Daddy Is Tired

This post was originally posted at the Shredheads blog on November 11, 2009 – feel free to comment over there.

We’ve been great friends for a long time now, and you’ve really helped me a lot.  In fact, in some ways you’ve carried me through the most difficult times of my weight loss journey.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re still wonderful, but it’s gotten to the point where you’re all I think about.  In fact, I long for you, often choosing you over who I should and that’s just not right.  So right now I think we need to spend less time together.

After last week’s accidental running out of Diet Mountain Dew, and the resulting caffeine withdrawal, I realized I needed to cut back. WAY back.  I don’t know how much I was drinking before, but it was at least 2 liters a day (probably more).  Don’t bother telling me how bad that is.

So this past week I’ve been making a 2 liter bottle last 3 days (filling in the gaps with water and decaf iced tea), and I’m noticed some big changes.  The strangest is that I’ve started dreaming again.  For a long time I haven’t had (or remembered, at least) ANY dreams.  Nothing.  And for the past few nights I’ve been having and remembering dreams.  I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I figure it’s a sign that I’m headed in the right direction.

Our house is a sty.  Of the pig variety.

I have only myself to blame – after all, it’s my job to keep it clean since I don’t have a Real Job.  But there’s something about cleaning that makes it hard for me to focus.  I’ll start out strong, maybe cleaning toilets.  Suddenly a bird chirps outside and I end up with Alzheimer’s disease.  I wander off aimlessly with no clue what’s going on, only to come to my senses in front of the television some time later with no memories of what has happened.  I’m just lucky that so far I always stay in the house!

This week was our biweekly maids visit.  Of course that required a Serious Cleaning Day…you know the one, where you clean the house so the cleaning people won’t discover the filth in which you live for the other 13 days?

Anyway, I was carrying some clothes upstairs to dump them on the floor hang them in my closet, and I took my shoes with me.  Because I’m all about efficiency, you know…why make two trips?  When I got to our room, I dropped my shoes in the middle of the room…despite being on my way to the closet!  It was okay, though, because they landed in a nice soft pile of dirty socks that I’d left there earlier in the day on my way down to the laundry room.

The great part was that as I stepped back over the shoes and socks to head back downstairs I thought, “Wow, that was really dumb to leave those there.”  And yet there they stayed.

None of this is my fault, though.  I have a Y chromosome, you see…

It’s now officially been a year that we’ve been without a dog.  Losing Mena was such a terrible thing, and to lose Gideon only two weeks later was devastating.

I can’t pretend that he was the perfect family dog…he had sore hips and didn’t like when the kids got near them.  He liked to wrestle – roughly.  But we’d gotten him before we had kids.  Before we knew some of the habits we should break from a dog.  So I ended up with the perfect dog not for a family with kids…but for me.

He and I really understood each other, and it’s contemplating how wonderful he was that makes me REALLY wonder about what people call the soul.  He had such a strong personality, and was so smart, that I wonder where that came from.  We understood each other perfectly.  When I was in a bad mood, he’d sense it from across the house and put his chin (or butt) on me.  When I was sad he’d come cuddle me.  And of course he’d always want to play in the yard.  I miss throwing his toys and watching him catch them mid-air.  I miss going on walks, watching how wiggly he got when I got the leash out.  I miss coming home from work to have lunch with him.  I miss just hearing his nails click on the floor.

You may not have been the ideal family dog, Gideon, but you were perfect for me.  You were my little guy, and you always will be.  I love you.

My Little Guy

I can’t believe it’s been a year without Mena.  I’ve managed to make it through an entire year without the greatest family dog that ever was.

This morning I took Mena’s favorite toy out and held it for a while.  I just can’t believe how fast we went from having her to losing her.  It’s hard holding her toy and not having her come squeak it for me.  It’s hard looking at all of her cozy spots around the house and seeing other stuff in them.  It’s hard not seeing her smiley face when I’m walking (or running) around the neighborhood.

And it’s extra hard right now, because with all of the problems we’re having with Ellie (and they spill over into Matthew’s attitude too) I could sure use her sweet disposition around.  Just sitting with her would calm me down.  She was awesome, and I still miss her.

I love you Mena.  And you know I always will.

Little Mena

So some of you may have read The Tweet I sent yesterday.  If you didn’t see it, don’t bother looking.  I deleted it.  To give you a hint of what it said, before I sent it I sent this:

And right after The Tweet, I sent this:

The Tweet was profanity-laden and not very complimentary – to Ellie or, quite frankly, to me.  But I needed an outlet.  I needed it to get out there so someone would actually hear it, because sometimes if nobody hears you it just isn’t the same.  And I didn’t think the neighbors really needed to hear it.  So, well, hi Twitterverse, it comes to you!

Not surprisingly, I got a reply tweet.  I love feedback, but for some reason this woman’s reply really got to me.  It was seconds after I sent the original, and she said:

My first thought was, “Fuck you!”  Then my insecurities took over.  While I was annoyed with the “lot of people unfollowing you” bit, I was really disturbed about the “I’m upset for your 5 year old” comment.  I shouldn’t let that get to me, but, well, instead of getting to bed at a reasonable hour my brain ended up getting all wound up and I deleted The Tweet.

Fortunately, as the evening went on, some very cool people tweeted me back and made me feel better (sorry if I missed anyone).  @SarcasticMomLC pointed out that if they unfollow me for a single tweet then they weren’t my kind of people.

Thank goodness I’ve got “my kind of people” following me too.  <drunken slur>  I love you guys! </drunken slur>

I recently read a blog post discussing how what people say affects you.  I thought about that for a bit, but since my memories of childhood (and even adulthood) are foggy at best, I don’t recall a lot of specific comments about my weight or anything else.  I know they were there, but they just don’t surface often.

Anyway, I was just listening to a Def Leppard tune while doing dishes.  Do people still use the word “tune”?  While singing along I had a flashback to high school – if you’ll recall, I was the fattest kid in school.  I was in a friend’s house and his sister was talking to her friend about how she had tickets to Def Leppard.  I walked into the kitchen as she was saying something like, “He is SO hot!”

Then, and this is one of the few times in my life where my memory turns crystal clear, she looked at me and said, “I mean Joe Elliott, not you.”

I’m reasonably sure a few boxes of Oreos made the ultimate sacrifice for that one.

There was another good one in college.  My classmates and I were hanging out, and one of the guys who was really into fitness said to me, “Don’t take off your shirt, it’s going to be a flabalanche.”  Much laughter ensued.

My coping mechanism at that time was simple.  For dinner that night I guarantee I hit the drive-thru at Jack in the Box and ordered two sourdough jacks, two large fries, and two large cokes.  The two cokes were to fool the people into thinking there were two people eating all that food.  I had that meal a lot.

Good times.

It’s interesting that out of all the comments I’ve heard that those two should stand out so strongly.  They were just throwaway lines, and shouldn’t have mattered, but they did.  More than any complimentary lines, apparently, because I don’t easily recall any of those.  Except for one.

In graduate school I had an AMAZING set of friends who helped me start eating right and losing weight (the first time).  And they introduced me to Diet Mountain Dew.  (heh)  Shortly before I moved, we were getting ready to go on one of our regular hikes.  I’d just gotten to the base of Squaw Peak and as I walked up one of them said, “I hadn’t realized until just now how much weight you’ve lost.  You look great!”

You probably can’t imagine how that felt.  Even thinking about it now almost gives me goose bumps.

I like to imagine that my kids will never have to deal with hurtful comments, but my daughter already has.  About a year ago, a boy in her school told her (in soccer class) that she couldn’t play well because she was a girl.  One comment by that little POS and it took weeks to get her even to kick a soccer ball again.  Even when it’s not about food, words matter.

I just hope I can teach my kids to remember how great they are, no matter what anyone might say to them.

Lately I’ve been trying to remember what I think about when I run.  Since I usually zone out that’s been tougher than I thought, but I have managed to remember a few things.

Of course there’s the requisite ogling of women.  What can I say?  There are some hotties out there!  Oh, hi Sharon.  Hee hee, uh, well, hmm.  So, how was your day?

I also think about how fast I’m running compared to last time, and trying to figure out how fast I might run a 10K.  I think about random song lyrics (and by “random” I mean “Alter Bridge”), where the next bathroom is, Twitter…lots of dumb stuff like that.   Lately I’ve been thinking about the Tiarathon (Disney Princess 1/2 marathon) that I hope to be doing in March with other Shredheads, which leads to thinking about a Disney trip with the family.  Mostly  mundane and boring stuff.

But then there’s the weird stuff.  The stuff that makes me wonder if I’m really qualified to be watching children all day long.

The other morning I found myself thinking about the people I was running by – what their stories might be.  That’s not unusual, but after passing one old man I actually thought about if he was an older version of me coming back from the future to watch the “now” me run.  I even came up with some theories of why I’d want to come back to watch me.  After all, he must have looked away because if we make eye contact something bad will happen to the universe, right?

WTF?

Sometimes I think it’s better if I don’t remember what I think while I run.

[Note: This is cross-posted at/from the Shredheads site...so if you've read that, you've read this!]

I was originally going to just run my usual 5K this past weekend…you know, to keep up with the BlogHer 5K.  But since I am trying to convince Sharon to let me run the Tiarathon I decided to do 10K instead.  But when @momslant boasted that she “saw  your 5K (on Thursday) and raised you 5K”, I couldn’t help raising the bar a bit and do more than 10K.  So I bumped it to 6.6 miles – that’s 1/4 of a full marathon!  Hence, the 1st Annual #notblogher Half-Half Marathon was born.

This year’s route was fantastic.  Sorry about the awful picture quality.

I started in Arlington at about 6.  As you know, I usually run earlier than that, but this was a one-way run and the train I was taking back didn’t leave until 7:25am.  First I ran to the Iwo Jima portapotties Memorial, then followed the trail down past Arlington Cemetary.  That’s a pretty amazing place if you haven’t seen it in person.  Take this picture and multiply it by a gazillionty.

After that I headed out across Memorial Bridge, and I still felt strong.  It was pretty cool running toward both the Lincoln Memorial and a beautiful sunrise.

After running past the Lincoln Memorial (and some tourists who were out at 6:30?), I ran along the reflecting pool and headed past the Korean War and WWII Memorials toward the Washington Monument.  I think I must have been showing off a bit (not on purpose) in front of the tourists because I noticed myself going pretty fast after I passed them.

After that, there wasn’t a lot to see as I ran toward the Capitol.  I’ve got to admit, when I passed the Washington Monument I started to run out of gas.  I’d meant to eat before leaving but didn’t, and combined with showing off in front of the tourists, I was really feeling tired.  Then after a pretty long stop at a stop light it was REALLY tough to get my legs running again.  Walking was great, running not so much, so at some point I ended up doing 1 minute run/45 second walk intervals.  But I ran by my metro stop (Smithsonian) as planned and went toward the Capitol.

At 6 miles I turned around and made it back to the metro.  Ahh…the sweet, sweet feeling of being done.

I ended up doing 6.6 miles in 1 hour 05 minutes (1 hour 03 minutes if you take out bathroom and picture stops).  I can’t believe I want to do 13.1 next year!

In an attempt to be less hermit-like, I’ve started trying to make friends.  I figured my Weight Watcher’s meeting is a pretty good place to start because, after all, we all have at least ONE thing in common.  So at one meeting a while ago I decided to reach out to people like me…you know, people who are young and attractive.

I’ll wait while you stop laughing.

I met a very nice woman (call her “J,” because everyone loves a mystery) who reminds me of one of my old friends, although she’s probably the age my friend and I were when we first met…which puts me solidly 10 years older than she is.  But I try to ignore that.  Anyway, J and I were sitting next to each other at the last meeting when the leader began talking about vegetables.  I know, isn’t Weight Watcher’s great?  J then raised her hand and told the class how she’d actually been researching the health benefits of spinach.

“That’s odd,” I thought to myself.  “Who researches spinach?”

Apparently, not only is spinach a mediocre-tasting vegetable (heh), it has some great cancer fighting properties and other health benefits too.  I used all my willpower and refrained from mentioning that I’d eaten spinach in my omlette that morning, and somehow the meeting went on.

I kind of instantly forgot the spinach discussion because, seriously, why would I remember anything about a spinach discussion?  Gosh, remember that thing we were talking about the other day, about how great spinach is? A couple of minutes later J – did I mention she’s young and attractive, much like me – turned to me and said quietly, “You know, spinach really helps with prostate health.”

Random prostate advice from young women.  Ouch.  I’m old again.

Boy, those medical texts can make anything sexy!

I’ve been reading with great fascination – much in the same way I read about  Jon and Kate – about the now infamous Nikon cocktail party at BlogHer 2009.  Yes, the one that proves once and for all that indeed, Nikon hates babies.  I know that it’s true because I heard it on Twitter: #nikonhatesbabies.

I didn’t go to BlogHer, but this story makes me sad.  I’m sad that such a silly incident* blew up into such an enormous todo.  Toodoo?  Hullabaloo?  Whatever…people have forgotten what conferences are all about.  Conferences should not be about getting into cocktail parties.  They should not be about forming cliques.  They should not be about ostracizing some poor individual or company for making a mistake.  And conferences should definitely not be about if you have your baby with you.

Unless you’re at the AVN Expo (note to my relatives,  don’t click that).  If you’re a porn star, leave the kid at home.  Thanks.

Ahh, I can hear the cheers now.  Yea, verily, it’s about the bloggers!  It’s about content, and storytelling.  It’s about friendship and comradery!  It’s about banding together and standing as one.  We’re proud of what we do, and we’re proud of how we do it!

And while you suckers cheer for that, I’m going to elbow that baby to get my swag bag.  Daddy needs a new tampon purse and iPod vibrator.**

—
*Yes, someone was denied entry into the Nikon party, but she didn’t mean for it to be blown up into the “major” incident that it was.  As things do on The Internets, it took on a life of its own.

**I don’t know if the swag actually included a tampon purse.