Punky vs. The Olympics

In general, very few things make me teary.  I'm not an overly sappy person.  I don't cry at commercials, except when I had pregnancy hormones up to my eyeballs, and I can count on one hand the number of movies that have prompted me to shed a tear.  Even real-life circumstances that cause normal people to lose control and break down rarely start waterworks for me.  One exception is my love for Punky, of course.  Sometimes I get teary just watching her watch TV.  And the other guaranteed tearjerker for me?  The Olympics.

The watery eyes start with the opening ceremonies and continue through each event I watch.  I love the Olympics, especially the summer games, and they turn me into a complete couch potato for two weeks straight.  Four years ago, while I was pregnant with Punky, I spent every free moment tuned in to the games.  Night after night I vegged on the couch with my cross-stitch and stockpile of sour foods that I craved the entire nine months.  The crazy hormones made it an especially teary time for me.  The house was quiet; her dad knew not to interrupt.  And life returned to normal after the closing ceremonies.

In preparation for the London games, I've spent the last few months telling Punky tidbits about the Olympics, the different sports and events, and some of the great moments I'll always remember from games past.  The intent, of course, was to build her interest and excitement so I stand a small chance in hell at being able actually watch an event from start to finish without getting her twenty-three cups of milk, putting the head back on her doll eight times, answering fifteen questions completely unrelated to the happenings on TV, and solving at least seven utter crises that occur in a three-year-old's world in a ten-minute period.

About four minutes into the London opening ceremonies it was already clear that I failed miserably.  She danced around in front of the TV, played with the loudest toys in her arsenal, and was the hungriest, thirstiest, neediest child I have ever seen over the course of those few hours.  I kept trying to suck her in to the excitement on the screen, but she'd watch for thirty seconds and then return to raising hell.  When the parade of nations began, I grabbed her globe ball and attempted a geography lesson.  I thought it would be neat to show her where everyone was from, and maybe it would keep her seated and quiet for a bit.  We made as far as China and then she tired of my plan.  I was a somewhat grateful when I saw names like Mauritius, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.  And where the hell is Azerbaijan anyway?  In the end, Punky fell asleep exactly two minutes before team USA was finally announced in the stadium and I knew better than to wake her.  

I was a bit more hopeful going into yesterday's events because she would get to watch actual sports instead of people just walking around in circles.  In my mind I envisioned us snuggled up on the couch, laughing and cheering and munching popcorn together.  It didn't quite work out as planned.  The cycling prompted her to ask me to ride her tricycle about fifty times before I finally couldn't take it anymore and reluctantly shut off the TV to take her outside for a bit.  Upon our return, the women's beach volleyball match between the USA and Australia cost me a picture frame when Punky decided to serve a ball into the entertainment center.  The men's 400 IM, that resulted in Ryan Lochte finally ending Michael Phelps' Olympic medal-winning streak, made Punky think it would be a good idea to dive off the couch into a pile of pillows.  She miscalculated and went face-first into her guitar which left a little cut on her cheek and prompted a twenty-minute crying spree.  The men's gymnastics qualifying event caused her to run, jump, spin, and tumble around the living room but thankfully I caught her before she dismounted from the back of the couch and broke any bones. 

I have a feeling this is going to be a long, dangerous, stress-filled two weeks at our house as I struggle to keep both Punky and the furniture in one piece.  As I write this, the TV is on the Disney Channel.  I'm saving my strength and patience for the start of the women's gymnastics events tonight, and I'm looking forward to Rio in 2016.  Hopefully it will be much easier when Punky is seven, because right now just watching feels like an Olympic event in itself.  Thankfully I've had three years of training.

Glutton for Punishment

In terms of holidays, the Fourth of July has never been a big deal to me.  I welcome the day off from work, of course, and I enjoy a grilled burger now and then, but other than that it's just like any other day of the year.  It's certainly not in the same holiday category as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

But not to Punky's dad's family.  For them, the day is truly Christmas in July.  It's a big deal, complete with a huge family gathering, lots of food and booze, and the utter need to end the night watching a fireworks display impressive enough to rival the largest cities of the world.  Lucky for them, his sister happens to live in a tiny town that does just that, and she opens her home every year to friends and relatives for the celebration.

Fireworks, meh.  I could honestly take 'em or leave 'em.  Yes, they're pretty to watch, but they've never been a big draw for me.  Even as a kid, I'd rather do something else.  I remember staying in the pool in the backyard while everyone else went out front to watch the fireworks at my grandmother's.  Swimming was simply more fun.  Disney World is another fine example.  Stop and watch the fireworks at the end of the night?  Hell no.  Go on as many rides as possible while the lines are short because everyone else has gathered to watch the them, of course.  I've just never been bitten by the fireworks bug, I suppose.

Anyway, even though I'm not really into the bangs, booms, and colors in the sky, I enjoy going to his sister's for the get-together.  We don't really see most of his family very often, and I want to make sure Punky has the opportunity to spend time with them.  They are her aunts, uncles, and cousins, and I want her to grow up knowing them.  It's important to me.  And the day is usually full of good laughs, good music, and good food.

Punky and Marley

This year we took the camper and parked it in her driveway so we could spend the night and not have to worry about having a few drinks or fighting the traffic to get out of town.  Punky had a great time playing with Marley, a little girl her age, and I enjoyed watching their interactions.  We walked down to the tiny carnival in town for a bit and Punky loved the rides and games.  She won a goldfish, but thankfully forgot all about it so we left it at her aunt's when we left the next morning.  I know, bad Mommy, but I'm seriously not up for cleaning fish bowls or hosting flushing funerals just yet.  And the fireworks display at the end of the night was pretty spectacular, but we would have enjoyed it more if it didn't start raining two minutes before it started.

We got home shortly after noon yesterday and by one o'clock I was in bed, sick as a dog.  My stomach simply ached.  It rumbled, grumbled, cramped, and turned for hours, despite the three doses of Pepto, eight Tums, and an enormous glass of baking soda and water.  I moaned, groaned and whined through movie after movie while Punky's dad thankfully kept her occupied all day so I could pray for death in peace.  He even took her out to the camper to sleep last night and spared me the usually lengthy and complicated bedtime routine.  I finally felt better this morning, until I stepped on the scale.  In exactly forty-eight hours, I gained three pounds on the nose.  And, aside from breakfast, all I ate yesterday was twenty-calorie popsicles because the cold was oddly relieving some of my stomach trauma.  

I suppose I overdid it a bit on Saturday.  Okay, a lot.  And it was somewhat premeditated.  I mean, I've been diligently counting, and watching, and exercising for months.  Once in a while I deserve a day to eat what I want and not worry about it, and what better opportunity than a family picnic, right?  I worked out just before we went, we walked miles around town, and I chased Punky around all day.  I wasn't exactly sedentary and I made the conscious decision to enjoy all the wonderful foods stockpiled in the kitchen.

Unfortunately for me, my body rebelled against my choice.  I'm just not used to eating like that.  Cookies, cheese and crackers, chips, candy.  A deep-fried bloomin' onion at the carnival.  A six-pack of wine coolers.  What the hell was I thinking?  All that fat, sugar, grease, and alcohol surely wouldn't sit well in a stomach used to mostly healthy foods and a low-calorie diet.  And believe me, over the last twenty-for hours I've paid for every single bite I took.

While I obviously have no intention on ever returning to old eating habits, once in a while it's nice to indulge a bit.  But one of the side effects of this body-changing journey is apparently the development of a finicky stomach.  Honestly, it really sucks.  I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted with no issues.  I never had indigestion, constipation, heartburn, or nausea from food.  Most women suffer with those almost constantly through pregnancy, but I got by with a handful of Tums over the course of nine months.

Now I've found that just one slice of greasy, cheesy pizza can block me up for days.  Sweets of any kind can set me up for bedtime heartburn.  And alcohol consumption leaves me bloated and gassy, with an occasional bout of the walking farts.  

I suppose these changes in digestion could be attributed to the fact that I'm getting older, but I'd rather blame it on something more positive.  If I tell myself it's from all the incredible changes I've made in the last few months, it's easier to swallow.  We have another camping trip and huge family picnic coming up at the end of August which will be the perfect opportunity for history to repeat itself.  I sure hope I internalize this lesson by then because I don't want to spend those days alone, on the hard bed in the camper, praying for my stomach to explode and put me out of my misery once and for all.

My Fifty Cents

As much as I love it, it's no secret that reading has been on the very bottom of my to-do list the last few years.  I manage to keep up on some blogs I love and sneak in the occasional novel once in a while, but for the most part recreational reading landed in the not-enough-hours-in-the-day category once Punky came along.

Over the last few months, I've read blog after blog about the book Fifty Shades of Grey and, to be quite honest, I reached a point where I was tired of hearing about it and I had no desire whatsoever to read the trilogy.  First off, the biggest complaint was that it is poorly written, and I knew that in itself would make me want to gouge me eyes out.  And the other hot topic, of course, was the intense sexual relationship at the very core of the plot.

But then I read that analysts are actually predicting a 2013 baby boom because of the immense popularity of the books.  I read that seniors in nursing homes are devouring the trilogy.  I read that thirty-year marriages are ending because women are demanding changes in their sex lives after years of the same old routine.  Finally my curiosity got the best of me and on a whim I decided to take the plunge.  Plus, it was the perfect excuse to try out the Kindle app I installed on my iPhone months ago but had yet to actually use.

If you haven't read the books but intend to, stop reading here as this post may contain some spoilers.  And, Mom and Dad, if today happens to been the once-in-a-blue-moon when you actually come by and read something I've written, kindly hit the back button on your browser now to return to your bingo game or Facebook.

I started the first book shortly before our camping trip last month and the trilogy became a welcome distraction with all the crap that ensued in the following weeks.  Just a few chapters in, I had to agree with the critiques about poor writing.  If it weren't for the dark and mysterious character of Christian, I may have been tempted to quit reading, but I already needed to figure him out.  The more I read, the less annoying the poor dialogue and repetitious vocabulary became.

On the whole, the characters are fairly unbelievable.  Take Anastasia, for example.  What twenty-one year old female in modern times doesn't own a cell phone?  I mean, really.  She's portrayed as the perfect picture of innocence and naive to the gills.  Of course she's a virgin, in fact she's never even had a boyfriend.  While finishing up her college degree, she buries herself in classic literature and her part-time hardware store job, and is apparently oblivious to the fact that a world of incredible technology exists all around her.  She's portrayed as whiny and needy and child-like on one hand, yet in other respects she comes across much older than she is.  Her character is a bit conflicting and confusing at times.  One minute I'm rooting for her, and the next I want to punch her.

Then there's Christian, because gorgeous, mysterious, twenty-seven year old millionaires are a dime a dozen, right?  Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is only twenty-eight, but he's not exactly a Christian Grey, is he?  For me, Christian's character would be much more believable if he were forty.  He's smug, arrogant, controlling, demanding, and sneaky, and even though those traits all end up attributed to his early childhood with his birth mother, the crack-whore as he so affectionately calls her, and his six years of submission to the infamous Mrs. Robinson, he still comes across as way older than he's supposed to be.  In my mind, anyway.  No matter how I tried, I couldn't envision a twenty-seven year old kid while reading. 

Minus the poor grammar, conflicting character portrayal, and pages upon pages of sexual encounters, the underlying plot of the trilogy isn't bad.  There are plenty of surprises and intense moments that leave you hiding in the bathroom to finish a chapter before your three-year-old can interrupt you for the hundredth time.  Or maybe that's just me.  

Now to address the big elephant dancing around the room in a tutu: Ana and Christian's sexcapades.  Critics have called the book dirty.  Religious zealots have called it sinful.  Prudes of all ages have deemed it pornographic.  I don't think it was really any of those things; I think it was real.  Just because people in general don't talk openly about such intense sexual encounters doesn't mean they're not having them behind closed doors, or that the majority of the population only has missionary sex for the purpose of procreation.  If that were the case, strip clubs, hookers, adult bookstores, and the world-wide web of pornography simply wouldn't exist. 

Christian and Ana's sexual relationship is definitely intense.  In the beginning, he's trying to mold her into what he's always known, and her innocence keeps getting in the way.  Their encounters are always heated, overly passionate, often downright scary, and sometimes even a bit gross, but the one thing the critics fail to point out is that they truly are head over heels in love from the very start.  Throughout the trilogy their sex life continually evolved, and by the end they seem to have it all figured out.  Everyone has limits, sexual or otherwise, and they know each other on an intimate level that most people married for decades never even know exists.

The hardest part of the story for me was figuring out when exactly Christian made the transformation from jerk to Mr. Wonderful.  In the beginning I didn't like him, even though he intrigued me.  Every time I started to be on his side and think he wasn't such an a-hole after all, he'd screw up.  By the end of the story I loved his character, but it was truly a two step forward/one step back process through all three books.  

My absolute favorite part of the trilogy was the final epilogue at the end of the third book, especially the very last part where the author rewrote the beginning of the first book from Christian's point of view.  It gave me the answer I wanted: Christian had feelings for Anastasia right from the moment they met.  He wasn't really the selfish, arrogant, twisted jerk he seemed to be.  Okay, so he was, but his intentions were good.  And knowing that changed entire tone of the story for me just when I thought I had it straight in my mind.

Laters, baby.