Fertilehealthy

Just when you think your know everything about me, I get tagged again!  This is courtesy of Natalie. 

A - Age: 38

B – Bed size: Queen

C - Chores you hate: Ironing

D - Dessert you love: Fruit salad with cashew cream custard

E - Essential start your day item: Barleylife

F - Favourite actor(s): John Travolta & Denzel Washington

G - Gold or Silver: White gold

H - Height: 1.77 m (5 ft 8 inches)

I - Instruments you play: Guitar – badly!

J - Job title: Home executive, Nutritional Consultant, Fitness Student 

K - Kids: Yes, please!  Make that 3…

L - Living arrangements: In our renovated Victorian house in the city (as opposed to the suburbs) with my husband and 3 cats.

M - My name is: Hanlie

N - Nicknames: Angel baby (of course only my husband calls me that!)

O - Overnight hospital stay: Laparoscopy, Myomectomy (removal of uterine fibroids), Appendicitis, Allergic reaction resulting in severe facial swelling, Appendectomy and then again to fix the mess the doctor made.

P - Pet Peeve:  Telemarketers!

Q - Favourite quote:  “If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come”. ~ Chinese proverb

R - Right or left handed: RightS - Siblings: One sister and a half sister

T - Time you woke up today: 06h45

U - Unique habit: I always give people the benefit of the doubt

V - Vegetable you hate: I like all vegetables! 

W - Wishing for:  A pregnancy later this year

X - X-rays you’ve had: Teeth, chest, ankle

Y - Yummy food you make: Soups and salads

Z - Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Now you know my ABC’s … Let me know if you’re doing this!

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I saw this on Kelly’s blog and thought it would be interesting! 

Here are the instructions:
1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.

This is from the brilliantly thoughtful Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Alblom.

The quote was from Ted Turner, the billionaire media mogul, founder of CNN, who had been lamenting his inability to snatch up the CBS network in a corporate megadeal. I had bought the story to Morrie this morning because I wonderered if Turner ever found himself in my old professor’s position, his breath disappearing, his body turning to stone, his days being crossed off the calendar one by one - would he really be crying over owning a network?

“It’s all part of the same problem, Mitch,” Morrie said.

This little meme is completely voluntary and open to anyone who wants it. 

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I was tagged by Natalie!

Welcome to the new edition of getting to know your friends.
Here are the rules.
(1) Link to the person that tagged you.
(2) Copy and paste on your blog.
(3) Fill out.
(4) Tag random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

1. What time did you get up this morning? About 7 am.

2. Diamonds or pearls? Sapphires

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Man On Fire.  That must have been in 2004! 

4. What is your favorite TV show? Grey’s Anatomy, American Idol, Survivor, The Amazing Race.

5. What do you usually have for breakfast? Fruit and nuts, but at the moment it’s only juice, of course.

6. Favorite cuisine? Mediterranean

7. What are your middle names? I don’t have a middle name

8. What food do you dislike most? Anything deep fried or vegetables with sugar added.

9. What is your favorite CD at the moment? Paul Simon’s Graceland.  I used to have a copy, oh about 20 years ago, but it got stolen.  Hubby gave me another copy for Christmas and I’m really enjoying it.  I know I’m stuck in the eighties, but that was my heydey!  Here’s a picture circa 1985 (look I had a neck!).

10. What kind of car would you drive?  A luxury SUV.

11. Favorite sandwich? Hummus, tomato, lettuce, avocado, cucumber, sprouts

12. What characteristic do you despise? Victim mentality

13. Favorite item of clothing? I love wearing sarongs at home.  They’re cool and unrestrictive.

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be? New Zealand

15. What color is your bathroom? The walls are a savannah green colour and the tiles are beige.  The accent colours are gold and maroon.  That probably sounds strange, but it actually works. Here’s a picture.

16. Favorite brand of clothing? I haven’t worn brands in years, since most of my clothes are made by my mother, but I want a pair of Levi’s one day!

17. Where would you retire? The country.  I’d go tomorrow!

18. What was your most memorable birthday? My 21st, which was in France.  I spent the day in Le Mans with my friend Theresa and then got champagne and cake from my “family” that evening.  Lots of people from home phoned me.  Here’s another pic.  (May the spiral perm never show its face again! Oh, and the scarf was a birthday gift.)

19. Favorite sport to watch? Formula 1

20. Furthest place you are sending this? Probably Canada.

21. When is your birthday? 5 September

22. Are you a morning person or a night person? A night owl.

23. What is your shoe size? British size 9

24. Pets? 3 cats - Bonnie, Lavis and Pepper

25. What did you want to be when you were big? A mommy

26. How are you today? Great

27. What is your favorite lolly/sweet/chocolate? Jelly babies

28. What is a date on the calendar you are looking forward to? Nothing springs to mind…  I appreciate every day. 

29. Piercings? Ears

30. Place of birth: Somerset West, Western Cape, South Africa

31. Love someone/something so much it made you cry? Yes, every day.

32. Favorite Restaurant: greek (that’s the name of the restaurant)

33. Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Good red wine

34. Favorite ice cream: I don’t eat ice cream - I’m dairy intolerant.

35. What color is your bedroom: The walls are crepe and we have wooden blinds and a wooden floor.  Our linen is white.

36. From whom did you get your last e-mail? Cape Town Fish Market - promotional stuff.

37. What do you do most often when you are bored? I’m never bored.  I wish there were more hours in the day for all the things I’d like to do!

38. Bedtime: About 11 pm.

39. What are you listening to right now: “What are you going to do with your life” by Echo and the Bunnymen.

40. What is your favorite color/s? All shades of blue and purple.

41. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Duh, the chicken.  Nowhere does it say that God laid eggs!

42. What are you wearing? Clothes for a change!  Blue top and navy pants.

43. What is the greatest place on earth?  Home.

44. How would you react to a flat tyre? I’d change it!

45. How many people are you tagging: Nobody!  This is totally voluntary.

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• A glass of freshly extracted barleygrass juice.
• Salad made with a wide variety of fruit and raw cashew nuts.
• An avocado.
• A cup of chai tea.

 Mmm, that avocado sounds delicious right now!  Did you know that it is one of the superfoods that we should eat every day? 

Avocados are an important source of Essential Fatty Acids and also have 60% more potassium than bananas. They are rich in B vitamins, as well as vitamin E and vitamin K.

A fatty triol, avocadene is found in avocado and has been tested for anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. These properties are likely related with the curative effects of avocado described for a number of ailments (diarrhea, dysentery, abdominal pains and high blood pressure).

Avocado is also thought to promote physical beauty and is used in cosmetics to this day. In fact, whenever I work with avocado, I always wipe my hands on my arms or legs, rubbing the avocado in, as it’s good for the skin! 

The Aztecs ate the vegetable as an aphrodisiac and called it “the fertility vegetable”.  Previously, avocados were not purchased or consumed by any person wishing to preserve a chaste image. Growers had to sponsor a public relations campaign to debunk the avocado’s unsavory reputation before they eventually became popular.  

I love avocados! 

If you want to know whether this weight loss and maintaining thing ever gets easier, read this brilliant post by Savy over at Shaping My Way.  It’s an eye opener!

Go Workout Mom is starting a series of posts on strength training.  I am all ears (or eyes, or that matter), because that’s something that I find rather intimidating at present.  I just don’t quite know where to start.  Read about how our great grandmothers trained!

Then, finally, I know that in the US catalogues are big. Tania at Freshtopia has a solution for stopping tons of catalogues landing in your post box every year. Go green and say no to catalogues!

I have been tagged by Kelly!  I find it hard to believe that there is something about myself that I haven’t shared yet (well there’s plenty, but I’ve swept my misspent youth under the rug and you’ll have to torture me to get it out!). So I hope you manage to stay awake through what promises to be 6 extremely arbitrary facts about myself.

Here are the rules.
(1) Link to the person that tagged you.
(2) Post the rules on your blog.
(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Okay, so here goes:

1. I drank ant poison (Dieldrin) when I was about two years old. Not because of the ennui of potty training and the lack of cartoons (we only got TV in SA when I was 6), but because it was within reach in a soda bottle. I’m nothing if not opportunistic.  I had to have my stomach pumped. Wonder if the experience scarred me emotionally…

2.  I’m extremely myopic.  I started wearing glasses at age 8, only in order to see on the blackboard and tv screen.  My eyes deteriorated over the next ten years to the extent that I would have had to wear glasses permanently, but fortuntately I got contacts, which I wore and didn’t clean properly throughout my aforementioned misspent youth.  In my mid-thirties I had developed so many problems with my eyes that I had to restrict my contact lens wearing and now I wear glasses again.  When I heard the news, I got Lizana, who is very cool and has excellent taste, to go with me and choose a funky frame.  Now that I’m doing pilates and aqua aerobics, I’m back to wearing contacts for a few hours a day.  This seems to be a happy medium.  Oh, by the way, the prescription for my left eye is -4.5 and for my right eye -7.5, meaning that my right eye is just about useless. 

Look at the glasses and ignore the orange hair… I have already forgiven myself!

3.  I am a great aunt to two little girls.  My father has a daughter  from a previous marriage, who had her children when she was very young.  Her son started a family at a young age too, so that makes me a great aunt.  My great nieces will be older than my own children!

4.  I’m addicted to Sudoku.  Not the online kind, it has to involve a very sharp pencil and a soft eraser.

5.  I don’t bake.  Never have, never will.  You can keep your cookies and cakes, they don’t tempt me at all!

6.  I once got given a boat my a one-legged man.  Long story.  Met him in a bar in Plettenberg Bay, where I was living at the time.  He mentioned that he had this boat at the lagoon, but that he couldn’t handle it himself on account of his leg.  He lied.  He couldn’t handle it on account of the boat being too big and heavy for one person.  As a boat owner,  I had a willing stream of ne’er-do-well lads who went fishing with me, rowed their merry hearts out and helped me drag the boat up and down the beach.  When I left Plett, I gave it to one of them.  And got fat.

This is what my boat looked like, except that it was orange (much like my hair years later…)

There’s a class I want to check out, called Body Sculpt: A low impact, overall body conditioning class using various techniques, to tone and condition different muscle groups. The use of Thera bands, Pezzi balls, your own bodyweight(!), and specific mat exercises provides a good workout that appeals to both men and women. Because you can never be too rich or too sculpted, you know…

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