Which Is Better To Wake Up To?

An alarm clock or a thunderstorm? I vote thunderstorm, that makes me want to get up and watch, and the alarm makes me want to smash it and roll over back to sleep. I was contemplating taking a short bike ride around the neighborhood when I got up this morning but not in the pouring rain. I'm hoping for nicer days over the weekend so I can pedal around a bit.

Another question--how deluded do you have to be to think the scale numbers will go down if you eat all the wrong stuff? Pretty darned deluded, I'm thinking. I wish I had a reset button to push in my brain sometimes. I'd also like to know where the motivation for change comes from, where it goes, and why. Motivation seems to come screaming up, grab on, and ride for a while, then it jumps off and goes haring off to Outer Mongolia or someplace far away. I limp along pretending and looking out for its return. That's where I am right now, limping along. The numbers on the scale are inching up and no matter how many mental lectures I give myself some demon inside me derails my good intentions. Bah. It's a rainy day, I'm taking a break from recrimination, at least for today.

September 22--Waikiki Beach. All her life Beth had dreamed of being on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. She had tried to talk Arlen into going to Hawaii on their honeymoon but he said he couldn't be away from the herd for that long so she settled for two nights in the Downtowner Motel on the seedy end of downtown Green Bay. Pretty soon she was popping out babies at the rate of one every twenty months or so. Arlen told her he could always use the help, he didn't mind, as he held her as she cried when she told him that she was pregnant for the sixth time. They were good Catholics and both of them bought the line of reproductive bull crap the Church was handing out at the time. Beth knew they'd change their tune if men were the ones who carried the babies. All it would have taken was for just one Pope or even a priest to get knocked up while practicing the rhythm method. Hell, the only thing rhythmic about it was the regular rate the babies came. It was after Lisa, their number seven, that Beth saw a different doctor, a woman doctor, for a prescription for the Pill. She told Arlen that they were special "female" vitamins and he never questioned her.

Well, that veered away from the beach pretty darned fast, didn't it? I'm intrigued by Beth. I'll put a star by this one in the notebook. Stay dry!
--Barbara