Ode to a Cable Guy

The TV is unplugged now, the cables in a heap,
The satellite deactivated, the remote is asleep.
I have no entertainment, and you may wonder why;
It's because I'm sitting here, waiting for the cable guy.

We have a media center, a computer with light that glows,
The cable box will hook to this, in whatever port it goes;
More connections to the stereo, Xbox and DVD,
And when he's done he'll turn them on and then collect his fee.

He'll hook up both the televisions, and the Internet,
Because we use them frequently, most every chance we get.
I love to watch the television, through channels I will fly,
As soon as this man sets it up, this great ol' cable guy.

With cable Internet I will receive e-mail anybody sends;
On cable TV I'm sure there is a channel to watch Friends;
Oh the world I'll view, it opens to new horizons I will delve;
As soon as this guy will show up, sometime 'tween 8 and 12.

Sorry for the terrible poetry, but I couldn't help myself. God save me; I AM sitting here waiting for the Time Warner cable guy to show up (not Larry, unfortunately, although this is the South so he may be a look-alike). We've been using satellite television for several years now, but the quality of the picture is lacking (could just be our outdated TV, I suppose), and the reception is disrupted by the microwave in the kitchen and any thunderstorms that move through the area. These are things they really don't tell you about in their "It's great, all you need is a clear view of the southern sky" sales pitch. We're also taking the opportunity to dump our DSL Internet connection. Again, when we signed up for it, they neglected to tell us a few things. They were excited to tell us that we were indeed within their service area for DSL, but they didn't bother to tell us that we were pretty far away from their router. What that means is that we are far enough away that we lose signal strength and bandwidth along the line before it gets to our house. So our home router (we have a wireless network in the house) will lose enough of the signal that it will reset itself, and then we have to turn it off and back on to get our Internet connection back. Kind of a pain, so the cable Internet should alleviate that.

I'm sure the poor man is going to freak when he sees what he's dealing with. We've got two rooms that he'll need to switch over from satellite to cable. Won't be too strenuous because there are already cable connections run to those rooms; he'll just need to install the cable boxes. But in the main room he's going to have to contend with the wire convention from hell. Sitting behind our entertainment center (where he'll have to go to reconnect everything) is a tangled jumble of wires from the TV, satellite receiver, DVD player, stereo receiver, tape deck, CD player, 5-speaker surround sound system, media center computer (a full tower connected to everything), wireless router, two Xboxes (360 and regular), old Sega Dreamcast, video game boxes, and a load of mouse turds. Hey, I did TRY to vacuum them up. Anyway, unlike many tech geeks, my husband does not have that anal-retentive cable-bundling attitude. You know, many of those guys have to zip-tie their cables and wires together, and color code them so they are easily identified as to which machine they belong. Not at our house. And the poor guy will also have to run a new cable connection in the dining room for the Internet connection, since that's where our big momma computer that runs the whole house is (it makes us sound a little like the Gates family, saying we have a computer that runs everything. Not so. I'm sure our whole house could fit into Bill's bathroom, for goodness sake, and one easy way to tell we aren't Bill and Melinda: I have an iBook).

So I'm sitting here, killing time waiting for this cable dude to show up. Why do they give you such vague time references, anyway? Sometime between 8 and 12. how many people do they schedule during these time periods? Two? Three? How long does the average installation take? If it's two hours, why can't they schedule one person at 8 and one at 10? We'll certainly understand if they are a few minutes tardy because they encountered difficulties. But giving a four-hour window isn't very convenient. I mean, I was frantically cleaning the rooms in the house this man was going to have to work in, because I can't give this guy whom I will probably never see again the impression that I really am a total slob (which I am). So I had the whole place swept and vacuumed and the laundry piled out of sight (note I didn't say "put away") by 8. And no cable guy. Since then I've just been killing time, not wanting to do anything too crazy in case he showed up.

Oh. Sounds like he's here! And it's only 10:40! I feel like I've won the lottery or something!

Had a random music compulsion this morning (Alabama's Mountain Music, not a regularly played part of my collection but an echo from my childhood) that got me to thinking about my eclectic assortment of CDs. It's amazing to consider my musical choices and where they came from. Take the aforementioned Alabama. I do not, as a general rule, listen to country. There are a few exceptions, of course, just as in the grammatical world (I before E, EXCEPT after C, and what about the poor kid named "Keith"? Don't you think he was just horror-stricken as a young speller to learn that his first name flew in the face of all that is good and right in the English language?)--I believe that Patsy Cline's "Crazy" transcends all musical forms, and Kenny Rogers was part of my early years too; thanks, Mom.

But that's just it: much of what I listen to came out of the music I heard around me. Kenny Rogers? Mom. Bing Crosby? Dad. Alabama (and Stryper, and Weird Al, and metal of all forms)? My brother. Everything my brother listened to, I wanted to listen to. Despite what he may think, I thought he was unbelieveably cool (and still do, by the way), and so I surreptitiously borrowed and copied all of his cassette tapes when he wasn't home. The first "albums" I myself owned were birthday gifts in 5th grade: Madonna's Like a Virgin, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, and Tears for Fears' Songs from the Big Chair. And thus my strangely meandering musical collection was born.

Through high school, most of my music fell into two categories (sometimes overlapping): metal and Christian. Enter Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Stryper, Barren Cross. Again, my brother had a tremendous influence; his roommate in college had an extensive music collection, and my brother would make me copies. Who needs digital piracy when you can do it on the cheap with a tape deck? When I got to college, I rebelled against the music around me (country, and my friends' idea of hazing the chick from California was to trap me in a room with "Friends in Low Places" playing over and over again; is there any wonder that I do not listen to a lot of country?) by finding the loudest and most obnoxious metal to blare--Pantera's "F$%^&#$ Hostile" will forever reign as the angriest song I can think of. But I was also exposed to music I hadn't heard before. My roommate brought with her from Chicago a collection of underground/alternative, and my best friend (and future and current husband) listened to Depeche Mode, New Order, Agnes Poetry, and Concrete Blonde.

Since then, as I have grown more mature (or at least pretended to), I have added music that I would have never admitted to liking before: Neil Diamond (saw him in concert, by the way--Neil ROCKS!), Air Supply, Journey, things that wouldn't have seemed cool when I was younger...now I don't care if anyone else thinks they are cool.

And we have the music we've stumbled across. Barenaked Ladies, for example. Everyone's heard a few of their songs that have gotten radio play, such as "One Week", "Pinch Me", and "Another Postcard (the chimpanzee song)". But we got into them in college and now they are one of our favorite bands, all because one of my husband's friends left their first album at his apartment (never gave it back). Great Big Sea (another Canadian band, pop and folk music), whom we started listening to after flipping across a concert of theirs on MuchMusic (Canadian music channel) on our satellite TV. Awesome, and a must-listen if you like celtic-sounding music, folk music, or just a great fun band. Carbon Leaf, a Virginian college "Dave Matthews meets Great Big Sea meets damned talented musicians" band. They opened for Great Big Sea one of the times we saw them, and now we just pine and pine for them to come back to the area for another concert. The live version of their song "Home" is one of the greatest "throw your head back and just sing and feel great" songs of all time. Cowboy Mouth. New Orleans rock band, they've had a couple of radio songs (their most popular still is "Jenny Says"). We were given the CD single of "Jenny Says" right when it came out, by an embarrassed music store clerk who was deeply apologetic after not demagnetizing our purchased CDs which caused us to set off the doorway alarm. Loved it, and when we saw them live (opening for Bakenaked Ladies)--we've now seen them five times, and they are the ultimate good times party band. I highly recommend all these bands.

So we have a lot of music. There is something for every day, good or bad (Good? Great Big Sea-"Ordinary Day". Bad? Limp Bizkit-"Break Stuff"). There is something for every mood (Happy? Carbon Leaf-"Home". Sad? Moloney, O'Connell and Keane-"Kilkelly, Ireland"--boy, if you want to cry, here's one that will get you. Pissed? Pantera-"F$%^&#@ Hostile". Sleazy? Nine Inch Nails-"Closer". Wanna sing really fast? Letters to Cleo-"Here and Now" or Great Big Sea's remake of "End of the World as We Know It" which is WAY faster than the original).

So I'm proud of my music collection. I'm off to listen to something obscure. Maybe Jimmie's Chicken Shack. No, really. They opened at the Live and Luscious Jackson concert. Their album Pushing the Salmonella Envelope is really good.

I'm agonizingly frustrated. I went back and examined my weigh-in records (we keep an Excel spreadsheet where we record our nightly weigh-ins, body fat percentage and hydration levels according to our high-tech scale), and I have not lost any weight in FIFTEEN WEEKS. Since the second week in March. This f$%#^&@ sucks. All of my weigh-ins from that week on have been in the 183-184 range. Oh sure, I've had a few good weigh-ins, where I've gotten down to 181, but the averages are staying the same, and my end of the week measurements usually have brought me back up to 183. I'm f$^%&#@ sick of 183.

I know there are a few events that occurred around that time that have some relation to this lack of weight loss. First and foremost is the seasonal change. No, not from winter to spring or anything like that. It's the change from swim season to lacrosse season. I coach both sports, and swimming ends at the end of February, which is when lacrosse picks up. As much as I love to coach the girls, I hate the schedule of swim season. The school I teach at does not have its own pool, so we rent lane space from the university. The club swim team that practices there has an arrangement with our swim league (which, to put it bluntly, is sort of a half-assed organization that only exists because of the determination of a few coaches in the area) to allow many of the teams to practice with their club using some of their coaches. It benefits many of the high school teams, because swimming is not a popular sport here in the midsouth, and there are few experienced coaches. This way, the kids get to work with experienced coaches (that work for the club team), and the club team usually ends up picking up some of the more talented high school swimmers who join the club year-round. Anyway, the downside to this arrangement is that the practices are not until 7 p.m. Since we live 45 minutes from the school and the university, this schedule four days a week means I don't get home until 9:30 every night. So my schedule during swim season was to get up at 4, go to the gym from 5-6:30, head to school for the day, from 3:30 to 6:30 stay at school and get grading done or go to the gym again, do swim practice from 7-8:30, and then drive home. When I got home, I would stay up for maybe half an hour, during which I generally did not eat anything--I usually picked something quick up on the way to swim practice--and then go to bed. The next day I'd do it all over again. As I've established in previous posts, my eating habits and self-control are much better when I'm away from home. My husband and I have both agreed that we eat better, and earlier in the evening, away from each other. When we're home together we cook meals that aren't as healthy as they could be, we snack all evening, we eat desserts, or we go out to eat. Plus we generally eat later in the evening because we have to prepare the meal. When swim season switched to lacrosse, my schedule changed. Lacrosse practices were right after school, 3:30-5. Then I'd meet my husband at the gym, and then we'd either go out to eat or we'd go home and cook something (see "eating at home with hubby" problems above). I'd do my grading at home while snacking (or I just wouldn't do it, it would pile up, my girls would get frustrated because their grades weren't posted, and I'd have to go on a frantic grading binge over a weekend to get it all done). Just a bad deal all around.

So I know the schedule change affected my weight loss. It changed both my eating habits and, to a lesser extent, my work out habits. The next thing that happened was around the beginning of April: the time change. I love the "fall back"; I HATE the "spring forward". It's bad enough that I was getting up at 4 in the morning every day to go to the gym, but to make the 4 feel like 3 is just freakin' wrong. So I stopped going to the gym as regularly in the mornings as I did during the winter. I was doing it four or five days a week during the winter, but once the time change hit I was only making it maybe three times a week, sometimes as bad as just once a week. I couldn't adjust. I kept telling myself, give it a week and then you'll be used to it, but I just never got my rhythm back. Only now that school is out have I gotten back even some of my morning routine. And even now, I'm still not as reliable in the mornings as I was, say, back in December.

The last thing that affected the weight loss is my swimming. I love to swim. I would rather swim than do any other form of exercise in the world. Exercise sucks; swimming is fun. I started swimming in the mornings instead of doing my 45-60 minutes of cardio and my 20 minutes of weights because my sister-in-law asked me to do the mile swim portion of the Memphis in May triathlon on a relay team with her and her husband. I figured I needed to build up my endurance and speed a bit so I wouldn't embarrass myself. So I switched my morning work out from cardio and a little weight lifting to swimming, and saved the cardio and weights for later in the day. But here's the thing about swimming: it's great for toning your muscles and giving you a whole-body workout, but it actually sucks for weight loss. Your body wants to defend itself from threats, and there are two threats that your body perceives from swimming: hypothermia and drowning. The human body has the fascinating ability to adapt itself to its daily routine and to its surrounding circumstances. When placed in water regularly, the body wants to make things as easy and safe as possible for itself, so it floats. When you float, you can't drown. It's as simple as that. So the body will actually reserve some of its fat stores to mainain its buoyancy. Even if you are burning lots and lots of calories, it will try to hang onto some of its fat, even sacrificing some muscle. Swimming IS great for maintaining your weight. If you are thin, as many competetive swimmers are because of all the cross-training they do, you won't gain weight while swimming, and your muscles won't bulk up either (this is why you never see big, overly muscular competetive swimmers; they're all lean and mean). Also, swimming takes place in water that is cooler than your body temperature. The best temperature for lap swimming is between 75-80 degrees. This is a water temp that, if you just plan on floating around, may seem a little chilly. But water conducts heat much better than air does, so you heat up and cool down at least twenty times faster in water than out of it. This is why super cold water temperatures produce hypothermia so much faster than cold air. You can be in 50 degree air temperatures for hours and hours with few to no ill effects. But submerge your body in 50 degree water for an hour, and you will have major problems--cooled core temperature, blurry vision, changes in level of consciousness--all signs of hypothermia. So even in water closer to your body temperature, you can lose body heat. Your body does not want hypothermia. So immersion in water that is more than a few degrees cooler than you are produces the peculiar effect of retention of fat. Your body keeps fat on itself to insulate and keep its core temperature where it should be. I know, you probably had no idea your body was so determined to keep you fat. Well, it is. Plus, swimming is a low- to non-impact sport. Sports that jostle you around and make your fat jiggle are better at helping you lose the fat than sports that don't. Jogging=good fat loss. Yoga=not as good. Kick boxing=good fat loss. Walking=not as good. Swimming is great for your joints because there is no pounding on them, no gravity to make them irritated. But the trade-off is, you are participating in a sport that will not help you lose the fat. And when I started swimming regularly instead of doing as much cardio on the elliptical machine (great for fat loss), my body started keeping the fat instead of shedding it. Cardiovascularly, I'm in good shape, and my muscles are strong and toned, but there is a layer of fat over everything that won't go away.

So I know what many of the problems are regarding my loss of weight loss, so to speak. But what to do about them?

Well, first of all, I need to eat better. I've been trying for about two weeks or so to write down what I'm eating. It's not working very well. I'll start out the day fine, but by mid-afternoon I've forgotten a few things, or I've left the notebook in the car, or something else. And it's not what I'm eating the rest of the day that's the problem, it's what I eat for dinner (which doesn't usually get written down by that part of the day). I HAVE TO EAT BETTER. No more splitting the box of hamburger helper between the two of us. No more splitting the large pizza between the two of us. No more fast food meals.

Next, I need to change my work out routine. As much as I love to swim, I'm going to have to sacrifice some of my swimming for something that dumps the fat better. I refuse to abandon swimming entirely, because it's the only form of exercise I like. But I need to make sure I'm doing some cardio in the mornings. During the summer, when I have a lot more time available, I will still swim in the mornings, but I will then go change into my work out clothes and do at least an hour of cardio before going home. Then, when I go back to the gym in the afternoon to work out with my husband, I will do more cardio and my weight lifting. During the school year, I will alternate several mornings each week of swimming with the other mornings of cardio. After school and grading I will either meet my husband at the gym for our afternoon work outs or (during swim season) make sure I get in an afternoon work out at the pool where we have swim practice (I can get a month to month membership at the university; they have a weight room, a track, and the pool so I could do my swimming in the evenings instead).

And last, I have got to realize that weight loss is more important than sleep (to an extent). When my schedule gets thrown off, or the time change comes to get me, I just have to say f$%& it, and still do what needs to be done.

Sorry for the long rant (and so is my husband; I think he's a bit dismayed that I'm in such a suck-ass mood without PMS), but I need something to kick my ass (my fat ass, still, after all this time) back into gear.

*sigh*

Well, so far, so good. I've been home for the summer now for a few days, and I'm happy to report that nothing has gotten out of control yet. Basically because I've had too much to do. On Monday I was out of the house for most of the day. I got sucked into a pyramid scheme. Let me explain what happened. During the school year, we had a nutrition and health fair at our school, and a lady came who does at-home spa treatments. I was interested in some of the products she had, for my mom (chemo is destroying her skin), and so I signed up to have the lady come to my house to demo some of the stuff. Normally, they do a party. You know, one person is the hostess, everyone gets to try all the stuff and get pampered, and at the end people can buy stuff. Kind of like a candle party, but fun. Anyway, I didn't invite anyone else over, partly because I feel bad about forcing others to sit through those carefully disguised sales pitches, and partially because I'm sometimes antisocial. But by not having anyone else over, it made me feel guilty, because this woman doesn't make any money unless people buy stuff. So I bought stuff. It seemed like a good deal, a lot of their products (skin care, cosmetics, microderm abrasion, lotions) for $99. The catch was, only half of the products get sent to you right away. To get the rest, the more expensive items, you have to sit through a day of their consultant training. They are hoping to get you to sell the products too. Everyone makes some profit from the people beneath them. So ultimately it's a big pyramid scheme. Now, the products actually are pretty good, but I'm not enough of a cosmetics or skin care freak to worry about it. I usually just wash my face with soap and water, and use a little Oil of Olay now that I'm over thirty. As far as make up goes, I've never been particularly girly, so I've never worn much. So this selling of items really isn't my thing. I'm not into the lifestyle that much, I'm not very social, and I hate selling things (I was terrible at selling Girl Scout cookies as a kid, even when my mom was the cookie chairperson for our troop). So I'll probably just end up buying the products for myself and other people as gifts (I do get a 25% discount as a consultant, whoo hoo) and call it good. But the upshot of the whole thing is that I was out of the house all day on Monday at this consultant training, and therefore couldn't get myself into trouble. Worked out a little Monday night, but not much. I actually had to stop working out because I got lightheaded (I think it's a side effect of my new blood pressure medication, thank you Mom and Dad for the genetic gift). But yesterday I had nowhere to go. I started by going to the gym and swimming 1 1/2 miles. Then I lifted weights for an hour, and I finished by gerbiling on the elliptical machine for half an hour. I managed to avoid going crazy with food all day, and then we went and played boatball (sort of water polo/soccer in kayaks on a lake) for two hours. Needless to say, when I weighed myself last night, I hit my second best weigh-in ever, at 181.2 (terrible body fat percentage though--also a gift from the blood pressure med because it has a diuretic effect and dehydrates me). So I'm going to try to keep it up. After posting this, I'm headed to the gym to swim and gerbil again. I'll save the lifting for tonight so I can use my husband as a spotting partner. If I can do this today and tomorrow, then I should be home free for the rest of the week, because we're going out of town to go kayaking for three days. I always lose weight when we boat, because there's nothing to eat and no time to eat it. If all goes well, I should be able to crack 180 for the first time in at least three years. That would be awesome. I'll let you know how it goes...

I thought this Cathy strip seemed to pinpoint my problem. It's all well and good to have all these prepackaged snacks in the house, but when you eat five or six of them at a time, the 100 calorie snack becomes the 500 calorie meal. *sigh* I really do need someone sitting in my kitchen, preventing me from getting out of control. I need one of those time-sensitive safes like they have in the convenience stores. That way I can only eat at certain times. And I need it to only dispense a certain amount of food at one time. Or I could just learn some self-control...

Well. Here I am, sitting at home at 9:00 a.m. on a workday. Why? you may ask...because it's SUMMER, baby! Yesterday was the last day of "out-service" work we had to do at school, and now we're done. Whoo hoo! No more pencils, no more books, no more students' dirty looks... Sorry, got a little giddy there.

Actually, summer is an awkward time for me. Despite what people think, most teachers did not go into the education field for the summer vacations. Sure, the time off is nice, but we feel a little useless when we aren't participating in our chosen profession. Weird, I know, but still true. A day or week off here or there is nice, but the whole two and a half months makes us feel sort of adrift with no direction.

On top of that, the free time scares me a little. Being at home alone is when I get in the most trouble, food-wise. I have a bad habit of snacking throughout the day. Last summer I worked out a lot. I swam up to four miles every morning, I gerbiled and lifted weights, and yet I didn't lose any weight. My self-control when it comes to food is not great, and I would eat a big breakfast, come home after working out and eat a big lunch, snack all afternoon, and eat a big dinner at night. When you are burning 1500 calories a day it's great, unless you are consuming 4000 calories a day, which is probably what I was doing. I would eat something small, which would whet my appetite, so I'd eat something else small. And something else. And something else. I just wouldn't stop myself. My personality lends itself to binging. I can't have one Oreo out of the bag; I have an entire row. I have one granola bar, which is tasty, so I have two more. I have one piece of string cheese and it's great, so I have another one. This has always been a problem with me. I remember as a little kid buying a box of Girl Scout cookies for myself and eating an entire bag of the Thin Mints (there are two bags in the box) [Note: that many Thin Mints does horrible things to your digestive system]. So I know that all of this time by myself at home is not necessarily a good thing. It isn't that I don't have things to do at home to keep me busy, but all of the things I should do at home can easily be done while snacking. So I need a plan. I need a daily schedule. And I need to make sure there is not enough food in the house to let myself get out of control.

So here's what I need to do. I need to plan multiple workouts. I will get up in the mornings (either with my husband so he can work out with me, or at the same time as he gets up to go to work), eat a small breakfast, and go to the gym. I will swim at that time (that way there won't be many people in the pool at the gym). I will take a snack with me to the gym so I can eat something reasonable after the workout. When I get home, I will start with my housework. I've never been very good at keeping my house clean; maybe this is a good time to start. I need to plan my lunches out and prepare them in advance so I don't get carried away when I'm hungry. In the afternoon I'll work on my school work (I'm taking an online class this summer, and I have lesson plans to work on for my summer classes and for the fall, since I'm doing some new books in class) and try picking the guitar up again. The afternoon is when I'll have to watch out for the snacks. Then I'll go back to the gym and meet up with my husband to work out again in the evening. When we get home, I'll have to be really careful about dinner. We will need to plan those out at the beginning of the week so we aren't as tempted to just pick up something on the way home or go out to eat. Here is where portion control often gets me. I need to try to stick with small portions. Does anyone have any suggestions, like eating off a smaller plate or using a particular serving utensil to control portion size? I've never really experimented with any of those things. Lastly, I need to write everything down. I hate being obsessive about it, but I guess this is the only way to make sure I'm controlling myself.

Well. Now begins the experiment. I haven't lost any weight in several months, so I feel like I'm starting over. My weight right now is about 185. My goal for the beginning of school (Aug. 10) is 170 lbs. So I have fifteen pounds to lose in about 10 weeks. Let's see what happens from here...