Lawn Mower Parts for Breakfast

The lawnmower was broken. I knew it was broken, but I hadn't yet taken the time to find the replacement pieces.
Meanwhile, the grass quietly, slowly grew unruly.

PC politely fed me a reminder on a paper plate:


Mmmm....crunchy.

Mind Boggling Diet Shit

Have you noticed that all the current store circulars and advertisements are focusing on organization and fitness/weight loss?

I know that a lot of psychology goes into marketing/advertisement, but this is very blatant:
You made a New Year's Resolution to get off your ass, get fit, and lose weight?
Great! Buy our products -spend lots of money! The more you spend the easier it will be to fit into a size 2! You WILL be smarter and healthier and more beautiful in 2008 if you buy this! and this! and this! Just buy! buy! buy! No matter that you've made the same damn resolutions for the last 17 years - THIS IS THE YEAR! Believe it! Buy it! Be it!

Blech.

Okay, don't get me wrong. I'm all about self-analysis and improvement, but I don't think making an impulse buy of some ridiculous piece of workout equipment is going to get me to where I want to go. Besides, that new 'Magic Leg' machine will most likely function best as a coat hanger and dust collector. And you need another clothes rack, right?

Here's something else I have to make fun of (I can't help myself):

The Diet Fork. And yes, it uses dietfork.com (a nifty little domain name, huh?). And for the tab description it uses 'The Fitness Diet Fork.' I'm just learning about some of these online 'pings' and other such mysteries of internet marketing, but it seems to me that 'Fitness' got thrown in there with 'Diet,' so that it would have double the hit power with search engines (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, or if you understand how all this crap works maybe you can explain it better than I can?).
The website proclaims: "America's First Diet Fork" and "Make Dieting Fun" (which I originally misread as 'Make Fun of Dieting' to which I immediately thought, "I can do that!").
And here's a great quote:

"New York , NY (PRWEB) - June 10, 2007. - A new diet weapon is launched, the Diet Fork. By eliminating over-indulgence, and creating a "chewing fitness" dieters can now assist in metabolism by chewing more, less portions, and taking longer to eat."

Disregarding the grammatical problems, do we really need a 'diet weapon?' What are you gonna do, shoot the food? Or just stab it? Just think, this nifty little tool can eliminate over-indulgence (really?) and create "chewing fitness." What the hell is chewing fitness?

And apparently, one of the 'Key Factors' of this amazing new product is an

• "Uncomfortable grip compelling user to put fork down between bites, slowing the user's eating speed."

What the hell? Turn your eating experience into a torture session and maybe you can finally shrink your fat ass! But, really, I wonder what that means (there is no real picture of the product, just a stylized silhouette of a fork)? Is the handle covered in tiny little spikes? If you get too into shoveling food in your mouth will you end up with blood oozing out of a bunch of little holes?

And, finally:

The website's homepage has both of the required pictures for any real diet:

1. a girl in a bikini
2. large piles of food

What a bunch of assholes.

The end of the stomach bug, snow days, messy kitchen, pictures, exercise, the hazards of dieting, and other such ramblings

We made it through the stomach bug; I'll spare you more details.

The kiddies have not gotten back to school yet. We got quite a bit of snow and they called off school for our county -and most surrounding counties- yesterday and today. The kids are ecstatic! The only thing that would make them any happier is if I'd let them stay out all day. But, no, too cold for that. I call them in after half an hour and (they make it in about the 45 minute mark) have them spread out their gloves, hats, coats, boots, snow pants, and scarves to dry. I try to control the sprawl, but no such luck: the kitchen looks like a bombed closet (or like Grunt's room, but that's another post) when they're in and a wading pool by the time they go out again.
I went out after lunch, but they were all in lounge-mode and didn't join me. I dutifully -at PK's request- took pictures while tromping up the mountain and laughing at the dog. I think she may be even happier than the kids. By the time I came back in, all three of them were getting dressed again. I was just in time to help adjust gloves, tuck sleeves, zip coats, and wrap scarves.
Now it's quiet in here (at least for the next 25-30 minutes) and the camera battery is dead. You'll have to wait on the pictures until it's charged.

Changes are happening over at The 123. Progress. Good.

I've not been to the gym since last week, but all is well on the exercise front. I've been doing Turbulence Training and long walks with the dog. The Turbulence Training (I found it through Skwigg. You can get a 4week TT body weight routine over at her site, too.) is surprisingly tough, even the body-weight stuff. I've been doing some pretty heavy-duty lifting and it's STILL tough. Tough=sore=results=good :).
Okay, I was just over at there copying links and here's Skwigg's post for today on the insanity of dieting.
Argh. I have a lot to say about all the diet bullshit, but I'm still working out what I feel comfortable posting on here and what I don't. I suppose if this were a completely anonymous blog, I'd spill it all. But it's not. On the other side of the anonymity discussion, though, I find that the longer I keep this blog and the more feedback I get, the more I'm willing to put myself out there. Remind me I said that when I start getting snarky comments and hate mail.

Stay tuned. I have more to say.
And I'm getting braver.

Pictures to come, too....

Media Images vs. Self-Esteem

I won't get all soap-boxy (because if you read this post, I already had a little rant about media images), but one of my readers (Thanks, Courtney:)) sent me this video:

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has been working toward drawing attention to the problems that arise from being bombarded with images of beautiful people 24/7.

As the mother of a beautiful 10 year old girl, I am particularly concerned about it.

Here's a quote (from this article):

"Although 75 percent of 8- and 9-year-old girls in the study said they like their looks, only 56 percent of those ages 12 and 13 did. And of the 33 percent of girls ages 14-17 who said they're too fat, two-thirds were dieting. Ninety percent of eating disorders are diagnosed in girls."

Not only is this cause for alarm, but I would be willing to bet that these numbers are not as high as they should be. The problem is far worse than we realize. Eating disorders are a private hell that not everyone is going to share with a poll, anonymous or not.

Dove's website offers resources for Moms and other mentors, as well as straight talk for girls.

"I feel fat" is not a valid statement.

Fat is not a feeling.