Scissors, Paper, God

I had a box of them. Mary Poppins, with Jane and Michael, Samantha from Bewitched, the perfunctory bridal party so many girls in the early 60's had. On and on. I can't remember what others were there but, unlike my limited Barbie collection (didn't Barbie cost an astronomical amount of money in the `60's?), I could actually perform The Sound of Music with my paper dolls because I had enough of them.

Then I discovered my mother's wrapping paper and starting making clothes for them with whatever didn't reek too much of mistletoe.

It would not surprise you to know, then, that I still love cutting things out of magazines and catalogues.

The point of the Third Step, which is the same for all 12-step programs ("Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the will of God as I understood God") is to first make some decisions about God or a higher power and then cast one's fate to it.

My sponsor and I have had several conversations now that have hinged on me playing God. The first was my rage at having relapsed. The second came up in a conversation about how to approach the Dreaded Fourth Step ("Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"). "How could I have two crazy bosses in a row? It must have been me." After the first go-around of being so angry at myself for relapsing, I caught myself. Who am I to say it was me or it was them? Who am I to say I was naive and unable to establish an adult relationship with either of them? Those are judgment calls. Is someone who will tuck her nightgown into sweatpants and run out to the deli in the rain really in a position to make judgments about herself, let alone anyone else?

Let alone my fondness for paper dolls.

I'm sure I've written about my Catholic School Girl Concept of God, which is best sung to the tune, "You Better Not Pout". My sponsor is all too familiar with it. I've tried a buddy God I called Ralph for a while. I've tried to integrate myself back into the Church. I've tried various saints. And then I relapse. Or feel crummy about wasting my life with online games. Or watch a marathon of America's Next Top Model, God save me.

When I first went into the Rooms, I made what is known there as a "God box". It can be anything -- a paper bag, a shoe box, a jar, whatever. The idea is that when something Big happens (a fight with a friend, a resentment, a decision to be made: whatever troubles the waters), you write it down and stick it in the vessel of choice. I, of course, saw this as an opportunity to play paper dolls.

That God box, made from an oatmeal container 11 years ago, is dusty, faded, fraying and heavy. I really want this abstinence to be a new beginning so part of my Third Step was making a new God box. I had the good karma box for it -- the box from the Ralph Lauren Romance perfume my father gave me for Christmas -- and stacks of unread magazines and catalogues. It was time to go to work.

It's been an interesting and sometimes moving several days because of it.

My first God box was about my relationship with God. The new one is about 1) God's relationship with me, and 2) proof that there is a God. Swan Lake, for instance, is proof of the Sublime. So are the Rockies that are my soul's cradle. Venice, flowers, my sense of being from Somewhere, the Hubble Telescope, Barack Obama, the fierceness and love of bears, Jane Austen -- proof. I'm sorry, my Agnostics, but these aren't random items for me.

Then there's the matter of God's relationship with me, which has been missing since the days I used to hold hands with guardian angel, probably pre-First Confession when God gets wicked on kids. "Be Yourself -- Everyone Else Is Taken," God tells me. "Love is patient, love is kind," he assures me. Buddhas laugh; a wounded angel is carried by ordinary boys; a black Edmund Gorey Lab carries a banner that says, "We belong together."

The project got me humming The Mills Brothers. I wasn't surprised when the chorus of "Paper Doll" echoed my sense of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately.

I'm gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

When I come home at night she will be waiting
She'll be the truest doll in all this world
I'd rather have a Paper Doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl

I'm interested in seeing what the compassionate, monogamous, cheerleader of a God will do for me.

Oops.

This is not my foot.

It's not my foot because the labeled fourth metatarsal of my foot has a stress fracture, known as a march fracture. I've been walking around on it for a while -- which is why it's called a march fracture to begin with -- thinking I'd done something to my little toe again until I noticed how swollen my foot was and started poking around to see where the tenderness is. A consult with the `net and my father has confirmed what I can't quite bring myself to pay someone else to confirm only to be told what my father told me: wear a stiff-soled shoe and stay off the foot.

I can, however, wear the stiff-soled shoe and I've taken the week off from dog walking, which is a lurching, pausing, pulling six or seven miles a day.

My manuscript is open in another window, as well as a new document to begin outlining it in order to see where I can impose more of the story line. I just walked Daisy and my foot's throbbing a little. I have better sympathy than usual for my former AFG cohorts who have knee problems. I'm not used to picking and choosing what walks I can take and regretting running into a good friend on the way back from Key Food because we lingered and talked.

Right now I'm avoiding that outline. I think Angry Fat Girls is a more important book than Passing for Thin. It's reality whereas PFT is true for so few women. But it's been a painful book to write and isn't my foot enough pain???

Well, no. If, in fact, I pay someone to diagnose and possibly treat this, I'd better keep working through the soul-pain since I'm not making any money off the foot-pain.

It's one of those times that I feel like I did at my highest weight and was so debilitated. It makes me feel like I weigh 340 pounds. Weirdly, I had more of a social life then. I fought the pain my back, legs, feet were in. But I also fought the physical pain with food and fought for a social life with food as well. I'd come home from seeing people feeling inadequate -- inadequate because I so disliked myself and inadequate because I couldn't taste the food we may have eaten together and certainly didn't get, for me, adequate amounts. I'd stop by the all-night deli and have my real meal at home in bed. In some ways, eating after socializing was also prolonging the pleasure on the literal gut level.

Maybe it's not so weird that I've become skittish about leaving home and mixing with the world in the last few years. I've been in the food most of that time but I've lost my innocence about what I do with it as well. I haven't learned enough about being a myself in public to be relaxed about it.

Emphasis on "being" because I act like myself but am not, quite, myself in most settings.

When I was a young poet, Dick Hugo asked how it was that I wrote such precocious poems. I told him that "I" didn't. I had a sort of role I slipped into that got me past my tongue-tied-ness; I acted up a storm of confidence in putting pen to paper.

It's an apt description of me in social situations as well.

How much does it have to do with weight? Everything and nothing. Obesity debilitates some of my confidence and a lot of my genuineness because I have to act harder to get beyond the place of crumpling outsiderness and self-flagellation that being around people stirs up.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this or where I'm going with it. Bea responded to my last post about using fat to absorb the slings and arrows and I immediately thought, "I use food, not fat, to do that." There is an Easter brunch my closest friends are hosting and my hostess called last night to discuss what she was serving that I can eat and what she could make for me instead. I told her I'd bring stewed fruit and a salad, things I can eat. I don't think I resent making the offer or having the conversation or being the imposition...but I'm aware that this is the first party I've gone to since getting clean and I'm going to have to act graciously, consciously, soberly -- and possibly even funnily and interestingly.

I'm exhausted already. I wonder if my plaid dress fits and if I have hard-soled shoes to go with?

I think this abstinence is going to include chucking some stuff out. I can feel the radiation of blame from my friend over the situation that arose last week and I have a certain proactive response to it that refuses either to be her target, if it comes to that, or to have the self-pity fest I've held at other ruptures in our acquaintance. On my side of the street, I've tried hard to be a good friend. Period. What I did in my efforts doesn't matter because they're score keeping. I'm sticking with "I've tried hard to be a good friend". If sniveling is required to be forgiven, then chuck it.

Holy Week.

What an ironic time to be working toward finishing my Third Step and outlining my book.

Emotional Weight Lifting

If I make it to midnight today, and there is a reasonable chance that I will, I'll have seven weeks of abstinence and a guesstimated loss of 26 pounds.

I say all this for a couple of reasons.

My home 12-step group, the meeting I exert myself most habitually to get to, has shifted personality over the years. I've heard a number of down and dirty bulimia stories since going back. There is nothing more gutter-drunk than bulimia. I respect their struggles and recovery enormously, and much prefer those stories to people who are complacent about their weight.

However...

I don't hear anyone sharing a day count or anniversary that mentions weight loss any more. I am disturbed by this so much that I spoke about it in my three minutes last week, bawling as I did so. I don't like the lack of sisterhood in my endeavor or the lack of discussion about the particular brutalities of obesity.

So I'm sharing my weight loss. I'm also sharing it because, as you know from The Great Wattle Disaster, there is a long period when you're working your way down from big numbers that one can't see one's weight loss. A dress size might be 20 or 30 pounds, and I've been wearing pretty much the same stuff as I did 8 weeks ago. Lots of elastic sweat pants and shirts bought big to begin with. Even my corduroys are elastic waisted. There is, for some months yet, a ways to go before I'll really see it -- in the mirror, on my labels -- for myself. So the scale is not a bad thing, especially when I'm not trying to get away with anything.

You know. Too much corned beef: will it show up on the scale tomorrow??? As though when I step on the scale, instead of a number, a big red brisket will be on the dial.

That's a great phrase We rely on, isn't it? Will X show up on the scale? Wonderfully absurd in the absurd idiom of weight loss.

I mention the seven weeks, which sounds tidier and bigger than 49 days, because of something my sponsor said in regards to a painful episode. "She's in her disease."

I was a little taken aback, not because my sponsor was wrong but because who are we -- she and I -- to differentiate between someone who's eating at will and my mere seven weeks of [really pretty good] behavior? How can seven weeks make me "sober"?

I've been thinking about what I haven't eaten my way through lately. Revising Angry Fat Girls, which is a painful process because it's an acutely painful but loving book. A lot of irritation with human beings when I'm out with dogs. A lot of flack in response to the last Lab Lady posts I did for the Brooklyn Heights Blog. Working every weekend and being very tired from the cold. A flare-up with someone who tends to drop me every couple of years that has me wondering if it would be better to end the friendship which gives me some of my greatest pleasure but is entirely at the whim of my friend.

This is nothing to the daily pressures and fears I faced when I was an agent and abstinent. How did I do without klonopin, I wonder? How will I get back to a place where I don't have a nervous breakdown about going to the grocery store or to walk the dogs, let alone get myself to a movie?

Maybe I've been handed these small bumps in the road as emotional dumbbells. What I've learned about myself in these seven weeks is how emotionally fragile I am. Confrontations devastate me, even when they're the sort someone else would shrug off. I'm prone to emotional exhaustion -- the flare up with my friend cost me two days of writing.

And I am very bad at speaking up for myself unless it's in rage. I defend my dogs but not myself.

I've lucked out. It was my turn to go see my parents but my brother has a conference coming up in Las Vegas and will take my turn. A dear friend has canceled a visit in May. I won't have to drink water at the rice pudding shop in Little Italy. I even ended up wit too many dogs on my slate to go to the St. Pat's bash that is a tradition. My life will not have been interrupted through these wobbly times when food is still a real option. I'll have to face it in June and July, but not in the first four months.

I wish there was a way to exercise emotional strength and appropriateness, the way one can press iron or go to yoga. I mean, one needs the strength of weight lifting in order to, say, carry a toddler, and one can get that strength in advance of said-toddler. Why isn't there a way to do in-advance push-ups regarding, "I feel taken advantage of" or "Please listen more carefully to what I'm saying"?

Maybe prayer, meditation, medication, chi help in situations like dog rage, but I'm less certain of their efficacy when pulled out on the carpet for misbehavior or mistakes, for being dumped by a guy, fired from a job, death in the family, loss of friends, travel and all the rest of the junk that goes into being human.

The only real difference I can see between seven weeks of abstinence and being actively in pursuit of pasta is that I take more of the punch than I did two months ago.

And, of course, the scale. ;)

And Then, Suddenly, It's About the Weight

Day 40 here but it doesn't feel like it. My experience of my 12-step program is a toss-up between the food, the abstinence & the weight loss. It's supposed to be about the abstinence & most of this God-granted spell has been. Then, Monday, a friend took a picture of me.

& don't you DARE say "What a great smile". I look like a no-neck Stay-Puff Woman. All the days and all the pounds were suddenly for naught as I looked at the wattle hanging off that stranger's face.

Whomp! I'm in how-long-till-I-can-fit land, close allies with how-much-will-I-weigh-when-I-see-so-and-so. It goes from, "Gee, I've lost at least 18 pounds" to "I have just under a hundred pounds to lose." Another ally: "I can do without my fruit and grain at breakfast."

I had a slip last night, which was preventable. I had corned beef in the crock pot and it smelled wonderful. I was also waiting for Go-Geek-Go to come and do things to my computer. I waited. I waited. My stomach growled. He should be here any time. I waited. I felt weak with hunger. Daisy cottoned on to my nervousness and began barking every time the building's front door opened. I waited. At 7.30 he called. He'd taken the wrong street name down & was somewhere on 6th Street in Park Slope. We decided to get together this weekend & I was left bored, with no work done, cabbage that had to be added to the crock, and I was starving By the time I ate, I was on the verge of being out of control. I ate too much. and woke up this morning in that remorse we all know too well.

I had missed part of breakfast yesterday because I was late for the dogs. When I weighed my corned beef for lunch just now, I realized I may not have eaten as much as I thought I did. I did my usual four or five miles yesterday. It's not that big a deal.

But it is. It is because that's not how one eats on my food plan. I could have had a cup of yogurt and a fruit to tide me over until the work was done and I could have dinner. But I didn't. I blurred lines yesterday and I don't like it.

That was AFTER I uploaded the photos my friend took of me. Coincidence? I'm not sure.

I had a good reminder of what I am this morning, however. If you remember, I compare my compulsion to my tender feet: they just are, and either I tend to them or I walk around in pain.

Yesterday, my feet were killing me. To avoid stepping on the balls of my feet, I contorted myself until my lower back and a ham string were also out of whack. I'd shaved my feet less than a week ago so I was pretending it wasn't the callouses on my corns. Like, what's the big deal? My callouses had thickened more quickly than usual and I was in pain. Still, all day, denial.

I hobbled behind Daisy at 7.30 this morning, wincing from my hamstring and my feet. "This is STUPID," I thought. I desperately needed some groceries but they became less a priority than running a tub of hot water, soaking my feet, putting in a brand new razor blade and shaving the callouses. 98% of the problem was solved.

Just as having had an approved snack last night would have almost certainly prevented too much dinner.

I had an email from a colleague this afternoon about how she can't lose weight at this time. I've been reporting my weight losses to her because she's part of the AFG publication team. I wrote back that she would when she was ready & that I'd done this when I was ready.

I also wanted her not to use my current success against herself. I've felt this when friends wre losing weight and I was gaining. And I wanted her to know that for the big pay-offs of my food plan, it's hard work. It's shopping and preparing. It's communicating with my sponsor. It's writing. It's meetings. It's step work and praying. I'm only a C 12-stepper but this is a program that demands work that is inconvenient and hard to fit in. I don't recommend it unless someone can put it at the very center of their lives.

So, danger averted. I didn't binge. I would not look better if I'd weighed my meat last night. Everything takes time. I've done well by dogs so far today & God's in his heaven. No scale for a couple of days. I want to enjoy my jammies that now fit and fit comfortably, and the jeans I wouldn't have dared put on a month ago. I want this day to be Enough and Just Right.

Woman Seeks God

The second step of the twelve is "Came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity". This step means finding a god one can work with. I've done various treatment of God but this time around I decided to place a personal ad on Craig's List under Missed Connections. Fifteen hours later, I haven't received a response, but it was a really interesting & revealing exercise because a) I had to sell myself, b) in essence, I asked God for a life. Should he be willing to give me one, of course the only possible reciprocity is to {gulp} give mine to him.

As goofy as all this sounds, I'm kind of moved by what I've done.

***

Seeks God – female – 52 – Brooklyn

Me: female, tall, zaftig but losing weight; dark hair graying; navy blue eyes; best smile; great voice. Fabulous sense of humor, talented & successful writer, Labrador/reading/movie/ballet-loving, earnest. I give the best presents & always remember birthdays. I have enough money to live moderately. I love my parents and my family, and they love me back, even though I confuse the bejesus out of them. Dogs like me. I have a lot of friends but none locally who will motivate me to get out & do stuff. I like tchotchkes, especially things that remind me of my childhood, & tend to buy too many books, movies, music & Barbie dolls. Very passionate. Prefer mountains to the ocean & want a hiking-camping companion.

You: beats me but my Catholic childhood tends toward male. Tall, strong, magical, warm eyes, best smile, great voice. You must have the perfect sense of humor that also accommodates mine, be as rich as, well, God. Inspire me to write & relieve my fear of it. Give me best presents & remember my birthday -- especially that I don't feel 52 & that it's a sore day for a kid who is adopted & feels congenitally unwantable. You must make me feel wanted, necessary & loved at all times & so well that I will return same. Be my best friend & teach me how to have fun. Suggest a movie or massage or season tickets at NYCB & I'm there. Indulge my weaknesses but not my dis-eases. Of the latter, you must slowly but certainly relieve me. You are passionate about all things, worlds, people, plants, animals & space dust, but you are most passionate about me & will teach me how to use & enjoy my passions. Help me plan & go with me to the Cascades, Fatima, the Rockies, Prague, Ireland, Yorkshire, Cambodia, Venice, Budapest, Krakow, Bath, Nova Scotia, Gettysburg, Transylvania & New Orleans. Be so much fun & so into me that I forget my jealousies, lost opportunities, vanished friends, the dead, the men I still have a sore spot for. Shield me from insults, fear, giving too much when I have too little to give. Hand me energy drinks when I need them and read me to sleep at night.

Willing to relocate -- you must be as well.

***

The code I had to type in to publish was, interestingly, “go Dolores” – Dolores means “sadness”.

***

I must add that I had this brain wave during a melanch0ly dog walk after two days of living someone else's obsessions for a good cause. I will have failed to accomplish what she wanted, which was to get a dog a home instead of back to the shelter. I was walking with all my own adoption issues, praying for the dog, feeling extremely lonely & abandoned to the inevitable flack that comes with writing for brooklynheightsblog.com.

At the end of the long block that these thoughts & feelings filled, Daisy began to play tug-of-war with her leash, which drives me crazy & very dangerous. I felt too weak to hang on to the leash & I stumbled slightly. She immediately let go & poked her head between my legs in what we call the tunnel-of-love, in which she threads through my legs for a butt rub. She was very concerned about that stumble (she gets hysterical when I actually fall).

We met A. outside my house & chatted about what's going on with her & with this dog. At the end of the conversation she reached out & rubbed my arm in what I can only describe as a gesture of warmth. "I needed that," I said. "I know," she answered.

God is in the small things.

Day 37 = 5 weeks. I think 5 weeks sounds better that 37 days.

Some Things

Bank Mergers
My bank, which had free everything but wasn't the most stable institution in the world, merged with a Big Bank last year. This has created some inconvenience for local customers because we've had to re-configure our ATM cards in order to transfer money between accounts and can only make deposits to a human teller.

This is a problem for people like me who have a hard time getting to the bank during working hours. I've tried taking a dog with me but each one I've experimented with has not at all liked the revolving doors and one was scared of the fancy mosaic tile floors.

& fancy the bank is! I'm not an expert on architecture but I think it must be art deco, judging from the chandeliers. I've never banked anywhere with chandeliers.

This is what I find hilarious about it, however, and if I was that bank's nibs, I would hang large meaningless posters or paintings over them.

Engraved high above the north door:

Society is built upon trust and trust upon
confidence in one another's integrity.

Tell that to Congress and the A.I.G. executives who are willing to give back half their bonuses which would still be 6% of the bail-out they've received so far.

Over the south door:

Commerce defies every wind, outrides every
tempest and invades every zone.

Anyone want to pass that on to the line workers in Detroit?

The bank, whether Victorian, Edwardian or Art Deco, was obviously built in the days when the United States was Young. It does not feel Young these days.

Why Seattle?

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Western Montana. My life as a New Yorker has ceased to exist and I am increasing irked by the tininess of my apartment, the entitlement of Brooklyn Heightsers walking down the street and my loneliness. Lately it seems like every walk I do with the dogs reveals yet another hole in the pavement or sidewalks, as though Brooklyn in breaking up.

I want to move West again. I want to be near my family. My hometown, despite being a college town, is too small for me and my ghosts. There isn't another town in Montana I would want to live in and I realize that I probably wouldn't be happy unless I'm in a city. That pretty much gives me Portland, OR, or Seattle. I have more friends in Seattle and more close relatives at hand than I do in Portland, and as a compulsive overeater I find myself to be a burden, to other and to me. I feel better thinking my neediness will be spread around.

Either city is fabulous but Seattle feels homier, possibly because I've lived there before. I want an easier life where a dollar will go a little farther than it does in New York and where Daisy and I will have a chance to get out in the woods and lakes on a regular basis.

When I first started to lose weight The First Time, I had those three dreams: to be thin, to fall mutually and sanely in love, and to publish a book. Love is not under my province, but I got the other two. And it was part of my downfall. I might have wanted stuff but I had no dreams. Seattle and the novel I'm working on are the first dreams I've had in all these years. They are part of my motivation for abstinence, working, waking up.

Eleven years ago I didn't know that I need a dream to keep me going. I'm so fucking relieved to have some again that it's like being able to breathe clearly.

Did I mention Seattle is a coffee-drinker's paradise?

More of the Magic of Abstinence

Day 34. I bought a digital scale because my eyesight isn't good enough to distinguish what's going on with those vague two-pound increments. 250 this morning, just so you all know. I'm going to replace the plastic tab over the lithium batteries, wrap it up and put it away. My sponsor and I have agreed I'll weigh once a month, although she hasn't told me when that month starts...So I can have a little more insanity until she lays down the Scale Law.

I'm waking up more consistently at 7 a.m., despite what kind of day I had before. I bought an HDTV and new VCR/DVD unit because mine were really really dead. I've been loving watching a movie in bed at night. I actually have the attention span to do it for some reason. Abstinence often makes me hyper but I seem able to give in to my new toy.

It's a 22"-screen, by the way. We are NOT talking home theater here.

I've been busy with dogs and find myself unable to think ahead to what big thing I can cook and live on. It's enough that I get food in the house for a day or two right now. I'm living on salads for two meals a day for the time being. Sesame seed oil at noon, olive oil at night.

I'm dying to have one day truly off from dogs and cats. That could happen the first weekend in April. But my busy-ness is paying my state taxes for 2008. I try to keep that in mind.

Just some things. That's all.

30 Days

Today is Day Thirty of no flour, no sugar, weighing & measuring my meals. There are some things on my mind that I want to share about it & there is the little matter of my step work, which might be easier to do as a blog, in bits, as things come to me.

The first step of the twelve is that "We admitted we were powerless over ___ and that our lives had become unmanageable."

I learned that after having something like four or five days clean without hooking up with my sponsor or going to meetings. Late Friday night I got a call on my cell phone. I had to heave myself up out of bed & go through the machinations of retrieving the message in order to shut the damn thing up. It was a call from one of my clients about a missing pair of earrings. Had I seen them? No, sorry. I went back to bed & the phone rang again. She had found them. I'd been taking care of her dogs for over a week, it was finally over, I'd gotten to bed abstinent & then it wasn't over. I ripped off my nightgown, put on my clothes & went to the deli.

The next morning I found I'd fallen asleep in my shirt & that my nightgown was inside out, such was the hurry I was in.

I got myself to the meeting the next morning & the first person I saw stood up, hugged me & I sobbed, "I can't stop." My sponsor came in late & headed straight for me & again I sobbed very quietly, "I'm in so much trouble."

The inside-out nightgown -- the couple of clean days over in 20 minutes because of a phone call -- the days before I'd stopped bingeing when I took my Entenmann boxes over to the dogs' apartment building to put them in that recycling rather than my own building's...

Yup. Got that.

In many ways, however, I think it becomes apparent how unmanageable life is only when you stop using. The irritations I've written about lately are evidence of this. One's emotions wake up & there's no guarantee that they're going to be the pretty ones. I think the first time I had 30 clean days together I felt excited & curious. The last couple of times I hoped I'd lose a lot of weight & get to qualify (speak for 15 minutes or so) at a meeting & be a star again.

This time...

I dunno. I'm not excited about it. I'm not terribly hopeful about getting thin or being a star after so many resounding disasters. I feel...I feel like I'm showing up, that being abstinent is being on time, having my homework done, being prepared. It's not about being a rule follower as it is a feeling that this is the right way to live. & I WANT this abstinence. For thirty days I have not looked for a way to not have my cake & eat it too.

I also feel like every day of abstinence prepares me for the next hurdles -- publishing Angry Fat Girls, moving to Seattle. Part of it is being thinner but part of it is that I've smooshed abstinence together with walking toward my future. Every day I ask myself, what have I done to move to Seattle? There are a finite number of answers. I made some extra money. I reinforced a friendship there. I got rid of something I won't have to move. I wrote words someone might pay me for. I was abstinent.

I have weary days on which I don't have the wherewithal, after battling my dogs or for my dogs, after screaming at the agony of whatever is agonizing, after a snowstorm, to write or weed through or whatever.

But I was abstinent.

Bottom line.

So while I've been cranky & weepy & sometimes downright foul in these 30 days, wondering exactly where these mood swings come from, I've been able to say each day that I've taken a step toward the Puget Sound.

Which is one [small] aspect of getting some control in my life even when my emotions are anything but orderly.

Another thing about these 30 days that has given me a sense at least of method in action is the work of being able to be abstinent -- the shopping, the chopping, the steaming, the crockpotting. I have a sense of accomplishment when I put a bag of salad I chopped in my tiny refrigerator, & a sense of what I'll be eating next.

I'd forgotten what it was like to be very hungry & have all kinds of chatter in my head about what to eat, only to have all those voice stop when I walk myself through an abstinent meal.

My cravings aren't gone but they're under better control than they've been in a long time.

I WANT WANT WANT this abstinence. I want it. I need it. I deserve it. I will yank it out of God's hands if I have to.

But that's a whole `nother step.

Oh, yeah: I'm fuzzy on how much weight I've lost but it's somewhere between 8 - 18 pounds. My favorite jammies, which I was afraid to put on, are loose & comfy again.

Let It Go! + Curry Recipe

It's no wonder I struggle with weight: I can't let ANYTHING go.

Yesterday morning I took Daisy over to Cadman Plaza, one of the nice things about Brooklyn Heights. It stretches on forever & has an astroturf playing field, a running path, lanes of lime trees, nice plantings in warmer weather. I took up a position in a lane of trees -- off the turf, as required, off the running path, as is polite. She began to bark wildly. A father with two young kids, a toddler + razor bike, a post-toddler riding his bike on the astro, was standing some twenty feet away. The boy hopped off his bike & started to bawl at Daisy's barking & running. A ricochet off a tree sent her scuttling under a bench to retrieve it, at which the boy began to scream.

"Would you leash your dog, please?" the father said. "This isn't a dog run."

"Actually, it is a dog run," I told him. "From 9 - 9, dogs are allowed off leash."

"Where does it say THAT???" he demanded.

"Just read the signs."

It was over that quickly & if he looked around that moment he would have seen twenty dogs flittering around the park. I did not sayy, "Just read the signs that include a rule against bikes on the astroturf," for which I'm both mildly sorry & mildly proud of myself. I didn't swear or raise my voice. But I wanted to stuff my correctness down his throat. I wanted to tell everyone I saw what had happened so they could tell me how right I was & how bad he was. I wanted him to apologize.

If you want to hate people, walk a dog.

Or live in a thin-walled studio apartment next to the Loathsomes, neighbors who scream about FDR while playing Trivial Pursuit at 11 p.m. on a Friday until I got so frustrated I yelled out, "Hold it down." My bell rang, Daisy went into a barking frenzy, I stumbled up out of bed & my neighbor was at the door, which Daisy slipped through & tried to go join their party. "Are we being too loud?" "Yeah." "Sorry." "Sounds like Trivial Pursuit?" "Yeah," he laughed.

I got what I wanted -- a reasonable decibel level -- but did he HAVE to rile Daisy up, haul me out of bed in my flannel nightgown, & thus waken me further & make a nuisance out of my previously peacefully sleeping dog?

The point here is that I am still seething over this shit. I want to let it go. So what? I mean, I have writing to do here, a recipe to share, a desk to dismantle, laundry to do.

Early abstinence, my friends, is a time of housekeeping. I struggle to get as much of the food as I need during the week into the house & prepared so that tiredness doesn't send me to the deli or dialing for expensive take-out, & it's a nervy, prickly time when lovely character defects show up.

This is why I do not play competitive games or take IQ quizes on Facebook. I want to be right, & that means someone else must be wrong.

Ick.

*

OK. Moosewood's Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant Eggplant, Red Pepper & Spinach Curry, adopted for my food plan (low on oil) & the crock pot.

Place 1 medium eggplant, cut into 1" cubes into a colander. Sprinkle with salt & give it a swish every once in a while in the next 20 - 30 minutes to sweat out the water.

Into the crockpot goes:

1 large Spanish onion, chopped
2 red bells peppers, cut into 1" cubes
1 T grated peeled ginger root (or powdered ginger, if lazy or budgeting weirdly)
1 T ground cumin seeds
2 t ground coriander seeds
1/2 t turmeric
1/8 t cayenne
1/8 t cinnamon
1 T s/f peach jam or applesauce

Rinse the eggplant and shake the water off. Add to crock & cook on low for 6 - 12 hours.

A half-hour to an hour before you're going to eat, add:

10 oz. spinach
1 T lemon juice.

You really want to wilt the spinach more than you want to cook it. When I made a second batch, I added about four carrots I decided I didn't want to live here any more. You always take liberties.

The spices have the following properties:

Ginger: helps digest high fat foods & breaks down protein, making it good for digestion which is probably why it is helpful in controlling nausea, morning & motion sickness. It is also thought to be good against arthritis.

Cumin: good for dementia-fighting power.

Coriander: along with cinnamon, it help regulate blood sugar. It also fights headaches & depression.

Cinnamon: see coriander above for its obesity & diabetic-fighting pwers. It is dense in manganese, iron, calcium, Vitamins A & C, & fiber, which protects the heart and colon. The calcium and fiber bind to bile salts, which neutralizes the salts' damage to the colon. When the body has to replace the bile salts, it has to break down cholesterol. It is a strong antiseptic with microbial and clotting fighting powers. It demonstratively improves cognitive functioning and motor speed and is an immune booster.

Turmeric: a immune booster and anti-inflammatory, it is cancer fighter and also reduces the chance of gallstones.

Cayenne: a source of Vitamin A & a strong appetite suppressant/satiety-booster. It's also a depression-fighter, stimulates circulation & the digestive process. It not only makes you feel full faster but helps burn calories.

Cardamom: good for heartburn & stomach problems, which may be one reason why curries are survivable.

So the moral of this post is -- you tell me.

Breathing

Yesterday was a bearcat. I knew it by 10 a.m. when Daisy and I walked the mile down to pick up Henry. As we approached the corner, crowded with garbage bags and early morning worker bees, I saw a Welsh springer spaniel approaching.

"Don't be scared," I soothed Daisy as I shortened her leash. "It's OK, you don't have to be scared." She lunged anyway & the owner of the spaniel yelled at me about controlling my dor or what is the matter with her or some damn thing. He'd heard me talking to her about being scared & made no attempt to sidestep us or simply ignore the lunge. "I'm sorry," I called over my shoulder as I struggled to get Daisy away from a bag full of bread someone had dumped on the sidewalk, "I'm doing the best I can."

But I broke down in tears by the time I turned the corner, leashed her & went back to pick up the 20 rolls that had spilled all over the place. I cried intermittently the mile and a half to Hero's house, although by then it wasn't about being yelled at. I was crying because I lost six years to compulsive eating, & 42 years before that. I was crying because it's Not Fair that God gave me this disease of addiction and of depression as well.

I did a smart thing when I got home. I turned off my computer, stuck the DVD of the first half of the first season of 30 Roc in my new thingie, sat down with Daisy curled up against me & disappeared into this OK sit-com.

A good crying jag must release some hormone, one that leaves one limp for the day. I was exhausted by 11.30 a.m.

That was the Pity-Me part of this post.

I must now say a couple of things that directly attack my right to self-pity.

The first is that I am feeling every which way at any given time (although yesterday just left me depleted). I'm not medicating with food. I'm walking through my break-up with my lover. I have no words for how fiercely I WANT this abstinence. I WANT it. I WANT it. But breaking up is still hard to do.

The second is that I was walking my three-mile morning walk without Naprosin or any other pain medication. I've lost enough weight to be more pain-free than I've been in a long time.

The third is that I watched 30 Roc, then watched TV that night. I've lived in silence for years, unable to sit still long enough to watch a video or TV show. I didn't know my television was dying until the presidential debates. Some power of concentration has come back & it's a welcome guest.

OK, the next part of this post is enlightenment. I told my sponsor about how wretched I'd felt that morning & how I'd taken the day off, which she thought was a very good reaction. Then she reminded me of the 12-step axiom:

"You have awareness of this disease, but as long as you keep saying `I'm so angry at myself for relapsing,' you're playing God. Awareness, acceptance, action. You've got to accept that you're a compulsive overeater."

We ended the conversation & I went back to bed with Daisy, who was being therapy dog par excellence last night. What did she mean that I had to accept my disease? Wasn't I, every time I measured an ounce of chicken or went to a meeting? How could I move beyond my anger, at myself, at God? I'd relapsed, no one pushed me into a pint of Ben & Jerry's. How could I not be angry at myself?

As I was ruminating on this today, I stepped on a rock right on the ball of my foot. I have terrible, deep corns on the nerves in the balls of my feet. A podiatrist explained that they're too deep to remove & not curable because I have one toe that's too long & one that's too short. I can shave the callouses down & that helps a lot, but stepping on a rock will always make me wince smartly.

I've never blamed myself for my feet. I've never blamed God for them. I've never blamed myself for smoking (or only a little) & I don't blame God. I don't blame either of us when I get a cold (although I blamed him when my intestines got all tangled up & I had to have abdominal surgery) or it rains or my eyebrows need waxing. (I blame myself & my weight for being tired and achy, however. The examples I've given are really accurate). I shave my feet, enjoy my cigarette, take Thera-flu, complain a lot, put on my raincoat, make an appointment or let them go.

I decide whether to take action on stuff I'm stuck with or leave it be. But I don't rant at myself or God about them.

Compulsive eating & depression are painful. My feet are in pain. Compulsive eating & depression are physical facts about me as much as the way my feet are made. They just are. They aren't my fault. An addict will go back to her substance when she doesn't want her sobriety & when she doesn't take the actions to keep it from happening. & my best shot of conquering or riding out depression is not to eat sugar & flour.

I got it, finally. I have funny feet, two diseases, navy blue eyes, long fingers, am right-handed, am a spendthrift & like 19th century British novels.

It's who & what I am.

Day 21. Time to go make a salad with 1 cup of garbanzo beans, it being Lent & all.

We Plan, God Laughs

I didn't realize until this morning how much shame I could confess here.

The Bat Cave has very poor lighting. I have a large flashlight that I use at least once a day to read labels or find shoes. Lately it's been in steady use as I've worked on getting my new television & DVD/VCR hooked up & comfortably running. So I blame this on poor lighting.

Oh, & on me, of course.

I blew up during last fall's depression & Christmas madness at my parents' house, so much so that I was literally off my scale, which ends at 250. Last week I was finally at 250. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn't tell my sponsor how much I'd lost -- 10 pounds? fifteen or twenty? -- but I had succeeded, at least, in "fitting" my scale.

It was an achievement.

This has been a hard week. I'm cold all the time. Taking Daisy out means fitting her little booties on which is just this side of aggravating. I'm not just walking dogs, I'm climbing through the snow they love to explore. My computer needs a physical & a knee replacement. There's garbage everywhere because of human laziness & because we haven't had the Sanitation trucks for two pick-up days. The dogs are darting after food & after those first pristine hours of heavy snow, the world is pretty ugly.

I haven't gotten any writing done. The time I had for it yesterday I spent looking for a gentle, English-speaking geek who could help me out.

I haven't gotten any writing done. Some kind of deadline for the revised Angry Fat Girls is looming but we haven't settled on one yet. In the meantime, I have a sort of forward to write for it & I haven't gotten any writing done.

I mad. Pissed off. Angry. Resentful. Peevish. Sullen. At myself, the weather, time, obligations, human frailty.

(In the larger picture, the line above is a miracle. I'm feeling these feelings. I have names for them. I've experienced them a lot in the last ten days or so and I've ridden them out. A month ago I would have been feeling them and simultaneously thinking about when & what I could eat to make them shrink. They feel very big to me simply because I don't have the shame & chemical dousing of eating to reduce them. I'm rather proud of my brattiness.)

In that state this morning I thought I'd give myself some good news. Today is Day 19 & my food has been very clean & I'm always walking so I knew that something would have happened since last Thursday.

It had. I'd misread my scale. It ends at 260 rather than 250. I've either gained eight pounds from the number in my calendar last week or lost two pounds if I hadn't been such a dumbass as to not know how her own damn scale works.

I wanted to write about the Indian vegetables I crocked this week, or about how, as the Big Book says, "God is doing for [me] what [I] cannot do for [myself]". Instead, I guess I've just done a small treatment of Step 1: my life has become unmanageable.

& I feel like a fool. A very fat fool.

Curiosity Seasoned the Cat

Not to worry, Zesty: I answered that response because I think the idea of dissolving anger in "diet and exercise" is one of the great unexamined cliches in the Diet Lexicon.

But I'm moving on, and quickly if I can help it for once. My body aches from walking dogs and I'm longing for bed. This will be a first installment on a topic I'll come back to.

Today I have 11 days of an abstinence I want more than I've wanted in as long as I can remember. My abstinence takes a lot of work. One of them is having the right food in the house.

We're going through one of what I hope are our last remaining cold spells so Sunday I decided to get the 3,000 vegetables used in making a warming, sustaining vegetable chili that I got from Allrecipes. It's not for the faint of heart -- but then again, I'm learning, perhaps it is especially for the faint of heart.

Here's the recipe:

Slow Cooker Vegetable Chili

1 (28-oz.) can whole peeled tomatoes with juice
1 (15-oz.) can garbanzo beans, drained
2 zucchini, thinly sliced
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/3 cup chili powder
1 (4-oz. can) chopped green peppers
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt

Throw it all in the crockpot and cook on low 6 - 8 hours or on high for 3 - 4 hours.

I happen to love spicy food and I happen to love cumin, which I increased. I tried to make a double batch but my crock isn't big enough. The next time I have it for dinner, I'll heat up another can of tomatoes and garbanzo beans with more seasoning and add it to the plentiful vegetables.

It's as perfect a dish as I can imagine for my food plan. I simply add 4 ounces of protein and then do the research for this blog.

I don't count calories. I weigh and measure foods that exclude sugar and flour. It all comes out to somewhere around 1200 calories a day -- I think. Sometimes I don't have a carbohydrate at night and sometimes, if I've told my sponsor, I have a protein/fruit snack. At 52, I find that I'm as hungry as ever but not as often and not for as much.

This is startling insight into my body. My body is Mumbai, a tragic place w-a-y over t-h-e-r-e.

This weekend Daisy and I spent a night with Molly, whose owners left a Bon Appetite out. It contained a short article extolling the virtues of spices and herbs. I decided to do some research.

The oregano (flowering to the left) in my chili is exploding with antioxidents, a word I had to look up and then keep looking up the vocabulary of the definition. What it comes down to is rust. Oxidation is the loss of oxygen that results in rust. It's good to keep our oxygen atoms in our body in order not to end up singing "If I Only Had a Heart" (toot-toot).

OK. What else about oregano? It has very few calories. It is high in calcium and iron. It supports the immune system against certain diseases and is a fungus fighter. It has antimicrobial activity against pathogens in food -- it's a cancer fighter. Most surprisingly, a tablespoon of the stuff has the same thermogenic power as two cups of broccoli, which means it's so nutrient-dense that it boosts metabolism and has recently been found to affect the satiety center so that we feel fuller faster.

Garlic helps lower blood fats and cholesterol. It also has antiviral and antibacterial powers that boost our ability to fight flus and colds. It's good for your heart and it helps ward off strokes.

Cumin (ah, cumin!) fights dementia. Chili powder (along with red pepper flakes, cayenne and paprika) contains vitamin A. It enhances digestion and circulation and there is increasing evidence that it, too, enhances metabolism and fat-burning and increases satiety. A Dutch study found that half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes as part of an appetizer reduced calorie intake by 10 - 16%.

The seven Wonder Spices, according to SHEKNOWS, are oregano, ginger, dried red peppers, rosemary, thyme and turmeric. The seventh is cinnamon, which just oozes good stuff. It contains calcium, iron and vitamin C and is anti-microbial and anti-clotting. A Swedish trial with Type-2 diabetes patients found that two teaspoons of cinnamon a day for six weeks significantly reduced blood-glucose. It also reduces cholesterol and triglycerides.

All of these herbs and spices fight inflammation, which is often the first step toward heart disease, Alzheimer's and allergies.

So when I walked in the door with Daisy this evening, I tossed some cinnamon in my coffee grounds for tomorrow's wake-up.

I wonder what I'll make this weekend?

She said, she said

A response to my last blog has put me in a peevish mood and I think my day will go better if I get it off my chest.

I quite often nod to themes that I've written so often about that I'm surprised anyone reads this blog at all. Depression, relapse, bingeing, dogs -- you're free to tell me what's stale. My last post was about ceasing to-do lists because they make me crazy and depressed when I don't finish them. I prefaced this by talking about how to-do lists partly filled a long time of waiting for my life as the author of my upcoming book to begin.

I don't demand to be loved all the time, but I do wish readers would look at the whole of at least the sentence they take umbrage with. I am accused of being a) remiss in not directing my anger into diet and exercise and b) being infantile because I'm angry with a world that isn't fair.

The statement in my post is "anger in my manuscript". That's a very different thing than pouty and/or fatty anger, and it has the acrid smell of a reader who is perhaps bored or annoyed or expecting something else from me to the point of, well, getting angry. If a friend told me this story, I'd remind her that it's often the things we don't like in ourselves that we don't like in other people. I bring this up so no one else has to. I don't know the respondent from Eve and I genuinely give her the benefit of being a content and disciplined woman.

All this begs a bigger question, however, and that's anger itself. Am I angry at myself for being fat again? Hell, yes. Should I be, to quote, "redirecting all that wasted energy into diet and exericse" [sic]? That's another question all together and one that, if posed to any person can ONLY be answered by that person.

I, Frances, will answer it by saying that "diet and exercise" are one day at a time things, which I addressed in why I currently prefer to the word "priorities" to "lists". I don't diet. I have a food plan that is helped by not thinking of it as a diet. My hackles raise each time someone talks to me about my "diet". I think it's a dirty word, associated with promises, restrictions, feeling left out, feeling locked in. A food plan, to me, is a way of life, like converting to Buddhism or taking the citizenship oath in Denmark. There are philosophical, social, political, scientific and spiritual reasons for realigning my life. "Diets" are things that sell magazines and memberships.

OK, so if I'm such a fervent convert, why have I gained so much weight?

ONLY speaking for myself, there is a list of reasons that include being addicted to sugar, having a body that will, every day for the rest of my life, want to weigh more and more and more, and, yes, anger.

Can anger be cured by "diet and exercise"? Really: THINK ABOUT THAT. Charles Manson is, um, thin. So is Osama bin Laden. I didn't have a clue how angry I was until I began to lose weight. In my case, anger is actually quelled by food and being heavy.

I don't want to be heavy, I'm not currently taking any actions to remain heavy, and my blog has largely been an exploration of my reasons for being heavy, beginning with childhood. In actual fact, I'm currently doing everything in my power to be un-heavy.

Including walking six - eight miles a day with 75-pound dogs lurching this way and that.

And I was venting in the writing of Angry Fat Girls, which is why I know there's a God: he makes editors who show you where to soften up.

The next accusation is that I'm angry with the world.

I don't know many people who aren't angry with the world. I can't take a walk in my neighborhood for longer than 10 minutes without meeting one or another acquaintance who tells me the kids they teach are driving them crazy or the seller of a desired item won't give them exactly what they want or who spew venom at Wall Street that fuels their fears about their job. It's endemic to the human race. Actually, it's endemic to dogs as well. I don't know how other species feel about the way the world treats them.

In my defense, I will say that my anger, occasionally explosive, is with specific behaviors. I'm learning to be angry at my former boss who hit me in public and confused me in the office after years of blaming myself for not being angry with her. I was angry this morning with whoever dumped a large pile of turkey legs on the sidewalk.

But the answer to such anger is to track back with a garbage bag, pick up the garbage and throw it away. Exercise won't cure boss-anger: I've tried. Getting out of the equation does, meaning that when I stop being mad at myself I can see what boundaries were crossed in the situation and, hopefully and metaphorically, pick up the garbage and throw it away.

Most anger at the world is either addressable or passes. If it doesn't, one tends to become paranoid. If I was paranoid, I'd make this a closed blog and delete comments that annoy me for their misreading of what I've written.

And in this instance, I wrote about anger in a manuscript no one but a few editors and my agent have read, which makes the assumptions about the nature of my anger even more wildly askew.

If I go back through my blogs my guess is that I won't find much about expecting the "world" to give me anything. I have a long list of things I want -- to finish and sell my novel, to lose weight in an abstinence I want to want to have forever, to get out of debt and learn to manage my life, to move to Seattle, to travel, to have health insurance, to get my computer fixed (the CD/DVD drive is whacked), to have a home with a standard-sized refrigerator, a bedroom and electricity that permits me to use a blow-dryer, to have a circle of friends.

I don't think I'll find much evidence that these desires have been "denied" me or "taken away" from me, or that I'm owed them. If I made a corresponding list of the people whom I most angry at, in fact, it would be clear that if those relationships were still amiable, most of the things on that list would be a LOT harder to accomplish. (I.e., it would be difficult to move to Seattle if I were still working for Alix.) They're all simply things I have to work for. If there is peevishness attached, it's how hard it is to get out of my own way and do them.

But nobody is standing in my way and in so many instances I am the luckiest person I know.

Yackity-yack-yack-yack...

For ten months, my life has been on-hold as I've waited out the next step in the Angry Fat Girls saga. I sent the manuscript to my original publisher in mid-April. Months later, my publisher declined to publish it because they were pursuing a new editorial direction. We re-auctioned it. Berkely won the auction. We waited through pregnancies for contracts and revision directions. The date for the revisions kept changing. By contract, the revised manuscript was actually due yesterday. I will be getting the revisions this week and then, after reviewing them, we'll amend the contract for a new due date, keeping in mind that we all want and intend to publish in January, 2010.

Before that, of course, my life was on hold as I wrote the manuscript, which was a struggle for me. One of the things I have to do is reign in my anger in the manuscript. It's a dark book on a dark but essential topic that no one wants to admit to: weight loss is always temporary, even if you maintain that weight loss for the rest of your life. Ninety percent of us don't.

We're all too familiar with the depressions I've been through in the last year but I'm going to discuss one aspect of a subset, which is how I flay myself with to-do lists in my ongoing effort to sustain my self-revulsion.

Each week I usually start a new to-do list, with carry overs from the week before. There is a master list, and then daily lists. I usually do a separate list for the weekend because I have more time and because some daily things can't be done on weekends (i.e., I still need to get a New York State driver's license). Despite how much I enjoy crossing things off, too often I don't do what's on the list so that a task carries over from day-to-day, and then week-to-week. Anal compulsive that I am, I keep the old lists until their contents have been reasonably addressed. Right now there are three lists on my computer, with a really long list in a file called "The Big To Do". They torture me. They lay down precepts that make it harder to perform. "Jewelry," an entry might say, meaning, put the jewelry away. Because it's on a list, I become stubborn about doing it.

K-sh, k-sh, the whip lashes.

The lists on my computer are dated January because I've stopped making them. They were hurting me. I've exchanged a daily fare of tasks for the mental chatter of priorities. Each morning I mentally go over what is most important to do. Abstinence is first. Dogs, meetings, writing, bathing, contact with my 12-step pals and sponsor fill out the rest.

And then there's the question of when to shower, who to call, and what else needs to be done.

With a manuscript to revise in the immediate future there are a number of big things I need to do to be as easy in my skin as I can be as I juggle dogs, editing, eating, sleeping and a program, and all those voices are vying to be first.

I'm writing this as much to understand what my priorities today need to be as to talk about the harmful effects of a to-do list. I need to do a very big grocery shopping -- and I simply don't wanna. It's dumb but I've been avoiding the grocery store. My television, I discovered during the elections, has nice clear sound and nice snow flurries in the picture. My DVD never worked & my VCR is trusty but antique. I could not get myself to P.C. Richards this weekend to replace them but finally realized I could order them online with some help from customer service about the two pieces of equipment's compatibility.

That, however, meant I should be ready for delivery, so I pulled my entertainment thingy out and swept up a basketball of dog hair and grit, undid cords and hauled my TV to the basement. Things got disrupted in doing that and I should put some of the disruption in better storage than it had been. I'm going to have to face the piper on the new TV sooner or later, so why have all that junk there when it comes?

I would have liked to have cleaned the bathroom. I would like to do a last load of laundry. I finished the third chapter of my novel yesterday and really had hopes of writing the fourth, or being so far into the fourth that I could dabble at it while I'm in Revision Land. But the chatter of groceries & cleaning are sapping my mental energies for chapter four, which is really stupid.

All I have to do is grab my rolly cart and go.

The thing about replacing a written to-do list with a mental list of priorities, however, is that priorities are more service-oriented and repetitive. I can cross "be abstinent" off a list but it feels very much more like a task than a way of life. "Do well by my dogs" is a consciousness of what they need and like. Priorities are services to my self and to others.

I had difficult week of dogs last week, following a month of boarding for a month of weekends, and came out of it nearly numb with a tiredness that wasn't so much about sleep as depletion. I'm still recovering. I really do need to get to Key Food but more than that, I need to stick to my other new promise to myself: first, do no harm.

That means, don't eat. Don't buy another Barbie doll on eBay. Don't get into a tangle about old grudges. Don't start a substitute project that will make another mess that will either drain me to finish or remain unfinished.

So instead of clattering off to Montague Street this morning I sat down and read. I napped very lightly. I got up and felt the ennui of not having accomplished anything. So I've written this blog to remind myself that the groceries are a priority, not a task. They are a service to myself because come tomorrow, I'll be back on the streets with long hikes between dogs and it will be good to know that the right food is in the house.

In that light, maybe the best thing I did yesterday was not finishing the chapter or ordering a new TV. It was chopping up celery so I didn't have to do it to make the salad I'm eating right now...

P.S. I washed my dishes after writing this and took my cart (the New York station wagon), debit card and long list to the store. It took 45 minutes and about $90 to get protein, fresh fruit and vegetables, dog treats, coffee, olive oil, vinegar, canned staples, oatmeal and rice, milk and soap into the house.

I feel like I could take on the world.

Will I Be My Valentine?

Just where, I wonder, does Valentine's Day rate in per-holiday chocolate consumption? Lower, maybe than Halloween or Easter, given that adult valentines are often dinner out or Victoria's Secret. Still, those glossy red boxes call out to me. I always got one from my father...but then I always got this or that for other holidays as well. The Fourth of July, Labor Day, Presidents' Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, St. Patrick's Day -- these are my saf[er] holidays.

I know I've bought those boxes for myself, with a tight-lipped justification that everyone else is getting chocolate, everyone else is somebody's valentine. I've walked by the delis where flowers are sold and into the local uber-florist's shop to torture myself/admire/laugh at the last minute dash for roses that happens on Valentine's Day. My favorite experience of Valentine voyeurism was the big bouquet of roses being sent C.O.D.

Of course, this year it falls on a Saturday. Oh joy. This means the restaurants will be wildly busy with patrons nose-to-nose, guys will be carrying home flowers by the bushel. The world will be full of the black plastic bags with gold crisscrossing from the liquor stores. There will be a run on seafood. The Promenade will be a place to avoid unless I'm in a prankish mood and Daisy is in an obstreperous one.

Then again, Valentine's Day falls on a Saturday. I don't have the excuse of not having time to be my own valentine. I can take a shower, buy flowers for myself, and blog about some of the things I like about being single.

1. I used my Christmas check from my parents to get flannel Dick and Jane sheets. This seems to me a very Single Woman thing to do.

2. I have a cadre of Facebook pals who are into sending each other Barbies. I happen to love Barbie if she's the Barbie of my childhood. I've been holding my money market close to my chest, paying off credit cards, but I did cave and buy a "Busy Gal" Barbie for myself.

3. My apartment is rife with Girl Things like that. A winter Madeline doll. Very tall Princess Di and Jackie O. dolls. A "That Girl" Barbie. Many artifacts from or like my childhood.

4. I can be abstinent and not have to watch a civilian eat a couple of normie meals a day.

5. My bad habits disgust only me.

6. Thinking of being my own valentine as a year-round, lifetime proposition that could mean I will give myself the decadent gifts of what I REALLY want.

It's not chocolate I want, or to be a cozy half in a restaurant (I'd have to change my sheets), or even flowers, really. I might want a piece of salmon and I prefer pink-tinged white roses to red, and hydrangea to roses. Those are very local desires and very meetable. I need to pay attention to them.

But I also WANT to get Angry Fat Girls into production and I want it to do well enough to be another step UP in my career. I want to finish my novel. I want to learn to deal with life without sugar -- I want to GROW UP. I want to go somewhere by myself where I will load up on new information (I was looking at Orbitz deals for Amsterdam and Prague last night). I want out of debt. I want to move. I want to be secure enough to put together a life that includes a bedroom, electrical capacity for a blow-dryer, health insurance and a refrigerator taller than my thigh.

I've said all these things before but I'm attaching them to being my own valentine. And looking back at that paragraph, I have to say growing up is the locus of everything else. Maybe I have to do two things at once in all this. Maybe I have to enjoy my Dick and Jane sheets and Barbies to honor the parts of childhood I fuzzed out on and in celebration of the parts I lived and loved. And maybe I have to decide what being a grown-up is and aim for it.

Right now the only things I know about being a grown-up on Valentine's Day are that I will not hover on the edges in self-torture, I will not eat chocolate, and I will get to a meeting, which is a class in growing up I desperately need. Aside from that, let the Barbie game begin.

In Answer to a Question

"Tell me how you work," a rediscovered friend wrote me recently. It's an interesting question that I've been pondering how to respond to ever since.

I've gone back to my novel after months of hiatus so I think I should start with why I don't work.

I was, as I've said too often, depressed. I was also obsessing about Christmas, and getting Christmas as packed up as possible because I thought I would be getting revision instructions from my editors in the first week of December, then in the first week of January. In between scouring the recycling for shipping boxes, I could have been working on my novel but what was the point? I would have to drop it in God knew what state in order to turn my attention to rewriting Angry Fat Girls.

That didn't happen. I'm expecting revisions in the middle of this month.

As I've also said too often of late, I feel I don't deserve to write -- even that I can't write -- can't think straight, don't have the energy -- when I'm into the food.

& I was into the food.

If you've been reading my blog, you may note a trend in my life to get over myself, to put aside the shit that blocks me like ideas about food, weight, worthiness, competition, envy -- even deadlines like Christmas or revising AFG. I'm trying not to exclude myself from the world because of these things. So the energy & desire to write has been mounting with my readiness to take part in life.

But then there was the chapter itself that I had to start, one in which schizophrenia plays a major part. I felt, despite much research, humbled by this incredibly horrible disease. How could I bring it to life? I went back & reread one of the bibles on the disease & yet another memoir. There were hints of it in the first chapter & I may have tinkered with them early after I got back from Arizona, seizing them as opportunities to show the early symptoms. I reread the chapters from the Jane Austen novel I'm stealing from. I divided my chapter notes into two separate documents, one about Jane Austen and one about schizophrenia. I tried to reduce each to one page or to at least reduce the redundancies and unnecessary stuff.

One day last week I was either sitting on my bed or in bed & I heard something. I couldn't place the fleeting sound but it my brain conjured the ends of a paper clip being rubbed together, a teeny metallic voice.

That was the moment I knew I could start working on the chapter that had dangled for so many months.

I haven't used that sound/image. It was just a moment in which my gut told me I "got" the illness enough to write about it.

On Saturday, January 31st, I opened the document, re-read the three paragraphs I'd written, twiddled a bit and dove in.

I usually overwrite & always encouraged my clients not to worry about overwriting. It's easier to cut than it is to add, unless you have a very patient and savvy editor. (A blessing on your head, Becky Cole.) I also always coached the "show, don't tell" adage of writing, one that was driven home in revising Passing for Thin. I'm better at it now & I rely on dialogue to a good extent. This is a first person, present tense novel -- the beginner's cheap way out -- so I don't need to worry a lot about what other characters are thinking or even doing. Cheesy but easy.

So how do I actually work?

First there is the matter of the desk, which I like to have reasonably organized & reasonably dedicated to the task at hand. In the photo above, which I can't drag down today, you'll see a notebook in front of my computer screen. It had schizophrenia notes in it & now has more notes about dates. I don't work from many hand-written notes but taking a notebook to bed while I read a reference book is easier than typing them & there is always a need for reference points.

You'll also see that just behind the monitor is a piece of paper on a magnetic bulletin board. It's a run out of all my characters' names, ages, occupations & is no longer completely accurate. Just above the monitor is a small piece of paper with essential names & relationships from the second chapter. I haven't taken it down because it's a nice piece of torture.

On the left hand side of my desk is a a pen holder and a bunch of papers. This is actually a recent innovation that was also an instigation to write. I cleared the top of my small filing cabinet last week & did some organizing. The Bat Cave abhors a vacuum, so I naturally put two filing thingies that I didn't know what to do with there until I could figure them out. One was empty. Saturday brain wave #1: Clean it & chuck all the junk from the other side of the desk into some sort of order in it. That leaves the other side dedicated to essentials.

So that's my desk & it morphed last Saturday morning before I heard the paper clip.

I used to think I had to start writing upon getting up in the morning, but with a dog to walk & a life to organize in advance of other dogs, I learned in AFG to write when I can. I don't smoke outside of my kitchen, and I don't drink much at my computer because I'm too busy, one way or another, to remember to sip.

This is good not only because the main room of my apartment is relatively clean-aired but because when I write a section that is hard or needs a bridge, I have to get up & go out to the kitchen to take a break. One cigarette or putting a book away or, if I'm really cooking & can trust myself, folding laundry, gives me a bit of time to come down or figure out the next simple problem.

I couldn't write without the Internet. I'm constantly looking things up. Yesterday I took ten minutes to find my character's dining room table. I haven't described it yet & probably won't, but it was something I needed a picture of in my head. I made a new bookmark file called "Cranberry Street house" & stuck it there. That led to a new piece of information just for my head. I chose a Mission dining room set, quite simple & light. Ergo, my main character will have baroque china & silver & ceiling moldings. This is only important to me but I know more about her because of it.

I usually pause, I realize in writing this, after I finish a paragraph. Not a break, a pause.

I keep another document going called "Outtakes". I paste longish cuts in it. Sometimes I use them later.

I've been keeping track of my word counts this week because it's easer than pages. But I hated query letters that described a manuscript as being 200,000 words in length. As I move into a chapter, I begin thinking more about pages because I aim for each chapter to be 21 pages.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning of a chapter, I'll write a precis for myself. It's an internal dialogue: "OK, so this chapter is about how mean Cinderella's stepmother is & how impossible she makes it for her to go to the ball. There will be a fairy godmother in it. A dress the color of winter butter."

That's what's hanging above my monitor, or a parallel thereof.

I try not to leave the computer when I don't know what's coming next. It's only when I'm secure in what is coming that I can quit. It makes opening the document less scary.

On days, such as Monday & Tuesday of this week, when I had extra walks rattling around in my head, it's best if I can make my peace with not writing at all. On weekdays, I need to be mindful about not getting number-obsessed. It's the weekends when I might turn out four or six pages a day. I've written one page today & need to figure out the next third of the chapter. I know what it entails & I know what the Austen parallel is, but I need to strike at the heart of it, not the set-up. I don't think I'll do any more work on it today, but who knows?

I use a thesaurus.

I seem to depend heavily on the following reference books that are above my desk: an old Bantam guide to movies; my German, French & English dictionaries; British English from A to Zed; a dictionary of the saints; Edith Hamilton Greek mythology; an old Blue Guide of New York & an old New York Zagat's.

I work hard to cut, among other words, "always," "when," "just," "even," "so," "however," "only". I KNOW they're evil. I don't have to wait to get rid of them.

I don't begin again by rereading the whole chapter. I tend to start with what I wrote the day before & edit that.

I don't walk around with with a pen & notebook. If something is really worth remembering, I will.

Sometimes I badly need to disconnect from a project for the balance of the day.

Sometimes that's when I write my blog.

Off to walk Boomer.

Musings

It's the season of black and white -- and blue if we're lucky and the sun is out. I think Christmas should be commuted to the end of January so that we could all slog along through the slush and ice and wind with something to look forward to. As it is, each morning I wake up and thinks it's X number of days until April 1st, when there is a hope, maybe, that winter will be over.

Alas, two years ago there was snow on the dogwood on Easter.

I am much too irregular about blogging. Partly I know that there are other good blogs to read on the subjects I cover and partly it's everything else. Laziness. Unworthiness. Tiredness. Who-will-read-this-on-a-Sunday-ness. For the last week, however, I've actually had a good reason: I got a cold that makes the economy look healthy. I think I've canceled two dogs for two illness-related reasons but this week Henry stayed in DUMBO for three days and I stayed in bed as much as possible. It hit my chest first but my head felt like a helium balloon bobbing about three feet away from my nose and I was intensely tired. Daisy was a good nurse, surprisingly, and didn't resent the shorter walks and all the napping.

I think I know who shared this bug with me but it came right on the heels of seeing my psychiatrist, who I hadn't seen in many months. I sat down and promptly turned into a wreck. She thinks I'm depressed. I wanted to say, "You should have seen me in September," but I couldn't say much of anything. "Did you think of calling me?" she asked and I looked at her like she was the crazy one. "I couldn't," I said. When I'm in that place, I can barely pick up the phone let alone ask for help.

I have that problem with doctors as a whole because I grew up with patients calling at all hours to tell my dad about, what he called while he was in general practice, "moles, colds, sore holes, fits, farts and freckles". I've been astonished the few times I've called a doctor and they've called me back and been glad to listen and/or prescribe.

But it's also that thing about asking for help. I can accept help when it's offered...and then feel there is nothing I can do to thank my savior enough. Asking for it is another thing altogether.

There are several themes running through this little discourse I hadn't planned on writing. One of them is unworthiness. I guess I've been feeling that all over the place lately.

And writing that makes me sit back in my chair and assess. Fear is often confuted with unworthiness, it occurs to me. I'm not scared of going back into the Rooms as I feel unworthy of the time I will use up, the space I will take, the help I HAVE to ask for to make a 12-step program work. I'm scared of my novel not because I'm afraid I don't have the talent but because novels are what worthy people get to write. You know: people who are thin, people who are popular, people who are...worth something.

Yikes.

So here's the deal. I impose this upon myself. The door rang one morning early this week and there was a man from the local Food Museum with an enormous basket. Why do I have to be the one to sign for stuff? I grumbled but lo! it was from Henry's humans. I lived off that basket for days.

In light of my conversation with Dr. Pluto, that gift basket was a bolt of lightening (as well as various sugars and refined white carbohydrates). They knew I was at the farthest end of my energy tether and they empathized. It's the sweetest gesture I've received in years.

But only the sweetest and maybe just the biggest. There aren't very many people who think of me the way I do myself and there is, miraculously, hard evidence for it. I can live in my delusions or I can pay attention to what actual persons are telling me.

So I'm going to work on that. I deserve it.