f-a-t

that's about how i feel! i'm coming off a whole week layoff from exercise...i was just getting completely burned out on it after doing it pretty darn regularly since mid-january. to use some modern-day parlance, i just wasn't that into it anymore. my dvds no longer beckoned seductively. i no longer felt like leaping to my feet to go for a 2 or 4 mile walk around the neighborhood every night. and i sure as heck no longer felt like jotting down everything i ate all day every day... so i took a 7-day break.

and boy, do i feel fat!

and not the good, p-h-a-t kind either. the b-l-o-b-b-y kind!

now, logically, i do understand that i'm probably not actually fat. LOGICALLY. but a woman's mind is a bizarre wonderworld of illogicality from time to time...and this is one of those times. i look in the mirror, and i can fairly see the muscle i've built up turning to globby silly putty goo before my very eyes.

of course, the fact this past weekend was a HOLIDAY weekend doesn't help either. i spazzed out - hamburgers, hot dogs, COOKIES - and the ultimate sweet nectar of the south...sweet tea. ahhhhhhhhhh. *glug*

now, in reality, i do realize taking the week off is good in the long run, blah blah blah, mental burnout, blah blah, this, that, the other, but I FEEL FAT.

walk by the mirror, glance sideways, and cluck my tongue over the seeming potbelly i am convinced i can see poking through my clothes. that kind of thing. stupid, huh?

so i had a mini-epiphany, actually, which is helping me get over all this - actually, a two-part epiphany. one part came on sunday, when j and i went by my mother-in-law's house to drop off some pictures of the kids for her. she has stepping stones outside her house, pavers leading up to her back door. the pavers are set adult-step-length apart, which is normally no problem for me and my long step. however, it posed a bit more of a challenge for jacob, who had to carefully step from paver to paver.

and i was behind him, and the fact he was going slower made me have to slow down and focus all my energies on my own stepping (which normally requires no thought). made me stop and think for a minute - we were focusing so intently on the simple act of walking that nothing else was on our minds right then - not the beautiful lushness of my mother-in-law's backyard - not the ever-present rabbits - not the singing birds - not the sunshine. just focusing on that very next step.

and it kind of made me wonder if maybe i'm not approaching this whole fit-and-healthy thing a little too single-mindedly. maybe i should look up from the pavers once in a while and see what's going on.

the other part of the epiphany was meeting a woman who, until 2 years ago, weighed 300 pounds. she is 6' tall, and had a defective thyroid which went undiagnosed for twenty years. she lost 150 pounds in a year and a half after the thyroid was finally removed and she was given medication to compensate for its function. she told me, "sometimes, when i look in the mirror, i still see the fat me."

and it made me realize, hey... me obsessing over a pound here or a cookie there is kind of inane. and a waste of time and mental and emotional energy that can be much better spent doing something like enjoying that cookie with my kids. bringing the joy of food into a life full of joy itself. tapping into my deep-rooted love/adoration of good food, a love i've fed since childhood and the days of homemade peach ice cream, eaten on a back porch swing, cicadas humming in the trees.

so last night, i slid back into exercising with a brisk 2-mile walk. this time, i made sure to spend less time checking my heart rate and more time looking around me. for my efforts, or lack thereof, i saw a beautiful whitetail deer pricking to attention at my approach, then gracefully bounding off into the dusky woods. a cottontail hiding in the tall grasses by the side of the road, trying to steel itself for my presence, and its courage failing at the last moment - the only thing i glimpsed was two long soft ears and a white stubby tail as it leaped off to safety. and last, but not least, five fireflies, winking at me in the deepening twilight. i don't remember seeing those for a while. it was like welcoming back an old friend from childhood.

kind of like welcoming back myself.

setting a very bad example

ok, so i did a bad thing last night. j and i went out to dinner together, mama and son, at a chinese restaurant. he loves the lo mein noodles and sticky white rice. anyway. we both eat with chopsticks, and about halfway through the meal he chirruped to me, "mama, try to make me laugh!"

this is a game we often play, where he will fold his arms and set his mouth and determine that he shan't laugh no matter what mama does to try to make him do so. i, in turn, pull the silliest things i can think of out of my hat to try to make him laugh, and it usually ends up with us both laughing.

however! we were in the midst of a semi-crowded chinese restaurant, in public; ergo, it was not the time to play the "make me laugh" game! so i said, "not now, honey. perhaps later." i then resumed my eating; glanced up at him, and he looked - not sad, not disappointed, just sort of, "oh well" - so i very craftily, very sneakily inserted both chopsticks under my upper lip above my canines to form great walrus teeth.

then i kicked his leg lightly under the table to make him look up at me (it's rather difficult to SPEAK with chopsticks stuck under one's upper lip - just try it if you don't believe me) - he glanced up, saw mommy walrus, and erupted into peals of laughter.

i started laughing too (easier than talking with said chopsticks). everyone in the vicinity was staring at us (probably more at the pitiful adult woman with chopsticks for teeth), but we didn't care. we just laughed and laughed.

then i pulled the chopsticks out and said, "told you i could make you laugh!" he giggled, eyes still sparkling, and said, "silly mama!!!!"

silly, indeed. and may that never change!

quiet

it's entirely too quiet here. c is at her grandma's house, j is off at school larking about, no doubt, and i'm sitting here waiting for the washing machine to finish its ponderous spin cycle. and it is too quiet! it's not quite 0800 here as yet, but it feels as if i've been awake for hours and hours.

i'm used to a little hand tugging on my sleeve, a little voice querying me, "mama, wanna dweenk?" and pulling me over to sit/snuggle by her on the sofa while we watch cartoons on the telly.

she starts school this fall, and all along i've been good-naturedly fielding the repetitive question from everyone - "well, my my, how will mama handle both little ones being off at school??" - i've been saying, with an equable smile, "well, i'm sure it'll be a very strange feeling, but surely i'll get quite a lot done," etc., etc., etc., with some rubbish thrown in about how "all children have to grow up sometime."

but now? i'm not quite so sure. i think mama might be plastered to the clock for the first few weeks of the school term, waiting until it's time to go pick up both my babies.

maybe mama is the one who is having trouble letting go, after all.

goodreads

so i joined this new thing called goodreads, which i found out about through facebook. basically, it's a way to create an online bookshelf on which you can select books you have read, books you plan to read, and write reviews and/or rate books (5 star system), and all your facebook friends can see what you've added/marked/written. sounds cool, right?

right!

so i happily dove in, started finding books i like, marking them, going along merrily as you please... when It Happened. i suddenly stopped to think - what do my book selections say about me? what does it say that "the hobbit" is nestled sidelong with "where the sidewalk ends"? what does it say that i've never read "catcher in the rye"? am i somehow less of an english major by admitting this? should i have not eaten the last of the cheddar cheese block in the fridge?

(ok, that last question isn't pertinent, but it is salient. that cheese isn't exactly agreeing with me right now.)

back to the point. so it got me to thinking - is this really some subversive attempt at making everyone judge everyone else? do we now get to mock people for not having read Certain Books? do we now get to point our virtual fingers and laugh ha-ha-ha-ha when we find out someone has the "kama sutra" as their "most favorite book ever"? is this judgmental? or just another example of how the internet's anonymity can spark our natural human tendency to divide into the haves and have nots?

so what started out as a simple lark along my bookshelves turned into something way more neurotic, and made me review my own selections with a hyper-critical eye. should i leave this in? take this out? add a well-worded-wordy-critical review of this, this, but ignore that as a sign of my oh-so-proper prioritization of the nuances of my reading?

then i realized...it really doesn't matter. one of the most perfect things about being rational, free-thinking human beings is our free will. we can read any blessed thing we want, and everything, no matter how horrifically written, adds something to our mental echelon of information.

so yeah, i'll leave good ol' shel silverstein in there. he can turn the world upside down with a seemingly simple rhyme. and yeah, i'll admit i've never read salinger. maybe that'll provoke someone to loan me their loved copy of "catcher in the rye."

and yeah, i'll keep adding my books - MY books - the ones i've loved through the years, the ones i've only just met, the ones i have yet to meet but have admired from afar, and the ones i've loved, lost, and loved again.

'cause that's a big part of who i am. and anyone who doesn't like or understand that...i feel sorry for them.

discovery

so we found where The Mouse is bunkered down - in our guest bathroom (which shares a wall with the garage, so i guess that's how he got in) in the vanity cabinet. we discovered this by opening the door to get another roll of toilet paper, and lo! a small snowstorm was blizzarding inside the cabinet, with the piteous remnants of a t.p. roll lolling about inside. what i'm honestly impressed with is the mouse's apparent devotion to his task - this was no puny little public-bathroom-paper-thin roll of toilet paper. this was a charmin double roll, extra soft and plush, which is something fierce when it comes to shredding.

but sho'nuff! he did it! shredded the entire ding dong roll! it was amazing. the whole bottom of the cabinet looked like the north pole. i bet his mouse biceps were downright rippling after that exertion. i can see him now... "they're all asleep! quick, shred! shred! shred!" chanting to the rhythm of his workout tape.

(what? you didn't know mice had workout tapes? of course they do. "tails of steel"...."beadier eyes in 10 days"....and of course, the ever popular "10 minute cheese abs.")

so, The Mouse apparently likes Toilet Paper and made himself quite the mouse pad. i'm sure it's a big hit with all the girl mice - "oh this? just a little slice of home. here, have a roll. what? yeah. it's a double roll. ah, it was nothing. c'mere baby, feel my muscles."

so we are going to set out a trap with some organic, free-range, shelled-without-cruelty peanut butter in the bathroom, see if we can capture him and set him free, free in the Great Wild Beyond, free to roam and romp, to feel the wind in his little tiny fur, to twitch his ears and laugh his tinny mouse laugh, to smell the flowers, to run in super-mouse-slow-mo, then be eaten by a hawk or something.

boy, being a mouse would suck.

apodemus s. sylvaticus

which is nothing more than a fancy way of saying "field mouse" which is to say, i have one LIVING IN MY HOUSE.

picture it. there i am, merrily typing along on the keyboard this morning, when what should i see out of the corner of my eye? a small blob darting along the floor. naturally (naturellement!) i immediately looked to my right to re-focus. as i did, the aforementioned blob began scuttling toward me - i took one step backward in disbelief as it scuttled right by me, pausing only long enough to flip me (the giantess) a mouse birdie, then took off and hung a sharp right into my kitchen.

ran into the kitchen to find and eject the interloping critter, and he was gone. vanished, most likely under the stove. i looked for him, with no luck. so i guess we have a new member of the household...an unwelcome one, to be sure, but for the time being there's not a lot i can do.

later i'll pull out the stuff in the cabinets, try to corner him. this means war! i must arm myself with all the correct items with which to catch an interloping field mouse!

we've been down this particular road before, and while we did eventually get rid of the intruders it was at no small effort. mice are amazingly smart. maybe we should try, instead, to trap them. train them for the betterment of our society. they could be taught to do menial small tasks, such as picking up trash and disposing of it in a nearby container, complete with tiny built-in mouse ramp. or they could serve as guide mice for the blind, helping them to find small items they drop. or they could even help achieve world peace just by twitching their cute little noses and blinking their beady little eyes in just the right cadence to cause miniature brain seizures that would incapacitate the warring/violent part of everyone's brains.....maybe i shouldn't be so quick to judge this singular field mouse. maybe i should show him compassion. maybe i should help him find his role in this great big wonderful messy operation called Life.

maybe?


nah. he's going DOWN!

i'm going quackers

quackers, because c has discovered daddy's duck call, and she has been wandering around the house randomly quacking. the problem is her duck calls sound more like dying ducks than anything else...either that, or a duck that ate too many beans. your choice.

so j and i have been spending some time creating The Ultimate Baseball Card for him online because his coach neglected to tell me *supposedly* when picture day was... and we didn't get any pictures of him with his other teammates. i was so irritated with her - i think she's trying to get back at us, subconsciously, for trying to move j up to the next level of ball (coach pitch) and not play tee ball. whatever. we found a much cooler card online anyway. nyah nyah! *sticks tongue out very childishly*

maybe it's completely childish of me, but i feel downright triumphant over the fact i found a nicer, cooler card online, and that my boy won't miss out on having a baseball card just because his spaz of a coach didn't bother to make any effort to tell either me or m when picture day was - mind you, she told everyone ELSE. but i'm not bitter, not at all. i just hope the fleas of a thousand camels infest her armpits. that's all.

and c is bunkered down rightbesidemelikethis, giving me just enough room to take half-breaths. if i scootch down the sofa, she scootches right along with me and hunkers right back down rightbesidemelikethis... i always remind myself that one day, all too soon, it'll be all i can do to get her to spend 5 minutes with me, let alone shadow me all day long.

BUT SOMETIMES I WANT TO SCREAM.

ok, i'm better now. just sitting here, watching it rain. wonder when the last non-child-related thought or non-work-related thought i had was. my wellspring of creativity is about dry as an arizona river bed in the middle of august. i've resorted to tacking up signs - "muse wanted. reward offered."

maybe i should smoke some of the happy weed, a la coleridge. hey, it got him to write some of the best poetry in the english language. why wouldn't it work for me?

(and if you're reading this, Big Brother, please note i've never even puffed a ciggie, so the chances of the above happening are approximately nil)

oh well. i think i'll go raid the fridge. maybe i'll find creativity among the leftovers. that mac 'n' cheese i made today was pretty inspiring.

ughhhhhhhhhh!

ugh! i am such a spaz. it's been almost a year since i posted anything here. i have to give credit to kate for giving me a much-needed virtual kick in the booty to start blogging again. her blog is pretty darn funny, spiritual, sweet, emotional, snarky, intelligent, and all-around eminently readable. so go visit her, but be sure you don't forget *me*.

today was seriously stressy. it was a wonderful day, a fabulous day, and a stressy day. kind of a bizarre combination. the wonderful part was this morning, watching j play tee ball - he did well, and it was a beautiful day, so all was good. then i had to dash-drag the children to the store to pick up birthday presents for the party we were going to this afternoon, and dash-drag them back to the field to watch another game, then dash-drag to mcd's (which i really did not, not, not want to eat lunch at but in a democracy, the most votes wins, and it was us and two other families, so i lost big-time), then dash-drag over to my friend's house, then dash to the bowling alley in petersburg (over an hour from OUR house).......and therein began the stressy part!

i am now convinced my sweet little girl c is absolutely demon possessed. there can be no other explanation for her. NONE. how else to explain why my sweet lil' prisspot would suddenly take off and determine that she, not i, was in control of The World Around Her, and to try to crash every single bowling alley lane's game? no sooner had we arrived, she was off like a shot, grabbed a 12 pound ball (yes, 12 pounds), and began doing a duck-waddle toward the nearest lane, ball held perilously somewhere between her midriff and her thighs, descending ever lower with each step.

when i gently corrected her, she gave me the Chucky Look. this was to become a recurring theme of our Afternoon At The Alley, with her misadventures becoming ever more dangerous, and my corrections becoming ever less-gentle. j, meanwhile, is off merrily playing with his friends, only stopping periodically to demand of me why the bowling alley People are not Doing Their Jobs and getting his shoes to him. i should also point out that there were approximately 75 people at this "small party," about 75% of which were children 8 and younger. IT....WAS....LOUD.

so there's my little demoness, scampering hither and yon, creating chaos. as an example.

me: *talking to my friend* *looks up to spot where c was one nanosecond before, said spot is now empty* "oh crap! hang on, hang on, where is..." *begins looking*
c: *maniacal giggle, as she flees toward a rack of balls*
me: "no! no honey! NO! PUT THE BALL DOWN!!!!"
c: *maniacal giggle as she hefts a one-ton ball onto her hip and tries to scamper as well as one can scamper when carrying a ball one-third one's own weight*
me: "PUT THE BALL DOWN" (in the mommy death voice)
c: *stops, ponders briefly, decides mommy won't enforce death threats in a crowded alley* *scampers again*
me: *briefly considers the fact that yes, it is possible to be Pushed Over The Edge*

that was replayed several times during the long afternoon. after finally bribing c into sitting still for more than 2 seconds by giving her a hot dog (yes, i know i shouldn't bribe her with food, all kinds of future issues there, but this was after 2 hours of navigating a packed saturday-afternoon bowling alley with three consecutive birthday parties going on and her determined to create as much chaos as POSSIBLE), i got into a convo with my friend r about parenting - she has a child about the same age as c, so we trade war stories - and she said, very thoughtfully, "y'know, i can understand how some parents just snap." and we had a really good convo about that. and it's true. as she said, it's amazing how someone THEIR size can have such an emotionally stressing influence on someone OUR size.

but yes, i can understand how mommies and daddies snap. yank an arm too hard, slap a bottom too many times, too hard, hit when they oughtn't, shout when they shouldn't...but i think the difference isn't in who does or doesn't feel those things. it's in who does or doesn't do something about those feelings. she and i have both made the conscious choices that sometimes you have to back away, go into another room, and regroup.

sometimes, you have to force yourself to be adult.

even when you don't particularly want to.

even when it'd be easier to just cave to the tempest of the moment, and let a hand fly.

so yes, i bit back my animal impulses at the bowling alley. yes, i ignored how tired i was. yes, i cheered endless times for my babies' efforts. and yes, above all else, i picked up my little girl in the middle of one of her "it's my turn, not her turn" tantrums, and i kissed her, and i told her i loved her.

because i do.