I am Sara, 35, married for 10 years, with two girls age 10 and 4. I have been a mother for 10 years and somewhere along the way that is all I have become. I lost myself during some unknown moment and am trying to find the path back. I am an ambitious procrastinator, a hopeful traveler,  a self taught wannabe linguist, and a history loving, bibliophile, with the deep desire to put down roots in a foreign country. One so filled with history you can feel it in your soul. I also want to start being a freelance writer. So if you have any advice just comment below or shoot me an email through my contact form. To give you an idea of who I am, I present you a list of random facts about me.

1. I am completely disorganized. I have grandiose plans although they never get fully accomplished.
2. I am introverted, not shy.
3. I do get social anxiety sometimes though. I think that has more to do with the fact that I suck at small talk and chasing around a 4 year old who is borderline wild does not equate to good times.
4. I am a cup half empty kind of person. The eternal pessimist. The upside? I never expect anything to work out so if it does I am genuinely surprised and thankful.
5. I play the lottery weekly because if I don’t, then you know my numbers will be drawn next week. This goes back to the pessimist/cup half empty thing.
6. I am Agnostic.
7. I’ve got a potty mouth. I used the F word as verb, adverb, adjective, command, interjection, and noun. Sometimes all at once.
8. I get uncomfortable when people say my name. It’s hard to explain, but it almost doesn’t feel like it is my name or that they are talking to me.
9. I can’t relax. Even if I try meditation or yoga I can never clear my head. I don’t get massages for this reason as well.
10. I consider myself skinny-fat and am going to try to hard to change that.
11. I really want to get a Standard Poodle and name her Scheherazade. I saw it in an old black and white movie a long time ago and it stuck. I can’t remember the movie so if you know what it is called I would love to hear it.
12. I wish I could time travel. I only have interest of going back in time not forward.
13. My favourite movie is The Sound of Music. I don’t know why.
14. I think I was visited by an alien when I was 5. I remember waking up to it standing in the corner of my room staring at me.
15. I hate using text speak. If you text me expect a slight delay in response time because my reply will be full length.
16. I get car sick.
17. I prefer overcast and rainy to sunny.
18. My dream is to live in Europe. I haven’t finalized my preferred destination yet though.
19. I homeschool my children……well child #2 isn’t old enough yet. I do not homeschool for religious purposes (see #6) but because I feel that education isn’t one size fits all.
20. I prefer tea to coffee.
21. Red is my favourite colour, but I usually wear a lot of black.
22. After highschool I applied to college for Interior Design. My portfolio got “lost” in the mail and they could not process my application without it. Dream squashed.
23. I guess that worked out because I am not really creative. I can do some creative type things like sewing and mediocre drawing if I have something to copy (patterns or pictures). But I cannot come up with an idea on my own.
24. I really want to search my family Genealogy but I do not know where to start. I guess I am hoping that I will find out one of my grandparents had citizenship to another country and I can get my own granted because of this (goes with #18). Wishful thinking.
25. I don’t know how to coupon.
26. I used to be a people pleaser but now I am just bitchy.

On my quest to be more healthy I obviously included eating better. Which is huge for me because I really like to not eat well. I enjoy all the bad for you places. When I used to work retail in a mall there was too many occasions to count that I ate McDonalds three times in one shift (if it was a 12 hour shift). So my goal is not super 100% organic because I am a realist, but I am definitely trying to make better choices. If only my kids were on the same page. Anyway, I decided I would be rebellious and have a spinach salad with lunch today instead of my typical  potato chips and I had way more energy this afternoon.  Shocking? I know. This leads me to wishing that I was a more motivated and effective meal planner and chef because I’m sure it would save us some money and cure the dinner doldrums. As it stands, I need to figure out how to make the food budget stretch because there is a large price difference to where we lived last month and where we live now. A big difference. I literally flinch as I toss things in to the cart when I see the price of them. This grocery store gives air mile points so I thought, “hey, it may be pricey but at least it is going towards helping me achieve my travelling dream.” Then you look at your air miles balance and see it only went up a couple of miles after spending $80…….I just can’t win.

P.S. That $80 wasn’t on a full grocery shop if you were thinking that cost wasn’t too bad. That was just a mid week top up shop. Full grocery is twice as much. *Flinch*

Also, if you know of any great budget meal planning sites, let me know.

The rules of etiquette state that the amount of personal space in between strangers is 4+ feet. We all know that this rule goes out the window during times when it can’t be avoided, like today when I needed to go shopping.  My neighbourhood grocery store is relatively small for the size of the community it serves. The isles are so narrow that they only have those small, two basket carts in order to allow people to shop. It’s also totally expensive but that is neither here nor there. It is also ridiculously busy. I have yet to find a time that I can shop comfortably and leisurely without feeling like I have to rush to get the hell out of there. Today I went in for a quick few items so I was in the express line, along with 9 million other people. Generally when you are standing in line you try to allow a little room in front and hopefully in back for people to move and manoeuvre their carts and baskets. Today it was like the game Rush Hour but much less fun.  Apparently the guy behind me didn’t get the memo on personal space. He was so close that his breath was blowing the hair by ears making me cringe. Then the bum bumping began. His basket kept hitting me in the ass. Not, once or twice but ongoing in a kind of rhythm. All I kept thinking was “thank god it is not his penis”.

I would really like to be making my first post from my most recent travel destination, a cafe in Paris, a pub in London, the beach in Barbados. Somewhere. I could totally lie and say I was, but I’m not. I am at home alternating which child I drag back in to bed after their 30th time of coming out for whatever random reason they can think of (no exaggeration). I would like to be able to ignore them and say no but you can’t really say “no you can’t go to the bathroom” to your potty training 3 year old no matter how much you know she doesn’t actually have to go. The older got sent to bed at 8:00 because she is her own worst enemy – more on that constant battle at a different time.

Hmmm where to start. I guess I will begin with my inability to stay on track with an exercise regime. I cannot, I repeat cannot exercise in a gym. I truly will not give it my all with people around me, it is a weird quirk of mine since many people have the opposite problem. I call myself skinny-fat. It’s actually a known term and is defined by a skinny person who looks good in clothes but is flabby and untoned with little to no muscle mass. That is me. I’ve never battled weight but I am sure out of shape. I have been a member of the free online exercise following called Bodyrock (now known as the Daily Hiit) since 2011,  but always seemed to find enough excuses to slowly fizzle out. Tomorrow is the start of a new 30 day challenge with them which I plan to begin once again. I made a promise to myself as this new year passed, that I would get in to shape for the first time in my life. I need the energy, strength, clarity, confidence, and mood elevation that exercise brings because I am just so tired. I feel like I have been living life on auto pilot for years. My sleep is restless, my temper is short, my eating habits are very, very bad. I need an overhaul. This post reminds me that I have to dig out my weights and yoga mat for tomorrow because we recently moved and I don’t think I came across them yet. That also reminds me that I need to finish unpacking, which goes right back to the being to tired and zombie like to motivate myself to finish.

This is not going to be an fitness or exercise blog. I hope it is a life blog. A blog that follows my journey to finding and waking up the parts of me that went dormant from lack of use when I became a mom. A blog that follows me while I try to find my own identity and pursue my own goals and dreams.