Plumb tuckered out...

Ethan's party was yesterday. He's five and still needs a nap, but doesn't always take one. So instead, he literally fell asleep on his feet.

Revising History

Have you heard? Size 12 is the new size 10; 40 is the new 30 (and 50 takes 40's place as well).

Maybe it's a Baby Boomer thing, rewriting history or facts to suit your own situation. I know my dad did a lot of revisionist history, shaping himself in stories to be the kind of father he never was in real life. But lately I appreciate a good revision myself, and I look for opportunities to make changes in myself where they won't be noticed as much.

Why hide change? Well, another way at looking at change is to admit that the way you once did things or looked or what have you was wrong, or not good, or some other negative connotation. (In fact, every positive sentiment can be flipped to be negative, and vice verse...)

Vacations are a good time for me, personally, to try out new hair styles or fashion looks. This works out for me particularly because I make such a big deal normally of not caring about my looks, so when I'm off in some strange town no one will scoff at my contradictions. For some reason, I also spend a lot of time on vacation looking for a great hat, but that's a story for another time.

I find myself poised at another opportunity for change and redefinition: I've been laid off, or layed off, depending on how you look at it. In slightly less than a month, I will be without work, or perhaps on the road to the job of my dreams, at last. I'd settle for the job of my realistic fantasies. 

A fantasy job would be you being overheard while talking to your friends by some high muckety muck at a really cool company and being brought in without an interview to a really cool job with short hours and high pay. As opposed to realistic fantasy job, which involves you finding a nice job after a short search and not too many humiliating interviews working OK hours with a couple of really nice benefits.

So here's to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, and how I want to look, and what hat I'll wear when I get there.

Triggers!

Last week's triggers are not as easy to figure out as this week's. This week I got 30 day's notice that I'm being let go at work (layed off or laid off? Is one preferable??) Last week, however. Well, the cause wasn't as cut and dried (0r traumatic).

Last week was spring break, and my daughter was off with my husband for 3 days of it. On Friday, finally, after 4 years of procrastinating, I got around to filing our petition for re-adoption for our son. Something about the paperwork and the complex instructions, and the metal detector at the courthouse, and losing yet another keyring Swiss Army knife to security, and having the filing clerk question my documents, something in there made me feel really inadequate or stupid or something else. Then I went and met up with my family at the post office to apply for passports for the kids. Despite having my huge book of paperwork including several copies each of my and my husband's birth certificates and marriage certificate, I did not have a copy of Kyra's birth certificate. I could not convince the passport clerk or her boss that I didn't need this according to the instructions on the internet. Again with the feeling stupid or inadequate or inept, or some other "in-" prefix feeling. Sigh.

So between that and the lay off this week, I've been in an ice cream spiral of despair. Well, maybe I wouldn't go that far. I'm actually OK about losing my job. I've been trying to get up the backbone or something to leave. What I really wanted was to get a fantastic job and leave with no notice. Well, that can't happen now, what with the severance packet I have waiting at the end of the rainbow. 

It doesn't help that I have this cold that makes food taste like paste (so I keep trying to see if it tastes better...)

Well, I know that ice cream won't find me a job, that expanding over my waistline while job hunting will just make me feel more inadequate and useless and unwanted. Still, there is that other half a pint of ice cream... Maybe just one more serving...

Aaron go brah??

The leprechauns made little hats today in pre-k. Both kids tried it on (slideshow at the top).

Case in Point

Hello: my name is Shawn and I'm a sweet-oholic. It's been 3 days since my last spicy jelly bean, and 6 since those chocolate covered almonds. Both are my current obsessions, and I'm hard-pressed to make it through the day without thinking about one or both. At least the jelly beans are fat free. Problem is everyone seems to be out of them. They have plenty of Classic and Speckled. So far I've been to 4 different stores, not on the same day. The only thing that prevents me from hopping in my car and trying another store or, worse yet, going to Trader Joe's for the almonds, is that I'm running on empty and don't feel like getting gas tonight. Sigh. Well, at least I'm stocked up on my Weight Watcher English Toffee ice cream bars (which I can usually stop at 2)...

Feeling Pensieve

I found myself thinking about Harry Potter today and the Pensieve in Dumbledore's office. How cool would that be to be able to extract thoughts and store them for later analysis? Maybe you could get a perspective that you don't have ordinarily get when the thoughts are jumbled and crowding one another to get to the forefront and be acknowledged. Knowing me I'd watch the memories and think something like "I look fat in that" or "I wish I'd told so-and-so about the crumb on their upper lip..."

Another thing I was pondering was identity, and how some people have a harder time than others finding their own or feeling comfortable with them. Like me. For longer than I can remember, I have been consumed with thoughts about food, thoughts about weight. What a lot of time to spend thinking about something so prosaic, so necessary to life, but surely not so...weighty. What could I have done with my thoughts if they weren't spent on weight and self-image?

But I am an obsessor. And my obsessions become my identity for a time. When that phase is passed, I go through another identity crisis until I find the next obsession. The last decade has been invested first in fertility matters: trying for a baby, failing to have a baby, having a baby (at last!), mothering and wanting another baby, failing to have another baby, etc. I am quite the subject matter expert on a number of topics relating to the subject of family building now. After completing my family, I was sort of at a loss: what now? Finally I settled on focusing on me and getting my body back. I think maybe part of my angst lately is due to the future: what comes after losing the weight? Maybe my mind is thinking (shut up!) that it doesn't know what to obsess about next, so why not stick with this weight loss roller coaster. Does my weight loss goal need to include a "what comes next" piece in order for me to feel comfortable enough to reach it? Hmmmm....

Another thing on my mind. I was at a seminar yesterday about managing change, and I managed to make most of it about personal stuff rather than work stuff, as was intended (oh well, at least it wasn't a total waste of time). The seminar leader mentioned the steps of grieving and said sometimes people get stuck in one phase or another and have a hard time moving on. Well duh...and yet. Here it is coming on three years since my mom's illness and death and I found myself tearing up on the drive home today. I was thinking about when she was my movie buddy; how we went to see "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and laughed so hard we almost peed our pants over the opening scene where Hugh Grant says the F word over and over. And thinking about that, and other movies we laughed at, finally pushed aside those other memories of her with shorn hair and chocolate on her mouth. I miss my mom. So I guess I'm over anger and moving on...

How Bad Do You Want It?

And it turns out the answer might be, "not so much." That was the startling revelation at my last WW meeting. It's March, which is typically the time of year when all the newbies start falling off the wagon, so the leader handed out these little report cards for us to keep. It was a tracker to make sure we're doing program all week, and it was arranged from Sunday to Saturday. Now, my weigh-in day is Saturday, and the first thing I thought of was, "oh great! I can start this tomorrow!" So of course the next thing the leader said was "And we're doing this backward so we can start TODAY!" Dang! Foiled again!

So she was saying all this stuff and then she goes "who here wants to lose weight?". Now I know that I avoid going with the crowd: I don't like to clap when others clap, I refuse to do all those goofy participation dances; in short, I hate that crap. But I can't help but wonder at my first impulse, which did not feel like knee-jerk dissension: I did not want to raise my hand.

Now what kind of crap is that? Here I've been going to these meetings for over 6 years now, with varying degrees of commitment  and success; I go to the gym...a lot. I have gotten down to goal once and to to under 10% many times, and for some reason or another I just can't seem to stay there. What is holding me back?

The first thought that pops in my mind is that I don't have a realistic goal. I've been trying really hard to adopt the idea that I want to be healthy and want to be at a weight that is better for me. How can that not be a realistic goal? I like the way I feel when I'm smaller. I feel more confident, I feel healthier, but still, there is something about the attention or the compliments or some other self-defeating trip switch that goes off once those events occur that makes me fall off the wagon. I'm at that point where I stay about the same, give or take 5 lbs, in some kind of holding pattern for months. I'm in month 4 now of being close to 30 lbs down. I'm in month 4 of being between sizes and sort of fitting into my size 10s. I'm in month 4 of sort of eating core and having little mini binges. Uh oh: I feel some chastisement and self-flagellation coming!

So the question remains: what's in it for me to be fat? Is it like it would prove that I can't do this? I know I can. Unfortunately, having done it once doesn't make it easier the next time(s), it actually makes it harder. I've been tossing this topic around in my head for weeks without actually putting pen to paper (so to speak), so it's a loaded one for me, obviously. I'm on the brink: don't fall!