#oatmeal cookies dipped in milk > literally any other cookie

[crabofthewoods]

no you’re so right

Yap all you want, but oatmeal raisin cookies are actually good

This is to the people who refuse to try it based off of its reputation, if you genuinely don't enjoy it then that's totally cool too!

[canaryatlaw]

ALRIGHT, well today was something. Something indeed. Woke up to my alarm at 9:25, got out of bed and got ready, poured my cocoa krispies I not a bowl only to discover my milk had curdled one day past the expiration date (booo, but at least I discovered it before I poured it over the cereal) so I had to pour that back into the box and go with some cinnamon toast eggos and some cranberry oatmeal cookies (because I mean, cranberries and oatmeal are healthy, that's good enough) and stuck a yogurt smoothie drink in my bag to drink on the train. So I leave at 10 to get to school by 11. I get off the train and I see Dan hanging out, then I dig in my bag for like 2 minutes to discover I'm out of bars, and I'm also 100% out of cash, and change. But, I never got around to drinking my yogurt smoothie, so hey, he could probably use it more than me. So I go talk to him, and he says he was thinking about me the other day because some guy gave him a clif bar and those are what I always give out, and how he was hoping he'd see me soon, and that he really loved the yogurt things so that made me happy. Anthony wasn't out at that point which I was sad to see, but more on that later. Get to school, drop my stuff in the PAD office. I had to have my paper time stamped and in the drop box by noon, and it's a little after 11 at this point. I end up waiting for my spring break friend because we had been discussing stapling them or not (because they're generally too thick to be stapled) and she said she had those little black clips so she had to go print hers out and then we went and handed them in, time stamped 11:27. I don't know when they'll actually get out of that box and graded, I'm just happy that it's out of my hands now. I was supposed to meet with my field placement advisor at 11:30, but being that her office was literally one floor away I wasn't too worried, and I got there at 11:29 just as she was finishing her meeting with the other girl she's the advisor for. Pleasant enough meeting (well, for our line of work, but you know), I was telling her about the change of goal hearing I was witnessing the other day and she wanted to know what I would do if I was the judge and I was honestly like so torn because clearly this kids want to go home and you want to give the parents another chance, but at what point have they been given enough chances if this case has been in the system since 2013? Just a hard situation. I ended up saying I'd want to talk to the kids, which is the conclusion the judge came to as well. We talked a bit about the child death case of a baby (a few months after her 1st birthday I believe) that happened in a town a bit further out, and how when your normal person hears a news report like oh a child is missing they don't necessarily think any nefarious is going on but from this perspective you immediately know something is wrong for a child of that age, they can barely take two steps without falling, they don't go wandering off. As one lawyer in my office put it "once they said they couldn't find her after 10 minutes I knew she was dead." And sadly he was right. It was a really troubling case that's very indicative of the issues of the system because a DCFS investigator had literally been at the house earlier that day- typical dirty house case (yes that's a thing, it's a form of neglect and it requires a high level of filth and living in pretty much insect infested trash) and the girl's death will probably be ruled accidental, but that doesn't mean neglect charges can't be brought in criminal court because you can just leave a 1 year old alone...okay sorry for the rant, I'll move on now. So after the meeting I went back to the PAD office and wound up hanging out in the lounge for most of the rest of the day with several other members of my class and kind of alternated between attempting to explain concepts we only had a cursory handle on to each other, quizzing each other, bitching about the class, and bitching about other things haha. It was, honestly probably one of the more entertaining studying sessions I've had in a while, and it's good to hear what other people have been focusing on and a lot of them had like memorized formulas for claims that I could use so I worked on remembering those. At some point being that I'd only had a fairly light breakfast I was hungry, and decided to go to the salad place across the street that I've only been to once before because it's like *uber healthy* and that's very much not my thing haha but I had actually really liked what I got there the first time and felt like going there again. So I go outside, and Anthony is out in his normal spot, which is actually just to the right of this place. So, a bit of background I think I forgot to mention in some of these posts since I don't always catalogue our day to day conversations. A few weeks ago he told me it was his birthday and I wanted to get him something, so I told him I would because I wanted him to at least have a gift from somebody. Then of course I faced the same issue as Christmas- what do you buy for someone that's homeless/living in a shelter? The options are kind of limited. I ended up going with a personal sized fan, a really nice one from Brookstone. I was trying to find one with a long lasting battery like the watch I got him but they just didn't exist, so I gave him two times worth of batteries as well. I had left it in the office at that point though, so I went over to him and said I was gonna grab lunch but that I had his present and would come right back down with it, and of course I offered to buy him lunch because I mean, if I'm buying it for myself, how can I not offer to do the same for him when I clearly have the ability to do so? That's not love. So of course I did. I asked if there was anything in particular he liked and he said chicken salad which I wasn't sure they had but I told him I'd try, so I go in there and it's a chipotle style line thing with different combinations you can customize and have everything as a wrap or a salad, and they had other things too. They didn't really have anything close to chicken salad, so I figured a warm meal could probably do him good (despite it being the 3rd day of May, the air still had quite a chill in it today) so I got him a barbocoa chicken market plate which came with chicken and veggies and looked good. I think what I got was called the healthy turkey club or something like that, but it's just romaine lettuce, turkey in cube form, white cheddar, and egg whites all chopped up in a wrap, and then I get the ranch on the side because I can't have too much salad dressing so I need to be able to control it (but it then makes it difficult to dip without pieces of it falling into the dressing, but I digress). So I run outside, give Anthony his food which he seemed quite excited about, then ran back over to school, stashed my food, and grabbed his present and ran back out to give it to him and man, the smile that lit up his face when he saw what it was and he just said "how did you know I needed one of these?" Of course I didn't know, but somehow it was the thing I ended up buying for him (say what you will about coincidences, but I would refer to that as a small "God moment"). And man, he was just so happy and it made my heart so happy to see that. So I hugged him and said that while this was my last day down at school I'll try to be around and if I am I'll come by and say hello. I just find my interactions with my homeless friends to be so incredibly rewarding. They've taught me much more about strength, perseverance, and hope than I could ever give to them in food, change, or any other material possession. I feel so blessed to have known them. So that whole interaction, coupled with Dan's from earlier made me happy. I did have to go back and study though, so we hugged goodbye and I headed back across the street, where we did more studying/explaining/bitching/probably some other stuff in there somewhere lol. Different people from our class kind of ended up walking in and out at different times so it ended up being interesting to see who showed up. As the day went on I made a 7-11 run with one of my friends for sugar and caffeine, deciding on an iced tea with a decent caffeine rate, pretzel m&ms, and "bright side" skittles which are pretty good, and that managed to be a pretty solid pre-test dinner lol. When we got back we mostly quizzed each other on different things and laughed, then at 5:30 we headed up to the classroom as the exam started at 6. So we get up there, I put my stuff down, and run to the bathroom and...oh crap, I'm bleeding. Of all the shitty timing. I don't think I ever mentioned this here just because it didn't really occur to me, but a few weeks ago I started bleeding a bit, not heavy, while still taking my birth control regularly. I figured it was gonna happen at some point since I've been taking my bc packs back to back without the placebo pills (because if you know you're not pregnant you really don't need them) but even when I've taken the placebo pills for a number of days I haven't gotten anything, so it's been like a year......so this was shitty timing lol but at least I didn't have any accompanying cramps, that would've been the real issue. Guess I'll survive. Back to the classroom and we get started, new exam software that everyone's wary about because that shit is always looking to screw toy over, I swear, so everyone's always very careful with it. But we managed. The test was 15 multiple choice, which we did on a scantron, then had 3 essay questions which we could type on the computer. The multiple choice Q's were 1/3 of the grade, the first essay was 1/3, and then the second and third essays were 1/6 each. Alright, not bad. Multiple choice first, not bad. There were maybe one or two I had a legit debate between two answers, but overall I felt like I did pretty good with them so that satisfied me. The first essay, the long one, I immediately recognize the fact pattern as a note that we had read in the casebook (cuz our professor was obsessed with the notes) and she legit took it word for word because I remember reading it and what it had said because it was a really horrific crime (that I'll spare you the details of recounting). But the ultimate question was two ineffective assistance of counsel claims, one for the guilt phase and one for the sentencing phase since it was a capital case. I'm pretty dang familiar with all of that even before I got to law school or this class thanks to two little podcasts called serial and undisclosed that have covered the subjects fairly thoroughly, so I felt pretty good about that. I was debating if I should assess the two slightly different claims from the sentencing one separately or just combine them, but they were really getting at the same point so I just combined them so I guess we'll see. The second was a Brady violation one, which was pretty easy, and it was just a good faith/bad faith comparison because it was that and a destruction of evidence claim and for that you need bad faith and for Brady it doesn't matter if it was good faith or bad faith. Finally the last one was a client perjury one that we'd sort of gone over during the semester, just basically what do you do if you think your client is going to perjure themselves, all the avenues you can possibly (and ethically) take if they insist on testifying, so that was pretty straightforward. And yeah, that was it and I was done. Not bad at all. It's weird because I feel like I did like, a fair job on the test that wouldn't necessarily lead to a top grade on a curve, but past experience has taught me I generally underestimate my test taking skills, especially when it comes to writing, so I'm telling myself I'll probably get a good grade. So I think all my classes this semester are at least potential A's or A-'s, and I will be perfectly happy if that's what happen (but probably a little happier if it leans more heavily on the A's, like last semester). Headed home, stopped for ice cream that was actually the peach Melba frozen yogurt I got the other day that was really good because I deserve it dammit, then went home and did eat some actually food haha and figured I needed to keep up with Arrow if I want to watch the end of the season episode with Katrina and Katie in them *sigh* but I don't have to be happy about it. It was fine I suppose, I'm not really on the Olicity train anymore because all the crazies had me jumping off pretty quickly so I was kind of meh on that part, like I'm not actively against it but I just don't want it to like, take over the plot. I did like the rest of the team working together to get them out though, and how Johnny and Lyla came to an agreement about her working at ARGUS and them trusting each other (and I did appreciate Oliver and Felicity coming to the same agreement as well). The final rescue scene was pretty cool, and I have to say, I'm sure even with supports in place Stephen pulling Emily up sheerly by his arm strength was pretty fucking epic and had to have taken a LOT of strength, so kudos to him on training. And yeah, decent episode, I just want to see Katie and Katrina already *sigh*. After that I switched over to friends cuz that was on and did my PT exercises during it which I'm also trying to treat as ab exercises to some extent without over-extending myself, because I am so very good at doing that. And yeah, that was my day. Pretty busy one, but good and mostly enjoyable, and I'm so glad I'm finally done with everything because this year just felt like it dragged on forever and I'm ready to actually have some free time to relax in my evenings and such. I do have a semi-active day tomorrow though, I have to go back to the doctor who ended up treating me for the latest coughing episode that I no longer have a real diagnosis for, for a follow up, and I have to say, I was quite skeptical at first but I haven't really coughed in quite a few days now and I'm actually really damn impressed lol because that's actually super effective so I'm definitely pleased with that. Then I have PT at 4:30 and our small group final dinner at 7:30. I was sad though, the guy from our small group who I may have been developing a small crush on emailed today saying he actually wouldn't be able to make it, which sucks because he actually works at the nice restaurant we're going to and I was planning on being like "oh I'm gonna sit next to you so I can pick your brain on menu items because of my dietary restrictions" or something like that haha and then end up talking to him, so that sucks. He did however friend me on Facebook, so I'm concocting a Facebook message to send to him tomorrow being like "hey, I was so sad to see you couldn't make it, I was gonna use you to make sure I ordered something good 😂" or something half-serious like that and then probably follow up with "and omg did you see the marvel defenders trailer??? Im SO pumped" because we've had previous conversations about the marvel Netflix shows. So I guess we'll see where that goes, lol. Okay this is WAY to long and I need to shut up and go to bed now, lol. I hope your day was lovely as well. Goodnight friends. Best of wishes to you and yours.

[ashtonadk]

My main tips to getting FIT.

x WILL POWER // this is something we all struggle with. It is a mind game that you have to win. You CAN & WILL do this! Your biggest enemy is yourself in this fight. Overcoming this obstacle can be one of the most rewarding challenges! 

x DRINK WATER // a healthy amount of water for everyone is HALF your body weight in OZ. Your body needs water to become a healthier you, period. It flushes out all of the toxins & everything bad. So if you’re not a “water person” become one! Try squeezing a lemon or adding fruit into it, so it’s not so “plain” tasting. Water is one of the main keys for weight loss & your organs need it to stay healthy.

x DRINK GREEN TEA & COFFEE // Additional to water, a cup of green & coffee (plain) every day, can be so beneficial to your health. Green tea is so rich in antioxidants & powerful nutrients that your body needs. It boosts your metabolism, has zero cals, & burns fat. Coffee, also boosts your metabolism, has near zero cals, & burns fat. Learn to drink it plain. When you add creamer & sugar to your cup of joe, it is not doing near what it could be for your body. You are essentially adding fat, sugar, & overall more cals. These things don’t aid in weight loss, unfortunately. Now don’t get me wrong, I occasionally love a splash of the all to well known coffee mate creamers. Ya know, the ones that include girl scout cookies & my personal fav, Pumpkin Spice. However, these are not good for you at all. Try it plain, or add a little stevia & skim milk if you absolutely have to. Bottom line, plain is the best medicine.

x  BREAKFAST// If you aren’t a “breakfast person” become one. We’ve all heard it, it is the most important meal of the day and I can’t stress that enough! Breakfast is what starts your metabolism first thing in the morning. In order to lose weight, you have to get your metabolism up to speed.

x FAT BURNING FOODS // When they say “fat burning foods” they aren’t lying. I incorporate some of these fat burning foods in my every day routine and I have watched the fat literally burn away. These types of foods include apples, berries, avocados, oatmeal, greek yogurt and almonds, just to name a few of my favs.  I’ll touch more on these in a later post! 

x 1200 CALS // I strive to maintain a 1200 calorie a day diet and no more than 1500. Counting calories has 100% been the key to losing weight for me personally. I have an app called MyPlate, and it lets you put in everything you had in a day including breakfast, lunch, dinner, & snacks. It even has an option to track your water intake and exercise. The exercise part will actually subtract the calories burned from your total calories consumed and give you your net calories for the day so you know where you stand. Create your own calorie goal for each day based off how active or inactive you are! It has been said that a woman who is trying to lose weight should consume no more than 1500 cals per day while working out on top of that.

x MODERATION // Moderation is literally key to staying healthy & losing weight! Don’t get me wrong, I still go out to eat and have during my entire weight loss journey. The key is to either order a healthy meal or if you don’t, eat it in moderation & use portion control. Try not to eat the rolls or just have one if you must. Try to eat a few chips instead of a whole basket or two. This goes back to will power. Try to leave at least half your entree on your plate and take the rest home. This is moderation. If you go to Whataburger, try ordering a kids meal. I know… it’s a tough concept but stick with me! For example, my fav thing to order from there is the #13 whatachick’n strips. It comes with texas toast, 3 chicken strips, fries, and your choice of dipping sauce. It’s also 1300 cals if you eat the whole meal, not including the sweet tea or coke you order to wash it down with. OMG right??? So, I order the whatachick’n strips kids meal instead. The difference is insane. The kids meal comes with two chicken strips, fries, and dipping sauce. It is 590 cals compared to 1300. That is less than HALF the cals. I usually top it off with an unsweet tea. You are still getting your whataburger fill, but with way less fried food and cals. Now don’t get me wrong… Sometimes I get the regular meal because we all have those days. But it is very rare for me to do that now, knowing how many cals are going into my body. So my advice, try the kids meal! Tip: Don’t be afraid to look up the restaurants nutrition menu! Most all chains have them.

x 6 SMALL MEALS // Eating 5 or 6 small meals a day can boost your metabolism by a long shot. I usually eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. My metabolism used to be slow but now it’s like clock work. I’m usually hungry every 3 hours. I’ve said it before but your metabolism speed is what helps you lose weight. If your metabolism is slow, you will probably find that you have a hard time losing weight and may even begin to gain it. Doing things to help boost your metabolism is key.   

x WORKOUTS // Working out is something that everyone struggles with. You say you don’t have time, you don’t know how to, or you just don’t want to. My advice to you is start small and don’t have unrealistic expectations. When people struggle with their weight they tend to have unrealistic expectations about how it is going to happen. Just because you ate healthy one day and worked out, does not mean you will lose any weight by the next day. I know it can be discouraging. I’ve been there. The key is going 2-3 times a week and working up to more. When it comes to what kind of workouts you do during those times, make them count. For instance, cardio is a calorie burner. Lifting weights is good for toning, but it will not help you drop the weight that you want to. I get on the treadmill at an incline of 15 and walk at 3.5 mph for an hour. This burns over 600 cals. Trust me, it is not as hard as it seems, but I also didn’t start there. I started at only 3 mph and went for 30 minutes while at 15 incline. It burns so many calories and the best part is you don’t even have to run! My other fav machine is the elliptical. I started at 10 incline with 6 resistance for 30 minutes and would usually burn around 300 cals. Now, I do the programmed fat burner workout which lasts 60 minutes and burns over 600 cals. Workouts like incline walking and the elliptical helped me lose 40 pounds. I know staying on a machine for that long can be boring. But I’ve learned that a great playlist or a netflix show I’m binging on can get me through it! Cardio along with Pinterest inspired toning workouts have got me to where I am today. Stay tuned for a later post that will go in depth on my weekly workouts. 

x SMALL CHANGES // Small changes add up to big changes. Take pics of yourself & every couple of weeks compare them. You will notice small changes and it will only give you more motivation! There is an app called Photo Vault that locks with a password if you don’t want anyone seeing them. Don’t get discouraged because you aren’t seeing the results right away. For me personally, I bought a scale. Seeing the pounds drop every week was what kept me going. It also kept me on track. Sometimes I would see that I went up on the scale after a week of not doing so good. That would fuel my fire to fix it and do better! Remember though, weight doesn’t always show your body becoming healthier. Get a measuring tape to see how many inches you are losing everywhere. Don’t give up!

Thanks for reading along and stay tuned for more helpful tips!

Please feel free to make suggestions or ask questions!