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.

TRAVIS PASTRANA PULLS OFF 1st COMPETITION DOUBLE BACKFLIP AT XGAMES

I am not really an adventurous person, despite the kayaking. I am a stay-at-home, live-vicariously-through-the-experiences-of-others person. I love to watch adventure races, crazy expeditions on the Travel or Discovery Channel, and the XGames. I could never do the cool stuff they do in the XGames. But I loooove to watch it. So when Travis Pastrana, a sort of geeky-looking stringy kid, rides his motorcycle in the XGames events, it makes it extra-fun, because (God bless him) he just doesn't look like he belongs there. All the other competitors are covered with piercings and tattoos, and here is this tall, lanky, big-eared 21-year-old (around that age, anyway) who beats them all but looks like a member of the chess team.

The best thing about the double backflip wasn't even how amazing it was or the skill it took. It was the kid's attitude about it. Before he tried it, he told his mother he was going to go for it, and if something happened to remember that he was having fun. And then, after the glorious completion, it showed him hugging his mother and apologizing to her for scaring her like that. What a fantastic kid! And then, he got really excited, not because he just pulled off the greatest motorcycle trick in the history of the sport, but because skateboarding god Tony Hawk waved at him and gave him a thumbs-up. He was just enthralled that his extreme sport hero (not even in the same discipline as he is) was impressed by his trick.

What a great kid! Of course, I'm sure his mother is proud, and horrified. In the back of her mind she's thinking Why couldn't I just have a little girl with pigtails and Barbie dolls? But she has to be pleased that he ran the idea past her first, that he apologized for scaring her (bet she's heard that a million times), and that everyone is so impressed not just by Travis Pastrana's mad skillz (he also won gold medals in the rally car racing and the moto freestyle along with his best trick gold) but by what a nice young man he seems to be.

I like this new generation of extreme athlete, the Travis Pastranas and Shaun Whites. It gives me hope that I'll be living vicariously through them for a long time.

Ahhhhh.



That's what it feels like in my house right now, finally. I don't think there is a single greater invention in this world than air conditioning. Well, there probably is, but I sure couldn't think of one yesterday as I waited for the repairman to show up.

Our house is a rental, which means we cannot handle any repair work ourselves. Well, we can, but it's really better to consult the person who actually owns the house. So I called my landlord yesterday morning after a wonderful night in the motel Sunday. It was 89 degrees in the house yesterday morning when I placed the call. But guess what? There was no helpful landlord to fix the problem. He's on vacation this week, probably to somewhere a heck of a lot cooler than my house. After pondering briefly how to handle this unfortunate news, I left a message with his secretary that we would be calling someone to handle the problem, and deducting the cost from our next month's rent. Yippee.

So I called a repair person. The lady at the a/c company said she'd call me when the serviceman was on his way. That was at about 9:30 yesterday morning. At 3 p.m. I got a call that the repair guy was coming. By this time, the temperature in the house was 100 degrees. I had three ceiling fans, two box fans, and one little round floor fan blowing their little hearts out trying to keep air moving inside the house. It wouldn't have done any good to go outside, because the weather was just as unpleasant out there. I couldn't leave the house and drive around in the air conditioned car, because I had to wait for the repairman. It was miserable. The dog and I laid nose to nose on the hardwood floor, contemplating how miserable it was. I think the dog was more miserable than I was, owing to his thick double coat of black fur. There can be nothing worse than being a black dog in the summertime (I believe Harper Lee even pointed that out in To Kill A Mockingbird).

When the repairman showed up, he poked and prodded at the a/c unit outside for a few minutes, hooked up a gauge of some kind to it, and then asked to see the furnace. WTF? Why would he need to see the furnace? He never really explained that need, but we searched the house for the opening in the ceiling to get up into the attic. It was then that I realized there was another level of idiocy to our other landlord. (There were two, partners, and one handled the paperwork while the other did the renovations and repairs on the house. They had some disagreements, and the one who did the work on the house bailed out of the partnership. But before he did, he did many stupid things to the house, and neglected to do things that needed to be done. For example, we have a hole in the bathroom wall where an electrical outlet should be. He never got around to doing the wiring in the bathroom, and so now the nearest outlet I can use to blowdry my hair is two rooms away, in the kitchen.) In the renovations of the house, the landlord put up beadboard in all the rooms as the ceiling. But he never left any opening into the attic. The only way you can get up there is to scale the wall on the outside of the house, and try to open one of the two small windows to the attic, and worm your way in. Our heroic a/c guy didn't have a ladder, so that was out of the question.

So he went back and examined the a/c unit again. He pointed out a layer of dusty dirt on the coil of the unit, asked if I had a garden hose, and hosed the unit down. Then he turned it on and checked to see if cool air was coming in through the vents. It was. AND THAT WAS IT! If someone had suggested to me that I should hose off the a/c unit before calling someone, I would have. The cost for the hosing of the unit? $200. And that's only because I had a $20 off coupon from the phone book. Sheesh. I should be an a/c repair person. I could make a load more money than I do as a teacher.

It took ages for the house to cool down. We left all the fans running the rest of the afternoon and evening, and it was still 89 degrees when we went to bed. We slept with the ceiling fan running (we don't usually do that because it wreaks havoc with my husband's allergies, and I wake up all stuffy too) and no blankets on the bed. But thankfully, it did ultimately cool down, and was 70 degrees this morning when we got up to start the day. I am sitting beneath the vent in our living room as I type this, and I can feel the wonderful breeze blowing down on me. I'll say it again: there is no greater invention in the history of mankind than the air conditioner. If you want to argue about it, I challenge you to sit in a 100-degree house all day, waiting for a repairman.

Welcome to hell.



OK, so it isn't THAT hot. But it sure feels like it.

We went out of town this past weekend. When I left the house on Friday afternoon, I noticed the air conditioner, a TV-sized brown metal box at the side of our house, was rattling. I thought perhaps something was loose, maybe a panel. When I pressed my hand on the side of the box, the rattling stopped. I didn't think anything of it.

Well, I have no proof that the rattling had anything to do with what happened over the weekend, but a momentary thought of "Boy, hope the air conditioner is OK" flitted through my mind. Perhaps I should have paid it more attention.

We got home Sunday afternoon at about 2 o'clock. It was hot, in the mid 90's, and we were looking forward to opening the front door and being greeted with a breath of cool air. Nope. Instead, an exhalation of hot, steamy, musty, humid hot air wheezed out of the door and smothered us where we stood. Even the dog didn't want to go inside.

Upon inspection, we determined that the air conditioner was still on, the little fan was spinning, and air was blowing out of the vents, but it was like the parlour of hell in our front room. At 2 p.m. the interior temperature was 97 degrees. We took action, running off to Walmart and purchasing some box fans (we used to have one, but it didn't make the purge of belongings that accompanied our move to this house). We thought about buying a free-standing air conditioner, but we couldn't stand the thought of shelling out $400.

So we came home and battled the heat. The dog lay on the dining room floor (hardwood), panting, and occasionally barking at us in frustration. He couldn't understand why we couldn't change the temperature. Barking usually gets him what he wants, but this time there was nothing we could do. We cranked up the fans, sat in front of them, and waited. But when there is no cooler air anywhere for the fans to circulate, the temperature simply cannot go down. Instead, it crept up. At 7 p.m. it was 104 in the house.

We escaped for dinner (leaving the poor dog in the house; there was nowhere else for him to go) and then came home and took the dog for a walk to our nearby ice cream stand. It was marginally cooler outside, and we tried to walk in the shade as much as possible. But eventually we had to go back to the house.

When the temperature had only receded to 102 by 8:30, we knew there was no way we'd be staying in the house overnight. We thought about knocking on our neighbor's door and asking if we could sleep over, but we weren't sure if they had an available bedroom after all their renovating for their two kids. So we packed up and went down the street to a motel. It seems ridiculous to be sleeping in a motel room a mile from our house, but we just couldn't stay there in that heat. We cranked the a/c in the motel room up, showered in cold water, and went to bed. It was actually cool enough in our room to sleep with a blanket on the bed, and the dog was comfortable enough to curl up in a ball on the extra pillows I laid out on the floor for him.

This morning we packed up and came back to the house. It is currently 87 degrees in the house, at 5 minutes to 9. I've called the landlord and left a message for him about the air conditioner. Let's hope this gets taken care of quickly. It's already unpleasant in here, and it's bound to get worse in a hurry.

Well, I hope that wherever you are, you are staying cool. I'll let you know if the a/c gets resurrected, or if we'll be spending another fabulous night at the Super 8.

6 lbs in one week!

That's right, you heard it here...I lost 6 lbs this week! When I returned from my CA trip, I weighed in at 185.8. This evening, when I got home from an afternoon paddling trip (kayaking, not kinky, for those of you who don't pay attention), I weighed in at 179.6! I've been good this week--limiting my calorie intake to about 1500, and working out at least once each day. Actually, this is three days in a row at 179.6. Some of that might have to do with the fact that my husband finally came home (we'd seen each other for one day out of the previous fourteen) and we celebrated by doing what has done such damage in the past...we went out to eat. We did try to keep the rest of our eating this weekend to a reasonable amount, but we splurged last night and went to an Italian place called Carrabbas (sp?). I had chicken parmigiana. Couldn't find that particular restaurant chain on Calorie King, but I checked The Olive Garden for a comparison, and the same dish there is 1300 calories. Eek. So I'm lucky to be under 180 lbs for the first time in years. Whoo hoo! I need to celebrate. Bring on the cheesecake! Aw, s***, just give me a cup of sugar-free Jello. *sigh*

First of all, for all of you who have never received a trip to Southern California paid for by your employer...





HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Sorry, had to be done. Anyway, I have returned from America's Finest City to America's...well...I really can't write that here; children might be reading. I must say, it is not at all pleasant being back. Nice to sleep in my own bed, but my husband had to fly to FL for the week, so I only got to see him for one day, and we hadn't seen each other for almost a week and a half. Bleah. So I'm sad and lonely, and of course the dog is holding me jointly responsible for being gone for a week and for driving Daddy away.

Well, I was correct in my assessment of the damage that would be done to my diet while on vacation. I came back with a four-pound weight gain. Eew. This morning I weighed in at 185 fat, er, flat (it was 187 on Sunday). I usually do my weigh-ins at night, when my hydration level and fat percentage are perhaps more accurate, but there is always food weight to consider. I don't really know the best time of day to weigh myself to be most accurate overall. So I started with a weigh-in this morning for a baseline, and I will take it from there.

Here's the deal: I have 30 days until the first day of school, just a little over four weeks. My goal is to be below 180 lbs (on a night weigh-in) by the time school starts. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Not for someone who hasn't lost any weight in 4 months. I went for an easy goal so it won't completely crush my spirit if I don't make it, you know? The plan is basic: eat less and exercise more. This week shouldn't be a problem with the eating less--I'm teaching summer school from 10-4 each day, putting me out of reach of all the food at home that has submarined me (ooo, sub sandwiches...sorry) all summer. I can only eat at school what I bring to school, which is usually just a couple granola bars and one of those 100-calorie bags of microwave popcorn. Of course, next week and the subsequent weeks I'll have to be careful and really cling to what willpower I have so I don't overeat at home. I won't be cooking for sure this week and possibly longer, because it is unbearably hot and humid (I won't even go out to the porch to grill anything), and I won't eat out because we're pretty broke, so it will be nothing but cereal, sandwiches, and salads for me for awhile. Hopefully that will help keep the calorie intake under control. Then there is the working out. Didn't work out this morning because I took my husband to the airport, but I plan to work out every weekday morning from now until the start of school (probably alternate swimming and *gasp* running). In the afternoons I will go back to the gym to meet up with my husband (not this week, sadly) for more cardio and weight lifting.

It sounds so easy, but it feels completely daunting. I just need to get back into a rhythm, I know, and then it will be easier. But it is so easy to sit around and do nothing at home! Why did God make it so easy to be lazy?

Well, my challenge has begun. 180 lbs by August 16. What consequences are there if I don't make my goal? Well, I'll have to feel terrible about myself as I gaze at all the skinny little 9th graders I'll be teaching this year. What a minute, that's what's going to happen anyway, weight loss or no weight loss... *sigh*

Man, this week is gonna kill my diet. I'm home (San Diego, for all you suckers who don't live in the Greatest City on Earth) for a conference on using computers in the educational realm. My parents, while supportive of my weight loss attempts, don't help and never have when it comes to my eating habits.

Let's see...when I got in at the airport, we stopped at a restaurant called Bread Bites (made by the same glorious people who created Pat and Oscars, so the food all tastes similar) and gorged on fried chicken, Greek salad, and the second greatest breadstick-things ever (the greatest are still at aforementioned Pat and Oscar's, and are probably trademarked or something, but these were similar). Too much food. Sunday, my mom treated me to a full-on turkey/mashed potatoes/dinner rolls/berry trifle kind of meal (nobody does turkey like mom). Again, way, way, way too much food. I tried to hold back, but I'm so rarely home for this kind of meal that I overdid it. Today, I'm attending the first day of my conference. We were given a fabulous lunch of chicken salad (very good), rolls, pasta salad, fruit, cookies, and chips, of which again I ate too much. Then we took a break and had more chips, more cookies, more fruit, and some lovely soul brought a bag of mini Snickers/Three Musketeers/Milky Way/Twix candies. Argh. Tomorrow night (after what I assume will be a similar food kind of day during the conference), they are taking all of us to Karl Strauss' (mmmm, beer). Mom keeps asking what foods I'm craving. I'm sure we'll go out with my brother and his girlfriend one evening. And Friday I expect to go out with one of my best friends from high school, which will probably involve food and/or alcohol (I promise I'll behave. I miss my snugglebear something dreadful already).

So you can see where my problem is going to develop. Lots of food. I'm thrown off of my "little meals, regular snacks" schedule. And I'm eating all kinds of wonderful things that you should never, ever eat. (Chicken and rice casserole with a can of cream of chicken soup and half a loaf of Velveeta cheese? Heaven!)

I did try to do something good. I went to the 24 Hour Fitness website and downloaded a ten-day trial membership, thinking I could just run down the street from where my parents live and work out. Well, when I went in to redeem it, I discovered that they REALLY want you to commit to a membership when you do this. I didn't want to. I have a club membership at home that I'm reasonably happy with, even though I don't use it as often as I should. So I sat through the guy's sales speech, lied through my teeth and said I'd "check with my husband about switching clubs and I'd call the guy back of come back down my nine o'clock" and then of course never did. I do have the ten-day membership card now, so I can go down there, but now I'm afraid of having to confont the sales guy with my fib and say no, I'm not interested. I at least did gerbil yesterday for 30 minutes. That had to help at least a little bit.

But I'm doomed. I was at 183 when I left home; we'll see what the damage is when I get back...

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...