The Allerton Park

I haven't been seeing aspects of my spontaneous self for quite sometime. Very recently I've seen some sparkles of it and I'm so damn happy that it's not dead, the spontaneous self I mean. I was going to accompany my friend, who was visiting from Iran, to Chicago. A few days before he arrived here he said something in his text messages that implied he has been assuming that I will go to Milwaukee with him and I thought well, we'll see and I ended up going to Milwaukee with him and we stayed with a mutual friend and it was hysterically fun. Thankfully I didn't hesitate to go. Also a few days before going to Milwaukee this other friend of mine called saying a few friends have rented a cabin in the woods near Asheville and it will be cool if I could join them. He generously invited me to go to his place in Atlanta, spend a day or two with him and another mutual friend and then we drive to Asheville and join the other two friends with whom we were planning to stay in the cabin?! What did I do!? Got a plane ticket from Milwaukee to Atlanta that very night, a few hours after my friend's call! 

Today?! I was sitting in my office not doing shit and it was too cloudy and depressing; I was down and all of a sudden I decided it's such a shame that I've never been to Allerton Park in nearly four years that I've lived in this town. Fortunately I had a friend's car borrowed for today and I simply drove to Allerton. The best thing I have done in quite a while. Isn't it pretty?!  The interesting thing was that once I got to the park it stopped raining and it got quite sunny and beautiful as you can say from these two photos:

And below is the same scene but this time from the top of the white folly in the Fu Dog Garden. 

Look at the photos in this blog post so you will get a better feeling what a heaven I've been to today. I would recommend reading the post as well; she has written pretty well about the park and Robert Allerton. The white folly I talked about earlier is captured in the first photo of the post. 

On my way back I was so charged that once I got to Champaign I realized I had driven 28 miles in 17 minutes! 

I just learned today that Robert Allerton has donated a substantial number of artifacts to The Art Institute of Chicago. Such a shame I didn't know this person before. 

"You can't plant wheat and expect to harvest oat" said L from Milwaukee!!!

I can't believe I have done this. Today is the second day I'm on this low carb diet. If you think two days are nothing, I invite you to try it and see how terrible you will feel in the middle of the very first day. I had a very bad headache yesterday. Today my headache was way milder. I read a lot and realized the headache is due to the decrease in blood sugar and its consequences. I am not taking the insane diet version of under 30 gm daily intake of carbs. I've had 100 gm a day so far (I mean in the 1.75 last days!). I will write more about the diet once I get to the rewarding stage which is when I already lost a few pounds. I have had this obsession with desserts forever and I always thought I got to do something about it before I will need to deal with its terrible consequences especially as I get older. Also it has been a while again that I am not happy with my weight and I am tired of too many failed trials to lose weight. I need to get rid of the 10-15 pounds I gained since last summer. The weird thing to me yesterday was that I didn't have the daydreamings I usually have when I try to cut down on desserts. I usually find myself in the middle of fantasizing that for example I am walking to Panera Bread to get a croissant, or I am at Mia Za's buying a tiramisu,... I guess yesterday I had so much headache and nausea to deal with that I didn't get luxurious problems like fantasizing!

Meeting L and hanging out with her in Milwaukee was really inspiring. She's super cool, positive and funny. It was interesting to hear it from her, whom I always thought is more or less an easygoing person, that "One shouldn't flirt with one's goals!", she laughed before finishing the sentence herself. Apparently she has bet with a few colleagues on growing six pack abs and she has started a serious bodybuilding program since February. Her body is just perfect. It was amazing to me how she wasn't even tempted to take a bite of any sort of desserts. Her determination was really admirable and made me think "C'mon girl! If you really want something, you gotta pay the price! If not then drop it!". I'm thinking of starting power yoga maybe; weightlifting is a bit too boring for me to be honest.

The spectacular thing is that I automatically have been eating fish and drinking green tea since yesterday. I used to avoid them as much as I could. Again L had this priceless statement that "It's only 50% about work out, the other 50% is about what you eat and how you live"; then she continued that "Bodybuilding is an art. The major difference with other forms of art is that the masterpiece you are working on is alive! You literally build your body". We again laughed at her deep philosophical statement and analogy together. I guess she has really changed something in my conscious as well as my subconscious. I mean it! We'll see where this whole thing goes.