Balancing My Weight and My Life

Back

2009-03-22T22:08:00.002-05:00

I've been gone for a while--somehow it seems like more than three months.

Anyway, in that time we've moved and gotten more or less settled in, and I've realized that I need to get back on the wagon. As much as I would like to think that I can do this without being "on a diet," I can't. I would like to, but I know that I can't. So I'm not going to. I'm setting a goal for myself this time that I will stick with it for at least six months before I even consider quitting. I won't allow myself cheat days/meals until I've lost twenty pounds and the results are tangible.

So I'm back. And I hope to stay back.

So...lazy...

2008-12-13T21:08:00.000-06:00

My time for making Christmas gifts is supposed to be after the boys go to bed. Ideally, with them going to bed at eight and me going to bed sometime after midnight, that's a good four hours of work getting done. It very rarely—OK, never—works out that way.

It's so much easier to stay in my nice warm bedroom hiding under blankets watching reruns of various crime/forensic dramas than to get up and go into the cold (so cold) sewing room and work. It's above the garage, it's easily ten degrees colder in there than it is in the rest of the house. And the rest of the house is also cold. I need to invest in some adult-sized footie pajamas. (There is a space heater in there, but I'd have to go turn it on at seven and then huddle by it the entire time I'm in there.)

I'm going to have to get over this, though. I have nine gifts in various states of completion. Most of them are in the “not started yet” state. If I want to get anything done on time, I'm going to have to wear my bunny slippers and a giant sweater and suck it up. Just...not tonight.

I have a terrible secret

2008-12-10T20:27:00.004-06:00

Shameful, too. In fact, I might as well just come out with it.

I like tween TV shows.

It doesn't hurt that my four-year-old likes them, too. (He's my beard.) Drake and Josh, iCarly, Hannah Montana, Wizards of Waverly Place. I LOVE them. I have seen Merry Christmas, Drake and Josh about four times now, and it's so cute. And festive--I'm also a sucker for Christmas episodes/made-for-TV movies. And Lifetime TV movies. But I'm getting sidetracked.

I don't know what it is about these shows. If I'm honest, the writing is...not great. Most of the time, anyway. Whoever wrote Merry Christmas, Drake and Josh either has no idea what a parole officer does and the powers they legally have or they don't care. The acting is OK but usually over the top. If there are special effects they're terrible. Maybe all that's part of the appeal.

I know that someday I'll have to hide my love and consumption of these shows. I don't have any daughters to justify watching them with, and I would imagine the boys will only watch them for so long before they decide it's more fun to watch sports...or play sports...or do other things that boys do. My husband may suspect something, but I would probably deny it if pressed. Of course he likes Walker, Texas Ranger; what does he know?

Here's a cute title about fat people and clothes

2008-12-09T22:11:00.005-06:00

So, somewhat inspired by this post over at Joy Nash's blog, I have been thinking about me as a teenager and my attitude about clothes. See, I had this thing about being perceived as fat. I consider this thing gotten over because I really don't care anymore. Whether or not other people see me as being fat is something I can't control, and I have better things to do with my time.

However, when I was younger I thought about it. A lot. I never ever wore horizontal stripes or bright colors or did any of the other clothing-related things fat people aren't supposed to do. When I would go shopping, if I was in the dressing room and the saleswoman asked me if I needed a different size I would always say no, even if I really did. My thought was that if I didn't tell her my size she wouldn't know I was fat. Which is stupid because a) she could probably tell I was a big girl whether or not she knew my size, and b) she was probably more concerned with me buying something and giving her a commission than what my size was and if that made me fat or not.

Usually in those situations I left empty-handed. Actually, most of the time when I shopped I left empty-handed. The clothes making me look fat was usually my reason why. It took me years to come to terms with the fact that while, yes, I do have long monkey arms and a long torso and long legs that are certainly not conducive to finding clothes that fit easily and hit me at a flattering point, it wasn't the clothes making me look fat. I was heavy--fat, if you prefer--and probably always would be to some extent. My whole family is large, and even when we're thin we still look...thick, if that makes sense. We're German. What can I say?

I'm trying to get better at ignoring sizes and buying clothes that I like and that look good on me instead of wearing my old T-shirts and track pants to rags. (I just threw away a shirt my dad bought me a decade ago. It was almost transparent. I'm still sad about it.) I'm glad I've finally realized that “looks good on me” is not synonymous with “make me look like a size six.” And I just might buy a trapeze jacket or a spaghetti-strap tank top or an empire-waisted dress one of these days.

Better late than never, I suppose

2008-11-24T21:43:00.003-06:00

Anyway, as I promised you in September, here are some remodeling pictures and stories.

Story the First: when we got this place, the previous owner's daughter very proudly told us that they had been planning to remodel it but had never really gotten around to it, so they would leave the remodeling supplies they had bought behind. These supplies, according to the woman, were a new front door, some laminate for the hallway (three boxes worth, about 55 square feet), quite a few mini blinds still in boxes, and a toilet. The toilet was still in its boxes when we saw the trailer, and the woman pointed to them and said, “Here's a new toilet. We were planning on redoing the bathroom in a pink theme, so we got a new toilet.” From that I extrapolated that the boxes contained a pink toilet. We moved on.

Now it's after we've bought the trailer and we're clearing the garbage out, aka gutting it. No one has looked in the toilet boxes yet, but one had been moved into the living room to use as a little table. I realized we hadn't opened it yet, so I peeked inside and saw...the basin to a pedestal sink.

I called my husband over and said, “Please look in this box. Am I correct in thinking that this is a sink basin, not a very shallow toilet?” He looked and agreed that it was, indeed a sink and not a toilet. It was white, too—bonus!

I went to look at the other box, thinking maybe they got one wrong box and the other one is part of a toilet. A pink toilet, too. I wouldn't be surprised. But no, I opened the box and saw the pedestal to a pedestal sink.

A pedestal! A new pedestal sink. Woohoo! Best part of the deal so far if you ask me. Now, granted, these people aren't big on measuring things (you'll know how I know in the next story) so I'm not totally sure it will fit in the bathroom. The vanity has to come out anyway, though, so at least we don't have to buy a sink. (Probably not--my dad is strongly against the pedestal sink, and we've had a few fights about the pedestal sink. Mostly because I insist that the plumbing for the sink go under the floor or inside the wall, not across like you would be able to get away with if you had a vanity.) I will point out that getting a pedestal sink to replace a double vanity in a trailer that's less than 1000 square feet was probably not the smartest choice, but whatever. We'll put the pedestal sink in and put a tall cupboard next to it for storage. There was one at Home Depot that had cupboards on the top and drawers on the bottom that would be pretty nice, I think. I'd even stain it instead of painting it.

Story the Second: Remember the new front door I mentioned up above? This is it:

Now, first things first: I love a French door as much as the next person. However, this trailer is located in Nebraska. NEBRASKA! Anyone who lives in Nebraska—or anywhere in the Midwest or any other state that gets cold winters—please raise your hand if you think a French door is a good idea for an entry door. Not to mention how easy it would be if someone were ever to break in.

The second thing about the door...I don't know if you've noticed, but it's a storm door. It's not an exterior door at all. There is a handle with a lock on it, but it's certainly not a lock I would ever consider acceptable for keeping things out of my house. Plus there's no key, so the lock would have to be replaced anyway.

On to the third point. The point that makes the first two points moot. I shall tell this part in my typical long-winded fashion. As I was moving this stupid stupid door around inside, I kept thinking, “This door is really big. Really, really big. But surely they measured before they went and purchased a storm-door-that-is-supposed-to-be-an-entry-door. Surely.” Hahaha! Oh, you fool! Measuring is for suckers, all the cool people eyeball it.

Here is a picture of the existing front door. (It's textured almost-paper-thin sheets of metal sandwiching a slab of styrofoam, so it's probably not keeping much cold air out, either, but still.)

I have helpfully added the measurements for you. This door—the existing door—is 32 inches across and 76 inches tall. Now for the storm door...wait for it...

That's right. 36 inches by 80 inches. Really? Really? It's a metal door and this is a trailer, I'm not really sure if they just thought it looked like it fit or if there was some plan to make it fit. It could not have been a very good plan, I don't think.

Story the Third: I was going to separate this out into another blog entry, but I'm typing this in Open Office Writer (screw Word, I don't have that kind of money) at midnight, so it would really be pointless to separate it, wouldn't it? I'd just post both entries at the same time anyway.

This is the Best Story of All. This is the Story of How I Fell Through the Floor. Gather round, children.

Okay, enough of the caps and librarian crap. We knew when we bought the trailer that some of the floors would need to be replaced, even though there were supposedly no active leaks (HA! And HA! Again!). I am amazed that anyone managed to put a bed in the master bedroom, considering that the floor was completely rotten and was fixed with a sheet of 1/4” plywood and gigantic railroad spike-type nails driven through it (but not actually holding it in place, they were apparently just there to increase the odds of someone getting tetanus or something).

We knew that the master bedroom, bathroom and boys' room needed at least some subfloor repair. We did figure out that the kitchen also needed some repairs, presumably where the refrigerator used to be. We did not, however, realize how bad it was.

I was standing in the kitchen, having just triumphed over some crappy cupboards. I was now taking out carpeting—the original 1975 carpeting, I think; none of the cabinets had bottoms, but they all had lovely blue floral carpeting in the bottom of them, which is gross beyond words—that had been glued down with that black tar-type glue. I was basically just having to cut it at the wall with a utility knife because it wasn't ripping up. I think they installed the carpet and then put the walls in, because the carpet was under the wall.

I was trying to avoid the exact spongy spot because I was worried about exactly what happened next. I fell through the floor. Not just a little, but left leg up to the hip. I think I'm lucky that the insulation under that part of the kitchen had been taken out, because Lord knows what would have been in that.

There's the hole. That's the bare ground you see down there. I'm going to look on the positive side, though. Now it's going to be easy for us to put insulation in there, and no one will have to crawl through the nasty dirt under the trailer. Makes it easier for me to do stuff on my own, because Brandon is not really much of a DIYer unless he wants to be, and that's not very often.

Stranger Things Have Happened

2008-11-18T11:50:00.001-06:00

I have somehow lost six pounds. I hope they stay lost.

Fun at Home

2008-11-07T21:40:00.000-06:00

A little bit of news since I last posted. First, I had my first ever trip to the emergency room. We were over at the trailer cleaning up and I stepped on a nail. Ho-ly monkeys did that hurt. A little info about our deck to set the scene: on one side there is a gaping hole. This gaping hole is there so that people may walk down the stairs on that side, but because no one has maintained this place in years, the stairs rotted off. The previous owners started pulling them off but basically left a giant pile of wood to rot in the yard.

So Brandon was loading the last of the trash from inside (yay!) into the back of the truck and I decided I would hop down into the yard and toss the pieces of wood up onto the deck so he could put them in the truck, too. I sat down on the deck and scooted off, and as soon as I did a piece of wood with a good inch and a half or so of nail went through the sole of my shoe and into my foot. (Sidenote: I am a big fan of House and CSI. As a result, whenever I think about the nail going into my foot I get a mental image of that inside-the-body imagery they use, and I see the nail going into my foot from the inside, plus I hear a “puncture wound” noise. It's hard to describe, but I bet if you've seen any of those shows you can imagine it, too.) I screamed and pulled it out and took off my shoe and sock. Hoo boy was my foot bleeding. I staunched the blood with my sock (mmm, sanitary) and waited for Brandon to find me. I say I screamed, but it wasn't bloodcurdling. It was pretty breathless, actually.

It stopped bleeding within a few minutes, but it was easily the worst pain I've ever experienced outside of childbirth. In fact, as I was sitting there I had to do some deep breathing and remind myself that it hurt a lot less than giving birth. After that I debated on going to the emergency room. When I pulled the board off I had tossed it back to the ground, so we couldn't be sure which one it was, but none of the ones we could see that it could have been had rust on the nails. I went inside and looked up tetanus on WebMD. The quote that did it for me was something along the lines of “tetanus can very often be fatal even if expertly treated.” I was decided after that.

We were in and out in about an hour. By the time the doctor saw us—about an hour and a half after it happened—the wound was nearly invisible. Deep but not wide. That was Sunday, and my foot is pretty much back to normal. The doctor said it would bruise and be painful to walk on, but it never bruised. It was pretty painful to walk on for the first day, uncomfortable the second, and only bad Wednesday if I stepped down on it a certain day. Hopefully all the things that can kill me from the trailer are gone now. I can't image what else it would be. Tree branch falling on my head? Electrocution? I suppose I could fall through the floor again and, I don't know, knock myself out on a beam and die of a subdural hemotoma. Let's hope not, shall we?

Tomorrow Comes So Quickly

2008-10-21T10:36:00.003-05:00

Oops. The "tomorrow" that I promised to post pictures on has come and gone quite a few times. Can I just say, though, that Blogger does not work on dial up? At least not my dial up. So this is being posted from my mom's computer, which has broadband. Slow broadband, but nevertheless.

So basic update: we're still working. I was hoping to be in by the end of October, but now it's looking like mid-December. We will be in before the end of the year, because since we're moving from one state to another it will have tax ramifications if we don't. And I hate filling out tax returns for two states.

Um...yeah. I don't have any pictures on this computer, and I've forgotten where I left off with my story last time, so I'll have to do all that later. I will try and do that by the weekend, but no promises.

As for weight loss...well, I'm at the same weight I have been for a while. No more, no less. Any effort at changing my eating habits has been put on hold until we move. Basically, while my mom has an awesome kitchen, it's 65 degrees in here right now. We tend to huddle in one bedroom with one or two space heaters so we don't all freeze to death. In fact, I think that's where we'll go now. I can't feel my toes.

Diet is...

2008-09-23T16:21:00.004-05:00

My grandma has this magnet that looks like it was made in the '60s or '70s, and it's been on her refrigerator for as long as I can remember. It's a small rectangle of wood with a black background and a measuring tape painted across the middle. One side says “Diet is On,” and when you turn it upside down, the other half says “Diet is Off.” My magnet has flipped to the “Diet is Off” side. Low carb...well, it sucks, but the reasons it sucks are mostly due to me. For one, I like to cook, but I don't like to wait, and I don't like to do dishes. You get to do both in low-carb cooking. Also, it annoys me to eat something different than the rest of my family, because of the aforementioned dish-hating. So my patience with it was wearing thin, but the biggest reason I went off it (okay, maybe not the biggest, but one of the bigger) was that we spent all our money on a mobile home. Moving out means having to pay actual bills again, and since I was already getting tired of low-carb, now seemed as good a time to quit as any.

We've been looking for an apartment closer to Brandon's work and having little luck finding anything we could afford. I mean, seriously, we live in Nebraska. Prices near $1000 for a 900-square-foot two bedroom with washer/dryer hookups? Come on. But then we saw someone advertising a mobile home for free on a garage sale group, so we went and looked at it, then took it. Free was by no means really free, though, as you probably suspected. Free included a ridiculously high price for credit checks for Brandon and I ($70! I can buy a credit report WITH A SCORE for $6!), two months back rent plus one month's rent as a deposit, and, since we're in a trailer park and officially trash in the eyes of the world, ridiculously high deposits for all our utilities. Plus the fixing up that needs to be done on the trailer itself, which we will need a small loan for.

So anyway, there it is. And this is your notice that I'm going to start blogging about things other than weight or size acceptance or dieting or whatever. I think we all know, from the spacing of the entries, that I am at a bit of a loss when it comes to blogging about size acceptance. Tomorrow I shall have an entry or two with hi-larious stories, including one about how the previous owners of our trailer think that all doors fit into any doorway and how I fell through a rotten floor. I bet you can't wait, can you?

Yet Another Change of Plan

2008-09-08T12:30:00.002-05:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should post this here: I am on a diet. Low-carb, to be specific, but not Atkins. (Screw induction, I'll eat as many vegetables and low-sugar fruits as I want to eat.) I feel a few ways about this: first of all, I feel a little bit like I've failed. Like I've become a person that just has to be on a diet because they don't know any other way, which, to be honest, is true. I've been on diets since I was twelve—I'm almost twenty-six now, so I've been dieting over half my life. I don't know how to relate to food normally; that's why I am where I am.

I also feel a bit defensive about this choice, and I feel like I shouldn't have to be defensive about it. I probably don't have to be, but since this is a blog, here I go.

I wholly support size acceptance. I do. It feels a bit hypocritical to add “for everyone else,” but there it is. SA should also allow me to not accept my size if it's not what I want for me. I am 80-100 pounds overweight, depending on which numbers you use, and I don't think that's anything to sneeze at. And since it took me twenty-some years to get to this point, logic dictates that it's going to take a fair amount of time to get to the point where I can relate to my body in a semi-normal way again. It's time I don't have. I have a family history of diabetes and heart disease, and I feel like I'm courting disaster, not only with my weight but with my eating habits. In a perfect world I would be able to see this and have some sort of epiphany which allowed me to immediately start eating tons of fruits and vegetables and very little processed food. It's not a perfect world, as we all know, so this is going to take some work. Obviously doing it on my own isn't working. Also, I feel terrible most of the time. I constantly have sinus problems, joint pain in my ankles and fingers, and stomach problems even when I haven't eaten for several hours. I can stand on principal all day long, but if I feel like shit when the sun goes down, I'm going to take some honest-to-God for-reals action.

So this is the action I'm taking. I'm going on a diet. I'm going to try to make it a learning experience and to break bad habits, like eating when I'm full or bored or eating nutritionally deficient foods. And yes, I still think dieting sucks, and I still hate being on one, but you do what you have to do. I want to be around to see my grandkids, and I don't want to be so out of shape I can't enjoy it.

Where has the time gone? Where have I gone?

2008-07-11T17:01:00.002-05:00

I thought I had just posted here for some reason. I didn't realize that bridal post was all the way back in May. The end of May, but still. I was being crappy about posting before that, though, so that's really no excuse. I shall hang my head in shame.

Anyhoo, it appears as if we are moving. To make a thousand-page novel short, we were going to buy a house. It appeared as if everything was going great, so we notified our landlord, who congratulated us and sent us a letter being official about the whole breaking our lease thing. (It's month-to-month, so no big deal.) Then the house deal fell apart. We had an inkling that was coming, and had been tossing around the idea of moving to a different apartment if we didn't get that house, one that would hopefully have most of the features that our current place did not. Namely, a dishwasher and a washer/dryer. A playground or some sort of yard would be nice, too, as would being on the first floor so that I wouldn't have that excuse for not taking the boys on walks. We started looking, but the idea of moving when it wasn't to a house was overwhelming and annoying. So we changed our minds and DH called the landlord to inform him that we were not moving. Then, a few days later, a woman came to our door with a paper for us to sign telling us we didn't have to be out at the end of July, we had to be out at the end of August, maybe September. After some (rather embarrassing on my part) conversation, we found out that we didn't have a choice in the matter: the building had been sold. That letter wasn't just for us; everyone got one.

So now we're looking for a new apartment. We may have found one in a nearby town, but we're waiting to hear if we've passed muster. And that's all I'll be able to type today because the children are up now and I'm being ordered to hold E. Duty calls.

Fat Bride, Pregnant Bride

2008-05-30T11:34:00.003-05:00

So thanks to Kate Harding's great post I am now hooked on InfoMania. (Seriously, I think I've watched all the segments twice now.) Last night was a new episode with a new Target: Women section about bridal shows. Go watch now, then come back and I'll finish. Go on, scoot.

http://current.com/items/88988193_target_women_wedding_shows

OK, back? I would like to discuss the part about the show Bulging Brides. First of all, the name is beyond ridiculous. Nothing like a little shame to get a fat girl motivated to fit into her wedding gown, am I right? Second of all, the woman they refer to as a "chubster"? I'm not the best at guessing dress sizes, but I seriously doubt that woman is more than a size 8. That's fat? (And why is her wedding dress a size too small? Generally speaking you order your dress or have it custom made, why not just get it in the right size?)

I'm not really comfortable with bridal shows--partially because there seems to be a large percentage of the population that think it's OK to act like a total bitch if there's a camera on them--but also because there is this whole message that you, as a woman, are Not Good Enough to get married. You must be skinnier, more tanned, with better hair and the perfect dress or your prospective husband will realize the error of his ways and call it off. It makes me appreciate my husband more, who still loves me as much as or more than the day we met even though I'm easily fifty pounds heavier than I was when we got married. And even though our wedding was something of a disaster.

For my second item, I would have you refer to the June 2008 issue of Redbook. (Don't worry, I'll type it out.) On page 28, in the "What's on our Radar" section, there is a story titled "No Way!: The Bridal Bump," which reads "We're not suggesting that you need to be a virgin to wear white at your wedding, but a white maternity gown takes the chastity speculation out of the equation altogether. Sister stores Motherhood Maternity, A Pea in the Pod, and Mimi Maternity are now offering wedding dresses for their shoppers who are 'marrying and carrying.' Shotgun sold separately."

Yes, Pregnant Brides, for shame! How dare you marry after getting pregnant! Don't you know you are supposed to hide your shame and not show your face in public once that little bastard starts to grow inside you? Then you pass the baby off as a younger sibling or a niece or nephew.

Set aside for a moment the mistaken assumption this article has that white wedding dress=chastity,* why on earth shouldn't a pregnant bride wear whatever the hell dress she wants to wear? Because she's pregnant she's not allowed to wear white? She should wear red instead since she's obviously a big whore? And what is the deal with the shotgun line? Not all women who are pregnant when they get married are getting married because they're pregnant. Maybe this is what I get for reading Redbook. Heads up, editors: some women DO THINGS OUT OF YOUR DECREED ORDER. Some women have children and THEN get married. Some women have children and NEVER get married. Some women get married and never have children. Get off your high horses.

*The white wedding dress trend was started by Queen Victoria. The way I've always heard it is that white wedding dresses are a symbol of wealth. Up to that point most women simply wore their best dress, so buying a white dress that you would wear for one day and could never wear again showed that you were rolling in the dough a la Scrooge McDuck. Wiki has it a little differently, saying Queen Victoria chose white to use some lace she had and that other women honored their queen's choice by also marrying in white.

Shopping While Fat and Other Delightful Tales

2008-03-08T23:31:00.003-06:00

Wow, it has been an excessively long time since I’ve been on here. My only excuse is that I am boring and many times I have nothing to say. It’s a character flaw that needs to be addressed. Also, I think the Internet wants to know that at this moment I am eating popcorn with white cheddar seasoning and M&Ms. (Well, between typing.) Also, my husband bought three pizzas for movie night at a friend’s house and 1 ½ came home with them. Therefore I have eaten pizza for I think every meal for the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow I am going to roast some vegetables and eat them because roasted vegetables are freaking delicious. (Fun fact: I will only eat cabbage that has been roasted. Otherwise, eeeew.)

So, yeah, the shopping thing. The mall was having a sale a weekend or two ago, so DH requested that I go and procure the family some clothing. I did. It sucked. I hate shopping as a fat girl. Especially the specific fat girl that I am, because I have long monkey arms and long legs and a long torso, with a big butt for good measure. Finding jeans that fit ever since low rise jeans became popular is IMPOSSIBLE. And who is the genius that decided that elastic waistbands were a better idea than trying to make women’s jeans according to some sort of sizing standard? (Newsflash: they're not. Maternity pants have elastic waists. Jeans of any size above 3T should not.

As I was walking around the store, trying to figure out which of the 40 women’s clothing vignettes I’d visited and which of them had clothes that would fit me, I got this sudden urge to throw things on the floor and kick and scream. I hate shopping. Even when I was thin I hated shopping (because of the aforementioned monkey limbs) and obviously being fat does not make it better. I also wanted to put everything I’d picked out down and run away from the mall. But I sucked it up and purchased a hoodie and a few shirts. No pants—nothing that looked good was on sale.

As for the other tales I promised you up there in the title: I saw this the other day. (And yes, I know it's old, but it's my blog and I'm going to talk about it, damnit.) Basically, a sex columnist for the New York Press used some old Dan Savage questions in her debut sex column, as she had no reader questions of her own. (BTW, Dan Savage doesn't think it's plagiarism.) It’s not totally clear from the way these articles are written if she just took the questions or if she used both the questions and the answers. The first one, bad but kind of understandable. Second one, very bad and not at all understandable. I am going to guess that she took only the questions and made up her own answers, because I would hope that she planned to do some writing on this column. I have no legal training or anything, but I would say that was misguided more than it was plagiarism, although still a fireable offense. Here’s my thing, though: when I was a relationship columnist in college (ooh, kinky) and I didn’t have any questions*, I MADE THEM UP. Seriously, how hard is it to hypothesize a sex column question. My girlfriend wants to tie me up and I’m not comfortable with it, how do I talk to her about it? My boyfriend wants me to use a dildo on him and I’m not comfortable with it, how do I talk to him about it? See, there you go. Done and done. Open communication in a relationship is a must, kids.

As a final parting gift, I will tell you that potty training sucks. And pretty much as soon as I’m done with Kid One I have to move on to Kid Two. I don’t know what my son’s deal with the potty is but apparently he has decided it is a Very Bad Thing and is acting accordingly. I want one of those kids that just decides—preferably as close to the age of 2 as possible—that they’re not going to wear diapers anymore and never has an accident again. I think they’re a myth, though.

*I never had any questions. Well, I got one the whole time I did it, which was from another columnist. We either had apathetic readers, readers with very healthy relationships, or I sucked. I shall leave the deciding up to you.

Obligatory Whining

2008-01-14T12:56:00.000-06:00

I love not dieting. I do. And I am a bit shocked that it's not taking any effort to eat vegetables or salads, because--shocker--I like them. There is a but, though.

I never imagined letting myself have full reign over what I eat, without consulting anyone else about it, would be so hard. On the surface this seemed great--the aforementioned freedom from consulting books on what I should eat, no running on a treadmill unless I wanted to (that's not going to happen). Just freedom.

Have you ever seen "The Shawshank Redemption?" Where the prisoners talk about getting out and committing another crime to get back in because they're lost without the structure of prison? That's the closest example I can think of for this feeling. I want the freedom but I'm scared of it, too. I have no idea what I want to eat 90% of the time, good or bad. Some days after I've been staring hungrily into the refrigerator for half an hour, trying to decide between one thing and another but not really wanting any of it, I feel like collapsing to the floor in a gibbering mess, rocking back and forth until a nice orderly comes and puts me back in my room.

One thing that I always used to do was make lists of weight-related goals. Eat eight servings of fruits and vegetables each day--and the good ones, too, not potatoes and corn. Exercise six days a week at least an hour a day. Weights three times a week. Don't eat more than X calories. And so on and so forth. At first I didn't miss that; now I do. I have goals for other parts of my life, but I have had to follow a plan for eating for so long that I feel like something's missing now. And it sucks, not because I really want the lists back (I don't) but because it's making me feel like any decision I make is the wrong one.

There's also this guilt I have because I still want to lose weight. I still read diet articles and watch diet shows. I still weigh myself, although the number on the scale no longer makes me want to delve headfirst back into disordered eating. I accept that dieting is unnecessary and almost certainly harmful to my body, but I can't accept the weight I'm at now. (For the record, I am about 65 pounds overweight, and that number is based on what I consider to be my set point.) So does that make me a SA fraud? I don't know. I wish I did.

Cheeeeeeese

2007-12-13T12:04:00.000-06:00

Yes, it's picture time. Tomorrow my boys go to my best friend's mother's house to see the Santa Claus that she hires every year for the four boys her daughter and I have between us, plus her brother's girlfriend's daughter. (Get all that?) There will be pictures there; Santa makes the adults sit on his lap. Which weirds me out for a whole different non-fat-related reason.

The day after that I get to go to my mom's house and have a family portrait taken for a bound book my sister is making for my mom's Christmas present. I have four siblings; why is it only me that needs a family portrait, you ask? Because there was a group portrait session months ago and the photographer took no pictures of me and the boys (together, that is). My husband was at work, so I don't know if the assumption was that I wouldn't want any pictures of me and my kids together without him or if it just honestly did not occur to her to make sure she got pictures of everyone. I'm so glad I'm grown up now--in high school, exclusion was free. Now I get to pay for it. And yes, I'm a tad bitter.

Anyway, the point of this post, once you get past all my bitching and moaning, is this: I am not afraid of pictures this year. In years past I have managed to be in the background or on the fringes of any picture including me, of which there were few. I am not photogenic, and that plus being fat made me want to skip all events where a camera could theoretically be present. I have decided that this year is not going to be the same. I'm not going to seek out the camera, but nor will I avoid it. I am what I am; I'll be the same whether or not there's photographic proof. And I like having photographic proof--we have thousands of pictures of our children, but there are approximately three total pictures of me while pregnant. That makes me sad; that's an opportunity missed that can never be gotten back. There are even fewer pictures of me--intentional pictures, that is--when I'm not pregnant.

I am of the personal opinion that our portrait Saturday will look ridiculous in context. Everyone else's portraits were taken outdoors in August. Ours will be taken indoors in December. It will be quite obvious that we were not included in the original portrait session. But whatever; it's done. Now I just have to make sure that I don't make a weird face in this picture.

Shopping While Fat

2007-12-10T08:55:00.000-06:00

Normally I don't, but as I posted here I decided that owning a pair of jeans that fits again would be nice. A new Steve and Barry's just opened here, so I went out. I am hugely attracted to the idea of Steve & Barry's--it's like Old Navy, but cheaper, and with cuter stuff. I first heard about when I saw a piece from Sarah Jessica Parker's line Bitten, which goes up to size 22. (I discovered when I got there that SJP's line was the only thing that went up to size 22. The rest of the store did not even have XL. I'm not kidding; everything else only went up to a size L and the biggest I saw in pants was a 14.)

So I got my fat ass over there and picked out four pairs of Bitten jeans in three different sizes. As expected, one was too small, one fit, one was too big. I didn't buy any of them. In fact, shopping made me reaffirm my belief that homemade clothes are best because of one thing: tailoring.

I am, in addition to having a big belly and a big butt, gifted with freakishly long monkey arms and legs and a long torso. Try fitting that commercially. I dare you.

Every pair of jeans I tried on, low waisted or not, exposed at least two inches of underwear and, one would assume, buttcrack. Definitely not the look I am going for. So I purchased nothing. And for once I'm not blaming myself for being too fat to fit into the clothes.

A Decision a Decade in the Making

2007-11-28T02:47:00.000-06:00

I know that I am not unique in this, but I am schlumpy. Slobbish. I do not take the time to do my hair and makeup before I leave the house. I do not wear pretty clothes. I do not put my best foot forward. Because I am Fat.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve made plans to buy a whole new wardrobe (or make one, since I love to sew and can rock it) when I was Not Fat Anymore. The last time I was Not Fat was in 2001. Before I was married or had children. It was a pretty short period of time, and even then I was not Not Fat enough for myself. I did buy a few smaller items that were necessary, like jeans (slow down, don’t get crazy!), but I didn’t go balls out like I planned on doing when I got to that elusive goal weight. (Back then it was 135 for 5’10” me. I chose that number because I read in an issue of People that that was what Tyra Banks weighed, and that was enough for me.)

And now I have decided that this is pretty ridiculous behavior. The whole thing, not just the Tyra Banks goal weight. I never understood why, on What Not to Wear, they would tell people who said they were going to lose weight that they should look good whatever weight they were at. Not that those fat people didn’t deserve to look good, but what was the point of buying a whole new wardrobe since you knew, for reals, that in mere weeks or months or whatever you were going to be hott with two Ts?

Even if I were still dieting religiously, I would be changing my tune. I’m not sure exactly what precipitated this, but I think it might have something to do with a certain habit of mine.

You see, I am a prodigious collector of tear sheets. Pages torn out of magazines for parenting, web sites, clothes, home décor, whatever I think looks cool. These are all filed in a white file box, which I get out every month when I receive a new magazine. I take the old magazine and go through it, tearing out whatever I’ve marked or whatever looks good to me. And I file it. Sometimes I go through the things I’ve filed and throw stuff away, but not very often.

My clothing folder was bulging, as it always is. So I went through it and picked out some pages that I liked. Then I separated those pages into what I would make now, what I would make when I was halfway to goal, and what I would make when I was at goal. Guess how many things were in the “now” pile. Five. And two of those were shoes. One of them was a pair of pants, and the other two were fairly innocuous shirts—with sleeves, of course.

I am in possession of literally hundreds of pictures of clothes that I like, and yet I can only give my fat self permission to wear three of the pieces? Why? People don’t point and laugh at me now; do I think that if I stop wearing giant T-shirts and track pants that they’re going to start?

Some time ago, when my favorite jeans were dirty, and maybe starting to get a little tight, I don’t really remember, I went out in public in pajama pants. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me! I was going to wear my damn pajama pants if I wanted to and everyone else could suck up their mortification! And no one pointed and laughed. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wore fluffy gorilla slippers out once or twice and if there was no pointing and laughing about that I am hard pressed to believe it’s coming due to anything else. So why is me wearing the clothes I want to wear—even dresses!—any different than my rebellious pajama wearing? It’s not, that’s how.

I don’t guarantee that I will be brave enough to post pictures of me wearing said clothes. But I can guarantee that I will be brave enough to wear them in public. And for me, that’s a huge step.

More bloggy goodness

2007-11-24T00:08:00.000-06:00

I discovered Kate Harding's blog yesterday and I am shocked that I have lasted this long without it. This post is exactly what I want to say about my food issues, except a gajillion times more eloquent. You can definitely put me in the group of people afraid of what they will do if they have no restraints on their eating. It's like there's a gene that people who eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full got, and I'm missing it. Definitely read the comments on that post if you click on it.

Dealing with food is starting to get easier. I think my biggest issue right now is time/laziness. I really really love roasted broccoli and cauliflower, for example, but I usually make the stupid mistake of not starting dinner until it's time to eat. Roasting vegetables takes time that I don't want to take, so I skip it. And microwaved broccoli is just not the same thing. I don't like most prepared foods (see below for more on that) but they tend to be a go-to food here, because if the kids expect food at 6 and I get busy with other things until 5:50, they're not going to wait an extra hour so I can make something healthy. Frankly, I don't want to wait either.

There are some quote unquote "bad foods" that I used to love that now I'm not that into. I'm like a little kid--I eat something until I burn myself out on it and then it disgusts me. One example would be hot dogs and cheddarwurst, which are like bratwurst, but cheese-flavored. A year ago, when those were things we didn't eat very often because they were salty and full of junk, I could eat two cheddarwurst in a sitting, or three hot dogs. And half an hour later I wanted more because, you know, those aren't the most nutritionally dense foods. Then something happened and we started eating them a lot more, and now they gross me out. All I can taste when I eat them is salt and fat. That actually happened before, when I had my first son. I actually made a concerted effort to cook healthy foods and stuff that had previously been the norm--like Hamburger Helper or macaroni and cheese--was inedible. I hope to get to that point again. I just have to stop being lazy about cooking, I guess.

One problem that I'm still having is that my brain is still remembering that I like these foods. I will see a package of hot dogs and go, "Ooh! Hot dogs! Those sound good!" Then I stop and remember that I don't even like hot dogs. How weird is that that I don't even know what foods I like and don't like? Perhaps I should start carrying a list with me.

E and I went for a walk today. He's at the point now where he prefers to walk rather than ride, which is great because I can get by with one stroller. The obvious drawback is that he's three and tires easily. Our walk today was four blocks each way. In winter that's fine, but in the summer it's nothing. I'd really like one of these but I don't want to spend more than $200 on something that we won't need in a year or two. I hope to make the walks a regular thing. It's November, maybe by spring or summer we'll have worked up to a longer distance.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T22:38:00.001-06:00

I was kind of shocked when I saw that I haven't posted for over a month. I'm going to try and be less negligent in the future, because I do feel like writing here is helpful to me.

So Thanksgiving was not bad as far as eating. Too many crackers and spinach dip, but I also ate raw broccoli. I was shocked because normally raw vegetables almost make me gag. Still can't stand raw carrots, but I'm getting closer. I only had one plate at dinner and I didn't finish the whole thing, and I had no dessert. In the interest of full disclosure, that was only because the apple crisp that was to be dessert was still cooking when E decided he was scared and wanted to go home. (That's his new thing. He's scared of everything. I think he uses the word scared to describe emotions that are not scared--like nervous, for example.)

I really don't expect that holidays are going to be that hard, besides the cookies. I love cookies, and my grandma always gives me a cookie platter. I should take that damn thing down to the homeless people that hang out around the library. My problem is usually night eating. I don't know if this is legit or not, but I always feel hungrier at night, and when there aren't kids to chase or things to be done that need immediate attention, I eat to keep busy or...whatever. If I could take care of that bad habit, I think I would be a heck of a lot further along in my loss.

I was cruising through some of the blogs that I've come across lately, courtesy of Delightful Blogs. Through one of those, Big Fat Deal, I stumbled across the blog First, Do No Harm. I wholly recommend all of these sites, especially if you are a person like me who likes black and white proof that other people are going through the same thing I am. The stories on First, Do No Harm were literally jaw-dropping. I knew that fat was the last acceptable prejudice, but I guess I've lived in a little bubble where I didn't realize how bad it was.

I am lucky in that I have never had a doctor tell me that I was fat, or that my problem was due to being fat. The closest I've ever come is, when taking a sports physical when I was younger I checked that I had irregular periods. When the doctor asked me about it, I said that yes, that was correct. He hemmed and hawed for a minute, then said "That might be due to your being slightly overweight." I'm pretty sure that I weigh more now than I did then, and I now have regular periods. My guess is that it was more due to age than weight.

On the one hand, my mouth was hanging open in horror at a lot of the women's stories in First, Do No Harm. I almost believe that if they had gone to the doctor with a compound fracture they would have been told to lose weight and it would go away. On the other hand, what if I had had a serious illness like PCOS or thyroid imbalance, where weight gain or inability to lose is a symptom? The doctor seemed almost scared to say anything about my weight, and said nothing about it besides that one sentence, but what if it was important? Is there really no middle ground here? Either don't bring up weight at all, or bring it up and rub the patient's face in it until the skin is gone off their nose?

I have had other weight-related testing. I had my thyroid tested once and I told the doctor I wanted it done because of my inability to lose weight despite dieting and exercising. All he said was OK and did the tests. Again, I really appreciate that he didn't lecture me about it, but when the tests came back normal there was no follow-up. Have things like this happened to anyone else? Are some doctors so afraid of offending fat women that things could be going undiagnosed?

Also, I can't remember if I've mentioned this book before, but I'm going to do it now, redundancy be damned! I absolutely love it. It's by Paul Campos, and it's called The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession With Weight is Hazardous to Your Health. It's awesome; I loved this book. Highly recommend it, it's relevant even if you're dieting to lose weight. I'm finding more and more that a key part of my success has to be acceptance of my body and what it can do, so that I can take seriously the task of getting healthy. This is helping me with that.

A good week, so far

2007-10-18T19:15:00.000-05:00

I've been doing really well on food and exercise since Sunday. Weekends are hardest for me, so I know I can get through the rest of today and Friday, but Saturday and Sunday will be my real challenges.

Exercise is going pretty well, although I would like to get to the point where I can do a lot more with a lot less resting. I've done something every day, though. Monday I jogged, Tuesday I did a few toning videos off the cable OnDemand that added up to about twenty minutes. Wednesday I should have jogged again, but the shoes I bought on the weekend had made my toes go numb on Monday, so I had no shoes. Instead I did more OnDemand videos for about 30 minutes total, including a Tae Bo one that made me feel about as graceful as an elephant. Tonight I will probably be doing a couch potato-esque workout: toning exercises while watching TV. Not ideal, but it's what fits in right now and it's better than nothing. Tomorrow will be a cardio day again, but it'll undoubtedly be another video day.

I found this site today that I love, although I think it's been around for a while. I wish I had known about it before! I found Hungry Girl while I was looking for these Tofu Shirataki noodles, and I love it. I haven't seen it all yet, but so far I've seen recipes that look really good and a section called Chew the Right Thing. They list a "bad" food, like a patty melt or a sausage breakfast sandwich, and then show a healthy food that can be a commercial product or a recipe. I'm looking forward to seeing it all, I think it'll be a really big help for me since I love food so much.

Not-so-startling revelation

2007-10-15T09:41:00.001-05:00

Yesterday DH and I were in the car riding home. I was eating a rice cake, and after a few bites I realized I didn't like it--normally I do, but this one tasted funny. So I threw it out the window. When DH asked what I was doing, I said "I didn't like it, so I stopped eating it. I should do that more often." Then, like a lightbulb that should have come on a long time ago, I thought, "Hey. I really should do that more often." I stuck with it all day yesterday, even through a birthday party with cake. (I had no cake--I had decided that before it was even cut. It was a store bought cake and I don't ever really like them. I always have a piece, but the frosting always leaves a residue and the cake usually tastes fake.)

This brings me to another thing I saw online the other day while I was messing around. Paraphrased, it said "No one ever wakes up in the morning wishing they'd eaten more the night before, but most of us have woken up wishing we'd eaten less." It was another "so-obvious-why-didn't-I-think-it" moment. How many times have I eaten something at night just because I was bored and woke up in the morning wondering why I ate all of it when it wasn't even that great and I wasn't hungry?

I went jogging this morning--well, I jogged some and walked some. It was much nicer than walking on a treadmill or riding the exercise bike. I may try and see if I can get in one last round of golf before it gets too cold. I once saw something on Oprah that said that it was great if you played tennis, golfed, swam, whatever, but those were "activities," and "activities" were not to be confused with or used in lieu of "exercise," which is apparently to be done in a gym and preferably with a trainer. I say that's crap. It may work for some people, but in the past when all my exercise has been in a gym or on a machine I've just found excuses not to do it. I'd much rather look forward to playing a round of golf or taking a swim than dreading my hour on the treadmill. It may be different for others, but this is what I have to do to make it work for me.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

2007-10-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

Today and yesterday were bad days as far as diet is concerned--and exercise, too, but I've got an injury to explain that. Anyway, I spent most of the day(s) frustrated and feeling defeated and thinking that I just wanted to quit, when it occurred to me that what I was thinking was nothing but a bunch of excuses that would allow me to eat what I want, when I want. Which means all the time.

Here are some of the defeatist attitudes that I need to get rid of if I'm ever going to succeed.

1. I'll start tomorrow/I screwed up so I can eat what I want for the rest of the day. Any good dieting article or book should include the advice that when you screw up, you get back on the horse right away. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not next Monday. This very minute. I cannot tell you how many days I've eaten something "forbidden" (a term I really don't like, because that just means you want it all the more) and decided that meant that I had messed up, so I could eat want I wanted for the rest of the day and start again tomorrow. For me, and I suspect many other people with similar problems with food, this translates to "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

2. I don't really care if I'm fat/This is how I'm meant to be. Some days I really wish I could make myself believe this one. Life would be so much easier if I could accept myself the way that I am: fat and addicted to food. I would be happy. But I would also be happy to be "normal," with food having no control over me.

I once had a professor mention in a lecture that if he could he would rather not have to eat, that food for him was an annoyance, something he had to stop working to do. He didn't like to eat, he didn't care what his food tasted like. To me, this was a shocking thing to say for many reason. First of all, how could you not like food or not care what it tasted like? Second of all, how could you have something more important than food that you would be annoyed to have stopped so that you could eat? Didn't everyone look forward to each mealtime from the moment they woke up, planning what they would eat, how they would prepare it, what order they would eat it in?

I want to be like that. That is my fantasy of normal. I don't think it will ever happen for me so completely--I was raised to love food and eat beyond full, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to fully overcome that--but I would like to get to the point where every day, every meal, every bite, is a struggle. I would like to be able to eat and stop when I'm full without having to sit and stare down the remaining food for twenty minutes. But maybe I'll never get to that point. I think if I got to the point where I at least won the staring contest I'd be happy. Or happier.

I actually tried to convince myself the other day that my dad's history of diabetes wasn't that big of a deal. It may be, it may not be. I have never had a problem with blood sugar, including during my two pregnancies, so it may be that I am not going to have a problem with diabetes. None of the women on my dad's side do, after all.

It may be, though, that it just hasn't happened yet. My dad's diabetes came on when he was in his late forties, and I'm pretty sure that's when my uncle's came on, too. I'm in my mid-twenties, so it may be twenty years before I have to face the diabetes monster. I'd rather have things under control long before that time comes around. And, to be frank, I have been struggling with food and weight for over half my life now--my first diet was when I was twelve. When I think of doing the same thing for the next twenty years or more, I want to cry or hit something. (Or have some pasta.)

3. I can eat a TV dinner if it's under X calories. While this may be true for some people, it's not for me. In fact, processed food should be removed from my diet as much as humanly possible. I am way too sensitive to sodium to be eating most of it. I'm tired of having fingers swollen up twice their normal size in the morning and not being able to wear my engagement ring for fear I won't be able to get it off.

Also, even if I didn't have a problem with sodium, there is a lot more satisfaction available in 500 calories of homemade food and 500 calories of TV dinner food. Usually you can get a lot more bang for your buck by making it yourself, and in more ways than one. Homemade food is cheaper and you'll get more food for your 500 calories. And the absence of a plasticky or chemical-y flavor is nice, too.

4. I'm hungry, so I should eat. If I've just eaten a big meal and I'm still hungry, I should not eat. If I just ate an hour ago and I'm hungry I shouldn't eat. If I'm getting ready to go to bed I shouldn't eat. This is a hard one for me, because everyone keeps saying things along the line of "if you only eat when you're hungry, you'll be fine." Well, my body is used to running on a lot more calories than it needs. If I cut it off, it's going to protest and think that it needs that extra food. It doesn't. The thing is, I have to convince myself not to eat when my stomach's growling and I feel hollow. I have, to some degree or another, been able to do all the other things on my list at some point in the past, when I had been doing really well with my eating and exercise. I don't know that I've ever done this one. It's so contrary to what I've been taught and what I myself believe. I think this is going to be one of the most difficult attitudes/habits for me to break.

That's it for now, although I'm sure I have a bunch more that are so ingrained that I don't even recognize them for what they are.

Mmm, food

2007-10-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

That is my attitude this morning. I got up at 5:30 but have accomplished just about nothing. Well, the kids are both bathed. And I'm dressed. That's it.

I've been feeling very food-oriented today. My meal plan is off for the week since DH couldn't find (or forgot) a few very important things on the grocery list. When I went in to eat breakfast this morning, I found that we had no oatmeal. For a second, I was seriously tempted to eat a piece or two of leftover pizza. Then I realized how ridiculous that sounded. "We didn't have any oatmeal, so I had pizza instead." I settled for cereal, but I did eat some pieces of krab meat a few hours after that. And they were good. I could go for some more.

Sometimes I think that I would rather be fat than moderate my eating. If it weren't for my family history of diabetes, I think that might very well end up being the case. As it is, I'm apparently becoming hypersensitive to sodium since my fingers are swollen every morning when I wake up. (30 or 40 ounces of water usually makes it go down, but it's annoying.)

I'm going to try very hard not to eat until lunch. I have no idea what we'll be eating, but I do know that I have plenty to do to keep me occupied until then. It's just a matter of doing it.

We're free!

2007-10-01T06:05:00.000-05:00

We are finally in our own apartment! Sunday night was the first night here, and it's so nice. Of course, when I asked my mother what she thought of it she said "I'm happy if you're happy." And I am happy. So I guess everyone is delirious.

I actually have tried to post in the last month, but apparently Blogger and dial-up don't get along very well. Now, though, it's back to cable internet. I also need to get back to dieting. I've been trying to just kind of self-regulate without a food diary or any journaling and I think we all know how well I do with that sort of thing. I did get an excellent toning workout yesterday, though--our apartment is on the second floor and I must have taken those stairs fifty times. I shall have buns of steel yet.

Updates, updates, updates

2007-09-04T00:14:00.000-05:00

The first update is actually relevant to the blog--DH and I have started exercising together. Our workouts are hardly anything to write home about, but it's better than nothing. I'm not doing so well on the food angle. Food is so much cheaper and easier to procure than narcotics, and I have a feeling it's going to be a bit of a problem until we move again.

On the family front, there was a big blowup this weekend. It was inevitable--when, not if. Suffice it to say that my mom was rude to my husband, my husband was rude to her, and I was rude for not taking her side and telling her that she made us feel unwelcome. Imagine! How impertinent! So the plans for now have changed. We are looking for a cheap car to get us around and we'll be waiting and fixing our regular car with the tax return. We're hoping to move out by the beginning of October at the very latest. I'm going to go look at the newspaper online and see if I can find anything that's anywhere near our price range.

My Quandry...

2007-08-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

So for those of you who are just joining the group, DH and I and our two children moved in with my mother because the transmission went out on our car. At the time there were no other options. Now, however, my mom has gotten (I hate that word) a truck from her dad and her brother, and it is available for us to drive instead of a rental car. Now we can save the $600 a month that would go toward said rental car. Although DH hasn't been able to actually drive it yet; it needed insurance and registration and the taillights weren't working. It has insurance and working taillights now, just waiting for the registration.

Anyway, enough blathering. My quandry is, should we move out now? (It's more like can we move out now? Can we can we can we? Please please please, I beg of you!) It certainly wouldn't be the smartest thing I've ever done financially, but it would be a pretty wise decision healthwise. (Physically and mentally) I wouldn't have to hear that anything with vegetables other than peas or corn is "weird." No more cookies around, no more ice cream, no more candy bars. I never bought that stuff at my house, yet it's a constant presence here. (My mother is relatively thin, though. I don't know how she does it.)

I'm tired. I hate it here. I'm cranky all the time, and I keep gaining weight. This is a huge step back for me. I keep bouncing between renting an apartment now and waiting and seeing if maybe we actually get that one in a million chance that we could buy a house in the spring. I just don't know what to do. The other day DH was telling me that I need to just wait and see. I hate that idea. I hate not knowing, at least a little bit, what I'm going to do. I need a direction, an end to look forward to. I just don't want to make yet another bad decision.

DH is going to start working out with me starting September 1. My dad is coming home this weekend, and it seems that he's actually started taking his diabetes seriously. He's asked for healthy food. So I think that all this could actually give me the start that I need.

I'm going to look at apartments on Craigslist. Even if we don't move, I can dream, right?

Reflections on Relatives

2007-08-27T19:40:00.001-05:00

This post is actually not about my mother! Can you believe it? Instead, it's about my MIL. (Can't get away from mothers of one kind or another, I guess.)

So I don't think it's necessary to go into the whole sordid situation here, but basically late last week--Thursday, I think--DH's sister called our house crying. I thought it had something to do with my dog--we have two dogs that we had given the ILs a year ago when we were in an apartment that didn't allow them, and MIL called Wednesday to say that one of them had died. Everyone is claiming not to know why, but it was obviously heatstroke due to negligence.

Anyway. SIL called crying, DH got home and called her back. Seems that MIL had, for some reason apparent to no one but herself, gone over to where SIL was and called her several names and said anything she could think of to hurt SIL. Including that she slept with SIL's boyfriend's dad. Why this was deemed to be hurtful to SIL I will never know.

So...DH calls MIL and leaves a very angry message, demanding to know why he's getting phone calls about her behavior, what the hell is she thinking, she needs to explain her actions, etc. He started out calm but he just kept getting angrier and angrier. Shockingly, the excessively needy MIL does not call back until Sunday night. She is incredibly rude to my mother, who answers the phone, and incredibly rude to DH. First she demands to know who is calling, then says she has told FIL everything and he's on her side. DH doesn't ask if she told him that she's going around bragging about cheating on him. He wishes he had. Then, she starts to tell DH "If you don't stop running your mouth..." At which point he cuts her off, says a certain rude two-word phrase, and tells her not to come up anymore. Then he hangs up on her. I'm about 100% sure we'll be getting a Crazy Letter (we've received them before) in the next day or two.

Hmm. Guess I did tell the whole sordid story anyway. But that wasn't the point of this blog. I was thinking after all this, and I've told DH this, but I think that they all need to cut ties with their mother. There is so much more going on than this--this is just the latest thing. My mother has had her share of crazy moments, but she has never actively tried to hinder the progress of any of her children. MIL has made children quit jobs, kept them from going to college, kept them from going to sports events that would have allowed them to excel in the field and probably get scholarships, pushed SIL (the same one) to have a baby at 18 before she was married instead of going to college...the list goes on. She has also gotten into physical altercations with at least two of her four children. I have told DH that I think she's jealous of her children. She herself is either a high school or junior high drop out. I don't think she wants her children to do better than that, even though all of them already have, and she's trying her best to keep them back.

We would all like to think that our relatives have only our best intentions at heart when they say or do things to us. We would especially like to believe this of our parents, namely our mothers, but sometimes that's just not the way it is. At that point, when you realize that that person is actively trying to hinder your progress in life, you should cut them out. It will be excessively hard if it's a parent, but it has to be done for your own sanity. What purpose is there in having them in your life? You know that they do nothing but hold you back, and you know that if they haven't changed over the last twenty or thirty years, it's not happening. That's just the way it is. If you realized that a food you were eating was poisonous, you would not continue to eat it. This is the same thing. She is leeching poison into her children and doing her best to rot them and make them shrivel up and die inside. Frankly, if I have anything to say about it, she will not be around my children anymore. She won't get her chance to poison them like she's poisoned the others. If they get rid of the poison now, they'll have a chance at recovery. If not, it'll ruin their lives.

Sorry if that seems a bit melodramatic, but it's the truth. I read a lot of self-improvement stuff, and the number one rule in almost everything is to surround yourself with helpful people that want you to succeed. MIL obviously doesn't want that for any of her children. Why I'll never know--I can't imagine ever doing the same thing to my children.

MIL almost got chewed out by my mother--MIL treated her like a secretary when she answered the phone and my mother almost did the same thing DH did--use a certain two-word phrase and hang up. My two sisters have been putting her in the middle of an argument about my youngest sister using her as a babysitting service when she "just needs a break," which is every other day; my older sister thinks this is ridiculous and doesn't hesitate to tell anyone, mother or younger sister included, and both of them rag on my mother for complaining or not complaining. Top it off with the fact that my brother called Sunday to tell her that he was shipping out for Iraq and it was about the worst day anyone could have picked to get an attitude with her.

I am fully expecting that MIL will show up at the boys' birthday party in three weeks. DH thinks she'll call up crying a few days before and beg to come up. I don't think so. I think there's a scene on the horizon, and I have no qualms about calling the police on such an occasion. I've done it before with others, I'll do it again with her. If it was at any time other than my children's birthday party, I'd be looking forward to it. It makes me sick that I could even imagine that she would do such a thing as ruin her own grandchildren's birthday party, just to be a vindictive witch.

Same old same old

2007-08-23T15:44:00.000-05:00

Same passive aggressive mother, same reversion to emotional eating...everything is as per usual. I've given up on buying a house next year. I won't survive that long. I will either eat myself to 300 pounds or I will punch my mother in the face and be kicked out.

We're going to sell off the appliances we have in storage that have been accumulated for a new house and use the money to sell the car. My dad's cousin owns a store with a one bedroom apartment over it; right now that sounds great to me. I'll deal with a sofa bed to be free of this place.

I'm starting a nervous breakdown pool

2007-08-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

It's for my mother, but hey, why not me, too? My brother left for Iraq either today or yesterday, and she's not happy. (According to my sister, he didn't actually leave for Iraq, he's got a layover somewhere for two weeks. But I guess it's all the same to my mom, and for that I can't blame her.) I'm trying to be sympathetic--hell, I can even be empathetic, I have two sons and I have been trying very hard not to imagine what it would be like to see one or both of them and know that it may very well be the last time I'll see them alive--but she's not making it easy. How can I be sympathetic to someone who tells me that me and my family are filthy and disgusting? Take it with a grain of salt. That has become my mantra.

I have gained at least five pounds since living with her, probably more. But that stops now. I will not let her make me revert to emotional eating--well, again, anyway.

Before my brother left, we had some pictures taken. I got them off my mom's camera and onto my computer and I am not at all happy with what I see. I look six months pregnant in all of them. The only decent one is one where I am posing with my siblings and I'm behind my sister. Here's one of the worse pictures. I'm the one in red.

I've never been particularly photogenic, but this just...ugh. (By the way, that's my sister holding my youngest, her husband behind her, and the back of my oldest's head.) I don't want to look like this any more. I think that from now on when I need a kick in the pants to get back on track I need to have someone take a candid picture of me.

I almost went to Taco Bell today. My mom was driving me crazy, my 25-year-old husband is having stomach pains because of her (onset of an ulcer?) and I was just done. I couldn't even fathom the idea of being there another day, let alone another six months. I was actually counting the money in my purse to see what I could get, and I just said, "Stop. This is not what you want." So far it's worked. And I'm right, it isn't what I want.

You know when they say that you have to lose weight for yourself first? I honestly think that if my main reason for losing weight was for myself--and especially if it was noncosmetic--I wouldn't do it. "Health" is kind of a nebulous idea at my age. I feel fine. I can walk up a flight of stairs just fine, I can ride a bike, I can do pretty much whatever I want to do. I will be drenched in sweat, but I can do it. To me it's not enough to say "I want to get healthy," even though I have a strong family history of diabetes. There is no diabetes meter that I can see my risk go down with my weight. (I'm sure there's a calculator of some sort online, but you know what I mean.) So I need something stronger than that. To be honest, most of the time my strongest reason for losing weight is revenge. Well, maybe revenge isn't the best word. I want to show people that I can overcome obstacles. That I am not a fat lazy slob. That I can be pretty. I want to show them that they were wrong about me. Right now I want to show my mother that she cannot break me. She cannot drag me down with her, and she will not make me turn to fast food for comfort because she's taken her bad day out on me.

OK. Enough of that. I can hear the swelling of the violins as I shake my fist in the air. I think I've griped enough for today. I'm going to go look at real estate online and dream.

Hurry hurry hurry

2007-08-05T16:48:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post before the library closes...that's where I get to go to use the internet now. Yay fun, especially considering that during the week DH doesn't get home from work until they're ready to close, so if I come down I get to sit outside and feel like I'm a thief. Anyway.

Dieting is...eh. Not good, not bad, just pretty much not anything. I'm trying to pay more attention to my eating and do the stuff I've learned from the Beck Diet Solution--I have my card with reasons that I want to lose weight that I read twice a day and before meals, I eat sitting down, and I have my diet picked out. Just slow going right now. But I'm still here, I swear! At this point it's looking like we may be able to get out by February. That would be nice.

Have to go...hope everyone out there is doing well, I don't have time to visit other journals today. I hope to be back soon.

Goodbye, blog

2007-07-26T10:10:00.000-05:00

Well, not really. Catchy, though, right? The reason I say goodbye is that my mother's house has only--wait for it--dial-up internet. The horror. She is looking into getting satellite internet so that she can talk to my brother on Yahoo Messenger or something similar when he gets to Iraq. Since she lives in the country, she can't get cable under normal circumstances. DH works for the cable company, though, so he's trying to get them to pull some strings and install cable access out there. They're going to have to do it sooner or later--housing developments are springing up all around her house, and presumably they are going to want cable. The estimate is $7000, and I guess the cable company is now deciding if it's worth it to install. I will miss my cable internet, yes, but I do feel slightly vindicated. One of our neighbors has been stealing our WiFi and to him I say ha! Enjoy your last night of free internet, josh-PC, because tomorrow it goes bye-bye. Ha ha ha! And ha!

Eating is bleh. No real change. I made cheesecake cookies today and ate too many when they were first out, but that was because the first batch didn't come out very well and I was trying to get rid of them. Isn't that the stupidest reason to gorge on cookies? I did notice this morning that my pants weren't as tight when I put them on. That's a plus.

I really do need to get moving on the whole weight loss thing. The Beck Diet Solution is really helping me, but I haven't read anything on it in a week or so and I'm kind of stagnating.

Well, I have a lot to say about this move--our worst move ever, although I would never go so far as to say it was *the* worst move ever--but it will have to wait. I'm at the house to clean, and it is going very slo-o-o-o-wly. Our washer kicked a hole in the wall behind it, and I'm trying to fix it. It was able to kick a hole in the wall because it wasn't actual wallboard, and I really don't think a shoddy fix that inevitably broke when exposed to normal use should be my responsibility to fix, but I want my deposit back. So I'm fixing it. It's 10 PM and I wouldn't be surprised if I were here for another two or three hours. One nice thing about being at my mom's house, she gets home at 5 PM. I could always take her car and finish it tomorrow. In fact, I probably will, because I don't see how this is going to get done tonight.

The next six months are going to be terrible.

2007-07-23T10:03:00.000-05:00

Well, my mom and I had a fight. Not physical or anything, just yelling.

A quick recap of the situation there: about a year and a half ago we went through some major financial difficulties that resulted in lots of bills that we were very close to not being able to pay. We had to move out of our first house, a house that I loved and still do. It was a very difficult time, and I am very paranoid about money now. Especially since we don't have any, and you should be paranoid about money if you're poor. So when the car died and we had no savings to pay for it (it couldn't have broken a month earlier when we did have savings, of course not) I made the decision that we needed to move in with my mom to avoid getting into a situation like we had before, where we very seriously were discussing bankruptcy. I don't want to do that again. We're moving this weekend and hope to have the money for the car by mid-August. Then we can focus on saving, paying bills, and maybe even buying another house. I asked her if that would be OK, and she agreed.

My sister lived with my mom and moved out not too long before our situation came up , and all I have heard the entire time we have been planning our move is "I hope it's not like when your sister was here. I can't take that again." "I hope you appreciate this more than your sister did." "I hope you keep this room cleaner than your sister did." It's not all about my sister, though. Some other memorable quotes? "If I decide that you're spending money on things that aren't necessary, I'm going to start charging you rent." And about us being there when she's trying to sell her house: "If the real estate agent comes to show the house, you guys need to leave. Take a walk or something." (To understand why this is so bad, my mom lives about ten miles out in the country. Off a major highway. There is no place to 'take a walk' unless I want to get hit by a car, and if the kids are sleeping, I'm not going to wake them up. Sorry, that's just how it is. If people can't make an appointment and expect to show up at a moment's notice, they have to get used to the idea that there may be people home.)

She's also told me that I have to buy groceries and clean, which, on paper doesn't sound so bad. The first one doesn't really bother me, my mom doesn't eat breakfast and buys her lunch so all I'd have to worry about is dinner. Most of the food I make can be served family style, one extra isn't a big deal. However, I have cleaned for my mom before and she expects the house to constantly be in show condition. As in, if the kids are playing with toys, run after them and pick up one toy as soon as they're done with it instead of waiting until they're done playing. Take people's plates from them as soon as they've taken the last bite of food off of it even if this means getting up from your own meal. Even if it means you have to eat cold food, you put the pots and pans from dinner in the dishwasher as soon as the food is out of them (if they're able to be put in the dishwasher, there is some sort of arbitrary system to what can and cannot go in the dishwasher that seems to be related to when she bought the items and how much she paid). Stuff like that.

I don't want to sound ungrateful that my mom is letting us move in for a few months. I am grateful. I am just tired of being taken for granted. I have yet to hear a thank you for loaning my mom/brother the money that could have let me avoid this whole situation. DH doesn't get thanked for helping my mom with the chores; in fact, she complains about him all the time and has been trying to get me to leave him even when I was pregnant with my oldest. I can remember an incident where she was driving me home from the hospital where I had been with preterm labor. I was going home to go on bedrest and she harped on me the entire way home about leaving him. Stress is good for the baby, right?

My mother is difficult to live with. At least two of my sisters agree with me on this. She is great when you're not living with her: easy to get along with, nice, etc. But when you're under the same roof she's a nightmare.

Where was I going with all this? Oh, yes. We were at her house Sunday. DH and I had been moving stuff up, and E was sitting at the table coloring with his cousin M. M knocked a napkin on the floor, no big deal. I saw it as I was loading and unloading the dishwasher. I didn't think it was important enough to interrupt that to go pick up a clean napkin. Oops.

My mom came in, saw the napkin on the floor, and started sniping about how this was just like when my sister was here, it was starting already, on and on and on. Over a napkin that a two-year-old knocked onto the floor. And not even my two-year-old. I snapped. I am so sick and tired of hearing how us moving in is a huge inconvenience. She constantly talks about wishing she could sell the house now, there's a lady who's going to come see it in November, wouldn't it be nice if she could sell it then, etc. I know, or hope, she doesn't mean it the way it comes across--I'll sell this thing without a care as to what you guys are going to do for shelter--but it still stings. So I had had it up to my eyeballs yesterday. When she started complaining, I started yelling about how I wasn't my sister and I was sick and tired of hearing about all this, it wasn't even something that my kid had done, etc. I was just done with it. We left.

On the way home, I kept telling DH "this is a huge mistake. This is a huge mistake, we should not be doing this." His argument was it's not a mistake if it's your only option. I think that you can be doing the only thing you see available to you and still be making a mistake. Sometimes that's just how things work out.

Sorry about the huge vent, hopefully no one thinks I'm an ungrateful brat. I just don't appreciate the attitude that we're doing this because we'd rather leech off my parents. To the contrary, I am very upset that I'm 24, married with 2 kids, and having to move in with my mom. I only hope that we can get this taken care of and get out of there ASAP.

To make this a post that's on topic with my blog, this didn't make me overeat. In fact, I believe I lost another pound. So there.

I am a weight loss turtle

2007-07-20T18:15:00.000-05:00

Slow and steady wins the race and all. Since I last posted I've lost two pounds doing a whole lot of nothing. Well, eating slightly less. (If I didn't overeat at all it probably would have been down five or more pounds.) I've been reading this book called "The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person." It's actually working. For instance, and this is going to sound really stupid, it came as somewhat of a revelation to me that you don't always need to eat if you're hungry. If it's an hour to dinnertime or an hour since you last ate, you're probably not going to die. There's a lot about talking yourself through stuff like cravings. They will go away eventually, you don't need to give in to them. It's actually been helpful.

I mentioned in a previous post that I don't really eat emotionally anymore. I guess it's true that I don't eat out of anxiety or anger or whatever--not really--but I do eat out of boredom. Especially after the kids go to bed. After 8 PM, I don't really know what to do with myself. I think this is why I always need to have a project. It kind of makes me sad to think that my sense of self is so wrapped up in being a mother that I am at loose ends when there is not some immediate parenting to do. That's my biggest hurdle right now. After that? Laziness. Because I am nothing if not a couch potato.

It's a Numbers Game

2007-07-09T23:07:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking over the past few days, weeks, whatever, about my grandfather. He died in January of 2002, at 78 years old. He died of a diabetes-related illness that could have been prevented if he had stayed on some sort of diet and exercised, even a little bit. My father and uncle also have diabetes--they have two brothers and two sisters who have so far escaped it. (I wonder how long it will stay that way.)

Anyway, my father is 48 and my uncle is 58. This makes me wonder--does that mean that my uncle has 20 years to live? And my dad only has 30? Does this mean that I am probably looking at 50-some years? It sounds like a lot--20, 30, 50 years. But when you consider that we could have at least another 10 years on top of that, and probably better quality of life in between, shouldn't that be something to strive for? Health and wellbeing and happiness and all that? My grandfather was chairbound for probably the last ten years of his life. I can only vaguely remember a time when he could walk easily, drive a car, etc. What sort of life is that?

I get these forwarded emails from my mom that say things like "Eat well, exercise, die anyway." If only it were that simple. It would be nice to have that black and white choice: I can eat well and exercise, or I can not, and the consequences would be the same. Ultimately I suppose they are, but the years before the final "consequence" will surely be as different as night and day.

Another thing that I have been thinking--I really want to lose weight. Really really. But somehow I let the stupidest things get in my way--Taco Bell, for one. Chocolate, for another. How is it that I could value a taco or a candy bar over the thing that I have wanted for over a decade?

I am so depressed/angry right now

2007-06-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

The bank denied our loan. Of course. Nevermind that we have an account with them that is now and has always been in good standing. Nevermind that we have a car loan with them. That's all irrelevant. What matters is that our credit scores and on the brink of fair and good. I'm glad to see that this process is as arbitrary as possible. It brings me unending happiness.

In the meantime, we have to rent the car for another week. Another $150. This is the last week we can afford it. The check we have been expecting is MIA, of course, since it would solve a good portion of our problems. When we do get it it'll probably be for a third of what it's supposed to be. Because I need more to do. I am wavering between just telling the transmission place to go ahead and start and hope things have worked themselves out by next Thursday or Friday (when it would be done) and crying. Option 2 seems really viable right now.

I wish I could say that I was too mad or sad to eat. It's not true. I could eat a lot of Taco Bell right now. It doesn't help that no one's been shopping in a while and food options are limited at best.

I'm just so tired of all this crap. I need a few days of alone time to keep from going crazy. I won't get it, but I need it.

Some other stuff

2007-06-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

Well, since this is supposed to be at least partially a diet blog, I thought I'd post about the diet. It's nonexistent. I've been off for...I don't know, a while now. I wasn't even on for a week. Stress and working constantly on the house and cleaning and packing and chasing kids and the 400 other things I have to do each day make it hard to spend an hour preparing each meal.

My husband talked to Marty Wolff today (of Biggest Loser fame--and I went to high school with him!) and he said that you won't stick to a plan unless you're eating food you like. Which, at first I was kind of like, "Well, duh," but then I thought about it. On the 6WBMO I was eating chicken at almost every meal. I don't like to eat chicken for a snack. (Unless it's in the form of a fast food chicken sandwich. But anyway.) So I'm thinking that I will add more forms of protein besides egg whites, like peanut butter and soy products. Instead of 2 egg whites for breakfast (if I'm eating them scrambled), I'm going to do an egg white and a whole egg. I'm adding in whole wheat bread and pasta, and a serving of dairy. I have long believed that if you're on a diet plan that makes you give up everything you love, you won't stick to it. I have no idea why I thought this would be any different. Maybe because I really really wanted it to be.

The whole moving thing: I'm not sure how I feel about this. As to the delay, one part of me is glad that I don't have to have everything done yesterday, but another part of me (the bigger part, I think) is frustrated that things are going to take so long. When I make a decision or a plan, I want it done and done fast. Maybe that's why I suck so badly at diets. I'm impatient and I've been fooled by all those before/after montages on TV.

Ugh...foot dragging

2007-06-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

I talked to the landlord today, and she said that she hadn't decided if she was going to sell the house or rent it again. She needed time to think about it. I had held out some hope that she could put an ad in the paper right away and maybe get someone in here to rent and we could be out by next weekend. Not happening now. I guess on the plus side that means I can stop working on stuff every second of the day. On the minus side, the next month will be really really hard, because we have an extra $300 (at least) for renting a car, plus another $50 on the car payment to pay for the repairs, plus $500-$700 to make a dent in what we have to pay for the repairs. It just keeps adding up.

Another update

2007-06-22T14:09:00.000-05:00

It has been decided--we are moving in with my mom. I am trying to stay positive and think of this as one year out of my life to rebuild and get ahead in a way that I would otherwise not be able to.

As Kathy commented, I am very glad that my mom is there when I need her. (Just to clarify, my parents are not divorced, but my dad works/lives in Florida--it's complicated, but he's not usually too involved in stuff until after it's been decided.) DH and I were just talking last night about how lucky we were that we had my mom. The house she lives in (alone up until now) is a 5BR with a finished basement that is more or less set up that it could be use as an in-law suite or whatever--there's a bathroom with shower, large room to be used as a living room with storage, a room that was a laundry room that has a sink, lots of cupboards and a gas hookup that could easily be used as a kitchen (although we won't have our stove down there), and a small room that could be used as a bedroom. Most people in our position wouldn't have that sort of space to move into. That is one thing to be positive about.

Hopefully when all is said and done we'll have the car and credit card paid off and a good amount of savings built up and will be in a position to buy a house instead of moving into yet another apartment.

I do have to admit that all this has wreaked havoc on my diet. I've basically been off the past two days. I'm also concerned that I won't have the money to continue it for at least another month, since there are going to be some costs involved with moving and getting the car fixed, like renting a storage unit and a U-Haul and needing a rental car for a week.

DH and I are going to work on cleaning out the basement tonight after the boys go to bed. I don't want to have to pay for more storage than I need (and ideally we would get rid of everything so that we didn't need any storage at all).

Things keep getting worse

2007-06-21T13:43:00.000-05:00

Last night I was up until 2 researching transmission stuff. I was hoping that it was the torque converter because that would be less expensive than a transmission. This morning I had DH take the car to Auto Zone and get them to use their computer to pull codes off the car to tell us what was wrong. There were three--one a minor emissions thing, one something to do with auxiliary systems, and one that said something about the torque converter. So DH took the car to Certified Transmission and had them check it out. They came back and said that the transmission was shot. Completely. The fluid that had just been put in yesterday was already black, there were pieces of metal and debris inside the transmission that had basically ruined it. The ideal would be to replace the entire transmission. A transmission with a three year warranty is $2000. A transmission with a five year warranty is $2500. It would be possible to replace just the torque converter and have it run, but there were no guarantees. Just replacing the torque converter would probably make the car drivable, but there was still the possibility that it could die and we would then need a new transmission.

I don't know what to do. The place offers financing, but we don't have the extra money per month to pay anything. If I drain savings, we have maybe $500. We are expecting a check at some point in the (hopefully) near future that should be over $1000. My mom owes me $1000 (although I owe her a lot more). If we could get the financing to hold us over until all this money comes in, we would be OK. But if we had to pay monthly we'd be screwed. We are already upside down on this car, now we're tacking another $2000 onto what we already owe. If there was no loan on the car I'd say take it to a dealer and trade it in for $500 but we owe $5000.

We are considering moving in with my mother. It is the last thing that DH and I want to do, but I figure we could probably save $900 a month doing that. That would let us pay off the transmission, pay off the car, and save some money to buy a house (if our credit will let us). DH says that if we move there he wants to stay for at least six months, to get us to the point of our next tax return. I have to say that the last thing I want to do is move in with my mother. Everything just seems so overwhelming right now. I don't know what to do.

I want to cry. And eat. Mostly eat.

2007-06-21T01:22:00.000-05:00

We are having some financial problems right now (actually, always) that mostly stem from being a one-income family with a not-very-high income. There is enough money to pay the main bills if nothing goes wrong, but if something goes wrong we are screwed.

Today the car started acting up. DH realized that we hadn't changed the transmission fluid in a loooong time (the car is a five-year-old Kia; if anyone changed the fluid, probably I did it before we got married three years ago) so he topped it off for the time being. Oops, we drive a POS Kia. Kia makes their own special transmission fluid that you cannot purchase anywhere else. (Don't even get me started on this.) We did not know this and DH, being a man, forgot to bring the manual with the name of the fluid we needed into the store and decided that whatever they sold would do just fine. To be fair to him, they only sold one brand of transmission fluid. I would never have thought that it wasn't compatible with a cheapy brand like Kia. Maybe a Mercedes of a BMW would need special fluid, but not a car I paid less than $10K for five years ago.

So anyway, DH adds the transmission fluid. Car immediately starts acting up and of course we are away from home when it does so. And that's not all, oh no. A/C is also being crappy. Needs new windshield wiper blades. A truck kicked up a rock which chipped the windshield which cracked all the way across. Needs new brake pads and possibly rotors. Someone hit it in a parking lot a few weeks ago. And now the transmission.

We took it to the local Auto Zone, where the guy informed DH that you could not buy Kia fluid there, you had to get it from Kia or another mechanic. DH took the car to Grease Monkey on the Auto Zone employee's recommendation and had them flush the fluid and refill with Kia fluid. The car is now almost undriveable, probably through no fault of Grease Monkey. It doesn't reverse, it has trouble getting up even very slight hills (like the one at the end of our street), it doesn't shift gears...I didn't believe that changing the fluid on a car that needed it could hurt it but yes, apparently it can. It seems that sometimes all the grit and crap and pieces of metal in the transmission fluid is all that's keeping a crappy car running, as weird as that sounds. And having the wrong fluid in there, even for a couple of hours, was apparently devastating to the Kia's fragile sensibilities.

The more research into transmissions I do the more depressed I get. My sister owned a Kia way back when--six or seven years ago--and she trashed the transmission. My mom told me she thought it was around $300 to get it fixed. But now I read that a new transmission or even some transmission repairs can run $1000-$2000. The car has 90,000 miles on it and apparently around 100,000 miles is when repairs start getting really pricey and your car turns into a money pit. We do not have the money for pricey repairs. Even if this car was in great shape we are probably close to $1000 upside down on it. We do not have the money for a new car. No relative has the money to loan us to purchase a new car. (And by new I mean "new to us.") Even if we could get this Kia monkey off our back our credit is so bad that we probably couldn't get a loan anyway.

DH had Wednesday off, he will most likely have to call in Thursday and possibly Friday. I have an extremely overactive imagination and it hasn't taken me long to see the absolute worst outcome of this situation: no money = no car = no job = no money. And I feel so terrible for so many reasons. Obviously the prospect of living with my mother thrills me to no end (ha). But also DH had been trying to get this job for 3 1/2 years when he was finally hired, and he loves it. I am sure that losing it would be devastating to him.

I am so depressed right now. If we had a car I would probably go to Taco Bell.

I'm melting away

2007-06-20T09:59:00.000-05:00

Weight today was 229.6! Woohoo! I feel "cautiously optimistic" that this isn't water weight--I am running a serious calorie deficit, so it's not unreasonable that this be real weight, right? Just a quick update--we're off to Hobby Lobby.

I'm still here

2007-06-19T23:21:00.000-05:00

Still on plan, too, although I could still go for a piece of dark chocolate. Apparently that will go away with time. That kind of sucks. I don't know if I want to not eat chocolate anymore; it's never really been a binge food for me. I also can't imagine six weeks without it, let alone the rest of my life. The Six Week Body Makeover (or 6WBMO) people insist that that will go away.

The forums over there have given me a lot of good info, but I've laughed at some things, too. For instance there are a lot of concerns over the plan having enough calories. Someone posted that they had measured their calories for a while with the help of an aunt who was a nutritionist and it consistently came out to less than 1000 calories. One day was 500. I don't know how they were still on the plan because I would have caved in at that point, but I can believe that if you just strictly adhere to the meal suggestions (i.e., 2 oz protein, 1/4 c fruit) that you could eat very few calories. I say strictly adhere meaning if you don't add any of the "free" vegetables, although none of them are very high calorie.

Anyway, the answer to this person's and other's concerns was "but our calories are soooo nutrient packed! We can get away with only 500! Long live 6WBMO!" It was pretty amusing, and total crap if ever there has been total crap. I am not a nutritionist or a doctor, but my understanding of calories is this: a calorie, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. A calorie is a unit of energy. The body needs a minimum of calories to run all its systems and not eat itself. Calories from "whole," unprocessed foods are easier for the body to digest, but it can digest junk food calories too. To my understanding calories and nutrition are mostly separate. The reason you should eat healthily is a) It's easier for the body to process, as I said, and b) You get more food when you eat healthier. There's a little blurb in Glamour magazine each month that is "eat this, or eat all this," which basically shows usable alternatives to your favorite foods/meals. For instance, there was one that showed that instead of eating four fried cheese sticks and beer you could have ten buffalo wings, popcorn, and a couple glasses of wine. Or something. It's the same idea: 500 calories from vegetables, chicken and brown rice goes a lot further than 500 calories from a double cheeseburger.

Of course you know no one said "Excuse me but that's a load of malarkey." Actually everyone chimed in and said "Yes! This is true! That whole 'don't go below 1200 calories' thing? That just means 'without your doctor's blessing.' Oh, you didn't run this by your doctor? Well, Michael Thurmond is close, right?"

The program itself is really not that bad, I actually feel good and like I'm doing good things for my body, but groupthink annoys me no matter what the context.

I think I'm going to go read a magazine. I was cleaning today and found a couple of them that had fallen behind the chest freezer. There's actually one somewhere that I haven't even taken out of the plastic yet, but I'm too lazy to go find it. Oh, a quick note about lazy: I did not do my exercise today. I am going to pull my exercise bike out tomorrow and go to the gym (DH has the day off work) and I have to do the toning program thingy. I hate seeing that thing in the living room, but I need the visual to get me off my butt.

Even though I know I shouldn't...

2007-06-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

...I weighed myself this morning. 232.4! Woohoo! 2.6 pounds down, probably water weight this early, but it's still nice to see a difference in the scale so early on. I can't wait to be under 230. I can't wait to be under 200.

I would love some chocolate right now

2007-06-18T18:54:00.001-05:00

So far this isn't too bad as far as the food goes, although as the title says a piece of chocolate would be good. After I kicked the whole "rapid results" thing to the curb it was much easier (although now I have a bunch of grapefruit to eat). I actually feel like I'm being healthy on this plan. Breakfast was 3 egg whites and salad; lunch was 2 oz. chicken, 1/2 cup mashed potatoes (made with no butter or milk, but I added a sprinkle of bacon cheddar dip mix, 10 calories per teaspoon and I used less than that), and a cup of that squash vegetable mix. Snack of grilled chicken, mushrooms, and red onion. Dinner chicken curry with broccoli, carrots, red onion, and white rice.

The food may not be bad so far, but going from around 2500 calories a day to around 1200 is hard. I finished dinner maybe half an hour to forty minutes ago and I'm hungry. I am ignoring it. And I discovered that you are supposed to eat all the food in order: breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, optional evening snack. Oops.

Also, the literature says that most people don't find that it takes them longer to prepare meals as compared to before. I don't know if it's that it's my first day, but that's crap. Normally I would microwave leftovers or maybe a veggie burger or some form of convenience food if we had it, or maybe I would eat whatever the kids had left on their plates. It took me close to an hour to make lunch and dinner today, and this method of cooking sure generates more dishes. It is healthier, though, so I guess that's my tradeoff.

I did not get to take that walk today--I babysat my niece this morning so I couldn't go then. As a result of having her the kids got put down for naps late and didn't wake up until 4:30, an hour before dinner and not the optimal time to be leaving. I have just now finished making their dinner, cleaning up, making my dinner, and cleaning up after it. I will be mowing the lawn when they go to bed and probably doing some cleaning in the basement, but I would have preferred the walk. I think.

And so it begins

2007-06-18T12:04:00.000-05:00

Today is Day One of the Six Week Body Makeover. I had planned on doing all Rapid Results meals (or as many as possible, you're not supposed to do them after you've worked out) but I am rethinking that because, as another poster put it, "a diet of nothing but turkey and grapefruit will push you over the edge." That it will. I have had one meal of egg whites and salad and already I'm snapping at everyone. It doesn't help that I have a headache, although I can't imagine how that could be related to what food I eat. (Or could it? "I have to eat eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast! It's MEDICAL!") (Here's another parentheses for you: I forgot I wasn't breastfeeding anymore. I can take whatever pills I want! Woohoo! Imagine the possibilities!)

So I think the plan for lunch is 2 ounces chicken, grilled; 1/2 cup mashed potato; 1 cup squash blend mixed vegetables. That's not too bad. And I still have a morning snack that I get to eat later, probably tonight, because I didn't eat breakfast until 10:30. I'm pretty sure if I get through the first three days that's the hardest part. Things will probably not be easy after that, but they might be easier.

If I were single this would be a piece of cake. I don't have to feed anyone else but me, so no one else's food needs to be in the house. Except I'm not single, I have a husband and two kids, and they all love junk food. The kitchen is filled with various Helpers, cereal bars, crackers, tater tots, macaroni and cheese, potato chips, hot dogs...when I was single, I DID NOT BUY THESE FOODS. I swear. I never ate hot dogs and macaroni and cheese; not it's on the menu at least once a week. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my family to make it easier to diet, but it would be nice if they could be satisfied eating what I eat--chicken, rice, vegtables, etc. Actually the baby would probably be OK with that. The other two would mutiny.

According to the literature (and my own calculations) the maximum I could lose in the first six weeks is about forty pounds. The minimum I expect to lose is fifteen pounds, although I'm pretty sure their minimum was more than this. That would be nice to see that kind of result--forty pounds is a pretty good motivator to keep going.

Also, you are supposed to do an hour of cardio 5-6 days a week on this plan, and I believe the weather is actually going to cooperate enough for me to walk to the library with the kids without melting.

My Scale is Laughing at Me

2007-06-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's weight was 232.4; today it is 234.8. Ah, arbitrary weight loss and gain, how I've missed you. I was never exactly thrilled about the two pounds that I lost taking me from 234.6 to 232.4. I know, it sounds weird, but I am highly suspicious of weight loss I did nothing to earn. And by earn, I mean tracking every calorie I eat, keeping them under 1800, and working out an hour a day. Just eating healthy and getting more activity in doesn't cut it in my book, because it's never seemed to do anything before so why should I believe it will now?

Another reason for my suspicion of unearned weight loss is that I have been burned by scales before. The scale I had before I got my new one (which I still don't trust; in fact, I don't trust any scale but I still use them religiously. Go figure.) showed me as weighing 184 just before I got pregnant with N, my 9-month-old. After I gave birth it showed me at 219, then a drop over a few weeks to 207 which I considered my "baseline", my real weight after the excess fluids from the baby were gone. Shortly after that it settled in around 199/200. And then, all of a sudden, an 11 pound loss to put me at 189. I didn't believe it for a second. But it stayed there for a while, so I foolishly accepted it. Then my scale started showing that I had gained 75 pounds or lost ten pounds from when I weighed myself two minutes before. I decided a new scale was in order and, surprise surprise, the new scale showed my weight at 207. I was so disgusted and, frankly, pissed off that I had worked so hard for four months to lose exactly no weight. This was the point at which I decided that diets disgusted me and I wasn't going to do it anymore, I was going to Eat Healthy and Exercise Every Day. Thirty pounds gained and I'm back on the Diet Wagon, even though I really don't want to be there. I guess I'd rather be on the Diet Wagon than the Overweight with Type 2 Diabetes Wagon.

I will be starting the Six Week Body Makeover Sunday. I have warned my husband that I will probably be not fun to be around for the first week. As I put it, "No food makes J angry." As far as I can tell the plan is about 1200 calories a day and you're supposed to do an hour of cardio five days a week, with a toning program three days a week. I am so thrilled, there are no words. Especially since I am starting with the "Rapid Results" program, which seems to be turkey breast, greens, grapefruit, and the occasional half cup of rice or cup of mixed veggies. But it is better than getting diabetes or something, and I'm only doing the Rapid Results for a week. I feel like I need to do something drastic to start to get my mind in the zone of sticking to this program.

As I was typing this, my hands went numb no fewer than five times.

I have a plan...

2007-06-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

It's an ambitious one to be sure. I dug out my Six Week Body Makeover book and looked through it and decided that I would do the Rapid Start program. Very few carbs, no dairy, no fruit besides grapefruit, only chicken and fish for protein. Granted, I'm only doing it for the first week to get myself into the dieting mindset. And the rest of the plan will be wonderful after that. We'll see how I do. I just have to focus. Eye on the prize and all that.

Yay! Motivation to lose weight!

2007-06-10T21:05:00.000-05:00

My best friend just told me that she is engaged, so woohoo! I do not want to be fat for her wedding--I have until late summer (August or September) of next year to lose an estimated 70 pounds at least. It makes it so much easier to stick to a plan if I have a reason to, and since I'm maid of honor I really want to put my best foot forward, so to speak. No one else that would be in the wedding is overweight and Lord knows that's one way I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. Who wants to be the fat girl?

Tiny quesadilla card sharks

2007-06-09T00:08:00.000-05:00

I went to Wal-Mart tonight and on the way I heard this weird Taco Bell ad on the radio. It's the latest in a series featuring various anthropomorphized menu items. This time it was an extreme beef and cheese quesadilla or some such thing. It was trying to enter a high stakes poker tournament and it suddenly struck me that these commercials are weird. Really weird. We are supposed to eat these things? After being told that they can think and speak and would like to be poker champions? I find that slightly disturbing. I should probably not think about this too much or soon I will be a vegetarian.

Speaking of fast food, I told DH at the beginning of the month that I (meaning he had to do it too) wanted to not eat fast food this month. We ate out waaaay too much last month. My reasons were mostly financial, but as bad as I eat sometimes I am convinced that the stuff I can get at Taco Bell and Burger King is much worse. (Which is almost certainly why it's so tasty.) Anyway, he lasted until today. A whole week. That must be some sort of record or something. His reason was that he had a dentist's appointment this morning to get a crown and "forgot" to take lunch because he didn't know how his tooth would feel. Is it just me or does that not make sense? I think this whole thing was planned. When he told me that I was very tempted to go to Taco Bell tonight. He had cheated, didn't I get to, too? But I was strong and I resisted the lure of the Bell. It was hard, but I did it. I kind of wonder if July 1st I'll be running for the car to get a taco or a burger, or if I'll feel good not having eaten the food for a month and will resist. I'd like to think it will be the latter, but I know myself better than that.

A Horrible New Weight

2007-06-08T08:55:00.000-05:00

I have lost a pound, down to 235.8. Forgive me if I don't get excited. Losing a pound=good. Weighing 235 pounds=bad. Disgusting. Horrifying. I know there are people out there who are trying to lose a lot more weight than I am--75.8 pounds at last count--but that doesn't mean I can't be depressed about the number anyway.

I went to the gym for the last two days in a row--even if I only did cardio I went. No go today because DH had a dentist's appointment. I will try and do a video while the kids nap later, assuming I don't fall asleep on the couch first.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2007-06-01T21:25:00.001-05:00

Things I have accomplished today: rearranged furniture, cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed said kitchen floor, fixed a curtain rod, painted a table. Things I wanted to do today but did not get done: go to gym, eat low-calorie foods.

Sigh. I'm proud of what I have accomplished, but I really wish I could get myself more on board with this gym thing. It's so easy to forget to do it, completely block it from my brain until the gym is closed for the night.

I have never understood the whole endorphin rush that you're supposed to get from exercising. It's never happened to me. Never. Not once in my entire life. I played on the golf and tennis teams in high school, I played soccer when I was younger, I still like to bike, play golf, and hike, not to mention the workouts I do at the gym. (I won't call them "regular" workouts because there's nothing regular about working out twice a week for a week and then skipping the gym for the next three weeks.) I have done cardio for an hour at a time, and all I ever felt afterward was tired. Either my brain isn't working right or that whole endorphin thing is way oversold. Probably it's both. Anyway, the reason I started on this tangent was to say that maybe that's part of why I don't like to exercise at the gym. I don't get high like everyone else apparently does. Or am I misinformed and the high is only for extreme sports? But that would be adrenaline, wouldn't it?

My table is dry now, so I'm going to go bring it upstairs and try to be happy about the things I've accomplished instead of dwelling on what I haven't. Yay positive thinking.

Room and Board

2007-05-31T17:36:00.000-05:00

I finally broke down and bought some convenience foods. I balanced the checking account the other day and there were way too many entries for fast food. So I bought cereal bars, granola bars, a few TV dinners and a few Hot Pocket-type things. Not to worry, I also bought more fruit and vegetables than I usually do.

Sorry for the length, this is just a quick update. I'm engrossed in a search for a three bedroom apartment. Not that I'm going to find anything, but I guess it'll keep me distracted for a few hours.

Back for more

2007-05-25T19:22:00.000-05:00

I actually got to the gym today! Woohoo! The workout I did won't get me into the Olympics or anything, but it's a start. My gym is closed Monday, but I'm going to go Saturday and Sunday. I also get to mow the lawn tomorrow, and I might try and talk my mom into helping me split some perennials. We're going to the zoo sometime this weekend, too, so I will be all kinds of active.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go figure out how many calories were in the pasta I just ate.

Up and up and up

2007-05-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

Weight is up to 237.6. Yay! I cannot express to you how much the idea of gaining weight for no good reason thrills me. And at what, 1 or 2 pounds a day? How exciting! I shall be unable to move by the end of the year.

So, to recap, I need 3400 calories a day to maintain 230 pounds. Not that I want to maintain 230 pounds, but anyway. My calories yesterday were 2887, which is more than it should be. I ate emotionally twice, a glass of chocolate milk when the damn curtain rod fell off the wall again and no matter what I did it wouldn't stay up; and a sesame seed bagel with cheese and Canadian bacon when I weighed myself and it said I'd gained 4 pounds. Apparently I was teaching that scale good. It ended up being around 600 extra calories. No matter how many extra calories it ended up being, I was still well below the break-even line. I had a 500 calorie deficit, which, while it may not have made me lose any weight right away, should be enough to lose a pound a week. Yet here we are.

Anyway, I'll stop harping on that. Today is my last day providing daycare full-time. Yay! Kind of. (That one wasn't sarcastic.) On the one hand, I know that E and, to some extent, N, like having other kids around. However, it can get really grating if the daycare kids are being brats (happens a lot) and it can get really annoying if them being brats makes E think that he can act the same way (happens way too much for me). The money was also nice. But oh well.

That's it for now, I guess. I won't bore you by trying to pull topics out to discuss when I can't think of any. I'm going to pay special attention to balancing what food groups I eat and getting lots of water today; hopefully tomorrow will show some improvement in weight.

Fatty fatty fat fat

2007-05-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

Weight is up to 235.8. This is baffling to me. I will admit to eating more than I should on the weekend, but that was four days ago, and I certainly didn't eat an extra 18,000 calories.

According to the most basic formula (weight x 15 to maintain) I should be able to eat 3500 calories a day and not gain weight. And I don't. Eat 3500 calories a day, that is. I do keep track. I hope it's one of those girl bloaty things. Gaining unexplainable weight was one reason why I gave up dieting after N was born. Breastfeeding and eating 2000-2500 calories a day got me a 10 pound weight gain. The next 25 came after I threw up my hands in disgust and gave up. Good job me! I am seriously considering thyroid testing, the fat person's scapegoat of choice. I had it tested once, when I was younger, and it was within normal ranges. However, that is something that can change with pregnancy and I've had two. So maybe. That would be nice to be able to take a pill and actually lose weight when I diet and exercise.

I have a confession to make. When I was younger, after my dog died, I stopped eating. And then once I got over the worst of the grief I had lost weight. So I kept not eating. And I lost 40 pounds. (Sadly, losing forty pounds did not make me skinny. I was still at least 15 pounds overweight.) Then I got bored and started eating again. I did manage to keep a lot of the weight I had lost off until I got pregnant with E. I am very seriously considering doing that again. Willful anorexia. Frankly, it was the only diet that ever worked for me. I am not condoning the whole eat-until-you-starve-to-death thing, nor am I saying it's for long term use. But maybe my food issues are so bad that the only way I can deal with them is to just not eat. I wish I could be normal about food, but I've been trying for a decade now and I'm no closer than I was when I started.

I can't believe I'm actually going to put this on the internet. But it's pertinent information, I guess.

It's just me again

2007-05-24T00:06:00.000-05:00

I know I've been inconspicuously absent for a few days. I haven't been avoiding you, I swear.

I'm kind of annoyed with myself right now. I haven't been to the gym since the start of this thing. Actually since well before the start of this thing. I really really want to go. No, I do, seriously. However, I have this weird thing now where I will be dead tired around 9 PM, sleep for an hour, wake up, be up until 3 AM, sleep really crappily until DH finally drags me out of bed so he can get ready to leave at around 9 or 9:30 AM. He leaves a little after 10 and gets home around 8:30 at night. The gym closes at 9. We are a one-car family, and even if we weren't the child care situation at my gym is iffy to say the least. I would probably be seriously angry if I loaded up the kids and took them down there only to find out that it was full, but that's a moot point.

I need to drag my ass out of bed in the morning and go, I know, but it's so hard when you've gotten maybe four hours of sleep. I guess I'll have to split it up--whatever I can get at night and maybe two hours during naptime, and hope I don't keel over from exhaustion.

I've been playing around with real estate listings for the past few days. I would love nothing more than to get my hands on a neglected old house and bring it back to its full glory. I have this weird thing about "saving" old houses from being turned into shitty apartments or being bulldozed to make way for condos or McMansions. To see an old house that someone has remuddled to the point that it needs to be torn down to the studs makes me want to cry. I think I seek out these neglected houses because I feel bad for the old houses I've owned and had big plans for, but haven't been able to save because of one extenuating circumstance or another. If any of that makes sense.

Our credit sucks, though, so purchasing a house will be a few years in the making. I even applied for a mortgage tonight, but, surprise surprise, our scores weren't good enough to get it. (By the way, I think it is a bit silly that the gateway criteria is credit score. To me it's a bit arbitrary to be the end-all be-all deciding factor in these things.) I was completely expecting that we wouldn't get it, but it still depressed me. And I ate a bowl of pasta with ricotta and mozzarella. Sorry, Internet. I'm hanging my head in shame. I fell off the wagon. I wish I could guarantee that it won't happen again, but I can only say that I'll do my best to stay away from the spaghetti next time.

2007-05-18T12:25:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard that joke about the fat person who goes to a drive thru and orders a double cheeseburger with bacon, large fries, a dessert pie, and a diet Coke? And haha at the fattie because after ordering all that junk he thought he was being "healthy" and ordering a diet drink? I hate that joke. A, because a person is really not what they eat. (See my husband--he can eat anything he wants and not gain weight. Although lately he has been getting a little belly and I feel slightly vindicated. Guilty, too.) B, people don't always buy "healthy" things because they are healthy. I cannot stand the taste of regular colas. They disgust me. I grew up on diet soda, so that is what I can stand. And no, this little rant isn't coming from anything specific. Just a pet peeve of mine.

I am still feeling bleh if you wanted to know. Last night after writing my entry I thought, "Oh my God. I am describing depression. I am depressed." And the word "depressed" depressed me. I'm an emo kid. Excuse me while I get my Buddy Holly glasses and put on an ironic T-shirt and my Chuck Taylors.

My mood is not being helped by these damn kids. And I'm not referring to my own, I watch a few kids for daycare purposes. And I'm soooo glad it's Friday. I cannot put up with the chasing, toy stealing, hitting, kicking, running in the house, crocodile tears when you get punished crap anymore this week. I neither drink nor smoke, and right now I feel like I could use a pack of cigarettes and at least one bottle of wine.

Ah, insomnia. We meet again.

2007-05-18T01:56:00.000-05:00

I guess it's not terribly fair to call it insomnia if I'm almost always up at this hour. It just feels wrong to be wide awake at 2 AM when there is no pay involved. I'm starting to think it would be better for me to nap in the afternoon with the kids and then sleep for six or so hours at 8 or 9. It just seems to be how things want to be.

Anyway, I've been feeling a little stagnant lately. We rent, but we rent from a private owner, which means that we have certain freedoms that people in apartments owned by corporations don't have. We can paint, and I put in a new kitchen floor (with permission, thank you). But now all the major stuff is done. Except for the dozens of sewing projects and, frankly, ugh. I'm sick of sewing right now. I had a bad experience with finishing the edges of sheer fabric embroidered with metallic threads. It was the biggest pain in the ass ever.

When we had finished the painting, floor, etc., I realized that, for the most part, I was done. I have never been done before. We have lived a lot of places, most private owned, and quite a few owned by my parents. There were projects I wanted to do in all of them and in all of them we moved before they were finished and I still lament not getting those things done. But now I am done. And I feel at loose ends. It's unfamiliar, and it's not like what I thought it would be. I imagined I would bask in the glow of my finishedness, and instead I seem to be panicking and going through some sort of life crisis. I even looked at houses for sale although we're really not in a financial position to be doing so. And moving sucks.

This mood was made worse when I went to put N in his carseat tonight. It is a 5-22 pound carrier, and I realized that he was probably at the upper weight limit. His feet are hanging over the end, and the shoulder straps cannot be adjusted any higher. My baby is growing up. DH and I agreed that we would not have any more children (more on this in a minute) so I have been gathering baby paraphernalia to sell on Craigslist or something. I realized that that carseat was my last bit of little baby stuff. There will be no other stuff to get rid of until N outgrows the convertible carseat that E is currently in, the one that goes to 40 pounds. That will probably be another two years.

Now on to the stuff about babies. I don't know that I am done having kids. It was always my plan to have four children. Even now, after giving birth to two, and remembering how bad it was, I'd like to have four. At the time that we agreed that two was best, well, two was best. I certainly wouldn't have a third child now, right this minute. I can't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep and I am seriously contemplating becoming nocturnal because it would be easier. Also, I have always said that I would have an even number of kids. Odd numbers mean someone gets left out. I grew up with two siblings at home and I can attest to this fact. This means that if I have one more kid I'm committing to having two more kids. And we don't have anywhere to put two more kids, unless they are of the variety that you can fold up and store under the couch when not in use.

One major reason I said OK to only having two was that I have two sons, and I wanted (want) a daughter very badly. Nothing against boys, but I want a little girl. There are tons of reasons why, and I'm not going to justify my want. However, I have this fear that if I get pregnant again I will have another boy. And then another one after that. And then I will have four sons. Imagine all the possible broken and/or maimed appendages. I cannot or I will surely become a gibbering, drooling idiot.

So right now I just feel like I need...something. Something to happen. Although normally I am content with the day to day of my life, and I am happy with everything around me, right now I am...restless seems to be the best word. Waiting. I guess I'll know what I'm waiting for when it happens.

Insight or Die

2007-05-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here I am again, this time to give you insight into my eating habits. Calm down, control yourself. Try to contain your euphoria.

Most of the time I am really good during the day (although I hate to quantify eating habits as "good" or "bad.") and I do not overeat. I have been having some problems with this at lunch--the kids will eat one bite of their food, or half a sandwich, and then get up from the table. The Clean Plate Club member in me immediately screams in protest, saying that there are starving children in China! Not eating that food would be a travesty! Plus, we are a one-income family, and wasting food=wasting money to me. Something that I cannot abide. But yesterday and today I have done better. When E didn't touch his lunch yesterday, I simply covered it and put it in the fridge for dinner. (Shut up. I'm not Joan Crawford, it was something he liked but he wasn't hungry due to sneaking half of his brother's yogurt.) My first instinct was to eat it, but I fought it successfully. And no one is going to go bankrupt throwing away half a PBJ sandwich a few times a week. Although I may start making half sandwiches to nip that problem in the bud.

Nighttime is the worst time for me. After the kids have gone to bed, it is quiet and it feels like I can finally sit down and relax, and what better way to do that than with a bowl of ice cream? Also, DH doesn't get home until 8:30. I consume most of my food after this point. Not because he's eating; in fact, he usually doesn't eat much at night. I actually don't know why I eat so much when he's home. Is it a subconscious thing? Like he can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight (bastard) so I should be able to as well? Or is it a subconscious thing where I'm trying to eat so much that I goad him into telling me to put down the fork, for God's sake? I really don't think I'm that passive-aggressive.

I know that DH loves me the way I am. When we first met, I told him I was on a diet. He immediately announced his intention to make me a chocolate cake because I did not need to be on a diet. Ha. I weighed 176 when we met. If only he had known how much I really did need to be on a diet so I did not blow up like Violet Beauregarde. It was kind of sweet, though. I guess. I probably would have gotten fat even without that chocolate cake, since most of my weight is from pregnancy and breastfeeding.

When I worked, before being married or having children, when I still lived at home with my parents, in fact, I got to go home for lunch. When I went home I did not prepare a meal, sit down, eat it, and then read a book or watch TV until it was time to go back to work. Not most of the time, anyway. Most of the time I would open the fridge or cupboard, find something to eat, inhale it, and repeat. For some reason I was laboring under the impression that since it was a lunch hour, I should be lunching the entire hour. The funny thing is, I did not realize I was doing this until after I moved out on my own. I have been dieting since I was twelve (at least), thought I knew all there was to know about fats vs. sugars, calories consumed vs. calories expended, crunches vs. lunges, and I failed to identify a huge black hole of calories.

I think this entry has gone on long enough. Before I go, though, I am simply bursting to tell you that my weight is down 0.6 pounds. Woohoo! Excuses to eat! And I am going to a Mother's Day Pizza Fest at my mom's house tonight, so let's hope I can keep myself from gaining that back and then some. Anyway. I'm all done. Really.

In which I am no fun to be around

2007-05-16T19:03:00.000-05:00

I am In A Mood. I hate being In A Mood, as it makes me short with the kids (and thank God I only had mine today, or I might have torn out half the hair on my head) and then it makes me feel terrible for being short with the kids. I was doing fairly well until this Mood descended on me around 4 PM. Now it appears that only salt, carbs, and sugar can treat this horrible affliction. And maybe some pasta. DS#2 appears to also be In A Mood as he keeps following me around whining. I can blame his poutiness on teething, but I can't do the same for myself. (Is it odd that I think it's OK to be pissy if there's a reason? Being crabby because somebody broke something or your husband left a sinkful of dishes after you had just cleaned up is OK. Being a jerk for some inexplicable chemical/hormonal reason is not, apparently.)

I have taken my knitting back out. To backtrack, I am terrible about unitasking. I hate doing it. I cannot just sit still and do one thing. Even when I'm up and about doing things I don't like to be doing just one thing. So it was very hard to sit at night and do nothing else when reading or watching TV. Eating used to be the perfect way to solve that problem, but I took to knitting as a solution a while ago. And then I got a new knitting basket so that balls of yarn would not be everywhere and that somehow kept me from knitting for a month or so. I brought the basket out again and am currently working on a baby blanket for the Children's Hospital NICU. That way I can use leftover yarn and do simple patterns. The one right now is just a moss stitch, although I wish I had started it in a basketweave stitch. I'm too lazy to tear anything out even though I'm only five rows in and three were edging.

Anyway, I'm going to go sit in front of the TV with a diet soda (another thing I won't give up. Diet soda is not the devil, people) and knit. And watch Ghost Hunters and How Clean is Your House.

Yay for Lists

2007-05-15T14:09:00.000-05:00

I am a compulsive list maker by nature. I’m a Virgo, for those of you that follow astrology, and we are perfectionists. That is what I blame for all the lists, although I don’t really follow astrology, and you would never call me a perfectionist if you saw my house right now. I think I just like seeing my day broken down into doable tasks.

Anyway, here we go with list one.

Foods I’m Not Willing to Give Up to Lose Weight

Let me preface this by saying that I know that my major problem with eating is portion control. I am not saying that I can eat the foods below in massive portions every day. But I love them, and there is no real substitute for any of them. I also reserve the right to add items to the list as I remember them.

Chocolate. I eat chocolate every day. I guess my palate has been trained to expect chocolate after meals. Usually it’s a serving of pudding or a cup of cocoa. I am toying with the idea of buying a bunch of those individual fun size candy bars or whatever, throwing them in the freezer, and letting myself have one every day. One thing I’ve learned is that I should indulge my chocolate cravings within reason. The times that I have resisted a chocolate craving have usually resulted in me eating 300 calories of something else and still eating the chocolate. For that I might as well have had a full size candy bar and then some.
Real butter. Margarine is gross. Have you ever melted it? Or “spread,” whatever that is? Disgusting. It separates into water and oil. I think a lot of people try to save calories by substituting “diet” foods, and since margarine is lower in calories than butter, they consider it a diet food. I was watching a TV show about weight loss once (those shows are one of my addictions) and they had a doctor on there saying that margarine goes straight to your arteries. It’s fake, your body doesn’t know what to do with it. Butter is a “natural” food. Your body can process it. You shouldn’t be eating a stick a day or anything, but there is no substitute for real butter flavor. In cookies, I will usually substitute half the butter with unsweetened applesauce. Still has the flavor but half the calories and fat.
Cheese. I am, technically speaking, lactose intolerant. I was when I was a kid, then it went away for a while, and I’m pretty sure it’s back. But I love cheese anyway. You can add cheese to so much stuff and it becomes better. What casserole isn’t better with a layer of sharp cheddar on top? Or smoked gouda? (You have to love a cheese that tastes like bacon.) I do not generally just eat chunks of cheese, although when I was pregnant I used to get cravings for whole-milk mozzarella, put on a plate and melted just slightly. Yum.
Pasta. I used to eat pasta a lot more than I do now, almost every day. I don’t know if I’ve gotten lazy or what, but as far as just eating a big bowl of pasta, I probably only do that once or twice a month. I do use pasta in a lot of casseroles and stuff like that, though.

I actually can’t think of anything else right now. Could it be that I am so easy to please? Only four things? I thought about putting meat on there, but I like tofu, and I get cravings for veggie burgers a lot. I should pick some up the next time I’m at the store. As it is we don’t eat red meat, so if it came down to it I think I could go without it.

There you are, Internet. My first list. Probably the first of many. Maybe next time I will post something more important. I make no guarantees.

The Gory Side of Having Kids

2007-05-14T13:45:00.001-05:00

E had a minor accident today. He was holding the storm door open for me after I took out the trash, and I pulled it closed without realizing his finger was in the crack between the door and jamb. I had to call my mom to leave work to help me calm him down, and I told her I'd probably be in big trouble if she didn't work so close. He's had Tylenol and is sleeping on the couch. I feel terrible about it, even though I know that the odds of him getting his finger slammed in a door at some point were pretty high. I think everybody's done that at least once.

Yet Another Day One

2007-05-13T18:04:00.000-05:00

Well, actually it's 6 PM, so tomorrow will be another day one. One of many.

I am a mother of two, and my youngest is eight months old. With the first, E, the baby weight was fairly easy to lose once I got down to it. It's completely the opposite with my youngest, N. It seems that no matter what I do--low calorie, high protein, low fat, lots of exercise, tons of water--I gain weight. So for a while now I have done what I want. And, of course, I have gained weight. I actually weigh more now than I did when I was 9 months pregnant. Only two pounds more, but still. Sometimes I wish I was pregnant again so at least there would be some justification for all this weight.

Right now I weigh 231.2. There, it's said. When N was born I weighed somewhere around 219 (229 when I was 9 months pregnant) and I got down to 207 within a few months of his birth. I thought I was down to 189, and I was ecstatic. Then I got a new scale, since the old one would measure up to 75 pounds difference within a minute. No, seriously. I found out I was 207 and fell off the wagon, for lack of a better term.

I'm done. I have two pairs of pants that fit, and they're on the way out. I have less than five shirts that fit comfortably, and I have three pairs of shorts. I have boxes and boxes of clothes that I have packed up because they no longer fit. I can't bear to get rid of them, though, mostly because I'm not independently wealthy and can't afford to replace my wardrobe when I gain or lose weight.

I'm sure it will take me a while to find a balance between being able to control my weight and the rest of my life. And I'm here to write about it until I do.