All Weight Limits Lifted at Midnight

                                               
                                                 I ain't talkin' Cinderella, here!

"All weight limits lifted at midnight" used to be the cry heard round the quad every Thursday night when I was in college in the - ahem - late 1970s..  Thursday night was the big party night and many a young buck with an alcohol level that should have rendered him comatose would encourage his fellow young bucks that if they hadn't scored with a woman by midnight, the "big girls" were then allowed into the arena of possible hook-ups.  No questions asked the following morning.

As someone at or near my normal weight back then I would always laugh along with my fellow partiers.  Lowering the bar when things became too hard was a novel approach back them.  Not so much these days.  Limbo classes abound as the race to the bottom intensifies in arenas such as politics, education, civility, life in general.

Unfortunately, I too have lowered the bar on my own personal standards.  Always generally within 10-15 pounds of my normal weight, 35 years is a long time to keep reaching a new low by my weight reaching a new high.  It all started rolling downhill after I got married - you know the old saying," Once you've caught the bus, you can stop running."  So tomorrow I'm having lunch with a friend from those college daze who hasn't seen me since then.  I almost feel like I have to fire a warning shot to let him know not to choose a booth seat should  he arrive at the restaurant first.  I am already cringing at the thought of the impending double-take and the eyebrow raise that temporarily becomes part of his hairline.  Wearing black and hoping for a dimly lit room will only get me so far.  Granted, I doubt he's been on the cover of GQ in all those years but still, most folks I'm reconnecting with are still making the best of what metabolism they have left. 

I've moved back to the area where I grew up after living out of state for the past 30+ years and haven't seen a lot of these friends since I was literally almost half my size.  To say I am anxious about my appearance grossly understates my feelings.  But...I can't hide forever.  I can't keep living this life of limits.  Tomorrow will be the figurative pulling off of the bandaid.  And then, again as my new saying goes, "All weight limits imposed at midnight" on New Year's Eve.  Again.

Love & Hate in the Time of Facebook

Facebook. 

Has there ever been a bigger time-suck created in all of history - besides marathon showings of "The Walking Dead", of which I am very fond?

I don't post a lot because, like Hillary, I am technically challenged (and that's where the comparison ends).  I don't photograph my food, ask others to sign "Amen" to a tear-jerking re-post and then call my "friends" thoughtless pigs if they don't comply, or divulge my political or religious leanings (about which many of my "friends" would still characterize me as a thoughtless pig).

While society as a hole...oops, pardon me Dr. Freud, as a whole seems to be coarsening by the minute, FB merely seems to be hastening the decline.  I've done a lot of things in my life which I had hoped would've thickened my skin some:  stand-up comedy, capital markets broker, wife, mother, and Walmart shopper.  But THE straw that broke this camel's back was a FB post of a supposed childhood friend at the beach with her grandson and the picture of what she called 2 "obese" people standing way too close to said young one.  Some people seem smarter and smarter the more you get to know them.  She is not one of those people.  It was more along the lines of "how dare these obese people wear bathing suits out in the open like that!"  (I didn't think they were obese at all - in fact, my high school graduation picture should've looked so good.)  She then displayed ever more depths of her ignorance and intolerance by saying she had a little boy to "protect" from "these people".  Okay, imagine if said people in the picture were black, gay, wearing burqas, etc - you get the gist - she would've been slapped down for being the bigot she is.  But no, all the skinny people start "weighing" in about how they'd like those people to stand next to them at the beach so they'd look better by comparison "haha" (notice they said "look better", not "smarter" or "kinder" or "civilized").

A couple of people called her a bully.  I commented that I'd take being too fat than too rude any day of the week.  She then went on to say how fat people are costing her tax dollars with their free gastric by-pass surgeries (I didn't know they were giving them away), and all their health problems.  Basically, fat people, aside from their weight, are lesser people than everyone else.  I know a bit of her backstory and trust me, many other people's tax dollars were used at her expense - but I didn't dare confuse this hypocrite with the facts.

Okay, I am to the point in my life where I do shake stuff like this off once I've shared it with others.  As the saying goes, "It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to."  So true.  I'm taking better care of myself but it is a struggle and will take time now that my metabolism has gone to wherever Jimmy Hoffa is.  And everybody's favorite, Forrest Gump, evens know that "stupid is as stupid does".  This woman will never know how ignorant she is but life is too short to include her in my precious life anymore.

Finding Me - What?! At this age?!

Okay - don't laugh.  I have strict instructions to find out who I am.  A simple command loaded with all kinds of unintended (and "intended") consequences.  Now that mothering has me on part-time hours, if that, I have the time to explore things I always wanted to do without interruption.  That's the easy part - as far as "things" go, I'm discovering a whole other side of me that is creative instead of "administrative".  Makes that BS in Finance look a little useless now.  I've discovered I love writing (eyes right for my 1st self-published book under a pen-name, of course, because I live near relatives now), I've created a bracelet line I'm taking to a fair in October for the first time, and I am awesome when it comes to floral design (see below).

 Like I said, the "things" were easy to figure out - the people, not so much.  This new stage in my life has given me lots of time to really observe and digest my relationships with people who were in my life when it was careening out of control for the past 20 years.  I'm also finally in a part of the world I love - my native Connecticut - and I at least feel more relaxed in my surroundings.  But back to the people.  Many of the "core" people in my life who were supposed to have my back, didn't.  Even though I'm pretty much a go-along kind of girl, I'm at a point in my life where just "going with the flow" is more like "going over the waterfall".  I am in danger of just shrugging along the rest of my years, acting very much as if I have another life to get it right in the event I don't grow some cajones in this one to tell people the uncomfortable truth about me and them.

I know I have to do some hard things in the near future if I'm truly looking to "find myself".  Stay tuned.  I fear it will be a rocky ride and can use all the support I can get.

Stuck Between Floors in Limbo

 

 "Gray skies are gonna clear up..."

This was the year I was supposed to finally figure out who I really am - not the high honors student my parents wanted me to be, not the sex goddess my husband expected me to be nightly (ok - annually) and certainly not the Mrs. Cleaver I know my son was just hankering for me to be.  Epic fail in all three categories.  However, in a pass-fail kind of way I did okay in every category - I just did not exceed expectations.  But the reason is - they were never MY expectations to begin with.

I'm in the middle of prepping my parents' home to eventually sell, altho since my father was a classic hoarder and lived in said house for over 45 years, so it ain't your typical clean-up.  My siblings are both having major surgery before the end of the year.  The Teen is attending college but living at home (I know I'm saving thousands in room & board, but some days - like today - it just doesn't seem worth it!).  They do not stop being snotty know-it-all jerks at 15 - that's just a warm-up session.  And the Husband, well, suffice to say for the time being that emotionally we seem to be in different time zones.

I know, I know - come down off your cross, we sure could use the wood.  Agreed.  I had a couple of good months where I was able to tune out all this static, lose a few pounds and self-publish a novel.  The thing is I need to lose more than a few pounds and figure out what I want to do next - not for anyone else but me.  Again, I know it sounds selfish and my Catholic guilt is kicking in big time, but this is something I need to succeed AND exceed at because I'm sick of putting on a happy face when it's the last thing I'm feeling.

The Upside Down of Goal-achieving

I remember at various times in my life when I would feel a let-down after a big event or achieving a big goal.  After college, I was too busy moving to Boston and finding a job to support myself to feel down:  I was starting a new chapter of my life and too young and loaded for adventure to care about downsides.  But after promotions or getting married or becoming a parent, my emotions not so much crashed as they took a serious dip.  Then the reality of maintaining that higher level of doing and being snapped me to in a hurry - especially with a little baby.

So I finally self-published a book, which I now realize became a much bigger part of me than I thought.  It took me over 8 years from start to finish and now I sense that writing it was only the beginning of the process:  suffice to say I should've been a marketing major.  I'm so proud of myself for finally completing it but the quasi-funk of getting myself psyched to set another goal (besides the ever present one to lose weight!) has lasted a little longer than I anticipated.

Does anyone out there have a similar story?  Maybe after running your first 5K or reaching your weight loss goal?  I'd appreciate your weighing in.

Back for Seconds

Never one to push away from the table until I've sampled everything, I'm literally back for seconds in the blogger world.  My old blog, "Chunky Monkey Mama" seems to under new ownership by Google as I can't convince them that I'm still the same old Gigi - new browser and email seem to have rendered my efforts useless.

I'm looking forward to renewing old friendships and covering new ground with you all.  See you 'round the hood!