Summer Activities

Wilmington Crane

• Location: Tucked into a crack in a wall in downtown Winchester, Massachusetts
• Date: Saturday, July 12, 2008
• Description: Royal blue crane with a black dove on one wing and the word “peace” on the other

Seth and I went to Winchester yesterday to check out a farmer’s market. We like fresh vegetables, and our tomato plants aren’t producing like they should, so we checked out this place. Lo and behold, fresh tomatoes — and green beans and lettuce and kale and broccoli and all sorts of wonderful produce items that we didn’t buy (except for green beans) because we didn’t need anything but tomatoes, which were expensive. Huh.

As we walked around downtown Winchester after buying our green beans, we came across a rock wall overlooking some water and man-made, terraced waterfalls, which is where I stuck this crane. We also saw neat buildings that look really old and architecturally interesting, and some very expensive houses for sale.

I thought it would be cool to learn more about Winchester and the buildings we saw, but I can’t find anything about them so far. I had a slight heart attack just now when I looked up Winchester and typed in “Wilmington” accidentally, which is a nearby town that happens to be a cancer cluster because of industrial chemical contamination. Scary! Thank goodness I got the address wrong. What would we have done with the fresh green beans if that were the case?

How am I Doing so Far?

• Location: Border’s Books, Peabody, Massachusetts
• Date: Sunday, June 22, 2008
• Description: Lime green crane with peace signs all over

Here is another one of Roy’s cranes.  Here’s what he said about it: “Went to Borders tonight to browse place a crane.  Plopped the crane down in front of War & Peace, turned the camera on and got the dreaded ‘No Memory Card.’”  Whoops!  This is a fantastic drawing.  It makes me feel like I’m in a cartoon.  He draws much better than I do.  That’s cool.

I was so proud of myself for writing that post on feminism last week.  I had it in my head all evening, and then I went to my yoga class and felt really great and connected to my body, and I was looking forward to coming home and continuing writing.  On the way out, I noticed a woman walking in front of me who was in the yoga class.  She was on a mat near mine, and I remembered that her arm placement during one pose was particularly impressive, so I told her.

“Your arms stretches were excellent during that one exercise,” I said, and mimicked the arm movement.  “I noticed that your arm was going all the way down to the ground, and it was really great.  My arms don’t do that,” I added.  I wanted to mention how I’m still new to this yoga thing and working on my muscles movements, but for some reason I was too shy.

She looked at me in surprise.  “Oh!  Thank you,” she said.

Then, instead of telling her about my muscles and how tense I normally am, I repeated myself and said, “My arms don’t do that.”  I’m sure if she hadn’t said anything, I would have eventually added something about my arms just to break the awkwardness, but she didn’t give me a chance to feel awkward — at first.

“Well… all bodies are different,” she said.

Then I wanted to explain how I knew that and how I looked at pictures of different bones that day, and how they were all different and I knew that and bones grow in a spiral and it was super cool, but instead I let the conversation lapse and the woman probably thinks I’m all down on my body now.  I’m not.  It was a failing moment for me and my recent plan to go all out on this Health at Every Size thing.  In fact, now that I think about it, I think I even repeated myself again.  That’s depressing to remember.

Well anyway, I peeked into the pool section after we said goodnight, and there was this little girl standing in front of the pool windows.  She must’ve been about three, and she was wearing a fabulous red dress.  She smiled at me.  I noticed her dimples were huge.

“What’s her name, mommy?” the little girl said and pointed at me.

“I’m Christine,” I replied, “What’s your name?”

“Ranya!” she said.

“That’s a very pretty dress, Ranya,” I told her.

“My mommy’s name is —— and my daddy’s name is ——-,” she told me and looked at me expectantly.

“Those are beautiful names,” I said and smiled at Ranya and her mother, who was sitting nearby and watching us chat with a bemused expression.

“My daddy’s a boy!” Ranya seemed upset that I called her dad’s name beautiful.

“Boys’ names can be beautiful too,” I said, and then since I didn’t see who I was looking for in the pool section, I added, “goodnight!” and walked away.  Ranya said something else to me or at me or about me, but I didn’t hear it because her voice was tiny and I was across the room.  So I waved and walked out the door.

Afterwards, I felt bad that the first thing I told Ranya was that her dress was pretty.  I mean, yes, it was pretty, but it was also reinforcing the idea that the first thing you should notice about someone is what they’re wearing or what they look like, and that it’s okay to comment on a stranger’s personal appearance.  That’s not the best thing to teach kids.  I felt a little better once I remembered I told her a boy’s name could be beautiful too, but I didn’t feel like that was redeeming enough.

I don’t know.  Even though my body felt good, my mind felt bad because I had two strange experiences in a row about bodies and appearances.  Instead of showing off my beliefs to others about bodies and how they’re all beautiful and that it doesn’t matter what you look like, I let that fall to the wayside because I felt awkward in the conversations.  This probably means I need to work more on my people skills than my Getting Fit skills.

Food, Food, and More Food

• Location: bread store, somewhere between Kittery and York Beach, Maine
• Date: Friday, May 23, 2008
• Description: Blue crane with the word “peace” stamped on one wing, and “love” on the other

How serendipitous that I left this crane and decided to blog about it on the day I made beer bread.  It feels serendipitous to me, even if it doesn’t seem that way to you.  I made beer bread and ate it with vegetable lasagna tonight, and it was good.

While we’re on the topic of food, let’s talk about all the things I can’t or won’t eat and why.  It’s pretty interesting, to me at least.  You know about these stupid migraines, right?  I have no idea why I get them, but I decided it would be awesome to change my diet a lot in order to see if that affects their intensity.  This means no chocolate.  I stopped eating chocolate one year and four months ago, and the migraines have become less painful.  My cravings for chocolate, however, have not.

More recently, I adopted a semi-vegetarian diet to keep artificial hormones out of my body.  The meat that I do eat is of the all natural, cage free, organic persuasion.  And since that’s very expensive, we’re eating vegetarian a lot.  A LOT.  And drinking hormone-free milk.  And stuff.  I would have a food blog if I actually knew how to create my own recipes, but I don’t.  But if I did, it would be called “Sans Chocolate,” and then we would talk about all the things I’m trying not to eat, like anything with nitrates and partially-hydrogenated oils.  A lot of things have partially-hydrogenated oils.  And we’d also talk about trying to save money while on this diet.  Those are all topics that seem to get a lot of lip-service these days, you know?  I know.

I’m rambling at this point.  I don’t really care.

It’s All Coming Back to me Now

• Location: near the elevator, some building that I’ll probably never visit again
• Date: May 20, 2008
• Description: Orange crane with a ridiculous mini peace sticker on one wing

I see what Familiar Face meant when she said her blog was being stupid and wouldn’t let her post pictures. Mind won’t either. I mean I upload a photo and name it and everything, and then when I click the “insert into post” button, the dialog box turns white and nothing happens. I’ll have to try again tomorrow. [Update: I was able to post the picture!  Weird for WordPress to fritz out like that.]

I was walking a few blocks to the post office today when I saw a building in which I could leave a crane. So I did. I left the crane on the chair rail near the elevator buttons. It was a pretty crane, with an bright, crazy-looking peace sticker on it. I’d post a picture so you could see, but you know how it is. The peace sticker was decorated with what looked like a teenie-bopper hippie’s idea of camo pattern. It was ridiculous. I found it in my sticker collection. Yes, I have a sticker collection.

So, bad news. Senator Kennedy, one of my senators, has a malignant glioma. This is not good on several levels. First, he has a brain tumor. That’s always bad. Second, he’s my senator and he’s a Kennedy and he’s been in politics for 40+ years, and what will the U.S. (not to mention Massachusetts) do without a Kennedy at the national level? And third, I guess this means he won’t be minding the peace crane I sent him.

Well, this hasn’t turned out to be the most productive of days. For your trouble, here is an excellent David Hasselhoff music video of him singing “Hooked on a Feeling.” I recommend you watch it and laugh hysterically for the next 20 minutes. Good luck.

Family Road Trip

• Location: Cracker Barrel, Mount Holly, NJ
• Date: April 27, 2008
• Description: small red crane with gold olive branch on one wing

I gave my brother and his wife this crane one or two months ago, and they ended up leaving it this weekend. I’m pretty excited. My whole family went to Delaware to visit with another brother and his family for my nephew’s third birthday. I’m not kidding — it was my whole family. Most of them live in Connecticut, so it’s wasn’t that far of a drive, only 4-5 hours. From here, it’s 7-8 hours, and I couldn’t justify driving all that way when I’d just seen them a few weeks ago. So they were all in Delaware. It’s probably good that I didn’t go. We drove each other crazy on the family car rides when we were kids. I can’t imagine it would be much different.

My sister-in-law placed the crane and took the picture, so if you think it’s bad, you’ll know who to blame (it’s not, if you’re reading this, sister-in-law). And apparently, the waitress was privy to the whole scene, so my brother and sister-in-law “greased her palm to keep her mouth shut.” Excellent. I wonder if she was the one to pick up the crane. If I saw some crazy couple taking pictures of their dirty dishes, I’d want to know what they were doing too.

I find that I’m incredibly sensitive to scenes of violence on TV and in the movies, particularly war scenes and sexual abuse. I usually get nightmares. (I always thought nightmares would stop as I got older. No such luck.) As you can imagine, this has affected my taste in movies to the point where I watch light and fluffy films all the time. It makes me a joy to be around in a group setting, let me tell you. Everyone loves a chick who enjoys “Enchanted” and has never seen “The Godfather.”

[Still holding off on the new page. It's coming, I swear!]