Outnumbered Two to One

I did a lot of eating this Thanksgiving weekend.

I’m not proud of it,  but I’m not ashamed either. It is what it is. I did what I set out to do. Eat and vegetate.

I ate past the point of comfort as I am wont to do. I ate over the course of several days, regardless of hunger or energy level, I ate. A lot. I made poor choices knowingly and repeatedly. Honestly, I felt no remorse. When I was bored I made a box cake or banana pudding or sugar cookies…because I could.

Then today at the grocery store, I weighed myself.

I love to think it’s not about numbers, it’s about getting stronger, more fit and all that blablabla. But man-oh-man five pounds in four days, that’s just rude. That Publix scale with the big numbers, I think I heard it laugh at me.

The good news, last week I managed to exercise to Jillian Michael’s 30 day Shred DVD three days in a row. That took some determination. I know 3 out of 30 is only 10% but multiply that times 10 and I’m what you call a success story. The point is though, it’s completely possible for me to exercise every day for 20 heart pounding minutes in the name of lean muscle mass.

The other truth that I’ve unwittingly discovered - I completely abhor exercise. Seriously. I despise every single stationary lunge, every sissy girl push up, every mother-loving jumping jack. I hate exercise. Like. A lot.

But I can do it. Oh yes. I. Can.

I hope my fellow HASAYers aren’t too disappointed.

Most of the time, my kids are fighting.

Their battles run the gamut from minor skirmishes to full on wars. Simple disagreements escalate quickly to shouting matches that then explode in to shoving matches that subsequently get even uglier than that. Eventually it ends with one or both parties or occasionally three or maybe just everyone, crying and sobbing and trying at the top of their lungs to plead their cases to mom or dad, who at that point are so NOT listening.

Today…

Today was not  one of those days.

Possibly the planets were righteously aligned. Maybe it’s some sort of karmic pat on the back for years of stellar parenting. More than likely my children have been replaced with alien facsimiles of themselves. Either way I’m good with it.

While we sat at the dinner table tonight, everyone seemingly satisfied with their meals, the children began joking and giggling and actually *gasp* enjoying each other’s company. The common theme? The joke that had everyone in stitches, literally rolling with laughter and unable to contain themselves?

It was the uttering of a single, lunatic phrase.

Complete nonsense.

And totally inappropriate for civilized dinner conversation.

Butt nipple.

I apologize in advance if your kid picks that up from my kid.

They were having so much fun with it. Seriously, who was I to rain on their weirdo anatomy parade?

Eventually it turned in to Monkey Nipple, but even I can’t say that without cracking a smile.

I’m just not feeling it.

Maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the shrinking numbers in our bank account, but this whole Christmas thing has me feeling like a deer in headlights. The holiday season is speeding recklessly toward me and all I can do is blink, frozen as the driver sings drunken carols and chucks empty bottles of nog out the window.

If you ask me, Thanksgiving is just a gateway holiday. Blowing the door wide open to the dangers of Christmas - tinsel, pine trees, stockings and scotch tape.

Oh the pressure.

I don’t want to shop, I don’t want to decorate. What I do want to do is eat scads of leftovers and curl up in the fetal position.

Not an option with kids. Kids want Christmas music, they want to author Christmas lists and watch Christmas movies. They want a tree and happiness and joy and fun, so for them I will stir my inner elf with a red hot poker and wait for her to do a little jig, maybe find the motivation to do some online shopping while the kidlings are asleep. And sometime next week, we’re getting a Christmas tree.

It’ll need decorating.

Can you hear me sighing?

I’ll take plenty of pictures, I’ll fake some enthusiasm, eventually the spirit will catch on like a bad head cold, right?

Yeah, I’ll work on that.

Perhaps you bloggy readers can offer some tips for slaying my inner Grinch and getting in to the holiday spirit? Bring it.

For more WW visit here and here .

Maybe it’s because we’ve been so busy lately or maybe it’s the tension of the impending holiday season, but this month the PMS just caught me totally off guard.

Sure, I’ve been a little more anxious than usual but I attributed that to the forced social interactions - festivals, shows, baby showers - they all put me on edge. I do okay once I get to wherever I need to be - I smile, I laugh nervously, I socialize, I eat, I leave. But the precursor to that is a stressed out drama mama who changes her clothes five times, cries about the state of her hair, then walks around slamming drawers and cabinet doors for no reason.

How did I finally come to the obvious conclusion? I guess the two monster zits on the side of my face gave it away. It’s like a puberty flashback without the adolescent awkwardness, instead I’ve got thirtysomething awkwardness, which believe me, is not as endearing.

Then there’s the anger. That bubbling-up-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach fury that makes me want to shake the snot out of someone. (Not the kids, we have a don’t shake the kids rule…but maybe the dogs or a door to door salesman.)

It doesn’t help that the kids spent all day yelling at each other, which makes me yell at them, which makes everyone else yell even louder. I don’t even want to know what it sounds like on the outside, but I’m pretty sure the noise travels for at least a three block radius. So by the time my dear husband called me from work to wish me good-night and talk about my day, I was. just. not. feeling. it. The best I could do was grunt in periodic intervals and perhaps snicker in disdain. Any questions he may or may not have asked me were met with a combination of sighs, clicks and eye rolls he was not privy to since he was on the other end of the phone line.

It’s like everyone is suddenly irritating x 10 through no fault of their own.

It’s me, it’s all me.

Who am I kidding? It’s them, it’s all them.

So I don’t have a lot to brag about on the fitness front. It’s been a combination of viral infections, scheduling conflicts, and plain apathy that were my downfall last week. This week the prospects would seem just as grim considering Turkey Day looms just on the horizon, threatening diet ambitions with its gluttonous offerings.

I’m not going to lie.

I expect to eat my weight in sweet potato casserole, turkey, and chorizo stuffing. Then I’m going to get horizontal while my children run rampant in someone else’s house, terrorizing cats and feeding leftovers to the dog. All the exercise I’m going to be getting Thursday will be in the brief treks I make from the kitchen to the dinner table to the sofa to the car to my bed. I suppose I could travel in walking lunges and work off some of that sugar and starch, but what are the chances.

My goal this week is to try and make up for that one no - holds - barred day of eating. Today I plugged in my Jillian Michaels DVD, put on my sneakers and sports bra and got to “Shredding” - twenty minutes of strength and cardio intervals designed to shrink my thighs and give me palpitations. The problem is every time I do the Level 1 segment, I always think of this video:

I’ve got four kids, we’ve been Spongebob Squarepants fans for a long time. One of the “Shred” moves in particular is a pelvic stretch that is almost identical in practice to Spongebob’s “bring it around town” move. Inevitably every time I put my hands to my hips and do this rotating stretch, I can’t help but shriek my zaniest cartoon imitation of the yellow goober. I suppose there are worse things to channel as I exhaust my muscles in to near collapse. Spongebob is eager, energetic and spunky for an invertebrate. And I’m pretty sure he’s got like zero body fat. So rather than focus on Jillian Michael’s angry eyes, flared nostrils, and rock solid abs, I’ll channel my inner sponge and shred the week away. (Except for Thursday, I’ve made that abundantly clear right?)I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

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In case you’re wondering what that clever acronym in the title means, visit Casey at Half As Good As You and meet all the other members of club HASAY , a weight loss and fitness support group for everyone under the bloggy sun.

For almost four years he’s been a dinosaur junkie. He could barely form sentences and he was already expressing his awe for the mighty T-Rex.

Of course, my husband and I being the good parents that we are, fed his obsession with the requisite enthusiasm, filling his closet beyond capacity with dinosaur toys, dinosaur puzzles, dinosaur books, dinosaur DVDs and dinosaur clothing. And while he was learning to identify all these prehistoric monstrosities by name, well…so were we. We know more than we ever care to about the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.  That’s why when we heard the North American tour of Walking with Dinosaurs Live was coming to an arena near us, we had to mortgage the house to get the family some tickets to last night’s show. Here’s a little taste of the main attraction, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The dinosaurs were incredible, I’ll give them that. They were mammoth and their movements exceptionally lifelike. It would have been difficult not to be impressed. My son watched the whole thing with wide eyes, perched right on the edge of his seat. Even my toddler didn’t utter a single peep once the dinos started to march out, other than to point and say “dinosaur” in his baby speak.

I loved watching the kids’ expressions, but for me the show was so-so. I thought it was a little dull, there were some tense moments but really it was just a dinosaur robotics pageant. They came out, they roared, they did their little choreographed battles, they roared, the end. My older children were hoping for some kind of dino animatronic evisceration, but that wasn’t in the cards. And those arena seats, dear God, I don’t know how I managed to fold myself in to them and balance a two year old on my lap. By the time the performance was over and we had to stand up to leave, I swear I could hear my knees creaking, it actually took me a while to straighten them out.

Still, it was totally worth it to see the look on this kid’s face at the end of the night.

Yeah. Dinosaurs totally rule.

Our elementary school’s PTA was hosting a Harvest Festival fundraiser today, complete with “rides” and a petting zoo. I think they’ve sent home fliers every day for the last two weeks trying to work up some hype. Needless to say my five year old and ten year old (aka the tween) were working themselves in to a froth at the prospect of attending the big event.

The big event in question was a series of eight different inflatable “rides”, a rock climbing wall and a bungee trampoline type contraption. For this they sold $12 bracelets that gave you unlimited admission to all the “rides” except of course the rock climbing wall and the bungee, for which you were only allowed a single shot, extras would cost you a buck a pop. Oh and they had a hand cranked hamster wheel thing that was pretty popular as well.

I wasn’t too happy about shelling out the $24 for bounce house entries, but it went toward a worthy cause, so I bought each kid a wrist band and set out on my way to guard shoes while they frolicked.

I’m not a big fan of crowds personally, and hordes of restless children make me antsy. Especially since nobody knows how to wait their turn and I’m always compelled to run interference for my offspring just so I can muscle any stray line cutters back a place or two. Being mother hen gets a little exhausting actually. Pecking other people’s kids in the shins and such because my own kids are either too distracted or too shy to mark their territory.

They had a good time for the most part. Although that good time mainly consisted of spending an hour manhandling farm animals, and running the same inflatable obstacle course at least 17 times. It’s all relative I guess. Hopefully the PTA will earn the money back they had to spend renting all those air powered amusements.

What’s worse than a single teen making mischief all by her lonesome?

Well, four teens of course.

Four lanky, giggling, squealing, smart alecky girls, who coincidentally thought they were the cat’s meow today when I dropped them off at the local movie theater to see a 7 PM showing of “Twilight”. (I completely realize hip teen girls do not say cat’s meow, or hip for that matter, I’m not a total square.)

My daughter had a blast in spite of not really caring for the film. The theme of the night was of course boys. The one thing she couldn’t get enough of. Eye candy. Or as she puts it “hot guys“. And she’s not talking about boys wearing parkas in the middle of summer either.

I love that she wants to share the experience with me. I think it’s sweet, and with her I’ve got to take the communication where I can get it. That she volunteered our house as the central location, and me to chauffer the minivan is rather flattering. But man oh man have I had my fill of teen chatter today.

Did you know the average teen girl can fit 250 words in a sentence without introducing a single mode of punctuation, except for a high pitch shrieking sound meant to express excitement, disgust, and/or hilarity?

Did you know when four teenage girls are trapped in a minivan for fifteen minutes they will all talk non-stop simultaneously over one another?

Did you know it makes a teen girl giggle to hear a grown woman say “What the flock?” when she almost rams a distracted driver who cut her off in traffic?

Did you know a gaggle of teenage girls can make you feel about ten years older than you felt when you got out of bed that morning?

I so need a nap. And maybe some hot tea. And some rice pudding.

See, I am old.

Life would be like really hard. Cause I’d have to like constantly pause mid-sentence just to like squeeze the word “like” in it at least like twenty times.

I’d have to obsess non-stop about boys noticing me in my skin tight school pants.

The muscles behind my eyeballs would hurt so bad from all the rolling they’d have to do on any given day that I’d need some kind of eyeball therapy just to get them back in rolling condition.

I’d be easily distracted by things like boys or music or music that’s made by boys in really tight pants.

I’d have to take my mom’s camera without asking so I could take weirdo pictures of myself in the bathroom I’m supposed to share with my sister, except it’s totally mine.

I’d have to pretend to be on the toilet a lot, just to get some privacy.

I would be annoyed by everyone on the planet because they’re all stupid, unlike me who is so NOT stupid.

I’d have to slam a lot of doors.

I’d live on a diet of Hot Fries and Coke and Cosmic Brownies.

I’d totally need a cell phone with a texting plan so I could send indecipherable messages to all my friends at any given time of the day or night, then I’d snicker at really inappropriate moments and when someone asked what I was laughing at, I could just roll my overstressed eyeballs and say “nothing” with a smirk.

I’d have to complain a lot about how unfair life is because I never get sick enough to stay home from school or because I don’t have my own room.

I would loathe math.

I’d have to contradict myself at least fifteen times a day on any given topic, then pretend I didn’t.

I would be completely oblivious to the time space continuum, making my perception of a two hour shower seem like just fifteen minutes.

I’d squeal for no apparent reason and say random things in the middle of other people’s conversations, like if someone is talking about the economy, I could volunteer that I love cheese.

Did someone say boys?

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