Thinner but Boring

So I'm at a crossroads in a part of the country where I never thought I'd be and I might need some guidance.

Weight Watchers says I've reached and maintained my weight goal to the extent that they gave me a little gold key and pronounced me a Lifetime member.

I don't know quite what to do with myself now. I wonder if mountain climbers who reach the peak get up there and say, "Well, hell. What now?" like I'm doing right now.

I know it's not enough to reach this level. I have to stay here. I know full well that I have the capacity to backslide into the culinary sins of fried food and full-fat ice cream faster than a felon just released from prison where he discovered Jesus.

I'm tempted to set a new, lower goal because I've gotten used to my somewhat restrictive diet. I've perfected my whine. I am so used to trying to lose that the idea of maintaining scares the, uh, pumpkin out of me.

Most people at work don't even try anymore to convince me to try the yummy treats they bring in. (For this I am deeply thankful.) Jeff's been great and for the last three weeks has been a WW believer. He's so into it now (dropped 10 pounds in three weeks) that he's teaching me stuff and shopping for low-point stuff like a lo-cal champion.

Don't tell anyone, but Weight Watchers is not all that restrictive once you get past the desire for foods that, truth be told, aren't really all that great.

Sure, it's nice to think about pie and chocolate cake and piles of ice cream. Pizza. Lasagna. Al Fredo sauce. Pumpkin rolls.....ahhh pumpkin rolls... Donna's yeast rolls and butter. Bread sticks...

Sorry. Got distracted there for a minute. Sure I fantasize sometimes and breathe deep when someone's having fried chicken. But there are few things I've learned from my 22.5 months of Weight Watchers membership.

1. I like being thinner way more than I enjoy chocolate. I know! I wouldn't have believed it myself two years ago. But it's true.

2. While I will occasionally indulge in a Dexatrim when I will be faced with great temptation (parties, traveling, vacation) chemicals aren't the answer. There's no quick fix. It's eating less and exercising more until you get to a point where you don't dread shopping for swim suits or when you finally get to the point where you're just not going to go up another size.

3. I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol but I do think sustained weight loss has got to be something close. And like other addicts, no one can make you decide to really kick the habit. You have to do it. And you have to do it for yourself.

4. The gym is not a torture chamber. Well, if it is, it's at least one you emerge from better than you when you entered. And once you get to a point where you don't flinch when you pass the mirrors, you're home free. Don't tell Kelsey Taylor but I get cranky when I don't get to go to the gym.

If I can just stay in my WW world and focus on eating, or not eating, I don't have to work on other areas of my life that could need improving. So here's where your guidance comes in.

I might be thinner than I've ever been in my life, but I'm B.O.R.I.N.G. and I need help to overcome it.

I need to develop an interest in something that will energize all of us in the TeamReed family, not eat into the gym time and not expose me to too much culinary temptation.

Temptation lies in bars, wine festivals, beer gardens and street fairs where there's more grease per square inch than oxygen. (See why I'm boring?)

It's getting colder, so hikes and bike rides will be getting scarcer. While I can drag Alison with me, she's even less inclined than I to brave the cold. She has inheirited, I fear, my exultation in the couch, a book and snacks.

Music is great. But it usually comes with beer. Maybe I start there. I'm taking Jeff to see Matthew Sweet this week for his upcoming birthday.

Maybe we should go to a concert every month. My smart friend Angela has season tickets to the local theater. It forces a date night. Maybe that? Both will involve wearing grown-up clothes and makeup, getting a sitter, a little 5-hour-energy.

I think I need an after-hours coach. I'm good with school stuff, work stuff, yard work, working out and getting through the dinner hour. It's the prime-time viewing hours and the weekends when I want to stay home and veg out.

If this keeps up, I'll be a thin old lady with no friends who's only activity is running out to catch the leaves when they fall on the lawn.

Is there a class for boring people?

Sleepover Weekend!

We had an all-Jenna-all-the-time-weekend, so it's taken me a little bit of time to get things back in order. We got her Friday afternoon and reluctantly gave her back on Sunday evening. We would have LOVED to keep her longer. Although I'm not sure I could keep up the pace.


Sleepover Itinerary
* Friday pickup at school -- Jenna first so Ali could show her off at CKS.
* Ali was waiting in the 2nd floor window overlooking the parking lot when we got there.
* One block from home, I let them stand up in the car and poke their heads out the sun roof. You would have thought they were Princesses in the Indy 500 Parade.
* Papa John catered, Roderick from the Wimpy Kid amused and there was no need for me in the family room.
* Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful for Jenna's soccer game. We attended. Jeff paid attention and gave Tom a great play-by-play text, complete with pictures.
* It's possible that Alison and I might have read during times when Jenna wasn't on the field. It's been a while since Saturday and my memory is foggy.
* Sadly, the Azetecs were felled by the Falcons which meant we had all afternoon to play together instead of one of us having to focus on a white ball and all kinds of confusing rules.
* On the way home, we stopped in at the Farmer's Market and come home with pulled pork BBQ, mums, apples, pear tomatoes and pumpkins.
* We get home, snarf down the BBQ and some apples.
* We get on the bikes to feed the Broad Ripple ducks and visit Broad Ripple Ice Cream (BRIC)for dessert.
* Jeff makes us bike to 86th Street before he'll give the girls ice cream.
* On the way to ice cream, we spy a school of fish as we cross the river. At one point I thought they might actually have been rocks, but they did move around. We even saw some turtles splashing around and a hawk overhead. It was a brilliantly blue fall day -- the perfect temperature, Jenna claimed, for bike riding.
* We get home, just in time to get dressed again to visit the Jordan YMCA for swimming (girls and Jeff) and a workout for me.
* Jeff visited Kroger after I rescued him from the pool.
* The girls and I set a record tossing her giant tennis ball without dropping it --
171 catches. The lifeguard was not impressed.
* Back home again to find dinner and Harry Potter.
* Girls crash on the couch and don't move until Sunday morning dawns.
* Jeff trots off to basketball. Ali and Jenna are head to head on the couch watching something horrible or obsese cats on the laptop. Breakfast is unnecessary.
* I have coffee, read the paper and plant mums.
* Breakfast gets taken care of without me.
* By noon, we're back on the bikes bound for BR Nails and a pedicure courtesy of Miss Amy's suitcase surprise. "Are you sisters?" the pedicurist asked. "No. We're friends. Well, we're best friends."
* Properly pampered, we go back to the ducks with leftover cookies to share. To escape an aggressive goose, we move downstream. Our plan goes awry and inspires a mass migration from the flock when they figure out there are still cookies to be had. (Go west young duck!) The sky was full of feathers. It was pretty spectacular; well deserving of another visit to BRIC.
* Once home, the girls break out the paint and glitter and set about turning their pumpkins into a vampire and a black something or other.
* After lunch, the girls decide they need one last swim.
* When informed we'll be making another trip to the Y, Jeff informs me that we are not compelled to grant their every wish. I'm still mystified by that. It was a sleepover weekend! Someone needs to explain the sleepover rules to him, I guess...

And now we breathe

A hundred years ago, I was a news reporter covering the cops beat. Sometimes I had to go ask people questions after tragedy had struck, and it was the worst thing ever. More for them, I'm sure, than me.

I think that's when I learned to compartmentalize. I'm pretty sure the mental health professionals would say it's not a good thing to do. But I'm a black belt at it now, and I'm too old to stop putting fears and tears and thoughts of foreboding into their own little closets in my head.

Take the last couple of weeks, for example. Jeff had hurt his knee playing basketball and had finally gone to the doctor. I suspected a muscle or meniscus tear. Something painful but fixable with time and frozen peas. "Baby," he said, calling me after the doctor. "Don't freak out."

So of course I freaked out. Silently, because I was at work. But yeah. The loop was thrown.

"There was a strange shadow on the Xray. It could be nothing. It could be cancer. I'll need an MRI to know for sure."

I'm not exactly sure that's what he said because it all went to Charlie Brown's teacher speak as my mind spun into how Ali would deal with being half-an-orphan, how I'd deal with widowhood and whether he'd be buried in Indiana or Maine.

I mumbled something I hope was comforting as he ended the call saying we'd talk more at home. I shook my head, built a new mental closet with a really big lock and slammed the door.

I dealt with an employee resigning from my already too-small staff. I dealt with last minute details with my upcoming work trip that would end the day the MRI was scheduled. I might have talked to my boss and co-workers. Hell, I might have been interviewed by CNN. Who could say?

I'm not sure how Jeff made it through the next few days. He apparently has a few closets of his own.

Long-story short, the shadow turned out to be a bone spur. Probably has been there since his little bones first formed. That news was clearly delivered and received. Can we all say, "wahoo?"

So anyway, it's Sunday, we're all as healthy as we can be. I've deconstructed my latest mental clost -- no need for that box of worry to take up any more space.

Ali and Dominic are upstairs, waiting for Jeff to get back home with Amanda in tow. I'm downstairs.

I hear the creaking of the floor underneath my husband's heavy tread and his booming voice. He's home. My daughter is squealing as her friends surround her.

My little world is perfect.

Model Behavior

I was sitting on the couch the other day, minding my own business and occasionally wondering where my daughter was. We'd been joined at the hip since I'd gotten home late Tuesday night from a 4-day work trip that had robbed us of our weekend, but all of a sudden, she'd put down her book and disappeared.

Then, I heard a clunking noise coming at me. I looked up to see the child formerly known as Alison coming at me. "Hey, Mom. I've been in your closet. What you do you think of my look?"

When she was a toddler, Alison was forever wearing her dress up clothes, which consisted mostly of frilly skirts and silky tops with my cast-off heels and maybe even a hat or two. She'd drape herself in beads and trip around, more often than not forgetting that you could see her Dora the Explorer panties under her sheer net skirt. She'd dress up to go climb the tree in the front yard.

She's had had an interest in my jewelry closet for a while, but mostly as storage space for her collection. This was her first actual foray into my things.

I was, in equal parts, horrified and over-joyed.

I love my little tomboy.
I'm not sure I'm ready for a real girl, certainly not one who is so close to actually being able to wear some of my stuff.

Several of my heels fit her perfectly. The length on some of the skirts and dresses was actually nice. Unlike some of her girl friends, adolescent hormones have given Ali only a passing glance, so none of the dresses or blouses were form fitting. "If I don't hold on tight, you can see my junk," she said.

Wearing a little black dress with a bit of a plunge, she said: "Mom, why are their fake, uh, things in here?" she asked, clutching at the bodice.

"Well, sometimes a girl needs help," I said.

She's been wondering when she'll see some development, but the idea of "help" resulted in a big, "gak!"

She ended up calling a halt to the dress-up when her little Ogden friends called offering a sleepover. Jeff had gotten home by then and his reaction was 100 percent appalled.

"You know she's not that far off from actually wearing stuff like that," he said, as if he was a Navy Seal revealing government secrets to al Queda.

"Yeah. I know," I sighed. Happily for us, she returned in torn blue jeans and tee shirt, happy to kick a ball around in the yard with Alex. She hit the friends-over jackpot when Dominic called, so she's been tearing around with him for a couple of hours. Soon, Amanda will be here and I'll be needed only for food and drink.

But it'll be fun to hear them being silly kids. I'll get her back later and I'll snag every second I can.

The Scales of Justice

We had Bunco on Saturday night so I knew I'd better get a good work-out in before I met up with my long-time buddies. I sandwiched a trip to the YMCA between errands, so I was gone for a good bit of the morning.

About 12:30 I called Jeff with a Kroger question and decided to make sure I had all the things Ali needed, too.

"When are you coming home, Mom?" she asked.

"Soon as I'm done here," I said.

"So, five minutes?"

Probably more. I need to get through check-out and then drive home."

"So, ten minutes?"

"Probably more than that. Why? Do you miss me so very much?"

"Well, yeah," she said. "You have been gone a long time."

The shine on the Kroger tile had nothing on my face as I smiled and my heart soared. She loves me!!! I thought. And then came this: "And, well, I was kind of hoping you'd come home soon because I really would like to have my lunch and I'm not exactly sure how to make it."

My laughter woke up the security guard and I'm sure identified me as a kook. You know how annoying it is to be shopping and have to endure the conversation of your fellow Kroger shoppers? I was annoying and loud about it.

I did, in fact, go home and make her lunch. We had a good weekend. Alison made another cookie creation, this one was supposed to be a house but we gave a wall away to the neighbor girl who had a birthday. So it's more of a tent, but it has a dog and a boy, and Alison did 99 percent of it herself. She even used a paint brush like the Cake Boss crew does all the time.

On Sunday, we convinced Jenna to come over. After a while, the girls decided they wanted to go swim at YMCA. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to entertain them and work off the decadent breakfast Jeff and I had. (Weigh-in Wednesday is going to be ugly.)

Going back to the Y also promised a chance to get to listen, uninterrupted, to new music Jeff had put on my iPod. So it was a win all around.

Kids aren't supposed to be in the Y work-out room so I sent them off to the pool and told them I'd come get them in an hour. Three minutes later, I was two Pistol Annies songs in only to look up to see them dripping next to my ellipitical trainer.

Now, there's a lifeguard on duty poolside, and I can actually see the pool when I look up. But apparently, unless you're 12, you can't swim without having a parent poolside, regardless of whether you are an excellent swimmer or a novice. Both Jen and Alison are fishes. Their presence in the pool would have doubled the number of swimmers. So I can understand how much extra work they would have been. (not)

Anyway, I really wanted to work out, and I hadn't brought my suit. I don't usually flout rules around Alison, but I was trying to get at least 30 minutes in. So I let them try out the treadmill and elliptical trainer even though they're not supposed to be in that room. That bought me 10 minutes.

Then, I told them they could go to the kids play area, knowing good and well that the rule there is you have to be 11 to be on your own.

I called Ali over, looked her in the eye and said, "You can be 11 in there, OK?"

She grinned because she knows that rule, too. "OK!"

Jenna, of course, was listening. "Hey! That's not fair!"

"You can be 11, too," I said.

"OK!" she said.

The little lawbreakers ran off, happy as clams. I had a moment or two of guilt. But I weighed it against what I'll have to face on Wednesday. Don't tell anyone at the Y.

Cookie Boss

We've been watching a lot of Cake Boss lately. Cousin Rachael turned us on to it a while ago and Alison has DVRd every episode she can find.

Ali can credential everyone who works at the Cake Boss -- Buddy's -- shop and she's committed several of the episodes to memory. She told me the other day she might need to go live in Hoboken and work for Buddy as a means to learn her new future job -- cake and cookie decorating.

This morning, she must have been plotting her future again when my friend Carey came over.

Carey reminded me of her upcoming fundraiser for Melina Kennedy, and because it's during the week, I asked if I could bring Ali, who'd just emerged from the family room and her beloved television. I told her what we were planning to do.

"I can make cookies!" she informed Carey, who, good person that she is played right along. But Ali was serious.

She trotted over to give her potential client a sampling from last weekend's batch and told her how much her friends like it when she makes them cookies.

Carey nibbled, pronounced it great and agreed to let Ali bring a dessert.

After much debate, the Cookie Boss decided on flags because it's a government event; stars because there are stars on the flag; and a girl because Melina is a female candidate for mayor of Indianapolis.

Avowed chocolate hater, she even agreed to use chocolate for the hair and eyes to accurately depict her honoree. (She's watched a lot of Cake Boss; I was mildly shocked that she didn't suggest doing model donkeys out of fondant and modeling chocolate.)

Later, as she was decorating, she looked up, icing dripping on the counter instead of the cookie, she looked at me and said, "Hey, Mom. Am I gonna get paid for this?"

I explained to her the concept of an in-kind contribution. She wasn't sold.

"So basically, I'm being kind but not getting paid?"

Yes, I laughed. Out loud. But it was a nice laugh and I tried again to explain the various ways one can show support for a candidate even before you vote. Despite her disappointment over the compensation plan, she didn't waver in her work. And she seems excited about going to the event.

I've been on political sabbatical for a while now, but I really like Melina. I'm not trying to turn Alison into a little political junkie but she's seen more than her fair share of Power Puff Girls episodes. She needs a little better image of a mayor and some real-life girl power, if you know what I mean.

Truth be told, she's going to the even to show off her wares rather than to learn about how city government could/should be run. But it can't hurt her to see a room full of vibrant women who want to make their community better.

So anyway, if you're in town and you want some kick-ass cookies, or if you want to hear from the woman I hope is our next mayor, let me know, and I'll let Carey know.
I'm pretty sure she'll let you come.

You'll have to work out your own in-kind contribution...

Cutting deep

It was a very long week and we had a lazy Saturday. Oh, we got our usual chores done, but that was it. Ali managed to get a few of her chores but she had a few treats between reading on the couch, playing computer in her room and watching TV.

At one point, she was about to receive another small favor and I remarked that she had a pretty good life.

"I have a good Mom. There IS a difference," she said.

Little suck-up.

Earlier, we were discussing what we will do tomorrow when Drew and Jenna come over. All of Ali's ideas were good, though most involved my credit card, but they were very girl-focused. I kept reminding her that we needed to think about what 12-year-old Drew might like.

"I do not understand the species of boy, Mom," she said in frustration.

I stopped myself from revealing that she never would....

When I dropped Ali off to play at Jenna's Sunday afternoon before the big sleepover here, Alison was plotting ways to torture Drew and Jenna was plotting a way for him to NOT be involved in HER sleepover. Drew, I'm sure was upstairs in his room on his knees praying to avoid both the girls.

Turned out, everyone got their wish. Tom devised a plan for Drew to be his own man and the girls have been here whooping it up.

They wanted to sleep outside in the tent but didn't last beyond 30 minutes. Used to be, Alison was a backyard nature lover. Last night she got spooked by a car alarm and the memory of a guy in our neighborhood walking to his car with guns. I didn't stop to see if they were real, and he isn't a regular so we were hoping he was a grandson now long gone. In any event, she decided it would be best to sleep indoors in case his visit was longer and he was out at night.

Today has been cookie decoration day. In between rolling them out, cutting them out and decorating, we had an interesting coversation about the girlfriend code. They were making me listen to rock-n-roll music and "Jessie's Girl" came on.

I felt compelled to inform them about the girlfriend code.

"Mom. I've known about the girlfriend code since first grade," Alison said.

"Really? What it is?"

"You can't go out with your friend's boyfriend," she said.

"Who told you THAT?" I asked, a bit outraged at having my role usurped.

She sighed. "You did."

"I did? Really?"

"Yes."

Man, I'm ahead of the curve, I thought, wondering what had prompted it then. And then, I'm the one learning:

"You know, Miss Cheryl, if he's moved on and she's moved on, you can date your girlfriend's OLD boyfriend," Jenna said.

Moved on? Moved on? What does that mean?

"But what if she still loves him and he's the only one who's moved on?" I asked.

"Well. "You know, if it's over," she said.

I almost turned them around and them look me in the eye. "The code says you can't date your girlfriend's boyfriend. Period. That's it," I said. "That's the code."

Without even seeing them, I knew they were rolling their eyes.


"Why are we even talking about this?" Alison asked.

"Because it's my job to teach you stuff. Like the code," I sputtered.

Jenna laughed. "Yeah. Like she learned her code back when she was a girl. Like back in the fifties!"

I'm still trying to get the last bits of blood off the floor. You know, the ones that dripped when I removed the knives they were sticking in my heart. My old, fading, barely beating heart.