The Choice Is Yours

I previously decided that I would post blogs once a week on Wednesdays. This a good proposition to make sure that I don’t fall behind on my blogging. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to impose a limit on myself. At the bare minimum, I’ll submit by Wednesday, but if I find that by Wednesday, I have something else to say, then I’ll just post twice—or three times, or however often I feel like it. While I’ll always keep in mind that imaginary audience of fans that I soon hope to develop (who are more than likely just to be friends when I decide I’m ready to share the permalink with them), blogging is cathartic. As I tell my students, any story comes from a writer’s need to share something. And today, I’m feeling particularly needy. Today I started work off kilter. I was almost a half hour late. And I could sit here and play the blame game with a hundred different reasons as to why I was late: • My husband turned the light off in the bedroom so I overslept. • Traffic was backed up on the beltway. • I was stuck at two cycles of the same light when I got off the beltway. • I got stuck behind a school bus that made four different stops. • I got stuck behind a slow dump truck. I could even come up with excuses that are focused on me: • I cooked a large meal and then worked out too late last night and was tired. • I had to stop for gas. • I was already late and had to stop for my usual morning coffee and run back into my car to grab my wallet. But the truth of the matter was that I made a choice. I made an entirely conscious choice this morning NOT to get up at 6:15, or 6:25, 6:35, or three other times my snooze button went off with my phone. In fact, my active choice was to remain in bed. My husband was gone, my son was sleeping peacefully beside me, and that bed just felt good. Not just good, but DAMN good. And so I made the choice to not get up until 7:10, the time when I am normally dressed and prepping my son to get to get dressed. As a result, all those other chain reactions (bullets 2-5 in the first list) happened. Sure I did have to stop for gas this morning; stopping last night in all that ridiculous weather was not an option for me. Normally, when things are out of my control, I say “oh well” and chalk it up to the Lord making me avoid some calamity or horrendous accident. And that very well may have been it, but today I don’t think that was it at least not by itself. Because I do have control of two things: my body and my mind. And today they dictated my actions in a negative way, keeping me doing one of the things I am supposed to do, and that is to be to work on time. I remember spending the weekend with my mom and grandma recently and turning on the TV to this television evangelist who’s featured in Virginia on Sunday mornings. He was dressed in khakis and a button-down shirt and was completely casual on this stage set that you would think was for a comedian or a play. He was so interesting that I ended up watching his sermons back to back. And his final one was a question: “Are you taking responsibility for your life, really?” The “really” was emphasized with a pause, and he used the story of Adam and Even explaining to Lord why they’d eaten the apple. Adam said Eve told him to do it, and Eve said the serpent told her to do it. The evangelist’s point was that neither of them took responsibility for what they did, and as a result, all the generations after them to this very day are inherently separated from the face of God. My goal is to get closer.

Devotion and Motivation

Two things. First, sorry that I skipped last week, but my entire household caught some kind of bug. No, I was not entirely impervious to it as I usually am and ended up feeling a little rundown, what with the holiday weekend, my grandmother’s 100th birthday party, my son getting sick at the beginning of the week (I now know that seeing and feeling beans that are thrown up are among the grossest two things ever) and my husband getting the same virus at the end of the week. I will definitely endeavor to at least complete two blogs so that I can release one immediately and time release the other, or at least stay one week ahead to kind of buffer this kind of mistake from happening again. After all, I won’t continue to have a somewhat steady, if imaginary at this point, readership if I can’t manage to maintain a current blog. I can’t have you depending on my “Unchained Thoughts” megablog or shortly lived “More Unchained Thoughts.” Second, I know that the next series of blogs was supposed to be about those habits I have changed/cultivated toward being a better me, but two more pressing themes came up. Today, in an effort to stamp down my work email into a more manageable beast, I endeavored to clean out my inbox. This in and of itself is a monumental feat because besides the fact that I have twenty plus emails respectively from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dictionary Word of the Day, and my spiritual Word of the Day, navigating through Outlook, while seemingly more organized than GroupWise, is proving more difficult. Outlook doesn’t have the same sense of comfort (a sign of getting old is often being uncomfortable with change), but in my defense the college has had Groupwise almost as long as I’ve had a desktop computer at work. Today, I was determined to slay some of my email dragons. I now have only 262 pieces of mail in my inbox, which pales in comparison to the 1000 plus that I’m sure I have in my Yahoo! account. However, I do have two gmail accounts that I manage to keep rather clutter free (less than 20 in the inbox). It’s part of one of my yearly goals of de-cluttering my environment and the sub-goal of completing something almost every day. Last week, with my family’s illnesses, I barely completed anything with the exception of two books. It’s almost the end of February, and it’s time to kick it up a notch in the area of goal fulfillment. But back to the point of today’s blog. While I was rummaging through my email, I kept coming across two definitive themes. The first was to keep the romance alive in my marriage. And truth be told, the romance should not even be anywhere but with us. But I think last week’s illness left something more than fatigue; it left a void because while he was sick and I was nursemaid to our son, we weren’t communicating. And one of the things that my husband loves to try to drill into my brain is the fact that communication is key to any strong healthy relationship. So today’s theme was just to imbibe a little impromptu love note into my husband’s day to say that I appreciate him. It all started with coming across one that he had written me back in November that was in my inbox. I saved it to a more permanent locale on my flash drive. Then I finally opened the presidential inauguration slide show. I’m telling you nothing is more inspiring than seeing the genuine love that our president and first lady share. Even though they were in a crowded ballroom and their pictures were being taken to share with the world, they were in their own private bubble of love when they shared that dance. Next, I came across a bunch of emails from The Nest that thematically talked about 15 things to do before having kids, activities couples could do together, and how to keep the relationship fresh. I’m happy to say that we did accomplish a lot of those 15 things prior to Ayden. I’m still considering what kind of activity we can do together (while I would love to do cycling, the reality is that the lazy sport of bowling was more our speed), even though at some point exercise will be involve. As for keeping it fresh, one of the suggestions was a love note placed inconspicuously for your mate to find. After that, I listened to a Yolanda Adams Morning Show Point of Power segment that talked about the roles in marriage. And finally, the inspiration for what I could do came from my husband himself. He called to ask me if I had any notebook paper. A few minutes later I came up with the idea of writing a love note and slipping it in between the pages for him to discover at some future time, whether that’s at his meeting today or some other day. I like the fact that it was handwritten, and I realized that this note was one of the few times he’s actually seen a lot of my handwriting, so this can and will not be the last time I write my husband a handwritten note. Hmmm…maybe a week’s worth of notes my do the trick, especially in light of the fact that he has not found the first and still brought me a nice huge lunch. The second theme for the day was fitness, which really is tying into the theme that I’m working toward. This weekend I started the Nike Fit program that is under the auspicious moniker of “game” for Xbox 360. And let me tell you, nothing lets you know how out of shape you are more than seeing a digitized outline version of yourself on screen. Add to that the fact that you’re in workout gear, and you really (or at least I really) look humungous. Saturday, I started with the fit test, where this handsome avatar motivated (and I use that term loosely) me to push as hard I can to see where my fitness level was. After his “assessment,” he gave this mini-pep talk about making a small commitment to three days a week, with a 19/23/19-minute schedule that consisted of two days (19 minutes) of cardio and one day of strengthening. And it’s set with the short-term goal of one month (four weeks). Realistically, I know it doesn’t happen overnight: I’m not going to wake up skinny tomorrow, and that I didn’t get this fat quickly, so taking it off won’t be fast either, and that I have to start thinking of this program and any other regimen that I set up as a long-term commitment to be better and stay better. But my mind’s eye is saying, “Come on fat! Melt off! Shouldn’t I have lost a pound after a month and a half of cutting calories and two days of jumping around in my basement?” Unfortunately, it is my scale who has given me an emphatic no. Again, good old realism is saying, you know it’s not so much the pounds but how your body feels and how your clothes start to fit. But that mind’s eye is shouting for realism to shut up and show some results. Which finally leads me to today’s other theme inspiration. First I came across a Washington Post “Lean and Fit” segment that I’m subscribed to. I only read these sporadically, and usually just for the recipes. But today I read the full article about the 50-fitness guru who wrote a book that combines the physical and spiritual health and motivation. Naturally, as a book nook, I located her book on Amazon, read a few pages, and added it to my Wish List. This spiritually holistic approach goes right in line with one of my other goals for the year of reading the Bible in One year. The biggest message I received from this is to keep your motivation going strong and not give. No, the journey will not be easy, but it will be worth it. To reinforce this, I also opened up a life coach blog email that I again seldom read or let sit in my inbox until I feel compelled to just delete it. But this time, I opened and read it, and what do you know, it was the same message of keeping up motivation by starting small habits one at a time and mastering that before moving onto a new one. The life coach even quoted the very fitness guru I had read about this morning. These two messages are further affirmation that I am on the right track with life in general. Now I promise that my next blogs WILL tell you those small habits that I’m mastering.

Funny Bunches of Oats

After much much ado, here is my first blog dedicated to the habit changing that I’ve been doing as of late as promised. I think one of the reasons I keep hesitating with this blog is that oatmeal is so BORING. But it has become my most necessary of evil. These blogs will not necessarily be in the order in which they occurred but more by the lifestyle impact they may have had. Some will be grouped together, while others will have entire monologues dedicated to them, like this one. Even though I have a title for this blog already, if I had to give a subtitle, it would be My Ode to Oats, or more accurately My Odiousness to Oatmeal. In fairy tales and fables, it is known by an almost pleasant name, porridge. To me, it is no fairytale food and should be known by its corporal punishment moniker in nightmarish tales: gruel. I will fully admit that I have never been fond of oatmeal in its most natural form that I was introduced to by Quaker. As a child, my mother boiled the oats in water which enhances its gruel-like texture. I would find that no matter how much sugar I dumped into the offensive glob that sat in front of me, it would never make me desire to eat it. I would cringe whenever my mom went to the store and pick the serious old man in the black brimmed hat over the smiling guy in the white chef’s hat that symbolized Cream of Wheat, which I love. Now there was a guy with credibility to my young eyes—he had on a chef’s hat for goodness sake! How much could a man dressed like a minister know about really good food? Aren’t they more interested in abstaining from the pleasurable pursuits in life? The invention of the Quaker Apples-n-Cinnamon instant oatmeal packet slightly adjusted my thinking as a youth because it was something quick and easy that I could fix for myself (without the microwave oven).Therefore, that flavor and only that flavor, helped me to steadily ingest oatmeal (once my mom found something you liked, she stayed with it. For most of my adult life, I have studiously avoided oatmeal like it was gruel. I’m a habitual breakfast skipper, so it was easy to shun old fashioned oats. Even when I did break my fast with a morning meal, I either went to the no-cook convenience of cereal, or the polar opposite of a full breakfast that included pancakes, eggs, and breakfast meat. Clearly, I was not worried about cholesterol. I’m still not worried about cholesterol to this day, but I was slowly reintroduced to the concept of eating it by my son of all people. He LOVES oatmeal, and so we buy the instant packs in bulk and send some to the babysitter. When I decided to embark upon my newest battle (see “I De-Clare War”) I kept hearing from various sources that it was good option to promote weight loss. In truth, the flavor of oatmeal isn’t that bad, but as is often said on Food Network, we eat with our eyes, and the primary problem with oatmeal is that it just doesn’t look good (unless it’s shaped into a cookie). I’ve even ventured outside of the apples and cinnamon into maple and brown sugar and the other one that tastes exactly like maple and brown sugar (I think Quaker calls it cinnamon and brown sugar). The only flavor that I have lingering animosity toward is plain oatmeal. What I’ve done to make it more palatable was to add fresh blueberries or bananas, but even that has not been enough to disguise the gruel-like taste. Then, in an effort to help reduce my oatmeal animosity since every time I made a bowl, I would make a sarcastic comment about it, my coworker suggested I try a different type of oatmeal. She even nicely gave me a few packets to try before I buy. My first thought upon opening the package was why are these oat flakes so HUGE? In fact, I think my exact thought process was why does this oatmeal look so oaty? (Okay, I know oaty is not a real word but it should be.) This oatmeal also happens to have flaxseed already in it, which in whole form, as my other co-worker pointed out, resembles small black beetles, giving you the illusion that the oatmeal has gone bad. (Flaxseed will be a future topic of discussion). Surprisingly, however, this healthier oatmeal tasted just a good as the Quaker I thought at the time. I tried maple and brown sugar and even pomegranate, which I thought would be disgusting, but was again, rather tasty. It turns out that ironically, this more healthy for you oatmeal, called Good Oats is actually better than Quaker. After a week, I returned to Quaker and found myself disappointed with the tiny undistinguishable oat flakes and dust that Quaker had to offer. So while I will continue (at least for the meantime) to buy Quaker for Ayden, I have decided to fully commit to more adult oatflakes. And I may not even complain about them as vocally.

I De-clare War

There’s an oft-used cliché about struggling with weight. Well for this year I have decide to wage an all-out UFC, gladiator-style, take-no-prisoners, last-man-standing war. Admittedly, the battles have been occurring for years, with resurges of war as I went through various diet and exercise stages. In addition, the weight has indeed tipped the scale (excuse the pun) in its favor for the past five years in light of the added schoolwork, relationship, teaching, home, marriage, baby, and the just general busyness that causes the lapse in healthy habits. At first it was the cessation of exercise, then the stopping for something quick to eat on the way to class. After that it was the stages of dating where we went out to eat. Surprisingly, I stayed at my healthiest during my pregnancy out of the fear of gaining too much weight. But ironically, it was postpartum that I gained the most weight since I was no longer on dietary restriction. Almost since the moment of Ayden’s birth up until May of last year, fat had won out over fit. Last year’s catalyst to retake on The Battle of the Bulging Butt and Gut was brought on by none other than my impending wedding day. Realistically, I knew that I wasn't going to shed massive poundage before the big day, but I could at least become the best me I could be. I ended up joining my job’s fitness boot camp on Monday and Wednesday evenings after work. In addition I ended up reincorporating some old habits back into into my daily routine, along with some new ones. The next few blogs will be dedicated to those habits that I've picked up. By the time my wedding came around, I hadn't lost but five pounds which I promptly regained on the honeymoon. But all was not lost since I lost ten after returning from the honeymoon. Go figure. I have yet to add exercise back into my routine, but I do at least plan to work on that next. That ten pounds that I lost from the previous remained steady without the exercise. so while I'm complaining about not losing ONE SINGLE pound this year, I suppose the bright side is that I haven't gained one or more either.

The Envelope, the Drawer, and the Ladle

“It amazes me the amount of time that can be wasted doing totally stupid but suddenly necessary tasks.” This was my Facebook status of a few moments ago. It’s actually a shame that my first blog after so many weeks should be about this, especially since I have a few really great topics lined up for the next few days. But this waste of my time was so monumentally stupid that it suddenly became blognotable, which, now that I think about it, is an excellent title for my new blog series that I just thought to create about a moment ago. It started with an envelope and drawer and ends oddly enough, with a ladle. (Kind of C.S. Lewis-like in the title. Notice?) It’s tax season and my new husband and I have been debating over whether to file separately or jointly. So this week, I’ve been running numbers for my separate tax return to maximize my refund. Yesterday, my hubby found out that he would be ineligible to claim if we file separately. As divine interventions would have it, a colleague of ours whom I found knows an old friend of mine came and my husband asked her casually if she filed separately or jointly. This colleague said something wonderfully profound: “we are supposed to be one.” This implies in all things, even taxes. Hit with that fresh perspective, I am prepared to forge ahead with the joint returns. My hubby had brought me his paperwork early in the morning with the caveat to not lose it. I scoffed and said that of course I wouldn’t. It remained in an envelope on my desk for the majority of the day until I was considering leaving the office for an extended period. This is the part of the story starts my spiral into absurdity. I (haphazardly I admit) tossed the envelope in my bottom desk drawer and quickly closed it. The problem with that brilliant move is that the envelope wasn’t completely IN the drawer, but resting on top of it. When I closed the drawer, the envelope who plausible disappeared I had scoffed at was nicely jammed behind the desk drawer. Of course this drawer couldn’t be one of those nifty removable drawers. No, these drawer casters are solidly bolted, so all I could do was say a four-letter invective as I tried to reach my hand between the small 11/2 inch-gap in the drawer. There had to be a solution, so I looked around my office for something I could use to dislodge it. First came the wooden ruler. Then went the wooden ruler as it slipped out of my fingertips into the same spot as the envelope. Spotting nothing else in my desk area, I made my way to our office kitchen where I checked the drawers for some utensils. You can see where I’m going with this now, can’t you? I found a serving fork and a ladle and tried the ladle first. I lost the ladle to the drawer even faster than I did the ruler. So at this point, I had three objects stuck behind the desk drawer and my last ray of hope was the serving fork. The good news is that I managed to get the object that started all this mess out relatively quickly by using the fork to slide it under the drawer. Then miraculously, the ruler came out of the bottom with the same ease. But the ladle…that was a different story. At first, I was tempted to just leave and get back to it another day, but if I’d been able to close the drawer, it probably would have been shoved to the back forever. Besides, the drawer wouldn’t close. After numerous tries, I did somehow manage to dislodge it using both the fork and my index finger and doing an awkward Operation (board game) shimmy up the side gap in the drawer. Total time wasted: almost a half hour.