Monthly Archives: April 2019

Just Me - AmeliaJake

Overweight – so what else is new?

2 Comments

So, I haven’t been here for awhile, quite possibly because there is peanut butter here and I have regained most of the weight I lost. Having faceplanted myself in deep shame, I hid inside during cold weather and under bulky jackets when I went out. However, IT’S GETTING WARMER and I’m not moving to the North Pole, so there seems to be nothing for it but the dreaded dieting and exercising. Oh, my.

Of course, determinations that are made quietly in the privacy of one’s home can be broken so easily. Making a public announcement of your intention usually just leads to thinking of excuses to back away from your goal. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been so stressed about _______ that I just had to eat.” (Whatever nonsense you think you can pass off.)

In dire straits, I went to a place I had abandoned: FaceBook.

April 22, 2019

What’s on my mind? What’s on my mind? That is not a relevant question at this time. What’s on my body? would qualify; but no one has to ask that. You can see it – A LOT OF EXTRA WEIGHT.
Now, I know public announcements of diets and New Year’s Resolutions are usually self-jinxing, but listen, folks, I am desperate.
So everyday, I am going to indicate something about my weight – actual numbers, without the numbers. We’ll just say if you knew what X equaled, you could calculate things in “Jody’s” – such as in fractions or multiples of Jody’s.
I am doing it this way because I have just the tiniest bit of pride left under all this flabby embarrassment.
I will post everyday, even if it is an “X + ” number.
Since I am being a jerk and not posting 12345 type of numbers or an actual picture, I will give you a mental image: Think Mrs. Butterworth in a swimsuit . . .
SO I GUESS THIS IS BodyBook.
And at Day 1 we are at X

April 23

OK, I have not finked out on Day 2 of the weight loss endeavor. I am thinking about the best way to actually set the start point. I weighed yesterday in the afternoon and today in the morning. I don’t think it is fair to compare the two and give myself a four pound loss, so I will start with today’s morning weight, which is the New X (nothing at all like the new black)

April 24
We’re still at X.

April 25
X-1. A start, sort of like the journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. Oh, rats, that was not really inspirational.

April 26
We have X-2. It will be a long and possibly frustrating job, losing this weight. So, I suppose I need not focus on the end, but try to invent ways to mentally enjoy the process.
Remember gold stars in elementary school? I’m thinking of putting a poster on the refrigerator for gold stars and then putting labels on some foods that ask the question: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO FORFEIT YOUR GOLD STAR BY EATING THIS?

April 27
I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten, so it is now X-2.4. I imagine it will be somewhere around this figure for a couple of weeks. The main thing is I will keep track daily; I will not forget as I look at eats that are too decadent to be considered food that the next morning I will be standing on a scale.
On the other side of the coin of not doing something, in this case eating unnecessarily, I have started doing more physically. There is a scale for that as well – it is called aching the next day.
I feel not unlike the Panama Canal guy(Goethals, I think), who when told of another collapse in the Culebra Cut, said, “Hell, dig it out again.” I just wish I had more of TR’s determination and energy.

April 28 (Today – well, wait for it.)

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Palm Sunday tornadoes 1965

1 Comment

Because I am an older American and lived in Indiana, I was alive when tornadoes ripped through on Palm Sunday, 1965. I would have been a junior in high school and possibly fretting about homework that would be due on Monday. It might have been Easter Vacation, though, I really don’t remember.

What I do remember is my Mother coming into the West Room (aka – the Cold Room) and telling us a black cloud was coming very fast over the treeline. She and my grandmother went to the basement; I don’t know why my father and I didn’t feel the urgency to do so. And it seemed, at first, as if we had been right.

Then, a little while later someone came to the door and asked if we had phone service and added that the farm house across the field and beyond the trees had been lifted up and turned on its foundation. Down the road, houses were picked up and thrown into the lake.

Just a little northwest of the house, on the road we took to the orchard, a man I knew sat on his lawn with his house in shambles, a huge, huge tree totally uprooted not far from him and metal from silo wrapped around trees in a nearby woods.

Forty-seven tornadoes killed 271 people. One lifted after it hit that aforementioned farm house and went right over our heads and set back down – and we didn’t even know it. Amazing. And tragic for others.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, Kendallville, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Old time blog reading

1 Comment

When blogs first became popular, I remember encountering a great number of them in which the authors SPILLED THEIR GUTS in relation to their bosses, husbands, in-laws, children’s misdeeds, etc. Reading them was not the most honorable thing, but gosh darn, it was addictive.

I think some people couldn’t shake the feeling that they were just venting off into the ether. I mean providing a detailed account of your suicide attempt or your husband’s infidelity or your mother-in-law’s jihad against you is not the wisest thing to do. I think a number of people were awakened rudely to this fact or it dawned on them to wonder: What the heck am I doing?

Now, after having said it wasn’t the most honorable thing to read such blogs, I find that I sort of miss the over the fence, backyard, whispered gossip of people I don’t know.

Oh, I confessed this . . . and . . .and . . . I’m NOT just sending words off to disappear in the ether. What was I thinking?

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Disrespect as a verb

1 Comment

This is probably a petty thing, but I have never been comfortable with someone saying, “He disrespected me.” Technically, maybe, perhaps, it can be traced back to an early source, but I don’t remember hearing it through decades of my life. Then all of a sudden, it showed up.

I know my father was not familiar with the usage either because once he came into a room, asking what it was about disrespect as a verb. At the time that would have meant he had spent seven decades of his life being unaware of it . . . and he had taught English.

Come to think of it, Rodney Dangerfield got no respect; he never claimed anyone disrespected him. Now, there’s an authority on the matter.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Kendallville to have curbside pickup

1 Comment

Clean up week, which several years ago included curbside pickup, lost his oomph when the curbside service was discontinued. But this year it is fact, which guidelines. Gee, guideline are my Indiana Jone’s snakes, but at least I can get rid of microwaves and other stuff.

You are supposed to put items in boxes and secure with twine. I just spent time cutting up a bunch of boxes so sigh. You can only put out a pickup truck load of stuff; I may have to negotiate. Stuff is to be out by 6 am but you are not to put it out early because people make scavenging trips. Sigh again.

This is going to take some planning and probably a lot of sighing.

Just Me - AmeliaJake, The Peanut Butter Cafe & Roadhouse

Balkans = confusion

1 Comment

I watched Sarajevo again recently and then started wondering about the country we learned about in school: Yugoslavia. Of course, I know that merging of territories and countries had “unmerged” in the recent decades. I thought I had some inkling of what was and what is. As it turns out, a little bit of research has made me aware that it is complicated. I would not want to be faced with being tested on the information; if I did badly, I think I would ask the instructor to just wait because, given the history of the Balkans, my answers might suddenly be right again.

I read one article that cautioned people not to confuse Serbian Bosnians with Serb Bosnians, and I almost started looking for a wall to bang my head against. For the record, Serbian Bosnians are ethnic Bosnians who live in Serbia and Serb Bosnians are ethnic Serbs who live in Bosnia.

As I am starting to understand it, your national identity and citizenship may not necessarily be the same thing in former Yugoslavia. I know we have hyphenated Americans, but for the most part, I don’t think very many would be upset about flopping down a U.S. passport when in – to use what we Americans call anyplace other than here – a foreign country.

I had to take a break when I read about a Serbian Republic (Republika Srpska) surrounded by Bosnia. The break was especially important when I glimpsed a reference to another Serbian Republic (Serbian Krajina) in Croatia in the next sentence.

I’m going to wait to see if there are Croatian Bosnians (or Serbians) and Croat Bosnians (or Serbians). I think I really need that head-banging wall.