But we thought it would be fun to compete against each other to see who could get Wii-Fitter in 2009. So for the next month we will be posting weekly videos about our progress.
Yes, my husband agreed to do this with me. Actually it was his idea.
So watch us reduce our BMI scores and increase our flexibility and balance. Watch some healthy competetion between spouses. And watch us go to physical therapy because we’ve thrown out our backs.
There’s zest. Meaning energy or spice or vitality. But then that would just be a redo of voracity or something. And…it reminds me of soap or lemons.
There is zeal. Zeal is always good. I’m learning zealousness, yes I am. But then again, its very much like the afore mentioned, zest.
The only other “z” word in my vocabulary has to do with a stripped equine-like creature that is near the end of all my daughter’s alphabet book (hey at least I never mentioned xylophones).
There is Zsa Zsa Gabor, Zora Neale Hurston and Zelda Fitzgerald. There is also Zeus the Greek god.
There isn’t a dearth of Zs in the world, just not a lot of good words for my series. So maybe I should tackle the letter itself (interesting fact about Sarah: I cross all my sevens and “z’s” — don’t ask me why).
Z signifies the ending of something or the closing of a book. We say things like, “…everything from A to Z….” meaing that my letter of the hour puts on the finishing touches. It is on the last page, at the back of the line (When I got married I moved from a “S” to an “M” — I was elated.).
But it’s ending postion says nothing for it’s importance. It might just be more important than “A”.
Tomorrow we close out a year; we put an exclamation point or a question mark or a period at then end of our personal 365 days. They way I finish might be just as important as how I begun. I’m trying to finish this year well. My “Z” day is always my birthday (December 31, 1974 means that tomorrow I turn 34) and it has always been something to look forward to.
And of course I’ve ended better than I’ve begun. If I’ve made any progress this year at all, I’ve collected mistakes and triumphs and things learned along the way. So I’m looking forward to the end, to close out my 2008 book with a Z, with an exclamation point!
(Come back tomorrow for a video and how my husband and I will compete with each other during the month of January to see who is Wii Fitter!)
Last weekend I had the privilege of meeting Denise and her family. She lives 7 hours away from me and we’ve never had the chance to meet in person. Just through words and blog entries.
When I heard she was making the Disney trek to Southern California and spending the weekend, we made arrangements to meet her and her family at the beach where they were staying.
We jumped….
We laughed…
and we ate a yummy lunch.
And we would have spent all evening talking and maybe found our way to some chocolate chip ice cream had they not have had to drive back. I don’t even want to know what time they got home that night. Our kids played, we planned future marriages and our grandchildren’s names (If Noah and Naomi got married then their children would have to be Ned and Nora.) and thought about how great friends we’d be if we lived closer.
A friend that (now that I look at the pictures we even look alike) feels more like a sister and I’m honored to know her.
(All pictures courtesy of Michael Jones, Denise’s husband, although if you visit his site you’ll find his wedding photography isn’t taken on a pocket digital camera)
(I’m saving Z for tomorrow – this will be a fun blog week)
Yield means to give up and give over. To relenquish or surrender. And I’m not talking about the type where I stretch out on my porch and stamp, “welcome” across my forehead.
I’ve learned much more in the last five years of marriage than I did in the first seven. When I was 21 and only married for a few months, the manager of our apartment complex confronted us because we/I was slamming doors and we/he was yelling too much. She said neighbors were complaining and that we’d have to keep our arguements to ourselves. Point taken.
We still fought with as much ferocity but just not as loudly. And we moved too.
The normal ebb and flow of married life never caught up with us like it did other couples because by the time we were married for four years, our relationship was already seriously diseased. A few years of big problems, and then a few years of healing and here we are: feeling like we’ve shrugged off the weight of old sicknesses but also feeling the burden to help others.
One of the things that I learned when we begun our healing process and still continues to haunt me as something to relearn again and again is the concept of yielding in love.
Because I love my husband and because we find so much to disagree about each of us is constantly in the position to either forgive or be forgiven. My theory is that couples are either fighters or they aren’t and I’ve given it up to the fact that we will always disagree fiercely and we must work within that. Daily I’m presented with the opportunity to yield to him in love, to give up the fight for the sake of my love for this man.
I give up my heart.
I surrender my hurt.
I give in because I know him so well.
I yield the fight because he loves me.
I’m so far from good at this. But it seems like every year that goes by and we are in a healthy relationship, the yielding part becomes better and easier. Maybe I’m getting more proficient at it, or maybe I’m just falling more and more in love with him.
(Did you really think I was going find an appropriate “X” word?)
Blogging my (failed) attempts at moderate weight loss this past fall has been very exposing. Much more than I thought it would be.
I kept myself accountable to a weekly video post, sometimes winning the seven-day war, but usually fizzling into a post-weigh-in period of laziness and undisciplined eating.
I exposed my actual weight in real numbers, my failures, and my eating habits.
It is so difficult and uncomfortable to show so much of myself. (A little bit like that horrible nightmare you have when find yourself in 11th grade US History and didn’t remember to put on your pants. Or that you are grocery store shopping naked. Yes, I’ve had that dream. Scarring, I know.)
But even though exposure is highly disconcerting, it is a good thing. I’ve learned more about myself in the journey, I’ve become more open with others and I’m learning to be less embarrassed in general. I think exposure also shows others that I am real and that really, at the core, we are all very similar in our fears and struggles.
So, thank you 2008 for showing me that the discomfort of exposure can bring about good results. Even if I am still at the same weight as when I began.
(watch for another video next week – I’ve got something planned)
If I’ve learned one thing this year, it has been to write everyday.
Every single day. 300 words or so. A piece of myself, even if it isn’t very good, as a practice for what I want to do well eventually: write. Everyday. The discipline of doing that thing consistently to cut grooves of repitition into my fingers and my mind.
2008 has taught me the value of gradual, minimal steps forward in one direction. And by writing every day, I think more like a writer, I feel more like a writer, and even if I’m not doing anything today to push myself further along in the publishing world, at the least I am doing the quiet work of working daily at my craft.
Write. Everyday. Even if it it kills me. Even if I’m sick. Even if I’m exhausted. Even if I have to do it on the back of a recycled Starbuck napkin. In crayon.
I write to be a writer: to create the deep ruts of my thoughts in myself, to rehearse structures of paragraphs and reiterate the poetry of words. Writing everyday frees me, it teaches me and it reinforces a part of my own identity.
What do you do EVERYday? Or, what SHOULD you do everyday?
My daughters tear into the bowl of Christmas cookies and ice cream I put in front of them. There are chocolate drips down chins, red and green sprinkles scattered and sticky little fingers. They consume their treat as if they’ve never been fed.
They are voracious.
However, if I put a plate of potatoes, vegetables and barbeque chicken on the table the scene changes. They’ll pick, nibble at the meat, never touch the corn and sniff the potatoes. They hunger for the edges of life, not the everyday.
Both of my girls consume life like it was a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream and candy cane cookies. They devour days at the park and feast on roller coaster afternoons. They love a trip to the carousel and are ravenous for a rainy-day living room tent. They eat up life well and then dab the corners of their mouths girlishly when they are through.
I’m learning to hunger for life like them. To them, everything is new and shiny and there seems to be an adventure everywhere. To me, the same things are dull and burdened with details and what-ifs. I run out of ideas whereas they are always up for something we’ve never done before.
They are teaching me to see the same things with new eyes and to try to consume life with the same hunger they have.
I am learning voracity for reading and for friend-making. I am learning voracity for the quiet of life and the value in simplicity. I am learning how to hunger for laughter as if it fed my soul.
2008 has taught me to be thirsty for this difficult, amazing, tear-filled wonderful life I’ve been given.
(I had to consult my self-educated, community-college – however brilliant – husband for the definition of this word because somehow I forgot. He proceeded to give me synonyms and practically the etymology of the word. Thanks, Chad, for humbling me. And apparently according to him I should have known it because I am “certified” in words. I’m not.)
And I’m guessing that the word “unruffled” has something to do with feathers and birds, but what I’m leaning (and again, this will be the challenge of my life for the next 50 years) is to be un-bothered by things that are out of my control and un-involved with situations that don’t concern me.
I try to be unruffled when I’m putting dinner on the table in the hope that my husband will be home on time and I get THAT phone call – you know, the one when he says he “doesn’t know when he’s leaving.” Foil over plate. Dinner off the table and into the icebox for later. And I sit down to eat with my daughters and an empty chair missing.
I am learning to be unruffled when the telemarketer ridicules ME for asking politely for their company not to call my home again. I am learning to keep my feathers calm when my toddler has a “special” accident in her big-girl underpants behind the Christmas tree. I try to stay undisturbed when giant cylinder of mini Christmas foam stickers spill in millions of tiny piles on the kitchen tile.
Like a cozy afternoon in the middle of a rainstorm. Like a quiet minute in the middle of the night. Like a still ocean, no wind, no waves. Unruffled in the middle of a world of chaos.
Unruffled – screams from the living room.
Unruffled – piles of laundry.
Unruffled – a misplaced to-do list with things that won’t wait.
Unruffled – someone in Target purposely shoves their cart into my ankle.
I am learning to take small steps forward in my projects, to take quiet minutes in my day, and to try to see the whole picture when the NOW of my world begins to splinter.
I am learning to be unruffled. And it is a stubborn journey.
(But please don’t come to my house before bath time or when scissors find their way into the hands of an artistic two-year-old. Then my word might be “UNGLUED“.)
This should be on my trying-really-hard-to-learn list.
I’m only tenacious when I want to be, it seems. Its hard to be tenacious about my eating habits and discplining my children consistently, but not hard to be resolved about exercising or running. It takes willfulness and tenacity to get through a single day with a hair-cutting two-year-old sometimes but then I seem to lose all resolve some weeks about keeping my home clean.
I want to have tenacity. Not the stubborn/obstinate kind. But the firm, resolved I-can-do-this attitude. I want to be strong.
But for some reason my knees are weak by 10 am and all good intention I have built up the night before crumbles into a handful of M&Ms and unfiled mail. But other days, I seem to have a purpose in my sight and I know where I’m headed all day long. These days I feel like I have the tenacity to take steps forward in my life.
Resolved living, tenacious motherhood, the courage to stand up to my own temptations – this is what I am only just beginning to learn this year.
In what do you feel “resolved” or in what do you feel “weak”?
