Breathing....

I find it impossible to meditate. I really want to, I really need to, but I find it utterly impossible.

It's bad enough that I can't quiet my own mind - two seconds of "Breathing in, I know I am breathing in" and my mind is thinking about what color to paint the meditation room (we turned Tony's old office into a meditation room) or what I'm going to eat for dinner or why my customer just emailed me at 10:30 at night. I've never been good at quieting my mind. In yoga class, it is much the same. Sometimes I hit that sweet spot of not wondering what my butt looks like in these pants or if I'm showing too much cleavage because I swore this tank covered more when I left the house and did I leave the iron on but I couldn't because I haven't ironed anything in over a year and surely the house would have burned down by now and how much insurance do we have and could we just take the money and forget about rebuilding the house that is slowly bankrupting us and oh, god what if we do go bankrupt, where will Mom and Jack live and so on. That's your little peek into my mind. Never quits.

But sometimes, every once in a great while, I'll be breathing and softly gazing at my candle and my mind will go white and it is a beautiful thing.

And that's usually when Sarge barks or someone calls my name. See, I tell everyone in the house when I'm headed to meditate. I want them to know that for the next half hour or so I will be unavailable to answer phones or questions or watch American Idol or whatever else is going on at the time. I'm conscious of the fact that I'm needed a lot in my house and that everyone needs to know when I'm going off the grid.

Doesn't matter. I swear that somewhere in the house there is a light that goes on about five to seven minutes into my meditation that alerts Sarge or Tony or Mom that I need to be interrupted IMMEDIATELY! The first time, Mom needed me to clean up a Sarge accident. The second, Tony forgot I was meditating and needed me to fix the remote control in the basement. The third, Sarge needed my attention because I hadn't given him any in five to seven minutes. It has become a big joke in the house that as soon as I go in that room, I become the most popular person in the house. Tony could go the entire day without talking to me but the minute my butt hits that cushion and I light that candle, we have ISSUES to discuss.

Tonight, I had a combination of distractions. Before going in the meditation room, I announced that unless the house was burning down or someone was headed to the hospital, I was not to be disturbed. Or I would make sure that the house did burn down and one of them went to the hospital. But, Sarge was barking, the neighbors were having a party and Mom and Jack were two rooms over in the library watching some movie that involved police sirens, chainsaws, screaming and loud rock music. I think it's the latest Miley Cyrus vehicle. Plus, Tony was watching something in the basement that had so much bass in the soundtrack that the floor was vibrating. It was the perfect storm of meditation killers.

So, I did what any good student of meditation does. I fumed. But I was breathing deeply the whole time, so I think that counts.

Double Down!

It isn't news to anyone that I love fried chicken. I've written before about my love for everything Kentucky Fried, and I may have even mentioned that I'll eat until I have to roll around the floor in a big greasy pile, stomach distended from scarfing too many drummies and wings. It might even qualify as an addiction. An obsession, at least.

Last night, I took that obsession to a new level. I ate a KFC Double Down sandwich.

Frankly, what surprises me most was that I survived the experience and lived to type about it. But, we'll start at the beginning.

Yesterday was a bit stressful. Most days are a bit stressful now that I'm a Captain of Industry, but yesterday had its own unique complications and I needed greasy food salve for my wounds. Tony suggested the KFC, and you know as well I do that nothing trumps the siren song of Extra Crispy. Then Mom kicked it up a notch and said that in addition to the bucket we always get, she wanted to try the Double Down.

(Keep in mind that my mom has become one of those senior citizens who eats a dollop of potato salad and calls that dinner. I didn't think she'd be able to handle the double downage. So I offered to share it with her. Aren't I generous?)

And so, at 5:45, we drove off into the sunset, in search of crispy, salty meat products. The KFC here in Florence is about 20 minutes from the house, so the drive there is filled with anticipation, and the drive back is filled with the smell of fried chicken. At the drive-up, I told mom that the guys in the window were probably wondering what two hot ladies like ourselves were going to do with a whole bucket of chicken AND a Double Down, but they were probably just wondering why the entire country hasn't died of a heart attack already. Or what the change from $21 would be since the total was $20.50. Yes, one bucket of chicken with no sides and a Double Down costs $20.50. Mom is not a cheap date.

Once we arrived home, I knew we had approximately 30 seconds before the destroyer of chicken showed up. Tony can reduce a bucket to a few scraps of skin and a pile of bones in three minutes flat, so you have to get in, get what you want, and get out, perhaps with your fingers intact, perhaps not. Mom has a habit of dithering around the kitchen after we get take-out, gathering drinks, getting silverware, checking on the dogs, knitting a sweater, etc. She doesn't understand the Chicken Imperative. I grabbed the Double Down, hid it in a cabinet and called for Jack to Loose the Hounds (let Tony out of the attic so he can eat.)

As Tony was devouring his third piece of Kentucky Fried, Mom finally landed at the table to start eating. We cut the DD in half (actually thirds - Mom got 2/3 and I got the scrappins - she's not good at sharing) and braced ourselves for the chicken-y, bacon-y, cheesy goodness.

The verdict? Meh.

I'll admit, it was tasty. But was it more tasty than a piece of extra-crispy KFC? Not really. The box they put it in kinda steams out the crispiness and the bacon adds another (unnecessary) layer of salt to an already salty product. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I'll be purchasing another.

I did eat two drummies, though, and those were fantastic. That's right, people. I ate a third of a Double Down AND two drumsticks. And some potato salad. Save your judgements for someone who cares that it's swimsuit season.

This morning, however, I felt like I'd been doing salt shooters all night. I've had almost a gallon of water today and my body still feels like the Sahara.

So, my Double Down recommendations:

1. Eat a Double Down at least once in your life. It's a cultural experience.
2. Drink lots of water with the DD.
3. Eat it as soon as you order it so the packaging can't steam it to death.
4. Tell no one.

Stripping isn't what it used to be.

I used to be an expert stripper. Just ask my mom. I could take any piece of furniture, strip off all the paint, varnish, dirt and age and turn it into something beautiful and light that you'd be happy to have in your house.

Oh, you thought I was talking about something else.

Anyhow, that was when I was a younger woman, with more tolerance for caustic chemicals, more agile fingers and knees that didn't blow out if I tried to crouch too long. Today I undertook a project that showed my age in more ways than one, but proved that I can still have a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old if properly motivated.

First, though, I have to explain Starling woman projects. Some people are happy having as a project a little scrap booking weekend, or planting a flowerbed in fluffy moist soil. Not Starling women. We believe that a project should crush your will to live, should challenge all your physical and mental capabilities and should, if possible, send someone to the hospital with a bizarre (but non-life-threatening) injury.

My mother was always taking on this kind of project when we were younger. She'd wake up Saturday morning with a bolt, thinking to herself, "Today is the day we rip out the kitchen and reposition it on the roof! We should totally be able to finish that in two days!" or "I feel the urge to build a full-scale medieval trebuchet out of nothing but lawn clippings and guano! Go to it, kids!"

Of course, I exaggerate. Mom would never touch guano. But whatever the urge, it seems genetic. Yesterday morning, I woke with a bolt, thinking, "I'm going to strip and re-paint that chest in my bedroom! Surely I'll be finished by Sunday afternoon and can bask in the glow of my handiness while filling the beautiful chest with crisp bed linens!" (Where I was going to find crisp bed linens, I don't know. Mine are all kind of limp and pilly. I probably thought I'd have time left over to starch and iron mine.)

I thought I could crank this out because in my younger years (when I was recovering from a minor nervous breakdown) I refinished a couple of pieces that are still part of my furniture collection, even after 22 moves in the intervening years. So mom and I set out to buy all the supplies and after a few hours of shopping (turns out some of the supplies were clothes from Ann Taylor Loft), I was home and ready to go.

And that's when it all fell apart. This chest had three layers of intense oil paint on it, each nastier and more stubborn than the last. I spent hours on Saturday spreading, scraping and cursing the paint stripper, breathing in deadly toxic fumes and burning holes in myself. At one point, the stripper was eating through my gloves, so I had to make a choice which hand I liked least. (Take that sentence out of context and this gets weird again.) After a second run to the hardware store for better gloves, mineral spirits and more stripper, I went back to work. (I've got a fever and the only cure is...more stripper!)

This morning I woke up at 6:45, what I consider to be an unseemly hour for a Sunday, so I could bolt back into my bedroom and get back to work. (We slept in the guest room last night so as to survive. Those fumes are not kidding around.) Three hours later, I had to admit defeat. The top layer of paint turned into a substance not unlike toxic marshmallow fluff, while the bottom two layers stubbornly clung to the wood of the chest. I chipped the veneer in several places trying to scrape the paint away and every time I sat down to give my poor ancient knees a rest, I burned my leg or butt or foot or arm with paint stripper. Not to mention the brain cells I killed in the pursuit of bare wood. I need help brushing my teeth now.

The most demoralizing part is that the chest looks worse now than it did when I started. It has a few bare spots, but most of it looks like it's been crusted in, well, toxic half-melted paint. So I did what any sane adult woman would do. I threw a fit. I cried, I stormed around looking for a vacuum cleaner and I yelled at both my husband and my mother. All my work toward a calm, centered self went right out the window, which is nearly where I threw the vacuum cleaner in a fit of rage. Not my best moment.

But, now that I've had time to consider the ill-fated project, I've realized one thing. I'm not as young as I used to be. Oh, and some things you should leave to professionals, like stripping. Both furniture and the other kind.

(Oh, did you miss me? Because I missed you....)

Swiss cheese brain

I'm embarrassed to admit that my brain is made of Swiss cheese. I've forgotten more things in the past week than I remember about my entire life. And as a result of that, I've spent hours on the phone to no less than five different customer service departments, trying to get passwords reset so I can log into the myriad web sites I use to keep our business going. At last count, I have to log on to about 350,000different web sites to track account balances, issue payments, receive payments, input invoices, shop for office supplies, book Tony's facials, and the list goes on.

Over the past five business days, I've had to call for passwords from the bank, my student loan provider, a third-party payment site and Office Depot. In fact, I just got off the phone with a lovely young lady who is in the customer service department for our credit card processing company who informed me that not only was I entering the wrong information, but I was ON THE WRONG WEB SITE. I could hear her gesticulating wildly for her fellow call-center employees to click over and listen to the nutter who just called in and didn't even know which web site she was supposed to use. Awesome.

I have no idea at what point in my life my brain died, but I know it was recently. Part of the problem is that I have a lot to do every day now for the first time in nearly a year. I suppose there is some mental muscle atrophy after an extensive period of disuse. Watching Tabatha's Salon Takeover all day can only use so many brain cells, and it probably kills about three times that many. Working back up to full mental capacity must take some time. I'm guessing that by the time I retire, I'll have my faculties back.

The other problem is that every site has different password requirements. Here you have to enter a password with letters and numbers. Over here, a password has to have capital AND lowercase letters and numbers. At this third place, capital, lowercase, numbers AND be longer than 12 characters. Another place, capital, lowercase, numbers, umlauts, Cyrillic characters, punctuation and a hat. It becomes impossible to come up with something that anyone could remember. Let alone a woman with mush for a brain.

So, I make embarrassing phone calls to bored CSRs in foreign countries and throw myself on their mercy. Only one has had the bad form to laugh at me, and he laughed for what seemed like 15 minutes at my admission of being unable to log into a web site I hadn't used in three months. (He was from the South, so at least his laughing had a pleasing, gentle accent.) Everyone else has just seemed mildly irritated with my ineptitude.

But I've started solving the problem. I'm using miniature Post-It notes (Hey, I thought they were adult-sized when I ordered them from Office Depot. How was I supposed to know they were Lilliputian?) and sticking them in a secret place on my desk with all my user names and passwords written down.

The only problem now is finding a secret place in my desk large enough for 450 tiny Post-its.

Spinning Class

Yesterday, Tony and I took our first Spinning class together. I'm a veteran of Spinning (not to look at me, but I swear I've gone to Spinning before) but Tony was a rookie. I managed to talk him into it with promises of burning more than 1,000 calories in an hour and that there would be other men in this class, unlike Zumba. (Don't worry, I've never tried to talk Tony into Zumba. I understand and respect the limits of our relationship.)

Everything was going great, too. We woke up on time, ate our breakfast and were to the gym in plenty of time to claim a bike and start warming up. Then, our instructor arrived. Let's call her Chesty LaRue. (Keep in mind, I've only ever had male instructors for my Spinning classes. Cleavage wasn't really an issue.)

Chesty was dressed modestly enough when she arrived (late). Long-sleeved shirt, cropped sweatpants (a trend I'll never understand - if it is cold enough for sweatpants, don't you want your shins warm, too?), Ugg boots. I was willing to forgive her for the Uggs if she was a good instructor. Then, moments before we started riding in earnest, she whipped off the outer layer to reveal hotpants and a bikini top. I've never seen a sports bra that small. For a moment, I thought we'd wandered into Stripperobics instead of Group Cycle.

Tony looked at me with bug eyes. I'm sure he was thinking this was the best fitness class he would ever attend. I didn't have the heart to tell him they were going to shut the lights off in a minute and unless Busty McGee's breast implants glowed under the black lights, he wouldn't get the show he was anticipating. His disappointment was palpable.

However, like many women who wear bikini tops and hot pants indoors, Boobs McClanahan's personality didn't improve when the lights were off. (I realize that makes me sound like I've been in the dark with a lot of scantily clad women. I'm not above pandering to increase my readership, people.) For the next hour, we were subjected to her shouting motivational-poster aphorisms:

"It's up to you to decide what your personal best is!" (Mine is not falling off the bike and yarfing on myself.)

"Everyone's feeling alive now!" (If by alive, you mean half dead, I've never felt this alive!)

"What if I told you that you were stronger now than when you walked in here? Scientific fact!" (I'm just wondering where she got her biology degree? Hooters U?)

And my personal favorite, "Dance on that bike - everything's a dance party to me!" Shocking.

Somewhat worse than the shouting was the flat, off-key singing. Every time a new song would come on the sound system, Tatas O'Shea would pick out several key phrases to shout-sing along with. It was kind of like being at a church service where the choir sings and the pastor shouts out their lines about a half-beat too late. "Knockers McGillicutty's 9:15 Bon Jovi Worship service!"

All that being said, she put together a good workout. I fell off that bike at the end of the hour with wobbly legs, a red face and sheets of sweat running off me. Tony crawled off to the locker room in even worse shape. Hours later, I asked if he would ever come back to another class and he said he would.

I'm just not sure if it would be for the workout or the boobs.

Carrots....

I hate carrots. Really despise them. They make me want to scrub my tongue with a washcloth after I eat them.

Why am I telling you this? Frankly, I'm out of good ideas for blogs this week. I've spent the entire week glued to my computer, working, and not that many funny stories arise out of that. Aside from the fact that I've had to blockade my desk with empty boxes and trash cans to keep Big Smelly Dog from wiping his wet beard on my back, there hasn't been a lot of breaking news in here.

I haven't even been to the gym this week because of, in this order, a stomach bug, a fax toner cartridge emergency (it's a long story) and the sheer exhaustion that results from adjusting to a lower-calorie diet. (I'm barely keeping my eyes open while I type this. If I doze off, don't take it personally.)

Which brings us back to the carrots. I really like the food I'm eating right now - it's tasty and the portions aren't even too controlled. I filled a whole plate with lunch today. And last night I got a chocolate square. (I really know how to live it up!) However, the chefs who create these meals LOVE carrots. I've had to eat the orange horsemen of the apocalypse in every non-breakfast meal I've had so far. Raw, cooked, cooked and cold, in slaw, baby ones for crunch, you name it. And I've hated every weirdly bittersweet bite. I don't like the texture, the taste, or even the look of them.

Upon reflection, I think carrots are the only vegetable I really hate. (I'm not a huge artichoke fan, but I'm not even sure that's a serious vegetable.) I eat peas and broccoli and even brussels sprouts. But if I could go the rest of my life without eating carrots, I'd be a happy woman. (And Mom, I know if Tony and I have kids, I'm going to have to eat everything and not complain because I want them to eat everything and not complain. Right now I don't have to be mature about it because I'm the only person who cares what I eat.)

However, if I'm going to keep eating my delivery food, I need to just suck it up and learn to deal with the disgusting little things. No matter how they make the inside of my mouth feel. (Like I've been eating shampoo-flavored sandpaper.) It will all be worth it when I'm as thin as (and, because of the carrots, the same color as) Victoria Beckham.

TV Dinners

Tony and I are, as usual, trying to watch what we eat. We're trying something new this month, though - eating meals from a delivery service. The food is all-natural, never frozen, has no preservatives or artificial flavors and lasts for a week in the fridge. All the portions are strictly controlled and we get three meals and two snacks a day, five days a week. (We like to leave the house occasionally, so we chose to have some days off the plan to allow for that.)

It has made life much easier in that I don't have to plan, shop and cook for meals during the week when my workday starts at 8 in the morning and ends at about 7:30 in the evening. I can just hop into the kitchen, plate some food, heat it up and blam! we have a meal. And the food is super tasty, so that makes it easier. (It certainly doesn't taste like a Lean Cuisine, thank God.) The only thing that remains to be seen is how many pounds I'm going to lose. Tony and I were laughing this morning that the weight was going to just drop off. We'll get on the scale in the morning (because we like to torture ourselves and weigh in every day.) and 10 pounds will be magically gone from our bodies. My clothes will start fitting and his will stop. It will be magical. Kind of like a unicorn who knows karate.

The biggest problem with this system is that with portion control, you sometimes get hungry. (Like, four times a day, max.) And that typically happens late at night, especially if you get hungry and eat dinner at 5 and bedtime isn't until 11. Adding to that is the glut (pun intended) of food commercials on TV, most pointedly during my favorite shows, which all revolve around food. (Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, Last Restaurant Standing, Biggest Loser, Top Chef, etc.) Last night, with my tummy grumbling, I had to sit through at least 4,000 commercials for Red Lobster, Taco Bell (Who's taking on that Drive-Thru Diet?), Kentucky Fried Chicken (and you know how I feel about that), and every other kind of restaurant you can imagine. The entire time, I was salivating.

It gets better when you DVR something (I like to watch the two-hour Biggest Loser in super-fast-forward, stopping only when someone falls down or they get on the big scale. I can only watch so many sweaty people cry before I become immune to their issues. And I want to swat Jillian Michaels like the tiny gnat she is.) but you still have to deal with the pictures of clam chowder, cake and fried chicken flashing on the screen, tempting you.

I think the only solution is to stop watching TV. Which would also benefit me in the long run. However, the two warmest (read: tolerably warm) rooms in the house both have TVs in them. The rest of the house is an icebox of death. You could hang meat in here, all part of our bill-reduction program. After the December gas bill, we had to turn the thermostat down another five degrees and put on yet another layer of socks and scarves. We both look like that little kid in "A Christmas Story." I'm typing with fingerless gloves right now.

The moral of this story? Don't diet and watch TV. And don't diet, stop watching TV and hang out in an ice-cold house. Go to the gym and sit in the dry sauna for 15 minutes. You'll sweat out the fat AND be warm for a little while. The 55-degree living room will feel refreshing after that. And you'll be so hot you won't want to eat for at least 15 minutes.