November 22, 2002
4:20pm (cool!)

1. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a
day; teach that person to use the Internet and they
won't bother you for weeks.

2. Some people are like Slinkies . . . not
really good for anything, but you still can't help
but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

3. I read recipes the same way I read science
fiction. I get to the end and I think, "Well, that's
not going to happen."

4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday,
lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

5. The other night I ate at a real family
restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

6. Have you noticed since everyone has a
camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs
like they used to.

7. According to a recent survey, men say the
first thing they notice about a woman is their eyes,
and women say the first thing they notice about men
is they're a bunch of fuckin' liars.

8. Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing
again.

9. All of us could take a lesson from the
weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

10. Have you noticed that a slight tax increase
costs you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax
cut saves you thirty cents?

11. In the 60's people took acid to make the
world weird. Now the world is weird and people take
Prozac to make it normal.

12. Politics is supposed to be the second oldest
profession. I have come to realize that it bears a
very close resemblance to the first.

13. There is a theory which states that if ever
anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for
and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and
be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states
that this has already happened.

14. How is it one careless match can start a
forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a
campfire?

15. You read about all these terrorists--most of
them came here legally, but they hung around on
these expired visas, some for as long as 10-15
years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster: you're two
days late with a video and those people are all over
you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration

You've got to love a good laugh!

November 22, 2002
10:20pm - Part 2

Day one of the diet down.  I actually did OK.  Got in lots of fluids, stayed to all protein except for a half cup of soup and a half cup of potatoes at lunch.  Also had a quarter slice of sourdough bread.  Not perfect, but if you go by Carb Addicts Diet rather than Atkins, it was perfect!  I balanced out the carbs with LOTS of green salad and turkey.  I REALLY wanted some pumpkin pie (Lordy, it looked so good!), but I made it through.  I'm hungry now and will probably get another bit of steak in a while, but I'm fairly stable.  The Hydroxycut worked well and I can feel that I'm going to be able to sleep (already drowsy), so that's good.  Taking full dosage worried me a bit since I'm very susceptible to speeding out.  I felt very comfortable, just didn't have cravings or over-hunger.  One day down.  A year or so to go.

I was thinking about when my attachment to food really began and like for most people, it was in childhood.  As a bit of backstory, my whole family is really large.  My mom, dad and two brothers all have weighed over 300 pounds.  My dad is dead now (Yep, from arterial deposits blocking the old heart doors.  That man could really eat!).  My mother is losing weight as she gets older, after having two knees replaced due to her weight (I don't want to wait that long).  Both of my brothers are still really big from what I hear.  

I started taking care of my mom's family, meaning my dad and two brothers and her, when I was ten and my mom went into the hospital for her second or third (don't remember which).  It pretty much sucked.  She'd taught me to cook over the past few years and when it reached the point that she was chronically in surgery, recovering for surgery or in bed needing surgery, the care of the family fell to me.  I don't think it was designed that way (if it was, I'm gonna be PISSED), but it's how it ended up.  Poor mom really needed the attention her hypochondria provided and evidently, Dr Padgett needed the insurance money.  He once laughed that he was going to install a zipper in her abdomen next surgery.  So I'd get up in the morning, get something out of the freezer for dinner, get out the door for school, come home from school, do homework, take a swipe at cleaning the house, make dinner, take care of my brothers, then go to bed and do it again.  No one was ever particularly grateful.  I was just doing what was expected of me.  I'm not saying any of this for sympathy (although taking care of people for the past 30 years or so should definitely warrant a massage or something), but to set the stage for what was to come next. 

The School Cafeteria.  Ironic, isn't it?  A place so closely synonymous with the worst food on earth started my dependence on it for comfort.  You had to understand this cafeteria, though.  I went to Pleasant Ridge Elementary School, which was a wonderful little primary school that started out with grades 1-5 and between my 5th and 6th grades, included a 6th grade (prior to this, 6th graders were bussed out of town to the dreaded Wayland Elementary School for the year before Middle School) by turning the 4th and 5th grade classes into two 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes.  The good news is that I got to keep my faaaaavorite teacher, Judy Ward, for 6th grade as well.  It was odd having three grades in one class, but somehow, they made it work without a hitch (not a hitch that we saw, anyway).  

But I digress.  Each grade in Pleasant Ridge Elementary had about 20 kids.  I remember the group that I started first grade with (no kindergarten there!) had 13 boys and 7 girls.  It didn't really change until 5th grade when Elizabeth Lane (the first black family in our town) and Laura P. Quizon, Jr (the first Filipino family) moved in.  Since there was one boy and one girl, the ratio didn't really shift much.  :-)  What is amazing about the school is that the cafeteria workers, Mrs Wilma Stone, Mrs Arlene Reagan and Mrs Hoover, were the most incredible cooks ever to set foot on this earth.  They didn't make any of the prefab foods that are so well associated with school food.  We got home cooked, delicious meals about 99% of the time.  The only real slacker meals were when we'd get a slice of pineapple, a huge pile of potato chips and our choice of either 2 pimento cheese sammichs or 2 peanut butter on crackers sammichs (on double saltines, all passed around by two lucky kids in big plastic tubs).  Yum. That began a lifelong affection for institution peanut butter.  I just love it.  That's right.  The thick, dry, gubment peanut butter.  Mmmmm.  

Other than the peanut butter, pimento cheese days, the meals were always incredible.  Delicious meat loaf with homemade mashed potatoes.  Homemade chicken pot pie.  Homemade chili.  Homemade chicken soup.  Homemade fried chicken.  The most delicious yeast rolls you would ever, ever put in your mouth.  Homemade corn bread.  Every day, they would make a little extras and you'd get to go back for seconds.  It was always Mrs Hoover who got to announce what the extras would be.  Usually it was, "Extras in bread and butter."  My god it was good.  I am positive the food was laced with high grade heroin.

The thing was that when I went home, it sucked.  My brothers were unruly because Mom was seldom available and Dad was working.  I had work to do above and beyond and no means to escape other than biking down the little general store a quarter mile or so from the house or way over the hill to see my friend, Susie (about 2 miles).  Other than that, I was landlocked.  School sucked.  The kids made fun of me and made fun of my clothes and made fun of my name and just about anything else they could find.  I had only one friend all through grade school, Charlene Greer, who was two years younger than I was, so didn't really come along until about 4th grade.  I recently made contact with her again and she's now a successful psychologist.  I clearly remember the day in 8TH GRADE when Charlene told me she was going to be a psychologist.  She sure did it.  So in the middle of home sucking and school sucking and having basically (Dr Phil rears his bald head) "no soft place to fall," the half hour of lunch was just *sigh* dreamy.  I got to eat by myself.  We had these long fold up tables with benches attached (didn't everyone?) and we could sit anywhere we wanted.  Only two classes ate at a time, so it was pretty roomy.  I could sit by myself and eat a meal I didn't cook...a delicious meal I didn't cook.  It filled me.  It nurtured me.  It warmed me.  It satisfied me.  It was absolutely glorious.  

So that, I'm certain, is where it all began.  Food hasn't let me down since and is still my buddy.  I'm going to work through this as best as I can because I know I need to lost weight, but my heart isn't in it.  I'll do it anyway, again, because it needs to happen and I know I'm in as safe a place to do it as I am likely to be for a while.  

I'll keep you posted for a while.  I hope it doesn't suck as much as it did when I got to Middle School and got a taste of "real" school cafeteria food.  Ew!  Don't know if Mrs Stone, Mrs Reagan or Mrs Hoover are still alive, but if they were, I'd probably empty my checking account if they'd just cook me one meal.  

Have a great weekend!!  

November 21, 2002
6am

(I did not write this.  Author unknown)

THE BOOB POEM 

For years and years they told me,
Be careful of your breasts.
Don't ever squeeze or bruise them.
And give them monthly tests.

So I heeded all their warnings,
And protected them by law.
Guarded them very carefully,
And I always wore my bra.

After 30 years of astute care,
My gyno, Dr. Pruitt,
Said I should get a Mammogram.
"O.K," I said, "let's do it."

"Stand up here real close" she said,
(She got my boob in line),
And tell me when it hurts," she said,
"Ah yes! Right there, that's fine." 

She stepped upon a pedal,
I could not believe my eyes,
A plastic plate came slamming down,
My hooter's in a vise!

My skin was stretched and mangled,
From underneath my chin.
My poor boob was being squashed,
To Swedish Pancake thin.

Excruciating pain I felt,
Within it's vise-like grip.
A prisoner in this vicious thing,
My poor defenseless tit!

"Take a deep breath" she said to me,
Who does she think she's kidding?!?
My chest is mashed in her machine,
And woozy I am getting.

"There, that's good," I heard her say,
(The room was slowly swaying.)
"Now, let's have a go at the other one.
Have mercy, I was praying.

It squeezed me from both up and down.
It squeezed me from both sides.
I'll bet SHE'S never had this done,
To HER tender little hide.

Next time that they make me do this,
I will request a blindfold.
I have no wish to see again,
My knockers getting steamrolled.

If I had no problem when I came in,
I surely have one now.
If there had been a cyst in there,
It would have gone "ker-pow!"

This machine was created by a man,
Of this, I have no doubt.
I'd like to stick his balls in there,
And see how THEY come out.

November 20, 2002
Delena's Birthday!

People, I am just sick as all hell.  It started at our circle meeting on Saturday with just a bit of the sniffles, but by yesterday, it had gone into that full scale crap where your sinuses are making your teeth hurt and your head is all congested and stupid and everything feels all numb and cottony.  When I first looked at that pictures at the left, I thought she was holding a flashlight and got all kinds of ominous ideas for what a person with a cold would do with a flashlight, but then I saw it was a giant pill bottle, probably full of the same worthless drugs that I'm taking that are doing no good.  

These are the times that I really miss having a mom.  My mom was always sick when I was growing up, so when I was sick, there wasn't much nurturing going on.  None of my husbands/live in boyfriends have ever been particularly good at giving a shit when I was dying sick.  It ends up being more of a major inconvenience than anything.  I remember giving birth to little Dylan in the early hours of the morning (I have home births for the most part) and promptly at 5pm, I woke up to find faces staring down at me, asking what I was making for dinner.  >:<  I've always wanted to be gently tucked into bed, told to sleep, having someone take care of EVERYTHING while I work on healing.  Tissues, remote control and warm beverages at my side.  Nurture foods like soups and such being brought in from time to time.  It just doesn't happen.  I have given detailed instructions of what I'd like to happen and...it just doesn't.  There's always something that some up to steal my sick thunder.  Tonight, Eric will work on the truck, which is absolutely necessary (even I can concede that) since the Intrepid went away yesterday.  

It was so sweet and gentle how it went.  I was thinking that I really didn't want to see it drive away and that I might feel a last minute clamoring and clawing and such.  I got a call from the very, very pleasant repo man (in conversation, he told me was 62), who said they would be out sometime that day and to please have the keys under the mat.  We'd already done that some time back, so all systems were go.   As it happened, it went away while I was walking Dylan to school, so there was no opportunity to be sad, which was lovely.  Unfortunately, Eric has encountered some kind of bizarre carburetor issue after he just rebuilt it and has to go mad tonight tearing it apart again.  He worked until almost 9pm last night, so I was already pretty much in bed asleep with the little boys when he got in.  

So yes, today is Delena's 10th birthday and she is very excited.  Tonight is only family, but on Saturday, she is going to go play laser tag (she's never done it) with 3 of her friends and they will come back here for cake, ice cream and pizza.  Back when the bigger boys were young, I did the whole gift buying thing and loved it.  Then I ended up with a few tragic gift choices in a row, so I went to very strong suggestion lists, then decided that if they were going to tell me what to buy anyway, I might as well let them buy it, so for years, my kids have gotten money for their birthdays.  They begin mentally spending it months in advance.  This year, she is devastated that she couldn't find, despite haunting pawn shops and e-bay, Pokemon Stadium 2 for the Nintendo 64 that would fit into her budget.  But such is life!  She is such a video game hound, so that and Yu-gi-oh cards have pretty well dominated her gift search.  She wants teriyaki chicken kabobs and couscous for dinner (um, the rest of us will have potatoes), angel biscuits (a yeast biscuit that I make), white cake, mint chocolate chip ice cream and  RC to drink (a real luxury since my kids seldom get caramel colored drinks).  

She is just such a beautiful, marvelous little bundle of 10-years-old and I'm so glad I have her.  She taught me a LOT about the differences in raising boys and girls and in particular, just how hard it is to be a little girl out there in the world with those other little vipers.  How any girl reaches puberty with an ounce of self-esteem left is a mystery to me.  Delena is just incredible.  Last year, she had to write a biography which accounted for a good amount of her English grade.  Her target was Davy Crockett or, as we learned, "David Crockett" (evidently, a biographer called him Davy Crockett years after he was born and it stuck posthumously) was not exactly the stuff legends are made of, at least not legitimately.  She wrote a wonderful, factual biography and for her summary wrote, "I'm not even sure why this man is famous.  The only thing he was good at was storytelling.  He was not a particularly good statesman, he was a terrible father and husband, he wasn't a good hunter and he was even a bad soldier because he was one of the first ones to get killed at the Alamo."  My little expose writer.  She got an A.

    
Click to enlarge

So Happy Birthday to my sweetie, my only little girl amongst 5 sons and a real joy in my life.  

For now, I think I'm going to go crawl into bed and hope Nathan will sit beside me and etch-a-sketch or do something benign until I have to go pick up kids at school.  The way the morning has gone, he'll be more likely to draw on the carpet with lipstick and throw leggos at the cat.  Regardless, I'm going to go hit the bed and be sick.

Night night,

  
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