Rebellin

What a rough morning.  I needed to have a meeting with three people in the US and one guy in the UK.  UK guy insists on a time that is super early for me.  All the US people declined.  Accepting that I’d now have to host two separate meetings for the two different time zones, I rearranged my schedule, woke up early, and still ended up rushing as I tried to get out the door…  Rushing as my boy is being clingy, and he insists I am the one that takes him to the sitter.  I try going out the door, but the sound of him wailing on the floor melts my heart.

I come back in, gather him up, and by now, the stress level for me is through the roof.  I drop him at the sitter’s (he’s still in tears and I am on the verge), and realize I only have 5 minutes until the meeting starts.  I ditch all plans to take the call from my office, and run back in the house, boot up the computer, just to find that my conference call software isn’t connecting to the network.

Lots of cursing, blood pressure skyrocketing, I finally get enough of a connection to instant message UK guy.  His response?  “Oh, I can’t make the meeting now.”

If only I could have reached through the computer to strangle him.  I typed out a very snippy response about how that would have been nice to know as I arranged my whole morning around him and left one kid in tears, but then I stopped, deleted it, and just shut down my computer.

Geesh.  Early meetings are the bain of my life as a working mother.  My family just doesn’t work well with an accellerated morning.  That man has no idea how much stress he put me through just to blow me off.

I did it!  Wedding Weight achieved!  *doing the happy dance*

Next goal:  two more pounds until I was the weight when I met my hubby! 

We all have them…  Women, that is…  Numbers in our head of how much we weighed when…  They often are our own internal barometer on how we feel about our bodies.

My milestones are probably the same as most women my age:

• High School Weight (the pipe dream that I’ll never see again)
• College Weight
• Driver’s License Weight
• Wedding Weight
• Pre-pregnancy Weight
• 10 months Pregnancy Weight (a number in my head that I always marvel at how I used to weigh that much)
• Post-pregnancy Weight (I look at a picture of me holding my 3 week old baby, and that number pops in my head.  But you know what, I still think I look beautiful because I’m radiating in happiness). 

I started off this New Year with a personal, silent goal.  I was still carrying around 10 pounds of what I thought of as “pregnancy weight”, and by golly, my baby was 2.5 years old.  I had met with my doctor in December, voicing my concerns about not being able to lose weight.  I eat very healthy, exercise daily, but still, for my health and my self esteem, I needed to shed at a minimum those 10 pounds.

So I got on a medically supervised weight loss plan.  It has been strict.  But it has worked.  As of today, I’ve lost 20 pounds, and I’m one pound over WEDDING WEIGHT.  Not to say I was stick skinny at my wedding, but I was at a weight that made me happy, was healthy, and it is a weight I literally haven’t seen since my wedding day (I gained 4 pounds on my honeymoon in Italy, but it was totally WORTH it). 

I always thought that exercise was the key to maintaining or losing weight for me.  And since I was 19, I pretty much worked out 5+ times a week.  Religiously.  Vigorously.  What I’ve learned on this plan, which actually restricts my exercise to light walking, is that for me, it’s really about the food and the calorie count. 

I think my problem before was that I was working out so hard that I would become ravenous.  Even though I was eating healthy foods, I was simply eating too much to offset how much exercise I was doing.

Anyway, it’s interesting how the people that see you every day and live with you really don’t notice much of a change, but I’m starting to get comments from people at work on how I look GOOD. 

Which always makes me pause and think, did I look that BAD before?!  I really don’t feel like I look THAT different, but I do notice how my clothes are fitting differently and I have bought some smaller sizes recently.

Throughout this journey, I have also been very concious to not talk to my kids about what I was doing…  I believe I’ve managed to slide this under the radar.  I don’t want my daughter to even know what a diet is at this age.  I simply eat my healthy food, which is often what the family is eating minus the carbs.  I’ve taken to snacking on cucumbers and baby bell peppers daily, and you know what has happened?  My kids now think that is a lovely snack.  That makes me happy to see.  They’re also really fond of shrimp now. 

Anyway, I sure hope I can maintain this weight.  I want to lose that one more pound go get me down to Wedding Weight.  I think I may do a little dance when that happens. 

There have been so many changes in my life since I hit my 30s.  I think learning to regulate your weight in the face of marriage, bearing children, and raising children is a whole learning curve.  I’m hoping that I have truly figured it out, and can stop the battle and just enjoy the living. 

I’m beginning to wonder if Little Man will ever be potty trained.  I have signed him up to start preschool two days a week starting in June.  But, he has to be potty trained first. 

So, I talked to our care provider, telling her, “I’m ready to go cold turkey on diapers!”

She looked at me shell shocked, saying, “well I can’t be cleaning messes all day.  He must be ‘almost there’ before I can start.”

Almost there.  Tell me, how do I get said 2.75 year old ‘almost there’ when she is with him 45 hours a week and she’s NOT participating.  Hmmm… 

Of course, around the same time, he lost interest in the whole process anyway.

So, I’m starting to think his start date at preschool will come and go…  Although they will give us one more chance for next school year with a September deadline. 

I keep trying on the weekends, but honestly, we do so much on the weekends that it’s a pain to have him wetting his pants while we’re out and about.  If only I could outsource potty training… 

Yesterday as I was leaving the gym, the second I went outside I could smell smoke.

Sh!t. Was my first thought.

Reno hasn’t had any significant preciptation for several months.  We had a horrible fire two months ago when a storm was blowing in and we had high winds.

Yesterday, the fates aligned again with a storm blowing in, high winds, and a fire.

I came back to my office to look up online where the fire was, and it was in Washoe Valley, just south of where we live.  I wasn’t too worried until I got an update a few hours later saying that Callahan, a neighborhood one road up the hill from us, was being evacuated.

I decided to go work from home at 3pm, as I wanted to be close to the kids if our neighborhood was evacuated.  Turns out that was a very smart move.

At about 4:30, I decided perhaps I should once again (as I did two months ago when the last fire hit) gather up some of our important paperwork.  I went up to the office, and happened to look out the front window.  I saw two of my neighbors gathered talking to a stranger.  It didn’t take me long to figure out they were talking to a firefighter.

I ran down the stairs and out of my house to find my next door neighbor, who does after care for my daughter was packing up and about to drive away.  I quickly got my daughter from them, and as I was walking to get my son, the firefighter came up to me and said the area was being evacuated.

She looked into our garage and asked if we were taking our dog with us.  I said we were (mentally anguishing the stress on our 16 year old lab), and she tied a blue ribbon on our door, marking that we were evacuating.

That was when it started to feel REAL.  About that time, I turned and saw the flames coming down the hill towards our neighborhood.

People often talk about what they would take in the event of a fire, and I can just say after packing up one suitcase for all 3 of us, our 90 pound dog and a pack and play, there really wasn’t much room in the car for anything big.

I grabbed an empty box and filled it with photo albums, baby books, birth certificates and passports.  I brought one change of clothes for each person, and the favorite loveys for each kid.  I threw it all in the car, and started to back out of the driveway.

There were so many people evacuating at the same time that I had to wait a few minutes before I could back out of our driveway, and then the main street in/out of our neighborhood was jam packed with people evacuating and emergency responders and news crews driving in.

As I drove down the foothill, there were flames approaching our neighborhood from two directions.  As much as I didn’t want to freak the kids out, I couldn’t help but saying, “Oh, my God…   Oh, my God…”

I drove straight to my brother’s house, and this is what the hill by my house looked like from his neighborhood.

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We turned on the news at my brother’s house, and the news announced that flames had reached the high school by our house.  That high school is really CLOSE to our house.  We walk there all the time.  About this time was when I realized I was shaking.

My phone was ringing and buzzing with texts as people offered me places to stay.  The one person I wasn’t hearing from was my husband, who had left his cell phone at home, and whose car wasn’t at his office when I drove by on my way to my brother’s house.

The kids and I ate dinner there, and I kept calling his office, only to get his voicemail.  I knew in my gut that he was OK, but couldn’t imagine why on earth he hadn’t tried to get ahold of me.

I finally got a call at 7pm (two hours after being evacuated) from a strange cell phone.  He had been in South Lake Tahoe (in a snow storm) all day, and didn’t realize there was a massive fire until he drove into Carson City.  He stopped at a fast food restaurant and asked the cashier if he could use their phone to call me.

The road in between Carson City and Reno was shut down, so he had to seek refuge at a friends’ house in that area.  I ended up going to my friend Annie’s house, as she had enough bedrooms to accommodate the kids and I, as well as our poor old dog Shadow.

I was rather afraid all this excitement might be too much for old Shadow, but he hung in there through two changes in venue last night.

I didn’t sleep much.  By the time I went to bed, I was pretty sure our house would be OK, but it was still disconcerting.  This morning, our area was considered still evacuated, but I called a neighbor to find out that they were home and people were returning to there houses throughout the neighborhood.

No homes in our neighborhood burned, but over 20 did in the neighboring valley.  Reno has been struck by so many tragedies in the last year.  Can we just get some significant preciptation and a bit of a break, starting NOW?

Last week was pretty bad at our house. It all started Monday morning at about 5am, when Little Miss woke me in tears, saying that her tummy hurt.

And with that, the flu had entered our house.

I worked from home with her Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which meant the poor little sick girl ended up watching movies in the morning and taking a nap in the afternoons while I participated in conference calls in my pjs. (What, a nap for an almost 6 year old, you ask?! I made up the rule for her that if she is too sick to go to school, she must take a nap. I think it aids in healing, and it also helps this Mom get some work done while she sleeps!)

Wednesday night, I picked up Little Man from daycare, noticed he had a fever, and he puked on me shortly after we got home. He puked on me four times in the last week. I am SO over being puked on. I swear, that is one of the grossest trials of motherhood.

Thursday morning, I woke up realizing that the flu had taken me as a victim as well, and then JB got up and announced he was sick, too. I was too sick to work. We all four wallowed in our misery together all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. JB and I were sick enough that at a few points, we slept during the day while the children played in the family room and we hoped for the best. Nothing went horribly wrong, but at one point, I did catch them trying to stand on the kitchen table “because they thought that would be fun.”

Or in other words, my daughter thought it would be fun, and convinced her brother it would be as well.

Two members of the family are on antibiotics, and all of us are finally on the mend. We all lost weight, and we all slept A LOT. I have to say that one of the toughest parts of motherhood that I have experienced is being so sick myself, but still expected to nurture two little ones that are sick as well. I felt like I was pulled in too many directions last week — my body giving out on me, my kids needing me, and deadlines slipping at work.

I’m just glad it’s over. Sorry for the lapse in posting, but now you understand the reason!

One Fin. That is my new tribal name. I’m wondering how many laps I’ll swim with one fin before someone takes notice and asks me what the heck I’m doing?!

The interesting thing is that with one fin on, my backstroke is much straighter. Normally, I’m clamboring with the lane line, but as One Fin, I swim straight as an arrow.

Go figure.

I’m also hoping none of my co-workers catch me sitting in my office shaking my head frantically trying to get the water out of my ears.

I feel like a bit of a failure in the aftermath of Easter. After years of obsessing on how to get my kids to eat healthy food and not be obsessed with sugar, I came to the conclusion yesterday that I’ve failed.

I remember when Little Miss was a baby. I decided I didn’t want her to have a sweet tooth like her mother, as it has been one of my toughest challenges in managing my weight. I thought what if we just have fruit for dessert? I tried to keep candy out of the house.

But somewhere along the way, she got older, and the few bits of sugar/sweet treats I gave her became an obsession. Somehow, she now expects dessert every night (even though I didn’t want to get in that rut), and her entire focus yesterday was CANDY and SUGAR! Lately, I’ve been trying to steer her towards fruit with whipped cream for dessert, which does seem to do the trick, but Easter convinced me that we have a problem…

My theory for the past few holidays (XMAS and Easter) is that I’d just lift all of the rules for one day. Candy before breakfast? OK. Cake with lunch? OK. More candy in the afternoon? If you insist. And that was exactly how yesterday went. She dug into the Easter basket at 6 am and started in on the candy. I then encouraged her to eat a healthy breakfast before we went to church. After church, there were baked goods served, and she devoured a piece of chocolate cake.

After church, we headed to a neighbor’s house for lunch, where there were bowls of candy at easy reach of my kids, and Little Miss fed herself and her brother. That’s right, her obession is now starting Little Man in on the sugar thing at way too young of an age. It feels like a top spinning out of control.

I knew we had a problem when she asked for dessert after dinner about a hundred times last night. I finally got so irritated at the constant prodding that I said NO. NO DESSERT. I then marched her upstairs and got her ready for bed an hour early, as the sugar seemed to make her act like a crazy person, and I couldn’t deal with it anymore.

So today, I’m looking back wondering where I went wrong. My original theory was that you let them have the treats on the holiday, and then any additional treats will be allowed in small doses as dessert after dinner if she eats her vegetables and protein. I didn’t want to make sweets taboo, as I thought that would make the obsession worse. But goodness… Yesterday was just plain ugly in the nutrition department. Not only does she have a sweet tooth, but she has an insane obsession with it.

I thought about putting carrots in her plastic eggs next year, but that would probably cause quite a rebellion. Does anyone have tips for me to break out of this cycle for the next holiday season? I guess I could have put money in some of the eggs, but I was also worried Little Man would try to eat the money… He is following in her footsteps, and it isn’t something I’m happy about in this case.

An executive decision was made to take down my flash mob. All that work gone down the drain. Yesterday had to be the second worst day of my career… Second only to getting laid off. Allow me some silence for a few days as I pick myself up again and try to dust myself off.

Six months ago, I had this crazy idea that my work should stage a flash mob. I spent hours putting together the strategy, and sold it to my on-site leadership, and we submitted to a Corporate Vice President, who gave me funding.

The plan was to hold a flash mob at a ski resort. Microsoft Licensing and Microsoft Student partnered up with the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority, Alpine Meadows Ski Resort, Moment Skis and Sentury Snowboards to create a mob that was a true community event. After six months of planning, everything was ready.

Microsoft Licensing sponsored the Take the Lake Competition at Alpine Meadows, which was planned during college spring break. We had pictured the flash mob going down on a balmy Spring day outdoors in the middle of a huge crowd watching the rail jam competition.
Mother Nature had different plans for us. She sent us a blizzard in which Alpine received 54 inches of snow over the three days of the Take The Lake competition.

Months of planning and preparation had gone into both the competition, Microsoft’s presence at the competition, as well as the flash mob. We had people and equipment that had been flown into town just for the weekend, including a team of professional videographers. We decided the show must go on.
On Thursday, the plans for our two outdoor tents were moved inside, and we moved forward with plans for the flash mob. On Friday, people started getting wind of the forecast, and my Windows Phone lit up with texts, emails, and calls from people backing out of the flash mob.

On Friday night, we had a rehearsal at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. We had 25 dancers show up, with a large group of UNR Dance Co-op dancers, who offered to teach the dance, and representatives from dance schools from Reno all the way to South Lake Tahoe. The rehearsal went well, but we knew 25 people wouldn’t make an impressive flash mob.

We had partnered with the Alpine Meadows Ski Foundation, offering them raffle prizes for a fundraiser in exchange for 100 dancers from the Alpine Meadows Ski Teams. In the weeks leading up to the event, we had 115 people committed to the flash mob from the ski teams. The day before the flash mob, our contact at the ski teams said she didn’t think people would want to participate because of the snow. We told them that we were carrying on as planned, and still needed their help.

We had a rehearsal scheduled for 7:30am at the Alpine Meadows Lodge on Saturday, the day of the flash mob. A team of three Microsoft Licensing employees left Reno at 5:30am to drive through the blizzard to the lodge. We initially had one family of four turn up to the rehearsal.

Due to avalanche control, the road into the resort was shut down, and everyone was restricted to the lodge. We tried to recruit the people trapped in the lodge with us to the flash mob, but no one was interested. At 8am the day of the flash mob, it was looking doomed.

Our team of videographers showed up for the rehearsal in a Chevy Cavalier, not the ideal car for the weather conditions. After the rehearsal, they said they were headed back to the lodge in Tahoe City to get their equipment. At this time, roads between Alpine and Tahoe City were not an easy task for a vehicle without four wheel drive or chains.

It was an unbelievable rally as we tried to gather dancers. The head coach for the ski teams approached us and said he would have ski teams come to us to learn the dance throughout the day as they came in for shelter from the storm. Jennifer Mizzi, a MSLI Intern (and dance minor) led dance training all day in a secret room in the lodge.

People spent 3 hours on the road driving in blizzard conditions from Reno and Carson City to Alpine Meadows for this event. The entire day, we tried to see if the weather would ease up for us to execute the flash mob outside at the rail jam, but it never did. All day, we worried if the videographer would make it back in time for the flash mob. Thankfully, they did.

In an effort to show the weather conditions on the video, we had the UNR dancers go outside, and we signaled them when to enter the lodge dancing. One of the dancers was put in charge of the Reno Tahoe Big Horn mascot, RT. We had the Windows mascot, Buddy, inside the lodge fending off the kids that were swarming him before the flash mob began.

At 4pm, the flash mob was scheduled to start, but the videographer was getting his team of 12 in place still. We fretted over scantily clad dancers in 80s apparel shivering in the hurricane force winds and blinding snow. At 4:10, everyone was ready, and the music was pumped into the lodge, while people planted all throughout the lodge and the dancers streaming into the lodge all got up and started dancing to the Microsoft song “I’m a PC for Life.”

Unfortunately, RT the Bighorn was left out in the storm, and only realized she had been left when she was the only person left outside the lodge, and found her way inside with limited visibility from the head to join in the festivities.

We ended up having around 125 people participating in the flash mob. During the chorus, all of the participants shouted “I’m a PC for Life”, which echoed off of the high ceilings of the lodge. Considering mere hours before we had feared the flash mob would consist of 10 people, it was truly an amazing feat.
This flash mob was an entire community coming together. We had children, dancers, ski team members, coaches and parents, employees and their families and friends. Our mission was to promote local products and the Reno Tahoe area. We did that in one of the most powerful storms of the year, pooling resources and making new friends.

Thank you to everyone for braving the storm and making this happen.

The big accomplishment this weekend was that I managed to take both kids to the pool by myself. I leaned on Little Miss a lot to help secure Little Man as I got in and out of the pool, but it went really well. We all had a great time. Little Miss swam 4 laps of freestyle, with 2 laps of kicking, showing great potential! It was good for my knee to walk back and forth with her. Little Man has figured out how to hold his breath under water, so he jumps in and enjoys going under water.

On Friday, we had a surprise visit from my brother’s family, as the roads to Kirkwood Ski Resort were closed, and they needed a place to crash for the night. It was a lovely impromptu reuinion, and we let the kids stay up super late as all of the cousins played together. Poor Little Miss was crushed when neither of her boy cousins wanted to sleep in her room. I told her they thought it was too pink.

I’m getting much more mobile and functional, though in the back of my head, I know that in just a month’s time, I’ll be going under the knife and starting all over with my knee. Boo!

It is blizzarding in Reno. After I woke up, I checked to make sure preschool was open, and decided to brave the storm to get to work. You see, back in 1998, I moved to Detroit, MI in January after living my whole life in New Mexico. It was truly sink or swim, as I immediately had to learn how to drive in snow (lots of snow) so that I could make it to my new job at GM. The policy at GM was that you always were expected to make it to work on a snow day. You were also expected to show up on time. My managers schooled me that you are to watch the weather, and plan to get up super early if a storm is expected.

I then moved to Reno, and am still amazed at how empty our offices are on snow days. I do think half of the people might be powder hounds up on the ski slopes, but there is definitely a good contingent that is just scared to go outside.

I spoke to a colleague in Seattle this week who said she was staying home “because of the snow”. I asked her how much snow she had at her house, and she said, “none, it is supposed to snow.”

That just made me laugh. Overnight, we got about 6 inches on top of the foot of snow that still remains from last week’s storm. Now that I’m off of crutches, I felt like I could brave it. The roads weren’t too bad, and I made it to preschool and then my office without a problem.

That is, until I discovered I left my laptop at home.

Argh. I am completely useless at work without a computer, so instead of being one of the few brave souls at the office, I got back in the car and drove home. After an hour of driving around town in a blizzard, I look like one of those wimpy people afraid to drive to work.

Oh well.

Can you guess where my hubby is? Yup, enjoying yet ANOTHER powder day. Lucky bastard!

A co-worker sent me the following image, which helped me understand exactly what I tore in my knee. Check out the image below. I have a grade 3 (i.e. worst possible) tear of the MCL, and a complete tear and femoral detachment of the ACL.

I am usually (OK, always) the one to get up with the kids in the morning.  Now that I can’t climb stairs, JB has been doing it.  And though it is nice to not have to rush out of bed, I have missed my morning snuggle-fests with Little Man.  The only time that kid is into cuddling is first thing in the morning, before he is truly awake.

It had been three mornings since my injury, and JB had been taking care of Little Man in the morning.  But this morning, I asked JB to bring Little Man to me with his milk. 

Once again, it felt that all was right in the world.  We lay with my arm wrapped around him, and the other hand rubbing his soft and truly irresistable belly.  We stayed like that for 20 minutes, and it was truly my favorite time of the whole day.

Tonight, I have two girlfriends coming over with dinner and much needed company.  I can’t think of a better way to start, or end the day.

P.S.  Today’s workout was going to the grocery store to refill my pain meds.  I opted not to use their motorized cart, and instead hung my purse over my shoulder, and my shopping bag around my neck.  I was rather sweaty after I picked up a few necesseties and my prescription, and a few store employees stopped me to remind me of the motorized cart.   I was resistance training on crutches! I finished the “workout” by coming home and taking a shower.  It’s amazing how exhausting everyday tasks are when you’re on crutches!

On Friday, I had a quandry. I had two free ski tickets to two different resorts — Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley. I had a meeting at Alpine, where they gave me a free pass for the day, yet a work “Morale” event at Squaw.

Unfortunately, the snow conditions leave a lot to be desired, as it has been warm, and we haven’t had snow since Jan. 1. Hence, the day was 90% groomers. But, really, a bad day on the slopes is better than a good day at work, right?!

So I did 3 runs at Alpine, and then headed to the resort next door, where I met up with a bunch of co-workers for some more groomer skiing. It was fun, though, as I’m so used to skiing by myself lately with JB and I switching off skiing and staying home with the kids.  My “Morale” was sky high.

On Sunday, I took Little Miss to ski camp, where she not only advanced a level, but was a rock star.  In fact, the instructor said, “she really likes to go fast.”  Little Man was at home with a sitter, so I decided to take Little Miss up on our first chair lift ride together. 

It was a dream come true.  She was so excited about skiing, and so chill about the chairlift (after years of telling me they looked too scary).  We hugged the whole way up, and I was amazed at her progress as we started to ski down.

I even stopped to take some video.

Right after I took that video, we got close to the bottom, where the slope of the hill gets a bit steeper.  Considering her newfound lack of fear of speed, I was worried she might get going out of control, so I decided to pull her in between my legs and snowplow down together. 

We lasted about 2 minutes like that, and next thing I knew, we were falling, my knee went POP, and my ski season came to a grinding halt.  That’s right, I injured the same knee I injured skiing 8 years ago.  Back then, I was leaping off a cornice.  At least then I had a good story to tell.

So anyway, from experience, I knew I couldn’t ski down.  Ski Patrol was fetched, and Little Miss and I rode down on a snowmobile.  Luckily, my brother and sister-in-law were still at Mt. Rose to come pick up the pieces.  Audra took me to the ER, and later when JB was located, she watched the kids while they finished up on me in the hospital. 

All we know right now is I didn’t break any bones.  I’m going to an orthopedist today, and I assume we’ll get an MRI scheduled. 

So now, I deal with the aftermath.  My lifestyle just isn’t condusive right now to being on crutches.  With two young kids and a two story house, I have been rendered rather useless.  I’m really not looking forward to this recovery process, plus having to get myself back in shape after  being forced to be bed ridden for weeks.

Excuse me while I wallow in self pity just a bit.

Anyway, I guess the good news is this should give me more time for writing.  Right?  There has to be something good to come out of this!

Ah, the stomach flu. It entered our house Sunday morning at about 3am when Little Miss started puking. I nursed her back to health, and thought the rest of the family had avoided this fate until Little Man started puking Tuesday afternoon.

As of last night, everyone was well, and we even enjoyed chili for dinner.

Then, at 3am, I awoke suddenly to the sound of puking, this time it was JB that was hit. My first thought was how much I now regretted kissing him goodnight!

For some reason, in JB’s groggy sleepyness, he didn’t think to kneel in front of the toilet. Can I just tell you what happens when a 6’6″ man pukes from a standing position?! It’s not pretty. SPLAT.

Anyway, I’m trying to brace for it, because at this point, I’m not sure there is any chance for me to avoid this.

But on the bright side, it could give me a nice weight loss boost!

Like millions of Americans, I took on the New Year as a challenge to jump start my fitness protocol.  First on the agenda was melting off some of that remaining baby weight — 10 pounds that were haunting me 18 months after Little Man was born.

I’ve talked to my doctor before about weight loss, especially considering I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrom (PCOS), which inhibits weight loss.  He said that the South Beach Diet is a healthy option, and is particularly good for women with PCOS.

He gave me this advice a few years ago.  Last New Years, I decided I loved my carbs too much to do South Beach, so I signed up for a 3x/week bootcamp.  The result?  I got my rear end kicked with high intensity workouts for 6 months, and didn’t lose a pound.

Six months later, I came back to the realization that for me, it’s all about diet.  I’ve been working out regularly (5+times per week) most of my life, and my body simply needs exercise not to gain weight.  But to lose it?  Well, time to say bye bye to carbs.

The last successful weight loss I had was on the Atkins Diet, which is stricter on the carbs.  South Beach allows carbs, but only after a 2 week induction of no carbs…  Just proteins and greens and sugar free Jello.  I started this phase last Monday.  I promptly had to take a hiatus for my company’s “winter party”, where I just couldn’t turn down the alcohol and chocolate dessert.  Sooooo, this Monday, I started up again.

So far, I’m down 8 pounds.  8 of those pesky 10, so I’d call it a success.  I feel healthy.  I’m living off of egg whites, tons of veggies, fish and chicken.  It’s all good, right? 

Except for the fact that I miss my carbs.  Oh, how I love cereal in the morning, and my almost daily fix of dark chocolate.  And the wine. My, do I miss wine. Two weeks of sobriety shouldn’t be bad after doing it for two pregnancies, but it is BAD. If I can just make it through the two week Phase 1, I can have dark chocolate again and wine.  But 4 days in on this regime (not counting the 5 days last week before I jumped off the wagon), another 10 seems lofty.  Especially when I look at my calendar, and find out my work group is going out for an Italian food dinner tomorrow.  $#!@  JB also wisely commented how everyone is going to think I’m pregnant if I don’t drink at our outing.  I think he is right!

Anyway (pausing to drink my V8 juice), it’s mind over matter, right?  There’s definitely part of me that wants to hanker down and keep this up, trying to not only melt away those remaining 2 pounds of baby weight, but perhaps getting back to my wedding weight.

Did I mention my work had a pizza party with cupcakes on Tuesday?  I’ll have you know I skipped all of that in favor of my salad with shrimp and Jello for dessert.  I even took 2 cupcakes home for JB and Little Miss, letting those God-foresaken things stare at me from my office desk all afternoon long.

Oh, and my husband non-chalantly announced this weekend that he has lost 20 pounds. Without trying. Just — woops — 20 pounds gone. I see what he consumes — wine every night, endless pasta, ice cream shakes daily… IT’S JUST NOT FAIR! In my next life, I’m coming back with his metabolism!

So, here is my ode…

Chocolate, I miss you so.

Ice cream, why did you have to go?

Fruit, wherefore art thou?

I long for our reunion.

Cupcakes be damned.

Trying out the Windows Phone 7 blogging app

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

Last week, I received an email from WordPress, the platform for my blog.  It was an email with auto-populated statistics, meant to congratulate me on my awesome blog content. 

What it actually do was serve as a huge reality check.

They said: 

“A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,600 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.”  That low number made me cringe.  It’s not even a blip in the blogosphere.  In fact, it is downright embarrassing.

“In 2010, you wrote 32 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1399 posts. You uploaded 25 pictures, taking up a total of 9mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.”  Ugh.  32.  That is hideous.  I knew the blog had been put on the back shelf, but didn’t realize how much until I saw that statistic.  My blog turns 9 years old this month, and I posted religiously until last year, when I went back to work after having my second child.  You can tell that not only do I have limited time, my life pretty much zaps any creative energy out of me, which is depressing in itself.

“Your busiest day of the year was September 15th with 32 views. The most popular post that day was I Heart Michael Phelps.”  How sad is it that not my witty words drive my top post, but a picture of Michael Phelps in a swim suit.  Ha!  As much as I enjoy looking at that picture, I take that as a challenge.

So, thank you, Word Press.  I needed that slap in the face.  It did make me chuckle about how positive and upbeat that message was intended to be, compared to the message it really delivered to me.

I need to take my writing seriously.  And hence, that is my New Years Resolution.  Haha, I know how many people make that resolution, but I’m back, people.  Hear me roar!

I recently read Anna Quindlen’s book A Short Guide to a Happy Life.   I’ve been contemplating some professional changes of my own, and the below passage really spoke to me.  So, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy.  Happy Friday.

“Here is my resume.  It’s not what my professional bio says, proud as I am of all that:

I am a good mother to three good children.  I have tried to never let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent.  I no longer consider myself at the center of the universe.  I show up.  I listen.  I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my husband.  I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say.  I show up.  I listen.  I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me.  Without them I would have nothing of interest to say to anyone, because I would be a cardboard cutout.  But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch.  I show up.  I listen.  I try to laugh. 

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.  You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So I suppose the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple:  get a life.  A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.  Do you think you’d care so very much about these things if you developed an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast while in the shower?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines.  Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finter.

Turn off your cell phone.  Turn off your regular phone, for that matter.  Keep still.  Be present.

Get a life in which you are not alone.  Find people you love, and who love you.  And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.  Each time I look at my diploma, I remember that I am still a student, still learning every day how to be human.  Send an e-mail.  Write a letter.  Kiss your mom.  Hug your dad.

Get a life in which you are generous…  And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.  Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around.  Take the money you would have spent on beers in a bar and give it to charity.  Work in a soup kitchen.  Tutor a seventh-grader. 

All of us want to do well.  But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.”