Month: December 2020

Two weeks ago we lost our only leghorn hen, Mother Theresa. She was the sweetest hen— she’d run up to meet me anytime I left my front door, and she’d follow me around the yard.

As our lone leghorn, she provided the only white egg in our ombré-colored dozen. After her attack, I had to give her eggs away because it made me so sad.

The attack happened in broad daylight; a large hawk swooped down on her and left a pile of white feathers behind. My husband managed to scare the hawk away, but it was too late.

Since the attack we haven’t let our hens roam our yard again. Each morning, when I go out to feed them, they try to push through my legs to escape, but I won’t let them. They’re defenseless little chickens after all, and I have seen the same hawk continue to circle our yard since the attack.

I’m their owner, it’s my job to protect them… so until I feel like our yard is safe I’m keeping them locked up.

As I was deliberating whether I would let my hens roam the yard today, the irony of how America is living today hit me.

We the People of the United States, are allowing the government to act like our owners. Essentially, allowing the government to choose when and where and how we are allowed to move freely from our properties or provide for our families.

We the People of the United States, have forgotten the purpose of the United States government as described in the preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’’

Importantly, note that the Preamble declares who is enacting our Constitution—the people of “the United States”— not the government. It then further states the 5 purposes of the government as:

1. Establish Justice- to provide laws and punishments in a fair manner.

2. Insure domestic tranquility – to preserve civil peace so that everyone could live their lives without fear of social strife.

3. Provide for the common defense – to appropriate funds for national defense, having the power to declare war, and to support efforts to resolve conflict through diplomacy.

4. Promote the general welfare-providing for the general welfare such as improving transportation, promoting agriculture and industry, protecting the environment, and seeking ways to solve social and economic problems.

5. Secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity- preservation of the rights and freedom of each citizen.

The Preamble closes by stating, “Do ordain and establish this Constitution

For the United States of America.”—Meaning, to write down, and then to live by, a list of rules and promises for our government to keep and our people to obey, in OUR country- where we live.

At no point did we define the purpose of our government to:

Act like our owners,

Control choices on how to navigate life’s risks and challenges,

Control or restrict our religious beliefs and practices,

Lock us down in and on our properties,

Lockdown our livelihoods, and/or

Control who and how we interact with other humans.

Wake up America. The government is NOT the owner of our land and our coop, “protecting” us (chickens) from a “hawk” (COVID19).

The sad part is that for the 1st two weeks of the COVID19 scare/quarantine, we all acted like chickens… myself included. I had heard what they said about the “hawk” (COVID19) and I was happy to be locked up safely inside “my coop.” Our “owners” (the government) had promised they would keep us safe and promised it would only be 14 days. And we ALL believed them, and obeyed like good like chickens.

Well, those promises were made 9 months ago.

And for those too slow to follow along with what is really happening here, the government is not our “owner”.

They’ve become the hawk.

Wake the fuck up.

#bealion

#thegovernmentdoesNOTownus

Anyone who knows me, knows that I spend a good portion of my life attempting to stay in shape. This gets harder as I get older, but I refuse to go down without a fight.

There is a big portion of my “why” that comes from pure vanity, just wanting to look good or better.

There is another big portion of my “why” that comes from wanting to be strong enough to just do life’s tasks. A bag of dog food is 40 lbs; I can carry it on my shoulder and dump it in our dog food bin. A bag of chicken food is 50 lbs; I can carry it on my shoulder and dump it in our chicken food bin. My kids are in the 40-60 lb range; I can carry them.

The last big portion of my “why” is that I want my girls to see how to grow up strong… notice the word choice is strong & not thin.

I think interest in fitness & body image are strongly-influenced by our own individual upbringings and experiences. For example, my parents have always worked out, and they tried their best to encourage their kiddos to participate in their workouts. I remember waking up around 5 am as a middle-schooler running laps with my mom around the subdivision meadow. I remember running 5Ks in high school with my dad. I remember going to the YMCA when I was on Christmas break with my dad. I remember every day of our family vacation (including up to present day vacations) starting the day with my folks on a run or walk. These family habits had me involved in track & dance through college, and fitness there on after. So, it’s in my DNA to stay active, thanks to how I was raised.

But I also have had numerous life experiences that affected my view on fitness & body image:

1. My first pregnancy was rough, and required me to stay bedridden for 3+ months. When I finally delivered and got home, my feet were struggling to support the additional weight I had gained. I think it took close to a year for my heels not to hurt. That entire experience taught me what a gift it was being able to move and workout, and how I should never take it for granted.

2. I was a lifeguard in high school and in the military for 10 years after that. Both required a uniform. Both situations resulted in my body & how I fit in said-uniform to be compared to others bodies & how they fit. Those moments were probably when I learned to be critical about my body; when my self-talk changed from my childhood love of my body, to worrying about keeping up with other people’s bodies. These experiences taught me to worry about my weight.

3. When I got out of the Coast Guard, I wanted a new fitness challenge so I jumped into marathons. I loved the experience & the quiet & the feeling of accomplishment when I finished. In a few years I had finished 2 half marathons (Key West & STL) and 2 full marathons (Kansas City & Quebec City). These experiences taught me that you don’t get good muscle definition from just running, and that marathons were really hard on my knees & feet…

4. So then my big switch in my 30s was when I switched from marathons to fitness competitions. I’ve completed 3 now, and I loved the results and how it changed my body. But I didn’t like the restrictive diet and how I felt I had to plan each and every interaction with humans so that only the right food/drink went in my body. These experiences taught me how important lifting and diet are to maintaining a healthy BMI.

So you roll all of those experiences together & where does that put me with body image.

Well, let me start my saying life humbles you. I’m in my mid-40s now, and although I still wear a bikini on the beach I am well aware that I have more jiggle in my wiggle than I did as a 20 year old.

I think the most important things we need to teach ourselves and our children about fitness & maintaining a healthy body image are:

The DO’s-

DO stay active every single day. Do this by finding some form of cardio that you enjoy and make it a habit. Don’t start out crazy with huge goals, start small like 20-30 min a day and stay active. This will help every facet of your life: mood, energy, strength, peace, etc.

DO add weightlifting to your workout routine. Cardio is great for losing weight, but weightlifting will define your shape.

DO get sleep. There’s the obvious benefits to sleep that you can google … but to me, if you aren’t rested, you can kiss staying active goodbye. It will be the first thing you cut out of your day.

DO learn to love where you are in your fitness journey. This is easier said than done. I look back at fitness competition pictures with sad eyes sometimes… knowing the extra 20-30 lbs on my body nowadays is covering up some lean muscle. But I recognize the annoying level of commitment that that took, and resulted in what I would consider unhealthy eating habits. I love where I am fitness-wise because I feel strong and I eat healthy 60-70% of the time.

DO focus on protein vs calories. Try to eat 75% of your weight in grams of protein. Teach your kids about protein on labels not calories.

DO focus on consuming your weight in oz of water.

DO forgive yourself if you fall off your fitness plan. Don’t give up, get back at it.

The DON’Ts

DON’T compare your shape to others, nor teach your children to judge theirs to others. I think teaching our children to live healthy active lifestyles is critical. If they learn that, they should have strong healthy bodies that they love. Their bodies may have an extra roll than the “norm”, or may grow up to have more stretch marks than the “norm”, or may have more jiggle than the “norm”…. but it’s their strong healthy body. If you change how you think and talk about your body in front of your children, instead of hating their bodies that may not fit in single-digit sizes, they will love their bodies. They will love their bodies because they’ll realize their strength allowed them to compete in athletics, and play kickball with their kids, and swim in the ocean with their family, and carry their child on their shoulders.

DON’T talk (or worry about) sizes or weight numbers. Talk strength. I weigh anywhere around 165-175 lbs. As a 5’9” woman that weight is healthy, and lands me in a 10-12 size. I’ve been in this weight/height range since high school. Sadly, I grew up knowing those numbers should be lower… that most girls my age were 120-130 lbs and size 4-6. In fact, I was told repeatedly as a young girl, 5’ equals 100 lbs, and each additional inch above 5’ equals 5 lbs. That would equate to me weighing 145 lbs. Now, 145 lbs is achievable at my height, but that is my competition weight, when my body fat % is close to 10%. That guideline didn’t take into account muscle mass. Talk strength, not size.

DON’T talk about how others look. Yesterday, People Magazine posted a picture/article about a celebrity (one of the Baldwin kids) holding her new-ish born baby. She was in lingerie (which I agree was a titch odd, but most celebrities are odd), and she was lifting her baby in the air, smiling. The comments were horrific. Every single human (sadly, mostly women) blasted her for promoting an unrealistic and unhealthy body image. They had no idea if she had been busting her arse trying to lose the baby weight, they didn’t know if her genetics just tend to result in a slimmer figure, they just assumed she lost weight in an unhealthy manner and slammed the crap out of her. You will never get control of your own body image by tearing others down. If you teach your children to judge others weight, shape, size, they’ll soon start judging their own.

DON’T discourage people on their fitness journeys. I remember when I started posting workouts (for my own accountability) that I had several “haters” make fun of me. I’m too old to care at this point, but at the time it really sucked.

DON’T promote an unhealthy lifestyle because getting in shape is too hard. Back to the People Magazine example, there were plenty of comments stating the normal mom keeps the baby weight around for years after delivery. Now, if you think promoting not getting yourself back in shape after childbirth is healthy you’re being just as harmful. We shouldn’t teach our children being obese is ok, because losing weight is hard. There’s a fine line between teaching our kids to love their bodies, while also encouraging them to be fit & healthy. We need to learn how to teach our children that being strong is critical in life—-physically & emotionally.

It’s not about size.

It’s not about calories.

It’s not about what others look like.

It’s about strength.

Get after it…

And don’t forget to support those around you who are getting after it too.

#bestrong

Has there ever been a better title to a blog? I think not.

PSA: Based on the title, you should already recognize this … but if you’re offended by bad language, you should eject your little arse right out of this blog before it’s too late…

There are sooooooooo many directions I can take this blog, because there are sooooooooo many assholes nowadays😂

So I’m going to take it the direction that I want, because it’s my blog and I do what I want. 😂

If you’ve been a friend of mine on social media for any period of time, you probably know my stance on lockdowns, masks, and any other freedom-restricting mandate that has been pushed down on the American people since March. If you’re new to being my friend, here’s a quick recap——I’m 110% against all of these ridiculous mandates/restrictions… and although I do not even slightly understand those w/opposing views on these matters, I respect all other adults enough to assume they can figure out on their own how they want to navigate risks in their lives.

So fast forward to today. I have had yet another FB friend make a passive aggressive comment towards me when I shared a post about the negative impacts & opinions of others towards lockdowns. This friend wrote, “how’s your pool coming along?” The comment didn’t make sense, and didn’t pertain to the post content at all, so I was going to blow it off. But then I remembered one of his buddies wrote the same thing last week on one of my posts. It took me a bit to understand what the hell he was getting at…. but I think I finally figured it out. The message from my “friends” I am assuming is: “Lindsey, you have enough funds to put in a pool, so what are you bitching about lockdowns for….you’re clearly not starving, so just shut up and follow the rules.”

Once I realized that was the point, I was dumbfounded. It’s bad enough that we have virtue-signaling Karen’s running around pissed that WE ARE NOT protecting the greater good by wearing masks, NO BUT NOW we have them speaking out the other side of their masks (😂) pissed that WE ARE wanting to protect the greater good of small business owners by fighting against lockdowns.

Who is more important? Which greater good is the good-est 😂? The greater good being POTENTIALLY exposed to COVID? Or the greater good DEFINITELY losing their livelihood due to lockdowns? One is a potential and one is a definite.

I find it laughable that anyone would think that because my job & my husband’s job haven’t been impacted (yet) by lockdowns, that I wouldn’t fight for the rights of my fellow Americans? Where the fuck is the patriotism?

You know all of these damn politicians are still getting their nice government checks every 2 weeks—-they have no skin in the game, and if they’re not fighting these restrictions they’re failing the citizens they serve. For all of you that are begging for these restrictions, I bet none of you have had your business shut down. Because if you had… if you were less than a week from Christmas and staring at an empty checking account wondering how you were going to make the holiday special… or looking at your next mortgage payment wondering how you could cover it and therefore wondering if you and your babies will be out on the street in the dead of winter… you wouldn’t be so careless with your acceptance of lockdowns.

So I go back to the question posed to me… “how can I bitch about lockdowns, when my household hasn’t been impacted financially…”

Here’s how:

I’m not an asshole.

I love social media.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love social media. I love to see & hear what is happening in my friends’ lives; most of these friends, that without the help from social media, I would’ve lost contact with years ago.

I also love to post (as you all probably have noticed). I love to use social media to share my thoughts, my blogs, my songs, my fears, my fantastic sense of humor (lol), and my daily highs/lows of adulting. Social media has allowed me to express my many different values/views to so many people who may have otherwise just put me in a box based on our limited interactions. It has also helped me stay accountable at different times in my life for certain goals, like eating right, working out, and reading (resulting in the most boring & redundant posts ever, sorry ‘bout that).

As much as I love about social media, I also detest at an equal level. I hate how it listens to me, and then adds ads to my newsfeed. I hate being tracked & traced——I mean if the US government wanted to snatch me and my little terrorist children up for a water-boarding exercise, I’ve basically given them a road map to our hourly location with all my ridiculous posts. But above all, I detest the level of immaturity & disrespect these platforms encourage.

I’m not going to sit up on a high horse & say I haven’t lost my cool during a social media attack, and ended up writing something I’m not proud of; I’m human and screw up on the regular. But on the whole, I try to be someone who loves to scream about my passions at the top of the tallest mountain I can find, while also listening to my friends view points bellowing over from a nearby mountain.

I don’t know when our world changed to a place where if someone doesn’t agree with your viewpoint they’ve become open game for ridicule and insults. In the last 24 hours on Facebook, I’ve seen grown-arse adults, all of whom I went to high school with, tear each other apart (to the level of insulting their children). There were insults, sarcasm, nastiness, and of course passive aggressive jabs from the mean cowards in the back. It’s absolutely sickening, and sad.

Let’s rewind back to when we were children on a playground at school. Imagine one freckled face little 7 year-old boy wearing an “I believe in Santa” shirt, surrounded by mean older kids who are laughing at him or throwing rocks at him because of his beliefs. Or imagine a little girl in the school cafeteria praying before her meal, only to look up and see a table full of kids making fun of her for her beliefs. Is this where we have all landed again? “Be exactly like me, or you’ll be attacked?” It’s shameful.

I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you’re on.

I don’t care if you believe in my God, or your God, or no God.

I don’t care if you’re pro-life or pro-choice.

I don’t care if you love masks or hate them.

If you are my friend, I respect you and your point of view.

If you claim to be my friend, and spew hate at my beliefs or others, well then you aren’t really my friend.

#growup

#bekind

#anddontbeanasshole