BulgingButtons

Not bad for a fat girl

Category Archives: Family


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I Feel Like a Failure

After four successful challenges, which I’m still completing each week, I’ve hit upon the one that broke me. Exercise. UGH. I just don’t LIKE it. I’m too BUSY. I can’t possibly do it ALONE. Does it even really MATTER? Do I HAVE to?

In a nutshell:mistake-oops1

1. Too bad.

2. No I’m not.

3. Yes I can.

4. Yes it does.

5. Yes I do.

I JUST DON’T LIKE IT

This statement is only partially true. I don’t like the idea of having to exercise, but once I get going I actually don’t mind it all that much. There are lots of types of exercise that this body isn’t built for, but I don’t have to do those. I have a bellydance DVD that I enjoy (although it’s murder on the shoulders, but I modify) and I can certainly take a walk in the park. I also have gorgeous pink boxing gloves that are gathering dust. Just putting those on makes me want to get up and move (and maybe jab at something too, just saying). And when the weather gets warmer, I’ll be in the water walking my laps, my favorite exercise of all. So no, I’m not going to be doing burpees or running marathons, but I don’t have to. I just have to move.

I’M TOO BUSY

As if I’m the only person in the world with a full-time job and a family. I could be exercising now, but I’m sitting comfortably on my well cushioned backside instead. I live directly across the street from a lovely park. As in walk to the end of the driveway, look both ways, and cross. It’s RIGHT THERE! A walk around it is about a mile. People walk it all the time. I see them from my house. As far as I can tell the only difference between me and them is that they actually took the time to get to the park, and most of them probably don’t live directly across from it. I can walk after school. I can walk all weekend. No, I’m not like my wonderful colleagues who wake during the dead of night to exercise, but there are certainly enough waking hours for me to find at least twenty minutes to spare. My brain knows this, but my lazy body is in denial.

I CAN’T POSSIBLY DO IT ALONE

This one is really a double lie. First of all, yes, I can. Even if it’s too cold out or too scary out or too anything out, I have a treadmill. It’s in the house. It’s plugged in. It works. I know how to operate it. It doesn’t take two people to get on a treadmill and walk. In fact that would be a problem. It’s hard enough to walk on it with the dog. It’s actually her treadmill and sometimes she wants to join in when I’m on it. I let her once, but I was so concerned with our safety that I didn’t stay on for long. Now we take turns. Although in reality, she gets about ten turns for each one I take.

Now here’s the other part of that lie. I don’t have to do it alone. My son walks the dog every day that he’s here. I can go with them if I choose. Even if he’s not here, my sweetheart will always drop everything to go for a walk with me. He’s also ready, willing, and able to field my jabs and kicks if I happen to want to get on my pink gloves and go all pugilistic on him. I bet he would even go to a gym with me, if I asked him to. The mere thought sends a chill down my spine.

DOES IT EVEN REALLY MATTER?

Well of course it matters. I know that the more sedentary I am the more weight I will continue to carry around, negatively impacting my quality of life. When I move I feel good. I feel powerful and in control, not to mention that I lose weight. When I lose weight, I don’t huff and puff as much, and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, not to mention all the good things that happen inside my body. My doctor confirms these for me with my regular visits. I take medication that requires regular bloodwork, and it’s quite obvious from the results that the effort I put into my body is directly affecting how efficiently my body works. I really want it to work for a long time, so I need to put in the effort. I know this. Now I have to live it.

DO I HAVE TO?

I suppose the answer to this one has to do with the type of life I want to life and how long I want to live it. If I want to keep being sedentary I guess I don’t have to exercise. I could just keep sitting on the couch and allowing time and age to take their toll on me. I can imagine a scenario where it gets more and more difficult to do anything, so I would do less and less. All those minor annoyances of being fat would compound and eventually I would have some really serious health problems. I’m not excited about that prospect. The opposite scenario, the one where I get my butt in gear and get moving, seems far more attractive. In that scenario I have fun being active and do all sorts of neat things. There have been times in my life where I felt great, and moving was a part of it. I’ve never been a real athlete, but just putting in SOME effort makes me feel good. Why is this truth so difficult for me to remember?

THE NEXT STEP

I’m done beating myself up over this “failed” challenge. After all, I did put in one good day of exercise, and that was more than any of the days in the previous week. I’m not giving up. I’m not quitting. I’m going to try again. And again and again and again if that’s what it takes. I have to. I want to live a long and healthy life, and what I’m doing now isn’t working, so here I go again.


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I’m Back! Happy 2015

New Year 2015It’s another New Year, and so it feels like a fresh start. It feels like a brand new clean sheet of paper waiting to be written on. At least that’s what I wish it felt like. The reality is slightly different.

The reality is that my house stinks like pork ramen that my teenager apparently made in the middle of the night, and there’s the remains of a partly finished bottle of champagne on the counter along with two dirty flutes and some cracker crumbs and leftover crunch-n-munch in a bowl, and there are clothes in the dryer waiting to be folded and put away, and there’s over a week’s worth of mail to be read and sorted, and bills to be paid, and suitcases to be unpacked, and yes, still boxes from the move back in July to be dealt with. Oh. My. Gawd.

Throw in the fact that the heat isn’t working properly and that we currently have no power to the master bathroom, and all of a sudden the New Year is feeling sort of overwhelming. In fact, I don’t think I have six square feet of space anywhere in this house where I feel like everything is as it should be, even if I disregard the cold factor.

I wanted to start 2015 with a bang. I wanted to refocus and reenergize. I wanted to make it the BEST. YEAR. EVER. But here it is, not even 9 am and I realizing that maybe that goal is just a little too lofty. I need to readjust. So here’s what I’m going for instead. I’m going to do the best I can. And some days maybe even not that. I’m going to focus on the small victories, like the fact that just this morning I managed to get all my music into my new phone. Man the learning curve on that thing is steep!

I’m going to celebrate each time the dishwasher gets emptied. I’m going to feel satisfaction every time laundry is completed. I’m going to congratulate myself each time I lace up my sneakers and go for a walk. I’m going to rejoice in the love of my family. I’m going to focus on living in the moment while still keeping an eye to the future. It’s coming up quickly. We’re already halfway through my son’s junior year of high school, and once he finishes there will be huge changes for all of us. This is both exciting and terrifying, but I know we’ll get through it.

In the meantime I will keep writing, I will keep reading, I will keep teaching, I will keep living and loving and learning and trying to see the world through a positive lens. I will keep moving ahead, one step at a time. For my first step, I will clean up the kitchen. It may not be much, but it’s a start.


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Reblog-Lamenting the Decline of the Christmas Card

It’s a new year and I’m in a new home, and of course I didn’t send out a change of address card to anyone, so this year I really won’t get many cards, but yesterday I did get one. It may be the only one, aside from the one my mom sent. That’s ok, because this year I’m not sending out a bunch either. I’m afraid I’ve given in this year. Maybe 2015 will be the year that old fashioned in the mailbox Christmas cards make their return to fashion. In the meantime, enjoy this post from Christmas 2013.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe my own personal circle of friends is unusual, or maybe they all lost my address, or, dare I even say it, maybe they just don’t like me anymore. I don’t think any of those are true, but who knows? Whatever it is, the number of Christmas cards I’ve received so far this year is zero. Not one single card. It is the 7th of December and the Christmas spirit has yet to enter my mailbox.

Now, before I go too far, I have to come clean and admit that I have likewise sent zero Christmas cards this year.  I have good intentions, though. I even saw a box of cards that I really liked with a cool funky retro pine forest on the front and a nice non-offensive greeting in the center. I didn’t buy them, though. A snarky little voice inside my head said, “Why should you send cards out? Remember how many you received last year? It’s hardly worth the trouble.” And I put them down and walked away. I regret doing that. I will go back and get them. Let me tell you why.

First there’s this little saying that I actually happen to believe that goes a little something like this, “it is better to give than to receive.” Ok, sure, if you’re starving it’s better to receive food than to give it away, but I’m hardly starving. My life is full of abundance. I live in comfort surrounded by love. I have rewarding work, I can pay my bills, I feel safe and secure, my loved ones are reasonably happy and healthy, and therefore I have nothing to complain about.

I like being able to give a tiny bit of myself to my friends, even if that tiny bit is just a warm greeting inside a pretty card. I know some people see sending out cards as an unnecessary chore, but I actually like sending Christmas cards. 1012-den-cards-lI like writing a short personal note inside each one letting my friends know I’m thinking of them at this time of year. I also like slipping in a school picture of my now gangly, braces wearing teen, as much to embarrass him as anything else. Besides, what else are you supposed to do with all those tiny pictures? His friends don’t want them. They all have phones that take pictures.

Another reason I’m sad about the demise of the Christmas card is that it offered a yearly glimpse into the lives of people with whom I’m friendly but didn’t necessarily see or talk to a lot. It was a yearly check in, sort of like your annual physical. It said, “we’re still connected to one another.” It might prompt a phone call or a get together, or it might just bring a warm feeling, but it didn’t mean a big commitment. Now those people are on your Facebook feed and you hear more about their lives than you ever did, so the check in feels unnecessary. I think that’s one reason the cards are going the way of the dinosaur, at least for my generation.

My mother’s generation is still a generation of Christmas card senders, bless them. She has a lovely annual display of them on her piano, showing smiling grandchildren, fabulous vacation spots, and drawings made by pediatric cancer patients. They feature spiky script, or long newsy letters full of deaths, births, and procedures, and promises to get together when the weather warms up or they get back from Florida.  They are cherished by my mother, as I cherish the few I still receive.

Growing up, I lived in a house built in the 1930’s. It had a beautiful fireplace with a grand mantle. Every night in December we would read the day’s Christmas cards at the dinner table, then after dinner add them to the already impressive display on the mantle. There was often some rearranging to be done, taller cards in back, prettiest pictures in front, and so on. In my twenties I lived in apartment with a long extinct fireplace, but it had a pretty mantle, and it always filled with Christmas cards too.

Depending on where I’ve lived I had different methods of display, but I think my favorite was in my last home, which was two stories. We wrapped garland (with white lights) around the bannister, and attached the cards to it with tiny clothes pins. It made such a pretty display. I no longer have stairs, but I do have my grandmother’s antique piano on which to showcase my cards this year. If I get any.

Today I will go back to that store and buy that box of cards. I will write a note inside each one and mail them out. I won’t send out twenty or thirty, like I used to, but I will send some. I hope to receive some in return, but if I don’t I’ll try not to take it personally. Everyone is trying to get by, especially this time of year. Decisions need to be made, time and resources have to be distributed in the most effective way possible. For many people that means putting up a Facebook post with a cute or meaningful graphic on Christmas will take the place of a real card sent through the mail. I understand this, but it makes me a little nostalgic and sad. I hope your mailbox is filled with Christmas cards this year, and for many years to come.