As If We Never Said Goodbye

Forgive me, Internet people, for I have sinned. It has been 420 days since my last confession.

There is literally no reason for this picture to be here ... and yet, here we are.

(No, wait: that’s not true. It’s been 17 days since my last confession -- yes, really! -- but it’s been 420 days since my last blog post, which is what I really mean. Or, at least, that’s all you care about, anyway. Which is fine, because nobody cares how often I go to confession. Except maybe that poor priest who had to hear my first actual confession in 15 years. But he’s not allowed to rat me out, so you’ll just have to sit there and stew in your own juices and wonder what I had to confess after all that time.)

[Okay, fine. Can’t have you all worrying about me since it’s been so darned long. I’ll give you the short version, which is basically what I gave that priest, anyway: you know those Commandment thingies? I broke just about all of them except the ones about murder and adultery. I’m also pretty sure that I committed all of the Cardinal Sins, too, especially gluttony. I mean, Meghan Trainor might be all about that bass, but my “good-butt” jeans are most decidedly not.]

{Oops, there I go busting out the Pride already. But trust me: I still fit into these pants right now, and I intend to keep it that way, and if that’s sinful pride (prideful sin?), so be it.}

Gaaah, that’s a lot of parenthetical-type markings at the beginning of a blog post. ANYWAY. The point of all of this is to say that one of my resolutions for 2015 is to post more often. You know: like, more than once every 1⅙ years.

INCIDENTALLY, if you happened to find yourself wondering what I did during my mostly unintentional (yes, really!) hiatus, allow me to direct you to my Instagram and Twitter feeds. If you don’t know what those are (hi, Mom!), then let’s just say I spent a lot of time having something vaguely resembling a “normal” life, reading everything I could get my hands on, and trying to figure out (1) what in the Dickens my kid means when the words come out of her mouth and (2) where in the Dickens she picks these things up, anyway.

Oh, and I stopped being a grad student and became an actual, real-life, certified teacher of 7th-12th grade English Language Arts in the state of Pennsylvania. I have all kinds of paperwork to prove it and everything (including the student loan bills). They’re somewhere in this house, anyway. I can tell you where my diploma is, at least. Which, if you know anything about my life, is definitely progress. Victory in our time!

Anyway, I fully intend to get back to business now, beginning with my New Year’s resolutions. Except: I don’t really “do” resolutions, really. I mean, I make them, just like everyone else, but I also break them pretty easily (see: my attempts to learn to make a flaming dessert, which have been ongoing for approximately eleventeen years at this point).

But now that I’m mumble-something years old, I’ve finally gotten around to realizing that broken resolutions aren’t really fractured promises so much as they are detours -- or maybe I mean “scenic routes.” Sometimes you have to break a resolution in order to find out if it was one worth making in the first place. So I guess what I am saying is that I plan to make these resolutions more like guidelines (not unlike recipes and speed limit signs).

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Blog more often. (See paragraph 5, above … the one after the {squiggle brackets}.) This one is self-explanatory and doesn’t require any clarification; yet here I am, writing at least one whole additional compound-complex sentence about it, including a properly-placed but entirely gratuitous semicolon.
2. Treat myself better. Not necessarily in a “splurge” sort of sense (although I do intend to at least try to get massages and pedicures more often), but more in the “give myself at least a small break once in a while” kind of way. Stop beating myself up for small mistakes and lapses in judgement. Wear my “good-butt” jeans just because. Have an extra pudding cup because I want to.
3. Take better care of myself. Again, not the usual “stop eating food that tastes good and work out 4 hours a day.” I’m 40 years old -- it’s okay, I’m fine with it, really -- and I’ve been on a diet for, like, 39½ of those years. That isn’t what I mean. (Although I do need to lose weight and exercise more.) Of course I’ll refocus my efforts on eating healthy food and not having Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for dinner four nights a week. But I should also get a mammogram and a Pap smear and maybe some baseline blood work to make sure that my blood isn’t made up of 75% bacon grease. And I should definitely check in with a therapist for a tune-up.
4. Keep learning. One of the things that I learned (or that was reinforced) while I was in grad school was how much I love to learn new things. I completely changed careers and lines of intellectual inquiry, which was so revitalizing for me. I know I was annoying, and I appreciate everyone who tolerated (and continues to tolerate!) my insufferable excitement. But I know I’m not done learning, and I want to keep learning something new every day.
5. Try new things. This is, of course, related to “Keep learning” -- but the differences between those two resolutions are vast. It’s one thing to know who The Doctor is, but something altogether different to experience Doctor Who. I like to know what my students are reading, but it’s important to also read those things as well. Knowing and understanding are not the same, and unless I try to apply the things I have learned, my “personal education” will always be incomplete. (This might mean that I make more Pinterest recipes or try again to tackle Don Quixote; hard to say how this one will pan out. Hopefully this will give me plenty of things to blog about this year.)

So. I guess I’m back. And already it’s as if we never said goodbye. (Probably because we didn’t, but still.)

Convergence Point

It's weird walking around campus on my way to class, and not just because I'm an ancient, elderly, crotchety old crone surrounded by nubile little 20-year-olds in their Uggs and their AE hoodies and their bare midriffs even when it's like 9° and their skinny jeans that are so tight that I want to run up to them like some kind of religious evangelical with illustrated pamphlets about the dangers of yeast infections. Because seriously.

No, that's not why things are strange, although my puffy down coat and my sensible shoes and my tendency to dress like my own grandmother are certainly not helping things. Mostly I am finding myself slightly wigged out because I keep running into people I know, people I haven't seen in a long time, and I just don't know who I'm going to run into next.

I picked this particular college for graduate school largely because their M.Ed. program is well-regarded -- my aunt, herself a teacher, is the one who recommended it -- and also in part because it is significantly less expensive than other programs I looked into, and while I may be insane, I am not stupid. Since I had to take out student loans in order to pay for everything, I couldn't really justify the higher price tag for the big deal, big name, big ticket, big city school.

Also: that other program was entirely online, and let's face it, I simply cannot be trusted to maintain my focus for any length of time when I am in such close proximity to LOLcats.

So in addition to quality, cost, and actually being in a classroom, the one other thing that I considered was location. This school is about halfway between my house and my parents', and when I have classes at night, I can get there from work in just about an hour. This is wonderful, because it means that my days don't need to be any longer than they already are. (My night classes go from 6-9 twice a week, so those days are basically 16 hours long, but at least I have time in between work and driving and class to sit down somewhere and have dinner like a civilized person.)

But one of the things I never thought to consider is that going to a local college means that there would be the distinct possibility that other people might be choosing the college for the same reasons. It's close to where I grew up -- which means it's also close to where I used to be on the Y swim team ... which may explain how it turns out that my former swimming coach from 20-some odd years ago is now my academic advisor.

It also makes it close to where a lot of my family lived at one time, and still lives ... which may explain how it turns out that one of my cousins, who I last saw 13 years ago when my husband and I were in marriage preparation class, is also a student there.

Now, it's highly likely that these things are just coincidences. I mean, I didn't grow up in that big a town, or anything. But what are the odds that of all the gin joints in all the world, so to speak, that I would run into two people from past like that within just a few days of each other? Is this place some sort of a convergence point for all the "lost memories" of my past? Who else is there that I might run into?

Challenge: An Exercise in Self-Acceptance

Shae has been saying things lately that upset me: "I wish I had long blonde hair like Rapunzel." "I wish I were beautiful like Belle." "I wish I could sing like Ariel." "My feet are too big." "I don't want to get old and mean and ugly." "I wish I were perfect like ..."

She has no idea how perfect she already is.

As a feminist, but mostly as a human being who has a working brain, I have an intense dislike for princess culture. We watch Disney movies in our house, because I love the music and the art, but I do worry about the examples that your typical princess movies are setting for my daughter. I don't like the way that physical beauty and passivity are prized characteristics in those women. I understand that they are products of another time, but I don't understand why Snow White and Cinderella are such paragons of feminine virtue.

The world needs more princesses like Leia, is what I am saying.

So to set a good example for her, to encourage her to love all the things about herself that I so admire -- her spunk, her smarts, her take-no-nonsense attitude. And to be a good role model, I need to take ownership of my attitude about myself. Be the change I want to see, and all that. I am following the lead of my online friend and back-haver-in-a-parking-lot-slap-fight, Chibi Jeebs, and accepting this challenge.

Part One: "Think about how your best friend would compliment your best features. I want you to think of five great things about your body. FIVE. And no Christmas-tree ornaments/negative riders on this. Five 100% HONEST, POSITIVE things you love about yourself."

1. I have big, bright, clear, pretty blue eyes that look good in glasses.
2. My hair is healthy and shiny, and I love the color (people pay good money for this color).
3. I love the way I tan gradually, the freckles slowly expanding into one another, like a chocolate chip cookie.
4. My bosoms: They're real, and they're spectacular.
5. I love my laugh lines, because I have earned every one of them.

Part One-A: Extra credit. Five non-physical traits that I love about myself.

1. I am one of the smartest people I know.
2. I am a good singer, and even if I am not, I still love singing and do it every chance I get.
3. I am funny -- I make others laugh, but I crack myself up regularly.
4. I will fight to the death anyone who gets in the way of my family/friends and their happiness.
5. I take commitments seriously, and nobody can make me feel worse about breaking a promise than I make myself feel.

Part Two: "I want you to pick 5 NON PHYSICAL things you can change about yourself (like, read 1 more chapter of a book per day, or take an extra 10 minutes in the shower) to feel better about yourself."

1. Get pedicures regularly. My daughter doesn't want to have "old feet" -- i.e., cracked dry heels and trashy polish -- and neither do I. I resolve to start budgeting $10 from every paycheck so I can get a spa pedicure once every 2 months.
2. Drink more water. I've been trying to drink lots of water, but I don't really like it when it's "plain," so I don't drink as much as I should. I'm going to try to remember to buy limes or lemons or oranges -- maybe even cucumbers -- to cut up and put in my water. I might even buy myself a pretty, fancy glass.
3. Go to bed earlier. I don't need enough sleep, and I am grumpy and irritable and I don't like it. I need to set a firm bedtime and stick to it. Period.
4. Relax. Take a few minutes a few times a day -- a few minutes every hour, if I need to -- to take deep breaths, stretch, stop thinking about whatever and unwind. I am very tightly coiled, generally speaking, and I need to stop that.
5. Make a to-do list, and stick to it. Determine what I need to do, adjust as necessary, and weed out the stuff that can be delegated or rescheduled. (Focusing my energy and efforts better will also help me relax.)

So, who else is in?

Desperation Samba

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the week before the week before vacation is the worst week of the entire year. I can't put my clothes in the suitcase, because I haven't changed my mind about what I want to pack enough times yet. I can't really switch to autopilot at work, because there are still projects and deadlines that need to be met before I go. And I can't really go grocery shopping, because if I do, and we don't eat every. single. thing. in the house before we leave, then you just know that while we're away we'll have a major electrical storm and my house will be without power for 4 days and the basement will flood and the toilet will overflow and everything in the fridge and the freezer will spoil and we'll get rats and bugs and squatters and looting and our home will be condemned and we'll have to live in our cars or even worse -- WE'LL NEED TO MOVE IN WITH MY MOTHER.

So this week we're doing what I like to call the "desperation samba," a very carefully choreographed dance that involves cleaning out the current provisions and making meals out what basically amounts to random crap in my freezer and cupboards. Mysterious baggies of ground meat. Baked beans of unverifiable provenance. Canned soup out the wazoo. Cereal and PB&J for supper, with sides of creamed corn and freezer-burned lima beans. I mean, yes, we'll go to the store for absolute essentials, like milk and bread and the occasional fruit or vegetable, but my husband is under very strict orders should that unfortunate eventuality occur: quarts of milk only, smallest loaves of bread you can find, only three ears of corn. Our biggest splurge in the last two weeks was buying two pounds on strawberries last Sunday, and we did that only because, hey, we really like strawberries in our house, and I knew they'd get eaten.

I will say this much: doing this? Living like complete savages? It takes a lot of cojones, and confidence in your own cooking abilities. I like to think of myself as a better-than-average home cook, and I pride myself on my ability to make a meal out of basically anything, provided that I have access to basic herbs, spices, and bouillon cubes. But making meals out of scavenged foodstuffs is part skill, part alchemy, part divination, part illusion, and part faith, with a big heaping swig of ballsiness thrown in: "Oh, yes, you WILL eat what I am feeding you."

This is the kind of wackaloony stuff I've served to my actual family this week for dinner:

• Browned loose sweet Italian sausage with chopped onions and canned diced tomatoes, served over elbow macaroni that was tossed with butter and Parmesan cheese
• Thawed package of pre-cooked chicken with a sell-by date of November 2009, with some kind of noodly stuff
• Zucchini gratin -- sliced zucchini sauteed with olive oil and Italian seasoning, with toasted breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese added
• Frosted mini-wheats cereal

I mean, yeah, this is totally a first-world problem -- "oh, poor poor pitiful me, I am serving my family food that we bought maybe two weeks ago but that we had to properly store in the refrigerator or freezer until we got around to using it" -- and it's more than partly my own fault since I'm such a cheapskate, but still. When was the last time you served chicken to your kid that had been in the freezer for 8 months? I just don't want to waste money on stuff that will just sit around while I am laughing it up at the beach, and I don't want to take two chicken breasts if I don't have enough to share with everyone.

Now do you see why I worry about drinking?

Feed Me, Seymour

It might be kind of hard to believe, but this is what diet food looks like:

I mention this because there are a bunch of people at work who have recently started a Weight Watchers program, and I listen to them talk about what they've been eating, and nothing sounds like what you see on that plate -- 4 ounces of strip steak, marinated in Worcestershire sauce, with ¾ cup of roasted Dutch yellow baby potatoes and 1 cup of fresh steamed green beans, both with lemon vinaigrette.

No, what I am hearing from the WW crowd is stuff like "brown rice" and "plain broiled chicken" and "no dressing" and "cabbage soup" and "popcorn" and "rice cakes." And I wonder to myself, every time I hear certain buzzwords, "WHY? Who eats THAT?" Who can get excited about a menu that doesn't sound like it tastes very good? I mean, I love microwave popcorn as much as the next person, and I even go through phases where I am borderline obsessed with it, but I don't think I have ever once eaten it for breakfast because it's a "filling food."

That is not to say that I am opposed to WW, or that I think it is bad, or anything like that, because believe me, I am an old-timer. I have been around the block a time or two. Like most women my age, I have spent a good portion of my adult like on some kind of weight-loss plan, and WW is one that works for a whole lot of people. WW worked for me at one point -- more than once, actually. It's a good program, based on very solid, very important ideas that have been proven to be effective in many, many cases. My co-workers are already having some success following the WW plan.

It's just that it isn't what I want to do right now. Right now, ten-and-a-half weeks into a diet that I "developed" myself but that references several important WW concepts, like drinking lots of water and getting maximum volume for minimum calories, right now I can't imagine going back to eating that way. Because I remember doing WW, and I don't remember ever feeling so satisfied, ever, as I did after eating my dinner last night.

When I started this diet, it wasn't supposed to be a weight-loss plan, or at least not immediately. I said back in May, when I implemented this "12-Week 12-Step Plan": "I do not really have a goal here, beyond the generic 'eating better and being healthier.' ... I am more interested in making positive changes and sticking to them than I am in hitting a specific target." The "12-Step" part of the plan was kind of a giveaway -- I didn't explicitly mention it then, but I was very concerned about my caffeine consumption, which was one of the big triggers for starting in the first place.

I also had other concerns that I did not mention at the time, which were big driving forces behind the plan I put together (i.e., small changes, one week at a time, adding up to what amounted to a really significant reduction in calories). I worry about high-fructose corn syrup, and genetically-modified foods, and artificial sweeteners, and salt. I didn't want to go jumping with both feet into a diet that was equally-but-differently as bad for me as what I started with.

But mostly, I am cheap and lazy and didn't want to have to buy or plan or cook anything "special." I didn't want to fill the fridge with stuff I don't want my kid to eat. And I certainly didn't want someone to look at my lunch bag in the office fridge and immediately say: "This is diet food." I just wanted it to look like I was just trying to save money by packing a lunch. In the beginning, I was pretty quiet about my goals. I didn’t announce that I was on a diet. I just … stopped snacking and drinking so much Mountain Dew.

Whether it was conscious or subconscious, I wanted to prove to myself that given enough time and enough discipline, it was totally possible to lose weight while eating, every day, the same stuff that I was always eating, all along. I just recently started actually tracking calories so that I can keep making changes and reductions, to keep up the slow-but-steady pace. That's kind of what WW is all about, but I feel more proud of what I have already done because I did it "my" way, and I didn't have to do any fancy math, or learn any secret tricks, or ever feel that I was suffering or sacrificing anything. And I definitely didn't ever have to eat a frickin' rice cake.

This morning, when I got dressed, I put on a pair of pants that were shoved in the way-back recesses of my closet. I can't remember when the last time was that I wore these pants, but I'm pretty sure they got phased out of the regular rotation because they were too tight and uncomfortable. They're not my "skinny pants," or anything remotely like them, but they're a size smaller than what I was wearing when I started, and these are going to be too big soon. Maybe not for another month or so, but soon enough.

And it might be kind of hard to believe, but I'll be able to keep this up for a lot while longer (my goal is to lose another 100+ lbs. before I stop) because I have a very different idea of what constitutes diet food than other people I know.

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.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Hi! Just wanted to let you know I have added a new feature to this here blog thingie: patented "Cupcake Cam"©™® technology. Under that gorgeous glamour shot of me at age 2, looking for all the world like the future diva attention whore that I turned out to be, you will see a thumbnail of a pic from my flickr photostream -- every time you come to the page, or refresh, it will be a different random picture of Cupcake. Click on the picture to go the full photostream (same as with the larger daily-ish photos).

Seriously, though -- as she gets older and taller and tanner and even more awesome every day, it will be like a mini blast from the past.

Oh, and if you ever actually do go into my photostream? Feel free to leave notes or comments on the pics. But be nice -- you can snark on me until the cows come home, but Cupcake and G are people with feelings. Don't make me hunt you down like a dog and cut you where you stand, OK? Mean people suck, and besides, that shit is disrespectful.

Happy New Year and Shit

With about 19 minutes to go before the ball drops and 2008 begins, and about 20 minutes to go before my sorry old ass can get to sleep, I figure now is as good a time as any to reveal my latest batch of resolutions. Well, not resolutions, per se -- it's really hard to improve yourself when you're a veritable Mary Poppins*. But stuff I'd like to work on in the new year, just the same:

10. Make a flaming dessert. Not "learn to make one," because I already know how to make at least three (two of them intentionally), but actually commit to actually making one.

9. Be less artsy and more fartsy.

8. Stop getting into discussions with anyone about the Philadelphia Eagles. If necessary, I will use my father's gambit on this and say that "my anger management counselor told me I am not 'allowed' to discuss religion, politics, or sports."

7. Eat more vegetables.

6. Learn to say "please," "thank you," and "fast" in as many languages as possible, in case I ever end up on The Amazing Race. Also, learn to drive stick shift.

5. Forgive Santa for giving my husband "Guitar Hero II" for Christmas.

4. Somehow, some way, forget the words to "Surrender" and "Possum Kingdom," and replace them with the words to "Strutter," "Tattoo Love Boys," and "Jessica." Heh.

3. Blog more regularly.

2. Finish the goddamned novel that I have been writing in my head, little by little and piece by piece, since I read my first Judy Blume book when I was 8 years old.

1. Live well, laugh often, and love much. Especially myself.

And not that you asked, but the best part of the last year? This minute, right here:

* = Practically perfect in every way. Heh.