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My son is quickly nearing the age where he’s going to start asking big questions, like “where are we from?”, “why are we here?”, “what’s God”, etc. I’m faced with a problem which I’m unsure as to how to solve: what do I tell him?

I’ve long thought that indoctrinating small children with religion is not without its problems, as religion seems to me something that one should decide on for themselves. For something that can alter one’s life so much, it seems wrong to me to teach kids this way or that way from an early age. If we can get them to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, we can get them to believe in anything; to use the innocence, and frankly, gullibility of children to put them on whatever path the parent (or whoever) has chosen seems rather unfair to me.

But of course, I can certainly understand why this happens, particularly now that I’m in the position of the parent. You have to tell your kid(s) something, because rest assured, if you don’t, someone else will. But the big question is, what do we tell him? I consider myself Buddhist, but due to my feelings on the issue, I don’t really want to just say “this is it, kid; this is the way to be.” Buddhism is the choice I’ve made for myself, but I’m really not sure it’s my place to make that choice for him, nutty as that may sound coming from a parent. I’d introduce him to a variety of religions and let him decide, but at his age, I think all that would accomplish would be to confuse him – not to mention, I’d say most people I know would disown me for doing such a thing. :) While I may not agree with all of them, I can’t completely ignore social norms. I’m not sure how well it would go over in first grade if he went in and said that he’d decided to be Muslim or Hindu; we do, after all, live along the Bible Belt.

Then again, perhaps I’m agonizing over this for nothing. Perhaps, regardless of what we tell him, he’ll find his own way in his own time. I was raised in a Christian family, and I’m certainly not a Christian now. On the other hand, I’ve known people who were raised following one religious path or another, and it caused them endless trouble as an adult as they struggled to figure out their own beliefs and thoughts.

So, here I am. I’m in the position of needing to give guidance on this issue, but unsure as to what guidance I should give. Any ideas on this one?

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I’ve not mentioned shovelglove or the No S diet lately, so it’s probably pretty clear that I’ve quit doing both. . . just kidding. :) I’m still doing both, and have stuck to them quite well. I’ve lost around 25 pounds so far, and gone down 2 to 3 sizes in pants (depending on which brand I try on). Believe it or not, I’ve actually had to resort to using a belt with some of my pants, something which my eternally fat self has never had to do before. A bit weird, really, but something I’m certainly okay with.

I am, however, off of shovelglove for a few days. I’ve done something stupid, and gone and hurt myself. You would think that doing an exercise program that involves swinging a sledgehammer around, I would have injured myself with the hammer; but that’s not the case. I actually injured myself by doing the one exercise in my program that doesn’t really use the hammer at all: squats. I think I did them a bit… over zealously.

I don’t remember any sharp pains or anything while exercising last week, but by the weekend, I was in quite a bit of pain. I stubbornly put off going to the urgent care center until Thursday, thinking that it would just get better on its own (it wasn’t). The urgent care center did an x-ray to make sure I hadn’t broken anything, gave me crutches, and some wonderful pain medicine – the documentation on it says it’s akin to morphine.

The crutches seem to be helping tremendously, as I can already note less pain. I’ve also been icing it regularly, as ordered. I’ve got a follow-up appointment with my doctor on Monday, to see if she thinks I need to get an MRI to check for any soft tissue damage, or if I should just continue babying the knee. Let us all hope and pray and do knee dances (just do the rain dance moves and think about my knee) for the latter course of action. You all do the dancing, please; I’m not in any shape to jump around, even with crutches.

As an aside – crutches! I’m not sure if they’re supposed to help me or torture me. I’ve never had to use crutches before, and I must say – they’re a lot harder to use than I ever would have imagined. I’ve had some very close calls, thinking that not only would I need to get my knee checked out again, but also my head. In mid-swing, your balance has a tendency to get a little screwy.

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Not Dead

I just wanted to post a quick note and let any remaining readers I have (do I have any?) know that I’m not dead. I’ve been fairly busy with school, and this week is midterm week, so I’ve been doubly busy. Regular posts should be forthcoming fairly soon, because I’ve got some ideas floating around in my head; I also have one rather funny picture I grabbed with my cellphone that I want to post. It’s something that most of you will appreciate, I think. Satanists? Maybe not so much.

So, if you’re still around, I thank you for your patience, and ask you to bear with me. Cheers!

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Yesterday, I started two new daily routines – well, almost daily routines: shovelgloving, and no S dieting. Let me elaborate:

Shovelglove

I discovered shovelgloving a few weeks ago, but only glanced at the site; it seemed rather weird, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Yesterday, however, I rediscovered it via my daily consumption of feeds, and decided to read the whole page (something I don’t do much these days on the internet, I admit). If you’d rather not do that, in a nutshell: shovelgloving is wrapping an old sweater around the head of a sledgehammer, and then doing basic movements with your new “shovelglove” – shoveling, chopping wood, churning butter, smiting the orc (I’m serious). See, I said it was weird, and I meant it. But its weirdness gives it an awful lot of charm. How could anyone not pay some attention to an exercise program that has an exercise called “smiting the orc”?

Despite its weirdness, Reinhard, the quirky librarian in charge of the site, convinced me to give it a go. I like that shovelgloving makes exercise such a simple thing, rather than charting it all out – this exercise for that muscle, that exercise for this muscle. Sure, there’s a table of movements, but they’re all pretty logical, with the names (mostly) describing the action very well. I understand “tuck bales” and “drive fence posts” far better than I understand “lat extension to the rear” and “triceps kickback”… what do those things mean?

In regards to how often and how much you’re supposed to shovelglove, it’s dead simple: Monday through Friday, 14 minutes a day – no more, no less. You rest on the weekend. Reinhard has an interesting psychological explanation as to why he chose 14 minutes – it’s not a typical time block, so it doesn’t really register with a lot of people. 14 minutes? Sure, I can spare that, that’s nothing. But half an hour? That’s half an hour. I could watch a TV show during that!

I put in my first 14 minutes of shovelgloving yesterday evening, and it was a surprisingly hard workout. But it was also a hell of a lot of fun – in a quite weird way. I just hope the neighbors didn’t see me.

No S Diet

The No S diet is perhaps even simpler than shovelgloving. Here’s the diet:

  • No Snacks
  • No Sweets
  • No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No calorie counting, no “you can’t eat that!”; just 3 meals a day, without constantly visiting the kitchen for snacks all day. And while I suppose things could change in the future, I’d say that at least during my lifetime, there will always be 2 days in the week which begin with “S”, so when I want some cookies or cake or whatever, I’ll know right when I can have them.

When I read about this diet, which I discovered via the shovelglove.com site, I thought: this is it. This is the best diet idea I’ve ever seen (and I’ve looked at my fair share of them, lemme’ tell ya’.) Why? Because it’s doable. I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s simple, and it’s not going to feel like I’m trying to become an ascetic. I’ve tried counting calories before, and I discovered that it – ahem, sucks. Sure, I did it for a few weeks. And then I started to hate that little red book. Hate it. It made every meal a math assignment, and I think I’ve mentioned it in the past: I hate math! I’ve also tried diets that simply cut off certain foods, and that sucks even more than calorie counting. I like cookies, thank you very much.

I also think it’s going to be a great fit for me, because I know I’m awful about snacking; it’s probably the #1 reason why I’m fat (with a close #2 being that during most of my life, when it comes to physical exercise, I’ve been a lazy bastard – hey, I’m going for honesty here). Bored? Hit the kitchen. In the kitchen for a glass of water? Hey, grab a snack – it’s just one or two bites of food, right? Right, but those bites add up, chum. Read the nosdiet.com page for more about this, because Reinhard’s got some really good info about snacking and why we all should probably quit doing it so damn much. And for the record, no, I’m not being paid to write this. I’ve not even spoken to the guy. :)

I realize I’ve only done shovelgloving and No S dieting one day, but I must say – that one day felt fine. It didn’t feel like a chore that I had to make myself do, even the exercise – which I can’t say about many other exercises I’ve done. (I still love punching bag workouts, though!) I’m going to continue to give both a go, and if in a few weeks I’m still feeling fine with both, they may just become life habits.

(Sidenote: I read that apparently, many people respond to the No S diet and shovelgloving as I have – very enthusiastically. And then they discover that it’s not ultra easy all of the time, and they start to despair a bit. So I’m keeping that in mind – the diet in particular is a big change for me, and I’m going to have to be diligent. Here’s my daily calendar for shovegloving and nosdiet; if you see a red square, feel free to say “get back on track!” via the comments here.)

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Gnorb posted this entry today, which is actually 3 smaller posts rolled into one. He began the entry with:

Don’t you just hate it when you have a bunch of things you think are important to you going on, but then when you start to tell someone about them you realize they probably don’t give a rip?

I realized I’ve had a few things like that rolling around in my head – things that I’ve felt are fairly important to me, but I wasn’t quite sure if I could make a post out of any one of them. So, in the best fashion, I’m stealing Gnorb’s idea. Thanks, Gnorb. ;) (Hope you enjoy your typewriters, and I hope you get your health issues sorted out soon!)

Point One. The first thing on the agenda: exercise. I’ve stuck with it. Days have been missed here and there, certainly, but the overall trend has been regular exercise. About two weeks ago, I started using my punching bag again. If you recall from the last post about it, I stopped using it because I was concerned that the house was going to fall in on me; that wouldn’t be good. However, upon inspecting where it’s mounted a bit more, I came to the conclusion that it should be okay. I’m going to keep an eye on the wall above the woodwork for any developing cracks, and if I see any, I’ll stop using the bag. Until then, I’m going to continue on. One good sign is that I’ve not seen any more little pieces of plaster on the floor after using it.

A week ago, I started the 100 Pushups in 6 Weeks program. I’ve been doing push ups as part of me routine, but I saw someone mention the site somewhere – a feed item, Twitter? – and thought it sounded pretty cool. I’ve done 4 sessions thus far, and am already seeing some improvement in my arms. Looking at the later weeks, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up with it – I’ve done well so far – but we’ll see. If I can’t, I’ll just start the program over and do it until I can keep up. :)

Finally, yesterday, I signed up at Mapmywalk.com, to.. well, duh, map my walks out. It’s a pretty neat service. You map out your walks on a Google Map, and the site calculates the distance you’ll be walking. Speaking of walking…

Point Two. I’ll now be taking two dogs for regular walks instead of one, as I’ve officially accepted that the dog that showed up is now ours. I’ve checked everywhere I know to check, and found nothing at all about her. No one has said “Hey, my dog!” when I’ve walked her with Gandalf, nor has anyone knocked on my door saying, “Excuse me, you’ve got my dog in your backyard.” So, she’s now ours. We named her Zoë. The name has some spunk to it, which she has plenty of. Perhaps a little too much – I’ve been paying lots of attention to both her and Gandalf, but she still keeps knocking their water bowl over…

And yes, particularly because Cas did some light badgering via email, pictures of the dog shall be forthcoming. Soon. I promise.

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