#3 of TEN, TIMES CHANGE

/ janpriddyoregon

I began writing this on Tuesday, three days ago, and you won’t read it until Friday morning. It was a chilling, damp morning but we walked north to the headland, zig-zagging back home. We spotted the little shore birds on our way north, found sea glass walking both directions (35 pieces by the time you read), and heard five sirens and met a couple of friends and dogs we know on our way home on the inner road. A log truck drove off the road and into a muddy bank. I don’t know how that went or if anyone died. I will not even know by Friday morning.

Shorebirds waiting out the terrible weather. (Gulls ion the other side of the creek. Can you see the little birds on the near side, mostly with their heads turned away?) We missed our walk two days this week, but went out in damp and drizzle the other five days. My fingers chilled to pale and senseless on those days we went out for an hour or two as I bent over for dozens of rock and bits of sea glass. 
THE ASSIGNMENT
3. Changing verb tense. MLA demands consistent use of present tense. APA is mostly past tense, but strives to be “authentic” in its use of tense. Something that happened yesterday is past. Something you are currently doing is in the present. When you plan a vacation for next summer, you write in future tense. Maintaining control of verb tense is essential in good writing. This usually means editing to maintain a consistent verb tense. After all hard work learning how to use one consistent verb tense, here’s some news: Changing tense is fine. Just do it deliberately and with purpose. Read the following examples and note how verb tense changes and consider the reasons for the tense change. [warning: verb tense is considerably more complicated than this, but for the exercise, we’ll pretend there are only three basic tenses.]

• Without first understanding the history of the situation, readers will fail to appreciate implications for the future. 
• Once Minik lost his family, he is doomed. 
• With the help of local residents, Perry was able to survive and establish a reputation as an explorer which he exploits for the remainder of his life. 
• Review what is already known and then extrapolate what might be true in the future. 

ASSIGNMENT: Write two or more nonfiction sentences that shift tense at least once—and for a reason. Then explain.

We do this all the time; we shift tenses while writing or speaking because we need to. Times change. I did it up at the top when I began this post. It is Thursday now as I type this sentence, a day of the month when I would normally post, but I will schedule this post for tomorrow.

The crabbers come in close sometimes so I didn’t zoom much to get this shot. The ocean was less blue, more green when I was looking at it, but they rest is about right. You can see the crab pots at the stern and the variety of floats neatly lining port side.

Yesterday (yes, it’s Friday) I was reading a blog post by a woman learning to love herself post-menopause at a heavier weight. Yeah, I tried doing that. I just ate and ate, hoping to placate whatever was missing. But then I thought: Why carry around twenty or thirty extra pounds? That’s hard work!

The pandemic. The need to do something at home. A hard look in a full length mirror… and I decided enough was too much and went on a careful diet in September of 2020. I ate only regular meals with an occasional snack (almonds or 1%milk in my coffee). My biggest meal was midday, no eating after dinner. I aimed for 500 calories a day less than the estimate required to support my “ideal weight” (the weight doctors use to calculate prescription doses, not the weight fashion or anyone declares as “perfect.”). If I ate that way every day I would lose a pound a week, but I didn’t need to lose that fast. Some days I ate more (rarely, even too much), my weight dropped unevenly and I didn’t let the ups and downs worry me. Some higher calorie days were part of my plan.

By writing everything down, I was meticulous about eating enough vegetables and fruit, ensuring a truly balanced diet with cheese and the occasional treat. I baked and ate bread. I had desserts, but small servings. Salads for dinner. I walked most every day.

I fought hunger-fear, because I was never “starving” just a little hungry. It’s okay to be hungry, and going to bed a little bit hungry seemed to be the secret to losing weight. I lost 40 pounds in a year. It is amazing to feel so light, to walk more easily, to run again.

Since then, I continue working to maintain my weight. And it is work. Stress-eating and boredom-eating are terrible habits. And habits are hard to break. So I work to keep fit. My life is worth it.

15 thoughts on “#3 of TEN, TIMES CHANGE”

  1. Wow, 40 pound weight loss during the pandemic. That’s good stuff. I lost 15 and my doctor said I was only a handful of her patients who lost weight. I just lost interest in eating nor did I have any desire to cook elaborate meals or food. She said the best thing is the long fast, like you and I did, going to bed a bit hungry (I did this because there was nothing to eat that interested me) and then not eating until I was up for a few hours in the morning, again as there just wasn’t much to interest me.

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    • I tried to focus on the vegetables I needed (leafy greens, etc.) so that I was looking for things I needed to eat rather than focusing on what I shouldn’t have. But yes, the fast from at least 6pm until after our walk (sometimes 10am).

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  2. I am really enjoying this tiny writing class! Maybe it is the total lack of pressure, and the delightful exercises embedded in the delightful but not totally related blog entries, that allows me to have fun with them. Thank you so much for these, Jan!

    Sentence:

    As I threw the remnants of our first covid tests in the trash—the gross, snot-soaked swabs neatly tucked back into their wrappers, the formerly stress-inducing, now meaningless cards, where the second little lines indicating infection hadn’t appeared this time for any of us, thankfully, the step by step illustrated, Ikea like directions, with clear diagrams and not too much text, that we had pretty much memorized already—I wondered if we will be using these tests, or some updated version of them for the rest of our lives, if they will become as routine as, what, as brushing our teeth in the morning, or as sugar checks for people with diabetes.

    Explanation:

    I seem to have integrated the Monster Sentence exercise from last week into this one a bit! Each of these Covid milestones that has so dramatically changed our lives in ways big and small happen for a first jarring, jolting, shocking time and then gradually become routine. I suppose like any big changes, like the first time you hear your baby cry is a huge deal, and then after the first year, after a few weeks even, not such a big deal, a concern, something to deal with, but routine, not unexpected. Those moments of sudden change that you know, or suspect, even at the time, will become routine, seem to provide a pivot point where past tense and future tense collide, when you still have a foot in the before but you sense soon you will live in the forever thereafter.

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    • Ha! To be honest, our salad for dinner is often Costco organic salad in a bag—two meals/bag. I feel a little better about the thin bags than the clamshells. Fruit salad: apples, dates, and toasted walnuts, maybe celery—your basic Waldorf with thinned mayo dressing—or avocado and citrus with a white dressing, or banana and frozen blueberries and toasted coconut that needs no dressing at all. I make a “salad” with brown rice ramen that is cooked and rinsed to serve cool, a dressing of kimchee and peanut butter processed till smooth, and more kimchee on top—that one is a serious meal. Spinach with blue cheese dressing and some fruit like fresh raspberries or dried cranberries. Is that any help?

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  5. first I bought ice cream
    very very wrong and bad
    then I bought 2 % milk
    wrong again
    somebody stop me please!
    this is not helping at all
    but maybe in my own small way
    I was trying to say
    happy birthday to two dear friends
    Toni and Jeff
    shall we start again?

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