Kari Neumeyer

True Confessions, weight loss edition

Almost 10 years ago, I lost a bit of weight on Weight Watchers. Following the plan was fairly easy and it took me a little over six months. I lived alone and didn’t have much of a social life; controlling what I ate was a piece of cake. I didn’t even exercise that vigorously at the time. And I was in my twenties.

I mostly kept the weight off for several years, despite moving in with Rob, perhaps because I practiced martial arts with him regularly. If the pounds started to creep back on, I thought, no problem, when the number on the scale gets higher than I can stand, I’ll just do Weight Watchers again. I rejoined on two occasions. Once with meetings and once online. I didn’t find it as effective either time, and not because they changed the plan slightly.

Partly, I found it too hard to keep track of my points. I eat lunch at the Skagit Co-op a lot. How am I supposed to know how many points are in their tuna cassoulet? I also blame my thirtysomething metabolism. The pounds don’t just melt off anymore.

When you’ve been meaning for a few years to lose that pesky five pounds, it’s especially discouraging to watch that amount double… and triple… and …

“Okay,” I’d tell myself. “Let’s do this.” Then I’d finish Rob’s fries. A couple of fries can’t hurt, can they?

A few months ago, I saw Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper on the Today Show talking about his new book, The Skinny Rules: The Simple, Nonnegotiable Principles for Getting to Thin.

The rules include:

Drink a big glass of water before every meal.

I can do that!

Eat apples and berries every day.

Oookay.

Go to bed hungry (don’t eat after 8 pm)

Challenging, maybe, but definitely a good idea and something I could work toward.

Eat protein at every meal.

This is a tough one for me, since I don’t eat meat (although I do eat fish, eggs and cheese). When I was on Weight Watchers, I considered a baked potato to be an acceptable meal. Which brings me to:

No white potatoes. Not even baked.

Uh oh.

No starchy carbs after lunch.

Oh, hell, no. That’s too hard. If I can’t have rice, potatoes or pasta, what am I supposed to eat for dinner?

The following week, I may have tried to drink more water and not eat after 8, but that was about it until Rob downloaded Harper’s audiobook from the library. (He downloads lots of books by trainers. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t telling me I needed to lose weight.) I spent a recent Sunday morning lying in bed listening to Harper’s twenty rules.

“Okay,” I told myself. “Let’s do this.” Then ate most of Rob’s fries at lunch.

BUT… I also stocked up on veggies, apples, and berries. Bought the Skinny Rules for my Nook, so I could reference Harper’s sample menus to give me ideas about what I’m supposed to eat for dinner.

A week and a half later, I’m down four pounds. Which is awesome, considering I cheat every day. Just a little.

What’s the difference? I needed some rules to enable me to make better choices. No potatoes. Fine. No starches after lunch. If you insist.

Also, I’m not thinking about what I can’t eat, but what I get to eat. Yay, salmon, peanut butter on apples, fancy hard cheeses, cucumbers and hummus, Greek yogurt mixed into my oatmeal. I feel like I’m changing the way that I eat, not just dieting. Remember that tuna cassoulet? I’m not eating it anymore (pasta noodles and creamy sauce). I stick to the vegetable dishes at the Co-op and make sure to get a small scoop of tuna or egg salad. That place is really a blessing, since I don’t like preparing my own lunches. (Or dinners, for that matter, which makes it less fun to follow Rule 15: Prepare and eat ten meals at home a week.)

I don’t usually tell people when I’m trying to lose weight. And incidentally, I’m allowed one splurge meal a week, so if you see me eating a cracker at 7 pm, don’t wag your finger at me.

If I gain those four pounds back by next week, I’m totally deleting this post.

So this is what they mean by Voice Control

I haven’t brought Mia to work in so long I forgot her leash today. Amazingly, I didn’t have a spare in my car or my office. I considered buying a cheap one for our lunchtime stroll, but decided instead to take her someplace we could “get away” with being off leash. Now, I don’t condone this behavior, and wouldn’t dream of it with Leo, but Mia has proven to be rock solid in terms of staying near me, not running after other people or dogs, and not wandering into the street. She reliably hops in my car in the driveway, will walk with me to the strip of grass near my office parking lot, and come into my office without being on a leash. Which is why I forgot it today.

The places I sometimes let Mia loose are well away from traffic, and when I have a leash with me, I always call her back and put it on her when I see another person or dog.

Today we strolled through a field and along a Frisbee golf course. While there is a sign that says dogs should be leashed, I see plenty of scofflaws just like me all the time. When we arrived today, in fact, a person was on his way back to the car with an off-leash dog.

oops — That poop was there when we got there. I picked hers up.

As we made our way back to the car after a delightful walk, I saw a woman with an off-leash russet-colored golden retriever. “Oh good,” I thought. “That dog is off leash too. This won’t be a problem.”

Then the woman re-leashed her dog and stood there looking in our direction. I may have detected some nervousness, although we were more than 100 feet away, which is a little far to read facial expressions and gauge emotion.

I still thought, “No problem. Mia is not dog-aggressive.” Then I flashed back to “friendly” off-leash dogs who bombarded Isis, helping to derail our earnest efforts to learn leash manners. I had no way of knowing how this dog would feel about off-leash Mia heading its way, so I started to walk in a huge arc way into the field, effectively going around this dog at a great enough distance not to ruffle its fur. The woman and her golden could have kept on walking along the trail, I thought.

Instead, she watched us another few seconds before turning back toward the parking lot, her dog looking over its shoulder every few steps, causing her to look over her shoulder. We were still pretty far away, but Mia trotted up ahead of me. Since I didn’t want her to get anywhere near that dog, I said, “Mia Mia,” and she ran back to me. Then I let her trot ahead and called her back again. And again. Once, I let her get a little bit farther ahead, and she paused, training her laser focus on the golden for a second and a half. “Uh oh,” I thought. “Another half-second of that stare and she might bolt.” But when I said, “Mia Mia Mia,” again, she came right back. I fed her crumbs of freeze-dried lamb lung from my pocket as I praised her effusively.

Now, I know this isn’t impressive dog training or anything. First of all, I should have had a leash. Second, a perfectly trained dog would have walked beside me, and I wouldn’t have to say her name 2-3 times to get her attention. (Possibly I didn’t have to say it twice, but that’s what I did.)

I feel bad that the lady probably retreated thinking, “Goddammit. That stupid off-leash dog ruined our outing.” I wonder what she would have done if Mia had been on a leash. After all, she did have her own dog off leash before she saw us. I figure, if you’re going to flout the leash law, your dog should at the very least be comfortable with other off-leash dogs. As well as on-leash dogs.

For all I know, she had a bad experience with a German shepherd once.

None of this makes me any less irresponsible, but I will say that Mia constantly delights me with her manners in public. Not that I can take any credit. She came this way. I can name three dogs I raised from puppies who enjoyed humiliating games of keep-away in treacherous places.

Mia only barks at two things:

1) Us. When we’re in the backyard. She wants to play, but refuses to give up her ball. It’s vexing.

2) Other dogs when she is inside the car.

After our walk, I drove to the grocery story and parked near the entrance. Mia stepped on my thigh, as is her way when she wants to get out of the car first. Glancing to my left, I noticed the car beside me was filled with itty bitty terriers. At least four of them. They went beserker, running along the windowsill yipping. I thought, “Well, this isn’t going to work,” as Mia called back, “Woof! Woof!” and I backed out to find another parking spot.

Self-imposed required reading

I’ve signed up for the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat in March, and have added a bunch of books to my to-read list in anticipation. Cheryl Strayed is the keynote speaker, and I’ve had her memoir, Wild, on my Nook since before my trip to Russia. (I keep wanting to call it “Strayed.”) I haven’t started reading it, because I thought it was more appropriate to read books about Russia while I was in Russia. So I read Moscow Mule and I started Ken Follett’s Winter of the World, which is about World War II.

I’m still reading Winter of the World. In my defense, it’s 700-plus pages (on the Nook, apparently it’s 960 pages in hardcover.) But the truth is, if I were enjoying it more, I’d have finished it by now. Every time I curl up with my Nook, I ask myself why I’m bothering to finish this book. Why not move on to another book already loaded into my device?

Winter of the World is the second part of a trilogy. After I read part one, Fall of Giants, I wrote:

I was never much of a history student. If my textbooks had as much sex in them as Follett injects into his characters in Europe during World War I, I might have felt differently.

He puts the war and its lead-up in perspective, from the points of view of Brits, Germans, Americans and Russians. Perhaps the latter half gets more bogged down in the technicalities of the war, and that’s why I lost momentum, but it’s still a very exciting book with an intriguing cast of characters.

I’m looking forward to part 2, to see what happens to these characters during the second world war.

And that’s the only reason I’m toughing it out. Because I do want to know what happens to the characters, even as Follett’s writing style has begun to get on my nerves. I’d have to take another look at Fall of Giants, or even The Pillars of the Earth to be sure, but I suspect that this book suffered because he was in a rush to get it out a year after the first part.

There are no graceful turns of phrase, and most of the war stuff is pretty pedantic. Maybe I’m just too familiar with the politics of WWII. Nazis vs. Communists. The atrocities committed on both sides. I know exactly what’s going to happen when disabled children are sent to a hospital in Bavaria for “special treatment.” Or when an American soldier gets stationed in Oahu.

Excellent writing and fascinating characters should be able to transcend that, but I don’t think this book has either. Some critics of Pillars of the Earth accused Follett of poorly developed female characters. So to speak, because all the women were described by the size of their bosoms. That didn’t bother me in Pillars, but I’m keenly aware and annoyed by it now.

Star-crossed lovers are separated and come back together with very little drama and uninspired sex. “I’ve always loved you.” “I love you too!” “Now take off your pants!”

And yet, I carry on. Should I bother? Am I going to feel obligated to read part three about the Cold War?

What do you think, readers? What are some of the books you struggled to finish? Which have you abandoned, and how do you know when it’s time to give up?

If Madonna isn’t too old for this sh*t, how come I am?

The past few years, every time I go to a big concert (which is like, once a year), I think to myself, “Maybe I don’t need to be spending hundreds of dollars to sit really far back in a stadium and watch a performance on a video screen.” I had thought it would be awesome to see Lady Gaga live, but really, we were too far away to feel like we were really seeing her live.

Plus, there’s so much sitting and waiting in uncomfortable bleacher seats. I would love to be able to show up an hour after the scheduled start time and miss the opening act, but there’s always that fear, “What if this is the one concert where the main act hits the stage within an hour of the start time?”

After Lady Gaga, I didn’t have a burning desire to see any concerts until Madonna performed at the Super Bowl last year, and tickets to her show went on sale very soon thereafter.

I’d never seen Madonna live. I still regret never seeing Michael Jackson on tour. What if this is my last chance to see Madonna?

So we got tickets, and months later planned a trip to Italy and Russia leaving the day after the Madonna show in Vancouver. Not the best timing, but these things happen.

Once again, I found myself sitting in very nearly the back row of the arena, waiting for hours for the show to start. HOURS. Madonna herself didn’t hit the stage until 10:30. Perhaps if I ever go to another concert, I should bring my Nook Tablet with me. I would have enjoyed myself more if I’d been able to read during opening act, DJ Martin Solveig.

With these crotchety thoughts running through my head, I started to feel really old. Although, really, the chicks sitting behind us probably weren’t much younger than me. They were drunk and loud, all decked out in their Madonna best, and honestly, they didn’t seem to be having any more fun than me as we waited.

Finally, the show began, and within a few songs, I was horrified. I mean, I’d heard the song “Gang Bang” from her new album, and thought it was pretty tasteless, but I was not prepared to watch her prance around a motel set wielding a shotgun, singing, “Bang Bang, I shot my lover in the head” while projections of blood splattered on the massive screen behind her.

The article I link to above describes Madonna using a “fake gun to shoot a masked gunman and images of blood splattering on a large screen behind the stage.” Masked gunman? Uh, no, the lyrics are about shooting her lover in the head. Without doing too careful an analysis of the lyrics, that sounds premeditated to me. Maybe if I understood the story a little better, I’d see the entertainment value? Or is it social commentary?

While all this is going on in front of me, I’m full of self-doubt because I find it so offensive. What’s happened to me? I’ve always loved violence in my entertainment. Wild at Heart was my favorite movie the year I was 14. I loved everything about Inglourious Basterds, including the gratuitously balletic, blood-spattering shooting death of woman. I find everything about Natural Born Killers entertaining.

And yet, I thought The Dark Knight Rises was too dark… Madonna’s gun-slinging dance routine creeped me out.

Am I going soft in my pre-middle age?

The MDNA Tour took a turn for the better after that brutal “Gang Bang” number. I calmed down once she changed into her cheerleader outfit. Overall her dancing was incredible, and she sounded pretty damn good too. I wished she had done more of her “classic” numbers, because I enjoyed those more than the techo-dance tracks of recent years, but again, that’s probably because I’m getting too old for this shit.

Howloween Horror: Death by Undercoat

The instrument of your death is familiar, always just under the surface. As it spreads, you grow accustomed to its coating your furniture and car upholstery, gathering in tumbleweeds on the floor, and surrounding you like an aura. You feel like Pig Pen from Peanuts, if he owned a German shepherd and instead of dirt, he walked around in a cloud of dog hair.

Golden tufts poke out from beneath her sleek outer coat, coming out easily in your hands, leading to an obsessive-compulsive grooming ritual reminiscent of pulling the spines off a shedding pet iguana.

The undercoat is pervasive. Annoying, but harmless. Comes with the territory of loving your dog. Why not let her lie on his pillow? She fills the void when he gets out of bed.

While sleeping, you open your mouth for an intake of breath and draw in a wispy mass, once part of her. Gasping for air, you suck the undercoat deeper into your lungs. Without breath, your scream is silent and the dog beside you remains unaware that the world grows darker until finally you lay dead beside this precious creature who filled your heart with joy beyond measure, and your last thought before you die is, “No dog should ever outlive her person.”

Happy Halloween from Leo and Mia!

attack of angry bug (7) — Attack of the Angry Bird

One last thing about my severe cough and cold

I’m not really a germaphobe. I tend to think, “Meh, that’s what my immune system is for.” Until I get sick, and wonder about the trail of germs that led me here. It’s like that movie Contagion. (It used to be like that movie Outbreak, but I try to stay current.)

I had an itsy bitsy cold in St. Petersburg. Then I felt better for a few days, but started to feel sick again in Moscow. Just a sore throat and the sniffles. After being home for a couple of days, the cough started, escalated, didn’t get better, sucked pretty bad, and is now very slowly getting better.

Where did I get sick? Did the cough come from the same virus I had in Russia, or was that something new I caught on the plane? When someone local says, “Oh, yeah, that’s going around,” can they possibly be talking about the same thing I have, since I wasn’t even in this country when I first got sick?

You know where I think I got it? Amsterdam.

On our layover between Florence and St. Petersburg, we visited the airport spa for the Stress & Tension Eliminator. Seemed like a good idea at the time. A head, facial, neck and shoulder massage, right? I wasn’t too impressed with my masseuse lady, though. Didn’t feel like there was too much expertise behind her touching my face.

A few hours later, I had a sore throat.

Let’s think about this for a second. Having my face touched by a stranger in the airport. Who touches all kinds of other strange faces all day. The faces of people who think they need a massage to relieve sinus pressure. Why might they do that? Perhaps because they are sick??

Consider me now completely grossed out by the idea of having a facial massage at the airport. (Or anywhere, actually.) In fact, next time you see me on a plane, I’ll be the one disinfecting my armrest and tray table with an antibacterial handi-wipe.

Good fortune or bedside nagging?

I’ve been quite sick with a cough. Mostly, I’ve been lying on the couch watching the Bourne movies. Yesterday, I rewatched almost the entire series of Firefly. (Wow. Christina Hendricks. Someone tell me she does those ninja kicks on Mad Men, I might actually watch that show.) One episode to go. Then the movie.

On the one hand, my lucky doggies get to spend the entire day with me. On the other, they seem a little bored. Days are short and rainy. I fear this is what they have to look forward to for the next several months.

In my hermetic state, I’ve found blog inspiration in my Halls cough drops and Yogi tea. They’re the new fortune cookie.

Who doesn’t love a fortune cookie? Even if you scoff at horoscopes, I bet you give the slightest consideration to your cookie fortunes. I prefer the ones that are predictive to those that are prescriptive. I once got a very specific one that said, “Remember this day three months from now. Good things are in store.” Man, did I mark my calendar for that one. I interviewed a fascinating young man that day for a newspaper article, not that it changed my life, but that cookie really gave me something to look forward to.

Some prescriptive fortunes can be taken to heart, such as, “Don’t ignore your needs in the area of new challenges,” and “Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”

I used to eat at Panda Express at least once a week and post my fortunes.

For several years now, I’ve enjoyed the helpful guidance on the tags of Yogi tea. Their Throat Comfort tea was a fixture during my tonsillectomy recovery, and today’s tea advises me, “To be great, feel great and act great.” Yes! I can do that. Very motivating.

From yesterday: “Your greatness is not what you have, it’s what you give.”

While this particular box seems rather focused on greatness, this is sound life advice, one tea bag at a time. Spend a day ruminating on it, because how many tea bags does a person go through, really? I confess that I’m more likely to reuse a tea bag than to use up a second one.

How could I be anything but delighted then, when I spotted some words of wisdom on the wrapper of my honey-berry Advanced Formula Sugar Free Halls with Triple Soothing Action?

“Fire up those engines.”

Yeah! Thanks, Halls. I’m not feeling my best, but there you are, with a “Pep Talk in Every Drop.” I’d seen the commercials, but I didn’t realize there were literal pep talks printed on the wrappers.

However, after a full week of rib-aching coughing fits, I’m over it. Halls doesn’t settle for just one motivational message per cough drop. They’ve mass-printed them several to a wrapper, and I’m going through 5-10 cough drops a day.

On a single wrapper, my medicine is telling me, “Go get it!”, “Conquer today,” “It’s yours for the taking,” “Get back in the game,” “Be resilient,” “High-five yourself.”

Shut uuuup, Halls! You don’t know what I’m going through. I just want to rest.

All those really translate to is, “Get off your ass and go back to work.” Maybe you’re the one slacking off on your job, Halls. How about you help me stop coughing… then I’ll get back in the game!

Hazy shade of autumn

I apologize to my new readers and old friends who grew accustomed to my daily postings. I surprised even myself with how often I blogged during my trip. Now that I’m back home, my goal is to post at least once a week, but I’d love to find as much wonder in my daily life as I found during my travels. Treat every day like an exciting adventure.

Jet lag’s always worse coming home, and an 11-hour time difference is one of the hardest to overcome. Add to that the resurgence of my head cold, and I’ve been in kind of a fog since we got home Monday. I’ve been sleeping fine. Getting out of bed is the hard part.

I’m back at the office today and felt like I was fading to black just before lunch. Eyes glazing over, thinking, If I just had a bed (or a couch) I could fall asleep right this second. I considered going home, but instead decided to grab a bite and take Mia for our regularly scheduled noontime walk. I can’t guarantee I’ll last until the end of the day, but the fresh air (and mango shrimp and rice) revived me quite a bit.

Yet another reason dogs in the workplace are a very, very good thing. She gets me up and moving. I was tempted to just eat and come straight back to my desk. Too tired to walk. But that wouldn’t be fair to her. So we strolled through a woodsy trail that is both roadside and riverside. I unhooked Mia’s leash as we got to the stretch that is protected from the road. Usually, she trots off ahead of me, but today, she looked over her shoulder with a huge smile, like “I’m so happy you’re home,” and walked beside me a little longer.

Airport security and a missed opportunity

Long ago, my mother taught me that if you see something you really want during your travels, buy it. Don’t wait. Because you might not see it again, and then you spend the rest of your trip searching in vain for the clear umbrella with matryoshka dolls on it. Oh, sure you’ll see lots of blue ones, but the clear one will elude you.

It feels like a silly travel rule when tons of souvenir stands sell millions of seemingly the same thing. But time and again, I’ve made this mistake.

We flew Dutch airline KLM for our European adventure, which meant we passed through the Amsterdam airport three times. The first time, we were here more than seven hours which was enough time to go into the city, have some beers and see the Anne Frank House. We had one minor glitch, though, because we put our coats in a locker near the gate where we arrived, without paying attention to where it was, or where our departing gate was, which led to our having to go through the security line and passport control twice, and being the last ones on the plane. They did not, however, call our names, tell us we were delaying the flight, and threaten to offload our luggage, which we heard them do to others on our second trip through.

After we’d been through security once, before we knew we’d have to do it again, we passed a chocolate shop called Leonidas. That’s our dog’s name!! I cooed, we hastily took a (not very good) picture with Rob’s digital camera, and I made a mental note to come back. Because it would be silly to buy a box of chocolates with your dog’s name on it at the beginning of a two-week trip to Europe. Not when you know you’ll have another chance on your way home.

Unless… getting back to that store on your way home would mean having to go through passport and security twice more. I mean, I love my dog, and I love chocolate, but he can’t read. Or eat chocolate.

Still, I’m pretty sure this is the biggest disappointment of the trip. Worse than not getting to see Lenin.

The evolution of my travel journal

Before email, it was all about the travel journal. Sometimes I went through more than one and had to acquire another abroad. Record every sight, every meal, what I paid for each souvenir, what my traveling companion had done to get on my nerves.

Before blogs, assuming I wasn’t traveling with her, it was all about emails to my mother. “Save these. They’re a record of my trip.”

Before wifi, it was all about hunting down an internet cafe, where I could email my mother, and after blogs, write posts about my adventures, for my six readers to see.

Before my Nook Tablet, I sat down at internet cafes in India, Thailand and Vietnam, and tried to remember that clever thing I thought of in front of that Buddhist shrine, and tried to reconstruct my thoughts for a blog.

What the addition of a tablet and omnipresent wifi have done for my travelogues! Not only can I check Facebook at nearly every cafe, but the WordPress app that works offline allows me to write a blog post as easily as jot something in a travel diary.

Resting on a bench in the Hermitage, have a thought about the Renoir before me? Blog about it now, post it later.

Rob’s iPad adds a whole other dimension. He can take photos, somewhat surreptitiously at times, edit them, and upload them on the same device.

Plus, we’ve got maps and guidebooks on our devices, which we can consult without looking (as much) like the clueless tourists we are.