• About

fivenineteen

~ My eclectic musings on reality…

fivenineteen

Tag Archives: real housewives

An APB on my Inner Queen

04 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

behavior, book club, celebrating, conversation, hockey, nurture, passion, queen, real housewives, workshop

It’s an extra blissful Sunday morning…one of my favorite times of the year!  We’ve fallen back.  That glorious extra hour gift from the end of Daylight Savings Time.  What are you doing with YOURS?

I was at the salon yesterday getting my highlights touched up.  H has been doing my hair color for over 20 years – she’s awesome and I feel like we’ve grown up together because we’re about the same age.  I almost fell out of my chair when she mentioned her daughter turned NINETEEN on Halloween.  Wow – I remember when H was pregnant with her!  So she asked what I was up to this weekend…any big plans?  It’s always fun having some place to go out with your hair all freshly colored and styled.  But nope – not last night.  Just a run to the grocery store and veging out browsing a new cookbook, talking with my Mom on the phone, watching the latest Real Housewives of Miami episode (thank you, DVR)…I’m shamelessly addicted to each franchise of The Real Housewives – I never get tired of their catty drama…these ladies kill me! And speaking of TV, I’m feeling the hunger and emptiness of no NHL hockey (stupid lockout)…normally this time of year the season would be in full swing and I’d have 9 or 10 channels of hockey to choose from.  This past week they canceled the annual Winter Classic.  This is not good, fellow hockey fans.  As a friend of mine posted on Facebook, “It’s a little like when you know you’ve hurt your leg, but having them cancel the Winter Classic is like seeing the bone poking out.”  Dammit, people, let’s make a deal already and get our boys back on the ice!  (The dispute is over the revenue sharing split between the NHL and the players’ union).  Well, if things keep going as they have been, they’ll have a blast figuring out how to split ZERO.  Oh, I try to remain optimistic but if there’s no hockey this season it’s gonna be one long, empty winter.  And spring.

So not really having any major plans this weekend was just fine with me.  Downtime gives me the fuel I need to recharge.  This upcoming week is going to be super busy and crescendo-ing all the way through next weekend, and I’m feeling all tingly just thinking about it!

Back in late April I went to a weekend-long transformational workshop for women which focuses on understanding (and celebrating) men and their behavior.  In fact, the name of the workshop is Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women!  Wow!  Kind of a different way to look at that whole dealio, right?  It has completely changed my perspective of men and melted away lots of past resentments and misunderstandings. I’ve forgiven myself for my past actions which have (unintentionally) damaged relationships with men in my life – family, co-workers, platonic friendships and men I’ve dated and had relationships with. I didn’t know what I didn’t know! The women I’ve met in these workshops tell me their relationships with their husbands and sons have bolted to a whole other level.  This coursework also saves marriages!  Wow!

Now, this doesn’t mean I still don’t occasionally get frustrated or puzzled or even angered.  And it doesn’t make excuses for anyone.  It’s kind of like getting a new set of glasses and forgetting to put them on – it’s easy to fall back into old habits of reacting and responding certain ways or making incorrect assumptions.  That’s OK.  I have the rest of my life to learn, practice and grow as I apply what I’ve learned every day!  Men have VERY good reasons for why they do what they do (or don’t do), and most often the reason is NOT what we as women might think it is!  It’s truly astonishing how differently we are wired! 

I’m getting a double-shot bonus of TWO buckets of new goodness which build upon the CMSW workshop from last spring.  First of all, Alison A. Armstrong, the champion behind this amazing material, has just published a new e-book called The Queen’s Code.  It’s not your typical book!  It’s actually a comprehensive, online experience.  Each week she releases a new chapter to read and download onto your device of choice.  The website allows you to post a short video with a question about the chapter contents (totally optional of course), and fellow subscribers can vote on their favorite questions.  Then, Alison does a ‘weekly wrap up,’ where she posts her own video, responding to the questions which received the most votes.  I’ve never experienced anything like this and if you are the slightest bit intrigued I highly recommend checking the website out and joining the conversation.  The book and online experience is just $14.95.  [I’m not affiliated with the company at all – just a huge fan!]

I also joined a book club which meets every week to discuss the latest chapter. We are meeting at Wine Tea Chocolate in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. Not only is this a great group to gather with, but also fun for me to get my ‘city fix’ and out of the suburbs.  And we’re blessed to have a guy joining our conversation as well – nothing better than getting things validated straight from the male point of view!

AND, next weekend I will be joining a second weekend-long workshop which builds upon what I learned last April.  It’s called Celebrating Women:  Regarding Ecstasy and Power.  Or “The Queen Course.”  I’ve been counting the weeks and months waiting in anticipation for next weekend…and it’s almost here!  Why is this course I signed up for months ago also now right in the middle of the Queen’s Code e-book chapters and our book club?  There are no accidents.  It’s time for me to really look deep within myself and learn how to better nurture myself.  Improve my own, unique operating manual.  It’s kind of funny trying to write about something I’m going to do when I don’t really even know what’s going to happen. 

I just know it’s going to be a fabulous, growing experience.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Beat the Bridge…Beaten

15 Sunday May 2011

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bridge, float, foot trail, freeway, friends, JDRF, jewelry, pinot grigio, real housewives, run, sleep, tired

Ah, bridges.

How much we depend upon our beloved bridges around here in the beautiful Puget Sound region.  Pulsing arteries jampacked with cars, buses, bikes – and painfully clogged during those peak commuter hours.  We’ve got so much natural gorgeousness around us…lakes, the Sound (salt water), rivers, mountains – all within a short drive for most of us.  Meaning, you can’t go far without eventually running into one of those.

Today was the annual Beat the Bridge run/walk to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  The jewelry line I represent, Silpada Designs, has JDRF as its charity of choice.  One of the girls on our local team here had a wonderful idea for us to do Beat the Bridge and pledge to donate the commission from one of our jewelry parties as part of our fundraising!  What a great idea! With 10 of us participating and an average party commission at around $300 (yes, it’s true) we were excited to set our team goal at $3000!  Which bridge you may wonder?  The University Bridge, not far from the U of W campus where the race starts and finishes. 

This was planned back in February. And yes, we had the best of intentions.  However, the Universe had other intentions, which I discovered around 6am this morning.  

Bottom line, we didn’t go.  Damn that pouring rain already!

I knew that I’d be walking most if not all of this 8K – and most of the other girls were planning to as well.  Back in February I figured this would be a great way to kickstart getting back in shape for this summer’s 5Ks by restarting the Couch to 5K plan I’ve written about in here occasionally over the past year.  It’s an 8-week running and walking program – just 3 times a week – that gets you ready to run a 5K when you’re done.  And yes, it works!

But illness and stress earlier this year really sapped my energy and my poor lungs.  I had a bad cold and cough for about two months – it just wouldn’t go away.  It was all I could do to eeek out a game of hockey, much less hit the treadmill or go outside in our (cold, shitty) winter weather.  Soggy, soggy soggy.

Nevertheless, I was ready to get out of bed super early and drive to the freeway bus stop where my carpool was going to scoop me up this morning on the way into Seattle.

But let me back up to Saturday for a minute…a glorious, sensuous, warm and sunny day – the kind of day we’ve been starving for here all spring.  Spring so far this year has been a repeat of our rain-soaked, chilly winter sans the snow.  I had a few things planned for Saturday but decided to squeeze in another mini-adventure when it dawned on me that I really should verify I know how to get to the freeway bus stop where my carpool was going to pick me up.  I had an idea in my mind of how to get there, but realized it had been – gasp – nearly 10 years since I’d ventured to that bus stop with a friend.  I’d better go drive over and check it out!  And it was a beautiful day – a perfect excuse to open the sun roof and get some vitamin D the natural way, crank some music and just drive.

So what’s the big deal about this bus stop?  Well, it’s perched literally at land’s end before the freeway turns into one of our two floating bridges that connect Seattle with the suburbs.  These bridges were built decades ago and at the time were very state of the art given they ‘float.’  Lake Washington was determined too deep to do any sort of structural building underneath, hence the floating design.  And I’ll keep it to that because I’m no expert in structural engineering.

Now, there is an oddly creepy-looking pedestrian bridge over the freeway on the east side of the lake, which is how my friend P and I last got to that bus stop nearly a decade ago.  P and I have fallen out of contact and I’d forgotten where we had parked to walk across that bridge, hence my sunny journey in the car yesterday.

Boy am I glad I checked it all out.  There are major projects underway to build a second portion of this particular floating bridge to help with congestion…and, as I soon found out, plans to remove that pedestrian bridge!  Yep, once I figured out where to park and found the foot trail that was supposed to get me to the pedestrian overpass it was all blocked off.  Wow.

So it was a neon yellow vinyl fence that stopped me from my foot journey over the freeway.  And I was not one to rebel and climb through.  Who knows – it might not be structurally sound any longer.  Actually that’s not a good feeling since thousands of cars drive under it every day, but anyway I wasn’t going to chance it.

But I looked across the freeway and could see people waiting at that elusive bus stop.  How the hell did they get over there?  There was no parking lot near it at all – just a carved out covered area in a small, grassy hillside to stand or sit. 

As I started to get a little frustrated (NOW what?) I paused for a moment and just drank in everything around me.  I’m standing on a dirt trail in beautiful sunshine.  I’m mere steps from incredibly ritzy homes (in the ‘high rent district’ neighborhood around here called Medina).  And I’m also mere steps from, well, a 20 foot drop down to a roaring river freeway, with the hillside below covered in tangled, dirty weeds from decades of car exhaust.  How rare is it we stand still so close to a freeway like this?  Thankfully my time roadside has been those rare occasions when I’ve been in a fender-bender or have a flat tire.  It’s just astonishing watching and hearing the amount of cars whizzing by every second and being so close perched at the angle above it on the foot trail.  I think back on how many thousands of times in my life I have gone back and forth over that bridge.  As a child in the back seat of my parents’ old station wagon.  On my own as a teen and a freshly-minted drivers license in an orange 1970 Volvo (LOVED that car, wow). And countless times as an adult.

I jumped back in my car and drove back to the main road.  Aha!  I found a small, gravelly parking lot for bus commuters.  The trick was to park there and walk over the main road that goes over the freeway, not the pedestrian bridge.  Then, jump onto the trail on the bus stop side and voila – you’re there!  Wow, cryptic.  Believe me I tried searching online for maps long before I got in the car.  Anyway, a little resourcefulness pays off.

I walked over the freeway, again in awe of the cars whooshing by below me.  And looked to the west toward our beautiful, shining Lake Washington and the Olympic Mountains a little hazy along the horizon.  This is our back yard.  And how awesome it was to take it in on foot rather than as a stressed out commuter.  As I stepped onto the foot trail down to the bus stop I ran into a very nice lady out walking her dog.  She was disappointed that the pedestrian bridge was now closed off – she sounded like she walked over it fairly often so this might have been a really recent closure.

After my bridge and freeway adventure I drove over to my friend M’s house.  Back in the car, I laughed to myself and thought WOW, I am SO GLAD I did all that foot trail and bus stop homework a day ahead of time.  I am a terrible morning person and I would have been a total zombie case trying to figure it out that morning, worrying my carpool would be held up. 

After a quick visit with M (she is going to host a jewelry party in combination with her new office opening and we’re so excited!), I headed back home, grabbed a bottle of pinot grigio and walked up to my neighbor A’s house.  We’re getting in a groove of watching any of The Real Housewives series (on Bravo) that she has in her Tivo a couple of times a month.  Sadly I have not yet made the switch to flat screen TV but that’s another post.  If any of you follow the New York housewives, you’ll understand the pinot grigio (it’s the signature drink of one of the cast). 

So after getting caught up with A and laughing our asses off at fabulous trainwreck TV, I headed home to carbo load with some penne and pesto and forced myself to bed early.  I knew I had to leave the house around 6am to get to that good ol’ bus stop for my carpool.

And, it started to rain.  What a huge contrast from the tease of sunny spring we had earlier in the day.  I kept optimistic – the weather forcecast for Sunday was a ‘chance of showers.’  Actually, around here you could use that forecast every day and be pretty accurate.

I was tired this morning.  But I got out of bed, got dressed in my walking/running gear and after scaring myself looking in the mirror I dabbed on a small bit of foundation (my face is naturally ruddy so anything to tone it down helps) and a little flick of mascara for those tired eyes.  Keys, hat, sunglasses (I’m eternally optimistic plus sensitive to glare)…and…phone.

Wow.  My phone had blown up with tons of voicemail and texts last night after I’d forced myself to go to bed early, but I didn’t see any of it until early this morning.  I keep my phone downstairs at night because I don’t feel a need to have it with me 24/7.  

When I saw how my carpool driver plus a ton of others in the group were going to cancel, the wind went out of my sails.  Just poof and pffffttt.  Why cancel?  Rain. Yep, it was still raining hard this morning and even still is now in the early afternoon.

So I was a sheep and I bailed too.  I felt a little dejected because I was looking forward to trying this race for the first time with friends, but I have to know that it just wasn’t meant to be.  And I won’t dig too deep for the reason right now.

‘Cause I’m tired.    

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Is it Easter Writer’s Block?

24 Sunday Apr 2011

Posted by fivenineteen in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Easter, equinox, full moon, hockey, hockey fights cancer, real housewives, silent auction, Sunday, sushi

Nope.  On the contrary I have so many things whirling around in my head from this past week to write about that nothing has gelled yet.  Not even this rather late in the weekend. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.

Work contract extension.  Jewelry “homework.” Lots of parties this week…from a work party to a great girls night in with my neighbor A to watch reruns of the Real Housewives series on Bravo.  Shamelessly.  Oh, and Easter.  Time with family today.  An INTENSE Canucks/Blackhawks playoff series right now (I’m a huge Canucks fan, by the way).  A fabulous silent auction last night to benefit a team a few friends will be playing on next week in a tournament to benefit Hockey Fights Cancer.  Once I saw the spa package up for bid…AND the TPS hockey stick (a lefty – yay!) decked out in PINK, yep, with the breast cancer awareness ribbons on it…I knew those two beauties would be mine.  And they are! 

I started the evening yesterday meeting my dear friend J for sushi before we headed to the auction.  And ended it meeting another friend J for a drink afterwards at the bar nearby…one of the guys I’ve know through the league for years but we fell out of contact recently.  Good to reconnect.  Too funny how I was tired yesterday and didn’t think I’d stay at the auction too long, but I ended up heading home close to midnight with a pretty long drive ahead of me.

Now I’m even more tired and ready to hit the coffee before spending some time with my family to celebrate Easter.  Can you believe how LATE Easter is this year?  It’s about as late as it can be. 

Ahem, excuse my geekiness, but I happen to know why.  There was a full moon just one day prior to the Vernal Equinox (the first day of spring) this year.  Easter always needs the Equinox first, then a full moon, then a Sunday.  So because a full moon was just the day prior to the Equinox this year, the moon had to go through a whole wax and wane cycle again…it wasn’t full again until April 18, a Monday.  Since Easter has to be on a Sunday we had to go another week till today, Sunday April 24.

And there’s your Easter lesson from a rather tired fivenineteen here.  Time to get ready for brunch, visit with family and then glue myself to the Canucks/Hawks game tonight.  Can the Canucks finish off the series and send the Hawks to the golf course?  Or do we have to go till game 7 to decide this once and for all?

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 119 other followers

Recent Posts

  • …and the World got Sucker Punched
  • tap tap tap…is this thing still on?
  • First Soup of 2016! Red Lentil and North African Spices
  • Break on Through to the Other Side…
  • Dreams…Dusted Off

4 agreements birthday bliss book ceiling change changes cookbook cooking drama dreams emotions energy equinox exercise family fitness food food processor friends friendship gluten free gym happiness health hiking hockey home projects ingredients intuitive eating jewelry job joy laptop lean eating love MAC makeup man help memories music networking new year nutrition paint passion precision nutrition preparation projects recipe relationships Seattle shopping Silpada sleep slow cooking soup South America spices stress sunshine time tired Tom Douglas townhouse transformation travel vegan walk walking weather weekend work workout workshop

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Blogroll

  • 32 Dreams
  • A Lot on Your Plate
  • Alaskagirlatheart
  • Amaryllis sillyramA
  • Belle Grove
  • Bucket List
  • Everywhere Once
  • Going Dutch
  • Lady Romp
  • Maggie's One Butt Kitchen
  • Makeup by Tiffany D
  • Makeup Geek
  • Moment Matters
  • Rogue Wave Media
  • Sybaritica
  • The Ranting Chef
  • The Walk & Talk

Archives

Blog Stats

  • 22,333 hits

Search fivenineteen

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Twitter Updates

  • Put me on the cover of Men's Health! I Need your vote! orm.la/xzKR 6 years ago
  • Go #Seahawks! #WhosGonnaWin vz.to/1gjdi5E @VerizonWireless 6 years ago
  • Go #Seahawks! #WhosGonnaWin vz.to/1gjdi5E @VerizonWireless 6 years ago
  • Love me some @RSherman_25 . That is all. 7 years ago
  • Interval training today @insidePN ...rocked! 7 years ago
Follow @five19

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: