Aspirations

I’ve been working hard to simplify my life lately, but not too hard because that could complicate things, but just hard enough. I’ve taken some smart steps like saying no to things I didn’t want to do and getting rid of clutter and then some not-so-smart steps like ignoring my email box, ceasing any kind of quality blogging for days at a time and letting the house get super messy while I take the time to “enjoy life” by spending all day reading.

There’s just too much going on. I have my hand in too many pies. But they all taste SO GOOD! I am over-stimulated most of the time. I don’t like at least 1/3 of the things I’m doing and there are several things I want to do but don’t have time for. For a long time I tried so hard to go overboard with the little details of holidays, birthdays, and celebrations that I got burnt out and now I sometimes forget to do anything at all to mark special days. My to-do list has gotten so long that I’m afraid to look at it. I get a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see my planner laying on the counter so I just ignore it. At least 4 million trees gave their lives to create the massive piles of paperwork that are stacked all over my house waiting to be attended to.

ENOUGH!

I’ve been thinking “ENOUGH” for a while now but didn’t get up the gumption to actually do anything about it until I was talking to my brain doctor this summer and he suggested that I really focus on trying to say no unless I have a compelling reason to say yes to the various things that are asked of me. He’s a pretty smart guy and has gotten to know me fairly well in the past 3 and a half years since Magoo was born. (If you read the cover story in the NW Living section of the Seattle Times this weekend, you well know that I went a little loopy a few years ago and blog on the advice of my special doctor friend. No matter how open I am about my postpartum experiences, it will always be a bit jarring to see my mental health history in print like that.)

So for the next little while, until I’m as simple as Lenny from Of Mice and Men but far less violent, I am going to set a goal for simplification each week and I’d love some friends to join me. In the spirit of simplification, I don’t have a graphic or a Mr. Linky for this endeavor and the goals will be really small tiny embryonic steps to Lenny-ness.

I’ll post them on Sunday nights and we can all report back the following Sunday. You can leave your thoughts in my comments section or if you post on your blog, let me know.

Dare to Simplify Week 1 — Audio Input
For the week of October 5th I will play only classical music or none at all(besides when I’m working out — I’m just not sure Vivaldi will get my heart rate up enough.). The music will be calming and have no vocals. This includes all music played in my car, house or on my MP3 player.

This may seem like a strange way to start the experiment but I am over-stimulated and overwhelmed by the noise all around me, song lyrics, crazy beats, loud radio DJs and obnoxious political ads. It shouldn’t be that hard to calm down my audio input or even turn it off. I’m curious to see if this helps me feel more peaceful overall.

Care to join me?

Sometimes I really wish I were good at laundry. The problem is — I don’t wish it enough to actually make it happen. I’ve known quality laundresses in my day (yes they’ve all been female). I’ve observed them and I’m pretty sure I could become one of them if I really put my mind and my back into it.

To be good at laundry, you have to be a meticulous gatherer. Like a sheepherding dog, you must constantly be yipping at the heels of the dirty clothes piles and at the heels of the people who create them. Sometimes the people yip back but the clothes rarely do and they need to be gathered. Relentlessly. Possibly day and night. The gathering never ceases.

You then have to be a transportation engineer. This is crucial. Once you gather the laundry you have to find the motivation to actually get it down to the room where the washing of the laundry occurs. I’ve thought about putting in a laundry chute to make this a little more fun, that or a dumbwaiter like Webster used to ride in. I could put the whole basket in a dumbwaiter and even jump in there myself if I were feeling particularly lazy, which I never do. I just like to have contingency plans in place.

At this point in my laundry career I just tend to throw the clothes over the banister while looking at my kids and saying, “You know that only mommy gets to throw things or people down the stairs, right?” They see right through my hypocrisy but have yet to question it openly.

Then comes the sorting. To be good at laundry you need to know not only color names but also color/social groups and not every pink shirt belongs in the same group. The color/social groups as I see them are Whites, Volatile Colors, Benign Colors, Magoo’s Underwear, Light Linens, Dark Linens, Nasty Linens and Nobody Cares.

Laylee likes to sort and so does Magoo. One of my children is better at sorting than the other. Hint — It’s the one who does not need an entire laundry category for her underwear. I like them to help when I’m feeling all Mary-Poppinsy and wanting to sing songs and whistle tunes and teach them lessons about life. But let’s be honest, it’s easier to sort myself and this is probably my favorite part of laundry.

I’m also passable at step three, removing lima beans, pens, crayons, lipstick, chapstick, glue stick, pretty much any stick, coins, bobby pins, bowling balls and living creatures from pockets before putting the clothes in the washer.

Next is the part I never do but always wish I had but then never do again because it takes a little something called effort. Pre-treating. The name is misleading because doing this is not a treat. It’s not even foreplay to a treat. It’s just a pain in the glute.

I have a couple of natural stain removers that I like now, Charlie’s All Purpose Cleaner which was suggested by Kath and the Ecover with the built-in brush. They’re both good for different kinds of stains. That being said, I still hate looking for stains and putting the soap on the clothes. There are too many spots and grime and goo everywhere. My kids attract stains like… like…slime on a couple of kids and it drives me crazy. Usually when I’m pre-treating I want to put down the clothes and just go wrap my kids from head to foot in saran wrap with tiny holes for breathing and visibility.

The next part I’ve probably done 8.5 times in my adult life. It’s probably the most important. The next step to being a good laundress is checking the clothes for remaining stains between the washer and dryer so the stains won’t be forever set in. I find this so discouraging because half the stains become camouflaged with the rest of the clothing item when wet. So even if I decide to go crazy and actually do this step, I miss half the stains anyway and my kids end up going to school looking like schlumperly orphans by the second time they wear an outfit out of the house.

Alas, I believe my mom had a special laundry force that allowed her to see these stains with the aura emanating from her fingertips. I can assure you that the aura is not hereditary. Neither is her knack for finding good deals on clothes. Luckily, although she is not available to wash all my children’s clothes, she is willing to act as my personal shopper, keeping new inexpensive raiment coming so that once a week they can wear something that is not stained until it is.

I’ve never been much of an athlete. I did some pathetic gymnastics in elementary school and junior high. I loved it but I wasn’t exactly one of the girls the instructors spent any extra time on. They didn’t see me as an investment. Therefore I didn’t see me as an investment but I sure loved wearing my team hoodie around.

For years I tried out for every sports team there was, volleyball, basketball, badminton. I never made the first cut and eventually demoralized I gave up on the possibility that I might have some latent physical abilities just waiting to be discovered. It’s sad that I gave up so completely on that side of myself, sad because it marked the beginning of the end of my belief that I could do or be anything, sad because it launched me into a lifelong pattern of neglecting and ignoring my physical fitness.

In college I was average-sized but I’ve never been fit. I remember being mortified when someone would suggest a weekend hike, knowing that although I had a normal body weight, I’d be huffing and puffing up the hill, slowing down the group and unable to keep up with everybody else. I saw fit people, really athletic people, as somehow intrinsically different from me, somehow better.

I’ve gained a lot of weight through the years and on Labor Day this year I saw a number on the scale that really scared me, one of those lines I swore I’d never cross, one of those weights that “other” people see on the scale, people I smile at and feel sorry for. We want to have more kids but my body in its current state would have quite a hard time with the stress of pregnancy. I have frequent back and joint pain and I’m always telling the kids I can’t hold them because I’m too tired or my back’s too sore. Magoo will even ask me in the morning, “Mommy. Kin you carry me or is your back too hurting?”

Sure I weigh more now, but honestly this is not much different than the way I’ve lived most of my life, not being able to do many of the things I want to do because I’m too weak, soft and uncoordinated. Now I’ve been working out sporadically with some wonderful friends for about year, doing big events and getting the little boosts of self confidence I needed to bring me to the point where I was on Labor Day when I finally snapped.

I dusted off a copy of Bob Green’s 12-Week Total Body Makeover that was sitting on my shelf full of health and fitness books I buy to change my life and then give up on when I realize that a book can’t change my life. Only I can do that. I read through it in the car on the way home from Montana and I formulated a plan. For 12 weeks I would treat myself like an athlete training for a major event. Dan was happy to support me and so I began.

I’ve always been afraid to use the weights at the gym, not knowing how to use them and too intimidated to ask anyone so the week after Labor Day I threw my last inch of pride to the wind and headed to the gym with a water bottle and my book, bearing a picture of Fat Oprah on the back cover. I shamelessly poured over the instructions from Bob Green and then read the fine print on the weight machine itself and then took a look back at the Fat Oprah book. I did this for 3 days and found I had the hang of it. I could leave Fat Oprah at home in peace while I went about my rehearsed routine.

Now I’m working out 6 days a week, 6 sessions of cardio, one yoga session and 3 days of weight training. For the first time in my life I’m in a steady workout groove and I can. not. believe. how fast my body is changing. I’m not dropping a ton of weight but I feel completely different. I am stronger. I have WAY more energy and patience and for the first time in my adult life I have hope that if I really want to, I can do anything I want to physically.

I’ve been putting off blogging about this because like most people no matter how far I come there will always be a little bit of Fat Oprah waiting to pop out. I get the feeling that no matter how thin, beautiful and successful she is, there’s always that Fat Oprah in the back of her mind telling her that that’s who she really is, that she’s gonna give up this farce of fitness and any day go back to her old ways. again.

And I do. I feel scared. Every morning when I get up at 5 or 6 to head to the gym for a grueling workout, there’s part of me that wants to give up or that reminds me I’m still that little girl who got laughed off the volleyball court. And I am still covered with a layer of fat that feels ever-so-slightly out of place at the gym, in my spinning class full of hard bodies, in my yoga class full of former instructors who can bend themselves into human pretzels.

But then there’s a bigger part of me that feels so proud and happy and strong and I just want to share with the world how great I feel. Yesterday when I picked up Magoo, I was shocked at how light he felt. I wondered if his picky eating had finally resulted in some toddler weight loss. Then I caught sight of my suddenly existent tricep in the mirror and thought, “Nope. He feels light because I’m an athlete and because I’ve shoved my own personal Fat Oprah in my sock drawer and I’m not letting her out any time soon.”

Someone recently told me that my face at rest looks a little angry, mean or possibly snarkish. Since I rarely see my face when it’s truly at rest, I had no idea that I was possibly sending people a rageful vibe.

This has troubled me and I’ve begun practicing my neutral face. I want to look happy but I don’t want to sit around with a goofy grin on my face, my eyes popping open with inexplicable joy at the thought of the traffic I’m sitting in or the produce I’m squeezing.

I also don’t want to be one of those people who walks around with a secret smirk on their face, a look says, “Sh-yeah. I am so much cooler than you. You don’t even know that your fly is undone.” Do you know those people, people who make you self-conscious by the simple fact that they always seem to by laughing on the inside, not in a nice way?*

So, I’m trying to cultivate a look of friendly, happy, effortless contentment. It sounds easy, but oh no it is not.

I want to keep my mouth closed to avoid what my dad refers to as “looking like an idiot” and I want the corners of my lips to turn up ever so slightly but not enough to make me look demented or promote wrinkles or other facial decay.

I spent 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym today sweating away my troubles and trying out various relaxed facial expressions in the equipment video screen which is quite reflective and conveniently placed.

I’ll tell you, I’m not making a lot of progress in this mission. I end up looking like someone who’s trying to look relaxed, friendly and effortlessly at peace while bouncing up and down with a heart rate of 160. It’s very strange and when I’m practicing facial expressions, I always end up doing the fake laugh like I’ve just thought of something mildly hilarious from earlier in the day. One corner of my mouth twitches to the side, I wrinkle my nose and make a mild “hmph” sound while nodding my head ever-so-slightly. Trust me — I look really cool and nonchalant while I do that.

In the end I decided that perhaps I should work on learning to make a face that does not inform everyone that on my MP3 player I’m listening to Vanilla Ice, Paula Abdul and Shakira in Spanish (which I don’t understand) and I’m grooving so hard on the inside that it would be embarrassing to the other gym patrons if they knew what was happening inside my head.

Hola Isabel! I feel you dawg. Move to my town. Iron something on for me!