When Properly Motivated

I can run very, very fast.

Last night, Thomas, Darcy and I were out for our usual Thursday walk (ish about a two-miler.)

One part of our walking path takes us along the "lake". It's not a lake, it's a hole in the ground where water collects. There's a lot of that around here. I do live in a swamp (part of the Great Dismal Swamp, actually...) and there's a lot. LOT. of water around here. (As a further note, I actually live in one of the highest points in the city, 18 feet above sea level. That's NOT very far, really.) Anyway, our view here is to the left side, water, to the right side, the backs of a bunch of condos. We're walking and we see a white and brown spotted dog running around, leash dragging merrily on the ground behind him.

A few minutes later, a woman pushing a jogging stroller trots up, looking furious, and calling for the dog. The dog, being a dog, ignores her completely and continues tearing around, peeing on trees, sniffing bushes, and generally acting dog-like.

Eventually, said dog notices us and comes bounding over, so excited that not only is its tail wagging, but the whole back end of the dog is wagging.

Thomas reaches down and snags the leash.

"Oh, thank you," says the lady. She leaves the stroller where it is and comes over to collect the dog.

Darcy is busy petting the dog, who is now slobbering all over my child and wiggling ecstatically. (Both dog and child. Are wiggling, that is. Darcy gave up slobbering a while ago.)

"He's very excited," the woman comments, taking the leash. She and Thomas talk a bit about the dog. I... don't much like dogs, so I'm trying to dodge the animal and keep an eye on my daughter and occasionally glancing at my watch wondering how long we have to make small talk before we can keep walking. We're supposed to go to Target after our walk and then I need to cook dinner and I'm hoping that things won't run too late because...

I glance over at the stroller to realize it is ROLLING BACKWARDS DOWN THE HILL TOWARDS THE LAKE.

"Jesus," I comment and take off flat running. I probably covered about 20 yards in 3 seconds, grabbed the stroller handle and turned sideways to keep the entire thing from flipping over on the rough ground. The baby, inside, is a red-headed little girl who is... fast asleep.

"Mom's saved the baby!" Darcy yells, jumping up and down and cheering.

"I stole her from a stupid Dikini while he was taking a pee pee," Thomas mutters under his breath.

In Another's Eyes

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Well, we all know I have Issues.

I don't see myself as I am, and I certainly don't see myself as other people see me.

We also know that I'm a little too cynical to think the I'm ok, you're ok theory of self-esteem improvement actually works, most of the time. You can tell yourself you are lovable and capable as much as you want (or are forced to!) and it doesn't really help all that much. The best way, I've found, to gain self-esteem is to do those things that you think are worthy.

Sit down, look at those things you find admirable in other people. I'm not necessarily talking about Michael Jordan (don't we all wanna be like Mike?) but about the people in your life that you look up to and admire. Because we can't all be basketball players. (Even if Sulu would like that if we were...)

What are the people you admire like? Are they intelligent, witty, or generous? Be careful, while you examine these people: do you actually admire them, or are you jealous? Make a list of the things you admire in the people you've chosen... honest? Or tactful? Kind-hearted?

Now, sit down with your list of traits you find admirable. I admire people who are even-tempered, good with children, generous, determined, and mostly cheerful, with a good dash of sarcastic.

Here are the items you can work on; I admire people who are even-tempered. I... well, let's just say I won't win any awards for being calm in the face of aggravation.

But I can work on it! It's not possible, perhaps, to be perfect, but we can always, always find ways of improving. I'm learning - slowly, and with a great many set-backs - to calm down. To take a few deep breaths. To ask myself if this really matters in the grand scheme of things.

I admire people who go out of their way to make other people's lives better. I may not be wealthy, but I can give to charity. I'm an organ donor. I give blood regularly. I'm doing a 60-mile, 3-day walk in October to raise money for breast cancer awareness, screenings, research, and hopefully one day to find a cure. My daughter and I take trash bags out with us to the playground about once every 3 months and clean trash up in our neighborhood. I donate my gently used clothing and household items to the Salvation Army. I click here. And here. And here. And here. Every day.

Sometimes it helps to see yourself through someone else's eyes. It's not always easy; there's sometimes the nagging suspicion that someone is telling you what you want to hear... but when you get an honest opinion - or sometimes for me, it's even just seeing a list of my accomplishments; what does it look like to someone else...

Here's what some friends had to say about me recently... and the thing is... nothing here isn't true. It's just... wow, when you put it all together like that, maybe I am, actually, pretty damn nifty...

One of my best friends, Jeanne, sent this email out to her family and friends (who are not also my family and friends, since we do have a load of friends in common) and bcc'd me on it...

My best friend will be participating in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure in Washington, DC in October.

That's a 60 mile walk for someone who was a half-a-pack-a-day smoker 12 years ago (until she quit cold turkey). Who was told after her ankle was shattered in a car wreck 8 years ago that she'd never walk again without a cane (today, she can step-run like Rocky Balboa). Who was in the "high-risk pregnancy" category 5 years ago because of weight-related complications and asthma (which she has since controlled). Who was borderline diabetic 2 years ago because of her weight (she joined Weight Watchers in Jan. 2008 and has lost over 80 pounds to date; her husband, who joined to support her, has lost over 90).

She has a beautiful 5-year-old daughter, and a close family history of breast cancer-- both her aunt and her grandmother were survivors. Her mother's breast cancer diagnosis in late 2007 was her personal wake-up call to improve her life and her health, for her own good and that of her family. Now she's done it, and in October, she means to give back in her mother's honor. She's up to walking 18 miles on the weekend, and she's working out extensively during the week to prep for the Walk.

Unfortunately, unlike a standard walk-a-thon where you simply raise as much as you can, the Susan G. Komen Foundation sets a minimum fundraising goal of $2300 that you must meet in order to be allowed to walk in the 3-Day (any donations short of the goal will still be accepted). She is only about halfway to her goal. She's an amazing person, it's a great cause, and she really, really wants to be able to walk.

Please help.

Well.

It does sound sort of impressive, doesn't it? When you lump it all together like that. I tend to see things all microscopic. I have problems - doesn't everyone? - but my problems are like a bunch of tiny rocks. If I hold them in my hand and put them out at arm's length, they look fairly minor. But I don't. I bring them up close to my face and study them. I know them intimately. Try it. Take a small rock, less than an inch across, and hold it up as close to your eye as you can (and still be able to focus on the rock! Don't poke your eye out!) Now, you can see the rock really well, right? But the problem here is that you can't see much aside from the rock. The rest of your life is blurry, out of focus, and blocked off because you're looking too closely at a stupid, little rock.

One of the people I admire (and, I confess, am somewhat jealous of) had this to say to me recently:

I chuckle every time I think what the "college Lynn" would say if she saw you now. It is silly to say that you make me proud as I have nothing to do with any of the things you have done. Yet your hard work has inspired me to work on making things better for me. Good luck on your walk!

How nifty is that? Someone that I admire is admiring me right back... interesting.

I may not be where I want to be, and I may not yet be who I want to be. Neither am I who I was, and neither am I incapable of change.

Perfection and true happiness may be unattainable (and I reserve the right to doubt) but we can always improve, we can always become better, and we can always be happier.

I think these are things worth striving for.

And I think, sometimes, I need to sit down and look over just how far I've come.

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.

Lynn's Karmic Challenge

I just finished up doing this with a group of ladies from my Weight Watchers message boards, and I thought I'd offer an open invitation to do the same thing here...

Karmic balance!

We could all use some good karma points, right?

So, here's my offer. I have several pieces of nice/like new clothes in sizes that I no longer fit into. (24/26 and 4X for the most part) I don't need them any more, and I know there are loads of people out there who are on a different stage of their own weight loss journey who can probably wear them.

Below are some pictures, along with a description of the item. If you want it, it's yours. I will ship it to you - entirely at my own expense! - as soon as we work out arrangements. (Leave a comment in the blog, telling me what you want, and an email address for me to get in contact with you, and I'll make arrangements for shipping.) I'll also include with every item I send out a few "special" things that I've got - it could be a tube of lip gloss, or some scented body spray, or a USB-drive - totally random. All I ask in return is that when you're going through YOUR closet, that you re-gift to someone else.

Three weeks ago, I sent out a 3X belt with cupcakes on it that I'd gotten from Torrid last year to a girl in Canada. I included a deck of cards with 52 things to do when you're feeling blue, a tube of cherry glitter lip gloss, and a pair of cherry earrings. She was THRILLED to no end when her package arrived. Life had been really rotten for her recently, and a cute little care package from someone she only knows from a newsgroup really made her day.

Today, in the mail, I got a package from the girl who's one down from me... Jenny mailed me a pair of shorts with a bright flower print belt, a pair of capris, and a tinker bell t-shirt (she said she had never even worn this last one, her weight had dropped so quickly, and winter lasted longer than she expected, so she'd sized right out of the thing without ever having done more than tried it on a few times.) And I was thrilled!

So, here's the things that I have in my dresser that need to go... if you want them, please let me know. If you know someone who might want them, point them at this post!

This first pair of capris are size 24. They came from Torrid, and are made from denim. They have huge brassy buttons on the cuffs and near the pocket gromets. Very comfortable, but a little worn, as these have been my favorite pants most of the winter, so there are some fade spots here and there.

There's a size 3X sleeveless vest that goes with these pants (not pictured) that has matching buttons up the front and a tie in the back. I've never worn the vest because the buttons need to be sewn back into place (they were very loose in the store, so they marked the piece down by $20, but I never got around to sewing them back on...)

This second pair of pants, also a size 24 and also from Torrid, is one of those cropped pairs of pants. There's a pair of buttons at the bottom of each leg where you can roll the pants up to the cuff length you want and button them in place.

I've worn these a few times, and they desperately need to be ironed (which I won't do before mailing them out because I hate ironing ;-) ) but they're in very good shape. I got them on sale last autumn.

Similarly (not pictured) there's a pair of red capris in almost the same style, except instead of buttons, you can tie he cuffs up. They're the same size, and bright red, but I wore them less because they ended up not being the best color for my skin.

These are a size 24 black khaki style pants, from Mossimo (one of the various clothing companies that Target carries) They were a little bit on the big side, even for 24s, but very comfortable.

They're "walking pants" length, which means for me (being short) they were almost the perfect pant length, but they might be a little cropped on someone with longer legs than mine.

These shorts are a 24, and if you were around in the 80's, they're very 80's style... deliberate 'holes' in the fronts, and torn off legs. The ink stain near the right hand pocket is my fault tho... my husband left a pen in his shirt pocket and I didn't get it out before doing the laundry...

They are, however, VERY comfortable and great for doing things in when you don't mind if you get a little dirty.

This little sweater/cover up thingie is a size 4X mesh cropped top. It's got a name, I've just forgotten what it is. It's from Torrid, and really doesn't do much of anything - it's not good for keeping warmer, unless it's just a touch breezy, but it does LOOK cute. Forgive the model here, but I couldn't figure out any other way to show you what it looked like.

This is a size 22 skirt, black and psuedo-lacy panels in it. I got it with a gift card birthday present last year and have probably worn it about 8 times since then. Like the pants, it should be ironed (but won't be, because I hate ironing.) I bought it specifically to go with the above cropped sweater, and the two do look quite charming together.

This skirt is a 26, a very professional-looking plaid in dark red, tan and brown. It's lined on the inside for comfort, and it's wool, so it's nice and warm. I bought it and a matching sweater to wear for a Christmas party, then the sweater's sleeves fell off the first time I tried to wear it (long story) and I never could find a replacement for the sweater. Nothing else I own goes well with it, so I never wore it at all.

There's also a blue jean skirt, size 24, that I don't have a picture of either (there's something wrong with my camera, and it's not saving all the images...) that's very nice, also Mossimo, comes to about the bottom of the knee, and hasn't been worn much, maybe 10 times altogether, since I got it.

If you're interested in participating in the Karmic Challenge and you have clothing of your own that you'd like to find a new home for, make a post on your own blog and let me know. I'll link to you here to direct readers to sizes that might fit them better!