25-50-75: Day 22

25
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.

50
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 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.

25

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.