"I'm back & I'm ringing the bell

…rocking on the mic while the fly girls yell.”

– Vanilla Ice

tomorrow….GOOGLE HANGOUT 

Everyone…just letting you know:  Thursday, Sep. 26th my publisher is hosting a google hangout where you can tune in and ask questions- or just be a wallflower and watch me struggle through answering questions from A Story Unfinished.  I wanted to throw it out there because we have had great fun with launch events locally, so this is a way that anyone can delve a little further into the story.

Would love for you to join us….I’ve never done one either, so we’ll learn together; also, I think these sound quite a bit  more fun if someone actually shows up.  Just imagine me with big crocodile tears staring at my computer and talking to no one.  It could happen, but for you taking pity (guilt is such a powerful tool).

Thursday, Sep. 25th.
3pm central.
info.

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I’ve been on a bit of an unintended blog-cation.  Just returned from Austin, TX and so happy to be back in my bed at my house alongside my wife and my rascals.  Sometimes writing down thoughts just doesn’t get top billing in a world with 3 & 4 & 6 yr olds and a job and a wife and feelings of having nothing to say cause your just ready to go to bed … and it’s only 3pm.

All three kids started their version of school in the last 3 weeks.  Hazel & Anders go to a preschool two days a week and Lena started 1/2 day school at Stanford.  It’s not really, Stanford…it just costs the same.  It’s what she needs and God has made a way for her to go and you can read more about our being undone with both joy & sadness at the thought of Lena starting school (as told through the eyes of my beloved wife in a few posts here).

I turned 36 on Sep. 17th.  Thus, I am closer to 50 than 20.  Think about it.  Take it in.  Now, throw up with me.  No, really I think I’m okay with aging.  For so long I got taken by others for being a decade younger than I actually was and it really wasn’t all that it is cracked up to be by those who look their age or even older.  The only thing I can’t handle is when kids say sir.  Stop it, I tell them….knowing full well that I am going against precisely what their parents have told them to do.  STOP IT….call me Matt or idiot or butthead, but not sir.  I still get carded on an annual basis so if and when that ends, we may have a problem.

In light of this aging milestone and to fend off depression with something I could control, I decided 3.5 weeks prior to my birthday that I would undergo a self-labeled MATT MOONEY FITNESS CHALLENGE.

side note::  I have never before attempted to lose weight.  I have plenty of issues and realize that our culture perpetuates a ton of image problems and that it is a real issue for many folks and even folks I love… but this is not an issue I have.  Instead, my issue- far more grandiose on the delusional scale- is that I that I think I am the definition of sexy.  So why would this beast be losing weight…okay, I’m going a bit overboard on my self esteem, but not all that far…I like me and struggle to find reasons why you wouldn’t either.

Now, you also need to know that any form of discipline over the last year & 8 months (read every since we adopted Lena) has been absent.  I mean absent in the most literal way…not there, left the building.  If something was there, I ate it.  If I wanted to do it, I did it.  Not sleeping and feeling overwhelmed will put you in a corner whereby anything that seems a wee bit nice, now instead looks irresistible…because you’re tired and beat down and give me that chicken leg.

So I set out the following 5 rules and stuck to them hard core cause I know me and if I deviate at all, then I deviate all:

1. No Fried::  I eat out at meetings, etc. quite a bit and the best option on the menu is always fried.  I live in the south…we fry vegetables and call it healthy.  
2. No Sugar::  This is the one that made Ginny’s look as though I was discussing leaving her.  Now, I am not hardcore on this one.  I eat fruit.  I eat bread.  I don’t check labels.  I just don’t eat sweets or anything that has obvious sugar in it.
3. Fruit only for Breakfast::  This one was actually the hardest.  I have eaten cereal for breakfast for oh about my life.  I love cereal.  I eat it when I am not hungry.  I eat it when I am.  I eat if for dinner.  You get it.
4. Exercise daily::  20-30 minutes of anything at all.  could be walking, should be running.  maybe a basketball game now and again.  Nothing fancy, no spandex….just movement.
5. Skip some Meals::  I am sure this sounds unhealthy, but it came from my time in Africa.  Not everyone is eating 3 square meals a day…we made that up.  With that said, in actuality I skipped precisely 0 meals in the 3.5 weeks.  Upon eating fruit for breakfast, I was unwilling to forego any single morsel of the two meals I did get.

Lastly, if I hit my target weight (175 for the nosy ones) which was 10 lbs lower than I started, then I could buy myself a gift and if I did not reach the desired tonnage then I would get no gift (dangle the carrot, folks).  The sought gift was either a fly fishing rod or a new pair of boots (not cowboy) with wooden soles crafted from some hide of something.

Drumroll………

I did it.  I stuck to it.  I exhibited discipline and learned a bit about freedom in the process.  Target weight achieved & my looks are deadlier than ever.  I’ve decided to continue on with the rules, they seem to work for me and are not too wild and crazy (I’m not gonna do bench press reps for more than a day); I’m modifying without total abandonment.

And so goes the story of why I haven’t been blogging.  I’ve been threatening to eat tables- or even people on the worst of days- without energy to push on the keyboard.  Thanks for coming back…now I’m off to bench press.