I haven’t been watching a lot of TV lately. For one thing there’s not that much interesting to watch and for the other TV is something that I try to cut back on, so that I can spend my time more wisely. And tv is an energy sucker. Like a vampire it can suck the life force out of you, unless you hang in front of it, unable to get up and go to bed, or even to turn it off.
I know, because there have been times when I spent my entire day in front of the tube, hopping from one sitcom to the other. My husband dreaded the sound of canned laughter coming out of the living room, where I supposedly worked on my dissertation. While this was an excellent way to procrastinate, I then set up my newly built study in a way that forbid watching tv while working. And it served me well, work is going better without tv. (And then there came the internet and blogs…)
But as I said, I haven’t been watching a lot of tv lately. The only thing I have been looking forward to is “Buffy the vampire slayer”. Every week I’d tape the latest episode or two and then the next day I’d sit in down in front of the tv and enjoy my funny horror teen show. I’m not quite sure, why I like it so much, my husband for example thinks it’s stupid.
Last Friday I sat down, rewind the videotape and then, – no episode of Buffy. Nada. Obviously I had taped some film I had never heard of. I was furious. Not for a second did I think, I had programmed the VCR wrong,. And I was right. The channel showing my weekly tv show had decided to move it to another time, or to skip it altogether. This was especially annoying, since there was no warning the week before, and it was the final episode of season two where the big story arch of the whole season was about to be released. And it’s one of the most dramatic episodes of the whole show.
(Buffy has to kill the love of her life, a, um, vampire, who had been one of the good guys, then lost his soul (and she thinks it’s her fault): just in the moment, when she is about to thrust her sword through his heart, he gets his souls back, they tell each their eternal love, but she has to kill him anyway, in order to save the world. Best greek tragedy. (And no, I despise soaps.))
I was so upset that I spent the rest of the evening in front of the computer violating my very own ‘no computer in the evenings’-rule. First I tried to find out where the missing episode had gone. Then I tried to buy and download it from the iTunes music store, but since I’m living in Germany, no films to buy.
Those of you familiar with Buffy might ask “Why is she so upset? The show has been over for years.” And it’s not as if I had never seen that particular episode. I have seen it at least two times. Because the final season of “Buffy the vampire slayer” had been aired years ago. Maybe in 2002 or so. And afterwards I lent the whole series on DVD from a student of mine and watched it all again, but without annoying advertisement breaks and in English. So even I was flabbergasted, why did this make me so sad. Why do I love a show about a teenager fighting vampires so much? I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.
But sad I was. And angry. I wanted my season finale. And then it hit me – I could go and buy it on DVD! I haven’t spent any money on comics, books or CDs in September, and since I had made a budget, I could spend it all on Buffy DVDs. So I went online and ordered season 2 and 3. Ha! I’ll watch the season finale and then the whole of season 3 and then season 2 and 3 again. For weeks. (I hope. This might turn into a Buffy-athon, ahem. I’ll ask my husband to remove me from the tv set with force at 10 p.m….) And I don’t have to watch annoying advertisement, or minutes of trailers for whatever film the channel is promoting this week until I don’t know any longer what I had been watching before the break.
And I’ll watch it in English! And the whole of the show. No more cutting off the final scene to announce whatever monstrous thing is up next. Ha! Take that tyranny. I’m becoming independent.
Though I really don’t know why I like this particular show so much. It is disturbing.
goals and time-management
I became a member of yet another group of bloggers. This time it’s a group called blogjolt that is focusing on mothers who work at home. Each Thursday a member’s blog gets ‘blogjolted’ by being linked to. SAdly I’ve been a member of blogjolt for weeks without blogjolting anyone.
This Thursday’s blog to be jolted is written by Jill Koenig. On her goalblog she offers advice on goal setting and time-management for super-achievers. While I’m still lacking in the time-management department, I never thought that I might lack goal-setting skills. I always thought, my problem lay in the gap between the setting of the goal and the achievement of the goal.
Maybe I should subscribe to her newsletter and profit from her free advice on time-management. (Sadly, there is no permalink, just go to her blog.)
The other blog to be jolted looks really nice. Unlike most of the jolted blogs it’s not a business blog either, but one of the personal mommyblogs that I like best. BlondeMom’s question “Do you ever take your kids in on your day off?” was a no-brainer for me.
Of course! I’m waiting for that all week! Time for me! Time for music! Time to do the grocery shopping. And my son loves kindergarten. (Actually he started crying, when we told him he couldn’t go due to his cold. “But I don’t have fever, I don’t have fever. I can’t have fever, because then I can’t go to kindergarten!”)
Technorati Tags: time-manegement, blogjolt, daycare
school starts – child sick
Yesterday was the first teaching day for me after summer break. I already complained about summer vacation, but I really have issues with transitions. I realized that when I read Christine Kane’s essay about this and also Liz Strauss’.
So we had a little ritual to mark the beginning of the school year. On Sunday we opened a bottle of champagne and sat down to talk about what we did during the last weeks and what we’d like to do during the next weeks. I feel much better because of this.
So, what happened? My son got a cold. First sniffles, then a mild fever then we thought he’s better already and then it got worse. Monday night he woke at half past two in the morning, couldn’t get back to sleep, kept us all awake, until my husband went off to the guest bedroom and I pulled out the anti-pain-medication. The child slept, in my bed and managed to take up two thirds of it. I don’t know how he does it.
Yesterday, of course, all my plans were automatically canceled, I became nurse to a miserable child. Other people tell tales of miserable children, clingy and – miserable. Mine becomes clingy and – very angry. He spent most of the day restless, talking without a stop and throwing one tantrum after the other.
When I looked for something to help him, I took out my books on homeopathy (yes, books not book). And I think I’ve found something for him.
But homeopathy won’t help me with my time and energy management issues. While I long for the structure that my teaching days give me, there actually is less time to accomplish anything. So on my to-do-list is:
- fix new shelves to wall in living room
- transfer video recorder and television set to new stand
- layout and print new flyer to attract more singing and piano students
- entertain my son, who’s staying yet another day at home due to his cold
- send e-mail to banking guy to alter something on the mortgage
- give a singing lesson to a new student
- write new blog-post
- do grocery shopping
- do two or three loads of laundry
- and, most important, practice singing, piano and guitar.
Funny, isn’t it?
Okay, I’ll practice in the evening. I’ll do the grocery shopping after the singing lesson, when my MIL can babysit.
(Short break, while I look for my son, who is playing in the garden.)
Son still there. Phew! E-mail sent, blog-post written.
(I promise another one titled “Do what you want or surrender” the next time I can hear myself think.)
Technorati Tags: cold, teaching, to-do-list
How to get out of diet mentality
This is the second part to my post about diet mentality:
First of all, I’m really not there, but still trying. And for those of you who didn’t read my too long series about non-dieting and weight-loss, this is how I look now:
(When I first saw this picture I thought, “That can’t be me. I’m not that thin.”
But here they are, 11 ways to get out of diet mentality:
1. Focus on what’s right with your body. Is it living? Breathing? Able to walk, talk, think, nurture? Good.
Jon Kabat-Zinn says somewhere (sorry, but I didn’t find it again) that as long as you’re living there’s more right with you than wrong.
2. Learn to love your body the way it is now. And dress in clothes that feel and look good.
I know, that’s a tough one. But it works. Stand in front of the mirror each day (preferably naked) and say to yourself what you love. Be specific. Imagine that you just fell in love with this person. The least you can say is, “I love that you carry me through my day.” “I love that you gave birth.”
3. Focus on positive change. Set intent (Christine Kane says it better than I ever could.) Follow through.
When you fail (and you will), pick up yourself, and start over again.
Diets don’t work. Ever. Not for losing weight. Not for becoming happy. They do work, when you have a food-related illness like diabetes.
So the trick is to concentrate on things to do. Like when I’m hungry in the evening and crave chocolate, I’ll drink a cup of tea instead. (Well, that’s the plan.) Or I go to bed instead. My craving for chocolate is not a sign of hunger bur of tiredness.
4. Get rest. Sleep enough.
(And no, contrary to popular myth, not all adults can exist with a max. of six hours of sleep per night. I need 8 1/2 and so do most women.)
5. Do something nice for you every day. That’s an order. And nice does not mean chocolate every time.
Sit down with a cup of tea, read a book, do something different, smell the roses, nurture your sense of wonder and adventure.
6. When you find yourself thinking about being fat ot what to eat, think about something really important instead.
Like your music or your writing, your blog or your children.
7. Do the thing you love. The thing you really love.
For me that is making music. It works every time. I sit down, cranky, bored and not willing to play, and after some playing and working, and improvising – instant happiness.
8. Eat real food that tastes good. Geneen Roth adds to this that you should eat one warm meal every day.
Try to have quiet and enjoyable mealtimes. (I know how hard that is with children around.) Really taste your food. And be mindful of your body while eating.
9. When the meal is over, stop eating. No grazing, no stuffing leftovers in your mouth.
10. Focus on the life you want to live.
Do I really want to be someone who is stuffing herself with junk food all the time? Does it really feel good? No, it doesn’t. So until I become healthy and sane, I’ll fake it. Pretend until it gets real.
11. Declutter, tidy and clean your house. Seriously. Work on things you procrastinated. Energy will flow again.
When you do all this, you’ll feel better regardless of your weight. And chances are that you’ll lose some. But if you’re stuck in diet mentality the any amount you lose won’t be enough. So our focus should be on healing ourselves, not on the scale.
For additional resources and inspiration I’ll point you towards Geneen Roth (again), FlyLady‘s Body Clutter book, and Debra Waterhouse.
Technorati Tags: Debra Waterhouse, diet, diet mentality, FlyLady, Geneen Roth
Diet mentality never gets enough
(A friend of mine read my recent post about summer break and asked me how I’d define “diet mentality”. Here’s the answer to that. Part two will deal with ways out of diet mentality.)
- Diet mentality means going through your day thinking, “I’m fat. I’m fat. I’m fat.”
- And, “I shouldn’t have eaten this. Should I eat this? I shouldn’t eat this. Oh, what the heck. Now I’ve eaten it. I shouldn’t have eaten this. I’ll make up for it by not eating [insert food or meal of choice here].”
- Diet mentality means that you’re defining yourself and your worth by the number on the scale.
- Diet mentality thinks, if only this number were right, everything would fall into place.
- Dieting means, you’re trying to starve yourself or live on a restriction for a finite amount of time and then your life (and your eating) can turn back to “normal”.
- Diet mentality focuses on the number of the scale like, “Oh, I lost 2 pounds already. Now I can reward myself with ridiculous amounts of chocolate.” Or, “Oh, I gained 2 pounds. How could that have happened! I’ll eat only bread and water (or more likely vegetables, yoghurt and water) until they’re off again.” (Unless you believe in water-retention like I do.)
- Diet mentality means trying to fight for losing the same 5 pounds over and over again.
- Diet mentality means that if you’d only manage to be good for a few weeks, everything will be fine again.
But guess what, nobody’s going to give you a medal for “being good” or losing weight. (Well, apart from Weight Watchers, maybe.) And like Geneen Roth says,
“Thin people get cellulite, get sick and die, too.”
(I couldn’t find the source of this quote, but I can recommend all Geneen Roth‘s books. For starters try “When you eat at the refrigerator, pull up a chair.“)
And when you’ve finally lost that elusive two pounds, there will be the next goal:
- When I weighed 84 kg, I thought, “If only I were back at my pre-pregnancy weight of 78.”
- When I weighed 78 (before that) I thought, “If only I were back at 71.”
- When I was at 71 I thought, “I’m real fat, if only I were back at 69.”
And then 67, 65, 63, 60, 56. There it stopped, because I never weighed less as an adult or teenager. I was 16, I was love-sick, I was depressed, and I looked like a stick figure with ears for handles.
Look, stick-figure Susanne:
And here big Susanne:
Which one looks happier? (I know you maybe can’t see it, but big Susanne is much happier than stick-figure Susanne. Even though she feels fat all the time.)
So, the question is: How do you come out of diet mentality?
Stay tuned…
Technorati Tags: diet, diet mentality, Geneen Roth
Marvelous Modern Medicine?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against modern medicine. Thanks to modern medicine and a couple of its practitioners (and especially a skillful surgeon) my son still has a mother (and I still have a functioning uterus and bladder). But.
(You knew there’s be a “but”, didn’t you?)
This is not about surgery. This is about pills. And salves. You know, I’m allergic. As a child I reacted to insect bites. Mosquito bites, wasp bites, they all ended up red, swollen and itchy. Then it turned out, I wasn’t having a cold all year long, I had hay fever instead. And then I started to be allergic to the sun.
At that time I was studying for my master’s thesis. What better place to learn than beneath the river. Each day I’d spend hours outside with my books. And then my skin began itching and developing a rash. Of course I applied sunscreen. My skin is so white that people suspect me of living in a cellar, even when I’m actually tanned. One day I planned to go out, but didn’t for whatever reason. Well, it turns out that I’m allergic not to sun rays but to the brand of sunscreen I had been using all my life. Duh.
I have to tell you that I’m coming from a family where everything has to be treated. Preferably chemical. A pill, an ointment, whatever. So my mother put soothing salve on every single of my mosquito bites. Ten years ago I happened to be bitten by a mosquito and I RAN OUT OF SALVE! Guess what?
- Mosquito bites do heal even if you do nothing at all.
- If I don’t put special healing and cooling salve on my mosquito bite, there will be no allergic reaction.
So I turn out to be allergic not against insect bites, but against insect bite-salve. So I have to keep this in mind: I have a very sensitive skin. If something unusual is appearing, leave whatever you smear on it off. (So I was a little quicker when I found out that my skin didn’t like the new moisturizer I had bought.)
Unfortunately my allergies to pollen and mold are real. It was not my fragile disposition that let me have a year-round cold, but hay fever. I actually suffer from it from March to October. And I’m not a pretty sight at the height of it in the beginning of August. You’d think I’m having influenza only I’m not feverish. So I started taking a pill. I have been taking this for the last ten years or so. With the exception of my pregnancy when I was allowed only a measly nose spray. The pills didn’t stop me from having a running and itching nose altogether. But I shuddered to imagine my state if I didn’t take them.
I don’t quite know why, but last week I looked at the list of unwanted symptoms accompanying my pills for the first time in years. “May cause drowsiness, tiredness and heightened appetite.” Duh! I have been tired for years regardless of the hours I slept. And maybe there was a reason that I never lost weight in the summer. So I decided to stop taking the pills and see what happens. Well:
1. I’m not feeling tired anymore in spite of lack of sleep.
2. My mind doesn’t feel numb and dumb anymore.
3. I’m sneezing less than before.
4. What I do have is sneezing fits, a sore throat and itching and running eyes.
So. The pills are out of the picture. My fear of getting allergic asthma or chronic bronchitis is not big enough to justify suffering a numb mind and heavy tiredness. I’m starting to look for some other treatment for my allergies. Maybe acupuncture or homeopathy. I’m not going chemical again.
Any suggestions? What’s worse to you? The malady or the remedy?