Let me preface this by saying I am not a smoker; never have been, never will be. I hate smoking. Smokers, even the ones I love, smell. A hug from a smoker is enough to make my nostrils twitch and wake up the desire to cough no matter how many antihistamines and steroids I have pumped into my body that day. I am all for putting whatever disgusting picture on the packs of cigarettes necessary to discourage anyone from ever picking up the filthy habit and inflicting it on the rest of us, with one caveat: those pictures make me sick. I HATE that commercial where the “poor” guy is wheezing and dying slowly from his lifelong disgusting habit. It makes me gag. That said, I’m wondering if similar dissuasion should be placed on some of the thing I am addicted to: things like chocolate.
I have been taking off the same ten pounds since New Year’s Day. I take off ten, put on 4, take off 2, put on three, take off 4… you get the picture. The culprit is chocolate. I cannot resist it. If it is in the house it is in my mouth. And once I start, I cannot stop. I cannot have just one piece. A bag of M&Ms is crack. CVS put the leftover Valentine’s Day candy on sale and I bought a bag of the cherry ones for $.99, took them home, opened them up, and before the day was out I was back at the store for four more bags. I hide them in the closet over the stove. I challenge myself not to open a bag for once they are open they are inhaled. Dark chocolate is my nemesis. I know, it is supposed to be good for you. Perhaps it is… for those people who can eat a serving. I eat a serving, carefully unwrapping the foil, rewrapping it and sliding it back into the paper sleeve. Then I go back, slide it out again, carefully unwrap the foil, get another serving, rewrap, go back again, tear open the sleeve and the foil and devour the rest of the bar. Candy should come with a warning similar to those on cigarettes. “This is your body on chocolate!” When you reach a certain age, even if you take off the weight, the skin just stays there, loose, a reminder of your debauchery. Once you stretch out, you can never again be the hard-body you were at 25. Some say motherhood might have something to do with it but I got my body back after birth. You do not get it back after chocolate.
So I will keep ‘dieting’. I will keep resisting only succumbing at weak moments. I will try not to buy it and will stay out of CVS after Easter. But just know, when all else fails, there is “Spanx”.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
March 8, 2012
It’s a miraculous day. March 8th, my granddaughter’s 3rd birthday, and I’m sitting on my deck, sleeveless, as temps rise through the sixties toward seventy this afternoon. Remember last March? I couldn’t find my deck until some time in late April.
I love the warmth of spring. Unlike the summer, we actually get some sunshine because the leaves on all these trees have yet to obliterate it. Yesterday in the late afternoon, another beautiful day, I went out on the front deck and looked up to find five of the biggest birds I’d ever seen up close perched on the tree that looms over the entire house. (I have the white stains on the wood to prove it.) I think they were turkey hawks (I looked it up; I would not know them on my own). One by one they lifted off with wingspans of three to four feet. My son said they were hunting. I said they were beautiful. It’s easy to see how they can carry off a cat.
And speaking of cats, where have all of our stray cats gone? There was an active ‘catch, neuter and release’ program this year, but if you were a cat, would you return to the scene of your abduction? I think not!
The other night, I’m sure I saw an Eastern Screech Owl zip across the path of my headlights as I came home. I found it particularly amazing because I had just done a reading of Mary Louise Wilson’s “Lost” in which an addled woman sees a “bird! A big, beige bird…” fly past her windshield. It turns out to be the purse she left on the roof of the car, but mine really was a bird! It flew into the woods at a low level, also hunting, I suppose.
Ah, spring… mating and hunting and longer hours of daylight. I have so much to do but, for now, I just want to sit here and breathe.
I love the warmth of spring. Unlike the summer, we actually get some sunshine because the leaves on all these trees have yet to obliterate it. Yesterday in the late afternoon, another beautiful day, I went out on the front deck and looked up to find five of the biggest birds I’d ever seen up close perched on the tree that looms over the entire house. (I have the white stains on the wood to prove it.) I think they were turkey hawks (I looked it up; I would not know them on my own). One by one they lifted off with wingspans of three to four feet. My son said they were hunting. I said they were beautiful. It’s easy to see how they can carry off a cat.
And speaking of cats, where have all of our stray cats gone? There was an active ‘catch, neuter and release’ program this year, but if you were a cat, would you return to the scene of your abduction? I think not!
The other night, I’m sure I saw an Eastern Screech Owl zip across the path of my headlights as I came home. I found it particularly amazing because I had just done a reading of Mary Louise Wilson’s “Lost” in which an addled woman sees a “bird! A big, beige bird…” fly past her windshield. It turns out to be the purse she left on the roof of the car, but mine really was a bird! It flew into the woods at a low level, also hunting, I suppose.
Ah, spring… mating and hunting and longer hours of daylight. I have so much to do but, for now, I just want to sit here and breathe.
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