January 13, 2004

This Day in My History

TODAY's QUOTE

Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.

~ Soren Kirkegaard

MAD and I discussed this quote at length today.

Yesterday's Entries

2001: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
2002: Keep the Candle Burning Until It Burns Out
2003: Lucky Luciana

TODAY's READS

Angels and Demons...this book has reached the "can't put it down" stage (though I do put it down to work and to sleep!)

TODAY'S FOOD

Breakfast: Kashi GoLean Crunch

Lunch: Salmon sandwich on chibatta bread.

Dinner: Terriyaki Chicken

TODAY's WEATHER

Grey, drizzily

SECRET WEIGHT

13 January 2004

I chickened out. I did something I haven’t done before.

Weight Watchers offers you the option of skipping the weigh in (as long as they get their money, they don’t care if you weigh in or not!).

I had been so good this week. I stuck with the diet every single day until "The Day of the Web Site" when I got so frustrated and went and ate compulsively.

The next day we had dinner with friends at a "family style" restaurant where it was just easier to let everybody else do the ordering. There wasn’t a dish there that I "should" have eaten, and in addition, I had more than I should have of what was there. I was in "I just don’t care" mode.

Monday was OK and back on track, but when I stepped on our scale this morning, the needle went up. I just wasn’t up to having another gain put on my Weight Watchers card today, so I took a "pass."

So my work is cut out for me for next week. This whole weight thing is getting to be like the shoulder thing -– the first (year for the diet, six months for the shoulder) was ok, but it’s getting old. Doesn’t mean I’m going to quit -– I’m definitely not quitting. I am just going through a slump in dedication again.

It’s so nice working with MAD again. This is our third time working together. We first worked together for a small private gynecologist’s office. When that office closed, she moved to the big ob/gyn office and, for a time, I went back to the typing service, and then got hired by the same ob/gyn office. We worked together there for ten years or more. I hadn’t really seen much of her in about five years, but now here we are working again.

Things are quiet in the office this week and we will have a lot of time where it’s just the two of us together, so we are getting caught up on what’s been going on in each other’s lives in the past five years, what’s been going on in our children’s lives in the past five years or so, and comparing notes on our mutual friends and acquaintances.

I will admit that days with Dr. G weren’t all stressful. There were things I liked about that job. There were things I hated about that job. There were things I tolerated about that job.

But the things that I didn’t like the most, though I didn’t realize it until I started this job, was that I worked alone.

One of the things I had missed in the five years I was off work and staying at home, was the social connection.

Well, with me being the only employee for Dr. G, that didn’t give me much of a social connection. He was always pleasant, even when I wanted to shoot him -– a bad temper is not one of his idiosyncrasies. But he was not the sort of person I was ever going to become chummy with.

I liked a lot of the patients and grew very fond of some of them, but at most I would see them once every six weeks, if that. While there was a steady stream of people in and out of the office, that did not invite any sort of "bonds" developing.

If I developed any "bond" there it was with Mrs. Dr. G, whom I grew quite friendly with, but who is now up to her eyeballs in her own career and I doubt that our fragile friendship will survive my no longer being under her nose every day.

So I am finding a whole new joy in having co-workers again. It is especially fun to rediscover MAD in a whole different environment, which is conducive to our relationship blossoming in a way that the pressures of working for an HMO did not always permit.

She’s always been a very supportive person for anyone struggling with difficult life issues and I suspect will be helpful to me as I continue to stumble along this path to "healthy lifestyle." If nothing else, I suspect we will have a lot of time to talk about it and many other subjects in great depth.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

deweyflower.jpg (45711 bytes)

These were growing outside of the Kaiser pharmacy today.
the photo doesn't do them justice.

For more photos, please visit My Fotolog and My FoodLog