It's no secret that any relationship has certain issues when it comes to housekeeping. There can be skirmishes on should the toilet paper roll over or under, forks in the dishwasher go tines up or tines down, and of course whether the dirty underwear stays on the floor or makes it into the hamper.
My marriage is no different, and each of us has our reasons for doing the things we do. When Dave and I were dating, I was determined to let him see the real me. I made no special effort to clean up when he was coming over. So he saw the piles of books I kept on the unused side of the bed, the many art projects in various stages of completion, the stack of folded laundry sitting on the dresser and the pile of laundry next to the dresser. I never claimed to be Suzy Homemaker, and since he never said anything, I figured he was okay with my level of controlled chaos.
I was wrong. You see Dave figured I would "grow up" after we were married, and I would suddenly morph into someone whose focus was keeping a neat and tidy home. I don't know if he pictured me wearing pearls or not but if he did, at least I could handle that part of the fantasy. What my poor husband didn't realize was the apartment I lived in was evidence of me all grown up.
As a kid, my room resembled something you would see in an episode of "Hoarders." Piles of stuff made up of clothes, toys, books, perhaps the wayward petrified peanut butter and jelly sandwich, engulfed my tiny living space. I did try to leave a path from the bed to door, but there was the occasional avalanche. Mom would often say she need to tie a rope to the door and around her waist just to find her way out.
When cleaning as a kid, bags (yes that is plural) of trash would come out of the room. But more often than not half way through the ordeal I would panic and just shove things under the bed. There were times I swore the bed was no longer sitting on the floor. It would take DAYS to clean my room. At wits end, my mother decided to be brave and come in to see what I was actually doing. There I sat, reading each note, magazine and whatnot before deciding where to put it. Dolls where dressed and hair brushed before being seated just so in their doll house. No wonder it took so long! So mom made the sacrifice and would sit on my bed, giving words of encouragement like, "FOCUS." "Throw it out." And my personal favorite, "EWWWW what was that?"
Time marched on and eventually I got the hang of organizing my space, well sort of anyway. See I am a "visual" person, what that means is I need to see my stuff other wise I forget I have it. The style I perfected for myself is piling. I pile things up. Now to the rest of the world, these are not neat tidy piles. But what the rest of the world does not realize is those bits of paper sticking out of my pile is actually my filing system. I know this may not work for the majority of people but it works for me.
Unfortunately my system, in fact my entire visual personality, doesn't work for my husband. So I frequently try to clean and organize our home. Now for those of you that don't know this, we have 5 kids ages 18 - 7, we have a golden retriever (oh the hair!), 2 parakeets (oh the feathers!) and 1 guinea pig. Suffice to say cleaning up our home is not for the faint of heart.
So its time to get serious. I start, as I am sure ANYONE would, at the computer. Looking up organizing and cleaning techniques leads me to some interesting data about cluttering and individuals with ADHD. After 10 or so minutes I move on, it is time to get serious and I will once I finish the quiz on hoarding personalities.
After the quiz, which not surprisingly, cast some suspicion my discomfort with throwing things away, I get started in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher of the plates I convinced my friend to give me when I found out she was going to donate them. Next I wipe down the table and chairs that came from a former neighbor, and 2 chairs I found on the side of the road. They are perfectly good chairs, or they will be once I refinish them.
On to the stack of papers that I have been meaning to put in the recycling bin, or should I say bins? For some reason I always for get to take the bins out to be recycled. As I am about to drop the papers in I spy a catalog I haven't looked at yet. So out comes the catalog and in go the papers. The catalog reminds me I haven't gotten the mail yet today, so I place it on the pile of magazines and such that I keep meaning to read so I can get rid of them.
On the way to the mailbox I notice there are spring flowers starting to peek out the dirt, so I stop to admire them. Remembering why I came outside I get the mail and look to see if anything fun came today. I add the mail to the growing stacks of paper that cover the half wall. Oh look a coffee coupon from Dunkin' Donuts!
The coupon reminds me that I left my coffee cup upstairs and I really want a sip. So up the steps I go, stopping in the girls' room to make sure their light are turn off. While I'm there I may as well open the curtains, and pick up some clothes, and toys. Now I have to remember why I came upstairs. Oh that's right the coffee!
In my room I go over to the bedside table and see my watch, which I had better put in the jewelry tray before it gets lost. I then make my bed, and put away a few of the clothes I left on the side of the tub. It's then that remember I had started laundry and had better empty the dryer.
In the laundry room downstairs, I see that I forgot to shut the lid to the washer so the clothes have just been soaking. I shut the lid and the washer moves on to the spin cycle and since it isn't ready to be emptied, I put the dryer on fluff thinking it will help keep the wrinkles out of the clothes. At this point I look around for my coffee again and trudge back upstairs for it. I'm now tired, it's practically lunch time so I come back to the kitchen, coffee in hand and make some lunch.
There I sit, eating lunch, reading a magazine while catching up with Facebook and possibly some email. When I hear the washer stop I know my time is up and I try desperately to remember where I left off with my cleaning. There have been days that my husband comes home and can list everything I worked on that day. When I ask him how he can possibly know all that he just smiles and says, "I just follow the trail half finished tasks and it tells me everything I need to know."
There you have it! So if you are dating and see many piles or unusual "collections" in your significant other's space, don't say I never told you!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Trying To Make Light Of A Heavy Subject
I make it no secret that I am trying to lose weight by eating right and exercising. Actually, it is hard for me to remember a time when I haven't been dealing with my weight in one way or another. This time is different in that I have a different motivation. Before I would say I want to be healthier, when deep down I really wanted to look better. Now, both older and wiser, I have a focus on health in the physical and spiritual aspects of my life.
Now let me just say that I grew up in a time when childhood obesity was rare, unlike the epidemic it is today. I was that rare plump kid and I definitely knew it. On the odd occasion I forgot about my looks, I was frequently reminded by my peers, or the very sparse selection of clothes available to round girls like me. Anyone else remember the tiny department for "hefty" girls called the Lemon Frog? The name is somehow burned into my mind. Was it because of the sigma of being a "lemon" or maybe the fact that girls my size were frogs, not princesses?
I didn't date much in my teens. Of course I believed it was because I was the chubby girl. Seriously, who would want to be seen with me? My mom always said it was because the boys were intimidated, but I would roll my eyes telling her she was my mom and had to say that stuff. I became a compulsive dieter, and along with that came other odd compulsions. For one, I couldn't let anyone see me chew. Lunches were spent sneaking food into my mouth and covering the lower part of my face. If by some chance someone did see me eat it had to be something healthy for fear that person would confront me with "Lisa, french fries are the LAST thing you need to be eating." If I ate too much I would panic and force myself to throw-up.
Exercise was a whole other matter. I hated "exercise" and still do. Remember back then there was no such thing as sport bras, and busty girls like me took their lives in their hands just trying to jog the track. I should also mention that our sadistic school system made the girls wear a GYM SUIT. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! This thing was a one piece number that combined shorts that looked more like bloomers, with a longer top that was supposed to blouse a bit. It zipped up the front and had a bit of elastic in the waist. Trust me, I was not inspired to exercise in this thing. As you ran, the shorts would slide down, the zipper didn't like to stay in place, so the days we had track were spent in a half jog/half walk while I tugged at my shorts, adjusted my zipper, and tried not to give myself a black eye! It was no wonder I was thrilled to have fractured my ankle one year just because I got out of gym class.
Back then, exercise was what you did when you played sports, (I didn't) or did aerobics, (I did but not well) or lifted weights, (I did that but stopped for fear of becoming to big or masculine). Dance, which I loved, didn't count, nor did colorguard (yes I was an indoor colorguard person), and I rode my beloved Huffy Santa Fe 10 speed bike every where, at least I did, before I started driving. After I started driving, I regularly got my exercise by pushing my car through intersections when it would stall out. Through all of this I had people around me to point out that I was "pleasingly plump." True story, I heard those very words spoken as I walked out of the lunchroom in Jr high school. Two boys were behind me, and I heard one say, "She's not fat, she's pleasingly plump." Needless to say my heart sank because the focus, in my mind, was on the "plump" NOT the "pleasingly" part!
Enough reminiscing. Through the years, I have been up and down the scale in my own virtuoso of weight loss. But as I said, it was always more about fighting the demons that haunted me about my looks. If I could finally win the battle, I would suddenly find, not only true love, but true happiness and have the successful life I always dreamed of. What a lie! I know that now. And I am glad I finally got it through my head...at least I thought I got it through that skull of mine.
Now I am not so sure. I truly enjoy healthy foods. My husband marvels at my ability to contentedly munch on salad with tons of veggies and just a bit of oil and vinegar. Fresh fruit sends me over the moon.I admit I have a weakness for carbs but even then I want whole grain high fiber bread, not white. My kids even refer to cereal in terms of "Mommy Cereal" vs "Kid Cereal." These days "exercise" includes things like walking, dancing, aerobics done in the pool, and video games on Wii. But the scars of the past remain and I find I am even more aware of perceived teasing.
Take today for example, I was dancing with my one daughter for a minute. She did a move she saw on Zumba where she shakes her rump very quickly. I did it too and she started smirking. I stopped dancing and sat down, crushed because I was sure she was looking at my "fat jiggling." Later, I actually did my Wii Zumba workout. My husband was in the room, working from home, and I breathlessly commented, " If this is medium intensity I can't imagine what high intensity would be like."
His response? "I wouldn't be able to work, with my laptop bouncing off my lap." I can only imagine what my look conveyed because he quickly continued, " That is, with anyone, even the girls...." Our girls are small but honestly, his save just didn't cut it. Really, all this time and I am still dealing with the reminders that I don't fit the physical ideal in my head.
So where do I go with all this? Well for one thing, I am not going dwell on it. Yes, yes I know that blogging about it may, in fact, appear to be dwelling on it. But here is the difference, the things that happened in the past were things I never spoke of. I held on to them in my head, and there they stayed for decades. Whenever I needed to indulge self flagellation, I went to that source. Now I am determined to stay in the here and now. I want to feel the feelings, not stuff them down with food or other self destructive behaviors.
So, yes it is no secret that I am trying to improve my health, and while it may not show on the outside, I am improving on the inside.
Don't Say I Never Told You...
Now let me just say that I grew up in a time when childhood obesity was rare, unlike the epidemic it is today. I was that rare plump kid and I definitely knew it. On the odd occasion I forgot about my looks, I was frequently reminded by my peers, or the very sparse selection of clothes available to round girls like me. Anyone else remember the tiny department for "hefty" girls called the Lemon Frog? The name is somehow burned into my mind. Was it because of the sigma of being a "lemon" or maybe the fact that girls my size were frogs, not princesses?
I didn't date much in my teens. Of course I believed it was because I was the chubby girl. Seriously, who would want to be seen with me? My mom always said it was because the boys were intimidated, but I would roll my eyes telling her she was my mom and had to say that stuff. I became a compulsive dieter, and along with that came other odd compulsions. For one, I couldn't let anyone see me chew. Lunches were spent sneaking food into my mouth and covering the lower part of my face. If by some chance someone did see me eat it had to be something healthy for fear that person would confront me with "Lisa, french fries are the LAST thing you need to be eating." If I ate too much I would panic and force myself to throw-up.
Exercise was a whole other matter. I hated "exercise" and still do. Remember back then there was no such thing as sport bras, and busty girls like me took their lives in their hands just trying to jog the track. I should also mention that our sadistic school system made the girls wear a GYM SUIT. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! This thing was a one piece number that combined shorts that looked more like bloomers, with a longer top that was supposed to blouse a bit. It zipped up the front and had a bit of elastic in the waist. Trust me, I was not inspired to exercise in this thing. As you ran, the shorts would slide down, the zipper didn't like to stay in place, so the days we had track were spent in a half jog/half walk while I tugged at my shorts, adjusted my zipper, and tried not to give myself a black eye! It was no wonder I was thrilled to have fractured my ankle one year just because I got out of gym class.
Back then, exercise was what you did when you played sports, (I didn't) or did aerobics, (I did but not well) or lifted weights, (I did that but stopped for fear of becoming to big or masculine). Dance, which I loved, didn't count, nor did colorguard (yes I was an indoor colorguard person), and I rode my beloved Huffy Santa Fe 10 speed bike every where, at least I did, before I started driving. After I started driving, I regularly got my exercise by pushing my car through intersections when it would stall out. Through all of this I had people around me to point out that I was "pleasingly plump." True story, I heard those very words spoken as I walked out of the lunchroom in Jr high school. Two boys were behind me, and I heard one say, "She's not fat, she's pleasingly plump." Needless to say my heart sank because the focus, in my mind, was on the "plump" NOT the "pleasingly" part!
Enough reminiscing. Through the years, I have been up and down the scale in my own virtuoso of weight loss. But as I said, it was always more about fighting the demons that haunted me about my looks. If I could finally win the battle, I would suddenly find, not only true love, but true happiness and have the successful life I always dreamed of. What a lie! I know that now. And I am glad I finally got it through my head...at least I thought I got it through that skull of mine.
Now I am not so sure. I truly enjoy healthy foods. My husband marvels at my ability to contentedly munch on salad with tons of veggies and just a bit of oil and vinegar. Fresh fruit sends me over the moon.I admit I have a weakness for carbs but even then I want whole grain high fiber bread, not white. My kids even refer to cereal in terms of "Mommy Cereal" vs "Kid Cereal." These days "exercise" includes things like walking, dancing, aerobics done in the pool, and video games on Wii. But the scars of the past remain and I find I am even more aware of perceived teasing.
Take today for example, I was dancing with my one daughter for a minute. She did a move she saw on Zumba where she shakes her rump very quickly. I did it too and she started smirking. I stopped dancing and sat down, crushed because I was sure she was looking at my "fat jiggling." Later, I actually did my Wii Zumba workout. My husband was in the room, working from home, and I breathlessly commented, " If this is medium intensity I can't imagine what high intensity would be like."
His response? "I wouldn't be able to work, with my laptop bouncing off my lap." I can only imagine what my look conveyed because he quickly continued, " That is, with anyone, even the girls...." Our girls are small but honestly, his save just didn't cut it. Really, all this time and I am still dealing with the reminders that I don't fit the physical ideal in my head.
So where do I go with all this? Well for one thing, I am not going dwell on it. Yes, yes I know that blogging about it may, in fact, appear to be dwelling on it. But here is the difference, the things that happened in the past were things I never spoke of. I held on to them in my head, and there they stayed for decades. Whenever I needed to indulge self flagellation, I went to that source. Now I am determined to stay in the here and now. I want to feel the feelings, not stuff them down with food or other self destructive behaviors.
So, yes it is no secret that I am trying to improve my health, and while it may not show on the outside, I am improving on the inside.
Don't Say I Never Told You...
Friday, February 3, 2012
Shakin What My Momma Gave Me
It's no secret that fat is a big issue these days. From how much you eat of it, to how much you have on your body and where that body stores it, fat is never far from our minds. There is a ton of information out there on what to eat, what not to eat, and what is eating you. On top of that is the exercise factor, complicating everything.
So I am trying to figure it all out, and not making too much progress, well at least in the sense that I look the same as I ever did. But I keep reminding myself it isn't about how I look, it's how I feel. YEAH RIGHT! I wish I could honestly say it's all about the health but in reality, who doesn't want to look great too?
Given the ability to be this size and in perfect health would that be enough? Sadly, no, I am greedy I want the health AND I want to look great in a swimsuit. I know in my mind that size is no indicator of health, but in my heart, I see the number on the scale, or the measuring tape, or even the clothing label as badge of achievement. I want to be a high achiever but am I willing to do what it takes to get there?
This year I am taking the baby step approach to fitness. What I mean is, making little changes and working them into my life until they are habitual before moving on to the next change. In the past, I wouldbe trying to do it all, workout hard for an hour a day, eat salads and restrict my food. It never lasts. Soon into the program I would start looking at my friends, and they would resemble cheeseburgers. At least I got some exercise chasing them around!
So the baby step I am working on now is working activity I enjoy into my life. That means walking, dancing and if I can find my way into a warm pool, I will be a very happy girl. I am also eating more food that I actually enjoy. Now here is a point of frustration for me, I actually enjoy eating healthy foods. I don't enjoy fried greasy food, I don't crave fast foods. My down fall is carbs, and yes, I have a dessert fetish. So I am eating my healthy food, and enjoying it. Plus, I am learning about healthy desserts so I can have my cake and eat it too (so to speak).
Will it all work? Only time will tell, but I intend to give it my best shot. And if you should see me somewhere shakin' what my Momma gave me, don't call 911. Just jump in and join me because let's face it, babies don't learn to to step on their own. Baby steps are more fun with a friend, and I promise not to chase you around with a knife and fork in my hand.
Don't say I never told you.
So I am trying to figure it all out, and not making too much progress, well at least in the sense that I look the same as I ever did. But I keep reminding myself it isn't about how I look, it's how I feel. YEAH RIGHT! I wish I could honestly say it's all about the health but in reality, who doesn't want to look great too?
Given the ability to be this size and in perfect health would that be enough? Sadly, no, I am greedy I want the health AND I want to look great in a swimsuit. I know in my mind that size is no indicator of health, but in my heart, I see the number on the scale, or the measuring tape, or even the clothing label as badge of achievement. I want to be a high achiever but am I willing to do what it takes to get there?
This year I am taking the baby step approach to fitness. What I mean is, making little changes and working them into my life until they are habitual before moving on to the next change. In the past, I wouldbe trying to do it all, workout hard for an hour a day, eat salads and restrict my food. It never lasts. Soon into the program I would start looking at my friends, and they would resemble cheeseburgers. At least I got some exercise chasing them around!
So the baby step I am working on now is working activity I enjoy into my life. That means walking, dancing and if I can find my way into a warm pool, I will be a very happy girl. I am also eating more food that I actually enjoy. Now here is a point of frustration for me, I actually enjoy eating healthy foods. I don't enjoy fried greasy food, I don't crave fast foods. My down fall is carbs, and yes, I have a dessert fetish. So I am eating my healthy food, and enjoying it. Plus, I am learning about healthy desserts so I can have my cake and eat it too (so to speak).
Will it all work? Only time will tell, but I intend to give it my best shot. And if you should see me somewhere shakin' what my Momma gave me, don't call 911. Just jump in and join me because let's face it, babies don't learn to to step on their own. Baby steps are more fun with a friend, and I promise not to chase you around with a knife and fork in my hand.
Don't say I never told you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)