The Diet, Stress and Little Insanity for flavor

Stress is probably one of the biggest diet killers along with that bottle of honey Jack in the cupboard. If anything can throw you off track from bothering to weigh food, watching every fucking calorie that goes done the gullet, and gives the biggest excuse to miss the Zumba class because of emotional exhaustion, it’s STRESS. Yes, stress will take a perfectly good diet and exercise day, and just trash it right into the gutter. It does for me, because I’m a stress eater.

When I’m under stress, nothing that even resembles food, wither I like it or not, will go in my mouth. I’m like a teething two year old. It all goes to one place, in the pie hole, including a piece of pie. And I don’t eat sweets.

Right before I went on vacation with my friends to beautiful Mendocino, I was slammed with over the top family drama. My dad is 90 something years old, (there is a whole story behind why we don’t have an exact age) and seems to think his new job in his golden years is to make his kids crazy. He should get a raise because he does a damn good job of it. It just might be pay back for our teen years. I’m beginning to really believe it.

The problem is more dad’s live in girlfriend, than him. On his own he’s pretty good. His girlfriend, who has been with him for only two years, is a mean nasty thing. Twice we’ve called Adult Protective Services on her. The first time she called her son to come and get her, because of this bodacious insult. The son refused, doesn’t want mom under his roof making him miserable. What my dad saw in her, I don’t know. She’s vicious enough to end up as the villain in a book. Yep, never piss off an author, ya might end up in an Indie book, which stays up on Amazon for fucking ever and ever, one more ever to grind in the point. Actually the whole shebang goes in the will, along with the image of being a really repulsively ugly bad guy, with the very well worded imagery.

What this whole situation has done, is completely throw me off my diet. While in Mendocino, I actually did pretty well, because my friends all eat healthy. It was the wine that was the killer, but it was so beautiful, having a glass of wine on the front porch with ocean view, can ya blame me. We hiked every morning and spent hours exploring the area, so I burned off every calorie that passed my lips. I even managed to lose a couple of pounds while I was there. In between stress and walking, I'm sure that did it. I would never prescribe this as a diet. Stress will kill ya, or your 90 something year old dad.

I had to make a run to dad’s when I got home and confront the girlfriend and her bad behavior and lies. It was ugly and once more, my diet went further south, due to the stress, and because I was eating out. I didn’t want to eat there, I was afraid she’d poison me. APS was there, again, and things were straightened out, again. We're getting to know the social worker well, maybe we'll invite her to Thanksgiving. Oh the girlfriend would love that, maybe so much she'll leave for the day. We just have to get one of the girlfriend's six kids to take her. Damn, maybe I can pay them to take their mother. Buy She Cried Wolf, so I can bribe this woman's kids into taking her away. Please. It's only $1.99. This whole situation has slowed my writing progress way down, to a near stop.

So now I’m fighting to regain my diet footing. I rode my bike like the wind yesterday. Today, nothing, I had a migraine. Tomorrow, I plan on taking a nice long ride. My diet is slowly going back to normal. I’m eating a lot of veggies, juicing and adding more fruit, trying to get more sleep, that’s a challenge, since my dad makes me fucking crazy, (he won’t kick the girlfriend out because he feels sorry for her). I don’t, I’ll do it.

This is turning into the further adventures of Lee and her diet. Stay tuned for more disruptions. The one thing, that is helping with my stress and physical exhaustion, is Kale juice. I drink it everyday. I swear by it. Kale juice helps with detoxing the liver. The liver stores energy. The better functioning it is, the more energy there will be for the body to burn.  This nasty little veggie is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body, especially for women. Try different recipes to get use to it. I swear this dark green veggie is keeping me sane right now.

If you have a juicer it's very easy, 2 bunches of cleaned kale, with two apples. When I drink it, because it is nasty, almost as nasty as the girlfriend, but not quit, I squeeze one lemon in it. It helps to cut the bitterness.

The pictures I took while in Mendocino. It's such a spectacular area. My muse did manage to wake out of a deep slumber a couple of times.  
 

Now I can Say I'm a author, a real author!

My book, She Cried Wolf was finally completed, handed over to a editor, then beta readers, then I formatted (with the help of Jill James) and up loaded to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

Then I quietly sit, chew my nails, drink wine and freak out.

Now I wait for reviews, or lack of, or bad ones, or the drive-by 1 star, and drink the whole bottle of wine and continue to freak out, while I try not to check my stats every few seconds. Even though the book has only been released for one hour. I’m checking. I’m freaking out. I’m checking some more and waiting. 

I’ve been writing a long time and this isn’t my first manuscript. But the first I felt good enough to be published but not the first completed.

I’ve been down that long rocky road of rejections, enough to wallpaper my bedroom, down the hall, and into the bathroom. When self-publishing took the turn it did recently for all us little people, I jumped on the very overloaded and crowded wagon to seek publication, because the other more traditional way, wasn’t working for me well. Let’s rephrase that, it wasn’t working at all. But I wasn’t alone.

It’s not that I love to write, or am that good of a writer, but I love to tell stories. As an author, I’ve got plenty of material to work with, and time to write it. Self-publishing worked well for both. So I bit the bullet, had a cover designed, finished my manuscript, went through the editing process and asked friends and family to be beta readers, than learned to format my manuscript to be published, and at the end of it all I can say I’m a author, a real author.

Now on to the next book…It’s a bit addictive to see one’s name up on a book cover and a dream come true.

I’m a author..Finally…

Lee Lopez, 

Author

The Older Heroine

As I write this I’m watching the half time show at the Super Bowl. It’s hard to be reminded of older heroines watching Madonna, but it is the reason I’m writing about the subject, because Madonna is 53 years old. She’s in amazingly good shape and looks better than ever and easily keeps up with the younger dancers. Of course, she has a special chef. She admits she doesn’t cook. She has dance coaches and trainers, and all the paraphernalia that goes with her fame and wealth.

As an average baby boomer, I struggle with diet, weight, menopause and the energy and willingness to exercise. Madonna might be like the rest of us, but we’ll never see that side of her. I just can’t image her lying in bed early in the morning when the night before she promised herself she’d get up and run 3 miles. Nope, just can’t see it. She’d get up and run 6 miles, lift weights and dance.

So why can’t we have older, sexy heroines in our books? My upcoming release, She Cried Wolf, features Irene Carlotti. Although, I don’t mention her age, it’s easy to know she’s 50yrs old and in pretty good shape. She ice skates daily at the artificial rink in Golden Gate Park. It’s not even great exercise, it frees her tortured spirit. When attacked by a stalker, she takes him on with firing pan. But like most of this age, she also struggles with enthusiasm towards trying to stay in shape, eat right and has a lifetime of demons and baggage. Sound familiar?   

Irene isn’t sexy, isn’t beautiful, but there is something about her that attracts contractor Rio DeJesus. He likes her. It’s plain and simple, he likes her. He appreciates her qualities, something that is often missed in standard romances. Right out of the gate we’re bombarded with physical attraction as the biggest deal. With an older hero and heroine we have dig deeper to make them more realistic. As an author I gave them something more, the realization they aren’t as young as they’d like to be.

My hero Rio DeJesus jokes about how he might be able save Irene if he was Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, but now he has a bad back and knees, which might slow him down, but won’t stop him from being there for Irene, but he does remind us and her he’s not as young as he use to be. Still, Irene likes him and finds his Mexican features endearing, and his ability to laugh at himself one of his best qualities.

I had fun with these two characters. The best thing about writing them, was the fact they were older. I could relate to their quirks, their tastes, as they deal with a world that is speeding forward faster than they can keep up. After Rio's teenage daughters had to teach him how to text.