Excessively Diverted

I have a good life. A fun, loving family, a decent job with fair pay, a few good friends, a really great husband who puts up with my grouchiness in the mornings. For all these reasons, I feel guilty for whining about the one thing that isn’t so great. Yet I feel compelled.

The fly in my ointment is my health. Ah, heck, let’s call a spade a spade. My weight. The fly in my oinment is my weight.

I was chubby from the ages of 6-17, during which time I thought I was the fattest person ever. Then I went to college and got fat for real. Then I got married and crossed the line into obese. And then we come to a few days ago, when I saw a number on the scale that almost made me faint. I have gone on a diet - changed my lifestyle, chosen a new way of eating, whatever you want to call it - multiple times in the last dozen years. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told myself, ‘this is it, I’m drawing the line here.’ Each time, obviously, something happened to derail me. But there was always the thought in the back of my mind that I’d get it right eventually and that sometime in the near future I’d have lost such-and-such amount of weight. I never dreamed that at 27, I’d still be struggling to find clothes that fit and dreading going places where all the chairs have arms.

They say you can’t master something like weight loss unless the desire is deeply rooted inside you. Not just that you want to be prettier, or impress an old flame, or have nicer clothes, but that you want it for you. I’ve always thought that I did want it for me, but my failure to avoid Ben and Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream says otherwise. Does that mean that somewhere deep down inside, I like the way that I am? Horrible thought.

Despite my lack of success, I have learned some important lessons regarding weight loss over the last few years, among them being: don’t take it day by day, take it meal by meal; eat less food more often; food can be just as much of an addiction as alcohol or drugs; pasta does wonky things to me (too bad, because I love a good dish of spaghetti); boredom leads to snacking; and the South Beach Diet does work. But most important was the realization that this is a fight against myself. Somehow I’d gotten the idea that the fat me was a separate being, an adversary of the real me, and she kept winning. On the day I realized that the fat me and the real me were both part and parcel of the total me, I felt both exhilerated and really stupid - stupid because I had been fighting a non-existent being this whole time and exhilerated because now that I’d had this epiphany, there was no way I would continue to fail. Because, really, what kind of dummy fights with herself? And as long as I remembered that, it worked, too. But time passed and the epiphany faded. Now it’s time to pull that memory and my resolve out of the trunk and dust them off. Maybe get out the dancing shoes.

I have a bad habit of forgetting that life is not a dress rehearsal. I often catch myself thinking, ‘next time I’ll do it right’, as if I am going to get the chance to be in my twenties again, be in college again, choose my career again, or get married again. There honestly is a voice in the back my head whispering that I’ll be able to live my life over again and make different choices. Well, listen here, little voice: you’re wrong. I only get to do this once.

This week I renewed my commitment to weight loss for probably the 25th time. I’m doing it because of the number on the scale and the size of my clothes, but also because I have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and my seat belt is uncomfortably tight when I’m wearing my leather jacket. I’m doing it because I want to have a baby, and the idea of being pregnant in this condition gives me nightmares. Will these reasons be enough this time? I hope so, but I can’t swear to it.

This weekend Daniel took advantage of the three day weekend to spirit me off on a mystery trip.

The secret destination turned out to be the lake region of central Florida, which is about three and a half hours southwest of us. It’s an area of retirees, orange groves and, of course, the aforementioned lakes. There are hundreds upon hundreds of them, stretching as far as the eye can see. I had no idea Florida even had an area like that, and I’ve lived here twenty years. The weather was gorgeous - a tad chilly (for Florida, anyway) but we had blue skies and sunshine the whole time. And beautiful sunsets.

We visited Historic Bok Sanctuary, a park with lovely gardens crowned by a tower that is out of this world. Out of the New World, anyway. You just don’t see stuff like this here. That’s why we go to Europe. But nonetheless, here it is, sitting in central Florida. The darn thing isn’t even in most of the Florida guidebooks, a huge oversight in my humble opinion. And the best part is the bells - they put on a concert every day at three o’clock. Sitting there looking out at the orange groves, listening to those bells, was twenty minutes of what I imagine Heaven is like. Oh, and the tower is standing on the highest point in peninsular Florida - a dizzying 298 feet above sea level.

And this morning - oh, I could not believe this. We went FLYING. Ok, so it wasn’t like Superman - a girl can’t have everything - but we got to go up in a 1931 biplane with an open air cockpit and it *rocked*. It was like nothing else I’ve ever done before. It was loud and it was windy and it was beautiful. (This is how I know the lakes stretch out as far as the eye can see!)

We finished off the weekend by visiting a winery, where I discovered that there are indeed wines that I like, namely those made with muscadine grapes. Which completely makes sense because my grandfather used to run a little muscadine vineyard in Mississippi. The smell of the wine prompted a minor childhood nostalgia trip for me, but that’s another story.

So, in short, I had a great time and I love my husband because he comes up with all sorts of nifty ways to spend a long weekend. And now I’m tired and going to bed.

1. I have a vertical scar on my upper lip that I received at the age of three when another little girl and I were throwing stuffed animals into the air in her bedroom. One of them hit the light and it shattered.
2. People who don’t know me seem to think that I’m a snob. The reality is that I have a problem speaking first and I’m not a good conversationalist. I don’t have the chit-chat gene so usually I just don’t know what to say.
3. I often wish I was born years earlier than so that I could have experienced some of the more interesting moments history - been a WAC in WW2, protested Vietnam, etc. Then I wonder if these are exciting times too and I just don’t notice.
4. I am so capable of seeing both sides of every story that I tend to straddle the fence and never render a firm opinion at all.
5. My mother always said I would grow up to have dark hair like hers, but at 27 it is still pretty light: dark blond or light brown depending on who you ask. I think she’s the teensiest bit jealous.
6. I am unreasonably thrilled by the nifty train stamp that I got in my passport when I visited Brussels.
7. In the last six months, I have gone from not being sure that I want children to intense baby fever.
8. When I was 13, I was hit by a car while riding my bike. I was incredibly lucky to come out of it with only skinned knees and a bent bike. I didn’t tell my mother for almost ten years.
9. My wedding dress was of royal blue satin. It had a matching stole with blue, black and gold trim. My mother made it.
10. I would sooner work as a fry cook at Burger King than have a job in sales ever again. I am absolutely serious about this.
11. The front door of my childhood home is 30 feet from a cemetery, and a walk in an old cemetery full of trees on a beautiful afternoon is still one of my favorite pastimes.
12. I was born in the Mississippi Delta, but due to the divorce I only spent summers there growing up.  When I go back to visit my father now, I feel very strange - like I should have a sense of homecoming but can’t quite grasp the feeling.
13. I keep meaning to create a compost heap, because it bothers me to send biodegradable stuff (veggie scraps, etc) to a landfill.
14. The only exciting thing I have ever done by myself was run off to London for three months in 2001.
15. I enjoy balancing my checkbook.
16. I have no artistic talents.
17. I know a lot more about the history of my family than the average person.
18. I love the way I look in my rear view mirror.
19. I am just now beginning to realize that I don’t know my mother at all.
20. My favorite movies are Pride and Prejudice (the 1995 BBC miniseries), The Quiet Man, and His Girl Friday.
21. My father had a stroke the summer I turned 15. It took me a long time to get over the sense of betrayal I felt.
22. Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison makes me instantly happy.
23. I am jealous of my two cousins because they grew up in a loving Christian home. Not a very charitible feeling, but there it is.
24. Under my extra 100 lbs I am a beautiful woman.
25. I always thought that when I bought my own home I would be really into decorating it and gardening, but I’m not.
26. Watching PBS’s Mystery! series on Sunday night is the highlight of my week.
27. I recently joined a church for the first time.
28. Last year I gave up TV for Lent. It was a lot more difficult than I expected.
29. I believe that the South Beach Diet is the way every sensible adult should eat most of the time. Too bad I can’t seem to stick to it.
30. My parents separated when I was two years old. I did not see them in the same room together until my graduation from college.
31. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome is named for and runs in my family. The main symptom is hypermobility (what many people call ‘double-jointed’). My brothers can do circus tricks, really freaky stuff, but my only manifestations are the occasional joint doing something funky and a bit more overall flexibility than most people of my size possess. Although it’s also probably why I’ve never broken a bone.
32. My favorite ice cream is Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake, but often I eat all the graham cracker and then give the rest to my husband.
33. I laugh hardest, feel safest and drink the most alcohol with the women of my mother’s family.
34. I have been a voracious reader since the age of eight, but about six months ago my desire to read suddenly went away. I feel like I have lost a part of myself.
35. I was a Girl Scout for over ten years.
36. I will never forget standing outside St. Paul’s Cathedral on 9/14/01 with thousands of Londoners as the city fell silent in remembrance of the victims of 9/11. The power of that silence was overwhelming.
37. I am a cat person.
38. My husband and I have a tickle fight at least once a day on average. I sincerely hope this continues far into the future.
39. My grandfather used to call me every few days. Sometimes it was annoying. He died on November 3, 2003. I wish every day that he would call.
40. I keep a running list in my head of the things I want to teach my children.
41. I have lived in the South all my life and I like the heat. The idea of snow as a regular thing horrifies me.
42. My mother’s family is Dutch; all four of her grandparents immigrated from the Netherlands between 1906 and 1912. I really wish they had passed down the language, but they were trying to be “American”. They couldn’t avoid passing down the blond hair and blue eyes, though. My father’s family has been in North America so long that we can’t figure out when most of them got here.
43. I’ve had mono three times, at ages 7, 16 and 24. Unfortunately once you have it, it never really leaves your body. I figure I’ll be due for a recurrence at 31. I’m not looking forward to it.
44. I am a Christian, and I really enjoyed the movie Dogma. Many would view these items as mutually exclusive. Obviously, I do not.
45. I crashed my father’s car on my first driving lesson, but it actually wasn’t my fault - we discovered later that the brakes had failed.
46. I think everyone should be able to drive a manual transmission. I’m a little rabid on the subject, actually.
47. My grammar and spelling are getting worse as I get older. I find this very strange.
48. Anne of Green Gables and its sequels are my comfort books.
49. I started school in New Orleans. When we moved to Florida a few years later, I was really confused by the fact that I didn’t get a three-day holiday for Mardi Gras anymore.
50. History is a fascinating subject. It astounds me that so many teachers manage to make it boring.

Today Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signed a law requiring girls entering the sixth grade to have the new HPV vaccination.

I have nothing against vaccinations. When it comes to mumps, measles, chicken pox, I’m all for them, sign me up. And I completely understand why certain ones are required to enter school. An entire class of five year olds coming down with red spots isn’t a pleasant thought. I am not against the idea of an HPV vaccine, either – on the contrary, I think it has the potential to do a lot of good - but the idea of a state requiring this particular vaccine at this point in time rubs me the wrong way.

First, while it must have passed clinical trials and been deemed safe for humans since it is on the market, it was just approved last year, for goodness sake! What if five years from now some horrendous side effect is discovered and thousands of young women suffer because they were required to get it? Far fetched, perhaps, but that’s my gut reaction.

Second, does it really need to be required at all? Measles, mumps and chicken pox can spread like wildfire in a closed in space such as a classroom, but HPV is an STD. I am not in the mood to discuss today whether teenagers should or shouldn’t be sexually active, but I can state that usually kids aren’t having sex in algebra class. A teenager with HPV is not putting her classmates at risk by her presence in the room. That alone should remove the discussion from the hands of lawmakers and place it into those of the girl and her parents.

But what really, really makes me boil is the knowledge that lawmakers are being assisted in this decision by Merck’s use of lobbyists and campaign contributions. I haven’t looked up the data on this, but I am not naïve enough to believe it isn’t happening.

So, back off, Mr. Governor. The sexual health of my (as yet non-existent) daughter is my purview, not yours.

I’ve never pictured myself as a fiction writer.  I am really good at term papers and essays, but I don’t have a fantastic imagination, which is an absolute requirement for writing fiction.  With this in mind, I never even attempted it.  But one day in August, something happened in my life that I thought might make a sweet Lois & Clark vignette, so I wrote it up.  And then just a few weeks ago, a fellow fan posted a Twenty Minute Challenge and, completely unexpectedly, I was really taken with the idea, and that’s where my last two vignettes came from.  They just appeared out of the blue, really.  And all three were moderately well received, which honestly suprised me.

In the midst of all this I’ve discovered something interesting:  I can sit down to write with a vague thought in mind and suddenly three pages are filled.  When the storm of typing is done, I just sit and look at the screen and think, ‘where did that come from?’  No idea whether it’s crap or not, of course.  I am writing a new, longer, story now - it will probably be about 12,000 words when it’s done - and I am rather fond of it, but in the grand scheme of things I have no idea whether it’s good or not. 

What makes me happy about all this is just the knowledge that, bad or good, I can do this.  I can write a story that makes sense from start to finish and that maybe a few people will find interesting.  I am filled with a sense of wonder because I never knew I could do that before.  It makes me wonder what other suprises the inner me has in store.

Alienation

I mentioned a week or so ago that I am thinking of going back to school.  And, man, I don’t want to do it.  I really hate school.  But I know that I should do this, and I will always kick myself if I don’t.  Actually, I am already kicking myself for not doing it when I first thought of it three years ago. 

The first step is to study for the GMAT.  The application deadline for the summer semester is March 15, so I need to get a move on.  A coworker lent me some study guides on Tuesday and I have yet to open them.  It’s like I am trying to savor the free time now, because I know once I start on the GMAT studying, it’s going to be non-stop for, oh, four years. (!)

Sigh.  Sometimes I hate being a grownup.

We put Gandalf to sleep this morning.  We found out on Saturday morning that he had chronic renal (kidney) failure.  And then I was truly upset.  I suppose I just needed something concrete to be upset about.  Anyway, there is no cure for this.  The disease can be managed, but his quality of life would never have returned to where it was, and it would have been difficult for him and us.  Daniel and I decided that the best thing would be to end it now.  So we went to the vet this morning.  We were with him when it happened, and it was so quick, and then we came home and cried.    And cried.  The worst thing about this was that it was so sudden.  A week ago we had no idea he was terminally ill.  I thought he would be around for another ten years.  I worried about him sneezing on the baby, and we don’t even have a baby yet.  I keep looking at all his haunts - in front of the kitchen door (right underfoot, of course), on top of the toilet seat - expecting that he is going to be there.  Ozzy doesn’t seem to realize that he’s gone yet.  The vet is going to return his ashes to us, which we will probably spread in the backyard.  I couldn’t just let his remains be tossed in a heap with other cats.

I have a bad memory, so I am going to catalogue here as many memories of Gandy as I can while I still remember them. 

We got him a the humane society in July 2002.  He was four years old.  This was before Daniel and I were even engaged, but I lived with a roommate who was allergic to cats, so convincing my boyfriend to get one was as close as I could get.  I don’t remember exactly why we chose this particular cat; so far as I recall he just seemed nice.  His name at the time was Phantom, but we have a friend whose cat is named that, plus I always wanted to name a grey and white cat Gandalf.  But he had a few other nicknames, too: Gandy, Gandiest, Mr. Glowpaws, Rock, Blue Cat (as in Red Cat, Blue Cat).

He cried all the way home.  We thought it was just because he didn’t know us, but no: he cried constantly every time we put him in the car from that day on.  The longest drive we ever took him on was about half an hour, and he didn’t let up the whole time.  We actually got sedatives for him in the event we had to evacuate for a hurricane.

The humane society said he was scared of vacuums and thunderstorms.  They were wrong about the vacuum, but they certainly were correct about thunderstorms, at least in the beginning.  He would huddle on the kitchen floor, shaking, while Ozzy danced around him, teasing him for being a baby.  At least that was what she would have been saying if she could talk.  We tried making a bed for him on the floor of the closet where the thunder wasn’t so loud, but he always went back to the kitchen.  The fear eventually wore off, though.  I don’t remember him being scared of a storm for at least the last two years.

He wasn’t the smartest cat.  We had a cat door installed in the laundry room door so they could get to their food and litter box.  Ozzy mastered it right away, but it took Gandy days and when he finally figured out how to go out, it still took a few more days for him to realize he could get back in by the same method.

He loved Daniel the most.  He would climb up on his chest and rub the top of his head against Daniel’s goatee.  He would sit on my lap only on rare occasions.  But he was extremely friendly otherwise.  Every person who came through the door was his friend, even the refrigerator repairman. 

Most nights Gandy slept with us on the pillow between our heads, lulling us to sleep with his purrs.  Some mornings I woke up with him literally on my head.  One morning about three months ago I had to cut dried snot out of my hair because he sneezed on me during the night.

We got Ozzy because Gandy needed the company.  Before her he would cry in the night from lonliness.  And they were good friends, playing, fighting, washing each other.  But even with her presence, he would still cry if he thought we weren’t in the house.  It would drive me nuts on Saturday mornings after Daniel left for work and I was trying to sleep.

He had the most beautiful fur.  It was smoke grey on the top, but underneath it was pure white.  You could only see the white underneath if you ran his fur backwards.  And he shed like crazy.  We could have stuffed pillows with the amount of hair that cat left lying around.  In fact, we probably still could.

He would sit on the toilet seat in the morning watching me get ready for work.

When I would catch a glimpse of him in the mirror, I always thought it looked like someone had punched him and caused the spot on his nose to move to the other side.

He was a real sweetheart at home; you could pick him, hug him, pretty much anything.  But at the vet he became a wild banshee cat.  I probably sounded like a broken record over the years, constantly saying, “He’s a real sweetheart at home, nothing like this.”  I guess I wanted them to like him.

Last night after Daniel went to bed, I found Gandy on the toilet seat as usual.  I sat on the floor and looked him in eye and said goodbye.  I prayed for God to watch over him - not sure what the position is concerning cats going to heaven, but he was one of God’s creatures.  And I prayed for God to help Daniel through this because I knew he was going to be very upset.  I should have prayed the same thing for myself.

Goodbye, Gandalf.

Our cat, Gandalf, is ill.  About two and half years ago, he started sneezing.  About one year ago, snot was added to the picture.  About two months ago, the sneezing turned into a stuffy nose. And about a month ago, he started losing weight.  We’ve been taking him to the vet fairly regularly ever since this began, and they haven’t been able to solve the problem.  Today Daniel took him for the first time since the weight loss began and found that he had lost half his body weight.  Seven pounds!  He really is frail now, and I think he may be losing fur, too, or perhaps it just looks different because he has lost so much weight.  The vet took several blood tests but refused to speculate on the problem.  Hopefully we will hear something tomorrow.

This whole affair has made Daniel pretty depressed.  He has a slight leaning to melancholia anyway, and the illness and feared imminent death of a beloved pet certainly doesn’t help matters.  I feel like a heel because it really doesn’t bother me, at least not right now.  I do love Gandalf - I am at cat lover in general so of course I especially love my own two - and when he actually dies, whenever that happens to be, I will be pretty upset, just as I was concerning that kitten a few weeks back.  But I am not very sentimental.  I accept that pets die.  I don’t really get upset about it until it actually happens and then the pain passes pretty quickly.  So I’m afraid I look very unfeeling here.  Actually, maybe I *am* unfeeling, because I have to admit there is a little voice in the back of my head that is irritated that he is so mopey over this. 

Ah, well.  I guess I will have to take the advice of the Chief:

Lois: But, Perry, partnership is like marriage… It takes patience, understanding, and a willingness to be supportive.  Perry: I know, honey.  Fake it. ~ Lois & Clark, “Requiem for a Superhero”

My first big idea of the day came while I was frying my breakfast egg.  We are (well, were, see Big Idea #2) thinking of selling our house, and we were only planning on making necessary improvements.  But then it occured to me that it was very possible that the house would be bought by a flipper - an investor who buys a house, fixes it up and then sells it again, hopefully realizing a profit.  Our neighborhood dates to the 1950s, so we see this around us often.  So it seems that we should do that ourselves, right?  Why allow someone else to make extra money on our house?  So the entire ride to work (Daniel and I carpool) was spent thinking of all the things we can do - new roof, new water heater, new flooring in the living room, kitchen and dining room, just a bit of landscaping. 

My second big idea hit somewhere around midday when it finally occured to me - four years after our wedding date - that fate had worked out that I was to be the primary breadwinner in our family and as such, considering the state of my career, I really needed to go back to school.  And this neatly satisfies New Years Resolution #5.  But we don’t want to put off having a baby either.  So by the end of the day, we had decided that we would not sell the house, we would have a baby and Daniel would handle the greater share of the parenting so I could go to school.  And we are still going to do the improvements to the house that we discussed this morning.  We are, after all, going to be living here for a while.

Am I insane or what?