Little Dutch Girl

I seem always to be writing in the few moments before a taxi comes to whisk me off to an airport. (Actually, I can't really say I "always" seem to be writing, when here lately, it's more like I "never" seem to be writing!)

Anyway...I'm off to Utah today for my annual May workshop in Provo. I will enjoy my 3 days there, because I invariably do! It's sooooooo pretty in Provo...and by now, that group feels like family, since I've been doing workshops in Provo forever and ever.

But before I go...I found a photo my sister gave me recently, taken in 1966 on the front porch of the Lutheran parsonage - our home. I'm 10. I don't remember this dress (or those godawful shoes!) but good grief....it looks like someone thought it would be a good idea to design a dress that could easily carry a toaster in its pockets!

So. You tell me? Does it look like I needed cow urine injection intervention?

Personally, I think all I need is a little shoe polish, sun-glasses and a little loosening up. I am looking like such a very good little pastor's daughter here, aren't I??? :-)

I'll write again soon! I promise!!

(Nora and I made up, btw.....thanks for asking!)

cow urine & fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt

Months ago, I mentioned a "cow urine" diet...

By the age of 14, I'd already been thoroughly through the diet wringer. Why I was put on so many diets so young is pretty much of a mystery to me, since I wasn't fat. Round, yes...but never so round that you'd even call me chubby. My parents are fine people, but they were pretty much nuts during much of our coming up years, and I guess, like, one of their hobbies was to try to make me thin or something.

By 1970, they'd tried the following in their fearless quest for a Twiggy daughter:

• 1961 - Changing the big meal of the day to noon, during which time I was at kindergarten.
• 1965 - Paying me a dollar for every pound I lost. I was 8 at the time. A dollar bought 20 candy bars in 1962, or two movie tickets. A dollar was sweet incentive...
• 1969 - Stillman's Diet. What every junior high kid wants to eat in front of her friends at school every day - broiled hamburger and a boiled egg. Oh yeah. THAT was fun...

Apparently none of these diets did much good. I do remember quickly losing weight on the Stillman's Diet...then gaining it all back in something like 3 and a half minutes.

So there was a fourth (but hardly the last) attempt. This one, the cow urine diet, involved Mom driving me to the local medical clinic every day for a shot of treated cow urine. It was supposed to help me shed pounds quickly. Hmmm...... Oh....and....well...just in case the pee shot didn't work, I was also simultaneously put on a rather restrictive diet. How restrictive? This restrictive: I was supposed to eat two cartons of yogurt a day. And that's it. Two cartons of yogurt! 500 calories.

Mind you, I was walking a mile to school every day and a mile back. I was 14 and a cheerleader and we practiced cheer for a couple hours every night after school, and when I wasn't walking or cheering I was playing badminton or kick ball in the church parking lot, or on my bike roaming the neighborhoods. Two cartons of yogurt a day. Ahhh....the enlightened 70's....

After 2 or 3 days of near starvation, I invented various and vital reasons to go down to the basement many, many times a day. Our basement was our pantry, and it was loaded with 10 lb. coffee cans loaded with Mom's reeeeally yummy homemade cookies. Peanut butter cookies, gingersnap cookies, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, snickerdoodles and shortbread and probably more that I've forgotten. No lie. There were never fewer than 6 giant coffee cans full of cookies downstairs. If the measure of a great mom is whether or not she stays home and bakes cookies, then my mom gets a perfect 10!

So, the cow urine diet was a bust. Two cartons of yogurt a day plus the crusts off Kim Harmon's tuna fish sandwiches at school lunch every day plus a couple dozen cookies every day pretty much negated whatever magical powers lurked inside that syringe. After a couple of weeks with no results, I remember the doctor's furrowed, accusatory brow as he actually asked me if I was cheating on the diet. If?? He had to ask if??????? I steadfastly denied it of course, probably while turning a furious red, as I was wont to do back then.

So there you go. That's my cow urine story. Not just everyone has a cow urine story. I'm rather fond of mine...