Finally, signs of spring

It's not the nearly clear front lawn that has me finally feeling as if spring has arrived. It's the pleasant sound of kids laughing and running about outside. It's warm enough to dig the bicycles out of the garage, pump up the tires and ride off on adventures until the sun goes down...which is thankfully several hours later than just a few weeks ago.

Thoughts on making the best of a situation

I've been trying to focus my reading in a more "serious" direction lately. That is, more non-fiction and general "serious"fiction rather than my usual fare which can only be called literary "junk food". A guilty pleasure, but not something worth contemplating or discussion with anyone.

I've just started reading this book "Fieldwork" By Micha Berlinski. How I'll feel about the book it's too early to say, but very early on it has me deep in thought. The main character is listening to a story over dinner, from a man who visited a woman in a Thai prison. She is serving a life sentence for murder and inherited some money from an uncle. The man was sent to inform her of the inheritance and make arrangements for what she wanted done with the money. In her situation, this money could give her a chance at freedom, but instead of using it to bribe her way out of jail, she gives most of it to charity and uses the rest to purchase the supplies she needs to complete two anthropological studies of prison life.

This was stunning to me. What sort of person chooses to, in spite of having a way out, stay in a bad situation and essentially, work to make the best of it. I would think most people would not hesitate to escape and yet this woman stays to study the political and economic systems that form in jails.

This is all told in the first 30 pages of the book, so clearly I will learn more about this woman along the way, but I am already completely engrossed in thoughts about this topic.

What would the world be like if we all, regardless of where we found ourselves, did whatever we could to make a difference or impact the world in some way. This woman made her stay in jail not just about punishment or rehabilitation, but about helping the world understand the unique interaction of people in a prison setting.

Is it possible that this is the very thing we are all meant to do? Each of us has a unique situation in which it is our challenge to find a way to make it meaningful. I guess what strikes me is, this woman, who was in a Thai prison, for the rest of her life, found a way to make it meaningful, found a way to leave the world with more knowledge than it had before she came along. What possible excuse do the rest of us have to not find a way to leave the world better in some way than before we were here?

After all, you may think you have it bad, but you aren't stuck in a Thai prison for the rest of your life, how bad can it really be?

-peace

Life moves fast...everything that's true is a lie and everything thats up is down...

...15 lbs later and i've been working my ass off. Literally.
Life always likes to toss shit at you tho, doesn't it?
Suddenly, I've lost someone so important in my life, I really can't say which way is up. I used a phrase the other day and really it describes things so well, I didn't realize how well until I stopped to think about it.

I've dropped my basket. Everything is rolling away in a million different directions and all I can do is watch as it does and cry.

Not everything I've got is gone. I know this and inspite of feeling absolutely horrid, like someone is repeatedly punching me in the stomach, I am determined to hold on to what I've got left. That includes the focus I have on getting myself in shape and healthy. It took me a long time to get my motivation back and if there is anything that I can keep him from taking from me it will be that.

Let it be known far and wide that I can keep a food diary.

After reading my friend Carrie's blog, coffee is on my mind. But rather than continue the spread of coffee related blogs through out the world, I will resist commenting on my own addiction.

Instead, I will celebrate the 6th day of what is officially the longest period of time I've ever kept a full and accurate food diary. *waits for the fanfare and applause*

Ok fine, it's not that big of a deal, but in this new quest I'm on, it's the single hardest part of the whole shebang. There are things that I have talent for and there are things whose mastery always seem to elude me. Keeping track of what I put in my mouth, taking pills and calculus compete for the top spot.

So, this is my new goal (previous goals were 1)plan menu and cook at home and 2)drink less Starbucks). I am, right now, not even concerned with what I have to write down (or embarrassed that the phrase "12 oz of coffee" repeats over and over and over again) as much as i am trying to be obsessed with getting it on paper. or...into the computer, as it were.

I was using my little journal software thing to keep track of it, but i recently found a free website that comes up with calorie counts for foods and entire recipes and decided this might be an even more useful tool to use as a diary.

I have been visiting the website often to calculate how many calories are in things like my chili recipe or the mashed mock-potatoes i made last week. It will take all the ingredients and put them together and divide it all out into the number of servings you choose. It breaks down fat, carbs, protein and other nutritional info also. Very handy.

I guess the whole point is to make this as easy and interesting as possible, so as to not stop doing it. Of course, now I want to track my progress with their nifty reports and such and so I have 5 more days of stuff to enter that I was putting in the journal and that's a bunch more work. Work, I think....that requires a cup of coffee to complete. Heh.

Notes from my holiday vacation...or apparently you can get good eats in North Dakota

- I actually dig my mom with no hair. She's grown accustom to the look and says it's quite liberating. She's over the chemo-already-dead look and her color is good. I was prepared to be shocked and horrified, but it was really rather cool. She didn't quite appreciate me calling her "baldy."

- This year was no different, mom left the entirety of the Christmas decorating to us when we arrived and was bugged by my less than enthused execution of the task. Well, it was a bit different in that she got to use cancer as an excuse not to do it herself. An excuse that would have totally held more water with me if she hadn't left it for me to do every year since I left home.

- Ryan managed to enjoy most, if not all, the food he ate while visiting (unlike last year where it seemed everything he ate somehow sucked). He had sweet potato fries for the first time and is planning to return to California to open a place that serves only those. He was shocked to find a place that serves decent falafel(sp?) as well. For the most part, our eating out was 1000% better than the last time he was here. Also, I mention with pride, he thinks I make great coffee, great French toast, loves my bacon wrapped shrimp and my lasagna (which admittedly would only be mediocre if anyone with Italian blood happened to taste it).

- The dog has graduated from sleeping in his box at night to taking the place of several stuffed animals in my daughter's bed. He is still, however, eating his own poop. :(

- I still have not mailed out most of my Christmas cards. They will now be referred to as Post-Holiday Season cards.

- I think I am officially old. We went out New Year's Even and had a very good time but as soon as Midnight hit we couldn't get home fast enough. If it hadn't been New Year's we probably would have been home before midnight.