Category Archives: General Thoughts

Nominated for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award!

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One of the cool things about chucking your thoughts at the interwebz is the camaraderie and support you get from other bloggers.  There’s a whole virtual neighborhood out here – it’s a place where you can actually pick your neighbors, no less! – and you’ll find a huge variety of folks:  Some just like you and some completely different.  Some old enough to be a grandparent and some young enough to be your grandchild.  Some who write for the love of writing and some who write so they don’t implode, crumbling and falling under the weights they carry.  Some who suffer deeply, some who uplift and shed light everywhere they go, and some who manage to do both.

I am honored to meet you.  And you have no idea how much GOOD you are doing, simply by being here.  You can’t know how much it means when you simply click, “Like.”  It means I’ve been heard.  I’m valid.  And maybe, if I’m lucky, something I wrote resonated with you.

I get so much more from this community than I give.  And today, I see that the very talented cassandrarei has nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.  She inspires ME every time she posts!

RULES:
Thank the person who nominated you for the award.

Thank you Cass!  Please keep writing.  You add so much to this community!

Add the logo to your post.

(I love the retro feel.  I feel underdresssed in my Cookie Monster PJs)

VeryInspiringBloggerAward

Nominate ten (10) bloggers you admire and inform them of the nomination.

There are so many talented writers out there….

The Persistent Platypus – love her energy

betternotbroken – sage advice and thoughts

The Ninth Life – inspiring and uplifting

Storyshucker – Just a good read that makes you think!

The Elephant in the Room – A brave soul.

This Little Diary – like the chocolate chip cookie at the end of your meal – just right!

karmasama – bite-sized smiles

theGoodVader – food for thought, and easily digestible

Living to thrive  – great balance of info, inspiration, and hope!

Vogue Infatuation – she lets me get my girly fix on!

<wild applause and standing ovations>

Burying my Inner Athlete

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Historically, I have not been a terribly athletic person.

(Wait. If we break this apart, you COULD say, somewhat truthfully, that if I was athletic, I was terrible at it.  So “terribly athletic” is deceptively close to the truth here.)

I didn’t play sports as a child.  I read books.  Lots of books.  I was a voracious reader with an insatiable appetite.  I remember vividly my mother sending a note to my second grade teacher to please, please allow her daughter to select chapter books instead of picture books.  I guess she got tired of helping me cart twenty books at a time back and forth to school.

So, I spent a lot of time on the couch reading, instead of “playing outside,” whatever THAT was supposed to mean.  My only physical activity, really, was the required “physical education” a couple of days a week in school.

And who here has excellent memories of gym class?

<crickets>

Yeah, me too.

In elementary school, gym wasn’t too taxing, really.  We all looked forward to the days where the gym teacher would roll out the big parachute, and we’d flap it up and down together, taking turns running underneath the bright, billowed canopy. (If your school didn’t do this, you totally missed out.  Trust me.)

I looked less forward to the mandated “square dancing.”  Let’s face it, no one wants to dance with the class egghead. Even in third grade, no one picks the smart girl to dance with.  Especially if she has glasses, braces, and an awkward haircut.  And ESPECIALLY especially if she’s chunky.  Or just plain fat.

It wasn’t just dancing where I was picked last.  That was the protocol for pretty much any team sport – in elementary school, this was largely kickball.  Of course, I couldn’t kick, I couldn’t run, and I couldn’t catch.  (Last-picked loser trifecta!)  I tried to stand in the outfield, sending anti-ball vibes to the kicker.  Fortunately, when you’re seven or eight, no one can really kick it much past 2nd base, so I didn’t screw up any big plays.

In middle school, there were new challenges.  I was still fat – when we were lined up for our scoliosis test (you remember, where they lifted your shirt up and drew down your spine with a ballpoint pen?) and they weighed us, I was the kid on the scale when they moved the “big weight” from 50 to 100.  I remember some gasps.  I remember my classmates’ eyes widening.  I remember that odd sensation of feeling so big and yet so small, all at the same time.

Gym class was harder in middle school.  They actually expected you to DO things.

Pushups.  (To this day, I still can’t do a single one.)

Pullups.  (You’re kidding, right?  I can’t even do a pushup.  What gravitational miracle do you think is going to transpire once you move the chair?)

Climbing the rope.  (HAHAHAHAHAHA.  No.)

And…group showers.  Yep, it’s not bad enough that you’re at least thirty pounds heavier than your classmates, and the only one who needs a bra*, but now, two or three times a week, you’re expected to CHANGE CLOTHES and SHOWER – NAKED – in front of other people.  Funny, I don’t actually remember what anyone else looked like.  I just remember feeling…big.  Naked and big.  Like the Darci doll in a world of Barbies, it was clear I didn’t fit in this toybox.

*Ah, my first bra.  In 5th grade, I distinctly remember asking my mom for a bra, because it hurt to run in gym class.  Mom said I was too young (even though I needed to shave my pits, WHATEVER MOM) but reluctantly took me to the local Ben Franklin to try some on, since I insisted.  I walked out with a 36B.  Mom was, and still is, a 34A.  Totally blew her cups out of the cabinet at the ripe age of 10.  That had to be…awkward. 

In high school, the stakes got higher.  By now, we had some decent athletes among us.  I was not one of them.  (OBVIOUSLY.  I think we’ve established this.)  But, our gym teacher coached track, volleyball, and a few other sports I don’t care about, so she used gym class to condition her hopefuls for the sport in season.

In the fall, it was track.  She had a cross-country course all laid out for us – leave the high school, turn left at the bottom of the hill*, run in front of the elementary school, across the field to the middle school, do a lap at the track, and then back up the hill to do four laps in the gym (as well as some bleacher climbs, pushups, cartwheels, pole vaults, or some other thing that clearly was not going to happen.)

*Our high school hill was legendary.  When it snowed, people came from all over the county to sled down it – well, before there were six lawsuits for every light pole and before helmets were even an afterthought.  It wasn’t truly winter until someone busted a bone doing a total yard sale out of a plastic saucer shooting down High School Hill.

In the winter, we moved the fun indoors…to swimming.  Humiliation, Boss Stage:  you now have to parade around ALL of your peers, boys AND girls, in a <gasp> SWIMSUIT.  (Oh, the horror!)   

And to add insult to injury…remember I said I wore glasses?  I am EXTREMELY nearsighted.  I am “butter the toast, get butter on my nose” nearsighted.  I am so nearsighted that if I hold a book up to my face to read, I have to close one eye, because if one eye can focus on the type, the other eye is too far away to see it.  Yeah.  THAT nearsighted.

So one day I’m standing by the end of the pool, waiting my turn to do a 25-yard crawl.  The gym teacher is at the midpoint.  She’s telling people when to go, spacing us out so we don’t crash into one another.  (Really, I should just go last.  No way I’m catching up to anyone in front of me, and I won’t slow the group down if I’m on the tail end.)

I’m shivering by the edge of the pool, ready to dive in.  I’m waiting, and waiting….nothing.

I yell out to her, “Do you want me to go?”

Nothing.

“Mrs. A!  Should I go now?”

Silence.

After a couple of rounds of this, I relax my stance.  I step away from the edge of the pool.  Clearly, something is wrong, and I’m not swimming any time soon.  (Boo hoo, I’m crushed.)

Then about five minutes later, she’s IN MY FACE yelling at me.  Whu…?  Well, apparently, when I was standing there asking her “can I go?  how about now?” – she was WAVING AT ME to go.  And I kept standing there asking “Do you want me to go?  Do I go now?” while she was waving at me.  The one who LITERALLY CANNOT SEE PAST HER OWN NOSE.  Comedy of errors, anyone?

Worst part is, she totally didn’t believe me that I couldn’t see.  (Gah, I hated that b!tch….)

So that was my introduction to what it meant to be physically fit.  Suffice it to say I didn’t actively seek out exercise of any kind for most of my adult life.  When you’ve spent twelve years being told you’re absolutely terrible at something, you usually quit doing it.

But marry a self-loathing for your body with external criticism about your lack of physical abilities and it’s no wonder, really, that you give birth to a whole family of food issues and eating disorders.

My upbringing and my experiences worked together like well-meaning grandmothers to knit together a robe that I was all too happy to slip on.  It was comfortable and familiar, and I clung to it like a favored baby blanket, reluctant to let go of the security it gave me.

I didn’t ever think about whether I LIKED dragging the old, tired garment around.  It was simply a part of me, and I kept it close long after I should have outgrown the ratty thing and chucked it in the rags bin.

Even now, as I’m working to recover, I can only set the blasted thing down long enough to wash it periodically.

For some reason, I’m unable to get rid of it – this blanket of poor body image, of uselessness, of self-doubt and criticism, stitched with fat-feeling threads on seams that are never thin enough, and finished with a band of anxiety and depression.

I know I don’t NEED it.  That’s just silly.  Right?  But yet, I keep slipping it back on over my shoulders – when I’m stressed, when I’m tired, when I’m frustrated.

I’m just starting to realize that it really doesn’t fit all that well, and the colors are all wrong for me.  But I think it’ll be hard to throw away until I find something to replace it.  Hopefully, something woven from joy, love, and contentment, with a soft lace border of peace.

Drowning the Emotional Babel Fish

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This morning I was reading a recent post by The Persistent Platypus, “It’s ok to feel your emotions.”   She got me thinking a bit, because I’ve been working on expressing my emotions instead of drowning them with a bag of kettle corn.  See, when you have food issues, it’s almost never actually about the food, or your weight.  It’s about the emotions and feelings that express themselves through the voice of the eating disorder.

I’ll give you some examples:  Feeling sad?  No, you’re fat.  Disappointed in yourself?  No, you need to lose weight.  Someone hurt your feelings?  No, you need a cupcake.  Feeling stressed?  No, you’re starving….or, more accurately, you need to eat EVERYTHING, RIGHT NOW.  Even though you may not be physically hungry, something inside you is yelling, shouting, demanding, SCREAMING for a box of cereal, a large pizza, chocolate, ice cream candy bars chips EVERYTHING ALL OF IT NOW NOW NOW

It’s not about the food.

When you live with an eating disorder, or food issues, your mind translates uncomfortable, painful, confusing emotions into a language you’ve spoken since birth:  food and your weight.

It’s not about food, and its impact on the scale – and it never really was.  But, like some bizarre outer-space Babel fish, this is how your brain translates emotion.  It turns it into something you recognize and are accustomed to handling.  It may not be healthy, but it’s familiar and comfortable.

It’s what you know.

In the process of going through therapy and attempting to get well, I’ve experienced a strange phenomenon:  My food issues have a very strong, independent voice.  It’s almost like a separate entity living inside my head.

It’s been there for so long (over thirty years – yes, longer than some of you have probably been alive, rub it in already!) that the Voice and I have developed our own secret language of sorts – it’s been so long since I’ve heard my native language that when I experience an emotion, I only know it in the Voice’s language, and struggle to find the words that others would understand.  And the words don’t make much sense to anyone but the Voice – and me:

Anger is interpreted as “you’re fat.  Quit eating.”

Sadness translates to needing sweets.

Loneliness is deciphered as emptiness, which in this language, means “need to binge.”

Decoding stress is tricky, as it has multiple meanings; its true meaning is modified by one of the emotions above…the pairing of the modifier transposes the actual definition.  It can mean any of the above, or one followed by the other.  Much like English, it’s hard to define directly; all of the rules have exceptions.

I’m working on rediscovering my native tongue.  It’s slow going.  It’s like trying to rename colors – imagine, after years of saying that your favorite color was orange, now having to say it’s blue, even though “blue” looks like what you’ve always known as “orange.”  Or imagine having to switch the words “beet” and “chocolate.”  Or “hot” and “pickle.”  You get the idea.

But I’m making progress, somewhat.  I have, at least, begun to recognize when the Voice is using the wrong words.  This week, I spent three days eating my feelings.  In one evening, I devoured an ENTIRE BOX OF CHOCO CHIMPS.    (Side note:  What am I?  Five?  CHOCO CHIMPS?!?)

On Wednesday, after most of the box was gone, I recognized that I was upset about something.  (I hear all of you out there rolling your eyes and saying “well, duh.”)

On Thursday night, I figured out what it was:  The hubs shared with me that on a recent trip to a home-improvement store, he parked next to a person who had a bumper sticker on his car that he didn’t like – it was, of course, in conflict with his beliefs.  So he decided to confront the guy on his way in.  He told him, “You know, you have some really stupid stuff on your car.”

This apparently bugged the crap out of me.

First, the obvious.  Which is (cue sarcasm font):  Eyeroll.  Yes, dear, you sure told him.  I’m sure now he’s going to know the error of his ways, COMPLETELY do a 180 on his opinion, and probably burn his car so no one else has to see it.  All because a random 6’4″ dude confronted him directly.

Second, I don’t want a bully for a husband.  I married a decent human being, not a bully.  And the hubs was actually bullied as a kid, so you’d think he’d know better. Plus – regardless of the sentiment – would he want someone to approach ME like that?  (Okay, his answer would be, “I’d like to see them try.”  Fair enough; I can hold my own.  But our kids?  Our mothers?  NOT OKAY.)

Third – one of my favorite quotes as of late is, “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” (Credited to Paulo Coelho.)  You don’t change anyone’s opinion by telling them that you don’t like it – we have teenagers, so he should know this from fairly recent experience.  Being a jerk to someone with a different opinion only causes them to justify holding onto it more strongly…namely, because they DON’T WANT TO BE LIKE YOU.

Lastly, the hubs and I disagree on a lot of things –  namely, spiritual things and political things. (We agree on pizza toppings, so we have THAT going for us, I guess.)  But I suppose, if I’m honest with myself…I don’t want him to express or FEEL that disgusted, dismissive emotion towards me.

There.  There it is.  In my native language.

Now I can put the food down.  For a little bit.

As of late, I’ve begun to recognize the Voice as a type of parasite.  Why?  Because she needs me.  She feeds off me.

Without me, she will cease to exist.

That’s probably why she’s fighting so hard to stay alive.

I’ve noticed that, right after a more successful therapy session, that I sort of relapse for a day or two…sometimes a week.  The Voice is fighting – hustling to be heard, wrestling for relevance.

Struggling for survival.

But so am I.

And, while I’ve managed most of my existence cohabiting with the Voice, I think it’s time to serve her eviction papers.  Like any eviction, it’s a long, complicated process, wrought with setbacks and delays.  But if I keep fighting the good fight, eventually I’ll have my space back.  I’m looking forward to redecorating – letting in color and light and making the space my own.

Retail Therapy = Instant Gratification

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Had another therapy session on Friday.  And none too soon, I might add.  I had been stressed and irritable all week – very much on edge, like a cat that you’ve repeatedly pet backwards from tail to head.  As the week went on, I was bristling more and more, flexing my claws and waiting to lash at the VERY NEXT PERSON who DARED utter something mortally offensive, like “Hi” or “What time is it?”

Therapy is one of those spinach-and-broccoli exercises.  You don’t really want to chew and swallow what’s in front of you, but you know it’s good for you do to so, and besides, there isn’t really a more effective way to clean it off your plate.  It’s not like some mental Labrador will come by and happily lick it off for you and make it magically vanish.

So I went.  And we talked about how I had cleaned out my closet, per our last session.  We then went back to talking about my marriage and our relationship.  Although things had been better since he threw out the shirts, I just didn’t understand why I was so angry and irritable this week.

After some back-and-forth, it came out that I’m simply not getting enough attention.  Yep.  Like a spoiled child, I need more focus on ME ME ME to be happy.

I just want some dedicated focus from my husband.

Back story that I should explain – the hubs is, we suspect, on the autism spectrum.  His older boy has the official diagnosis, but in all honesty, he’s just like his daddy.  Back in the day <cue old fogey music and bored teenagers rolling their eyes> they didn’t diagnose all these disorders and spectrums and so forth.  You just sat in class and did the best you could, and if you slipped up, you got whacked with a ruler.  WHICH THEY’D TOTALLY ARREST YOU FOR NOW.

Anyway.  So one of the behavioral markers for autism spectrum disorder is an intense focus on certain items of interest.  Need new shoes?  Drop everything and ORDER IMMEDIATELY.  Think you might need a new car?  Be first in line on Saturday to test drive, after staying up all night reading back issues of Consumer Reports.  Got a new video game?  MUST PLAY UNTIL VICTORIOUS WITH ALL CHARACTERS.

This trait makes the hubs really good at programming.  (Some companies specifically recruit those with autism/Asperger’s to program.  Really.  Check it out!  Diversity is something that a lot of companies claim to embrace, but until they take a swing at neurological diversity, they have a ways to go yet.)

This hyperfocus is also EXCELLENT when we have a home improvement project.  Recently, the hubs redid one of our bathrooms.  It was something of a HGTV “Before” picture – gold-flecked sink circa 1970, dark brown vanity and cabinet that had a thick layer of chocolate brown paint (obviously a failed refinishing project, unless they MEANT it to look like a half-melted, lint-covered Hershey bar,) and mauve tile 3/4 of the way up the wall, with lovely “accent” tiles featuring shiny gold outlines of fish.  The fish even had little bubbles rising from their mouths.  Except HALF OF THEM WERE UPSIDE DOWN so the bubbles were heading south.  (“Mom?  What exactly is the fish supposed to be doing here?”)  Anyway.  Hubs decided we’d redo the bathroom, and he’s spent nearly every waking moment since then ripping out, destroying, re-tiling, grouting, and painting the bathroom.  It’s just about finished now, and looks beautiful, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.  There were days he got frustrated:

We call this one "Anger Management."

We call this one “Anger Management.”

This is what happens to naughty tile that won’t cut in a straight line without chipping.  (I have no idea what the garage wall did, though.)

So, as of late (several months, at least) – this laser-focus attention has been on the bathroom, the floors, the garage, the kids, the video games, work….but not on me.  And apparently, I miss that.  I miss having him want to spend time with me so badly that he stays up past 10PM.  I miss the dates we used to have – the outings he’d plan, where we’d go to a baseball game, or stroll the art museum, or watching the British Arrows Awards (if you haven’t heard of this, you’re missing out.)

Nowadays, I seem to be more of an afterthought.  He seems to enjoy my company, but not to the point of planning activities for us, or making “us” time a priority.  It makes me sad, sure, but it surprised me to discover that it also inflames my food issues.  Why?  Because when I was ten pounds thinner, I got WAY more attention – because he was worried about me, sure, but it was dedicated attention!  (And the behavioral experts are always telling us that negative attention is better than being ignored; children will misbehave just so someone notices them.  Apparently, I misbehave by slowly starving myself to death.)

Now?  I’m…average.  And average doesn’t get attention.  It’s beige in a world of glitter and rainbows.  It’s flat, dull, and uninteresting.  Blah.

So my homework is to tell the hubs (and we worked on how to say this so I don’t sound whiny, thanks Dr. P!) that I love spending time with him, and back when we were dating, it made me feel very special, valued, and very loved when he’d plan activities for us to do.  And that I enjoy his company thoroughly, and would love to have him plan an activity so we could spend time together building memories and enjoying each other.

(Barf.  I know.  But I need to say it, because it’s something I need, and I need to find my voice and use it vs. silencing it with fistfuls of popcorn and chocolate or shouting over it that I’m disgustingly fat and gross.)

So, therapy was Friday morning.  And since I wasn’t feeling up to any big conversation, and since I had a couple empty hangers in my closet, I decided to go shopping.  (Dr. P approved; even though we realized that it might be an experience that soured quickly, if I could find something I felt good in, in the size I wear now, it might help.)

Shopping?  Don’t have to ask me twice.  <screech of tires and whiff of rubber>

Miracle of miracles:  I found not one, but TWO pairs of pants that fit me PERFECTLY and that I didn’t look completely hideous in.  Seriously, I actually didn’t feel the need to sob uncontrollably, take a flamethrower to the dressing room, and dive headfirst into a pizza.  A MIRACLE, I TELL YA.

I also found this…dress.  I think it’s a dress.  It may be the abandoned love child of Cookie Monster and Big Bird.  I didn’t buy it, so if you head to Saks Off 5th, it can still be yours for the low bargain price of $805.  <choke>

CookieMonsterBigBirdLoveChildDress

Clearly, I will never understand high fashion.

Oh, but don’t worry, kids.  I did get the shoes.

Have I mentioned my love for shoes?  I big-puffy-purple-glitter-sparkly-heart LOVE shoes.  Especially heels.

So after spending considerable time “just looking,” this cute little pair followed me home last night.  How could I possibly say no?  CHECK OUT THESE DOPE KICKS.  I’m in love.

  FABULOUS SHOES

I’m nearly 5’10” in these shoes.  BOOM.   And – of course – they were 40% off.  SOLD.

I realize that shopping didn’t magically fix my issues – it was only a detour on the way to working through some things; a procrastination tool to delay a more difficult conversation.

But, like a mini-vacation, it refreshed my spirits just a bit.  I had fun…and I can’t stop smiling at my feet.  A little burst of happy at a great price is always a fantastic value.  It’s a small investment in my soul.

Be Careful What You Wish For

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A couple of years ago, for the first time in my entire life, I lost a bunch of weight pretty much by accident.  I was plagued by a sick stomach, and generally felt queasy for much of the day.  This was paired with some odd, dull pains in my upper stomach, bloating, and the strangest, most disturbing mushy grinding noises from my lower abdomen.  (These were actually quite amusing – often, I could generate additional noises with a well-placed poke or a brief massage.  I’d record the sounds and send them via text to my kids to gross them out.  You see what you resort to for entertainment when you stop springing for cable TV?)

This came a couple years after my marriage.  While the now-hubby and I were dating, I had admittedly packed on a few pounds, thanks to dates of late-night nachos and Molten Chocolate Cakes.  I had managed to squeeze into a size 9 wedding dress, but I was about 25 pounds heavier than I wanted to be at the time.  So the weight loss was welcome.  I lost those 25 pounds, and then ten more.  At this point, I was loving the weight loss, but figured I best check in with the doc.  You know, just to make sure I wasn’t dying of anything.

Over the next several months, I was screened for pretty much anything that can cause weight loss.  Ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer.  Celiac disease.  Ulcers.  Parasites. Cat scratch disease.  Lyme disease.  Pregnancy.  (Three times.)  The results were inconclusive:  I wasn’t dying of anything, but something was effed up in my immune panel.  My doctor threw up her hands and said “try not eating wheat, see if it helps.”

During all these tests, I managed to drop a few more pounds.  I was loving wearing a size 0, loving when I’d walk into a store and everything was too big, but I was not loving feeling exhausted and ill all the time.

As I was going through this, I did learn that some foods managed to make me feel worse – particularly, foods with white flour and processed sugar.  In other words – FOODS THAT MAKE LIFE WORTH LIVING.  Twinkies.  Nutty Bars.  Fresh Italian bread.  Those Zingers with the coconut on them.  Cake. Cookies. Donuts.  CAKE.

So I quit eating those foods, and eventually gave up on wheat all together.  And occasionally, when there was an office birthday party or Donut Friday, people would ask why I wasn’t having any. (Because, if you haven’t noticed, people are freakishly interested in what you are or aren’t eating.  I mean, I could light my desk on fire and sacrifice the company’s 2012 tax records while performing an ancient rain dance, wearing only a garbage bag and Crocs, and folks would barely blink. But skip a slice of cake at a company function and suddenly you are the most interesting person on the planet and EVERYONE wants to know what the heck is up.)

So I’d tell them:  “Oh…I can’t eat baked goods.  They make me kind of sick to my stomach.”

Invariably, the response was (I bet you know it, kids, so sing along!) “Wow, I WISH I had that problem!  Then maybe I wouldn’t eat so much!”

Well. About that.

No.  No, you don’t wish you had this. You really do not.  And here is why.

Because when eating a food makes you ill – guess what?  IT TASTES JUST AS DELICIOUS AS ALWAYS.  But after you eat a couple of donuts, or a plate of pasta, about an hour later, it haunts you.  Not just in the usual way – you feel not only fat, gross, and like a complete failure because you YET AGAIN totally blew your diet…as a bonus, you ALSO feel bloated, lethargic, queasy, and drained.  You feel like you’re trying to digest a lump of wet concrete.  (Don’t try this at home, kids.  Suffice it to say it doesn’t feel great.)  So, now you have a double whammy – you can beat yourself up both mentally AND physically with just a single slice of cake!  Two for the price of one!!

Yay.

So, in this process of trying to figure out what makes me ill, after a few years of dealing with this, I’ve come to another surprising conclusion.

Sugar messes with my head.

I’ve finally figured out why I’m such a mess on Sunday nights – because on the weekends, I let my eating “relax” a bit, and indulge – sometimes it’s ice cream, sometimes it’s a gluten-free cookie. (Which generally is not the tastiest of treats, but if you MUST have a cookie, and you don’t want to bite into a flavorless mass of disappointment, try these.  Actually, on second thought, don’t. Don’t even click the link, because you won’t be able to eat fewer than four at a time.  Don’t ask me how I know this.  Moo.)

And by Sunday night, I’m a mess.  Psychologically, I’ve completely fallen apart.  I hate myself, I’m a fat slob, I need to lose ten – no, fifteen – pounds, I’m NEVER EATING AGAIN but OH LOOK SUGAR I MUST HAVE MORE SUGAR CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM CANDY BARRRRRRRRR

<ERROR:  Circular Reference in Prior Logic>

It’s a vicious cycle.  Once I eat a sugary treat, my body releases the food demons.  I’m like a sucrose vampire.  I.  MUST.  FEED.  I.  MUST.  HAVE.  SUGAR.   (I’m visualizing a tray of sugar cookies with terrified faces cowering in fear as I lurk in the shadows waiting to churn them into crumbs.)  It’s an animalistic drive; one I can only sometimes, and only barely, control.

Not only does eating sugar make me crave more sugar, but it also seems to anger those defeating voices in my head.  The voices that tell me I’m fat, and that until I lose some weight, absolutely nothing else matters.  My husband won’t find me attractive. I’ll fail at my job.  I’m a horrible mother to my kids.  And I’m fat.  Huge, wobbly, saggy, weak, worthless, disgusting, nothing.

It’s as if sugar makes the weeds grow.  They pop up and choke out all the peace and harmony I’ve tried so hard to establish and root.  They wilt the buds of hope I was so delicately trying to get to bloom.

I’ve actually tested this theory. I’ve gone for a week or two without any sugary treats, and the stability of my mood is remarkable.  Sure, there are ups and downs, but I can speak logically to myself and back away from the ledge.

Then, once I’ve indulged…well, the baboon is out of the cage.  AND HE AIN’T HAPPY BRO.  I hate myself, and won’t be worth the air I breathe until I get my weight down to 110…105…99.  But I’ll never, ever GET there because I simply cannot stop eating ice cream and kettle corn, along with any random foodstuffs that happen to be innocently lying in their paths.

It takes a few days before I can keep my head above the waves of self-loathing long enough to really be able to see the shore I so desperately want to swim to.  It takes water and clean eating and exercise and rest.  And time.

Last night, I tested myself again.  This week’s leap into the abyss featured a DQ Blizzard.  A stupid Blizzard?  Really?  Not even something GOOD like Ben and Jerry’s or Culver’s, but a lame-o crappy Blizzard?

I’m weak.  Or so the Blizzard is telling me.

I’m working so hard right now to keep the riptide from ripping off my life vest.  I ate fruit and an egg today, and chili and a baked potato for dinner.  No candy, no ice cream, even though the mean, hateful voices in my head are telling me I’d be a size 00 if I had any willpower at all while simultaneously screaming at me to GET A $&%(@$! FROSTY ALREADY.

Sigh.

Why do I keep doing this to myself?!

Because, dammit…sugar tastes good.  The bitter aftertaste doesn’t kick in right away.

It’s still delicious.

It lies.

I wish I could bottle up this feeling and sprinkle it all over all the peanut butter cups and ice cream pints on the planet.  I wish it turned them all a sickly, neon green and make them impossible to swallow.

Until then…it’s like a bad hangover.  I know, at least intellectually, that my body WILL figure this out in a couple of days, and I just have to nurture myself with good food and rest while my body works the poison out of my system.

It takes time to heal.  Things will look better tomorrow…at least somewhat.

Hang on, Kate.  Hang on.

Fowl Play in the Workplace

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And now for something completely different….

I work just outside of a major metropolitan area.  But, like most cities, we’re fairly compartmentalized – once you get outside of the beltway, you’re in the wilderness fairly quickly.  We’re only about 10 miles from a large city, but very quickly, the 4-lane highway dissolves into a two-lane road, and you’re driving past fields and farms in short order.   When we have visitors coming out to the facility, part of my directions include “drive past the chicken farm and over the train tracks, then turn left.”  And the directions are accurate.  There is a legit free-range chicken farm not 2 miles from work.  Unlike the legend, these chickens seem to know better than to cross the road…

…unlike the turkeys.   But more on that in a sec.

Over the last few years, our metro area has had some challenges with an overrun of Canadian Geese.  The geese are awful.  They’re loud:  HONK HONK HONK EVEN AT FREAKING 6 AM YO.  They’re messy:  They leave droppings everywhere – on walking trails, in parking lots….and these are large birds, so they leave a LOT.  And they’re extremely territorial:  Once they decide to nest somewhere – a watershed, a man-made lake, the base of a light post, between lanes at the bank drive-up window, RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR WORK EXIT…you can forget about using that space for anything else.  They’ll hiss, honk, chase, AND BITE you to get you to stay away.  Trouble is, some ding dong marked these suckers as “protected” – so you can’t (legally, coughcough) shoot them.  So they crap all over everything and terrorize us as we DARE cross the pavement trying to get to the safety of our cars.   Fortunately for me, I can move pretty quickly in 4″ heels, so I haven’t been pinched in the calf by a ticked-off goose…yet.

Since it’s finally looking like spring around here, unfortunately, the geese are starting to come back.  However, to their credit, the geese have acclimated to people enough to understand traffic, for the most part.  They generally tend to stay off the roads, save the occasional exception where a family is crossing with hatchlings.  SUPER FUN when you’re late to work and all four lanes of the beltway come to a screeching halt to avoid flattening the baby pest parade.  <eyeroll>

So, while we’re used to the geese, we seem to have a new addition to the wildlife assortment this year:  wild turkeys.  I suppose they’ve always been in the area, but for some reason (global warming?  food foraging?  running for office?) they seem to be more prolific as of late.

On Monday, I left for work feeling pretty accomplished – because, this past weekend, we FINALLY took down our Christmas tree.  (Yeah.  I know.  I procrastinate, what can I say?)  But my mood went south as I noticed that my 25-mile commute was heavier than usual.  With the arrival of spring comes the return of everyone’s favorite travel season…ROAD CONSTRUCTION.  So one of the major highways I take was reduced to two lanes.  The annual appearance of orange (just like the first winter snow, first thunderstorm, or any display of flashing lights) turns everyone into a COMPLETE FREAKING MORON.  In this state, we merge “zipper style.”  This means that you use ALL lanes up to the merge point, and then take turns merging.  Believe me, this is CLEARLY marked and there are signs ALL OVER THE PLACE, but I swear, once you put people in the safe cocoons of their cars, they lose both natural fear of being struck AS WELL AS THEIR FREAKING MINDS.  So merging (which the locals cannot figure out; it’s not car dancing, SOMEBODY @$#$%!NG GO ALREADY) slows everything down for miles and (obviously) gives me mild road rage.

<pausing to breathe slowly into a paper bag and go to my happy place>

So once that was behind me, and I got off the main highway, I was surprised to find a similar backup at a traffic light a few miles later.  The cause of this backup?  A very confused turkey.  Right in the middle of the intersection.  Poor thing was just wandering around aimlessly, taking its time going absolutely nowhere, and having no clue (or care) that it was making pretty much everybody irritated and late.

I eventually got to work.  (Fortunately, no one cares what time I get there.)  And as I was juggling my coffee, my smoothie, my giant purse, and my lunch as I headed towards the front door, I found that we had a visitor.

TurkeyPretty, isn’t he?

So on Monday, he just wandered around the main entrance.  He watched people as they came and went, and was generally a source of entertainment for everyone.

On Tuesday, Luke (come on, he TOTALLY looks like a Luke, doesn’t he?) was back…a little bolder, a little badder.  He decided to engage us all in a game of hide-and-seek that no one knew they had been invited to play.  The rules:  Hide behind something – a car, a transformer – and when a person comes by, jump out in front of them.  Fortunately for me, I have a main-floor office right by the front door, so I got to watch several folks jump out of their skins as they turned the corner and were face-to-face with a giant bird.

After most of our employees had arrived for the day, he decided, like most good performers do, to up the ante.  He flew up to the roof of the building (OK, I knew turkeys could fly, but up to a 3rd story?) and proceeded to sing us the Song of His People.  For his stage, he chose the corner just above the (ironically appropriate) CEO’s office.  GOBBLEGOBBLEGOBBLE GOBBLEGOBBLEGOBBLE…for a full half-hour as he splayed his feathers and strutted back and forth, showing off for everyone.

Unfortunately, Luke’s thirst for danger was increasing.  On Wednesday morning, I got a report from our 2nd shift customer service department:  the night before, when one of our new hires went outside for a quick smoke, Luke decided to turn hide-and-seek into a game of tag.  He managed to chase this poor woman around the corner – and when she screamed and jumped up on the picnic table, he followed her there, as well.  (I am VERY SAD that our security camera cut off the feed as she turned the corner.  VERY. SAD.  Why have a security camera system if you can’t catch instant YouTube classics like this?!)

Time for a strategy meeting.  (Because, when you work in HR, turkey removal is part of your job description, right?!)  My suggestion – that we blast him with pepper spray and roast him over a company bonfire – was rejected.  (Why?  People are starving in this country, folks!)  We decided to ask our publisher (our company owns and runs a hobby magazine as well) what he might do, because our publisher is one of those absent-minded-professor-crossed-with-a-hipster types who is quirky, deeply intelligent, has both an extensive vocabulary and an insanely quick wit, and has had a deeply rich and fascinating life and knows something about pretty much everything.  So we figured he’d be our best bet in turkey eviction.

He responded to the challenge immediately, with enthusiasm and vigor.  “No no NO!  You CANNOT let the turkey chase people.  It has now established dominance over people and will never leave.  You can’t run from it. You gotta be BIG, you gotta be LOUD, and you need to BE THE ALPHA!”  He then stomped into the lobby and grabbed a six-foot walking stick that was inexplicably leaning there against the grandfather clock (seriously, the random things you find in family-owned businesses) and rushed outside.

Luke was strolling at the side of the building.  The publisher glared at his target.  He sturdied his stance, as a baseball player staring down a star pitcher, mentally preparing to hit a home run.

He shook his hips, and beat the stick onto the ground, once, twice…three times, eyeing his opposition menacingly.

Then he raised the stick over his head, screaming a battle cry that he probably learned from studying ancient Viking slaughter rituals, and took off full force after Luke.  “GAAAAAAAAAA GAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW GAAAAAAWWWWW”

Right in front of the executive suite, and in full view by the conference room holding a meeting with international vendors.

I love privately held companies.

Luke ran around in circles for a bit, attempting to charge some onlookers, but they gamely stood firm in “looking big”.  Defeated, Luke flapped his wings and retreated to the roof.

Twenty minutes later, Luke waltzed up to our main entrance and took a massive dump just outside the door.  (“Oh look!  He signed up for direct deposit.”)

Since chasing the turkey with a stick proved to be SUPER EFFECTIVE (uh…notsomuch) a couple other folks decided to give it a shot.  (We’re always looking for creative and innovative (read: free) additions to our wellness program….)  One lady, bless her heart, just wasn’t in peak turkey-pursuit condition.  Luke barely glanced at her over his shoulder, slowly taking a couple half-hearted steps away from her as she waved the stick, approaching him with what can best be described as a very determined stroll.

As she quickly ran out of breath, she passed the stick to our champion athlete (he rollerblades marathons for fun.  FOR FUN.)  This dude, as lean as the stick he wielded, ran back and forth across the grassy areas of the site for a good twenty minutes, waving the stick, and dodging and weaving like someone avoiding gunfire (just to keep the turkey guessing…?  I cannot imagine what was going through this turkey’s head.)  Eventually, he managed to successfully chase Luke off the property and across the street.

He was back an hour later, pecking at dead bugs off everyone’s license plate, looking up and gobbling at me through my window every time a train went by.  (Even the turkeys complain about the working conditions.  Sheesh.)

Sadly, it was time to admit defeat.

But not for long….wild turkey season opened on Thursday.

I like to think that Luke retreated and went into hiding, and that he’ll come visit us again one day.  Maybe we’ll try to coax him out of hiding to come say hello at our next board meeting.  Judging by what the board said about my last compensation proposal, I think he’d really bond with a couple of our members.

Purging the Pollutants and Poisons

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So…in case you’re wondering (and I’m sure all three of you who read this have been waiting with bated breath just DYING to know how this turned out, ha ha) – I gave him the letter.  I did it.  I actually did it.

I had had a night of very little sleep when I wrote that post.  I saved it, and rushed off to church (of COURSE I was late. If I show up anywhere early, assume aliens have taken possession of my body, and what you’re seeing isn’t me, but an imposter, and shoot me with a green laser gun before I take over the planet.)

After church, we sat on the couch and talked.  Well…I tried to talk.  I was too upset to say much.  Finally, I told him, “I wrote you a letter.  I don’t want to give it to you.  It may be hard to read.  Some of it isn’t very nice.  But you need to understand it comes from a place where I am hurting.  I hope you can read it in the spirit in which it is intended.”

He asked for the letter.

He read the letter while I cried.

Then he said, “I love you, and I want to talk about this.  But first, let me change my shirt.”

And then he went to his closet and THREW THE MEAN SHIRTS AWAY.  ALL OF THEM.  Every last one.

And then we talked.  Really talked.

I was stunned – still am, frankly – that he actually threw those shirts away.  He must really love me.  I’m overwhelmed by that.  How can I mean so much to him?

He really is an amazing guy.

I walked around for the next week feeling like I had removed an eighty-pound backpack that I’d forgotten I was carrying.  Drama is like that – it starts out as a flashy new bag, which is hip and cool and fun to show off as you twirl and strut.  But as time goes on, it collects rocks and dirt and lead and concrete. It gets heavier and heavier, and for some reason, you keep carting it around like you’re doing it a favor.  As if it benefits you in some way.  It’s only when you eventually unload it that you realize how soul-suckingly bad it was for you, how much of a drain it was on your energy and your joy.

So I spent a full week feeling almost normal.  And then things went sideways again (due to a visit with my folks…doesn’t visiting your parents always remind you of the ways you’ve failed them?  I may write more about that later.)  Suffice it to say I had plenty to talk about in my appointment with Dr. P this week.

One of the things I’ve been struggling with is accepting myself at a higher weight.  I hate saying this, because I KNOW how lame, pathetic, and first-world-problemy it sounds. Really.  I’d totally be rolling my eyes (and mentally slapping her) if anyone ELSE told me how hard it was for her now that she’s eaten her way out of a size zero and is ALL THE WAY up to a size two now.  Boo freakin’ hoo, right?

But when it’s your own body?  When the sign of success you previously had (BMI of 18, yeah!) has faded away? When your clothes are getting tighter?  When no one gasps at how skinny you are anymore, and the one thing you used to be good at, the ONE AREA you could excel in, the ONLY area that anyone in society seems to value (and certainly the one that’s the most prized, yet least attainable, by you) is now an area where you’re not in the best 5%?  Where you’re now just…normal?  It kind of sucks.  It feels like failure.

AND THAT’S STUPID.

Intellectually, I know I am not a fat monster.  I can’t be.  The numbers do not add up.  Even if I looked 20 pounds heavier than I am, logic tells me I cannot possibly be a huge beast.  But when I look in the mirror, my thighs are bulging out in all directions, and my stomach poofs out in an unflattering not-sure-if-she’s-pregnant bloat.  Flesh hangs over the tightening waistband of my pants (hello, back fat.  Who invited YOU, anyway?)  Pants in the smallest size are uncomfortably snug and emphasize every flaw.

Ah, yes, the pants.  I have clothes that have been hanging in my closet, unworn for several months, mocking me.  You can’t wear me.  I cut you sharply across the waist; I stretch in a most unflattering fashion across your thighs.  I’m here to remind you that you will NEVER be good enough. You will never be perfect.  What a shame that you lack the discipline to stick to your diet.  How pathetic that you have so little control.  I’m a prize you don’t deserve to have.

How ironic.  Apparently, it wasn’t just my husband who had hurtful things in his closet.

So, during my session with Dr. P, we decided that I’d clean out my closet.  I had mixed feelings about this.  First and foremost (if you’re female and have ever struggled with your weight, you’ll guess this one) – “WHAT ABOUT WHEN I GET THIN AND CAN WEAR THEM AGAIN?”  I know I’m trying to learn to accept myself at a healthy weight, but I’m not ready to say that I will never be 107 pounds again.  And that’s OK – I’m not there now, but I’m not ready to let go of that quite yet.  In the meantime, the pants don’t fit me well now, so why keep them when all they do is make me unhappy?  And, as Dr. P reminded me, “if you do need that size later, you’ll want to buy new stuff anyway.”  Good point.

And today I did it.  I went to my closet and ruthlessly pulled out all the size 0 pants.  I went through EVERYTHING (and I have a BIG closet, folks.  As if I would live in a house with inadequate closet space. AS IF.)  and bravely deposited in the Donations bag a grand total of…

<drum roll, please>

one skirt and two pairs of pants.

<cue sad trombone>

Wait…that’s it?

All that fuss for TWO FREAKING PAIRS OF PANTS?

(Wow.  Drama much?)

I stared at my small offering in disbelief….Yup.  Out of an entire wardrobe of “clothes I’m too fat for,” I had two – TWO – pairs of pants that are a bit snug to be flattering.  And you know what?  THEY NEVER ACTUALLY FIT ME WELL IN THE FIRST PLACE.  The brown pants were too short in the rise <coughcoughcameltoecough> and the black pinstripe pair were flattering but were always gave me a bit of back fat.  The skirt was skin-tight, but always had been, really, and I hadn’t worn it much because it was borderline inappropriate – a little too Jessica Rabbit for the office.

What’s amazing me about this is the power that these unworn pants had.  I mean, I have like 10 pairs of other pants – that FIT – and I wasn’t enjoying them because I had two ill-fitting pairs in my closet?  And WHY WAS I NOT BLAMING THE PANTS?  I can’t possibly expect every pair of pants to fit well and be flattering.  But…isn’t that what I’ve been doing?

The mean pants are in the donation sack, ready to leave my life completely tomorrow.

And, just like that, I have a closet full of pants that fit.

All my clothes fit.

That sort of feels…good?  Wait, that’s not the word.  More like “not a failure.”

I’ll take it.  It’s not my usual style, but the cut is surprisingly comfortable, so I’ll try to work it into my wardrobe.

The Things We Learn From Trees

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Because the hubs and I are a hip, well-connected couple accustomed to burning up the trendiest activities on the social scene…we spend a lot of time on the couch perusing Netflix shows.

Sometimes, we have a tough time deciding what to watch.  We don’t always agree on what constitutes good entertainment.

My list:  What Not to Wear.  Friends.  Anything qualifying as “food porn” (i.e. Man Vs. Food, Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins.)  Say Yes to the Dress.  <hangs head in shame>

(Actually, wait.  There was something worse on Netflix for a while.  It was one season of this show called Bridalplasty.  If you’re wondering if the name alone should have you cringing, the answer is, obviously, yes.  It was a mix of Bridezilla, The Bachelor, and Mean Girls.  Each week, twelve hopeful brides would compete (for the life of me, I cannot remember the challenges.  Stuff like naming the designer of crystal?  Pin the boutineer on the groom?) and the winner got a full plastic-surgery makeover AND a dream wedding.  If you won that week’s challenge, you got one plastic-surgery procedure and/or a dream wedding item (dress, flowers.)  It was a dramatic, hot mess.  And the reason I know so much about it is because I watched the entire season.  I should be banned from society.  I’m clearly not fit to be around children.)

His list:  Earth and space science.  Military history.  Things that blow up.  Transformers.  Tosh.0.

So you can see there might be a slight disconnect here….Our “Suggested for Kate” list is slightly disturbing; I think the logarithm just threw its hands in the air, stuck a bunch of random 80s cartoons and reality shows into our feed, and curled up in the fetal position under the futon.

However, Netflix being a rich, untapped oil well of time-suck with a huge variety of subjects, we have been able to find a few things we agree on.  We like stories about the supernatural and the afterlife.  Documentaries about how things are made will keep our attention (especially if they’re about food, of course!)  We enjoyed Weird or What? with William Shatner (who I find awkwardly hilarious) – and right now we’re blasting through a season of Modern Marvels.  It’s one of those shows that sounds really, really boring, but once you start watching, you kind of get into it, and you accidentally learn stuff.  Plus, they had an episode ABOUT SHOES.  SHOES!  SHOES AND SCIENCE!

So one of the episodes we watched recently was about wood.  Yeah, wood.  Like from trees.  Which is odd, because wood isn’t exactly modern, is it?  But it is sort of a marvel.  For example, I marvel at how many leaves one tree can produce.  If I were that efficient, I’d be running marathons while programming robots in space to stop tsunamis and redirect the tidal energy into washing my windows.  But since I’m not, I’ll just sit here in my cozy recliner and share with you what I learned about wood.  (Don’t worry, it’s not totally lame.)

Accidental Thing I Learned (ATIL) #1:  Trees are deceptively strong and can hold many times their weight – but only from a certain angle.  We already know how trees tend to grow – barring any obstacles, pretty much straight up.  And we all learned in elementary school about the rings of a tree – if you count the rings, theoretically you’ll know the tree’s age, since they add a ring of outer growth every year.  In other words, trees essentially GROW into columns – it’s what they’re genetically engineered to be.

In certain parts of the country, where the water table is high – (think New Orleans, and…well, that’s the only one I can think of.  But there are probably more) – you can’t build houses directly on the ground; they’d sink.  The soil is a silty, clay-muckity mess.  The solution?  Build somewhere else.  But if you can’t, or won’t (humans are invariably stubborn) – use trees.  Lots of trees.  To set up a new building, you first get a ton of wood columns.  You then use a big digger/drill machine thingy (sorry for getting so technical here) to shove the mud out of the way in a hole, and then a pile driver to shove the tree-columns into the goo.  Once you line up a few dozen trees, you have a series of columns that can each support many times their own weight.  From there you level ’em off and go ahead and build your hospital or hotel or whatever.

What makes this especially impressive is that these columns are made of the same stuff that is seemingly effortless to chop in half with your bare hands.  Seriously, little five-year-olds in karate class give a shout and <thwack> they’ve totally split a board.

The secret, of course, is in the grain.  It’s pretty tough to smash through a tree by slamming down on it directly from the top.  Take a plank, however, and you’ll see the wood’s weakness – the grain.  if you want to break a board, you just line up the grain to be parallel with your hand, and while I wouldn’t recommend punching into a hunk of tree without some guidance, it’s significantly easier to break through this way.

In other words – depending on how you strike it – a tree can be overwhelmingly strong, or deceptively weak.  From the right angle, it can support great structures under significant stress and impact.  From others, it’s child’s play.

I guess we’re all like that, aren’t we?  Don’t we all have some seemingly little things that just fling us over the edge?  Give me a mass layoff at work, or a personal tragedy, and I’m a pillar of strength, being admiringly Zen-chill and waxing philosophical all day.  But a curt word from a loved one, or a flight delay, or someone leaving a dish in the bathroom (the bathroom!  Really?!) for THE ELEVENTY BILLIONTH TIME, and I lose my shiz all over the walls, floors, and countertops; I’ll be scrubbing my outbursts off the ceiling for weeks.  Those seemingly minor annoyances cut me across the grain.  While I can be strong under significant adversity, what appears to be a disproportionately small stressor breaks me in two.

ATIL #2:  Charcoal briquettes were created as a way to use up waste in the automotive industry.   Yes, the backyard barbeque gold standard wasn’t invented on purpose – this wasn’t a product to fill a consumer need; it was a manufacturing one.  Back when cars were first invented, they were modeled after carriages – so they were made largely of wood. As demand grew, so did the pile of scrap.  Eventually, someone got the bright idea to burn it down and resell it to cook meat.  A little bit of marketing, and voila!  Garbage turned into money, and Ford Charcoal morphed into Kingsford, and they still make the picnic staple today.  (Although nowadays they’re owned by Clorox.  You can read a more eloquent version of this history here.)

It goes without saying that it’s better to deal with the garbage in our lives – the emotional clutter, the mental baggage – than to let it pile up and rot.  You can only store it for so long before it starts to smell badly enough to distract passers-by.  But to find a way to turn an unfortunate event, a mishap, a broken heart into something not only salvageable, but something clean, shiny, and new that brings something positive to others who might need it?  That’s brilliant.  And probably better for all of us.  Yeah, I know – that’s one of those things that SOUNDS easy, and we all know it’s not.  But I wonder how much farther I’d get if, instead of mulling over the well-known choruses of “woe is me” and “this sucks”, I focused instead on “what positive change can I make from this?” or “what can I learn from this?” or at least “how can I share this experience in a way that’s helpful and not totally preachy?”

ATIL #3:  Wood can stay strong for CENTURIES underwater.  You’re probably thinking what I was thinking – “but wood HATES water!”  I remember from my marching band days how much damage a good rainstorm was theorized to do to my clarinet.  And we all know what a good flood does to your hardwood.  But what I learned is that surprisingly, water isn’t the enemy.  Wood can last for years out of the water, and it has a very similar resilience when submerged.  You can see some evidence of this with shipwrecks that are hundreds of years old – they’re surprisingly well-preserved and haven’t deteriorated much differently that they would have on land, save a few starfish and some globs of seaweed.

What wood DOESN’T like?  Change.  If wood gets wet and stays wet, it’s fine.  If it’s dry, and never gets wet, it’s also fine.  But take a dry piece of wood, and saturate it, then let it dry…and it’s weaker.  Repeat this cycle and wood deteriorates rather quickly.  This is best demonstrated with old wooden pirate ships.  The top half of the boat that sticks up out of the water and doesn’t really get that wet stays pretty sturdy.  The bottom of the boat, that’s always underwater? Also pretty solid.  Where the boat starts to fall apart is at that line where the boat meets the water – the constant transition of going back and forth from wet to dry to wet again causes the boat to lose its integrity.

Now, you and I both know we can’t entirely control change.  Things change when we least expect them to – you can be ambling along at an unobtrusive pace when life suddenly chucks us curveballs and trap doors and the occasional fire-breathing dragon.  But there’s a lot we can control to be better prepared.  Just like you wouldn’t put a wooden boat in the ocean without some sort of wax or fiberglass coating to protect it, neither should we barrel through life without some sort of shield.  I’m not saying you should put up walls and lock people out – that would be shielding ourselves from being human, and let’s face it, if you hide from the pain life springs on us, you’ll also miss out on all the joy, too.

But we can certainly prepare ourselves, mentally and physically, for the inevitable stumbles and storms.  We can meditate.  We can pray for peace and strength.  We can put down the pizza and the Pop-Tarts and eat more green things.  We can exercise; we can stretch, we can sweat, we can think, we can learn.  We can shut off our iPhones at a reasonable hour and rest. We can give a lot of hugs.  We can express gratitude.  We can allow ourselves to be loved, and we can return that love.  We can stop being so hard on ourselves when we miss perfection, and instead work on having a generous and kind spirit.

Sometimes the boat has to meet the water.  There’s no avoiding that.  So I’ll pack my life jacket and do my best to continue to sail.

So A Bag of Kettle Corn Tried to Kill Me….

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Please allow me to share my tale as a warning to those of you who think that this pillowy, salty-sweet, crunchy bag of delight is safe.  It’s not.   Well, it probably is, kind of like saccharin is – if you ingest it in typical, socially normal amounts, it’s probably not going to give you cancer.  But if you are prone to excess, and slog back cans of Diet Fizzy Delite by the case, it just might hurt you.

In my defense, they are selling mighty big bags of kettle corn nowadays, and do you think there’s a SINGLE warning on the stuff?  Anything like, “CAUTION: Read the bag, moron, and pace yourself.  This is NOT a single serving.  You will NOT be labeled a quitter if you use a chip clip and have leftovers” ?  Nooooooooooo.  Not a thing.  So if you use food to self-medicate – BE WARNED, kids – this one is dangerous and not to be underestimated.  And as you’ll see – this wasn’t ENTIRELY my fault.  I was provoked.  I needed help coping, and the kettle corn was readily available….

Let me give you the back story:

Last weekend was the first one in a couple of months where the hubby and I had a weekend together.  No kids, no plans.  I really wanted us to have an old-fashioned date.  I wanted some quality time where he and I did something together other than get groceries or home-improvement supplies.  I suggested the local science museum, the art museum, the comedy club….

His reply was “anything sounds good.  You pick.”  GAH! I HATE THAT.  Does that mean that everything actually DOES sound good and he really does NOT have a preference?  Or does it, as I fear, mean that he really would rather do something else that I haven’t suggested yet?

The lack of enthusiasm caused us to bleed away Saturday futzing around in indecision.  I rested.  We ran a couple of quick errands.  It was OK, but I really wanted us to, you know, reconnect, and this was one item I was unable to find at Home Depot.  I was sad, listless, and a bit lonely.  So I opened the new bag of kettle corn that I had just purchased from Costco the night before.  (Yes, I should know better.)  I stuffed my feelings back with bite after bite of cane syrup and popped corn.  I chewed and I swallowed my emotions so they could leave me alone for just a little while longer.

On Sunday I tried to fly the “date” idea again.  After lunch, we (read: I) decided it’d be fun to go see Lark Toys.  I’d read about this place, and thought its retro toys and carousel would make a nice day trip.  (Trust me.  I know the creepy Santa on their home page would lead you to believe it’s a trap, but it gets lots of good reviews and is locally quite popular.  I swear it is not a trick meant to lure you into the lair of creepy gnomes and possessed antique dolls with pale skin and glassy, unblinking eyes….)

Hubby agreed to drive, and I agreed to let him.  And the drive was actually quite pleasant – he toned down the testosterone display (he usually drives like a rabid cheetah in search of a fresh kill), so I could actually enjoy the ride, as opposed to “tolerate” it (read:  death grip on the door handle and praying for a divine dose of Xanax.)  The drive was really pretty, too – lots of cliffs and bluffs, lakes and rivers, and several small towns one could only describe as “quaint.”

The toy store was lovely.  Not an electronic toy in sight.  It was filled with all sorts of whimsical things – dinosaurs, wind-up tin toys, puppets, building blocks and logs, and active toys to catch, throw, and jump with.  These are the sorts of toys, I’m sure, that parents think are good for kids…unfortunately, given the choice, our little cherubs end up gravitating towards iPads and X-Boxes, and sadly, even the best of us get tired of fighting them and eventually just let them plug in.

The hubby and I had a pleasant day, mostly.  But there was, frankly, something bugging me.  The hubs had decided to wear one of his “special” T-shirts.  I think I mentioned previously that he had recently acquired a collection of in-your-face anti-religion T-shirts, and he decided to wear one today.  Now, to be fair, it was one of the more minor ones…but dang it, he KNOWS I hate them.  And I decided to take it personally that he chose to deliberately wear one on our DATE.  I thought about mentioning it to him before we left – but honestly, what good would that do?  He’d probably change into something else, but it would certainly irritate him and the mood would be dead, and it wasn’t easy to break our inertia to actually get us headed on some sort of a date in the first place…so I attempted to suck it up and try to enjoy the day despite staring into the flame-embellished “HERETIC” written across his chest.

And I guess I failed.

We got home, I cooked dinner in a very quiet house while he played some video game (the current favorite is Destiny, which I call Density, because it’s funny every.single.time.  I am so clever. <chuckle>)  I made a very nice, healthy dinner of Italian stuffed peppers (I use this recipe, and it’s great.  Note, this EASILY makes enough filling for 3 peppers, and I invariably have a spoon or two of filling left over that will only fit in my pie hole.  (Can’t waste it, ya know.)  I don’t put the sauce on top, and I mix up the cheeses depending on what is 45 seconds from going bad in my fridge.  But if you like bell peppers, these are really good.)

And later, I sat on the couch, feeling the same listless, lonely emptiness I’d felt the day before, now highlighted with the fly-in-the-otherwise-lovely-salad disappointment of the day and the fourteen-shades-of-blue Sunday night blahs…and I once again reached for the kettle corn.

And I finished the bag.

I FINISHED THE BAG.  THE ENTIRE FREAKING BAG.

TWENTY-FOUR (!!!) SERVINGS OF KETTLE CORN DOWN THE CHUTE IN TWO DAYS.

I’m not sure if I should be pitied, embarrassed, or high-fiving myself.  (I’ll go with Door #2, Alex.)

So on Monday, I had a well-deserved food hangover.  I was bloated and puffy and had a bit of a stomachache.  (And I’m sure you’re thinking, “Dude.  DUH.  You ate a bag of popcorn meant to feed a small village for a week IN TWO DAYS!”)

Otherwise, it was a normal day.  I worked.  I came home from work.  I made a tuna melt.  I did a load of laundry.  I called my kids, who were at their Dad’s.

About five minutes after I hung up the phone, I suddenly went into labor.

Now, this is concerning for a number of reasons.  One, I’m in my 40s.  Two, I’m not pregnant, to my knowledge anyway.  I had my tubes tied about ten years ago, and if I remember biology correctly, if I AM giving birth right now, this baby has only had a two-week gestation period. Three….it f@$(#@ HURTS LIKE HELL.

I didn’t mull this over for very long (see #3 above) before I told the hubby that I probably needed to go to the hospital.  In about 10 minutes I had blown past “maybe this is just gas” to realizing that the pain was not only THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER FELT, but that it was coming in waves.  Every 3-4 minutes or so, I’d get a brief, 5-7 second respite where I didn’t feel like ripping out my uterus with a fork would be a relief.

The next couple of hours were a blur.  I’m not sure how the wheelchair appeared.  I remember shaking quite violently from the pain.  Somehow, they got an IV started (they must have a sniper on the needle ward.)  I recall being asked how bad the pain was, on a scale from 1-10.  (I believe I said “fourteen.”)  There was morphine.

And then there was relief.

All of the usual tests were run. CT, ultrasound, tubes of blood.  This all took a while….Interestingly, for the CT scan, they had me drink the contrast instead of injecting it.  The nurse said – AND I QUOTE – “because you’re skinny, this will help us get a better view.”  SHE CALLED ME SKINNY.  <swoon>  I may marry her.

By now, it was well after 3 AM.  The doctor came in to deliver the diagnosis:

“Well…we don’t know.”

EXCUSE ME?  I nearly DIED here.  (Ok, cue the melodrama.  To my credit, I was in an insane amount of pain.)

“There is no definitive cause for your pain.  There are some things that may have contributed…but we can’t say why exactly this happened.”

Possible Cause #1:  My bloodwork showed that I was a little low on potassium.  Potassium deficiencies can cause muscle cramps.  So this could have been a Charley horse in my babymaker?  REALLY?  Who does this stuff HAPPEN to???

Possible Cause #2:  “You did show a moderate amount of stool in your colon.  Sometimes, in very thin women, the wrong mass in the wrong place can cause a significant amount of pain.”

(I cannot believe I just wrote that on the Internet.  Humiliation, party of one.  But – did you notice?  SHE CALLED ME THIN.  That’s TWICE now.  It’s OFFICIAL!!!)

“Have you eaten any high-fiber foods lately?”  I shook my head innocently.  “No…nothing I don’t normally eat…?”  (NO WAY was I admitting to my gluttonous debauchery.  NO.  WAY.)

Possible Cause #3:  It’s a virus.  You should feel better in a few days.

Treatment Plan:  Drink this potassium solution to boost levels. (This, for the record, was not yummy.  It was fluorescent orange and tasted a bit like an orange popsicle…that is, if you also blended in the stick, the paper wrapper, and some earwax.)  Take Milk of Magnesia to see if that helps.  And take Advil for pain. (That’ll be $4500, please.)

So we got home at about 4 AM.  And I realized that my spouse had been sitting by my side, holding my hand, for SIX HOURS.

Six long, grueling hours, in the middle of the night, surrounded by germs and doctors and nurses and tests, knowing he needed to work the next day, and not complaining even once.

He was there for me.  In exactly the way I needed.

It’s funny how, just when I think maybe he’d be better off without me, perhaps we’re not well-suited for each other, and maybe he’d be HAPPIER without me sighing and pouting and disliking this and frowning about that and HATING THOSE STUPID T-SHIRTS…something like this happens that shows me in high-definition, high-resolution clarity how much he really does love me.

Even if sometimes, I do stupid things like eat too much kettle corn.  Even if I give an obnoxious T-shirt far more power than it deserves.

He does love me, and this week, that’s been enough.

***************************************

Post Script:  If you’re interested….I guess it really WAS a virus – but the kettle corn certainly, uh, contributed.  On Tuesday I took my Elixir of Expulsion like a good little patient.  (It actually tasted pretty good…like the filling of chocolate-covered cherries.  Yum.  Highly recommend as a beverage of choice over the oral potassium.)

Later that night, I had a similar pain episode, but I headed it off with about 6 Advil and a heating pad, and it subsided after about 30 minutes.  That night, my stomach made some unholy noises reminiscent of demonic exorcism.  (It made the cat jump about a foot.  That was freaking hilarious.) There was no more significant stomach pain after that.

I spent most of the week resting.  I slept a lot, and my stomach kept subtlety reminding me NOT to challenge it.  I started to turn the corner at about 3ish on Friday (just in time for the weekend!  yeah!) and today I broke out in a viral rash – this is something that little kids get, but I didn’t start getting until my 30s.  <insert obvious immaturity jokes.>  My typical pattern is that I break out across the torso once I’m over the worst and the virus has started to wind down.

So I’ll live.

But will I buy kettle corn again?

<sigh>  Don’t hold me to “never”….I can be a really slow learner.

Sealed With A Sunset

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Last week, I had the opportunity (read: I was, as we like to say in the business world, “voluntold”) to attend a conference for work.

The bad news:  The conference was about Worker’s Compensation and Safety.  OSHA and EH&S.  Holy snorefest, Batman.  This conference is clearly the equivalent of the ZONK prize on Let’s Make a Deal:

<cue cheesy game show host>

“Congratulations KATE!  YOU have been chosen for a two-day, two-night all-expense (as long as they’re under our woefully antiquated per diem) paid trip to learn things YOU already know about The.  Most.  Booooooring subject on the planet!

“You will receive flight accommodations on the most economical option available, allowing YOU to spend QUALITY TIME in America’s FINEST airports eating the LOWEST QUALITY FOOD money can buy for under $25 during your extended layovers!  Aaaaaaaaaannnnd NOT ONLY will you arrive exhausted, frustrated, and 17% homicidal, you will, at our leisure, be shoved into a crowded airport shuttle where a driver of questionable skill will terrify you with his bob-and-weave rush-hour traffic skills!  Once you arrive at your hotel, you’ll be greeted by the following:

* A broken elevator!

* A room with PLENTY of Keurig coffee, but NO coffee mugs!  And….

* TWO FULL DAYS OF LECTURES in a fourteen-degree conference hall, where you’ll spend nine hours a day hearing ALL ABOUT workplace safety and OSHA!  Congratulations KATE!!!!!”

The good news?  The conference was being held in San Diego.  I live in the Midwest, and it’s the middle of winter here.  Days where the high is in the double-digits are few and far between until April or May (when it VERY RUDELY has continued to snow – IN MAY – for the past two winters.  Even the diehard Minnesotans and Wisconsinites are growing weary of the seven-month gift from Canada.)  So I figured San Diego HAS to be warmer, and warmer = better.  And the conference hotel was right on the beach.  Even with my “economical” flights, I had a good shot at getting to my hotel before sunset the day before the conference.  I hadn’t been to the beach in…um…(carry the one, subtract…uh…twenty years?  Can that be right?  Wow…yep.  Probably more like twenty-five years.)  Too long, in any case.

So the day before the conference, I spent six (!!) hours on an airplane.  Word to the uninformed:  Work travel is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, glamorous.  If you’ve been on a plane any time in the last ten years, you’ve likely rid yourself of that delusion.  But if you haven’t – just know that it kind of sucks.  You arrive at the airport.  You wait in a long line with people who are grumpy, smelly, whiny, or all three.  You remove any extra layers of clothing. You separate your liquids, electronics, and shoes into bins.  Your personal belongings get scanned.  You wait while the person in front of you – clearly an inexperienced traveler – gets sent back through the X-ray for attempting to smuggle dangerous contraband like a cell phone, water bottle, or <gasp> a jar of peanut butter past security screening.

Eventually, it’s your turn for the X-ray, and YOU get scanned. (Yes, TSA can see an outline of your netherbits.  But it’s not a good picture; your clandestine objects look just like everyone else’s, so try not to think about it.)  You rush to join the logjam on the other side of the scanner and, while the plastic bins are coming out faster than the candy in Lucy’s factory, you do your best to quickly jam your personal belongings back into your one allowed carry-on and your one permitted personal item, wedging them in just so, ensuring that everything will still close and fit in the overhead.  (It’s a good thing I was so good at Tetris back in the day.  I have mad packing skills, yo.)

Mad dash to find your gate.  (This COULD be a leisurely stroll, but I’m a horrible procrastinator, and probably didn’t leave home until the last possible minute.  I guess I like living on the edge….)  Sit and wait.  Find out that flight is delayed.  Wait some more.  Line up by caste ranking, but as close to the front of the line as you can, so you aren’t separated from your carry-on due to full overhead bins.  Get your bar code scanned.  Find your seat.  Buckle up.  Ride to de-icing.  Park.  Wait some more.  Insert a variety of potential delays – flat tire, ground stop, weather, or JUST BECAUSE IT’S TUESDAY, and eventually take off for your next destination – a two-hour layover.

Are we having fun yet?  I think, after flying for so long, I now know how cattle feels.  Except at the end of the trip, I don’t go to slaughter, I go to work.  Not sure who is getting the better deal here.

So I FINALLY get to San Diego.  But as travelers know, the airport isn’t really your final destination. Now you have to find your shuttle, and it’s rush hour (of course.)  It’s another hour before I get to my hotel.  And part of the trip involves high-speed travel over a very long, very narrow, very HIGH bridge.  (This bridge is sometimes called the Suicide Bridge. It’s 2000 feet above the water.  That’s a long, long way down….)  Clearly, our driver has a teenage fantasy about NASCAR, or Bump-N-Jump, or maybe the local ordinance prohibits staying in one lane for more than 500 feet at a time.  It’s a white-knuckler over the span, that’s for sure.  And me without a paper bag to breathe into, or a parachute, just in case.

By the time I get to my hotel, I’ve sailed past grumpy, dashed by cranky, and completely missed irritable.  If I was a cartoon character, you’d see FOUL MOOD in an aura-like cloud radiating off my head like steam.  So I get to my room, unpack…and then have my meltdown.

After about 15 minutes of an unspecified rant of I HATE EVERYTHING <stomp stomp stomp> I take a deep breath and notice that there’s still daylight.  I wander down to the beach.

Sunset1

Aaaaaahhhhh.

I kick off my shoes and roll up my yoga pants and head to the shore.  I climb out on the rocks.  I watch the surf.

I breathe.  For maybe the first time all day.  I breathe in, I breathe out, and I just soak in the calm and the beauty.

I spend the next hour or so walking up and down the shoreline, marveling at every shell, rock, and hunk of seaweed.  I stick my toes in the cold surf and let the sand ease away all the baggage I’d been carrying around in my head.  I sit on the rocks, dangerously close to the icy, crashing waves.  And I breathe.

And then…I see it.  I SEE IT.  I cannot believe what I am seeing:

ZOMG SEAL1 Is…is that what I think it is?

SEAL!  SEAL!  ZOMG A LEGIT ACTUAL SEAL IN REAL LIFE!!!!

ZOMG SEAL2I’m awestruck at this little dude, and watch him for a few minutes as he flops up on shore, barks as the bewildered tourists, and then casually heads back out to sea.

And then:

Sunset2

It’s getting colder, but I just can’t tear myself away from this.  The sky lights up in pink and periwinkle and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

And as the sun continues to set, I receive the most fantastic gift as the sky explodes in color:

Sunset3

I’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s indescribably beautiful.

I’m overwhelmed by what I’m feeling.  It’s…peace.  Peace and joy.  I’m refreshed and renewed.  What started out as a boring, frustrating, work-required inconvenience was something I needed badly.  So very badly.  More than I ever knew.

Sometimes, God throws you a small reminder that He’s out there, even when you forget to look.  I’m holding this reminder close to my heart, to remind me that life really can bring joy.

Just keep looking.

This is life’s love letter to me.  Dear Kate, you are loved.  Sealed with a sunset.