Ice Bucket of Truth

Been avoiding scales as my clothes have grown tighter but had a doc visit today, so there you are. Ugh.

To make myself feel better I calculated that if I had my weight in gold, I'd have about $6,000,000. That's pretty cool.

This weight gain isn't a surprise and I can tell you exactly how it happened -eating crap and not moving any more than I have to.  Even with working out a couple times a week with a trainer, you can't live off cookies and coffee and expect different results.

I feel bad about the RESULT, but honestly, I don't feel bad about MYSELF.  I prioritized my health behind a few other things. I knew I was doing it, and I knew that I would be frustrated, but honestly, there was neither mental nor physical bandwidth to do all that much about it.

Well, it is spring now, and there are things happening in the next several months for which I will want to be in better physical shape.  The sun is out, my energy level is increasing, and I feel somewhat capable.  The plague I caught two weeks ago is passing slowly away, so likely within the week I can come up with a better exercise plan than I've had.

Also, I have some really great summer clothes I'd love to fit into again.

Ebbing

Eat nutritiously, exercise, pray, build community, take care of yourself and those around you, hold down a job, go to church, be creative, find balance, be organized, keep up on current events, improve your mind, Make Goals, be politically and socially active, save for retirement, plan vacations, and deal with life as it presents itself.

Sometimes, life is just crazy.

Just reading that list made me a little crazy.

Mostly what I want from life is a giant bag of Reeses Sticks and a fully charged iPad.

I heard a quote recently, "People overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a year."

Another helpful quote: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

My temperament does not lend itself to projects requiring consistency over time. You need me to stay up 48 hours straight and pound through the misery to produce something amazingly creative and practical at the end of it? I'M YOUR GAL!  Let the accolades commence!

You need me to Save The World by just pushing a button once at the EXACT SAME TIME every single day for a year?  Yeah, I'd be on that for about 2 days, then complete Armageddon. Sorry for destroying the world, though.

as I age (gracefully) I notice that most of life is about projects requiring consistency over time... creating relationships, being healthy, success at work and financially. So most of the time, I feel like nothing is being done well -I am neglecting my friends and family, I am eating impulsively, I am not making any time to write or be creative, I am skipping Mass.

However, I am VERY familiar with the offerings on Netflix at the moment, and the change of shadows across my ceiling.

There are ebbs and flows to this existence,  and this does not worry me like it used to.  I used to panic and berate myself for my seeming laziness and despondency.  I love the feeling of that tide in full flow, where I am amazingly productive and everything works, and nothing seems overwhelming or impossible.  I know, now, that is not sustainable.

Stumbling happens, literally and figuratively. Sometimes, you can't just pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Sometimes, you aren't just fingering your jaw in wry admiration of Life's sucker punch. Sometimes, things break or tear and take time to heal -like my rotator cuff, or a dear friend's grief.

And sometimes it isn't even a stumble -it is just a human need for rest.

Ebbing, slow and agonizing as it can be, is part of the estimate of accomplishments.  Ebbing prepares me for flowing, and flowering. Ebbing is the deep breath of an entire life.

so, Spring

Spring is here, and for a moment I felt a spark of energy and excitement which led me to clean my house and go grocery shopping.

That spark left the next day, which I spent in bed, mostly, feeling sad and striving for motionlessness.

I wish I understood better this strange melancholy that seems to be no respecter of sunny spring days and bright blooms.  Sometimes, it feels as though the cheeriness of the sun drives me into the shadows, and its very warmth hardens my heart, which then slowly spreads to my head, my arms, my feet.

My mother had this strange shadow as well. I remember her motionless for hours sometimes, not understanding that being frozen means that no matter how much you love someone, you can't get out of bed to play, or eat, or shower, or read stories. Not asleep, she would stare at the ceiling, or out the window, and eventually lose her temper over my incessant entreaties.

 Most of the time, I make bargains with myself: Take a shower, and you can take a nap.  Sew 3 quilt blocks and you can stay in your pajamas all day. Put the dishes in the dishwasher, and you can eat all the chips.  Put on clothes and go to work, and you can order Jimmy Johns for lunch.

Sometimes the bargains work. Mostly, I sleep, and when I can't sleep, I stare at the ceiling, and watch the shadows pass the hours.

The shadow passes, and when it does it seems like it was all a dream. How could anyone NOT be outside on this glorious day, full of bright promise? The person who could barely summon the energy to open a bag of M&Ms and napped for two hours after taking a shower must have been a character I saw in a movie.

Starting Anew

Once again, I find myself on a grey snowy day wondering how I got here.

Once again, I am reminded that the only person who can do the work to get to where I want to be is me.

Once again, I take a deep breath and chant softly to myself that I am worth the effort it takes to be healthy.

And it takes a _lot_ of effort here in the heartland.

iamworththeeffortiamworththeeffort toeatwelltoexercisewelltosleepwelltothinkwelltopraywelltobewell

I think some part of me was waiting for some sort of turn of events and then I would know NOW is the time, HERE is the place, THIS is the activity that will somehow all coalesce into the answers. I never heard anything click into place.

Yet, here I am, realizing that once again, I need to figure out how to make my life HERE, work for me HERE, without a geographical solution, without anything pointing toward perfection or even mere convenience.

The weather will never be great.  Days are short and nights are long. There is no inside space where I look forward to arriving and going into my zone and throwing it down and leaving happy and sweaty and exhausted.  The food desert means that the healthy stuff is far more expensive than I am used to paying. I have no team here, no "gym friends," no sense of belonging. I cannot do some of the things I loved to do -belly dancing, heavy lifting, running.  These are not things I can do again "someday."

These are facts.

SO, I revisit my old manifesto where I declared my own time and space and dedication to being the person God has called me to be. It looks different this time because I am different -older, more particular, creakier, weary.

So, off I go, feeling unsteady on my feet, slightly cranky that this path must be walked again, wondering if it will somehow all be worth it.

I just know I can't stay where I am.

Finding Fit

Does anyone else think it is odd that no matter how much we accomplish in life, sometimes our entire self-worth boils down to our weight?

I've been feeling bloated and sluggish lately, so of course it does not matter at all that I am working lots of hours at a demanding profession, helping friends with various legal matters, been traveling extensively both for work and fun, am deep into a serious relationship with a wonderful man, got a promotion, or moved twice in the last year.

Nope, what matters is that my jeans are really freaking tight! Just moved up another skirt size.

I came across a photo yesterday and felt transported back to that moment and felt the faint stirrings of the yearning to feel the way I remember feeling that day -strong, confident, healthy.

One thing that has been drilled home this past year -fitness has no end goal.  There is no sense of completion, no checking a box, no finish line. You can't find it like gold coins then stick it in the closet to keep safe.

Once more, I find myself realizing that I have to make my life work for me where I am. There is no geographical solution.

So the first step is to make a plan.

Girlz and Bugz

I have a confession to make.

I loved bugs.

As a girl, I played with roly-polys, caught grasshoppers and fireflies by the score, was mesmerized by butterflies and horseflies alike and could spend hours staring at a bumblebee hopping from flower to flower. I begged for an ant farm because my magnifying glass was no help at all once the ants retreated under ground. (Did not receive one, BTW. Not bitter any more.)

I loved live bugs. I was horrified the first time I saw scarab beetles pinned to a storage box, little paper slips defining and naming them. I could not believe people would capture anything just to pin it to a piece of wood.

We had a wasp nest drop from a tree in our front yard the year I was in third grade. Despite all admonitions to the contrary, on a cold day I slipped it into a paper bag, hauled it to school and gleefully tore it open to surprise my teacher.  She was more than surprised as angry wasps swooped out and terrorized the rest of the class.

Since those were the days students could get spanked for far less than bringing a live wasp nest to class, I was fortunate to just get an exasperated, "ANNE!!" as she threw open all the windows and sent me off to the library. Talk about rewarding bad behavior.

This same teacher learned to have me empty my pockets after recess because somehow a menagerie of grasshoppers would end up there, and on a less diligent day, usually loose in the classroom.

She really deserves an extra jewel in her crown for not arranging an accident.

Somewhere along the line, my fascination waned. Spiders began to creep me out more. Bugs began to be something to smash, not study under magnifying glasses. I learned to look at butterfly collections impassively.  In third grade, I had other kids who thought bugs were cool, but as I aged, then switched schools, my love for bugs was just one more weird thing about me, in a large pool of weird things.

But once upon a time, I was a girl who loved bugs.

O Tell Me The Truth

a Nod to WH Auden

Some say Science is absurd

And some say it’s The Word

Some say it shows how the world goes round

Some say it just occurred.

And when I asked the EPA

Who looked as if they knew

The Prez got very cross indeed

And said it wouldn’t do.

Does it look like global warming?

Or a bear on crumbling ice?

Does it smell like we’re measuring methane?

Or cuddling chimera mice?

Is it as exciting as Twitter?

Or boring as half-hearted defiance?

Does it taste sweet or seem bitter?

O, Tell Me the Truth About Science!

Will our history books whisper of it?

(The ones that are left unburned.)

Will Facebook exalt and revere it?

(If a few faces remain unturned.)

Will Alternative Facts rule the Future?

A Rogue NASA and Alt Parks alliance?

Is Rogue POTUS Staff in the know?

O, Tell Me the Truth About Science!