Ready For Some Football . . .And A Nap

I make my bed almost every day. But, I left it disheveled today as a reminder that I needed to find my way back in there for a couple of hours. That’s because I’m coming off several nights of interrupted slumber. First it was my son, who was battling the flu and needed to reload with Motrin or Tylenol every few hours. Then I worked late the next couple of nights, and then the next kid got sick. There was actually one night between my weekend waitressing shifts and round two of the flu, but a completely healthy kid wet the bed that night. A lot of completely healthy kids probably wet the bed Sunday night, but this one was in my house, so I was drafted into changing sheets and finding clean pajamas.

In order to stay healthy myself, I need to listen to my body. It’s telling me a lot of things today. Things like “You need to nap for a few hours,” and “You won’t make it without an adequate dose of dark chocolate,” and “I need something salty. No sweet. No salty. . .” and finally, it’s saying, “Try to get a nerve blocker as soon as possible.” That’s because I had my session with the trainer yesterday and out of the 640 muscles I have, 600 are killing me today.

But while napping is a priority, it’s not the only one. There were cereal bowls to fill this morning and lunchboxes to pack. Prescriptions to pick up and phone calls to return. I had to run the vacuum over the upstairs carpet so I could check “clean the house” off my list. Clean the house usually means clean the house, but when I’m operating on a sleep deficit, I allow myself to do one thing that falls under that category and call it good. And my laziness was also interrupted by trying to get organized for the Super Bowl.

I’m not playing in it this year, or even the foreseeable future, but in honor of the men who are, it’s my job, as an American, to consume 5,000 extra calories that day. For whatever reason, this one sporting event calls for Doritos, Oreos, and a plethora of dips. There are zoning ordinances in place that call for hamburger and hotdog preparation, or, in some counties, pizza is an option. And I fear if I don’t make brownies, my citizenship could be revoked. But why is it just for this one game? I don’t remember ever breaking all FDA guidelines during the NBA Finals or The World Series. (Some maybe, but not all) And I certainly wasn’t chowing down on nachos when the American women’s gymnastics team took the gold for the all-around competition in the Beijing Olympics.

One year I actually decided we would eat healthy fare on Super Bowl Sunday. We made turkey burgers and served them on whole wheat buns with fresh tomato slices and reduced fat cheese. Instead of chips, we had carrot sticks and ranch. And I topped that off with a fruit salad. It was the worst Super Bowl EVER. I was ashamed of myself and what I had become. I don’t remember who we had over that year, but I’m pretty sure we never heard from them again.

So I spent some time today making a grocery list that would make the Pillsbury dough boy blush, and scouring the Sunday coupons for anything that would fit in that tiny triangle at the top of the suggested food pyramid. Because we’re going to enjoy the Super Bowl this year, regardless of the outcome of the game itself, and we’re doing it the old-fashioned way, through voracious eating. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a nap to take.

Fro-Yo Anonymous

There’s this new frozen yogurt shop in town, Sweet Spoons. It’s about 4.2 miles from my house, give or take. I go a lot. But I go for a lot of different reasons, like if it’s unseasonably warm outside and frozen yogurt sounds perfect, or if I’m driving by on my way to work and need something sweet, or if I have an hour to kill with the girls before my son gets out of school and they need a snack, or if I’m awake. All of those things make me feel like I should go there.

On Sunday, the weather was beautiful, sixty-five degrees and sunny, so I ran three miles to the gym, worked out for thirty minutes, and then ran home. I wish increased physical fitness was its own reward, but it’s not, so my husband and I loaded up the kids and went to the yogurt shop. On Monday, which was supposed to be one of my two days off of work, I had to go in for a couple of hours to make some flyers and I figured a monotonous job like that would go faster if I had some frozen yogurt keeping me company.

Tuesday, I managed not to go to Sweet Spoons, but I have to say, I wasn’t as happy yesterday and I think there’s a correlation. Today, Wednesday, my mom was in town and wanted to try the new frozen yogurt shop I’ve been raving about. Enough said; you had me at “today”. Tomorrow night is my monthly girls’ night out with my church friends, and it was decided, by someone other than me, actually, that we should meet at Sweet Spoons. I mentioned some, but not all, of this to my best friend on the phone today and she was like, “Did you fill up your card already?” (They have a frequent customer card where you buy nine and the tenth one is free.) “Are you kidding me,” I said, “I turned in my third card today. Forget free yogurt, I’ve almost earned enough points for a trip to Cancun.”

I’m not sure why I can’t quit going, but I blame it on Hollywood. I blame a lot of things on Hollywood. For instance, on Monday, I really really wanted to rob an armored truck or knock off a bank because my husband and I rented The Town and they really glamorized the life of armed robbery. Here I am, a thirty-three year old housewife, folding laundry in the bonus room of my house in the suburbs, and at the end of the movie, I turned to my husband and said, “Do you think any of my friends would wanna do that with me?” He laughed and said, “Your friends scrapbook and do recipe exchanges; I don’t think they’d know what to do with an assault rifle.” I laid the pair of Minnie Mouse size four underpants I was folding down on the appropriate pile and said, “Maybe I need new friends.”

By the next morning, the adrenaline rush of the movie had worn off and I was pretty content with my law-abiding life. But, I got way off track there. Sorry. I blame Hollywood for my yogurt addiction because of that movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a movie I always mistakenly call Willy Wonka.

When you’re dieting, and I always am and always will be to some extent, you feel like your underprivileged, like Charlie. And you feel like your life is dull and gray sometimes. So when I walked into that shop the first time and was visually seduced by all of the bright colors and fun decorations, it felt a little like I won the golden ticket. And haven’t we all been waiting to win one of those ever since we saw that movie?

And the cool part is you get to make your own treat! There are eight flavors of fat free frozen yogurt, occasionally one of them will just be “low fat”, but I avoid those whenever humanly possible. (There was a German Chocolate Cake one that, I promise you, no man could’ve turned down.) You can sample any and all of them in these little paper cups like they have at the dentist, but now someone has finally put them to good use. Redeemed them, if you will. And once you choose your flavor (s) (sss), you can go through and put any number of toppings on. We’re talking basics like strawberries, sprinkles or Oreo cookie pieces, to more unorthodox Lucky Charms, cantaloupe, kiwi, cheesecake pieces, or even yogurt chips. How decadent is that, to put yogurt chips on your frozen yogurt?! Finally, you weigh your concoction and pay. I had two flavors and six toppings today and it was $3.15!

I haven’t gained any weight since I started going there, but if you had any idea how much I exercise, you’d know that it’s probably the one thing standing in the way of me losing anymore. Not so much that I go there, but just that I go there every day. I might need to check myself into some kind of rehab. If I can find a facility that treats yogurt addicts, that is.

New Year, Same Life

There’s something familiar about 2011; it reminds me of 2010, with faint traces of 06-09. The New Year’s Fairy didn’t make it to my house to give me an actual clean slate to work with. My desk was still is great disarray when I woke up on Saturday morning and I’m still not a size four, despite putting pictures of movie stars who are under my pillow on December 31^st. I’d like to say I’m a much improved person this year, and maybe the possibility remains in certain areas, but, sadly, I’ve already committed a crime, driving eighty miles per hour when I knew the interstate speed limit was seventy, and I’ve already slipped a tiny bit on my diet, unless someone can come up with a solid nutritional value for the Rice Krispie treat I had yesterday. I haven’t raised my voice at my kids yet, and I really hope to keep that resolution as long as possible, but, in all fairness, I was gone Saturday and Sunday and they went back to school this week, and I’ve always been better at not losing my patience with them when they’re not around.

I’ve overheard the resolutions of others in the last few days. From your basic “get in shape” to “going to bed by midnight every night”. The bedtime one was from a college friend who has a strong distaste for mornings, and she had been pretty successful in passing that aversion on to her kids until she had this last baby and now she’s out of bed before McDonald’s even starts serving lunch. I thought it was ironic that she made her New Year’s Declaration public at 12:06am on January 1^st. Talk about blowing it right away.

My heart goes out to the weight loss and get in shape crowd because I’ve been there. I was fortunate enough to find something I love to do – running, and it’s been easy to stick with. And I think that’s key in anyone’s overall success; you have to find something you love and that doesn’t feel like a chore. And you can’t choose eating. Believe me, I’ve tried. My husband and some of his cronies love playing basketball, so they get up in predawn hours and meet at the gym a couple of days a week. It’s a “come as you are”, no teeth brushing or hair combing necessary type of organization. Not that my husband needs that to stay trim; he won the genetic lottery with a fast metabolism. He could eat half a gallon of ice cream at eleven at night and it wouldn’t show up on the scale in the morning. Actually, I think it might show up on the scale in the morning, just not when he’s the one standing on it. And I know he secretly indulges in the dark arts of fast food eating and dessert consumption, whereas I can’t even drive by a Taco Bell without gaining a little weight. And while I’m comfortable with the size I am now, I want to lose another 17-18 pounds so that I can be a serious competitor in running. So, I just pretend cookies and donuts are poison and that full fat dressing doesn’t exist. And it helps to brainwash yourself into believing your highly allergic to anything fried.

So, good luck to all of you who are climbing on the whole grain, low-fat wagon, and remember that while your eating options may be limited, your options for an active lifestyle are virtually limitless. This twenty-one year old guy I work with came to work the other night with an eye-catching scab on one of his elbows and when I asked him how he got it he said, “Ping pong.” Seriously? What kind of ping-pong is he playing? Tackle ping-pong? Whatever style it is, it seems pretty hard-core. And to each his own.

Home Alone

My dad has been on a business trip for over a week now, and my mom has managed to stay out trouble in his absence by not leaving the house. She is however starting to get her days and nights mixed up, like a newborn, because she gets sucked into late night TV programming and can’t quiet the voice that tells her there’s actually no reason she has to get up in the morning; she could sleep until noon if she wants. She hasn’t made it until noon yet, but she’s getting close. And she acts like someone should award her bonus points for showering and blow drying her hair every day, even though she doesn’t have any contact with other human beings. I reminded her a few days ago that most people bathe daily for pure hygiene purposes, and not necessarily to impress their families, and she countered it was the hair styling that was the extraordinary measure. Yes, Mom, it shows real determination to fix your hair every day.

But, I digress; it was the staying out of trouble thing that started this train out of the station. Yesterday, there someone knocking on the front door, and since it’s Christmastime, she assumed it was a neighbor dropping by baked goods and couldn’t open said door fast enough. But, instead of being handed cookies, a stranger handed her a bottle of Tide. Her first thought was that someone had alerted the authorities to the way she’s been letting the laundry pile up while my dad is away, but it turns out that isn’t actually against the law. Neither is eating cereal for dinner three nights in a row because you don’t feel like cooking for just yourself. And we know this because we’ve studied case law concerning the lives of domestic women while their spouse is away on business. (There’s a sweatpants clause that has served me well in the past.)

So, here’s where the story takes a turn and becomes an Oprah Winfrey special on what women should not do when home alone. #1: Answer the door for a stranger. Oops, too late. #2: Say that you’re home alone. The detergent giver claimed to be there to sell vacuum cleaners and needed to come in to demonstrate the product. It is of note here that this man didn’t have a vacuum cleaner with him. My mom spotted this like a trained field agent and said, “No, you can’t come in. I’m here alone.” Great. Next, he tells her he’ll need the Tide back if he can’t come in. Mom considers this. Tide’s the good stuff. She was holding in her hands something close to a ten dollar value. And her life was worth? Yeah, more. So, she opened the glass storm door a second time and gave it back. The man says that he could come back later, when her husband was home. And this brings us to rule #3: Don’t tell the potential homicidal thief how long he has to come and commit crimes against you. My mom said, “Oh, he won’t be home for a couple of days.” And then immediately realizing her mistake changed it to, “I mean he’ll be home tonight. Soon, really.” Sure he will, lady. How’s about you just leave the front door unlocked so I don’t have to break a window?

He went on to deliver more of his vacuum cleaner sales pitch, and I’m not even sure how it got this far in the exchange without my mom mentioning that she doesn’t have carpet. Their entire house is restored hardwood flooring. But it did. And somewhere near this juncture, the man’s “boss”, or, more accurately, accomplice, drove up to the curb and parked. Mom and the bad guy wrapped things up and scheduled a time for them to come back and pillage the house before she finally closed and locked the door. And then, having learned some valuable lessons during her primetime television watching, she moved chairs and other manageable pieces of furniture in front of the door. I understand the concept of a barricade, but since I also know my mom can barely lift a full jug of milk, I doubt it was an effective one.

Dad’s on his way home right now, thank God. Because I’d hate to see what she’d do if someone showed up and offered something even more valuable, like a gift card to Macy’s or something.

What Recession?

Cra-zy (kra’ze) adj. From the Latin meaning, I went to the mall on the Saturday before Christmas. Not that this is news to you. Based on the population of Triangle Town Center Mall, I’d wager all of you were there. And, yes, even my out of state readers. I parked between two mammoth SUVs, with license plates from Colorado and Iowa. I didn’t park at the mall exactly, just an outskirt that may or may not have been in Raleigh, but was definitely in North Carolina (I saw NASCAR stickers). But, anyway, I was thinking that perhaps our mall is the front line of the war against the recession.

Remember when I was ridiculing the people that had their Christmas shopping done by the end of October, yeah, well, that gulp you just heard was me swallowing those words. Because those are the people curled up on the sofa today watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and sipping hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows of satisfaction. Though, to be fair, I wasn’t at the mall to Christmas shop, as there is no one on my list that’s been nice enough to warrant me entering a battle of that magnitude. I was there because my daughter had a lunch date at California Pizza Kitchen, which is at our mall, and she’s not old enough to drive, yet. Or pay. Or wipe her mouth effectively. So I tagged along.

The girls loved that the mall was so crowded and that multiple people were wearing red Santa hats. For them, there was excitement in the air. To me, there was just the heavy stench of too much cologne and perfume broken up by the wafting smells of b.o. and waffle fries. And Santa hats really only work on the big guy himself and possibly the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Other than that, it just looks creepy and sad on adults. Sadder in say February, but still not great in December.

I only went in one store and that was to purchase a gift for my mother, who, for whatever excuse, is still not a follower of my blog, but does read it, so I’ll not name the store I went to. I’ll just say that there was a line and I had to wait in it with two girls who were so happy about their playdate, they were twirling. Twirling and knocking things down. Twirling into people. Twirling and making me dizzy. You get the picture. And that wasn’t the only line we were in. There was also a line to walk through the mall. I didn’t notice at first, but then when the family in front of us stopped short right in front of The Gap, I realized we couldn’t walk around them. It was too crowded. We got into a thirty person pile up because Susie Glitter Shoes and her mom were discussing if they should go in and look for something for her cousin Adrianna. (I’m not sure of the spelling of Adrianna, but the fact that I know her cousin’s name should be enough. Too much even.) “Maybe a vest or a scarf?” Mom asks, as Dad eyeballs The Great American Cookie Company. He’s been there before, I can tell. I really wanted to suggest they step into the store to decide. Because going in isn’t a contractual obligation to purchase, you know. I was even considering taking the dad to the cookie place with us, if they’d just get out of the way because that’s where we were headed anyway. But luckily I thought twice before saying, “I’ll take your husband, if you’ll let us by.”

We purchased our cookies and began the long odyssey back to the van. I was worried both of the girls would have a birthday or two before we made it, but we got there in thirty minutes flat. I auctioned off our parking spot for twenty bucks, and vowed to never return to the mall again.

Limited Choices

I hope all of you voted yesterday; I did. Sadly we didn’t get to try again with the President thing; I feel like four years is pretty optimistic in light of current national problems, but no one asked me. I did get to vote for Senator, House Representative, Sheriff, judges, and even the super-important office of Soil and Water District Conservation Supervisor. The only thing stranger than that being an elected position is that there was more than one person who wanted to do it. Who aspires to something like that? Is it people who spent their childhoods playing in the mud and just can’t get enough of it, or is Soil and Water District Conservation Supervisor a stepping stone to The White House?

And how is that two people were running for that office and only one person wanted to be District Attorney? I can’t speak to the glamour involved in the Soil and Water office, but based on the four hundred seasons of Law&Order I’ve seen, I think D.A. is a fairly prestigious and exciting job and it seems like more people would want to do it. I, for one, was kicking myself for not running against that guy. Granted I don’t have a law degree or any actual experience, but I’ve read the complete works of John Grisham and if that doesn’t qualify me for District Attorney, I’d be shocked.

There was also a proposed state constitutional amendment wherein no ex-felons could become sheriff, and we were either for or against that. Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me; I don’t want felons out there arresting people. I thought that would be a unanimous decision, but then woke up today to find the election results showed over 300,000 voters would like the option of a felon sheriff. Really? I went to Google for answers.

Apparently, some people were against this because they don’t like adding things on to the constitution willy-nilly, and felt there was no need for this amendment. Maybe, maybe not. If you look at the types of people Americans are electing these days, putting Sheriff Reformed Felon in office doesn’t seem outside of the realm of possibility. I mean, have you heard Joe Biden speak? He had to pick up some of that language in the joint and you know it. (Other people were just against the amendment because they think a felonious sheriff will be more forgiving of the crimes they’re planning to commit, and I suppose if I were a criminal, I would’ve voted that way, too.)

And since I fulfilled my voting responsibility yesterday, I didn’t feel the need to fulfill any others. Like, I don’t have to make dinner, I voted today. I’m not one to burden myself with too many tasks in one day. Vacuuming can seem like overkill when I’ve already showered, brushed my teeth, and driven the kids to school. Speaking of adding on random amendments, can we put something on there about skinny jeans and who can and cannot wear them?

The Silence Of The Preseason Shoppers

I have had not one, but TWO friends tell me they’re done with their Christmas shopping! I know what you’re thinking; I need to get some new friends. I’m working on it. But, in the meantime, the ones I have are making me feel really behind. The first time someone claimed this completion, I ignored it. One overachiever doesn’t need to upset the balance of my laid back lifestyle, but the second time gave me pause and I conducted an impromptu interview of the friend in question, trying to isolate and study the mutated gene of foresight and planning that I do not possess. It was kind of like when Clarice Starling interviewed Hannibal Lecter so she could get into the mind of a psychopath and see what makes him tick. But with less discussion of what wines go best with the human liver.

She said that she starts buying gifts the day after one Christmas in preparation for the next, and then she just picks up things “here and there” throughout the course of the next calendar year and is usually finished by the end of summer or early fall. She just happened to notice that Christmas comes around again every year and rolled with it. Well, I’ve noticed that everyone eventually dies but I’m not out shopping for burial plots right now. But maybe these are the kind of people you want evaluating your retirement portfolio or something. Come to think of it, if my husband didn’t put money into that 401K thingy, I might have a little cash to participate in all of this preemptive Christmas shopping that’s all the rage.

I decided I could at least write out a list of who we need to buy presents for this year. And I thought I’d use that list to jot down some preliminary gift ideas, but actually all I’ve done is cross people’s names off because they’ve irritated me in some way or another. The way things are going the only person who’s going to be left on the list in two months is my grandma and, at age 86, all she’s into is warm socks and Pond’s cold cream. That seems pretty doable at the last minute. Overall, I think the less time my family has where they could potentially be moved to a naughty list, the better.

But while I’m not much of a gift planner, I’m very into the decorating. I think Christmas lights make the whole world a brighter place. I only wait until Thanksgiving Day to get ours out because I have this innate fear that the social-norm police will show up and give me a citation for off-season light displaying. And if the social-norm police ever show up here, I’ll have lots of explaining to do. Maybe not as much as Hannibal Lecter when his freezer was raided, but still.

So, I didn’t buy any Christmas gifts when I was Target today. I bought a couple of pumpkin scented candles instead because it seems like we’re going to go ahead and have fall and Thanksgiving first again this year.