One More Time

Don't hate me for this but for most of my life, my weight was not an issue. I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted and still fit into the pants I wore in high school. Not that I would have ever wanted to do anything like that as most of those pants were butt ugly but I could have. And now? Now I can't even fit into the pants I wore last week. So here we go again.

This is Day Five of the new and improved exercise program - the one I am not going to give up on; the one that will make a difference; the one that will turn me into a lean, mean fighting machine. (Yikes! I have to stop watching The Biggest Loser).

My previous plan (one of them) to rid my diet of sugar lasted less than seventy-two hours and didn't really eliminate the evil white stuff beyond cookies, cupcakes, etc. I couldn't bring myself to give up my Frosted Mini-Wheats (I cannot eat eggs every day) or Skippy peanut butter (I know there are some without sugar but blech) but at least I restrained myself from activities like downing a half-bag of mini-donuts in one sitting.

This time around, I'm on the treadmill every morning, lifting weights every other day, doing 100 crunches, and trying to get my body to bend in ways it hasn't in quite a while. I'm trying to drink nothing but water and unsweetened tea. And I'm even giving that natural peanut butter another try. My late night snacking has been all but eliminated if you don't count the lone Nestle Crunch fun-size bar left over from Halloween. I know the upcoming holidays are going to be even tougher than that Trick-or-Treat bowl but nothing tastes as good as the first bite, right? And I plan on having several of those.

Where has all this renewed motivation to get in shape come from you may ask? Well. I have a new grandson and I'd like to be able to get down on the floor with him without needing a crane. So I've decided I'm going to do whatever it takes to feel better and stronger even if it means watching old Dr. Phil episodes while I'm pounding out that last quarter-mile or listening to Taylor Swift shake it off as I struggle with that last arm curl.

Hey, no matter what I do or how long I do it, I know it's unlikely that I'll ever go back to the size I was in high school and that's okay. In eight weeks, I hope to be an energetic sexagenarian with a little less flab and a little more muscle. I'll happily settle for that. Oh, and did I mention I've got a winter vacation coming up that involves a bathing suit.

Yeah. Getting on the floor to play with my grandson isn't my only motivation.

No Butts About It

If you haven’t been living in a submarine off the coast of Greenland or sailing down the Nile in a hollowed out canoe, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the pseudo-celebrity (who will remain nameless as uttering the devil’s name is just tempting fate) determined to break the Internet with images of her enormous, oiled-up derriere. If you’re as unfortunate as I am, you’ve even seen said images. I hope I’m wrong but I may never get that picture out of my head.

Let’s forget for a second that there is someone out there who is vain enough and spotlight-seeking enough to foist her dipped in butter tush onto our unsuspecting consciousness. What’s more disturbing is the fact that there’s such an insatiable demand for what this woman is selling. I know train wrecks are hard to ignore but if they were on the cover of every magazine short of Field and Stream, you would think the public might get a little tired of looking at them.

On top of the controversy over whether a mother should be behaving like a come-to-life version of an African fertility god, the Internet (when it recovered from being broken) blew up with a couple of interesting questions. Like: Why was a photo of Alyssa Milano breastfeeding her child so offensive to so many people when these photos of a contorted booty were not? And: how could the image of a woman doing something with her breasts that they were meant to do set off a mean-spirited Twitter stream when the image of a woman using her rear end as a coffee table did not?

I wish I had the answers.

Girls' Day Out

The first time I was pregnant, I secretly hoped for a girl. It had nothing to do with dressing her up in frilly clothes or styling her hair in perfectly coiffed French braids. At thirty-three, I was thrilled to be having a baby and would have happily left the hospital with either gender but having never had a brother, I was under the delusional impression that I was better equipped to deal with whatever a daughter might throw at me; that there would be fewer surprises. I also hoped that that fantasy daughter would someday turn out to be a friend that would share shopping trips and lunches to cute French bistros.

I never did master those tricky braids but I was blessed with a beautiful, smart, funny daughter. (I was also lucky enough to produce a male offspring a couple of years later but that's another story.) Since my sister had also been blessed with a daughter, we hoped the girls would turn out to be best friends (check) who wouldn't mind occasionally hanging out with their moms (check). What we could never have envisioned is that they would be kind enough to grace us with our first grandchildren within eight months of one another.

There may have been some great sales in the mall today. And that French bistro was probably serving a mean onion soup. But the four of us had no time for any of that. We sat on the floor of our mother's (Nana's) house, pouring over boxes of old photos, sharing a take-out lunch, and making every silly face we could think of to make the newest members of our family laugh.

No shopping bag full of bargains or fancy three-course meal can beat that.

This blog was originally published under Coleen's other blog ForeverAMom. You can check it out at  www.blogher.com/foreveramom

Wish I Was There

This sucks. Every November 10th for the last twenty-five years has been guaranteed face time with my son. We've been together since he put his hand in his very first (and oh, so, not the last) chocolate cake. We've celebrated at Chuckie Cheese, batting cages, go-kart tracks, arcades and laser tag venues. I've watched as he unwrapped stuffed animals, nerf guns, video games, and snowboarding equipment. I've baked Ninja Turtle cupcakes, fudge layer cakes, and Peanut Blossom cookies. For twenty-five years I've had a ringside seat at every one of his birthdays and now, when he's residing in a beautiful place like Colorado, where am I on his big day? A thousand miles away.

I really thought I'd be there for this one, too. My hubby and I had kicked around the idea of surprising him, showing up on his doorstep in time to whip up one of his favorite chocolate concoctions and treat him to some fancy dinner in Denver. But one thing after another conspired against us. Our son is still spending every waking hour on the job hunt and my husband had to schedule some important meetings this week. So, instead of celebrating the birth of my incredible son in person, I am forced to post mushy messages and old photos on Facebook and hope that his package of goodies got there in time. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll be able to catch him on Skype later.

It's bad form to ditch your mother on the anniversary of the date she brought you into the world, isn't it?

Glad It's Over

I've never been a big fan of Halloween. Oh, I liked it when I was the one running around getting the candy (and I don't mean traipsing to Target to buy seventeen bags of Kit-Kats) but since those days are long gone, it's not a holiday I even remotely look forward to.

I think it has something to do with my general dislike of anything that scares me. Unlike much of America, you will never catch me watching Scream (1, 2, or however many they ended up making) or any episode of The Walking Dead.  I will not set foot in a haunted house (you would not believe how long it took my family to convince me that nothing bad would happen to me on The Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World) or read a Stephen King novel. The way I see it, life is scary enough on a day-to-day basis. I don't need anything else to ramp up the excitement.  Just give me a DVD collection of Seinfeld  or Everybody Loves Raymond and let me laugh while you check out what those crazy zombies are doing over on AMC.

Halloween did have its merits when my kids were little. I loved seeing their excitement as they put their costumes on every year. I even enjoyed making a few of them. What I didn't love was the pressure to come up with something amazing every October and haggling over how much sugar they could consume before I hid their pillow cases full of loot. I also didn't appreciate having to eat all those leftover M&Ms and 3 Musketeers bars after the last Trick-or-Treaters were gone. (I know, I know, I could have bought candy I didn't like but somehow I could never bring myself to do something so rational.)

So, I'm glad it's over. The ghosts and goblins have vanished. The bags of fun-sized Snickers are now on clearance and the pumpkins have all been smashed. I don't have to think about any of it for 364 more days. But next year is going to be different and I just may end up looking forward to October 31. My first grandchild is going to be old enough to dress up like Elmo or Buzz Lightyear or Batman. Or he may fit into the penguin costume his mom bought on clearance today.

As long as she doesn't put that Scream mask on him, I should be okay.