20 Days on The Plan -- Day Ten - midpoint (revisited

January 31, 2018

Day Ten on the Twenty Day Plan

Midpoint in The Plan

Woke up and was thrilled with my BBT.

96.9.

This is the highest I have seen since starting The Plan. Got on the scales. Hey, I’m down one whole pound. Well, all right!

Sue’s BBT had dropped from the day before which of course prompts her to want to double-check her BBT temp on one of my digitals. You can borrow them, I tell her, but they’re staying on MY side of the bed.

Sure enough, she gets a better reading on the digital.

I take that to mean that she’ll either be going to bed with her thermometer planted under her arm or I’ll be passing over my digitals just like in the good days.

I tell Sue I’m feeling knee-worthy enough to go downstairs and get the lemon water and tea started but the trip back up with two glasses and two cups and one hand on the railing would not work unless I were willing to make four trips.

Sue agrees. I will go down and set up the lemon water and put the kettle to boil and tea to steep and she will go down a little later and bring it all up.

But, once I get downstairs and set up the lemon water, I find I have time to kill waiting for the water to boil so, I drink my lemon water. Then, once I put the tea to steep, it occurs to me that I can easily manage the stairs with either one glass of lemon water or one cup of tea.

This presents a dilemma. I could take Sue her lemon water but then she’d have to drink it before going down to retrieve the teas. I’d be sitting there for who knows how long waiting for my tea. As my mornings are typically rushed, this idea didn’t sit all that well with me.

I troop back up the stairs with my tea, just mine, get back in bed and open my computer to check on emails.

Sue pushes herself forward and proceeded to give me the eye. That head-lowered, gaze-over-the-top-of-the-glasses, well-practiced-almost-always effective look she has that demands your attention. I’m sure it’s something she learned from her mother who learned it from her mother going all the way back to when spectacles or stairs were invented or maybe the beginning of time.

I stayed focused on deleting about a hundred spam emails without killing something important. I’ve noticed that since the very first day I began posting this blog, my usual array of Russian bride and easy term loan offers are being overwhelmed by miracle weight loss offers. It seems Sue isn’t the only one watching my every move.

You’re drinking your tea, she says, finally saying something.

I nod. Yes, I am, I say and take a sip and add a satisfying ahhh.

Well, where’s my tea? And where’s my lemon water and why aren’t you drinking your lemon water?

I drank my lemon water, I say. While the water for tea was boiling.

She says nothing. I shut the lid on my laptop and turn to face her. Do you want me to go downstairs, make two trips, back and forth, up those stairs WITH my knee so you can have your lemon water and your tea? I mean, I will do that but didn’t we already agree that you would be more than happy to go down and get everything on your own?

Never mind, she says, and climbs out of bed.

I check face book and the Team Plan page.

Apparently, someone on the Team Blog page must have read my blog posts and my perennial low BBT scores and wondered if I was drinking warm water or cold water. She stated that drinking cold water could impact the BBT’s and drop your scores.

I thought about that. My highest BBT was this morning after spending the day at home where my water sits in a jug all day at room temp. Normally, I go to work and pull water from the water cooler and it is considerably colder. Was this variant in water temperature keeping my BBT low? It seemed entirely possible so I posted my thanks and noted that this could very well be true. A few minutes later Lyn Genet “likes my comment” which I took to mean she approved and agreed with the original post but it also felt oddly cult-like – as if I had just gotten an approving nod from the master. But then that got me thinking, how in the world could drinking cold water at say, three thirty in the afternoon affect one’s BBT temperature taken more than twelve hours later? When I checked the face book thread a few minutes later, someone else had chimed in as if anticipating that question. Warm water is better absorbed by the body. Okay. Really…?

What do I know, I mutter to myself.

Sue returns, settles back into bed and sips her lemon water then says, have you read The Plan? Meaning the original book.

Uh, parts of it, I say.

I wish you were more of an expert. I think you need to become more of an expert.

Why?

You talk to your customers and a lot of them are on The Plan. You should be able to talk to them like you know what you’re talking about.

My mind flashes back to that strategic marketing study that advised me to separate from The Plan association and here Sue wants me to become one of Lyn’s devotees, dispensing Plan advice. I could see myself talking to someone on the phone who wants to know if they should order the flax granola in the 12 ounce four pack or the bulk size and I respond by asking what their BBT’s are like.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Breakfast was an apple compote but no one remembered to turn the oven on in all our trips downstairs and I had to be up at the bakery in a half hour to make sure the bread and pita from last nights bake got properly distributed.

I say my goodbyes to Sue and drive up to the bakery in dense, heavy fog. Warming temperatures while snow still blankets the ground make for lousy visibility. It feels like driving thru a white night.

The bread loaves from last night’s bake were phenomenal. Full, soft to the touch. They just looked awesome. I couldn’t wait to get them to Jimi so he could package them up and ship them off. I figured we’d have a lot of very happy customers. And the pita too baked up perfectly. I counted out the loaves Jimi needed to ship and got them all bagged and sealed. Steve arrived to get ready to go to market with a full array of our products. Nick arrived next to make local deliveries including the Bakers Guild Café.

That done, I drove home for breakfast. Sue had the 8 oz apple streusels in the oven getting warm. We both poured coconut milk over top and let it seep in. Very tasty, once again, I finger the bowl clean.

Sue has to leave. She’s driving out to see one of her three sisters who lives about forty-five minutes away so she can accompany her on a trip to the doctor. It sounds like the results from a mammogram. I wasn’t sure.

I have a feeling Sue’s going to talk up The Plan to her sisters individually but I don’t know how well that’s going to go. No one thinks they’re eating badly. We certainly didn’t. Every meal we prepared was with fresh ingredients. But The Plan stresses a balance of carbs to fats to sugars to proteins that I never really considered before. And, of course, all that water.

I went to the office and spent the day across from Kristen who peppered me with endless questions about this or that sale. Do you have any idea what you’re spending on freight, she asked me at one point?

You mean, shipping? I ask.

Yes, shipping and packing. Freight. You paid $49,000 on shipping alone.

But we charge for shipping, I countered.

Not enough, she said and gave me a frosty look that could shatter Sue’s best, on any day. Kristen is tough as nails when it comes to books. She trusts no one and looks askance at everything that comes her way. She can make me feel like a complete an utter idiot simply by muttering something under her breath as she taps her way thru our QuickBooks account.

What?

You’re killing me, Smalls. You’re killing me, she responds.

And this is how she talks. Lines from movies or TV shows from twenty years ago. Get schnigitz on the phone, she says, and find out why his market sheet is ninety-five dollars short.

Schnigitz…?

Schnigitz, she responds then stands up to join the ladies for a nicotine break where I imagine she talks about me as if I’m the schnigitz in there who gives away his products and pays for the shipping to boot.

I get home before Sue and the cats immediately swarm me. They obviously want food but their bowls aren’t empty. I realize each one has their favorite treat. The one takes a small bowl of milk, preferably raw, while the other craves egg white.

This would be fine if we weren’t on The Plan and I had either raw milk or eggs in the fridge. But I don’t.

Would you like coconut milk, I ask the one and pour a capful into a dish.

His response is classic. You gotta be kidding me. Don’t EVER insult me like that again I can hear him say and then it dawns on me it might be kinda cool to write a Plan workbook for pets.

Hold still, kitty, while I check your BBT. C’mon, Buster, you’re not lapping up enough water…

Sue arrives and we get started on dinner. Steaks and we’re testing potatoes.

I fire up the gas grill on the porch – too warm outside to light the wood stove.

While I tend the steaks, Sue bangs out a big pot of diced potatoes with Kale. Salad is radicchio and apples and goat cheese. I find I don’t care that much for radicchio. I love to say the name but I ain’t all that fond of whatever it is. Is it a cabbage or a lettuce? I have no idea.

Kristen calls. Working late it seems because she can’t figure out if two orders ever got paid. I pop open my computer and look into it. I verify the one for over two hundred dollars but I can’t verify payment for a much, much smaller order. This can’t wait? I think to myself and it rubs me the wrong way. I get short with her and hang up. A big mistake.

Sue comes up to me looking concerned and I go off on a tirade about Kristen and all the money I pay her when all I get back is suspicion and the implication of my incompetence. I’m realizing this is a very sensitive issue with me. I’m not a money guy. I’m not a numbers guy. So are those really the two key factors in running a successful business? Okay, granted, I can be intensely insecure in my role as a business owner but I will say this and say it again. The key, in my mind, is how you treat your co-workers and how you treat your customers. The numbers stuff is important, yes, I get it, particularly now, as we court investors, but when I see someone in some small town in say, Oregon, ordering our granola then reordering it then reordering it again.

And then I see someone else in that same small town ordering granola then someone else. So now I want to reach out to that first customer and say thanks and, hey, you’re not going to pay for shipping from us anymore. Why? Because even if that means that, on some marginal scale, the cost of shipping eats away at any profit we might make on that sale, that customer is talking up our products to her friends and neighbors and so that right there means that individual is someone I want to reach out to and make them aware of how valuable they are. And if we lose money on her orders, so be it.

Anyway, I go to bed worrying that I’ve alienated Kristen and she’s going to quit and that would be an absolute disaster but I reassure myself that as long as I show up in the morning with Orange Poppy seed flat bread and some of our newly developed chocolate flax granola, she’s not going anywhere. Right? Right, Doug…?

End of Day Ten on the Twenty Day Plan