This blog entry is instructional in nature...a how NOT to exercise in, well, exercise.

Let's start with some background information. Travel with me in time to November 2007. It has been a year since my son was born, I went crazy and then back to relative sanity, had a baby, nursed him for a year, it was time to write a novel, the holidays were coming, I was as fat as I had ever been in a non-pregnant state. I was ready to get myself and my house fixed up. So I hung up a calendar and wrote down what I was going to do everyday: Drink a bunch of water, not a let a drop of soda pass my lips, do my devotions, work on my novel, and exercise. It was great. I was doing it. I was amazing myself. Okay, so I had a little trouble not drinking Coke, but I was working on it. I lost one pound. The angels were playing their heavenly trumpets for me.

Then I got appendecitis, my right ovary went beserk, I went to the hospital, they kept me there, my baby weaned himself, it hurt ...

Ben is 13 months old this Christmas. Clearly at age when he does not understand all the Christmas hullabaloo and in fact was at times overwhelmed by the strangeness of everything happening in his house. Unwrapping presents interests him for about twenty seconds for the first four presents and then no more. What he found instead fun instead was navigating his way through piles of presents and people and playing with toys that he already owned.

Andrew and I vowed not to go overboard this Christmas due to his age and his lack of attachment to the emotions of Christmas. As it turned out though our own emotional attachment was more than enough to compensate for his.... In reality, any by comparison, we didn't do to badly. He got a new outfit (tradition), a Fisher Price, a DVD, a couple board books, his first "classic" book, a Little Touch Leappad, Bubblebath, a pack of sippy cups, two little toy cars, a CD, and some various little stocking stuffers. (Plus the gifts fr ...

We got Ben's pictures back from Sears yesterday and they are so good! He is so handsome and adorable. They turned out great. There's this one pose where he has his hand in his mouth and his eyes wide open and it's my favorite favorite favorite. We had it printed in sepia tones and it is beautiful. We also got a big framed 10x30 wall hanging that has three different pictures inside in black and white and it's gorgeous. It's like art on our walls. So, I'm totally thrilled about all the pictures. His little skin is just flawless, he looks like a baby movie star newspaper boy. It's to die for. To balance out all this gushing I will say that I wish we had a couple more poses because we only have four I think, but he just didn't cooperate in those poses. I totally recommend Sears for having portraits taken. I didn't think that we were going to like it, but the prices were pretty decent, but we did like it. The girl did a really good job, the pictures are beautiful, and I love them. Of course, I wish that I ...

Benjamin had his one year checkup today. Unfortunately, we couldn't see his regular doctor and so we saw Dr. Idiot instead. First, this poor man gave off the most unmanly vibe I think I've ever gotten. He just seemed squishy...from his handshake, to his voice...his entire demeanor.

He did interact with and talk to directly to Ben, which is a big plus, but even while he was doing that he was so tentative about everything that I felt like I needed to whip out my "mom skills" to encourage him. It would have gone something like this. I see that he wants to listen to Ben's heart, but seems unsure about it. "Oh, you want to listen to his heart? You can do it. Just try. See, you're doing it. Yay! You're very brave. What a good doctor you are..." Ugh. GROW SOME BALLS, MAN!

So, I'm making it through the appointment, trying to get it over with as fast as possible and make things easy for him. He asked if I had any questions and I did h ...

Benjamin started walking yesterday. In the morning he'd only walk if he was holding at least one of your hands, but by bedtime he was moving under his own power. He doesn't so much bend his knees while he walks as he more just lists from side to side stumbling his way forward. He hasn't quite mastered steering yet, as he'll be looking longingly in one direction, but walking away not able to make the turn. By this morning he had added the ability to walk holding blankie, which is important.

We did catch the spectacle on video tape, which we were very happy about. It's a poorly taped event and Andrew likened it to the footage someone takes of a Sasquatch. The problem was that he wanted to walk to an actual person so whoever had the video camera was trying to catch Ben and film so his head just gets progressively bigger and off center. Then the focus disappears completely for a minute as we try to readjust to send him the other way, his wobbling takes him on and off camera and the so ...

My Benjamin Mark Hatter is officially a year old. Actually, to be absolutely official he's one year old and one day to this very exact minute. Wow. It has been a year that is almost beyond words for me. To think that last year at this time I hadn't even brought my son home from the hospital. He was just this little tiny blob swaddled up in the arms of two very exhausted parents who had no idea what was in store for them...

Last year when I went into the hospital I had spent the previous days planning our traditional Thanksgiving party that we host with friends. I really thought that within 24 hours of coming home from the hospital that I'd be up to hosting a Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously, I thought that! Just FYI, that didn't happen. We did walk over to the party with tiny Ben and stayed for oh, twenty minutes.

When I think back about what I was experiencing last year at this time and in the next few days it makes me want to weep with gratitude that I'm past t ...

Okay, so my novel died. It was struggling weakly along and I would have carried it through to the end despite our rough beginning, but my emergency surgery and then recovery period delivered the killing blows and I decided there was just no way that I was going to be able to pull this off this month. It was a sad decision. I mourned (parts) of my novel. I grieved for another November passing without my completing a novel. I've also decided that I'm going to give myself a "re-do" month once I'm fully recovered and back up and around. So, this thread might be revived later on, but I just wanted to let anyone who was wondering (aka no one) what had happened to my poor book.

I am suffering. My story is suffering. We do not go well together. Nothing is going well. (Note to the concerned: there's not actually anything wrong with me besides the story.)  I have 6,319 words. Today I should be breaking 10k. I have a very definite feeling that I will not be making that goal. The prospects of me finishing this story are getting slimmer and slimmer (quite unlike my stomach and thighs) because I'll be spending a week in Kentucky this month as well and that will not increase my word count in any meaningful way. Failure is looming over me...and my screaming son looming under me...

Yesterday did not go well. I realized all over again how stupid my plot/lack of plot was and how I didn't really like anything about my story and I didn't know where to go with it and I was seriously considering burning down the girl's house and having her reincarnated into another life and plot somewhere else. However, with the wisdom only a long-time mother possess, mom came up with an equally interesting and less violent proposition. A time travel machine. I was immediately intrigued and have decided to time-travel my female character back in time and pop her into a wagon-train/pioneer drama. This hasn't really given me a plot, but it's a change of direction at least and so I'm just going to go with it for now. Saturday's funk has left me with only 3,705 words where I should have 6,668 leaving me 2,963 words behind. I wasted most of Benjamin's first nap today watching tv and so now I'm definitely feeling the time crunch.

I'm ending Day 2 with 3,416, which puts me just slightly ahead of where I ought to be. The good news is that I'm not behind yet, the bad news is that tomorrow I have to write basically all my words. The badder news is that my story is not good. It's really not. Somehow before all my beginnings have turned out pretty well and that at least gets me a rather inspired start. This year that is not the case. I have no description. My dialogue is trite. My plot is sparse at best and is taking me places that I don't know about which means my choices are to either make something up (hard to keep up over 50,000 words) or do research (slows the whole process down). I'm not really sure what I'm going to do about it. But for me to be stumped on page seven does not bode well. Week One is supposed to be this flurry of inspiration and Week Two is supposed to be the bog so I'm just not sure how this is going to work. I'm giving serious thought to starting Day 3 with the sentence "And then she woke up from a ...