I went shopping at Target the other day.  I parked my car, grabbed a stray shopping cart from the lot and wheeled it into the store to use.  I do this all the time, usually at the supermarket; I take a cart that someone has abandoned in the parking lot and use it.  It always strikes me as funny that most people don’t park their carts in the little shopping cart corrals, preferring to squeeze them between two parked cars – usually nudged up against the bumper or door of my car.  It’s odd because most large stores now have these little corrals situated roughly every 12 feet in their parking lots. 

So, it got me thinking about little things that would make life easier for ourselves and others.  Just little incidental things like bringing a stray shopping cart from the parking lot back to the store to use instead of using one that’s already there.  I mean, how many shopping carts do we pass by on our way into the store?  If everyone brought one cart back with them, there would never be any carts rolling around the parking lot, slamming into my car doors.  Just bring a cart back from the parking lot.

Taking a turn in traffic.  If every other person would let one person take their turn, how smooth would traffic flow?  My turn, your turn, my turn, your turn.  See?  No one would ever be stuck waiting for an opening to sneak a turn through miles long stretches of traffic.  Simple.

Ziploc bags.  Any and all food that is sold, packaged in plastic bags should come in a ziploc bag.  This would elimnate the need for clothespins, elastic bands, paper clips, etc., which are SO inferior to the convenience of the handy ziploc.  No more tearing the bag down the side as you try to open it by pulling the seam and then trying to roll the bag tightly so whatever is in it remains fresh and not freezer burned.  Just “cut along line” and zip closed.  Nice.

So there.  There’s three things that would make my life a little, tiny bit easier.

Snore.

Sigh…can you tell I’m having a hard time thinking of what to blog about?? 

 When my boys were small, I’d spread a blanket on the floor in our living room.  I’d make sandwiches and pop in a movie (back then they were VHS tapes) and we’d have a picnic while we watched together.  We watched all sorts of stuff.  Disney movies like Bambi, Pinnochio, Cinderella (yes, boys watched Cinderella), and Sleeping Beauty.  Classic movies like Lassie Come Home and The Yearling. 

Now they’re older and though we don’t spread a blanket on the floor, they’ll still sit with their old mom and watch movies with her.  Being the only Christian in my house, sometimes I won’t even condsider watching some of the stuff they want to watch, but we can usually find a common ground.  My husband isn’t much of a movie lover, but if I insist enough that he’ll like a movie, he’ll sit and watch with me once in a while too.

 I love all kinds of movies – comedies, dramas, foreign, animated.  I’m not crazy about SciFi, action, and horror, but I’ll give some a chance.  I loved 28 Days Later and The Sixth Sense.

For the fun of it, I thought I’d just post a random list of some of the movies I love.  I hope you’ll comment and post some of yours.

In no particular order:

• To Kill a Mockingbird – could watch it over and over.
• All the Disney movies listed above
• Toy Story and Toy Story II – I think two of the funniest movies ever.
• Finding Nemo
• Babe
• Gosford Park
• Remains of the Day
• Howard’s End
• Sense and Sensibility
• A Room with a View
• About a Boy
• Love Actually
• Raise the Red Lanterns
• The Scent of Green Papaya
• The Joy Luck Club
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• The Journey of Natty Gann
• Wild Hearts can’t be Broken
• Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy – my favorite movies of all time
• Rebecca (Joan Fontaine & Laurence Olivier)
• Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine & Orson Wells)
• Enchanted April
• Amelie
• Like Water for Chocolate
• Chocolat
• Don Juan DeMarco
• Edward Scissorhands
• Pirates of Carribbean (Curse of the Black Pearl) (we have a Johnny Depp thing going on here…)
• What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
• Drop Dead Fred
• Napoleon Dynamite
• The Enchanted Cottage (Dorothy McGuire & Robert Young)
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Spirited Away
• Oklahoma
• Carousel
• The King & I
• The Wedding Banquet
• Eat Drink Man Woman
• Into the West
• Seabiscuit
• The Good Earth
• Night on Earth
• Johnny Stecchino
• Cinderella Man
• Catch me if you can

Whew.  That’s not even all of them, but I’ll stop there. Hahaha  Like I said, I love all kinds of movies and now it’s apparent, I love a lot of movies. 

So there’s my list.  I think they’re good movies, you might disagree.  Discuss.  Haha

I was wrong.

A couple weeks ago my little great-nephew came down with a stomach flu.  Throwing up, diarrhea, nasty sick.  Then his mom, my niece, got it.  Then her sister, my other niece and her husband got it.  Then their mother, my sister, got it.  Then, my little great-niece, who lives with my sister, got it.  Then my other sister got it this past Thursday. 

From the time my great-nephew got it, I fretted that I would get it.  When my nieces and sisters got it, I fretted that I would get it.  They kept telling me, “Oh, you won’t get it.  You’d have had it by now.”  I didn’t believe them.  Every time my stomach gurgled I thought, “Is this it?”  I imagined myself into nausea that never materialized. 

By Easter, I figured I’d beat it.  I cooked a feast, served it, and ate it.  Sunday night I was pretty happy.  If I hadn’t gotten it by then, I probably wouldn’t right?  Wrong.

Monday, was my day off from work.  I spent it happily picking on Easter dinner leftovers.  I felt fine.  I was fine.  Fiiiiine and dandy.  I went to bed Monday night and slept the sleep of the healthy.  Until 2:30 AM.  I awoke with an impending sense of doom.  An awful, restless, shivery, feeling of terrible anticipation.  Not necessarily nauseous, just….awful.  I got up.  I got back down.  I went into the bathroom and paced.  I got back into bed.  I got back up again.  I waited and waited for the inevitable. 

I can’t even remember the last time I threw up, but I knew that feeling.  I knew what was coming and at this point, I was praying for it.

I tried to go back to bed and pretend it wasn’t happening.  I tried to force myself back to sleep.  It wasn’t happening.  After what seemed eternity the awfulness finally happened.  I threw up.  I hugged that toilet and wrenched my guts until I cried.  Yes, I cried.  Like a baby for my mother.  It was totally involuntary, just like throwing up. 

 I had gotten it.  The stomach flu that had ravaged my family had now found me.  I spent the rest of the night alternately sleeping and throwing up.  By morning, my stomach had calmed down, but my body was wracked with pain.  Hot, feverish, spine searing, head splitting, hit by a truck pain.  I couldn’t open my eyes – the light hurt.  It was okay, though, because all I really wanted to do was sleep, and sleep and sleep.  I slept.  I slept all through the day and into the night and into today.

I woke up this morning feeling oh, so much better, but weak.  So weak and shaky and headachey.  But you know what?  I’m so glad.  I’m glad it’s over.  Waiting and wondering if I was going to get sick and throw up was almost worse than actually getting sick.  Now it’s over and done with and I don’t have to worry anymore.  It’s a relief, really.

So, I’m on the mend.  I’m glad I got “it.”  And if I never get “it” again in my life, I’ll be even gladder.

My oldest is 27.

 This is the first year the Easter Bunny didn’t come to my house.   I feel a little guilty.

When they were little, they got the traditional Easter basket – chocolate bunnies, Peeps, Reese’s peanut butter eggs, Cadbury eggs, a little toy of some kind, all nestled in a bed of green, cellophane easter grass.  When they got a little older, they got the candy plus things like baseball cards, Pokemon cards, kites, Matchbox cars, action figures – GI Joe guys, Star Wars guys, Batman figures, fancy pencils, markers, etc.  Older still, they got the candy, VHS movies, CDs, toiletries like deoderant, shampoo, shower gel, and little grooming kits with nail clippers and tweezers.   Some years they got cool t-shirts or a hooded sweatshirt, baseball caps – stuff like that.

Every year, it seemed to get harder and harder to find interesting stuff to put in the basket.  The Easter Bunny still used their original baskets from when they were small – awesome, beautiful, old baskets that had been given to me by MY Easter Bunny.  Every year it became more and more of a challenge to arrange and fit all their loot into the basket.  Every year it seemed to get more and more extravagant and a little ridiculous as I waited until all of them were home from their various nights out and in bed sleeping, so that I could sneak into their bedrooms and deliver their baskets.

A couple years ago, when my youngest was in his late teens, the Easter Bunny downsized, dropped the baskets and scaled down to just a gift bag with some chocolate and a DVD. 

This year, the Easter Bunny didn’t come. 

 I don’t know….I just felt the time had come to retire the Bunny, but I feel kind of sad.  I mean, how long does the Bunny come??  My Bunny stopped coming when I was 19 and got married and left my parents house.  If my kids had left the house, the Bunny would, obviously, have stopped delivering, but they won’t leave.  I just kept thinking, “Paula, Adam is 27.  It’s time to let the Easter Bunny go.”  I had scenes in my head of him being in his thirties and still waking up on Easter morning to his Easter Bunny gift bag.  But, I couldn’t stop delivering to one and keep delivering to the others, right?  So I made the decision and no one got anything.

I feel like a mean mom.

I am excited that someone else even knows me to tag me! Hahaha  I figured out what a meme is and realized I’ve been getting memes in my email for years!  I never knew what they were called.  I always called them, “those email things you get where you have to tell about yourself.”

I am going to try and complete the challenge, but at the moment I don’t know enough bloggers to pass it onto.  So, if you happen to read this and want to pass it on, feel free.  Here are the rules:

*     Link back to me

*     Post theses rules on your meme post

*     Share seven random things about you…or as many as you like.

*     Tag seven other fun-loving blog friends that need something to write about!

*     And let them know…so they can do it

Here goes:

1. I have a strange condition called Chiari Type I Malformation. Basically, my huge brain overflows and protrudes past the base of my skull, putting pressure on my spine. I never knew I had this until I started getting MASSIVE headaches which caused me to fear for my life. When I informed my doctor, she sent me for an MRI and voila’! Chiari (which is the last name of the doctor who discovered this condition). It can have serious and severe symptoms, which I won’t go into, but at the moment the worst I have is a little imbalance, neck, shoulder and back pain, and the random headache, all of which I can live with.  Surgery is the only remedy, but I’m believing for, and fully expect that I won’t need surgery. Thank you God.

2. My favorite food is pasta. I could probably eat it every day.

3. When I was 9 years old, I won a puppy in a radio contest.

4.  I literally, bumped into the actor, Bill Murray, coming off an elevator in a hotel in New York, when I was there for the weekend.  He’s TALL.

5.  My second grade teacher once tied me to my chair because I couldn’t seem to stay seated.  She seriously wrapped a rope around me and tied me to my chair.  Back then that was considered “discipline.”  Today, it’s a law suit.  

 6.  I hate Brussel sprouts and beets.  Beets taste like dirt.  Brussel sprouts just taste bad.

7.  I don’t have a dishwasher.  And, I’m really sick of washing dishes by hand. 

For those of you under 30 or 40, who are thinking, “Remember bread?  Of course I remember bread – I just had a sandwich at lunch that was made with bread,”  Bread was a soft rock group from the 70′s who were fairly popular.  They had several hits in their day and teenagers everywhere made out in the back seat to the sound of Bread playing on the 8 track.

The other morning I woke up with a Bread song playing in my head.  Don’t ask me how it got there because I haven’t heard a Bread song since I wore patches on my jeans and embroidered peasant blouses.  Yes, I was a teenager in the seventies.

 Anyway, I woke up with the song, “Baby I’m a Want You” rolling around in my head and I couldn’t get it out.  Bread was never a particular favorite of mine – I didn’t hate them, but I didn’t love them either.  They were just a group on the radio.  The song, Baby I’m a Want You was NOT one of my favorites of theirs either.  So the song is playing in my brain and I’m trying to have my morning talk with God.  I do that early in the morning.  It starts my day and I hate to be distracted.  This song is song is distracting me;

“Good morning, God.  Thank you for this morn….Baby I’m a want you….” 

Start over, Paula;

“Praise you, Lord.  I’m so grateful for….Baby I’m a need you….”

Ugh.  Get your head together!

“Lord, thank you for your forgiv….Your the only one I care enough to hurt about…”

Here, I just gave in and let the song play out in my head and I couldn’t believe I remembered the lyrics.  “Lately I’m a praying, that you’ll always be a stayin’ beside me…”  I kind of chuckled and thought, “This song could be a prayer.”  So I switched, “Baby” for “Jesus.”  And in the corniest of ways, it worked. 

Look at the lyrics and replace the word, “baby” with “Jesus”

Baby I’m-a want you
Baby I’m-a need you
You’re the only one I care enough to hurt about
Maybe I’m-a crazy
But I just can’t live without
Your lovin’ and affection
Givin’ me direction
Like a guiding light to help me through my darkest hour
Lately I’m-a prayin’
That you’ll always be a-stayin’
Beside me.

Used to be my life was just emotions passing by
Feeling all the while and never really knowing why

Lately I’m-a prayin’
That you’ll always be a-stayin’
Beside me.

Used to be my life was just emotions passing by
Then you came along and made me laugh and made me cry
You taught me why

Baby I’m-a want you
Baby I’m-a need you
Oh it took so long to find you baby
Baby I’m-a want you
Baby I’m-a need you.

(c) Copyright 1971 by Screen-Gems – Columbia Music, Inc.

Hahahahaha See what I mean??  Can’t you just hear this playing at your worship and praise at church on Sunday morning?? Do you think Jesus would like it? 

I think He might smile at it.

I’m not as fixated on my weight as I may have sounded in my previous post.  True, my weight has been an issue for me for a looooong time, but as I’ve gotten older, I’m happy to say, it’s importance has diminished.  I’ll be honest though, I would like to lose weight, but it’s not the focus of my life.  It’s not just because I want to be “thin.”  For the most part, I’m happy with my looks.  I think I clean up pretty well.  

There are other reasons why I’d like to be less fat.

 I LOVE nice clothes.  I’d love to be able to walk into a store and just grab stuff of the racks of “regular” sized clothing.  Let’s face it, plus sized clothes can be a drag.  Oh, they have come a long way, but I still have to search long and hard to find stuff I like.  I hate being limited to Lane Bryant and Avenue when the urge strikes to buy clothes.  I hate that the plus size department in most major department stores is shoved into a corner next to the maternity department.  What the heck is THAT all about?  I don’t need to be a size 6, but I don’t like being a size 20 either.  I want to be able to go into any store, not a “specialty store” and find clothes that fit me AND I like.

And, then there’s shoes.  Oh, how I love shoes.  I love sleek, pointy toed, high heeled shoes.  I love strappy, sexy sandals.  I love chic, leather boots that go higher than my ankle.  Do you know how depressing it is when the zipper on knee high boots won’t go higher than the bottom of my calf?  Trust me, it’s depressing.   Oh sure, there are “wide calf” boots in some of the plus sized catalogs.  Plain and simple, I haven’t found one, single pair that I’d want to wear unless I want to look like a lumberjack.  And those sleek, pointy toed, high heeled shoes and strappy, sexy sandals?  Designers aren’t designing them for my overweight feet.  They’re designing for fairies; light, airy, weightless beings with tiny, delicate feet on the ends of their slim calfed legs.  They pinch and crush and squish and I wear them anyway.  If I have to stand for any lenght of time or walk any distance, the ball of my foot goes numb and my big toe hurts.  I guess I’m vain.  I refuse to wear a sensible, low heeled shoe that would support my weight more comfortably.  I know if I were lighter, my shoes would feel better.  I want to traipse around in those fairy shoes AND feel good.

Then there’s Summer.  Hot, humid, steamy, Summer.  Summer is a challenge for overweight women and I’m not even talking about finding a bathing suit.  I’m what you might call….voluptuous.  Big chest, big hips, big thighs.  There’s lots of potential for….friction.  I know, I know, those of you who know me, just lost that cool, calm, sophistcated, impression you have of me.  Sorry.  But, I want to be able to take a nice, long, walk on a Summer day, wearing a pair of cute shorts that don’t creep up between my thighs and and chafe me raw.  I hate that - or a skirt or some kicky, little sundress.  My thighs don’t like skirts and sundresses in the Summer.   There was a time when I wouldn’t wear a pair of shorts or a sleeveless top in the Summer.  I hid myself in jeans and T-shirts all summer long.  I’d swealter and be miserable.   Now I wear shorts and sleeveless shirts, and I won’t say I’m miserable, but I’m not….comfortable.  I really should buy stock in Gold Bond powder.  I want to be cool and dry - without the assistance of corn starch.  

We come now to health.  I want to be healthier.  I want to have low blood pressure without having to take a pill.  I want to have low cholesteral.  I want to wake up in the morning and not have my back ache or my knees hurt.  I realize aches and pains are natural at my age, but lightening the load on these bones could only help, right?  Here, we have a bit of a dilemma because all these things could be resolved if I exercised more….or at all.  But, and remember, I’m being honest here, I hate exercise.  I don’t mind a brisk walk, but you will probably never find me at the gym.  Ever.  So that leaves dieting, which, I know, is harder if I don’t exercise, but not impossible.  

Once, several years ago, when my kids were young, I was dressed to go to a function at one of their schools.  I thought I looked pretty good.  I did look pretty good.  I was running late, parked my car, and jaywalked across the street.  A pickup truck passed by me and the young man inside rolled down his window and shouted, “You’re not only fat, but you’re stupid too!”  He shouted this at me, in front of other parents who were also going into the school.  It was just like walking home from school all over again and having Robert Watkins taunt me the way I wrote about in my previous post.  I swear I went deaf and blind as I reached the sidewalk.  My head swam with humiliation and I couldn’t think straight.  I sat through that school assembly with a lump in my throat, hearing the guy in the truck over and over in my head.  For days afterward, I heard him.

Stuff like that hurts.  It hurt me then.  It’s like a slap in the face, when you think you’ve grown up and you’re doing fine. You think you’ve accepted the way you look, even though it’s not the ideal.  You think you’ve grown beyond worrying how other people see you.  I know now that that guy in the truck was just a jerk and I shouldn’t have let him throw me for a loop the way he did, but I wasn’t the woman then, that I am now.  I laugh about that guy now and if someone yelled at me from their truck tomorrow, tsk, whatEVER!  Hahaha

 I want to lose weight now because I want to feel better physically, not only mentally like before.  I think I’m secure.  I don’t need acceptance from strangers and I have acceptance from my family and friends.  I don’t really know why I ask, “Does this make me look fat?”  I do care how I look.  I do want to look nice, but I know that I can look nice even if I’m fat, so why do I ask?  Maybe it’s habit.  Maybe I care more than I like to admit, but I don’t care so much that I can’t be happy with myself.  I am happy.  And don’t worry, (I know you’re not really worrying) I’m not depriving myself.  I eat sensibly, healthily, during the week.  I don’t deprive myself – there’s plenty of stuff I can eat and not feel cheated.  And if I feel like blowing it once in a while and eating something cooked in butter or sauteed in oil, or called parmagianna or alfredo, I do. 

 Anyway, enough about weight, about fat and traumatic memories.  I’m good.  How are you?

Heck, I asked it just this morning of my youngest son, before I left for work.

 I’ve always been overweight.  I had a few years in my late teens and twenties when I was, what I realize now, were “thin,” but I was an overweight child.  Not huge, but overweight enough for mean boys in school to make fun of me and forever imprint me with the knowlege that I had a weight problem.   I can remember my pediatrician telling my mother that I was overweight, but it never sank in until Robert Watkins taunted me while walking home from school, calling me “Maya the elephant,” in front of my friends.  In front of other kids that I didn’t know, who walked the same route.  In front of the world, in front of the universe, as far as I was concerned.

 I slimmed down a little when I hit puberty, but not enough, apparently, because I can remember the doctor at my first gynecologist appointment, telling my mother (once again), that I was “obese.”  Obese, being 10 pounds over the “ideal” weight on the chart on the wall.  It didn’t seem to matter that I was healthy, that I was active.  My mom didn’t drive so I walked nearly 4 miles to and from school or anyplace else that I wanted to go.  I rode my bike.  I ran the laps and did the squat thrusts in gym class.  But none of that mattered.  I was obese.  

 It didn’t help my self-esteem any, that my best friend, who’d always been fat like me, betrayed me, not only by getting her period before me, but along with it, becoming positively skinny without even trying.  Overnight.  She, whose mother made homemade pasta and chocolate cakes from scratch which she could now eat with abandon.  My daily food intake, on the other hand, was strictly overseen by my mother, who by now, didn’t want to take me to anymore doctors appointments and hear how she’d failed as a mother by having an obese daughter.  I had been left behind by the only person who understood how I felt.  We had always been fat together and now I was fat, alone.  She moved on to discover boys and have them discover her.  I discovered boys too, only they weren’t interested.  The biggest insult came when one of my other thin friends started “going out” with a boy she knew I had a mad crush on. 

I became, a “Weight Watcher.”  My mother, who had a weight problem of her own, and I, joined Weight Watchers.  Weight Watchers back then was far different than the Weight Watchers of today.  Weight Watchers today is all about what you can eat.  Weight Watchers of yesterday was all about limits and deprivation.  I learned to weigh and measure anything and everything that went into my mouth.  I learned to eat tuna fish salad with mustard (and pretend I liked it).  I learned to toast a piece of bread and shave it down through the middle of the slice, vertically, making two paper-thin slices of bread with which to make a sandwich, so that I didn’t go over my “starch” allowance for the day.  I learned to deprive myself of everything delicious, that I loved to eat and feel like I was starving – to lose 1/4 lb. a week.  That was about the size of my weekly weight loss at ”weigh in.” 

That was all just the beginning of my long, unsuccessful, attempts to be thin.  As I mentioned above, there were a few years where I achieved thinness.  The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I finally succeeded at Weight Watchers.  I left my junior year of high school a shy, chubby, self-conscious girl, and returned in the fall, a shy, thin, self-conscious girl.  It was like I’d had a mini-makeover.  I grew my hair, I wore make-up, I wore stylish clothes.  That first day of school in my senior year, was an education in itself.  People, kids and teachers, raved about how good I looked.  Some kids later told me that they thought I was a new kid.  Shoot, I hadn’t changed THAT much.  Imagine.  Being fat hadn’t made me stick out the way I thought it had, it made me INVISIBLE.  Suddenly, I was there.  Suddenly people noticed me.  Where the heck had I been before??  Hidden under fat, I guess. 

 I managed to keep the weight off for a few more years into my twenties.  I met my husband the summer I graduated.  I was 17 and we got married when I was 19.  But all the while, it was a battle.  I did Weight Watchers on and off, I did a version of the Atkins Diet.  I did diets from Glamour magazine and Good Housekeeping.  I can still remember waking up and eating one slice of American cheese and an orange for breakfast.  What the heck was that??  The thing is, inside, I was still fat.  I never enjoyed those years that I was thin because I was so worried about being fat again.  The other thing was, I convinced my husband that I was fat, even though I wasn’t.  I was thin when he met me, but I was so hung up on staying that way, that I made him aware.  He was aware of my dieting.  He was aware of what I ate.  He was aware of how my clothes fit.  I told him I was too fat and he believed me.  To his credit, he never said I was fat, but when I asked him that question, “Does this make me look fat?” I knew he was thinking that I could stand to lose a few pounds. 

When I got pregnant with my first baby it was all over.  I gained 49 pounds and I never lost them.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t have another baby until I lost the weight from the first, but it soon became apparent that he’d be an only child if I kept that promise.  I had two more babies and have never been thin again.

 It’s 27 years since I had my first baby and over the years, I’ve accepted that I’m a fat woman, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.  I went through a few years where I told myself, “You’re fat, that’s how you are.  As long as you don’t get fatter, it’s okay.  Accept it.”  I tried to embrace it and get along with it, but shoot, I realized that I was fooling myself.  I’ve accepted that I’m probably never going to be thin, but I don’t want to be as fat as I am.  I don’t so much want to be thin.  I want to be less fat. 

My kids, bless their mother-loving hearts, tell me I’m not fat.  They compliment me and tell me I look nice.  And, when I ask, “that question,” they always say no.  I raised me some smart boys.  I don’t really know what the heck my husband thinks.  The other day, I came downstairs dressed to go out.  I had on a new sweater and a pair of jeans.  He looked at me funny and in my insecurity I asked, “Do I look okay?”  He answered, “You’re fine.”  A little while later, he looked at me funny again.  I asked, “What?  Does this sweater look okay?”  Again, he said, “You look fine.”  A third time, I caught him eyeing me and I finally demanded, “WHAT?  WHAT’S WRONG?”  This time, he laughed and said, “Nothing, nothing is wrong, you just look really good, kind of sexy.”  Well, for crying out loud.  Why couldn’t he have just said that to begin with??  Here I am thinking I must look too darn fat to be seen with him out in public and he’s thinking I look sexy! 

The stupid thing about “that question,” is that since I am fat, I look fat in everything I put on.  So, logically, the real question should be, “Does this make me look fattER?”  Of course, those of us who ask that question, expect to hear, “Oh, no, it makes you look THIN!”  And here we have another, funny side of the coin.  Sometimes I’ll wear something and people will say, “That outfit makes you look so thin!”  Which really makes no sense at all.  What they really should say is, “That outfit makes you look so much less fat!”  Right?  It’s okay, I don’t mind being told I might look thin in an outfit.  It gives me hope.  Hope, that in my quest to be “less fat,”  I don’t have as far to go as it appears to me.

In the meantime, I’m trying Weight Watchers again.  I have been for the last two years. I’ve lost 16 pounds, six of which I gained back over Thanksgiving and Christmas, three of which I lost again.  I’m not discouraged.  Some of you might think that’s pathetic, it isn’t working.  But it is.  As long as I’m not gaining and there’s a chance I might lose, I’m happy.

So, yes, I’ll still ask, “Does this make me look fat?” Knowing all the while, that it probably does, but loving the fact that the people who love me will say, “no.” 

The other night while I was watching television a gum commercial came on.  I don’t even remember what kind of gum they were advertising, because I was so put off at the message they were trying to convey.  They, being the gum makers, were trying to tell me that gum was a snack; that when I crave something sweet or salty or, whatever, that all I have to do is pop a piece of their gum in my mouth and I could fake myself out into believing that I was having a snack. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love gum.  I’m one of those annoying people who loves to manipulate a piece of gum around on my back molars while Im chewing, so that it pops and snaps. I blow little bubbles and pop them in my mouth.  Yup, I’m fun to be around.  I can chew the same piece of gum for hours, long after it has lost any trace of its cool arctic mint flavoring.  I love it when I’m chewing gum and I drink something ice cold and the gum gets really hard for a few seconds.  When I was younger, I even twirled my gum around on my finger.  So, yeah, I love gum.  But, gum is NOT a snack.

 Graham crackers and milk are a snack.  Chips and pretzels are a snack.  Popcorn and Cheezits are a snack.  Leftover pizza is a snack.  Heck, even an apple or a bunch of raisins can be a snack, if you go for that kind of thing.  A snack is something you chew and swallow, not just chew. 

 So, gum manufacturer, whoever you were, you should rethink your marketing strategy.  We’re not stupid and we’re not so desperate to stay on our diets and deny ourselves the satisfaction of actually eating something, to be fooled into thinking that gum is a snack.  It just isn’t. 

 And, you’ll never convince me that it is.

When I was thinking about starting this blog, my head was full of all kinds of things – ideas, viewpoints, recollections, both irreverant (mostly irreverant) and important.  That’s why I wanted to start a blog.  Almost as soon as I joined here, they just flew right out of my head. 

So here I sit, feeling just a bit inadequate.  Not that too many folks stop by here, but I feel as though I’m letting you (the few) down by not regaling you with my innermost thoughts.  So for the sake of the blog, here’s a random sampling of what’s been on my mind and what I’ve been up to lately:

I’ve been thinking about LOST.  I’m obsessed with it.  I live for Thursday nights.  All day long I keep thinking, “LOST is on tonight.”  I drink a fully caffienated coffee around 4:00, to make sure I can stay awake to watch the entire show.  I lurk at a couple of websites devoted to those of us who have nothing better to do than wonder, who’s in the coffin?  Why does Kate have Aaron?  What’s the deal with the time paradox?  Where did Jacob’s cabin go?  Is Locke going crazy or is he crazy like a fox?  Will Penny find Desmond?  Some of the people who belong to these websites are really, REALLY, obsessed.  They post long, elaborate, theories, most of which, I don’t understand.  They record soundbites and play them backwards to glean some secret message hidden deep within in the background sounds.  They capture screenshots of seemingly important instances that were missed while watching in real time.  They discuss and discuss and discuss.  I’m intrigued by these people; part of me admires them for being so cerebral and observant, but part of me wonders when they have the time to do all this stuff.  Are they just sitting all day at their computers, watching and rewatching, researching and posting minute by minute?  Do they have jobs?  Do they work?  Do they have families?  I’ll admit, I’m grateful for their diligence and the time and effort they put into their obsession.  As much as I love the show, I’m way too lazy to dig as deep as they do to find answers.  And why should I when I know they’ll do it for me?  Thank you, LOST obsessed fans who go that extra mile.

I’ve been thinking about my sofa.  It’s a leather sofa and I love it.  I do, I love it, but from the day it was delivered, one of the cushions sagged.  My husband and I kept telling each other that we should call the store and have them send someone out to look at it, but we put it off and put it off.  Now, nearly 3 years later, the cushion is REALLY sagging,  so my husband turned it over and peeled back the covering to see what was going on under there.  Turns out, the webbing that supports the cushions has snapped under the sagging cushion, hence the sagging.  I don’t know if the webbing was broken when we got the sofa, or if it snapped after we started sitting on it.  Whichever, it sagged from the beginning.  Anyway, we finally called.  Guess what?  The store we bought the sofa from is in bankruptcy and basically has no customer service anymore.  “I’m sorry, there’s really nothing we can do.  You’ll have to find a furniture repair shop on your own.”  I’m mad that we were such procrastinators.  I’m mad that the sofa sagged from the start. I’m mad that we have to fix it on our own.  But you know what?  My husband turned it over again today, made a quick trip to Home Depot for supplies, and fixed the thing.  He stuffed extra foam under the cushion and repaired the webbing.  Cool.  So now, after 3 years, the cushion no longer sags.  I’m happy.

Jigsaw puzzles.  My dad’s birthday was this week and I never know what to get him.  He never needs clothes, my mother dresses him.  He loves to read, likes to listen to music, but doesn’t really like to sit and watch movies.  He has a pretty fair supply of books, DVDs, and CDs, so he doesn’t really need more.  Mom complains that he has too many books and CDs anyway.  So I was talking to a friend at work the other day and telling her how I don’t know what to get my dad.  Right away, without hesitation, she says, “get him a jigsaw puzzle.”  Well it was like the sun burst throught the clouds.  “What a great idea!” I thought, ”I’m going to get him a puzzle!”  I imagined him sitting at the dining room table, puzzle pieces strewn about, edge pieces separated out, working on his puzzle.  Maybe my mom would sit with him and help.  I love jigsaw puzzles, I think dad will like a jigsaw puzzle.  What a great idea.

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent puzzle?  How hard could it be? Well it’s hard.  I tried 3 stores – a major book store,  a department store, and a toy store.  The book store had a card table set up with a pretty sorry assortment of puzzles – Thomas Kincaid paintings, puppies and kittens, Spiderman….nothing dad would want to do.  The department store had a shelf in the toy department with a picked over bunch of puzzles more aimed to younger people.  Much younger.  Like 3 and up.  My last hope was the toy store.  Here, I knew I would find the perfect puzzle.  That’s what toy stores are for, right?  Toys, books, puzzles…things like that.  Again, just a shelf.  A picked over shelf of crummy puzzles geared toward younger people, kids, little kids.  Where do adults find nice, interesting puzzles??  If I’d had time, I would have ordered something online.  There are plenty of beautiful puzzles to be had online.  But by the time I decided upon a puzzle, it was too late.  I finally ended up at a Hallmark card store.  They had a real nice assortment of puzzles; puzzles of scenery, puzzles of the Red Sox, puzzles of Boston and New York – all kinds of puzzles.  Puzzles that I would want to do.  Puzzles that I think my dad would like to do.  I bought one; a nice one of a lighthouse at sunset.  I also bought him a little book of 30 Second Mysteries.  It’s a cool little book that describes a crime and gives you a list of clues. You should be able to figure it out in roughtly 30 seconds.  I got him some chocolate covered sunflower seeds and a Christian CD.  Mom should like that.  We’re taking Dad out for dinner tomorrow and I’ll give him his puzzle.  I hope he likes it.

So that’s some of the stuff that I’ve been thinking about.  Nothing earth shattering or even interesting, but I’ve written it in my blog for you to read.