Admission: I'm on a diet

I'm on a diet.

Without getting into the details, yes, it's brand-name, no it does not involve anything delicious, and yes, I'm aware I'm consuming a lot of chemicals. It's temporary!

I've been trying for a while to lose the weight I gained when, over two years ago, I worked at a job with long hours and a lot of travel. And I've been unsuccessful. I've tried upping my protein. I've tried new exercises. I joined a CrossFit box. (I LOVE my CrossFit box! I am so strong now! But I have some pants I still can't button.) I've tried cutting out drinks (any drinks: juice, coffee, alcohol).

But it wasn't working. So when a coworker had success with this diet, and another wanted to try it, I thought, well, let's see what happens. It's easy in that I don't have to think about what I eat: everything is prepackaged. I have some friends doing it with me, so that helps. And it's been working.

I was hesitant to try this diet because I was afraid of what people would think. I didn't want to be someone who had to diet. I didn't want to jump on a trend bandwagon. I didn't want to feel desperate and fat. I WANT to be someone who can be cognizant of what they are eating and make smart changes to lose weight. But, I'm not that person. Or at least not yet. But then I also realized, I don't care about the diets of my friends: I care that they're healthy and happy. I'm not doing this because it's a trend, I'm doing it for me. And I'm not desperate. I'm still a healthy weight and size. I'm not fat. I'm just not who I want to be.

Tackling the question of who I want to be has many layers. But one of them is someone who is a little smaller.

Almost every female I know has a love/hate relationship with food, or has gotten over a love/hate relationship with food. It's like that boyfriend we've all had--that one where we say, well, I was in this dysfunctional relationship and it sucked, but now I really appreciate the person I'm with because of it. Why do we need that? Why can't we skip over the disfunction and just appreciate? This is probably a topic to discuss with my therapist. If I had a therapist. But that's another kind of "dating" relationship; one that I don't really have time for right now.

Back to the love/hate relationship with food. It's really sad, because food is fuel, and it's delicious and nourishing in more ways than one. Food is socializing with people you care about, food is holiday traditions, food can feed your body and your soul.

But sometimes food pollutes your body and soul.

When I talk to people who have made major changes to their diet and nutritional lifestyle, I'm always amazed by how personal it is. I always thought you just start eating better and less, but that's not the case at all. It's way more an emotional battle than a physical one.

I used to be the person who could eat anything. In high school, I was on two swim teams. That coupled with a fast metabolism inherited from my mother meant I could eat donuts and Reese's pieces every day, in addition to all of the significantly more normal, and decidedly healthier meals my mother prepared. And still be a size 2. And have muscles.

Tragically, I am no longer on two swim teams. I have a job where I sit at my desk. My mother doesn't cook my meals, my husband or I do (mostly my husband, actually). And while I still have muscles (bigger muscles, in fact!), and my pants size is single-digit, I'm far from a 2 (although I have no plans to ever get back to that).

I've been on this diet almost two weeks now, and I'm noticing both the physical and emotional changes. Good or bad, here's what I've learned about myself:
1. I miss coffee more than chocolate (WTF?)
2. I don't like to be full; I like to be not hungry.
3. I like eating small meals every two hours, like a newborn.
4. I like eating the same thing every day.
5. It's actually easier on the weekends, when I can DO what I enjoy than on the weekdays, when I don't enjoy what I do.
6. Which means I should probably be looking for a career change. Hopefully it's not located at the bottom of a pint of ice cream or beer.
7. In general, I don't miss alcohol, but I haven't become a teetotaler.
8. I do miss juice, hot chocolate, tea with milk, and pretty much anything else I can drink.
9. I'm more of an emotional-eater than I thought.

I'm not a patient person by nature, so this whole life's-a-journey thing is never really something I've embraced. But, to quote the Cheshire cat, if it doesn't matter where you want to go, "then it doesn't matter which way you go." And I definitely have a destination in mind.

Different Seasons by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Stephen King, however, I have to be really choosy in what I read of his, because some of his works scare the shit out of me.

This is a series of four shortish stories, and while each story (except the first one) has an element of creepy darkish weirdness to it, they're not bad.

The first story is Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, and the movie remarkably nails it, so I'm not going to discuss it here.

The second story is Apt Pupil, and this is, by far, the most disturbing of the set, but not in a sleep-with-the-light-on sort of way. It's about a boy who discovers a former Nazi officer living in his home town, and rather than turn him in, the boy asks a lot of questions about what the man did during WWII. The boy and the man develop this mutual co-dependent grotesque relationship based on their fascination with mass murder. The content is disturbing, in and of itself, and also because you watch a seemingly normal, albeit precocious, boy turn a corner into someone very dark and disturbed, and even to the end of the book, I found myself wondering how he was going to get out of it, how this boy was going to get back to normal.

The third story is The Body, which was turned into the movie, Stand by Me. It was after watching the movie and seeing in the credits that it was based on a short story by King, that I decided to read the book. The Body is, in a nutshell, a coming-of-age story about four boys. The boys go off on an adventure to find the body of a boy about their own age who was hit by a train. That description doesn't really do the story justice, but I don't think you read coming-of-age stories for the plot so much as for self-reflection and an opportunity to go back and live a different youth.

The fourth story is called The Breathing Method, and is about a man who joins a club where the members tell stories. Except it isn't quite as simple as that. The club has an element of almost Alice in Wonderland-ish mystique to it, where not all doors are open, and not all doors lead to rooms in this world. There's an almost dream-like quality to the club, and while reading the story, I felt at any moment I might be drawn back into reality.

I had a friend tell me she liked reading King because he wrote what we all thought but were afraid to say. I'm not sure I totally agree with that assessment, but I do think King says things we all want to say, only he manages to articulate it so much better than we ever could. As an example, here's a quote from The Breathing Method: Ellen was sixty per cent asleep when I sat down on the bed to take off my shoes. She rolled over and made a fuzzy interrogative sound deep in her throat. I told her to go back to sleep. She made the muzzy sound again. This time it approximated English: "Howwuzzit?"

Captain America and I have lots of conversations where one of us is "sixty per cent asleep" and this is EXACTLY what they sound like, although it would have taken me about 92 sentences to describe them.

At the end of the book (at least in the version I read) is a letter from King to his readers. He says a couple of interesting things in it that I want to share.

But neither of these magazines [Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker] has been particularly receptive to my stuff, which is fairly plan, not very literary, and sometimes (although it hurts like hell to admit it) downright clumsy. To some degree or other, I would guess that those very qualities--unadmirable though they may be--have been responsible for the success of my novels. Most of them have been plain fiction for plain folks, the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald's.

I disagree with King's assessment of his writing, and I wouldn't have used the word plain, except that King doesn't use flowery language, he uses accurate language. I'm not sure that makes it plain at all.

Finally, he says of this book in particular:

But I've been in love with each of these stories, too, and part of me always will be in love with them, I guess. I hope that you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know. 

Isn't that wonderful?

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My lifelong fear of being in trouble

So I just finished reading The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac, and chapter 24 got me thinking about something that happened to me in 5th grade. The chapter is only two paragraphs, so I'm just going to quote them here:

You'll never make a boy in the middle of a gripping story understand--you'll never get him to understand through a demonstration intended for him alone--why he must stop reading and go to bed.

It was Kafka who said that, little Franz, whose father wanted him to spend every night counting.

As a child, I never understood why I had to stop reading, but one incident is forever branded in my mind. I was in 5th grade, and every morning, students gave a little presentation on any books they had finished reading. One morning, a boy named Matt Bagley, who was gawky and tall (for a 5th grader), and had what seemed like huge hands to me, was discussing the book Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Patterson, which was one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors. He was tapping the book during his presentation, which is probably why I noticed his hands. AND HE WAS GETTING IT WRONG! It was clear to me that he had not read the book, or if he had, that he had so obviously not understood what was going on, or what made it such a GOOD book. It was incredible how inaccurate his description of it was.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember thinking, I've already read that book, and besides, he's getting it wrong, so I'll just go back to reading what I was reading before he started his report.

But despite the fact that Matt was so clearly in the wrong, I got in trouble FOR READING. And I wasn't even expecting it.

On the first day of school, Ms. Rottenberg (yes, that really was her name), told us the classroom rules, and what the penalties were. The first penalty was your name on the board. I don't remember what the second one was, but the third one was being sent to the principal and so on. Somehow, I missed the part where you'd start anew the next day, and so I thought as soon as you got your name on the board once, you were totally screwed (it didn't occur to me how irrational this was, if for no other reason than it can be really difficult for elementary-aged kids to always behave).

Anyway, reading during Matt's atrocious presentation got me my name on the board. I was told I wasn't paying attention. I was so dumbfounded that I didn't even bother to point out that it didn't make sense for me to pay attention to someone who clearly was talking about a book they hadn't read. And besides, I'm not sure my 5th-grade mind could articulate such a sentiment.

At any rate, my name was on the board, and I was convinced that if I stuck a toe out of line the rest of the year, whatever the second thing was would happen, and the world would come to an end. My parents would disown me, I'd be kicked out of school and become a drug addict and get pregnant and never go to college (okay, and while we're on the subject, why is this always the series of events presented to kids? I mean, every time we discussed drugs and/or sex in school, it seemed like we were all doomed if we ever did either of those things. It was like God was hovering over our health classes ready to send in a wrath of locusts or something). I apparently never noticed if my name was removed the next day or not. It was etched on the chalkboard in my mind's eye, and that was all that mattered to me.

So, little 5th-grade Virginia was terrified of getting in trouble, and the worst part was, I really didn't understand what I had done wrong. I mean, I was READING in SCHOOL! So, more accurately, my fear was, I'd get in trouble for something I couldn't predict would get me in trouble. It would have been one thing if I had known what I was doing was wrong, and was doing it anyway, like the kids who got in trouble for writing on their desks (why would they ever think such a thing was appropriate?). But the fact that I didn't even expect to get in trouble was unnerving.

This is actually a fear that has followed me to this day. I'm a grown-up with legitimate, employable skill sets, and every time my boss calls me into his office, I'm afraid that I'm going to be in trouble. Not that I'm going to be fired, but that that unnamed second thing is going to happen. That somehow, I've done something wrong that I didn't even realize was the wrong thing to do. Chapter 24 was an epiphany for me, and realizing my habit has been instrumental in helping me change it. It makes no sense for me to be so nervous at work. I'm not a brain surgeon--no one is going to die if I make a mistake, and furthermore, it's my boss's job to help me if I do make a mistake.

I'm saddened by the amount of time and energy I've wasted being scared of getting in trouble when I don't expect to, but I'm glad I've finally named that fear. It's a fear of the unknown, a fear of not knowing the rules of the game, a fear I'm still not able to articulate to the depths that it has shaped my life. It was an unexpected find in a book about reading.

Do we all just live in a perpetual state of anguish?

This isn't Cicero.

Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to. --the character Cicero in the movie Gladiator.

I was on the phone with Captain America the other night, complaining about how busy I am when it occurred to me that it's all my own fault that I'm busy. The problem, in a nutshell, is that there are so many things I'd like to be doing, or doing a lot more of. 

For instance, I love to read. Probably more than I like to do anything else. And I read a lot, but not nearly as much as I'd like to. I feel like I am so far behind on what I want to be reading that it's actually stressful trying to figure out when I could fit more of it in. But I also feel like I'm so close to getting to a point where I could read as much as I want...like if I could just get caught up, I could stay caught up. 

I feel the same way about exercising. When I'm unemployed, a trip to the gym can take me four hours, door-to-door. That allows me 15 minutes of driving each way, an hour of ellipticalling, 40 minutes of running, 40 minutes of lifting weights, 40 minutes of stretching and the like, 20 minutes in the sauna, and 10 minutes to deal with things like peeing and filling up my water bottle and changing my shoes to use said sauna (don't get me started on how stupid I think that rule is). I get that four hours is a lot of time at the gym, and obviously this would be the long day (the short workout is the alternative days when I don't lift). In real life, I do get to spend about two hours a day at the gym, but then I have days where there is no way I can fit in 30 minutes of cardio. Which, for me, is a stupid amount of time. I have to spend the same amount of time wrangling myself into my sports bra, and the same amount of time stretching, for a whole lot less exercise. I realize this sounds like an excuse, but somehow 30 minutes is just where I say, I have better things to do with my time. If I know I can get in 45 minutes, though, it's worth it. 

So, I'm perpetually feeling frustrated because there are SO MANY THINGS I WANT TO DO, and instead, I have to spend my time at work, or even worse, commuting to and from work. (I am aware that all of my problems are first world problems. As I was discussing with a friend the other day, isn't that sort of the goal? I mean, how awesome would it be if everyone's problems were first world problems?) Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my job. The pay is good, the company is good, the people are nice, the hours are even reasonable. It's just not nearly as enjoyable as reading or exercising.

What I was wondering aloud to Captain America the other night, though, is whether or not everyone else lives in this same perpetual state of anguish that I'm in that I'm not doing what I want with my life, or if everyone else has managed to grow up and accept it and I'm still the teenager raging against the world. 

Good Lord, I hope not. 

On raising children, part two

So yesterday my company had this crazy Halloween party for the employee's kids. We have this sort of grassy park-like area on campus, and my company hired a party company who came and set up a bunch of Halloween decorations and games, craft stations, a photo booth (complete with green-screen so you could pick your appropriate background, presumably depending on your costume), and there was even a buffet of snacks.

It was a really great party. My boss told me I was welcome to come, even though I didn't have any kids. I thanked her, but explained that one of the reasons I don't have kids is that the kind of chaos that ensues at Halloween parties sort of terrifies me. But I did go check it out. And it really was a pretty awesome party. And I was terrified by the millions of children. Or 100. Even though they were adorable in their costumes, there were about 98 more children than I can handle at any given time. Ninety-seven if they're sleeping.

After work, I went to the gym. There was a mom (Pocahontas, actually) in the dressing room trying to get her kid changed. And he was being difficult. He was probably four or five and he wasn't throwing a full-blown tantrum, but he certainly wasn't cooperating. And from the way he was speaking, I'm pretty sure he was autistic, although he also sounded like he may have had a hearing problem. I tried to look at the kid to see if there was something wrong with him (and by using the word "wrong," I realize I sound like a total asshole), but it was hard to tell because he had blue paint all around his mouth. Or maybe blue frosting.

Pocahontas was trying to keep him on the other side of the partition in the bathroom from where I was. I wasn't sure if she thought I'd think it was weird to change in front of a boy, or if she didn't want her son watching me change. On the former, I really don't care. I change pretty quickly, and if the kid's in the locker room, chances are he's been in other locker rooms with women changing. If it was the latter, though, that's Pocahontas's prerogative  I decided to just change in a stall, figuring that would sort of solve for either scenario. Except the kid tried to crawl under the door to my stall. This wasn't particularly bothersome to me, but I sort of felt like, lady, I've helped you out here as much as I could.

Apparently, Pocahontas wanted her son to change his shirt, and so they were waiting for Dad to bring the clothes. And the kid wanted a brown shirt (he kept shouting "brown shirt, brown shirt"), but his option was a red one. Whatever. Pocahontas did a great job of remaining calm, and honestly, I didn't think the kid was being that terrible. I mean, he had just been to an over-stimulating Halloween party with a bunch of games and sweets and it was almost dinner time. It sounds like a lot of fun until it becomes a meltdown. Even if the kid wasn't autistic, which I still think this was.

I really feel like there should be a code for this sort of thing. Like I could say a magic phrase like "purple monkeys" and the mom would know that I knew she was doing the best she could and I wasn't judging her or anything, and really, it wasn't a problem to me at all.

I don't want kids because I don't want to deal with meltdowns (among many other reasons), but I know that even good kids with good parents are going to have a meltdown at some point. I just want a way to communicate that I understand all of this, if that would help ease the pressure to get your kid under control. I mean, no parent wants to be the parent who's kid is throwing a fit. I just want a way to let you know that I know that, so you can carry on the business of tending to your kid without worrying that your kid is making me mad. Because he or she isn't. Because it's better you than me.

House Rules by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoy Jodi Picoult,and this did not disappoint. I actually had it figured out before the end, which I don't generally do (or, I should say, I don't try to do), but I've read enough of her work to figure out what was going to happen.

I read the whole book with my Peeta Mellark District 12 bookmark, so, of course, in my imagination, every male character looks a bit like Peeta. And, don't be fooled by the boy on the cover of the book. I'm not sure why that cover was picked, because the story centers around an 18-year-old autistic kid, Jacob.

I don't know about you, but every time I read about Asperger's, I self-diagnose myself with it. I know I don't have it, but I think we've all had times when we've been in conversations that don't make sense, or hyper-focus on something, or when the world is too loud and we want to hide under a blanket until we can handle it. So at one point, (on page 456), Jacob's father says "I think maybe we've all got something in us that keeps us from connecting to people, when we want to." And Jacob thinks in response, I like the concept: that Asperger's is like a flavoring added to a person, and although my concentration is higher than those of others, if tested, everyone else would have traces of this condition, too.

There are times in the book that are really, really frustrating. I grew up babysitting a high-functioning autistic kid, and was fortunate enough to never witness a full-blown meltdown. But there were rules to be followed, and when they were, everything ran a little more smoothly. For example, I had to tell the kid, it's 7:30 now; in half an hour, at 8 o'clock, you need to put your pajamas on and brush your teeth. Inevitably, he'd get it done before then so he could go back to his show or movie or whatever, but if I didn't give him that time window, and those explicit instructions, getting him ready for bed was a hassle.

Anyway, the book is frustrating because so may people, like the detective and the prosecutor, don't understand that Jacob's mind doesn't work like a normal persons'. People with Asperger's are very literal (I'm very literal, too, but they take it a whole other step further). They don't understand idioms, (for example "raining cats and dogs" means that pets are falling out of the sky). When asked if he understood what it meant to "waive his rights," Jacob's response was to wave his right hand. There were times when I just wanted to yell at them: it doesn't work that way! He can't imagine what it would feel like to be another person. He can't feel empathy or sympathy.

I was also frustrated because I knew they weren't asking the right questions. Jacob wouldn't have lied, but they were picking the wrong things to ask him.

Picoult tells an interesting story that combines forensics with autism, and just enough family chaos to make it real.


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Catching happiness

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
--Benjamin Franklin

I just watched a documentary called Happy that was given to me by my Pilates instructor, and while the movie didn't really introduce anything new to me, it was still interesting. My Pilates instructor and I discuss happiness a lot. We're both trying to figure it out. And for the record, both of us are actually happy people. We're trying to figure out who we are, we're trying to eliminate bad habits and cultivate good ones, and we're trying to figure out how to fit in everything we'd like to do and find important to do with going to work. Both of us like our jobs, but they take up so much time that everything else has to be crammed in.

One phrase that the movie introduced to me was the hedonistic treadmill, which is basically that cycle we're all on where we want something new, and when we get it, we lose interest in it and then we want something else new. I don't consider my friends or myself to be particularly materialistic or egocentric, but I know we all do this. I recently attended a rehearsal dinner and wedding where everyone had separate outfits for each event. This isn't particularly unusual, but when you think about it, I have two distinct outfits for special events that don't get worn on a regular basis, don't qualify for work attire, and that require special accessories to be complete. I mean, really what have I got to complain about?

The movie talks about extrinsic happiness and intrinsic happiness. Extrinsic happiness is like what I talked about above--it's based on money, self-image, and status. The movie doesn't say this is bad, it just says that this is at odds with intrinsic happiness, which is based on friends and family, feeling good, and feeling a connections with the world. Just like yin and yang, you probably need both, but I'm having a very hard time figuring out how to balance the two.

I had something else I wanted to talk about here and I was going to jot it down before I lost it and then I lost it before I could jot it down so there you are. You may or may not get to learn about it at some point in the future, if I can remember whatever it was.

Ah yes, on a maybe-only-related-in-my-mind sort of way, I've read that kids can really only handle three things. The article was in reference to after school activities and basically said that you have to count school as one thing. So you can sign your kid up for soccer and scouts, but if you try to add in piano, that's where the meltdown will occur.

I have a theory that the same is basically true for adults. I can go to work, exercise, and read, but when I add in taking a class, for example, everything else suffers a little. Obviously this sort of counting eliminates things that have to get done--laundry is not a thing. Grocery shopping is not a thing. You're an adult. You do laundry, and grocery shop, and pay the bills, and a million other things that can't be a thing.

I wish I was good at clip art or something, because I really think a picture would help me explain this. So back to my Pilates instructor and me. Both of us are struggling to lose some weight. Neither of us are fat. We're just not fitting into our respective pants, and we're not happy about it. My Pilates instructor concedes that she can't claim ignorance. She knows she eats a little too much. But, as she points out, it's no fun to go out with your friends and watch them eat burgers while you have to have your grapes or whatever. And she doesn't want to sacrifice her social life.

Figuring out how to be thin is in the extrinsic camp, while having a good social life is in the intrinsic camp. What's a girl to do? The thing is, neither of us feel like we look as healthy and fit as we actually are, which is just frustrating. And what's doubly frustrating is that we both are making healthy changes but are no closer to closing the top button on our pants. Ugh!

So yesterday, I went to the gym for about 3 hours. (This is a luxury for me--I don't normally get to go to the gym for 3 hours.) However, that means that I was more tired AND got less work done, so there's that. I know I need to get more sleep in general, but I can't figure out how to do that without doing less of something else.

I feel like I've talked about how I'm training to run a marathon about a million times already, and you all know I love to read. Typically, I actually enjoy working. Okay, the getting up and getting dressed thing maybe can be annoying sometimes, but in general, I like working. Except lately. I'm just not that into it. I just saw a quote (probably on Facebook) that caught my eye. It basically said, we can't wait to do something until we're inspired to do it because very few people are truly inspired and they're already really busy.

The obvious follow up, is so quit complaining and just go and do it. However, while I wouldn't normally say I'm inspired to work--my job is not particularly inspirational, I'm also generally not uninspired to work. And that's a big difference to me. So it has me thinking about where I am in my life and what I want to be and where I'm going and where I'd like to be and what I have to do to get there. As I'm sure you realize, all of this thinking has gotten me exactly zero answers. What I'd like to do is to take six months or so and just sort of figure things out, and then come back and have all of the options I currently have now still available, if I want to pursue them.

But the reality is that we've all got to figure things out while we're doing a bunch of other things. So I have no advise to offer other than good luck!

I've had a day, and it somehow disintegrates from there

I am having one of those days/weeks/months/quarters (yes, I'm an accountant...I think in quarters) where I just can't seem to get things to happen. My April was totally disorganized, my May was insanely busy, and my June has somehow managed to be both disorganized and busy. I have no idea how this happened.

Don't get me wrong. I have a great life.

I'm just going through a period in it where I keep asking myself how did THIS become my life?

I'm feeling very much like I can't MAKE things happen, and this worries me. In addition to the fact that I'm not actually getting anything done, I'm worried about the language I'm using to express my feelings. Whenever I feel like I can't MAKE things happen, it is inevitably tied to my chronic depression. For anyone who's not in the know about chronic depression, it's a lot like any other mental disorder...you always have it...you just learn coping skills to deal with it/keep it under control. And for me, medication helps a lot. I have a physical chemical imbalance in my brain. I'm not imagining I'm sad and I'm not a hypochondriac. You wouldn't tell someone with high blood pressure not to take their medication, would you? Also running and reading help a lot. For me. I'm not a doctor, so I can't prescribe this combination for you.

So anyway, today I tried to go to a massage appointment. Except I could not get there. I'm not kidding. I left work in plenty of time. But then the gas light came on in my car. I have no idea how far I can actually drive with the light on because I've never tested it (and I don't plan to), and while I thought I had enough gas to get there if I was driving, as it turns out, I was driving in SoCal, so I was mostly sitting. In a shit-ton of traffic (Hey, Voracious, I know you love this magical measurement, so I threw it in just for you!). And I wasn't convinced I had enough gas for an hour of sitting. (As it turns out, I probably did). And just for fun, my gas light came on in the only 10 mile stretch of I-5 that doesn't have a gas station you can actually get to before you run out of gas because...wait for it...the fair is going so the traffic situation in SoCal is exponentially bad!


So, I got off the freeway, pulled over, and just waited for traffic to die down enough for me to actually get SOMEWHERE USEFUL.

So in the process of delivering this rant, I found this blog post that made me laugh out loud a lot. And of course, I facebooked it. Yup, I'm verbing facebook and verb. It's been that kind of day. Who knows what wild and crazy thing I'll do next, so watch out.

So anyway, back in my world where I'm not managing to get anything done...which of course is not actually true. I get a lot of stuff done. I just never get to the point where I feel like, aahhh, I've gotten a bunch of stuff done today and now I can relax BECAUSE THERE'S STILL MORE STUFF TO DO!! Which is sounding an awful lot like this amusing blog. So maybe that's the real problem. Not that I'm not getting anything done, but that there is so much to get done.

And then I got distracted by showing Captain America the words with friends game in which I beat the Professor by 7 points in the last move, causing me to text him (the Professor) Boo-ya! in my excitement. Because the Professor blew a 50 point lead. Because I'm awesome. And clearly in the Double Unicorn Success Club.

So it seems like now is a good time to have some hot chocolate and read about women in jail.

P.S. I realize that this blog post sounds a lot like I have ADD. I don't. Seriously. I've had that tested. (I'm also not schizophrenic or manic depressive, in case you're curious.) This whole ADD-thing is another manifestation of my chronic depression. Really. This is one of those things that acts up before I really feel like I'm losing control and go into a full depressive state. And for those of you who are now beginning to get worried about my mental health, relax. I'm really not to go off the deep end...I don't suffer migraines, but from what I understand, for a lot of people, there are signs that they are going to get one...and if they get rest or hydrate or whatever their migraine trigger is, they can cut it off before it happens. The feeling like I can't get anything done and the ADD-like behavior are both signs for me. But unlike when you're about to get a migraine and should probably do something ASAP, this state for me is fine for a while. (Obviously, since it's been going on for three months). My prediction is, given the events and tasks in my immediate future, that this state will exist for about another month and then it will resolve itself and I'll go back to being my more normal self.

After Roy by Mary Tannen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is probably the best Mary Tannen that I've read.  The ending of this book is more of a question than a conclusion, which is interesting.  One thing Tannen does that I don't care for is that she introduces a bunch of characters right away without explaining their relationships to each other or why they are important.  I guess this is supposed to be a clever literary device, designed to make the reader go, aha! But I find it a little annoying.

Also, I can't really figure out who Tannen is writing for.  Her books are easy to read, but I don't think they're young adult, but they're also not really adult novels.  There's a decide simplicity to them.

This one was interesting because one of the main characters, Maggie, is trying to rehabilitate chimps in Africa.  One interesting thing Maggie thins is "just as when one of the chimpanzees comes flying to her in fright, she has to remember that Didier's fears are not necessarily her own."  This observation clearly illustrates the psychological premise of projection: when you assume someone else will feel the same way you do about a situation.  Everyone projects--this isn't a criticism--it's one of the ways we emotionally relate to each other.  But I think it's always useful to be reminded that we don't have to feel the same way about something as someone else does.

One final note about the book.  Two of Maggie's friends visit her in Africa and when they return, they observe that she's become like someone who's truly found a religion--that she is able to disregard everything that is not truly important and just focus on what is valuable to her.


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