Author Archives: simpleijustdo

This Week

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This week I am…

Reading lots and lots of blogs, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (with The Boy), and The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss (recommended here, by Holly Burns at Nothing But Bonfires whose writing I love, and figure if her book recommendations are half as good as her writing, I’m golden!)

Cooking pizza puffs, ugly chicken (looks nasty [nothing like the pic on the site] but tastes sooooooo good), and pasta, using my best friend’s husband’s meat sauce (he’s a chef!)

Anticipating the World Series (Go Tigers!), the delivery of my new Kindle (in November!), the new James Bond movie (love me some Daniel Craig [swoon <3]), Thanksgiving (only 30 days until I see The Man again!), and Friday, always Friday

Listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and Feist (The Metals album) – I LOVE this version of Undiscovered First, especially at about 3:50, when she starts whacking the roof of the car for percussive effect.

Keeping an eye on The Boy’s cold, his reaction to attending his first funeral (maybe), and how he handles one of his best buddies moving away

Finding every excuse not to work out

Getting up the nerve to write a letter to our neighbor about the volume of her TV (or is it a radio) every morning at 5:30am

In disbelief that I’m hearing Christmas music as we begin to prepare for our next concert in class, and hearing the s-word in our forecast

Savoring any sleep I can get, the chocolate chip cookies I made last week, the Ghirardelli chocolates The Man got me for my birthday (my favorites!), my homemade sweet tea, and a relatively quiet house in the evening

___

This post is modeled after this one from Ali Edwards…

Body Image, Cellulite, and The Man’s Perspective

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Scale

Scale (Photo credit: vividBreeze)

I’m getting older.  I know this not because I actually know how old I am in years – I am already to that point where I don’t consciously think about how many years I have been alive and often have to do the math to figure out the correct number.  I know this because I had to go buy a new pair of pants the other day because I needed a bigger size.  And when I looked in the mirror (something I don’t have in my room, nor do I own a scale) I saw the cellulite I have seen making its way into the limelight over the past year.  I saw it plain as day, and I was, for the first time since middle school, a bit ashamed of my body.

Middle school was a rough time (wasn’t it for everyone?).  I am still in middle school, as a teacher, and I know intimately that no one wants to relive it.  As a student, I struggled with how others viewed me as much as the next kid, if not more.  I look back remembering the whole time period as angst-ridden about my appearance, when in actuality, there were maybe three incidents that were burned into my memory, forever tarnishing the whole experience.  Magically, I turned a corner in high school and never looked back, consciously deciding not to give a rip about what anyone thought about how I looked.  That is not to say that I did not care about my appearance, but I didn’t ever dress or do anything else to my body to please anyone besides myself.

Until now.  Here I am, for the first time since then, looking at my own body with self-doubt, wondering how long The Man will find me attractive, and if I will continue to gain weight, getting fatter and fatter… Part of my problem is that I never had a weight problem, and never worked out.  Why would I if I didn’t need to?  Don’t hate, please, if you have struggled with weight.  Just like we shouldn’t scorn those who are heavier than us, we also shouldn’t scorn those who are thinner than us.  I had nothing to do with it, it was just how it was.  And now that I really could use the exercise, it is a foreign concept to me, and it has been hard to incorporate into my already hectic schedule.  Something else will have to go if I am to add regular exercise to my schedule, and I’m not sure what I can afford to leave behind to make room.  It won’t be sleep.  That I can tell you for sure.  I will not be waking up earlier than I do, nor will I be staying up later.  Something else will have to give.

In any case, The Man reassures me that I have nothing to fear in regard to whether or not he still finds me attractive.  According to him, while a woman is running through a litany of things in her mind that her man might not find attractive (Can he see the cellulite on my thighs? How about the hair growing out of that mole?  My cuticles in need of a manicure?  That pimple on my nose? My split ends?)  The man looks at her and thinks, “Wow!  I get to touch her boobies!”

Ha!

Take that, cellulite!

One of the Toughest Things

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One of the toughest things about autism is its unpredictability, which has a certain sense of irony, doesn’t it?  The person with autism relies on predictability, craves it, seeks it out, and yet the disorder itself, for those of us on the outside, has it’s own set of rules, or more like a general sense of chaos.  Just when you think your kid has a handle on the process of setting out clothes the night before, and understanding that we can’t wait until bedtime to decide to wear something already in the dirty clothes, here comes a  curveball: “Where’s the sweatshirt that goes with these pants?”  You know, the sweatshirt that got donated a year ago because it had a blob of glue on it…

And I have no solution.  I try to distract, suggest alternatives, to no avail.  “I’ll just spend all night looking for it,” says he.  No, no you won’t.  You’re going to be miserable, making me miserable until you pass out, which most likely will not be until the wee hours of the morning.  And I can only hope you can move past this in the morning, or the first hour of my morning will be a trial, too.

Damn you, sweatshirt-with-the-blob-of-glue.  Damn you.

Avocado Angst

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Avocado sandwich

Avocado sandwich (Photo credit: Niklas)

I have mentioned before how I am having trouble with my avocados in my lunch.  I am still loving my avocado-hummus-cucumber sandwich, but it is really kind of ridiculous what a mess I am making each morning with the darn avocado.

I tried mashing them, and that seemed to work, but then my friend brought in lunch for us for the next few days, and the avocado mash, well, started to look like something meant for the bathroom rather than the kitchen (did I go to far, there? Um…  Sorry).

I have tried leaving the pit in for some stability.  I have used a regular sharp knife, and I have used an avocado knife, all to no avail.  I am still on the hunt for a solution.  Reader Holly, suggested slicing it, and leaving the skin on until placing it in the sandwich.  I am going to try that next.

Any other suggestions?