Home Exercise Equipment

A few months after Gavin was born, when I had cruised right on up past my top pregnancy weight, I purchased a Nordic Track elliptical trainer. I used it religiously for a few months, lost some weight, and got bored. Luckily, instead of turning into an expensive piece of sculpture, the poor neglected machine was adopted by Dan. He used it so much that he actually wore it out.

We replaced it with a much more durable LifeFitness elliptical trainer which has seen a great deal of good use. But not from me. In spite of another attempt at regular usage of the machine in January of 2009, I found myself largely sedentary by April. And despite the fact that I have not varied one iota from my precisely measured food plan, I was slowly putting on weight.

Then, in August, I acquired the ultimate piece of home exercise equipment. We named him Brubeck. He’s an 8 ½-pound miniature pinscher who’d been found living stray out in the country and needed a loving home. Knowing nothing about the so-called ‘min-pin’ (and really, knowing nothing about dogs in general) I hopped on line to do some research on the breed.

Wikipedia had this wisdom to offer:

“These little dogs will need lots of exercise per day… [Their] energy level exceeds the traditional concept or idea of the standard toy breed. Daily walks are not sufficient for this breed to wear off their excess energy.”

I scowled heavenward when I read this. Once again, God’s sense of humor had made me the butt of the joke. It wasn’t going to be enough to walk the little guy around the block a couple times a day. He would need to really exercise to burn off his excess energy. And since I’m a stay-at-home mom and his primary care-giver during the day, that meant I would need to really exercise to burn off his excess energy. Hardee-har-har.

I am happy to report that I have exercised more in the past three months than in the previous three years. Grumble though I may, dragging my rear end out of the house for a brisk, 30-minute walk every day has been a true blessing. And, not surprisingly, I'm starting to reverse the weight-gain trend. Dan, too, is enjoying his daily “long walk” with Brubeck after supper. In fact, he finds it so invigorating that it has replaced the elliptical in his exercise routine.

The only question now is: Does anybody want to buy an elliptical trainer?

90 in 90

In the recovery program of which I am a member, I have heard that if a fellow has a slip and falls into relapse, his or her sponsor may recommend a drastic re-focusing called a 90 in 90: that is, 90 meetings in 90 days. I think the idea is that this level of intense immersion in the Twelve Steps can snap a person out of his denial of the disease and help him get back on track.

A dear friend of mine sent me an email on October 6th, the subject line of which read: “July 6th.” The body of the email simply said: “The date of your last blog entry.” followed by an encouragement to get on with it already! November 6th has already come and gone and still, life seems to be preventing me from sitting still long enough to do this.

It occurred to me a few days ago that, just as in recovery, the program has to come first. I can’t wait to “get around to” the activities that keep me connected to God and abstinent from compulsive eating. Likewise, if I really want the kind of spiritual connection to God that I experience through writing, the writing has to come first. “Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others,” as they say.

Once I had made this connection between the spiritual disciplines of recovery and the spiritual rewards of writing, the phrase “90 in 90” sprang to mind. As if the thought didn’t come from me, I heard, “You need to do 90 blog entries in 90 days.” Blogger boot camp, as it were.

I found the idea immediately both appealing and terrifying. Could I pull it off? Could I write a blog entry—however banal or mundane—every single day for three months? When I couldn’t even keep it up once a week past January this year?!?

Still, I have learned in recovery to trust my gut. To prayerfully consider what seem to be direct communications from God and check them out with others. And guess what? Terrifying or not, this feels right.

You might be thinking, “Are you COMPLETELY insane? It’s the ‘holiday season!’ Isn’t life crazy enough?” You may be right (I may be crazy), but I recall that I started working my recovery program two days before Thanksgiving. I didn’t wait until after the ‘high holy days of gluttony’ to completely remove sugar and wheat flour from my diet, or to start precisely weighing everything that went into my body. If I can do THAT during the season of Whitman Samplers and Russian Tea Cakes, Honeybaked Hams and green bean casserole, this will be—forgive the food cliché—cake.

So off I go, now. This is Number One. Feel free to stay with me if you like, but if a daily dose of the nutty workings of my brain seems a bit much, just stop in from time to time. Or swing by in February to see if I’ve made it.

Cheers!

Can't Buy Happiness

On the trip home from a visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s farm, Eiledon was deeply engrossed by her Pokemon Diamond and Pearl game on her Nintendo DS. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a hand-held video-game unit—looks like a tiny laptop. Of course, Eiledon’s is pink. Gavin had decided not to bring his DS on the trip but was perfectly content to lean halfway across the back seat of the car to watch Eiledon play. He can do this for hours. I don’t get it, but hey, no one was fighting.

As dinner time approached, there was a bit of commotion in the back seat—whooping and hollering with glee.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You’ll never believe this!” Gavin shouted. The child always talks loudly, but this time the volume was up to 11. “Eiledon caught a Cranidos!!!!”

I couldn’t have told you the first thing about a Cranidos except that it was obviously quite the prize.

“That’s great!” I said.

There were more exclamations of joy from both children, and an excited conversation about how Cranidos had been obtained from a fossil and how it would evolve into a Rampardos and how it could learn Zen Head Butt after it learned Ancient Power. Seriously. Aren’t you totally jazzed by this information?!? Like I said. No one was fighting.

We pulled off the interstate at St. Michael to grab a bite to eat. We hit McDonald’s first as Gavin wanted a “happy meal” with chicken nuggets, apple slices and milk and, of course, the TOY that came with it. This time the toy was a dinosaur from the new Ice Age animated movie. Eiledon, who dislikes McDonalds entirely with the exception of the fries and chocolate milk-shakes, opted to forego the toy for Subway across the road.

Dan and Gavin waited in the car while Eiledon and I went in to order our meals.

As they munched on their dinners, Gavin regarded his “happy meal” and said philosophically, “I think Eiledon’s much happier than I am. She caught a Cranidos. I just got a fake dinosaur.”

And there you have it, folks. You can’t buy happiness. At least, not at McDonald’s.

A Generational Curse

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,

yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.’
   - Exodus 34:6-7

I know there’s a lot of controversy among Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists about whether or not the idea of a ‘generational curse’ has any scriptural or doctrinal validity. Being neither an evangelical nor a fundamentalist, I find it’s best not to engage in such debates.

However, I am here today to tell you that GENERATIONAL CURSES ARE REAL.

My evidence for this bold pronouncement? Raiders of the Lost Ark.

No, seriously. I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with my family the other night. My son, who I knew would find it too scary, lasted halfway through the opening scene before retreating to the safety of my bedroom to play computer games. My daughter, on the other hand, LOVED it and was prone to yell “COOL!” and “SWEET!” and “That was AWESOME!”

I was relieved by her enthusiasm. I hadn’t seen the movie in years and there was quite a bit more graphic gore than I’d remembered. And lots of dead people. Lots and lots of dead people. Dead, half-decomposed, cobweb-draped, misshapen and moldy-looking dead people. One with a large snake coming out of its mouth.

Yeah, I know. SWEET!

But then it was bed time.

“Mama, I’m freaked. Can I sleep with you?”

“Too many scary things in the movie?” I asked with a sinking feeling.

“Yeah. It was great. But that part after the snakes with all the dead people…”

“But we made you close your eyes during the melting faces part,” I offered. “Can’t you just sleep in your own bed?”

“I’m too scared.”

What, you might be wondering, does this remotely have to do with Exodus 34? The answer is that my daughter’s being freaked out by Raiders of the Lost Ark is all my grandmother’s fault.

Flash back, if you will, to 1953. My grandfather was not a big movie fan. His wife, on the other hand, adored movies, especially science fiction movies. Since her husband would not go with her to see these films, she would bring along her son, Marty. My dad. He was only 10 in 1953 and my grandparents were careful not to let him see scary movies like Frankenstein or Dracula. But apparently, Invaders from Mars was okay since it was just science fiction. Invaders from Mars scared the knickers off little 10-year-old Marty.

For the record, I watched the trailer for the film in preparation for this blog entry and I was freaked out. At 37. See for yourself here.  If you dare.

So the curse began and was carried through to the next generation. Apparently permanently unhinged by his early movie-going experiences with Grandma Hilda, my Dad developed a love for the same sorts of science fiction as his mom. He loves the Twilight Zone, subscribed for YEARS to Asimov’s Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, and just seems to have an affinity for the weird and unsettling.

So now it’s the late 1970s. Marty has four kids of his own and a TV set with local channels that show lots of old movies. In complete innocence he shares his passion for science fiction with his children. His eldest, Danny, is haunted by Day of the Triffids (and in an ironic twist, my dad doesn’t even remember seeing that movie.) His second child, Kathy, is traumatized by Hitchcock’s The Birds, particularly when a young, beautiful woman named Kathy is mobbed to death by a flock of deranged birds. To be fair, his fourth child, Peter, was already well on his way to insanseville at birth so I’m not sure if Dad really contributed much there.

Me? The Incredible Shrinking Man. A movie he still insists was “neat.” I have distinct memories of sitting in church, looking down at my feet, and actually seeing them start to shrink. (The mist! The mist!!)  I was convinced I would slowly disappear into a world where spiders were as big as monsters and no one would be able to figure out how to stop it.

And now, in 2009, shaggy spear-pierced Nazi corpses covered in tarantulas are going to pop out of my daughter’s closet with the ark of the covenant.

I already feel bad for her children.