Good Material

I'm sitting at Starbucks right now, all alone.  By that, of course, I mean I didn't come here with anyone, but we all know that one is never actually alone at Starbucks.  I came to get coffee and sit by myself to do some writing.  I didn't know when I got here what I would write.  I've recently caught a new spark for a story I started some time ago, and I've been jotting down ideas for it, so I thought I might come here to work on that.  I considered blogging, too, but then I'm pretty much always considering that.  If you could get inside my mind, you would know that at any given moment I might be composing some random blog post.  Clearly, most of those never actually get written.

Ah, but today is different.  Probably because I'm sitting right here with my computer, able to immediately pour my musings out onto my keyboard, as opposed to being in my van or on a walk/run or somewhere else.  I guess in a way my thoughts about my story have led to this post.  I've been adding to a list of ideas, and all of them are in some way connected to a real-life person, situation or event I personally know, have experienced or have heard about firsthand.  I think so much writing is like that, isn't it?  Sure, some writers imagine all kinds of circumstances and whole worlds that seem new and never before thought of, but the characters involved are surely inspired by reality.  That's what makes those stories so compelling, right?  As readers (and viewers, if I include movies and television in this thought), we connect with characters we can believe in, even if they're dealing with completely impossible "realities."  What would I do if I discovered the hottest guy at my high school is a vampire?  Would I volunteer if my baby sister's name was drawn to compete in a teenage death match in a post-apocolyptic society?  I guess I could learn to use a gun, too, if it was necessary to defend myself from the zombie horde.  Catch my drift?  So when I find myself trying to think of ideas for characters for a story, I don't have to look very far.

Ah, the benefits of people-watching to the writer's mind!  Right here at Starbucks, as I sip my coffee (which is almost gone and has gotten a little cold), I'm surrounded by good material.  To my right are two youngish people (college students?) who appear to be studying.  Not together, mind you.  They're just here together, but they clearly don't need each other to study.  She's working on conjugating verbs in Spanish, and he's doing something with a very fancy calculator and an iPad.  They chat from time to time, but not about what they're studying.  They know each other fairly well and have mutual friends, based on their conversation.

I've also managed to gather that the guy is married, but not to this girl.  But she knows his wife, and he's talked to his wife on his phone at least once since I've been here.  Hmmmm.  What's up with that?  Is the wife completely okay with this?  See how interesting this could be?  Good material.

Okay, Patrick Duffy's long lost twin just walked in.  Weird.

At another table is an older gentleman who walked in right before I did.  He did so with great effort, assisted by two canes, his legs bent and twisted, his back stooped.  I watched his interaction with the young girl at the counter, who was very polite and helpful and took his order to him at the table where he sat down.  As I stood nearby I seriously wanted to plop right down with him and have a conversation.  I wondered if it would be totally off-putting to him if I asked him outright about the nature of his condition.  Is this a form of cerebral palsy?  Has it been this way his whole life?  If I did, would he be offended, or would it seem refreshing to him that someone would be interested in talking, as opposed to just staring (which is what I think so many people do)?  Or would he wonder why I would think he's different from anyone else in this coffee shop who came in alone because they wanted to be alone?  Go away, lady.  Did I accidentally wear my Askmeaboutmylegs sign instead of my Mindyourownfreakin'business sign?  Gee, my bad.

I wonder what it would be like to know that no matter where you go, it is physically impossible to hurry.  I bet it would totally change the way you see the world.  I am, it seems, always in a hurry.  I wonder how much I fail to notice, how much I miss, that a man like this doesn't.  That's an interesting thought, considering the fact that the most natural thought someone like me might have about someone like him is He must miss out on so much.  Wow.  Good material.

Ever had a Starbucks Bistro Box?  Not cheap.  But I'm really hungry, and it's healthy, and I'm using a gift card.  How can I not have one?

There's a woman here by herself who is also furiously studying for something.  I'm curious, because she is definitely not college age.  Closer to my age, I think.  So is she taking college classes?  Getting some kind of license or certification?  Fulfilling a training requirement for her job?  Does she have kids?  Who is at home with them while she's here?  How can she think and retain information with this music playing????  I am regularly fighting distraction myself, and I'm in output mode.  It would be nearly impossible for me to process anything going into my brain right now.  And the guy next to me who isn't married to the girl he's here with just started whistling!  For the love of all that is holy, how am I supposed to be able to form a complete thought??!!  I can't decide if this is good material, because in my head I'm singing an opera-like song in Spanish.

The girl sitting across from me who is not married to the guy she's here with just said, "So apparently the double negative is not a thing in Spanish."  It's not a thing in English, either, pumpkin.  Contrary to popular usage, we don't have no double negatives.

A young Asian dude just walked in.  Also college age, undoubtedly also here to study for something.  I wonder if one day Jin will walk into a Starbucks or some other popular study spot to prepare for a college final exam, and someone will watch him and wonder things about him.  Maybe that person will want to just plop right down and ask him what happened to his leg.  I wonder if, by then, he would be completely annoyed by such an intrusion, or if he'd be happy to share his story with this stranger.  He gets so much attention right now, and I imagine that will be true for a very long time.  But will there come a time when Jin just wants to be invisible, when he chooses obscurity after an entire childhood of being the poster boy both for adorable Chinese orphans and adorable one-legged kids?  We shall see.  Good material.

A young Asian woman just came in and joined the young Asian dude, and they are chatting away in an Asian language that I can't readily identify.  How will Jin one day fit in with other young Asian Americans who are from families who still speak the languages and observe the customs from their original lands?  Who don't have completely white parents and siblings?  Will he have a hard time finding where he really fits in culturally, ethnicly, socially?   No doubt somebody with a PhD in social sciences will find this very thing to be good material.  Coming soon to a sociology journal near you.

Now there's another young woman here studying for something.  And a mutual friend joined the not-married couple.  He's wearing a camouflage cap, and his clear blue eyes and week's worth of stubble are really cute, even though his fingernails are seriously dirty.  Maybe he's been working on an engine, or a farm.  There are two older couples here, each sitting at a cozy table for two having an afternoon coffee and just quietly talking about whatever.  There's a heavyset young man at the counter waiting for his order.  He's wearing a bright green arm band like you might get at a concert or the state fair, and some kind of name tag sticker.  Wonder where he's been today.  The staff has grown to four people to cover this late afternoon shift. 

Here we all are, for our own reasons, most of us completely unconnected in our lives outside this Starbucks. 

So what would happen if the next customer decided to take us all hostage?  Or if an alien ship appeared out of nowhere in the sky and ugly green creatures began looking for potential subjects for their ghastly experiments?  Or if a wormhole opened in the men's restroom and we were all sucked into prehistoric Pasco County?  Who would emerge as a leader among us?  Who would have skills and knowledge to help us all survive?  Who would cause dissention in the group?  Who would turn to one another for comfort?  Who would completely lose his marbles?  Who would provide a little comic relief?  Who would be too out of shape to make it when we decide to run to Target right across the parking lot (because Super Target is a great place to hunker down in any survival scenario, don't you think?)?  Who would die in the first chapter (or episode)?

See what I mean?  Such.  Good.  Material. 

Too bad my story isn't about anything even remotely related to these ideas.  Still, perhaps one of today's Starbucks friends will make his or her way in, along with a whole collection of other real people I've encountered somewhere along the way.

Unless all I ever write are blog posts.  *sigh*


P.S.  This just in:  Cute camo-hat guy is going to a truck pull tonight.  A Truck. Pull.  Talk about your parallel universe.  So instead of the alien invasion, what if we all went with him? 

Who would emerge as a leader among us? 

Who would have skills and knowledge to help us all survive?

Heh heh . . .

I owned that soup.

Stick a fork in me (or maybe a spoon would be more appropriate), 'cause I'm done.

And to the Cabbage Soup Diet, I apologize for all those nasty, mean things I said about you, because it worked.  Here's proof:

Did ya see that?  Did you count those beads that have been moved to the "pounds lost" cup on the right?!  Uh huh.  That would be eight.  Eight sweet little beads representing eight hard-earned pounds.  And the bead resting on the edge between the two cups is another half pound . . . for a total weight loss of 8.5 pounds.  Wooooohooooo!

I don't mind saying that I'm pretty proud of myself.  Not so much for losing the weight, because I realize that a lot of it is surely water weight, and anyone can lose a fairly significant amount of weight in one week by eating the way I did for the last seven days, especially if that way of eating is radically different from the norm.  But that's exactly why I'm proud of myself... just for sticking to it with relentless commitment.  It took a lot of willpower, I tell ya.  Especially at the bridal shower I went to on Saturday, where they had chocolate fondue and a bunch of other amazing treats.  And at the Chinese New Year party I went to yesterday, where I literally ate only raw carrot sticks and sugar snap peas (although I did have the presence of mind to take a plate of delicious Chinese food to go so I can eat some for lunch today).  This kind of commitment to self-denial is pretty hard for me.  I don't think it's easy for anyone, really, so I'm totally patting myself on the back today.

Considering the success I've had, will I ever do the Cabbage Soup Diet again?  I seriously doubt it.  At least I won't do a week of cabbage soup, that's for sure.  After we got home from the party yesterday afternoon, I forced myself to eat a bowl of it just because I was so hungry.  But by the time I was getting ready for bed last night, the very thought of that stuff made me feel a little queasy.  No lie.  And that's the problem with this diet.  It requires you to eat ridiculous quantities of the exact same thing for a whole week, and you just get totally sick of it.  And believe me, there's absolutely nothing special about that soup.  It's just vegetables and water and a little bit of seasoning.  No special weight-loss ingredient, no secret fat-erasing mojo, no magical spooky dust.  It's just naturally healthy food that's not all crapped up with the stuff we usually put on our veggies, like loads of salt and butter.  So all week I could have been eating all that stuff, not to mention any other vegetables, in some other way, like steamed, roasted, sauteed (in cooking spray or just a tiny bit of olive oil), or on a salad, as long as I didn't cover it in salt, sauces, or dressings.  That would be a lot better, and I can see myself doing something like that again in the future.

As for the specifically prescribed food combinations that went along with the soup, that was a little weird, too.  Beef and tomatoes?  Bananas and milk?  Maybe there's some kind of scientific basis for the particular combinations the diet calls for on particular days of the week, but I haven't seen any explanation about that, so who knows?  Here's what I think the basic keys to this diet are:

1.  Eliminate refined sugars and salt from your diet.  Like, completely.  Go ahead and have a funeral for everything that tastes really fabulous.  Reminds me of something I read on a greeting card once:  "My diet plan:  If it tastes good, spit it out."

2.  Say "goodbye" to carbs.  Except for the two days of fruit, one day of bananas, a single baked potato (in the whole darn week), and brown rice on day seven (which I didn't even have, because I forgot to buy some, and by the time I got home yesterday I just wanted to hunker down, watch The Walking Dead, and ride it out until I could go to sleep).  That's it.  No white rice, no bread or noodles of any kind.  Not even whole wheat stuff, which is such a great source of fiber.  I guess they figure you're getting enough fiber from the mounds of veggies you're eating. 

3.  While you're at it, say "goodbye" to protein and fat, too.  Pretend that cows and chickens are only good to you dead, and nothing useful comes from their, um, nether regions.  The only thing available to you from these friendly farm animals is their meat, and even that is in limited quantities.  So you'll get a little bit of protein and fat on a couple of designated days, but you can forget about eggs or nuts (other great sources of protein), and just imagine you've never even heard the word "dairy" (except on banana day, when you can have as much skim milk as you want.  Whatever.).

4.  Drink water until you nearly drown yourself from the inside out.

Yep, that about sums it up.  So maybe eating this way for a few days isn't such a bad thing.  It certainly achieved the purpose for which I intended it: to kickstart my much needed weight loss.  Mission accomplished there, for sure.  But it's completely unbalanced, and I don't think it's a generally healthy way of eating over the long haul.  Our bodies need protein, some carbs, and even "good" fats, but we don't need them in the quantities our bodies are used to.  Well, at least my body.

So, my goal for this week (because I am far from reaching my overall goal.  See beads in left jar in above photo.) is to simply maintain this new weight.  Honestly, if I don't actually lose more weight this week, that will be okay with me, because I won't be eating the same way.  I do intend to continue sharply limiting my intake of sugar, salt, and fat, to keep drinking lots of water, and just eat less in general, but nothing as extreme as this past week.  I plan to work out more, though, because I only walked/ran three times last week.  So if it's another two weeks before I see any more pounds fall away, I will be satisfied with that . . . as long as I don't gain any of these back!

Anyone else out there have a weight loss or fitness goal you're pursuing?  I'd love to hear how you're doing it.  In our journeys toward being healthy and feeling good, it's always helpful to trade stories!

Update On This Stupid Diet That I Hate

It's day five. 

The good news is that I'm hanging in there and I haven't cheated. 

The bad news is that I'm hanging in there and I haven't cheated. 

Could someone please come to my house, tie me up, and force me to eat a chocolate chip cookie?  At this point, I'd even settle for a plain bagel.  I promise I won't press charges if you leave quietly, and maybe straighten up my kitchen on your way out.

Okay, so it's not that bad.  It's not like I'm starving, what with all the soup I can eat.  But I do still feel hungry quite a bit, and limitations on what I can eat are annoying.  Yesterday was banana day, so that was a bright spot.  I ate about five bananas throughout the day, and at least three of them were sliced up with cinnamon sprinkled on them.  Delish.  But still . . .  According to the official diet plan, yesterday was supposed to "lessen [my] desire for sweets."  Let's pause just a moment while I fall off my chair laughing.  As if some one-week diet is going to accomplish that.  Do these people know just exactly how much I desire sweets??!! 

Today is the day I've been dreading the most. It's beef and tomatoes day. I want to gag just thinking about it. Nothing even remotely sweet (i.e. fruit). And I hate fresh tomatoes. That means I'm going to have to saute them or something, but without any salt, of course. I'm supposed to eat ten-to-twenty ounces of beef, but I can substitute chicken for that, which I will definitely do, because I have a cholesterol thing. Oh, and I'm supposed to drink even more water "to wash the uric acid from [my] body." Uric acid??!! This sounds bad. Why would they make me eat something that's going to need to flushed out of my system? I bet cupcakes don't have any uric acid in them. Why can't today be cupcake day?

*sigh*

I suppose the other good news is that I think I have probably lost some weight.  I don't know how many pounds I've lost, because I won't weigh again until Monday, the morning after it's all over.  This diet promises a loss of ten pounds if you follow it to the letter, but that seems a little extreme to me.  I'm hoping for five.  Just five itty bitty pounds.  I don't think that's too much to ask.  But if it's less than that, I hope some unsuspecting Publix shopper isn't standing within striking distance of those scales, because I can't be responsible for my actions at that point.  I might hurt someone.  But I don't care.  As long as they drag me off to jail by way of the Publix bakery, I'll be fine.

And the other bad news is that I've realized that on day seven, our whole family is going to a Chinese New Year party with other families who have adopted from China.  I am so excited about this little gathering, for obvious reasons, but I am not happy about the fact that I will be able to eat . . . nothing.  That's right.  Nada.  Because day seven is beef and vegetables day, and although I'm sure there will be plenty of beef and vegetables at the party, they will undoubtedly be covered in some kind of delicious Asian sauces (which I love, by the way), making them off-limits to me and my stupid diet.  So I guess I'll be the one in the corner in the fetal position, eating raw carrot sticks from a Ziploc baggie.  Nice.

So, there you have it.  Consider yourself updated.  Enjoy your sugar in your coffee today and the piece of cheesecake you might have after lunch and the yogurt you possibly ate for breakfast, and the salt!  My goodness, the salt you will sprinkle over whatever you're eating for dinner, which probably will not be STUPID CABBAGE SOUP!!!!!!

Soup's On

When I want to know what I weigh, I go to Publix.  They have those ginormous scales there, right at the front of the store in full view of everyone in the check-out lanes.  It may seem like an odd place to weigh in, especially for someone who could stand to shed a few pounds.  But I decided many years ago that  1.) I don't want to have scales at my house, because I will weigh myself obsessively, and  2.) I don't really give a crap if the whole world (at least the world of Publix) can see what I weigh.  It's not like anyone will see where the needle lands and think, "SHE weighs THAT??  I never would have guessed it!"  Seriously?  Let's be honest.  We may be able to draw others' attention away from those extra pounds with strategic accessorizing, but we can't actually hide them.

So, off to Publix I went yesterday morning, intending to verify that I did, in fact, weigh what I thought I did.  Just wanted to get my official "starting weight" as I headed into day one of a seven-day dietish-cleansish kind of thing.  Imagine my frustration when I discovered I had somehow gained three pounds.  WHAT??  This is not exactly how I had hoped to start things off.  But, I guess it's not all bad, because it resulted in an even greater determination to actually do this thing.  Sooooo, I bought all the stuff I would need for the week, and later that day I had to dig out extra supplies from our craft stash to add to my visual weight loss motivational tool (a.k.a. pink beads in votive holders, pictured below).  Each bead represents a pound, and as I shed real pounds, beads will move from the "pounds to lose" container to the "pounds lost" container.  Thank you, Pinterest.

 

 

You can't tell by looking, but there are twenty-eight beads in there.  Twenty-eight.  This feels a little ambitious for me, at my age and, well, historical lack of follow-through.  But I just really need to get my act together, honeys, so I'm goin' for it.

So I found this cleansy-dietish thing on Pinterest.  Click here to check it out.   Upon further investigation, I discovered it's just a variation on the well-known Cabbage Soup Diet (here's the 7-day plan and the recipe for the soup), which I did many years ago and lost several pounds.  If you're not familiar with it, let me summarize:  Eat specifially prescribed foods on each of seven days (i.e. all fruit one day, nothing but bananas and milk on another, etc.), supplement with unlimited quantities of near-flavorless rabbit food soup, and drink enough water to float the Spanish Armada. 

As I contemplated the whole thing, I started to have second thoughts, because I know good and well that this is just a quick fix and is by no means the "lifestyle change" that we all know is necessary for meaningful and long-lasting weight loss.  But that's not the reason I'm doing it, and I decided that the reasons I do have for doing it are still valid.

1.  I want to lose several pounds FAST.  Let's face it: results are the best motivation for sticking with a more long-term plan, so I need a kick-start.  Especially after that not-so-fun visit to Publix.  I have no intention of using this diet to lose all twenty-eight pounds.

2.  Eating this way for a week will go a long way toward curbing my near-insatiable appetite for all things sweet.  I suppose this is the cleanse-like element of the diet.  I know I could accomplish that by just fasting sugar for a week or two, but whenever I try that I always end up filling the void with other, less sweet carbs, like salty crackers and stuff with all kinds of chemicals and preservatives.  It will be good to purge myself of all of that, and having specific boundaries is pretty much the only way I can ensure I'll do it.

So how am I doing?  Well, I'm on day two, and I've already screwed it up.

For starters, I didn't eat any of the soup yesterday.  I was a little confused about when to start eating it, based on the version of the diet I found on Pinterest, so I just never got around to making it.  So all I had to eat all day yesterday was fruit.  Good thing I love fruit.

The other monumental fail was that I pretty much forgot about that whole "drinkwateruntilyourbackteetharefloating" thing.  Totally slipped my mind until about 2:00.  But once I got with the program, the bathroom and I became best friends.  And we're just getting cozier today.

Now, before you start to think I've fallen prey to the lure of the fad diet, let me assure you that I'm also exercising a lot.  I'm mostly walking/running, and I plan to throw in the occasional Zumba via XBox.  I did an Insanity workout with Tony a couple weeks ago, but that resulted in my not being able to walk for a few days.  Or bathe.  Or pick up heavy objects, like pencils and styrofoam cups.  Tony has encouraged me to give it another try, so we'll see.

I must confess, though, that I am allowing myself to cheat in one area.  The diet allows coffee, but no sugar or creamer. 

Um . . . what.ever.

I can do without the sugar, friends, but I just cannot drink my coffee black.  I know this makes me, in the eyes of many, a coffee faker.  A phony.  A lightweight.  But I really don't care, and the only way I could go without my beloved half-n-half is to go without coffee altogether, and well, that idea is drowning in crazy sauce.  Makes me think of that quote . . . I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I think it goes something like this: "Man cannot live by bread alone, but bread and coffee would probably work."

So, dear readers, I'll let you know how it goes.  For now, just know I'm loving cabbage like this . . .

 

 

And water like this . . .

 



 And making lots of trips here . . .

 And trying not to think too much about things like this . . .

*sigh*  Six more days . . . six more days . . . six more days.  :-)