Dealing with a break-in at your house is terrifying, especially when it happens in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping. I’m thankful that my wife was the responsible one to insist on installing a security system with an alarm when we moved into this house. I had never owned a home security system, but it’s essential when you live in the city. We are on a road where all of the houses have large front and back yards, but we’re only walking distance from downtown. That’s why we are particularly vulnerable to robbers living in this area. You’d think that people would be deterred by those signs the security company puts in your yard to ward off would-be burglars before they get a chance to attempt a break-in. When it happened for the third time, I started to get angry. In a fit of rage I decided to call a commercial fencing company to build a concrete fence and gate to wrap around our property. I wanted them to put security gates at the end of the driveway with a keypad and microphone. If someone wants to come inside, they’ll have to hit the button on the keypad to speak with me or my wife first. After the fencing company built the huge wall and security gate around our property, we haven’t had anymore problems with burglars. Scaling the concrete wall isn’t easy, especially with the mental prongs at the top. I feel like our house is a literal fortress now. We just need to dig a moat around the wall and fill it with angry alligators.

Fence Repair

I absolutely loved extreme sports while I was growing up.

If there was snow on the ground in the winter I would hit the slopes with my snowboard. During the rest of the year I skateboarded, water skied, and jumped ramps with my BMX bike. I was no stranger to getting injuries and hurting myself, but each time it felt like a badge of honor. When you’re young it’s a lot easier to bounce back from these scrapes and falls, but it gets a lot harder as your body ages and you inevitably get older. I was an avid runner, even after getting a gym membership. There are always other machines at my disposal, but for whatever reason I have stuck with running since I was young. The constant high impact to my joints in my feet and legs is starting to take a toll and I have finally decided to stop. But it was my crossfit class that was posing the biggest risk to my physical health. I loved the idea of extreme workouts, but it started to become obvious to me that my group fitness trainer wasn’t experienced enough to be teaching crossfit. It can be debilitating on your body because you’re doing high resistance exercises in quick succession, pushing your muscles to the ultimate breaking point. If your fitness instructor in crossfit is irresponsible, you could injure yourself seriously. I quit going to crossfit classes after sustaining an injury to my sciatic nerve at the base of my back. It affects my ability to walk and gives me constant pain whenever I’m on my feet for extended periods of time. I should have simply stuck with safe workouts and weightlifting at the fitness center.

Workout program

My first experience with weight lifting started in gym class in eighth grade.

We were given the option to play basketball at the end of class everyday or go into the weight room and learn proper weightlifting skills and techniques.

It’s easy to hurt yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing. Imagine trying to bench press too much weight with no one around to help you once the bar slams into your chest and starts to strangle you. We learned to start out slow and to always have someone close by to spot you in case you slip and can’t get the barbell off your body. Nowadays I have a gym membership and do all of my weightlifting in the mornings before heading to work. It gives me so much energy and there isn’t a better way for me to start my morning every single day. When I worked with a personal trainer for a few months, he taught me a lot of skills and techniques that I would have never learned otherwise. I had neglected my lower body and my legs so we focused on squats every week over anything else. Pretty soon my legs were looking toned and my endurance was increasing constantly. It felt nice being able to walk long distances with so much ease. These days my weightlifting workout program is constantly evolving. I try to change the numbers of sets and repetitions daily, while swapping out different kinds of workouts by the week. Right now I have been spending as much time doing cardio while I’m at the gym as I do weightlifting. When I get to the weight room, I focus on my core and my upper body.

Sauna

I’m happy to see my friend Chris succeeding in his career after so many years of hardships. He dropped out of college as a freshman and didn’t really have any clear ideas for what he was going to do with his life moving forward. He’s such a nice guy and a loyal friend, so it was saddening for me to watch him struggle with one stressful job after the next while I was coasting through university. Although we both struggle these days, he’s been doing it a lot longer than I have. Thankfully he made a great choice getting certification to become a yoga instructor before going the extra step to also become a certified personal trainer. In no time at all he found a steady position at a local fitness center where they assigned him to half a dozen clients right out the gate. As his reputation and prominence grew, some of his clients started to request semi-private in-home personal training. He asked me what I thought about him quitting his job and trying to go out on his own with a private practice. I encouraged him and told him that he would be successful. Not only is he doing semi-private in-home personal training, he is also doing semi-private and group yoga classes. Many people turn to yoga for stress relief and mind-body awareness. It’s also really good at stretching your muscles and improving your physical health and endurance. Although some people injure themselves doing yoga stretches, learning from a trained and certified yoga instructor like my friend Chris minimizes that risk greatly.

Semi-Private Fitness Training

Even though I go on long walks all of the time, I need to get my eating under control before I gain even more weight.

I have a bad habit of snacking mindlessly in the evening hours after I get home from work.

To make matters worse, this is when I like to smoke marijuana. Obviously my cannabis use gives me more food cravings than I would have to begin with, so my snacking increases two-fold. I learned along the way that most of my problems with food stem from mental health problems that I haven’t been addressing over the years. I think some of the traumas have compounded in my subconscious mind and have molded my life in their image. You realize that you have to take your power back, but there are different approaches that work for different people. My mental health problems are also hereditary, so many of my family members are on pharmaceutical mental health drugs. I have tried different antidepressants but they haven’t worked for me. I was at my wit’s end before I found a local body wellness center that is walking distance from my office. They utilize alternative medicine and spiritual techniques. There are reiki healers at the body wellness center, as well as massage therapists and workout instructors. You can enjoy the himalayan salt lamps and the crystal healing beds. This body wellness center also offers nutritional counseling, largely based on vegetarian and vegan diets. Although it might not be a place for everyone, I really enjoy my local body wellness center.
Yoga studio

I don’t live a sedentary lifestyle, but I have slacked on getting regular exercise over the past few years. When I was a teenager I loved going to the gym, but I gave up my gym membership years ago. I liked running on the treadmill and using the weightlifting equipment downstairs. After I stopped renewing my gym membership, I noticed that I didn’t even go on bike rides anymore. My passion for going outside and being active just withered away and never returned. That’s when I quit caring about poor eating habits and was putting on the pounds slowly each year. Eventually you take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and notice the transformation that has been happening slowly right before your eyes. Maybe you see yourself decline week after week, but for me there was a definitive moment when I realized how unhealthy I had become and how disappointed I was about how my body looked. That’s when I decided I wanted to make serious changes and reclaim control over my health. I tried doing it on my own for a few weeks but faltered at each step of the process. That’s when someone at my gym recommended that I talk to a personal trainer. I didn’t realize that a personal trainer could help me with everything from crafting a unique workout plan to offering nutritional counseling. Soon I was learning proper physical training methods from my helpful personal trainer. They taught me safe weightlifting habits and good workout routines to maximize muscle growth. I don’t know where I’d be with my physical health if it weren’t for my amazing personal trainer.

Body Wellness Center

I started relying on caffeine to start my mornings going as far back as middle school.

• My mom let me try a cup of coffee and from that moment moving forward I was completely hooked.

I loved the flavor, the aroma, and the energizing effects that would rush over my body like a warm wave. There’s nothing quite like a really flavorful cup of coffee with strong effects. Getting exercise in the mornings has been a game changer for me recently, and it’s something I can pair with my coffee consumption. I like putting my coffee in a thermos container and taking it with me on bike rides around my neighborhood in the mornings before work. My fitness and health are improving so much that I have started working out and weightlifting in the mornings as well. I bought a few dumbbells for doing bicep curls and I’m already seeing the improvements in my muscle tone when I look at myself in the mirror. It’s also really nice to feel energized from the workouts at the beginning of the day to push me through my shift at work. Some people prefer to workout at night because they say it exhausts them and helps them sleep, but I get the opposite effect. When I workout at the gym it gets me hyper and energized, feeling ready to conquer the day. It would give me a second wind in the evening and would make it harder for me to sleep. That’s why it’s perfect for me to do my weightlifting session at the beginning of the day with a cup of coffee opposed to at the end of the day right before going to bed. If I can keep this up long enough, I’ll start to look better without a shirt on for the first time since I was a kid.

Sauna

With much diligence on my part, I’m slowly losing a lot of the weight I gained during a year of working from my living room.

• It was nice to get off the busy highways everyday, but I was missing walking up and down stairwells and down long city streets to visit particular stores.

Often I would visit the park with my bicycle and would go on rides through the paved trails. But when I’m working at home exclusively, it’s easy to neglect making excuses to get out and get exercise. This is made worse by the fact that most stores started offering home delivery last year, so there were rarely legitimate reasons to actually leave the house. That’s why in part I was a little relieved when my company announced that it would return to in person working again this spring season. I started going to the gym again and have already lost 15 pounds with enough concentrated effort on my part. However, my gym membership is about to expire and I’m wondering if I should go to a different fitness center for a change. My existing gym is limited on weightlifting options. There are only two bench presses and they always seem to be claimed whenever I’m there. More often than not someone is already waiting off to the side for the current person to finish. I also want to join group fitness training classes, but my existing gym is limited. They have crossfit and yoga classes, but I’m not interested in either right now. I just want to learn healthy stretching and safe exercises to burn as much fat as quickly as possible. Maybe a different gym would be a better fit for my fitness needs.

Certified Fitness Experts

When I moved into my first home with my ex-husband, he was excited to take the handmade furniture that his grandfather was giving him. He said he had a couch, a dining room set and a rocker. I was thrilled to think that someone had handmade furniture, but I knew his family. The rocker was beautiful and sturdy, so I was hoping the rest of the furniture was going to be just as nice, if not nicer. The table and chairs were old and well-used, but they were beautiful. I was now thinking that all of the handmade furniture was going to be of equal quality. When he brought the wood couch into the house, I was in shock. It was a rectangular wood base with a handmade cloth pad thrown on top of it. The cloth pad was about three inches thick and stuffed with cotton. There was no back to the couch. It was huge and heavy. I looked at the bottom of the couch, wondering if it had a hidden drawer or something to make it unique. There was nothing unique about this handmade couch. The wood was pretty, but it looked like the German siding that was on our home. It wasn’t comfortable to sit on or lay on. I didn’t really want it in my home. I had a hard time telling him that, so I kept my mouth shut. The rest of the handmade furniture was beautiful. I had him put the couch in the living room where the television was. Once I bought a thick mat for the sofa, it really wasn’t so bad to relax on.

Southwest furniture

I realize that eating at fast food places and restaurants is not a good idea.

However, I really enjoy eating out.

When I discover a restaurant I like, I usually start eating there on a weekly basis. This has been a common theme for me. I come across a new favorite restaurant, then I become a regular there for weeks. After I have gone through everything that appeals to me on the menu at that location, I move on to somewhere else. The process repeats itself every couple of months or so. A few months ago, I was feeling lazy and hungry. I wasn’t sure what I was in the mood to eat. I started searching online and found a website that advertised desserts available for delivery. That’s when I found my new interest. This business includes an array of fantastic desserts. Because they are located a fairly good distance away from my house, I am thrilled to have access to their local meal delivery service. They deliver my order right to my door. My latest obsession is this menu of desserts. Now that I’ve proven how easy local food delivery is, I am considering having my dinners delivered rather than making the trip to a restaurant. It’s so much more convenient. I can wear my sweatpants. All I need to do is answer the door. The menu offerings available online are really wonderful. I can pick whatever I feel like that day and have it arrive in under an hour. Some of my favorite foods to choose online are burgers, soups, desserts and Italian food. I doubt that I will ever get sick of having my dinner show up right at my door. Because ordering meals online is affordable and saves a great deal of effort and time, it just might turn into a permanent habit.

local meal delivery