Weight Watchers

At the point that my fat clothes were only kind of buttoning, I had to do something.

We had paid to subscribe Todd to Weight Watchers for a while. He has sleep apnea, and his doctor told him that if were to lose weight, he could also lose his bi-pap machine. This summer, though, he switched to a gluten-free diet. With the gluten-free diet and the subsequent elimination of all things made of flour, he was losing enough weight that he did not feel that he need to use Weight Watchers. I, however, forgot to cancel the automatic payment.

When January came around, and I decided to get serious about losing weight, I hopped onto his Weight Watchers account and changed everything but the name.

I started on January 18th, right after the "new" points system started. Unaware of the change, I logged in, typed in my vitals and how much I wanted to lose. Weight Watchers oh-so-generously gave me 29 points. (As nearly as I can tell, that puts me at about 1200 calories a day, plus weekly points.)

Then I saw that my Lean Cuisine lunch, three tiny "Thai-style" spring rolls were five points. I was still starving. I wanted to cry. A granola bar would be another five points. Anything from the vending machine would start from five and go up. So I starved.

I think I have it sorted out a bit better now, though. I figured out what the weekly points were and how they worked. And "free" (zero point) fruit is kind of a godsend. Unfortunately, I tend to hoard the points, and then splurge on the last day before they expire. And, the points expire the day before weigh in. I've done two full weeks and two weigh-ins. I have weighed more at weigh-in than on any other day in the week.

But, I weighed less at Monday's weigh in than I did the previous Monday. I guess as long as the overall trend is down, I'll be okay.

I'm not promising to be happy about it though.

Long overdue update...

We're still working with our son's psychiatrist to sort out medications. That leaves our lives kind of chaotic.

Just in case I don't have enough trauma, I decided to start a diet. It takes a solid level of obsession to make this work. I have to do something, though. I have gained about 40-45 pounds since starting my PhD. I am not happy with the way I look in my clothes. My blood pressure tends to run a little high, and I am concerned about my blood sugar. So it seems like obsession may be necessary.

Library Books

I went to the local library the other day and paid my fine, so I am once more able to check books out of the county library.

Here's a rundown of some of what I checked out and my assessment.

The Sewing Machine Guide: Tips on Choosing, Buying and Refurbishing by John Giordano is dated. It was written in 1997, so anything about prices is way off. (A sewing machine that can interface with your computer is priced at about $4,000.) It has a lot of basic information, though, about the different brands and the capabilities to expect. It also gives basic information about how to maintain a machine. The maintenance information, though, is minimal.

I also checked out  The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy: Wheat-Free Recipes with Less Fuss and Less Fat by Bette Hagman. Since my husband and son went Gluten Free last spring, I've been mostly cooking food they can eat. I have couple of cookbooks, but they are far from simple to use. I checked this out in hopes of finding the "less fuss" advertised in the title.
 
While it did have some useful recipes (I can count them on my fingers), I was not impressed overall. Many of the recipes rely on mixes that should be made in advance. This seemed like unnecessary complication. Compared to other books,  this seems fussy. It also relies a *lot* on bean flours, which are not easy to get where I live. 

Nothing to Say...

I am coming to the conclusion that if I wait until I have something to say, it will be weeks before I write anything. But since I wrote yesterday,  I thought I might write again today.

At work, I am still working on finishing up assessment. The results are compiled, but now I'm trying to find "representative papers" as well as papers that are problematic. That is, they have significant strengths but also significant weaknesses, which makes them hard to grade.

Assessment sucks my brain. My energy. My ability to think.

Mea and I have been watching the first season of Mad Men. Todd, of course, hates it. He idealizes the 1950s and early 1960s, when the economy was good. And, of course, women stayed home and cooked and cleaned. Of course, women in my family, worked on the farm or what-ever kind of factory they could get. My grandparents also cut staves and sheared wool. Personally, I don't see much to idealize from that time at all, except the dresses.

And, oh, the dresses are sweet on Mad Men. So lovely. I would love to be able to shop in their costume department. I adore the fitted tops and full skirts.

The show itself? Too much soap opera for my taste. And too depressing to even be a good soap. I prefer my soaps a lot less dark.

Graves are imporant

Graves are important to us hill-folk. Tending to those who have gone on before reinforces our connection to the past. I remember being little and my mamaw taking me to the cemetery to "work the graves" of her parents, grandparents, and siblings. We also usually made it over to see to her father-in-law's grave as well. All had to look good for "Decoration Day" when people might be coming to visit the cemeteries.

This week, my high-school friend Amy went to check on her mother-in-law's grave. (Her mother-in-law is Arvilla, whom I've written about before.) Anyway, Amy and Sonya (Arvilla's daughter) had put a ceramic angel on the grave, and someone threw it out. I am sure that it was some teenage boy or other that they paid minimum wage to clean up the cemetery.

Because a lot of us don't do it any more. I never go up and tend to the graves. My mom and my aunt do, I guess. Although I'll ask about it, I won't go check and make sure they did.

When they are gone, though, I guess I'll have to. I can't imagine anyone else would.

What I Learned From Roadrunner

For better or worse, my comps are done. Unless, of course, I failed, in which case the whole thing starts all over again.

Anyway, Monda suggested that I write something frivolous. While I didn't actually write anything new, I found this in my notebook that I wrote with my freshmen class. We were responding to one of Monda's Easy Street Prompts.

We only got two channels on television: 3 and 10. These were the Springfield Missouri affiliates for NBC and CBS. My dad did not really "believe" in television, but kept one for the nightly news. Our television watching was pretty limited, when I was young. But we were allowed to watch all the television we wanted on Saturday mornings. So we watched whatever came on.

Evidently, Looney Tunes were cheap. They were certainly widely available. Looney Tunes came on every Saturday morning-- sometimes twice. There was the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour on channel 10 and then the Children's Hour on channel 3 also showed Looney Toons cartoons, as well as Davey and Goliath. Roadruner was my least favorite of all these. It bothered me, what happened to Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius. I felt sorry for him. After all, I grew up in a world where people hunted for their meat, so I didn't find it all that bad that Coyote wanted to eat the bird. But I did learn some important lessons from the show, nonetheless.

This is what I learned.

1. I learned that being smart is one thing, but being clever is quite another.
2. Life rarely works out like it does on paper.
3. We rarely make good decisions when we are hungry.
4. Machines are only as good as the operator.
5. I learned not to believe advertising. People who are selling things do not have my best interests at heart.
6. Some name brands can't be trusted.
7. If the first anvil that I buy from ACME explodes, so will the second.
8. Never buy anything from my enemies.
9. And, most importantly, I learned that the deck is stacked. Not everyone gets an even playing field.
10. And some people just go hungry at the end of the day, no matter how hard they work.

While there were certainly shows that I enjoyed more growing up, I am not sure that any other show taught me so much about life.

Aakk!

My qualifying exams are scheduled for the end of February.

That is a month away.

One month.

Before I take my test.

The test that determines whether or not I become a PhD candidate.

I get one more chance, if I fail this one. But just one.

And every day I wait is one day further away from the classes that I took.

Aakkk. Aarrg. Eeek!

Tables turned...

Today, I was sitting in a meeting, and there was a student standing outside the door, waiting. After the meeting was done, I nudged my friend and co-worker, since the student was obviously waiting for her. Turns out, it was her daughter, who looked so different that I hardly recognized her. She's in danger of being dropped from her classes because she missed last week because her two-year-old was in the hospital and she could not bring herself to leave his side.

It is rather startling to see a student in my university, if not my class, so starkly from her mother's point of view. Of course, I walked away and gave them their privacy, but not before I saw the concern on my friend's face. Concern for her daughter who, in being a good mom, seems to be in trouble as a student.

I have to wonder what is going on with my colleagues in other departments? This young woman is bright, a brilliant writer (although I won't link to her blog here, out of respect for her privacy). I had two children before I graduated with my BA. I don't know that I could have done that if I had not had wonderful, understanding professors. Professors who held my work to high standards, but were flexible about some deadlines. Professors who encouraged me to finish college, despite my choices. Professors who believed in me. I wish my friend's daughter such professors, although I am afraid she's not as fortunate.

I wish her luck. And I wish both her and her baby good health for the entirety of the semester.

Pleasant Weekend...

It has been relatively slow this weekend (so far). Both girls spent the night with friends last night, and W wasn't feeling well, so he was kind of quiet. My husband and I watched Frank Sinatra and Shirley McClain in Can-Can. Then we watched Holmes on Homes.

Saturday was kind of laid back, too. W had quiz bowl, so T took him out early to catch the bus. They won, by the way. This has been W's week-- he placed second in his district in FBLA in network security. T and I hung out and watched A&E for a while. Then, of course, we had to start collecting the girls. Mea and I ran to Children's Place to pick up a gift certificate for my friend's twin girls' birthday. Then we stopped by Sally to pursue her quest for purple hair (a pretty purple-- not a blue).

We were planning to go grocery shopping this evening at Sam's Club, but the torrential rain kept us in. Instead, I am watching Caprica. Not sure how I feel about that, yet. I skipped the Battlestar Galactica revival, mostly out of respect for the original. I love the original Battlestar Galactica, which I almost completely missed in its original run, because we didn't the channel that it aired on. But love it I did. I watched it in reruns and on SciFi channel marathons. I feared the revival. Years later, The Prisoner was certainly a disappointment. I watched part of it, but found myself just not caring what happened.

Caprica, however, has no such baggage. It is set in the Battlestar Galactica universe, but is all backstory. As I said, I haven't yet decided an opinion. It lacks spaceships, but does appear to be on a different planet. A lot of the plot seems to revolve around a virtual reality Second Life kind of environment. But I am also seeing robots. Robots are good.

Steampunk Laptop

This beauty is from Datamancer. I am always amazed by what creative people can do when they decide to. Really, who ever would have thought of modding a computer to look be Steampunk?

Datamancer sells these gems either by special order or on ebay. The late, great Victoria magazine (I have not even looked at the recent revival) used to have a theme that women should follow their bliss-- do what makes them happy. They would profile women who were making a living (or at least an income) owning businesses where they sold things or services that they believed in. Small runs and special orders were, of course, most common. But what makes these business special are that they are created by someone who loves them. The owners love the products and (generally) love their customers.

I can see Datamancer fitting right in.



(And for my friend the typewriter fanatic, Datamancer also makes keyboards.)

Meme Oddness

The Internets are a strange place, indeed. Here a a couple of sites that prove that beyond doubt:

• Internet Meme Timeline
• Know Your Meme

I'm not referring to memes in the sense of "List 25 Random Facts About Yourself" but rather in the Dawkins sense of "Bits of Culture," kind of like genes are bits of life.

The month that I am a gardener...

Some days, I channel my late grandmother. When this becomes painfully apparent is when seed catalogs come in. Burgess is the first one to hit my mailbox this season. I have about $70 worth of plants picked out, but see that it has a lousy reputation. Who knew seed companies had ratings?

I think, though, somewhere I'll order some Apache Blackberries. They are thornless, and goodness knows, I like to be able to pick blackberries in the summer. I prefer, though, to skip the ticks, chiggers, snakes, and thorns, if I can. So maybe I'll plant me one of these in my back yard. Unfortunately, companies that actually send plants, charge more for them. So I am not sure how many I can afford. Now, I am seeing that all the catalogs we used to get: Henry Field, Gurney, Spring Hill and others were all bought by one company and don't send out high quality plants any more. The one that I wanted to order from, Burgess, seems to be less that 50% in sending out viable plants.

I guess I'll have to wait patiently, and shop local. But really, what does local mean? Wal-Mart? Home Depot? Lowe's? Those are hardly local. Plant Outlet is pricey but everything I've bought there lives... Decisions decisions...

I did fine one immediately useful thing today: Conway is in zone 7. I've never been able to read those stupid maps, because they don't list the counties. But this site told me. Now I am informed.

Amusement/Tourture of Choice

Every morning, a couple of newspapers deliver their headlines to my email. One, the one I never fail to open, is the Harrison Daily Times. I did my student teaching there in 1998 and subbed at the junior high for most of a semester in 1999. I worked at American Freightways before it became FedEx Freight. It is also the daily newspaper from close to where I grew up. (Understand that "close" is a relative term.) They also publish the Newton County Times, which tends to publish more stories about people I know, but it only comes out weekly.

Of course, all the friends that I had from Harrison when I was young have moved away, so those aren't the people I read about. My relatives and childhood friends from "home," however, are occasionally mentioned. The cousins with untreated ADHD,depression and other problems that drive them to self-medicate. Self-medication is expensive, so that drives them to manufacture and sell products in order to imbibe.

I truly believe better mental health screening would solve a lot of this. And some kind of job program. Something certainly needs to be done, because the drug problems are becoming generational. What used to be a few bootleggers getting into a bit of trouble turned in to marijuana growers and has evolved into meth manufacturing.

I know there are people who would like to turn the area into a giant National Park or something, but I would really like to see small-scale manufacturing return. Throw in mandatory drug testing. But people need jobs and dignity. Not weed and meth.

Another one gone...

Our friend and neighbor Conard Middleton died this week. He was 86. He was a lifelong Republican and long time member of the Newton County Quorum Court-- a JP.

The reason that I tell you that he was a Republican is because my Papaw was a Democrat. In the world where I grew up, such designations mattered. A lot. Such things determine if your road gets maintained and what jobs are open to you.

But Conard was bigger than that. He cared about people more than parties. I know that he called over a time or two to someone to get them to grade our road, because when the "wrong" party was in charge, our gravel road sometimes became virtually impossible to traverse in a car. And my mom always drove a car, in the days before quad-cab pickups and SUVs. (She still drives a car-- better gas mileage.)

And, when I was a beginning driver, I spilled some hot tea on myself and landed my dad's car in a ditch. And he pulled me out, and never called my parents.

That, my friends, is a good man.

Stealing a moment

I should be asleep. Barring that, I should be reading for my comps. Or doing laundry. Or something productive.

Instead, I am sitting on the loveseat, indulging in a guilty pleasure.

I feel like I am trapped in shoulds. Shoot, I know I am. I should be a better teacher, better student, better mother. My house should be neater, my papers graded faster, I should be thinner, more patient.

I am completely aware that my expectations are excessive. If anyone else were trying to do everything I try to do, I would tell them that they are nuts. I, however, feel that I ought to manage.

And really, I should. You know, my great grandmothers raised everything their families put in their mouths. They got up before everyone else so that there was breakfast before they went out to the fields to work. They built fires to cook on and hauled water to cook with and wash up with. They hauled their laundry to the creek to wash it on a rub board for god's sake.

Comps? I should be able to breeze through them, right? With one hand on a mop and the other grasping an outline for the perfect answer? Whatever.

Sigh of relief

My second job wrapped up today, so I am back down to just the one full time teaching job. Oh, and graduate school. My dissertation proposal is due in December. So I just trade one problem in for another.

We've adjusted son's medication, so he is less crazy. Which makes my life less crazy.

We bought a new kitchen stove today, paid for by my second job. We bought a dishwasher earlier this summer with that money, too. It is so nice not to have to borrow money for absolutely everything we do. My mother keeps pointing out that everything I borrow just has to be paid back, and of course, she's right. Maybe next year, if I do this again, I can pay something off.

Someday, our student loans will be due, and at that point, we're in trouble. :) I should totally buy a car before that happens. Never worry today about what I can worry about tomorrow.

In the meantime, I try to muddle through my PhD and keep my kids fed. As part of my quest to keep my kids fed, I bought Once-A-Month Cooking: Family Favorites. I don't know why I keep buying these cookbooks. I like the way it is laid out, and the way they break down the shopping lists. But a lot of the dishes sound really horrid, like Mahi Mahi steaks. The worst part of that recipe is actually that it isn't really a make-ahead recipe. The recipe is for a grilling sauce that gets repackaged with the fish steaks that don't even thaw as this recipe is "made ahead."

And, of course, modifying one recipe changes the whole shopping list, the advantage of buying the book. Aaarg!

Where has the time gone?

I can hardly believe how little I've posted lately! Well, maybe I can. I've been uber-busy, finishing up my summer job as my real job started up. My summer job is grading papers for a class for talented high school students, and all I have left are final reviews. Those are due Monday, but I'm procrastinating.

On top of all this, my son has been especially unstable. That is always fun. He disrupts the whole household, and then does not understand why we're still upset once he's calmed down.

All I have been doing for weeks is working one job or the other, punctuated by insane rampaging teenage boy.

I haven't even seen one of Project Runway's new season yet. (Although I do have them on the DVR.) As soon as I finish these final papers, I am going to go all hedonist and catch up on Project Runway. And watch those Being Human episodes that I've queued up in anticipation for a moment's free time.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I finish up with my talented high school students, I have to start to work on bibliographies for my Comprehensive Exam. To make matters worse, I am only really friends with two of the other ten people in my class, and neither of them (I think) are in my "track," Professional Writing and New Media. Either way, I will have to do group work with people that I don't know/like. So I am fretting about that.

I tell my students that they should narrow their ideas down so that they only are saying one thing, but I completely failed on that point here. Perhaps if I had loaded my ideas in a shotgun and shot them at my blog they could have been more scattered. But perhaps not.

It is possible that I could be better next time. :)

Cash for clunkers?

So I am tired of my life. It gets lousy gas mileage. I'm looking for a trade in program. My life for someone who did her phd the normal way-- funded and sans kids. My kids are, this very minute, asleep. But earlier today, they made me crazy. Miss O, my seven year old, skipped in circles around my parents' living room, but refused to go outside to burn off energy. My 16 year old took five hours to figure out what she wanted to do today, and then called me in a panic to sort out the fact that we ate the food that she had intended to contribute to the church youth group get-together. My 14 year old son spent the evening lolling around because he got too much sun at above youth get together and somehow can't figure out that his pale skin (belying his Scots-Irish roots-- he managed to skip any Native American skin tones) means sunscreen and lots of it.

And all of this is my problem.

Right.

Craziness & Chaos

My husband is moderate about nothing. If anything gets his attention, the world is on hold until someone has solved it. This is never more apparent than it was today.

Olivia, our seven year old, is staying with Mea while I am in Writing Project and Todd is taking graduate classes. Today, Olivia did bother to wake up Mea. She got board, so decided to call me. I was of course in class. W had my phone because his day camp was over and he had to wait until I got done. W wouldn't come get me, so Olivia called Todd. He got very upset because she was “alone” while Meleah slept. It is important to note here that Todd was often neglected as a small child. From the time his sister was born when he was seven, he was left at home alone. This has obviously affected his outlook. His visceral reaction was extreme. So I tried to sort things out.

I called home. I called Mea's number and it rolled over to voicemail. Then I called the house phone. It, too, rolled over to voicemail. I had understood from Walker that Olivia could not wake Mea. So I came home.

I walk in the door, Mea is awake. Olivia is on the phone with her friend Sharnetta, watching tv in my bedroom. I had a nice long conversation with Olivia about what constitutes an emergency. She should only call me if one of the following occurs: the house is on fire; uncontrollable bleeding; severe burns; a break-in; or if she cannot wake up Mea after she pours water on her. I'll add a meltdown by W to that list for Mea.

It is hard to come down too hard on a seven-year-old for a lack of judgment. Of course, she lacks judgment. She's seven. But now she knows. No more judgment for her. Now she has rules.

Quick post and then off

Today, I am going to a family reunion (or reonion, as some of them refer to it, when they are in a mood). This is my dad's side of the family. He was one of seven surviving children and he and his siblings (and their kids, which is where I come in) get together 2-3 times a year. We all get together the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Memorial Day weekend at least.

This year's Memorial Day get-together was postponed for a week for Bluegrass and BBQ at Silver Dollar City last weekend. My dad has played bluegrass semi-professionally most of my life. He has played for churches and festivals and even at Dogpatch for a few years. Since he retired from teaching, though, he has been playing music with some of the young people in the community. A few years ago, he had worked with three young me and created quite the band. They made a couple albums privately and sold them. They made some spending money, anyway. And, like the Commitments, about the time they got their break, they fell apart. Trust me when I say it is no easier to watch in person than in the movie.

A year or two back, he stated working with a new group of boys. And they had a lot of potential. They were asked to play here and there. The boys, though, are also into sports and girls and being boys. So despite the gigs that have been coming, they were still having problems getting their stuff together.

Then they got the chance to play at Silver Dollar City's Youth in Bluegrass competition. There was a catch, though. My dad couldn't be on stage with them, since he wasn't related to any of them. So he has been trying to get them to work up their 2-3 songs. For months. Then, in April, one of the boys, J.O. went nuts, changing schools and quitting the band. This leaves two boys. After some scrambling, one of the boys from the first band, Anthony, pulled in his little brother and taught him the bass in a MONTH, so they could play at the park.

One of the other boys, J.S., still wouldn't come to practice. And he blew the show. The boy that had been playing a month played better.

So Dad is ready to quit them. The band was one reason that he and Mom had been reluctant to move down here. Dad felt obligated to them. He always wished he had been given that sort of mentoring. In all honesty, Dad could have been a session musician in Nashville, if he had known how to go about it. Or played with a band. He's not front man material, but he is a heck of an instrument player.

So today is our Memorial Day reunion, and I am heading to Cabot with two of my kids (the other one being at Disney World today, marching in a parade). And I will hear some of the best gospel bluegrass played anywhere on the front porch of my cousin's house.

And I will avoid it, as I always do, because as much as I have tried, I have never really developed a liking for bluegrass.