Tri- Quad - Oh Hell, Pentfecta

Once a year, and only once a year, I change my Facebook avatar from one of my book jackets to a picture of Cupid face down on the ground with an arrow in his back.

Coupled with Fat Tuesday, Chinese New Year and Presidents' Day Weekend, I'm swinging between bitchy and heartbroken.

You think all of this is self-inflated exclusion?  It is.  But I've run into Chinese lanterns, Mardi Gras beads, countless valentines and have a heavy schedule of dogs for the three-day weekend.  I ordered flowers for my father's sort-of girl friend yesterday, wishing he'd asked my brother to do it and order some for me at the same time.  How much fun to get flowers!  How it's NOT going to happen.  I'd go buy them myself but the Bat Cave is mid-disarray after getting rid of almost all the clothes I don't fit.  The project involved so many piles of various destinations that a lot of other things got out of control & I don't know where I'd put the flowers I won't buy myself.

God, I'm so tired of myself.

OK, so here is what I need to say: a catalogue of all my feelings the last few days:

Glad to be rid of all but two hefty armfuls of clothes I want to sell on eBay.
Glad some bad karma went out the door with those clothes.
A failure for having gained back most of the weight.  I kept one dress from my highest weight and when I found it, I tossed it into the Salvation Army bag with a shudder as to how it might fit me now.
Regretful about some of the associations of those clothes.
Angry and resentful about some of the associations of those clothes.

Sad and angry about men I loved who did not love me back.

Heartbroken that my black Lab client is moving to Manhattan on Friday.  Great week to break up a marriage, BTW.

Frustrated leading into anger at a freelance project I can't get answers on, including whether I will be paid for it.  This is the thorniest feeling.  I THINK frustration leads to anger, which leads to self-justification which leads to sarcasm which leads to all the reasons I should be paying my employer for doing a massive project in a very short time.  I THINK that's the order.  Doesn't matter.  It all ends in Ben & Jerry's Key Lime Ice Cream.

Stressed out over the project above, edits for my new book coming in, many dogs to walk, money (loss of Lab = $600 a month).

Wishing I wanted something.  Or maybe I do.  I wish I had hope.  I wish I could be thin, write a novel and be solvent.

Funny: I am where I started in Passing for Thin.  Fat.  Hopeless.  Wanting to write.  Only this time, I'd trade freedom from credit cards for the love of my life.  Been there, didn't do that.

Thanks for letting me vent.  I THINK I got it all out............

VERITAS w/ Mel Fabregas: 'Food Addict' Label May Worsen Fat Stigma

VERITAS w/ Mel Fabregas: 'Food Addict' Label May Worsen Fat Stigma

My response:

We can only hope that the more information about food addiction that becomes available, the more compassion people will have for the obese.  How much were these people told about the addiction?  If you read Pam Peeke The Hunger Fix or any of the other half dozen laymen's science on the subject, you'll know food can literally scar the brain.  Obesity is not a choice, it's an unavoidable consequence of the dopamine system gone awry. You have to be pretty odd to wake up one day and decide, "I think I'll gain 200 pounds, have a hard time moving, difficulty sleeping, have to ask for a seat belt extender and endure disapproval every time I encounter another human being."

Perhaps the people in the study feel fat women are like Bowery drunks.  Perhaps compassion is a disappearing quality.  Perhaps they will one day wake up on the wrong side of the number on the scale and will have to re-think their prejudices.  The latter is the most likely scenario of all.

Bad Week...Or Not...

I need to review this very strange week and the only way I'll do it is if I show off while I'm at it.  Ergo: I blog.

Let's begin with the glass half empty of pond scum, my default position in life.

1. My computer screen is fading in and out.
2. I lost internet (and phone and cable) for an entire business day on Tuesday.  I have a freelance gig that is entirely dependent on the internet.  My freelance gig boss was not happy.
3. I lost $55 in cash on a very windy day.
4. Daisy got very sick.
5. Daisy got very sick all over the sheets and blankets.
6. Daisy cost $660 to get her take a solid poop.
7. Daisy's vet visits cost me at least $115 in lost business this week.
8. My house looks like I need a hoarding counselor's intervention as I continue to sort clothes into piles: (1) Salvation Army (picking up 2/13, my deadline); (2) niece in Washington; (3) niece and sister-in-law in Montana; (4) Housing Works donations; (5) boxes to ship West; (6) trash; (7) eBay; (8) waiting for a decision from various nieces; (9) clothes I need to hang up or store because they are either too sentimental or they actually fit.  My friend Ann gave me a baseline I'm grateful for: if it fits or almost fits, keep it.  My closets, now mostly empty of Thin Clothes, are bulging, as are my drawers.
9. The shoes I ordered my father do not fit.  I have to run out and send the paperwork so that my brother, in full I-told-you-so mode, can return them.  I wanted them to fit because it would have made my dad feel...younger, having more choices than Fred Flintstone.  I was really upset about that.
10. I ate over Daisy.  Piles of sugar.  Twice

That's a nice full list of reasons to be exhausted.  Because after surviving the list, I go into the weekend with 15 and 10 walks per day, which is not relaxing and especially not relaxing when I decide to pull down four big boxes of clothes that need to be photographed, described & emailed to probably parties before dividing into 8 of 9 piles above.

Ah.  Burp.  I just had a deserved Greek salad with grilled chicken from the diner.  I believe in restaurants & weight loss, if don't order the milk shake, fries and pie.  I mean, it's gone.  There isn't anything else to pick at.  All the experts say don't go out.  I say, go out, order healthy, and have a cigarette.

Or order in, which is what an agoraphobe with dirty hair and clothes does.

Anyway.  You can see I'm pushing toward the better side of it all if I can appreciate a good salad.

Half full of good Champagne would be:

1.  My internet, phone and cable service have been restored.
2.  Daisy is much better and got to run loose on the Promenade in the scant snow this morning with her pal, Sandy.
3.  This is big: I PAID THE VET BILLS BY CHECK.  For once in my life, I am both paying my bills down, have a teeny but growing nest egg and am liquid enough to pay a big sudden bill like that without having to make minimum payments.  It helps that Discover gave me $106 back for some random reason.  A minimum payment there will LOOK like a bigger payment, at least.
4.  I got rid of enough clothes yesterday to walk through the apartment without terrible, terrible danger.  I'd like to attack my cellar cubby today but everything seems to be taking longer than I'd like.  Tomorrow I'll be able to ship off two big boxes.  That will feel good.  Still, I'm anxious because I don't know what's downstairs in storage and when I get done with this, I will have to do it all over again with the CTFOAF.

I did some blogging.  I put in the hours I demand of myself on this freelance project.  I took a huge bag of clothes to Housing Works last night and seem, from what the women at the donation desk said, to have been the only genuinely nice person to have graced their Saturday.  I even got the vomit washed out of the bedding.  Five days out of seven without sugar is better than four or two or none.

Still, it was a tiring week.  I would really really like to have a whole day off.  Maybe two.  Only Daisy and an appointment for a massage and the energy of declothing myself to put into making some decent food instead of ordering it out.  It's not going be this week.  Dogs and dogs, at least five containers of clothes to mess my head up with.  If I'm lucky, I'll get to spend some exhausting hours photographing and measuring clothes for eBay.  If I'm even more lucky, someone will buy something.

OK.  Gotta go walk a golden retriever.  I'll be the one who smells like raw red onions and feta cheese.