No All-Nighters For Me

I am a lightweight and a mess. Last night I got home just before two from driving Carter and her friend to the concert in Charlotte. I had drunk enough coffee to keep an army awake so even though it was hours past my regular bedtime it took me until three in the morning to wind down and actually go to sleep.

Fast forward four short hours and my alarm was gonging its Big Ben tone and it was time to wake the girls for school. After dropping them off I went to my regular appointment with my trainer and home to walk. I could have gone back to bed I was so wiped out, but I soldiered on to two appointments and picked Carter back up from school.

At five in the afternoon I could take it no longer and I passed out on my bed, reading glasses perched on my nose, every light in the room on. If it weren’t for the phone ringing I would still be asleep, but two hours after I passed out I got up to write.

I am more of a dishrag now than I was before my unplanned nap. I don’t know how Carter went to school, turned in a paper, took a quiz and attended classes without a complaint. She made herself dinner, did her homework, fed the fish she is caring for at a neighbor’s house and when she saw me awake told me to go back to bed. I’m now the lightweight. The roles have been reversed.

Back to bed I go. Certainly I will recover after one full night of extra long sleep. I did not even go to the concert. I did not stand screaming at two different boy bands for six hours. I just drove the car. Old age has set in.

My Grandparent’s Diet Tips

Dieting is not a new thing, but the need to watch what we eat has grown as access to food has increased. Hundreds of years ago the food supply was not as consistent as it is now. The lack of refrigeration or ability to transport food long distances meant that people were a little more careful about what they were consuming.

My Paternal Grandmother used to “can” produce that she and my Grandfather grew. I can remember fondly eating stewed tomatoes she had put up from the summer before. The amount of work it took her to grow the tomatoes, pick them, skin them and cook them down into the stewed form, sterilize the jars, pack them and then seal them took not just hours but days. No wonder she used to dole out the precious fruit to us as if it were gold. There was no way we would get fat on one spoonful.

If I had to live on what I could grow, can, put up freeze, catch, kill, find, hunt or gather I would be the thinnest person on earth. My father was born in 1938 so was just a little boy during the War. I can remember him telling me about how he was in charge of killing the chickens for Sunday dinner when he was five years old. I say chickens plural because he used to tell me this story in relation to the preacher coming to Sunday dinner — my father’s immediate family got to split one chicken among the four of them and the preacher got a whole chicken to himself.   I bet this made an impact on my father’s younger brother who was three at the time. Unknowingly this might have been one of the reasons he grew up to be an Episcopal priest.

My maternal Grandmother Mima was always concerned about her figure as well as her daughters’. My mother used to tell me that when she was a teenager her mother told her that having a cigarette rather than something to eat would be better for her figure. Selling cigarettes as a diet aid was brilliant until they started killing people.

I think for Mima the thing that cigarettes did best was dull her taste buds to the point that nothing tasted good so why bother eating.

Of course for all my Grandparents cocktail hour was more than an hour long. I think that drinking so much that you forget to eat dinner was a big diet aid. Not that bourbon was calorie free, but if it caused enough fighting someone was bound to storm out of the room and go to bed without dinner rather than sit down at the table together. Oh how times have changed in my generation. No one produces all their own food, none of us smoke and I don’t think that any of us drink our meals. We might be heavier, but I think we are happier.

No Armpit Drinks Please

Try as I might to stop writing about bad service, or terrible food or questionable management at eating establishments sometimes I just have to break my own rule and share a particularly horrible experience. Here is my one disclosure, please do not continue reading this if you are eating your dinner right now. Fair warning.

Today I went to a charity luncheon to support an organization that is doing good work in our community. You know the type of thing. A giant room full of women with five uncomfortable men scattered about. I am all for charity spreading their message and getting a few bucks to keep their doors open. What happened at this event in no way should reflect badly on the organization that was benefiting from it.

After visiting with old friends from far and wide I rarely see except at these things I joined the table I was asked to sit with. We were lucky enough to be right by the kitchen door, which meant that the staff did not have far to go when we had a need. When we arrived at our table our perfect for ladies who lunch salad with chicken was sitting at our places. On the table were carafes of water and tea.

Being polite Southern women we poured each other glasses of tea and passed around the tiny sauce boat of dressing, each trying to take only a drop or two since eight of us needed to share the serving that usually would cover two salads.

After all the pouring was done, one friend took a sip of tea and declared, “Oh no, it’s sweet tea.” Now I may live in the south, but any caterer worth their salt knows better than to serve middle aged women who try to avoid sugar at all costs sweet tea without warning them. One woman asked a sever if they had any unsweet tea and without much trouble a new carafe was delivered to our table. But what to do with all the glasses full of brown sugar water?

My table neighbor and friend K asked a server who was passing bread if she could have a new glass. She quickly disappeared into the kitchen and upon her return with breadbasket and tongs in her hands she leaned one side of her body into K and offered her a new glass that she was carrying tucked tightly into her armpit. I wish that I had a video of our faces as she pulled the glass from rim to stem fully through her sweaty shirt, keeping her arm tightly squeezed against her body so she would not drop the glass. K took the glass trying to touch as little of it as possible and placed the offending crystal as far from her plate as she could.

K looked at me with that did you see what I saw look and we both almost spit our lunches out on our plates in disgust with the thought that a server in any sort of establishment thought that it was sanitary to carry anything in her arm pit, let alone something someone might put to their lips. The fact that the server in no way thought this was acceptable is the scary thought. Imagine what might be going on in the kitchen.

Consider this my public service message to cater waiters, servers and restaurant owners everywhere – Never and I mean Never Ever carry anything in your armpit. Outside of the one in one million person with an armpit fetish no one wants to touch, let alone eat or drink with anything that has been tucked up there. I guess to the manager of this place he might have thought he did not need to cover this is training, but I guess you do.

The Fine Line

I am a person who likes to get things done, has big ideas about improving things and has a hard time keeping my opinions to myself. I feel like most problems in the world can be solved if worked on and I see so many things that need work. On the other hand I really enjoy doing fun things that have no real world changing purpose other than making me happy. Then there is the middle ground, the stuff I need to do to keep me healthy and well, not really fun and not making an impact on any one but my family and me.

How to walk that fine line between taking care of myself, doing what is needed for my husband and child, helping my friends, and the world and then the just plain selfish hedonistic things is a balancing act I’m not sure I’ve mastered yet.

When I was first out of college I worked a full-time traveling salesman job and had a catering business on the side. That left no time whatsoever for me to have much fun, nor really give back. My mantra was to make as much money as I could; it was the 80’s after all. Greed was good, was the theme of the decade.

Thank goodness I outgrew that mode, the greed one, but I still worked too hard and did too little self-care. I also had not learned the word, “No.” If I noticed a problem I often volunteered to fix it. Frequently I was the one pointing out problems, which meant that I was practically obliged to offer to help.

My worst enemy is my mouth. I just did not know when to keep it shut. Just because I could help fix a failing system did not mean I had to be the one that did it. I blame my father for my shortcoming, or over confidence in this area. He told me from a very young age that I could do anything. I came to believe he was right about that, everything except climbing the robe to the top of the gym ceiling. He was also the one who taught me that if I could not do it to talk my way out.

Now, I would like to do less, offer fewer solutions, let others figure things out, or just live with an imperfect world. That is hard on me. I practically have to go through life with blinders on. It is not that I have the only answer or even the right answer; I really just want to get the conversation started and have others help fix the world.

So please understand if I turn down your request for help, or don’t volunteer I’m working on finding balance. That means I have to be less bossy, not in charge, have fewer opinions. You think I can’t do it? Yeah I know.

What’s Your Dream?

Today while I was having lunch with a friend I will just call, “E” she said, “It was a terrible day when I realized I had missed my window to become a professional tap dancer.” Now E is younger than I am so I challenged her on the idea that she was too old to do anything. See if she were too old, that meant that I was too old to do anything and I am not admitting that yet.

As I delved deeper into this passion for tap dancing that was unknown to me before today I learned that E had never even taken one tap dancing lesson, let alone missed a professional opportunity. She followed up the tap dancing dream with one as a back-up singer/tambourine player in a band. Again, not something she had actually tried out for, yet was still a dream.

Now I am not sure what the demand for “Professional” tap dancers is, but I certainly think that E is much too young and capable to be giving up any dream she really has. I am sure that there is a band out there somewhere that would take her on with tambourine in hand to sing back up for a few numbers. If they threw her a couple of bucks at the end of the night that would qualify her as a pro too.   If she owned tap shoes, she might do a few steps while harmonizing and then that too would satisfy her tap dancing dream.

Back when I weighed more than a hundred pounds than I do now I used to dream to be able to walk into Neiman Marcus and try anything on in the “Misses” Department, better known as the regular sized clothing. That dream seemed as far away to me as E’s tap dancing dream. But like E, I had not done anything to try and fulfill it.

Then I started. I made a bold declaration that I was going to lose weight. I practiced, like a tap student, I studied, and I worked my ass off literally. Suddenly my dream was not a dream, but a car ride away from Neiman Marcus. Last month when I drove Carter and her friends to Charlotte I decided to make my dream come true.

Alone, with no one to witness a possible snubbing by the high and mighty Neiman’s sales clerk I went into the store. I wandered through the designer collections. Sales women fawned over me, practically begging me to try on the dresses I eyed. After taking my time looking at all the tiny clothes that represented my dream I agreed that a nice young man named Nate could carry in an armload of items for me to try on.

One dress, followed three blouses, five sweaters, two skirts and four pairs of slacks, each one fit or was too big. Nate was quick to get me smaller sizes and find me other items he thought would work well on me. I could have worn them all. Poor Nate worked very hard for the one blouse I bought. See my dream was not to buy everything in Neiman’s, just be able to fit into it.

So E, let’s go take a tap dancing class. It only takes one tiny step to fulfilling your dream. I also know a band that might let you stand in the back and sing along. It’s never too late to fulfill your dream and certainly not if you are still just in your forties.

 Happy Non-Labor Day

I know the name is Labor Day, but it really should be called Non-labor Day since it is traditionally a day off from work. I am married to a person who is almost always working so getting Russ to take off a day is difficult. That is unless he is at my family farm with our sweet dog Shay Shay. So when Russ suggested we go to the farm for the day I knew it was the perfect way to get him into a non-labor frame of mind.

Although we all love going to the farm and have never brought anyone there who did not beg us to go back we somehow have not been once this summer. Perhaps it was because we were in Africa and Maine, maybe it was even because while we love the farm it is damn hot there in the summer. So celebrating the last day of traditional summer at the farm relieved some of my guilt for not visiting my parents all summer.

Carter got to drive her car, “Katherine,” up to show my father how much she loves the present he gave her for Christmas. I got to needlepoint all the way there and back and some in between. Russ got to have Shay Shay sit on his lap and look out the window with the happiness anticipation look on her face that read, “We’re going to my favorite place where I run FREEEEE!” At least that is how Russ interprets her look.

To none of our surprise it was damn hot there today. Good thing we brought our swim suits along with our friends the Toms and their dog Millie. Lynn and Logan Toms are the extra children my parents wished they had because they are so nice to my mother and father. Their daughter Ellis is also like a granddaughter, which doubles the number of kids they actually like.

After lunch at our regular Mexican restaurant where Carter and Ellis got to eat in my Dad’s regular booth alone while the adults sat at a separate table we went back to the farm to laze away the afternoon by the pool.

Since Russ personifies everything that Shay Shay does he insisted that our brown dog was hot and needed to go swimming. Shay hates going in the water, but Russ says since she is half Labrador she should be a great swimmer. She is not. Just like every other time she has been in the pool she clung to the closest human by the sharpest points of her toenails, shivering and looking like a wet rat.

After her first dip she jumped out of the pool as fast as she could and shook herself off all over my mother. Not good form from a guest at my mother’s house. After an hour or so Russ decided that Shay was hot again even though if she was she could have jumped in the pool herself. This time he put her on a raft so that he could save the delicate skin on his shoulders from certain clawing. This suited her better and she tentatively stayed on the float while Russ and Carter played with her a while.

The way I see it is Shay’s psyche was sacrificed so the Russ could take the day off from work and play with his dog, his child and his friends. Since Shay loves Russ more than any thing, human or animal I think she is fine with this. Perhaps she even plays up her dislike of the water so Russ feels needed to save her from drowning, even if he is the one making her endure the water. Whatever, she provided the perfect excuse for celebrating Non-labor Day because if we were home Russ most certainly would have worked. So thanks baby Shay, you make us all relax.