You have been invited to be a part of a recipe exchange

Do you believe I received this email from two different sources?  Ok, here's my recipe:

Remove dinner from box
Pierce film three or four times to vent
Heat in microwave on high for 3-1/2 to 4 minutes
Let sit in microwave for two minutes.  Dinner will be hot.
Remove film and stir before eating

Created with flickr slideshow.

WHAT I ATE ON TUESDAY SLIDESHOW

Created with flickr slideshow.

And the next few days... (still fat 6)

I don't remember too much about Friday but Saturday was a major disaster.  I left the house with good intentions.  Just a coffee and a liquid yogurt until I got to the workshop.  There was free pizza.  I knew there could be trouble but it was FREE!  There was trouble but much worse to come.  The lecturer set me thinking I might never qualify for any job ever again.  All I could think of was snacking please.  I had a field day at K-Mart and came home with a trunkful of Little Debbie's cakes, but not before stopping to pick up the greasiest Chinese dinner I could imagine.  After eating what I'm too mortified to list here I was pretty convinced that I wouldn't have to worry about a job because I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a heart attack in my 50's.  

Today I only had one meal... ok, and a snack cake.  But now I've done my homework and there's no more reason to eat.


OOoohhhmmmmmm


I only eat healthy food in healthy amounts I only eat healthy food in healthy amounts I only eat healthy food in healthy amounts............

THURSDAY - still fat (5)

PEANUT BUTTER AND BANANA ON A HAMBURGER BUN, ONLY 89 CENTS A PACKAGE

3/4 OF A MOJO BAR DURING CLASS BREAK.  DID YOU KNOW THOSE THINGS HAVE 200 CALORIES?

SMOOTHIE BETWEEN MORNING AND EVENING CLASSES.  LUNCH?

THE REST OF THAT WRAP BEFORE CLASS

TWO TANGERINES. HEALTHY LATE NIGHT SNACK.

UH-OH.  IT WAS A STRESSFUL NIGHT.  A MIDTERM AND THREE ASSIGNMENTS DUE IN EVENING CLASS.  I THINK I ACED THEM.

WEDNESDAY - VERY PROUD (still fat 4)

EVERY DAY STARTS THIS WAY:

LUNCH - TJ CREPES AND HALF A BAGEL

DRIVING SNACK AROUND 6PM

DINNER.  HALF A WRAP, SALAD, COUPLA HANDFULS OF TORTILLA CHIPS.  COULD HAVE DONE WITHOUT THE CHIPS.  THEY'RE GONE NOW

PHOTOGRAPHING SHOULD PUT THE BRAKES ON.  ONLY ONE MARSHMALLOW PIE.

TUESDAY, A MORNING, AN EVENING, ONE DAY - STILL FAT 3

HAPPENS EVERY TIME (still fat 2)

Created with flickr slideshow.THIS IS NOT MY SLIDESHOW!!!

WHY AM I STILL FAT?

I had what I thought was a great idea for a food blog.  I photographed everything I ate for three days.  I was going to make three slide shows with  the calorie counts for every item and see why I keep gaining weight when it seems like I'm not eating that much.  I found out a few shocking things about my diet.  They are:  just about everything I eat comes out of a box or a bag; I CAN go without eating for a long time; my emotional binges are cringeworthy.  It doesn't take much to throw me over the Little Debbie edge.

Only I can't make the slideshows.  The flickr slideshow freeware doesn't like me.  And the instructions are written in some accented English that doesn't always make sense.  I'm guessing Dutch.

I'm disappointed but not defeated.  The project continues...

In front of the class in your underwear

You know that dream you have where you're running across the campus to take a final exam for a class you didn't know you had?  I'm living that dream today.  Only it's midterms and I don't have any surprise classes, just surprise projects and tests I thought were a week away.  Oy vey.  College was never like this.  I never did anything in advance then but always did everything on time, albeit at the last minute.  Now, well maybe it's because I have two classes that meet at the same time, I'm behind on both of them.
Thing is, I'm attached the the A's I've been getting on quizzes and projects.  I want to be good at this. It'll be a whole new world to feel like I'm accomplishing something that matters and that I'm good at it. So the task at hand is to buckle down and study, do what I can in the time that's left.  As my dear classmate said, Just do the best you can.  Wasn't that sweet?  She's a mom.  Lucky son.

I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD

I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD I ONLY EAT HEALTHFUL FOOD


(can you tell I had a three ice cream sandwich double moon pie night?)

FAST, FAST, FAST RELIEF

10-17-09

Remember that 1950s Anacin commercial with that animation of a skull suffering from headache, neuritis and neuralgia?  I  have that headache now.  Sergio woke me up from dreaming to tell me he was waiting on line to get into the Showbiz Expo.  I wanted to go just to pick up some swag but he knew the Expo as a big hardware show.  I hate being awakened from a dream.  It takes a day and a night to recover.  Anyway he called me back two more times and finally told me not to even bother.  No swag and the show was all for actors.

So now I have no choice but to do homework.  Makes me want to crawl back into bed.  I attempted a nap but no way. Not a chance for this insomniac.  So, assignment one, due on Monday, the blog it is.  What about a mission statement?  No idea.  Who do I want to reach?  People like me and people who appreciate people like me.  Middle-aged, full of regrets, trying hard to live this next stage of life putting a positive spin on everything.  Half airy-fairy and half just wanting to move on without dragging along that baggage of pessimism, trepidation, fear and misery.  So my teachers are Rabbis Stan and Laura,  former disc jockey and drug addict Shadoe Stevens,  the Gratefulness Word for the Day email blast and my more practiced friends and acquaintance who just know how it’s done.  It is a choice, after all.  Shit keeps on happening and all you can do is react.   Will it go any better if you’re terrified of the outcome than if you expect it to all work out well in the end? 

My mom was a practitioner of the grit your teeth and hold on tight school of imaginary control of things that are out of your control.  Not as empowering as it sounds.   So I really envy people who were raised to see the sunny side or to believe the Eye in the sky cares and protects.  Me, not so much.  So gotta keep making that choice over and over all day long.

And by the way, thank you Gratefulness Word for the Day from leftist historian Howard Zinn who it turns out is not the cynic you might expect.

An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, sappy whistler in the dark. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us energy to act and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

Don't think positive?

Barbara Ehrenreich is pissed off. Again. I haven’t read her new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, but I’ve been reading about it, they way I do all books I’m interested in.* There were two posts about it on my facebook page, one linking Ehrenreich’s interview with Democracy Now http://staging.democracynow.org/2009/10/13/author_barbara_ehrenreich_on_bright_sided

and another one from L.A. Observed http://www.laobserved.com/biz/2009/10/enough_smiling.php

I was incensed by my friend’s typically curmudgeonly facebook comment about how grateful he was that someone was finally blowing the lid off of Positive Thinking. Listen, I’m a born pessimist and an atheist to boot, but these kinds of decontextualized dismissals get my knickers in a knot. Especially now, when my new religion is the Power of Positive Thinking and The Law of Attraction. I’m one of the millions who have lost a job in this economic shitstorm and it’s all I can do to keep my head from exploding. But thanks to the miracles of modern science, along with the constant practice of practicing positive thinking, I’m able to put one foot in front of the other and get on with it.

One of Ehrenreich’s objections is the profit making of the self-help industry. I think she’s missing the obvious. People want help to become more positive. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible or meaningless. It means it’s hard. So as for requiring people to keep coming back and paying up, well that’s a spending decision that people have to make for themselves, but clearly, the positive attitude doesn’t come naturally. That’s why the religious attend weekly (or daily) services. You need what I call “a booster shot” with regularity to antidote our natural inclination to be frightened, defensive, selfish, all highly valuable qualities when you’re living in a cave or a twig lean-to and there isn’t enough mastodon to go around but not so productive when you’re trying to develop a new career or find a way to live on zero dollars a week.

My rabbis have been talking about faith all month, a hard concept for me to follow. What does faith mean without God? Rabbi Stan says, Faith in the Future, Faith in your ability to “make it.” This is more challenging than it sounds. But it’s a choice we each can make. Look, the universe rains down all kinds of hardships and heartache. You have to decide how to deal with them. So you can choose to be buried by a rain of frogs or you can choose to open your arms to a rain of those tiny multicolored chicklets like in that commercial from 1962 with the girl with the weird braids.

There’s lots of research on happiness and positivity and some of it can be found in this commentary about the book on Forbes.com http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/14/positive-thinking-myths-lifestyle-health-happiness.html

*I have been collecting books for at least 15 years. It’s a reaction the impoverished feeling of childhood trips to the library. I was never allowed to buy anything. Now I still don’t ever pay retail for a book but I accumulate books relentlessly. Who has time to read all that when there’s so much tv to watch? I heard a story on my This American Life podcast last night about a construction worker who amassed the largest private collection of books about the Lewis and Clark expedition without ever reading any of them... until he did. And then he sold the collection to Lewis and Clark College. http://legacy.lclark.edu/~public/CHRONICLE/Spring1999/wendlick.html

Oh god, I just spent an hour finding out more about Roger Wendlick and his Lewis and Clark collection…

Monday nite

This is it. Two minutes till the end of class. I have a blog. Now what....