17 Day Diet - Day 0

Tomorrow starts Day 1 of the 17 day diet.  I know many people that have been very successful on this diet:  Friends from NW Iowa and a couple people at work.  This diet makes sense.  And the important thing is that this is not just a diet - it is a way of eating that keeps your metabolism going.  A change in how I eat.  The first 17 days are greens, lean proteins (chicken and fish), probiotic yogurts, no fruit after 2:00 pm, green tea and LOTS of water.  Paying attention to portion sizes and following the plan.

To read more about it, check out this website:  17 Day Diet

So my plan is to blog every day about this journey.

Why am I doing this?  Health.  It isn't about shame about my body or wanting to be a twig.  It's about my achy ankles, my tired feet, and the crazy blood tests that I have to have every 6 months because I am teetering on the edge of being diabetic along with high cholesterol.  It is important for me to have a goal of not having to take a handful of pills every morning.  It is time!  I am tired!  Sick and tired!

I look at this as one day at a time.  I am not naive enough to think that I won't have slip ups.  But it is a journey not an event.

So here we go!  I won't write how much I weigh, but I will write about how much I lose and how many sizes I drop in this process.

Let this journey begin.

Maybe there is a way out of the cage where you live in.....

The words are moving within me again.  The bubbling and the churning that has reached the top of my chest.  I have a tendency to try to keep it all there until the pressure cooker can't take it anymore.  It feels like I can explode in a torrent of tears.  But I keep the lid on because it is safer that way.  I blame all those times I heard "Shut up or I will give you something to cry about" when I was a kid.   Crying is weak.  And frankly a part of me thinks that if I start, I won't be able to stop

And then something happens.  I get a sign.  A BIG FUCKING sign!  Music talks to me.  It saved my life as a kid.  Helped me deal as a teenager and carries me through stress and strain every day.  And my favorites are eclectic and strange at times.  My shuffle goes from Dixie Chicks to Lady Gaga to Justin Beiber to Chad Elliott to Mackelmore and Ryan Lewis to Mat D and the Profane Saints.  But a song that brings that bubbling to a head finds itself playing on the radio at the most appropriate time.  The time when for whatever reason I need it the most.  A sign!

October 2011, Ms. Sara Bareilles showed us what it is like to be with the  King of Everything.........."Let Me Hold Your Crown Babe"!  It was the theme to a very important road trip in my life.  And guess what HERE SHE IS AGAIN!

Nothing's gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle 'neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you...

Say what you want to say and let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be BRAVE

The first time I had a reaction to this song, I was sitting in my dining room working on bills or a project, and the meaning of the words hit me hard!  Sobs erupted enough to worry my Sulu dog so that he came up to me and rested his head on my lap with his "it's okay mom" puppy eyes.  

Show me how big your brave is.........

The lid slipped off the pressure cooker a bit and let some of the churning toxins out.  So I keep hearing her speak to me at the strangest times.  And then I attend a conference for work.  A mom is speaking about her child being abducted and the tragedy that befell the family with that child's murder.  She started a foundation to assist other parents of abducted and murdered children.  This beautiful little angel would draw pictures for her mother and on those pictures she wrote "BE BRAVE".  The theme for this foundation is BE BRAVE.  I was taken aback.  There are those words again.

Let your words be anything but empty........why don't you tell them the truth.

So today, I am meeting with my counselor.  And I am telling her about the Sulu moment and the conference moment.  And the pressure cooker is at maximum today.  Things are going to boil over.  Lots of things are piling and churning and reacting like acid causing pain.  No deep breaths or cleansing thoughts today.  Just sadness and melancholy and anger and pain.

Stop holding your tongue

Lots of tears during the session.  Think I am done, the pressure is released a bit.  Get in my car, start to head home.  Turned the radio on......Ms Sara!  SIGN AGAIN AND AGAIN.  Driving with streaming eyes and snotty nose in rush hour traffic is not my idea of safe driving but I didn't care at that moment.

How big is my brave?

May be one of these days you can let the light in.

SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND LET THE WORDS FALL OUT
HONESTLY 

I WANT TO SEE YOU BE BRAVE!!!

I need to be brave!  I need to let the light in and move free from the cage.  The tides of grief move in and out like the ocean.  Bravery through the high tide and the low tide both.  Breathe, scream, cry and swear!

I WANT TO SEE ME BE BRAVE!  LET THE WORDS FALL OUT!  HONESTLY!  I WANT TO SEE ME BE BRAVE!

I am trying.........

Wordless Wednesday

Full Moon Mayhem

The title makes it sound like there was debauchery and mischief.  But alas, just a bunch a seasoned women talking and catching up.  It was a great night filled with TOO MUCH WINE and old friends.  I need to do that more often.  Both the friends and the wine part!

This particular full moon in April was called the Pink Moon.  According to the farmer's almanac "the name came from the herb moss pink or wild ground phlox which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the Spring".  It also was a lunar eclipse.  Unfortunately, we could not see it on this side of the world in the western hemisphere.  

When it rose, it was beautiful.  HUGE on the horizon and glowing pink then orange.  Being in the middle of the country (in the trailerhood), the sky was dark unlike the urban area that is lit up by the lights.  This made for some great star and moon watching.   Once she rose, the stars said, "have at it lady.......we will go dim while you run across the sky".  

The moon to me signifies a female.  The full moon represents the end of mother earth's cycle.  She is full and ripe and ready to purge the month's worth of growth.  This purging prepares her for the new moon and the cycle begins again.

When we planned the full moon party, I wanted it to be a connection to her - a connection to the earth.  One of the ceremonies that I found was a burning/cleansing.  We took a piece of wood (mine was an old paint stick) and wrote down the things that we wanted to clean from ourselves.  This was a bit difficult to do because one thinks about labels.  Expectations of ourselves and expectations from others were at the top of my list.  We all shared those words and then tossed the sticks into the fire.

Another cycle done.  Another chapter turned.  And it starts again.  So is life.  It keeps waxing and waning just like her.

Public Toilet Procedures

Okay - I bet you are totally trying to figure out what the heck is coming next.

Well you guessed it - people's public toilet procedures.  Particularly women's (although I have been known to occasionally use a men's room when the line is too long) because I am not sure what happens in the urinals or troughs or individual stalls.

So have you every wondered as you are sitting in the bathroom doing your BID-NESS what other women do when they close that stall door.  I think about it.  I know.......I think I may need a hobby.

I hear that inevitable bathroom door open and then stall door close.  This is the point when I say, 'come on, couldn't you have just given me a little more time?  Now I have to worry about the noises I make since I WAS the only one in here'.  All this in my head of course.

But the only thing that women do that is consistent is opening the bathroom door and closing the stall door.  From that point on, it is a free for all of strategies for cleanliness.

I could keep going about the cleanliness of the bathroom but that might be reserved for another post.  A once work neighbor told me that she judges restaurants by how clean the bathrooms are.  She said that "if the bathroom is clean, the kitchen is clean" - so she will eat there.  I tend to believe her although it is very rare that I say "could you wait to sit us until I check out your shitter".  Although I might get away with that if I travel to Missoura or Arkansas.

Any way what I want to discuss is what do you do when you close that stall door?  Every person has their habit.

Do you look for the hook to hang your purse and coat?  If there isn't a hook for your purse, do you put it on the floor?  YIKES -- See previous comment about cleanliness.  Do you hold it in your lap while you are peeing.  AWKWARD at best.

Do you pull the toilet seat cover paper thingy out and try to position it on the toilet cover so as to avoid germs and coodies from other folks?

Do you take strips of toilet paper and line the seat rim and then sit down?  What happens if one of those strips sticks to your butt?  Then what?

Do you take toilet paper and wipe the seat down as a pseudo-sanitizer?

Or do you squat/lean/hover pee over the top of the seat so as not to touch anything?  And if you do, be honest -- have you ever peed on yourself?

Or do you just sit and let her rip?  The hurried, relief of a pee.  There is nothing like it.  OOPS!  I digress.

As I sit in the stall contemplating the noises coming from the other stalls, I imagine that I can tell what other folks are doing?  I can tell when Suzie Tennis Shoes is placing precise strips of toilet paper on the seat so as not to touch her skin to the seat where other skin has rested.

I can tell when Jamie Cute Heels is hovering because her feet are shaking underneath the stalls.  Not that I am looking THAT close.....really......I am not.

Or when Felicia Flip Flop is using her hand sanitizer on toilet paper to actually clean the seat before she plants herself down.

So what do you do?  And why do you do it?  Are there really any germs that can live that long on a public toilet seat?  If there are germs are they going to absorb thru your skin or are you rubbing your lady parts all over the seat?  (Okay that may have been a little too much - sorry about that)

Me?  I am all about the sit and let her rip.  Which reminds me the topic of my next blog is going to be "sounds heard in the public bathroom".  Because if you can't let it rip - literally - in the bathroom, where can you let it rip?

Support, family and oh, yeah food!

Needless to say this week has been a roller coaster experience.  NO words or actions can make the pain go away from my friend.  But I know a certainty from all of this is that she will be okay.

The support and love that surrounds her is a web of comfort like no other I have seen.  Watching this dynamic is something to behold.  I have been so blessed to witness this amazing energy fill the room.  They don't sweep in when there are tears, they just BE.  BE there for her with words, memories, and laughter.  It is a GOD thing.

It is a good thing that my weigh-ins have stopped, because not only is the support something magical - the FOOD has been divine.  Sunday dinner yesterday was from the hands of the best bed and breakfast chef around.  Check out the Morning Glory Bed and Breakfast in Cherokee Iowa.  Sister Sue made a Pot Roast, Carrots, Potatoes, Gravy (OH MY GRAVY!), Almond Green Beans and Fruit Salad.  We sat at the large dining room table and shared food and stories and wisdom.  It doesn't get any better than that for healing.  Thank you Sue for a fantastic meal!

Yesterday was a turned corner.  She will heal.  She will continue to move forward on her journey.  But for me, the most important AH HA has been that family support is so very necessary.  Coming together in faith and family (and food) is the best healing salve in the world.  And I know they are so very good at allowing her wounds to be tended.  As I said before, the bucket is beginning to weld back together.  Yesterday, the family took a turn at the torch.

Holy Buckets

In most cases, that is how I start an exclamation that is an exasperation.  Usually it goes something like "Holy Buckets Batman".  Makes no sense I know, but it makes me feel good when I say it.

But today Holy Buckets should actually be spelled HOLE-Y BUCKETS.  My bucket feels full of holes.  While it could be an exclamation, it is just a quiet statement that expresses how I feel when I am spent.  All the energy and life joy is drained from my bucket that today looks like swiss cheese.

A really good friend is going through the most difficult struggle and I want to help her as much as I can, but no words can repair it.  Not enough hugs in the universe to make it better.  One day things are great and plans and dreams have been discussed and decided.  Within hours, that has ripped apart.

Her bucket is like a bomb went off and there are metal shards strewn about the house.  The process to repairing that will take so much time and energy and today she tells me that she is not sure how she can survive this.

My heart breaks.

She has within her to know what will repair her bucket.  The shards are just too sharp for her to remember what it takes.  The wounds are too raw and fresh.

Talking to her on the morning that she finishes the public process of saying goodbye to her husband, the pain is so very sharp.   No words work.  We always wish we had the correct thing to "fix" it.  That elusive magic wand.

I don't say, "time will make this better" because today I am not confident that it will make it better.

Today she moves through the grief like a fog.  Tomorrow I hope for her she can start the healing journey.  I do know that the only thing I can do is try to bring out a welder to help repair her bucket and tomorrow she can take over the welding rod to mend the joints.  As soon as that bucket is put back together, she can begin to fill it again.