Living-Deliberately.com

Remember what they say! Thinking them through, then writing them down, will mean a powerful increase in the likelihood of your meeting your goals!

Here’s my last update, at the end of May. And here’s a clue of my latest goal achievement!

The original list, in January:

So here was my original list for 2008:

(obviously not a complete list):

• continue to learn and train as necessary for my first sprint-level Triathlon; I want to do my first in the spring of ‘09 so the bulk of my learning and prep should be within this year.
• obtain and learn to play the guitar (leftover goal from last year, completely untouched).
• read fiction again this summer.
• paint again.
• hit my buisiness goal.
• transition my children healthfully, teaching them to live honestly, loving them patiently.
• continue, and to some extent return to, eating whole, traditional foods prepared at home, wherever home comes to be.

And the ammendments, later in the spring:

• work on “greening” things up a bit more….compost the food scraps, contribute to the garden, be more diligent with power consumption (turn off this ‘puter at night!), use a reusable water bottle instead of buying them…etc.
• get my budget written. I am now “variable income” and Dave has sheets for that. It’s time to get very, very intentional with money, more than I ever have done so before; there’s no excuse not to because I certainly know better!
• kayak…another long time wish that I’ve done nothing to attain. Saying it in writing is a start

And here is my mid-summer update!

• I can now do all three of the Tri elements, consecutively but s-l-o-w-l-y, and only in the gym. It’s a 3 mile run, a 13 mile ride, and a 400 yard swim. The swimming is still sloppy (and mostly side stroke…not sure if that’s allowed or not). But the endurance is building, I’ll continue to work on technique, and worry about speed dead last ;-).
• playing my guitar about 4 times a week. Finger picking is improving. Need to broaden the variety of chords I’m using though….getting stuck in a rut between C, G, F, Em, and Am.
• reading a lot, period. Fiction, non-fiction, magazines, Sunday Times….it’s all good!
• I paint on Sunday afternoons. Nearly done with my most recent painting and have begun sketches for the next.
• Business is building…and this week I’m headed to the NSA conference in NY, which should only make it better!
• Kids are doing great too; things are so much more stable. And we’re all in support groups, which I tremendously recommend!
• food progress is slow. In the heat, I love sushi and iced coffee and could easily eat only that. They’re whole foods though…. ;-).
• miserable, non-existent progress on greening things up, except that my travel has reduced a little and so thus has my gas consumption.
• Budget is written and being worked on. Baby steps to be sure.
• KAYAKING BEGUN!!! Hoooo rah! I was just about to remove this one from the list when I was suddenly blessed with the opportunity to give it a whirl. Even better was the company I kept while doing it. And there is more to come, which I am soooo glad for because I totally fell in love with it that night. Next stop: a bigger river and maybe manatees!

New goals, that may fit into this year and may be part of next, but I know I want to do them:

• learn to surf! My kids are doing this and I want to do it with them!
• Karate. I learned some basic self-defense moves but I’ve been considering this one for about 17 years now and I’ve decided I want to approach it deliberately. Not necessarily aim for a black belt, but at least the serious pursuit of the discipline.

Anyone else want to post and share their goal progress for 2008?

Yesterday at the pool my 7 year old was swimming with another 7 year old…a cute kid with dark curls and sparkling eyes. They were tossing back and forth a water rocket and diving for it. The kid’s grandma was nearby correcting him every 5 seconds or so. “You threw that too far to the right” (come and sit in time out). “You are walking in the water more than swimming” (come and sit in time out). “Don’t splash so much” (come and sit in time out). That poor kid couldn’t do a single thing right and spent more time sitting on the side of the pool than he did in the water. But what really got me was this:

in a low tone, staring down right into that baby’s eyes, she growled, “You. Sit. Still or I’ll knock your damn head right off your neck.”

And in one chilled instant I knew she was the kind of woman to be feared. That if she says that in public, she’ll say worse in private. I spoke to the lifeguards about it, who are now going to watch her more closely and say something (it’s their policy as a family institution). They would prefer I go through them if there is ever a problem to reduce conflict. It didn’t feel like I’d done enough though.

There is a commercial running in some parts of the country. A man and woman in a duplex are having dinner at their dining room table. Through the adjoining wall a loud fight can be heard. The couple shift uncomfortably, debating if they should say something or not. The question we all ask, “should I get involved?”. Finally, the man gets up and goes out the front door. The anticipation builds as the viewer wonders what he’s going to say to the wife-beating neighbor.

He knocks.

He has a bat.

He says, “I thought you just might want to use the bat.”

Because the point is, when we do nothing, we’re helping them continue. Our silence is a contributor. Knowledge is power and power requires responsibility. The witness always has less to lose than the victim.

New Category for free-writes and lines of thought to explore: I’m Just Sayin….

A couple of friends and I were joking and reminiscing yesterday about an old diet habit we had as older teens: The Coke and M & M diet. I’m sure it looked a little different for all of us, but for me, it was a combination of factors that made the mixture a frequent source of substinence. For one, school started much too early for me to be hungry first thing, so I’d roll out of bed and sleep through First Period without eating first. By second period, which to get to I had to walk right past the PE coach selling candy from shopping cart, brought me a pack of peanut M & M’s (protein) and a few steps from there was the coke machine holding chilled caffeine…just what I needed to jump start the day! And I wasn’t alone. Half of my art class was eating the same freakin’ way.

Lunch was a Chip Which (ice cream sandwich made of chocolate chip cookies) because two hours after the Coke/Candy Combo, I was sugar crashing hard. The Chip Which and Chocolate Milk got me through the second half of the day. Just before Marching Band practice I’d grab a half gallon of Tropicana Twister (Strawberry Banana). After band, I needed salt, so it was french fries from the McDonald’s I passed on the way home. Dinner was always pretty decent because my mom cooked.

Why wasn’t I huge? Because of that band practice and portion size. What was I learning? To scrape by on sugar hits rather than nutrition.

After graduation I became more size-obsessed. Enter: Not Eating. That, of course, doesn’t get you far either, so the sugar hits continued in even smaller portions. It’s also a convenient way to fly under the radar while honing an eating disorder: no one seeing you eat junk food thinks you have one. Hot beverages make you feel full, so when you have communal drinks like coffee and tea, no one worries that you are starving yourself. I’d figured out how to make it on about 900 calories a day and just as the shakes would start, I could pop a few M & M’s, take a swig of Diet Coke, and the edge was off.

That year I started caring a smidge more for “healthier” eating so I’d dropped the ice cream sandwiches and chocolate milk, replacing them with sauteed veggies in toasted pita pockets and garden salads with no dressing. No one but my mom worried; my body looked pretty good. But her tip off was the depression symptoms that surface when your mind and body is so nutritionally depleted.

I was underweight when I got married, and when I was quickly pregnant 6 months after the wedding, I finally had a reason to get serious about eating better. My midwife, in so many ways the catalystic person starting me on a journey thoroughly touching every corner of my life, took me from an under-weight, mal-nourished Hungry Girl to a mother who could care for her baby by first caring for herself.

Still, I can’t entirely hate the eating disorder. It was that year that developed a strong sense of self-control and discipline, which in and of itself is not bad and quite necessary in order to in turn become healthy. I learned to push myself, learned to set goals and reach them, and heck…I lost weight.

I’ve never understood the American mentality of asking Overweight people or Yo-Yo Dieters for dieting advice (Have You Tried Jenny Yet?). Isn’t that a bit like asking the chain smoker how to quit? If I were a smoker and needed advice, I’d go find the NON smoker. The one who built a life around not being tempted, of rising above the habit. Ditto with drinkers; I’m not going to AA to learn how to not drink. AA is for *support*, but I would think those really needing to dry out would be better served to surround themselves with other dry people. A social life sans drinking, a healthy work life, healthy relationships.

So when it comes to weight loss, I can see the validity in going to the real experts on weight loss: the Anorexics. Not to emmulate their distortions or unbalance…but to actually get from them the methods that work. Healthy people don’t have to take them to the same extreme and that’s their power: because what Anorexics in turn don’t realize is that true self-control is in being balanced. Take the good and just let it be good: more is not always better.

What are my favorite Anorexic tips? Here they are:

• weight loss ALWAYS comes down to burning more than you eat. It is never harder or easier than that.
• exercise matters. If you’re going to burn more than you eat, and you’re going to eat, then you have to do more than sit on the couch and breathe.
• water, water, water. It doesn’t just hydrate you, it fills you. Likewise, frozen water (aka ice) can give your mouth something calorie and additive free to munch on when you know you’ve eaten enough but still want to work your yapper.
• hot fluids are miraculous. Clear Soup is part of almost every ethnic diet around. Coffee and Tea count too. They are communal, so are great choices when you need to consume things around other eaters but don’t want to dip into the Chili Cheese Fries. You’ll feel full, get a measure of nutrition, and won’t consume a huge portion
• Which reminds me: PORTION. You truly can eat ANYTHING you want, as long as you keep it to a decent portion size (define “decent”? Gastric Bypass people learn this the hardest way of all). If you have to have something, teach yourself to s-l-o-w-l-y eat a bite or two and then fill up on something else.
• Speed matters. There are lots of studies out there showing that the human appetite becomes satisfied in an amount of time, not just amount of food. So, in that 15 minute-or-so span of time, you can inhale the super-size, gluttonous mass of food, OR you can slowly savor a more sane portion. Watch someone with a disorder eat, and they are doing so slowly, unless that disorder is gluttony, in which case they are inhaling food by the pile-full.
• Never fill your fork. This plays into portion and speed. If your bite doesn’t fill the twines of your fork, it’s a decent size mouthful. If your fork resembles more of a shovel, it’s too full.
• make it count: if you need a protein hit, eat something whole and simple, like cheese or a hardboiled egg instead of a chicken sandwich with a bun and mayo.
• a little hunger is necessary. Hunger pangs are not always a bad thing. When your body needs to use fat stores, it needs hunger to signal it to do so. Go distract your mind for a while with something else; the first three days are the hardest and then your stomach adjusts.
• GRAZE. Lots of small meals, bites here and there, keep your metabolism high. This helps with inordinate amounts of hunger, blood sugar fluctuations, and energy.
• Fiber. Grains, Veggies….in short, roughage, is your friend. Fills you up, moves it on out, and usually is nutritious.

This many years later I know: balance is the key. The brain needs healthy fat to think clearly and avoid the depressive mood swings. If your diet is fat-free you’re in for one heckuva a dark period. Get sun, get exercise, get air. Seek out pure foods. If you’re growing a person, or feeding them via breastmilk, get over the weightloss thing almost entirely and remember you need extra fat and nutrition: that season is more about them than you. And it will take self-control. Self-control is it’s strongest when it’s used for GOOD rather than bad. It’s easier to deny something entirely than it is to be moderate, and that’s where gluttons and anorexics conjoined make the mistake.

I’m just thinkin’ it makes more sense to take the baby out of the water before tossing it.

After an early morning of sweltering humidity that made my curly hair straight in about 10 minutes (and no, I’m not exaggerating), I pulled into the gas station somewhere between Surf Camp and Visitation. I was sticky and rushed and flustered. I grabbed a pack of bottled waters from the cooler and dropped them on the counter. The attendant looked me up head to toe and said,

“Well honey…I’d just give my right tittie to have hair as purty as yours.”

5 days later I’m still trying to decide what just to say to something like that.

I know the primary question I ask on this blog is, “what if you wanted to change your life?”. Very often, that question morphs into, “what would you do if your life changed?”. Or maybe still, “what do you do when you changed one thing and other changes rippled on down because of it?” That’s where I sit at the moment.

I took my children and left an abusive marriage. Ten moons later we are divorced and living a very different lifestyle. I changed my life; that part was deliberate. I do preface any struggle this new life presents with the honest reality that safety makes everything worth it. I can’t say it would be if leaving were a simple lifestyle option, or an emotional response to not “feeling in love”, or because I thought the grass would be greener. Often I hear people justify divorce in cases of adultery or abuse and I’m living the truth that those two reasons are two of the only ones that would make it worthwhile. The raw truth is that life outside is often filled with some of the most extreme struggling I’ve ever known but with one added blessing: the toxic danger is gone. It’s nice to be able to sleep in peace, make human mistakes in grace, be loved for who I am; one might even say this is a “right”. Children, most especially, deserve to dwell in safety.

So here we are. And I am a single mother now still not fully transitioned (financially speaking) and also self-employed. The most flexible work schedule in the world still requires one thing: Time To Work. That is not compatible with days full of homeschooling 3 grade levels and a preschooler. Our time spent at Story Hour, soccer practice, swim lessons, surf camp and beach days, hiking, books before bed, handwriting practice does not a full education make.

A little history may put this transition into a little more perspective. I first wanted to homeschool my future children when I was 13. I *hated* school and the restrictiveness of it: institutionalized education is hard for a creative spirit. I wanted hours spent outside for my children, lots of books, free exploration, un-stifled creativity, personalized pace, eclectic resources….not until my children were much older, approaching the middle school years, and we were so broke that my working became more of a necessity did I feel compelled to consider putting them in school. I wanted their childhoods to be as “intact” as possible and to instill the ability to think “outside the box” from their earliest moments on.

The fact is that mothers are Only One Person and though many in the movement try to wear all the hats at once, very few can adequately pull off a good homeschool, a second income, and a well-managed household. If it was hard then, it’s even harder now, as a nearly single breadwinner. There are just not enough hours in the day to do it all, all at once.

Coupled with this is their very real need for more structure. After a tumultuous year with more travel than some adults could take, they need the consistent, even rather monotonous, routine that school can provide. I always prayed that when the time was right, I’d know, and I do. Fortunately, we are in a small town with what are considered “excellent” schools. The kids are all excited about the change (their opinions matter). We are all viewing it as a new kind of adventure: a change that is happening because other change happened.

The dream of homeschooling them forever never existed for me. I didn’t imagine a home-style high school graduation and I’ve always talked to them about the virtues of going to college. Still, saying good bye to my little homeschool is a loss. Little moments come, like when I’m selling a curriculum I’d spent so many hours studying and planning with, or when I walked them through the halls of the school for the very first time in their lives.

I think it’s more than a small poverty of our society that schools, even “excellent” schools, look like jails with happy colors. I wonder how we all will all adapt to having so much of our time decided *for* us, rather than *by* us. I can’t imagine dreaming in a place like that. Today I was reading an article in Vanity Fair on the birth of the Internet. It’s the 50th anniversary of the Arpanet and the 15th anniversary of the first browser. I was struck by this quote,

…find a good scientist. Fund him. Leave him alone. Don’t over manage. Don’t tell him how to do something…. Tell him what you’re interested in: don’t tell him how to do it.

That kind of free learning and boundless creativity is the culture that gave us one of the most transformative and historic tools of humanity. The homeschooling movement today is more broad and far reaching than most would realize and I have more faith in it’s ability to continue to promote extraordinary thinking (and thinkers) than institutionalized education. I wanted that for my babies.

For now though, it’s time to play by different rules. It’s time to fit within a context. It’s time to explore what the flip side can offer. It’s change that is happening because change happened. I’m learning the mechanics: the physicals, the shot records, the placement tests. I’m buying the supplies: the lunchboxes, the backpacks, the shoes and socks. Truth be told I’m grieving a little when I hear homeschooling friends talk about field trip schedules or history programs. I think the kids are a little nervous about things like Waking Before Sunrise, Homework, and Having To Ask To Use The Bathroom. Just like I didn’t spend my childhood dreaming of one day being divorced, I didn’t dream about sitting them down in a crowded classroom and a day planner at age 7.

One thing remains true: life is full of changes, deliberate and not. It’s what we do with those changes that matters.

I was at the grocery store in our small town on the Fl/Ga border. In front of me in line was a young mother…white and blond with a little girl dark and curly.

The store clerk (young, blond, teenager who has worked in the store for a few years): “Oh! She’s so cute! Is she yours?”

The mother: “Well, yes, she’s mine, but she’s adopted from Guatamala.” Starts to ask baby where she’s from, saying, “guata” and the baby finished with “mala”.

The clerk: “Are you going to tell her when she’s older that she’s not yours?”

The mother: “Well I guess she’ll take a look at me and figure it out. But we already teach her about where she’s from.” And the “guata” with the baby’s “mala” question repeated.

The clerk: “Yeah…I guess I’d better make sure I get a baby from HERE cuz I’m so white!”

The mother: “Yeah…you’d better”.

Wherever you are, however you’re celebrating, I hope it’s a great one!

My favorite memories for 4th of July always include the beach and fireworks at dusk. I like the small ones at home better than the big displays that require sitting through a traffic jam. Best yet is being able to do the small ones at home AND see the big ones from afar, ahead of the traffic! This year was a mingling of the usual (Mom’s potato salad and sparklers) and the not (no beach trip or parade).

I think my favorite memory of the 4th ever was one year on the “farm” I grew up on in Michigan (no animals and the garden was one full of roses). That year my dad went a little crazy with the fireworks and it’s really the first year I remember them. I was amazed and a little frightened and awestruck; I must have been 7. My sister and I had a summer habit of getting baths and nightgowns on and then heading back outside to run barefoot in the chilled grass, challenging one another to see who could run the farthest out of the circle of light, hoping to make it to the locust tree on the edge of the grove we called “the park”. I don’t think either of us ever made it that far, always turning chicken about half way across the yard. When I think of it, I remember the heavy smell of roses hanging in the dark air, the coolness of the grass just on the verge of dew, and laughing with a sister I was usually bickering with under the brighter light of day. And maybe all of that didn’t happen on that same 4th….or maybe it did. Childhood sometimes coagulates that way in the adult mind and that’s okay. What I know is that memory is one my sister and I both count as one of our mutual favorites and I think of it every time I sit barefoot at dusk, watch fireflies, or light a sparkler with a child on the 4th.

So here’s a toast to the Fourth, Families, Food, and Fantastic Memories! Blessings to all~