The Eighth Habit

It's sort of amazing how capable the Mister is considering he keeps all his to do lists on little scraps of paper—the torn edge of a newspaper will do—that he tucks into various pockets. At any given time there are at least three of them going at once.

I just saw one of his lists (it was in the back pocket of his jeans) and one of the items says, "make moonshine." First chickens, now moonshine. We are going to start punctuating our sentences with "coot coot" pretty soon.

Feel the burn

For much of my life I poo-pooed exercise. My single foray into team sports was in 8th grade when I played basketball for half a season, traveling around rural Vermont in the freezing school bus so that I could sit on the bench and cheer on the astonishingly popular Leah of the long wavy hair.

I hate riding bikes (scary!). I'm not much of a swimmer. In fact, I spent many of my young adult years exhaling cigarette smoke and making fun of people shallow enough to sweat on purpose.

Don't get me wrong, I did a little Jane Fonda back in the day. And I could skate backwards like nobody's business in elementary school. For a while there in middle school I was quite the jazz dancer (I was in a dance troupe called the Kicky Birds). But in total, my athletic life doesn't add up to much.

Which is why my sudden religious-like devotion to the joys and benefits of exercise is so weird. It started about two years ago when I was feeling depressed. Like, the Golden-Gate-Bridge-is-looking-pretty-good depressed. I went to a therapist for a while. She was a tiny Lithuanian who kept saying, "You seem ok to me," and suggesting I get rid of my dog.

Since that wasn't exactly perking me up, I decided to look into antidepressants. But then the idea of going on antidepressants made me so depressed I decided to just suck it up and take the advice of all those annoyingly perky people who bounce around from foot to foot in their wicking fabrics talking about endorphins.

Long story long, I signed up for boot camp, got a free wicking shirt, and felt much better. And although I still don't believe in wearing running shoes unless you are actually running somewhere, and many of my muscles are still hidden under my muffin top, I have been like all gym-y ever since. I have been known to grunt while lifting weights. I've spun. Me!

I mention it only because sometimes the answers are so simple.

Me + the Taliban = one degree of separation

David Rohdes, the New York Times journalist kidnapped by the Taliban and held for more than nine months, is married to the Mister's cousin, Kristen. They had been married two months when he was captured. Oof!

We have never met him and we had no idea he had even been kidnapped until he was released (they were keeping it a secret to avoid publicity that might put him in danger).

THIS is the six-part, first-person story of what happened. Aside from the pure drama of the story, I found it to be one of the most compelling and telling stories I've read on the whole Taliban/Al-Queda/Afghanistan/Pakistan thing. It's complicated stuff. And bleak. But this made me understand it all a little bit more. And it made me thankful for good journalists.

You should read it. You'll probably cry.