My 2010 diet of choice is the green tea diet I read about in Woman's World Magazine. The gal in the photo lost 7 pounds and 12 inches in a week without giving up her favorite foods. The new diet requires the equivalent of 9 cups of green tea a day and a stack of Depends if you’re on the road. A combo of green tea and a green tea supplement seems more prudent.
I’m to aim for a 900mg daily dose of "catechins", the active ingredient. One cup of green tea = 100mg of catechins, thus 9 cups = 900-mg. Hmm. I sped over to my local GNC.
At GNC I analyzed the green tea pills, the green tea extract in the dropper, and Jackie Chan’s XTRAGREEN beverage mix with 8X more anti-oxidants than regular green tea. Three "Jackie Chans" a day = 900 polyphenols and 300 mg EGCG. Sold!
Well, apparently the look and feel of our vaginas are one more thing we’re suppose to be concerned about as we rebuild our lives after divorce.
Haven’t you heard? We’re supposed to be as pretty and symmetrical as a text-book drawing. Are you a little one-sided…stretched out…dangly? Well welcome the labioplasto — a delightful flesh-carving procedure that "re-sculpts" your labia. Now you can lie back and spread your legs for any man with pride.
Vagina too big? Saggy? Wrinkly? Tsk tsk, you childbearing women. Welcome the vaginoplasti, a totally invasive way of removing some of that vaginal tissue. To heck with kegels — don’t bother strengthening your muscles back into shape the natural way. You should be smaller and tighter damn it — small enough for even the tiniest penises.
It happened about a month ago. I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror in a towel and for whatever reason, I held my left arm out to the side. And that’s when I saw it: movement. More movement. Even MORE movement: my tricep was swaying back and forth like laundry blowing on the clothes line.
Immediately I zoomed in for anaylsis. Had I imagined it? Was there more fat there than last month? Hang on — had gravity been sneakily taking its toll on my breasts too? I opened my towel and had a good peer. Hmmm. Maybe yes, maybe no. I pulled my shoulders back and stood extra tall. Kay, still half-perky. But the alarm had been triggered: I needed to start exercising again PRONTO.
Over the past couple of years since divorcing, exercise has taken a backseat in my life. Between working, caring for my three young kids, and piecing my heart back together, I just haven’t made it the priority it was previously; I’ve always enjoyed exercising — or at least how it made me feel afterwards: FIRM!
“You have a hair!” he shrieked. From his tone of voice, one might have thought he’d seen a zombie from ‘Night of the Living Dead’ heading right for him. “You have a hair!” he repeated vehemently, as if I were hearing-aid dependent. “Growing out of your face. Right there!”
I was wounded by his obvious dislike of the hair so I paused before answering to give the moment a bit of drama. “Well thank you for informing me,” I uttered in a less-than-thankful tone “I’ll pluck it.” He nodded in a manner suggesting that sooner would be preferable to later.
While digging through my make-up bag in search of the tweezers, I began to ponder the conversation of a moment ago. Why was I so put out when my husband drew attention to the coarse, black, ugly hair that had sprouted forth, full grown, from my face? At least it wasn’t gray and curly too. But it was quite long and had mysteriously sprouted sometime between breakfast and the cocktail hour. (How is such a thing possible?)
You know the romance is gone when your husband buys you flannel pajamas for your birthday. Yes, it’s cold and you live in a big drafty house, which he hasn’t been making any warmer lately, but how does he expect you to get the home- fires burning while sporting a pair of blue and white checked pj’s and the big floppy slippers that are probably in the other box?
Nothing says “I’ll be staying home tonight washing my hair” like flannel. Might as well just microwave a huge bowl of popcorn and settle in for a rousing night with the TV guide and the remote control, ready to snuggle in later with a good book, a cup of hot tea and the cat. That’s what flannel says to me.
I will never be thin enough to please my husband. He wants me to look like the bony, anorexic women who prance across the screen of our Plasma he watches, 8 hours a day. (It’s like he thinks it’s his second job.) When I point out that he’s comparing me — a real, three-dimensional-flesh-and-blood woman — to the impossible standard the media has brainwashed him with, he dismisses my idea completely.
Is he kidding or am I married to a man who’s really that stupid and shallow?
He devours hour upon hour of programming that features perfectly lit, digitally enhanced, starved, young bodies that have been painted, polished and coifed to within an inch of their lives and then when he looks at me he thinks, "What is wrong with this picture?" He can deny it all day long, but the shocked expression on his face is a dead giveaway and though he’d never admit it out loud, deep down I know he believes that if I were as thin and beautiful as his two-dimensional dream-dates, his life would be perfect.
I want to play by the school's rules, honest I do. But when they are just plain stupid and possibly endangering my child's well being, not so much.
Even with continued therapy, K's panic attacks are an issue. If I knew then what I know now, I would have skipped steps one through 10 and just hidden her stash in a mint box. (Then again, after hearing about the Supreme Court case of the poor girl who was strip searched on suspicion of carrying Advil, maybe not.)
I went to her doctor, who filled out the proper forms and expressed her medical opinion that K should be able to self-administer her anti-anxiety meds in school as necessary. Delivered to school nurse.
Permission denied.
So I brought in a supply of 0.5 mg Xanax — in original container — so the nurse could dispense them as needed. That is, if K could actually get to her.
Her first attack took place at the beginning of history class. K told the teacher she needed to go to the nurse. His response: "We’re having a quiz — if you don't stay, you'll get an incomplete for the quarter."
