Archive | July 2012

Less is….

Jul8

Graphic courtesy of The Idealist.

So, this picture pretty much explains what I want life to be like. You saw yesterday that I worked on the reading list for next year. I spent a good chuck of today learning about calories and macronutrients and just such as this over at acaloriecounter. I won’t scare you with the number I saw on the scale two days ago, but I pretty much freaked out. I knew I was gaining because my clothes were getting snug, but it’s gotten a little worse than “gaining.” I’ve managed to pack on 20 pounds since last January. So now, I have a new eating plan in place, and I’m making it as easy peasy on myself as possible: 130-150 grams of protein a day, no more than 39 grams of fat, and 111-131 grams of carbs. That and 2 liters of water a day ought to get me where I want to be in 3 months or so. Oh, and did I mention I am avoiding soda? That’s because of this:

Now, we all know I love to plan stuff, and I am an *excellent* planner. My problem is follow-through. So my goal here, as I pan for some life changes in this time preceding my birthday, is to develop a system I can keep up with once school starts again. I had a great system going after the first of the year, but it derailed when I had more on my plate than just keeping up with what I was supposed to be doing when. This time, I am looking at things from the KISS perspective, because anything complicated is not sustainable once classes begin. I’m not going to be adding items like “learn to play a holton h379“, but I might try to remind myself to turn on Pandora more often. I love music, and just because I can’t find time to MAKE it, doesn’t mean I can’t make time to HEAR it.

Okay, I’m sleepy. Which is odd, because I slept until almost noon. I think I will take a nap anyway, because it is hot and because I can.

The 45 Year Reading List

Jul7

Alrighty then. Between blogging and facebooking session, I have been as busy as an industrial motor. I told you I pulled the books. I told you I pulled the photos and found the box. Well, I couldn’t just leave that stuff piled in the living room and heaped on the bed. So I made a place for it.

Bear in mind that my digital books are not represented in this stack. Er, stacks. Think that will keep me busy for a while? I still haven’t figured out what to do with them after I finish them.

And right before I got that all put together, I cleared the chair in my room. So now, I have a place to sit and read, as well as a place to sit and write. I also have all the throw pillows that used to be on the bench on the floor beside my bed, in front of the trunk. Sigh. It’s progress, of a sort. Something is better than nothing.

Ahh, Facebook! How I love thee!

Jul7

Ah, Facebook, how I love thee!
I continually find cute pictures and words of wisdom. Some of these are simple and fit for printing as customized t-shirts. Others are more thought provoking and cause me to think and form actual opinions. And yet, when I do, people want to argue with me. The only problem is, well, more than one. The first problem is that most people don’t come to facebook to read essays. Most of them come to facebook to read pithy one-liners and find out where/what folks are eating/going/doing. But I like thinking, and I like debating, and I particularly enjoy making folks examine opinions that they think they have but that they have really only borrowed from mass media and dogma, and yes I mean incorrectly expounded theology.

So! I have decided that I want to do some political blogging. Muhahahah. I have even borrowed a little picture from AATP to help us all understand the rules of correct debate. Are you ready? Ok, check this out.

Remember this, and I will be back when I have more to say!

This entry was posted on July 7, 2012, in cass votes.

I found a box

Jul7

Yeah, yeah, I know its already the seventh. But I was camping on the first. Also on the second and third. Then I was busy being HOT, and keeping my kids from killing one another. But I have also been thinking about goals and plans for the year. This morning/afternoon, I pulled out all the American History and Writing and Spirituality books I had crammed in the nooks and crannies of my living room and bedroom. It’s quite an impressive stack, especially considering that the digital books aren’t even represented. Apparently, I plan to spend a lot of time in coffee kiosks in the next 390 days, reading. It has to be a coffee kiosk, and not a food court, because I am trying to give up soda, but I will save that for another day. And also more on my study plan. Because right now, I have something else to say.

In accordance with my decision to look at, sort, and scrapbook the pictures I have of my dad, I went into the trunk today to pull them all out. And I did. But while I was in there, I found a box of memorabilia from school. I’m not sure what all is in there, though I recognized the souvenir book from one of my proms and programs from a couple of plays I was in. Here’s the deal. I shut the box. I kept it out of the trunk because I also saw a few pics of my dad, but I didn’t dig through it much. The truth is, that damn box unnerved me. I’m just not sure I am ready to see what all is in there. How can a half-empty box that only measures 9x12x4 rattle me so?

Writing As A Way Of Healing by Louise DeSalvo

Jul5

I just finished this book, which I started on April 22 of this year. That’s a long time to spend reading a 216 page book, isn’t it? I thought I would review it, but in the moment, I have decided not to. I’m going to write something else instead, and what I am about to write is a direct effect of reading this book. In fact, I could hardly make myself finish it, because this idea gripped me with such compelling force that I had to keep drawing myself back to the page. And now I struggle to begin.

I have, several times over the past few years, struggled to write about my father. Part of the Mary Monologues was about him, and I have written a couple of poems about him, but I have never truly come to grips with him, his life, his death. I’ve felt the emotions and the turmoil, but I have not tried to organize that mishmash of confusion into a narrative that I could integrate into something useful, something I could process. Today, as I was finishing DeSalvo’s book, my mind continued to wander to the trunk in my room. Inside that trunk are photo albums. Several, I don’t remember how many. There are albums in there that hold pictures of my father, albums that my step-mother gave me not long after he died. I haven’t ever really studied them, and have looked at them only briefly since they came into my possession.

I think it may be because by not looking, I could choose to continue to not remember. We have discussed before, you and I, my faulty memory. But I know that my memory can be triggered by pictures. That in fact, if I want to remember something now, I stop and take a mental image of what is happening at this moment. It has, I think, been easier until now to think of him as someone who was never truly part of my life than to admit that I might have had, and then lost, something very precious. The truth is, I don’t know what I will find in those albums. I do know there are at least two images there that I can talk about, because I can see them just as clearly as if I had them in front of me.

Anyway, I had planned to write this summer, but I had no idea what about until today. I have a couple of collaborative projects going, but I’m also pretty sure that this will be the summer I pull all the writing I have already done about him together into one piece. And it will be the summer I pull those photographs from their acidic PVC albums and mount them on proper paper. It will be the summer I let myself tell me the story of My Daddy. There are parts that will be very ugly. Such is life. There is anger as well. But I hope I also find beauty and laughter. Mostly, I want something whole and something true. A piece that says: this is what happened when I was six, when I was seven, when I was 12, and when I was 43, 44, and 45.

I knew it would happen eventually, and I bought the scrapbook supplies last fall. I guess it’s time.