Front Loading and Gold Stars

I'm trying a couple of things new, this time around.

First off, I don't really care how much I weigh. I don't want to know the number. I don't want to think about that. The number doesn't make me happy. It never has. It was never enough, it was always too slow, or it wasn't as much as last week, or even though I had a good week, Thomas would have a better week. (That always happened... if I lost 4 pounds in one week, Thomas would lose 7. And I know it's not fair to compare, but fuck it, I do it anyway. Did someone sign a contract with you that said life was fair? No, me either.)

Never made me happy. Ever.

So, I'm not weighing in. You won't see the "I lost 10 pounds!" over here. Because in the end, it does not matter. I'm not going to be happy with that number, so that number is fucking irrelevant. I'm not setting goal weights or goal sizes, or anything like that.

My plan is to eat well and exercise and what happens, happens.

I have walked over 10 miles since Wednesday. Gold Star.

I have logged my food - I do still have to count calories because I am NOT good at "intuitive eating" yet - every day. Gold Star.

I am also doing something a friend called "Front Loading."

Apparently we start out with a given amount of willpower each day - according to the friend - and as we go through our day, we use it up. We resist the muffin for breakfast, or the ice cream in the afternoon, and by 9pm we eat a whole bag of chips.

The idea is to Front Load my day; to not use all my willpower up at the beginning of the day. To eat between 35 - 50% of my daily allotted calories FOR breakfast.

My breakfasts are looking like this

2 egg omelette, a piece of cheese, tomato/spinach filling (240 cals)
cream of wheat and peach slices (150 cals)
2 slices of bacon (140 cals)

I'm not trying to limit my fat intake, as long as it's fat from a natural source (meat, eggs, etc). I'm not trying to stack fiber. I am trying to increase my vegetables/fruits and protein and cut down on boxed or pre-packaged food.

I'm also doing my workouts first thing. I get up, get the kiddo ready for school and get into my workout clothes. I take her to the bus-stop and as soon as she gets on the bus, I head out for my walk. I'm home by 8:30 and I eat breakfast, and I still have all the rest of my day to get things done without feeling like anything is hanging over my head.

Wax On, Wax Off

Waxing Lady: So this is your first time getting body wax?
Andy Stitzer: Yes. Yes it is.
Waxing Lady: Take off your shirt.
Andy Stitzer: Ok.
[Takes off his shirt revealing a very hairy torso]
Waxing Lady: [to whoever's outside] Oh, we gonna need more wax.
Cal: I'm staying. This is gonna be good.
Waxing Lady: and clear all my appointments in the afternoon.

40 Year Old Virgin

There are some days when I look around and I have no idea who these people are in my life. I'm not talking about friends; I'm talking about the woman who's wearing the size 8 jeans and who spends 15 minutes in the evening doing facial masks and the guy who is waxing his back.

Seriously.

When, really, did we become so vain?

My evening routine gets longer, it seems, every month. Right now I have a peach scrub facial wash, followed by a moisturizer. Once a week I do a 10-minute mask. I have moisturizer especially for my eyes. (That costs like $25 for this tiny little jar...) I have a lip mask and a lip balm that I use twice a day.

What happened to brushing my teeth and going to sleep?

My husband is wearing $70 designer jeans.

Huh?

He's also waxing his back.

Or, more exactly, I am waxing his back FOR HIM.

Now, the fact that my husband has hair on his back and chest has never particularly bothered me. It is what it is, and I don't worry about it... he's not furry enough to have that tuft that sticks out at the collar of his t-shirt, and really, that's all that's been important to me.

But, apparently, in addition to 1) not being able to swim very well, 2) not being able to see while swimming because my husband's eyesight is something scarily blind like 20/1000 and 3) being overweight, my husband has a phobia of the swimming pool brought about by the fact that he looks like he's got ursine ancestry.

So... we bought a wax kit and I have been learning the fine art of ripping someone's hair out by the roots.

Fun, fun.

Things to remember, if you try this at home:

- Pull the paper-strips off in the OPPOSITE direction of the hair growth. Otherwise, the hair (and wax) doesn't actually come off. And it's very painful.
- Do Not touch the wax. It's very, very sticky.
- The "after waxing lotion" doesn't do anything. Use mineral oil to remove excess wax.
- Be very careful where you put the lid. In addition to being sticky, wax... oozes. Everywhere.

All jokes aside, the results have been... very nice.

I'm just finding it weird how... image conscious Thomas and I have become.

I used to get up in the morning, and if I bothered to get dressed at all, I'd throw on my house dress. But usually, I just pulled on an extra long t-shirt and schlepped around the house in that, until shortly before Thomas would get home from work, at which point I'd toss on a bra, pair of shorts, use deodorant, and rake a comb through my hair. (Sometimes. Sometimes I skipped the hair-combing bit.)

My wardrobe consisted of a few dozen 3X t-shirts, whatever jeans I could find that fit, and step-in shoes. (Seriously, until last year, I didn't own more than three or four pairs of socks...)

These days, I have tops and coordinating sweaters. I have a pair of tights that are the same color as one of my shirts and a blue sweater dress. I have earrings and chunky bracelets that were bought specifically to match one of my outfits. I have three pairs of high heels that I wear regularly, very expensive running shoes, and a pair of step-ins that I often forget I have, since I'm too busy wearing my high-heeled boots.

My whole life has changed in ways that didn't seem important at the time, but lately have become noticeable as to how much has changed. Instead of leveling three alts to 80, I spent 3 hours at the gym per week. Instead of watching movies all day on Sunday, I walk seven miles. I went to the gym this morning at 6:30am because I won't be able to get in later today, and instead of resenting being awake that early, I more resented the fact that I could only spend 25 minutes in the gym, instead of my usual 90.

Strange.

(Now, if only all these changes were adding up... my weight loss has been stagnant for the last three weeks. gained .2, maintained, lost .2. Gyah!)

It's all Relative

I confess.

I'm a bad person.

I've been selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed.

I've been stupid.

I've been lazy.

I'm guilty.

I've been neglectful.

Lame.

Pathetic.

Whiny.

Disrespectful.

I know.

I've made bad choices.

I am, actually, quite cognizant of these things.

I can't change the past. (When I'm feeling a little more frivolous, I'm aware that this is a good thing, because otherwise we'd all be back in 5th grade thinking that really, with just one more attempt, we could get it right this time...)

I am a very forgiving person. I kinda have to be. Because I think everyone deserves second chances; third chances, fifth chances, eighty-ninth chances.

I know need those chances. So I have to give them out, because otherwise, why should I ever expect life to give me one?

I don't generally forget. It's not always on my mind, but I don't think I'll ever forget that my best friend of three years dumped me for my best friend, but it's ok. They're happily married and I'm happily married, and we're all still good friends, and the only reason it's important at all is that it's part of our history, and knowing that about us explains some of the weird commentary we make about each other.

I won't forget that Pearl once decided that we shouldn't be friends anymore (right about the time that we didn't have enough money to take her out to dinner on a regular basis..) but I can move on. We were estranged for... eh, I'm not sure, two or three years, at least. And while I don't always consider her a good friend, I help her out when I can, listen when she needs it, and I don't expect too much out of her.

I don't talk about my family much because, frankly, with the exception of my parents, all of my family has been out of my life for a long time.

I pretty much collectively disowned all of my mother's sisters and their families, and my dad's brother and sister and their families, just as soon as I graduated from high school and no one was forcing me to associate with them anymore.

Why?

I didn't like them very much. And I didn't feel liked.

I've always had a big problem with feeling "Least of 10". Whenever I'm in a group situation, I often feel; the biggest, the ugliest, the most stupid, the most boring, the least talented. And my cousin Harriet was always the best. You understand, Hickory (as we called her) was very allergic to everything when she was born. She almost died because my aunt couldn't breastfeed. She was always everyone's favorite.

Hickory speaks French, isn't that so lovely? (Yes, I know. And she goes to a bilingual school near Canada... I go to a crappy public school.) And she plays PIANO, how nice... why don't YOU play an instrument (how about the fact that I desperately WANTED to and my mother wouldn't ALLOW IT!) And she's this and that and... I was 11 months older than her, and whenever we got in trouble, it was always my fault. I was older, I should know better, I'm less, I'm not, you never...

Stupid, petty, childish reasons to dislike someone. She couldn't help that I felt inferior. But I resented it.

My aunt... well, she's a bit of a religious nut, and I'm an atheist. Sometimes I feel like it would be nice to have faith. I see what it does for other people, and I envy that. But I don't feel it. At the time, however, I was not just atheist, but I was a militant atheist. I considered people who believed in God to not only be delusional, but completely annoying on top of that. And my aunt, at least while I was growing up, was still trying to find her place in the religious community. She'd change churches every couple of years, be all fanatical about that ice-cream flavor of the week for like six to eighteen months, find something about the church or the congregation that annoyed her, spend a few months with the drama llama, and then change churches.

That was immature of me. I was just as closed-minded as I was accusing Christians of being. Of assuming that because I didn't believe, that it was stupid, mindless, pathetic, and annoying.

I don't... do funerals. I know what they're for, and I know why people think they're important... but I just can't. I find what's happened to me is that for every funeral I've attended, that becomes the most important, consuming memory for me of that person. I barely remember things that my friend Tracy and I used to talk about, but I remember every minute of her funeral in crisp, painful detail. I hate it. I don't feel comfort. I don't get closure. What I get is a big freaky sticker on my memory that says Never Shall Ye Pass that obscures every other memory...

I didn't go to my dad's mother's funeral. I didn't go to my mom's parents funerals.

But I did say "Good Bye, I love you," to my grandmother the day she died. I remember vividly one day, waiting for my plane to fly home to Virginia from my annual summer visit, she ran her fingernails through my hair for the better part of an hour, while she thought I was asleep. I remember her standing on the deck at camp, yelling at Hickory and I for accidentally running over her water lilies with a canoe. She wore dozens of rings on each finger, her hands were covered with them, and each one had a special significance to her - I remember thinking that she'd probably have a mean right hook, if she ever hit anyone. I remember playing game after game of cribbage. I remember building huge card-houses across the family room floor and having her teach me a more secure building so I could stack the card-houses over a story. I remember using her waterpick; my nozzle was green. She had hundreds of pairs of earrings, and she always, always was wearing a pair; some of them are now sitting in my jewelry box. I remember sitting up in the attic with her one day, going through boxes of old clothes and jars of buttons and bags of beads and just talking. She collected music boxes. She had dozens of them, scattered through the house.

And none of those memories are tainted with the irritation that I always feel, being in churches where everyone else feels faith and comfort. They're not ruined by someone trying to make her more than she was, by acting like, in death, she'd never made a mistake, that by dying everything she'd ever done was perfect, inspiring, whatever. She was all those things, and she was also a flake. She couldn't sing half as well as she thought she could. She was judgmental, thought I read meaningless crap without taking into consideration that at least I read books, whereas most of my cousins didn't. She nitpicked. She developed "headaches" whenever she wasn't the center of attention.

I remember, and loved, a real person. And the grief I feel, writing this now, is just as real, and just as fresh, as it was that afternoon, almost twelve years ago, when my mother finally got in touch with me (I'd driven down to visit Thomas for the weekend, we were just starting dating at the time, and after work on Friday, I'd drive down 3 hours from Lynchburg to Chesapeake to spend the weekend with him...) to tell me that she'd died.

Other people have closure.

More power to them.

I have a real person. She was real.

I can't be sorry about that.

Once my parents, in their divorce and just the distance between us after that, didn't force me to send Christmas cards, or call, or whatever... I didn't. I saw my grandparents once, or sometimes twice a year. They migrated from New York to Florida and often stayed with my mom on their way down and back. But aunts and cousins... I didn't call. I didn't write. My freshman year of college, my aunt wrote me one letter. The first line of the letter was this, "I don't actually expect you to write me back, because well, I'm sure you feel it's not worth your time, but..."

I didn't write back.

And I didn't call.

And time passed.

My cousins got married, divorced, had kids... sometimes even in that order. I sort of vaguely knew about it. Sometimes I didn't. I don't know what my cousins' families names are, or how many kids they have.

I had my own things to do, and the longer I went without any contact, the harder it got to start any...

What have I done with my life? I've been stupid. I got married young, got divorced. Got fat. Got in a car accident. Nearly died from asthma complications. Got better. Got thin.

I don't have a stunningly interesting job. I don't do the sorts of things that make for a nice, cute Christmas card. I don't even, most of the time, have the sort of life that makes a funny, sarcastic Christmas card.

I couldn't think why to bother to contact them... I didn't like them as a child... but that doesn't mean that as adults we couldn't have found some common ground; even if it was just our past relationships and shared experiences.

And the longer I didn't, the easier it got just to not...

To continue to not. (And in my more self-castigating moments, I'd snarl to myself that the phone lines did, actually, go both ways...)

In the land of procrastination, contacting my relatives... was the mountain that I'd even given up saying I was going to climb.

When I started kicking the idea of doing the Komen walk around in my head, it occurred to me that while I hadn't contacted my relatives in years, my mother was still in some touch with them; at least her sisters if no one else.

And that there were people out there who cared about my mother, and who supported her when she was ill, and who have prayed and thought of her while she recovered.

So... and I admit, it was harder than I expected it to be... I started making calls.

Let me make this perfectly clear: I don't need their support. I believe I can make these donations without their help. It is not "just about the money." I've made a lot of changes in my life. I feel, to some degree, that I might be worth something. Which makes me question a lot of decisions I made earlier in my life, when I felt that I wasn't worth anything. Are my relatives really as useless, stupid, demanding and annoying as I've always said, or were they, too, worthy people? As distanced as we've been, there's no way to know that.

I had to open the door and take a look.

It has not been easy, and honestly, I didn't expect it to be.

I don't know what I expected.

The Long Walk

"Hi. My name is Lynn. You might not know me. I live in here in Chesapeake. I'm a stay at home mom. I went to college at William & Mary and majored in literature. I have a love for action movies, science fiction, Russian art, Irish beer, Jackie Chan, and just about anything with cheese on it.

I'm thirty-six years old (thirty-seven in May!) and grew up in Louisa County, Virginia. I used to spend summers in upstate New York with my grandparents. My mother's parents and my dad's parents lived about four miles away from each other, near a tiny town called Peru.

My favorite color is green.

This is my mother. You probably don't know her either. Her name is Cynda Abolt. She's sixty years old and lives in St. Simon's Island, Georgia. She's an historian and a reenactor and a member of the National Park Service. Nine years ago, she married my step-father in an early 19th century period wedding down in New Orleans.

Her favorite poem is The Doormouse and the Doctor, by A.A. Milne. She likes suspense movies, novels by Patricia Cromwell, and has an inexplicable fondness for purple cow creamers.

In October, 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery and several months of radiation treatment, my mother has been cancer free for a little over a year now.

(Insert picture of Gramma here, don't currently have one that's electronic)

This is my grandmother, Ethel Stafford. Her favorite color was yellow, and she had a collection of china birds, especially cardinals. During the Great Depression, she was a teacher. When my family visited her, she always made two batches of chocolate chip cookies, one with walnuts in them, for my dad, and one without, for me. She died in 1994 from pnuemonia. She had been a breast cancer survivor for almost ten years after a partial masectomy.

This is my aunt, Beth Anne. We called her Big Beth, as opposed to her daughter, Little Beth. She lived in a log cabin, and enjoyed sailing. She died two years ago from heart disease. She was also a breast cancer survivor.

Betty Poe, friend of the family. Died in 1987 from breast cancer.

I never met my friend Leslie's mother. Brynia died from breast cancer in the mid 90's, before I even met Leslie.

These are women you probably don't know. But I expect if you looked around at your mother, your grandmothers, aunts, and cousins, sisters and friends, there are women you know who have been affected by this disease. Breast cancer is the second most prevalent form of cancer, after lung cancer, and the fifth most common cause of cancer death.

In 2007, after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I decided it was time for me to get healthy. At that time in my life, I was nearly 100 pounds overweight and had been sedintary for years. In early 2008, I joined Weight Watchers and began a more active lifestyle. A little more than a year later, I have lost seventy pounds and am now in the gym three times a week.

But it's time to do a little more.

In October, 2009, I'm going to walk in the Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure. It's a sixty mile walk, spread over three days, to raise awareness for this disease and to raise money to help find a cure, better current treatments, and help provide screenings for people who can't afford them.

In order to do that walk, I need to raise $2,300 in sponsorship money. And, quite obviously, train to be able to walk that far."

Here's where I'm asking for your help.

At the moment, I have not actually paid my registration money to walk... I am hoping to get verbal promises for sponsorship for at least half of the money I need to raise in order to join the Walk. Once I get promises for half, I'll pay my registration fee and get an on-line donation form set up. I've gotten permission from my apartment complex manager to post requests for donations to all the residents in my complex. I'll hit up local businesses.

When I raise the money, I'll be blogging/tweeting from the walk so you can share this experience with me.

To this end, I have decided to shelve my C25K training - since really, I'm just not capable of doing that many different kinds of training - and begin working towards increasing my walking endurance.

It's going to be a long walk. I hope you'll join me.

If you are interested in making a verbal promise, please post in the comments how much you think you will be willing to sponsor me for. You are NOT obligated to do so at a later time, but if you don't think you will, or can afford to, please do not promise. When I reach a goal of 50% required donations in verbal promises, I will set up the online donation forms for you to make good! Thank you very much for listening, and for any help you can give!

Update: You guys are AWESOME. Look how far we've come in just a few hours!!

Would you like some Cheese with that Whine?

Sometimes, people explain too much.

Recently, I was having a conversation with my step-mom about something completely unrelated to weight-loss. I had my hair pinned up in a Chinese braid (which has become my favorite way to wear my hair... it looks sophisticated and complicated and takes me a whopping three minutes to do...) and was looking out the window while we were chatting. (My dad and step-mom have about 30 bird feeders in their yard, so there's always a flock of avian leeches hanging around their backyard.)

"You know," she interrupts me to say, "I was just noticing, with your hair up like that, in profile, now that you've lost all that weight... you're really sort-of pretty."

Wow, I thought. Did she really need to qualify her compliment that much? Not that I object to being called pretty... and not that I don't qualify everything I think about myself... but my goodness... so, I have to be thin, with my hair up, and turned to the side to be sort-of pretty? And what does "really sort of" mean? Really sort of pretty? Really, only sort of pretty? Sort of really pretty?

Advice: If you're giving me a compliment, please don't qualify it. (Trust me... I will qualify, disbelieve, and worry over the compliment enough as it is...)

(Not that I think Rosie meant to get me all in a dither... but by the time she said it, I'd spent the last two days being raved over by my assorted not-quite-relatives about how good I looked, and I was starting to feel a little... weird about it. Like, I look so great now, which correlates nicely to how TERRIBLE I must have looked before! I found myself, after about sixty of these comments, really wanting someone to say something like "My goodness, Lynn, you're just so smart!" Something. Please, god, people. I know I lost a lot of weight, but being thin is NOT the only good thing about me, I promise. At least some of the "spotlight" got swiped by my cousin's wife, who's finally pregnant - finally? she's only been married for like 18 months - and everyone got sidetracked in talking about that instead. Which was fine with me. Being fussed over that much was a little... awkward.)

We went to weigh in last night, and once again, Thomas shows me up. I wish I could get over this, but it frustrates me so much... He's on maintenance, and because he's a guy, he gets 8 more points a day over me anyway, so that's 12 points he gets, then 17 for his weight, then three or four for his height, and another two for his age... some 35 points to my 21. Last week he ate (that I saw) three cupcakes from the deli (the kind with the two inch layer of frosting that looks like a dinosaur on them!) all of his dinner at the "would you like a side order of cheese with your cheese?" restaurant, and half a piece of chocolate cake... and he lost 2.4 pounds.... I worked my ass off at the gym three times last week for about 90 minutes a session, abstained from the cupcakes, and only ate half my dinner when we went out... to lose 1.4. It's just. Not. Fair.

Thomas weighs less than 20 pounds more than I do. Without putting much effort into it, he's kicking my ass on the stationary bike, he lifts more, he does more push ups... he eats more and he's losing more weight. He looks like 10 times better than I do... I'm only 11 pounds from being classified as "normal weight" according to the BMI charts and yet I still look like a fat, middle-aged housewife (the more frustrating part about this is that I am a fat, middle-aged housewife...) Because he works and I stay home, we have to keep on top of his wardrobe, because he cannot look like a rag-bag at work. He works with client teams and customers, and he needs to look well-groomed and put together. I'm a mother. As soon as anyone sees a young child with me, they immediately file me in the "walmart shopper" catagory and it doesn't really matter what I'm wearing, no one cares. So, his clothes fit and mine... not so much. He looks nice and I... don't.

And I know that it's not his fault, and that, actually, he's trying to maintain his weight, and he's having a lot of trouble finding the good balance between wanting to be fit and what he can eat, and I positively refuse to cook two different meals in order to put full fat cheese and meats into his dinner. Not to mention, I don't want Little Debbie cakes in the house. I don't want to put my weight loss in jepordy because he can't be bothered to eat breakfast.

On the other hand, if I'm not mad at him about it, the only other person that I can legitimately be mad at is myself.

And believe me, I am. I'm mad that I must not be working hard enough, that I could do better. And at the same time, I know I'm being completely ridiculous and unbearable and insufferable. I know that weight loss is not Zero-sum DKP, that Thomas losing weight doesn't mean that I'm not also losing weight. I also know that I'm not being a good partner because I'm constantly harping on this theme of "why do you always have to show me up?"

And yet... while I know... I just can't help but be disappointed.

So... Lifetime membership comes with... less benefits...

Thomas got lifetime last night.

He started Jan 3, 2007, weighing in at 253.2 pounds.

Here's a picture of him in July of '06. At the time, he was wearing 44 x 32 pants and a size XXL t-shirt.

I never really thought we'd stick with this weight loss program. I tried not to talk about it too much because I didn't want to be discouraging, nor did I want to talk my way into quitting becoming reality.

I have often taken my husband's sloth-like tendencies for granted. He's not a really changeable sort of guy. Once he settles into his routine, it takes an act of god to get him moving again.

I would say he's decidedly shown me that he can be more than I expected.

I'm very proud.

(And truth be told, a tiny bit jealous, but you know, we're not going there...)

Here's what he looks like now:

81.8 pounds later, he weighs in at a lean 171.4 pounds.

He's wearing 32 x 34 jeans (no, I don't really know where the extra 2 inches came from in the leg...) and a Medium shirt.

It's pretty amazing...

Despite being amazing, I must say I'm a little put out with Weight Watchers... apparently while Thomas now getting meetings for free, the Online eTools (should he chose to continue to use them) will cost him $16 a month. Given that eTools was free with the Monthly pass ($40 a month), is weight watchers really saying that meetings are worth ~$24 a month (or $6 per meeting?)... really, I don't see the servers that eTools being WORTH $16 a month...

Ah well... it's not like Thomas likes tracking anyway... this week upcoming, we're supposed to get the coaching on how to go back to Core (Simply Filling...) and I rather suspect he'll go back to that.

My own weight loss was somewhat less than impressive this week, only down .2 pounds. But you know, that's ok... when I look back through my food journal for the past week, I don't think I was eating enough for the amount of activity I added in. Part of it is the new tracking system. I'd gotten used to the way they did it before, which is to say, APs were used first, and then WPAs...

I had determined, through trial and error, that I needed to eat at least 3/4 of all APs and no FEWER than 12 WPS but no MORE than 25 for the best weight loss.

Last week, I earned 28 APs and ate... 17 flex points.

Bad Lynn!

So, this week's goals are to keep up with the workouts (did one today, 35 minutes on the bike, 5.4 miles and 35 minutes High Intensity Interval Training on the treadmill, varied back and forth between 2.5 mph at 5 incline and 3.5 mph at 2 incline, did 40 crunches, benched 50 pounds for 7 reps, did 20 pound bicep curls and tricep extensions, stretched, and walked back and forth to the gym which is about a quarter of a mile each way...) and to remember to eat enough to keep my body burning fuel efficiently and effectively.

Gym Bunny

Our apartment complex, after years of being completely lame, and last year the pool didn't even open (much to my disgust, which was seconded only by the guy who had been hired to be the lifeguard. They wouldn't let him out of his contract, so he ended up spending the summer sweeping the sidewalks, and brushing cobwebs off the sides of the buildings...) decided to open a Fitness Center.

This makes me happy, since both me and Thomas (Can't believe I wrote something that grammatical horrendous!) Thomas and I want to further our health and wellness goals to include getting into some other shape besides flabby. Thomas has lost 80 pounds, and while I'm sure we all hate him for that, he's still... well, flabby. But thin! And quite good looking! On the other hand, while today will be his last paid meeting at Weight Watchers (unless, of course, he falls off the wagon!), I still have another 30 pounds to lose before we'll stop paying for that... and gym memberships are Not Cheap.

So, the Fitness Center really could not have come at a better time for our finances. A Gym Membership for family is like $75 a month, and that's just not feasible at this time. I don't care how many salsa classes they offer.

My Fitness Center key is attached to my Shiny New Australia keychain and has a green star "Bravo!" sticker attached to it. Since getting my key, I've been to the gym three times.

The first time I went, I did 15 minutes on the stationary bike and 15 minutes of walking, as well as some weights and some stretches. Nothing big, I was just familiarizing myself with the equipment and trying out a few things. The bike seems a little odd to me, since the pedals are in a seated, flat leg position, rather than what I think of as being an actual biking-position, which is to say 'standing, with an uncomfortable seat under your butt." That was Tuesday, last week.

Then I went again on Friday because it was cold and rainy and I didn't want to drag Darcy on the long walk... not to mention not really wanting to be outside in the cold and wet myself. That time, I did an hour on the treadmill and some crunches and weights. I really like the treadmill... I slowly increased the speed and incline of the machine and worked my way up to a really good sweat.

And I went again yesterday (Sunday)... got in 30 minutes of biking and 30 minutes of walking. Used the sit-up bench to do crunches, did bicep curls and tricep lifts, stretched, and then walked home. While I was there, another resident came in to the gym. By that time, I'd been working out for a good 40 minutes, so I was hot, sweaty, and probably looked a bit like a gym bunny if you don't have much experience with gyms or gym bunnies. He looked at me. Then he crossed the room to the weights. And looked at me. And fiddled with the settings. And looked at me. And did a few half-hearted bicep curls. And looked at me. And then he left.

I'm not sure if he was afraid of me watching him try to figure out what he was doing with the weights, or if he didn't want to groan and strain in front of me, or what. It was certainly odd. I never thought I'd be the sort of person to intimidate someone else with my fitness prowess.

A few hours later, Thomas and I did our short family walk (the 2.2 mile walk, as opposed to the 3.5 mile walk).

"I wonder how long I'll keep being enthusiastic about the gym," I chirped. I was in a fairly good mood, felt productive and if not exactly in the peak of fitness, certainly fitter than I have been in the past.

"Oh, probably until your next weigh-in," Thomas said.

"Eh?" That certainly wasn't what I expected.

"You've kicked your workups up at least 100% over what you normally do," he said. "I doubt that's going to have a good effect on tomorrow's weigh-in. At which point you'll get discouraged..."

"Woah," I said. "What boat did I get on? Let me be the cynic around here, I'm much better at it than you are."

The Plan

The Plan:

Go to Best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat as much as I want. Get overly stuffed. Do not feel guilty. Walk tonight, and extra this weekend. Gain weight this week. Accept this as being a normal part of life.

The Ideal:

Go to Best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat as much as I need, but no more. Feel pleased with self-control, but not deprived. Walk tonight and extra this weekend. Lose or maintain weight. Feel proud of self and accomplishments.

The Probable:

Go to best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat not enough to be happy, but more than I need. Feel deprived and guilty. Gain weight anyway. Hate self.

The Possible:

Go to best friend's parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Eat some, get thrown up on by sick infant. Catch stomach virus. Spend all weekend throwing up. Gain weight ANYWAY and be truly and thoroughly convinced that the universe is a vile, evil place.

I'll let ya know how it goes...

Nine and a Half Weeks

(Well, more like Seven weeks, but hey, making obscure, old movie references is kinda fun...)

Anyway, it's been seven weeks since the last time I hit a 5-pound star. I hit 55 pounds lost on October 6th, and then pretty much bounced around between 54 and 58 for weeks.

I've been trying to be patient and determined and not frustrated and if you've been paying attention, you know I have not been doing very well at those things... you also can probably guess how much of the impatience and stressed and frustrated that you haven't seen. I had three weeks in those seven where I gained, or maintained. Quite frustrating, really. It's by far the longest stretch of time I've had between 5 pound markers...

But we have increased our walking in the last two weeks, and I think that's made some difference. Also, I've been a lot more careful to journal what I'm eating (Or I would have been, if my computer hadn't taken a sudden nose-dive last week and caused Thomas to spend at least 48 hours during his week-long vacation trying to keep it running. Obviously, it is running, but it's not at all... well, you'd have to see it to believe it... the thing is on the floor, open, because the replacement power supply - scrounged from another system - doesn't fit inside the case. It's given to shorting out randomly, and my graphics settings are turned to the bare minimum, somewhere between Big and "Do you want your mom in Georgia to be able to read this without putting on her glasses?") I've lost almost 4 pounds in the last two weeks, which is pretty good for me. These days, I've been lucky to lose more than a pound at a clip...

Anyway, since I haven't been around for much this week; between my computer not working, and when it was working, I've fallen face-first into the new Warcraft expansion... here are some scenes from my life in the last week that I thought I'd share with you.

Scene: 6:30pm, Thursday night.

Lynn: Oh, hell.

Thomas: What?

Lynn: We need to walk tonight. And it's the long walk. And I haven't started dinner. So by the time we get home from the walk, at 7:30, it'll be past 8 before dinner's ready... maybe... Ah! yes. I can cook dinner in the toaster oven. When it reaches the end of its timer, the toaster will turn off.

Thomas: Are you sure?

Lynn: Sure...

(somewhat later, about 1/4 mile away from the house, on the way back.)

Lynn: I think so, at least. That the toaster will turn itself off. I've never actually tested that theory.

Thomas: Are you burning the house down?

Lynn: Nah. Worst that'll happen is dinner will be completely inedible and we'll have to order out Chinese. And not like my diet-friendly Chinese stir fry, but you know, deep fried egg rolls and teriyaki steak and...

Thomas: ... 12 points a cup General Tso's chicken?

Lynn: Exactly.

Thomas: Never thought I'd be hoping for a burned dinner before....

[As a note, dinner was perfectly fine. The toaster acted exactly as I had thought it would, and will probably become my preferred way to cook dinner on Thursdays and Fridays, since we take our 3.4 mile walk on those days, which takes us about an hour, and leaving the house at 5:45 after Thomas gets home from work puts us at having dinner at a reasonable hour... Further note, having talked about Chinese food in detail, we decided to do Chinese as our splurge this week, and had it for dinner on Saturday instead.... I ate 5 mu shu pork rolls and one chicken teriyaki apetizer. Yes, with WHITE RICE too.]

Scene: Saturday, 10am

Darcy, playing with doll: My name is Darcy Angelia Carpenter.

Doll: And my name is Beth Carol Dollie!

Darcy: And this is my Mommy. Mommy Carpenter. And she needs to lose 30 pounds!

[Guess I've been talking about my eating plan a little much recently....]

And my last interesting piece of news... Thomas is now at goal! technically, a bit below goal. Two weeks back, he got to .6 pounds away from goal... then last week, he gained a pound... and then this week, he lost like 4.4 pounds... (god, that makes me so furious sometimes. I know he doesn't do it just to piss me off, but really... just once! I'd like to have a good loss and not immediately be upstaged by a factor of 2!) so now he's a bit under goal and weighing in at 172 pounds. (He's 6 feet tall and was aiming for a goal weight of 175...) So... now we're entering a new stage of our life...

Maintenance.

He gets now, on Core... 63 extra flex points per week to play with.

While I have another 32 pounds to lose before I'm at goal weight.

Yeah. This might be tricky.

Time on Target...

Target dates are flexible, you move when the target moves. Deadlines... are missed.
-- Thomas C. , Technical Project Management

It is time to look at my goals again...

When I first started this lifestyle change, I really didn't have any idea what was a reasonable amount of weight to lose. Not only that, but I didn't know what was a reasonable amount of weight to lose for me.

"They"¹ say that it's not healthy to lose more than one to two pounds per week. All those various ads and commercials that say "Lose 9 pounds in 11 days..." Not gonna happen. Unless you try something a bit extreme. 1 - 2 pounds per week. That's it.

However, I was pretty sure that I was not going to lose 2 pounds a week. That's 104 pounds in a year, and honestly, I didn't think that was anywhere close to a realistic expectation. Even if I had 104 pounds to lose. Which I didn't. Not much less than that, admittedly, but I was willing to take my comfort² where I could.

Ok... so, one pound per week... I thought I could live with that. That'd be 52 pounds gone by the end of the year. That would put me in the mid 160's by January, a weight I hadn't personally seen since Chris and I broke up in 1996, and I spent two whole weeks either not eating, or throwing up what I did eat. (Extreme stress is good for your weight. Unfortunately, the loss doesn't stick around, even if the stress does.)

And yet, further analysis of my own habits convinced me that 1 pound a week was probably not realistic either. After all, when I was pregnant and had lost a lot of weight (I went from 227 to 188 in 40 weeks) I hadn't lost quite a pound a week. And when I did that, I had some serious motivation. After trying so hard to have a baby, I didn't want to take any chances with the one successful pregnancy that I'd managed. I had iron willpower, but only - I thought - because something I wanted more than chocolate cake existed. I wanted that baby so badly that I ached, every single day³.

So... one pound a week was out. Therefore... what was reasonable?

I decided - eventually, after a lot of thought - that 35 pounds was a reasonable amount to expect to lose in a year's time. That would put me in the low 180s⁴ and I'd have lost a little over 15% of my body weight.

And, given how things were going, at first, that seemed like a goal I could make. It took me 16 weeks to get my first 10% gone. In those 3 short months, I'd already had gains, almost a full month of platuea... 35 pounds in a year. Totally doable.

I don't like setting myself up to fail. (It's so stupid. You don't learn anything by succeeding right away.... and yet, I hate failure... I hate how stupid I feel, how unworthy. I mean, it's not like my self-esteem is all that and a side of fries to start with, I don't need to make it worse by humiliating myself, do I? So... I sat around for years, just letting myself get fatter because I was afraid to fail. Which, in and of itself, made me feel stupid. I guess I eventually came to the conclusion that it was better to do something and be stupid, rather than do nothing and still be stupid.)

On the other hand, when my weight loss started picking up (right about the same time we switched to Core), I didn't want to make things too easy for myself. A goal isn't really a goal if it's easy. I was at -35 pounds by week 26. So, I revamped my goals again.

My husband works as a project manager. Which means, essentially, that he's in charge of making other people do stuff without having the authority to make anyone do anything.

He does this by setting Target Dates. Almost nothing he does is ever time-urgent (no matter how he might get personally frustrated when things take months longer than honestly, they should...). "Here's what I need you to do. I've got a Target Date of Oct 13th for it." And if whoever it is can't get it done by then, he readjusts his delivery time accordingly. There are no deadlines. People don't like deadlines. Deadlines get missed.

If you can't make the Target Date, he moves the Target.

I've reset my Target a few times. A few months back, I said I wanted to be at my second 10% and in size 14s by the end of September. Well, it's the end of September now, and I've made that goal. My next goal was to make my 3rd 10% and in 12s by the end of the year. (I said Thanksgiving, originally, but I still don't really expect to lose any weight during the holidays...)

I'm wearing 12s now. And my 3rd 10% goal is 160, which is less than 5 pounds away.

So, perhaps I should adjust my Target again.

There are 14 weeks left until the end of the year. Five of which are in the Dead Zone between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That leaves me 9 workable weeks until year's end.

Think I can hit another 12 pounds by year's end? That'll put me in the low 150's and will put me at -65 pounds lost for the year.



1. Oh, lookie! A footnote!

Justin: "Who decides that the work day is from 9 to 5, instead of 11 to 4? Who decides that the hemlines will be below the knee this year and short again next year? Who draws up the borders, controls the currency, handles all of the decisions that happen transparently around us?"

Sheridan: “I don’t know.”

Justin: "Ah! I’m with Them. Same group, different department."

Babylon Five, Episode 322 "Z'ha'dum"

2. Having been taught how to make footnotes, I'm probably going to overuse them for a while. But, speaking of comfort, I wanted to give you all my recipe for Rice Bowl, which is one of my favorite comfort foods. Why it's comforting, I'm not quite certain, since it comes from the day where I was poorer than dirt, but nonetheless... (Of course, if I was still as poor as dirt, I couldn't afford to make this anymore. Tomatoes are no longer cheap vegetables. Nor is 94/6 fat free ground beef cheap. For that matter, even rice is getting more expensive.)

It's sort of a mixture recipe. When my mom was serious about her diet, she used to eat rice with diced tomato, spiced with McCormick's Lemon Herb. The other recipe was from my ex-boyfriend Chris, who called it Man-food, which was basically ground beef spiced with mustard, steak sauce, and bbq sauce, served over a hamburger bun. I mixed the two recipes together - rice, tomato, ground beef, sauces - and added cheese and onions. It made for a very filling, quick meal that covered my basic food groups.

Rice Bowl

1 cup cooked brown rice (I often use leftover rice for this, or make up some of the 10-minute minute rice)
1 tomato, chopped
1/4 onion, chopped
1/4 pound low fat ground beef
1/2 cup fat free cheese (cheddar and feta are what I use, mixed together)
gulden's mustard
A1 steak sauce
Worchestershire sauce

pan fry ground beef with onion and sauces until sauce is thick, beef is cooked through, and onions are translucent and slightly soft.

Chop tomato, mix with cheese. Pour hot beef mixture over cheese and tomato. Add rice, stir thoroughly. Serve immediately.

3. What did I tell ya? Too many footnotes. Are these better or worse than my long parenthetical asides? Opinions?

Anyway, what I was going to say is that most of my friends wouldn't have believed how badly I wanted to be pregnant. While I'm generally a fairly open person - I don't just wear my heart on my sleeve, I freaking advertise it in neon - this was something I just was not willing to share until the point was moot. But trust me, getting pregnant was my all-consuming passion for the better part of three years.

4. I have a thing about 180 pounds... comes from a weird source, and I'll quote it here for you. If you've read this book, you might have a better idea of what my self-esteem is like, that I compare myself with Mrs. Kaspbrak.

Once, shortly before actually proposing marriage, he had taken a picture of Myra which she had given him and had put it next to one of his mother, who had died of congestive heart-failure at the age of sixty-four. At the time of her death, Eddie's mother had topped the scales at over four hundred pound - four hundred and six, to be exact. She had become something nearly monstrous by then - her body had seemed nothing more than boobs and butt and belly, all overtopped by her pasty, perpetually dismayed face. But the picture of her which he put next to Myra's picture had been taken in 1944, two years before he had been born (You were a very sickly baby, the ghost-mom now whispered in his ear. Many times we despaired of your life...). In 1944 his mother had been a relatively svelte one hundred and eighty pounds.

He had made that comparison, he supposed, in a last-ditch effort to stop himself from committing psychological incest. He looked from Mother to Myra and back again to Mother.

They could have been sisters. The resemblance was that close.

Stephen King, IT, 1986, Viking Penguin, Inc

I could stand being "relatively svelte."

Dem Bones

Hello again.

I hope I didn't leave everyone panting in anticipation of a wondrous and insightful blog posting.

[Ok, if I'm going to be honest, and I'm always honest (well, unless you ask me if you look good in yellow because no one does, ok?), I was. Hoping, that is. I always like to think of my readers as at least a little bit impressed with my writing... ]

That being said, I'm not sure I have any earth shattering insight this week. Well, not for anyone else.

I've been happy this week.

Pretty much unreservedly happy.

It's not a state I'm well accustomed to walking about in. Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that I have a bad tendency to both attract and borrow trouble. As if one thing weren't enough. If something's not going wrong, I start wondering when something will. In the hour of the wolf, I find myself mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios. I plan what I'll say to Thomas's mother, should Thomas get into a car accident and die on the way home from work. I hold long, imaginary conversations in which I explain to my father that his only grandchild has died. Or gotten cancer. I have protracted and totally fabricated arguments with Thomas when I discover he has been cheating on me.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. -- Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), Baz Luhrman

Good advice. If I can ever figure out how to do it, I'll let you know.

But this week has been a strange sort of quiet in my mental landscape.

I haven't been entertaining myself in my normal macabre fashion and envisioning disasters. I haven't been stressed out about my weight loss. I haven't been looking around when Thomas and I go for walks, wondering who's thinking "My god, she really let herself go."

(This being my most recent paranoia. Thomas is very close to his goal weight, like less than 18 pounds away, and he looks fantastic. And I... have between 33 and 44 more pounds to lose, depending on where I decide I'm happy with my goal weight. So I still look fat. And with the pre-schooler and walking around, I'm just positive that complete strangers probably think that Thomas is a good husband and concerned for his fat wife's health and dragging me out to get some exercise. And it's not that way at all, and I get so angry about what I imagine people are thinking... stupid stupid stupid. But there it is.)

Maybe it was the doctor. Splan looked at my charts and my bloodwork. He asked about my weight loss and my goals. And he said, "Well, you look great. Very healthy. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to easily make it to 125." He gave me an emergency inhaler, over a week ago, in case I needed it. I've used it three times, for vague tightenings in my chest. But not since Sunday. I really feel healthy. And that's a strange thing for me.

I mean, I've known my asthma was getting better, but I still thought of myself as being ill. It's been part of my self-identity for so long. "I'm a severe asthmatic." If you asked me to define myself, it would have been on the list. I don't think I can even find the words to tell you how strange and wonderful it feels to be able to draw a strike through.

I am a wife.
I am a mother.
I am a writer.
I am a severe asthmatic.
I am a dreamer.
I am a snarky babe.

Maybe it was Tuesday. I do the laundry every other week by packing it all up and taking it to the laundrymat. The same girl, Bonnie, is working there every week. She's a tiny little thing, with bleach blonde hair and a ready smile. I usually wave to her when I come in, and then I load the washers and go walk around the parkinglot, come back, load the dryers, and then walk some more. It gives me something to do and I like the alone time. This week, while I was taking my clothes out of the dryer and sorting them into baskets, she came over to me.

"Have you lost a lot of weight?" she asks.

"Hmm? Yeah," I said, tossing a t-shirt into the blue basket.

"I can tell. Your clothes are smaller." I find this deliciously funny, since she is the laundry girl, that what she noticed were my clothes.

"Thank you. About fifty pounds now."

"You look great. Your skin is just beautiful, too... very radiant."

Who would have thought the girl I see twice a month would even remember me, much less notice that I'd lost weight?

Or maybe it was yesterday. The UPS guy knocked on the door and asked me to hold a package for my across the hall neighbor. It's the same UPS guy I've answered the door to for almost four and a half years now.

"Have you been working out?" he asks me as I sign for the package.

Maybe it's just that I've hit a huge goal. Fifty. Pounds.

There's really not that much difference between forty-nine pounds and fifty pounds. One tiny little pound. Sixteen ounces. And yet...

But fifty pounds seems... huge. Mind-boggling. Impressive. And wonderful. And scary. All at the same time.

Maybe it's being merely overweight now, instead of obese.

Maybe it's the somewhat annoying thing that both Thomas and I have discovered recently. We have bones.

I mean, not that we didn't know that, honestly. I've broken enough bones to recognize that they are in there. Somewhere.

But now, they stick out in weird places. Thomas has discovered that he can't slouch over in his chair anymore because it hurts his tailbone. I have trouble sleeping in my normal curled up position because my ribs aren't padded enough. I have collarbones. And a sternum. I knew that thing was there, somewhere, but I haven't felt it in years.

Maybe it's that eight months has passed and I'm still doing this.

If you could have gotten me to answer honestly, in January, what I thought our chances were... I wouldn't have been kind. I would have guessed us at lucky if we managed to lose 35 pounds each by year's end. And that Thomas probably would have given it up as a bad job by April, and me shortly after he did. I don't even know that I wanted to lose the weight, but more that I wanted to be able to say that I tried. I really did, and it didn't work out, and now I'll work on self-acceptance.

But it has worked. And we are doing it. And I feel more comfortable and confident about our ability to keep doing it.

In 8 months:

I have lost 50.8 pounds. I have lost 3 inches from my upper arm. I have lost 11.5 inches from my waist. I have lost eleven inches from my hips. I have lost six inches from my thigh. I have gone from wearing 24s and 3XL shirts to wearing 14s and medium shirts. I have gone from taking $90 worth of medication a month to none. I have gone from sitting in front of the computer absent-mindedly eating 8 or 10 (or 15, or the whole damn bag!) mini twix bars to gaining a horrendous chewing gum habit, and drinking water. I no longer avoid going outdoors. I'm tanned. (And while I know that I probably shouldn't be happy about that, I am. I like the way I look with a tan.) I have actual muscles in my arms and legs. I no longer have a double chin. I don't have severe leg cramps any more, the kind that wake you up at 3am gasping in agony. I still sweat profusely if I'm hot, but I no longer sweat through a t-shirt in an air-conditioned room. I don't mind being outside in 95+ degree heat, playing with my child.

My goals, set earlier this year, were to be comfortably in size 14s by the end of summer (Sept 21st is end of summer, tyvm) and to lose my 3rd 10% by the end of year, being in size 12s by end of year. I've made it early to the 14s, with more than a month to go since I bought them. And my 3rd 10% is 161, which is 6 - 7 pounds away. I don't see any reason why I can't do this.

I'd be lying if I said that the idea of maintenance doesn't scare me, some. But it's less scary than it used to be. Do I think I can do this for the rest of my life? Yeah. I do.

I do.

Three Bags Full

Among other things on my vacationing-to-do list (top of the list was to sleep LATE at least one day, and one day was all I managed, but I did sleep til 10:30, and that's pretty good, so I'll take it. On the other hand, I also got 8 pages of scrapbooking done, watched a couple of adult movies, and had lots of spontaneous, middle of the day sex.) was to go through my old, over-sized clothing and pare things down a little.

I don't think I've ever suffered from the delusion that larger t-shirts made me look thin. I mean, how can you think you look thin when you weigh over 200 pounds? You just don't. But they were comfortable, and for a long time I was very unhappy with the idea of my clothing forming itself around my fat rolls. Not that loose clothing hides that you're fat; just the whole idea that one need not display said fat in saran wrap, not going there thankyouverymuch.

So, I always bought my t-shirts on the larger side. XXXLs. And they were huge. But comfortable. And they hung down around my knees most of the time (I am not tall) which meant that unless I was expecting someone over (and I never am... that's the thing about being a Stay at Home Mom. You Stay at Home. And rarely see another adult.) I could just lounge around all day in said t-shirt. So, I did.

Then I discovered the house dress... t-shirt material, calf-length dress. Loved it. Lived in it.

Somewhere... in the losing weight process... larger t-shirts stopped being so comfortable. I honestly couldn't tell ya when, or why. Just found myself plucking at a shirt if it was too big... shuffling the larger tees to the bottom of the drawer and only wearing the newer, smaller ones. Of course, I also dug out several L and XLs that I had saved away over the years... t-shirts that had some emotional reason to keep, even though I couldn't wear them anymore.

Thomas watched me grow this geological wonder of t-shirts, squashed into a drawer that really wasn't meant to hold over forty shirts. "Do you think, maybe, we might consider getting rid of some of those old clothes of yours?"

Thomas, by the way, is not a packrat. He has never been a packrat. He does not generally have emotional investment in things. Unless it's an old computer part, and I have learned my lesson there. I do not nag about his leftover computer parts. I've had my system salvaged until we can afford to get a new part - monitor, power supply, hard-drive, cd-rom, etc. Usually this happens about two weeks after I've said he should do something about the growing pile of salvaged computer parts. If I was of a more suspicious nature...

Anyway, throwing out stuff is not something Thomas has a problem with...

Me, I do. Less than I used to, but still. My mom... well, let's just say that my mom claims to have stayed married to my dad for as long as she did "for my sake." Yeah, great, let's just blame ten years of unhappy on the child, shall we? "Well, I just thought it would be better for you..." Oh, horseshit, woman. You stayed because he had money and you were scared of being poor. And you stayed so long and you were so miserable that by the time you finally left, you were too eager to get away to make a good fight for a divorce settlement. And you've been mad about it ever since, so will you just shut up already? By the time I left for college, things were abysmal around my house. I never went home for vacation if I could possibly find a friend to leach off of. (Thanks, Carol!)

The summer before college, my mom came into my room, looked around at all my stuff and said; "I'm going to use this room while you're gone for a crafting room. Anything you don't take with you, I'm going to throw away." She meant it. The week after I moved out, my mom set up my old bedroom as her bedroom, so she didn't have to share a bed with my dad anymore.

So... my freshman year, I dragged every bit of my shit from my hometown to my college. And then during the summer, I packed it all up, moved it into storage, moved it into a summer-school dorm, changed dorm rooms, moved it back into storage, and then out of storage and into a new dorm, halfway through that year I changed rooms again... I had nowhere else to leave my stuff, and I got obsessively attached to it. I'd gone through so much trouble to keep it, so much emotional pain... I just couldn't get rid of it. Not now. Not after all I'd been through for it.

The last bit of my college career, I actually had the same boyfriend for like, three years. In that time, we'd acquired a lot of community property stuff. And not since moving out of my hometown and knowing anything I left behind was considered trash and tossed, was anything so hard. Two days after he moved out, I had to go through all of "our" things and decide what was his and what was mine. Split up comic book collections, decided which CDs belonged to whom, which movies, which books... I believe (probably incorrectly) that I was fair about it, that I didn't keep anything that wasn't legitimately mine, and that I divided the stuff up as best I could. I never, ever want to do that again.

In further fact, I almost didn't let Thomas move in with me, when we got to that stage of our relationship, because I was so terrified of this intermingling of stuff. Finally, in a fit of desperation, Thomas grabbed a notebook and scrawled out "If I leave you, you can kill me and keep all the stuff. Thomas." and tacked it to my fridge. It stayed there for the two years we lived together in that apartment.

I still have that "contract."


Anyway... Thomas has been watching me, for weeks now, living out of, perhaps, less than one quarter of my entire t-shirt drawers (yes, that's three drawers of shirts. And my new shirts were taking up, maybe half of one drawer...)

"Ok, time to pare down," he says, leaning against the door frame and looking at me over the rim of his glasses.

"I just... don't feel comfortable with it. I mean, what if I get fat again? It's not like I haven't gained all that weight back before."

"So?"

"So, then I'll just have to buy new clothes all over again."

"So?" (Can you see why I love this man?)

"Well, that'll be expensive."

"How much clothes do you think you need?"

"Minimum?" I do some calculations. "Fourteen pairs of socks, fourteen pairs of underwear, three bras, twenty t-shirts, two sweaters or cardigans, four or five pairs of pants, ditto on shorts, and one or two nice dresses."

"And how much will that cost?"

"Maybe $400?"

"So, the smallest storage unit we can rent is $70 a month... I think it'll pay for itself if we have to buy more clothes rather than continuing to store all these things you're not wearing."

"Smart ass."

"I'm willing to take the risk that we'll need to buy new clothes again. I'm not willing to watch you attack your dresser every day with a crowbar trying to shove more shit in there. Pack. It. Up."

So... we did. Everything 2X or larger. My new t-shirts from Jeanne with the Jane Austen quotes? Gone. My lesbian t-shirt ("Sorry I haven't been attending church recently. I've been busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.") gone. My Lynchburg Storm t-shirt that was a gift from L.G. for designing his web page? Gone. The tank tops I got last year? Poof. Black dress with cherries on it? Gone. The dress I wore to my cousin's wedding. My house dress. The $180 adorable pink dress that I managed to find on sale at TJ Maxx for $14? Bagged.

I set aside one shirt, a 4X and one pair of pants, size 24, for later pictures when I reach my goal weight. Everything else was bagged up. No, I'm not the only one. Thomas did a similar paring down of his clothing, including several pairs of work khakis that were entirely too big, and a dozen shirts or so.

We filled three large trash bags with our old clothes. And yesterday, we took them, along with our old DVD player, and our old printer, to the Goodwill.

"Thank you, so much," the guy at the Goodwill said, as he was sorting things into bins at the drop off. "This'll really help some people."

"It already has," Thomas said, putting his arm around my shoulders.

TAN STAAFL

There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

My husband has now lost almost fifty-five pounds. He's wearing a medium-sized shirt, which he has not been able to do since high school. And size 36 pants, which he says he can't remember ever doing. He weighs 198.

His friend at work, the one who does the Ironman competitions, promised to take him out to lunch when he got to less than 200 pounds.

Why does this just seem like a contradiction in ideas, to me?

He... lost weight. So you're going to take him to lunch?

It seems like making a chocolate cake part of my reward for losing five pounds.

There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Greg Mankiw described the concept as: "To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another." To get his "free lunch", Thomas has given up eating cheeseburgers and moonpies and twinkies for eight months. To get his "free lunch," we walk over 6 miles a week. We play tennis, and climb hills, and run around the front yard. For two Computer Chair Eclairs, this has been impressive amounts of activity.


We dropped Darcy off with my parents this weekend. Remember I told y'all that my dad said he'd gained 25 pounds? I could tell.

"You know," Thomas says to me last night while we're in bed, waiting to fall asleep, "I was surprised by something this weekend."

"Oh?"

"When we were playing with Darcy?" I grinned. My dad and Thomas had taken turns playing "monster" while Darcy ran shrieking and laughing in circles around her new playhouse.

(Look at that thing! My god! And Rosie, my step-mom, has put in a paved brick walkway, stepping stones, a small picnic table behind it, flower boxes under the window... ok, maybe I'm not the only one who never had anything like this as a girl, and Rosie is acting out her own prepubescent fantasies.)

"Yeah, I remember."

"Your dad got tired before I did..."

Keeping in mind that my dad lives and works on a farm, that he's always been completely whipcord thin and fit as a fiddle... he's the man who ROWED us back to his beach house when the boat ran out of gas...

"Impressive." I rolled over. "His elliptical had dust on it." I borrowed the weight bench while we were there to do a few sets. (I used the seven pound weights, which is four pounds more than my at-home set of weights, and was pleased to see I could manage them easily. Maybe I should get some new weights.)

To some degree, I find it sad that we're competing, even mentally, with a man who's almost 25 years older than we are. On the other hand, everyone's got to start somewhere. So we started at the bottom of the hill; so what? The rock hasn't rolled over and crushed us yet. Between the pair of us, we've lost over 100 pounds. He's down 54 pounds, and I got my 45 pound bling yesterday. (That pesky pound was, indeed, evicted, along with 2.8 of his friends.... biggest loss I've had in quite a while.)

But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

We've given up a lot to get here. We've gone through a lot to get here. We've changed and made changes. Both of us still have a ways to go, but it's been a better journey for the help and partnership.

Fee to Check Bags

I accept that I have baggage, you know. I don't know a single overweight person who doesn't have some issues... ( I'm sure skinny people have issues too, I just wouldn't know anything about them.)

[My husband would like to pretend he doesn't have issues, but this is the man who wouldn't give me roses for the first seven years of our relationship because when he sent roses to a girl he liked back in college (bad timing for him, as he sent them about two days after she'd gotten together with someone else, but he didn't know that) she never spoke to him again.

One incident, and he decides the ROSES were the problem. So I got carnations. Or tulips. And honestly, it wasn't so much that I have a yen for roses, because I don't. I tend to prefer lilies anyway... but the fact that he wouldn't do it because of some other girl... yeah, I had a problem with it... a problem that was promptly stopped when a girlfriend of mine sent me - ok, technically speaking, her D&D character sent my D&D character - roses... real ones... no, I'm not the only person with issues.]

Wow. I got sidetracked there... why do you people let me run on like that? Don't you know better by now?

Issues.

Obviously, I have them. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be overweight and constantly ragging on myself, and if I wasn't doing those things, then I probably wouldn't keep a blog. Does anyone keep a blog who doesn't have issues?

One of my biggest issues is with my parents. (It's one of the reasons I'm so scared to death about being a parent myself. I dread the days to come when my child sits down with one of her best friends and cries herself sick about how terrible a parent I am.)

Admittedly, my dad and I get on a lot better than we used to. And he is working to improve the relationship (most of the time) and so am I. I think as long as we're working on the issue, even if things never exactly square between us, that we're pretty much golden.

However, there still comes those awkward moments... those projections of mine, and thoughtlessness of his, that sort of jumble the hell out of a conversation.

He and my step-mom are taking Darcy for a week; August 9th to the 15th I will be CHILD FREE! Huzzah! Anyway, I called him to start tacking down details... and during the conversation, we got onto other topics.

"So, how much weight have you lost?" (It's been a while since we've talked for more than a few minutes.)

"About 45 pounds." (That's close enough for government work, and very likely to be true in fact by the time I see him.)

"Wow."

"And Thomas has lost 52."

"Well, you two are proof that the plan works..."

"... as long as you work the plan," I finish his sentence with him. "Really, any plan would have some results. It's not taking off the weight that is the hard part. It's keeping it off." Honestly, I don't know anything about maintenance, but that's what I'm told... as hard and frustrating and nerve-wracking as losing weight has been, I haven't seen anything yet as far as frustration, pain, and stress goes. Oh. Joi.

"Don't I know it," says my dad. "I should go back to Weight Watchers."

"Oh, what happened?" I say, sarcasm dripping. "Did you forget to get a haircut?"

"I've put on about twenty-five pounds, actually."

"Oh, really?" Ok, I'm a bad person. And I have issues. And god as my witness, I'm such a bitch. I get serious amounts of schadenfreude whenever my father fails. It doesn't happen all that often... which would probably be why I get such searing delight out of it.

"Yep," he says. "And if they can help you take off fifty pounds, then they ought to be able to help me take off twenty-five."

Subtext: If you, slack, lazy, fat, slobby, worthless person, can lose fifty pounds, surely, me in my perfection, could take off merely half that. Because, you know, I don't let a bad thing go on as long as you do before I do something about it. Bet I can do it in half the time, too.

I know. I know. He didn't say that. But that's what I heard.

Yeah. I have baggage. Lots and lots of baggage.

Oh, Say Can You C?

This is probably going to be a very girlie sort of entry, so if you're a guy with issues, go do something else today...

I.

Hate.

Bras.

I hate that they exist. I hate that I have to wear them. I hate that they never fit. I hate that I don't know HOW to make them fit.

My first experience getting fitted with a bra was not pleasant, and none of my experiences with bras to date have been pleasant.

I was thirteen by the time my mom bothered to take me in to get bras. I'd had boobs since I was 11... I don't think my mom was in denial about my growing up; I think she was just too oblivious. Didn't really matter, I guess. She took me into some department store, handed me over to a saleslady and wandered off to do some of her own shopping.

My cousin had already rather gleefully informed me a year earlier that I already had "cooper's droop", which is to say that my nipples point directly at the floor... The saleslady (and I use the term 'lady' with substantial amounts of irony) confirmed this, although she didn't use the phrase "cooper's droop." She said "Well... how odd. I've never seen anyone's breasts do that who wasn't 90 years old." She seemed to find it quite amusing.

I was fitted with a bra. A 34C. In middle school.

I got very, very accustomed to having a bruise in the center of my back from guys snapping my bra-strap.

I got very, very tired of guys putting their hand on the bus seat and scooting closer, so their hand would end up pressed up against the underside of my thigh, and then looking at me like "What the hell is your problem?" when I'd try to scoot away, or ask/tell them to stop.

I got used to the not-so-subtle gropes, "accidental" bumps, and general harassment. I remember Rex S. once leaning over the back of my seat and whispering that he didn't think it was too cold in the classroom, so I must be thinking about him. (It took me weeks to figure out what the hell he was talking about, actually...)

I got used to the jokes... "Guy is dead in the band room with bruises around his face, how did he die?" "Lynn shook her shoulders at him from across the room." "Oh, look, it's Lynn!" "How did you know?" "Her chest came into the room five minutes ago." Har de har har.

When I was fifteen or so, my parents were drinking with my uncle Chris and his wife, Virginia. (Chris isn't actually my uncle at all, he's my Aunt Aradice's first husband. After they broke it off, my grandparents didn't disown Chris. In fact, Chris named his son after my grandfather... I've always thought of them as Uncle Chris and Aunt Virginia... this fact did NOT, however, keep me from rather enthusiastically kissing my "cousin" Henry a few times...) It was late at night, and all the kids were supposed to be asleep.

"So, Howard -" My Uncle Chris says to my dad, "We all know you married Ardelle, but you dated Aradice first."

This was news to me... I snuck a bit closer to the opening of the stairs.

"Yep," said my dad. He sounded rather disgusted. He and my aunt had a long history of not getting along.

"Why?" Virginia exclaimed. "You hate her."

"Yeah, well," my dad said, "I was sixteen at the time, and she had these enormous tits, and all I could think about was getting my face in 'em."

My uncle bursts into laughter. My mom and Virginia sounded horrified in their exclamations of shock.

"Get yourself a stick," my uncle says. "Lynn's built just like her aunt."

Great.... just what I wanted to know.

By college, I was in a 40DD. I stopped buying bras in sizes and just got sports bras. They were more comfortable. I hated all that underwire stuff that seems to always end up stabbing me in the ribs, or digging into the breast. I never could figure out what size I was supposed to wear anyway. Nothing was comfortable, or looked good. I gave up caring about it. I had an enormous, pointless rack. It was just another thing on the list of why I wasn't particularly attractive except for all the wrong reasons.

But you know, I got used to it. I've had more than one lover comment on my boobs, favorably and otherwise.

My ex-husband told me that my boobs were entirely too big, and in his opinion, more than a handful was wasted. I won't repeat what I said back to him because it was entirely too rude.

Guys at the Anime Club once said that I could easily compete with the nurses from Ogenki Clinic. (Go ahead, Google it if you're feeling daring, but don't say I didn't warn ya.)

After I gave birth, I did discover that my weird, ugly, malformed breasts had one great redeeming feature. They were great for nursing. The angle was perfect. I didn't have to do any weird twisting. I could lay Darcy on my lap, and just pop it right into her mouth. Up until she started biting me around 6 months, nursing was the easiest thing about being a new mom.

My nursing bra (which I still have for some odd reason) is a 48G.

More recently, I've been wearing a 44DD, and sometimes a 44DDD.

More than one person has told me to do something about my bra. (Yes, all of them were women... I don't know if guys don't notice, or if they don't care, or if they're just too smart to open their mouths and comment.)

Most recently, Leslie said something about them. I knew the new bras I got back in March (42DD, for those of you keeping track) were getting loose. I was latching them on the third set of hooks.

Once again, I ventured forth to look for something new. The original plan was to go shopping with Leslie and she promised to help me with this bit of women's lore that I can't seem to manage on my own. That fell through because her husband decided that they should sit down and talk about their marital problems on the day we planned our shopping trip.

I don't begrudge anyone the time to yell at their husbands, and certainly not after the weekend she was put through, but it did mean I was back on my own for shopping. And that I now had to take Thomas and Darcy with me (since we didn't have much time to get my shopping done, and I needed to get a new vacuum - long story; my mechanical aptitude was tested and found wanting, and I ended up with parts for the wrong vacuum that couldn't be returned, and the parts I needed weren't made anymore, etc etc, so, $40 later, I have to buy a new freaking vacuum anyway!) I didn't feel very comfortable trying to track down a saleslady (not to mention that I'm still very wary of salespeople and their inability to keep from making me feel like I'm just not normal!) to do a fitting.

I did my own measurements again, and I'm sure that, once again, I did them wrong.

I came up with a 40C.

A C?

Huh.

Unfortunately, with my baconish sunburn, my shoulders have been exceptionally tender recently, and I couldn't tell you if it fits right. My shoulder hurts too much to wear it for more than about an hour. And the material is scratchy. I can't tell if that's my skin being too overly sensitive right now, or if it's just a cheap (not in price, but in quality) bra.

I.

Hate.

Bras.

Impromptu Fun in the Sun Sun Sun

Yesterday morning, I roll out of bed to my phone ringing... (that link is to the ring tone I use for my phone. DO NOT CLICK if you don't want this earwiggy bit of music stuck in your head. You're welcome.)

I didn't quite get to the phone in time. Thomas and I had stayed up very late Saturday night watching movies with our friend Toby... but when I checked my voice mail, it was Leslie.

She said, and I quote, "I'm really not having a great weekend, and I don't have anything to do and no one to do it with - long story - but could we do something impromptu today?"

Of course, as tends to be typical, she didn't have anything in mind. (Not typical to her, mind you, just typical in general... if there's one conversation I've had entirely too freaking often, it's the "What do you want to do?" "I dunno, whatever you want is fine." GRRRRRRRRR. I swear to god, I'm going to make a list of activities, and write them all down and the next time someone asks me what I want to do, I'm going to give them the damn list and say "Just pick something, you indecisive noodle-head!" Why, why, why is it always me who has to come up with something to do? Is it because I actually DO come up with something?)

So, since she skipped out on us the last time we suggested Mt. Trashmore, we suggested that again... this time she actually showed up. It wasn't nearly as windy as the last several times we'd been there, so it took several attempts to get our kite airborne. Even then, it didn't want to stay up there.

So we tossed a ball around for a while - and Darcy let it fall down the side of the "mountain" a few times (Mt. Trashmore is, in case you didn't know, built on a mountain of trash... hence the name...) so we had to climb down the hill and then back up it a few times. Lots of work; I'm sure I got a lot of APs for it...

Then we walked over to the 7-11 and got some water and walked back to the park where Darcy went to play at the playground for another hour or so.

Leslie hinted around that she'd been having a big argument with her husband and he'd actually left the house and had been gone for a while. (I personally can't imagine an argument that bad - on the other hand, Thomas and I don't really have anyplace to go even if we were that mad at each other!) So after we finished playing at the park we headed over to her place and watched a movie on her freaking enormous television. (she has a slightly smaller freaking enormous television in the other room hooked up to their gaming consoles; including the whole set up for guitar hero and the drum set and everything. If you cut the smaller of her tvs in half, turned that half on its side, that might be the size of our television. Yikes! She says she's spoiled. I agree.)

After the movie, we went out and caught dinner at the Ruby Tuesdays. We split a tray of cheese fries 4 ways, which probably put me over my points for the week, but I'm not positive because once again I have turned into a slackasarus about journaling. I don't know what it is about journaling, but I just cannot seem to get back into it. We'll see, I guess, when I weigh in.

About halfway through dinner, I noticed my shoulders were stinging a bit, and when I took Darcy to the ladies room (for like the 9th time in 4 hours) I peered at my shoulders.

Sunburned. Again!

You know, I do use sunscreen. I promise, I do.

And still, I keep getting torched.

My freaking eyelids are sunburned.

I have gotten more sun this summer than in the last 10 years put together, I swear.

After dinner we dropped Leslie off, and she looked pretty sad to be headed back to that huge house of hers alone. (I don't blame her. One, that place is enormous, and two, I would be so totally freaked if Thomas left me and I had no idea where he was... but maybe they have a more tumultuous relationship than we do...)

All in all, it was a good weekend, and I sat on my butt a lot less than usual... now, if I could stop turning into an advertisement for Solarcaine (do they even make that stuff anymore?) I'd be fine.