Adventurous spirit

Who is this cutie? Well, if you guessed that it's me, you're right. I spent yesterday afternoon looking for pictures that haven't been scanned into digital format, and got to work with the scanner so they can be used in blog posts. I looked and looked at this picture, wondering about the differences between people and what makes us each unique. Certainly the care we receive as infants and children has an impact on who we become, and this little imp obviously felt cherished and happy. As the firstborn I also had my parents' undivided attention for two and a half years, before Norma Jean came along to disrupt my happy role as Queen of the Universe. Fortunately she didn't stay uncommunicative for long and we eventually became inseparable.

From my earliest recollection, there was a distinct difference between us: I was outgoing and willing to take risks, while Norma Jean was shy and diffident, always willing to let me take the lead. As we grew older, it became obvious that we characterize the classic extroverted and introverted personalities. Of course I didn't learn the labels until much later, but as we grew up, I am pretty sure that we continued to make decisions based on our own natural inclinations.  Even though we have been through a full lifetime of experience, we continue to follow entirely different pathways to fulfillment.

It's fascinating to talk with Norma Jean about shared childhood experiences and realize how different our memories of the same event can be. Since Daddy was in the military and we moved around a great deal, I developed a "new girl" persona so that when we moved to a new place, I picked up mannerisms that I would use to cope; I never minded it, but she agonized over leaving her old friends and the necessity to be singled out. I never looked back or missed anybody. Consequently I also never learned to develop long-term relationships and ended up going from one partnership to another until I had the good fortune to meet my life partner at the age of fifty. Norma Jean and Pete were married for almost half a century before he died last year.

Smart Guy and I are coming up on our twentieth anniversary, but we will never see a half century, since we got a rather late start. In some ways I am amazed that we have managed to find such a rich and satisfying life together, since I had to develop some new skills, ones which at first I didn't believe I had the ability to develop. It took many years of effort to find our way, but it happened, and I am now able to write from my favorite Sunday morning spot: in the darkness before the dawn, a cup of hot tea within reach as I struggle with my thoughts. He's still asleep next to me. On some level he must hear the tapping of the keys, but the sound is not unfamiliar and doesn't disturb his rest.

We met as skydivers. If I had never started skydiving, I would never have known him. If the internet had not come into being, we would never have encountered each other. Our spirits were attracted to each other before we ever met in person. (I wrote about it here, if you want to know the details.) My life trajectory has been permanently altered by several events in the past, as all people experience throughout life. But I continually thank my lucky stars for those two: skydiving and my life partner. Without those two incredibly important occurrences, I cannot imagine who I would have become.

That's the way of life, I guess. Things happen to us that cause us to take a fork in the path that lead us to places we can't even imagine. I finished re-reading "Of Human Bondage" yesterday, and I now believe that the reading of that book in my twenties was one of the events that opened my eyes to new ways of perceiving life. It's certainly not life-changing to the Me of today the way it was then, but now that I have read it a half century later, I can understand why it affected me so deeply. I was accustomed to living my life in a rather superficial manner, not delving very deeply into the meaning of life, and Somerset Maugham was able to write this book in such a way that I began to examine my reactions to life events in a much deeper fashion. It deserves its place as one of the best novels of the twentieth century, and as I re-read certain passages, I felt stirrings of my old quest to understand the meaning of life.

Although I still spend a few days every spring and summer with my skydiving friends, it no longer occupies the central place it once did. Everything has its time and place, and as I begin my eighth decade (yes, that's when you turn seventy) on the planet, my adventurous spirit is now looking towards new challenges, new ways to feel excitement without throwing myself out of an airplane. I would never have thought that it would become a familiar feeling, but after more than 66 hours of accumulated freefall time, it has indeed become old hat. These days, I look forward to the intellectual adventures that my spirit still craves. The writing of these Sunday morning posts has become a part of that adventure. Who knows what will emerge?

Revisiting the past

This past week I've been re-reading a book I read long ago, about the time that this young woman was taking care of her newborn baby boy. That's me fifty years ago. Chris is dressed for his christening, with his godparents and the Episcopal priest Fr. Shipps surrounding us. It's a bit overwhelming to realize that I was once that young. My husband Derald was still in Puerto Rico, and I was in Georgia visiting my parents for a short visit when this picture was taken. Fr. Shipps eventually became a Bishop, and the young man Charles on his left became an Episcopal priest as well. I don't even remember the names of the couple, I'm ashamed to say. I think they were active in the church, which I wasn't, and they were probably chosen by someone other than me. Fifty years is a long time.

One of the things I did to pass the time as a young mother was to read books. I would visit the library and choose several to take home and would lose myself in them. It wasn't a particularly happy time in my life, so entering into the world of various authors would lighten my spirit and give me something to think about. I remembered reading "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was written in 1915 and was considered to be a classic. It's long but easy to read, although I didn't remember much about it, other than that it followed the life of a young man. When I finished the book, I thought about it a lot, and over the years I considered it to have affected me profoundly and that it was one of the best books I had ever read.

I suppose it's true that you can never re-read a book, since the person who read it long ago has changed through life experience enough that the book is being read by an entirely different person. I'm about halfway through the book and find myself quite surprised that it affected me so deeply. Perhaps the protagonist's search to find himself was what the young mother identified with. Life was so different for me in those days, but the struggle to become your own person is one that goes on from one generation to the next. I think I felt trapped into motherhood and an unhappy marriage, and that would have certainly colored anything I was reading. But I remember so well that this book stood out from many others, and I decided to find out why, this me of today.

That Wikipedia link above tells me that the Modern Library ranked this book as one of the best 100 English-language novels of the twentieth century. Well, I guess I wasn't alone in thinking it was good. But I'm curious to know if I will feel that way when I reach the end of it in a few days. The world is not only very different today than it was fifty years ago, but the book was also written a century ago, and the inhabitants of the world of 1915 could hardly imagine what 2012 would look like. Who could have visualized the Internet?

I have probably spent as much time this week on line, reading the news, blogs, commenting, reading emails, as I would have spent at my job during my working years. Several hours every day find me peering at a computer screen, and the connection I feel with people I've never met, will never meet, consumes much of the time I once spent reading hardback books. In fact, I'm reading the aforementioned book on my iPad!

Another event of this past week has me thinking about how much our lives have changed. I finally got to the movies to see Albert Nobbs, where Glenn Close plays a woman who lives her entire life as a man, a butler in 19th-century Ireland. Both Close and another woman who masquerades as a man in the movie, Janet McTeer, have been nominated for Oscars for their performances. Although the movie hasn't been very successful at the box office, seeing the performance of these two makes it entirely worthwhile. I myself thought the movie was very good.

The reason they dressed and lived their lives as men is because in that era, if you were a woman without a husband, means, or the prospects of marriage, your options were extremely limited. When she was fourteen, Albert (the Close character) answered an advertisement for a butler and dressed herself up as one, got the job, and ended up working her entire life as a butler. No one suspected, and if you get a chance to see this movie, you'll see why. Albert found a way to survive in that world.

The young modern women of today have no idea how different the experience of being female in a male-dominated world can be. Of course, it's not the same everywhere in the world, but because of the Internet, because every corner of our world is easily visited on line, we know so much more about virtually anything that interests us, with just the click of a mouse.

Although the woman in Kabul who lives behind the walls of her home, unable to walk on the street alone, has no Internet, I suspect that there are leaks into her life of the wider world. I wonder if she has books to read, like the young woman I was a half-century ago, that spark ideas she wouldn't have otherwise. I wonder.

My little corner of the universe

Unknown women at airport in Skopje

I took a picture of these women while I was waiting to leave Skopje, Macedonia, in April 2009. I didn't ask their permission (I'm sure we didn't speak the same language anyway), and I pretended to be focusing in another direction and snapped it. They enchanted me, just thinking about the focus of their lives, how they spend each day. They must be Muslims, from their head coverings, and matrons, probably mothers or grandmothers. Going from Skopje to somewhere else, obviously friends or relatives, and probably have not traveled much in the world. I was eavesdropping with my camera.

There are so many people in the world, so many different experiences of life, and I've been fortunate to have traveled a fair amount into many different environments. From the mountains of the Andes, to China and Vietnam, I have met people as different from me as one could imagine. And yet, we all have lives that matter to us and our families, with each of us trying to find our own little corner of the universe where we belong.

I was fortunate to have lived in Puerto Rico for several years and learned to speak some Spanish. Although I don't practice it much, when I traveled to Peru I was able to study it again and use it pretty well. When I knew I was going to be traveling to Paris, I took a French class but my Spanish kept clogging up my brain when I tried to learn to speak French. In Paris I was at a tremendous disadvantage being unable to speak the language and was treated as a bothersome tourist, and many servers took advantage of it, charging me more and ignoring me. I felt out of place, and of course I was.

Learning to communicate with other people who don't speak the same language is not difficult in most places, and given enough time, most of us learn the essentials and accommodate each other as best we can. I have had people communicate with me through pantomime and knew exactly what they were telling me. Although most Americans believe that in most places there is at least a little English, I have found that not to be the case. Although in China most people study English in school, they never hear it spoken and consequently have a difficult time communicating in the language. I carried a business card with me when I entered a taxi in China, showing my destination to the driver; otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get around that way.

This past week, I noticed a trio who have been taking the bus at the same time every day, when I am traveling home after going out for my morning coffee and class. An older woman and a younger couple, and they were speaking to each other in a foreign language. I thought I understood it to be Russian, so I asked the man (who was sitting next to me) where he is from. Speaking with a heavy accent, he said, "Russia." When they arrived at the technical college (their destination), I said, "Do svidaniya!" (I learned to say goodbye and thank you while in Russia, and I was pretty sure this was the correct salutation.) The younger woman turned and flashed me the most brilliant smile as they disembarked.

The next day, there they were again, and this time the woman came up to me and said, "You speak Russian?" I explained that I only knew two words, other than Da and Nyet, that is, and she told me how to say hello:  Zdravstvujtye. When I got home, I explained to Smart Guy about my adventure, and he taught me how to say hello in a way I could remember (he took Russian in college). I also got on YouTube and listened to the pronunciation over and over. The next day I greeted Irina with it (I discovered her name that day), and she was so pleased. This time, she sat next to me and we "talked" together. I learned that she and her husband have been in the United States since mid-November and are from Siberia. She told me the name of her town, but I couldn't even begin to remember it. The older woman is another Russian taking the English class, but they are not related.

Before we had arrived at the college, I ascertained that her daughter lives here and has been in Bellingham for six years. Her daughter has an 18-year-old son and an infant daughter, which I assume is the reason that Irina came here, to help with her newest grandchild. Her grandson went to Russia for two years when he was nine and learned quite a bit of Russian but has forgotten most of it. Irina is practicing her limited English with me, and we are now friends. I look forward to our interaction and I know she does, too. Her husband smiles at me, but she is the one who makes a tremendous effort to speak English with me. She told me she is fifty (she doesn't look it at all). She knew no English when she arrived and is learning quickly, but we use pantomime and laughter to bridge the gap when communication breaks down.

I myself have been helped by strangers to navigate a strange country, and it makes me very happy to listen to Irina's first attempts at speaking English. Knowing that there is no substitution for interaction, I am pleased to have made a new friend from Siberia. Irina has her own little corner of her universe, but she has stepped out into the wider world, and hopefully she will be treated well and will have a good impression of my chosen home town. I realize that she must miss her home and her own country. She hasn't even been here three months and she's already taking classes and interacting with strangers on the bus.

When I contemplate the vast number of people in the world and the number of languages we speak, it's amazing that we can communicate with each other so well. Each of us also feels most at home in a place where we can understand the conversations swirling around us and know the names of the streets and towns nearby, but getting out of our comfort zone and traveling the wider world makes us all better people. That's what I think, anyway.

Now that I am older and have most of my foreign travels behind me, I find comfort and reassurance in reaching out to those fellow travelers and realize that I am at home right here, my own little corner of the universe. I've traveled around and chosen my place, rather than having it given to me. Growing up as a child with no home town, since we lived wherever my father was stationed, I chose Boulder for my first home town, and Bellingham as the town for my retirement years. I think I've chosen well.

Wheat and sugar blues

I looked at these cream puffs at the coffee shop and wished I could eat one. It had been three months since I last ate any wheat or sugar, but this last week, I indulged. While at the movies, I realized I would need something to tide me over until dinnertime, and while I waited for my friend Judy to arrive, I perused the offerings. A very enticing chocolate cookie made by a local bakery caught my eye, and I thought to myself that I could share it with Judy. By the time she arrived, however, it was gone. Completely. Biting into it, I realized that it was not only rich and tasty, with chunks of melting chocolate, but the texture was also completely scrumptious. It was very enjoyable.

In some ways I am fortunate that I have a reaction to sugar when I haven't eaten it in awhile. During the entire movie, my heart pounded and I felt a little shaky and broke out in a sweat. It's a familiar feeling I get when I eat something sugary and rich on an empty stomach, and indicates to me that my insulin level has just spiked. It wasn't until we were in the restaurant later that my body felt totally normal again. I ate a tuna sandwich (more wheat) and was just fine after that. The tendency toward diabetes runs in my family, and I have little doubt that if I ate a normal American diet, by this time in my life I would be either pre-diabetic or completely so. My grandfather died of it at 62, and my mother developed Type II diabetes in her forties.  One of my younger sisters takes insulin shots for it.

The mechanism of how insulin spikes work is this:

In normal physiology, the body is able to balance the glucose (sugar levels) in the bloodstream. When a person eats, and glucose levels start to rise, the body signals the pancreas to secrete insulin. Insulin "unlocks the door" to cells in the body so that the glucose can be used for energy. When blood sugar levels drop, insulin production decreases and the liver begins producing glucose.

Apparently when my blood sugar levels begin to drop, they don't stop dropping until I become mildly hypoglycemic and I experience that feeling described above. Once I return to eating a diet low in simple carbohydrates, I don't get those uncomfortable feelings when I eat. It's a good way to keep myself on the path of eating what agrees with me. When I've had my fasting blood sugar checked, it's always been within normal limits, but I suspect that there is some imbalance in either my pancreas or my liver that doesn't work as it should. I could worry about it, but I've found that if I am cautious about what I eat, it doesn't happen at all. Every once in awhile I guess I need to remember that. The cookie did its work.

There is another side effect of falling off the wagon: I begin to crave sweets. It's impossible for me to know if this is physiological or completely emotional, but those cream puffs caught my eye and I decided to take a picture of them since I wouldn't allow myself to have one. I imagined biting into it, feeling the creaminess of the chocolate and the soft whipped cream inside the shell... ooohhh. Heaven for a little while. Then I remembered how I would feel afterwards, and I was able to resist.

The other trick I have is to carry some raw almonds and walnuts in a little baggie inside my purse or pocket, so that I can have something that takes away any hunger and is good for me. I never have reactions from them, no matter how hungry I am. Within a few minutes, my hunger is gone and I feel just right. I had forgotten to put any in my pocket for the movies, which is why this whole treadmill has started again. It's important for me to remind myself that the craving will diminish as long as I don't indulge again any time soon.

I don't think I had any reaction to the wheat itself. I read the book Wheat Belly (as opposed to Beer Belly) and have found it true that my belly has diminished in size over the past three months. I am no longer dieting per se, but my body seems to be redistributing my fat deposits. I keep being surprised when I put on a favorite pair of pants and find that they are loose, although I haven't lost any more weight. The only thing I have changed in these past three months is to stay away from wheat and sugar.

There is one other rather interesting side effect: my mood is much improved, and it's the depths of winter right now. Other than the Christmas season when I was robbed (I wrote about it here), I've been in a really good mood. Could it be the diet? If you read the book, the author swears that your mood will improve if you get rid of wheat. I don't have any way to know how I would be feeling otherwise, which is always a problem if you try to figure out what changes what. I'm also possibly susceptible to suggestion. Who knows? I'll take it, whatever the reason.

Since my little foray into wheat and sugar, the only thing I still notice, a week later, is that my eye tends to drift toward the dessert tray at the coffee shop a little more often. I know that will eventually diminish, unless I indulge again. Then I remember that awful shaky sweaty feeling, and that helps me decide to look at the pretty clouds in the sky outside, instead.

March family reunion

Me, Norma Jean, PJ, Buz, Markee, Fia, oldest to youngest

Last year I traveled to Texas in March for a family reunion and to finish the celebration of Pete's life with the rest of our family. Norma Jean didn't want the entire clan to descend upon her little mobile home when Pete died, so we made arrangements to gather in Texas to give us all a chance to be together once more and to celebrate the man we all loved.

I also got another chance to spend time with Norma Jean, Allison and her beautiful child Lexie. She's grown so much in a year, but then again, she was only nine months old then, and now she's a toddler, with a full set of teeth! Allison had this picture taken and added to her Christmas card this year. She is certainly a happy child.

There is an incredible number of people around when you have five siblings who are all married and have families. At one point I think we had two or three dozen of us together, with barking dogs, shouting kids, and laughing adults. A madhouse.  Every one of the young children are right around the age my grandchildren would be, if I had any, that is. Actually, now that I think of it, Chris would be fifty right now and could be a grandfather himself and I could be a great-grandmother! How quickly time flies by.

Although it was hard to travel again so soon after having spent three weeks in Florida with Norma Jean, it was wonderful to reconnect with my family again. The ones we really missed, though, are our parents, who seemed to peek out every now and then in the expression or mannerism of one of my siblings. Although I don't have any living children or grandchildren, I will never lack for family to love and be with if I choose it. Here in this part of the country where I live now, I've made friends and have a life that fulfills me, and because of iChat and Skype, I can visit with many of my family members any time I want. This technology makes all the difference in my sense of being connected. We live in a very interesting time.

I haven't traveled again since last March, unless you can count the numerous local trips I took with my Trailblazer friends. This past summer was filled with our regular Thursday outings, plus six or seven extra ones to new and different parts of the state. I learned so much and wrote a post on my other blog about my favorite hikes this past summer.

Now we are in the depths of winter, and the cold and snow of last week has given way to our usual wind and rain. At least the driving is reasonable again, but it seems a long time ago, more than a year, that I visited my family, and a long time ago (more than a few months) that I spent my days hiking in the sunshine, taking pictures of flowers and mountain vistas. These days are spent reading, blogging, talking with Smart Guy and just basically feeling more housebound than usual. I realize how much I enjoy being outdoors, when I'm dressed for the weather and active. We haven't gone snowshoeing yet this year, since the snow took its time getting here and now the avalanche danger is very high.

When I read the posts of my blogging family, it's clear that many of us are feeling a bit of nostalgia for other seasons. Some of my bloggers are in the Southern Hemisphere and dealing with heat and humidity. It makes me realize how insular my view of time and the world is. A year is a long time when I think of the change that has happened, and it's a very short time when I look at the longer view. The older I get, the smaller a percentage a year takes up in my entire lifetime, so maybe that's one reason it seems to have gone by fast.

And then I think of the many long dark days before the birds will be singing outside my window before I wake. This morning I am sitting in bed, laptop perched in my lap, and it's dark and silent outside. It's after 7:00am -- in the middle of summer the sun rises three hours earlier. It will come around and I'll wonder when that happened. Slowly, a minute or two each day... change comes on little cat feet.

Florida in February

BetMar Retirement Community grounds on a foggy morning

Last February I spent three weeks in Florida with my sister Norma Jean. It's been almost a year since my brother-in-law Pete died on February 10. His death was not unexpected, since he knew he was dying of emphysema and COPD. At the young age of 67, no less. He was a lifelong smoker and was unable to give it up, even though he knew it would cost him his life. Pete started a blog in 2010 and wrote over a hundred posts, a legacy of his writing and viewpoints that I cherish. Nobody could write quite like Pete, and he wrote several of them while he was suffering from low oxygen levels. Nevertheless, they are still very well written and give a little taste of who he was. Here's one of the last ones, called "Hop, Skip, and Off to Hospice We Go!" -- I just now re-read it and Pete's character jumped off the page and into my heart. I didn't expect to make this post into a remembrance of him, but sometimes you've just got to go with the flow.

I didn't intend to go to Florida, but a few days after he passed, my niece Allison (who was there with her mom when he died) called to tell me that Norma Jean's little long-haired chihuahua Moose had been run over and killed right in front of her house, and she was simply devastated by the double whammy. That happened on the 15th and I arrived on the 17th. I slept on the couch on her back porch, while Allison with her infant daughter Lexie slept in Norma Jean's bedroom together, and Peter (her son) slept in Pete's office. One by one they would leave; first Peter, then Allison and Lexie, and finally I was alone with Norma Jean. But before they went back to their lives, we had a celebration of Pete's life. Pete did not want a funeral or any fuss made over him, but we pondered the whole idea of holding something for those of us left behind. A celebration of his life seemed appropriate. On the 20th, we carried some of his art (he was a gifted photographer) to one of the clubhouses located on the BetMar Retirement Community grounds. His motorcycle friends and many people from around the community showed up.

His son Peter constructed a slide show that rotated hundreds of pictures of Pete during his life. One of Pete's most successful photographs is displayed above the monitor, "Sunrise over Tampa Bay." It was a very fitting celebration, but it was also very hard on all of us. We trudged through day after day, just trying to make it through the hardest part of the grief. I would wake in the middle of the night to the flickering of images reflected on the wall, and I'd realize that Norma Jean couldn't sleep and was up watching TV. She used headphones so I wouldn't have known except for the light. I wasn't sleeping all that well, either. I'd get up and we would talk, for hours. We would talk, laugh, and cry together and watch the sun come up. But the three weeks finally passed and it was time for me to return home.

Many of the family members felt it was important to get Norma Jean another dog, and she and I went to websites to figure out how to get a rescue dog. Before long we ended up with two of them, and I hoped that when I left it would give her something to fill her days. She eventually decided to go to Michigan and spend three months in the town where her son Peter lived. She turned the dogs back to the rescue organization (you are required to do that) traveled first to visit her daughter Allison and then soon after for those three months in Michigan. It was too soon to bring those dogs into her life, I know that now, and I suspected it while I was there. She needed more time.

Now she has a wonderful little dog, a Papillon puppy she named Icarus (because of the ears, you see) but it has been shortened to Icky. A bit unfortunate, maybe, but the dog is perfect for her now. And her son Peter was laid off from his job in Michigan and is living with her temporarily. He brought HIS dog with him, a little Jack Russell terrier named Zen, and so two dogs run and play again in the house. I am familiar with them because of the changes that happened in my own life because of my three weeks in Florida.

First, Norma Jean swims every day for exercise, so I began to join her. She had not been swimming since Pete died, and as normality began to return in her life, she decided to start swimming again. I myself had not swum laps for exercise in decades, so I was at a disadvantage, but I remembered how to breathe and just... started. It was incredibly hard to find a pace I could maintain, and at first I couldn't go more than a few lengths before I had to catch my breath. Before I left Florida, however, I could swim ten laps without stopping. When I returned home, I decided to use the pool at the YMCA (where I work out) and see how it progressed. Now swimming laps once or twice a week is part of my repertoire.

The other major change is that I talk with Norma Jean two or three times a week on iChat. Now that I've been there with her, it's easy to fall into the same routine we had then: somehow we never seem to run out of things to say, to share, to talk about. And recently I discovered how to send her pictures while we're chatting, and now I save them up so she can see the birds or other scenery I want to share with her. Of course she reads my blogs, but it's so much nicer when I'm looking at her and we are doing things together. The added bonus of seeing her makes it seem very much more immediate and intimate. I miss being with her, but nowhere near as much as I would have without iChat or Skype.

Looking back at the past year, I realize how incredibly full it was. The new year, 2012, is likely (God willing) to be much less so. I traveled twice in a year's time because of major loss, and I'm hoping that nothing like that will happen this year. It's a Leap Year, too. Smart Guy and I will both turn 70 this year, and of course it's also supposed to be the end of the world in December. I'm hoping I'll get to have a satisfying retrospective in January 2013. Most likely I will.

In March 2011 I got to visit my family in Texas and had another reunion. I'll revisit that trip next week. Until then, I hope that you have a wonderful week, filled with sunshine and even snow, if that's what you want. It's almost 7:00am and I'm getting hungry and ready to start the rest of my Sunday.

Resolutions and retrospective

Every new year I make a resolution or two, as most people do. And as the numbers of the year turn from one year to the next, it seems like a good time to look back on the past year and see how successful I was. Last year I saw a new doctor in January (because of the change in Medicare coverage) and learned that I had gained ten pounds since the last time I'd visited a doctor. When you're short like me, that's a significant amount of weight. I decided to start counting calories, and I wrote a post on my other blog about it, which I called "The long slog toward slim."

This January 2012, I have lost all the weight I wanted to lose, and then some. I wanted to lose the ten pounds but have actually lost 18 in total. I'm now thinner than I have been for years, probably since 2005 when this picture was taken.

I remember looking wistfully at this picture last January and wishing I would be able to wear those jeans again without a roll over the top. And now I can. In fact, the strange part is that I wonder now how come I allowed myself to gain weight in the first place. I continue to be active and exercise plenty. But I also had become fond of eating late in the day. It doesn't take many extra calories to add on ten pounds. Conversely, it doesn't take much of a calorie deficit for the weight to begin to fall away.

The hard part was getting started. Counting calories and using an online food diary taught me many things, not the least of which is that some of my food choices were adding calories that I could easily skip. I started counting out the nuts I eat every day (raw almonds and walnuts) so I could add them to the diary, and I experimented with ways to get sugar out of my diet. A scale helped me understand how much a portion was supposed to be. I kept my calories to 1500 per day and was rewarded with pretty consistent weight loss until I hit a plateau after I had lost about eight pounds. Since my new eating plan had become familiar by then, it wasn't hard to keep at it until I began to lose again.

Last year I read two books that helped me a lot: Mindless Eating and The End of Overeating.  Of course I had already read all of Michael Pollan's wonderful books about food. It is endlessly satisfying to read books about food when I'm trying to understand my own relationship to it. I've been a vegetarian for decades (well, a pescatarian anyway, since I eat fish) and things like bacon and steak don't even look like food to me any more. But it's really easy to gain weight by eating too many carbohydrates, especially the simple carbs. That's what I had been doing, and now I'm eating more protein and fat and limiting the amount of gluten foods in my diet. I continue to eat lots of veggies every day, but I was doing that before.

Not long ago I learned that two-thirds of all Americans are overweight. A full third of us are obese, many morbidly obese. The health effects of obesity are well known, but the problem is that our diets are apparently designed to keep us eating more and more. I know that when I eat something high in added sugar, I want more of it, even when I'm full. If I don't eat it in the first place, I lose the desire to overeat. Or I eat something else, something better for me.

Hmmm. This is not where I thought I would be going with this post, but it's a good one. It never ceases to amaze me that reading about food and food choices, diets, and body image is endlessly fascinating, to me at least. What I was hoping to do when I first started this post was to write about the past year's events. I started with the January doctor's visit and it ended up filling the post with food and weight issues. Maybe the thing to do is cover each eventful month one at a time. By the time spring rolls around, I'll have finished the entire year of 2011.

One nice thing about blogging is having the ability to go back and read how I felt a year ago. I've been writing this blog since December 2009. I started writing my own history and then got into the habit of pondering where I am today, giving myself permission to write whatever comes into my head once a week. On this blog I don't use labels or have much of anything in the sidebar except the chronological march of posts. Even so, this will be my 115th post, writing once a week.

And over the past two years, I have found a community of fellow bloggers, friends from around the world who delight me and challenge me by leaving perceptive comments. These sometimes spark new directions and avenues in my thinking that I find to be rather addicting. Thank you for being part of my life. I am enriched by our interaction and continue to gain strength and courage from you.