Waiting For Food
Posted: March 26, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: eavesdropping Leave a comment
Since Russ was in San Francisco last night and Carter had finished up her Science Independent Project she and I decided that a quick dinner out was the right thing to do. We just went to a family style restaurant, nothing special, but Carter was thrilled not to have to eat the green beans and broccoli I was planning on serving.
The good thing for me about going to dinner with a fourteen year old is that I can indulge my love of eavesdropping on other people’s conversations while Carter is busy texting. Yes, I admit I listen to what is going on at the tables around me. It is all I can do not to comment or weigh in on whatever fight or discussion people are having. The way I see it is that if you don’t want people to hear, you should talk about it in the car, otherwise it’s fair game for my entertainment.
Last night we were seated in a booth that backed up to a father and his sons, ages about four and six. It was obvious to us that these children rarely went to anything more than a fast food restaurant and were having the time of their lives.
Here is the conversation we overheard that really made us smile:
Younger boy: When is the food coming?
Older boy: Yeah, I’m hungry.
Father: I’m sure the waiter will bring it soon.
Younger boy: What are you talking about? I am the waiter.
Older boy: No, you are the customer.
Younger boy: No, I am the one waiting for food, so I am the waiter.
It all made sense to us and was so much more fun to listen to that the three adult daughters and their 70 year old mother whose birthday it was who did not like one drink the poor waiter brought them and sat silently when they weren’t sending things back to the bar. I’ll take kids to listen to over pouting adults anyday.
Yoga Pants
Posted: March 25, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: tennis, work out, yoga pants 1 Comment
Today after Yoga I went to coffee with my friends Sara and Michelle. Since we had all been in Yoga together it seemed perfectly fine to be in public for coffee together in our Yoga pants. Michelle and Sara looked better than I did post Yoga. Perhaps I should have put some make up on to go to class, but since I tend not to look at my face in the mirror because I am busy trying to judge if my shoulders are down and back or my leg is straight I skip it.
After whiling the rest of the morning away discussing important issues like drivers ed, we finally broke up since the lunch crowd was showing up in real clothes, except for one friend who was in her tennis clothes.
I was starting to get self-conscious about being out so late in Yoga clothes, no make up, hair, which had not been washed and had been hanging upside down for a while so it stuck into an odd-do. What I really wanted was an sign on my chest that read, “Yes, I actually was at Yoga, I’m not just slumming it.”
Apparently I am not the only person her feels this way because when I went to pick up after school today a friend told me she was not getting out of her car because she was still in her Yoga pants. I asked if it was because she was wearing Luluemon see through Yoga pants and she said, no. This particular friend is tall, thin, incredibly athletic and looks great in a potato sack so if she was feeling uncomfortable being in her Yoga pants at 3:30 then I felt perfectly justified that I felt that way just hours before.
Why do the tennis people not feel uncomfortable being out in their little skirts, while Yoga pant wearing elicits some sort of guilt? I actually did Yoga today and yes it is not quite the work out tennis is, but my Yoga pants are the same thing I will wear to work out with my trainer tomorrow and that is an hugely butt busting activity much more strenuous than a doubles tennis game.
Since I don’t have a sign to wear announcing why I am dressed the way I am I will declare it here for good. If you see me and I have Yoga pants on I recently must have been exercising. Don’t think I am slumming it; I would have my jeans on if I was doing that. If I am really dressed up I had a meeting with someone who does not know me well or someone I was asking for money. Now you know you may want to avoid me if you see me coming in anything but jeans, I am either smelly or am going to ask you for money.
Sing Out
Posted: March 24, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Ethel Walker School, Miss Sala, singing Leave a commentMy friend Hugh once did a study for the Catholic schools of Philadelphia about singing. He asked students of various grades who thought they could sing. In kindergarten 100% of students claimed to be singers, in third grade the number of self described singers dropped a little to about 80%, six grade it was only about 40% and by 10th grade only about two in ten felt they could sing. For most of the high schoolers they probably could sing better than they could at five years old, but their standards had been raised.
I knew early on in life that I actually could not sing, despite having a talented father and sister in the vocal arts. This was confirmed to me my first day of boarding school. As I nervously went through the registration line with all the other new girls I learned of my room assignment, my class schedule and the time of the mandatory voice test with the choir mistress Miss Sala. Girls ahead of me in line informed Miss Sala that their voice test was unnecessary because they had not the interest or vocal talent. The sixty-year-old girls school veteran staunchly held firm to the requirement that all new girls take a voice test, that was until she heard me speaking.
As I wound my way through the line she caught up with me and took my voice test time assignment paper from my hand, telling me I was excused. Apparently in the history of The Ethel Walker School I was the only new girl ever rejected from any singing requirements without even taking the test, a test I was actually willing to try. Poor Miss Sala did not know that day that in the years to come my lack of any vocal training was going to become a school wide problem.
My senior year I was the head of the Northfield League, the girls in charge of the chapel program. Thursday morning chapel was a mandatory school wide meeting where I often spoke. After finishing my prayer, reading or talk I would start the school off in a hymn. The first few times I actually sang the first note, which was always off key, I would get the entire chapel of girls and fifty adults started off wrong. Miss Sala in great frustration eventually found a member of the choir who sat behind me to ghost sing for me. I would open my mother and pretend to sing and a beautiful sound came out from behind me, but most people in the pews were unaware of the lip dubbing we were doing.
My lack of ability has never stopped me from singing. I just try and keep it from bothering the rest of the world. Because of this I usually sit in the second pew at church now so I can sing as loudly as I want and there is almost never anyone in front of me that I am annoying. This morning I arrived at church and some visitors were sitting in my regular seat and so I sat right behind them in the third row. I am never happy about losing my regular seat, but then I figure the poor people who got there first will not make that mistake again once I disturb their music enjoyment with my singing.
As we stood singing the first hymn today the small child sitting in front of me turned and looked at me and gave me a big smile while I sang. I smiled back through my notes. She then gave me a little wave and a bigger smile. My singing must be improving I thought, and sang louder. She looked at me through all three versus and then as the hymn ended she turned around, still standing on the pew. It was then that I noticed this little girl had two hearing aids that were only visible from the back of her head. She certainly could not have heard me singing, she just liked that I smiled at her. For a moment or two I was under the delusion that someone liked my singing, and you know what, someone did, even if she could not hear.
March Diet Madness
Posted: March 23, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: basketball, march madness, NCAA Leave a comment
What is the tie between major sporting events and eating really unhealthy food? During the Super Bowl this year I learned the statistic that Super Bowl Sunday was the second biggest eating day behind Thanksgiving. I wonder what the calorie count difference is though? At Thanksgiving you have a chance at some vegetables and turkey can be healthy, but I can’t think of one traditional Super Bowl food that would be in my normal weight reduction food list.
Now it’s March Madness and since I live between Duke and UNC I can’t help but be interested in the goings on around hoops. I just got an e-mail from our club up the street that they have a special NCAA menu in the Grille for B-ball watching. This is what is being served: Buffalo Chicken Wings with blue cheese dressing and celery, Fried Mozzarella Sticks, Fried Mushroom Caps, Potato Skins with Cheddar Cheese, Bacon, Sour Cream and Scallions, Chili Fries, Beef Sliders with three kids of cheese and Nacho Platter. Out of that whole list I could have the scallions and the celery.
One would think that watching basketball was a huge amount of exercise based on the number of calories that appear to be necessary to watch it. Maybe it is just that these foods can be consumed mindlessly so one can stay focused on the screen. I am sure that the club will still have salads available, but don’t plan on any salad specials for the games. Who can eat with a fork and watch TV at the same time, must be the reasoning?
Since March Madness is an eight-day event if you only count the days games are being played and not the time in between, I venture to say that NCAA tournament is the biggest eating affair of the year by far. Even if you only eat wings every other day you are probably consuming more calories watching basketball over those eight days than you ever would burn off playing basketball all year.
I’m advocating for some lettuce wraps and fruit kabobs be included in the offerings during the tournament. People really need to pace themselves, March is a long month.
Look Me in the Eye
Posted: March 22, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dress for success Leave a commentBased on this blog one might be led to believe that my only philanthropic interest is the Food Bank. Yes, this blog did start as my weight loss journey to help support the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, but it is in no way my only interest.. What I have found is that once you start to help other people you get a certain personal satisfaction that is way beyond what you put in.
Today I attended a lunch for Dress For Success where one of my fellow Food Bank board members, Debbie Aiken is the board chair. It was inspiring to learn all that Dress for Success did to help women become self supporting through job search and interview skills training as well as help to obtain the right “look” for searching for a job. I was somewhat familiar with their mission because my husband Russ had a team from CMG Partners, his strategic marketing consulting firm do a little pro-bono session to help Dress for Success come up with a good tag line and elevator pitch. What they developed was “Dress for Success – more than a suit.”
I listened to the inspiring and widely varied stories of the women who had been helped by Dress for Success and how important learning basic skills were for helping them land a job. The women I met shook my hand and looked me in the eye as they greeted me. This skill is something I take for granted, but realized today was something some people needed to be taught at a later stage of life.
I can remember my friend Missy Brinegar giving me the best parenting advice when Carter was only about four. Her boys are a few years older than Carter and I always commented on what nice manners they had with adults. Missy told me this trick to get a child to look an adult in the eyes when they meet them and shake their hand — tell them before they do it, “I want to figure out what color eyes that person has and after you have said hello to come tell me.” It is a brilliant way to take the scary out of a child looking directly into a strangers face.
I understand that meeting a stranger, especially one you might want to give you a job, can be just as scary for adults as it can for children. What I hope is that we can all look people we meet in the eye and really see them for the fellow human beings that they are. It is just by the luck of birth that some of us ended up having parents who teach us these lessons when we are little and some who do not.
Old Friends with Smart Kids
Posted: March 21, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: duke, unc Leave a comment
I love living in Durham for so many reasons. People who are from here are nice to new people that move here, the restaurants are mostly chef/owner run so they care about their customer’s and products, differences of all kinds are embraced and celebrated and people are just plain ole’ friendly.
Although I have nothing to do with it, Durham also has this little thing called Duke University, which draws the best and the brightest to Durham. For me that means more than really exciting basketball and good doctors, but it is a major draw for my old friends with college bound children to come and visit while they are looking at schools. Some also are looking at that other great school in the town next door, UNC. Wherever they may be looking in North Carolina, I love the fact that they come and stay with us.
Yesterday my college friend Jamie Karp Stone came all the way from Santa Fe with her husband Mark, daughter Meggie and Chinese exchange student Jolene for breakfast before going to look at Duke. I have not seen Jamie in twenty-one years so I am thankful that she has a smart daughter and I have a smart University near by which created the opportunity for us to catch up.
This year I have had a number of college looking visitors and we are open to future visitors. It is so fun to meet the children of people I got to know when we were just about their children’s age. I think back to how smart and grown-up we thought we were as seniors in high school. But of course we weren’t. Just don’t tell kids that because they might never leave home if they knew all that they don’t know.
So if you have a child getting ready to jump out of the nest come and visit us and look at the school near by. They don’t have to be Duke smart, they just have to be your kid to be welcome at our house.
Get It In Writing
Posted: March 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy 4 Comments
As a woman of experience, that should read, a woman of middle aged, one who wears many hats; confident, confessor, laundress, chef, driver, advisor, fundraiser, writer, seamstress, animal trainer, maid, event planner, historian, communicator, comedian, gambler, public speaker, procurement agent, long-range planner, shipping clerk, scheduler, hostess, travel agent, proof reader, accountant, nurse, promoter, cheerleader, spiritual advisor, coach, secretary, therapist and some unmentionables. I could summarize that list into two words, wife and mother.
One thing I have learned over the years of doing the many jobs that a wife and a mother does is that when someone actual thanks you or compliments you it is a great day and should be noted. Now a thank you from my husband is great, but he is a serial thanker so it is not a red-letter day when it happens. It is great to be appreciated by my spouse and makes me want to make sure I thank him more too.
But for all you people who have or have lived through having a fourteen-year-old daughter a compliment from her is a newsworthy event. Yesterday was that day for me. For what ever reason Carter was particularly happy with me and told me, in front of her friend Ashley no less, that I was the “Best person alive!” I had not done anything extraordinary for her, just one of the things on my “hat list,” but she just appreciated me yesterday.
Knowing the importance of that moment I asked her if she would put it in writing for me. Carter picked up a pencil and a pad of free from some hotel post-it notes and wrote, “You, Dana are the best person alive- Carter.” There it is, evidence that for one tiny moment I was good in the eyes of my teenager. Now, I am certainly spoiling it by writing it here. Hopefully she won’t read this blog. But I do forever have these words by her own hand.
I know that everyone out there has encountered a situation where someone paid you a compliment or told you something that made your spirit sing because it was rare and special. Sometimes it is so out of the blue that after the fact you begin to question whether is actually happened or wonder if you heard it right. Next time kudos come your way, ask for it in writing. If your praiser was sincere they will be happy to write it down – It multiplies the accolade because you can forever reread it. Not that I am encouraging you to go around singing your own praises, but having that little bit of paper can make you smile, cheer you up or remind you why you wear the one thousand and thirty four hats you do for the ones you love. Better yet, write a note to your loved ones and tell them how you feel about them — Nothing too over the top, just one really good sentence.
Thanks Be to Friends
Posted: March 19, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cbs sunday morning, friends 2 CommentsI love when I learn scientific proof for something I always believed in my gut. I just saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about the power of friendship. Not just the schmaltzy importance of friendship, but evidence that friends help us carry life’s loads.
A Professor at UVA asked people to put on a heavy backpack and estimate the incline of a very steep hill. Then he did the same thing except that the person had a friend stand by their side when they did it, nothing else just be there. Overwhelmingly people who had a friend there estimated the difficulty of climbing the hill as dramatically easier than the people who were alone. The mere presence of the friend somehow lessened the perceived burden.
Another professor gave people small shocks while they were getting an MRI and recorded the pain receptors in their brain. Then he did the same experiment with a friend holding the hand of the person receiving the shocks. The pain receptors hardly registered anything when a friend was present thus creating less wear on the body.
Dieting works the same way, at least for me. By sharing the burden of needing to lose weight with my friends helps me actually stick to my plan and not feel deprived. This blog is my daily connection to so many friends, old and new, known and unknown, that spreads out my burden so I don’t feel I am carrying it alone.
Worrying is something that causes our body’s physical stress and most of what we worry about is anticipatory. Will something bad happen? How bad will it be? Having a friend somehow helps dissipate a problem, according to these learned Professors. I am going to go one step further and say sharing the problem with your friend can make you feel better, as long as you don’t overwhelm your friend with your problems. Don’t expect your friend to solve your issues, but just having someone close to listen can reduce your pain receptors, whether you can see them on an MRI or not.
Of course the old saying holds true here, “To have a friend, you must be a friend.” I want to thank all my wonderful friends who help me carry the load and encourage you all to spread your difficulties out into the world and not carry anything alone.
Life Without Sound Effects
Posted: March 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cbs sunday morning, friends, ipad, solitaire, sound effects 2 CommentsI love games. To me computers, ipads and smart phones were invented really just to act as substitutes for game playing friends. Of course actual live friends who also like to play games are my number one choice of game interaction, but in the late of the night when I am snuggled down in bed next to a non-game-loving-ipad-magazine-reading husband playing solitaire on my ipad is a good second choice.
I usually play electronic games in the silent mode so as not to bother anyone else or so I can still watch TV while playing. Even though I am playing game against myself and no one will be the wiser if I win or lose I still play uber competitively.
What does that mean in solitaire? First I play Las Vegas rules which means that the deck of cards costs 52 imaginary dollars and for every card I get in the Aces piles I earn back 5 dollars per card. You only get to turn the discard pile over three times before the game is over and you turn the cards three at a time so if you can’t move the top card onto a different pile you don’t even know what you are missing underneath.
The second way I compete is that I play speed solitaire, trying to move all the cards to the Aces piles faster than I have before. Since I have been playing this particular game on my ipad for a number of years it gets harder and harder to break into my top fifteen fastest games. I think my best time was one minute and 22 seconds.
Today when I had ten minutes between commitments I pulled out my ipad and starting playing solitaire. For some reason the volume control was up one notch from silent which I did not notice until I failed to win my first game and I heard a faint sound of a crowd saying “OOHHHH,” in that “too bad for you” kind of way.
Wait a minute, why was the crowd feeling sorry for me? Although I had failed to clear the board I did win a good amount of imaginary money because I had gotten my spades pile up to 5, hearts to jack, diamonds to 10 and clubs to 4, which in monetary terms meant I had earned $155. When you subtract the $52 initial investment I had net $103 — Nothing to feel sorry for me about. Yet the sound effects still played a little pity party for me because I had not cleared the board.
I quickly dropped the volume control back to nothing because I don’t want anyone else to determine what the sound effects for my life should be, but me. We all don’t have the same perspective on what is good or bad, or successful or failure, nor should we. Each one of us needs to decide if a situation is funny or scary, not the man playing the organ at a silent picture show. Today I encourage you to ignore the sounds that others, be they live humans or mere machines, make about you and create your own life’s soundtrack. Mine has a lot more laughter and cheers than sobs and jeers.
Walking Miracles
Posted: March 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: London, nuts, squirrel, walking Leave a comment
Being a tourist in a city is not only fun, but can also be healthy. While in London Carter and I walked and walked and walked. Our hotel was four blocks from our tube station and once in the station the actual trains were another good walk underground. That was just the pre-walk to get to where we would go and really walk.
Carter did not have much sympathy me when on the first day I came up with a pain in the back of my left knee until she too hurt her knee a few days later. Despite these amateur walker injuries we soldiered on.
We would walk through Green Park to Buckingham Palace and then through St. James Park where there were lots of aggressive squirrels wanting food along with some very forward geese. We saw one squirrel who literally climbed the pant leg of a man with nuts, trying to get one. I guess most men have nuts, but this one had one in his hand the squirrel wanted and eventually got.
Even though it was bitterly cold and windy most of the days we were on holiday we kept walking because we just did not have a choice. The coldest, but sunniest day we were there we took the train to Hampton Court, which is just a short walk from the station across a bridge over the Thames to the Palace. It was so windy that although we were pushing as hard as we could the wind almost held us in place preventing us from crossing the bridge. I must have burned an incredible amount of calories that day between the walking and the trying to keep my body temperature high enough to stay alive.
The only times we were not walking was during meals eating. And we certainly had many wonderful meals. Carter, having been well trained on varied cuisines, was keen on having Indian, Japanese, French, Thai as well has the British Staple of fish and chips. I was sure that all this good food was going to be a killer to my weight.
But the walking obvious saved us. This morning at my trusty home scale I got on with a feeling of trepidation and was shocked to learn that I had not gained one pound, even after partaking fully in two afternoon teas, eating nan at dinner my last night and having toast with strawberry jam every morning.
This is no way gives me pause to think that I can eat like I did this past week at home, even if I gave up my car and walked everywhere. I know that I have weeks where my body looses weight and weeks where no matter what I eat I don’t loose weight. Perhaps this week in London was one of the good weeks in my cycle. It certainly was a good week in my life.
Farewell Britannia
Posted: March 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: London 1 CommentAt the Lounge at Heathrow with my sad Anglophile girl, mostly because of her love and devotion to British boy band One Direction. It has been a fun, save cold, spring break in London. Being back here has reminded me how much I love this country, the sweet people, the lovely parks, the history all around, the tea.
I tried to introduce Carter to as much English history as possible from Westminster Abbey first built in 920 to Winston Churchill of 1945. I know that learning about King Henry VIII at both the Tower of London and Hampton Court may have sunk in, but all the other Monarchs and their order are confusing for the most studied history student.
We enjoyed two musicals, Chorus Line and Les Mis, Carter’s favorite, where in the small world way another Durham Academy family happened to sit directly in front of us. We shopped, just a little because Carter definitely has the Janie Carter gene of not wanting to over pay for anything. Between the exchange rate and the city prices Carter could not see spending much on anything. The one spending exception was the second day when it snowed and Carter informed me that the zipper on her fleece jacket was broken. Not that the jacket was warm enough for the bitter winds anyway, but she did get a new Northface jacket and overpriced, but cute hat.
In true London life we spent a lot of time on the tube and the bus. We got more than our money’s worth out of our travel card. It is so wonderful to travel with a child who is old enough to keep track of her own card and is good at navigating the underground. It was much more of a vacation for me because unlike traveling with small children, I did not have to constantly worry about where Carter was, or entertain her. For the most part she was easy, except when I would try and wake her to start her day, two hours after I had gotten up. Balancing making the most of one’s trip and a teenager’s natural need for sleep was our only difficulty.
Of course seeing old friends was the highlight for me. I’m sorry I did not get to the midlands to see my great friend Debbie, but she knows she is welcome to come and visit me in North Carolina. Also I was sorry Monica was under the weather, but seeing both Simons and Paul was, as the English would say, brilliant.
As sad as I am to go it is time to get back to my salad life and I don’t mean that in the poetic sense. Carter says she has never seen me eat so much bread in my whole life. I think she has no memory of me two years ago, but she is right I have had bread this week, what with all those finger sandwiches. Somehow rocket salad has never become a big thing at tea here. But it is not the getting back to the disciplined life I look most forward to, but going home Russ and Shay-Shay.
Experiencing new places is wonderful and I am thrilled that Carter has the travel bug, but going home to the one you love takes away any sadness from leaving the excitement of London. Thanks to Russ for giving us this great trip that he did not even get to enjoy with us because he was working to provide it. I think that I can honestly say that Carter and I are two lucky girls.
Two Meals is Still Too Much
Posted: March 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Afternoon tea, fish and chips, Wagamamas 1 CommentFor a person who gets up every morning and weighs myself, does not eat white flour or sugar being in London is hard. Add to the hardship that I have lived here twice before for a total of over six years so I have some favorite foods that are best in Britain. Multiply the situation by the fact that the most fabulous breakfast is included in our hotel plan with full fat English yogurt and bright yellow yoked eggs all hard to resist, especially since I have already paid for it.
Then there is the problem of Afternoon tea. Tea is without a doubt the best meal ever invented and purely sinful and chocked with both flour and sugar, but so irresistible. To try and counteract the bad choices I may make on days like today when Carter and I are going to the theatre we are only eating breakfast and Afternoon tea, but even those two meals are equivalent to three days of eating back home. There is no way around it, I know I will pay dearly for this holiday, but oh, it is worth it.
I am not saying that all my choices have been bad. Last night Carter and I met my old colleague Paul for dinner and I had a prawn, crab and endive salad for dinner. When we went to Wagamamas, my very favorite noodle house where Russ and I used to eat every week, I had a salad and not my favorite Chili Ramen. But I also have had a bite of Carter’s fish and chips and all the food memories of living here come back.
One thing about a holiday is you need to cut yourself some slack without totally falling off the wagon, you just don’t want to be dragged behind it too far. So
two more days of less than perfect then locked in the dungeon of lettuce and chicken for me. I’m actually looking forward to my no choice cereal breakfast at home.
The Warmth Of Old Friends
Posted: March 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: bt, London, Simon George, Simon wells 2 CommentsIt’s cold in London now, and god awful windy too. It’s -1 c. degrees with windchill or -9 c. degrees. For you Celsius virgins that means is is about 16 degrees out. Any scale you use it means it’s freekin’ cold, especially for us Southern, thin blooded, no body heat left from dieting types.
But last night, despite the frigid temperatures, I was embraced in the warmth of a wonderful visit with my two old English friends, Simon George and Simon Wells. The Simons, as I described them to Carter, and I had spent a very concentrated nine months of our lives traveling around the world together to fabulous locations like South Africa and Bali shooting commercials for BT (the British Telephone company). It was clearly the best job on earth and a good reason to retire right afterwards and go out on a high.
Traveling and working with people on an intense project like that can either speed up the creation of friendship or make you vow to never see each other again. In the case of the Simons it was the former for me. Fifteen years of being out of London made not a wink of an eyes difference when we caught back up together last night. If Carter had not been there as evidence that time had certainly passed you might have thought we had just returned from a shoot at a Safari.
The Simons both looked the same and thankfully I did not. Despite my dramatic change in looks, the years apart made no difference. We picked right up in the familiar patter of friends with lots of shared experiences. Carter peppered them to tell her dirt on me, but instead she got words of advice on how to live a happy life.
One bit they did not tell her that will not mean anything to her at 14, but I hope she will remember when she is older is this; you never forget true friends, and they never forget you. Cherish them for they are your treasure. Thanks to my two Simons for catching up right where we left off, and cheers to you.
You Have To Be Rich To Be Thin in London
Posted: March 11, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: London, Mango tree 3 CommentsNow I remember why I got so fat living in London, skinny food is really expensive and fattening food is cheep. Today Carter and I went to Lunch at an Asian restaurant Mango Tree in hopes of having something small and light. We both got a small bowl of Tom Yam Goong soup and Carter had three tiny Szechuan Chicken Dumplings. It was all delicious, but Carter said the soup tasted exactly like mine. Not what I need when I travel. I would like to be inspired by new flavors, but that is proving hard for me to find.
Along with our soup we splurged on three small bottles of water. When I say splurged I mean it since they cost almost ten dollars each. Anyway our small, but healthy meal cost almost one hundred dollars. Don’t tell Russ!
Now I know that Mango Tree is a fancy place, but really! It is costly to eat waist friendly food. As we were leaving we passed by a bakery with giant scones for a dollar fifty. We kept walking.
Mothering Sunday
Posted: March 10, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Afternoon tea 2 CommentsWhen in London one can’t help but eat bread, or bread like products so I am taking a little break and not beating myself up if something with flour passes my lips. This confession is after the fact since I went to afternoon tea today with Carter and had not only tea sandwiches (oh so yummy), but also scones which are without a doubt one of the great gifts to human kind the British have given. But enough about my indulgences and now my bad mothering confession.
Afternoon tea is something Carter begs for too, but this being Mothering Sunday, the English version of Mother’s day, we should have made reservations earlier in the week. Being the mother that I am, I was able to talk our way into the sold out tea at the Kensington Hotel without actually embarrassing Carter.
After we were seated in the lovely dining room the service of tea and finger sandwiches began. Egg cress, smoked salmon, chicken salad, ham and chutney and cucumber fingers stacked neatly on our small plates gave us both great glee. Carter even discovered her love of English Breakfast tea. After the fingers a small digestif of mango Bellini sorbet was placed in front of us.
Carter took one tiny spoonful and announced it was alcoholic and the laughter began. “It’s good and I’m drunk,” Carter confessed between fits of giggles. “No wonder everybody wants to move to London so they can have tea everyday.”
I pointed out to her that between the cost and the calories no one is having tea everyday. But the happy effects of the Bellini lasted though the whole afternoon. Really it is too bad that it is against the law to give teenagers liquor because one small sip makes a very fun and happy traveling companion.
Tomorrow it’s back to fruit and salad. Tea is a treat if you only have it once in a while.
London Calling
Posted: March 9, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy, Uncategorized | Tags: cheesecake, London, lunch Leave a commentAfter years of being away it is wonderful to be back in the city I called home for so long, London. This time I am having the fun of introducing it to Carter who is something of an Anglophile already. We arrived this morning on the RDU redeye. Since we could not get into our room at the hotel at 8:00 in the morning, but were not quite up to doing justice to a museum or palace on four hours sleep I decided it was best if we did the sitting tourist city orientation thing by riding on the top of a Big Red Bus.
Criss Crossing the city to pass by the major attractions, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abby, Houses of Parliament, The Tower of London, speakers Corner, Marble Arch, St. Paul’s, the London Eye, Etc. Etc. Etc. Carter got a good overview of where she wants to go during the coming days. After two and a half hours with our spunky tour guide Philamenia we decided that our tired and frozen bodies needed some lunch and warmth.
A stop into a small teashop was just what we needed. Carter was able to get her fill of attractive British people and I was able to eavesdrop on a most remarkable conversation of two gay men who clearly need my blog.
This is how the noontime conversation went.
Austin Powers Look-Alike (referred to as APLA from now. on), complete with bad teeth, sideburns and small print floral shirt and large plaid tweed jacket: “Darling, what are you going to have?”
Boy-Friend Nigel, with contrasting small print floral shirt and large window pane plaid jacket, but better teeth: “Of course a cappuccino, but I can’t decide on what else.”
APLA: “Yes, a cappuccino, and a slice. (not a slice of pizza, but cake). Do you think they have a coffee gateau?”
Nigel: “They have coffee eclairs and cheesecake.”
APLA: “OOOOH, Cheesecake.”
Waiter: “Have you decided?”
APLA: “What kind of cheesecake do you have?”
Waiter: “Lemon”
APLA: “Yes, Please” (I was sure I was sitting next to the real Austin Powers at that very moment.)
The waiter arrives with their cappuccinos, cheesecake and eclair.
APLA: after a bite or two, “Oh, Nigel, you must try this, it is the most lovely cheesecake I have ever had.”
Nigel tastes it and agrees.
Nigel: “When we’re finished here, we can pop up to Fortnum and Mason and buy some goodies and then we can go to lunch.”
Stupid or Brilliant?
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cake, Electrolux vacuum 4 Comments
I opened an e-mail today from the Food Network and the title of the page was “Crowd Pleasing Cakes.” Duh! I thought. Have you ever heard of a crowd hating cake? It’s a cake; the fact that it is pleasing is not news. Now Crowd Pleasing Crudités, that’s groundbreaking. That web-editor was just plain lazy to come up with that cake headline, but then again it did get me thinking about cake with just the power of suggestion.
Sometimes asking a dumb question can get people to go where you want to lead them without them even knowing that is what you are doing. If that last sentence does not make any sense to you follow this true story.
The summer between my sophomore and junior year in college I stayed in Carlisle, PA and had numerous jobs to try and make ends meet. It was a recession and unskilled liberal arts labor was cheep and abundant. One of my favorite short-lived employers was the Electrolux vacuum company, maker of fine, but very expensive cleaning machines. I was a door-to-door vacuum sales person peddling $500 machines in an area where people’s mortgages might only be $300, yet I still sold some vacuums.
How did I do that, you might ask? I asked a stupid question. See, once I got inside someone’s house I was almost assured of selling him or her a vacuum. The top of the line Electrolux was a canister machine that had a wand so you could not just suck the dirt off the floors, but the furniture, draperies and most importantly, mattresses were all possible cleaning areas. Have you ever vacuumed your mattress? Certainly not, if you had an upright vacuum.
Here is how the pitch went: I showed the sucker; I mean prospect, a clean empty cloth vacuum bag for demonstration purposes. I vacuum about one square yard in their living room and then take the bag out and dump all the stuff it sucked up back on the floor. It is amazing what a new vacuum can find. I never failed to have a noticeably gross amount of dust, dirt and hair, no matter how clean the house looked to start.
Horrified, the homeowner, usually a woman, would make some excuse about the age of her current machine. Gotcha. It was never that she had not cleaned in weeks, but to save face it must be an equipment problem. Then I would ask the really dumb question that guaranteed me the sale, “Has anyone in your house had a cold this year?” At least one person in every house in America has had a cold in the last year.
That was when I would ask to see their mattress, specifically the husband’s side of the bed. I would peel back the sheets and repeat the cloth bag routine but on the mattress. The stuff you get out of a mattress makes the floor look like a clean plate that just came out of the dishwasher. This is when I would infer that not sucking the dead skin out of your mattress is somehow connected to colds. SOLD!
The point of this story is don’t be lead down a path you did not intend to travel because someone pointed out something obvious or asked a stupid question. I had to fight hard not to be drawn to eat some cake just because it was crowd pleasing, but then again I have to work hard not to want cake just because it exists on earth.
Did I Eat?
Posted: March 6, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Alzheimer's, memory 1 CommentIf you lose your memory do you forget to eat? In the last little bit I have talked to more people who have a loved one facing memory issues. Not just the “Where the hell did I put my keys?” kinds of stuff, but the “I can’t remember how to get home” issues. I learned of someone my age that has early onset of Alzheimer’s. That is scary and sad stuff.
Keeping your brain in tip-top shape is hard work. I remember when I first got out of college I felt that I was losing my basic math skills. One day I was trying to do long division without a calculator and could not remember where the remainder went. Are you kidding me? I stopped using a calculator to balance my checkbook from then on. I wonder how long it has been since I balanced a checkbook. Maybe I better practice my long division again.
I justify spending time playing games like Mah Jongg and Bridge because they are reported to help keeping your brain working. I don’t know if they keep your brain working or point out early on when your memory starts to go. I played bridge for years with a friend who now has Alzheimer’s and the day she looked at me and asked me how much an ace was worth I knew she was in big trouble.
What I really need to know is if you start to lose your mind do you forget to eat and miss some meals or do you forget that you already ate and eat twice? I know that some people who take Ambien get up and eat in their sleep with no memory of doing it. I wonder if developing a memory issue is something like being on Ambien.
If the answer is that people end up eating more I am going to need to develop some kind of timer controlled locked refrigerator that keeps me out of it until the appointed time. I am not really worried about forgetting to eat becoming a problem. I think my naturally sluggish metabolism will adjust fine to fewer and fewer meals. Maybe Tupperware can make giant seven-day meal containers along the lines of pillboxes. We can have a weeks worth of food put in them and then we would know if we had eaten or not.
I am hopeful that the sharp-brained stock I come from will keep me protected from the serious forgetfulness, but there is no guarantee. I went to write this blog today and cooked two different things to post and discovered after the fact that I had already written recipes just like them and posted them. I think I need to play more Mah Jongg.
Step Away From the Oven
Posted: March 4, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Anger-bake, Briana brough Leave a commentMy wonderful friend Briana Brough invented the best word on a Facebook post today. The word is “Anger-bake”, which is the act of baking something yummy and fattening in response to something stupid. In Bri’s case it was the whole sequester and why the republicans can’t make a deal with the President that was giving her fits, but “Anger-baking” can certainly come about because of so many things that make us crazy.
What Bri did not disclose was whether her “anger-baking” was going to be followed up with “pissed-off-eating” and then “despondent-self-loathing.” It is bad enough that we have actual personal relationships that can push our need for baked goods buttons, but when every act or in this case non-act of our elected officials is driving us to the chocolate chip aisle what are we to do?
Do you think that all the politicians got together and said, “people are living too long for our social security system. Let’s drive everybody to an early grave by making them so crazy they eat themselves to death.” Cutting ten to twenty years off the current lifespan certainly would solve some of the budget crisis. It is practically the only excuse I can think of for they way both sides of the aisle are acting.
In my case I am going to have to go with the ostrich plan and not watch any TV news, read any newspapers or news websites or listen to NPR. All those media outlets could lead me to anger-bake too and I just can’t afford to have even an individual size cheesecake around.
I wish I could say that the answer is to get involved and help solve the problem, but even ever optimistic me is worried that there is little help for Washington. I did hear one reporter ask the President if he could just lock Congress in until they came up with a solution and he said he was just the President, not a dictator, but that pressure from the American people is all that will work. I’m afraid there is just not enough pressure in the world, but maybe we can send all our congress people all our doubly fattening anger-baked goods and kill them off with butter, sugar and flour.
Epic Zipper Failure Follow-up
Posted: March 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Durham Academy Auction, zipper 1 CommentRarely do I do a follow-up blog, but if you read yesterday’s “Will It Zip Roulette” you only got half the story. I reported that my main concern was fitting into my deal-of-the-decade-dress before going off to stand on the stage and raise money for my daughter’s school. I wrote yesterday’s blog, jumped in my dress and Carter zipped me up saying, “You have lost more weight, it zips perfectly.” Then she took my picture and I posted it with the blog.
Not one minute after posting, just a half an hour before I needed to leave for the auction the zipper broke and my naked bits beneath the dress made an explosive appearance. Holy Molly (Not my actual words or thoughts.) Carter’s first reaction was, “It your dress flies open at the auction I will never be able to show my face at school again.”
Carter was unable to fix the zipper with me in the dress so I wriggled it over my head and was able to pull the tab back down to the bottom and try again. Luckily it was just a faulty zipper (No wonder that Saks guy was so happy to sell the dress to me cheap) and not a ripped dress. I knew my only option was to get sewn into the dress, but time and expertise were short. Carter has never sewn anything except needlepoint so she was not the answer. My friend Lynn was due to arrive at my house just to see how I looked in dress, but domestic work is not her strong suit.
I called my professional drapery maker neighbor Mary Clayton and she came to my rescue in less than five minutes. By that time Lynn had arrived so she witnessed Mary’s Navy Seal like dress saving surgery and was so thankful that she did not have to learn to sew on me. Being the expert seamstress that she is, Mary informed us that in the olden days before zippers women of means were always sewn into their finery. That elevated my status, but I still feared the stitching bursting out as I stood on the theatre in the round stage with spots lights glaring.
I told the audience last night that this was a possibility and if it did indeed happen I hoped they were bid bigger and higher for the unwanted show they were getting. But thanks to Mary’s master handiwork the stitching held. All my womanness was bound tightly inside my dress and the bidding went on for just the regular items. Perhaps a wardrobe malfunction would have gotten people’s attention better, but at least I have no worries that Carter can’t hold her head up high at school on Monday.
Will It Zip Roulette
Posted: March 1, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Durham Academy Auction, zipper 7 Comments
Tonight is the Durham Academy Auction where I am the auctioneer. Being a charity auctioneer is practically my favorite thing to do. I love enticing people to part with their money for a good cause. This auction theme is Mad Men. Thank goodness a theme that has a major character with a full figure, Joan, the secretary that slept her way to partnership.
So in the spirit of all things Joan I set out to find a dress that is tight in all the right places that will push up and out my heaving bosom yet still be appropriate for a school sponsored affair. I auctioneer in the round so I have to have my back side look as good as my front side since half the time that is all people are getting to see. Add sleeves that at least cover my arms to the elbow to the list of dress requirements since I am flapping them around pointing at people as they bid. Top it off with my natural penuriousness that refuses to spend too much money on a dress and not enough on the charity. That is one tall order in dress shopping.
As luck would have it I found something at 0ff 5th that seemed to fit the bill. I stopped by the store one Tuesday morning when I was alone and clearly the store did not expect any customers either, at least not women, because the only sales clerk was a man. I spotted a dress that I was sure I should try and the gentleman unlocked a dressing room for me. I went in and undressed completely before unzipping the long mermaid gown. As the zipper descended I noticed that the last four inches of the zipper had come unstitched from the dress. Nothing unusual for a discount store and certainly something I could sew up myself.
I stepped into the navy blue number, unsure what my current dress size was, hoping it would fit. The first test of going over my usual problem area hips was not an issue. I was sure I was home free because if a dress fit my hips the rest would be good. I slipped my arms into sleeves and pulled the dress up around my nakedness. Seemed good. I reached behind me to zip it up but with the unattached zipper I was unable to get a grasp on it and pull it up. I contorted and twisted myself trying to get the zipper up. No luck. I opened the dressing room door a crack to see if there was some woman outside who could help me. Not a clicking heel could be heard. I stood there looking at the dress trying to decide if it fit.
After a few moments I took it off and got dressed to go see if they had another. Certainly not. I brought it to the salesman and pointed out the zipper problem. He offered me more money off the dress if I would take it like that as a final sale, no returns. So the $495 dress was now going to cost me only $92. I decided it was a risk worth taking and bought it.
I tried it on at home and asked Carter to zip it up for me. No easy task, but I’m wearing it anyway. It acts as it’s own corset and fulfills all my auctioneering requirements. So off to the Cotton room I will go, with my 1960’s inspired false eyelashes and eyeliner. I feel like all of Joan’s clothes are very tight so I’m sticking tightly to the Mad Men theme.
My Love Affair With My DVR
Posted: February 24, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: ads, commercials, DVR 2 CommentsI love to watch TV. I am not a snob about it and am happy to admit that I do it. From news in the morning to the Good Wife at night, there are lots of different types of shows I love to watch. With the exception of the Super Bowl ads, I would rather skip the commercials, especially food commercials and ones for local car dealerships. Mostly I want to skip them because they are eating up my allotted TV watching time and I want see the story. But I definitely want to skip the food ads, restaurants as well as individual foods, because they start my brain thinking I want to eat something, even if I was not hungry before.
The DVR, or Digital Video Recorder, is almost the best diet tool I own. The ability to record my favorite shows and then fast-forward through all the ads keeps the cheesy gooey pizza ads from planting the desire in my head.
On one memorable occasion an ad had an adverse effect on me. As a teenager I was home sick with the flu. Hold-up on the playroom sofa watching TV an advertisement for Ragu came on the screen. I will never forget how seeing those images of sauce-laden spaghetti made my stomach feel and before I knew it I was running to the bathroom barley making it before the projectile show began. It was months before I could even look at spaghetti again, all just from watching the pictures on the tube.
Unfortunately I got over that Pavlovian experience and now have no ill feelings when I see that yummy red sauce. Rarely are commercials for plain steamed broccoli or one perfectly ripe peach. Individual fruits and vegetables don’t have agencies or campaigns. But burgers and fries or gooey chocolate chip cookies can be seen hourly enticing weak willed beings to crave them.
DVR is our only defense. Don’t let those brilliant marketers get into your head because your head controls your stomach. The power of suggestion is great. The best way to fight eating the wrong thing at the wrong time is not to have any reminders it exists. You could just read a book, but eventually you will want to know whom the Bachelor gave the final rose to.
Tapping to Thinness?
Posted: February 23, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques Leave a commentHave you ever seen a person out in public tapping on their face or collarbone or underarms? Neither have I. But it is a stress relieving technique that was brought to my attention called EFT which does not stand for Electronic Funds transfer as I have known that acronym, but Emotional Freedom Techniques.
According to EFT Universe, the largest EFT website in the Universe, this technique was developed using Cognitive and Exposure Therapy combined with acupressure and is good for helping people with over 30 different problems from ADD, allergies, carpel tunnel, phobias, sports anxiety to weight loss. From the little I have learned, it involves tapping on the acupressure points and talking yourself out of what ails you. Your pressure points are places like your temples, besides the outside of your eye, the bone under your eye, the place between your nose and mouth and the center of your chin.
I have no personal experience with this method and since it is simple and free I can’t call it snake oil because I don’t know who is benefitting from promoting it. The way you do it for weight loss is if you have a food you crave you are supposed to smell it and then start this tapping process on eight places on your body, tapping each place ten to fifteen times saying all the while, “Even though I deeply crave this (fill in the blank, let’s say brownie), I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Then tap, tap tap. Smell the brownie again and if you still crave it, do the tap-talking again. Still crave, tap-talk. Hell, if I had a brownie in front of me and I was smelling it I am sure I could tap on the side of my face with one hand and lift the brownie to my mouth with the other hand. If I was supposed to be tapping with two hands I easily could bend my face down to the brownie on a plate and take a bite handless.
Maybe this technique is supposed to help with future brownie encounters and somehow if I meet one on the street I am just supposed to tap my pressure points and I will somehow lose my desire to take a bite, but that seems just too simple for me. I think that by doing this smelling-tap-talking I would probably actually sensitize myself to want a brownie anytime I accidentally tapped one of these pressure points.
Maybe people who are prone to being hypnotized could have success with Emotional Freedom Techniques. Somehow I just don’t see that I am one of them. I think that the best EFT stress reliever for me is still Electronic Funds Transfers, as long as they were transfers into my bank account and not out. As for brownie cravings, my best defense is steering clear and definitely not smelling them.
Kids Make a Difference
Posted: February 22, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: NC School of Science and Math 1 Comment
It’s cold here today — like the rainy and bitter cold. It’s the kind of day you would like to make a big mug of hot chocolate and sit in front of a fire. But that’s not what Carter, and her friends Mason and Ellis did with me today. For a mission project the four of us went down to the unheated Durham Food Bank warehouse and sorted brights.
Brights might be a term you are not familiar with unless you are in the canning or food banking business. A bright is a can without a label. The kids spent the afternoon inspecting dented cans and identifying the contents by a stamp on the lid and adding labels to those without one. After doing all that they had to box the good ones and then carefully stack the rejects in a giant box to be sent off to a hog farm. Since they were the first crew on this bright shift the reject box was empty. One kid had to climb inside the box and the others handed the cans in. Carter was the last one to put her finger on her nose so into the box she went.
Let me set the record straight that I did not do any of the work. I had other Food Bank business to attend to while I was there. Thankfully Carter’s mentor Jamie came and supervised when I had to be elsewhere. By the time I came back they had sorted through a good size pallet and Ellis and Mason were just handing the last of the cans down inside the box to Carter.
It was not hard work, but good work. Their volunteer time was equivalent to what it would have cost the Food Bank about $120 if they had to pay an employee to do it. Instead of spending their resources doing that the Food Bank will be able to spend that money acquiring more food to feed hungry people. They can turn that $120 into $1,200 worth of food so in essence that is how much food the kids were providing to hungry people by volunteering.
North Carolina kids hold the Guinness World record for the largest food drive by a non-charitable organization in 24 hours. Two years ago the students at the NC school of Science and Math in conjunction with the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC collected 559,885 pounds of food in Durham – A WORLD RECORD.
The kids at Science and Math had tried to break that record in years before and even though they had not succeeded they had fed thousands of people with the food they collected. Their not setting the record was still a big win for the Food Bank.
So today on this cold and blistery day I am thankful for the generosity and hard work of kids. Everyone can make a difference in the world no matter your age.
The Stand In Line Diet
Posted: February 21, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: georgetown cupcake, standing in line Leave a commentMy great college friend Janet and her daughter Sofia arrived last night for a few days visit while they are making the great college tour. Being a diet supportive friend Janet brought me a beautiful Hydrangea plant. Carter on the other hand got a cupcake from Georgetown Cupcake of TLC TV fame. I asked how long they had to stand in line to get that cupcake and they said only thirty minutes.
Only is not a word I would use when thinking about standing in line for food especially when there is plenty of food available in America. It is one thing to have to stand in a line to get bread in London during World War II, but a cupcake, not something I would do for my child. I am thankful that Janet did it for Carter because now that she has had one I am off the hook from even being asked.
I wonder if people buy more cupcakes at one time when they have to wait so long? Would waiting cause me to eat more because I had so many available at once or make me eat less because I would not want to have to wait in another long line to buy it? Would I just not bother to eat because I would not want to stand in line?
If only I could create some artificial waiting period for fattening food, but instant availability for healthy food. I don’t know what most people would be willing to put up with, but I for one would rather not spend my time standing in lines and would forego something yummy. But somehow, for many people, the line to get something raises its worthiness.
Maybe the answer is that there is an exercise class that happens while people stand in line for something decadent, like a cupcake. That way the waiting was productive and they would not want to overeat after doing all that exercise. On the other hand they may feel like they could afford to eat more after doing the exercise. Human psychology is so complicated when it comes to cupcakes.
Nothing Replaces Willpower
Posted: February 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: healthcare, money Leave a commentMy friend Arabella sent me a link to an NPR story entitled “Money replaces willpower in programs promoting weight loss.” The long and the short of it is that the new health care law allows companies with more than 50 employees to require over weight workers who do not exercise to pay a great portion of their insurance costs. I think of it as a sin tax for being fat like smokers pay a steep tax for cigarettes.
The story goes on to say that some companies are taking this as an opportunity to help their employees get to a healthy weight by offering monetary incentives. It surely is cheaper for a company to have healthy employees so offering some money directly to the employees is more economical than paying higher insurance premiums. The story goes on to say that money is not a great motivator for losing weight.
The problem is money might help a small percentage of people lose weight, but if they only did it for the money what is going to prevent them from gaining it back? Not your employer, your spouse, a parent or child is going to make you want to lose weight. Only you can do it. Not until you decide you want it will it happen in any meaningful and lasting way and then it is still a struggle.
The problem is you have to eat everyday. It’s not like quitting drugs or drinking where you can never do it again. We all have to eat. So money can never replace will power. There is not enough money in the world. If you are someone who lives to eat you have to work at not letting it take over.
For most obese people they will just pay the penalty rather than actually work out and loose weight. Food is a much stronger drug than money. So no matter how much America collectively wants to be thinner because it is good for our health care bill it won’t happen because we legislate it. At least it will be a little fairer that if you don’t do anything about it you carry a great portion of the burden your fat imposes on society. No one is giving up Girl Scout cookies for the good of their country.
The Specialness of a “Collection”
Posted: February 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: jeff jones, palm beach, target Leave a comment
When I was a kid we only had cake in the house on someone’s birthday. It was always a cake made out of box with frosting made from a mix too. Something that would now be considered nothing special, but the fact that there was cake was the thing that made it special, and the birthday. For kids I know now, having a cake is an everyday occurrence, or at least expected. The specialness of it has been overrun by the everydayness. No one pays any attention to the average.
Target has really hit on the way to take the ho-hum out of the unexciting with the brilliant marketing campaign of the “Everyday Collection.” I don’t know if my friend Jeff Jones, the CMO of Target, came up with this idea, but I will give him credit. “Collections” are special and he has elevated the mundane things like diapers and paper towels to a new level by calling them part of the “Everyday Collection” at least at Target. Those same things are not part of a collection at any other store and so don’t you want to get them only at Target?
The psychology of special makes us like something more than we normally would. If we can be desensitized to the specialness of having a cake around we can be resentistized to the average being elevated. It all has to do with our perception.
This can work for eating healthy food too. Rather than calling something a “diet food,” with all the depriving connotations those words conjure up, I am going to call my daily salad part of my “Svelte Collection.” Who doesn’t want to be svelte? Makes you want to run right over to my house and have that oil-free salad.
Marketing has been a big part of the diet industry for years. You don’t think that the Palm Beach Diet would have been as successful if it were named the Pine Bluff, Arkansas Diet? When you close your eyes and think of Palm Beach beautiful and thin people like CZ Guest come to mind.
So market the good things to yourself. Rename and reframe the ordinary, typical and dull as something new and exciting. Make things special again, even if it comes out of a box.
Body Opposites
Posted: February 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Birthday, Suzanne 1 CommentToday is my dearest college friend Suzanne’s birthday! She is Carter’s Godmother, and we were each other’s maid and matron of honor at out weddings. It is hard for me to believe that we have known each other almost twice as long as we have not known each other.
In our decades long friendship one thing has remained the same. While my body has changed multiple times, Suzanne’s has not. More of the time than not we would have what be what I call “Body opposites.” Suzanne is very tall and perfectly thin. I am neither. People often mistake me for being tall, but I correct them by saying I am just loud and thus appear taller than I am.
When Suzanne and I were in college she used to describe our bras as a fruit cup and a salad bowl. That has not changed; although I think now the better description might be a fruit cup and a salad spinner since my boobs can take any shape they are molded into, except for bowl shape.
Suzanne loves food, a common interest we share, but somehow she is able not to overeat or gain weight. The only time I can think of her being concerned with her weight was sometime after the birth of her third child. She told me she asked a doctor what might possibly be going wrong and after a few probing questions the doctor discovered that Suzanne was eating her cereal out of a bowl that held three or four servings. Soon after that realization Suzanne was down the few pounds that the cereal had left her with.
Suzanne is an adventurous eater. One of her favorite things to do is make a sandwich out of all the leftovers in the refrigerator. “A meal between two pieces of bread.” One of the best habits she has is that she always washes fruit when she brings it home from the store and keeps what is not perishable on her kitchen counter so when someone in her house is hungry the fruit is the first thing they see. I have happily snacked on more than a few grapes while cooking in her kitchen.
One thing that is wonderful about being Suzanne’s friend is that no matter where I am on my weight continuum she is never judgmental and is always supportive. That is a great sign of a true friend, one who loves you just the way you are. So today, on her day I would like to thank her for all the fabulous years we have spent together. We may be body opposites but I will always consider us hearts alike.
The Real Inspiration for Downton Abbey
Posted: February 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: downton abbey, hom-a-gen farm 1 CommentWell before Downton Abbey was a well-formed story idea I feel that Julian Fellows, its creator, must have met my father while we were working in London for British Telecom. Julian’s original screenplay was actually called Hom-a-gen Abbey based at my ancestral farm in Providence, NC.
Lord Grantham is clearly based on my father, who chose “Your Grace” as his grandfather name. Gracie, as my father is called by his granddaughter, has three daughters just as Lord Grantham does. Mary would be loosely based on me, since I am the oldest and only married daughter. Edith would be my middle sister Margaret, looking for her place in the world. And the much loved and hardest working youngest daughter Sybil is based on my sister Janet.
Fellows surely had heard my father talk about his mother, known as Granettes because Dame Maggie Smith portrays my Grandmother to a tee. One example of their parallel personalities is towards the end of Granettes life she was in the infirmary and she rang and rang the nurse call button. When the nurse came scurrying in my grandmother screamed at her, “Get a pain pill, quick.” The nurse ran out of the room and returned with the medication and asked her what was hurting. “It’s not for me, it’s for that fool over there,” my grandmother said pointing to another patient in the room. Granettes was famous for saying something terribly biting which took a person a moment to figure out. I’m sure I heard her say to more than one pitiful person she met, “You are all you’ll ever be.”
My mother would love to be the wealthy wife who saved the family home with her inheritance. She lives a charmed life similar to Lady Cora.
Mr. Fellow certainly must have spent time in my father’s London office and overheard him talking to the people on the speakerphone who work at Home-a-gen. The relationship of all the farm workers and my father is exactly like the downstairs characters on Downton Abbey to Lord Grantham.
My father depended on his staff to keep the farm going while he was away. One important character was Alvin who was chief builder and as important to the running of Hom-a-gen as chief butler Mr. Carson, but in a much more redneck way. Gracie would call Alvin and check in on the progress of building projects and the weather, always an important topic to land owners and farmers. Once when my father heard bad weather was going on in the Americas he called Alvin to get the local report. Since he always used a speakerphone everyone in the office heard this conversation.
Gracie: Alvin, what is happening with the weather?
Alvin: Well, there’s a tycoon and it’s off the coast of Costa Rica.
Gracie: Really?
Alvin: No, no I’m wrong, It’s off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Gracie, like Lord Grantham, did not correct Alvin that it was not a tycoon, but a typhoon.
When Julian Fellows wrote the first screenplay for Hom-a-gen Abbey and went to sell it to the BBC they certainly said it would be way too cost prohibitive to film a show in America and could he please rewrite the show for a British location. And thus Downton Abbey came to be.
Teenage Boys
Posted: February 15, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: milk, teenage boys Leave a commentThe gender differences in calorie consumption just are not fair. There are two teenage boys at my house right now and at 3:00 in the afternoon they were about to expire so they ordered pizza. When three boxes arrived at the door I asked how many other kids were showing up. None, two pizza and one cheese sticks were just for them as the afternoon snack.
Growing up I lived next door to the Prahl family of four boys. One a year older than me, named Halfdan (pronounced Hallffdan), Crispan was my age, Duncan one year younger and Amos was three years younger. The timing must have been off on the last one. Our bus stop was at their house so when we were let in the afternoon the Prahl boys and I would go in their house for our snack. Each one of them would sit down at their kitchen counter and eat a whole box of cereal and a half-gallon of milk.
I would get a cookie and talk with their mother Lottie who was just happy to have another female to talk to for a moment. I used to ask her how in the world she could bring enough milk home to keep these four boys going? She said that the afternoon snack mil was only about half of their at home daily consumption. The difference in the amount of food they needed, especially when they were teenagers, than that of my family of girls was over whelming.
How did boys survive in a world before there was a constant food supply? I guess the human race really only needed a few men. I don’t know that I ever heard of boys starving more than girls, but based on what I have seen boys eat I would think that the slightest famine would render the massive calorie requiring boys practically useless.
I think big pharma needs to study the metabolic makeup of fourteen-year-old boys and put that in a pill to sell as the weight loss miracle. I know there comes a time when even people of the male persuasion need to reign in their eating, thank goodness, otherwise there would not be enough food on earth. Imagine how many diary cows would be needed in every man continued to drink as much as the teenage Prahl boys did.
Looking Through the Valentine’s Lens
Posted: February 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cameras, cannon, olympus, valentine's day Leave a commentThis afternoon Carter went to take Shay-Shay out for a walk and announced that there were flowers on the front porch. Not just flowers, but two beautiful orchids, my favorite. It was a wonderful treat that was not surprising on this Valentines Day. Russ is in Chicago and won’t be home until tomorrow, but I knew he would still make the day special even if he were not here. It is not just because he is an exemplary husband who I love more than chocolate and peanut butter, but also because he has a long-standing Valentine’s phobia.
Twenty-two years at our first Valentine’s Day, before we were married, Russ really felt the pressure to live up to all the manufactured hype about declaring his love on this day. Diamond earrings were the gift he thought he should give me, probably from watching too many Kay Jewelers ads. So for the days leading up to February 14 he searched every mall in South Jersey looking for what he considered to be diamonds worthy of his love and my ears only to discover that diamonds were really, really expensive.
He continued the quest until the day before when he finally realized that the prices on diamonds just don’t vary that much and had to find a plan “B” at the last minute. For Christmas that year Russ had given me a very nice camera. Since I was fourteen I had been into photography, even concentrating on it as an art major in college. Russ did not know that camera brand loyalty was akin to speaking a foreign language. Just because you can speak French when your native tongue is English does not mean you can understand Spanish.
I was a Cannon girl and Russ gave me an Olympus. It was a foreign operating system to me and one where I had a lot less creative control. I pretended I liked it, but secretly I still used my trusty Cannon. One excuse I used with Russ was that all my lenses were Cannon and they did not fit the new Olympus. So what brilliant gift did Russ come up with for our first Valentine’s Day together… a lens for my hated Olympus.
Poor Russ. I tried to act excited, but my reaction clearly showed that he was now compounding a wrong gift with an unromantic gift. I tried to make him see that it is not the value of the gift, just the sentiment that counts. I don’t need any gift on Valentine’s Day. I love my husband and I know he loves me too. The last thing I want him to do is stress about a gift. His learning the “lens mistake” so early in our relationship has saved him hurt feelings and thousands of dollars in wrong gift choices. A sweet note, or an orchid that will live until the next year make me happiest.
So the words on the card from the florist today, “I hope you like this more than a lens” are the similar to the words he says every year. But it’s not the flowers or a gift that I like. It’s my husband whom I love everyday. He makes every day Valentines Day for me.
Happy Fat Tuesday!
Posted: February 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Fat Tuesday, Mari gras, Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday 2 CommentsHow could I let the only day in the year with the word Fat in it go by uncelebrated? In case you aren’t from New Orleans or fluent in French you might not know that Mardi Gras is actually the translation of Fat Tuesday. In New Orleans tonight plenty of good Catholics and other lovers of good food are going to be eating high on the hog because tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten season when same said good Catholics are supposed to give up decedent eating and do some good fasting and denying during Lent.
When I lived in London I learned that today is called Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day when the believers would eat really fattening pancakes. In Brazil today is Carnival and we know what a wild party that is. Holland, Germany, Sweden and Italy are all also eating up a storm today for tomorrow they pray and start the fasting.
I am not sure how many people actually fast these days, although I do know many people who give up one particular sinful food during Lent, such as chocolate or soda. That seems a lot easier than fasting during all daylight hours and only eating a small evening meal.
As a Presbyterian there is nothing I am required to give up. Thank goodness because I am running out of things to give up in the food category. I could give up playing games on my phone, I-pad or computer if I was looking for some penance. But I am not looking for atonement. What can I do that would be better for the world than not playing a game?
Having a holiday to eat as much as you can one day before you don’t eat much the next days almost seem like you are cheating the system. Wouldn’t it be better to just eat thoughtfully and thankfully all the time? I’m sure those theologians amongst you might send me some comments on this.
But no matter what you believe or celebrate or give up if you are enjoying some King Cake today please have a slice for me. See my giving up started long ago and will have to continue well past 40 days. I’m working to get to Skinny Saturday and Svelte Sunday. I’ve had one too many Fat Tuesdays in my life.
Don’t Mix It Up
Posted: February 11, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: mix, mixed, trail mix 1 CommentI have decided that almost any food with the word “mix” in it is not a low calorie food. Let’s start with “trail mix.” This seems to be a current favorite of my husbands. He had a big meeting at his office in January and had me buy all the snacks for them especially requesting “trail mix” since it was something “everybody” loved. Since that meeting he has asked me to buy more trail mix, which I thought was for his office. Nooo, that was his personal trail mix for home. Please go hide the bag of everything yummy, peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins and the big time sin of all sins, M&M’s.
Other mixes I can’t get near are Chex mix, cake mix, brownie mix, sweet and sour mix, bridge mix or pancake mix. What I have decided is that the word “mix” is code for fattening although “mixed” is not always bad.
Mixed fruit is good as long as it is fresh and not canned with syrup. Mixed fruit is bad if it is followed by any of the words pie, cobbler or muffins. Mixed nuts are fattening, although healthy fattening if there can be such a thing. Mixed drinks are just that, mixed. Mixed vegetables are great.
Of the things I eat that help me drop the pounds hardly any of them are a mix. As far as I can remember I have never eaten a salad mix. I make my own soups, so soup mixes are not part of my intake. Nothing sounds as unappetizing as a meat mix, so I hope no one is eating that, although a lean meatloaf is good.
In the history of food mixes are relatively new and in food, new is not all that good. Basically the things that come straight out of the earth or animal with little to no enhancements are the best and I can’t think of any food that God made as a mix. It takes a human to make something worse for you.
Sunday Nights Are Not The Same
Posted: February 10, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Andy Rooney, Sixty Minutes 2 CommentsI miss Andy Rooney. Sixty Minutes just isn’t the same without him. Not the most attractive guy, with those monster eyebrows and wrinkled clothes yet somehow I was wildly attracted to him. Just goes to show that some women like a good sense of humor I guess.
What I miss is someone who is respectable enough to be on a serious news show, but allowed to talk about the most ridiculous subjects. Somehow I think that Andy and I must be distantly related because I too often write and talk about things that no one ever thought of or at least would not admit to thinking of.
One of my favorite Andy Rooney essays was about how real food almost never looks like the picture of the food on the box it came out of. Never once did his pancakes come out so perfectly matched and brown as the ones on the Bisquik box. He goes on to say that he never had a Betty Crocker cake come out at even and symmetrical as the one on the box.
Since I take a lot of pictures of food I cook to put with the recipes on the blog I know that food styling in a serious art, one that I have not mastered. I have never been one who cared exactly how food looked, but am much more concerned about how it tastes. I am sorry that you can’t taste my food on the blog and have to be wooed to make it yourself from my inferior photo and maybe a delicious description.
With the giant world of Andy Rooney wannabe’s in the blogosphere I don’t know if Sixty Minutes will ever replace him. I am sure he was quite a big expense for the two minutes of weekly programming he produced. But those two minutes were almost always my favorite TV of the week.
Although Andy was often funny he also was often touching especially when he talked about war. I will never forget a piece he did about memorial day and how maybe we should not spend time thinking about those we have lost in war, but spend time figuring out how to not have any more wars so we would not have to lose any more young people.
Please Sixty Minutes, bring us a modern day Andy Rooney. I miss having someone say the things we all need to hear whether it’s inane or heartfelt.
Yankee Workout
Posted: February 9, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: shovel, snow, yoga 3 CommentsThis morning I went to Yoga class where I got to think good thoughts while trying to stretch my body to be longer and taller. One thing I was giving thanks for in that class was that I do not live in the blizzard hit area of the country any more. For those of you who are stuck inside with two feet of snow outside I am sorry. Even if you only have one foot of snow I am sorry.
Living in North Carolina now and almost never having to shovel was a choice Russ and I made nineteen years ago. Why my southern born parents ever left the south to live in Connecticut for thirty years I will never know. We came here after living through fifteen snow storms in twelve weeks in 1993 and have never looked back.
One really memorable snowstorm took place in Wilton when I must have been about nine years old. It happened before my parents built on to our house and we still had four garages all in a row. It was a blizzard very similar to the one Connecticut had yesterday so huge amounts of snow fell and the winds were so strong that they blew it up against the house. The drifts were way above the garage doors so that when we opened them there was a wall of snow at least eight feet deep outside.
I remember digging tunnels out of one garage door opening and looping back to another garage door opening. It was like a giant hamster habit trail in snow. Our garage was heated and I’m sure that my sister Margaret and I spent at least $300 in heating oil because we opened all the doors at the same time to dig tunnels. My mother must have been glad that we were just not bothering her and never came down to see what we were doing.
Shoveling snow is the hardest exercise on earth. It uses lots of different muscle groups that don’t get used enough unless you are a prisoner who breaks up rocks all day. The trick to shoveling is to do it throughout the storm, unless it is blowing like it did yesterday. The second trick is to shovel as soon as the snow stops because new snow is lighter than old snow. The worst snow is one that ends with sleet or freezing rain on top so you get a really hard crust on top. That stuff is hard to break through and really heavy.
For all my Yankee domiciled friends right now, I hope you have power, are warm and have shoveled already. If you have done all those things try some Yoga. The stretching will do you good. If you don’t have power, or heat or own a shovel do some Yoga. You will need to find some inner peace. Namaste.
SkinnyLicious
Posted: February 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Cheesecake Factory 1 CommentLast night I took Carter out to dinner. As we were driving to a place I thought would be an easy diet place Carter begged to change locations and go to the Cheesecake Factory. Before I said anything Carter said, “I understand if you don’t want to go there since they won’t have anything you can eat.” Thinking it might not be too crowded on a Wednesday night and since it had been some time since we had been there I gave in.
I was right on the lack of crowd part so we were seated immediately. I was not even going to open the giant book of a menu because I knew that I would get the luau salad without the wontons or nuts and the light soy dressing on the side. Can you tell I’ve ordered that before? As Carter was reading the manuscript of choices I noticed a small folder that was under my menu. I pulled it out and thought I read the word “SkinnyLicious,” but was unsure until I got my reading glasses out.
Hooray! A whole menu of choices of lighter fare at the Cheesecake factory! When I say a whole menu I mean it. There were 47 choices not including the skinny cocktails. I am not sure how skinny it is because the heading at the top of the salads sections said, “Each one under 590 calories.” I thought that 590 calories is not usually a small amount for one meal, but in comparison to the regular Cheesecake Factory food it must be a huge reduction.
I ordered the Asian Chicken Salad asking for the dressing on the side, hoping I could reduce the calories that way. Well, when this giant serving platter sized salad arrived I thought I had hit the jackpot. I was able to get my dinner fill with only half the salad and brought the other half home for today! So now that 590 calories turned into 295 and I was happy.
After dinner the waitress brought the dessert menu. She had a new sales technique. She told us that if we ordered from a certain list of cheesecakes .25¢ of our bill would be given to Feeding America. What a way to relieve guilt. You eat dessert so others will be fed. Twenty-five cents does not seem like a large enough donation to push many people over the edge to order dessert if they were not already going to do it. If the Cheesecake Factory really wants to increase sales they should consider bumping up the donation to at least a dollar.
I do want to thank them for finally offering a number of choices that are a little healthier than their average fare. I hope it is successful and other restaurants will follow suit.
The Chit Book Diet
Posted: February 6, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: chits, Wilton riding Club 4 CommentsWhen I was a kid growing up in Wilton, Connecticut my family belonged to a tiny club called the Wilton Riding Club. It was basically a swim and tennis club with some horses walking around. We did not have any fancy dining facilities, just a snack bar and a big barn for parties.
The Riding Club was the summer center of our childhood universe. All my friends had the same summer routine. Our mothers would drop us off at swim team at 7:30 in the morning and they would go play tennis before it got to hot for adults to be out on the courts. We would freeze in the morning pool water, which had to make us swim faster for the hour and a half long practice.
After practice the very young kids would go off to day camp on the back half of the club and the older, like twelve-year old kids, would hang around the pool and jump on the trampoline. Once you had aged out of day camp most of the “regulars” would stay at the club all day. We had a routine of swimming and eating lunch and then playing tennis around one in the afternoon because no mothers would be on the courts at the height of the sun.
Lunch for the hangout crowd meant a visit to the snack bar. The choices were limited. Grilled cheese, Grilled cheese with bacon, hamburgers, cheeseburger and cheeseburgers with bacon, fries, frozen candy bars and ice cream. Iced tea, lemonade and half and half (tea and lemonade in the days before Arnold Palmer.) Payment for these items was through the use of “Chits” which were tickets with .25¢, .10¢ and .05¢ printed on them that were sold in books of ten-dollar increments.
Everyday my mother would dole out our allotted chits for the day. I can remember that .85¢ was the amount of chits I was given for years on end. It was perfect training to become the head of the budget and management because your choices were severely limited with just .85¢.
Basically I ran a two-day menu plan. One day I would get the cheapest main dish, the grilled cheese at .45¢ and then a half and half for .25¢, leaving me with .15¢ to carry over the next day. The second day I could get a cheeseburger for .75¢ and a cup of water and later in the afternoon I would take my carryover money and my dime left from that day and get a frozen Milky Way bar for .25¢. All the candy bars were frozen, which was a bonus because it took us three times as long to eat them.
The only time I ever had anything with bacon was on a weekend when my father would take us swimming and he had control of a whole chit book or two. If I were really lucky he would give me the practically spent book with a few nickel tickets still in it because I had a pool bag to carry it in. He would forget abut those chits and the next Monday I might have enough to get a Cheeseburger and a half and half on the same day.
On weekdays we usually ate lunch around 11:30 because we all were starving from swim practice. Tennis was the perfect thing to do after lunch since we technically had to stay out of the pool for half an hour after eating. When we got too hot from running around the red clay courts we would all head back to the pool where we would play categories while jumping off the diving board. Categories involved the lifeguard screaming out a category to the person at the end of the diving board just as they jumped in the air and they would have to give an answer before they went under water. The lifeguard might say, “Colors” and the jumper would then scream out something like “Red.” The older we got the harder the questions became.
At the end of the day, usually around six o’clock, my mother would pull her light blue Chevy Impala wagon into the club driveway and honk her horn. My friends and I got really good at recognizing our mothers’ various car horns and were quick to alert each other when we were being summoned. The worst thing we could do as a kid was not come to the car when called because that meant that our mothers had to circle the whole club and park and walk down the big hill to the pool to get us.
By six we were ready to go home because first we were starving. None of us ever had enough chits to get a good snack. Lots of time I had money from babysitting at the pool for some mother who wanted to play tennis, but money did you no good in our “Chit book” world. Our gang of kids also needed a break from each other by late afternoon because inevitably someone had hurt feelings from some slight during the day. We were exhausted from over sun exposure since it was the seventies, the time of the Bain du solie tans and no sunscreen. But we were right back at the club first thing the next morning ready to do it all over again, chits in hand.
Life’s a Puzzle
Posted: February 3, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: puzzle 1 Comment
One of my real non-food related guilty pleasure is playing jigsaw puzzles. I say playing rather than the more conventional “working” a puzzle because I don’t know anyone who gets paid to put together jigsaws and it can only be work if someone, somewhere gets paid.
While doing some Christmas shopping I came upon two 1000 piece puzzles that were severally marked down so I gave them to myself. I had to be particularly restrained not to break one out during the holiday, but I knew in the back of my head as soon as Christmas was cleaned up and put away I could reward myself with some puzzle time.
Last week when I was finally well enough to do more than lie in bed, but not so well that I wanted to leave the house I decided it was the perfect time for mindless puzzle play. As I flipped the pieces over, spreading them out on the game table in the living room, looking for edges it dawned on me that doing a puzzle is very similar to trying to get a better body.
The easy part is the beginning. In puzzle making I look for corners and the edges, studying the picture on the box I begin to form the outline. It goes fairly quickly and I have some quick success. But then I usually hit a bump in the road when I can’t quite complete the whole perimeter. I search through all the pieces I have designated as non-edges looking for those missing few.
Eventually I get a tape measure out to see how far off the dimensions I am. I then run my fingers along the edge of the pieces I have put together looking for any slight imperfections which might indicate I have mistakenly attached two together that don’t belong. The quick wins of the beginning slow to a snails pace and I feel I am not making any progress. Eventually I find my mistake and begin to work into the middle doing something easy, like words.
I often find that in order to have the most success I have to not make assumptions about exactly the piece I am looking for. Puzzle makers love to cut shapes that disguise the identity of an adjoining piece. Even if I think the white shape is continuing and I search and search for a piece with some white I may be wrong and the white might end right where the piece was divided from it’s mate. Giving up on one area when I hit a roadblock and moving to another is my best strategy for whittling down the giant pile of unattached pieces and getting a feeling of accomplishment.
Here is how puzzle making is like dieting. The beginning is easy. You hardly have to work very hard to lose some weight, just like looking for edge pieces. But eventually forward progress slows down to a snails pace and frustration sets in. In dieting, like puzzle solving you have to change up how you are working something to kick start progress. Looking at the situation differently sometimes brings success. Walking away and coming back can give you a new perspective. Not giving up is the real key to success.
So when eating the same combinations of food or same amount or number of calories stops working I have to try something new to get a different result.
Just like doing a puzzle the satisfaction comes with every piece that finds it right home like every pound that is lost is a win of its own. You don’t have to wait until you have completed the whole picture or reached your eventual goal weight to feel happy about your progress. It is the journey and not the final product where you find gratification. Isn’t life one big puzzle after all?
Dancing at Breakfast
Posted: February 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: breakfast, Cajun, dancing, zydeco 5 Comments
Dad and Janet dancing
My Dad called me this morning and said, “Do you remember where we were exactly one year ago.” I had to think about it for a second and I said, “New Orleans.” He corrected me, “We were at Café des Amis dancing.”
He was right. We were in Breaux Bridge Louisiana at Zydeco breakfast dancing at ten in the morning. I think it was about my Dad’s favorite thing that happened all year so it was not surprising that he called me to reminisce about it.
My sisters and I had given him a trip for his Christmas present that year. All our lives he had taken us on great vacations all over the world and it was about time we took him somewhere. On Christmas day when we told him we were going to take him anywhere he wanted to go it was not two seconds before he said, “Let’s go to New Orleans.”
I am thankful that we went last year because that trip was all about eating and spending time together. Before we went I asked my Dad what he wanted to do and he had not given me any guidance. But once we were there the truth came out. What he really wanted to do was go to Cajun country and listen to great music and dance. Since we were staying in the Big Easy about an hour and a half from true Cajun country I had to scramble to figure out how to make this happen. Within four clicks of my I-phone I discovered Zydeco breakfast at the famous Café des Amis happening the very next morning.
My sister Janet, my Dad and I got up early to drive to Breaux Bridge leaving Margaret in New Orleans to shop. We arrived at 9:00 and waited in line with the regulars who came out every Saturday to dance. We could hear the band perfectly as we waited about an hour to get into the joint. It was my Dad’s idea of heaven, people drinking beer and Bloody Marys in the morning itching to dance.
Dancing at breakfast is something that should catch on other places. Some of us are too old to go out late and listen to bands and too tired to dance long into the night. Starting your day with dancing is really the healthiest thing to do. Although paired with eating eggs with crawfish etoufee on a grilled biscuit and a few beignets you negate most of the health benefits.
Based on the lines of people wanting to listen to music and dance before lunch I think that Durham could use a Zydeco breakfast and they served fruit and egg white omelets all the people who go to exercise classes might switch over and come dance instead.
The Academy Awards of Food Bank Donors and Volunteers
Posted: February 1, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Bob Aiken, Feeding America, Hunt, Morgridge 1 Comment
Last night the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina held it’s annual thank you awards and the Hunt-Morgridge Service award. It is the one time during the year when organizations that donate funds, food, volunteer hours and in-kind services come together with the agencies, which get food from the Food Bank.
As the board chair of the Food Bank I was the master of ceremonies, a job you can imagine I love to do. There was one theme that ran through the evening that really warmed my heart, which was of the hundreds of people who were there every person felt passionately about feeding hungry people and the good work the Food Bank does.
Running a Food Bank, or a soup kitchen or emergency food pantry is not glamorous work, but the satisfaction that comes from giving a hungry child a fresh pear and see the joy in his face when he tastes it for the first time is gratifying. We are lucky that there are so many people in our community who feel drawn to this good work.
I am overwhelmed by the generosity of companies who raise money, send employees over to volunteer and look for creative ways to support the work of the Food Bank. Our President’s Circle Humanitarian partners that have given over one million dollars or a minimum of ten million pounds of food or in-kind services in the last five years were, ABC-11, Cisco, Food Lion, Resers’s Fine Foods, Society of Saint Andrews and Wal-Mart.
John Morgridge the chair emeritus of Cisco has created a culture of serving the Food Bank in that company that has expanded every year and continued well past his retirement. Our service award is named for Mr. Morgrdige and Governor James B. Hunt, both of whom are committed to our mission. This year’s Hunt-Morgridge Service Award Winner was Barbara Oates, the founder of our Food Bank thirty- two years ago.
Barbara told the story about how when she started the Food Bank it was run exclusively by volunteers and she would go home at night and talk to her then eight-year-old son about “how the people at the Food Bank were the best people on earth.” She later heard him repeating the phrase, which she obviously said more than once. I would like to reiterate that sentiment. The staff and volunteers at the Food Bank and the dedicated board which I serve is made up of a group of hard working and selfless people who really are the best people on earth.
I also got to introduce “Hungry Kate.” If you want to learn what the Food Bank does please click on this link to watch a two-minute video.
http://www.foodbankcenc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HungryKate
I was happy we got to show off for Bob Aiken, the new president of Feeding America and a group of his staff who were visiting our Food Bank yesterday and today. Mostly I want to thank everyone who helps feed another person, whether you know them and do it directly or you give through the Food Bank. God is smiling on your face today.
Parking Rummy
Posted: January 31, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: compact cars, handicapped, Moms, parking spaces Leave a commentThis morning I went to the store and I noticed I had to park very far from the store even though most of the close in spots were empty. The empty spots were those designated for different groups of people who may need to be closer to the store. You know what they are, Handicapped, of course. Having a child who has been on crutches multiple times I am appreciative of those spots. I don’t like those people who have a handicapped placard for their elderly grandmother and pull it out when she is not even in the car just so they can get the choice spot, but what can we do.
Another group was designated for people with small children. Those spaces are right next to the cart coral so that you don’t have to leave a baby in a car alone a long time to return the grocery cart. That makes a lot of sense and I am all for that. Even though the sign was clear as day I saw a twenties something guy park in the spot and get out of his car alone. I was dying to ask him if he was leaving a child in the car.
A new group of spots poped up recently for expectant moms. They are slightly closer to the store and I wondered if they were needed so they could get to the bathroom faster. The parking spaces are the same size as the regular spots so I did not think they allowed for wider door opening to enable these women to get out of the car with their enormous belly’s. It seems like they should even designate those spaces for third trimester pregnant women.
Then there are the compact car spots. I assume they are there because the civil engineers who laid out the parking lot did not measure correctly and the spots are too small for a big car. The problem with those spaces is people with big cars have no respect for them and use them just the same making the small spots next to them even smaller.
I got to thinking that perhaps they could make some extra large spots, far from the store for over weight people. They would be able to open their doors widely enough to get in and out, but would have the added advantage of getting some exercise because they had to walk further to and from the store. I can see it now. Thin people who have really nice cars might park in those fat people spots because they do not want people in the cars next to them to ding their doors.
Since all the spots except for handicapped are self-policing I can hear the excuse the thin people parking in the extra large spot will use, “I’m so fat right now. I need to drop five pounds.” I liked it better in the olden days when parking spaces were big to accommodate cars like the two door Cadillac Eldorado with giant doors that required four feet of empty space beside them just to swing open. Those cars could hold an overdue pregnant woman with six small children sitting untethered in the back seat.
I predict we have not seen the end of special parking designations. I am sure that some special interest group will lobby a store to give them prime spots and those of us regular people, with regular cars are going to be SOL to get any parking spots what-so-ever.
Are You Prepared?
Posted: January 30, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: disaster, power outage, survival 1 CommentBeing prepared for the worst situation is something insurance company ads like to scare us about. The local news spends inordinate amounts of time talking about bad weather that may or may not be coming. It drives people to toilet paper hoarding behavior quite unnecessarily. Being prepared is so important that an entire sex of scouts claims it as their motto. Since I am neither a boy, nor scout I wonder if that group actually does stuff or just spends time getting ready to do something. Wouldn’t a better motto be, “Be Prepared and Actually Get Something Done”?
Today at lunch a group was talking about people who think the end is coming so they are preparing by buying food that will survive in the packages for twenty-four years – guaranteed. I can guarantee that if the worst does happen and you open that food and it is no good you will have a hard time getting your money back from the guys who made it. If some kind of holocaust happens I am not interested in sticking around until I run out of some stinkin’ survival food. I’m prepared to just go in the deluge and not worry about repopulating the planet. I’m clean out of repopulating supplies any way.
This afternoon I arrived home to a powerless house. Since I usually get in my house through the automatic garage door opener I had to go old school and find a key to open a regular door. I was prepared for that emergency. It was still light enough to see inside without lights, but I realized that soon enough the darkness was coming. I went to my abundant lantern, flashlight, battery and candle storage area and gathered enough illuminating power to run a small village. I took stock in my head of the food in the refrigerator, which could be heated, on my gas stove top. I did not want to open the fridge and let out any cold. All these things were good. I was prepared.
Then I thought about what I was not prepared for. We have a gas-powered generator in the garage. I don’t think I know if we have any gas for it and I do know that I don’t know how to run it. This would seem like something I should learn since in the 19 years we have lived in our house Russ has only ever been home for 2% of any power outages. I thought about writing my blog, but realized that I had not charged either my computer or my ipad and writing on my phone is really too slow. We have two fireplaces, but I think most of our wood is very old and soaking wet outside. I was clearly not prepared. Then the power came back on.
Here is my takeaway. Life is a balancing act between spending time preparing for the worst or living like everything is going to be all right. I like having a cabinet stocked with toilet paper so there is no need to run out to the store at the mere mention of a snowflake or two. I like buying two boxes of cereal at a time so I don’t discover that I only have two spoonfuls when pouring my morning bowl. I like belonging to AAA so someone else can lie on the ground and change my flat tire. That is being prepared to me. What I don’t like is stock piling weapons and food in case terrorist invade Durham NC. I think I am as prepared as I care to be.
How Do You Know You Have Changed Your Eating Habits?
Posted: January 29, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: eating habits 2 CommentsMost of us are the size we are because of what we eat, when we eat, how much we eat and what triggers us to eat. If you are thin you probably have a fairly good handle on not letting things change some relatively good eating habits. If you are somewhat over weight you probably have a few eating patterns which could be improved.
Changing your eating routine for the long run is not an easy job. In fact, it is a job and one you probably hate as much as you hate cleaning out a grease trap. The problem is you always need to eat something and once you have created a memory of a yummy food it is hard to wipe it from your brain. If you are a late night eater you need to find new ways to distract yourself. If stress drives you to seek the chocolate fairy you are under the power of an intoxicating mistress.
Somehow the desire to have healthy eating habits and be thinner is not great enough and that is why the majority of people who lose weight on diets end up gaining it back. You have to create new ways of living so that food is not a medicine, friend, comforter, consolation, reward or distracter.
Experts say it takes months and months to change desires and even then you have to constantly work at it. Today I recognized that I might be on the road to creating new habits. I discovered that a drain in my down stairs bath had gotten clogged and since it is the pipe that leads from the dishwasher as it ran overnight all the dirty water flowed on the bathroom floor and rug.
After scooping water out of the sink and trying the plunger I searched the house for Liquid Plumber and finding none I went off to my regular store. I picked up two bottles of drain cleaner and approached the checkout, which was thankfully free of other customers. The clerk told me the total was $15.07 and I handed over a twenty as I bagged my two items. Realizing that I had seven pennies in my wallet I asked the clerk if I could give her the seven cents since I really did not want four one dollar bills and 97 cent change. She looked at me and said, “No.”
I assumed she was kidding because she would much rather make all that change than just give me a five dollar bill, so I asked her, “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I already keyed $20 in the register.”
“You are really going to not take my seven cents and going to make me take all that change?”
“Yes.”
This is normally the point in life when I go crazy. I am a really good customer of this particular store. I am not holding any other customers up by asking this clerk to take my change. This is the kind of situation that used to drive me to eat a brownie, but not today. That clerk should have recognized a woman who was carb deprived and accepted my pennies without an argument. Eventually she did, but both she and her manager will never make that mistake again.
I went home poured the liquid plumber in the sink and still have a clogged drain, but none of these things have driven me to fall back into old stress relieving eating patterns. Have I permanently changed? No way. But just recognizing a situation that used to derail me is a big step in the right direction.
Winter Diet Dry Skin
Posted: January 28, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dry skin, lotion 1 CommentOne of the annoying side affects of dieting is that as you reduce the amount of oil you are eating you may be keeping fat from developing under your skin, but you are also robbing your skin of moisture. Winter dry heat and lack of humidity in the air also contribute to your skin being dryer. What is the use of being thinner if you look older and wrinkled because your skin is too dry?
Keeping your body well hydrated from both the inside and outside is the only way to fight flaky skin. Here is yet another reason you need to drink a lot of water. You don’t need to go back to drowning your salad in olive oil, just make sure you have 8-10 glasses of water. Adding fruits and vegetables are great ways to get more water in your system and they fill you up on things that are diet friendly.
If you can add a humidifier to your heating system you will not only help your skin but all the wood in your house too. All things made up of cells need moisture. Wearing gloves when you go out in the cold helps you keep whatever moisture you have in your hands rather than letting the dry air suck it our of your digits.
There is nothing I like better in the cold weather than a really long hot shower, but that is the wrong way to go. Dialing back the water temperature and taking a quick shower is better for our delicate dried out skin. As soon as you finish from your shower, don’t zap every bit of moisture from your body with a towel. Act more like your dog and shake off the excess and then slather yourself with lotion while you are still damp. Your pores will more easily suck of the emollient right after the shower.
With all the flu bugs around we need to be vigilant about washing our hands, but then you need to use lotion after all that washing too. Dry and cracked cuticles are a super highway for bugs to get into your system, so not just washing the germs off, but also sealing the cracks will help keep you healthy.
You can’t do much about sun damage you may have done to your skin over years of non-sunscreen use or the naturally reducing collagen due to aging, but deep hydrating winter skin can fight off the appearance of wrinkles and just make you happier.
Spring Break Reality Check
Posted: January 27, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: bathing suit, spring break 1 CommentIt may still be January and perhaps the coldest weekend we have seen here in North Carolina in a few years, but I am here to remind you that spring break is just around the corner. Spring break is my favorite vacation of the year. March is clearly when I am sick of my regular life and in need of a little pick me up.
This year I just hope that Carter and I will both be well by spring break. My two-week bronchitis and her two-week double flu infections are really wearing on us. Carter is suffering much more than I am having missed so much school having basically slept day and night for a fortnight.
In my guilt of being so unproductive stuck in my house for the last two weeks doing basically nothing I forced myself to weed through some of the too big clothes and remove them from my closet. In the unearthing process I came across the bathing suit drawer. Spring break is coming. Do I have a suitable bathing suit that holds everything up and in the right places?
I am lucky that this year for Carter’s break I am taking her to London, which will certainly not involve a bathing suit. But a month later Russ is taking me on a company trip to a warm and sandy place. Two and a half months until I have to wear a suit and in front of people I know.
This January sick period has been wonderful to drop the pounds. Coughing must be great exercise, at least for my core. But the lack of real weight bearing workouts is not helping to tone up the flabby bits and pieces. I have not tried a suit on yet. I think I will hold off on doing that until I am better and need some diet inspiration because I am no longer losing weight due to illness.
Don’t let spring break sneak up on you unprepared. Find your bathing suit soon and try it on. If you need any inspiration hang your swimwear on your bathroom mirror. Being spring break body ready takes longer to obtain than we think it will. I hope I will have mine by 2014.
Good Ice
Posted: January 26, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: ice skating 3 CommentsYesterday we had a sleeting, rainy, and icy afternoon, which basically shut Durham down. Schools got let out early, people left work in the middle of the day and parties were canceled. Even the mall closed at five in the afternoon. Panic set in from those people who did not have dinner purchased before noon because even pizza deliveries were suspended.
I was prepared because I had bought pork chops to make for a neighbor who had lost a loved one and deserved to have dinner delivered. After making the pork with balsamic glazed pears and onions, roast green beans and risottoed farrow I put it all in a bag along with a loaf of zucchini bread from the freezer and set out to skate my way down the street to deliver it.
As grains of frozen ice resembling grape nuts more than snow came down around me as I slid down the hill from my house to my neighbors I had flashbacks of childhood winters in Connecticut. So many winter days would my sisters and I have to shuffle our way up our icy driveway and down our busy road to the school bus stop. This granulated precipitation was the kind we hated. Certainly not because it made the roads more treacherous or because it was the hardest to shovel. We hated it because it ruined the glass like frozen surface of our ice skating pond.
When you grew up in the pre-global warming winter wonderland of Connecticut you had to embrace winter full on. We were very lucky to have a big ice skating pond at our house that my father kept in good condition since he had no grass to cut during the winter months. Keeping up an outdoor rink involved shoveling, or in my father’s case, snow blowing the surface the second that snow fell on the ice. The best ice was black ice, which meant that it had frozen quickly and for a long time without any snow or melting and refreezing.
Our pond was private, as opposed to the big town lakes where many people came to skate. The good thing about having a private pond was the fewer people skating on your ice, the nicer the surface was. Too many skaters put dings and marks in the ice from their toe picks on the front of their figure skates.
My father also created a system of resurfacing the ice by putting a gutter from the stream that fed the pond onto the top of the ice’s surface overnight so that new water was recoating the top. In the morning he would take the gutter off and the ice would freeze hard while we were at school.
This winter wonderland of a pond made us very popular on the school bus. Kids would saddle up to me on the way home and hint at wanting an invitation to come skating on our newly surfaced ice. Having just the right number of kids to play whip was the ideal afternoon activity. We just had to make sure that the boys we invited would not get too rough and put a small child on the end of the line skating around in a giant circle until the last could not hold on any longer and would go hurdling off the end at twenty miles per hour.
I am no longer a fearless skater. Fear of falling and lack of practice has zapped me of what was my daily winter pastime. I am happy not to live in such cold weather now and just enjoy the memories of our great pond and the time spent gliding along its perfect surface.
Less Dana, More Good 