Month: August 2006

So… remember that sparkling clean oven I had just a few nights ago?  Well… it’s not any longer. As if to reenact the barbecue effect in the kitchen tonight, I dumped the contents of pecan pie bars on the oven floor.  So, that’s why the oven is no longer sparkling clean.  And why there’s a semi-melted plastic garbage sack full of burnt offerings out in the tall can.

Clean ovens: Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun;
and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
Ecclesiastes 1.14

It’s a dreary day here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s cold, too. The Seattle area didn’t buy tickets to the global warming event, nor offer to host it. Apparently.

It’s day nine of the Umpteenth and One diet. I’m drinking a mocha. No one bought it for me, it’s not a reward for changed behaviour and no one is forcing me to drink a special treat. I just made it… and am drinking it. I didn’t get a “grande-mocha… whip? yes” last night. I drank coffee. Just coffee with half&half. That, and the sweetest conversations in a long time. I’d go back tonight if the whole venue could be repeated or at least continued.

We talked… Initially about the shocking stories in the news and the going’s on in our families… and then we shared pictures and stories and it was quite possibly the sweetest evening ever spent with the sisters in our fellowship. We each brought a handful of pictures of the different seasons of our lives and in so doing, briefly told our “life stories” as we described the settings of some of the photos. We’re all works in progress… some further down the road than others, but journeying together just the same. The only thing I wish… that all the sisters could’ve been there. It was intentionally designed to be a reflective sort of evening… the sort of evening that calls for or allows a vulnerability rarely displayed.

I think most of the time we, as women, would like to present the best possible persona of our selves and hope our prior failings, bad hair and manner of dress could just discreetly fade into the shadows of the past. But pictures don’t lie… they reflect all the good and the bad of the choices or lifestyles we intentionally or unintentionally live/lived. Photographs also have a way of revealing progress if we see them in the proper light. I immediately thought of the Sunscreen recording… and wished it were playing in the background. It starts like this…

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.

But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked…

You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum… “

We talked about things going on around us… where we, as women, have been and we attempted to catch a glimpse of where we’re going. I think we walked away realizing… the present is not all that bad, the future not all that scary and the past? It’s just that… days gone by, days we lived and can never repeat. I think we all smiled—glad we learned from those day and sort of sad we couldn’t see some of those sweet days again. I think we all came away with thoughts of endearment for each sister and probably much more compassionate having seen the paths each have traveled to become the women we are today. Just like I couldn’t grasp twenty years ago where I’d be today… though I think I can imagine… but deep down I know I’ve really no idea what the next twenty will bring.

I hope I’ll be sitting at the table at Starbucks with those same sisters looking over photographs and reminiscing about these good old days.

Today is day six of my Umpteenth and One diet. I don’t really know how many umpteen is, but I know it’s a lot. And I know it’s not specific, for I could never actually recall the actual diets I have attempted. I say attempted, bcz actually, I have never really strictly adhered to a diet. Well, maybe the Cambridge diet (I dunno—was that product recalled? did women die on that diet?) many years ago. That was the diet where a friend of ours (who was a rep of that company, by the way) came over and while he was eating at our table and drinking our coffee he told me I was so fat. Yea, really. I remember being so shocked at his bluntness and the candid expression of his thoughts. But then—in retrospect—I see that he was seeing me as I wasn’t seeing me. He was seeing that I was overweight and on a road I should never have been on and a road that would never be good for me. Plus, he did rep that product, by the way. I had just, six months prior, given birth to our second son. I wasn’t seeing myself as “that bad.” I wasn’t’ seeing the staggering results of that road should I continue to remain or travel it. I was thirty pounds overweight. It’s the same thirty pounds I have dropped off and picked up― dropped off and picked up several dozen times through the years in the course of a bunch of pregnancies and umpteen diets. Overweight’s not healthy… no matter how it might seem or how difficult it might seem to be to reverse. And thirty or twenty or ten pounds may as well be one hundred when the problem is out of control.

So, I was talking with two trusted friends… and I was telling them that I needed to get a food-divorce. I’m not ordinarily this flippant ― but I needed a strong description for the glaring problem I was/am facing. And as my friend rightly stated, that’s the only time or place I would use that term. One of the friends said it’s the only time she’d recommend to “leave that loser” and be free. I feel the same way. She and I are never glib or joke about marriage or men or husbands and so the divorce analogy is very finite and specific to this problem ― it breaks down immediately and therefore, I apply it in the strictest sense: I need to break the bonds I have with food and have a proper relationship or perspective of nourishment and tasty meals ― and I do see a right balance or right connection … I just need to get a handle on what that means for me. And I do see that the food relationship is different for or is as individual as people are. I’ve also had to get straight some what and why questions. The “What am I doing and why am I doing it?” sort of questions. This, by the way, pertains to both the eating/preparing food and the abstaining or limiting of the consumption of food. As the days go by, I’m seeing it’s not the food but the eater. When I hear someone say (or myself say), “I have a weight problem.” I think no, no, no… you (I) don’t have a weight problem, you (I) have a different problem. O, the weight may be a problem to you (me), but it’s a symptom of a problem, it is not the problem. The issue is gluttony… yes, it’s even a sickening word to type let alone possess the sin habit of gluttony. I gotta interject a big disclaimer here —sincerely— I *do not* believe all overweight is gluttony or due to gluttony. But this girl’s weight *is* and it’s this girl’s been convicted that such is the case.

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1Corinthians 9.24-27

I am genuinely working at setting my thoughts on Christ who strengthens me and who sustains me. For I have this peculiar relationship with food…. I eat it mindlessly, think I need it endlessly, think about its taste, origin, and mull over beautiful preparation and presentation and at the very same time don’t care much about it at all. Truth.

I smile at this train-wreck of thoughts bcz I’m much like my dad — my dad who didn’t raise me but who instilled in me (and my brother) a love for food — the planning, preparing and presentation of good food. My brother followed in footsteps he never actually witnessed while growing up. He pursued the same career though it was quite opposite the “growing up” life/training. Now there’s a nature/nurture conundrum — but that’s a topic for another day. Our dad was a cook, a chef, a restaurateur and food connoisseur. I think of him so often when I prepare specific things he taught me to make. I miss him… only knowing him in my adult life and seeing his passing way too soon. I can chuckle now… and ask… was it healthy to be overweight? Did it contribute to or hasten his passing? I need to end here for today… as I am nose-diving into an arena that is distinctly different than this post begin.

I am smiling as I think of a picture my brother gave me… that was our dad’s and is sort of a picture of his life (and ours). It hangs in my kitchen today. Eating carrots and reading a diet book… sitting in a bakery. Actually, the epitome of my dad would have been talking about a diet, eating something delicious. That, or dieting while holding a cookbook detailing sumptuous food preparation.

My oven’s being cleaned right now. Actually, it’s being chemically treated right now and in a few minutes I am going to don a mask and attempt to clean it. I don’t know what I was thinking as I removed a pan from the oven a few nights ago… and sort of flung the contents of the broiler pan onto the oven floor. And the door. My family came running… thinking that perhaps I’d set up the barbecue in the kitchen and was grilling their dinner.

Since then, I’ve used the oven and have been reminded of the error of my ways. A few times.

I have attempted the vinegar and water, the baking soda and water routine to clean the oven… and I never have significant results. So… it’s the cleaner in a can and part of a roll of paper towels. I don’t mind cleaning the oven, really, I just know that it’s one of those necessary evils… like cleaning behind and under the fridge or cleaning under and behind bunk-beds… or pulling stuff out of back-packs. You know… the backpack you find a couple of weeks after its last use. You sort of squint and unzip the zipper… holding your breath as you remove things. And food. Then you wonder how you could’ve missed those odiferous items for that many days. It’s times like that that I say to myself… how long have you been doing this and saying this is absolutely the *last* time you will open an aged backpack? That and picking up an item off the floor and immediately bringing it to my nose to smell if it’s clean.

I don’t know why I do it. And you probably don’t know why you do it either. You probably say the same thing, too. And you probably procrastinate cleaning your oven. Like I’ve just done.

And may I say… I love eBay? Well anyway… it’s fun to say I won another item. Actually, I’m not so sure Wes thinks I “win” items — for every time I win, he loses a little ~wink~ and adores me, I suppose. This time my purchase was a Christmas with Southern Living. I know… it’s funny that a girl who lives in the Northwest would prefer whatever is from the South (and, ahem, that would also include a bit of Southern California, btw). It’s my mama’s family, I suppose. I had wanted that particular book bcz I had read through it at our friend’s home a couple weeks ago. I liked the way some soups and breads were prepared. So… I googled the book when I came home… and, voilá! eBay.

I bid on the item… I watched, nervously wondering if I’d win the item that had no bidders, and then went to bed (the suspense was too much by morning!). While I was sleeping, I won the bid. O, and Wes was surprised when he opened his mail to see: congratulations…!

That was last week and yesterday afternoon, I was browsing through the new (to me) book that had just arrived in the mail and I was delighted with all the recipes! Recipes, recipes, recipes and *nothing* for this girl to eat!! This is still, in fact, the third day of my Umpteenth and One diet — I think I nearly gained five pounds just reading the recipes in the 2001 edition of the Christmas with Southern Living. Instead of trying anything, I just read and planned things I might make this fall. I *really* was looking at the dinner menus. Really. I’m sort of making an attempt to climb out of a rut of same ole-same ole meals and be more creative regarding dinnertime for our family. They deserve better and I should be doing better… after all, I *do* strongly advocate creativity and the family meal table!! I don’t want to be like a plumber with a clogged drain or a dentist whose kids have bad teeth or a pool guy with a green pool… ooops, that *did* happen!!

So, anyway… My husband has an entirely different palate than I do… I would eat a variety of salads, chicken, sweet tea, Mexican food or cereal at every meal (and the nine remaining children at home would join me happily!). He would eat fewer sandwiches, less Mexican food, no cereal, no graham-crackers ‘n milk, no sweet tea or plain tea tea, no cucumbers, or chile or baked beans, hushpuppies, or cottage-cheese-anything, grits, greens, hominy or any other things like that. But amazingly, and sweetly, when we do have a few of the above items when he’s home, he humours me and eats them―as if he loves them! He likes “home-style” cooking, Italian, and some Greek… a little Chinese and some more Italian.

He doesn’t ordinarily consider a sandwich to be dinner. Same goes for cereal, peanut butter on Ritz crackers and apples, or popcorn or chips and salsa… unless it’s a side accompanied by a chile relleno or a tamale.

So… it sort of cramps my creative style a tad bit. That, and I need to see pictures or need to have tasted the food somewhere before I can make it, bake it, cook it or serve it in our home. You would think after decades of melding our lives together, that we’d want to eat the very same things! I guess that’s why we love to go out to dinner… we try stuff we’d love to cook ourselves or stuff we don’t usually make at home—and we sample each other’s foods.

I received a nice letter regarding this Umpteenth and One diet… and a suggestion was made for the Carbohydrate Addict’s diet… and that’s actually sort of what I am doing now. A blend of that and SouthBeach. The Atkins’ was a bit too out of reach for me; it was a bit difficult to live in and cook for a large (in number) family—but that’s the diet I did a few years ago when I lost 30 pounds. The thirty pounds I didn’t know I had actually gained. The thirty pounds I gained and lost a couple of dozen times. I think we all do a sort of self preservation dance: O, I’m so fat—well, I’m not that fat; O, I need to lose weight—well, I know I can go on a diet tomorrow; O, maybe it’s not that much weight—wow! It *is* that much?!?!? Then… usually I’d do something about it—that, or I’d be pregnant and have all those well intentioned plans to not gain so much with that pregnancy… and the weight goes on…

So, I lost weight (again)—and at that point—that most recent diet, it was as if I purposefully sabotaged myself when I reached my goal-weight and the pounds slowly crept on over a couple of years. Then, when I wasn’t feeling so well before my surgery and in the sedentary months following that, I gained a few more. So, now, my goal weight is a tad bit more than it was then and when I get there, my goal is to stay there long enough to be “in control” at that weight and then perhaps lose 5 or 10. I appreciated that letter (thank you, Sheila) and the accompanying stunning “before-and-after” pictures… the pictures alone gave me hope as I saw before my eyes the beautiful, incredible, shrinking woman. That letter and Barbara Curtis’s wonderful progress are incentives to me to press on. Well, and so is this almost embarrassing candid public confession weblog. I am purposefully making entries… both to encourage other mothers and to humble myself to the reality that not only do I need to lose weight… I need accountability in doing so.