Tag Archives: rock of ages

Kindness, Kourtney, Divorce & Tom Cruise

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This should be a fun post 🙂

So for starters, this morning a post on one of the blogs that I follow was about kindness. What prompted the post was ugly comments written on another bloggers page. You can read A Beautiful Day kindness post here. This is the reminder she has there…

I’ve been thinking for a few hours about what this poster says. I’ve not been so kind this past week. I’m angry about a decision here at work that I wasn’t consulted on and I’ve been trying for 6 days to be more zen about it. The cool thing about the people here is that they don’t hold grudges… ME… I’m a GRUDGE holder and I own it 🙂 I just don’t get over things easily. I stew about them, work them out and then throw them out… but it takes me a while.

This morning, once again, something silly and non-evidence based practice came up in morning rounds. Sunday up on the mountain I PROMISED myself to stay zen, to stay calm, to practice breathing, to not care (although I totally do), to just let go. So the past 2 days when something comes up, I take a deeeeeeep breath, say the word zen, think of something positive and don’t comment on it… I’m a big under the breath commenter… sometimes inappropriate words (thank God most of the people here don’t understand English… lol). My personal assistant/translator, Vivi was with me. I went into the stairwell, took some nice deep breaths, said out loud, “stay zen, do not allow it in, meditate.” Vivi asked me if I was a Buddhist 🙂 It made me smile. I got over it pretty quick and continued on with my morning.

Then I started reading the Entertainment news on my morning break. I usually don’t follow Entertainment news… I don’t care what these people do in their personal lives, I want to be entertained by them. Two stories piqued my interest this morning.

First… Kourtney Kardashian had her baby girl. So, why would this pique my interest? Well, she was planning a home water birth and I’m a huge home water birth advocate… in fact, a water birth expert… so I was rooting her on. She had an “all-natural” birth according to her sister’s tweet, but no further info. I’m looking forward to the results… So what does this have to do with my Kindness post? Oh my… the UNKIND comments people made on the story. Calling her a whore and loser and a bunch of other names. How sad is that? Why do people even bother on commenting? I would say that for every 1 kind comment there were 10 or more UNkind comments. I personally like watching their show when I am at home in the States… I don’t have to think, they are funny to me and they have pretty much the same problems the rest do with life & relationships. Congrats Kourtney… I hope this child brings you as much joy as your baby boy has!
**On a side note, this article from Australia has nothing but KIND things… is it Americans that are so cynical and unkind?

And the next news item… Tom and Katie have divorced in just 11 days since Katie filed. I love Tom Cruise… I don’t care about what he practices spiritually… I seriously don’t… I love him as an actor. He always entertains me and I could look at him forever. His latest movie, Rock of Ages is hysterical and the man can sing! And oh what I could do to those gun tats on his err, um, lower abdominal area 😀 The soundtrack has all of my favorite songs from the 80’s and I walked out of the movie theatre HAPPY… HAPPY, with a grin on my face… I can’t say that about many movies. The high from being happy from the movie lasted for hours afterwards. OK… enough about that movie, hehe… The comments were SO UNKIND after the story that I just stopped reading. Again, why are people so unkind? What is the point of writing horrible comments. What cracks me up is that the people writing the comments write them as if Tom Cruise will actually read them… LOL.
You know what I say… good on them. I’m sure there was a prenup and things were hammered out quickly for everyone’s benefit… especially their child Suri. I think it was very grown up for them to handle things so quickly and without it dragging on forever.

And finally… as I was walking back to work after a yummy lunch at home, I saw this on the sidewalk, while listening to the Rock of Ages soundtrack and the song, “I Wanna Know What Love Is” was blaring in my ears…

Isn’t that what all of us want… a little heart? A little love? A bit of kindness? After seeing the leaf, I started thinking about writing this post. I then walked back a block to take this picture. I’m going to practice showing some love for the rest of the week… I’ll let ya know how that goes 😀

Ciao!

Dukan – Consolidation Day 56

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Thursday was a stressful day 😦

Daily Weight: 147 lbs/66.8 kgs
Goal Weight: 155 lbs/70.5 kgs

I sure don’t like stressful days. Makes me want to nosh around on food… thank goodness I only have healthy choices around me, but even too much of a good thing can be a not so good thing!

My stress centers around changes to my work schedule without consulting with me. They just toss me to the wind sometimes and see where I land. I am about the easiest going, “fly by the seat of your pants” kinda gal, but when it seems to be changes made with the wrong intent, it gets my hackles up.

Then after the schedule change stuff, I went on morning rounds and had to stop due to the stress of dealing with people who give misinformation. Formula (baby poison in MY humble opinion) is passed out like candy here. Women being told that they don’t have any milk in their breasts… it does my head in.

So… two things I’m concentrating on to get me out of my funk…
1. My job ends here in 10 weeks and 5 days and I will go home, for good… maybe, at least for now… and…
2.  I won’t be doing birth work full time when I go home. I will be starting my own diet and fitness business. I am very excited about this.
Oh… and a 3rd thing… because they’ve changed my schedule to go to Guangzhou July 12, I will be near Hong Kong and being near Hong Kong means I can go to a movie theatre and watch ROCK OF AGES… now THAT will make me happy and get me out of this funk… I saw it in the States last month and I want to see it again! I’m listening to the soundtrack to ROA as I am typing this post! 

After work I walked to the grocery store to pick up some veggies for the dinner I made for Vivi and Olivia. Vivi is my new personal assistant, having replaced the amazing Kitty, and Olivia is a translator in our office. I wanted to have them over for dinner for helping out with Tits the Cat while I was at home on vacation. Their request… an American dinner. So I made them steak, carrots with splenda and cinnamon and mashed potatoes with aged cheddar… I didn’t eat the carrots or the potatoes… although they both appeared to be big hits, given the fact there was nothing left over! I also made a nice salad with greens, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

Vivi and Olivia

An American dinner for my Chinese friends 🙂

While the carrots and potatoes were boiling, I showed the girls how to use the wii for bowling. Neither had bowled before. They did pretty well for their first game. While I was finishing up supper, they bowled their second game and Vivi scored a 201! She did almost as well on game 3… note to self… stop teaching people how to play, they’ll beat you! LOL

All in all a very nice night. The girls cheered me up. I walked them down to the corner and got Vivi in a taxi home. I then did a walk around the neighborhood.

Food:
Breakfast: 2 tea eggs, coffee
Snack: 10 almonds
Lunch: left over pork from the dinner out with Jerry… when I heated this up in the staff canteen here at work, the chef came over with chop sticks and had a few bites… lol. I’m working REAL hard on the lack of personal space… real hard!
Snack: 1 ounce aged cheddar and 10 almonds
Dinner: Steak w/ onions, salad and a tea cup of wine
Water: 2.5 liters
Exercise:
10 minute morning flow yoga, Walk to work (1 mile) Walk from work to grocery then home (1.9 miles),  walk around neighborhood before bed 1.2 miles)

So… deep breaths, positive outlook, awesome soundtrack, meditation… in and out… 10 weeks, 5 days… ahhhhhh

Ciao!

One last pic… my little baby from Tuesday… his mommy IS exclusively breast feeding… that’s a rare thing here!  🙂

Cute lil thing!

Travel – Not Quite Back in the Groove

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Exhausted. Knackered. Achy.

Weight? Who knows, but the pants still fit… scale is missing in my “delayed” luggage. I did stick to my diet while on my vacation and since I’ve been back in China.
Exercise? Worry? Does that count? I can’t run, since my running shoes are also in my “delayed” luggage… along with clothes and underwear! I did walk all over Shanghai yesterday and to and from work on Saturday morning and to work, home for lunch and back to work so far today racked up 3+ miles.

That about explains the 3 ways I’m feeling right now. Even after having an 8 hour sleep
last night. Jet lag sucks… BIG TIME. So, I’m not quite back in my groove, but feel that an update is overdue, for sure!

I left Florida on Thursday morning at 1145 a.m. for a flight to New York’s JFK. As I blogged before, they actually have Wifi on flights in the States now… how cool is that? Nice 1.5 hour layover there then off to Beijing, except the flight is delayed and they are talking about me not making my flight to Hangzhou, blah, blah, blah… I actually said to the lady at the counter, “seriously, please don’t tell me that… I have travel anxiety related to timeliness!!!” I decided I was going to try not to fret over it… what will be, will be. They made up some of the time, but the transfer time was close in Beijing and I had to go through immigration, collect my bags and then recheck my bags and get on the flight. I had 47 minutes!

I sailed through immigration and went to the baggage carousel… one of my bags was the first one on the carousel!!! What luck! LOL… until after 25 minutes, the bags stopped coming and I realized that A. I had 15 minutes to haul my butt to my connecting flight and B. my 2nd bag was missing… PANIC set in. I ran to the missing baggage office and they put my baggage number in and found that my bag was still in New York… tears were shed, I’m a cry baby when I’m tired, and I ran to check my bag for the Hangzhou flight and actually made it on the plane… because it too was delayed.

I get to Hangzhou at midnight, collect my one bag and head to the lost baggage office to file a claim. It is now officially Saturday morning (I’ve missed all of Friday being in the air) and I have to be at work at 8 a.m. Through more tears I realize that the bag I have is NOT the bag with my clothes and my Brooks Addiction running shoes and MOST importantly MY SCALE… can anyone say MELTDOWN!?! She files the claim with the Air China office in New York and says, as she hands me the paper… it’s just “delayed” baggage, not “lost”… with the sweetest little smile. It’s hard to be angry with her 😦

I get a taxi home and fall into bed after loving all over Tits the Cat, who has apparently missed me immensely. He insisted I carry him around like a baby for half an hour! I got into bed at 3 a.m. and woke up at 558 a.m…. ugh! Made coffee, checked email and got ready for work… at work by 730 a.m. On my way to work I picked up tea eggs… I was so happy to see my favorite tea egg lady…

Those are the tea eggs in that ginormous crockpot!

I think the exhaustion hit me around noon. I felt like someone was sitting on my head! But I made it through most of the day. At 3 I decided to leave and called my friend Alice, a midwife from Florida who is visiting her son here in Hangzhou. They just happened to be at my favorite restaurant in town, The Vineyard, and I took a taxi there to meet them. It was so wonderful to see her. I think it’s been 15 years or so since I’ve seen her in person, but she is the one who inspired me to walk the Camino 2 years ago.

In bed Saturday night before 10 and up at 458… UGH! No problem, got up, made a breakfast of steak and onions and showered and dressed and headed out the door to get the train to Shanghai! A fellow blogger, Mona, was in China for a summer assignment and we were going to meet in person! How awesome is that? I love her photography on her blog and even though I was knackered as all get out, it was worth the trip to meet her!

Mona on the Bund… The Pearl in the background.

Walking to the Bund.

We met at her hotel and walked to the subway. We took that down to the Bund, which is the waterfront walk on the Pearl River. It was an overcast day, but we still had a good time! After walking the Bund we google mapped my favorite restaurant in Shanghai the Blue Frog. Unfortunately the address was incorrect and we ended up walking a heck of a lot more than we intended… no worries… the lunch and company was worth it!

On the walk we saw lots of cool things and some random things like the fresh piece of asparagus on the stairs of a walk over and this beautiful cherry in the gutter…

Cherry in the gutter… streets of Shanghai

After the trip back to Mona’s hotel, I taxied up to the subway and then took Line 2 to the Family Mart… the grocery store that I can get my Fat Free yogurt. Bought 8 containers and a few other items and then took the subway back to the Shanghai train station… it was a wonderful day!

Bye-bye Shanghai

Back to my flat… call to Air China “delayed” baggage office… “good news Ms. Blankenship, your bag is on the flight to Beijing! You should have bag tomorrow noon”… well, my assistant has just called and been told it’s still in New York… I’m trying not to panic. I’d like to have my clothes, my shoes and MY SCALE… my Vivien tells me it will come, “this is China, it’ll happen”… I take a deep breath, come back to my office and pray… yes… this is China… things do happen.

As I finish this post I am listening to the soundtrack of Rock of Ages… the music makes me HAPPY 😀 I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this movie. I know that it got crappy reviews, but they were wrong. It’s a funny, happy inducing movie and thinking of Tom Cruise (lovingly referred to as TC) singing and dancing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” gives this 48 year old giggles and smiles… If I was in the States… I’d probably have seen it 3 times already!

And now… Vivien has just walked into my office and said MY BAGS ARE GOING TO BE HERE, IN OUR OFFICE IN 2 HOURS!!!!!!!!!! OK, trying not to hold my breath, trying not to be too optimistic, but they asked her for directions to the hospital. Dear Lord, I pray it’s MY bag… lol.

With that… I’m outta here… if anyone has a secret to getting rid of jet lag quicker, I’d be ever so grateful!!!

Ciao!

“I’m hot sticky sweet, from my head, my head to my feet”… Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard… redone by the yummy TC 😀