YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! YOU'RE NOT MY MOM! TheBrains Struggle with the New Weight Watcher's Program

CRASH!

....BANG!!!!

.......KAPOW!!!!!!!!!

Goodness! What is all the racket? Oh - Oh dear. It's TheBrains - or rather, it's my precious little wild child of a RIGHT BRAIN and I suspect she's upset about all the changes Weight Watcher made in their points calculations this week. Let's listen in and see what transpires.

* * * * *

RIGHT BRAIN: AAAAARGH!  AHHHEEEE! (kicks metal trash can with a loud CRASH!)

LEFT BRAIN: Here Here. Stop

RIGHT BRAIN NOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU CAN'T MAKE MEEEEEEEEE!

LEFT BRAIN:Shh shhh. calm down (reaching out and touching a shoulder)

RIGHT BRAIN  (flinging off the stroking hand) HOW DARE THEY? WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?  NO NO NO THEY CAN'T MAKE ME.

LEFT BRAIN: (grabbing in a big hug, tightening her arms)  Shh shh. It's going to be alright.

RIGHT BRAIN: (struggles a moment then bursts into huge gulping sobs)

LEFT BRAIN:(snuggles and rocks gently) Calma calma - it's going to be alright. I will take care of you. We're going to be okay. I promise

RIGHT BRAIN (sobs harder but stops struggling)

LEFT BRAIN: There there, honey. It's going to be okay. I swear it. We'll get through this together.

Some minutes later .....

RIGHT BRAIN (sits quietly, just a few shuddering sobs every now and then)

LEFT BRAIN: Okay now? Is it all out of your system?

RIGHT BRAIN mmmm. maybe not all of it but yeah, mostly

LEFT BRAIN: I completely understand how frustrated and frightened you are

RIGHT BRAIN   Do you?

LEFT BRAIN: Of course. We had all these plans. We worked out steps to take. We have worked very hard to get down to the happy weight number and were going to get to January feeling proud and fit and hot hot hot ... and now Weight Watchers has changed their tracker, their points calculators, and assigned such high points to the fun foods of Christmas that we're going to feel frightened and guilty just looking at them. Not to mention how much work we're going to have to do to relearn our basic healthy foods' new points. and their new website is S L O W and cumbersome.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Oh. you do understand. It was heaven. And now it's all ruined. Ruined ruined ruined!

LEFT BRAIN: No. It's not ruined. It's changed. That's all

RIGHT BRAIN:  Ruined AND changed

LEFT BRAIN: (hugs tight) No. It's just different.

RIGHT BRAIN:  I hate Weight Watchers. I hate them hate them hate them

LEFT BRAIN: (hugs even tighter and laughs) No you don't. You hate change

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well - they made me change. I hate them for it

LEFT BRAIN: (cups her face and looks into her eyes) No they did not. They offered you a change.  They also took away something you knew and liked. But only you can make you change. Or ... rather ... only we can make us change.

RIGHT BRAIN: You mean you think you can make me change and  YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!

LEFT BRAIN: (smiles tenderly) You're absolutely right. I can't make you change -I don't want to make you change. But I can point out a truth or two.  Admit it now. No matter what else you also feel, you also feel that there is something fundamentally right about the new things they're offering.

RIGHT BRAIN:  (squirms, pouts) I hate them

LEFT BRAIN: It's okay to hate the awful feelings of change. The scariness. The doubt of self, the feeling that you will fail at this change and fail where you had been a success.  But tell me this. Has there ever been anything fabulous we've achieved that didn't include the awful feelings of change?

RIGHT BRAIN:  (thinks a moment) Yes! When we changed from knitting american style to continental - it was fun!

LEFT BRAIN: But it was hard too, wasn't it?

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well - yes. But I don't mind hard. I hate pain. Besides - I wanted to make that change. I don't want to make the changes that Weight Watcher's asking me to make

LEFT BRAIN: You don't want to be healthy and thin?

RIGHT BRAIN:  I want SUGAR! SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR - right NOW at Christmas time I want SUGAR!  

LEFT BRAIN: Laughs out loud)  Well so do I. Maybe not that much sugar - but yeah - I do want me some sugar.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well - well?!? Weight Watcher's made anything with sugar in it so high in points that we cant ever have any sugar again. We will die without ever having sugar again and all the black pepper refrigerator cookies in the world will go to SOMEONE ELSE!

LEFT BRAIN: (hugs tightly again) You are so utterly cute.

RIGHT BRAIN:  I'm not cute! I am mad. and grieving. and angry

LEFT BRAIN: And cute. And I completely understand the way you feel but tell me ... when you read the new Weight Watcher's way of calculating food points didn't you instinctively feel that it would nudge us into healthier eating, and slimmer eating and maybe even a kind of preventive eating that would keep our hearts healthier - stave off diabetes - make the last years of our life more comfortable. Didn't you feel that little twinge of "YES"?

RIGHT BRAIN:  (squirms)

LEFT BRAIN: (gives her little shake) Didn't you?

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well...um...yes.

LEFT BRAIN: You recognized that this new way of calculating what and how much we should eat will edge us away from eating sweets and other white food. It'll push us into that next level of healthy eating we ought to be doing.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Oh you. You are all about doing what we ought to be doing

LEFT BRAIN: I can't help that. It's my role

RIGHT BRAIN:  But I don't want to do what we ought to be doing. I want to be lucky! I want the weight loss fairy to tap me on the head and make me thin even if I do eat Black Pepper Refrigerator Cookies made with Butter.

LEFT BRAIN: Can't help you there either. Feelings are your job. But I can make a suggestion.

RIGHT BRAIN:  What. Suffer? Suck it up? Be miserable for the rest of our lives?

LEFT BRAIN: No dearest sweet thing. Nothing so draconian. Do you want to hear it?

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well, of course I do.

LEFT BRAIN: (smiles) Okay .. first off - what say we don't worry about these changes At All.

RIGHT BRAIN:  You mean ... don't do them?

LEFT BRAIN: Maybe. Maybe not. Let's just wait and see. Let's just read all the material, use the tracker and don't give a damn about if we go over our points or not. Just use it and see what the numbers end up looking like

RIGHT BRAIN:  But what about feeling guilty? What about seeing that a single brownie is 17 points which is more than half the points you can eat in a day? What about that?

LEFT BRAIN: Well - it is what it is. We don't have to care about it.

RIGHT BRAIN:  But what if we eat  a brownie

LEFT BRAIN: So what? Who cares. This is a fact finding week. This is a get to know something different week. We're just curious. We won't let the tracker judge us any more than we let the scale judge us.

RIGHT BRAIN:  But the tracker was always protecting me from getting fat fat fat

LEFT BRAIN: Well - yes, in a way it was.  But this week it's not going to be. Maybe not this whole month. What do you say that for the rest of this month we just watch and see what the tracker looks like.

RIGHT BRAIN:  But what if we get so fat we can't wear our clothes or our tummy hurts?

LEFT BRAIN: My dearest dear.  Do you think I would let you eat till your tummy hurts?

RIGHT BRAIN:  Well. No. No I think you would stop me.

LEFT BRAIN: There you have it. Let's just look at this new program as a super big math problem. Let's figure out the math of the new Weight Watcher's program.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Oh. Oh. .I like math problems.

LEFT BRAIN: I know

RIGHT BRAIN:  And you actually like this new program don't you?

LEFT BRAIN: Actually - yes. I already know it's a good program. I think they timed it horribly. A change this  big should have been rolled out in October, not half way to Christmas. It's a huge change that targets holiday food the most so it's really asking people to give up not just sugar, but memories, traditional foods and ceremonies. It's asking people to be in Fresh Start Mode just when they're trying to be nostalgic. I can't believe the psychologists at Weight Watcher's were consulted.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Or if they were, they're all a bunch of 25 year old left brain metro-central modern emotionless robots who had mothers like William's college roommates';  mothers who never cooked a meal in their lives.

LEFT BRAIN: (smiling) maybe. Probably. I agree. So, the timing of this is abysmal - but you know - just because they say we ought to do something doesn't mean we have to, now, does it?

RIGHT BRAIN:  No.

LEFT BRAIN: And aren't you just a little curious to get to know it better? to just try it?

RIGHT BRAIN: Well. Well. yes.

LEFT BRAIN: And we don't have to do anything more than just learn about it. and use the tracker to do that learning. But we will not  treat the tracker like some giant big scolding finger, right?

RIGHT BRAIN:  Okay

LEFT BRAIN: Feel better?

RIGHT BRAIN:  That's all?

LEFT BRAIN: Yup. That's all

RIGHT BRAIN:  Oh. Then yes. I do feel better

LEFT BRAIN: Good

RIGHT BRAIN:  Are we going to order a fitbit today?

LEFT BRAIN: Yes.

RIGHT BRAIN:  Oh. I feel lots better then

LEFT BRAIN: (Grins) Good.

* * * * *

Well. There you have it. TheBrains have to rethink their holiday strategy, maybe even come up with some new goals and steps, but I think they're going to be alright.

Saturday Thoughts

And sneezing! La! I collided with something yesterday that has my nose in an uproar! I've been sneezing almost constantly since about 4 o'clock and it is not pretty. I wonder what it was that I am so allergic to. Yes. I've taken zyrtek and no it doesn't seem to be helping. Glad I have a new box of tissues.

But anyway

That's not what I'm thinking about - I'm pondering the issue of magic pills to make you skinny.  And body image. And instant gratification. And what feels like Rat Park and not Rat Prison. (see Martha Beck's book "4-Day Win" or check out this link: 

I'm still wondering about talking to my sister and her experience with the weight loss drug Contrave. I'm also pondering our longing for instant perfection at the swallow of a pill - though I'd prefer the touch of a magic wand. I've never really had much confidence in the old DuPont slogan Better Living Through Chemistry. Got way more faith in magic. And why the AICH am I still getting images of Kr is tee  Brink lee at sixtee won in my sidebars and puh-leeze! No More with the sixty one year olds looking like twenty year olds.

I know. It's spelled differently but ever since I typed in Cee Bee's name in some blog I posted I've been flooded with More Robot Driven ads. As Gawd is Mah Witnuss,  I swear I will never type the Cee Bee word again.

And truly - I don't mind it that Someone looks 20 at 60.Well - maybe 40 - 'cause I mean, look at her throat. That ain't no 24 year old neck. And besides, I don't think that someone else's situation in life is a reflection on me. I don't think her beauty takes away from my beauty any more than I think that your money takes away from my bank account. They're not even remotely connected.

What I'm really thinking about is .... why do we feel so much pressure from the opinions of Other People. Today, Sparkpeople had this blog from staff writer Allicia Capetillo:
Will Hollywood Ever  Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Real Bodies? 

And my first reaction to that question was ... well, who cares if it does or doesn't?  What gives Hollywood so much power? Or rather, who does? Well - we do. Or rather, A Person does. You do. I do. Or don't. Our choice. We don't have to give anyone that power.

And yet.

And yet I like to check in on what stars and models and fashion magazines are advising. I seriously love me some pretty clothes. I love my image of me when I'm feeling hot hot hot. I even love shopping! Even when I weighed XXX lbs I loved shopping for clothes. The puzzle ... the MATH ... the Geometry of finding clothes that flattered ME ME ME ME ME was always interesting - always fun. Mind now - it's way way way more fun finding clothes that fit the fitter slimmer me - but pleasure in pretty clothes has always been mine.

And when I was at my heaviest, did I want a pill to make me instantly slim? I am sure I did - or ... as I said before .... I longed for a magic wand to tap me on the head and sprinkle sparkles on me to make me instantly slim. Yes. I did want that. instant gratification - instant fix.

And if I dig far enough into the store lot of my memory I can still feel the ache of yearning, from my teenage self, for skinny legs, like Patti Hayes. (or Twiggy .. just in case you need a mental image). I went years without wearing jeans or pants because I thought I had fat thighs, even though my legs are the slimmest part of my figure - were even then!

So, for sure, I understand THAT we give such power to the media - to Hollywood and Glamour Magazine and the fashion spreads in People. And those irritating Cee Bee photos (do you suspect that there's one in the right hand sidebar of my page right now?  One that won't scroll away as I type this post? You would be right)

What I don't understand is WHY we give such power away. Because, one thing I know for sure is that, while when we take power for ourselves we are not diminishing another, when we give power away we are diminishing ourselves.

LOL - which would be fine if what we were diminishing were the adipose fat cells on our hips and waists and backs and thighs. alas. Those we can't just give away.

We have to diminish them away. And the only way to diminish them without diminishing health, energy, vigor, and self esteem is   S L O W L Y  - and by eating healthy foods and moving our now diminishing bodies.

Having lost substantial weight twice now by making daily healthy changes and slowly dropping the lbs, I know that I'd rather lose weight that way. Is it because the process of slowly getting better prolongs the compliments, the praise, the excitement of looking in the mirror and seeing something I like?

I'm so glad I didn't miss out on the process. What a loss that would have been. The re-gains came and there may be another one in my future - I don't know. Usually they came as the result of some outside blow, not because I got lazy or disenchanted with my new fit healthy self. and none of them ever took me back up to the scary XXX number. Always, before I got that kind of heavy again, I'd remember the process, the pleasure, the skills I'd used before, and I'd start that pleasure process again.

Each time I   S L O W L Y   work my way back down to the happy weight I learn more skills for finding pleasure by making "staying there" a process too - a pleasure process - a process pleasure. Even when I wish for the magic wand to tap myself on the head - or to tap a beloved sister or a friend or even some stranger I see  ... the magic I want to happen is that they - and I - begin to feel the process pleasure - that they - and I -  begin to want the healthy over the icky, the right portion over the humongous one, the thrill of taking back our power - from Hollywood - from the media - from the memories of our own hurt selves.

So. so those are my thoughts on a chilly Saturday morning in early December. Thanks for stopping by - thanks for reading - please feel free to leave a comment.

AWOL - TheBrains, Transactional Analysis and Germs

Oh la! November 30th and not a single peep out of me. And not in the mood to be either witty or sharp or even interesting. Yikes! What's happened? Where is the familiar loquacity, the need to blab, the desire to display my Virgo skill with language? Where is the ego that is sure everyone wants to know ... or at least have a record of ... what is going on at TheCastle? Is this just a temporary hiatus? A reaction to a sinus infection that laid me low for weeks? A calm before the storm? A dark hour just before the dawn?  Or has TheQueen sort of had her day? Is it time she retires into semi-seclusion and lets a new regime take over?  Am I ready to let TheQueen and her Blog just fade away into nothingness?

I don't know. What I do know is that the thought of a post-less month in the sidebar feels very much like  Rat Prison so here is a post to fill that up. If my LeftBrain wants to keep a perfect, if gratuitous score, that's okay by me.  And it's not as if I have done "Nussing, nussing" since I last posted.  There was werk - which had it's own set of demands, including fun ones. And two visits from the kids, counting this past Thanksgiving weeken: A thanksgiving weekend that included Cousins! And a thoroughly delightful weekend visit with adorable Other cousins - and even knitting! I taught said adorable cousin how to knit baby booties. I mean - how cool is that?

That weekend was super fun - but as I recall, I was sick as a dog then too. Or maybe just sick as a puppy - but ugh. sick.

And also there is grief. Global grief about the massacre in Paris. And personal grief about the holidays coming up and, hey, no Mama. And grief that resulted from a clash with ThePrince. (Can you imagine? Insurrection in the ThePalace? I mean, who would ever quarrel with that paragon of peaceful cooperation, me?) And grief coupled with fear because sister had to have open heart surgery and, hello - scary. Not really up to losing More Precious Family. And a fundamental grief too about the loss of Things As They Once Were.

And no I'm not stupid enough to cling to an ignorant belief that Things Were Better In the Good Old Days. I mean - we could be having an epidemic of typhoid or Tamerlane could be galloping across the landscape making mountains of skulls (though maybe his spirit is in Paris). Which is just to say that, yeah, I know. Times are always bad and always good and it's really up to us to pluck the good out of the gross. Which I can usually do. Just struggling a bit here, now.

No. I am blaming all of this on germs. I am sure they are still coursing through my blood veins. Maybe just the sloughs of them - not the live active ones - but there has to be some sort of Other Reason for this tough time besides a selfish indulgence in melancholy.
Yeah - right. blame it on germs - so you don't have to listen to me and figure out what we need to make me feel better.

Ooops. RightBrain is right about that. She is hurting and something needs to be done. Well, my beloved NaturalChild, we'll take this week to figure out what you need and then find some way to give it to you. I promise.



But what about that MediGap thing we have to do? And the 5-Year Plan work? And don't forget we need to go to the gym. And I thought we were going to start strength training again. There are ThingsToDo!

Yes, my dear LeftBrain Parent - we'll get to it all. You'll see. It'll even be fun. After we go have a good cry - you'll see. It'll all be fun.

And TheQueen will be back, too - and it'll be fun. I promise. It'll all be fun.

An Anniversary I Never Forget

  is the sum of   +      Yes my friends - it is that time again. The anniversary of the day, the very moment, when TheQueen knew her future and it was good. I missed posting this last year and it was a different sort of celebration anyway. This year I'm more on top of my game. This year so many new happinesses have piled on top of each other I am sure Mama must be up there in heaven, picking the best stuff off the shelve and showering it down on top of me. Thank you, Mama. I feel your presence all the time.  So - for the 43rd time I'm gong to remember that special day by posting the story of how TheQueen found ThePrince: 

Long long ago there was a cheeky teenager, just past her 19th birthday, who was studying music at

big city university. One Friday, as she walked into the orchestra room, the flute player spun around in his chair, looked straight at her and asked her if she wanted to drive to North Carolina with him the next day.

“Sure” she said, desperate for anything to do on the weekend, when most of her friends split for home, leaving her to rattle all alone in a monolithical cement dormitory. Besides, he was one of the really good looking guys she and Robyn had decided were “cute enough to take us out”. And he had such a voice - deep sonorous basso profundo with the most delicious country southern drawl - not hick, in fact, very cultured, but oh so Southern. And startlingly blue eyes. Blue like autumn skies. And he was big - not fat or anything - just big with a big aura, a big presence. Nothing hesitant or shy or self-effacing. This was a man, not a boy, and he was inviting her to spend all day with him.

“Right.” he said. "Meet me at my house tomorrow at 10 a.m." and he gave directions to a row house in the Fan district, a few blocks from school.

Poor thing. Little did he know that he’d just arranged a date with his exact opposite in the GreatClockUniverse. She was no ditherer. No lingerer. No procrastinating late comer. She was an EarlyBird - always 15 minutes before hand, sometimes more. For this important assignation she was a full 30 minutes early, knocking on the dark and silent door of his first floor apartment.

“Stood up!” she thought. “Impossible” Nobody stood up this girl, no siree. And she stomped the four blocks back to school, snatched her fiddle out of her locker, slammed the practice room door shut and began to saw away, muttering imprecations, curses, indignant affronted descriptions of what is expected in this world, and other dark and damning words. But ...

She was also innately fair and as she scraped away at Kreutzer, she had to admit that the man had said come at 10. Perhaps he was out filling up the gas tank. Or perhaps he was renting a trailer. After all, the purpose of the trip was to retrieve his piano, waiting for him in his old place in Chapel Hill, NC. And so, at 10 o’clock for sure, she rounded the corner of Lombardy and Floyd and there he was, waving an arm, smiling happily and calling out “Hey Baby!”

She crossed the street and he invited her into his apartment. He offered her a beer, and though she hated the stuff - still does, in fact - she was also aware of what is cool and for a still-teenage girl at college, drinking beer at 10 a.m. was truly cool, so she said yes. He was back in a flash with a mason jar full of the most delicate, most mellow drink she’d ever tasted. His own home brew. There were gallons of it in his little bachelor kitchen. Now, be it gallons or pints, this stuff was potent and it was only moments before she was definitely in the mood to be entertained. And entertained she was, with music, books, ideas, and talk talk talk, tumbling out of this delightful man with his shelves full of books, boxes full of sheet music, head full of poetry in three different languages and kitchen full of nectar. Best of all, he was happy. Neither cynical, sarcastic nor jealous of another’s musical ability or progress, he was ready to share, to learn, to listen and to admire. In the highly competitive world of performing arts, here was someone with a blend of such innocence and courage there was nothing to do but laugh with pure pleasure and maybe fall in love a bit.

After a while the two of them tooled off in search of a U-haul place. Across the Lee Bridge at an Esso Station on Cowardan Ave., where Caravatti’s Junk Yard used to be, he stopped and went in to arrange a rental. Minutes passed and when he returned he stood right in front of the car and grinned at her through the windshield; one of those beaming, sunshiny “Ain’t this Grand?” grins. And as she stared up at him, suddenly he turned into an old man, still standing there, still grinning. She blinked; gawped; stared again. She looked down at her own hands and they had turned into an old lady's hands, the skin papery and spotted with large brown freckles, sunk down between the tendons. They were her grandmother’s hands. And she thought “My god. I’m going to be riding around in a car with this man when I’m an old lady.”

For some reason he had decided to rent the trailer in NC. Probably the Richmond outfit didn’t have what he was looking for. They motored on down I95, past the tobacco plant and warehouse district of south Richmond, past Petersburg, through Emporia. They talked the whole time, chattering, discovering, opening, sharing. At one point he said “well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me” and she thought “oh boy, there’s a lot you don’t know either”. And at that, there were some surprising points of contact. He had graduated from the same high school her dad had gone to. She had played a concert in Chapel Hill that he had gone to hear. He had taken lessons in Winston Salem while she had been a student at the School of the Arts. At Herndon, NC they stopped for lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken place. She had never been to one. In fact, fast food then consisted almost entirely of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, milkshakes and fries. Fried chicken was a real treat and, of course, to a 19-year old, it didn’t foretell the diet doom it was to present later on.

The October skies had been gray all day but they grew heavier and more threatening as evening approached. Rain began to fall. At a Carolina gas station he picked up a small box trailer and two ice cream sandwiches. “How did you know ice cream is my all time favorite treat?” she cried and to his question of “Then don’t I deserve a reward” she answered with a resounding kiss. Of course, this was in the days when, first off, girls worried about being thought forward or even worse; fast! It was also at a time when she was very wary of anything that would cause boys to sidle away from a touchy feely woman. Of course, this was no boy. 28, he’d told her. But when it’s the right guy, with the right gift, only a kiss will do.

It was harder to be chatty on the long dark wet drive home. Especially when the passenger was one of those Superior Morning Persons. For an SMP, darkness means it’s time to close one’s eyes. She still didn’t realize she was dealing with one of those Stubborn Night Owls. SNO’s think SMP’s are silly, especially the types who creep out of cozy warm beds before the sun is actually above the roof tops of the houses across the street. All those delightful discoveries were waiting up ahead for them. On that day, in the hypnotic glare of headlights on raindrops, she grew pretty drowsy. “I like to drive. Go to sleep” he told her and eventually she did.

It was too late to get back into the dorm when they reached Richmond. She’d known it would be and had signed out for the weekend. He gallantly put her up for the night. She was there the next day when other friends came around to help shove the piano down the narrow hallway and into the apartment. It was well into the afternoon before she made her way back to her place, to pace the dormitory halls till her girlfriend should show up and she could tell her the exciting news about the upcoming nuptials.

There have been many more rambles, in half a dozen different cars, since that October 16, thirty nine forty two forty four years ago. In 1991 the two of them took the trip to North Carolina all over again, even to starting at 1617 Floyd and to looking for some sort of U-haul place on the south side. They found the KFC in Herndon had moved a block but it was still serving up the original 11 herbs and spices recipe. They'll probably go off on a ramble today, the two of them, getting older, but not yet quite as old as the geezers in her vision.

But that is the story of my anniversary. We also celebrate a lovely wedding anniversary in April. It’s important, but not more important than October 16, when my favorite cute couple started out on life’s journey. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I even had a life before that day, although I can tell stories from that Mesozoic Era. It’s as if 10/16 were my real birthday; the day I began living my grown up life. BD, who had a head start on me, says he feels the same way.

There are a lot of stories in my bag of tales, but this one is my favorite.

Ooops. Time Got Away From Me

I didn't mean to stop posting about my trip - and I promise - before the weekend is over You, Yes, You, You Lucky Readers, will get to hear about TheWeddingInRomania! But for today TheQueen is going to talk about HerRoyalSelf.

TheQueen returned from her travels with the dread Vacation Poundage clinging to her regal form and some of the vacation photos are (ahem) Not as Attractive as She Would Have Liked. So she buckled down on her menu planning and joined an exercise challenge from SparkPeople dot com.  Every morning she - er, sorry, I'll get off my throne now - I get an email with New Exercises To Do.  They're fun. They're challenging. They're shaking things up and I am loving it. It is just the mind-stir I needed.

Yesterday's challenge was to snack smartly and get in 30 minutes of cardio. I know that cardio really means get your heart rate up and I am sure I felt it beating now and then as I climbed the hills of Maymont Park yesterday. Was it sustained for 30 minutes? probably not but I got in about 3 hours of walking altogether and that is good enough for me.



I'm not really a bad snacker, most of the time. so long as I can stay away from the Cheetos - and I never went near a Cheetos store. (I don't count the grocery store since I think of it as  a place to get food - not junk. Junk comes from 7-11 or a gas station store). So yesterday was not much of a challenge. It was some challenge since Sister and I were at CanCan, a very tony restaurant that can serve you up some calorie laden goodies .... think lobster mac 'n' cheese. Drool. but they also make such delectable goodies as roasted beet salad with walnuts and water cress. Do you know how rare watercress is in a salad? Lawsie I love that green! succulent. peppery. delicate. yum. On my plate. Lucky me!

It was warm enough for us to eat outside and there was a wonderful blues singer on the sidewalk serenading us at just the right decibel. We caught up on TheWedding and TheTrip and swapped horror stories about pilots going on strike and 1 year old triplets squirming in the seats directly in front of us, screaming for 5 hours.  Then she said "Let's go to Maymont"



As a true Richmond VA girl - I know Maymont. It's a Gilded Age mansion that was given to the city upon the death of its owner, Sally Dooley in 1926. It lies on the rolling bluffs of the river bank just across the river from where I lived as a teen. You could walk there, though we usually drove and I have a lifetime of memories tied up with the place. My sister has even more because they've always operated an animal rescue operation on the premise and my 2 younger sisters volunteered there for years. The house, alas, was never open when I was a girl. It was left to the city. with almost all its gilded and glorious furnishings,  but no money for upkeep. By 1929, gilded money had dried up and the house was closed to outside visitors till after I moved away from Richmond. In the 1970's a non-profit was formed to restore it but I just haven't ever had the opportunity (or taken the opportunity) to go inside.

sister and I rectified that yesterday and boy oh boy - did we have fun. Himself asked me later if the Dooley's had good taste and all I could say was that they had exquisite taste for the taste they had. What an explosion of ornamentation. I loved it  loved looking at it - and was oh so grateful I neither had to live with it or clean it. But boy oh boy - it was like looking at all the glitter and glitz you could dream of in a single building.

So - what a rewarding, happy, joy filled way to spend Day #8 of my 30-day challenge. Still loving it - still feeling the obligation AND desire to watch what I eat - still wanting to reach my October goal.

For day #9 I will go to the gym and do the exercises - which look interesting and fun and yeah, probably hard. But I'll be thinking about day #8 and smiling.

And in my next life I get to sleep in this.