A bikini? Really?

I can now be counted with the millions of European women who, by American standards, should NOT be wearing a bikini. Yes in just under two months in this country and countless times participating in the national past time - soaking my body in the public mineral baths (think public pool without the chlorine) - I have come around to their way of thinking. It will take me while to get over what they all have obviously no compulsion to give another thought to: all my cellulite and fat rolls are on display for the world to see. I am, in the immortal words of someone too stoned to care in the sixties, letting it all hang out.

I neither have the language skills nor the chutzpah to ask any of these women who, we in America tend to snicker at on the beach as their bellies seem to be breaking through the little strings that are holding on their tiny patch of triangular fabric (that as far as I can see's only value is hiding a few pubic hairs), what are they thinking?

But I can try to speculate now from my own experience, as I am about to reveal my far less than perfect and pale-ass, body to the world at the hungarian summer spot, Lake Balaton.

First and foremost, I have to say, I appreciate very much having a little of my body as possible wrapped in spandex, the clothing equivalent of saran wrap. Parts of my body are breathing in the fresh air today that have never seen daylight. No really, not since I was a size five, sixteen year-old, have some of these patches of skin gotten to see the great outdoors and of course visa versa. In those days, the less material you wore was directly proportional to your chances of finding a guy. Today this actually has the exact opposite ratio of material to male interest with my current body. But regardless, it is really nice not to be sweating like a pig which has to gain me some points on the public attractiveness scale?

Along those lines, I have to think that there is something really healthy about my potential vitamin D intake today. I can only imagine that while some of these people in itty bitty bikinis may be overweight I'll bet their vitamin d levels are great.

The next benefit I've discovered is navigating the little tiny wc's along the beaches and baths. There is something to be said for the quick in and out with the little bitty bikini bottom!

And let me be clear. I don't for a minute delude myself into thinking that I rock this bikini. After a full day on various and sundry beaches in the 'hungarian inland sea,' I can tell you that there were definitely those among us who did and many of us, myself included, who didn't (some even less than I). And I certainly didn't buy it and wear it because I think I got something to flaunt, because I absolutely don't. But the point is I don't care. I'm not making a statement about my body or even showing it off for that matter. It's just showing, so, get over it.

Tell me the truth, does this country make me look fat?

Since I painted all eastern european women in that stereotypical, androgynous, russian, olympic-wrestler, paint brush, I figured with my recent 30+ pound weight loss i'd be a shoe in for best body at the baths award. It came as oh such a shock the first day in country as I arrived at my new office only find a bevy of the most perfect physical specimens. Instantly, I felt obese again. The same way I felt walking down the streets of Paris; like my size 16 butt was screaming "OBESE AMERICAN TOURIST." But here I was, a size 10, realizing that in Hungarian terms that represented "Large" where by American standards I was just starting to feel good about moving to Medium.

In my six weeks here, I've tried to analyze why it is that these women have the exact opposite ratio of "normal" to "obese" as we have in the states. All of my amateur nutritional ethnographic detective skills seem to be failing me though.

I watch them, every day, eating the most amazing pastries and baked goods for breakfast and snacks. They seem to cook their vegetables to death, removing what we have come to believe are the most important nutritional and fiber values. There are tons of cars and even those who walk mostly take public transportation. And, I'm loath to write this off to genetics BECAUSE I SHARE DNA WITH THIS PEOPLE!
So i give up trying to figure it out.

I've started eating like a hungarian but I've managed to gain two pounds. I walk to work every day, go to the gym every morning (which by the way the Hungarian women think is hysterical), and have forgone any desserts during the week. And yet, I can do nothing more than keep my weight at two pounds over what it was when I stepped foot in this country. Go figure.

In the mean time, I watch my Hungarian peers, eating pokacha every day made with either lard, cheese or potato, down glass after glass of hungarian beer at happy hour, and partake in the most amazing baked goods of all ilk that I have every experienced outside of Paris. Oh well, while my mouth believes when in Hungary do like the Hungarians, my body apparently is not on board.

Observations of Paris (oldie but goodie)

It's very easy to maintain a vegetarian diet in Paris and even easier to abandon one.
You can survive solely on nouns with a few verbs sprinkled in for flavor for an entire week.
French women really don't get fat.
French chefs definitely do not use instant mashed potatoes.
Harcourt Verts actually do taste better, and are not, as I suspected, just green beans with a fancy name to get you to pay more.
It is surrealistic to be sitting in a Parisian restaurant, hearing people speak French all around you, eating French food, drinking French wine, and suddenly realize you are listening to the Eagles Hotel California in the background.
If you buy an all day transportation pass in Paris, it just doesn't matter what bus you get on.
Let's face it, can any American really hear a French police siren without thinking about Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
French women eat croissants du chocolat for breakfast, clean their plates at dinner and are always eating amazing pastries and desserts. Why don't French women get fat?
I have heard a lot of stories about rude French people. I have yet to have any person be rude to me in France. Maybe it's the "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for George W Bush" button that I wear?
If you are lactose intolerant, steer clear of the 3 Fromage sandwich. Trust me on this one.
French women smoke a lot, which could account for why French women don't get fat.
No matter how long you stare at a historical marker written in French the meaning will not magically come to you if you do not speak the language. (I'm going to guess this one is true in any language, but would have to do much more traveling to prove the theory. At this point in time, I've proven it to be true in Japanese, German, Spanish, French, and Egyptian)
If you see a fat woman in Paris, she's probably American. It's probably me.

The denouement

Well Team it was a real Hollywood ending for the Emerson Late Shift and their production of Tea & Thievery.

While Kristen and Sara worked their hardest to get everything edited and the reshots and rerecords, we knew from early on that we were coming down to the wire. Colette, Linda and I did our best to support and do what we could, but the weight of the world was on their shoulders and they held up like champs.

As late afternoon approached, technical issues continued to plague us and caused us to get closer and closer to the 7:30PM deadline for submission. We tried calling a few lifelines but no one could really help us until we decided to call the 48 hour film project hotline where Ben Guaraldi was on the phone, talking us through some of our issues and trying to debug our problem. He also strongly recommended that we finish working IN THE CAR and get our butts down to Lir in case we had even a slim chance of working through our technical problems in time to submit. At 6:00PM we piled into Colette and my car with Sara and Kristen continuing to work as we drove, and was Jessica packed and ready to be taken to the airport for her 9pm flight. On the way downtown, Kristen realized she hadn't had anything to eat all day! So I knew my first job when we got there was to get some food into her before we lost her :-)

By the time we got to Lir, we were almost over one hurdle and ready to move on to the next. At 7:15 (by our computer's time) we began the final process of burning the file onto the flash drive to be turned in. The progress bar on the program reported that we were looking at 13 minutes and we started emotionally preparing for the inevitable late submission that it looked like we were destine for. That is until Ben announced to all in the room, (including several people in our same position) that there was 20 minutes left! Their "official" time was in fact 5 minutes slower than our time.

I quickly took my place on the submission line while the file finished downloading. Once that progress bar disappeared, Kristen quickly ejected it from the computer and Colette ripped it out of the computer and handed it off to me. Our "official" check in time was 7:27! We made it with 3 minutes to spare!

Needless to say, it was a relief to get it in and on time no less. It was truly an incredible sense of accomplishment and of course relief.

Unfortunately there were some compromises we had to make in order to make the "on time" deadline so Jessica's fabulous music that she worked so hard on all weekend didn't get in, some of the footage that we really wanted in also didn't make it, and a few additional edits that Kristen wanted to make had to be bumped off the priority list. And probably most nerve wracking of all is that we never got to test the media before we handed it in. Once it went into the sealed envelop we were not able to access it. It's in the hands of the film gods now.

The good news is we know the file worked as we have now watched it several times and LOVE IT. However that said, we'd like to see the final product we wanted to create make it to the "youtube" version. So, to that end, Kristen, Sara, and Jessica are going to continue to work on it and since we aren't even allowed to post it on you tube until the end of the week at the earliest, we will post the project that we wanted to do film instead of the one that we wound up with.

Thank you all again for all your efforts over the course of the last 48 hours. And most especially to the extraordinary effort and hours logged from Kristen, Colette, Sara, Jessica and Linda for whom 48 hours was really almost a straight 48 hours  -- combined, this team got as much sleep in the last 48 hours as a single human usually gets in one night. To them, the biggest round of applause and appreciation. And to all of you my thanks!

Hopefully we'll see you at the screening Tuesday night, if not, we hope you will love what we post on You Tube and we'll be looking for your comments when we do!

r

The Daily Debate

It's dark. It's 10 degrees outside.

When the alarm goes off at 5AM, my brain kicks into gear explaining to the rest of my body all the reasons why we should stay in bed and forget about the perfect 35 consecutive day streak I have getting up every morning and going to the gym.

Before I know it though, the covers are tossed back, legs are kicked over the side, and feet are on the floor.

Guys, my brain implores, think about how warm and cozy this bed is. Look at these soft, flannel sheets, feel the warmth of the heated mattress pad. The rest of my body is moving slowly but not listening to the pleadings of my brain.

Yesterday, I had yet another horrible sinus attack. I was in bed by 7 and my head is still killing me. But now, I seem to have reached for my workout clothes.

Guys, come on, give me a break. Just one day. It will be fine, maybe we'll go later when the Advil kicks in.

Now shoes are on. Pills are popped. Coffee cup is full. I'm ready to go. My brain takes one more shot at it.

Look guys, missing one day isn't going to kill us. Back, listen to me, your twinging. You know that's not a good sign. You could herniate a disk again. Calf and Shins, come on, I know you are with me, remember how much pain you have about 15 minutes into the walk. Let's give you poor guys a rest. Feet, listen, just stop and listen. You're hurting, I know you are. Let's just stop this silliness and go back to our nice, warm, bed. No one will ever know. No one will be the wiser. We can keep telling people you've had an unbroken attendance record, who the hell is going to know the difference?

And then I look up and I see that we are in the Y parking lot. It's 5:30am, the doors have just opened.

Oh, fine, might as well just get this over with. And so starts day number 36.

Everyone Needs a Cheering Section

Today, it was just me and a few other crazy people who trudged to the Y in the sleet and freezing rain at 5:30AM. It was really nice when I got the two thumbs up from Wally, my trainer, when I broke 50 crunches for the first time today. (When I first started at the Y, I could barely get to 10). But then as I was leaving, a very fit, very trim, elderly man, stepped out of the wellness center as I was grabbing for my coat coming off the track. I had seen him a few times when I was in the wellness room doing my resistance training but had never spoken to him.
"Leaving so soon?" he slyly smiled.
"Hey, I've been here since 5:30, where've you been?" I sarcastically retorted.
"In bed sleeping!"
"Probably a better use of your time on a day like today," I answered.
"Well," he said, "you're doing great!"
I was shocked, did he mean today? or in general? Had he taken notice of me before?
"Thanks," I said, "I'm not seeing any physical evidence of it, but I'll take your word for it."
Then he told me how there were those a lot worse off than I, which I had agreed and noted that I had seen them at the Walmart, which he found quite amusing. Then he repeated, with a smile as he walked toward the door, "You're doing just fine, I'll let you know if I think it's going otherwise."
"Thanks!" I yelled after him. It's nice to know someone's watching my back(side). Literally.

Filler Up, My Tank is Empty

Tomorrow starts month number two at the Y and this is the “make it or break it” for me. Was this just a flash in the pan or a lifetime commitment to being healthy? Last night on the way home from Brian's I stopped and picked up some extra workout clothes. Either these will sit in the corner mocking me for the rest of my life, or I will wear them out. Only time will tell.

So today, the new dietary recommendations came out. After reading through most of them, I have to say, GROW A PAIR USDA.

Brian and I have been doing a lot of reading on nutritional research and data. But the bottom line is this: The human body was not meant to be this sedentary or eat what we typically eat.

So let’s get down to basics. Food = Energy. It’s the fuel we use to drive our bodies, period. Over the course of the last 100 or so years, Americans have started using fewer and fewer calories during the course of the day. Let's not even go back through the millennia for a list of all the activities we are not doing (we are not hunting, gathering or foraging anymore let alone running for our lives periodically during the day). Just over the course of the last century, we’ve stopped walking to town, plowing the earth, churning butter, grinding flour, chopping wood just to name a few activities no longer on my daily chore list.

And since the invention of television and its evil cousin the computer, we mostly sit. Which is basically like leaving the pilot light on the stove, hardly any fuel usage at all. Additionally we are no longer living in cycles of feast and famine, so while I try to explain to my body it no longer needs to store all that energy in the form of fat in the event of a famine, it's not listening to me.

So many of us are going out and running around the streets or down in our basements or gyms pumping iron on ergonomic torture devices, but it’s just not the same. Our bodies are designed to be constantly in motion working and/or sleeping (not at the same time). And so most of us, those who are overweight and beyond and you know who you are, are taking in far more calories than our bodies need and/or want.

And it's not just how much we eat, but what we eat as well. There is plenty of evidence that the rise in Americans' collective weight coincided with the not only the invention of television and the proliferation of the automobile, but the farm friendly government subsidies that led to CORN being in almost everything you put in your mouth. The fact is the USDA is not going to come out and tell you to stop eating products with high fructose corn syrup in them. But you should run to your cabinets right now and purge everything in your house that has it as an ingredient, and then if you have time, watch King Corn. Now, look, I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories. I do think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But lest you think that a powerful source cannot have information suppressed, drop me a line after you watch the Kennedy miniseries on the History Channel. I have now been high fructose corn syrup free for 3 months (thank you Ryan and Adria), but when Brian found the TruWhip at Whole Foods this weekend (fat free, all natural whipped topping with no high fructose corn syrup) it made my life complete.


Does anyone really have a clue how many calories you either A. need or B. are eating over the course of a day? I didn't. The recommended calorie intake for women my age is 10 - 12 calories per pound of your weight, per day depending on your activity level with 12 calories per pound being the marathon runner and 10 being the slug. I'm some where in between. And when you actually add up the calories of EVERYTHING you are putting in to your mouth, you cannot believe how quickly this calorie quota is filled. My first few days changing my eating habits, I was out of calories by noon. When I mentioned to Brian that it's not fair that he gets over twice the amount of calories in a day that I do, he pointed out that if I too wanted to weigh 240 pounds I was welcome to keep up with him. Touché.

Obviously I can pay someone like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, or Nutrisystem to count the calories out for me, balance the calories intake properly, and tell me what to eat when, but why should? I'm a relatively smart person, with 2 computers, an iPad, and a smart phone at my disposal. Surely I can do this on my own. And I need to do it not just until I drop a few pounds but I need to maintain it forever. The reality is this is my calorie limit for life period. And well, it’s just depressing that's all. Because it just doesn't go very far.

Some people have sexual fantasies. I have food fantasies. I fantasized about a great breakfast I was going to make Brian to show him that we can have our fabulous diner breakfast for far fewer calories. The menu called for a western omelet, home fries, bacon and sausage, fresh fruit and toast. I set out to do the necessary modifications to fit into Brian’s 500 calories per meal food plan.

Ok, so the 3-egg omelet went down to two eggs. I used low fat cheddar. I didn’t use any fat to cook with just all natural, Trader Joes, zero calories, olive oil spray. I carefully picked out and weighed a tiny red-potato, which I chopped up and sautéed with a couple of tablespoons of onion and green pepper. I carefully checked the calories on the Morningstar farms breakfast patties and started to add up the calories all together to figure out how much fruit to slice up. And whoa! how many calories in a little tiny 4 oz red potato? Are you kidding me? Well right then and there, I realized that I had not only hit, but had exceed his limit. Bread, even at 45 calories per whole grain slice had to go back in the bag. Fruit remained in the drawer. And all I could think of was: if that very carefully prepared and counted meal was over 500 calories, how many calories must be in that breakfast when we order it from the greasy spoon diner down the street? I was shell shocked for the rest of the day. All day long I kept saying, “Can you imagine how many calories are in that [fill in the blank] meal we had at [fill in the blank] restaurant”

But the sad fact is that right now 1400 calories is my pathetic limit. And that's just to lose 1/2 to one pound per week. Once I get down to the weight I want to maintain, I can soar back up to about 1800 calories per day. I guess I’ll have to wait until then to reintroduce myself to pizza. Until then, I guess I'll just keep having my nightly pizza fantasies.

Let Me Walk On That

Epiphanies are coming fast and furious these days.

Last night I decided to go to the free "Meditation" class at the Y. I don't know what I thought it would be, but what ever I thought it would be, it wasn't. This was meditation to take a "spiritual journey." Unfortunatley the room was small and the town is smaller so escape was futile. Ashem works in mysterious ways....

After we got lavender oil dropped on our head and the lights were dimmed, she talked us through opening up the space above our heads and allowing each of the chakra colors to stream into our body, and she talked and talked and talked. She wanted us to get in touch with our spiritual guide. Well I don't know about that, but I did get in touch with my inner 5 year-old boy, when just as we were supposed to feel the yellow chakra flowing through our pelvic area, someone went into the bathroom that shared a wall with the classroom, tinkled, and flushed the toilet.

So I survived the hour and all the various and sundry chakra colors entering and filling my body and then, thankfully it was over. But not before I heard something that really blew me away. She gave some "tips" for meditating at home. Don't lay down, most people fall asleep (well duh), reclining is better, and best of all, walking. WALKING! Walking she said allows you to get into the perfect meditative state. Eureka!

Now, this explains a lot. Most of all, why I hate treadmills. And for that, kind reader, you'll have to come with me to back to a class I took when I was teaching many many moons ago. The class was called F.A.T. City (FAT = Frustration, Anxiety, and Tension) and nothing that I've done before or since has affected me more. The class is intended to put people in situations that allow you to experience what special needs students experience in the classroom. It was a profound experience. But here in lies the crux for this story.

In that class, we learned that all the tasks in the world are divided into to categories: associative and cognitive. Most things for normal functioning brains are associative, meaning you can do more than one thing at a time (talk on the phone and take notes for example, or in my co-workers cases, play computer solitaire.) But there are other tasks that are cognitive, meaning they take all your brain function at once. The example the instructor gave was driving. Most of the time driving is an associative task, you can drive and talk and listen to the radio all at the same time. But imagine, that suddenly the sky opens up, it starts to pour - it's dark and you don't know where you are. What's the first thing you do? Turn off the radio and say to everyone in the car, Shhh. Suddenly driving has become a cognitive task. (Ok many of you who have driven with me are now saying to yourself, For Robin, driving should always be a cognitive task and I can't argue with that, I'm a terrible driver, but this is about walking).

I realized why I HATE treadmills! For me, walking on a treadmill is a cognitive task! Maybe I'm scarred by my early childhood memories of poor George Jetson being constantly sucked under the treadmill over and over again and no one there to help him. But when I'm on a treadmill I literally concentrate on every step I take. So walking on the treadmill was never a place where I did my best thinking. And certainly watching TV or reading a book made it even worse as a time for my brain to cut loose. This also explains why I hate to walk with another human being (on a regular basis) it's nothing personal, it's just I realize how much I love walking when my brain and I are alone with each other. I also realized, I lost my perfect walking companion - Hazel.

So now I know, why I walk past all those people in the morning in the nice, climate-controlled room on those very state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line treadmills that the Y is proud to boast they just purchased. This is why I prefer the track to the treadmill. And despite my father's claims to the contrary, I CAN in fact walk and chew gum at the same time. And more importantly, I can walk and think at the same time.

Having that time alone with my brain every morning has been great. It's like we get on the track, and I take the leash off and let it run. Of course every once in a while it circles back mostly to belt out the chorus of the song it's just heard on the ipod or struggles to think about whether or not I clicked off the last lap on the clicker, but eventually, I can cajole it into running back out in the wild and seeing what it can fetch.

I composed this blog entry on my walk this morning. Ok so it's not War and Peace but come on, I've only been walking for 10 days, give me time. And if you have a problem that needs to be solved, give me a call and I'll walk on it.

The Writer's Discipline

No one has ever accused me of being disciplined. Ask any of my teachers, grades k through well, ever. I tend to wait until the last minute to get things done, which in this day and age, seems to be gaining favor and even has a new moniker: Just in time (whatever).

I think about the Maslow chart from psych 101 where different people needed different levels of stress to be motivated. Mine was way on the right/stress side. The more stressed I was the better I performed.

The problem is that as a writer, I also know that the more time I have for a piece of work, the better it is. Writing, like wine and cheese, gets better with age. First and foremost, it gives Lisa and I more time to go back and forth on it. And there is no doubt in my mind that the more she looks as something the better it gets. Take the first chapter of my book. She just looked at it again for the first time in probably about a year, and there are new edits! yes! and brilliant ones at that. My friend Kerry introduced me to the old writer's axiom "If I had more time, I would have written less." It's true, the longer I have to work on a piece, the tighter and crisper it becomes. So then my instinct to procrastinate is in direct conflict with my goal to succeed as a writer. So the course is clear: I must develop a better writing habit.

I have read many writers work on writing. They all have a method they are happy to pass on and might work for you. But none work for me. I read one writer who sits at his computer every day for 4 hours. He types gibberish if need be until something intelligent comes out of his brain on to the screen. Others just write, about anything, forcing themselves to put words together every day no matter what. None of that is going to work for me. My brain and my fingers rebel.

Lisa, like a good manager, pushes me and that helps. "Where's the next chapter?" the email will say. "Can you send me back the copy with the edits in?" But sometimes, like last night, I just want to veg: watch 2 hours of on demand TV, play computer solitaire, and go to bed. The problem is that isn't going to get the book finished.

The good news is this, I woke up feeling so guilty about my lack of productivity yesterday, I banged out a new chapter this morning. So therein might be the solution to my problem. Guilt. Lisa is Catholic, I'm Jewish. We should have a lock on this. Once the book is published, the next book will be, The Secret to A Good Writing Habit: Guilt. Oye.

The Painful Truth About Exercise

Today, I hit a wall (hit the wall? ran into a wall?). I'm not sure what the fitness jargon is, but today was day five of my new routine and the day I was willing to chuck the whole thing. I had to force myself out of bed, and once on the track, turned into a whiny baby -- Most of it stemming from the pain radiating from my left shin. I've decided to blame my new sneakers. I bought the Reebok EasyTones because like most people, I'm looking for a quick way to get fit without much effort.

My favorite line from the show Absolutely Fabulous happens when the mother walks through the door with a HUGE stack of diet and exercise books and explains to her daughter that she is going to read every single one of those books to find the secret to losing weight. The daughter looks at her and tells her that she doesn't need to read all those books. The secret to losing weight is to eat less and exercise more to which Mum replies, "Don't be ridiculous darling. If it were that easy, everyone would do it!" Ah, how true.

I too thought that maybe, somewhere I would discover the magical secret to losing weight. Surely there was a plan/food/pill that with very little effort and probably exorbitant sums of money, the pounds would melt away or I would grow a few inches, really either way would be fine with me.

But now I realize that once you resign yourself to the fact that you just need to eat less and exercise more, the you really don't need anything except a brain (or in my case half a brain) to do it.

Yet, even though I resigned myself to that basic fact of fitness and weight loss, it didn't stop me from buying the shoes. Because the shoes would magically transform my butt into, well, what was promised to me in the Reebok ad which was a butt that looked like a tight, little, upside down heart instead of my current jumbo bowl of large curd cottage cheese.

So my legs were in pain and I was willing to consider blaming the shoes. My brain probably went there first because of the article I read this Sunday about this man who continued to run in the latest running-fad shoes despite the extreme pain he was in. I thought, what an idiot. Why didn't he stop? But then here I was, thinking, I'm taxing new muscles, working my body in ways it has not worked in, well, ever. So, I'll just tough it out and I'm sure it will get better. Yeah, that's what the guy in the article thought too. In a few months when the research comes out that these Reebok EasyTone shoes are an easy way to wreck your body, I'll be the idiot who the reporter quotes saying, "yeah, well they hurt real bad but I thought that meant they were working..."

Which brings us to the painful point of this blog entry: No pain no gain right? This morning, I could not get my pace up. No matter how badly I yelled at myself or sweetly encourage, or blatantly bribed, my legs just wouldn't bust a move. And the thing that I have learned by tracking my exercise on my new iPad is that pace is everything. That woman who I watch on the track in her best Talbot’s clothes, hair and make up pristine, getting a quick little bit of exercise in before she sets off to the office... well she might have spared herself the trouble and got an extra 30 minutes sleep since she’d burn about the same amount of calories with a lot less trouble. At her pace, she'll be lucky to burn 25 calories which she'll probably put back in her coffee with her first mini-moo. So, I thought, maybe the pain in my shins was the price I am paying for my 4mph pace which is the slowest you can walk and still break 100 calories burned for 30 minutes.

And then, just when I was getting a little hopeful that the end was near, and I watch my clicker and the clock get ready to do the Flintstone whistle in my head, I remembered I had an appointment this morning with my new personal trainer. What the hell was I thinking?

He was a nice enough man, my new best friend Wally. Retired high school science and gym teacher (yep about cliché as you can get), he started me on my new "resistance training" program. By the time I got home today, I could barely move my left shoulder and my legs were like jelly, and of course the ever present pain in my shin. But hey, no pain no gain right? That means the exercise is working right? Can someone pass the Advil please....

Random Thoughts (after all isn't that what blogging is all about?)

There is nothing like watching the snowfall out the window of the Y as you are walking the temperature-controlled, indoor track to make you feel good about the money you spent on your Y membership.

There is nothing like watching the very fit, skinny woman running on the street in the snow in front of you as you pull out of the Y parking lot to make you feel bad about the money you spent on your Y membership.

Worrying that the heavyset woman on the track approaching behind you is purposefully plotting ways to make you walk faster, move to the shorter lane, or feel bad about your pace since she's heavier than you and is moving faster than you, is proof you suffer from paranoid delusions. She doesn't give a shit about you, she just wants you to get out of her way.

The euphoria you felt over solving your concentration problem by buying a mechanical clicker is short lived as the novelty will wear off in 24 hours and you will yet again find yourself staring at your starting point from across the track and wondering, "did I click off that lap?"

After accidently copying my entire music library onto my iPod Shuffle instead of just the Super Pep playlist, I find that certain songs are really better for keeping up my 4mph pace than others. Good songs for brisk walking:

Here it Goes Again (Ok Go)

Karma Chameleon (Boy George)

Step into my Office Baby (Belle and Sebastian)

You Can't Always Get What You Want (both the Glee version and the Stones)

You Spin me Right Round (Billy Idol)

Mrs. Robinson (Simon and Garfunkel)

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)

Love you Madly (Cake)

Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Turnstall) -- sadly, I cannot keep myself from singing along with this one no matter how hard I try.

Golddigger (the Glee version)

I would walk 500 miles (The Proclaimers) -- favorite line: "If I get drunk yes I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you. And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you."

Just what I needed (The Cars)

Fluorescent Adolescent (Arctic Monkeys) favorite line: "You took a left off Last Laugh Lane."

Songs that aren't so good and need to be deleted off my shuffle:

The more we get together (Raffi)

Defying Gravity (Wicked Cast Album and Glee)

Tiny Dancer (Elton John) Sorry Elton, love you but you don't get my heart racing anymore....

No matter how cocky you feel because you have a big honking 4-wheel drive car with anti-lock brakes and high end snow tires, if you don't slow down you are going to skid in the snow. And as a corollary to that, putting a "skid indicator light" on the dashboard of a car is really stupid since I don't think anyone really doesn't know when they are skidding. But then I grew up in Florida, what do I know about driving in snow....

Clicking off the laps

Today I started my new routine. Up at 5am. Arrive at the Y at 5:30. Walk/Run 30 minutes on the track. Go home, shower, get dressed, write for 30 minutes and then start work. So far so good.

Although, I must say, I'm not really sure if I fit in at the Y with the 5:30AM crowd.

I used to think that all the people in my town were fat. I felt like Twiggy everywhere I went. Which I admit was kinda nice. Brian once said, that he didn't think we made the weight class to shop at the local Walmart. But now I know. There is a leaner more fit contingent of Warehamites (Warehamians?) and while I've obviously never frequented the same haunts as they do, I know now they hang out at the Wareham Y at 5:30AM. And even though I was there the second the doors were unlocked, the best parking I could find was in the last row.

It looks like most of those people though, hang out in the "wellness center." Which is basically a room full of what looks like ancient torture devices including weights, treadmills, etc. I prefer the track which for a brief moment today, looked like I would have all to myself. That was fine with me, no point in badly embarrassing myself on my very first day.

The first person to join me on the track was a woman with a good 20 years on me. I felt pretty good (and young and fit) as I lapped her the first time around. She was walking on the inside lane I was walking on the outside. (I have chosen to walk on the outside lane because it only takes 17 laps to make a mile instead of the 19 it takes on the inside lane. My brain has not yet figured out that the reason it's fewer laps is because the laps are longer, and please don't tell it. I'm hoping it won't figure it out.) I felt pretty good about myself as I was sure she felt the whoosh of my air current as I passed her several times on my way to a 12 minute mile. Of course, she weighed probably about 50 pounds less than I do so maybe she wasn't so jealous of me after all.

This brings us to two points that are true potential causes of embarrassment that may force me to find a time at the gym when there are more old, fat people like me.

First, I've had to buy a clicker. You know one of those little metal round things that sit on your finger and you press a little button on it and it keeps a count. Like the one the guy at Costco uses. Why Costco needs to pay a guy to stand at the door and click off people is beyond me, but it's another guy off the unemployment line so I guess it's fine. And after this experience at the Y, I will have mastered the clicker, and if I ever need to maybe I can apply for the Clicker job at my local Costco because I will have had clicker experience.

Anyway, I need the clicker because it became clear to me, when I came to the Y for my guest visits, that it was impossible for me to focus enough keep track of how many laps I did in my head. The only reason it's important is because when you calculate how many calories you burn by walking/running, you have to tell the tool what "pace" you are going and the only way I can know that is if I count the laps/miles.

The first time I went, I tried to keep track in my head. Ok, I thought, every time I pass the door, I'll add one. That worked up until about 3. Suddenly I found myself across the track looking at the door thinking, "did I count that lap?" or having my mind wander off to whereever it disappears to when I'm not looking, only to find that 10 minutes had passed yet I still only held the number "4" in my head.

The second visit, I tried keeping track on my fingers, I'm not sure what I was going to do when I got to 11, possibly employ some form of ancient chinese abacus methodology, but again, too many laps went by without my mind being present, and I completely lost track. Amazingly the clicker did the trick. Something about having the cold metal pressed in my hand kept me focused, and while I garnered looks from some of the other people who had joined me, I thought maybe they'd just think it was cute in that pathetic way you think old people are cute.

Speaking of those other people who joined me, that too was a problem for a couple of reasons. A very very very fit young guy, I'd say early to mid 30s entered the track about 15 minutes after I got there. Every once and a while, my internal filter gets tested and this was definitely one of those times. When I first saw him, all hard body and short shorts, I wanted to say, "excuse me, would you have time for a quickie in the locker room when you are done here?" But I didn't. Internal filter on. Check. He lapped me over and over again and then, as fast as he came, he flew out the door. I thought, good, go. But then he was back and I realized, he was going out the door, running up and down the stairs and then taking a few more laps around (I couldn't count his laps since I only had one clicker). That's when I had to employ the filter again and suppress my gut reaction to scream out, "fucking show off...." The problem is, that while I might be able to filter what comes out of my mouth. I'm not always aware that things are leaking out.

There are several noises that really get on my nerves. Not like "nails on a blackboard" get on your nerves but like people smacking their lips when they eat kind of get on your nerves. The kind of sounds that make you want to walk over to the person making the noise and simply strangle them. A bouncing basketball is one of those noises. I have never been able to tolerate listening to a bouncing basketball for more than a few minutes before I want to put an ice pick through said ball. That's kind of a problem for me because the track at the Y is right over the basketball courts and surprisingly enough, at 5:30 in the morning there are people playing basketball. I wish they'd get a life. But until they do, I'm destine to crank up the volume on my ipod to drown out the noise that would otherwise be driving me batty. Ok, more batty than usual.

So the problem with this is that remember, I often suffer from mouth leakage. And with the ipod so loud, I can't always hear what's coming out of my mouth. My intention is to sing along with the peppier songs on my ipod playlist that Sara made for me, ONLY in my head. But often times, I will catch a glance of someone smiling at me, in the kind of way you would smile at young child doing something cute or a senile old woman just out of sheer embarrassment for her, and yeah, then I realize that while I THOUGHT I was belting out "don't stop believing...." in my head, in fact, some of it may have leaked out of my mouth and been ever so slightly audible to everyone else on the track.

Maybe there is a tool I can use, like I solved my lap counting problem, to remind me to not let noise leak out of my mouth. You think duct tape would look bad?

Of packing, pesticides, and pagans

That's it. I have to resign myself to the fact that I was not born with the packing gene and just get over it. I'm doomed to be dragging a steamer trunk for weekend trips. And on long trips, despite having emptied out my closet into my busting bags, I will never have the right clothes with me.

Despite having started weeks ahead of time and planned and planned and planned for this trip, I sit here typing in my bra and underwear stressing out about which of my few precious clean clothes I will sacrifice to the clothing gods today. And because I've grown tired of watching them mock me from the closet, I have packed up all the (you brought what?) clothes that will never see the light of day here. My bathing suit? What I was I thinking? EVEN if I could live with being the ugly American (in more ways than one) who bared too much pool-side, exactly when did I think I'd have time to frolic in the pool? back in the suitcase you go. And shorts? Ok, well shorts was sort of a purposeful mistake. People told me that people don't wear shorts in India, but then people told me that they don't wear shorts in Paris and when I got to France there were tons of people in shorts. So, as I sweltered in the heat, I cursed myself for listening to the advice and not going with my gut. So this time, I said, "it's 100 degrees in Bangalore, I'm packing shorts." And I'd be brave enough to wear them even if I could just see ONE, JUST ONE other person wearing shorts. I'm already attracting enough attention dressed conservatively.

So I'm not finding the bugs here as bad as I thought. I haven't really been religious about putting on my insect repellent and maybe I'm feeling a little cocky because I'm taking malaria pills. (Go ahead, bite me, I dare you....) But the thing that is making me sick is the smell of the fogger that they spray everyday. Apparently, I've been missing the morning spraying. Either I get up after it's dissipated or before.

But some how, I've managed to time it so that I walk into the hotel at the exact second the spraying has completed -- at peak smell. Think of a skunk spray immediately after spraying. And I can't decide which is worse, the smell of the insecticide or the hundreds of scented candles they light in the lobby to mask the scent (good luck on that). And it doesn't seem to matter what time I return to the hotel the spraying has always just happened. Maybe my driver calls ahead to say, "we are on our way, go ahead and spray."

The problem is as I walk into the hotel I start to gag, which I'm sure is endearing me to the staff (who is already suspicious of me due to the "ugly grape incident" as we are calling it -- more on that later). I do feel bad, it really isn't commentary on them, just a low threshold gag reflex. And of course, my mind can't help race to how these people will fair 20 years from now with their daily (twice daily actually) exposure to this. If there is one thing overall that is making me glad to leave this country, it's that.

So this weekend, I did what I do on any given weekend in the US: I went to temple and I shopped. Ok so maybe I don't go to temple as much anymore in the US, but I visited at least 6 here so I think that gets me ahead in the count. I almost feel like this story is the start of a joke: So a Catholic, an agnostic, and an atheist walk into to a Hindu temple. The Catholic says, "you know maybe it's all the years of Catholic school, but I can't believe that I'm not really comfortable with the whole "idol worship thing." The agnostic says, "Well, I don't mind because I think it's all the same path to the same goal." The atheist says, "Well it's all idol worship to me. What's the difference between bowing down to pray to a wooden cross with a man hanging from it, or a closet with a roll of parchment paper in it, or a statue of Ganesha? What's the difference between lighting candles and lighting incense? And speaking of incense, the smell is killing me I can't breath let's get out of here..." ok well that last part wasn't part of the philosophical discussion but you get the picture.

As an American abroad, I'm always conscious of how I'm being perceived. I never want to be that ugly American that plants prejudice in the hearts and minds of the people I encounter. It's a lot of pressure representing an entire nation. Ryan once told me that flying was exhausting to him because he had to expend so much of his mental energy on keeping the plane in the air. I feel the same way about traveling. It takes so much energy to have the weight of an entire country on my shoulders. So in being so self conscious, it's been interesting to speculate on how I've been perceived traveling around the world.

But in India, I seem to be a genuine source of curiosity. I feel like back in the day, I probably could have gotten a job at a circus side show in India "Come see the pale skinned, balding, fat woman wearing drab clothing. She's so pale she's practically translucent!"

At the Harikrishna temple, I was choking so bad on the incense that I bolted out. My travel companions decided to stay and listen to the guide. So I had quite a long wait for them. As I stood on the walkway waiting, I cannot adequately describe the surreal experience I had.

First a group of "MBA" students gathered around me. They allegedly spoke English and yet, some how it was painful to communicate with each other. But they wanted to talk, about everything. As we talked, more of their class came until I was basically holding court of a group of about 40 people. I was running out of conversation (or maybe just too exhausted to keep it up) but that was fine because they were just as content to stand and stare at me. That was so awkward, I was forced to come up with more small talk. Thank god when their chaperone called them to move on. But right when they left, a man accompanied by 4 or 5 older woman, and I mean OLD, came up to me with them in tow and asked if I would shake their hands. I was waiting for Alan Funt or even Ashton Kutcher to jump out and let me know I was being punked, but I shook all their hands, he thanked me very much, and they moved on. Do I look like some celebrity that I'm not aware of? And if that wasn't weird enough, as we left the building a group of young, seemingly hip, Indian 20somethings came up and asked if they could take their picture with us. Ok seriously, who put them up to this? come on, admit it....

Ok, well sorry this is so long, I started it on Sunday and could not bring myself to finish it. But since I'm leaving in 24 hours I figured it was kind of now or never. I'm leaving just in time. IF I have to drive ONE MORE day on the street of Bangalore, I think I will be forced to get out of the car in the middle of the road and SCREAM at everyone. Of course, they'd probably stop and ask me for my autograph.

I cannot begin to tell you how happy I will be to get back in my own bed!

Bye bye from India,

Toto, we're not in Boston anymore...

Here I am in room number two of the trip. Bangalore, brilliantly, does all its road construction at night. Traffic is bad enough during the day, they don't need road construction adding to it. However the Taj hotel, in not such a stroke of brilliance, gave me the room with the window right on top of the construction. So last night instead of making a dent in my sleep debt., I wound up channel surfing pretty much all night long. And let me tell you, it's a little disconcerting seeing Billie Mays hocking his wears on late night television in India. I don't know which was worse, knowing that he's dead or the bad dubbing into Kannada.

Part of the reason I'm in such a sleep debt, besides the 36 hours that it took to get here (crammed into coach like a sardine on two very crowded planes) is that you arrive in Bangalore at 1am in the morning. There's just no way to recover from that and get on a normal sleep schedule in one day. My driver said that all the international flights arrive after midnight and leave after midnight. He said this is to help cut down on city traffic. I think it's so that visitors arrive under the cloak of darkness so they can't see the slums that you pass on the way into the city. They can't fool me though. One, I've seen Slumdog Millionaire, and two, I recognize that silhouette anywhere. It's the same silhouette I've seen in Cairo and Mexico only substituting Kannada for the Arabic and Spanish written across the buildings. I can't decide which country does poverty better, us or them. After all their poor live in shanty towns without sanitary living conditions where as ours are out in the fresh air, in cardboard boxes, on the streets. It's a toss up I guess.

On the plane, I met two other IBMers coming here to audit one of the other divisions. I just thank god it's not mine. It was great to have someone to hang out with since all my coworkers are all staying at different hotels. I probably would have just rotted in my hotel room all day yesterday, but they invited me to tag along with them to the botanical garden which was just lovely. http://www.horticulture.kar.nic.in/lalbagh.htm but it was such a spontaneous invitation, that I completely spaced on grabbing a hat, sunscreen, or even comfortable shoes. I had a little sweater with me which I draped over my poor bald head trying to at least protect my scalp. My coworkers tried to convince me that we were attracting attention because we were American, but I'm pretty sure the woman with the purple sweater on her head was the topic of many a dinner conversation in Bangalore last night.

Speaking of dinner, apparently Valentines day is a pretty big thing here. I wonder if they know it's SAINT Valentines day? We panicked about getting a dinner reservation somewhere, but thanks to a trusty list of choices one of my coworkers gave me before I left, we found a great little restaurant that managed to squeeze us in on the patio. Eating outside was a very strange experience, because it was warm, and I'm definitely not used to that. Because Bob Dylan was playing on the sound system which was a little disconcerting. But ultimately, because they put us under this tree where things keep flying in and out of it. It took us about 20 minutes to realize they were bats. The waiter confirmed, Fruit Bats, "nothing to worry about ma'am." Of course that didn't stop me from flinching every time one left the tree. I was pretty darn proud of myself for containing the scream that I really wanted to let out.

The food over all has been excellent. Although I have been avoiding traditional Indian cuisine for fear of my allergies and digestive system. I have been playing a pretty fun game after each meal called, "I wonder what's making me itch this time?" I'm trying to be pretty careful about what I'm eating but clearly there are just somethings I'm not aware of. Like the granola this morning had an awfully strange crunch to it, and I started to think, "I wonder if they ground the shells up with the nuts?"

So, today it's Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho, off to work I go. I don't think I'll be doing anything during the week, because of course, my team here works second shift and therefore, so will I. Everyone else I've met here is working a normal day shift. Tonight I'm not going to mind because I absolutely have to get some sleep. Later in the week, it might get a little lonely.

Driving Ms. Robin

I once thought that driving in a car in Mexico was the scariest thing I ever did. And then I went to Egypt. And I knew that driving in a car in Cairo was by far the scariest thing I'd ever do. But trust me, all seem like a kiddie ride at Disney World compared to today's experience of driving to and from work in rush hour traffic in Bangalore. Driving in Bangalore seems to be one horrific, extended game of chicken played by cars, buses, motorcycles, scooters, these weird little 3 wheeled things called Tuk Tuks, pedestrians, bicycles, the occasional cow, and an army of rolling fruit stands.

My guys in my office tell me that Bangalore has a very low traffic fatality rate and I say, then they obviously have just stopped counting. I clearly did not bring enough pharmaceuticals with me and I'm too cheap to raid the honor bar, so I'd figured out the only alternative is to keep my eyes closed at all times. This has cut down tremendously on my screaming, "oh my god, we're going to die, we're going to die," which oddly enough doesn't seem to distract the driver one bit.

In the few times I managed to pry open my eyes for a few moments, I realize that the problem seems to stem from (and I admit I'm no urban planner) the fact that there don't really seem to be any rules of the road here. There seems to be a faint suggestion that cars drive on the left side, but that seems to get pretty fluid during rush hour. Unlike the stringent rules of "right of way" that us uptight American's subscribe to, the right of way here seems to be yielded to the person who doesn't flinch in the big city wide game of chicken. Motorcycles seem to be especially brave, possibly because all the drivers are wearing helmets but the 6 other people perched on the seat don't seem to be all that concerned about the big blue bus coming straight for them either.

I rented a car at Hertz, which here, comes with a little Indian man who drives you around. And I say "man" because they are all men, no women drive here. Proving once again that we are by far the smarter of the two sexes.

It takes us an hour and a half to get to the office but for all I know, it could be just 2 blocks away. And the honking! THE HONKING! it's incessant, relentless. I have only seen 2 traffic lights and 1 intersection where a police man was directing traffic and no one seemed to be paying attention to either. Whether making a left from the far right side, crossing over 6 lanes of on coming traffic, or cruising through an intersection, the protocol seems to be just to lean on your horn as if to say, "pardon me, coming through, excuse me." and then just plow right though and expect the other guy to stop. crossing over multiple lanes of traffic though is exciting, because just because you intimidate the first lane into stopping doesn't necessarily mean subsequent lanes will stop for you especially when the bicycles, scooters and tuk-tuks are taking advantage of the small whole you've created in the vortex of traffic causing an amazing cacophony of horns, which my driver said is not meant in anger at anyone. So, is road rage a cultural thing? Because several times I wanted to get out of the cab and scream "JUST STOP IT!!" But then I just closed my eyes and pretended I was on mr. toad's wild ride.

When I got back to the hotel, I went straight to the bar and threw back 2 cosmopolitans which have finally allowed me to unclench my hands from my purse and back pack long enough to get the key to my room out.

As I sit here, I hear the god awful symphony of horns penetrating the window of my room behind me and wonder, "exactly what time IS rush hour over?" That and the fact that it sounds like they are rebuilding the room next to me makes me think, "who really cares how much the liquor in the honor bar costs anyway?"

The India Essays

In February I spent a few weeks in India for work. What follows are the three essays I wrote to my friends and family at home about my experience.

If You Don't Know Where You're Going, It Doesn't Matter How You Get There

That's one of those sayings that people attribute to just about everyone -- from Nietzsche to Yogi Berra to my friend Mike. But no matter. The point being, for 50 years, I've wandered the planet directionless. So no destination to guide my choices, I took whatever road lie ahead. Again, one of those oft used, rarely credited quotes, "When you see a fork in the road, take it." And I did. Often.

I've always envied people like my sister, Bonnie and my son Ryan who always knew what they wanted to do from a very young age, and then let nothing stand in their way of achieving it. I know that from the time my sister was very little, she wanted to be a math teacher. I know this because when I was little I stole her diaries and read them, and somewhere in there, in one of the Dear Kitty passages, was the declaration "I want to be a math teacher when I grow up." So at that very moment, I too wanted to be a teacher. For about 20 seconds. But then an actress, and then a flight attendant, 0r "stewardess" as we called them back then. And then I think for a while there was beautician or maybe that was just a ruse to get my grandmother to let me have my way with her thin, blue, curly hair.

And then there is my son. My son Ryan, the product of two people who couldn't set a goal if their life depended on it, decided when he was 6, that he was going to become a filmmaker. Have you ever heard a six year old declare himself to be a filmmaker? It's adorable. And you pat them on the head and say, "that's nice dear." But then you realize, when they are 10 and asking you to sign them up for animation classes at the local art school, or they are 16 and they are the most prolific, writer, producer, editor, of their school film program, and when they are 17 and they are writing producing and staring in a special on the WB called, Getting Real: My Life as a Teen, or winning the TV Production Student of The Year award at Graduation from high school and shipping off to California to go to Film School, that maybe, indeed, this man is going to be a filmmaker.

But THAT, is not my story. That is his. My story begins like this: How does one go from being a homeless, teenage, high school drop out to having a Harvard undergraduate degree, and a master's of science in education, working at a fortune 500 company with a comfortable middle class income living in a comfortable middle class neighborhood with two wonderful kids and a dog?

I don't know.

God I hate the term BUCKET LIST!

It's so over used now. And the movie wasn't that great either. But until I think of a better term, and I'm not feeling all that creative today, it will have to suffice. I'm hoping that I'm a little on the young side to be creating a bucket list. But that's the point. I want to get a head start and possibly a better shot at actually crossing some of these things off the list. I suppose it's a work in progress as I figure out more things I want to do. But hell, you have to start somewhere right?

Sell a screenplay (I have to figure out if this includes having my screenplay actually produced into something, but for now, I'll be happy to sell one)

Make a living as a writer -- I guess this is too broadly defined, but I want to be able to sustain myself solely on the income I make from writing.

Publish/Sell my two books -- obviously in this day and age, publishing does not mean what it used to. These days I can "self publish" and I'm not sure if that's going to satisfy this requirement. Selling a few copies would make it better. :-)

Live in NYC -- I heart NY and must return to my ancestral roots before I die.

Ok, that's the best I can do at 7AM on a work morning. More later.

Whatever happens to a dream deferred?

So it turns out that "whatever happens to a dream deferred," is not just something that angry young black men during the Harlem Renaissance ponder. I think about my deferred dreams a lot. More than a lot. Ok, probably too much. Let's say, somewhere between healthy mulling and unhealthy ruminating depending the time, place, and point of my hormonal cycle.

But this year, this year is different. Because this year, I'm not just thinking about my deferred dreams, but I'm doing something about them - like, trying to fulfilled them specifically. It's a long story about how I got here, and that's all water under the bridge, but the interesting story is going to begin now, as I try to start a new life, a new beginning, at 50.

If I succeed, I'm hoping this blog will inspire others to do the same. If I fail, I'm obviously I'm not planning to fail, but if I do, people will have the "what not to do," right at their fingertips and hopefully someone can use that info and succeed. And no offense, but I'm hoping that's me.

Stay tuned.