8.14.99

    One way to start a perfect day:

1. Wake up and think it's Monday. Panic. Then realize it's Sunday.
2. Sleep another hour.
3. Pick up yawning cat and take him with you to the couch with a book that a friend loaned you because she thought that you'd like it.
4. You do.
5. Cry a little an hour later when something sad happens to the main character.
6. Kiss someone you love and decide to make pancakes from scratch.
7. Bring pancakes to table to find that someone you love has set the table with folded napkins, hot coffee and tall glasses of icy-cold orange juice.
8. Listen to jazz.
9. Take coffee to computer and write about nothing in particular.

    I'm reading Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It's got a great cover with one, joyful 1950s teenager springing over another one. If you've been to a bookstore in the last year, you've seen it.

    I never picked it up because I think I was a little suspicious of it. In the rush of Oprah Book Club frenzy it seems anything and everything about women and strife is flying out of publishing houses and into the stores. It's the new kind of soap opera. Women are in pain. Women are lonely. Women are strong. Women are friends of women.

    I have my own thoughts about notions of women peddled in most of these books. But, I suspect, it's because I only find only the barest bits of myself in these stories. I suspect that my life and my character would not be nearly enough to build a story around. Not one that could be marketed towards women, anyway. Although, you could add the platitudes easily and no one would guess the difference.

    Which is all somewhat beside the point since I'm enjoying the book. I like the characters although at times I don't understand why they do what they do. The back and forth nature of the story, from present to past, is nearly seamless. The present character, Sidda, is a bit unbelievable. She sort of has everything on a platter but refuses to recognize it. Actually, all the characters have everything at one point or another but still what they are doing in their lives is interesting. This is great hammock and iced-tea reading.

    The motivational tear I have been on the last week has not subsided. The apartment looks infinitely better this morning than it did yesterday morning. The den is so close to getting cleaned up. There will be much rearranging of closets today in the attempt to stash things. Then we need to find someplace to donate this old 486 computer and monitor we have hulking in the corner and then the apartment will be ours once again.

    I made a late night run to Target last night for wood screws and hooks. I bought two hooks for the bathroom. We need a spot for extra towels and bathrobes. The wood screws are for some shelves that we're going to put in the closet. What I really wanted to get was something for hats. T. and I have about six baseball hats between us that get scattered all over the apartment. What I wanted to find were some very attractive hooks or some sort of rack. I figured that I'd find one of those ugly, wooden accordian type things that almost everyone had when I was growing up but I didn't find anything. Most of the hooks were too ugly for me to even think about putting six of them on a wall. Target had racks for every conceivable thing except for hats. Feh. Will have to find some other solution.

    I wonder if my motivational streak can be attributed to more exercise and a more balanced diet? How's that for a News Flash? Yes, I know that is a stupid question and the obvious answer is that exercise and better food will always make one happier, healthier and maybe even wealthier. I think the key to all of this has been my fitness journal. Instead of wondering why I'm so run down I can point to specific days and see that a lunch at Burger King followed by two Rice Krispee treats and two hours in front of the teevee makes me feel like crap. Of course, I have noticed that on days that I don't work out I tend to forget to write in my journal. I need to stop that pattern since just because I haven't gone to the gym doesn't mean that it's a bad day.

    T. and I joined the Gold's gym down the street on Friday. There's a location downtown right where our new office is going to be so I'm planning to use that one. Saturday morning, I went in for a fitness evaluation. I'll get the results and a work-out plan this next Tuesday. I think I'm pretty in tune with what I can and cannot commit to doing. Ideally, I'd like to make going to the gym a part of my daily routine, something I do before or after work. My goal is a leaner, stronger body. I want to be able to do things like hiking and biking and scuba diving without feeling like a wimp. I do those things anyway when the opportunity arises but I get too tired to be pleased with myself.

    So, when I told the fitness and nutrition guy that I wanted to work workouts into my daily routine he said, "So, we can put you down for five workouts a week?" I laughed. "No." See, if I commit to five workouts as my goal and I realize at the beginning of the week or at any point that I'm not going to make it then I'm more likely to quit right then. If I say that I'll definitely do three than any above and beyond that is extra good and I can pat myself on the back until my arm breaks off. This trait that I have where failure is worse than not trying is a bad one. I do recognize it though and am able to head disaster off at the pass with more and more frequency. I don't even want to get into why it is that I do that. It's a surface I have a feeling that I'd rather not scratch.

    One of the fun things in going through all this stuff that my parents left here is finding lots of old pictures. I thought I would throw one in here of me as a wee little girl.