no more mrs. fatty

the diet starts now.

not january 1st. not tomorrow. not in five minutes. now.

there will be a detox. it will last 2 weeks. on the menu will be protein and vegtables and whole fruit and whole grains and vitamins and water and coffee. there will be nothing else on the menu.

after the detox dark chocolate will be added.

french fries and ice cream will not be added until i have lost ten pounds.

TEN POUNDS IS NOT THAT MUCH.

the sit ups will continue.

i will wear my size 27 AGs again.

How long will it take!?

stay tuned...

merry merry

many people have asked me how the sit ups are going. thanks for caring i appreciate it. it's folks like you who are going to keep my stomach from remaining like a bowl of jello. i def hit a wall with the situps and i think it's because i'm just not seeing the results i expected. i didn't expect much because i know it's not a lot of sit ups but i guess i did expect a little tightening or something and that's not happening. the reason it's not happening is because i am eating like a cow. which isn't a good analogy because cows eat grass and i'm eating chocolate. i've decided that after the new year i'll start watching what i'm eating. it's just futile until then. i sit at work across from a credenza upon which is piled a mountain brownies and fine chocolates, like really good brownies and really good chocolates. so please, i'd like to see you NOT eat them (shut up trisch).

so new years. i'm not big on resolutions but the timing is convenient. until then, i will continue my sit ups. it may not be helping but it can't be hurting me either. i skipped mon, tues & wed. then i did them thurs, fri, sat. so today i did 400 sit ups to make up for the lost 3 days which puts me back on track at day 29. so i'm still doing it DOUBTERS!!!!!!!

the real reason i'm posting is to share this photo we cooked up yesterday after our big walk into williamsburg where i bought my christmas present that dup is getting me with his credit card and gave it to him to wrap for me so that i can open it christmas day, then this morning wrapped it myself. yes i guess the romance is gone people. i think the photo turned out pretty cute and i'm glad we finally did something because you know, baby's first christmas and all, people EXPECT IT. you've probably already seen it because we sent it out in a mass e-mail yesterday. if we missed you, here it is! that's our little dude with our other little dude! we love them to pieces.

We are truly blessed this year and we send out all of the love and joy we can to each and every one of you. may we please have some peace in 2008 or at least a Democrat in the White House. OH PLEASE GOD!

merry merry every body.

xo,
la Ketch

Eureka!

Ladies and Gentleman, last night, for the first time ever, our little tiny four month old genius, slept through the night.

That's right. He went to bed at 9:30pm and woke up at 6:30am. That's 9 hours folks!

I'm not banking on that happening every night from now on or anything but we'll take it. I think we'll keep him.

In other news, last night, for the first time since I started 100 sit ups a day for 100 days, I didn't do my sit ups. So now it's 100 sit ups a day for 101 days. NO I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP! I'M STILL DOING IT!! It's just a very minor set back.

adendum to my previous post.

after re-reading my last post this morning, I find it kind of insane that I am comparing Sylvia Plath to Steve Martin. It's so unlikely and the only thing the two really have in common is that I just read their books back to back. Still it would only be fair to point out that while Steve Martin did not give up and Sylvia Plath did, Steve Martin is a man who came of age in the 60's and Sylvia was a woman who came of age in the 50's - putting a very different set of choices on their respective plates. At the time of her death, Sylvia was separated from her husband and trying to raise 3 small children and write some of the world's best poems at the same time. She was living in a small apt. in London and at the time of her death it was the middle of a very cold winter and had lost her heat. I'd be eyeing the oven too. So it's not exactly a level playing field here. Also, Sylvia struggled with horrible depression. Steve Martin did suffer from massive panic attacks for many years but he had many affairs with beautiful women throughout his career and "settling down" or having children was never on the list of things to do.

snow

A friend requested that I tell a story about the dog run. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to tell a good story that will be funny but I just can’t do it today. Sorry C, soon. It has brought up some big thoughts for me though.

I’m totally done with the dog run. The fence has been installed and I really mentally and almost physically, have emancipated myself from the place entirely. It’s just so strange when for almost two years it was such an obsession for me, now I’m just done. Of course, becoming the mother of a human baby has a lot to do with that.

I’ve been reluctant to meet other new mothers and I think my experience at the Dog Run has really informed that inclination. I’m a member of a list serve that is made up of the mothers of mostly infants in my neighborhood and they are always having these meet ups and I just don’t want to meet them. I’m too afraid that I will try to take over and put myself in charge.

The worst thing about putting yourself in charge is the fear that no one wanted you there to begin with.

I’ve been reading this new biography written by Steve Martin. It’s an auto biography called, “Standing Up” all about his formative years as a young stand-up comedian in Southern California. He says that it should be considered a biography, not an autobiography because he’s written it about someone he used to be, someone totally different.

Steve Martin is a pretty big deal for me because he went to high school at Garden Grove High School, which is where my mom and her brother and two sisters went. He was older than my mom and didn’t know her but he was just one year older than my Aunt. It’s possible that he would remember her because she was super popular in high school, the homecoming queen, etc... hmmm......

So he was really lauded in our family as a huge hero. I think I was shown “The Jerk” when I was about 5 years old and I’ve since memorized the movie. It is my all time second favorite movie, nearly neck and neck with “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure”. Both films have many, many similarities.

I highly recommend the book for anyone. Steve Martin is a really readable writer and it’s very interesting to listen to him talk about his process and how he came to be a successful comedian. It’s especially interesting to me though because he’s talking so much about Southern California and the cities and towns where my parents grew up and where I was raised until I was 14.

Steve Martin credits his success mostly to two things: perseverance & naiveté. I think he’s being kind of modest here (talent Steve?) but those two things are really essential for sure. I mean he started honing his craft as a young boy with these magic routines and he studied the greats, sought out mentors and worked, worked, worked, really hard and he was poor and let himself stay poor so that he could keep working on his craft. And then the naiveté, he just didn't realize how impossible what he was doing was.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I always compare it to doing gymnastics, little kids are so good at it because they don’t know that it’s impossible to flip yourself around through gravity like that, then one day they notice the impossibility and fall on their heads and that’s when it becomes scary because they remember the pain and they can’t do it anymore. I think that on one level, the older we become the more secure we become because we get to know ourselves and the world around us and hopefully we start to care less and less what people think but then again on another level we become less secure because we know what it feels like to fail. To be unafraid of failure, well that will get you quite far, won’t it?

I just reread the Bell Jar. When people see you reading this book they always say something like, “what a depressing book.” And when I was reading it I kept thinking, “no it’s not really because it’s quite funny and she gets better. It’s a hopeful story in the end!” It is, until you read the little biography that’s printed with the edition I have and you are reminded (not that you didn’t know already) that in real life she got better too but then she killed herself. The Bell Jar came back and she died so young; not before she was able to write her best poems but still, it’s very sad. It is.

The thing about her character in the Bell Jar is that she becomes withdrawn with indecision. She’s looking at her life laid out before her and there are just so many directions she could go in that she can’t decide. She can see the direction that society and her mother would like her to go in and she doesn’t want that but when she looks at everything else.... so many choices. How can a person be everything they want to be? They can’t. She wanted to be everything and she saw that she couldn’t do it and so she chose nothing.

Steve Martin could choose. He wasn’t always entirely sure what he wanted to do, he studied philosophy and was even going for his doctorate for a while and thought he might become a teacher. Then he basically couldn’t handle the degree of difficulty of the philosophy courses and decided to become a drama major instead. This is when his path became more fully illuminated.

Because of our age, a lot of my friends are now thinking they better start having some kids. Some of them are even going so far as to get pregnant or at least start trying. I always knew that I wanted to have a baby but I wanted to be an actor too. When I realized that I couldn’t keep pursuing my acting life and have a baby at the same time (without compromising my idea of what being a good mother is and without being dirt poor) I choose to have a baby. I’m really glad I did because I’m much happier now. I think some of my friends would feel the same way if they did what I did. Some would not. Some should probably keep going with their artistic lives and some just might be able to have both (albeit, not without compromise). Who am I to say which is which? I don’t know. It’s up to them.

I bring this up because now that I’m having kids, I’m trying to pull my friends with me. Mostly because I think my friends are beautiful and smart and they would make really good parents and the wrong people are populating the earth, so lets get to it. If they come to me and ask me how long it took me to get pregnant or anything else like that I definitely encourage them to start right away. I kind of feel like telling them, “well you better just wise up and quit your artistic pursuits and get a good job with lots of health insurance real quick because your ovaries are shriveling up just as we’re sitting here having this conversation. I mean why aren’t you over there having unprotected sex RIGHT NOW?!” I’m not saying this directly to anyone but by god I’m thinking it. And how horrible.

I mean, it’s not entirely horrible because I'm a realist and the biological clock is a very, very real thing and if you’re sure you want to have kids and you have a partner to do it with then you should get started before you are 35ish. I’m not the only one saying this. It’s a very shitty reality but it IS reality.

Still, just because that’s what I told myself, that it was time now and I needed to do it now, that doesn’t mean that’s what everyone else needs to do. This may seem very obvious to most of you out there but it wasn’t obvious to me until recently. Also, if you are one of my friends and you think I’m talking about you, I’m not. Well I might be talking about you but I’m not talking just about you. There are a lot of you going through this. Pretty much all of you are dealing with this in one way or another.

I guess I just want all of my friends to be doing what I’m doing. So that I don’t have to go to these meet ups and boss everyone around. Am I afraid of meeting new people? I want my friends to have babies so that I won't have to meet new people? I don’t know what it is really. I guess part of it is that I’m waiting to move to California and why meet new people when you’re just going to have to say good bye to them? It’s going to be hard to say good bye to the people here, very hard. I haven’t really let myself think about it yet.

December, January, February – that’s Winter folks! And here we are staring down from the very tip of it, about to slide into the ass crack of the slithery bitch. My very last winter in New York. Praise Jesus. It snowed today and I didn’t even go outside once. I put the fake fire on the television and listened to Christmas music and made pancakes. I will miss snow.

In conclusion! Steve Martin never gave up. Sylvia Plath did. Dog people are insane because their dogs are their babies and people with actual babies are going to be even more insane so I really shouldn’t try and put myself in charge of them. I’m glad that I had a baby even though I miss being an actor. I hope my friends have babies if they want them but if they want to be actors more than I did that they don’t give up like I did, even if it means not ever having a baby. I miss Southern California. I don’t like winter. I will miss my friends. I will miss the snow.