You Go, Girl…But I’ll Stay Here.

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A couple of weeks ago, the TwitterFaces of the Internets were all up in arms about the supposed release of a photo of Cindy Crawford that was “unretouched.”

(I’m putting the link here, but FYI, most of these photos have inexplicably vanished from the interwebs….leading me to think JUST MAYBE their release was lead by a disgruntled photographer who couldn’t get Cindy’s phone number.  But if the picture at the link is gone, just Google “Cindy Crawford Photoshop” and it’ll likely come up.  It’s the one with the black hat and boa.)

The word on the street at the time was that Marie Claire was publishing their April 2015 issue with all un-Photoshopped images – celebrities in their natural, unretouched glory! – and THIS was a sneak peek.

And as the picture took off across the World Wide Web at the speed of gossip and lost workplace productivity, the women of the internet cheered and rejoiced!  She looks even MORE beautiful here!  Finally, a REAL-looking woman!  Huzzah, she has sagging skin and cellulite, just like me!

Uh…Yay?

Well, first off, the alleged au naturel mag isn’t going to print.  Marie Claire tells us that, while this IS Cindy Crawford, this is from an old (12/2013) shoot and not a preview of what’s to come.  So if you were looking forward to celebrity close-ups of cellulite, loose skin, and plastic surgery scars, you’re stuck trolling Pinterest.  Sorry.

Incidentally, did you know there are SCADS of Pinterest pages DEDICATED in one way or another to exposing really bad pictures of famous people?  Models without makeup, before/after Photoshop… What the heck is wrong with us?  There’s a slightly bitter irony to the fact that we sell, and buy, fictional perfection – we pour obscene gobs of money into magazines, fashion, makeup, fitness clubs, diet food, and plastic surgery – but then seek out, and sometimes TAKE DELIGHT IN, discovering and exposing every flaw on those we seek to emulate.

Initially, this victory feels about as triumphant as discovering there is no Santa Claus.  Do you remember that feeling?  For a moment, you felt pretty smart – you busted the Christmas Code, dude! Ha ha, “Santa,” I MEAN MOM, caught you! – but once the “I’m a genius” vibe wore off…wasn’t the world a little less…magical? Wasn’t it really more fun to be able to pretend?  Victory and discovery are a brief, but bittersweet, payout that is quickly cashed and spent.

The big difference here, though, is that with this whole Photoshop/supermodel/perfection-in-a-two-piece thing, we go back to believing in Santa Claus.

I don’t know how that’s even possible – but we do.

I’ll prove it to you.  Let’s take a quick poll:  Once you saw unaltered Cindy, how many of you took down those motivational pictures of Famous Perfect Body in Tiny Bikini from your fridge and replaced them with the “real” Cindy Crawford? How many of you said, “Once I look like THAT, I’ve achieved PERFECTION and I HAVE ARRIVED!”

<crickets>

Anyone?  Anyone?  <cough>

Okay then.  How many of you are still using a more traditional thinspiration picture for motivation?  Whether it’s hanging on your fridge, hiding on your phone, or carried around in your head….how many of you still are shooting for something closer to the Sports Illustrated cover look as the place where you’ll feel like you’ve met your goals?

WHOOSH <rush of wind from massive hand wave>

<gavel bangs>  I rest my case.

So when this Cindy Crawford photo hit my Facebook page…I have to confess that the very first thing I did was compare myself to her.  Oh, let’s be clear, I joined my peers in the general Grrl Power cries of “she looks awesome!” and “You GO Girl!”

But while I was SAYING that, I was looking hard at the “real” picture…and at myself.  To see if I could measure up.

Granted, I’m certainly a lot closer to THIS version of beauty than I am to the ones you see in Vogue, Elle, or Self.  I’m not THERE, but maybe, if I run five times a week AND add in yoga twice a week AND STOP BUYING THIS STUPID @#$@%#%@ KETTLE CORN THAT I CANNOT STOP EATING (curse you, Costco, and your ginormous addictive feed bags of crunchy deliciousness) – maybe, just MAYBE, I could look like a supermodel.  Well, like ONE supermodel.  Who happens to be almost fifty.  But a SUPERMODEL.   This is ATTAINABLE!  Sorta!

And then the next day I got up to run, and I sized myself up as I worked my way into my running tights.  Bulge above the waistband.  Check.  Back fat.  Yep, still here.  Thighs touch at the top.  Boo.  Bad.  All bad.  Saggy, baggy, and way too big all over.  Sigh.

Which leads me to ask the question:  Was I joining Team She Looks Awesome because I really thought she looked great?

Truth:  sadly, I wasn’t.

I mean, she DOES look good – certainly far better than most of the nearly-fifty set.  But if I’m completely honest with myself, I have to admit that I won’t be happy with MY body until it looks like the ideal that’s been welded into my brain for most of my life – and I was vocal about Cindy’s “natural” look out of…well…

Sympathy.

I’m sympathetic because she’s human, just like I am.  Because her body is on display to the world with absolutely no filter.  Because the internet never forgets.  Because she has to harden herself to the comments of public opinion, in addition to the critical voices she may have in her own head.

Because while I can’t be kind to myself, I’d hope others would be kind when I inadvertently expose the flabby bits and rough edges.  I’d want others to be supportive and uplifting.  And that’s what I tried to be.

(Hmm.  Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not a supermodel.  Although I don’t think there is any critical comment the public can make about my body that could out-shout the berating I deal out to the mirror daily.)

I’d love to live in a world where, when Facebook puts one of those pictures in my path like “NEW Beach Pic of Celebrity Cellulite – You Won’t BELIEVE Who This Is!” – that it won’t matter.  It won’t matter because I am healthy and strong. It won’t matter because perfection just isn’t, well, HUMAN.  It won’t matter because the sizes and shapes of Kim, Scarlett, and Jessica have nothing to do with me.

Actually, I’d like to live in a world where this isn’t news at all.

And while I’m trying to get there, can you ask Santa to bring me new red-patent platforms?  Seems it’s a lot harder to get where I want to be without shoes to click together and wish with.  But for now, I still believe.

I See Things in Black and…Blue

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So last night, my daughter (who’s away at a music competition, she placed EIGHTH IN THE STATE, momma is SO PROUD!) texted me this picture:

IMG_0487Unless you live in a cave where your Wi-Fi doesn’t work, you’ve seen this dress, too.  Apparently, our drive as a nation to debate over health care, fix immigration, solve world hunger, and gossip about how much Oprah weighs today has been replaced by this dress and arguing about what color it is.  (You can read some of the debate here.)

For the record, my daughter and I are on Team Blue (the science behind WHY I’M RIGHT <ahem> is here) and my son is on Team White.  But he’s a boy, and don’t all boys think that there are only like 6 colors on the planet?  (If you’ve ever gone paint shopping and tried to sell your partner on the merits of true white vs. eggshell vs. cream….yeah, that.)

Anyway, if you poke around Google or Twitter, you’ll see that this debate has created quite a fuss.  Which I find absolutely fascinating.

The biggest point that this whole debate has highlighted – in bright, throbbing neon yellow that hurts your eyeballs – is that perception DOES, in fact, equal reality. Depending on which informal Facebook survey you read, 25-35% of us insist that the dress is blue and black, while the rest of the world thinks we’re insane because it is VERY CLEARLY WHITE AND GOLD.  And you will have a very difficult time convincing someone who is looking at a blue dress that it’s white, and vice-versa.  Blue is blue and white is white.  Two very different perceptions of the SAME PICTURE.

I work in HR (don’t hate me, I’m not entirely evil, and do have an actual personality that I bring out on occasion) and often work with managers attempting to coach them on this very subject.  This usually comes up around things like face time and favoritism.  Things that are difficult to quantify, but easy to complain about if you perceive them.

“Bill, your work is great.  But when your team is expected to open at 7, and you don’t roll in until 9, and then you take a two-hour lunch and leave at 4 PM, the perception from your team is that you aren’t working as many hours as they are.  Yes, I know you have told me that you often put in 4-5 hours on Saturday, and usually complete projects in the evenings.  But you could further engage and energize your team by working on those projects when they’re also working.”

“Marcus, I know you enjoy Terry’s company.  And I know she is a very hard worker.  But when you disappear with her for an offsite lunch several days a week, and Terry ends up with her favorite spot on the assembly line several days in a row, it creates the perception of favoritism.  I know Terry produces 20% more on that spot on the line, and her hard work makes the whole team look good…but the other folks might have a chance at hitting those numbers if they got a little more practice working that spot.”

Bill works hard.  Marcus works hard.  They see a blue dress, period.  But their teams are seeing a white dress, so Bill and Marcus need to change behaviors and play along with the perception that the dress is, in fact, white.  They’ll never believe it themselves, but that doesn’t matter, really.  One of their jobs as manager is to build the team – and if the team insists that dress is white, well, you best work with a white dress.  You have to respect your team’s perceptions as their reality.

So how does this apply to me?

Well, I’m fat.  I’ve always been fat.  Right now I’m just a hair under 5’5″ and weigh (gulp) about 118.  But I was fat when I weighed 10 pounds less a couple of years ago.  I was fat when I weighed 15 pounds less back in high school.

In other words….that dress will ALWAYS be blue to me.  I don’t know how, or if, I can actually change that.  I started therapy.  I am trying NOT to weigh my food, and my body, obsessively. I’m trying to get regular exercise because I know I’ll handle stress better and sleep better.

But I’m still fat.  Still mentally wearing a dress that is VERY CLEARLY BLUE.  But when I talk to my spouse, my friends, my DOCTOR….nope, I’m not fat, and at lower weights was too thin, actually, and had to think about nutritional supplementation, osteoporosis, and a weakened heart.  To them – and I suspect to the majority – the dress I’m wearing is white, and it’s crystal clear, and WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU that you don’t see how white your dress is?

My husband tells me quite often that he wishes I could see what he sees.  He thinks I’m beautiful, and certainly NOT fat.  (To his credit, he tells me this a lot.)

He sees my personal dress as white.

I wish I could see this dress as white, too.

And I wonder if this applies to my husband, and some of his extremist views, as well.  (I texted him the dress picture; since he does work in IT, he does, in fact, live in a cave where social media does not penetrate, and I haven’t heard back from him yet on this one.  I suspect his answer will be something deliciously snarky, but I also suspect he’ll see it as white.)

As I’ve mentioned before, the hubby is on an anti-religion kick.  His gut reaction to all things religious is “bad” and his approach has been kind of attack-ish.  (Who am I kidding?  Sometimes it’s downright hateful; at the very least, it’s angry.)

I’ve tried to have discussions with him on those occasions where I feel mentally strong enough to challenge him, and have tried to sell him on the concept that different ideas aren’t automatically “wrong” – they’re just “different” – and if you can start with the assumption that others are DIFFERENT, and not WRONG, you get a lot further in mutual understanding.

But his “all things religion” dress is stubbornly, frustratingly white, and I just can’t understand why he can’t even bend a teeny bit and admit that in certain lights, the dress MIGHT be JUST A LITTLE BIT blue.

Unfortunately, I can’t easily understand why his perception is his reality.  It can’t be explained by rods and cones and lighting.  Neither can I explain away my perceptions of why I can’t see myself objectively like others do.

It just is.

I just pray that one day, he’ll be able to at least articulate that sometimes, the dress looks more blue.  And I hope I get to the point where “you know what?  In the right light, in the right clothes, standing this way?  I don’t look so bad.”

That’d be a good start.  I can’t say my dress will ever be white, but if I could get to periwinkle with a slight gold sparkle to the lace, I think I could say I’ve made progress.

(P.S. – Hubs just now texted me back…he said the dress is “light blue and gold.”  That’s gotta be a sign, right?  There’s hope for us to meet in the middle?)

Feelin’ Hot, Hot, Hot…Yikes, it’s hot. Did I mention it’s HOT?

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So in my continued effort to find my center, calm the heck down, etc. I got the bright idea to try hot yoga.  (Okay, it wasn’t just for some heightened state of well-being, peace, and light.  We’re doing a wellness program at work where we have to try three new activities in a six-week period.  And since I run the wellness program, I sort of have to set the example….)

So here’s my review of Hot Yoga:

What is it? The facility’s website described the class: “Bikram yoga is a series of 26 Hatha Yoga postures and two Pranayama Breathing exercises designed to provide a challenging, invigorating, rejuvenating and effective yoga experience….(It) is performed in a room warmed to 105 degrees, 50% humidity, is 90 minutes and 26 postures that systematically work every part of the body.”

How was it? I’m a beginner as far as yoga goes. My past yoga experience is limited to what I could do with my Wii Fit, and I’m not very flexible. However, I run a few times a week, so I’m not in bad shape. Besides, I’m always cold, so I figured I’d tolerate the heat pretty well.

The facility’s web site gave a few pointers for beginners – and they were very helpful. I was instructed to bring a yoga mat and a couple of towels, and plenty of water. I was also told that the goal for the first class is to just stay in the room the entire time, and “be prepared to sweat, stretch, laugh” – that sounded to me like beginners would be welcome!

What I liked/what you might like: When I arrived, the staff – and other class members – were VERY welcoming. They want you to have a great experience, so they gave me pointers before class started and showed me a couple of the poses. They suggested I place my mat in the back of the room, so I could watch other participants, but somewhere I had a clear view of the mirror so I could check my form.

The yoga poses were varied and not overly intimidating – no headstands, no impossible contortions. Most of them could be done by most people, and there are modifications if you can’t quite stretch or bend that way. It really was a good class for beginners – it wasn’t easy, but it was easy to follow.

One thing I didn’t expect – the instructor/leader talks the entire time. Throughout the class, you’re coached as you go – they walk you through each pose, they suggest corrections if they see you’re not quite in the pose the rest of the class is doing, and they encourage you the entire time to do the best you can!

What I didn’t like/what you might not like: Let’s be honest here – if you’re in a 105-degree room, people are going to sweat, and sweat a lot. The person beside me had an admirable amount of liquid just pouring off her – I legit thought she was melting. It’s been said you can sweat off 3-5 pounds in one class session – that is a LOT OF SWEAT. Suffice it to say that it doesn’t smell like roses (at least, not roses I would send a loved one for Valentine’s Day. Maybe to my ex. But I digress.) By the time the class was over, you could have wrung out my beach towel – and I used the other one to sit on in the car on the way home. I was THAT sweaty.

The classroom isn’t very big, and you take the class barefoot. If you’re a germaphobe, this might be a little much for you – you’re sweating REALLY closely to the person next to you. (Did I mention you sweat a LOT? Like rivers? Because you do.)

Also note that it’s hot. Really hot. Like the Deep South in August. I did OK with this – I didn’t think the temperature was overwhelmingly bad, but some people really have a low tolerance for heat. If you wilt in the summer, you probably won’t love this class. You really have to be careful to know your limits, be well-hydrated, and have a snack an hour or so before class. No one in my class fainted or got sick – but I’m sure that does happen on occasion.

Note also that this is a long class – 90 minutes. It’s hard to focus on exercise for that long (well, at least for me; it’s hard to focus on ANYTHING for that long. I have the attention span of a hyperactive 4-year-old.) At the one-hour mark I was ready to be done, but the class kept going.

Would you do it again? After the class was over, and I had a chance to go home and shower – I actually felt pretty good. Relaxed, refreshed, and well-stretched. I’m not sure I LOVE hot yoga, but I did enjoy it, for the most part. It really felt like a good workout, and is a nice change-up from running. I’m planning to attend another class when I can.

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Follow-up:  I attended another class last weekend.  This session was a little more crowded – and consequently, it was EVEN HOTTER.  I arrived about 15 seconds before class started (why do I do this?  I am ALWAYS LATE; it’s a sickness, I swear.  I think it’s my brain’s way of reminding me that I’m not REALLY in charge, and it can distract me from the goal of getting out the door AT ANY TIME) and the only space for my mat was next to this…really, REALLY fit dude…wearing a SPEEDO.  A legit Speedo.  Remember, this is yoga, where you twist and contort and bend in all directions.  I was worried about…things…popping out…. <averts eyes and fans delicate-flower virgin countenance>

I didn’t need to worry.  After 20 minutes, SuperFit was a literal sweat volcano, and there was AN ACTUAL PUDDLE OF SWEAT 12″ ACROSS ON THE CARPET in front of his face.  About five minutes later, he had to fold and tap out.  I didn’t see him again until class was over.

The nice thing about being this sweaty, though – you are so hot you really don’t care too much about extra skin and fat and folds that don’t lay quite right.  You have to concentrate just to remember to breathe.  It was also nice that the class wasn’t full of perfect, pert little bodies – there were all shapes and sizes there.  (And one particularly enviable man who was wisp-thin and as flexible as a rubber band.  He finished the class by casually performing a few handstands and then turning himself into a twisted loop that I’m sure most mortals with actual bones just canNOT physically contort into.)

But both times, I’ve left class feeling like I accomplished something.  That’s a big step for me.  My only real goal for my first class was quite simple:  Don’t die.  AND I MADE IT.  I was a beginner and not only did I stick out the entire class without leaving the room, I WASN’T THE WORST IN THE CLASS.  (My high-school gym teacher can stuff it.)  Heck, actually showing up and being willing to do poses in front of 25 other people is a big step for me.  Not sucking is a triumph.  I’ll take it.

Sunday Struggles

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After what was a pretty good week, I find myself struggling today.  It’s the usual “nothing’s wrong…with everything.”  I ate too much, I haven’t exercised, I’m completely out of control; the scale won’t be kind to me tomorrow and no matter how much brain space I devote to this today – no matter how many seconds, minutes, and hours I spend THINKING about this, planning what to do TODAY…very little I do RIGHT NOW will change tomorrow’s weigh-in.

It would make sense, then, to quit thinking about it – to shrug, drink some water, go for a walk, and do the best I can, and be as healthy as I can.  But my brain keeps pulling me out of focus and re-centering me on the COMPLETELY UNHELPFUL observation that I am, in fact, way too fat and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE and done RIGHT NOW.

So – brain dump.  I’ll write it out.  At least that will keep me from taping a bag of potato chips to my pie hole.  Hard to type when you’ve got a hand in a bag of greasy comfort food.

To be fair, most of the week, I actually did quite well.  I actually didn’t use my food scale ONCE (well, for calorie counting, anyway.  I do use it for cooking on occasion; that feels more legit to me.)  I had a sensible smoothie for breakfast (yeah, I KNOW what I said last time about smoothies, but this is all whole, real food, and I’m just trying to get more veggies, OK?) an apple and soup for lunch, and a sensible dinner made with whole, clean ingredients.  I overdid it a bit on the evening snacks, but I figured that was OK, because I’m trying to recover from something (backstory below) and figured I could use the extra energy.

Boring, but relevant, backstory:  I’m trying this new anti-viral protocol through my naturopath to try to get over a chronic/recurring illness – I’ve had mono 6-7 times in the last 4 years.  In case you were wondering – no, that isn’t supposed to happen, and yes, most people only get it once, and DEFINITELY, it sucks and sucks hard.  The exhaustion you get with mono is completely frustrating; you can’t muster up the strength to get regular exercise, and your body craves quick-energy fixes (aka: LIES to you) and demands you eat bags of candy, chocolate, and kettle corn just so you can have the energy to breathe and sit upright.

After years of really interesting and unusual blood tests, we have determined that I have an autoimmune disorder.  It doesn’t have a name yet, and appears to be Atypical (from the Greek word meaning: “We have absolutely no idea.”)  To summarize, what appears to be happening with the mono is that whenever my immune system is challenged – i.e. one of the kids gets a cold, or I get on a plane, or I’m just plain stressed out – the mono comes back.  (Did I mention we have four kids, I’m on a plane at least twice a month, and I work long days with a 45-minute commute?)  Once the mono pops in, I’m in for 6+ weeks of the tired.  I can usually go to work (though I may spend weekends and an extra day in bed,) but exercise is out for a couple weeks, along with anything that requires more energy than changing the channel from Dr. Oz to Ellen.

So anyway, I’m on some megadoses of extracts and potions to try to 1) kill off an underlying virus (some strain of pneumonia; I can’t remember which, but it has about 47 syllables and is apparently quite difficult to completely obliterate once it gets settled in) and 2) boost my immune system so the mono doesn’t get a foothold when my immune system gets distracted by something new and shiny to fight off.

With this Immunity Protocol comes something really fun called Viral Die-Off.  Short description:  When your body is killing something that does NOT want to die, sometimes you feel worse before you feel better.  So – physically, I felt really crappy this week.  I did get my run in on Monday, but after that, the only exercise I got was arm curls:  bag to mouth.  Unfortunately, cheese popcorn just won’t have the desired impact on your triceps, no matter how many fistfuls you stuff in there.

By the time I got to Friday, I was still tired but feeling a little better.  Friday night, I didn’t get nearly enough sleep.  So  on Saturday, the delicate tightrope I was gracefully balancing on broke, and I ate.  I ate and ate and ate.  A whole pizza, an entire box of Larabars, two boxes of freeze-dried fruit, a couple eggs, a yogurt, and one of those dessert-in-a-cup coffee drinks that you would have to run the entire Boston Marathon in order to burn off.

So what went wrong here?  I know, at least intellectually, that it isn’t about the food.  I know I was likely trying to self-soothe the yuckies, and was anxious and stressed from the lack of exercise and missing a day of work.  I also know that my husband has been pretty distant this week.  I mentioned before that he’s been working through what I’ve been calling (to myself, anyway) his spiritual mid-life crisis.  He’s working quite diligently on what he calls his “thesis”, which appears to involve ripping to shreds any form of organized religion. He actually woke up early a few days this week to work on it, and is looking to buy a website domain so he can share his venom with the rest of the world.

To be clear, I have absolutely zero issue with someone researching religion or spirituality.  Frankly, I think more people should do that – we should spend time discovering how we believe we’re connected and come to a conclusion that puts us at peace, as opposed to just believing what Mom and Dad did (or the full-180-degree opposite of what Mom and Dad did, if you’re the rebellious sort.)  What I DO take issue with is approaching religious differences from a place of anger instead of a place of love – or at least tolerance and an attempt to understand.  And it hurts me when my husband, who knows how important my faith is to me, would want to invest so much time trying to shoot holes into various channels of spirituality.

I suppose the question is WHY does this hurt me so much?  Why do I take it so personally?  And the bigger question is WHY can’t I just TELL HIM “hey sweetie, can you spend an hour focusing on us and our relationship?  Because that would mean a lot to me.”

As I’m writing this, the light is starting to leak in under the door.  (No fireworks display of A-HA!…more like a “Hmm….)

Last weekend, I realized that my husband and I have Memorial Day weekend together – we actually have a four-day weekend, and NO plans, and the kids will all be at the other parents’ houses that weekend.  I suggested we try to squeeze in a trip – we always TALK about how nice a getaway would be, but other than taking brief visits to see distant family, the only true vacation we’ve ever had was our honeymoon, which was two nights away about eight years ago.  My husband seemed really enthused about taking this opportunity to travel, but every time I broached the subject this week, he was too busy to talk about it – because he was working on his Grand Thesis.

I suppose it’s not out of the question that I might be somewhat bothered by that.  I could be hurt that his religious critique has yet again risen above what I might need.  Not only does he work on this quite blatantly when he knows it hurts me, but he works on it in lieu of working on things that might help our relationship.  (Which is, not unironically, somewhat stressed due to his new research hobby.)

Hey, I know this sounds selfish.  Obviously, his “thesis” is really important to him, and I need to find a way to respect that and deal with it.  And for most part, I do – I don’t comment to him about it; I don’t roll my eyes or spit in his food or give him the silent treatment or scan his hard drive and delete files or any such thing.  (Although, when he uses the voice-command on Google, if I’m nearby, I can’t help but shout something like “UNICORN PORNOGRAPHY!” just to eff with his search a tiny bit.  Heh.)

I need to find a way to get my needs met more effectively than by eating either everything or nothing.  I need to figure out how to articulate what it is, exactly, that I need.  I need to understand how I can meet those needs myself instead of relying on a fallible human to meet them.  And I need to understand why my reaction to EVERYTHING is to punish myself with food.

I am eating very lightly today – mostly healthy stuff so far.  My stomach isn’t convinced that it doesn’t need a bag of trail mix, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of potato chips, but it needs to shut the heck up until my clothes are looser.

Or until it doesn’t matter so much.

<sigh>

No dinner tonight, and will run tomorrow morning.  Attempting to preserve my sanity one denied, avoided, burned calorie at a time.

Ready Aura Not…Here I Come

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Last Sunday I went to a local “Health and Wellness Expo.”  These are always…interesting.  Largely, they’re an avenue for the local home-based businesses (danger! danger! MLM Vultures Ahead. Do not smell of desperation, gullibility, or financial insolvency!) but occasionally you can find some things worth the price of admission.

(The “price” of admission is officially $6-10, unless you bring a can of food to donate, or a coupon from the internet, or a low-cut blouse and a saucy wink to the lonely guy running ticket booth.  So, these things SHOULD be free; if they’re not, you didn’t try hard enough.)

I wasn’t disappointed by my expectations.  True to form, there were a variety of powder peddlers who were very eager to sell me quick weight loss, more energy, and better health.  (And of course, my first thought as they approach me is “you think I need to lose weight?  GREAT, thanks.”  And then I can’t eat for the rest of the day, unless it’s an entire frozen pizza, a box of cereal, and half a pound of chocolate bars.  Moderation is for other people, I guess.)

Back to the powders.  Normally, I’m not a proponent of manufactured nutrition.  Food should be…well, FOOD.  A tub of chemicals can’t be as good as what God made for us to eat, can it?  All those weird chemical-sounding things make me uneasy.  Besides – I want to CHEW my food.

Okay, I know that this is manufactured self-righteousness.  With all the abuse I’ve dealt my body over the years – gallons of diet soda and boxes of diet pills between bouts of binging, purging, and starvation, I’m going to worry myself over an eight-ounce shake?  I suppose if I’m completely honest with myself, I’m really afraid that I’ll drink the “meal-replacement” and it’ll make absolutely no dent in my appetite…so I’ll have to eat an actual meal anyway.  My waistline does not benefit from drinking my calories.  My brain just doesn’t get that “you’ve BEEN fed, now shut up until lunchtime” when it drank dinner.

I did sample one of the powders.  Why?  Why do I do this?  I KNOW how this is going to go.  It will taste terrible and I’ll stress myself out for the rest of the day wondering 1) how many calories that thing had and 2) what chemicals I drank and if they’ll further eff up my already-craptacular metabolism.  But I do it anyway.

I can’t remember the name of the powder I tried.  I did verify that it was gluten-free (I don’t eat wheat; more on that another time, maybe) before tasting it.  I slowly took a sip…GAK CHOKE BLEAGH WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS AND WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US ALL???  It tasted like a box of chalk and a frosted Pop-Tart had a clandestine night of debauchery and left their love-child on the doorstep of poverty and shame, doomed to sell her body as a form of protein shake in order to survive.  It was cloyingly sweet – and trust me, NEVER in my ENTIRE LIFE have I been the sort of person to complain that something is too sweet.  I’m a frosting junkie who will take the corner piece of a birthday cake just to eat the giant globs of butter and sugar, and at least 14% of the reason I married my husband is because he doesn’t LIKE frosting so when there is cake, I get his frosting too. (Sometimes, I even sneak back at the end of the party to run my fork around the now-empty cake board to finish off those frosting flowers left behind by those less enlightened about the magical awesomeness of SUGAR SUGAR SUGARRRRRRR)

But this?  Couldn’t drink it.

The vendor told me that I probably didn’t like it because it was mixed with vanilla almond milk, and THAT was actually what I was finding too sweet.  (Oooookay.)  She also admitted that they sold a lot more of the stuff when they mixed it with sweet bases like this.  “The American palate has a certain…expectation, you know?  And we have to make things that people can actually see themselves drinking day to day.”  She’s probably right.  I’m sad for America, but she’s right.

Incidentally, the vendor had a concentrated tart cherry juice, as well.  That was way more my speed.  It was not unlike wine.  Wine is good and is part of what’s right with the world.  And supposedly, tart cherry juice helps with melatonin production, so could help one sleep.  I’ll have to research that another time, but I’m not terribly optimistic that there’s a fruit on the planet that can silence the voices in my head.

There were some other vendors I visited at the fair.  I sampled a purple tea (yeah, PURPLE, of all things – and it was really good, if you like tea, which I do, and are set up to brew actual leaves, which I am not.)  I skipped past all of the home improvement booths (three window companies – really?  This is wellness HOW, exactly?  Clean window, clean soul?) and browsed a couple of jewelry vendors (because, well, jewelry.  Hi, my name is Kate and I’m a jewelry junkie.  And pretty things ARE good for your soul, so I TOTALLY get the relevance here.  Really.)  I tried the buffalo-style gluten free pretzels.  (Verdict:  Dangerous.  I would’ve polished off the entire bag before I got out of the parking garage. And yeah, they were undoubtedly probably full of those chemicals I was so ready to criticize earlier when they didn’t taste quite so good.  <hangs head sheepishly>)

I spent some time at the crystals booth (yeah, they had jewelry, too, of course.)  This whole arena fascinates me.  I don’t fully understand how crystals work, exactly.  You hold them while you meditate?  Wear them?  (The pretty ones, anyway.)  Place them on your body, or under your bed?  Stare at them and pray?  I truly don’t know.  But I did spend some time reading – this stone is good for relaxation, that one helps release creativity.  The blue one will calm anxiety and the red one will reduce stress.  Now, I do carry a pretty sizable purse, but sadly, I don’t have a bag, nor strong enough shoulders, to carry all the rocks I apparently need.  I’m getting a vision of that dead dude in A Christmas Carol, hauling around those giant chains.  Except mine would be rocks, albeit pretty rocks, and I’d have a much nicer death robe to wear, and totally dope shoes.

So, no crystals for me, at least not today.  But I did walk away with one small piece of enlightenment:  I had my aura read.

The booth was simple and unassuming.  Posters were handmade, and a small man in a white robe staffed the booth.  On the table was a laptop, and a device that had what looked like two metal handprints on it.

The poster told me I could have my aura read for $5 (Normally $15!  Show Special!)  I know the most colorful things about myself are 1) my shoes and 2) my language.  But for $5…why not, right?  Not a bad price for entertainment.

So I entered the booth and the man wiped off the metal handprints.  He instructed me to put my hands on the metal shapes, making full contact with them, and relax….

And in a few moments, this popped up on the screen:

Aura

Well, yay, my soul isn’t black.  That’s good, right?  I mean, I’m mildly disappointed I don’t feel tingly, or see unicorns, but….

The vendor told me that my aura is “mostly green, and some yellow.”  Green represents spirituality, and yellow represents joy.  So mostly spiritual, with a little bit of joy.   “But there is something interesting about you.  Your aura is trapped.  You can see here the colors of your heart.  But you are trapping this with your mind.  You are keeping yourself from who you are to be by thinking too much.”

Well huh.

He went on to tell me that I needed to do some work on listening to my heart and allowing it to speak.  He said that I would too often overthink things, and my mind would talk my heart out of doing what it wanted to do.

Curious.  I’m sure he had no way to know that I keep myself up at night with the thoughts and voices in my head.  He had no way to know that I had just recently committed to getting WELL this year, to work on myself on the inside, and that I trip myself up over and over again.  Or maybe the furrows between my brows and the tension in my shoulders gave him the clues he needed.

Regardless, it was an interesting reading.  And I’ll take the validation.  I like the idea that the work I’ve recently committed to do is in line with what I’m meant to be…that I’m some sort of spiritual butterfly that needs to work on nourishing my soul so I can grow strong wings instead of reminding myself that I can’t possibly ever fly.

I’ve been building this cocoon since I was ten years old.  That’s over thirty years of powerful work to undo.  It’ll take a while, and I suspect that I’ll squint and wince once the first bright light hits my eyes.  It takes time to adjust as you grow.  But I’m looking forward to my first flight; even if I crash-land in epic fashion, it’ll be a heck of a ride while I soar.

The voice of a flower…

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One of the things I’ve always loved to do is sing.  I sing in a band on occasion, which is a total rush, but I got my start in church choirs.  When I first moved here, I sang with a local church, but my attendance petered out a few years ago.  I was traveling a ton for work, and seeing my family out East a couple times a month, and had an illness that would not go away – so I put the brakes on church so I could rest on Sundays.  Gah, that sounds weak…but sometimes, something has to give.  And that’s simply what gave out at the time.

So, since I’m trying to get healthier overall, I thought going back to church would help.  It’s like exercise, in a way.  Dragging myself out of bed takes a Herculean effort, and when it’s dark and cold and the bed is soft and warm and I’m sleepy I JUST DON’T WANNA. <whine>  But once I get up and get to it, I feel so much better.

I’ve been rehearsing with the choir once a week, and got to sing with them this morning.  The sermon was good, as it usually is, but today’s Children’s Message actually got me thinking after I left the four walls of the church.

(A lot of churches have messages targeted to kids before the actual “adult” sermon.  The Children’s Message is a short message, typically with props to keep it entertaining, and invariably one kid wanders off and spills the Communion juice or pulls his pants down or does something that makes you laugh – and makes you thankful that it wasn’t YOUR kid, this time.  After the message, the kids typically get chased down to the basement so the adults can stick around and really focus on the full sermon without worrying if darling little Brittney has enough crayons and animal crackers to keep her still until 11 AM.)

Today the Children’s Message featured flowers.   As the leader talked, she handed out flowers one at a time to all the kids.  Red and yellow roses, white lilies, pink carnations, magenta Gerber daisies.  The message was about Esther.  Essentially, Esther gets picked out of a whole gaggle of really pretty girls to be queen.  Sounds like it was a year-long beauty contest of sorts – they had a year just to make themselves look good (Extreme Makeover, Egyptian Year-Long Edition.)

Anyway – Esther’s Jewish, and one of the bad guys ordered all the Jews to be killed.  Esther has the opportunity as queen to bend the king’s ear and convince him that this isn’t such a good idea.  (Which was no easy feat, because normally if you approached the king without being invited, he had you killed, even if you were totally hot and queen to boot.  So it was kind of a big deal.)

The leader, after telling this story, showed all of the kids a dead rose.  It had blackened and withered, and the bud drooped lifelessly on its stem.  She reminded them that no matter what the kids did – no matter how careful they were, how much water they used, or how much pizza they gave it – in a couple of weeks, that pretty, pretty flower they were holding would look much like the one she was holding.  As one of the children put it, “It goes rotten!”

Hmm.  It goes rotten.

I worry (or re-center my worry) so, so much on what I eat, and how what I eat manifests itself in unwanted places on my body.  I’ve exhausted myself worrying about the bulges in my stomach and the width of my saddlebags.  I spend more time than I’d like to admit putting on this face cream and coloring this gray hair and trying to blend in that wrinkle and these under-eye bags….

Don’t I have more to offer this world?  SHOULDN’T I offer more?  Why is so much of my focus on something so meaningless and fruitless to preserve?

The pastor, in the adult version of the sermon, talked about “finding your voice.”  She specifically talked about the fate of women in many parts of the world – being no more than property, trinkets for trafficking, having no opportunities for education – and encouraged us to DO something.  Get involved, make a difference, at the very least raise your sons and daughters to CARE.

What’s my voice?

So often (between days of beating myself up over eating YET ANOTHER effing bag of kettle corn) I find myself wondering what the point is to my life.  I exist.  I get up, I work, I come home.  Why bother?  So much work, and eventually I’ll die anyway, right?

I’ve come to realize recently that this is a very selfish viewpoint, and maybe I should try looking at this from a different angle.  Why am I thinking that the world owes me a life?  Shouldn’t I instead be looking at how I can work to make the world better somehow?  Instead of wondering why life isn’t particularly meaningful, I should go out and MAKE it meaningful.

In other words – what can I do for this world?

There are things I can do.  I can volunteer.  I can control my anger and biting sarcasm.  I can treat people with kindness.

I did donate to a couple of charities recently, and I know of some volunteer opportunities locally.  I certainly can extend small kindnesses (especially when I’m driving, ha ha) and I can be a better friend, wife, and mom by being more engaged and mindful with my family.

I don’t have any big, lofty goals around this right now, other than to recognize that “just existing” isn’t enough – nor is it the point.  My focus should be on what I can do to make the other flowers here bloom as big and bright as possible.

How can you help someone bloom today?  How can you plant the flowers that make the world more beautiful?

So why am I here?

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Big question with a long answer….

I’m Kate.  I’m in my 40s.  (EARLY forties, thankyouverymuch)

I have happy, smart, well-adjusted kids.  I have a devoted husband. We both have stable, steady jobs that we don’t hate.   No one has a troublesome illness, police record, or embarrassing YouTube videos.  So everything is wonderful…everything should be fine.

But it’s not.  And it’s a shame, because this should be a wonderful life.

Don’t get me wrong – I do appreciate what I have.   How could I not?  But I’d like to enjoy life more.  And I think I COULD, if I could just get rid of all the noise in my head.

So what exactly is the problem here?  I hate to spell it out, because it feels so trivial in black and white.  But I need a safe place to talk some things out and unload the weight of the thoughts that keep me from seeing the sun in all the places it shines.

I want to find my joy, but I struggle.

I struggle with my relationship with food and my weight.   That began when I was ten.  Until that time I had no idea I was fat, or really any sense of how I looked at all.  Until one day, during a school assembly as I sauntered to the front of the gymnasium to accept some geeky award for math or spelling or some such, my brother’s friend told him that I was getting as fat as he was.  And of course my brother told me, and POOF, I was suddenly fat, and have been ever since.  My weight’s gone up and down a number of times since then – I’ve been 65 pounds heavier and 15 pounds lighter – but I’ve always been too fat.

The trouble with food issues is that it really isn’t about the food.  It’s about a convenient thing to be upset about so you don’t have to think about whatever it is that you’re REALLY upset about.  In other words, the size of your thighs can be easier to fret over than the stability of your marriage, or whether your kids love you, or why your mom doesn’t really like you all that much, or when your boss will find out that you’re really a poseur and have NO idea what you are doing, or why the heck you’re on this planet in the first place and is there really any point to life?  (Side note – I’m not in the market to off myself.  Just don’t feel like I’m doing much more than existing sometimes.)

To add to this, my husband has been stretching through some sort of spiritual mid-life crisis.  Spiritually, this has been a challenge.  To be fair, when we met, I knew we approached religion from different angles – I identify with Christianity, while he is agnostic.   This has mostly worked just fine for us, and we’ve explored some ideas together and kept it respectful.

However, as of late, he’s been on a mission – he wants to be the Voice of the People for atheists everywhere.  This has involved ripping apart the Bible and buying in-your-face blasphemous T-shirts.   I’m all for freedom of religious expression, but it’s hard not to find his behavior hurtful.  It’s hard not to take it personally.  Yes, I know a lot of wars have started over religion.  Frankly, I think God hates that.  I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea that everything associated with Christianity is automatically bad.  People can be very bad, religion can be very political, but that’s not its intent.

I could write a lot about that, and I might later.   But that’s one of the things that brought me here – my husband says he loves me, but when he goes on these anti-religion rants, I feel like he’s wrenching my heart out.  I feel like every harsh, angry, derogatory thing he says reflects how he really feels about me.

So it all came to a head last December, when my husband was at his peak vitriol and my dad suddenly had a heart attack and life just got really dark really fast and I no longer wanted to eat anything at all…and I decided that enough was enough and I’d better learn to handle this better.  I decided I needed to attack this thing and address the noises in my head.

I need to cope better and not be so darn hard on myself.  So this year, I’m working on getting well.

I started therapy.  (I’ve only gone once so far.  But making the appointment and actually showing up is a big step.)  I’m trying to learn to meditate.  I’m trying to get regular exercise.  And I’m trying to be gentler with myself.

I’m hoping that getting my thoughts out here will help me better deal with them.  I’m hoping this can be somewhat of an online journal to assist me with the process of therapy.

And maybe if I post things out loud, maybe it’ll help someone else who wrestles with this mess to walk just a little bit closer to wellness.