Kicking and screaming

I woke up in a bad mood this morning. My attitude was crummy
before I even shuffled to the bathroom for my morning ablutions. I performed a mental and emotional inventory, searching for a source, and I realized that I
was angry that the weekend I envisioned turned out to be 180 degrees from
reality. I also noticed that the more I felt like I wasn’t getting what I
wanted, the less I wanted to make myself available to anyone or for anything
else. I saw myself as a small child throwing a tantrum after not getting
something she wanted. The spoiled girl voice in my head said, “Fine, then I’m
not going to church early for the prayer group. In fact, I may not go to church
at all!” To which God replied, “It’s not about you.”

Learning to take a God's-eye view of Jerry Springer situations

So I was reading along in Genesis yesterday about Jacob being deceived by his future father-in-law Laban. He worked for seven years to get Rebekah and he gets Leah instead (surprise!). I don't even want to go into how he didn't know it was Leah; that's a conversation for another day. Anyway, so Laban basically says, "Well... just take Leah for now and I'll give you Rebekah if you agree to work for me some more." Jacob agreed to this. I tried to put myself in Jacob's shoes... I would have been angry at Laban. I would have felt betrayed and tricked. I would have felt kind of bad for Leah because she wasn't the one I really wanted (and Leah knew this). I would have felt horrible for Rebekah but I would wonder if she was in on it and therefore was also part of the betrayal. She might have been innocent in which case I would have felt bad about having consummated with Leah. My point is that this was a pretty Jerry Springer kind of situation. What's amazing to me is that God knew all of this, planned it all out, and the 12 tribes of Israel came from this mess. It made me think about all the times in my life when I've thought to myself, "This is so messed up" or "Life is so stinkin hard sometimes" but God knew it all, planned it all, and brought His will out of it anyway. All this in spite of what it looks like to us from our perspective.

The Journey of 75 - How to get to "there" from "here"

The journey of 75lbs begins with...

I'm SO full but this ______ is so good; just one more.
Now my jeans are tight around my calves? Really?!?!
Where are my "fat jeans"? These are too tight (again).
Why am I so tired all the time?
Why do my feet always hurt?
My cholesterol is HOW high?
"They just admitted Dad for emergency quadruple bypass surgery."

I really don't want to take high cholesterol medication.
"Uncle Bob died of a massive heart attack last night."
Side effects of statins include changes in liver function, muscle & joint pain.
I can't stand this anymore; I have to do something about it.

How do I get "there" from "here"?

You don't just wake up one morning and lose 75lbs but you can wake up to the fact that you have to do something about a serious health risk and decide to do something about it. The problem to be solved is figuring out what you're going to do to, what changes you're going to make, how you'll eat, and what your fitness regimen will be.

After spending some time on a bicycle this past summer - a valiant effort to get off the couch but my bicycle seat isn't nearly as comfortable as my recliner - I found out that I can actually enjoy some fitness activities. And before the bikes we were doing more hikes - a little hard on my feet - and I enjoyed that too. Of course those two things aren't going to be enough; I'll have to do more, much more, fitness activity and I'll have to do it daily. Not only that, but eating better, eating less, cutting the garbage out of my diet. I certainly have my work cut out for me.

Like the positiion I was standing in when I took these pictures, I am at the beginning of this journey. There are going to be quite a few steps needed to bridge the gap between "here" and "there". I won't get anywhere unless I begin to take those steps.

Here I go!

Things that make you go hmmm...

Found on a friend's FB status: "So let me get this STRAIGHT... Kelsey Grammer can end a 15 yr marriage by phone, Larry King is on divorce #9, Britney Spears had a 55hr marriage, Jesse James & Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with EVERYONE, 53% of Americans get divorced & 30-60% cheat on their spouses. Yet, same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage? Really? Does anybody else find this ridiculous?"

Given enough time, humans can, and will, find a multitude of ways to mess up.


From JSOnline: Koss' $34 million loss first came to light in December 2009, when American Express notified the company that Sachdeva was paying her personal credit card bills with money from the company. Sachdeva stole the money over a period of at least six years, with the amount taken escalating over time.

Mulvaney is accused in court documents of assisting Sachdeva in hiding the illegal transactions. The SEC complaint says she maintained a binder referred to in the complaint as "the red book." There, according to the complaint, Mulvaney wrote down the false entries she was making in the company's records.

The complaint says she also prepared falsified accounting books and records and maintained them in a series of colored folders referred to as the "rainbow files." The files were green, orange, blue or yellow, depending on the year, and included more than 100 fraudulent transactions, the complaint says.


Very organized, not very ethical.

Toward a simpler kind of life

I've just finished reading a book entitled, "Tis a Gift to be Simple: Embracing the Freedom of Living with Less" by Barbara DeGrote-Sorensen and David Allen Sorensen. This book was given to me as a 'secret sister' gift about two years ago by someone whom I would have thought didn't know me very well but, as it turns out, hit the nail on the head. I found it recently when I was rearranging some books on a shelf and decided that it was a very timely topic for me and indeed it was. I've given quite a bit of thought to the idea of living a simpler kind of life over the past year or so.

Truthfully the thinking has been going on longer than a year but the serious thinking started in winter during a few particularly cold, snowy and treacherous commutes to and from work. As I mentally argued with myself about the fact that I was attempting to drive 30 miles to work in a snowstorm or on slippery roads, "Nothing about accounting is THIS important," I told myself, I felt a desperate need to make a change. Something had to give in my life and my lifestyle; I just hoped it wouldn't be that I would give up my life trying to get to the office in bad weather. It was around that time that I learned how to take the bus to work. Learning to take the bus may sound strange considering that I took the city bus to school from fifth grade through college but that was when I lived in the city; living out here in mostly rural Ozaukee County doesn't offer the same ubiquitous transit system that living in Milwaukee offered. Nor do the Ozaukee buses run as long or as frequently. Therefore, learning was required. For example, not every bus goes back to the stop where I left my car that morning. I only had to be burned by that lesson once. Also, the last pick up from my stop at the end of the day is 5:30pm. In my world, that's still fairly early. There have been many frantic runs from my desk to the busstop while simultanously putting on my coat or shoving my laptop in the case because I still had work to finish. Missing that last bus would make for a very miserable night.

So I learned to take the bus and I've gotten pretty good at it. I try to take the bus to work more than I drive my car which saves 60 miles of gas, wear and tear each day I do so. I read on the bus, respond to e-mails, sometimes I make to-do lists, sometimes I pray and/or listen to worship music, and sometimes I just look at the window because I don't have to worry about the traffic. It does take a bit longer than driving... a guaranteed hour each way by bus versus about 40 to 50 minutes by car during rush hour... but I think my relative lack of stress while riding the bus makes up for that in some ways.

I feel as if taking the bus was step one in my pursuit of a simpler life and my latest effort, working from home at least once per week, is step two. This one hasn't been going as well. My boss and my boss' boss are all for it. They've encouraged me to work from home but it's more difficult than I thought it would be. Part of the problem is what I call the "you're home, let's talk" syndrome. My husband starts his job at 11am and ends about 8pm so when I get up and start working at 7am and he meanders over to whatever room I've ensconced myself, he wants to talk about things on his mind or tasks on his lists or other matters that are not work related. I will indulge him for awhile but then I gently remind him that I have work to do and he'll apologize and only interrupt me about five more times before he leaves for work, usually with, "Sorry, one more thing..." as his introductory phrase. He's a love.

Another, and more troublesome, part of the problem is the fact that it's very difficult to do my job without a number of references and resources that are kept in very large, three-ring binders stored in my file cabinet. Most of the documents contained in those binders are also available to me on my laptop but I often have to reference more than one at a time. I've tried bringing them home; it requires a suitcase with wheels and a telescopic handle. Furthermore, when I work from home I am working over the company's virtual private network (VPN) which bogs down during certain hours of the day or on snow days when the entire Midwest region is working from home and sucking up all the bandwidth the VPN can manage. I still make the effort, however, and I've learned to save a working copy of the file to my local drive so I can avoid the delays. Just another of the many little tricks I've learned in my quest to simplify my life.

I plan to continue the effort to work from home at least once a week. Perhaps I can even try twice per week if I can iron out all of the wrinkles. So now I am trying to think ahead to the next change I will make. I think there are a number of drawers, cabinets and closets that need to be ruthlessly cleared out and de-cluttered; but then I must decide what to do with all that stuff.

Who knew that simplifying life could be so fraught with complications?

Love

The scenery barely registered on my brain as I rode the bus to work on Wednesday morning. It seemed inconceivable that Saturday through Tuesday could have already been lived. Four glorious days spent in the Salt Lake area with our daughter, son-in-law, and 12 week old grandson. Tears stung the corners of my eyes as I recalled sitting on the patio just 24 hours earlier, coffee ignored and growing cold on the glass-topped table beside me, while I stared into the sleeping face of the brown-haired little boy who had captured my heart in record time.

The bus driver snapped her gum incessantly and the air conditioned bus was too cold. The driver's habit of making slight adjustments to the steering wheel had long ago forced me to give up reading 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' but it had started out slowly so not much of a sacrifice. Besides, the first day back to work after a four-day weekend spent in Utah didn't feel like a good day for a crime novel, no matter how incredible it was purported to be. My heart just wasn't in it. I found myself thinking ahead to my next solid (read: more than 5 mile) bike ride but this would not likely be the day for that ride since rain was forecasted all day and into Thursday. My heart felt as heavy as the rain clouds looked.

I recalled an article I had just read online about a Norwegian mother who had been reunited with her 16-year-old daughter after the bombing and massacre near Oslo. The mother, in trying to convey the daughter's anxiety level in text messages she was sending throughout the siege by the gunman on the resort island, had said that the daughter texted, "I love you" to her mother. The mother went on to say that Norwegians aren't like Americans, who are "so clever to tell anybody that you love them but we in Norway, we normally don't do that." I found that I was personally offended by her comment because I say "I love you" quite often, and yet, not as often as I'd like for fear of making someone feel uncomfortable or obligated to respond in kind. The woman’s comment had me questioning whether I’ve ever said those words casually; have I ever said them when I didn’t really mean them?

I suppose there have been a few “I love you man” moments that were meant to be jokes imitating the old Bud Lite commercials. There may have even been an “I love you” to a boyfriend I thought I loved when I was really too young and inexperienced to fully comprehend the meaning. By and large, however, my expressions of love have been truly heartfelt and the words have grown more meaningful to me with time. Likewise, when someone says “I love you” to me, I take them at their word and treasure it in my heart. On the other hand, I have been accused more than once of being emotional and even overly-emotional by some people so I leave it to you to form your own opinion. I’m about to tell ‘anybody’ that I love them.

I love my husband. I love my grandkids. I love my kids (natural, step and in-law kids). I love my Mom. I love my family. I love my friends and their kids too. Does this make me “clever”? Nah, just blessed.

July

Last July we had rain, lots and lots of rain. Six months ago we had snow, lots and lots of snow. This month we have near drought conditions plus oppressive heat and humidity. Call me sick but I'll take the heat and humidity. Granted, I don't work outside for a living, but this is just my opinion based on my experience. All that rain and flooding was scary and all that snow was a pain in the back. In the heat I go from my air conditioned house to an air conditioned car or bus to an air conditioned office. It's okay for me so I'm not complaining.