Small Victories

Life is full of small victories. I lost 4 pounds in February, a pound a week, which is my goal. I lost 1 inch off my waist and 1 inch off my hips, so that was another small cause for celebration.

Next, I had an appointment at the doctor’s office this morning to have blood drawn. My doctor keeps a close eye on my blood sugar, cholesterol, liver and kidney functions and other measures, so I go in every 4 months or so to get blood drawn for lab work. I won’t get the results until next week, so the lab work wasn’t the victory (yet). Ever since I gained weight, people have had a terrible time finding my veins to draw blood. It was not unusual for me to get stuck 2 or 3 times on the back of my hand in order to get enough blood for the tests I need. (I think 5 sticks was the record.) My good veins were just buried under a layer of fat and hard to reach, so the back of the hand was the only option, and that hurts. Well, this morning I was apologizing to the lab tech about my poor veins and she said “No problem”. Then, instead of tying her little rubber band thing around my wrist and poking the back of my hand with a tiny “butterfly” needle, she wrapped her band around my upper arm and stuck me once in the crook of my elbow with a regular sized needle. Next thing I knew she had four tubes of blood and she was done. Apparently losing pounds of fat uncovered my previously shy veins and made the whole blood-drawing thing much easier and less painful - a small, but significant victory.

This is one of my favorite poems because is it so joyful: It was written by Siegfried Sassoon.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on, on, and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears, and horror
Drifted away…O but everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Revery

Jane Austen wrote in a letter that her novel Pride and Prejudice was maybe a little too "light and bright and sparkling". Perhaps this description is what has often made me think that Jane Austin wrote prose the way Mozart wrote music. I find Mozart's music to be "light and bright and sparkling". Like Austen he is melodic, inventive, well structured and amazingly beautiful. I was thinking this the other day as I walked on the treadmill listening to "The Marriage of Figaro".

Then I was thinking that Beethoven reminds me of Emily Bronte - all stormy and brooding. Wonderful stuff, but I like the light and bright better.

Next my mind wandered to Bach. What author does he remind me of? I'm not sure. My father loved Bach. He said Bach was the father of modern jazz. My father had us listen to the Goldberg Variations because, he said, jazz has the same structure of theme and variations.

I never really developed this idea of comparing authors to composers. It was just a passing treadmill musing. But yesterday right after my treadmill walk, I logged on to twitter and saw a tweet refernce to a book comparing Jane Austin to Mozart. What a coincidence! I ordered the book on line and can't wait to read it.

The following poem by Emily Dickinson seems to fit because music and literature both start with revery.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

I Never Saw a Purple Cow

Thinking back on my previous diet sins, one of the biggest was a lack of color. I mostly ate white, beige or brown foods, with the occasional yellow. Those colors are fine for decorating your house, but not so good on your plate.

I ate potatoes, rice, bananas, beef, pork, chicken, eggs, bread, chocolate, milk, cheese, and butter. Not much color there! So I am making a real effort to get more colorful foods into my diet. I'm going for baby spinach rather than iceberg lettuce. I'm choosing sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes or rice. I'm loading up on blueberries and strawberries and melon. I'm having green beans, tomatoes, and carrots rather than corn.

Colorful foods have more vitamins, and usually less calories, so I'm definitely making a colorful diet one of my goals!

I haven't seen purple cow on the menu anywhere, but I find this poem amusing, so I'm sharing it.

Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.

Frank Gelett Burgess

It's Not for Sale

I wanted to go to the mall today. I've been cooped up in the house for more than a week. My consumer confidence was feeling really healthy and I felt it was my patriotic duty to boost the economy by spending money. We got down the drive way without much trouble, then got stuck in the road. And I mean stuck. Not going anywhere. The road was a mess of slush with ice underneath and that car wasn't moving. Another car finally came up the road towards us and stopped. The driver helpfully got out to push and we got back into the driveway. No mall for me today. My husband didn't mind. He shops on line, but I hate to shop on line. I like to see things and touch them before I buy them.

What was I wanting to buy? Well, maybe some new underwear. I'm going on a trip in March and I need more underwear that actually fits me. Or maybe a pair of boots because I don't have any. Or maybe just a latte at Starbucks (skim, of course) or a new sweater. My urge to shop is sometimes stronger even than my urge to eat. It's one thing to not be able to get out to the office, but to not be able to get to the mall, now that pisses me off. I would pay more taxes for more snow plows. I really would.

So I vacuumed the rugs and did my 2 miles on the treadmill.

Maybe I'll check out the Victoria's Secret website.

The following poem was written by a Seattle doctor and writer. The title, Oniomania, is a word for compulsive shopping.

Oniomania

Not so much the desire
for owning things
as the inability to choose
between hunter or emerald
green, to buy
just roses, when there are birds
of paradise, dahlias,
delphinium, and baby's breath.
At center an emptiness
large as a half-off sale table.
What could be so wrong
with a little indulgence?
To wander the aisles of fresh
new good things knowing
any of them could be hers?
With a closet full of shoes
unworn back home,
she's looking for love
but it's not for sale —
so she grabs three of
the next best thing.

By Peter Pereira

Sometimes

I woke up this morning feeling thinner, but the scale said I’d gained more than a pound this past week. That can’t be right. I watched my food all week, and I got plenty of exercise over the weekend. Oh well. Sometimes the scale is like that.

The Federal government was closed again today in D.C. because of the snow, but I worked again from home. At least half my employees were also working from home. We all have laptops with special encryption capabilities and access cards so that we can work securely from any spot with internet access. One of my employees actually had to call 911 during the snow storm to take her husband to the hospital because he was having a seizure. When I talked to her Monday she was waiting for her husband to have some tests done and she had her laptop with her at the hospital so she could keep up with her work. Next time you complain about lazy government employees think about the thousands of us who give our heart and soul to protecting the public interest. Sometimes the government isn’t so bad.

So I worked at my laptop, reviewing work, running reports, and feeling hungry all day. My husband says cold weather makes him hungry, but truthfully, some days I am just hungry, regardless of the weather. So I had a substantial snack about 3 pm that threw off my calorie count for the day. Sometimes that happens.

After I closed up my work laptop for the day I got on the treadmill. I tried to listen to Nora Jones on my iPod, but it refused to play her songs. I’ve no idea why. The iPod was quite happy to play Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”. Well he’s cool, too. I had a good relaxing walk. Sometimes exercise is the best cure for a bad mood.

I love the following poem. It was written by a British poet and novelist. I checked her website and she says she doesn’t even like this poem anymore, but she doesn’t mind if people use it on personal blogs as long as they don’t use her name, and don’t change anything. So I am respecting her wishes.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave a stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.

Let it Snow Again

The Weather Service is calling for more snow starting tonight. We are on the southern edge of the storm so it's hard to say what we'll get. It could be 10 to 20 inches, or not. We just got shoveled out to the street, the mailman delivered mail today, and now we'll have to start all over again.

I don't remember where I found the following poem. I looked up Jesse Winchester today and discovered he is a singer-songwriter, and these are song lyrics. I've never heard his stuff, but I can totally get behind the thought he expresses.

Jesse Winchester

Snow

Yes it can!

Now you know what they say about snowflakes
How there ain't no two the same
Well, all them flakes look alike to me
Every one is a dirty shame

My ears are cold my feet are cold
Bermuda stays on my mind
And I'm here to say that if winter comes
Then spring is a ways behind

What Seemed a Good Idea

Some times I eat and I don't know why - maybe just because the food is there. I get up to let the cat out and stop by the pantry on the way back to grab a couple of pecans. No rhyme or reason. It just seems like a good idea at the time. (The difference is that now I stop at 2 pecan halves instead of 2 handfuls.) But a whole day of unmindful eating can lead to big-time regret.

I found the following poem by Connie Bensley in my collection and decided to share it for all of us who ever made a poor decision.

Permissive Society

Wake, for the dawn has put the stars to flight,
And in my bed a stranger, so once more,
What seemed to be a good idea last night,
Appears, this morning, sober, rather poor.

Connie Bensley

Let It Snow

What a winter this has been for snow! First we had the big storm right before Christmas. Next we had a small snow in, was it January? Then last Friday and Saturday we got two feet of snow, a real blizzard. Some winters we don't shovel at all, but this past weekend we shoveled for hours. Thank goodness my son spent the weekend with us and helped his two old parents clear the driveway out to the street.

He also shoveled a path to the bird feeder so we could continue to keep the birds happy. We've had two pairs of cardinals, a red headed woodpecker, a blue jay, and dozens of smaller birds taking turns at the feeder.

Now the Weather Service is calling for another 6 to 10 inches (or more) of snow starting tomorrow afternoon. The Federal government closed today and tomorrow so none of us has to go to work, and there is plenty of food in the house. Things aren't going too badly.

I found this bit of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson recently, and it seems an appropriate time to share.

From The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Eating at Outback

My husband and I ate at Outback Steakhouse a couple of nights ago, and I made some sensible choices.

Previously at Outback I'd have eaten:

Small Cheese Fries (shared) 374 calories
Side Salad with Ranch Dressing 319 calories
7 oz Victoria’s Filet 587 calories
Baked Potato with Butter & Sour Cream 455 calories
Chocolate Thunder from Down Under (shared) 478 calories
Coffee with Cream 39 calories
Total calories: 2252

This time I ate:

Atlantic Salmon (1/2 order) 364 calories
Baked Sweet Potato (no butter) 418 calories
Fresh Steamed Green Beans (butter) 228 calories
Decaf Coffee (no cream) 0 calories
Total calories: 1010

A thousand calorie meal is not great, but it's less than half the calories I previously tucked into at a visit to Outback. And I wasn't dissatisfied at all with the meal. My husband was as charming as always. We had a good talk and enjoyed ourselves just as much as we always do, only we ate a much healthier meal by skipping the appetizer and desert. I got some fiber with the green beans and sweet potato, and the salmon was definitely healthier than my usual steak. I only ate half the salmon because it definitely looked bigger than a deck of cards! Next time I might only eat half the sweet potato, too. I pushed off the ball of butter, but there were still a lot of calories there.

Maybe I'm starting to figure out this weight loss thing. You don't have to deprive yourself of everything enjoyable. You do have to make small changes and better choices towards healthier eating.

My poem to share today is by Dorothy Parker who was one cool woman. It's not about food, but it is about staying out of trouble (or not).


Portrait of the Artist

Oh lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rambles
And bar the window passing well
And gyve my wrists and ankles
Oh wrap my eyes with linen fair
With hempen cord go bind me
And, of your mercy, leave me there
Nor tell them where to find me
Oh, lock the portal as you go
And see its bolts be double…
Come back in half an hour or so
And I will be in trouble.


By the way, the Outback has a great interactive web site where you pick items off the menu with different options and add-ons and they give you the nutritional information.

They also have a gluten free menu.

February

I am so tired of winter.

I grew up in the midwest, where we certainly had plenty of winter. Then, when I was a young wife with a toddler, my husband, daughter and I moved to Bermuda for 5 years, and I never liked winter again. Now we live in Virginia where the winters are generally mild. Only this winter it's been cold for days at a time, and we've had lots of snow. It's snowing again right now. We're expecting 3 to 6 inches overnight, which means the commute tomorrow morning will be from hell. Starting Friday afternoon we are expecting a really big winter snow storm. It will probably snow all day Saturday, so there goes my weekend plans.

People in Virginia just do not know how to drive in the snow, and the county doesn't invest much in snow removal or salt, so you are taking your life in your hands to be on the roads. Since Friday and Saturday will not be good days for grocery shopping I may try to shop Thursday night. I need to have good things to eat in the house, like fresh fruits & vegetables so I will stay out of the leftover Christmas candy and the gluten-free cookies. (I still have peppermint ice cream in the freezer.) (I will not pig out on it.)

Maybe I can just walk on the treadmill all day Saturday.

Or I can relax, slow down, and enjoy life without running around trying to get everything done at once.

The following poem is a reminder to me, and to all of us, that winter can be beautiful if we slow down and enjoy. It's by Sara Teasdale, one of my favorite poets.

February Twilight

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow.
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see—
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.


Sara Teasdale