02.09.10
Oh. Right. I live in THAT kind of a place.
So I decided to go to the gym today, given the low likelihood of my being able to get there tomorrow. It was rough, because I didn’t get home from pool until 1:20, and didn’t make it into bed until 2:00. But the alarm went off at 7, and I dragged myself and a can of Red Bull (sugar free) to the house that Arnold built.
And boy, was I glad I did. See, I normally do something like 30-45 minutes of intense cardio (depending on the workout scheduled for the day), and then hit the weights. I was planning on doing a light arm day, having done legs yesterday, and anticipating a fair amount of shoveling in the near future. But as I got on the treadmill, a trainer I’d seen there a few times before approached me and said he’d be interested in giving me a free training session.
Yes, I recognize this is an advertising technique. And it may have worked, as his rates are pretty reasonable and he’s got a bootcamp thing going on twice a week that might be just the change I need. But anyway.
Towards the end of the (productive, challenging, mostly body-weight and plyometric oriented session), he mentioned that he trains a couple of kids on a weekly basis. They are brothers.
They are nine and seven years old, and the parents got the nine-year-old a personal trainer because the nine-year-old is “a little overweight”.
Now, I know that I haven’t seen the child, and the trainer might have been trying to be tactful about a more serious weight problem, but THE CHILD IS NINE. And I know from personal experience just how damaging it can be to introduce an emphasis on weight at that age – S.E. was 14 when I was 9, and had been in Weight Watchers for 3 years. And now, neither one of us has an ideal relationship with food.
But I live in THAT kind of a place. Where helicopter parents don’t want to do anything BUT hover. Where test scores and weight problems and behavioral abnormalities are things to be farmed out to private tutors, personal trainers, and pharmacists, instead of addressed through gentle guidance over time.
I don’t know. I was just a little appalled. Seven. And Nine. And already being told that they’re not good enough, that they’re “special”, and not necessarily in a good way.
It makes me sad.
02.05.10
Open letter
Dear Sir,
The next time your (or anyone else’s) hand attempts to insinuate itself anywhere in the vicinity of my posterior while I am riding public transportation, you will at the very least suffer from a broken foot and, quite possibly, hearing loss.
Kthankxbai.
I only wish I’d thought of doing something… at the time.
02.04.10
How about a light meal?
“Well,” said Milo, remembering that his mother had told him to always eat lightly when he was a guest, “Why don’t we have a light meal?”
“A light meal it shall be,” roared the bug, waving his arms.
The waiters rushed in carrying large serving platters and set them on the table in front of the king. When he lifted the covers, shafts of brilliant-colored light leaped from the plates and bounced around the ceiling, the walls, across the floor and out the windows.
“Not a very substantial meal,” said the Humbug, rubbing his eyes, “but quite an attractive one. Perhaps you can suggest something a little more filling.”
~ The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
I’ve nearly cut out all the sugar. There’s still Splenda in my tea, but my meals consist of eggs and turkey and carrots and spinach and cottage cheese.
And fruit – grapes and apples and bananas and clementines, because I cannot go completely cold turkey (HAHAHAHA, see what awful puns withdrawal is causing???). And seriously, I don’t even LIKE turkey. It’s just so stupidly good for you, I feel like I’d be doing myself a disservice by not including it in my diet.
Honestly, I haven’t felt this twitchy and fidgety since I gave up cigarettes. And if I can compare sugar to nicotine with nary a qualm, then clearly it was time for the sugar to get the boot.
Now don’t get me wrong – there is still diet soda in my life, if only for the blessed doses of caffeine it brings. Which I’ve needed less of, since my afternoon blood sugar crashes seem to have leveled off and I’m having an easier time of sleeping at night and all that nonsense. I have no doubt that this lack of sugar is entirely a good thing.
But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
02.03.10
That’s the thing we should all have more of, really.
That feeling? That the person you’re talking to will pretty much always be on your side and assume that you’re coming from a good place? That’s what we should strive for with the people we keep close to us.
And maybe you’re all like, “Duh.”
Or maybe you’re all like, “Oh, I had cloying for breakfast. Leaving now!”
And that’s fine, I suppose.
I think some people, at least, get this feeling from their parents, first. Because parents are supposed to tell you when you’ve messed up, and how to not mess up the next time, but some parents manage to do that without making you feel like a bad person. They treat these things as mistakes, as things you simply didn’t think of. Other parents don’t really focus on the whys of your actions, or might openly assume that you’re the sort of person who would deliberately try to make their lives more difficult.
So you go through life trying to hide the bad bits, the parts responsible for things you suspect might be less accepted in your society. You’re so used to people looking for flaws, that it’s hard to let anyone in to where they might see them.
And if you don’t have the kind of relationship where you just know that someone knows you’re a good person, if you don’t know that they think that of you, any criticism they utter is going to be that much harder to take. Because anything they say might mean that in addition to being a bit lazy from time to time, they also suspect you eat babies for profit.
If, say, you’re also adept at reading lots of extra into things.
But I have a theory – and that theory, is that we can have more of these people who think the best of us… if we trust them to think the best of us. Maybe it’s not just being awesome and hoping that someone will come along and see it. Maybe it’s being awesome, and expecting that they already do.
Which is a hilariously terrifying suggestion.
02.02.10
Majorette, Part 2.
I was trying to explain the friendship to W, who occasionally finds my relationships with my friends somewhat confusing and/or unrelatable. Which is understandable, as I have eclectic tastes.
And given that she lives far, far away, W has not yet met the woman for whom I am majorette-ing. And she’s not exactly someone you can explain - she must be experienced, to be understood. So what I tried to do, is explain who she is to me.
There is the woman who has known me since toddlerhood, who can tell you much you might want to know about who I was. And there is Sibling Extraordinaire, who can tell you about the dark and twisty ways I traveled to get to where I am, even if she doesn’t quite always understand or approve of where that is. There are newer friends (relatively speaking), with whom a certain kindred-ness resonates, and whose objectivity and honesty have been invaluable. But this friend?
She is the person with whom I am most fearlessly, unadulteratedly myself. Because I trust that she won’t take things the wrong way, and because I know that she looks at everything I say and do through a lens made up of my fundamentally good qualities – the way I see the things that she says and does*.
This is not to say that she hasn’t ever criticized me. But when she has, I’ve never once doubted her esteem or affection for me.
People like that are pretty hard to come by. So when you think you might have found one, you’ll likely be happy to don a poly-wool blend in garish school colors, if the occasion requires.
*I see things through a lens of HER good qualities, not mine. Just in case that wasn’t clear. *sigh* Another metaphor ruined!
02.01.10
Cooking with Pressure
I need to get used to playing under pressure. Because when my team had only won one of the first three matches, we needed to take matches four and five in order to advance. And I was playing match # 4. Against a woman ranked one higher than me.
Granted, that meant I only needed to win two games to her three, but we were playing a team that had bested everyone else in their division, too. And? It was COLD. So cold that my long-sleeved shirt, short sleeved shirt, fleece hoodie, AND arm-warmers (yes, arm-warmers!) were insufficient insulation. I was shaking during my match, but not from nerves.
Thankfully, I won – decisively, too. She took the first game, but I took the next two with just three or four turns at the table, each. And that put my teammate in a position to win our last match, with everything ending right around 4 pm.
In Laurel, MD.
I went outside, brushed the snow off my car, and proceeded to negotiate snow-covered highways for the next THREE AND ONE-HALF HOURS.
I’m not sure which was more stressful, but I’m glad that the weekend is over with. Now I just need to get ready to do it all over again next Saturday. If the weather could take it easy this time around, that’d be great, really. Otherwise, I’ll likely be a well-done brisket by the time I make it home…
01.29.10
Gossip Girl
So I was at the pool hall last night, losing one, then winning one, largely minding my own business (which requires a fair amount of minding, these days), and then it happened, again.
There’s another female player who started playing in the same leagues as me a couple seasons ago. She and I have something (someone) in common, someone that I don’t talk to anymore, but to whom I am civil when the occasion requires. And though we’ve been playing in the same leagues (twice a week) for at least 6-7 months, now, we have yet to exchange a word. Which is too bad, because she’s got some killer outfits, and I’d love to know where she shops.
Yet each time I’ve seen her looking at me, it’s involved a stony glare. Like I … did something to her, kicked her puppy, or maybe made an inappropriate, public accusation about her mom.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not necessarily upset about an Alexis Carrington reputation… I’d just like to know what it is I’m supposed to have done. It seems like it must be terribly exciting.
Then again, perhaps I’m better off in ignorant bliss. We wouldn’t want me getting any ideas…
xoxo?
01.28.10
Nerves
At this point last season, I think I was at… 20%? 25%? I was on my teams for a variety of reasons, none of which included the expectation of regular victories while I was at the table. I was having fun, and I never really felt like I wasn’t a valued member of my teams. My captains made an effort to be even-handed in assigning matches, so I didn’t feel excluded.
And then, I started winning. Just on Thursday nights, just for the team that I drank with. But I was winning… a lot. By the end of postseason, I had somewhere near an 87% record.
Of course, I did my best for my other teams, and managed to pull out a victory for them here and there. But it was that team – the team for which I won the match that put us on top for the season, where I’d been performing consistently well.
This weekend, that team has a bigger tournament. I’ll be driving into the hinterlands at a positively ungodly hour, pulling my cue out of its case and wondering exactly how early is too early to get one’s first adult beverage of the day.
I think they might be counting on me, and I’m nervous.
How do you deal with that kind of pressure?
01.27.10
Between the lines
Some people really are “straightforward”. Frequently, this circle overlaps significantly with “socially inept”, but not always.
I can’t tell if I’ve become overly cynical, or if I’m as good at reading people as I like to think I am. I can say that only one person I knew reasonably well managed to surprise me – and that involved some pretty egregious lying by omission.
But I wonder, sometimes, if I’m wrong in assuming that everyone puts a certain spin on a situation – that one has to see through a layer or two in order to get a glimpse of something closer to the cold, hard facts.
Does everyone do this, or just me?
01.26.10
Catch-22
I get it. If you’re frustrated with me, you have two choices. One, you can tell me that you’re frustrated with me, and you can be honest about it, and you can hurt my feelings.
Or, you can deal with the frustrating things over and over again, and not say anything, and resent me.
And if we’re the kind of people who are supposed to be able to talk to each other about things, I definitely want you to choose the first option, I really do.
But if, towards the end of that conversation, you have reason to believe that I’m feeling pretty awful about things?
It wouldn’t kill you to give me a hug, or a word or two of encouragement.
I’m just sayin’.
