Cleaning out the decade

Last night I walked into my bedroom with one thought in my mind: get rid of it all.

I tried to go on a cleaning rampage. I write tried here because I am very bad at getting rid of things. I'm not a pack rat by any means. I will happily toss scraps of paper. Unless they have scribbles of thought on them. I'll toss out an old shampoo bottle though. Yes indeed.

The reason I needed to clean was twofold. First of all, I couldn't see the floor. It's not that I had dirty clothes everywhere, it was that I had attempted to sort my clean clothes one too many times and had piles stacked wall to wall. Second, the drawers were full of clothes already, so there was a storage issue. Given that I have 11 drawers to myself, I figured I had better go through some of my clothes and see what could be donated or trashed.

The first thing I did was tackle the piles on the floor. This was fairly easy. It was all newly clean and therefore I had worn items in the recent past. All keepers except two t-shirts I just didn't like and a pair of jeans that had recently ripped on the inner thigh. I had fond memories of the jeans, which I bought in August 2003. They were too small when I bought them and the first time I fit into them I was very proud. I gave them a short farewell speech before turning to tackle the drawers.

Drawer 1 was a hard as it was my nostalgic shirt drawer. The t-shirt I got at my college orientation that I loved but would never wear again. The long sleeve t from summer 2000 with Waltham the band on the front. My old roommate confessed to still owning hers so it's a keeper even though I hadn't worn it since that glorious city summer. Then my Preserve California shirt from 2003, 1970s glam shirt from 2004, and, well, you get the picture. It was a t-shirt tour of my 20s. Drawer shut.

Drawer 2 was a collection of wraps/pashminas for formal occasions. My next formal occasion is this Saturday, but it will be 86 degrees and sunny, so the wool shawl won't be needed. Still, one day I may need them and having one in every color imaginable will come in handy.

Drawer 3 was pajamas. It was at this point I gave up. I had folded and organized two baskets of laundry, cleaned the floor, tracked down socks, and looked at 2 drawers. The big black bag for donations had 2 shirts that should have probably been used as dust rags. I needed help. I called in dear husband Jon to help move things along.

Now don't think that he is any better at throwing stuff out. His drawers also contain a collection of nostalgic shirts (there is one with barely a back on it, but it was a frat shirt, so it stays). He also had been living out of 2 laundry baskets [thanks mom for giving us more laundry baskets for our anniversary after giving up on asking why we dont use our drawers]. Well, he is better at it, but just doesn't do it. He sat down to help, probably wishing I had more friends in the area to do this with as I tried on tops that hadn't fit since 2007.

"This one," I said holding up a white tank with three red, white, and blue stars on it, "I bought for the Cape when we went down with everyone to Falmouth."

"That was 10 years ago," he said.

I tried it on. It wasn't even a half shirt. I sighed, resigned to lose a memento of our first group vacation. I put it in the bag. In all honesty, I hadn't worn the shirt on that vacation. I think I had worn it 2 times total.

"See, this is why I need you here."

Over the next 20 minutes--yes, it took 20 minutes to go through 11 drawer--I heard his honest opinion on my clothes. I ended up getting rid of some things I liked because they weren't flattering, or were ugly, or turned out to be a bit more see through than I thought. A large pile grew at my feet for my "gym clothes" which was the last designation for something before it ended up in the trash. The last thing we tackled was PJs. I kept 4 even though he set a 3 item limit, and got rid of faded t-s and puffy shorts. All my clothes fit into the drawers again. I had gotten rid of some outdated styles, lost my nostalgia for some of the older ts (the Preserve California one bit the dust) and tripled the choices for gym ware.

Tonight maybe we'll tackle the closet, where the dress I wore for my high school senior portrait hangs along with the suit my mom bought me when I graduated college.

Taking a breath

Well, my promise to post weekly faded with an influx of work and personal related mini-crises that all turned out fine. It just got a little hectic around here in May and June. I'm hoping July is less busy.

So what did I do in the last few weeks? In bullet form:

• Preparing for one of my best friend's wedding, which is coming up THIS weekend. Had shower, bachelorette party, and dress fittings.
• Week vacation on Cape Cod at the Breakers in Dennisport. Love it. Had great weather for early June and a good run on the candy stores.
  
• Son finished first music class and now will break into song randomly. Favorites include ABC and Peas Porridge Hot.
• Husband left me for a week for a biz trip out to Arizona. Son started breaking in his 1-year molars at same time. That equals no sleep for me.
  
• Realized my Friday or Saturday nights have reverted back to when I was 14 or 15. I sit in my bedroom pretending to clean it while listening to music and reading my tarot cards. Also realized that I am OK with this!
• Spent 2 days at a convention devoted to manuscript processing in the publishing industry. Realized I am very good at this which led to reevaluation of job and what the hell I went to grad school for.
  
• Went strawberry picking (12 lbs!) and made multiple batches of strawberry jam. 12 pounds doesnt make too much jam. Also made 1 strawberry rhubarb pie that is quite yummy.
  
• Written articles for the Beacon-Villager and think it's improved my writing quality (well, not here obviously) and also change my narrative for fiction. Excited to try to write some fiction I thought of on my week vacation...

In other news the Editorial Assistant in my office quit and we have replaced her with a woman who just moved back from Germany. I am interested to see how the new dynamic works out. I have my fingers crossed that it is good.

Also of interest is the demise of my friend's blog. Ms. High Heels wrote a blog about her family and work life and when she told her boss she was asked if anything embarrassing was posted. After thinking it over she said yes and he recommended she delete it. So she did. I have to say that I am very sad about this turn of events for many reasons.
1. I do not get to see this person very much anymore and it kept me up on her life and her growing family.
2. She never used names and gave everyone wonderful little nicknames that made it a game to figure out who she was writing about.
3. Her sense of humor is spot on, and I never failed to laugh out loud.

A Day in Heels, you will be missed.

A sneaky vacation

Usually I am extremely excited for a vacation. A far off trip to a tropical island is our usual venture. This year we decided that traveling to a far off tropical island would probably not work out with a toddler. So, we booked a week down the Cape (um, that's Cape Cod for all non-New Englanders) for Memorial Day weekend.

Because the hotel is 2 hours from our door, and we have the opportunity to come home at any time, this is a sneaky vacation. We've been down the Cape a lot. Natural New Englanders, we gravitate towards the Cape and its beaches and fun minigolf.

But we realized last night that our vacation starts Friday. And we've done nothing to prepare. At all.

No frenzy of buying clothes, beach ware, or vacation books. Tonight I must go through the mound of laundry, pack up stuff, and figure out if it will be worth bringing the kiddie pool with us. This vacation is going to be thrown together, but we decided that is OK with us. I'm tempted to just bring a big backpack and live out of it like Europeans visiting the Cape. If they didn't all live in great apartments and become waiters for the summer that is.

As I sit in my office going through author indexes and page proofs, I really cannot believe that tomorrow I'll be dipping my toes into the frigid Atlantic. And the heated pool.

May Day May Day

This time of year is always stressful for me. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, commencements all snowball on top of each other, blotting out weekends and spare time. My bank account is drained buying presents for people (which I am happy to do) and my stress levels rise with each task I add to my to-do list. It's as though the universe knows this and piles it on, maybe trying to teach me a lesson about taking too much on, being too materialistic, or some other junk. Once mid-May hits, my mayday button is blinking.

This week in particular is busy. I've been attempting to keep it together and have for the most part done OK. On Monday I was at a town meeting until midnight, scrawling notes about budgeting for an article due the next morning--having already written and submitted a piece earlier the morning before. I volunteered to do some work for a friend entering the hospital, and had a pile of papers to read through and worry about her procedure. This weekend I am going out of town for a friend's bridal shower--I'm a bridesmaid--and have been struggling about stupid things, but which still have stressed me out nonetheless. It will be the first night I am away from my son too. Yesterday I nearly forgot to call my father on his birthday and when I did call from the train station the announcer chose those 5 minutes to make all the announcements for the day. Plus, my father pointed out that I was the last one to call him. My father calls me on my birthday separately from my mother just because, and I really wish I had called him earlier and not while in transit. But I got a card and Dunkins gift certificate to him, so hopefully he will think of me when he has his daily infusions of coffee.

Now today. Today is my wedding anniversary and in advance of the date I booked a babysitter, got a reservation at a nice restaurant, and bought my husband a card. I wanted it to be calm, organized, and stressless. However, the universe decided to give us a 5 AM wake up call with a "strong odor of gas" in the house and a screaming child. When your day starts with your husband saying "Get dressed quickly, get out of the house, and don't turn on any lights" you know that the universe is fucking with you. Especially as all my clothes were in the dryer. Normally I have clothes strewn across the floor for easy picking. Not this morning. Having recently reorganized my dresser drawer, I couldn't even remember where my pants were stored. Fumbling in the dark, I pulled out a random pair of pants and threw on an old jacket from college that was on my floor and have only worn maybe 5 times in my life. I then grabbed the kiddo, wrapped him in a blanket, and stumbled down the dark hall.

Turns out there was not a gas main break. Somehow one of the burners on the stove had turned on a bit, and gas was running out of it. I am going to have to blame the cats, but really have no idea as it was the side of burners we rarely use and the only scenario I can see the cats having done it was trying to jump up to the stove, missing, and catching the knob on the way down. Odd, especially as they both sleep in our room at night. But the gas leak had been going all night. The house was FULL of gas and we were lucky that the house did not explode, or we did not asphyxiate. Once husband turned off the stove we were able to clear the house by opening all the doors and windows. The morning routine resumed.

The universe must have been sorry or thought that I learned something sitting in the nursery holding my son after the gas situation had resolved itself. I got a prime parking spot at the train today. Plus my friend is OK, some money arrived in the mail to cover the birthday/wedding/fathers' day presents coming up, and I realized I could do some errands for this weekend at lunch. Still, I feel as though the week vacation down the Cape that begins next Friday is months away. Memories are appearing fuzzy as time goes forward, and each day rolls into the next, blurring the line of time. There are days I feel as though staying awake for a few days would be OK because then everything would be done and my sleep would be more sound. But then I pass out from exhaustion or cry because it's all too much.

But this morning as we opened the house for a cleansing, outside sounded like a rainforest. It was pouring, humid, and the birds were just waking up and calling to each other. I think I heard a wake up call from somewhere.

Message received universe, your point.

Carbs be not proud

CARBS be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore carbs, nor yet canst thou kill me. [*]

As I write this I am eating a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and drinking caffeinated coffee.

I did the cleanse a full week, and now it's over.

But I did learn some things. Besides the fact that my DNA is composed entirely of wheat germ.

My egg sandwich is on a skinny wheat bagel and my coffee is lighted with soy milk. That's right people, it's the little things.

My skin is back to red blotches though.

But anyway, there was no way I could do a full month. I'm currently "training" for a 1/2 marathon and on Sunday when I went for my long run I had energy only for the first 2 miles. The next 5 were miserable. I had to sit down. I've never sat down on a run before. Not to mention at the family barbque I had some lovely chocolate chip cookies my sister made (and her cookies are amazing, I dare you not to eat them if they are presented to you. They call out to you...) and some ice cream cake. And beer. But after being so good for so many days, my stomach rebelled. I could feel the sugars fermenting. Not fun.

I managed to jump back on the wagon though until yesterday when I snuck some gold fish crackers. Then I broke down and had a bowl of my honey sunshine cereal [Yes, it is really called honey sunshine and is completely good for you]. I then knew I was done with my abstinence and opened a Hazed and Infused beer (now in a can. I haven't had good beer in a can in ages!)

So as I sit here with my lovely coffee I have a few changes to my life.

1. Only 1 cup of caffeinated coffee a day. I love the taste of coffee and will get decaf if I need more each day. Plus I never want to experience the caffeinne headache I had last week ever again. Who needs that 36 hours of pain?
2. Use soy milk when given the chance in my coffee. Au Bon Pain (who get a % of my paycheck each week) keeps it out on the coffee station.
3. Eat way more veggies.
4. Limit carb/wheat servings. I don't need the goldfish crackers at 10 PM. At this time there isn't a toddler around to blame for even having them out.
5. I eat a lot less dairy than I thought. The hardest part about the no dairy was milk in my decaf.
6. If I have a special event I will not eat wheat or have any alcohol the preceding 3 days before in order to get glowing skin.
7. 4 pounds aint worth nearly passing out on a run.

So, that bikini is still challenging me, and I'm going to answer the call with a 9 mile run this weekend, following by yoga, a 4 mile run, and then 1 pull up. That's right. 1 pull up.

Cause I've improved since last week.

[*full and correct text above poem excerpt can be found here]

Sometimes I hate it when people are right

Day 4. No, it's not a vast wasteland of headaches and hunger anymore.

OK, well, a little hungry. I still get my 4 PM feed me or die feelings, but I have to say.

I feel freaking amazing.

I guess I'm over the hump. My chiropractor told me last night that the days 2 and 3 of this diet change were the hardest, and from here it was all smooth sailing and rainbows. He said when he does it he wants to kill someone on day 3.

I have to say I came very close yesterday. If the people I were emailing with were in my state, I'd be in prison right now for first degree murder.

Sure enough, when I was leaving his office there was a rainbow in the sky.

But this morning when I woke up I did not bound out of bed ready to start the day. In fact, I hit the snooze button for 30 minutes. When I did finally get up though I found I could put one foot in front of the other without pain and my head felt clear. Then I got to the mirror.

Something was different.

My skin was clear. Now, I have clear skin. In fact, I've been told by many people that they hate me because I haven't had a pimple in the last decade. My husband who suffered from acne as a teenager just sighs when I claim to have a blemish. It's usually a scratch on my face or a piece of food. I do get roseasca when I drink a lot, but in the past few years that seems to have gone down.

But today my skin was really clear. I was nearly glowing.

One of the reasons why I began this diet change was that I had been experiencing a surge of skin allergies. Rashes, hives, itchiness, and general redness. All gone. No weird welts on my neck. No odd lines on my arms. My red toned skin, which I thought was just my natural color, was a healthy rosy pink.

Of course the first thing I thought wasn't, yay, I'm healthy!

It was crap, this is working and I have to keep going.

So goodbye bread. It looks like it will be a while before we meet again.

And beer, well I can't even think about missing you yet. Tomorrow at the family bbq will be test enough.

Fat detox

My son turns one this weekend and I decided it was time to lose the extra weight I picked up carrying him around for 9 months. I'm nearly there...just 5 pounds until my pre-pregnancy weight. In the last year I've lost over 20 pounds but in last 6 months I've not lost one.

But I actually have a lot more to lose.

Before I got pregnant I had just finished training for 2 marathons. I was svelte and muscular. Now I run about once a week and am not svelte and muscular. I'm squishy. While I'm in all the clothes I was wearing this time two years ago, they don't fit quite right, and I know that I've been thinner.

I'm skipping over the fact I'm still wearing the same outfits 2 years later.

So I decided that I needed a jump start on my weight loss. I recently quit Weight Watchers after not losing 1 single pound despite paying for membership for 3 months. My friend out in Cali-lala emailed me this diet that she got from her yoga center.

I know, California. Yoga. Diet. It's sounds a little hippy dippy.

But I saw her a few weeks ago and she looked amazing. Thin. Tan. Fit.

Seeing as I can't really ever be tan, I'll settle for thin and fit.

The diet is fairly simple. Give up all the things you love and eat like an adult. But a hard ass adult who is concerned with fitness. You can eat all the vegetables you want, and most of the lower sugar fruits on the Glycemic index. You can also eat lean meats, but should buy organic to avoid any chemicals/hormones/whatever it is they do to meats these days.

But there are 4 rules that must be followed.

First, no alcohol. I can do that. And I know I will lose weight because of that. I love beer. Heavy imported beer with lots of yeast.

Second, no caffeine. I can do that, but not happily. I couldn't have caffeine while breastfeeding the little guy, so I've done that before.

Third, no wheat. Hmmm. A gluten free diet. I asked myself how much wheat do I really eat..it turns out my DNA probably has wheat meshed into it now. That's how much I eat. On day 1 I thought I was going to starve. I feel very bad for anyone who cannot process gluten because it is just yummy.

Fourth, no dairy. This made me nervous. I drink milk, eat cheese, and while I detest yogurt I eat it. No dairy. I had to consider this very seriously. I have a cheese drawer in my fridge.

But in the end, the bikini that arrived in the mail on Saturday really sealed the deal. It's skimpy. And I needed to lose a few pounds to look decent in it. Plus, I'm in a wedding in July and want to be feel confident in the strapless dress.

So Tuesday began day 1.

And what a frigging day it was. I woke up at 5 like normal and went about my routine. Instead of having a nice bowl of honey sunshine Kashi cereal and coffee I had 2 eggs and green tea. That's not so bad.

Except I was exhausted. Where the caffeine would have pushed me through the rest of my routine to get out of the house and on the train, the green tea did nothing. I called in sick, went back to bed, and slept until 11:30. When I woke up I was starving.

It was then I realized I did not do an important step in this diet. Clean out the fridge.

4 containers of milk, 5 bags of cheeses, a pie, butter, all the wrong fruits. My cabinets were full of crackers and bread. The only fruit I had were the highest on the glycemic index and banned. I wanted a cup of coffee bad. I got a headache. I took another nap.

A frozen Kashi dinner in the freezer saved me at dinner time. Coconut chicken with quinoa. I gnawed on a piece of lettuce and drank gallons of water and tea. The headache persisted through day 2.

Day 2 pretty much went the same except that I was more prepared at lunch and made a nice salad. Dinner was Indian food which was fine except for the white rice and piece of naan. But at that point it was cheat or completely give up. The piece of naan may be why day 3 is going so well. I have it stored in the very fat cells I'm trying to detox and shrink.

Today, day 3, I will make it through the day. I'm armed with decaf coffee, the memory of warm naan, and 2 pounds weight loss in 2 days.

That alone is enough to convince me to keep going.