When does food cease to drive me aboslutely bat shit crazy? It’s good, it’s bad, it’s wonderful and confusing. What to eat, when to eat, how much to eat… And I really hate the term diet. Diets sound like something that people do to try and lose weight but everyone has one be it healthy or unhealthy. Lets call them that doesn’t sound like roadkill on a vintage 1950’s plate. Why don’t we call them something like Feeding Plans. Or Nourishment Calendars… Even though those sound like terms pulled directly from a bad scifi movie, I’d much prefer them to the word diet.

Which brings about my latest eating goal. Getting back from vacation is hard and so is getting back on track. The thought of completely changing my entire way of eating sounds daunting. I’ve decided to break it down into little itty bitty baby part steps.

Here’s the first one: Eat something green every day.

It could be a salad, it could be a veggie, I’m just hoping it’s not bread.

Sounds simple enough huh? Eat something green. I think I can handle this. And the feeling I get when the week is over and I’ve been successful in my goal will be awesome. And hopefully it will stick. That will be step one.

This eating stuff is hard work.

I said I wasn’t going to do it. In fact, I told anyone that would listen that I wasn’t having any of it this year. Nope. Not this guy. I was done. Bad experiences had soiled my memory and I was washing my hands of the entire thing. That meant no tree, no decorations, very few presents, DEFINATELY no baking.. I was not going to be holly, jolly or any other words that ended in olly. Christmas was not happenin at my house!

So what suddenly changed that I now feel all fuzzy inside and I want to make gifts for my loved ones? I have a few ideas.

I’ve let it go. The man who can hold a grudge for eternity (and beyond!) has let it go. I’ve accepted that the sitatuion was and always will remain the same and I’ve made provisions to ensure that this year I don’t have to experience the same thing again. It’s weird.. I was so very very angry. Hell’s fury known as woman was like holding a bic up to my bonfire. Besides leading to the darkside though, the anger wasn’t really hurting the people that had hurt me.. I mean afterall, I was the angry one. I wouldn’t say that I’ve forgotten and forgiven the instance as for that to happen there would need to be dialogue (which there isn’t) but I’ve accepted it for what it was and them for who they are. I realized that the only person that I can change in this instance is myself. I can change how it effected and continues to resonate (or not!) in my life. I chose for it to not resonate.

Another reason is I’ve been working on a top secret surprise (which I’ll post pictures of once it’s completed) that has been so theraputic for me. I have no pattern to follow, I can do it while watching tv and I know that it will be well received. In the midst of all this I missed the creativity that comes along with the holiday season.

You may not know this yet, but I’m a Christmas junkie. Christmas was always a big time of year, not because of the boat load of presents but because of all the rituals that were conducted. Every year I helped my grandma put up her tree and decorated it and there was the village she put in the bay window. My grandfather would record the christmas specials (Hours upon hours of them) and cut out all the commercials and we’d sit and watch them. Then there was all the cookie baking that my mother and I would do. It was such a creative process and I feel my best when I’m able to express myself in some way.

Now that I’m older that way had always been my tree and the decorations I chose to display as well as the way I would wrap my gifts. I wanted the wrapping to be as awesome as the gift that was inside. And that too is creative for me.

So why would I even for one second consider cutting that out for myself? Only a crazy person would do that.

Am I going to get wild with my spreadsheet of gifts and spending? You’re damn right I am. Will there be cookies galore? You betcha. Will my house look like I’m related to Chevy Chase? Not so much.. but there will be a tree. Maybe some outside decorations.

I’m kicking it into high gear. I’m going to grab this holiday season by the horns and make it my bitch. Everyone is going to have a awesome holiday season if I have to kill every last person on the face of the earth to do it!

This may look like a pathetic little tree, but really it’s hiding under my desk and preparing to spring out at unsuspecting coworkers who want to drop things off for me. Work seems to be the only gift that really keeps on giving.

This weekend I went on my first run. Or well.. I walked briskly and then ran the last 1/4 mile. After that I stopped and died a little bit on the inside as physical activity and I aren’t really mixy things yet.

After that I went and finished up my nutrition homework for the week. We were discussing the digestive tract and how the body absorbs nutrients and the whole process from mouth to stomache to.. well, you get the picture. There were graphs too. Lots of them.

I really never realized just how intricate the human body is or how gross it is. There is a lot of whacked out alien shit going on inside of all of us people. I’m talking sea urchin weirdness. All up in our insides.

At that point in the lesson I may or may not have opted to gloss over what I was reading. The important thing I gleened was this:

Your insides? Not so pretty. Down right gross in fact. But (But!!) gross or not they play an important part of breaking down what it is you’re stuffing your face with and without the ick you’d be sick from malnutrition. If they’re not opperating correctly, you can and will explode.

(That part might be an exageration. Only slightly though. Seriously, go read the book, it’s all right there in black and white and horrifyingly detailed diagrams.)

The summer (for me) is offically over. School is back in full swing and with it come assignments, due dates, papers and homework. None of which I really care to be associated with. I kind of hope that if I ignore them they’ll scurry away to some brainiac who really really loves homework. That hasn’t happened yet. And what does school have to do with wagon wheels or anything at all? I’m gettin there.

I feel like I’ve really been in a rut lately. (Hello Wagon Wheel tracks) A friend and I were discussing these ruts the other day. I described mine like this curved huge walled concrete alley.. like something you could skateboard on or luge down. And seriously, who doesn’t want to luge down a rut? My point was (and still is!) that I felt like a lugeing pendulum where I’d go up up up and almost break out of the rut but then I’d swing back down again into the center of the rut (the darkest part) before swinging up the other side to almost once again break out of it.

I have these “goals” or “things I want to accomplish” and I look at people like Michael Phelps (as an exagerated example since he is apparently water repellant and does not swim but slides across the water at a rapid speed) who are younger and doing all kinds of things and I think to myself, “Why haven’t I won 26 gold metals or become America’s Next Top Model?!” Well ok.. I don’t ask myself those specific questions, but that’s the gist of it.

This semester I think I may be able to kill two birds with one stone. I won’t be setting any records or becoming famous (just yet) but I will (hopefully) be giving myself the added momentum that I need to clear the rut and speed onto the highway that is life.

The list of things that I want to accomplish range from knitting a sweater to getting in shape to far flung impossible things like having tea with the Queen of England. I highly doubt Elizabeth is going to ring me up this weekend and invite me over for some crumpets, but I shouldn’t cross them off my list because they won’t happen. Never say never… or something like that.

Two items from my list that have been plagueing my mind for a while now are getting in shape and writing a book. I have all these ideas for stories that are rolling around in my head (it’s quite noisy in here) and I really want to get them out so I can have some piece and quiet but I never seem to have the motivation or time (hello full-time job and part-time school! Thanks for taking all 24 of the available hours in a day!) and drive to do it. And when I finally do feel like I have time I want to sit and stare at the blank wall.. just because it requires no thought or effort on my part.

Now back to the school (see, I am totally not random). This semester I enrolled in a advanced fiction writing class (I took the normal fiction writing class a few semesters ago and it was super fun) that will hopefully strengthen my writing skills and also motivate me to stop being afraid of what a book is and write one myself. They seem awfully big ya know? It’s kind of intimidating to be responsible for THAT may words. I start flipping through books and I think maybe that I could write a classified ad instead as they are shorter and confined to a box and also 2 inches on a page.

The other class I registered for this semester is a nutrition class. You see, I need gym credits. 3 of them to be exact. And the gym classes only come in 1.5 credit increments for god knows what reason and the only way to get three would be to take two classes and that really goes against everything I stand for. Ie: laziness.

But! with this nutrition class I get all the gym credits I need without actually doing any activity and I can hopefully get onto a diet where I don’t feel like a slug everyday. Because really.. that snot like trail I’m leaving? No fun.  And by diet I don’t mean a eat only bacon type of thing (although.. how fun would that diet be?) and I don’t mean a limit myself to this and this type of thing I mean my diet as a whole to simply eat better. I figure that if I understand food and the way the body utilizes it I can make a better decision as to what I put inside it.

I guess that I was lamenting that I had no idea how to get motivated on anything this entire time and subconciously I was in fact motivating myself. Damn I’m sneaky. You can’t really ignore something that is in your face every day and I’m hoping that I both learn a lot and am able to cross off two items on my list.

Who can ignore nutrition when it’s this large, heavy, and tomatoey?