A couple of weeks ago I weighed in at 146 pounds. I was 195 or so at my heaviest, which I thik was about a year into working at Sara Lee. (Some of that I blame on my discovery of their powdered hot cappuccino. A lot changed once I saw the nutritionals...)
I feel better, I look better. It hasn't happened through anything dramatic. I smallerfied portion sizes to eat until I wasn't hungry, instead of eating until full. I cut down on soda and started drinking more water. I ate less dessert and became more mindful of comfort food. Basic good lifestyle stuff.
And then yesterday I mowed the lawn. Jareth followed me around with his toy mower, which he still insists is the vacuum. If I'd thought about it, I'd have had Amy get a picture of it. It would have been a cute picture.
Actually, we did a decent amount of yard work, but it was mowing the lawn that was nearly so horrible.
I put the lawnmower back in the garage, did some other tidying up, and noticed that my wedding band was gone. It was one of those heart-stopping moments.
We have matching wedding bands, just different sizes. There's a huge amount of meaning for us to them being a matched set. Even if I had the ring replaced, they wouldn't be matching ever again. That magic would be broken forever.
Amy and I walked through the whole yard. I raked the whole back yard, hoping to turn it up. I had done the back last, so that seemed a good place to start. Eventually it got dark and I found myself crawling through the yard, flashlight in one hand and raking the grass with the fingers on the other hand.
I eventually found it settled into the grass, and it went back on that finger with an urgency Gollum would have related to.
Today was a short day at work, as I stayed home this morning to watch the kids while Amy went to class. It made for good training time using the on-line training stuff the dealership signed us all up for. Good stuff.
Then at work something unexpected happened. One of the customers I sold to back at the RV show came in to pick up the license plates for her camper. Okay, so that's not the unexpected part. But she came with a gift bag, with a card and two outfits for Kayla.
That pretty effectively made my day.
It seems that customer traffic at work was good right around the time Kayla was born. Since then it has slowed back down. I'm told that's normal this time of year. Spring breaks happen at different times for different schools, which creates a few weeks of slower traffic. This is the weekend things are expected to pick back up again.
It has been disappointing and frustrating. I've doing this for eight or nine months and I still don't feel good at it. It's not a personality or temperment thing, I'm just slow climbing over the learning curve. Intellectually I know what to do. I just haven't been able to create some of the habits. Some of it is a lack of confidence, but I've struggled with that in every aspect of my life pretty much forever.
They say in sales, your paycheck is a direct reflection of your selling skills.
One of the new sales people is doing better than the others. Better than me, lately, too, which adds to the frustration. Now, a lot of customers lately have been "just starting their research," and pointedly not ready to buy yet. I'm good with those people, and I just need to be patient with them. But patience doesn't buy groceries or pay bills now. Somehow the one doing better seems to get the customers who are ready to buy--and some of them even know what they want.
There was a book I read back in the motorhome, so 1998 or '99. The author mentioned a restaurant cook he worked with at one point. When that cook was off, the place was chaos. Customers came in in spurts all at once, flooding the kitchen with orders. When the cook was in, customers seemed to come in more spread out, and they were able to keep up. The only variable the author could come up with was the one cook. Somehow he was controling the flow of customer traffic.
So that, some determination, some confidence... There's a new on-line training program we got signed up for at work that I can start today. What I need I'll get more effectively from something seminar-like, but this might be a good start. I just have to make it all happen. Having faith that I'll get there isn't good enough. I have to prove it and make it happen.
So that's what been on my mind of late, especially the last couple of days.
I saw a CNN piece earlier in the week about controversy surrounding an exhibit at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry called Bodies.
(Very cool article about it here.)
They're real cadavers from China, preserved in a plastic resin. They are posed in a number of actions, and are peeled down in differing layers. One man's muscles dance with his skeleton as the partner.
An ethics committee, along with others in Florida, were trying to prevent the exhibition's opening. It looks like it opened anyway. Part of the complaint revolved around people thinking it wasn't preserving the dignity that the dead should be treated with.
One of the exhibit designers, was asked why real bodies when it could have all been done with plastic.
His answer was that with plastic you can show what the body looks like. But it's still an artificial display. With real bodies it's, well, real. You can't deny it. It's all the more valid that way.
As to the dignity thing, I have no problem with it. Cadavers get donated to medical school for students to practice dissecting. I would rather my body be used for an eye-opening and educational exhibit than to be turned into just an object for practice. But maybe I have a different idea of dignity.