Category Archives: All about me

ABCs of Gratitude

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Armed Forces — With­out the self­less­ness of men and women who choose to serve in America’s mil­i­tary branches, I wouldn’t have free­dom as I know it.

Beach­body — With­out the amaz­ing group of peo­ple and pro­grams made avail­able through this com­pany, I wouldn’t have man­aged to lose weight with­out a gimmick.

Cof­fee — Mir­a­cle elixir of the morning.

Dop­pel­ganger — I love the word. I’m not so sure I’d ever want to meet mine.

Estro­gen — I enjoy being a girl! OK, not ALL the time, but I’m grate­ful menopause hasn’t hit me yet.

Food — Seems rather basic, huh? There’s always food on my table and in my son’s belly… and a bit too much in mine. It’s a love/hate relationship.

Girl­friends — Every woman needs close-knit female friends. Mine are diverse and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hum­mus — It’s deli­cious and good for you! Think the kids won’t like chick-peas aka gar­ban­zos? Have them try Hummus.

Idioms — I use them freely. They are fun and add color to conversation.

Jump­ing Jacks — Two years ago I couldn’t do them. Today I am able to thanks to los­ing weight and increas­ing my strength and mobil­ity. YEA!

Kit­ties — I love my feline friends. They may be aloof and annoy­ing at times, but I love ‘em.

Laugh­ter — Yours or my own. It’s the world’s best medicine.

Man­cub — He is my world and rea­son for get­ting up daily. He teaches me lessons daily.

Nean­derthals — The jerks who haven’t evolved. Why am I grate­ful for them? It helps me teach my son what NOT to be.

Open minds — We need more of them in this world.

Patience — It is a virtue and not some­thing I typ­i­cally pos­sess. How­ever, when it counts the most it’s with me.

Qual­ity — In this world of excess, I have learned that qual­ity of time and prod­uct is the bet­ter partner.

Resilience — My par­ents blessed me with the abil­ity to be resilient. Try to knock me down and I bounce right back. A proud fam­ily trait.

Sis­ters — I have four fab­u­lous female role mod­els. Each one has offered amaz­ing lessons in my lifetime.

Tech­nol­ogy — This blog brought to you by Apple.

Uncon­di­tional love — Best feel­ing in the world to give it and receive it.

Ver­nac­u­lar — OK, it’s an unusual thing to be grate­ful for, I guess. Wel­come to the melt­ing pot! Plus, I’m cur­rently watch­ing Swamp Peo­ple on His­tory Channel.

Water — Basic. Sim­ple. Not avail­able to every­one on this planet.

XX — chro­mo­somes that make me a girl! This makes me think of a Sein­feld episode when Elaine declares to George and Jerry, “I don’t know how you walk around with those things. ”

Zip­pity Doo Dah! — Yes, I sing it when I’m happy. I sing it when I need to get happy. I sing it when I’m being sarcastic.

    Borked

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    Borked

    Per the online Urban Dic­tio­nary BORKED has sev­en­teen def­i­n­i­tions that range from down­right vul­gar (no sur­prise! This is the Urban Dic­tio­nary we’re talk­ing about) to what appears actual def­i­n­i­tion. I’m tak­ing num­ber two to best explain how things have been for me lately:

    Some­thing is “borked” when it doesn’t work cor­rectly or mis­be­haves, gen­er­ally due to neg­li­gence by the person(s) that are respon­si­ble for it.

    Ety­mol­ogy: Com­bine one part “bro­ken” and one part Swedish Chef and you get “borked.”

     
    This web­site is borked.
    That mechanic borked your car.

    Dili­gence does not describe me as of late. Well, unless you con­sid­er­ing get­ting up and going to work being dili­gent. Since I get paid to be there, I don’t let my respon­si­bil­i­ties slide.

    Take this blog, for instance. No new posts for a week. Nary a photo or blurb. What gives, eh? I’ve felt for awhile that I’d lost my muse. Every writer (seri­ous or not) needs a muse. Some­times it is a per­son or per­sonal mantra … a state of mind. The lack of gen­uine idea for blog entries is reflec­tive of my lack of deter­mi­na­tion on my weight loss goal. That drive has dwin­dled down to thoughts of con­sid­er­ing my cur­rent weight being com­fort­able. Although, I am not ‘com­fort­able’ at my cur­rent girthiness.

    So, what the heck gives?

    Where, oh where, has my deter­mi­na­tion gone? Where, oh where, can it be?

     

    Frustration Relief Borked

      Back at the beginning

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      Argh!

      After a month of nurs­ing a knee injury and, then, nurs­ing myself back to health after a week of suf­fer­ing the flu (and sus­pected caf­feine with­drawal), I worked out. The last time this body endured an offi­cial work­out was Sep­tem­ber 17 in the hotel gym in Spring­field where we stayed for my niece’s wed­ding. Even though I knew I’d be danc­ing the night away I wanted to get a real work­out in. Maybe it was too much, but the fol­low­ing day I was limp­ing about. Full mobil­ity returned after my bout with ill­ness. I guess being laid up is just what my ail­ing knee required.

      So, what was my weapon of choice today? Some­thing easy-ish. Slim in 6 with Deb­bie Siebers Start It Up! It’s the intro­duc­tion dvd. It juiced my joints (as Leslie San­son of Walk Fit says). Along with nearly every move­ment, I snap! crack­led! popped! Rice Krispies has noth­ing on me. Do you ever expe­ri­ence that or is it just me?

      Along with joint stiff­ness, I am cer­tain that I’m still recov­er­ing from dehy­dra­tion. It seems I can­not get enough flu­ids. The best bev­er­age is still water — unless, of course, I’m run­ning a marathon … which, I am not.

      This is another begin­ning for me. I’ve not really kept you up on my health and fit­ness quest as I had cast it aside. No rea­son. It just hap­pened. Lack of focus. But I am hearby stat­ing pub­licly that my goal has been reset to lose 30 pounds by the end of 2011. I can do it. I will do it. Help to keep me on track by pop­ping on my per­sonal Face­book wall, Maris­sol­ogy Page or drop­ping me an email me wildhair65@gmail.com . Find me on Google +, too. I’m every­where! Tweet me if that’s your method of check­ing in. Together, we can get healthy and stomp out obe­sity. It begins at home!

        Pass the Kleenex

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        Man­cub and I have trav­eled to Spring­field for a wed­ding. The bride is my niece; one of my broth­ers daugh­ters. This excur­sion marks the third wed­ding we’ve attended in 2011. Third, but not last. The fourth will be in Octo­ber when a friend weds. Truly the year of commitment.

        Here’s a lit­tle known fact to peo­ple out­side of my fam­ily cir­cle: I have been the offi­cial wed­ding crier since my first flower girl expe­ri­ence in my sis­ter Karen’s wed­ding a bil­lion years ago. All of 6 years old, I sobbed uncon­trol­lably at the altar. Talk about a pathetic sight. To fully grasp what it is about wed­dings that makes me cry so much is fod­der for the psy­chi­a­trists couch. At that age my esti­ma­tion is fear that my sis­ter was being taken away from me for­ever! Of course, that the­ory doesn’t make sense when you con­sider the fact that I can cry at the nup­tials of some­one who is a rel­a­tive stranger. 

        After sev­eral years of see­ing myself in wed­ding pho­tos with smudged eye make up, shin­ing bright red nose and gen­er­ally look­ing as if some­one beat me up, I had to do some­thing. c31fc4f9c3ab40fa4cc2b21fefd652fc 700x550 Pass the KleenexWith FOUR wed­dings to attend in a year, I didn’t want ugly mem­o­ries of myself for the lov­ing couples.

        It is bizarre.

        As I have matured, it has become a smidgen eas­ier to stop the tsunami of tears. That is not to say I do not cry at all. Even though I got teary eyed at my own wed­ding in 1990, I didn’t sob. I should have RUN, but that’s for another day. So many things went wrong on my wed­ding day and the days lead­ing up to it I think I was just relieved it was finally com­menc­ing. Another instance where I didn’t lose con­trol was recently at my sister’s civil union. Tak­ing delib­er­ate steps to main­tain con­trol dur­ing the cer­e­mony was exe­cuted. I fol­lowed these three sim­ple steps:

        1. When music plays or some­one sings (before or dur­ing the wed­ding), start run­ning through a men­tal to-do list for work. A gro­cery shop­ping list or a tally sheet of all the peo­ple you believe to be morons are options, too. Just keep your mind preoccupied.
        2. Scan the other guests and find some­one who is cry­ing and laugh at them (men­tally) for being an ugly crier. If no one else is cry­ing, seek out the worst dressed woman and pick apart her ensem­ble as if you’re Stacy and Clin­ton from What Not To Wear. Yes, it seems cruel but you’re try­ing to save your­self from hideous wed­ding photo ops.
        3. Hum the theme song from The Fam­ily Guy any­time you feel the burn­ing sen­sa­tion in your eyes, nose or throat indi­cat­ing you are about to lose it.

         

        The last one is the hum-dinger of no-fail tech­niques for me. Shar­ing this infor­ma­tion may make me appear to be a lunatic or I’ll be given high praise. Oh, this is just for the cer­e­mony. Ask me to make a toast and all bets are off. Have you ever tried to men­tally sing some­thing while read­ing a heart­felt ded­i­ca­tion to the happy cou­ple? Nia­gra Falls, baby.

          Begin Again… again.

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          You may have noticed that my posts haven’t revolved around my weight loss efforts. That’s due to me hav­ing less focus on it. I’ve not gained, but in the grand scheme of things that pro­vides no solace. With a goal of 100 pounds to lose and only being 40% of the way there after a year and a half, that is not progress. I don’t know exactly WHY momen­tum was lost about a year ago. Yeah, that’s right. In six months I lost the weight I’ve man­aged to keep off for a year. For the aver­age per­son that is some­thing to cel­e­brate. How­ever, with the way my mind works it is not.

          Refer back to the real goal of 100 pounds to lose. With that all being said, I have begun again. Since the clock has already ticked away the days; months; year, I can’t go back, but what can be done is look back to see what worked for six months in 2010. The work­outs that I’ve pur­chased through Beach­body all have great aspects. I started out with Power 90 and Turbo Jam (loaned to my niece), it seemed nat­ural to move on to their next level work­outs: P90X and Turbo Fire. They are both very chal­leng­ing. It felt good to push my body, though. Yet some­thing hap­pened and I can’t put my fin­ger on it. Lazi­ness? Bore­dom? Old habits? What­ever the rea­son, I couldn’t stick with the pro­grams. Rather than fol­low the pro­vided work­out cal­en­dars, I devi­ated and did other work­outs from Beach­body. Lack of con­sis­tency would prove to be my health and fit­ness demise. At the time, mind you, it wasn’t real­ized. Since it seems to have dawned on me that the prob­lem was about account­abil­ity and con­sis­tency, a return to what worked a year ago is what will be done. The cal­en­dar for Turbo Fire is up on my refrig­er­a­tor. Auto-Schedule in WOWY Super­gym is set for TurboFire.

          Now, when I do my work­out I can post it on Face­book and Twit­ter — it will help me be more account­able. Announc­ing that this is my new path makes it known to all who read this blog (all 4 of you — thanks). For the past two days I’ve done Turbo Fire. Egads! I for­got how it works every mus­cle in my body. I’m sore. A good sore. Unlike some of the other pro­grams I’ve been toy­ing with, this one charges me and isn’t so bor­ing that I count­down the sec­onds. It suits MY work­out per­son­al­ity. Yes, we all have one. Some times it takes sam­pling and explo­ration to fig­ure that out. Fol­low me for the next 12 weeks as I com­plete Turbo Fire. Mes­sage me if you’re inter­ested in being a vir­tual work­out buddy. I could use the encour­age­ment icon smile Begin Again... again.

          300x250 V1a Begin Again... again.

            Happy Anniversary!

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            Had it not been for Facebook’s awe­some “On this Day .…” reminders I never would have real­ized  that one year ago today I cre­ated MARISSOLOGY on Face­book. A ‘like’ page for this blog and all its mus­ings. It didn’t catch on like wild­fire as I’d hoped, but to the 211 of those who clicked “LIKE” and con­tinue to sup­port the endeavor, I say THANK YOU!!! Tell your friends and feel free to com­ment and post your own suc­cesses and faux pas that life con­stantly hands us. My blog is ded­i­cated to liv­ing life and admit­ting when we’ve stum­bled or par­ty­ing like it’s 1999 for the tri­umphs. What I’m say­ing is that it is NOT all about weight loss. I know it seemed for awhile that my jour­ney to lose 100 pounds was all that my brain could spew out. You hung in there, though. You didn’t bail on me when I sounded like a bro­ken record or infomer­cial for Beachbody.

            samp31f361bc407aa509 Happy Anniversary!

              Riss and Tell

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              Get­ting to know me:  25 ques­tions!

              1. Where were you 3 hours ago? Home bask­ing in the glory that is my dwelling

              2. Who are you in love with? Can I be in love with myself? I am feel­ing a bit nar­cis­sis­tic today.

              3. Have you ever eaten a crayon? Neg­a­tivo. It\‘s tough on an old girl\‘s diges­tive tract.

              4. Is there any­thing pink within 10 feet of you? Heh. I\‘m a chick. You do the math

              5. When is the last time you went to the mall? I work in the eff­ing mall, thank you very much. And since you asked, might I sug­gest you never wear paja­mas in pub­lic? Hey saggy Aggie, how about a frig­gin\’ bra under that wife beater tshirt?

              6. Are you wear­ing socks right now? It\‘s sum­mer. Hell no.

              7. Do you have a car worth over $2,000? Worth? No. Owe? Yes.

              8. When was the last time you drove out of town? Yes­ter­day. Thank you to my Android Nav­i­ga­tion I drove through the ghetto of Joliet. Woo! Fun.

              9. Have you been to the movies in the last 5 days? Not to the theater.

              10. Are you hot? This lap­top kind of over­heats me from time to time. And hel­loooo o mid­dle 40 female. Duh.

              11. What was the last thing you had to drink? Water

              12. What are you wear­ing right now? You tell me what you\‘re wear­ing first.

              13. Do you wash your car or let the car wash do it? I let the Mother Nature do it.

              14. Last food that you ate? Chicken, brown rice and Brussel\‘s sprouts. If you saw what I ate for lunch you wouldn\‘t be in awe over my clean eating.

              15. Where were you last week at this time? It was my 46th birth­day. So, that means I was doing the same thing I\‘m doing now minus the survey.

              16. Have you bought any cloth­ing items in the last week? No. How­ever, I was tempted to buy a pair of socks. But it is sum­mer. No need.

              17. When is the last time you ran? Inten­tion­ally? Have you seen my boobs? That ain\‘t gonna happen.

              18. What’s the last sport­ing event you watched? Sport­ing event. Sports. Balls are some­times involved? Teams com­pete and peo­ple cheer and jeer?

              19. What is your favorite ani­mal? Liger

              20. Your dream vaca­tion? Recall­ing dreams is not my forte\’. I\‘ll let you know if I ever remem­ber when I dream of a vacation

              21. Last person’s house you were in? Other than my own? I think peo­ple sus­pect me of being a vam­pire and don\‘t invite me in for fear I may bite them or wel­come myself any time I choose.

              22. Worst injury you’ve ever had? ::sob:: Bro­ken heart :: sob::

              23. Have you been in love? Oh, sure.

              24. Do you miss any­one right now? Yes. Indeed, I do!

              25. What is your secret weapon to lure in the oppo­site sex? haha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­han­odateinthree­year­sha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­haha

              OK, Do what you want with this sur­vey.
              It’s a quirky ques­tion­naire. At least I didn’t email it to you and insist your hair would all fall out and every dead gold­fish you ever flushed would haunt you if you didn’t com­plete it and return it to me within 24 hours

                Passion. Wisdom. Aging

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                As I write this it is less than 24 hours from my 46th year of mov­ing about on this planet. There are days when I am more like the walk­ing dead. Going from point A to point B sim­ply because mak­ing a buck demands it. Work. I have been told that if work was intended to be fun it would be called some­thing else. Poppycock!

                Per­haps I am cur­rently enveloped in a greater range of depth in think­ing due to expe­ri­ences a grand spec­trum of emo­tions in the course of a day short of a week.

                Last Fri­day my one and only son turned 17. That’s not so tough other than to real­ize it was NOT only yes­ter­day that he was tod­dling around in a diaper.

                On Sat­ur­day, my sis­ter (Happy Birth­day today!) was wed to her beloved. To see her live out a fairy tale was awe inspir­ing. it’s not that I am envi­ous of what she has, but I do dream of it for myself one day.

                A reminder of my “not-even-close-to-a-fairy-tale-but-gave-me-the-best-kid-in-the-world-so-for-that-I-cannot-entirely-despise-him” arrived unan­nounced on Sun­day. That would be my son’s father who hasn’t been in con­tact with him since Christ­mas of 2010. His com­mu­ni­ca­tions have always been few and far between but this is the longest. He bab­bled on about try­ing to call on Mancub’s birth­day “But your phone says it is dis­con­nected…” We had our land­line removed in MARCH!!! Thanks for notic­ing. He was vis­it­ing due to the unfor­tu­nate event that his father passed away. We gave our con­do­lences. How­ever, the ‘grand­fa­ther’ spent all of 5 hours with Man­cub in his 17 years and never once sent a birth­day card or acknowl­edg­ment of any sort. Leav­ing it up to my young man to make a deci­sion about attend­ing the wake and funeral, he had a face to face con­fronta­tion with his dad. It wasn’t easy and I had to keep in the back­ground with­out adding my two cents. Actu­ally, I have about a mil­lion dol­lars worth of cents (sense). Mancub’s dad took it in stride and didn’t argue.

                It was emo­tional to have a heart to heart con­ver­sa­tion with Man­cub as he’d been hold­ing in a lot of dis­ap­point­ment, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, anger and lack of feel­ing loved by his father. As much as I try to pre­pare him for life, I couldn’t pre­pare for this cave in. We’re stronger now as a result. 

                Mov­ing along.

                I’ve been off work since August 4. My final day of vaca­tion hap­pens to be my birth­day. Did I men­tion that I will be 46? Offi­cially, I am closer to 50 than 40 and for some goofy-ass rea­son it is affect­ing me. I think part of that is due to being sin­gle since ’99 and hav­ing not one shred of a rela­tion­ship to even rem­i­nisce upon fondly. There comes a time in a woman’s life (this woman) when they won­der if hope is lost. Could I pos­si­ble be beyond my shelf life? Do I start plan­ning to hop on a bus to Bran­son, MO and be con­tent that the Statler Broth­ers or Osmonds are singing directly to me? Maybe I’d have bet­ter luck with Yakov Smirnoff.

                What has come as a result of this long awaited time off from work — it has been ages since I took any extended time off — is that while I am abun­dantly grate­ful to be employed, there is enor­mous dread fill­ing me as I con­tem­plate the return to said work­place. Hate is a mighty strong word yet it keeps pop­ping in my head. Mostly, and likely due to how many other Ris­sues have been sim­mer­ing in the kettle.

                Need­less to say, you can guess why I’m feel­ing … blurgh. I’d love to just dash off and party with my bevvy of boda­cious girl­friends in Vegas or some­thing. Oh yeah, I don’t live in a movie. Back to life. Back to reality.

                 

                IMAG0527 125x300 Passion. Wisdom. Aging

                  Flutter By

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                  On Thurs­day, June 14, I met with friends for din­ner after work. The unique thing about this is that the hus­band of the cou­ple and I hadn’t seen each other since high school. We’d been cross town rivals. How­ever, in the fine arts there seemed to be less ani­mos­ity than that of sports. Through the magic of Face­book, his wife and I have befriended each other. Get­ting together with this cou­ple who had come to town for his high school reunion week­end was, to put it mildly, a pure joy.

                  Had this sit­u­a­tion arisen a year or so ago, I can hon­estly say I prob­a­bly would not have fol­lowed through or even enter­tained the idea.

                  Shock­ing!

                  Maybe it is the result of being burned numer­ous times in my life­time by fair weather friends (not to say I haven’t been one myself), but lit­tle by lit­tle becom­ing a shut in was becom­ing real­ity. Aside from hav­ing to work out­side the home and run­ning nec­es­sary errands, I was happy to con­duct my life from more than arms length of other people.

                  The Inter­net afforded me the abil­ity to appear social — demented and sad, but social. What lie beneath the facade was fear of close­ness to peo­ple who were not already within my very tightly woven inner cir­cle. Read: my son and a sib­ling or two and long time friends. When­ever I revealed this fact to an online friend, it sur­prised them. One or two would express a sense of sad­ness for me that I’d allowed my life to take such an avenue. Appar­ently it seemed that I had a lot to offer oth­ers, but mostly it wasn’t fair for me to rob myself and oth­ers the expe­ri­ence of friendship.

                  It didn’t hap­pen in the form of light­ning strik­ing or a Bib­li­cal epiphany to make me real­ize that I had noth­ing to gain by being shut off or putting up a front that I hated all peo­ple. Slow pro­gres­sion and encour­age­ment along with invi­ta­tions. Deep down I wanted to be a but­ter­fly of the social vari­ety. Even in early life I hadn’t sur­rounded myself with huge groups of friends. One or two close rela­tion­ships were devel­oped and I merely dealt with being involved with larger groups.

                  As a result of being entwined with Beach­body, I have learned that we get in return what we put out in the uni­verse. Con­nect­ing with humans will  only improve my life. Break­ing out of the shell I’d encased myself in was the most dif­fi­cult part. Ignor­ing my fear of rejec­tion is not easy yet I forge through it. What is most remark­able is that I have watched my teen age son embrace per­sonal encoun­ters with­out hes­i­ta­tion. He says hello to peo­ple he may have met a year ago and hasn’t seen since. He will engage with total strangers as if they are best friends from a past life.

                  As a par­ent, I have so much to learn from watch­ing my child.

                  Sat­ur­day, July 16, 2011, I had to bring my car to the auto shop for a check up. Even talk­ing to the owner of the shop is tricky for me. The pos­si­bil­ity that he won’t remem­ber me from a year ago had been keep­ing me from call­ing to dis­cuss the issues my car was hav­ing. Stu­pid. But I’m not nor­mal. He remem­bered me. Maybe I’m not that for­get­table after all? Who knew I could be cute and social while doing busi­ness? Ha!!

                  Once the inspec­tion was com­plete, I made my way to the Sat­ur­day Farmer’s Mar­ket in down­town Kanka­kee. Alone. All by my lone­some. A sur­prise to myself and with­out hes­i­ta­tion I spoke to the ven­dors and approached peo­ple I rec­og­nized. Say­ing hello and being received in a pos­i­tive man­ner gave me such an warm feel­ing. Remem­ber in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at the end when Belle thinks she’s lost Beast to the curse and sud­denly beams of light lift him from the ground and he’s trans­formed? At the risk of sound­ing melo­dra­matic, that is how I felt on this day. What’s most sur­pris­ing is that it all came so nat­u­rally. The sen­sa­tion I felt trick­ling through my body was so for­eign, but wel­come. I think know it’s welcome.

                  Usu­ally, when the ques­tion is posed if time travel was pos­si­ble what would I change, I say noth­ing since that isn’t even a pos­si­bil­ity and the present is based on the past. Now, I sor­takinda think that it would be a keen notion to believe how much richer my life might be had I made these real­iza­tions ten years ago. Alas, I can­not. I move for­ward with­out regret and embrace that which is at hand … and flut­ter by like a butterfly.