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>

Swimming with Crocodiles

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Recovery isn’t linear. It’s cyclical.

You have days, much like I did a week ago Saturday, where you feel so GOOD that you could just OWN the planet.  Nothing can stop you!

You strut proudly.  You’re feeling stable and solid.  You feel unshakable.

You feel good.  It feels GREAT!

You feel confident.  You feel strong.  Hey, life is…good!

You feel at peace with what you are and where you’ve come from.  You sigh in relief.  No mountain is too tall.  No earthquake is too strong.  You can do this!  You’re tough.  You’re solid.  You’re ready.

This feels easy.

Too easy.

One day, without warning, the wind changes direction.  The gentle breeze you were enjoying develops a sharp edge.  It starts to feel cold.  It begins to sting.

Perhaps it was a snub, a slight.  Maybe you received harsher-than-necessary words from a loved one.  You might feel a bit shut out from friends as you see they’ve planned an outing, a project, without you.  Your teenagers might possibly be waffling between childlike affection and adult indifference, and their flexing of the latter leaves your soul tender and mottled with bruises.

You draw yourself inward, trying to protect what you thought was strong and solid from bending and breaking under the heavy, cold blackness that seeps in.  You look to seek shelter, and the ground quakes around you.  You step gingerly, seeking a secure foothold, not knowing which moss-covered rock will teeter and slide, casting you into the icy darkness.

You struggle wildly, desperate to keep your head above the surface, gulping breaths between violent waves.  You grasp at something, ANYTHING, to keep you from washing away.

A branch.  A rock.

Anything.

Something familiar, something predictable.

Food.

Weight.

All you can think about is stopping the slide.  You want to get out of the cold blackness.  You need to get out of the wind.

You can’t find a branch; the rocks you grasp slip out of hands that refuse to cooperate.   You need to get out of this NOW.

You need to get back in control.

You latch on to the one thing that has pulled you out before.  Ah.  It’s familiar; it feels solid.  You climb on and look around.  You’re still in the river, and it’s whirling around you, but you can SEE that from here, and from this vantage point, none of the dangers that tried to suck you in can reach you.

I don’t need people.  I don’t need their drama and their utter crap.  I need to be thin.  I am powerful when I’m losing weight.  People are more interested in me when I’m thin.  I’m perceived as smarter, prettier, more competent when I’m thin.  I can lose five pounds this week; I’ll eat only fruit, I’ll run four times a week and do crunches until I can’t anymore.  I can be lighter, leaner. 

It’s no wonder no one wants anything to do with you.  Look at how your arms jiggle when you gesture wildly to make a point.  Look down and see the fat that bulges over your waistband when you sit down.  Walk some stairs and notice the bounce in your thighs, your hips. 

You are nothing with this layer of weakness you wear.  You are worthless.  Meaningless.  Nothing. 

Unbeknownst to you, you are not safe.

You were so focused on pulling yourself out of the current that you have hauled yourself onto the back of a crocodile.

You’ve climbed out of the water, but you’re still smack-dab in the middle of the river.  You know the water still surrounds you, waiting to suck you to its black depths. But it’s no longer your primary danger.

You feel safe, because you’re relied on crocodiles before.  On the back of a crocodile, you know what to expect.  Sure, there’s some danger here.  But I’m in control now.  I’m not in that uncomfortable river of “emotions” and “feelings” and speaking my mind and standing up for myself and demanding respect.

I don’t have to do the very difficult job of “working through” this, because all I can focus on is staying on the crocodile.  Because one flick of the tail, a snap of the jaw, and he’ll have me in his unyielding jaws.  He’ll drag me to the bottom of the river, exhausting me quickly as I succumb to the sea.

I should be looking for a sturdier platform.  A branch, a tree.  Something rooted solidly in the bank and the sun.  I should be shouting for help and reaching out for a hand.

But I don’t dare take my focus off the crocodile.

Eventually, the storms will subside a bit, and he’ll swim close enough to shore so that I can leap off his back onto the ground.  Once I do that, I have to run – run hard and run fast – so he can’t drag me back in.

He doesn’t have to try too hard, though.  He just eyes me cockily, and with a tilt of the head eases himself back into the water.

He knows the storms will come again.  He knows I’ll relax, let my guard down, be overconfident, and think I can row the rapids without a life jacket.

Perhaps one day I’ll find some reliable life preservers that I can keep securely on my person, having them at the ready with an emotional poncho.

Because no matter how brightly the sun shines today, the storms always roll back in.

And maybe one day, I can shoot the stupid crocodile and make myself a sweet pair of shoes out of his empty, depleted shell.

A Season of Spring for the Soul

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Saturday was absolutely beautiful.

First, my long-anticipated 5K.  (My second ever.  My first was in Philly, back in 2002 or so.  At the time, I hadn’t been exercising all that regularly, and certainly wasn’t running, but wanted to give it a go and “just see how I do.”  I got passed by pretty much everyone, including a 75-year-old speed walker. Whomp whomp whomp.)

This race was different.  I’d been running pretty regularly, and I knew I could finish it.  I was as prepared as I could be, and certainly more ready than I’d ever been.  I never expected to WIN, of course, but…gosh, wouldn’t it be cool if I really pushed and did the 5K in under thirty minutes?

I admit I started to worry that I’d be disappointed if I didn’t achieve that goal. But I managed to (somewhat) shrug it off and reminded myself that just showing up meant I’d already won.  And it was perfectly OK to just enjoy the day and do the best I could.

I gave myself permission to just…be.

Ready?

Set?

GO!

I ran the entire time.  I kept running.  At first, several people passed me.  That’s OK, Kate.  You’re here to finish, not to win.  But, as the race went on, I actually passed some people.  Then a few more.  And then a whole bunch more as I crossed the finish line, still running.

My time?  28:20.  BOOYAH.  Who rocks?  THIS GIRL.

I was completely energized by my “win” (don’t laugh – remember, I barely passed gym class in high school and was asked to leave a P.E. class in college) and it painted my entire day in colors of victory and can-do.

I got home and I was an efficiency MACHINE!  RAWRRRR! In a whirlwind, I did a bunch of chores – and then mowed the lawn.    (Our mower is not self-propelled, so wrapping up the yard takes about an hour and 15 and is not an insignificant feat.)  I weeded, and picked up all the sticks that the long winter had tossed about the grass, cutting them down to size and making a clean, neat pile at the end of the driveway.

(Side note:  Our city requires that you not put yard trash in a landfill – YAY EARTH! – you have to lay it out separately for the garbage company.  They come and collect it when they get your trash – for an additional fee, of course – and compost it.  The odd thing, though – trash pickup is on Mondays, and on Sunday, I noticed that my neat pile of sticks was GONE.  Either the 2nd Little Pig was building nearby, or we have some VERY industrious – and large – birds in the ‘hood.  They’re welcome to my yard trash, I suppose, but I sure as heck hope none of them ends up flying over my car.  I’ve heard that people will take ANYTHING if it’s free.  But sticks?!?  People are weird.)

Next, I whipped up a delicious brunch of poached eggs, ham, and toast, and when we polished it off, we were on our way to the local arboretum.  The state university runs this, and it’s your go-to when you want to see a huge variety of flowers and plants, traditional and experimental.  They have this landscaped into a series of hills, complete with both paved and wooded trails.

There’s something about hiking through the woods that gives me a sense of complete peace.  Being outdoors, surrounded by living things.  Breathing.  Being alive.

And the flowers.  Oh, the flowers. DSC03089DSC03108DSC03113 DSC03095 DSC03097 Everything in bloom, reaching out from the cold, damp ground to the dazzling brightness and warmth of the sun.  DSC03078 DSC03070I, too, am reaching for the light and the warmth.  I’m feverishly working to escape the dark, cold places.  The places where I cower and hide; the places where I hug my knees to my chest to close out the blackness.

But when you’re surrounded by this – by light and beauty and LIFE – you want to drink it all in. You want to swim in the river of color and brightness; you want to absorb the vibrancy and unite with the radiant energy.

DSC03105 DSC03099

You breathe without having to remind yourself.  Your shoulders relax; the furrow in your brow fades.

You are so very thankful to be right here, right now.

You have permission to just…be.

And, in this moment, you experience joy.

DSC03066 Saturday was overflowing with contented peace.  How I wish I could just bottle its rich, heady fragrance to scent those dark, oppressive days, spraying a bit into the corners when I need to be reminded to breathe and to seek out the sun.

Nurturing My Inner Athlete

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So now you know why I’m not the most athletic person (see my previous post.)

But today, I’m getting up early, ON PURPOSE, to run a race.

Deliberately.

By my own free will.  No threats, no guns.

Getting up early.

On a SATURDAY.

To run.

So how did I get here, after a lifetime of being convinced that I was just not athletically inclined?

After high school was over and behind me, I only had to get through some minimal physical education credits in college before mandatory movement was FINALLY BEHIND ME FOREVER.  First, I took aerobics, which graded on attendance – and hey, I can tell time, so I passed!  Of course, I couldn’t follow a lot of the moves, but that didn’t matter – as long as you kept moving, marching in place or some such, you got credit for being there.  March in place?  Heck, I was in the marching band for YEARS – I can march the shiz out of anything.

Next, I signed up for racquetball.  After a few classes, the instructor gently took me aside and said that, given my abilities, if I preferred to just run the track upstairs instead of hitting the ball around the court, he’d give me a C and we’d call it good.  (Apparently, there’s a level of “horrifically terrible” that eclipses your own performance; once you’re so pathetically bad that you’re a hazard to others, it’s a whole new box of goats.)

After that debacle, I generally shied away from voluntary activity.  Oh, occasionally I’d dip a toe into the fitness pool – not because it was good for my heart, not for stress reduction – oh, no – but only because it burned calories.  My distaste for physical activity was trumped only by my need to be thin.  But eventually, laziness, time, boredom, and the fact that I was MUCH better at starvation than I was at exercise led me to abandon the effort.

Then, a few years ago, I tried again.  Years of a poor-quality diet had left me feeling…well, gross.  Sluggish and flabby and…kinda greasy. At this point I had been having mysterious stomach issues, and had begun trying a number of things in an attempt to feel better.  I was cooking – actually COOKING – things with vegetables in them.  I was cutting back on processed (albeit yummy) packaged food.  And it seemed to helping, just a little bit.  And I figured “well, everyone says exercise is healthy – so maybe that’ll help just a little bit, too.”

We live in the Midwest, and the winters can be brutally cold – so exercise had to be something that could be done indoors, or it just wouldn’t happen between November and April.  (Even the heartiest of athletes tends to balk at outdoor workouts when the temperature is 10-20F below zero.  Don’t ask about the wind chill – you don’t want to know.)

The hubs had an old skiing contraption in the basement – a manual-action, dusty, rusty metal thing.  (He had acquired it at a garage sale years ago; how he managed to sneak it into the house without me noticing is a mystery to me.)  It was…kind of big and foreboding.  But, with a little WD-40, it was serviceable.  It was something I could do for a half hour while listening to the radio.  I turned on the local morning talk show and moved my arms and legs back and forth for thirty minutes.

It was something.  It was a start.

I kept that up for nearly two years.

Then, I convinced the hubs to start taking walks with me.  We mapped out a two-mile route and started walking several mornings a week before work.  It wasn’t hard (well, except getting out of bed – that’s always a struggle.)  It gave us a chance to talk; it got me outside in the fresh air.

It didn’t FEEL like exercise.  It was easy.  And I found it quieted my head – just a little bit.

After walking for a couple of years (alternating with the skiing device when the temperature dipped below 15, of course) I thought maybe we should step up our game and try running.  You see, I’d heard that running “burns the fat right off ya” – that was the ONLY thing that was appealing, but for a woman with food and body issues, that was all the motivation I needed.

We didn’t follow any formal program.  (I’ve heard wonderful things about Couch to 5K, and know many people who learned to run through this program, but I hate following directions, and tend to rebel when there’s a process in front of me.  I’m not the instruction-manual type.)  This wasn’t a fancy effort.  We’d walk for a while to warm up, then we’d run until we couldn’t run any more.  Then we’d walk until we were ready to run again.

Learning to run was an interesting and challenging process.  Sometimes, I’d feel like I could run FOREVER, but just wasn’t able to get enough oxygen.  Other times, my breathing was fine, but my legs just could NOT run another step.

(And one day, I found seven dollars!  SCORE!  Ok, not a life-changer, but I was disproportionately thrilled about finding it.) 🙂

Gradually, over time, my legs and my lungs caught up with each other, and I was running more and walking less.

And I kept doing it.

Did my body change?  A little bit, sure.  It wasn’t the promised magic pill to physical perfection – I still struggle with the lumps and bumps; I still frown at the flab, the pooch, and the back fat.

And I don’t look forward to running.  I don’t blast out of bed in the morning like Mary Freaking Poppins, singing a happy song about what a glorious day it is now that I get to go run.  (The day THAT happens is the day you need to lock me up but good.)

But I run.

And when I’m consistent with it…it actually helps.  It clears my mind – just a bit.  It burns off some the cortisol that anxiety and stress have built up in my system.  And when I finish my run, I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Something I was told I could never do.

Who can run three miles without stopping?  Who can run each mile in under ten minutes?  This girl.  The girl who barely passed high school gym class.  The girl who got kicked out of racquetball.  The fat fifth-grade physical-fitness flunkie.

Who’s a runner?  THIS GIRL.

I am a runner.

I’m running a race this morning.  And I already know I’ve won.

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.

Broccoli on the Spiritual Path

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I started this blog as an avenue to get thoughts out of my head – to help me wave away the mental gnats that kept getting in my eyes, buzzing in my ears, and generally distracting me from getting on with living.  But one of the benefits of having this blog is that it’s opened up a whole community to me – I’ve been able to read the thoughts of so many others, on a variety of subjects – discussions of spirituality, living with mental and physical illness, and where to buy the coolest new scarves ever.  It’s a virtual buffet; there’s some of everything here.  And I’m free to take a little taste of everything – if I don’t care for something, I don’t have to take additional helpings – I don’t even have to finish what I’ve dished out, and if I love something, I can have it delivered to my inbox as soon as the casserole comes out of the oven.  Sweet and savory, healthy and indulgent  – it’s all here and it all contributes to my level of balance.

So this morning, I read a post that got me thinking – BEFORE I EVEN HAD ANY COFFEE.  (This is not insignificant, by the way.)  So I’d like to share that post here.  It’s from a fellow WordPress blogger that I follow for a regular dose of spirituality that speaks to me.

In this particular post, the author talks about graduating with a Chemistry degree, and accepting a gig at a call center shortly after graduation to make ends meet.  She goes on to explain that the call center job helped her develop skills that were of tremendous value to her eventual career.  This spun off into a “what does God’s plan mean, anyway?” discussion, which you can find here: Whoa! How Did I Get Here? Posted by K. L. Register on “The Ninth Life”

I have been working on developing and solidifying my spiritual beliefs.  I’m familiar with Christianity, but I can relate well to “many paths of enlightenment”; my belief is that God makes Himself known to us in a variety of ways and in a number of forms, and that we call him by a number of names, but it all rolls up to the Big Head Honcho eventually.  I suppose that makes me more of a Deist.    I don’t really need a label, and I fully embrace and support that other intelligent folks will experience life differently than I do, and may look at the same facts and circumstances and arrive at a completely different conclusion.  That’s awesome, because differing opinions help us understand each other better (well, when we’re not fighting about them.  So let’s not do that here, mmmkay?  So if you call God by a different name, or just have an unnamed Higher Power – I’m down with that.   And if you’re an atheist, I still like you.  Heck, I married one!  I’m fully on Team Coexist here.  Join me – we have the best cookies.)

Since I follow a Higher Power that I call God, I sometimes wonder about God’s Plan, and what that means for me.  Is there a plan?  If so, how do I know I’m following it?   As I reflect on this in the context of where I am and what I’m trying to do with my life, I had a couple of thoughts on that subject….

1.  The decision can be the lesson.  Sometimes, God’s plan isn’t dependent on which choice we make – it’s the process of MAKING the choice that prepares us for what’s next.

Let’s say you’ve been feeling a bit trapped living in a really little town, working a steady, but uninspiring, job for a few years.  A new opportunity drops in your lap suddenly….do you relocate 1000 miles away, where you know no one, to embrace a completely new adventure?  Or do you reject the adventure to embrace the stability and non-drama of regular income and a fairly predictable schedule?

You begin the analysis of “should I move across the country for a fabulous yet challenging Job A, or stay in Podunk, PA working at a job that keeps me ‘safe’ and ‘comfortable’ yet painfully restless?” Whatever choice you eventually select, you’ll have learned something about yourself and what you truly want.  You’ll likely have learned what you truly value. And you can use that knowledge to make changes that enrich the very essence of who you are and who you were meant to be.

You make take the new gig, or you may stay local and enrich your wanderlust in other ways (Volunteering?  More travel?  New extreme hobby?) but just making the decision will change you.  Based on the experience alone, you have more insight about who you are, and how to feed your soul, than you did before – regardless of which door you eventually walk through.

2.  A little growth is good for you.  Sometimes, we reach a crossroads, and we’re presented with options we just don’t like.  There’s no easy decision to be made, no option that’s obviously less painful. You just can’t understand why your otherwise happy and stable life got choked up by this event; you were doing FINE without this complication – and you might even wonder how you ticked God off so badly as to put you in this position.

This is not unlike when we were kids, where your delicious plate of mac-n-cheese was accompanied by a pile of GREEN THINGS.  And no way did you want the green things.  But Mom put them there because they’re good for you.  And you usually managed to choke down some of them.  Some, you buried in the cheese sauce.  Others, you tried to feed to the dog (and invariably, got caught.  Mom always knows.)  But you did eat them, albeit reluctantly.

But veggies are good for you.  You wouldn’t be a strong, healthy, robust person on a diet of mac-n-cheese alone.  You need balance; you need variety.  You need the nutrition that the veggies provide in order to grow.

And you know what?  Once in a while, you were surprised to find that the offending GREEN THING really wasn’t so bad.  (Side note – try roasting.  Brussels sprouts are DELICIOUS this way – and I am not a veggie lover.)

Besides – on a constant diet of your favorite childhood dish, wouldn’t you eventually tire of it?  On a consistent helping of everything you think you wanted, at the very least, you’d grow bored.  You’d likely take it for granted.  And after a while, as strange as it sounds, you might actually come to resent it.

It seems that we all need some contrast in our lives.  Conflict to appreciate the peace.  Noise to appreciate the silence.  Chaos to appreciate the monotony.  Pain to appreciate joy.

I’ll admit that there are days where I’d really like a smaller helping of what I’ve been dished up – on some days I want to send the entire dish back to the kitchen and complain to the chef.  But I have faith that as unpleasant as some of these life experiences may be, they’ll help me develop the spiritual muscles that I need in order to grow into exactly what I’m supposed to be.

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.