Ageless Passions by Karen Putz

Tag: Karen Putz

  • Losing Weight — A Work in Progress

    At the beginning of this year, I joined Loser Moms in an attempt to lose weight for barefoot water skiing.  I was heading down to the World Barefoot Center in March and I wanted to lose a few pounds before getting on the water.   Part of the requirement to join was to post a picture on a personal blog.  So with a heavy (yeah, pun intended!) heart, I went searching for a picture to post.   I had to close my eyes when I hit the “publish” button.

    The thing is, by the time that picture was snapped, I had already lost a few pounds.  I’m estimating at my heaviest, I was probably 215 pounds.   I wouldn’t know– I avoided the scale, the mirror and the camera every chance I could.    The only exercise that I got around to doing was playing a weekly volleyball game in a league.  A local bar sponsored our team, so we were obligated to head over there after the game and hang out.   I filled up on appetizers, sometimes late at night.

    I grew up waterskiing and barefooting and I really missed those activities.  My niece convinced me to try water skiing again on July 4 in 2008.  I got up on two skis and kicked off one.   I went back and forth across the wake a few times and called it a day.  I was out of breath and had no strength to continue.  It was one very short ride on the water.   I was in a size 16 jeans and wearing 2x tops.  No, it wasn’t pretty.   You would think after seeing this photo on my niece’s Facebook page– that I would be motivated to lose weight.  I wasn’t.

    Ever hear the saying by Buddha:   “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”   Well, that’s pretty much what happened.  The teacher turned out to be Keith St. Onge, from the World Barefoot Center.  Keith went through a metamorphosis of his own several years ago.   He was packing on too many pounds as a professional athlete and wasn’t feeling healthy.   He became serious about his health, made some changes in his lifestyle and eating habits and went on to win two World Championships.    At the end of May, Keith sent me some eating guidelines to improve my health.  I was ready, finally ready, to make some lifestyle changes.

    “You have to cut out pop,” he told me.

    I loved my Coke and Pepsi.  I lived each day for the moment I could sip the soda.   Every time we went out to eat, I ordered soda.  And now it was time to kiss it goodbye.  My friend Sue had kicked the pop habit and she was trying to get me to kick it a year ago.   But now, I was ready.

    I wanted a lifestyle change, not a diet.  Keith’s guidelines fit right into that.  I made healthier choices, but I enjoyed the food.  Instead of boneless chicken wings, I went for grilled chicken on a salad when eating out.  Salmon with asparagus.   I went for more fruits and vegetables and less of the processed stuff.  I found ways to cut out white flour– but I have a weakness for Panera Bread’s sourdough rolls, so eliminating that completely felt like death.   So I saved it as a very rare treat.   And I got hooked on quinoa.  “Keen-wa”– the whole grain with funny name.   I introduced my book club to it one day and they liked it.  I brought in almond and coconut milk and the kids went crazy for the almond milk.

    I also had two other barefooters who provided support and encouragement, Joann O’Connor and Judy Myers.  Both of them had wonderful weight loss stories of their own.  I joined Donna Cutting’s weight loss group on Facebook, and it helped tremendously to be surrounded by others walking the same journey.

    It’s a work in progress– as I still eat emotionally and I deal with that all the time.  It’s a work in progress, I remind myself again and again– as I still have a ways to go to get healthy and lean.  In a weak moment this fall, I texted Keith after I had scarfed down two rolls at a fundraiser.   “Always bring healthy snacks with you for moments like that,” he said.  Then he shot me a modified Dave Ramsey quote:   “If you want to live like no one else, make decisions like no one else!”

    I put my fork down when the dessert came.

    I had two incredible highlights this year:  the day that I learned to go backwards on the water… and the day that I slipped on size eight jeans.   Thanks, Keith, for both of those highlights.

  • The “Second” That Lasts a Lifetime

    I came across the tweet on Twitter:  “Thought Of The Day:  It only takes a second to make someone feel special, but that second may last a lifetime in their mind.  The tweet was produced by Steve Harper, a guy who specializes in teaching  The Ripple Effect: Maximizing the Power of Relationships for Life & Business (Second Edition).

    Funny, I couldn’t get that tweet out of mind.  I copied it and saved it, because I knew a blog post was brewing from it.   I thought back to one of my religion school teachers, Mrs. Marshall.    She taught a class that prepared a group of us for our confirmation at St. Mary’s Church in Dolton.   One Saturday morning, the class was being especially rowdy that day.   The boys were boisterous and creating havoc in the classroom and Mrs. Marshall was quickly losing control.   All of her attempts to settle down the class were falling on deaf ears.   She finally resorted to raising her voice and losing her patience.  Everyone eventually settled down to do some paperwork that she handed out.   Mrs. Marshall sat back in her chair and I saw tears in her eyes.

    My heart went out to her.  I got out a sheet of paper and quickly wrote her a note.  To this day, I don’t even remember what I wrote, but I wrote a couple of paragraphs about the situation in the classroom and that I thought she was a wonderful teacher.   I handed her the note after class had ended.

    At the start of the next class, Mrs. Marshall came up to me and thanked me for the note.   After my Confirmation in May, she sent me a thank you note for the flowers that I gave her.  In the note she shared:

    Congratulations on your Confirmation!  My wishes for you are these:

    When you are lonely, I wish you love.

    When you are down, I wish you joy.

    When you are troubled, I wish you peace.

    When things are complicated, I wish you simple beauty.

    When things are chaotic, I wish you inner peace.

    When things look empty, I wish you hope.

    And may the gifts of the Holy Spirit help you to have all of these throughout your whole life.  Thank you so much for the lovely flowers.  I wore them with so much pride.  And I was so proud of you.   Sincerely yours,  Mrs. Marshall.

    In July of that year, my father received a phone call.   “Mrs. Marshall died on Sunday,” he told me when I arrived home from a friend’s house.  “She had a severe asthma attack, followed by a stroke.  Her son called to tell you because she  had your letter in her hands when she passed away.  You were her favorite and that letter was special to her.”

    She was only 56 years old and left behind a husband,  three kids and a grandson.

    Which leads me back to that quote above.   “It only takes a second to make someone feel special, but that second may last a lifetime in their mind.”

    I never forgot Mrs. Marshall, but I had forgotten the note she wrote to me.  I found it a year ago, when it fell out from the back pages of my bible.   I passed the words on to a friend who was going through a difficult time in life.   There’s a powerful lesson here– taking  just a moment to tell someone that they are special can last a lifetime in their mind.   Thanks to Mrs. Marshall, that ripple goes on.

  • Getting Into a Wetsuit

    karen in wetsuit

    From:

    Your SENIOR Magazine:

    Overheard at the doctor’s office:  “I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising.  I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors.  I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.”

    This cracked me up!  Then I thought back to the second time that I went to the World Barefoot Center back in April.  I had to buy a wetsuit and I went into the pro shop to buy one.   Judy Myers took a women’s size 14 off the rack.  “Here, try this on,” she said.

    I looked at the wetsuit and shook my head. “I haven’t been in a size 14 since I had kids,” I told her.

    “Try it on,” she insisted.  “Wetsuits are always very tight when you try them on dry.  When you get in the water, they stretch out.”

    I tried on the wetsuit and couldn’t get it over my shoulders.  It went back on the rack.  “I’ll need a men’s size,” I said.

    Judy pulled off a men’s size medium.   I looked at it and shook my head again.  “That’s not going to fit.  I know my body and I can’t get in that one!”

    “You gotta try it on,” Judy said.  And hey, when Judy tells you to do something, you do it.  She’s a former gym teacher –and I was afraid she would make me drop down and give her ten pushups if I didn’t obey.  I dutifully stepped into the wetsuit and slipped one arm in.  I had to “bend, twist, gyrate and jump up and down” to get the other arm in.  Judy remained positive throughout the ordeal.  “We can zip this up!”   Keith St.Onge was standing in the corner, trying not to laugh.

    I looked at the half-donned wetsuit.  The zipper was a long way down and the two halves of the wetsuit were parked near my shoulders.  I didn’t see how it was possible to get the female parts of me into a too-small, men’s wetsuit.

    “This ain’t going to happen,” I told Judy.  “Let’s go up a size.”  She pulled a bigger size off the rack.

    “We can zip this up!  I promise you, once you get this in the water it will loosen up!”

    So there we were– Judy trying to zip up the wetsuit while I tried to minimize my upper chest.   The zipper only went up a few inches.  “Here, you zip it up while I pull the suit together,” Judy suggested.   We wrestled with the suit for a few more minutes, inching the zipper up a bit more.  Finally, out of desperation– or perhaps it was the eagerness to get on the water–Judy stuffed the puppies in while I managed to zip it up.

    “Um, I can’t breathe,” I said.

    When I look back at my year of getting back to barefooting again, I realize that the hardest part wasn’t learning to put my feet back on the water– the hardest part was getting into the wetsuit.

  • Writing for the Chicago Tribune TribLocal

    The email came out of the blue.  It was titled, “DeafMom Tweets.”  It was from Amy Alderman, a staff reporter and producer from the Chicago Tribune TribLocal.

    “Dear Karen,” she wrote. “I just wanted to write to say I really enjoy your tweets. By any chance, are you based in the Chicago suburbs? I work as a reporter and producer for the Chicago Tribune’s TribLocal online and print news, and I’m looking for new bloggers for our sites.”

    Would I be interested?

    I love when new opportunities like that pop up.  So I said yes.  I was a little scared to take on more work at a time when I was completely overwhelmed, but writing for the Chicago Tribune TribLocal has been fun.  I have been writing online and in print for various publications for years, but there’s something about being able to pick up the newspaper on a Thursday morning and see an article in there that I’ve written–well, that just puts a smile on my face.

    This week, I wrote about how Facebook and Twitter have brought me many wonderful opportunities to meet people online and face-to-face.  I had a blast barefooting with Dan Tanis and Jeff Hoekstra on Cedar Lake:

    Here are the three articles printed so far:

    Karen Putz Debuts on TribLocal

    Barefoot Water Skiing with a Senior Citizen

    Adventures with Facebook and Twitter

    More to come!

  • The Kronewitters– A Blast from the Past

    I drove to Huzzy lake last week with great anticipation.  I had connected with the Kronewitter family via Facebook and for the first time in about 25 years, I was going to see them again.  The family was celebrating Andy’s birthday and I brought along a super soaker pump as his gift.  Not only was it a tribute to the fourth of July boat parades of the past when we would go around and soak the other boaters, but it was also a gift for traumatizing him as a kid.

    In my teen years, I hung out with Andy’s sisters, Tammy and Tracy.  The three of us spent entire summers together on the water, sometimes skiing up to eight times a day.   In a previous post, The Older I Get, The More Adventure I Want, I wrote about them here:

    Then there were the ATV toys that the Kronewitters brought into the picture.  They had two ATVs and a Dune Buggy.  The very first day that we unloaded the brand-new ATV off the truck, the youngest Kronewitter rode it into a tree and bent the foot rest.  That didn’t stop us. Tammy, Tracy and I would pack a lunch and hit the roads around the lake.  We explored abandoned houses and got lost a couple of times.  We built a dirt ramp in a field and borrowed Tim Brown’s dirt bike to add to the mix.  At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, so I rode the dirt bike home and headed inside.  Mom stopped me at the door.  “Whose motorcycle is that and why are you riding it?”  She was not pleased.

    Fun was the operative word of my childhood.  Tammy, Tracy and I often came up with crazy ideas to pass the time.  We did an all-girl pyramid with me at the top.  We did three of us on two pairs of skis, with me riding in the back binder of each.  We tied ropes around black truck inner tubes which folded practically in half when pulled, but we hung on.  We boat jumped (don’t even ask).  We attempted to jump over each other with kneeboards–which ended right after I knocked Tammy in the head.  We settled for pulling up on the rope and jumping over the rope instead.  And one day, we had a competition with another boat on the lake, to see which boat could pull the most skiers.  We won, with eight.

    (Tracy and Tammy on bottom, me on top)

    One day, I drove up to the lake by myself for the week.  I invited a bunch of friends over that night and we sat around playing cards.  Suddenly, they all jumped.  “What’s going on?” I asked.

    “There’s a noise coming from the bedroom,” one of them explained.  They all jumped again and some of them started to scream.

    “Ok,” I said.  “Follow me into the bedroom and we’ll see what’s going on!”

    I grabbed a monkey wrench and Tammy grabbed a broom and we all crept into the bedroom.  I flipped on the light.

    Nothing.  We all relaxed a bit and then suddenly, the screaming began again.  The girls rushed back into the kitchen with me following behind.

    “It’s coming from outside!” one of them said.

    Another one screamed.  “It’s coming from that window!”

    “Ok, we’re going outside,” I said.  “Jenny, flip on the floodlights and let’s head out.  If we all go together, whatever it is, we can handle it together.”

    As soon as Jenny hit the lights, we saw them.  It was Andy and his friend, Billy.  We chased after them but they took off into the darkness.

    So what do six scared girls do?  They plan revenge.

    The next night, we removed a screen in Tammy’s house and crept inside the window.  We were armed with duct tape and ropes.  We tiptoed over to where Andy and Billy were sleeping and we pounced on them.  Duct tape went over their mouth and rope on their hands and feet.  We hauled them outside and tossed them into the rowboat and set them loose, minus the oars.  We sat on the bank and watched them wriggle loose as the sun came up.   As soon as they started paddling to shore, we took off.

    Later that day, we held a meeting and declared a truce.  They never messed with us gals again.

    So when I saw Andy again, I promised to reimburse him for any therapy that he needed as a result of that kidnapping.

    “I sure hope you weren’t traumatized by that,” I chuckled as we reminisced.

    “I’ve got some duct tape and rope around here to return the favor!” he said.

    Tammy and me

    Tammy and me on bottom, Tracy on top

  • Turning 45 and Celebrating

     

    Last year’s birthday and this year’s birthday– quite a difference!  Last year, I sat in the pontoon and had a moment of looking back on my teen years and crying.  At the age of 44, I figured the best years were over with.  No one was barefoot water skiing on the lake anymore and even the younger generation wasn’t taking up the sport.

    Then the hubby sent me a fateful link to Judy Myers, the “Old Lady” who is now 67-years-old and competes in barefoot water ski tournaments.  In fact, she’s in Germany right now, competing in the World Barefoot Tournament.   Earlier this year, I went down to the World Barefoot Center and met Judy and Keith St. Onge and as soon as I put my feet on the water, I was bitten by the barefoot bug again.

    I have been working up in Michigan this week and every day, I’ve been barefooting.  I accomplished one successful deep water start this week, my fourth one this summer (one step forward, twenty steps back, but I’m getting there!) Yesterday, I managed to pull a muscle in my back on my second run– I lost my balance on the kneeboard just as David hit the throttle and silly me, I pulled back trying to salvage the start. Ouch.

    The best part of getting back into barefooting has been a surprising one.  My older friends are starting to rethink the process of getting older and changing some choices– they’re looking ahead with hope and inspiration– instead of the same resignation that I experienced last year.   I tell them stories about the 61-, 67-, 75-, 82- year olds that are out on the water.  And about Banana George who barefooted at the age of 94.  Inspiration is like a ripple: start one and the ripple goes on.   The stories aren’t about barefooting, they’re about challenging the “I-can’t-do-that-because-I’m-too-old” mentality.

    Next week, I will be barefooting with 61-year-old Joann O’Conner, who learned to barefoot backwards just a year ago!  How’s that for inspiration?  And to top it off, she has a fused ankle!

    So this year, I won’t be crying in the boat.  Instead, I’m going to calculate how many Motrin it’ll take to hit the water again.

  • Karen Putz Chosen as a “Hidden Pearl”

    I’m proud to be among 20 amazing Deaf women chosen as “Pearls” by The M Project:

    The Pearls, by The M Project

    Next year, June 4, 2011, I will have to the opportunity to meet them all in Studio City, California.  I’m looking forward to getting to know these amazing gals!

    “Is a jewel just a pebble, that found a way to shine?”  –John Denver

  • What I Learned from Laughter: Laughing at the Small Stuff

    Every now and then, I like to participate in Robert Hruzek’s group writing projects–they’re always a fun read!  This month’s subject focuses on:

    What I Learned from Laughter.

    At first, I thought I would just share the blog post I wrote over at Chicago Moms Blog:

    When Your Only Option is a Thong.

    When I wrote that one, several friends emailed me and told me they couldn’t stop laughing.  I wasn’t laughing too much when I wrote it, because I was overwhelmed at the laundry piles around my house.  But hey, I learned a valuable lesson from that episode: do your laundry on a regular basis and you won’t have to resort to thongs.  Or worse, commando, as Vicky once teased on Twitter.

    When I think about what I’ve learned from laughter, there’s one episode in my life that stands out.  When the three kids were younger, I often had days when I counted the minutes until the hubby would arrive home and provide an extra pair of eyes and hands in my quest to keep three kids in one place.

    My oldest kiddo, David, was often on hurricane cycle.  He would bounce from one activity to the next (like his Mom??) and leave a path of destruction in his wake.  I once put the baby down for a nap and left David and Lauren parked in front of the TV so I could quickly go to the bathroom.   I walked into the kitchen to find the two of them drawing wavy lines on the kitchen wall.  In a matter of seconds, David had grabbed some crayons off the counter and coerced his sister into drawing artwork on the flat white builder’s paint.  The artwork stayed on the wall for over a year– because neither the hubby nor I could muster up enough energy to paint over the crayon.

    One evening, David was a category five and my patience was long gone.  I was just trying to survive long enough until the hubby arrived home so I could hand off the kid duties to him.  The hubby arrived home and surveyed the toys strewn about, the lunch dishes on the table and me with the harried look on my face.  He could tell it was “one of those days.”

    After a hurried dinner, I filled the bathtub up and went to grab towels from the other bathroom.  As I walked back in, my eyes caught something floating in the bathtub.

    I screamed.

    It was a brand new book:  Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

    I fished it out of the water, wiped as much of the wet stuff off as I could and started to cry.  I sat on the toilet and the tears kept coming.  Mothering three kids just two years apart had taken its toll and came crashing down on me at that moment.  Just then, David came over, climbed in my lap and started hugging me.

    “I love you Mommy.”  He hugged me again.

    My eyes went back to the book and I saw the title more clearly.  “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.”

    I started to laugh.

    Alternating between tears and laughter, I smiled at the irony of the whole thing.

    It is now years later– the little boy has grown into a young man– but I still have the book with the warped pages stuck together.  It’s a reminder of that hectic time of three kids under the age of four–when I thought the day would never end and I’d never have a minute to myself.  Today, the kids amuse themselves and there’s a little more time for me.  How quickly the time flies, how valuable that lesson of laughter is.

    Don’t sweat the small stuff.  And remember to laugh in the process.

  • Yes, I Have a Messy House

    Today, my blog post from the Chicago Moms Blog was syndicated in several newspapers across the U.S. 

    Now everyone knows I have a messy house.  I’m making the kids clean it.

    Sacramento Bee

    Family Wire, North Carolina

    Centre Daily Times, PA

    Lorain County Moms

    But hey, come on over for a visit!  Just be sure to wipe your feet before you enter.