Jane Austen and the Sermon on the Mount

I have two almost completely written posts from the last few days trying to figure out what I want to say, and I'm not getting anywhere.  They're about what I warned you was coming a couple of weeks ago-- time to dive back in to the faith of my childhood.  The last time I did this, I was analyzing what was wrong, what drove me crazy, why I left.  I'm good at that.  It comes naturally.

This time I'm trying to figure out what's worth keeping.  That does not come naturally.  I was burned, badly burned, and I don't want to think about the positives.  I want to keep being cynical, snide, and bitter. (even though I keep going to church. It's weird.)  Also-- and probably more to the point-- I don't want my readers to think I'm a religious fanatic.  But you know what?  I need to do this.

So if religious stuff bores you to tears, feel free to tune out.  Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent) is this week, so after this one I'll put "Lent" in the title somewhere for this topic so you'll be able to tell. 

So... back up to last spring, which is when this started (that's how long I've been putting this off).  I took that seminar on Jane Austen where we read all of her novels, some juvenilia, and some of her letters.  The prompt for our seminar paper was a quotation on Austen from a famous critic that was something like:  Austen was the first major writer to present secular morality, a morality that is based not on religious tenets, but on what is socially acceptable.  "Austen's fiction," continued the prompt, "seems to constitute as much of a departure, as a continuance, of Christian ethics."  Agree or disagree, using examples from her work, in 15-20 pages.

The question fascinated me.  I wish I'd had a couple of months to work on it.  (to which you could respond, and rightly so, that I did have a couple of months, if I'd started as soon as he gave us the prompt, but I had a few other things to do at that point, which I started to list but that would get me way off track.)  First of all, it pissed me off that some critic thinks he gets to decide whether or not Austen is Christian.  Austen gets to decide that (or speaking from certain theological standpoints, I guess God would get to decide that, but whatever, not the critic anyway).  and Austen clearly considered herself to be Christian.  Read her letters, the prayers she wrote for family devotions, the things that other people said about her.  Just because what she believed doesn't match up with what some critic considers to be Christianity doesn't make her not Christian.

Obviously I have a personal stake here, because I still consider myself to be a Christian, but my beliefs are not the standard ones.  if I were to write a list of things I believe (my own statement of faith), probably most Christians, even members of my family, would say that I am not Christian.  So when someone sets themselves up as the arbiter of what is and is not Christianity, my back is already up before we've even started.

But I've run into the problem of inserting my own beliefs into academic papers before (see this post).  It doesn't work.  So even though I started with the point that Austen considered herself to be a Christian, I still had to figure out some way of defining Christianity that would be acceptable academically, and then show whether or not Austen matched up.  I started out looking at Anglican creeds (Austen's father and closest brother were Anglican clergymen).  But creeds are too abstract for what I needed. 

So I ended up at the Sermon on the Mount, which is a sermon Jesus preached outlining his ideas about moral behavior (although it seems likely that it was actually a collection of his teachings, and not just a single lecture).  Some version of it appears in all four of the gospels, so it is pretty much the standard statement of Jesus' ideas about morality.

(The paper becomes mostly irrelevant at this point, but just in case you're interested, I thought I made a pretty good case that in her novels, there are many examples of Christian morality as it is presented in the Sermon on the Mount.  For example, Jesus says, "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them," (Matthew 6.1) and Mr. Darcy does his best to save Lydia without letting anyone know about it.)  

But what surprised me, since I hadn't read the sermon on the mount in years, was how much of my own ideas about morality come from it.  And one of the things that turned me off about Evangelical Christianity is how little they follow it.  I had a bunch of examples here, but I just deleted them, because this wasn't going to be about analyzing the negatives, remember?  It's about what's worth keeping. 

So first on my list of things worth saving would be the sermon on the mount.  It seems to me that one of the main points of the sermon on the mount is that what looks like winning isn't always winning; the person who looks big and important and powerful is not worth any more than the homeless guy under the bridge; looking all holy and righteous in public is pointless if you're not practicing what you preach in the small, private moments that really count.  It's not a description of the way the "real" world is; it's a way of thinking and seeing that prompts you to look past the glitter and the trappings of power and see the human heart underneath the facade.  and those are ideas worth thinking about.

And it's taking all I can do to not launch into an analysis of the parts of the sermon on the mount that are problematic (like, when does 'turning the other cheek' become 'enabling an abuser'?) but that's not my point at the moment.  maybe we can discuss that another time.  and p.s.:  I only described as much of my JA paper as I needed to set this up, so it doesn't sound like a very convincing argument.  We can argue discuss further in the comments if any of you made it this far and are so inclined.

Riffday: pop, scheduling, and boxes

I realized the other day that I never updated you on my January goals at the end of January.  Not much changed-- the menu planning was a no-go, but I did make it through the entire month without drinking a diet Dr. Pepper (caffeine free or otherwise).  And since that's the only soft drink I ever drink, that means I had no soft drinks for the entire month.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  On February 1st, I had not one but two DDPs.  But since then, I've noticed a definite decrease in how often I want one.  I've had about one a week, which seems reasonable to me.  So I'm glad I did that one, it was worth it.

My February goals were going to be to start exercising by 9 a.m. (on days that I'm exercising), and to wait to get on the internet until after 4 p.m.  Then we moved on January 28th, and there was no way to maintain any schedule at all.  So I'm going to pick those back up, and will probably keep them into March, because those are good ones for me.  On the days I'm home alone, I can putter around in the morning until suddenly it's 11 a.m. and I haven't even started exercising, let alone getting ready to go out and about.  And on some days that's fine, but I think in general I'd like to get an earlier start.  I doubt I have to explain the point of waiting till 4 to get on the internet.  Otherwise I waste way too much time just poking around, and then I do it again in the evening anyway.

The unpacking continues.  I've discovered that I am not good at it.  I open a box, and then I start ruminating about where the things should go.  Then I decide on a spot, but first it has to be cleared out (a bunch of things were just shoved in random spots in the first couple of days), and then the shelf needs to be cleaned, which reminds me that I forgot to wipe down the mirror in the closet, and the back of the toilet in the bathroom where they were drywalling, and then I have to go to Target to see if there is some sort of shelf organizer that will enable me to fit two shelves worth of stuff into the space of one, and before you know it, I've spent the afternoon unpacking one box.

Dean, on the other hand, is an unpacking god.  He was out of town last week (caught a ton of very big fish, by the way), and then he had to work Monday and Tuesday.  But he had the day off Wednesday and in one day he did about three times more unpacking than I had managed all last week.  It was astonishing.  We now have access to our dining room table again-- which is in its very own room.  We lost all those other rooms I told you about but we gained a dining room!  first time we've ever had one.  And our bedroom is almost box free.  I walked back in at the end of the afternoon and gaped.  How did he do that in one day?

On the other hand, I realized Wednesday that the freshly painted shelves in our closet were going to get white dust all over my clothes, so I went out and got shelf liner (normally I am not a big fan of shelf liner), cut it to fit, figured out that it didn't quite fit and had to decide whether to cut it again, or wrap the excess over the edge and tape it in place, which would look really nice because then the edge of the shelf would be covered.  And then I had to decide which clothes went on shelves and which ones should hang up, and which ones could just go straight to the Salvo.  And by mid-afternoon, I had unloaded one box.  It was a big one, though.

You're wondering why he puts up with me, right?  I know.  Sometimes I'm mystified myself.  I think I'm kind of entertaining, at least.

Tomorrow some friends are coming over to help me figure out where our furniture should go.  It didn't occur to me until I after I invited them that the house isn't nearly in any condition for having people over.  Fortunately they will understand.  And at least we now have.... TA DA....

....one fully functioning bathroom.  The plumber came this afternoon and installed the faucet in the sink.  There are no towel bars and the toilet paper is just sitting on the back of the toilet, but those are details.  There is a working shower, toilet, and sink.  Yay.

four-letter word: the beck book

I wanted to give my blog address to a friend this week, but then I stopped.  Wait!  I can't give it to her this week while I'm blogging about dieting.  She'll think that's what this blog is about.  She won't realize that in the eight years I've been blogging, before this week there were exactly six posts with the 4LetterWord label.  So I'm going to try to finish this up quickly and move on.  Because as you might have predicted if you've been around for other times that I've typed elaborate setup posts, now I'm getting bored with it and I just want to stop.  Blecch.

Partly because the more I read this Beck book, the more I realize I don't want to "think like a thin person."  Or at least, what she describes as thinking like a thin person.  She assumes that all thin people think alike, for one thing-- but in my experience, there are people who are thin because they have great genes (i.e., they eat whatever they want and they're still thin); there are people who are thin because they deprive themselves and are therefore (imo) unhealthy; and there are people who are thin because they're healthy.  (She doesn't acknowledge that you can be healthy and be anything other than thin.  In fact, she doesn't even talk about being healthy, she just assumes that being thin is a valid goal in and of itself.)

Realistically I'd like to be in that third category, and if I were 30, I think I'd have a pretty good shot at it.  But I'm 50, and I'm built exactly like my mom.  I'm not going to be a skinny 75-year-old, if I'm lucky enough to live that long.  I think I can be leaner than I am now, but that's probably as good as it's going to get.  Because I'm not going to starve myself.  Life's too short to starve, and I love food.  Good, healthy food, in reasonable portion sizes, with the occasional splurge thrown in when I need it.  that's the plan.

This is not meant to be different than the previous two posts; it's the same attitude.  I'm just saying it again, because I found the Beck book and started reading it again today and it pissed me off.  I don't think I find her approach particularly helpful.

Except sometimes it is helpful (*admits grudgingly* *sigh* damn it).  So, here you go: the things she says in an introductory chapter about the eight characteristics that lead to weight loss failure.  I'm rephrasing, because part of what makes me mad about her ideas is the way she phrases them. 

Of course she's not the first person to notice that people with unhealthy eating habits often eat when they're not hungry (characteristic #1).  But what I found helpful is that she proposes the idea of investigating this:  explore the difference between being hungry and the desire to eat.  My take:  I'm willing to try this.  In the past, I could never let myself get too hungry, because low blood sugar was an almost sure-fire trigger for a migraine.  But not so much anymore.  I could probably play around this a little, try letting myself get hungry and see what happens.  If I let myself live with being hungry for 20 or 30 minutes, get a drink of water, distract myself, does the feeling go away?  I could try this.

But I'm not sure how it will work, because of  characteristic #2:  people with unhealthy eating habits have a low tolerance for hunger.  Yup, that's me.  You don't want to be around me when I'm hungry.  I get grumpy and miserable-- I'm fairly hypoglocemic, or at least I used to be, so (in the past at least) mild hunger pains quickly moved to jittery, finger-nail chewing desperation.  I get frantic.  And I would often get a migraine.  I may have to read more about this one to see what she says to do about this, since she claims that she has "many techniques" to deal with this.

Characteristic #3:  You like the feeling of being full.   Well, maybe.  I think the problem is more that I like the taste of the food than that I like the feeling of being full.  This one (in her description which I'm not repeating here) is the most snobby about how pathetic non-thin people are.  It practically made me grind my teeth, so we'll just move on.

Characteristic #4:  You fool yourself about how much you eat.  I don't think so.  I'm pretty aware of how much I eat, because I can drown myself in guilt about it if I let myself.  The examples she gave for this one didn't seem like things that I have a problem with, except for one-- thinking if you stray from your desired menu, "Well, I already screwed up so I might as well blow it for the whole day."  I don't do this so much with food as I do with caffeine-- you already know I avoid caffeine, but if for some reason I've had some during the morning, I usually decide that since I've already had it, I might as well just have as much caffeine as I want that day.  That's actually one helpful thing that this book has done for me-- I read this about three weeks ago, and already recognizing that as a bogus thought has helped me out 2 or 3 times.

Characteristic #5:  You comfort yourself with food.  Yes, I do.  But only occasionally; I'm much better about this than I was a few months ago.  I don't think I do this often enough to be a problem.  I think having a gooey treat at the end of a truly horrendous day is actually a pretty good coping strategy, as long as it's not something you do all the time.

#6  You feel helpless and hopeless when you gain weight.  When thin people gain weight, she says, they don't see it as a catastrophe.  They have confidence that if they watch what they eat for a few days and increase their exercise, the scales will go back down.  I'm not sure I agree with this.  I've known thin people who were terrified of gaining weight.  Which is why this "the way thin people think" schtick is more than a little suspect --being thin doesn't automatically equate to mental and emotional health.  But the idea of not panicking over minor fluctuations in weight is a good one.

#7 You focus on issues of unfairness: i.e., it's not fair that some people can eat whatever they want and I can't.  This one didn't resonate for me at all. I might occasionally unconsciously be affected by this, but I can't think of a time I've "focused" on it, or made a decision to eat or not eat because of it.

#8  You stop dieting once you lose weight, rather than continuing to eat healthy food in healthy amounts.  I'm not there yet so I don't know if this will be a problem for me.  But since I'm in this to become more healthy, it's at least a point that makes sense. 

So that's the (very) quick overview.  Like I said, there are a few of her points that interest me, so I'm going to read those chapters.  But I have my doubts about the system overall.

four-letter word: healthy? what is that?

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the hard things we sometimes have to do to be healthy, or clear our clutter, or finish a project, or whatever.  That post has generated more traffic than any other one I've written in the eight years I've been blogging.  None of the newcomers have commented, so I'm not sure what the attraction is-- are they agreeing? finding it inspiring? pointing it out as an example of the kind of thinking that leads to capitalist materialist world dominance? who knows.

But I'm feeling the need to explain myself a little better, from both sides of the thin-ness issue, because it's a fairly contentious one around the web.  On the one hand, you have the socially-acceptable opinion that thin is good, thin is healthy, thin is desirable, everyone should be thin.  But there is growing evidence that "fat" is not always the cause of poor health (correlation is not the same thing as cause), and-- especially for certain body types-- being over the limits of BMI or physician-waiting-room charts is not necessarily unhealthy. 

I think you can go too far either way-- 'I only eat 800 calories a day but I'm a size zero! it's so worth it!' on the one hand, 'unbridled splurging until you can't get out of your chair' on the other.  It's clear to me that our society is overly-obsessed with thin-ness.  I have no desire to participate in that.  I want a middle ground between I-can-only-have-two-bites-of-food-for-lunch, and I-just-ate-that-entire-bag-of-whole-grain-baked-tortilla-chips. 

For me, with my body type and the active life our family leads, I'm unhealthier than I want to be, and that is in large part due to the 25 pounds I've gained in the past ten years (including ten during my first year back at school last year).  And more important than that (to me), my cholesterol is way too high (since I already wrote an entire post about that, I'll skip it here).

So I'm trying to ignore the larger controversy, which I can feel practically pressing down on my head as people read that last post, and just navigate my way to my own version of healthy.  It will probably not be the same as your version of healthy.  That's one thing that is becoming clear not only to me but to medical science-- at one time the fact that some particular treatment worked for 80% of white males meant that it became standard treatment for everyone.  But now there is much higher recognition that the one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work.  There is no single version of healthy.

Ha.  I still haven't made it to the Beck diet.  Another setup post.  You're going to be so disappointed when I finally get there because it's not all that interesting.

Oh! and Happy Valentine's Day!  If you don't have a sweetheart, I'm adopting you for the day.  Go for a walk, enjoy some fresh air, and know that I am grateful you stopped by today to read my drivel.

four-letter word: more than you wanted to know

Okay, sorry for the delay, but I had the migraine from hell on Friday and it dribbled over into Saturday.  But even feeling peaky, I managed to take MadMax out for his first driving lesson Saturday night.  We went to the community college parking lot (lighted, and no one there on Saturday night, so lots of wide open space).  Did the two-minute overview to locate the gas pedal, brakes, gear shift, odometer, and let him go.  He did just fine.  My car has all-wheel-drive, which  makes for somewhat tricky turning for a newbie-- I didn't think about that, or we would have used Dean's car which is front wheel drive.  But it was a successful first time out.

Because:  he started driver's ed today.  How does this happen?  One minute, they're having non-stop nerf dart gun wars in the basement and cackling like loons, and then the next time you turn around, they refuse to do anything that doesn't involve sitting sullenly in front of a screen and they're DRIVING.  *shakes head* *feels old*

However, that's not today's topic.  I said I would talk about the book I'm reading (or was reading before I  misplaced it in the move), The Beck Diet Solution.  Julie has been reading Allen Carr, and when I was reading about that on Amazon, the Beck book kept popping up in the recommendations.  I figured since she was reading Carr, I would try a different one just for variety, and plus the Beck book has 103 out of 133 5-star reviews (5 stars is Amazon's highest rating)(does anyone not know that?  I'm such an Amazon addict that I can't imagine not knowing that, but I'm explaining it anyway because I'm helpful like that.)

So you're probably already shaking your head with disgust because we've already established that I don't diet, none of us likes diets, we thumb our noses at our society's obsession with thin-ness, we cheekily turn a blind eye to all that garbage.  But, the Beck diet "solution" isn't that kind of diet-- there are no food recommendations anywhere in the book, and no rules about what you can or can't eat.  The point is to change the way you think about food.

So I figured what the heck, it can't hurt to read it.  (Don't go buy it yet-- I have at least two and possibly three posts planned about it, so wait till you read them to see what you think.  It's an unusual book.  I'm only about a third of the way through it, and already it has both given me excellent, ummmm, food for thought, and also thoroughly pissed me off.)

The first strike against it is the subtitle:  "Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person."  It almost kept me from ordering the book.  What the heck?  It sounds like promoting thin-ness for the sake of thin-ness, like every thin person is smarter than someone who isn't thin; no matter what thin person you find, they will have enviable mental habits which you will want to emulate.  Which sounds like an express ticket to anorexia or bulimia, if you ask me.  I don't want to be thin at any cost, I want to feel more in charge of my eating.  And I want my cholesterol numbers to come down so I don't have to take drugs.

But the description of the book sounded more interesting than that, so I ordered it, and I'll tell you about it.  After you slog your way though this setup post.

Like many people who have gradually gained weight through their adult life, I look at pictures of myself ten years ago -- when I was horrified that I weighed 145-- and I think, wow, I looked great.  Not tiny and not a size 6, but healthy and happy.  Why didn't I know I looked great back then?  which is a whole nother topic.

Beck's point, and she does have one, is that it's not just that thin people eat less than people who are heavier, it's that they think differently about food.  I hadn't ever really thought about this.  I have relatively healthy tastes -- I don't mind eating vegetables (as long as they're not overcooked), I like salad, I love fruit, I like whole grain bread and pasta and brown rice.  I almost never eat packaged foods like Twinkies and CheezWhiz and ChipsAhoy. I get the late afternoon urge for something sweet, but usually a couple of Rolos handles it.  I don't have dessert every night.

So I didn't think I needed to think differently about food, I just thought I needed to eat less food.  As I've said before, I have a hard time stopping eating once I've started.  I tend to just keep going until it's gone.  I'm often over-stuffed, even when I've eaten healthy food.  But since ten years ago I weighed *coughs* *sneezes large number* pounds less and I was for the most part eating exactly the same as I do now, it hadn't occurred to me that I needed to think differently about food.  I just thought my metabolism had slowed, so the pounds were packing on.

So she's got me thinking about this.  (I'll save exactly how she wants us to think differently for the next couple of posts.)  I'm not entirely convinced, as you'll see.  Stay tuned.

four-letter word: the February update

The four-letter word is diet, and it's a four-letter word because I can't diet.  If anything has been proved to me over the past month or two, it's that diets don't work for me.  So... moving on.

But I'm still fitting in my clothes better, and feeling better, and (although I haven't weighed myself in the last couple of weeks) I think I've lost a few pounds.  I think I've figured out why.  You remember I joined Fitocracy at the beginning of the year as a way to track my workouts.  Now that I've been there for awhile, I feel like I should put "workouts" in quotations marks, because my piddly little attempts at exercise are pathetic compared to what many of these people do.

But you know, I'm fifty, not 24, and what I'm doing is working for me, so to hell with it.  I just keep doing my little thing.  At least I'm consistent.

Anyway.  The other thing I am is crafty.  I'm an expert at figuring out how to work the system.  So as I've tried various exercises that I've seen online somewhere, or in a magazine, or whatever, I've "tracked" them on Fitocracy and figured out how to maximize my points.  I don't cheat-- I never log something I didn't do (well, except one time by accident)-- but I don't feel bad about choosing activities that maximize points and minimize time and effort. This morning, I spent about 35 minutes on my workout (20 minutes yoga and 15 minutes floor exercises) and it was 225 points.  My standard yoga and abs routine when I first started was about 105.

But what the heck do you know--  There's a reason those exercises are worth more points.  I can feel myself getting stronger and more resilient as I do the exercises that earn more points-- and not just a subtle change, but a big change.  My body is starting to feel entirely different.  I'm very psyched about this.  (and in case you're interested, the exercises with more points are lunges, planks and side planks).   

And then, even though I haven't been dieting at all other than trying not to over-indulge, I've started to notice that my clothes fit better.  I think I might actually be losing weight.  (I'll let you know next week, I wanted to wait awhile before weighing myself again, because if it's bad news, it depresses me.)  I read somewhere (comments at ReFab?) that muscle burns calories faster than other types of tissue, so maybe this is actually working.  Or maybe I still weigh the same and I'm just toning up.  Who knows.  It feels good, I'll take it.

Which is a good thing, because I'm too embarrassed to do the treadmill with a house full of construction workers.  I haven't done it since we moved in.

The continuing saga of the shower:  when the tile guy got here, he discovered that the flange around the edge of the fiberglass pan sloped down (funneling water away from the drain) instead of up (toward the drain).  We had to special order the pan because of the dimensions of the shower, so he called the plumber, who called the company, who said the pan is defective and they're sending us another one.  Which will get here ON THE TWENTIETH.  No I am not making that up.

*sigh*

I had originally intended to talk about what I learned from the Beck Diet book, but this went on longer than I expected.  Maybe I will do that tomorrow.

the new john

Well, I was going to write something interesting (I'm sure it would have been interesting), but I sat down and started reading through all of your blogs and used up all my time.  But I am not sorry because dang I love reading all your blogs.  Excuse me while I exude sparkly warm girlfriend feelings. 

So here is our main news, and the rest will have to wait:  we now have TWO, count them, one....two!! functioning toilets at our house.  Woo-hoo!  Especially appreciated since the one that was working before was in our bedroom, which meant that every construction worker who spent more than a half day here came up to use it.  I am happy.  I will even give you a picture, even though there is nothing fancy about this toilet. 

OK, when I went to take the commode photo off the SD card, I remembered there were pictures there from the other day, too, so you get three.  This turned out not to be such a lame post after all.

Here is what we see when we walk out of our bedroom (from the landing at the top of the stairs):

The dark beam across the top third is what we had to add to support the roof, which was starting to sag.  Visibly.

Remember the other day when I told you it was hard to take pictures of the things that are cool about this house?  Well, the things that are cool about this house are almost all outside the house, and they don't photograph well through the windows, as you can see in that picture.  I had completely forgotten that after I took that one I went out on the deck and took an unobstructed picture, so here is that one, too (you'll note we don't have much snow this year, much to the chagrin of MadMax, who is mad for skiing at the moment).

and voila, the new toilet:

hey! you wanted pictures! :-)

phew.

This is one of those weeks that you look back and can't quite believe you survived.  Thank goodness a girlfriend invited us over for a Mexican themed dinner and I suspect there will be margaritas.  I never drink more than one, but as you all know, that's enough to get me giggly and that is definitely what I need tonight.

Anyway.  Before that happens, I will tell you about my week.  Monday was the second week of my only class this semester.  I think I told you I decided to drop back to part time this semester, so I have one class and 3 credits of thesis hours.  The class is called "Whales and Shaggy Dogs," and we will be reading many (long) novels that comment in an ironic way on the fact that they are novels-- meta-novels, I think you could call them, although he hasn't used that term.  I like the professor and the reading list is interesting, but a bit of a challenge.  LOTS of pages to read this semester.  First up, Tristram Shandy, which I read 25 years ago but remember almost nothing about.

Every other Thursday I'll drive down to talk to my thesis advisor.  I'm feeling OK about it at the moment.  My goal is to get my research done the first half of the semester, and have the first draft of the written part of my thesis done by the end of the semester (which only has to be about 35-40 pages since it's a two-part project, part of it will be an addition to our website).  It seems do-able to me, and it's also something that interests me, so it looks like it could be a great semester, and doesn't feel nearly as overwhelming as last semester.

OK, I got out of order there.  Back to Tuesday, when the nice man from Lowe's came and installed the dishwasher.  Still no washer and dryer (I'm headed to the laundromat later today), but at least we have a dishwasher now.  The construction guys are still here, so we can't really put anything in the garage or the furnace room (which has about 5x8 ft of storage).  So the unpacking is going depressingly slowly.  I'm about half done with the kitchen.  I wish you could all come over for dinner because there is WAY too much food in this house.  We had a pantry at the other house, and none here, so we will have to eat many meals before everything will fit.

I think once the backlog of food is gone I won't miss having a pantry.  When I was at the grocery store, I could never remember what was in there, so I just kept buying more stuff, and the stuff in the pantry just backed up.  It doesn't work for someone as absent-minded as me.  I think we will do better to have just a few staples on hand.

Dean left on the 6 a.m. flight this morning for a week of deep sea fishing with his dad.  So this week it will be MadMax and me plus all the boxes that need to be unpacked and the construction crew.  But they are done with all the major stuff, so it should go just fine.  They have to finish drywalling in the garage, and the tile guy is (finally) coming on Monday to do our shower, and then the plumber will come. 

I just looked back and it appears I've never told you the saga of our shower.  Not that it's very interesting.  Originally we were going to have a full-tile shower with a glass block outer wall.  It was my favorite thing we were doing and it was going to be gorgeous (and expensive.  Dean was not all that excited about it.)  But then the structural engineer came out and said that the house would fall in if we did that.  So we had to scale back (literally) to just tile on the walls, fiberglass pan, and regular glass door.  Damn.  The upside is that it is way less expensive now, which is good because the engineer also told us about all the beams and joists we needed so that the house wouldn't blow over in a windstorm.  It's entirely possible that we should have just razed the house and started over, but too late now. 

First half of this was written last night, finished this morning.  I know I promised you interesting posts.  I think they are still coming but this house thing is so unsettling that it's hard to get anything done, even just the basics. 

I'm just what's-her-name in the back row

I used to be a teacher.  When we first moved here, I taught spreadsheets and business software at the local community college (the same one where I hope to be teaching freshman writing in a year or two).  Usually my classes had 12-15 students, but occasionally, for reasons known only to the registration gods, a class would be full to overflowing.  The computer labs had 24 computers in them if they were all working--which was rare--so when you had 25-26 students, it was a problem.

Not just because of the lack of computer space.  Lab time turned into a circus of me trying to be everywhere at once.  In some classes, a spontaneous spirit of camaraderie would develop, and the students would help each other.  But one time I had the class from hell, and there were 25 of them, and they were divided up into snipey little pockets of disgruntled, critical students.

After the first test, one of the students who always sat at the back and never said anything came up to gripe about his grade (which, if I remember right, was a C or so, not failing).  I was friendly, but firm.  The test was fair; most students had done well on it.  At some point in the conversation, he said to me, "You've had it in for me since the first day of class," at which my eyebrows must have raised practically to my hairline in surprise, because he immediately started backpedaling.

I could barely keep track of what was going on in the classroom, let alone plan to systematically undermine a particular student.  I didn't dislike the kid, and I knew for sure that I wanted him to do well, in the generalized way I wanted all my students to do well. To be entirely honest, I wasn't even exactly sure what his last name was, he was just one of that group of 3-4 students at the back who rarely participated.

Which says terrible things about me as a teacher, I know.  But it was a college-level class, dang it.

Anyway.  It's something I've thought of often when I've had a paranoid tendency to think that someone I don't know well doesn't like me or has deliberately snubbed or ignored me.  Chances are slim.  It's almost never about me.  It was a great object lesson.

The rest of this was a long, whiny complaint about a situation I've been in where I felt like that kid in the back row of the class.  But I'm deleting the rest of it and ending here, because it's not worth putting the energy into that particular kind of negative thinking.  Ha, which reminds me of a post I've been meaning to write about negative thinking.  Maybe I will completely switch gears and go for that, because it's not long enough to make into its own post.

So here's the deal. We all know that negative thinking is bad, that we don't like to be around people who are negative, who are always looking for the dark cloud around the silver lining.  Got that.  But then there's also the completely true fact that if you ignore negative stuff, you'll end up neurotic with an ulcer.  I'm starting to think that maybe there's two kinds of negativity-- one that's just honesty, acknowledging the darker side of our experience, and another that's a twisted form of that, where you're always raining on other people's parade, always criticizing and carping and looking for other people's faults.  That first kind of negative thinking isn't bad; it's necessary.  The second kind is the kind I want to avoid (and that's why I deleted the whiny part of this post).

Huh.  and that makes me wonder if there's two kinds of positive thinking, too.  One that's based on a genuine love of life--all of it, good, bad, positive, negative-- and warm acceptance of other people exactly as they are; and another that's based on ignoring anything you don't want to see.  The first kind is something I aspire to (to which I aspire), the second kind gives me the complete and utter creeps because it was such an unhealthy thing for me in my early life.

Do with this disjointed mess what you will. 

back to the land of the living

So I finally had about an hour to write something interesting, and what did I do instead?  spent considerably more than an hour messing with a new template.  I'm not sure about this one, but it was fun to play with.  I may change it in a few days.  Minimalist, for winter.

We have one functional bathroom spread across the house:  the toilet works in our bathroom, but no sink or shower; the shower works in the kids' bathroom, but no sink or toilet; there is a sink in the vanity in our bedroom, or the sink in the kitchen, and that's it.  The tile guy is supposed to come do our shower later this week, then the plumber will come and hook everything up.  Our fingers are crossed that we will have two complete bathrooms by the middle of next week.  Please.

Instead of many of the fancy things we were going to do, we have several new joists holding up the floor and a solid wood beam holding up the roof.  We decided it was more important that the house stay standing than any of the other stuff.  Go figure.

Dishwasher will be installed tomorrow (the one that was here before didn't work at all and was cracked across the control panel).  Drywalling downstairs should be done in a day or two, then primed and painted by the end of the week.  Then the carpenter, the amazing, miraculous Mark, who has been here for the whole thing, will do one set of built-in bookshelves under the stairs (all we can afford after the aforementioned joists and beams), and ..drumroll please... we'll be done with Phase One.  Phase Two will involve exterior paint and a new roof this summer.

We have no money.  But our internet connection is working, and as of tonight we are out of the old place, and this place-- even unfinished -- is terrific.  Pictures coming soon.

AB3 will reopen soon in its new location

I have several brilliant posts in my head, but the carpet is half-done, after which we can actually start putting stuff in the new house; the garage sale is Saturday; our phone is getting switched over to the new house on Monday; the internet and dish will be moved on Tuesday.  And if all of that goes as planned, I might be back online on Wednesday.  The movers don't come until next Friday, though, so we're stretching this out over a full week.  Who knows when I'll be back.  Wish me luck.

Clarence would give his wings back

(for my new readers:  I was raised Evangelical, left it behind in my twenties, and am now... eclectic?  Mostly agnostic and Christian with Buddhist, pagan and a whole bunch of skepticism thrown in for good measure.  My family-of-origin is still very evangelical.  I apologize in advance if I offend anyone here.)

After a couple of weeks and a chance to catch up on my sleep, things are back to normal with my mom and me.  We will never agree on many things, but really she is the best. We were both just stressed and exhausted for the holidays.  

But I'm still thinking through some of the things that happened while she was here in December.  One is the movie she brought for us to watch.  My mom and I have a long history of disagreeing over movies.  We both love the old Rogers and Hammerstein movies (Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I, Sound of Music), but I can't think of any others we agree on.  She loves sappy sweet tearjerkers, most rom coms, most Christian movies, and Kate and Leopold.  I could barely sit through Kate and Leopold; it is my mom's favorite movie. 

So when she was here, every time she mentioned the DVD that she brought that she wanted us to watch, I put her off.  I've done this before, it has worked many times.  But this time she was determined.  So Nell, a friend, mom and I sat down the day to watch this movie before mom left.  I brought down the basket of nail polish so we could do our toenails while we watched; at least the time spent wouldn't be a complete loss that way.

When I sat down to write this, I couldn't remember the name of the movie, but I remembered John Ratzenberger from Cheers was in it, so it was quick work on IMDB to find it.  It's called What If.  The backstory:  a man who leaves behind his Evangelical girlfriend and his plans to be a pastor and goes into investment banking instead.  Years later, when the story opens, he is in a high-powered career, but he is miserable.  An angel (played by John Ratzenberger) gives him the opportunity to see what his life would have been like if he'd married his original girlfriend and become a pastor instead.  It is an Evangelical version of It's a Wonderful Life, except the point is to see how great his life would be if he'd followed the straight and narrow, instead of the mess it has become.

I found it to be enormously disturbing, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly why.  It's easy to pinpoint the things that are wrong with it:  its overly-rosy view of middle class American evangelicalism (if you were one of us, you'd be happy!); the way it sets up straw men and then knocks them down (yup, if you set up the terms of the argument the way you want them so that all your assumptions are reinforced, then sure enough! you can win the argument!); and the way that at the end, after his (smirk) come-to-Jesus moment, the guy completely blows off his previous friends and his fiancé in the business world so can track down the sweet Christian girl he left behind.  I mean, given that he is an evangelical, shouldn't he care for, love and want to witness to his former colleagues?  But he leaves them behind faster than a middle school mean girl leaving behind her grade school friends who turned out geeky.

Anyway.  That stuff isn't what disturbed me--that's just par for the course for a Christian  movie.  What disturbed me was the part of it that was true, and that I've left behind myself.  There were a couple of moments in it that really moved me, and that gave me pause--things that aren't specific to evangelicalism, but to spiritual health in general.  I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what those moments were, and I'm not about to watch the movie again.  The thought makes my stomach turn.

But it did make me think that maybe it's time for me to start thinking about Christianity again. Not that I've ever entirely stopped; it's always knocking around in my head somewhere.  I'm just giving you fair warning that there's more to come.  (Or maybe not, since we're in the middle of moving and I lose my roll of strapping tape and my Sharpie marker at least 5 times a day, which does not bode well for my ability to think coherently enough to write blog posts.)(not that any of these are exactly stellar examples of clear thinking.)  I know I lose some of you when I start on religion, so feel free to skip right over when you see one of these, I'll try to come up with some kind of title so you can recognize them.

Riffday: I'm bored, so I'm boring you

January goals update:  The weekly menu planning thing is a bust.  Completely.  I haven't even done it once.  But I have tried to do the thing I described in this post where I write down my ideas of what we could have for dinner after going to the grocery store, and that is actually helping out.  After my trip to SuperOne yesterday, I have the ingredients for two meals ready and waiting, which makes me feel smug and secure.  Sort of like when I know I have four or five books by good authors waiting to be read.  *sighs with happiness*

The Diet Dr. Pepper thing was easy for the first couple of weeks.  I barely even thought about it.  But Thursday and today I've been jonesing for a DDP so bad that I'm having a hard time not hopping into the car and going out specifically to get one.  (I drank my last one New Year's Eve.)  It makes it harder that I'm not planning on eliminating them entirely, I just want to cut back.  So my bad-influence-self keeps saying: it doesn't really matter, you haven't had one in two weeks, just go get one.  But my virtuous self says: I said I wasn't going to have one for a month.  I gave my word.  It is a matter of honor.

Which then throws the whole thing off, because I don't especially care to be the virtuous, holier-than-thou person that does things because of rules rather than because of some real reason.  But still, there are other things I can drink-- I've drunk so much sparkling water the past couple of weeks I probably have bubbly pee for god's sake-- and I'm going to stick with it, purely so I can pat myself on the back at the end of the month and feel like I followed through on at least one of my goals.

Fitocracy is interesting.  Part of me loves it, and it has definitely given me a renewed interest in my exercise routine.  It's such a great affirmation to come in here after I finish a workout and record my points and watch my numbers climb.  (tomorrow I get to level up!)

But on the other hand, so far I have found exactly three people who are 50 or older.  Pretty much everyone is in their 20s and lifts weights.  Now that I've been watching for awhile, I realize that the point system is stacked toward lifting.  My 45 minutes of treadmill at about 3.4 mph and with an incline of 4% is 93 points; if you lifted for 45 minutes, you'd easily have several hundred points.

So I just have to ignore what everyone else is doing and use it for what works for me.  Because silly as it seems, there have been at least two times when I wasn't all that excited about doing my workout, and my sole motivation for doing it was so I could come in afterwards, record my points, and see that little blue bar on my profile jump up another notch.  Whatever works.

I've let myself have a mini-vacation this week.  I've been out of school since 12/18, but that first week was all the Christmas prep, and then everybody was home and had to be fed and mommed the next week, and the week after that there were many house things to do and all the appointments I'd been putting off for months.  So this past week I slacked off.  Not that I haven't done anything constructive--I've packed up ten or twelve boxes, mailed books that I've sold on Amazon, cleaned out a couple of cabinets, gotten up and gotten MadMax to school every day, picked out tile and paint colors, etc etc-- but I haven't done nearly as much as I could have.  I think I read at least half a dozen books, including three Georgette Heyers.  It was lovely.  But it also worked-- I can feel myself getting a little bit bored, and being ready for a bit more structure and a bit more of a challenge.  I wasn't quite sure that would happen-- I was so exhausted at the end of last semester, it didn't seem like I'd ever recover.  yay for vacations.

Lift the Eyes, See Farther

Here is the garage at our current house:

Boring, right?  It is what I see every day, sometimes many times a day, when I drive in and out of our driveway.  But if I were to look up, I would see this:

Funny how rarely I do that.  I forget all about the amazing trees we've had in our yard all these years because, you know, they just fade into the background.  There is one in particular that you can't see very well in that picture because it is blocked by the one in front of the garage, so here is another picture:

It's one of the biggest trees I've ever seen.  And it's not even as tall as it used to be-- at some point, probably 25-30 years ago, the top was blown off by lightning.  You can't own a tree, so I won't say it's "our" tree, but we've had the privilege of having it behind our house for the past 12 years.  It has a bee hive.  On hot summer days you can stand below it and listen to the hum of the bees. 

I'll miss this tree.  Even though I didn't notice it most times I drove in the driveway, I've been back to visit it many times.  We actually had one of those tree doctor guys stop one time and knock on the door.  He said, "Don't let anyone tell you to cut that tree down.  It looks like it's dying, but it will be years before it's dead."  Ponderosa pines have very long tap roots, he told us, and even after they're dead, they will continue to stand for years, providing habitat for birds (and bees).

This is zoomed way in at the tippy top. I think an owl lives here, but I've never actually seen it fly in or out.

further thoughts

You know, I've been catching up on all the other blogs I read and posting various comments and giving advice, and then I come back here to AB3 and I have double my usual number of readers for that last post, the one in which I recommended being more type A.

And I feel like such a fake.  You should not be taking advice from me.  I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.  The "feel bad post" was written as much to myself as it was to anyone else; I am the laziest person I know.  It's like a pendulum swing, like someone who has been as lazy as they possibly can be coming back toward the center of average activity and spouting wisdom about the wonders of working hard.  Do not take me seriously.  Seriously. 

Julie made an interesting point in her blog the other day (completely unrelated to my post) about how sometimes you know things are right by how easy they are, how smoothly they work. (And I'm re-wording what she said here, so this may not be what she meant, if it makes no sense, blame me, not her.)  Like you've been pushing and pushing and pushing on a brick wall, and all the sudden you notice there's a door you could walk through.  You pour your heart into method A and get no results, but you keep working your heart out because it seems like the right thing to do, but you're not getting where you want to go.  So then you try method B and suddenly you're getting results.  Obviously method B works better.

I've had that experience, so I know what she means.  It's an excellent point.  I think you have to find what works at any given time.  Sometimes you need to really work your butt off and get things done.   Sometimes you need to stop working so hard and find a different way that gets better results for less effort.  Sometimes you need to pamper yourself, give yourself a break, be kind to yourself. Sometimes life shouldn't be as hard as you're making it; sometimes you're not expecting enough from yourself.

All of those things are true.  Balance.  It keeps coming back to balance.  Now if we could just figure out how to find it.

the feel bad post

OK, just kidding on the title.  Apparently I'm still in rant mode, and the current topic is feel-good-ism, which is a term I think I just made up, but that is starting to drive me crazy.  I would like to say up front that I'm not advocating that we all turn into hairshirt-wearing ascetics who regularly starve themselves while exercising non-stop and feeling superior at our incredible self-control.  That isn't what I mean at all.

But I'm getting really tired of the constant murmur in certain areas of the internet that we should be able to feel good all the time-- that we should always pamper and indulge ourselves and never do anything hard.  I think it's one of those ground-wave things that gets started and then takes on a momentum of its own.  I've been involved in many internet communities over the past 25 years where I've seen this happen (and been part of it).  Sometimes the people in a group seem to play off each other and work themselves into extreme opinions that just don't make sense. 

Like my moms group.  I've been involved off and on with a group of moms since I found out I was pregnant with MadMax about 15 years ago.  Over the years, we've occasionally moved into these somewhat extreme positions, where --for example-- one mom might be a little more concerned about safety than some of the rest of us, so she'll post about how horrified she is about some "neglect" that occurred while she was at the playground, and then the rest of us, feeling a little guilty that we wouldn't have been upset about that, one-up her by noticing some other thing, and pretty soon we'd all become complete safety freaks.  It's not necessarily bad, it's just that it becomes a bit extreme, and then that extreme becomes the norm, and you forget that you're being a little extreme.

Recently, I've noticed in several of the places where I hang out on the Internet that the new thing seems to be feel-goodism.  These people want you to believe that it is more important that you never deny yourself anything than it is to be healthy.  Or that you should always treat yourself with indulgence and lenience rather than trying to push yourself to do something difficult.  And while I see their point-- it would be just as bad to go too far the other direction-- it's also a bunch of baloney.

Sometimes you have to do things that are hard.  Or things that are boring, or that you just plain old don't want to do.  If I'm going to bring my cholesterol down without going on drugs, sometimes I have to not eat what I want to eat.  At the end of last semester, if I was going to get that last paper done, I had to force myself to sit down and just do it, even though it felt like forcing myself to drink poison.  If we're going to move into the (smaller) house that we all want to move into, we have to spend hours and hours going through 27 years of crap and getting rid of stuff, which is boring beyond belief.  It's not always bad to push yourself.

That's not to say you need to have any of those priorities, but I do, and I'm not going to achieve them by always pampering and indulging myself.  Sometimes you have to work damn hard to get where you want to go.  And the odd thing, the unexpected thing, is that when you do that, somehow magic still happens.  It wasn't until the last 90 minutes of editing that final paper that I figured out what I was trying to say and was able to whip it into shape.  After all that whining and moaning about how much I didn't want to do it and how I wasn't sure I could do it because I'm so old now and yadda yadda yadda, I ended up with a paper that I was really proud of. Surprised the hell out of me. And there is an unexpected feeling of pride and happiness that comes up when I've spent several hours clearing out a closet or a drawer and it looks great.  I haven't found that magic yet in the process of figuring out how to re-think my food choices, but I'm convinced it's in there somewhere. 

And then sometimes after you work really hard, you need to give yourself a break.  It's a balance.  How many times has this come up recently?  It's hard to find that delicate balance between pushing yourself and letting yourself be.  But I'm convinced it's worth finding.

p.s.  I scheduled this to post just after midnight, and then went out and read some other blog posts, like Lani's post on ReFab, and Julie's post for last night (went to bed early last night).  On the surface, they seem to be saying the opposite, but on further reflection, I don't think they're entirely opposed.  We're just working on different things.  It's not that I'm right and they're wrong, it's all of us trying to figure out how to do what we want to do right now.

another brief rant about kindle and ebook pricing

This will be quick.  I keep meaning to fit it into another post, but it never fits.  And I was just surfing on Amazon, so want to get it out of my system.  I think publishers are making a big mistake by charging full price for e-book editions of older books.  There are dozens of books that I own that I would be willing to buy a second e-book edition of so that I would have my Kindle/e-reader stocked with books I want to re-read.  But only if it wasn't too expensive-- say $2.  There are even a couple of dozen that I would buy a second copy of at 2.99 or 3.99.

But I am not going to pay 7.99 for a second copy of a book I already own.  I'm not even going to pay 7.99 for a book I don't own if I can get it used for a couple of bucks.  Example.  Jenny Crusie recommended Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip on her blog this week.  I looked it up on Amazon.  It was published in May of 2006, so it's more than five years old.  I could get the paperback brand new for 7.99; the Kindle edition is also 7.99.  Or I could order a used copy from Amazon for a penny, plus 3.99 shipping; or since I am a Prime member, I could get a used copy for $3.00 and it would be here in two days with free shipping.  Or they might have it at my local used book store for a couple of dollars.

The only way the publisher makes money is if I buy either the new book or the e-book, but I won't, because why should I?  Ha!  And I just looked on our library's website and for the first time EVER, they have the e-book of a book I want to read.  So forget it.  I'm skipping the purchase altogether.  But they lose out, because if they'd priced it at $2-3, I would have just bought it without looking around so I could read it this week.

[edited to add:  based on London Mabel's comment, I'd like to just emphasize that I'm not talking about recently published books.  I'm talking about books that have been out for awhile-- which I would define as ones that have been out for more than five years, but I'd settle for even ten years.  I read one (that I bought used) published in 1997 a couple of weeks ago that I loved and I know I will re-read.  I would have bought an e-edition of if it had been reasonably priced, but it was $7.99.  ]

And another thing-- and this is less a rant than just an idea.  With new release Blu-Rays, you can opt to pay a few dollars more and get a digital copy of the movie-- i.e., a copy that MadMax can load onto his iPod.  This is often worth it to me, because it saves me a ton of money when I'm loading up his iPod for a plane flight or a long car ride.

I wish they had this for books, too.  I wouldn't want it for every book, but I would be willing to pay a few dollars more for certain books, if I could get both the physical copy and an e-version.  For example, I bought The Missing Manual for my new iPhone last week because I can't figure out my fancy new phone.  I wanted a physical copy, because then I could look at the figures and screen shots and refer to my phone more easily.  But if they'd had an option where I could get the physical book (which was $15 and change) and the e-book for $20, I would have done it in a heartbeat, because in the future, it would be great to have it on my phone for reference.  Just sayin.

and as always, when I say "this will be quick," it ended up being longer than I expected.  But I feel better.  Rant over.

the unplanned menu

My favorite thing about the new year is all the inspirational quotes that everybody posts, tweets, and tacks up on their wall.  There are some great ones out there.  Terri and Delia both have posts this week about not letting other people define what your goals should be, or how success should look for you.  So, I'm taking that and running with it, because by most counts, I have a 50% success rate on my January goals so far, which is a fail.  The Diet Dr. Pepper one has been fine, but the 'planning our menus' thing has been a complete non-starter.  More about that later.  But I don't really feel like a failure, because ... well, I'm not sure why.  I just don't.

That's a new one for me.  Those of us who are on the spectrum, even if only minimally, have a hard time with flexibility, with making allowances for human foibles.  If your goal was this particular thing, then you are a failure if you didn't do this particular thing.  But I know what my week was like this week, and the things that came up that I wasn't exactly expecting, and I understand why the menu planning didn't happen.  And I also have some renewed insight into why it might not work for us, and why I haven't done it in the past.  And, plus, my cousin Heidi said in the comments on my last post that it didn't work for her, so I can always claim that it's genetic, right?

Anyway.  Here is what the menu-planning post was going to say back before I already goofed it up.

I don't think I've ever posted about my obsession with cookbooks.  Compared to people who actually collect cookbooks, I don't have that many.  But I probably have 25.  OK, maybe 30.  I look at my book buying budget as part of our entertainment spending.  A new cookbook will keep me entertained for at least 8-10 hours, sometimes longer (and then if it's a good one, I'll use it for years).  That's the equivalent of 3-5 movies. Theater tickets are $8.50 around here ($11, that's ELEVEN DOLLARS for 3-D, is that the same nation wide? it seems insane to me).  I almost never go see films in the theater, so I figure buying a cookbook every 3-4 months is OK.

But the thing that makes this habit weird is that I don't cook all that often.  We've had this conversation before, here for example.  I read cookbooks all the time, but I cook maybe 2-3 times per week.  And I'm a decent cook, not a great cook.  I don't hate cooking, but I don't particularly enjoy it either.

Also, Dean does not cook.  He doesn't mind fending for himself if I don't feel like cooking, but he doesn't then step up to the stove and whip up some scrambled eggs or boil water for pasta.  He will just sit down happily to a bowl of cereal.  There's nothing wrong with that, and I have no problem with cereal for dinner every once in awhile.  But I don't like for it to be more than once every couple of weeks. 

I lost my train of thought.  This was going somewhere that had to do with menu planning, wasn't it?

so anyway, I read these great new recipes I want to try, and often I'm even motivated enough to go out to the grocery store and get the ingredients.  But then we'll have 3-4 nights in a row where the kids have school activities or Dean is working overnight, or we've been invited over to someone's house, or whatever, and by the time I get back to the cooking mindset, I've forgotten about whatever it was I planned to cook.  So the ingredients pile up in the pantry, and I can't remember exactly why I bought Patak's Hot Mango Chutney (2 jars).  I'm sure there was a reason.

So I thought menu planning might help. If I wrote down three recipes that I wanted to try in a given week, then got the stuff for them at the market, I would have something to refer to if I forgot what my plan was.  (Lists, I'm telling you, it's all about lists when you're absent-minded)(and 50). 

But I forgot that I hate planning.  It felt like I was setting myself up to fail.  I couldn't quite make myself do it Sunday night, and then Monday MadMax was still at home (they didn't go back to school till tuesday), and then I had those moles removed Tuesday morning, and Wednesday I felt wonky, before I knew it, it was Thursday and I had never planned a menu.  Dang it.

But what I remembered is something that has worked in the past.  While I am in the grocery store, I see beautiful broccoli, and I think, oh, I could make that broccoli recipe that MadMax likes.  And then I see that they have tilapia on sale, so I buy some of that because I have a good recipe for that, too.  And etc.  Then when I get home from the grocery store, I grab an index card (keep those in the organizer box by the phone)(which only does a marginal job of keeping me organized, but it does keep index cards, a pair of scissors, and two sizes of envelopes to hand).  And I jot down on the index card the ideas I had while I was shopping, so I know what I was planning and I don't forget that I bought cauliflower until it has turned into a yellow and black furry mass at the back of the crisper drawer.  The index card gets stuck to the side of the fridge with a magnet and voilà.

So maybe I will do that instead of menu planning.  It's sort of reverse menu planning.  Or maybe I will just try again next week with *Real Menu Planning* and see how it goes.

Work in Progress.  It's always a work in progress.

Riffday: back to... um... normal. I think.

Nell took the early flight back to Seattle Sunday morning, Dean went back to work yesterday, and MadMax went back to school today.  So we are as normal as we ever get around here.

1.  I went to the doctor to get three moles removed today-- two on my face, one on my scalp.  She froze the one on my scalp, but the two on my face she ... um.... removed.  I don't want to get too graphic in case any of you are eating lunch.  It didn't hurt while she was doing it because of lidocaine, but now?  Ouch.  It's not horrible, just pretty sting-y.  And while I'm whining, with all the advances in medical technology, etc, why the hell hasn't anyone come up with bandages you can put on your face?  You should be able to buy them in rounded shapes in fair, medium, and dark skin tones.  3M? Johnson and Johnson?  are you listening?  There is nothing. 

Turns out I am surprisingly (to me) sensitive about this.  I am embarrassed to death to go out with these two band-aids on my face.  Which is odd, because I don't think of myself as being particularly vain.  I almost never wear makeup, I spend less than five minutes a day on my hair.  But it must be pretty bad-- I figured MadMax would make fun of me for being sensitive about it, but when I picked him up from school and told him I was embarrassed to go to the post office, he said, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't."  Ouch.  (Again.  but different ouch.)

2.  I've read so many New Year's posts over the last few days that I can't remember what I learned where.  But thank you to whoever turned me on to Fitocracy.  I've only been using it for three days, so I'm not sure how it will be long term, but so far it is fun.  You enter your workout every time you do one and get a point value for it.  Then you can work toward point goals, etc.  It's a very social network, but I'm not interested in the social part of it as much as I am the points thing.  That appeals to my OCD self-- I can totally get into working toward 2500 points by the end of the month (or whatever).  Oddly, my usual 45 min on the treadmill was 72 points, while the 45 minute walk we took on Sunday afternoon was 92-- seems backward to me since the walk was mostly on level ground, and the treadmill was done at 4-6% incline.  And then 15 min of yoga today was 58 points.  Really?  for yoga?  cool, because yoga makes me feel great but i don't do it all that often because I'm just not that motivated.  But for 58 points in 15 minutes, I might get a lot more interested. ha.

3.  Soft drinks.  At least three or four different posts I read were about giving up soft drinks, so apparently I am not alone.  So far I'm doing OK-- I had already cut back to not having one everyday, and that is probably the hardest part.  But I do get a craving for one with certain foods.  Since I'm already off caffeine, I think it is the fizziness I miss the most, so I bought some sparkling cider.  That works pretty well, but it may not be all that much better than a soft drink.

4.  Movie report:  I saw three over the holidays, and the Muppet Movie was hands down the best.  Unless you have muppet-phobia, you should really find a kid and go.  I borrowed one of the neighbors' daughters because MadMax refused to go.  Cute movie and surprisingly thought-provoking about what it means to grow up.  Sherlock Holmes 2 and Mission Impossible 8 (or whatever the number is) were typical thriller blockbusters, not a thought-provoking moment in sight.  Not worth it unless you enjoy the genre, which obviously MadMax does.  I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes more than MI8 because I like Robert Downey Jr; don't particularly care for Tom Cruise, and that's what MI8 is all about--the glory of Tom Cruise.

and that's it for me today.  I think we are finally done boxing up all the books.  It only took a week. :-)

nothing but good times ahead

The past three weeks have been such a blur that I hadn't really thought about a year-end wrap-up post or a new year's resolutions post until I started reading everybody else's.  And can I just say here that I have some damn fine blog friends?  (some of whom did not do new year's posts, you know, because it's not everybody's thing.)  So as I've been packing up all the detritus of my office/library, I've been thinking about new year's stuff.

2011 wasn't necessarily a good or bad year for me.  There was lots of both.  Good:  I've climbed out of the depression that plagued me in the 2006-2009 era-- it was never full-blown depression, just a sort of generalized numbing gray-ness, but still I am so glad it's gone.  Bad:  I hurt some people I love, and learned some things about myself that I'm tempted to say I'd rather not know.  But if I didn't know, I'd keep doing stuff that hurts and/or alienates people that I don't want to hurt or alienate, so I'm glad I know now.  I'm learning, and changing, too, I hope.

So 2011 wasn't good or bad, it was just hard.  My father's death, the pressures of my master's program, and now remodeling a house while we pack up the house where we've lived 12 years.  And hard can be good, so I'm not necessarily hoping that 2012 will be any easier. I'm hoping for a continued softening of heart, and continued lessons that teach me to be more thoughtful and compassionate.

As I've said every year I've kept this blog (I think, I didn't really go back and check to make sure it has been Every Year), I don't do New Year's resolutions.  Too much chance to feel bad over something that's not worth feeling bad about.  But the last couple of years, I've had a sort of general idea of something I wanted to work on.  Two years ago, it was lightening up.  This past year it was being willing to start over.  and over.  and over.  I've used the hell out of that one.  Every time I screw up, instead of feeling bad and guilty and ashamed, I've tried to just start over. Try again. Pick myself up and keep going. I didn't always manage it--there has still been a fair amount of self-recrimination; but I've given it a pretty good effort.

For 2012, my idea is similar to last year's.  Buddhists have a concept called Beginner's Mind.  It's been too long since I've read any Buddhist stuff to be able to explain what a Buddhist means by that, but what I mean is that I want to be able to see my same old same old situation through new eyes.  Rather than being jaded and cynical, I want to be open to joy and life and fresh ways of thinking.  The energy of new beginnings, without actually beginning anything new.  That's it.  Remind me.

I do have a couple of January goals, though.  They're things that I don't want to commit to for a full year, but I want to try.  And those are:  1) no Diet Dr. Pepper, not even the caffeine free kind (which has been my usual).  Just for a month, just to see how I do.  I've already cut way back-- I used to drink one every single day, now I probably have 3-4 a week.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  For a month, I'm going to do without, and then see what I think.  I didn't want to cut them out for a full year, because honestly I don't think they're that bad.  The occasional soft drink isn't going to kill anybody.

2)  For the month of January, on Sunday or Monday, I'm going to try planning out our food for the week.  Doesn't that sound like Little Suzy Homemaker?  I don't think it will be, because y'all know me well enough to know I'm not particularly domestic, but there's a bit of reasoning behind it.  There is a post coming on this, so that's all I'll say about it for now.

That's it for me.  We are still packing and packing, and will be for the foreseeable future.  It's going OK, I guess. We did decide to have a yard sale, because there are just mountains of things to get rid of.  Probably in a couple of weeks.

from our house to yours!

spew

You will, I hope, forgive me if I erupt all over this post.  I've been bottling it all up for days and I'm starting to get depressed.  You've heard me go on and on about my dad, but I've pretty much left my mom out of it.  She's so sweet, if you get mad at her, you feel guilty.  But I am mad.  And of course, since it's my mom, it's stirred up a whole pile of shit that would be better left untouched, you know?  But stirred it is, and probably typing will help.

I want to say that I'm nothing like my mom, and it is true that in terms of personality, as much as it pains me to say it, I'm much more like my dad than I am like her.  But my mom and I have so many things in common that it's not entirely true.  For one thing, the older I get, the more I look like her.  And we share many of the same anxieties.  Is that what mothers pass on to their children?  These are the things that should make your stomach clench.  These are the things that should make you worry about your worth as a human being.  These are the reasons why you can never relax. 

Fuck.

Do I do this to Nell?  Probably. 

Anyway.  Usually my mom and I get along pretty well as long as we're not together more than 4-5 days.  She chats endlessly to fill me in about all the relatives and what's going on with her friends and the book she's writing.  I enjoy hearing all the news, and although we long ago parted ways on opinions of any importance, we're both smart enough not to discuss that stuff.  And I help her with her computer questions.  That's one place we are entirely different-- she has not a molecule of technical proficiency in her entire body; I took to computers like a duck to water when I first encountered them in graduate school.  (don't laugh, it was 1983.)

I'm rambling.  This time, my strategy of just listening to her talk didn't work.  For one thing, I was (am) exhausted.  I finished the semester three days later than I was planning to, and then had nearly all of the Christmas preparations to do.  We hadn't even decorated the tree yet.  I spent all last week creating Christmas from the ground up, which all of us who are mothers (who celebrate Christmas) probably understand.  Usually I love doing it.  But I was just so tired this year.  It came together pretty well, and everyone, including me, had a great day. 

But I didn't do anything right as far as my mom was concerned the entire time.  I was doing too much.  I wasn't doing enough.  I would regret it if I didn't do this.  It doesn't make any sense to do that.  The major feeling I got from her as the days went by was disapproval.  Make that disapproval.  or maybe even DISAPPROVAL.  It was exhausting and demoralizing.  And I took it out on her by griping right back.  It's entirely possible that she's having exactly this same discussion with one of my sisters this week. 

Anyway.  What stopped me dead in my tracks this morning was thinking how different my life would have been if I had ever felt even a modicum of support from my parents.  My dad, for all his craziness, was far more supportive of who I am as a person than my mom ever was.  But he was crazy toxic, and not much help.  My mom just wanted a different kid than I was.  I was never social enough, acceptable enough, thin enough, popular enough.  I was far too introverted and I was interested in all the wrong things-- science fiction, music, deep questions.  I never cared enough about my social standing in our small town, and how that might reflect on her or on our family.  I liked being different, I liked being a nerd and going to science fairs and wearing overalls on Friday and playing up on stage in the symphony instead of wearing fancy clothes and handing out programs as a Symphonette like all the popular girls did. 

And yet at the same time, I can't blame that on her.  She never actively stopped me from doing any of those things, and she was very proud of my musical accomplishments.  She never forced me to take Social Dancing or finishing classes as many of my friends' moms did.  She wasn't awful.  We just didn't have the same priorities. 

And I'm still exhausted, so I'm ranting when there's really no reason to.  I will try to get more sleep this weekend and post something less whiney next week.  The new house renovation is proceeding.  It is (of course) going to take about ten days longer than we expected, but we should be in by the end of January.  We are packing like mad while Dean is off this week, and he has been beyond patient with my grumpiness. 

I was right.  I do feel better for having typed this out.  Hope y'all are all enjoying the post-holiday slowdown.

until we meet again....

I thought I had interesting things to say this week, but every time I try to type them out, they turn into rants.  I think it is going to take awhile to recover from the end of the semester.  I've been a full-time student so far, but I decided last week that starting this coming semester, I'm going to drop back to part-time.  It's just too much.  I don't ever want to live through another week like that again.  

So, I will return after the holidays, probably next week.  Happy Solstice to all my friends who celebrate it!  and Merry Christmas, or Happy Hanukkah, or enjoy Kwanzaa, Festivus, or whatever variety of winter holiday you celebrate. 

your rodents are safe

I'm finally finally finally done.

survivor

You know, I have a bit of sexual abuse in my past, from when I was a kid.  It wasn't anything spectacularly horrible, but as anyone who has been there can tell you, it isn't the "amount" of abuse that makes a difference, it's that it happened and you can't go back and undo it.  You have to deal with it, even though it's not your fault.  There was a time when that abuse and my struggles to heal were overwhelming, and I went through several years of therapy.   

But I don't think about it very often anymore.  About 6-7 years ago when I suddenly realized one day that it had been weeks since I'd thought about it, I was so happy.  You can't ever get to the point where it didn't happen, but you can get to the point where it is firmly, safely in your past, not sneaking around and wreaking havoc in your present.  I don't avoid thinking about it, and I don't want to repress thinking about it because the years that I spent repressing it were far worse than the ones that I spent dealing with it.  It just doesn't come up. 

Unless something brings it up.  Which is why it's so difficult that this mess at Penn State is everywhere you turn.  I hate that--mostly for the victims' sake, of course, but also for my own, and for everyone else who has ever been there.

So when I walk in the room and Dean is listening to ESPN and someone is describing exactly what the graduate assistant saw and heard when he walked in that locker room, I have no good choices-- avoid it, or let it in. I don't like either one of them.  Avoiding it's no good, but I don't want to dwell on it either.  I don't want to remember that sick feeling, that twisted, perverted energy from the person that abused me that was in some ways worse than the actual actions that happened.

I don't have any wisdom here.  I just think it's better to acknowledge it than to not say anything.  So this one is for everyone who's been there.  We're strong.  We survived.  And for the victims that are still dealing with it.  Stay strong.  You will survive, too.

a plea for help

It is not going well.  If you are willing to sacrifice a small rodent or maybe a sheep or a goat to the Gods of Getting Through the End of the Semester, I would be ever grateful.

riffday: AB goes to the movies

So I let myself take off about half the day on Saturday, between papers.  Saturday night, the three of us were home, so we decided we would watch a movie.  I was trying to think of movies that have Christmas in them but aren't specifically Christmas movies-- we have a raft of those we watch every year, but we have to wait till Nell gets home next week (Rudolph, both versions of the Grinch, maybe A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Christmas Vacation, etc).

I'm considering going off on a tangent here about how we came to love the second Grinch movie just as much as the first after boycotting it to start.  But that's probably the whole story right there.

Anyway.  The ones I thought of were:  Hook, Home Alone, While You Were Sleeping, Die Hard.  and I'm putting It's a Wonderful Life in this category as well, even though everyone thinks of it as a Christmas movie.

We ended up with While You Were Sleeping, which I love with a great love.  It might be the only romantic comedy that I like, I'm too curmudgeonly for the rest of them.  We hadn't watched "Sleeping" for at least 3-4 years, so it was great.  I love the scene where Jack cuts the cards while Peter is in a coma, and Jack's goofy family, and "I'm really, really sorry about your carpet."

"Why didn't you say anything?"  "I didn't know how to tell you."  *sigh*

Tonight Dean and MadMax are watching Transformers 3, while I am supposed to be working on paper #2. (And I am.  Intermittently.)  It will probably destroy whatever shred of feminist credibility I had left to tell you that I kind of enjoyed the first Transformers movie.  The parents are hilarious, and if your kid grew up watching the Transformers cartoon, you already know all the characters.  But the second one was barely worth watching, and the third one is awful.

If you had asked me after Transformers 2, I would have told you that Megan Fox's role was the ultimate eye candy role-- there's even one scene where she's half naked draped over a motorcycle.  But that was before Transformers 3.  The blond, I don't even know what her name is and I don't care enough to look it up, doesn't even have any lines to speak of. *smirk*  She plays absolutely no part in the plot.  A new low for female sidekicks.  At least Megan could hotwire a truck and drive it through (what city is that?  Manhattan?) to save Bumblebee.  And the special effects are so non-stop that when someone actually has a line to speak, it sounds weird.

OK, I really should get in another hour or two of work before I go to bed.  The thing is, I have this feeling of false confidence at the moment because the outline came together much more easily than I was expecting it to today, so I've been cutting myself some slack this evening.  I will regret it later, oh, yes I will.

Oh, and Julie-- you remember when I told you in an e-mail that I was pretty much past using food as a reward??  HA.  that's all I have to say.  HA.  When I finished that paper yesterday and was proofing it, I ate about a dozen mini-Reese's.  I had to raid the stuff I've bought for the kids stockings because I try not to keep candy that I like in the house.

Now if Nell decides to make one of her rare visits here, she'll know that I buy her stocking stuffers and not Santa.  Dang.

Can you think of any other movies set at Christmas time that aren't about Christmas?

the before part of before and after

Here ya go:  the red plaid carpet

and the last little bit of the paneling that hasn't been covered by drywall:

and the master bath, done in Early Bordello (this looks orange, but really it's red)

Oh, and by the way:  MY FIRST PAPER IS FINISHED.  Phew.  I was pretty pleased with it when I finished typing it, but then I went back and re-read it before e-mailing it to the prof, and I shouldn't have.  On second read-through it sounded awful.  But at least it is done.  Next paper is due Wednesday, so I'm about to disappear again.  Then an exam on Friday, and then I really am done.

fortress of solitude

OK, I took the pictures at the house, but I don't have time to post them tonight.  But!  I have a better picture to tide you over, never fear.  When I was driving back from UTown today, I saw the most amazing thing.  I practically drove off the road looking at it.  Then I remembered that I had the camera in the car from taking pictures at the house, so I turned around and drove back.  I had to stop on a bridge, with a shoulder that was only half as wide as my car, in a 70mph speed zone with cars whizzing by me, so this is not the best picture in the world.  But way cool, yes?  Sorry about the telephone wire running right through it.  I'm assuming it's a sweat lodge, but I know nothing about it other than what's in the picture.

love this

I love XKCD.  I don't always get them, but I love it.  Here is today's, which seemed appropriate to some things we've discussed recently. Well, I guess it's yesterday's by now.

And by the way, in case you were wondering, this paper is the worst paper that anyone has ever written in the history of the world.  It's due on Friday, and I have five, count them FIVE, pages written out of the twenty that are due.  and that's after spending practically the entire day working on it.  I am discouraged.  I will be in UTown most of the day tomorrow, and then I will come home and somehow manage to put together another fifteen pages of this utter garbage and then I will turn it in and I don't want to talk about it.

not poetry Tuesday: Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.  I've never read any of his poems, but I read his translation of Beowulf, and it's wonderful.  This is "not poetry Tuesday" because it is a quotation from Heaney's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, not one of his poems.  During the speech, he read one of Yeats's poems--click on his speech if you want to read it-- and then said of it:

"[This poem] knows that the massacre will happen again on the roadside, that the workers in the minibus are going to be lined up and shot down just after quitting time; but it also credits as a reality the squeeze of the hand, the actuality of sympathy and protectiveness between living creatures. It satisfies the contradictory needs which consciousness experiences at times of extreme crisis, the need on the one hand for a truth telling that will be hard and retributive, and on the other hand, the need not to harden the mind to a point where it denies its own yearnings for sweetness and trust."

(I added the italics.)  If things weren't so crazy (see previous post), I would attempt to make some sort of wise commentary on that, but since even the thought of that threatens to make me scream, I will just hand it to you and let you do with it what you will.  It occurs to me, though, that the difficulty in finding the balance between those two is more continually with us than just in times of extreme crisis.  In fact, sometimes the daily accretion of little, inconsequential, awful things can be as insidiously difficult as the big stuff. 

why my hair is mostly pulled out

Here is what you should not do two weeks before the end of the semester:  do not buy a house.  especially do not buy a house that needs to be remodeled.  especially do not buy a house that needs to be remodeled that keeps having more and more problems the more you work on it.

Because you will have to spend all the time that you should be spending on your two 20-page papers running around town picking out paint colors and getting stain samples and looking at ten gazillion colors and types of tile (who knew there were so many different kinds of tile?), and meeting with the carpet installer to find out how to solve the problem of not one level floor surface in the house.  And you will need to "pop over" to the other house at least two times a day and sometimes up to four to respond to various questions that come up as our valiant, beleaguered carpenter tries to do the things we asked him to do in a house where nothing is quite right.

Every time I'm over there I make myself stand in front of the window, even if it's only a few seconds, to remind myself why we're doing this.  Julie reminded me that it would be good to have before and after pictures, but it's already too late.  The old carpet is pulled out, they're drywalling over the cheap 70s paneling tomorrow, and the 30-year-old fiberglass jacuzzi tub got pulled out the first night.  Ha.  But I just remembered that the bright red-plaid glue down carpet in the laundry room is still there.  I'll try and get photographic evidence tomorrow.

It's entirely possible I will be insane by the end of this.  I went to Costco this afternoon and bought a bunch of frozen food because I will not be cooking for the next two weeks.  Other than to slide things into the oven or the microwave.

The carpet installation guy (who is already booked out until mid-January) said to me today, "Remodeling is brutal."  Why, yes.  That would be correct.