25-50-75: Day 32

25 Hit the gym this morning. Hard. I feel good, tired and a little sore, but good. Healthy lunch at 715 today, looking forward to organic free range deliciousness. 50 Finished The Lonely Polygamist. It was too involved, much like the title character. I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything the last few weeks. Probably anxiety about my damn house not selling. I'm officially in the phase of now not ebing ale to pay my mortgage due to my increased student loan debt. Pray for me, universe. I am slowly working my way through shame researcher (yes, that is a real thing ) Brene Brown's book The Gift of Imperfection. I read a friend's copy last year, but now reading my own copy means annotating and internalizing a lot offer brilliant ideas. Like talking about your shame so it doesn't control. Acknowledging tht we all feel shame at some point, that guilt is the notion of having done something bad while shame is the idea that we are inherently bad. Pretty great stuff. I am a work in progress, y'all. Trying every day to accept and love myself so that I may more fully accept and love others. I the words of Jack Black, "being human is hard."

25-50-75: Day 27

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No more progress in terms of pounds, but I am feeling better about my food choices and the way I treat my body.  I've also not gone to the pool in a little while.  It isn't that I don't still love the sun and the easy lull of the water, but even with sunscreen I could see the freckles popping out across my face, and I don't love them.  So, I need a new sunhat (I seem to have lost the cute one I bought at the beginning of the summer).

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Less progress here than I'd hoped.  I'm still stuck on the Udall.  It's good, but I'm not as interested in finishing it as I am in other things I've been reading.  Working my way through things for school--I can't imagine spending the summer not thinking about what I will teach during the year--has been really good.  I'm teaching a class I've never taught, and I have a good plan for it finally, now I just need to tweak the other courses.

The other book I'm reading is The Gift of Imperfection by Brene Brown.  Self-help?  Maybe, but I am not too proud to admit when I need a little help, and this one is all about the necessity of self-acceptance as the road to pure and unconditional love.  I believe that true and passionate love will be mine, but I want to be whole enough to accept and enjoy it, and for that to happen, I have to be healthy in all forms.

25-50-75: Day 22

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Lost 4 pounds so far.  Not the marathon weight loss I'd envisioned, but I am happy for progress.  The goal here has never been about becoming thin--I'm never going to be that, I never have been that, and I don't particularly want to be that, I like my curves--but I do want to be healthier.  So, I'm aiming for a healthy weight that makes me feel good.  It's never been about the number on the scale so much as it is about how my body feel and how my clothes fit.  I feel good when I'm a size 12, I'm not now, so that's my goal.  I have an idea of what weight goes with that size, but if I'm off by a little I don't care.  I'm not making health changes to become some fashion-forward bastion of beauty and consumer/capitalism driven style.  And I'm certainly not doing it for a man.  Anyone lucky enough to be with me will love me for who I am, not how I look.

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Having just completed In the Woods by Tana French, I can say I have read 12 books so far and am into my 13th.  Again, the going is slower than I anticipated, but on the book front part of that is due to choosing 300+ pagers.  If I stuck with smaller books, as a friend told me, I could knock a lot more out.  I quickly thanked him for his foray into the world of the obvious and picked up the 599 page The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall.

First, the French.  As a rule I do not read supermarket fiction.  You know the ones I mean, endcaps at Dillons or Hy-Vee with the "hot" reads of the day, all splashily displayed with the same wanton lust as, say, detangler or white tea and jasmine scented hand lotions.  These are not items you buy the grocery store: they're too expensive and too main stream to be considered luxurious in anyway save for the price.  But, we've all been known to buy ourself a little happy in the form of an over-priced egg shaped lip balm (strawberry flavored) simply because it was too cute to not get us out of our self-indued-why-won't-someone-ever-really-love-me-funk, and so, thus entered French's novel into my life.

Told in first person by an Irish detective with a carefully cultivated British accent to hide his cultural heritage, it's the story of a man looking into the murder and disappearance of a 12 year old girl in the woods in a suburb just out of Dublin.  A wood where three other children disappeared years before, only one of whom returned.  And that boy was our detective.  A little cliche, sure, but the man's mania over not being able to remember the events of that tragic day plays so beautifully against the taut suspense of the current case that you don't get tripped up by the obvious over-reaching of the parallel, or at least I didn't.

This isn't a book that will win any awards for earth-shattering fiction writing, it's not Colum McCann for heaven's sake, but it was gripping and I did enjoy it.  If you need a good summer read, beach or pool or couchside, it's a good one. (Lovers of crime shows will dig it, people with young children may want to steer clear).

The Udall is good so far.  As the title implies, it revolves around a man practicing the principle of plural marriage.  He has 4 wives and 32 children and a failing construction business.  Already the ties to HBOs Big Love--a show I loved until they copped out with the series finale--and it rings with the truth of the memoir I read last week, Escape.  I may have noted before that I have a fascination with Mormons and ploygamy, but in this case I really wanted to read something else by Udall.  I read his Miracle Life of Edgar Mint when it first came out and loved it, so I was eager to see that this had to offer.

Nearly a third of the way in to this challenge, I can say I am proud of myself for sticking with it.  If I want a day off from the healthy eating, I take it.  If I want to watch movies instead of read (as I did today: The Rum Diary, B+ and Love & Other Disasters, C) I do.  The challenge isn't about completion in a lockstep way that keeps me from enjoying it, it's about the journey and trying to push myself.

As a very wise person said to me today, perfection doesn't exist so trying to achieve it is absolutely pointless.  Instead, we have to look for the things that feed our souls.  That's what this summer is about for me.  I hope you are doing the same.

25-50-75: Day 18

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Dinner: turkey meatballs, whole wheat pasta, homemade pasta sauce: olive oil, Roma tomatoes, green onions and garlic simmered and mashed until sauce-y.  Topped with shaved parmesan.  Yes.

4th day in a row at the pool.  Much quieter today, plenty of time to read.  Got more sun and the hair is FINALLY starting to lighten up after the home dye-job disaster of early 2012.

Lots of water: Pamplemouse.  And my favorite iced tea: Celestial Seasonings Cool Brew-Peach.

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Hated the ending to Blue Angel.  Seriously.  The guy gets busted for his affair and as he leaves the mock trial on campus realizes he's been set up from the very beginning.  Just then the campus bells, which he has always found annoying until now, begin to chime and he feels liberated from his buttoned-down back East existence.  BOO.

Read two more today: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons and Mister Posterior & the Genius Child by Emily Jenkins.

Ellen Foster was better when I read it the first time, but it was called Bastard Out of Carolina then and it was written by Dorothy Allison.  Gibbons has a decent voice, but I could never told how old the narrator was supposed to be in the telling and it distracted me from the story.  Also, it was unclear if her father was black or if he just associated with blacks.  This seems small, but the way her grandmother treats Ellen because of the grandmother's disdain for Ellen's father makes the distinction important.  Quick read, but not great.

Mister Posterior etc. was good, but it too has a better corollary.  The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau does a much better job of capturing early 70s sexual rebellion-post sexual revolution.  I didn't hate Jenkins' book, but I did find the eight going on nine year old narrator's comfort with the naked ass flashing that occurs over a period of months outside her bedroom window to be disingenuous.  I have a hard time any kid, when confronted with a "wiggly, hairy" male ass would be so mellow about it that they'd refer to it as "just a bottom".  Maybe I'm uptight, but I didn't buy it.

 

25-50-75: Day 17

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New salad obsession has ruled my life yet again.  Spring mix, cherry tomatoes, green onions, goat cheese, almonds, white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Book room work is done.  Gym is on deck for Friday morning--tomorrow I'm typing up inventory--any suggestions for a good workout playlist?

Day three at the pool; oh, sun.  I do love you so.

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While I was home for the River Festical, I read a book I forgot to write about: Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven.  It's Appalachia before WWII and Velva Jean's mother, just before she dies, tells her daughter to "live out there" as she gestures to the world beyond the windows of their small mountain home.  I was completely transported by this book.  The era fascinates me anyway--prohibition, moonshine--and the setting is brilliantly described.  Having just read the Bondurant novel and watched "Hatfields and McCoys", I was primed for a novel set in that are with a female protagonist, and Velva Jean does not disappoint.

As she grows into a beauty, she becomes fixed on a young revivalist preacher named Harley Bright, the same young man who she used to call the moonshiner's boy when they were young and he was trouble, before he found his way to salvation.  The novel covers her life before him and with him, and throughout its telling there are rich descriptions of land and love, of what it means to want someone so badly you lose yourself in the wanting.  It was beautiful and full of aching hope.

The novel of today is Blue Angel by Francine Prose.  It is a decidedly different beast.  Most everything else I've read would be pretty accessible to most audiences, but I have a hard time imagining everyone would love this.  Set on a small east coast college campus, the protagonist (Swenson) is the novelist in residence and is teaching a particularly diverse writer's work shop including a young Boston Brahmin girl he refers to as Back Bay Barbie. This--among many other things--cracked me up, but if you aren't familiar with the references this book would probably either be a snoozer for you or a plain old irritation.

Case in point: the campus is worrying about sexual harassment in the wake of an incident at a neighboring state school.  The dean throws a dinner party to feel out the English department about the climate on their own campus; one professor talks about his class referring to Poe as a child molester after learning of his marriage to his 13 year old cousin.   Another says a particularly evangelical young lady told him she felt 'unsafe' after a class discussion surrounding possible gay overtones in the relationship between Pip and Magwich in Great Expectations.   Finally, the female poet in residence shares a story about trying to open her students' minds to the notion of what a poem can mean.  To do this, she read them "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin.  Her students did not respond well, and one of her colleagues tears Larkin apart for being self-pitying and essentially a waste of time.

Now, if you read the above paragraph and laughed because those references all resonate with you, then this is your book.  If not, skip it.  Me, I'm having a ball.  Of course all of this surrounds the central story of the professor who falls for his weird looking but incredibly talented young female student and the havoc it wreaks on his wife.  Not very original, but Prose can write, so I'm eager to finish it.

Next up, either The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacob or I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron.  Any votes?

25-50-75: Day 15

A million pardons for the hiatus, lovely reader(s).  I had a hellacious week last week that included an overview session about Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts--check this out for more info. about what I saw and the guy I heard: Shanahan On Literacy.

For those of you who don't know, I am passionately committed to my job.  So much so that I don't even like to think of it as a job.  It's a calling.  That may sound strange, but there is simply no other word for it.  This is the work I am meant to do in the world.  To teach students to think critically, write coherently, and above all to believe that their individual voice matters, well, the fact that I get paid to do all of that is really just icing on a decadently rich and rewarding cake.

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That being said, the time I am putting in in the bookroom is hampering the 25 portion of this challenge.  My upper body and legs are stronger without question--hauling books around and moving them from top to bottom shelves, packing and moving boxes weighing anywhere from 3-40 pounds, that's strength training if ever I've done it, but I miss sweating pushing myself to my limit at the gym, so I am trying to work out a schedule that will make that more possible.  The good news is the book room is almost done, and when it is complete, I promise to post pictures so you can revel in the magical wonderland that is the newly organized space.  I should have taken before pictures, but the afters will just have to do.

The good thing about this challenge, though, is that I am being more conscious of what I put in to and how I treat my body.  From my time in the sun at the pool to the way I eat, I'm trying to be more aware and in the moment.  At the pool, I lay and read for much of the time, but I try to take ten minutes out of every hour to watch the clouds, listen to the water lapping, breathe in the chlorinated air, giggle along with the littlest kids who find every new splash to be a revelation.  And when it comes to food, I am realizing more and more that when I eat fast food--and yes, I have fallen off that wagon--I not only feel badly about my choice to eat it, but I also feel physically bad.  So, tonights dinner of a spring mix salad with almonds, peas, cherry tomatoes, goat cheese, and an olive oil/white wine vinegar dressing is the kind of thing I am going to work to include in my diet.  I like to eat healthily, I jut always take the time. But, if I'm not going to care for my body, no one else will, and I want to love myself enough to be good to myself, so here's to me trying.

50

I gave up on the Arsonist's Guide to Homes in New England.  If I can't care about your main character in the first 100 pages, I'm not ever going to care about him, so your book can suck it.  (For other revelatory things that make main characters detestable, check out this great list from novelist Chuck Wendig: 25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character)

Luckily, the book I picked up after the Arsonist's debacle kept me riveted: Carolyn Jessop's Escape is a 400+ page recounting of her escape, at the age of 34, from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community in which she was raised.  When she left she had eight children and had been married to a man 30 years her senior for seventeen years.  The book never felt long, never felt like it needed to be edited, it was harrowing and shocking and honestly disgusting in some places.  I just cannot believe that in people can confuse loving God with polygamy, child abuse--physical and sexual--and complete and total domination of women through a patriarchal power structure built around large families that seek to keep women pregnant and silent at all times.  One of the most sickening notions was that of perfect obedience in which a wife will earn favor with God if she completely submits to her husband's will in all ways, even when he is being abusive, neglectful, or psychotic.

The older I get, the more I understand the nature of submission.  Not in the sense that I want to turn my life over to a man, but I believe the Biblical teaching that a wife submits to her husband so long as he loves her to the point of being willing to lay down his life for her.  That's the section of the verse that gets left out when people start talking about male dominance and the Bible.  I am as feminist as they come, but this verse--to me--is about mutual sacrifice and true partnership.  I don't know too many couples that exhibit these behaviors because they are damn hard to comply with.  Isn't our first instinct one of self-preservation?  Why would we lay down our lives for someone else, even someone we love, if it meant losing ourselves?  And why would we give up our position and allow someone else's choices to speak for us if it means silencing our perspective?  But I don't think that's what God calls us to do.  I think we're supposed to try as hard as we can to love one another as fully as we can, to create a union made from perfect love that is forgiving, patient, helpful, and unconditional.  It is not easy.  It means bending when everything in us says to just go ahead and break under the pressure, but if two people really love one another--and I mean ANY TWO PEOPLE, gay, straight, lesbian, what have you--then I believe they should work towards that perfect love all the days of their lives.

Clearly, in the case of Carolyn Jessop--and in the case of my marriage and many others like me--there comes a point when bending is no longer possible.  There are obstacles that cannot be overcome no matter how desperately we may want to hang on.  In Jessop's case, leaving the FLDS meant abandoning the only life she had ever known, renouncing her faith that had instilled in her the belief that she was chosen among God's people to live the principle of plural marriage, and to begin again in a world she knew very little about.  Imagine trying to navigate social services when your only access to money was through the cash your husband gave you when he felt like it.  Yikes.

For the rest of us, often our marriages end because the two people involved weren't ever able to be honest with one another, because we grow apart, because what we need and what the other person can give us are so far apart that we may as well be living on separate planets.  But this book, Escape, made me think deeply about what it means to love someone, what it means to love God, and what it means to love myself.  I never renounced my faith, but I had some years when believing was hard for me.  My mother's cancer took that faith and ran it through every wringer you can imagine.  And I never like the treatment of women in the Bible.  But I found my way back to a faith that works for me, one that is accepting and honest and full of love.  And I've come out of my divorce with the belief that no matter how hard it may be to fall in love again, I'm committed to doing it because I deserve to be happy and to share my life with someone.

But first, I gotta love me. So here's to that.

25-50-75: Day 8

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Absolutely no progress.  Everything is as it was a week ago.  Better than gaining weight, for sure, but not so joyful on the losing front.

Book room boxing and hauling is giving me more upper body strength, I can feel the muscles working with less pain than they did a week ago, so that is goo, but I haven't made it back to the gym.  I love it there, but I can't get motivated at 5 a.m., and I don't want to go at night, which means I either sacrifice time in the book room or at the pool, and I don't want to do either of those things...I'll figure it out.

50

Started An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England today by Brock Clarke.  It's good so far, funny, a little irritating.  The protagonist/arsonist accidentally burned down Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst and killed two people in the process.  The novel follows him in the aftermath--the way aftermath--after he's served 10 years in prison for the crime and emerges a 28 year old virgin with an inability to tell people he loves the truth about his past.  

I'm definitely engaged, but if he doesn't do something redemptive soon, I'm going to have to decide if reading the whole thing is worth it.

I ran into a dear friend at the pool today who complimented me on my efforts on this little quest--thank you for that affirmation that this isn't just floating in the void.  I don't know who's reading, and I'm not really writing for anyone but me, but come on--we all like to hear feedback once in awhile, right?

***

On another note, my dear ex-husband stayed the night here last night.  The carbon monoxide detector in his apartment went off and it rattled him--me, too--so he crashed on the couch.  It's the first time we've spent the night under the same roof since the month he moved out, June 2010.  It was a little weird at first, his familiar pajama pants and college t-shirt, the tightening in my chest when he played with Zelda, but then that was it.  No pain, no remorse, no sadness.  I didn't once look at him and think we should still be together.  It was just one friend helping another out.  I'm so proud of us that we can be this way.  Our divorce was never about not loving one another.  It was about loving each other too much to stay in an unhappy marriage: we wanted each other to be happy, and it just wasn't going to happen in our marriage.

So, here's to happiness, wherever you can find it, even if--especially if--you have to make really tough decisions to get there.  Joy is worth it, people.  You are worth it.  Always.

25-50-75: Day 7

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No work out, no sweating, some stretches for my aching neck and back and some tylenol.  I slept strangely last night, woke up all splayed out on the bed, covers twisted half way round, from odd fits even odder dreams.  My body, I think, wants water and rest, two things I've been neglecting.  So, I ate healthily today, but gave the lump of flesh that transports me a rest.  I'll weigh myself tomorrow morning to see how much progress I've made and, if I'm feeling brave, I'll let you in on it then.

50
Finished Wettest County and it was everything I thought it would be.  Read George Saunders' Pastoralia and thankfully had no expectations for it to meet.  It wasn't bad, it was just a lot of sardonic skepticism wrapped in wry and clever-for-clever's-sake observations about American life, and I was frankly unimpressed.

I spoke to a friend tonight about this, and what I concluded was that Saunders seems to be at the forefront of American post-modern absurdist fiction, but his take is--for me--ultimately soulless.  He characters don't change or learn anything new, there's no sense of humanity lurking beneath the surface, it's all just vapid commercialism and theme parks designed to poke fun at who we are.  And I just don't need a book to do that for me.  I get that humanity is flawed and that Americans in particular have a pretty deadlock on narcissism and a seemingly endless lack of empathy, but you know what?  I still fundamentally like people.  I like that we are all colossal fuck-ups in the giant bowl of soup that is time.  I like us.  I like that we keep trying, that we keep falling down and screwing up and making really bad choices and hurting people we love and yet we still. keep. trying.  I like that about us as a species, and I guess I need my fiction--even when it's filled with deplorable human beings--to still seem to have been written by someone who deep down likes people.

(Two writers of absurdist post-modern American fiction that get it right, the whole liking people thing, can be found HERE and HERE)

On the advice of the aforementioned good friend, I'm taking a night off from reading.  I have a raging headache and a profound need to sit on my couch and watch season one episodes of Law & Order: SVU on Netflix, so I'm going to feed that need.

I hope your weekend was filled with beautiful things.  This is the face that makes me happiest:

25-50-75: Day 6

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Officially off the wagon when it comes to the no fast food thing.  Why must McDonald's breakfast sing its siren song to me as I drive by in the morning, and why was I not smart enough to eat before I left the house?  Answer: because sometimes you want salt and fat and your body and car take you to it against your will.

I worked up in our school book room again today and loved every second of it.  So far I've packed up 52 boxes to be shipped off to our district office, and I am nowhere near done yet.  As much as I love the life of the mind I have cultivated for myself, there is a real intense pleasure that comes from working a physically strenuous job and being able to see the fruits of your labor at the end of the day.  And my arms are burning like a sonofabitch, so I must be doing something right.

Spent three hours at the pool this afternoon, then home to read and relax.  A good good day.

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Almost done with The Wettest County in the World, and it is EXCELLENT.  The writer is a Bondurant himself, so he's writing about his own family history here, and while much of the story is embellished, the major events are all rooted in things that actually happened (scroll to the novel and epitaphs on the author's site to see) which makes for a pretty compelling narrative.  Also, I am a sucker for a good Southern voice, and this guy has it.  A bit like Woodrell in the way that the male characters are heartbreakingly flawed, but Bondurant's men are redeemed by their perfectly honorable intentions.  It's their piss poor execution and stubbornness that gets them in over their heads time and again.

I downloaded this song today--it's from the Hatfields & McCoys soundtrack--and it pretty much perfectly accompanies the novel.  You should give it a listen.

Next up is a short story collection by George Saunders called Pastoralia.  A number of my friends have read and loved him, he's actually been on my radar a long time but I've never gotten around to checking him out, so...heeeeeeeere's Georgie.

Finally, I have to note that my unstructured time thing has gotten to me a bit today.  I gave myself things to do, but without a goal or purpose my mind wanders, and it often makes it back to dark corners from days gone by.  I am not in a bad place, no need to fret, but I have discovered a new truth about myself: when given time to do nothing but think, my thinking tends towards the sad and painful.  I have always fancied myself an optimistic person, but I think much of that was the me born of distraction: when you're busy, who has time to be melancholy and reflective?

So the vow is to stay busy.  Not to the point of never relaxing, but busy enough that my time is spent LIVING my life rather than sitting about ruminating on it.

25-50-75: Day 5

It's June 1st and the weather is strange.  More like fall than impending summer.  I'm happy for cool air as it makes working in air-condition-less rooms much easier, but I haven't been to the pool since Monday, and my body aches for sun and water.

Two days of training kept me from the gym, but I got a workout today, though not on an elliptical machine.

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I spent the morning boxing and moving books in our high school book room.  I've taken on this behemoth task the last couple of summers, and while it is admittedly a lot of work, I love it.  It strains my muscles, makes me curse publishers for putting out crap textbooks that become obsolete within a month of publication, and it requires me to rise early if I want to get in any pool time in the afternoon, but I love it.  Nothing is more rewarding that hauling 40 pound boxes of books around and reorganizing space to be more efficient, right?

I spent a number of years working in bookstores or working in the book sections of bigger stores, so being in three small rooms, attached by doorways, filled with floor to ceiling bookshelves, is a bit like coming home.  Today I moved 18 boxes to a classroom on the first floor, packed up 9 boxes for our district office, moved out 2 empty bookshelves, and came up with a reorganization plan that is pretty genius.  If I do it right there will be an empty room that can become my office and that would be just fan-damn-tastic.

The healthy eating thing has been tragically out of practice.  Why can't I resist the lure of chicken nuggets?  Answer: I'm too lazy to be prepared at home for needing to eat in a hurry.  So the solution is to spend some quality time at the grocery store and in my kitchen this weekend prepping healthy food I can eat on the fly.  No more excuses.

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It took me a little time to get through the most recent book, not because it was long or involved, but the short stories all had to do with cancer or divorce or relationships in various stages of decline, and those subjects are difficult for me to process.  My mom's rounds of cancer have, over the years, messed me up in ways I am still dealing with.  I just never let myself fully process how I felt when she was sick until last summer--when a major part of my life fell apart for a bit--and I was forced to sit with all my feelings and just. fucking. deal with them.  It was ugly and hard and not something I would wish on my worst enemy, but I am better for having gone through it.

That being said, if you want some cathartic sadness in your life, go pick up a copy of Mary Clyde's Survival Rates.  There is redemption in it, sort of, but you have to be willing to stretch pretty far to find it.  Which is, I suppose, why she won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction when the book came out.  Like O'Connor, nothing is easy for Clyde's characters and, by association, nothing is easier for their readers either.

Next up is Matt Bondurant's The Wettest County in the World.  It's the book the new movie Lawless is based on (which I saw a preview for whilst attending Snow White & the Huntsman today--I LOVED it).  I started this book last summer but never finished it, my head just wasn't in memoir space, but it is now, so it's on deck.

Sidebar: if you haven't seen the History channel's Hatfields & McCoys mininseries, run don't walk.  I have one more part to watch and I am absolutely hooked.  If history had been this interesting in high school, I would have been an infinitely better student.