I Love Clay Part 2

Well, I finally got around to narrating the photos below. Perhaps just a little more background is needed to round out the story. I had always loved pottery. When watching potters at the wheel at crafts fairs, I always wanted to reach out and touch the clay, but I never did. When I met DH, I found out that he had worked as a potter for about 7 years when he was in his 20's. I thought this was really cool and admired the things he had around the house from that time.

About 10 years into our marriage, DH and I hit a period where we wanted to explore a different way of life. We decided to move to a small town and open a pottery studio and crafts gallery. Without going into all the details, we did this. It lasted about 1 year while we struggled to find our design niche and watched our savings dwindle. Long story short, DH went back into the "traditional" workforce, which occasioned 2 moves until we found the place we are now.

We still have a potter's wheel, an extruder, a slab roller, some clay and some glaze chemicals. We gave away the electric kiln. We have not touched clay since we packed up our studio. However, one day when we get our garage cleaned out, maybe we will set up a small hobby studio. I miss playing with wet clay (always my favorite part, although I do like it at the leather hard stage, as well. Not that fond of decorating/glazing). So, I Love Clay is in hibernation right now, but could appear again one day.

I Love Clay

Hi there,

It has been very busy around here with the family reunion over the weekend and then a visit by some cousins on Monday and an old friend on Tuesday, I've hardly had a chance to think about blogging. However, I didn't want to let too much time pass before moving on to my next fact: I love clay. As it turns out, though, I do not have much time or energy to post about this tonight. So, I leave you with some photos that I will narrate later.

It is now later. This head is my first project with clay. I took a clay sculpture class. We had a model who sat on a revolving stool encircled by about 10 students all modeling his head. The students would stay in one place and the man would move 1 quarter turn every 15 minutes. I really enjoyed this experience and thought my head looked quite a bit like the model.

After that, DH set up a studio in our garage with an electric potter's wheel that he had kept from 15-20 years earlier when he had worked as a potter and a newly purchased electric kiln. He started teaching me to throw pots on the wheel. I decided to take an entry level community college course. We learned to make pinch pots, slabs, and coils, and to begin to work on the wheel. Below is one of several assignments completed during that course: to make a set of goblets combining at least two of the techniques we had learned. These are made with pinch pots, extruded tubes, and coils. Hopefully, you can tell they are meant to resemble winter trees against a night sky!
One day, DH and I left our lives as we knew them and moved to a small town in Pennsylvania to open a pottery shop. The piggy bank below was a joint creation from that time. DH threw a vase shape (set pig on its bottom and remove all attachments and you will see the vase) and I added the piggy details and decoration. This one was called polka dot pig and I kept it for myself. We sold barnyard pig and blue sky pig.
Also, during this time, I tried my hand at sculpture again. This time I used a photo of a civil war re-enactor published in the paper to create this clay sculpture version. I called it "Rebel Yell" because that was the caption in the newspaper. I was secretly quite pleased with this sculpture. My father's comment, who is a Civil War buff, was that it didn't look like he was yelling. Oh well, at some point in your life you've got to give up trying to impress your father.

DH made the covered jar below in his past life (i.e. before we met) and it now sits in our dining room and contains his father's ashes.


Part of our pottery collection displayed in our house, consisting of both things we have made (mostly DH) and the work of others.

Interlude

I'm up to Fact #6, "I love clay" and I think it deserves some thought so I won't be posting about that for a few days--or anything else, either. My parents and their 2 dogs are coming to spend Friday and Saturday nights with us and we're all going to participate in a family reunion over the next 2 days. I've got to get busy cleaning the house and finishing up a few things at work. I'll catch up with you soon!

The Return of Rocket! (plus Facts 4&5)

Well, it's time for Fact #4 & 5 (I thought I would write about them together because they both seem to involve some kind of commitment phobia.), however, first, news about our wildlife! Rocket is back!! When DH got home tonight, he was refilling the bird feeders when he came across Rocket Girl near our crawl space door. Not wanting her to disappear before I got home, he put her in the pond:


When I got home, we took her out and placed her on the ground with some dried fruit (out of blueberries).
Here she eyes a dried cranberry:

And goes for it! (stepping on the white raisin in the process)

Rocket Girl update: DH says she is back in the pond of her own volition. We've got to put in a ramp!

Okay; just back from putting a piece of split firewood at one corner of the pond. I placed her on it--half in and half out. We'll check on her later.

On to changing jobs and changing homes. I feel like making this quick. Reasons I've changed jobs: to move up; to de-stress; to try being a full-time homemaker (if you know me, this is a laugh riot); to travel; to have more flexibility; to go to school. Thing that made this possible (beyond changing jobs to move up, which I mostly did before I got married): marrying a man who had the potential to make a good living and whose passion was to make me happy. Problem with this strategy--I'm never happy for long. Why he still loves me: I don't know!

Now, moving: my family did that a lot before my parents bought their first house when I was 12. They stayed put for a long time after that. When I met DH, I had just purchased a small town house in the suburbs and he was renting a town house closer in, which meant my mortgage payments were a lot less than his rent payments. Therefore, first move was from his place to mine. Next move to get a bigger townhouse. Next purchase to move closer to town; next purchase to move to a bigger house, then back to a smaller house to save money; then to a house in a small town to set up shop as potters (more on that under "I love clay"); next move to another big city for DH's job; next move to a small city for DH's job (because he hated the previous job). Final two moves: one to be closer to school during my graduate work (neither one of us can stand long commutes); one to the current house, close to both of our jobs and a house that we love.

Whew; that's it for tonight. Hope all are well.

Random Fact #3

Fact: I have 2 degrees in early childhood education, but never taught or worked directly with children.

So, when last you visited, I had received a bachelor's degree in early childhood education. On to a career in teaching, right? Wrong. . .After student teaching for the last semester of my senior year, I ended up hating teaching!! Now, I didn't go into this just willy nilly. When, during my sophomore year, I thought I might want to teach young children (1st grade was my inclination), I spent a week with my uncle who was an elementary school principal and assisted in one of the first grade classrooms. I loved it. So, what went wrong? I don't know. Student teaching was like one continuous test. Every day your work was being observed by the classroom teacher you were working with or your college professor or both. It was draining and nerve wracking. Keeping the kids focused was a challenge. I could feel my patience wear thin with two or three boys with problems (these were 7 year olds!). If I was losing my patience as a student teacher, how was I going to be a good "real" teacher? Also, after all the schooling, it was amazing how unprepared I felt to actually start a classroom. Here's your room; now what? Anyway, much of this can be chalked up to immaturity and the rest to the fact that I just did not have the personality characteristics to work with large groups of children all day long. I should have investigated becoming a reading teacher or something where I could work with students one-on-one or in small groups, but I was not smart enough to think of that then and just wanted to get out! So, I graduated and then went floundering around in the job market for years, mostly using the clerical skills I had learned in high school. I may try to remember all of the places I have worked and list those tomorrow, but for now, let's move along to the second degree.

I maintained my interest in child development and educational policy (and, along the way, child care policy) and one day, about 6 years ago, took a job with a small non-profit early childhood education-focused association. The job turned into conference planning as one of the main programs of this association was to hold a statewide education conference. If you've caught on to the theme of my life at this point, it will come as no surprise to find that I hate conference planning!! (Of course, I didn't know that at the time and didn't know the job would have such a narrow focus.) This is when I had a revelation. If I wanted to be involved in the early childhood education field in a more substantive way, I was going to have to get more education. So, off to graduate school I went with the goal of earning at least a master's degree. I found a nearby program that offered a Master of Arts in early childhood education. It was for people who were interested in policy and research and did not require participants to have had a teaching background. It was, in fact, geared toward people who wanted to get a doctorate in education, but who did not yet have a master's degree. I had decided that I wanted a job analyzing research and making recommendations for early care and education policy in the U.S. or evaluating education and care programs and policy. What I didn't know was whether or not I needed a Ph.D. to do that. Being the reluctant student that I am, I was always questioning whether or not I should go into the Ph.D. program.

To wrap this up, I received my M.A. in 2004 and continued with the Ph.D. program, always with a finger to the wind hoping that the right job would fall into my lap sooner rather than later. That happened in 2006 when the non-profit where I had worked 6 years earlier, and was then serving on the Board of, decided to hire a new Executive Director. Ta da! I have just finished one year as the Executive Director. I wonder how long this will last?

Random Fact #2

Fact: I graduated from high school a year early and entered college a year late.

The year was 1976. A friend of mine noted that one could get all of the high school credits then required for graduation by the end of the 11th grade. All you needed was permission from your parents. We were in the 11th grade and both hated school, so we decided to go this route. (A couple of years later, they raised the number of credit hours needed so this was no longer possible.) So, there I was, a high school graduate 2 weeks before my 17th birthday with absolutely no job experience and no idea what I was going to do. My father says that I had promised him that I would go to college if he permitted the early graduation. This may be true because I probably would have promised almost anything to get out of high school, but, in truth, the idea of college scared me to death and I had no intention of going. (Not to mention that my parents had not done one thing to prepare me for the possibility of going to college--did not insist that I take college prep courses in high school, did not suggest that we go visit colleges, did not insist that I take the SATs.)

So, after a summer of doing nothing, my mom helped me get a job doing odds and ends in a small office through a friend of hers at church. Eventually, I took the civil servant's exam in preparation for applying for a federal government job (we lived in Maryland and both of my parents worked for the government in D.C.). I had taken typing in high school, but was never very good at it, but my skills were enough to make me eligible for clerical jobs. I got one at the National Endowment for the Arts. I worked there for a year with the growing realization that I was probably going to have to screw up my courage and go to college because my brain was turning to mush. During this time I was seeing a psychiatrist (something I've done more often than not during my adult life). I remember going to an appointment and crying (sobbing) because I thought I would have to figure out how to make myself go. To get to the point, I ended up at a small liberal arts school that was part of the state higher education system. They took me without the SATs because I had a good grade point average from high school (never mind that the courses were things like typing, business math, and individualized reading) and I had taken the ACTs and scored well. They also welcomed me because at the ripe old age of 19, I was considered an "older returning student." Yes; I had so much life experience! I was shaking so badly when I went to check in the first day that I could barely sign my name for the key to my room. Well, I made it through and graduated after 4.5 years with a degree in early childhood education. More on that tomorrow!

8 Random Facts

Here are the rules for Eight Random Facts:
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Thanks to Possumlady for tagging me for 8 random facts (BTW, what's a "meme"?) I definitely do not know 8 other bloggers to tag; maybe not even one! (Anvilcloud, have you done this yet?) I invite anyone who reads my blog and has not done this yet to participate.

Here are my eight, but I think I will drag this out over the next 7 days and only post details about each fact on a different day. This will give me something to write about for a whole week!

1.) I was living in Cuba when President Kennedy was assassinated.

2.) I graduated a year early from high school and went to collage a year late.

3.) I have 2 degrees in early childhood education, but never taught or worked directly with children.

4.) I’ve never had the same job for more than 3 years.

5.) As an adult, I have never lived in the same house for more than 4 years.

6.) I love clay.

7.) I am an atheist.

8.) I’ve taken a boat ride on the Seine and seen the Eiffel Tower under a full moon.

Okay, so here's the scoop for #1: Having been born in 1959, I was 4 years old when President Kennedy was shot. My father was a teacher at the time and had volunteered (or signed up) to teach for 9 months on Guantanamo Base (I think it was at a school for the soldiers' children. As far as I know, he taught junior high English and geography. Maybe it was for the soldiers themselves; I'll have to ask him.) I don't remember learning that the President had been shot. (I wonder if I have any actual memories from that time or just memories of stories told to me.) My mother says my Dad came home from school to tell her. That's it. I just always thought it was an odd bit of trivia that we were living in Cuba at the time.

Other thoughts about that time: We had a huge old tree in the yard with a tire swing and iguanas that would run up the trunk. My mom shopped at a grocery store (on base?) where there was a big "pen" outside where you were supposed to leave your children while you were shopping. I hated that and would beg to go inside and be really quiet so no one would notice I was there. I went to nursery school in Cuba. My 2-year old brother and I found a coconut once. While my father tried to open it for us (not an easy thing to do and my father gets easily frustrated--a trait I have inherited) we jumped up and down wanting to taste it. When he finally got it open, he was so frustrated that he dumped the coconut juice on my head. He felt terribly guilty about it for years and I was frequently prompted by my mother to tell him that this incident had not ruined my life, which I dutifully did. However, I do think it left a little psychic scar! Also, there was a hurricane when we lived there. For the duration, we had to go stay with a neighbor that had a brick house (we lived in a wooden house--sounds like the 3 Little Pigs). While we were there she made what we came to call "Cuban Candy," which consists of evaporated milk and sugar cooked to a "soft ball" stage, then slightly cooled and rolled into little balls with butter and cinnamon on them. As Americans, always looking for a short cut, we have since always made this by pouring the boiling mixture onto a buttered plate and dousing with cinnamon. Then, cutting into squares and eating it after it cooled. Kind of like vanilla fudge. That's it for my recollections from Cuba. Tomorrow stories of high school and college.

I've Been Tagged!

So, Possumlady has "tagged" me to tell 8 facts (things?) about myself. This will require some thought, so that is not what I'll write about tonight.

Rocket (the box turtle) has not been seen for 36 hours. I knew that this would happen. Just when we named her and I started to feel invested in her welfare, she disappears! It happened once before and she appeared again, but I think she may have escaped the confines of our backyard and gone on to someone else's. However, I wonder if anyone else will feed her blueberries?

On to a totally different subject: Why do I like tv shows about horrible, despicable things? This particularly hit home last night after I watched "Criminal Intent" about a pedophile and realized that the episode of "The Closer" on Monday night was also about a pedophile. I'm addicted to Law and Order, both the original and SVU, which always has horrific crimes. Often, I have to look away when they show close-ups of gross stuff and yet I keep coming back. What is this phenomenon? Any ideas?

To end on a brighter note, here are some photos of our sunflowers and our tomatoes. We finally have gotten some much needed rain the last two evenings.

I didn't do this intentionally, but I thought this was an interesting silhouetting effect. (That's our neighbor's house in the background. Our neighbors who, after almost a year, we still do not know the names of. Sad commentary.)

You can see my relatively new Subaru Tribeca in the driveway.

Some ripe cherry tomatoes with some "regular" tomatoes that look promising.

NYT Article

I have about 4 things on my mind that I could blog about today. (I will probably forget what they are by tomorrow.) But, today, I want to post an article that was published in the New York Times in January. It just came across my desk today. Perhaps you read it when it was originally published or have seen articles like it. However, I thought it was a telling commentary about the Iraq war and the U.S. commitment to other priorities, so I will post it here today.

The New York Times, Business Section

Economix

What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

By DAVID LEONHARDT

Published: January 17, 2007

The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Graphic

Putting the Annual Cost of War in Perspective

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending.

The two best-known analyses of the war’s costs agree on this figure, but they diverge from there. Linda Bilmes, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and former Clinton administration adviser, put a total price tag of more than $2 trillion on the war. They include a number of indirect costs, like the economic stimulus that the war funds would have provided if they had been spent in this country.

Mr. Wallsten, who worked with Katrina Kosec, another economist, argues for a figure closer to $1 trillion in today’s dollars. My own estimate falls on the conservative side, largely because it focuses on the actual money that Americans would have been able to spend in the absence of a war. I didn’t even attempt to put a monetary value on the more than 3,000 American deaths in the war.

Besides the direct military spending, I’m including the gas tax that the war has effectively imposed on American families (to the benefit of oil-producing countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia). At the start of 2003, a barrel of oil was selling for $30. Since then, the average price has been about $50. Attributing even $5 of this difference to the conflict adds another $150 billion to the war’s price tag, Ms. Bilmes and Mr. Stiglitz say.

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war’s veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam’s, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, “It’s like a miniature Medicare.”

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Whatever number you use for the war’s total cost, it will tower over costs that normally seem prohibitive. Right now, including everything, the war is costing about $200 billion a year.

Treating heart disease and diabetes, by contrast, would probably cost about $50 billion a year. The remaining 9/11 Commission recommendations — held up in Congress partly because of their cost — might cost somewhat less. Universal preschool would be $35 billion. In Afghanistan, $10 billion could make a real difference. At the National Cancer Institute, annual budget is about $6 billion.

“This war has skewed our thinking about resources,” said Mr. Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative-leaning research group. “In the context of the war, $20 billion is nothing.”

As it happens, $20 billion is not a bad ballpark estimate for the added cost of Mr. Bush’s planned surge in troops. By itself, of course, that price tag doesn’t mean the surge is a bad idea. If it offers the best chance to stabilize Iraq, then it may well be the right option.

But the standard shouldn’t simply be whether a surge is better than the most popular alternative — a far-less-expensive political strategy that includes getting tough with the Iraqi government. The standard should be whether the surge would be better than the political strategy plus whatever else might be accomplished with the $20 billion.

This time, it would be nice to have that discussion before the troops reach Iraq.

leonhardt@nytimes.com

The Next Phase

It seems that DH and I are about to enter the next phase of our lives. He is ready to retire and I just started a new job a year ago. Actually, that was the plan. I was in school for 4 years prior to taking this job. I got my master's degree and was working on a doctorate when this job opportunity came along that was more attractive to me than 2 more years of school. So, the plan was, when I finished school and got a job, he could retire. Thankfully, for our finances, he does not really want to retire, just step down from his current stressful position, which he finds increasingly distasteful, and get something less demanding (which usually means something less lucrative, as well). So, we spent most of today looking at our finances, figuring our retirement income and talking about various job possibilities for him. It is scary to know how much, and how soon, he would like to leave his current position without knowing what he might do instead. However, he will turn 63 next month and he has been the major contributor to our finances during our marriage, so I whole heartedly support his decision to "downshift." For my part, I better go into work tomorrow with renewed vigor and commitment because it's my turn now to be the major breadwinner (although, if he finds another suitable position, we might not need to touch our retirement savings for another 3 years or so). Well, that's all that's fit to print for today!

Hodge Podge

I have been sinking into a funk since yesterday. Is it a coincidence that this coincides with my attempt to restart my "program?" I don't think so, because the day before I went back on my program, I was already feeling a little blah and edgy (for me, it is possible to feel blah and edgy at the same time). That day, I was eating whatever I wanted and that included a bit of wine and quite a few chocolate cupcakes. However, it was in the mindset of "going on a program tomorrow; better try to satisfy all my cravings now." So, perhaps I am a bit down because I really don't feel like thinking about what I'm going to eat and that I'm getting flabby and should be exercising.

DH and I took some days off of work and every day (which coincides with my program) he has wanted to go out to eat for lunch or breakfast or brunch. This is not like him. I have managed to be moderate in what I am eating despite this. Today after brunch, we went to Trader Joe's and I stocked up on my favorite gazpacho and some frozen cooked shrimp. Thaw out a few of those and toss them in the soup and you have a light, refreshing, and healthy meal (if you can call that a meal and not just an appetizer!). Anyway, enough of that. Certainly I must have something else to talk about.

I also may be a little down because I thought I might take advantage of this time to read a short book about the status of the profession that I am a member of (if it is a profession; there is a bit of controversy about that) and do some thinking and writing about that, but I just haven't felt like it and now tomorrow is Sunday, then Monday and I will be back to the daily grind, not having accomplished anything over the past 5 days. The thing is, doing nothing is really what I feel like doing! Thanks to DH's participation, I have managed to do 20 minutes of exercise for 3 days in a row. That's something!

After thinking he (she?) had left us, we continue to see the turtle around (I guess technically it is a tortoise because it does not have webbed feet and spends most of it's time on land.). DH has decided to name it "Rocket," because he does seem to get around. One minute he's there; the next minute he's not. (Unless he's in the pond from which he must be removed on occasion.) Our poor dogs--Harry and Nutmeg have been very reluctant to go out in the yard for their final pee pees in the evening due to being traumatized by the fireworks on the 4th. To reinforce their fear, there was another fireworks display somewhere nearby tonight for some reason!

What else? Nothing really. So, to make up for a boring, negative post, here are some photos of flowers in our yard this spring, before I was blogging and before this interminable heat and drought set in.






P.S., Poundage today 197.8

What Season Is It?

These are photos of our yard taken today, not last October! I'm very thankful that I do not live in Texas where they are having terrible floods, or in Boise, Idaho where it was supposed to be about 105 today, but it's plenty hot and dry here. These leaves seem to be from one tree--a tulip poplar on which about half of the leaves have turned yellow. We don't know if it is stressed by the lack of rain or if something else is wrong with it. It's a very large tree, which we would hate to lose because it helps sheild us from the neighbor's backyard. We live in a subdivision with houses all around, but because we have some tall, mature trees, we have a nice feeling of privacy from late spring to the middle of fall. DH called a tree service today to see if they had an arborist who could come out and take a look at it. We are still waiting for a return call.


Meanwhile, here is a photo of Harry enjoying the very brief snow we had this past winter. He looks pathetic, but we really didn't make him stay out there! With his hair, he enjoys cold weather. Poor guy; today we took him and Meg to the vet and the car was so hot; I felt so sorry for him. The vet is close so the car was just starting to cool down when we got there. We found out that Meg had gained 10 lbs. since January! She's not fat, but she's not as active as she used to be and she is looking a little thicker through the waist (it happens to all of us!).

"Mom, can I have a fish for dinner? They're supposed to be good for you!"

What to talk about today? First crop of cherry tomatos from the garden yesterday. Harry and Nutmeg go to the vet tomorrow for check-ups and Meg has gotten a bald spot on her leg that needs to be looked at. They were a little uncomfortable with the sounds of fireworks last night. Harry, who's got hip dysplasia and doesn't usually do this kind of thing, got up on the sofa with me and then later on the bed with DH. The turtle is still around. He's been roaming around the yard and taking the occasional dip in the pond. But, what really is on my mind today is weight, mine specifically. It's been going up and up and up since I was about 29, with 2 major weight loss successes mixed in there. I don't want to be as thin as I was in my 20s, but I would like to stabilize at a comfortable and healthy weight. I have never been able to maintain my weight--it's either going up or down, and mostly it's going up. In the spirit of true confessions behind the annonymity of my blog, I am about 5 foot 7 inches and current 199.6 lbs. Which is good, considering I had gotten up to over 200 and that's when I really get uncomfortable. I've decided today is the day I am going back on a "program."

About 7 weeks ago, I got a Jack Lalane juicer. This was inspired by reading about "cleansing juice fasts." I was obviously in some kind of mood the day I ordered it. Anyway, I decided I would try a 3-day juice fast. Well, I quickly found out that just juice had an ill effect on my blood sugar (this is based on how I felt, not any knowlege of a medical problem) and I started thinking, "Hey, isn't fiber supposed to be good for you? Why am I taking the fiber out of my fruits and vegetables?" So, this morphed into an effort to make healthier food choices and generally eat less. This translates into not continuing to eat when I am full, no wine, and no artificial sweets (love sweets; those are my downfall). At that time, I decided not to eat red meat or pork either. Just concentrate on fish and chicken. Well, I was doing pretty well and that is when I dipped down below 200 lbs for the first time in over a year. Then, PMDD hit!! Suddenly, I was out of control, eating a whole large chocolate bar with a bottle of red wine. Polishing off a chocolate cake at work (a half of a cake!), having wine when I got home from work, etc. I had just gotten excited because my clothes were fitting better and I could feel them getting tight again.

Well, the PMDD is over (for a couple of weeks) and I got up the nerve to weigh myself this morning as a precurser to getting on the program again. (A lot of people say forget the scale; what is important is how you feel and how your clothes fit. I've always found that there's a direct correlation between my weight and those things.) Anyway, I was relieved to find that I had not undone all of my previous efforts, having not gone beyond 200 lbs. yet, as stated earlier. So, I am going to renew my efforts and hope to even add a little exercise this time (ugh!). I will not make every post about my weight or "the program," but may put some stats at the end of each post to keep track of my progress and what I ate that day--if I feel like it. So, today I offer you (and me) some photos of my current shape in a dress that I had to buy recently to go to a dressy work affair. I actually wore stockings and high heels! Felt like a stuffed sausage (is there any other kind?). After trying on almost every party dress in the women's department at the store, I opted for this straight dress rather than the others, in which I looked like a linebacker in a tutu. Anyway, it is my hope that the next time I wear a dress, I will not look like a flower covered refrigerator or a line backer in a tutu. I'd like to stop being shocked when I see myself in photos!
Poundage: 199.6

From a Distance

Happy Independence Day. This photo was taken when I was on a trip to D.C. this past March. I am in a somber mood this July 4th. I am feeling the weight of the arrogance of the United States. Before I say anything else, I'm glad I was born in the U.S. and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else (maybe Canada, but I don't really know that much about Canada). I consider myself very fortunate. I grew up in the D.C. area and there is no more moving place to watch fireworks on the 4th of July than standing on the Washington Mall with the Capitol behind you and the Washington Monument in front as the backdrop for the fireworks.

However, when celebrating the "home of the free and the brave" my patriotism is sometimes tempered by thoughts of what we took away from the Native Americans to make this the U.S. and what we try to impose on others. We are really a bullying lot. We take what we want and find a way to justify it later.

Yesterday, I was listening to a Nanci Griffith CD on the way home and she sings a version of "From a Distance." As I sang along, I found myself getting choked up. "From a distance you look like my friend even though we are at war." I have been against invading Iraq since the beginning. I do not believe in forcing our beliefs on other peoples. We are (mostly) happy with our democracy and therefore, we assume others must want it, too. (I know there are a lot of other complex reasons for the war), but the reason we have Independence Day is because a majority of people who settled in the US. wanted independence, wanted a different form of government. That cannot be forced on people and succeed. It has to come from within. People must rise up and demand it. Seems to me in Iraq we went there and said you have a bad leader, we're sure you would want to do things our way. We'll get rid of your leader and then you'll be free to "have it our way." Any surprise it is not working? This is the kind of imposed government that our ancestors fought against. We want the freedom to create the kind of government we want and we're willing to fight and die for it. It just doesn't work if you impose it from the outside. So, I am sad. I believe we have made life worse for millions of Iraqi citizens and there is no chance we can repair the damage we've done. I respect our troops and cherish their belief in doing what their country needs of them, but I hate to see one more person die for a situation that I do not see improving whether we leave tomorrow or 10 years from now. So, Happy 4th of July. Yes; I'm glad to be an American, but look forward to a time when we have wiser leadership and that will only happen when we become wiser ourselves.

Dogs; you've gotta love 'em

I wanted to post a photo of Sandy, a dog in NC that stayed by a missing toddler all night and alerted searchers with a bark. They found the toddler sitting on a tree stump with his faithful companion by his side. However, I couldn't figure out how to post the photo from the newspaper. So, I've decided to use this opportunity to introduce you to our dogs, Nutmeg (Meg) and Harry. Guess which one is Harry and which is Nutmeg! They are both shelter dogs. Harry came to us after the shelter could no longer care for him. That was about 2 years ago. The vet said at the time that he could be anywhere between 4 and 7 years of age. He is clearly part Chow because his tongue is totally black. We went to the shelter and chose Meg about a year later. She was about 6 months at the time. I could tell lots of stories about them, but I need to go to bed now, so more later.