Stupid. Really, really stupid.

... Not just the producers of Prison Break but the fact that I'm blogging about it. I apologize in advance.


I know I'm a little behind because the show is already over, but I just found out that the main character of Prison Break, a show I have recently become re-obsessed (ok, maybe re-re-obsessed) with, dies. Yep, dies. That's how they end the series. Really?? I mean, there are a million ways to end a TV show and they chose to kill off the main (and very sexy, I might add) character? Stoopid.

And it's such a good show. Totally implausible and a bit gruesome at parts, but really clever and suspenseful. My favorite kind of show. 


I was all excited to watch the rest of the seasons (Traci and I just watched the first - don't judge me and all my TV watching... if it was this cold where you are, the couch and TV on DVD would be your best friends too...), but now I think I just want to cry. Boo. (Ok, I'll probably still watch them, but still... STUPID.)


I avoid Nicholas Sparks movies for this very reason.

For reals.

Ok, I know I talk about the Wii a lot. Probably in copious doses of annoying, I'm sure. And I apologize. But here's the thing: it works miracles. For reals.

I say miracles (plural) because to be more specific, it has worked three miracles on me. Yep, you heard me, three. Let me just tell you about them...

Since using the Wii (about 4 weeks now) I have:

1.) learned breathing skills that have taught me to breathe in and out of my nose while exercising. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a hard thing for me to do in general, let alone through the duration of a work out. Yay, lungs! As Bob would say, "you're doing great!"

2.) gained some awesome flexibility to the point of being able to touch my toes while standing straight-legged or sitting with my legs out in front of me. With legs the length of mine, it has been a real challenge for me in my life and I haven't been able to do it since I was a kid well, ever, so let's just say I'm feeling pretty proud. 

3.) not had to crack my back in over three weeks. Yes, I am one of those people that will contort my body and twist in a chair into what looks like a very painful position, just to "crack" my back and which usually causes the major grossing-out of all those that might be within earshot. But the yoga poses I am learning have really helped me stretch my spine and focus on my posture. Give me a Wii balance board and my trainer Bob and voila!, my back doesn't crave that vertebrae popping sensation any longer... 

Now, if the Wii could just help me with brevity...

I ventured out today and I just HAD to blog about it.

I'll be the first to admit that I am a huge pansy when it comes to cold weather. So not my favorite. In fact, being cold makes me downright angry.

What's so funny (or not so funny) about that is that I was born in Colorado, chose to go to school in Idaho (Rexburg happens to be one of the 3 coldest places in the nation...), and then moved to Utah to live and continue my education. Twenty seven years later (that's not sarcasm or an exaggeration - that's for real) I got the clue that me and cold weather are not friends and moved my frozen bones to Arizona. And then, just as I was feeling thawed out and pleasantly sun-baked, I moved to Ukraine. UKRAINE...

Ha ha ha. I laugh at my own idiocy.

SO, it's a good thing I came here for my family and not for the weather. Or the scenery or pleasant people. Ok, I take back the scenery bit - the little churches and cathedrals are amazing and there is some beautiful landscape here. But this should go to show just how much I love my fam...

Anyway, being as cold as it is and knowing that cold and I broke up long ago, I don't go out much. And when I do, we're in the car, safely bundled up with warm vents in our faces and out of the bitterness. So today was something new. I was feeling like I needed a little "fresh air" and had an errand to run so I put my layers (upon layers) on and ventured out. And this is what I experienced/witnessed/felt:

• My crazy good balance skills that I'm learning from Wii Fit (ha ha, I just had to throw that in there) came in very handy on the sidewalks that are covered in 6 inches of pure ice.
• My nose started running (that happens to everyone in the cold, right?...) and so I sniffed to keep it all contained. Yeah... bad idea. Both of my nostrils stuck to the inside of my nose for a couple seconds and I kind of panicked and had to take a deep breath through my mouth (BRRRR! Wake up lungs!!). I now have first hand experience with what it feels like to have icicles hanging from your nose hairs. I didn't think it was really true. But oh, believe me, it is.
• A lady was out with what looked like a two or three-year-old. But they weren't in a stroller or holding her hand, walking. Nope, they were sitting on a sled. She was pulling her kid down the sidewalk on a sled. In these treacherous conditions - genius.
• I ran into my brother-in-law on the sidewalk on his way back from a meeting. He had just been waiting at the bus stop where this crazy old babushka asked him where his hat was (he wasn't expecting to be out in the cold) and he told her he had left it at the office. She proceeded to yell at him and ask him if he was crazy. You'd be surprised at how many strangers will yell at you for being improperly clad. And don't think I'm kidding when I say yell.
• I almost fell/slipped about five times. But thanks to my cat-like reflexes (and my crazy good balance skills...), neither my wrists nor my butt will be feeling any repercussions from the unkempt and much neglected Ukrainian sidewalks. 
• What should have taken about 30-40 minutes roundtrip ended up being a very slow-paced hour where I found myself feeling very silly and old-ladyish. But what it also turned out to be was an hour of truly eventful and totally blog-worthy experiences.

I hope this doesn't sound like one huge complaint about the cold (even though I still loathe it), because that was not my intent at all. My venturing out today was quite eventful (here's where you can say "Wow, she doesn't get out much," and it wouldn't even be sarcastic or untrue) and I was smiling the whole way there and back.

Who would have thought - me, of all people, smiling in 12 degree weather?

We ♥ Wii!

So it turns out that I've never been the dieting type. I feel like diets - no matter how big or small they are - just aren't realistic for me. I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm pro-healthy and feeling good and keeping your body in tip-top shape. I really wish I was better at being a health fanatic but the truth is, I'm not. And I think that's the way it will always be.

I go in spurts where all the groceries I buy are things to make salads and eat fruits for snacks. I'll go through a spurt here and there where I want to exercise every day (I'm having one of those spurts right now). But it's really hard for me to keep at it. Maybe because I have a hard time sticking to something long term (not relationships, for any of you single available men that might be reading this), hence the gypsy-ness of my life. But I hope that's not because I'm lazy or lacking some important part of my brain that helps a person stick to something longer than three weeks or a couple months. I'd like to think I'm just realistic, not lazy. But then again, realistic varies quite a bit depending on the person.

Realistic for some people ( some being the operative word here) is eating only organically certified fruits and vegetables, abhorring all things sugar, and going to the gym eight times a week so that they can fit nicely into their size zeros.

But realistic for me is a little different. It's trying not to sit on the couch all day and maybe doing an hour of exercise here and there. It's trying not consume an entire bag of chips or box of oatmeal cream pies in one sitting and stopping at half instead. It's trying not to eat at In N' Out or Chick-fil-A more than four times a month (which is working out nicely since Ukraine has yet to catch on to any American franchise except McDonalds... which if I'm being honest, I have eaten at more since being here than I ever do in the states. Grrr, dang it for being honest!). And it's trying (with some serious exerted effort) to have a balanced lifestyle between the food I consume and the activities I perform. Its exhausting really. I can't even imagine how it must be for those who are on a perma-diet and in perpetual motion with all the exercising they do when life's not happening.

But enough of that. Let me get to the point of this post...

I'd like to thank my brother-in-law for the gift he got for his wife for Christmas. He got Traci a Wii and the Wii Fit program and can I just say that I am LOVING it?! 

Not only have I learned some really fab yoga poses that are stretching and strengthening things that I didn't know I had, but it is motivating me to be more exercise prone. I have faithfully done a body test (weighing in and calculating my BMI) and some sort of exercise (sometimes only 30 minutes of yoga and a few other activities, but still...) every night for the past 13 or so days. And it is motivating me to do more than that even. I know, can you imagine?! But I was on the elyptical a lot last week - I "ran" a total of about 33 miles - on top of my nightly yoga and strength training on the Wii. And tonight starts a brand new week of elyptical and yoga lovin'. Bring it!

There are a lot of Wii critics out there that argue that it doesn't really do much for you, exercise-wise. They say that the yoga isn't realistic and that you need to be in an actual yoga class with all its proper serene-ness for it to have its full effect. And they say that the strength training doesn't really strengthen anything at all. Which may be true for some people. Maybe for those people that can afford to work out at the gym every day or those whose bodies are naturally strong because all they eat are whole grains and carrots.

But let's get real here - there are some of us that are just not good eaters, despite how hard we try,  and have a hard time sacrificing our daily intake of chocolate. There are some of us that haven't been to the gym for ages for various reasons. And there are a lot of people that just don't feel comfortable prancing their spandex-clad bootie into a yoga class for the first time (or even the hundredth time). Like I said before, it's just not realistic for some of us.

So to those critics out there I say mind your own naturally strong, super motivated, whole grain, carroty business. If the Wii can motivate a person like me to get the couch off my butt for a little while and do a little physical exercise, then it's doing a dang good job if you ask me. And if it can help me set goals and stick to something for longer than a week, no matter how small it may be, then it deserves a freakin' award! And if nothing else it can motivate me to eat better, then for crying out loud, it is well worth the purchase (not that I spent any money on the Wii that I'm using, but you get the point).

Besides, they're probably just jealous of those of us that learned yoga and crazy good balance skills on the Wii - we get a personal animated trainer who talks to us and encourages us all along the way. I call mine Bob.

Maybe he can help me do this one day...

Time is a funny thing.

I was just thinking about how weird time is. Ok, I wasn't just thinking about it - I think about it all the time, but days like today make me think about it a little more than usual.

Today is my Dad's birthday (happy birthday Dad!) and birthdays are always a reminder of how time sneaks by, sometimes without notice. I always think of my Dad as a 40-year-old, maybe because that's how I remember him from my younger days. But to think that he's a (few) years older than that now makes me realize just how swiftly years can go by. Today also marks five years since I got home from my mission and that's WEIRD. In a lot of ways, it feels like I have been home for a decade, but in other ways, I feel like I was just turning 21 and heading to Florida a couple months ago. The things I have done and the places I have been since then really puts time into perspective.

It's also strange to me that I have been in Ukraine now for three months. It feels like I just got here, but at the same time, Arizona feels like it was years ago. Like I have been away from there forever. Time is so strange the way it plays tricks with your head.

This week my cousin Camille would have been turning 29. What?? Now that's strange. But instead, she is forever 21. To think that it was almost eight years ago that she died is one of the strangest time phenomenons of my life. I can't believe it's been that long since I have seen her or talked to her when the fact that she's not here still feels so fresh. I remember a conversation my sister Lesli and I had as we were assembling little orange hearts for people to wear at the funeral. We were saying that it was so hard to grasp the fact that she was gone and how we wish we could just snap our fingers and it would be five or six years down the road. Because by then it would be a lot easier to cope with. And here we are now - in what feels like a finger snap away from that slow motion, life-altering day. Yet it feels like a whole different life time that I spent my time connected to her hip. There haven't been very many days since her death that I haven't thought or even dreamt about her. That's about 2,900 days - some of which have felt like an eternity. Time is a funny thing.

I've always said that time goes by slowly the smaller the increment of time. When you are thinking about it in the moment, a minute can tick by so slowly, an hour can drag on and on, and a day can feel like eternity sometimes. But it's always in retrospect that time feels like it has literally flown by. I can look back on a week sometimes and think, "What on earth? It was seriously just Friday a couple days ago." And a month - it's crazy to think about it. It's already the middle of January and it was only a month ago that we were gearing up for the holidays and getting ready to head to Germany. And every time my birthday rolls around, I am abruptly reminded just how quickly a year can go by. Too quickly for my taste, if you wanna know the truth.

Anyway, I don't really know what the point of this post is - I guess I just wanted to get my thoughts out of my head and into visibility. I don't have a poignant moral for my yet again long-winded story. I suppose there can be though. Perhaps I have come to realize (maybe a little too late) that time is valuable and what I fill that time with is what molds and shapes my life and creates memories. I think (no, I know) that I have spent WAY too much time recently sulking and complaining and being generally annoyed with my life and what I am doing with it. And then a year goes by and I have to stop and think, "Great, there went another year. And what do I have to show for it?"

So in a really round about way, perhaps this is a resolution-esque moment for me (although I do NOT believe in new year's resolutions - they are a recipe for failure and total loss of self-esteem for me so all I can do is avoid them). However, I have done a lot of thinking and "soul searching" the last couple of weeks and I think I have come to a not-so-new but rather a resurrected conclusion - that life is gonna go by no matter what I do with it so I may as well do it good. I need to be content with where I am and what I'm doing. Chances are, whatever it is that I am doing is a one time deal and I need to take every advantage of it. Live in the moment, dance, frolic through a field of daisies, sing in the rain - all that good cliche stuff.

So come, let us dance like children of the night!

No more blonde jokes, people....

So I've always had the belief that if you can't get it done professionally, don't do it at all.

But since my hair stylist currently lives on the opposite side of the world from me, I had to take matters (and my hair) into my own hands (well, my sister's really - thanks T!).

I've never done color this drastic before. I've always been pretty blondie-blonde and totally chicken at that, but I was craving a little change. More than anything, I guess I just wanted to see if brunettes can have as much fun as blondes...

Also, my belief that you "shouldn't do it at all" has proven very wrong since clearly not doing anything about this mop has not been the best choice for me recently.

So here it is... BROWN(ish)!

(I thought making several different faces would give you a better idea of how I look in motion. Ok, that's a total lie - I just like taking pictures of myself.)

What do you think? Be honest. I can always try to fix it. I mean, hair dye is easy to come by in Ukraine - especially if I wanted to go Ariel-red or platinum blonde...

My effort at ethnic cooking...

So I tried the Kutya recipe from my last post tonight (a day late for traditional Kutya consumption, but oh well). I'm a true lover of everything oatmealy, ricey, breakfasty-chewy, so I decided it would be fun to try it out.

And then I realized why they only have it once a year on Christmas.

The wheat berries had to soak for 24 hours. The dried apricots had to be chopped. The poppy seeds had to be scalded (first time I've ever scalded something on purpose). And then drained (how exactly does one drain poppy seeds?). And then soaked. And then pureed in a food processor. Seriously? They're microscopic. And then the wheat berries had to boil. And then be left to simmer for three hours. And then, after all that, everything had to be combined into a casserole dish to bake in the oven for an additional 20 minutes. Good grief, quite the process!

But it turns out that everyone liked it (even though it looked a bit like the crawling mush from Better Off Dead...) Even the little boys wanted seconds and thirds. Which I was grateful for - it was a lot of work for no one to like it! And even though Ukrainians traditionally serve it as the first dish of their Christmas meal, it seemed more like a dessert so we had it after dinner. We also discovered it tastes really good with a tiny bit of sweetened condensed milk or a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar on it.

So, all in all, I think it's definitely something I would make again - maybe as a fun tradition to incorporate at Christmas time.

Except next time I'm leaving out the poppy seeds...

A Happy New Year & Merry Christmas! In that order.

Today is Christmas Eve for Orthodox Ukrainians. Yep, Christmas comes after New Years here. But it's definitely not the commercialized Christmas that we Americans are used to. In fact their big gift-giving, tree-decorating, party-throwing celebration for the year happens on New Year's Eve. At first it all seemed a bit backwards to me but now I have really come to appreciate the way they do it here.

On New Year's Eve, Ukrainians decorate their "New Year's Tree", prepare gifts for friends and family, and have big (BIG) parties. And when the clock hits midnight, most parties have just begun. Since we live right in the heart of the city, we got to hear fireworks (like the big football stadium kind - anyone is allowed to buy them off the street here) going off from about 11 p.m. until 2 in the morning.... from every part of the city....

However, sometime before the clock strikes twelve families are traditionally gathered together giving gifts and discussing how the gifts are symbolic to the gifts that the new year will bring. Ukrainians believe that at night on New Year's Eve the old year with all its troubles and worries leaves them forever while the New Year with all its hopes and expectations comes knocking at their door. I really like that.

Also, while Santa Claus is our traditional symbol of gift giving, Snegurochka is the Slavic symbol of everything gifty and wintery. She is the daughter of Spring and Father Frost (who is also called Ded Moroz - the Slavic version of Santa Claus). I like the tale of Snegurochka so can I tell you about her real quick? Ok...

Snegurochka is a snow maiden who yearns for the companionship of mortal humans. She begins to like a shepherd named Lel but is unable to feel love for him since her heart is made of snow. Her mother, Spring, takes pity on her and grants her with the ability to love. But as soon as she has the ability, she falls in love with Lel and her heart warms up and she melts. Wow, now that I typed that out, it sounds even more depressing than when I heard it for the first time. But it's totally deep at the same time... the choice between life with no love or love and and loss of life. Hmmm....

(These are little matryoshka dolls depicting the scenes from Snegoruchka's life. Cute huh?)

Anyway, on the morning of the new year, children will find that Ded Moroz and Snegurochka have come to visit and have left gifts under the tree. Great way to bring in the new year, right?

Then, one week later, after all the partying and gift-giving is done, Christmas comes - a more religious observance and celebration of Christ's birth. Traditionally on Christmas Eve people gather together as families, sing carols, cook the traditional Christmas dish "Kutya", eat together, and then go to church to listen to the Christmas sermon. By this time, the New Year's tree has been taken down and Christmas becomes a less glitzy and glittery celebration and more of a serene and spiritual observance. I really like that too.

So maybe I secretly wish that we celebrated the holidays like Ukrainians. As I've mentioned before I am a huge fan of Christmas. I love everything associated with it. But I think sometimes I get it all mixed up - the gift-giving, the decorating, the stress, the hustle and bustle of it all - tossed in with what should be the most simple and reverent of celebrations dedicated to the birth of the Savior. But I know it can't be that way, so instead I'll learn to prioritize and balance out the Christmas celebrations in the future. A new year's resolution perhaps?

This sounds (and feels) a bit more like an anthropology research paper or something and not so much a blog post. Why do my posts always end up being eternally long? Good grief, I am so wordy! But look at me - doing research and being all brushed up on Ukrainian culture! Not too bad, I suppose. I guess I just wanted to talk about how cool the holidays are here... That's all.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! ;)