Nonsense

Spare us your angst about Weight Watchers and Oprah

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Okay, I’ll admit I was one of those who cringed just a little at Oprah’s Weight Watchers ad this week, where she bared her soul.

“Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.”

Yeesh. Painting weight loss as a panacea for self image issues rubs me the wrong way. I’ve been a member of Weight Watchers for a while. I’ve gone to the weekly meetings. I know both weight loss and self-esteem are more complex issues than a one minute spot can capture.

But it’s not Oprah’s vulnerability that is getting some people getting riled up.


Why do I care? I’m kind of a Weight Watcher’s groupie. Over the course of my first year with the program, I lost seventeen pounds, reached my goal weight, and became a devotee.

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Nonsense

Life lessons from the checkout stand

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Healthy groceriesThank you so much, Mr. Albertson’s Checker, for your thoughtfulness this evening. After taking time to inquire about my day and whether I’d found everything I needed, you complimented my clever cell phone cover/credit card holder combo case as I swiped my card.

… And followed that up with just a smidge of concern for my well-being.

“You ever think about disconnecting from the grid?”

Don’t worry, Mr. Checker. Your comment didn’t come across as pompous at all. I could feel the concern coming off you in waves, from your knitted brow to your bushy-bearded half smirk.

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Nonsense

Sparkly part III: The Faction Awakens

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1C1A9389B4As I’m sharing this story with you, about how I hired my friend – whom we’re calling Sparkly – who turned out to be unqualified and then turned the whole office against me, Mike keeps reminding me of things I’ve blocked from memory.

Like the time we took personality tests at a staff retreat, and almost everyone tested about the same – each big into the emotion stuff, with a strong aversion to conflict. That’s kind of the norm for nonprofits, I’ve found. People who want to do good things for crappy pay tend to be all about the feels.

Except Sparkly. Sparkly tested high on the opposite end of the spectrum, in the case of this particular personality test: motivated by fun with a tendency toward bossiness assertiveness. Go figure, huh?

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Nonsense

Sparkly part II: The mean girl at work

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16214699701_55072899bb_zIt seems weird today, but there was a time when “out of the office” truly meant incommunicado. And once, about 15 years ago, I left town for a family vacation and a much-needed recharge, and had not one shred of news from the office for at least two weeks. It was bliss.

A couple of months earlier I had made the horrible decision to hire my friend, Sparkly. In my defense, she had looked good on paper, and her references – all from people I knew and trusted – were stellar. But in close quarters, her boisterous behavior and machine-gun laugh put me on edge. She had no work ethic and I started to suspect she lacked even the rudimentary skills to do her job. What she did have was an ability to get people to do things for her. She was just so … Sparkly. Everyone wanted to be part of her retinue.

The problem was how to manage her. There had to be a way to utilize her strengths and … well I didn’t know what the heck I was going to do about the other stuff. But I returned from my trip resolute, sure I could turn things around with a good attitude and a stiff upper lip.

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Nonsense

The Punishment Light

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A couple of red traffic lights against a blue skyA package came to our house this week. I wasn’t expecting it until Monday. Colin was expecting it by 8 pm Sunday evening like the tracking website promised. I showed him it was being sent via USPS and explained they don’t work Sundays. His shoulders drooped. He wouldn’t have the precious headphones he’d researched and saved for and finally badgered me into letting him buy online until Monday.

A whole day later than expected.

I’m prone to getting a little snippy at these moments; with a kid whose whole day can be destroyed when one, little thing that doesn’t go exactly as planned, who lives with so much privilege, he can’t cope with not having everything he wants. Right. Freaking. Now. A little shoulder droop will call to mind people out in the world who don’t know whether they’re going to sleep on the cement floor of a train station tonight, or on one side of a razor-wire fence or another. I told Colin he could find something to occupy his mind while he waited for his package.

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Nonsense

My closet could indeed use some magic

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sad_dogI hesitated for just a moment recently before posting a Facebook photo of my dog cowering in the closet during a thunderstorm. Just for a second. It was a really cute picture.

There she was, my little, brown dog, apparently anxious about the cacophony happening just outside. Or that’s how I played it off on social media. Actually, given the fact that she was in my closet, she could have been just as distressed to realize she was in imminent danger of being crushed by falling shoes.

Forget thunder, that freaking closet is the stuff of nightmares.

Oh my God, you guys, the clutter bomb of my life is making me INSANE. And I work from home, so all day long I’m surrounded by some combination of laundry, books and papers, dog toys, kids and dishes and dust and it has reached a point where it’s generating a constant low, steady hum. Always there, creating anxiety that could be released at any moment on my unsuspecting loved ones. Really, anyone who comes within in arm’s reach at the wrong moment is danger of getting stabbed with a ballpoint pen.

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Fitness, Nonsense

2 Vans, 12 Runners, 30-Some Hours. A Grand Teton Relay Recap

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sasquatch
Mike and I with Sasquatch … all the pictures I’ve seen of him have been so blurry, I never knew he had a ‘stash.

When the starting gun sounded on Friday, I was still messing with my Garmin. Everybody else took off like they were shot from a cannon.

It’s possible our venerable leader made a mistake assigning the first leg of our rely event to a chronic procrastinator. I had the honor of putting our whole team behind, first thing.

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Nonsense

Mammogram-musings and things about which I am not an expert

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Mammogram MachineI had my first mammogram when I was in my early 20s.

I’d felt something, and a doctor confirmed I wasn’t imagining it, and then after considerable poking and prodding and squishing, a full, surgical biopsy confirmed what I’d found was a big lump of nothing really to worry about.

I didn’t have another mammogram until my 40s, and it actually took a lot of pluck for me to return.

… And that’s coming from a person who’s done stuff scary enough to make her tummy turn to Jell-O. I rode the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. I do a live radio show every week (worrying each time that I’ll bump my knee or something and unwittingly unleash a torrent of profanity worthy of a truck driver). I’ve taught a fifteen year-old boy to drive on the freeway. I’ve hailed a cab in Buenos Aires and made it to my destination even though I was pretty sure the driver couldn’t understand my crappy Spanish.

I picked up a snake once, thinking it was a stick.

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Nonsense

Of food snobs, the apocalypse and people who just want some jelly

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French PastriesMike was telling me a story the other day about his experience in a local restaurant. Oh, not restaurant: pâtisserie. Excuse me. That’s French for specializing in pastries, you ee-dee-ottt.

I’ve been in there exactly once, pastry not being my thing. I think someone called a meeting or something, which is how Mike ended up in this establishment the other day. Pastry isn’t his thing either. Not that there’s anything wrong with pastries, mind you. Pastry wasn’t the problem.

Mike was there for the meeting he didn’t call when some hapless guy asked the lady behind the counter for some jelly to go with his croissant.

In my mind the guy is holding his plate up, pointing at the flaky lump – his cress-ant – looking as doe-eyed and humble as Oliver Twist requesting another portion from the workhouse master.

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Nonsense

You know it’s a real party when …

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“Look, boys, someone called the cops on your parents!” I hollered as soon as we walked in the door, flashing the picture on my phone at anyone who cared to look.

Mike heaved one of his big sighs. He should have seen this coming. On the way home, he’d lobbied against telling the boys about the cops, an idea with which I was not fully on board. I’d been looking forward to earning a little cred. Mike worried about getting into a sort of one-upmanship thing with the kids.

But then I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone as we walked in the house. Up pops a selfie of our hostess with the cops who crashed her backyard party. What was I supposed to do, besides gloat confess?

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