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.

 

My Most Favorite Day of the Year!

For the last 9 years my BFF and I plan a Christmas shopping trip to Mayfair Mall in Milwaukee. We generally go around the first week of December – always mid-week.

The intent is to shop for others, but in honesty, we do a lot of shopping for us. Two full-time working moms responsible for the near flawless execution of Christmas wizardry clearly deserve a little retail compensation. It’s a big fat juicy rationalization at its finest and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In all of our years planning the Mayfair Holiday Shopping Extravaganza we’ve only been foiled once by bad weather. Otherwise, our drill is the same. By way of Starbucks I head to my friends house where we compare coupons for various stores, pile in the car and arrive promptly at Mayfair by 8:30am. Macys typically has a sale every other day so the odds are pretty good they are already open which means lolling about and acquiring several pairs of shoes in an hour’s time while waiting for the rest of the mall to open. This is not uncommon. My BFF understands and appreciates the value (and need) to own multiple pairs of black shiny shoes (or boots). It is strongly encouraged. It is not atypical to make multiple shoe purchases with said BFF, which of course receive affirmation of the buyer’s good style and taste. A successful first hour in the shoe department will result in one trip back to the car to unload packages.

And then it’s time to hit the mall, making various stops, lulled by sparkly holiday attire in store windows and the aroma of delicious treats from William Sonoma.

And just like that (insert finger snap here)…its 2:00. Not kidding. It’s the world’s fastest day…which means it’s time for lunch and cocktails. Is there anything better than lettuce wraps and Mai Tais from PF Changs while the rest of the world is having a workday? I think not.

Now I will admit that one Mai Tai slips down the gullet pretty quickly. Ordering a 2nd has been done on more than one occasion. There a few risks associated with the Mai Tai lunch; first there is that there are two, happily buzzed females roaming the mall wielding Visa cards. The other risk is that eventually the Mai Tai the buzz wears off, but one chemical can be replaced with another. Hurray for the White Mocha Peppermint Latte, a 500 calorie orgasm in a cup. Brilliant! The benefit of said lunch is that everything looks better through Mai Tai colored glasses (it’s the dark rum float) including me half naked in a three way mirror, which is why the lingerie shopping is after lunch. Many a sexy bra has been acquired at Soma while delicately buzzed on fruity rum drinks. It really should be a law to serve cocktails to women while shopping for intimates, jeans or bathing suits.

More roaming of the mall ensues including a trip to Crate and Barrel. And then just like that (insert finger snap here) the world’s best grown up girl day is over and it’s time to head back home…two ladies all the happier with several new pairs of shiny shiny shoes.

Putting the Jolly Back into the Holidays: Update #1

I took that first step to a jollier holiday season the weekend before Thanksgiving. Actually it was one step + 252 round trip miles. Go me.

The ulterior motive was largely driven by the craft show circuit but the end result was surprisingly positive.

My craft show circuitude yielded a tip on a potential show location for 2011…The Holiday Craft Market at The American Club in Kohler, Wisconsin. I’ve never been to The American Club but I have heard it’s lovely. I have had the good fortune to stay at The Sundara Inn and Spa which has all Kohler fixtures, like the shower tower haven system and the overflow soak tub. I figured anything linked to both The American Club and Kohler was worth a looksy.

As luck would have it the Holiday Craft Market was within the week of acquiring the tip. I made plans to meet my two sister-in-laws for a morning of crafting and scoping out the venue, all in the name of holiday cheer.

Of course this all seemed like a good idea when I made plans on Tuesday, but to be perfectly honest by Saturday, after a full week of my corporate desk job and a moderately lucrative show in Waunakee I was tired. Dog tired. My enthusiasm for hopping in the car at 6:30am on a Sunday morning had dwindled to record lows. But my BFF told me I would have fun and to press on.

So I did.

And it was.

I hate when my BFF is smarter than me. Curses.

The show itself is very lovely. I will definitely apply for 2011.

But the very act of walking the show and stopping to chat with vendors and buy a few trifles for myself (and a few for some other people) while simultaneously chatting with my sister-in-laws was really fun. And then we did brunch. Not just a regular brunch but The American Club Sunday Champagne brunch; the kind of brunch in which one tosses out all eating rules like “eating in moderation” and “no sugar” because the food is so decadent.

For two solid hours we sat in tufted chairs at a linen covered table listening to classical music and ate fresh omelet’s, cold seafood and sipped coffee from delicate china. Time was inconsequential. It was just a lovely morning of ladies who brunch. Decadent, relaxing and wholly enjoyable.

And that is how I kicked off my holiday season. Perhaps there is hope for me yet this holiday season.

Trying to put the jolly back into the Holidays

In recent years, I fear I have become a glorified bah-humbug. In my youth (youth being defined as pre mortgage, children and in-laws) I loved Christmas. I loved all of it; the music, the decorations, the buzz of the mall, the wrapping, the baking. Unfortunately family responsibilities and unreasonable self expectations for pulling off a Frank Capra Christmas have left me scarred and jaded. Christmas has become an exercise in survival. Can I mire through yet another season of shopping, baking, decorating, cooking, wrapping and entertaining reasonably unscathed?

Every year Christmas approaches with the ferocity and speed of freight train. A fast and furious commercialized beast with the possibility to do great bodily harm and significant credit card damage. What was once the 12 days of Christmas has morphed into the 3 months and 12 days of Christmas. Macys had their Christmas decorations up before Halloween. I am 100% serious. Full blown decorations and merchandising; tables stocked with coin counters, mini golf sets and Godiva gift boxes. By the time there are only 12 days until Christmas I am so sick of Christmas music I could run screaming from yet another rendition of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

I find this early bird gets the worm approach to Christmas to be both a blessing and curse. My twisted logic rationalizes that getting my shopping done early, say before December 1st, will afford me the opportunity to actually enjoy a season I’ve come to dread with the same intensity as a root canal. The curse is obvious. I have to start thinking and planning in September. That’s too early.

Common sense would say to forgo all the fluffery of the baking, elaborate decorations and neatly wrapped packages. I am not sure my family would notice. Or maybe they would. I’m too much of a chicken to find out. Let’s face it, the combination of unreasonable self expectations and mom guilt would probably send me right into therapy. Or into the Betty Ford center. Hard to say.

I am trying very hard to carve out some special holiday-esque events so I can actually enjoy what the season has to offer. So far I’ve planned two shopping trips, a girl’s only cocktail party and a dinner reservation at a nice steakhouse as a surprise for my family. I also have this little ritual of watching every Christmas movie I own (and I own many of them) between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many times a movie classic is playing while I’m multitasking with other things because if there is one thing that December is short on, it’s time to sit and relax.

My favorite holiday event is ringing bells for the Salvation Army. It is an annual Christmas Eve event and those who sign up early (like September) get the choice ringing spot (like right outside Macys which is in an indoor shopping mall). On Christmas Eve people are generally cheerful and generous. I hypothesize that’s because they are secretly glad (like me) that the season is coming to a close.

So with Thanksgiving a mere few days away, I’m going to take a deep breath, a gulp of wine and ask for patience from the universe to shed some of my bah-humbug ways in an attempt to enjoy the next month. Updates to follow…

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.

Things I learned from Judy Blume

There are a series of conversations that my mother failed to have with me during my growing up years into adulthood. Let me be clear, my mom, while being a lovely women is not a proactive conversation starter especially on sensitive girl topics.

In my opinion there are several topics that moms are required to cover off on with their daughters. Primarily they revolve around the periods, puberty and sex. To be fair, I’m sure my grandma never talked to my mom on either of these topics and judging from the separate rooms my grandparents kept, any topics on sex probably wouldn’t have been a good news message anyway. In hindsight, my mom’s lack of parental conversation is a bit surprising as she walked in on me and my high school beau, heatedly making out in the basement family room with a blanket over our laps, more than once. It was those experiences that will lead to my “no blankets-no closed door policy” with my teenage son should girls come a visiting. I vividly remember being 14 and all the hormones therein.

All of my information on girl biology came via the teen classic “Are you there God, it’s me Margaret.” That book combined with the filmstrip shown in 5th grade on “men-strooo-a-shun” was the extent of my health education. The girls received a flowered pamphlet and box of kotex pads covertly disguised in a brown paper lunch bag. I took my new treasures home and laid them on the butcher block in the kitchen for my mom to see and then exited the crime scene.

To be clear, I’m sure I didn’t really want to have any conversation with my mom about this subject. Education via Judy Blume worked for me just fine. As a parent, I quickly figured out conversations on these types of subjects should take place early and often, as opposed to a one-time event. That’s probably why I avoided my mom like the plague. I was uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable. Avoidance was the best option for all concerned parties.

My mom did attempt to address the brown paper bag on the counter and the conversation was as follows:

Mom: "Do you have any questions?"

Me: "No."

Case closed. Crisis averted.

All my information about s-e-x was also delivered via Judy Blume. The book "Forever" was a favorite title circulating between my girlfriends in high school. My best friend asked her mom for permission to read it.

I just read it. I was a rebel that way.

Between that book and my real life boyfriend I was a fountain of life experience. A fact that my parents would probably not appreciate. But my girlfriends did. I could dispense advice ala Judy Blume. Once again in hindsight I’m more than stunned they didn’t sit me down and try to lecture me on the evils of the flesh or teen pregnancy. Mostly they just suggested that we go downstairs and “watch a movie” when my boyfriend came over.

Needless to say, I don’t have a basement with a TV and a couch for good reason.

The Birthday Octave

Sigh.

Another candle on the cake. Technically, I’ve officially stopped counting. This makes the whole aging process seemingly less horrific then it truly is. And it is horrific. Whoever says “it’s just a number” hasn’t hit the magical age of 40 where parts of the body break, sag and atrophy at a rate that is staggering. I am not making this up. There is a reason trips to the plastic surgeon have increased for the 40-50 demographic. 


Despite my disdain for counting the actual birthday candles, I am a big fan of maximizing birthday celebration opportunities. And I like cake.

My brilliant BFF taught me all about the “birthday octave” wherein the birthday girl is allowed to partake in any and all celebratory occasions, gifts (either received by friends or self purchased), outings, special lunches, dinners, extra trips to Starbucks, new boots, any treats involving chocolate, wine, happy hours or spa services of any kind for a full 8 days before and after the actual birth date. Boys of course can take advantage of the octave, although I’ve never met one who does.

My husband thought he was being cute and witty when he hooked up the new washer and proclaimed “Happy Birthday”. He got the stink eye, a frosty response and a general proclamation that I wanted new dishes for my birthday. Go me.

So far my birthday octave includes one vacation day, 3 dates for cocktails/appetizers, 1 dinner out and a pedicure.

Clearly there is capacity for other Happy Birthday to me type of events. I definitely envision a new pair of boots folded into the mix, especially after the washing machine jab. And they are so richly deserved after the multiple treks to the Park Town Laundry during the 2 longs weeks that I was without a washer.

I think platform boot with the mega heel will look especially fabulous dangling off a barstool whilst sipping a Happy Birthday to me martini. The birthday octave is a stroke of pure genius!