I've fallen and I can't get up.

Thud.

Did you hear it?

The distinctive thud of me falling off the ‘sweets only once a month’ wagon? I’m not sure how you missed it. It’s become a daily occurrence.

Some say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Actually, I think it’s paved with ice cream. Mint Chip, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Cookie Dough, Strawberry and Old Fashioned Vanilla. Sometimes the road to hell is dotted with ice cream sandwiches and sundae cones (also known as drumsticks, you know, the ones with the hard chocolate shell sprinkled with peanuts). The road could be paved with custard, but custard is too rich. Ice Cream is better. Real ice cream. Not soft serve. Ice cream. Am I making my point clear?

Ice cream is my Achilles heel. (As if you hadn’t guessed) And it’s summer. Summer is for ice cream. I’m screaming for ice cream. It’s so tasty. Curses!

The ‘sweets only once a month’ wagon has been rolling back and forth over my body for a few weeks now. But due to the uptick of butterfat and heavy cream in my diet, no bones have been broken. There is padding. Ice cream filled padding.

Fudge.

Except I’m not thinking fudge. Well, unless it’s Mackinac Island Fudge. I digress.

I’m thinking the "F – dash – dash - dash" word because I’ve failed the challenge. I’ve fallen off the  wagon but landed safely in the dish of ice cream. An endless dish. Yum.

I could sit here and flat out lie that I’m giving up ice cream for the summer, but honestly, I have a better chance of winning the SuperCash. I can’t do it. I can’t. I’ve tried. Not possible. I do have the ability to give up ice cream and everything else sweet in the winter/cooler months, but summer screams for ice cream. It calls to me and I’m answering. My only hope of surviving the ice cream phenomena is cramming in a few more workouts to keep all the ice cream goodness from permanently taking up residence in my thighs. My only saving grace is Wisconsin has only 3 months of summer and 9 months of winter so my deep dive in the ice cream bowl is short-lived.

Summer and ice cream is a big glorified rationalization. I admit it. I’m an ice cream-aholic. But to be honest, I have no real inclination to be cured of my addiction. None. Nada. Pass me a spoon.

In the Weeds

I had big plans for this winter. Big.

I intended to spend the 7 months of Wisconsin winter (and there were 7 months this year) prepping for the summer and fall art festival season. That was my intent. But we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Instead I spent copious amounts of time lolling about the sofa watching The Tudors, Big Love and Mad Men whilst perfecting the Sunday afternoon Bloody Mary followed by a well timed nap.

The tye dye table sat idle. Dust collected.

And just like that (insert finger snap here) the summer festival season is nipping at my heels. As a point of clarity, the weather has generally been about as far as you can get from summer until today, but you get the point.

In 6 short weeks I need to be fully stocked for 3 big festivals, in addition to keeping my consignor stocked with bucket hats and toddler tshirts. All this while working my regular job and shuttling my son from upwards of 20 ballgames, assorted practices and umpire duties.

I also need to keep up on my exercise routine because summer festivals equals fair food and fair food equals deep fried calorie laden delciousness. I mean I’m already limiting myself to one dessert a month, it’s not like I’m going to get all healthy and give up the fried cheese curds or pork chop on a stick, or the tasty roasted corn that is dipped in a vat of butter. Let’s not be unrealistic.

Now I’m in the weeds.

What’s the saying “Bite off more than you can chew, and chew it anyway”.

Pass the salt.

The 100 Day No Sweet Treat Challenge

New year. New tortures. I am taking on the "ultimate challenge".  Effective January 26, 2011 I am going 100 days with no cakes, cookies, pies, candy, muffins, desserts of any kind, donuts, coffee cake and chocolate. It’s a challenge I’ve always wanted to try. Either I will be able to gut it out and lose a few pounds off my waistline or I will have committed a heinous crime and be serving 10-20. Time will tell.

 

Every challenge needs an exception. With the collaboration of my fellow girl friends (also participating in this torturous motivating experiment) we devised the following exceptions:

•  Chocolate Milk (as that’s the only way to choke down my fish oil supplements that are the size of horse pills)
• Breath Mints/Gum
• Granola bars with chocolate chips
• Jello
• Waffles/Pancakes

 

Also participants are allowed three (3) exceptions, you know for dinners out when the promise of lava cake or crème brulee is on the menu.

 

Mmmm lava cake.

 

I am guardedly optimistic the challenge will be good for me. Guardedly.

 

The Pain of Teambuilding

I work in corporate America. “Teaming” or “team building” is an important part of the corporate culture. It is a subject that I find exhausting.

The people in my work group are all nice people, but we are not best friends. I don’t think we will ever be hitting the weekly happy hour. I don’t think that level of intimacy is required to function as a team. From my point of view it’s all about the common goal; the project or task that the team is working towards to further fatten the wallets of our shareholders. It’s not about lunches and outings and spending more time with people I probably see too much of already.

There are of course exceptions. I do, of course, have friends both in and outside of my current team that I “do lunch with” or share a happy hour. That is to be expected.

There are those on the team who feel like everyone needs to be best friends and has a right to know all the personal details of everyone’s life in the name of “teaming”. These folks feel that personal camaraderie is equivalent to working efficiently on a team together. Ironically these are also the most annoying people on my team. I can barely grit my teeth through an hour long meeting. Anything on a social level including hallway water cooler chit chat would be tantamount to a red hot poker through the retina and is generally best avoided.

Over the past 2 weeks our department has endured three, yes count ‘em, three, separate sessions where we “share our feelings” on a wide variety of subjects…including teaming. Sharing is exhausting and it generally produces no real outcome.

In our most recent kumbaya session our team had a mandatory visioning exercise wherein each team member looked into our crystal ball to envision how the team would “look” in the next in two years. Then we had to share with a partner, rotate partners, share some more, rotate for the third time and share again. I am not making this up! And there wasn’t even alcohol to dull the pain of this exercise. Then….wait for it….we had to share as a group and brainstorm. URGH! Stop the insanity!

One of the comments shared was we needed to do more teambuilding because and I quote “someone one aisle over was having a personal major life event and we all didn’t know about it” . Ummmm. It’s personal and therefore not required fodder for corporate consumption.

This is the kind of thinking that keeps me in SuperCash tickets each week while simultaneously counting down until retirement so I can walk away from cubicle living and never look back.

Dream Big

Playing the lottery is one of the several vices I carry around. The others being Starbucks and an unhealthy affinity for black boots. Oh and good tequila. I would not define myself as a “big gambler”, but I do buy 7 days worth of SuperCash tickets at a time. And yes, I use the same numbers. I will also, on occasion, purchase a “Powerball” or “Mega Millions” ticket if the jackpot inches upwards to the many millions of dollars.

I don’t think dreaming is a character flaw. I think it’s nice actually. Even though my odds of hitting it are say .00001%. They are the same .00001% for me as anyone else. And wouldn’t it make a great story?

My husband refuses to play the “what if we won the lottery game” with me. A quality I find annoying and joyless. I agree that some people can be ultra fanatical about winning 10 million dollars by simply plunking down $1 and ordering up a quick pick Mega Millions ticket. I am of the personal opinion that there is a certain level of joy and optimism that comes from dreaming big, even if those dreams have a .00001% of coming to fruition.

The “Mega Millions” jackpot was at $118 million recently and I bought a ticket. Why not? $118 million could do a lot of good for a lot of people. If I won said lottery, the very first thing I would do is change my phone number, hire a lawyer and a good accountant so I can spend some, share some, save some.

Think of what I could I do for my parents and my mother in law. We could gift a sizeable check to each of our respective siblings and good friends… enough to get them out from any debt, offset the kids’ college funds or simply have some money in the bank so it’s not so stressful if the car breaks down?

And for ourselves…invest heavily. Buy a car that isn’t 10 years old. Replace the carpeting and living room furniture. Build a deck. Redecorate the bedroom. Upgrade the computer to something slightly zippier than a dinosaur. Donate a big check to a bunch of charities.

I would quit my corporate job and really see about expanding my tye dye line – the kind of expansion you can only do if you have some dollars to help get things rolling. Like add my own labels, a customer website, or a van customized to hold all my displays and inventory.

Of course winning the “SuperCash” (top prize $350,000) wouldn’t afford the kind of luxurious spending and saving mentioned earlier, but it would definitely allow for much needed new carpeting, and fattening up my sons college account. Unfortunately, I would still need to keep my corporate cube job but such things are a trade-off for even a little financial freedom.

And that alone is worth the price of a ticket to dream about.