This article may take a little bit of a harsh approach to all things Twitter – but I do agree with this specific sentiment:

But I’m giving it up. I know I’ll get roasted for being anti-tech. But, what I really am is pro meaningful communication. And somewhere along the Internet highway we fell under the spell that more communication is better communication. Sometimes more communication is just noise.

I still use Twitter pretty minimally. Lately I’ve used to to update several people at one time, and I do find it a good way to pass time if I’m bored (and maybe stuck on the shuttle ride from hell) and forgot my book. I also follow a bunch of people on Twitter who I like to keep up with (Jimmy Fallon twittered on the Today Show today! Hee!) in that celebrestalker kinda way. (What? I admit it!) But I do feel like sometimes I forget that 140 characters is not enough to nurture a relationship or friendship. Sometimes it’s just enough to offend people.

I think I may take this as motivation to write a few letters this week. Dig out the gobs and gobs of awesome stationary, buy some stamps, and communicate the old-fashioned way. Just for the hell of it.

Hello! How are you doing? I’m fine, thanks. Been a little busy, but hanging in there. I went back home this week for a short trip since my Dad got discharged from the hospital and sent home. (Woo Hoo! No more hospital food!) While at home my youngest has had a double ear infection and NikkiZ is sporting her nine millionth cold of the season. Due to reasons I won’t divulge, LilZ lost the use of his cell phone and the internet this week. He also lost his DVR which may have been more of a perk for us since we now have dual tuner recording capabilities in the bedroom now. All of these things combine to be my list of Excuses Why I Haven’t Been Blogging. And also Excuses Why I Have Been Drinking MrZ’s Beer When He’s Not Looking. (Sorry, hon.)

I have been using my Awake Time in the middle of the night with random sick children to catch up on some TV. I have made a few decisions regarding this current TV season I thought I’d share with you:

• My favorite new shows: Leverage and Fringe. I’m thrilled everyone else seems to love them as well.
• Shows that I used to love but are letting me down this season: Ugly Betty and C.S.I.
• Then, of course, there are always the shows I still watch religiously even though I have NO IDEA WHY: Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs
• I’m still continually thrilled by the developments on Lost. Making a concrete END DATE for that show was the best thing they ever did. The show seems to actually be following some sort of path towards a conclusion while still making me go…”No!?” every week.
• I am always happy when my favorite shows continue to keep me happy: NCIS, Bones, House, Criminal Minds, HIMYM.
• I feel really guilty for not falling desperately in love with Dollhouse yet. It’s a Joss Whedon creation – I feel like I’m required to obsess over everything he does. WHY CAN’T I OBSESS OVER THAT?
• I find myself fast forwarding through a lot of TV lately. There are several story lines on Friday Night Lights that bore me so I tend to zoom past those. (None of the ones involving Coach Taylor, of course. Yum.) I fear that may be a bad sign.
• I am having a hard time picking favorites on Biggest Loser or The Amazing Race yet this year. There are a bunch of teams/people on both I like. That may be a first!

What about you? Any TV opinions this season you’d like to share as we head into the finale season?

If there’s one thing that will inspire you to improve the way you handle stress – it’s the realization that your children will test your patience more if they sense that you are stressed. I’m not sure if all kids do this, because I don’t think LilZ did, but my two youngest children? Sometimes I feel like they are wanting to be sold to gypsies. Or auctioned off on eBay. Because they have learned to sense my anxiety and do everything they can to send me screaming down the streets, “Need help! Send beer! Or possibly narcotics!”

NikkiZ does this in her usual way of Deliberately Hovering Around The Line Of Rule-Breaking and Rule-Abiding To Test Where That Line Actually Is. For example – let’s say she’s wiggling around at the table and almost knocks her plate and/or cup over several times. You say, “Sit on your bottom while you eat dinner.” She will lean as faaaaar to the side as she can and still be sitting on her bottom but obviously still (knowingly) missing the point of the rule. So, you clarify, “Please sit still and on your bottom while you eat because we don’t want you spilling your food.” She then sits perfectly flat on her bottom and start lightly tapping your chair with her foot. She knows she’s not being still, but she’s also not moving around enough to spill her food so she’s testing to see which part of the rule was the important part. You give yourself a pat on the back for not making her eat her food outside in the rain.

AndyZ tests my patience by deciding he doesn’t need sleep. EVER. AT ALL. Two nights in a row now he has opted not to sleep. Until…of course…I have decided I can’t try to sleep anymore and I get up for the day. Then he’ll go to sleep (in his crib) for a few hours peacefully. He knows that I’m too awake to try to get any extra sleep and he also knows that I know that if I did try to go back to bed for a bit longer? He would then wake up. I’M NO DUMMY.

But…BUT…no matter how stressed I am – if I hide it from them? They’re perfect angels. If I go about my day without any of my token I’m Stressed behaviors? They’ll just go about their day without pushing my buttons. And they’ll sleep, and be as rule-abiding as they normally are. (Which, granted, in NikkiZ’s case is not that great.) So – I’m learning much better stress-coping techniques. It’s forcing me to master the art of the Deep Breath or the perfect timed Soak in the Tub. I process the stress and move it on before they sense it so that they can not use it to their advantage. I have officially gained the upper-hand in this relationship, DAMMIT. LOOK WHO IS BOSS NOW, Kiddos. HA!

(I am shaking my fist in the air and maniacally laughing, if you needed the full image.)

(Maybe I’m not coping so well after all?)

NikkiZ has just developed such entertaining use of language that I can think of nothing more fun than just hanging out and talking to her many days. She is picking up a lot more from adults around her than she had in the passed and that has birthed some fantastic expressive moments from her. This morning? She exasperatingly exclaimed while throwing her hands up in the air, “Oh, Man! I totally forgot to ask Ms. D for that paper!” It was such a teenager thing to do that I almost spit out my coffee I started laughing so hard. Throw the hand on the hip and an, “Oh. My. Gawd.” and I will feel like I’ve just meant the 14-year old version of my daughter.

Last night she and I went to the grocery store by ourselves. (To get kitty litter. Just kidding.) When we were going towards the front door, a young guy grabbing buggies from the buggy-bin (or shopping cart bin, if you’re not me) and NikkiZ said to me, “I like him. That boy right there.” I have no idea what drew her attention to him in the first place so I said, “Really? Why?” She said, “Because he’s HEALTHY.”

HA! Really? Because he’s HEALTHY? HA!

Those two things almost made me forget that she got a red card yesterday at school. AGAIN. Because while she has an entertaining grasp on the English language, she’s still a tad bit possessed by demons. *sigh*

All of us who have had babies have discussed Baby Weight at least once after having our babies. And probably, we thought about it more than once. Some women are lucky and they gain little and it comes off easy. (And those women are BEYATCHES, right?) Then there are people like me:

1) I gained 68lbs with LilZ – took several years to lose it all.
2) I gained 60lbs with NikkiZ – still hadn’t lost the last bit 2 years later when I got pregnant with AndyZ.
3) I gained 50lbs with AndyZ. As of today, I weight 2 pounds less than I did the day I came home from the hospital. Meaning I have lost 2lbs in 9 months.

Considering I hadn’t finished losing the weight pre-AndyZ in the first place, I choose to use my pre-NikkiZ weight as my target. So, I am currently 43lbs away from that goal. I have been struggling to lose the weight quietly, away from my blog. I’ve gained and lost the same 10lbs over the last few months. Obviously? My quiet way isn’t working. It’s time for some accountability.

Now, I know my weight battle is not as extreme as some. My need to drop 43lbs would make some people want to punch me in the face. But, I just know that there was a time when I was lighter and healthier. It’s not just about the weight – it’s about the general lifestyle I’m living now. The frenzied eat fast and crash early lifestyle that makes me feel really disappointed in my body. It is not just the extra pounds, its that I no longer feel that pride in myself that I felt at healthier points in my life. I mean – there’s a huge difference in these two bodies physically and mentally.

I just felt good the day of that race. It wasn’t just about weight because I was a few pounds shy of my goal on that day. It was about respecting my body. Taking care of it with diet AND excercise. That other body? That body gets abused. It doesn’t get enough sleep, it drinks lots of caffeine, it eats lots of junk to cope with stress and it never ever gets any excercise. EVER.

(Sidenote: While looking through all of my race photos I found this one taken about 2.5 years ago. Look! I’m totally taller than LilZ!)

Anyway…I want that other body back. I want to feel like I’m taking care of myself because you know what? I deserve to take care of myself. I deserve that pride. I work too hard at my job and for my family to put myself last on my priority list. This is about weight – for sure – but also so much more than that. This is about finally saying, “I want to treat myself at least as good as I treat everyone else, maybe even better.” Why does everyone, even the cashiers at the grocery store, get more respect from me than I do from myself? That’s completely ridiculous.

So, I’m taking the initiative today. Today? I start to put myself on the priority list. I’ll vow to start finding time to excercise because someone else can do the laundry. I’ll make a point to buy healthy foods that I like, even if no one else in the house does. I’ll take time to reflect, maybe even start meditating, because right now I cope with anxiety by eating and that’s just not working for me. I’ll demand that my family allow me to do all of these things because you know what? It will benefit them in the long run. They can attest that Anxiety Zoot? Not that fun to live with. Add Unhappy With Her Body Zoot and Super Tired Zoot in the mix and you’ll find my family is looking into a vacation home. Fr away from me.

This will be largely about losing the weight. But it will also be about finding a way to take as good of care of myself as I do my family. Finding a way to put Me Time in the schedule, even if it means that I have to ask someone else to do the laundry for a change. Or vacuum. Or grocery shop.

My basic concrete goals are this:

1) Lose those 43lbs.
2) Run a half-marathon this fall/winter.

I’ll have several other mini-goals along the way, but those are my two biggies. I found out the hard way that training for a marathon with small children and a full-time job is close to impossible. At least in my life. I mean, I did it, but not well. Not the right way. So, I’m sticking with the half-marathon which is a much more attainable goal.

I have several more vague goals I’d like to strive for along the way. I want to shake up the diet and learn to eat and cook healthy foods that I haven’t already cooked 9-million times. I want to find some sort of relaxation/meditation regiment that will possibly allow me binge-eating to cope with anxiety. I want to not wear a t-shirt and shorts over my bathing suit when we go to the beach this summer. I want to be able to wear my wedding band again without getting it re-sized.

I’ll be documenting my journey at the Balanced Living website. My page is here and will hopefully show my introductory article soon. If you want to join me, I’d love to have you. There’s a great community over there full of inspirational stories and support. They’re even holding a contest through the end of the month where they’ll give the winner $5,000 to achieve their healthy living goal. $5,000 would pay for my gym membership AND periodic days at the spa! I’d love to have you over there.

For now? It’s all about the baby steps. Like joining the YMCA. I’m going to do that this week and maybe excercise for the first time in months. Be prepared for the Holy Shit, My Body Hurts entry that will follow. I’m sure it will be a good one.