Weight Loss

I have been struggling with weight all my life.  Despite eating healthy food and exercising strenuously, I was thirty pounds overweight and had been for about a year.  Prior to that I lost weight to avoid knee replacement surgery, but it came back.  Gary moved in with me and together we began to eat far too many of the meals I prepared for us.

Of course, he gained weight, too.  In November, he had his yearly physical.  His doctor found some problems he said should be addressed.  Gary took this very seriously and decided to lose thirty pounds.  His weight goal was 166 pounds.  I don't remember why that exact weight, perhaps what he weighed in high school.

My goal was 150, which I thought possible. I have no serious health issues.  All my yearly blood work shows I am in near to perfect health, other than a little arthritis.  I can still walk with a bounce in my step.  Still, I would really have liked to lose some of that belly fat.

Together, I thought we could reach our goals.  We went to the fitness center to lift weights. We took walks together although I tended to walk a lot more than he did. We cut back on fatty foods and sugars.  Gary began to read labels on packages.

It's been nine months since we started to work out.  Gary returned from camping today and for the first time in a month, weighed himself.  He weighed 166 lbs exactly. His thirty pounds simply melted off. He looks incredible for a man of 68.

After all that exercising and dieting, I am still thirty pounds overweight.

I think I may have to murder him.

Bathroom Problems

After our trip to Canada, Gary's nephew came over to paint the bathroom.  He's an expert who stripped, scraped and treated before he applied the paint.  

But before he started, Gary took everything out of the bathroom, including towels, personal hygiene items, nostrums, and miscellaneous stuff and stored it away until he could install the new vanity and shelves.  Then he went camping. That was several months ago and everything is still somewhere in crates and boxes. 

The problem is now that I am home, I have no idea where anything is. I seem to have a cold, but I don't know where any of the medications are.  There are some antihistamines I keep in my purse in case I start sneezing while I am storytelling, but my real problem today is a painful ear infection.  I know that somewhere in this house there is a lovely fizzy ear spray that has always done the trick with ear problems but where could it be now?  

I've looked all over the house.  It isn't in the kitchen, living room or my office.  Gary is a pack rat so there are boxes all over the house filled with junk (treasures) but where are the things I need?   I found another ear spray down in the basement...who knows how old...and am using that.   

Gary will be home from his camping trip tomorrow.  He has some explaining ... and clearing ... to do. 

Meanwhile, I am gargling and taking Tylenol.  

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Bettyann Moore has added another story at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com.  "Listen" is one of her oblique stories that makes the reader think, and think some more. 

  

Changes for the Better

I was switching channels, trying to find something beside the GOP convention, a Packer game, and reality shows that aren't in the slightest real when I came to Channel 32, another station with a Packer game, but this time the commentary was in Spanish.

Now this is interesting.  This is not the lily white northeast Wisconsin I grew up in. Times have changed and in this regard, for the better.

Until I was eight or nine, I don't think I ate anything but good Germanic food, heavy on meat and potatoes. Then my mother tried packaged Chef Boyardee pizza and after that canned La Choy chop suey.  Wow, we felt sophisticated eating such exotic food.

I left home when I was eighteen and from then on I lived in places with diverse populations. I came to love the different languages I heard on the street in places like Los Angeles and Chicago.- It was wonderful to try restaurants that served ethnic foods, so different from the blue plate specials of the Midwest.

I moved back to Seymour to raise my son in a small town with a good school system. That was thirty years ago.  I could get Chinese food in Appleton or Green Bay and after a while there were Taco Bells.   It wasn't the same thing.

But five years or so, Kary's Restaurant opened up downtown with authentic Mexican food.  Last year, we got our first Chinese restaurant.   We have pizza parlors, too.  

These days, we can buy a much wider variety of food at the supermarket.  There's an entire section devoted to Mexican food.  The Hmong community is a big part of our Tuesday farmers market.  We can get produce there that I didn't know existed when I was a child.  Bok choy anyone?

And as of today, we can watch our own Green Bay Packers play with Spanish play by plays.

Who would have thought?   

What You Need to Know about Cats

I've had cats all of my life and learned a few truths about them.

1.  Cats are unreliable.  Rascal serves as my cat alarm and wakes me almost every morning at 6:00 a.m. so I don't turn on my alarm.  It seems to be broken anyhow.  This morning I was to meet Wade in Appleton in 10:00 a.m.

No cat came in to wake me up.  Well, that was OK because the clock said 6:33.  I yawned stretched and put on my reading glasses to read in bed for a while.  I glanced back at the clock which now said 8:33.  I had less than an hour to get ready.  I leaped out of bed, hit the shower while my tea bag was working its way into a cup of hot water.  I forgot my cell phone, didn't pack all I needed for the day.  

All because Rascal is unreliable.

2.  Cats are fussy.   The cat food that was wonderful yesterday is not acceptable today. Turkey with gravy is almost always good.  At Thanksgiving, Rascal sits in front of the stove staring at the oven.  Today he looks at his bowl and says, "Surely you jest."

3.  Cats punish us.  I once had a cat that unrolled the toilet paper in the bathroom whenever I went someplace over night.  He never did it any other time.  Rascal punishes me by ignoring me but since I don't mind he soon quits.

4.  Cats are territorial but aren't really serious about it.   Rascal screeches in Siamese dialect at Koala and Mittens, but they don't get into fisticuffs about it. These days Rascal's tail doesn't even fluff up.  He always looks relieved when I haul his fuzzy bottom back in the house.

5.  You got the cat to keep the house free of rodents.  Instead the cat hauls in chipmunks and baby bunnies and lets them loose in your office where they crawl behind and under the furniture. This wrecks a writer's concentration.

5.  Cats lie.  Rascal does his best to convince me he hasn't been fed for twenty-four hours (unless I need him to wake me up).  He assures me that it was something else that chewed on the bread I left sitting on the counter.   "Who, me?"  He is not to be believed.

6. Cats love you and want to sit on your lap....but only when they are cold.

If, however, you still want a cat, Mittens and Koala still need homes.

Just Another Day in Seymour

All writers establish their mode of working.  Larry McMurty writes exactly 500 words a day, no more no less, then stops. Stephen King works each morning of every day with precisely scheduled times. Annie Dillard works in closed rooms with no windows and no distractions.  

Me, I work best in the morning, in this office, with set goals for the day, and always in my ratty old bathrobe, the one with tea stains down the front. Until I accomplish most of the things on my list, here I stay.  Some who might come to my door would think I am goofing off when they see me at noon still in my robe, but they would be wrong.  When the bathrobe comes off and is replaced by daytime clothing, I am done working, at least at the computer. 

So it was today. When I finally went out the door it was to go to the garden and pick beans which I then blanched for freezing.   When I was done with that, it was time for the farmers market out on the highway.  Besides looking for vegetables, I was there to meet Susan to celebrate her birthday with rainbow smoothies. By the time I had purchased green peppers, cucumbers, cilantro, one humongous cabbage, and an apricot almond scone, she had arrived.   

Susan finished her shopping and we got our smoothies.  At first we talked about going to a park with them but settled on my front porch which was shady and cool.   We settled there and were talking about short stories and such when a couple of young people went down the street across the road.  They waved at us, we waved at them then they came over.  They promised they wouldn't talk about religion or politics which sounded fine to me.  Instead, they were selling cleaning products. 

I explained that I had no money and besides that I would never use cleaning products because I never cleaned and Susan backed me up on that one. 

Mittens came over from next door, meowing.  On Saturday, Elaine told me Mittens and Koala were going to the pound.  Since she has been telling me that for two years, I doubted it.  Here Mittens was, giving the two kids kitty love with purrs and nudges.  

The girl admired my gardens so I picked a bouquet for her.   

The kids left, Susan left.  I weeded some in the garden, walked to the bank to use the ATM machine.  When I got back I sent e-mails to nursing homes in Illinois to fill in blank spots in my October tour.   

Tonight there's the Republican convention but darned if the speakers aren't all Republicans.  They really should hire some liberals to spice up their speeches.  Good thing we have Netflix. 

All in all, a satisfactory day.  

Autumn Flowers

We won't reach the autumn equinox until September 22 but the fall flowers are here already.

I threw some sunflower seeds in the vegetable garden when some marigolds didn't make it.  The sunflowers are now almost eight feet tall.

A few years ago, Gary's sister gave me some cup plants, so named because the leaves catch rain water as if they were cups.  They have taken off to the point of being a nuisance but I still like the flowers in the fall.

When drought took some of the ground cover on the terrace strip, I bought some moss roses.  These took over the strip and have done so well I think I might plant more next summer.

The goldenrod is blooming, too.  One of my neighbors thinks she is allergic to goldenrod, but it is actually ragweed which blooms at the same time.  Its pollen is spread by the wind whereas goldenrod is fertilized by bees.  I tell her she can't be allergic to it unless a bee flies up her nose, but I don't think she believes me.

We go through the same thing in the spring when she is convinced she is allergic to lilacs when the true culprit is maple pollen.

Finally, the phlox and multi-floral rose are in bloom, for the second time this season.

With the odd seasons we've had, warm in March, drought in June, now rainy in August, we've had a few of these double bloomings.  

The fall colors are a last gasp of summer.  Will they last into October?

Solitude

Today, my little family, Chris, Tisha, and Evan, came to take me out to eat.  Evan is seven now.  He lost his top two front teeth earlier this year and permanent teeth are coming in. As those big teeth come in, the shape of his face is changing. He no longer looks like my baby grandson.  When I got home I took out the photo albums and thought back.

They called me from the hospital on that first day.  I came in an hour after he was born.  The first thing I said to him was, "So, what have you learned so far?"  Then I read him his first book.

Today he is reading his own books.  He's going into the second grade, but his first grade scores showed he's working on a higher level.  He knows more about computers than I do.  He's learned a lot so far.

Now I'm alone again, and other than writing this blog, I have been contacting libraries, senior residences, schools, and nursing homes to organize work for the fall and winter. I finished reading Sherman Alexie's War Dances, another collection of short stories, and listened to another section of Stephen King's 11/22./63, on a Playaway recorded book.


There is a difference between loneliness and being alone. With Gary still camping, I am alone in the house except for Rascal, and since he sleeps a deep feline sleep most of the day, it is quiet.  I don't mind at all.
Since I came home, I've been reading, writing, gardening, cleaning, doing this and that, with no pressures.  

I was going to turn around and go back to meet Gary at the campground in a day or two but now I am thinking I will stay put for a while.  Ah, solitude.