diet & exercise - an update

I've been keeping a food diary this week, and a few things have jumped out at me.

1. Everything I eat has sugar in it. This seems like it would be a bad habit from the weight loss standpoint!

2. I never eat breakfast.

3. We don't have a set lunchtime, and usually eat snacky/breakfasty foods as our "lunch".

I did manage to run twice this week. I'm having some issues with the treadmill track that will have to be worked on, and am really only at a moderate walk, but that built up pretty fast before so I'm not too worried. The 'running' felt good; the stretching felt great!

So my plan for the week:

Continue my food diary.
Make a conscious effort to eat fewer sugary foods.
Make a point of eating breakfast every day (even if it does have sugar!).
Start tracking my liquid consumption by volume again.
Run at least twice.
Stretch every day.

mature enough to appreciate

Once I wrote to my aunt that I wished I had been "old enough and mature enough" to have really appreciated my grandmother and my great-aunt while they were alive. Her response was that she also wishes she had been "old enough and mature enough" to have appreciated them. The response startled me, and I think about it often as I contemplate opportunities missed/lost/not appreciated enough.

I thought of it again yesterday as I walked through the streets of Salem, hand in hand with my toddler. I've never done that before, just gone somewhere to take a walk with one of my kids. I've always been "too busy," too much in a hurry. And I thought as I watched her look around at things, saw the joy she took in patting a post or playing with a chain-link-fence—why couldn't I have done this with my first? I had nothing but time, just one child to care for, and nowhere I had to be. No schedule, hard as that is to believe.

But the truth is, I wasn't that kind of person then. I was highly stressed, terrified of being a mother, didn't know what I was doing, and was so wrapped up in all of it that I hadn't spent any time growing as a person. Left to myself at that point, I don't think I would have chosen to take a walk, much less to take one with my child in tow!

I think what it comes down to is not that I'm sorry for opportunities that I missed, but sorry that I couldn't have been this person at that time, to have made the opportunities. And in a larger sense, that's a good thing. Because it means that I'm becoming a better, more interesting person all the time. I wonder in 10 years what I'll wish I had been "mature enough" to appreciate now.

random thoughts

I MISS MY BOOKS! I don't know how many times in the last couple of weeks I've started to look for a book (seeing in my head exactly where it belongs on the shelf) only to remember that it's in a box somewhere.

Ran today for the first time in a long while (although not quite "four years", which is what Greyson accused me of!). I'm way out of shape, no surprise there, but it felt good. And the stretching felt great!

My desk is a disaster and needs to make it to the top of my to-do list.

I have way too much to do.

Only 17 more pick-ups from Greyson's school! Wahoo! I set up a tour of his new school for next week, and will hopefully get the whole scoop on the busing then. I need to finish his paperwork and Charles's so I can take both of those with me and drop them off. Grey will have to miss a day of school, but so be it. I can't work a whole trip out to Andover around two different school schedules.

Organization. Need more of it!

Now to work, to make sure I tape Kitchen Nightmares, and to try and make sure my children actually go to sleep.

diet & exercise

These categories are near the top of the "works in progress" list that often seems to be my life. After my surgery I really fell off the running/working out wagon—first because I was too scared it would hurt, then because Veronica's increasing mobility made her a hazard around the treadmill, then simply because I was out of the habit and too lazy to get back into it. Diet habits I've never managed to instill in myself, and to be honest most of my attempts have been half-hearted at best. (I suspect there's a correlation there!) Then once we listed the house, it became an easy mantra. "Once we've sold the house ....", "Once we've moved ..."

Now, really. Do I honestly think that in the midst of settling into the new house, getting the kids comfortable in their new schools, finding entirely new social networks, and having to find everything from the grocery store on up anew ... I'll magically have MORE time than I do now? Sure, it's nice to think that once we've moved I can leave the old bad habits behind, but I fell into that trap more than once in my "grass is greener" days. And it doesn't work as well as a vivid imagination may paint! Some things I can change. For example, moving the dining room table to a more prominent place will help us start eating together and stop eating in front of the TV. Better for family togetherness, and also better for getting the kids to eat what's on their plate. It's not as easy to turn up your nose when mealtime is a 'formal' occasion.

But on a personal level I cannot count on the new house to be my motivator. So with that in mind ... my goals for this week: keep track of everything I eat so I have a better idea of what's actually being consumed, pay much closer attention to my liquid intake, and try to run at least twice.

5 things that make me happy, V

For a Monday, today was a pretty good day. If my daughter would learn to use words instead of tantrums, it would have been a very nice day!

1. the sounds of the washing machine and dishwasher. For some reason, both machines just sound homey and make me feel productive. The smell and sound of the dryer can go along with this one, as well.

2. pastry. Cakes, ice cream, cookies, cupcakes, pie, doughnuts, you name it. Not necessarily in a "had a bad day, let's eat a pound cake" way, but more in a "wow, this really hits the spot" way. For now, we won't dwell on the dietary implications or the need to start eating like an adult!

3. TV shows. Specifically this week, Cold Case and K-Ville. Even when there are large plot holes, I love watching the characters unfold and the stories have a mystique about them.

4. my books. Having to pack them all away has made me realize how much I love various titles—some of them are the closest link I have with my personal past, and my love of the books and characters is flavored with my love of the people and places that were around when I first read them. And I've given myself the gift of rereading a number of old favorites, which is like a spa day for the brain!

5. my job. Today I've been delving into 100 pages of book reviews for a historical journal I work on. I feel so cutting-edge, reading about the latest in historical scholarship, I enjoy the tidbits of history that work themselves into the reviews, and I love to get the scoop on new books to buy. (Not that I have time to read them once I buy them, or space to put the unread books, but that's beside today's point!)

clutter vs. mess

Before we put our house on the market, I admit the stuff used to get to me. Piles everywhere, things waiting to be given away, projects waiting to be finished—it was a bit of chaos. Then we cleaned. Packed all the "unnecessary" things away for a less "lived-in" feel. And I hated that even more. Without all my belongings—the pictures on every inch of wall, the bookshelves in every room—I no longer felt like this was my space. It was more like being a caretaker for the future owners.

Fortunately for me, my other half feels the same way. I can only imagine what it would be like if one of us liked the old way, with all the stuff, and the other liked the new way, with nothing.

But I wouldn't want to go completely back to the whole catastrophe, with the unfinished, un-put-away things all over the place. That's the kind of thing that gets you down when you come home to it. (I say this, with piles of paper spread out all over my desk. But I think desks have different rules.) This my other half doesn't care so much about. Unsurprisingly.

At any rate, I think what it comes down to is that I deeply miss my clutter, but I am happy to be living without my mess.

disappointment, parenting, and my mother

This morning's MOPS was about the subtle ways that parents instill morals, values, and general good behavior in their children. The questions afterward were about our parents: what they had done to give us good morals (or not, as the case might be). I found them difficult to answer—the process is so gradual that it's hard to point to one thing.

As I thought about it, I remembered my mother boasting about how sharply honed my conscience was that I would start to cry after having done wrong before she even had to say anything. Of course, that was an extremely self-congratulatory stance, and the truth I think was a bit different. The truth was that I was really frightened of disappointing my mother. And I realized as I sat at the table at MOPS this morning that I am still frightened of disappointing people and making them upset with me. From the person waiting behind me to turn into the grocery store parking lot, whose presence makes me turn before I want to because I don't want to be seen as holding up traffic, to the people I'm closest to, it makes me feel sick to my stomach to imagine that I've upset someone, and it unsettles most of my day.

The worst of it is that this fear is carrying over into my parenting. Last night, I was an incredible shrew to my children because they kept jumping on the beds and running around in the furniture store we were at. No one else cared that much (including the salesman), and my attitude stressed out my children and my husband and made the situation much more tense and unpleasant than it had to have been ... and even worse, it was a waste of my authority. Because next time, when I'm speaking strictly about something that is really important, I will have a little less clout, having used up so much of it uselessly last night to keep them 'behaving' in public. Which they didn't do. And all so that my children didn't cause me to get in trouble with the store for letting them climb on the display beds! What an incredibly selfish reason to be angry at them.

It would be nice if this realization could help me create a less stressful parenting environment when out in public with my children. Any kind of experience out with them makes me feel a little tense just in contemplation ... and I spend increasing amounts of my time out with them.

book review

I've been on a big rereading of old favorites kick recently, but I have finished a few new books, and I must report them so they can go in a box along with the rest of the library!

Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. My opinion of M*A*S*H and all the actors therefrom continues to rise, so I picked this up and am so glad I did. It was really just witty and fun and interesting and deep, and in general had a lot to say on many different topics. Well worth the read.

Robert Knox Sneden, Images from the Storm. Sneden was a cartographer in the Civil War, and not only kept a journal of his experiences but also published many of his drawings in the years after the war. Overall, an interesting pictorial journey through the war.

Howard Fast, The Crossing. I had seen the excellent adaptation of this book by A&E, starring Jeff Daniels as George Washington. The book is entirely different from the TV movie, but still a very excellent read, and possibly even more interesting.

Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives. I'm conflicted about this one. I've read the full Tales of the City series and love them, although I find they get darker as they go along. So I read this one with a bit of trepidation. And it is darker ... but lighter ... and very much politicized ... and the characters are almost strangers. Except that you would have to expect them to be strangers, since it's 20+ years since the end of the last book. I can't decide if I liked it or not.

Erle Stanley Gardner, Case of the Mythical Monkeys. This one was okay. Interesting premise, kind of, but a little too glib, I guess.

Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story. This was a compilation of Paul Harvey's bits, where he tells the story and then only at the end do you find out who it's about. Some of them have been disproven or are out of date in other ways (the book was published in 1977!), but many of the stories remain interesting.

Archibald Gracie and John B. Thayer, Titanic: A Survivor's Story and The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic. Gracie's book was amazing, especially when you consider it was written by a civilian. So detailed, with a listing of the (first-class) occupants of every lifeboat and an attempt at a thorough telling of each lifeboat's story. Thayer's was more confined to his own experiences, but in both cases the story was well worth reading.

a weekend in Plymouth - Day 3

Finishing up the story of my weekend! Hopefully I can remember everything I did. :)

So I got up that Sunday and hung around my hotel room, packing and channel-surfing and reading, until check-out time. Then I went to breakfast at a little place on the main drag where last year I had the best breakfast ever. This year (cinnamon French toast) fell a bit short of "best ever", but was still darned good.

I figured I had done everything I wanted to do in Plymouth at that point, and decided to spend the rest of the day in one of my new favorite places—the Minuteman National Park in Lexington. Now, I'm not usually the outdoorsy type, but somehow that place just feels right. Hard to explain, really.

I drove up to Lexington and stopped at a nice spot in the Minuteman. I found a place that was peaceful and quiet, and lay down under a tree for a while, reading Anne Rivers Siddons's Heartbreak Hotel. After a while, I thought I'd drive into downtown Lexington and find somewhere to eat lunch. But on the way, I spied a sign saying there were living history exhibits going on in the Minuteman, so I stopped immediately and went to this tavern (which I've forgotten the name of) where two park rangers were doing demonstrations of loading and firing a flintlock musket. I hung around for quite a while, chatting with both the rangers, until it was definitely time to go if I was going to eat before I had to head back home. So I stopped on a rock to check in at home. Once I'd hung up, I started back toward the car, reaching into my pocket for the keys. Which weren't there. And weren't in my purse. Now, I have a very bad habit of stuffing my keys into my hip pocket and letting half of them dangle out. Which works fine for my set, since I have about 10 different keys and key-rings, so there's no way I could miss it if they fell out ... but Lou's set has only three items on it, and clearly worked its way out of my pocket. Which meant it could have been on the ground anywhere in the vicinity. So I started retracing my steps. Not wanting to disrupt the musket demonstration by looking for my keys around the benches, I paused next to the other ranger, waiting for the end of the presentation, and explained the problem to her. She went looking for the keys, couldn't find them, and we went into the tavern for pencil and paper so I could give her my cell phone number, in case someone turned them in. As the ranger left the building I could hear her mutter, half to herself and half to me, "Now I'm looking for car keys everywhere!" A tourist standing in the room said, "Car keys?" The ranger explained, and the tourist said she'd seen a set on the top of a sign near the parking lot. Of course, I took off sprinting (learning to my chagrin exactly how out of shape I am!), and they were my keys. Whew!

From there, I had a nice lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Plymouth, some ice cream, and a really tasty butterscotch mocha, and headed home. Where everyone was happy to see me!