Ah, summer. The chirp of crickets, the croak of mating frogs, the searing heat that threatens your sanity. We actually went to the park in the afternoon, with the temperature nearing 100 deg. F (37 deg. C). The boys and a couple of the girls actually played in the sun while Husband and I sat in the van with all the windows open, sweating unattractively. We would have gotten out and sat in the shade of the pavilion, but a big ol' group of people were having themselves a picnic and had claimed all the tables. The pavilion provided the only shade in the entire park, so we stayed in the car. I sat and considered how having a big picnic in the middle of the afternoon on a swelteringly hot day was as much a sign of insanity as going to the park to play.
My husband's nephew is visiting from Wales. He's a tall, strapping lad of 16, and he happens to be attractive and speaks with a lovely, strong accent that is sort of a mix between Welsh and English. Gabrielle, who is his age, has a group of friends who adopted him right away, and the young men in our ward are impressed with his excellent soccer skills. Right now he's with my daughters at a very large pool party for the LDS youth in the city. Between sight seeing with my in-laws, helping FIL in the garden, and being pulled off to various activities with the young people, I hope he has a grand time on his first visit to the States, which extends to the end of August. MIL and FIL have planned to take him to all the best buffet restaurants, as all-you-can-eat places are pretty much non-existent in the UK. Nephew, being naturally thin and sporting a hollow leg, will probably not go home any heavier despite his gastronomic extravagances. If nothing else, the heat will melt all the fat off of him before he gets back to Britain.
Hey, I wonder if I could just cook myself outside for a while and watch the fat melt away...
Speaking of fat and dieting and being tired of thinking about food and feeling guilty about eating certain foods and not eating others, I think I'm finally to the point where I'm starting to lick the dieting mentality entirely. I don't go on a lot of diets simply because I know at the outset that I do not have the will power to stick to them--especially if I know I'm going to feel desperately hungry for days and weeks at a time. But I do have a dieting mentality, and that makes even choosing a snack a long and arduous chore, an act of considering how "good" I am with some foods and how "bad" I am when I slip.
You can actually read too much, I think, and when you take in a lot of information that will naturally help your already healthy sense of shame and guilt over how you take care of your body, and then the information starts to contradict itself and create real paralysis in decision making abilities, it's time to just. let. go.
Remember when I was writing about gratitude a couple weeks ago? I realized something that I already knew intellectually but had not yet learned emotionally. I decided to be sincerely grateful for EVERYTHING in my life, including my body exactly how it is. I mean, this body has birthed six healthy children and kept me from getting sick even when everyone around me has been dropping like flies. I can move and work and play and walk (okay, I can't jog or run, and my hips and back like to scream at me a bit), and I am sincerely grateful for this absolute miracle and gift.
And being grateful has started to open up my understanding and help me see new things. I am looking at food in a different way. I'm responding to my desire to move and exercise as a method of enjoyment of my body rather than a chore I must perform in order to reach a desired weight so I fit whatever beauty standard I think is acceptable.
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