family 2 Comments

Thirty Years Ago Today

Several years ago, Mom gave me the small “baby diary” she’d kept during the first year after I was born. She started it in July 1976, when I was 10 weeks old. It’s really a fascinating look into my Mom’s life as a single 21-year-old mother in the 1970s.

July 14, 1976:

Today Bonnie and I went to see the lawyer. I know it will be hard for you to understand why your father doesn’t want to admit you are his. I hope it can have a happy ending for all of us.

Well, we took you to have your picture taken. And you heard a squeeky toy for the first time. And you smiled real big for the man. Mommy was glad you smiled.

Your Uncle Donnie held you and you talked to him. He played a harmonica, but you didn’t like it.

Good night,
Mom

(It’s a small book. That filled up the whole page for July 14.)

Actually, now that I’m older than he was at the time, I can understand. I don’t agree with his reaction to the situation, but I do understand. He was 25, messing around with his 20-year-old girlfriend. He wasn’t looking for any of this. When he found out, it was probably easier to deny all responsibility. Although I don’t know if I can understand his offering to pay to have me aborted. (Sorry, abortion rights activists, but I am pro-life by default. No matter what I might have said when I was 15, I truly am glad to be alive.)

It’s been interesting growing up fatherless. I don’t think I was scarred by it — of course, I really don’t have a basis of comparison. I learned at some point in my youth when it was OK to talk about my parentage, and when I should just let people draw their own conclusions about how I came to live with my Mom and my grandmother. As I got older and more open with people, and as single parenting became less of a stigma, I began telling more people in more situations. Now I’m to the point where I can discuss my bastard nature with co-workers who are younger than me — and who, surprisingly enough, share very similar stories of their own unusual parentage.

I’ve never met my father face-to-face. It would be interesting, if awkward, to have a discussion with him about that stretch of time in 1975 and 1976 when he so vehemently denied being my father. I’m just curious if he really believes that he isn’t the one. I wonder if he ever thought about it, years later.

On a lighter note, I look forward to reading this while I blog about my own (still unconceived) child’s first year of life. Or maybe I’ll get a little diary and write a few words in my own hand after she goes to sleep at night. I know I’m enjoying reading Mom’s (and Memaw’s, sometimes) handwritten thoughts, thirty years after the fact.

Update, 9:40pm: Continuing to read through the diary. Some of these entries are making me all misty. Dammit. 😉

gardening 1 Comment

Filling In The Gaps

Since some fantastic small furry animal (perhaps now gathered together with several of its friends in a cave and grooving with a pict?) ate my sweet basil, I decided to start some new plants indoors. Three sweet basil, three lemon basil, and three lavender. They’re currently living under the plant lamp, which is on a timer, and they’ve been there for… three days? Four? Something like that. All three sweet basil are almost an inch tall, the lemon basil are over half an inch tall — the two that germinated, anyway — and the lavender aren’t doing crap.

I thought maybe I got three duds. So I planted a couple more yesterday, in the same peat pellet pots. No love today.

So, I went online to check the germination time of lavender. (I believe the internet before I believe the seed packet.) And what do I find? Lavender can take up to a month to germinate! I might have to research some alternate germination methods (in the fridge?!) to make these babies grow.

Oops. Who knew?

food 2 Comments

Tonight’s Main Course

Homemade shrimp and cucumber sushi. I haven’t rolled sushi in years, but this turned out relatively well.

I took the less-pretty pieces (shown) for myself, and put the better-looking ones in the fridge for Aaron when he gets home from work. He’ll be surprised; we haven’t made sushi at home in probably almost three years.

For future reference: I cooked one cup of brown rice in the rice cooker, then added two tablespoons of rice vinegar and two tablespoons of Splenda after the rice cooled. That yielded two rolls. Two strips of cucumber and six shrimpies per roll. It actually turned out a little sweeter than I’m used to, so I might have to revise the recipe next time I try this.

writing 2 Comments

Nothing Special

dianaschnuth.net is never going to become an internet giant. It’s never going to earn revenue (or at least, not of job-quitting calibre). Hell, it’s probably never going to get even 100 hits a day on a regular basis.

It’s just an excuse for me to write almost-daily. Who knows if I’d still journal if I didn’t have my blog?

I have volumes of journals dating back to when I was seven years old. Most of my life is documented in journals of one form or another, be they bound volumes of lined paper in fuzzy bookcovers, stacks of notebook paper with single metal rings holding them together, or electronic text files. The years that aren’t documented seem almost lost to me. The important events that I skipped over sometimes seem hazy in my memory. Then there are memories that I’d completely managed to push into the farthest corner of my subconscious and had almost forgotten, but were documented at the time, and later read and remembered.

This is really just an open journal. For you, and for me. For you, so you can laugh at my funnies and muse with me about stupid shit. For me, so I can look back later and remember what it was like before [insert major life event here]. The only thing that differentiates this from what I would write for myself alone is that I can’t (or won’t) go off about any particular person for any particular reason. The internet’s a big place, and a potentially permanent one, and I don’t need people (or their friends or family or bodyguards) coming to me years later, after I no longer have a beef with them. Or while I still do.

I don’t make a concerted effort to always be witty, or to have a great punch line, or even to maintain coherent structure in my entries. I try to effectively get out what’s in my head. If you like it, that’s cool. If all I’ve got to say is, “Man, I’m really in a mood tonight,” then I’m just going to say it and not put some sort of interesting spin on it for my readers. I’m not Dooce or Wil. I’m just me.

My English teacher, Mr. Falls, wrote in my 8th grade yearbook something along the lines of, “Like a world-class athlete, a writer like you should write every day!” Well, Mr. Falls, here I am. Getting it out of my head. Trying to express myself. My fiction has gone by the wayside (dusty and neglected, but not forgotten), but my little essays about my life keep on keeping on.

health & fitness

Chiropractor, Part II

Today’s follow-up was at 6pm, which gave me time to see Aaron, change clothes and feed the cat before heading back out to see Dr. Sue.

Dr. Sue was a few minutes late, due to her son’s senior pictures running longer (or being more difficult) than expected. She rolled up in her minivan just as I was starting to get a little worried about my appointment. When I realized that she’d driven to the office just for me, I thought that was pretty damn cool. She could have said she couldn’t see me today, and scheduled me for some other time. That was mighty considerate of her, I thought.

The session didn’t take quite as long this time, and she noticed right away that my back must be feeling a lot better than it was. She was right; all weekend, all I had were twinges here and there when I bent the wrong way or tried to take too big of a step. The routine was the same as before: moist heat, cracking the neck and upper back, stretching the lower back, ultrasound therapy, and one last neck crack. That got me to feeling almost normal.

I did ask her about her normal price for a visit, and she said it’s $25. She also said that my insurance probably wouldn’t pay for most of it. I told her that Aaron’s visits with Dr. Smith are mostly paid for by insurance, so hopefully these will be, too. I’m going to take care of my co-pay at my next (and hopefully final) visit on Saturday morning at 10:00, so I’m hoping she actually runs my insurance through, instead of assuming the worst.

My back feels like I worked out a little hard. That’s all. It doesn’t hurt like it did — there’s just some muscular soreness. I’m sure that will go away over the course of this week.

Now I need to get back into my exercise routine. I’ve become adept at finding things to watch on TV for the past week, while I was beached on the couch, nursing my back. I’m itching to get active again — which I would never have expected. I mean, I’ve continued to take my lunchtime walks, but I’ve been missing how I feel after a real workout. I did a few upper body exercises with my resistance bands, and did a few ab exercises. None of those seemed to bother my back, which is good. Maybe tomorrow I can try doing a full-on PUSH workout, and just skip past anything that feels like it might hurt (in a bad way — either my knee or my lower back).

Oh, yeah, did I mention that my right knee felt like shit over the weekend? I have no idea what I did, besides walking funny to favor my back, but my knee hurt like a bitch. When I got up to go to work today, it was perfectly fine. WTF?

I’m taking photos and measurements on July 14, in preparation for a renewed phase of my goddamn weight loss plan. I’m going to do this thing, goddammit. I’m sick of kicking ass, then ceasing to kick ass for whatever bullshit reason, then having to kick ass twice as hard to get back to where I was. This is bullshit, and being forced into being sedentary last week really made me see it. I’m going to lose 20 pounds in 15 weeks. By Halloween (preferably sooner), I intend to weight 190. Or be under 30% bodyfat.

(How many pounds of fat would be 4% of my total weight, assuming I were to gain muscle in the process? I don’t even know how to begin calculating that. How much does 20 pounds of fat weigh? —Never mind. Forget I asked that. *smacks forehead*)

I wonder if I could go jogging again yet?