The B.S. of Busy

I am so busy.

I teach college, which means that I deal with a lot of students every semester, and each student has his or her particular issues.  I am expected to work with and past these issues.  This makes me busy.

I teach writing, which means that I have many, many essays to grade over the course of the year.  Each essay presents its own set of problems that I have to not only explain but also suggest ways to work though and then assign a grade to it.  Oh, and I often let the students rewrite the essays, and then I have to grade them again.  This makes me busy.

I have a family.  If you have a family, you know how much busier that makes me. If you don't have a family, you're not as busy as me, so don't even try to say that you are.  I was without a husband until I was 32 and without a kid until I was 35, so I remember very well what it was like to not have a husband or a child, and I thought I was busy then, but I definitely wasn't, so no thank you, you singles.

Did I mention that I have other obligations at work?  Did I mention that I work out to take care of my body and my mind?  Did I mention that I'm in two bands?  Did I mention that I have to read at least a half hour before I go to sleep each night so I'm able to slow my mind down enough to be able to drift off?  Did I mention that I am susceptible to anxiety?  Did I mention that I am a people-pleaser and a perfectionist who has to fight against the tendency to believe that I am not only NOT doing enough, but I'm also not doing it WELL enough?

I am SO busy, and SO WHAT?

There's this association we make with the word busy.  We connect it with the word stress.  If we're busy, we must be stressed, and we'd be less stressed if we weren't so busy.

I'm going to throw down the "Are you kidding me??" gauntlet in two ways.

First, being busy is doing life.  We do the things we do because they are choices.  I work, so that takes time out of my day.  I must work, yes, but I chose to teach English, and if I wasn't grading essays, I'd be doing charting as a nurse or running through quality control protocol on a product.  The nature of work is that there is work involved.  People get real philosophical about making work their passion or finding meaning in the work they do.  I'm not saying that's not possible or that it's not good to find your work to be meaningful.  What I do reject, though, is when we are somehow surprised that when we're at work, we're working, meaning that we're busy.  That's what work should be, right?

And what about other aspects of life that don't include work?  These things are about choices.  I chose to have a family.  I choose to be in bands.  If I get down on myself because I think I'm not doing enough, that's something I am doing to myself.

Of course, there are things that happen that are out of our control.  My kid gets sick and needs to stay home.  I have an anxiety attack.  My car breaks down.  Yes, I get stressed about that stuff because I prefer to be in control, but I have to reframe it.  I take care of my kid.  I take care of myself.  I get the car into the shop.  I do what needs to be done because that's what living is.

Now, let me say that I live a comfortable existence with a good job, a home, a car, and a healthy family.  If you do not have those things, I'm not talking to you.  Don't get offended.  I'm talking about people like me who, when complaining about not being able to decide between going to the Olive Garden or Applebee's for lunch, someone should maybe hit us upside the head with the ubiquitous "First-World Problems!" hashtag.  It's not tough on the streets for us, and we need to stop conflating "busy" with "stress."

And that's another thing.  I get more stressed when I'm NOT busy.  I like having things to do.  I am akin to a toddler: we enjoy structured time.  It helps us be productive.  I know this because I am a teacher who has had summers off in the past.  These summers have led to:

1. One summer searching for and ultimately buying both a house and a dog.
2. One summer searching for and ultimately dating the man I ended up marrying.
3. One summer having a total meltdown because, I honestly believe (in part) I didn't have enough structured activity keeping me busy and because I am, at my heart, lazy, all my plans that depended on keeping myself accountable went out the window.

People think that teachers have it so easy with our summers "off."  No.  First, we spend summers getting ready for the school year, and second, we do the stuff that we can't otherwise do when school is in session, like make major life decisions or finally have a minor mental breakdown that made me understand what I need to do to take care of myself.  Now, I either teach during the summer or I have a specific schedule of events I follow that get me out of the house and participating in life (or, as most would say, BUSY).  

So I would like it if folks could let go of the idea that busy equals stress.  It creates a hostile environment regarding getting work done, and it's also not true for many people like myself.  If I feel like I'm getting stressed because of all the choices I've made that have led up to the stress, I don't make everyone else miserable by talking about how so very insanely busy I am.  

I make a different choice because, dammit, I can, and so can most of us.  Maybe if we lived in a society where there was no audience for people who want to cry about how stressed they are because of how busy they are because of the choices they've made, they might make better choices to begin with.  Seriously.  If I worked in a place where it was actively discouraged to complain about busy-ness, maybe there would be less stress and more, well, just doing things.  So instead of me asking someone how they're doing, instead of saying, "Oh my god, I'm just so busy!  I'm up to my eyeballs!" they'd say, "I'm doing the stuff of work," and I'd say, "Cool; me too," and maybe that would lead to more conversations about baseball, how to best serve students, or even leave room for complaining about stuff that might actually be solved because of the complaining.  Complaining about being busy is not useful.  Everyone else is also busy, and it doesn't make the work get done.  So, just do work.  Save your feelings for stuff that can benefit from them.  

My Little Pony

There's a scene in a Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Elaine go to a 50th anniversary dinner for a distant relative of his.  Over the course of the dinner, the group starts talking about horses, and the conversation quickly turns to ponies, at which time Jerry states that he hated anyone who had a pony when they were growing up.  Of course, the script was written by the king of foot-in-mouth-remarks, Larry David, and the guest of honor at the party, Manya, is insulted:  "When I was a little girl in Poland, we all had ponies. My sister had pony, my cousin had pony... So, what's wrong with that?" (credit to "The Pony Remark" on Wikipedia).  She ends up getting so upset that she leaves the table...and dies soon thereafter, because Larry David needs to take it to the extreme.

It's a cliche, these kids who have ponies.  Probably every little girl (and probably lots of little boys, too) has had the fleeting thought that it would be awesome to have a pony. I wonder how many times the mall Santa has heard this request from a little girl, who really maybe just wants a realistic-looking pony stuffed animal, but decides that it's Santa, so what the hell, go for broke.  I'm not sure if kids these days are into asking for unrealistic animals for Christmas; I should ask my five- and six-year-old nieces.  My brother might be irked for planting the seed, but that's what he gets for sitting on me when I was little and playing typewriter on my chest.

Girls were obviously into Barbies when I was growing up in the 80's, but there were much cooler toys to be had.  I experienced the advent of Care Bears and Pound Puppies and Purries.  I was generally obsessed with stuffed animals, but my favorite toys of all were My Little Ponies.  Those pastel horses with their soft plastic bodies and neon hair and tattooed rumps were the best, man.  One Christmas I got the My Little Pony castle which nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.  My friends loved My Little Ponies, too, so we would get together and create a whole world of these things, getting them into dangerous and/or amorous situations, all accompanied by high-pitched whinnying.  At home, though, this was a lone pursuit as my older brother and cousin were much more into Transformers, He-Man, and Star Wars.  I'd get in on that, too, but always got stuck with Battle Cat while my brother got Optimus Prime (we mixed all the toys together in a game called "Secret Wars").  No, I could never convince the boys to play My Little Ponies with me, the sexist jerks.

We also lived sort of out in the country, meaning we had land, but we also had neighbors all around us.  Country-Suburban?  Subountry?  Anyway, we had enough land behind our house to build a big enclosure for, that's right, horses.  My mom, hearkening back to her own childhood where she lived in the legit country and had horses, bought a big brown Quarterhorse-mix named Brandy and, not long after, got another, slightly smaller brown horse with a black mane and tail named Rusty for my brother to ride.  Despite my love for the My Little Ponies, Brandy and Rusty were terrifying.  I never wanted to ride them, preferring instead to pet their ears and feed them carrots until one time Brandy inadvertently nipped my hand and I then avoided him.

I had a job with the horses, and that was to collect strings of twine from the ground that had been cut from the bales of hay.  I'd get paid a nickel a string, and one time, I fibbed and paid myself an extra twenty-five cents (my parents, not really giving a crap, took my word on whatever I said I picked up).  So I'd do that job, but I never reaped any real rewards from having the horses.  In fact, on several occasions, they'd get loose, which would unleash a flurry of frantic chasing and general melee that left me feeling anxious and exhausted.

My main fear of the horses was how tall they were.  I was afraid of heights ever since I fell down a flight of stairs as a toddler and my dad, hearing the bumping and rushing to catch me, broke my fall enough so I didn't crack my head open on the basement floor but didn't actually totally prevent me from hitting it.  I never let him pick me up after that, and heights freaked me out.  Despite this, I was jealous of the horses and that my fearless older brother would go ride with my mom and I was left at home. It stood to reason that I would perhaps like a horse, but maybe one that wasn't so tall.

So, a pony.

As the fates would have it, my brother had a friend who had just the pony, a small gray mare named Flicka.  I met Flicka and loved her, and my mother, happy to grant my wish, bought her for me.  I have to kind of blame her, though, for what happened next as she didn't take the most logical first step: have me ride Flicka before she bought her.

I was thrilled; upon Flicka's arrival, I busted out the curry comb and gave her a good brush down, fed her some hay and water, and was ready to ride. Mom saddled her up and got me up there, and as we ambled through the empty lot next to our house, the saddle slipped over to the side and I fell, very slowly, off my pony, reliving a primal trauma of the stairs incident, but in slow motion.

Friends, that was it for me.  I was fine, of course, and it was no fault of Flicka's, but I did NOT get back on that horse.  We walked her back and I told my mom and myself that I needed to gather my wits and we'd try again the next day.

Of course, the next day never came.  Well, it literally did, but my days of horse riding were over after the slow-motion slide-off of Flicka.  My mom would encourage me, my brother would tease me (my dad said nothing--he took a hard pass on anything having to do with these beasts, being raised in a house with a father who said all animals belonged in the barn), but get back on that pony I would not.  I don't know how long we kept Flicka, but it must not have been for more than a couple of months before she was sold, and I didn't even feel bad about it.  I had more affection for my hermit crab.

I hadn't been on the back of a horse since Flicka.  Why tempt fate?  I don't need a horse to get around; plus, it's not like I've had convenient access to one...until I did.  As a grown adult finally moving back to my hometown, I hooked back up with some friends from high school, notably a gal who was still obsessed with horses long after I moved on from My Little Ponies and started wearing men's polyester shirts and thinking it was cool to simultaneously smoke clove cigarettes and eat pork fried rice out of the carton.  This friend made her obsession her living, managing a horse barn in our little hometown.  She lived right upstairs from the stables, so when we'd get together, we met the horses.  I decided that it would be a fun activity for my boyfriend and I to do together, to ride horses, and set a date.

I wish there was a hilarious-in-hindsight story to tell about my adult experience of horse riding because that would make for a great climax here, but I'm afraid it was simply fine.  I wasn't bucked off, and I didn't experience a sense of revelation, having made it past a childhood trauma.  It was fun, though, kind of like being on vacation and riding a jet ski for the first time might be fun, but my mind did not get blown.  I didn't feel like a badass, but I did feel like a woman on a horse who wasn't freaked out by it.  I gave it a go, kind of like when I gave oil painting Bob Ross-style a go, but I didn't fool myself into thinking I was going to then buy a set of paints.  Sometimes you do things just to say you've done them, period.  It's taken me growing up to realize that it doesn't mean the next logical step is a Flicka in my backyard.

I'll Wave YOU Through...

I am fifteen, behind the wheel of a Ford Taurus with a driving instructor next to me.  He's guiding me through our busy downtown, telling me to take wrong turns down one-way streets to test my awareness. I do well, only getting fooled for a second one time.  My hands are death-gripping at 10 and 2, my back ramrod straight.  We practice parallel parking, and then he guides me back on the freeway, encouraging me to go the 65-mile-per-hour speed limit.  I feel like I'm flying and have the most excruciating tension headache when I get home.

When I'm sixteen, it takes me two tries to get my license.  The first time, I would have passed with a 95 but I hit one of the poles parallel parking: an instant fail.  The second time, I passed with an 80 and have never felt happier to earn a low B.  Besides a few deer hits and an epic snowstorm navigation incident, driving has ranged from a pleasure to...nothing, kind of like walking.  I am a good and safe driver.  I go a bit above the speed limit, but never at unsafe speeds.  I do not text while the car is in motion.  I get from point A to point B.

My husband, however, would claim that I have a bit of the road rage.  I find this preposterous.  Road rage is when people flip the bird or even get out of their cars to belly buck each other in intersections.  Yes, there have been times when I've spoken loudly to myself about what some idiot is doing that is endangering me, my family, and my vehicle with their stupid brain and stupid vehicle, but I wouldn't call that rage.  I would call that social commentary.

One thing, however, really chaps my hide, and it's a bummer because the perpetrator is actually trying to be nice, which is a double-whammy: it's irritating AND I'm a jerk because I find it irritating.  Allow me to expound.

Let's say I'm approaching a four-way stop at the time time another car is to my right.  It's just me and this other car, and we get to the stop signs at the same time.  What do you do??  Easy.  If you get there at the same time, the car on the right goes first.  Why?  Because the Driving Gods say so.  Don't be a pain in the ass about it; that's just how it is.  

Who doesn't know this rule?  I know this rule, and I don't even pay attention to these kinds of things.  I don't even know the difference between a sweet potato and a yam, but I know that the person on the right has the right-of-way in an arriving-at-the-four-way-stop-at-the-same-time scenario.  So if a village idiot like myself knows this rule, I get a little irritated when others don't.  

Here's what happens that makes me feel crazy: the driver on the right waves at me.  He's saying, "Go ahead.  Go ahead through, person on the left."  

I hate that, you guys.  First, no.  This isn't polite society.  This is the road, where homo erecti are manipulating molded tons of steel and plastic at high speeds on four skids of rubber.  Because of this, and second, there are rules that should be followed. Otherwise, we become selfish assholes.  Just look at Black Friday at Walmart when they're selling 60-inch flat screen TVs for 250 bucks.  A guy DIED from being trampled because people couldn't wait to get that cheap TV, yo.  Even in super-polite northern Minnesota, we are jerks without rules.  Third, it actually takes more time to do this silly waving than if the person simply went because they have the right of way.  It's 7:56 in the morning, sir!  I know you have to be to work at 8:00; why are you wasting time with the parade princess wave??

Most of the time, if I get waved through, I'll go, momentarily disoriented (because this makes no sense!), replaced quickly by frustration.  I refuse, however, to wave back.  That would make me complicit in the game, as though I somehow approve of these rule-bending shenanigans.  Do I feel a little guilty for not matching niceness for niceness?  You bet your sweet ass I do.  Mama didn't raise no ingrate.  But I simply cannot encourage the other person creating MORE confusion for others in the future by acting happy about their "generosity" now.  If the person can see my face, they'll likely register irritation and think to himself, Hmm.  That woman seems irritated.  Perhaps I should have followed the civilized rules of the road and gone first.  Or, he thinks to himself, Jerk.

Sometimes I get so irritated I refuse to go.  The person will wave, and I will point him and then sweep my finger in the path that he should follow with his car, clearly saying, "No. You. GO."  They usually do, and I watch with a shaking head as they make their way through the intersection.

There have been times when I've done that, and they don't go, instead waving again.  God forgive me, I have, at times, taken my hands off the wheel and crossed my arms in front of me, defiant in what is a life-altering situation here in my first world of a full belly and several hundred dollar Frye boots.  Sometimes, another driver will show up at the intersection, and now there are spectators to the showdown.  The waving driver will see my crossed arms and will know that 1) I'm a piece of work and 2) I'm not going, so they'd better because this is getting stupid.  In response, I think, You already made it stupid, buddy.

Long story short, I do not have road rage.  I do, however, have a pet peeve that involves following the rules when at four-way stops.  Oh, and signaling.  Also, when people pull out into the middle turn lane to then merge into traffic because it scares the crap out of me.  And those LED headlights that are only a notch dimmer than the sun on a cloudless day.

Don't get me started on people who try the wave-through when they arrive first at the four-way stop.  Just don't. 

For the Community

Election day, 3 p.m.  I am sitting in my early American literature course.  We've just had a guest speaker leave; he's an incredibly powerful advocate for equality in our city and is a former colleague and friend of mine.  He's also a large, African-American guy with an infectious smile who embodies kindness.  He was there to talk about the legacy of slavery in our country and, more to the point, our city, the students just having finished reading Frederick Douglass's powerful autobiographical Narrative of the Life of an American Slave.

During our conversation, the issue of Black Lives Matter arose.  Our guest discussed the idea that it's truly about all lives mattering.  As I was half-expecting, a white student described a situation in which he went to a party in southern Iowa where he and his friend were the only white people there.  He cleaned up the story for class, but afterwards, he told me that it was worse: he and his friend felt threatened to the point of near physical violence until they left.  Back in class, though, he made his point: can't black people be just as racist as white people?  I looked at our guest and imagined the inner turmoil he must have been feeling.  As a person who refuses to play poker mostly because I don't have the face for it, I know my feelings were clear for anyone who looked at me.  There's a difference between racism and prejudice! were my first thoughts.  Our guest, however, still radiated kindness as he said, simply, "I'm very sorry that you had to go through that experience.  It sounds scary."  Ah, perspective.  This student wasn't wrong; his experience was his experience, and our guest acknowledged that.  Another student jumped in with an experience she had and we moved on.

After he left, I thought about his response as we continued our conversation, and, though no one talked overtly about the election (and I didn't encourage it, not feeling ready to put on an unbiased mask), one student, a woman in her 30's, said, "You know, we can talk about this stuff, but what difference does my one voice make?"

I looked around and saw other people nodding, and I said, "You know what?  NO.  I patently reject that sentiment."  The students laughed; they'd heard me "lay down the smack" like this before and knew I came from a place of respect.

Then I asked, "How many of you have been out in the world working before coming back to school?"  Over half of the students raised their hands.

"How many of you are still in high school?"  Two students.

"Listen.  What this is all about is choices.  You made a choice, and not an easy one.  Those of you who were working?  You made a radical choice that you wanted more.  Those of you still in high school?  You wanted the challenge of being among minds who are taking on complex problems, so you made a choice.  Even those of you 'traditional' students are here because you chose to be.

"You probably are in this class because you needed literature credits.  When you signed up for the course, did you imagine that we'd be sitting here, having such deep conversations not just about the symbols and characters in the literature, but about life?  This is happening because of YOU, because of your willingness to make a new choice and be open to creating a community in this classroom.

"And me, as an English teacher.  Do you really think that I'm here because I want you to learn how to write a thesis statement or not use 'they' when you really mean 'he or she'?  NO!  I'm here to get you to think more deeply about things, and when you're willing to engage in that because you've said 'YES' to broadening your thinking by taking these types of courses, I am inspired.  As an educator, the experiences we have here have a profound effect on my ability to do this work every day.  It's my hope that you will keep saying 'YES' to learning more and thinking deeply and creating community because that's when you'll see how much your one voice matters."

If I was holding a microphone, I would have dropped it.

I got emotional during my speech.  Tears came into my eyes and I told them I was feeling these emotions because they were giving me hope.  I was proud of them and the community we made.

I didn't know what I would be feeling the next morning after a restless night sleep and the news that Trump had won, forcing me out of my bed at 5:30 for a hard run to clear my mind.  As I headed up a hill, my legs felt it but kept moving, and I thought about the student who had a bad incident with a group of black kids.  It occurred to me that what my student walked into was not an angry hive, but a community of people that had formed to hold on to each other, to be a safe space in a world that hasn't seemed safe to them.

Our guest speaker's words echoed in my mind: I'm sorry you had to go through that experience.  It sounds scary.  I felt those words in my heart: "It sounds scary."  The antidote to fear is knowledge, and collective knowledge creates power.  Later that day, I met with people from my larger community, people who think deeply about issues and who care for one another and are reaching out to all people.  It wasn't right that my student felt fear in his experience at the party; it indeed sounds scary.  But it's scarier to allow a bad experience, either his personal bad experience or what many of us feel is a bad experience of this election, to close us off from still reaching out, reaching out and connecting and creating the community where all feel safe.

Burnin' In Me

I am not new to running, but the last time I made a serious go of it was four years ago when I trained my body to get through the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon.  At the time, I didn't control what I was eating, built distance too quickly, ended up with shin splints and finished at 2:18 (not too shabby, considering I had to stop and go number two halfway there (let's keep it real people)).  I swore I wouldn't do it again:

"13.1 miles is too far okay."

Image credit: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Pepe_the_King_Prawn

Four years later, I've signed up to do it again.

This time, though, I'm being smart.  I started training over the summer (that's right...I started a year in advance); a good move when starting from zero.  I set some goals: 5k easy by October and 5 miles easy by January.  The class I'm taking to get me seriously ready starts in March, so I'd like so be up to 7 miles easy by then.  I say "easy" with a wink and a nod.  A mile is far, so I have respect for a person getting time on their legs no matter how far or how fast they go.  

I also have lost weight (20 pounds in six months), and that's made a big difference in my speed.  I'm finding a 9-minute mile to be the norm, whereas before, my goal was 10-minute miles (again, an excellent speed!  Have you noticed that I detest implicit (and obviously explicit) distance/time shaming?).  

So, I'm feeling good, running five days a week, eating better, and have a sub-2:00 half in my sights.  

Yikes.  That's the first time I've put that goal in writing.

...

Anyway.  Besides being smart about training, I have a not-so-secret weapon: tunes, baby.

Most people like music.  Many people who work out, especially during cardio, need music.  I'm one of those people.  One song in particular has been like an anthem, pushing me forward when I feel like I can't do it:  John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)."

"Yes.  It is my epic feathered hairdo that inspires your miles."

Image credit: http://thistotallyhappened.blogspot.com/2012/09/john-parr-st-elmos-fire-man-in-motion.html

Let's address the MAN part of the song right away.  I am a WOman, and thus, it would seem, might feel left out or even dissed by the manly focus.  This is not true.  I don't need a song to talk about me being a hardcore woman, specifically, in order to get into it.  It needs to speak about baddassery, period, and if I connect, I connect.  In fact, I sometimes like to be in touch with my masculine side, which is not any weirder than encouraging men to be in touch with their feminine sides (though it does feel weird to type).  

Okay.  Back to the song.  First, St. Elmo's Fire is a weather phenomenon that occurs during a thunderstorm:  

Back in the day, when sailors saw it, they thanked their lucky stars, or, more accurately, St. Elmo (or Ermo or Erasmus), who was the saint of Mediterranean sailors,  It was good mojo for them.  (Read more about it here: What is St. Elmo's Fire?)

John Parr's song seems to focus more on the secondary title, "Man in Motion."  As the song begins, we've got a guy who's taken the straight path his whole life, but then, something happens that makes him change course.  He's not a rebel: he's playing "the game," but suddenly the stakes are much higher; he's a prisoner, "tryin' to break free," and now there's a second person "you," who is on the same path.

The third verse is what really gets me:

"Burning up, don't know just how far that I can go (just how far I go)
Soon be home, only just a few miles down the road
I can make it, I know I can
You broke the boy in me, but you won't break the man"

AHH!  Are you kidding me, John Parr??  This verse is MADE for a running person, especially a running person who's had a bad attitude about it for much of her life.  Believe me, in the song, it's much more like, "You broke the boy in me, but you won't BREAK THE MAN!!!!" I defy anyone to not feel pumped up with a lyric that's best represented in writing in all caps, italics, and bold.  

What's interesting in this song is that there's a chorus, of course, with the same basic melody, but the words are different each time.  It starts with illusions of flying eagles and a fast car, then moves to climbing the highest mountain (Everest, right?) and crossing the wildest sea (I'm going to go with the Southern Sea by Antarctica on this one):

"Iceberg! Right ahead!"

Image Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ARL6j3saws

...and it ends with banners flying and music playing; "Feel like you're back again," full of hope.  Ah yes: hope.  The audacity of it.

I have to say, though, that the song's interlude rivals the above-mentioned verse in sheer pump-a-person-upness.  You're running along, riding high, a WO"man in motion," and all of a sudden, THIS:

"Just once in his life...a man has his time. And my time is now...I'm coming alive!"

You are STRAIGHT KILLING ME, John Parr!  This is it, folks.  A cheesy 80's song has buoyed me when I needed it most.  I am coming alive.  Listen to the song and get it on your rotation.

Lyric credit: http://www.metrolyrics.com/st-elmos-fire-man-in-motion-lyrics-john-parr.html

Losing It

Here's what happens when you lose weight: people say to your face that you look great/fantastic/amazing/SO SKINNY!!!!!!!** OMGOMGOMG! (Okay, that may be excessive, but there is one gal who says I'm skinny with such gusto, it can only be expressed here via texting shorthand.)

Sometimes people ask, "What are you doing?" (I always assume that they're asking me what I'm doing to lose the weight, not what am I doing at that second, which is having an out-of-the-blue conversation about my body.  This assumption is correct.)  I always answer the same way: "Calories in, calories out."  There's not much else to say.  I don't tell them I'm training for a half marathon very slowly; I don't tell them I eat the same thing for breakfast every day of the week and for lunch every weekday; I don't tell them I count my steps or use a calorie tracking app.  

First, typing that out makes me sound terribly obsessive.  I assure you, I'm not.  If I don't exercise one day, I still try to stay at or below my calories (1630, by the way, and to prove how NOT obsessed I am, I had to check the app on my phone for the exact number), but I don't exercise twice as long the next day.  Today, I had some of my husband's fries at lunch and didn't bother recording them on my phone because it's not that big of a deal.  I eat dessert every single night.  I like my breakfast (pina colada oatmeal, if you're curious). 

Second, weight loss is made out to be a practically-impossible act of willpower.  It wasn't for me.  I just stuck to my calories for the day.  I added a word I kind of hate, "JUST," but it's apt here for describing my emotional state about it.  I downloaded the tracking app and when I started figuring out how many calories certain things were, I took a pass on those things.  When I knew I was going to have dessert at night, it was easier to not go crazy during the day.  I figured out that veggies have few calories and loaded them on, and I did some research to understand the best, lower-calorie foods to eat so I would stay full.  

This did take some figuring, but the figuring was both eye-opening and fun.  Before this, every day, I would eat two eggs scrambled with some Parmesan cheese and two whole wheat pieces of toast with peanut butter on one and jelly on the other.  When I figured out that was over 500 calories, it was easy to make the oatmeal switch, which is about 300 calories.  I rarely eat eggs now; they're great protein, yes, but they aren't that enjoyable, and I'd rather spend my calories on something else.  I figured out that Hidden Valley has this ranch dip mix you can make with plain Greek yogurt.  It is so delicious and at 24 calories for two tablespoons, I'm piling the veg on my plate with a side of the dip--deliciousness.  My dessert choices?  Boom Chicka Pop Salted Caramel Corn (80 calories a cup), Nestle Toll House refrigerator cookies (80 calories a cookie), Yasso frozen Greek yogurt bars (100 calories apiece) and/or Diana's Bananas chocolate-covered frozen bananas (130 calories apiece).  I write "and/or" because it's usually a combination of two (or three!!) of these things every night. 

So, my weight loss has been mostly about educating myself.  I don't drink my calories unless it's my morning coffee with milk and sugar.  Low sugar jelly is just as good as the regular stuff.  Moving more, whether it's a training run or making my step goal for the day, feels amazing.  I feel healthier than I have been in a very long time, and weight loss has been a side effect.  It's been nice, yes, to get the compliments, but after I've said a polite "Thank you," I usually also add, "...but you know I looked good before, too."  With that kind of confidence, they cannot help but agree.  Losing weight is fine, but feeling good is better.  

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*Note:  I am not, objectively, SO skinny.  I am in the normal range for my height and was only slightly (by five pounds or so) over the normal range when I started.  Don't think I lost fifty pounds or something. I did not go from a size 12 to a size 4.  If I did that, I would probably be unhealthy for my height.

Tattoos are Silly; Tattoos are Serious

The other night, my husband posed a hypothetical question, the type of question that helps keep marriages alive:

"If you were to win a bet and you could force someone to get a silly tattoo, what would it be?"

"Uhhh...well," I said, but before I really started thinking, he said, "Nothing dirty.  Silly."

"Uhhh...well," I said, and he jumped in.  "Do you want to hear what mine is?"

This is not an unusual situation for us.  I do the same thing; I act like I want to pose a hypothetical situation, but I actually have an answer of my own I want to share.  It's weird, though, to say apropos to nothing as we're making dinner, "Hey, if there was suddenly a rip in the space-time continuum and I could only drink one beverage for the rest of my life, it would definitely be Ovaltine."

So of course I wanted to hear what Dan's answer would be.

"Richie Cunningham from Happy Days."

I busted out laughing.  "What??"

"Like a photo-realistic portrait."  A few taps on his cell phone later, and he turned it towards me to reveal this:

                                                                        (image credit: What ever happened to...)

"You know, like this."

I mean, he could have dropped the mike right there and walked out of the room.  How could I come up with something better than that?  Answer: I didn't.  But what I do have that's better than him are tattoos (perhaps this is only because I have tattoos and he doesn't, but who's keeping track).

It wasn't always so, though.  I used to have one really bad tattoo.

I got it when I was 18, but not during a night of drunken hilarity my freshman year at spring break in Cabo.  No, I got a tattoo with my brother and my mom.  Not the same tattoo, but we all got 'em together, and that's the only non-seedy part of the story.  We went over to this guy's house and into his basement, where he had a space cleared with a chair and a mirror and his tattoo machine.  Now, it's not like this was a cool, finished basement with carpeting and a wet bar.  No.  This was a basement-basement, with cinder block walls and a concrete floor.  But we sat, one by one, and got our tattoos.

Mine?  It came from a greeting card: the Chinese symbol for "peace."  These were trendy tattoos to get at the time, these symbols, and I can't even say for sure that this is what the symbol means.  It feels pretty legit, though, because it was on a card, and card's don't lie, right?  Ink that baby on!

Nearly 20 years later, I'm feeling like this is a terrible tattoo because it is a terrible tattoo.  It's fading, and as it's the only thing I have on my back, it looks like a mistake.  I wanted to get it removed altogether, but my brother forbade it.  "You have to keep it in some way.  It's like your prison tattoo.  You can't erase it."  This allusion to prison was not comforting, but I understood what he meant: he had a bad tattoo from that visit, too (Bruce Lee's ubiquitous dragon), and so did my mom (but hers is actually good--a pelican), so they bound us together.  The tattoo, to me, was silly, but the meaning was serious.

I couldn't just leave it, though.  My brother had gotten many more cool tattoos since that first one, and I'd gotten another, too, but it was small.  Being a tattooed person felt good to me, like I was in a special club of badass women, but I still didn't like the tattoo.  If I wasn't going to erase it, I had no other choice: I had to add to it.

I'll spare the details of getting the piece.  An artist who'd done work on my brother put it on me, a curvy woman with Nordic roots who made me feel welcome and not only humored my idea about what to do with it, she brought it to life:

Yes, it hurt, and yes, the symbol is still there, but it's a part of a whole now.  The white pine, the owl, the pine cone, and yes, the "Peace": all are symbols now, hidden away from others' eyes on my back but never far away.

This is a serious tattoo, serious because it's a no-messing-around, big tattoo, and serious because it speaks my ability to commit.  There are symbols in the images, but there's larger symbolism in tattooing.  Those who have tattoos understand what it means to say yes to art, to trust those who will create this art, and to live with the reminder of their commitments the remainder of their days.  Even if that tattoo is Richie Cunningham.

The Voiceless Dog

I yammer constantly to my toddler on our walks together.  "Look at the pretty bird!" (It's a pigeon.) "What do you see?  So many trees!" (Mostly pine in this figurative neck of the woods.)  "Wow!  A bus!"  (I will then lustily launch into "The Wheels on the Bus," and from my rear view, the dents in my son's cheeks tell me he is smiling.)  We move quickly up and down the sidewalked hills of our neighborhood, stopping occasionally for a garage sale or to take a picture of some interesting-looking bark on a tree:

This morning, as we careened through a more affluent neighborhood than the one in which we currently reside, I saw and heard the voiceless dog simultaneously.  He was small, maybe 20 pounds, with short, dark hair, pointy ears, and a sturdy body that looked terrier.  He jumped up and down, all four legs springing from the ground at the same time.  He was barking, but he wasn't barking.

"Oh, look!  A doggie!"  I said to my son, and he looked.  "Oh!  He's barking, but he's not making much sound because he's had his voice box removed!"  His bark was raspy and windy, a dry cough.  "See?  He is trying to bark, but he can't make much noise," I rambled on.  "Some people might think that's cruel, removing a dogger's voice box, but I have to say, sometimes I've wanted to throttle the Bean Dog when she starts barking like crazy just after you've gone to sleep."  Bean is our elderly and adorable dachshund who barks a normal amount for a dachshund, and that normal amount sometimes feels like way too friggin' much when it messes with the sleep of the people in the house.

We're way past the dog, but I'm not done.  "See, sometimes dogs bark too much, and maybe it drives the owners crazy.  Or maybe the neighbors complain.  It can get to the point where they might have to get rid of the dog because of all the barking, so they decide it's better to get the dog's voice box removed."

I walk on, and my son crosses his feet at the ankles and grabs another graham cracker from his snack bowl.  For me, this is exercise.  For him, this is toddler TV.  

It's another weekend, but it's a long one; Labor Day is Monday, and while my coworkers are planning trips to the Boundary Waters with their adult children, I am trying to figure out two more things we can do on Monday: pre-nap and post-nap fun.  Parenting a toddler is like that, or at least, it has been for me: get him out of the house as much as possible, experiencing new things to help get the energy out and the brain matter growing.  My mother wonders if I do this stuff more for me or for him.  It doesn't matter.  It is how I do.

As a professor, my schedule tends to be fairly "loose"--I must be in the school for office hours, class, and meetings--but the rest of my time is unscheduled.  Last year, when I didn't have specific obligations on one day a week, I had my son stay home with me from daycare.  I was trying to do work and entertain him--an impossible task, to be sure.  This year, he goes to daycare five days a week, even though my Fridays are unscheduled.  Two weeks in, and it feels amazing.  I have TIME!!!! on Fridays to grade things and get things ready for the upcoming week so I'm not worrying about that on top of being a toddler concierge on the weekend.

What happens, then, is that I work very hard during the week (I could, and frequently do, easily work on the weekends) so I can then plan fun things to do on the weekend, like go to the Port Wing Fish Boil (yes, that's a thing: Fish Boil) in northwest Wisconsin.  There's not much time to do pre-kid Kelli stuff, like have breakfast with friends and hit a slew of garage sales, or spend some time making jewelry or sewing.  Pre-kid Kelli is a person of the past.

I push the jogging stroller along, mentally committing myself to walking up one of the steep, five-block-long hills in the neighborhood to add some oomph to my walk.  The dog bouncing on pogo-stick legs, though, leaps back into the front of my mind, and I imagined the husband saying to the wife, "I can't handle it anymore.  Baxter just won't shut up.  Milton and Nellie are going to start making nuisance calls--you know Milt's had it in for me ever since I beat his record at the country club."  The wife, pain in her eyes, might reply, "I've done all I can to train him.  He just isn't learning."  She'll look at Baxter who, quiet finally in sleep, twitches his legs in his dog bed.  The husband will inevitably say, "We need to do it, Susan.  I can't take it anymore."  And Susan, because she knows that he is kind but also pragmatic and because she doesn't have a choice, will agree. "I'll make the appointment on Monday."  And Baxter will "Urf!" in his sleep, a small fellow whose nurture tells him to protect these people and his loud, obnoxious voice the only thing nature gave him to do it.

I take a deep breath and let it out, taking a right turn to head up the steep hill.  "See, kiddo, it's like this.  Sometimes you have to make hard decisions."  

"Mama!" he says, pointing at a squirrel.  

"Hey, cool!" I respond, puffing up the hill.