Tag Archives: mental health

Pulverizing My Poisonous Provisions

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So I had therapy on Wednesday.  I know you’ve been sitting here, waiting with bated breath, biting your nails and bouncing your foot on your knee, just DYING to know if I did my homework and threw the peanut butter away.

Well, I won’t keep you in suspense.

It was Tuesday morning.  I knew my next appointment was in twenty-four hours, and I was wrestling with a couple of things:

  1. I don’t like to follow directions.  You tell me to hurry up, I’m suddenly exhausted and need a nap. So since I was asked to throw away food, there it sits in the pantry.  I’d have been more likely to chuck it if no one had TOLD me to.
  2. I know I’m going to be held accountable to this.  And I hate letting my boss, teachers, etc. down.  My therapist is going to be VERY DISAPPOINTED in me if I don’t do this.  And if I DON’T get it done, who knows what I’ll get asked to do next??  Steal someone’s baby?  Knock over a bird’s nest, swipe the eggs, and make an omelet I eat while looking out the window where Momma Robin can stare at me eating her young? File my taxes again?  Give up my shoe collection, INCLUDING my teal cowboy boots, which are the cutest things ever?  NOOOoooooo….I better get to it so I don’t have to do something less comfortable as penance.
  3. IT’S JUST FREAKING PEANUT BUTTER.<sigh>

So, after my morning run, while the hubby was in the shower…I DID IT.  I NOT ONLY scooped out all the chocolate peanut butter with a spatula and washed it down the garbage disposal – I ALSO (being an overachiever when I’m being graded) threw out a mostly-eaten bag of kettle-cooked potato chips.

VICTORY IS MINE!  BWA HA HA HA (You TOTALLY need a sinister laugh when you’re running the garbage disposal.  It makes the process so much more empowering.)

So I was delighted to be able to report to Dr. P that I did complete my task.  And I was impressed that she was prepared enough to remember to ask me about it.  (Note to self:  My therapist apparently prepares for my sessions.  It would seem that she either has an enviable memory, or actually reviewed my file.  Either way, I wasn’t expecting anyone to be that invested in me and my sad, weird first-world problems.  I suppose for what therapy costs, I should expect this level of attention, and the fact that this was a pleasant surprise probably speaks volumes about our health care system.  But I digress.)

We talked about this food-chucking for a bit. I told her what I had thrown out.  She totally called me on putting it off until the last minute, too.  Good for her.  Being held accountable made me actually change my behavior and take action, so we know that works.

Dr. P asked me how I felt about it.  It was odd; after all the energy I invested in avoiding the task, getting around to actually accomplishing it was pretty anti-climatic.  I didn’t feel stressed, or anxious….  I actually felt somewhat relieved, to be honest.  These two items – unfinished remnants of a binge – were no longer hanging around just waiting for me to fail again.  They were reminders of times I’ve failed in the past – but they were also a promise that I’d mess up again later.  Who needs that kind of pressure?  OFF WITH YOUR HEADS, toxic (yet delicious) chocolate PB and nutritionless (and enticingly crunchy) greasy potato chips.  Out you go.  We only have room for fabulous here!

Her other question, though – why did I hide this from my husband?  I thought that was a fair question.  Really, as much as I gripe on here about how much I hate his T-shirt collection, he’s been nothing but supportive regarding my “food issues.”  Dr. P wondered if the hubs saw me actually throw out food, would he think I was suddenly “cured” of my aversion to tossing things, and nag at me when it wasn’t so easy next time?

I really don’t think that was the issue.  I really just wanted to avoid questions.  For one, the hubs really would like me to gain a couple of pounds – so if I’m throwing “fattening” food away that he knows I can eat large volumes of, would he maybe wonder if therapy was good for me – or if I was going at all (maybe sneaking off to Weight Watchers instead?)  Or would he start to wonder what food I actually DID eat, and what I threw out when he wasn’t looking, so I could fast/starve while making it appear I had eaten much more than I actually did?  (He knows I used to do this all the time in high school. Dang courting phase of the relationship where I spilled my deep dark secrets.)

So, since therapy is fairly new for me, and since I think it’s helping somewhat, I didn’t want to upset the apple cart by introducing new opinions.  It’s just me and Dr. P for now, with guest appearances from my pantry’s evil villains.

Incidentally, this was the first therapy session I had where I didn’t bawl my way through an entire flat of tissues.  Progress?  Yeah baby.  I’m wearing my victory like a sassy new pair of heels.  <strut strut>

The real test will come in our next session, where we are going to talk about the hubby’s T-shirt collection and how I can better handle the wearable hate mail…but that’s not for two weeks.  I have time to ride the victory wave.

P.S.  Did I just write 900 words about throwing away a jar of peanut butter?!?  Seriously??  I’ll take “Things That Only People With Food Issues Understand” for $500, Alex.

Letting It All Go To Waist

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So let me give you a glimpse of what the insides of my thoughts look like when I’m stuck in the eating disorder vortex. I’m going to try to organize this into outline form, but it’s tough, because when you get stuck in this thought pattern, different snippets are flying at you like missiles at hundreds of miles an hour from all different directions and it’s exhausting to try to duck out of the way.

I’m currently stuck in an airport for a couple of hours with free Wi-Fi.  I have a few options to kill time:

  • I could take a brief, energizing walk, followed by a healthy snack and some Internet browsing
  • I could arrive at the airport and panic because
    1. I’m totally starving, which is an issue because
      1. I really have NO BUSINESS being hungry, because I had an ice-cream sundae for lunch – one of those enormous, ridiculous heaps of goo and glob that are simultaneously reminiscent of childhood and totally delicious – Friendly’s, I both love you and hate you for this – and the plan was to not eat for the rest of the day, and
      2. I ate TWO PACKETS of peanuts on the plane, which I’m kicking myself for – gah, two tiny packets of insignificant volume and ONE HUNDRED FORTY CALORIES, ugh, and
      3. there really aren’t any decent gluten-free options at the airport, and I’m tired and I’m stressed and
      4. CANDY CANDY CANDY CANDY
    2. Surrounded by empty wrappers, the harsh fluorescent lighting reflecting the guilt back at me like Hell’s disco ball…I hate myself.
  • Repeat the 2nd bullet above, 1-3, about six times.  Pace around for about twenty minutes while repeating this cycle.
    1. While trying to break the cycle, I realize – Hey, there’s a Wendy’s.  I can have chili.  That’s decent, right? Oh, and a baked potato.  Because potato is a vegetable, or a starch, or something, as long as it isn’t fries, and if I get it without the cheese that’d be OK, right? I know I’m over my calories for the day, but I’m supposed to not be obsessing over this stuff, and OOH LOOK CHOCOLATE <slaps self> Chili. And a potato.  NO CHEESE.  That’s too much.  This together is about 345 calories and I KNOW you ate too much today but I PROMISE this will NOT make you fat.  Yes, I know you’re already fat.  But just EAT THE DAMN CHILI so you don’t completely crash here, you’re coming off the sundae and I KNOW it feels like you’re losing your mind but I PROMISE it’s just the sugar and YES you will be OK if you eat the potato and the chili.
    2. Burn 87 calories walking through the airport.  (Yes.  I measured.  That’s what smartphones are for, after all.)  Get the freaking potato.  Get asked twice “are you sure you don’t want cheese?”  Gee, thanks.  Usually I only need enough willpower to make my order.  <eyeroll>
    3. Eat the chili and the potato.  Note that it would have been much better with cheese.  Feel virtuous at the sacrifice.  Scrape bowl thoroughly with spoon and tip dish up to face to get every last morsel.  To the horror of others waiting at gate A33, proceed to lick out bowl.  (Dude. If this isn’t your first time in the airport, undoubtedly you’ve seen weirder.  Deal.)
    4. Sit and write, because as much as you’d rather eat your feelings, you know you’ll feel better if you get some of them out.

So, to the rest of the world, I can pretend today was the first bullet – but anyone with food issues could have written bullets 2 and 3, which were my reality.

I’ve been putting off writing this week.  I had therapy last Friday, and dang it, therapy is HARD.  It’s an hour of crying, and I don’t even really know why….

Interestingly, my therapist says I do not have an eating disorder.  To which my first response was, “oh yeah?  I’ll show YOU!”  And I measured every bite I ate this week, and ran 14 miles, and was on my way to proving her wrong until I fell off the fence a bit today.

I also have some homework from therapy.  And since I go back on Wednesday, I best get started on some of it.  (I always was a pretty good student.  The pressure for straight As pales to the pressure to be thin.  In comparison, school was kind of a breeze – much easier to get an A on a paper you can finish – hand in and hand off – than to work constantly towards a goal of perfection that you can never reach.)

My homework is based a bit on what we talked about – that I was having a hard time stopping the evening binges lately.  I seem to have a need to fill the time between “home from work” and “bed” with food.  She wondered if I was self-medicating (wow.  Sorry, but duh) since I was primarily stuffing my face with carbs (kettle corn, with cheese popcorn if I’m out of the former, and chips.  This is progress, sort of.  It’d be entire boxes of cereal if I allowed myself to bring them into the house.)

We also discussed my need to finish things off – when I’m in binge mode, I can’t stop myself by throwing things away.  I have no idea why this is – I’ll be eating, and feel sick and stuffed, and KNOW I need to get away from the food because it’s no good for me – but I canNOT throw it in the garbage.  It’s baffling.  Occasionally, I can save some for later (yay!  another opportunity to binge and hate myself!) but why can’t I throw it in the trash?  It’s not like I get charged more if I don’t finish it.  No one comes to my house and fines me.  I don’t get a refund for an empty container.  Why I insist on wedging it down my pie pit is beyond me.

But I do.

So the homework was:

  1. Write in the evenings.
  2. Go for at least one evening walk with your husband each week.
  3. Change self-talk to “I don’t feel comfortable….” (instead of “fat” or “this weight doesn’t work for me”)
  4. Throw away some food.

This was a week ago Friday.  Since then, I’ve come up with some great excuses as to why I haven’t done this stuff yet.  (Hey, good excuses DO take some effort!)  I was really busy at work and didn’t get home until after 7 most nights.  And I didn’t binge once this week (today excepted, kind of.)  And while we didn’t walk in the evenings, we did go for four morning runs this week.  (Okay, okay, my prime motivation here was weight loss.  But IT TOTALLY COUNTS because a good run clears my head…right?)

Sigh.

I won’t even get in to #3.

This leaves me with #4.  Throw away some food.  When she suggested this, instantly my mind went to the remnants of my last binge:  a bag of kettle-cooked potato chips, about 2/3 empty, and a jar of the most dangerous and delicious food on the planet – dark chocolate peanut butter.  (WARNING – viewer discretion is advised.  This shiz is addictive and dangerous.  Really, don’t click this.  Just.  Do.  Not.  Go.  There.  Unless you’re one of those people who is all like, “I don’t really see what all the fuss is about chocolate,” in which case I don’t understand you and we can never be friends.  But if you’re one of those people, you probably have zero interest in this blog, anyway.)  About 1/4 of the jar was sitting there, quietly mocking me from the kitchen cupboard, just waiting for me to succumb….

So I left my appointment with those two things in mind.  Throw away the chips and the chocolate peanut butter.

Guess where they are?

Still in my pantry.

Waiting.

I did eat one and one-half ounces of chips with dinner one night.  I know I was supposed to throw them out, but look at how disciplined I was, eating just a serving and a half!  I’m a model of moderation!  I can handle this!!  So they can totally stay, right??

But there the peanut butter sits.  Untouched….but not thrown away, either.

I wonder why I can’t just…pitch it?   I’m amazed by its power over me.  A small, three-quarters-empty jar of nuts, sugar, and chocolate is holding me hostage like a mouse in a glue trap.

I have three days to carry this jar six feet from the pantry to the garbage.  So why don’t I just do it?  What am I afraid I’m tossing in the trash?  What part of me am I discarding?  What becomes vulnerable if I put this piece of armor on the compost heap?

It’s just food, after all.

<sigh>

Driving in the Wrong Direction – Where Can I Turn Around?

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Rough day today.  I’m not exactly sure where things went sideways, but it was probably halfway between Expectation and Reality, when I made that sharp left at Disappointment.

Hubby and I had a whole kid-free day together.  I wanted to do…something.  The weather’s been unseasonably warm – perfect for a bike ride or a long walk.

I cooked a crustless quiche for breakfast (OK, I’m not sure if that’s really what it is.  You beat 5 eggs, add a cup of milk, and whatever spices and veggies you want.  Maybe some cheese,  Bake in a pie plate at 350 for 45 minutes.  It’s not REALLY quiche, but doesn’t “crustless quiche” sound fancy enough to be special?)  It turned out great.  OM NOM NOM

Afterwards, the hubs decided that he’d really like to go see the automobile show.  I thought that’d be fun, actually – while I drive a sturdy Toyota, it’s fun to look at Alfa Romeos.  So I went online and got us a couple of tickets, personalized – check out our special names:

Tickets

<snort> I kill me.

The show was…nice, I guess.  We saw two cars priced at over $250k (yowsa!) as well as one with a giant, hot-pink stuffed unicorn on top of it.  (Sadly, there was no price tag on the unicorn.)

As we walked around, though, I just couldn’t help feeling like I was a million miles away from my husband.  He was right next to me, but I just didn’t feel like we were connecting.  He seemed to feel something – he even commented on how much he was enjoying just being out with me.  I enjoyed it, too, but I just didn’t feel very close to him.

Part of the reason?  Yes, he wore one of THOSE shirts.  So, although I tried to look past it, I had to walk the show next to GODLESS HEATHEN.  And to further rub lemon juice into my paper cuts, he proudly shared with me that the dude at the mini donuts counter absolutely CROWED about his shirt, and that he gets a lot of positive comments on it.  Sigh.  I’m sure you do. From everyone but your wife.  But I guess that doesn’t matter.  And I guess shouldn’t matter that people will assume I love your shirt too, if I’m with you.  But I don’t.  I hate it.  I want to burn it, and the others, in a fiery pit, after shredding them with the lawn mower.

(For the record, I did not have any mini donuts.  They smelled wonderful, and they taunted me the entire time we were there.  But I’m not supposed to eat wheat, and I know that they probably have about 100 calories each, if not more, so I only would have enjoyed them for the fifteen seconds it took me to inhale the bag.  So I refrained.)

Later, we stopped at Target to get lights and a lock for my bike.  (My knee’s been bugging me, so I was hoping I could ride on the mornings I couldn’t run.)  I suggested we go back home, grab an early dinner, and get back outside.  Bike ride, walk, something.  He wasn’t feeling it, but thought if we went home and ate, he’d perk up.

So we did that, and about an hour later, he decided he still didn’t really feel like going on a bike ride, and really wanted to work on the bathroom (he’s re-tiling our bathroom.  Which is great, and I sincerely appreciate all the work he’s doing on it….but I wanted to go outside, darn it.)  So I decided to attempt to install my bike lock.

It shouldn’t be hard, right?  it’s a bike lock, not a rocket ship.  But the course was charted now; I was in a bad mood because I WANTED TO PLAY, not work.  My bike was in the shed – this alone got my blood pressure rising.  (A little history:  last fall, hubby decided that the garage was “his” workspace, and that the bikes would be perfectly happy outside.  For the winter.  In the midwest.   I threw a fit, because it’s MY bike, and I own the garage, too, and even if he thought my bike would be fine out in the elements, I DIDN’T WANT IT THERE.  I could not understand why there wasn’t room for my bike in our garage.  He told me I was overreacting and just didn’t understand why the hell it mattered.  Well, it mattered because it was important to me, but since I couldn’t seem to explain that, the bikes were evicted from the garage.  As a compromise, they were put in the storage shed.  So going out there to LOOK at my bike reminds me that it SHOULD be in the garage…and starts the downward spiral of mad.)

I found the key to the shed – it was on hubby’s key chain.  And my temper flared yet again.  Great.  He has the only key, and it’s on his car keys – so if he’s not home, I can’t ride my bike.  And right now, THIS WAS NOT OKAY.  I wanted access to my bike 24/7, it’s MY BIKE, after all.  (Not that this has ever HAPPENED, mind you.  I’ve never felt the urge to take a random bike ride when the hubby wasn’t home.  But it could, and this. was. making. me. FURIOUS.)

Breathe, Kate, breathe.

I attempt to install the bracket for my new lock.  Of course, there were no instructions, and I actually ended up futzing with that stupid thing for a half hour before I determined that one of the nut/screw combos was defective.  There was swearing.  I believe the walls of the shed started to melt, but I can’t be sure.  There was lots of throwing things and stomping.  I gathered all the little parts so I could return the blasted thing later.

Now what?

Well, since we’re not doing anything FUN, I may as well clean up the yard.  At least I’ll get some exercise, and it has to get done sometime.  I got my tools, and for the next hour, I raked and I trimmed and I pulled.  And I got madder and madder and more and more frustrated.

Finally, two large bags of yard trash later, I put the tools away.  I went inside.

And I completely fell apart.

I hate when this happens.  In the moment, I can’t explain why I am so overwhelmingly sad – I just AM.  It’s only later, when I’m writing, that I realize it’s the disappointment and frustration I’ve been bottling in has burst out like an overshaken soda.

The hubs is usually really good about this. But when I tried to apologize – tried to say I was sorry I sometimes get this way, I was sorry I couldn’t articulate things better – he scolded me.

<sarcasm>This totally fixed the problem, and I was in a GREAT mood forever and ever.</sarcasm>

He said I shouldn’t apologize because while I was sad, I wasn’t doing anything to HIM.  But…I know my moods are tough to live with.  I know how difficult it can be when your spouse just gets in a bad place.  And I just wanted to acknowledge that.

But he scolded me.  And it hurt.  So I shut up.  And moved even further away from him than I was before.

I sat outside for a while, and decided to look at the lilacs we had planted last year.  I thought they might be budding soon.  And I discovered that the lilac in front of the house – the one that promised to sprout beautiful, deep purple blossoms in the spring – was chewed up.  It was a barren bunch of sticks.  The ends of each branch, which should have been filled with hopeful hints of spring, was bitten off.  Every single bud, gone.

Except one.

They say that lilacs are very hardy plants.  I’m told you can cut them back nearly to the ground and they’ll spring back.  So maybe, just maybe, this bush I planted last year will manage to survive.  Maybe if it still has one bud, It can grow back and be something magnificent.

I don’t feel like I have any buds left today.  I know I must…I just can’t feel them right now.  I’m just overwhelmed with sad.  And I don’t know how many more buds can snap off my marriage before someone no longer recognizes it and unceremoniously mows it down when cutting the grass.

I can put a wire cage over my lilacs.  That will give them a better chance to grow.  I’m just not sure how to protect my marriage or myself.  I don’t know how to shield my soul from all the thorns, slivers, and skinned knees that make it hard to thrive.

I’ll keep trying.  I’ll keep breathing.  And right now, that’s enough.  That will get me through until tomorrow when I can start fresh and try again.

The Things We Learn From Trees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me give you the back story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I guess I failed.

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

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

And I finished the bag.

I FINISHED THE BAG.  THE ENTIRE FREAKING BAG.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there was relief.

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

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

“Well…we don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I’ll live.

But will I buy kettle corn again?

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

Sealed With A Sunset

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

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

<cue cheesy game show host>

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

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

* A broken elevator!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunset1

Aaaaaahhhhh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then:

Sunset2

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

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

Sunset3

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

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

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

Just keep looking.

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

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.