Thursday, August 14, 2003
first entry
All my life I've wanted to keep a diary. Usually it goes like this:
Day 1. Get new diary. Write 1000-2000 words about self, life, loves, desires, and that day.
Days 2-10. Write every day. By day 10, entry is very short indeed
Days 11-infinity. Leave gargantuan blanks. Then after several months, resolve to use diary more regularly. Write 500-word catchup entry. For the next few days, write every day. Repeat.
This has happened probably half a dozen times over the course of my life. When I was 8 (this was in 1983) my dad bought me one of those little diaries with a lock -- tiny pages, narrow lines, you know the type. It was orange. It had a line at the top of each page for the date, and, like check registers, it went _______, 19____. I asked my dad, "But what if I'm still using it in the year 2000?" He told me that if I hadn't filled it by the year 2000, I would not have written very much, would I have? Well, I kid you not, that diary is probably three-quarters blank. (the entries that ARE in it are really funny, though. Especially the attempt at the drawing of the polka-dotted pleated-skirted dress I got for Christmas that year -- done in marker.) I gave up on using it in probably 1988, when I got a bigger version, which also never got nearly full. In high school I went to plain spiral notebooks, then my first PC (just like Doogie Howser, ha ha)... tried again when I was first married. All in all it's a long sordid history of undisciplined abandonment of journals. Here's another try. :)
Rather than start with a recap of my life to date, à la my 10-year-old self, I'll just start with today and anyone bored enough to actually read this can catch on as I go.
I am trying to lose 40 pounds. 35 would be OK, 45 or 50 would be wonderful (but unlikely), so 40 it is. I am not (NOT) going to put my weight down here for all and sundry to see; suffice to say that after I have successfully lost 40 pounds I still will not be anything like Kate Moss, and I'm 5'8 1/2" tall. So far, I have, in two weeks of making an effort, lost 8 pounds, which is not bad. Of course, that's using as my starting weight what it said on one of those 25c scales in Albertson's (except subtracting 4 lb from that since it was in the middle of the afternoon and I was -- being of course in a major chain grocery store and not in the privacy of my own bathroom with the door shut -- dressed), since I did not own a scale until a week ago. I have been actually (bo-ring) counting calories. Sheesh, that sounds like it's 1974 and I'm trying to fit back into the pantsuits I wore on my honeymoon (Now, to fit into the Worthington wardrobe we charged on our honeymoon, THAT would be nice), but so be it, I have been. I've been keeping myself to 1200-1500 calories per day, and making an effort to move my sizeable self around more each day. Tonight I went and swam laps at the town pool. This means I paid a dollar to swim back and forth, alone, under the scrutiny of a college-aged Twiggy-esque (but nice nonetheless) lifeguard who has probably never eaten two donuts in one day and who probably went home and laughed at the dinner table about the way I swim. Last week there were other people there, this week it was just me. I lasted only 20 minutes this time -- last week I made it 35 minutes before I got too self-conscious. She says it's busier on Mondays.
I have spent a lot of time today looking at real estate. Not here -- it is too depressing to look at real estate here. We will be moving out of this house (where we've lived since we got married) in the spring, buying our first house, and it is just TOO depressing to see how prices have gone up in the last 5 years. So I will worry about that when the time comes to actually do something about it. Today I tortured myself looking at real estate in other places. There's a job T qualifies for, which he'd enjoy as well (it's in the Drug Enforcement Agency and that is right up his alley), in Laredo, Texas. So I looked at houses there. Four bedrooms, two baths, and an inground pool with a diving board for $100K. O-K. (that house would be $325K here, I know this because it seems comparable to the one across the street from us which is listed for exactly that amount). My aunt used to live in Muleshoe, Texas, which is a dinky little town about 45 minutes from the New Mexico border in the northern part of the state. Out of curiosity, I looked at listings there (there are all of 2!). 4 br 1 bath, EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. I mean, there has GOT to be something wrong with that house, right? I am tempted to call the realtor and say, "look, I'm never realistically going to buy this, so you can tell me to save my sanity, this place is about to fall down, right? or something?" Nowata, OK, the town where my dad was born -- nice place on 5 acres, $140K (which, by the way, is what places used to sell for around here, until recently). Or a little cheap 4 br place in town, which looks uncannily like his grandmother's house, for 40K. Oh well. I'm resigned to buying bare land and putting a run-of-the-mill-but-nice new house on it, and paying $1200 a month for that privilege for the next 30 years. sigh.
Tonight or tomorrow I will fiddle with this and make it look nice, give it my own look. For now it's time to pick up T and the little ones where they've been working on a destruction derby car this evening. Well, T has been working on the car while the kids have been playing in the dirt. I might as well just plan on turning the hose on them when we get home. Small price to pay for two hours alone at the computer and a trip to the pool... such as it was. More tomorrow! :)
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