It’s not the first time I’ve dieted.  I did Weight Watchers for the first time ten years ago through a promotion at work.  The Points system was exactly what I was looking for.  I lost all the pounds I’d planned plus some.  I ended up skinnier than I’d been since I entered high school.

Problem was, I couldn’t maintain that weight.  I like to eat.  I don’t love cooking but I’ll gladly eat what is cooked by others.  I particularly love carbs in all their glorious forms — pasta, bread, brownies, chocolate, etc. 

So just like everyone else I lost weight, then gained it back, then lost it again, then gained it back.  I’m fond of blaming pregnancy for some of the gains but truthfully I just enjoyed having an excuse to eat again.

Portion sizes are a major issue for me, as is eating out of boredom and/or depression.  I have to be in the right frame of mind to garner the willpower to control these issues.  Why the appropriate mindset hit this past fall I’m not sure.  Maybe a new school year felt a bit like the New Year to me.

Once again I managed to lose the weight I wanted using the Points system.  (The Weight Watchers frozen meals are quite good by the way.)  But this time I’ve resolved to deal with my weight differently.  I consciously decided to not lose as much as I possibly could, to stop at a predetermined weight that I feel I can maintain for the long run.

I’ve finally realized that I’ve been fighting my own nature.  I don’t really care that much about being skinny.  I want to be at a healthy weight and to feel attractive in clothes.  And I also want to be able to enjoy good meals, to have a glass of wine with dinner, to indulge in dessert once in a while. 

I’ll always have to watch my portions, to pass on seconds most of the time.  I’ll always have to keep my wits about me so I don’t end up choosing a chocolate bar as a snack every day.  But now that I’m just a tad bit older I don’t feel bad at all about not being able to wear skinny jeans or a bikini.  I like what I see in the mirror and my husband thinks I look damn good.  It doesn’t get better than that.

Parents are bragging online about their weekend partying, complete with photos of themselves boozing it up and hanging all over complete strangers or sometimes even stripper poles.  They’re buying rounds of cyber cocktails for their friends via Facebook apps.

Little Suzy reads that Mom thinks her dad is a low-life asshole and that she thinks her life overall is complete shit.  Little Bobby follows his dad’s conversation about all the hot bitches he’s hooked up with.

Who knows, maybe these people speak and act this way right in front of their kids too.  But I suspect that when even these parents are in the same room with their children they censor themselves at least a little bit.  On Facebook however they seem to fall victim to a sort of peer pressure that persuades them to put their worst selves on display to try to impress their so-called friends.

Parents want to be Facebook friends with their children so they can monitor who they’re talking to and what they’re saying.  But a consequence of that cyber relationship is that the kids can monitor their parents as well.  Apparently this light bulb hasn’t come on yet for a good many parents.

If you wouldn’t say it to your kid at home then please don’t say it anywhere on Facebook.  If you wouldn’t put it in your family photo album then please don’t display it on Facebook.  And if you’re not a parent, please remember that I am and don’t post any of that crap on my wall.

Today I applied to grad school.  Assuming I’m accepted I will begin classes in the Fall of 2010.  After being out of school for…well, let’s just say for a very long time, this is a huge commitment.  Did I mention I have two kids who still very much need mothering? 

But all the lists and resolutions haven’t been working.  I feel great after I make them.  I dream of how wonderful my life will be when I accomplish all my goals.  For too many years though my progress has been like walking the wrong way on the people mover at the airport.  My legs always appear to be moving yet I never get anywhere.

So this year I will make a big leap forward.  Do I need a master’s degree to be successful?  Probably not.  There are plenty of published authors without that credential.  (Apparently they know the right people.)  I need this degree so I can be proud of me.  Not to get a job or even to earn a living necessarily.  Just to be proud of me, for doing the work and accomplishing something that I consider meaningful.

Happy New Year!

Although we won’t be with our extended family this year, we are celebrating our family traditions in the usual way — via food.  (Now that I think of it, food is the main focus of all our holidays.)  I’m feeling particularly sentimental this year, so I decided to try for the first time a couple of recipes that my mother-in-law made every Christmas.  She was Italian and I am not, so this was a big deal for me.  First I made her Walnut Crescent Cookies, which I’m proud to say taste fantastic, even if they are about three times bigger than they should be. 

Then I did the unthinkable.  With my husband’s assistance I attempted the holy grail of Italian-American holiday meals — Escarole soup (you know it as Italian wedding soup.)  We labored over the steaming pot most of the day yesterday.  I think my mother-in-law must have been overseeing our effort from above because even my son, who revered his Mom-mom, praised our soup as being just like he remembered. 

My mother-in-law spent many long days in her kitchen preparing special foods for each holiday.  She welcomed everyone into her home and joyously served them, barely even sitting down herself.  Her legendary meals were like holiday glue, binding her family together with homemade love. 

I’ve never been as much a cook as she was and I’m sure I never will be.  But last night as I sat with my family eating our holiday soup I experienced a sliver of the joy she must have known as she watched her loved ones talking and laughing together over the feast she had selflessly prepared.  I saw the joy in my husband’s eyes as he tasted a childhood memory and I was happy to have been able to give him that gift.

I am conscious of the memories we are creating for our own children by serving holiday meals mixing favorites from our childhoods with new dishes that appeal to our mature taste buds.  Our kids already expect to have pasta with anchovies on Christmas Eve and they know that they will have to endure standing rib roast on Christmas day (hopefully they’ll grow to love it.)  The four of us will sit at the festively adorned dining room table set with our good dishes and the real silverware inherited from my grandmother.  The kids will raise their stemmed glasses filled with milk and clink them against ours filled with wine.

These are the things that make a holiday different from the everyday, the things that remind us of how special we are to each other.

Sarah Palin reportedly tried to remain incognito in Hawaii by taking a Sharpie to a McCain campaign sun visor to black out his name.  According to Ms. Palin she wasn’t trying to diss McCain at all.  This was just the only hat she could find and she wanted to protect her family’s privacy.  She thought she had done a mighty fine job of disguising herself but somehow the paparazzi figured out it was her. 

Despite almost falling off my chair laughing when I read this, I cannot in good faith label her as the stupidest woman in the world.  Clearly any woman who would vote for her would be in the running for that title!

It’s not that I don’t have any free time.  Technically I have a lot more free time than the moms who are out working all day at full time jobs.  I just don’t want to spend all my free time at my child’s school.  I’ve already been through elementary school myself and I have no secret desire to be a teacher.  So I’d rather spend my free time building a new career for myself.

That doesn’t mean though that I don’t want to be involved in my child’s education.  In fact, when S. gets home from school and sits down to do his homework, I sit down next to him while I work on my laptop so I can answer any questions he may have.  I practice multiplication facts with him twice a week.  I quiz him before test days.  I help him edit the paragraphs he writes. 

It also doesn’t mean that I never want to visit my child’s school.  S. loves for me to come to his classroom or even just to come have lunch with him occasionally, which I do.  It is important to both of us that I experience what it is like for my son to be at school every day.  He is proud to show me his classroom, to introduce me to his friends, to demonstrate what he is learning.  So it offends me when a Room Mom goes overboard by doing everything for the holdiay party herself and not involving any of the other parents.

I’ve experienced some great Room Moms.  They are the ones who are friendly and inclusive.  They know who every child in the class is.  They make sure they communicate with all the parents, even the ones who aren’t computer savvy.  They make it easy to participate by allowing parents to sign up for little things like reading to the class or bringing cookies to a party. 

And then I’ve also experienced the uber Room Moms, the ones who have everything handled themselves, who neglect to even communicate when the party is being held or that all parents are invited to attend.  These women seem to not really want any help.  They prefer to be known as The One Who Did It All and then they look down upon all of us slackers who did not step up to be leaders at the beginning of the year.  These are the Room Moms who don’t have a clue who my child is and don’t remember who I am even after I’ve volunteered for a classroom project.

Again, I thank all of the Room Moms because in fact they are better than me.  They are willing to put in an extraordinary amount of time for the good of all our kids.  But it’s unfortunate that some Room Moms morph into control freaks and deny children the time they want with their own parents at school. 

If you ask the kids, they’ll tell you that they want to see their own mom in their classroom.  They don’t care if she just stands there and watches them, as long as she’s there.  And they don’t care much about all the cool stuff the Room Mom came up with for the party if their own mom isn’t there.

I like WordPress overall.  It offers tons of useful features without the need for coding.  I like that I’m able to pick a theme and get writing immediately.  I just wish there was an easier way to see all the features available for each theme.  I mean, the previews are nice but they just show you the bare minimum you can do on many of the themes. 

I wish that when you clicked on theme, you could see a list of sample blogs using that theme, especially some where bloggers have customized the appearance.  Since a list like this is not available within WordPress, I was forced to locate samples myself via Google.  I found that some themes I originally thought were very nice seemed bland and boring after I saw four or five blogs looking exactly the same.  So I went with this one, Vigilance, because I can customize the header, the colors and even play with CSS if I get really daring.  (New header coming here soon!)

I just wonder why none of the themes seems to offer the option of customizing fonts?  And can’t there be an easier way to customize colors than entering hex codes? 

CSS scares me.  But I may have to dive in anyway.