swimwear BEFORE visiting, but I had to work a lot until right before my trip, plus the thought had crossed my mind that it might be easier if I tried on bathing suits somewhere else. More options, different styles, whatever. Guess what? That didn’t help.

So Skye and I went shopping with her friend Lynn. This is always fun. Lynn doesn’t really need anything, but she is still somewhat of a shopaholic, if you ask me. She buys purses and make-up and belts and pashminas, and then she donates it all for some charity auction. She is also constantly looking for a new house, kind of as a pastime, primarily to be able to decorate it all again and to invest lots of time and money in her new project. She mainly wears black, because it makes her look good and slim, so she has an abundance of black dresses, tops, pants, shoes…

Lynn is also known as someone who doesn’t mince words. She says it like it is (or like she sees it), if you like it or not. Plus, she doesn’t really care who might be overhearing what she says. This can be very funny, especially if you’re just visiting and don’t have to care about the mess she sometimes gets herself and others into with her big mouth. Lynn is definitely fun to go out with. And she is a great personal shopper. She should actually do that for a living. Something like “Rent-a-Lynn.com—your personal shopper” would be perfect for her. (While I’m writing this, the site is still available. So if you want to use it, go ahead!) She knows most stores like the back of her hand. She knows what’s “in” and where to get it. If you ask her anything shopping-related and she doesn’t know the answer, it most likely doesn’t exist.

My friend Skye is very helpful, but very polite too. So when I ask her things like, “Would you like to have lunch now, or should we go shopping first and maybe have an early dinner later?”, she will say, “I could go either way. What would you prefer?” And I would say the same. And then we reach some kind of a weird standstill, which will definitely be interrupted by Lynn, “I don’t care what you’re doing, but I’m starving, and if I don’t eat lunch in, like, five minutes, I’m going to die..” “OK, then, lunch first,” we say.

So after eating lunch, we decided to tackle the bathing suit project. The thing is that Skye and Lynn are both a size 0, Skye is sometimes a size 2, but she is really petite, whereas I am 5’9” and a size 8, so it’s like we’re playing in different leagues. All the little thingies that do look good on them, don’t work for me. My weight is normal, even when I have a few more pounds than I would like to, and I have a healthy BMI. But here I was, in the dressing room, trying on bathing suits. The bright neon light wasn’t comforting. The just-having-had-lunch didn’t help either.

So I was trying on bathing suit after bathing suit, and none of them really looked good on me. There was that one piece that I liked on the hanger, but I wasn’t sure if I liked it on me too. At some point, Lynn decided to come in to help me and give her advice. I had to put on most bathing suits again, so she could see me wearing them, only the ones she hadn’t sorted out in the first place though. She didn’t say much, which is really unlike Lynn, and when I showed her the last one, the one I kind of liked, which was also the most expensive one, she looked at me for a moment and said just this:

“We can do better than that.”

And that has since been my motto for many things in life. It is a very wise sentence, if you come to think about it, so true in many situations. Don’t just buy something, just to buy something. Don’t just say something, just to say something. Don’t just do something, just to do something. If you think you can do better, then do better. And it’s good to be polite, but it also helps to be honest. And if you are ever shopping with a friend, remember this sentence, because she will know what you mean, and she won’t be offended, only thankful.

By the way, Lynn later found an inexpensive bathing suit for me that worked just fine for my stay in California. Guess what color it was? Yes. And it did make me look a little better.

[Picture: © Mahesh Shantaram, USA, wikimedia.com/flickr.com]