Mashed Against The Glass

I’m trapped in a snow globe!   It’s hard enough to keep my balance on the back of the little deer in here with me when the water is calm but then some idiot comes along and shakes the  globe.  I’m exhausted from living on the small gulps of air I grab when my head pops above the water and that horrid white stuff is getting up my nose and in my eyes.  Just as things begin to settle and I almost have my butt back down on Bambi’s back, grabbing for his ears, the idiot grabs the globe and shakes again.  I’m getting dizzy from all the spinning … and I’m feeling sick … to my ... urp ... stomach … oh, no … the hand … it’s reaching again …

◦

Mashed Against The Glass

The Candy Made Me Do It

Did you think I’d been so busy working out and making up for lost time at the gym that I was too busy to write anything in this “really? .. you read this?” blog? You imagined me sweating in yoga or puffing on the elliptical or fighting the winds on the sidewalks of Wyoming? Seriously? What planet are you living on? Because I’m living on the Planet of the Unfit Woman which you can take to mean, “hell, no, I haven’t been working out or seen the inside of the gym or breaking a sweat.”

I HAVE been thinking about it – a fair amount, actually. I think about it every time I button my pants, or inadvertently catch my reflection in the mirror. I thought about it so much that last night I had convinced myself I was going to walk through that gym door tonight. When I woke up I remembered that promise but I wasn’t sure Thursday was the best day to begin a new exercise routine. On the way to work I was pretty sure that I should wait until Monday. “It IS Easter weekend after all”, I thought. “I should probably just relax and enjoy the holiday.” When I got to work I was positive I should wait until Monday. “Monday will be better. It’ll be a fresh start for me.”

And then I read Art’s blog post. Of course I read it on my break. I would never, ever, read a blog during work hours. No, that would be as unacceptable as the way I've been treating my body during the past I don't even know how many weeks. Gosh, no. I wouldn’t even consider it. How could you even think that?  Anyway….after I read his post I was ashamed of my total lack of concern for my own body. I sat there hanging my head in shame. And, no, my eyes were NOT closed. I would never, ever, close my eyes while I am sitting in front of my computer at work. Sheesh. As I was saying, after I was finally able to raise my head and face my reflection in the computer screen again, I started thinking I should probably go to the gym tonight after all. I would go right after work. Almost positively. Pretty dang sure.

It just so happened that instead of eating lunch today I ran an errand. When I got back and thought about my new exercise plan, it seemed logical that since I hadn’t eaten lunch, I probably didn’t have to begin my new exercise plan tonight. And I sure wouldn’t want to start working out on the Friday of an Easter weekend. What good would THAT do? I’d just have to start over on Monday anyway. But my stomach had not gotten the message that nothing would be filling it and I was forced to grab the closest food item to appease it – Dove chocolate squares.   Now, you’d think I might just eat one square of chocolate and see if that would shut the stomach up, but no. Not me. I read the back of the bag and saw that one serving was five whole squares and I LOVE those chocolate squares, so in my own warped brain I took that as a sign that I should eat one full serving. Unfortunately, I ate ... well, let’s just say I ate more than one serving. But here’s the spooky part. That candy was talking to me. It was sending me a message. These candies have little messages written inside the foil. I normally don’t read them because I’m too busy unwrapping the next square to take the time to smooth it out but for some mysterious reason I did read the wrapper from what was not only the very last square of chocolate I ate, but the very last square of chocolate from the bag. The • Very • Last • One. Do you know what it said?



Not only red sweater but red bracelet!






Do you know what I was wearing today? I know! Spoooooooky. I had to answer that chocolate somehow. I had to let it know I got its message.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 So guess what I did? I went to the gym. Yup. I did.

Cuz, dang it; if that candy knows when I’m wearing red, if I continue on this path of indolence, the next time I unwrap one of those wonderful squares it might tell me I look good in elastic-waisted double-knit pants.◦

The Candy Made Me Do It

Raining M&Ms

Even though the weather has not improved, this morning I felt I was on the way to conquering the grumps. Unfortunately other contributing factors seem determined to put a stranglehold on my normally rosy outlook.

Grandchild: “Nada. Can I have some hot chocolate?”

Nada: “Of course!”

Nada: “Dean, I can’t find the chocolate syrup. I know we couldn’t have used it all. It was almost full.”

Dean: “I threw it out.”

Nada: “What?! Why?”

Dean: “I didn’t want to be tempted.”

Nada (in her head): Unprintable

Nada to grandchild: “How about some M&Ms? I will go get them from my secret hiding place where later today I will be putting a brand new bottle of chocolate syrup.”

Nevertheless, all is not lost. Even though I am a victim of weather and absurdity, today did bring some color.




Before the rain began.





  The results of an art project with Papa.  "Just singin' in the rain ..."

◦

Raining M&Ms

Slugs Accidentally Wreak Havoc

Obsessed ~~~ Fixated. Preoccupied. Focused.

I have been told I can be somewhat obsessed at times. Obsessed with exercise. Obsessed with details. Obsessed with organizing. Obsessed with planning. Obsessed with writing lists and checking off items on those lists. It’s even been suggested I can be obsessed about posting to this blog. I myself have always felt I was just an extremely organized person and felt this personality trait was worthy of respect. It seemed to me that people who decried my so-called obsessiveness were just jealous.

Not obsessed ~~~~ Uninterested. Indifferent.

Recently, I have stopped being “obsessed” and have become the complete opposite. I have become so UNobsessed that I believe I have gone beyond just disinterestedness to a full-fledged slug. The me who “had” to sweat in hot yoga, or “had” to suffer through the agony of the elliptical, or “had” to religiously attend pilates classes – that me is nowhere in sight. The me who walked out of the office every night with “to-do” sticky notes stuck on her thermos – that me is gone. The me who kept a bag of Dove chocolate squares in her desk drawer for five whole months without opening it – she has disappeared (along with most of the chocolate).

In place of the old previous me is a me who has not participated in any activity remotely construed as exercise for the past 12 days. The most exercise I’ve been getting is pushing the fast-forward button on the remote. The me who used to complete items on to-do lists, now only completes watching shows on the DVR list. Actually, I might have exaggerated a little bit about my lack of exercise. As the concavity in the couch has grown deeper over the past days it has required a bit more effort to pry my rear end up and out of it. So I guess I am getting “some” exercise.

I hate these.

I know what took the healthy, happy, productive me and left a lazy, grumpy, soon-to-be-pudgy me in it’s place. It’s the weather. It’s “spring” dang it. Why doesn't it feel like it?  Why is it we are still getting snow?  Why are we getting so many days with these? (over there...to the right).  And, oh, the wind. Holy cow. I feel like Dorothy; only instead of ruby slippers after my adventure across the parking lot all I end up with is grit in my teeth.






 


Not enough of these.





I want to see more of these.

Sophie

So I say this to you Weather. Shape up! I’ve had enough! If you don’t improve soon I may never make it out of that great big indentation in the couch and then what?! The dishes wouldn’t get washed and they’d start growing green spongy stuff and the girls wouldn’t get fed and they’d start meowing and meowing and meowing and they’d be forced to eat that green spongy stuff but the dishes would be piled so high they’d knock them down (accidentally, of course) and that would result in broken shards of pottery all over the floor which Dean would step on when he walked in the kitchen and then he’d be bleeding and making a mess and he’d be yelling

Maisie

Shadow

which would scare Shadow and the girls and then they’d all run to hide but they’d be running so fast they’d slide on the wood floor and into the rugs which would get all bunched up so then when Dean was hobbling around holding his bleeding foot he would trip on them and fall into the counter and beak his ribs and he would barely be able to breathe and he’d need to go to the emergency room but there’d be nobody to take him because I would still be stuck in the big indentation in the couch and oh, I can’t even imagine how sad I would be for him.

Weather, you can see there’s more than just my emotional well-being at stake here. This is a life and death situation. So I say again. Shape up!◦

Slugs Accidentally Wreak Havoc

The Kids Made Me Do It

I blame my children for my recent obsession with technology. Both Dean and I were cell phone hold-outs until about four years ago when we drove to visit Leslie & Ryan in Colorado and Dean's as-yet-to-be-determined gallbladder issues slowed us down. Leslie met us at her front door with “I’ve been worrying for two hours. Where were you? Why don’t you have a cell phone? If you had a cell phone you could have called to tell me you were going to be late. You need a cell phone. When are you going to get a cell phone? ” That “get a cell phone” refrain was repeated off and on until I finally succumbed and joined the cell phone world. But I kept it simple. I did not text or surf the web from my phone. I flipped it up, I dialed, I talked, and I flipped it closed.

If Abby wouldn’t have moved to Ecuador I wouldn’t have felt I needed a Skype phone to keep in touch with her. Skyping from the computer is cool and the video is nice, but to be able to actually hold a phone and walk around or sit on the couch and visit is amazing. Remember the days when nobody called long distance except on Saturday or after 9 p.m. during the week? And it cost about 10 cents a minute – or even more? Now we can call all over the world – for “free.” But after a while, that wasn’t good enough for me and the freedom to Skype her in places other than my house became too tempting to resist. So it’s really Abby’s fault I moved up from the simple flip phone to the iPhone.

The iPhone led to all kinds of other amazing and astonishing technological activities; like entertaining a little boy by playing a movie on the laptop in a car while you’re driving down the Interstate for nine hours.

If you are in a coffee shop and the laptop is unavailable, you can download Bugs Bunny on your iPhone for that little boy … or while waiting for your meal to arrive in a restaurant when you’re too exhausted to entertain him … or even while he rides patiently in the car as you drive 25 minutes from one end of a city to the other in search of Kohls.

And after he’s been dragged from jeans to shirts to shoes inside that Kohls, you can grab that iPhone and take his picture as he finally gets to ride the carousel – while you are also talking to your daughter in Ecuador on Skype on that same iPhone – from the mall!  How cool is that?!

Don't worry, Dad.  Do what the drill seargents say and you'll be escaping soon.

You can even whip out your iPhone and snap a picture of the little guy visiting his Great-Grandpa before he has a chance to escape. 














 
I realized too late that rather than searching for free cartoons for that little boy to watch on the iPhone I could have streamed Netflix shows. So it’s not really my fault that the whole streaming Netflix thing was in my mind when I saw the Best Buy ad in the paper this morning. Hmmmm....those two Best Buy reward coupons are going to expire soon and if I can stream directly to my iPhone why shouldn’t I stream directly to my TV?   I bought a Blue-ray DVD player.
 
 

Don't worry--it was already dead

 
I could say the weather made me do it. Yesterday I was wearing sunscreen and short sleeves and cleaning up flower beds. This morning we woke up to this. What else are you going to do on a depressing, snowy day – in APRIL – besides go shopping? But I don't blame the weather.  And I certainly don't blame myself.  And for once I don't even blame Dean.  I place the blame on my children. Completely.  Before the girls had corrupted me and turned me into a technology monster I might have considered spending the day quilting or baking or reading. 
 
I'm probably still going to spend part of the day reading (on my kindle) and I might bake some cookies to have on hand for whenever the kids drop by (while I listen to Stitcher on my iPhone), and I will definitely be quilting. I’ll just be quilting while I’m watching streaming Netflix shows.◦

The Kids Made Me Do It