Farmers market
I gained weight this week. Lots of weight. I don’t want to talk about it.
Instead, I’m going to talk about why I haven’t had time to even think about dieting, let alone do it: I’m having a ball doing OTHER things.
First of all, I joined Toastmasters a few months ago and I’m enjoying myself at the meetings, polishing my public speaking skills (which, if I am honest, are fairly good), and making friends. The group isn’t at all what I expected it to be. My next door neighbors had decided to start a group in our town and they asked me to come to the founding meeting. I said yes only to be neighborly and half expected a bunch of old coots sitting around counting how many times they all stammered and stuttered and said “ah” and then engaging in incredibly boring networking.
To my amazement, the group is fun and supporting and very very informative. We’re a small group (about 20 members so far) but quite diverse. I’m one of the elders (but not the oldest!) and there are some as young as 18! I don’t think I’ve laughed as much at any meeting as I have with this bunch.
And, my public speaking abilities and self-confidence are increasing (although since the latter already borders on egotism, some may question the advantages of that side effect).
I’ve also become extremely interested in genealogy and spend an inordinate amount of time on ancestry.com tracing my family tree. For years, I resisted the urge to look into my ancestry because I assumed it would be a waste of time. My parents are both deceased and I missed the opportunity to find out about the history of either branch (my mother told stories, but I seldom listened).
I assumed — rightly, as it turns out — that the Polish roots on my mother’s side would be hard to trace. Her parents were among that huge wave of Eastern Europeans who arrived at Ellis Island in the early part of the last century. I’ve been able to track down their arrival dates, download images of the actual passenger manifests and ships, and find out (thanks to a death certificate purchased from NYC) my grandfathers’ parents’ names. Whether I manage to get any further than that depends on my ability to decipher some of the Polish names on the document, and find help with translations, etc. But even the little glimpse I’ve gotten of them and their lives has been fascinating.
Originally, I held out just as little hope for success tracking my father’s ancestry. I always thought of his people as Texas backwoods hillbillies who probably came over to the US in the past few generations and weren’t the type of people who left much in the way of “documents.” If the dead (and living) can hear, I apologize profusely for my ignorance and prejudice.
I’ve learned that they were an interesting group of people, many of whom came to America before the Revolution. Some fought in that war of independence and it’s a tickle to know I’m qualified to join the DAR (whether I will or not remains to be seen … but, like Mensa, it’s nice to know you COULD join). My great great grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was killed at the battle of Chickamauga. A generation before him and my family were slave owners on a plantation. You can’t imagine how that makes me — a staunch liberal and human rights advocate — feel. I finally know what my mother meant when she used to say to me “I love you … but I don’t like what you did.” These were, for the most part, otherwise good men and women and it still bewilders me how they could have had such a horrid blind spot that allowed them to think it was okay to own other good men and women.
But I’m finally learning about them and the places where and the times in which they lived. They’re becoming real individuals who lived what we know as American (and European) history. I’ve even decided to start a website sharing what I know about them and about my experiences in searching for my “roots” (when I actually launch it, I’ll post the URL here!).
While all this is going on, I’m still reading and learning about the “new sciences” of epigenetics and quantum physics, particularly as it’s used to explain everything from self-healing and energy medicine to the “law of attraction.”
Dieting? Oh yes, I put on quite a bit of weight this past week and can only hope it’s just water and that I’ll emerge from the bathroom one of these days having dropped 12 pounds! I actually gained 3.5 pounds this week (EEK!) but lost 1.5 of it, so I’m at a net gain of “only” 2 pounds. And you know what’s to blame? Fruit. That’s right. Fruit.
Fruit isn’t suppose to weigh anything or have any significant amount of calories, is it? I mean, every book you read says that, instead of eating doughnuts or cake, have a piece of fruit instead. So I did. Well, more than a piece I suppose. A cup or two of grapes, five or six cherries, a handful of blueberries, a few strawberries, a peach and a cup or so of watermelon. Yes, that’s a lot — but it’s FRUIT, right???? Is that really supposed to come to about 350 calories???? Who knew? Well, now I do, so I’ll have to back off a bit. I have a feeling the only thing that’s really going to work is to STOP eating non-stop in the evenings. No matter what I eat, if I eat a ton of it, I’ll gain a ton of weight.
But this week, I’ve had other things on my mind and nothing can make me feel anything less than fantastic. I hope your week has been as good as mine (AND that you lost weight as well!)
