Be The Change

So this post will be along the same lines as the last one. But I want to give the so-called "normal" world a little perspective on not fitting.

That's not a typo. Not fitting.

When you are more than fifty or a hundred pounds overweight, you don't fit.

You don't fit into booths at a pub. You don't fit into certain chairs in restaurants. You don't fit into stadium, movie theatre, or airplane seats. Or (how could I forget?) stylyng chairs and pedi-spas at the salon.

You don't fit into regular clothes. Your options for clothing are actually quite limited and quite expensive. You can get cheap stuff but it is usually very ugly and unflattering.

Now, I am not talking about "plus sizes" like they sell in most stores. I am not talking a 1X or a 2X. I am talking bigger than they sell in most specialty stores.

There are very few choices for the very large. And the nicer, more fashionable, better quality clothing costs way more than what fluffy gals can find in a basic plus-plus size catalog. My fluffy brothers don't fare much better.

You can't fit through certain stores because they make the spaces between what they are selling more narrow to fit in more products. Walking into a crowded restaurant is a nightmare. Or, when you are in a crowded place, an elevator, a night club, you find yourself trying not to take up so much space, to make room for the normal people. I have seen people not get onto elevators because they think "I don't want to get too close the chubby gal" or they just don't want to take the chance.

Fitting into cars can be an issue too. I remember the last time I gained back weight after keeping off 50 or 60 out of 100 pounds lost, the steering wheel of my car was eroding at the bottom because it hit my stomach when I drove.

And perception and perspective of the thin world is skewed too. I could lose forty or fifty pounds and a thin person might never notice because to certain types of people, fat is fat. 50 pounds or 150 pounds...to them, you are just fat.

A few years ago, a former co-worker of mine came into my new place of employment and I made comment to her about how I used to be skinny (because you always, when you are fluffy, have to clear the air and make it known that you know you've gotten fat!) and she said I looked exactly the same. I had gained 80 pounds since I had last seen her.

Then there is the other end of that spectrum. I have plenty of thin friends who don't "see" my fat because they love me.

They think I am wonderful and beautiful because they see past the weight and see me.

If that is true, then why are they so happy for me when they see me looking more like them? It is for the very same reason, they know me and they love me and they know that this other person was in here all along.

A friend of mine commented to me the other day on my previous post and she said that she takes people noticing when she loses weight in negative way. I've done that. Because you second guess and you say to yourself "Well, jeez, I must have looked really terrible to look so 'great' now. Why did I let myself go like that?"

I am here as a person who only kept getting bigger and bigger and I am here to tell you that I find joy in the fact that I am not getting bigger anymore.

Sometimes I wonder how people who barely know me can notice it and are looking at me in a whole new way. But then there are, what I like to call, the skinny-minded people who don't notice because I am still fat. I hope that's the case, anyway, and that they are not just thinking something completely different. (Like "Is she ever gonna lose all that weight?")

I used to hear skinny people, and when I say skinny people, I mean the really, naturally skinny ones who never had to worry about gaining weight and do anyway, or the ones who are fine they way they are-fit and healthy, but won't wear a bathing suit without shorts and a t-shirt over it; and I wonder what they see when they look in the mirror. I would  kill to be that small; to take up that little space. I don't like to be envious but I am a little  bit. I can admit it.

Last night, I did a client's hair and I have to say, she is hands down, one of the most beautiful women (including models and celebs) that I have ever seen. She is tall and naturally thin. She barely wears a stitch of make-up and she is flawless.

I often wonder, on the rare occasions I meet someone like that, if it feels different to look so pretty.

I know that thin feels much different than fluff. But does pretty feel different than plain? I wonder. I wonder, when you're thin, if you will ever be thin enough.

When I was a size ten, I felt "thin enough". I felt it because that was the size that people treated me like everybody else. That was the size that no one gave me a second glance at the beach. That was the size and weight that fit. That I fit.

I watched a movie (a guilty pleasure and I can't believe I am admitting it to all five you!) called Pitch Perfect in which there is a fluffy girl and she calls  herself Fat Amy "...so twig bitches like you don't do it behind my back." I totally do that. I try to beat people to the punch. To let them know that I know that they know I'm fat!

All you "twig bitches" out there who think you are fat or have a crazy, unrealistic image of yourself, don't teach that to your children. Teach them, instead, to make the right choices when it comes to food. Lead by example. Don't count calories in front of your daughters. Calories are not nearly as important as nutrition.

I think, when I was a child, I received so many mixed messages from my mother and my aunt and my grandmother. "Finish everything on your plate or you don't get dessert!" It didn't matter that I was full, I wasn't allowed to go out and play until I cleared my plate. Then, I was told, as I got older, that I was eating too much.

Teach your girls and boys about healthy foods and lead by example. Eat your fruits and veggies. Drink water instead of soda. Don't force feed them if they are not hungry. But if they are holding out for ice cream and they didn't finish their dinner, tell them that's OK but just one scoop and then have a piece of fruit. When I was a kid, if I choked down all my dinner, I didn't want to miss dessert so I ate it anyway. I'm not saying it's my mother's fault. But, I can't help wondering if, had I learned moderation at a young age, things might be easier for me now.

Don't bribe your children with snacks and treats like my mother did. I'm not saying ever, but don't make it their habit.  Sometimes, you just have to give in and give them that lollipop. But not every time. Sometimes, it's better to just leave the cart in the middle of Target and cut your losses.

Change the cycle. Teach them to get off the couch and away from the computer. Teach them that balance is more important than counting calories. But when they want chocolate cake, let them eat it! Just not on a daily basis.

I'm no shining example of how to be thin. But I sure know how to get fat. Trust me, thin is better. But more important than that is good health. Natural, whole foods most of the time, can make up for the chicken nuggets they're having in the school cafeteria. Teach them. If you are a junk food junkie, teach yourself first.

I come from a long line of the "feed a cold, gorge a crisis" mentality. At some point, we have to break the vicious circle.

Gandhi said that we should "be the change" we want to see in the world. Be the change. Skinny, fat, or somewhere in between, we all need to stop beating ourselves up and start taking care of ourselves.

"Love is a Battlefield"

So I hear language bandied about where fitness and weight loss are concerned and I am afraid that I am going to have to use some of it.

These past two weeks I have experienced my first struggle with my whole new lifestyle.

I am not really struggling too badly, but I definitely feel off my game and can totally see where it could all go awry.

We get to that place I like to call the "safe" zone. For me, it is a place where I begin to feel comfortable in my own skin again. People tell me how great I look and I forget that it is just comparatively speaking.

While I am sure that I have achieved a significant amount of weight loss (I have not yet gotten on the scale), I sometimes forget that I have not reached my goal of achieving wellness by only putting healthful things into my body and keeping active. I almost forgot that I am still, well, fat. I am not "well" yet. I am only better.

I hear so many people say phrases like "always a struggle" or "battling my weight" or other negative, self-defeating language. Up until now, it has not really been much of a struggle for me. I have been consistently able to eat right and keep moving and motivate myself and lose weight. When people say "what diet are you following?" I say I am not on a diet. I just changed everything.

And I did. But I forgot about the traps that have been preset by my sub-conscious to sabotage me along the way. I forgot about complacency, the power of positive reinforcement, the wicked, wicked appeal of a nightly cocktail.

My "struggles" have not really been all that difficult but I used them to ensnare myself in a net of negativity. It's strange how people telling me that they notice that I've lost weight or that I look "great" can be considered a negative in my world but it leads me down a dark path of wrong-thinking: thinking that I look "great" can lead me to think that I can slack off a little. But this is not something to slack off on. I am trying to reverse years of damage and trauma that I have put my body through by carrying all that excess weight.

I came to this realization a few days ago when I heard someone say that it is a never-ending battle to lose weight and be healthy.  It doesn't have to be. I don't want to fight anymore.

I don't want to be too big to fit into chairs with arms anymore. I don't want to have to shop only at "plus size" specialty stores anymore. I don't want to have to worry if the step ladder will hold me when I clean my station at work. That's the real hard stuff. Holding up three hundred pounds every day is the battle. The changing? That's the easy part. But I forgot that for a few days and I let it get to me.

I did not binge eat or suddenly start eating McDonald's and Taco Bell again. I did, however, over-indulge in some of my go-to healthier snacks and get a little lazy in my routine. I did not exercise for nearly two whole weeks.I was not cooking for myself every day. I was not keeping track of little snacks here and there. And I could feel the pull taking hold of me. So I didn't fight it.

I called it what it was-a temporary lapse-and I am moving on.

I don't want to ever look at this life I am choosing to live as a fight or a battle. I only want to stay on my course and do what is best for me.

I could blame the heat for my lack of motivation. But I'd be kidding myself. I fell into a slight depression and now I am climbing out of it.

My sister is doing something similar with her life and she has begun inspiring me. I am going to try to use some visualization techniques to get me over this rough spot. I am envisioning my healthier, happier me and it has seemed to light a bit of a fire under me. Don't get me wrong, I still procrastinated much of my day away and am writing this at almost two in the morning. But I definitely feel the wheels turning again.

I am not waging war on food and fat. I am not fighting the battle of the bulge. I am simply going back to the beginning when it was going right and I am moving on from here.

Who's with me?

"In The Good Old Summertime"

Never let it be said that this fluffy girl does not come clean when she has been slacking!

I have been trying to squeeze every minute out of every day and yet I get so distracted by television and facebook and Candy Crush and birdsong and sunsets and squirrels!

I am squeezing in a brief update on my progress and where I have been slacking off.

I continue to progress at a fairly steady pace with my new healthy lifestyle. That being said, I have been taking some short cuts. 

I am caught in the never ending struggle of trying to create balance in my life. I want to socialize with my friends and visit my family and keep in touch with those close to me who live out of town. I want to spend time with my husband. I want to spend at least some part of my sunny days off at the beach. I want to exercise outside and take advantage of communing with nature while exercising. I want to spend a couple of hours a day writing. I want to keep up with my housework and staying organized because I understand fully how much that will help me in my journey towards good health. I want to have time to meditate. I want to read every book on my summer reading list.I like to do food shopping every few days so I am only eating the freshest and healthiest foods. I want to spend time cooking and preparing that food. All I need is...totally drew a blank there! All I need is what? More time? A time machine? A personal assistant? 

Every night I go to bed saying tomorrow will be the day I hit the ground running. I wake up early after not sleeping more than two hours in a row in the six or seven hours I allot for sleeping. I wake up and have my one cup of caffeine and watch the today show and read a little which usually turns into reading for an hour because I lose all sense of time when I am lost in a book.

I set timers to limit the time I spend doing certain tasks to shave a few minutes here or there. But then I sit down to catch my breath and I'll play a game on my iPhone or someone will call and I'll be on the phone for an hour or I get into texting and it turns into a marathon. I lose hours this way!

I have opened up this old laptop several times in the past week so I can sit and write my book or work on this blog and I, of course, find myself checking email and before I know it I am stalking Facebook. Then the computer crashes because I haven't been on it in three weeks and it needs to be updated and security checked and it's two hours later and all I know is that someone went to the gym, someone is mad at someone, and some celebrity did some ridiculous thing!

Social media and technology are a wonderful way to stay connected to friends and to glean information but I am finding that it is also a way to fritter away what little precious time we all have. Isn't that ironic? Here you sit, all four or five of you, reading my blog that I just spent the last forty minutes I didn't have writing, and I am complaining about technology and my lack of time!

Well, I think I need to shake things up a little in my quest for good health and balance in life. It will take much willpower and a lot of courage on my part. I need to unplug. From now on, I will try to keep my phone on do not disturb while I am doing the important things I need to do to take care of me. Instead of shaving time off cooking by ordering a whole wheat pizza with no cheese and a salad with no dressing.  I will start cooking my own pizzas again and keep the television off and try to eliminate the day to day distractions.

I am determined to stay on my path! I feel like I am putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect at everything that I am not even coming close at even one little thing like taking care of me.

I welcome summer with open arms and I hope that by the time the nights begin to cool and grow longer, I will have a handle on the balance I so desperately seek. I'll keep you posted. Now get off your computer and go to the beach or the park or have some Fro Yo!

"Have You Heard About the Lonesome Loser?"

Another post about loss. Sort of.

It's been marinating for a couple of weeks now but I wasn't, and still am not, sure if I could do it justice.

First of all, and perhaps I should have led with this, I would like to apologize to those of you who have been googling or searching and have found a blog about a middle-aged, over-weight, whiny chick instead of a hot porn site! I got so excited about how many hits my blog got last week that I clicked on the site that was sending people here and I was taken aback when topless women popped up! Let's just say that some things are better left a mystery!

Speaking of mysteries, I have been getting asked a lot about how much weight I have lost and I am sorry to say that I still have no earthly idea. That, like who my readers are, shall remain a mystery.

When I began this whole journey, I knew that it was a complete lifestyle change and not a diet or a weight loss program. It may be difficult for many to grasp the concept. The weight loss is a happy by-product of some life-altering changes I have made.

So what has been turning over around in my head these past few weeks is not about size or weight or  ups and downs on the scale. It's about how I feel about me.

I feel smaller.

Strange thing to say when my foot print is most likely still the same as it ever was. I am a large person and I need more space than the average gal. However, in my mind, I feel completely transformed.

I am transformed, if not completely.

Let's start with the losses. What have I lost since this journey began?

I have lost half my wardrobe because it is too big. I have lost (according to most of the tags in my clothes) two, three, or four sizes depending on what type of clothing you are talking about. I just donated two more bags of clothing this past week.

I needed to buy different bras and underwear because those things need to fit.

I have lost my craving for processed foods, for fatty, non-nutritive food, for decadent cakes and cookies and pies and well you get the idea. I am not saying that I wouldn't enjoy a chocolate chip cookie or some ice cream once in awhile but I would prefer to know that they were made with non-gmo, organic, whole ingredients when possible. I now crave fruits and vegetables and water and whole, raw nuts and grains.

It doesn't bother me so much when someone is having lasagna or fried chicken or take-out from a burger joint. I

I have also lost my obsession with food. I no longer spend my days off devising my menus and grocery lists and trying to figure out what I am going to eat each day so I don't slip up. There is no slipping up any more. I just shop and cook and eat and clean up. If I choose to dine out, I try to make the right kind of choices and ask for sauces or butter or the like to be on the side or left out completely. I even order take out from my local pizza joint and once in a blue I'll have sushi. Last night, we had sushi delivered and they sent me the wrong thing. I do not eat eel. So I ate an egg roll. I made the decision but even as I was eating it I decided that I would just eat the inside and then I panicked because I could taste all that oil and I didn't know what kind of oil it was so I ate the inside of half an egg roll. And then I made a salad.

Not too long ago, I would have eaten two egg rolls and an entree and some steamed dumplings and God knows what else and been totally sick after I ate but still had dessert. Today, something reflexively stops me from doing that.

So this must be what it feels like to not have a compulsion to eat, well, everything.

What have I gained?

I have gained confidence, faith in myself to make the right choices (fro yo for dinner is OK once in a blue). I have gained a cheering section from my co-workers to my readers (all seven of you, porn searchers notwithstanding), new wardrobe choices that have been hanging in my closet for years. I have gained the ability to breathe. That was a biggie. One day I realized that I was breathing like a normal person. I have gained the option to shop in regular stores (still in plus sizes but I don't have to go to specific plus size specialty stores, most of which charge an flabby arm and a dimpled thigh!) I have gained income by not spending all my money on someone else's cooking (Gino, The King, The Colonel, Ronald, Papa John, Chung Wah) and eating out.

It's strange how straightening out one, huge area in my life has brought order to so much of the rest of my life.

I have been walking and am up to four miles now without really trying too hard. I will start adding in short sprints of "jogging" this week. 

I am not scale obsessed like I used to be when trying to lose weight. That trying thing really struck me. I no longer try to lose weight. I eat healthy and I exercise. The weight is coming off all on it's own and it seems to be at a good pace. Some weeks I feel my clothes are looser and looser and some weeks I feel the same. But I never feel bigger. And I always feel better. Each week I notice another little ache or pain has gone away. Or I am sleeping better. Or I don't get headaches any more. Or I had a sore throat and very red tonsils but it went away and I didn't lose any time from work because it turned in to a nasty cold then bronchitis etc.

On those long walks, I am really taking stock and facing some demons that I thought I buried long ago. They are still there and I am trying to deal with them one at a time. I am trying to be brave and open up each door very slowly.
I'm a fixer and a doer and I want to make it all great without waiting to see if it all supposed to actually be great.

Control.

I could spend my days trying to control the outcome of every aspect of my life and that would most likely leave me sitting on the sofa binge-eating my way through every take-out menu ever published! Gaining control of your life, to me, means realizing that you are not actually in control of it. All you can control is how you react to what life throws at you. If the pitch is in the dirt, don't swing.

"Happiness is a Warm Puppy" Charles M. Shulz

I have been thinking about grief and loss a lot lately.

Recently, some very dear friends of mine lost their most beloved pet. Their dog was sixteen years old so he had been part of their lives for a very long time. More than half their son's life.

When my cat died she was twenty-one. She saw me through the loss of both my parents, some rocky times in my marriage, several moves, weight loss and weight gain, and a couple of surgeries. She wasn't nice to other people but I knew she loved me.

When you own and love a pet, your habits become about that pet. Your sleep patterns, what you do when you get home from work, even the position you lie in bed is adjusted for that furry family member. They end up owning you right back.

When a pet dies, as with any family member, you feel the grief and loss completely. However, we don't get to give our pets the same kind of send-off that humans get.

When a person we love dies, whether it is suddenly or after prolonged illness, we go through stages of grief.

Maybe we plan their funeral, pick out music for a church service, order flowers, call friends and family, call the newspaper, prepare tons of food. People come in and out of your house at all hours. It's almost like the preparations we make for other, more happy events in our lives. Just add grief. It's a busy time and you don't have much time to dwell on the loss. The grief seeps in gradually.

When a pet dies, it is much more solitary. Depending on whether or not the pet dies of natural causes or we make that all too difficult decision to humanely end their suffering, the immediate family gathers, we say goodbye, and we cry and then it's pretty much business as usual. You don't get paid bereavement time. You don't even get the finality of a funeral or church service. Maybe the vet takes care of the whole thing or, after a couple of weeks, you have a container with their remains. Some people choose to take them to a pet cemetery, some choose a sunny spot in their yards, but we are expected to grieve and move on almost immediately.

But, after the first couple of days, when we come home from work or the grocery store, our house seems much more empty than it did before. Our hearts are broken. We are grieving. 

So why risk it?

One of my co-workers and I were having lunch and discussing grieving a pet's loss and she said that was why she doesn't think she would ever get a pet for her children.

I said, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

I have been thinking about that ever since. It could easily be said the other way round, "nothing ventured, nothing lost," right?

So why do we put ourselves out there and risk loving a pet? I think it is a valuable lesson to teach all of us about grief and loss but also about unconditional love and joy.

I look back to my first pet, Guy. He was a French Poodle. He was a bit of a misfit, though. As were all of my pets, I think.

He lost part of his ear, he chased cars. But he was a great dog. He was well behaved. Well, except for that time he bit my brother's cheek. In Guy's defense, I believe my brother was forcing the dog to wear his underpants at the time. He had  been clipped by cars a couple of times but he never got seriously hurt. Then, one day, he got hit. My mother was at work and my sister had to deal with the whole thing on her own. Their was a nice, elderly man who lived in our apartment complex and I remember his kindness when my sister came and told us what happened. But I loved that dog and I still remember him and all his quirks. He loved us unconditionally.

Then there was Chip, Chippy. Or as we lovingly called him, Poopie or Poop or Poopie Head. My mother called him Shithead. Come to think of it she called all our dogs Shithead. She had a theory that it was all in how you said it not what  you said. For that reason, I called my cat Fuckface.

Let's face it, many people out there are not pet owners or maybe they don't even like animals or the messes they make. 

I think pet ownership is the great metaphor for life. People break our hearts every day. They break up with us, they never call or write (or text), they do or say hurtful things, they manipulate us. And still we love.

All pets want from us is food and water and shelter and love. Just like children. They are not manipulative or petty. They don't betray us. OK, maybe they chew up our sofa or poop in our shoe or knock that beloved picture frame over and it seems calculated and spiteful. But they are not deliberately malicious. They just want our attention. They grow old. They get sick. They die.

Isn't that life in a nutshell? I learned grief at a fairly early age because Guy got hit by a car. I remember my mother being very gentle with us when it happened and letting me sleep in her bed.

So risking it, risking our hearts this way-adopting that dog, winning that goldfish, rescuing that kitten, has a big pay off. It teaches us how to love and accept love unconditionally. It teaches us responsibility for another living being. It teaches us that, while opening up your heart to all the joy and heartache love can bring, if you don't sow the seeds, you don't reap the harvest. And, yes it teaches us to grieve.

But let's not forget, it also teaches us how to heal.

"You're sixteen, you're beautiful and you're mine"

So, lately I have been doing a lot of talking at work about my new healthy lifestyle. I feel almost like a broken record when I give my speeches about my food extracting, my healthy cooking, eating whole organic and clean,  how easy it is etc.

But, yesterday I was talking to a woman who has had the same lifelong struggle with weight and she asked me what most people seem to want to know: "How much weight have you lost?"

I have no idea. While it's clear that the amount is significant enough for people to be noticing, I am sorry to say I don't know. A lot of people are more concerned with the pounds coming off or how much fat they are eating or how many carbs are in that banana.

I try to stress to them that it is a lifestyle change and not a diet. That I am not going to set weight loss targets and and a final goal. I want to sustain good health for however long I am going to live on this great planet of ours.  

I set out to figure out why I struggle with food, to learn about my relationship with eating. I wanted to address all my triggers and why I would always gain the weight back. I wanted to figure out why I became a compulsive eater in the first place.

I have taken a long hard look at all of those things. And while I don't, and may never, have all they answers as to why food was my way through stress and grief, I now know that there is another way to use food.

I have done numerous weight loss programs and all I concerned myself with was eating however many calories, points, fat grams, or carbs were allowed on these "diets". I have learned much from these programs including what not to do. I have also learned that I had so many tools already and never knew how to use them.

I am not a vegan. I am not a total raw food freak. I am not only going to eat what has fallen on the ground for fear of hurting the plant or tree from which it came! But I do care what I put into my body.

Does this mean I will never again have a burger from a drive-thru? Most likely, yes. Does it mean I will never have ice cream or cookies or chocolate or pizza? Not on your life!

There are many alternatives to fast food and junk food. I still have chips and salsa. I still have cheese. I even have beef once in a blue moon. I dine out. I visit friends. I go to social functions. And, in all of these instances, I choose things that are most like what I would make at home. Yes, the chips are most likely multi-grain and organic and I might order something without some of the sauces and glazes. I make my own salad dressing. It's not that hard to do.

I reached a couple of landmarks this week and I am quite proud of both.

Tomorrow will start week number seventeen of eating healthy and taking care of myself. When I belonged to Weight Watchers, they had started something where, after sixteen weeks, you received a key chain that said "sweet sixteen". Behavioral professionals believe that if you can change a behavior for sixteen weeks, the new behavior you replaced the bad one with becomes a new habit. So you absolutely can teach an old dog new tricks!

There is still a long road ahead of me to get this battered body of mine back into shape and there is much learning on my part that still needs to take place. But I know in my bones that this is the right path for me. It's not for everyone. Lots of people can maintain good health and weight and still have the occasional Big Mac or ice cream sundae. They don't need to pre-think each morsel they ingest. But food has been my go to drug for so long that I have to continue to be wary of going back to my old way of thinking which was, when it came to food, not much thinking at all. I drove past a fast food drive-thru yesterday as a short cut and I realized that aside from maybe the actual taste of some of the food, I don't miss those super sized meals one bit. There are so many tastes that I am discovering that are way more satisfying and will lead me to better health.

My other landmark was fitting into ten pairs of pants that have been sitting in my closet for a few years. Some of them were almost brand new! When I began this whole journey, I was busting out of a size and could have gone up and the pants would have fit fine (maybe slightly loose). Now,I am squeezing into some that are three full sizes down. I won't wear those yet. Maybe in a couple of weeks. And, although I'll hold on to them a bit longer, I will be donating some of my "fatter" pants eventually.

I set out to make myself healthier. I think I am achieving that, more so each week. I knew that I needed to lose weight. DUH! But, I did not start out with that specific goal in mind. It has been a wonderful by-product of changing everything!

There's a weight loss product commercial on TV that says "Want big pants?" My response has always been "I already have big pants! That's my problem!" But I guess I forgot that I also had smaller pants that were just waiting for my ass to get smaller (and, maybe a little smarter)!

"Please Come to Boston for the Springtime..."

There are times when I come up with a million and one ideas for posts and then by the time I get through my day and sit at my computer, I have completely forgotten what I wanted to say.

This may be one of those times so forgive me if I end up rambling.

Last weekend I went to visit a friend who lives out of state. Over the years since she moved there with her husband, it has become a haven for me. She has added a daughter, now thirteen, and two cats. It's a wonderfully cozy niche in the mountains of  southern Pennsylvania. I go there to heal.

Well it ended up being a more chaotic weekend than I would have had if I had stayed home. Her daughter was in a play and my friend was starting a new job and family was in and out and a big project was due and there wasn't a lot of down time. I had a ball. I left there as relaxed as ever.

It took me seven hours to get home and I spent most of that time singing to the radio and hatching a story that could turn into a book or a series of books or nothing at all.

When I got home, my husband informed me of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon. My thoughts went immediately to another friend whose daughter is about to graduate from BU. I was relieved to find out that she was safe.

But I was struck by the fact that some people were not. The news was still sketchy and no one knew how many people were killed or injured. When things like this happen, I can't help but wonder why humans can do such terrible things to their fellow humans. It's baffling.

But I was also struck by the spirit of some people who ran into the crowd to help their fellow humans. Not just the first responders...but the ordinary citizens who probably don't think they did anything extraordinary.

A marathon is an inspiring event to people like me...long distance running is something I don't think I could ever understand. You run until you're panting and your eyes are going to pop out of your head and your muscles burn and you are hallucinating...I just don't get it. I don't think I'll be running any marathons any time soon or ever at all. Small sprints are more my speed. Very small. And not even all that sprint-y.

I watched the news while they were trying to take the second bomber into custody. I found myself praying that they didn't kill him. I believed, or hoped, that he may be able to provide some minor tidbit of intel that would help thwart any further acts of terror that may be in the offing. There had been enough death over those few days and all of it senseless.  I truly felt for the  poor families of all those victims. And these two boys who got all pumped up with hate...I even had a little pity for them...and for their families who just couldn't believe that these two boys would do anything remotely like this. We have since learned that maybe the older boy was filled with some kind of hatred for our ways and wanted to do some damage.

These terrorists don't understand that the lesson isn't theirs to teach. Most American citizens, and most citizens of the world as well, are just going about their lives.

We all go to school...I'm not talking about Third World countries and countries where girls aren't allowed to get an education...but most of us go to school and graduate and go to college or trade schools or out into the world to make a living. We get married, move in with life partners, have children or buy a dog or adopt a cat or a ferret or a parakeet...we spend most our lives working and trying to stay afloat...we don't take time to stop and consider that someone is resenting us because we have all this opportunity and all this entitlement and all this stuff and we don't appreciate any of it...and because our government is using their countries for oil and power and whatever else, they blame us because they think we are all the same...and maybe we are what they think...complacent, intolerant, irreverent. They say, "We'll show them!" and they try to blow us up or they crash planes into our buildings because we believe that girls SHOULD go to school and every nation should have clean water and schools and art and music. We are walking our dogs and cleaning out the litter box and feeding the fish and we are buying groceries and cars and condos. We are so caught up in getting little Sally to ballet class and soccer practice and honor society meetings, and Rover to the groomer and Fluffy to the cat whisperer that we don't realize that there are whole villages being taught to hate our entitled lives.

There are people out there who want to blow us up. They want to destroy our infrastructure. They want to scare us with nuclear weapons. But, I don't think these people are the majority. Only the people who want to inflict terror on us feel that we should suffer and die for our ways.That is why we call them "terrorists".

I would like to believe that most people are tolerant and good and don't hate because of diversity. I know there are many in the world and lots in this country who hate because of skin color, religion, sexual orientation or political affiliation. Diversity has always made this country strong. It is not an excuse to hate.

These terrorists, foreign and domestic alike, are no better than bullies on the playground. Why bring a knife to a gunfight? Why bring a bomb to a foot race? I doubt very many people there had some kind of political agenda. They just wanted to run or cheer on their loved ones. And they paid dearly for the privilege.

But the human spirit is resilient and we still have Neil Diamond and the New York Yankees still paid homage to the Boston Red Sox. And in London, at their own marathon, people wore ribbons and dedicated their run to the victims of the Boston tragedy. We are not undone by what they do.