20 books and 20 lbs (week 30): It would be nice just to be whelmed

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I’ve had this conversation with family before, including dh: how come you can be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but never just “whelmed”? Right about now, I could use just being whelmed. It would be such a nice change of pace.

Since we got back from vacation, things have been quite busy at work – to the point where one of my major sources of work-related stress is just getting there and getting out on time. I’m very much looking forward to the point a little more than a year from now, when we’ll get back to ONE set of drop-offs and ONE set of pick-ups for the kids; having two separate drop-offs and pick-ups makes morning and evening logistics hard and adds stress. Will I get to work on time or show up late? Will I get the kids before {the place I’m getting them from} closes and I get into trouble?

I also – rather randomly – got sick late last week, probably food poisoning of some kind, so my eating was pretty curtailed. On the plus side, that meant I lost some of the weight I’d gained in DC. That’s definitely NOT how I like to lose weight, so I’ll hope that I can find a way to lose the remaining 10lbs without that extra oomph. Of course, being that this week had extra stress at work and with my family, my eating habits were off a bit. I wasn’t shoveling all the food into my body at a breakneck pace, but neither was I existing off lettuce and raw carrots. Neither is sustainable, anyway, so I’ll just take what I’ve got when I weigh in tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I can report that I’m currently down almost 10lbs from my starting point…but I’m losing daylight on the year and need to find a ~sustainable~ way of losing the remaining 10. I also managed to finish off another two books, so at least I think I’m on track there. I hope.

Book #9: “Gun Machine” by Warren Ellis

This is my second read by Ellis this year, and between that and “FreakAngels”, I’m starting to get the sense that he’s one moody, dark genius. I consider this an incredibly good thing. The story opens with Detective John Tallow losing his partner to a gun-wielding psychotic. The building where the shooting takes place gets cordoned off as a crime scene, and when Tallow discovers an apartment that’s literally covered in guns, he unwittingly uncovers a conspiracy, ages-old murders, and a plan by one of the most dangerous men in history. Ellis deftly mixes the geography and history of New York City with more information about how to kill a person than most sane folks should ever know. The story builds slowly and carefully until it all starts to come together…by which time the characters, the story, and you are running through it all so fast that it climaxes in a blur. Ellis’ second novel is an incredibly engaging read – not for the faint of heart – and it shows that just as he’s got the ability to craft rich, well-drawn stories in graphic novels (where “well-drawn” refers both to the artwork AND the story), he’s mastered the art of the graphic (un-graphic) novel, as well.

Book #10: “Gossip Girl” by Cecily Von Ziegesar

Figuring that I’d need a “light, come-down” reading after another Warren Ellis book, I’d saved this library sale pick for the #10 spot. It definitely didn’t disappoint for the category of “light read”, although I can’t say that I was entirely enamored of it. Perhaps it’s because I read it immediately following a book that had my neurons firing constantly, or perhaps it’s because I never saw the show “Gossip Girl” but had the images in my head of the various actors who played the key roles as I read every page of this book. In any event, I found “Gossip Girl” to be fairly meh, as books go.

I’ve read enough young adult (YA) lit to know how things typically go, and I’m just as interested as the next person in reading about the troubled life of the brahmin; however, I found the writing to be scattered enough that character development was too limited for my taste. Only two characters really got fleshed out to any extent, and even then it was hard to find anyone particularly sympathetic enough that you’d want to continue reading on. This works fine for TV, when the purpose is to give short, easily consumed bites on a weekly basis…but when it’s a book, it’s not always as attractive. Let’s just say that I’m not inspired to read the rest of the series. For those interested in a far better YA read with a girly bend to it, I’d recommend skipping “Gossip Girl” and getting “Spoiled” by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan (aka “The Fuggirls”). It’s a far more amusing and engaging read, as is its followup, “Messy”.

A week on the road with the kids

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We spent all of last week on my home turf: the DC area. We decided to get ourselves away for a less-expensive vacation than House of Mouse, and the original plan was halfsies in Sesame Place and halfsies in DC. When it turned out that I couldn’t even stomach the price of 3 nights of hotel + 2 days admission at Sesame Place, we decided to go all-in for DC and just give ourselves more time to visit with friends, more flexibility in scheduling what we’d do, etc.

Before I get into this, let me give a BIG shout-out to KidFriendly DC, which had some fantastic ideas about where to go, what to do, etc. I haven’t lived in the DC area full-time in 16 years, and even with trips home no less than once a year, I don’t know all the latest-and-greatest places to take kiddos. So, big thanks to a blog that’s really well done and very helpful.

As we did in prior trips, this was a driving trip, and I’ll say only that I learned three very important things on our drives down and back:

  1. NEVER travel on a Sunday in the summertime,
  2. Google Maps has another color that’s for traffic worse than bright red and, if you see it, time to start looking for an alternate route, and
  3. I want to give sloppy tongue-kisses to whoever it was that designed the DVD player in the backseat of our SUV.

Seriously, for someone who (pre-kids) thought, “I’ll never need a DVD player in the back of MY CAR”, I’ve come over to the not-so-dark-side in relatively short order. That stuff is genius. DD appears to have inherited at least some portion of dh’s carsickness, so she can’t read in a car or focus on things in her lap for too long without getting ill. The DVD screen, however, works fine for her and she can watch it for a good long stretch with NO negative side-effects. Sure, her brain’s probably rotting out the side of her head for watching so much TV but…did I mention that we were on vacation?

Anyhoo, we did our usual thing of staying at a suite hotel that’s near a Metro stop. When the kids were younger, having a kitchen with a sink for washing dishes and a fridge for storing milk was key. These days, it’s less important, but it’s definitely a nice thing to have: you can fill up the pitcher with water and just pull cold water for your water bottles first thing in the AM. A full breakfast is included in our room price, so we had fantastic breakfast choices every morning – something for everybody. Getting a one-bedroom suite is also the standard for us, since it allows us to put the kids to bed in the evening and then adjourn to the living room to chill out, watch TV, read, etc. before we retire to bed – all without disturbing the sleeping kidlets.

The kids got plenty of exposure to many of the kid-friendly places in DC: Smithsonian institutions like the National Museum of Natural History, the National Air & Space Museum, and the National Zoo, plus the National Building Museum, the National Aquarium (in Baltimore, MD), the B&O Railroad Museum (also in Baltimore) and a bunch of neighborhood playgrounds. Staying in the close-in MD suburbs also gave us great access to really good restaurants (like Redwood, in Bethesda, MD) and places that are MUST-EAT-ATs, like Tastee Diner (we went to Bethesda for that, as well). I was overjoyed – and totally unsurprised – that the meal the kids ate best was as the Tastee. I’m not sure how many late night and weekend breakfasts I had there when I was still a local…let’s say many.

Eating out was something we were dreading, since the kids don’t typically do well at eating out in a one-off situation, much less for about 21 consecutive meals. So, we devised a scheme to tackle this: a rewards system. We told the kids we’d give each of them a single point for trying a bite of something new to them, and we’d give them 5 points for eating an entire serving (or whatever we carved out as what we wanted them to eat). Every 10 points could be cashed in for screen time on dh’s iPad or my iPhone. The hope was that they wouldn’t exist solely on chicken fingers, pizza, and burgers for the entire week. And it worked…somewhat.

DD turned out to be the more adventurous of the two (which is a bit of a reverse from the usual), but that was mainly because she was all about the points. (Her common response to my offer of a food or drink: “Will I get a point?”) I think if I’d asked her to eat fried worms, she would’ve done it to get the point. DS was less into it, but he still tried a few foods here and there. The big surprise for us was that we all liked baby cactus (included in a light salad offered by Oyamel, in downtown DC), especially dd. We all agreed that the baby cactus pieces tasted just like pea pods, and she gobbled up the serving dh gave her and proudly told everyone throughout the rest of the trip, “I ate baby cactus!” She also discovered that she likes some cheeseburgers. (Now, I could’ve told her that, since she’s finished off my cheeseburgers before…but I was trying to encourage the girl to branch out, and I wasn’t about to burst her bubble at this point.)

All in all, it was a nice week away…the kids got plenty of outside time, dh got some workouts in, I got a nice tan, and we got visiting time in with several of my friends who I desperately miss. There’s something very frustrating about not being able to just hop on a plane for a weekend visit like I used to do in the old (read: pre-kid) days, but life’s different now and I mostly accept that.

One of the big benefits, in the end, was also seeing that we could go on the road with each other for a solid week and have everyone come home in one piece. Future trips may be in the car, or may be based on a plane (which would be a whole other new frontier for the kids), but we at least have our routine down for life in a hotel. I’d say it was a big win all around. Now, if only I can scrape together enough cash for that trip to Florida…

20 books and 20 lbs (week 28): The weight of it all

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Now that I’m past the horrible time suck that was Salman Rushdie, it seems like things are finally proceeding apace with my reading goal. I just finished book #8 and I’m already onto book #9: “Gun Machine” by Warren Ellis. At this rate, I’m still not at the point where I can say that I’m on track to get through all 20 books by the end of the year…but I’ll put in the hours, if that’s what it takes. My sister informed me just the other day that she’s challenged herself to read 25 books this year, and I just can’t even imagine that right now.

Book #8: “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card

How desperate are we when we say that children are the key to our future? In Card’s dystopian image of Earth’s future, desperation has grown to enormous proportions as children are recruited in their mid-single digits to get trained for military service. Years before, a savage race of aliens – known only as “buggers” – attempted to wipe humans off the face of the galaxy. Earth’s countries took this opportunity to stop aiming their weapons at each other and created a joint military service that was aimed solely at protecting the planet from the buggers. That’s where these genius children come in: plucked from obscurity after much testing and (invasive) monitoring, they’re taken away to an orbiting Battle School that prepares them for infantry, piloting or even command.

This is where we meet Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a small child of six who is destined to be so much more. Ender is not only a genius; he’s also a “third” (the third child to parents who, under strict population controls, should typically never have been born). His older brother (Peter) and sister (Valentine) are seemingly polar opposites; Peter is a psychopath who delights in tormenting others (especially Ender), and Valentine is his sweet sister who plays the salve to Peter’s acid burn. Ender is whisked away to Battle School by the manipulative Colonel Graff, where he’s tested day in, day out, by all manners of physical, psychological and emotional stresses. Graff believes Ender is the key to the humans’ survival against the next bugger invasion, and Ender – repeatedly displaced from what little familiarity he is allowed to foster at any time – is far from just any ordinary marionette.

Card’s story is another very fast read – incredibly engrossing and very hard to put down. At the same time, it’s terribly distressing. The idea that society would ever get to the point where we would willingly put small children through this kind of torture is really upsetting, and I’m glad that the movie version of the book (coming out in November 2013) shifts things by a few years so that Ender’s not quite so young when Graff gets at him. As a side note, I was further upset to find that Card spends his free time playing homophobe extraordinaire; I tend not to give financial or other support to people who clearly espouse viewpoints that make my blood boil. So, read it or not – it’s an excellent book that’s likely to make for an interesting movie. I’ll say that the only things of Card’s I’d be willing to read would be what I’ve purchased (the series that includes “Ender’s Game”). The rest of my money I think I’ll spend on authors who have a bit wider of a world view.

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I was mostly back to normal with my eating habits last week, although the holiday and various commitments made it very difficult to get any real exercise in. I suppose *sweating* may count, and I certainly did my fair share of that. These are the days where I feel wise to have purchased a house with central air conditioning.

My weight loss is back on track, and I’m now 8lbs under my starting weight. So, I’m still behind where I should be…but it’s not worth fretting over lost time. Some of it is that I haven’t exercised more (partially my fault and partially out of my control); some of it is that I won’t stop having my ice cream a few nights a week. I know where these issues are, but since I’m looking for a lifelong solution and not just a quick way to get to my goal (which would be just as quickly lost), I need a solution that accommodates moderation over limitation. I’m sure I sound like a broken record about this, but I just have no desire to lose the weight quickly with a fad that gets undone the second I get back into “regular” eating habits. In other words, I’ll just keep my feet moving and see where I land as of 12/31.