Countdown to the New Me

It is just five-and-a-half weeks until my big trip to the West Coast where, along with the beauty of San Francisco and the drive down the coast to LA, I will also be seeing friends I haven’t seen in many, many years. I am so excited! And, also, nervous. Thinking about seeing friends from college makes me think about college, and me in college, and how I looked in college and the ensuing years in NYC. And then that makes me think about how, somewhere along the journey from 20 to 40, things changed and Me now does not look like Me in my twenties.

Apparently, I have “aged,” but whatever – the point is this: I have 38 days to get everything back to the way it was 20 years ago.

I will need to start by losing 10-12 pounds. To that end, I have cut back on my wine consumption, which I have identified as the black cloud in the otherwise clear sky of my diet. (Truly, as far as meals go, I do pretty well. Yogurt and fruit for breakfast, grilled meat and fresh veggies for dinner. We all know I have a wicked sweet tooth but if you tell me that a couple tiny Ginger Snaps from Trader Joe’s at 10:30pm is my downfall, I will…well, I probably wont’ do anything. Yeah, I’m actually certain that I won’t.)

So, yes, I have cut back! The decrease in intake may be subtle – it may even be what some people call “negligible” – but I’m going for it and I’m enthused and expecting results! Any day now.

I also, as you may have read on Facebook, went jogging a few days ago. Jogging is something I do every 14 years or so, just to make sure that I can. It usually works out okay – I jog a mile-and-a-half or so, and then once I’m feeling confident that I could run on a regular basis if I wanted to, I stop and don’t do it again for the next 14 years.

You know when brides-to-be decide that they will use the wedding as the reason why they will finally lose that extra 10 pounds? Yeah, that never works. So, you know what? Screw it. if I haven’t lost the ten pounds in the four years since I had a baby, I’m not going to lose it before this trip. I will just buy bigger clothing.

Since I’m not going to lose weight, I should really concentrate on these wrinkles. I have significant wrinkles all around my eyes which I swear all appeared during just this last year (that actually makes total sense and is not at all shocking) and I am guessing I will need some really expensive eye cream to fix them. Expensive eye cream is a great example of Something I Would Have Bought a Year Ago, when I had a job and cash (other examples would be, uhm, hard cover books, clothing from Anthropologie, and frequent massages). (Hey, remember when people had cash and went out to dinner and bought stuff? I miss that. That was fun.)

Okay, so screw it, I’m not going to order some stupid eye cream that probably won’t work anyway, so I’m going to just go with the wrinkles and I can wear some of those big-ass sunglasses (speaking of big ass – wait, no, we covered that). So I’ll be a little chubby and I’ll have the wrinkles. But you know what I can do? I can whiten my teeth.

I know some people do the fancy teeth whitening at the dentist or the salon. I’m not one of those people. I am talking Crest Whitening strips, which I will probably forget to do until the night before the trip, which is actually fine since no over-the-counter whitener is going to do anything to counteract the red wine and coffee that I drink daily. When you get right down to it, I’m sure you’d agree that I shouldn’t even waste my money.

I did make an appointment to get a hair cut and color a few days before the trip. And I will sneak in a pedicure and brow waxing, too. I don’t need to worry too much about the hair situation because I have a great hairdresser who I’ve gone to for years and there was only the one “Pat Benetar” incident, and that was so many years ago, I’m certain that nothing like that will happen on the week of my very big trip. As for the brow waxing, really, what could possibly go wrong there?

So, West Coast friends, when you see me in August, please look down at my toes, which will very likely look just as they did twenty years ago.

What’s that you say? You, too, are less taut, with, perhaps, a vein here and there on the leg and a bunion from time to time? What once was up is now down?! This is excellent news! I am so, so excited to see you all soon.

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Foreign news. (Hey, get back here!)

During the recent, post-election unrest in Iran, I noticed that several of my friends’ status updates on Facebook addressed the situation – certainly not with the frequency of, say, complaints about the abysmal weather in New England or cute things said by kids (for the record, I’m guilty on both fronts), but frequently enough for me to take notice.

It brought back to mind a question that I have pondered (yes, I do ponder from time to time) in the past:

Why do Americans seem, overall, disinterested in what’s going on in the rest of the world?

Before you think I’m up on my high horse with this one let me ‘fess up: Like most Americans, I do not spend much time seeking out foreign news coverage. I rely mostly on what makes it to the front page of the New York Times, or into The Week magazine’s international section.

So…what is the deal here? I am smart, my husband is smart – we listen to NPR and read The New Yorker, like good smart people are supposed to do. (Okay, I also watch Weeds, which isn’t even a good show any more, never mind smart, and David sometimes watches these sketchy extreme fighting shows that annoy the hell out of me and then I go drink wine and cruise Facebook. But we’re still smart. We are. NPR: Woo-hoo!)

At any rate, I have some theories.

Theory #1: We are all trashy, loathesome swine. Certainly some light has been shed of late on Americans’ disgusting habits of consumption – the McMansions, the SUVs, the brand new giant-screen TVs in houses where no one is employed, and so on. Is it possible that we honestly just want to amass a boatload of crap, and we don’t give a flying turd about things like people living in extreme poverty, or in refugee camps? As long as we don’t have to see it, we honestly just don’t care?

Wow, that is so, so depressing.

Theory #2: It’s a failure of the education system that we are not taught, as young children, about the rest of the world and our connection to it. As we get older, events in places with weird names – Yemen and Bolivia and Congo – just seem so far away, so removed, that none of it has anything to do with us anyway. What are you talking about, some people don’t have a toilet?! Ewww!

I can honestly say, sadly, that I never felt part of anything “global” when I was growing up. Even in high school, when I took a History of the Middle East class, I don’t recall it being made clear to me how any of it could possibly have any impact on “my world.”

Theory #3: Most of the news is difficult so we become overwhelmed and shut down. Obviously, there isn’t some big news story saying, “This just in: Everyone in Ecuador is generally satisfied!” That’s not what news is. But I’m recalling a theory that talks about how it is easy to process a story that involves, say, under twenty people, but after that we start to shut down and just think of “them” as a number instead of individuals like ourselves.

So, if, for example, six children are in danger we will do anything in our power to rescue them; meanwhile, there are untold numbers of children living in camps, malnourished and sick, being beaten and raped…but they have become numbers to us, not individual people. And anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it, right? It’s too enormous, and way out of our control. We can barely handle getting the kids to school and paying the bills.

Theory #4: We would care, if we had the information. This is the “chicken and egg” theory. Is there a lack of foreign news because of a lack of desire, or is there a lack of desire because of the lack of coverage?

Due to cutbacks in funding so many news organizations have simply given up on the coverage of world events. And we’re busy people – we don’t have time to go searching for information. So, if the news is pushing a story about a kitten that was abandoned in a mailbox (Cambridge, MA, last week), then that’s what we’re going to absorb. (Don’t worry, someone adopted the kitten the very next day. That also made headlines.)

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I’m going to briefly pause the theories to confess that another reason this whole issue has been on my mind is because of two friends I saw recently, Jason Maloney and Kira Kay, and their non profit international news organization, the Bureau for International Reporting (check them out at www.thebir.org). Along with being friends of mine, they are also award-winning, international journalists who have reported from over 25 countries. I knew they would have some thoughts on the topic. So, I bring you Theory #5, which takes into account some of Jason’s opinions.

Theory #5: – In order to engage people, stories need to be well told, and they’re not.

A recent example of what can go wrong? The Nightline report of Salma Hayek visiting Sierra Leone. Now, I did not watch this show and I did not read specific coverage of this show. But somehow, somewhere, I heard that Hayek had nursed someone else’s baby. I didn’t even hear where she was or what she was doing there! For all I knew she could have been in a mall in Dallas. So, issues of health in Africa be damned – the story became about a Hollywood star’s (sizable) breast in not-her-own-baby’s mouth. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our news from oversees.

On the other hand, would the story even have been possible without her participation? Would we have watched it? How can we get the stories that are somewhere between “celebrity do-gooder takes a trip” and “amateur reporter makes a YouTube video?”

I could go on and on and on – there are so many questions. As for answers…yeah, I don’t have any. I think it’s a combination of all of the theories, actually. I do know that I am going to make it a point to pay more attention to what is happening world-wide, and to talk to my four-year-old about other countries and cultures on a more regular basis.

See? I am working on Theory #2 so as to never be the person in Theory #1.

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Ball of Ecoconfusion

I found myself wondering yesterday, as I folded what seemed like 680 cloth napkins in the clean laundry pile, whether our switch from paper napkins to cloth was actually the environmentally friendly act that we meant it to be.

Sure, we are throwing away less paper, but we are also using more water and detergent to clean the cloth ones on a regular basis – and that is with me sometimes re-folding them and sneaking them back onto the pile after dinners that I deem  ”pretty clean.”  (Don’t worry, I always make sure guests have a newly laundered one.)

I realize that I can get a little over-thinky about stuff like this so I was urging myself to “Let it go,” (I actually spend a good portion of my life urging myself to “Let it go”) until I realized that it is one of many questions that I have contemplated recently, on the topic of supposedly environmentally friendly practices. My conclusion?

I am eco-confused.

On a positive note, I can say without hesitation that I care, which puts me near the front of the pack. Here are some of the good things I can say, confidently, that I do to be eco-friendly:

Having said that, there’s also a lot that I could do better. Remember when Sheryl Crow told everyone that they should use, like, two squares of toilet paper per sitting? Without getting too personal, let that be first on my list:

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that. I’m starting to look bad, which seems ridiculous since this is my blog.

So, back to my question about the cloth napkins. Perhaps you’re thinking that the cloth vs. paper napkin issue is so small that it doesn’t warrant a whole blog post in the first place, and maybe you’re right. But, on the other hand, until people start caring about little choices like this we’re going to be stuck on the tip of the (rapidly melting) iceberg when it comes to this whole movement.

One last question: Is the extra freezer that we bought for the basement, which we use to store meat for grilling and lots of Trader Joe’s frozen items, worth the electricity? Our thinking was that it would save money on gas, and time, for all those frequent trips to TJs, but now eco-confused me is wondering whether a large and constant electricity sucker is doing more harm than good.

I’m pretty sure what Sheryl Crow would say. Then again, I don’t really care what Sheryl Crow would say.

Here’s what I have say: I’m thinking yes to the cloth napkins, but the freezer is debatable. But I want it, so can I keep it if I promise to start turning off all the lights in empty rooms? Or am I fooling myself and unless we get solar panels, and hybrid cars and start collecting our rain water, all our changes are worthless?

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The Beginning

Welcome to my blog. I’ve been threatening to do this for some time now so it is odd to actually be typing in this little box; I find it equal parts exciting and, actually, embarrassing. I mean, really, does the world really need another blog? Is this truly the best use of my time? Shouldn’t I be doing laundry, or researching clinical trials? Maybe I am just finding it daunting, this first post, so I’ve decide to cheat and do a little copy’n'paste.

I am fortunate to have for a neighbor and good friend the wonderful Monica S., who is an established executive- and management-level coach (clearly she is slumming it with my unemployed self). During our first meeting, which took place in my living room (my new “recession lounge”) and involved way, way too much wine for reasonable people on a weeknight, she posed two important questions, which I was to answer as homework: Why did I want to write? And, what did I want to leave behind as my legacy when I was no longer here?

It was all fun and games when we were deep in the Tres Picos, but when I sat down days later to do my assignment, I realized that this was some serious shit.

So, just to get the ball rolling, here are my answers:

Why writing?

1- Because I want to. I like thinking of ideas, sitting down to write, revising essays to improve them…I truly enjoy all of it, really. I think about writing every single day so it’s been a treat to actually write, beyond emails and Facebook status updates (sad that I’ve come to think of status updates as “writing.”).

I’m still not writing on a daily basis, though. I hope this blog will help with that. My seventh grade teacher said I was going to be a writer (what a dorky, ridiculous thing for me to reveal). In short, I feel like I’ve been reunited with a long lost friend since taking my writing class.

2- To keep up the mental game. For obvious reasons, I want to keep my mind limber and according to the research, the best way to do that is by engaging in activities you don’t normally do. I haven’t spent much time in the past few years thinking about things like sentence structure, or grammar, or punctuation, or synonyms and so on. It feels good to have essays in the works and to go through the process of revising them, and researching target markets, setting up the blog and so on.

3- Writing gives me a sense of purpose/identity. Since my store closed I have spent a lot of my time taking care of others. That’s my choice and it’s what I want to do – but maybe not all the time. When I am sitting down to write it is about me and what I want to do.

Due to MANY factors it is not the right time for me to go out and get a traditional job. If I could publish an essay here and there and make even a little money, it would make me feel good about myself.

There, I said it. I am hoping, at some point, to make some money from writing.

4- It helps me sort through things. The situation with my mom is hands-down the craziest, worst, and most all-encompassing, confusing thing I have ever dealt with and I think that putting some of it in writing will help me sort through the mess and come to terms with it. At some point maybe it will also help someone else deal wth a similar situation. Maybe I’m kidding myself and neither of those things will ever happen, but it’s all about the trying, right?

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