Last January while I was at a friend’s house on vacation I stepped on to their bathroom scale. I hadn’t weighed myself in years and only had a vague idea of my weight. Seeing two hundred and fifty pounds on the dial was a shock. I knew that I was heavy but I didn’t realize just how heavy.
With my motivation and focus at an all time low following Michele’s death, and my mother’s illness approaching the terminal stage I didn’t do anything about losing weight until about a month ago. This series of postings by Jeremy Zawodny got me to thinking, and what’s more, got me to acting.
As of this morning I saw two forty even, 240.0, for the first time. I’ve lost ten pounds. In a nutshell I track everything I eat in a spreadsheet, calories and grams of fat. I also weigh myself every morning after getting up and using the bathroom. Just the act of recording every single thing I eat in a day or a week made me very aware of where I was getting extra calories. At work I was typically consuming two or three sodas and a candy bar (or two) a day. Added too that was another soda with dinner and maybe dessert as well. Just eliminating those items from my diet saves me upwards of 800 calories per day. Over the course of a week I’m taking in 4000 to 5600 fewer calories.
Combined with my lowered intake I’ve increased my energy output; twice weekly kendo workouts (outside, two hours or more, in ninety plus temperatures) and walks in the evenings. I’ll never see one sixty again, but I think my goal of two hundred by next summer is well within my grasp.
In the movie Witness, at the end as John Book is getting ready to leave the Amish world and return to his own, Eli Lapp says to him, “You be careful out there among the English.” As both Michele and I loved the movie this phrase became part of our lexicon. When ever one of us was going somewhere alone the other would quite often say, “You be careful out there among the English.”
In my post-Michele world I have stayed close to home, not just physically but emotionally and philosophically as well. Knowing that still waters, while running deep, also can become stagnant, I’ve taken one or two small steps towards returning to the larger world outside. In effect I am going out among the English.
I’m not prepared to discuss details just yet, but I am moving forward – I’ve stirred up the water to see where it goes.
Coke Ad
Believe it or not, my windshield woes continue. In our last episode the technician came and examined the rain sensor assembly and decided that a new “gel pack” was needed. He called his office and they placed an order. Later that day I was called by the dispatcher and informed that the parts would arrive late Thursday, and could they install it on Friday. I explained very clearly that my car would be at my work location from 6:30 until 2:00 today, that the work had to be completed before 2:00 PM.
So naturally when I called at 1:15 this afternoon to inquire as to the status of my repair I was told that the technician would be at least another hour before he even left for my location. It seems that telling the dispatcher what times do and don’t work for you, the customer, doesn’t have any impact.
After venting at the current dispatcher on the phone about all of this we agreed that they would come on Monday between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. I told him in no uncertain terms that if the car wasn’t fixed and working by 10:00 AM that I would be calling my insurance agent and taking my business elsewhere. Then I called Safelite’s Customer Satisfaction line and filled them in (again) on the troubles to date. They promised to follow up with the local unit first thing Monday morning. Of course on Wednesday they promised to follow up today, and whether they did or didn’t, nothing happened today.
No matter what happens on Monday I will be calling Progressive and voice my extreme displeasure with this entire affair. I was prepared to have the car repaired at the local Lexus dealer’s body shop when the adjuster talked me into using Safelite. She said they were highly recommended and that Progressive would back them up 100% and go to bat for me if needed. On Wednesday they did put me in touch with Safelite’s Customer Satisfaction division, but so far that hasn’t visibly helped.
Please just shoot me now.
It has only been nine months since Michele died and already some of the memory contexts I’ve been using to keep the sound of her voice alive in my memory are failing. To be fair the urgency to hear her voice is falling off a bit too. In recent weeks I’ve been thinking more and more about the future, and while Michele will always be a part of me, she won’t be an (active) part of my future.
At times I still have an overpowering urge to call her on the phone. The impulse just happens and it always takes me by surprise when I realize anew that I can’t ever call her again. I still talk to her in the dark before going to sleep – this is the one context left where I can still conjure the sound of her voice in my ears. Early on, in my writing about all of this, I noted that there were parts of me that I lost as they existed solely in relationship to Michele. I’m discovering that there are new parts to me, new facets to my personality that she’ll never know.
Michele would never have wanted me to stay stuck in the past; were she here, she would encourage me to move on with the rest of my life. It seems that I am doing that without really setting out with that goal in mind. I’ve even started to think about dipping my toe in the relationship pool again. More in response to the fear of being alone forever than any other reason, but still considering it.
So I’m tearing down old contexts and starting to erect new ones. I don’t know what will come of this, and I’m not sure I need to know. It is enough, I think, to be moving forward.
Another graphic novel translated to the big screen, A History of Violence is reasonably good. There are no real surprises in the story line or eventual outcome.
Rating: Good Saturday evening fare
This live DVD, shot in Paris, following the debut Fallen album, is muscular, energetic, and aurally very satisfying. Where it slips a bit is visually. Unfortunately the director felt that split-second shots of the band from strange angles, in a montage with crowd scenes, makes a better video than a straight ahead look from say five rows out in the crowd.
Rating: Play it LOUD
Yesterday I went to a friend’s house for a backyard cookout and 4th of July celebration. A family affair, there were kids, cold drinks, face painting, and fireworks.
Lots and lots of fireworks. It seems the neighborhood where my friends live, and the neighborhoods around them, all get into fireworks in a major way. The “show” started around dusk and last for two hours. Some of the shells were near commercial quality for height and burst. It was the most impressive fireworks display I have ever seen.
I’ve always loved fireworks displays and consequently thoroughly enjoyed myself. At the same time I was aware that fireworks were not Michele’s thing, and that, had she been there, we most likely would have left earlier. I am trying to be careful not to overly romanticize the history of our relationship nor to denigrate it. Finding the line of honesty that threads its way through my memories is not easy. But there are some occasions, like yesterday’s party, where I am acutely aware that, without her by my side, I had the freedom to do more of what I wanted rather than compromise and do some of what she wanted as well.
The saga of my windshield continues. Yesterday morning we had intermittent showers while I was out having breakfast and buying groceries and the automatic rain sensor failed to work properly.
When the windshield was replaced the old sensor stuck to the removable housing and cable assembly. The technician didn’t notice this and consequently there were two sensor pads (the old one on the housing and the new one on the glass) which doubled the thickness and caused the glue to fail leaving the housing dangling by its wire.
The technician on repair attempt number two also failed to discover the presence of the extra sensor and his glue and tape job failed within minutes of his leaving the scene.
Technician number three actually discovered the problem, and removed the old sensor pad from the housing resulting in a repair that at least looks correct. The housing has stayed glued to the glass since Saturday. Only it doesn’t work properly. When the control stalk is positioned at automatic the wipers cycle at a very slow speed regardless of the amount of rain on the windshield. So instead of having settings for automatic, intermittent, and high; I now have very slow, intermittent, and high.
I strongly suspect that I’ll have to have the entire windshield replaced again in order to get a functioning rain sensor pad. Hopefully that technician will be bright enough to remove the old pad completely so as not to damage the new one reapplying the housing.
I never should have allowed the claims adjuster to talk me into this installer, even with their guarantee and promise to back them up. Three times now I’ve had to make the car available for hours on end and wait for them to show. Calling them today will only mean more of the same. I should’ve lived with the damn crack in the glass.
Let’s face it – I’m fat. At five feet nine inches and two hundred forty odd pounds – I’m fat. At age thirty (fifteen freakin’ years ago!) I weighed one-sixty. How I managed to gain ninety pounds in fifteen years is beyond me.
Actually it isn’t beyond me. Ninety pounds in fifteen years is six pound a year or half a pound a month. All the nutritionists say that there are 3500 calories in a pound of weight, so doing the math, I’ve only been eating an extra 1700 or so calories a month for fifteen years. That’s roughly 57 calories a day more than my bodies needs. Calories scale.
In all likelihood I’ve been eating just enough to maintain my weight for the last five or six years, but even over ten years, the monthly gain is small compared to the sum. Reversing this trend has already been started. About three weeks ago I stated tracking everything I ate, the calories and fat grams of everything, and my daily weight. Using a spreadsheet I’ve got a five-day running average of my weight and it is creeping down. Tracking my intake immediately showed me that the three to four sodas and a candy bar or two that I consumed everyday was adding six to eight hundred calories to my daily diet. Multiply eight hundred by seven days in a week, and you have fifty-six hundred extra calories. A week. Over a pound and a half extra a week.
Or, looked at from a losing perspective, a pound and a half potential loss per week. I can pretty easily get my daily intake down to fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred calories per day, and that seems to lower enough that I am losing weight. My goal: two hundred pounds or less. At a pound a week I should be there late next spring. Extra workouts (walking mostly) on top of my twice weekly martial arts workout will help too.