Broken Ideals

You know, losing weight didn't make me happy.

It sounds weird to say it, and god knows I get shit for it like you wouldn't believe, or maybe you would.

I lost 87 pounds, or thereabouts. And I wanted to think that I didn't have unrealistic expectations. I never thought I'd be hollywoodesque or suddenly beautiful. But I did think, MAYBE, it wasn't a terrible thing to hope I wouldn't hate myself so much.

But I did, and I begin to think, at 40, that's a trick this old dog isn't going to learn. I don't even know that it's possible for me to stop hating myself.

And on top of that, I ended up with problems; unwanted attention.

See, I used to have this neighbor. Bob.

And Bob was a drunken asshole. I don't think I ever saw the man sober. He lived in the apartment diagonal across the hall from us.

One day, I was outside, talking to one of the other neighborhood moms, while we were waiting for our daughters to get home from first grade - they were allowed to walk home from school, but for most of first grade, Darcy wanted me to be outside, waiting for her. Her dad would walk her over to the school sidewalk and let her go the rest of the way on her own. Small independences.

And Debbie was selling something - Pampered Chef stuff, maybe? I don't remember. I was leaning over the picnic table, looking at the brochure she had.

"Hey!" Bob tapped me. I'd like to say he tapped my shoulder, but he didn't. He stabbed me in the lower back/upper ass with his huge, blunt finger. "You look so hot, leanin' over like that, I took a picture." He shows me on his cell phone, this picture of my ass. He's seriously crowding my personal space and this guy is huge - well over six feet tall and probably a good 280 pounds. Like a linebacker who's been drinking too many beers.

"Um... yeah." I straighten up and move a little, trying to get out of his shadow. I don't like people looming over me. It's 2pm and I can already smell cheap beer and sweat.

The phone in his hand rings. "Oh, yeah, hey, yeah, I know, ain't it great... I just came over to tell her. So, you like that ass, huh?" He looks at me. "I texted the pic to my friend."

You did... what? I laugh uncomfortably and move further away; honestly at this point I'm trying to get Debbie between me and him. She's just as uncomfortable.

"Oh, look, she's laughin'," he says. "It's makin' her tits bounce around." He hands me the phone. "He wants to talk to you."

"Yeah, right. You know, I'm waiting for my seven-year-old daughter to get home from first grade." I give Bob a look, but if it impacts him at all, he completely ignores it. I look away from him and start talking to Debbie. Neither of us look at Bob, or the phone, or acknowledge anything else he says. He eventually wanders away.

A few weeks later, my husband goes off to New Jersey for business for a week. And Bob starts rattling the doorknob to my apartment every time he walks by. If the door's unlocked, he opens it.

I start to feel trapped in my own house. I don't like to go out at night to take out the trash and now I NEVER go all the way down to the mailbox after dark.

Thomas gets home, and I tell him what's been going on. A few days later, Debbie asks us if we can take care of her dog for the afternoon, because she's going to be gone all day. "Sure, no problem." It's not. I don't like dogs, but Debbie's isn't too bad.

We're out walking the dog when Bob rides up, drunkenly, on his bicycle.

"That ain't your dog. Did you steal that dog?"

"I don't see that it's any of your concern," Thomas says, handing the leash over to me. "I'd like you to leave my family alone."

"What, asshole?"

"You heard me." I don't know what Bob hears in Thomas's voice, but what I hear is the keys moving from Thomas's pocket to his hand. I look. He's done the Wolverine thing with his keychain; several keys poke out between his fisted knuckles. "You're harassing my wife. Don't talk to us. Don't talk to her."

Bob jumps off his bike and charges him. Thomas stands there, cool and collected. Bob tops him by a good five inches and at least a hundred pounds. I scramble to get my phone out of my pocket.

Bob ended up backing down, no punches thrown. But I thought I was going to be sick.

For this? I lost weight for this? To be treated like this? To garner this sort of attention?

It wasn't the whole reason; I got frustrated by the slow, creeping gains, the constant hunger and irritability.

But Bob scared the hell out of me.

We reported him to the apartment complex - I have serious trust issues with police, too, and I don't... technically being a douche canoe isn't against the law. And I have no faith that a police officer would take me seriously. The manager told him that he wasn't to speak to us, at all, or they'd evict him. One more complaint and he was out - we weren't the only people in the complex who'd complained about him.

I lost weight for this?

A Little Less than More

I don't think I can begin to explain exactly how much I hate being bipolar.

I rather expect there are worse things to be. And yet, sometimes being bipolar is damned exhausting.

As far as I can tell, I've been in a downswing for going on nine months.

Nine. Months.

I've had good days - even a few good spots... and I've had some really, really bad days. But mostly it's been a long, long cycle of down. Sad. Discouraged. Lazy. (Lazy is such a bad word. And yet I don't have a good word for the immense amounts of I-don't-want-to-do-Fuck-all that seems to come with these bad spells.) Angry. Frustrated. Self-hating.

And I can track right along with it, my weight loss. Or, one should say Weight Gain.

I weighed in last night at WW for the first time in three weeks. I've been skipping meetings. (I never used to do that. Even if we missed a meeting because of a holiday, or illness, I would go in for a weigh in at another time...) I was up almost 7 pounds.

Ok, let me back up and explain that. It's not up 7 pounds in a week... it was "only" one pound this week.

But it's up 7 pounds from where I was when I declared goal... it's up 7 pounds from my lowest weight, which was never as low as I wanted it to be. (I eventually declared goal at 134, with the intent of pushing for 125 anyway.) I managed to get down to 132 before I started this creep. (Creep: the slow, inexorable movement of soil downhill... geology 101, otherwise known as Rocks for Jocks.)

Right now, I'm having another twilight stage. Usually that's a good thing... twilight indicates that I'm coming out of the downphase... I am self-aware. I realize that things haven't been getting done (as an example, I haven't vacuumed the house in something like 2 months... I think the last time was right before my birthday party...) I notice that the house is a wreck and instead of wanting to go back to bed, I want to do something about it.

And yet, these last nine months have been dotted with twilights that have never, ever turned all the way into day.

I look back at the last nine months... and I've done nothing... I'm barely managing to maintain some sort of status quo, and honestly, the status is NOT quo. (The world is a messed up place... and I just need to rule it.)

I don't know.

I really don't. It may be time for me to go back on medication. On the other hand, that means finding a new psychiatrist/psychologist and going through the whole nine yards all over again... which I hate. I hate shrinks. I hate medications. I hate the clear, vivid gray that hangs over everything while I'm on meds.

And it's not as bad as it has been, the last few times I've done a medication regime. I haven't dug myself into debt. I'm not in the middle of several bad, destructive relationships. I'm just... not productive.

I mean, I've done some stuff. I've paid all the bills. I've kept the house in a reasonable state of tolerable-slovenly. I've had social outings (Too many, maybe!). I haven't - mostly - gone off the screaming deep end and bitten anyone's head off. I've done some writing.

And yet, I've run us dangerously close to the red line for money several months in a row. I've gained 7 pounds (I know, someone's going to say that 7 pounds isn't that much, but 7 pounds in 9 months is dangerously close to a dress-size... and it's been a constant gaining... the 7 pounds might be "not much" but I'd prefer it to be "not NORMAL".) I've stopped keeping my lists. (I'm usually a list-maniac... I like to track my daily chores, what I eat, my dinner plans for the week, my grocery lists, what coupons I have, what's on my social calendar, etc etc.) I don't feel connected to my husband. Or my daughter. Or my friends. I don't feel like I've had a meaningful conversation with anyone in the last several months.

I keep worrying that I'm killing my own twilight. That I start coming around and I see everything I've not-done in the last few months and I try so hard to get back to good that I smash my chances at sunshine and just dive back under the cloud cover. It's kept me holding on the ledge, instead of falling over the side.

But really, I'd like to get back on the mountain now.

ok?

The Cycle of Flation

This was my day, yesterday.

Start with an empty balloon. Stretch it out. Flick it across the room a few times at your friend. Blow it up. Tie a knot in the end and bat it around like a ball. Then, when it's floating gracefully across the room, BANG! The cat jumps up, sinks his claws into it and splodo... and instead of a cheap, pretty toy, you've got a bunch of shapeless scraps of plastic and a terrified cat.

Things started out sort of eh. My daughter woke me up; I got up, set her up with a wii game and attempted to go back to bed for a while (I'd stayed up pretty late the night before finishing off the sparkly vampire romance novel series... ) but that didn't work out so well, as Tuesday (did I tell you that if being clumsy was a crime, I'd be incarcerated for the rest of my life?? I didn't? Oh, well, anyway...) I fell over on Tuesday and nearly killed myself, managed to avoid death by concrete block to the head at the cost of one completely scraped toe and another one that... well, sort of hurt. Yesterday, the sort of hurt blossomed into a massive bruise under my toenail. Quite ugly, and for whatever reason, rather excessively painful. Resting the toe on the mattress? Hurts. Allowing the blankets to rest on the toe? Hurts. The only really comfortable place for my foot is uncomfortable for the rest of me. So, I got out of bed.

But my weight is doing well; according to the Wii Fit, I've lost about two and a half pounds this week. (Most of last week's gain, I'm convinced, was water weight.)

I finally got around to making up my mind about the 200 squat challenge. (The same guy who does the pushup program has a 200 sit up and 200 squat program as well...) It took me so long to decide to do it because I really, really hate squats. Not so much while I'm doing them; they're really not all that hard individually; and not the next day; I'm only a little sore the next day. But the third day? Oh, ow.

So I cleared some space and began with my squats. I had decided my personal challenge to myself was to do at least 36. That would put me squarely in the Very Good category... room for improvement, but certainly no slackard. (Keeping in mind that I've never done more than ten or twenty squats in a row, and these usually make my legs pretty sore, you can see where I might not want to aim higher than 36, right?)

But it was so easy... thirty came... and went.

And forty.

And fifty.

Around sixty I started mentally joking with myself that it wasn't much of a challenge if I finished the whole 200 today, but wouldn't that be impressive?

At sixty-five, Darcy started 1) talking to me (or more exactly, asking questions. If you know anything about five year olds it's that they are not actually physically capable of ending a sentence without a question mark. Even if they're saying something like "I have to go to the bathroom?" They want/crave/need/require/are possessed by demons to demand an answer of some sort. Even if it's just "well, for God's sake, go to the bathroom, then!") and 2) getting in the way. She'd stand just in front of me so that I'd have to shift my arms just slightly so that I wouldn't bonk her in the eye with my finger. And as soon as I'd figure out how not to do that, she'd move again. (And no, telling her to go away would have just ensured that instead of standing there, being in the way, she'd grab onto my leg and start crying and asking me if I still liked her... she's been a little insecure recently. Exasperating as that is, I didn't think getting into that particular little cycle again was going to be conducive to getting my squats done.)

So, I'm doing squats, dodging a five year old, and attempting to answer questions like "What are you doing?" "Squats." "Why a squats?" "Because I'm exercising." "Why are you exercising?" "Because it's good for me." "Why is it good for me?" "Well, it's not good for you, honey, you're not doing them, are you?" "I don't know." "Doesn't look like you are to me." "Why doesn't look to you?" (I am really. Really. Epically. Looking forward to her going off to school in the fall... oh yes. I am.)

And... because I'm talking, working out, the door is open and there's a breeze coming in from the porch... I managed to inhale a piece of dust. At 70, I start coughing. I try a few more squats, hoping I can get my breathing under control, but...

Nope. Not happening.

So... 72 squats.

Ok, that's not bad, really. Twice as good as my personal goal. I'm vaguely disappointed, however, because I think I could have done more, if I hadn't started coughing.

My babysitter came over about an hour after that and I headed off to the gym. For the first time since I got sick, I got a full workout in. 30 minutes on the elliptical, bicep curls, tricep lifts, rowing, chest presses, chair dips, crunches, stretches, walking. (Also, I walked 1/4 of a mile while carrying a 14 pound plastic jug of cat litter! That's got to count for at least a bit more...)

After my workout, I headed over to the drugstore to pick up a soda (yes, I still drink them... just only like 1-2 times a week...) batteries (the wii fit has been complaining about dead batteries for a few days now. I need to get a charging station for both the wii motes and the fit board...) and cat litter.

I'm feeling pretty good about myself; it feels good to be pleasantly wrung out and sweaty from my workout. I have those little twitches in my muscles that tell me I did good. My asthma has - at least for the time being - taken itself off to the back of the room, instead of sitting right up there in the first row waving its arms around like that idiot in Welcome Back, Kotter.

"How was your workout?" the cashier asks me. I'm on fairly good chatty terms with most of the people who work at the drug store. They see me a couple times a week.

"Oh, good, good," I said, grinning. "I did 72 squats today."

The cashier blinks. "Oh. I do 150 everyday."

BANG!

There goes my balloon.

Well, don't I feel pathetic.

Dreaded Question

Of the five questions men most hate to hear (loosely based on a this article...) I probably ask my husband "What are you thinking?" and "Do you love me?" on a fairly regular basis.

He's a pretty typical guy, except for the fact that "Football" would never be an answer to "What are you thinking?" For Thomas, it runs more along the lines of "Stupid work stuff/stupid raid stuff/random observations about science fiction television/theoretical physics..."

I don't usually ask anyone the question "Do I look fat in this?"

The closest I usually get to the question is "Do I look OK?" By OK, I generally mean "Does this cover all the requisite bits of me, is it formal or informal enough for the event, is my fly open, and do I need to comb my hair again?"

I have always known the answer to "Do these jeans make me look fat?"

"Honey, it's not the jeans."

Wince.

Just because I knew it didn't mean I ever wanted to hear it from someone. I already knew I was fat. I didn't particularly have a need to make someone I liked repeat it for me.

The problem is, I think my eyes are broken. I know I've talked about this before, but it seems to be a real problem for me, and I can't get my brain aligned.

Thomas talks about his mental woah moments... "I walk by a store window and I have to stop and stare at that skinny guy in the reflection."

I still walk past reflective store windows with my eyes downcast.

I've had woah moments, don't get me wrong. The first time Thomas and I passed each other in the hallway without one or both of us unconsciously turning sideways to allow us both to fit though... when I noticed the car steering wheel didn't need to be adjusted to allow me to fit behind the wheel... but they've never had anything to do with pictures, or reflections.

I'm ok, if I can compare myself to a space I didn't used to be able to occupy, or comparing my required Fat Girl pants to my current pants (I think it's mandatory, by law, that you have to save something from your Fat Days... mine are a pair of red capris, size 24) or looking down while I'm folding laundry and thinking "I fit in that shirt??"

But as soon as I see myself in the mirror, or a picture, I'm like "God, I look like a freaking beached whale!"

I really do think my brain is broken. I mean, I'm wearing size 7 jeans, and they're too big for me. (I should have gotten the 6s.) So, just recently, I've started asking a few, select people that question.

I'm still not getting answers that I'm happy with.

"You look thin-er."

Which is to say, you were such a disgusting pork before, and now you're slightly smaller than a freight train... but it's progress, right?

"Well, I don't know, really. I mean, your body type is so different from mine..."

I thought that was a really interesting way to avoid answering me with "No, actually, you do look fat."

I'm honestly getting a bit tired of this whole lifestyle change thing... My average weight loss for this year has been dropping steadily... it took me a year to lose 65 pounds, and it's going to take at least another whole year to get rid of 20 pounds. Somehow, that just doesn't seem fair.

The last twenty pounds is the hardest.

Unless, of course, you're my skinny-ass husband who had his last 20 pounds drop off in a whopping 4 weeks, and then lost another 12 pounds while he was at it.

Bastard.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?

Attack of the killer tomatoes! Attack of the killer tomatoes!
They'll beat you, bash you, squish you, mash you
Chew you up for brunch and finish you off for dinner or lunch!
They're marching down the halls - They're crawling up the walls
They're gooey, gushy, squishy, mushy - Rotten to the core
They're standing outside your door!

Remember Herman Farbage while taking out his garbage
He turned around and he did see tomatoes hiding in his tree
Now he's just a memory!
I know I'm going to miss her - a tomato ate my sister
Sacramento fell today - They're marching in San Jose
Tomatoes are on their way!

Why is it, you think, that people don't binge on tomatoes?

This might be the answer!

We're afraid our vegetables will come back to haunt us, whereas a brownie... nice, safe, chocolate-y, gooey thing... would never appear in a bad movie to suck our brains out.

Or maybe it's just that the tomatoes are more obvious about their evil intent. I mean, don't you see them there, nestled in their little clear plastic box from the grocers, sniggering with sinister maliciousness? Ever notice how you slice them up for a salad and they lay there, wedges with smug, bloody grins?

And they have this nasty tendency to revolt in the crisper drawer, turn obviously evil and black with murderous intent...

Whereas the brownies, even when they get a little old, are just that much better? A little chewier around the outside edges, but still gooey and lovely in the middle. And if they're too stale, you can toss them in the microwave, wrapped in a moistened paper towel and POOF! They're back to their young and carefree selves. (I keep being tempted to wrap myself in a wet paper towel and microzot myself back into my twenties... don't you?)

But maybe that's part of their evil plot to take over the world. The brownies, I mean. They just... look good. And deep down, where it counts, they are even more dangerous than tomatoes, even slightly anthropomorphic ones.

If you're thinking I fell sway to the siren's call of brownies yesterday...

Well, you just might be right.

Watch out. Maybe I'll get YOU when you're taking out your garbage!

Because, you know, we can't all aspire to be Brownies. Some of us have to be tomatoes.

Now, pass me the salad dressing... I have some making up to do...

Eight is Enough

Aside from my wedding dress (in which I looked liked a silk and seed-pearl wrapped marshmallow) I have never owned clothing more expensive than the stuff I am wearing today.

I am wearing a teal blue silk overshirt ($59.99), a nude cami top ($19.50), and skinny-leg pair of Mia jeans ($69.50) with a pair of black wingtip-style heels ($29.95). I'm also wearing a belt ($12.99). It's not a belt I have any need for, mind you. My jeans are new, and a size 8. There's no way I need a belt to hold my pants up. I'm wearing a tiny, patent leather belt around my shirt. As a decoration.

I am wearing a $200 outfit.

I didn't even spend that much money on a prom dress. (In high school, I was required to buy my own prom dresses out of a $15 a week allowance that also had to cover my school lunches, books, and outtings. I hit the sale racks for prom dresses... I think I spent a grand total of $25 for my senior prom gown.)

Last year, I wouldn't even have looked at a silk shirt. I used to sweat, constantly, even in air-conditioned rooms when I wasn't doing anything. A silk shirt would have been a waste of money. Not to mention the fact that I don't think they make silk shirts in an XXXL.

My ass is crammed into a pair of skinny-legged, $70 jeans. Sized 8. You know, two weeks ago when I got my first pair of 8's, I was... trying to talk myself down of them, you know. Oh, well, of course it's a size 8. I got them at TJ Maxx, and you know, that's a discount store, so regardless of what the tag says, they're probably not a size 8. And you know, they're a relaxed fit.

But these are size 8 from Express. Express. Which carries size 0. Where the sales-staff are all no larger than 4s. Who talk about "Oh, well, these sweaters are sized a little small. I mean, usually I wear an XS, but for this cardigan, I needed a small...." (I shit you not, my favorite sales girl said that two weeks ago when I bought a lovely paint-splatter patterned sweater in a Large... there are realms left in the skinny fashion industry in which I daresay I will never be more than a casual explorer. If nothing else, I still have boobs.)

And what, you might ask, am I doing in a $200 outfit?

I've been asking myself the same question.

I have. No. Earthly. Clue.

Sometimes I think I have a weird sort of reverse fat-girl vision. I know a lot of women have problems realizing just how big they've gotten. I remember talking with a friend back when she started Weight Watchers and she said to me, "I used to comfort myself with this idea; that at least I wasn't a hundred pounds overweight. And then I got on the scale." Turns out, when she wasn't paying attention, she had gotten to that arbitrary line of what was acceptable and what wasn't. (For her. Those lines are different for everyone.)

I have the opposite problem.

I can't see myself as thin. Or even normal. I still look in the mirror and see fat expanding in all directions.

I keep trying to find excuses about why I should be able to fit into a size 8 pair of pants. (See my above rationalization about the pair I got at TJ Maxx...)

I've lost 70 pounds. I'm (according to the Wii Fit; which has become my cross to bear, and yes, I still jump on the damn thing every morning.. and I might add, I had a discussion with Thomas yesterday about how much 20oz of water weighs, and could I legitimately blame that on a 1 pound weight gain? The answer to that is, YES. A 20 ounce bottle of water weighs ~1.3 POUNDS. So if I drank a whole 20oz bottle right before jumping on the scale, yes, the scale's going to pick that up...) about 5 pounds away from being a normal weight for my height. (On the high edge of normal, admittedly, but a BMI of 25 is "normal". The Wii says I weighed 146 this morning. To get to a BMI of 25, I need to weigh 141.)

I keep waiting for that lightbulb moment...

Really... you'd think eight would be enough.

The Post That Was Not

I've been writing a post recently, adding to it, as things occur to me... that I deleted this morning.

You're welcome.

I'll sum up... it was no more and no less than a litany of loathing. Starting at the top of my head and working my way down, it categorized, delineated and defined everything I think is wrong with the way I look. I took a long look at everything that was ugly, fat, flabby, wrinkled, runkled, spotty, splotchy, faded, and hairy...

I sometimes wonder if we all do this; if we all look in the mirror and sum up what we see as, basically, "Yuck."

Then I wonder if I'm the only one out there who loathes everything about herself so completely as to be generally unable to even notice there's a 60 pound difference between what she hated last year and what she continues to hate this year. Seriously. I still don't see anything in the mirror.

Pictures? Yes. I can look at two pictures of myself and see the difference. But I still don't see... me in the mirror. I see a collection - a very large collection - of flaws.

But really, what's the point in reiterating all of it? At the best, people will assume I'm fishing for reassurance and shower the comment sections with compliments. (Honestly, while I thank every single person for any and all compliments, I have a nasty mental habit of compliment-bashing. "Oh, Lynn, you look so nice..." Nice for yard trash, maybe... "That dress looks really great on you." It looked better on the hanger. "You have really lovely eyes." Have you had your glasses checked recently?) At the worst, someone will take me aside with that "I'm very concerned" look on their face and suggest that really, I need some intense therapy. Trust me, I know that.

As far as I know, there's no solution to it. I just have to work it out myself. I know, and have tried, the various stages of self-love and self-acceptance... I just haven't had that light bulb moment. And until I do, I don't really think there's much anyone can do to help.

I thought about making the post anyway as a symbolic throwing away of old ideas and old thoughts and trying to find new ones.

But really... when your cat vomits up on your carpet, you don't need to keep it on display to show how nice the rest of the carpet looks.

So, I'm not going to say it.

And I'll try not to think it.

Much.

Me and the Molasses

So... (Ok, if I have any guy readers, go ahead and take a hike, would ya? Most guys, they get the weirded outs when I talk about 'girl stuff'. So, you know, if you're the kind of guy who cannot go to the store and buy tampons for his wife, go... shoo. Why do guys have a problem with this, I wonder. I mean, do you really think the store clerk thinks YOU are using them? No. If the store clerk thinks anything about it AT ALL - and believe me, I've worked as a cashier before... the only time we care about your order at all is if you're being a SERIOUS PAIN IN THE ASS while we ring it up... - he's just going to know you have a wife/girlfriend at home who's probably being a serious pain in YOUR ass right now. Which, honestly, is not a bad think to be thinking. Oh, look, he's got a GIRL back at his house. This is embarrassing how? Nevermind.)

I had a gain again last night... not much, .6. But that brings my monthly loss to a whopping 2.2 pounds this month.

Now, as you all know, I've been tracking my menstrual cycle, specifically because I tend to have a gain right about the same time as I'm having EWM (That's egg-white mucus, which you knew that if you've ever been trying to have a baby unsuccessfully) which is to further say that I tend to gain weight right around the time that I'm ovulating. Unusual, since most women gain weight the week directly before their menstration starts, but ordinary I have never been.

Frustrating, as I've also been noticing a trend in the length of my cycle. Which, unfortunately, is not to say that I'm getting more time between periods; quite the contrary. In further fact, my cycle has "slimmed" down, so that I'm starting my period almost precisely every 28 days. HOWEVER, the length of my period itself has increased. It started at a nice, neat, four days. Two days of spotting/light bleed, one day of 'dear goddess, let me die now,' and then another day of spotting, then done.

This month? I started spotting on the 16th of October and didn't stop until the 25th. Which means my gain/maintain week should have, technically, been last week. (In which I maintained.) As, if things continue as they have been, I should start menstrating again in the next 4 days.

Somehow, it doesn't seem exactly fair that I spend 1/3 of my time having my period.

Not that anyone ever nominated life for the Fair Play award.

(Ok, done with that, guys, you can come back now, unless I've completely alienated you, and if, honestly, you're that easily alienated, you probably didn't want to be here anyway...)

Anyway, I confess I'm a little disappointed in my weight loss for this month.

I mean, I know this happens. "Gains are part of the whole weight loss process." "The last (10 pounds, 20 pounds, 40 pounds) is the hardest." "You will have plateaus (god, I hate that word. I can't spell it. French is just no.)" I know.

That doesn't, honestly, make it any easier to deal with. I'd say "Especially with Thomas the wonder-loser over there making everything look all easy," but let's be perfectly honest. Thomas could be gaining weight and I'd still be frustrated. Much as I love pointing out the various other scapegoats in my life, it doesn't really have anything to do with anything. I want to be doing well, regardless of other people. That other people continue to do better than me doesn't affect me nearly as much as the fact that I'm never doing quite as well as I want to be doing.

So....

Solutions...

Well, for the first thing, I think I need to slow the fuck heck down. I'm trying to do too many things at once, and the net results of that is that I'm getting absolutely nothing done, and making myself exhausted while I don't do it. I cannot maintain the pace of NaNoWriMo. I tried it for two weeks, and I'm completely burned out, and I have a perpetual headache on top of that. I actually spent the last couple of days almost entirely off the computer (except for some Warcraft, which engages an entirely different part of my brain than writing). Now, part of that was because my secondary hard drive is engaging itself in cascading drive failure. If you don't know what that means, it's basically my drive is dying. Slowly. Which is good, in that I can make backups of the drive, and that I can continue to use my computer. Which is bad, in that the drive is STILL DYING, and in between uses of my computer, I'm running scandisks to close off bad drive sectors, and that's time consuming. That said, after spending most of Saturday and Sunday off the computer, I feel... lots better. More relaxed. I got some extra sleep. I read books. I watched movies.

Secondly, get my ass back to journaling. I don't know why this is so hard to do, but it is. I hate journaling. My journal tends to look something like this:

Tuesday: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, checklist, activity all filled out. Full Smilies.
Wednesday: Breakfast. Snack. Activity. Checklist filled in.
Thursday: Activity. Checklist partially filled.
Friday - Monday: Blank.

Third: Water water water.

Me and drinking water go on this cycle... the cycle goes like this.

Week One: Drink soda first thing in the morning, water most of the day, one soda with dinner.
Week Two: Drink one soda first thing in the morning, then a water, then a soda, then a water, then a soda, then a water. Then soda for the rest of the day (my "waters" are 20 ounces, so, on Week Two, I'm still getting my water intake, altho you see I have greatly increased my caffiene intake as well.)
Week Three: Soda for most of the day. One water, somewhere in there.
Week Four: Soda all day. Water only when I run out of soda.
Week Five: Swear to do better next week.
Repeat Weeks Four and Five

My "logic," if you will, goes something along these lines. I hate water. HATE it. Bottled water is ok, but very expensive, so I don't generally buy it. The cute little filtery thing we have on the kitchen tap... really doesn't help anything. I can't tell a "taste" diffence, and I know for a fact that it's not actually filtering out any of the bad stuff that shows up in our city water. So, in order to be able to drink it, I have to put crystal light, or TrueLime and splenda in the water. (Both of these things add about 4 - 10 calories to my 20-ounce sports bottle.)

Soda, if you will, has >5 calories for a 12 ounce serving. The only difference between the soda and the adulterated water that I drink is:

Soda: >5 calories, 40mgs sodium, 46 mgs caffiene
Crystal Light: 10 calories, 10mgs sodium, 0 caffiene
Energy Crystal Light: 10 calories, 0 sodium, 120 mgs caffiene
TrueLime + 2 packets Splenda: 8 calories, 0 sodium, 0 caffiene

(Did you notice that the energy crystal light has 120 mgs of caffiene?? I didn't actually know that until I went and looked it up, just now.)

I try, sometimes, to cut back. Or, I'll try to quit entirely.

That never, ever lasts... and even if I do well for a few days, I find myself adding soda back into my diet after the caffiene withdrawal headache gets so bad that I start wondering if my eyeballs are bleeding. Obviously, even after a week or two weeks without caffiene, I go right back to it. Slowly, at first, then building. I'm so bad about caffiene that I absolutely refuse to buy penguin mints. I literally cannot be trusted not to overcaffienate myself. When you snarf 40+ mints in little less than 2 hours, you know there's something really, really wrong with you. (Ok, complete honesty here... I would mainline caffiene. I really would.)

Fourth, and probably last;

Exercise. (Another word I never spell correctly the first time, which is why we're all very thankful that such a thing as spellcheck exists. Even if spellcheck isn't in the dictionary.)

I can't seem to keep up with a constant work-out program. I did cardio for a while, on the DVD. Quit after a few months. I tried Couch to 5K. Quit after a few weeks. I did weight training. Quit after a few weeks. The only thing I've managed to keep up with consistently is walking. At the beginning of the year, Thomas and I walked ~1 mile, three times a week. Gradually we upped it to ~2.2 miles, and now we walk that 2.2 miles four times a week. It may very well be time for us to up the distance again. Or, at least, we might want to walk further on our Saturday walk - since our Tuesday, Thursday and Friday walks are already now taking place in the full dark, which is, honestly, not really fun. Especially since portions of the back trail are not lit.

In any case, something has to be done, because if I fall down consistently to losing only 2.2 pounds in a month, it'll be more than a full year from now before I'm at goal weight, and honestly, I just don't know how much more of this I can take. My first impulse after last night's weigh in was to go snarf a hershey's bar, because honestly, if I'm going to GAIN weight, I may as well at least deserve it.

Week Five Hundred Seventy Thousand and One

(570,001)

I had a slight hard time last night, not slapping one of the ladies in my weight watcher's group silly.

She made her goal weight last night, and I'm thrilled for her. Seriously. It's a hell of an accomplishment, whether you need to lose 90 pounds or you need to lose 25. Beth, our leader, who has one of the most destructive relationships with food I've ever seen (the woman sprays Windex on leftover cake because she cannot be trusted with leftovers! And SHE KNOWS that Windex tastes nasty. Which means at least once, she must have tried to eat something, even after treating it with window cleaner!) lost 35 pounds to get to goal weight.

So, you don't necessarily have to have "been there" (there being the vast realm of obesity) to be helped by Weight Watchers. I know my friend Leigh - who in my opinion is sort of a skinny minnie, and I'm never really sure where she plans to lose weight from - has often felt sort of awkward and unwelcome at Weight Watchers where she "only" has to lose seventeen pounds. I try really hard not to be judgmental about people.

I don't always succeed.

I confess, there are some things I don't understand about other people. I have not yet had a binge-eating, falling-off-the-wagon craptastic "I don't give a damn" week. Or even a meal. I don't always understand people who say "I just couldn't help myself."

I get this mental image of some homicidal cupcake brigade marching across the counter and forcing itself down someone's throat, ala Young Sherlock Holmes. The practical part of me says, "Who, exactly, forced you to eat three slices of pizza? YOU did. You made the choice. Now, maybe it was a bad choice, and you wish you hadn't done it, but you did." Not that I haven't said this sort of thing before. I'm just as eager as the next person to pass off blame to someone else. But maybe that's exactly what we need to learn not to do. Take responsibility for the consequences of our own actions. "I got fat because I was on steroids for such a long time." That may well be true, but after I was off the steroids, the only person keeping me fat was me.

The only person who can lose this weight is me.

It's all on me; I cannot afford to binge out. So, I don't. Mentally, I recognize that this isn't as easy for some people. But I don't understand it.

All of this has nothing to do with Monica. But you know how I get off topic. Anyway. Monica. Who made her goal weight last night after losing twenty-five pounds. In tiny little .2 pound increments. (I have sympathy for that, really, I do... I lost .2 yesterday. My fifty-five pound lost bling looks a month away at this moment...)

Beth says to her, "So, what made you walk in the door?"

Monica, "I just didn't feel good about myself." She crosses her arms in front of her chest defensively. I doubt if she feels good about herself, even now. "I mean, I wasn't grossly obese or anything..." She says the word like it's a vile, filthy epithet.

Beth cut her off...

There are quite a number of people in our group who are - or who have been - obese. I don't think any one of us was particularly thrilled to be discussed in the same tone of voice that someone might indicate vomit on an Oriental carpet.

You know, it's a real bitch that so many of us feel the need to bolster ourselves at someone else's expense. She felt bad about herself carrying an extra 25 pounds around, so she has to say "at least I wasn't..." I've done it too, although I try very hard not to say things like that out loud. (Anyone who's ever thought being telepathic would be fun and romantic ought to sit down for a good long while, listen to their own hostile, nasty thoughts, and then, take a moment to imagine what it would be like to hear that from everyone, all the time, and reconsider how much fun that would be...) (And, of course, here I am looking down on Monica for being so bitter and nasty, and... man, it's a vicious little circle, isn't it?)

I'd love to be a better person. I really would.

But I don't quite know how.

I guess the best I can hope for is that I recognize it.

Dashboard Confessional

Actually, this isn't about the band, but I really do like the name, and I'm feeling vaguely confessional today, so... there ya go...

The Cheats start to sneak up on you, have you ever noticed that? (Putting aside the fact that the word Cheating is weird and doesn't really apply well to a Food Plan... I mean, Cheating is to help you win through unfair means, and there's nothing winning about gaining weight, right? So why call it Cheating? Be that as it may, everyone knows what I mean when I say the word Cheat, so I'll just use it. It's like Organic food. Stupid. All food is Organic. If it were Inorganic, it'd be plastic, or rocks, or dirt or something. But then, I could write a whole article on my particular grammatical twidges, so I will just stop here before this becomes a rant.)

Where was I before I got distracted by the grammar police? Right. Cheating. Sneaking up on you.

They do. Creepy little things.

Back when you (and yes, by you I mean me.) start your diet, you're soooo good. You watch every bite you each, you write it down, you measure, you weigh. You make sure you get all your fruits and vegetables, and you avoid temptation.

After a few months of it, you may sit back and think (smugly, of course) "This isn't so hard. This isn't so bad. Why did it take me so long to get around to doing this?"

I think the first thing to go is measuring. Measuring takes time. And we're not just talking about the time to dig out the measuring cup, fill it up, scrape it out, dump it in your bowl. We're also talking about having to wash countless numbers of measuring cups. And I don't know about you, but I only have 2 of each cup size. So, if I have a cup of this and a cup of that and a cup of the third thing, I have to stop mid-meal prep to wash out a measuring cup.

So... we eyeball it. And our eyeball gets bigger, every time we have a bowl of ice cream.

The next thing... journaling. Writing down every nibble and bite we eat is BORING. It's also time consuming. Even with the computerized options. I mean, Weight Watchers has a mostly lovely site to enter your food journal, and yet, you either have to look up each food item as you enter it, or you can save things to favorites. And yet, your favorite list is alphabetized. And Brown Rice isn't under Brown, but under Cooked. For Cooked Brown Rice. Skim milk? Under Fat-free Skim Milk. So, it takes time to sort through the list... And certainly, once you skip a day of journaling, you feel like you have to "catch up" and it's hard to remember what you ate yesterday, but looking at those blank pages makes you feel guilty... vaguely uneasy...

It's just easier to shut the book and not write anything down. "Oh, I'll remember it."

Water water everywhere... and it's rather unpleasant to drink, at that. It either comes out of the tap and tastes vile (as well as having everyone's leftover prescription drugs in it!) or it comes out of a bottle and poisons the environment for 4,000 years. Or you drink it from a plastic cup and you're poisoning yourself. If you believe some reports. Or sometimes, not. It's complicated and confusing and yet, you're told to drink 6-8 cups a day, and honestly, do you really need that much? Some studies say you do, some say you don't. Caffeine is the enemy. No, no, it's fine. And you try to alternate between soda and water, just to make things easier, but jeez, you're already putting the Crystal Light in the water, so it's got the artificial sweetners in it. Does it matter if you're drinking all soda instead of water? Not to mention two of my water-bottles developed leaks and I had to throw them away.

So... soda it is.

Or those little bites of things. And this is the one that's really getting to me. Darcy still eats sugary cereals. Perhaps I'm a bad mom that I let her eat "normal" food while I eat "diet" food. She gets full fat hot dogs (on lowfat bread rolls, but still, have you looked at the calorie and fat content of an Oscar Meyer Weiner?) and ice cream and fruit snacks and full sugared cereals. On the other hand, she eats whatever we eat for dinner, and as she's just as apt to chose a banana or some grapes for a snack as a cupcake, I'm happy to let her learn to have a better relationship with food than I do. Is it so bad that she doesn't currently think of a cupcake as the root of all evil?

And yet, these things she eats... some of them are very tempting. (Not the hot dog, through. I don't really like hot dogs.) But... gummy lifesavers. Cereal. Full fat ice cream.

I don't take much.

Just a bite.

But it's a bite here. And a bite there. And it's getting more and more frequent.

I counted, yesterday.

I had four extra "bites". That's probably more than two points there. And because it's "only a bite", I'm certainly not writing it down. Or counting it as a point.

Back in college, I took Geology 101, colloquailly known as "Rocks for Jocks."

In that class, we defined Creep as "the slow, inexonerable movement of soil downhill."

I think I'm suffering from Dieter's Creep. "The slow, inexonerable movement of my eating plan downhill."

And the result?

I'm up .6 pounds this week. Creep. Creep. Creep.

Judge Not (Or Do the Math)

I am trying so hard not to be "that dieting girl." You know the one. The one who orders a salad when you go out to eat together and then spends the whole time casting nasty looks at your cheeseburger and milk shake. Like it's going to get off the plate, dance across the table, and shove itself down my throat. Or, worse yet, give it looks of covetousness. I try not to be the girl who says "My god, are you really going to eat that?" . o O (Wish I could...)

Which is not to say that I don't notice.

That's the weirdest thing. I never used to care what other people ate - not even when it looked particularly good, or there was something wrong with it. These days... oh, yes. I can tell you what my friend Leslie has eaten, every. single. time. we've gone out. I know. I know how fast Toby ate his chicken two weeks ago. I know how much of the pasta got stowed into the take-home box when Carol and I went to the beach. Hell, I know what the people ordered at Thomas's business lunch in Richmond a month ago and I didn't even GO to that lunch, I just remember because Thomas told me about it later.

This lifestyle change is like having an unrequited crush on that really cute guy that hangs out with the group, but has a girlfriend back home. I'm hyper aware. I know who he talked to and did he actually put a hand on her shoulder and what color shirt he was wearing the day he smiled at me between classes. I'd recognize him from two inches of his elbow visible from outside the door.

Being in love is wonderful, and yet, at the same time, it's agonizing. Especially when the object of your affection is completely unaware. And worse, if he was aware... well, then you have to deal with the social weirdness of being ignored by - but pretending you're not being ignored by, or that you don't care that you're being ignored by - someone in your social circle.

I'm aware of food smells. Everywhere I go. I can smell the Buffalo Hot Wings when we shop at the Target. The bookstore is filled with the sweet, warm aroma of coffee and various sticky rolls. Driving to the mall the other day took us right past the Red Robin.

I am fervently grateful that we TiVo everything that I actually want to watch, because food commercials are like watching porn... that slow, delicate swirl of fatty ground beef and slick, melting cheese and... or money shots of ice cream, chocolate syrup dripping over delectable mounds of whipped cream with a bright red cherry peeking out...

I am more aware of people who are eating while driving their cars than I am conscious of people who are yapping on the cell phone. It's a quick flicker of the eye, but I saw that boy in the mall, licking melted ice cream off his arm. The woman in front of me at the grocery store? I tallied up how many packages of junk food she had and wondered vaguely if she ever ate a vegetable in her life.

I don't really like that I'm this hyper-aware of things. It's crazy-making.

Last night, in our Weight Watcher's meeting, we talked about 0 + 0 = 2.

Admittedly, it's a topic better left to Flex people, because it doesn't quite apply to Core.

Zero Point Foods.

If you've ever done Weight Watchers, or even known someone who's done it, you're at least passing familiar with the Zero Point foods. Baby Carrots. Sugar free jello. High fiber cereals. Fat free whipped cream. That butter spray stuff. Salad Spritzer Dressing. Salsa.

Zero point foods is where the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom becomes apparent.

The Intelligent thing to do is to take advantage of the Zero Point foods. Mix sugar free jello mix together with fat free whipped cream and eat the whole tub as a snack. Have a piece of broccoli, but saturate it with 20 butter sprays. This maximizes the food you eat, without costing you any points. And then, you can go ahead and eat the rest of your 27 points.

And be completely floored when you gain five pounds.

Two tablespoons of fat free whipped cream is Zero Points. The whole tub? About 8 points. (0 + 0)25 = 8.

Beth was twice disappointed with Thomas and I last night. Because we are Wise (In addition to being intelligent, which is, honestly, quite a lot of fun when you can fuddle someone.)

"So who uses that spray on butter?" I raise my hand.

Triumph! "And how often do you replace it?"

"About once every 3 or 4 months."

"Oh." She moves on to the girl behind me. "And you?"

"Every two weeks."

"Aha! There's 48 points in that container!"

Later in the meeting. "Let's see... a serving size of sugar free jello is 1/2 a cup. Who actually eats just half a cup of jello?"

Thomas raises his hand. "Um, we do."

Beth whirls on him. "You do?"

Thomas points to me, then to Darcy, then to himself. "One. Two. Three."

"And who gets the other serving?"

"Thomas does -" I say, watching her eyes light up again. "- for lunch. The next day."

"Wow, you guys are no fun."

Thomas smirks. "Sixty pounds lost." He points to me. "Fifty pounds lost."

Of course, I later confessed that I do have to limit myself. Even on Core, where all Core foods are free.

I can only eat 1/4 of an avocado per day. I love avocados. They're filling and creamy and tasty. I could sit down with a spoon and the salt shaker and eat an entire one in a sitting. On flex points, that's 8 points right there, in one tiny green fruit. On Core? Free! But if I eat a whole avocado in one day, I'll just eat another one tomorrow. And one the day after that. And one on Friday.

And I won't lose weight. This week, I was down another 1.4 pounds.

Of course, if I was eating 4 avocados in a week, I probably wouldn't be eying your cheeseburger, either.

It's Just You

Me: "Is it hot in here?"

Other person looks around, as if the temperature is written in mid air in glowing golden letters. Or to see if Lucifer might have opened up a pawn shop in the corner of the room. Or something. I never can figure out what they're looking for.

"Nope. It's just you."

There's nothing quite designed like that phrase to make one feel just a tiny bit on the freakish, outcast side.

It's just you.

It's not really been a great couple of days for me, and my mood is bouncing all over the place like a flamingo with a yo-yo. (Is it just me, or do those guys remind you of the instant aliens, just add water from Bugs Bunny? I know! I know! It's just me.)

Thursday night, cat has a seizure. Friday night, cat has a seizure. Saturday day, air conditioner springs leak. Maintenance looks at it, says "We'll fix it on Monday. Empty out this closet." Saturday night, husband has screaming nightmare. Sunday day. Water still dripping. Clean out the closet. Now I have all my picnic supplies, cookbooks, extra bookshelf, folding chairs and table scattered hither and yon in every available smidge of space left in this apartment. (No, they haven't come over to fix it yet. No, I'm not shocked.) Sunday afternoon, husband finally admits problem with his hair.

Why do they never tell you these things? Thomas has lost 60+ pounds in the last eight months. He's also lost about 10% of his hair. He's not bald, yet, but is decidedly - noticeably, one might say - thinning. The lovely pony-tail he had in the back, which he used to wrap a band around three times, now needs five twists to keep it in place. His hairline is receding.

Him: "Is it just me, or is my hairline thinning."

Me: "No, it's not just you. It definitely is." Of course it's not just him. I haven't wanted to mention it, but I'd noticed it a while ago. Men can be very... weird about things like that and I figured it wasn't a safe conversation topic. Mine's thinning, too, but it's not quite so noticeable. Probably because I had overly thick hair to start with, and now I have "normal". His stylist recommended some product, which I don't know if I hope works or not. I mean, I don't want him to lose his hair, but sheeeeyit, this stuff is not cheap.

Also Sunday afternoon, we went through clothing again. Thomas is down to wearing size 34-32 pants. So, the 40-32s had to go. They just were not doing attractive things to his rear end. When we finished going through his business shirts and pants, he has... 6 shirts and 3 pairs of pants that fit. This is... not enough. Again. So we have to go out and buy some new pants and new shirts, and my god, why didn't anyone warn us that losing weight was going to be so expensive?

I have... two dresses left. One sweater. That's it. Even the medium broomstick skirt I had in college doesn't fit anymore. (Yes, before you ask, this would be the one that I had a Junebug fly up and scare the living hell out of me.) After listening to me bitch for a while about how much better Thomas looks than I do, he made me try on my wedding gown. It doesn't fit. And my god, is it heavy! Did I really walk around all day wearing that thing? There's at least 5 extra inches in the thing.

"Still think you look fat?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're the only one who does."

It's just you.

Several years ago, when I was going to a psychiatrist on a regular basis, I was diagnosed as mild manic-depressive with situational anxiety.

Situational anxiety always sounds incredibly lame to me. Yes, if there's a situation, I'll be anxious about it. Aren't most people?

No, it's just you.

Essentially what it means is that I overreact. A normal situation can get me into serious depression. What a normal person would consider stressful, I can go into non-functional behavior patterns. (Being deep in debt, for instance, has been known to drive me to hiding bills in the trunk of my car. Because, obviously, if I don't pay the bills, I'll have money. Don't ask me, I don't understand it myself, and I live with it.)

The straw that broke the camel's back.

Breaking strain.

It's just you.

Despite that, I'm fairly flexible. Which is how my mood can go from so happy to seriously scraping the barrel is such a short amount of time. I used to be on medication to regulate my mood swings, but I took myself off it. I'd rather feel bad than feel nothing at all. Taking medication was like... walking around with grey sunglasses on, wrapped in a layer of cotton. Nothing really mattered.

Today... I'm mostly okay. A bit tired. Truly batty from water dripping in my apartment. But okay.

So, the only question is; is it hot in here, or is it just me?

It's just you.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall

[Just so you know, I started writing this entry at 5am, after being awake for over an hour. My cat had another seizure, only a day after the last one. Before that, he hadn't had one for a few months, and before that, a couple years. I don't know if he's getting worse, or what. It's scary, and I feel very helpless. And I still can't afford to give him anti-seizure medication. So, I'm awake, and I don't want to be thinking about things I can't do anything about, so I'll write a blog entry about something else entirely. I may not finish it this morning, though. I'm already getting sort of bleary-eyed and desperately wanting to go back to bed. However, if I go back to bed right now, I'll just stare at the wall in that sort of squinty where-are-my-glasses way and worry and worry, and if I'm just going to worry and toss and turn and worry some more, I may as well get up so I don't bother Thomas. Right? Yeah.]

The mirror, these days.

Kinda not my friend.

I suppose I'm just as happy that it can't actually talk to me, although I imagine it does. In that game-show-host false cheerful voice as it tells me how terrible I look. It gleefully points out, in loving detail, every lump and bump, every roll and wrinkle.

I guess it's still holding a grudge.

Because I ignored it.

For years.

I still don't own a full length mirror. I haven't had regular access to a full length mirror since I left Hometown (My own private corner of hell. When I die and go to hell, I'll be back in Hometown with a bunch of rednecks who think hanging out in the Safeway parking lot drinking beer out of Dr. Pepper bottles is the height of cool.)

I have never, ever, liked the mirror. In high school I stood in front of it and counted zits. Seriously, I know everyone makes jokes about being a spotty faced teenager. My teenage acne was the sort they photograph and put in magazines as a "before" picture for Acutane. In fact, I've been on Acutane. My face actually wasn't as bad as my back, which was just beyond nasty. I'm rather desperately hoping that my daughter inherits my husband's complexion which is gorgeous and creamy-smooth and feels just lovely under my fingertips, rather than my own. Which is still somewhat vile, and I have scars the likes of which you'd have to see to believe, and I'm not going to show them to you.

And, like many things that I don't like, I developed a good case of Wally-vision.

No, not that one.

I think I've mentioned that my mom does Historical Reinacting. If not, she does. Basically, she dresses up in hand-made clothing from the 18th century and putters around with tents and campfires on weekends. It's an expensive and uncomfortable form of escapism, but you know, we all need to make an escape from time to time, right?

Anyway, back when I was still in middle-school, early high-school, she used to drag me around to these events with her. I did not - repeat did NOT - like them. It was hot. It was cold. It was raining. There were bugs. I didn't like sleeping on the ground. I didn't like washing cast iron pots in cold water. It was dirty. I did not like sleeping on piles of straw that poked through the canvas groundsheets. I didn't like eating anything that had been cooked in a washed-in-cold-water cast iron pot. Girl of creature comforts I was then, and I am still. Roughing it is not my idea of fun.

However... in our unit (the First Virginia Regiment, in case you care) we had this guy, Wally. Wally was... well, he was very enthusiastic about reinacting and he was a bit of nazi. (If you do reinacting, or SCA or anything like that, you'll find people divided into two camps. The "If they'd have had it, they'd have used it" people and the fashion police who yell at everyone for being inaccurate.) He was, however, also about five foot five and skinny as a rail. And once, after fussing at someone who had a wrong-century something-or-other, he got clocked with a perfectly era-accurate fist.

After which he developed the idea of Wally-vision.

"I do not like what I see over there. However, I cannot do anything about not liking it. If I look over there, I will be angry. I do not want to be angry. Therefore, I will not look over there."

Wally Vision. Do not look at things you do not like, unless you are willing to do something about them.

I had Wally Vision for the mirror.

I also had it for photographs.

I was looking through my wedding album the other day (My daughter likes to look at the pictures. I find it very amusing that - because I honestly couldn't remember the man's name - when she asked who the priest was, I said "Oh, that's the guy who married us," and Darcy now names him as "Guy Merrysus.") and realizing with a start that I have several pictures from our honeymoon. And we are actually in... none of them. It could have been anyone's vacation. It was mine, and while it wasn't the best time I've ever had in my life (my mother, god bless her, gave us a vacation in Jamaica, conveniently forgetting that I am allergic to pineapples, my husband is allergic to shellfish, and neither of us likes to swim. So, mostly we drank a lot.) it was mine. And it's like I never even existed.

(Have I mentioned that my dream is to someday have a renewal of vows celebration so I can wear a wedding dress again and look pretty, as opposed to looking somewhat like a silk wrapped marshmallow?)

Other people have pictures of me, but I don't really have many of my own. I tend to hide behind the camera. And I don't take pictures of my husband unless he's not paying attention because while I am camera shy, he is camera hostile. Mostly I have pictures of our daughter, and pictures of animals at the zoo, and pictures of my stuff.

Looking through my photo albums can be a surreal experience. This is my life. But where am I? Jesus, how could you miss me, I was freaking enormous. And yet... there I'm not.

To be, or not to be (fat)... if a fat girl falls over in the woods and no one hears her, does she exist? Cogito, ergo sum fat.

There are three mirrors in my house. One in the bathroom, over the sink. One in Darcy's room (you've all seen this one, it's the one I take my progress pictures in.) Technically, that's my dresser. I know, I'm a bad mother, having my clothes in my daughter's room. But really, there's no space in our room for two dressers. Our old apartment was much larger and we had enough room in the master bedroom for our enormous king-sized bed, Thomas's dresser and my dresser. This apartment? Not so much. One in the bedroom. We have a pier-cabinet instead of a headboard, and I love it for all it's nooks and drawers. But when we got it, I was very uncomfortable with the huge mirror that made up the entire wall across the king-sized mattress.

However, I'd been doing the mirror-slide for years by that point, so after we got the new bed, it only took me about two weeks before I was doing the mirror-slide in the bedroom as well.

Do you know the mirror-slide? It's that quick glance in the mirror; don't meet your own gaze, don't really look too hard. Hair's combed. Teeth are brushed. Clothes are not wrinkled or spotted. Great, move along, nothing to see here.

I've become an expert in the mirror-slide. Wally Vision. I can't do anything about my weight. Looking at myself in the mirror only makes me unhappy. I don't wish to be unhappy. Since I can't do anything about my weight, I may as well do something about being unhappy. I won't look.

And I didn't.

For years.

I mean, it's not like I didn't know that I was fat. I couldn't possibly not know it. When you're sneaking up on 250 pounds, you know it. When you worry about walking around in shops full of breakable things because you just know you're going to bump a shelf, you know it. Do they even make clothes anymore that "shrink in the wash" or is that just an excuse?

Wally Vision. What I see is going to make me unhappy.

I don't want to be unhappy.

Ergo, I won't look.

The mirror, as I've said, is mad at me.

And after years of neglect, I find myself desperately trying to salvage a relationship that died. Died, was buried, decomposed, and here I am, digging it up again and crying into the maggoty remains to please, please forgive me, I'm sorry, I didn't know...

Baby come back
You can blame it all on me
I was wrong
And I just can't live without you

Why can I not see in the mirror the person I know is there? Why why why?

I look in the mirror, I take a picture and all I see...

Han, mi boogie...

I know I've lost 50 pounds. (Fifty? Really? My god, when did that happen. Oh, right, the last eight months of my life which have been a blur of weigh ins and anticipating weigh ins and dreading weigh ins and... yeah. If I had to sum up my life for the last eight months, it would be "talked about my weight entirely too much.")

I know I've lost 11+ inches from my waist.

I know I'm wearing a medium shirt and size 14 shorts.

I know I'm now shopping the upper end of the "women's" clothing department, instead of the "plus".

I know.

And yet...

Me dwana no bata. Chone manya weesh asha beecho. E chu ta! Bantha poodoo!

The mirror hates me. That's really all there is to it.

It hasn't forgiven me for so many years of neglect.

And frankly, why should it?

But, we're going to councelling now, and I have hopes for a reconcilliation. At least he hasn't moved out yet. So there's still hope.

Right?

Provoking

So, my computer has been on the wonk. My video card (a little over a year old, so of course it's past the warranty, again...) got overheated. The bearings in the fan are just slightly not round any more, so the fan doesn't go 'round. So I'm using my on board video card, which sucks the likes of which makes my vacuum cleaner jealous. The worst part is, I don't know if it is, or is not, going to work at any particular moment. I could be tooling along writing a blog entry or surfing the web, or writing email or playing WoW, and all the sudden the screen flickers, goes dark, and then opens back up with the bastard love child of Georges-Pierre Seurat and Hermann Rorschach. Yesterday, for instance, I played several hours of Warcraft. Today, I can't get the damn thing to run for more than a minute before I'm making comparisons to Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Does that Look Like a Bat or Two Lesbians Kissing.

But, enough about my computer woes. Hopefully my new video card will be in on Wednesday and everything will be peachy.

On the recommendation of one of the blogs I read, I netflixed myself a copy of DisFIGURED.

With my computer being on the fritz, and knowing full well that my husband was entirely and completely uninterested in this movie, I tossed it in the DVD player and watched it. My daughter, who shares a name with the main character, watched it with me. (Honestly, it probably wasn't a kids' movie, with swearing and sex, but both were tastefully done and I decided not to make an issue about it. To be perfectly frank, there's nothing in the film she hasn't seen or heard before. God knows, I'm not modest, so she's seen naked fat chicks, and my husband and I are a little less discrete with our language than perhaps we'd like to be. Getting Darcy to stop saying "What the hell?" has been an interesting parental challenge.)

There movie opens up with a bitch session at the local Fat Acceptance Group. I don't think there's a single thing said in that first five minutes that I haven't said, or heard someone say. I spent a while with that half-smile, nod your chin, or just shake your head the tiniest bit... You know the whole "I've so been there, done that" look.

The movie covers a lot of topics, from sizeist issues such as airline and movie theater seats being too small to such wince-worthy moments like the guy who quits the Fat Acceptance walking group because he needs to gain weight in order to medically qualify for the gastric bypass surgery. There's a lot of yelling back and forth between Lydia - the obese girl - and her lover, who is going for the surgery, about whether or not it is cheating.

Bob: "If I got Lasik eye surgery because I needed glasses, would that be ok?"

Lydia: "Yes, but you can't correct your vision by eating right and exercising!"

Bob: "I can't lose weight by doing those things either. I'm weak, so be it. You don't expect a crippled man to go without his crutch, do you?"

or later:

Darcy: "So if you take an insecure woman and she gets the nose job and the boob lift and the tummy tuck, what do you have? An insecure woman in a mask. With scars."

I'm never sure how I feel about medical intervention as a solution. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of fat as a disease. The "obesity epidemic". No, people, please. The 1918 flu was an epidemic. I know, even if I had qualified for the gastric bypass surgery, I would have never done it. I don't feel comfortable with the whole idea of being cut open and having things stitched and stapled together. I wouldn't do plastic surgery, either. I may not always be comfortable with how I look, or how much I weigh, but I don't think... well, let me explain it this way:

After my car accident, I had to have two surgeries. One to set the bones and pins and brackets in place, and one to remove one screw. I still have several plates and screws in my leg. There is a C-curve scar along the inside of my right ankle and a long, straight scar, intersected regularly with horizontal slashes, starting at my ankle and running six inches up my leg.

The first time I saw my leg, after the car accident (the EMTs and Emergency Room Doctors would not let me look at my leg while it was broken...) I felt a strange detachment. That couldn't possibly be my leg. My leg didn't look like that. Whatever this was, I didn't own it anymore. It wasn't mine. It wasn't me.

I don't avoid looking at my leg as much as I used to, but I still have never quite felt the same about it. The scars and the injury became so much more and at the same time, so much less, of what I was.

I can't do that. My ankle won't allow it.

Like it has some sort of control over me, some external force of authority. I don't think of my other joints like that. I don't obsessively hate my elbow, for instance. It just does what it does. Sometimes it fails to perform the way I ask it to, and I don't worry about it too much.

Anyway, I could never, ever, volunteer to be cut open. Not so that I could look better, because no matter how I looked afterwards, I can't imagine that I wouldn't think I looked horrifying. I hate looking at my ankle, at the scars there. I wonder if other people think they're hideous. I couldn't imagine looking at my face and thinking the same thing.

I recognize that not everyone agrees with me. I have blog friends who have had gastric bypass and I have blog friends who have had plastic surgery. They're happy with their solutions, and I am happy for them. I certainly would never try to force my views on anyone about it. But it's not the approach for me. I just couldn't.

There were a lot of things to think about in that movie, and I haven't even sorted them all out.

Leader: "We are not a self-help group. We are here to get a screwed-up world to accept us"

Lydia: "What about accepting ourselves?"

Leader: "Well, if you’re having a hard time with that then you have internalized that prejudice. You are trying to change your body, Lydia, and that is self-hatred, pure and simple."

Lydia: "You’re trying to change the world. Does that mean you hate the world?"

Leader: "Yeah... I do. Very often. Don’t you?"

Do I hate the world?

Yeah, sometimes.

Do I hate myself?

Yeah, sometimes.

The Proverbial Thin Line

[Forgive me if this entry is a bit disorganized, I started writing it last week and then saved it as a draft when I went to do something else and completely forgot it was here.]

Have I ever mentioned that I'm a genius?

(Don't feel intimidated by this; there are less practical applications to intelligence than you might imagine. The brain is a muscle that can move the world, but like any other muscle, it atrophies with lack of use. For instance, I cannot produce a theoretical calculus equation without googling it. For that matter, I never could. Or, at least, I always hated math enough that I wouldn't, and wouldn't is almost the same as couldn't. Same end results, at least. Unless you're highly creative and manage to luck out in getting a job that can challenge your brain power, most geniuses I know - why yes, I do know several - live the same basic life as anyone else. Except, for perhaps, a greater awareness of how much basic life kinda sucks.)

Most of the highly intelligent people I know (and I am no exception) are thoroughly neurotic, have lousy self-esteem, are constantly over-thinking or over-analyzing things, and have pet peeves that include lists of common grammatical errors.

All this really boils down to my constant obsession these days: My complete and total awareness that Weight Watchers is a company out to make money.

That makes me somewhat suspicious and cynical. Really, my losing weight and getting to goal is not in Weight Watchers' best interests. A good company model means they want me to lose some weight, and get close - but not all the way to - to goal. They want me to feel that goal is in reach, so I don't get too discouraged and quit, since quitting means I'm not paying them anymore. At the same time, if I reach my goal weight, I also stop paying them.

However, they have a very thin line to walk down (pardon the pun.) If no one gets to goal, people will stop paying them, as well. They won't have great inspirational stories, and eventually people will stop believing that Weight Watchers can actually help them to lose weight.

Since Weight Watchers is based on a subscription service (much like World of Warcraft, without the pvp agenda!) the ideal company model is to make it take as long as possible to get from level 1 to level 70. (Sorry, mixing my metaphors here.) And then we have end game content... lots of endgame content! In the form of maintenance.

[Now, I know that I shouldn't be looking that far ahead. I've still got another 50 pounds or so to lose, so end game content really doesn't concern me yet. Except that I'm overly intelligent and I don't do much in a given day that challenges me, so my brain goes off on its own to find things for me to think/worry/obsess over.]

Now, the racket that Weight Watchers has is that - if you want to continue to take up space in a meeting as a lifetime (and hence, free) member - you have to stay no more than 2 pounds over your goal weight, and you have to weigh in once a month. If you're over your goal by more than 2 pounds, you don't lose your "lifetime" status, but you do have to pay for the meetings again until you're back under your goal weight.

2 pounds is NOT a lot of wiggle room. I cannot, however, discover if there's more wiggle room under your goal. Can you still have a free meeting if you end up 5 pounds under your goal weight? I mentioned that to Beth the other day, that Weight Watchers had a good money making racket going on, if you had only a 4 pound window to maintain. (As I've said before, my winter boots weigh at least 2 pounds.) She rather dodged the question by saying that she didn't think setting a goal weight higher than what you wanted to lose was a good idea. She says she's seen it happen too many times that people leave themselves some "extra" weight room and then because they have 10 pounds before they lose their free meetings, they become a little more careless with it, since they have those 10 pounds, and then suddenly they're on a gaining trend and it becomes hard to reverse it. (I think, based on what she said, that there is more wiggle room under your goal weight, but since she didn't specifically spell it out for me, that still leaves the question open for debate. Does anyone actually know for sure?)

The whole tug-of-war between profitability and delivering on their product probably consumes a lot of the executives at Weight Watcher Headquarters' time.

The Diet industry is Huge. I mean, like space is huge.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. - Douglas Adams.

Space is peanuts, compared to the Diet Industry.

This concerns me, because honestly, what incentive does Weight Watchers have to actually help me lose weight? Yes, I'm a cynic. No, I don't think that anyone beyond my leader, actually cares if I lose weight or not. (And sometimes I wonder about her. She seems like a nice person, and I do like her, but this is her job. She makes jokes about it sometimes... "What happens if you gain this week?" People in the back row; "Beth gets to keep her job!")

This is further complicated by the structure of the meetings themselves.

At our meeting, we have several lifetime members. Many of them have only lost between 20 and 30 pounds. (It's decidedly unfair of me to feel snarky about these people, since at least they were smart, and got into the program before they ended up in a size 26, but honestly, I don't always feel I can relate to someone who's cheering and happy about fitting back into a size 4. I've never been a size 4. Not even when I was four.) We have one guy, Danny, who's lost 85 pounds.

And then we have Marsha. Marsha means well, I'm sure, but I honestly wish she wouldn't come to the meetings. Or wouldn't talk as much. Or something. She's been an on and off member of Weight Watchers since 1972.

I was born in 1972.

She's been an on and off again member of Weight Watchers for thirty-six years. And she's still at least 100 pounds overweight. And she's always cheerful and encouraging and hopeful... and for god's sake woman, at what point do you stop being Pollyanna and just give it up as not working?? She attends meetings with her daughter, who's about twenty-three or so. And who is just as round as her mother. Which makes me think that either they both have a really bad genetic/medical condition or - and I consider this more likely - she's just not learning anything.

This is exceptionally discouraging. And I know I should be a better person about it, but I'm just not. I'm selfish and shallow and cynical and honest to god, listening to this woman is emotionally painful. She tries and she fails and she tries and she fails, and I can't decide if she's lying about what she eats or what. She celebrates her little successes and ignores the fact that she's spent an entire lifetime on a lifestyle change that isn't changing her lifestyle.

On the other hand, I expect the bigwigs at Weight Watchers think she is the ideal client. One who keeps paying and paying and paying...

Please, Keep Your Excuses (I Have Enough of my Own)

Thomas has always said he hates biology. Unlike math, or chemistry, biology is unpredictable. In chemistry, if you add X element to Y element and add Z amount of energy, you always, always get R. Two plus two always equals four. Every single time.

Biology? Not so much. Sometimes you breed red-eyed fruit flies with white-eyed fruit flies and you get pink-eyed fruit flies. And sometimes you get all red-eyed fruit flies anyway. And from time to time, a brown-eyed fruit fly will show up in the mix. And while there are percentages and trends, you cannot predict. Ever. Exactly what will happen. (For instance, sometimes some idiot might decide to OPEN all the fruit fly tubes during the weekend and infect the entire school with mutant freaking fruit flies so that your English teacher decides to give bonus points on the final exam based on who can kill more of the little bastards. And wrote points up on the board WWI Flying Ace style so you could see who bagged the most fruit flies. Not that that happened, or anything... no, no, of course not. Purely hypothetical.)

I always liked biology, back in high school, because it wasn't predictable. You never quite knew what was going to happen, or why, but you could run experiments and find out.

I find I'm liking it less when I am the experiment. Didn't get in all your waters this week? Are you up, or down? Is it consistent over the weeks? Did you eat all 35 of your flex points? Forget to journal? What's the scale say?

Of course, I'm up again this week. 1.2 pounds, as a further matter of fact, which is the largest gain I've had since starting Weight Watchers. Sigh. I've been journaling though, so I've been pouring over my journal obsessively. The only things I can really see that might be the problem is 1) I ate all of my flex points and most of my activity points, which put me at 38.5 flexies. and 2) it's the week-to-10 days before my time of the month and sometimes I have a gain/small loss/maintain that week.

It never fails, however. As soon as I gain, I get el sticky globules of sympathy, advice, excuses, and theories about why I gained.

"Did you step up your exercise? That might be it."

"Time of the month?"

"You know, that's normal, right?"

I know. The entire point is to make me feel better. And honestly, I do appreciate the sympathy. I don't, however, appreciate the excuses.

I'm perfectly capable of coming up with my own excuses. Trust me, I am the Reigning Queen of Why-it's-Not-My-Fault.

But in all honesty, that's not what I need right now. I do not need to be blasé about my weight loss. I don't want to shrug off a pound with yet another round of how the world is out to get me. I don't want to get complaisant yet.

What I'm most afraid of here is becoming apathetic.

This is the weight my body is comfortable with.

That's the place I don't want to go. If I make too many excuses about why this isn't my fault, why I couldn't do better/try harder/be more vigilant, I'll get back to that place where I was blaming my ballooning weight on steroid pills that I haven't taken in five years.

For years, I blamed my size on steroids. It wasn't my fault that I was this big, it was doctors who didn't warn me about the side effects of the medication I was constantly taking. It wasn't my fault I couldn't lose weight, there was no way I could exercise, not with my ankle the way it was. My asthma is bad, I can't even walk a mile, much less enough to do any good! It's not my fault.

It's long past time I owned my own mistakes.

Next time I gain weight, please, please just say "Oh, that sucks. I'm sure you'll do better next week."

I can find my own excuses.

Weight One Minute!

Once again, my "feelings" and my weigh in were not lined up.

I never understand that. (Despite my post yesterday, I wasn't really feeling too negative about my weight loss for the week... I just wanted to talk about the money thing and my poor opened box of chocolate bars...) It doesn't seem to matter how I feel, it always does not go. If I feel fat, I lose weight. If I'm depressed and angry when I walk in the door, I did good. If I'm upbeat and cheerful, fate smacks me in the face and I've gained. And it does seem in direct proportion...

For example: I bought new clothes this weekend. I knew that my 18s were way too big. I've been holding them up with a belt and a prayer recently. My size 16 pants fit, and there was a smallish gap in them, but it's summer, and only a masochist wears pants in the summer in Virginia. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Miss Sweatpants Queen...) Still, playing around with Darcy in the front yard - jumping ROPE of all things. Me! Jumping ROPE! - my shorts fell down.

Time to get new shorts, right? Right. So we hit up the Target, and I started scoping out the selections. I almost bought a horrible pair of lime green shorts just because they were god-awful (yes, I do that. I have one of the ugliest stuffed animals on the planet because it was just so ugly I had to have it...) but decided to get the maroon ones instead. I went to the changing room with a pair of 16s, a 14 and a 12 (just in case.) and some large and medium shirts.

I decided to try the 14 on, and they fit perfectly. I was quite pleased. When I lost all the weight from being on the gestational diabetes diet while I was pregnant, I never got back into 14s. I held up the medium shirt. I looked at it. "This is so never gonna fit me," I muttered. But I pulled it on anyway, and was moderately astonished that it did.

Yesterday, I took a picture of myself and was actually happy with the picture. That's a first!

So, when I went into the meeting, I was expecting to get my 45 pound bling.

Yeah... yeah yeah yeah. I'm up a pound this week.

SIGH.

So, no bling. I spent the rest of the meeting fuming.

(Ok, I'm a bad person, I admit it. Thomas was up 1.4 this week as well, so I feel slightly better about it. At least I didn't have to put up with his weight loss...)

I'd love to have a reason for this. I'd love to point at this, or that, or the other and say "oh, well, here's the problem."

Except I can't. Not for sure. I haven't been journaling for... oh, probably 8 weeks at this point. I think it might be that I've been missing bread recently, so every day for the last week or so, I've been eating a weight watcher's english muffin and some weight watcher's cream cheese. This is only 2 flex points, but I generally also have a Skinny Cow Popsicle in the evening, too. That's flex points. Per day. That's 21 points right there of my flexies. And we ate out at Applebee's this weekend. Now I was "good" in that I only had half my roll-up (7 points) and about half my fries (10 points)... still 21 + 17 does not equal 35. I probably used more points than that this week. I seem to recall my mexi-chicken dish as having a few points because I was out of fat free cheese and used low-fat instead... so, I probably went over my flex points by a considerable chunk.

Starting last week, Thomas and I are on the pay-by-the-month plan for Weight Watchers. This includes free access to the eTools, so I am going to start tracking what I eat again this week and get myself back into the habit of logging my food somewhere. You know, when I started Weight Watchers, I was logging in my journal, and logging here on my blog, and logging on the Daily Plate... I think I logged myself out... and even trying to cut back to logging in one place, I just wasn't keeping up with it.

Of course, it could also be the scale. There's three scales in the Center, and we usually weigh in on Beth's scale, but we were running late yesterday and she'd already started the meeting, so we had to weigh in on Fran's. Thomas thinks that Fran's scale is "off." I haven't really been paying attention myself...

Doesn't matter. This pesky pound is NOT allowed to stay, he is being evicted immediately, and while I'm at it, a few of his friends can go away as well.