Snow Day

Well this really sucks -- or maybe it doesn't.

I tripped in the Grand Canyon this October & smashed the lens coverings of my camera. If I was careful, I could still use it but last week it died a true death. I find I'm lonely without my camera. It's been a good friend. I'll replace it in lower-priced everything in Arizona but in the meantime I can't show you what my street looks like under whipped cream.

On the other hand, it's one more reason I don't have to put on 8 million items of clothing & go outside.

I was due to leave The Bat Cave for La Guardia at 6.30 a.m. for my 8.30 flight to Phoenix. When I called American Airlines last night about the weather conditions, the Human said the flight was on but to call as soon as I woke up. At 4.45 this morning I called & found out my flight was canceled & please hold for the next available agent. I knew, after something like 24 hours of cancellations, I had to stay on the line if I was going to get a flight in time for Christmas. At 7.15 a Human voice interrupted the music & woke me up.

"M'mpg m'mph, yabba, bwaf," I said.

"I can't understand you," the Human Agent replied.

I shook myself awake and told her my flight had been canceled and what should we do about this. She reticketed me for Monday afternoon & I found myself truly alone for the first time in years. There was white snow-light pooling into the Cave, I was exhausted from therapy, errands, packing & laundry the day before, Daisy is staying with her auntie & uncle for the duration of my trip & went off to the Fields of Snow in New Jersey yesterday. I keep thinking she's sleeping at the end of the bed & will start whining any minute for a walk. It's very quiet. I slept till 11, called various car services to cancel & re-book, read, called my father, read, napped, considered a spot of interpersonal turmoil I've hit but had had explained to me by New Therapist & now it's 8.30 & I've taken two Klonopin & thought I'd write a spot of blog before it hits.

I love Daisy. You know that. But I'm oddly enjoying this strange solitude that comes from everyone thinking I've left & no dogs to be wrenched around by & resting after an incredibly busy week. I've boarded with dogs for something like two weeks, had a promotional video & podcast to do at Berkley, a day of tradition with my friend Meem (Union Square Xmas Fair, Qi Dong massage in Chinatown), a marathon present-wrapping day & another of delivering, then a Saturday of errands & appointments & chores. Had I made that flight this morning, chances are I'd be a zombie tomorrow. Maybe I'll be a little fresher & rested for today's enforced downtime.

I'm missing a radio interview in Phoenix, however. Never a good feeling but, well, not my fault.

I'm actually looking forward to this two weeks in Arizona, although I know it will have some heart string tugging without Mom. Does Dad really want a tree? Does he really want cookies? Will I be forced to make mincemeat pie with my mother's alliance? Despite the questions of who my father and I really are when it comes to Christmas, I know my presence there will do more good than not. It's a good feeling, to be needed.

One of the gifts of this year's general yuckiness has been a growing correspondence with one of my cousins. She gifted me her kids who have adopted me. I'm like a pig in shit with all these younger first-cousins-once-removed who are snarky, smart, articulate, educated & share some common ancestors we can laugh at. One lives in Arizona & another is coming to stay with Dad and me (I should tell him this, yes?) for a few days.

I'm looking forward to 2010. Angry Fat Girls may have been turned down for some of the media coverage that Passing for Thin got (20/20 wants all five women in the book & I've been creative in protecting their anonymity), but I think AFG is a much more important book. PFT is a sort of fairy tale come true; AFG is the truth waiting at the close of every fairy tale. I want very much to make the point that weight gain is not merely statistically inevitable but biologically and emotionally normal. If we can't live with our selves we won't sustain weight loss and will make being overweight a form of 24/7 punishment. I want to salve some of our collected woundedness.

I want my relationship with my family to mend. New Therapist asked how I expect this to happen & I said, "Organically." I'm not sorry for this hissy fit(s) I threw over not being at Mother's memorial service but I am working through the anger & not mattering to my family. The lump in my throat right now is MUCH smaller.

I'm done with writing about fat & thin. I'm moving on to the kookie side of my life, of being a peasant in Brownstone Brooklyn. Today is the only day I've not had some light bulb flash of something I need to add to one or another planned essay.

I've eked out enough savings to plan another trip abroad, either to Budapest/Krakow or Brussels/Amsterdam. I'm planning to go to Seattle & Portland to promote AFG & will see many friends & extended family there, as well as snoop around Seattle as my potential next home.

Right now my attention is on those things. It's also on the intangibles of what I want from therapy -- setting boundaries, making myself heard, not reacting to stubbing my toe by automatically saying, "I hate myself." It's high time I hie myself off to the Rooms to get those boundaries & automatic reactions applied to food as well. But for now, it's a small miracle that this Panic-Disordered Lady can run a half dozen errands & get herself into a shrink's office.

These are the ruminations of a snow day. I'm grateful this difficult year has less than two weeks to wreck its grief, worry, stress, loneliness & rejection on me. I want, for the first time, to be the driver of the new year, rather than a nervous cringing passenger.

So. Happy new year to all of us. May the snow melt quickly.