LifePundit

Only Eleven Weeks Left

In spite of the fact that today is a holiday, our Biggest Loser coaches expected us to show up for our team workout. This meant that I missed the barbecue and dessert party at the pool. She busted our behinds and did it with a lovely smile and a great deal of passion. I doubt I could work my jaws to eat barbecue and dessert right now.

I couldn't be having more fun and had a very happy weigh-in. My team members are interesting, my coaches are great and this all feels shiny and new.

I'm writing this before I collapse in a heap. First off, there's a great free web site for exercise and diet information that I've started using. Lance Armstrong's Livestrong. Makes it easier to keep my exercise and nutrition diary, which I have to show to my leader every time I see her. She's very kind about it and makes suggestions that sometimes make me very happy, such as that I'm not eating often enough. I'm to eat every 2.5 hours and never go beyond 3 hours before eating. No pie or cake was mentioned, however.

I'm learning about perspective, too. Before she released us and I got to crawl out of the door to finally leave, she gave us a pep talk. She said, "Ladies, we've only got 11 weeks left so you really have to start working hard."

A short time to her. A lifetime for those of us dead on the floor.

The Biggest Loser Turns Out to be Fun

It's either go tackle Paul's leftover birthday cake (which I have resisted), eat those cookies I bought for Lily and her friends' after school snack, go crazy or blog.

I know I've been missing, and if there's anyone who missed me, I'm grateful for you. Lily has started high school and I have so very much I could say but since she reads my blog I'll just say...nothing.

No, I'll say this: thank God she went to the single-gender middle school and got her confidence, sense of self and a strengthened sense of independence from peer pressure built up. I'm not sure that sentence says what I want it to say but I need a cookie. Maybe the whole bag. Maybe I'll go trick-or-treating in my neighborhood this very night and see what I can beg from my friends. 

I am hungry. Starved. I hurt all over. And I'm on the first week of The Biggest Loser at my local gym. 

No, we're not on TV. I wouldn't do that. Blogging about it is as far as I'll go. I'm not the size I like me to be, I'm not fit and my blood work at my last appointment could have been better. So, after much belly-button gazing -- combined with the realization that my belly button could use some buttoning up -- I cautiously signed up for the Biggest Loser. I didn't want to tell anyone. I'm not Big Big. I may not even be Medium Big. I might be Small Big. But I'm bigger than I ought to be and too big to be happy about my bigness. 

Did I say that I'm really hungry and that I hurt all over? I haven't been hungry before today, but I spent my calories foolishly earlier in the day so I'm paying for it now. I could eat, but where's the fun in that?

(I know all about the fun in that. I'm trying to persuade myself.) I'm a team player and I'm not going to eat because my team wants to win.

And I hurt, how I hurt. I've been told I will hurt for the next three weeks. Then I'll hurt less. This kind of hurting almost feels good. At least until I try to stand up or do anything that involves more than blinking my eyelids.

I get plenty of food in theory. It's balanced and not some crazy diet, and I'm supposed to eat six meals a day, which is a lot harder than you might think to squeeze in. I'm a little shocked that I'm not supposed to have watermelon. During the summer I cut up watermelon and keep chunks in a container for what I thought was healthy snacking. But I'm following the rules. No watermelon means no watermelon. I'm dying for watermelon. They're in season. The diet is supposed to keep your blood sugar even so you don't have peaks and valleys and watermelon has too much sugar.  Okay. I'll play. I can do anything for 12 weeks. But watermelon? I'll miss you. 

We're the purple team. Our reasons for being there are all different. Some people don't really need to be there, some are trying to get off that last 60 pounds, and some have serious health issues that run in their families and they're trying to outrun them. Good for all of us. 

Each team leader has what must be a serious incentive to have his or her team win. It must be a ticket to heaven, because these people are motivated motivators. For my leader, that means we're supposed to come 30 minutes earlier and work our butts off past quitting time. She even is throwing in extra workouts every week, beyond what I thought I was getting. It sounded expensive when I signed up -- about $37 per week for 12 weeks (on top of monthly membership fees), but I'm getting at least three personal training sessions (though in a small group setting), nutritional help and guidance and lots of pep talks, friendly e-mail reminders and a phone number I can call anytime for moral support. 

Paul says I'm the most excited he's ever seen me. It feels good to be a part of a winning team -- no matter where we end up.

And it's funny, too. I know I'm competitive (as in, "I want to win") when it comes to horse back riding, but I didn't think I was that competitive otherwise. Wrong. Two team members came to the workout late yesterday. I realized I was pissed at them. I can't believe this is me. 

I'd tell you more but I'd have to have a cookie to go on any longer, so I think I'll just go to bed. Hungry. And be grateful that this is a hunger I chose.

Be a Fountain, Not a Drain

Lily's been on spring break all week. We've spent her vacation in the car, either driving to go look at a horse to buy, or hauling our horse in hopes that someone will buy him, or hauling the horse we've selected home for a two-week trial (Markus, pictured at left). I drove. She listened to her iPod while texting her friends. For hundreds of miles.

Still, we had a lot of quality time in the car. We had a lot of confessions. So far, I'm the only one to confess anything. She said she's not old enough to have anything to confess, and let's hope she keeps it that way. We've talked about:

• What really happened to Princess, the hamster (Tiger ate her, leaving only her hands and feet and head on the laundry rug.)
• Why I would be in a long-term relationship with a guy who thought the overhead passenger handles on the London Tube were germy so he got ME to hold them and then he held onto me.
• Why I would still date a guy (same as above) when he couldn't remember why he was standing outside a men's room so he left with me in it, unguarded. He wasn't there very long -- I promise. I had gone in there to use the facilities and he was supposed to stand guard at the door so I would have the men's room to myself. He was reading a book, forgot why he was standing there, and wandered off. His roommate came in the men's room, saw my sandaled feet under the stall door, said, "Hi, Anne. How are you?" and proceeded to use the urinal. I used my Invisible Walk to exit as quickly and as invisibly as I could. (And no, I was too mortified to cast even a backward glance.)
• And other things that don't make sense from my past.

She laughed until she cried. She even turned off her iPod and stopped texting for a few minutes.

When I ran out of things to confess, I took in the scenery. And I saw a country church sermon sign that I think I will take as my new motto: Be a Fountain, Not a Drain.

Happy Easter, all!

A Master Procrastinator Reveals Her Secrets

There is no one who is better at procrastinating than me. I have some articles that were due last Friday. They are interesting articles I'm writing for one of my favorite clients. But I am stuck. It isn't writer's block. It's .... being a master procrastinator.

I will tell what I did today in hopes that you can learn from me. Writing this post is also one more task to help me achieve my procrastination goals.

Here’s what I’ve done today instead of finishing my articles:

• Vacuumed

• Mopped
• Cleared kitchenette area and cleaned it up (I’m talking moving furniture into the living room until we decide what to do with the old stuff) to make room for when the new table and chairs come tomorrow
• Reorganized part of laundry room (!!!)
• Six loads of laundry (no folding, though; we’ll be clean but wrinkled)
• And get this. Went to Lowe’s and bought stick-down vinyl tile, cut out the damaged part of the laundry room floor, and used a box cutter to cut the stick-down (non-matching) vinyl tile squares into shapes that resembled the part of the floor I cut out (not a very workmanlike fit) and stuck them down. They pretty much look like dooky but at least the old vinyl that was rolled back, tearing, splitting and catching on the laundry room door and breaking off into pieces is gone. Who knows. It looks so bad I might get a new floor out of this (way overdue), if Paul even notices it. However, that was not my intention. I thought I was suddenly a vinyl floor installer. The guy at Lowe’s told me how to do it. (I had to reglue part of the old floor around the edges where I cut the piece out). And even though I had picked up some stick-down tile a few months ago and finally decided which color was the closest, it was discontinued, so I picked out a color on the spot. Uh oh. The existing floor is a golden white; the pieced in squares are a grey-white.
  

Then, I had an appointment with a friend, which I decided not to cancel because that was yet another excuse not to write the articles -- plus she's leaving for Mexico tomorrow so I needed to wish her bon voyage, When I told her what I'd been up to she said that was an awful lot of work for procrastination and probably it would have been easier to just write the articles.  (I love her.)

 She also had some insight into how/why I get myself into this. When something is due, I take a militaristic approach to managing me. I say to myself that I can’t do anything fun until I’ve gotten my work done. She called this taking myself hostage. And, like any good hostage, I resist.

Then the next thing I did was to pick up Lily from school. But she didn't feel well, so I took her to the local

Doc in the Box. Lily is okay – unless she’s coming down with the flu, a virus or has a brain tumor on her pituitary gland. 

How comforting that last is.

There was guy at the doc’s who is one of those skating car hops at Sonic. He had just been run over by an SUV. The manager of Sonic stopped the SUV driver, who was mad that the car hop had “hit” his car. The guy looked pretty good for having been run over by an SUV. He was very chatty, a dreadlocked soul with tattoos who looked like the shock of it all was almost worse than the injuries, though I think he had a broken knee cap and was swaddled from hip to toe on one side with all manner of padded devices. I even overheard that maybe a hip was out of joint. Maybe he was chatty because they had him feeling little pain.

Okay, suppertime. Then I really will write those articles. I always do -- eventually.

My Job is to Make You Feel Good About Christmas

So far, Christmas is upside down. No matter what you haven't done for Christmas, you're ahead of me. I've bought three gifts. One for the piano teacher, and two joke gifts for friends I met for dinner.

The only signs of Christmas at our house are a festive vinyl tablecloth (the real ones are in the attic), a Wal-Mart "seasonal" bouquet and the Christmas cards we've received from the friends who haven't given up on us.

Our tree isn't up. (And will be right-side-up.) No wreath on the door. There's just a warm spot under the bed where I've been hiding, curled up in a fetal position. That's it.

Paul is STILL working every day and night on his office. They moved this week. Sort of. The office still isn't finished, Paul doesn't own a desk (he was using his former landlord's desk), and the cube assemblers are still assembling. Cube assembly is the only job Paul has discovered he can't do himself.

You say Christmas is one week away? Well, at least it's not tomorrow.

We'll get the tree up this weekend (except that Paul and I both have bad colds, Lily's just now off crutches from a horse fall -- nothing broken -- and he's so worn out I hate to ask him to help do anything). We'll go Christmas shopping or maybe send gift cards from Amazon to out-of-state relatives. It's just one of those years.

I did buy Christmas cards in a moment of misplaced optimism. Get this: Did you know that Wal-Mart has a section for Christian Christmas cards? That did make shopping handy-dandy, but I found this odd. Do they have a section for Jewish Hanukkah cards?

And I'm looking forward to cooking Christmas dinner because it's going to be different. I'm using the Silver Palate's recipe for lobster bisque, Paul is murdering the lobsters, and we'll have good bread, a salad and tiramisu (Lily's request and she'll probably make it) for dessert. That feels lavish and simple all at the same time. I'm just sorry that there won't be leftovers to live on for days afterwards. Oh well.

My wicked MiL is coming, but we've set boundaries on for how long. (Right. Boundary trampling is a sport for her.) And then I'm going to visit my mother, who, with any luck, will know who I am. Or, even more importantly, will know who she is.

I won't let Paul put the icicle lights up anymore. They do look pretty on our porch but, no lie, one year I couldn't get them down until July. Never again.

So all you smug Internets who've been ready for Christmas since the day after Thanksgiving, good for you. My wish for Christmas is that we'll get the decorations down before July.

I Want a Dumpster for Christmas

This year for Christmas, I want the anti-gift. I want a dumpster.

I asked for a dumpster once before. Paul said they are too expensive. Paul is frugal. I don't get diamonds or dumpsters.

I'm doing my big, end-of-year Dung Shui, and Everything Must Go. This feels very therapeutic, especially with so many misbehaving people in my life. I can't declutter people from my life, but I can declutter stuff.

Lily started it. She wants to repaint her room and get rid of all the animal prints and other things she considers childish. She's purged everything and most of it has gone to Goodwill. I got in the spirit of things and sent some fancy evening dresses I no longer have anywhere to wear. The lady at Goodwill was thrilled and said that she would put them out immediately because there were girls looking for party clothes.

And I'm not making this up -- as soon as I got home I received an invitation to a black tie dance. if you want to get invited to a party, get rid of your party clothes.

Still, I'm going to keep getting rid of stuff that isn't useful or beautiful. And though I don't quite know what I will wear to that dance, I hope those girls have a great time in my evening dresses. Something will turn up for me (it's probably forgotten in the back of a closet) and I'm thrilled that things I wasn't using (I thought) will bring others joy.

I guess there's a reason it's called Goodwill.

Curing My News Addiction

I need to cut back on my consumption of the news. I know all I need to know now. Actually, I know more than I need to know for my mental health. I'm going to limit my time spent staying current on the news. Although being informed is part of being a good citizen, I need to take a break.

Say, for the next four years.

Obama is getting the worst job in the world. I hope he's a quick study and proves to be up for it. I will be praying for him and for all of us. Yes, God bless America.

Accutane Appears to Make Some People Grumpy

I'm not naming names, but Accutane appears to make some people grumpy. This surprises me, because when I took it eons ago I was my usual self until I started to see double. (True story.)

Then again, just how can you tell if a 13-year-old is grumpy? What part of the grumpiness is being 13, taking exams or being on Accutane?

For more on our family's Accutane adventures, go here (one month report) and here (our Kafka-esque beginning).

We're supposed to be looking for signs of depression in her, but this grumpiness might make us all depressed.

By the way, her skin is clearing up. The doctor has reduced the dose, so perhaps the grumpiness will reduce as well.

Unless that's not what's causing it and we have to wait until she graduates from college.

What to do When You Can't Sleep

Can't sleep? Here's the best thing in the world for putting yourself to sleep when you've got insomnia, or perhaps monsters sitting on your chest. A friend gave me a great technique for when you're brain won't shut down at night time. Give it a job. The best job in the world.

Pray for your friends in alphabetical order (I'm usually asleep before I make it to Zan -- so sorry). Don't obsess over who you put in and who you leave out. Just open your heart and call their images and concerns to mind. Not much to mind, but brush past them and offer them up to God. Offer everything up to God. Let go. Pray. Touch your friends.

You'll be asleep by "H."

So glad my name starts with "A."

Something in me feels like this isn't quite right. I'm using prayer as a sleep aid.

God's always glad to hear from me. And if my child was tense and anxious and couldn't sleep and was nestled in my arms, I'd relish hearing her offer up the names of the people she loved, holding them up to their Creator in love and, yes, sleepiness.

One way we'd put Lily to sleep was to read her the book, Goodnight Moon. But now I've found that it's hazardous to our children's health. Read this very funny opinion in The New York Times here.

You Are Mine

God’s been calling me. But I didn’t hear him through the whirlwind of my life. While I know that Jesus fed the 5,000, I don’t notice the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I wonder how 5,000 people heard him with no amplification system. With this kind of heart – one deaf even to miracles – how is God going to reach me? 

God has his ways. To help me through difficult times, my dear husband signed me up for pottery classes. Here, I found out how God-the-Potter works. And it’s not tidy or mass-produced. 

Clay is not as compliant as you might think. The clay fights back, resisting the potter’s efforts. Even dirt has a mind of its own. The worst was the pottery wheel. If your clay is slightly off-center, your pot will collapse in your hands, spectacularly tearing and folding into uselessness. 

Peter Lenzo (see him and one of his works, left), the master potter, showed the tremendous effort it takes the creator. He crouched over his wheel and steadied his arms by digging his elbows into his thighs to brace them. He wet his hands and molded the clay in a ball while the wheel spun.

Then, as though he was completely alone in the room, he said the most amazing thing to the clay: “You are mine.” He held the clay tighter and expertly forced it into the center. “You are mine,” he proclaimed again. Then he looked up at us and said, “You have to talk to your clay. You have to show it who is in control. Sometimes you have to talk pretty rough.” 

I got chills. “You are mine,” God had been saying to me. Finally, I was listening. 

I still couldn’t center my clay. No matter how I braced my arms and held onto the clay, no matter what I said to it, it got wobbly and off-center. So Peter placed his hands on top of mine and pressed so hard that the muddy pottery wheel nearly wore my skin raw. But, with his help, the clay was centered and I could begin to shape my pot. I now have a crude but beautiful blue bowl. And a better understanding of God. 

Before God can mold me and make me, He declares, “You are mine.” I have to let go of my efforts to control my life and surrender to the hands of the potter, whose first move will be to take me in His hands as He speaks. 

How I resist! But God insists, “You are mine.” 

I don’t even know how to give in, and the spinning disorients and distracts me. I want to get off His wheel and make myself into a shape that appeals to me.

“You are mine,” God declares, and the voice that spun the universe into being starts the work of reshaping my heart. 

The process is hard on the clay and the potter. While God may not have slapped me with unfortunate circumstances or terrible trials, the potter’s hands were lovingly at work the whole time, using my life to shape me into the creature He created me to be.

Tell me again, God. Tell me again. 

“You are mine.” 

Then teach me how to feel Your hands and spin jubilantly into the shape You have in mind for me. Help me to focus on what I am becoming. Yes, Lord. I am Yours.