Mary Haley

One of these days, I will finish posting all the tales from India. Since it’s been almost a year, those stories are long overdue. Instead of glorious stories of vomit both real and fake, I’m checking in with an update.

Beau and I decided to spend Thanksgiving with family. The nearest family we could find was 10 hours away, but that didn’t deter us. We took a quick overnight rest break in Anchorage, and arrived in Homer around 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. His father and stepmother built a house there and finally moved into it in the fall. One of his sisters was there with her family when we arrived, and we had the traditional holiday meal.

On a side note: I’m not sure if I just try too hard to be an iconoclast, but the trappings and finery of holiday traditions bore me. Given the chance, I try to ignore them. I tried to avoid Christmas by going to New Zealand one year, though we ended up at a strange hostel party regardless. That same year, I also hosted Bollywood Thanksgiving, as a way to honor the other Indians. We made a Ganesh in our Lite Brite coffeetable. And last year, India proved an excellent way to dodge Christmas, as no one even blinked an eye on December 25.

While in Homer, I did my best to support the local economy by visiting a winery, brewery and meadery. It was a trifecta of alcoholism. Beau and I also met up with an old friend from Fairbanks for a drink, and watched far too much television. There’s a reason why I don’t want cable. On the drive back to Anchorage, I picked out the spot for our dream retirement house and we discussed architectural features and long-range timelines for making retirement happen.

On Sunday, I had a hot, sweaty date with a yoga studio. I spent 90 minutes in a dimly lit room, contorting my body and sweating more that I thought possible. There’s a reason why that studio has showers for its students. The class was the culmination of a personal 30-day yoga challenge I had set for myself. For a solid month, I did some form of yoga every day. I had my regular hot yoga class through UAF. I attended the Saturday community yoga group. I dropped in on yogalates, Kundalini and restorative classes at a local studio. I practiced at home. I stayed consistent.

One doesn’t just enter into 30 days of yoga lightly, and I had a goal in mind. I was testing out the waters, and I decided to take the plunge. This spring, I will be getting my yoga teacher certification. It’s not going to be easy: The nearest training is in Anchorage, so I will be driving down there for 9 weekends spread out over 4 months. So on top of the cost of certification, there will be gas and hotel expenses. Still, I’m confident this is a good move for me.

I got an extra hour over the weekend. It's not that I'm a time-traveler or that the universe likes me best. Everyone who observes daylight savings also got an extra hour, but I'm pretty sure most people I know used it to sleep. Or play Minecraft. Not naming any names. (Beau)

After popping out of bed all bright and chipper at 8 a.m. (technically, 7 a.m.) on Sunday, I had to figure out what to do with myself. When you're a morning person living with a night person, you spend a lot of time figuring out what to do with yourself. I'm certain that our relationship will improve once we buy a bigger house so that I can move around in it without making too much noise in the mornings. But on Sunday morning, I decided to mosey down to the fabric store and buy myself some supplies. Once I was suitably equipped, I returned home and set myself to learning to knit.

I sew. There's no secret there. I made my own wedding dress (technically, I made two of them). I sew my own clothes frequently. But knitting is not a skill I ever acquired as a youngster. And while it's true that we'll be able to steal lots of sweaters after the apocalypse, eventually the never-ending supply of haute couture will, in fact, end. And then what will we wear? So I was going to learn how to knit.

It couldn't be too hard. I mean, I had bought a book. And yarn. And needles. Easy-peasy. Sort of. But line drawings in books don't accurately convey the complexities of the knit or the purl stitches, so I turned to the Internet. A few YouTube videos, and I was good to go. I seemed to have picked up some pretty advanced techniques, because after just a few rows, my 20 stitches had become 23. I'm now working on what is sure to be the world's ugliest scarf. Every time I decide to try a new pattern, I just hop right in. It's like I have yarn-induced ADD. On the bright side, my husband is contractually obliged to wear anything I make him.

The "winning" in the title has nothing to do with knitting, however. Yesterday I got a suspicious e-mail telling me I was a winner. Instead of being from a Nigerian widow, it was actually from the writer of a finance blog I read. A few weeks ago, the blog hosted a contest, and I idly posted a comment to enter. Ka-ching. $50 Amazon gift card. They already sent me the code, so now I'm carefully assessing my multiple wishlists, trying to figure out how to best spend this windfall. (Where was this two weeks ago when I ordered a bunch of books?)

I'm pretty sure one of the things I order will be this book. I've been half-heartedly meaning to give canning a try, and surely buying a book will propel me into action. (See above, re: knitting) Plus, canning is just another way to build that post-apocalyptic survival skill set. As I told a friend,

I've never been one for pictures, probably because I've never really liked what I see in them. You can call it typical female angst if you'd like. After all, isn't the yo-yo dieter a female stereotype? Are women forever doomed to be Cathy, eating chocolate ice cream and yelling "Ack!" at the scale? Regardless of how active I've been in my life, I've still never been entirely pleased with the way I look. In high school I endured a traditional upper-middle class eating disorder and still felt I was fat. In college, my activity level dropped off dramatically and I took a shine to carbs, thus altering my physique. Even getting an intestinal parasite in Central America in my early 20s didn't do the trick. Oh, sure, I dropped to around 110 pounds and you could see my ribs along the line of my sternum, but still I felt fat.

Partly, I blame my father. It's not that he ever told me I was fat or made me feel bad about myself. To the contrary, he's always been very accepting of me. However, he did give me half of my genetics. And in the gene pool lottery, I somehow missed out on my mother's skinny legs and instead inherited the functional Haley thighs. Yes, I also lucked out and got a small waist, and I've certainly read the research telling me that pear-shaped women are statistically much healthier than apple-shaped women. But still, when I look at pictures, I zero in on the lower half of my body and sigh.

As you may know, my lower half caused me even more consternation last year when I tore my ACL. I went from being a very active dancer and hitting the gym about four times a week to laying in bed and watching four season of Star Trek: Enterprise. I drowned my sorrows in cookies and went into the hospital for two procedures to try to get my knee functional again. I endured more than a year of physical therapy (which my insurance is still refusing to pay for, but that's another story). I was getting stronger, but then I got laid off, went to India and ate my weight in paneer curries for a month. Needless to say, after months of inactivity, I don't really like to look at pictures from India. My goal for the trip was to get Delhi belly and get skinny. I was only 50% successful.

So, without much fanfare, I decided it was time to Do Something About It. It's worth noting that many times in the past I decided to do something about it. But this was different. This time I decided to really Do Something About It. And I did. And I have been Doing Something About It for months. This week marked a milestone. A milestone best represented with a graph.



The graph you see represents my real weight vs. the weight listed on my driver's license. You can clearly see the slow and steady upward creep of my weight since I arrived in Alaska. You can see the point in 2008 when I had to renew my license and decided to be a little less dishonest about my weight. And you can also see how the two numbers never matched up. But you can also see that this week, for the first time in almost a decade, I weigh LESS than my driver's license. Less than the number I made up a few years ago to soothe my vanity.

This is cause for celebration, right? Like with a piece of rich gooey cake! Just kidding - I ordered new shoes instead. And I finally feel ready to tackle my stash of fabric and vintage patterns that I've been hesitant to sew for more than a year now.



And the kicker to all this is that even as my weight has been dropping, my activity level has stayed low. I think the last time I actually exercised was July 29. I've been pretty busy with dance, but I don't really think that counts as exercise. My theory is that all the stress of renovating our house and trying to plan a wedding reception was helping with the weight loss. Yay, stress!

So maybe I don't like looking at the pictures from India. (And maybe I'm trying to only put up good ones of me here.) But I do like pictures like this.

And Beau and I have our tickets to Hawaii for this winter. We'll be island-hopping for three weeks. I'm sure to like some of the pictures from that trip.

Our wedding reception is in 8 days. The wedding reception that we will be holding in our backyard. The backyard of the house that was supposed to have two simple renovation projects this summer. The house that currently has only half of the walls up in the living room, and a bathroom that has a bathtub in it (but not hooked up) and nothing else.

My husband is 350 miles away. Still.
Thanks to a sharp utility knife on Monday, I have one functional hand and 5 stitches in my left hand.
And somehow I have to finish a LOT of the house projects on my own. Because Beau (bless his pea-picking heart) has lofty beliefs that he will arrive Monday night and the house will be completely ready by Friday.

Oh, and I should probably find time to make all the desserts for the reception. And there's that 3-hour workshop and performance this weekend. But I'm not stressed at all.

Google does not make it easy to change your name. This is the problem with picking a username like jane.doe instead of something like teddy_bear1234. Since my name is in my username, when I changed my last name, I had to set up entirely new accounts. I'm going to have to start sharing access to this blog with myself so I can get in here easily to post.

I'm tired. Home renovations have worn me down. Beau is coming into town this weekend, and we are going to spend 4 solid days working on the house. Our wedding reception is being held here at the beginning of September. It's time to get some stuff done. Right now there is nothing in the bathroom but walls and a floor. The living room needs drywall everywhere.

I'm taking a rare night off from work on the house. I investigated the linen cabinet a bit, but it looks like I'm going to have to remove it entirely. I don't feel like starting that project. It's 8:30 pm, and the skies are a clear blue with lots of sun. I want to get on my bike and go for a ride, but I'm too tired. I haven't ridden in weeks, and I've been slacking on running the stairs for a few weeks, too. I need to get back in the game.

I know it's shocking that I posted more the blog whilst abroad than I have since my return. If I could get pictures off my camera (note to self: buy card reader), I could show you a progress report of the summer. Of bike miles ridden and things torn out of my walls. Of things put back in my walls, and other things torn out of other walls. There's an empty spot in my bathroom where a tub used to be. It now rests against the fence outside, and I'm trying to figure out how best to put in a new crossbeam for bathroom floor support so that the rest of the bathroom work can progress. I've left the toilet hooked up in a doorless room stripped to the studs. It's still slightly better than an outhouse, so we've got that advantage over many Fairbanksans.

Partly my work has been stymied by the lack of a truck. We hired someone to install the windows, and he was kind enough to dispose of the bathroom walls, which had ended up on my back porch. But getting stuff to my house hasn't gone as well. Tomorrow I plan to rent a U-Haul truck and go grab the rest of what I need. I may not be able to start until I get that crossbeam in place, but at least I'll have everything here.

I've started a massive purge of my closet. I've got 27 dresses and 19 shoes ready to go away. I'm debating using them to barter help with construction. I figure they're used, but the value is actually higher because they're curated from my personal collection. It feels liberating to be getting rid of some of my stuff, shedding some of my baggage. My life isn't getting too minimalist, though as 28 pairs of shoes remain.

I don't know if it's the getting old bit or the (sadly sub-par) Indian food that Nancy, the twins and I biked out to tonight, but I feel the itchy feet again. I've got the urge to travel, to see a new place. We still need to book tickets for our honeymoon, and maybe that will help me. Or maybe not. Maybe I need to crash a wedding in El Salvador this winter or show up on my friend's new doorstep in Jakarta suddenly. I just feel the urge to be in a crowded marketplace that jars all my senses.

Or maybe I should just rebuild my shower.

Agra is a great and noble city. It is home to the Taj Mahal, one of the most famous monuments in the world. Nearly everybody who goes to India will visit Agra. And I am here to tell you the truth: Agra kind of sucked a lot.

It's not really Agra's fault. It can't help being the biggest tourist trap in the country. And we only planned to spend two days there. But as John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." And so it was that when we got to Agra, we found out that the Gujjars had gone on strike and closed down all transport into and around Rajasthan. They were literally sitting on the roads and the train tracks. Our plans to go to Ranthambhore? Train was canceled. Our hastily concocted backup plans to leave the day after we were supposed to leave? Train was canceled. Our harrowing escape came at great personal, karmic expense. More on that later.

We arrived in the evening and made our way to the hotel. Tourists Rest House. Good place. I highly recommend it. The next day, we met our rickshaw driver from the previous evening. We had agreed on a set price to hire him for the day to take us to various places in Agra. And thus I present the Agra picture porn:

Overall, I was pleased with hiring him for the day. Until the end of the day, when we suddenly found ourselves being brought to shops. Beau quickly learned to follow my lead when I started begging poor and heading for the door. Manish earned his commissions, but lost any tip that we may have been inclined to give.

The next day, we checked out of the hotel and went to the Taj Nature Walk for the afternoon. Naturally we saw Manish as we passed the Taj entrance.


For Rs100 each, the Taj Nature Walk was a good way to pass the time. Sure, you only saw the Taj in the distance, but there were no crowds of people. The few kids that bothered us there quickly figured out that I really wasn't going to give them chocolate or money, and they left us alone. We spent a few hours wandering the paths and startling large, hooved animals.

Then we went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and went to the train station for our journey to Ranthambhore and tigers! Except remember that little Gujjar strike? No trains were running. Back to the hotel, check into another room, find some tatkal tickets for the next day, with a new plan to skip Ranthambhore and head straight to Udaipur.

The next day we woke up, checked out of the hotel and decided to kill some time by taking a cycle rickshaw around the city. Pedal power is not only cheaper, but slower. We stopped at a travel agent to inquire about bus tickets to Udaipur. These were normally around Rs300. They quoted us Rs600 for a seat and Rs800 for a sleeper. Since we had the tatkal tickets, we went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, and went to the train station. No trains were running. We hopped a rickshaw back to the travel agent, but they told us the bus was full. Back to the hotel, check into another room, have a small fit.

The next morning, Beau went back to the travel agent, who quoted him Rs1000 for a seat. He got it down to Rs900, then bought two tickets. We had time to kill, so we went to Pizza Hut for lunch. We also documented some hideous wiring.

On the way out, we ran into Manish again. Small town. And then we got into the rickshaw of destiny.

Up next: The Great Escape, Or How We Got To Udaipur