Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

I'm married and mothering four children.

I'm going to be 35 in two weeks.

Alex is 7 (second grade), and Sophie is 5 (kindergarten). They both read marvelously. This weekend they had an argument about commas.

I rediscovered boogieboarding, but I am still too chicken for the rough waves.

My best friend is pregnant and is due on her 36th birthday in February.

My parents plan to move on their boat in a year.

My new web site is launched: http://www.inchwormbaby.com.

I haven't counted my skirts in a while.

An Excerpt From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

From C.S. Lewis

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

Slinking Back to Weight Watchers

I just realized that "slinking" can have the connotation of a sexy walk as well as the connotation of a dog with its tail between its legs. Let's use the second sense of the word, shall we?

I rejoined Weight Watchers yesterday, with a bit of bitterness. I'm annoyed with myself for not keeping it together and JUST EATING BETTER, and instead I have to join a group of chubby cheerleaders at weekly weigh-ins and meetings. I'll admit I am enjoying the structure of the program as well as its freedoms. According to the program, I am permitted to eat from the Core Foods List until I am satisfied. I don't even have to count points except for the extras (dessert, full-fat dairy, sugar, etc.). It is quite satisfying and certainly reasonable enough to continue indefinitely. It was counting the points that used to grate on me, and now that I have the Core option, it's a better fit. Let's hope my pants see it that way.

I am supplementing my new eating habits with some intense gym workouts. Ouch--my muscles are worked from doing the weight circuit both today and yesterday! I'm waiting for the part where working out gives me more energy instead of less.

I have created some incentives for myself for every five pounds lost. Some incentives involve personal care (massage, pedicure), while some involve fashion (new shoes, a dress). Not even one incentive involves food. Well duh!

Tone

I'm still early enough in the blogging process that I have not set an irrevocable tone for my posts. I was tempted this morning to post another rant about something that irked me, but then I realized I didn't want to be crabby and sarcastic. I also don't want to be trite and silly (i.e., I will try to minimize my mentions of skirts). So, today my post is all about resolve.

I re-learned something about myself this week: I love lists. I don't just love them; I need them. If I don't make a list, I DON'T DO THINGS. Today my list is about 20 items long. It holds every task from "make the bed" to "read two chapters of John" to "cut out Jennifer's outfits." There's also the occasional odd thing like "water water water water water water" which is my reminder to drink six glasses of water today. I don't have high hopes for enjoying the task, but instead I get a thrill from crossing off six waters. It's alarmingly motivating, crossing stuff off. I wonder what my loved ones (and strangers?) could get me to do by putting it on a list.

A benefit of listmaking is that, assuming you have actually stuck to your list, at the end of the day, you can look back on all you accomplished, and this is especially useful for things that are invisible: making a phone call doesn't make the house look any different (unlike making the bed), but it can be gratifying nonetheless. And without a list to look back on, where's that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment?

Celebration!

Alex, Sophie and I went out to dinner at Benihana tonight to celebrate my first Inchworm home show. (Think PartyLite, Tupperware, Mary Kay, etc. but with something truly USEFUL instead--handmade children's clothing!) I hit four digits! And so I took the kids to the most festive restaurant I could think of--and one that wasn't pushing green beer tonight. Their awed little faces were worth the price of admission as the chef chopped off shrimp tails, flicked them into the air and caught them in his pocket or on top of his hat. At one point, Alex's mouth was actually hanging open; I think it was when the chef made a "volcano" by stacking rings of onions and pouring some water in the middle to make "smoke." Sophie said excitedly, "He's doin' tricks!"

On a down note, I tore the back of my black eyelet skirt today. I need to act fast before my blog title becomes obsolete.

What I Learned At School Today

I was picking up Alex from school when I came upon an interesting scene. There was a harried mom, standing at the base of the church steps, looking up at a rambunctious boy of perhaps four. She had three fingers in the air and was loudly announcing to him, "THREE!" He looked down at her and kept on playing on the landing. She added a finger and counted deliberately, "FOUR!" The boy didn't even glance her way. But before counting "five," she commanded his attention by shouting his name. (He had clearly lost interest in the countdown by this point.) "FIVE!" she then exclaimed, at which point he looked down at her and blew a series of giant raspberries.

I have always believed that counting up to obedience tells the child two things, neither of which really affects obedience: 1.) You don't have to obey until I get to [insert number here--generally three or five are the magic numbers] and 2.) I don't actually want to discipline you, so could you help us both out and obey by the time I'm done counting?