Missing in Action

…or rather, INaction. 

I used to blog incessantly, about every little thing, no matter how trivial.  I was constantly amazed that anyone at all visited my blog but somehow over the years I attracted a following of people who, for whatever reason, found my relatively mundane life interesting.

Then I joined Facebook and I slowly stared posting trivialities about my mundane life there instead of on my blog.

Oddly enough, I constantly ask myself now whether a topic is blog worthy – which I never used to do.  And 99% of the time I answer myself with a resounding NO.  So I Facebook said topic instead which, truth be told, simply bores a different audience!

Regardless of whether my loyal readers miss me, I miss blogging!  So I’m making an effort to come back.  Brace yourself more of the truly mundane!

So where have I been, you ask? 

Mostly hanging out here in the Land of Limbo. 

Although my company Sandcastle Educational Consulting is still alive and well (though a bit dormant at the moment), I am looking for full-time work as an Educational Media Specialist (“I create experiences that engage and inspire youth and families”) with my eye and heart focused on one position in particular with Microsoft’s Kinect for Kids.  Just how perfect would THAT be?!

I’ve interviewed twice and now it’s pretty much a waiting game while that team re-structures and figures out what their needs are and where (if anywhere) I’d best fit.  My fingers have been crossed for so long that I have a feeling they’re stuck this way forever – which is fine, because hope and optimism never hurt anyone.

And if that position doesn’t pan out, I’ll do my own re-assessing.  Unfortunately, Sandcastle doesn’t offer great benefits that allow us to save for retirement, which is really where we need to focus now that we’re ONE TUITION PAYMENT AWAY (!!!) from being done with paying for kids’ college – something we’ve done for the past ten years solid!

So instead of waiting until everything is resolved and all nice and pretty, as I’ve been doing thus far, I guess I’ll blog all the ups and downs and ins and outs of my life – just as I did for five years until I… didn’t.

And hey, guess what?  I’m solidly on the road to getting back in shape and finding a new healthy me – or, as I indicate on the masthead of my blog at My Fitness Pal, “steadfastly clawing my way back from the depths of LETTING MYSELF GO.”  This journey is a tough one and has been where I’ve focused the majority of my energy lately.  After almost 30 years of focusing on everyone else’s health and needs, I am finally, finally focusing on my own.  It actually is beginning to feel good and I am actually beginning to look forward to the endorphin rush that I get each day when I work out at the gym. 

I know – that looks funny to me too!  Me?  Working out daily at a gym?  Yup!  I lift weights (a full circuit!), sweat on the elliptical, and swim.  Something every single day.  Me!  Can you believe it?  And for two months now I’ve tracked every single morsel that’s gone into my mouth – which is so easy using the My Fitness Pal app’s bar code scanner!

So ten pounds down, forty to go.  Ugh – that just looks so daunting!  But I’m taking it one pound, one centimeter , one lap, and one carrot at a time, allowing myself a full year to accomplish my goal.  If nothing else, I should feel better this year (my third!) at the Danskin Triathlon… where I plan to actually jog, rather than walk for the first time since breaking my ankle three years ago.

So yeah, that’s where I’ve been.  I promise not to stay away for so long again… as long as you promise that you won’t mind if I go back to posting the mundane. 

My father's heart

Remember this video I took of my dad and his soon-to-be wife, Lou, playing a mean game of ping-pong EXACTLY three years ago today?



Well, Dad's heart isn't playing ping-pong these days. In fact, for about an hour and a half today, Dad's heart won't be pumping at all. Instead, it's (literally) being put into the capable hands of a heart surgeon who, through multiple bypass surgery, will attempt to bring oxygen back into this heart that, as of last week, was "days, not weeks" from stopping altogether.

I have never, ever heard Dad admit to being scared of anything.  But last night, when I called him to wish him well (and he was stressing over an unbalanced checkbook -- grrrrr!), he told me that he was scared -- and who wouldn't be?  Dad has never had surgery or been in the hospital for more than relatively routine procedures, so this is new for him.

I'm not the praying sort, though at times like this I envy those who are.  The most I can do today is think positive thoughts, fill my own heart and mind with the love I feel for my daddy, and trust that the universe is working exactly as it should.  Your positive thoughts, in whatever form they work for you, are welcome as well.

I love you, Dad.  I trust your heart, just like I always have.  Everything will be fine.

One woman’s nuttin’ is another woman’s sumpin’ (Huff-puff)

So I ran today for the first time in (gulp) years.

I didn’t run far and I certainly didn’t run fast, but I ran.

Considering that just over a year ago I took my first steps a full 13 weeks after breaking my ankle (remember this?)…

…running today was kinda sorta an achievement for l’il ol’ me!

We can either blame or credit Elisabeth for my achievement, since she absolutely insisted that I run part of the way around Green Lake today – and she insisted that I do it twice! I whined and begged and cried, but she was ruthless and unrelenting, meanie daughter that she is!

So here’s where I ran:

According to Trails.com, that’s .537 miles! On Thursday, Elisabeth will make me run three times! She seems to believe that by the time the Seattle Danskin Triathlon comes around in August, I’ll be able to easily run the whole 3 miles around Green Lake – and the whole 3-point-something miles in the triathlon. Today I can’t even imagine that, but perhaps by next week I’ll think (and feel) differently.

Tomorrow morning it’s back to yoga class, where I make a total fool of myself. Seriously, who can put their ankle into their groin and stand like that, still as a tree, for two frikkin’ minutes?! I can’t even stand on one foot (especially my injured foot) without just about falling over! And yet, I will subject myself to another hour of yoga tomorrow…

A walk around Seattle’s Green Lake

This walk will (so help me) become part of my regimen as I prepare for the Danskin Triathlon this summer – especially because my personal training sessions are over and there’s no way I can pay another $75o for another 6 weeks. Elisabeth lives just a few blocks from Green Lake so at least twice a week we’ll meet at her house after work and do this 3 mile walk. Eventually (she says once I stop snapping pictures constantly), we should be pretty quick, especially if when we (gasp) start running, but right now it’s taking us just under an hour. It’s not a bad work-out because… well, because of this:

(I know! How cute is he?!)

Dream house alert! This house is directly across the street from the lake. Swoooon!

“C’mon, Mom! You’re supposed to be exercising your whole body, not just your shutter finger!”

Fly fishing lessons!

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Seattle and the Pacific Northwest?

Discouraged

So five weeks into working out twice a week (hard!) with a personal trainer and eating really well, I am down a grand total of 2 (yes, only TWO) pounds and 1 (yes, only ONE) percentage in body fat.  Needless to say, I am hugely, massively, extremely disappointed and discouraged.

I’ve kept a food journal all along and it reflects healthy eating – unless you consider salmon and tzatziki sauce made with nonfat yogurt and cucumbers (30 calories for two tablespoons) or dinner at the Mongolian Grill with only fresh veggies and shrimp and cooked with very little oil unhealthy. 

I have one more week on my (phenomenally expensive) personal training contract and then… well, I don’t know!  I will continue to go to the gym at least three times a week because I know that’s a good, healthy choice no matter what I do there.  Maybe I’ll replace the Monday/Wednesday 7 AM personal training with a 7 AM yoga class (I’ve never done yoga!).  I’ll continue to eat well, continue to shun sweets and, yes, we’ll likely continue to eat out a time or two a week because – well, we’re empty nesters and that’s what we now do.   

And I WILL do the Danskin Triathlon in August, even if I have to crawl to the finish line!

But today, I am discouraged, baffled, frustrated, and sad. I know this is 100% up to me, but where do I even go from here?

Inspired -- and really tired!

So, I did it.

Actually, I did even more than I had intended. Instead of biking 6 miles, I biked slightly over 7. Instead of walking 1.5 miles, I walked 1.75 miles. And instead of swimming 18 laps (a quarter mile), I swam 20 laps.

(Yes Aleks, I do, in fact, feel pretty dang good. Or, as you call it, “pumped”!)

I didn’t mean to go beyond what I’d set out to do and, in fact, when I read the sign on the front door of the gym I congratulated myself just for showing up and gave myself permission to “just do something” because I had, after all, “just shown up.”

Then I remembered that yesterday after a vigorous Boot Camp class that he taught (and insisted strongly suggested I attend), Chris, my personal torturer trainer, mentioned that next time I come to the gym there’d a be a book in his office that I should read.

I’m scared of Chris (his boyish face can’t fool me!), so I picked up the book in his office, hopped on a treadmill, and began to read the book, Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels.

When I read the section on stress I just about stopped in my tracks – literally.

“Stress is like kryptonite for your hormones — even just a bit of it can throw them entirely out of whack. If you remain a stress case for a long time, you could do some major damage to many parts of your body, including your glands. One of the biggest causes and symptoms of hormonal shutdown from stress is when people start cutting into their hours of quality sleep.”

Remember my last job? The one that worked me morning, noon, and night for two full years? The job in which worked with our production team in India at night, then got online for a few hours again very early in the morning to make sure everything was done correctly (and scrambled like crazy when it wasn’t), and then worked with clients at Microsoft all day?

Remember that job?

(Yeah, I’d like to forget it too.)

It was a year into that job that I broke my ankle, at which point I continued to lead my very stressful life -- except now I was completely sedentary. Stressed, sleep-deprived, injured and sedentary.

Oh, and menopausal.

Kryptonite is right.

I was so immersed in the book that I’d walked over a mile and a half before I knew it! Then, as I biked, I continued to read about the vital role that hormones play in fitness (or lack of it) and in eating. I read about my increased risk of many cancers since I am both menopausal and overweight, not to mention that Mom’s death from ovarian cancer means that I might have a genetic predisposition to certain cancers as well.

What I was reading both scared and inspired me. I think it was the fear, though, and not the inspiration, that got my feet peddling faster and faster, and before I knew it I had biked seven miles, a full mile more than I’d intended to.

I make no promises, to myself or to anyone else, because I’ve done that before and it backfired, and everyone was let down and disappointed. But I am now on a road toward something and I’m beginning to not hate it quite as much as I did when I started all this, signing up for both a personal trainer and for the Danskin Triathlon.

I don’t love it yet and I wonder if I ever will. But today I at least don’t hate it and I am proud of myself for finishing the mini-est of triathlons.

I think Mom might even have been proud of me today.

Expired and inspired

This expired a few days ago (though I really haven’t used it lately):

Today I’m headed to the gym to attempt a VERY mini triathlon in a five-months-out Danskin Triathlon self-pre-assessment -- because I’m terrified and hugely lacking confidence that I can do this.

My Easter morning goal will be 1/4 mile swim, 5 mile bike, and 1.5 mile walk (yes, I said walk).

I’ll do this today in honor of my mother, who was always far more athletic than me and who died on Easter morning six years ago.

Now I’m really in for it!

If I spend money on something, my level of commitment toward it goes way up. It’s just frugal me; I can’t help it.

So this whole get-back-in-shape thing has my full commitment because… well, behold:

• Personal trainer (6 weeks): $750.00 (gulp!)
• Gym membership: $35 a month
• Danskin triathlon: $130
• And my latest purchases:

Now I’m really in for it!

And while we’re focusing on all this “fresh beginnings” stuff…

I did it.  I signed up AND PRE-PAID FOR (the key for me…) a gym membership and a personal trainer, beginning at 7:00 AM on March 8th because…

I am the quintessential project manger… except, for some reason, when it comes to my own health and fitness. 

It is now time.  I no longer have to get up at 6 AM, work all morning, then work all day, and then be back online and working all evening.  I finally have the time to commit  to my health.  This is no longer optional; it is a necessity if I want to enjoy my life, my family, my career, and my future grandchildren.

Please remind me that I can do this! 

In which I place the blame for my weight issues on everyone but myself

I was doomed to be fat from day one because I was born into a hyper-fanatical German family in which food was tightly controlled and firmly regulated from morning to night. I was only allowed to eat at prescribed times and when it was mealtime I was forced to eat everything on my plate. Way back then I developed a mentality I still have: eat when you can and all you can, and sneak your food if necessary, because the rules are too strict and you’ll never be able to comply successfully anyway.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a teenager I always “felt fat” because I had a pear-shaped, curvy (yet petite) body, unlike anything I saw in fashion magazines. Even as a relatively popular cheerleader and social butterfly, I never felt thin enough or pretty enough because the really popular girls were thinner and prettier. The social mandate demanded a body I simply didn’t have.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

When I was a healthy, young woman at a healthy, normal weight (though all the voices I cared about -- media, friends, even my own mother -- told me otherwise), engaged to a wonderful young man, I was ashamed to be looking at size 10 wedding dresses. Size 10 means fat, I told myself. And I knew that even my fiancé would have preferred I wore a smaller size. All those voices, all speaking so loudly at me, all telling me that I should be a smaller size.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then came pregnancies and babies. Healthy pregnancies and very, very healthy babies. Even the twins were full-term, beautifully baked babies. But oh, the havoc they wreaked on my body! I gained 40 pounds with each singleton and upwards of 60 pounds with the twins. As perfect as my babies were, they ravaged my body and stole my “youthful figure” from me and I never got it back. How dare they?

Before I knew it, menopause was upon me and the fat cells celebrated by gathering around a whole new venue -- my waist. They’d become more stubborn, too, refusing to disappear no matter how I starved them. Where I’d always been able to drop 10 pounds easily (though keeping it off was another story), I now couldn’t even lost the weight without three times the effort it’d taken in my youth. The discouragement was just too much to bear.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Then, in January of this year, I fell and broke every bone in my ankle, leaving me sedentary, overworked, depressed, old, and literally falling apart. As a result, my weight sky-rocketed and I gained 15 pounds over just eight months --a good chunk of it after this photo was taken.

So my weight issues can’t possibly be my fault. Right?

Right?

Wait.

Wrong.

Even if my weight gain over the years wasn’t entirely my fault (and of course it’s entirely my fault!), I’m still the one who has to live with it and it’s still my responsibility to do something about it.

So it’s time to stop the excuses and actually do something about it. Or at least take the very first step in that direction – which I did today. I finally joined Weight Watchers.

(Again.)

I finally took step one: taking full responsibility for both the problem and the solution. The goal seems huge and unattainable and I make no promises… except to go to bed tonight not feeling like a victim.

Training day #1 for the Seattle Danskin mini-triathlon 2010

About two days before I broke my ankle last January, my sister-in-law Marcy called from Idaho and asked if I was interested in joining her in August for the Seattle Danskin mini-triathlon. It’d be an attainable goal, she promised, since it was only a half-mile swim, a 12-mile bike ride (all flat!), and a 3-mile run (or walk). I told her I’d definitely think about it, knowing that it’d be a great goal and something I really should do to finally get off my butt and move.

Then I broke my ankle and couldn’t walk again until March. I’m still limping, but I am, indeed, walking (relatively) long distances! (Kat made me walk a mile with her yesterday and, I admit, it felt great… everywhere but my ankle.)

Marcy continued to train for the mini-triathlon and on Sunday she came to Seattle from Idaho to “compete” – which is probably the wrong word because the emphasis is much more on fun and estro-friendship than on competition.

This is the first sight I had of Marcy in over a year:

I realized how much I’d missed her the minute I saw her!

While we waited for Marcy to come around the corner toward the finish line, we also saw these people (and, er, non-people!):

Truly inspiring stuff!

We decided that next year, we’ll make this a mother/daughter event. Marcy and her daughter Tina, along with some of their mother/daughter friends, will join Elisabeth, Kat, and me.

Anyone want to join us? (Daughter not required…) I will need big-time support to get off my butt and spend 30 minutes a day swimming (easy – love it), biking (not hard – like it) or running/walking (next-to-impossible – hate it!). We could train in our own neighborhoods most of the time and then meet, maybe monthly, for a group swim and/or bike and/or run… and some shopping, or spa-ing, or eating!

Anyone? Anyone? Lynn? Tonya? Margaret? Susan? Anyone??

Spa day

I spent today alone at Olympus Spa, a rejuvenating sanctuary for women that’s housed in an industrial park, but could just as easily be situated in an expensive destination resort.

I was at Olympus last November when Elisabeth and Kat treated me to a day at the spa for my 52nd birthday. But today was different. Today was a day for me to be very quiet, to be alone, to focus inward a bit, and to just float – literally and figuratively.

The great thing about a women’s spa is that all pretenses, all vanity, all ego, and all self-consciousness are stripped – quite literally – away within moments of arrival and we are exposed completely to each other. In the large pool and body scrub room, woman walk around completely naked and completely unashamed. Morbidly obese women, anorexic women and women of every body type in between move from pool to pool, from sauna to scrub to shower without shame and without judgment.

I have never loved my body – ever. I have always found fault in my too-short legs, my more-than-ample bottom, and my obvious pear-shape. Even in high school and college, at 120 pounds, I hated my body and felt that I was fat. Four children later, my body image is worse than ever, and since gaining 30-some pounds in the five years since my mother died, my self-esteem and body image has been pathetic. I’ve let myself go. I’ve gotten fat. I’ve lost respect for my body and I’ve betrayed it. How dare I? It’s a silent shame that I live with and I quietly beat myself up over it daily.

When I sat in the pools at Olympus Spa today and watched the women around me, though, I came to the realization that in spite of my dismal personal body image that I rarely speak about but is always with me, I am actually pretty solidly average. Sure, there were the svelte young high school and college students with beautiful, sleek, smooth bodies at the spa. But mostly there were women like me -- women who had obviously birthed and nursed a few babies and who, like me, are contending with the effects of age and gravity.

Today was physically rejuvenating as I soaked in the pools of various temperatures, treated myself to a vigorous (and that’s putting it lightly!) Korean Body Scrub, and sat motionless in hot sand and salt and charcoal rooms.

Today was also emotionally rejuvenating, as I read, wrote, pondered and reflected. And as I fully accepted my body … if only for a few short hours.

A melanoma quiz: which of these moles is suspicious and which is not?

My doctor will remove one of these moles in a few weeks because it concerns her as possibly being pre-cancerous.  The other one doesn't bother her in the least. 

Can you identify the worrisome mole?  If you can't (and I sure couldn't!), you should make an appointment with your own dermatologist for a full-body mole check -- especially if you're a redhead like me, or fair-skinned. 

This chart should NOT take the place of a personal check-up, but it might help you in identifying suspicious moles: So really, will you do it, please?  If you need a specific personal prod, do it for my brother-in-law who was diagnosed with melanoma last March and has been enduring a year of debilitating Interferon treatments (it's like having the flu for a year) in an effort to improve his chance of survival by 10%.

Oh, and the mole Dr. Voss will be removing is the one on the lower left.  How did you do?  Did you guess correctly?  One of the other moles she'll remove is on my left ankle, not more than an inch away from one of my surgery scars!  How's that for sigh-inducing chutzpah?!