Peeps, I’ve discovered a new diet. Well, I guess I invented it more than discovered it. It’s the Sweet BBQ chips Venti peach green tea lemonade Hot tomales diet. If you’re thinking this is a weight loss diet, don’t, because it doesn’t do that. Think of it as the ‘happy diet’ because it makes you happy until… it doesn’t.

While you are munching on your chips and washing them down with that refreshing peach/green tea/lemonade concoction you are in heaven. Pure bliss. Green tea is the new magic health serum is it not? Im just making it more palatable. I’ve decided that since sugar is the real culprit in declining health that these chips are the best choice over all the Starbucks confections. Follow that up with a few mouth jolting hot tomales (to speed up your metabolism) and your in your happy place. Until you try on your stretchy white jeans from last summer and you cannot get them done up (did I mention they are stretchy?). This is where the happy diet breaks down.

I guess this is why people often label chubby people as jolly. Because the food they are eating IS making them happy-in that moment. These people are happy because they get to eat what they want. They get to eat what makes them feel good emotionally.

So I’m giving the chubby happy thing a whirl for a bit, in case you hadn’t noticed. It works nicely in that you don’t have to count calories or points or say ‘no thanks I can’t eat that’ as you glance longingly at the delectable offering that is not on your list of approved foods. So much less work. Less math. Less deprivation. Less hangry. Let’s just say I’m a nicer person over all. It’s been quite freeing to just not care.  Sometimes when I’m out with friends (I usually don’t go out with enemies) I’ll just say in an unusually loud voice ‘well my agent wanted me to gain 25 pounds for this new role’.

Unfortunately, my doctor told me I was totally depleted of Vitamin B12 and did I notice I was having difficulty dragging my assets around? Yup! I thought I was just being lazy. She wants me to have B12 shots. I asked where a person gets B12 from in their diet and not one food she mentioned was sweet BBQ chips, peach green tea lemonade or hot tomales.

So I’m happy when I’m enjoying my new food addictions and this works when I’m lounging around the house in my baggy plaid GAP housecoat/shirt (which I can do because I’m jobless) or making a Starbucks run in my Lulus. The trouble begins when I attempt to get dressed to go out and look respectable and stylish. Style is overrated, don’t you think? Maybe you’re thinking it’s time to stage an intervention. I’m way ahead of you.

June 7 I am embarking on the Whole 30 journey. I got this idea from one of my favorite blogger/authors Jen Hatmaker. This month I am reading the books to prepare my life for this challenge. The premise is to only eat whole clean life giving foods for 30 days and totally break your cravings for crap food. Usually as I’m reading I’m sipping upon a peach green tea lemonade which will inevitably have to go. I’ll still be able to have the green tea just not the peach and sugary lemonade enhancers.

This program (by Melissa Hartwig and Dallas Hartwig) is about eating for health and vitality and is basically a reset. Apparently, if done properly and diligently it will change your life. By the end of 30 days I should not even want my new favorite happy diet foods and I will still be happy…. probably even more happy as my white jeans will fit.

I’ll keep you posted.

Sitting at a Chapters Starbucks savouring a bag of crunchy sweet BBQ kettle chips while sipping on a cool peach green tea lemonade. This experience is enhanced if you are sharing the moment with someone you love to be with. I’m addicted to this combo. In my defense, the bag of chips is small and mom and I have convinced ourselves they are healthy or at the very least, the lesser of all the Starbucks treat evils. My personal trainer sister mocked us for thinking, and worse yet, believing, that any bag of chips was healthy. But we don’t care, we’re gonna eat them anyway.

I’ve fallen in love with relaxing by the fire accompanied by some smooth jazz after a long, tedious and hard day. Who am I kidding? I like to do this everyday. I’m so impressed with, and grateful for, a fireplace that jumps to serve by the flick of a switch. I snuggle up in a chair close enough to absorb the heat and pretend to read a book. After I’ve read the same page 5 times I give myself up to the semiconscious snooze while the music soothes my subconscious appreciation.

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes or just outside a picture window for my viewing pleasure. I love listening to the silence of huge ash like flakes slowly and softly falling to the ground as they pass by the street light on their descent. This moment is enhanced if I can hear my favorite Christmas music playing in the background and I usually can as this festive music comes out at first snowfall. I can’t help myself.

I am soothed and healed by the sound of the waves crashing again the shore as I lay in bed next to my snoring husband, after a rushed and invasive trip across the Pacific Ocean. Once I hear those waves I know we have extracted ourselves from our stressful real lives and will be waking up to a slower pace in the morning. An existence with no alarm clocks or todo lists, knowing my toes and soles will be massaged by warm soft sand soon.

Walking into the floral boutique where my daughter spends her days. The shabby chic decor flush with flowers and the heavenly scent of roses, peonies and eucalyptus. I love watching the girls (the designers) quickly and adeptly gather together arms full of flowers and turn these into the most visually appealing arrangements. For the most part, it’s such a happy business.

It all started with the Sears Christmas Wish catalogue back when I was too young to shop for myself. My sisters and I would wait in eager anticipation of its arrival. Often my mom would withhold it and use it as a treat for some unfinished task. Plus we each got to enjoy it all by ourselves for the first peruse. Then once it was coffee table fodder my sisters and I would play a game we called ‘pick’. We would proceed to go through the catalogue page by page and take turns getting first pick of anything on that page. This was purely for entertainment but to this day we all love magazines. There is just something about actually turning those beautiful glossy pages filled with brilliant photography of beautiful and fun things that holds me captive. I also get many a fine creative idea from these magazines as well. I do have several magazine subscriptions sent to my iPad monthly but they are not quite as fun as hanging at chapters and browsing the real thing.

Zara may start with a Z but it’s the first name on my list when I’m at Chinook mall. I often go pick up my husband from his practice at Chinook and I’m usually there earlier than he gets off. The text he most often receives? ‘Hi honey. I’m at Zara’. They’ve conveniently located two couch areas directly in front of the stores doors for mike to sit when he is done and I am not. I’ve been to Zara in New York, Las Vegas, Barcelona, Paris, London, Venice, Rome, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary so each time I am in one I feel like I’m on vacation in some glamourous locale and very often, I am. I can count on Zara to surprise and delight and stock the most current trends that I fall in love with in the aforementioned magazines.

Father of the Bride (Franc and that basketball hoop), You’ve got Mail (that quaint little bookstore and the New York brownstone) , Breakfast at Tiffanys (Audrey Hepburn and George Pepard and Moon River), It’s Complicated (that French bakery and coffee shop), Something’s Gotta Give (that glorious beach house), The Holiday (everything except Kate Winslets jerky ex boyfriend who makes me want to throw up in my mouth) White Christmas (and I fall asleep counting my blessings)….these are the movies I will watch anytime anywhere. I can’t get enough of them.

Continued….

A week spent with my sisters (during the month that I will turn 60) has been an enlightening and healing experience. When we were young… ages 18, 15, 13 and 11…we were obviously in different stages of experience and interest. I loved all my sisters but let’s face it, I wasn’t that interested in an 11 years olds life. Or even a 13 year olds life. Then I moved away from home at 18 and pretty much missed the growing up of my younger siblings. They are shaped by experiences that I really have no knowledge of. Therefore, most of the years following, even as they went to college, got married, had families and established their professional lives I’ve still been thinking of them as 15, 13 and 11.

If you do the math you will realize by now that we are 60, 57, 55 and 53? (Sorry Jacqui). That’s a completely different scenario. Those are the ages of some of my best friends these days. And at this point age isn’t that defining. Who they’ve become is really what I need to focus on now. And who they’ve become is vastly shaped by their life experience which I have not really been privy to as we are spread across the world… literally.

I have been living with some false perceptions. No, really? First of all, I have perceived myself as the family idiot. My mom hates it when I call myself that but it’s just that all my siblings, most younger than me, have got a degree or two each or at the very least, some valuable post secondary education that has enabled them to have professions. They are so accomplished. I’m still trying to sort out what I want to be when I grow up. Are folks in the nursing home allowed to take university courses?

In reality, I actually chose marriage and family over academia. It wasn’t popular to announce this back when I was post secondary education age but that’s actually what I wanted and that’s what I got. So-mission accomplished! Plus I was creative more than intelligent but you can’t make a living being creative. At least that was the message that was subliminally preached to me by my environment. So I’ve wasted a lot of years feeling I didn’t measure up when in actual fact I was quite content with my lot in life. But I thought somehow I was inferior if I expressed total satisfaction with being a wife, a mother and thriving on domesticity. But that is the honest truth. I am content with my life.

As circumstances would have it, and I loved those circumstances…we spent a lot of time around the pool this particular week. You know what that means. There was a limited amount of lycra and spandex covering our birthday suits. Let’s just say I finally learned the meaning of the axiom ‘large and in charge’. Not only am I the oldest and bossiest,I am also the largest. Not that those two are synonymous, just the way it worked out I guess. If you want to be bossy size can be an advantage. Let’s just say donning swimwear is not my finest hour…it exposes more than flesh. It exposes my insecurities and leaves me vulnerable. I am much cuter when wrapped head to toe in designer (actual) clothing. In years gone by, my younger sisters had put me upon a style and beauty pedestal and I actually quite revelled in the glory. Unfortunately this set the bar quite high and I’ve been struggling to maintain their respect and awe for the last decade or so.

My youngest sister is a fitness trainer and a dwarf so …. need I say more? The next sister was blessed with this lovely tiny boned body (I actually think she was adopted) and the sister closet in age to me has just learned how to remain lovely and thin. So what’s my excuse? I’m working on it. I’m forever working on it and sometimes I get tired of working on it. Sometimes I get tired of doing battle against my short waist, thick legs, linebacker shoulders, my love of cooking and eating and I’d rather be painting, quilting, sewing, decorating, reading or writing than working out. So sue me.

But I managed to have a blast around that pool inspite of my girth. I didn’t have to look at me. l was just enjoying everyone’s company and the heat and the relaxation and having a great time. It is what it is. No use getting hung up on it. I wasn’t going to let it ruin my vacation. And it didn’t. We just had SO much fun and I felt accepted by my family. Maybe they were secretly elated that I was huge and they were not but if I could make them feel good about themselves let’s just say I took one for the team. LOL

So I realized that I am related to some very beautiful, glamourous, intelligent, polished, professional, sensitive, strong, resilient, generous women this week. And I am one of them. I am privileged to be part of this genealogy. I’ve started to finally accept them as friends and ally’s rather than hold them in judgement and competition. We are peers now, not divided by age and superiority. I guess that is why we had so much fun. We are fun when we let down our pretenses and quit hiding. I think we started to let our guard down and accept each other as the valuable person they are. It only took 53 years. Let’s not waste anymore time ladies.

Love you to the moon and back.

DISCLAIMER: When I refer to myself as large in this article, I am comparing myself to my sisters not the rest of the population. I, myself, fluctuate. I would never judge people on size. I am all too familiar with the battle that is weight management. Believe me, I know the struggle.

Its interesting to realize that safety and growth are not actually synonymous.
Not only arent they synonymous they are practically opposites. Anybody that clings to safety will most likely not grow so now I have a conundrum.

The other thing that occurs to me is this, I have about as much control over their safety as I do of the Pope. It’s not my job (anymore). At 26 and 30 they have to take ownership for their safety to a large degree. I still offer up unsolicited advice but no ones listening. And that, folks, is what makes this job so dang hard.

As a mother, I just finally get a handle on my responsibilities for a certain phase and then all the rules change and I have to loosen my grip a bit more. I liked being needed. I enjoyed being the centre of their universe. I took my responsibilities seriously and trained myself to be their secret service. Although it wasn’t that much of a secret.

I am a fixer and a rescuer mainly because I can. I’m very self sufficient, always have been. Phrase most often heard coming out of my mouth: I can do that myself.

But I have to pull back and let these adults find their own way, make their own mistakes, solve their own problems and achieve their own victories. They have to know they can and I must not interfere. Oh that rips my heart out. I feel….so helpless. I just want to save them a lot of grief and let them learn through my experience but that is not the way most of our kids work. They have to learn on their own. Let’s face it… the only reason I have the advantage of wisdom is because of my own experience…. good experiences and not so good experiences aka: mistakes.

I’ve been demoted. At least it feels that way. My new role is to love, support, encourage and pray. That’s it! Not that that is a small insignificant task. Why does it feel that way often?

Although the mother role is continually changing and evolving, meaning you are continually learning – it has been the most rewarding job I have had the privilege to fill. Hard but worth it. Rewarding. Just the fact that my kids made it past the age of two and are still talking to me is a major accomplishment. I had lots of help… yes, Mike, but more significant even than that, the Lord. Because I do have callouses on my knees as a result of the prayer going up for them. I have hit the wall many times over the years in regards to fear, anger, frustration and exhaustion but the Lord graciously heard my prayers and came to the rescue. And He reminds me of my purpose and role in my kids lives ‘for such a time as this’. And there’s no need for me to make this job harder than it needs to be. They are His and I am His. And nobody is going to lay me off of this job. It belongs to me. The pay is crap but the benefits are Cadillac.