Friday Goals

Well, it's Friday again. Time to set some goals for the weekend. Unfortunately, my last set of Friday goals were derailed by illness, so my goals for this weekend are pretty similar:

• Paint Timmy (I finished his paper mache tonight, and put out the call for rebar on Freecycle)
• Go the Cocoa Village Arts and Crafts show. RSVP to me if you plan to come along!
• If Timmy is dry and has legs and shoes, take him out to be photographed for the annual holiday card. If he does not have legs and shoes, stay home and rectify the situation as time is getting short!
• -Alt--If it doesn't look like Timmy will be complete, see if I can safely use Rudolph one last year

So tell me -- what are your goals for the weekend? Watching TV doesn't count!

Perspective

Sometimes when I am feeling down I try to think hard about what is that is really missing from my life. It's far too easy to convince myself that if I had more money or was thinner or had something I could be happier. But the fact of the matter is what is almost always missing is just perspective.

A true story: David was gone for most of the summer on a consulting job. One morning, I awoke to find all 5 of our cats WAY too interested in my slippers lying beside my bed. I got out of bed and lifted my slippers to find one very unhappy frog under them. The cats all converged, and with my husband 500 miles away, I had no choice but to wrestle the poor frog away from the cats myself. This is probably TMI, but I generally sleep nekkid... so there I am, nekkid, holding a very unhappy frog with 5 very excited cats wanting their toy back. With one hand holding the frog, I wrapped as much of myself in a blanket as I could, and went out onto the side porch to release the frog. I muttered to myself and the frog, "Dang, it, I bet no one in the world is having a bad a day as I am already."

The frog turned around, gave me the stink eye and said, "YOU? YOU? You are having a bad day? I just got attacked by 5 freaking cats!" Well, okay, he didn't actually say the words, but I saw it in his little froggy face. And I realized that no, I was not having the worst day in the world, and in fact, I probably was not even in the top 10. And I most definitely was not having a worse day than the frog.

The next time you are feeling down, perhaps needing a little motivation, step back, take a deep breath, and remind yourself, "At least I'm not the frog!"

On Being Good and Bad

One of the things that comes up often in relation to eating is the concept of "good" and "bad" foods. Salad=good, cookies=bad. I've spent a lot of time in the past associating what I eat with how I judge myself. If I had a hunk of cake, I was a bad person, if I had a salad I was good. Even knowing that raw veggies upset my stomach, I would still feel good about myself for eating a salad, despite being curled up in the fetal position from the stomach pains. But at least I was "good".

In hind sight, it's easy to say that this was completely insane on many levels. In the first place, food is just food. It isn't good or evil, and consuming food doesn't make me good or evil. But more importantly, why judge myself at all? As an atheist, I don't believe anyone or anything is inherently good or evil, especially not food. But for some reason, I, and many fat chicks, feel the need to judge ourselves by what we eat or what the number on the scale is.

I think we need some perspective. Here is my list of foods that there is legitimate reasons for feeling good or bad about eating:

Bad Foods:

• Wheel bearings -- despite the high iron content, they hurt your teeth
• Chick peas -- they are nasty and feel like you're eating little tiny icky eyeballs. And worse, at parties they sometimes disguise themselves as cheese dip, when in fact, it is Hummus, which is ground chick peas, which is the only thing more evil than whole chick peas.
• Hitler's brain -- I saw a movie about this once. Not something one should eat.

Good Foods:

• What ever you need or perceive that you need to sustain your mind and body.

The point here, is that food and consuming food does not make you good or evil. Whether you are good or evil depends on your own definition, which, at least for me, changes from day to day, and minute to minute. Right now, my definition of "good" is someone who keeps the litter box clean. My definition might be something different in the morning, but it doesn't ever have to be anything more; I don't need to rate myself as good or evil, I just am.

Your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- is to just be. Don't call yourself good or bad, and if you feel you must make a judgment, make it over something real, not about something you ate. Unless you ate some chick peas, in which case, you probably are evil.