Sunshine Alert

Posted: July 11, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

 

For the last few weeks my local news TV station has been pushing the bad weather alert app for my phone.  The free app sends me an audible and text alert when there is bad weather in my location, wherever that location happens to be.  After hearing over and over again how helpful it is to be warned of dangerous weather events I went ahead and put the app on my phone.

 

What a pain this has turned out to be.  Any time in the day or night my phone has spoken loudly and sternly to me telling me of a flash flood, big wind, falling tree or potential to be struck by lightening eminent event.  Even if my phone is on mute the sound overrides my requested silence sending warnings and beeps, flashes, speaks and spelling out life threatening messages.  I have been awoken a half dozen times.

 

Do you think waking me up in the middle of the night hearing that I need to go to a center-of-my-house-windowless-room and stay there until the all-clear alert is actually making me do it?  Hell no.  I lived in Washington DC when it was the murder capital of America.  I used to hear gunshots right outside my bedroom window regularly and I barely paused to think, “Should I roll off my bed by the window and sleep on the floor where I was protected by a brick wall?”  The answer to that question was always no.  I needed a good night’s sleep because I had work in the morning.  If I got killed in my sleep by a stray bullet at least my corpse would look well rested.

 

The way the biblical amount of rains have been this summer I don’t stand a chance to have a good night’s sleep if I keep this app, so I am going back to my ignorance is bliss way of life and removing it.  What I am really looking for is the “Sunshine Alert App” because I hate missing a moment of the rare and precious sunshine we might still get this summer.

 

I wish that I could search for apps under the category of “Good News Apps” rather than the “Impending Doom Apps” that seem to be the trend.  I’m sick to death about impending anything.  People worry way too much about what probably won’t happen and not enough about enjoying the good that actually exists in the world.  I’m keeping my eye out for the sunshine and the rainbows that will certainly come with it.  I’m going to do it the old fashioned way by looking up in the sky and enjoying the lack of any annoying beeping to let me know there is a rainbow.

No Such Thing As Average

Posted: June 30, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Average is just a math equation, but in the real world nothing is ever actually average.  In my opinion it is usually feast or famine, high or low, big or small rarely right in the middle.  Take the weather we are having in Durham right now.  Rain, BIG Rain, certainly record setting rain for the day, which just happens to be 1.32 inches.  Gee, I think we got that much in the middle of the night and now it is raining buckets again and will for almost the rest of the day.  We might triple that record, but in the world of averages, will hardly move the average rainfall line at all.

 

Even though we are up something like nine inches of rainfall for the year compared to the average it is just balancing out the terrible drought we had a few years ago.  In the end when you average the two years together you keep the average rainfall about in the same place it was.

 

The same idea is true for me in trying to move the needle on the scale down.  If I eat roughly the same food everyday and work out about the same amount I seem to stay in the same place.  My average is what my body has become accustomed too and has learned to live on.  In order to make a dent in my average I have to change some things and keep changing them for a very long time.

 

I just can’t have one day of extra vigilant eating, but I have to have ten and even then the needle might only move a little.  That’s the reality of middle-aged-peri-menopausal-woman.  I have spent a lifetime of days that makes up my average.  To change the average might take the rest of my lifetime.

 

But of course no one wants to be average, even our own average.  We all want to be better than our regular selves, which is just plain hard to do, that is unless you put everything about yourself on the scale.  Some days you might have a bad day at working out, but a good day at eating, a great day at work, but a poor day at laundry, a fantastic day at parenting, but a so-so day at being a spouse.  You never have an average day at everything, but over time you create a set point for what you are going to be like in every aspect of your life.

 

The best we can hope for is that we are a little better at a little more today than we were yesterday and that way, given enough time your average will improve.  The key is not to throw in the towel on anything if you have one bad day, because a good day is coming that will balance it out, just like the rain, the drought year has been overcome by a wet year.

Living the High Life

Posted: June 7, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: , | Leave a comment

 

It’s raining, I mean pouring, and the old man certainly is snoring.  This tropical storm Andrea has been dumping bucket loads of water on our already saturated land for over 24 hours now.  Carter and I ventured out of the house this afternoon on an errand.  We left our neighborhood via Dover Rd. heading towards Hope Valley Rd.  At 1:30 the golf course was already completely lake like and the tiny bridge at the end of the course by the Hodges & Burket’s houses was barley peeking above the rushing water.

 

We went to the mall and two hours later were barley able to make it back home.   As we returned via Hope Valley rd. the water had breached it at Rugby and city workers were just about to stop cars from passing.  We got to Dover rd and turn down only to be stopped four houses in because the road was so flooded that you could not see pavement for at least a football field and a half.

 

We turned around and went up to Surrey Rd.  I was fearful that the water might have come across the road there, but we were lucky enough to get there before the breach that I am sure happened within moments of our passing.  The water was six feet up a street sign, which I knew because I could only see about half the speed limit on the face of the sign.  It is still raining and raining hard.

 

Seeing the homes in the valley’s of my neighborhood where water has engulfed them reminded me of something a friend’s father told me before I bought my first house; he said, “always buy on the high side of the hill because water always runs down hill and water always wins.”  No matter how attractive a house was on the outside, if it was in a valley I never bothered to even look at the inside.  Why fall in love with something that could cause heartache?

 

The phrase “taking the high road” also comes to mind today.  Sure the quickest route is not the easiest or in the case today, even the passable way to go.  The high road took longer, but in the end it got us home.

 

Nature is going to win.  We can fight, but rather than fight, working with the inevitable is easier.  Dieting is the same way for me.  I have learned what naturally works for me and what might cause me to be underwater and I plan around it.  But I always plan to be on the high side of the hill so that I am not caught surprised by a sudden deluge.  That means having healthy food in the house and not having to go to the store hungry, or looking at restaurant’s menu on-line before I go out to dinner.   I’m not going to win against nature, but I hope that I am learning to stay out of her way.