Yes! It *has* been almost a whole year!

Life has been interesting and strange and fast and wonderful. My girls are seven and three now and one is finishing first grade while the other will be starting a part time program in the fall. My girls are bigger and life is more complicated in some ways. It is mostly good, so I cannot complain.

I am still teaching and still married (yeah me!) but currently NOT shaking my rump at Zumba classes. I had issues off and on with my knees and kept taking breaks before I realized I should just do things that don't hurt me until I feel stronger and can dance WITHOUT pain. It has been a little sad, but I'm going to keep working on finding new ways to keep active and interested in movement.

Most recently, I have been exploring myself and my future and trying to figure out what is next for me. There can be no more children, so I know that in two years I'll have both girls in school full time. Until then, I can figure out what is next for me. Last summer I started to sew and learned that I love it. I will always sew and want to learn more and find time to make more dresses and tops for the girls and things for myself too. I'm excited about the summer for that reason because I will finally have more time to dedicate to those projects I have in mind.

I realized a while back that while I do enjoy teaching, I don't want to do MORE of it. I don't want a full time teaching schedule and I do not want a 9 to 5 teaching gig. I have been there, done that, and it isn't my cup of tea. The world of academia is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there! So what will I "do" with the free time I will have in two years?

I have considered this--ad nauseum--and keep thinking that the answer has to be in front of me. What do I love and what can I do with that? What are my passions? Really my family is my passion. Taking care of them and doing the best I can do for each of them is what I wake up every morning hoping to accomplish. I want my girls to be healthy and loving people who learn and do well in the world. I want my husband to be satisfied and happy in his life and with his choices. I want to do all I can to encourage him to live well and be healthy. I also want to achieve my own goals and to be happy with where and when and what I am in life.

One of my favorite things to do is to read and learn more about how I can make better choices. I read about the food system and about health considerations. I read about studies and food types and learn about how our bodies work. I learn about growing things and eliminating chemicals and such from our homes and bodies. I have so much more to learn and a strong desire to dedicate real time to these ideas. In the past year, my family has gone from eating "whatever" (including an embarrassing amount of fast food and restaurant prepared meals) to eating less processed foods and "clean" farm-bought "kinder" meat choices. We then started to shop organic and before long started visiting the local farmer's markets and buying local too.

One day I heard about a book that led me to some videos online discussing a movie that was supposed to be life changing. I found the movie online and made my husband sit and watch it with me. What I thought was a movie about "healthy food choices" was a movie about meat and protein choices. The title of the film was "Forks over Knives" and our lives have never been the same since that evening. Had I known the content of the film, I honestly don't know that I would have watched it. I also wouldn't have tried to make my husband watch it, for fear he'd scoff at the subject-matter. Much to my surprise, he embraced the information wholeheartedly and vowed to go vegan. *Insert shocked look here*

So that didn't happen exactly, but I am very proud to say we have eliminated most meat from our meals and are eating a largely plant-based diet.We are making very strong efforts to integrate milk free products and options into our meals and have tried many new recipes that I would have never even read before. I feel like a better mom for making this choices and I take every chance I have to spread the knowledge I have acquired to others in my life who haven't converted yet.

The truth is that the standard American Diet is not working for most and the staggering statistics you hear on the news are the proof. The shockingly high rates of heart disease and diabetes and obesity are not a mystery if you look at what is on our food and how we eat. Most of us know this, but don't know the science behind it or the details. Most of us choose to not look into this or to turn a blind eye to the stories we hear. We think "Wow that is horrible" but we don't see ourselves in those stories or in those statistics. Once we do, and once we learn, you cannot unlearn it and life HAS to change. You don't have a choice. If you learn and do not make changes, it is just like agreeing to a death sentence by saying, "Sure! Let me help you!"

Now I get why Susan Powter's always said, "Stop the insanity!" That is precisely how most Americans are living and I have been one of those people for far too many years.

That must be it. I need to do something with the knowledge I am gaining to help other people live better lives. I share all I can with anyone who will listen as it is. There must be people who are mystified at the store like I have been at times. There must be people who struggle with weight loss like I have and don't get the connection yet between our western lifestyles and how we look and feel. There must be people who need a little push and a little information to help them decode the language of products and options that exist. They need definitions and summaries and guidance. I haven't had that thus far, and have muddled around trying to figure it all out bit by bit. I've made some mistakes, but I've learned quite a lot along the way.

On a whim this past Saturday, I Googled "becoming healthy living coach" thinking, "Surely this doesn't exist." I was wrong. They do exist. There are people who want/need help and there are people from all walks of life who have dedicated their professional lives to helping those people. Finding this tidbit out has given me some peace and a goal that I plan to start working on immediately. I have much to learn and more growing to do, but this summer begins my journey toward an actual and exciting place that I never before knew existed.

So...yeah.

Aside from figuring out what I want to do when I grow up, learning to sew, helping with homework, cooking meals and packing lunches, grading papers and teaching classes, taking children here and there, shopping for groceries, volunteering at my daughter's school, trying to get to the gym to exercise, relearning how to eat and treat my body and unlearning life-long bad habits and finding time for some of the most embarrassing line-ups of shows on television that I am addicted to (and some of the best--30 Rock, Modern Family, etc), I have been just hanging out...not really doing much with myself. ;)

And how are you?