Category: Suburban

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Suburban

John Tesh says blogging about your diet will help you lose weight…thanks for the tip, Tipster.

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Fasting

First of all, where does that stupid word come from? Fasting…there’s nothing fast about fasting. It actually feels like time is standing still. How many more hours until I can eat? Has it really only been an hour??? When can I go to bed? Because when I go to bed, then I’ll go to sleep and when I wake up, I can eat!!!

It makes my brain hurt and my body tired…or perhaps it’s the other way around.

So, why I am doing it? Well, I signed up for this “nutritional program”. Cleanse your way to better health! Be a slimmer, healthier, happier you! Who doesn’t want that? I’m all about health. Nothing is more important to me. Well, sometimes chocolate. And definitely wine. But nope. Health. Health is #1. Of course, there is also that little matter of seeing pictures of myself in a bathing suit this summer. That was not nice. No one should have to see that. I wanted to get a t-shirt made that said, “Look away! Avert your eyes! You will turn into a pillar of salt if you gaze upon this sad spectacle!” But alas, I had no sign and no doubt scarred a few poor souls for life, through no fault of their own.

So, I signed up for this (expensive) program that promised better health, slimmer thighs and perhaps happiness for life. Supposedly there is a mountain of science behind the program basically saying that it’s been flown to us from a mystical land on the backs of unicorns. Just follow our plan, the magic fairies sing, and you too will look like Jennifer Anniston (Disclaimer: minus the hair…we can’t do anything about the hair. That’s a gift from God). This plan involves drinking 2 protein shakes a day: ideally, one in the morning and one at night. (I don’t like to say breakfast and dinner because then it just sounds sad.) At noontime, you get to eat one “healthy meal of 400-600” calories. Enjoy it because it’s the only solid food you will put in your mouth for the rest of the day. This wouldn’t be so bad if you could choose your 600 calories (let’s not be silly, here, who would pick the 400 calorie option?). A glass or two of wine, some cheese and crackers, an apple (for fibre and to keep the doctor away) and maybe a handful of veggies to keep the fanatics happy. But no. It’s all fruits and veggies and lean protein, blah, blah, blah. To make things worse (if that’s possible), wine, sugar, wheat, caffeine, and I believe possibly, air, need to be eliminated from your diet altogether. Lord save me from my own vanity.

I wonder if Jennifer Anniston eats this way? I once saw an interview with Cindy Crawford where she said she wishes she could get up in the mornings and look like Cindy Crawford, the Supermodel. Between airbrushing and personal chefs and private trainers, it’s no wonder these women look the way they do. And for us mere mortals to aspire to look like them is ridiculous if not bordering on the insane. (My husband would like to note that I crossed that border a long time ago. I hope you like sleeping on the couch, Big Fella!)

So, here I sit, at 3:30 on a Friday, with no food in my belly, other than two small powdered disks of I don’t know what (perhaps they are ground fairy dust designed to melt fat and erase wrinkles – oh please, please!).  And I wonder, WHY??? I don’t think Ms. Universe is about to come calling and Vogue hasn’t booked a visit in, like, ages. I’m can still see my own toes and don’t have Type 2 diabetes…yet. I’m already married and it’s much too expensive for my husband to divorce me now. So….WHY???? If you can tell me, please do. For now, I will sip my herbal tea and wait for tomorrow to come.

(Is 6 pm to early to go to bed?)

Memoir, Pop Culture, Princess, Rants, Suburban, Teacher

No one told me I’d have to raise my own children!

suburbanprincessteacher

Response to Brenda MacDonald’s Oct 15, 2012 column: Two Cents Worth

I’d like to add my two cents worth to Brenda MacDonald’s recent column in the Bedford-Sackville Daily News. In this week’s column, she laments the fact that she can no longer trust her sons’ teachers to teach them “the moral, value, life lesson, don’t-miss-a- deadline stuff”. Wow. My heart goes out to her. I mean, as a parent, I didn’t know either that I was actually expected to teach my children morals and values. This wasn’t in my “What to expect when you’re expecting” book! I mean, I understood that until they started school, I would have to teach them certain things like, “Don’t touch the stove or you’ll get burned!” and “Don’t flush your dinky toys down the toilet or we’ll have to pee in the yard!” But I felt safe in knowing that once my boys started school that responsibility, that heavy, heavy burden, would be lifted off my shoulders and placed on the backs of those miracle workers known as teachers. And when the last of my (two) children got on the school bus to begin his first day of school, I heaved a heavy sigh of relief. I felt light. No more worrying about educating my children on life lessons or morals or values. That job was now up to the teacher. I now have one child in grade 9 and another in grade 12 and I’m afraid I have a lot of catching up to do. You see I trusted their extraordinary teachers to teach them all of the morals and values and life lessons they would ever need. Thanks to Ms. MacDonald, I now realize how wrong I was.

Sarcasm aside, Ms. MacDonald’s initial concern that her child was given a 5-week extension on his middle school project and was not docked any points off his final grade is certainly valid. None of us likes it when we work our butts off and get our work done on time and the person in the cubicle next to us does the minimum amount and still gets paid as much or more than we do. (Yes, real life sucks, too.)

Ms. MacDonald admits that schools across the country have adopted no-zero policies, which means students can’t be penalized for what is considered a “behaviour issue” such as handing in a project late. Some parents and teachers are currently banding together to protest this new rule. The most high profile case on the books right now involves a teacher in Alberta who was suspended for going against the rule and assigning a child a zero. Ms. MacDonald dimisses the rapid spread of this policy across the country by saying, “I have no time such nonsense.” Nonsense or not, it is here, and teachers are required to follow the guidelines set forth by their provincial departments of education, their school boards and their school administrators. Shaming and blaming teachers (“I no longer totally trust them to teach my children anymore.”) is shifting blame to an easily identifiable group and allows Ms. MacDonald to ignore that other “nonsense”. A backhanded compliment like “don’t get me wrong, teachers are an admirable bunch” is as insulting as saying, “That dress is lovely. It really hides all the weight you’ve gained.”

Teacher responsibilities have grown over the years to include much more than the traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic. The obesity crisis, the bullying crisis, the identity crisis – all of these things are now being placed on schools. Fix our children, parents cry! Oh, and while you’re at it, make sure they can still read, write and do math better than children in other countries.

I did not, have not, and will not ever expect my child’s teacher to prepare my child for the “real world”. I want my child’s math teacher to teach him math and his biology teacher to teach him biology. I can handle the life-lessons, the morals, the values and “don’t miss a deadline” stuff. That’s what I signed up for.