January 10, 2013 - Fast Day

Post 707, Day 10 of 2013.
It has been 741 days since I started this blog.

Daily Comment

I have often talked about my inclination towards wasting my free time doing nothing.

I don't think I have ever taken myself to task for being a slob, which I am.

This may be the single thing I like least about myself - my disinclination to do housework, or even to practice simple preventative measures to slow the accumulation of clutter.

There are a few exceptions: I don't let dirty dishes accumulate (any more - before I lived in an apartment with a dishwasher, they did - thankfully, that hasn't been the case in more than 30 years, and now, I don't even mind hand-washing). I also do my laundry regularly, without the necessity of wearing dirty clothes, ever since I gave up ironing and wearing clothes that required dry-cleaning.

OK, there are only two exceptions. I can't say that any congratulations are in order for these basic self-care accomplishments.

The biggest obstacle to me living in a neat and clean environment - something I actually enjoy when it (so rarely) happens - is a somewhat malicious lifelong behavioral problem that seems to have permanently established itself in my sub- and un-conscious programming. 

I'm aware of it, and regularly, daily, concoct schemes to counteract it (like breaking it into small pieces, and attacking it a little every day) that I just as regularly don't implement.

Why? Well, that's a question I can't answer, completely. There doesn't seem to be any reward for it, and I think I've already established that I'm not purely lazy - quite the opposite, when I have some shred of motivation to work on something. No reward I can discern for this behavior, it's not like I am saving a lot of time or even much effort, but I can see some penalties arising, chiefly that I'm living in a rather unpleasant environment that I am ashamed and embarassed by, enough to not allow visitors.

And now that I have put that down in writing, I realize that I am duplicating the environment I grew up in.

Wow, a simple insight, but I hadn't made the connection before. I think it has even been pointed out to me, and I think on some level I obviously knew this. I have a photo taken by my mother in the Fall of 1965, when I was fifteen. It is also the only photo I know of taken in my Clearview apartment. Here it is:

That's me, fist-under-chin, in the foreground, and my sister, Joan, lying on the couch, rear-right. Everybody else is a friend, and all my friends and I are stoned. Me, for the first time.

I'm not certain, but it may be the first time ever that I had friends over in this apartment.  That's how stoned I am here. If you look around the people in the pic, though, you see it: The apartment is a mess.

It is a mess because it was left up to the kids to keep it clean, and we really didn't have a good model to work from for house-cleaning. I think this was part of my mother's psychosis/bipolar syndrome, the part that resulted in me growing up with her screaming (yes, screaming), "What did I have kids for, anway?"

So, maybe the cause of my unsatisfactory behavior is not so mysterious after all. 

Maybe now I can go about fixing it.

We'll see.

  

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First-half year 2013 daily weight from December 31, 2012

 Food and Diet Section

Today's Weight:       205.0 lbs 

Yesterday's Weight:   204.0 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:    + 1.0 lbs

Diet Comment

Did a 23-hour fast today, broken with a trip to Ruby Tuesday before seeing Django Unchained (which I thought was very, very good).

Food Log

Breakfast
Skipped.

Lunch

Skipped.

Dinner

At Ruby Tuesday's I had grilled salmon with sauteed spaghetti squash and two plates of salad from the salad bar, including baby spinach, Spring Mix, peas, broccoli, mushrooms, lima beans, bacon pieces, tomatoes, green peppers and blue cheese and ranch salad dressings.

Snack

Baby carrots and home-made mayonnaise.

Liquid Intake   

   Coffee:  18 oz,  Water:  126+ oz.

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