The Disappearing Panda

Silver Transitions e-mailed me a lovely bunch of bamboo fresh from Australia this morning, along with a charming picture of pandas (to remind me of what I'm supposed to eat and to look like, I suppose). She'd heard I've been feeling crummy lately, but I think the spelling was altered over the water because truth is, I'm feeling more cranky than crummy. But then, pandas do get cranky when they don't get their bamboo (or so I've heard). I have lost six panda pounds in the past nine days. Pandas are supposed to have nice, big, round bellies and mine is shrinking away practically as I watch. Perhaps it has something to do with a hormone - balancing diet I'm on (see From Belly Fat to Belly Flat by Dr. C. W. Randolph). Every few years I stiffen my will to the breaking point and Do Something to lose the fat - successfully. I enjoy my un-panda-like body for a while, then Something Happens, stress like a ton of bricks falls on me, and the pounds rapidly reappear: magical transmogrification - I look like a panda again. Dr. R claims that estrogen overload is common among women like me who have been on The Pill for decades, followed by hormone replacement therapy to get through the bumps of menopause. He calls for applying a special Mexican yam-derived hormone cream and eating foods proven to encourage hormone balance. Often the meals make me slightly nauseous - I miss my comforting bamboo - but there's nothing wrong with lots of cruciferous and root vegetables, spinach salads and baked fish, except that my body hardly recognizes it as food any more. But it is hard to argue with success, and any plan that has me losing weight (while still eating normal amount of calories and not getting hungry) is a plan that I want to keep following.

Lovely Old Word of the Day

When I was in school, I loved sports of all kinds, was captain of our girls softball team, played tennis year round, and when I wasn't running, biking or swimming I was surfing. So I never thought of myself as a "geek", but geekdom lurked just under my skin, for I was a closet dictionary reader. Yes, I thought reading the unabridged dictionary was a form of entertainment. Sometimes when I run across an especially lovely word, I bookmark it, and while I was cleaning up my bookmarked links today I ran across this lovely word from the year 1623: ineluctable: not to be avoided, changed or resisted (see also inevitable) As in: Visual evidence of the ineluctable physical progression of aging may be delayed or ameliorated, but it is ultimately inevitable.

Cold - Hot - Cold - Hot - Cold - Hot

The water in the pool was cold this morning, and the air was only sixty-five degrees. It felt like the ocean at San Diego in December. I entered the pool very slowly the first time, and my breathing became irregular as the water reached my chest. Once my leg started cramping, I left the pool for the hot tub - aahhhh. Hot. Just right.

After the hot water restored my body heat I left the hot tub for the pool, and entered the water at a fast but steady pace, descending the steps without a pause. I had the whole place to myself (who else is crazy enough to go swimming in a cold pool on a cold morning?). Part-way through my laps, I got a foot cramp, so back to the hot tub. MMmmmmm. The only thing better than a hot tub is a hot tub after a cold pool.

For my third time in the pool, I let the teenager inside me loose, and simply jumped into the deep end. Whoooh! Another lap, back to the hot tub and done. That was so much fun I might do it again tomorrow. Dr. Randolph in his latest book, From Belly Fat to Belly Flat, writes "if you are too busy to exercise every day, then every day you are busy dying". That was the last thing I read before my jaunt to the swimming pool. Today I'm busy living.

Dewey and Me - a Book Review

"Find your place.

Be happy with what you have.

Treat everyone well.

Live a good life. It isn't about material things; it's about love. And you can never anticipate love."

That, according to his Best Friend Vicki Myron, sums up the life philosophy of Dewey Readmore Books, the official cat of the municipal library in Spencer, Iowa. I had to quote Dewey because his philosophy and mine match so perfectly, if we had met I know we'd be best friends.

When I was a teenager, I asked my parents if I'd been adopted. They were shocked and surprised (and perhaps, after second thoughts, they wondered if someone had mixed up the babies in the hospital.) I never marched in step with my family, even when it looked like I was doing so, the inner me was in full-throttle rebellion. So even though I was not adopted, I identified immediately with Dewey, who was abandoned in a book drop one freezing cold Iowa night.

Dewey: the Small-town Library Cat Who Touched the World is not only about Dewey. It is about Vicki and her family, the Jipsons, and about the town of Spencer. Dewey struggles but remains loving and faithful to his duties and his loved ones all of his days, and the same might be said of the author and her town. They all surpass their beginnings and reach beyond their potential, over-comers and overachievers every one.

If you are looking for a true story that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you feel better about yourself, your life and your future, I recommend Dewey, a five hankie - er, I mean five star book that is sure to please even the curmudgeonly reader, much as the eponymous cat won over the patrons of the library.

and Speaking of Happiness...

It is wonderful how once something grabs my attention, I start stumbling over it everywhere I look. Remember when you bought a new car, and suddenly you were seeing that model all over the place?

What is marvelous is how our unconscious brain works so hard to give us what we ask for. So now that I'm seeking to give my life a happiness tune-up, I find the elements of my research every day, even when I'm looking at other things.

I was on the Forward Motion writers forum yesterday, and there was a discussion of flow. I was reading a political blog this morning, and there was a discussion of forgiveness. At that point I tripped over the mother lode of happiness tune-ups at the Happiness Project Toolbox. I'm s l o w l y working my through The Rough Guide to Happiness by Dr. Nick Baylis - slow because I need to meditate on the points he makes and connect them to my own life and decide how to implement them.

It is O.K. to be happy, and to want happiness. Happiness is not self-indulgence or narcissism, or ignoring the needy world. Happiness is not synonymous with pleasure, and wanting to be happy is not being a pleasure-seeker. Somewhere in my Calvinist background ancestors, I think happiness got a bad reputation. Let me be very plain: happiness is not "un-Christian" and it is not selfish. I wish you a truly happy day, engaged with your inner self, and the people and the world around you. I hope you find something to do where you enter flow, and that you savor it later.

Pesky Inner Child

"Oh look - the pool's open!" "Nothin' to do with us." "But, but - I want to go swimming!" "Too cold." "See, there's people in the pool." "We AREN'T going swimming." "They're having fun." "No." "Remember floating in sunshine?" "Can't go. We'd look silly in a swim suit." "No one will notice us." "It's too cold for swimming." "Not anymore. Today will be 89F." "All right. You win. We'll go this afternoon while everyone's at work." My inner child skips in a circle chanting, "We're going swimming." I mutter, "All our flab will show, and all the wrinkles and liver spots - " "But it will be FUN!" chortles my inner child. I smile.