Glass Slipper, Revisited: What to Do with the Other Shoe

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My last post was decidedly unfunny.  I’d apologize for that, but it’s not every day that the man you married confesses to dabbling with Ashley Madison.  I think I’ve earned a temporary hall pass on that.

This post won’t be all that hilarious, either.  I need to take some time to purge the thoughts in my head.  It’s like I binged on a full jar of chocolate peanut butter and a large pizza; it’s bloating me and congealing on my insides, and I’m desperate to get it out as quickly as I can before it consumes me.

I’m finding myself trapped in the incongruous dichotomy of having a racing mind, yet not being able to actually feel anything.

I’m keenly aware of a number of thoughts (How did I miss this? and My spouse cheated) bouncing uncontrollably around my head like a giant tub of Super Balls broke and scattered all over a gymnasium – hundreds of thousands of pinging bullets that roll and bounce and refuse to be stilled.

Yet, at the same time…I should be upset.  It would be natural to be angry.  Logical to be yelling.  You might expect me to cry.

But other than one or two stray tears, I’ve been numb.  I’ve been walking around like I’ve been mentally anesthetized.  I feel detached; I’m absently letting the situation play in the background like some third-rate sitcom while I nonchalantly go about my business, seemingly unaffected.

This can’t be real, can it?  This is just a very long, drawn-out dream; soon I’ll be rudely interrupted by the morning show blaring through my clock radio and be jolted into a perfectly normal day.

You’ve certainly heard the old adage, “Pinch me, I must be dreaming.”  Unfortunately, I’ve tried that, and it just isn’t effective.  I used to pinch myself when I was dreaming – but my brain outsmarted me by allowing me to feel pain while I sleep.  I’d actually feel the pinch, but wouldn’t wake up.  So I devised a new trick to help me discern dreams from reality:  telekinesis.  If I can move things with my mind, I’ll know INSTANTLY that the situation isn’t real, and I can happily coast along knowing it’s just a dream and I’ll wake up soon and it’ll all go away.  When I’m having a bad dream, I focus on something lightweight – a tissue, a piece of paper (because even though it’s a dream, we don’t want to get all crazy here by trying to throw cars.) If I can get it to move – if I can get that piece of paper to twitch, even just a little bit – it gives me the courage to stand up to whatever demon is chasing me, because I’ll know I’m only dreaming.

Suffice it to say on Thursday night, and at least hourly since then, I’ve desperately tried to get papers to flicker.  I’ve begged tissues to please, please, just flutter a teensy bit so I know this will be over soon.

But all the paper products have conspired against me and refuse to budge.

What the hell do I do now?

I work in HR.  My career is built on how I react when people surprise me.  But this has struck me as unexpectedly as a truck barreling through a stop sign, hitting me so hard that I’m having a discarnate experience, watching my body violently bounce off the hood while thinking, “Dayum…that’s gotta hurt!” as I painlessly float above the carnage.

He tells me that, although he was on the site, he didn’t actually meet anyone.

In the unlikely event that it isn’t blatantly obvious, this article provides an excellent summary of everything that’s wrong with this.  But, in the spirit of trying to get it to soak in so I can accept it and address it, I’ll list it out.

He set up an account, with a new email I’d not been aware of.  Deception with intent to harm.

He paid for the account.  To the tune of $250 or so.  And when I think of all the forgotten birthdays and neglected anniversaries, this is the closest I can get to tears.   He’s never spent that much on me.  His wife.  Yet he found it a worthy investment to make in the collapse of my trust.  (Him:  “I promise there was no further money spent.  I didn’t mortgage the house.”  Me:  “No.  Just our marriage.”)

He contacted two women and communicated to four.   But he insists that he never met any of them.  And it was two years ago.  In the past.

Where I struggle with this:  My gut is convinced he’s telling the truth.  But based on how many clues I missed – based on how completely oblivious I was to his discomfort when the data breach broke – I can’t trust my gut.  I would be foolish to do so.

And frankly, what would YOU tell your best friend in this situation?  If she said, “He was on the site, but he swears he never actually met anyone”?

<cue the rousing chorus of “Yeah…riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”>

I am a smart woman.  Aren’t I?

How can I possibly believe him when I can’t believe myself?

He tells me that he’s tried a number of times to tell me.  (Well, once the news broke and it was conceivable that he’d get caught.  Eyeroll.)  To his credit, he knew it’d be better if he told me, as opposed to waiting until I found out.   And there were a number of reasons why it wasn’t a good time – the kids were home all day during the summer, which segued into my super-busy season at work – and he knows about my food issues and my anxiety and wanted to wait until a time where I’d be better equipped to handle it.

As misguided as it was, he was sort of trying to do the right thing.  (Which would have been a much nicer sentiment when he was whipping out his credit card to buy deception and lies. Obvs.)

But there’s no good time for bad news. HR folks talk about this quite a bit, in the context of “what’s the best day of the week to fire someone?”  Is it Friday, so they have the weekend to cool down? Is it Monday, so they have a full week to job hunt and file for unemployment?  There is no clear answer.  (Although, if you can avoid canning someone on their birthday, they usually appreciate that.  My sincere apologies to Pat.  Know that I learned from it, and I always check birthdays before a layoff now.)

He tells me that he’s incredibly sorry, and that he’ll do anything – ANYTHING – that I need him to do in order to make this work.  He’s already offered me full access to all of his PCs and his phone; he’s volunteered to carry a GPS 24/7.

He’s begging me to stay.  To give him another chance.  He pleaded with me to go to counseling with him, to please, please let him try to fix this.

He’ll do anything.  Anything.

He’s doing his best to give me space, backing off quickly when I don’t want him near enough to touch.

Over the last two days, he’s broken down completely.  I’ve never seen him close to anything like this.  We’re talking big, ugly, snot-dribbling sobbing here.

While I sit there, numbly, listening.

It’s so surreal.

He is absolutely terrified that I’m going to leave him.

And I don’t know that I won’t.

My heart desperately wants to forgive him.  My head, however, knows that I need to do my due diligence here – while it may be a long time before I can trust him, he can certainly work his a$$ off proving to me that he means what he says in the meantime.

I’ve told him that I don’t know where this will go.  That I may seem fine some days, and then suddenly be angry, and I have every right to react in whatever way my emotions choose to express themselves.

He said he’s just thankful I haven’t left yet.  That I’m talking to him.  He said he’ll take any and every moment now, because he realized in full force what it would mean to lose me.

All the right words.

Will the right actions follow?  As we say in HR: “Immediate, significant, and sustained improvement is required for continued employment.”

Show me.

I attempted to escape from this today by taking my bike out.  I thought a long ride would do me some good – if I logged a solid 20 miles, perhaps I’d burn off some of this numbness and be able to sleep.

It was a beautiful ride.  Good for the soul.

bikedam1 bikedam2 bikecity1Unfortunately, I got lost, and ended up clocking 27 miles before I got home.  But, as with my marriage, I can take all the time I need.  There’s no deadline here; I can take it moment by moment, stopping to snap some pictures or to rest a bit, and head home – or wherever I want to be – when I’m ready.

Glass Slipper, Shattered

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This week, I had an unexpected visitor.

It was someone from my past.  Someone who, in the back of my mind, I feared would come to visit me one day.  And although I certainly wasn’t looking forward to her arrival, I fully deserved her company.

Sure, I had cut off all contact with her, or at least I TRIED to.  But she found me.  How?  Well, I suppose I could blame this blog; while it’s anonymous, my guest this week is quite resourceful at connecting the dots, and I did throw some things “out there” to the blogosphere, and to the universe.  I started this blog to fix the issues in my head, but sticking my Swiffer into the cobwebs meant sharing some dark, dirty corners of my life that my friends and family aren’t typically privy to.

That’s the risk you take when you’re honest.  Someone might find you.

And she always does, eventually.

Obviously, I didn’t want her to find me.  While I wanted to use my writing to expunge some demons, I certainly didn’t want them to darken my doorstep in real life.  But she found my address, and it’s my own fault that she did, and now I need to find a way to make room for her in my life, because I have no right to ask her to leave.

She came knocking at my door on Thursday night, pulling her overstuffed, heavy Louis Vuitton roller bags, and when I opened the door just a crack, she came barging in, her luggage banging on the floor and denting the walls as she roughly threw an impossible number of suitcases and steamer trunks in a huge pile in the center of the room, forcing me to face it all and deal with the mess.

She turned her back to the giant, precarious stack.  Haughtily, she stood facing me, her feet firmly planted to the ground in a wide stance in severe Prada ankle boots, her Chanel power suit inexplicably perfectly pressed.   She looked me directly in the eye, then, her eyebrows slightly raised and her right hand assuming the position of authority on her hip.

Challenging me.

Daring me to speak.

I blinked.  Once.  Twice.  My mind racing.  Why was she here?  What does she want?

I didn’t have to ask that question aloud.  You never do with her.  She knows.

She stuck her perfectly manicured hand (OPI’s I’m Not Really a Waitress) into her sleek Gucci messenger bag, and pulled out a document and handed it to me.

A hollow, cold blackness tore through my heart and slowly snaked its way to my brain as I read the words in front of me.

The document?  This.

The mysterious Angel of Vindication had found me.

Her name?  Karma.

KarmaKnot

And she was forcing me to be held accountable for the most despicable, wretched thing I’ve ever done.

It was time to pay the piper.

She watched me with an ironic, sanctimonious smirk as I digested the evidence she had presented.

I closed my eyes for a moment.  Hadn’t I always suspected she was coming?

I looked at her then, resigned.

Waiting.

She met my gaze for a full half minute, drinking in my discomfort.

I braced myself for the inevitable.

Finally, she spoke.

Two words.

Ashley Madison.

She let the words hang in the air for a moment, watching my reaction with a satisfied glare.   Then she turned on her heel and marched toward my bedroom, slamming the door hard.

There was a brief silence as her words, and what they meant to me and my marriage, sunk in more deeply.

As the noxious fog of her message crept into my pores, poisoning my soul, I was startled out of the eerie quiet as a loud crash of glass shattered the silence.

Hesitantly, I stepped toward the unstable, haphazard pile of baggage, unsure what had broken, yet afraid to look.

I saw the remains of a single glass slipper, smashed to unrecognizable bits by its plunge to the hard, cold floor of reality.

He confessed to me on Thursday night, under the cloak of darkness that only a rainstorm can bring.

About two years ago, he established an account.  He took the deliberate steps to set up a new email address, he paid the fee, and he contacted two women, conversing with four.  He claims he never met any of them.

Of the many, many thoughts, fears, and questions racing through my mind, there are two dominating thoughts.

The first:  How did I not know?  How did I miss this?  My career is reading people, for f#ck’s sake.  And yet, my own husband was able to deceive me. Effortlessly.

We had talked about the Ashley Madison data breach over the dinner table.  I had heard about it on NPR, and brought it up merely as a point of conversation. Weren’t we all talking about it?  Unlike politics or global warming, this was actually kind of…fascinating. Juicy.

(Funny how quickly that juice turns into a rancid vinegar once it’s served to you at the dinner table in your own home.)

It would certainly have been more interesting news had I realized that my husband turned several shades of red and started to sweat when I brought up the subject.

But apparently, I didn’t even notice.

Not even a blip on the radar.  No thread of a red flag.  Clueless.  Oblivious.  Chalked it up to my spicy tofu stir-fry.

But if I look back…I mentioned in this post that the hubs had recently stepped up his game.  He’s been, and I quote, “absolutely amazing lately.”

Lately = last couple of weeks.

The data breach hit the news July 15.  I made that post September 9.

Usually, I like math.  (Karma knows that, too.)

In retrospect, I know I had casually made the observation that he had seemed to lose much of his appetite.  (He’s 6’4″, and he’s a dude.  Big cup of DUH there.)  And he started therapy a couple of weeks ago; he said it was to better manage his ability to hold eye contact with people at work.  (He is on the autism spectrum, after all.)

The clue phone was clearly set to vibrate, sending those calls right to voice mail.

It was like I was happily tapping along on my mental laptop, not worrying about saving my work because it was plugged in, after all, and was confused when the battery suddenly died and I discovered that in my foolish reliance on the consistency of the power cord, I had apparently neglected to actually plug the damn thing into the wall.

Despite all of our challenges over the last year, the one thing I knew – I KNEW, with absolute certainly and with the absence of any and all doubt – was that I could rely on his faithfulness.  We’d talked about it; we’d said on several occasions that if we ever felt the need to step out, we respected each other enough to discuss it first.  Decide whether to fix it or move on. Like adults in a mature relationship.

Of course, that was all hypothetical, because it was never going to actually happen.

And now, I’m like the child who has discovered that there is no Santa Claus, that peanut butter cups will always have too many calories, and that, simply put, there are no fairy tales.

I have to face the reality that my husband and I aren’t unique or special.  Our relationship is no longer a beautiful story that little girls dress up and dream about.  It’s as raw, gritty, and real as everyone else’s, with rough edges that snag the tulle and sticky dust that dulls the sparkles on your tiara.

Our relationship is painfully human.

So now, I’m looking for a dustpan that I never thought I’d need, as I begin sweeping up the pieces of my broken glass slipper.  I’m just starting the cleanup, and there are little shards everywhere – under couches and in the African violets – so it’ll take a while.

This is messy work, I’m finding, and the slivers are getting under my fingernails and into my eyes, contorting how I see the comforting and familiar into caricatures with a different shape and color.

I don’t know where the scars will land.

Which brings me to my second thought.

As my spouse was confessing – as he was purging his soul of the demons that have occupied him, as he was begging forgiveness – I didn’t feel anything.

No sadness.   No anger.

I suppose I was, and have been, in shock.

Instead, inside my head was a clear, calm, meditative treble, that simply stated:

Now you never, ever have to eat again.

Is this the end, or the beginning?

…to be continued….

Humpday Chuckles: Photopourri

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Have I mentioned that I’m not a fan of clutter?

Long before Hoarders became a watercooler topic, I had a Hoarder-like experience with my ex and his family.

The ex’s parents had a four-bedroom house crammed full of…stuff.  Clothes, books, shoes, more clothes.  The bedrooms were wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling piles with a narrow path from door to bed.  The family room was only half-useable; the rest was filled with “stuff we might need someday.”

His mom was a child of Depression-era parents, and she couldn’t bear to donate or toss anything that might have use.  His dad?  Well, he retired early and frequented garage sales, auctions, and flea markets, and accumulated an impressive collection of…

Guess.

No, really, c’mon.  Guess.

CAKE PLATES.

Were you close?

No, of course you weren’t.  Of all the things for a seventy-year-old man to collect, this probably wasn’t one of your first five thousand guesses.  But for some reason, this is what he always found – and brought home.  And he had HUNDREDS.  I’m literally being literal here. HUNDREDS.  Stacked along every wall, shelf, crevice, and ledge.

But I married his son anyway.  (And that wasn’t even the biggest red flag.  Not by a longshot.)

I should have known I was in trouble when he wouldn’t let me cancel the newspaper subscription – even when several weeks’ worth were found – not only unread, but still rolled up – under the couch.  The tipping point came several years later when we bought our second house – it came with a four-car garage, but we had so much stuff THERE WAS NO ROOM FOR ME TO PARK.  My reaction was to throw out an entire closet full of plastic Cool Whip and cottage cheese containers.  NONE OF WHICH HAD MATCHING LIDS ANYWAY BUT FOR SOME REASON WE HAAAAAAAAAAAAD TO KEEP THEM

<breathes deeply into paper bag>

To this day I have an aversion to clutter.  When I relocated out West, and had to move from my three-bedroom, two-bath abode, the movers scheduled 8 hours and an empty tractor trailer to pack up the contents of the house.  They were finished by 11AM and had my life’s belongings in less than a fifth of the trailer.

Anyway.  I was thinking of this as I went to organize my Blog Pictures folder (which now has a sophisticated system of color-coded subfolders.)  As I was reorganizing, I found some…uh…gems…that I haven’t posted yet.

So before I file them, I thought I’d share them in one big honkin’ motley medley picture parade.

Let’s start with a billboard.  I pass this one on occasion when I’m traveling and it always makes me chuckle.  I mean….well, look at it:

billboard1Belle:  “Oh, Beauregard….of COURSE I’ll marry you!  Where ever did you FIND this GEM? It’s so…”

Bo:  “I giddyapped and went to Kirk’s!  YEE HAW!”

Belle:  <weeps softly into her sweet tea>

Today’s Weather:  Rain, yo.

That’s chill.

Word.

rain_word

Next, I’d like to share a religious symbol with y’all.

I may have mentioned that I sing in a band on occasion.  Normally, when we perform at a church, we’re up front, to the side of the altar, facing the congregation.  At this gig, we warmed up and started the service – so far, so good.  Then, as the pastor started to speak, I turned toward the altar to face him…

…and I saw…

This.

DoveUnfortunately, the keyboardist and I saw it at the same time, and turned into poorly-behaved schoolkids who could. not. stop. snickering.

(We haven’t been invited back to the church yet.)

I’m sure one of the church elders lovingly handcrafted this artifact and graciously donated it to the church, along with a significant endowment, resulting in no one wanting to offend the dude and his money by suggesting they display a nice spray of lilies instead.

One question.  If a dove bearing an olive branch is a symbol of peace, what is this supposed to symbolize?

Never mind.  I do NOT wanna know.

Here’s a feline edition of “Where’s Waldo?” adapted from my cat’s last trip to the vet. Can you find him?

CarrotVet

You know how cats like boxes?  Mine turned into one.

Olliebox

One more.  A little while back, I posted about my hair.  I really like my hair.  It’s really thick and wavy, and it’s supposed to look something like this:

FabHairYoBut wavy hair often has its own ideas.  Today it had something a bit more avant-garde in mind:

bedhead

#iwokeuplikethis LEGIT.

Thank goodness for hats.

becausehatsHave a great week, peeps.  😉   <MWAH>

Food Issues Aren’t Child’s Play

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Remember the playground?

When your parents parked the car, or when the bell for recess FINALLY rang…where did you run first?

I was all about the swings.  Unlike the monkey bars, they didn’t require much athletic ability, and they didn’t scald the skin on your thighs like the metal slide did on a hot summer day.  Didn’t we all pinch our fingers in the chains at least once when we were lost in the challenge of swinging hard enough to fly all the way around the bar?

(I recognize that some of you are too young to remember a playground that had actual safety hazards.  But back in MY day <hitching up suspenders> we didn’t have plastic coatings over the chains.  We had shiny metal slides that heated up to skin-blistering, egg-frying temperatures in August.  Seat belts on the swings?  You have GOT to be kidding.  And we had NONE of that sissy-boy recycled-tire mulch at the bottom of the monkey bars.    We had good old-fashioned DIRT.  Soft landings = soft adults!  Got a boo-boo?  Pop that sucker back into joint, rub some gravel on it and get back outside!)

Anyway.

As adults, I think we look for that same thrill that the playground used to give us.  We all need to find our fun, right?

Some of us look to extreme sports (100-milers.  The Ironman.)  Others look to death-defying activities.  (Bungee jumping, anyone?  Skydiving?  That’s a big helping of NOT ME.  But you go on with yo’ bad self.)  And a few get way too absorbed in the drama of politics, Big Brother, or Facebook.

Some of us get a little lost looking for that playground thrill.  That’s where things like gambling and alcohol come into play.  And for me, obviously, food.

Recently, the hubs and I went to our local State Fair, where they historically feature diabetes and obesity “on a stick.”  (Delicious, delicious diabetes.  OMNOMNOM)  You can find something for every palate – pickle juice Popsicles, chocolate-covered bacon, funnel cake, and deep-fried everything from candy bars to cookie dough – even butter.  (But butter sort of terrifies me, so we are NOT having any of THAT.)

I joke occasionally that the State Fair is “the one day I allow myself to eat.”  Now, I’ve been trying desperately to get these last ten fifteen five few pounds off, and I’ve been trying to not go all eating-disorder starvation crazy about it.  For the last four weeks, I’ve conscientiously eaten 1200 calories a day and gone for a run 3-4 times a week, with long bike rides on the weekends.  Balanced.  Healthy.  Right?

So I knew the fair was coming up, and I know I like to eat fair food, so I decided to just have a day of “screw it” and eat what I felt like eating at the fair.  One planned afternoon of once-a-year treats.

And eat I did.  I had:

  • a blueberry/honey/chipotle muffin (they were gluten-free, so I had to try one)
  • a scoop of chocolate raspberry wine ice cream (fabulous)
  • a beer-battered fried brat (also gluten-free!)
  • a “triple peanut threat” milkshake (peanut butter, Reese’s pieces, and Butterfingers, which probably aren’t gluten-free, but my throttle was jammed firmly into don’t-give-a-s#it gear at this point.
  • a chocolate-coated pecan nut roll (gluten?  WHO CARES SUGAR SUGAR SUGARSUGARSUGARSUUUUUUUGAAAARRRR)

Now, that’s a lot of food, but trust me, in past years, when I didn’t need to worry about not eating wheat, I’ve done a LOT worse.  (Add not one, but TWO, orders of deep-fried cheese curds, and probably a chocolate sandwich, which YES, is as good as it sounds, and maybe some sweet potato fries with a small lake of ketchup.)  So, given that this was a planned indulgence, this wasn’t TOO bad for a full day of food, especially when you’re walking all day, too.

Right?

Right  If I’d have STOPPED there.

I had been having quite a time on the monkey bars, enjoying the view up high, until I slipped, fell hard, and whacked my elbow on the unforgiving pavement.  THUD.

Unable to do anything halfway, I gave moderation a hostile middle finger and ate half a king-sized pillow bag of popcorn once I got home.

And, despite sticking religiously to my diet for the rest of the week – zero weight loss.

Well, what did I expect, exactly?  I guess I should feel lucky that I didn’t gain from my dalliance with debauchery.  I know that one day off from diligence – one bad meal, actually – will cost me (I wrote about why here.)

But I also know it’s dangerous to dance close to the edge of that oh-so-slippery slope.  Because with eating disorders, there is no “just once.”  There’s no minor diversion.  No day off.  It’s black or white.  All or nothing.

It’s kind of ironic, actually.  I mean, when you’re starving yourself (alternating with periods of stuffing yourself senseless) you spend a lot of time on a scale.  And if you’ve ever waded in past your knees in the eating-issues pool, you have a food scale, too.

The scale.  A symbol of balance.  A precise measuring device calculating, gram by gram, the distance of an object from zero.  Calculating the mass between the amount of space you take up and the amount of space that’s acceptable to occupy.

Physically, you’re constantly working with this instrument to find balance.

Yet, when it comes to the food?  Mentally, we can’t get off the seesaw.  Up.  Down.  Back up.  Quickly down.  One minute, you’re briefly at the top, and in the next moment, you’re bouncing painfully off the ground when your partner bails from the ride.

It’s all or nothing.

And we all know how it SHOULD be, right?  Mentally, we should strive to be balanced, aiming mightily for that elusive “moderation” bullseye, while physically, the scale should be an occasional, twice-a-year checkup at the doctor’s office.

My relationship with food, and my weight, should look like this:

But it feels more like this (except picture the elephant tumbling @ss over teakettle to the ground in a thunderous crash):

Or this:

Or, more accurately, this:

Somehow, I need to move myself to the center of the seesaw.  It doesn’t HAVE to be all-or-nothing, right?  Most people eat when they’re hungry, stop when they’re not, and don’t burn up so much freaking mental energy on this stuff.

They just DO it.  It’s like breathing.

It’s not so automatic for me.  I have to keep reminding myself to find my balance.

Keep shifting to the center.

Try to balance.

Fall.

Get back up.  Rub some dirt on it.

Try again.

<sigh>

Anyone wanna go back to the swings with me?  Let’s leave all this food baggage in Mom’s purse on the ground, and just rock back and forth for a while.

If I lean back, and point my toes to the sky, I’ll go higher and higher, alternately reaching for the moon and gently floating back to earth, not having a care in the world.

For a moment.

See Saw, Margery Daw

Katie shall have a new master

But she shall lose just two ounces a day

Because she can’t starve any faster

The Future’s So Right…. I Gotta Get Weighed

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I love a good challenge…gets me off the inertia couch and writing…SOMETHING.  It generally ends up being a word salad, but salad is good for you, right?  I like to think my word salad has lots of crunchy, salty bits, a bit of sweet, and a deceptively creamy dressing that is miraculously fat-free.  But I may be dreaming.

Speaking of dreaming…fattymccupcakes, who is going to be my new best friend if she ever moves here (that’s not creepy, is it?) nominated me for the Future Challenge.  So thanks for the mental shove, chica.  (And if you haven’t picked up her blog – she is freaking hilarious.  So you need to totally go read her.)

DA RULZ:

  • Thank the blogger who nominated you.
  • Next, link back to the original creator of the challenge, Dreams and Movie Screens, so they can see how far their challenge has spread.
  • Then, share 5 things about your future.
  • Finally, nominate 5 bloggers to share their own future.

So, about my future….

The challenge didn’t say I had to be totally realistic.  (Not that I’m a great rule-follower, anyway.  Speed limits?  MERELY A SUGGESTION.)  But I think it makes sense to chuck your desires at the universe.  You can look at it as a goal to reach for, or a dream to follow, or some woo-woo hippie-dippie full-bore shot at The Secret.

Either way, I can’t help but believe that thinking positively does me more good than embracing gloom-and-doom.  (Remind me of this in the middle of the night when my mind is racing maniacally to the tune of “the EEO report is due this month and I have to read 500 reviews and book flights for November before the holiday traffic takes all the good seats and someday my cats will die, my parents will die, and what if my kids or the hubs dies, they’ll ALL die someday or maybe one of my flights will crash and none of this will matter except then how will my kids buy shoes and why can’t I sleep EVER and my run tomorrow morning is gonna SUCK if I can’t get more than four hours of sleep and will my knee hold out, because if it doesn’t I am totally doomed to be fat forever and….” Do you know this one?  Sing along when we get to the chorus.  Anxiety always suckers me in to attending the after-party, and there’s no mental Uber to give me a ride home at 3 AM.)

Side note:  I’m one of those peeps who copes by attempting to take control by taking action.  (Which kind of explains the whole eating disorder dealio.)  So, for example, if I’m having a craptacular day at work, I peruse job boards and send out a couple of resumes.  To that end, I actually have a plan in place should something happen to my spouse:  I’m selling off most of my belongings and moving somewhere warm – probably Arizona – but I’ve been eyeing this little town called Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. There aren’t many jobs there – most of them are entry-level – but housing is cheap, and I’d use this as an opportunity to simplify and scale back.  Plus, the neighboring town is called – get this – Elephant Butte.  Which makes me giggle, because mentally, I’m still twelve.

Barring tragedy, though…given the canvas I own and the paints I have, here’s how I’m sketching out my future:

Financial Health:  I’ll have sufficient funds to retire more than comfortably by age 55.  (OK, admittedly a stretch.  65?)  And by “comfortably,” I mean I’ll have enough to both travel AND to make Christmas really special for the kids and grandkids.  (Of which I’ll have four.  NO PRESSURE KIDDOS.)

Physical Health:  I’ll be in excellent shape (relative to most of the US – not planning on doing an Ironman or any of that cray shiz) and quite active.  Since I’ll be retired, I’ll have plenty of time to work on my landscaping, as well as go hiking and biking as weather permits.  And I’ll still be able to complete the airport sprint (when you have 15 minutes to get to your gate 1.2 miles away) at a dead run if I need to.  My knees and hips will be in top form, and my bones will be strong.  People will marvel at my energy level, and won’t add “for your age”, because they know they’ll get a fierce roundhouse kick to the cranium.  BOOM.

Spiritual Health:  I’ll be at peace with myself and with the universe.  I’ll still read a lot, and talk up the issues, because that’s how we learn, right?  The grandkids will seek advice and guidance from me because of how grounded and non-judgmental Grandma is:  cool and calm, untroubled and relaxed, dynamic and feisty.  (See “roundhouse kick” above.  I don’t ever think I will suffer fools well.  That ain’t in my DNA.)

Mental Health (#1):  I’ll have found my voice and stood up to the bullying taunts in my  head that tells me I’m not enough.  I’ll know that I AM enough.  I am whole and complete and have value.

In the future, I’ll be able to believe it – and I’ll live my life that way.

Mental Health (#2):  I will finally be at peace with my body.  I will have forgiven myself for taking up so much space, and will issue my thighs a pardon for their genetic makeup.

No.  Wait.

Forgive?

What was the crime, exactly?

I guess I have a way to go before I get to this Future place.  But I knew that; that’s kind of why I’m here.

But, try as I might, I still can’t envision a future without a scale in it.  I can’t wrap my mind around how to exist without it.  It’s easier to picture other what-ifs, like my relocation contingency plan above.

I’ve made some attempts at getting better – I’m working on some healthier habits, and tried therapy. Well, for a while.  I haven’t been totally consistent, other than when I fall, I’m trying really, really hard to get back up. And I usually do.

The funny thing about failing at life?  If you look outside your lane, you see you’re not the only one sprawled on the cinders.  There’s camaraderie in life’s pileups.  That’s why we lean on each other in the blogosphere, right?

I think the key is to keep going.  And if we don’t like the direction we’re headed, we can always turn around.  Or start over.

We can only really start from where we stand right now, right?

I’m putting on my sneakers, my knee brace, and my zaniest running capris.

The door’s open.  I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, visualizing the finish line so I have a better chance of crossing it.

I’d like to invite these five bloggers to step into the TARDIS* and share their own futures.  Have at it, ladies!  🙂

*This isn’t my typical genre, but the kiddos got me hooked, and for the record?  I am TOTALLY TEAM TENTH DOCTOR.  In fact, I had a dream about David Tennant the other night that was so <cough> detailed and explicit, I couldn’t look the hubs in the eye for two whole days.  Anyway, if you haven’t watched, take a gamble and add it to your Netflix queue.  At the very least, you’ll understand all these vague pop-culture references that erupt on your Facebook feed.  And you’ll never look at angel statues the same way again.  <shudder>

Liebster, Revisited: Part 3 of 3: How I Met the Hubs. And Shoes.

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For those of you just tuning in now, this is the third and final installation of the challenge presented to me by sonofabeach96, who kindly nominated me for the Liebster Award:

liebster3(You can find Part 1, and Da Rulz, HERE.  Part 2 is HERE.)

Eleven simple questions, eleven long, convoluted answers.  Okay, I swear this is the final chapter in this disjointed series.  Then we can move along to something interesting, like politics, paint drying, taxes, or landscaping.

<snurk>

So, the rest of the questions:

What is your favorite vacation destination, and where would you want to travel if money were no object?

I actually haven’t really had many vacations, other than to see family.  Which, as much as I love them, doesn’t count, because being around family requires you to wear heavy, impenetrable armor, and after a few days, it just wears a gal down.

But I do have a couple of dream vacations.  I want to visit the West Coast (the last time I was there, I was sorely tempted to cancel my return ticket) and see mountains, ocean, and giant redwoods.  (Oh, and yeah, a few wineries.) I want to take a cruise to Alaska.  And I’d like to eventually visit Hawaii, because it’s both warm AND beautiful.

But the thought of being on a plane for four or five hours exhausts me – I’ve had several jobs where I’ve had to travel a lot – like 75% – and they’ve sucked all the glamour out of travel and basically ruined me for airports for life.

If money were no object, I’d sit in first class, and I expect it’d be a heckuva lot nicer.  Plus there’d be no hurry to return.  So maybe, in that case, I’d squeeze in a side jaunt to Australia.

BECAUSE KANGAROOS.

If you’re married, how did you meet your spouse?

The story behind my “starter spouse” is, unfortunately, not all that interesting.  We were in college together and married right after graduation.*  Very typical, very average.  And, just like everyone** else, we got divorced a few years later.

*Technically, I was three credits shy of graduation.  Details, details….I did finish three years later.

**I actually only know one couple who married right after college and stayed married.  Actually, she was my roommate and he was my ex’s roommate, so they spent a good bit of time together somewhat by default, and eventually decided to be a couple.  We always thought they were really odd together – culturally, spiritually, physically, personality-wise – they just never appeared as a matching set.  As the Brits would say – cheese and chalk.  But then again, who really had a good man-picker in college, anyway?  Clearly not EVERYONE ELSE who wound up divorced.  Twenty-plus years later, I guess they WERE the odd couple, at least in tenacity.

The story behind the hubs is much juicier.

Fast forward a few years.  I’m going through a divorce and juggling a new job.  In the midst of dividing up a life’s worth of possessions and trying to establish a “new normal”…I met someone.

It was a lousy time to begin a relationship – all the experts on divorce recovery will tell you “take time for yourself” and “don’t rush into something new.”  But I was never great at following a vague “they say” (or, for that matter, any voice of authority.)  Plus, I was enjoying my freedom – I had recently come to discover that my first spouse was mentally abusive (and likely suffering from some sort of personality disorder.  We flunked out of three therapists (which is a story for another time) so I never found out for sure.  Suffice it to say that if it walks like a duck, it ain’t a donut.)  

And this was not the relationship to start, for a number of reasons.  In addition to the fact that it was a long-distance relationship, he simply wasn’t available, and neither he nor I knew the difference between drama and love.  So while there was admittedly a lot of passion, it was the over-inflated extremist version that would rival any long-running soap on afternoon TV.  And I hadn’t learned enough about relationships to understand that while, on paper, he appeared to be the polar opposite of my ex (physically, politically, socially, etc.,) the reality was that they shared some startlingly similar personality traits (controlling, belittling, demeaning) that I failed to recognize until the bitter, melodramatic termination of the relationship.

And we pretty much had nothing in common, save loneliness.  Hard to build a long-term bond on the absence of something.

I didn’t marry that guy.  (Although, we looked at rings, and I bought a dress – which, after several moves, is currently sitting in a local consignment shop, tags still on it, ready to complete YOUR dream wedding!)  But I did endure about two years of emotional highs and lows, the soaring and plummeting of which would earn the envy and admiration of amusement park thrill ride engineers globally.

To further complicate matters, I had just been offered another job 900 miles away, in this guy’s metro area.

Kismet!  This was MEANT TO BE!

(Maybe.)

And then we broke up.  Again.

My sister decided that enough was enough, and perhaps I could try to meet someone else.  With renewed resolve, I reactivated my online dating profile (it had been created, utilized, and deactivated several times between our frequent breakups and reconciliations – you know, for added entertainment and histrionics -) and changed my location to my pending address.

Ahhhh.   A fresh start, a new city, a clean slate, a whole new buffet of man candy.   My sister and I clicked through profiles, evaluating and reviewing each one.  (Side note:  Online dating is like shoe shopping.  You can sift through a ton online, but until you walk in them a while, you really don’t have any idea whether they’ll actually work with your wardrobe and your lifestyle.)

A profile popped up.  “Ooh!  He’s cute. His ears are kind of big.  But he’s cute. Click him!”

So I did.  And I liked what I read:  He sounded intelligent and honest.  Plus, he was cute.  Waaaaay out of my league cute.  But…what the heck?  My last boyfriend was fond of saying, “You miss all the shots you don’t take.”  So I shot.

I composed a message – I commented on a few things he listed in his profile, and closed with, “I think peeling some mental onions with you could prove interesting.”

He said he fell for me right there.  (Aww.  <barf>)

So what happened to the other guy?  Well, he did try to get me back.  (No one saw THAT coming, right?)  His argument was – I kid you not – “We weren’t really broken up.  We were just taking a break.  We were supposed to get back together in a couple of months.  You weren’t supposed to meet someone else and fall in love.”

(Sorry.  Couldn’t resist.)

I’m embarrassed to admit that he and I briefly got back together one more time before the hubs and I became exclusive.  But our final breakup was empowering – I used my words, and my voice, and by ceremoniously dumping him, I was able to purge my soul of both him and my ex-spouse, and define how I deserved to be treated.

(Odd how it sounds like much of my eating disorder.  Like I “had” to stuff myself with pizza and ice cream one last time before I started The Official Diet.  Hmm.  Gonna have to think about that one.)

After the final fireworks died out and the audience went home, I emailed my now-hubs, told him I’d love to see him again, and the rest is history.  And while we’ve had some challenges over the last year, it would be unfair of me not to mention that he’s been absolutely amazing lately. He’s trying so very hard and has put in some tremendous effort after I was clear with him about what was so troublesome – especially lately.  (Funny how that works in healthy adult relationships….you rationally and calmly state what you need, and you get it.  It really can be that easy.)

P.S.  The dating site I used?  Don’t laugh.  Plenty of Fish.  It’s free.  Which means…well, you know what it means.  The hubs often tells people that he found me in the “FREE” box at a yard sale.  <snort>

Describe your personality and what type of people are you drawn to?

I think I’m drawn to people who have the traits I like in myself.  So, here’s my list:

  • I like funny people who can laugh at themselves, but not at the expense of others.  (Well, maybe a little.) <snurk>
  • I like people who have opinions they’re not afraid to use – as long as they use their ears and their brains as effectively as their mouths.
  • Bonus points if you have great shoes.  BECAUSE SHOES.

Speaking of which – here’s my latest haul.  Enjoy!

shoerunning

My most expensive shoes are my running shoes….

shoegold

GOLD SHOES. TWELVE DOLLARS. SCORE.

shoepinkpatent

These just make me happy. Lipstick for the feet!

Liebster, Revisited: Part 2 of 3: High School Never Ends, Cars, and Christmas Trees

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This is a continuation of my last post, where I started responding to sonofabeach96’s  nomination of me for a Liebster Award:

liebster3Because I’m the verbal equivalent of Niagara Falls, I couldn’t get it all into one post.  So here are three more of the questions…and three more long-winded answers:

What were your high school days like?  Good, bad, or indifferent and why?

On the surface, high school wasn’t that bad.  I wasn’t really bullied.  I had friends.  I was involved in every music activity our small district had available.  I got excellent grades.

But it’s hard to reminisce about high school without noting, as a point of reference, where I was with my eating disorder.  It’s like having a sterile, undisturbing stock photo of a smiling family set inside a dusty, chipped, weather-beaten picture frame.

The story’s in the setting, not the scene.

Ninth grade started with a bang, because <dramatic pause> I met a boy.  When you’re fourteen, this is typical.  When you’re fourteen and chubby, and he likes you back, it’s life-changing.   He was older (by one year – oh, the SCANDAL!) and was (of COURSE!) as thin as a rail with a sky-high metabolism.  (Seriously – weren’t they all?)  I coasted through most of freshman year with a lot of “firsts” – first kiss, first date, first formal – and, for the first time since fifth grade, didn’t focus too much on my weight.

I ended my first year of high school wearing a size 11 and weighing about 145.

And then summer hit.  And with the heat came last year’s clothes that were way, way too small.  And by August, I was appalled to discover that my marching band uniform had shrunk.  Significantly.

Now, as an adult, I can objectively look back and see that truly, I was pretty much “normal.”  Probably a bit chubby, especially compared to the track stars and cheerleaders.  But surely I didn’t stand out as the fattest kid in the class.  I understand intellectually that I didn’t look all that different from my classmates – to this day, when I occasionally page through an old yearbook, it never fails to strike me how downright NORMAL I appear.

But at the time?  I was FAT.  And Something Had To Be Done About That.

I knew all too well what worked.  I quit eating.

I started tenth grade a good 25 pounds less than I had ended freshman year.  I walked into my first day of my sophomore year with my size 7 jeans hanging off me.

Bolstered by success and compliments from my classmates, I kept going.  I kept going despite occasional blackouts.  Despite a blood pressure of 80/40.  Despite lectures from the school nurse.  Despite missing family meals.  Despite peer praise turning to worry.  Despite bodily functions ceasing to exist.  Despite my (new) boyfriend begging me to eat.

I finally settled in at just barely over 100 pounds, logging every calorie and measuring every morsel of food (including mustard and Crystal Light – I was hardcore, bro).

This was my existence for the next two years.

Outwardly, things looked to be great – I was thin, I was active in music stuff, I had a boyfriend who loved me dearly and was going to take care of me ALWAYS, and as long as I controlled my body and the food I put into it, I was safe and secure.

Then, during my first semester as a senior, my boyfriend – my first love, the boy who swore he’d marry me one day and would love me forever – unceremoniously dumped me.  (Because college, ya know.)  Suddenly, after over two years of coasting in the shade, the sun was beating down on me, burning off the fog and forcing its bright, harsh light directly into my eyes, commanding my pupils to constrict as my eyes ached from pained, constant squinting.

With absolutely no idea how to cope, I started to eat.

Once the dam broke, it was impossible to stop the flood.  I gained fifty pounds the last half of senior year, as I filled the time with extracurricular activities (read: boys) trying to find my self-worth while simultaneously feeding my starving soul with anything I could get my hands on.  (Unfortunately, I was feeding it the equivalent of onion rings and Twinkies.  But I had to start somewhere.)

I left for college in the fall with the Bright Future of weighing 170 pounds and having absolutely no idea what to do with my life.

So…yeah.  High school was…high school.

KatieSeniorPic

And here I am, twenty-five over twenty years later, still wrestling the same pigs and getting just as dirty.  True, I have cuter shoes and no boa.  But still….

What was your first car? 

The first car that was actually MINE was a 1991 Chevy Lumina.  I’d love to say it was a sweet ride, but the only people to say that about this car is the bluehair-and-Bingo set. 

I mean…just…gaaaah: 

Really makes a statement, doesn’t it?  In addition to its edgy, bad@ss look, it also featured a speedometer that pegged at a hairnet-blowing 85mph.  Which is totally un-American, and un-German, and un-everything-under-age-seventy.

So why did I have this?  Well, as is the case with most first cars, I wasn’t actually involved in picking it out.  It actually came into my possession courtesy of my now-ex-in-laws.

See, my former mother-in-law cleaned houses for a living – generally for the elderly.  Consequently, they often paid her in either quarters, baked goods, or castoff clothing.

Still, she persisted.  We think she was hoping that someday, one of her clients would kick the bucket and mention her in the will.

That never happened.

But, since most of her customers were in their late eighties, they did hop the heaven bus to harp lessons on occasion.  And, as the stereotypes dictate, they often left behind an older, low-miles vehicle – which she’d then volunteer to buy, at a bargain price, from the grieving family.

I kid you not.

(I guess it’s a small reward for choking down loaf after loaf of soggy, well-intentioned pumpkin bread.)

At the time, my then-spouse and I were newlyweds – and I had finally, after years of resistance*, learned to drive.  So we needed a second car, and this one met all of our requirements and qualifications (read:  it ran and it was cheap.)  It wasn’t exactly hip and trendy, but it was only a couple of years old with less than 15,000 miles on it.  SOLD!  I drove that sucker into the ground, tooling around in it until we eventually popped out some offspring and traded it in for a minivan.

*Side note:  I didn’t actually learn to drive until I was 24.  Why?  Well, if you asked me directly, I’d tell you, as I flipped my hair and narrowed my eyes coyly, “I always had a boy or two to drive me around.”  That was partially true; I also had an older brother and a younger sister who were more than happy to play chauffeur.  But the truth?  I’m hopelessly uncoordinated, easily distracted, and a champion procrastinator.  Plus, I wanted to spend my babysitting dinero on clothes and shoes, not gas and insurance.  Priorities, ya know.

What is the one thing that grates on your last nerve?

OK, there is NO WAY I can only pick only one thing.  I talked about a few Things I Hate in the Love/Hate Challenge (which took me SIX posts.  I am ridiculous.)

But out of all those posts, there was one thing I missed that absolutely drives me to shoot fire from my face holes and rant in unholy tongues.

It’s Christmas lights that BLINK IN SECTIONS.

They don’t twinkle.  They don’t flutter off and on to music.  They just ALL flip on and off AT THE SAME TIME, like some idiot minion is half-wittedly turning the switch off and on, off and on.

Off.  On.  Off.  On.

These are usually at the house that’s hung just one string, usually lining a roof or a window. Or part of a roof.  Or half a window.  Or until the string of lights just ran out.

THEY’RE LIGHTS THAT DON’T EVEN TRY.

And please note – when I say “you didn’t try,” I have a pretty high threshold for what I consider gallant effort.  Witness our family Christmas Tree a few years ago:

frogpoolnoodletree

Shout out to Problems with Infinity (http://problemswithinfinity.com/) – see? SEE?!?

Yes.  It’s a stuffed frog and a pool noodle.  BUT IT SAYS “TREE” SO IT’S LEGIT.  And I didn’t have to step on a single needle.  I WIN.

This tree is creative and unique (and affordable, I might add!)  But lights that blink in sections?  It’s like Christmas just gave up.  It’s Christmas sadness.

Don’t be that house.  Don’t be the Holiday Spirit Slayer.  Leave your lights on, in all their energy-sapping, glowing glory.  Your neighbors will shovel your walkways and bring you cookies, and there will be world peace and harmony.

Or, at least, I won’t have to violently hurl the Fruitcake of Christmas Past through your front window.

Liebster, Revisited: Part 1 of 3: History of My Career

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Recently (OK, it’s been a couple of weeks, because summer, yo!) sonofabeach96 was kind enough to nominate me for a Liebster Award:

liebster3This feels a little bit like cheating, because I actually won one of these before, and wrote about aliens and my cat.  But this one is a different COLOR, and like shoes THAT MAKES IT TOTALLY DIFFERENT so I’ll make room.

Before I dig in, lemme tell ya about sonofabeach96 – he writes about life and family, and seasons his posts liberally with great music.  He’s a good read, so go check him out. kthx

DA RULZ:

  1. Make a post thanking and linking the person who nominated me and include the Liebster Award sticker in the post.
  2. Nominate 5-10 other bloggers and notify them of this in one of their posts.
  3. All nominated bloggers are to have less than 200 followers.
  4. Answer the 11 questions posed by your nominator and create 11 different questions for your nominees to answer.  Or, you can repeat the same questions.
  5. Copy these rules into your post.

And now for the questions, which are sure to provide fascinating insight into the mental supply closet that is my psyche….

(Some of these are repeats, so I hope y’all don’t mind some backwards links.  Actually, I think I’ll list those questions first, just to get them checked off.)

What is your favorite movie and why?  I have two:  Hitch and The Incredibles.  You can read why here. 

Do you believe in an afterlife and/or ghosts?  Oh yes indeedy.  Here’s THAT post.

Describe your family and its dynamic.  I think most of it, and how it plays into the hot mess accomplished, mature professional I am today, can be found HERE.  

And now, some new stuff:

What is your career and is it what you’ve always wanted to do or did you just fall into it?

I work in Human Resources.  NO ONE wants to work in HR when they grow up.  No one even really knows what that IS, honestly.  I think “human resources” comes from an ancient Gaelic term meaning “shoveling employee drama that stinketh like elephant droppings”.

ihatepeople

Getting into HR was a total accident.  The kind where you’re juggling hot coffee and a plate of danishes, and your stiletto catches in the sidewalk, thrusting you rather violently and ungracefully into the cement, resulting in 1) hot coffee all over your white blouse, 2) scuffing your heel up beyond any hope of repair*, 3) tearing holes in the knees of the ONE pair of pants that don’t make your thighs look like they need their own zip code, and 4) all the pastries you were carrying landing sticky-side down in the dirt.  (Krispy Kreme redefined.  Bleck.)

*what nail polish and a Sharpie can fix.  (Don’t judge.)

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a meteorologist.  (OK, to be fair, not a lot of kids have THAT dream, either.)

I started college with no idea what I wanted to do for a living, and ended up gravitating towards education.  (Hey, I’d spent twelve years in school, it was the one thing I knew about.  I really wanted to study diet and nutrition, since that was the OTHER thing I knew about, but as a fat freshman, I didn’t think I’d be all that believable, so…. Voila!  Education it is!)  Unfortunately, after a fairly significant investment of four years and 175 credits, I learned in my last semester (during student teaching) that, while I enjoyed the actual TEACHING part of the job, I just could not stomach school politics.

The last straw?  I gave a kid a D in music class, and his dad threatened to kill me.  Note – the kid EARNED that D, refusing to participate, or listen, or do anything.  Essentially, he was a little a$$hole.  And his dad came to the school and told me I’d better think twice about keeping his precious little groinfruit off the honor roll, because he’d hate for me to be found dead in the park across the street like that 13-year-old girl they found there six weeks ago….(and I’m like, yeah…that totally just happened.)

I’m SURE this kid is enjoying a lucrative career now, thanks to Daddy’s stellar influence.  Somewhere that serves french fries.  If he’s not in prison.

The kicker?  The principal said I should consider the guy’s offer.  Uh no.  Little Lucifer got his D, and I washed my hands of the mess of trying to mold tomorrow’s society.  (Epilogue:  it broke all by itself without my help.) 

Unfortunately, when you study teaching but decide to pursue other careers, you really don’t have too many other readily marketable skills.  However, I had worked in college for the Conference Services department, managing the ins and outs of various camps and classes in the summer. (Yes…”band camp”.  And cheer camp and choir camp and art camp and robotics camp and football camp and pretty much everything else camp.)  So, with the handy skills of distributing keys, collecting payment, and working holidays under my belt, I got a job working the front desk at a hotel.

Hotels are crazy businesses.  Because people stay there, and people are nuts, especially after dark, and times fifty when you add in “I’m on vacation!” and alcohol.  For example – did you know that the reason there’s no roof access from hotel stairwells is because people go there to jump off?  There’s a whole book of “wow, people are totes craybeans” procedures around all kinds of stuff like that.

Unfortunately, employees aren’t much better, so eventually we had to fire someone for absenteeism or stealing food or sleeping with a guest or something, and no one wanted to deliver the message.  Which stumped me.  I mean, with all the crazy sauce the guests were slinging everywhere, employee discipline seemed like a fairly logical progression:

flowchartfiredSimple.  No guesswork here; I was just telling them they had arrived at the end of the chart, right?  This wasn’t complicated, or difficult…yet no one wanted to do it.  I guess they were afraid the person would be…angry?  Cry?  <eyeroll>  Whatever.  Just gimme the phone, Nancy-pants.

And that is how I got into HR.

Quickly, I became a pro at terminations.  Which served me well, career-wise – after working in manufacturing for 20 <gulp> years, and with all the ups and downs of the economy, and its myriad permutations of rightsizing and downsizing and layoffs and restructuring – not to mention the occasional employee bad behavior (and yes, there are some GREAT stories there…but we’ll save those for another day) I have had to fire literally hundreds of people.

At one company, we (read:  I) went through six rounds of layoffs in fourteen months.  And I sat through them all.

One by one.

It was…sucktacular.

If you could be anything, career-wise, what would you choose to do and why?

HR, of course.

frognope

I actually have a plan for this.  Once I can afford to retire HAHAHA who am I kidding win Powerball and become independently wealthy, I’m totally quitting HR for good.  I’ve told my coworkers, and my boss, this very thing – the moment I can afford to no longer work, Kate will turn into a puff of smoke and a screech of tires.  <poof>

My actual exit will be more subtle, though.  Because once I’m a bazillionaire, I need to fade into the sunset so people aren’t hitting me up for cash.  So one day, I’ll leave for lunch (which I have done maybe three times in as many years) and simply won’t come back.  My coworkers will start to miss me later in the afternoon:

“Uh…where’d Kate go?”

“Gosh, you know, I haven’t seen her in a few hours….Wait.  Didn’t she say she was going to lunch?”

“Yeah…which is weird because she, like, never goes to lunch.  She usually eats her six Cheerios at her desk.”

Eventually, one of them will text me, and I’ll simply reply “still at lunch.”  Which, a week later, will be freaking hilarious.  Right??

But I digress.

So my dream job?  I’ll learn to play guitar and sing folk songs in coffee houses and wine shops around the city.  I guess that isn’t really a job.  But I don’t care, because I’m independently wealthy now, and your rules no longer apply to me.  Neener neener.

I’ll continue answering the rest of the questions in another post….because by now, your nether-regions have likely fallen asleep, and you probably need to get up and stretch.

But without further ado…here are my nominees:

NOTE:  This is a zero-obligation nomination.  I swear my feelings will not be hurt if you don’t do this.  It’s just a way to give y’all a shout-out and say thanks for hanging your mental skivvies out on the line for all of us to gawk at.  Heh.  😉

But if you’re game….here are YOUR eleven questions – certain to provoke riveting and inspiring trinkets for conversational fodder…. 😉

  1. Describe for me your favorite piece of jewelry.
  2. Regarding #1, tell me where you got it, and who gets it in the will.
  3. What food should be made illegal, and why?
  4. In exactly fourteen words, tell me how you feel about clowns.
  5. Tell me how you got that scar.  (Pick your favorite.)
  6. What’s something you enjoy eating that others might find odd?
  7. What’s your favorite thing to look at/see in the sky?
  8. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve found while outside?  Jewelry, money…?
  9. What’d you do with what you found in #8?
  10. Have you ever stolen anything? Besides my heart.  <barf>
  11. Have you ever won anything?

Enjoy, kids.  😀

You…Should Take the Segway….

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As far as earworms go, this is a decent one to have.  🙂

So in my quest to get outside of myself a little bit and try new things, I stumbled upon the opportunity to try out a Segway.

Wait…a what?

A Segway is basically an electric scooter – except it doesn’t have a seat.  You stand on this contraption and lean backward or forward to make it go or stop.  The thing is designed with computerized sensors and gyroscopes that somehow sense your motions and respond accordingly.

Which I read as “the computer will SMELL YOUR FEAR and laugh maniacally as it pitches you violently to the ground.”

The Segway whistles innocently as it searches for a place to bury the body.

It looks pretty menacing.  And, for the record, the dude who bought the company in 2010 was promptly thrown off a cliff by one of his products.  TRUE STORY BRO.

But, on the other hand, thousands of people ride these things every year.  I see Security zipping around the airport and the mall on Segways all the time.  And many major metropolitan areas have local tours, given while riding Segways.

So…how bad can it be?  If you can chuck a group of jet-lagged novices on these, and generally have a reasonable expectation that you’ll end the tour with the same number of people you started with, it’s gotta be somewhat safe…right?

I located a local Segway tour and signed myself and my son up.  (My daughter wasn’t all that interested.  Plus, this way, if my son and I perished in a terrible Segway fire, there’d be someone to inherit my jewelry.)

My son was mildly interested in trying the Segway. He was decidedly less interested in the tour itself, however.  (He’s 15.  Can you blame him?)  Most of the available tours feature historical sites – “historical” coming from the ancient Greek word meaning “boring crap your grandpa won’t shut up about” – so I decided to sign us up for the sculpture tour, instead.  I figured that was our best bet – buildings might not be all that exciting to a teenager, but an unusual sculpture might get at least a “blink and shrug.”  Or just a blink.  (Like I said, he’s 15.  I set my expectations accordingly.)

The day of our tour was hot – it was about 90.  (Which I actually love, because I’m always cold.  I recognize that pretty much everyone else is dying when it gets that hot, but I just stand outside and soak that shiz up.)  Because it was stupid hot, my son and I were the only two people signed up for the tour that day.  BONUS – undivided attention!

There are a few things you have to do before they’ll let you tool around on the Segway.  Those bad boys can zoom up to 12.5mph, so safety first, right?  You have to watch a safety video, put a helmet on, and…um…something else I think I missed because I was finishing level 432 on Candy Crush.  Then you can take off on the official tour.

But before they make you invest all that time in safety, they give you a quick trial on the thing, to make sure you aren’t a complete lost cause on the balance front.  (Which is nice, because generally, gravity hates me, and sometimes, when I’m trying something completely off the rails like, I dunno, WALKING, the ground jumps up completely at random to slap some sense into me.)

(Hmm. I wonder if someone called ahead and warned them about me.  Maybe that’s why no one else was on this tour.)

So I was introduced to my Segway.  Her name was Eunice.

SegwayEunice

After a quick primer, they had me hop on and try some quick maneuvers.

I got on, and enthusiastically leaned forward.

And promptly ran over the instructor’s foot.

My son was not amused.

You can HEAR the eyeroll....

You can HEAR the eyeroll.

My son is a natural athlete (with a KILLER arm, by the way #mombrag) so he was fearlessly flying around on the thing in no time.  Being a world-class klutz, I wasn’t quite as confident.  But, after a few minutes, I was deemed passable.  (Clearly, the bar was so low, I ran THAT over, too.  And I never fully got the hang of standing still, so every time we stopped for a quick explanation on a sculpture or sign, I sort of coasted back and forth.  Sometimes gently into a wall or a stop sign.  I’m sure I appeared mildly drunk.  I’m sure they’ve seen worse.  I mean, tourists.  Right?)

The tour was pretty cool.  I’ve lived in this city for nine years (!!) now, and saw a million things I’ve never seen before.

We crossed historic bridges:

SewgayBridgesegwayintocityexplored some of our city’s many bike trails:

segwaybiketrailand checked out some…art, I guess?

segwaysonspooncherryYeah…this is called, creatively and literally, “Spoonbridge and Cherry.”  Because it’s a bridge that’s a spoon, and there’s a cherry on the end.

SegwaySpoon

This is located in an 11-acre sculpture garden outside a local “modern art” museum.  Now, I don’t pretend to know anything about art – but some of the displays are…well….Last time I was there, they had a wall of salt and pepper shakers.  Like Hell’s Yard Sale.  Which I would have understood if they had CALLED it that, but it had some other lame name like “Modern Salt Shakers of the Century.”  And the time before THAT, there was a whole room dedicated to the variant shadings of cubism and graphite.  Which means SOMEONE DOODLED ON GRAPH PAPER WITH A PENCIL.

I will never understand art.

I tried, I really did.  I studied the sculpture for a moment, cocking my head and squinting intellectually.  Cupping my chin in my hand, I pondered aloud how the tonality of the structure might be modified if the artist had chosen to represent the cherry with, let’s say, an olive.  I remarked that the timbre would quickly shift from whimsical and insouciant to somewhat disillusioned, yet sophisticated.

Glare from my son.  “MOM.  No one eats olives with a spoon.”

(Actually, I do. At midnight.  When no one is looking.  But apparently, that’s still a secret.)

The rest of the tour passed without incident.  And by “without incident,” I mean that we had to take an off-road, unplanned detour down a pedestrians-only, bar-lined street, DURING HAPPY HOUR, due to road construction, and I crashed soundly and resolutely into a bridge.  Which caused the tour guide (YES, the one whose foot I flattened) to solidly rearend me, sandwiching me between himself, Eunice, and the wrought-iron guard rail.

Hil-freakin-larious.

In my son’s words: “Dude.  You were going straight, and you just didn’t TURN, and BOOM!”  Soooo descriptive.  And helpful.  I cannot WAIT until you get your permit, buster.

I suppose he may as well learn that I never go out with anything less than a bang.  <takes bow>

P.S.  Yes, that’s me in the pictures.  (Well not the maroon T-shirt; that’s my son, obviously.)  I’ve added and deleted these photos several times. I may delete them again after I hit “publish.”  Because I hate pictures of myself; I can’t look at one without scrutinizing what’s too big and too lumpy and too much and too everything.  And then I wasn’t going to point OUT that it was me, because that’s calling attention to the whole thing, which means you are totally going to go back and click on the pictures now.  Right?  But part of the reason I’m here is to deal with my food and body issues – and normal people wouldn’t think twice about posting what SHOULD be perfectly innocuous pictures of something fun they did, because it’s NOT about the size of my azzmatazz, but about the event, and if I hadn’t SAID anything, no one would even have THOUGHT to check out the width of my thighs.  So this whole paragraph is mental anxiety vomit about me TRYING TO BE NORMAL, which defeats the point entirely, but there ya go.  I get a Participation Trophy for showing up, right?  :-/ 😉

Losing Weight Is Hard. Because Math

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If you’ve ever embarked on a weight loss journey, you’ve probably encountered several  folks who have attempted to provide tips and advice.  I bet you’ve heard – or even uttered – some of these gems:

“Oh…just cut back on the carbs/fat/sugar.”

“Eat less processed food.  That’ll do the trick.”

“Walk for an hour a day.  The weight will fall right off.”

“Drink more water.”

“Lift weights!  That just melts the fat away!”

“Don’t eat after 8 PM – those calories stick right to ya.”

I’m going to tell you right now that most of these folks are well-meaning (OK, maybe just nosy) – but entirely unhelpful.  Because while these tips are certainly useful if you want to incorporate healthier habits, they won’t take anyone from obese to svelte.  And they certainly won’t take twenty pounds off any female.

If losing weight were as easy as taking a daily walk, we’d all be in shape.  Yet nearly 35% of Americans are obese.  Let that sink in a minute.  THIRTY-FIVE PERCENT of us aren’t merely overweight – we’re obese.  And if you’re between the ages of 40 and 59, that figure rises to nearly FORTY PERCENT.  40% of that age group is obese.

Because I like pictures, here’s where all the fat people live:

Courtesy of http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html

<insert obvious joke about moving to West By-God Virginia so I can be the slimmest woman with the best – and most – teeth.  I’d be a freaking SUPERMODEL, yo.>

So now I’m going to tell you why losing weight is so dang hard.  And I’m talking about women – especially women over 40 – here.  (If you’re a dude, yes, I KNOW you can lose 5 pounds this week by replacing six of your french fries with a banana.  GO AWAY before I bite you.)

This actually came up in conversation this week while I was talking with my company’s CFO.  He mentioned his wife’s weight struggles, and his “helpful” suggestion of exercise.  (Fortunately for him, we have good dental insurance.)

Since he’s the CFO, I thought laying out the numbers might help him understand what women truly have to go through to make any noticeable dent in their weight.

We’re going to do some math here, folks.  Bear with me, though.  This is gold.

For my food and activity tracking, I like to use the free tool MyFitnessPal.  It has a huge database of foods and the calories they contain, and it syncs nicely with MapMyFitness, so my calories burned and calories eaten are all in the same place.

So let’s open up MyFitnessPal and see what it has to say.

I enter my age, my height, and my weight.  Next, I input my activity level.  I have a desk job, and a 45-minute commute, so I guess “sedentary” will cover it.

And my results….

To maintain my weight, I can eat 1450 calories a day.

<blink>

If you know anything about calories, you know that ain’t a lot.  I’m of pretty average height and pretty average build, and my daily caloric allowance to MAINTAIN my weight can be consumed in one moderate meal:

McDonald’s:  A Bacon Clubhouse Grilled Chicken sandwich (610), medium order of fries (340), and a small chocolate chip frappe (520).  (1470.  I didn’t even get any ketchup.)

Red Lobster:  a half-order of the Crab Linguini Alfredo (1030!! for half!!), a Cheddar Bay Biscuit (160), and a garden salad (70) with French dressing (180).  (1440.  I had to skip the drinks…I guess I could afford a lemon wedge in my water.)

These are not unreasonable meals.  I certainly know I can pack away a heckuva lot more in a day.  But by selecting one of these, I’ve spent my ENTIRE caloric allotment for the day IN ONE SITTING.  (And yes, I know there are better choices available.  The point here is that these are not inappropriately obnoxious plates of food, and if you’re not absolutely militant about knowing what you’re eating, the fat ninjas will jump you and tattoo themselves to your backside.)

Isn’t this FUN?!!  Let’s try going on a date.  How about:

Applebee’s:  Split an order of Spinach and Artichoke dip (980) and a Blue Ribbon brownie (1670).  Drink one light beer.  (Which is kinda pointless, right?  But that brings you to about 1430.)

Don Pablo’s:  Eat no more than eight tortilla chips (191 calories for 13) while waiting for your order.  Split an order of Buffalo Wings (752) and a plate of Chicken Cantina Nachos (1059).  Drink two Slenderitas.  (211 each.)  It’s not a very interesting date, but you munched 1445 calories while listening to him drone on about beating his mother on World of Warcraft.

That’s an entire day’s worth of calories right there, folks.  IN ONE DATE.

Depressed yet?  Because there’s more.

Let’s now shift our focus to actual weight loss.

Remember, to MAINTAIN my weight, I get to eat 1450 calories a day.  That means that if I want to LOSE, I actually have to eat less.

But how much less?   Well, we know you need a 3500-calorie deficit to lose a pound.  So, to lose a pound a week, we’d need to cut 500 calories a day.  (3500 / 7 = 500.)

<beep beep> Back up the truck here.  I get 1450 calories to MAINTAIN my weight.

1450 – 500 = 950. (Or a medium Chocolate Xtreme Blizzard at Dairy Queen.  BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS YO)

But wait a sec….we’ve all heard the guideline that you shouldn’t eat fewer than 1200 calories a day.  Frankly, it’s extremely difficult to get the recommended nutrition you need on 1200 calories – not to mention most of us get dangerously hangry and will bite your head clean off the clavicle.

Let’s be real – for most of us, a daily allowance of 950 calories is just not gonna happen, at least not on a regular, sustained basis.  You might be able to keep it up for a week or so, but eventually, your body will force you into survival by shoving you face-first into a deep dish pizza.  So let’s try to be somewhat moderate here.

1450 – 1200 = 250.  250 * 7 = 1750.  So by eating 1200 calories a day, I can expect to lose a half pound a week.

Yippee.

If I have five pounds to lose, that means I have to stick to 1200 calories a day, EVERY DAY, for TEN WEEKS.  (Two and a half months.  Pretty much an entire season.)

I don’t think I have to explain the level of discipline required to stick to this for ten weeks straight.

But let’s interject some real life here.

How many of us have gone into the weekend with steel resolve, only to be swayed by the mental chant of “I worked hard all week, I deserve a TREAT!” on Friday night or Saturday?

Because we’re being moderate, let’s allow ourselves a small indulgence.  How about, after resolutely following our diets for six days straight, we have a little Saturday treat? You know I like ice cream – let’s get a two-scoop sundae from Culver’s.

There goes 1040 calories of the 1750 deficit.  (And it was delicious.)

So now, I have a 710-calorie deficit for the week.  (1750 – 1040 = 710.)

Which means it will take me NEARLY FIVE WEEKS to lose ONE pound (3500 / 710 = 4.93) ….and to lose five pounds?  TWENTY-FOUR AND A HALF WEEKS.  (3500 * 5 / 710 = 24.65)

Yes, folks.  If I eat 1200 calories a day, with the SOLE exception of ONE two-scoop sundae cheat a week, it will take me SIX FREAKING @#($@#$ MONTHS to lose FIVE POUNDS.

Oh, wait, though – I can add exercise!  Ooh, that’s gotta help!  Right?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a runner.  Four days a week, I have a not-insignificant run of 3.5 miles. And I’m not slogging along, either – I’m doing a 9.25 minute mile.

So…3 miles at a jog, with a quarter mile warm-up and cool-down walk. Let’s put that into MyFitnessPal.

303 calories.  (1 1/2 Pop Tarts.)

So if I manage to get out of bed and DO this four days a week, I’ll have burned off the equivalent of one pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.  (Which, according to the label, has 1200 calories and is designed to serve four people.  To which I say HAHAHAHAHAHA)

In other words – if I run four days a week, I can eat 1450 calories a day + one pint of ice cream and MAINTAIN my weight…or I can lose ONE pound in just under three weeks by eating 1450 calories a day and RUNNING FULL TILT four times a week.

Are you seeing how freaking ridiculous this is? 

And we haven’t even added any complicating factors.  Thyroid issues.  Hormones.  Water retention.  Leftover Happy Meal fries.  Muscle loss and the metabolism slowdown that comes with aging.  And the fact that the more weight you lose, the fewer calories your body needs.

Is it any wonder that so many of us struggle with our weight, and with food? 

So, fellas?  If a woman you care about is frustrated with her weight, don’t tell her to hit the gym.  Don’t remind her that ice cream is fattening.  And for the love of all that is holy and good, do NOT tell her that she is anything but absolutely beautiful.

Just tell her that you love her, no matter what.

And give her a hug from me while you’re at it.  Because I’m right there with ya, chica.