I once thought yoga was for weirdos, but apparently yoga is for hard bodies. I regularly stare at our fellow yogi with wonder because their muscles are a thing to behold. My friends and I watched a girl hold an unsupported handstand in the middle of the room for three minutes yesterday during “inversion practice,” which we interpreted as lying on our backs and “inverting” our legs up the wall. It was what our practices desired. What grown adult can hold a handstand for three minutes? A sorcerer? Every muscle in her body was defined, and we wondered out loud if we had all the same muscles in our mom bodies because we’d never seen most of them. We want to win the Bicep Contest like her, not the Front Butt Contest we are currently winning in our pants. On our third yoga class, I asked our instructor: “How long until we look like you? Because this is already our third time and I have some expectations.”
That is another thing I do. I may go a year and a half with no physical activity, incurring all the pounds and squishy flesh that laziness provides in eighteen months, but after logging four hours of exercise, I expect to fit back into my jeans from last year. I actually try them on after going to the gym three times and weigh myself, anticipating a different second number. I always want a prize for going back, and I want that prize to be a cheerleader’s body after a week of classes, regularly shocked that even with seven days in the gym, I still look like a person who types for a living and also loves chips. What is this horsecrappery? After thirty days, I am ready to quit because obviously exercise doesn’t work. I didn’t lose twenty-five pounds yet, so it will clearly never happen, and I am convinced beyond measure that it is my thyroid.
Anyway, these are my exercise feelings and I don’t see them changing anytime soon or ever. I will just never be that girl who “can’t wait to get into the gym today” or go for “a quick run.” These are not things I will say or feel or mean or do. But I will keep dragging myself back in after another inevitable hiatus, shocked all over again at what inertia does to a forty-two-year-old container, and at the bare minimum, I will wrangle material out of it because I may not lose twenty pounds but I can sure write about wanting to.
How about some healthy recipes to accompany your workout phase? I love crap food as much as anyone, but even I am loath to pack on five times the calories I just burned going face-down in a bowl of chips and queso like Cookie Monster. Here are three absolutely delicious smoothie recipes that are super good for you and don’t taste like sadness and broken dreams. So many ingredients can live for ages in your freezer that you can be ready to rock a smoothie almost constantly. These are awesome for breakfast, midafternoon snack, postworkout refuel, or straight-up dessert.
SMOOTHIES
Let me say this first: I did it. I bought the Vitamix. I plunked down whatever-the-heck dumb amount they asked for and literally drank their Kool-Aid. The thing is, the Hatmakers drink us some smoothies, and one of the spawn cannot even deal with a single granule in his drink. Floating bits of kale? Armageddon. And all my Walmart blenders tried their best but ended up in our blender graveyard, so I finally just said, forget it, I’ll “invest” (this is how you sell these things to husbands) in a blender that will work forever and if it doesn’t, they’ll send me a new one. So now you know the story of my blender and thank you for listening. The point is, crappy blenders may or may not give you the smoothie of your dreams without making your house smell like a dumpster fire.
The Green One
This makes four to six smoothies depending on how you pour, so you can cut it in half for sure. It works for us, because my children drink smoothies like they have tapeworms, and even if I’m making this just for me, I like to have several in the fridge to drink for a couple of days. I just pour it in mason jars with lids and hide them behind the pickles so my kids can’t see them. Give the jar a quick shake when you pull it out and you are in business.
4 cups baby spinach
4 cups unsweetened coconut milk or almond milk (or real milk because everyone needs to RELAX)
2 oranges, peeled
2 cups cooked sweet potato, chilled (just peel, cube, and steam in the microwave and keep a baggie in your freezer for your smoothie needs)
2 cups chopped frozen pineapple
1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped (I always keep a big, gangly looking ginger root in my freezer and just lob off a piece when I need it)
Juice of 1 lime
Drizzle of honey
Big spoonful of protein powder (order online!)
Blend the spinach and milk first, because spinach is on a mission to jack all manufactured blenders. Get that nice and smooth and then add everything else. If you have a son like mine, put it on top speed and blend for two or three minutes so there will be “no gross floaties in it.”
The Peanut Butter and Banana One
Again, you’ll get around four smoothies out of these quantities. Halve the recipe if you aren’t raising a small army.
4 cups coconut milk, almond milk, or cow’s milk
2 cups baby spinach
3 to 4 frozen bananas (we let bunches go brown every week, peel and halve them, and bag them in the freezer)
1 cup unsweetened plain Greek yogurt (or regular yogurt; Greek is just nice and thick)
? cup peanut butter
2 tablespoons Nutella
Blend the milk and spinach until smooth. Add the bananas and blend. Don’t freak out if your blender sounds like it is giving birth. Frozen bananas are no joke. Add everything else and blend until it is a creamy gift from God’s angels.
The Berry Vanilla One
This also makes around three or four smoothies. We maybe pour a lot. Maybe this makes six where you live. I can’t know. Four of my five kids are teenagers right now, and it is like living with Olympic swimmers who have to eat 12,000 calories a day.
1 cup frozen unsweetened raspberries
1 cup frozen unsweetened strawberries
1? cups unsweetened pineapple juice
2 cups vanilla yogurt
Put it all in your blender and give it a whirl. If this is too tart for you, add a drizzle of honey. Yum.
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.1
— AGATHA CHRISTIE
CHAPTER 14
THE CABIN
In 1971, Grandma and Grandpa King were leaving Denver to drive home to Kansas after a court reporter convention (my grandpa was the court reporter for Brown v. Board of Education), and they saw a sign for a brand-new development near Woodland Park: “Now selling lots in Indian Creek Wilderness Estates,” an impressive name that played fast and loose since they didn’t even have electricity. I don’t know many “estates” that run on propane tanks and a generator, but there I go, being all fancy. Anyhow, my grandpa pulled off the highway, drove right to the office, and asked for a lot at the top of a mountain. On the spot, he bought seven acres with a view of Pikes Peak and then built a modified A-frame cabin for $21,000.
The cabin was monumental to my entire childhood.