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Gina’s Reading: The Given Day

June 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Given Day - Dennis LehaneI am not a lover of mysteries or violence — a switch flipped in my head when I was pregnant with B that makes even fictionalized peril or meanness intolerable for me — so Dennis Lehane isn’t someone I would ordinarily read. However, The Given Day is a departure from Lehane’s mystery genre and my incredibly smart and well-read mother-in-law raved about the book, so I picked it up.

It is wonderful.

This epic book follows two incredibly well-drawn men through a rather rough spot in Boston history. When the characters and the historical events eventually collide it was so natural and unpredictable that I wondered whether Lehane was that brilliant or I was just that dense. I believe it is the former.

I appreciated Lehane’s creating complex characters–even when drawing on stereotypes of race and religion. When folks act according to “place” it doesn’t appear to be a shortcut, but a researched, historical portrait.

Yes, there is an abundance of violence–graphic scenes of horrible behavior–but I was so enraptured by the characters’ stories that I managed to stomach even that.

In short, I loved this book and hated to see it end.

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Happy Quote

June 17, 2011 By 1 Comment

I'm a Right Brain Entrepreneur: My Creative Work Matters You have full permission to dream big, create passionately, and craft a plan that makes your heart sing and helps your head know where your business is growing.

— Jennifer Lee

The Right Brain Business Plan

 

At some point soon, this book will show up in Gina’s Reading. In the meantime, I wanted you to have this quote to chew on. It’s delicious, no?

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Workout 5 or Why I’d Procrastinate My Death If I Could…

June 16, 2011 By 5 Comments

The MegaChallenge 200 or 5 or... Well, it's a start!I love to work out. I love to write. I love to bake bread. I even love — truly — tidying our house.

But I procrastinate each and every one of them until my pants are so tight that I have to buy the next size, my blog goes un-updated for a year, we are forced to eat stale crackers, and the piles of clutter threaten to overtake the lawn.

Why?

Because I’m a professional procrastinator. That’s why. I work best for a deadline. Tell me it’s due at midnight and I’ll whip that assignment out and have it on your desk at 11:56. Sharp. And it will be gorgeous.

I used to believe that this was a character flaw. After reading about the first third of Martin Seligman’s latest book*, I’ve decided that it’s my preferred method of accomplishing goals. I am a precontemplator — I work on a task for as long as I’m given and then I finalize the whole thing just as it’s due. If I constantly missed deadlines or turned in shoddy work, I might feel the need to fix this methodology. Since it’s worked for me for decades, I’ve decided to stop fighting it.

So — the question becomes — how do I apply this same work-for-the-deadline mentality to my health goals?  At the risk of hearing the Universe moan, “Duh!” I’ll say it.

I must set a deadline.

The MegaChallenge 200 is about that deadline. It really doesn’t matter whether I work out 100 or 200 or 242 times a year. It matters that I feel some internal pressure to complete a task and mark it off. I’ve stopped pretending that I can be all Zen Master about this. I’m not going to manifest some universal peace and bliss about working out. I just have to put on my shoes and go play some music I love and run! I’m always glad that I did once I actually get on the machine.

So, I have gotten on the machine 5 times since May 22 and once — today for 46 minutes of glorious running to nowhere — in 2 weeks. I am not counting the 15-30 minute walks with Champ as workouts because my body could care less how far I walk. I don’t get any noticeable physical upticks unless I run. So I will. 195 more times before the next MegaConference.

Don’t anyone dare tell me I don’t have to.

*I pre-ordered Flourish and had it in my hands the day it was released. I’m reading it. Along with 18 other titles. I’ll finish it.  Eventually. And then I’ll write a great review. Right after I put out these other fires that I’ve been setting around here. Really.

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Gina’s Reading: A Girl Named Zippy

June 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A Girl Named Zippy - Haven KimmelHaven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana is such a funny, smart book! Back when we were still living 200 miles apart, Ned and I read it out loud to one another over the phone and laughed so hard we cried–and sometimes cried so hard we needed to laugh some more.

I highly recommend this deliciously honest memoir as well as Kimmel’s novel, Something Rising, Light and Swift, but can’t say the same for her second memoir, She Got Up Off The Couch: And Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana. It may deserve another attempt when Zippy isn’t so freshly lingering in my memory. It just seemed forced in comparison to Zippy‘s easy pace and tone.

Ned has been begging me to read Kimmel’s Iodine for years because he loved it so much and — he claims — didn’t understand a word of it. He’s thinking I can translate it for him. I’m thinking I’m going to need more room on my nightstand.

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Gina’s Reading: The Wordy Shipmates

June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah VowellThe only reason I didn’t give Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates a full set of stars is pretty petty… it isn’t my all-time favorite book ever. But it does rank up there! I love Sarah’s cheeky treatment of — well — everything. She knows her history (not always the case with people who like to groan about it) and manages to weave a deliciously coherent narrative around some pretty disjointed characters.

As a part-Cherokee, solidly-citified, religiously tolerant but in-adherent girl — much like myself — Sarah takes a look back to our Puritanical roots through the stories of several folks who helped found Boston, were tossed out of there — or both. She doesn’t spare us the often-gory details as people wipe one another out because of a variety of differences — most of them petty.

Sarah also avoids the white-washing of individuals — recognizing that even the most disgusting of behavior doesn’t fully define an individual. She tries to tell both sides, even when it would have been easy to tell us a version that vilifies a particularly cruel character — how would we know the good-guy stuff if she hadn’t read his diary in its entirety and told us about it?

Oh, and if that weren’t enough — check out the cover! Like all of Sarah’s books this one features a diorama-style image that sends me back to 5th grade Social Studies. In a good way. What’s not to like about a group of Thanksgiving-play-ready Pilgrims waxing eloquent on a beach in front of a sunset-lit (or is that an East Coast sunrise?) sailing ship? Nothing. Nothing’s not to like.

Overall, I loved this book. But I’ve already told you that. Go! Read!

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Gina’s Reading: That Old Cape Magic

May 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

That Old Cape Magic by Richard RussoI love, love, love Richard Russo. Straight Man is an all-time favorite and worth a regular re-read. So, I pre-ordered my copy of That Old Cape Magic back in April 2010 and read it within a couple of days of it arriving.

Elements that I love:

(1) Russo is a master of character. You know these people. They live in your town. They are in your family. They are so real, they breathe.

(2) Russo is a master of dialogue. No matter what he has those real characters say, it always comes off as naturally as if he were walking around tape-recording people talking.

(3) Russo is a master of place. He takes you there. You can smell the air.

(4) Laughter through tears. My favorite.

(5) “The story tracks” as he states about other things 400 times in this book. I buy it. I really do.

(6) It has a completely satisfying ending. None of my pet peeves were set off here. Delicious.

Elements that lost it a star:

(1) The time warp thing. It makes me banana crackers to start a chapter and find out that we have skipped some time and will now learn what happened in review. The device is okay for exposition, but for moving the plot forward it is awkward and off putting. It is a personal preference–but it bothers me enough to complain!

(2) The absolutely ridiculous rehearsal dinner scene. I hate it so much that I don’t want to think about it any more.

All-in-all it is a better book than most people write at their very, very best. Russo usually takes about a million years between releases, so maybe he was rushed to press in order to get his royalty check to pay for his daughters’ weddings. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Go ahead, read it. It’s a really good book.

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The R-Word: Beyond Political Correctness

January 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Be a fan of Respect -- Pledge to Ban the R Word

Justin is a bright, funny, creative 10-year-old boy. He loves science and reading. He builds rockets, watches movies and spends hours playing with his dogs, Rascal and Champ. He had a part in his 4th grade play, was on the winning team in his community softball league, and has traveled to Washington, DC to meet with legislators.

In addition, Justin has an intellectual disability. He also has a massive pet peeve: he hates being called “retarded.”

It turns out that Justin’s not alone in wishing that people would pay more attention to the things that he does well, rather than to his diagnosis. Folks with a variety of disabilities are speaking up and asking us to think before we speak or write about them.

In a world where a diagnostic label can easily become a playground taunt or a laugh-grabber in a movie—how often do you hear the R-word said as an endearment?—people who are assigned these labels are stigmatized, ridiculed, or worse, seen as easy targets for abuse. Throughout history, words like retard, idiot, spaz/spastic, and moron—all originally diagnostic labels—have been adopted as insults. Yes, we often use them without thinking, but we can do better.

Some folks may argue that changing the language we use when we speak or write about people with disabilities is futile—that whatever we call people will become the new insult—or purely an exercise in political correctness. The points are well taken, but misguided. Those same folks would be hesitant to say the N-word out loud in a room-full of people. It isn’t about political correctness. It’s about respect, eliminating words that humiliate and ostracize whole groups of people, and shifting the cultural dialogue about disability from one of pity, fear and shame to one of inclusion.

Known as, “People First Language” the guidelines for respecting the dignity of folks with disabilities are pretty straight-forward.

First, we only refer to a diagnosis or a disability if it is relevant and critical that we do so.

Second, when we do need to talk about the diagnosis, we try to be respectful of the person, and we refer to the person first. So we would say, “man with a disability, student with a learning disability or person with an intellectual disability” rather than, “disabled man, LD student or retard.”

Let’s work together to remove diagnostic labels from our joke and insult vocabulary. It’s going to take practice to break the habit of reaching for those words, but if we gently remind one another when it happens, we’ll quickly eliminate them.

As Kathie Snow so eloquently says, “They are people: moms and dads; sons and daughters; employees and employers; friends and neighbors; students and teachers; scientists, reporters, doctors, actors, presidents, and more. People with disabilities are people, first.”

Justin sums it up perfectly when he says, “Call me Justin. That’s my name!”

This article originally appeared in Hope and Dream Magazine.
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Two Weeks and Two Days Later…

December 8, 2005 By 1 Comment

I am still weighing in around 149. Some days a little more, some days a little less. The lowest evah was 148 last week. And don’t ask about workouts. They aren’t happening. But that is so not the focus of my thoughts right now.

My focus is on getting my house in order – literally and figuratively. I am reading tons of books, planning the holidays for my kids (I am not into it at all, but I know better than to skip the festivities.), and throwing out piles of stuff.

It is amazing what you (I) will hang onto way past its usefulness. Like who needs 75 buttons from the 80’s? If you were around when Robin Williams was better known as Mork, you will remember the suspenders he wore – complete with sun and moon buttons. Well, that was early in my formative years, and I took that fad and carried it all the way into my adulthood by way of a massive collection of buttons that refused to die. Yeah, they ended up in some box along with several Swatch watches, ticket stubs from concerts and movies (remember the Police? How ’bout the Goonies??), and gawd knows what else. I finally made a clean break with middle and high school and dumped the whole shebang into the garbage.

Yeah, here’s where I could make the leap and say the same thing about my marriage. But that would be way too obvious. So, how about I wait right here while you think through that thought and then we can move on.

You back? Great!

So where were we? Oh yeah, cleaning house. See the trouble with cleaning house is that you spend way too much time looking at the stuff you are throwing away and get really close to forgetting the point of the cleaning part. Now you want to know the point? Okay, get ready for it…

The point of cleaning house is to make room to live in it.

If your life is cluttered with all the memorabilia from what you have already done, how will you ever make space to experience anything new? You won’t. Of course, you risk throwing away the one thing that you will desperately need in a week and won’t be able to replace for anything less than $600 on eBay. That’s why we hang on to all of that stuff. It seems too risky to let it go.

But at some point it has to go. Either that, or you will find yourself sitting amongst your piles of already-dones and wondering why you aren’t happy. Don’t get me wrong. I am keeping my grandmother’s dishes and all of my CDs and lots of other things that I love. It isn’t that things from the past are bad – but they need to grow with you. I mean, how ridiculous would I look walking around wearing rainbow suspenders covered with buttons that say things like, “I Heart Garfield”? Yeah. Not pretty.

So, out with the tasteless, dated, rusting garbage. I am making room to live again.

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So Close…

November 20, 2005 By 2 Comments

I am finally out of the 150’s with a morning scale reading of 149.5 lbs. Yep. I am a half pound away from my goal weight! Yeehaw! It feels amazing and surreal to be this close to a goal that seemed so far away when I started the MegaChallenge back in June. Let’s see what this does to the car:

I am also less than 24 hours away from seeing the judge to finalize my divorce. Yikes! I am sort of in shock – numb and disbelief are the feelings of the day – but at the same time I realize that what we are doing makes sense. Of course, no one walks down the aisle in 40 yards of organza with the hopes that they will end up divorced some 10 years, 4 months, and 6 days later (but who’s counting?). I said those vows believing that we’d be a couple until death. Luckily neither of us resorted to murder to keep that vow. Though, I am sure we were both tempted a time or two.

Hint: You know your marriage is over when your spouse is 4 hours late getting home and you start thinking of ways to spend the insurance money rather that calling hospitals. It is never a good sign when you are disappointed that they showed up alive. I never wished my wasband dead. And I actually still care a lot about him. So, don’t worry that I have come completely unhinged. I’m just sayin’.

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Still Hanging Around…

August 10, 2005 By 2 Comments

Though I havent been posting much, I have been updating my stats this week. One really cool item is that the scale finally fell a little more (171 – it is the lowest reading to date and comes just before my TOM) and now when I step on the scale fully clothed after eating all day it reads 173. Kinda cool to not see 175 pop up anymore.

I have been pitching in at my sister’s all week, so the gym trip didn’t make it into the schedule today. I did go Sunday (39/200) and Monday (40/200), so I am not completely falling apart! 20% of the MegaChallenge is behind me. It is so cool to hit these milestones. I suppose I am still a sucker for a gold star – though elementary school is a foggy memory.

In other news, my eldest munchkin turned 7 this weekend. He seems all grown up to me. Of course, put him in a room full of 15 year olds and he reverts to his true stature. I never stop being amazed by my children. A girlfriend once said to me, “Get where they are and just enjoy the moments as they whiz by.” She’s right. Sure, I gotta think ahead a little. Of course, I get misty when I see baby pictures. But right now is the only moment that really matters.

Gotta go smooch my babies.

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