Staying on the funny side...of Weight Loss Secrets

Staying on the funny side…of Weight Loss Secrets

I would like to thank TiredOfYourWeight@WhosTheNextIdiot.com for the email you just sent reminding me that I’m overweight. How did you find me? Were you there when I used emergency money to buy girl scout cookies? When I dove between the sofa cushions because I thought I saw a French fry? When I ran past you in my bathing suit at the pool and took out three toddlers? How do you people know that I want to lose weight, need money transferred from Nigerian royalty, and have been looking everywhere for a fake Rolodex? Baffling.

So, Mister TiredOfYourWeight, I appreciate that you took time in the middle of the night to send me this urgent email to share your weight loss secret that is sure to revolutionize the world and to give me the opportunity to buy into it before anyone else. I am flattered that you spend so much time and energy caring about strangers. I wish you would spend the same amount of time learning to spell and removing the strands of gibberish in your heartfelt message which, until I speak in tongues, I am unable to translate. I’m sure you mean well, but I don’t need the revolutionary answer to instant weight loss. You see, I already know the answer, and have known it for years. In fact, it really hasn’t been much of a secret since 4th grade biology. Eat less than you are, exercise more than you are, and you will lose weight. Shocking I know. Knowing what to do isn’t the secret. It’s doing it.

You see, I would rather drink lumpy shakes made out of goat’s urine, strap thirty pounds of spandex to my body, and spend thousands on hairdos, clothes, and accessories guaranteed to make me look a size smaller. I would rather have my colon flushed and take diet pills that cause hair loss, fainting spells, and the unavoidable explosive diarrhea. But don’t make me eat vegetables – that’s just gross. I want those programs where you actually pay more to eat less. I would rather spend hours reading manuals from experts claiming it’s not the quantity but the combinations of foods– just don’t mix the brown Snickers with the tan French fries and you’re fine.

I want to sit around perplexed saying, “But I don’t eat that much” and convince myself that I must have some rare thyroid condition and that everybody’s order contains the word Supersize. I want to buy exercise tapes that I’m too lazy to open and fancy treadmills to hold my plants, rather than park at the back of the parking lot and take the stairs. I am not interested in the kind of exercise where I am involved. I don’t even want to get up to change the TV. I once watched a twenty-four hour Valerie Bertinelli marathon because I couldn’t find the remote. I would rather sit around with a group of other overweight people and have them tell me size doesn’t matter and look at skinny people in disgust and hope they’re miserable.

So I do know the secret to weight loss, Mr. TiredOfYourWeight. Perhaps if you could come up with a revolutionary way to do the things we don’t want to do. Now that I would read. So thanks but no thanks. I would, however, be interested in a way to earn a million in a week without ever having to get dressed or leave my house. Do you have a cousin who does that?

Frazzled Mom Hiding Out in Bathroom

by Kelly Swanson

I have to talk quietly so he won’t hear me. If he hears me, he will find me, and I haven’t had a moment to myself all day. That’s why I’m sitting here in the bathroom sucking on a lollipop wishing it were a Marlboro, and clutching a bottle of cooking sherry. I just need a moment to vent. And I don’t have anybody. So you’re it.

No, it’s not about the gas bill again. I’m over that. Yes, I’m still counting points. Why do you think I’m in such a bad mood all the time? And, thank you, I’m no longer worried that my left elbow is bigger than my right. I’m just deformed. I’ll live with it. No, today I’m just tired.

That’s all there is to it. Tired. I don’t care anymore about winning the lottery, I don’t care about getting a new minivan. I don’t care about being swept away to a tropical paradise where I instantly turn into a size 0 and my breasts get perky again. I don’t care about anything but sleep.

You’re probably not going to feel sorry for me because my situation is not unique. I’m a mom. And to just one kid – a two-year-old boy– but just one kid all the same. “Oh shut up,” my Aunt Edna always says, “I had four kids in two years. You don’t even know tired.”

Please….just this one time…don’t tell me you have it worse…..don’t be like my cousin Shirley who constantly whines about how bad she’s got it. Waa, waa, waa. I’ve got three kids. We live in a trailer with my great Aunt Nadine who keeps losing her teeth while my no-good husband is in Nashville trying to make it as a country/western singer in between shifts at the nude car wash.

Maybe she does have it worse, but just for today. Take one minute out of your day to listen to a stranger. I won’t tell you the story of my life. I won’t even tell you the story of my week. Just let me tell you about my day. That’s all I ask.

He gets up at 5am. Which means I get up at five am and throw him another day-old cereal bar so he can watch cartoons while I get ready. Oh I know I know about that whole cartoon will rot his brain stuff. I was worried about it for about two weeks and then I got over that. I’ll trade rotted brain for some moments of quiet.

So I get one eyebrow done and I hear something that I know means trouble - silence. If you’re a mom and you hear silence, run.

In our house, junior’s silence usually means he’s either got the cat caught up in another death grip that he innocently refers to as playing – or he’s naked. In this case it’s the latter.

I follow the trail of pajamas and socks and diaper pieces (he can’t just take the thing off, he’s got to shred it in the process) and I get to where my beloved son is standing on top of his train play table playing my pee pee’s a water gun and firing on a helpless line of stuffed animals as well as anything else he deems worthy of death by pee pee – which now includes my bathrobe which is the price you pay when you startle an unsuspecting pee shooter. They’ll turn on you. That was just the beginning.

He refuses to get in his car seat because he thinks the dead leaf on the window is a bug, and he’s suddenly developed a terrifying phobia for anything smaller than a fly and lets out a terrifying shriek that can be heard all over the world – a shriek which he now finds to be quite fun and so continues shrieking without ceasing for a good twenty minutes – seeing how high up he can get in octave without breaking glass.

He sings Jesus Loves Me This I Know to the sweet foreign gentleman working at the gas station who apparently was not in a singing mood which did nothing to deter junior from singing it louder and louder with more urgency as if threatening to pull out his weapon and pee the poor man to death. I got a dirty look from this old lady beside me and I said, “What? We’re witnessing. Would you be interested in a pamphlet?” That shut her up.

I spend forever in the gym parking lot trying to find the ten-cent red rubber nose he found earlier in the week on the floor of the auto shop that had now rolled under the car. And he’s crying in jags stopping only to hold his breath and I’m under the car screaming, “I’ll give you something to cry about young man” and secretly hoping he doesn’t start holding his breath again – cause the gym nursery won’t take ‘em if they’re blue.

Oh, and get this. He chokes on a piece of gum at the grocery store – right in front of the feminine products, which is just Murphy’s Law. And I pounded him on the back a couple of times like we do to Uncle Willy when he eats steak without his teeth, and the gum finally shoots out. And it was really a crisis, ‘cause that was like my last piece.

And this little old lady gives me this sour look like it was my fault that Junior threw his sandal into her grocery cart and pulled over a display of oranges before I could catch him. And she’s all sour-faced and looking at me like I was something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe, and I’m like, “Look old woman, cut me some slack, he’s not even my kid. Check the milk carton in the back.”

He’s figured out how to roll down the window (used recycled Pintos don’t come with child window locks) and in the course of a four-minute conversation I had on my cell phone (telling my sister why I will never shop at the Wally Mart again) he manages to get his window down, work his way out of his clothes and throw them out, along with his diapers and his socks and his shoes, at intervals along highway 68. All of this in four minutes, while still strapped in and without making a peep. This from a kid who can’t keep the food on his fork from the plate to his mouth.

I could go on, but I’m not. Because I just don’t have the energy is why. And that’s why I’m here. Hiding in the bathroom. While he’s out there. Somewhere. Plotting. Scheming. Lurking. Help me! It’s only 10am. I’m tired.

From the Page to the Stage

CREATION
A journey from the page to the stage

by Kelly Swanson
President, North Carolina Storytelling Guild www.ncstoryguild.org
August, 2006

I promised as President of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild, that I would do a monthly article on a topic of interest to storytellers. You can read the whole thing by going to my site. Otherwise, here are the bits and pieces.

YOUR STORY

Stop fanning yourself. This is not a religious discussion on creation. I mean creation in the artistic sense. We are artists. We create. We tell a story. Whether we dance, paint, sing, or play Beethoven’s Fifth on the jaw harp, we tell a story. A story about life. And when we tell this story we evoke an emotion from our audience. We take them to places in their own life or to distant lands where cultures are different but the emotions are the same. We are given our gifts for a reason. Our voices were meant to tell a story. And as artists, we spend our lives finding out what stories are in us to tell. It is important that you find YOUR story, YOUR message to the world, YOUR voice.

Note: A great book you should read on the kinds of stories you should tell: The Story Factor by Annette Simmons. Here's a link to her site: www.groupprocessconsulting.com

THE PROCESS STARTS INSIDE OF YOU

It starts with searching inside yourself (an ongoing process by the way) to find out what messages you have to share with the world. What stories your heart speaks.

WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW

Professional speakers are taught to speak about what they know, what life has taught them. I encourage you as artists to do the same. And to do so, we must at least wonder what our lives have taught us. What lessons have we learned? What sage wisdom have we stored up? What do we have to share with the world?

Note: Pamela King Cable is a southern writer who has really tapped into the heart of writing what you know. Here's her site: http://www.pamelacable.com/

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED IN MY LIFE

If you’re like me, upon hearing this, you went “huh?” and wondered if maybe you should have filled out that Wal-Mart application after all. I went so far as to get out a piece of paper and write across the top, “Things I have learned in my life….” And I stared at it for like fifteen minutes and then went to get some chocolate and an aspirin for my brain cramp. But I came back to it and decided, oh what the heck, just start writing. And my list was started. I gave myself no rules, no limits, no boundaries. I told myself it could be serious, funny, religious, earth shattering or silly. The point was just to write and keep writing without thinking. To write about what my life has taught me. And I knew (I was right of course) that in this process some things would start to take birth. And I was right.

MAKE SURE THE LISTENER KNOWS YOUR MESSAGE

Make sure your listener knows the message. I am surprised at how often the teller isn’t even clear on the message, much less the audience. I know it sounds weird and maybe hard to understand. But nobody said creation was going to be easy. But you will be glad you went to the trouble because this is how you begin to find your voice, your attitude, the kinds of stories you want to tell. Shoot, you may even have the courage to start writing your own stories.

STARTING A LIFE JOURNAL

I want you to get a journal. Today. By journal, I mean a notebook with paper in it that can not be used for grocery lists or notes to yourself. Call it your life journal. This is not a diary. I repeat, this is not a diary. This is a place to start recording stuff. By stuff, I mean anything that gets your attention. I mean scenes that touch your heart, descriptions of people on the subway, funny ways to describe a drooling dog with three legs, what it feels like to get older, rants about voice mail and customer service, whatever you want to write. You don’t even have to write in complete sentences.

Keep the journal with you at all times. If you’re like me, you’ll have several in different places - your car, by your bed, in your purse. And I’m warning you to write this stuff down as soon as you think of it. You will not remember it tomorrow. What we’re doing here is recording the details in life so that when we sit down to write a story, we’re not trying to think of things off the top of our head. We can refer to our notebooks which over time will grow to be grand collections of material to use in our art.

Here's a thought: why not create a blog and let your daily entries be your journal? I know. I'm a genius.

JOURNAL TOPICS

On some of the pages of the journal, give yourself a topic and write about it. Here are some of the topics I have used in mine:
· Funny names of people and towns (internet and phone book is a great place to look)
· Funny names of businesses
· Places I remember growing up
· My first love
· What it felt like to be a teenager
· If I had a week left to live
· Ways to describe a man with a long neck
· Things you don’t see in church
· The dinner table at a our family reunions

FINDING YOUR OWN VOICE

Your main goal in storytelling is to tell the story in your own voice. To be different than the twenty-five other people who may be telling that same story. To be different than the storyteller they just saw who told the same story. The key lies in what makes you different. And the details will be what make you different. The way you describe things, the funny voices you use, the way you have of seeing the world from where you sit. This will give flavor to your storytelling. When you tell a story you are telling it in your own way. Whether you ever put it on paper, like it or not, you’re writing. You’re creating. You are taking the words and making them your own.

IF YOU STILL DON'T GET IT

Email me (Kelly@kellyswanson.net) and I will be happy to respond. I suggest that you start your journal first, get used to it for a little while, and then if you still have questions let me know.

SHARING THE JOURNEY

I’m excited to walk along this journey with you - the journey to discover your unique voice. Trust me, you have a gift. You were given this gift for a reason. We need your voice. Until we meet again, happy creating!

Kelly Swanson

It's all fun and games 'til the hair gets messed up

www.kellyswanson.net

kelly@kellyswanson.net