Bo-Bo Knows We've Lost Bo

Mike and I lost Bo this morning. Not all at once, of course. It's been a long and brutal farewell. But it's finally official. Bo's gone, gone, gone.

As of this morning's post Thanksgiving weigh-in, my husband and I have lost the equivalent of the heft of our sometimes sulky greyhound, Bo. Today Mike and I officially passed the 75-pound mark. Next stop? 100. Then 125 after that.

Any of our skinny friends out there weigh a buck and a quarter? I find it oddly inspiring to think of the weight left to be lost as a person person instead of a disembodied number.

Bo-Bo Knows The Necessaries (Walden, 267-281)

The bare necessities of life are way barer than we think they are.

All we really need, Thoreau says, are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. Maybe a few tools and books, but then again maybe not. Anything beyond these basics—even just too much of these basics—is a luxury, and luxuries get in the way of a simple, independent living. If you're happy, fine, he says. But if you're unhappy—if you think that life is hard, hard, hard—then stripping away the distractions might turn the tide of of your discontent.

The Thoreau chestnuts gleaned from today's excerpt:

• LIVE IN THE NOW by standing "on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment" (pp 272).
  

• BEAR WITNESS to the unsung miracles that are impossible to ignore and yet taken for granted by that mass of discontented men—why stay in bed when there are sunrises to be breathed in?
  

• CONSIDER THE TRUE REWARDS. "For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward" ( p 273).

Any writers out there hearing that last one loud and clear? He goes on to tell the story of an Indian—Thoreau's word, not mine—who decided to make his living weaving baskets only to discover to his shock that the villagers had zippo interest in buying. The solution seems like a dismal choice: either squander energy convincing the world that we've just made what they never knew they always wanted or—can I get a collective shudder from the writer's out there?—make the goods we think will please others.

"I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth anyone's while to buy them," Thoreau says. "Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."

For those of us who hobble together professional life support for our creative body of work, our progress on that work is the antidote to the sacrifices we make so we don't have to suffer traditional 9-to-5 jobs. But what if we could cut a little deeper and need that professional life support a little less? What if we could all pare back to the simple necessaries of life and log our own hours in the woods of our own design?

The call to Walden, then, isn't about reporting to a cabin on a pond at the outskirts of Concord, but about reporting to the call we hear to our own endeavors—a call to create each our own private Waldens in the lives we're living now. Lately, there have been a rash of books published about experiential living— the guy lived a year following every Biblical rule it was possible to follow; the gal who outran her demons by globetrotting for a year. I totally get the impulse to be better, to be disciplined, to strike out on an adventure. But I'm not convinced that being better or disciplined or adventurous can't start where we are now with a simple, simple shift in our thinking.

But maybe that's just as naive as thinking the answer is in taking to the woods as a hermit for a couple years.

Bo-Bo Knows Hosers (Walden, 258-267)

Jobs are for hosers.

That's the clear takeaway in the opening pages to the "Economy" section of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. After introducing the concept of his experiment and inviting readers to take away the principles that suit them best, Thoreau points his authorial finger at his readers and warns that they're killing themselves in pursuit of society's bullshit expectations of the shape of well-lived lives:

"[You're] making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day" (p. 262).

"The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation" (p 263).

"It appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living, because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose slear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof" (p. 264).

But all this striving, striving, striving is nothing but a collective nightmare that Thoreau's desperately trying to wake us up to escape. The messages in this opening, then, are clear: Draw your own conclusions, and direct the course of your life through deliberate choices:

"What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate" (p 263).

"We are made to exaggerate he importance of what work we do; and yethos much is not done by us! ... So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center" (p. 267).

Bo-Bo Knows Suburban Walden

So I've never actually read Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" from start to finish. Excerpts in high school, sure. Different excerpts in college, OK. But mostly I'm guilty of

1. falling for the seduction of the merchandising that's sprung up around Thoreau's soundbites (don't the mass of men own magnets rah-rah-rahing them to advance confidently in the direction of their dreams?¹) and
   
   
   
2. constructing an opinion of the man and his plan based on an idyllic portrait cobbled together from my dip-in-and-out acquaintance.

In spite of my spotty Thoreau scholarship, lately I've been thinking that the world wouldn't be such a bad place if people took a page from Thoreau and lived more deliberately. I'm not saying that we should all trek out to the nearest pond and set up camp for the next two years and two months. Just that if we adopted even a handful of Thoreau's tips for living, we might all have a little more peace. Maybe even a collective utopia built upon the sum of a million suburban Waldens created not by dropping out of society but by living the lives we intend within the fabric of our existing day to day whirlywoo. ²

Big thoughts given that I've never read the book from cover to cover. Ever. So I will. This month. Right here. Scholarship be damned. Each day I'll read a chunk of pages and figure out what they're saying to me.

I'm guessing Thoreau would approve. At the end of the second paragraph of the book, he writes of his hope that his readers "will accept such portions as apply to them." I read that as the author himself clearing the world for a buffet-style approach to "Walden."

If you want to join me in my little Suburban Walden project, I'll be reading from "The Portable Thoreau" pictured above. So read along. Comment. Please. Because if nobody joins the conversation, it'll be me yammering on about what I think, what I feel, what I, I, I...

Forgive me.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."³

SUBURBAN WALDEN ENTRIES

Bo-Bo Knows Hosers (Walden, 258-267)

Bo-Bo Knows The Necessaries (Walden, 268-281)



¹ This is a mangling of two quotes we'll get to in time, I promise.

² Or maybe I'm just enjoying an extra helping of delusions to complement my annual late-fall re-evaluation of the state of my union.

³ Page 252.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Losing Scratch Tickets

I buy a scratch ticket maybe once every three years, so you know it was a bad day when, exhausted, I convinced myself that the answer to all my problems lay behind a silver film I could scratch away with a quarter. Surely, the fates would be kind to the woman who believed—even for a second— that the urge to buy a ticket was a clear sign that freedom could be bought for the price of a garishly colored dream.

Alas, no.

But I've decided this is a good thing. Because as Emily Dickinson once said in her halting nineteenth century way: "success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed." Never mind how much that line reads like the sour grapes of a hermit woman who spent her life pushing society away. Because really, where's the sport in scratching your way to a brighter tomorrow? Had I won that million-dollar prize, I'd have been elated, sure. But what would that have taught me? A winning card might bring me a fortune, but my loser card gives me a chance to become the kind of scrappy person who doesn't need a stinking scratch ticket.

So screw you, Massachusetts State Lottery! Screw you, mom in Stoneham who scratched off a $10 million prize at Fast Freddies in Wakefield last week. Money? That's nothing. The real prize is the epiphany that comes from banging your head against the grind until a new solution presents itself. You know. Teach man a fish and all that happy horse shit.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Old Wisdom

Long before Nike slapped their just-do-it slogan on billboards and buses, some of the world's best thinkers were teaching that true happiness lies in yanking our thumbs out of our asses and taking action. Loosely translated, of course.

Today I'm grateful for the philosophical cheerleading squad that reminds me that there's no substitute for sweat. Hopefully my favorite quotes will inspire you as much as they do me:

"An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea."
- Buddha

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle

"Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and you will have success unimagined in common hours."
- Henry David Thoreau

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
- Goethe¹

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Just do it" sounds so vulgar by comparison, doesn't it?

¹ OK, technically nobody said this exactly as it's written, but it gets attributed to Goethe on quote magnets, so that's good enough for me!

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Vicarious Vacation Bliss

Just when I think I'm getting the hang of this gratitude thing, I go and bury my thankfulness beneath the rubble of some seriously ungrateful griping. Today it was about feeling worn down to the nubs but somehow not quite full-on sick.¹ About how green it makes me that, as of 7 p.m., my husband's officially on vacation until November 30. About the shitstorm I have to get through before I can take my (much shorter) Thanksgiving break with him next week.

But in the aisles of our local Stop & Shop tonight², the radio launched into the Chaka Khan version of "I'm Every Woman" and Mike busted into an impromptu dance down the length of the natural food aisle: Get-out-of-jail-free giddiness? Legs jerking like they're in a conga line? Fists drumming the air like he just don't care? Impassioned falsetto sing-a-long? Check, check, check, and check.

It's hard to stay grumpy when someone's bliss has bubbled over into dancing-in-the-supermarket abandon. And while vicarious bliss isn't quite as sweet as actual bliss, it's something to hold onto on a swamptastic day. I may have spent most of today feeling ungrateful and grumpy, but I'm choosing to end the day grateful that my husband's vacation high spreads faster than the swine flu among runny-nosed toddlers. It's all in me, baby. It's all in me!

¹I absolutely credit this to my dramatically improved nutrition of late.

²We've found that if you can stand shopping amongst weirdos, closing time on Friday is the easiest time to navigate the grocery store.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Grub Street

After the initial shock of the September 11^th attacks wore off—once it became clear that the nuclear bombs I'd been bracing for weren't imminent—it became even more clear that my well-intended plan to satisfy my urge to write with a career in journalism was absolutely cock-eyed.

I wish I could say that 9/11 had stirred my inner heroine. That I'd been called to enlist or become a firefighter or paramedic or grief counselor. But the only calling I felt was the same old call to write fiction that I'd been ignoring for years. It was time to write for me— not just a paycheck. So I bought a notebook and started what would turn out to be failed novel number¹, but my problems were bigger than a second failed book: the journalism skills that helped me tell true stories were letting my fiction fall flat.

Enter Grub Street, the Boston-based non-profit creative writing center extraordinaire.²

By December, 2001 I was scribbling away in a beginning fiction class at Grub Street.³ That first class gave me the most precious of gifts: access to a community where like-minded individuals didn't need me to explain why the writing itch I felt went deeper than journalism's ability to scratch.

At Grub Street, I was welcomed as a writer as long as I showed up willing to learn. And that welcome took the form of established writers who had clear memories of what it felt to be just starting out, peers who knew what POV⁴ stands for, seminars on topics I wanted to wade around in for an evening and workshops on topics I wanted to immerse myself in for weeks, opportunities to read my work and hear others read theirs, encouragement, commiseration, and a safe place to take risks, build confidence, foster friendships, and line myself up for the all-important, if occasional, kick in the ass.

Last night I met with a couple of Grub-Street novelists to swap scenes from our novels-in-progress, chat about what's working and what still needs work, and just generally refill the well that drains down to nothing by unchecked solo-time spent blinking at my computer screen. I walked away feeling jazzed—for their books, for mine, and for the process in general.

For the most part, the non-writing world only recognizes writers once they've got an Amazon sales rank. But Grub Street recognizes writers in the fast-talking breathless ways we speak when talk turns to writing, in the beautiful turns of phrases that shine like daffodils among our beginner dandelion sentences, and in our Herculean ability to nurture a willingness to stick to the page in the face of long, long odds.

For the guidance, friendships, and all the ways leading to ways⁵ I can trace back to finding my own way into that first Grub Street class almost eight years ago, I'm more grateful than I have words to describe. Maybe some Grub Street someone will help me with that, too.


¹ Out of four failed novels. Five times is hopefully the charm...novel number five is the only one that graduated to revision stage, so it's already more successful than all the others combined.

²I think it's only fair to disclose that I'm an ambassador at Grub Street. Though I want to be clear: I'm not writing this piece because I'm an ambassador, but I'd bet I got tapped to become an ambassador because I love Grub enough to think to write a piece like this.

³Novelist Lisa Borders was at the helm. I couldn't have asked for a friendlier, more doggedly enthusiastic first face of Grub.

⁴Point of view.

⁵With apologies to Robert Frost.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Unexpected Visitors

This morning I can't stop looking at the horse—yes, horse—in my neighbor's backyard. I stumbled from my bed a bit groggy but not so out of it that I failed to wonder what use my neighbors had for the horse trailer camped in their driveway. Their dobermans aren't that big. Then I glanced over at their slice of the American dream—a grassy area that would be too cramped for most trailers to sit on—and there was my answer. Horse. Horse. As in a country-mouse-lovin', in-the-flesh, honest-to-god horse. In Winthrop.

For those of you that don't know Winthrop, Massachusetts well enough to be sufficiently slack-jawed, our town shares a border with East Boston. We're not exactly a community known for its big lawns. The lot our condo sits on, for example, has no grass. Not one blade. And the most open space our town can claim is a handful of parks I'm totally grateful for and the beach. In other words, there are rich parts of town where the houses are off the hook, but no one 'round these parts is using the size of their lots to compensate for anything, if you know what I mean. In other words, this ain't horse country.

So I can't stop looking at my newest four-legged neighbor. Which is kinda sorta putting the neighbors off. Which maybe serves them right. Because unless the zoning laws in this town are arcane enough to hearken back to a time when sheep and chickens weren't oddities kept in petting zoos you have to pay to see, that horse's tail swishing in the cold November breeze is probably flipping off the guidelines for acceptable land use. So when I threw open my window to share my gleeful moment with my historically less-than-gleeful neighbors (there have been run-ins with them and the first floor over the barking, barking, barking of the aforementioned dobermans), the first thing they said was:

"It's just a visit!"

Me: "What's her name?"

Neighbor dude: "HIS name!"

Me, laughing: "Like I can tell that from way up here."

The guy gave me a look which confirmed my suspicions that they think the lady who regularly stands at her window watching their pack of dogs romp (that lurch would be me) is a little off her rocker. Then he turned to the horse who had itself turned in such a way as to put all its horsey manhood on enormously obvious display. The guy shook his head and turned away, but I wouldn't be deterred.

Me, louder: "So what did you say his name was?"

Neighbor dude: "Cigar!"

Because the annoyed glance neighbor-dude shot in my direction seemed to translate roughly to why-the-hell-are-you-still-there, I closed the window and receded a little bit. But I wouldn't go completely away. Not before I took pictures and ate breakfast while standing in the window! Because it's not every day I get to share my morning oats with a horse. And I'd still be watching if this majestic beauty hadn't turned his majestic hiney in my direction. My imagination projected to the majestic dookie I wouldn't want to watch get made while I was eating, and the spell was temporarily lifted.

But majestic dookies aside, I'll be enjoying the view from my kitchen window for a few days. And if that makes me a lurch perched behind a second story kitchen window, so be it.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Tea

Some fanatics will tell you it's all about the ritual, but I think tea's simpler than all that. When I make my daily cup(s) of Bigelow's Plantation Mint black tea, I boil water and plop a bag in without ceremony. Unless, of course, it's ceremonial to use the same hand-painted, orange-and-yellow paisley mug with every sitting. I use it in part because it's the most beautiful mug I own, but mostly because it's big enough to dilute the tea just the way I like it, not so insulated I can't feel the warmth of the water within, and its slick sides roll with ridges my fingers run up and down while my mind drifts elsewhere.

OK. Maybe drinking tea's about personal ritual after all.

But it's also a diet drink. Some people claim that caffeine stimulates the appetite, but tea's been nothing but a calorie suppressant for me. I replaced the caffeine in two cans of soda a day with the caffeine in two bags of tea. Then I replaced a sweet treat after dinner with a healthy yogurt concoction and tea. And if the first waft of spearmint makes me smile as I pour it, or the heat from the water holds the winter cold at bay, well, bring it on.

Forget wanting to buy the world a coke—what kind of peace and harmony can I buy with a few billion mugs of black mint tea? About as much as that coke did you say? Aw well. The way I see it world peace is less about sweeping global change and more about a pandemic of individuals taking responsibility for their personal peace.

I'm no statesman, but even I'll raise a steaming mug to that.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Dogs

Forget halos and snow-white wings—if angels exist they're dogs.

How else can you explain universal delight at the sight of a puppy, the calm that comes over you as you pet one that's chosen to lean against you for a spell, or the the silly joy that comes with realizing that the long list of things that can get a dog's tail thumping includes the slop they call dog food, being reunited after your long trip downstairs to get the mail, and the prospect of an opportunity to take a poo?

Bo will lope along beside me whether I take a 20-minute walk or a 60-minute walk. When I'm on a deserted road and the music inspires me to dance for a few measures, he hops along beside me with his head turned to look at me, his tongue lolling in a doggy smile that says "you go mom." And I'm convinced he's been trained to detect and counter my moods.

When I found out one of my best friends had been diagnosed with an aggresive and untreatable cancer, the news came over the phone, and though I was at the extreme opposite end of the condo from his favorite dog bed, Bo got up, came into my office, and put his head on my knees while I figured out how to balance sadness and bravery. How to stay in the moment I had with my friend right then instead of fast fowarding to future moments that had just been ripped away.

Dogs do that so well, don't they? Stay in the moment? The sun is shining, he's stretching his legs, there's an old friend visiting the house, a new friend on the street, a treat being offered, the smell of meat cooking, a toy that needs tossing, a pillow that needs a good claw fluffing, and on days when he eats a little too fast, a burp that needs tending to (he patters to my side and stands there while I stroke his chin and neck until he, well, burps).

There are angels among us. They may keep you up by licking their winkies throughout the wee hours, but they're angels nonetheless. I know I'm grateful for mine.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for the Dawn

Some days it's enough to be grateful for the dawn. Especially the morning after a night that found me cocking my ear toward the dragon lady who lives in a cave in my mind, lying in the dark, patiently waiting for me to stumble so she can spring up and assure me, her voice a cocktail of spurious sweetness, that it's not too late to swap my dreams of a creative life for some easier, simpler, more practical future.

Because while the dawn isn't the antidote to doubt exactly, morning light exposes that dragon for the vampire she is. And because even though the dragon spent last night pointing to all the years I've written in obscurity as proof of my total failure, in the light of day those same years look a bit more like tenacity. And though I may have drifted to sleep convinced I was a washed up wannabe, something in the dawn reminded me that failures fuel spunk, that there's fight in me yet, and that even when the sun takes the weekend off, it's out there, doggedly fighting to burn its way through. That the dawn is the dawn is the dawn. Even when it's gray.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Kitchen Marvels

The scale ruined a gorgeous stormy morning for me today. My grand experiment in spreading out the pounds left to be lost and being less obsessed ended this morning when I stepped on he scale (a Saturday morning ritual) and discovered that instead of a enjoying a smaller loss, I was suffering a big gain: 1.4 pounds.

My husband reminds me there's no way that I ate 1.4 extra pounds this week, that the gain probably means I ate too much salt this week or pooed too little poo or stood on the scale differently than I did before. And believe me. I know all about the caprice of fluctuations at the scale. But knowing doesn't make it feel any less like a bitch.

If you've never battled with your weight and can't imagine why I'm (still) whining about this phenomenon, consider this: 1.4 pounds represents 4% of the weight I've lost. Now imagine that you're trying to save $6000 for a dream vacation to Tanzania/Australia/Aruba...wherever. You're so motivated to save , that you actually look forward to going into the bank each week to tally that week's new balance. I mean, you wanted to go out and celebrate when you hit the halfway point, but celebrations are expensive, so you did a little dance instead.

Last week your balance was at $3400, and you're hoping that this week's deposits have put you up over the $3500 mark, but no. When you get to the bank, you see there's only $3260 in your account. What the hairy hell is that about? Wouldn't you make a beeline for the customer service line and demand that the manager explain where your $140 popped off to? And wouldn't you be a little miffed if that manager told you, oh, there are a lot of places it might be. Maybe the money was stuck behind someone else's wads of cash. Or maybe the teller spilled soy sauce on it from her take out and sent it out to clean it up. Or maybe the money's really right where you left it, but you just can't see it because the computer's touchy--that thing can range anywhere from $300 over or under your balance, you know.

If your bank worked like your body, you'd be nuts not to withdraw the cash and deposit it in the sane bank down the street where $3400 is always $3400. But losing weight isn't an exercise in capitalism,* so I'm stuck with a body that acts like a clueless bank manager every once in a while. And there's nothing for it but to keep depositing the money (exercising, eating well) and hope that the dweeb behind the counter (that would be my metabolism) gets his act together. And preferably before the big Thanksgiving meal, please.

So today I'm grumpy. And while that may not be the exact opposite of grateful, it comes pretty damn close. So in the interest of clearing my metal constipation around the idea that my weight detoured in the decidedly wrong direction, I'm going to force myself to catalog a few of the kitchen tools that make healthy eating as simple--or simpler--than I used to think take out used to be. Tools you might even say I'm grateful to have discovered:

1. THE STEAMER. Forget that set-it-and-forget-it rotisserie thing you see on TV. Pop a few chicken breasts into the steamer, press on, and in about 25 minutes, you're good to go. I steam a ton at the start of the week and pull from them for the rest of the week.
   
   
2. A SET OF CHEAP PLASTIC MIXING BOWLS WITH COVERS. I think we paid something like $2.50 for a set of three of these at Shaw's years ago, and I use them all the time. I throw my favorite cut up veggies into the big one, drizzle them with so little olive oil onlookers (like my husband) are sure it's not enough to coat them. Then I cover the bowl and shake-shake-shake. The veggies are coated beautifully.
   
   
3. THE ROASTING PAN. A recent purchase. Got tired of trying to stir roasting veggies on a shallow cookie sheet. The roasting pan has high sides that practical scream stir in me.
   
   
4. A FEW GOOD POTS. We used some of our wedding money to invest in a very set of pots and pans. You would think the price we paid for the set would cause us to choke on whatever food comes from them, but it's OK. The cost included a self washing feature. You just think about putting them in the sink, and they're clean. They also have an anti-burn feature. The pan tells the food to move to a cooler spot of the pan when burns are imminent. The pans are also guaranteed to turn passable cooks into speedy gourmets and inspire the uninspired chef to experiment with a variety of close-enough approximations of recipes you want to eat without the hassle of actually spending all that time making.
   
   
5. CHICKEN BROTH. The cooking oil of the gods. Stir fry can be moist without all the oil, and dipping sauces can be whipped up with just a little creativity. Want honey mustard without all the calories? Dilute mustard with chicken broth and sweeten with a touch of sugarfree maple syrup. Want Indian without the calories and total time sink? Splash a little chicken broth and margarine into fat free plain yogurt and season with curry powder and salt and mix into lentils. And for a plan stir fry, toss basil and oregano into the broth as you cook. If you're feeling really adventurous, add a dash of thyme.
   
   
6. FAST FOOD ALA TUPPERWARE. And by Tupperware I mean plastic containers from Rubbermaid. My mom spent a few of my formative years as a Tupperware lady, so every plastic container is Tupperware forever and always, though I think Rubbermaid and Gladware are just fine. Anyway, cook too much food. Like, way too much and then portion it out. I do this with chicken (as you can see above) and lentils and soups. Then I grab a base for lunch--lentils and a little chicken. Pick a fruit to spice it up and go. No thinking. No fuss. Just go. I have quinoa and roasted veggies waiting to come with me to work today.
   
   
7. TRAVEL COFFEE MUGS. For tea on the go so I don't get tempted to get my caffeine the nectar of the gods way: Coca Cola in a can. I keep plantation mint tea bags in my pockets pretty much at all time for such emergencies.
   
   
8. SPONGE WAND. Two people living with one set of dishes and a dishwasher means you run out of spoons and bowls long before you have enough dishes to merit running the dishwasher. Enter the dish wand--a sponge with soap in the handle. This makes it easy to use the wash the same bowl and spoon and mug again and again quickly.
   
   
9. DIGITAL SCALE. Touch-button portion control. Enough said.
   
   
10. HIGH QUALITY KITCHEN UTENSILS. They don't melt if you leave them on the edge of of a pot, and speaking of the space-age no stick, they won't scratch the coating. These get used so much they see wand cleaning more than dishwashing action.
    
    
11. PRETTY STUFF. Our wedding brought us a bonanza of beautiful kitchen things that make dining at home a bigger joy than dining out. Great news for the calorie count.
    
    
12. ICE CUBE TRAYS. I hate ice cubes, but the trays are great to help me with cookie portion control. I mix up my cookies, space out 36 cookies and freeze them. Once frozen, I put them into Tupperware (!) containers and keep them in the freezer. If I want cookies I can thaw a couple and treat myself without going overboard. And since cookies are the world's best food, I can use my stash of frozen treats to fend off cravings: will I enjoy this chai latte more than I'd enjoy a chocolate chip cookie? If the answer is no, I tell myself I can have a cookie when I get home, but usually I don't want one by then. And because the dough is frozen, there's no chance of mindlessly indulging. It's my ace in the hole where dieting is concerned.
    

And no, my 1.4 pound gain had nothing to do with number 12 and everything to do with the caprice of the body. I know I'll be down two pounds tomorrow, but mostly I know that because I reminded myself about all the kitchen marvels I'm grateful to have figured out. Let me know if any of them work for you, or better yet, share your kitchen marvels.

If you have any tips you'd like to add, comment away!


*Let's ignore the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry that begs to differ with me

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Groom Gripes

Maybe it's because his tie cut off circulation to his brain yesterday when he was required to wear a suit to be granted an audience with the world's squarest client, but this morning my husband woke up inspired to pair the handsome paisley tie he'd bought for the meeting-o-stiffs with a shirt that rocks a swirl pattern best described as rich-people wall paper.

"How's this for awesomeness?" he said with a goofy grin as he showed off his outfit before he left for the day. "And why are you laughing?"

I told him the same thing I'd said when he asked me why I was laughing the night he brought the shirt home: I'm giggling because those blue loop-de-loops might as well spell out Mike.

It wasn't always this way.

The first real fight we had as a couple* was over the shirt he was wearing to dinner. I can't remember what the thing looked like, but I remember my very visceral certainty that it was ratty enough he needed to change into something respectable, like now. He wondered what the Man had done with his girlfriend, and could he expect she'd be returning any time soon?

At the time I believed that the secret to love and friendship was some strange calculus that involved figuring out the least painful way to morph myself into that person's ideal friend or partner. Because of that, I wasted a lot of my college years positioning myself as the brunt of the joke and lost track of the me pursuing we after we.

But Mike was different.

He turned my head the first time because he begged off of a lame Pink Floyd laser show at the Museum of Science. Later he said he just wasn't interested, and I was floored that he'd a) think it was better to be alone than do whatever the rest of the gang was doing, and b) actually choose to be alone. And yes, I do realize it's a testament to my extreme late bloom that college me needed to be reminded that spending an evening alone is always a viable option.

Fast forward to Mike and me as a new couple. Every bit of our early friction stemmed from my backward idea that to love someone was to change and be changed--the more drastic the shift, the deeper the passion or some such horseshit. I was a slow to grasp the radical idea that real connection was about finding the person who loved me enough to leave me space to find my life while also staying close enough to embrace the life I chose.

I was so used to letting people tell me which way to turn that being with a man who lobbed that choice back to me again and again and again was terrifying. But you can't be a partner without standing on your own. And if you come into a relationship young and superbly confused, you can't learn to stand on your own unless your partner loves you enough to trust that you'll figure it out. It took me a ridiculous amount of time for it to dawn on me that though Mike will carry me through nothing, he'll walk beside me through anything. And it took me even longer to recognize that for the priceless gift that it is.

So now, married a year and a half, when I get frustrated with him about some little stupid something, I'm grateful. OK, maybe not in the exact moment that he's using my nerves as a trampoline, but in the bigger picture, I'm thankful for the gripes I have with my groom. Because if he's annoying me, that means we're partners, not clones. It means I've married someone who understands that true partnership is about the health of its individuals and that the health of its individuals is about loving a person enough to let her figure out who she is for herself. The best I can do is offer the same gift to him.

Even if that means a closet full of wild and wacky prints.

* Have my husband and I really been together more than twelve years??

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for New Music

Yesterday I fell in love with Harper Simon's debut CD while walking Bo through the crisp fall night. The folksy guitar hearkens back to the kind of rolling musical lines that would feel at home among haunting folk phrases from the sixties, but the slide guitar on many of the tracks makes the album feel like an heir to true old country. You know, before Nashville sold out the twang in its pursuit of winning hits about saving horses by riding cowboys.

I'm guilty of buying Harper Simon's CD because I'm a huge Paul Simon fan and the tracks on Harper Simon's My Space page sounded remarkably like tracks Paul might have written. And after a quick look at the liner notes, I was delighted to find that Paul Simon actually had contributed lyrics for a couple of the songs. But the album's a gem of its own making. The faster songs bounce you even as bittersweet lyrics rip at your heart, and the melodies soar and soar and soar. The final track, "Berkeley Girl," has a musical phrase in it that's such an echo of a phrase from "The Dangling Conversation" (Simon & Garfunkel) that my heart stopped a second, then raced to catch up to the song. That's not to say it's ripped off, oh no. The son's song is the son's, but there's some of the best of the dad in there, too.*

"The Dangling Conversation" was a track off of Simon & Garfunkel's "Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme" album. A high school friend had told me Simon & Garfunkel was the bomb, so being the sheep I was then, when I saw this cassette in a bargain bin nestled between "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and "Greatest Hits," I bought all three. But I didn't really turn onto the music until my grandfather finally broke down and went to the doctor about his aching back only to find the pain was liver cancer and that the liver cancer was--so sorry--actually lung cancer that had already spread. As rocker Warren Zevon would tell David Letterman years later on the show Letterman devoted to Zevon a few months before he died of lung cancer himself: "I may have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years."

For me, the winter of 1992 was a blur of weekend trips to Lisbon Falls, ME to watch my last living grandparent wither a bit more each time I saw him. I got through it with a Walkman--remember when that was cutting edge?--and it was those Simon and Garfunkel tapes that serenaded me as I wore out the asphalt in laps around Grampy's block. I'd listen to those same tapes on the long trip home when my sister and I folded down the back seat of the station wagon and lay down in what we called the way bag, eyes trained on the clouds I could see through the rear window, ears trained on "The Dangling Conversation" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" and "Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall" and "Kathy's Song" which in my teen brain was clearly about the way the music kissed me as I started my days and who cares if the Kathy of the song spelled her name the stupid way because it was absolutely and undeniably about me, dammit.

The point is when music seeps in as a handmaiden to sadness, that music tattoos itself on your soul and sets your musical levels forever. So even if the adult I became enjoys bouncing around and laughing to goof pop, my heart will always be tugged by the soft lilting melodies that have an uncanny ability to carry sadness at the same time they buoy hope.

It's rare for me to love an album inside and out--I consider a record a find if it includes just one song that wiggles its airy way into my ear and won't let me let it go. But I love Harper Simon's debut. My heart felt ripped at the beauty of the softer songs like "The Shine" and "Berkley Girl," and when there was nobody coming along the dark street that winds between the gulf course and the cemetery, I danced down the center of the road to the "Cactus Flower Rag" (you'd be amazed how much the cross over step your coach used to make you do can feel like dancing when done in time to a melody).

Don't try to share any new music with me in the next week, maybe two. I'll be bathed in the hope and sadness of Harper Simon's debut and remembering how thankful I am for those rare and glorious times when I stumble across music that helps reconnect me to wonder.

* The echoed phrase is on the lyric "And she drives a Karmann Ghia" in Harper Simon's "Berkeley Girl." To me, this sounds like "And you read your Emily Dickinson" from Paul Simon's "The Dangling Conversation." Maybe not a direct match, but close enough to take my breath, anyway.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude For Trees

I'm obsessed with trees. Or I guess I should say I'm obsessed with admiring trees—I can't be bothered to spoil the mystery by memorizing names out of a guidebook. But in the photo albums for every trip I've ever taken, there's at least one random tree photo. My husband doesn't quite get my firm belief that the way a tree curls in some new somewhere is every bit as much the point of a trip for me as noting (yes, yes, very nice) the exact spot where idiot one slew idiot two during a heated argument about some peccadillo you can be is no where near worth dying over . And he absolutely can't understand why I'm totally bored by the thought of visiting Chicago and absolutely charmed by the idea of flying across country to California and renting a car to drive along coastal roads for hours to reach a Redwood forest so I can stand at the base of trees I can't even come close to putting my arms around and stare up in abject wonder at just how small I really am.

"But monkey," he says. "They're just big trees."

"You are SO not getting the point," I tell him as I make a mental note to put the Redwoods on my wish list of solo vacations. Because the only thing worse than not seeing the Redwoods at all would be seeing them with someone who glances up for a second, nods, and says: yup, big trees.

This morning, Mike got to see just how passionately (and perhaps frighteningly) attached to trees I can be. Today, the big tree behind our condo building (oak, I think) was scheduled for a trim. Our condo association has been waging an annual battle against a troop of squirrels who treat the branches of that tree as a causeway to the relative luxury of our warm attic space. After deciding that the cost of rehabilitating our squirrel squatters has grown too high, all of the condo owners agreed it was time to shut down the rodent expressway above us: the tree would be trimmed.

So it wasn't a surprise to me when the chainsaw chorus in my backyard stirred me awake this morning, but what floored me was the discovery that the genteel pruning I was expecting looked more like an amputation. One of the main boughs had been stripped of every spider limb, and there was a hard-hat-wearing guy in a bucket seat chopping the bony branch down piece by piece.

My hand flew to my head which felt immediately hot. To say I flipped out would be an understatement. There were curses. Impassioned pleas to my husband to stop the slaughter, a frantic call to the condo association president during which I managed to relay that whatever she'd told them to do, the butchers had gone tree-toppling mad, that a quarter of the tree was gone, and there were neighbors on the ground looking up at the workers with their hands on their hips.

The condo association president tried to tell me that all was well, explain that we had a legal right to cut the branches that affected our property, that a tree can and will survive the loss of one or more main boughs, that she'd come back to check on things. But she seemed to be missing the headline: a big and beautiful branch had been sliced down in pieces.

All I could think about was the permanence of this mistake. All I could do was watch helplessly as the wood that used to be a bough was being turned into mulch, and, when I hung up the phone, I cried. Hard. Because a beautiful branch that yesterday had wended its way out and up, reaching and reaching and reaching, had been cut down and erased in less time than it took for me to snap fully awake.

What is it about trees that's so primal for me? Is it the way they yield to the wind on one day and stand tall again the next? The way they radiate natural beauty in every season whether people bother to notice them or not? The way they still my breath and mind when I take a second to stop and watch? The way they start in the mess and the muck of the dirt to burst forth and patiently, patiently grow into this spiderweb tangle that reaches higher and higher and higher? I don't know the right reason any more than I can tell you the name of the short and gnarly trees that line the path in the park on Crest Avenue in Winthrop that I go out of my way to walk under every day. I just know that I like the way liking trees makes me feel. That I'm grateful that something so simple can please me so much.

Now that operation tree top is done, I can see that the end product isn't as brutal as it looked like it was going to be while the chopping was taking place. Something about seeing the branch fall brutal bit by brutal bit was too hard to take. I can see now that the tree is fine, or mostly fine. That all will be well. All will be fine. Still the visceral reaction lingered, so I calmed myself with a tour of the trees I've captured in my travels around the world, and shared a handful. There are a couple from Australia (Watson Bay in Sydney and Uluru in the Outback), another from a gorilla habitat at the Bronx Zoo, one from a farm in Northern New Hampshire, one from a Folk Festival in the Berkshires, and another from the lovely Llanberis, Wales. I bet you can't tell for sure which is which. And maybe that's the magic of the trees— their growth and striving is absolutely borderless.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Fall Heat Waves

It's 9 o'clock in the morning, and I don't want to be here today. Nope. No way. Because it's November 10 and 61 degrees outside, the third of three days I would have been happy to enjoy in early May. I want to leash Bo up and go for a long and —here's the key—coatless walk. There's not as much bright and shining sun as there was yesterday, but I'll smile as if there was.

Because when I got back from a fantabulous visit with friends in Los Angeles in July, I came home in a funk. Not because the trip was so good it made me want to live there, but because I knew that we Bostonians had five more weeks of summer left to enjoy before the fall heralded the beginning of the l-o-n-g winter season, while my California girls never, ever have to think about rationing their warmth.

As if on cue, November in Boston came on the back of a particularly ferocious cold front that had me digging through closets in search of hats and gloves for those early morning walks. But in my envy for constant sunshine, I forgot about the special brand of euphoria that comes with an unseasonable reprieve. The absolute high of hearing your ipod click to Katrina and the Waves when you are quite literally walking on sunshine yourself and by all rights shouldn't be. This is November, people. November!

So today I'm grateful for the warming trifecta. And to my friend who pointed out that it made her think about polar bears stranded on chunks of ice that had broken free, I say Bah Humbug! I hate the thought of a forlorn polar bear as much as the next person with an ounce of compassion, but there's nothing I can do to help him from Boston, so I choose to go out and enjoy Boston's impression of November in LA. God knows we'll all need the sunny memory when the mercury drops below zero in a few months...

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for The Next Ten Minutes

My husband has a theory about the mercurial nature of happiness: unhappiness sprouts in minds stuck in "big time" while happiness blossoms in those that understand how to use "little time" to reach big-time goals.

Big-time thinkers—aka the miserable ones—focus on the year it will take to finish the project; the hundred-thousand good choices that need to be made to reach a healthy goal weight; and the thousands upon thousands of hours it will take to write a book, revise a book, shop and sell and pub a book.

Little-time thinkers focus on the next small step they can take right now to move toward the big goals they want to reach. And never mind that moving forward is inching forward. Forward is forward is forward.

The year I spent as a freelance writer I understood this. I took on way more than I could reasonably finish in an eight-hour workday. Scratch that. I took on more than I could reasonable finish in a twelve-hour workday. I realized quickly that focusing on the the many deadlines advancing toward me like the push of humorless troops armed with pocket watches and metaphorical whips was a recipe for hyperventilation, so to preserve a regular breathing pattern, I developed a system: I filled my to-do list with 30-minute project chunks and set an alarm. Each time the buzzer bleated, I crossed an action item off instead of waiting a month to cross the whole project off a much more stagnant list. I was still ridiculously overstretched, but I wasn't hyperventilating. That's the second ingredient in a happy life, I think. A distinct lack of hyperventilation.

So I know that little time works in theory. Set a realistic goal and then forget all about the big project as you focus on the little chunks you can do now. Little time isn't exactly a new thought. Some thinker that came before both my husband and I coined the idea that the only way to eat an elephant was one piece at a time. But I need the occasional refresher course.

Yesterday, for example.

I've been so focused on sprinting to the healthy me, that I didn't notice the storm brewing--all of a sudden I realized that there's very little wiggle room for human frailty in my diet. Cookies. There's no room for cookies. Or hand-cut french fries. Or yellow cake with buttercream frosting from Party Favors. Or chicken tikka masala. The cravings were likely a figment of the period that started this morning (and there's mention of that again, boys), but the thinking that I'd never have any of these things again was very real. Wrongheaded, but real.

Enter Mike's little time theory. He pointed out that I've been locked into big time on this, and so obsessed with getting to the first weight-loss benchmark by Christmas that I've pumped up the exercise and pared back the calories so far that there's not much wiggle room for anything but perfection. And two pounds a week is a lot when you've already burned off 34 pounds.

"Just make good choices for the next ten minutes, and everything else locks into place."

So in that ten mintues, I recalculated my daily calorie range based on a more humane goal of losing 27.5 pounds by January, 2011. Pushing the date 14 months into the future makes big-time me a little crazy, but little time me will be all the happier for it.

How much more happily productive would I be if I could remember to be grateful for the next ten minutes in all my projects? If organizing the house was a series of little time triumphs. If revising the book was a series of ever-smaller chunks: sections or scenes or paragraphs. Can I get a word by word? A letter by letter?

Today I'm grateful for Mike's reminder that life is too big to be squandered in big-time anxiety. That life is lived, moment-by-moment, in the little-time now. Today I'm grateful to focus on what I can do in the next ten minutes.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for the Lesson

Mary had a heart attack yesterday.

She was walking her spotted dachshund along the Boston Common side of Beacon Street when the dread of what was to coming crept over her. A tightness of the chest? A tingling of the arms? I don't know. I couldn't see her face from my side of the street. The only reason I can be sure that she knew it was coming at all was because she was screaming at anybody nearby: "Will you take my dog?!"

Ahead of me, on my side of the street, a crowd of men I took for tourists started talking in French that was too fast for me to understand anything but the word "chien." Dog.

Mary, screamed again, more insistent this time, clearly distressed as she took another step into the street. One of the French men glanced at the stream of traffic zipping up the hill. The tension in the air was palpable. Dread mingled with an electric charge. She started sobbing as she inched toward the middle of the street. My stomach bottomed out. Alarmed, I called to her, meaning to ask if she was all right, but before my second word was out, Mary was down. A heavy woman, solid, and yet her strong legs swayed, then buckled as if they held all the strength of limp noodles. She folded first to her knees, then to her hands, and then she rolled over onto her back right there in the middle of Beacon Street. Someone yelled, call 9-1-1, so I did as I beelined for the center of the road.

One woman grabbed the dog's leash as I waited for the phone to connect. In the road, Mary lay on her back, her rouged cheeks puffed up on a face that was upside down to me, her hand over her chest. No shortage of people had rushed out, but everyone was hanging back; nobody was talking to her. So I told her my name was Cathy, asked her hers, the dog's. Her name was Mary, she told me. The dog was Happy. When I told her I was calling for an ambulance, she stretched her fingers toward me, her voice childlike:

"Will you hold my hand, please?"

The traffic veered around us. I dropped the pack I was carrying, laid my binder beside that. I put the GPS unit I was using to direct me to a client's house on the ground in front of me beside my purse. Then I took her very cold fingers in mine as I tried to relay information to the 9-1-1 operator. The traffic swerved behind us.

I looked over my shoulder to see how close those cars were. Too close. "Could someone wave the cars around so I don't get hit?" I asked. So I don't get hit. Not we.

Mary's fingers squirmed in my hand. I assured her that help was on the way, and asked her questions the 9-1-1 operator was asking of me. Did she have nitroglycerin? Not on her, she said in a child's cry. A history of heart disease then? A keening, then a drawn out yes. How old was she? Sixty.

A biker stopped, introduced himself as a physician, and went to work loosening the coat around Mary's chest. My hand still in Mary's, I noticed my GPS was gone, and I asked after it. The woman with the dog told me it was just here somewhere. It was mine, I told her. Beside Mary, the physician called out to passersby—did they have nitroglycerin? Aspirin? Someone came forward with a bottle of Bayer. Someone else a bottle of water. Mary choked it all down. The 9-1-1 operator assured me help was coming, then my phone buzzed and the connection was gone.

My GPS got pulled out of Mary's handbag. I took it from the woman. "That's mine," I told her again. Like it mattered. Like I thought she might think I was stealing.

Mary's fingers were still in mine when she started crying about her dog. Where was he? Where was he?

"Here," the woman holding the leash said.

The poor dog was shaking hard enough his collar tinkled, but when I reached my right hand toward him and called his name, he inched closer. I sat like that a few seconds, a minute maybe, my left hand in Mary's, my right hand stroking Happy.

The fire truck arrived first.

As the medics poured on the scene, I remembered I was late, pulled my hand from Mary's, collected my stuff, and slipped back into the crowd without sticking around to find out what happened to Happy, what became of Mary. The only sign that something out of the ordinary had happened was my hands. They shook as I climbed the stairs to my appointment a few minutes later.

I'm sure Mary's gonna be fine. The fact that she was lucid enough to answer questions seems like a sign of survival to me. But what shook me up was the three strikes I racked up quickly. When Mary needed someone to be present with her while her heart ripped her world open, I let myself be distracted with thoughts of preserving my safety, my electronics, my schedule.

What kind of person does that make me?

I don't like any of the answers I came up with yesterday. I like the answers I've come up with this morning even less. But deeper than that, I feel like the message that keeps surfacing from all this is "be present"—not that I have any idea what that might mean in terms of my day-to-day life. I guess today it's enough that I'm grateful for the invitation to the lesson. Maybe that's enough period.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for The Beach

Last night I walked Bo on—not along—the Winthrop Beach outpost. The tide was low enough to let us pass between the crashing waves and the craggy rocks that are too treacherous to travel through in the light—never mind the dark. The people of Winthrop call any movement along the water a wave, but I grew up near the New Hampshire seacoast. I know a real wave has the power to hold you upside down just long enough that you're still laughing when you sputter back to the surface. In Winthrop, the waves are beautiful and calming, but they're nothing more than ripples from some restless mermaid's bath.

The outpost—that's just my name for it, nothing official—is my favorite part of the beach. To reach the water here requires a climb down two staircases, and, once there, you're annexed from Winthrop Beach proper by several impassable jetties. Not many people bother with this little spit of seaside, so because of that, descending to the shore here, particularly when the packed sand is glistening, unmarred by anyone who walked there before you, is descending into another world. An easy transfer to a calmer country, a quick trip to the dark side of the moon. Here, you remember things you'd thought you'd forgotten, allow your brain to turn away from whatever thoughts had you low down, as if what was bothering you just needed communion with the tide to remember how to ebb and ebb and ebb. And at night, when the only light comes from a dim streetlamp, an even dimmer moon, and whatever of those two is reflected on the baby white caps lolling in toward the shore, it's as if the whole purpose of the crash and hum of Winthrop's wee waves is this reminder: the only thing that will really matter tomorrow is remembering to breathe today.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Physical Strength

So picture me running this week, my ipod cranking up the goof pop, my feet flying, my muscles making quick work of the five inclines on my running route, laughing when I realize that I'm sailing--as in easily--by the restored Victorian house that used to mark the part of the run where my face turned blood red, my legs screamed, and I could hardly catch my breath.

But no more!

I've flown through my runs so fast this week that I have muscle soreness. Not cramps! Soreness. As in I ran hard enough to build muscle. As in I had the steam to run hard enough to build said muscles.

And best yet? My handy Nike/ipod/pedometer thing tells me I was averaging 1o minutes and 52 seconds per mile. So, no, the international Olympic committee isn't exactly beating my door down, but in June it took me more than 50 minutes to run a 3.5-mile road race. And when I started the race, the time clock wasn't even on! Now granted, the field was so packed that there were some points in that race that I had to jog in place and others when I was being passed by pedestrians on the sidewalk, but any way you cut it, 50+ minutes is slow. A pace that has all the fleetness of a garden slug.

Now I've cracked the 11 minute mile! Happily. With a grin on my face! I am the bionic woman: sh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh--nng! I think people recognize the new bionic me, too. There have definitely been a couple of double takes as I pass that I'm choosing to believe have everything to do with people recognizing my new steel core and nothing to do with the fact that I'm a runner with a goofy grin plastered on her face. I'm further choosing to believe that those second looks have even less to do with the fact that, on occassion, I answer the lyrics of my goof pop running selections. Out loud. Like when the song my husband and I chose for our last dance at our wedding comes on and serenade me with"Wow! Look at you now!" and I giggle and say something that sounds in my head like you're damn right, look at me now but I'm sure comes out more like "pant, pant, yeah, giggle, pant, hee-hee!"

So I'm grateful for the clear proof of the added muscle mass, I am. But if the scale wants to start heading back in the right direction (aka DOWN), I'd be grateful for that too.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Sickening Dread

If you've never ridden in a car with a GPS device to help you navigate your way from point A to point B, you may not know that when you miss a turn—either deliberately or because the jerkwad in the next lane wouldn't let you in—the machine will turn the little car on the map (the icon is GPS-speak for "you are here") before realizing that you are so NOT here. Then, there's a hiccup and a robotized female voice says recalculating as your trip remapped to accommodate your detour.

I'm sure the engineers who programmed the GPS to say "recalculating" intended it as comforting shorthand for we'll get you back on track in a jiffy, but the drop in the timbre of robo woman's voice combined with the way she lingers on the long vowel sound in re-caaal-culating makes it sound for all the world that the person in the driver's seat (AKA me) has been nothing but a colossal disappointment to her, and could I please follow simple directions for once in my sorry little life.

I realized recently that I have an internal GPS.

As models go, I can't recommend it for mass production because the thing has yet to offer me step-by-step instruction on the best route to any of my goals. But it's aces at telling me when I've gone off track. I'm not so crazy that I actually hear some robotized female voice, but I do feel it as a black hole in my stomach that, if left unchecked, will creep up my body to my neck, then up and over my chin, my face, my eyes and hair. And though it's often way wrong about the little things—did I leave the oven on? did I remember to attach the file to that email? will that whacko whose trunk I slapped when he almost ran me over while I was out running yesterday track me down and shoot me at point blank range?—it's pretty much never wrong about the big things. The things that matter.

At the end of my day off yesterday, the dread swamped me—my inner GPS was recaaaaalculating all over the place–and I was glad. Not because having my head swallowed by darkness is such a pleasant experience, but because on a day when I had nothing but time, I only saved an an hour for my writing. My inner GPS can't tell me the best way to finish the novel I'm revising, but it's smart enough to send up a flare when I only use one measly hour of the twenty-four I had free to work on it.

There are times when putting aside an hour in a day is an act of faith—it's all the time I have so I use it. But yesterday wasn't one of those days, and I'm grateful to the vortex of my inner GPS for reminding me that all my excuses disguise the truth: that I'm scared out of my ever-loving mind.

But given that I believe that fears stand up to scrutiny about as well as the Wicked Witch of the West stood up to a bucket of water, I'll say it right here, right now: I'm afraid I don't know how to revise this book.

Any minute now the green skin of fear will start pooling around my feet. No?

How about if I voice this fear: If you don't get your thumb out of your ass, like right this very minute, you risk never finishing a revision at all.

Now there's a fear that feels like a bucket of water tossed in the face. What a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude For Days Off

Yesterday may have been an exercise in reminding myself why my job is working for me, but today's my day off and there is nothing--nothing--like waking up with an empty day yawning out before me--no scheduled appointments, no expectations. Bliss.

Sure there are things I want to do, and plenty more things I should do (hello, laundry!) but this day's mine all mine, and when my day's my own, wondrous things happen. Like piling up revised pages. And the pancakes I'm eating as I type. The healthy, wheat kind, but pancakes nonetheless. You know. The breakfast we love to eat but never have the time to make? Yeah. Pancakes. Later I might go a little crazy and roast me some veggies for lunch. It's like I'm made of time! Here's my current wish list for today:

1. walk my dog on the beach (an extended walk on this gorgeous fall day),
2. run a 5K (the equivalent distance, not a race),
3. shower (I'll need it after number 2),
4. laundry (because it's nice to have clean clothes on busy days),
5. three writing goals (two scene revisions and the start of a new scene),
6. reading (I'm currently loving "The Patron Saint of Liars" by Ann Patchett),
7. wedding photo sort (I need to decide which wedding photos I want to print before my prepaid card at Ritz expires),
8. blogging, and
9. pancakes.

And with this post, numbers 8 and 9 are done. Let's see how this sunny of sunniest days shapes up, shall we? Yes. Yes, we shall.

*Except maybe waking up on the morning of the first of TWO days off. Like in a row. Like normal people. And with that, my 2010 resolution list has officially begun.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for: Gratitude

I know, I know. True gratitude springs from an overflowing heart. It's supposed to be as pure as icy mountain air and as warm as the patches of sun that woo cats to while away their quiet afternoons. And that's all good--a fine ideal to strive for--but for me gratitude is a tool. A powerful tool, but a tool.

Despite all the blessings in my life, I aspire to gratitude. By that I mean that my full understanding of the many things I have to be grateful about are too often--and too easily--eclipsed by complaints and worry. But I've found that I can scratch the needle off the record of complaint by transforming it to gratitude.

An example: When I get down about my job, I count the hours I spend from the time I leave my house until the time I get back, I focus on how my work schedule--evenings and weekends--means I can't take classes, teach classes, spend time with friends who work traditional hours, or even do something as simple as blow a Saturday farting around with my husband. The complaining doesn't change any of that, of course. It just makes me feel like I'm going through my day with weights sewed into the lining of my clothes. But I've found I can switch my thinking quickly by focusing on grateful realities:

1. In the shakiest economic downturn of my lifetime, I'm grateful to have steady income.
2. Though it's true this schedule is social kryptonite, I'm grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with friends who have non-traditional schedules.
3. I'm grateful that this job leaves my mornings free to write. By being able to prioritize my writing on my daily to-do list, I finished a first draft of a book and am hard at work on a revision.

If I just remember to trade complaints for thanks, my no-good-terrible-very-bad-days* are absolutely bearable. Gratitude is a bit like magic that way. And if that's not something to be thankful for, I don't know what is.


* With apologies to Judith Viorst

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for: Low Tech, Too

Stacks of books, an old iron spoon my mom used to teach me how to cream butter for cookies, a cup of tea—no cream, no honey, just tea—old-fashioned twist can openers, slippers, the warmth of the voice that comes from a record, the smell of turkey roasting in the kitchen, the peace of the silence between my husband and me that's our tacit rejection of society's dictum that we should be talking or doing or striving at all times, purple tulips, singer-songwriters who aren't afraid to write songs that are just guitar and voice, tap water, and the carpet of leaves on lawns that belong to people who understand that rakes in the fall are like yuppie tyranny against nature. But above all else, my favorite low tech lovelies are pen and paper. Specifically, any pen with black ink and a hefty grip and simple paper (spiral-bound notebooks from CVS, composition books, legal pads—anything unassuming will do, though I much prefer college-ruled sheets). But the paper is really secondary to the pens.

Oh my pens.

There's nothing quite like the pleasure of long hand in a type, type, type world. Nothing like sprawling across the bed in my office-slash-guest room, staring at a blank page, pen poised to fill it. Nothing like the smooth, cool plastic of the barrel of a Pentel RSVP pen against the skin at the tips of my thumb and index finger. Nothing like the sound of the scratch of the fine point scribbling across the page. Nothing like the sour, nutty smell of black ink that grows stronger the longer I write, the smell wafting up like low tide for writers. Nothing like the bumpy Braille of the inked words beneath my fingertips as I brush my hand over a page full of fresh writing. Nothing like the way inked pages crinkle when I turn to the next, fresh page.

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for: High Tech Lovelies

I was born in 1975, grew up during the eighties, and was a high school student during the high-waisted nineties. The first national news story I remember clearly was the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. I had two very clear sense memoriesfrom that day. The first was guilt. During our kindergarten election, I had fallen in love with Carter (something about his background as a peanut farmer charmed the 5-year-old in me and I drew haearts around his photo on the mock ballot Mrs. Valardo handed out). Could my love of the peanut man have hurt the jelly bean man? Such is child logic.

The second was utter impatience. We were in the car driving--this was prime music time given that turning on the home stereo was a rarity--and the men on the air were just yak, yak, yaking about this shot in the arm when what I needed--most desperately--was my daily fix of Olivia Newton John or Air Supply. But an illustration about the evolution of my musical tastes aside (and I'm a firm believer that you cannot hold a 5-year-old responsible for something like musical taste), the point is that during this national crisis, the radio was my primary source. Not the television, not the Internet, not the blogosphere, not tweets, not Facebook, not YouTube. And while we're at it, when I did get to play a record at home it was a record (I think at that time I had one from Lionel Ritchie and one of Olivia Newton John in workout gear, but my memory is hazy). And if I wanted to take my music with me to my grandparents' house, I was all out of luck (ha!) because ipods weren't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs's eye. And let's not even talk about how it would be ten years before my family bought its first desktop computer--a 486.

I think it's fair to say that since 1981, technology has prolioiferated. The VHS released us from the tyranny of first-run movies, the DVD opened the door for netflix and freed us all from the patchy selection at our local video stores which have gone quietly out of business as more and more people get red envelopes in the mail. Tivo has released us from anything so quaint as a programming schedule, and the 30-second skip button has pardoned all of us from ever having to watch any commericals we don't want to see (though in our house, we will often rewind to catch the latest Mac vs. PC commercial--but only once, and then we skip it after that).

On the highways, I have a GPS to keep me from getting lost without having to carry a piece of paper in my hand, and if I want a cup of tea, I can tell the GPS to find me the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. And when I'm on the highway, I have a transponder that links my lincense plate to my credit card so I can zip through the tolls while the rest of the saps wait to pay their actual dollars to an actual person. I'm grateful for the time that little plastic square saves me, of course, but I'm at least equally grateful for the sense of awe I feel as I peer at the drivers who still haven't gotten a fob knowing that the highway department gives them away for free now.

And last night I went jogging with my new nano which means I had a mix tape of goof pop I love without having to spend hours making anything so silly as a mix tape. And that nano was connected to a pedometer attached to my shoe that tracked my mileage. Actually, it did one better than that. I punched in how far I wanted to go and at the halfway point a robot woman interrupted the song to tell me I was halfway there. Then in the home stretch she (it?) let me know when I had 400 meters, 300 meters, 200, 100 to go. When I was done she (it?) congratulated me on finishing my workout. The five year old I was would sum all this wonder up with apt lyrics from one of her least favorite Olivia Newton John songs: You have to believe [this is] magic.

But electronics aren't magic. What's magic are the advances in medicine. After the run, I got a migraine (my seocnd in a couple of weeks, and I have to think that the aspartame in my gum isn't as innocuous as I thought it was). And though I lost the rest of the night, a couple Imitrex (a blood-brain barrier medicine) and a good night's sleep and I'm ready for a long day. Well, a bit tired, and a little shaky, but as a kid with migraines I used to lose days. So this is magic.

And with that I got to run. But when I hook up my ipod to my car stero and punch in my GPS route and zip through the fast lane with a head that's good as new, I'll be thinking about how grateful I am that it's 2009 and not 1981. For technilogical upgrades, yeah, but the political upgrades aren't too shabby either. Reagan to Obama in one generation, baby. Now there's a post
all by itself!

Bo-Bo Knows 30 Days of Gratitude

I had so much fun writing about shredding in October, I've decided to experiment with monthly themes. And because this is the month with the Thanksgiving holiday in it, I figured gratitude was the timeliest follow up. That and lately I've had a Goldilocks-like fixation on everything in my life that's either too hot or too cold and thought it was high time to start thinking about all the things in my life that are juuuust right.

If you're worried about high-minded sappiness, well, that's a valid concern. The only thing I can tell you is that while there might be some grand ideas (freedom of speech springs immediately to mind) and some heart string ideas (my peeps spring immediately to mind here), at the other end of the spectrum I can't imagine writing 30 mini essays about the things that make me go yay without at least one entry about fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies (the Ghirardelli recipe because it kicks Tollhouse's ass in the tasty goodness category which is really the only category that matters with cookies).

Here's how this will work. Every day I add a blog entry, I'll come back to this jump page and add a link here so at the end of the month, the links to all the entries will be right here on this one page. Ready? Here we go:

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for High Tech Lovelies

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Low Tech, Too

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Gratitude

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Days Off

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Sickening Dread

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Physical Strength

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for The Beach

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for The Lesson

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for The Next Ten Minutes

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Fall Heat Waves

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Trees

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for New Music

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Groom Gripes

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Kitchen Marvels

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for the Dawn

Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Dogs

Bo-Bo Knows The End (Shred Day 30)

Done! Finished! The End! Woot! Woot!

And though taking my measurements made me feel more like a lumpy sofa than a triumphant athlete, here are my fitness numbers after 30 days of shredding:

• Weight: Down 3.4 pounds
• Bicep: Down 1 inch
• Thigh: Down 1/2 inch
• Hips: Down 1.5 inches
• Breast: No change (My B-cup girls are grateful for the net zero here.)
• Waist: Down 1 inch*

I look at these numbers--by all measures, a success--and I think every number here should be bigger, much bigger. And yet, I've lost 34 pounds since the start of the summer--that's like rubbing out a whole leg, only the weight loss is more evenly distributed. It's only right that my weight loss should slow to a pound-a-week trickle (though the foot-stomping three-year-old in me is pouting--are we there yet?)

Getting fit's a hairy mind trip, isn't it?

I remind myself that my go-to pants were in storage a month ago, my clinging shirts no longer have a spare tire to cling to, I can take the groceries up the stairs without getting winded, my mood is better in general, and--perhaps most importantly--I believe there's a healthy fit body waiting for me at the end of this journey. And maybe even more importantly than even that last one, I also recognize that getting to that healthy body is the end of the first leg of a lifetime journey, not an end in itself. For now, though, I'm choosing to be psyched to report that on this Halloween Day, I'm dressed as a slightly more shredded version of myself.

Werewolves are sooo overrated.

* Some of you may be wondering why my waist measurement increased an inch in the last week. I did have a frozen yogurt, but I suspect it has more to do with forcing my sleepy husband to get up and help measure me before 8 a.m. on a Saturday. First he tried to measure me from a prone position. Then he tried to, keeping his eyes closed against the light, measure me half-heartedly. When I pointed out that I was getting measurements at or in excess of my readings at the start of the month, he measured again:

Me: If you go all tourniquet, you're not doing me any favors.
Him (grinning): I know where my bread is buttered.
Me (laughing): Just do it right!
Him (getting up like the sleeping bear he is): Your name is mud.

So the results may be a bit hairy, but fitting into old clothes is real. And the subjective truth is this. I feel stronger. I feel amazing, actually. I feel ready to take on those last (sigh) 27 pounds. Maybe next month I'll be ready to scratch the sigh.