Wrecklamation

Progress

2012-03-03T08:24:00.003-08:00

Since my last post, I've taken two walks (two days were raining so I didn't walk those days) and done a few days of free step on the Wii. I also discovered that I'm better than my seven year old at Just Dance 3. I'm not saying I'm GOOD, just better than my poor child who has never been to a dance club. I've restarted logging every jot and tittle I put in my mouth in the Plan Manager of Weight Watchers Online. And I'm making kale chips as I write. [Update -- kale chips ROCK!]

My Wii Fit welcomed me back with a minimum of chiding, and I am starting to realize that I actually deserve to not feel crappy. I've been starting to think in ways I never have before - in my life. Ideas like, "I wish I could play tennis." "Wouldn't it be fun to go snowshoeing?" and "I wonder what snorkeling is like."

For me, this is progress.

Here we go again

2012-02-28T07:05:00.006-08:00

I thought when I started writing this blog that it would provide me with inspiration and a public venue which would add the "shame" incentive -- I would somehow be more accountable to unkown strangers than I am to myself. The good news? I've discovered that I'm not as "other directed" as I might have thought. I guess the hell of middle school, when I craved the approval of the "crowd" and didn't get it, burned that desire right out of me for life. The bad news? I'm not as other directed as I might have thought. So, the idea that unkown others might be saying to themselves, "What a loser" (and not in the way I would have hoped) didn't really have much of an impact on me.

So, I'm starting again, rethinking this blog, and trying to salvage some good things out of this experience.

Here are the good things:

For the past few months, I've been seeing a nutrition counselor. Emphasis on the counselor. She is really nice, although the fact that she highly could be my sister-in-law's long lost twin kind of freaks me out. She thinks I am too negative (true), that I don't eat in the right way (true), and that I don't do things for myself (true). All of these factors contribute to the plateau I've been on for several years now.

After a longish hiatus, I thought I should sign up for Weight Watchers Online. I can't stand the meetings, which always seem to devolve into tips (if you only do x (usually involving buying WW products), the weight will just FALL OFF) or complaint sessions ("I just CAN'T figure out why I gained last week), or loving recitations of the wonderful, low cal concoction that tastes "exactly the same as pumpkin pie, I swear"). But WW Online has some useful tools and their concept of eating anything, in moderation, seems reasonable to me. I have always thought that the latest diet fad, whether it's low-fat, low-carb, no-meat, no wheat, no this, no that, is unreasonable. Human beings are omnivores and should be able to eat any kind of food. Eliminating whole food groups seems very counterproductive to me. I also know that a lifestyle that doesn't include buttered toast or mashed potates is not one I would willingly choose or sustain.

I've been working with my sister and my aunt on something called Made to Crave, which takes a spiritual approach to losing weight. As the author, Lysa TerKeurst says, it's about finding your "want to", not about "how to" lose weight. There are a series of video lectures she gives, then we work through daily assignments (which are tough, in that they require you to really be conscious of what you are thinking and believing about yourself and what you want), and then we meet weekly (lately it's been monthly) to discuss. It's been a really rewarding experience in many ways, especially since it has allowed me to grow closer to two phenomenal women, both of whom are so beautiful inside and out. The only dark spot is that my mother, who had been joining us before Christmas, is now in Florida for the winter, so we are deprived of her gentle and loving presence.

I took a walk this morning, after doing drop off. It was a small walk, but it was a walk. I went twice around the track at a local park. My goal is to do this every morning, and to build up to ten times around the track by the end of March. Then I'll go looking for more interesting walks.

This walking mania came about because, over President's Day weekend, a friend and I went to New York for a "mom's weekend away" minibreak. It was so much fun, and I walked and walked and walked. And I was in horrible pain. All the muscles in the backs of my legs were so tight and really painful, to the point that I had to stop my friend during our 8 block walk to Penn Station at the end of the weekend and ask her to hail a cab. It was awful. But, as I told my friend, if I can walk in New York because I want to see the 9/11 memorial or the Irish Hunger memorial or the Met, I sure as heck can walk at home, even if the scenery is not as interesting.

As I was walking this morning, I was thinking of all the walking I used to do when I was younger and healthier. I walked all over Rome, all over Dublin, all over Baltimore, and all over the District of Columbia. It occurred to me that, when I was in graduate school, there were times that I was so poor that I couln't afford the 85 cent metro fare from Ballston to Foggy Bottom. On those days, I'd get up an hour earlier than normal and walk the 6.5 miles from my apartment to school. It wasn't easy or fun, but I remember not giving it too much thought -- it was just something I had to do. I want to get back to that stage, when I don't have to think about the pain that walking any distance will cause me.

Now off to do 20 minutes of Free Step on the Wii. Whee!
Pray for me!

Dear Friend, Sadly Missed

2012-02-07T16:11:00.000-08:00

My friend, Susan Niebur, passed away yesterday, after a five year battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, the deadly cancer that presents with no lump.

These are my words for Susan.

In 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13, verse 13, St. Paul writes, “And now abides faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Recently, I saw a commentary about this verse given by a priest who was, I think, recapitulating St. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation of it. The priest said that, when our earthly lives are done and we see God face to face, there is no longer any need for faith, because all of our questions have been answered and all of our searching for the Ultimate has come to a triumphant close. In the same way, there is no longer any need for hope, because when we see God, Creator of the Universe, face to face, all our hopes, even those we ourselves can barely acknowledge, are fulfilled. What then is left?

Love is left.

Love abides.

And when we see God, the Creator of the Universe, face to face, what we are seeing is Love distilled to its finest point. And, to the extent that we have loved in our lives, to the extent that we have habituated ourselves to this Love, then, to that extent, we participate in this Ultimate Love for all eternity. If this is true, and I know with all my heart and soul and intellect that it is, as I know Susan did, then at this very moment she is participating in this Love in a way that we can only dimly comprehend.

I think this is fitting, because if there is anything that characterized Susan Niebur, it is the love that she had for her husband, Curt, and their children, and all those who were privileged to know her in person and virtually. Susan was blessed with a mind both scientific and poetic. She could as easily explain how light is refracted by a prism, with the math to explain it, as she could write a sentence that carried such weight of meaning that it could transport her readers in profound ways. Ways that changed them. Ways that made our community a better place – indeed, ways that made, and are still making, the world a better place.

And yet, as the cancer that claimed Susan’s life progressed, those things were slowly stripped away, as important and as integral to her person as they were. And finally, things that we take for granted, like the ability to drive a car, to be in charge of our days, to walk from one room to another, were slowly taken from Susan. What remained?

Love remained.

Love abides.

Throughout the last several weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dante’s Divine Comedy. In this marvelous poem, Dante the poet travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, observing and relaying all that he sees there to his readers. In the final book of the poem, Il Paradiso, Dante moves in concentric circles (kind of like the solar system!) through the heavenly host, drawing ever closer to a final celestial vision. I remember that, when I first read Dante, I thought that Paradise was a real let-down after all the dynamism of the earlier two books, what with Sisyphus pushing the stone perpetually up the hill, illicit lovers burning with unrequited passion, Satan encased in ice up to his diabolical waist, and the myriad souls moving up the terraces of Purgatory, every fiber of their souls yearning to attain unity with God and drawing ever closer to Him as their earthly attachments and concerns fell away.

But as I have gotten older, it’s the final image of the Divine Comedy that comes back to me again and again. After his long and fantastic journey, Dante finally comes face to face with God Himself. And here, description does not suffice. He says, “Oh how poor our speech is and how feeble/for my conception! Compared to what I saw/to say its power is ‘little’ is to say too much./” And yet, he tries, imagining the Holy Trinity as three circles, the Father, the Son as reflected light, and the Holy Spirit as impassioned fire breathed out by them both. It is only with the help of a flash of Grace that he is able to understand the image of man inherent in the Son, the Incarnation. And he says, “For the great imagination here power failed;/But already my desire and will [in harmony]/were turning like a wheel moved evenly/by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”

For me THIS is the entire point. The point of the Divine Comedy, the point of the Incarnation, the point of Creation, and, yes, the point of Susan Niebur’s life: Love – HER love, as a reflection and amplification, a reverberation, of the love of the Prime Mover. As my heart is breaking for Curt and the boys, for Susan’s family, for us all as we endure the loss of this great woman, I also am comforted by the sure knowledge that at this very moment, Susan is immersed in the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.

coming out of hibernation

2011-12-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

Just to say that we are, again, praying a novena through the intercession of Blessed John Paul II, for our lovely Susan Niebur, a beautiful and lovely little girl who has cancer, and others in St. John the Evangelist Parish and friends who are ill. The novena runs through the 21st of December. Give the gift of prayer to those who need it.

Link to post containing the novena prayer is here:

storming heaven

It's Crunch Time

2011-06-21T08:53:00.000-07:00

I know Jamie Oliver is not everyone's cup of tea. Personally, I think he's kind of cute, and he's a family man, which endears him to me. Even his working class Brit accent and affectations don't bother me -- neither does his cute little lisp (it's an official crush, I guess). His Food Revolution initiative and television show have given my husband and me a lot to talk about lately. This morning, the Food Revolution email I received even made me smile and feel proud of my girlhood home, Carroll County, MD.

The Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County received a grant from the Kaiser Permanente Foundation to implement a program encouraging school children and their families to eat more fruits and vegetables and less fast food and sugar. L.E.A.N. Carroll is a program designed to help families encourage healthy Lifestyles, promote Education and Activity, and improve Nutrition for both children and parents. A pilot program, It's Crunch Time, was carried out in two elementary schools in Mt. Airy, MD and, by all accounts, was quite successful. Those nice folks at the Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County have even made their packet for It's Crunch Time available on the web as a pdf. I'm sure they won't mind if I snag it for home use, even if I don't live Carroll County any more.

Thanks to all at the Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County for a fantastic and inspirational program.

Some success

2011-06-21T05:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday was my WW weigh in day. I'm happy to say that I lost 1.8 pounds since last week. We'll see what next week brings. We are in week 2 of the "no eating out" phase of our lives. My husband has posted a "what we need to save each month to send the kids to school the year after next" reminder chart on the fridge. A big incentive to open up that door and do some cooking magic. Last night's dinner was Curried pan fried cod, with rice and broccoli on the side, with strawberries and yogurt for dessert. Yummy.

Making Sure We Get Milk

2011-06-15T06:47:00.001-07:00

I'm not a milk drinker. I'm sure osteoporosis is in my future, since I have trouble taking calcium pills as well. I have trouble remembering to take pills, period (thus, no vitamins, no calcium, so Yeast Cleanse, etc.). My kids are water drinkers, with milk at meals, and my husband consumes enough gluten free cereal with lactose free milk (Yay Celiac Disease!!) to ensure that his bones are good and strong. So, I'm really the problem. Most days I forget to drink anything at all, except for hot tea, without which I can't get through the day.

But, for the sake of argument, I'm going to pretend that milk consumption is a family problem. My latest idea is to get canning jars and a paint marker and, each morning (or evening, if I am prepared!), to put the (next) day's allotment of milk into a personalized jar for each person. That way, I'll know at a glance whether I, or one of the children, has not had enough milk. I'll have to take a picture when they're done...

Last night's dinner was very good, BTW. I love the Food Revolution cookbook, especially the 20 minute meals. Last night's meal was Spicy Moroccan Fish Stew with Couscous (rice for my husband). It included diced tomatoes (canned), white fish (I used tilapia), shrimp, cumin seeds, garlic, cinnamon, lemon juice, basil, and a red pepper. The couscous preparation couldn't have been simpler -- put couscous in a bowl with a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and then cover it with boiling water, put a plate over the top and let sit while the fish cooks (10 minutes). We all liked it, even though the kids were a bit freaked out by the "spicy" (i.e., lemony) couscous. Chickadee #2 ended up eating some smoked turkey because she couldn't handle all the "mixed together" stuff. But the rest of it liked it -- Chickadee #1, when biting into the fish, said, with a huge grin, "Cod!!! Yummy!"

Did I tell you I'm a great starter?

2011-05-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Last week, my husband and I had our periodic budget discussion. It's not pleasant -- he's the type of person who analyzes a Target receipt to figure out how much (including taxes) was spent on the separate categories of groceries, the children, the household; I'm the type of person who loses the Target receipt. But, one thing we both agreed on was the disgusting amount of money we spend on food -- eating out, buying groceries, and throwing leftovers away.

Our discussion (okay, argument) came during the last fifteen minutes of the latest episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution . The fact that it became an argument probably has to do with the sorry fact that I could really identify with Denny, the father of two who feeds his kids out of fast food joints. Although we don't frequent McDonald's and the like eight times a week, we do eat out A LOT more than I would like. And we don't eat out at McDonald's either. On Monday, we went to Black Market Bistro in Garrett Park out for my husband's birthday -- 60 dollars down the drain. Oh, and we got pizza from Mamma Lucia's for the kids and my parents -- delivered -- 40 dollars down the drain. One hundred dollars -- in one two hour period. On food. If you add in the spontaneous, "Let's go to dinner" on a Sunday afternoon, the "I don't really like what you made for dinner, honey, I'm just going to get carryout from Ruan Thai), and the "Mommy, can we stop at Wendy's for a fruit punch?" after school occasions, it starts to add up... and up... and up.

As we discussed our horrendous habits, my husband said something to me that really stuck -- he said, "Look, I know you. I've seen how you operate. You planned our wedding like it was a commando operation -- every detail was perfect. If you decide to do something, you decide to do it well. You just haven't decided to do this (the eating properly thing) well." Wow. That hurt. What the hell have I been doing all these months?

Truthfully, spending a lot of money and not a whole heck of a lot else.

Yes, I'm tracking points almost every day and giving WW membership money.
Am I drinking the recommended 64 ounces of water a day? No, I drink SOME water and lots of hot tea. But I do sometimes drink Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, to excess.
Am I eating the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables each day? Some days yes, some days no. Okay, most days I get close, but no cigar.
Am I weighing and measuring each morsel of food or drink that passes my lips? No. I had been guesstimating. Did you know that a serving of protein is the no bigger than the size of a deck of cards (in all three dimensions) -- compare THAT to the size of the average chicken breast.
Am I having the recommended servings of dairy? Yes. (Whew -- finally got one!)
Am I having the recommended servings of healthy oils per day? Does using only olive oil in cooking count?
Am I taking my multi-vitamin? No. I can't get past the fact that I choke on those horse pills.

After going through that mental inventory and coming up so much the loser, I proposed the radical notion to my husband that we are both pretty intelligent people, that we both agree that our eating habits are problematic for a variety of reasons, and that we should surely be able to come up with a solution that we could live with, instead of coming back to the same stupid discussion time after time. He agreed and we started to brainstorm. Here's what we came up with:

Be Ready--

I won't run errands in the late morning (my preferred time), but instead do things either right after breakfast or right after lunch. And no more acquiescing to "Can we get a treat, Mom?" Instead, I will start carrying healthy treats with me. If errands at mealtimes are unavoidable, we'll pack a picnic, as we did yesterday -- I had an 11 am doctor's appointment in DC, so the kids and I brought sandwiches, veggie chips, and fruit and had a picnic in a nearby park, followed by a stint at the playground.
We will do weekend cooking for my husband's lunches - making 8 serving batches of gluten free food he likes, then freezing it. In two weekends, we'll have 32 potential lunch dishes waiting to be grabbed as he walks out the door (he is a "I don't want to think about it" kind of eater -- very hard when you have celiac disease).

Be Realistic --

Recognize that my middle name should be Entropy. I want to go with the flow, especially when I'm stressed (all the time) and overtaxed (ditto). Resolve to swim against the tide of entropy.
Don't make meals my family won't eat -- even if they are "good" in some gourmet and/or nutritional sense -- I'm a pretty good cook, and I like to try new things. My husband is not adventurous (he described not knowing what to expect for dinner as "one more stressful thing I have to deal with" and my kids are just like him.

Be Ruthless --

So you don't like veggies, family? Too bad. So sad. Guess you will go hungry tonight.
I said to my husband, "Just so you know, if we do this, our lives are going to change. Completely. So be prepared." I proposed getting microwavable freezer containers this past weekend so we could start pre-packing his lunches. I think he's scared -- he wants to "think about how we are going to do this" first. My take-- what's to think about? Just do it, okay? My idea is to get these, paired with these, so he can grab one as he walks out the door. But we'll have to relocate the chest freezer to the front entry for that to work, I guess.
The WW scale is now resident on my dining room table. Chickadee #1 asked me last night, "Mommy, why are you weighing everything now?" as I weighed (8 oz), then cut (3.8 oz) my chicken breast (marinated in rosemary, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice, cook at 350 for 20 minutes, turn on broiler then top with 1 oz feta cheese. Serve with Greek salad and homemade dressing. Yummy.)

Educate the children --

We printed out information from USDA's new Choose My Plate website and have it posted on our fridge. You can tailor the plate based upon your age, sex, weight, and goals. It's a much better mnemonic than the food pyramid it replaced and the kids really seemed to get it. When we looked at it, we concluded that we are pretty much a protein and carbohydrate family. We need to become a fruit and veggie family.
We need to start buying better food -- for example, my husband likes only Red Delicious apples. Since I'm not picky when it comes to apples (they're not my favorite fruit), I don't really care what kind we buy. But face it, Red Delicious are the least tasty of all the apples available. Yesterday, I bought Pink Lady apples from a local fruit stand. Chickadee #1 (who didn't much like the Greek delight dinner I'd made) ate 3 for dessert. She said they were the best apples she'd ever had. Sad thing is, she is probably right!
We need to go for resources and support to sites like Jamie Oliver's foundation and Rachel Ray's Yum-O.

Now it's a challenge. I don't think my family knows what's about to hit them.

Day 3

2011-03-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'm currently in Day 3 of the new Weight Watchers plan. I survived a birthday cake (my own), a St. Patrick's Day party, and a Confirmation Party over the weekend, with my sanity intact. I did pretty well, and I actually tasted some really yummy food -- including an incredible cake made by a German pastry chef -- think delicious, moist cake, raspberry jam, buttercream icing, and slivered almonds. It was beautiful -- I could have done with a piece half the size, though -- left me feeling slightly sick.

I am really liking the fact that (most) vegetables and fruits on the new WW plan count for 0 points. It's a reminder to me that, when I am hungry and need a snack, it's better to go for a banana or some carrots and hummus than a cereal bar or yogurt. So, we'll see if I have any weight loss at the end of this week. I have to survive a birthday lunch (my mother and sister are coming today -- in fact, I'm waiting for them to arrive as I type) and going away for the weekend with T. Thankfully, we'll be in a house, not a hotel, so we can have more control over the food we eat and don't have to frequent restaurants 3 times a day. I'll have to remember to pack my scale, though, and hope for internet connectivity at the house -- otherwise, I'll have to lug the laptop to a Panera (dangerous) or someplace similar to log in and record my food.

Sigh

2011-03-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Starting again. T. and I talked this morning. He is really concerned about all the pain I am having and continuing to have. He accurately diagnosed that it began in earnest after Chickadee #2 was born, when I just couldn't seem to lose the baby weight (plus). I hadn't lost much baby weight after Chickadee #1 either -- but that was easy to blame on T.'s schedule, my stress, the miscarriage, our incessant eating out because it was 'easier'. With #2, I gained weight (not much, but some) but I had started at such a high level that it was hard to take comfort in that. I tried WW meetings, which were always difficult for me because I had either #1 or #2 with me (WW meetings are not exactly welcoming to children, in my experience). WW was also difficult for me because I have heard it all before, being a WW veteran. Remembering that WW considered me considerably overweight when I was at a scale number that I would actually be extremely happy with now and at which I felt good, beautiful, and healthy made me jaded with the whole WW approach. Additionally, every several years, WW revamps its approach so that all the materials you might already have no longer "apply" and you have to go out and spend more money and enthusiasm getting in sync with the new program.

And yet.... WW is an effective way of losing weight. And boy do I need effective. T said several things to me today that really made me think. The first was that he doesn't want to see me become the old lady in the scooter who can't walk at all (and believe me folks, some days I am not far from that). The reason it struck me was that last night, we had gone to dinner for my birthday at a famous local seafood restaurant. We had parked across the street from it, but had to walk up the block, across the 8 lane road and then down the block again. My feet hurt so much, I was hobbling and lurching. And, I actually had a vision of myself in a Hover-Round. That is not the life I want for myself or my family, but I know that if I don't get better all around, that is where I am heading.

The second was that he thought I just had to decide that this was the most important thing in my life and just do it. That reminded me of when I actually finally decided to quit smoking, years ago. I'd picked up the nasty habit in the last years of college, and going to Ireland for grad school solidified that habit into something I did as a matter of course (everyone I knew in Ireland smoked, except for the children). I thought for years about quitting, vowed to quit several times, tried to quit several more. Then, one day, overcome by disgust by my inability to conquer an inanimate object's hold over me, I just stopped. I threw away my pack of cigarettes and just stopped. I only tried cigarettes twice after that -- once when visiting a college friend and once at a particularly stressful time. In both cases, I threw the cigarette away before finishing it and honestly couldn't see the point or figure out the attraction these things had for me. I never had withdrawal symptoms, never felt jumpy or sad, never really missed them.

Now I have to figure out how to feel that way about creme brulee.

The Mystery of Prayer

2011-02-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, our church community, and many people around the world recently finished a novena asking for God's grace and mercy through the intervention of Blessed John Paul II. Specifically we asked that Susan of Whymommy fame be healed from the cancer that just won't realize that it's up against a too formidable foe. Throughout the nine days of the novena, my mind and heart kept circling the same, central question -- do I REALLY believe in miracles? Do we understand what it is that we are asking for? And, if we do, do we dare to ask for it?

Van Morrison, echoing my beloved W.B. Yeats, calls prayer "the inarticulate speech of the heart." Prayer is inarticulate inasmuch as God doesn't need our fancy words or formulae to know what we need. He knows the deepest cries of our souls, the most profound depths of our need before we do. Similarly, it's impossible to adequately describe or to summarize such a profound spiritual experience as the novena was for me and, I think, for all those who participated. For one thing, it's easy to sound trite or silly when talking about such things. In another way, I'm wary of even trying to talk about what the novena meant for me -- after all, this fight is not my fight; I am not the protagonist here -- I am simply a bystander, even one filled with love and hope.

On the other hand, I know that many people from all over the world joined in our chorus of prayer for our friend. One may know Susan personally, as I am privileged to do, or one may know her through her writing-- writing which is so immediate, honest, eloquent, and luminescent that it regularly inspires a shock of recognition, a thrill at the sheer beauty of her words, or a profound grief in the face of her suffering. In some ways, I feel that I must attempt to provide some insight into what the novena was like, from the standpoint of one of those praying, in order to solidify and make manifest in words the circle of love and caring and, oh! just ardent desire and longing for God's grace and mercy.

So -- some images:

One friend calling me the first day of the novena to ask whether she could come if she wasn't sure she believed in the power of prayer, and the reply that bubbled out of my mouth without any forethought -- "you believe in the power of love, though. Please come." And she did -- for all nine nights.
Being asked later whether I believed that a miracle could happen and shocking even myself with my answer -- "Absolutely." The ferocity of that answer startled me so much that I immediately felt I should qualify it with all sorts of explanations and rationalizations. But that was just fear talking -- fear of being seen as weird, fear of being wrong, fear. I actually DO believe that miracles are possible and that a miraculous healing is possible for Susan.
Encountering signs of God's presence throughout the novena that spoke to the situation -- I call them "Godsmacks" -- when you realize that He really is talking to you, in your particular situation. They're exceedingly rare, in my experience -- maybe because I'm not such a good listener. But during the novena, again and again, I and others experienced these Godsmacks

-- One night, I opened the missalette at random and found the story of Jesus curing the ten lepers.

-- Another friend, on another night, opened the same missalette to another random reading and found the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

-- On the last day of the novena, I opened my Magnificat to the the story of Jesus arriving in Gennesaret and the people all around bringing Him their sick, carrying them on mats and placing them in His path, in the hope that they would be able to just touch His cloak, believing that just that would bring healing. And it did.

As I was meditating on this story of Gennesaret, I kept repeating the phrase "we're bringing Susan to you on our mats, oh Lord. Please heal her." This struck me, and frightened me. I realized that we are asking that God set aside the natural order of things. That He actually come into the world in a material, immediate way and DO something amazing. That's a scary thing to ask. I really had a hard time with it, but then I looked at the Tabernacle in the chapel and I thought, "This IS something I can ask. God DOES make Himself manifest ALL THE TIME. He's actually HERE, right NOW. So ASK without fear."

And then, on perhaps the most devastating night of the novena, a woman whom I have never before seen came into the chapel in the middle of our silent prayer. Afterwards, a friend and I were in the little vestibule outside the chapel, talking about what was happening, when this woman appeared beside us. She asked about the purpose of the novena. When my friend explained, this woman said that she was gifted with visions. And I thought, "Oh no! She is "one of those" Catholics." I am sorry to say that I was embarrassed because my friend is not Catholic and I didn't want her thinking that Catholics were all crazy.
But my embarrassment quickly changed to wonder when this woman explained that she had been given a special prayer while on a pilgrimage to a church in Philadelphia. Another person approached her and told her that "The Lord told me to give this prayer to you."

Our interlocutor then told us that she had prayed this prayer intensely for the healing of a friend's sister, who was suffering from lung cancer and metastatic brain cancer. During a surgery to remove four tumors, we were told, our storyteller told us that she had prayed this prayer, which she gave to my friend, unceasingly for hours. In a post-surgery call to her friend, she was told that, despite a pre-surgical MRI showing four tumors, the surgeon could not find them. The cancer had been healed -- both the brain cancer and the original lung cancer. The woman is alive and well -- in fact, our friend said, "I just talked to her yesterday." Then she said, looking keenly at us:

"God can do anything."

Such conviction. Such sureness. It put me to shame. She related another story of a miraculous healing. Again, she forcefully said:

"God can do anything."

So this is the question: Do we believe that God can do anything? Or will we try to corral Him, confine Him to our understanding of the way the world is? Will we be embarrassed to believe in miracles, to ask for miracles, to let our scientific, post-Enlightenment, non-mystical way of looking at the world convince us that miracles are not only rare, but actually impossible?

I don't know.

I am certain, however, that I am praying for a miracle. I don't know what the will of God in this situation is -- I don't have an out-of-universe, eternal, omnipotent viewpoint. I do know, however, that God IS working a miracle in Susan. She herself, as I've told her, is the miracle, and the gift. And when I see how much love shines through her, again I say:

God can do anything.

Storming Heaven

2011-01-31T04:20:00.003-08:00

Friends, today is the first day of the novena for our beloved Susan (aka Whymommy). Starting tonight, and continuing for a full nine days, we will be storming heaven with our prayer for Susan's complete and total healing. We are told that all we need to do is to ask for all we need. Well, we are asking. The link to the novena prayers and readings, suitable for printing at home, is here. This novena is adapted from one I found on the web which was written by a priest at Texas A&M.

Fighting Together, with Prayer

2011-01-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

In my posting on Lymphedema Sleeves, I talked about my friend, Susan Niebur aka Whymommy, who is currently participating in a clinical trial to battle a locally metastatic cancer, her fourth cancer in as many years. Susan is an amazing person. She shines with love. She radiates joy. She makes you want to be a better person. In the short time she has been part of our church community, she has drawn so many people to her, just like moths to a flame. It might be her cheery smile and her ability to see the goodness in life; it might be her obvious love for her husband and children; it might be her wit, her intelligence, her kindness, her gentleness. I'm not sure.

What I am sure of, however, is that many people have expressed to me the desire to pray as a community for Susan. And, as a result, we are joining together starting next Monday, January 31, to say a novena (communal or private prayer, said over nine days or hours). We will say the novena in our church chapel and we are inviting those who cannot be there in person to pray with us between the hours of 8 and 9, every night from January 31 through February 8.

If you are not the formal prayer type, we invite you to send all positive thoughts and vibes, expressions of caring and love, and aspirations of hope out to the Unknowable Universe over this period. We also invite you to pray formally in the style of your own tradition for this intention if you are more comfortable doing that.

We will be praying through the intercession of Blessed John Paul II -- intercessory prayer is like asking a beloved older brother or sister to talk to Dad (intercede) for us. It is a type of prayer that has a long history in Catholicism, and which makes perfect sense if you believe, as Catholics do, in the Communion of Saints -- that is, in the spiritual unity of all in the Christian Church, those on earth and those who are with God. All members of the Communion of Saints are members of a Mystical Body, with Christ as the Head, in which all members contribute to the good of all and share in the welfare of all.

We are working on the details right now -- when we are finished, I intend to post the novena prayers here so that anyone who wishes to can pray the novena with us. If you do so, please let me know so that we can let Susan know the breadth and depth of love for her, both here in her immediate community and around the world.

Surrendering Hunger

2011-01-20T02:30:00.000-08:00

Have I told you about my fantastic sister, L? L. is older than me by 18 months and 2 weeks. All of my life, I've looked up to her as a trailblazer and a leader. We never went through much of the sisterly anguish that many people do (aside from the time I smeared black fingerpaint all over her beautiful picture in kindergarten (I was attending with her for the day). But hey, she wouldn't let me play with her and her friend, Sherry, so she deserved what she got, right?)

Last year, L. decided to lose weight. And guess what? She did. She, an aunt of ours, and I used a book called Your Whole Life to try to address some of the reasons that we were overweight. My sister threw herself in whole heartedly into this new way of looking at being overweight. She went from "Couch Potato to 5K" and, by the summer, was running an hour every other day. Today, L. is stronger than ever. She radiates good health and vigor. She gave me a book called Surrendering Hunger, which is a companion to the Your Whole Life book. The idea is that, after the initial 12 week program, Surrendering Hunger will provide a year's worth of meditations to help you persevere in your attempts to lose weight. I haven't opened it yet. But I will.

There are a few things I've learned over the past year, after quitting Weight Watchers and going through Your Whole Life, and joining a gym:

Finding a way through being overweight is my personal cross to bear. No one else developed the habits of eating and of (non) exercising that have led to this condition. No one else can help me change those habits.

My huge (no pun intended) problem is that I don't pay enough attention. I am not organized enough. I can't figure out a way to integrate the life I want into the life I actually have. Maybe I'm too distracted. Maybe I'm too lazy. I'm not sure. It just struck me this weekend that I haven't had my hair cut or colored in almost a year. Most days I pull it into a ponytail and forget about it. That seems to me to be emblematic of the problem I have.

So, I'll go home (I'm currently in an airport in the great American Southwest, coming home after attending the funeral of a dear friend's father) and pick up Surrendering Hunger and Your Whole Life and I'll try to figure out how to translate the words on the page into action in my life. Again.

Lymphedema Sleeves

2011-01-06T05:39:00.005-08:00

My dear friend and cancer survivor Susan of ToddlerPlanet has posted today about a new effort to help breast cancer survivors who have had a mastectomy or axillary dissection of the lymph nodes due to breast cancer. Many of these women develop lymphedema, or swelling of one or both arms, as a result of surgery. In order to help deal with this condition, they need to wear lymphedema sleeves, which are like compression stockings for the arms. However, this pricey and medically necessary "medical device" is not covered under Medicare or most insurance plans. Women who cannot afford the $200 to $500 for the two sets of compression sleeves and gauntlets can now apply to a nonprofit organization founded to help breast cancer survivors. Please read Susan's blog post to find out more, and to donate if you can.

And while you are there, please say a prayer for Susan, who today is seeing her oncologist about some hot spots that showed up on a recent PET scan. They're in the middle of her chest and may indicate a recurrence. Susan is a fantastic woman, the mother of two small boys, the wife of a lovely man, and a space scientist who works on contract to NASA and promotes the idea of women in the sciences with her blog Women in Planetary Science. She is also a three time cancer survivor, and an advocate for others who have had cancer through her blogs, ToddlerPlanet and Mothers with Cancer. Please say a prayer for her and for her family.

Resumation

2010-12-29T00:58:00.001-08:00

It's been so long. I've done nothing on this blog for months and months and, truthfully, I wouldn't be writing now if I didn't have a a whopping sinus headache that won't let me sleep. I've been THINKING, yes thinking, of many things to write about over the months, but I have been so discouraged and so focussed in a completely different direction than I had expected that I didn't have the heart to put my thoughts out there.

So, let's catch up. First of all, I have not lost any weight. Fine news for a weight loss blog, you say. And you are right. My journey is not linear at all, and I really didn't expect that. When I began writing, I thought that I would see a line graph that consistently trended down -- probably not quickly, probably not easily, but down. Instead, my line graph looks like the EKG of someone who's coded. Flatline. A pound here or there -- one banner month, I lost 8 pounds and was super excited. That was the month I started taking Phentermine on the recommendation of a good friend who has lost quite a bit of weight. However, after the initial "I think this is going to work for me" happy thought, it stopped working. And I thought, "I'm not taking some drug that is not even working for me every day." And I stopped taking it and stopped weighing myself or dieting at all. I'm happy to say that I haven't gained weight, but sad to say also that I haven't lost.

All summer I struggled with incredible pain in my left leg -- pain that would wake me up at night writhing and crying. Charley horses that wouldn't go away. Throbbing, aching, hellish pain that would not let me sleep and prevented me from functioning. The doctor I was seeing who gave me the Phentermine enjoined me to walk one hour every day. I thought, "are you kidding me? I can't walk across the room. I can't go grocery shopping. I can't clean my house. I can't do anything. And you expect me to WALK for distance?" Needless to say, I didn't heed that admonition.

Over the summer, I met with friends every week for School of Community, and I remember talking to one of them who is a physical therapist. I said to her that the pain was so bad that I thought it would be better to have my leg amputated at the hip. With her encouragement and that of another dear PT friend, I actually made an appointment with an orthopedist early in the fall. I explained my history and my symptoms, and he took X-rays of my entire left side. His conclusion? There is nothing orthopedic involved -- get thee to physical therapy. When I showed my two PT friends his order for PT, they both burst out laughing -- he basically had said that I was inflamed from my hip to my ankle. Every item on the diagnosis (and the list was long) ended with "-itis". I began seeing a physical therapist, whom I love, and the work has begun.

To explain -- I was born extremely premature -- my mother's original due date was some time in May and I was born in mid-March. In 1966, that was no joke, and it's a wonder I survived. It was the only time in my life I've been underweight, in fact -- 2.25 pounds. One of the problems I had was that I was born without a hip socket on my left side. This is called "Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip". I had an operation when I was stable and strong enough to survive it to construct a socket and to pin the head of the femur into place. I was in a hard body cast until I was about 18 months old. Later, the pins were removed -- as a result I have a 12 inch scar on the front of my hip and a 6 inch one on the back.

All through my childhood, I saw the orthopedic surgeon who worked on me -- Liebe Diamond. She is an amazing woman -- please read her entry at the link above -- she is in the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. She scared the crap out of me as a child, but I am so grateful to her. She allowed me to live a pretty normal childhood. However, one result of the deformity and the surgery is that, over the years, I developed a bad habit -- it felt "normal" to me to stand, walk, climb stairs, etc., with my feet pointed slightly outward. My kneecaps also point slightly outward, not towards the front (this probably contributed to the traumatic knee dislocation I experienced last year). And, over the years, as a result of this bad habit, all the muscles on the outside of my legs -- particularly my left leg -- became so tight that they pulled my feet even more out of whack (technical medical term alert). I started to walk with a pronated gait -- thus ensuring that all the weight of my body was concentrated on a tiny little area of my left foot where the Posterior Tibial Tendon attaches. In fact, when I was diagnosed with plantar fascitis FOUR YEARS AGO (misdiagnosed, according to my physical therapist), that was the beginning of all this trouble coming home to roost. As the pain from the PTTD (PTT Dysfunction) became more pronounced, the other problems -- walking with my toes pointed outward, pronated gait -- also became more pronounced as I tried to escape the pain. As a result, the muscles on the outside of my left calf and in my ankle became so inflamed and so tight that, as the PT told me, "it feels like you have an extra tibia in your leg". The muscle is as hard as bone.

In order to fix this problem, I have been going to physical therapy three times a week since the beginning of November. There goes all my free time. I drop off Chickadee #2 at preschool, go directly to PT, spend one and a half to two hours there, being massaged, stretched, stuck with needles, having ultrasound and electricity run through the muscle, undergoing pressure point therapy, enduring ice massage and ice packs, and doing exercises, then I rush out to pick the chickadees up from school. It is exhausting and discouraging to see how much work is needed to correct this problem. But, we have to get through the point where pain prevents me from moving (I was walking as if my left leg were made of wood on many days -- not bending my knee, not flexing my ankle). After that, we can start to teach my muscles to work in the proper way. It's going to be a long haul. But I think and hope it will be worth it. Recently, I have started to experience a diminution of pain in the PTT. I've bought a brace that's supposed to help -- I was wearing it incorrectly, so I have to see tomorrow when I take the chickadees to the Maryland Science Center if a correctly worn brace is gong to help me.

So that, writ large, is what I've been working on instead of losing weight. I am hoping that fixing this problem will help me fix that problem. Pray for me!

The Shape of Evil

2010-09-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

Ever since September 11, 2001, the shape of evil for me has been those billowing clouds of pulverized concrete, metal, paper, carpet, asbestos, glass, and, God help us, human beings that whipped through the streets of lower Manhattan on a sunny and beautiful Tuesday morning. Every year, I make myself watch news footage from that date. I listen to music like Alan Jackson's Where Were You and Mozart's Requiem and cry and have skin-crawling flashbacks to the panic and sadness of that day.

I do those things because I'm trying to impose meaning, control, and reason onto a situation that is inherently nihilistic, uncontrolled, and unreasoning. Of course, the monsters who murdered almost 3,000 people in cold blood and those that financed them, and those that trained and supported them, and even those who, in their secret heart of hearts, sympathized with them, had their excuses and their rationalizations and their "reasons". It has been fashionable, since the very day when ordinary people living their ordinary lives were so brutally ripped from this world, for some of us in this country and around the world to try to "understand" the "roots of terrorism". For pete's sake, there are some who assert that these privileged sons of doctors, these engineers, and computer programmers, acted as they did because Christian nations 800 to 1000 years ago waged war to recapture cities in the Holy Land that had been conquered by Islamic armies. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Does that mean that we here in the West should wage war against Turkey to retake Constantinople (now called Istanbul)? That we should murder innocent men, women, and children to "avenge the insult" of Sultan Mehmed II's conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque --an "insult" that continued from 1453 until 1934 when the Hagia Sophia was secularized and turned into a museum? Should we murder innocent Muslim men at work because Christians cannot freely and openly worship in Saudi Arabia or because they are forbidden to enter Mecca or Medina? Should we riot because Christian converts from Islam must sometimes fear for their lives? Should we defend the principle of free speech and free expression by killing innocent Muslims because these principles are threatened by Islamic radicals who want to kill people and destroy things over movies, cartoons, or books? Should we defend equality between the sexes by bombing Riyadh? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Look, it's pretty simple. There is a perverse beauty in destruction. This struck me today as I watched footage of September 11. The images of the World Trade Center debris rolling through the canyons of Manhattan filled me with horror and fascination and a disquieting recognition that they were substantial. They looked alive. They looked hungry. They looked purposeful. And they were, as evil always is. Those privileged sons of doctors, those engineers and computer programmers, were in love with evil, in love with destruction, with desecration, with despair. Somehow, somewhere along the line, the Deceiver had convinced them that the way to Paradise was through the blood of innocents and that the power they would gain for their "cause" by the murder of innocents was more important than anything else.

They were deceived.

And I know they were deceived for a reason that might seem mundane to some. You see, I have another reason to remember September 11. It is the day that my second child was born, at four minutes after midnight. When I realized I was in labor on the evening of the 10th, two days in advance of my scheduled c-section and two weeks prior to my due date, I prayed that she would be delivered before the clock rolled over to 9-11. I didn't want to cry every year on my daughter's birthday. I didn't want that joyful day tainted with memories of evil. But God was trying to teach me something as I prayed the Hail Mary throughout the excruciatingly slow procedure, as I begged the Virgin to intercede and make Dr. T's fingers move a bit faster, to make him stop talking to the medical student he was training as my child was coming into this world.

It's taken me four years -- of crying on Chickadee #2's birthday, of feeling that something is not quite right about this day -- to get it. It's also simple, and it's this:

Perfect love

drives out all fear. (I John 4:18).

What happened on September 11 in New York, and Washington, and over the bucolic fields of Western Pennsylvania, proves that. People hurtling to their deaths or trapped above the fire line did not call their wives and mothers and sons and brothers and fathers and friends to express hatred, or anger, or division. They called to express love, concern, caring. The firemen and policemen and Port Authority employees and Emergency Responders didn't run into burning buildings out of fear and hatred, but because of love -- altruistic love -- the hardest kind of love to have because it is untainted with selfishness. People did not take to the streets and riot and call for the heads of their Muslim neighbors and friends on pikes. No one was tarred and feathered. In fact, in the weeks following the attacks, I distinctly remember my roommate and I talking about a family of Muslims who owned a convenience store just outside of our town. While neither of us was in the habit of stopping at that store, both of us independently had decided to start doing so, to make sure that we looked those people in the eye and smiled at them. So they wouldn't be afraid, so they wouldn't feel isolated or singled out.

When I look into my daughter's beautiful face, when I see her smile in delight at the

magnificent fairy cake her aunt created for her, when I hear her belt out tunes in her Ethel

Merman voice, when I receive her sticky sweet kisses and watch her eyelids fluttering as she strives to stay awake on this magical day for just one more minute, I no longer see the shape of evil, but the shape of love.

And I thank God that Dr. T's fingers were just a little slow.

The Italian Cure

2010-06-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

When I was 21, I lived for a semester at the University of Dallas's Rome campus, which was in a fairly dilapidated hotel at 103 Via del Pescaccio off the "Roman Beltway". Who knew that 23 years later, I'd be living in another Beltway community, this one a lot less romantic than the environs of Via del Pescaccio, overlooking, as it did, the ruins of a villa once occupied by a mistress of Mussolini (or so we were told before we hiked up there to drink our $1.50 bottles of spumante).

I've been thinking a lot about those days lately, and it occurred to me that one thing I never worried about in Rome was food, weight, or eating. For one thing, I didn't have a scale. For another, I was poor with a capital "P". I couldn't really afford to be picky and I couldn't really afford chocolate. Things I learned to eat during my Rome semester included basalmic vinegar salad dressing, calamari, octopus, goat, and the bull's nose. I also spent my days either in the classroom reading Sophocles, Herodotus, or Shakespeare or walking through history -- walking A LOT.

Most of our meals were provided on campus. A typical day's menu might consist of:

Breakfast: coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, an apple or orange, and a "moonrock" (a type of hollow, crusty bread roll particular to Rome called a rosette, but which resembled stone after sitting on the tables day after day) with butter and jam (7 to 7:30 am)

Lunch: the biggest meal of the day, consisted of a pasta course (usually penne with tomato sauce) and a meat course (veal medallions with green beans, chicken with some vegetable, etc.), with moonrocks and fruit as desired. (1:30 to 2:00 pm)

Dinner: This meal frequently consisted of either funghi soup (cream of mushroom) or "sweatsock soup" (tortellini in broth), scrambled eggs with provolone cheese, or a salad of bitter greens dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (7:30 - 8:00 pm)

Throughout the day, we could go to the cappuccino bar on campus for coffee and biscotti if we were hungry, and we often slipped a moonrock or a piece of fruit into a pocket for later consumption.

And then, when we were out and about on a walking tour of the city, we could always slip into a "Pizza Rustica" for "mille lire di pizza margharita, per favore."

But the thing about eating in Rome was that it was all good --even if it didn't taste good (we had the worst Italian cook I've ever seen). It was good because it satisfied hunger on so many levels -- eating in the dining room of the hotel satisfied the hunger for camaraderie as well as physical hunger. Running to catch the last 906 bus into Via Boccea to get pizza because we couldn't stand one more night of Franco's sweat sock soup was a twilight adventure that satisfied our need to break free of routine. Ordering our favorite pizza from the Pizza Rustica at the bus transfer area in Largo di Boccea meant we were coming home after a four day weekend trip bunking rough on "Hotel Eurail"-- it fed our need for stability. In short, food was uncomplicated -- it satisfied hunger and provided nourishment for body, mind, and soul.

Fast forward 23 years. My current relationship with food is anything but uncomplicated. In so many ways, I feel as if I'm flailing around, looking for the magic answer -- maybe Weight Watchers, maybe Atkins, maybe Dr. Berg's liver cleanse. Maybe swimming 3 days per week, maybe join a gym. Let's walk every day, let's aspire to walk every day, let's sleep late. Let's pray the weight off, let's talk the weight off -- hell, let's blog the weight off.

When in fact, losing weight is as simple as eating fewer calories than you expend, consistently, day by day. Maybe there IS a magic answer -- maybe it's giving up and taking what I'll call "the Italian Cure" -- I'll eat for nourishment, in every sense of the word. I'll eat with joy and with a sense of cameraderie (hard to do with picky grade schooler (!!!) and preschooler (!!!!!) and husband with newly-diagnosed celiac disease!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, but still). I'll eat for adventure -- trying new things that break free of routine. I'll eat for stability, making sure that I don't consume things that spike my blood sugar and make me cranky.

The Italian Cure. I think I like it.

What is your passion?

2010-05-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

Boy, I can't believe that it's been almost a month since I last posted anything. I can only blame end-of-the-year craziness, a chickadee who turned six (!!!!) this month, a husband who has been out of town for 3 of the last five weeks (including for our anniversary and said chickadee's birthday!), and sheer laziness on my part.

But never fear intrepid reader(s???), I'm here to tell you about a wonderful and motivating evening I just spent. I joined the lovely ladies of Momz Share for the Silver Spring Soiree this past Saturday. Hosted by the beautiful and amusing Jessica from A Parent In Silver Spring and organized by the amazingJennifer from Hip as I Wanna Be and the energetic Lara from Chicken Nuggets of Wisdom, the Silver Spring Soiree was a chance for mom bloggers from all over the Greater Washington DC area to come together to network, nosh on goodies from some incredible mompreneurs ( including Theresa of Treets and and Sarah of SouperGirl), as well as from the fabulous Done Right Catering, and to reconnect with our essential selves.

Lauree from Simply Leap led us all in an exercise designed to do just that. Imagine 60 or so slightly giddy mom bloggers, relieved to have left the demands of the laundry monster, husbands, in laws, children, work, and life in general behind for the evening, sitting (somewhat) quietly in the play room of Silver Spring's The Little Gym with their eyes closed. As they wait, a bit nervous about what is coming, Lauree's sweet voice asks:

What is your passion?

What would you do if time and money were no object?

What excites you? What gives you joy?

She asked us to come up with a word that represented all those things. There behind my eyes, FRAGMENTS FRAGMENTS FRAGMENTS.

Now, this might not mean much to you, or you might be thinking that there's something terrible going on in my life if all I can think of to represent my passions is the word "fragments". But here's the thing, I knew EXACTLY what that meant and where it came from.

T.S. Eliot.

Specifically, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins." (The Waste Land, 430), which are almost the last lines of this magnificent poem. If you haven't read it, you MUST. Oh you must.

I first encountered Eliot in Lit Trad I, the first of a series of English literature classes that all students at the University of Dallas (the absolute best Catholic university in the nation, hands down), regardless of major, must take. The Lit Trad series looks at literature generically and holistically -- Lit Trad I, for example, covered epic poetry from The Iliad to Eliot's The Waste Land. Other courses in the series looked at lyric poetry, drama. and novel. Reading Eliot at the age of 19 changed my life. It made me the person I am today. It set me on course to try to change the world through (studying and teaching) poetry, which is nice in theory but paid less than 30K per year, and only if I wanted to teach as some perpetual adjunct somewhere. The pursuit of this dream marred my twenties and sent me into a depression that was very hard to shake. But it also gave me something talismanic. In fact, when I was in graduate school at the George Washington University (maybe the most expensive, but not the best, university in the nation), I used to tell my students (who were for sure not looking at literature as anything but a stupid requirement), that one thing I wanted for them to get out of the course, maybe the ONLY thing, was something that they could take with them that would sustain them in the future -- that in a time of crisis or joy, a word of poetry, an image, a line from a play, a character they had come to love, would appear before them and help them through. I don't know whether any of my students took a talisman away from freshman English. I hope so.

What I do know is that Eliot's fragments of literature and culture and art and beauty help to sustain me in this life. They are what help me to see God in this world. They are what help me to see God in my fellow human beings. They are what led me to the road of Communion and Liberation, which is "the road toward a solution to this existential drama", as John Paul II of blessed memory said.

Any species that can create the perfect Shakespearean sonnet... When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.... Any culture which can give rise to the magnificent David or The Burghers of Calais... any society that can birth a recluse who can impart Scout's wonder at Boo Radley's courage? That is the species, the race, the society for me. The creators of these artifacts have been touched by God. They participate in the Creation -- the original Fiat Lux. And I can be part of that. I can touch that just by having a fricking library card.

That is my passion. THAT is my passion. Literature and culture and theology and philosophy and HOPE. Now, if I could only find a way to make a living at it.

Mirrors

2010-04-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

Today, I bought a new journal to record my nutrition and exercise. The one I chose has a two page spread to record all the information I want to record daily. I finally decided to take my doctor's advice and try to pay attention to the fat vs protein ratio that I am ingesting. She basically wanted me to invert the two types of nutrients. The Weight Watchers journal I was using records a number in which calories, fat, and fiber are the inputs in a proprietary algorithm that comes up with the mysterious Points value (TM). While using the new journal is going to be time consuming because I have to look up and record a number of bits of information about a food's nutrition, I think I'm going to like having more data rather than less, particularly about the fat vs. protein ratio.

I've mentioned before, I think, that I don't have any full length mirrors in the house, having taken the breaking of one during our move to a new house seven years ago as a sign that maybe I didn't need a full length mirror.

I should have replaced it.

As part of the goal setting section of the journal, there is space for a Before/After photo spread. I took a picture of myself in my underwear (and yes, this journal is being kept in a fireproof safe ringed round with adamantine chains). What a horrifying thing to see oneself in this way. I look like a balloon woman who has had been blown up by a malicious little boy giant.

Time to get that mirror. And no, you will not be seeing me do this on my blog at any time at all. What a brave woman that Jennette Fulda is -- funny too as her memoir, Half-Assed, attests.

"Mama, Don't Get F-a-t, O.K.?"

2010-04-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Peggy Orenstein's article in this week's New York Times Magazine hit home with me. I know that my complicated, hate-hate relationship (actually, I suppose a hate-hate relationship is pretty uncomplicated actually) with my body poses many risks for my two daughters and THEIR self-perceptions. I've already mentioned that Chickadee #1 is sensitive to my weight. She's not sensitive in the same way that I'm sensitive -- when I was upset by what she said to her friend, she hastened to tell me that "I was only talking about ME, Mommy, not YOU. I was just saying that I wouldn't be fat... I wasn't saying anything about you...," in all innocence.

So, I trudge forward, hoping against hope that I will become magically motivated and not be discouraged by the plateau I've been stuck on for months. Thing is, I don't WANT to diet. I don't WANT to become obsessed by every morsel that passes my lips - that's why I really had a difficult time with Weight Watchers -- journaling takes too many brain cells that I have to devote to other responsibilities. I want to be "normal", like other people who are not dogged by this dis-ease. A few observations on those lines:

Today, I had to do some grocery shopping. Because I also had to deal with a broken washing machine before I left which took a lot more time on the phone than I'd anticipated, I managed to time my shopping expedition with Chickadee #2 right at lunchtime. So, before we did our shopping, we had lunch in the little grocery store cafe. I had a cold cut sub (ham and cheese on Italian, with lettuce and tomatoes) and Chickadee #2 had a slice of cheese pizza. Seated right beside us was a young girl. I noticed as I sat down that this lovely young girl was munching down, with apparent gusto, on a salad from the salad bar. As I began my lunch, I reflected that this was the difference between her and me -- she chose a salad, and nice trim figure, and I chose a sub, which probably contained the same amount of bread that this child ate in a week. My task, the only thing that is going to make positive change in my life, is to make choosing a salad from the salad bar as automatic as choosing a ham and cheese sandwich is at the moment. I also have to ensure that I don't arrive at the grocery store starving because I've only had a quarter cup of milk and 20 goldfish pass my lips by 12:30 pm.
I think that my perceptions of "normal" are completely abnormal. A case in point is body image. I've managed to go for the past 7+ years without a full length mirror in my home (the full length mirror I brought to my marriage shattered during our move to our present home and I haven't replaced it). Truth be told, I don't want to replace it, because I really don't want to see myself. When I pass plate glass windows, my gaze seldom travels below my shoulders and I've already discussed the discomfiting feeling working out in the gym has caused me.
I've been told many times that inculcating a new habit takes twenty-one days. Three weeks of going to the gym and swimming pool. Three weeks of drinking cranberry lemon juice vinegar concoctions. Three weeks of journaling. Three weeks of meal planning. Trouble is, I have been so resistant to dedicating those three weeks. They seem insurmountable. But, as I've said, I'm a great beginner.

And, in a final, and unrelated note, can I tell you how disgusted I am that the "fitness assessment" I have been being urged to do at the gym since I joined (didn't want to do it then because my knee was still in trouble) was actually just an hour long commercial for physical training sessions? I mean, I didn't need some 30 year old guy to tell me that I'm fat, okay? I actually already know that. I didn't need him to tell me that I have pretty okay strength in my arms, but need to work on my lower back, or that my balance is crappy. I also didn't actually need to be sold on training sessions. I'd be the first to sign up if I had the money, but I nearly fainted when the price chart was revealed (always the last step). 800 dollars for the "package I'd recommend for you" -- 3 sessions per week for a year. When I explained that these prices were actually much greater than my monthly discretionary spending budget (my husband and I allocate a certain amount for our "allowances" -- discretionary money that we are not accountable to one another for and which doesn't figure into the detail of our monthly budget), the very nice young 30 year old who bragged to me that he had such low body fat that he sank to the bottom of the pool like a stone) presented much "better prices", the best of which is fully one third of my monthly discretionary spending, and that for 3 half-hour sessions per month. Sigh.

Well, onward anyway!

Nutrition Science with the Chickadees

2010-04-07T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today, my real-life and blogging friend, Susan (WhyMommy of Toddler Planet) is undergoing surgery for a locally metastatic recurrence of the Inflammatory Breast Cancer she successfully battled two years ago. Susan is a fantastic person, an inspiration, and one of the most intuitive and least neurotic moms I know. She also happens to be an astrophysicist who is dedicating her life and career to promoting women in science.

In honor of Susan as she undergoes surgery and prepares to begin another course of radiation, Stimey proposed that Susan's supporters take part in a virtual science fair to show her how much she inspires us, not just as a cancer survivor, but also as a woman, mom, and scientist. So without further ado, here's a little something I like to call "Nutrition Science with the Chickadees".

Our nutrition science activities included (1) sitting on our behinds and watching (thanks hulu) two segments of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (the "making of chicken nuggets" horror and the "beef fat in the dumpster" scariness) and then discussing whether we should want to eat chicken nuggets and things that are fried and brown, (2) an inadvertent experiment that happened when a bag of McDonald's apples was, um, left too long in Mommy's purse, and (3) an experiment testing the fat content in food.

First, the chickadees watched with great interest and growing disgust as Jamie Oliver created chicken nuggets from a chicken carcass, chicken fat, stabilizers, flavorings, breadcrumbs, and oil. We discussed whether those things were good for you and why they might be or might not be. I'm happy to inform you that both girls thought chicken nuggets were disgusting, unlike the children on the program. We also watched a few minutes as Jamie poured one week's worth of chocolate milk (more sugar than soda), sloppy joes, and other disgusting cafeteria foods into a large tarp, demonstrating for parents what kinds of foods their children were being given at school. In the most horrible revelation, he had a truck empty the equivalent of all the fat the school consumed in a year into a dumpster. Blech. It makes me glad that Chickadee #1 goes to a school that doesn't serve lunch most days, leaving the onus on me to provide nutritious meals. Unfortunately, on the days that her school does serve lunch, the lunch consists of either pizza, with a choice of chips, ice cream, or apples, or hot dogs and sloppy joes, with a choice of chips, ice cream, or apples.

In the "accidental experiment", Mommy found a bag of apple slices that had been marinating in her purse for several days. When asked, Chickadee #1 said that it looked like "great big, puffed up balloon". We discussed the fact that carbon dioxide is a gas that is released when organic material, like apples, decay. Usually, we said, the gas is released into the air and you can't see or realize it but, in this case, the apples were sealed in a plastic bag, which meant that the gas couldn't escape and was trapped in the bag. That meant we could watch what happened. We tried to wait to see whether the bag would explode from the pressure of the expanding gas, but impatience won out. We pierced the bag and smelled the gas. "Yuck," was the consensus. Chickadee # 1 didn't think that it smelled like anything apple-related. I'm glad to know that they don't recognize the smell of hard cider (which was all I used to drink when I was in graduate school in Ireland).

Finally, we got to the real experiment. Here, we tested the fat content of various foods (mostly Easter leftovers - we don't have ham, potatoes drenched in butter, and cheesecake (or asparagus, for that matter) on a regular basis) by rubbing them on brown paper and holding the paper up to the light. It was a delightful experience for me as I watched the Chickadees actually do a science experiment and draw the correct conclusions. I got to explain what a hypothesis is and to teach them how to think about what they did. It was fantastic and funny, and my favorite quote was:

Mommy: "It's okay to get a little messy...."

Chickadee #1: "It IS science."

So, for your viewing pleasure, here is our whole experiment of "Nutrition Science with the Chickadees". Sorry about the "hacking up a lung like a three-pack-a-day" smoker. I've been hard hit with allergies and reactive airway disorder is acting up. I should have done the breathing fish (Chickadee #2's name for the nebulizer) before we started -- she has RAD too.

I can't get blogger to upload the video, so I'm posting it in segments on YouTube.

First, Preparing for the Experiment.

Step 1: Smearing Foods on Brown Paper

Step 2: Getting Ready to Draw Conclusions

Step 3: Evaluating Results and Drawing Conclusions

The Leprechaun Trap, or Being Prepared

2010-03-19T04:45:00.001-07:00

Last Monday, I took Chickadee #1 to school as normal. There was an unusual crowd of parents at the door, so she slipped through in front of me before I could walk in. Thirty seconds later, she was back, her mouth in the perfect upside-down "U" shape it gets when she is devestated and about to cry. See, we (ahem, I) had forgotten about her leprechaun trap. Right there on the class calendar for all to see -- if "all" would only look at the calendar more than once a week. We had even had an unusually long weekend because she came home from school early on Wednesday with a stomach ache, then stayed home Thursday as precaution and was off already on Friday. But we didn't do the leprechaun trap. And, aside from googling "leprechaun trap" on Wednesday (the last time before Monday that I check the calendar), I gave it not one thought. Thus, on Monday, we were unprepared.

So I did what any self-respecting neurotic mother would do. I said, "Chickadee #1 -- no crying. We're going home and making your leprechaun trap." So, off we went. The flap from a cardboard box, some aluminum foil, the pot from a fake shamrock plant I had on the front porch, the base of the pot, a jar lid, and curtain rings, some tacky glue and packing tape, and 30 minutes -- this is what you get:

One happy (at least not crying) child, one leprechaun trap, and one mommy who's left kicking herself for not only being unprepared, but also for teaching her child the wrong lesson and taking responsibility for her school work in an unhealthy way.

So what does this all have to do with weight loss and my lack of it?

Preparation. Organization. Foresight. Taking the time to do things right.

All areas where I need help, and lots of it.

The one thing that I will say for myself is that I'm a good starter -- a great auld starter, actually. The trouble lies in finishing. Today I started my combination liver cleansing/penitential to prepare for Easter two week project to follow the guidelines established by Eric Berg (The Seven Principles of Fat Burning). In some ways, I'm skeptical -- I mean, Berg IS a chiropractor, after all -- not a nutritionist or a doctor. In other ways, I'm inspired -- two of my cousins, an aunt and an uncle, and now my sister and brother in law have all gone down this path. And my cousin, the first to try this, was directed to do it by her nutritionist.

The liver cleansing/penitential phase involves eating NO animal proteins or starches (breads, potatoes, rice) for two weeks (you can add a small amount of animal protein (a few ounces) per day if not having it makes you feel faint or sick. It also involves drinking the very pleasant cocktail of spring water (6 oz), unsweetened cranberry juice (2 ounces), lemon juice (2 T), and cider vinegar (1/2 t - 1 t) THREE TIMES PER DAY. So today, I started slowly. I'm not quite ready to go the no coffee/tea route (so I've had several cups of tea today). I also made myself a spinach and egg white omelet. But for lunch I'm having black bean soup (and probably for dinner too). This is going to be interesting. And scary and difficult, but my sister put it into great perspective yesterday. She just started week 2 of this phase, and said, "I know I can do anything for two weeks. I can do this."

I can do this.

Heavy Heart

2010-02-24T15:26:00.000-08:00

Just when I was feeling pretty good about myself, and what I'm doing, this happens. Chickadee #1 had a friend over for a play date and early dinner. As the children were eating, the friend said, "Chickadee #1, I think you are going to look like your mom when you grow up." Chickadee #1 leaned over and whispered something into her friend's ear, and wouldn't tell me what she had said. I let the matter drop, but at bath time (which just started), I asked again what she had said. She hesitated to tell me until I said, "I won't be upset no matter what it was." Then my beloved daughter, my whipcracker smart, funny, talented little girl, my five year old said, "I said 'Except I won't be fat." I just replied, "Oh." and left the room. Now I'm recording the shame and sadness into the permanent (well, digital) record as I sit at my keyboard crying. How pathetic.

I guess I just have to look at this as an impetus for further, permanent change. But oh how it hurts.

And it's sad to know that while, in my imagination, I look like the person in the WHFS T-shirt, I really look the like person in the blue sleeveless number. What the heck was I thinking? Sigh.

Thin Is the New Happy

2010-02-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

In my profile, I describe myself as a weight-loss book aficionado. In fact, if one could lose weight by reading about it, I'd be Twiggy. I've always tended to mediate reality through the printed word and there is something incredibly comforting to read a memoir such as Valerie Frankel's Thin Is The New Happy and to find a fellow-traveler, someone who articulates the struggle of those who have tried, succeeded, failed, and tried again to lose weight -- whether we need to lose a significant or a negligible amount.

As I read Frankel's excellent book, I cringed where appropriate, sighed ruefully where appropriate, and even cried where appropriate. Like Frankel, I suffered under the tyranny of middle-school bullies who hated and tormented me for no decent reason at all (you know who you are). Like Frankel, I occasionally have fantasies of telling those nasty people how much they had to do with transforming a relatively happy kid into a miserable teenager whose only thought was to do as well as possible in school so that I could get a scholarship to a college FAR FAR FAR away from anyone who might know me and might remember that a particularly "endearing" sobriquet I was known by in middle school was MonagHAM. Ha ha ha ha. And, to make it all worse -- I was no chubbier than many other girls in my class and turned out to be fairly well-proportioned in high school and college.

That scarring experience resonates for me today in ways that I hardly notice any more -- but reading this book brought them into focus for me. For example, Frankel relates buying a clicker so that she can count all the instances in which she thinks badly of herself or talks unkindly to herself. She counted instances of "negative self-talking" numbering in the hundreds EACH DAY -- in fact, she calculated that she had a negative thought about her body or looks every three and a half minutes. That sounds familiar -- I can't recall the last time I looked at myself in the mirror and liked what I saw -- that's a lie -- it was the day I met my future husband. Ten years ago. Even on my wedding day I was either counting flaws or not thinking about what I looked like, just hoping that everything would go well.

Frankel also talks about the personal consultation she had with her friend, Stacy London, the style guru from What Not to Wear. Everything in Frankel's closet was chosen to hide some perceived flaw. Most of it was trashed and, armed with explicit instructions from London, Frankel bought a new wardrobe which suited her life, looks, and style. It's a secret fantasy of mine to be whisked away by the What Not to Wear team and transformed, except that I would only want to do it after losing weight and I'm too shy to go on TV. But anyone who knows me in person can see that my clothes follow a pattern -- the things I choose are mostly black, green, or brown. I like to fade into the background -- I don't want people to look at me too much. And that shows. But I am working on changing that.

I'm Back

2010-02-22T15:42:00.000-08:00

This'll be short, but I PROMISE to start writing again. I've been really depressed lately because of the repercussions of my knee injury in NOVEMBER. It's just been this last week where I have not been in constant pain. I guess a week of enforced immobility because of 2 massive snowstorms in a week was what I needed -- neither the chickadees nor my husband nor I had anywhere to go at all for a whole week. It was a bit... ahem... confining. But I think it really helped in my healing process.

I have news to report also -- I've lost 7 pounds, which is not a lot but, after months of stasis, seems like a mountain. I joined a gym and actually went to work out for the first time today. Previous visits were only to visit the jacuzzi. While it was humiliating to discover that I couldn't figure out how to work one of the stair step machines and evidently don't have the strength in my right leg (which is odd) to make it work properly, I did ride the recumbent bike for 15 minutes and walk on the treadmill for half an hour.

And I'm not in pain. And I feel good about myself. It helped that there was a mirror in front of me -- watching myself walking was a somewhat humiliating experience, but in the mirror, I could see the shadow of the woman I want to be -- someone who sets a goal and achieves it, no matter how flipping long it takes. Over the past several years, I've been knocked down multiple times by various issues. But, by heaven, I was back on that darned treadmill today. And I'm going swimming tomorrow. Go me.

New Directions

2009-12-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

So, I told you that, after my fatty liver syndrome freak out, the Nurse Practioner assured me that they were going to help me through this, monitor me monthly, and get me on the right track. She figured out my basal metabolic rate and told me that these are the calories that I need to simply "be". If I eat that many calories and expend calories through exercise, weight loss would result. Great -- fine. All set to join a gym that my friend has been urging me to join so we can work out together.

Then, three days later I dislocated my knee. Since then the only exercise I'm getting is stumping around on crutches and Physical Therapy. But that's another story.

I also mentioned that I have completely fallen off the WW bandwagon. This is for two reasons -- first, my aunt, who had encouraged me to go to WW with her, has stopped going. The meeting location is about a 20 mile drive for me (we chose that location because it's close to my aunt). So, if my aunt (for whom I would walk on hot coals) is not going to be there, I am, shall we say, "disincentivized" to drive that far for a meeting, get sneered at by the weigh-in lady (only one - the others are lovely), corral chickadee #2, and then run back to my home city in time to pick up chickadee #1 from school.

On my WW meeting days, I'd drop off Chickadee #1, go to School of Community, then head to WW. I'd take Chickadee #2 to lunch at Chick-fil-a (they make a mean 8 point salad), and rush back to pick up Chickadee #1, then rush home to get into ballet gear (chickadee, not me) and rush out to ballet, run some errands in that hour, then go home. I'd be gone from 8 am until at least 5, with maybe a 15 minute period here and there to come home. That is CRAZY. It was making ME crazy. And ineffective. And tired. Not to mention a cruel mommy to a 3 year old.

The second reason is the basal metabolic rate that the Nurse Practioner gave me. I'm not sure whether the WW formula is wrong, or if I did it wrong, but it turns out that, if we are talking 50 calories per WW point, then my daily point allowance under WW seriously underestimated my caloric requirements -- by say, at least 300 calories per day. Given the fact that, because I was not really losing under WW, I had further reduced the number of points I was consuming each day, I was never going to lose weight that way -- I had sent my metabolism into a tailspin.

So, instead of doing WW, I asked Santa Claus to bring me a GoWear Fit armband. Have you heard of these things? Basically, it's an armband that you wear on your left bicep. It keeps track of the calories you expend, the steps you take, and the amount you sleep each day. You connect it to your computer and it records the data. Then, you connect to their website and enter what you have eaten for the day. The website will tell you whether you have consumed more than you have expended and provides reports that analyze your sleep efficiency, what sources you have gotten your calories from, and the like. It takes the mystery out of things, and will give me something concrete to bring to the doctor when I go in for my monthly "check in". So, it's all good. While the armband is pricey ($199 -- $179 on Amazon.com), having raw data in front of me is really helpful. I can see, for example, that I get way too few calories from protein and more than I should from carbohydrate. I can see that I need to increase my steps, though that's kind of difficult with crutches. I think it will be a good tool, and there are other features, such as alarms and reminders, that I haven't worked with since you need to have a matching "wrist display" to see what you are doing in "real time" rather than after the fact. Santa's helper is bringing that, I think.

OT -- Nickelodeon ParentsConnect "World's Biggest Online Baby Shower"

2009-12-14T13:17:00.001-08:00

When I was pregnant with Chickadee #2, my sister invited me to Carroll County's Biggest Baby Shower. At the time, my sister worked for the County's Infant and Toddler's Program, which provides early intervention services to children with disabilities and to their families. The concept of the County's Biggest Baby Shower was to get a bunch of pregnant women into a room, give them a nice lunch and some cake and punch, some party games and door prizes, and LOTS of information on infant development, services, health, and other parenting topics. Even though I only won a small scrapbook which I later regifted (with full disclosure to the recipient that I was regifting), I learned a lot despite the fact that I was not a brand new mother.

Now, even if you don't live in Carroll County and it's not the summer of 2006, you too can participate in a great virtual baby shower, complete with games, advice, and prizes. It has come to my attention (via a dear blogging (and real-life) friend at A Parent in Silver Spring) that, this Wednesday, December 16 (as in, two days from now!) Nickelodeon is hosting Nickelodeon ParentsConnect's World's Biggest Online Baby Shower. Between 10 am and 8 pm, the ParentsConnect Message Board will be hopping with shower games, a lifeline of advice on parenting, and many cool (really cool) prizes. Need a UppaVista Baby Stroller or a Medela Freestyle Breast Pump? Drop in to the Message Board for your chance to win these and many other great prizes -- from diapers to jewelry! The host of this unique online party will be Susan Newton, of The Shower Diva fame.

You can participate in the party in one of three ways:

1. Log in (or register) for ParentsConnect. Go to http://www.parentsconnect.com/me/registration/index.jhtml

2. Go to Pingg, RSVP "Yes!" and use the "Share Invite" to invite others. The person with the most guests wins a $650 stroller. RSVP at: http://parentsconnect.pingg.com/babyshower

3) Visit parentsconnect.com on December 16 between 10 am and 8 pm to join the party.
Go to http://www.parentsconnect.com/connect/boards/bootcamp/baby_shower/chat_it_up.jhtml

See you at the party!

Hiatus Over

2009-11-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I've posted. A lot has happened. First, I'll come clean. I haven't set foot in a WW meeting or tracked a single point for ~~weeks~~ months. You could say that I've fallen off the wagon. Hard. Nonetheless, this has been a period of incredible introspection and lots of mental work for me.

When I spoke before about my strange experience of recognizing the ultrasound technician, my discomfort with the whole procedure presaged something even more intense. I got a call at 6 pm two weeks ago from my doctor's office, asking me to come in to discuss the ultrasound results. We made an appointment for 1 pm the following Monday.

That Wednesday through Monday was one of the most difficult periods I've had yet. By the time Monday rolled around, I was convinced that I had pancreatic cancer -- something that runs in my family. I couldn't sleep or eat, couldn't think about anything else. I was gaming out how the chickadees would get taken care of if I were really ill or if I died, how my husband would survive, all that I would have missed. In the doctor's waiting room, I had a serious anxiety attack -- I couldn't feel my fingers or lips, my heart was pounding, and I was close to hyperventilating. Luckily, I do a very quiet freak out so I didn't embarrass myself totally.

In the exam room, when I talked to the nurse practitioner about all of this, she reassured me that I didn't have anything horrible based on what they know now. But, I do have a potentially very serious condition called fatty liver syndrome which, if left untreated, can result in cirrhosis and, eventually, liver failure. My liver is enlarged as a result of irritation (i.e., being "fat") and I need to have a CT scan to look at a cyst they found on my kidney. The doctor reassured me that the cyst was not cancerous -- that they could tell that it was filled with liquid -- and that the radiologist didn't even recommend a follow up -- they were just using a surfeit of caution.

HOWEVER, the important thing to note is that it is imperative for my health and future well being to lose weight. As if I didn't know that already. But the nurse practitioner was really lovely about it and assured me that they were going to help me to do it. I am to go in monthly to be monitored and to make sure I get and stay on track.

I left the office relieved and somewhat happy, if a little worried about the CT scan. I resolved to join a gym that a friend has been urging me to join for a long time (low rates plus babysitting, close to home). We were arranging a time for her to meet me there so that she could introduce me to the manager (she gets some kind of emolument for bringing in new members). I was preparing to go away to Colorado for a wedding with my husband, leaving the chickadees with my parents for the whole weekend! And then, I did this:

Yes, folks, that's a human knee. MY dislocated human knee. My dislocated human knee that failed me in the wet, slippery parking garage of a major big box store that will remain nameless -- but it's not the Arkansan one. In this parking structure of this nameless store, I slipped on the crosswalk and my leg and knee did things that no human knee should do. The pain was intense and I had to crawl across the parking deck, with my 3 year old chickadee screaming, "Mommy, please get up!" over and over again, while I treated her tender ears to words she shouldn't have been hearing (in between screaming myself, I mean). There was no one around (we were on the top level of a 5 level garage), so I had to get myself and the chickadee into the car, in a rainstorm.

And I've destroyed my knee. No fitness club for me these days -- but I am doing PT twice a week. Sigh.

God's Little Wake Up Call

2009-10-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

This morning, I had an abdominal sonogram. No, I'm not pregnant. Instead, I was being examined because I'd had some elevated liver enzymes in blood work that I'd had done during my September physical. Going into the exam room with the sonogram technician was sobering. Sobering because she was the same technician who had examined me last spring when the doctor thought I might have a blood clot in my leg (thank you, sciatica). Sobering because, while I recognized her, she also recognized me. Sobering because, all the while she was examining me, I was praying to God to spare me from some horrible diagnosis. I was also thinking about how terrible it is that. in the last two years, especially this past year, we have spent so much money on health expenses for ME. As I've ~~complained about~~ mentioned before, I've had a revolving litany of health problems recently. How many times am I going to ignore what my body is telling me? Isn't it enough that I have personal relationships with incidental health care professionals?

Yes, I'm trying to be healthier. Yes, I'm doing Weight Watchers and I try to be cognizant of what I'm eating. But I'm not exercising (because I hate it, I hurt, I don't want to, I'm busy, I'm lazy, I've never liked exercising, it costs too much, I'm tired, I can't take the kids, etc. etc. etc.). So what is stopping my lazy ass from getting out of bed at 5 am and walking? Nothing but laziness and exhaustion -- both of which can be cured by doing the thing I'm avoiding.

What makes me sad, though, is that the last time I lost a lot of weight (right before I met my husband), I did it out of PRIDE. I was planning a trip to Ireland, where I'd spent a year and a half while in graduate school. I didn't want to go back there and have people look at me crossways because I'd gained 30 pounds. For pete's sake, if I lost weight for a bunch of strangers, why the f*&* won't I do it for my husband, my children, MY SELF???? This is the mystery.

Sigh. Let's go for a walk.

The Demon of Frustration

2009-10-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been really frustrated. I'm not losing weight. In fact, I'm gaining. Last week was the last straw. I'd "been good" all week. I'd done a lot, if not everything "right". And still I gained. Turns out I was retaining water for the usual monthly reason like crazy, but still very frustrating. Weight Watchers is supposed to be empowering, not humiliating. Not shaming. Not another occasion to fail. Weight loss is not rocket science -- Calories in need to be less than calories out and weight loss will occur.

So, knowing this, why do I do things that are absolutely counterproductive (like buying a big bag of dark chocolate M&Ms for putting into cookies for the chickadees). Now, I don't really like M&Ms, so that's not too tempting, but I DO really like the dark chocolate M&Ms. So far, I've stayed away from them and the accompanying Semi-sweet chocolate morsels for the same cookies. But, will I be as successful when I make the cookies? Will I "try just one" and see it become 2, or 3, or 5, or 7? Why don't I more regularly do productive things, like walking every morning? Because my time is not my own? Because I don't want to give up those extra 50 minutes of sleep in the morning? Because I don't want to add another layer of complexity to an already complex morning routine (small house, small children, one bathroom, two adults and two children getting ready at the same time)?

So, what are the PRODUCTIVE things I'm not doing or not doing regularly enough?

drinking water/liquids
preplanning breakfast and lunch consistently
walking and other cardio exercises
getting enough sleep
weighing and measuring
tracking BEFORE eating

What are the COUNTERPRODUCTIVE things I am doing too regularly?

bringing trigger foods into the house (dark chocolate M&Ms, anyone?)
planning a really high calorie meal because the chickadees and husband will like it or because it's on the meal plan of the week I'm following
agreeing to eat out
agreeing with husband that pizza on Friday was a good choice and THEN not choosing something alternate
skipping meals (like yesterday, when I ate a McDonald's Bacon, egg, and cheese bagel (without yucky sauce) and hash brown for breakfast, then had only some dried apple chips for the rest of the day until night time, when I had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup for dinner). I certainly didn't have all my points yesterday.

So the question is, why am I doing these things (or not doing these things) that are not getting me what I want? Don't I want it enough? Am I just lazy? Am I scared? Am I depressed? Am I overwhelmed? Am I sad? Am I frustrated? Am I stupid?

I don't know. I'm going to do some laundry and then take a walk. Aaargh!

Interim Goal Check

2009-09-29T08:50:00.001-07:00

So, how am I doing on those interim goals that I listed last week....

Yoga 3 times -- NOPE, not yet, though I started to do a Bollywood dancing class before it killed me. It's lots of fun and I'm planning on doing it again today.

Let DH put the chickadees to bed 2 times this week while I go upstairs to read and relax. I'm on track with this -- DH put the girls to bed one night last week, while I relaxed, and even cleaned the kitchen after dinner twice!

Lose five pounds over three weeks. We'll see how I did at WW on Thursday.

Take a short walk every day. NOPE, but I'm turning off the computer right now to go for a walk with Chickadee #2.

She wants to know if we are going far, and if so, how we are going to walk home. With our feet, I said. She seemed to think that was acceptable.

Goal Setting

2009-09-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

I think one of my problems in this process has been my lack of intermediate goal setting. I've had my eye on the end goal and it seems overwhelming. I see my friends, moms of my children's friends, women on the street -- I see those women and I think "I'll never get there. I might as well not even start or not really be serious about doing this because I will never ever get there." I'm defeated before I begin. What a waste of time and energy.

Today's WW meeting talked about setting goals. I think that my fellow meeting attendees are just as confounded as I am. We all know the importance of this task, yet, when Lisa, our meeting leader, wanted us to tell her about the goals we have set, there was silence. We could articulate the reason for setting short-term goals ("Because if you set a short term goal and achieve it, then you are encouraged and feel like you can reach your ultimate goal), but apparently none of us had done this.

So, it's time to fix this problem:

My first short term goal is to do the yoga class on Comcast Exercise TV 3 times in the next week. Each class is 45 minutes long -- I think I can do that, even if I have to get up at 5 am to do it.

My second short term goal is to let my husband put the chickadees to bed twice a week while I go upstairs to my newly revamped reading nook and look at magazines or read short stories or something else that relaxes me.

My third short term goal is to lose five pounds over three weeks.

My fourth short term goal is to take a short walk every day this week.

I'll keep you posted.

Finding a Voice

2009-09-14T10:36:00.001-07:00

I'm really struggling in these writings to find a voice. And, I think, that struggle to find a voice is connected to the larger fight to lose weight and be healthy. Over the weekend, my husband and I were talking about some issues and I just lost it -- in that moment, I felt so misunderstood, so frustrated, so downtrodden, and so alone. He asked me what I wanted, and I could only reply that I didn't know -- that I am so far away from myself and the dreams that I had when I was younger, I couldn't even recall them any more. There's so much babble going on inside my head, I can't seem to breathe or to find the psychological space to devote time to my own happiness and health. I'm almost entirely at the behest of others -- sometimes because that can't be helped (as when my chickadees are demanding and needing attention (all the time, LOL), and sometimes that's because I add too much "stuff" to my life -- volunteering at church, visiting friends and family, taking the children on outings, etc. Life just seems to accelerate and accelerate and only screeches to a halt when I lose my mind temporarily, have a fit, then pick up the pieces. Obviously, this is not an optimal way to conduct business.

So, why is it so hard? Why is it that I can't seem to find time for the things that I love to do? Why can't I bring myself to say to my husband when he arrives home from work, "Honey, I'm going upstairs for some alone time or out for a walk? Dinner's on the table and the children are ready for bed." Could that reason possibly be that, most of the time when he arrives home from work, the house is in chaos, children are jumping off the sofa, I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, and I'm ready to lose my mind? Then we have dinner, and I start the nighttime routine. Even if we start bedtime on time (around 7:30), I'm still not finished with it until at least 8 and more likely 8:30. Then I have to clean the kitchen and try to restore some order. Sometimes, instead of straightening up, we talk or share things about our days, so clean up doesn't happen until 10, 10:30, 11:00 pm, at which point, we're both mind numbingly exhausted and likely snapping at one another. We retire to our (messy) bedroom, read for ten minutes, then pass out from sheer exhaustion -- if we can sleep or are let sleep by the chickadees. Then we wake up and do it all again. Day after day after day. I can barely take a breath, let alone take time to be healthy.

And in the midst of it all, I hear my voice getting fainter and fainter. I'm becoming someone I don't want to be -- someone who whines, who makes excuses, who takes her frustration out on others. The clarity of mind I used to have seems to have gone, replaced instead with emotionalism. I know the way out of this, but I can't seem to get going on the road. I feel stymied at every turn and get more and more frustrated, until I'm tempted to give up and just let life take me where it may. But I'm not a piece of flotsam. I have to be an agent, rather than an object. That means taking control. Deep breath. I can do this.

Daily Progress

2009-09-08T18:14:00.001-07:00

Last week's WW meeting didn't go well -- I'd gained 1.2 pounds. I really have got to stop goofing around here.

So, I've tried to be cognizant of what was entering my mouth today.

I started off strong! Oatmeal, with a sprinkle (1/2 tsp) of sugar and a small splash of half-and-half. A banana -- Points total? 2 + .5 +.5 +2 = 5 WHOOO HOO!

Mid-morning latte with a friend (assume the friend got whole milk when she ordered -- I was with Chickadee #2 in the bathroom, where she produced, and I quote: "A turtle and a Mystery Fish." LOL, FLUSH!!!!, so Points total: 2

Lunch: Crab Cake Sandwich -- set points 5, ciabatta -- 4, 1/2 french fry order = 5 (Points total 14)

Snack: 1/2 apple = 1

Dinner: 3 oz chicken (crockpot chicken with a bit of pesto on it): 4 points
Jasmine rice 1/2 c. -- 2 points
Broccoli 1 c -- 0 points
2" square of sheet birthday cake: 3

Half and half in tea -- 2 points

Total: 33 points.

That's pretty much on target and I think there's some wiggle room since I'm overestimating points in many cases.

The only way I could be off -- and this is a possibility, of course, is over the points at lunch. We had lunch with my in-laws before they left after spending the long weekend with us.

It's very difficult to tell what a restaurant uses in their dishes, but the crab cake was broiled, not fried, and although it apparently used some mayonnaise, it was not over the top. The fries I should have just left on the plate, but at least I split them with my mother in law.

My husband and I are doing very well with our resolution to not eat out at all -- before this weekend, we had not eaten a restaurant meal in over 2 weeks. While the in laws were here, we had one dinner (at Bertucci's, where I got what I hoped was the lowest calorie thing on the menu, a sirloin fillet) and today's lunch.

Today I worked on getting all my fluids in. I still need to work on getting enough vegetables -- I had broccoli (1 vegetable serving), 2 large slices of tomato (1 vegetable serving), and 1/2 of a large apple (1 fruit serving). That means I still need two fruits or vegetable servings. And I'm full. And it's almost 10 pm. And I'm blogging instead of working. And what the hell, I can't eat any more today. I need to make better choices tomorrow.... As all days. Sigh.

I hope this disgusts you as much as it does me....

2009-09-02T15:23:00.001-07:00

So "plus sized" model Lizzie Miller is posing nude in the September issue of Glamour magazine. This woman is BEAUTIFUL. She has great skin, a gorgeous face, a lovely, arresting smile, and a body that I would kill for. She's sexy, attractive, and vital. And yet, the reaction to the 3" x 3" picture has merited a mention in the network news and as a Yahoo! Entertainment News story (where I first encountered it), as well as a frenzy of handwringing (including this post) about how our culture looks at women's bodies. Is anyone surprised at the following:

Lots of female readers said "bravo," and thanked the magazine for showing a woman with an average body. But many men wrote in saying they didn't like the picture, and that the model is too heavy.

If this woman is too heavy, at 5'11" and 180 pounds, God help us all.

Seriously, folks, this points out the utterly ridiculous culture in which we live. If we cannot recognize a "beauty" who is actually beautiful rather than emaciated in a "heroin-chic" (????) way, how can we survive?

The Best Time of the Year

2009-08-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

Forget New Year's Day. Forget Birthdays. The REAL start of any year is the beginning of the school year. Even now, as removed as I am from the life of an academic, my step becomes more springy as the days gets cooler, the school buses start rolling, and the smell of new erasers and paper fills the air. Chickadee #1 starts kindergarten this year, at our local parish school. She gets to wear a uniform (thank God) and and will get in the classroom of a very loving, and very no-nonsense Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Sister. Just what Chickadee #1 needs. Less nonsense. More loving.

I got the chance today to demonstrate the turning over of multiple new leaves -- my imperviousness to shame, my ability to absorb pain, my new found resolution to stick to my guns when it comes to the chickadees, and my refusal to take any nonsense from them. I was proud of myself, but I don't think our local Target will stop talking about us any time soon.

It's a beautiful day here in the center of the Mid-Atlantic region. Clouds marching off into the distance make you imagine fairy realms high in the air. I spent the morning at the doctor's office (full physical -- blood work and x-ray results to follow. We'll get to the bottom of this pain thing I am sure.) After I picked up the chickadees from my friend's house, I softened the blow of them leaving their best friends by telling them that we had to go to Target to pick up a few things, but that if they were good and obeyed the rules, I would take them bike and trike riding in the school parking lot (empty) afterwards. I was looking forward to their playing and my sitting on a convenient stump reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which is marvelous.

Before we went into the store, these were the rules I set down:
1. Stay with Mommy.
2. No pulling things from the shelves.
3. No shouting or disrespect.
4. We buy only what is necessary.

If they successfully followed these rules, we would have the rewarding experience of riding and reading. If not, we would leave the store immediately and come straight home.

So off we went. Chickadee #1 was really trying to follow the rules, although she strayed from the straight and narrow a few times (pushing the cart when told not to, for example). Chickadee #2 was bopping along, mostly in the cart. We picked up what we'd come for on the first floor. We rode the escalator upstairs as a special treat (the chickadees love the "cart escalator" in Target) and started to look at books. Then Chickadee #1 had to use the bathroom. We made a successful potty visit and the hand washing reminded me that I needed Purell. So, it was off downstairs again, and another escalator ride. While we were walking towards the pharmacy area, Chickadee #1 pulled away to grab a Sponge bob Square pants watch from the jewelry section -- she just wanted me to see it and put it back as soon as I told her to. But, she broke rule #1 and rule #2.

And MUCH WORSE, she gave Chickadee #2 the idea to check out the kiddie watches. She grabbed a Dora watch and tried to open the packaging. She wanted to buy it. When I said no, she went into full blown TANTRUM mode. Screaming, crying, thrashing about, etc. I said that we were leaving, and Chickadee #1 started to have a fit about the cart we were leaving behind. So now I had two screaming chickadees who absolutely couldn't believe that I was leaving the store without buying the watch and/or buying anything and that we were going straight home.

I managed to get the kids intact up to the fifth floor of the garage (where we'd parked to enjoy the fantastic sky view just twenty minutes prior -- but oh how crucial a twenty minutes it was) and into the car. Then I left them in the car and watched the clouds go along until the roaring and gnashing of teeth had subsided to a dull whimper. When I got back into the car, I warned them that we would stop the car if they started to cry and fuss again. We got down to level 4 of the garage when it started up again. I drove back up to level 5, got out of the car, looked at the sky for a few more minutes, and called my husband for some moral support. He, of course, backed me up completely. He also shored up my wavering (maybe I should give them another chance??? NOOOO!) and asked to speak to a very upset chickadee #1, who felt that the punishment did not fit the crime -- she hadn't started the tantruming, and she put the watch back, after all. He was able to calm both down a little bit -- despite stifled sobbing from the back seat, we drove home fairly well. Chickadee #2 fell asleep on the way, and I was able to have a reasonable talk with Chickadee #1 about the consequences of not following the rules and the unfortunate fact that, if her sister can't go bike riding, she can't go bike riding either.

She doesn't know it, but my husband and I have agreed that, if she behaves well for the rest of the day, I'll take her to ride her bike after dinner while he puts her sister to sleep.

I'm exhausted but happy to have stuck to my guns. I think we'll all be the better for it.

Better, I think.

2009-08-27T18:17:00.000-07:00

Is it me, or are the last days of summer particularly difficult? In the past two days, I have had to contend with and defuse (or not) multiple (and I mean, MULTIPLE) temper tantrums both of the 2.99 year old and 5 year old varieties. Today, I think the number was five for Chickadee #2 and 3 for Chickadee #1. The big blowout for Chickadee #2 was when I wouldn't let her paint on the dining room rug with the painting set she pilfered from her sister. For Chickadee #1, it was when I refused to take her bike riding at 4:45 p.m., right as I was getting dinner ready. Some days, whew.

Adding to the general cheer, I started the day very discouraged. It's my practice to get on the scale at home prior to going to the WW meeting. That way, I am clued in to the general direction things are going in -- I don't like surprises. Well, this morning, I didn't like what I saw on the scale, and spent all morning and the drive to the meeting excoriating myself -- "Well, it's no more than you deserve -- you didn't track at all this week, you didn't drink milk, you didn't drink water, you didn't exercise. LOSER!!! (but only in the metaphorical sense)." But, still, I hauled myself to the meeting and stood in line, waiting to be given that pitying, condescending look by the woman behind the desk. Imagine my shock when she smiled and said, "Good job -- you lost .4 of a pound." Now, four tenths doesn't sound like much but, believe me, when you are expecting to have gained two pounds, it feels like a lot.

So, hooray, hooray for me. Imagine what I coiuld do if I actually did everything I'm supposed to be doing?

Now, if only there were a meeting for how to lose the temper tantrums.

Bad Day Yesterday

2009-08-20T05:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an awful day for me. While I had lunch with a friend (Chick-fil-A salad and sandwich 10 points total), which was nice, Chickadee #2 took my question, "Do you have to go to the bathroom?" a little too literally and peed all over the floor of the mall food court. She's "almost" potty trained, so it was not a huge deal -- except that I, having left the house unprepared AGAIN, didn't have anything to put on her. Luckily for us, the secondary purpose of going to the mall, after meeting my friend, was to go to the Hanna Anderssen store to buy another 3-pack of their training pants. They're lovely, soft, organic cotton and cost only 10 dollars each, LOL! So, we high-tailed it to the bathroom to take off her wet things, Chickadee #1 bringing up the rear. When we got there, I did some quick thinking and told Chickadee #1 to take off the shorts she was wearing (under a dress that is a tad too short) and hand them over. I slapped them (way too big) onto Chickadee #2 and went in search of Hanna Anderssen.

As we walked through the mall, it became more and more apparent to me that I am actually falling apart. Not figuratively -- literally. Every step I took made me feel as if the ground glass in my left hip was shifting around a little bit more and the hot poker running down my leg was heating up to the melting point. By the time we got to the store, I was almost in tears. We quickly bought the training pants and I put them on Chickadee #2, tucking the waistband of the too-big shorts into the waistband of the training pants. We'd planned to also buy school shoes for Chickadee #1, and we did stop by Stride Rite, but the way I was feeling, coupled with the $55 price tag for a pair of Mary Janes, cut our trip short.

On the way home, I became more and more depressed. I'm at the point now where the small things that I need to do are becoming ever more difficult. I can't seem to get a handle on pain -- first from my foot which, after a year and a half, has become a constant companion, to the sciatica, arthritis, whatever the heck it is, in my left hip and leg, which has been with me now for months, to the arthritis in my fingers. The most frightening and most depressing thing for me is to think that I am now only in midlife. If I survive to old age, I will be crippled. Whenever I begin to envision things being better for me physically, my body, this body which I've never really liked, shows me that it's my enemy. "You think you're going to start walking for exercise again -- do a 5K race (which I did actually hobble through)? Ha effin' ha. I'll make it so you can't walk for locomotion."

I don't want to be a mother so wrapped up in her own physical limitations that she can't do things with her children but that's the mother I've become and it makes me so sad. An example -- after getting home from the mall, I took the chickadees to the pool. During "safety break", when the big pools are closed to children, we decamp to the baby pool. At its deepest this pool is 6". From the pool deck to the bottom of the pool can't be more than a foot. But I, instead of just stepping down into the pool, found myself walking around the the shallow (depth 0") end of the pool and walking to the 6" deep side before sitting down on the edge to watch my children play. I did it without really thinking about it. I did it because that's just what I do now; those are just the "accommodations" I make to manage the pain.

After I made that little accommodation so unthinkingly, I looked back down to the current issue of Weight Watchers Magazine, which I was reading. The cover article is an interview with Jenny McCarthy (one of my heroes, actually). The question was, "Why do you think it's healthy to invest in yourself?" Her response, "On an airplane, they say to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before putting it on your child. I've constantly been training myself to think that way. I say I can only be the greatest mom alive if I'm the healthiest, happiest mom alive," (WWMagazine, Sept/Oct 2009, pg. 114). In the bright, sunny mid afternoon heat, I started to cry. I'm not that mom. I'm just not. Not the healthiest, not the happiest, not the greatest.

I'll get there, I pray, but it's such slow going and is so frustrating. I'm going back to a Weight Watchers meeting today, after being away due to vacation, and I'm hoping that I haven't done too much damage, and I am starting some resistance training today (I have the resistance bands and tubes, and think I should actually USE them), and I have finally made an appointment with my doctor for a physical. I've got to write all this down so that I don't forget to mention anything on my catalogue of woes. I hope I can gain some momentum going forward. Please pray for me.

Body Image Blues

2009-08-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

A word of advice, Dear Reader. If you have body image issues, as I do, DON'T GO ON VACATION to a place that has as its main attraction a huge indoor swimming pool and accompanying "attractions". Great Wolf Lodge is a lot of fun for children but, in addition to the normal -- ahem-- headaches associated with being in a 4 acre room full of screaming, running, excited children and multiple water features, I spent our mercifully short 24 hours there in excruitating comparisions between myself and others. As much as I hate to admit it, I looked at other women with an assessing, comparing, critical eye. Although I mostly found myself on the deficient side of these comparisons, it kills me that I did it, and it kills me to know that other women are doing it to me: "Whew! At least I don't look like that!"

Comparing ourselves to others is, I think, a natural thing for human beings to do. "How am I doing in comparison to my peer over there?" "Is he smarter than I am? "Is he more handsome than me?" "Does she make more money than I do?" "Is she better looking than me?" That it is natural doesn't mean it's a good thing. I've never been competitive with other people -- I was comfortable with the idea of competing with myself, striving to do and be better with each iteration of a task. I find myself appalled, then, that I am doing all this comparing, which is just another form of competitiveness.

And, of course, it makes me feel so much worse. Sigh.

Menu Plan Monday

2009-08-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

I've been planning menus for about a year now - it's a simple way to plan grocery shopping, it helps me be in control of our grocery budget, and it helps to run by the week's selections with my super-picky husband. I've mostly stuck to planning dinners, but this week, in an attempt to rein in our rampant spending (vacation was SO expensive), I've planned every meal. I've also been a big fan of OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday for almost as long as I've been menu planning. So it makes me happy to be able publish my very first Menu Plan Monday post. Next week, I'll do my best to calculate WW points for all the meals.

Without further ado:

Monday

Breakfast -- Vanilla Yogurt with frozen berry medley and granola parfaits
Lunch – 99 cent macaroni and cheese at IKEA
Dinner -- Leftover Pasta Meatball Soup (garlic bread and salad)

Tuesday

Breakfast – whole wheat waffle sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and banana
Lunch – ham and cheese sandwiches, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, chips or Peanut butter and jelly, chips, fruit
Dinner -- Roast Turkey Breast, Stuffing, Corn, Gravy, Green beans,Rolls

Wednesday

Breakfast – frozen berry medley smoothie with vanilla yogurt, English Muffin bread
Lunch – kids (hot dogs speared with spaghetti and then cooked) and peas, Mom (green salad topped with leftover turkey, asian dressing, edamame)
Dinner -- Cheese tortellini bake

Thursday – crockpot day

Breakfast –oatmeal with cranberries and almonds
Lunch – on the go sandwiches for Chickadees
Salad with leftover roast chicken and asian dressing for Mom
Dinner: Applesauce chicken
Rice
Frozen Peas

Friday

Breakfast – cereal of choice or egg white omelet
Lunch – Sandwiches at pool
Dinner -- Fish sticks (kids) or Chile Lime Fish Fry, Corny Polenta, Peas with lemon zest

Saturday

Breakfast -- Cereal with bananas
Lunch – pack a picnic lunch to take to Brother-in-law’s house (we’re helping them move), Ham and cheese sandwiches, Coleslaw, Spicy noodle salad, Lettuce and tomato
Dinner: Leftover Applesauce Chicken, Buttered egg noodles, green beans, corn

Sunday

Breakfast -- vanilla yogurt with berry medley and granola parfaits, english muffin bread
Lunch -- spaghettios with broccoli (kids), sandwiches or leftovers for Mom and Dad
Dinner -- Ham Steaks with peaches and apricot sauce, rice, green beans, salad

So how am I doing on vacation?

2009-08-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

All I can say is, thank God, Thursday starts a new week of tracking for me. I thought I was doing pretty well, but I was a tad mistaken. Every week, I get the regular amount of daily WW points, plus 35 extra points that I can either use or not use. Most of the time I don't use them. This week, I used 37 of them (oops).

What really sent me over the top was the flatbread pizza at Uno Chicago Grill last night. Why I thought flatbread was a better choice than say, a salad, I don't know. I just know that I was in a foul mood because the skies had opened up (4 to 7 inches here last night) and we were soaking wet. We'd been driving up and down the "strip" looking for someplace to land, and I knew that the rest of the family would enjoy pizza. So, that's what we chose. I got the vegetable soup (2 points) and a flatbread pizza (24!!! points). Thank heavens I didn't eat the entire thing, but really.

Today is a new day and the beginning of a new week. Vegetables. Water. No more Chicago Grill.

Vacation, aahhh. Hunh?

2009-08-12T05:13:00.000-07:00

Here we are on vacation near a beach and some naval installations. I've tried to prepare for at least not gaining and, I hope, losing some weight while here. Our hotel provides breakfast -- I've stuck mainly to toast and hard boiled eggs. Not the tastiest, but the eggs are the only protein on offer and I'm trying to ensure that I start my day off correctly.

Yesterday, we brought the lunch I prepared to the beach. It was HOT and very sunny -- almost uncomfortable. We stayed on the beach for a few hours, then, as it got really hot towards noon, retired to find a shady spot to have lunch. Unfortunately, that spot happened to be our RAV4, in the parking lot. Evidently, this town has no parks at all. I suppose they think that the beach is all one could need -- but we prefer our children to remain unlike lobsters and our sandwiches as free from sand as possible. It wasn't too bad -- the chickadees thought it was exotic to eat lunch in the car. My husband was less enthused, but he troupered along.

After lunch, we went on a harbor cruise to look at the naval base that's here. Do yourself a favor -- don't take a five year old and a two year old on a two hour cruise, or you will be praying for a tidal wave to come and sweep you (just you) away. We were shoehorned into the very full cruise at the last minute, so we couldn't find seats (in the air conditioned bottom deck) together. Daddy and the chickadees had three seats (2 side by side and 1 in front), while I had a single seat 4 or so rows behind, across the aisle. Chickadee #1 spent the entire cruise running between her seat and mine. Chickadee #2 followed suit, and added lying over the escape hatch in the middle of the floor to the repertoire. The highlight of the cruise (for the horrified, watching crowd) was when Chickadee #1 tried to get in front of Chickadee #2 -- a little too enthusiastic, she pushed a bit too hard, the boat went over a wave, and Chickadee #2 fell backwards into the side of a seat across the aisle. The wailing and gnashing of teeth began, in stereo.

Afterwards, my husband said, "You know, we really have to rethink these vacations. We just have to resign ourselves to the fact that we have to only do things that the children will enjoy, not necessarily what we enjoy -- this cruise was a disaster." Yep. Next.

Shopping, menu, trepidation, vacation

2009-08-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, as I do every Monday, I planned our menu for the week. I got most of the groceries from Harris Teeter, since I can order them and then pick them up. Staff there shops for you, bags the groceries, charges your account, and puts the packed bags in your car when you arrive to pick them up. Not having to shop with the chickadees in tow is worth the $4.95 service fee I (which has been deferred almost every time I've used the service for one promotional reason or another). I did, however, have to stop at Trader Joe's to pick some other things up.

My menu plan for the week, you ask?

Monday: Grilled Tilapia, fish fingers for the chickadees, homemade french fries, green beans, applesauce. We didn't do that -- instead, I had the Pesto-cheese-tomato burger, 1 cup of fettuccine with grape tomatoes, and the chickadees and husband had hot dogs with ketchup and/or mustard and a side of fettuccine and marinara sauce. My dinner came to 9 points for the burger (including everything, including the roll), and 5 points for the pasta (4 for the pasta, one for the tomatoes which were cooked in a spray of olive oil). That wasn't too bad, particularly considering that lunch consisted of a salad and lemongrass chicken sticks from Trader Joe's, for a total of 5 points, and breakfast was 2 small bananas (4 points) and a cup of coffee with milk (1 point).

Tuesday: Dinner at sister's to celebrate sister's birthday My beloved older sister is holding a party for herself, 'cause she's just the kind of gal who can think of nothing more lovely to do on her birthday than to gather her family around her. We're having steamed crabs, a Maryland tradition, which is a bit yucky but oh so yummy. As long as I stay away from the beer (which I hate anyway), I should be fine -- a little punch drunk from all the sodium in the Old Bay seasoning, but crab is very low in calories and fat.

Wednesday: Chicken Parmesan Fingers over Garlic Spaghetti

Thursday: Pesto-Cheese-Tomato Burgers, salad Not sure what I'll do here -- the burgers were very good, so I might make them again for the whole family, but I also might just substitute Monday's meal here.

Friday: Cheese Tortellini with tomato sauce for chickadees and husband. Tortellini veggie salad for me

Saturday: Hot dogs or hamburgers on the grill for chickadees and husband. Grilled chicken for me. Leftover tortellini salad

Sunday: Leftover buffet -- clean out the fridge before vacation day.

Ah.... Vacation. Should be fun. Beach, sand, nature reserves, bird watching, Great Wolf, restaurants.

YIKES. We are going to be stuck for five nights in motels/hotels with no kitchen, a family that loves to eat out, and a "carnivale" attitude (all rules are suspended, we are in "extra"-ordinary time). That could spell disaster. I'm coming up with a game plan (eat mostly fruit, with English muffin or toast at the continental breakfast, keep lunch things in the room refrigerator and take to the beach with us in our cooler, choose wisely at dinner, stock up on healthy snacks, etc.). I've asked for advice in the WW meeting and on the WW community website, and have submitted a question to www.hungrygirl.com. Any suggestions would be welcome. I already know to stay away from the Boardwalk fries (which are too greasy for me anyway) LOL.

Restaurants

2009-07-28T15:13:00.001-07:00

The folks at Washington Hospital Center are jumping all over my a#$ -- even they are telling me I need to lose weight. I received in the mail a beautiful packet of information -- the main enclosure was something titled "Weigh to Lose: The Power of Portions and the Vital Vegetable." Included in the information were a bookmark (always useful for me), a folder which, when opened, becomes a placemat that shows portion sizes of starches, vegetables, proteins, etc. on a plate, and a booklet of information about a contest a local television channel and Washington Hospital Center hosted. The contest is over, but when I checked out their website, I found that the winner, Jenny, was a SAHM of FIVE children. The dietician's description of Jenny's diet very much resembled mine, and my problems. She said:

Jenny was already consuming a very healthy diet when she started the contest. Approximately one month before the contest began she started eating more vegetables and whole grain foods. Her eating issues were related to the amount of food she was ingesting. She would often eat seconds at mealtimes and she would pick and snack throughout the day.... Her meal plan is designed to help her eat in a more structured manner.

I think that is pretty much where I am too -- I try to eat whole grains when I can, and I'm not a fiend for chips, candy, etc. But I do pick at things (even healthy things) during the day and I also tend to consume larger portions than are necessary.

I think the portion size problem may have started out as a side effect to all the restaurant eating we did when I was pregnant with Chickadee #2 -- I was exhausted all the time from running around after the small toddler Chickadee #1 was at the time and my husband was working at night in a very high-stress job. He was stressed and didn't want to deal with the process of cooking, eating, and consuming food at home, and he is a stress eater who turns to pizza for comfort. So, he would suggest going out and I would agree -- I didn't want to cook and clean up either. Everyone knows that restaurant food is cooked with lots of added fat, sugar, and salt (thanks Dr. Kessler). And some restaurants (like The Cheesecake Factory) are notorious for huge portions (I once ordered a salad there that I had for dinner at the restaurant and lunch and dinner the next day!!).

Even when portion sizes are not screaming "I am a behemoth!" to you, they are larger than what you'd make at home. Take pasta, for example. A serving size of pasta is one cup, with one half cup of sauce. At our local Italian restaurant, the penne with sausage comes on an oval plate and includes at least 2 cups of penne, a whole link of sausage, sliced, and about a cup of sauce. Looking at this portion, it doesn't seem unreasonable. It seems an appropriate portion for the $11.95 price. But, if you actually measured it, you would find that, instead of consuming 4 WW points worth of pasta, you had just consumed 8, and instead of consuming 2 points of sauce, you had eaten at least 4 -- not to mention the sausage. This doesn't even account for the salad at the beginning of the meal or the "free" bread that they bring to the table with olive oil for dipping. Your "reasonable" meal probably cost you at least 15 points, which is huge proportion of the daily points you get.

The solution to this problem seems obvious -- do not eat out. Under any circumstances. That's quite hard to do in my family, for one reason and another. My husband comes from a family culture of eating out, which I do not. I actually cannot remember ever eating out with my parents (aside from vacation or road trips) when I was small. In contrast, my husband grew up with a mother who worked night shift and a father who worked swing shift -- this crazy schedule and the exhaustion it engendered made eating out the obvious choice for his family. In times of stress (and who doesn't have stress when you have preschoolers?), we have tended to follow my husband's family pattern -- to eat out or call for takeaway. Every time we have a budget discussion, we target out restaurant budget as the one area we agree to cut. Every month, we spend money on eating out. It takes discipline and planning not to do that. That has to be our next goal.

struggling

2009-07-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

I'm having a real struggle right now. After last week's "lost week", I still haven't really gotten back on track. And, I double-scheduled myself for this morning -- I scheduled Caroline to participate in a study at the nearby state university's Infant Studies lab at the same time as "Against the Current". All weekend, I've been wavering between going to exercise and going to the study. All right, all right -- I'm choosing to exercise, but my motivation is very low. I'm going because I have to, because I should -- not because I'm looking forward to it. I think I'm just really tired and need a break of some kind. Vacation is in two weeks, so that will be very nice. In the meantime, I have to jump back in. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Lost Week

2009-07-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

Weight loss efforts this week have flown out the window. After the Saturday "lose your child at the beach" fiasco, we jumped right into the "sofa leg broke, no where to sit" debacle, the "Daddy's going to be out of town for the week" disaster, and the "Mommy's teaching Vacation Bible School" adventure. So, Monday's "Against the Current" class was a miss (which is a shame, because I could have really used the energy). Yesterday, the babysitter arrived to let me go deep water running. On the way to the indoor pool, I actually started to nod off at a traffic light. So, I sensibly pulled into the parking lot, lowered my seat back, pulled the beach towel over me, and took an hour-long nap. Today was my weigh-in day for Weight Watchers, but I didn't go -- I was at the closing assembly for VBS, watching my second grade class practice their song for tomorrow's grand finale.

It's probably a good thing -- I haven't been tracking at all this week and had Trader Joe's frozen pasta 2 out of four nights, Trader Joe's pizza for lunch yesterday, and "Irish spitballs" for dinner (my dad's affectionate name for Chili-mac) last night.

I'll do better this week and get back on track.

Thankfulness

2009-07-19T04:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I lost something precious.

I took the chickadees to the beach, in a state park on the Chesapeake Bay. I met my brother and his wife and two little beans and some friends and their mite. We had a lovely time -- had lunch (pb&j with sand, grapes with sand, potato chips with sand, you get the picture), built sand castles, splashed in the very mild waves. All was great under the very intense sun.

Until.

Chickadee #1 had gotten up enough courage to actually want to get into the water and go out into the waves. But I had to be there and had to be LOOKING as she cavorted. Chickadee #2 was content to play at the water's edge. I had my brother's oldest bean with me -- a real daredevil whom I had to watch like a hawk to prevent her from swimming out to meet the passing speedboats.

Chickadee # 2, as I said, was content to play in the sand at the water's edge. She had been running between our blanket, where my sister-in-law and friend were hanging out with their year-old-ish babies, and the pile of sand she'd been working on. I saw her running toward the blanket and let her go. A few minutes later, I couldn't see her with the adults on the blanket, so decided to go up to them to see what she was doing behind them.

She was not there.

She had not been there.

I immediately panicked, though I unsuccessfully tried to hide it. Thinking -- I DON'T KNOW WHERE MY BABY IS!!! IT'S A FRICKIN' BEACH. THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE AND CARS AND WATER AND OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD."

My brother took off running to the south, my friend's husband to the north, and I, screaming my chickadee's name as loud as I could, ran inland, towards the spot where I'd seen park rangers earlier. I ran into the concession stand when I couldn't see them, then ran out again, screaming her name all the while.

As I approached the beach again, a beautiful young woman came up to me and asked me what Chickadee #2 looked like. She said, "I'm going to help you find her. I have a two year old too." She took off running towards the playground. She had an air of confidence -- not, "I'll try to help you find her." No, "I'm going to help you find her." A few seconds later, another, older, black woman came up to me and told me, "He's got her. She's all right, she's all right," and gave me a hug. I am so grateful to these women. So grateful for the kindness of these strangers. They took the time to help me and comfort me. They were ministers of God to me. I'm sorry to say that I was too panic stricken to even pray throughout the whole ordeal. But God heard the inarticulate cry of my heart and send these women to help me. I wish I could thank them in person, but I hope they know how incredibly thankful I am.

When I saw my brother carrying a crying Chickadee #2 towards me, everything clicked back into place. The possibility of our lives tilting irrevocably out of kilter receded back to the other side of the veil.

Chickadee #2 had been about 100 yards to the south, sitting on the sand, crying. When my brother found her, she clutched at him and cried harder. When he put her in my arms, she clung to me like a monkey, wrapping her arms and legs about my body and crying into my neck. That's okay -- I would have done the same to her if I could have. My baby. Restored to me.

Shortly after this adventure, we left -- too much excitement for one day. As I was walking through the parking lot, chickadees in tow, I saw my first angel, smiling so beautifully at me as she and her husband and children drove past. It was the final surreal touch -- I wasn't sure at first that it was her, because I only saw her face for a few seconds when she approached me on the beach -- I didn't have the opportunity to really form an impression of what she looked like except to note that she was beautiful. But I am convinced that it was her. Thank you.

Later, after the chickadees were asleep and my husband and I had gone to bed, I was jolted back to wakefulness by thinking of all the horrible possibilities. I was overcome with such a sense of gratitude and joy, such thankfulness to God above. I could barely contain it -- I wanted to get up and get dressed and go and pray before Jesus in the 24 hour Eucharistic Chapel our parish has, but I didn't want to wake my husband up by getting out of bed. I thought about waiting a while, then getting up and prostrating my trembling self before the Infant (Jesus) of Prague statue I have, but thought that would too weird.

I contented myself by praying a heartfelt Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. The last joyful mystery, "They Find Jesus Preaching in the Temple" blew me away. I understood viscerally, emotionally, in a newfound way how Mary and Joseph must have felt. God had entrusted them with this marvellous child, this gift, and He was missing. I cannot even imagine the emotions they must have felt -- they didn't lose their child on the beach for three minutes. They lost him in a huge city for three days. My joy on finding Chickadee #2 mirrors that of the Blessed Mother on finding her child.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Obesity Research

2009-07-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

I've spent a fair amount of time this weekend reading David Kessler's The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite and it's really making a lot of sense to me. I also saw an article on the BBC website, Obesity 'link to same sex parent', which asserts that obesity in children is directly connected to whether their parent of the same sex is also obese. Wonderful. I found consolation, however, in another BBC article, Obesity 'set before the age of five', which presents research that children who are obese tend to gain most of their excess weight (90% for girls, 70% for boys) before they reach school age (five). Both of my chickadees are extraordinarily tall for their age, but their weight is absolutely proportional to their height and the pediatrician has assured me that they are both at really healthy weights and have healthy BMIs. In fact, Chickadee #2 freaks me out because I can count all her ribs when she raises her arms above her head.

Terry Wilkin, the lead researcher in the study on the age at which obesity is "set" theorizes that there is evidence that diet, rather than lack of exercise, is to blame for obesity in preschool children. He blames higher caloric density and larger portion sizes. Which brings me back to David Kessler.

I'd been waiting to get this book from the library (I'm number 32 on the waiting list) but, this weekend, I decided not to wait any longer and sent my husband to Barnes and Noble. I'm still in the first part of the book, in which Kessler discusses the neurological research related to how animals react to what he calls the "salient stimuli" offered by food -- the taste, texture, smell, and emotional/cultural context of the food we eat. Kessler's presentation of this research is fascinating and very readable -- in some ways, it is even too "dumbed down" -- there are places where I am left wanting to know more (but that's what end notes are for, I suppose). It's also somewhat dispiriting to learn how like laboratory rats we are. Kessler's main point in this section is that human beings react to the presence of fat, sugar, and salt in much the same way as they do to, say, cocaine in terms of the brain's endorphin system.

Kessler describes the ways in which combinations of fat, sugar, and salt are included in different foods. His descriptions of various menu offerings, while funny, are also pretty disgusting. For example, here is his description of potato skins:

Typically, the potato is hollowed out and the skin is fried, which provides a substantial surface area for what [Kessler's industry insider] calls "fat pickup." Then some combination of bacon bits, sour cream, and cheese is added. The result is fat on fat on fat on fat, much of it loaded with salt. -- (Kessler, 19)

Yum. Think of that next time you're at a sports bar.

While this section of the book is disturbing, especially in its relentless detailing of the ways in which our brains are rewired through the things we put in our mouths, I think the next section, called "The Food Industry" is going to be even more eye-opening. I'll keep you posted.

I wear black on the outside because black is how feel on the inside....

2009-07-09T17:56:00.001-07:00

Thanks for the great title, Morrissey. I knew all those hours listening to you wail were going to have an effect on me.

After the last appallingly maudlin post, I am half-ashamed to say that I lost 2.4 pounds at this week's weigh in. You might be surprised to find, however, that most of that post was actually written AFTER my success at the scales -- immediately before I started this post, in fact

See, I really DO resent all this, even when I'm "successful". I really wish I didn't have to think about it so much. I really do worry about the messages I'm sending to the chickadees (girls, 5 and almost 3) about how women view their bodies and what is beautiful. I wish I could be happy in my skin, no matter my size, but I can't -- I have never been able to do that -- not at size 10, not at size 12, not at size 14, or 16 or upwards. What I'm looking for on this journey is the ability to inhabit my own body happily, at whatever size I end up.

In fact, the goal I have in mind for my weight loss would have appalled me at 20 or 30 -- THAT's your desired END STATE???? Are you nuts? I'm afraid, however, that once I reach that goal (and I will, no matter what I think in my discouragement) that I still won't be happy.

But here's the rub -- without unhappiness with the status quo, there is no incentive to change. Without hating the way I look, I'll continue to act in the ways that got me to this place, and I think we already know that the elevator goes up much more easily than it comes down. I don't even want to consider where I could end up if I don't assert control now.

It's all confusing to me -- I wish so much that I could approach this whole project without emotionalism, without investing so much of myself in it, but that seems to be beyond me as well. Any suggestions?

Here we go again

2009-07-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

At last week's WW weigh-in, I'd gained 4/10 of a pound. That's not very much, and I'm not that upset about it, because I know that there could be a host of reasons for that gain. I could have been retaining water, my clothes could have been heavier than those I'd been wearing the week before (I had been wearing the same thing every week, until I found out that the outfit's pants were literally falling apart and I had to throw them away -- I don't buy clothes much -- I think they were from the early days of my pregnancy with chickadee #1, six years ago), or I could have had just one Chocolate Mint Milano cookie too many (just kidding).

Nevertheless, this kind of 4/10ths up, 2/10ths down crapola is very discouraging. I am getting a lot more exercise than I had been -- my "Against the Current" class really kicks my a#@S every Monday, and I'm going deep water running twice a week. My problem is my discouragement and my belief, deep inside, that I actually CAN'T lose weight. I alone, of all the people in the world, have a unique metabolism that does not react to diet and exercise. I alone, of all the people in the world, am consigned to looking and feeling terrible until I die an early death.

How's that for cheery?

I know it's not true. I know that my metabolism is not unique and that fewer calories in and more calories burned equals weight loss. However, it doesn't FEEL like that. It feels like I'm stuck in this less than optimal way of living and I resent it. I resent having to monitor every frickin' thing that enters my mouth and every intentional expenditure of energy. I resent having to write it all down and I resent feeling as if I must always "be good". I hate the way I think about it and talk about it -- all this talk about being good, as if what I eat is some kind of reflection on the state of my soul. I resent it, I resent it, I resent it. And that, ladies and gents, is the kernel of the problem.

It's all mental and emotional, see?

Musings on Exercise

2009-06-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I had a dream, one that woke me from a deep sleep. I woke with a smile on my face (a rare occurence for my sleep-deprived self). In my dream, I was running. I felt so free, so happy, so in-tune with my body. That dream shocked me. I thought about it for days. I'm still thinking about it, still trying to understand both the happiness I felt in the dream and the shock I felt at dreaming it.

See, people like me don't run. People like me are not athletic. People like me hate to exercise.

Wait. Is that true? Why does it have to be true?

When I was a child in elementary school, I was very active. The tribe of children on my road (we didn't have a street, but a road -- a gravel road bordered by a thick hedgerow of overgrown vegetation and, beyond that, a corn field) were always playing tag, olly-olly-in-free, chase games that involved throwing things at one another (apples, plums, peaches from the trees in our yards, gravel from the road, etc.), hide and seek, hiking in the woods, playing in the stream, building "houses" in the hedgerow by whacking at the vegetation with sticks.

No sitting for hours in front of flickering screens for us.

In school, we had a great gym teacher (Mr. Ahrens) who, in his first teaching position right out of college, loved us children and received our adulation in return. He encouraged us to do things that were at the limits of our physical and social abilities -- climbing ropes up to the ceiling, playing all kinds of games, learning to work together in teams. Mr. Ahrens made you feel good about exercise, made you feel good about yourself and what your body could do, made you feel strong.

At our end-of-year field day in fifth grade, Mr. Ahrens encouraged me to run in the hurdles race. He told me that I was really good at hurdles. I believed him and ran a great race -- I don't remember whether I won, but I do remember feeling really proud of myself, and really accomplished.

Fast forward to the horror that was middle school gym. When I mentioned writing this entry to my younger sister, M., she said, "oh, you mean the torture show? Those horrible women who were our "teachers"?" and we spent a good five minutes reminiscing about Mrs. S. and Mrs. O.

They spent our gym classes riding in a golf cart behind us as they herded us forward in the "cross-country running" portion of the class, at best. At worst, they sent us out in the rain to run as they stayed in the gym office playing Boggle and eating Bugles.

The nadir of my experience in middle school gym class came in the spring of 6th grade and serves as a perfect counterpoint to my experience with Mr. Ahrens. It also completely changed how I thought of myself in terms of athletic ability and coordination. During the track and field unit, we had to choose three "events". Naturally, I chose the hurdles. I was good at hurdles, remember?

I'm not sure what happened. Instead of gliding over the hurdles as I leapt like a gazelle, I knocked them all over, falling flat on my face at each. At the beginning and end of the course, Mrs. O. and Mrs. S. stood, watching, assessing, laughing.

Laughing. At. Me.

Mrs. S. thanked me, guffawing, for giving her the best laugh she'd had all year. "I have to give it you, though -- you kept going when anyone else would have given up," she said. Of course, when your teacher laughs at you, it's okay for everyone else to laugh at you too. When your teacher says, in effect, "you should have given up and spared yourself the embarrassment," you listen. I wasn't good at hurdles after all. I wasn't athletic after all. I wasn't "good" at the things you do in gym class.

From that point onwards, gym was a torture in which I had to participate. From the horrible uniforms -- one piece, baby blue "rompers" with a HORIZONTAL pinstrip at top (all the better to highlight our budding breasts and developing waists and hips) to the enforced communal showers -- teachers inspecting us as we left the spray, clutching our inadequate school-supplied hand towels to cover our nakedness. Team sports where teammates groaned when I was assigned to them. Mean girls making comments about other girls' bodies, attractiveness, prospects.

Obviously, I'm still working through all that -- how can I reclaim that child who was good at hurdles? How can I become someone who exercises and moves for sheer joy? How can I burst through the limitations that I let other people, people who didn't care a fig about me, impose?

Me. Somone who exercises. Someone who LIKES to exercise. Whoa.

Stasis and Pain

2009-06-27T08:02:00.001-07:00

After two weeks, I had not lost or gained an ounce at my last WW weigh-in. That's okay, and actually more than I expected -- after last weekend's dessert extravaganza and scant attention paid to the Good Health Guidelines (I mostly stayed within points the whole time, but fell down on the job when it comes to making sure I got enough dairy, enough fruits and vegetables, etc.), it's more than I deserve.

So that's the status update.

The real point of this entry, however, is to talk about something that has been on my mind a lot lately -- PAIN. Serial, unrelenting, stupid pain. Not to complain-- I've had pain of one kind or another for at least 18 months now. In March of 2008, I saw my doctor and discussed with her wanting to lose weight. She was very encouraging, but cautioned me that diet was probably not going to do it for me. She told me that I needed to engage in at least 60 minutes of vigorous, sustained, intentional exercise at least five days per week. I "enthusiastically" started -- exercising with children is not a lot of fun, but I did get some of Leslie Sansone's Walk Away the Pounds DVDs and began doing them religiously every morning. I mean, I can walk, right? Anybody can walk.

Wrong. By April, a few weeks later, I had a terrible pain in my left foot. A pain that wouldn't go away and didn't get better. I went to a podiatrist in late May, who diagnosed me with tendonitis and offered me orthotic inserts for my shoes (to the tune of several hundred dollars). That was not very appealing, so I decided to do things the old way -- let's wait and see and it will get better.

Wrong. By October, right before the 20th anniversary of my graduation from the best Catholic liberal arts university in the nation, I was complaining to some friends that I could barely walk and that I was going to be hobbling around campus like I was 142, not 42. A friend looked at me quizzically and said, "why haven't you gone back to the doctor?" Good question. After my return from the reunion (pictures from which make me cringe -- so much for my plans to have lost weight before the reunion -- I'll have to wait until the 25th to fit back into my beloved freshman year pants), I went back to the doctor, who sent me for an MRI. The damage was extensive -- not tendonitis, but a torn tendon. I spent 12 weeks in a "boot". The pain from the torn tendon has receded into background noise -- it's still there, but I can deal with it.

In November of 2008, I came down with a cough that lasted and lasted and lasted and lasted. I was diagnosed multiple times with bronchitis and given four different antibiotics, none of which helped. Finally, I decided I needed to find a new primary care doctor (whom I like very much). She told me that I might have pneumonia, asthma, COPD, or even a lung tumor!!! An x-ray ruled out pneumonia and a tumor (thanks be to God), but didn't solve the problem of the cough. She sent me to an asthma and allergy doctor, who worked with me over a period of months. Earlier this month, he told me that he did not think I had asthma, but that I had had a horrible, drug resistant case of sinusitis, which caused continual post-nasal discharge, which started me coughing and which eventually evolved into a condition that mimicked asthma (recurrent bronchial spasmosis or something like that). I'd been taking Symbicort, Nasonex, another nasal spray, doing sinus rinsing, and a bunch of other things. I feel so much better. I'm not coughing. It's hard to exercise when your lung capacity is at 70 percent. Now that's all over -- I can finally really start to exercise, right?

Wrong again.

Two months ago, I woke up with a horrible pain in my left leg, hip to knee. After a spending a weekend staggering around the house, I decided to see the doctor. She suspected a blood clot (which I also wanted to rule out since my father had just developed one and the pain sounded similar). I didn't have a blood clot, so she wanted me to see a vascular surgeon. After thinking about it, I decided that I didn't want to do that because I wasn't convinced the pain I was feeling came from varicose veins. I really thought (and think) it was from sciatica. So I began seeing a chiropractor recommended by a friend. It really helped, but I'm still not 100 percent better. I need to see him again -- it's just really difficult to make multiple appointments in a week with the chickadees. There is only so far you can impose on friends to babysit for you.

This morning, I woke up with a pain in my back.

I am falling apart.

So what does this pain mean? What is God trying to teach me? I must admit that I am very impatient with it. I am not cut out to be a saint. I think of all the martyrs who bore their pain joyfully, of St. Therese of Liseux who was so patient in illness, and I am ashamed. But being in pain for so long has clouded everything and colored everything with a kind of gray discouragement. I know that I need to lose weight to feel better. I need to exercise in order to lose weight. I can't exercise because I can't walk, can't breathe, or have sciatica (which is horribly painful if you've never experienced it). It's a vicious cycle that I can't seem to break. I think of all the Nike commercials -- just do it. How we valorize athletes who "play through the pain." And I have been trying -- I'm doing deep water running twice a week (all the babysitting we want to pay for right now) and am taking the very strenous "Against the Current" class. So, while three hours of vigorous intentional exercise per week is not five hours of vigorous intentional exercise per week, it is a step in the right direction. I even walked in a 5 K race, for pete's sake -- I should say staggered, actually, and came in dead last. Humiliating. But I "just did it." And I am not seeing the results I want to see. I feel like Sysiphus -- pushing that same fricking boulder up the hill. That same 10-ish pounds comes on and comes off, comes on and comes off, comes on and comes off. Searching for the meaning in all this. Any suggestions welcome.

Just Desserts

2009-06-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

My husband and I went away for the weekend, arriving back home on Father's Day. On Friday and Saturday we enjoyed two of the loveliest desserts I've tasted in a long time. The first was a strawberry tiramisu -- ladyfingers soaked in Grand Marnier, a layer of strawberries, a layer of sweetened marscapone cheese, and a drizzle of strawberry confit on top. Believe me when I tell you that it was worth every single calorie -- I counted it as 10 points since the two of us split the dessert between us. The preceding meal was also lovely -- smoked tomato soup, a crabcake on a very tasty hard roll, and a salad of bitter greens with a Dijon vinaigrette. On Saturday, after a day spent in various pursuits (curio shopping, birdwatching, antiquing, beach walking), we enjoyed another good meal at a restaurant in Rock Hall, MD -- Maryland Crab Soup, a crabcake, baked potato, and asparagus. The blackberry cobbler looked too good to pass up -- and it was. Luckily, we split that dessert too.

However, I am afraid that my Thursday weigh-in day will be disastrous. I did try to follow the Good Health Guidelines, but it is quite difficult to do that when you are not in control of the food you are eating -- not in control of the production and, apparently, not in control of the consumption, LOL.

I've had a few days to recover, and have one more day before Thursday to "be good". I've been mostly good.

One wonderful thing is that I've been keeping really busy -- I took the chickadees swimming on Sunday, which is never horribly active for me, but the elevated heartrate caused by trying to keep track of children running in opposite directions near a drowning hazard should count for something. Yesterday, a friend called and invited us to lunch at Cheeburger, Cheeburger -- she's doing WW too, and was smart enough to ask about the nutritional content of their burgers -- 64 grams of FAT. How that is possible, I'll never know -- they must deep fry the burgers. I don't think that 4 ounces of beef naturally contains 64 grams of fat. In fact, I know it doesn't. Luckily, armed with that information, I chose the grilled chicken sandwich. Unluckily for me, I just found the nutritional content of this chain's food -- the grilled chicken sandwich, while better than the burger, contains 590 calories and 26 grams of fat. How the heck is this possible with a GRILLED piece of chicken --do they grill on a bed of Crisco? Sigh.

Anyway, the Cheebuger, Cheeburger fiasco was preceded by a kickass workout (Against the Current, offered by Montgomery County Department of Recreation -- this class deserves (and will get) its own post) and followed by a stint picking blueberries. Today's roster of activities included chickadee wrestling (they've been fighting a LOT lately -- that 2 year old is a fierce contender), Moms group at church, and swimming. We haven't been home a lot, which is good in terms of snacking. less good in terms of housework....

I Just Knew It Was A Conspiracy

2009-06-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

Forget the "vast right wing conspiracy" that then-First Lady Clinton slammed for going after her husband when he was caught with his pants down. Forget the Bush-Hitler hysterics. Forget the "Obama engineered the financial meltdown to get into power" theory. This is the real conspiracy: David Kessler, former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has written a new book called The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite (Rodale Books, 2009). The Women's Health website discusses the new book in its article, Control Your Cravings. Evidently, "menu scientists" at major chain restaurants manipulate the levels of salt, fat, sugar in their foods so as to trigger an addiction-like response in brain chemicals. So you really can't just stop at one french fry. Call me outraged.

Weight Watchers Good Health Guidelines

2009-06-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

The Weight Watchers Good Health Guidelines are pretty basic -- when you look at them the first time, you say, of course -- am I not already doing this? Shouldn't we all be doing this?

The guidelines are:

Eat 5 fruits and vegetables servings each day

Eat whole grains when possible

Get 2 servings of milk products each day

Get 2 teaspoons of healthy oils (olive oil, canola, sunflower, safflower, or flaxseed)

Eat 2 servings (at least) of lean meats, skinless poultry, fish, beans, soy products, and lentils

Limit added sugar and alcohol

Drink at least 6 8-ounce glasses of liquid each day -- water is the best.

Take a multivitamin each day

Do 30 minutes of intentional exercise most days.

So, why is it so hard to do those things? I'll be honest -- my adherence to the Good Health Guidelines is spotty.

I usually eat enough fruits and vegetables, but it's a struggle.

I choose whole grains when I can, though it would not be incredibly difficult to make the change to whole grains all the time --not doing so is just laziness, I guess.

Getting two servings of dairy every day is difficult for me. I tend to get my dairy from cheese products, which are full of fat, even when they are part-skim (because what's the point of eating fat-free cheese?) I don't particularly like yogurt, though I do like Greek-style better.

Healthy oils are really hard for me. I've been trying.

I choose lean meats whenever I can -- the beef we eat is all at least 90% lean, with the very occasional (non-lean) yummy steak thrown in. We eat a lot of chicken breast and turkey and some seafood, but only rarely eat beans and lentils -- and never soy!

I very, very rarely drink alcohol -- mostly because it's just not part of my lifestyle and I don't think of drinking -- also, I hate the taste of beer. Limiting sugar can be more difficult -- I do love baked goods.

I sometimes drink enough liquids -- though rarely confine my choices to water -- I like diet sodas and iced and hot tea.

I don't take a multivitamin because they make me choke (bad memories of prenatal vitamins!)

Intentional exercise is not every day -- usually 2 to 3 times per week for 40 minutes to an hour.

Success! (and Frustration!)

2009-06-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

At last, after 3 weeks of solid gains, I had a major loss this week -- 3 whole pounds. Now I'm back where I was a month ago, LOL. The trick is going to be how to make sure that that loss continues next week. One thing I did differently this past week was really work to get my milk in each day. I'm not a big milk drinker, and have tended to get my dairy from other sources, like cheese. And cheese is a less-good option than skim milk (Fat, constipation, bloating). I also have tried to ensure that I get at least 2 tsp. of "good" oils every day. My oil of choice is olive -- I use it for cooking whenever possible. I use canola when the olive oil taste would be instrusive. So, for the next week, my goal is going to be to ensure that I follow all of the healthy guideliness from Weight Watchers.

Much later this evening.... Chickadee #2 is still awake at 10:28 pm. I wish I had a HUGE PIECE of Death by Chocolate cake right now. It wouldn't make me feel better (and might make me feel sick), but I could turn the anger and frustration I'm feeling against myself -- at least then it would have an object. Death by chocolate indeed!

Works for Me Wednesday -- behavior modification with ditalini

2009-06-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

I've been reading WFMW for a year or so now, and I'm so excited to be posting my very own tip!

So, if you have a preschooler who has MAJOR trouble listening but who is motivated by strange things, this is the tip for you.

Have a discussion with the preschooler after a temper tantrum resulting from not being able to go to the playground after school because she has ballet in 40 minutes (or similar situation). The discussion is about TRUST. "See, Chickadee #1, I can't let you go to the playground after school because I can't trust that you will come with me when I call. How can we build trust? I know, let's build ourselves a "trust bank".

Get yourself a formula dispenser (the kind with three wells). Label one well Neutral, one well More Trust, and one well Less Trust. Get yourself some ditalini or other small pasta (elbow macaroni would also work). Fill the Neutral well to the brim. Explain to recalcintrant preschooler that she will be allowed to go to the playground after school or other fun activity only when the ditalini in the More Trust well are more numerous than those in the Less Trust well.

Watch the behavior improve. Watch the preschooler ask "Do I get a ditalini?" after good behavior and do a victory dance when the answer is yes. It's key, however, to just add ditalini to the Less Trust well at bad behavior without making a huge production of it -- otherwise, you'll get into a power struggle and invite a tantrum.

Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?

2009-06-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm a veteran reader of weight-loss books. If you could get thin by reading, I would have no problems. One of my recent favorites is Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? by Peter Walsh. The premise of the book is that many of the clients that Peter Walsh, a professional organizer, works with have problems keeping many areas of their lives under control -- weight is just one of them. A cluttered home and a cluttered body are evidences of a cluttered mind, and Walsh's premise is that if you get your mind straight, both your home and your body will follow.

Great premise. And I was seriously demonstrating the obverse yesterday and today. After my husband left for a week-long business trip, I started working on an assignment for work that needed to be completed yesterday. I hadn't started it because we had had a very busy weekend (birthday party to be attended by chickadee #1, graduation party for my fabulous nephew later the same day, birthday party for my husband (who turned 40!) on Sunday, dinner out with the family, then home so hubby could pack.) And I wanted to finish this assignment bright and early because my babysitter was coming at 12:30 so I could go swimming. I had to run out to the post office with the chickadees to pick up a registered certified nastygram from MOMS Club International (an organization with which I am no longer affiliated, so I refuse to link to them or to use the "circle R" they keep telling members they must use at every mention of the sacred name. No, I'm not bitter.) At any rate, when I arrived home, chickadee #2 was acting like the 2 year old she is and insisting that I give her my keys. I kept them away from her and continued working. When the babysitter arrived two hours later, I grabbed my keys.... No, wait -- my keys were not in their spot. I started looking. Couldn't find them. Couldn't find them. COULDN'T FIND THEM!!!

The babysitter stayed with the chickadees and I was able to finish my report, so at first, I chalked up the key disappearence to my higher power telling me that I should stay home and do my work. Later, though, my higher power and I had some serious disagreements because I STILL COULDN'T FIND MY KEYS. Car keys, house keys, access cards for the pool, teeny flashlight. A huge bundle.

We tore the house apart (and I live in a very small house). No keys. Desperation set in. I pictured being stuck in the house until Friday, when my husband returned with the extra set of keys. We had no groceries. We needed other things. The children need excursions to keep me sane. We all went to sleep last night with a very unhappy mommy and children who added helpful things like "I saw your keys in the bag of crayons." and "I hide them under the table."

Anyway, we woke up this morning and started looking again. I decided that the best thing to do would be a grid search, like they have on nifty police procedurals like Law and Order: SVU. I wrote up a list of all possible places to look, room by room -- as in, Living Room: couch, under, beside, behind. Shelves in LR --1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ... Dining room, corner table, on, beside, behind, inside... and then went through the places that had not already been searched bit by bit. Luckily, I started in the kitchen. And I found my keys, in a teacup in "Corner Cabinet, Shelf 2." I wish I'd followed my desire last night to have a nice soothing cup of tea.

A friend of mine told me last month (when I misplaced my pool access cards for three days and prayed fervently to St. Anthony for aid) that St. Anthony obviously wanted me to find not only the access cards but also something else, and I needed to figure out what that was. I thought to myself, and maybe even said, "Yeah, he wants me to find my sanity." Well, I guess the lesson was not learned, so the patron saint of the lost needed to give me a refresher. Lesson learned, dear St. Anthony. The first thing I did this morning was to order a remote control key finder from e-bay.

Sisterly Advice

2009-06-04T08:30:00.001-07:00

After I wrote the first entry or two of this blog, I sent the address to my three amazing sisters, L., M., and K. They are wonderful -- my best friends from childhood through adulthood -- always there, always supportive, always honest, always insightful, always funny, always fun. After my husband, they're my biggest supporters, as I am theirs. I thought they all had really relevant things to say.

First, my big sister, L., emailed me to say:

Your blog is interesting and a neat idea. I don't know why there are contradictions like self sabotage in our lives..what is it that keeps one from "just doing it" Nike has marketed this truth everywhere and I along with everyone else in the world wishes that it were that easy. It is not, but then again nothing worthwhile is easy anyway. There are lots of things that each person struggles with... weight is just one of many hangups we humans deal with. I think it is good that you can identify the facts that surround your self sabotage and maybe that will start some self actualization...who knows. I say do what works...if a blog helps so be it. However, you are a bright person and one thing you could easily let go of is the idea of wasting. Eating out is wasting money...eating candy and cake is just wasting time. If you want it eat it -but keep in mind that you will have to answer to your actions. In other words, you will have to "pay up". If you eat the cake, be willing to walk the mile or whatever you do to burn the calories...on the same day. I guess it is about being accountable to oneself. That is a life journey. One other thing I'd like to suggest is to. stop looking in your past...it is gone. Instead be happy that is was part of your past. You never know what great things might come in the future and that is where you need to set your sights. Instead of looking at what you were, start planning for what you will be... it is not OK to look back and say I did that ...instead think about the great stuff you did and figure out ways that you will do it better in the future. I don't know how to post to a blog but if you want you can put this on the page.

My next youngest sister, M., emailed me all the way from Paris to say:

I like your blog and it's title Wrecklamation - very clever! I also think it is a very good idea for the work you wish to do on yourself. I was touched by what you wrote, so thanks for sharing. It seems that one can become a "follower" of blogs, but I think I have to set up an account with google or something. In any case I plan to follow it - I like the way you write.

Finally, my youngest sister, K., said:

I don't know how to get "into" the blog to write, if that is what you are supposed to do but I wanted to tell you, you look beautiful in the pic. None of us will ever look like 20 somethings again, BUT we can be healthy, happy beautiful 40 somethings. I hear ya and relate all too well. I am hoping to enjoy my approaching 40's and I know I won't be able to unless I get my mind and body in the right place. It sucks to give up cheese steak and cheesecake but I think I'll like squeezing into a 12/14 more than I enjoy squeezing that grease and fat into my belly! I will pray for you and encourage you, you can do it!!!!

Thanks to all my sisters for their support. I love you all.

And I do actually have a brother, who is also the most wonderful brother a person could have. I haven't told him about the blog yet because he's been out of town. Was going to do it at lunch today, but he cancelled on me. He's still the most wonderful brother a person could have.

Nerves

2009-06-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Today is my first weigh-in day since starting this blog. I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't nervous. While I've stuck completely to my points this week (with the exception of Monday's cheeseburger debacle, which was within my weekly bonus points range), I confess I have only been deep water running once (40 minutes of blissful cardio in peace). But I have not been drinking water (WW now allows you to count all fluids, not just water, towards your daily 64 oz total, but I do think that water is best) or paying huge attention to the healthy guidelines. I HAVE been better about tracking, which is good. So it was not a great week, but not a terrible week -- and I have a feeling that the scale is going to show it.

I've been fighting a rearguard action since starting WW in January (yes, I've wasted six months on this, losing and gaining the same 5 pounds). I'm frustrated and need to shake something loose. That's one of the reasons I started this blog -- as a way to motivate myself and introduce an element of "oh no -- someone else is looking at how I'm doing." The question remains, though -- why I can't motivate myself for MYSELF.

More on that later, I hope, after I go to the meeting. I'm sure I'll have a lot to say then.

Planning ahead

2009-06-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went to a local restaurant with the chickadees to participate in a fundraiser for chickadee #1's school (15% of all proceeds from the meals sold between x and y time would go to the school). The restaurant specializes in eggs, breakfast foods, crepes, and American sandwiches -- very yummy. However, I didn't plan ahead by looking at their menu online (the last time I was there, I was told that they didn't bill their food as healthy, so they didn't make nutritional information available -- red flag!!!). I should have looked. If I had, I would have found that now they do publish their nutritional information and I wouldn't be suffering eater's remorse this morning.

The fundraiser was such a smashing success that our party of nine had to wait for almost an hour for a table, and we ended up being separated anyway because they didn't actually have a table for nine! I sat in a booth with my girls and my friends' two girls, who are a bit older than mine. Super hungry children + waiting a LONG time for a table + very crowded restaurant + "let's get this show on the road; it's past bedtime" = me ordering the first thing that looked good on the menu. A lovely cheeseburger and french fries. And I can attest that it was very good and I enjoyed every single bite and was sorry when they were gone.

I'm not so sanguine this morning after figuring out the damage I did -- calories = 1429, fat = 79 g., fiber = 8 g. for a grand total of 34 points for the cheeseburger ALONE (at least I think so -- I've emailed the restuarant chain to ask whether the information is for the whole meal (burger and fries) or just for the burger). People, that's more points than I get for a day. Thank heavens I wasn't tempted by dessert!

This situation is one the reasons I love WeightWatchers. I have 35 weekly points that I can add to my daily points for special occasions. This qualifies. I could wallow in self hatred and remorse (why didn't I have the grilled cheese with tomato bacon and cheddar (11 points) or even the asparagus and swiss omelet (21 points)). But I didn't plan ahead. And I enjoyed the meal. Moving on.

Chicken a la Carte

2009-06-02T05:31:00.000-07:00

This short movie, Chicken a la Carte, won the People's Choice award at the Green Unplugged Online Film Festival. Moving. Disturbing. Shaming.

Saturday Successes

2009-05-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

Today was a fairly good day, in terms of diet, mainly because we didn't follow our usual Saturday pattern of eating our main meal at a restaurant. And, sad to say, we didn't do that because my husband had to go into work today. The chickadees and I did have a lunch made up of a small slice of pizza each in the cafe of our local grocery store. I figure I made up for the caloric content of the pizza with an elevated heart rate caused by said chickadees' misbehavior in the aisles after lunch. After the grocery store, we went to the local swimming pool -- the chickadees got more exercise than I did. My workout consisted of schlepping all our gear across two parking lots (it was CROWDED) while pushing a toddler in a stroller and making sure a preschooler didn't get hit by speeding teenagers in Humvees, followed by contortions in the locker room as I attempted to get changed with modesty.

Despite my horror of locker rooms (and more about that in a later post -- I have A LOT to say about the scarring nature of middle school gym class), thank goodness summer is here. The big plan is to walk to the local outdoor pool (7/10ths of a mile from our house) every day that the weather permits. I am counting on the walking to help raise my level of everyday exercise and to exhaust my chickadees enough that they will welcome bedtime and sleep all night. I also plan to take a power water walking class and to do my scheduled deep water walking. I hope I survive the summer without growing webbed feet.

Starting Strong?

2009-05-29T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, I celebrated starting this blog yesterday by having some cake and half a fun size box of Dots afer dinner!!! Makes so much sense, doesn't it?

My college roommate told me that, during her Rome semester, on the class spring break trip to Greece, the history professor asked another student to read the entire "Catalogue of the Ships" from the Illiad in Greek as the 100 strong class stood listening in the lashing rain. I thought at the time that this sounded deadly dull, and so, despite the catalogue which follows, I promise that I don't plan to use this blog as a food tracker -- I actually pay Weight Watchers to provide that function for me -- but it is illustrative of the problem that I present myself with nearly every day. (Remember those contradictions I'm supposed to working through?).

So, yesterday, I had a bowl of raisin bran for breakfast (WW= 6 points with fat free milk), a lovely salad from Chick-fil-A for lunch (WW = 5 points) and half a fat free frozen yogurt from Costco (4 points). Dinner was broccoli (0 points) and 2 small servings of reduced fat King Ranch Casserole (7ish points (4 points per serving).

So at the end of the day, I had some points to use -- but it would have been better to use them on something nutritious, rather than something sweet. Truth be told, I only ate the cake because it was there -- it was my own baking, but I didn't have any vanilla when I made it, so it had a double dose of almond extract, and you could tell. It had lived in the freezer for a month or two, where it had been forgotten. Then I made the mistake of cleaning out the freezer, finding the cake, and refusing to throw it away. EVEN KNOWING that I am the only one who would eat it. So, I set myself up. I sabotaged myself -- something I do frequently.

I must ask the question, then, why? Do I want to be thin? Or do I want the cake? Well, of course, I want both. And that's the problem. I could go into a long screed about the ways I have and do sabotage myself, but I'll spare us all today and save that for a time when I don't have a five year old singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs (despite the fact that it's 95 humid degrees o ut there!)

But, I'll do better today, I promise And my lovely babysitter is coming back next week, so I'll be able to go deep water running on schedule. Thank goodness -- I need the break from the chickadees (my two little birds, 5 and 2). I'm also trying to use my deep water running time as an occasion to pray the Rosary. It's practically the only time in my day that isn't in imminent danger of being interrupted by someone needing something, and if I wait until night time, I tend to fall asleep before I hit the third Mystery. So, it's good all around.

Beginnings

2009-05-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

Me:
wreck (\ˈrek\)
something disabled or in a state of ruin or dilapidation; also : a person or animal of broken constitution, health, or spirits
My Project:
rec·la·ma·tion (\ˌre-klə-ˈmā-shən\)
the act or process of reclaiming: as a: reformation, rehabilitation b: restoration to use : recovery

See this picture? THIS is the person I’m trying to reclaim – that beautiful, funny, intense, hopeful young woman. Look at the spark in her eyes. Look at the confidence. She’s happy in her body, though she doesn’t know it. She thinks she looks great – loves her costume, mainly because it consists of a kimono bathrobe she made for herself (she’s very proud because she’s not much of a seamstress) and a bedsheet she took off her bunkbed in the dorm. It’s Carnivale in Rome circa 1986; she’s surrounded by friends and fellow intellectual seekers. She walks miles sightseeing most days, drinks water from drinking water spigots marked SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus), “The Senate and People of Rome.” It thrills her to know that she’s drinking water from the same aquifers tapped into by the Romans, from fountains marked with the same acronym used by the Roman Empire on all its public works. She’s happy, carefree, integrated.

That’s who I want to be, although I hope that, twenty-odd years later, I can recognize my good fortune for what it is and can be a little less neurotic about my body and my looks. Back in high school, I always felt inferior to the cheerleaders who were my high school’s (and probably yours) standards of beauty. I had breasts! How embarrassing! I had hips! Even worse! I had an hourglass figure! Oh no! I didn’t recognize that I was at the peak of my phsyical form, with healthy skin, beautiful hair, a nice body, a sharp mind.

Ah – there’s the problem. I was so cerebral then it was frightening. I’m not sure how I got be so divided from my own physicality, but I seemed to strike a pact with my body in seventh grade or so – “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone.” I gave my body the fuel it needed to be happy, the minimal exercise it neeeded to be healthy, and then I didn’t want to hear any more from it. For years, this way of working actually worked. I could devote my time and attention to what REALLY mattered – succeeding academically, devoting time to my friends and family, thinking my thinks.

And then it stopped working.

My metabolism slowed down. I aged. I had children and became a stay at home mom. And here I am today. Now that I have become so overweight that I could stand to lose the equivalent of one of those tenth grade cheerleaders I so envied, I’m starting this blog as a way to be more accountable to myself. If anyone reads this, it will be bonus motivation because, even more than I don’t like to fail, I don’t like to be SEEN to fail. Ironic, isn’t it, since I have written my failure to stay healthy all over my body. But these are some of the contradictions I’ll be working through.

Welcome to Wrecklamation.