Writers Workshop-My Path

I’ve walked a path this year full of changes……but the good kind of change. You know, as opposed to the pick-your-world-up, shake-it-around and then-drop-it-on-it’s-side kind of change. Oh, how I love this change where I haven’t had to pick up the pieces and figure out a way to move on.

I think the thing I love most about the changes of 2008 is that they were all with my consent. I CHOSE the changes and was lucky enough to not have them “happen” to me, as has happened in the past. I’m sure you can all imagine that being able to chose makes the manager in me very, very happy.

I headed down my path in 2008 with a New Year’s Resolution. I resolved not to resolve….out loud… rather in my heart and mind. And I did. I was sick and tired of carrying around the baby weight I had been unhappily lugging with me since two weeks after the twins were born. That’s right. I weighed the same weight 2 years post child birth as I did 2 weeks. That slayed me. Really slayed me.

So, I started the year with a plan. The plan to lose that weight once and for all, and keep it off. Since the word diet isn’t in my vocabulary, I decided to change the way I ate. Pure and simple. Those first three months were hard because my eating habits…..were, um…..habits…..and took a conscious effort to break. I sort of went through each day keeping a mentally tally of what I ate. If at the end of the day I couldn’t remember everything I put in my mouth, I knew I had eaten too much. I also made MUCH different choices, steering clear of unhealthy options…….and you all know what those are. I pretty much cut out all snacking, and stuck to 3 round meals and dessert. But not EVERY night. I couldn’t give up dessert. 11.5 months later I feel great and have forged a new partnership with food. It’s different than it was before. I don’t let it’s pleasures unnecessarily fill my stomach. Plain and simple.

Now, don’t be deceived. This path has not come without a few negatives. Like, it’s taken a toll on my husbands wallet. Every size I went down I bought new clothes…..and those (the clothing bills) add up. I played it safe and resold most of my designer jeans, but it was sort of shocking to find that I had moved up a tier in the Nordstrom customer appreciation ladder. I hadn’t “banked” on how expensive it can be to get rid of that junk in my trunk. Let’s count….2 or 3 pairs of jeans per size, is um, approximately 12 pairs…. Just fair warning, ladies and gents!

The second major path I followed in 2008 led us 1000 miles south on a prayer. Jeff and I finally felt good about our decision to walk away from our house (that had been on the market for 6 months and that we’d spend the previous 2 years remodelling), pull our children out of a school they loved, take them away from their friends, change jobs, and leave family and friends, and move. So we did. And those prayers paid off because a day after we left Oregon we received an offer on our house, and although the girls had a bit of an adjustment at school, we weathered the flurry and are all settled in our home of perpetual sunshine. Literally and figuratively.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention that after 8 years of diapering up to three children at a time, our household became diaper free. And crib free, too, for that matter. That’s another path that I no longer walk down….I don’t have babies anymore. That path has been bittersweet.

And there you have it. The Personal Christmas Letter I’ll never send out, and you can thank Mama Kat for it. This is just one more installment in her weekly Writers Workshop.

And, you got another “walk-away” shot because it’s so apropos. If I hadn’t fallen out of favor with Mama Kat and she still emailed me the writing prompts in advance like she USED to, this wouldn’t have happened. But, it’s OK, I’m not holding a grudge or anything. And, just to be clear. I haven’t fallen out of favor with Kathy. She still loves me as much as she used to… I think. I was only kidding.