Water, Losing Weight and Reeling Them In

Clearly, I'm not meant to post every day. But I'm posting more and slowly crawling up out of my blogging grave, so that's good.

On Wednesday, I begin a new weight-loss challenge. I lost 10 lbs. on my last challenge, sort of a virtual "Biggest Loser" contest. This is similar, but it's a Survivor-styled challenge. There are over 20 tribes and each tribe has to vote someone to "Exile Island" each week, and the tribe with the lowest percentage weight loss also gets sent to Exile Island. With over 20 tribes, this could take a while. I'd like to lose about 20 lbs, which isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but the benefit of having less than 50 to lose is that only 1 lb is still a sizable percentage.

Went to a b-day party today where the theme was "fishing," and one of the events was that a kid would wear a vest hooked to a fishing line. Someone else would stand on the side of the pool with a fishing pole and "reel" them in while they tried to swim to the opposite side. A. took both fish and fisher positions, and all the kids had fun. I love games like that - not a lot of money, not a lot of fancy equipment or jumpy houses.

Also went to my first UU water communion. We had to leave early because it's a long service (and we had to get A. to the soccer field at 11:45 or they'd take team photos without him). Anyway, in the service, everyone brings (literally or symbolically) some water from their summer. The four directions are named in verse and story, and you line up after whichever direction your water fits, either literally or symbolically, and add your water to the communal bowl while explaining where the water came from and what it represented to you. We were going to go with the "West" crowd since the water was from our home and we live on the west coast, but we ended up going with the "South" crowd because we needed to leave.

Having never been to one of these before, I didn't know that we really each talked into a microphone about our water. It was easy, though, because our water from our home, to me, symbolized my memories of the boys spending hours playing with the hose in the yard, and my continued quest for simplicity. G. pulled out a very nice exposition on water as representing the bonds of family formed during our summer. I really wish he'd consider doing a sermon one summer (when the minister usually takes time off and the congregation fill in with lay sermons). He's a very good speaker. I'm not horrible, but I get nervous and my voice shakes and my mind goes blank and I'd just rather avoid that.

Whew - how many unrelated topics can you fit into one blog post? At least three!