Aint no one here but us chickens. (And fat-asses.)

A typical Monday morning involves me lolly gagging around on the computer, looking at posts on other people's blogs, writing new posts for my own, and avoiding whatever it is I'm really supposed to be doing. Which is a lot if anyone recalls the big list of last month. Not too much has been marked off of that list. But unsurprisingly, I have made many new lists since.

I interrupt this broadcast to announce that someone is laying an egg right now, at this second. Someone else is making a lot of noise about it. For just a brief half second I wondered if any neighbors are sitting in their living rooms fantasizing about killing off my hens. Mostly I don't care because they don't make too much noise most of the time and they are completely LEGAL. Plus they will be our only source of protein once we have no money left to buy food*.

Which we'd have a better chance at buying down the road if we weren't so busy spending it all on beer right now.

My friend Lisa Dundee(not her real last name) told me about a great blog called "Crazy Aunt Purl". I've really been enjoying it, especially the whole bit about her making healthier choices for herself here and there, making small changes in the food she eats and the exercise she gets. Her plan is to never diet again. Which is brilliant. Her plan means she may never be really thin again but at least she'll be making healthier choices for herself than before. Which is what's more important anyway, right? I have felt really inspired by her.

Until five pm every single evening, which is Max's witching hour. The hours between five and eight (Max's bed time) are prime drinking hours because he's really cranky most of that time. Beer finesses the great battle that is otherwise known as BEDTIME. All day I tell myself I will go home and make a nice hot cup of relaxing tea and ride the waves of six year old angst out. Then I will wisely prepare to go to bed early myself, because everyone knows that sleep is the axis upon which all good health rests.

I get home and the pressure is too great. Tea seems like a pretty weak defense against the negative tirade that awaits me. You'd think that at least I could follow through on the early bed time thing. But I can't. It always sounds so good at ten in the morning. More sleep sounds so good at four pm. But at eight thirty pm, when the kid is finally in bed, (even if he is calling to us mercilessly for various things such as ice water, some obscure stuffed animal I didn't know existed, or the cat), I just can't get in bed. I must stay up like a proper adult. And unwind. With beer. Which also means I'll have to eat something I don't really need to eat. Truth be told, I probably don't "need" to eat again for about a month.

So I wake up every morning wondering how it is that my good resolve vanished and left me at the mercy of habit, once again. All the while I am beginning to panic inside every time I have to get dressed or undressed. Lots of people seek God for help in these things. I have certainly appealed to my own version of God to help me find that stubborn will of iron that plagued my parents for seventeen years, but if the Universe heard, it must have figured it was an appeal not worth responding to. I may have better luck appealing to Max's idea of God, which is a very very fat man wearing a brown suit. But if God really is "very very fat" then he doesn't have any more self control than I do, so how will he be able to help?

Not being religious, I keep appealing to myself instead. To my vanity (which is supposed to be such a great motivator). To my desire to be healthier and to not be so literally weighed down. Nothing has been able to shake my desire to remain in my comfortable routine. This allows me to be happy from five pm until I go to bed, but forces me into a blue study from the time I wake up until five pm.

Some thing's got to give. I've been edging towards change cautiously. If I promise anything I will only disappoint myself and others. But if I don't keep trying, I will eventually wake up and be six hundred pounds and unable to ever get up again. I am an eternal optimistic pessimist. I never give up hope, but I always keep expectations grounded. Sometimes six feet under. I know it seems impossible...but lots of things, like the fact that President Bush still hasn't been impeached, seem impossible, and yet they are true.

So, being inspired by Crazy Aunt Purl's no diet plan, (which is essentially what my mother has been doing too and has already lost thirty pounds!) in which she slowly and quietly begins to make some better choices for herself, which if they don't actually result in a lot of weight loss, will at least help her to feel better about herself, I have devised a new idiotic plan.

I've come up with ten things I should be doing every single day to be healthy. I do almost none of them on any given day. I figure that if I can at least check seven things off of that list a day I will not be able to help but get healthier, even if I don't get thinner. I could live with that. I certainly wouldn't get FATTER. People are always talking about giving one's self lots of incentive to reach goals. I have never been good at this because I always just go ahead and buy the shoes I want because the whole reason I have trouble with my weight is that I HAVE VERY LITTLE SELF CONTROL. But what the heck. I figure that any day on which I check off at least seven things on my list, I can earn $10.00. Think about what that could mean if I even managed to pay myself $10.00 every other day for a year: $1825.00

The funny thing is that if I really fell for this whole incentive thing, I can't actually afford to pay myself this amazing incentive money. I figure it doesn't matter though because the chances of that happening are the same as the chance of me seeing the Virgin Mary's face on the shell of one of my hen's eggs. Whatever. I amuse myself at any rate.

What I always want to know is where other people find their own strengths. And please don't tell me: in the pages of the bible. Or: by looking up to "HIM". C'mon, beyond that, how do you tap into the well of personal strength and determination that it takes to change really old unhealthy habits? I don't actually think it's possible for anyone to answer this question for anyone else. I already know the answer. I just feel locked out of my own stores of discipline. It was heartening that my mom gave me a reading from her cards (similar to tarot) that said I have the strength to do what I need to do.

People are always saying things like "when you want it bad enough you'll change" or "when you hate your body enough you'll motivate yourself" and most helpfully of all "when you get off your fat ass and exercise and stop stuffing twinkies, you'll lose weight!"

For the record: I do not eat twinkies. Ever.