Dear Reader:

Hello, Monday of the Last Week Of Classes!   I am so in trouble here.   I've hit that stage where I'm just full of the relief that the semester is over.  Except wait.  The semester is actually not quite over.   I can't quit now.  I can't just lock up and go home.   I still have to grade, grade, grade.   And, listen to a hundred music juries.   OK, not that many.   But, all I want to do is play.   Well, anyway, I have made some progress on the health and wellness front.   Here are today's statistics:

Total calories consumed:  1627 - this includes the bag of lime/salt popcorn that I am going to eat in a few minutes after finishing this post.

Total calories burned: 220  (35 minutes on the treadmill)

Fitbit steps:  10, 187   I am, yet again, a "champ"!

Pounds lost:  30 lbs.   A note about this.  So, as you know, I have not weighed myself for two weeks or more.   And, I will admit that I was very nervous about this.   Because I wasn't quite as vigilant for a while there about my intake of food.    I was pretty sure that I had gained some weight back - maybe 5 lbs. or so.   Turns out that I DIDN'T.    I am immensely relieved.  

Next weight loss goal:   End of August - 20-25 more pounds.    I will have so much more time this summer to focus on healthy eating and exercising.   This should be achievable, right?

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Dinner:

So, yeah, that's a new book there.   It's written by a Harvard School of Public Health nutritionist and the author of the original Moosewood Cookbook, so I think it might have some good info. in there!   

I have no other profound thoughts today, but I did happen to be randomly thinking about how much I wanted Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination last time around and how much I'd like her to win this time around and how it would be ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE to have a woman President of the United States and why is it again that this hasn't happened when it has happened in so, so, so, so, so many countries (India, for goodness sake.  Germany.  Canada.  I'm pretty sure several African countries.  COME ON, AMERICA.)? and then I remembered an odd poem by Lisel Mueller whose poetry I first came to enjoy because of a lovely poem called "The Romantics" about Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann sitting alone together in a garden and how we shouldn't be so crass as to wonder about the nature of their relationship because it was their business OK? and this odd poem seemed to fit with my musings about Hillary Clinton.   And now that I've written the longest run-on sentence in the history of run-on sentences (I'm lying - I've seen my students be more impressive in this area), here is the poem:

The Laughter of Women

The laughter of women sets fire

to the Halls of Injustice

and the false evidence burns 

to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress

and forces the windows wide open

so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist

from the spectacles of the old;

it infects them with a happy flu

and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells

imagine that they see daylight 

when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,

and reconciles two unfriendly shores

like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,

high-flying and subversive.

Long before law and scripture

we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

 ---Lisel Mueller 

Thanks for reading!