One of those Days...

It started yesterday. I wanted to give my morning dogs a work-out & I ended up being out for three hours with them. I barely had time to have snack (cottage cheese & a pear) before I was off to take care of Italian greyhounds. I crashed when I got there. I was suddenly so, so tired...& I had more dogs to walk.

It's my first week back with the full compliment. My foot barely twinged.

I decided to catch up on Facebook a little & took one of those "Everything About Me Quiz" quizzes. I'm fond of Facebook. I've found friends from grade school there & people I was scared of in high school who've turned out to be very cool. I know what my nieces, nephews & cousins are up to. I've made some friends.

But the quiz got me. I answered one of the first statements, "I am________." "Brilliant."

I believed it, too. But a half hour later I was kicking myself for not remembering the names of all the characters in the Palliser novels & nothing about biochemistry. I revised, in my head, that I'm brilliant at what I'm brilliant at. Sometimes I feel brilliant.

I should not have put that sentence out there where everyone can see it. I posted a bunch of new pictures kind of in the hopes of burying it. The statement haunts me.

When I get tired, I get cranky, & when I get cranky I either turn it on myself or on the world. I wasn't sure, as I dragged Daisy back from Henry's house last night, that the world would escape my anger. All I knew by then was that I hadn't gotten hungry for lunch until it was too late & that I was now starving. I also knew I didn't want to stand there & prepare anything. I ordered out. The meatloaf had gravy on it. I scraped it off as best I could & Daisy loved it. I took her for a quick pee-walk & went to bed with Conversations with Other Women in the DVD player.

I set myself up well for today -- tired, stressed, feeling a fake, no writing done, too big a dinner & a really depressing movie that made me think about things I'd rather not think about.

So I pour some milk into my coffee mug at ten minutes before seven this morning but it chugs out. F---. Gone sour. Coffee without milk. Uck.

I step on the scale. Up 1.8 pounds. My rice takes twice as long to cook than it should, thereby closing my option of getting to the store before breakfast & dogs. Then I cook the rice just long enough that I can scrape all the rice out but have to soak the pan. I now have a sink full of dishes to come home to.

The dogs were my reprieve, along with washing my hair & finally chopping a head of cabbage for my salad mix. I stood up from eating lunch & promptly tripped over my feet, nearly crushing the dog AND my knee & spraining the two smallest toes on my right foot.

Which is nearly mended from a fracture.

I'm starting to turn it on myself.

I'm afraid, I tell you, to go out in the world now. I have to walk Henry & go get essential groceries. Many things could happen. I could say any number of stupid things to myself. It's one of those days.

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.

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.

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.

Waiting for Hannah

You can cut the air with a butter knife right now. Until the storm really blows in it's going to be sheer unmitigated misery outside.

Then it will be a different kind of sheer unmitigated misery outside.

Yesterday was borderline horrid but evocative. I've never really been any place tropical but the very tip of the Caribbean was covering Brooklyn, sometimes in sticky stillness, sometimes in a breeze that "almost" made me want to dance. Almost = it was still damn humid, hanging out at between 60 - 80%.

So we wait. I'm in several cycles that I don't enjoy but have to go through. I have two extra dogs today, who hated each other -- "Allen," who needed to be out of the movers, & Henry, whose humans are suffering through the US Open. Tomorrow Daisy and I go to Mally's house for 3 1/2 days, juggling Mally with the other dogs, although thankfully Boomer is away for two weeks -- they hate each other & Roger went after Henry today that left a number of bloody scratches on my left arm & thigh, which is enough for a while.

The best thing about Roger moving, aside from fewer scraps, is that I gave him a red triceratops that is sewn as tightly as any object I've ever seen & is only slightly smaller than Roger. It's become his demon twin & he is hilariously attached & scared by it in turns. The other best thing about this dog is that when he goes in for a scrap, I can pull him out, not only because he weights about 25 pounds, but because he lets me. I hauled him away & we sat & had a talk about being jealous of Henry & I told him about the people I'm jealous of & I cried & he rolled over for a belly rub.

The worst thing about Roger is my sore heart at losing this demon seed. He's a scary, scared dog but so smart & understands me better than anyone but Daisy. Unfortunately, because Daisy owns me, she doesn't give a shit very often about how my novel is going or how much I wish most parts of Henry's humans' lives were mine. The second worst thing is that he didn't kiss me goodbye, but that, like losing weight & waiting for hurricanes, is an act of nature & nothing you can ask for.

The best thing about the Mally gig is his owner asking if I was prepared to hydrate their elderly cat. The cat's nickname is "Little Boo" but Tim put the question both more and less formally: "You OK with Left Pocket and the bag?" You tell me, but I had a long pause in which I had to put various scenes from The Godfather out of my mind.

The latest act of nature perpetrated upon me is that I got on the scale this morning & it told me I've gained four pounds. Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me??? What did I do? It's one of those "All I Want" days: "All I want is to break 240".

All "All I Want" modes are suspicious, even when I think they're realistic. I'd like to say, for instance, that all I want is a shower. But I want a cheeseburger more & I want to NOT want a cheeseburger even more than that. Whatever accounts for those four pounds is in the wait-and-see ether.

Still. I really want to break 240.

This is a grab-bag post. I'm listening to Annie Lennox. I cleaned the tops of my stove today & bought a flame-thrower with which to relight the pilot light in my oven. I walked past a Ford Explorer this morning & thought it said "Extortioner," which made me giggle, & when Henry wanted to kiss a baby's feet & I steered him away, I heard myself saying, "You don't eat babies' feet, Silly. You wait until they're toddlers."

I've spent too much time alone lately. Can you tell?

With more to come as Hannah sweeps up from New Jersey.

MIA

But I am, in fact, in action.

First of all, thank you so much for the many compliments. I suppose I know I'm pretty but we all know what it's like when we're squirming in our own bodies, of which this week has been chockful of. This is the email I wrote my sponsor this morning in lieu of a formal inventory. It seems crafted enough to post here...

Monday: jury duty and my air conditioner died. Taking it out of the wall pulled out part of the wall.

Tuesday: Bought a new air conditioner for twice what I expected to spend. Called Craig's List guy to install. He did but my socket is so old it couldn't plug in. All stores closed for converter.

Wednesday: Found out there is no converter, the socket would have to be changed. Joe from CL brought an electrician friend over and changed socket. Plugged in air conditioner. It works for less than a minute before shutting down and flashing numbers at us. Called store -- they told us to return it. Joe went out to get tools to do so and saw his car being towed.

Luckily, the weather was cooling off. I went out and bought another fan because I don't have the time to go to store & be here for installation until Saturday if I'm fair to Joe & fair to myself.

So. I'm out approximately (and this is gonna hurt because I haven't added it up yet): 430 (air co.) + 120 (removal) + 25 (car service) + 140 (Joe, so far) + 40 (electrician) + 2 (subway): $757. And we still don't know if it's a matter of the wrong amp for air conditioner or the air conditioner itself.

AND the wall will have to be re-drywalled AND we need a sleeve for the air conditioner.

But I'm abstinent. My meals have been small and cold because I'm so fucking hot and so fucking anxious, but they have been self-contained and, if not weighed and measured, not excessive. Today is Day 14 and I've gone from 262 to 252, and yes, I've been drinking my water.

I woke up today and didn't pray. I thanked. Daisy and I stayed here last night rather than at Boomer's house; there were big thunder storms; it's cool but very rainy today. I'm thankful we could stay at Boomer's but we were both very happy to be home, even with the door on the chain, ajar, & fans.

I'm behind in meetings. Will do my best to catch up. One reason I nixed tomorrow night or Saturday morning for the air conditioner is that I want to go to live meetings. I need them.

I haven't done anything nice for anyone because I'm in a nasty, jealous mood -- they have air conditioning, let them put their OWN garbage bales back. I haven't felt in the least feminine -- hard to do when I sweat so much that my hair stand up in thoroughly wet spikes. The scale is part of my higher power right now because I know that every pound I lose will make the heat more tolerable and the walking less painful to my hips and back, and it will help me restore order to the Bat Cave, which is a wreck with a million sizes of clothes for all seasons that don't fit.

I've had to deal with workmen, sales people, hosts and sympathy calls from dog owners, as well as a distraught M, who is borderline suicidal over her eating and in desperate grief about a death in her family. I can only listen & pray and DEAL with what's on my plate and hope that she sees if I can do it, in the same relapse as she's been in, then, maybe, she can try too. She calls me because I'm probably the only person who understands the eating, the weight, the Rooms, the loss, the walking of dogs, and the jealousy of her clients who HAVE family. It's strange that the person who, in a sense, inspired my book (she broke off our friendship, which were the first strong Amazon posts I wrote), turns to me when she's grieving and hurting.

An odd thing about being so focused on one problem -- the restoration of physical comfort and a refuge from the outside world -- is that it takes me to the bones of my misspent life. All kinds of regrets, people, incidents come up as my sadness, physical duress and frustration bubble to near-tears. Things from 20 years ago are vividly in my mind. Other times that were painful replay themselves. I feel self-absorbed and guilty -- was it especially painful for M to walk Daisy (or try to: Daisy is extremely reluctant to walk with anyone but me)? How can I pay for Joe's towed car? Where are the words to address other people's problems -- R's stolen wallet, M's grief, Joe's car?

And why am I alone at 51, dealing with this shit by myself? My alone-ness is very evident.

OK. Enough. Breakfast: 1 c. rice, 1/2 c. cottage cheese, 1 nectarine; lunch: steamed kale & a tomato, 4 oz. chicken; dinner w/ friends, which will be abstinent.

Love to you --

Frances