Somewhere, A Key Lime Pie Is Dying Of Loneliness

I am not 100% sure about this, but I think that the calorie restrictions from my diet are causing starvation-related brain damage, because for the last few days I have been seriously entertaining the notion of joining a gym.

And that, Gentle Readers, is CRAZY TALK.

I'll be the first person to tell you that a good 50% of the reason why I look like I do is because I am pretty much violently opposed to exercise of any sort. I hate sweating. It's gross, stinky, and there's really no way to look dignified while you're doing it -- at least, there isn't for me.

Which is funny, because literally half a lifetime ago, I was an athlete. Not exactly a world-class one, hardly even decent, but passable most days. My sport of choice? Swimming. Specifically, distance swimming. I used to swim the 500-yard race for my high school team, and I trained for the mile (1500m) event for the Y.

And let me tell you something: even you are not a particularly good distance swimmer, you train just the same as everyone else. You swim many, many miles a week, up and down the pool, over and over again, flip turn after flip turn, there and back again, lather rinse repeat, every day, sometimes twice, for two or more hours at a time. When I was in the most "intense" part of my training, I was swimming anywhere between 3-4 miles a day, and about 12-15 miles a week.

I know people who are in pretty darned good shape who don't RUN that much every week.

But that was the rub, of course. Swimming is a pretty solitary sport, and practices get boring and lonely fast. I would say that's doubly true when you train for long races. You get your program for the day and you do it, and while you're in a lane with other swimmers, you don't really interact with them much. There isn't time. You do your sets and you take your 45 seconds between 100's and during that 45 seconds you're trying to catch your breath. Everybody is competition, trying to beat you, to take your place on the leaderboard. You don't socialize, even if you wanted to. Your hips and knees and shoulders are jello and your brain turns to mush and all you want to do is be done so you can get out of the pool and throw up and then die on the floor in the locker room. Only to start all over again the next day.

I was not a good enough swimmer to earn a swimming scholarship, so when I got to college and found myself not on a team for a change, I allowed myself to enjoy the lack of routine. I didn't have to arrange my classes around a practice schedule. I kept saying that I would get in the pool to get some exercise, once I got settled in. Once I got a handle on all my classwork. Once I made a few more friends. Once I knew what my major was going to be. Once I memorized the calendar of free movies and plays and parties. Once I felt like I needed some exercise.

That day never came. I spent four years at Syracuse, and I never once saw the inside of the natatorium. I am not entirely sure that Syracuse actually has one.

Fast-forward 18 years in the future, to now -- and here we are. In the last half of my life, I have joined a gym three different times. Each time, I went a handful of times, and then got bored with the routine and frustrated with the changes I needed to make to my schedule. I don't like to be put out. I don't like to sacrifice. My time is mine, and I want to spend it doing something fun. Like watching "Phineas & Ferb." Or putting off doing laundry. Or bathing the cats.

Now I'm working really hard at losing weight. It's true what they say: it doesn't get any easier when you get older. But try telling that to any 18-year-old, and they'll laugh in your face. That's what I did when people tried to warn me. My "freshman 15" was more like a "freshman 50," what with stopping swimming and eating nothing but carbs in the dining hall and living for several semesters on ramen noodles, Pringles, microwave popcorn, and Mountain Dew. Since my freshman year, I've added another 50 pounds, and then some. Eighteen years of excess weight. And I want to lose that weight by next Labor Day.

Thus far, I've been doing fine with the calorie restrictions that my Lose It plan are setting for me, but I'm starting to feel like I should do more. I'm down more than a pant size, but not quite two, which is pretty awesome -- people are starting to notice. But instead of feeling better about myself by degrees, I am starting to get more critical. Around my middle, where my chunk used to be smooth and solid, I am looking lumpy and jiggly. Smaller, but jigglier. I am starting to feel self-conscious about my flappy old-lady chicken arms. If I want to attempt to put on a bikini next summer (and in the back of my mind, this is one of my goals), then I am going to have to do more than starve.

So a gym it is, then, right? But how can I justify the expense when my husband is still out of work? The local Y costs more than $80 a month for a family plan, and more than $50 if it's just me. That's a really lot of money, especially because I'd only be using the pool and the weight room. They have eleventy million different classes, all kinds of stuff I'd love to do, but everything is at 9:30 in the morning on a Tuesday, and I can't leave work for a bellydance fitness class. I was thinking about a gym chain with locations right near home and on my way to and from work, with a pool and a gym and conveniently-scheduled yoga and Pilates classes, and that's only $9 a week. But I've seen the people coming in and out of that gym, and they're already young and fit and out of my league, and I don't want to be judged by strangers in bicycle shorts.

Plus, I really, really hate exercise. Really hate it. I don't want to do it. I know I should, because it's only a matter of time before I am down to only 1,200 calories a day, and nobody wants to live like that, plus I don't want to be thin but unfit. I want to look good. I want to have nice toned arms and strong legs and a cute booty. I'll never have six-pack abs and I'll probably always have a little pooch in the tummy, but I want to be flexible. And confident. Which I've really never been in my entire adult life.

But mostly, I want to be able to eat key lime pie without eating nothing but carrots for three days.

One Big Happy

More pictures from the family photoshoot over the weekend. And further proof that I am grossly unqualified to work with children. Or animals. Or anything that moves, really. I should probably stick to still-lifes of plastic fruit.

I like the first and third pictures best, because they're the least "stagey-looking," even though this whole thing was basically staged. The wicker chair was Shae's idea, and it's kind of brilliant. She's already better than me.

SHUT UP. We are a fair-skinned people, and sun protection is essential. My sister had hair that light and that fine until she was, like, 15 years old. And at random intermittent points, it was PERMED.

There are several different versions of the grandparents-and-grandkids picture in my photostream, but this one is the best overall. I like Joey's smile better in one of them, and the way Shae is sitting in a different one, but at least in this one everyone is looking in the same approximate direction. And this is the best version of the picture of the parents-kids-and-grandkids. My kid's hair is going to be as big as my butterfly bush one of these days, I swear to God, and my butterfly bush ate Cleveland.

(And no, I don't know why it looks like my boobs are crooked, and one of them looks to be the same size and shape as a watermelon with a glandular problem. I assure you, they are basically cantaloupes.)

This one is just here because my sister basically triple-dog-dared me to post it. HA! Sucker.

Building a Mystery

Since we were trying to keep Shae's birthday celebrations small this year, what with Easter being only a couple of days later, we decided that the big "showcase" event was going to be a trip to the Build-A-Bear Workshop to, um, build a bear. Or whatever. There are all kinds of different animals you can make there. Shae wanted to make a monkey but we actually said NO because, believe it or not, it actually IS possible to have too many stuffed monkeys in the house. Who knew?

Here she is, working the pedal on the fluffer-stuffer machine, or whatever the heck they call it. I didn't ask, since I was on camera duty. (Also: look at those skinny little chicken legs my kid has! I swear to God that we feed her. I think she has a tapeworm or something, because nobody who eats PB&J like she does should be so spindly.)

Picking out a heart to put inside her animal. She chose a soft grey cat. I am surprised that she didn't go with Hello Kitty, but she named this new kitty Owen. This is very sweet, and will also become ironic in a few short paragraphs.

I think the little air-fluffer machines are kind of cool, and I wish I had something similar for blow-drying Shae's hair, because she doesn't like to sit still even for a second.

Now we're getting Owen dressed. Here she is putting on a pair of underpants. YES. At Build-A-Bear, you can buy UNDERPANTS for your critters. I think this is simultaneously brilliant and a little bit horrifying. But the important thing to note here is that my daughter dressed her "boy" cat in Hello Kitty panties.

We probably made out better than some of the parents at Build-A-Bear that day -- we got one animal and one outfit (Hello Kitty pajamas), plus panties and slippers (both also Hello Kitty). We only spent $40, and they threw in a free Easter basket. Some people were walking around shellshocked while their kids were throwing around fairy princess dresses and magic wands and crowns and glass slippers and houses and whatever the hell all else. It's kind of chaotic in there.

All in all, though, it wasn't a bad time. It was super-crowded at the mall -- when did Good Friday become this huge shopping day, anyway? -- and it was hot, and Shae didn't really grasp what was going on, but she loves that kitty, and I suppose that is the important part anyway.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

It's so cold and gray and blech and disgusting, plus that damned groundhog saw his shadow so six more weeks of this nonsense, and yadda yadda cabin fever fly to St. Somewhere, and so ... hey, look, something shiny!

Well look who it is -- our friendly neighborhood fairy! In a tutu and a crown and her princess shoes and waving around a pinwheel like a wand, even though she really has no idea what she's supposed to be doing, because her mother forced her to do this, because sweet cracker sandwich, there is nothing going on in our house until "Lost" comes on tonight.

We're a little unclear on the actual duties of a fairy, too. Abby Cadabby on "Sesame Street" can turn stuff into pumpkins, but Shae says she doesn't like pumpkins, so ... mostly we just blow on the pinwheel and giggle. Or let Mommy blow on the pinwheel while Shae tries to knock me over. (I wish there was a magical spell I could cast to get us over the hump with the potty training.)

It's a lot of work, being a fairy princess! Don't let the cute crown fool you.

2009: The Obligatory Navel-Gazing Year In Review

Apparently it's part of the Union Rules for Bloggers to do one of these here look-back post thingies. And so I perused my 2009 archives for something to write about or some way to encapsulate everything that happened, and I basically keep coming back to this line from The Princess Bride: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." Ha ha! Get it? Because I never shut up?

Anyway. Originally I asked my husband to poke through my archives for the past year and pick out one post from each month that he thought was pretty good so I can do up a Year-In-Review-Kind-Of-Something, but that did not work out as I had hoped, which is to say AT ALL, so basically you're stuck with this self-edited list of "My Best of 2009" and as you know if you read my blog every day or at all -- I am not very good at the whole self-editing thing.

• January -- 25 Things
• February -- Snowbird
• March -- Three Little Words 
• April -- (tie) Wordless Wednesday: Hallelujah and Just Like Starting Over
• May -- Sweet Caroline 
• June -- (tie) White Hot Spotlight and A River Runs Through It
• July -- Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves 
• August -- Who-ly McWhat? 
• September -- WTF!? Friday: September Already?
• October -- A Very Merry Un-Birthday 
• November -- A Week of Thanks: Day 7 
• December -- Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings 

So. Sorry that I can't count to 12, but I guess you can count those two extra links as "bonus material" on the special edition DVD that was the past year. That's 2009, in a nutshell. Our year didn't suck as much as it did for many other people -- in fact, it was pretty damned good. The adoption was final, we celebrated our 10-year anniversary, and I somehow managed to turn 35 without having myself committed over it. Sure, we had our share of crud, like my husband losing his job and being out of work for 6+ months and the ongoing intermittent bouts of self-doubt, but really, we are luckier than a whole lot of people, because we have each other. And if you don't have each other, what's the point, really?

Coming up in 2010: The First Family Wedding Of The New Decade! More Pictures! A Kind Of Hybrid Project 365 Kind Of Thing If I Ever Get Around To Starting It! Still More Pictures! Possibly A Book Club Which Might End Up Related To My Hybrid Project365 Thing That I Haven't Decided Whether Or Not I'm Going To Start! Even More Pictures! Naps! And Yet More Pictures!

Please stay tuned.

A House Is Not A Home

Way back when, I promised pictures of Shae's bedroom once I was done redecorating it to accommodate the big girl bed. Um, looks like I never did that, so I guess now that we have a new wardrobe and hanging lamp from Ikea, it might be a good time to give you the grand tour.

Here is what the bed looks like these days (L-R, mostly): Little Nutbrown Hare, a dalmatian Beanie Baby, Bedtime Bear, Cheer Bear, Gentle Heart Lamb (a Care Bear Cousin), Grumpy Bear, a stuffed cat, Linny from Wonder Pets!, a Cabbage Patch doll that Shae got for her 1st birthday but whose name we can't remember so she is called "Baby,"* a sock monkey that Shae calls "Monkeyhat," a stuffed crocodile, one of G's old Garfield toys, the stuffed bear that I got at my baby shower at work, and a stuffed dog that G gave me while we were still dating.

Yes, she actually sleeps in this bed.

Under all that mess are the "polka dot fairy princess flower butterfly" sheets (that's what she calls them), and at the foot of the bed is a "Nannie Hallman blanket." Shae can't say "Haldaman" yet. In these pictures I can tell how badly we need a dust ruffle -- I'll have to work on that tomorrow.

Probably the girliest stuff in the room are the things hanging over her bed -- a couple of tchochkes from her Easter basket, some ribbons from a bouquet of flowers that she got from my mother-in-law on Adoption Day, and her bouquet from my sister's wedding. We also have kite tails hanging in her room.

The night stand. You've seen the switchplate before. She knows most of those books by heart already. And that's our "travel monster," there on the right -- we take him with us when we go anywhere, because he fits in the side pocket of the diaper bag or, in a pinch, a jeans pocket.

Shae's name, in "lights." This is probably her favorite thing in the room, because she knows what it says. My mom picked these letters up for cheap at a yard sale or something -- they're some kind of foam that I painted and then coated with glitter paint.

The dressers. These were (one of?) my sisters'. A bed and at least one dresser to match are in my parents' house -- they've made up a room for Shae for when she sleeps over. I wanted to give Shae my old bedroom furniture, but that suite has a double bed, so it's probably going to end up in a guest room at some point in the future when we buy a house that isn't so damned small.

Here's the new wardrobe and lamp in action, next to the bookcase full of books that I won't let Shae touch yet. I know, I know, I'm a terrible mother -- but I have complete sets of Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, Unfortunate Events, and Septimus Heap novels, which are out of her age range, and I don't want them destroyed. (She's not really interested in them yet, anyway, since most of "my" books have minimal pictures.) Someday she's going to have the best damn kid's library ever.

Shae really likes her new room, even though it's the same room with the dirt just moved around. (Yeah, that last picture is completely gratuitous.)

* = And you'll notice that even in a toddler room, nobody puts Baby in the corner. RIP, Johnny Castle.

Jekyll and Hyde

The thing about kids is, at certain ages, they are very adorable and compliant and wonderful and photogenic:

At about nine months, for example. They sit still and let you take their picture and sometimes it's hard to get them to look directly at the camera because OMG SHINY THINGS! but as a general rule, it isn't hard to document the first year in pictures, provided you have enough hard drive space because: HELLO? 700 pictures in ONE DAY? Christ almighty.

But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how gross you think jarred baby food is), they eventually get all their teeth and start moving and wriggling and thinking on their own, GOD HELP US ALL, like they're actual people or something and not adorable little robots, and when you want to take a nice simple picture of them it requires nothing short of an Act of God:

I mean, WTF is that pose? And let me tell you, I admire spunk as much as the next person, I really do, but is it really so much to ask that maybe, just once, a child over the age of 27 months or so would just SIT THE HELL STILL for like 60 seconds so that we can get a nice picture of the grandchildren together where they don't both look like soul-eating zombies or something?

I really am starting to get afraid that it's contagious or something. And more importantly, I am afraid that I am not going to have any nice shots of the kids together to put in next year's Combo Calendar for My Anonymous Mother.

Which reminds me: last (this?) year we had the Cupcake Calendar, but now there are two grandchildren, so what should the Combo Calendar be called? "Combo Calendar" does not quite cut it, I don't think. I was thinking of maybe calling it "The Axis of Adorable" but I think that is too ... militant? Something. So I am taking suggestions, and there might be a prize in it for you.

Bananagate

We just spent the last hour negotiating with a tiny little terrorist over eating a banana. How do toddlers do that? She ate everything else we put in front of her, but she REFUSED to eat her banana. While we were "ignoring" her until she ate her breakfast, I entertained myself by making this:

I promise that I won't fill every blog post with scrapbook pages, but considering that I put this together in an hour, I think it's pretty alright. Maybe I'll get the hang of this yet.

(Design credits: Background and frames from "Thank You Dad" add-on kit by Delicious Scraps. Newspaper alpha also by Delicious Scraps. Bow from unknown source -- please let me know if you know where it came from.)

Something Fishy

So. Um. You might have read a tweet from me yesterday wherein I declared my sudden, inexplicable, uncrontrollable love for a brand new hobby: digital scrapbooking. Yes, that's right, I drank the damn Kool-Aid already and started doing what it looks like half the world has been doing since God invented the Internet. That's me, the early adopter!

Except ... well, I made my first "official" digital scrapbook page yesterday, and ...


... except for the fact that there are tchotchkes on the picture, this is sort of like the Cupcake Calendar, no? And the grandchildren calendar that I made a hundred years before that? So maybe I have been doing this all along and just didn't have a name for it? Except for perhaps "OCD-perfectionist-oriented-goddamned-handmade-Christmas-presents?"

Don't get me wrong: I like this. I'm still learning my away around, still scouring the Web for tips and tricks and -- oh my God, the freebies! And I still don't know yet what to do with these pages once I'm done with them. "Pretty Fishie" up there is sized at 12" x 12", which is too big for me to print out at home. And even if I could print it, where would I put it?

Once again, like all the hobbies I have taken up in the last ten years or so, I jumped right in with both feet without actually, you know, knowing anything about it. In the last two days I downloaded over 400 backgrounds, almost that many elements files, and two different "Intro to Photoshop" tutorials that I ended up abandoning, because I can just use Publisher, Picture Manager, and Picnik via Flickr, and still get what I want. As usual, further bullentins as events warrant.

... So, who wants scrapbooks for Christmas?