Gray Star

I hadn't intended this post as a celestial follow-up to the SuperMoon, but I like the continuity of that juxtaposition! Also, I appreciate any excuse to use the word "juxtaposition". "Juxtaposed" is nice, too. It's a genuinely useful word, and if you say it out loud with a straight face you sound really smart and sophisticated. Like you could be a political commentator. Try it! I'll wait.

See?

I got a gray star sticker today at my Weight Watchers meeting. It's currently adorning the front of my little membership folder, sporting the designation "5 lb". You get one of these every time you reach a five-pound milestone. I lost 2 this week, bringing my total since returning to WW to 11.6. I have two little stars, therefore, one more disheveled than the other, gracing the folded piece of cardboard that concisely summarizes this leg of my lifelong struggle.


For those of you uninitiated in the WW culture, you weigh in with a receptionist-type person when you arrive. It's private--no one can see the scale but you and the generally positive, compassionate person checking you in. Your new weight is entered on your little folder-card-thinger. Then, if you feel like it, you stay for the meeting and discuss whatever the topic of the week is. At the end, the leader asks if anyone has anything to celebrate. Those brave and/or joyous souls share their successes, and even the most minor victories get a round of heartfelt applause.

And sometimes you get a sticker. Like in elementary school. It's funny to me that they still work.

Gray seems like an odd color choice...perhaps they were going for silver? But I'll admit that it's fun plunking that thing on my card. Ha! Take THAT, sour cream and onion chips that tempted me all week! Where is thy victory, oh Twix bar?

If you've been following this saga since the beginning (because the minutiae of my life are seriously fascinating, I'm sure), you may be wondering about the numbers. My original list said I had 15 pounds to lose in order to bring the total to 100. Please disregard that number. It proved unreliable on many levels that would be very, very boring if recounted here.

Let's just skip straight to where things stand now. As of today's weigh-in I have officially lost 88.6 pounds since the beginning of this journey. I currently have two goals:

1. First, get to a healthy BMI for my height. I have...oh my gosh, only 6.2 more pounds to go!! Whoa. OK.
2. Second, I'd like to see whether I can lose another 5.2 after that to bring the total to 100 pounds. That would leave me well within the upper range of a healthy BMI. If this last step turns out to be unhealthy, I'll abandon it. But if I'm going to spend the next however many years saying that I've lost almost 100 pounds, I'd like to at least try to do the whole thing. Because maybe I can. :)

You have to understand that I have never...NEVER...been a healthy weight as an adult. Not for one day. I gained weight slowly but steadily through middle school, high school, and college, and by the time I got married at 22 I was well into the "obese" section of the BMI chart.

So the thing is, you see, that I feel completely incredulous about this whole thing. I can't believe it's happening. I don't feel like a different person than I've ever been, but for some reason this time it's actually working. And on some level I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable stall followed by a steady slide back into my size 20 jeans. But I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this is going to happen for real. And maybe it will stick.

I don't know what to do with that yet. It's just sort of hovering in the back of my mind. When it starts to get in my way I keep putting it back in a box marked "God's grace". That's the only thing to which I can attribute my current success...it's CERTAINLY not the result of any great self-control or discipline in my character. And I figure that if God's grace can enable me to start dealing with my destructive eating habits and the avalanche of deeply-buried crap that is associated with them, then I'm just going to have to trust His grace to help me navigate the next step in this journey.

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I'm just going to keep doing what's in front of me...trying to honor Him with what goes in my mouth. And trying not to eat the Cheetos that Jack requested for lunch.

In the meantime, though, I will readily admit to enjoying my little gray star. :)

SuperMoon

So right now, hovering outside my window somewhere, is a Supermoon. You've probably heard. Tonight the moon is bigger and brighter than it's been for nearly 20 years. This is due to technicalities of both its orbit and its cycle. Also possibly water retention, but we won't mention that aloud...no one wants to hear she's bloated when she's also dealing with her cycle.

Astute friend and famous Just Dancer Annette alerted me to this cosmic event and suggested it might be a good night for the sunset-watching that's on my list, with a spectacular moonrise thrown in. I agreed, envisioning a magical family moment where we would park on a mountainside, cameras and binoculars in hand, possibly with ice cream and/or classical music. We would watch the sun set in the west and turn to see an astounding moonrise in the east. The children would speak in hushed, amazed whispers, peering over our shoulders at the majesty of the moonscape, and we would speak both excitedly and reverently about the wonderful Creator.

You already know where this is going, don't you? Here's how it actually went down.

I'm not sure what mountaintop I thought we were going to be on. This is central New Jersey. We ended up at a mall. Specifically, the parking deck outside Menlo Park Mall in Edison. I had stuff to return to Old Navy.

In my defense, the top level of a parking deck is not a terrible vantage point for watching the horizon. Considerably less picturesque than a mountaintop, but what are you going to do?

As it turns out, Menlo Park's two decks are situated in such a way that we had to choose between a good look at the sunset and a good look at the moonrise. We chose the moon, positioning ourselves at the far end of the deck facing due east. I did turn around and watch what I could see of the sunset, but it was less than spectacular.

I'm going to count this as actually watching a sunset. It did set. I did watch. I promise I will make up for it...I will be spending 6 weeks this summer in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and I will watch a better sunset. But I live in Jersey, and I'm counting this.

Anyhow, after the sunset we turned our attention to the eastern horizon, awaiting the moon. The worldwide interweb told us it would rise at 7:28. The kids and I sat and watched and waited. My sweet husband returned my Old Navy stuff. Upon his return at 7:31, there was still no visible moon.

At 7:44 I took this picture. Sorry it's blurry...it was some kind of crazy long exposure.

See the moon? Yeah, me neither. At this point Mark was playing Solitaire on his iPhone. Joy and Will were making up a song called "Where the Heck is the Moon?" I thought Jack was singing along, but it turned out he was singing happy birthday to Chuck E. Cheese and to a backhoe. Also, he was removing his socks and putting them on his hands.

Not quite the magical family experience I was envisioning.

I teetered for a moment between grumpy disappointment and laughter, then opted for the laughter. It all seemed pretty appropriate, somehow. And memorable.

The boys are supposed to be in bed at 8, so I released everyone from the obligation to sit there and humor me while we waited for the Supermoon. Mark backed out of the parking space and drove about 30 feet before Joy yelled, "There it is!!"

And there it was. We'd parked so close to the edge of the deck that the building across the street had obscured the moon from our view. And it really was beautiful. Big and golden and suspended like a giant, amber-colored pearl over the silhouetted treetops. We turned the car around and looked for a moment, soaking it in. Then I hopped out of the car and took a picture.

I'm not sure I can express to you how lame this photo is. I know the relative size of the moon is mostly a trick of the eyes and the horizon, but I swear to you that when we were sitting there it looked at least 5 times bigger than it looks here. Also, more crazy-long-exposure blurriness.

The moon is the blob of light immediately to the right of the top right corner of the building. Not the bright, round, white one. That would be a security light. The yellow, unimpressive one to the left of the security light, kind of shaped like a pumpkin.

Yeah.

Please forget my ridiculous photo and remember instead this much, much nicer photo taken by someone who is not me. This is tonight's moon rising over Manchester, England.

THAT is what it looked like. Except add New Jersey to the horizon. (So a McDonald's, a Panera Bread, a gas station, three or four banks, an IHOP, myriad poles and wires, and a billion cars.) Even so, it was really impressive.

As I got back in the car, I think I told the kids that this might be the biggest full moon they would ever see. And I think someone (I want to say Will, but it honestly could have been Mark) responded with a comment about the moon's butt crack. And then we drove home.

I was reminded tonight that I like the moon, that I like my family, and that mixing up our routine to do something a little nutty is a good thing. Once in a while. :)

Thanks, Annette!

Ninja Snacks

I'm pretty good at eating well at mealtime. I make those choices in a deliberate, responsible manner, keeping an eye to flavor and variety while sticking with reasonable portions of simple, light foods. I monitor fiber and fat. I use clever substitutes for unhealthy favorites. I fill up on fruit and vegetables. I savor small portions of dessert. I check restaurant websites for nutritional information before leaving the house. Control, control, control.

And then there's 2:30pm. That's when the ninjas arrive.

Usually at 2:30 I'm cleaning up the kitchen. This task, incidentally, of cleaning, dirtying, and re-cleaning the kitchen seems to take up about 78% of my day. I'm not sure how that's possible, but there you have it. Anyway, by about 2:30 I'm trying to get the clutter off the counters. I'm putting away the bag of Chips Deluxe that Joy had out to pack her lunch, when....kapow! I've suddenly eaten like 6 of them. I reel backwards, stunned by the blow.

Shaken, I hurriedly deposit the now-lighter bag of cookies in a plastic bag and take it to the garage, where I keep a Rubbermaid box with all the stuff I shouldn't be snacking on. Ninja jail. But in order to put the cookies in the box I have to open it. And when I do, I'm surrounded. Chips, chocolate, deceptively-named Nutrigrain bars, fruit snacks, and the Valentine's Day candy the kids have totally forgotten about and would never miss. Like a minefield of nunchucks and throwing stars and those curvy swords.

I make it out alive, but not before I've downed three Hershey's kisses, a little box of Nerds, and a handful of salt and vinegar potato chips. I also have a lollipop in my mouth, because...wait for it...I don't actually like salt and vinegar potato chips. They smell like feet. But such is the power of the ninja.

I'm not much of a martial artist, but I have a few trusted defensive weapons. The most reliable is my toothbrush. I've started brushing my teeth right after lunch, which makes everything taste gross for a couple of hours. Take that, sneaky ninja food.

In reality, I am actually aware that food is not my enemy, and that it's my own stupid, greedy flesh I'm battling. (Which, if it had an audible voice, would sound like my toddler: "Wannit wannit wannit!!") But it FEELS like an ambush, especially when it happens so fast that I'm eating almost before I realize it's happening.

However, as tiring as this battle is, it's one that I'm largely winning. (Insert photo of me in cool karate uniform striking confident Karate-Kid-type pose.) Since joining Weight Watchers, which imparts a lot more accountability for ninja attacks, I've broken through my 7-month plateau and lost nearly 10 pounds in about 8 weeks. The progress is really encouraging.

In the end it comes down to the same basic thing as every other struggle in my life. Am I walking in the power of the Holy Spirit? Am I allowing God to build self-control into the core of who I am? Am I acknowledging my natural inability to take on a ninja battle and trusting Him to contend for me? And THIS is the thing, more than eating or exercising or whatever else, that I need to re-learn. Regardless of the number on the scale.

I still might buy these, though, because they are awesome.

Miscellaneous Cookery

I haven't been good about keeping up with the recipes I've been trying. I haven't even been making note of them, so I'm certain I've forgotten several. Apparently, though, I try new recipes constantly (I honestly did not know this about myself until I started paying attention), so I'm not worried about reaching my goal of 40.

Still, there are a couple of which I have photos, and those are less abundant around my house, so here you go.

Will's birthday party had a "Transformers" theme, which will not come as a surprise to any of you who know him. The kid is obsessed. We decided to make Transformers cookies for the party favor bags. I found cookie cutters shaped like a truck and a car at a cute website, and we made the cookies two weeks ahead and froze them.

The day before the party I attempted Royal Icing for the first time. It has heretofore existed in my life as only an intimidating, hypothetical substance. I'm not sure why...maybe because it required the purchase of meringue powder? But anything I read about baking and decorating mentioned it as though anyone familiar with a kitchen should be all over it. (Baking expert: "You can simply use Royal Icing for this part of the process." Me: "Oh, yeah. Totally. Royal Icing.")

Here is what I learned.

• Meringue powder is not scary and can be purchased at such non-gourmet establishments as Wal-Mart.
• Royal Icing is easy to make and is very shiny in its sitting-in-the-bowl state, which made me happy for some reason.
• It pipes like a DREAM. Oh my goodness, SO much easier than the vanilla icing I used on the gingerbread men.
• It dries beautifully and would probably lead to fewer maimed-looking gingerbread men. This is, I think, the point of Royal Icing.

See? Shiny.

So we piped outlines of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee (in their vehicle forms, of course) onto the cookies.
Be gentle. I am not a professional.

Anyhow, now the photojournalism falls apart. The pre-party frenzy began to build, and I never managed to get pictures of the fully decorated cookies. I used a new cookie glaze recipe that turned out GREAT. Nice flavor, vibrant color, dried smooth and super-shiny. (I like shiny things, apparently.) So Bumblebee got a fresh coat of yellow paint, and Optimus Prime got...let's see...I think it was a red cab and a blue stripe on his trailer. They both got black tires (even the black was vibrant and convincing!). The non-stripe portion of Prime's trailer was supposed to be white, but it got stupid late and I never got around to it. To my knowledge, no one boycotted the party in the wake of this oversight.

The other recipe experiment was for the filling between the layers of the cake. I tried a whipped chocolate ganache, about which I have the following to say:

Oh. My. Gosh.

Now, I'm a dark chocolate fan, so those of you who swing the direction of milk chocolate might not be as enthralled as I was, but from where I sit, this was...I...I have no words.

I had two 9x13 layers, and I slathered the ganache generously between them. In the end, though, I still had almost half the recipe left over, and it's sitting in my freezer now, taunting me. (This stuff is NOT good for you.) We frosted the outside with my go-to wedding buttercream and jazzed it all up a la Transformers. No pics of the ganache (sorry), but I do have one of the cake itself, which I will post here on the theory that a picture is better than no picture.
Prime is made of rolled fondant which I had to tint myself (which left me feeling like I had Carpal Tunnel Syndrome for days). The flames and the letters are piped buttercream. Will loved it, and the cake tasted outstanding. Win.

Only one more pic lying around: the scones. I had buttermilk left over from the Devil's Food Cookies I made for the Super Bowl, so I started trying buttermilk recipes from the Weight Watchers website. I found one for Three Berry Scones, which I made in kind of a hurry and took to my early-Saturday-morning Bible Study.
They turned out pretty nice, and, at 3 points each, they were a reasonable indulgence. I brought the leftovers home, where my kids totally did not get the concept ("It's sort of between a biscuit and a muffin. Please don't whine about gourmet food."), so I ended up eating half a scone toasted with a little butter every morning for like a week. I'm not complaining.

For the record, I've also tried the following recently:

• Southern-Style Oven-Fried Chicken. Without question the best version of this genre I've ever tried. Actually crisped up the way it's supposed to.
  
• Banana-Oatmeal Bread. Hearty and yummy. Not quite as sweet as your average banana bread.
• Spicy BBQ Meatballs. I de-spiced them a little for my fussy kids, who still found the barbecue sauce a little too zesty. For normal humans, they're nice.
• Banana Softies. Somewhere between a cookie and a mini-muffin. These were a hit, even though I left out the chocolate chips the recipe calls for. Not as good the second day, though.
  
• Parmesan Mashed Potatoes. Another buttermilk experiment...well-received.

I know there have been more, but that will have to do for now. Every time I sit down to do some blogging I get all involved and stay here like four times longer than I should. You people are far, far too engaging, it seems. Work on that.

Pump Up the Jam

I have some talents. I can carry a tune. I can generally write without falling into grammatical ignominy. I can find the bright side of almost any situation. Not one of my talents: dancing.

Ironically, I think I could have been a pretty good dancer. I'm not completely without rhythm, and when offered choreography I can hold my own. (I tore up the stage in the chorus of my high school's production of "Guys and Dolls". I can jump up on a chair like nobody's business.) But I grew up in a family where dancing was forbidden on moral grounds, so I never really got the chance to test my wings, or feet, or whatever, on the dance floor.

It's ok. I got through my childhood without much dance-related scarring. Now, though, when I find myself in situations where dancing might be appropriate, I feel incredibly awkward. I never learned what looks smooth or cool, or how to make my body move in the way my brain wants it to, so I'm always fearful that I'm dancing in the manner of Elaine from "Seinfeld" or Carlton from "Fresh Prince".

Despite it all, I secretly don't hate to dance. This winter I bought a copy of "Just Dance" for the Wii. (Did I mention it on this blog or just on Facebook? Can't remember.) It became my standard substitute for going to the gym on snow days--the kids did it right along with me. And I LOVED it. Awesomely campy music, garish graphics, ridiculous dance moves, and SO much fun. A great workout, too.


I started to think about how much fun it could be to do this in a group...if, you know, you were the kind of person who dances in public. I am not that girl. The moment I realized that, I began to rebel. Why not? Because I'm scared? Who exactly is the boss of whether I can dance in front of people?

In a fit of petulance, then, I signed on to this blog and changed item #37 on my list, which used to read "Host a creative night" (right up my alley), to "Host a 'Just Dance' night" (scary scary scary).

Last week I started to think about how I'd actually go about accomplishing this. Step one: I got Mark to agree to vacate the premises on Friday night for me. Not a hard sell. He went to a movie. Step two: a guest list. Much trickier. In the context of dancing, the only people who don't scare me are small children and the elderly. So in another fit of rebellion I started scrolling through my list of Facebook friends looking for local women my age and younger. I created an event and invited a bunch of women from my staff team and my church.

OK, at this moment the "F" in my Myers-Briggs "ENFP" designation is jabbing at me like an old football injury, worrying that someone might read this and feel hurt that they weren't invited. Let me just say that there are MANY more people on my list of FB friends whom I dearly love and who would have qualified under the above criteria, but I had visions of packing out our living room with 35 women who would have to stand in a huddled mob, looking at me quizzically and trying to figure out how soon they could gracefully leave.

As it turned out, though, we ended up with the following seven women, all of whom attend or have recently attended our church:

• Me. Hi, I'm Jocelyn. I have funny kids, and I'm fond of over-sharing on the internet.
• Monica, who has been transplanted here from Romania. She's smiley, sincere, and warm, and she has awesome super-curly hair. You may remember me mentioning that magical buttercream frosting we all learned to make for a wedding: it was Monica's. So we're all grateful for that, too. (She's probably wishing I'd shut up already about the frosting. Not likely.)
  
• Annette. Everyone needs someone like Annette in their life. She's fun, smart, and reliable, she's always thinking about other people, and she loves Jesus. Quality.
• Juliet, a young, artsy new mom who seems WAY more laid-back, in very good ways, than I was when my firstborn was as little as hers.
• Chelsea, who seriously doubted her dancing ability but whose enthusiasm for the music was totally contagious. So fun. She was in elementary school when we were teachers at her school...it's been fun getting to know her as a grownup. (note to self: I am old.)
  
• Natalie, who is quietly adorable and doesn't generally talk about the fact that she suffers from constant, chronic pain. Girl is NOT a complainer. And despite the pain, she can really move!
• Lucia. Lucia was the closest to my age. I'm not saying 40 is bearing down on her like the juggernaut it is in my life, but let's say she and I probably both bought dresses with shoulder pads in them the LAST time they were in style. (which: hello, current fashion designers, didn't we already decide that was a bad idea?) Lucia is smart, cerebral, and easygoing, and I like her. She endeared herself to me even further by wearing a sequined shirt to this event. Awesome.

We put the boys down a little early, Mark took off for his movie, and Joy helped me get things rolling at about 8 before she went to bed. I put out some healthyish snacks (including a weight watchers gingerbread that was really pretty good), and we just sort of jumped in.


And oh my gosh, was it fun. There was line-dancing-type jumping around to "Cotton-Eyed Joe". There was tribal-type gyrating to "Jin Go Lo Ba" (?). We shimmied and pranced to "Wannabe". We fake-surfed to the Beach Boys. We did the running man, the sprinkler, the twist, and...possibly the mashed potato?

And we laughed. A lot. At ourselves, at the tv...not so much at each other, really, except when Chelsea kept gleefully yelling "STOP it!!!" whenever we came across some awesomely cheesy song from her past. ("I Like To Move It"/"Pump Up the Jam"/some New Kids on the Block song/etc...) We decided that home video game dancing may be Lucia's spiritual gift, as she kept winning even when repeatedly hitting the ceiling fan with the Wii remote. There was way more apologetic downplaying of good performance ("I think it's this remote!") than trash-talking. It was silly, good-natured fun.

I did, in fact, feel totally awkward during the actual dancing. But there was something incredibly freeing about stubbornly dancing through the awkwardness, so by 20 minutes in I was sweating like I'd just run a marathon and having an increasingly fabulous time.

We went strong for 2 hours before we finally ran out of steam and called it quits. Everybody said they had a blast and that we ought to do it again. I don't know whether they were being polite (these are some seriously sweet women), but I totally agree.

This post turned out way longer than I planned. I'll add some photos tomorrow (though there's only one actual pic of the event, for which Annette agreed to pose...). For now, though, I just want to get it online and establish for the record that my wonderful friends helped me take one more silly, awkward, tiny step toward brave.