Mar
12
Delivering justice and counting points
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March 12, 2007
I was just watching the local news and there was a story about a man charged with abusing his four year old son by starving him. The boy was taken into protective custody, and subsequently to the hospital, after police went to his home following a request from CPS. He was so weak he couldn’t sit up on his own. He weighed only 22 pounds.
I can’t even imagine what that child looks like right now. Riley weighs 25 pounds, at 18 months old.
When JB and I saw the footage of this man, his face ducked to avoid cameras, I think we both felt the same thing: a desire to hurt him. I don’t think this guy should get the benefits of our justice system, I think he should be locked in a room with some angry people brandishing heavy weapons, and when his bones are nicely fractured and he, too, is too weak to sit up on his own, then he should be left to starve to death.
I guess that would leave the boy without a father, but really, I don’t think he’d be missing anything good.
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I’m glad you guys weighed in on the remodel stuff, I’m now re-considering the possibility of granite countertops and maybe a nice warm brown or gold or cream or olive or something for the wall colors. Boy, I can’t wait until this work gets underway and I am washing dishes in the bathroom sink and cooking in the garage and the living room is filled with workers and dirt and chaos! Oh wait.
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I’ve been so good on this diet of mine that when I stepped on the scale this morning I fully expected to see some dramatic number reduction. Annoyingly, it read 143, which is exactly what it read last Monday.
I know better than to live or die by the scale but COME ON. I’ve been eating salads. I’ve been eating sugar-free Jello. I’ve been eatings beans (they truly are the musical fruit, by the way) and green vegetables (seriously, this should be called the Ass Trombone Eating Plan) and fat-free cheese, which is, what, thinly sliced vinyl? Are there calories in vinyl?
In honesty I’ve been doing really well with food, sticking with low-calorie, healthy choices that taste good. Well, except for the tastes-like-human Tofurkey a few days ago, but I haven’t made THAT mistake again.
I’ve been exercising, too. I’ve done that Turbo Jam DVD enough now that I can actually do most of the moves, and I don’t even feel like barfing up both my lungs halfway through. Just the one lung. (What, it’s a challenging workout.) I’ve been doing some weights and last night, I shit you not, I did some crunches. For real, I just got down on the floor and did some crunches like a totally fucking crazy person, like some kind of psycho who subscribes to Shape magazine and drinks WATER all day long. Jesus.
My abs hurt today, by the way. Or, whatever “abs” are called when they’re less like muscle and more like veal.
The point is, I really feel that I should be rewarded with some movement on that scale. I do feel like my clothes fit better, and when I look at myself in the mirror there’s some subtle changes happening there, but still, I’d feel much more impressive about the whole endeavor to date if I could also say I lost a few pounds, you know? I know muscle weighs more than fat but doesn’t it take more than a week to build enough muscle density to affect the scale?
I am feeling good about my progress, though, and I feel positive about sticking with it. It was really hard at first, but it seems much easier now that I’ve figured out some meals that work for me. If you’re at all interested in this sort of thing, here’s my list of low-cal foods I’ve been rotating:
• Salads, and lots of them. Bagged greens with cut up cucumbers, mushrooms, and raw cauliflower, tossed with a dressing using a small amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, mustard, and a bit of Splenda.
• Weight Watchers “2 pts” cereal with blueberries.
• Beans and rice, rice and beans. With salsa mixed in and sometimes some melted fat-free vinyl.
• Stir fries with lean chicken, baby bok choy, broccoli, water chestnuts, etc.
• Whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce.
• Snacks: sugar-free Jello, 100-calorie popcorn packs (with Splenda and salt dumped on top), apples, bananas, Weight Watchers mini chocolate cake thingies.
Those of you who said the hunger lessens after the first week were right. I’m sure my brain was just rebelling to a new regime of portion size and non-junkfood choices (bye bye, Nutter Butters) because I felt barely in control at first and now I’m getting it on like Donkey Kong, baby.
Anyway! I’ll be sure and give you another thrilling update next Monday, when that scale better display a number lower than 143 or I’m throwing its cheap digital ass out the goddamn window.
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You know, bitching about scale numbers aside, life is pretty good these days.
Well, except maybe for Dog. God, won’t anyone pay attention to her?
Mar
11
March 11, 2007
This entry is entirely devoted to the colossally boring topic of home remodeling, so if you’d rather take a pass today I totally understand. I recommend checking out this 2,000-person pillow fight instead.
We’ve decided to go ahead with the second remodel, mostly because housing prices are so GOD DAMNED INSANE around here there’s no way we’ll be buying a larger home any time soon. Our house was appraised last week, and its street value has apparently grown 86% since we bought it 5 years ago—which is CRAZY, but also good news in terms of the last remodel we did. It wasn’t fun or inexpensive, but it was a good investment.
Anyway, what we’re doing this time around is expanding our kitchen and adding a new living room on the southwest side of our house. Currently there’s a single-space carport there, which will go away in lieu of about 300 square feet of new living room space. The kitchen will be widened by 2 feet, and a 5′ X 6′ breakfast nook area (with built-in bench and table) will be added on the east end of the kitchen.
We’re going to create a small office area in the new living room, and that’s where our office will move to—which frees up one bedroom for a potential theoretical second baby. I know lots of kids share a room and maybe we’ll do that in the future, but that’s the plan for now.
Here’s looking from the current living room into the kitchen:
And the kitchen as it is now:
As you can see it’s a pretty small space, which will be widened a bit. We’re going to get new cabinetry and appliances, which we have to pick out in the next few weeks.
We’re mostly settled on a contemporary, sleek cabinetry choice sort of like this:
But I’m going back and forth on colors. Since you can see the kitchen so easily from the front part of the house, it has to be complementary with our loud-ass red wall:
So far we’re thinking medium gray walls in the kitchen, with stainless steel appliances, warm-toned wood cabinets, and light (“Linen”) Corian surfaces. I’m not sure, though, is that maybe a little . . . bland?
The colors also have to work with the new living space, which will be visible (a small part of it) as well. You’ll see through the kitchen and into the new space. See this:
The door—which currently leads out to the carport—will be gone, and the wall on the left there will be pushed outwards to accommodate the nook. There will be a half-wall behind the back of the nook (in the space between the kitchen and new living space) and a doorway. Those areas will show the wall color of the new space.
It’s all very complicated. I know there are lots of people who would love this kind of design project, and if you are one of them could you please come tell me what would look best? I’m so inept at envisioning how things will turn out I may as well pick paint colors by throwing darts at a Sherwin-Williams chip sample. JB has great ideas but he has color deficient vision, so that’s problematic (“This gray sure is nice.” “Um, that’s green.” “Really? Looks gray to me!”).
Anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to lately: poring over kitchen design books and mouth-breathing over the endless, expensive possibilities. Well, that and generally fucking around, of course.
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