7ToF: You got a fast car, is it fast enough so we can fly away?

1. Years ago Tracy Chapman recorded "Fast Car," one of my all-time favorite songs, about driving off to a better life. Chapman grew up in the projects, and she said once in an interview that the fast car in the song was something like a Dodge Dart --in her mind at that age, any car that would run was a fast car, a vehicle for escape. (My original plan was just to explain the post title, but I started watching this video and was mesmerized, so I'm sharing-- we'll see if youtube lets me do this.)

2. We have motley crew of cars. The newest one is a 2011. My favorite, and the one I'm driving at the moment, is a 2005 Honda Pilot, and looky what happened this week (you'll ignore the dust, I'm sure):

190,000! This is the car I drove back and forth to Missoula for nearly three years while I was working on my master's, and I bonded with it in a major way. It's the old body style, more like a Jeep Cherokee than the huge Pilots they're making now. There were definitely days when it felt like I was in a fast car, escaping. Of course, there were also days when it felt like I was driving into the maw of hell. Either way, when I found out last week that its trade-in value was less than $3K, I decided I might as well drive it till it dies.

3. We're each firmly attached to our favorite elderly car-- my Pilot, Dean's 2000 pickup, MadMax's 2001 pickup, PellMel's tiny 2009 sedan-- and the advantages are obvious: they're paid off. Insurance is cheap. We know them well. And this cannot be overstated: you don't have to deal with buying a new car. But when you drive older cars, anything can go wrong at any time. It might be nice to have at least one car that is reliable for road trips, and since we're about to have a kid in college five hours away, many road trips loom. We're reluctantly considering our options. A pox on car shopping.

4. Remember awhile back when I told you about my clumsy experiments with finally, in my fifties, starting to wear makeup? Well, yeah. My need for full coverage has only grown. Now if I forget to leave time to put it on before I go out, I catch sight of myself somewhere and am horrified. Good God, I'm old. But as someone who is new to the world of makeup, there are all kinds of things I am still figuring out. Like--I swear I'm not making this up-- some people have two different shades, one for summer, when they're tan, and one for winter, when they're pale. Who knew? And how do you know when to switch?

5. We're throwing a party for our neighborhood seniors on the night before graduation. We're decorating with photos of the kids at all ages, which means I've spent several hours--and will doubtless spend several more--combing through old photos. *sniff* Good lord, these are some cute kids. Since I used up all my extra time in the rabbit warren known as YouTube looking for that Tracy Chapman video, I can't post any this week, but maybe next time. (How to win friends: force them to look at old pictures of your offspring.) How in the world did they grow up so fast? Except on the days when they're being so obstinately awful you can't wait to ship them off.

6. You know I've written at least half a dozen posts over the years defending romance novels (here's one). I will still defend to my last breath anybody's right to read whatever the heck they want to read whenever they want to read it, but I have to say I have not read a good romance novel in a couple of years now--the kind I used to put down with a sigh of pure satisfaction thinking that was a great story. I've pretty much given up. Other than my continuing intermittent fascination with Betty Neels (the most recent of which was published in 2001), I haven't read a romance novel in a long time. Maybe it's just me and I've moved on past the moment when they worked for me. But I want to blame it on the romance novel industry (the word industry used deliberately). The ones I read last year felt cranked out in a way they didn't five or six years ago, as if they were written based on what sells rather than what works as a story. But I do have three recently-published romance novels from favorite authors waiting for the beach in June, so maybe there is hope.

7. Since I'm running out of things to talk about, here is my Corny Thought For The Week, also filed under "Life Lessons I've Learned From Betty Neels." Don't smirk. She has one heroine after another who spends an entire book unable to believe the hero is interested in her, irritatingly lost in "He Can't Love Little Ol' Me" Land. But it occurred to me not long ago that I spend lots of time feeling unlovable, too. And if you can't believe you're lovable, you miss out on a lot of love, you know? And another thing that happens: it leaves her heroines (and me) open to bad advice. If you don't believe the people who clearly love and care about you, you end up believing the wrong person-- in Betty Neels, it's the cruel ex-girlfriend, the interfering busybody, the mean stepmother, the the people who are telling her he'd never love a little nobody like you. So there you go. Wisdom from romance novels. So, if the snippy ex-girlfriend tells you the ice on the pond is plenty thick enough to skate on, don't believe her. Just saying.

Have a nice weekend. Bonus video: Prince and Lenny Kravitz performing "American Woman," which is blatantly misogynist in a delicious sort of way, but somehow exactly right.

bathrooms, independence, and watching your kid drive away

I just watched MadMax drive himself off to school--his first time driving since the surgery, second day back at school. The surgery was on his left knee, so his driving leg has been fine all along, but still he was radiating happiness and relief that he is independent of his mother's driving and attention once more. Yesterday, after two weeks out of school, he told his calculus teacher that he was probably the only senior in the building who was happy to be at school on Monday morning. I think the boredom has been at least as bad as the pain. Maybe worse.

It reminded me of watching our kids drive off alone for the first time after they got their license. They're both good, safe drivers. They'd done driver's ed, they'd driven hours with me or their dad keeping watch. But you can't help but worry, watching them drive off alone. So many things can go wrong, lots of them completely unrelated to their driving skills.

In other news....: We had an interesting conversation about gender and bathrooms over dinner last night, which made me think. I have to balance my immediate liberal-bias reaction about yet another fear-based assault on the rights of -- I was going to say "the trans community," but really, it's anybody. We react in fear and dismay when any of our cherished beliefs about race or gender or class are challenged -- I have to balance my immediate, genuine support of anyone whose right to be themselves is being challenged, against my (also genuine) reaction of ewwww to the idea of running into a visibly male person in the women's room.

Even in a dirty, unkempt public bathroom, the women's room has always had a slight air of sanctuary, a place where you could hike up your skirt and adjust your panty hose, or check your teeth in the mirror, or bum a tampon in an emergency--all the things we'd hesitate to do in front of men.

The only trans woman I'm aware of here locally is visibly trans, a big 6-foot-plus person, who nonetheless dresses elegantly and is always polite and, for lack of a better word, decorous. If I'm entirely honest with myself, I have to admit it would make me a little uncomfortable to run into her in the women's room at Target.

But that's the point. This is on me. It's my discomfort. How about her discomfort in having to deal with this issue at all? Like many in the trans community, she has probably spent far more energy than any of us can imagine organizing her day around not needing to use public bathrooms so she could avoid this exact scenario. We want to define anything that makes us uncomfortable as Wrong, and thus keep our cherished beliefs intact while shifting all responsibility for dealing with differences off on the people who are different.

That's just not acceptable to me anymore. Either we're going to do our best to make our culture accepting and tolerant of all kinds of people we deem strange, or we aren't. Presumably when a trans woman is attending to her bodily needs, she'll be well-concealed by a stall, just as I will be as I attend to mine. I'm willing to live with a little discomfort in order to try and make the world a safer place for everybody. People put up with my weirdnesses every single day, should I not return the favor?

The whole fear-and-panic thing about sexual predators in public bathrooms is completely unchanged by which gender is allowed to use which stalls. Years ago when our kids were young and gender identity was an invisible issue, a neighbor involved in law enforcement told us, "Don't ever let your kid go in a public bathroom alone. You have no idea."

This is simple when your opposite sex child is small, but there were several years when MadMax was in the 8-12 age range that I stood outside the men's room watching the seconds tick by on my watch until he came out again. More than once I was on the panicked verge of approaching a friendly-looking man to go in and see what was taking him so long (because it had been more than a minute and a half). (As if any man who is outside the bathroom is less dangerous than the ones that are in. Go figure. I was panicked.) I didn't want to scare him, but I wanted him to be aware. I can remember telling him, if anything seems strange, just come right back out. I confess I let him pee in the bushes a few times rather than go alone into a public bathroom in a deserted place.

In other words: This is not a new problem, and it is not a problem that has anything more to do with the trans community than it does with the cis community. Restricting people to the bathroom that matches the genitals they were born with is not going to solve this problem. Let's not confuse the issues here.

So, that's my .02, and that's probably all it's worth. You watch your kid walk into the public restroom, you watch your kid drive away. We can wrap them in bubble wrap and keep them at home, or we can live in the real world and manage its dangers as best we can. I hope we can keep from adding imaginary dangers to the real ones.

7ToF: Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?

1. This was a stressful week (see below), but I managed to hang tough. Until this morning when I heard that Prince died. I was headed out the door to run errands, so I plugged in my phone and started up the Prince songs on my workout playlist (Let's Go Crazy, Raspberry Beret, Little Red Corvette) as I backed out of the garage. For some reason at that moment all the stress hit at once. I stopped the car and sat there and sobbed for about a minute. Ai-yi-yi, what a week.

2. Lots of stuff happened this week. MadMax is still recovering from surgery, and still hasn't been back to school. My mom fell and hit her head and ended up in the hospital for a couple of nights. My niece who courageously hung in there through a long stretch of sobriety is back in rehab. And that's just a partial list. And on the inside, all my own little insecurities chose this week to swarm me. It got a bit ugly. There are times when I want to crawl in a hole and pull it in after me, and sometimes that's exactly what I do. But I couldn't this week. I'm worn out.

3. One thing that has been helping is a new app I found called Relax Melodies by Ipnos Soft. Even in the free version, there are more than a dozen different types of sounds (rain, birds, ocean, thunder, even vacuum and urban) that you can mix and match to create your own meditation background or relaxation mix or white noise or whatever. You can set the volume level for each sound. There's a timer so you can set it to fade out after a certain amount of time. It is endlessly fascinating to me. My current favorite mix is night (crickets) with slow ocean waves and distant thunder. I told you last week about some new insights I read about meditation, so this app has been a great accompaniment to my renewed interest. Highly recommended.

4. At least we do have some good news. (Mom brag ahead.) MadMax got the big scholarship he applied for months ago. We are proud, proud, proud. He's a great student and a great kid, so I might have driven down there and collared somebody if they had turned him down.

5. Like most middle class Americans, I have way more clothes than I need. But on the other hand, I've been losing weight and I actually do "need" some new clothes. So I've done a little bit of shopping recently. I have the same problem I've had with women's fashions for the past decade. I don't like fussy clothes. I don't want ruffles or flounces or bell sleeves or ties or things that flap around my legs. I like clothes that are feminine because I'm wearing them (because, you know, I'm female), not because they have dropped shoulders and embroidered pockets and rhinestones. le sigh. Eventually simple clothes will come back into style, right?

6. You know I've avoided political posts like the proverbial plague. But I did say once in this space that I was a Bernie fan, so I feel that I should say I no longer am. Or rather, I am a fan of Bernie as a voice in our political scene-- I think he has valuable things to say as a counterpoint to all the business-as-usual rhetoric-- but I won't vote for him for president. For one thing because he's too divisive, too polarizing, but for another, I don't think he'd be a good one. At the time when I said I liked him, I didn't think he seriously had a chance. Like many people from both parties, I can see no good outcome for this election. It worries me.

7. At least it has been stunningly summer-like around here. It was nearly 80 today. We sat out on the deck and ate dinner. It won't last--in fact, it's supposed to be 54 and raining on Saturday, but it was nice to have a taste of summer. (you can tell I ran out of things to say.)

That's all for me. Thank God it's the weekend. Hope you have a good one. I'm planning to.

Caretaking and the maternal urge

The topic of caretaking keeps re-surfacing. First there was my friend Andrea who received care from friends and family and hospice during her final weeks of life. Then my 18-year-old wiped out his knee, followed by surgery, followed by days of not being able to do much but lie on his back. Then there's the book I obsessed over mentioned on Friday by a guy who was the caretaker for his wife during her battle with breast cancer.

It's funny in an un-funny, exhausting sort of way that I've been thrown back into being a full-time caregiver right as I'm also preparing to be an empty-nester-- i.e., my days of being a full-time mom are nearly over. We have a 25-year-old, so I know that you're never fully done. But you know what I mean--the days of having young kids are nearly over.

I had forgotten how exhausting it is, to always be vigilant for someone else's well-being. The situation with MadMax is temporary--he is already way better than he was, and in another week we will be more-or-less back to normal (with the addition of physical therapy). But there were several days right after the surgery when I was having to get up once or twice during the night, fetch and carry every little thing, and worry, worry, worry.

Too many pain pills? Not enough? Post-surgery intestinal activity? lack thereof? (sorry, tried to word that as gracefully as I could.) The schoolwork he's missing, the track season he's missing, he's bored, he's in pain, he's getting better, is he getting better?

Ack. How did any of us survive having babies and toddlers? I am not a naturally maternal person, so that was a hard time for me. I didn't do well with the invasion of my space, the continual demands on my attention, the lack of intellectual activity. My spouse and I had a difficult time navigating how to divvy up parenting chores. Even in one week I found all that re-surfacing.

And I've started having the anxiety dreams. I never, ever had one of those "forgot to drop the class, haven't been there all semester, now I have to take the exam" dreams until after our first child was born, and then I started having them all the time. I mentioned this oddity to a friend of mine who started to laugh. "Well that's obvious," she said. "You're afraid of failing at being a mom."

Oh.

Uh, yeah. Last night I had a dream/nightmare that was so vivid it's stuck with me all day. I was headed off to college, at the age I am now but no one (including the dream me) seemed to find that odd. The daughter of some friends handed me her baby to take care of because she just didn't have time to deal with it. In the dream, I kept losing the baby and forgetting about the baby and then I'd try to find it. I woke up feeling horribly guilty, like I had done something absolutely awful, even though it was all a dream. Nightmare.

I think caretaking is not my thing. I do a decent job at it, but it takes a toll. I guess it does with everybody. But you know, sometimes a situation gets dumped in your lap and you just have to man up (woman up) and do it.

I don't know that I really have any big conclusions or wisdom here (obviously), but it's all I have to post about since it's been taking most of my attention since last Tuesday.

p.s. Ken Wilber, author of that book from Friday's post, wrote an essay about being a caretaker/support person for someone with chronic or terminal illness. It's wise, witty, and practical. Definitely worth reading, even if you're not a caretaker--because you never know when you suddenly will be (take me this past week for an example). You can read the essay here, or find it in a free ebook from Shambhala called Radical Compassion.

7ToF: pain, forgiveness, and moving forward

(this got really long, apologies in advance. you've been warned.)

1. The surgery went well. Thank you to all of you who were thinking of MadMax. I did manage to keep it together. Dean was here for the surgery and the first day--and since he's not usually available during the day, I was really grateful for that. But he's been on a business trip since Wednesday, so the last couple of days (and nights) have gone by in a blur of timing meds, changing ice packs, and trying to get some sleep. MadMax is as usual being patient and stoic, but it's pretty painful. I have a hard time going back to sleep if I'm woken up (we've been setting alarms for meds), which has led to not much sleep, but even so I've slept considerably more than he has.

2. Said blur is the reason this post is late. About eleven last night, while I was lying on the other twin bed in MadMax's room keeping him company while watching Megamind, I remembered that it was Thursday and thus time for a blog post, and I just couldn't get up the energy to do it. Also, I was going to title this post Nurse Nancy after the old Golden Book, but fortunately I googled first. Oh, my. The times, they change.

3. I'd better start typing about something else or I will start telling you way more than you want to know about MadMax's recovery. So, let's see. Ah, it is coming back to me what I was going to post about. I'm reading a memoir by Ken Wilber about his wife's journey through cancer treatment, Grace and Grit. I'm not quite done with it yet, but it has given me lots to think about. He is a philosopher with a gazillion books to his name about spirituality, mysticism, religion, theology, philosophy, psychology and who knows what else. One of the things that makes this book so fascinating is the vast reach of topics covered. It feels pretty dated--it was first published 25 years ago, and cancer treatments and public attitudes have changed since then. Also, he is annoyingly sure that everyone wants to know his opinion about everything. And occasionally he goes into way more detail than I want, so I start to skim. But other than those caveats, it is fascinating. Worthwhile read.

4. He alternates his version of what's happening with his wife's journals. (Even though I haven't finished yet, it says right on the cover of the book that she dies at the end, so no spoilers here.) They are wide open to alternative treatments, but there is none of the blatant disregard for science and reality that I was expecting because of that. They go with conventional treatment until the conventional treatments stop working. He is surprisingly honest about some of the things they go through--the near meltdown of their relationship at one point, the prosaic nature of his own major epiphany toward the end. I alternate between being thoroughly annoyed with him and cheering him on.

5. They (the two of them) are at their best when they are dismantling the belief--still so widespread even now--that you create your own reality, and its corollary, that you get cancer (or any sickness) because of something you did or didn't do, or because you chose to be sick. Treya (his wife) has a great essay (which he includes) about how this belief affected her personally. She points out that, regardless of whether or not it is true, when you tell someone who has cancer that they got it because they didn't express their anger toward their mother or whatever, it's not helpful. When you are the recipient of statements like that, it feels like you are being attacked, not supported. Also, because it happens so often, the person with cancer soon starts to realize that the person making these statements is trying to reassure themselves that they're not going to get cancer because they haven't done whatever it is. It's about control, not support. Then Wilber takes on the whole "you create your own reality" mindset and brings it down, beautifully. Since I spent quite a bit of time in my old blog trying (less successfully) to do the same thing -- this post, for example-- I was cheering in my seat.

6. So buried among the mountain of ideas in this book, including quite a bit about how to support someone who is chronically ill or dying, there are two things that have profoundly affected me. One is a discussion fairly early on about forgiveness. I've been involved in several discussions over the years about forgiving the big things--an abusive parent or spouse, a scout leader who raped you, the big things. But I hadn't really spent much time thinking about forgiveness of the little things, the little resentments and hurts that don't really amount to much but that pile up over time. Wilber has a theory about that-- as we develop from the undifferentiated awareness of infancy, the way we learn to define ourselves is because of the little bumps, bruises, and insults we receive as we realize that we are not the same person as our caretaker. Thus, the ego is in effect defined by its hurts. Some of us come to identify so thoroughly with the ego that we hold on tightly to every single little resentment, because without those little hurts, we are nothing. Forgiveness feels threatening, because if I let go of all those little hurts, who am I? I must have them! Forgiveness is the way we let go of our small self, the selfish, narcissistic, it's-all-about-me self, and expand into a larger consciousness. This should be an entire post (and in fact it was the post I was going to write on Monday when it got pre-empted by ACL repair), but I love this. Very helpful insight.

7. And the other thing that had a significant take-home message for me is his discussion of the "pre/trans fallacy." My interpretation of it is possibly not what he intends at all and is definitely a vast over-simplification. But in all the years that I've tried meditation, I've always understood that I was reaching back to some ideal state that I was in before-- I think I might even have defined it as that infant state of undifferentiated awareness. When I meditate, I've been trying to sift through all of the experiences, emotions, intellectual fallacies, cognitive dissonances, whatever and get back to some previous, deeply buried state of peace and bliss. And it never worked. It felt to me like the more I dug, the more tangled up in my own mess I became.

But I get the idea from reading Wilber's discussion of the pre/trans fallacy that an early (pre-personal) state of mind is not the goal. The goal is to move forward into an integrated (trans-personal) consciousness, bringing all that you have learned, all that you have experienced with you. It's not a return to a lower state of consciousness, it's growth into a higher state of consciousness. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure I'm not describing it very well, because I'm making it sound hierarchical. But the basic idea feels important to me. If it's something that interests you, you should definitely read this book, because he explains it better than I do.

So, wow, that was way too much stuff for a Friday, but it's all I've got. If you're still reading, thanks and have a great weekend.

accidents, injuries, and mom panic

Three weeks ago MadMax was up at our local ski resort and he did one more three-sixty on his last run of the day before heading home. He fell. He heard a pop. He couldn't put any weight on his left knee. He almost passed out from the pain when it happened, but he managed to ski down on one leg, and by the time he got home, the pain wasn't too bad.

Several medical consults later, the decision was unanimous: ice and ibuprofen, don't stress it too much, and it will heal up in a few weeks. The option for an MRI was left open, but it didn't seem necessary at the time.

But two weeks later, he was still limping heavily and he kept saying his knee didn't feel stable, in fact it felt less stable instead of more. If you're in the know about this stuff, you already know what's coming. We finally got an MRI last week, and his ACL is torn.

We went in for the follow-up appointment this morning to see if surgery was recommended. It was, and by the way, the surgeon has an opening in his schedule tomorrow (which will be today by the time you read this), and suddenly-- like getting caught in an avalanche that started with just a tiny crack-- we're on an inescapable route that started with a simple fall three weeks ago and will end up with school absences, intense rehab, probably not going on the band trip next week, and the end of his senior track&field season before it even started.

MadMax has been remarkably poised and stoic about the whole thing. He's already switched from being one of the standouts of this year's track team to being a coach and mentor to the younger kids. He missed the last days of the ski season without complaint. He's made a few rueful comments about wishing he hadn't taken that one last run, but really, the trick he did was one he'd done safely a dozen times before. It was just an accident. An accident that is now having huge consequences.

I've been outwardly calm, but inside I'm not nearly as calm as I probably appear. We have not had to deal with many health issues with our kids. I've only been to the emergency room once, and that was just a couple of years ago. We've had a few bouts of flu, the occasional allergy or sinus infection, some sprains and bumps--nothing that even comes close to qualifying as major.

So I am very nearly approaching panic. This is my baby, I want to tell them. You better fucking take good care of him or you will answer to ME. I want to grab the surgeon by the collar, get right up in his face and make sure they know who they're dealing with. Don't you mess with my kid.

Of course I won't. It's a little silly to be so panicky because the guy who is doing the surgery is somebody Dean has known and respected for years, he's successfully done ACL reconstructions a gazillion times, including his own kid's. But I can't help it. I want them to give me an iron-clad guarantee he's going to be all right. YOU PINKY SWEAR YOU'RE GOING TO DO YOUR FREAKING BEST. IF ONE SINGLE THING GOES WRONG, I'M HOLDING YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE.

So, yeah, in the face of my moment of panic, the post I was going to write is seeming pretty unimportant. If you're a praying person, please say a prayer for MadMax and his surgeon today. And also a smaller one for my sanity. :-)

7ToF: the world's gonna wake up and see / Baltimore and me

1. Since I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for fiction these days, I've been reading memoirs. There are so many good ones out there you could read forever and not run out. When I get to the end of my current TBR list, I'll pass along the best ones. If you've got any recommendations, let me know. My favorite so far is Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm, the story of the winter he spent 40 miles from a paved road babysitting a couple million salmon eggs. Or maybe Upstairs at the White House, written by the guy who was the chief usher at the White House from Roosevelt to Nixon.

2. Some of you may remember my stories from back in the 90s when I was involved in several women's circles that were exploring feminist spirituality (this post, for example). It's a phase of my life that I'm not really planning on revisiting, but there was some genuine searching going on, and I loved those women and our group meetings. One of the things I loved most was the smell. You would walk in and there was this spicy scent, maybe a little bit of sandalwood, a little patchouli, a little cinnamon, but I could never find it when I was standing in front of the incense section of our tiny new age store. I looked for it off and on for years.

3. A couple of days before we left on our trip, I was wandering around our local beauty supply store looking for sample sizes of various toiletries for our travels. I've heard about Kenra hairspray for a long time--in my mind it's the original fancy, expensive hairspray, and I've heard many women swear by it-- but I'd never tried it because it's so expensive. But it was on sale, and the trial size was $7, so I thought what the hell, and bought it. I pulled it out of my bag in Mexico and sprayed it on, and OMG, there was that scent. The smell of 90s New Age feminism that I'd been looking for all those years was hairspray. Made my week.

(for the record, it doesn't work as well as the cheaper stuff I get at Target, but it does smell better.)

The rest of these are my Weight Watchers update, move on all ye who are not interested.

4. So, Weight Watchers. Still doing it, still working, although slowly. I can't tell you how happy I am about this. Other than post-pregnancy, I've never successfully lost more than about three pounds in my life. I only joined WW as a last-ditch effort, one final thing to try before I gave up and moved on to size 16. But after the first couple of weeks (which were admittedly awful), it hasn't been bad, and it's working. I've been losing a half a pound to a couple of pounds a week for three months now (with, admittedly, the occasional week where I go up a half pound). I'm more than halfway to my goal.

5. The main thing I've learned is that I eat too much. I live with two athletes, guys who can eat massive amounts of food without gaining weight, because they exercise like crazy-- Dean is a runner/skier/tennis player/hiker/biker, MadMax is a skier/lifter/thrower. I never ate anywhere close to as much as they did, so I didn't think I ate all that much. But once my body adjusted to the new way of eating, I realized that I was eating way less than I had been before and not really feeling hungry.

6. My one big complaint about the program is --and I think this is probably true of most diet programs-- it's really easy to start seeing food as the enemy. That's not built into the program-- you can eat whatever you want on WW, as long as you account for it in your points. But there's certainly a flavor of that in some of the conversations that happen at meetings.

I'm not going there. Food is not the enemy. I don't want to get to the point where I can't enjoy food, where I panic at the idea of gaining a pound or two on vacation, or can't eat a piece of my own birthday cake, or feel bad about having a margarita with my friends. For all of human history, food has been part of human celebrations, part of the joy of socializing with people you love, part of the celebration of being on a bountiful planet with amazing resources. I need to lose some weight, but I don't ever want to get to the point where I can't enjoy good food. I just needed to cut out the crap, eat nutrient dense food, and stop stuffing myself (which I didn't even know I was doing, see #5.)

7. I'm getting up on a soapbox here, but I really think this is important. I think it's why so many of the people who were so vocally enthusiastic about the program back in January are no longer there. If you deny yourself, deny yourself, deny yourself, eventually you're going to binge and/or quit. On the other hand, if I eat healthy most of the time, I seem to do just fine if I have the occasional bowl of ice cream, or a piece of bread out of the bread basket at a good restaurant (my theory on bread-- if it's good, and fresh, I'm eating it. It's the boring, supermarket stuff I can live without).

Word geek extra: Google tells me "eat healthy" is now considered correct, even though "healthy" is an adjective and it's being used as an adverb. I know I'm not the only grammar goddess around here, so I'm feeling a bit defensive. I did have "eat healthily" in the previous paragraph, but changed it because The Google says it's OK. :-)

So, packing up my soapbox.... Sorry to rant at you. Have a great weekend, and celebrate spring with some good food. And a margarita.

you wouldn't know me with this golden glow, soakin' up sun in Mexico

We returned from Mexico on Sunday. We don't usually do major vacations for spring break, but it's our last one with our last kid, so we decided to go big. We went in with two other families and rented a condo in Puerto Peñasco (sometimes called Rocky Point).

We flew Allegiant (a bargain basement airline) to Mesa, AZ, then drove four hours to PP. Allegiant charges for every little thing-- you want a reserved seat? $10. you want a carry-on? $25. you want a coke? $2. But even after we paid all the fees, our airfare was still less than half of what we would have paid on a traditional airline. In spite of a few things we'd heard, they were actually pretty pleasant to deal with. I'm a fan.

Puerto Peñasco is still fairly undeveloped. There is a ring of hotels and condos along the beach, a small "downtown" area, and practically nothing else. It wasn't fancy. There are a few decent restaurants, and a couple of shopping areas with typical Mexican souvenir stuff. There are jet skis and ATVs you can rent (some in our group did, we didn't). The weekend was a bit noisy, but it was blissfully quiet on the weekdays. The water is that gorgeous turquoise color that you see in postcards. For our purposes--getting out of cool, overcast Montana without paying a fortune-- it was perfect and we had a great time.

You can, and we did, feel some discomfort at the contrast between the beautiful resorts and the poverty surrounding, but two things helped with that. First of all, tourists from the U.S. were far outnumbered by vacationing Mexicans. And secondly, their economy is decidedly improved by the tourist industry. There are jobs. I know you could argue about this. We decided to enjoy our vacation.

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I've had plenty of time over the weeks since I last posted to think about blogging. I've had some pretty demoralizing things happen in the past few months, and I'm afraid I let "not a famous blogger yet" contribute to my feelings of failure. One or two fails you can chalk up to experience, but several spread out over a year and a half start to feel indicative of your worth as a person.

But at least as far as the blog is concerned, I had to remind myself that I don't really want to be a famous blogger. Every time my number of pageviews starts to tick upward, I panic and quit posting. So here's that.

I also had time to realize that I was occasionally trying to do something with this blog that I'm not good at. Instead of just writing about my own experience, at least in my head I was trying to speak for all women at my stage of life. Which is ridiculous. I don't think I even realized I was doing it until I had an a-ha moment while reading another blog.

I can't write for anybody else, I can only write for myself. So it's entirely possible that this blog will become tediously boring from here on out--I'm not exactly doing anything thrilling these days-- but I suspect it has already been that, at least sometimes.

So, with that said, on we go. I did not come to the conclusion that I need to quit, which is what I was thinking back when I said I was taking a break. For the time being, I'm planning on sticking with my original schedule--posts on Tuesday and Friday, with the occasional TBT (throwback Thursday) re-post of stuff from my old blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.