• Fitness,  Health,  Self Care

    Finding Your Perfect Personal Trainer

    These days there are endless opportunities to work with a personal trainer! Small independent studios, large commercial gyms, specialty studios, trainers that come to your home, trainers that train out of their homes, to name just some of your options. But with so many options, how do you find the trainer that is right for YOU? We each come with our own set of physical limitations, injuries, fitness goals, etc. So it’s going to be on you to find the right trainer, but what do you look for when you decide you want to start training with someone? Here are a few ideas to help narrow it down. Referrals: Talk…

  • Family,  Fitness,  Health,  Self Care

    The Ripple Effect

    It was the summer of 2010 and my sister had left me a voicemail. In her typical stoic way she informed me that she was on her way to the ER as she had woken up that morning with one leg twice the size of the other! She lived in Albuquerque and I was here in Edmonds. She’s my only sister, younger than I, just mid-30s at the time. She could have died from that blood clot in her leg, and she needed surgery pretty quickly. They placed a couple of stents in her arteries and kept her in the hospital for three days to recover. She was on blood…

  • Health

    The Consistency Factor

    I got Invisalign a couple of months ago. It’s basically a substitute for braces, a series of plastic “trays” that fit on your teeth. After a couple of weeks you switch to the next tray and your teeth move accordingly, so on and so forth until your teeth are where you want them. A client of mine also got Invisalign last year. She is still on her first tray (I’m on tray 7 of 10). We laugh hysterically about it, because she just doesn’t remember to wear it, can’t remember where she puts it until day(s) later, and she’s already lost that first tray three times! But we recently realized…

  • Family,  Health,  Nutrition,  Self Care

    ‘Your parents are cool’

    My parents recently visited for three weeks. And they stayed at my house the entire time! In their defense, it was only supposed to be two weeks. This is still a stretch for me, considering how small my house is and how important my downtime in my own space is for me. But my parents were coming all the way from New Zealand—not just to visit me but to also spend some time with Eric, my boyfriend who they had only met once before—so I was very happy to make it work. I just don’t see them that often anymore. I’m in the age range where parents start dying. Recently,…