Monthly Archives: January 2011

Assessing the Holiday Weight-Gain Damage

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Okay, so I finally did the countdown over the weekend and leapt onto the scale! I was nervous. I thought I’d gained at least five pounds. I’m like a walking cliche with the holiday weight-gain thing.

On Saturday, the news was grim: I’d gained five pounds exactly. Cliche, I tell you.

On Sunday, though, the numbers were back to normal. (???) Now, I didn’t lose five pounds in a day. So I think my scale is off, but I don’t know if it’s “off good” or “off bad.”

Either way, it’s time to get back to better eating! I cleaned out the entire fridge — all holiday leftovers are now gone, and all the crazy candy is, too. (I swear I didn’t eat all of it … although … well, plenty!) Anyway, then I restocked with better choices: greek yogurt, sourdough bread, leafy greens, broccoli, hummus, almonds, all of which I love and keep reading about at Lifescript, so they all became part of my regular diet last summer.

(Now I just have to get rid of this sweet tooth I’ve developed this month!)

How about you? Have you reverted back to healthier eating?

The Story of How I Met Superman, Part 14: Questions

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This is Part 14 of the story of How I Met Superman. To get caught up, you can find the preceding chapters here.

———————

It had been 13 days since Patrick’s party. In those two weeks, I’d had the joy of being walked home, several times, by Superman. And I was growing more and more attached.

I loved the way he held my books for me. I loved the way he looked at me sideways when we were walking. I loved the way he talked, but in very measured words, never wasting sentences. I loved the way he smiled when something struck him as funny, and how sometimes a smile was all he gave.

Valentine’s Day was fast approaching, but I wasn’t linking it to this boy I liked. For some reason, I still felt he was slightly out of my reach – like trying to get a ladybug to land on your finger: One false move and it was on its way.

Instead, as Valentine’s Day drew near, I was thinking about what I was going to make for my family. Valentines were sort of a big deal in our household of five – my mom really enjoyed it, and she would put out a box for us to put family valentines in, then we’d exchange them after dinner. Sometimes we went out to dinner, but not often. (In fact, maybe only once. We rarely went to restaurants back then.) Mostly we just had a Valentine’s dinner at home – spaghetti, most commonly – and then would open the valentine box. I always looked forward to seeing what my brothers and parents would write to me on their cards. To this day, Valentine’s Day seems like a family event to me. Continue reading →

What Was Your Favorite Book of 2010?

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Well, another year of reading, but this year I didn’t read nearly as much as I usually do. In fact, I think this is a record low. I was pretty busy working on my own books, I guess, in the evening hours (when I’d normally read fiction). Instead of curling up on the couch to read, I was sitting in my desk chair in the den, writing or rewriting dialogue and settings. But it was still fun. (Writing fiction is as much fun as reading it, truly. You never know what your characters are going to do next.)

Also, as I look over my list of books I read this year, I apparently needed to learn a lot. I read six nonfiction books – on writing, agents, the Wild West (research for my short story) and on paying for college! (Yep, need that one.) But I did manage to get a handful of fiction in, many of which were comfort re-reads.

Here’s what was on my complete list, in order from January through December (favorites at the bottom):

  • Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents (2009 Edition) — Huge. Intimidating. Took me a couple of months, but I finally looked through the entire thing with my little sticky notes and made a long list of possible agents. Then I gave them letter grades for how much they appealed to me (“C” through “A+”), and sorted the list in Excel. Whew! Now on to the next step in the agent search. … Continue reading →

So Do You Make Resolutions?

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It was fun scooting around the Web over the weekend and reading everyone’s thoughts on resolutions — if people make them, if they hate them, if they ever follow through on any of them. …

I wrote once before on my theory of resolutions: My basic point being that I generally find them kind of intimidating and disheartening, so I tend to spend my New Year’s day making lists of things I accomplished instead. I find it much more inspirational, and much better to give me that shove to march strongly into the new year.

No accomplishment is too small for the list: Anything I’d been putting off but finally did, any writing I accomplished, any home-improvement task I completed, any financial stride I made, anything that improved our health in any way, anything I was able to do for my kids that I’d been wanting to do for a long time — it all goes on that piece of paper.

When my list is done, it goes in a book with other lists just like it, and sometimes I make a plan for more accomplishments I’d like to complete the following year. I don’t always complete them, but I’m always surprised how many I do manage to check off. 

It gives me a sense of capability, and pride, and completeness and power.

So what would be on your list of accomplishments this year?

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