I get emails from the Slow Food movement all the time. "Slow" food, or to be a slow foodie, is a synonym, sort of, for being a locavore Their most recent email was all about finding ways to creatively squeeze slow food into your busy life. Big surprise; it's what I already do-- cook in huge batches and then microwave and freeze my cooking for later dates. What's sad, is that they didn't ever right anywhere about what that means. It means that you never get to just pick up a meal on the way home and veg; it means giving up half your weekend to prep meals for the week.
But, I digress, and I'll be doing a lot of it today... The Slow Food goals, from what I've gathered: getting kids to eat real food at school (my kid will NEVER eat caf food, never ever. I'd feed her connective tissue and eyeballs first.... except I'm pretty sure that's exactly what Sloppy Joe's are... plus some sugary sauce that might also contain something that once was a tomato, albeit a heavily scientifically "enhanced" one), and getting people to eat locally, which, of course, means making more things from scratch-- slow food, he he. Hence, my days of marathon cooking. After working all day on Tuesday, I went to the farm (baby was with her father), picked my green beans and blueberries, bagged the part of the share they pick for us, then came home and made baby peaches again, plus got those green beans in the freezer, and cooked up my tomatoes. This is my "slow" life. I picked up the baby and held her only twice that day, somewhere around 5 am, and then again at nearly 8 pm. She was sleeping for half the time I held her, so I got about 30 minutes of her awake time that day.
But, and here I'm writing mostly just to get thoughts that are evil out of my head... I hate being told how much of a good role model it makes me to my daughter that I do all of this running (the studies say this is true, that having a mom with a career is especially important for daughters). Right now, I feel like telling her exactly what I shouldn't-- that she can't have it all, not a career and a family, and a healthy body and marriage, and she especially can't try to live according to principles-- like my green thing-- at the same time. Right now I have the feeling that I'm only holding about half of each of those things in my hands, and just watching the rest of it, well, run. So, shouldn't I tell her not to try? That she should just pick one or two, because trying to do all these things well will only leave her feeling frazzled, inadequate and full of fear and regret? I had no perspective on what it would mean to be a "working" mom (they all work, so I'm trying to be p.c. with those quotes). I didn't have a "working" mom, and the only friend I have who's a mom has twins.. . and so has to stay home because day care would cancel her salary, and though I'd never say it to her, I envy her, and always want to slam her when she posts about the challenges of her life, even though I know it's unfair, and not just because she posts about these challenges with such grace and humor, rather than ill will. But, I do want to slam her, because deep down, I truly don't think she gets how much worse it would be if she didn't stay home, and instead, got stuck with the feelings I so often have. But, most importantly, I know how wrong it is to look and think someone else has it greener than you.
So, to update on my resolutions, I've run once. In sneakers, that is. But, running--that is, my crazy, fast paced life-- is getting old. I'm still lamenting that I didn't go to the beach that Friday. I absolutely should have. It would have been only my second trip for the whole dang season. But, more than that, I should have gone because it's been like it always is when I'm back at work ever since. I get up at five, leave by 6:15, get to work by 7, if I'm lucky. When I get in, I put on my makeup (because I can dress, and pack, and whatever else while holding a baby at home, but I can't do up my face), sign in in the office, then I run around in my classroom, writing on the board, straightening desks. I check emails, file papers, turn in forms, make sure everything I need for the kids (the stuff to support my lessons, that is) is photocopied and ready, hook up to the breast pump for fifteen minutes or so, then begin my teaching day. I teach a 30 minute advisory group, then an 80 minute class, then have 80 minutes to continue to file and turn in forms and hook up to a breast pump again, and then, if I remember, to eat, before I teach another 80 minute class, then file and turn in forms, then drive, this time in much thicker traffic, to pick up the baby. (If you noticed, I never mentioned a bathroom trip. I occasionally sprint for one of those between bells, but I've become the sort of person who has a steel bladder. Basic occupational hazard, I guess-- that and I'm draining out fluids elsewhere). We go home, and I wash all the crap from my lunch, the baby's bottles, the pieces of that torturous pump, and every other day, it's at least two loads of laundry so we have diapers. Baby eats dinner, and by nine o'clock, I start to think about what might be microwaveable, or whether I'm okay with skipping my second meal of the day, so I can get us all, baby too, to sleep so we can get seven--interupted-- hours or so when we're lucky. Yes, I skip meals a ton. But as for not eating, it's not really something I notice (I might be hungry now, come to think of it, but I'm truly not sure). The tummy gnawing feeling goes away. You'll get headaches, and feel dizzy, but you stop having that feeling your stomach acid has begun to eat away at your spine, now that its finished with all of the various viscera in between, and settle into a numb that can carry you a solid six or eight hours, at minimum, on nothing but coffee and water.
It's quite seriously the best diet I've ever been on. I ended my pregnancy weighing in at 186 lbs, having gone into it at a bloated 155 partly due to the fact that I had been twelve weeks pregnant, then got pregnant again eight or ten weeks after losing that baby. The last time I weighed myself, a day before my birthday, I was back at 135, so that means I've lost 51 lbs since December (okay, reasonably, I can only claim to have lost 40... 11 was my kid, and other associated.... stuff)... I was on Weight Watchers, very unfaithfully, for about three months, starting right after Christmas. The rest was trying, but usually failing, to get exercise (other than all that baby bouncing and chasing, and going up and down flights of stairs to get to my classroom and to do laundry that I never factor in), and just plain old not having time to eat. It's easy to have a sarcastic thought that people who keep their baby weight must have a secret strength or support network I don't. How do they find time to eat enough to sustain it, I wonder? How do they not burn off whatever they do get time to eat just through frenetic energy expenditure alone? But, I know this isn't fair. Their struggle is the same as mine, but manifests differently. They don't even attempt slow food, and what they end up with for choices out of desperate necessity instead, isn't going to help them get back to their fighting weights. I know it isn't green on the other side. I do.
Don't get me wrong: I'm happier than I think is healthy (psychologically, speaking) that I'm this thin again. Things I refused to buy again, out of some stubborn belief I'd get back there, do fit me once again, like suits, and it's making it easier to stick to my resolutions about not spending.
It's pretty amazing that I still keep at it. I guess I need to let myself recognize that. I still keep at it. And maybe that's what the daughters in those studies were picking up on-- the fact that those moms they hardly ever saw were persistent, determined bitches.
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