Well, let's try this again.
Since March, a lot has happened.
I managed to eke out a trip to see The Man. So that was great.
Regrettably, I developed a fierce case of plantar fasciitis and a bone spur, and couldn't walk around so I spent a lot of time sleeping, watching tv, and taking public transportation out to dinner. Really. Good. Dinners. It wasn't our usual sort of visit but it was wonderful nonetheless; that's the thing about your Person - it's always wonderful to be in their company.
Then I bawled my eyes out as I flew back to the myriad of schtuff awaiting my return at my post in the trenches on the frontline.
Well, anyway.
Nearly two weeks later, my uncle did indeed pass away. Horribly sad in and of itself, it triggered a whole chain reaction regarding loss and things left undone or unsaid, unchecked items on ignored bucket lists - - you get the idea.
Then Easter, and April vacation, and a lot of anxiety for me - more than usual - and then Mother's Day.
All those were okay - and then Weight Watchers.
Let me say this about that: I am not comfortable in my skin anymore. I was for a while, when I was young, until some clod told me I shouldn't be because I wasn't the right shape, size, and my appearance was objectionable. Even today - - without mirrors or cameras or society, telling me how inappropriate and horrible I am for not being the right size - - I feel ok in my own skin, but then , inevitably, you DO see yourself in the mirror or a photo and you cringe because of the disparity between your appearance and Sofia Vergara's. That leads to the glum-and-moodies which leads to sausage and green pepper pizza with wine and Coffee Coffee Heath Bar Crunch for dessert. I don't care what you say - I love vegetables (some of them) and I drink - even enjoy - water, but veggies and fruit are not satisfying. Water is not satisfying and drinking a bathtub full before meals does not make me less hungry, it makes me nauseated. So then I"m hungry and nauseated. Yayness.
So? There's exercise for that, I hear you saying. Yes. Yes there is. But it's miserable and I hate it. I do not get an endorphin rush, a full tide of seratonin, a wash of dopamine. Exercise pisses me off and makes me hungry, and not in the "Oh I'll have an orange" or "Yum, salad!" kind of way -- no -- more in the "Where's the closest Burger King" kind of way. Which is a real kick in the teeth, if you ask me. I have yet to meet a professional who can explain this to me. Further, if you had occipital neuralgia, trigeminal neuralgia, osteoarthritis, a bone spur and plantar fasciitis on top of an innate loathing of exercise and scorching depression, you wouldn't entertain the idea of serious exercise either.
I did Weight Watchers years ago , before Jack, and lost over 40lbs (3 stone for you UK types). Then Jack came, and I gained 22 lbs. Then Jack was born and I lost most of that...but then the postpartum depression grabbed me in its teeth, shaking me around but good, and then came Prozac and twenty five pounds of its friends. Then came William. I only gained 2 lbs - TWO! - with him, and let him sort of live off the land, as it were - - and the week after I delivered him, I was back in regular jeans - nice! ...except for the resurgence of Postpartum depression and the reintroduction of prozac, which resulted in more weight coming to the party.
I wish I were one of those people who forgets to eat, or is so stressed / sad / depressed / tired / happy that her appetite vanishes. But no. No. I wake up hungry, I go to sleep hungry, and I'm physically hungry - like, with a growling tummy - most of the day. Add stress or sadness or depression or fatigue or anything , particularly CONSCIOUSNESS , to the mix, and my appetite flares up in a major way.
I'm hungry RIGHT NOW.
But I digress.
Weight Watchers may take more time than Atkins or Ideal Protein or Zone or Paleo - but the fact is - when girlfriend here needs her chocolate? She needs her chocolate. Ditto wine, potatoes, bread, ice cream. Did I say chocolate?
So WW is the only plan I know which allows it. Nothing is off limits. And it worked before. And twice after that. I dropped 30 lbs after my marriage went down in flames and I dropped 20lbs again after that - it's the keeping it off which presents the biggest problem.
And now, lamentably, I am no longer 28. So am old and disgraceful and my self esteem is circling the drain. Before I wind up on My 600 Pound Life, I decided to try WW again. 3 weeks later, I am down 8 lbs. That's not horrible. So... eh.
Also, my nerves are breaking apart and I'm going to pieces. So getting kind of a lot of professional support at the moment in an attempt to get my shit together and be a Real Person who looks cute(ish) and gets compliments sometimes and doesn't cry when she gets overwhelmed in the paper goods aisle at the supermarket because she can't find her usual trashcan liners. This totally happens.
Well, and so. You're caught up.
I need a haircut, a vacation, a box of fifties, and a spa day. Also someone to walk behind me kicking me in the pants, away from the kitchen and through the entropy in my closet which, while lovely, has gone *boom* , spewing contents everywhere - and me without any wherewithal to manage it.
Just...really overwhelmed right now. Trying to keep perspective and forge ahead in the right direction. And I have come to the worrying conclusion that for now, I have to come first. Ish. After the children, obviously. Thing is, I am not at my peak performance or my highest heights, not at my best or strongest. I am here and I am still plugging away and yes, I'm still standing. But people better be prepared to meet me where I am for a while.
Allrighty then.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
A Hazy Shade of Winter
I should have known better than to start, then publicize, a blog with so lighthearted a name as "The Glorious Whimsy". With a nod to some of my more enlightened friends and certain philosophies extolling the virtue of positive thinking and the laws of attraction and such like, I did, though.
Which is why I haven't posted for two months.
There goes my resolve to blog every day. There it goes for nearly sixty consecutive days.
I have my reasons, of course. Chief among them is the fact that of late, I have begun to feel like the Angel of Death. It's everywhere, and it's all the time. Four deaths in three months, and it will be five deaths shortly as a family member approaches the end of his battle with stage four stomach cancer.
Death is not new to me. It has been an all too frequent caller since I was seven - my grandfather... a few years later, my grandmother... a cousin... a neighborhood friend, a teacher, a classmate, my father, his parents, another friend, and another and another and another - the most bizarre deaths, too, not just your bog standard death-at-the-end-of-a-long-life-well-lived. There were a few of those; but truthfully, most were more remarkable. Death following horribly cruel and protracted illnesses, death following the sudden manifestation of a problem nobody knew about, a crash, a drowning, a murder, exsanguination, painfully early deaths - it just goes on like that.
While one never truly gets used to the idea that literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON YOU KNOW is going to pop their clogs one day - and no fair guessing, you can't know when - I previously thought I'd got comfortable with the concept.
G-d and I are good; I died briefly once myself. (To quote Monty Python, I got better.) It was at the end of an extremely routine surgery and the surgeon told me that I just...stopped. Flatline, no breathing, no pulse. They jammed the breathing tube back into me, pumped things up again and hey presto, back to life. You're welcome.
And I know how to make peace with people. I can negotiate the choppy waters of The End of things - relationships, jobs, lives. I know how to grieve, I understand the process, I accept the universal truth of it. But it still rattles me. Every. Single. Time. Even when you expect it, it rattles the nerves and brings you spang up against your own mortality in an exceedingly unpleasant way.
And I'm not used it it. I'm not.
I'm sick of it. I hate it. I hate the unpredictability and the inevitability and the relentless permanence of it.
When you grapple with clinical (and I mean clinical) Anxiety Disorder, the idea that one day without any warning at all, people will be gone from your life (perversely, the good ones, more often than not) and there will be nothing you can do - no amount of crying or wishing or praying will undo it, there is no court of appeals - no undo button, no do over, nothing - checkmate, end game, full stop - well.
Every day becomes a special kind of hell. I find myself wondering whether it would be better to start culling people so the losses are fewer, because it may be preferable to not seeing someone to whom you are close ever again.
Until, of course - well - but - views on what happens AFTER vary widely. Mine are favorable and rather nice, really. But having some significant experience on long distance relationships with the living, during which you must go extended periods of time without seeing each other, I am none too keen on the extended period of time I must go without seeing or speaking with my beloved decedents. Then again, I'm not keen to join them, either.
And by this time in my life, you'd think - or at least, I'd thought - I'd be a bit more rooted, grounded, secure...tethered and fortified and able to deal with it all a bit better. But no.
No.
After my father died, and I mean really after - after the funeral and the cards and the flowers and the people all go home and get on with their lives while you're left to contend with the giant hole in yours... I remember choking on my own insomnia. I would fall asleep at one, two in the morning and wake up to see the first fiery sliver of sun appear in the sky. And I remember sitting in traffic, looking at the lights changing and everyone serenely driving through them.
And for the first time, I grasped the notion that the earth really does just keep turning. Night falls, the moon shines, the stars peek out, the owls call...the sun rises, and you are expected to get up and continue living.
I did, of course.
And I will.
The skies these days are full of milky sunlight, the kind which precedes the warmth of spring but gives one a bit of hope that it won't always be winter. Through the haze, sometimes I think I can feel the seasons shifting gears, can practically hear the shift in the trees, the wind, the ocean.
And now I clench up inside and wonder what changes they will bring. Who else will die?
It's no way to go through life, that.
So I'm trying to shift my own gears and ask a different question - will you live?
And I don't mean will you keep on with the breathing and the brain waves - I mean - will you LIVE? Will you embrace opportunities and go and do and say and really LIVE as much as you can? Despite the cruelty and horror and fear and ugliness that pervades this business of earthly existence?
As with the name of this blog, I will only know later if this will prove true, but for right now, right this moment, I choose to answer yes. Yes, I will.
Details to follow, I suppose.
Hm.
Yes.
Which is why I haven't posted for two months.
There goes my resolve to blog every day. There it goes for nearly sixty consecutive days.
I have my reasons, of course. Chief among them is the fact that of late, I have begun to feel like the Angel of Death. It's everywhere, and it's all the time. Four deaths in three months, and it will be five deaths shortly as a family member approaches the end of his battle with stage four stomach cancer.
Death is not new to me. It has been an all too frequent caller since I was seven - my grandfather... a few years later, my grandmother... a cousin... a neighborhood friend, a teacher, a classmate, my father, his parents, another friend, and another and another and another - the most bizarre deaths, too, not just your bog standard death-at-the-end-of-a-long-life-well-lived. There were a few of those; but truthfully, most were more remarkable. Death following horribly cruel and protracted illnesses, death following the sudden manifestation of a problem nobody knew about, a crash, a drowning, a murder, exsanguination, painfully early deaths - it just goes on like that.
While one never truly gets used to the idea that literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON YOU KNOW is going to pop their clogs one day - and no fair guessing, you can't know when - I previously thought I'd got comfortable with the concept.
G-d and I are good; I died briefly once myself. (To quote Monty Python, I got better.) It was at the end of an extremely routine surgery and the surgeon told me that I just...stopped. Flatline, no breathing, no pulse. They jammed the breathing tube back into me, pumped things up again and hey presto, back to life. You're welcome.
And I know how to make peace with people. I can negotiate the choppy waters of The End of things - relationships, jobs, lives. I know how to grieve, I understand the process, I accept the universal truth of it. But it still rattles me. Every. Single. Time. Even when you expect it, it rattles the nerves and brings you spang up against your own mortality in an exceedingly unpleasant way.
And I'm not used it it. I'm not.
I'm sick of it. I hate it. I hate the unpredictability and the inevitability and the relentless permanence of it.
When you grapple with clinical (and I mean clinical) Anxiety Disorder, the idea that one day without any warning at all, people will be gone from your life (perversely, the good ones, more often than not) and there will be nothing you can do - no amount of crying or wishing or praying will undo it, there is no court of appeals - no undo button, no do over, nothing - checkmate, end game, full stop - well.
Every day becomes a special kind of hell. I find myself wondering whether it would be better to start culling people so the losses are fewer, because it may be preferable to not seeing someone to whom you are close ever again.
Until, of course - well - but - views on what happens AFTER vary widely. Mine are favorable and rather nice, really. But having some significant experience on long distance relationships with the living, during which you must go extended periods of time without seeing each other, I am none too keen on the extended period of time I must go without seeing or speaking with my beloved decedents. Then again, I'm not keen to join them, either.
And by this time in my life, you'd think - or at least, I'd thought - I'd be a bit more rooted, grounded, secure...tethered and fortified and able to deal with it all a bit better. But no.
No.
After my father died, and I mean really after - after the funeral and the cards and the flowers and the people all go home and get on with their lives while you're left to contend with the giant hole in yours... I remember choking on my own insomnia. I would fall asleep at one, two in the morning and wake up to see the first fiery sliver of sun appear in the sky. And I remember sitting in traffic, looking at the lights changing and everyone serenely driving through them.
And for the first time, I grasped the notion that the earth really does just keep turning. Night falls, the moon shines, the stars peek out, the owls call...the sun rises, and you are expected to get up and continue living.
I did, of course.
And I will.
The skies these days are full of milky sunlight, the kind which precedes the warmth of spring but gives one a bit of hope that it won't always be winter. Through the haze, sometimes I think I can feel the seasons shifting gears, can practically hear the shift in the trees, the wind, the ocean.
And now I clench up inside and wonder what changes they will bring. Who else will die?
It's no way to go through life, that.
So I'm trying to shift my own gears and ask a different question - will you live?
And I don't mean will you keep on with the breathing and the brain waves - I mean - will you LIVE? Will you embrace opportunities and go and do and say and really LIVE as much as you can? Despite the cruelty and horror and fear and ugliness that pervades this business of earthly existence?
As with the name of this blog, I will only know later if this will prove true, but for right now, right this moment, I choose to answer yes. Yes, I will.
Details to follow, I suppose.
Hm.
Yes.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Who Needs Sleep
This girl.
And I got some. The good kind, with REM sleep. And dreams.
My dreams are usually pretty funky but these were wacky even by my standards, featuring a cousin, my father, my brother, some Soprano's type dude, a former co worker, my grandfather, and a whole bunch of wacky circumstances involving professional yard sale selling and a secret vault and a hidden key -
You know what? I think I need some more sleep. One night is not enough to counter chronic sleep deprivation - so I'm off. (This will get better. And easier. Probably.)
And I got some. The good kind, with REM sleep. And dreams.
My dreams are usually pretty funky but these were wacky even by my standards, featuring a cousin, my father, my brother, some Soprano's type dude, a former co worker, my grandfather, and a whole bunch of wacky circumstances involving professional yard sale selling and a secret vault and a hidden key -
You know what? I think I need some more sleep. One night is not enough to counter chronic sleep deprivation - so I'm off. (This will get better. And easier. Probably.)
Thursday, January 9, 2014
So Much To Say
And too busy to say it or think it through properly.
I have a column due; struggling on that front.
Laundry Hill growing into Laundry Mountain.
Adjusting to being two, easily, and trying to enjoy it instead of fretting about how quickly it goes by.
Children. Driving. Me. CRAZY.
Anyway.
I posted. Job done. Back again later.
I have a column due; struggling on that front.
Laundry Hill growing into Laundry Mountain.
Adjusting to being two, easily, and trying to enjoy it instead of fretting about how quickly it goes by.
Children. Driving. Me. CRAZY.
Anyway.
I posted. Job done. Back again later.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
(You've Got) The Magic Touch
Last night while I was waiting at the airport, I had some time to sit and indulge in some voyeurism.
People lined up at the gate and waited for someone. Parents..children...spouses...lovers, friends, brothers...
They fidgeted. They tapped their feet. They tapped their smartphones. They looked around. They sipped coffee and water, their faces betraying their anxiety, eagerness, impatience.
And one by each, as their loved ones came through the doors, wheeling their luggage or pushing a cart, their faces would change, muscles relaxing into smiles, laughing, shouting out to each other, some growing tearful - and I began to notice something.
As soon as they were able, every time - every single time - someone came through the gate to be met by someone else, they made physical contact. Handshake, shoulder clap, hug, kiss, high five, pat on the back - it didn't seem to matter. Men, women, children - the young, the elderly, the middle aged, the teenagers - it seemed like they were all compelled to achieve that physical connection as soon as possible.
They've done studies determining how important physical touch is - the impact it has on mood, self esteem, depression, health - not just for the huggee, but for the hugger as well. And at the end of the day, I guess we not only want it, but we need it. And somewhere in our collective consciousness, maybe we know it. Or maybe it's being largely deprived of touch during your travel and flight times, apart from the lucky few who are treated to a TSA grope or a handsy seatmate. But I really think it goes deeper than that.
We are affiliative creatures by nature. No matter how stodgy or badass or frosty or elsewise impervious my fellow airporters presented themselves to the world, they all wanted that touch. So consider the notion that while you might recognize how you benefit from receiving physical touch, you can also meet the inherent human need of others by simply by making physical contact with them.
It's astonishing and wonderful. And I found the whole thing rather...er... touching.
People lined up at the gate and waited for someone. Parents..children...spouses...lovers, friends, brothers...
They fidgeted. They tapped their feet. They tapped their smartphones. They looked around. They sipped coffee and water, their faces betraying their anxiety, eagerness, impatience.
And one by each, as their loved ones came through the doors, wheeling their luggage or pushing a cart, their faces would change, muscles relaxing into smiles, laughing, shouting out to each other, some growing tearful - and I began to notice something.
As soon as they were able, every time - every single time - someone came through the gate to be met by someone else, they made physical contact. Handshake, shoulder clap, hug, kiss, high five, pat on the back - it didn't seem to matter. Men, women, children - the young, the elderly, the middle aged, the teenagers - it seemed like they were all compelled to achieve that physical connection as soon as possible.
They've done studies determining how important physical touch is - the impact it has on mood, self esteem, depression, health - not just for the huggee, but for the hugger as well. And at the end of the day, I guess we not only want it, but we need it. And somewhere in our collective consciousness, maybe we know it. Or maybe it's being largely deprived of touch during your travel and flight times, apart from the lucky few who are treated to a TSA grope or a handsy seatmate. But I really think it goes deeper than that.
We are affiliative creatures by nature. No matter how stodgy or badass or frosty or elsewise impervious my fellow airporters presented themselves to the world, they all wanted that touch. So consider the notion that while you might recognize how you benefit from receiving physical touch, you can also meet the inherent human need of others by simply by making physical contact with them.
It's astonishing and wonderful. And I found the whole thing rather...er... touching.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Watching & Waiting
I've spent nearly 8 months watching the calendar and the clocks, and a while tonight watching the Arrivals Gate and waiting on The Man's arrival.
Been busy trying to make the house look like somewhere you'd want to stay and trying to hide evidence of my shopping, er, habit. (Fail.)
Not much time to write, as the day is nearly done but he is here and I am happy and I'll be back later. Play nicely, now.
Been busy trying to make the house look like somewhere you'd want to stay and trying to hide evidence of my shopping, er, habit. (Fail.)
Not much time to write, as the day is nearly done but he is here and I am happy and I'll be back later. Play nicely, now.
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