Watching Me

It's a bit after noon-thirty, and I've just finished lunch. Not much today, some leftover lemon meatballs with brown rice. It's weigh-in day, and we all know around here that I'm freaking deranged about that. It doesn't hurt anything for me to be extra diligent one day a week, and I have so many other issues to address that I haven't bothered to try and correct this behavior yet. I suspect it's actually become habit now.

I miss my daughter already and I feel moderately sheepish about it. She's only been gone since Saturday. How much I miss her already and how my own parents used to pack me off to New York for the whole summer to live with my grandparents because my mom didn't want to deal with me all day... it pisses me off, but there's nothing I can do about it now, and if I think about it too much I'll just be in a mood all day.

I go off to take a shower. I notice that I have a nice fat pimple forming on the right side of my nose. How lovely. I'll tell ya, my skin's mostly cleared up, but when I do have an outbreak these days, it's pretty damned impressive. I'll probably put some concealer on it before we head off to the meeting this afternoon. Not that that will actually do anything, except remind me not to pick at it.

I wash my hair with mandarin lime shampoo from Bath & Body works. I have a real love/hate relationship with B&B... every time I like something from them, they discontinue it. I haven't forgiven them yet for discontinuing the gingerbread moisturizer. This latest, the shampoo, was in for a few months, and then I managed to catch them just as they were pulling it from the shelves. I bought 4 bottles. I forgot, however, to get conditioner to go along with it. That's mostly ok, as I only condition once a week or so.

My hair is still falling out. Every time I wash or brush it, dozens of hairs go down the drain or into the trash. Side effect of cutting down the fat in my diet, I'm told. I remind myself to get more draino. It's becoming a staple in the household. I'm too lazy and somewhat squicked out to actually clean the drains.

I get out of the shower and grab a towel. I have really large towels, admittedly. But it's still nice to wrap the whole towel around myself. Last year, I barely had three inches of overlap and I tucked it in just over the center of my chest. Now I have at least a foot of spare fabric, and I am tucking the corner in just under my armpit.

I spread my other towel out over my pillow and lay on the bed for a while. Even though my hair is long enough to reach my lower back, I don't like using a blow dryer on it. Air drying is better for it, in the long run anyway.

The house is almost perfectly quiet, just the soft sound of the bedroom fan running, and the occasional click of the hot water heater as it refills.

I don't get a lot of alone time, and it seems weird, and somewhat sinful. Since Darcy was born, I've spent exactly 18 days alone. She'll be five in October. That's less than five days a year that I've not been on mom-call. Think about that the next time you're complaining that you don't get enough vacation time.

I lounge on the bed in my towel. I don't get to do that much. Usually by the time it takes me to type out that sentence, Darcy has come back to see "Mommy, what's is doing?" She has some really strange grammar sometimes, and I can't figure out why.

My hair is about half dry and starting to curl up when I finally get up. I always wish I could capture that damp, tousled look, but by the time my hair is dry, the weight will have pulled it back down, relentlessly straight.

I pick out my clothes. This is very important for weigh-in. I can't have anything on that's heavier than last time. My size 14 shorts weigh about 11 ounces less than my size 18 shorts. Why do you think I was so distressed about my weigh-in last week? Because I knew it was more than just one measly pound. My new clothes weigh less than my old clothes, so, it was probably closer to a pound and a half, or two pounds. I'm really not looking forward to the day it's time to start wearing my winter boots again. I lost at least 2 pounds trading those out for my Mary Janes.

Blue jean shorts, size 14. They slide over my hips and close easily. I don't even have a muffin top poking out over the hem. I pick up my black tank top, but decide that I don't want to wear that today, and eventually select the bright pink Medium top that I got two weeks ago. I've had this shirt, and three others like it, for two weeks, but every time I pick one up, my first thought it "there's no way in hell this fits me."

And yet, it still does. I smooth down the front and check my look in the mirror. I still look fat. I have a hard time seeing the thinner me, I really do. I mean, if I wave two pictures, before and now, in front of myself, I can see it. But it doesn't reflect back at me in the mirror. I still see the same old me, the same one that's been there since 1994 or so.

I turn sideways to check out my shape. Wish desperately that I could manage to actually suck in my stomach and hold it that way for more than a minute or so. I can't, though. I've tried a girdle on, and that didn't really help either; all that did was stick the fat higher up. I sigh and deflate. I feel a bit like a tired old beach ball, half full of air, runkled over and not very much fun.

I glare at my reflection. I know this isn't healthy to think this way. I've come about halfway, there's no sense in giving up now. Going back is just as far as going forward... and even if I should just give up... somehow my comfort with food is mostly gone now. I don't know that I'll ever be okay with myself again, if I sat down, for instance, and ate a double handful of snickers bars. If I can't go back to being okay with junk food, I may as well get thinner, right?

I look at myself again. I try really hard to pretend I'm not me, that I'm evaluating someone else.

Even without sucking in my stomach, there's a decided difference. My belly doesn't thrust forward, in front of my breasts. The amount of visible fat along my back is lower and my butt doesn't look half bad. I mean, baby's still got back, but it really doesn't look unattractive. There's definitely some shape to my arms, muscle tone there and my skin is a smooth, even bronze. My hair may be falling out, but I'm probably the only person who can see that, and my fingernails are a good length, well-trimmed and shapely.

I pull my hair up into a bun and stab a chopstick through it, letting a few strands loose to curl down my neck and along the side of my face.

I'm ready.

Bring on the world.