Saef, that sounds like a ... lovely... visit I think it's just how moms are. My grandma does it to my mom and I catch my mom doing it to me. Like when my mom came over and started opening all the windows because it 'smelled' She's the one who keeps rescuing strays and has a house that reeks like cats and kitty litter.

SilverBirch, it's okay, I love it! BC is nice and crisp still, but it looks like our rain is moving in tomorrow. I'll have to do something today while it's still clear.

Paperclippy, hi! Romanian deadlifts, sounds fun! I've seen pictures of them but haven't attempted them. I've only done the regular deadlifts which make me feel so amazing and strong after.

150.0 today, I am officially within 10 lbs of goal and feel like I belong here a bit more

saef - you have my sympathies. It's difficult to share your space with someone who knows how to push your buttons. What's the expression - oh yes - "The definition of stress is restraining yourself from strangling someone who desperately deserves it." Best solution is to give her a huge hug, say, "I love you for caring so much!" and then to leave LOTS of cleaning supplies out so she can go nuts with them. And speaking of nuts ... stay out of them! Good luck!


StephanieM - keep the fiance - he "gets it"! I remember a lonnnngggg time ago that my spouse used to clean furiously whenever we had a fight. I miss those days.

midwife - inertia just seems to be the default, I guess. It feels good to be taking steps forward - and yeah, why is it so easy to forget that good feeling?

Changed - welcome!

Kitty - YES YOU CAN. Big rocks first - and what's bigger than taking care of yourself?

xty - hi! Love your posts - you sound like a veteran maintainer!

silverbirch - agree with you fully on the focus and concentration. One would think "habit" would automate it, but it doesn't. I actually picked up a handful of M&Ms the other day (spouse insists on leaving jumbo bag OPEN next to my premium dark chocolate bars), and I got them as far as my eyes before the WTF ARE YOU DOING??? kicked in. Concentrate!

paperclippy - kudos on the choices and running on the sore legs! Me too on the recovery from the weekend.

151.5 again. Sore abs and pecs from the most minor of "exercise" excursions. Figured I'd better start loosening up now for the pool next week - I haven't been in since the end of May when I went to Atlanta. *Ahem*. The siggy will change to yardage counts next week.

Yesterday I was communicating with an English analyst who's only got BlackBerry service down at my company's major yearly event in Orlando ... and my mother was in the background, shaking a mop at me, showing me the dust bunnies on it. "These all came from underneath your bed." (I have a sleigh bed, about 160 years old, which is very low to the ground, and am very cautious about bumping a vacuum into it, as I don't want to chip off any ancient dried-out mahogany veneer -- but apparently a mop handle can fit underneath it.) I got up & ate two Macoun apples & a handful of almonds after that. I need to stop this. It's so obvious.

I've been working out hard, but this extra snacking, as healthy as my choices appear to be, will not lead to a good scale reading tomorrow morning. Mirror check this morning reveals my stomach lines have nearly disappeared. When that very slight bit of definition that I've worked so hard to get melts away, I know it's from puffiness & that's due to eating.

Today I'm getting away from my desk & my mother for a short time in the afternoon.

The rant that's been building up in me: Look, I can't do everything. Something has to give. I cook all my meals from scratch, except salad bar stuff for lunch on office days. I spend two hours or more in the gym daily. I work typically from 8 AM to 7 PM. When I commute, it's an hour drive in, an hour drive out, for two hours out of that day. And if I decided that, for the past month, using a dustmop underneath my bed was a lower priority than some of those things, well then, all right, I'm a dirty unkempt female. Okay. I'll own that. But those are my choices, freely made. And I don't think I am the only woman in the world who's juggling the same priorities.

saef - If you're feeling particularly snarky (I had to use this once, actually), another response is something to the effect that you've chosen to live your life in such a way that people will have more to say at your funeral than "She kept such a clean house!". It's "nice" that there are people in the world without education, motivation, and dreams that can keep the bar low for the rest of us. That being said ... it would be "nice" to be the sort of person that could be satisfied with the role of homebody - I'm always a bit in awe of the stay-at-home moms who manage their thriving families and sparkling homes with the efficiency of a CEO. Cool for them!

Saef, I don't think we've cleaned under our bed since we moved into the house over 3 years ago, even when we go on a cleaning spree because company is coming. There is nothing wrong with dust under the bed -- it's not like you're crawling around down there so who cares? Your mom probably just wants to give herself something to do and has to show you her accomplishments. Maybe next time she comes to visit you could hire a cleaning crew to do a deep cleaning before she arrives.

Becky, get back in that pool!

Legs are still sore today, probably more than they were yesterday. I'm thinking maybe today I will just do some stretching and core work.

I once did just that Jessica! But you cannot always do that as handy as it may be....
My mom does the finger sweep, then checks with disgust thing. This past summer she did it in our country place and (HA!!!!) while the sill does look dirty, I had just wet ragged it and it was not actually loose dusty, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyayyyyyyaaaayaaaaaa. She said nothing post finger check.

I marvel at these interactions.

I have nothing to do with my parents (long story) but I think about my in-laws. They should know by now not to expect too much in the housekeeping department. Of course, I recall their house when they were in the midst of raising multiple active children and juggling careers, so I think they understand. I think that if a relative commented on the stuff underneath my bed, depending on my moods I would either laugh at them or show them the door. But that might explain why my family of origin doesn't come around much and the my true family (my in-laws) who do, don't say much about it.

JessicaClippy wrote: This, plus naming your dog Carter, plus training as hard as you do, are all reasons why I think you're pretty wonderful.

Kitty wrote You & I could also have a drink together & share some stories.

Look, I refuse to be made to feel as though I am completely inept & inadequate.

It used to be like check, check: 1) Is fat, therefore does not take care of appearance, plus 2) Does not clean enough, therefore is slovenly & lazy = Utter failure as a womanly woman. Despite: 1) Educational attainments; 2) Good job, even better than her father's; 3) Achievements in writing. The latter grouping of three attainments appeared to be utterly canceled out by unsatisfactory achievements in the first two categories. Okay. So I took care of the No. 1 glaring flaw, and in a big way, too. But I can't seem to shake No. 2. Or rather, I decided that in my list of priorities, this one ought be lower than others.

Midwife said:I understand why you would. The mother/daughter rivalry thing can be an amazing spectacle.

I'm telling you, I know this connects with my weight directly. I believe that my attitude toward my weight was once the same as I have toward housekeeping. (More or less. I'm more careful about my housekeeping now than I was about my food choices.) Like: Damn it, I can't do everything, and I think I'm just not even going to try with the beauty thing.

So now I'm working on the beauty thing & tend to let the clean house thing drop.

ok girls, heading off to a run. wish me luck, it may very well suck

ICUWishing said:Becky, I know there's a real art to keeping a house looking immaculate, or to put it better, to making a home, but that was never among my aspirations. But probably women who excel in that have mothers who tell them they ought to go out & contribute to the family income or really "use" their education or something. It's hard to be a woman. Your choices will always damn you with one socio-political faction or the other.

Stephanie wrote: Thus the cycle of women going after women for their shortcomings continues unto the next generation. Isn't it fun?

House-cleaning, fat, feminism, mothers/daughters -- it's all a great noisy feuding mess in my head. I admire any woman who's made her peace with all these elements.

saef, I've never aspired to be Superwoman either. I knew someone who pulled it off for a couple of years ... before she had a full-blown meltdown and had to be hospitalized for several months and put under a suicide watch. Agreed, there is no way to satisfy all elements and live a well-balanced life. Dave Chappelle summed it up quite nicely with the "F*** It" song!

Regarding dust bunnies ... funny story. We recently acquired a desperately-adorable dwarf fuzzy lop bunny. Bunny had spent the majority of his life in his cage, so when given the opportunity to explore and honor his bunniness, he does so with a vengeance. He got under my bed. He went under there as a mostly-white fuzzo with some caramel and chocolate spots - he came out in kind of a soft-gray velvet blanket. But hey, it's clean under the bed now!

Hey, Becky, can I borrow your bunny?

The majority of people I work with hire someone to cook and/or clean for them and their families. I just can't justify the money. But then, the house is usually a disaster, just on various points of the disaster scale. I do ask the kids to do a few things around the house, but they are busy too. My oldest daughter is a bit of a neat freak (one of the few ways we are different) and I hadn't realized until she left for college how much she did that I never asked her to do.

You guys know the drill: work, shop, help with homework (and I'll tell you what, there is a lot of homework, things to sign, websites to check for school, etc), kids's sports/activities (right now there are just 3), exercise, time/energy for sex, then there's laundry, errands, budgets, meetings, volunteerism, etc. I can't remember the last time I read a book for fun. And I love to read...

My motto is "I can do ANYthing, but I can't do EVERYthing", so some stuff slides. A lot. And then I can get to it by allowing something else to slide. It's totally crazily busy, but what piece do I give up? How can I simplify? Each piece is so precious and vital to my life. On a good day, I get most of it done.

(I wrote this some hours ago but some of the things midwife listed intervened.)

I'd like you to try to reframe this scenario, saef.

Your mother is working at her usual job: cleaning. You are working at your usual job. She comes across something pretty unusual (big dust bunnies) and wants to share. Perhaps you do the same in your job.

Now reach up to that big red handle marked Emotional Freak Out OFF and pull it down. Well done.

So you're two people working in the same smallish space. That is always tricky.

I think that's as far as I can go. I do find reframing quite helpful in my life. I'm much less good at pulling the emergency handle regularly. (Flick it back on now, if it helps.)

I do like long baths rather than eating. I often go to sleep there.

I almost never clean apart from selected areas (basin in bathroom, for example). SO is in charge of it (early training by parents). Like many of you, I have other priorities (you all know that nowadays one is firewood).

nice to see everyone posting again

paperclippy - you are hardcore! have I said that before? have mental picture of you with icicles dangling off you doing roman deadlifts.

saef - if the worst of your reaction to your mother's antics is apple eating, you get a gold star in my book! at least you can see it, even if you cant quite stop it. and its not terrible foods either.

I dont do well with people judging or trying to manipulate me emotionally, in fact I flat out wont stand for it. I have and will put everyone from perfect strangers to my mother to coworkers in their place as needed! I was put down and manipulated for too long to sit quiet any longer. However, not being willing to put up with that has ended many relationships, including the one I had with my mother. (not that Id suggest that for others! my case was extreme)

In other news, Im struggling a bit and feeling down about the fact Im struggling. My mind has not at all caught up with my last drop from 145 to 127, and emotionally it seems very hard to understand my body's physical reality....plus the loss seems to have re-triggered emotional issues tied to body image (mom stuff, ex stuff, childhood stuff, you name it! oi!). I thought Id put many of these demons to bed long ago, but you never know when they pop back up I suppose...at least I feel like I have a bit of a roadmap.

Coping by doing healthy stuff that involved physical contact, it seems to ground and center me. Took that ballet class, seeing a gyrotonics/pilates private instructor (loving!), got a massage, buying some clothes that actually fit, etc.

Have just been reading the excellent Weight loss myths pet peeves thread, started by Matt H over at the 100 Club.

In it, Beverleyjoy writes "one that gets me is the folks that say if the plan they used worked for them, it MUST be able to work for you."

I've hastened back here to say that although I really like reframing, I accept it doesn't work for everyone. Phew.

I urge you all to read the thread. It's full of passion and relief. Cathartic, they say. V funny in parts.