Five!

By last evening, I was feeling grumpy and thought that a glass of wine would be a GREAT idea. So, Tall One and I went for a walk instead. He wondered about my day and I told him. He said, "Ahhh, what are you grumpy about?", and I said, "Probably because I can't have a glass of wine!" The circle begins....

I woke up feeling irritable this morning, too. The actual point of this experiment is to see exactly how alcohol effects my moods, feelings and productivity. It may be that a glass of wine, calms and settles me. It may turn out to be a great stress buster. It could turn out that my hormonal fluctuations are much worse without the calming effects of my nightly red. Or, it could turn out that I feel much better drinking only occasionally. That would definitely be easier on my weight.

In my youth, I struggled with my weight. I was never grossly overweight, I just saw myself that way. I ate all the calorie dense staples of the 60's, 70's, and 80's without the physical exertion necessary to negate it. I would jump on the latest diet bandwagon, only to fall off a week later. In the 90's I hit on a workable solution. I ate high fat, wasted calories foods almost exclusively. I lost about 25 pounds. This was because of the universal truth that if you expend more calories than you eat, you will lose weight. I ate crap, but only a tiny, little bit of crap, or nothing at all. And, then because I couldn't crap I would take a couple of laxatives. This type of diet does not bode well over the long haul. I then got interested in weight training. You can't lift weights and NOT eat. But, weight training and bizarre food patterns go hand in hand. Around this time, Tall One learned to cook. I existed on mostly tuna fish and grilled chicken. I lived for a daily snack of a banana with a little bit of peanut butter. This diet was a huge IMPROVEMENT. More time passed, and I passed into middle age. Right around 47, it all fell apart.

I learned how to eat well to get and stay healthy. I've jumped on a couple of bandwagons. The flax meal bandwagon, and the no fat bandwagon. I tried some supplements, primarily glucosamine/chondroitin. But, in the last years I have mellowed. I eat cheese, but almost never red meat. I drink 1% milk instead of skim. I try very hard to look at the whole picture.

So, now, I know how to eat. I value moderation.

There are similar stages associated with my drinking. First there was the extreme indiscriminate illegal binging of my youth, then the religious inspired tee-totaling of my young adulthood. After I decided I wasn't going to hell for drinking a glass of wine with dinner, I would occasionally have a glass of wine with dinner. Then, we encountered a couple of life glitches, and a couple of glasses of wine became a reward. A way to celebrate making it through another day! Every day now, for a couple of years. Then we discovered the bar!

The crises have passed or mellowed, and now it's time to figure out how to moderate. I'm feeling pretty good this afternoon....I get to be the designated driver tonight...see you in the morning...

Four?

Ok, I've lost count! But, be that as it may, so far, so good! Trite cliches rock!

Yesterday went well. I didn't need to take a nap in the afternoon. I watched some T.V. with Tall One in the evening. The new season opener of "Desperate Housewives", yay! and, the new show, "The Event" which has possibilities although, I'm leery...it could deteriorate a la "24", and that would be disappointing.

The DVR allows us to watch two hours of shows in an hour and a half, so by 9:30pm I was upstairs getting ready for bed and settling down to read. The last couple of nights I haven't sleep soundly, but it's not awful tossing and turning, just longer wakefulness and more frequent trips to the toilet. I am remembering what I read, and not having to reread entire sections while fighting to focus.

In spite of the sleep issue, which may not even be an issue, just a difference...I woke up at 6:06a.m. feeling quite well. I did a half hour on the Nordic, showered, and after a couple of chores, it's 8:55a.m. I'm feeling productive and not draggy.

This bodes well for the "booze hiatus"...but, in order to be completely definitive, I'll have to go through a couple of monthly cycles (making an exception for Costa Rica). "Feeling well" could be attributed to the 20-minutes of relief that I experience every couple of months from hormonal insanity . I imagine this is what "normal" feels like. It's interesting that 5 minutes a month, can define "normal"...but, I'm clinging to it!

I'm encouraged. I'm not feeling uncontrollable cravings for my wine. I'm not eating more to compensate...in fact, I'm not mindlessly grazing, as I have been, while enjoying that second glass after dinner.

Day Three (reporting on two, too)

Still not drinking. It's not as dramatic as it sounds. I'm not having to follow a 12 step program, or take it one day at a time. Tall One made a lovely pasta dinner last night, and I was fine, really fine, with my water. I actually like water, better than anything other than wine! So, day two, down, on to today!

I was planning to get up and go to the gym with Tall One this morning. He has a rigid schedule that must be accommodated. Other than that, he was very encouraging. However, when it was time to get rolling, promptly at 5:45a.m., I was not feeling the like! I needed to wake up, re-group, and head out later.

Back-story: A couple of weeks ago, I set up the old T.V. and VCR in the game/second guest room/PhD's old digs. While arranging the videos, I found a yoga tape that I had borrowed YEARS ago. I loved my yoga classes, also years ago, and occasionally practice the sun salutation and a couple of poses. I've wanted to get into some sort of yoga routine....for years.

Well, even after coffee and a couple of oranges, I wasn't anymore in like with the gym idea. It's funny (funny, strange - not, funny, haha) because I used to live at the gym...I LOVED to lift. I didn't mind the pain. Coveting the option of standing to pee was the bench mark of a good workout (ladies, do fifty squats, followed by fifty lunges...and by tomorrow you'll know what I'm talkin' 'bout!). Now, just the thought of purposely making my muscles stiff, makes me a little sick. My joints aren't happy campers these days either, and that probably has something to do with it as well.

So, I decided to procrastinate on the gym and check out my yoga video. I'm very glad I did. I was breathing, stretching, sweating...and having a nice time of it. The room is conducive to yoga exercise, the tape is instructive, the routine enough of a challenge without being a discouragement. I feel like I've done something, but just enough of something! So I'm psyched...well, as psyched as one can get about yoga...it's more of a calm acceptance.

I'm going to add a scented candle...

Day One (actually Two, but, well....)

Morning. Sunday. Day two.

I'm going to try posting every morning for a few weeks. Yesterday, I determined, (after seeing some candid pictures of myself) that middle-aged-spread is not the look I'm going for. My diet isn't bad. What I've been doing is sucking down obscene amounts of alcohol calories. Obscene for me...not on the scale of AA meeting obscene.

I've also been dealing with fatigue. Crushing fatigue. This isn't new either. It goes back years. But, alcohol is a depressant after all, and I'm sure it's not helping.

I don't have the energy or the inclination to exercise like I want/need to.

But, I do like my wine. I'm not about to give up, forever, my glass of red with dinner, but, I need to get a base line reading. I need to drop some pounds. So I set some goals.

I'm not going to drink until Tall One and I leave for Costa Rica at the beginning of November. This is five weeks. I will have a good idea by then if abstinence helps my energy level. I fully expect to have lost a few pounds.

I'm going to begin, in earnest, my "training program" for the mudder I want to enter in April with Daughter. I enjoy a run, usually on a Saturday morning. I'm running 3 1/2 miles right now, and I want to add on an additional walk of three miles by the middle of October. I, most weeks, have a "short" run some other time during the week.

I also want to get into the gym once a week to lift. Monday morning is my target day.

And, just because I think it might be good to establish a routine. I will be waking at 6am each day. Sleeping still makes me bitter....such a waste.

So, that's it. So far, so good. I drank diet sodas at the Pub. I ran yesterday. I did not get up at 6am this morning...but, it's the weekend...

Fair....Game....

Daughter and Dude are off for a mini-vacation. They are traveling, via Amtrak train to New York City, meeting up with Dude's best friend and wife, who are vacationing from California. I'm watching the Grands. I'm thrilled. I'm exhausted, and it's only 9:30 on the first morning.

Bigger was up at 6:30am. The cat took the bed. He had to sleep on the chair. He didn't even have time to get a cover. I need to have a cover up there, on the chair, for emergencies. Noted. Stupid of me not to have anticipated this need. Seems obvious.

Baby is playing Lego video games on the touchscreen computer - which seemed like a good idea at the time. Baby loves that computer, he also loves to eat. He does both at the same time....you don't want to know what that screen looks like. I've become a pro at de-sticking the keyboard. Did you know you could pop off the keys with a butter knife?

Pretty Princess is playing with a plastic basket full of baby spoons, forks and knives that she ferreted out of the cutlery drawer. They don't seem THAT dangerous. And, she's occupied...OF COURSE, she could poke something out...but, I'm playing the odds.

The local Fair is in town. I'm sure by tonight we'll welcome the diversion. Tall One loves the Fair, I am ambivalent. I'm actively ambivalent. I'm radically ambivalent.

When it's just Tall One and me, walking through the Fair is a fun, educational experience, full of local color. I enjoy seeing the farm animals at their very best, groomed and fatted, especially the pigs at feeding time. Actually, it's more of the HEARING of the pigs at feeding time. They sound like what a shark frenzy looks like. The smells from the food stands is intoxicating. The rides look like fun. Even a side show! The tiniest woman in the world! According to the banner, her eight year old son is twice as tall! Something for everyone!

And, the crowds! You won't find a more eclectic collection of people anywhere! Not at the beach, not even at Walmart. People-watching at it's very best! Who needs the side-show? The laissez-faire attitude of the ride operators, contrasts starkly with the non-stop banter of the midway game hucksters. Grandma, out for the evening, followed like a mother duck by her half-dozen children and their children of various sizes. The tattooed couple, in shorts and sleeveless tops, proudly showing their collection of "wearable art". The excited wide eyed children, jostling through the crowd to arrive at the show just a bit before their attentive smiling parents.

When we have the Grands with us, the whole thing takes on a sinister connotation. Like the laughing clown that transforms into the leering lunatic. The animals seem uncared for and ill used. Who's sadistic idea is the "petting" zoo? A rickety folding banquet table arrayed with a couple of dozen baby bunnies, wrapped in filthy blankets struggling to free themselves from the maniacal embraces of girls, 18 months to 12 years, as the life is forever squashed from their fluffy soft bodies. Adults, pushing and trampling to gain a prime vantage point for their children to view the hatching eggs in the makeshift incubator. The children watching joyously as the new born hatch-lings, triumphant from their struggle, drown in the filthy water dishes. Kids kicking over the piles of pygmy goats huddling in the corners, climbing on the calves for a ride, poking at the terrified alpacas with sticks or throwing straw on the defeated, exhausted lambs.

The games are nothing more than impossible ripoffs. How dare the foul barkers approach us with their offensive offers of "win" and their pathetic attempts to lure us with "prizes"? The Grands are too young and naive to appreciate the risk that Tall One and I are taking when we mumble "no thanks". All they see are the goldfish and the sun-bleached stuffed Spongbobs! They want to "play". Anathema!

The food stands look filthy. They are ill equipped and understaffed. You risk bodily injury or starving to death in the lines for service. The rides are unsafe and dangerous - erected in 30 minutes by drug addicted, incompetents, and operated by hung-over funny-uncle Bob! NO SEAT BELTS - on the Ferris wheel! Baby's only FOUR! Gaaaahhhhhhh! Everything is overpriced!

And, who ARE all these people and where do they come from? Look out! Oh my god! Nearly run over by the 462 lb. grandmother on her hoover-round. It's a game of "Dodge the Weirdos" as we're jostled and jolted by her slovenly entourage, hell bent on getting that dozen whoopie pies and cotton candy for dessert, BEFORE they finish their pork bar-b-q's, vat of fries, and extra large homemade rootbeers. How can you eat so much, with so few teeth? What the....exactly IS that tattoo? Don't LOOK! Buddy, for the love of....put on a SHIRT, nobody wants to see that...and put out that cigar...you're gonna burn someone's eye out! Sorry, my bad...."Discount Day for Children of People Who've Married Their First Cousins"!

At the Fair, I feel as if I have to grab the Grands to my bosom, shielding their eyes, covering their ears, and running for cover! They, of course, are enjoying themselves immensely!

Hair Today...Gone Tomorrow (I couldn't resist, sorry.)

I'm letting my hair grow.

Throughout high school I had long hair that I took great pains with. I learned to sleep in plastic rollers the size of soup cans. Then I'd spend an hour or so with a "curling" iron...making sure every strand was smooth and straight. You do see the irony? Oh, and I have naturally curly hair. I dyed it. Poured lemon juice and peroxide on it. I washed it every day, lathering twice, and used "creme rinse" to keep the fizz down. I brushed it when it was wet, combed it when it was dry, and generally abused it into submission.

We were married a few years, and I was tired of being held hostage by my artificially straight hair. I decided I needed a perm. I'm really not sure how I arrived at that conclusion. Maybe it was a form of "Stockholm syndrome". You remember big hair? It was going to prove to be just as time consuming as my faux straight style, and I had to buy a pick...but, I needed a change. It would be "different". I would be different, the world would dawn a brighter place, the lion would lie down with the lamb, and I'd be tall and thin...

So I got the perm. I really liked it. Tall One took one look at me and I could tell he DIDN'T. I was crushed. Cried. And, called EVERY female friend, acquaintance and cousin-of-their-boyfriend's-sister-who's-a-beautician for EVERY perm relaxing home remedy known to human kind. I sort of wish I had collected them all in a spiral bond notebook. It would be "fun" to look back at our primitive hair care knowledge or, I could bury it in the yard and give future archeologists a real thrill. I ended up slathering my head in mayonnaise, wrapping that with plastic wrap and sitting under the hood of a portable hair dryer for a couple of days. The perm remained intact, and, I learned a valuable lesson that had nothing to do with sandwich spread. Tall One does not react well to change. I just can't take it personally.

In the early eighties, I decided I needed another drastic change and cut my hair short. It turned out to be a good look. Periodically, over the next two decades I would let it grow, then cut it short again, each time thinking that would be the last time I'd ever have long hair. I was really pushing the "Nana-maxim" - "Thou shalt not have long hair after the age of 25"! Apparently, it's the eleventh commandment. Her "homosexual" (say it without making a sound, just by the exaggerated movement of your mouth, like you're trying to communicate via lip reading to a less than brilliant chimpanzee) hairdresser who lived in the apartment upstairs told her that - 55 YEARS AGO! Seriously, whenever I hear the story, I picture gay Moses (fuchsia robe, eye liner, and a dinner ring) handing down the tablets!

Sometime around our twenty fifth wedding anniversary, I had it cut really, really short. I love that look. Sophisticated woman with an almost shaved do. Except that I don't wear makeup or ear rings, and both of those are crucial to pulling it off. I lost all my femininity. I looked like a cross between a chemo patient and bulldyke (can I say that without offense, or should I just mouth it?). But, it grew out.

Shortly after the tragedy I've memorialized in "A Hair Raising Story of Passion and Loss", I lost interest in my hair. Nothing was working, I didn't hate my hair. I have good hair, it's forgiving and easy going...it was me, not hair. Up until this last cut, my hair style was based entirely on apathy. Now, I'm actively "growing my hair".

Today, my only requisite in a hair style, is that I don't have to mess with it. I like to get up in the morning, stick my head under the spigot, finger comb and go. My hair cooperates with this completely...it still wakes up screaming from the nightmares of it's long ago "Saw"-like captivity. I've found an up-do that works! So I have a bit of diversity. The first time I tried it, Tall One had that look that caused all the problems with my perm. I ignored it. I love the elegant grey-haired-older-woman-in-a-stunning-pashima look. Or, the casual-out-doorsy-older-woman with her braid. God, I hope I don't end up looking like the wicked witch of the west!

Tall One is still petitioning for a short hair cut...I'm not giving in because I imagine his disappointment in finding that by getting my hair cut short...I won't be twenty years younger and twenty pounds thinner.

Grand beginning....

I fully recognize that not everyone is completely enamored by, or even interested in MY grandchildren. I think that, because I choose not to bore people with pictures and "cute" stories, I avoided writing about being a grandmother here on my very own blog. But, all that is about to change! Why shouldn't I write about the most important people in my world! I've written about Tall One, and Daughter and Dude, and O.S., and PhD. and Masters. I spend the great majority of my time and energy with, and on, my grandchildren. I've learned as much or more from them as I have from anyone. I've learned a lot about myself. And, you choose to read about it...or not!

When I talked with other grandmothers, before the birth of Bigger, I heard, "Oh, it's wonderful! You'll love being a grandma! It's really "different"!". And, I thought, "I loved being a mom! How "different" could it be!?!". And, then, Daughter got pregnant with Bigger.

I remember the day Daughter and Dude told us of the "blessed event". I can't remember why I went to their home, it was early in the day, before Dude left for work. They told me, and then Dude called our shop to tell Tall One. "I knocked up your daughter....", he sing, songed. Cute. Well, Dude thought he was cute, and Tall One took it well!

My theory on the utter delight of grandchildren, is simple: All of the joy, none of the crushing responsibility. I've enjoyed wonderful circumstances! Our daughter and Dude bought a home a mile away from ours. I have a good relationship with Daughter. She is my friend, and confident. I respect her. Admire her. I enjoy her company. And, I love her with all of my heart. Dude seems very content to have Tall One and me in their lives. From the time Bigger was born, really before that, he's been a part of my life nearly every day. Our families have meshed in a way that I dreamed could be possible. Daughter works in the business with Tall One. I watch the kids. They have toys here, a computer, a Wii. They have their own sleeping spaces. Their special treats, and food. They don't "come to visit Mammy", they "go to Mammy's house" like "going home".

Bigger was born on the first day of summer. A little over two years later, Baby, burst onto the scene, born on my 50th birthday. Nearly three years later, Pretty Princess arrived, already Queen of our world, on the Ides of March. And, starting today, you'll learn a bit about our journey!