A Family Affair

So, as it turns out, I was wrong about everything.

I did weigh in at 180.25 pounds on Saturday morning, bringing my total weight loss to 70.75 pounds, just a slither away from the pre-tennis injury weight of 180.0, and 28% off my original body weight. I figure I can get my size 8s to Stage 2 by the end of this week, when I’m finished with my period.

Yes, that’s right: I got my period while vacationing at Howard’s parents in Florida. Yippee!! It’s as if my body knew that I’d be traveling on a mission to impress the parents of my One True Love, and so decided to dump my emotional stability at Midway airport just prior to departure.

Howard's parents: the people to whom he looks for counsel and advice, the pair who are held as the example for happy marriages and lifelong love and Family, capital “F” required, these people are his family, and home is wherever they are. Their life as Floridians is relatively short, but they’ve set up a house filled with half a century of history and family, so even though Howard has never stayed in this house for more than a few days, and even though he’s not lived with his parents for over 20 years, this is home for him. Thinking about it now, it’s a wonder I didn’t just explode into a zillion pieces when the trip got mentioned back in the fall. Whose whacked idea was this? Oh yeah; it was mine. Well, all right then. If my man wants to go home in December, then I’m going to go with him. Just excuse me a moment while I curl up in the fetal position. In a minute or two, you can just stuff me into the overhead bin.

In fairness to my own nausea, Howard laid out his own expectations around this trip: he wanted to come home as an adult with his family in tow (DS and me). He wanted to show us off, not in a nyah-nyah way, but the way a son brings home anything he’s proud of. Only instead of a spectacular career or a fabulous degree, this time it’s me, That Girl From College, who, while far removed from that 80s girl, is still me, only with gray hair and a child in tow.

I’d talked to Howard about my concerns, and my fears, and that prickle along the short hairs of my neck that happened every time I thought about our trip. He reassured me, insisting that his parents were excited to see me, even more excited to see DS, and had planned the whole of our trip to be inviting and welcoming. I don’t know, I warned Howard. You know how twisted up I get around other people. And besides, I would be neither at home nor with family. “Yes, you are,” he told me. “Or at least, you will be. You’ll see.”

These words, home and family, conjure all form of conflict inside me. They are elusive as deer, in that I can see them sometimes, but I can never get close, and I can never touch them. They are as dangerous as drugs, because I want them so badly that I’ve swallowed the generics, and sometimes even the street-cut variety, just to experience some whispered shadow of that rush. I wrote books about homes, and about families. The emotions and the actions flooded the pages, but the faces remained as blank as the walls in their ‘homes’. I didn’t paint my characters, because I couldn’t see them. Who had family? Where was home?

I’d heard once that family is something one creates-and that those called family are not necessarily those related to you. I believed that, and I looked for it. I looked and I hoped, and I dug like a pig for those truffles, but all I got was a snoot full of dirt and a couple of acorns. Eventually, ‘family’ became one of those words that belonged in other people’s lives-it was something that might exist, but not in my world. I've chosen people along the way who I thought qualified as family. I made the same mistake over and over, choosing people who needed me, and who disappeared once I solved their need (usually financial). Over the years, I've grafted and chainsawed so many limbs on and off my family tree that it looks pretty much like that nasty 'evergreen' from A Charlie Brown Christmas without the lone shiny bulb that, while dragging the whole scraggy thing down, at least makes it festive.

Then Howard came back into my life. We created a haven for ourselves here in Chicago, and, as much as I can face my fears to build a family and a home with him, we have succeeded. My hopes, still grandiose beyond anything a reasonable person should experience, hover over our shared dinners and our intimate chats, and, when I’m feeling particularly insane, our plans to visit Family at their Home. Yes, it was my idea that we visit Howard’s parents in Florida, and yes, it was with a heart full of hope and expectation. Clearly, this was doomed to failure.

Does everyone remember that I was wrong about everything?

I’ll spare the details, since these are private citizens who appear not to share my desire to blow personal baggage chunks all over their readers. I’m still in the middle of it, but despite the nerves, and my hormones, and a couple of hiccups that have been entirely my fault and not at all funny (though I’m hoping they will be, someday), I’ve discovered something important. It’s not the pursuit of the perfect visit that makes the trip right, and it’s not the rightness of the journey that makes the trip perfect. What does make it right, and perfect, is the people. Or rather, these people.

It wasn’t just Howard who held up his folks as the Primer on Parenting and the Manual for Happiness at Home. It was me, too. From my desire to wear a round-cut diamond with tapered baguettes on the side to kissing the same Marvelous Man every day for the rest of my life, these people have formed my conception of happiness, and of family, and of home. I chose them once, long ago, when I could not have known the prized decision I had made, and at a time in my life when I could not have been chosen, because I was not choose-able. I kept them all these years as a beacon of hope for my own tattered dreams of family and lifelong love. Whenever another love affair dissolved into the 'what were you thinking?' stage, I would remember Howard's parents, and I would know that love did exist, and that if I looked hard enough, I would find it.

During one of the moments this week when I unclenched long enough to spew my progesterone-depleted tears all over the lanai, Howard pointed out to me that I should stop worrying. I come from them, he reminded me. They made a great son because they are great people. As usual, when it comes to things like this, Howard was right. He is a great son, and they are great, great people.

I think at last I understand that Family is not some ideal, and it’s not some cerebral, theoretical thing. It’s a human-encrusted experience, complete in and of itself. Being a family is being a family. You can’t be one if you aren’t one. And you can’t be home until you’re home. But you can be as soon as you decide it.

So here I am in Florida, surrounded by my family, and home at last.

Guess I wasn’t wrong about everything.

A the R(ighted)

What's In A Name?

I’ve become my company’s Skinny Bitch.

Fascinating stuff, this, since I may have as many as 38.0 pounds yet to lose. But I’ll take it. Heck, I’m rolling around in it. I’m the Skinny Bitch. Me. Former Fat Lady, is a Be-yatch.

First, I’ll brag a little and report that I weighed in at 182.0 pounds this evening, which means I could be as low as 180.50 tomorrow morning. I will have my evening snack, because I should, and also because I don’t want to jinx myself. But I am consistently 1.50 pounds heavier at night and before dinner than I am in the morning before breakfast. I’m bowling straight toward the 180-pound goal, and after tomorrow, I’ll have a teeny little half-pound spare left standing and nothing else. Yee-ha.

This “happifies” me even more so, since I created a demi-goal of losing 14 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years, as suggested by my WW leader. She asked us to set a goal for what we wanted on the other side of this 7-week obstacle course, and Howard and I both agreed to continue losing as normal. All went well until the Great Traps debacle, and until this morning, I was cemented on 184.0 sucky pounds. Then this morning brought 183.125 and now tonight, 182.0. So, if I’m 180.50 pounds tomorrow, or even 181.0, I have a true and clean shot to hit 179.0 by January 1, which would be my 14 pound loss goal.

Second, I saw a picture of me from this afternoon when I was crawling around DS’s preschool classroom building a gingerbread house with him (which did NOT come home, btw. Are you high? That thing had jelly beans on it!). Howard and Lynda the Nanny/Goddess were snapping digital shots like the paparazzi, and I got snapped in mid-crawl, my face in profile to the camera, and most of my torso showing behind DS’s reindeer hat. I compared it to my Before Shot (coming soon), and I think I’ve reached another goal, which is that I actually look different from when I began this weight loss. I mean, of course I look different-I’ve lost a whole 3^rd grader off my 2-dimensional heiny (70.5 pounds maybe!). But more than that-my face is not just a thinner version of what it was. I look different. I wear a different face. And that’s as it should be, for I am a different woman.

But the big news is that I have a new label at work. Skinny Bitch.

The place where I work has a cafeteria, and, for the most part, it serves the requisite food, all the while swearing on their perky hats that it’s not fast food, even though it looks and tastes just like it would if it came in a paper wrapper and/or a Styrofoam box. It’s a pretty typical suburban dining hall, with little sections around the perimeter, with such inspired titles as ‘Deli’, ‘Grill’ and ‘Dessert’. Well, nobody can say they’re not direct about that, at least. The salad bar is in the middle, a sort of green oasis treading water in the midst of fried onions, fleshy burgers and boxed “salads” that have a thin layer of ‘garden’ at the bottom, but otherwise resemble the splayed innards of a bacon/cheese casserole gone berserk.

I don’t eat preassembled anything anymore-mostly because I don’t trust everyone to wash their hands before returning to their station. But after the Great Collapse drama, I refuse to eat anything that I haven’t built/created/supervised through its entire foodstuff lifecycle. Besides, I think that any food pressed into the shape of a gong is going to rebel against the first thing that sets it free-sort of like a genie, only one that’s been housed between foul-smelling blue bacteria and hours-old pork ‘crumbles’, and who just got showered with sweet, white glop smelling of poppyseed or a Ranch. Seriously, I just won’t take the chance. So I pay through the nose to assemble my salad ‘open faced’.

Usually I avoid the cafeteria altogether. I need to get out every day, just to see something other than my computer screen or one of a dozen Suck-Ups who come to call on me throughout the day. Yes, yes, I know they’re working, but their very presence prevents me from doing the same, and so I dodge them at lunch, their veritable Witching Hour. I go out, browse some size-down clothes or sneak a coffee in some place where the drinks must be served in stainless steel, or else they’ll eat through the mug, the table, and then my new wool pants on their way to scorch Indonesia and the whole of the South China Sea. These days, though, I’m avoiding the Christmas Crazies, and it’s been whackier than usual at work, so I don’t have more than about 20 minutes and so I’m downstairs with my compadres.

Like I said, the cafeteria is pretty nice as in-house eateries go, and the salad bar works. I avoid all mayonnaise-based concoctions, steer clear of anything misspelled, including the “Chik’n Bits”, and I skip the dressings altogether. Usually my salad is a good layer of romaine, cucumber slices, tomato wedges, a smattering of black olives, mushrooms, broccoli, a wee bit of smoked turkey and egg white.

This last is how the whole S.B. thing started. The salad bar does that egg-slicer thing and seems to expect that I’ll just drop a whole julienned, once-fetal chicken on my plate. Well, forget it. I’ve never liked egg yolk, and now I refuse to eat the fat. So I pluck through the bin with the tongs, finding the egg “crusts” that have only the whites. This slows up the line, and I get a lot of exasperated sighs as people ‘play through’ the bar on their way to the soups.

I built my salad in the slow lane, with no fewer than 5 people passing me on the right, and when I was finished, I got a Gargantuan coffee and headed to the cashier line. The line was pretty long, so I did the expected thing and started looking at people’s trays. That’s when I realize that I no longer eat like a typical person, and that I probably never can again. Onion rings were everywhere, along with fried fish, layered burgers and plates stacked with pizza ‘slices’ bigger than the last 8-cut medium that I ate before I started my diet. Plus, nearly everyone had a dessert of some kind on their tray, and yes, I count the Nutri-Grain bar. Compare the fat and sugar content to any Twinkie. The N-G is better, but only by degree. When it comes right down to it, the N-G is not a grain so much as it’s a soft candy bar too cowardly to dip itself in chocolate, and so markets itself naked, pretending that somehow, that’s healthy.

So as I’m cataloging the fare around me, I catch a woman whose been eyeing my tray. Fair’s fair, I guess, and since I’m in line and we’re all bored (and of course, there’s no talking in line, just like in the elevator), my tray is fodder for commentary. This woman, who looks like I did about 50 pounds ago, has a ‘salad’ that is covered in cheese and Bac’n, and is so heavily layered in dressing that it looks like someone orange bled all over her bowl. She also has a roll and a cup of cream soup so full that broccoli-infused lava is squirming out from under the lip. I don’t know this woman, but I think I know what she’s doing, and what she thinks she’s doing. She got a salad, because she wants to lose weight, and you eat salad if you want to drop pounds. But lettuce and tomatoes alone are dull, so you have to fancy it up a little with cheese and bacon. Why not? It’s a salad, after all, and salads are good for you.

How I wish.

Anyway, I catch her face just before our eyes meet, and I see her nose crinkle and her lips curl upward in what is clearly a silent ‘ewwww!’. Then she catches my eye, sizes me up and a pursed-lips expression follows as she looks away. Look how I’m eating. And then look how I look.

I saw that same woman 2 days later. She had more or less the same thing on her plate, though this time there was less cheese, the soup was gone and a slice of cheesecake had replaced the roll. She’d brought a friend along, a man of stature who wore his spare tire as a sign of prosperity. We did the tray-glance exchange, and then I saw her elbow her friend and tip her head toward my lunch. I hear their whispered exchange, and it goes basically, like this: Who eats like that? Not me. Heck no. Me neither. Let that skinny bitch have her rabbit food.

The thing is, despite my pride at being labeled, even with the Bitch piece (and hey, that ain’t the first time I’ve been called that!), I have empathy for this woman. I suspect that behind her chide at me, she suffers.

There is no arrogance in what I say. I remember the confusion over why I could eat so ‘little’ (at 1,800 calories a day) and not lose, or when I ate ‘salad’ with cheese and ham and didn’t get why I stayed the same nasty fat-girl weight. It’s burned in my brain how ugly and bloated I felt when I saw those skinny girls choosing nonfat yogurt and ‘lettuce’ –you couldn’t call what they bought a salad. There’s nothing on it! I feel for my sisters, and I want to reach out to them. But what do I know? I’m a skinny bitch who eats like a bird. It’s not natural. It’s not normal. If that’s what it takes, then weight loss is impossible.

Sometimes I think that the best way I can show support is to keep doing what I’m doing. To show the people around me that one can eat ‘light’ and show loss, and be happy. I am clearly healthy, and I’m smaller every week. And I’m right here. If anyone asks me how I stay so thin, I tell them the truth-I watch every bite like a Federal Reserve driver with a truckload of cash, and I suffer every day, watching the cookie parades, smelling the oil-crusted delights, and wishing that I could somehow eat as I pleased and look as I want.

But no, that’s not really true anymore. That’s how it began, and I do still suffer. In fact, I’ll tell you that I positively loathe chocolate now. It is my sworn enemy. How many ways can one decorate cocoa with refined sugar? Those stupid petit fours are back, and this time, they have sliced Reese’s miniatures as hats. WTF?! I’ve taken to eating coffee grounds at my desk, because I don’t dare refill my mug. Who knows what Black Forest Troll lurks under the Splenda? Whatever it is, it’ll have to come down the hall to me-I ain’t going over that bridge.

Despite all that, though, I am eating the way I want to eat. Food fuels my body, and I’m so energized and spirited in this form that my temptation to stray slides further away from reality every day. Hang on, I want to tell the Bac'n Babe. Don’t look at the end point, and don’t even look at the start. Take it one meal at a time. Heck, take it one bite at a time. There’s no rush, and there’s no risk. But there’s all kinds of rewards as you go.

Like being labeled Skinny. No matter what the noun that follows.

PS-Bought a cashmere sweater at Ann Taylor the other day. I’ve never paid so much for one item of clothing in my life. But it looks pretty, it shows off my boobs, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be part of my permanent wardrobe. Details to follow.

A the L(unch Buster)

That's a Wrap

Well, this is fascinating.

I weighed in on Saturday morning at 184.0 pounds, which is UP three-quarters of a pound from last week. Flummoxed, but not too upset, I figured it was a correction from last week's (also) inexplicable 3.6 loss. I also suspected that Howard might have stolen some of my weight loss, since he reported a 5.2 pound dip (bastard!), doing more or less exactly what I did all week. I can't really blame my period, since I was only on Day 18 Saturday, and I hadn't cheated AT ALL this week at work, a feat in itself, since the Suck-Up Sales Reps came out in formation against me. They sent cookies the size of footballs and "holiday baskets" that resembled more of a stash from a Cheese Freak than anything sensible for a Weight Watcher like me. I don't expect the Suck-Ups to remember my state of being or my current crusade, but I do expect them to send me something a little less "hippy" as in, 'make me look more ____' once I've eaten all the almond-dusted, chocolate-covered, braised-in-alcohol Evils.

I did what any panicked dieter would do, and set every item right next to this big guy in my department. He teeters somewhere near 7 feet tall, and he's about 19 years old, so he has the metabolism of a jackrabbit on jet fuel. I plopped them down on his desk and demanded that he sit there until every crumb disappeared. He gave me a wink and smiled, licking his lips. "I won't disappoint you, Amy." Phew! And thank you.

And still, somehow the pounds stuck AND accumulated on my frame. How rude! I went over my spreadsheet, looking carefully for hidden calories, combing my memory for forgotten Rack of Lambs that I had neglected to catalog, and secretly chastising myself for continuing to live as a couch potato. I no longer eat like a root vegetable, but clearly I'm going to continue looking like one if I don't start trotting on the treadmill. Okay, then. I surrender. Bring for the conveyor belt; I'll put my floppy flesh upon it.

I'm surprised by my Zen at the whole thing, but I really didn't do anything wrong. Or so I thought.

Howard and I found this place called Great Wraps a few weeks ago. It's right next to a Subway and it offers steamed/grilled wraps that are a zillion times tastier than the Goodyears-Posing-As-Chicken-Breast fare at my previous favorite sandwich shop. I've been going there nearly every day, ordering the chicken wrap with nothing but lettuce, tomato, and a little teriyaki sauce to dress it up. The wrap is a standard 12-inch jobbie, and since they don't baste it like they do their other creations, I thought I was safe.

The normal low-carb, high fiber wrap that Howard and I use for weekend turkey/tomato combos is an 80-calorie delight, with fourteen crunchy grams of fiber and only 1 lone fat gram. In Weight Watchers terms, it's a 1-point food. I figured that while the Great Wraps couldn't be so amazing, it was likely a standard tortilla, with about 100 calories, 2 grams of fat and a little fiber.

Wrong. This nasty, evil, suck-me-in flour devil is three hundred and twenty calories, and 10 fat grams. TEN! That is 6 points in Weight Watcher-land. I only get twenty-four points in the whole day! Six points, and I had been eating these things 3 or 4 times a week for the last 3 weeks. My weight gain is a mystery no more.

So, okay. Breathing....though much harder to do since my 100% denim size 10 jeans are cutting off the circulation in my tummy. Never, ever trust a restaurant--even one that looks healthy and appears to care about your figure. Ten fat grams. I can't even get into the carb count. Normally, I don't eat 16 fat grams all day, and this FLOUR tortilla that was not braised in butter has 10. So, out goes the Not-So-Great-Wraps, even though my next sandwich is free. Free. Ha! Only if 'free' means, 'free to jump up a size in those no-stretch jeans you were about to throw out.' Instead, I'm throwing out my Frequent Eater card. If I'm going to frequent-eat, I'm going back to the crunchy wraps.

On the up side, Howard found a fat-free hummus recipe, and he made us Grilled Shrimp and hummus wraps for dinner. Now those were Great Wraps.

So long, you Monsters of Deception. I have learned this lesson the hard way. I shan't have to repeat it. Great Wraps, indeed. Seems more like Great Traps.

A the U(nwrapped)

What Child is This?

I conceived my son on September 8, 2001 and gave birth to him 39 weeks and 2 days later. I had a textbook pregnancy, and there was nothing but nature and nurture between DS and I when we gazed at each other the first time. Becoming a parent was easy.

Becoming a Mommy was another matter entirely.

I grew up thinking I wouldn’t have children. I figured that between the baggage of my youth and my ‘not crazy, but you can see it from here’ mental state, I should steer clear of producing Tomorrow’s Leaders. I developed what I called my 12-carat/10 centimeter rule. The 12 carats referred to the size of the diamond a man would have to produce in order for me to consider having a child. Grace Kelly received a 12-carat engagement ring from Monaco’s Prince Rainier upon their engagement. She bore Rainier 3 children in exchange, but they were royalty. I took the Commoner’s Up-charge. One 12-carat diamond ring per baby. Payable up front, no refunds.

Ten centimeters is how far the cervix opens to allow the baby to pass through. That’s 4 inches. Pinch your index finger to your thumb, and that’s how the cervix looks normally. Now spread those 2 fingers as far apart as they’ll go. That’s 4 inches. This does not take into account that the average size of a newborn’s head is 13.5 inches in circumference, which is roughly the same size as a softball. “No person is worth stretching me to 10 centimeters,” I’d say. “Forget it.”

Then one night, X and I were talking about our most recent visit to see my aunt in a nearby suburb. Her house was a spectacle of entropy and noise, due in large part to my 4 cousins, all of whom were under 5. X and I had been having our own I Want a Baby-talk for over a year, but had never reached consensus or quorum. Starting a family was something to put on the To Do list: something to think about, but never something that made it to the top of the line. I paused, looking at X. Suddenly I was ready.

“Do you think we should try?” I asked him. He was quiet for a long time. “I want to,” he said.

That was September 8, 2001.

All the years I spent worrying about the labor and delivery were wasted on the pain-free experience I had. I didn’t even bother going to the birthing center until I was fully dilated (I did not know that at the time, but I do think it’s funny). DS was posterior (wrong position) and it was my first labor, so everything pointed to a long and complicated birth. No chance. It was intense, it wasn’t painful. DS breathed his first just a few minutes before 2am. The midwife cleaned out his nose and then laid him on my belly. I sat still, my eyes closed and my brain racing. It’s not real, I told myself. So long as I keep my eyes closed and don’t see him, this isn’t real.

Then he made a little noise and I opened my eyes. There he was, all small and wide-eyed, looking around and pushing against me. My arms cradled instinctively around him, and the room vanished. Somewhere nearby, X kissed me, but I barely remember it. This was the new man in my life. I couldn’t even make a meatloaf, and here, I’d made a person.

Over the next 24 hours, DS nursed when he felt like it, but was otherwise quiet. Wow, I thought. This is great. I had an easy conception and and easy birth. Now I have one of those Easy Babies.

As it turned out, though, DS was not Easy Baby. He was not even Typical Baby. He was the Advanced Calculus to my Beginner’s Algebra, and he taught me early and often that I was wholly unprepared to care for another person. I didn’t sleep through the night again for three and a half years. He nursed constantly, was incapable of being left alone, or even put down for a moment, and during one period, he woke up every hour, all night long, for 7 months. My life became an endless loop of diaper changes, movements confined to baby-in-arms and fitful sleep. I thought sometimes of the talks I’d planned to have with my Anointed Offspring and I scoffed at my own naiveté. Whoever said parenting was rewarding was an ass. Or a man who didn’t ever have to function on 45 minutes of sleep.

Nobody else seemed to have problems. My girlfriends with children talked about how they played with their children all day long, or how they had time to read and talk with their husbands in the evenings because their babies started sleeping through the night at 3 weeks old. I nursed DS to sleep, and sometimes he wouldn’t let go of me for hours. I’d be stuck in one position with teeny teeth carving marks into my flesh. I stared down at the angry creature in my arms, seething at me with a metal-filled mouth, and I wondered why I didn’t get one of those little fairy creatures that my girlfriends got? What child is this who hates me so?

I went back to work when DS was 2, entrusting him first with X and then later with a nanny. Back then, I didn’t have the Angel/Goddess who is his nanny now, and I sweated every day. Did he cry when she showed up because he knew I was about to leave, or because she was secretly boiling him in oil all day long? I would never know, because he didn’t talk, and couldn’t tell me.

At night when I came home, I gave my evenings over to him, but I wasn’t really present. I watched him stack blocks or bang on his keyboards, and I made all the appropriate, cheerful and supportive remarks, but I didn’t involve myself with him, or commit myself to playing along. I think I was waiting for him to tell me how to make him happy, and when he’d be big enough that I would get my life back. Certainly I had no ideas on what could work.

When he was still speechless at 3, I began the pilgrimage across the Developmental Delay desert. At the end, armed with a diagnosis, I found relief in the confirmation of my suspicions, but also fear and sadness, knowing that I could be parent to a child forever. He would never grow up. This job would never grow easier.

And then one day, I was sitting at my desk feeling sorry for myself that I had to go through all this crap to get DS this help, and wondering why it was so much harder for me to get my child what he needs. My mind replayed the months of solitary with him as companion, when neither of us knew what to say to the other, or how to behave. I thought about my wishes to home school him, and the utter futility of that hope, given his condition and my need to work full time (and then some). I wondered why I couldn’t make it work with X, or with the transition man who followed, and wondered if Howard would give up, too, seeing that parenting a special needs child was just too much work.

Somewhere in all that obscene self-pity, I realized that I had never accepted the fact that I was a Mommy, and that I had a son who needed me. Not just for his special needs, either, but as his Mommy. I’d given him years of my life and hours of my time, but I’d never fully handed over my heart to him, nor accepted his need for Someone to Watch Over Me.

I had an epiphany right there at my cubicle. I had given DS everything but what he really wanted from me--his Mommy. I'd been so busy taking care of him that I'd forgotten to take care with him. And so I gave up trying to be normal. I gave up hoping that DS would ever ‘recover’ and be a typical boy. I decided to focus on what he can do, and what joy he brings me (it’s a lot), to do what I had to do to get him what he needed, but to stop wishing that this cup would pass from me.

I expected the transition to take a long time, with many relapses with me slipping back into self-pity or blundering confusion over how to be with him, or how to take care of it. But instead, I went instantly to a state of peace and calm. I made my pronouncements, I committed to my son, and suddenly, I was okay.

I was okay with everything, including the fact that my life would probably never return or be ‘normal’. I wasn’t all that happy before, anyway. Working hard to retrieve those years makes about as much sense as trying to catch cancer. Besides, despite all the tough times behind us and all the challenges ahead, I have a beautiful little boy at home who loves me to his bones, and who needs me. He needs his Mommy. And I need him.

I went home early that night, leaving my laptop at my office. When I got to the house, he was there, playing on the floor with his trains. I got down to the floor and sat beside him, not even bothering to change out of my work clothes. I expected him to get territorial with his trains, as he often does. Trains are sacred territory to this child. So I prepared to sit silently, watching him. But I barely got my legs crossed before he scooted over toward me and leaned his head against me. “Hi, Mommy,” he said. “Wanna play trains?”

Yeah, honey. I sure do.

These last few weeks have transformed me and him and us. We are a twosome now, a dyad of love and understanding, and, thank the heavens, of acceptance.

Things are rarely as hard as we make them out to be. Parenting was hard because I made it hard. It’s still tough, but the challenge comes from the outside. The fight against reality that raged inside me for 4 years is gone. The frustration and anger I felt all this time is so foreign and distant, remembering it feels like recalling something that happened to someone else. I’ve never had to work harder to earn a title, and I’ve never felt more deserving of it, now that it’s mine.

What child is this? This child is mine.

A the M(ommy)

All About Even

So, apart from the fact that my hair is still escaping from my scalp, which is freaking me out, life is pretty good here in the Chicagoland 'burbs. After 41 years and 9 months of tumult, I might be ready to say things are evening out in my life.

For example, I weighed in on Saturday at 183.25 pounds, down 67.75 pounds from my apex, and 3 pounds from last week. I have no real idea how this happened, since I did everything the same, and I am not expecting my period for a while. I'll take it, though. Twice in the last week, I've remarked about my weight loss to people, and they were both surprised that I still wanted to lose more. "You look normal," they both said. One of them was a Weight Watchers receptionist. That was pretty cool.

It was also about the only odd thing that happened this week, apart from my incessant head-shed. I'm pretty sure my body is punishing me for all the weeks of food deprivation, and it will take me some time to gain its favor back. I continue to push the proteins, even topping out above 100 grams today. My goal is 125, but considering I had been eating around 50 per day in the Disorder Days, I'm pretty happy about my progress. Still, my body is clearly pissed at me, and so I must amend before I can a-mend.

It's so great to be eating more and still losing at the same rate. I did not expect that, believe me. I did a thousand incantations of 'I will not freak at the scale, I will not freak at the scale," in anticipation of a major slowdown in my weight loss, because I was SURE that I'd have a couple of less-than-a-pound losses and go back to starving. And in truth, I did skip my snacks on Friday night, which I probably should not have done, but sometimes we old crones just don't learn our lessons. I should go take a shower right now and see all the brown hair in the drain. That ought to be proof enough that I can never skip another meal. Anyway, I'm down 3 pounds this week, and I'm eating much better, and I'm no longer in a constant state of hunger.

In the interim, I continue to try on my jewelry to see what fits. The last qualifier for any ring is my left ring finger. It was a size 6 when I was normal, and it ballooned up to a 9.5 or a 10 at my heaviest. Over the last 67.75 pounds, my fingers shrink and my ring size drops along with it. About 2 weeks ago, I managed to get my size 7 ring on to the left hand. I had a little bit of fat-finger going on around the band, but I got it on without sticking my hand into the freezer, and without using lubricant of any kind, so it counts.

I have a mother's ring, a beautiful emerald and diamond job that X bought for me when I was pregnant. It's a size 6, and I've never been able to wear it on my ring finger, and there for a while, I couldn't wear it on my pinky. But this week, during the cold snap, I slid that baby right down my ring finger. I didn't keep it on for fear my skin would wrap around the band and refuse to let go, but there it was. The next day I wore the ring to work. I wore it all day in recycled, overheated office space, and when I got home that night, it slid off, just like a regular ring ought to. I'm back to a standard size 6 ring. My slender, tapered fingers have returned. Now, if only I could stop chewing the nails down to the bone....Well, one goal at a time.

Next, I slithered into a pair of size 10 jeans this week. Size 10! Remember, I still think they're cutting things larger than in my Jordache youth, but still, they went on comfortably, and I even managed to bend over and crouch down without pain. Of course, I later learned than any percentage of spandex counts as a stretch, and those were 1%, so I'm back to searching for pure denim. I think in the final analysis, I'm a 10 or even an 8 in a stretch, a 12-ish in 100% denim, and a 14 in low-rise. I had a fascinating conversation with a cocktail waitress on Saturday night. She was wearing her jeans in the fashionable 'just above the pubic bone' way, and I'm pretty sure that her t'shirt was a former nighshirt of Ebeneezer Scrooge's, it was so long. Still, it gave her a whole long torso, lithe look, and when I asked her about sizing, she admitted that her pubic-rise jeans were 3 sizes larger than her 'regular size', since of course women are larger around the hips. Okay! I hadn't even thought of that.

In truth, I don't think I can face buying size 14s, even if it makes sense to do so. I'm still a little jiggly in the tummy and I'm not about to build a collection of Scrooge-wear just so I can button my pants below my hip sockets. That will have to wait. When I'm a 6, I'll gladly buy size 10 low-rise. Maybe then, I'll even have the tummy to support them.

AND THEN....

In a daring Saturday morning move, I pulled out my Size 8 100% denim tall girl jeans and tried them on. I wore these jeans regularly when I was of normal body weight, and this summer, when I was at my peak, I could barely get them on above the knee. I had cried for an hour after that, and it had taken me the better part of a day to work up the courage to do it. I didn't want to try those jeans on back then. I knew they'd be way too small, and I knew it would humiliate me to try lifting them over my heft. But since I've been down the slimming road before, and since I always regret not having a Starting Point with measurements or clothing fits, I resolved to give myself one this time. Like I said, these drawers cleared my knees by about an inch, and that was it.

I nearly fell over trying them on, since I was so unstable on my fat feet that I couldn't really bend over to pull them, and of course those jeans weren't about to tug up over my thighs. So I marked the place in permanent ink on my brain and put them away, wondering if perhaps it was forever. That was June 5.

About a month ago, I had them up to my butt. They couldn't clear even my flounder-like bottom, though frankly I was pretty happy about having them up that high. I can wear these jeans-barely, at 170 pounds. It isn't until 160 that I can wear them anytime. So, a month ago when I was 190, I hadn't expected more than I got. Those jeans were climbing, but they weren't ready to summit yet. Heck, I hadn't even made Camp 4. But the oxygen levels were decreasing and I felt that giddiness of success climbing into my legs.

Well, yesterday I hauled them out again. I got a pair of those Size 10 fashion-retarded painters on me in a fair-and-square Stage 3, and I couldn't resist the temptation to try on those sexy 8s. I yanked them off the hanger, took a deep, dry-mouth gulp at the skinny legs, and slid them on over my feet.

Stage 1!

I can't close them, even while lying down and holding my breath. I have about an inch to go, even in that position, but man, it is really close. It'll be about 170 pounds when I can do Stage 2 with them, and probably 165 before I can go Stage 3. But, in thinking that 170 is just 13 pounds away-maybe another month or two, and that I can get those jeans up and over my hips, and that the octopus that is my stomach is hanging out of the fly and gasping for breath, it's about to be caged in those beauties. All hail the even sizes! I'm on my way to an 8. I'm not in goal jeans yet, but I can see them from here. Let me tell you, it is looking mighty fine.

I promise some sharp-tongued commentary on the weekend. I saw a polka band, did the Gem Show with Howard and lost my temper with a bank teller, and all need/deserve telling. Plus, I have my PowerPoint presentation tomorrow, and that should feed my sarcastic fingers for a while. But for now, I'm happy to be happy, and content to let the Stressor come and eat at me a while. I'll be too busying buzzing over my nearly-figure 8 shape to notice.

Of course, I'm going to look dang stupid wearing size 8 black sexy-jeans and a crop top, sporting the latest in the Female Comb-over, but hey, life ain't ever perfect.

A the E(ven)

PowerPointless

I have one of those suck-up jobs. Not one where I have to do a lot of sucking up, but where lots of people suck up to me. I work in a derivative of procurement, and I manage an 8-figure “spend” on a commodity represented by an oversaturated market. I receive no fewer than 6 cold calls a day, and that does not count those who send me e-mail, leave me long-winded messages or who call me and do not mark their attempt with a voicemail.

I have instructed the sales reps to stop upchucking their pitch on me. I was on their side of the fence for 6 years, and so I know what they’re going to say. I also know that most of it is generic sales blather, and as I have more in my job description than “Grow Bored Listening to Lies”, I must often cut them off. I don’t harbor any particular resentment for those earning their living the Smiling & Dialing way, but frankly, even though I have been in their shoes, I stepped out of them for a reason.

Here’s why: there are only so many ways to say, “Hi, my name is Nobody You Know, and I’m hawking Something You Don’t Need, but I’m hoping that if I keep you on the phone long enough, you’ll let me come visit you, so I can Put a Name With a Face.”

Well, first of all, it’s ‘put a face with a name’, but somehow, no one remembers how to invert the obvious. Second, who cares what I look like, and more to the point, who cares what they look like? If you ever want to see Boys from Brazil incarnate, go to any Fortune 500 lobby and watch the sales reps come and go. Never was there a more cookie-cutter bunch of coat-and-tie goofballs, sporting all the latest in TrendyWear, talking on their cell phones, and grinning through yet another throttling by someone like me who doesn’t want to talk.

And yet, as I am charged with managing the Cat Herd, I must speak with them. I must listen to them pitch, and I must sift the facts to find a pool of vendors to support my clients, the senior management.

Part of my job is evaluating who is calling on us now, cutting out the drek and replacing it with new and shiny models, eager to please their new client. I’ve given a presentation to the CIO on my plans for judging the pool, and I am now on the cusp of demonstrating how I will proceed. The last time I did the CIO meeting, I had a staffer put together all my documents. I wrote them up, I did the ‘director’s cut’ on the graphics and the layout, but he was the one who authored the slides and who ran the projector at the meeting. This time, in part because that guy is now too busy to do my work, and in part because I wanted to learn the tool, I decided to build the presentation myself.

Enter Microsoft PowerPoint.

I am a Microsoft Office wizard. This is as a lay person, admittedly, but I can make Outlook, Word, and Excel dance as if they had pistons in their Help directory. I know all the keyboard shortcuts, I type over 100 words a minute, and I’m an Old Crone when it comes to technology. I use it all, I like most of it, and I am the go-to girl among my non-technical colleagues. Want to know how to mail merge? Call Amy. Need a .pst to free up space in your Sent items? Come on by. Ever see a macro run? Ah, sit beside me, grasshopper…

PowerPoint has thus far evaded me. I studied enough to get ‘above average skills’ on a test once, but I forgot it all as soon as I hit the ‘submit’ button. Frankly, as a recruiter, my line of work never called for presentations. To a recruiter, “presentation” means ‘sending a resume via e-mail.’ Hardly reason for a slideshow.

This job, though, and in particular this company, crave PowerPoint presentations. They salivate at the pretty graphs, they ogle the bullet points, and they ooh like children at the circus at any kind of animation. Never mind that PowerPoint is essentially Tetris for Executives; pretty and interesting, but suitable only in small doses and never mixed with real work. PowerPoint takes serious messages and turns them into Eye Candy-Grams.

I learned this when a coworker offered to help me with my presentation. She’s done a slide show for this same CIO twice a month for over a year, so not only does she know PowerPoint to its core, she also knows what makes Captain Technology drool. I lugged my computer up to her desk, sent her the files I’d created and opened the first slide. I started to talk through my them, and she held up a graceful hand to quiet me.

“You’re not using the Standard Presentation Template. Hang on, it’s right here on the Portal.”

Her fingers stroke the mouse button and in a moment, her screen fills with a pre-designed slide the color of a melting dreamsicle. She half-turns toward me, fingers still gliding. “Captain won’t let you present if you’re on a non-standard template.”

Whoa, call the cops. I'm using a non-standard template. What if the neighbors find out?

“Thanks,” I mumble, wondering how I’m to get the Blessed Template to lay over my already-drafted slides. Coworker reads my mind.

“You can copy everything over. Here, I’ll do it for you.”

Never underestimate the motivation of the under-utilized. This woman is a powerhouse of skill and drive, but she’s 3 weeks from the end of her assignment, and her work load has dwindled to….well, to helping Goobers like me put their presentations on the Sacred Scrolls. I lean over, watching keystrokes blaze across her laptop screen. By the time I’ve mustered up words enough to ask what she’s doing, it’s finished. “There,” she reports. “Now let’s fix your slide text. It’s way too wordy. Didn’t they teach you about the PowerPoint four-by-four in MBA School?”

How in the world can you put four-by-four and PowerPoint in the same sentence? Is this MicroSoft’s SUV? Also, what does she mean, it’s too wordy? That’s how I write, it’s who I am, it’s all part of my charm!

As for ‘MBA School’, I have 4 half-degrees from institutions all over the country, primarily because I keep changing my mind about what I want to study, and invariably I get halfway through and decide that the degree program is pointless, because this is school, and I work in the real world. Then a few years pass, and I decide that I must have an advanced degree, and so I pick something that interest me, switch to Something Practical, get halfway through, decide that the degree program is pointless….So no, I never learned the PowerPoint/SUV secrets. Woe is me.

It turns out that ‘four by four’ is code for another acronym I know better and adhere to less, which is KISS, or ‘Keep it Simple, Stupid’. In this case, it means Keep it Short, Jackass. When delivering new information, one should have no more than 4 bullet points on a slide, and no more than 4 words per bullet. I stew on this while Coworker chops up my text. While she works, I practice my Bullet Haiku.

· This is impossibly stupid

· How can you morons

· Not understand what I

· Need to tell you?

Not bad. After all, I’ve always liked poetry.

· It’s okay if you

· Prefer pictures over words

· I make more money

· Than all of you.

My presentation grows to 23 slides, and wherever I can, I drop in the 4x4. I get crazy and do a little 3x4, and once, I split up the 4 into two 2x2. Sacrilege! Eventually I add hyperlinks, a few graphics, and Coworker helps me with 2 tables and a chart. When I’m done, it’s more Mess than Monet, but it’s stuffed with data, and lined by dreamsicles, and my accomplice pronounces me graduated.

At the end of the day today, my magnificent boss comes by to take a look at my work. I’m nervous still, even though I have conquered the 4x4. After all, my manager is the PowerPoint Hierophant, the One Great Graph Man, the All-Color Accountant complete with Pie Chart. Surely my measly texted bullets can’t compare.

He’d clearly prefer more art, but my gamble to seduce his left brain triumphs and he praises my work. We talk over a few minor things he’d like me to add-no criticism, just him thinking out loud to help me bolster my presentation. I shut down my laptop, satisfied.

“See you Monday at the meeting,” I tell him.

“Maybe next time,” he tells me. “You got bumped. Budgets come first, you know. Numbers before art.”

Curses! All that work for…

Well, hang on now. I have another sidearm in my MS arsenal. And now I can Speak Art to Power anywhere I like. I have the gift of graph. I am the PowerPoint Priestess. I write and bullet, and I am not heard.

But at least I look pretty.

184.0 pounds this morning. No idea how that happened. I’ve been 187 all week, and then Poof! I’m lighter. I did this, despite having some whack-job vendor deliver GODIVA chocolates to my desk. They are definitely off the list. Definitely.

It was really, really hard not to starve today, since I was down 3 pounds and there’s a weigh-in tomorrow. But I did it. I’m not snacking tonight, but I did eat all my dinner, including the carbs.

· Maybe next time I’ll

· Detail my loss by

· Drawing a chart and

· Sharing it. Or not.

A the T(runcated)

Love Game

I weighed in Saturday at 186.75 pounds, off 64.25 from my peak, and just 7 pounds away from my next goal of dipping below 180.0, a weight I carried prior to my last tennis injury.

I discovered tennis late, at 29. I'd just ended a year-long relationship with a man, and while the relationship was wrong from the beginning and all the way through to the end, it figured heavily in my eventual decision to have DS, and so (now) I am grateful for its existence in my history.

At the time, though, hostility trumped grace, and while I wasn't happy in the affair, I hadn't quite been ready to say good-bye. See, my partner had children-3 school-aged girls. We met realtively soon after I started dating "Father", and my terror of minors melted into novelty, and then eventually serenity as the 5 of us (he, me, those 3) settled into something roughly resembling domesticity. That is, if you don't count the fact that the girls lived full time with us for 2 weeks and then full time with their mother for the next 2, and that my partner had a Hostile-On-A-Good Day relationship with his ex, AND that "Father" had no concept of intimacy, emotional or physical, beyond the theoretical. He talked a great game, but when it came time to serve, well, let's just say he double-faulted. A lot.

Even so, any relationship develops its setpoints and its imperfect places, and we imperfect humans choose to make house anyway, figuring that nobody's racquet fits exactly right in someone else's hand, but at least the racquet, and the court, are known. Father and I lived a quiet, homey life for the better part of a year, and I built 3 marvelous relationships wth 3 young women whom I would never otherwise have met and whom I have never forgotten. I took one girl shopping for her first bra, I coaxed another one from juniors into misses jeans, and I taught the youngest that there was more to life than video games and fruit roll-ups. They shared Alladin with me, I shared cooking with them. I gave a lesson in condom usage to the 2 older girls, and they backed me up when both of their parents flipped at the "StepMonster" giving sex ed lectures in Father's bedroom with a Barbie doll and a condom bought in a gas station rest room, just for the occasion.

Though I knew that Father wasn't The One, I learned a lot about myself as a prospective parent and as a mentor, and I liked how I felt when I was around these would-be women. I cried harder at losing them than at losing their Dad, and while now, 13 years later, I have no interest in finding Father or knowing what he's doing, I often think of those 3 and wonder how their lives turned out.

So when Father came home one night and announced that he wanted to be alone for a while and to raise his children without assistance, I found a new place to live, moved out in a week, and looked for something distinctly undomestic to do while I rode out the post-breakup Single and Celibate While Healing period. It was April, and the hard court season had begun in earnest.

I had long held a fascination with Tennis The Sport. My dad played when I was young, and I watched Wimbledon and the US Open every year. I liked that women sweated and grunted and ran around like Romans while wearing skirts that would be considered slutty under any other circumstances. Oh, the dichotomy! Running like a fiend in a dress not meant to withstand movement, let alone running, stretching, and bending. I mean, in what other sport are you allowed, even encouraged, to show your panties, and then shake hands with your likewise-dressed opponent at game’s end? There is truly nothing more beautiful than that.

Determined not to sit around pining for my lover or wishing he would die of a painful and disfiguring disease, I ordered myself to learn this intriguing game. I found a beginner’s clinic at a club near my new apartment. Thirty-six dollars for six weeks, bring your own racquet, no experience required. That first night, I shot 4 balls over the fence and cracked the instructor in the temple with my racquet, but the game hooked me harder than any lover ever had. I left, exhausted but triumphant, and by month-end, I was taking 4 clinics a week, and snuck out of work on Friday afternoons for private lessons. At the end of the year, I took my women’s tennis team to New Orleans for the national finals. We placed 4th overall, and I went undefeated the whole year. An addict was born.

For the next 7 years, I played no fewer than 5 times per week, including at least 1 private lesson and 1 competitive match. I played doubles the first year, but as soon as I could, I moved over to singles and never went back. I found tennis camps offering 6 or even 8 hours of instruction per day, and I went twice a year, striking balls and perfecting my footwork until I could barely walk at night.

Recreational tennis players are rated on a simple numeric scale, from 1.0 to 7.0, according to their ability. I’ve never seen anything below a 2.5, which is a rank beginner, or above a 5.0, which is ‘open class’. When I first got rated, I’d been playing about 4 weeks and I barely got a ball inside the court. I was rated a 2.5. While in theory the rating goes up by tenths of a point, the USTA (United States Tennis Association) only recognizes ratings and teams on half points. So the first year I played 2.5 tennis, the next year I ‘moved up’ to 3.0, and so on.

Generally, it takes a year of determined play to move from 2.5 to 3.0, and then, after that, it’s at least 2 years per level; longer if you’re playing singles. By the time you hit 4.0, you’re facing women who have played all their lives, and in some cases, played competitively in college and are still swift and dangerous, just not as roadrunner fast as they once were. I learned early, and often, never to trust gray hair or frail limbs. The only group I was never able to beat with any consistency were those blue-haired, wash-and-set women who came to matches wearing make-up and who refused to put any speed on the ball.

In my last year, I was playing #1 singles in the USTA 4.0 category and beating everyone. I planned to finish the summer as a 4.0 and then start the fall season as a 4.5. I had everything I needed to play competitive at that level, and I was ready.

Then tendonitis appeared. I didn’t rest my arm as I should have-hey, it was the outdoor season!, and so it worsened until I couldn’t even hold my racquet without wincing. Every time I struck the ball I yelped, and at last even I conceded that I would have to lay my racquet down until my elbow healed. It was July of 2001, and by the time I returned to my beloved game, the outdoor season would be over. I would have roughly 1 week to prepare for the 4.5 tryouts. I could still do it. Every pro at the club knew me and knew my game. I’d make it. The last stop on the road before Open Play was mine. I only had to rest for 6 weeks, and then to recover quickly, and I’d be on the team.

I distracted myself by cross training. I ran until I couldn’t hold myself up anymore, and I went back to weightlifting, taking care not to harass my elbow, but building my core and my legs, so I could bend and run even faster once I returned. I took to relaxing in the sauna after workouts, reading about tennis stroke production and visualizing victories at my new level.

I got pregnant on August 23. While I longed to keep playing until DS’s head crowned, everything I read said that I must not exercise vigorously, as that might injure the baby. I retired my racquet, certain that after a suitable post-partum vacation, I could return. I might have to donate another year to 4.0 while I refreshed my skills, but that was all right. I would reunite with the courts, and do it post-baby, and my world would be right once more.

I never returned.

I tried once, about 3 years ago. I dug out my racquet from the back of the closet, and my blood rushed just holding it again. I bought a can of balls, drove to a nearby park, and DS ran around the free court while X and I played. Or rather, we tried.

The key to tennis is timing. It takes a dozen things to hit the ball with precision, and if even one things is off, the shot goes wild. Timing is a fickle mistress, and if you don’t tend to her every need, she’ll leave you. When I hit with X, I hadn’t swung the racquet in nearly 3 years. We played for about an hour, until I couldn’t bear to watch my once-stunning forehand spray so far off the court that it threatened to clock DS, who was 2 courts away. My serve, once my best weapon, never made it into the service box. Mistress Timing had left the building.

I thought about tennis constantly after that. I’d remember a grueling 3-hour match in blistering St. Louis heat, or some night when the ball went exactly where I told it and I crushed someone completely and without effort. I’d remember the hundreds of balls I’d hit, the same shot over and over, until I could feel my muscles register the stroke, the feel, and the sound of the shot, and I knew I could reproduce it at will. But I couldn’t go back. I had trouble staying lithe on my feet at 180 pounds, and I would have hurt something important if I’d tried to swing a racquet at 251. I could barely walk; there was no way I could run, and jumping for an overhead smash was inconceivable. Tennis became something I used to do—a pre-Mommy activity. I wanted to go back to it, but I simply couldn’t. I miss it still: I miss the competition, the manners inherent in the game, and, yes, I miss those cute little white skirts.

Now that I’m closer to my pre-injury weight I think again about returning, but tennis gave me as many headaches as it cured. I’m tragically competitive, and while I had every shot, my brain never relaxed enough to let me enjoy the talent I had or the progress I’d made. Any win where the score was more than 6-0, 6-0 I considered a loss, and I cursed myself through every match. I don’t miss that.

Tennis really is a jealous mistress. You can have no other love if you are to maintain her favor, and I have 2 other loves now, DS and my WW buddy. Plus, I’m not sure that I’m willing to give up that much money to play a game that makes me salivate every time I hear the thwop of a fresh ball on tight strings. Before I quit, my club statements averaged just over $1,000 a month, and I never put anything on my tab other than lessons, clinics, and tournament fees. All my racquets, all my equipment, and all my clothes came separately. In my later years, I preferred dresses to skirts, and those averaged $70 a pop, never mind shoes, socks, sweat bands, or those lovely little white panties. These days, I’d rather see that go to supplement DS’s speech therapy or remodel the bathroom in my house. So it could be that tennis is gone for good.

I might never return to the game, and certainly I’ll never play it with the intensity and passion that I gave to it all those years ago. But maybe my passion belongs in other places, like my family and my weight loss. And maybe it’s enough to know that I could wear one of those little pleated numbers and woo the Timing Temptress from her throne once more, if I wanted to. Maybe.

After all: in 7 pounds, I’ll have the body back to do it.

A the T(ennis, anyone?)

Remote Control

The Snow Queen bitch-slapped Chicago last night. Here in Wheaton, we got pelted with 9 inches. Every school south of Canada shut down for the duration. DS has been sick ever since we returned from Ohio, I’m on Day 3 of my period and I have some bizarre thing going on ‘down there’ that my doctor, despite hours of intense examination can only diagnose as ‘YuhGotMe’. Given the high probability that I would wind up in the county jail for assault if I attempted the plow-challenged roads and the Traffic Amateurs, I worked remotely today. Turned on my laptop, fired up the VPN, and started billing.

I stayed in my sweat pants all day, I rode the treadmill until I was dizzy, and I ate lunch at a real table, rather than at my desk. I got about 3 days worth of work done, and I still managed to shovel a little bit of the driveway, arrange my movie collection in the living room and receive 2 packages that required my signature. Sometimes I really miss telecommuting.

It’s not that I detest office working so much, really. It’s more that I have lots of things that I must do doing Normal Business Hours that are not part of my job. But I try to do them anyway, since I have scant time to spend with DS as it is, and I am only moderately successful at dragging him along with me on the weekend, while I jockey for parking spaces with the Saturday Psychos.

These things were a lot easier when I worked from home. I could check my e-mail while I waited on hold for the HMO to refuse coverage yet again, and then I could sort my bills while I spewed obscenities at the Customer Care Representative (where 'customer care' is Latin for 'oxymoron', heavy on the 'moron'). I could write out instructions for the nanny or notes to DS’s teacher while I was on conference calls, and sometimes I could even go out during the day and (gasp!) work out.

The job I have now does not allow telecommuting, and anyway, the nature of the position dictates that I must be at the office. I don’t really mind it. But on the days when I work at my home, I remember the glory of being alone for hours, and of getting everything done, including my work, and I really miss it. And every time I have to take hours away from work to do one of my myriad errands, I wish I were back at my cheap-o card table that serves as desk, quilting table, and writer’s corner.

I want to telecommute, but I want to move up the ladder more, and so I’ve made the compromise to do the ‘face time’ at the company headquarters. I still harbor guilt for doing personal business on company time, but as I have no real choice, I made my peace with the small amounts of time-stealing I must do. I keep it minimal, and sometimes I make it up to the firm by working at night and not charging them for it.

I’ve noticed over the 19 years of my career that the office has gone the way of the pension and that everyone but the C-level executives hunker down in cubicles. I’ve also noticed that ‘cubicle’ is taking on a whole new meaning. It used to be that a ‘cube’ was to an office what a townhouse was to a single family home--more compact but also more efficient, and rather nice, if you didn’t mind that you could hear your neighbors sometimes. Sure the walls didn’t reach to the ceiling and there was no door, but you did have some privacy and you didn’t have to listen to marital disputes and little league conference calls as a matter of course.

Then came the 4-pack—an office-sized ‘area’ with 4 desks bolted to the cube walls, with everyone facing away from the center. It’s more like a dormitory suite than a townhouse. Everyone has their space, and then there’s some common area in the center-white board, conference table, air hockey—whatever that company deemed appropriate for the schmucks who have neither walls nor ceilings. The 4-pack still had an entrance of sorts, and everybody’s name was on the outside wall. These contraptions always reminded me of a carpeted Alamo, with the corresponding results, and they soon gave way to the Time-Life Operator workspace, a low-walled, zero-privacy area so small, it can only rightly be called a “C”, because it’s too small to fit the other letters of ‘cubicle’.

These “C”’s are quite modern and sleek, but they stink re: productivity and concentration. I’m not playing video games at my desk, but sometimes I need to have a private conversation, and I’d rather not share these things with the sardines in my tin, as it were. I lobbied to get a "C" spot in the back row, away from the programmers who neither speak nor move all day, and who hate me because my phone rings constantly, and I have the nerve to answer it. I was told that contractors don’t get back row seats, and if my neighbors complained, well then perhaps I should just keep it down.

Okay, then.

In response to this, and because, at least for now, I like what I’m doing, I’ve developed a few skills to operate at my desk without going postal. For example, I developed a voice I call the Cubicle Whisper, that is low enough so as not to be heard by my neighbors or anyone standing more than 6 inches away from me, including, sometimes, the person on the other end of the phone. I have also altered my seating position in my office chair, so that my body covers the bulk of my laptop screen, and anyone coming up from behind me (which is everyone, given the arrangement of my desk relative to the walkway) can’t just ogle what’s spattered across my screen. I sweet-talked my way into a docking station and a privacy screen, so when I really need to look at something and not have it ogled by the Public At Large, I slide it to my desktop monitor and work with relative peace.

See how much easier this would all be if I worked from home? I’m starting to miss it again.

The one thing that helps me about working on site is that I’m nowhere near my kitchen, except at meal times. Despite grunting out 23 minutes on the treadmill (260 calories!) and humping wet snow for an hour, I worked all day long at 2 jobs: (1) my paid contract, and (2) keeping my fat ass out of the kitchen.

At the office, I go day after day at the office without any temptation to eat at mid-morning, and if I do, I just ignore it, or go drink more water/coffee to fill my tummy until lunch. I’m off coffee right now, while I figure out what the Down There Disease is all about, and so my appetite is a little stronger than usual, but nothing I can’t handle. Or so I thought. I made it through today without a breech, but I can see where being at home and around all of DS’s peanut butter crackers could drive me to a much slower weight loss pace. Suddenly I get why it’s so hard for the Stay-At-Homes to keep themselves on program.

So let me focus on the good things. First of all, my weight is all screwy because of my period, but I think I have a shot at a 187.0 weigh in tomorrow, which would bring me to 64.0 pounds lost and a whopping 25% gone from my original body weight. I’m three-quarters of my old self! I also recalculated my BMI, and I’m at 26.8, with 25.0 being 'normal' vs. 'overweight'. I can really see Normal from here, and it’s not that college town in downstate Illinois, either.

This particular site gave me a percentile rating, saying that for 5’10” and 187 pounds, I’m in the 53rd percentile, which means I weigh more than 53% of women ‘out there’. Curious, I typed in my old weight, 251, to get the percentile. Know what it was? 90. Ninetieth percentile. At my peak, I weighed more than ninety percent of women. Sobering, but also satisfying, because I am no longer there. I am 64 pounds away from that woman, and I am never going back.

Plus, after my period is over, I’m going out shopping for size 10 jeans. No "stretch" jeans for this old broad, so I’m sure I’ll be stuffed into them and sporting the side seams as skin ornaments for hours after I peel them off. But still, size 10. I started out at 20W, and I’m going to pass through a 10 on my way to…where? I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t have to telecommute to get there.

A the C(ubed)