Summer, in photos (so far)

From My Library: The Woman Warrior

New blog feature: sharing some books from my beloved library with the world. I don't want to write a big synopsis or review of these books--just talk a little bit about them.
___________________________________________________________

The Woman Warrior
-Maxine Hong Kingston

"Night after night my  mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began..."

A beautiful and complicated story. I've heard people say that they dislike the narrator, but I somehow find myself entranced by her, her story, how she tells her account of growing up in a strange place (amidst what it is to be American, Chinese, and Chinese-American) that can't be easily explained. It is a study of relationships, primarily between the narrator and her mother, but it contains so much more.

This is not an "easy" book, and I understand why some dislike it. For me, though, it pierced me, hitting some part of me that wouldn't stop bleeding once it had been touched. It made sense, although it was disturbing. Perhaps it is best described this way, from a New York Times reviewer: "it is dizzying, elemental, a poem turned into a sword."

It is tough for me to name favorites, but I would say that this is probably my favorite book. I don't love it for a warm fuzzy feeling or satisfying resolution. I love it for its confusion, beauty, and layers of depth.

"Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true."

And the results are in!

Here's how I did today diet-wise:

So now I have a basic idea of how I eat on any given day. To be fair, though, I think I ate a lot more sugar than normal. I know I eat a lot more sugar than I should...but today it seems like I went way overboard...like 5x more than I should have had (!). I am also concerned with the amount of fat I ate. I don't think I typically consume that much. Maybe I should try this again tomorrow, then kind of take the average of the two days? Or maybe I should do it a few more times...I'm not sure yet.

"Red Flag" foods that I ate today:

*Winco Cranberry Almond Mix (26.6g of sugar)

*Bridge Mix Candy (61g of sugar...oops)

*McDonald's Hot Fudge Sundae (48g of sugar)

Good Food Choices I ate today:

*1/2 Turkey Sandwich (lunch)

*Baby carrots

I dropped the ball today. I may have come in under 2000 calories, but I sucked at how I chose those calories. Clearly I need to set some boundaries for sugar and fat consumption. Maybe I'll start with that--reduce sugar and fat.

I'm making a tentative goal here: eat less than 50g of sugar and less than 65g of fat each day for the rest of the week. We'll see how I feel.

Once I get my diet "on track," I'd like to revisit this and see how I'm doing then compared to how I did today. I really hope that I'll be pleased with the results.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to ward of Wilford Brimly and insist that I'm not in the market for diabetes testing supplies yet.

Dialogue

Brain: Hey stomach! We're going to lose weight.
Stomach: Whatever. I don't care as long as I don't have to do anything.
Brain: Well, actually, that's part of the plan...
Stomach: Screw that.
Brain: Look. If you'll just try to enjoy healthy foods instead of junk, I'll do my best to supply the willpower to make this possible long-term.
Stomach: But I like junk food! I LIVE for junk food! In fact, me getting junk food is one thing that makes YOU happy, remember?
Brain: Well, yeah...for a few minutes. Then I'M the one that's stuck living with the guilt later on! And what about YOU? You just keep stretching out and then you want MORE food and I just feel worse and worse!
Stomach: Well, you over-analyze everything.
Brain: YOU DON'T SAY! That's my !@#$*&% JOB YOU !@#$ GUT!
Stomach: .....
Brain: .....
Stomach: I'm not speaking to you anymore.
Brain: I didn't even think it was possible for us to speak.
Stomach: .....
Brain: .....


THE END.

. . . . .

Sometimes you just feel like a cow.

I kind of wish that the above WERE just some silly thing I came up with, but there is some real truth to it. I want to lose weight, but it's quite difficult in part because I've grown up using food as a band-aid. It's like, "I feel upset. I'll have some chocolate because I deserve it since I'm upset. Then I'll feel better." And I do. For a few minutes. How long does it take to A.) be excited with the anticipation of the chocolate; B.) actually enjoy eating the chocolate; C.) feel content because i just ate chocolate? Not very long. And after that comes the guilt where I wish there was more chocolate, then realize I should never have eaten it at all because of how caloric/fatty/sugary it was, and soon I wish I could un-eat what I'd eaten to make me feel "better" in the first place.

It's a bad system, worse paired with my recent sedentary lifestyle. I don't work cleaning or running around a warehouse or anything like that anymore--I am sitting or standing most of the time. I do try to get some exercise in daily, but that's not enough. And since I live in the middle of nowhere, getting to a gym or whatever is a pain because it takes time to get there and it costs extra gas money. Thankfully I've been getting into walking/jogging outside with D. since the weather got nice. BUT...I think there needs to be more, and losing as much weight as I want will start with figuring out what I'm doing wrong NOW and get rid of it, for starters.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to keep track of everything I eat. I am also going to check my gym/rec center options again and just make some comparisons. It seems like it will be super inconvenient to change anything, but most major things don't come about without a bit of change and sacrifice. Right?

Truth

This is pretty much how I feel about gardening. And sometimes about life in general.

Pride and Joy

I have a confession to make: I collect books. I love owning books. I like getting new books almost more than I like to read them.

It's the English major in me that got me started, I suspect. Unlike many majors, English students tend to want to keep their books instead of selling them back at the end of each semester. Or, maybe it had more to do with the way I started to look at books. When you read a book for a college class, you can be sure that you will discuss the hell out of that book. And whether you loved the book or weren't so much a fan, you have still gone on a journey with that text and it will always be a part of you. It makes you come to treasure the books you've spent time with.

But since graduating, I've kept up a love for books and a desire to collect them with the hope of reading them. But, another confession: I am a slow reader. I know I don't read as often as I should, but this is partly because it takes me a fair amount of time to get through a book.

One of my favorite things in life is searching thrift store shelves for special books. There's a lot of what I would consider crap there (cheap romance novels, mass-produced best-seller thrillers, etc) but it can really be worth the time it takes to graze over all of those titles to get to the gems.

I guess there are worse things a person could spend time fretting over...but I tell you, browsing books is one of the best things in life.

Although I don't read as much as I really should, I'd like to share some of the best books I've encountered on this blog. Ones that have been important to me, or deeply influential in some way. This will require some consideration, though, so I can't commit to anything yet.

In the meantime...my library keeps growing and very soon I will need another shelf.