Unscheduled Maintenance

I no longer worry about maintenance.

I don’t worry about it, because I’m pretty much in it. My weight inches downward, but to such a degree that I can only measure it by keeping the shutter open on my scale. I feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie: things are happening, but the plot never advances, and I don’t get any of the jokes.

Back in the days when I was Always Thin, any time that a pound or two crept up, I would simply cut out half the butter on my mashed potatoes for a week, and it would go away. Man, I really miss the teen years sometimes. I long for those years, when losing weight was a matter of deciding to, and then doing it, without any real suffering on my part.

Anyway, the reduced butter often turned into No Extra Bread at Dinner, which led to half an hour of dancing in my bedroom to ‘tone things up’. Then summer would come, or basketball season would begin, and I’d notice that through no real effort, my weight would drop. I would lose 3 or 4 pounds a month, eating pretty much how I wanted and exercising when I felt like it.

To be fair, my exercise at the time involved 3 hours of intense basketball practice and/or jazzercise in my high school PE class, or maybe riding my zero-speed bike an hour in the Ohio hills to the gym, working out with weights until I collapsed, and then riding back home. I could still down the occasional hot fudge sundae on Saturday evenings, or share a pancake ‘breakfast’ with my drummer boyfriend at 3am following a gig, and my weight would remain low . Even when I got my period, my weight remained level, and continued that sneaky little drop.

One particularly beautiful memory I have is of going with my mother to some ‘women’s weight loss center’ when I was 17. It was one of those places that still had that jackhammer-like rubber band that shook the cellulite around on your hips. It was evening, I was wearing a heavy cowl-neck sweater, (designer!) jeans, and my shoes, which were probably a leather/wood clog of some kind. I tipped the scales at 144 pounds and I freaked out. That 150 pound marker loomed at me. I think I went home that night, vowed to ‘get back into shape’ and didn’t eat for a week.

Okay, so maybe the teen years weren’t so great. Or, they were, but I was just stupid. Or maybe I’m stupid now, because I’m all giddy that I might end up somewhere on the North end of that 150-pound mark. It might be time to revisit my goal weight.

Putting the Crazy Girl’s Goal Weight aside for the moment, I do think I’m pretty much settling in to where my body will stop losing and ‘maintain’ a weight unless I do something drastic, like exercise (saints alive, don't do THAT!). Until the end of February, I was losing about 3 pounds per week, or about 10 pounds a month. Then I had a couple of Flat Weeks and my overall loss went to 2.72 pounds a week, and I lost only 9 pounds for February. Small, simple; nearly imperceptible. But suddenly I wasn’t down a full size every 2 or 3 weeks, and the jeans in my closet were staying in the ‘wearable’ category longer.

Now March is here, and I have a real shot of being Bikini Ready for the first time since the 80s (the Octopus notwithstanding). My weight still declines, but more at a creep. I’ve lost 5 pounds since Feb 23, including the “big” 1.50 pound loss last week, and that was post-period, so I think I lost that 1.0 pound that I’d gained the week before. My weight chart is starting to flatten out. I knew it was coming, I’m proud to be at the end, but still, it is hard to stay motivated when the scale appears stuck just above the 160 mark.

And what’s the end, anyway? I was aiming for 149.0, but then I got a look at myself in the mirror last week, and I thought that if I slowed or stopped in the next few pounds, I’d be okay with that. And then Howard mentioned something about how I still might have 20 pounds to lose. Judging from my comments and my frame and my Teen Years weight, he’s probably right. But how in the world am I going to shave off 20 pounds in half-pound increments?

Goody. Again, I won’t have to worry about maintenance, but this time it’s because I’ll never get there.

Working the math, I see why this is going so slowly. At 161.0 pounds, I figured out that I am burning about 9 calories per pound. So to maintain this weight, I need to consume approximately 1,450 calories per day. To lose even 1 skinny pound a week, I have to cut out 500 calories per day. That means I could only eat 950. That’s a little lower than where I am right now, and so, predictably, I am losing about 0.80 pounds per week.

I can’t consider dropping far enough to lose 2 pounds per day, though some days, I really, really want to. That would be a daily intake maximum of 450—closer to where I was in the autumn when my hair was exiting my scalp. So no, that won’t work. Looks like I’m on the 1-pound paddy wagon. At least until I get into the 150s and I skip backward to the Half-Pound Tessy Caboose.

Get the hats and horns!

On the up side, I had a guard put on my engagement ring, because I've lost so much weight since January that it was spinning around on my finger and threatened to sail off the next time I gestured. I don't know what size ring I am, but everything in my jewelry box is too big, including the pretty little size 6 ring that Howard bought me in college.

That really is an International Coffee moment. I think my hands are among my best features, and so it was pretty great to see my ring get so loose on my hand that I could wear it on my index finger (and made a whole Euro-look for myself in the process). But it belongs on my ring finger, and that’s where it is now, and I didn’t even have to thread any yarn through it. Thank God for that, too, since I definitely do not miss that about the Teen Years.

And I went Spring Break shopping yesterday and found a pair of shorts in a size 8 that were properly comfortable, but loose enough that I thought I’d grabbed a 10. That was awesome. I am solidly a size 8 now in everything, and in some places, I’m leaning toward a 6. I should be easily into a size 2 “long” stretch jean once I make it into the mid-150s.

Maybe maintenance means something other than weighing the same (or nearly!) every day. Maybe it means a stasis in a process—a steadying of method that is more like calm than entropy. If that’s the case, then I’ve been in maintenance for a while now. I’ve been eating well and looking good, and feeling great for weeks. I’ve been below 200 pounds long enough that I can’t even believe I was up that high, never mind the 51 pounds beyond it where I once roosted. And the perfume I bought in October to celebrate that milestone is nearly empty.

I’m in this for the haul it has become, as well as the sweat it takes to stay here. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m already in maintenance, and so far, I seem pretty good at it.

A the S(neaking down the Scales)

Eating My Way To The Top

I’m going legit!

After 10 years and 3 months of working as an independent consultant, my Super Boss is working on converting me to a full time employee. If all goes well, I’ll be an employee some time in April, which means I’ll have Memorial Day off for the first time since 1996, and my honeymoon will not wreck my budget. At least, not because of my salary.

I’ve been looking for full time work since December of 2004, when my then-contracting employer offered to make me an permanent part of her group. The salary was too low, but as I lobbed the idea around in my head, the idea of going perm and having some form of pseudo-security with a True Employer (vs. with myself), I liked how it felt. I’d be an employee somewhere. I could hang up my Contractor Scum hat and work as a stiff like everyone else.

I began this assignment at my top weight of 251.0 pounds. I dressed in men’s clothes, the only office-appropriate things that would fit me. I worked, head down, too embarrassed to eat in front of my new co-workers. I snuck off to Subway for the meatball sandwich at lunch, and ate at my desk. I only went to the cafeteria in the middle of the afternoon, long after lunch was over, when I was sure that no one would be there to witness me raiding the vending machine for fatty snacks.

My first WW meeting was July 22, and by Labor Day, I had lost nearly 20 pounds. People at work started noticing my shrinking figure and my transition back to women’s wear. I broke 200 some time around Halloween, and my boss suddenly started hinting that he’d like to bring me on full time. He also commented that I was looking ‘healthier’ and sometimes after our work discussions, we would sit in his office and compare notes on my program (WW) vs. his (Atkins).

In January, I switched from All Jeans All The Time to Traditional Business dress at work. I felt better about how I looked, and wanted that reflected in what I wore. My weight continued to drop, and sometime in February, I hit BMI normal and was no longer overweight. My boss started confiding in me about his challenges within the department and sharing his plans for promotions and movement within the group. We were no longer contractor scum/supervisor, but senior staff/manager, and in many ways, we were peers.

I noticed that I got more nods in the hallways when I was in suits and skirts than when I wore my jeans. People around the office spoke to me with deference. They engaged me in the parking lot, on line for food at the cafeteria, and while waiting for coffee in the break room. I noticed further that they beamed when I spoke back, but demurred if I talked too much. Clearly, I was meant to acknowledge them, but not really participate in full-on small talk. I realized, with more than a little humor, that my dress and my bearing conveyed an attitude of Someone Important to these people. Here was a woman in the building, dressed in a suit when everyone else wore khakis or jeans, and she’s in heels (what?!). Who could this be? I said nothing, but secretly, I was pleased with the attention. This is the same place where I’d walked the halls and been stonewalled only a few months before, sometimes by people I knew.

About 3 weeks ago, I had an appointment to present my work to date at the CIO’s staff meeting. I wore a suit the day of the meeting--normally a smart choice, but a daring move in this organization. The CIO is known to ridicule people who show up for his meetings wearing suits. But I’d worn them long enough, and often enough, that showing up to his meeting in my Calvin Klein (size 8!) was no big deal. He merely smiled at me, said hello, and sat down. The presentation went well, and the very next day, he agreed to bring me on as an employee.

I will never know whether it was my work, or my changing shape, or my upgraded dress code that helped to make this real. I want to believe it was my work, and that my appearance played very little into this decision. But I know better. Corporate America is all about image and perception and presence, and I had none of those things as a fat person. I could talk circles around anyone when it came to my work, but it didn’t matter, because no one could see beyond the fat. Or, maybe they could (I kept getting hired, after all), but the fat-people-can’t-control-themselves thing always worked its way into the equation. I couldn’t get past it myself: I have no delusions about others being big enough (mentally) to ignore the fact that I was far too big (physically) to be considered for an executive role.

It’s still acceptable in our society to ridicule fat people, and to discriminate against them. It’s not cool, and it’s not fair, but it is true. And yes, I do still consider myself a part of that group. I’m wearing my size 4 jeans to work today, and I look skinny. Not sickly or scrawny, but thin; really, truly thin. But when I helped clean up from a friend’s baby shower today, and I mistakenly licked my fingers when they touched the frosting, I knew that I was just a mouthful of butter cream away from racing right back up the scales. The pain of denial is with me always, but it is a far, far better pain than that of regret.

For now, though, and hopefully forever, I will be a former fat girl; one who is thin, but who remembers the pain of being too heavy, and also the struggles of getting back to normal. I don’t know how much farther I have to go, and I know these last weeks are a hard, with me losing barely half a pound a week. But I’m so close to having everything I want, that I don’t really mind the battles on these last few miles. After all, I’ll soon be an employee, on WW maintenance, and married to the man of my dreams. I have the greatest, cutest, most wonderful boy ever known to humanity, and now I have the world’s coolest papa-in-training to help me help the little man along his journey. Life is pretty dang great right now.

Gotta get back to work. I’m still hourly for the time being. I’ll save my low productivity days for after I’ve gone on salary.

A the N(early There)

All Four One

There’s nothing like a new size to curb the appetite.

That rule applies in both directions, by the way. During my ‘expansion’ years, I always had a little food volume cut-back whenever I endured the humiliation of going up a size. I did it all wrong, of course, starving myself through the day and then overindulging at night, so that even the new size clothes chewed at the octopus.

Now, though, every time I land in a new size, my enthusiasm for the weight loss invigorates and the pains of denial recede. For example, I’ve been battling that nasty chocolate-stash cabinet at work for over a week now, digging my painted nails into my arms, just to keep from sliding the drawer open and nabbing the first Snack Sized anything that leaped into my palm.

Well, okay, ‘leaped’ is stretching it. My hand scoops, and the action is distinctly backhoe-like when it comes to chocolate tasties. My wrist unhinges, swinging over the pile, surveying clumps of goodies, and then lowering into the fray, lifting up whatever the stretched claw can manage (sometimes with help from Backhoe #2), and hauling the treasure straight up to my mouth, sometimes not bothering to unwrap the loot beforehand.

Is it any wonder I was once a size 22?

Anyway, my PMS lasted almost the whole month this time, and the Fat Girl wanted some chocolate. I had to do this whole walk-around thing to keep away from it, sometimes doing the unthinkable and walking along the window, just to avoid that stash. It’s not technically a walkway, and I think somewhere in the unwritten-yet-understood Code of Cubicle Protocol, we peons are supposed to stick to the true path up front and not impinge on the coveted real estate by the window, where the Directors sit--those employees important enough to have conference tables at their workspace but not yet prestigious enough to have offices. Well, tough. I’m not getting fat just because some Almost An Executive has a problem with me walking behind him and catching him playing Free Cell during a conference call. Next time maybe you’ll take that call on the handset and NOT on the speakerphone, and then my attention won’t be drawn to you.

Anyway…

Last weekend, I got to jonesing for some new clothes. My size 12 pants are ridiculously loose, even for those who wear their pants at normal size (vs me, who wears everything tight), and some of my 10s are hanging in an unflattering way. I have a single pair of size 8 pants, besides my suit, but that’s not enough to shuffle in a 5-day workweek, no matter how many different button-down white blouses I have. Besides, I realized that I hadn’t rewarded myself for a specific weight loss goal in a while and I wanted to fill my closet with single-digit items.

I found this great pair of black jeans with a sequined fabric belt in a 6, and then another suit in an 8, though the skirt was weird, so I put it back. I couldn’t find any more dress clothes, so I went ahead and hunted for jeans. I found a fun pair with embroidered flowers on the back pockets, and when I slipped them on, they buttoned and zipped easily. In a 6. Intrigued, I asked Howard to find me a size 4. In a moment he returned with a pair of denims with legs the width of flag poles and some funky beading at the pocket. I brought them back to the dressing room, prepared to lie down on that nasty dust-bunny-encrusted tile, just to see if I could get them on.

The octopus, fueled by my PMS, fought like a gladiator, but I managed to stuff it down and even though it took me 5 tries to button the things, I got them on. Ralph Lauren size 4. I beamed and giggled and turned around in the dressing room until I got vertigo. Then I walked out to show Howard.

And that’s when I noticed that my ankles were showing. They were too short. Size 4 ‘average’, with a 32” inseam. Impeded by the octopus, the pants simply did not reach far enough down my leg to justify the purchase. I was crushed, but also elated: somewhere in the world, there existed a pair of size 4 jeans that fit me. Me! I don’t even ever remember being a size 4. I went straight from a juniors 9/10 to a Misses 10. Whatever time I spent as a 4, if any, was before I started noticing sizes. My first 4. I couldn’t keep it, much like my below-160 weight (still p!ssed about that, btw), but it did exist.

I spent the rest of the weekend on a four-hunt. Howard found a pair of Ralph’s at Costco. They looked really skinny, and they were 1% lycra instead of the 2% I had on at TJMaxx, but I figured I could get them nearly on, and then I could wear them post-period.

Not so much.

It turns out, these Ralph’s are ultra low rise, which is Faux Straight Guy in Boat Clothes code for ‘won’t go over the hips of women who have curves’. I couldn’t even get them to my hip bones. They just sat on my haunches, the zipper yawning open like an upturned backhoe, and begging to be set free. So those went into the catch-and-release program. I’ll see if Costco is a place one can return clothes, and maybe then I’ll learn my lesson that one cannot buy New Size items without first trying them on.

I tried 2 other TJMaxx stores, a Dress Barn, and Old Navy, but could not find a cooperative 4 anywhere. And speaking of uncooperative, how in the world does Old Navy sell anything? There wasn’t a thing on the racks I could get into. My best guess is that they still sell clothes in the 1980s size range: I mean, I picked up a size small sweater (my current size), and I couldn’t even figure out how I’d squeeze my arms into it, never mind the girls in the rooms ‘upstairs’. The only place I had any success was in the bathing suits, inexplicably, but even then, the size M bottoms were too large, and the size XL top was pasty-small. I might be okay wearing something like that to the Riviera, but I am most certainly not going to flaunt the DD twins in a set of barely-there-triangles while on vacation at Wozen’s parents.

I finished the weekend without a 4 in my closet, saddened, and wondering if I shouldn’t have just plucked the 4 average from the rack and made off with it. At least then I could have proven that I fit into a 4. I looked through my calendar, trying to find a way to get to the Premium Outlet Mall and sneak into a size 4L at Eddie Bauer over lunch, but this week is insanely busy, and so I let it go. They’ll be other 4s. Someday. Maybe.

Then today, I ran out to K-mart to get a bowling set for DS and a shirt for Howard (I’ll let him tell you about that himself), and on impulse, I checked their stash of Levi’s. I found a 4Long, but it was in a low rise style, and only 1% lycra. I’m usually a size up in low rise, and a size up in 1%, so I figured that the combo might send me all the way up to an 8. But I own a pair of 6s from that very collection, and that was before the latest loss, so I tiptoed back to the dressing room to try them on.

Victory! They were even easier to lift over the octopus than the Ralph. All hail K-mart! All hail Levi’s! I am in a 4. Size 4, and only 1% Lycra. I didn’t even have to lie down with the dust bunnies to get them on, and I still have period puffiness!

So, thinking it over, maybe I’m okay that I’m still up this week, even though tomorrow is Thursday, and even though I might have to weigh in at my meeting in the ‘plus’ category. Maybe it’s okay that I’m a ‘four-plus’. It beats the heck out of 20-plus.

I wanted to wear my size 4s back to the office, but I had the new 6s with the sequined belt on, and anyway, I owned them now. I can wear them anytime I want. I am a 4, and I own a pair of jeans to prove it. One percent lycra. One hundred percent awesome.

On the way back to my desk, I walked right by the chocolate cabinet. I knew where I was going, but I didn’t even look over. Let some other backhoe have it. That loot isn’t worth an appetite curb in the other direction. I like the route I’m taking, even when (especially when!) it isn’t by the windows.

A the F(our) !!!

The Weekly Reader

This week’s news flash: watching the scale makes me fat.

After I decided that I’d weigh in every week, no matter the number on the scale, my body colluded with my brain to sabotage my trip down the scales. It hurt me further that I decided to go back to a daily weigh-in at home. In truth, it was more like a three-times-daily weigh-in; once in the morning, once after work and again right before bed. Here’s what the lowdown looked like.

Mon-159.75 (yay!)
Tue-159.75 (still sick)
Wed-161.5 (uh-oh)
Thu-161.5 (crap)
Fri-162.5 (hey!)
Sat-163.0 (what?!)

I weighed in at WW on Saturday morning. I lost 0.60 pounds from last week, and that’s good, but man, it really, really irritated me that I was down below 160 and then I wound up barely half a pound less than the week before.

And then the fun continued! Sunday, I was at 162.75, but then Monday I was 164.50 and Tuesday I was 165.50. Almost six pounds from a week before, and about at the weight I was more than 3 weeks ago. I’m down to 164.25 this morning, and I got my period yesterday, but still. It’s clearly a bad idea to weigh in and watch my weight.

I don’t think I have the ability to do what many of my WW buddies do, which is to weigh in only at the meetings. I can’t imagine the panic and stress I’d feel, stepping up on that scale and having no idea how it’s going to read. Maybe that’s exactly what I need to do. But the control freak in me is just not ready for it.

On the better side, it looks like Maria the Fabulous (WW leader) and our Saturday WW meeting is adopting the “Octopus” as part of the vocabulary when describing the post-partum tummy that never seems to depart. And I'm getting to know some of the women better, and that’s great. I’ve never been a joiner, and weight loss has always been a private, shameful affair for me. But this group, and this meeting, has changed all that. I actually get butterflies when I’m driving over to the meeting place, especially when Howard and I go together. I’m on the edge of my seat every week, and it’s very hard not to blurt out supportive comments every time Maria makes an observation or takes feedback from the room. I love this group, and this process, and all the people in it.

More later. I have lots of things to share, but prefer it when my posts have a theme, and a column-like feel to them, rather than slice of life. So let me get organized and then I’ll spew all over these e-pages. It should be fun. Or at least entertaining.

A the H(ey, a Short Post!)

On the Lighter Side

These days, I’m feeling rather like a mountain goat.

For whatever reason, my weight now bounces up and down until I wish I had hooves and a beard on my chin. Well, okay, the beard wouldn’t help and it would hair-up my sweaters, but still, sometimes I think I need climbing gear just to hang on to the scales. I was up and down all last week, up every day the week before, and this week I’m plummeting during PMS. Clearly this is how the bottom part of the weight loss goes. So, as part of the deciding-and-accepting phase of my weight loss, I’m going to suck it up and weigh in every week, no matter what the scale says. This is a lifetime journey and my weight does not matter week to week. It simply does not. What matters is the food I’m eating and the attitude I project and the way that I behave.

Is that convincing?

It helps considerably that I’ve had a flu bug that allows me to be up and working, but does not permit me to eat anything more dangerous than a protein shake or a calm yogurt (no big fruit pieces-learned that the hard way). Poor Howard. He’s weathering it better than the veterans I’ve had in this role, but still, he’s clearly a novice at Parenting While Sick. I don’t think he’s been to bed so early since the 70s. Last night, he fell asleep on the couch at 7:30pm, while DS and I battled over whose turn it was on Thomas’s Trains and Trestles game. Just for the record, I hate that game, and it has nothing (well, very little) to do with my current state of ill health.

The flu has its upside, at least as far as my demented brain determines “up”. While I’m doing my best to keep things protein-rich, I’m still way down on my food intake. After my Saturday weigh-in of 163.50, I hit 161.50 on Sunday and Monday, and today I am at 159.75. Below 160. I might have to tease my hair up and go back to my 1990s hairspray of choice, Rave #4-MegaHold, just for the occasion. I know I can’t keep it, but wow, does it feel good to be in the 150s. If I count today, then I’m officially down 91.25 pounds from my heaviest, and I still (maybe) have some period puffiness to go. Of course, as soon as I swallow a scrambled egg or slice of Canadian bacon, I’m flying right back up. But for now, today, and until I heal, I feel svelte and slim and sexy. And hungry. Really hungry. A protein shake lasts about as long in the tummy it takes to drink (less than 1 minute). But I’d rather be hungry than sick, especially since it’s a long a walk to the can from my desk.

But this could be the very Safe Place I need to get on the scale this Saturday and start something real and important. As of last week, I’m 2.4 pounds away from my goal weight at Weight Watchers. While I’m gunning to go to meetings for free under the Lifetime program, I want it to be real, and this is not. I’m a little bit worried about going to WW this Saturday and weighing in super-light, especially since I’ve been averaging about 1.2 pounds per week the last month, and every 2nd or 3rd week, I’ve had a gain. If I’m truly down almost 4 pounds by Saturday, I might have to temper the loss by wearing heavy clothes to the weigh-in. It could be funny, going to WW with all my clothes on, since it’s supposed to be 46 here on Saturday, which will feel like swimsuit weather. So for the first ‘nice’ day of the emerging spring, I’ll be in 3 sweaters and chest waders, refusing to take my shoes off to weigh-in.

No, no, no. I won’t do that. The whole point of this exercise is to be real, and to take the ups and downs, just as they are. So if I somehow slip into my goal weight on Saturday, and then next Saturday I slip right back out of it, then I’ll start my 6-week maintenance test at another time. According to my plan, I was going to hit 160 pounds at or around the time that I’d be in Florida. We’re scheduled to leave on the 23rd, which is 17 days away. I’d love to board the plane at 155, but it’s not likely, and that’s okay. I’m going to a WW-friendly environment, and I’ll be more active on vacation than I usually am at home, so all that will help. And I’ll be at my goal soon enough.

In other news, I had a conversation with Maria the Spectacular (WW Leader) last week about switching my goal weight to something lower. I had this idea that she’d been disappointed in my original goal. To my surprise, she balked when I tried to change it. “You look skinny,” she said. When I pinched the octopus to prove that I still had weight to lose, she pointed out (politely) that since I’d lost so much weight, I might always have that pooch (NO!!!). We agreed to leave the goal weight where it was, and see what happened once I reached it.

Maybe the octopus will always be with me, but I still think I can get it to 150-pounds instead of 160. But if I keep my goal at 163, I can get to Lifetime faster, and figure out what maintenance is all about. Right now, it looks like more points and more calories, which is terrifying, but I will not be deterred. I will learn how to take this as a long-term journey, even if I hate it at every step. I won’t; it’s more the fear of the “plus” sign in front of my weekly weigh-in that scares me. But it does not define me. Well, actually, it does. But I’m hoping that putting myself through a ‘gain’ will show me that it doesn’t.

Convinced yet?

Referencing last week and my post, I think I might have had a Good Stress Overload moment, or maybe a little bit of extra PMS. Oh, happy day. But I’m feeling much better, I’m back to realizing that my life is good, good, good, and thank you to everyone who offered support, commiserations and anecdotes to help me get my mind off of things. Now I can concentrate on finding a wedding dress, or at least doing a fair value comparison of the in-house stock, so that I can contact my seamstress and get to working on my actual gown. In the mean time, Lynda the Nanny-Goddess brought over her dress for me to try. It’s a bit small (it’s a 6), it’s a bit short, and it’s white, but it’s free, and apparently it gives an Irish woman lots of good luck if someone borrows her wedding gown. That might be the reason to use it right there.

She said that I could alter it, but wow, that’s a big thing. She doesn’t have children yet, but she might some day, and I’d hate to have to make her give over the Tall Girl variety to her wee one, just because I couldn’t make it work. I’m taking it to the seamstress to see what she says about the charges to alter it, and make it longer. Once I hear the price tag on that, I can make my decision about made-to-order bride’s wear. Thanks again to Jeanius for helping me through that process. It’s really amazing how much I just don’t know about women’s wear. And I wasn’t even a lesbian for all that long.

The next big thing in the honeymoon. Howard and I had decided on Vancouver and then shelved it because it’s on the lip of the rainy season. We threw Europe around, but I loathe flying, and when you factor in 4 hours over an ocean with no place to land, I start to white-knuckle. Next came the southwestern corridor (AZ, NM, Mexico), but since we have no real idea of what’s available in Mexico, which resorts are couples/romantic vs. family-friendly, and whether we’ll be shot while sunbathing (always a bad thing), that got canned. So did all the Caribbean islands, since it’s still technically hurricane season, and NO, I do not care that it’s almost over by then. It just takes one 300 mph wind to wreck your whole vacation.

So that pretty much leaves Florida and Chicago. I hear both places are nice.

I can’t believe that it’s so hard to think up some place to go and be with my new husband. But maybe it makes sense. It’s like my frigging dress: it’s nothing, just a vacation, but it’s also everything. Puerto Rico is on the table, as is Monaco. Yep, I know; one is in the Caribbean, and the other is in Europe. I am nothing if not full of contradictions.

Ah, at last: something convincing.

A the B(elow 160, however temporary)

Winter Blues

It might be that I’m incapable of happiness.

Take this weight loss, for instance. From my last official weigh-in of 164.0, I am down 87.0 pounds since last June. I have dropped 34.6% of my body weight, and I am comfortably in a size 6 jean and a size 8 pant. All my sweaters are size small, and every physical activity I do is easier. This morning, DS’s nanny asked me how much further I had to go, because, according to her, I looked ‘perfect’.

I think that the nanny says this because she knew me when I was Gargantu-Woman, and so now I look small in comparison. But small doesn’t mean done, or fit, or finished, or anything that describes my current state of being. I still want to lose, and I’m unhappy that it might be over, whether I like it or not. Ever since I declared my goal weight at WW, my loss has stalled: sputtered to the point that my body is acting like I’m close to the end. I’m not ready to be finished. I can see the trouble spots on my body, and I don’t look anywhere near ‘perfect’. The idea that I would be forced to stop before I was done-truly done, too, not ‘I want to be skinnier than everyone at Vogue’ done, negates the large part of the loss so far.

I was unhappy as a fat person. I was angry and cranky all the time, and my body responded with refusals to do anything exerting or taxing, to save my strength for walking from the couch to the refrigerator. Eighty-seven pounds later, I’m still unhappy. Fatness exacerbated my unhappiness, certainly, but thinness hasn’t solved it. My life isn’t better because I’m thinner. I’m thinner because I’m thinner, and nothing else.

Work is on my mind, too. It’s going well, and I’m still enjoying most of it, most of the time. I’m way too busy and sometimes I feel isolated because my manager has no interest in what I’m doing day to day. For the most part, I’m okay with that. I have worked alone for most of my career. I like working with others, but I trust myself best with tasks, and so I’m pretty comfortable in a Universe of One. But some days, like when I’m wearing jeans instead of dress clothes, and I’m overlooked in the hallways, it feels like the Fat Girl has come back. I’m invisible again, and this island I inhabit has no basis of reality here at the office. It’s a lonely job, and I am a lonely person in it.

My boss doesn’t talk about absorbing me as an employee anymore. There’s good and bad to that. I make a lot more money as a consultant, even when all my time off is unpaid. At the same time, though, I want to be part of something real and permanent, and I want to be able to take a day off for mental health or to go swimming with DS, or to spend some times with those lovely people in Florida, without having to rework my budget to make sure I have enough to pay the heat bill.

Life isn’t fair, and I know that. I don’t expect life to be fair. What I do expect is that I’d be okay about what’s happening, and that now at least, in middle age, I would have some sort of inner peace that allows me to roll with what’s coming at me. Well, the only thing that’s rolling is my adrenaline, and the only things at peace are those that live far, far from my reach.

I keep waiting for things to settle down. When I tell people what’s going on in my life, the invariable comment is, ‘wow! Things sure have changed with you.’ There’s always something big and heavy and medieval that stands between me and calm. Divorce, house hunting, move-outs, move-ins, fights and restraining orders, new love, weight loss, autism, diagnostic screenings, endless medical appointments, public school, private school, and now a wedding that I’ve always wanted, but that grinds at me with its incessant bleed-me-dry thirst for time and money.

In the mean time, I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m not getting any exercise, and I’m sharply aware that either one of those things will rip the sails out of a weight loss, because the body thinks it’s under attack and will store up until the seas return to normal. When I factor in both, there is no surprise that I’m as low as a winter sky.

But you know what? I could be tired all the time and broke all the time, and even living amongst the mess that inhabits my house as Howard and I attempt to blend 2 independent households into 1 location that doesn’t really stretch to fit us together. I could manage it all, if I had some happiness around what’s going on. I’m not miserable or blanched in defeat. I’m just dissatisfied. I could be thinner, my house could be bigger, I could earn more money than I do, DS could be happy in school next year, regardless of where he goes, my wedding dress will somehow materialize, and then it’ll all become normal.

How I long for ordinary.

So, okay, let’s address the obvious point here. Happiness is a state of mind. I’ll spare us all the beatitudes about wanting what you’ve got and living in the moment and being satisfied with less and all that. I’m not a materialistic person anyway, and I’m wary of physical things, because they make it harder to move and they clutter up the house. Maybe it’s true, and happiness is a state of mind—but it’s not a state of mine.

It’s not just me now, either, because Howard has been sniping at me for the last 2 days, and this morning, when I mentioned that maybe I’m finished losing weight, he actually rolled his eyes at me. I know that misery is contagious, and while I don’t care to have company in this little macabre carnival, it’s encouraging at least to know that it’s not all in my head, or at least if it is, I’m not the only one feeling it.

I wish I were a smoker. Now would be a good time to go stand outside and stare at the approaching tornado (yep, tornadoes in Chicago in February. Ain’t global warming grand?) and mull over what’s brewing inside my skull. As it is, though, I have business, and busy-ness, tugging at my sleeve. Maybe it’s enough that I can vent it all here and leave it at that. Maybe it’s okay that there’s no solution other than simply feeling better, or deciding to feel better, and maybe that’s what will happen. Or maybe it’s okay that I’m not happy. Maybe we’re not meant to be happy so much as content, or satisfied, or simply wrapped up in all the ‘other plans’ that make up our lives. Maybe.

I think I’ll try that thing where I smile even though I don’t feel like it, and see if I can trick my brain into thinking I’m happy. It’s a temporary fix and it won’t last, but I think I might be all right with a little deceptive, ‘faux’ sunshine. It’s been a long time since I remember anything other than ‘mostly cloudy’ in the forecast.

Thanks for listening.