Who's Divorce Is It Anyway?

I found this article on Web MD today, about how someone's divorce can affect their friends' marriages. I have to say, I've only read the first few pages, but so far this article is spot on. Michael and I have been through this more than a couple of times, where a couple we know and hang out with suddenly end up divorced. In fact, it's happened to us so often that I am no longer allowed to look through our wedding album, because I sit there and pick out all the people we know in the photos who are no longer together. These days, I can also pick out the people in our wedding album who are now dead, which is another reason why I'm not allowed to look through our wedding album anymore; Michael says it's just too ghoulish.

And he's right, it is ghoulish to sit there and look at the pictures and talk about what went wrong, like I'm performing some sort of verbal autopsy on a long-dead relationship, but that's how I handle these things. I look at what the people around me did wrong and I want to discuss it, to learn from it, to make sure I don't end up repeating their mistakes. As badly as I felt for my neighbor down the street who's husband died suddenly of a heart attack, I couldn't help but want to analyze about the aftermath she went through. She couldn't get into her late husband's computer to pay the bills; she wasn't sure how to handle the insurance claim; she didn't know how to deal with certain financial aspects of her home business because her husband had always handled it. I have to discuss these things with Michael to make sure I won't end up in the same bad situation.

I've done the same thing with divorces, picking apart what might have gone wrong and then comparing my findings to what's happening in my own marriage. It's armchair quarterbacking for sure, but when someone you know has been married for 10 years and you just went camping with them the weekend before and now suddenly the wife is moving out and they're getting a divorce, it does make you stop in your tracks and go, "WTF?! How'd that happen? Didn't we just go camping with them last week? Uh, honey? We're not headed for divorce, are we?"

To reassure all my friends, I do not study your lives under a microscope. Half the time, when you make a mistake, I have no idea; I'm too busy fighting off my own alligators to notice yours. And the closer I am to someone, the more likely I am not to need to analyze what's gone on in their lives. Those folks tell me everything anyway.

But some days I've got to be the ghoul. Some days I have to sit and try to learn from other's mistakes. It ain't pretty, but at least you know that because I'm a stay-at-home mom, I can't hang around the water cooler at work and gossip about it.

Move It Mama Monday! - Am I A Slug?

To quote the late, great Madeline Kahn, everything from the neck down is kaput. I am soooooo tired today, literally dragging myself through everything I have to do. I spent the weekend in Richmond attending Ravencon, and like a kid at a playground, I just wore myself out. I attended a slew of panels on podcasting and webcomics, stayed up too late chatting with friends I don't get to see often enough, and in general had a lot of grown-up fun (by which I mean I was able to do things without constant interuption from my kids, who stayed home all weekend with the Hubster - I love that man).

But after all that fun (which I know doesn't sound nearly as wild as the stuff I used to do in my twenties and even thirties), I had to come home and act like a responsible mommy again. After unpacking and handling a bunch of laundry, I crashed early, thinking I'd be better rested and prepared to handle the next day. WRONG! After eleven solid hours of sleep, I still had to drag myself out of bed, and then drag myself through the morning. I did manage to get out for an hour-long walk, and I did spend another hour outside with Pixie spreading mulch (Pixie LOVES to spread mulch!). But those two activities apparently consumed my entire energy allotment for the day.

By noon, I caught myself nodding off while reading to Pixie. I sent her off to her room for some quiet time and I stole a short nap. Twenty minutes later, I got up, took a bath, and took another nap. Thirty minutes later, I dragged myself up to the office to pencil the next episode of the webcomic. And thirty minutes after that, I was back in bed again, taking yet another nap.

Obviously, I had a little more fun than I realized this weekend. Even worse, I may have eaten a bit more than I thought I did. Wii Fit tells me I put on a pound or so over the weekend. However, I still have 20 days left to lose those last eight pounds and achieve my weightloss goal!

Um, yeah.

I have been exercising. I have been trying to eat right. Yet, it seems I am still tired and a little overweight, in spite of my efforts. So I have to ask myself, fitness-wise, have I accomplished anything in the last two months since setting my initial goal to lose weight on the Wii Fit?

I'm going to give a guarded yes. My weight may still be stuck at around 150 lbs, but it is more often below 150 lbs than above it these days. And I have seen that elusive number, 145, on my scale a few times in the last month or so. I'm willing to blame water weight at this point for my weight gain this weekend, and my period (along with too much fun) for the feeling of general tiredness. The ups and downs of a menstrual cycle are just a part of the unpleasant facts of female life that Wii Fit doesn't seem to understand or take into account when doing the daily body test. I wish it did. I also wish the Wii Fit could be programmed to deal with pregnancy (I'm planning on having one more child). Maybe some enterprising game designer will figure this out and a whole lot of women will be made very, very happy.

There have been other Wii Fit successes not related to my weight that I'm pleased with. My knees are doing much better. I'm lousy about taking my glucosamine and chondrotine supplements, and I just can't seem to fit both exercise and physical therapy into my daily regimen. But Wii Fit seems to have corrected my posture enough that I no longer sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies when I head down the steps. Even better, I can now hold a nice deep cat stance during karate class without feeling any pain. My balance while performing kata has improved, and it feels good for the first time in a long time to head into the dojo for an hour or more of class.

I won't be losing 8 lbs in the next twenty days. I might lose two pounds in that amount of time. I might lose a bit more if I really am carrying around some water weight right now. But I'm not going to be too upset about it if I fail to meet that initial goal I set. I'll simply correct the things I haven't been doing right, like eating more fruits and veggies, and get back on the Wii Fit wagon again. I'm looking at several weeks in a row without any trips out of town, so I think I'll be okay. And maybe in the next few months, those pounds will come off. We'll see how it goes.