My BIT

All right. Since Wende and scb are feeling self-conscious about being alone together in this enterprise for a better body, I have to join them, if only to encourage their efforts. Besides, I need encouragement too, and it makes no sense to me to let this opportunity go by.

Years ago, I purchased Bob Greene's "The Best Life Diet." At that time I was researching diets and low-glycemic index foods, healthy eating and lifestyle changes, and so on, and it seemed quite a sensible approach. So, that's what I'm going to use as my guide.

There's just one thing about it I really don't like, though it was probably important to me at the time I bought it. Greene places a lot of emphasis on analysing why you overeat. Are you stuffing down your anger? Your disappointment? Your frustration? Find new and better ways to deal with it, he says, and "have the best life you deserve."

(bleh)

Oprah wrote the introduction (of course). In it she writes:

Loving yourself means honoring yourself and your own feelings first. When I was 237 pounds, I didn't even know what I felt. It was like living behind a veil of fat.

I hesitate to say this, for all sorts of reasons, but I do not believe, in spite of being 75 pounds overweight, that I am living behind a "veil of fat."

No, I am living behind a veil of smoke.

I use cigarettes to "manage" my feelings. I have promised to quit and I have quit a few times in the last eleven years, but never for more than a month at a time. I've invested in courses from the Lung Association, pills from the doctor, nicotine gum...and now that the patch is available without prescription, I'll do that too.

I have to set a quit date and dig out my little cigarette charts to track and cut down on the number I smoke each day (about 20, now). Crikey, just typing this makes me so nervous, I'm reaching for the pack! They steady me.

Managing my emotions in a different way is going to be HUGE. I can't tell you.

Just a Small Project

No more soggy mail!
(The original one had lost its lid.)

Did you know the centre of my house is the mailbox--more or less? Crazy.

Who wants to make the mail box the focal point?

Now, for the light fixture. I'd like to either replace or repaint the one we have. If I could find a more attractive (and suitable) fixture for about the cost of a can of spray paint, I'll do it in a heartbeat! I'd want something plain--but somehow tied into the lovely trellis work. You can't see it, but the window in the front door is a simple diamond. A very simple arts and crafts style would be nice--or would it be too arts and crafts? I haven't a clue. But the current "carriage" style doesn't say anything nice (on my house. It'd be fine somewhere else, I'm sure.)

I went Windows shopping. Here's one from Home despot:



And here's one from our other Big Box store, Rona.

A bit ornate for my taste...but it has a diamond and the scrolly curves of the trellis. I would like it better if the face plate were square. I use compact fluorescent outside, so the frosted glass of the first one is preferable. I like this one, too (also from Rona) but the clear glass gives me pause:


(However, it is only $12!)

I seem to have lost all confidence when it comes to taste. Which one do you like?

From the Inbox

One of the great things about homeschooling is finding out about all the neat teaching tools out there.

A notice that these are available arrived in my mailbox today.




They are from Dover Publications. (psst, if you click on the link, you can follow a few more links and see Cindy and Michelle, too!)

Aren't they great?

Note the posture. Are Republicans upright and stiff? Are they unyielding? Or, are they trustworthy and dogged? Do they have necks?

Are Democrats sloppy and slouchy and not to be trusted--or comforting and laid back? Will they park my car for me?

I wonder if there would be outcry and brouhaha if Hillary had won the nomination instead? (Though I would feel vaguely indecent dressing and undressing Bill.)

I wish they had Canadian equivalents.

Giving Up....

It feels like giving up. It probably isn't. But it might be.

What am I giving up?

No, not food, not chocolate, no, nothing really that matters. No, I'm giving up on landscaping and gardening. My enthusiasm is finally waning. I'm not making any progress understanding what it is I'm supposed to be creating, so I'm going to stop trying.

I've been living, breathing, and dreaming about plants and plant care, designing with plants, pruning, soil, native species, ways to plant, styles of gardens, and studying (and trying to apply) each and every design principle so I can create a plan and get planting.

I give up. I can't figure out where to put the paths. I can't figure out where to put the planting areas. I've purchased two bushes--and already thinking that one of them was a mistake.*

I have to grade the front yard to ensure there is a 1" drop every 8 feet--and then plant the two bushes (probably on a great big mound of soil as I suspect we'll need a truckload of dirt). The husband is working on putting up new downspouts (had to be done as one of them ran down the trunk of the tree we axed). I still want to pressure wash the fence and paint it. And we need to mulch all the foliage we've got stacked in the backyard.

But the planning--I've hit a brick wall and it feels like defeat. I still don't know where to put anything--so I probably won't put anything anywhere. I'm very disappointed.


*The Isanti Dogwood. The beast is going to grow 8 to 10 feet around--if I don't whack at it constantly--though only five feet tall.

Crunching the Golden Numbers.

I've just read the most useful working explanation of the Golden Mean I've ever come across and I need to pass it along.

The Golden Mean is a ratio of proportion. The sides and length of a given rectangle are based on numbers which have a certain mathematical relationship to each other. It has connections to the Fibonacci sequence and the "Rule of Thirds" is loosely based on it too. (So I've read. I haven't the math skills to understand it clearly.)

I'm not going to try and explain the Golden Mean the complicated way. The easy way is this: take a dimension, say 12 feet. Multiply it by 1.618 to get a larger dimension. There you have one rectangle: 12 x 19.4. Alternately, you can multiply your given number by 0.618 to get a smaller dimension with the same Golden proportion. So, the smaller dimension would be 12 x 7.4.

Isn't that cool?

My house facade, as it turns out, is loosely based on the Golden Mean. The height of the roof on the right hand side is 12 feet. The husband and I estimated the peak at about 20. If it is, in fact, just under 19 1/2, then the roof heights are in perfect proportion to one another.

I also figured out that the left hand side of the house (including the width of the front stoop) is 18 1/2 feet. The right hand side of the house is 10 1/2 feet. The golden mean would have it be 11. Close enough.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to find this out! It's nice to know there's something elegant and vaguely classical about this generic Monopoly house of mine.

And now that tree has another reason to be taken down.

Another Idea

Notice anything different?

My neighbour had her son "who was in landscaping for six years" trim the tree. I was not at all impressed with his technique, but it's done.

We got to talking, though, and he recommended I build up the soil in order to plant. I fear he may be right. I was trying to figure out how deeply to dig my holes for the two dogwoods I bought today--and realised that we've disturbed the soil so much (especially where we took out the bush) that I have no idea where the "top" should be. He helped me figure that out (use the top of the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps as my guide).

Then a couple of other neighbours ambled down the street and said, in the nicest possible way, "This looks like a big project, what are you doing here?" I told them the truth, "I don't know anymore." We talked a bit and the fellow said he may have a saw the husband can use to take out the stump. I said I would send him down. He is picking up a heavy duty axe on his way home from work this evening thought.

Last night, I analysed my shadow pictures and studied up on asymmetry a bit more and drew the following.



The planting bed (between the house and the path) on the left side right drops down 16' at the sidewalk, and 14' on the right. (Right about where the sunlight is on the grass in the above photo, taken at 5:30 this evening.) From east to west, it extends 18' on the left and 11' on the right. I don't know how much I should raise it--except that dirt is supposed to slope one inch every eight feet down and away from the foundation. So, it should be 5 1/4" inches higher at the house end than the street sidewalk end. I haven't measured, but I bet it isn't.

Figuring out the math to calculate cubit feet of dirt needed is beyond me.

And that last tree has got to go.

Later--
You can call me insane, it's OK. I decided that as my trouble is with envisioning verticals, that I should make a scale 3-D model of the plan above. So, I did. It is very crude.

The first image in the sequences has no fence, the second, a fence along the west side only, and in the third there's a fence along the west side and west side front. It is to scale. The city will allow a fence 3.3 feet high (not including the height of the fence posts) in the front yard.

Looking head on:


Looking west:


Looking east:


Let's design by committee, shall we?

Which do you like best? No fence, one fence, or two fence?

Bit: or Biting off More than I Want.

Scb is to be applauded for just diving in and beginning. I have been in denial about my own weight issues for about seven years. I have such a precise figure simply because my daughter will be turning eight in less than a week. For the first year after she was born, I promised mysef to lose weight slowly and carefully. And I did--I got down to a weight that is about 50 lbs less than where I am now. That shocks me. See, 50lbs less than I am now was still "fat." I'd wanted to lose another 25-30, but I plateaued. So I gave up.

Of course, that means I have 75 lbs to lose, now. Impossible.

My knees are bad. My back is worse. My right arm has been bothering me for months. My feet, fortunately, seem to have stopped pronating (or whatever it is feet do when the arches "fall.")

And can you believe this? Digging out bushes, sledging concrete and walking, nearly every night for at least 1/2 hour, leisurely, to be sure, but still walking, has done nothing to the scales since we've returned from our trip 8-9 weeks ago now.

I can tell you though, I have lost a significant amount of weight in the past. Yep, about 70 lbs. It took nine months. Nine months of low-impact aerobics at the local Y (eventually I became a certified instructor and taught classes so my membership would be free), nine months of measuring out my food and recording everything I ate on a chart. Nine months of endless carrot sticks and eating (lightly floured) fried (baby beef) liver and onions every friday. Even though that was 20 years ago, I still remember it vividly. I just don't want to do that again.

I grew up in a house where my mother was always trying to lose weight. She always thought she was fat. She was always bemoaning her body. I do not want to continue that legacy. I grew up with absolutely no idea what was "normal" and what wasn't. At 13, I thought I had "fat thighs" and went on my first diet. Fortunately, I haven't dieted much at all, other than those two separate times.

But dieting does require you to focus, focus, focus on your body, your food, your excercise. And I honestly believe that intense focus is not healthy--though the process and the results may be.

So honestly, I don't know what to do.