Thanks for the words of advise above, Billy Mays, but I fixed things all on my own this time — Mighty Putty neither required nor desired! My bike had been gathering dust in the garage since we still lived in another town, specifically since 2009. That’s when both tubes were popped when my husband had my bike out for a ride, and being as neither of us knew how to change tubes, there it sat. Until yesterday. I attended a bike maintenance class at The Pathfinder, where two angels named Jim and Miranda empowered me with all the basic bike maintenance knowledge a non-mechanically inclined person like me needed to regain use of my own two wheels. Thanks to them, I came home and checked tire sizes, valve types (turns out I’m a Schroeder kind of gal), then I made my list and returned to the store for what I needed. Turns out, fixing your bike yourself is not all that expensive, who knew?! I’m sure normal, responsible bike owners already knew this…but I didn’t join that club until yesterday. I returned home and it took me under 5 minutes to take both wheels off the frame, disassemble the tires/tubes, and put everything back together (inflated to the proper psi for road-biking, too). Then, I cleaned my chain that had become a little rusty and lubed it up. I EVEN disengaged the brakes (to get the tires off) and was able to reassemble them to perfect working order! Let me tell you, I am so confident in my abilities now, I may just try building a house with my own two hands. Talk about some DIY empowerment! This is also going to be HUGE when Kansas’ weather calms down enough for me to get out and ride in the evenings, I have a bike trailer that I can pop on and tote around child #4, and child #3 can ride alone with me.

I missed a couple days blogging, so let me touch on some great things that have happened with the diet.

1. My spiralizer attachment on my Kitchen Aid stand mixer has been getting a workout lately. The fastest way, for me, to cut out excess carbs and calories has been to replace all pasta with veggie noodles of all kinds. I’ve done cucumber, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, butternut squash, and (pictured below) sweet potatoes. I received this attachment as a Christmas gift this year and it has been used every week since.

2. Still plowing through new recipes from my Skinnytaste cookbook. Today, I am plotting out two weeks worth of menus and plan on trying so many more, I haven’t made anything yet that we all didn’t like! Here is the Slow Cooker Banh Mi Rice Bowl, my presentation is lacking, but on this day I was too hungry to really care about appearances.

3. I haven’t done well the last 2 weeks at trying to coordinate my home menus with my daycare menus to where I overlap as many items as I can, thus eliminating extra cooking and prepping for two different groups of people. But I am getting back on track today with my menu planning! Since I’m feeding infants and toddlers in my daycare, obviously I have to take many things into consideration: introducing new foods at appropriate ages, scaling back the heat/spiciness on some recipes, and trying to guess quantities (i.e. if I’m preparing a meal for the fam one evening and want to also serve it to the daycare kiddos the next day, it’s pretty much a shot in the dark trying to guess how much the little ones will eat — anyone who has ever fed a small child knows that you haven’t a clue what or how much they’ll eat from day to day). I discovered, though, that they tiny humans are FASCINATED by cucumber noodles!

4. I have added one cup of morning coffee back into my daily routine. I have a wonderful Nespresso machine, and I was thrilled to discover that almond milk foams up marvelously! Not adding any sweetener or flavors…this is a struggle for me, as I have an enormous sweet tooth and love to experiment with flavor add-ins. I am holding strong, though, and learning to appreciate the flavors of the different espresso pods by letting the nuances of each variety stand out.

Alrighty, well, I’ve caught up on the goings on of my dieting and exercise the last 3 days. Now to make up for the days of my 30-Day Song Challenge…

…for Friday the 19th, a song that makes me think about life, “Everyday” by Toby Lightman. I love that this touches on the struggle we all have with letting ourselves be so influenced by others that it can start to cloud and distort who we truly are. But we can all return to clarity in our lives when we stop trying to fit others’ idea of what/who we should be.

…for Saturday the 20th, a song that has many meanings to me, “Still Fighting It” by Ben Folds. I love that Ben can write quirky, goofy lyrics, and then turn right around and do something deep and contemplative. Seriously, the placement of the simple line “I’m sorry…” in this song will make your heart ache.

…for today, Sunday the 21st, a song you like with a person’s name in the title, “Carey” by Sara Gazarek. This is a kooky, goofy song that is just all around fun! This was playing one day while I was reading Thale’s Folly by Dorothy Gilman, and I always reminds me of all the eccentric characters in that book every time I hear this song.

That’s all for now, everybody. May tomorrow not a bring a case Mondays to any of you…bye now.

~~ Amie