I drank the sugar-free koolaid

So, last month I joined a cult.

I should preface that a little. First, I live in the skinniest region in the country. I do not have research to back that up, but I know that research has been done, and someone is welcome to go have a google at it and prove me right.

Second, there has been a blog post growing in my head for several years about the teacher's lounge at one of the schools where I work...this is problematic because I know you're supposed to never blog about your workplace, especially if you're being less than complimentary. But listen, I think this is sort of the opposite of a backhanded compliment...some kind of gripe that is only a gripe because I like and admire the people about whom I'm griping? Does that work? I'm going to pretend it does.

Third, the first requirement of cult I joined is texting a picture of your scantily clad self to a total stranger...and I DID. That right there should be a huge red flag, the kind of red flag that, in its frantic waving, knocks you in the head with the end of its flagpole, giving you a concussion and averting the whole unfortunate situation. But I was not so lucky, and said picture is now preserved in the annals of electronic history (Side note: I'm sure we all have those moments when our utter lack of self-respect astounds even ourselves. Actually, I don't know if we all do that. Maybe it's just me). I could totally give you a blow-by-blow of me, facing the bathroom mirror in a sports bra, trying to hold the camera-phone at such an angle that it conceals the fact that I haven't shaved my armpits in...ahem...a while - but, luckily for you, this post is not about the growing-in of my winter pelt. No, it's about how the residents of my particular part of Colorado are body-obsessed (like, seventeen-year-old-girl body-obsessed, only it's not limited to seventeen-year-old-girls) and how I and my increasingly ample muffin top joined their ranks for a week.

So let's back up to the teacher's lounge. The teachers in this building are some of the best teachers you could hope to meet anywhere. They are caring, funny, supportive of the kids and of each other, devoted to their profession, and just an all-around lovely group of women. But I tell you what, for entire months at a stretch, the lunchroom conversation would center entirely around who was on what diet, who was doing what workout, and how much weight had been lost as a result. And how depressingly small that amount was, and how far they had to go to be back at their pre-pregnancy weight, and how early they had to get up how many days a week to complete their ps90X, or crossfit or crushfit or insanity workout, and which meal replacement shakes they liked or didn't like. It was soul-killing.
And to an outsider, it would appear that this was an intolerably shallow group of people. But the thing is, I know them, and they're not shallow. They're smart and dedicated and all better teachers than I am, and after weeks and weeks of listening to them the depressing realization dawned that this was such a large part of what they felt they had to offer the world. And then the scary realization dawned that these women are the role models for hundreds of girls every year, smart sassy beautiful silly girls, girls who were old enough to understand the message here, that it didn't matter how educated you were, or how many lives you touched; being thin and pretty was the most important thing.
And just like the message seeps into kids' brains without us even realizing it, it seeps into our brains too.
Case in point: I do not think being pretty and thin is the most important thing. I am not that person (am I? that little voice whispers). On a good day, my morning beauty routine runs about seven minutes. But I'm also of an age that could be rounded up to forty. I recently got reading glasses, and my eyes are not the only thing that don't look or function quite the same as when I was twenty-four. I don't care, I tell myself. It doesn't bother me. I'm above that. But it's hard to button my jeans. I'm braced for the day when a well-intentioned kindergartener asks me if I have a baby in my tummy. And, truth be told, my husband and I had been hitting the fun size snickers bars pretty hard in preparation for Halloween.

So when I found a flyer in my mailbox from a local nutritionist hosting a week-long 'clean eating challenge,' I thought, great idea! We would look her up on Facebook, she would post recipes daily, and we would check in, comment, and generally keep each other accountable and motivated. This sounded okay - I could use some new lunch options, and I'd been consuming so much coffee that I spent most afternoons with a low-grade headache. Clean eating, yay!
But then, as a token of our commitment, we had to text her a 'before' picture of ourselves in sports bra or bikini. 'Before' pictures are never pleasant (I guess that's the point), but I had already downloaded her shopping list and spent $200 on raw leafy veggies, berries, almond butter, and quinoa (okay, I admit it, I already had the quinoa), so I grimly donned the sports bra and sequestered myself with the camera phone.
Anyway, one cup of caffeinated beverage per day, lots of raw vegetables, and a completely unrealistic amount of water - generally survivable, and it was almost worth it alone to have someone else answer that least-favorite question of what's for dinner.  Our fearless leader was on the FB page constantly, responding to comments, answering questions about whether you could substitute kale for blueberries, and posting lots of bubbly support and positive, inspirational fitness messages. Things like "Stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will,' superimposed over rainbows, waterfalls, or people's exceedingly flat bellies (not making that up).

And for all the hype, living five days without wine or chocolate was not that big a deal. 
Nor did it change my life.
Working out every day is nice, but it sucks up a lot of precious, precious time. 
And for all that, my 'after' picture did not look any different than my 'before' picture. Excepting a slightly more strategic camera angle.
I already knew that water and vegetables are good for you, and coffee and mini snickers bars are not. The rest, the mystery at the heart (or the exceedingly flat belly) of this cult, remains a mystery, and I remain uninitiated. Half-disappointed and half-relieved, but still on the outside.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some cookies to bake. Maybe I'll take some in to the teacher's lounge.

Seriously, all the word 'stakeholder' says to me is that I'm in a situation I don't want to be in, listening to someone I don't want to listen to.

Braaaiiins! Brrraaaaaiiiinnnnnnssssss!

Back to School! Blaarrrghghhh!

Two things happened in September.

One: all I did all month was go to teacher trainings. And meetings. And meetings about training. And professional development.
Two: Season Four of The Walking Dead came out on Netflix.

Result: The next time someone says "drill down into _______," or "take _____ to the next level," or "stakeholder" I am going to go all zombie on their shit.

a matter of degree

Isaac (5): "Mom, I think I'm a bad kid."

Me: "No, Isaac, you're a wonderful kid! Why do you think you're bad?"

Isaac: "Well, sometimes I say stupid, and stupid is a really bad word."

Me: "It is a bad word, but sometimes even nice people say bad words. Like Dad. He's great, but sometimes he says words he shouldn't say."

Isaac: "Like fuck?"

Me: "..."

milestone

My first thesis-year mailing is mailed off! I know that to 12/13 of you, that makes no difference whatsoever, and this is why I'm posting here instead of Facebook (not that one more who-the-hell-cares post would break Facebook, but I'm trying to be considerate) but nonetheless I'm feeling the need to crow about it. And I have to crow now, before I get my professor's comments back, and she tells me not to quit the day job. (Receiving of such comments will take forever, mind you, because she must be the last person alive using USPS for this sort of thing. Seriously. I had to Print 30 pages of Actual Paper, stuff it in an envelope, write things on the envelope in actual handwriting, stick stamps to it, and drive it to the post office. Where it will be picked up, driven to Denver, and then flown on an airplane to Oregon. I don't know when exactly I developed an allergy to paper, but there is something jaw-droppingly archaic about transporting pieces of it around the country.) Anyway, yay for me!

Mom of the Year

The differences between firstborns and lastborns:

Alec, at 1, had been the sole subject of approximately 32,000 pictures.

Isaac, at 1, had been the sole subject of approximately a dozen pictures.

Alec, at 2, knew the word 'butt,' and also knew it was a word he was not allowed to say. So he didn't say it. Ever.

Isaac, at 2, loved to walk into the middle of a crowd and scream "BUTTCRACK!" because it got such an incomparable reaction.

Alec, at 3, was sometimes allowed to watch Disney/Pixar movies or educational PBS cartoons.

Isaac, at 3, could name every character on SpongeBob, and could independently find and use his favorite apps on my iPhone.

Alec, at 4, loved organic frozen blueberries, local whole-milk yogurt, and edamame.

Isaac, at 4, enjoyed those too, but was really fond of poorly spelled foods that come out of spray cans, such as Reddi-Whip and EZ-Cheez.

Owen, 7, was ssooooo excited to help me bake his older brother's birthday cake. First, he cracked an egg onto the floor. Then he tipped the mixing bowl over, pouring batter down the front of the cabinet.
The dogs have submitted a formal petition that he be put in charge of cooking everything, all the time.

more tofurky!

I found it! I found the thing!

What thing? you ask.

Glad you asked, I reply. It's the fake meat thing that is actually edible! And, better yet, it is a tofurky brand of fake meat.  Because that's just fun to say. Tofurky. And it sort of reminds me of turducken, though that's probably not what they were going for.
But here, let me end your suspense. It's the fake sandwich meat. Because when you put enough mayonnaise and mustard and cheese and lettuce and avocado in there, you really can't even tell. It's excellent.

It occurs to me that I need to update the little banner photos off to the side here -->
The little guy in the heart shades is now preparing to enter kindergarten, and will carry out his plans for world domination a week from next Tuesday.
The big guy is now a strapping young man with girlfriends and B.O. and ferocious, parentally-induced eye roll - all, apparently, requisites of third grade.
The basset still looks more or less the same. In fact, I don't think she's moved from that spot since I took that picture. In fact, we reupholstered that couch around her.

one is the loneliest number...

I think I'm down to one reader. This is what happens when you neglect a blog, I've brought it upon myself, all that. Fortunately, my one reader is a real person who comes over every so often, and he can berate me in person for my lack of bloggerliness, and apparently it has worked. A bit.
Here we are at the very end of spring break - a spring break that began with my first-ever writing retreat ('writing advance', my one reader kindly called it, and, while I would certainly like to think there was some advancement taking place, I'm pretty sure that for us writer-wannabes, advances are something different that involves money). I must say, as fabulous as the whole thing was, I am still recovering from all the silence. There was a time in my life when I was an abnormally quiet person. Okay, I'm still abnormally quiet, but once upon a time I existed in a near-constant state of abnormal quiet. Now I am a quiet person in a near-constant state of OH MY GOD PLEASE BE QUIET, and, as it turns out, life with all those Murray boys has reset my internal volume control such that when I find myself in a cabin, all alone, with no electricity and snow falling in huge blobs all around, I start feeling like my eyeballs are going to turn inside-out. Luckily the cure for the eyeball thing seems to be the same as the cure for the abnormal quiet thing, and it's the reason I was up there in the first place: write.
In other news, I read great books this month - two books by Adrianne Harun who is fabulous, and the new one - Ocean at the End of the Lane - by Neil Gaiman, from desperate adolescent nerd-crush on whom I have never recovered, and whose writing just keeps getting awesomer so I can justify the two-decade nerd crush - and also Drown by Junot Diaz, latest nerd crush. Sigh.

Celebrating a lovely evening run with a bowl of rocky road ice cream. What? That's the whole point, isn't it?

adventures in meatlessness

If you want to give a chef a heart attack, the quickest way is not a beurre blanc, a hollandaise, or some other cholesterol-laden sauce, oh no. Just come home from the grocery store with a package of vegetarian italian sausages (tofurky brand, no less)(totally crossing that off the bucket list). Happily, Ryan survived the shock (and he didn't even have to eat one. I cooked him the real thing) and I survived a dinner which prominently featured said tofurky product. It was very bad. Really exceptionally bad. You can probably tell I'm still working through this experience.
In contrast, just a night or two later we had dinner at our favorite Nepali restaurant and I tried something called Malai Kofta, and Sweet Hindu God of Vegetarianism it was lovely. Pretty sure there's a lesson around the juxtaposition and the reasons for it, but it will have to wait til I'm in a more ambitious frame of mind, or you can figure it out on your own. Coincidentally at the Nepali restaurant we dined near our friend Eric, who is one of the three readers of this blog, and who recommends the happy pills. In light of how much I have not flung myself into pursuit of my new sport, I'm not ruling them out.
On the bright side, while at the Nepali restaurant Isaac did not pull down his pants, destroy any furniture, or maim any innocent bystanders. It was a good dinner.

fake it til you make it.

It's no accident that I am squeezing out a post every two months this year - my writing-homework deadlines fall every two months, and immediately afterward is when I feel like I have time to putter for a couple days.
(disclaimer: food-themed navel-gazing ahead)
In the past couple of months, I have been experimenting with fake meat. TVP, seitan, tempeh, Tofurky ground beef crumble. I do not like it. I'm not even that wild about tofu, to be honest. 37 years of dietary habit are not about to be wooed away by masquerading soy product.
So now, Plan B, which so far consists of Ditching Fake Meat In Favor of Something Better.
Eggs? Eggplant? Mushrooms? Guittard 70% bittersweet chocolate? I don't know. Still working out the details. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure I'm not doing this vegetarian thing right. I find myself eating lots more garbage than I ever used to, because I feel hungry most of the time. But I'm telling myself that, like anything difficult, it's just a matter of doing it for today, and then doing it again tomorrow, and if I occasionally trip and a piece of bacon happens to accidentally land in my mouth, nobody is going to kick me out of the club. Right?

there was another holiday in there somewhere...

My Holiday Post Distress continues! And that's distress about holiday-themed blog posts, not post-holiday distress (or postal distress, or distress about a post), which is another thing entirely. This time, I've decided there's nothing to be done but dive in and admit, right here on the internet, that not only have I made New Year's resolutions, but I have made the most cliched New Year's resolutions possible for a female of my age group and demographic.
What, you don't believe me?
I'm taking up running. I, who make it a point to never run unless I am chasing one of my children, now own two pairs of running shoes, running tights, and funky-colored sports bras all in the interest of a sport I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to commit to. Understand that I'm dreaming loftily of being able to run a mile without dying.
If we're being really honest, readers, I'm hoping it will prove a viable alternative to my doctor putting me on crazy pills, but that's a topic for another post. In, like, ten years when this has all blown over. And I did say 'resolutions,' right? There's one more!
After thirty-six years of avoiding the inevitable, the inevitable has caught up with me, and I'm sort of taking a break from eating meat. Sort of. Except for fish sometimes, and the elk in my freezer, who at this point I would be doing no favors by not eating.