My optimism is a bit of a curse sometimes. I look at life with that silver-lining philosophy that if there’s a room full of shit there must be a pony buried in there somewhere.
I’ve filled out paperwork and placed the matching stickers in the right boxes for a chance at the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes. In the last month I spent untold minutes playing Safeway’s Monopoly game, tearing apart the game pieces, and searching for their matching spaces. I had more pieces than most shoppers, because friend Cindy and sister Shelly gave me theirs. Why? Because they found the monopoly game a long-shot time-waster. They were right. Safeway’s not giving out any more pieces. I didn’t win $1,000,000 cash, or the $500,000 vacation home, or a $35,000 vehicle of my choice, or any of the other prizes. Once again, I went from hopeful to loser.
And even now, I have a routine that borders on superstitious that whenever I gas up, I buy one Super Lotto, one Powerball and one Mega Million lottery ticket, or, as I say it when I buy it at the Safeway gas kiosk, a supermegapower. I justify the expense waste by the fact that I drive a Prius, and only put gas in the car about once a month. Besides, I hate to stop now. What if that one time I stop is when I would have won?
I know my psychology friends probably a name for this condition, but let’s not go there.
When I enter a contest, no matter how absurd, I don’t do the math and calculate that I’d have a better chance of being struck by lightning than to be the grand prize winner.
“Somebody has to win,” I’ll say. “Why not me?”
I blame this magical thinking on a story I wrote many years ago about “the luckiest guy” who won cars and trips and all kinds of stuff. When I asked why he was so lucky, he had a simple answer.
“I win a lot because I enter a lot.”
That stuck with me.
That was my mentality when I entered a contest last fall to win a house in Jackson, California. I totally fell in love with this house, to the point where I visited it twice. Hey, I happened to be in the area.
Doni had her heart set on winning this house in Jackson. (Btw, this is 10 pounds ago.)
The Gold Country Home Recipe Contest offered a chance to win a 1906 Craftsman (my favorite residential architecture, btw) home in Jackson. The rules were simple: send in $100 for an entry fee, and an original dessert recipe. The contest was widely publicized, especially in the Bay Area.
The competition would be stiff, because the contest didn’t eliminate professional cooks.
For added insurance I bought a pair of gold hoop earrings as a daily reminder of how I was putting my sights on that house. If my friends and family thought I was crazy for being so convinced I’d win, they thankfully never said so.
I paid my $100 entry fee, and created a kick-ass recipe that beat the Gold Country theme to death: Golden Delicious apples, with Golden caramel sauce over individual Golden honey-infused cheesecakes, served cheese-board style, a nod to the surrounding wineries.
The contest was a bust; cancelled “due to circumstances beyond our control” – which I figured meant that not enough people entered the contest to make it worth the owners’ financial while. Of course, I called to get a comment for a story. No reply. But they did send my money back.
The house is now up for sale.
You’d have thought I learned my lesson about entering contests.
I did. Until the Create TV Cooking Challenge came along, which I told you about in Week 14. My main reason for entering the contest wasn’t so much that I’d win $1,000 to create a bunch of 2-minute cooking videos, because really, Create TV would be the biggest winner in that case. My main reason was to get the eye of the Chopped deciders, so I’d be selected to appear on the cooking show where the prize is $10,000, and untold bragging rights, a big deal for me, since I’m a totally self-taught cook.
Plus, I might get to mention my life-long search for the missing branches on my mother’s amputated family tree and the mysterious disappearing Deanharts/Dienhardts/Dienharts/Harts and my maternal grandfather’s siblings: Stanton, Madeline and Dorothy, and half siblings John, Helen and Marion. My hope would be to find living ancestors, and with them, maybe the keys to unlock so many family secrets.
But back to my Create video, where my POV focused on low-carb, low-sugar recipes. I said I wanted to be a foodie, but not a fatty. I thought the alliteration had a nice ring. At that point I’d lost 15 pounds. I’ve lost 10 more since then.
Sadly, I got an email this week from Create TV. It thanked me for entering the contest. I wasn’t among the winners. The grand prize winner was a guy from New York, Jaime Isobe. I watched his video about making braised beef shanks. No wonder he won. His video had music, fade-ins and cut-aways, and was full of tips. And he had personality plus. At his video’s conclusion, when he’s taking a bite, he winked. Twice.
Anyone could see his video was far superior to mine. In fact, I can barely watch my video without wincing. My poor sister. She worked with me as my videographer to film my 2-minute clip. That’s five hours neither of us will ever get back.
Oh well.
I might have the whole contest thing out of my system for a while. But it occurred to me that the thing about contests is they’re beyond my control. It’s a matter of good fortune where there’s one winner, and a bunch of losers.
My consolation prize is that I may be a loser of contests, but I’m in a winner in other ways, such as my health and fitness.
I’ve lost 25 pounds, plus 5 inches around my waist since December by working out at Align Private Training with Matthew R. Lister. There was no luck involved. Nobody handed it to me. I earned every pound and inch lost through grueling physical work and sacrifice. Even so, I literally couldn’t have done it without Matthew. In fact, as committed as I am to this healthy lifestyle change, I am still not disciplined enough to do this on my own. I know that even if I had all the equipment at my house that Matthew has at Align, despite my best of intentions I have no doubt those machines would end up as clothing racks.
Not every day at Align is joyful. In fact, last week Matthew and I had a come-to-Jesus meeting about my continued fixation on the scale numbers. I realized that even though he won’t let me see the scale, psychologically I’m still worried about the numbers because I want Matthew to be proud of me.
The result? Not only did he confiscate my scale, and not only did he weigh me and and not disclose my weight to me, but now, he said he will no longer weigh me at all. The only measurement tool to determine my progress will be the tape measure.
So, where was I about how well I’m doing? I cut out sugar and steeply reduced carbs. I gave up my ice cream bedtime snacks and whenever-I felt-like-them dip-topped cones and bear claws and chocolate-covered French crullers.
Which reminds me. Did I ever tell you that on the way to my very first meeting with Matthew, I drove through Heavenly Donuts’ drive-through window and got two crullers? I ate them both on the way to my appointment.
Those were my last donuts. I can’t believe what I’m about to say, but I can’t even imagine eating a donut again.
Doni’s favorite workout shirt: “FIT(ish) Semi-fit; Kind of fit; Someone who likes the idea of being fit, but equally likes food.”
Despite being on the losing end of that house in Jackson, and despite being disappointed that Create TV didn’t pick me for its cooking show, and despite the fact that I’ve applied to Chopped numerous times to no avail, and despite having to admit that in all the years of playing my gas-station lottery, I’ve probably won a total of amout $6.
Somehow, despite all that, at this new station in life, I’m happy to say I still feel very much like a winner.
