you have to start small, like oak trees.

I love a good road trip, always have. One of the main reasons I love them is because you have time to think. We've been so busy for the past few months that I got behind on my thinking. So when the opportunity came to drive to Seattle last week to retrieve PellMel, I jumped at the chance. Really, she could have driven herself, but I wanted to do it. Two of my dearest friends live in Seattle, for one thing, and there's all that time in the car.

It was a lot of fun. PellMel and I had a great time bopping around downtown Seattle, we had some great food, we had lots of fun with our friends Laurel and Kami. But also, thankfully, I had lots of time to think.

And you know what I realized? Almost like a voice said it in my head: I am done blogging.

I think I've known it for awhile, but I'm a stubborn person, and I didn't want to be a quitter. This blog has never really taken off, and I didn't want to give up on it.

My previous, more successful blog was fairly anonymous, but this one is not. And one of the things that happens when you tell people you have a blog is that you start getting feedback. Most people are completely uninterested--in fact, they look slightly panicked when you tell them you have a blog, because you might expect them to actually read the thing. And then there are the few, my beloved readers--you--who are supportive, and make it all worthwhile.

But there is also a third group, whose voices sometimes sound loudest in my head, who react with criticism or disdain, or who are so stunned and surprised that it's a little insulting, or who can't understand why I think anyone would want to read something I'd written. Or the woman who said with great warmth and kindness, "I remember when I used to have time to do things like that." She didn't pat me on the head, so there's that.

And those responses made me stubborn. Even though I've wanted to quit several times over the past few months, I didn't want to prove the negative people right. I didn't want this blog to fail. So I kept going.

Finally, when I had the time to think these past few days, I realized that I can't let the naysayers make my decision for me. If I'm done, I'm done. Maybe after more than a dozen years of blogging (my first post was in December of 2003), it's time to move on.

So *hiccup* this might be my last real post (see postscript below). It's possible this is a temporary decision, but at the moment, I'm pretty sure it will be permanent. I had three or four posts planned for the next couple of weeks, but once the idea of stopping took hold, it seemed kind of pointless to continue. 

I am forever grateful to those of you who have followed along. Hugs and love and happy trails.

p.s. There may be one more post after this one--when I have time to put it together-- with links to the posts from this blog that I think are worth reading, sort of like an index, but it won't have anything new. So if you're subscribed, you can safely unsubscribe without missing anything.

p.p.s. the post title is from the end of The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. It seemed better to end by looking forward.

7ToF: the bird has flown the coop

1. I was a sobbing mess while we were packing up MadMax's stuff. It was ridiculous. Even for a devoted mom, it was excessive. I managed to do it mostly in private and not in front of poor Max, but still. I put the T in INTJ, you know. I hate emotional messiness. Ugh.

2. But you know what? The actual drop-off wasn't that bad-- I mean, in terms of me holding it together. There's so much excitement, and the school he chose did a great job of making 3,000+ freshmen and their families feel welcomed and cared for. Once he gets things figured out he's going to be fine. And I'm positive that he's going to miss his dog more than he misses us.

3. Now that we're back home, I think I'm having an easier time adjusting than Dean is. Dean and MadMax share many of the same interests, so he lost one of his best buds. On the other hand, I'm discovering that having MadMax out of the house means that there's considerably less laundry, and "his" bathroom (the only bathroom on the main floor of our house) stays clean. Not that I cleaned it all that often, mind you, but I don't have to walk in there after an adult has used it and realize that I let an unarmed, unwarned innocent go into an oversized petri dish. I think I'm already through the worst of it. Plus, we text just about every day and he's already called once. We'll be fine.

4. Random observation of the week: Chickens don't like bell peppers. Who knew?

5. I don't think I have any male readers at the moment so let's talk shopping. Is there anything worse than bra shopping? (as I type that, I realize that yes, there is, and it's swimsuit shopping. But bra shopping is still pretty bad.) With all my weight gain and loss and gain and loss over the past few years, my bras have been through the wringer. I've had bra expanders and gotten rid of them and adjusted them up and down. My bras--all of which were at least six years old, and some more like eight--were in tatters. But still I resisted, because UGH.

6. Then I saw a flyer from our local dept store about their annual INTIMATES sale, and practically on impulse I found myself pulling into their parking lot. I'm not gonna lie, it was still awful. There is no amount of intimate engineering, shall we say, that is going to make me look good nekkid, and there's no avoiding looking at yourself in the mirror while you're trying on bras. I tried on at least half a dozen before I found one I liked. But I persevered, and I ended up with three. Finally bra makers must be actually listening to what women want, because once I waded through the ones I didn't like to get to the ones I did, these are the most comfortable bras I've ever worn. If you haven't bought new bras recently, give it a go.

7. I bought the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (by Susan Cain) not long after it came out, just to be supportive since I am a pretty major introvert. But I never got around to reading it because I thought I knew everything I need to know about being an introvert. But then I heard the author speak on a podcast (more about that nother time), and decided I should actually read what she had to say. I am loving it. I don't always agree with her, but overall it has been one helpful insight after another. I'm probably the last introvert to read this book, but if you are and you haven't, you definitely should. Great book, fascinating stuff.

SO now that I've done FIVE "seven things" posts in a row, I will try to do something else next time. But probably not next week since I'm going to Seattle. Woot! Road trip!! If you've heard a terrific audiobook recently, let me know!

7ToF: Summer reading report 2016, plus one

1. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Serra Manning. This British chick lit novel is just about the perfect beach read. Neve has spent the three years since the love of her life left for a job in the US losing weight, exercising, and getting her life in order. But she hasn't figured out how to be in a relationship yet, so she figures maybe she better practice before her prince Charming returns. The practicing ends up being better than what she thought was the real thing, no surprise there. I loved, loved, loved this book for 99% of it. It's funny and well-written and Neve is great. But I hated the ending more than I can say. Neve has lost well over a hundred pounds, and she's down to a size 14. She's happy and healthy and even her worst enemy tells her she looks great. So you think part of her epiphany at the end is going to be that she's awesome just the way she is. But nope, in a teary tantrum on the last few pages, she insists that by God she is going to lose that last bit of weight and get down to some mythical size that she doesn't need. I was so disappointed it almost ruined the book for me, but since you've been warned, you can just enjoy the first 99% and ignore the ending. Great read. Even with the disappointing ending, this is still a don't-miss summer read.

2. Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming, third in the Clare Fergusson-Russ VanAlstyne series. The first book in this series (In the Bleak Midwinter) was a bit flawed, but intriguing enough that I kept picking up later books in the series when I would see them on sale or in used book stores. Then I finally got around to reading the second one, and it was remarkably disappointing. Clare, a former army helicopter pilot turned Episcopal priest, breaks a confidence in a spectacularly public way, and also she was turning into one of those annoying characters who is always right. If I hadn't already bought the other books, I probably would never have read another. I finally picked up the third one this summer and was suitably surprised. A man walks out of his house and doesn't return. Figuring out the details turns up a mystery that's gone unsolved for decades. It's a bit tricky keeping track of the dates-- the story is told in flashbacks-- but interesting mystery and Clare turns out to be not quite so irritatingly perfect in this one.

3. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty. This book has over 17,000 ratings on Amazon, and I kept hearing about it. But even though I bought it a couple of years ago when the Kindle version was on sale, I never managed to get around to reading it until a couple of weeks ago. It's a curious book. Her writing style made me nuts-- frenetic, is the only way I can think to describe it, like a voluble, nervous, chatty acquaintance who can't stop talking ninety-to-nothing when you run into her at a coffee shop. There are three storylines: uptight but happily married Cecilia, who discovers that her husband has a secret (hence, you know, the title of the book); Tess, whose husband falls in love with her cousin and best friend; and Rachel, whose daughter was murdered years ago and who is haunted by the unsolved mystery of her death. However much I disliked her writing style, Moriarty is a great storyteller, and handles the complicated inter-weaving of the three stories with ease. Difficult to put down. I'm not sure I'd say I like it, but there are a number of intriguing moral dilemmas raised. I kept thinking about it for days after I put it down. Worth reading. Would be a great book club book with lots to discuss.

4. Remember I told you awhile ago that I'm usually reading a literary fiction, a genre fiction, and a non-fiction at any one time? My non-fiction book for this summer was The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It took me several months to finish it, because the science was fairly dense, but I felt like I should understand it, so I would wade through the details. I finally started skimming over the complicated science stuff and enjoyed it much more after that. I do get the basic idea, and Dean explained a couple of other things I was mystified by, so even though I don't get every nuance of all the iterations of things they tried before they found something that worked, I think I got the message. What intrigued me was all the non-science stuff-- the stories of the interactions of the scientists and the rivalries and the history of how it all unfolded with the looming war in Europe. Well worth reading, and probably most of you would do better with the science parts than I did.

5. Let It Breathe by Tawna Fenske. Something else I told you awhile back-- I couldn't remember the last time I'd read a really good romance novel. Fenske's latest is. Really good, I mean. Reese and Clay were part of a trio of best friends in college, until Reese married (and then divorced) the third guy, and Clay went off to sober up. They've got some past issues to work through, and some current complications, but overall this was just the right mix of fun, funny, and serious. Great beach or plane read. The only false note for me was that I found her supposedly-perfect parents to be nauseating and irritating rather than enviable. But that's only a minor part of the story, this one is definitely worth reading.

6. Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal. Something about the cover of this one caught my eye at the library and I grabbed it. But I almost put it down after the first three pages. Oh, no, I thought. I'm not reading another foodie novel where ever-more perfect taste is exhibited in inflated language about food and every chapter has a recipe. But by the end of the first chapter, something had hooked me and I kept going. Kitchens is really a series of short stories, all revolving around Eva Thorvald, a pure soul and gifted chef. Only one story has Eva as the main character, she is just another character of varying importance in the others. There is a touch of magical realism (an unborn child communicates with his mother via text messages, for example), a lot of beautifully worded sentences, occasional sharp bursts of humor, and an interesting mix of criticism-of/homage-to foodie culture. Eva has become a little too perfect by the end, and one of the stories (the one about Pat) didn't really find its heart until two thirds of the way through, but other than that, there's not a false note anywhere. Loved it. Highly recommended.

7. So I could make this a perfect seven, but even though I read another half dozen books this summer, none of them seem worth reporting here. So I will tell you we went to see the new Star Trek movie last night. We are long time Star Trek fans-- we bonded over watching ST reruns in the dorm TV room back in the 80s-- and we have loved the new movies with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Carl Urban as Kirk, Spock, and Bones. This one was fun and had some great moments--and it more than accomplished its purpose of distracting us from a hot, grumpy August night. At one point we were laughing so hard that we were probably irritating the heck out of our neighbors. But the thing is, I'm not sure we were meant to be laughing. This one isn't nearly up to the standards of the first two. If you're a Trek fan, you're long used to the uneven quality of the different iterations, so no problem there. I wouldn't have missed it for the world, and we'll probably get it when it comes out on DVD and watch it again, but I have to admit I was a bit disappointed-- a disappointment that was very nearly redeemed by several classic ST moments.

That's it. Have a great weekend. The great college drop-off is next week and I have a few other things going on, so I probably won't post again until after Labor Day, but you never know.

7ToF: Two in a row, but there's lots to catch up on

1. I really did mean to post this earlier in the week, but I'm in my biannual Olympics coma and only the bare basics are getting done around here. and oh my word: they cry, I cry. Ally at the end of her floor routine, Simone when she finally got her winning score, Michael Phelps during the national anthem for his TWENTY-SIXTH medal, I feel like I've spent the last several days wiping away tears.

2. You know how the women gymnasts used to be these cute, pony-tailed little things bopping around the events? I loved to watch them, but they were mainly just cute. Not any more. Did you see them? They were incredible! Those are some formidable athletes. They do things that make my jaw drop. Wow. Even the jaded boys at my house have been impressed.

3. The other reason I didn't get this post done earlier is that I tweaked my neck, and that means migraines. I was doing so much better-- I filled my monthly Maxalt prescription in January, and then didn't fill it again until right before we left on our trip in June-- which (was) astonishingly, amazingly wonderful. Now I've had six migraines in the last ten days. Thank God for excellent pharmaceuticals. (It's better already.)

4. Remember I told you how miraculous it was that we had seven free-range chickens and a fox living practically next door? Yeah. Well, we now have six chickens and the miracle is over. If it hadn't been for our brave neighbor who came over and intervened, we'd be down a lot more than one chicken. The remaining ladies are already back to free-ranging. They seemed content to be shut in the coop for a day or two, but after that, they quite emphatically wanted to roam free again. It's been about a month and we're still holding at six chickens. We'll see.

5. Favorite website of the week: reuseit.com.  If you haven't been to Reuseit yet, it has everything you can think of that is reusable-- shopping bags, lunch boxes, dust cloths, paper towel replacements, water bottles, bento boxes, everything. I've mainly used it for their tan canvas shopping bags, which hold about as much as four of those plastic grocery store bags and last forever. I've had my original set for years now and I just keep buying more. Also love Baggu bags, which roll up small enough to keep in my purse, and come in great designs.

6. The Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Debate: are you a chocolate chocolate chip cookie lover? or a cookie chocolate chip cookie lover? (or neither, I suppose, but if that's the case you can go on to the next Thing.) Some people think that the cookie part of a chocolate chip cookie is just there to convey as much chocolate as possible to your mouth. I personally like lots of cookie and not so much chocolate. I think I'm in the minority, because most current recipes are designed around getting more chips and bigger chips into your cookie, but I quickly get to chocolate overload in a cookie. I've started making mine with mini- chips so they don't overwhelm the dough, but that's not quite right either. I suppose I'll have to take one for the team and continue to experiment until I get the perfect recipe. And then I will let you know.

See, these are the things I can lose sleep over. And you wondered why I haven't been posting.

7. We had VBS at our church this week, so I (don't laugh) signed up to help with crafts. Which is like those Lindsey Vonn commercials where a winter Olympian is trying to do the summer sports. I am not crafty. But no one else had volunteered, and I can organize and buy things at Michael's, so I figured it would work out. And it did. Oh my Lord, we had the greatest group of kids. They took our half-assed craft ideas and ran with them. Yesterday we had a competition to see which group of kids could create the longest paper chain-- you know, those loops of paper connected together, like pre-schoolers make at Christmas (it was loosely connected to that day's story). I thought they were going to be bored to death, but they were ALL IN. One of the leaders was counting down the time at the end and you would have thought they were racing to build the ark before the rain started. It was so much fun. The winning chain was about 40 feet long.

7a. Excellent lyric from new Miranda Lambert song: If you need me, I'll be where my reputation don't precede me.... Hmmmm, maybe you have to hear the song. That didn't translate so well.

7b. And I haven't even told you about going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter yet!! The downside of not posting all summer is that there's too much to tell you. Bottom line: if you love Harry Potter, you really should go sometime, it was fabulous and butter beer (non-alcoholic) is just as good as you hoped it would be. This could be an entire post, but I'm not sure if anyone's interested. Let me know. One thing: we bought the "front of the line pass" so we could cut to the front of the line, which was obscenely expensive and --I'm telling you-- not worth the money. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) If you get your ticket online, you can enter the park an hour early, and since HP is only a small part of the park, you can be done and out of there before it gets crowded. Before 11 a.m., there were no lines longer than about 15 minutes. I loved it, but I did not love the crowds in the afternoon. Go early and leave early.

And there's more. But this is already far too long and I suspect you have other things to do than sit and read my drivel. Eventually I will get caught up (summer reading report next week) and then I do have some interesting things to discuss. That part might not start until after we get MadMax off and we are officially empty nesters. Have a great weekend.

7ToF: Except it's Tuesday.

1. One of the reasons I went on a blogging break this summer is because I knew it would be crazy. It turned out to be even more crazy than I was expecting. After all the craziness around MadMax's graduation, I ended up being out of town for four of the next five weeks. That's the most I've been away from home ever. Some of it, most of it, was really fun, but it was such a relief to be back home again.

2. The extra week away was to stay with my mom while she had unexpected surgery. She had a mammogram in the spring which showed a suspicious lump, which ended up being early stages of cancer. Her outlook is good, but all of us who love her would be grateful if you sent a get-healthy blessing her way.

3. I'm typing this on my new laptop. Six years later, I finally decided it was time to move on, and I love love love this new one. It has a solid state drive (SSD) instead of a traditional hard drive, and it is fast and quiet.

4. Preparations to get MadMax off to college continue. I'm intermittently misty-eyed over some sweet memento and thrilled about the new stage of life we're moving into (empty nesters! wow!). I am continuing said preparations entirely without MadMax's help. What color bedspread do you want, I ask him. He looks at me blankly. Can't I just take my old one? So far he seems to consider his college adventure to be about fishing and hunting on the weekends, and maybe he'll be able to sneak out occasionally during the week. We have to remind him that he will need to study.

5. He broke up with his girlfriend of four years this week, which was heartbreaking for both of them. It's so hard to see your kids hurting, which includes her because she's been part of our family since they were in eighth grade. But they've been moving in different directions the past year or two and it will be good for both of them to try dating some other people. But, ouch. Ouch.

6. Reader Laurel and her wife Kami are biking from Mexico to Canada this summer. They started at the Mexico border back in June, and they're just about to finish up, probably later this week. Apologies for the late notice, but if you want to read about their trip, Laurel has been blogging and posting spectacular pictures here.

7. I'm officially declaring the end of my midlife crisis. I see now why there are so few people blogging about this stage of life, because who wants to read it? I had my few months of wallowing in my disappointment over all the things I'll never do, but I've had several sharp wake-up moments in the past few weeks that have done their work. I have two healthy kids and a spouse who not only still loves me 32 years later but puts up with all my crap. I live in a spectacularly beautiful place, and I am one lucky woman. Moving on. Thanks for putting up with me.

One thing I realized this summer is that I'm not a big fan of blogging to a schedule. So I'm going to stop doing it. I end up posting things I don't care about because the post I do care about isn't ready yet, and then I get distracted and never finish the first one, etc. It always astonishes me that anybody reads my drivel at all, so you're all a miracle to me.

Happy August. Hope you're having a great summer.

7ToF: in which I restrain myself from using very bad words.

I started this week's Seven-Things-on-Friday days ago because I knew I would be busy getting ready for vacation. Instead of making it quicker to write, though, I ended up spending at least three times as much time on it as I normally would. Then I accidentally freaking DELETED IT. I am saying ALL THE BAD WORDS.

Even after I googled how to recover a deleted blog post and tried a dozen different things, I couldn't get it back. I spent so much time on it that I'm sick of it and I have no desire to re-write it. So here is the abridged version.

1. We are going on vacation for two weeks, leaving on Saturday: two Souths (Carolina and Dakota) for back-to-back family reunions.

2. I'm feeling guilty again about having too much crap after seeing a TV ad this week about how charities don't want your stuff, they want your cash. Since I'm still clearing clutter, what the heck am I going to do with all this stuff?

3. So I'm having a hard time justifying buying a new comforter, even though our current one is ten years old and I'm sick of it, because I don't know what to do with the old one.

4. But I'm overcoming that guilt and buying one anyway because I'm not all that virtuous and I wants one.

5. Continuing my rampant consumer theme, I went on a (noble) quest to find good beer mugs. ha. I'm buying microbrews in cans now (we can't recycle glass locally), but I don't want to drink it from a can. So here is a picture of our new beer mugs, which I got at TJMaxx. Dishwasher safe, sturdy, and with a handle.

Check me out, stylin' a photo. Don't laugh.

6. I have a household hint. I may be a rotten housekeeper, but I'm good at finding things that work like a charm and save me a lot of work. To remove coffee and tea stains from ceramic mugs, put a tablespoon or so of baking soda in a mug, add a bit of water to make a paste, scrub around with your fingers. It's like magic. I'm so smugly pleased with myself I almost posted a before and after picture.

7. Originally I had planned to re-post some stuff from my old blog while we're gone, but at the moment, I'm so done with the whole blogging schtick that I'm taking a break instead. I guess accidentally deleting all that work struck a nerve. I'll probably be back at the end of the summer, but who knows.

And there you go. I'll be over being pissed (probably) by the time you read this. The good news is that it's WAY shorter than the original. Have a great weekend and a great summer.

We partied like it's 2016

Well, we survived and MadMax is now officially a high school graduate. Enormous graduation party, beloved house guests and RV guests, graduation ceremony, three and a half hour shift at the all-night senior party (that ended with me home and unable to sleep at 3 a.m.), and finally sending PellMel and house/RV guests off this morning.

Now I've proceeded to the collapsed-on-the-couch-like-a-truck-ran-over-me part of the weekend (I'm writing this on Sunday). Emotional rollercoaster times twelve. Expect no coherent thoughts in this post.

When MadMax was two, we moved across town to a neighborhood full of kids. They rode the school bus together, hunted for Easter eggs, decorated their bikes for fourth of July parades, fought and made up, grew apart and back together and apart again.

We moved out of the neighborhood (but still close by) a couple of years ago, and another family moved across town, but we're still friends. So when a bunch of them were all graduating the same weekend, we decided to band together and throw one big graduation party Friday night.

You probably know me well enough to know that parties are not my thing. But sometimes you have to do it, and when you're splitting up the work (and the expenses) between six different families, really it's not so bad.

We had it here since we have access to the biggest stretch of flat area for a crowd. My cousin was keeping a head count, and at one point we had 85 people here. Since there was quite a bit of coming and going, probably at least 100 people stopped by.

The amazing thing is, it was fun. The weather was spectacular, the food was great, there were kids from grade school through college tearing all over the yard, chasing frisbees and soccer balls and each other. After all the worrying I'd done, it was the most amazing thing.

Then there was their graduation ceremony, which was a bit too long-- have you ever been to one that wasn't? -- but otherwise joyously celebratory. I told you that MadMax was co-valedictorian, which is true, but because of the way they calculate GPA at their school, there were about a dozen valedictorians, so he didn't have to give a speech (much to his relief, he sadly inherited his mother's aversion to public speaking).

In the afternoon we went to another dear friend's party, then took my cousin and her husband up to Glacier NP for ice cream and a stroll along Lake MacDonald. Then I did my shift at the all-night community-wide senior party and came home and tried to get some sleep. Then this morning, PellMel drove off to get back to her studies, and my cousin and her spouse drove off to California, and I collapsed on the couch.

Where I may stay for days.

The Party. This was early on before it got crowded.

a bunch of amazing seniors

MadMax and PellMel

in the midst of pomp and circumstance

I have the most nutty week happening. Graduation is Friday and you can imagine. We are so proud of co-valedictorian MadMax, and also so happy that we will be celebrating with friends and family. All the hugs, and I will be back next week-- maybe I will even throw privacy to the winds and post a graduation picture or two.

I'm writing this on Memorial Day, so I'm also taking a moment to remember all those who serve our country, putting their own safety at risk to ensure ours. Thank you.

7ToF: the small screen, the fox, and the always looming pot luck disaster

1. The TV is frequently on at our house, but I would still say we are not big TV watchers. (And fwiw, when no one's watching it, it's off. There are few things that irritate me more than having the TV on in the background when no one is watching it.) About half the time, we watch sports, or one of MadMax's outdoors shows. (You would not believe the obscure outdoors skills that have entire series devoted to them.) Also, there are two shows set to record on the DVR (Modern Family and Big Bang Theory). But we're not really addicted to those-- if we miss them, or don't watch for several weeks, I don't even think about them. Also, there were brief periods early on when we were addicted to Downton Abbey and Arrested Development, but I lost interest after a season or two. And that's about it.

2. I'm not opposed to TV by any means. We have in the distant past been absolutely devoted to various shows-- a couple of iterations of Star Trek, Moonlighting, Northern Exposure, Lois and Clark, and there was some obscure detective show that came to its end when one of the stars shot himself with a prop gun and died-- I can't even remember the name of it. (see I told you, a really long time ago. the most recent one of those was mid-90s.)

3. But for some reason we haven't been immersed in a TV show in a long time. There are so many shows I've heard are good that I've never ever seen: Scandal, The Good Wife, Parenthood,The Gilmore Girls, Friday Night Lights, West Wing, Alien, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.... (After finding this list, I could go on and on.) I actually like the idea of binge watching seven seasons of a show in a weekend, but on the rare occasion when there is a weekend we could do it, for some reason we never do.

4. So it occurred to me recently, the last time I was really addicted to a show was for the most part before we had kids. So.... maybe this is something that will return when we are empty nesters. Maybe we will spend every weekend binge watching TV shows until we are all caught up. It could happen. Let me know if you have any likely candidates.

Now that we've exhausted that topic.... moving on.....

5. We have seven chickens, and we have a fox. Seriously. Dean saw him/her waltzing across the driveway as he was leaving for work recently, and MadMax and I watched her/him make her way across our neighbor's yard last week. Our neighbors who live in full view of the field-next-door can see the fox family in their den. How can this be? Why aren't our chickens disappearing to feed little foxlets? We do shut our ladies in at night, but they wander around all day. My favorite theory: I think Ms. Fox tried one time (we do have one chicken that mysteriously developed a permanent limp), and our little flock ganged up on her and fought her off. You go, girls.

6. Just so you know I did it, here is the First Folio. I have to confess it's a little underwhelming in person. You enter a darkened room, with several spotlighted poster boards of information about Shakespeare and the folio, and in the dark at the far end of the room is a glass case with a 400-year-old book in it. It can't be exposed to light. It's cool to see it, but to be entirely honest, the workshops I attended on teaching Shakespeare were much more interesting.

7. I took an enormous pan of chili mac to the band banquet/potluck this week. Every time I carry a big dish of food into a potluck, I go right back to a bad moment from college. Sophomore year, my friend Angela (named changed to protect the innocent) was taking an upper level Spanish class. Her final project for the class was to cook an authentic meal from (some-spanish-speaking-region I can no longer remember). She cooked all day. There were several dishes, so she asked me to help her carry them from the kitchen to the classroom (I wasn't in the class, she just needed help transporting the food). I grabbed the main dish, I think it was in a crock pot, and off we went. About halfway there, I dropped the entire thing. Yes, I did. Her final project, which was to be graded, and which could absolutely not be reproduced with a magic wand, dumped right there on the linoleum. *buries face in hands*

Ever resourceful, Angela saw that the food was mounded up on the floor, so she scooped up the part that wasn't touching the floor, dumped it back in the pot, and off we went. I was so utterly ashamed and embarrassed that I have no memory of what happened next. Did I go back and clean up the mess? Did anyone get food poisoning? Did she pass the class? I have no memory, except I remember it ever single freaking time I carry a heavy dish of food.

Surprisingly, she still speaks to me, and in fact, it's possible she will tell her side of the story in the comments. :-)

There you go. Have a great holiday weekend, and for God's sake, if you're going to a potluck, carry the food carefully.

P.S. As several of you who read here will remember, our wedding was Memorial Day weekend thirty-two years ago. Happy anniversary to us!

To like or not to like, that is the question

I recently read another rant by a literary person about readers like me who judge books based on whether or not the characters are likable. How boring it would be, she prosed, if the only books you read were filled with people you liked. How bland the literary landscape would be if we only had books about likable people.

She has a point, you know. It would be boring if everyone in a book was tediously nice. But also I've read books I could barely get through--sometimes didn't get through-- because they were filled with a such a seedy, slimy, selfish bunch of people that there was no one I could bring myself to care about. In real life, maybe not everyone is likable, but neither is everyone awful.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never been in a situation where there weren't at least one or two people I liked or admired or at least respected. When you read one of those dismal, depressing literary books, it's as if they take place in some anti-universe where only bad things happen and only awful people are real. Everything good or hopeful is fake, shallow, and/or laughably stupid.

I don't live in that world. I don't get this everything is awful mentality. When I read a book like that, it seems cold, chilled, unfeeling. There's no warmth. Maybe I need some warmth to keep reading.

Anyway, back to the likable characters problem. Since I do sometimes say I couldn't get through a book because I didn't like any of the characters, her arguments made me think. Maybe I'm not accurately describing the reason I couldn't get through a book. Is it that no one is likable? Maybe it's that no one is lovable-- it's possible to love someone, to find someone adorable, who isn't very likable.

Nah, that's not it. Maybe it's that when I read a story full of people who are abusive, or spineless, or victims of one piece of bad luck after another, it doesn't seem real. It seems false to me in the same way it would feel false if everything was great. Sometimes I enjoy chick lit because the characters seem like people I know. Even though chick lit gets a bad rap in the literary world, to me it sometimes feels more realistic than the more highbrow fare.

Or maybe I can't bring myself to keep going in a book where I don't care what happens to any of the people. I don't really have a definite answer here, I'm just thinking. Of course I think the problem here lies with the literary snobs, who seem to disdain anything fun to read. They would probably argue that the problem lies with readers like me, who prefer to be (what they would call) "mindlessly entertained" rather than to have my mind stretched by a grittier version of reality. (Thankfully there's a vast ocean of the written word that hits somewhere in between.) What do you think?

And p.s. for the record, I do think this dichotomy between highbrow and lowbrow fiction is getting less pronounced. I've read a couple of books in the past year, and even a handful of short stories--which are often the worst culprits of the plotless, despairing school of writing-- that offered warmth without resorting to happy ever afters or neatly resolved endings. Beautiful Ruins comes to mind (Jess Walter), and some of Sherman Alexie's stuff, some stories we read for my short story class by Maile Meloy and Pete Fromm. They're out there.

7ToF: I found the simple life, ain't so simple

1. At the food bank this week, I was bagging some donated restaurant food across the table from another volunteer, an amiable homeschool kid who is 14-ish. Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil" came on the radio, and since I'm not exactly overflowing with topics of conversation with 14-year-old boys, I told him the story of how Michael Anthony, the bass player for Van Halen, used to play the opening notes of the song with his tongue. The kid was suitably impressed, and added, "I've heard this song about a billion times. My grandparents are so into this stuff."

*pause*

his grandparents? OH, THE PAIN. THE PAIN.

2. Remember my gush from last week about events celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Well, it turns out I have to hope they release the Royal Shakespeare version of Much Ado on DVD, because I can't go. There's yet another end-of-the-year event at MadMax's school, and I'm not missing any of them. I may be a Shakespeare fangirl, but I'm not missing a single bit of the end of my youngest kid's senior year. #emptynestlooms (also #emptynestbeckons, but I can feel both, you know)

3. But one thing I can do, probably as you read this, is drive down to Missoula to see the First Folio that is traveling the country this year, on loan from the Folger Library. The First Folio is the reason we have copies of Shakespeare's plays-- back in the day, plays were meant to be performed, not read, and printed copies of them were rare. A few years after his death, a couple of Shakespeare's acting buddies decided someone should pull the bard's works together, hence the First Folio. 750 copies were printed, of which 230-ish survive, and one of them is in Missoula right now. I'm driving down to see it and attend a couple of events.

4. The history of the first folio is surprisingly interesting (well, to me, anyway). I'm reading The Millionaire and the Bard, which is the story of how Henry Folger, of Folger Shakespeare Library fame, became obsessed with the First Folio, and thus amassed the greatest collection of Shakespeare stuff anywhere. Good read.

5. For years I have planted window baskets with masses of trailing wave petunias and bacopa. Some years, they've been spectacularly gorgeous. But I'm not doing them this year. I might not plant any flowers at all. Part of my ongoing midlife crisis, I guess. I just can't quite bring myself to care. Dean is predicting I will change my mind when it gets to be flower weather. (around here you plant them in May and hope there's not a late frost. flower weather doesn't actually start until June.)

6. There's no way to get into our house without going up a bunch of stairs, and since we have several friends and family with mobility issues, this has been a problem. So Dean put in a wheelchair accessible path. It's a pretty amazing piece of work. It might be a bit of a wild ride in a wheelchair, but do-able. Little did we know the first person to make use of it would be MadMax with his post-surgery crutches. Which, I am pleased to announce, he no longer needs.

7. (WW update) Although I am still going to weight watcher meetings (much to my surprise, they are pretty fun and interesting), I seem to be taking a break from weight loss. I've weighed exactly the same for three weeks now, and since the WW scale measures to a tenth of a pound, that's kind of odd. Even though I'm only a little more than halfway to my goal, still I've lost fifteen pounds, which is more than I thought I would ever lose. I never imagined I could actually do this. So part of me is done. I mean, FIFTEEN POUNDS. That is amazing. I'm still figuring out whether this is a midterm slump, or if I'm going to quit. The good news is: now I know how to maintain my weight. To the tenth of a pound.

I've talked to so many friends in crisis this week. I hope we can all find a bit of calm in the midst of the crazy this weekend.

in with the bad air, out with the good

(This is not the post I was going to write when I sat down, this was just going to be one paragraph at the beginning before I moved on to some other point which I can't even remember at the moment. Which means that I was figuring it out as I'm typed, which means that it's probably not exactly clear. But I don't have time to come up with something else to post about at this point. Forewarned is forearmed.)

Years ago I listened to a series of recorded lectures by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher, about the practice of tonglen. Briefly, tonglen is the meditation practice of returning good for evil. You breathe in negativity and breathe out goodness. It sounds simple, but in fact, it can be quite difficult to do.

Pema Chodron says that tonglen is an intermediate practice, an idea that immediately gets my back up because I'm not a fan of hierarchical spirituality -- i.e., higher levels of spiritual insight that are only available to people who are in the know or have been around for awhile. I'm not a fan for two reasons: because first of all, it tends toward spiritual snobbery (poor you, you're not as spiritual as me because you haven't reached the level of teaching I have), and secondly, because it doesn't seem to me to be the way spiritual teachings work. Most spiritual lessons are utterly simple, and you just keep learning them over and over again in different ways and different situations. "Love is patient" or "give thanks in all circumstances" are pretty simple, but I keep having to learn them in new ways, sometimes deeper, sometimes harder, sometimes just the same lesson over again.

But in the case of tonglen, Pema Chodron has a point when she says it is an intermediate practice. It's a difficult practice because it's damn hard to actively love someone who means you harm, or who slights and ignores you, or who undermines your confidence, or does any of a thousand other things that hurt or betray. If mis-practiced, it can leave you open to abuse.

Also, it's easy to learn this lesson in a way that's false-- in some pollyanna way, making myself a martyr to the idea, when really I'm just slapping a Nice label on my fear of standing up for myself. I think you can only legitimately say that you love your enemy when you stand strong in yourself, take the negativity on the chin, don't duck it or complain about it or whine about it, and yet at the same time find compassion and kindness for the person who means you harm.

There is some similarity in Jesus' teaching in the sermon on the mount. Jesus says if someone slaps you on the cheek, turn the other cheek and let them slap you again. If someone asks you to carry his gear for a mile, offer to carry it two. In my false understanding of this teaching, I have at times simply let myself become a doormat--OK, I'll do whatever you want, because it's easier to go along with it than it is to fight it. I'll just suck it up and take it without complaining--on the outside. But inside I'm whining about being a victim, it's so unfair, you shouldn't act like that, it's not fair.

I don't want to say that Buddhism and Christianity are the same, because they're not. It demeans both religions to try and reduce them down to a set of universal principles. But this is a great example of the way that I've been able to use my understanding of both of them to illuminate each other.

Learning the similar-but-different Buddhist teaching shows me a different dimension that may be closer to what Jesus actually intended. Because Jesus doesn't say to just suck it up and don't complain. He says to take it as an opportunity to show a different way of responding. You're acting out of a desire to put me in my place, but I'm showing you how to be gracious and compassionate instead. I see how you are trapped by the way you are treating me. You are suffering, too.

The thing is, it's not easy to do, especially in the moment when you're insulted and pissed and all you want to do is strike back. In fact, I've been really bad at it this week. I've been in a couple of situations where I interpreted something as an insult, and I fumed and felt sorry for myself and whined. This shit ain't easy.

Buddhism offers another principle I find helpful, though. In the Buddhist teaching, you start out on things that are easier and you practice. You start with some negative thing that is unconnected to you, say an unkindness or unfairness that you know about through hearsay, something you don't feel particularly strongly about. You practice breathing in the negative emotions, and breathing out the positive. Then you gradually shift to things that are more personal, that really do get an instantaneous angry response out of you, and let yourself sit with that response.

Breathe it in, let it transform, breathe it out. You're not taking in the bad thing and sending nothing back out, you're actively transforming the bad energy into good energy. It's a skill.

One that I'm not good at. But I'm practicing. And if I can learn the skill, like all such learning, it's empowering. Love makes us powerful, not doormats.

7ToF: once more into the breach

1. I knew next to nothing about raising chickens when we decided to get six a few years ago--probably the reason none of the original six are still around. Now we have seven. They are friendly little things, and keep us supplied with eggs. But they are not clean creatures. I wouldn't exactly call our black lab Sadie a clean dog, but she would never poop where she sleeps--something that chickens do all night long. They also, uh, defecate as they're walking around, so there is frequently poop in their food and in their water. As far as I can tell, they never even notice. It's really irritating, because presumably they shouldn't drink water with poop in it, so I have to clean it up. There you go, your Chicken Insight of the Day. You're welcome.

2. All of us anglophiles went flutter-y this week when a video popped up on social media of Prince Charles (you know, the heir to the British throne) on stage with a bunch of Shakespearean actors who were arguing adorably about how to say Hamlet's famous line, "To be or not to be, that is the question." If you haven't seen it, it's here. Seriously. Ian McKellan, David Tennant, Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Prince Charles.

3. If you live in a place where you can go see Shakespeare any time you want, skip on to the next item. But for the rest of us, forgive me for gushing, but Much Ado About Nothing, filmed live by the Royal Shakespeare Company a few weeks ago for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, is coming to a theater near you. Or at least, near me. On May 23rd. I'm hyperventilating, I'm so worried something will come up and I'll miss it. Try this link for more info. Apparently the skit from #3 was recorded at the same event, because all of those people (besides the Prince of Wales) are in the play, plus more. Be still, my heart.

4. If you're a voracious reader, and I am, there are few things more unsettling than not being able to find something to read. It makes me twitchy. I've tried half a dozen books in the past week that I couldn't get into. Of course I have piles more, so no worries, but this is unusual for me. I usually read for about a half hour before I get up in the morning, and for an hour (or more) before I go to sleep at night. If I'm not reading, I end up just messing around on my phone, which then feels like wasted time. #firstworldproblem

5. MadMax suffers from mild GERD (a fancy way of saying he has heartburn) which means we avoid tomato products around here. Since spaghetti and meatballs is one of my favorite easy meals (NO I do not make meatballs from scratch, are you kidding me? Costco sells them by the enormo-bag), I've had to come up with a non-tomato sauce for them. It's actually not bad, and it's sort of like making a potion--i.e., it's fun. You shake some worcestershire sauce, some kitchen bouquet, a blob of beef bouillon paste, and a smaller blob of chicken bouillon paste into a jar with a tight lid, fill the jar about halfway with water, add about a third of a cup of flour and shake it up until smooth. Then you add that to the meatballs which you are already simmering in beef broth. Makes a kind-of gravy. I'd still rather have traditional tomato sauce, but for MadMax's sake, this works, and he loves it.

6. Did anybody else see the new version of The Jungle Book? I have to confess I was a little disappointed. After seeing the trailer on the big screen a couple of months ago, I somehow thought they were going back to the book--which I've never read, but the idea intrigued me. But it is basically a remake of the 1967 animated film (which came out when I was in grade school and I loved with a great love) without most of the music. It's not badly done, but not what I was expecting.

7. We went to our Last High School Band Concert this week. (It was excellent, by the way. Amazing how much a bunch of kids can learn about their instruments in six years.) As their bring-the-house-down number at the end, they played Stars and Stripes Forever, which I also played at my last high school band concert back in 1979. Traditionally, the piccolo players stand up on the third verse and play their tweedly-dee bit, and since I was one of two piccolo players, that included me. I freaked out and barely played two notes, although fortunately my friend and fellow piccoloist Lynne nailed it. It practically made me sick to my stomach when the poor girl from MadMax's band stood up for her moment, but she did not freak out and did a great job. The next tradition is that the trombones stand up for the last verse, and MadMax's band director went one better by having the entire back row of brass players stand. That part brought tears to my eyes, as it always does. Partly because of the music and the exuberance, partly the whole "last time" bit-- I suspect I'll be crying from now until August 26, when we get home from dropping our poor kid off for freshman orientation. Keep Dean and MadMax in your prayers, they may not survive this.

I just noticed as I was scheduling this that tomorrow is Friday the 13th (which will be today by the time you read this). Hope you have an uneventful day and a great weekend.

oops I did it again

I was driving in for my shift at the food bank yesterday when I realized that I never even thought about my usual Tuesday post. I've written a few recently that were last minute or otherwise haphazard, but I can't remember the last time that I flat-out forgot about my blog. Does this have some deeper meaning, or am still recovering from the stress of the past month? Who knows.

I did have an idea over the weekend of what to write about, but maybe I will save that for next week. At the moment, all I can do is worry about our country. I was listening to a podcast not long ago and one of the speakers, a blogger, said that she has been having a hard time coming up with things to post about because she is determined to stay out of politics, and yet she's so worried about the election it's all she wants to talk about.

I'm naturally apolitical-- I've never been one to follow politics, or enjoy debates, or in any way participate in our political process other than voting (I always vote). But I get what she means. It's hard to see how this is going to end well. I suppose things are at their very worst right now, with both parties divided and angry at others in their own party, let alone the other party. Maybe it will get better once the conventions are over. But at the moment, with huge chunks of each party insisting that they will refuse to participate if this or that happens, it's hard to see how healing will occur.

As a long-time democrat, I was expecting to sit back and watch smugly as our candidate sailed to an easy convention win while the GOP fell apart under the weight of their infighting. I can't regret Bernie's presence in our political process, because clearly he is voicing something that many feel. Having a voice is what democracy is all about.

But I wish he had figured out a way to do it without splitting the party. Pragmatically speaking, I'm skeptical about the viability of Bernie's ideas if he is elected, since almost nothing he proposes is likely to pass a Republican-controlled legislature. It sounds like The Adventures of Polarized Stagnant Congress Part II, if you ask me (and of course you didn't).

The thing that worries me most is the people on either extreme who are sure that everything will be fine if only their candidate wins. And the only way things will be fine is if their candidate wins. Those of us who are moderates--either left or right-- are left staring in disbelief, and worrying. For the first time ever, I feel I have more in common with moderate Republicans than I do with the extreme members of my own party.

I am so enormously grateful at the moment that I have friends in all camps. Having people I love and/or respect who thoroughly disagree with my opinions has opened my eyes to a wide variety of ways of looking at our current scene. There are so many who either by choice or by reason of geography or whatever have come to believe that what they think is what most reasonable people think, and that people who disagree must be ignorant and uninformed. But I can't do that, because I know too many wonderful people who believe differently than I do.

I don't know what I'm saying, I'm just writing off the cuff. I probably shouldn't even post this, because after all the times I've said I'm not writing about politics, this makes twice in the past two weeks. But it's what I'm thinking about right now.

7ToF: this is actually short this week because I'm too tired to think of anything to talk about.

1. We've been watching BBC Earth's Life Story. It's amazing, both the subject matter and the photography. Jaw dropping. Highly recommended.

2. We get to sleep to one of my favorite things tonight-- the sound of distant thunder. Since we've spent several hours gardening today, we're pretty psyched that it's raining.

3. After having been to the grocery store or Costco every day this week, I was not gonna go again today. But Cinco de Mayo snuck up on me. So we made do with a can of Rosarita refried beans, a package of tortillas, a couple of different types of salsa, and some sour cream. It was actually pretty good. #pantrydinner

4. It is now almost exactly one month until MadMax graduates from high school. Gack. Seems like it should still be months away.

5. Our amazing daughter PellMel turns 26 on Mother's Day. I'm not sure what better Mother's Day gift I could ask for than that she is driving home tomorrow and will be here for the weekend. I'm a happy mama.

6. The rivalry between Montana's two big state schools (Univ of Montana Grizzlies and Montana State Univ Bobcats) is intense--not that you would have ever heard of it since we're a pretty small state, but if you live here, it's a big deal. Not knowing this, we started buying UM gear when we moved here because you know, now we live in Montana, we should have some Montana stuff. Then in 2009, I went to UM for grad school. So we've always been more-or-less UM people, with a variety of maroon Griz t-shirts, mugs, and koozies hanging around.

7. But a couple of years ago PellMel went to MSU for her first year of graduate studies, and now MadMax is heading there in the fall. Apparently there aren't many Bobcats in our town, because I couldn't find much in the way of MSU stuff here locally. I had to get online this week and order blue and gold MSU t-shirts, etc. to reflect our changing loyalties.

There. A brief Seven Things on Friday. Have a great weekend.

What I Wish I Knew My First Week on Weight Watchers: Advice for Newbies / Beginners

I had a terrible time my first couple of weeks on Weight Watchers because I couldn't figure out what to eat. The veterans must have a bunch of things they pick up without thinking about it, because if you ask, they tell you, "Oh, just poke around on the Weight Watchers website! There are great recipes! I love the chicken teriyaki with greens!" or "Flip through the guide! There are great ideas, organized by points!" or "Eat whatever you want! That's the great thing about WW! Just make sure you track everything!"

That last one is particularly bad advice, because if you do that, you've used up your points by the time you're done with lunch (or maybe before). The others are actually good advice, and true, but they don't help any when you get back from running errands at noon and you're starving and you don't want to fix poached salmon and roasted asparagus for lunch. That's not to say you shouldn't cook lunch from scratch, but sometimes--especially that first week--you just want to eat.

They didn't understand that I needed actual food recommendations, not just generalized advice. So, here you go, the foods I wish I'd known about my first week. I'm a newbie myself, just four months in, so take this with a grain of salt. Also, forgive the amateur photos, I don't have the patience to set up those gorgeous food shots.

- I've said elsewhere that I'm not a fan of wasting points on supermarket bread, but sometimes you need to get the sandwich filling from the plate to your mouth. Sara Lee Delightful works well for that, and it's one point per slice. Also, "light" english muffins are two or three points, depending on the brand. Compare either of those to my old favorite sandwich bread, which is five points per slice.

Sara Lee Delightful sandwich bread and
Thomas light english muffins

- What to put between your Sara Lee slices: deli turkey and canadian bacon are 1 point for 2 ounces, which is plenty for a sandwich. Turkey bacon is one point per slice. My go-to breakfast is a single slice of Sara Lee bread made into a half-sandwich with either deli turkey or canadian bacon. Thank the lord I love deli mustard because it's zero points and adds a lot of flavor.

- The single serve pack of StarKist Chunk Light tuna in water is ZERO points. How amazing is that? So you can add a tablespoon of light mayonnaise (1 point) and two pieces of bread and you're still at 3 points. You can stir in minced onion, carrot, or apple for extra flavor (zero points). Or you can add capers and a squeeze of lemon (also zero points) to go Mediterranean.

Progresso Light soup and a Chunk Light Tuna pouch

- More lunch ideas: If you don't have a problem with salt (and recent research has shown that not many people do), Progresso Light soups are good, easy choices, although be aware that there are two "servings" in a can. The chicken and vegetables with rosemary in the picture above (my favorite) is 2 points per serving, so four points for the can. Other brands of light soup are also good.

PB2, both flavors, and lightly salted rice cakes, also known
as edible styrofoam, but sometimes they serve a purpose

- PB2 is powdered peanut butter which has somehow magically had 85% of the fat removed. At our grocery store, it is on the top shelf over the regular peanut butter. Is it as good as real peanut butter? No. But it's not bad. Two tablespoons are one point (as opposed to three points for one tablespoon of regular PB). You stir a tablespoon of water into two tablespoons of the powder and you have peanut butter (use a little extra water so it spreads easier). It also comes in chocolate, which is-- astoundingly-- the same number of points. My favorite late afternoon snack at the moment is a plain rice cake (1 point) spread with two tablespoons of chocolate PB2 (1 point), topped with banana slices (zero points). It's actually pretty dang good.

- More snack ideas. I really, really needed something I could carry in my purse for when I'm out running around. WW has some mini granola bars that are two points, but they're hella expensive and they're about a bite and a half. I've finally settled on Nature Valley Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Protein bars. They're six points, which is a lot, but they're relatively inexpensive, they're easy to carry, and they have 10 g of protein and only 6 g of sugar. If you're having a craving for something sweet, they do the job without blowing 15 points on a small hot fudge sundae from Dairy Queen (which I have also done, and sometimes it's worth it). There are lots of other options-- I spent about fifteen minutes in front of the granola bar section at the grocery store scanning bar codes in the WW app to find one that I liked.

Nature Valley protein bars and Pop Secret 94% fat free popcorn

Also in the picture above: 94% fat free microwave popcorn is 2 points for 3 cups of popped corn. I ate about five gallons of popcorn my first week because I didn't know what else to eat.

- And check this out. If you ate everything on the plate pictured below, it would be ZERO POINTS, and of course that goes for almost all fruits and vegetables eaten without any added sugar or fat. (The only exceptions I know of are avocados, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.) This is my favorite thing about weight watchers. If I put out a plate of cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, broccoli florets, clementines, etc, not only do I eat them instead of other snacks, the rest of my family does, too. They don't need to lose weight but it never hurts to eat your veggies.

I know. If I were a real blogger I would have
found a banana that looked more appetizing. 

- If you can't eat raw veggies without dipping them in something, try Opa Greek Yogurt salad dressings (with the refrigerated salad dressings in the produce section). They have a definite plain yogurt tang, but that's OK with me. The Feta Dill flavor is one point for two tablespoons. Yogurt can be a good snack, too, as long as you check carefully-- my old favorite (Dannon Cherry Orchard) is eight points, but various different "light" and non-fat greek yogurts are 3-5 points per serving. The Oikos Triple Zero shown in the picture is sweetened with Stevia, which has kind of a funny taste but is only 3 points.

- Late evening hot beverage. Having a cup of decaf coffee or herbal tea about an hour before I go to bed has saved me from many an evening snacking binge. I doctor it up with a quarter cup of soymilk (1 point) and a half teaspoon of maple sugar (0 points) and it is a life saver.

One more little trick. On the Weight Watchers app, if you pull up an item-- say deli turkey-- there is a default serving size. For deli turkey, it is two ounces. But if you edit the serving size, you sometimes discover that the next size up is still the same number of points-- three ounces of deli turkey is still one point. It's surprising how often that works. That's how I know that 94% fat free popcorn is two points for three cups, even though if you pull it up on the app, it says two cups are two points. Obscure WW knowledge.

So, hope that is helpful. And may we all persevere, even after we screw up and have to forgive ourselves and get back to it, which is where I am right now. I got halfway to my goal and got lazy, but I'm not giving up. I know a few of you are also in WW, any tips to add? 

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.