Still fuming about the end to the Chargers/Broncos game last night. Yes, I know, mistakes happen, and yes, I know, calls get blown all the time. But when not one but TWO calls go horribly awry in the same game, against the same team, you start to feel as though the refs have a personal vendetta against your team. I remember back to my college days. The refs in the old Western Athletic Conference were notoriously TERRIBLE. We had regular chants for such occasions, such as "THE REF BEATS HIS WIFE! THE REF BEATS HIS WIFE!" and "WHEN I GET OLD AND CANNOT SEE, I WANT TO BE A REFEREE!" and of course the classic "ZEBRA ZEBRA, SHORT AND STOUT, FIND YOUR HEAD AND PULL IT OUT!" which I still employ at hockey games. Heck, I even remember one game where the calls were so bad the refs had to be rescued by football players from a barrage of snowballs coming from the stands. We had deadly aim back then. What I wouldn't have given for a long-distance snowball last night to peg Ed Hochuli in the back of the head for blowing his damn whistle early.

I drove past a fire station today. Spread out on the grass in front of the building were three hundred and forty-three American flags. Big letters amidst the flags read FDNY.

Tears flowed as I drove on. It's been seven years, and as a country we are still frightened, heartsick, and angry. And so very, very proud. Most of us do not know the names of the firemen, the police officers, the first responders who lost their lives at Ground Zero. We have not memorized the names of the dead at the World Trade Center or Pentagon. We can't recite the names of the heroes who fought and died on United Airlines Flight 93.

And yet their names are written forever in our hearts.

God bless America, land that I love.

Amen.

Here I am. One full week left of my summer, and practically nothing to show for it. At the beginning of May I was rededicating myself to my weight loss attempt, figuring a full fifteen weeks before school started up for the fall would give me ample time to lose 15, 20, maybe 30 or more pounds! What a great idea!

And then the wheels fell off. I did not get myself to the gym as I should have. I did not get up and go jogging as I should have. I did not go rollerblading as I should have. I did not go biking as I should have. I did not take the dog to the park as I should have. I did not eat appropriately as I should have. I did not clean my house as I should have. I did not overhaul my lesson plans for the school year as I should have.

As a matter of fact, as I pointed out last time, the only thing I DID accomplish was to pick up a new sport (golf).

Pretty feeble. I did manage to make some money with my workout schedule, but there's no reason to spend it, because I haven't lost any weight so I don't need to buy new clothes.

So, here I am. I have one week left of summer. I need to do some work around the house, cleaning things up. I need to weed items out of my closet that don't fit (but hopefully will at some point before Christmas). I need to go over my school stuff to see what needs to be changed. I'm going out of town for a long weekend (early anniversary celebration), and then it's back to the grind. Hopefully I can make a start on the weight loss again. I'd hate to be stuck like this forever. I'm running out of rededications.

While I am not surprised by how most of my summer has transpired (like, the fact that I haven't gotten ANYTHING on my to-do list done, and I only have two weeks left), I am absolutely shocked by one occurrence, something I could never in my entire life have predicted:

I've taken up golf.

My entire adult life, I have subscribed to the opinion of the late George Carlin:

"Did you ever watch golf on TV? It's like watching flies fuck. I get more excited picking out socks. Think of the brains that it takes to play golf: hitting a ball with a crooked stick, and then...walking after it. And then, hitting it again! I say, 'Pick it up, asshole, you're lucky you found it. Put it in your pocket and go the fuck home, will ya?'"

I've had little contact with golf of the non-miniature variety during my life. My dad played occasionally when I was a kid. He owned his own clubs, but it wasn't a particularly frequent pasttime; I really can't remember any specific golf outings of his, or what caliber player he was. In fact, my only specific memory was when I was about seven or eight and my father decided to teach my brother and me to play.

Now, I suspect the plan was really to teach my brother the finer points of the game, as he is 3 1/2 years older than I am, but I tended to tag along when my brother wanted to do things, so I was probably included more to prevent hurt feelings and temper tantrums than for my edification.

Anyway, Dad was teaching us how to swing the clubs. The next event is shouded in mystery, and the truth may never be fully clear, but ultimately the result was my solid thwacking of my brother's head with an iron. Many questions have been asked about the intent of said thwacking: was my brother a victim of an accidental backswing or follow-through, or were there darker forces at work? I don't take well to criticism, so it's possible that assistance or critiques being offered were not taken in a positive light by me. In any case, my illustrious golfing career was over. The clubs were taken away, and suggestions were made that perhaps golf was not in my future.

And golf never entered my mind again, at least not for about 20 years. Meanwhile, my dad continued to play occasionally (probably not more than once or twice per year), and somewhere along the line my brother picked up enough of the game to get his own set of clubs and hit the driving range at lunchtimes or the links on a Saturday with some of his buddies. As for me, I did not play, I did not consider playing, and except for the sports highlights on the nightly news I did not see golf at all.

Then, in 2005, my brother-in-law graduated from high school. A member of his high school's golf team, he expressed an interest in hitting the local golf course with his siblings as a graduation gift. My husband agreed, having golfed a few times growing up and having enjoyed it, and so my husband, his brother, their sister, and her husband set off for the course. I tagged along out of curiosity, having never watched anyone actually play the sport live. The first few holes I enjoyed watching everyone else (my brother-in-law of course is quite good; everyone else had a few good shots but more unpredictable than not), but then once we were out of sight of the clubhouse, my sister-in-law offered me the use of her clubs and let me play along on a few holes. I thought perhaps this might be the moment where I discovered my true talent, my natural ability. I've never felt naturally gifted at anything, really, so I thought maybe I was a hidden gem, a Tigress just waiting to be discovered.

Alas, I really wasn't. I doubt that I hit the ball more than once correctly. My skills were more suited to the putt-putt courses than the full-sized game. Oh well. When we made the turn back towards the clubhouse, I relinquished the clubs to my sister-in-law and returned to my position as spectator. I had fun, but felt no real draw to the sport. I had tried it, I had failed, and I was moving on.

However, golf did not go away. My husband expressed several times how much fun he had playing with his little brother. The opportunity presented itself a few more times here and there, and he enjoyed himself. Several of his friends in town play golf, some pretty good actually, and he thought that it might be fun to learn to play so he could golf with them. And he suggested I might learn to play too--neither of us would be likely to take it seriously, but it would be something to do together, and a form of exercise that might be more interesting than cruising on an elliptical machine at the gym. His grandfather gave him an old set of clubs he had used when he retired (old enough that, as my husband laughs, "The woods are really wood"). The clubs sat in our house, unused, but occasionally the topic would be brought up again.

Nothing actually happened until June of this year. My husband's cousin was getting married at a golf resort, and the guests were offered the opportunity to play a round the day of the wedding. My brother-in-law of course expressed an interest, as did my sister-in-law and her husband, and my mother-in-law. My husband decided he would play too, and looked expectantly at me. What the heck, I thought, it would just be family, no one played regularly, my brother-in-law would surely smoke us all and we'd have a good time doing it.

But I had a problem: no clubs. My husband had his aged set, some family members had their own they would bring and others had sets they could borrow. I had neither my own clubs nor any friends who golf. I was uncomfortable asking my husband to borrow clubs from any of his coworkers' or friends' wives (and to be truthful it seems few of the women golfed--I don't know if we'd have found a set in time).

So a discussion with my husband ensued. Was it possible we might be interested in taking up the sport, not seriously of course, but as a fun option on weekends when rivers weren't running? Would we play enough to make a purchase of clubs worthwhile? Would this be a sport we might actually do more than once or twice a summer?

We answered "Yes", and purchased a set of woman's clubs (driver, two woods, two hybrids, four irons, two wedges, putter, bag, head covers) on sale at Sports Authority for $150. I was appalled at this outlay of money for a sport that I really, honestly, had not shown any promise at (I'm not even a par golfer on the putt-putt course), but after looking at the prices of the mid-range and upper quality clubs, I was pretty sure we'd just gotten the deal of a lifetime.

After only enough time to hit the driving range once and play a short nine holes on our little municipal course, we drove to the wedding. The morning of the wedding we showed up at the pro shop at a little after 7 a.m. It hadn't really occured to me that only four people could play golf at a time, so we were separated from my brother- and mother-in-law. Our foursome consisted of me, my husband, my sister-in-law and her husband. This suited us pretty well; while we would have liked to have the whole family together, who really wants to get shown up by a 21-year-old kid? I was fine with the group, since no one had significantly more experience than I did, in the grand scheme of things.

Two things became apparent on the first hole: 1) we were reasonably well matched as a foursome, skill-wise, and 2) this was not going to be a quick game before lunch. We were informed by a course ranger that a maximum score of 10 strokes was all that was permitted for each hole (what this meant was if you hit the ball ten times and still weren't in the hole, move on; what we interpreted this as was we might hit the ball thirteen times but we're only going to write down 10 on the scorecard). After being driven off the course after the first hole by a thunderstorm (generally holding a metal stick in a field when there's lightning is not on the recommended list of healthy activities) we resumed play. While I did not possess the golfing experience that my family members did, none of us possessed any consistency: one hole might find us on the green in two, only to six-putt; the next hole might require four tee-shots before we got one that was remotely playable; and a third hole might result in five lost balls before we ever got to the green. And yet, every few holes, each of us would hit a real golf shot, one that went where it was supposed to go. Those shots spurred us on (despite course rangers harassing us for being so slow), and we finished the eighteen holes (in 5 1/2 hours, a full hour beyond the course's maximum pace).

When the scores were totalled, I was shocked, stunned, and rather absurdly pleased with myself to find that I did not come in last in our foursome. My husband was equally pleased to learn that he had the best score of the four of us. This success, we decided, and the fun we had doing it, was just what we needed to verify that our decision had been correct. The Rubicon had been crossed, so to speak; we were taking up golfing.

However, we both agreed that our hack-and-slice approach probably wouldn't make us happy for long, so we decided to seek professional help. We arranged a lesson with a local golf pro, who took us one evening to the back end of the driving range at our municipal course. We were both disappointed to learn that we would be starting off with the short irons (part of the glee in golf, especially for my husband, is unleashing a wicked drive off the tee), basically because they are the easiest to control. The pro had us each hit a few balls while he evaluated our swings.

Then he started giving advice. He helped with the grip, the positioning of the shoulders and feet, where to put the head, and a number of other tips. Then he told me to swing again. Suddenly, it was like everything clicked into place, as my husband put it. Pow! I hit the ball with my pitching wedge, and it traveled easily just as far as the farthest I had ever managed to hit it with my driver (yes, sadly, that was only about 50-75 yards). I swung it again. Pow! And again. Pow! This was fantastic!

[On a side note, I actually hit the ball better than my husband did that day. His swing difficulties, however, were largely attributable to the fact that his clubs were old, battered, and far too short for his 6'4" frame. A new set of clubs, specially lengthened, have solved many of his problems. But I enjoyed the superiority while it lasted.]

Wanting to show off our new abilities, we scheduled a golf round with a kayaking friend of ours. He claimed to be a poor golfer (which he may be, but he still beat us). We had a great time, but there were still many inconsistencies in our game. My biggest problem seemed to be my longer clubs--our coach had taught us to swing the short irons, and I couldn't seem to translate that great-feeling swing to my driver or woods. Also, my putting, once the strongest (ha ha) part of my game (all that mini-golf), seemed to fall apart. We needed another lesson.

Our second lesson came, and despite our pro's plan to work on lower numbered irons (or, in my case, my hybrids), we asked him if he would teach us to hit the drivers. He acquiesced, and we started hitting. Again, with just a few tips here and there, my swing was back. Pow! Pow! Pow! (I've decided that the best course of action may be for me to record his advice and play it in headphones while I play the course.)

We played another round of golf with our friend this past weekend, and he was dismayed to see our improvement (I actually parred two holes, and my husband was only four strokes behind our friend at the end of 18). We're still wildly inconsistent, but so are the other people we've played with. Our friend has been playing since he was a kid; we've been playing for a month.

We have another lesson on Wednesday. I think we're going to ask if we can work on chipping and putting, as those have been weak spots for both of us.

So far I have resisted the urge to start replacing all my clubs with fancier ones (although I must admit, I have replaced the putter that came with my set with a novelty putter in the shape of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, and yes, I know that makes me a complete geek), but I'm sure the time will come. Already the shiny, high tech sticks are singing a siren call every time I enter a sporting goods store. I will only resist for so long. Perhaps instead of new clubs, we need a new house, with more storage space for all the expensive gear we seem to accumulate through our many hobbies (kayaking, skiing, hockey, mountain biking, Magic: the Gathering, reading, four video game consoles, five computers, and now golf). Anyone know a realtor? We can take them golfing and discuss our options...

Strange things happen at a school during the summer months. Teachers get hired and fired, or decide to retire, or move away. Floors get waxed, walls and handrails get painted, items get repaired or mysteriously broken. Whole classrooms full of furniture wander away and turn up in unlikely places. Bookshelves get rearranged. Supplies get ordered, delivered, and distributed, often to the wrong places. Students and teachers who cannot stay away roam the halls. New students are enrolled. Technology is upgraded. Major decisions are made.

In the midst of all this, I have to teach summer school to about twenty incoming freshmen. This is an English class designed to give a boost to students who didn't perform as well as our admissions office would have liked on the entrance exam. We spend most of our time on grammar, with a little discussion of reading techniques and study tips. It isn't anything drastic--just making the poor kids show up for fifteen hours in the middle of July is drastic enough.

But the chaos that surrounds such a simple class is remarkable. The students show up late and unprepared, and don't know where to go or what to do. Since there is little communication between groups of administrators, teachers, and support staff during the school year, let alone summer, no one knows anything about the class, not even me. I didn't get a roster. I showed up (early, thank goodness), to find that the classroom I've taught in for six years was utterly devoid of furniture. Partway through my copying of handouts for the students, someone (maintenance) came along and unplugged the copy machine, dragging it out of the faculty workroom and into the hallway. The second day of the class, today, I came in to find that someone (IT) had come in and taken the LCD projector I had been using off the rolling cart and mounted it to the ceiling. Great, except I can't find a remote for it so I have to stand on the furniture today to turn it off and on. Goodness knows if I will come in to find the furniture in this room gone as well.

Anyway, summer school is an adventure, and the only thing one can hope for, student or teacher, is survival. Four days left...

Went and saw Disney's WALL-E last night. I wanted to see it because I'm a huge Disney fan, and I love all the Disney/Pixar collaborations. But I was also curious because I had read about some controversy surrounding the movie.

What I had read on CNN.com were some comments by parents saying that their children were frightened and upset by some of the images in WALL-E, specifically images of the Earth that WALL-E lives on and of the people on the cruise-spaceship that left Earth over 700 years earlier.

This is an Earth of the future, and we haven't done very well, apparently. The opening shots of the movie pan mountains of garbage, taller than skyscrapers. Poking out of some of the garbage heaps are windmills, almost as if Pixar is mocking our 21st century attempts at cleaning and greening our planet. Right? Anyway, WALL-E is the last lonely garbage-crushing robot left on the planet, rolling around in the dust with just a little cockroach as a buddy, watching a videotape of Hello Dolly and wistfully wishing he could hold hands with someone (forget about the scores of other now-defunct WALL-E robots all over the place that he probably could have fixed since he had scavenged so many spare parts to keep his own bod running). The horror that these parents on this CNN blog claim their children feel comes from the destroyed Earth. Hmm.

The next images that are apparently stressful for kids are those of the humans on the giant space cruiser Axiom. The Axiom was built for a five-year cruise of the galaxy while the little WALL-Es cleaned up the Earth enough to make it hospitable again. Essentially a cruise ship similar to what you would find in the fleets of Norwegian or Carnival cruise lines, the Axiom made everything available to people--shopping, activities, TV and Internet, etc.--and went it one better: no one had to walk anywhere if they didn't want to, because specially designed lounge chairs could cart them anywhere on the ship they wanted to go. As the years passed on the ship, people chose to be less and less active, using the lounge chairs more and more, and gradually became self-absorbed, morbidly obese, stubby legged slugs floating around the ship not taking in the scenery because they were too plugged-in to their video screens. While these body changes are attributed to the "affects of microgravity" in the movie, it's pretty obvious that these people need to get off their fat butts and get some exercise, much like many of the people in the US today (myself included). I don't know why this would be upsetting to little kids, especially since many of them were probably sitting in the movie theatre eating out of their huge tub o'popcorn and sucking down a monster soda after sitting inside and playing video games all day.

Anyway, some people are bothered by the images, and feel that Disney/Pixar have taken the opportunity to get PREACHY about social issues, and they are bothered by this frightening depiction of the future Earth. "Let a kids' movie be a kids' movie, full of bright colors and harmless images," these parents say. "Let's not heap despair and social anxieties on them at this young age. It's too frightening."

Who ARE these people? And why are they complaining about these images, which seem pretty tame compared to some of the things kids' movies have dished out over the years. Anyone else upset by the nasty car accident that happened to The King in Cars? That was pretty realistic. And the villainous Syndrome getting sucked into a jet engine in The Incredibles? Pretty gruesome. Any little kids frightened by the great white shark in Finding Nemo when he snapped and tried to eat Dory and Marlin? Heck, I was a little disturbed. What about A Bug's Life when the grasshoppers show up to claim the ants' hard-earned food (with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss whispering "they come, they eat, they leave...they come, they eat, they leave..." over and over)? Eek. Heck, go back to the first Disney/Pixar film, Toy Story, and watch the scene where the toys scare Sid into treating his toys with more respect (come on: Woody's head turning a full 360 in a Linda Blaire-esque moment?). Terrifying. And those are just recent movies; look at the old Disney flicks--Bambi's mom being shot, Maleficent's transformation into the dragon in Sleeping Beauty, the wicked witch plunging over the cliff at the end of Snow White. After some of those, a brown, dusty Earth doesn't seem so bad. And some pudgy people? Gimme a break.

I think these PARENTS are more disturbed by the images in WALL-E because they hit a little too close to home. Yes, maybe Disney is trying to make a point or two about cleaning up the environment and reversing America's trend towards obesity. Does this mean Disney and Pixar are being PREACHY? So, what if they are? Is it a bad thing? Are these messages any different than a mother's basic two instructions to her children: 1) Clean up that mess you made; and 2) It's a nice day outside, why don't you go out and play instead of sitting in front of the TV?

I see nothing wrong with these messages. If WALL-E convinces a little kid that he or she needs to help encourage the family to recycle, good. If a little kid is so distressed by the images of fat people on lounge chairs that it makes him or her go outside and run around, hooray! All kids' movies have messages--be kind to others, be true to yourself, someday your prince will come--and I see nothing negative about these.

If your child is old enough and smart enough to pick up on Disney's "hidden agenda", good for you and them. If not, your kid will just be wowed by the robots and the cute story. Big deal.

Now, if your kid picks up on the more subtle messages (the huge "Buy N Large" corporation that apparently runs the Earth--can you say Walmart? The smarmy Buy N Large CEO who sends a message to the Axiom that they can never return to Earth and should "Stay the course"--picking on the Bush administration, are we?), we'll talk. Otherwise, clean up after yourselves, and go outside and play, because it's a beautiful day out there.

I thought it was a darn cute movie.

R.I.P. George Carlin
1937-2008


And the world is a less funny place.

Boy, just a reminder of how progress can be undone by just one indiscretion. It was looking to be a good week. I had a pretty surprising nearly two-pound drop on the last day of the week, which seemed like nothing but good news going into this morning's weigh-in. However, I probably should have questioned why I had such a large weight drop on a day that I didn't do anything particularly special (I did play boatball, a kind of waterpolo in kayaks, for about an hour and a half, which really wasn't enough to justify a loss that big); it probably meant that I was perhaps dehydrated and had some water loss. Anyway, maybe if I'd worked really hard yesterday I might have kept the loss for my weekly weigh-in this morning and gotten some cash out of it. Instead, we went to the local Chinese buffet for dinner last night. Chinese, along with Mexican, seems to be the absolute WORST thing that I can possibly eat when it comes to my weight. Even pizza and pasta don't have the effect that Chinese and Mexican seem to. I think it is the high salt content of the foods--I suspect I retain quite a bit of water when I consume them. Plus, the Chinese buffet is just an open invitation to eat way too much anyway. And the sauces, while being salty, are also high in sugar, which certainly doesn't help. So the ultimate result of the week, instead of being an almost two-pound drop, was a .2 pound GAIN. I gained two entire pounds in one night. Now, whether that was just because of the water or if I actually DID manage to lose and then gain two pounds in just two days' time, I don't know. But it sure turned what looked like a good week into a major disappointment.

We went camping this past weekend in a national forest service park campground. The first few nights were pretty quiet--the campground was mostly empty; obviously the gas prices are pretty prohibitive for a lot of people. But the last night people started to roll in, and by the middle of the night (like, 2 a.m.), the campground had filled up. And I developed some rules for staying in a public campground:

1. If you are going to come in really late (like, after midnight), consider changing your travel plans and possibly staying in a motel the first night. It's pretty much impossible to set up camp quietly.

2. If your dog barks at other dogs, unfamiliar people, strange noises, birds, trees, leaves, dirt, etc., leave the poor thing at home. You won't have to shush it the whole time and your camp neighbors will thank you.

3. If you are musically inclined, have a large stereo, or are a hippie, think twice about serenading your fellow campers. Despite your talents, you may be surprised to learn that not all your neighbors really want to hear your version of "Brown-Eyed Girl".

4. While some small children enjoy camping, you may consider the impact they'll have on the campground before taking the family on that trip. Do your children have any kind of volume control? Are they likely to barrel through other campsites while trying to catch fireflies? Do they like to poke their heads under the doors of restroom stalls even in the filthiest campground conditions? Take the kids to a motel and go to Disney Land instead. At least in a motel there are walls between your children and your neighbors. In a campground, all your neighbors have for protection is their nylon tent. Save the camping trip for when they have a little more self-control.

5. Don't be an early riser. Even if you normally get up at 5:30 a.m., try to sleep in. If you simply can't sleep any longer, bring a book to read, and don't start shuffling around your campsite until your neighbors begin to stir. If you absolutely need to get up early because you have a schedule to keep, pack up what needs to be packed the night before, so you don't make as much noise in the morning.

6. Conversely, don't be a night-owl either. Your lantern lights up the whole campground, and even the flickering flame of your campfire can be a distraction to neighbors trying to get some sleep. If you think you and your friends are whispering, you aren't.

I'm sure there are more rules that I will think of later, but take these to heart if you are planning a camping trip soon...

Just a quick "Yay me!" because I've got a lot to do in the next few hours--we're going camping. My last post was one of frustration and disappointment because I've had some backsliding lately. But this week has been quite the turn-around. I made my best workout record so far--five days, and three of them multiple-workout days. And, I ate pretty well for the week, which made for the ultimate combination of a 4+ pound weight loss for the week! Yay! I must have been a real slug the past few weeks to have such a good weight loss this week and such horrible gains/non-losses the previous weeks.

But now for one of my tests--we're leaving for a camping trip this afternoon, and as I've mentioned before, camping seems to bring out the worst in my eating, regardless of how much physical activity I get. So we'll see if I can duplicate my success. We'll find out Monday morning...

Well, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I've now had two straight weeks of backsliding, after three solid weeks of weight loss. I've gained back half of the 6 pounds I had dropped. I'm definitely frustrated, because this past week was much better about working out than the previous two had been. I think the biggest obstacle to my weight loss is not really the exercise at all, but the eating. I'm still not good about my portion control, and staying at home for most of the day I find myself grazing all day long. I've tried chewing gum when I get the urge to snack, but all that's done is burn through one of those "big pack" containers of gum in a week and give me a raging headache. I still find myself rummaging through the cabinets. I can't decide which is worse: having snacks in the house to eat, or not having any at all, which causes me to pull out and make things that aren't really snacks and end up eating too much.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to do about the snacking thing. I try to get out of the house, but the Southern summer with it's 90+ degree and 95+ humidity doesn't make that much fun. And of course forget the driving with gas being what it is right now. My husband is driving the more efficient vehicle to work now, since I really don't have many long-distance errands to run, which leaves me with the gas-guzzling pickup. I want to be as green as I can be, which means leaving the truck in the driveway. Maybe I've got a little cabin fever in the middle of the summer, I don't know.

So, I have a few things to work on. Portion control and snacking. I'm five weeks down in my fifteen-week summer experiment, and I haven't even managed a pound a week. Need to buckle down, or I won't have much of a shopping spree at the end of the summer (and I won't need one because all the "fat" clothes will still fit).

The first couple of weeks, I actually did pretty well with my eating and working out. I managed to drop a few pounds, and even weighed in under 190. Then, I hit the last week of school. I had lots of grading to do, with research papers and exams. I was up late grading and up again early, but not to work out. I didn't work out before school because I was grading until it was time to go to school. In the afternoons I stayed at school as long as I could to grade, then came home. We had company all week, so it meant no working out at night, because they'd been at home all day long while we were at work. It also meant food. We cooked big meals at home and went out a few times too.

Then the weekend came. We did our annual family camping trip. While there was exercise involved (two days of flat-water paddling plus lots of running around the campground with my nieces), there was also food. Or more appropriately, FOOD. Something about the great outdoors makes you want to eat. Food tastes really good in the outdoors. And, you've worked up an appetite from all the activities. Finally, add in the fact that there is nowhere to put leftovers, so you hear the family battle cry of "Finish it up" after you've already had two servings. And of course, the food is the good, hot, hearty kind, with lots of meat, cheese, potatoes, bacon, creamy sauces...OK, now I'm hungry again.

Then last week I spent all my time either in meetings for the end of the school year or packing up my classroom, as well as going out to eat with coworkers. I just didn't feel like working out. Bad, I know.

So it all boils down to a slight weight gain. I'm still down overall from my initial weigh-in, but I'm back at 191 after SWEARING that my weigh-in at 189 would be the breakthrough I was looking for. Meh.

The GOOD thing now, though, is that I've officially started my summer, and I'm really going to try incorporating some things that I haven't done in a while. I'm going to try to run around the neighborhood a few mornings a week, and swim at the gym the other mornings (minimizing driving and gas and all that crap). Maybe once or twice a week I'll take my skates or boat or dog up to the big nature park in Memphis. I'm also going to try using my mountain bike to run whatever errands (small shopping trips etc) in town, and not drive up to Southaven so often. This whole gas thing is ridiculous anyway.

So hopefully with the exercise and some better eating, I may be able to get back on track. We'll see.

Interesting. I hadn't given an update since I started my "new" weight loss plan that involves self-bribery. I am apparently extrinsically motivated. Who knew?

I started on May 1 with a weight of 195.6 (the weight I seem to have been stuck at for months and months now). I did much better about my eating for the week, while doing so-so at the working out (I did manage at least a brief workout five of the seven days that week). Lo and behold: one week later (May 8) my weight was 193. A 2.6 lb drop earned me (at $3 per lb) $7.80. The working out is what really adds up; five days of working out (only one of which was a two-workout day, sadly) earned me another $16, for a total for the week of $23.80. Whatever money I earn for myself I will just set aside for what I hope will be a killer shopping spree for all new clothes when school starts in August.

Anyway, this week hasn't been quite so stellar, although I still have a few days left. We've done more eating out than we should, and my weigh-ins have really fluctuated, with a high one morning of 194.2 and a low a two mornings later of 191.6. This morning it was 192.2. That still gives me a net loss for the week. Hopefully I can shed a little more between now and Thursday. The problem this week has been work--I've been grading rough drafts of research papers, and they've been...well...rough. I'll fully admit: I didn't spend nearly enough time working on the paper with this group of freshmen, and they aren't self-motivated enough to look up some of this stuff themselves. Of course, they should already know it; there's no reason any kid should make it to 9th grade without having had some exposure to research methods, notetaking, outlining, and citing sources. This may make the final papers, which get turned in later this week, pretty sketchy. We'll see. Anyway, the rough drafts have gone slowly enough that I've been getting up early in the morning and using my workout time to grade papers, and I'm still not done. I'll have to get the last ones done today for sure, because I need to hand them back to the girls this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed on that one.

So, the weight loss is progressing, although oh so slowly. Hopefully I can drop a little more this week to sweeten the $.

In a sporting world full of jackass superstars, overpaid prima donnas, and thugs constantly getting arrested, it's nice to see a really inspiring act of sportsmanship.

A softball player at Western Oregon University hit a home run with two runners on base in a game against Central Washington University. However, her joy turned to anguish when she blew out her knee rounding first. Suddenly, a really bizarre ruling came to light. If any of her teammates tried to assist her in traveling the bases, she would be called out, and if her coach subbed in a pinch runner, the hit would only count as a single. The poor girl couldn't make the bases on her own. So, what to do?

The Central Washington players didn't hesitate. Two of the girls approached the batter, asked which leg was hurt, and carefully carried her between them around the bases, stopping at each base for her to touch with her foot to make the run count. They said afterwards they weren't thinking about winning or losing the game, only that the girl on the other team had hit a home run and deserved to have it count.

Why can't we have more athletes like this?

OK, so, apparently I don't understand weight loss at all. Yesterday morning's weigh-in after a night of meat debauchery: 195.6 lbs. This morning's weigh-in, after eating reasonably well yesterday AND working out for over an hour: 197.0 lbs. WTF? Not fair. I know, I know, today's weigh-in probably more accurately represents the feeding frenzy from two nights ago, but still. Not fair at all. It's only my second day of the experiment and I'm already in negative numbers, but not the negative numbers I'm supposed to be seeing. Dang it. And I couldn't run this morning because I apparently pulled a hamstring in my excitement yesterday morning, so I had to rely on sit-ups and push-ups, which probably won't help much. Crud.

So, it's the first day of May. I find myself weighing the same as I did the first day (I weighed myself, the 4th) of April: 195.6 lbs. Eek. Actually, I had expected worse; we ate at Texas de Brazil last night, and as I've described before it's somewhat of a meat orgy. So it could have been worse, but still. Obviously, I've made utterly no progress at all in the past few weeks. So I'm trying to regroup (again, I know, it's getting a little silly) and try to figure out a way to motivate myself.

Here's my thinking: from today, there are fifteen weeks until school starts (oh, the horror; there's nothing worse to think about for a teacher who isn't even out of school yet than the fact that school starts in a few months) for the next school year. Here's my idea. Apparently just cheering myself on to lose weight isn't nearly enough to get me going. Maybe I can bribe myself. I've got two separate plans.

Plan one has to do with the actual weight loss. Each pound I lose will be worth some dollar amount ($3 is what I'm thinking of so far; $1 seems too small and $5 seems a bit much, at least it did when I first started thinking about this, but maybe $5 might be more motivation!). The money I accumulate over the summer will go towards buy the new clothes that I'll hopefully need for next school year.

Plan two has to do with the exercise. Each day I workout will also be worth money. The first day is worth only $1, the second day $2, the third $3, and so on. If I were to work out for seven days in a row, it would be worth $28 (and maybe I might reward myself by rounding it up to $30). I might even consider adding a dollar to each day that I work out twice. I don't know; I haven't ironed out all the details.

Now, I haven't quite decided what to do about any possible weight GAIN I might run across. Maybe if I end a week with a weight gain, obviously I wouldn't get any money from the weight loss, but I could possibly penalize myself by removing half the money I earned from working out. Hmm.

Ultimately any money I get from all this would go towards the clothes shopping I will hopefully need to do at the end of the summer to prepare for the start of the new school year.

Any suggestions as to how I can fine tune this plan? The good news is I've started out well; I managed to run this morning, despite every urge to the contrary.

You'd think with my super-reliable alarm clock there would be no question of my getting up at 4:00 a.m. to run, right? I have a pretty determined, furry, 23 lb alarm clock who does not like schedule changes. If I get up once at 4:00 a.m., he's pretty sure I should get up all the time at 4:00 a.m. Even if I turn off my regular, electrically-powered alarm clock, the fuzzy black one will be at the side of the bed within just a few minutes, with his beady little eyes glaring reproachfully. He wants OUT. Even though he pottied only seven hours ago (and this is the dog who got stuck in the house once for a day and a half WITHOUT having an accident), it is time for his morning constitutional, and he will not be denied.

Oh, I try to deny him, certainly. I tell him to shush. He continues to rustle around. I tell him to shush again. He scratches at the bedroom door (and no, we can't let him have the run of the house all night because his toenails on the hardwood floor drive us crazy, and if you're thinking we should crate him, well, you don't know much about the vocalizations of Shiba Inus). I shush him again, and he jumps on the bed and starts rolling around, kicking and biting at the blankets. Out of sheer kindness to my husband, I finally get up and take the dog out before he wakes up too.

Usually by the time I've shushed the dog as many times as I can, I've killed between 30-45 minutes. At that point, it's close enough to the "other" time I have to get up that I go ahead and get up for good.

The dog is both persistent and consistent. This battle rages every single morning, weekdays, weekends, and holidays. With such an irresistible force, you'd think I'd be lean and mean from all my morning workouts. Nope. Despite my demoniacal conscience, my Jiminy Cricket from hell, I haven't been running nearly as much in the mornings as I should. The most mornings I've done in a week has been three. I think I only ran once last week. Not good. If I can't get into a routine with my running in the morning by the end of May, I may have to give up and go back to mornings at the gym. Meh.

I didn't mention in my last post that we had just arrived home from a kayaking trip. If you read the previous post, you know I have been struggling with a crisis of confidence of late. This kayaking trip was an attempt to regain some of the joy and ease I used to feel on the river.

We went for a three-day weekend to the Nantahala River in North Carolina. The Nanty is a mostly class II river, meaning it's not really a river for true beginners but it isn't particularly difficult either. We spent two days on the river, and the trip was...good. I didn't leap for joy after I got off the river and shout, "I'M BACK!" but I had fun, which I haven't really had for the past few trips. The first day I was particularly tentative, pretty much just floating the river with a few minor course corrections. I felt uncomfortable in my boat and had to get out a few times to stretch. Part of it was certainly the weight issues I've been struggling with--I'm about ten pounds above the recommended upper range for the boat I've been using. But I'm sure a lot of it was simply tenseness on my part. I did loosen up throughout the day, enough to be willing to run the class III "Nantahala Falls" rapid at the end of the river. It wasn't the best run I've ever made, and I flipped at the bottom of the rapid. My husband afterwards admitted that he firmly believed I needed to flip (and of course hit my roll). Well, he got his wish. However, it wasn't the instinctive roll that I've had in the past. When a kayaker is completely comfortable and confident, he or she won't really even think about the steps it takes to roll a kayak back over again; the muscles simply take over. My roll obviously had lost this muscle memory, so I had to think about it. I set up the first time and felt the water pull at my paddle as if it were trying to pull it from my hands. I tucked my paddle back against the boat for a few seconds before I set up again. Then I counted to three, sort of psyching myself up (or out) for the actual attempt. But this time, unlike the last few times I've flipped over, the roll attempt worked, just like it should have. I was somewhat surprised, honestly.

Anyway, I made it back up. That right there was an improvement. As I said before, I didn't exactly clap my hands together and say, "Well, I guess I'm back to normal." The next day we put on the river with another paddler from the Memphis area, a guy who's a little newer to the sport. He's got a great roll (I envy it), but he'd never done the Nantahala before. I was slightly more adventurous on day 2, hitting more eddies and trying more moves that the day before, but I still didn't venture particularly close to the edge of my comfort zone. Again, when we got to the Falls at the end, I felt at least confident enough to run it. This time, I ran it upright. Still not the prettiest run I've made, but better than the last time. This second run made me feel better about my ability to run a rapid, the previous run when I flipped made me feel a little better about my ability to roll, and those are the two things I've been struggling with.

So, after two days on the river, I can say that, well, I'm still not close to 100%, but I do feel better. Of course, now we aren't going to have a chance to get to any river again for a few weeks. The next few weekends we'll either be out of town on family trips or I'll be working hard grading papers and preparing for the end of the school year. Hopefully the confidence I've gained will not ebb before I can get back in my boat, and hopefully I can drop a few pounds before that time arrives.

I miss my mom.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the death of my mother. I honestly don't believe there has been a single day since then that I have not thought of her. I'm constantly hearing or seeing things that trigger the thought, "Oh, I should tell Mom about this" or "Mom would love this". Many times things have happened during the day that I've wished I could talk to her about. I miss the sound of her voice on the long answering machine messages she used to leave (she'd always say, "I was just calling to say hi" and then leave a message that would inevitably get cut off by the machine because it had exceeded the time limit). I miss the confetti that used to fall out of every piece of mail she'd send me (when my husband and I got married we had gold confetti on the tables at the reception--little hearts and angels--and Mom must have swept every single bit into a bag or something, because for the seven years we were married before Mom passed away she'd put a couple bits into the envelops or tucked into the wrapping paper of whatever she'd sent us). Not long ago my father sent me an envelop with a few things, and wrapped in some tissue paper along with one of my mother's opal rings were a few pieces of confetti. I wept. Hindsight is always 20-20, and if I had known that the day she went into surgery (April 19, 2007) would be the last day I would talk to her, I would have let her know what a wonderful mother she was, and how proud I was to be her daughter. I like to think that she knows that anyway.

But boy do I miss my mom.