Well, it is Dec. 31, 2006. Time for some random reflections.



First of all, my holiday vacation in Southern California: AWESOME. Weather was beautiful (70's most of the days, rained one day only, sunny, just gorgeous. As my brother would say, a shitty week in paradise. Food was plentiful. This is where the problem comes in. Despite several attempts to rally myself, I did quite poorly controlling my eating for the past week and a half. My mother cooked a lot, including loads of Christmas cookies, a full turkey dinner complete with several meals of leftovers, a prime rib roast, and scads of other food. We ate, and ate, and snacked, and snacked, and ate some more. Whew! When I finally weighed in last night after a long day of traveling (and, to my credit, a big meal of beer cheese soup in a bread bowl to weigh me down), I had gained about four pounds. Ouch. Now, we did manage to get some exercise in, doing my least favorite thing ever: running. My husband and I ran/walked (well, he ran much more than walked; I probably ended about half and half) over about a 3-mile course near my parents' house several times during the trip. I hate running. More than pretty much anything except evil people and the Oakland Raiders. It sucked. Bad. But it probably lessened the damage.

The celebrity deaths coming in threes, within a few days of each other? Weird. James Brown will be much lamented. The hardest-working man in show business made a few mistakes during his lifetime, but for the most part his musical contributions greatly outweigh the downs. We'll miss him. President Ford was overall a good guy. He didn't really have a chance to strut his stuff, sort of shooting himself in the foot with his pardon of Nixon. But I think he did the right thing, and he was certainly a good person outside of the Oval Office too. He will also be missed. And then we come to yesterday's surprise: Saddam Hussein. Shall I break into "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead"? The only thing I can think of that would have been more fitting is that they should have handed him off to the Kurds to let them have a little fun. Saddam will not be missed, and I hope Satan is toasting him over the fires with a long fork. I sincerely hope Iraq can get past all this and enjoy a little peace in the new year. They deserve it. As do our servicemen and women all over the world.

New Year's Resolutions? I guess I need a few. Let's see...

1) The weight needs to come off. I didn't manage to celebrate Christmas at 170 lbs like I had hoped. Oh well. It's time to start over. I need to make the goals easy again so I don't get disappointed. We'll start with a short-term goal of 170 lbs or less by the time my Spring Break rolls around in mid-March. The long-term goals would be 160 lbs or under by the end of the school year (end of May) and 150 lbs or under by the beginning of the next school year (mid-August).

2) In order to accomplish the weight goals, I must have exercise goals. This resolution is to get back to my two-a-days. I haven't quite gotten back into a good routine. I need to work out in the mornings doing primarily cardio for a hour every weekday (on weekends we hit the gym once a day for either cardio or a couple games of racquetball). Then, in the afternoons, I need to either get to the weight room at my school to lift and do more cardio for another hour, or get in the pool before swim practice. That is the only way I'm going to reach my weight loss goals. I simply have to do it, no ifs, ans, or buts (or butts, either).

3) I need to be better about grading papers promptly. Especially towards the end of this past semester, I would grade the easier, less time-consuming assignments first, saving the more complicated stuff for later. By the time I'd get around to it, I'd have several hundred papers to grade and no time to grade them in. It meant taking up a lot of time I would have spent with my husband and my dog at home, to grade papers instead. I'd like to avoid taking so much work home this semester. So I need to make better use of my planning periods and the time I have available after school. I will try to make sure that I grade everything that was turned in that day. When they turn in projects, I will set a number of projects to grade each day, and the rest of the time will be to grade the normal homework the girls have done.

4) I will try to blog more regularly, primarily about the eating and exercise but in general about life, liberty, and the purfuit of happineff ("That's 'pursuit of happiness'." "Well, all your S's look like F's." "It's stylish. It's in, it's very in." "Well, if it's in...").

5) This one's an annual resolution that I rarely make good on, but I must include it again, as tradition if nothing else: I need to get better organized and get things cleaned up and put away. I love to make lists (like I'm doing now!), but I rarely follow through on them. My house is a disaster, as is my classroom at school. I need to get everything in some semblance of order. I have good reason to do this at home: my parents expressed an intention to come visit during my Spring Break in March. Nothing like imminent "Mom" to make you want to clean up the house! At school, it just helps to find everything easier, like handouts and homework that got turned in. I'm not quite sure how to go about doing this. I guess the first step is to pick a room to start in, like the guest bedroom/kayak storage closet. I need to clean out that room and figure out a better way to store some of our kayaking and outdoor gear. Since that's the room my parents will be staying in, it's a logical place to start. Hopefully if I can organize that room, it will be a springboard to the rest of the house.

You'll note that the last resolution, the organization, is the one for which I don't really have a concrete plan. That's because I am not by nature an organized person and never have been. So I suspect that will be the one that causes me the most trouble. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

For anyone who reads this blog, either regularly or just passing through, I wish you the most wonderful of new years. May you have peace, health, prosperity, and a lot of fun. God bless you and your loved ones in this holiday season.

I think I can remotivate myself, the same way I got motivated in the first place: The Biggest Loser.

I've previous mentioned my affinity for reality television. The show inspired my husband and me in our weight loss experiment. When I first heard that NBC was doing a reality show involving overweight people, I was offended, and not just because I myself was overweight. Reality shows really just exploit some of the more unsavory aspects of our culture, and I could just see this show humiliating these overweight people while fit Americans laughed and were glad they weren't fat. I didn't watch the first season for that very reason. But the second season somehow sucked us in, and we ended up watching the whole thing (I think we missed the first episode). We were blown away at the success these people had losing weight. Now, of course, they had a situation that most of us don't have: they were put in an environment where they weren't responsible for their families or for work; all they had to do was work out, learn about nutrition, work out some more, compete in challenges, and work out again before getting weighed each week. Most of these people lived completely sedentary lives, so just the addition of a little exercise made a difference. When you consider they were exercising for hours each day and changing their diets completely, it's no wonder they were losing up to 20 lbs in a week. If I could lose 20 lbs in a week, I'd have been done with this before Christmas LAST year. Anyway, we were so blown away last year at how much weight these people lost that we decided we'd give the whole weight loss thing a try.

Well, we did pretty well, for a while. My husband lost about 35 lbs; I lost about 40 lbs. And everything seemed great. And then March rolled around, and we both stalled out. Neither of us has really lost any appreciable weight since then. We've just struggled to stay right where we were. But then we watched the finale of this season's Biggest Loser this past Wednesday, and we weren't just impressed...we were STUNNED.

This season was interesting. They brought in people from each of the 50 states and had them work out while the trainers evaluated them. The trainers picked 14 contestants to stay on the ranch. The rest of the contestants were sent home to work out on their own. About 2/3 of the way through the season, they brought back to the ranch the male and female contestants from home who had been the most successful. And there were three competitions: the home contestant who lost the highest percentage of his or her body weight won $50K; the contestant who got voted off the ranch (a la Survivor) who was then the most successful at home won $100K; and the one of the final four contestants from the ranch who ultimately lost the highest percentage of weight won $250K.

The at-home winner was Poppi, who went from a size 22 to a size 2:




The sent-home winner was Brian, who was completely unrecognizable after his transformation:




And the ultimate winner was Erik, who started the game at an agonizing 407 lbs, and finished weighing in at 193 lbs!




Can you $^#&%@* believe that? He lost...ME! I started out at 218 lbs Halloween 2005. He lost my entire body off of his! How amazing is that?

If he can do that, I certainly can lose 30 more measly lbs. If you'll excuse me, I need to go to the gym.

My brother gave me a hard time for my lack of posts recently. It isn't that I don't like posting; it's simply that very little happens to me that is interesting. Life is fairly routine.

There are a few reasons I haven't posted much. The first is horrible, horrible shame. Despite all my chest-thumping and stand-taking on this whole weight-loss rejuvenation thing, I have been absolutely terrible the past few weeks. I've hardly worked out at all, and I haven't really been watching what I eat as closely as I should as we dive into the holiday eating season. Needless to say, I haven't bothered to weigh myself in at least a week, either. I'm afraid of what the scale will say. I doubt that I'm back into the 180's, but I'll be very surprised if I'm under 177. I guess part of me didn't want to blog because it would require that admission of guilt.

Another reason is school. I am a procrastinator first-class. When the students hand in their assignments (usually several at a time; I'm a mean teacher like that) I tend to grade the easy-to-grade ones first, the ones that take less time and less effort from yours truly. The assignments that require reading and thought on my part are the ones I save for weekends and moments of motivation. I had a serious backlog of work to grade, consisting of approximately 283 original poems composed by my students, 150 explication outlines of famous poetry, and 75 projects that included a powerpoint presentation, a podcast, and an outline each from every student. Needless to say, the past two weeks have been a blur of grading. I've stayed at school every day until it was time to head to swim practice (which is why there was no afternoon workout for me), I've taken assignments to swim practice and graded on the pool deck, I've taken work home with me to the chagrin of my husband and dog who've been feeling neglected...the work just hasn't stopped. I finally pushed through last night and finished the last assignment (with the exception of several students who have had prolonged absences and are turning in make-up work). Now I'm ready to grade EXAMS! Whoopee! Seventy-five 200-point tests! Hooray! Actually, I've made it as easy as possible on myself. The exams are all matching and multiple choice, so I can whip through these pretty fast. The first class actually took their exam yesterday, and I graded it in about an hour this morning. My next exam starts at 10 this morning, and I should have all their tests graded after lunch. Two exams tomorrow: I can grade one during the other, and have the other done by lunch; one exam Friday that I should have done in half an hour (only eight students in that class). So things are finally looking up, and I can break my self-imposed exile and start talking to people again.

And the last reason is, I'm lazy. I have to think of things to blog about and, as I've said before, not that much really happens to me. I have to be creative to come up with topics, and that requires effort.

So my apologies, Dear Reader, for neglecting you so these past few weeks. Things will start to improve. I promise. Tomorrow. Really.

I don't understand spam.

OK, I don't understand the "meat" version of spam, but I'm really talking about the uninvited e-mails received daily by millions of people. According to an article I saw on CNN.com today, they (whoever "they" are) estimate that 9 out of 10 e-mails received are spam e-mails trying to get the receiver to buy something, visit a certain website, or whatever.

I know why people send out spam. It's a cheap advertising method. I don't know how many people find anything interesting in their spam and actually visit the sites or buy the products that are being hawked, but it must be enough to make it worth their while.

But the recent spam I've received is weird. It doesn't make much sense. Here's a sample:


Chocolate and cinnamon transcend coffee's morning image and move it into the realm of an adult milkshake.
She marvels that such a simple dish can shine with flavors that absolutely sing!
But for times when a little familiarity is needed, these are the recipes to turn to.
This one can be made ahead, chilled, and rewarmed in a microwave or double boiler.
Or what's the best one you've seen? Or what's the best one you've seen?
I did that and then flew with him again last weekend. Clearly I need to keep at it.
So when nostalgia hits this fall, feature the last of summer's finest fruits right here in this dessert. It felt like there might be demand. Try this pecan-crusted red snapper. It would have all been manual work and I was already too busy.
Even "non-fishionados" will like this dish. But I just wanted to point out that it's there so that nobody is surprised.
Using winter squash and carrots make it the perfect side dish for a fall dinner.
Here's a tasty way to put them to good use. I suspect it's psychological.
You have been warned. That means you're safe, right? Show me someone who doesn't like sundaes and I'll show you a person a few scoops short of a pint. TechMeme is a useful service for many people.
These tartlet shells are partially baked, filled, then baked again. Eight cups of spinach and a touch of lemon ensure its presence in this rich treat.
You probably have all the ingredients on hand, and whipping them up takes just about as long as mixing their boxed buddies. She marvels that such a simple dish can shine with flavors that absolutely sing!
It's a wonder chickens all over the world aren't out of a job. I've been trying to fix that in recent months, but it's hard to go cold turkey.
But they've still developed a bad rep over time.
Don't shy away from the anchovy paste - it makes the vinaigrette distinctive without imparting a fishy taste.

OK, I get the picture. That's where the advertising takes place, and it's located in the picture so spam filters can't read the text and block it out. But what the hell is the rest of it? It is almost entirely weird, food-related chatter. Someone went through a lot of trouble to type that up, or at least to cut and paste it all. Why? Why not just send the picture without the rest of the text?

The addresses and subject headings kill me, too. I've received spam e-mails from such unlikely people as Flabby N. Moonpies, Tom and Katie Cruise, Obese Treefighter, and Ender McTouchy. Who thinks up these names? Like you're going to open an e-mail from Flabby N. Moonpies. Seriously. And the subject headers try to defeat the spam filters by intentionally misspelling or dividing the words, such as Vi*agra and Obes*ity and This Stocck Will Go Farr. Who do these people think they're kidding?

I don't understand spam.

OK, I can't even make a successful week of blogging every day, let alone make it to the gym every day. I just don't have enough time to get the blog done. Besides, my life isn't that interesting.

Despite my lack of exercise and occasional food indiscretion this week, I'm clinging to my third best weigh-in ever last night, 175.8. Will I make it to 170 by Christmas? That's five weeks away, so I'd have to lose just over 1 lb each week. Plus, there is Thanksgiving between now and then. I don't know if I'll make it, but I'm going to try. Next week I only have two early mornings, since we don't have school Wednesday through Friday. I can sleep in a little on Wednesday and still make it to the gym. Thursday we'll be traveling and eating, so I probably won't see a gym (we'll be out of town), but I'm sure we'll take our work out clothes so we'll probably run or something. Same for Friday and Saturday, and we'll be back and able to hit the gym by Sunday. I'd like to think that I at least won't gain next week, but who knows?

Well, that whole "skipping dinner" thing didn't happen last night. A trip to Olive Garden was not in the forecast but showed up anyway. Man, that stuffed chicken marsala stuff is awesome, as are the garlic mashed potatos and the spiced pumpkin cheesecake, but I didn't even bother recording the weigh in last night. Oddly enough, the fat percentage (which our scale shows) wasn't bad, but the weight wasn't good. And I didn't get up this morning to go to the gym. It may take a while before I can do two mornings in a row. But I will try to hit the gym tonight before practice. We'll see how it goes: Wednesdays are faculty meeting days, and those usually suck the life right out of me.

Yeek. Yesterday was not the best. Ended up not working out at all because I had too many papers to grade.

Food:
bowl of cereal
granola bar
popcorn (2)
bowl of soup
cheeseburger and waffle fries (yes, I know. Bad me.)

Exercise:
20 min. walk with the dog

Today, however, I made it to the gym in the morning for the first time in several weeks. Hooray. It wasn't actually that bad, getting up that early, which means when I try it again tomorrow morning it's going to suck lint. Big time. Food-wise, however, today has been a train wreck. This week is "teacher appreciation week" by our Key Club, and today's gift was baked goods of all shapes, sizes, and caloric content, distributed in the teachers' workrooms. TONS of cookies, brownies, muffins, etc. And one really kick-ass Boston cream pie. Anyway, I've had several no-nos, which won't help tonight's weigh-in one little bit.

Today's Food:
colby jack cheese (two slices)
granola bar (2)
popcorn
bowl of soup
3 cookies
1 brownie
1 teeny slice of Boston cream pie.

I may just skip dinner...

Exercise:
45 minutes elliptical machine

Guess I'm going to have to do my blogging in the morning instead of at the end of the day. I just don't have the time at the end of the day. Case in point: yesterday. I meant to do my blog and go to bed at a reasonable hour so I could get up and hit the gym. Instead I found myself still sitting there working on school stuff after ten. Crap.

So here's the food damage from yesterday:
bowl of cereal
toast
granola bar
tuna sandwich
carrots
pudding
big chicken taco thing (was supposed to be a quesadilla but didn't have any cheese in it) and some chips
small "dirt sundae" (had to heed the call of PMS)

Exercise? just a walk with the dog--not much happens on Sundays

And today isn't looking much better. I didn't make it to the gym this morning, again. Mondays are hard anyway; I've been comfy all weekend and it's hard to drag myself out of my toasty bed and commit to the horror. Plus, my husband and I, with all our similarities and common likes, have very dissimilar sleep schedules. I really need to be in bed by ten (lights and TV off, eyes shut) in order to get up at four. I really function best at eight hours of sleep, but I can't make it to bed before nine at the earliest. When I wake up, it's difficult to go back to sleep immediately, so I don't use a snooze alarm--when it goes off, I'm pretty much up. My husband on the other hand is a night owl. He can go and go in the evenings, hitting his stride later in the evening and not really getting tired until after midnight. When he gets up in the morning, the snooze alarm goes off three or four times before he finally gets up. The short of this is that it was already after ten when I finally headed to bed, and then we talked until about eleven. That meant there was no way I was making it to the gym.

Woman of 1000 excuses, that's me.

Been grading most of the day, with intermediate breaks to walk the dog. I'm not often home all day on a Saturday to watch television. It's been a good movie day. Hook, Gone in 60 Seconds, Face/Off, The Wizard of Oz. Lots of good shows. But other than grading and watching TV I really haven't done anything remarkable. Not an auspicious way to start my rededication, but you gotta go with what you got.



Food:
bowl of cereal
roast beef and colby jack sandwich
cottage cheese
raw carrots
popcorn
pudding
mashed potatoes

Exercise:
40 minutes walking

OK, I've obviously going to have to take a cue from the blogs of some of my blogging compatriots and start posting every day to keep myself honest, because so far nothing else has worked.

A week and a half ago I posted a dramatic entry detailing my successes and failures over the past twelve months. I was rededicating myself to the goal of losing another thirty pounds or so by August of next year. Seems like a good goal. But, to quote myself from that very same post: DIDN'T HAPPEN.

If you read my next post, you know that right away something happened to disrupt the routine I was hoping to set for myself. So November 1 I didn't make it to the gym that morning. I didn't make it that afternoon, either; I've let myself get REALLY behind in my grading, and I spent the entire time trying to get a foothold in the mountain of papers and files I need to wade through (let's just say that eleven days later I'm still not completely caught up--I'll be working on that today and tomorrow; my intention is to go back to school Monday with all the work totally graded). I did make it to the gym the next morning, but again I failed in my goal for the afternoon and again I did not work out before going to swim practice. My husband went out of town for the weekend and left Thursday afternoon, and I didn't sleep well without him, and sure enough I didn't get up Friday morning to work out. I managed a brief workout Friday evening, but I was lonely and just wanted to go home. Saturday was spent in the car driving all across the state to attend various state championship competitions that our school was competing in, so no exercise there. Sunday and Monday we had a state teachers conference to go to, and I had no enthusiasm either before or after the workshops to go to the gym. I just wanted to go home and not think for awhile. My husband came home Monday afternoon, and I just wanted to stay in bed with him Tuesday morning and snuggle. Tuesday night he had to work late (like, midnight late), and I didn't sleep well before he came home, so again with the no morning work out. I was still trying to get caught up on the grading, so no afternoon workouts this week. Friday afternoon I should have hit the gym to get some of my pent-up anger out (read my previous post), but traffic was horrific and after 45 minutes stuck on the interstate I surrendered and went home.

So here I am on a Saturday morning, having not worked out ALL F&$^#%* WEEK. Not good. I really need to refocus. So I guess along with my plans to work out every morning and afternoon, I need to blog every night to document what I've eaten and how I've exercised. I am not doing Weight Watchers or eating any specific diet where I can really easily count calories, but I can at least keep track of what I'm eating so I can take note of anything that might be a red flag.

So this is my new goal: I still want to lose enough weight by Christmas to be at or below 170 (may be much harder to get now that I'm almost two weeks late in getting started), but I also plan to make at least a short blog entry each day documenting my exercise and eating habits. I'm grading today, but I'll hit the gym this afternoon. We'll see how it goes...

I love my job more than almost anything, but there are some days that I wish I did something that didn't involve spoiled rotten brats and their rich, influential parents.

Thankfully in my time as a teacher and coach I've had surprisingly few run-ins with parents. Only one of these incidents was bad, and it was really bad (let's just say litigation was threatened, but of course never materialized). So I guess any time I get an e-mail from a parent, I'm automatically on guard for a bad go-round.

Hopefully, this one won't develop into anything, but I'm ticked off about it nonetheless. Allow me to elaborate.

One of the many paid and unpaid jobs I do under the title of "teacher" is coach an athletic team. Seems like it should be an easy job. Tell them what do to, when to do it, and how fast to do it in, and you're golden. But some times, it just doesn't work that way. My team was determined back in the middle of October. The girls were told that they had to commit to the team and pay their team fees by October 11 so the school could pay for pool space and we could order our uniforms. Nineteen girls made the commitment. But this past Thursday morning I opened my e-mail to find a message from a student, asking if it was too late to join the team. We've been practicing for two weeks, we only have two and a half weeks until our first meet, and we've already ordered and received our uniforms. I've turned aside another student who had a similar request just a few days after the deadline. Yes, it is too late. And I e-mailed the student a properly apologetic response to that end.

You'd think that would be the end. If the student were me, and I went to my parents and told them I wanted to play a sport but had missed the deadline, my parents would have said, "That's too bad. Maybe you can try out next year." But parents apparently don't allow their students to suffer defeats and disappointments these days. So this morning, I opened my e-mail to find a message from the student's father.

He asked very earnestly what he, I, and anyone else might do to help get his daughter on the team for the season. He said that he understood there had been a deadline last month that his daughter had missed, but that his daughter had been playing a fall sport which just ended and only now decided that she wanted to play a winter sport. He said he'd be willing to speak to any local, league, or state officials involved in the sport to see if we couldn't get her "passed the deadline".

First of all, in the real world, a deadline is a deadline. If you miss it, you are out of luck. I firmly believe the students need to learn this now so that when they get out into college and have to do some things on their own, they can handle it. She missed the deadline, not by a couple days, but by a friggin' MONTH. What is this guy going to do when the kid misses a credit card payment, sue the company for the late fee? I've already turned down another student who missed the deadline, and she was a lot closer to it than this kid.

Secondly, this girl was a "member" of the team last year in name only. She attended about three practices, didn't work very hard at any of them, didn't compete in any meets, and ordered a pair of sweat pants for which she never paid. Even if I hadn't turned down another student, I can't say I'd go out of my way to be accommodating. Part of the purpose of the deadline was to weed out the ones who aren't really serious about the sport. If she'd really wanted to be on the team, she'd have come to the meetings, turned in her stuff on time, or at least MENTIONED to me before now that she was interested.

The excuse that she was playing another sport doesn't fly with me. I have a girl who was on the same team, only varsity instead of JV (so this other girl had a longer season than the one who wants to join the team now), and she still made the committment on time. I had other girls playing other sports who made the committment on time. And I've got at least three girls participating in club sports outside of school who have managed to find the time to balance the club sport, the school sport, and their studies, and they all committed on time.

Man, when I read this guy's e-mail, I was furious. It was already shaping up to be a bad day: we were missing our morning periods to administer a standardized test, which meant I was losing my two planning periods. I had hoped to attend part of a retreat the seniors had that day, but with the schedule I wasn't going to have the time. I knew the afternoon classes would be worthless, on a Friday afternoon after four hours of standardized testing. And PMS was raging.

First, I was pissed off at the kid for being a spoiled brat. When I was in high school, there was a cheerleader with a license plate frame that read "I owe, I owe, so off to Daddy I go." I have always hated that mentality. Many of our students have it. Since we are a private school with a lot of rich and powerful families (doctors, lawyers, CEOs of the world's largest shipping company, you get the idea), the students all drive nicer cars than most of the faculty (and dress better too). They've got credit cards, expensive cell phones, iPods, $400 purses, Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses, it's just ridiculous. And this kid is just evincing that mentality completely. I told her no, and instead of accepting the disappointment she ran to Daddy to get her way. It reminds me of Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I can hear the snooty voice: "Dad-dy, I WANT to be on the team!!"

Then, I was angry at the dad for not taking the opportunity to do his fatherly duty and teach the kid that the world is full of disappointments. Here is the perfect chance to talk to your child about responsibility, about deadlines, and about consequences, thereby making her a better and stronger adult. Nope. Instead, he decided he'd do "anything" to help his baby get her way. If you spoil your child, you won't get anything out of it later, except perhaps to be eaten by lions (sorry, the kids just finished reading Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" and I'm still in that frame of mind).

And then, I was incredibly offended by this man's arrogance and presumption. He assumed that, even though I had said no to his daughter, I would succumb to his superiority and bend over backwards to accommodate him because he's the FATHER. Big $^%&#*@ whoop. How cocky do you have to be?

So I steamed about it all morning long. Man, I haven't been than pissed in a long time. And my poor kids knew it. They weren't taking the testing very seriously, and I snapped at them. I rarely raise my voice, and I'm never angry in class, so they knew something bad was going down.

I crafted a response with a little help from my friends--our AD, assistant AD, the guidance counselors, the dean, my assistant coach, and several teacher buddies. I was polite, apologetic, understanding, and firm: I said NO. I explained that the deadline had been an entire month ago, that we had already paid per student for our facilities usage and ordered our uniforms (and did not order extras), that I had several students who participated in other sports (including hers) but still made the committment to the team, and that I had already turned away another student and it would not be fair to her or to the girls who DID make the committment if I were to allow his daughter to join the team. I thanked him, suggested a number of local club teams if she really did want to participate in the sport this winter, and said I hoped his daughter would still be interested in the school team next year.

Now, I'm just waiting and holding my breath. I hope this does not become a pissing contest between the parent and the athletic department. I've been involved in one of those before and it wasn't much fun, even though we didn't get sued. I just want the dad to realize that he needs to cut the umbilical cord NOW and start letting his daughter deal with her successes and failures so she'll have that ability when she becomes an adult.

Don't want to get eaten by lions.

Today was supposed to be the day of my workout resurrection, the day I got back to the basics and started hitting the gym in the mornings. But instead, I was too tired (and a little sad) to make it to the gym this morning. I spent about five hours this morning laying in bed listening to the panicked activities of my dog. And it's all because of the damn bugs.

I think my dog is insane. I know people have said that statement before and meant it as a humorous commentary on the behavior of their pets. Perhaps their pets are funny, possibly behaving contrary to the norm. But I really mean it; I think my dog has some mental problems, possibly canine paranoid schizophenia with accompanying hallucinations. I know animals can have mental disorders. A friend of mine had a small dog that developed some kind of mental problems. She desperately wanted attention, but she would bare her teeth and shiver when you petted her. She'd sit for hours, staring out the window next to the front door, shivering. She became snappish with people, and when she snapped at the couple's new baby, it was time for her to go. So I really believe my dog may have a problem. He has undergone a personality change over the past few years. He used to be politely reserved with strangers, interested in children, excited about other dogs, and generally spoiled rotten and bratty. Now he is shy around strangers, snappish with children, aggressive with other dogs, and...well, he's still spoiled rotten and bratty.

He has anxiety attacks. He will run from room to room, throwing frantic glances over his shoulders, panting wildly, sniffing and snorting in search of what may or may not be there, shaking, occasionally crying and whining, and eventually stuffing himself under the nearest bed in terror. In the throes of his fear, he has actually had grand mal seizures. It is heartbreaking to watch. Thankfully these attacks are not commonplace, but when he gets going there isn't much to do other than wait it out and comfort him as best we can.

We think it's because of the bugs. As a younger dog (he's seven now), he loved to chase, play with, and eat bugs. They were fun; they were sport. Bugs in the house were tracked to a convenient location and then pounced upon (or snatched out of the air and devoured). But then, when he was about two or three, he made the mistake(s) of going after some of those big reddish-brown wasps. They had gotten into the house, probably built a nest somewhere, and the dog was too tempted to resist. Several times we came home to find his muzzle, jaw, or the entire side of his face swollen up from the stings. Sometimes he'd go a day or two without eating because of the pain. Once his face was so puffy his eye swelled shut. These events affected his outlook on bugs in the house. Outside, they are no threat, and he will still occasionally snap at them as they fly by. But inside is another story. Even the smallest fly, mosquito, or gnat drives him to paroxysms of terror. He'll still snap at them, but as soon as he does it he runs into the bedroom howling and hides under the bed.

But when there is a "real" bug in the house, he can pinpoint it. We'll see it at some point, and the dog will spend most of his time in the room hunting the bug, or running away from it. But we've started wondering if all the bugs he runs from are "real" or not. The times he gets the most panicked, my husband and I never see the bug that's causing the ruckus. The dog races from room to room, throwing panicked looks in every direction as though he's beset by a pack of demons. There is no safe place in the house, and instead of staying wedged under the bed in relative safety, he spends a lot of time scratching at the front door, looking for an escape from the house. He came to us on the bed several times last night, shivering and darting his eyes from side to side, hoping that we could protect him from whatever was coming to get him. Heartbreakingly, we can't really make him feel any better, and so he'd jump down after a few minutes and continue his restless prowling from room to room. When I took him for a walk, he did everything he could to prevent our return to the house, laying down in the grass, hanging his head and digging in his heels to make me drag him, and halfheartedly trying to get me to play so he wouldn't have to go inside. It made me want to cry. No dog should be afraid of going in his own home. He was so upset that I'm surprised he didn't frighten himself into having a seizure.

His fear of bugs has ruined some of the things he's liked the most. He used to love riding in cars. Now he obsessively stares at and occasionally licks the rock chips and water spots on the windows, making sure they aren't bugs clinging to the glass. He used to love the drive-thru windows at fast food restaurants (I mean, nice people lean into your car and give you FOOD! How awesome is that?!) but then came the day that a fly flew through the window while we were getting our food. The dog about tore me up trying to hide under me.

And I don't know what to do! I mean, can you take your dog to therapy? Can they give a dog prozac or valium? I wish there was something I could do to make him feel better. Poor baby. It breaks my heart.

So, here I am. Day 365. One year of weight loss. One year of watching what I eat. One year of forcing myself to go to the gym. One year.

Well, there's good news and bad news.

First, the good news: I've lost 40 lbs.

Then, while I'm still basking in the glow of the accomplishment, I must address the bad news: Even after 40 lbs of weight loss, I still weigh 178 lbs, and since March 15 I've lost 5 lbs.

The lowest weight I've managed to record was 175. My weight has fluctuated between that (hit it twice) and 183 since March.

Although I'm pleased with the 40 lbs, I still have more weight to lose. I'm about 5'7" (if you measure me in the morning, I might be 5'8") and of medium frame, so 178 lbs is not a good weight for me. I should be around 150 lbs. When I graduated high school, I was 155 lbs, and I guess a little chunky (I had lots of muscle, but a fair amount of padding too). The skinniest I've ever managed to be was 123 lbs, but that was on the college student starvation diet. I was a size three then; I've kept one pair of ultra-slim Calvin Klein jeans as proof that I was once that size. My doctor informed me a few years ago that I "will never be a size three again." He could have been a bit more tactful about it, but it was news I needed to hear. I didn't need to come up with an unrealistic and unhealthy weight loss goal.

Instead, I came up with a few small goals, all of which I accomplished. I wanted to lose 15 lbs by last Christmas, and be in the weigh range for my kayak (under 185 lbs) by the end of this past May. I did those. But I stalled out badly, and never really got started again.

I can identify exactly what caused the stall-out: I got lazy. Story of my life, really. I am the woman of 1000 excuses. I can rationalize all kinds of reasons why I can't make it to the gym, but it is all really because I am a lazy person and always have been. My weight loss went well when I really didn't have a good excuse for getting out of work outs. I coach high school swimming during the winter season, and the practices aren't until 7 p.m. Because I live 45 minutes from my school, it isn't feasible to drive all the way home and then back up for practice. So my schedule went as follows: up at 4 to walk the dog and head to the gym (a nightmare in my book--4 a.m. is not morning by any stretch of the imagination), leave at 4:30 and get to the gym by 5, work out until 6:15 or so, shower, dress, and head to school, grade papers for a few hours after school, then head to the pool to swim for an hour and a half before swim practice starts. I was getting two work outs each day, and since I was limited to eating the food I had in my desk at school, I wasn't taking in more than maybe 1200 calories each day.

But then came March. Swim season ended, and lacrosse season began. Lacrosse practice was right after school each day, so I lost my after school grading time. That meant I still had work to do in the evenings. Also, by the time I was finished with lacrosse practice, I didn't really feel like hitting the gym, so I'd just head home to see my hubby and get some grading done. I was still hitting the gym in the mornings, but then came the time change.

I love the fall time change. You go to bed early because it feels later than the clock says, and you get to sleep in an hour later than normal. Awesome. The April time change sucks lint. When you are already getting up at 4, and 4 becomes 3, you start thinking of any reason at all to stay home. Muscle stiffness. Headache. Didn't sleep well. Dog kept me up all night. Got a cold. Whatever. I'd tell myself I would work out in the afternoons to make up for missing the mornings. Didn't happen. I'd tell myself that once I got used to the time change, I'd start getting up again. Didn't happen.

Even in the summer, I was a slacker. I had these fabulous plans for staying organized, keeping the house clean, getting all kinds of work done in preparation for the school year, and working out multiple times each day. Didn't happen. Oh, I'd make it to the gym twice a day maybe once each week, but that really isn't enough to keep it going. And my husband and I feed off each other (pun intended); when we are together we opt for bad food choices, like eating out and stuff like that.

School started in August, and I promised myself that after a week or two of getting used to getting up for work each day, I'd get back to the mornings. Didn't happen. You see a pattern here?

Well, now is my chance to get back into the routine. Swim season starts Wednesday. I'll have my grading time after school (to an extent; this year we're doing preseason lacrosse a few times each week, so I'll have to surrender some of my time), but I'll still have time to hit the pool before practice in the evenings. And now that the time change has swung back in my favor, I'll be able to get up in the mornings a little easier.

So here's the new plan: I'm giving myself some more easy, attainable goals. First, I'd like to be below 170 lbs by Christmas. It means losing about 1 lb each week, but I should be able to do it if I get back on track with the eating and exercise. I'd like to be under 160 lbs by the time school gets out in May (I told you they were easy goals) and at or under 150 lbs by the time school starts next fall. So I've got about 30 lbs to lose.

I'd say here goes nothing, but it's gonna be something, all right.

Cross your fingers...

Don't you hate it when you get those "mixed message" compliments from people?

I got one this morning from a student. It's my birthday today, and thanks to the magic of our daily school bulletin, everybody knew about it. I received e-mails and notes from the girls all day long. But one student overheard me complaining about being old and said, "You aren't THAT old."

Hmm. How old is THAT old? So, I'm old, but I'm not THAT old? How old am I? I'm not quite twice the age of the oldest girls, but I'm more than twice the age of the younger girls. I guess that's pretty old.

Fun birthday, though. I share it with another teacher in the English department, and a coworker made us both a cake. Then another coworker brought me her famous "gooey double chocolate butter cake" (tastes just as fabulous as it sounds--it's like mainlining chocolate). And then some of my sophomores brought me a cupcake (and proceeded to almost set me on fire with a match while trying to light it for a birthday wish. I guess people don't use matches much anymore because she certainly was a menace trying to get it lit). I've had so much sugar I'm twitching. I did get another wonderful gift, though: some former students (my "marbles" who graduated last year) stopped by to visit while on their fall break. It was great to see them. They are all enjoying college very much.

Which reminds me: the last time my birthday fell on a Friday was my 21st birthday. It snowed so much that Sunday that they canceled classes on Monday. Which was good, because I needed another day to recover.

Happy birthday to me...

Everyone is a Saint.

I'm overjoyed that the New Orleans Saints are playing so well, for several reasons. First of all, several former San Diego Chargers are now members of the Saints football team, and I'm still fond of them. Secondly, they've spent so many years at the bottom of the heap that it's nice to see them on top.

And most importantly, New Orleans deserves this happiness, even if it is trivial.

After the nightmare that was the aftermath of Katrina, it is great to see the city beginning its long journey back to normalcy. If a football team can help them feel a little bit like they used to, then thank God for football.

After the most recent Saints victory, over Philadelphia, Saints QB Drew Brees (former Charger), had this to say:
"I can't tell you how happy I am, we all are, to be helping this city in some small way,'' Brees said. "To be here right now, it's ... it's unimaginable. We even had some Eagles fans come up to us and congratulate us. One of them said to me: 'We hate losing, but we couldn't have been beaten by a better team, in a better city.' That made me proud."

Thank God for football.

There's no T.O. in TEAM.



You know, I really feel a little sorry for the guy. Here is a man who clearly doesn't have many friends, if any. You'll see him, game after game, sitting alone on the bench with no teammates surrounding him. The other members of the team talk with each other, cheer with each other, commiserate with each other, but you rarely see anyone bothering to talk to T.O. When there is a conversation, you can assume he is angry that he isn't getting the ball enough, or that the plays aren't being crafted to take advantage of his abilities, or that the f$^%&*# safety is interferring with him and the f$^%&*# ref isn't calling it.

T.O. is exactly what he claims to be, a really incredible wide receiver. The problem is, he proclaims it WAY TOO OFTEN. Dude, we know you're good. Your teammates know you're good. Your opponents know you're good. The coaches know you're good. The media know you're good. The fans know you're good. You don't have to tell us every d&%^ day. We get sick of hearing it. Really. Shut up already and go play the game.

No one wants to hear about how fabulous someone is from his own mouth. It gets old in a hurry, and you start thinking more about how arrogant and self-absorbed that person is instead of how talented he is. And we don't need Drew Rosenhaus to tell us how great T.O. is, either. We've seen the film. Having Drew Rosenhaus as his agent just reminds me why I was never in a sorority: I didn't need to pay for my friends. Apparently T.O. does.

He had a great opportunity when he joined the Eagles team several seasons ago. It was the kind of team he could have been successful with. They have a great quarterback whose throwing style suited T.O. well. They've got loud-mouthed, energetic, somewhat thuggish guys on the team with whom he could have hung around and made friends. Instead, he ticked everybody off, and got suspended and shipped to Dallas.

And yet, as I said, I kind of feel sorry for T.O. It isn't entirely his fault he is a self-absorbed jacka$$. He's been told by myriads of people how great he is, and how no one appreciates him, and how fabulous his mad skillz are, and all that junk. He's essentially been groomed to be the ultimate prima donna, a spoiled brat to end all spoiled brats. Look at his circumstances. He's paid obscene amounts of money to play a game. He's a wide receiver, a position designed for attention-seekers. These guys are big, fast, and incredibly graceful (well, they're supposed to be). They get much of the glory in the game. So when you are really good at it, you can expect to spend plenty of time in the limelight. This is why we have so many spoiled receivers (T.O., Randy Moss, Keyshawn "Throw me the d&$% ball" Johnson). T.O. has also played with some of the best quarterbacks in the game, so he's received plenty of passes and gained oodles of yardage. And when everyone talks to you about how wonderful you are, you can't help but start to believe it. He's been pumped full of this by his family, his coaches, his teammates, and the media. You can't watch Sports Center without hearing something about him. It's no wonder he's full of himself; everyone has filled him with it. I had a spoiled brat student once (well, way more times than just once, but I'm thinking of one specific incident). I always wondered where the attitude problem came from, until the day I had a conference with the parents. The mother told me that this particular girl had always had trouble relating to her peers because they were "so intimidated by her beauty". Well, of course if the kid has been taught the world revolves around her, she'll try to force it to do just that, to the annoyance of the rest of the world. T.O. is like that girl. He's been told that he is everything, he is the driving force, he is the raison d'etre (no idea if that is correctly spelled in any way). Of course he is going to act this way! And now we are getting tired of him and his antics, and he doesn't understand what he has done wrong. All he has done all this time is act exactly how we've expected him to. And now we're trying to punish him for it.

I can't condone his behavior, because ultimately he does make the choice every week to be an a$$. He could change if he really wanted to. But I can't blame him entirely, because we have created this monster ourselves. So I will continue to feel a little sorry for him, sitting alone on the bench with no teammates to hang with.

What the hell is going on? Where did all the crazy people come from? If it isn't the current students, it's the former students. If it isn't students, it's random adults.

I don't remember violence like this when I was growing up. And yet I remember that song that the kids used to sing:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school...(don't remember this part)...
Glory, glory, halleluia
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Met her at the door
With a loaded .44
And she ain't gonna teach no more.
OK, so the concept of school violence was there when we were children, but the actual violence wasn't there. So what has changed?

When I was a kid, students got angry because of things teachers did or said. But no one brought a gun to school to shoot them. When I was a kid, children got punished (even paddled) by the principal, but not one kid came back to school to kill the administrators. When I was a kid, the playground was rife with teasing and bullying, but none of the picked-on kids snapped and planned a siege on their classmates. So what had changed?

I'm not asking these questions rhetorically. I really don't understand why we have this chain of school-related shootings in the past ten years or so. Is it something the schools are doing (or not doing)? What about the parents? Is it a lack of supervision? Is it all the violence on TV?

I ask these questions partly as a horrified citizen in a world that seems to be going crazy. I also ask these questions as a potential parent (I don't have children currently, but it is possible some day). And I REALLY want to know the answers as a teacher. I work in a private Catholic school that is populated by all girls, and it is unlikely that any of them could snap in that way (all the perpetrators of the school shootings seem to be male). But that doesn't preclude the possibility of something like what happened this past week in Colorado or in Pennsylvania today, with a seemingly random adult shooter taking and killing hostages in a murder-suicide.

I just don't understand. Maybe I should start taking donations to purchase some body armor...

Not us, thankfully.

But it was almost one of those days. We drove up into the city (we live about 17 miles south of the city and state limits) to run some errands. Nice, sunny day, no inclement weather or anything like that. Midday on a Saturday, not the right time for the inebriated to be on the road. Nowhere near the big college football game of the region, and not near the annual regional fair either, so no likelihood of impaired drivers due to some form of intake.

So why were we inches away from not one but two major accidents? Don't know, except that this city sucks. The first incident was when we exited the interstate to drive up into the eastern part of the city. The same place I turn every single morning on my way to work. We were stopped at the light at the top of the offramp. The light for the cross traffic went yellow, then red. There are a few seconds between the crossing red light and our green. We were in the right lane of two turn lanes, making a lefthand turn (thankfully not the left lane; if we had been a few feet to the left the close call would have become a direct hit). The light was solidly green before we started to move, but we were moving sooner than the cars to our left (they were lucky too). The guy who ran the light wasn't even close to making it. I don't know if he was already moving too fast to stop for the light and so he tried to make it, or if he was gunning it to try and make it and really misjudged, or if the dumba$$ didn't even see it (probably that last one), but in any case he was well exceeding the speed limit and seriously running the light. Everyone at some point has tried to make the light when it has gone yellow and has missed it, but not by this much. He saw us (how the hell you could miss our HUGE maroon Dodge Ram is beyond me) at the LAST POSSIBLE SECOND and swerved just barely enough to miss the front of the truck. I'm surprised he didn't clip our bumper anyway; it was that close. He lost control of his car, almost spun out completely (which would have been another disaster with oncoming traffic), and regained control and continued on his merry speeding way. All the drivers left at the intersection collectively let out a big sigh, shook their heads, and continued on, and so did we. It would have been much uglier for him than us; the benefit of driving a big truck is you have more vehicle around you for protection and you are sitting up above where most other vehicles might strike you (unless you get hit by another big vehicle or a semi--which is also really common around here). He was driving a small silver sedan, and a high-speed impact on the engine compartment of our big pickup would have f*&^ed him up BAD.

We nervously laughed off our close call, ran our errands, and got lunch at one of our fabulous Southern barbeque joints (yes, I know, it doesn't really help out my diet, but hey, I almost died so I'm gonna live it up a little). When we headed home we decided to backroad it a bit instead of staying on the interstate all the way. We were sedately driving down this six-lane road, a major one in town but with a speed limit of 40, and we had only been on it for about a minute when the rest of the excitement commenced. A black sedan several car-lengths ahead of us, just cruising along maybe 5 miles above the speed limit and not doing anything like passing anyone or even changing lanes, suddenly veered to the right, jumped onto the curb, and slammed into a telephone pole literally five feet from where a woman was standing on the sidewalk. Bits of metal, glass, and plastic flew everywhere, and the car rebounded into the street, blocking two of the three lanes of southbound traffic. We were in the farthest left lane anyway, so we were able to pass behind his car and then pull over into the far right lane. My husband whipped out his phone to call the police while I jumped out to see if anyone was hurt. Thankfully, the woman standing on the sidewalk was not injured at all (but startled as hell), and the man driving the car was also OK. He had a cut on one knuckle and was really shaken up, but otherwise he was fine. He didn't know what had caused the car to swerve; he said it was almost like his brakes locked up. It wasn't a cell phone related accident because he didn't even have one; he borrowed mine to call his family. The entire right front panel and the front bumper were peeled off the car. The frame was clearly bent and the passenger-side front post was crumpled along with the hood. The passenger side of the windshield was totally shattered. The front axle was ruined along with the wheel, and there was that heavy grayish-green grease sprayed all over the ground. All of the airbags had triggered, thank goodness. The police showed up to take care of things, and after giving the officer our names and contact information as witnesses we got back in the truck and drove home. We were going to stop at the gym on the way home and work off some of the barbeque, but after our close calls we just felt that it would be safer to head straight home and not leave the house again all weekend.

I almost feel like someone in one of those Final Destination movies, you know, where they somehow avoid the event that is supposed to kill them and then death chases them around for the rest of the show? I hope that isn't the case. Because if it is, even though we don't plan on driving anywhere the rest of the weekend, we do live right on a major highway where everyone speeds, and there are a lot of big semis, and our house is only a few feet from the edge of the road...

If you need me, I'll be under the bed, sucking my thumb.

Wow.

I just finished watching United 93 and I'm finishing drying my eyes.

There are many movies that I wish ended differently. I hate the fact that Bruce Willis' character dies at the end of Armageddon. I watch Mystery, Alaska over and over again, fervently hoping the puck will go in the net finally instead of bouncing off the crossbar. I'm always saddened at the end of Braveheart and Gladiator that the main characters don't live to enjoy the freedom for which they've fought.

But I have to say United 93 is the one I regret the ending of the most, because it is a true story. I'm awed by these people who willingly risked their lives to try to prevent another disaster on September 11, 2001. If I were faced with having to confront men with knives in a confined space 30,000 feet above the ground, I wish I could say I would be as brave and selfless as those passengers were, but I cannot be confident of that fact--and I hope I will never have to find out. But the circumstances were there for them to pull off an amazing save. They had a passenger on board who had some piloting experience, and another who had worked in air traffic control. Together they, if the circumstances were right, could have gotten the plane to the ground. If the story were fiction, they would have successfully overpowered the hijackers, gotten into the pilots' seats, and had a hair-raisingly close call on the way to the ground, but they would have made it in the end. But this was a real event, caused by real evil people. And those real evil people tried to carry out their plan, and in the ensuing struggle the plane crashed with no survivors.

But the passengers didn't lose. They prevented a fourth disaster on September 11, and established themselves in history as people who fought for their lives, their countrymen, and their freedom.

Evil doesn't have a gender, a religion, a country. Evil can come from anywhere, and the only hope we have is that there will always be people who have the faith and courage to fight back.

God bless America.

Land of the free, because of the brave.

God bless America
Land that I love
Stand beside her
And guide her
Through the night
With a light from above
From the mountains
To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home
God bless America
My home sweet home.



NEVER FORGET.

Being a responsible adult sucks.

Responsibility takes away a lot of the fun in life. You can't just go do what you want, when you want; you can't buy what you want without regard for how much money you actually have...it's just no fun sometimes.

I guess the reason this has presented itself is because my husband and I have recently been doing one of those "responsible adult" type things: looking at houses to buy. We've been renting, either an apartment or a small, poorly maintained house (see previous posts involving vermin and broken-down air conditioners), since we got married seven years ago. Now that we are both in our early thirties, our parents are watching us with interest to see if the "settling down" phase is imminent. Why are parents in such a hurry to get their children "settled down"? Is it because their parenting job effectively ends when you are married, have children, and own property? I've wondered this before, but, as the years have progressed and my mother and mother-in-law have become more inquisitive about grandkids, I've thought about it a lot more. Once the children are married, parents no longer have to feel like the providers. Once a house has been purchased, parents don't have to worry about the children being nomads and being hard to find or easy to misplace. And once the grandchildren have been spawned, they can stop worrying about populating the next generation and starting spoiling their grandkids. It's like being retired from parenting.

Anyway, my in-laws were in town last weekend, and we went and looked at some of the many housing developments being built in the midsouth area. I have heard that there is now a housing slow-down in other parts of the country (and my brother, Hoff, is an unfortunate victim of said slow-down in the SoCal area), but no one has heard of such a slow-down here. There is tremendous flight out of the hoods and ghettos in the city, to the nicer neighborhoods to the east and south of town. This means the housing market within the city, of existing homes, isn't great, but the new houses being built are selling like hotcakes. We found some nice houses, some better built than others--regardless of price range--and some with some cheesy extras, between $170K and $240K. Note: Housing prices in the South aren't all that bad, really. A house we looked at today was 3100 sq. ft. with four bedrooms, a sitting room in the master bedroom, a two-car garage (unusual in the area), and a finished bonus room upstairs, and cost $270K. In SoCal it would have been $800K, easy.

We've found some houses we like, but here's the thing: we can't afford to buy anything right now. We probably won't be able to buy for a minimum of 1 1/2 to 2 years. This is where that "responsible adult" thing comes in. You see, back when we were in college, we were a little, um, let's say reckless, with money. We bounced some checks, racked up some credit card debt, and basically had a whole lot of fun using money we didn't have. That's the problem. It is seriously fun sometimes to spend money. Buying things is great. So we did that, repeatedly. And now we are literally and figuratively paying for it. We've got some residual credit card debt that it is taking FOREVER to get rid of, not to mention $80K in student loans and two car payments with horrible interest rates (that's another downside to the fun you can have with credit cards--it screws your credit rating severely. Your credit rating is like that stupid "permanent record" you were forever being threatened with in high school, only it actually exists, and really can make your life miserable).

We are making ends meet, barely. We do make enough to cover all our bills and expenses each month, with a couple hundred bucks left over for those extraneous things, like food. Our kayaking habit isn't always a good thing, because of the gas our trips require, but we'd probably spend about the same amount of money on entertainment if we stayed home, so it's really a wash. But because we don't have any extra each month, we can't really start setting money aside for a down payment yet. We have to get these other bills taken care of first. The credit cards are slowly but surely getting paid off, but it will take at least a year, I'm guessing.

I did some math (something I'm not good at, or particularly proud of) and figured that, if we get all our credit cards paid off, we'll have enough money along with our rent payment to handle mortgage payments of about $1300 a month. Using one of those "mortgage calculators" online (I have no idea how reliable those are, or how accurate), that figures out to a $200K mortgage loan at 7% interest over 30 years. So, I feel a little better knowing that we CAN afford a house, someday. But I'm still a little ashamed of the fact that we can't afford one right now. We still do silly things occasionally, like going on a random trip or purchasing an Xbox 360, and we are bad about squandering opportunities when we get extra money, like bonuses.

So we have to be better about our finances. When we get extra money, no matter how small an amount, we need to throw it at a credit card. We've already agreed that for birthdays and Christmas, any money we had planned to spend on each other should just get paid to a credit card. Since my parents have already said they're getting plane tickets for us to come visit as our Christmas present, and we are going to skip the gift exchange with each other to save money, it's going to be a sparse holiday. I know that Christmas is not all about the presents, and we'll still get gifts from my in-laws, but it just isn't as much fun. I love giving my husband gifts. He's a techie, so he's all about toys and gadgets, and I like to surprise him with things like that. So, it won't be as much fun, not giving him a present.

Being responsible stinks.

Domestic goddess I am not. I hate cleaning. I hate all forms of cleaning. I hate every possible way you can clean your house.

Now, that does not mean I hate BEING clean. I love being clean. I love it when my house is clean. But most specifically I love it when other people have cleaned my house for me.

This doesn't happen often. I was green with envy when my sister-in-law informed me they had gotten a maid service (and they didn't even have kids then). Her husband was a consultant for a company that was not based in the Memphis area, so even though they already lived in the area before he became a consultant, they considered him to be on an out-of-town project, and so they paid him a living stipend to cover housing and transportation and stuff like that. So they got the rent on their house paid, and had enough left over for my sister-in-law to pay for a maid service. It wasn't heavy-duty cleaning; she did the vacuuming and dusting and cleaned up the kitchen and the bathroom.

Hell, that's exactly what I want someone to do at my house! I don't care if someone gets on his or her hands and knees and scrubs my kitchen floor--I'm certainly not going to do it and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do it either--but I would love the basics do get done: my toilet cleaned, my floors swept and vacuumed, my dishes washed and put away (I have a dishwasher that is not installed, so we have to do them by hand). That's really all I ask for. I don't mind doing my own laundry. I don't mind making my bed. I don't mind wiping off the counter tops. I can handle all that. Is it really so much for me to ask that someone else does the other stuff?

I know I sound really petty and lazy. I am. I freely admit it. I would love to have someone do this stuff for me. I just don't have the money to pay anyone right now.

Does anybody know someone who needs to get public service hours? I've got a bathroom floor that needs some attention...

Well, heck. A couple days after my beautiful post about my heroes retiring from sports and all that, Junior Seau decides he doesn't really want to retire. New England (not my fave team, and a repository for former San Diego players) needed a linebacker, and by golly Seau can still play, so Junior is now a Patriot. Hm. I'll get over the distress of seeing Seau in another uniform, and I'm glad he'll still get to play.

But the uniform thing opened up a whole different problem. You see, Seau has always worn number 55. At USC, at SD, in Miami. But New England's number 55 used to belong to another great linebacker, Willie McGinest (who also wore 55 at USC, after Seau did), who signed as a free agent with Cleveland. Seau and McGinest know each other, and Junior supposedly was going to call Willie to see if it was OK for him to wear 55. Apparently, McGinest wasn't thrilled, but OK'd the deal.

In football, you can't really retire a jersey number. Football teams are big--you've got 45 guys each season--as opposed to smaller team sports like hockey, baseball, and basketball. Also, jersey numbers in football are related (for the most part) to the position that the players occupy. Kickers generally get the low numbers (maybe it makes a kicker feel better to be Number 1!), quarterbacks are next, then running backs, the defensive backs, then receivers, etc. There are always exceptions to this pattern, but most players follow the tradition. That means there is a limited number of jerseys available for most players. And since teams generally have at least two players for each position (you've got to have a back-up in a physical sport like football), that cuts the available numbers down even more.

To complicate matters further, players in numbered sports get very attached to their jersey numbers as part of their identities. Some players throw fits if they don't get their numbers when they go to a new team, and more than one rookie or young player has been bumped out of a number by a veteran. A sign of class is how that younger player deals with it. (Ray Bourque used to play hockey on the Boston Bruins team as number 7, but when Boston decided to retire number 7 as a tribute to the great Phil Esposito, Bourque took the news with grace and dignity, traded for number 77, and wore it until his retirement--at which point both Boston and the Colorado Avalanche retired HIS jersey number.)

In basketball, Michael Jordan's number, 23, was retired not only by his own team, but by several others as well, in deference to many people's belief that he was the greatest player to play the game. In hockey, THE ENTIRE NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE retired number 99 because of Wayne Gretsky, who still holds close to 60 records in the NHL's record book.

But the greatest football player ever is much harder to determine, since a player can be great at his position, but there are so many positions. Who is to say that the greatest quarterback is really better than the greatest receiver? Or runningback? Or kicker? (Well, that one's pretty obvious, I guess...just kidding, kickers!) And the greatness of a football player is often dependent on the greatness of the players around that person. Where would Joe Montana have been if he hadn't had Jerry Rice to catch his passes? (Answer: Kansas City! hahahahaha!) There is no Wayne Gretsky in football, or Michael Jordan. (And even some sports fans would argue that Jordan wouldn't have been as great without Scottie Pippen, and Gretsky got some help from time to time from Mark Messier.)

The case with Seau and McGinest is difficult too, since both have legitimate claims to the number. Seau is the veteran, and did have 55 before McGinest did, even in college. But McGinest had the number first at New England, and won three Super Bowls with them.

So who will get the number? Probably Seau, since football players just can't lay claim to numbers like in other sports. If McGinest is a class act, he'll let Seau have it with grace, and let it go. And if he puts up a fuss, Seau can be the dignified one, and select a different number. They'll get over it.

The bigger question is, will my Chargers finally go back to the Super Bowl (and not get their butts kicked this time)? Only the season will tell...

It's 3 a.m. Do you know where your sanity is?

I am sitting in a gymnasium at 3 in the morning, listening to the muted conversations of about 100 high school girls while The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants plays in the background. This is the inaugural event of the school year, the lock-in for the incoming freshmen, hosted by about 20 of the seniors. They play games, have Q&A sessions, and eat a lot of junk food while being locked in the school all night long. Their parents dropped them off at 2 this afternoon, and they'll be picked up at 8 in the morning. I am one of only two chaperones awake at this hour; the other teachers who are staying the night are sleeping in a classroom somewhere. But I learned after the third lock-in I attended that I felt worse in the morning if I got only a little sleep than if I got none at all. So here I am. A few of the girls are sleeping, some of the older girls are working on summer assignments that will be due this week (school starts on Wednesday), some are watching the movie, but most are sitting around chatting with each other. This is a nice bonding time for the freshmen, who are coming to this school from a variety of public and private schools in the area.

Anyway, in my attempts to stay awake, I figured I'd post a blog entry to honor my favorite football player, Junior Seau, who has announced his retirement after sixteen years (thirteen of them with the San Diego Chargers).

I hate it when my sports heroes retire. I cried when I watched the press conference when Ray Bourque (twenty seasons with the Boston Bruins, two with the Colorado Avalanche) announced his retirement after the Avs finally won him the Stanley Cup (but not as hard as I cried when he hoisted the cup over his head); I cried a few days later when Tony Gwynn stepped down after twenty years as a San Diego Padre (it broke my heart that he never won the World Series he so deserved). And it breaks my heart that Seau is retiring without ever winning a Super Bowl, and that he's going out as a Dolphin. The Chargers wanted to open up a roster slot to sign him to a one-day contract, so he could retire with his hometown team, but there was no space available.

I like the players that are class acts. I love the people who are just as good off the field at helping others as they are on the field at hitting them. You can keep your Terrell Owens and your Randy Moss; give me a Reggie White or Cal Ripken. Give me someone who plays the game because he loves it, not because he gets paid for it. Give me Wayne Gretsky, who can own every record in the book and still seem like a humble, down-to-earth guy. Give me Ray Bourque, who only left the Bruins because they told him they could not win a Stanley Cup for him in the years he had left, and he cried when he left. Give me Tony Gwynn, who could have taken his batting titles and his 3000 hits anywhere in the league but only ever wanted to play in the town he loved. Give me Junior Seau, whose foundation has helped thousands of kids, who could inspire his teammates to greatness with a pump of his fist, who had thousands of fans in San Diego screaming his name, who signed a baseball cap for me for my twenty-first birthday. Give me my heroes.

Thank you Junior, for being the class act you've always been.

Number 19, Number 77, Number 55. Thank you for being more than just numbers on jerseys and in record books. You are the reason I love the game.

I can now actually call myself a kayaker.

Previously, kayaking was a hobby. If people asked me what I liked to do, I said, "I like to paddle." (Which can start some very interesting conversations, by the way. Not that kind of paddling!) But I never did introduce myself as a kayaker.

But this weekend I reached a milestone of sorts in my paddling career: I kayaked a section of the Ocoee River in eastern Tennessee. The Ocoee is the river on which they did the 1996 Atlanta Olympics paddling sports. The middle section, which is the commonly run/rafted section, is primarily class III in nature, and is pushy, splashy, and rocky. For most people in the southern paddling sphere, the Ocoee is the river by which you measure your ability. It is the first significantly challenging river in the range of abilities, not because it is incredibly difficult but because of the consequences if you fail (the Ocoee has had fatalities of experienced paddlers due to pinnings, head injuries, leg entrapments, drownings, etc. instead of just incidents involving stupid, drunken rednecks with more safety gear surrounding their coolers of beer than on their persons).

I had attempted the Ocoee on one earlier expedition, and unfortunately did not make it through more than two rapids before I was upside-down and exploring the bottom of the river with my head. Not fun. This time went better. I put in just about where I messed up the last time, and managed to make it down the rest of the river with only a few screw-ups. I did go through one rapid backwards, but I was in control and avoided all the obstacles. And I did swim one rapid, not through the fault of any major obstacles but because I flipped over on something innocuous and missed my roll attempts. I really need to work on my roll. But everything went very well, I did not feel at any time like I was in mortal peril, and I really did have fun.

So I can now say, yes, I've kayaked the Ocoee. And if someone asks me what I like to do, I may tell them, "I'm a kayaker."

As I sit and consider how I am spending my final day of freedom before the beginning of another school year, I am faced with the realization of a darker side of my personality, one that I do not often share with others. But I feel that it is something that I must admit to, in order to recognize the problem for what it is and deal with it as needed. And the realization is this:

I like reality television.

Oh dear God, I can't believe I just admitted that. But when I look at some of my recent entertainment choices, in the midday hours when more acceptable programming does not exist, I have to face reality. *intentional pun*

As I flip through channels and find little or nothing of value to watch (and I'm taking a break from reading all morning), I gravitate to some of the most depraved shows, namely Project Runway and Workout, both on the Bravo Channel. Fashion isn't even anything that interests me (I'm all about comfort and I dread the possibility that someday one of my students will submit me to What Not to Wear) and, while I am interested in working out, Work Out seems to be more about the trials and tribulations of the trainers with each other and the difficulties the owner experiences in her relationship with her girlfriend. So why did I sit and watch three or four episodes of each show yesterday?

Examining other television shows I watch regularly, I see a disturbing pattern. Oh, not all of my favorite shows are of the reality genre, thankfully--I love 24, My Name is Earl, and of course my SciFi trilogy of Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica--but I can't help but notice how many reality shows I like to watch. During the normal television season, we (I'm implicating my husband here as well) watch The Amazing Race and The Biggest Loser (that show is actually one of the inspirations for our weight loss project over the past ten months). In the past few weeks we've gotten interested in MTV2'sFinal Fu, a martial arts competition. We've also watched American Inventor, America's Got talent, and Who wants to Be a Superhero, which is like a ComicCon gone horribly awry. And, God help me, when I have the opportunity I still check in on MTV's Real World/Road Rules Challenge shows like the current Fresh Meat to see which past cast members are still publicly humiliating themselves.

Now, I don't like the reality shows that are along the Survivor vein. I have tried and am not interested in Survivor, Big Brother, and other shows where the contestants make and break alliances and try to lie, cheat, and steal whatever they must to achieve victory. NOTE: And yet we loved Celebrity Mole, where the whole point was to lie, cheat, and do what needed to be done to throw others off the scent while figuring out the truth before everyone else did.

I've pinpointed where my affection for reality television began, and it has a lot to do with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. In other words, MTV's The Real World. As a child of the 1980's, I grew up with MTV, and the first season of The Real World came on my senior year of high school (oh, I just showed my age. Crap.). Remember when MTV showed more videos than shows? Anyway, I was fascinated with the show. I mean, wow, what would happen if you took seven strangers and had them all live in a house together? This was back when the concept was new enough to be innovative and honest enough to be interesting. They didn't select the beautiful people just to see who would sleep with whom in the house. Instead, they picked people from different backgrounds and different lifestyles to see a mini sociology experiment in action. Take Julie, white, young, naive, from the South, and put her in an environment with a very political Kevin, black, from the city, and watch the sparks fly. Take Jon, a cowboy singer, from the South, and have him live in a decadent Southern Califonia environment. Take Puck, an obnoxious, non-hygenic bike messenger, and have him live with, well, anybody. I LOVED the show. I watched the first four seasons religiously. I loved Road Rules too. Same concept, smaller venue (have them all live in a Winnebago!), and throw in some physical challenges and interesting global locations. Cool! I fantasized about being a cast member on the show.

But then MTV started to change the formula a bit. They stopped looking for people who would disagree and cause sparks in the house, and started looking for sparks of a different kind. It seems like the casts of more recent Real World seasons have been all about sex. All they do is sleep with each other. I've stopped watching new seasons of The Real World, but I still love the Challenge shows where they bring a lot of the old cast members from both shows back for more fun. Some of the cast members have gotten a bit old for the silliness, but some still come back for more (I'm crushed, by the way, that Coral and her teammate Evan had to leave the current Fresh Meat show due to injuries. Coral is a bitch from way back, and super-fun to watch in action).

Even though I no longer watch all the MTV reality shows, the seed was sown, and I have quite a list. In no particular order, here are some of the reality-type shows, either competition game shows, or following people in the course of their lives/jobs, that I have enjoyed;

The Amazing Race: I would love to go around the world and see the places these people have gone. The challenges are fun because they have some cultural connection to the location in which they take place.

The Biggest Loser: Severely obese people are taught by trainers about exercise and nutrition, put through a boot camp over the course of several weeks, and then turned loose in the real world to see if they can continue the weight loss. After watching the show, my husband and I realized that we could do the same "eat less and exercise" plan that the contestants used on the show.

Final Fu: Thirty martial artists of various disciplines complete challenges that demonstrate their strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility, and spar against their competitors. It's hosted by Ernie Reyes, Jr., and he's amazing. I would love to do some form of martial arts, but if someone ever hit me, I'd cry.

Celebrity Mole: One person on the show is the mole, and is sabotaging challenges occasionally. The other people on the show are trying to figure out which person is the mole, and trying to throw the others off the mole's trail so they don't figure out the real mole. It's hysterical, and it is fun to see at the end of the show if your guess is the correct one.

The Real World: Wouldn't you love to live in the houses that MTV has provided over the years for this show? I mean, damn. When they had the San Diego season a few years ago, there's no telling how much MTV had to pay for that big-a$$ house on the waterfront. I mean, San Diego is the most expensive housing market in the country.

Road Rules: Basically, it's The Real World on the road. They travel in an RV to various locations and compete in physical (and occasionally mental) challenges. Again, cool locations, fun events, beautiful people...where can you go wrong?

any of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge shows. The best of both worlds, baby!

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How cool is this show, really? Answer: way cool. They take the home of someone who desperately needs help and is incredibly deserving, and they literally create a miracle in a week. If you want a good, warm, fuzzy feeling (and a good cry)you should watch this show.

Surf Girls: Another MTV show, that was only on for one season. They took a bunch of girls who could surf, and they competed against each other in surfing (and other things, but to their credit mostly surfing) to see who was the best. The best short boarder got an affiliation with Quicksilver (I think, it's been several years since it was on) and the best long boarder got to go on The Crossing (a big surf trip out in the middle of the ocean where they look for monster waves).

American Chopper: Not a competition, but a very entertaining show following the Teutel family who run Orange County Choppers. They make awesome theme bikes (the fire bike still gives me chills), and if you think your family is dysfunctional you should check these people out.

Monster Garage: Sort of a competition, where Jesse James and a team of mechanically inclined people take a perfectly good vehicle and do something ridiculous to it. Who could forget the funny car/hot dog cart? Or the Mustang/lawnmower?

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Come on, how can you not love this show? They are freakin' great. I think some of their behavior is a bit over-the-top, but they really do seem to clean these straight victims up. Even my husband has started using product on his hair and zhuzhing (is there even a right way to spell that?) it.

Boy Meets Boy: I hate the dating shows; I think they are pretty silly. I really don't think you can find true love on one of those shows, but the plot twist that they threw in (several of the men this guy was meeting and going on dates with were straight and he didn't know it) was (sad to say) too good to pass up. I mean, what a mean trick. But he took the revelation well.

Ghost Hunters: I don't know if you've ever seen this show, but it is a group of paranormal investigators who go to supposedly haunted locations to debunk or prove the hauntings. Most of what they find is inconclusive, but every once in a while they'll find something reeeeeally freaky. The episode in the lighthouse where you hear a woman's voice saying "Help me" when there are no women present and where you see on the video the shadow of something moving on the circular stairs is CREEPY. I feel like the cowardly lion: "I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks!"

Fear Factor: You know the saying, "Everyone has a price"? Well, for the people on this show, it's $50K. I mean, would you eat pig rectum for $50K? I'm not sure I could. I have a delicate gag reflex.

And probably the greatest one we've ever watched, The Joe Schmoe Show. This was like the anti-reality show. An "everyman" of sorts was selected in a casting call to be on a reality competition. But what he wasn't told was that he was the only contestant. All the rest of his "housemates" were actors and actresses playing the standard reality show stereotypes: the a$$hole, the bitch, the virgin, the buddy, the gay guy, the military nut, etc. Basically, the guy was guaranteed money; it was more about how long they could carry on the joke. It really was kind of mean; the guy became pretty good friends with some of the people, and he was genuinely hurt when he found out they were actors. Even the cast members questioned the joke; on several occasions when he did something really nice for someone else they would talk to each other "off camera" about how terrible they felt and how they wanted to tell him the truth because he was such a nice guy. As mean as it seemed, it was fun to watch because he was truly a nice person, he deserved the money, the reality show caricatures were spot-on, and you just couldn't believe the things he'd go along with. I mean, a competition to see who could keep their hand on a stripper the longest?

Anyway, it has been a long spiral into the pit of entertainment despair. But I'm not ashamed to admit that I like reality television. Maybe someday someone will create a reality show for people to admit their darkest secrets, addictions, and horrifying revelations.

Oh, wait, that's The Jerry Springer Show.