20/20 Vision

I'm working on vision boarding. Well, not a board but a book. And I'm not working on it NOW, but I am planning on how I want to create it. OK, so I'm PLANNING on working on a vision book. There. :-P

Anyway, I've been perusing the thought of a board but something about it was so limiting to me and because I like change, it felt like it could be a straightjacket. But writing out the vision is nothing new for me. I write letters to myself all the time as if I am already in the future. I'm sure I've mentioned here before how effective that can be. Sometimes I'm still astounded by how word-for-word some things turn out to be. (Be careful what you envision!)

So in this planning, I'm on Oprah.com using her Dream Board just to get something going and to help me figure out what I want my book to do for me when I get it. I can print out what I create on her site, which lets me import my own pictures, so it's not a waste of time. This whole thing is what helped convince me that it's time to get a smart phone because I can pull up the dream board on the phone too in the future. Or use the phone to take great pictures of things that I see and like and I can add it to my board or list of things to print out for my book right then and there. Someone already told me of a great app that will finally let me make audio notes to myself again too. (I don't know if you recall I was lamenting the loss of this feature first found in a simple cell phone years ago and never found again, despite all this super dandy technology.) So a smart phone and a vision book it shall be.

Know what I really liked about this vision board/book plan? As I thought about all the aspects of my life to include in this and all the things I want to see happen, it felt almost like it had indeed already started to happen. But what was even more interesting was what was missing - any direct reference to one of what may be only 2 things that really try to plague me in my life - my weight and my skin issues.

My skin I can live with. What choice do I have? I take care of it as best I can and consider the material of clothes I buy, the detergents I use, the material of anything I may touch, my husband vacuums deeply, I get my allergy shots and see the dermatologist at the first sign of something I won't be able to control with the current meds. I drink all the water I should (some days I fall short) and wear sunblock (no, not in the winter because it's not my bad season and I'm too lazy to go that far). My skin will do what it wants to and I assume that just like it started doing things differently with the conception of my first kid, it'll probably do something again when menopause starts edging closer. Hormones are no joke, people.

Now my weight? Well, that's another of my occasional blog topics. You know I've never been thrilled with it. Well, no that's not true. I was VERY happy with it 5 minutes before the conception of my 2nd kid. After all I was within 5 pounds of my goal and smaller than I had been in high school. Jennifer Hudson wouldn't have felt threatened but I was content with it. But with another baby came more of everything and less weight watching. Then my skin threw another curve ball for awhile. Then everything got quiet and I was just happy to be me again.

The thing is I don't really care about weight. All I care about is that I am comfortable in my skin and I really do hate to be too big because then I have to do the work of getting back down. But when I am fed up enough with something, I WILL change it. My vision board/book, though, didn't mention weight. It said I'm gonna finally get that chef who will cook us delicious, healthy meals at least twice a week because I hate cooking and refuse to pretend otherwise. It said I will get that treadclimber I really want because I did so love my treadmill. When I wanted to move, it let me do that in the peace of my own home. But it's dead now and I'm not sure what I shall replace it with until I can get that really pricey treadclimber.

That vision board/book said I buy all the clothes, shoes and purses I want when I want without thinking about sacrificing something else first. I'm no clotheshorse, mind you, like my husband can be, so you won't feel a need to call Clean House on me, but I do love to wear stuff that makes me feel good and if my husband can do one of his silent doubletakes in the process, then all the better. I could do more now, but I just have different priorities at the moment so I do what I can when I can and I go for the more costly if I can since it lasts longer.

Clothes do make the woman, don't they? When you wear stuff you like and that FITS, your weight is usually the last thing on your mind. But I may be a little off because some women see themselves as bigger than they really are - at least to the rest of the viewing public. I tend to do the opposite, but don't worry. I know I don't dress like it. I just see myself probably a little better than I really am and in my vision, at my very best, I'm just a wife and mother who is enjoying life and her business, and who love to let other people use their talents to fulfill themselves and keep me from having to cook and clean refrigerators, thank you very much.

I was really happy to see I unknowingly left this little issue on the cutting room floor. Maybe it's one of those changes from being 40 that I was expecting. Maybe I've just got too much good in my life to let this be bigger than the seed of doubt it is. I'll still keep on deliberately working to lose weight for now. It's been 7 months so far and I'm only down 17 pounds, but I'm not sad about it or anything. Now way! Better down than up I say. When it comes to my self-esteem, though, better up. So, I'll just keep on going.

Why Has It Been 3 Months Since My Last Post?

Well, ok. I just counted. It has been FOUR months and 7 days. Holy cannoli! But why? Why have I abandoned my blog baby?! Why?

• because my real baby turned 7 in October and had her first sleepover and I took them bowling too, but it was just 2 friends (thankfully), although 3 little girls in one little car can feel like a gaggle of giggly geese.
  
• because my baby nephew turned 2 this past Sunday.
• because my baby business is really more like a teen-ager and it is having some serious growing pains.
• because my big girl job is a monster right now and I have NEVER EVER EVAH been as busy as I am right now there. As I always say, it's a good thing I love it!
• because I went to the rheumatologist on Sept 20 and finally decided to look at the number on the scale (why weight us, doc?) and finally hated it enough to get back on the health wagon.
• because I started paying attention to the things that always work for me to lose weight - no programs, no major effort, just drinking all my water, hitting my treadmill, cutting the soda by way more than 70%, increasing the fruits and veggies - all stuff that makes weight loss really slow but a slow pound down is better than another size up.
• because after I got back on the health wagon, I started feeling odd, like I was hungry but I knew I wasn't and when I told my doctor I suspected an ulcer, she said, "Let's test for that and gallstones." and found out I had gallstones.
• because the doc told me to see a surgeon who has said that he doesn't think what I am feeling is gallstones, especially since the Nexium prescription is helping (and even now I am no longer needing it daily. Maybe every other day?) and so while I should take out the whole gallbladder, unless and until it attacks me (whaa?) I can do it whenever I'm ready - and oh by the way, the thinner the better and oh by the way, how do I not know now that the gallstones weren't there for a really long time already and there is no need to be laproscopically doing anything to me and mine?
  
• because another friend is expecting a baby early January and I think it will be late December and I hope he's on my birthday, so I am designing invites for her shower and I hope my artist is done soon.
• because I'll be 40 in exactly a month (yesterday) and I'm wondering if I'll have any epiphanies. Don't feel any coming but I suuuuuure am speaking my mind more and more and more - and it's not all PMS, either. There is someone I want to tell about herself right now and it's taking every fiber of my being not to do it, but to let the current, correct course happen instead. But if she even cracks the door, I'm taking it off its hinges.
  
• because my brother is getting married next July.
  
• because I don't have my VA for my business anymore because it's just too much - for now - but we do have plans for a VA who will do a specific project and when the business is fully taking care of itself (almost there!), we can go crawling back to that phenom of a VA who is just too smart to walk away from and in the meanwhile I REALLY need to get my business social networking back on track.
• because I have a whole new business blog the phenom VA started for me that I have yet to learn how to operate over on Wordpress but it will be so awesome when I get it going.
• because we had one co-worker leave us to be closer to her mom in D.C. and we had to hire another one assistant and get her going.
• because I'm watching my kids every Saturday morning learning how to swim and neither of them are willing to jump in so they both feel bad and cry about it, but all Mr. T and I can do is tell them they have the power. When they are ready, they'll jump. (I hope they jump. I don't want them to hate the water like I do.)
• because my son is in his last year of Cub Scouts - mondo work! - and he WILL cross over to Boy Scout, but will he stay? Who know.
• because my daughter is now a happy little Brownie doing happy little Brownie things and I tried to avoid that, but darn it! Here I go all over again! Her meetings are after school, so THAT Mr. T has to help with.
• because I decided to start my allergy shots up again after my skin was more of a pain than usual this summer and this time I'll have visual evidence of whether or not the shots help and if next summer is more of the same, I stop again.
  
• because my full-time job has become my full-time AND part-time job. Oh wait. I kinda said that already.

because I was lazy. But maybe I'm back on track.

Keep It To Yourself

If you are a parent, grandparent or anything that brings children into your life on a regular basis, please, please PLEASE think about the little ears around you and keep your neuroses to yourself!

I am annoyed. Son asked me last night if he was fat because he's 64 pounds.

"What?!" I breathed. "Who told you you were fat?"

"I weighed myself on Nana's scale."

He did this because over Easter, my SIL didn't want to eat too much because she's in the midst of losing weight - or trying to. She doesn't seem too happy with how it's going. So MIL brought out her new scale and they weighed themselves...on Easter...at dinner. And SIL actually did it before eating and after eating and then was upset because she had gained! "Woman, you just ate! What do you expect?"

Sigh.

The kids saw this as a new toy so they hopped on too. No harm done - I thought. I wasn't thinking I would have to tell Son not to obsess over that scale. But I do. He says he wants to eat healthy. "Maybe I shouldn't eat," he said. What? What?! My goodness. All I could do was bite my tongue because I was truly getting mad (still am) but I know he wouldn't understand why I was angry. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I can use this to my advantage prefacing everything with, "remember how you said you want to eat healthy? Well, broccoli is good for you! Try 'em!" Of course, we've already gone this route only to run into a dead end but maybe he's ready to try again.

Still, I was mad last night that he even asked me if he was fat. Weight is certainly an issue for Mr. T's mom and 2 sisters. They mention is A LOT. Weight is a big issue in my family too since most of us start out small but the females tend to gain with childbirth. Only my mother and I don't take too kindly to reminders about it. It's other family members - mainly Southerners - who find this to be an appropriate topic of conversation. (Uh uh uh. Don't even say it. I was born in D.C. which is SOUTH and my both sides of my family are Southerners and I will always be one at heart even if my birthplace really has me straddling the Mason-Dixon line.)

"How's the family? How's the job? How much DO you weigh now?"

Everybody. Please. SHUT UP! I'm beyond sick of it.

Whatever my issues with weight, I deliberately chose to go the opposite way with my kids and either not mention weight to them directly or simply to tell them how good they look no matter what. I even try to curb my tongue about myself lest either one of them take it and run. But they talk the talk anyway and sometimes it's good, sometimes I'm not so sure.

"Daddy, how big are you? You must be 400 pounds!" OK, that IS funny. The kids like to compare us. Mr. T is 6' 3" and weighs, well, probably a little more than he should but his job requires him to be physically fit so he can't be too bad and I'm happy so who cares? When they compare me to him, though, I always come out tiny. Or he's big, I'm medium and they're small and extra small. We listen. We laugh. We don't indulge the talk but so far because I know how it can go.

I do hate to hear the fat talk. I do hate to hear the concern about their health as if they were living on the edge of death at all times. I do watch them quietly because I want to keep their weight and food in check for diabetes reasons. I tell them they look good or I tell them what they are wearing ain't working anymore. Time for something new. I try NOT to inflict my issues on them. It's not fair to them. They will develop issues of their own soon enough. We encourage them to do whatever they have an interest in in order to get out of the house because we don't live in the world I grew up in where kids could go out to play all day and come back home safe and sound. It's not safe enough to do that anymore, as far as I am concerned.

I just want my kids to be the happy, silly, inquisitive people they are but life refuses to let that happen I see. The bad stuff gets all mixed up in there and they come to me with concerns I'm not ready for them to have. I never considered myself to be an overprotective mother but maybe I should just lock them in their rooms and save myself the future agita. Other people just are not cooperating. They keep saying things, not thinking, forgetting my kids are around. Hmm. Maybe I should lock up the other people and make the world a safe place for the innocents once again. Now there's an idea.