Long Days

So, all that progress I made over the summer when I had all that time to freak myself out about weight and other things has been partially undone in the last few weeks. The semester started. Tuesday starts week 5 (we don't have class tomorrow because of Yom Kippur). I'm taking four classes, I'm the president of my department's graduate student organization and I have a part time job. Needless to say, I'm a little busy.


And, my eating habits has gone to hell. To absolute hell. At least once a week in the past three weeks I've had a meal that consisted solely of dry toast (and at least once this has happened twice in one day). And, each time this came about by me opening the fridge, looking at the raw ingredients, considering the effort to make a quick stir-fry, closing the fridge and making toast. I've also eaten a lot of meat and cheese sandwiches. This is ridiculous because I have all these great fruits and vegetables in my fridge from my CSA share. Also, fruit and veg don't keep indefinitely, so I have to do something about them! So, today I am (despite the fact that in addition to my normal amount of work for this week, I just realized that the article I'm supposed to read for a lab meeting on Friday is seventy-one pages long.). I have a potato leek soup in my crock pot (made with whole milk instead of cream and with swiss chard added.) I have beets roasting in my oven, which will then by whipped into a soup as well. I have also pickled onions today and made zucchini bread. Most of these things will be going to straight into my freezer (or the cupboard), so that later in the semester when my CSA share is done for the season, I'm working on papers and I'm completely unhinged with stress all I have to remember how to do is thaw and microwave. At some point today, I'm heading out to a liquor store in order to purchase brandy. I'm then going to brandy some stone fruits I have. I've never done this before, and even though I've looked at recipes I'm going to wing it. My brandied fruit will probably only be good over ice cream or in brandied fruit smoothies, but whatever. The point is I'm not wasting the fruit and maybe this winter I won't be paying (completely) through the nose for vitamins. Maybe.

...and, then life happens.

This is the last week before school starts for me. I'm super excited about this coming semester. I'm going to learn Perl! But, of course, since its the last week before school, its not my last free week before school. We had a Welcome Party for the incoming graduate students (I made peach pie). There was a teaching conference (where we were served pizza for lunch every day.)


And, I've not written a damn thing down I've eaten since Breakfast on Tuesday. *sigh* I was on such a roll.


Here's the funny thing about this: writing everything down made me feel a little like I had some sort of disorder; that I was sliding down the slippery slope towards ED. Not writing things down makes me feel a little chaotic and out of control. (Also, I feel like I've lost three days because I don't have dated journal entries for them.) I don't know if this is a good thing, like I'm getting used to the notion of keeping track of things as part of my life or if its a bad thing. I suppose only time will tell. So, I'm back on the wagon again this morning (it was a morning of bacon and tea. Lots of tea.) . I suppose it will be easier once classes actually start as I will be bringing my own lunch. Which reminds me, I need to pick up some bread and lunch meat.

Obsessive Journaling

I have been food journaling this summer because I have read that the best way to really stay on top of your weight is to keep track of what you put in. I'm not going to say that I have been wildly successful with this tactic, but more often than not I remember to write stuff down and the general trend for the summer has been weight loss. This is good.


I have a problem, though.


I feel like I have a disease when I do this. Seriously. Writing down absolutely everything I eat makes me feel neurotic or like I'm trying to suss out an allergy or that I may be slowly skipping down the path to anorexia. It freaks me out a little. And, I don't know what to do about that.

Body Image and a Project I'm working on

So, I've been working on this thing. I joined one of those Flickr, 365 self-portraits in 365 days on my birthday this year. This is picture 43. The idea for this project grew out of a "powerful women" idea that I had way back in the day when I still lived in Iowa City and worked at a bookstore shelving magazines. The original thought was that people in general are involved in many narratives and we use these narratives to build our conception of ourselves. And, I'm interested in women in particular because I feel like one of the things that smart, strong, successful, powerful women do is perform the parts of their identity that they think are the most important, that they want to be the most salient in such a way that it can't be ignored. That you see what they see because, for lack of a better way to put it, they are such masters of appearance that they allow their interpretation of whatever feature is relevant to be not only a violable option, but the most likely option were you to talk or think or come up with a notion about them. So, How do you do that? And, how do we, as individuals decide (if we decide consciously at all) what is most important about ourselves and how do we then make that something other people see and think is important, too. This interests me.


So, the original idea was to sit down with awesome women that I know and interview them and discuss image and how they like to be perceived and how they try to make their ideas about who they are known, but for now I'm my guinea pig for these 365 days and then we'll see where things go after that. This picture is the furthest out on a limb that I've been during this project. I hope to get more adventurous (and better at lighting and angles) as time goes on. The idea behind this one was stple, I find a nice soak in the bath with a book to be a most enjoyable experience. And, part of that experience is adding a little extra hot water to the tub when it cools down a bit. For some reason, it makes me think a little bit about Marilyn Monroe in the Seven Year Itch, only she'd be sitting in a cool bathtub because it was just so hot in New York. I guess this means that the photo (since, yes, I just compared myself to Marilyn Monroe) may be inadvertently sexy. But, that wasn't the intention.

True Story.

I'm just on a roll

So, I'm sitting on my couch, thinking about getting up and taking a shower, drinking tea with white honey while listening to Joni Mitchell on Last.fm. And, this morning instead of the cereal that I bought new milk to pour over last night, I had one of Kellogg's new Cinnabon snack bars.

Yes, that's right. Its my ass and I'll add cinnamon roll snack bar to it if I want.

I've been thinking lately, and, yes, I'll get back to focusing on the dieting but right now I'm going to go off on another body issues and society rant.

I've been many weights and I will be honest with you, one of the things that off-putting about really committing to going from being a bigger woman to being a smaller woman is this:

Some men do not seem to know how to express their appreciation for the female form without being skeezy, leering, creepy and/or weird.

Now, I illustrate with examples. The last time I got down to smoking hot, I had more than one guy friend that had only ever known me at the higher weight walk up to me, put his arm around me, give me the visual once-over and then say something like, "Well, you're looking really good."

Now, these experiences admittedly probably freaked me out more than they would freak out the average bear because I'm very protective of my personal space. I just don't particularly care for a lot of people in my space. And, by a lot of people, I mean that if we don't have a hugging relationship I don't feel you should ever touch me for any reason and if we do have a hugging relationship, you should probably already have my attention or have me otherwise engaged before initiating physical contact. Also, I don't have many hugging relationships with men. (I can think of three off the top of my head of my head who aren't my father who get a hug *every time* I see them.)

So, here's the thing: I understand that these men just wanted to show their appreciation for something that obviously had required a lot of time and effort. They thought I looked nice and they wanted me to know that they appreciated that fact. But, I didn't come away from those experiences feeling appreciated, I ended up feeling cheap and as if I'd been stripped of my agency. I felt like I'd spent all this time and effort and that the pay off was that men who had known me for years and were (likely)* well aware of my protectiveness of my own space now felt it was appropriate to invite themselves into it. But, it doesn't matter what size I am, if I don't offer you a hug, I don't want you in my space.

I just think there has to be a better way to show your appreciation for how someone looks and the (possibly) obvious effort they put into looking like that.

*I say likely here because, while its unlikely that they were never told that I don't like being touched, it is possible that they never realized I was being serious. And, I say its unlikely because I used to wear a button on my name tag that said, "You are too close." Also, I say, "Oh, no touching." frequently. You know the mice in The Hitchhiker's guide posited that they could just replace Arthur's brain with a machine that repeated stock phrases like, "Cuppa tea?" My machine-brain would say, "Oh, No touching," "True Story," and "Well, that's less than ideal." Seriously. True Story.

I'm going to put one foot in front of the other, too!

So, even though I made all that great progress last month, according to my scale I've gone the other direction so far this month.

Also, I'm super stressed out and I hate the town that I live in and all my friends live somewhere else or aren't around for the summer because they are getting married or study cool things in which they get to play in the dirt. While this isn't exactly true and I'm really just kvetching it is certainly how I feel.

Anyway, it has occurred to me that perhaps I should follow Melissa's lead and start doing one (or more) of the many workout videos I have in my house and I much more regular basis. What could be better than expending some of my murderous, "I hate my life" energy while bouncing up and down on an exercise ball doing a lazy man's jumping jacks? (I mean, what could be better aside from not having murderous, "I hate my life" energy to begin with.) I have come to a decision. I am, starting today!, going to work out three times a week. If I can keep that going for a month, I think I may give myself a treat. Another orchid, perhaps? (Not that I can afford another orchid and another grow light so said orchid won't die during the winter, this is one of the source's for the murderous energy, but you know, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, Exercise ball ahoy!

Cravings.

I have been struck by an afternoon craving.

I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee this afternoon but she was then detained by the maintenance man in her building. The roof started leaking a while back and he came to fix it once already, but it didn't stay fixed. So, they waited for there to be some dry days so they could re-tar the roof and now that has been done her ceiling can be fixed. I am for apartments with complete, whole, and non-leaking ceilings, so I'm okay with the cancellation. Its just that I had it in my head that I was going to get to drink a tall, skinny, white mocha with just an itty, bitty bit of whipped cream and now I'm not. There is really no point in me going for coffee myself when the point, really, was to catch up with a friend I've not seen in a few weeks. Especially since there is nothing wrong with my coffee pot and I am not lacking in the skills necessary to make a good cup of joe.


Here's the thing, I promised myself this treat and now I'm not getting it. And, I feel denied. So, the part of my brain that likes treats and will not be denied is casting about looking for other options. And, it has presented me with an option that is appealing because it gives the illusion of doing something that is only moderately bad for me. I could walk to the doughnut shop that is kinda near my house and get that blueberry doughnut that they have been advertising a lot of late. It would be a nice walk. I would get out of the house. I would...being eating a doughnut that I don't need. (Also, it may rain. I'm not really in the mood for being rained on since its only 65 degrees Fahrenheit out.)

I don't know if I'm going to win this round with myself or not. I'm thinking that I might make myself a smoothie with the flavored decaf, ice and skim milk in my fridge. I am also pretty sure that I have some 100 calorie snack packs in my house. I'm hoping that will do the trick.