Take Up Your Bed and Walk

Movin' on up

2008-01-24T20:39:00.000-08:00

Come see me over at www.takeupyourbedandwalk.wordpress.com

It's still under construction: no blogroll or tags or anything like that - but it's up and running, more or less.

See you there!

Not tonight dear, I have a headache

2008-01-17T19:37:00.000-08:00

I have had almost no food today (thanks a lot, stress) and 3 glasses of wine (again, stress). I'm far too toasted to blog right now.

Tomorrow I will commence regular blogging. Which is to say, I have things to talk about other than the ex. (Although I might still talk about him, too.)

If you feel that you cannot live without me (::::snort::::), check out "The Adventures of Spydra" in the "Best of" section. It's funny as hell, even if I DO say so myself. ;)

G'night.

Some days are harder than others

2008-01-16T20:44:00.001-08:00

Hell, some MOMENTS are harder than others.

After having some time to think about it, I know that he’s right about breaking up. I know that somewhere along the line, instead of supporting and loving each other we started sniping at each other and hurting each other. The funny thing is that I think we both genuinely care for each other. I think that this might have been a classic rebound relationship, though. I didn’t worry too much about it because he said he’d dated someone between splitting with is wife and dating me, but now I’m wondering. So much of this was a bad concurrence of events: a rebound, combined with my own insecurity, combined with how fast we went into the relationship, combined with his stress about the divorce and his finances.

I alternate between being mad at him for loving me so much so fast, and being mad at myself for not paying attention to the red flags that I saw (like him loving me so much so fast). Professing your love in the first couple of months of a relationship is generally a VERY BAD SIGN. ::::sigh:::: But it was easier to go along with it than to stand my ground at the time. It was easier to believe that maybe it COULD happen that fast, that maybe we were lucky. It was easier to be willfully naïve.

I don’t really have much writing to do on other subjects these days. I might not for a little while.

I’m still proud of myself for functioning, when what I really want to do is sleep all friggin’ day. And I’m proud that 70% of the time, I can see the bigger picture: the energetics and the spiritual lessons. By the time it gets to evening though, it’s tougher to see.

The boyfriend and I broke up

2008-01-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

I can't deal with even 15 minutes of journaling/blogging today, but here are the 3 things I'm proud of:

We broke up this morning, and I still made it through the entire work day without breaking down or needing to come home.
I stopped at the grocery store after work, which I desperately needed to do.
I put gas in my car after the grocery store, which I also desperately needed to do.

Basically, I'm proud of myself for functioning at all, when my emotions are such a wreck. Now I'm going to go cry my eyeballs out.

That is all.

Saturday Statistics

2008-01-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know it’s not Saturday, but I’ve been weighing in on Saturday – I just haven’t posted it.

Weight: 173.6
Waist: 35”

For the record, that dramatic weight loss was due to the fact that a) I was in the middle of my . . . er . . . “cycle” ::::rolls eyes:::: and b) the fact that for the last 2 days I’ve been so stressed about the bf that I haven’t been able to eat much. But most of the week I’ve done well, nutritionally speaking.

3 things:
I went to 2 auditions yesterday. One was an easy one, but the second one was an improv one, and I HATE those. They just freak me out. Give me some copy and put me on a camera, I’m good to go, but make it up as I go along? Oh, HELL no. ::::sigh:::: But I went anyway, and it was good for me. It’s never quite as bad as I think it will be, so that’s important to remember.
Also, I’ve done pretty well on the habits so far. I’m still struggling with going to bed earlier, but I’m working on it.
Aaaaand today I went to a networking/support group at a friend’s house. They set goals and once a month they get together to discuss how they’re doing. I wanted to go, but at the same time I really didn’t want to, because it means facing myself and developing accountability, which is tough. But I went, so yay, me.

I feel like hell. I just feel sick to my stomach from the bf anxiety. I don’t know what’s going on, if we’re on, if we’re off, anything. And I’m trying to give him some space, so I can’t really call up and ask what the hell is going on. I already asked and he said he needed to think, so I have to STFU and let him sort out what he wants. (I already said what I want, so the ball’s in his court.) And this SUCKS.

But it’s interesting. I can’t help noticing that it’s my stomach that feels gross. Guess which chakra that is? Oooooohhhh, yeah, that 3rd one. And the 3rd one is what, kids? All together, now: SELF-ESTEEM. Yay! Aren’t we special. ::::gag:::: Sorry. I’m just feeling really cynical and bitter and sick.

Honestly though, I’m noticing that I feel like, “OMG I haven’t talked to him in FOREVER” – and it’s only been 3 or 4 days. ::::wince:::: Which means I’ve probablyl been even more of a pain in the ass than I realized - and I KNEW I was a pain in the ass, so if it's been worse than I thought - Jesus. I’ve also noticed that if I think about talking to him, my stomach feels better.

Now, I realize that part of that may be because it alleviates some anxiety. But the reason it alleviates the anxiety is because I'm basically tapping into his sense of his own self-esteem and using it as though it was mine. And by propping my self-esteem up with his energy and his attention, I’ve basically become an energetic vampire, stealing his energy to use as my own. I’ve been doing it unintentionally, unconsciously, but I’ve definitely been doing it. No wonder the poor guy feels harassed: he is. I've just been draining him. Fuck. I owe this guy SUCH an apology. I just hope I get a chance to make it.

And as far as the weight goes, I find it interesting that when I DO eat, the only thing that doesn’t immediately come back up (or at least feel like it’s going to) is toast (or variations on toast: biscuits, English muffins, cheese and crackers, etc.). And that’s not exactly food that’s good for me. In fact, that food will put weight on me faster than anything else, even sugar. So here’s my body, once again, trying to plug the hole in that 3rd chakra by gaining enough weight to stop the energy loss. Poor body. I’m trying, I really am.

Actually, even bread is more likely to make me sick than not at this point, but I figure that’s a good thing. At least I’m FEELING my emotions, instead of numbing them. ::::sigh::::

Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it

2008-01-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

After yesterday I got to thinking about why I didn’t think I deserved someone great, and when in my life I would have picked that belief up. That led me to the last time in my life when I was at this weight, and THAT led me to the emotional issues behind it, as well as the fact that I’ve gained 25 pounds since I started dating Great Guy.

Now before I start writing, I feel like I should say a few things up front:

First, I make no promises about the focus or coherence of this post. I’m writing to clear my emotions out, so I may wander all over hell’s half-acre and back again.

Second, I want to make it clear that although I’m talking about my experiences with my emotions and weight, I do not subscribe to the theory that anyone can lose weight by changing their emotions, dieting, exercising, whatever. Just as there are some people whose weight seems to be naturally teeny-tiny (I have a sister like that), there are some people whose weight is naturally NOT so teeny-tiny. When I speak of my emotional weight, I am speaking for myself. I know my weight is related to my emotions because I was not heavy throughout childhood or adolescence, and my weight changes always directly correlate with what’s going on in my emotional life.

Ok. I read somewhere that certain weights on our bodies correspond directly with certain emotional traumas in our lives. When you start to lose weight, you might be successful for a while, and then plateau abruptly. Oftentimes during those plateaus you’ll find that you’re an emotional wreck. The reason, according to this theory, is that you’re trying to process an emotional trauma that occurred the last time you were at this weight. When you process it, you break the plateau.

So I was thinking yesterday about why I didn’t think I deserved GG: about why I felt like I had to earn what was already freely given. I started thinking about past relationships and when I would have picked up that belief - or at least where I could first see it manifested - and I started thinking about a guy I fell for when I was just out of college. As I thought about it, I realized that at this moment I weigh exactly what I did then.

That guy was the “bad boy with a heart of gold” that every girl thinks she wants. The problem is that heart of gold so often is just a manipulation to get what he wants. In this guy’s case, I don’t think he was even conscious that he was doing it: it was just how he had learned to function within his own dysfunctional upbringing. I can look back now and see how foolish I was, but at the time I couldn’t see it. I tried to convince myself that I was ok with the sort of casual relationship we had, but the truth even then was that I wanted more than I knew he could give. In retrospect, I created that situation: he was very up front about what he could and couldn’t give me, and I decided that whatever he could give me was enough. And even as I decided that, I KNEW it wasn’t enough. I knew I wanted more from him. But I tried to convince myself that I could be what he wanted: casual, laid-back, uninvested emotionally.

And in doing so, I totally mind-fucked myself. At 21, already coming off the heels of an eating disorder, hating myself for untold numbers of reasons, I decided on some unconscious level that my relationship (or lack thereof) with the “bad boy” was indicative of the fact that I was inherently unlovable. It confirmed all my worst fears, which I then continued to live out in other relationships, with other men.

So when I started dating GG, I looked for who I “should” have been. I looked for the person I thought he wanted, and ignored the fact that he was already dating ME. He already loved me, the way I was. But because I couldn’t bring myself to believe that was possible, I set about reliving old patterns, trying to change myself to fit some perceived ideal. And that led to everything I posted about yesterday.

The funny thing is that I've gained weight over the last several months since I've been dating GG, right up to the weight I was when I "dated" BB. The more I've made up expectations and then tried to meet them, the more weight I've gained. Once again, my body is my reliable indicator of what's right or wrong inside my head and heart. One of these days I'll learn to recognize the signs before they get so dramatic.

Now, regardless of what happens with GG (because I can’t keep wondering if and when I’ll hear from him – all I can do is hope it works out), I have to work on myself. I have to DECIDE that I’m worth loving, that I don’t have to be what anyone else wants me to be. In fact, regardless of what happens with GG, I have to be grateful to him. Because what I can take from this is the knowledge that I HAVE BEEN LOVED FOR MYSELF. Even if I didn’t recognize it at the time.

Me, me, me

2008-01-09T20:03:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: this has nothing at all to do with weight. But it's what's on my mind, and since I'm supposed to write for 15 minutes no matter what, this is what you get tonight.

Last year, I met a great guy. We jumped into a full-on serious relationship way too fast. Now we’re both having second thoughts, even though I think we both enjoy each other’s company, and really like spending time together.

That’s the short version. The longer version is this: he was so great that I worried I didn’t deserve him. I felt like I had to “earn” his love, which he was already giving freely. I also felt like I was a little idealized, and that I had to make sure and stay on the pedestal I seemed to be on (obviously, I have no idea if he really put me there or not; I just FELT like I was). So I gave. And I gave. And I gave and I gave and I gave. I restructured my life around his schedule: I can’t go out this weekend, because he might be free. I can’t go out next weekend, because we’re taking the kids to the park. I can’t do this or that, or sixty thousand other things. I can’t schedule my life until I know what he’s doing. I've never been that way in any relationship, but I became that way in this one out of raging insecurity.

Here’s the thing: none of that was anything he asked me for – in fact, I don’t think he would have wanted me to do that at all. But all the same, I conned myself into believing that I was doing it for HIM, and when he got stressed about some things (unrelated to our relationship), and needed some time to himself, I felt like it was a reflection on me. I thought it meant he was upset with me or that I wasn’t perfect, or that he’d finally seen through my great exterior and didn’t love me anymore. And then I got mad at him for not being there for me.

Me, me, me.

I’m not sure at what point exactly I heard myself becoming so demanding. I do know that at some point I started thinking, “Who IS this person using my mouth? I have never behaved this way before! What the hell is wrong with me?” But I couldn’t stop. All my insecurities were in full swing, and I wanted reassurance that I was still loved.

Me, me, me.

The really funny thing is that in some ways this is NOT AT ALL about me: his stresses, what he asked (or more accurately, DIDN’T ask) me for . . . I turned it around and made it about me, when it wasn’t at all. It’s hard to face yourself when you realize that you’ve behaved so badly, been so self-centered.

Me, me, me.

The irony here though, is that in other ways this is TOTALLY about me. Not anything he did or didn’t do/say/think, but about what I think I deserve or don’t, whether or not I think I’m worthy of being loved by someone genuinely good, my fear that if I don’t live up to (unspecified and more importantly, UNHELD) expectations that it will all be taken away.

We did jump into things too fast. That’s definitely true. And I do think we should slow down: date casually or even just be friends for a while, without any pressure or expectations (again acknowledging that I am the one with the warped expectations of expectations).

Everything is up in the air right now, though – and I find myself hoping that I didn’t damage this relationship beyond repair. Truth be told, I could handle losing a boyfriend; at this point, I’m really hoping that I don’t lose a FRIEND. Because he is one of my best friends.

I really don’t feel like trying to think of 3 things I’m glad for today, but today might be the kind of day when it’s most important. So here goes:
I’m proud that I’ve been submitting for roles, because today I got a call for an audition on Saturday night.
I’m proud (that’s not really the right word but I don’t have a better one) that I am facing parts of myself that I’m NOT proud of, and acknowledging when I’ve fucked up.
I’m proud that I wrote this today, even though I just want to go to bed with some ice cream and a bottle of wine and cry (no, I won’t be doing that when I’m done here – well, maybe the crying).

Huh. I guess there were 3 things after all.

When you just dont feel like it

2008-01-08T19:35:00.001-08:00

Right about now I am fighting my inner saboteur on EVERYTHING. I didn’t want to throw a load of laundry in, I didn’t want to clean the bathroom, I didn’t want to blog, to submit for auditions, to plan my lunch for tomorrow.

I don’ wanna. ::::sulks::::

But I did all those things. Well, not the lunch, but I’ll do that after I finish this. And I know it’s sabotage and not exhaustion because I got loads of sleep last night. You know all those studies they do about how if you don’t get enough sleep you’re more likely to gain weight, blah, blah, blah? For me there’s something to that, and it goes beyond the idea that if I’m tired I crave simple carbs to keep running (although that’s true, too).

But I also have a theory that if we’re not getting enough sleep, then maybe our psyches aren’t processing all the things they need to process in order to keep us emotionally healthy. And if we’re emotionally unhealthy, then we retain weight in order to stop the chakra leakage (for lack of a less graphic term). All I know is that when I get enough sleep, my problems are WAY easier to handle. From rude phone calls to cleaning the bathroom, life is no big deal, whereas when I don’t have enough sleep everything is overwhelming. All I can do is lay on the couch and watch TV (and sometimes cry).

But that going to bed early, man: that’s TOUGH. There’s always something else to do, “just one more minute” of stuff. Yesterday was the first day I managed to get in bed anywhere NEAR 9:30, and that was 9:45. I was thinking that I would spend 2 weeks on each habit, and add time if I needed to, and I think I’ll be needing a month on the go-to-bed-early thing. Geez. The funny thing is, it seems like it should be the easiest thing to do. ::::sigh:::: But no. Oooooooooooook, then.

Today I am proud of the fact that I did all the stuff I was supposed to do, even though I didn’t feel like it. That’s pretty huge for me, actually.

And I got on the scale this morning, which is the first time since Saturday (those numbers in yesterday’s post were from Saturday), and that’s huge for me: I’m usually on the scale 4 or 5 times a day, so I’m getting better.

And I’m proud that even though I was tired and cranky most of the day (once that saboteur got started), I did NOT beat myself up about my weight. I managed to come through the day feeling ok about myself – not great, but ok.

Man. This enlightenment shit is TOUGH.

LOL

Facing Fear - no, make that Terror

2008-01-07T19:16:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I don’t really feel like blogging today, but since it’s one of the habits I’m supposed to be working on, it’s not really an option. Dammit. I HATE when I make myself face . . . erm . . . myself. ::::rolls eyes::::

Mostly I have been following the Zone diet, and mostly: no cravings. But Younger Sister 1 and I went to Disneyland yesterday, and SHE HAD NEVER HAD BEIGNETS!!! I know, I know. Pick yourself up off the floor and allow your breathing to return to normal. I’ll wait. (BTW, if you’ve never had them, hie thee to the nearest French bakery – or hey, Disneyland – and EAT SOME! They are of "teh godz." Truly. But since then (and since the fact that I got up at 4:30 in the morning yesterday), I’ve been seriously craving simple carbs. I think my body is basically saying, “Listen, bee-yotch, I need fuel to run on, here! That sugar worked!! So either get some sleep or eat more sugar that I can run on!!!!!” So I’ll be in bed early tonight. Ahem.

But back to the point of this post (betcha didn’t know there was one, did ya?). I spent a lot of time over the weekend thinking about whether or not to post my actual weight and measurements here. On the one hand, I’m supposed to be learning that I AM OK NO MATTER WHAT I WEIGH, right? So numbers are not the defining aspect of who I am. On the other hand, I feel slightly embarrassed and ashamed, because you know, cultural programming WORKS. So I was really toying with the idea of just saying how much I’d lost or gained, without putting a weight on it. But then I remembered that meant I would have to do math every day (“Hm, x pounds minus x more pounds is a total lost of . . . ). Screw that. I hate math. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a girly thing – I’m actually pretty good at math. I just hate it.

So, with that in mind, here we go:

Ok, now. I swear:

This is really fucking hard:

THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS!!
Weight: 180
Waist: 35.5”

AAAAAARGH!!!
::::pant, pant:::::

::::rolls eyes::::

You know what’s weird about those measurements and the fear and loathing they generate? I’ve been heavier (and bigger). I’ve been lighter (and smaller). But no matter WHAT size I’ve EVER been, I’ve ALWAYS been ashamed. I’ve ALWAYS thought I should be smaller. Even when I was in college and starving myself, I still thought I should be smaller. Always, always smaller.

FUCK THAT. That’s part of the reason I’m posting them. If I thought that in 10 pounds, I’d feel good and have no problem posting them, I’d probably wait and post them then. But I know from (bitter) experience that with that mentality, I’ll NEVER feel ok in my own body. So here’s hoping I just took a step closer to making peace with myself – at ANY weight, as long as I’m healthy.

::::sigh:::: I’m actually a little teary. That was really hard.

On a final note, here are the 3 things I’m proud of today:

I just posted my weight on the goddam INTERNET. But I think it was the right thing to do - at least for me, right now.
Today is the first day that I have fulfilled ALL my New Year's habits for January - assuming I go to bed by 9:30, but since I'm exhausted, I have no worries about that one. LOL
I went back to my crazy, liberal church yesterday (hence the 4:30 wake-up time: early service starts at 6:30) - and I was reminded that I really AM already ok. That was nice. (If you saw and liked "The Secret" click on the link - my pastor is the African-American dude with the dreads in the movie. Hee. :D)

Aaaaaaand, that's all, folks. I've done more than 15 minutes, and I'm tired. See you tomorrow.

The Morals of Food

2008-01-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve been reading a lot of Fat Acceptance blogs lately, and I’m struck by how our society thinks of food in terms of “good” and “bad.” Obviously, I haven’t been unaware of this before now, but for some reason, I’m in the midst of a cognitive shift about it: suddenly it doesn’t seem normal to me – in fact it seems downright insane. An apple is AMORAL: it’s not good or bad – it’s just a freakin’ apple, for God’s sake! Same with a burger and fries: they’re not good or bad – they just ARE. There is no inherent virtue or sin in food.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I think this comment (in response to a post over at Shapely Prose, which seems to be my jumping off point lately) was the first statement that got through to my disordered brain.

::::sigh:::: Oddly enough, after reading that for a little while, my WHOLE SELF just felt lighter. Not physically lighter, but as though I had just had truckloads of guilt lifted off of me. It’s just a burger, just an apple, just a piece of toast or broccoli or pie. It’s JUST not that important. I am so grateful to have heard that today, not just to have read it, but to really truly have HEARD it.

Aaaaanyway, here are today’s 3 things:

I didn’t plan on getting up early this morning, so I didn’t get up early. Even though I hadn’t PLANNED on getting up, when I did, I heard the mental voices start: “I can’t believe you didn’t get up earlier! You are supposed to be getting up to exercise! Can’t you stick with something for more than a day?” The REASON I am proud of myself is that I recognized that voice as WRONG. I stood in the bathroom and yelled at that voice: “No! I was NOT supposed to get up this morning – I’m not working on that habit yet, and I am entitled to sleep in if I’m freakin’ tired!! I didn’t fail at anything, and in fact I’m doing pretty damn well at the habits I AM working on! Shut up!” So I’m proud of recognizing that voice for what it is: wrong and mean.
I’m proud of myself for packing a healthy lunch and snacks for work today (and for eating them – ha!). Tasty soup and eggs and even shrimp cocktail for a snack! MMmmmmmm, shrimp. :D And I don’t have weird cravings tonight. Even better.
Finally, I’m proud of beginning the cognitive shift mentioned above. If food isn’t moral, then I don’t have to feel like a “bad person” every time I eat something. And if I’m not “bad” for eating, then I don’t have to figure that I’m already a “miserable sinner” and might as well eat the whole tin of cookies. I can just have one cookie, because you know what? It’s JUST A COOKIE. Nice. :D (I did in fact have ONE cookie today, and no desire to have any more. It was tasty, it made me happy, and then I was done. I have NEVER felt that way before. It was incredibly liberating.)

So that’s tonight’s 15 minutes. Tomorrow I’m going to post some more traditional “goals,” but with the caveat that they are not as important as the new habits I’m building.

Feeling good tonight! Woo-hoo!

Goals vs. Habits, Part 2

2008-01-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

So. I had been toying with the idea of using the Flylady system of habits (not goals) on myself for a while. Not just for weight, but for emotional issues and stuff like that, too. And then the other day I read something in one of the group emails she sent out:

It doesn’t have to be perfect to be better than it was.

For some reason, even though I’ve seen other variations on that statement, the first time it really penetrated my skull was when I read it there.

So with all that in mind (including Part 1, below), I decided that I would not set GOALS this New Year’s, but that I would think of 12 new HABITS I wanted to build in myself. Initially I figured one habit every month, but . . . ahem . . . there’s that whole instant gratification thing. And some of the new habits were pretty simple. So most of these are two weeks each, although some are a little longer, depending on how many times I’ve tried and failed at them. ::::sigh:::: I am hoping that these habits will cause me to drop weight by default, but I’m also trying to learn that even if I don’t lose any weight, that’s ok, too. (I do have a secret list of things I hope the habits result in – like a certain amount of weight loss – and I’ll probably post those tomorrow, but I’m trying really hard to not let them be the POINT.)

So, here are the first 4 new habits that I’m going to work on developing:

Spend 15 minutes journaling / blogging every day, including 3 things I accomplished and/or am proud of. (Gotta build that 3rd chakra back up.)
Spend 15 minutes submitting to LA Casting every evening. (Simple and accomplishable – more 3rd chakra work!)
Plan and pack tomorrow’s lunch and snacks for work TONIGHT. (So I can stop eating crap at the commissary and save some money, too!)
Go to bed, lights-out, by 9:30. (Ouch. This one’s hard, but eventually I want to get up and work out in the morning, and if I don’t get enough sleep, that’s never gonna happen.)

BTW, here’s what I’m proud of today:

I got up early. Not a lot, but all I asked of myself was that I get up early; I didn’t specify a time.
I made some New Year’s Resolutions that are totally attainable, and will benefit me in the long run, instead of becoming more things I failed at.
I got the info to call LA Casting and update my headshots (which I will do tomorrow).

Goals vs. Habits, Part 1

2008-01-03T19:06:00.000-08:00

So here’s the thing: when I really put my mind to it, I can accomplish any goal I damn well please. If I am determined enough, I am fucking ACE at reaching goals. And I’ll reach them faster and better than anyone else, because I don’t have the patience to wait around: I’m all about instant gratification and WINNING.

Go back and read those three sentences again. Now you know why I struggled with an eating disorder in college. Over the last 10 years or so, I would set a weight-loss goal, and about 3 weeks in I would suddenly realize that I was coming totally unglued. So I would stop acting like a crazy person. And then I would stop losing weight at the rate of 3 or 4 pounds a week. And THEN I would feel like a failure (even if I was still losing a little bit) and binge. I’d continue bingeing off and on for a couple of months, until I was heavier than I’d been when I started, at which point I would decide that THIS WAS IT. That weight was COMING OFF. And the cycle would repeat, and every time I’d end up a little bit heavier. After a while, I just felt like a failure all the time, because I couldn’t even lose weight anymore, and I’d been SO GOOD AT IT IN COLLEGE. I knew rationally that I was SICK in college, but emotionally I just didn’t get it: I just wanted to be thin again. Fortunately I didn’t want to be thin and SICK though, so I’ve just been heavy for a while now.

But every New Year rolls around and I hear the siren call of “we are not a diet” Weight Watchers (::::snort:::: yeah RIGHT – “not a diet” my ASS) and that perfectionist part of me pricks up its ears in the hope that THIS year I’ll get to be thin, and fuck being healthy. So I’m always pretty leery about making resolutions and setting goals.

A while back I found the Flylady site for housecleaning (this is not a tangent, I swear), and although she is way more politically conservative than I am, I figured, screw it, my house is always a wreck, maybe I should try something different (I just ignore the "we keep our houses clean for our husbands" angle). Her whole theory is that the reason our houses are chaotic is because we always feel like, “If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.” Or rather, wait until you have TIME to do it RIGHT. Ahem. Guilty as charged. But she’s big on the idea that you’re not “behind” in your work, and that your house didn’t get dirty overnight and it won’t get clean overnight, either. You have to build new HABITS. So I started doing that. And now when I get home from work, I throw a load of laundry in. Just one. A couple of mornings a week, before I race out the door, I swish out the bathroom: nothing major, just a quick sink wipe-down, and a quick toilet brushing. Takes 2 minutes – I timed it. Now when I look around my apartment, it’s NEVER dirty. It’s always peaceful. I like coming home. And I REALLY like not spending 3 hours every Saturday morning doing major cleaning – I’ve already done it in little bits all week. I might have to spend 10 minutes running the vacuum, but that's about it. Somewhere along the way, I became a clean person. Me, who always had piles and piles of laundry, and things growing in the bathroom because OMG I DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO CLEAN PROPERLY. Little changes, little habits. And they all added up.

Bet you know where I’m going with this, huh? ;) I’m going to break this into two posts here.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

Speaking of self-esteem and honoring the promises we make to ourselves . . .

Last night I decided that this morning I would get up early and go running. That is a promise I have made to myself many times in the past, but THIS time, I was sure it would be different. After all, I had an EPIPHANY last night, right? Riiiiiiiight. ::::sigh:::: Last night I tossed and turned all night, and when my alarm went off at the earlier time, I had cramps like I could not believe. AND I’d slept on my shoulder funny, so now my upper back hurts like hell.

I did not get up and go running or walking – I didn’t even get up. And as I lay there, I heard the old tapes start up in my head: “You do this to yourself EVERY time. What is WRONG with you? Why can’t you just fucking get up and do what you say you’ll do for once? God, you’re so weak!” And on and on and on. Because I felt so bad about myself, I didn’t eat well today; in fact I ate a lot of simple carbs and I was tired for most of the day.

Now, for the most part I was able to remember that those tapes are not RIGHT, both in the sense that they are inaccurate and in the sense that they are just fucking mean. But I still felt vaguely disappointed in myself. And that, for me, is the worst feeling. I’d rather be angry with myself or frustrated or even spiteful. But that feeling of disappointment just makes me feel beaten.

So.

Here’s my new lesson: when I have a goal that I’ve set and failed to meet multiple times, I need to remember that unconsciously I have a LOT of certainty that I will fail again. All the good intentions in the world are not enough to overturn years of failure. In that case (and this seems like a huge DUH in retrospect, but hindsight is always 20/20, right?) it might be a better idea to start with a SMALLER freakin’ goal. Something that I haven’t failed at 50 times already.

So with that in mind, here’s the mental progression I went through:
I’m going to get up every morning and walk or run. (I’ve failed at that one too many times to count.)
I’m going to get up early 3 days a week and walk or run. (I’ve failed at that one an awful lot, too.)
I’m going to get up early and do yoga. (Better – I’ve followed through on that one, but I’ve also failed at it, and since right now I’m leaning toward failure, I need to keep looking.)
I’m just going to get up early. (Better, but get up early and do WHAT? Because I know from experience that if I’m just getting up early for no reason, I won’t really get up.)
I’m going to get up early and write or read and have a cup of coffee and some time to myself. (Better still, but not quite right; coffee and quiet time won’t seem that important at 5:00am.)
(What is the central problem I have with getting up early? I’m always tired. How do I fix that? Ummmmm . . . .go to bed earlier?)
WOO-HOO!

How about this: I’m going to go to bed early enough that getting up early starts to seem possible. I’ll revisit ACTUALLY getting up in a week or so.

The funny thing is, I look at that idea and think, “Yeah, right. But you’re not really DOING anything!!!! That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” And I’d be inclined to listen to that voice, except that THAT is the voice that always causes me to fall on my ass. So I’m thinking that if/when I find something that that voice thinks is stupid, maybe that’s exactly the thing I should be doing. The logic is a little backwards there, but fuck it. Obviously the way I’ve been doing it (listening to that voice) hasn’t worked worth a damn, so this can’t work any WORSE, right?

I’m trying to remember that if I really want to change my life, I have, have, HAVE to do it incrementally. I have to do it in steps so small that they just become habits over time. And it might take longer than I want it to. Maybe it won’t take me a week to get into the habit of going to bed early; maybe it will take a month. And then it will take more time to get into the habit of getting up early – every day, even on weekends, because it’s just a HABIT. And then I can start thinking about using that time to exercise. That doesn’t mean I can’t walk or run or get some exercise in the meantime; it just means I’m not going to beat myself up for not GETTING UP AT 5AM 6 DAYS A WEEK AND RUNNING 3 MILES EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY, EVERY DAY.

Because THAT voice is fucking INSANE.

But doing this in teeny, tiny steps also means that I get to celebrate each individual step as a victory: as a promise kept. And you know what that builds, right? Self-esteem. And self-esteem repairs the 3rd chakra. And I’m hoping that THAT will cause me to drop some weight. We’ll see. (Hell, even if I don’t drop weight, I’ll be happier. That should be even BETTER than losing weight, right? That’s what I hear, anyway. LOL)

I have some more thinking to do about this. Maybe I’ll actually make some resolutions this New Year’s. (S.M.A.R.T. ones: Specific, Measurable, Attainable . . . I don’t remember what the R and the T stand for. I’ll have to look it up.) They’ll just be a little belated. ;)

The Third Chakra, Self-Esteem and Feminism

2008-01-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now. I was reading the other day about self-esteem and the third chakra: about how we strengthen our 3rd chakra by honoring our promises to ourselves, and in honoring those promises we build our self-esteem. Basically, it boils down to this: if you make yourself a promise or set a goal, and you follow through with it, your self-esteem increases. “Hey, I accomplished something! I am strong enough to see things through! I can do this! Yay, me!” And of course, every time you think that, you become more likely to follow through on your next promise or goal. It’s like a snowball: every time it turns over, it picks up a little more snow.

It also works the other way, though. If you say to yourself, “Tomorrow I will DEFINITELY do some sort of exercise for half an hour, even if I just walk around the block 4 or 5 times,” and then you don’t follow through, your self-esteem decreases. And again, that snowball picks up a little more snow every time it rolls over, until “Damn, I forgot to exercise” becomes, “Why even bother? I never stick to my goals anyway, because I have no fucking self-discipline at all. Where’s the ice cream?”

On a personal level, I find that as my self-esteem drops, I gain weight. I used to think it was because I hated myself so much for being fat (or what I perceive as fat) that I punished myself by STAYING fat. (Which of course, made me hate myself more, so I punished myself more, so I hated myself more . . . ad infinitum.) Now I know that as I lose self-esteem, I’m actually losing energy through my 3rd chakra. It’s like a hole in the bottom of a bottle: the energy comes in through the top of my head, down through my body, but when it hits that 3rd chakra, it just starts pouring out. There’s a little left to drop into my 2nd and 1st chakras, but not much, which in turn means that those 2 chakras are hurting, as well.

I’ve come to think that the weight I carry (which is mostly around my 3rd chakra) is really my spirit trying to stop up that hole. My spirit can see that I’m not doing the energetic work to heal the leak from the inside, so my body gains weight as a last-ditch attempt to keep that energy from leaking out. In other words, the only way to get rid of the fat that makes me hate myself so much is to start feeling better about myself (thus stopping the energy drain), REGARDLESS of what weight I’m carrying. How ironic. :P

Since arriving at that conclusion, I’ve been reading (and sometimes re-reading) a lot of fat-acceptance and feminist blogs as well as books on self-esteem, and the other day, I had another “connect-the-dots” moment. Bear with me here, because I haven’t articulated it fully (even to myself) until now.

I find it interesting that we (as women) live in a society where the standard of beauty that we expect to and/or are expected to adhere to is generally impossible. Since we are constantly trying to be something that most of us will never be, we are by default constantly failing. We set unrealistically low weight goals, we set unrealistically high nutrition and exercise goals, and when we don’t accomplish or stick to those goals, we feel like failures. And energetically, we are. Here’s the really horrific thing about that cycle: our energetic system, our spiritual anatomy, if you will, doesn’t recognize the difference between realistic, unrealistic, and “oh-my-god-have-you-lost-your-mind-that’s-IMPOSSIBLY unrealistic.” Our energy anatomy* (EA) recognizes two things: the goal you set/ promise you made, and whether or not you accomplished/kept it. That’s it. No more, no less. If you set a goal to weigh 92 pounds, your EA only recognizes that you didn’t get there. It doesn’t recognize (in the third chakra) that it would have been BAD to get there, and that not getting there is a good thing. It just registers that you broke your promise to yourself.

And again, I come back to the idea that most of us can’t look like celebrities. But whom do we want to emulate? Celebrities. We are operating, from the time we are little girls, all through puberty and adolescence, into adulthood, with a constant drain on our self-esteem, because we can’t accomplish the goals we are setting for ourselves. And guess what happens? Our bodies try to stop the leaks, which of course, makes us hate ourselves even more. We are living in a society whose expectations create a DEFAULT setting in women of low self-esteem. That is our DEFAULT emotional and energetic state. It’s not an aberration, it’s not a fluke, it’s not the case in a few, isolated women. It is the (say it with me, here) DEFAULT. We are leaking energy in a veritable flood.

It’s an interesting thing to think about. Horrifying, but interesting.

On a final note, if working on your self-esteem for your own sake seems like too big a task, then think about this: do you have a daughter? Do you hope to someday? Is there any little girl on the planet that you sort of kind of like? If the answer to any of those questions is “yes,” (as it is for me), then what are we modeling for these little girls? When I think of it in those terms, I have to admit that I find reserves of strength and determination in myself that amaze me. I don’t want the little girl I’m thinking of to grow up in a state of constant energetic loss, but unless I can heal myself, I can’t help her.

::::sigh:::: I’ve tried to end this 5 different times, but my brain is so busy now that I don’t know how to finish it. So this is the (rather abrupt) end. ;)

*The term “energy anatomy” comes from Carolyn Myss. Credit where it’s due, and all that. :)

Buying into "The Fantasy of Being Thin"

2007-12-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

Over at Shapely Prose, the lovely Kate Harding has a fan-fucking-tastic post called “The Fantasy of Being Thin.” Some excerpts:

Overcoming The Fantasy of Being Thin might be the hardest part of making it all the way into fat acceptance-land. And that might just be why I’d pushed that part of the process out of my memory: it fucking sucked. Because I didn’t just have to accept the size of my thighs; I had to accept who I am, rather than continuing to wait until I magically became the person I’d always imagined being. Ouch.
. . .

But when I was invested in The Fantasy of Being Thin, I really believed that changing this one “simple” (ha!) thing would unlock a whole new identity — this totally fabulous, free-spirited, try-anything-once kind of chick who was effortlessly a magnet for interesting people and experiences. And of course, the dark side of that is that being fat then became an excuse not to do much of anything, because it wouldn’t be the real me doing it, so what was the point? If I wouldn’t find the right guy until I was thin, why bother dating? If I wouldn’t have a breakthrough on the novel until I was thin, why bother writing? If I wouldn’t be the life of the party until I was thin, why bother trying to make new friends? If I wouldn’t feel like climbing a mountain until I was thin, why bother traveling at all?

I was thinking about this and about the idea that our weight is directly tied to our emotions: fears, resentments, happy events, whatever. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that for me, there is another layer to the Fantasy: what happens if (when) I lose all that weight and discover that there is no Fantasy-Thin person in there? What if I’m still me?

Obviously I KNOW that intellectually. And yet, if I dig deep, I find myself with this crippling fear: if I lost 20 pounds or 30 pounds or even 5 or 10, and I still didn’t have what I thought I would have by default (because you know, I’m THIN now, right?), then I would have nothing left to blame. If I don’t book an acting job, I can’t say, “It’s because I’m too fat.” (Not the best example, maybe – in acting, you might not be cast because they don’t like your HAIR COLOR or because you’re an inch taller than the leading man, but those are not my preferred methods of deflecting blame – ha!) But if I feel unattractive to men, I can blame being fat. If I don’t get up and exercise, I can say it’s because I’m so fat, so why bother? There are a lot of “why bother”s: why bother eating well? Why bother exercising? Why bother examining my emotions or taking steps forward in my career or my relationships or anything else?

I joke sometimes that I’m afraid of both succeeding AND failing, and I’m not entirely kidding (although I’m trying to stop saying that, since I know my brain believes everything it hears). But as I look at the post above, I know that I’m not really afraid of both: I’m just afraid of failure. I hate feeling like a failure now, but what I’m REALLY afraid of, and why the Fantasy is so insidious is: what if I have everything I ever thought I need to be successful (which of course really means: what if I lost all this weight) – and I still fail? If I have nothing to blame for my failure, then (in my head) that means that I am INHERENTLY a failure. And THAT is a tough fear to face.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2007-12-23T20:01:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I was presented with this idea:
“There is a voice in your head that we all have: the voice that tells us we’re not doing things right, that we’re too young/old/fat/thin/smart/stupid, the voice that is afraid of being embarrassed in front of others. That voice is not you.

But if we are “hearing” that voice, then what are we hearing it with? What is the part of us that quietly listens to everything that 1st voice has to say? THAT is us. That is the Spirit, the Energy, the Universal Consciousness, whatever you want to call it: that is the “still, small voice within.”

In Religious Science terms, the first voice is the Ego, and the second presence (for it can’t really be called a voice) is the part of us that is God. RS believes that we are manifestations of God (not children of God), and that all unhappiness is borne out of the misguided belief that we are separate from God (or whatever you want to call it).

The Ego is the part that lives according to everyday, human laws and illusions. It is the part that believes we are never enough. (Historically, many churches have incorporated this voice into their doctrines, believing that we are unworthy of the love of God, when nothing could be further from the truth, according to RS: we are God loving itself so much that we are made manifest out of pure love.)

I feel like I have to say all this, because I’ve been trying not to just stuff my emotions back into my body with food. (See previous post.) The result of that is that emotional issues start to rise up out of my unconscious, and I have to deal with them and let them go. I’ve been crying for 3 straight days. (I’m going to look GREAT on Christmas. :P) The really tough part is that I don’t even always know why I’m crying – in fact, I usually don’t have any idea where the hell it’s coming from. I feel like I’m grieving, but I don’t know what I’m missing.

And of course, every time something comes up, as I start to deal with it, I move a little closer to releasing it; to becoming enlightened (for lack of a better word). As that happens though, I start having to deal with TWO sets of issues: the emotional issue at hand, and the fact that the Ego doesn’t know the difference between transformation and annihilation. So the Ego fights for its life. Those voices of lack, limitation and doubt just get louder and more insistent, until there is a constant agitation in my soul. I feel it at the top of my spine, as though the muscles there are twitching constantly. I just want to crawl into a hole, sleep, eat, drink, ANYTHING to make the restlessness stop.

It helps if I can remember to think of the agitation as an old belief or thought-pattern that is afraid of being destroyed. If I can hold on to that concept, then when the voices are screaming through my head like energetic vampires, I can find that still part of me: that part that listens to the voices, and I can remember that THAT is the real me, and that this unbearable screaming restless agitation is the death throes of an old, hurting, fearful part of me. If I can hang on to that, if I can speak to the scared and hurting part of my soul with compassion and understanding, telling it that I know this is scary, but that it will pass: that it too, shall be transformed and not annihilated – then I can ride out the storm.

Begin at the beginning

2007-12-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

So I was looking at that last post, contemplating what it would mean if all my weight problems (over-, under-, obsessions, compulsions, etc.) were entirely due to emotional issues and fears and beliefs. I started thinking about being a little kid who was fat . . . and then I realized . . . I’ve seen pictures of myself. I was not a fat kid. I wasn’t even a fat teenager (so I can’t blame puberty, LOL). I was an UNACCEPTED child, I was a kid who didn’t fit in even with the nerds, and that did its own sort of emotional damage – but I was not a fat kid.

So I asked myself, when did I start gaining weight? I started in college, I thought, my first year away from home. But the more I thought about that, the more I realized that although that’s when I started gaining weight, it wasn’t really the beginning. If I’m honest I would have started gaining while I was in junior college, but I was so physically active that I burned off everything I ate (which, ahem, wasn’t much).

I started college when I was 14. That probably saved me from far worse emotional damage, so starting college wasn’t the problem. In fact, college in itself wasn’t a problem at all. But when I started, I’d never been liked by my peers in primary education. I’d never been anything but reviled by them, actually, and I wasn't sure college would be any different. As it turned out, school was big enough that no one cared what I wore, who I talked to, what I ate for lunch. I didn't get harrassed, but I also didn't really make any friends. So after a year of invisibility (which is better than being hated, but not much), I decided I wanted to be popular. I was a dance major at first, and the dance majors were a small group of people who were always together, and fresh out of high school themselves.

Here’s the thing, and I think, the beginning: the person I was, wasn’t going to be popular. So I sat back and watched the popular girls during the fall semester that I was 15 (I’d already been there, invisible, for a year). I sat close enough to hear what they talked about, I knew what the alliances were and where the power lay in the group. I learned everything I possibly could learn by just being nearby. And during the Spring semester, I befriended one of the girls who was lower on the totem pole. I talked about the “right” things, laughed at the “right” jokes, etc, etc. Anyone who’s ever been to high school knows the drill. And I got what I wanted. I spent the next year and a half at the top of the food chain, having become genuinely good friends with the “pack leader,” so to speak. Yay. :P

But what I learned from all of that was that I was not enough. By myself, I was not interesting, attractive, smart (despite being in college at 14), funny, witty, etc. I could PRETEND to be those things, but I wasn’t really those things naturally. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would pretend throughout my college “career:” through 7 years and 3 colleges, I would always be someone else, because I never wanted to be “me” again. Eventually the pretending would become a compulsion to lie, about anything and everything, and I would be several years out of college before I was able to break that behavior pattern.

The interesting thing (at least to me) about my weight is that I gain weight primarily in my stomach: from the bottom of my rib cage, down through the bottom of my belly. (My upper ribs remain tiny all the time. It’s a little weird.) But that area corresponds to the 2nd and 3rd chakras. The 2nd chakra represents the power dynamic of our interpersonal relationships and how we relate to money, sex and power. The 3rd chakra represents our self-esteem: whether we take care of ourselves, honor ourselves, honor our commitments to ourselves.

So in my case, I have problems around my 2nd and 3rd chakras – not just weight, but back problems, stomach issues, etc. And the reason I have those problems (according to energetic medicine) is that I’m violating those two areas: the 2nd, because I’m not being honest with others, and I’m lying in order to gain power. The 3rd, because I’m denying my essential self, and denying that who I am is “good enough.” Even though I'm not lying anymore, and not pretending, I still don't think I'm "good enough," and I still haven't really let go of the NEED to pretend: just the practice of pretending (most of the time).

So now I have to work on healing that time in my life. (I’m hoping I can deal with my issues chronologically, because God knows I’ve tried just dealing with the emotional issues as they come up, and it’s been pretty hit-and-miss.)

Stuffing, Starving and Sleeping

2007-12-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

I either stuff, starve or sleep. That’s how I have always dealt with emotions that make me uncomfortable. I stuff myself with junk food until the serotonin rush kicks in and I feel better, or I starve myself until the hunger gives way to euphoria and I can just float through life OR I just go to bed for hours at a time and hope that I will be able to handle my life when I wake up (note to self: more on sleep as transformation in another post).

I’ve been reading a lot of other posts lately on various blogs talking about your body’s natural set point for weight: about how it REALLY IS POSSIBLE to feed two people the same average calorie intake and they can still maintain wildly different weights. There was at least one study done that found people who dieted down to “normal” weights from “obese” weights did NOT subsequently have the same chemical makeup as “normal” people: they had the chemical makeup of people who were starving, even though their weight was normal. (I’ll see if I can find the link; if so, I’ll post it here.)

A lot of that makes sense to me. I know for a couple of years I gained weight eating 800 calories a day, and exercising for an hour, 5 days a week. Today, I eat a lot more than 800 calories, hardly ever exercise (although I’m trying to get back into the habit, because I just feel better when I do), and weigh about 30 pounds less than I did then. (And I haven’t started taking thyroid meds, or had weight-loss surgery or any of that stuff.) Even a slowed-down, starvation-style metabolism can’t account for a weight GAIN during the 800-calorie period. But the total embrace of a “set-point” doesn’t account for the fact that after several years at the same weight, and without really trying, I dropped 30 pounds, have kept it off for several MORE years, and that recently I have started dropping weight again without really trying.

I’ve done a lot of reading on energetics and all that woo-woo stuff, though (which I totally believe in, so I’m allowed to use the term “woo-woo”), and one of the things I’ve read over and over regarding weight is that our weight (whether over- or under-) corresponds directly to the things in our lives and psyches that we don’t want to deal with.

Yeah, yeah, I know: DUH.

But it’s not really a “duh,” because in the energetic world, it’s not a GENERAL correlation (like, “When I’m stressed, I eat and that’s why I gain weight”) – it’s a specific one (like, “My parents were unloving, so I unconsciously padded myself to keep from breaking”). There’s a reason we call it “emotional baggage:” we literally are carrying it on our bodies, and the more “baggage” we have around a certain event, the more weight we lose when we resolve that event. I have to admit that I’ve found any sustained weight-loss for me correlates directly with dealing with emotional issues that I had buried for years: anger at individuals, fears about my life, etc. When I’ve resolved those – and I mean REALLY resolved them, not just intellectually understood them – the weight just falls off, until I hit the next plateau and have new (old) issues to resolve.

So I’m thinking/wondering if/almost convinced that our “set points” aren’t really about calories or genetics* or the food we eat. Our set points are determined by how much of our life we’re hurt by and how much of that hurt we haven’t let go of. It’s inheritable because we internalize our families’ fears and beliefs (even when we think we’ve “gotten over” them, we usually haven’t – sometimes we have, but not always).

I think it’s an interesting proposition. I know that in the past, it’s been true for me. And I also know that sometimes finding what issue it is that I’m holding on to is incredibly hard: sometimes because I don’t want to deal with it, and sometimes just because there are SO MANY issues that it’s hard to pin one down, LOL. But I’ve noticed that when I make peace with stuff, I drop weight. When I re-own things, I gain weight. And what I’m putting in my mouth (or not, as the case may be) seems to have very little to do with it.

*I’m also of the opinion that we sometimes inherit family issues on an energetic level, not just a learned level, and that our genetic makeup is related to our soul-genetics, so to speak. In other words, if you believe something strongly enough, it will affect your body, up to and including your DNA, which you then pass on to your kids (along with the belief/fear). If the kid resolves the belief/fear, the DNA may or may not re-alter, but either way their odds of getting sick from it are pretty much nil.
I told you I was weird. You were warned. ;)

Circles and circles and circles and . . . you get the idea.

2007-12-06T11:20:00.000-08:00

Last night was a bad scene. I’d been feeling restless in my head – that feeling when there are things trying to surface out of my unconscious, but they haven’t quite surfaced yet. So I feel vaguely stressed and unsettled, but I don’t have a reason for it yet. Plus I know whatever’s coming up is something that I don’t want to deal with: that’s the reason it’s been BURIED, for cryin’ out loud.

So. I called my mom and talked to her about it. I felt much better after I got off the phone, and so – big mistake – I let my guard down. I got into the tub with a glass of wine, but I left the bottle within reach. Bad idea. I finished the bottle (except for the half-glass I ended up throwing out), along with most of a bag of chips with dip, and a bunch of those French Fried Onions. Oh, and 4 cookies. ::::sigh::::

So this morning I feel really gross and bloated. But at the same time, I feel calmer. That’s the addict’s high, right there: I’ve stuffed whatever was trying to come out back into the little black hole it was trying to come out of. ::::sigh:::: This is tough to deal with around the holidays. Most of the year I just don’t keep “trigger foods” in the house. Then, when I want to binge, I flat-out can’t, because there isn’t anything in the house to binge on, except fruits and veggies, which aren’t exactly “binge-friendly” foods, LOL. But during the holidays, I entertain. A lot. So I ALWAYS have food on hand for entertaining, which includes things like cookies in the freezer and chips in the cupboard.

It’s funny: I was talking to my mom the other day about how I get so good about packing nutritious lunches and breakfasts, and then I wonder why I can’t drop weight. But the problem isn’t really what I eat at WORK: it’s what I eat when I get HOME. I’ve got the whole thing backwards. I could probably not worry too much about what I eat at work, if I’d plan out my home meals better. :P
Aaaanyway. I had weird dreams all night. I dreamed I was being chased by a giant macaw: I’m talking GIANT, like old-1950s-movie-giant. And it was going to eat me alive, swallow me whole, that kind of thing. So I was hiding up in the trees, and then I was hiding in my dead grandmother’s house, except she was alive! And then she wasn’t. And I was crying because I missed her so much, and then I woke up. ::::sigh:::: And I had a HUGE glass of water and went back to bed. When I woke up this morning, I just felt sad and tired, but still with that weird calmness that comes from avoiding conscious introspection. :P I did start writing down in my calendar which days I felt restless and stressed, and then that I binged last night. I’m wondering if there’s a predictable pattern: 4 days calm, 4 days stressed and a binge on the 9th day, or something like that. If there is, I can at least see it coming and maybe head it off a little better. The downside of that is that I have to go through the cycle a couple of times, and I’ve been trying NOT to go through the cycle. Actually, last night was the first night I’ve had like that in a long time. So we’ll see what happens. I think I’m going to hide out in bed with a journal this weekend and see how it goes.

New stuff

2007-12-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

I think I have to preface this: I totally believe in a lot of things people think are completely bizarre. I’m just giving you an FYI, so that if you think I’m nuts, you won’t bother trying to tell me so. I think a lot of things are true that are outside the mainstream, but I’ve done a lot of reading and a lot of research, and I’m comfortable with my conclusions. So there you go.

I’ve gained a lot of weight. Well, not a WHOLE lot – after I was sick, I only weighed about 155, and now I’m back up to 173. Before I was sick, I was about 169, so overall that’s only a 4 pound weight gain, right? ::::sigh:::: Except that I kept the rest of it off until Christmas last year. And then I maintained at 161/162 until April, when my grandma died. And then it just all went to hell in a handbasket. So even from my “maintain,” I’ve gained more than 10 pounds. Geez.

I’ve tried various diets, but since I eat emotionally, they don’t always (::::cough, cough:::: EVER) work. So I’ve just been trying to pay attention to they way I feel when I eat, when I’m hungry, when I’m bored, etc., etc., etc. When I was sick, I got the chance to work on a lot of emotional issues that related to the illness – that was part of the reason I was able to keep the weight off for so long: I was literally getting rid of old entrenched thought patterns. But I must not have gotten rid of them as thoroughly as I thought. ::::rolls eyes:::: I don’t know why I can’t spend 3 weeks unlearning everything that’s been festering in my brain for the last 30 years – that just doesn’t seem fair. Ha!

In the 12-step world, they use the acronym HALT for anytime you want to drink, use, eat, have sex (whatever your addiction happens to be). It stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. You’re supposed to ask yourself if you are any of those things when you feel like “slipping.” “Tired” always fit me, but “Angry” and “Lonely” never really did. And it makes sense to eat when you’re tired: not from a nutritional standpoint, but from the standpoint of a body that has to run on SOMETHING, and it’ll take a blood-sugar spike as a substitute for sleep if it has to.

But recently I found a different list. The principle was the same, but it was phrased a little differently, and geared toward food specifically. Here’s the list to the best of my recollection (because of course I can’t remember where I found it now).

Are you hungry? If not:
What are you stuffing?
What are you burying?
What are you not saying?
What are you trying to keep from saying? [That’s different from “not saying,” btw.]
What are you trying to keep from feeling?
What are you hiding from?

Wherever I found it, the woman (why is it always women who go through this horseshit? – Don’t answer. I already know) was talking about how she wasn’t really changing her eating habits consciously. She was just running down that list every time she ate something and wasn’t hungry. She had a really funny bit about downing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s while thinking about what she was burying. But just the fact of thinking about it caused her to slowly decrease how much she was eating for stress relief. She found that by thinking about the issue itself, EVEN IF SHE BINGED WHILE SHE DID IT, she felt less of a need for the food. It was really interesting.

Since I’m an emotional eater, I figured I’d give it a shot. It seems to be working; I haven’t lost any weight yet, but I feel vaguely unsettled and I want to do/eat things I haven’t wanted since I was a kid. My emotional issues are all centered around childhood and the fear of being an adult and taking care of myself (even though I’ve BEEN an adult for a while, LOL), so it makes a weird sort of sense that I’d want to do little kid things. I’ve been craving hot chocolate and last night I watched Disney’s Cinderella for the first time in more than 10 years. And I’m tired all the time: that’s another sign for me that things are stirring in my unconscious, because I also hide from things by sleeping.

The thing I keep coming back to, when I’m standing there with a cookie, telling myself sternly, “you can only eat this if you figure out WHY you want it, and ‘because it tastes good’ is NOT a reason,” is that I want to be taken care of. I want someone to feed me milk and cookies and tuck me in and check under my bed for monsters before the light goes out. ::::sigh:::: The funny thing is, I don’t really want the kind of life that would entail. I could theoretically put myself in a SAHM situation. But I don’t want that, either. I wouldn’t want my mother’s life – especially the part about staying home with the kids! I like working, I like my independence, I like all that stuff.

But those two desires cannot exist in the same mind without making you a little nuts: I want my independence, but I want someone to take care of me. Nope, can’t have both. One of them has to die. But I’ve been ignoring my own paradox, and literally stuffing the voice that says, “This thought pattern isn’t possible.” I’ve been eating myself into a stupor so that I don’t have to face the fact that it’s time to let some old fears go. (And in the past, when I’ve dieted, I’ve just used alcohol instead of food to get to the same stupor.) It’s time to let go of the fear that I can’t support myself. It’s time to let go of the fear that I can’t take care of myself emotionally.

Actually, writing all this out helps tremendously. I’m thinking that instead of asking myself that list of questions every time I reach for a cookie or a piece of pizza or a glass of wine, I’m just going to say, “I can take care of myself.” And then, if I still want whatever it is, I’ll still have to run through the list to figure out exactly WHY. Something tells me that this will be a long process – and I’m an instant-gratification girl, so that’s why I usually don’t make it through long-process solutions – but I have to remember that I’ve got 30 years of thought-patterns to overcome. Those fears have already worn deep grooves in my brain, and before I can even change them, I have to haul them up out of those grooves. I didn’t get here overnight, and I won’t get out overnight – but with some self-awareness, it doesn’t have to take 30 more years, either.

99.44% Healthy

2006-09-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Remember those Ivory commercials? ::::sings:::: “Gotta be ninety-nine point FORTY-four! Got a clean as real as Ivory . . . “ Yeah, I watched WAY too much TV growing up.

Anyway, I’m not dead, and I don’t even wish that I were, anymore. Since everyone and their mother apparently knows what it was at this point, I might as well post it here: I had an anal fissure. And god-DAMN, that hurt! Someone told me that the feeling is very similar to severe hemmorhoids, so all you mommies know what that’s like. And what it’s NOT like, is fun. Nothing at all like fun. Ick.

Anyway, I went to the acupuncturist and she gave me some stuff to take and basically said, “Go home, lie down and don’t eat solid foods for a while. And when you do start eating, eat lots of steamed veggies, but not a lot of anything else.” So that’s what I did. And lo and behold, no surgery and I feel lots better! Whew! I’m not a fan of getting cut open, if I can avoid it. :P Unfortunately, I developed some skin tags (which I guess is pretty common with this), and those WILL have to get cut off surgically. Damn. I almost dodged that bullet. But it won’t be any big deal.

I saw a “regular” doctor last week, and he was pretty shocked that the fissure had healed itself, which was kind of funny. It always cracks me up when allopathic doctors are surprised that something else works, too. ::::shakes head:::: Ah, well. It’s not TOTALLY healed, so he gave me some nitroglycerin to apply topically and said to come back in 2 months: 6 weeks of nitro, 2 weeks to get it out of my system, and then we’ll talk about surgery. But he was pretty amazed that it had healed at all. He said he could actually tell how deep it had been, and said that if he’d seen me first, he would’ve put me into surgery post-haste. As it was, he ended up taking my acupuncturist’s card to refer other patients! Ha!

So that’s the upshot. I went back to work yesterday, and although I’m a little tender after sitting on my butt for the last two days (office jobs will do that), I’m ok. I just go home and lay down and watch TV all night. I never thought I’d be able to rationalize laziness as good for me! LOL

I also have a whole list of dietary restrictions now, too. I lived on broth and juice for about 3 weeks and lost almost 20 pounds when it was all said and done, so now I’m trying to keep the weight off! The fact that my diet is SEVERELY limited from here on out will help with that, I’m sure! I can’t eat any more dairy (although I did get some leeway for cream in my morning coffee, after I begged and pleaded!) – in fact, it was probably when I started eating more nonfat dairy that the fissure started developing. I’d actually been told by a few holistic doctors that I needed to lay off the dairy, but I didn’t have the motivation to do it. Boy do I have the motivation now, though! LOL I’m also severely restricted on grains. No bread, no sugar, all that kind of stuff. Oatmeal is ok, and the occasional piece of bread (VERY occasional), but as a rule it’s all out. So I’ll be eating a lot of veggies and fruit, with a little chicken and fish. (The holistic doctor said, “You’re looking at 80% fruits and veggies, maybe steamed with some olive oil, about 15% chicken or fish and 5% for everything else.”)

But I’m actually glad for all this: I lost some weight and actually have the motivation to take care of myself, which means I’ll keep it off. Plus, not only will I be skinnier, I’ll be healthier. And since I spent the last few weeks on broth and juice, most of my cravings have been cleared out of my system, which is VERY cool. I basically detoxed my system because I was trying to get well. Nice. :)

Monday I start a permanent, part-time position at Disney. Woo-hoo! I work 9-3, M-F, but I can adjust my hours for auditions if I need to, which is very cool. Plus, I get a park pass! I’m stoked on that!! My sister and I have been buying season tickets every year, but this way I can get us both in for free! Hee! ::::happy dance, happy dance:::: There are a few dates we can’t go, but not many, so YAY!!! I LOVE Disneyland!

And in other news, I had signed up for an online dating service last year. I went on a few dates with a few people, but nothing really worked out, and I pretty much stopped looking. I kept the account active because it was free and I liked hanging out in the forums, but I wasn’t really looking anymore. And then I started talking to this guy who also posted a lot in the forums. I knew he was smart and well-written just from reading what he had to say on various subjects, but I never really bothered contacting him, because he lives in Virginia. But it finally happened that we got to talking one day, and just really got along well. We were writing these crazy long emails every night, and when we started talking on the phone, it was just as ridiculous: we’re on the phone for 2 and 3 hours at a time. So, the long and short of it is that he’s coming out here next Wednesday for 10 days. I’m really excited – I figure the worst thing that can happen is that it won’t work out romantically (can’t make the distance work, lack of chemistry, whatever), and I’ll end up with a really close friend. Obviously, I hope we hit it off, but even if we don’t, I figure any scenario where the worst thing that happens is that I make a new friend must be a pretty damn good one.

So yay. :)

Aaaaanyway, that’s life for the last month or so. I’ll try and start posting regularly again, now that I’m back from the land of “I-wish-I-was-dead.”

And I’ll be around to everyone’s blogs to catch up and say hello!

Fun with doctors

2006-08-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

Well, that embarrassing butt problem I had last time I wrote? That got SO much worse last week. I woke up in the middle of the night and almost barfed, I hurt so much. And that’s saying a lot for me: I have a REALLY high pain tolerance for internal problems. My mom came up on Thursday to stay with me, and we got an appointment to see a Chinese doctor (well, an American doctor who practices Chinese medicine) on Friday. I literally lied in bed all day Thursday and tried not to cry. Mom took me to the doctor on Friday and she asked a million questions, looked at my tongue and took my pulse. I got some herbal Chinese remedy to help stimulate the chi in my digestive system, refresh my spleen, my stomach, my kidneys, my liver. It’s in a pill form, which I was grateful for. Sometimes they make you brew these nasty teas and drink them. :P The pills don’t smell too bad, though, and they seem to be helping. I also had some acupuncture, which was weird, but SO helpful, and I’m scheduled for 4 more treatments.

So . . . I’m still hurting, but I’m sort of functional. I’m at work for 4 hours today, after being out Thursday, Friday and Monday. (Although I told them I was in the hospital – people tend to treat that with more gravitas than when you tell them you’re seeing a Chinese doctor.)

But this is a short post, because I’m exhausted. Being in constant pain will do that to you. :P On the up side, I lost 8 pounds this week!! (Yeah, I know it’s fucked-up to be excited about that, but I’m trying to look on the bright side, here! LOL)

What goes up, must come down

2006-08-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the whole job thing that started out so well may not be going so well. I was supposed to start Monday in a permanent, part-time position, but apparently since I'm technically in a different job title, they can keep me as a full-time temporary employee for another 6 months. My supervisor delivered the news in such a cheerful, "Isn't that great?" manner that I was stunned and spluttered something like, "Well, um, ok, I think I could swing that . . . " Stupid, stupid. I need to learn the following words: "I need to think about it." Simple words, really. But not the ones I used.

My reasoning in the heat of the moment was that if they're really willing to let me go for auditions and such, that'd be great, but the job schedule is a schedule I HATE, and I know that last year when I was doing extra work one day a week, they got annoyed after a few weeks, even though I'd SAID I needed to do that going in. So I'm not holding out much hope that they'll be totally kosher with my taking off in the middle of the day to audition if I'm working 8 hours instead of 6. (See, if I work a total of 6, I can take off for 2 hours in the middle of the day to audition, and still work all the hours I'm "supposed" to. If I'm "supposed" to work 8 though, and I'm gone 2 hours in the middle of the day, I'm NOT working all the hours they want me to.)

So I'm going in on Monday to basically say that we're both changing the rules: the job they offered initially is NOT what they're saying now (and if they'd offered me the job on the contingency that I work for another 6 months full-time, I'd have turned it down), and I said I'd work full-time through January, but I can't. So the compromise I'll offer is to work full-time until the existing employee leaves, and have them switch me over after that. She's looking for work right now, so I'd guess I'll have a month, maybe two of working full-time, and then switch to part-time. I'll still have to audition, so that's not going to change, and they'll have to deal with that. Obviously I'll be a little more diplomatic, though. It won't get me very far to go in and rant uncontrollably. :P

In other news, I've managed to develop a rather painful, embarrassing butt condition. (I wouldn't even share this, but I think most of you who read this have kids and/or are old enough to have them, and God knows nothing's sacred after that! LOL) It's not hemorrhoids, but Mom tells me it's pretty much the same feeling. Great. I can't sit, I can't stand, and God forbid I go to the doctor. But I looked it up on the internet, and the main treatment is surgery, which is so NOT happening!!! So I've been laying around, taking homeopathy and using various over-the-counter medications ranging from toothache medicine (benzocaine to cut the pain) and aloe vera (to promote healing).

On the plus side, I haven't been eating solid food particularly (because the result of food is poo, and poo HURTS), which means that I've lost about 4 pounds in the last several days. I know it'll come back as soon as I start eating again, but in the meantime, it makes me feel better. I might as well get SOMETHING out of this fucking misery.

For cryin' out loud . . . . Just shoot me now.

I got the job!

2006-07-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

I pretty much knew I’d get called in for the interviews and all that, but that didn’t even happen. I talked to the Sr VP yesterday afternoon and he offered me the job outright. So next week I’ll work 40 hours as a temp, and the following Monday I’ll start in a permanent, part-time position. I’m pretty stoked. :) I’ll be working with the existing Assistant until she leaves in January, so I’ll have a good 5 months to get acclimated and learn whatever work I don’t already know how to do, which is cool – especially since I’m working in the Legal dept, I’d hate to run into a situation and NOT know what to do. That could get hairy.

It’s just a little weird how fast everything fell into place. Don’t misunderstand; the layoffs are HORRIBLE. But as far as my situation is concerned, it worked out really well. I just wish my good fortune didn’t come at the expense of someone else. :P

Coming up for air

2006-07-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have been crazy. I spent last week at home – everyone was gone but my mom and me, and we both had loads of cleaning out to do. I spent the whole week going through old stuff from my room and either throwing it out or giving it away. Lordy. Most of it was easy to get rid of, but there were a few things I had a hard time with. Old stuff from college, stuff I’d gotten from my then-best-friend, that kind of thing. I couldn’t even bring myself to touch my dance bag. I know there are 8 or 10 pairs of dance shoes in there, most of which I’ll never wear again, but still. I kept thinking, “I really need to clean that out,” and the thought of it would make me teary. Guess I’m not totally ready to let go of that stuff yet. So in the bag it all remains, at least for now.

Mom was cleaning out a bunch of stuff while Dad and Baby Sis were gone, so we’d work all day and then collapse at night with a movie (and some pizza or Chinese food – the diet went all to hell last week).

I’ve also been working a temporary job at The Walt Disney Studios, and my assignment is about to be over. I should be done sometime next week, but it suddenly looks like I might be staying longer. When I got back this week (after taking last week off), I found out that there were HUGE layoffs going on. The Admin. Assistant for the Sr VP of the Legal dept (where I’m working) was among the layoffs, as was another one in the Legal dept. They’re going to take 2 full-time secretarial positions and turn them into 1 part-time position. It sounds like a lot, but in reality, both those positions (by the assistants’ own admittance) were about 30% work and 70% trying to look busy because there wasn’t really enough work to do. The new position would be 12-6, M-F, which would be a really good schedule for me at the moment, and the total pay would be about what I’m making working full-time through the temp agency now (at 40 hrs/week). Aaaaaaand, I like everyone here, and they all seem to like me a lot too, so I’m first in line for the job if I want it.

They actually offered me this position before the layoffs, and I had turned it down, because I was thinking I’d need full days free to do background work in order to get my union card for acting. But since that time, I’ve gotten an agent, which means I’ll need a couple of hours here and there to audition, but not full days off, since I have every intention of getting my union card by working commercials. And if I had a job like this, it’d pay my bills, so anything I made from a commercial (which pays $1000-$80,000/year, depending on the commercial and the distribution) would just go straight to my bank account/stock account. I could buy a house in 3 or 4 years! That would be AWESOME! So I talked to my supervisor the other day and said that since things had changed with the agent situation, I’d be interested if that position opened up. And that was BEFORE I heard about the Admin. Assistants getting laid off! ::::Shakes head::::

So I might be staying at Disney. Which would be cool. As a part-timer I don’t get ANY benefits: no health, no sick or vacation days, no free park passes, but that’s no different from what I’m getting through the temp agency, so it’s not like I’d be giving anything up. AND I’d be on a studio lot (where there are frequent celebrity sightings, which is SO cool), AND I’d be working for a really cool company, with really cool people. So I’m beginning to get excited. :)

Wish me luck. I’ll try and post again sooner than two weeks from now! LOL

Oh, I almost forgot!!! I finally cracked that weight plateau: down a total of 11.4 now! :D (And I’m reading a REALLY interesting health book that I’ll talk about later.)

Laugh of the day . . . or maybe the year

2006-07-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

Click here:

http://www.filmhacks.blogspot.com/

Read the post called "I love the internets, yes I do."
Click on the links provided in the article as you read.

Try not to wet yourself because you're laughing too hard.

:D

If you want more fun, about the same post, go here:

http://sufficientscruples.com/blog/2006/07/06/anti-choice-tool-confirms-stereotype-one-in-a-continuing-series/

Note: If you read this and you're pro-life, please understand that I am not posting this to bash pro-lifers. I am posting this to bash stupidity, no matter what side of an issue it's on! LOL

The word of the day:
Peculiar

A five things meme

2006-07-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

This was entertaining . . . From PJ over at Mixed With Sugar . . . :D (I gotta stop stealing your stuff! LOL)

The Five Things Meme

Five things in my closet:
Handbags (each stuffed with tissue and stored)
Shoe boxes (with shoes in them – I’m not THAT messy! :D)
Plastic stackable storage containers (full of underwear, socks/nylons and bras)
My computer case
My weekend carry-all (for traveling)

Five things in my car:
Extra headshots and resumes
Gum
A soap dish full of change (for when I’m broke and need coffee or parking money)
Miscellaneous CDs
A blank notebook (for the mileage I keep forgetting to write down)

Five things in my refrigerator:
A jar of roasted red peppers
Kalamata olives (almost gone, now. ::::pout::::)
Low-carb tortillas from Trader Joe’s
Olive oil
Egg Whites
Oo, oo – can I add a sixth? English cheddar with carmelized onions! I found it at Trader Joe’s and it’s SO GOOD! :D Makes a hell of an omelette . . .

Five things in my purse:
(Skipping the obvious – wallet, phone, etc.)
A mini-makeup bag (yes, there’s more than powder and lipstick in it – scary, huh? :D)
Balance Bar
Disneyland Annual pass
Water bottle
3 CDs (I have to do SOMETHING at work while I file things!)

So there ya go . . . what are your five things??

An update

2006-07-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks I haven’t been doing so well, weight-wise. I gained about a pound and a half since my 9.3 pounds post, and I’ve been holding steady at about an 8 pound loss ever since.

The last couple of weeks I really wasn’t in a good place emotionally or physically. I had run my body into the ground, and it really took getting sick to straighten out my head. So I’m trying to take better care of myself. My cousin really wants to get some consistent exercise, and so do I, so we’re nagging each other, which works out well. LOL We don’t exercise together, but we’ll ask each other, “Did you exercise this week?” “Have you exercised again yet?” “You know you only have to do one more day; did you do it yet?” She’s cute, too. We’ll be sitting in the playroom talking, and suddenly she’ll announce dramatically, “We should both be exercising! Let’s go! This conversation can wait! I’ll talk to you in 40 minutes when we’re done!” LOL But it helps to be a little bit accountable, especially to someone who won’t get snotty if I don’t always make my goals.

As an aside, in the last Weight Watchers meeting, the leader was talking about getting support from other people. She was talking about how she’d tell her husband, “I really need your support,” and then two days later SHE’D suggest going out for ice cream. And he really couldn’t win: if he reminded her that she was trying to lose weight, she was mad (“You aren’t my father!”), and if he obligingly went along for ice cream, she was mad (“Why did you let me do that?”)! LOL She finally figured out what she needed and said to him, “At this party tonight, I’m not going to eat any of the hors doeuvres (sp??), except the veggies. So if you happen to notice that I’m doing really well, and sticking to my resolve, I’d really appreciate it if you’d come over and tell me you’re proud of me. And if you see me breaking my resolve and inhaling piles of chips, just DON’T SAY ANYTHING.” LOL That cracked me up, but I knew what she meant. It’s nice to have your efforts appreciated, but no one wants a baby-sitter.

So my cousin and I are trying to get in at least 3 days of exercise every week. I figure that’s enough to do me some good, and not so much that I get either obsessive (and start working out 2 hours a day, 7 days a week – I’ve been there :P) or overwhelmed (after about 3 weeks of working out 2 hours every day!) and quit. Three days a week. I can do that, right? Sure.

I’m a little proud of myself right now, though; I haven’t been drinking abnormally, by which I mean either for the wrong reasons and/or to excess. I had a beer on the Fourth with my cousin, and a glass of wine the other night. Actually I poured a second glass and started on it, but after a swallow or two I realized what I was doing, and I dumped the rest of it out. THAT was hard!! LOL I’m not a big fan of dumping out wine!

But other than that, I have not been drinking the last couple of weeks. There isn’t even any in the house at the moment. So I’m feeling saner. And when I wish I had a glass of (fill in the blank – I’ll drink anything), I’ve been making it a point to stop and think about WHY I want it. Usually I just need to go to bed, because I’m just tired. And sometimes the mental chatter in my head is out of control, which means I need to meditate. (Note to self: mediTATE, not mediCATE! LOL) It’s almost always one of those two things, though.

So, yay for that. :)

So very little alcohol, some exercise, and I have started being a little, teeny, tiny bit more honest about what I’m putting in my mouth! LOL I think I’d started low-balling those points . . . ah, screw it, I KNOW I’d started low-balling those points! “If the salmon roll (salmon, rice and seaweed) is 4 points, then the spicy salmon and avocado roll (salmon, avocado, a little mayo, rice and seaweed) is probably the same, right? Veggies don’t really count towards points, and there’s not really enough mayo in it to count . . . so yeah, 4 points is probably about right. “

A-HEM. May I have a side of sabotage to go with my main course of denial? Thank you SO much. And for dessert I think I’ll have the “Why me?” Oh, what the heck. I’ll have another plate of denial to go as well; I’m sure if it’s the same food the points won’t REALLY count. Lovely, thank you. :P

Fun with words

2006-07-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

This post is inspired by one that PJ posted recently . . . Thanks, PJ! :D

What words do you like? And what words (especially made-up words) drive you crazy?

I really really like the word windowsill. Especially if you say it a little exaggeratedly. Start high and then drop down every syllable: WIN-Dow-sill . . . Love it. :D

And “pickle relish.” I love the staccato sound of it: pic-kle-rel-ish. ::::hums happily::::

On the flip side, have you ever said a word so many times in a row that it loses all meaning and suddenly becomes nothing more than an odd conglomeration (I like that word, too) of sounds? And suddenly you realize how odd your own language sounds. Ooorrrrrrrrrr . . . maybe it’s just me. :P I used to do that all the time when I was little, although mostly I did it in my room Otherwise somewhere around the 30th repetition of the word my mother would start hollering, “If I hear you say “hamburger” ONE MORE TIME . . . !!!” LOL

On the other hand, there are words and mispronunciations that make me CRAZY. “Heighth” is a prime example. “What is your heighth?” WTF??? There is NO SUCH WORD AS HEIGHTH, PEOPLE!! It’s HEIGHT! No “H” at the end! Hard “T!” Everybody say it together, now . . . HeighT!! Like “heighT and weighT” – they go together, just like the “TH” words: “lengTH and widTH.” There is generally no mixing of the two. You just don’t usually hear, “height and width,” unless someone (who thinks they’re funny) is being incredibly rude. Likewise, you don’t hear “length and weight,” unless you’re talking about a newborn.

HEIGHT, PEOPLE!!! HEIGHT!!!! EMBRACE THE “T!” THE “T” IS YOUR FRIEND!!!!

::::deep breath:::: Excuse me while I clamber down off my soapbox now. I feel much better.

As an aside, I also like the word “clamber.” “Traipse” is another good one, often used by my mom when I was late coming home: “Where did you go traipsing off to?” And let’s not forget “conglomeration,” listed above.

Pardon me now, while I go traipsing off to do some work . . .

Nothing to see here . . .

2006-07-07T13:19:00.000-07:00

Life is extremely uneventful at the moment. I was sick for several days, so that pretty much curtailed any wild, debauched Fourth of July plans. That is, if I’d HAD any wild, debauched Fourth of July plans! LOL

I moved into a new room over the weekend (still in Grandma’s house, but a nicer room with its own bathroom, which I’m more than willing to pay rent for), and it was FILTHY. So I vacuumed and dusted and Windex-ed and Pledge-d everything within an inch of its life, and when I was done, my sinuses were so full of dust that I couldn’t breathe. Combine that with the fact that I was exhausted from the busy schedule I’ve had lately, and ta-da! I woke up Monday morning with what I hoped was just a summer cold, but which turned out to be a fairly nasty virus.

I don’t get sick very often. I really only get sick when I’ve run my body past its limits and then pushed it some more. Bad food, no sleep, too much activity, no meditation, no exercise, and my body finally says, “All right, BITCH. You don’t want to rest? Watch THIS!!” and BOOM! I’m sick. And what do I do when I’m sick? Lie on the couch and watch movies all day. Sounds like rest to me. So my body always wins like that. Dirty fighter. :P

And that was pretty much my week. I finally got back in to work yesterday, and got some stuff done, although I sleep-walked through the second half of the day. But I woke up this morning feeling fairly human, so I’m officially back in the world of the living! Just in time to start my Saturday class back up and get busy all over again!! ::::sigh:::: I have GOT to learn how to be crazy-busy and still stay sane. No, I take that back. I KNOW how – I just have to make the commitment to DO the meditation and DO the exercise and DO the nutrition.

Who knew being an adult would be so much frickin’ WORK???? LOL

Mr. Saturday Night, part 2

2006-06-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

I have the Natalie Cole version of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” stuck in my head. Mostly because the opening line is “Missed the Saturday dance,” but when I was little, I thought it was “Mis-ter Saturday Night,” and guess who called me the other day? Oh yeah, you know it.

I actually sent a “Dear John” e-mail on Monday. Kind of tacky, but I wasn’t feeling like dealing with a giant freak-out on my hands, and I had every indication that that’s what I would get in person. I did say in the e-mail that the reason I sent it instead of calling was that sometimes things are easier to process that way, and that if he needed to talk, he had my number. I knew he’d call, but I also knew that at least with the e-mail I’d already had my say (since he doesn’t listen in person).

Before I go any further though, I have to explain my phone situation. It’s pretty simple, really: I only give out my cell number. My cell ringer is never on, because I forget to turn it OFF and I don’t want it going off in church, movie theatres, restaurants, dates, etc. I’m from the old school belief that the phone is for MY convenience, not so that everyone else can get hold of me immediately to tell me how they’re stuck in traffic and bored, and what am I doing right now? :P I always tell people that: my phone’s never on, but I always check messages and I always return my calls, although it may take a day (if I don’t check messages till late in the evening).

Now Saturday Night guy (SNG) knows that. I already told him that. And when he asked why I didn’t answer my phone, I told him again. I think I even told him a third time. (I really hate repeating myself, too.) And on Saturday night, when things ended strangely, he called me TWICE on my way home. Left messages both times. I called him back from my driveway, and he asked/accused, “I left you 2 messages. I thought you weren’t picking up because you knew it was me!” AARRGGHH! When I reminded him that my ringer is never on, he asked, “So that’s how it’s always going to be?? That’s just how it is, huh?” I responded that if it was good enough for my FAMILY, it was going to have to be good enough for everyone else. Grrr.

Anyway, I sent the e-mail Monday, and he called and left a message on Tuesday. He left it late, so I figured I’d call him back Wednesday, but forgot that I was supposed to go out with my cousin. So I sent another e-mail Thursday morning, and said I’d try and get hold of him that night.

(Edit: I know I’m being way too nice about this. I really can’t help it. ::::sigh::::)

I called last night, got his machine, left a message. He called me back late. TWICE. Within FIFTEEN minutes. I got the messages as I was getting ready for bed. The first one was an “I got your message” message. The second one was to say that he had unblocked his number, so it should show up in my display. He figured that was why I hadn’t picked up the first time, but now I could see it, so why didn’t I pick up? Luckily for him he answered his own question . . . “Unless . . . I guess maybe your phone isn’t on . . . .” Ding, ding, ding! Tell him what he’s won, Bob!! ARGH!

So I’ll call him back tonight. My grandma’s old Southern manners won’t let me NOT return a call. (Fortunately they don’t prevent me from being snide and sarcastic on my blog! LOL)

Oh, and that first message from Tuesday? The following are some of the gems from that message:

He thinks he’s trying to teach me something if I want to be taught. He’s trying to help me to be more open.
He doesn’t dump or abandon people so quickly, thinking he knows them from just one night.
He knows me better than I know myself. [Especially amusing, considering the statement just above this one.]
As far as not being able to hold back, move slower, he’s very much a person who respects people’s space – but he’s a man. Not that that means he expects everything to go his way. [WTF?]
Gave me lots of space: allowed [ALLOWED?] me to tell him he had a big personality.
Allowed [there’s that word again!] me to decide not to see the movie we were going to.

Actually, that conversation went like this:
Him: I know we just got our food, and we’re having a great conversation, but we should probably go to the movie if we want to make the show.
Me: Ok. Would you rather stay here? I’m not hung up on the movie.
Him: Do YOU want to stay here?
Me: I can do either one; I’m not invested in either one over the other.
Him: Well, let’s stay here, then! Wow, most girls get really hung up on the movie! [Because he’s a member of an LA movie club and so has advance screening tickets for movies that aren’t out yet, which is what we were going to see.]
I’m still not sure how that was MY decision that he ALLOWED me to make.

:::sigh:::: I’ll keep you posted. This is too entertaining not to. :P

Emotional Spelunking and Well-Digging

2006-06-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that if you are an emotional eater, once you start losing weight you will hit certain weights that will be emotional watersheds. The idea behind this is that when you eat for emotional reasons, you’re stuffing your feelings deeper into your psyche instead of releasing them. So when you start losing the weight, you uncover those feelings again, and NOW you have to release them or you won’t lose any more weight. So if you weighed 150 and something traumatic happened, and you dealt with it by eating your way to 175, when you get back down to 150, you’ll have to actually deal with what happened before you’ll get down to 145. (I know it sounds weird. Chalk it up to my cereal-state, energy-medicine philosophy. LOL)

So. I lost 9.3 pounds a while back. I gained about a pound back almost right away, but then stopped. And I haven’t been eating very well, either. So I’m sitting at this weight, and I know there’s something emotional going on. Not only because my weight has stalled – and I mean really stalled: it doesn’t go up when I eat crap, it doesn’t go down when I eat well – but because my head is just constantly buzzing. I feel anxious, I don’t want to sleep even though I’m exhausted, I want to drink myself stupid, I want to eat chips and red vines until I’m sick to my stomach. And God forbid I do anything productive when I DO have time. :P I feel like I don’t have time to exercise and I’m too tired, but why am I too tired? From staying up late, gorging and drinking and reading trashy suspense novels. I could GO TO BED, for God’s sake. But I don’t. I don’t want to.

So I’m trying to figure out what it is that I’m supposed to be learning here. I’m wondering if I’m just in serious hand-to-hand, take-no-prisoners, fight-dirty, kick-‘em-in-the-balls combat with my inner saboteur. And I know that part of me comes out when I’m making changes that are good for me. It’s afraid of succeeding, you know. It’s the part of me that thinks, “If I don’t try, I’ll never fail” is a BRILLIANT life strategy! :P And then I eat too much and drink too much and stay up too late so that the next day I’m tired and sick and unable to accomplish anything. Even meditating seems too hard, and all that’s required of me for that is to SIT STILL!!! SITTING STILL SHOULD NOT BE TOO HARD!!!! What sense does THAT make? “I’m too tired to sit still.” WTF??? ::::rolls eyes::::

But last night I had the last 2 glasses of an expensive bottle of wine and the last of my baked chips. I’m now officially out of all the substances that I use to medicate myself, and I’m also conveniently broke for the next two weeks. I never thought I’d be glad to be broke, but in this case, I’m thanking God, lemme tell ya! Enforced discipline! LOL

So now I’m getting ready to gut it out for at least the next week or so, because that's about how long it will take to go through the REALLY insane period. The second week should get a little easier. I hope. I know from old experience that I’m about to become a crazy person, though; my mind is trying to run from itself, and I have nothing to medicate with, so I’ll be totally insane for a while here. I’m going to live in the “well.”

I heard someone speak once who was talking about wells in the Bible as metaphors for dark times. She pointed out several different types of wells, but the one that sticks with me right now is the dug well. Meaning a well you dug yourself into. And the thing that’s so complex and really wonderful about a dug well is that the very behaviors you used to dig your well are the things you are going to have to heal in order to get out of the well.

I wish I could say that I’m just sitting here in my well, but frankly at the moment, I’m just trying to stop digging deeper! I don’t think I’ve gotten to the sitting still part yet. LOL

I heard something else from that same speaker. She was talking about something that equated the shedding of a snake’s skin, the transformation of the snake, to our own transformation. And the interesting thing is that when a snake sheds its skin, it goes through a period where it’s not only raw, but it’s blind. It can’t see. And she was saying that we go through a period like that, too. And we get so scared that instead of sitting still and being willing to go through the blindness, we run around trying to “look cute. Instead of sitting in our well, getting our nourishment from the water, we’re out there selling lemonade! Giving away the very thing we need to heal!” Because we’re afraid to be blind. We don’t want to be alone in the dark of the well. But that’s the very thing we need to be doing in order to heal.

::::sigh::::

Well . . . this post was longer than I intended originally, and it probably meanders like nobody’s business. But it helped me clarify some of my own thoughts and that was kind of what I needed. So be advised that the next few posts may be the rantings of a crazy person, sitting in a well. Blind.

(I HATE this part. Can’t I just have my lesson NOW? Isn’t there an online course for this? LOL)

Always meet them for coffee first

2006-06-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Busy and stressed and tired. Story of my life lately. Even when I’m excited about stuff I’m busy and stressed and tired! What is THAT about?? LOL

I didn’t go in to work on Saturday morning like I was supposed to; I had a date the night before that ran late, and between that and the all-nighter I pulled last Wednesday, I was beat. I didn’t even wake up till 11, and usually I’m awake by 7:30, even on the weekends, and even without an alarm. :P So I went in to work for a few hours on Sunday and made it up that way. ::::sigh::::

In other news, I met a really cool guy off one of those dating sites. Hard to believe I know, but true! Ha! He lives about 40 minutes away from me, which I didn’t realize at the time we started talking though, and I do wish we lived closer. Once a week is about all we’re ever going to see each other unless he’s willing to drive to me during the week. Weekends we can switch off, but during the week I just don’t have time to make the drive. :P So we’ll see how it goes. He’s a good guy, and I like talking with him and spending time with him, but a lot of people want to see the person they’re dating more than once a week! LOL

So he and I got together on Friday night, and then I had another date on Saturday night, which didn’t go nearly as well. I actually thought about cancelling the Saturday night date, just because things had gotten a little intense with the Friday night guy, and I’m not someone who enjoys dating multiple guys at once. But I’d made the commitment, and figured I’d go and see how it went.

So this is the story of Saturday Night Guy, and why you should always meet blind dates for coffee first.

Ahem. First off, let me say that now I remember why I don’t date other actors. We are too high-maintenance. I include myself in that; I know I’m a high-maintenance person to date. And I know that 2 high-maintenance people (which means almost all actors) should NOT date each other. But . . . we had talked on the phone a few times, and although he seemed a little intense and hyper, our conversations were good. And I didn’t get any weird, “I’m-a-violent-psycho” vibe, and my “crazy radar” is better than most people’s. He was a little intense and hyper, like I said, but he didn’t seem dangerous.

So I left on Saturday about 6, and as I got on the freeway at 6:15 (I was supposed to meet him at his place between 6:30 and 7), I remembered that I was supposed to call him when I left. Oops. So I called and said I was getting on the freeway and should be there in about 15 minutes. No problem, he says. Sure enough, I call in to his apartment at 6:30 or so, and he’s all flustered. “I didn’t think you’d get here so fast. [I said 15 minutes, right? Right.] I haven’t even showered or anything . . . um, I’ll buzz you in, and if you don’t mind waiting downstairs, I’ll hurry up and get ready.” So he buzzes me in, meets me outside his apartment, and I size him up and figure if he tries anything, I can take him.

I wait downstairs while it takes him 40 minutes to get ready. FORTY minutes. No joke. Now, I’m a girl, and even I can shower, fix my hair and put my makeup on in less than 40 if I have to. And he’s got a shaved head and NO makeup!! WTF takes 40 minutes?? Especially since he was the one that had said, “between 6:30 and 7:00.” By the time he was ready to go, it was almost 7:30! But I wasn’t that worried about it at the time; lord knows I’ve been a pain in the ass like that on occasion, so I shrugged it off. Except that he kept saying, “Don’t be mad. I know you’re mad. Don’t be mad.” I finally told him I wasn’t mad, but that if he kept harping on it I was going to GET mad! LOL

When he finally gets downstairs, he hands me a CD that he just burned for me. Now. First of all, we had already had a conversation on the phone about how I’m just not comfortable accepting things from people I don’t know well. And by “people I don’t know well” I mean “people who are not my family or VERY close friends.” So I’m a little taken aback. Plus, he just burned it. Which means that while I’m waiting downstairs for him to get ready for dinner (and I’m starved, because I haven’t eaten yet), he’s burning a CD!!!! Seriously, if you’re that late, forget the CD. Just get dressed and let’s go! Geez, again. PLUS, burning a CD has always struck me as one of those things that you do for people whose music tastes you know pretty well, when you want to show them that you’ve spent some time thinking about them. It just seemed a little weird for a first meeting. I dunno. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who’s that neurotic about it, but since we’d TALKED about it already, I was kind of weirded out.

So we go to dinner. And the intense hyper-ness that I’d noticed on the phone and thought was just due to nerves or wanting to make a good first impression? SO much worse in person. Plus he kept touching me. Nothing sexual, but much friendlier than a first date. Really, when was the last time you walked to a date’s car on a first date, and he reaches out, puts his arm around you and then hugs you in really close? Not some flirty little hug that says, “Hey, you’re really cute, and I’m glad to meet you,” either. I’m talking a close, tight hug that says, “Hey, I just switched deodorants, bury your face in my armpit and tell me what you think!”

Anyway, the rest of the date pretty much continued along those lines. He said as we went into dinner, “I don’t think you like me,” and I answered, “No, it’s not that; you’re just a little overwhelming in person, and we’re both trying to find our balance.” Maybe that wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, but since what I really wanted to say was, “Get OFF me, for God’s sake!” I thought I showed remarkable restraint! LOL Over dinner he told me (rather dramatically) that I had hurt his feelings when I said he was overwhelming: “I’ve heard that before, but I thought I could be MYSELF with you!” ::::sigh:::: He also interrupted me every few minutes (on the rare occasions that I got a word in edgewise), psychoanalyzed me to death (incorrectly most of the time), and asked me the same questions more than once because he hadn’t listened when I answered them the first 3 times. Grrr.

He finally stopped grabbing me at dinner (after I told him flat out to lay off), although as we left, he made it a point to tell me every 2 minutes, “I’d put my arm around you now, but you said not to.” “I really want to kiss you, but I know you want your space.” “I’d hold your hand, but you said no, so I won’t.” EVERY. TWO. MINUTES. I think he said something along those lines at least 3 times before we even got back to the car.

(He even said, “I know women sometimes think I seem desperate, but I’m not.” LOL Actually though, I don’t think he was desperate; I think he was NEEDY. Desperate will date anyone because they’re afraid to be alone; needy won’t date just anyone, but when they do date someone, they’ll suck the life right out of you because they feel like life has “done them wrong” and they need someone to lean on. That’s been my experience, anyway: desperate = lonely. Needy = victim.)

After dinner we went to his local hang-out and had a drink. I only finished about half my drink, and I didn’t leave it sitting around. Too many alarm bells going off at that point. None that screamed, “Danger! Run!” but a few that quietly chimed, “Be careful . . . something’s not right.” You know that feeling? When something’s just a little . . . off, and you can’t quite put your finger on it, and you can totally rationalize how it’s all in your head?

We got back to his parking complex and got out of the car. I said I had to work the next day (which I did), and said I should probably get going. He was all set to have me up to the apartment, even telling me, “You’re just afraid to make out with me!” WTF? How OLD is this guy? (Mid-forties, just fyi.) Um, no, but it’s late, and I have to get up in 6 hours. (And hey, way to assume, buddy! It’s a first date! How do you know I even KISS on the first date, let alone “make oout???”) Gotta go.

So he swoops in to kiss me goodnight – I don’t move my head away in time, and so WHAM! I get kissed. Now, we’ve all been kissed. There’s a whole rhythm to it. And I think it’s fairly common sense that you don’t go in for that first kiss and immediately shove your tongue into someone’s TONSILS, for God’s sake!! Ew, ew, ew, ew!! Well, I backed off like I’d been hit with a baseball (which was kind of how it felt), and hustled back to my car. As I’m going, he’s calling, “See, you’re just afraid of our chemistry! I know you felt it, too!”

Holy fuck. “I know you felt it, too.” When he said that, it was the first time I actually got a little scared (as opposed to worried or concerned). I think we’ve all met those guys. The guys who you know on some level would wind up raping you and thinking it was consensual. That was TOTALLY the vibe I got off that. And even though I knew I could take him, it’s still not a situation you want to be in to begin with. So I got the hell out of there and thanked God I’d dodged that bullet.

I have to admit that I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on the “crazy” factor faster, though. I’m usually pretty on top of that. That’s what I get for not insisting on meeting for coffee before having a “real date.” If I had met him in person (for coffee), I wouldn’t have gone out with him again (for dinner). ::::sigh::::

So back to my tried-and-true coffee dates (aka “crazy” screenings,) and the guys who don’t like it can bite me. But not literally. LOL

On the other hand, I’ll be seeing FRIDAY night guy again later this week! Woo-hoo!

AMENDMENT:
This whole thing just made me think of that scene in the movie "Tootsie" where Dustin Hoffman is live on air playing the head nurse at a hospital. S/he's talking to Geena Davis about the lecherous doctor on staff who just grabbed Davis, and Hoffman (in a genteel Southern accent) is saying something like, "You know, I'm just going to get every nurse on this floor a cattle prod so they can carry it around and when he tries anything they can just zap him in his you-know-what! [Picks up phone] Hello, operator? Can you get me the listings for farm equipment?"

LOL

Busier and busier - with an almost-agent!

2006-06-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

Geez, things have been busy!

Over the weekend my mom came to visit, so that was cool – we got to spend some time together, hanging out.

Sunday was mostly spent doing laundry and that kind of stuff.

Monday I was at work at 6am, because I had a production job on a film shoot out of town the next two days and had to leave by 3 Monday afternoon. So I worked 6-3 and then drove down to Temecula to have a belated Father’s Day with the family.

Tuesday and Wednesday I worked on an industrial shoot, which was so easy and low-key. God, that was nice. I really like the people who work these shoots. It’s a husband and wife who run their own production company: she directs, and he shoots. They’re such cool people – no one screams or yells, they always feed us well and they always pay us well. This time they rented a motor home so that we had someplace to go during lunch (often, the corporation being filmed lends us a conference room, but it’s not the same).

Anyway, I got back late last night, and as I was getting ready for bed, there was another one of those GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDERS on the ceiling above my bed! Took me half an hour to chase it down to a reachable spot and catch it. I took it outside, went back upstairs, brushed my teeth and was getting ready to turn out the light when I saw ANOTHER ONE in almost EXACTLY the same spot! And this one was bigger. So after another half hour, I got that one out, but when I went back upstairs, I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the bed! So I ended up staying up all night on the computer. :P

I was a little tired today, needless to say. ::::sigh::::

I’ve been taking this commercial acting class, and I really like it. I had planned on taking the advanced classes too, and I was asking the teacher if he’d take a look at my agency mailing list and let me know what he thought. I also wanted to know if I could submit with HIS agency, which is relatively new, but is starting to book some good jobs. Well, come to find out if I take the advanced class (which I was already planning on doing, anyway), I automatically am offered a contract with his agency!

At first I thought it sounded a little sketchy, so I Googled him and his agency, but everything’s legit. He did make the comment that the reason he took all his advanced students in was because A) since his agency is small, he doesn’t have too many of any one “look” yet, and B) he figures that if he’s trained you, he knows you have the skill to book the jobs. You don’t HAVE to take the class to be represented, though; he represents people who have just come in and auditioned, too (which made me feel better).

Sooooooo . . . . one way or another, I have a commercial agent at the end of July! Which was on my list of goals!!! Wheeeeeeee! ::::happy dance, happy dance::::

I lost 9.3 POUNDS!!!!!

2006-06-16T09:37:00.000-07:00

::::happy dance, happy dance:::: Woo-hoo! I’m losing weight! Even a little bit! Yay! (If I had that cool dancing smiley icon, I’d put it here! So just imagine it, rocking out!)

Of course, what’s a little success without a little sabotage, right? So I came home from my meeting the other night and pretty much ate ALL my extra (flex) points for the week. And what I didn’t eat that night, I finished off last night. Plus two. Meh.

BUT . . . I keep reminding myself that one or even two nights of OOPS! isn’t going to put all that weight back on me. At least not right away. So now I’m trying to stay within my daily points the rest of the week. That part kind of sucks, because Friday and Saturday nights are the nights when I hang out with my friends (unless I just decide to go to bed. I’m exciting like that.). It’s harder to stay within your points when you’re all sitting around drinking and eating. :P On the plus side, though, my friends are actors, too, so we’re all weight-conscious. So I can say, “Nah, I’m trying to drop some weight,” and rather than give me a hard time about it, they say, “Oh, yeah, I totally understand. I should watch mine, too. Why don’t we all eat veggies and hummus instead of chips?” And then I feel all happy, because I still feel like part of the gang!

That’s a little weird, isn’t it? That I feel like if I just abstain from the chips, I’m somehow on the outside? ::::sigh:::: I’m working on that . . . .

(Hey, you know what? I lost 9.3 POUNDS!!!!!! ::::happy dance, happy dance:::)

I think that I feel weird about not eating because we’re a bunch of girls, and consciously or unconsciously, in this culture we equate food with love. If someone feeds you, they love you. And when you turn down food, people feel personally slighted, as though you’ve declined not just their food, but their love too. Especially stuff that comes from family: just TRY turning down Great Aunt Mabel and see what happens! LOL

(Hey, you know what? I lost 9.3 POUNDS!!!!!! ::::happy dance, happy dance::::)

And I have this compulsive need to be liked and approved of, at least by people that *I* like and approve of. I read somewhere that everyone has an inner child, but that there are different types of inner children. There are abandoned children, nature children, magical children, eternal children, and on and on. I’m an abandoned one, at least internally. I never experienced familial abandonment, but I was HATED in school, and it really affected me. So now I’m always looking for familial relationships with my friends, my co-workers, etc. When I lived in San Diego, I TURNED DOWN auditions because my workplace “needed me.” It didn’t; I just didn’t want to be disapproved of.

So I think that’s where the insecurity around not eating with my friends comes from. In fact, I usually eat MORE than other people, because hey, food is love, right? And I love you guys! Let me prove it by eating WAY more than I should!

God, I’m a dork sometimes! LOL

(But, you know what? I lost 9.3 POUNDS!!!!! ::::happy dance, happy dance::::)

Chaos reigns

2006-06-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

I haven’t felt like writing the last few days. Things have been not just busy, but totally chaotic. Last night I think 90% of the chaos finally resolved, but I’ve been so stressed out and anxious that when I realized it’s mostly (almost) over, I just felt sick. Does that make sense? When you’re busy as hell, and you know you’re tired and stressed and overworked, but the busy-ness just keeps coming and you HAVE to deal with it. So you push yourself and push yourself and push yourself, and finally, when it’s all over you go to bed thinking, “Thank God, I made it.” But sometime in the night your body says, “You need REST, bitch!” and the next morning you’re sick as a dog.

Today I feel sick as a dog. I don’t actually have a virus or anything as far as I can tell, but my stomach is upset, my head aches and I’m just generally exhausted. :P FOOD even sounds gross, and lemme tell ya, if I don’t want to eat, I’m in a bad way! LOL

See, I’ve been staying with my grandma for the last year. They have a huge house, but they also have 10 kids, so it’s usually a full house. It’s a rare weekend when someone isn’t visiting. I had actually found someplace new to live (in Brentwood, which is a nice area), so when termites invaded the room I’d been staying in, I just moved my stuff up to my grandma’s room (temporarily, I thought). (Grandma’s sick and can’t climb stairs, so the kids converted the living room into a bedroom for her – she hates it, as you can imagine, and I think they’re going to move her upstairs again at the urging of hospice. Thank God.) Three months later, I’m still in Grandma’s room, and the room I was supposed to rent is still not ready. The guy wanted to fix it up: new paint, new carpet, add some shelves, etc. That was cool with me, but I didn’t figure it would take longer than 6 weeks at the outside, since he had a couple of guys working for him. Well, as of last Saturday, the room has been painted. Period. The rest of the house looks great: repainted, cleaned out, new curtains, etc. But the room I’m supposed to rent? Not ready.

So over the weekend I started looking again. I didn’t really want to pay more than $350, simply because I’m trying to pay off some credit cards and on top of that, the business end of acting is expensive (pictures, envelopes, postage to mail them out, etc.). I’d also like to be able to take an acting class or two, and the cheap ones run about $200 a month. So I figured if I kept my rent low, I could get the other stuff done without freaking out about how I was going to make rent. In the last week I’ve seen several places, ranging from a really nice house in a crack-den part of town to a relatively safe neighborhood with a creepy homeowner (with whom I’d be sharing a bathroom). It’s been crazy; some days I’ve gotten off work and seen 2 or 3 places afterward.

On top of that, I’m trying like hell to get my headshots mailed out to agencies, so I can get an agent. It’s been completely chaotic.

The other night I was talking to my dad though, and we started talking about the possibility of staying in Grandma’s house and paying rent for one of the nicer rooms upstairs. I’d have a nice room, a private bath, space in the kitchen, washer / dryer in the house, all that jazz. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, with shopping and restaurants nearby. So I think I’m going to do that. I’ll pay them $300 a month, and although the downside is that I’m still in Grandma’s house, the upside is all of the above. I don’t think I’m going to find anything this nice for $300, and the family needs the money (medical bills), so it’ll work out well for everyone.

And once I get my agent, I’m working to get a national commercial before Christmas. At that point, I’ll move out but I’ll be able to afford my own apartment. It might just be a studio, but it’ll be my own space! I can’t wait for that. ::::wistful sigh:::: (I used to have a townhouse in San Diego, and although the rent was high enough that I was always stressed about how I was going to afford groceries, it was SO nice to have my own space; I miss it a LOT. I even liked living by myself.)

So it has been really chaotic, but it looks like it’s finally going to start calming down. Whew. Now I just have to not get sick from the emotional letdown.

How to look thinner in pictures!

2006-06-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

I think Blogger must have a limit on the number of pictures you can post per, um, post. I keep getting this far and then it won't let me upload any more. So to see the non-round-face pictures, scroll back down to the headshots a few posts below. :)

That said, take a look at those pictures in the "Little Help Here" post. If you have anything resembling a double chin, or even just a wimpy jaw line (I've got a little bit of a double chin, myself), the first thing you want to do is think about stretching the back of your neck really long, and dropping your shoulder blades down into your back. As you do that, your chin will automatically drop down just a little bit. At that angle, your neck looks longer, but you still look like you have a little bit of a double chin, so move your whole head forward - NOT down, but FORWARD, toward the camera. Imagine your chin sitting on a table, and slide it along that table. It also helps if you turn your head slightly to the side: it creates a stronger jawline, visually speaking. If you look at the blue "Little Help Here" picture, you can see how tight the muscles in my neck are, from doing exactly that: This definitely takes some practice before you stop looking like a reject from the psycho ward, but it's TOTALLY worth it

As a contrast, here are a couple of pictures where I forgot to hold my head properly - see the round face?

A pink one:

And a (VERY round) blue one (note the NOT tight neck muscles - I turned my head, but didn't elongate my neck or drop my shoulders):

So hold your head at an angle, drop your chin, stretch the BACK of your neck, drop your shoulder blades and slide your head forward a little. When you feel totally uncomfortable and unnatural, congratulations! That's it! LOL

Now on to full-body shots. The same head rules apply, but now you also have to deal with the rest of your body. :P When someone is taking your picture, stand with your torso directly to the camera, but angle your lower half about 45 degrees and put one foot in front of the other. The angle does two things: one, it visually gives you more of a waist, since you're turning at the waist, and two, the foot-in-front-of-the-other technique (a time-honored Hollywood pose; Renee Zellweger can't NOT do it!) creates a visually slimming line through your hips and thighs. See?

In this first picture, it doesn't totally look like my hips are angled, even though they are. You can kind of tell though, because my shirt is pulling across my chest at an odd angle.

In this (lower) one, I was leaning against a fence, making the pose a little harder to pull off, but it didn't wind up looking COMPLETELY stupid. Although it does look a little uncomfortable. Oops:

Oh, well. What are you gonna do? LOL

So there it is, in a nutshell. Definitely practice before you attend the next big family gathering, though. Otherwise instead of everyone telling you how photogenic you are, they'll all be asking what the hell you were DOING in that picture! LOL

Posing skinny

2006-06-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

Still can't post pictures. I got halfway through and blogger crashed on me. :P I'll try again later. ::::sigh::::

"Deep Thoughts" (No, really.)

2006-06-07T09:59:00.001-07:00

Anyone remember those? "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handy? I think it was an old SNL joke . . .

Triple-posting today. I have a lot on my mind, and it’s not all connected. So 2 posts, plus pictures later.

Just FYI: if you are a member of a 12-step group, you might want to skip this post. I have some things I need to vent about, and you won’t like them one bit. (And yes, I have extensive experience with these groups, so I know whereof I speak.) There is also some God stuff in here, although I’m not necessarily Christian, and I don’t care if you are or not. Everybody’s got their own path, so if you’re an atheist or a pagan or an evangelical and it’s working for you, good for you! Really. I’m not being sarcastic, although I know that’s hard to believe. ;) What is that disclaimer they put on DVD interviews? “The opinions expressed herein are solely the opinions of the people interviewed and do not represent the opinions of Big Movie Company in any way.” Or something like that. Same principle.

Anyway . . .

I’m pretty sure I’m an alcoholic. If I’m not, I’m well on my way. And I know why: as hard as I’ve been trying to deal with the emotions behind the food issues, I’m not really trying as hard as I should be. So I’ve been in the process of swapping one addiction (food or the lack thereof) for another (drinking). I guess I could be a skinny lush, but since more than one or two drinks generally trigger a binge, I won’t be skinny; I’ll be a fat lush, and in that case I might as well just stick to the bingeing! LOL

I’ve already been through therapy. I’ve already been to the OA (Overeaters Anonymous) meetings, and there are a LOT of people in my family who are part of AA. I know what my problems are intellectually and intellectually I know how to fix them. I wish it were that easy. :P

Here’s my thing with 12-step groups: I think they’re a great tool, but not the whole answer. It’s like needing to cross a river: the 12-step group is the boat that helps you across, but at some point, in order to move on with your life, you have to GET OUT OF THE BOAT. If you want to cross the river, you can’t just stay in the boat, bobbing around forever. In a way, a 12-step group can become an addiction in itself (in my experience).

I really started feeling this way when I went to OA. The whole idea that I was sick and could never get well just didn’t sit right with me. I could see the sickness, but not the “no cure.” And those people were nuts (so much for my “no judgment” resolution! LOL). They’d plan out what they were going to eat the next day, and if for their 3PM snack they had an apple instead of the pickle they had planned, that was BAD and OUT OF CONTROL. Frankly, that didn’t seem all that different from my anorexic attitudes in college. I went to a few meetings in a few different places, but just didn’t see how continuing to beat myself up, telling myself I was a sick victim and exercising freakish control attitudes were going to help me.

I think trying to apply the principle of a 12-step group to eating is tough though, because in AA or NA you “just” cut the substance out of your life. I guess you can do that with food too, but anorexia isn’t really something to aspire to. :P So you can’t just hide from the addiction to food. You have to face it head on, stare it down, dig deep into the dark well of your unconscious and clean it out, dragging all the detritus into the light of day to be examined and discarded. That’s how you heal. Not by hiding. Not by swapping one addiction for another.

Did you know that 90% of “recovering” alcoholics have what is clinically considered an addiction to sugar? And that in many ways, sugar does the same thing to your brain chemicals that alcohol does? That’s not the kind of recovery I want: swapping sugar for alcohol or alcohol for food or whatever for whatever-else. YOU’RE STILL HIDING FROM YOUR PROBLEMS. I’m tired of hiding.

So I’m not going to AA. I DON’T believe that I can never regain control of my behavior. I DON’T believe that treating the symptom of drinking will make the problem of hiding go away. I DON’T believe that I am sick, a victim of circumstance, a “poor baby” who is misunderstood by the world. I DON’T BELIEVE IT. I CHOSE THIS. I CAN CHOOSE SOMETHING ELSE.

Now. I know that not all AA people feel this way. I don’t believe that when Bill W and Dr. Bob started the program that they meant it to become a banner for victimhood. I think that used sensibly and responsibly and with a willingness to examine your inner life it can be a great thing. But 99% of the AA and OA people I know (I don’t know any NAs, so I can’t speak of them) have embraced their victimhood with a passion. I DON’T WANT TO BE A VICTIM.

So with that in mind . . .

I’ve been going to this church. (I swear this is not a tangent, although it may take me a while to tie it back into alcoholism and food. Bear with me.) It’s a Religious Science church, which is NOT Christian Science or Scientology. RS actually came out of the teachings of Thoreau and Emerson, as distilled by Ernest Holmes. (This is where I TOTALLY fit in with the Cereal State! LOL) The basic tenets are:

We are not “children” of God. We are MANIFESTATIONS of God.
As manifestations of God, we all have the potential to become Buddhas and Christs – it just depends on how much work you’re willing to do.
Since God is everywhere, omnipresent and omni-active, God is WITHIN us as well as outside us. We are part of God and God is part of us.
Our purpose in life is to overcome our egos and allow God to live as us, through us, which means that we are to become windows of peace, love, gratitude and forgiveness. (Think Dalai Lama, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Abraham, Krishna, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, etc)
Heaven and Hell are states of mind: Heaven is when you live in the peace and awareness of God, and Hell is when you allow your ego, your judgment, your fears to block the flow of God and create stagnation in your life.
ALL the religions have the same basic ideas and as such are equally valid: Love everyone. Practice radical forgiveness. Be grateful. Don’t judge anyone.

There’s plenty more (as in any religion), but you get the general idea.

So I’ve been listening to a lot of these sermons on CD. And I know that all my bingeing and hiding and drinking and running away is due to the fact that I am TERRIFIED. Of what, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s everything. I’m afraid of failing, because what will I do then? I’m afraid of succeeding, because everyone will expect so much more from me and what if I can’t do it and I fail? I’m afraid of losing my excuses: “I don’t have an agent because I don’t weigh 12 pounds.” I’m simultaneously terrified of losing my victimhood and sick of living with it. I’m afraid of the voices in my head telling me I’m not good enough, smart enough, thin enough, blond enough, tall enough, young enough, self-disciplined enough, strong enough, tan enough. Sometimes I just want to mainline a bottle of wine and 2 pints of ice cream just to make them SHUT UP. Sometimes I do mainline a bottle of wine and 2 pints of ice cream for just that reason. But the next morning they’re always back, and with new ammo, because NOW I’ve had a bottle of wine and 2 pints of ice cream! Now I’m REALLY not thin enough, self-disciplined enough or strong enough.

I had been meditating and doing yoga regularly, and I was doing better. I was listening to a sermon every day and it was getting easier to remember that all those fears and voices are just the panicked, dying cries of an ego. The ego, you know, doesn’t understand the difference between transformation and annihilation. So when you try to transform, it gets scared. I was doing well, though, because I would hear those voices and I was getting to a point where I could deal with them calmly, knowing what they were and that it was ok to be panicked and scared. Knowing that I didn’t have to hide from them.

Then I started “losing weight.” For me, that is my ego’s foot in the door. The drive to be something different than myself, to be something better, something ELSE just activates all those panicked voices, and I forget that those voices are transitory. I lost sight of having more energy and being ok with my body the way it was, NO MATTER WHAT. As soon as I lost sight of that, ironically, I stopped losing weight. Funny how that works. Real funny. Ha . . . Ha. :P

So it’s time to take a deep breath and remember that drinking and plowing through ice cream are simply responses to fear. Various fears that basically boil down to one: what if I’m not good enough the way I am? And then I have to remember that if I am a manifestation of God, a unique and divine way that God is expressing itself on the planet, then I AM ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH. I just have to be willing to sit in stillness and listen and remember. (The Reverend at my church likes to say, “Remember to remember!” LOL)

So I have a list of circumstantial goals at home on my bathroom mirror: when I want an agent by, when I want my union card by, that kind of stuff. But I have to remember to include goals like meditating every day and reading something that’s good for my soul every day. I’m learning to juggle my internal development with my external development; I can do one or the other, but both is tough. Obviously it has to be done though, because doing one at a time hasn’t worked very well so far; they’re too interconnected.

And I know from experience that if I do that inner work, the addictions fall away. It’s weird. And when I stop doing the inner work, about 2 weeks later I’m back to the addictions. Not just addictions to substances, either - addictions to attitudes, too. I get caught up in judgment and victimization really fast.

So . . . inner work. Meditate every day and read or listen to something good for my soul every day. I can do this. I have to do this. The alternatives aren’t pretty.

I need some sleep

2006-06-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

Triple-posting today. I have a lot on my mind, and it’s not all connected. So 2 posts, plus pictures later.

I am so tired. My uncle and his wife were in CA (actually ARE in CA until noon today), and I really wanted a chance to see them. They live in Georgia, but both their families are out here. When Aunt K married Uncle M, she told him that the only way she was moving to GA was if they flew out here every year for her birthday because there are multiple late May/early June birthdays in her family, and every year they have a HUGE bash. So that’s what they do. :)

So they flew out for her party on Sunday and then went to my parents’ house Monday. They fly out of LAX today. Originally I wasn’t going to get a chance to see them, but my uncle has cancer and although he still looks good and is functioning, none of the treatments are working. He has a rare type of thyroid cancer for which the prognosis is 5 years at the outside (he’s at 4 ½ now), and the survival rate is zero. Yup, you read it right: zero. No one in the medical literature who has ever had this cancer has beaten it. No one. Ever. Soooooo . . . he’s been doing a lot of alternative stuff (which is a whole ‘nother story), but the bottom line is that he probably won’t make it. (Unless he makes some radical changes that he doesn’t want to make, which is part of the “whole ‘nother” story. I’m a little bitter about that, and trying really hard to remember that it’s his life, and they are his choices. Some days I do better than other days.)

So he and his wife were visiting my parents and I decided yesterday to leave work a little early, drive down for dinner and drive back. (My parents are about an hour and half from where I live.) So I left around 3, got into the area by 4:30 (missed traffic! Woo-hoo!), picked up birthday cards for my aunt & uncle and went home for dinner. I had planned on leaving around 8:00, figuring that would put me home by half-past nine, and I could still get a good night’s sleep. I was finally getting ready to leave at 8:30 when my mom (bless her heart) chirped, “Tell M & K about your commercial class and working!” Honestly, I LOVE my mom and we usually get along really well, but at that moment I could have shot her. I did not want to be driving home at 10:00 and then try and get to work this morning by 7:00. Not. Enough. Sleep. :P But what was I going to do? It seemed rude to say, “Nope! Gotta run!” since M & K are here from GA and oh, I don’t know, HE’S DYING (probably). So I stayed for a while and we all talked, and I left about 9:30. Got home by 11, asleep by 12, up again at 5:30. I’ll be napping today. (I better never have kids; I’d have to kill them just to get some sleep! LOL)

Blogspot hates me

2006-06-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I was going to post about how to look thinner in pictures, but for some reason my example pictures (the good and the bad! LOL) aren't uploading tonight. :P I'll try again tomorrow.

In the meantime, I went to Disneyland on Friday for my birthday, and I got the most wicked case of heat exhaustion I've had in a long time. I'm prone to overheating, so I'm usually pretty careful, but my body has definitely NOT adapted yet to the summer weather we're suddenly getting. So by 4:00 I was dragging. I left early, around 8, and STILL had trouble making it home. The headache finally went away last night, but I'm still tired. I keep drinking juice and Gatorade, but it's definitely slower going than usual. On the other hand, I'm not at all hungry, so this ought to be a great weigh-in week! (I'm kidding, I'm kidding.)

Anyway, I'm going to bed. I'll try again with those pictures tomorrow. :)

Little help here

2006-06-01T23:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my birthday was yesterday (woo-hoo!) and although I could give two shits about my age, Hollywood feels differently. So I have (almost) decided to start lying about it. With that in mind, I have my headshots above (and by "headshots" I mean pictures. Get your mind out of the gutter! ;D). The one in pink is my main shot that I am sending out to agencies; the one in blue is the backup shot, so when they ask me, "Do you have a different look?" I can say, "Why, yes. Yes, I do. " Please take a look at them and WITHOUT CHECKING MY REAL AGE tell me how old you think I might be. Please don't worry about offending me; you won't, even if you guess older. I just want to know how much younger (if at all) I can claim to be. :)

Thanks in advance!

And please excuse any spelling or grammar errors; it's late and I've had a couple of drinks with my sister. (Hey lay off, it's my damn birthday! ;D)

Online dating in the cereal state

2006-06-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

I once heard someone refer to CA as the cereal state. Why? Because it’s full of fruits, nuts and flakes. Unfortunately, as much as I love my home state, I think the joke is true.

A while back I decided to try online dating. Now THERE’S an experience, kids. One that will make your standards so low so fast that someone who can use proper punctuation and has all his limbs attached to the right body parts suddenly looks like Brad Pitt with Einstein’s brain!! ::::sigh::::

I signed up for a couple of free online dating sites, but a while back I went on hiatus. My schedule had gotten to the point that I just didn’t have more than one or two free evenings in a month, and most people would like to date someone at least a LITTLE more often than that. But I left my profiles up because on one site I had some friends in the forums and on another site there were all these entertaining tests you could take to kill time. However, as soon as I posted that I was no longer dating, men started coming out of the woodwork! Seriously, my inbox messages tripled. It was ridiculous.

Most of them I politely decline with a rote message along the lines of, "Thanks for the message, but as you can see in my profile, my schedule is really busy and I just don't have time to date anyone at the moment." The really vulgar ones I just delete, but the rest I answer. I figure it's just good manners. About half of them just boggle my mind, though. I usually answer politely, all the while wondering, "What the HELL were you thinking when you wrote that??"

So for the sake of my own frustration, here are six of the most entertaining messages I've gotten so far:

Number six:

"do you have webcam?"

Ummmm, I’m gonna go with NO on that one. Definitely. Definitely NO.

Number five:

"my email is xxxxxxxxx@somespamsite.com send me an email and i’ll send u sum pix"

Another one for the “Oh, HELL, no!” pile. Cock pictures, anyone?

Number four:

"Hi."

That’s it. No other info. No questions that I could answer to start a conversation, even if I were so inclined. Geez.

Number three (after I politely turned him down):

"Believe it or not I actually designed my profile here mainly to draw attention to my main profile on MySpace.com, where some of my writing is hosted. Not my screenplays, mainly musings about Life & LOVE and Wisdom of The Ancient Ones. And perhaps, not looking a little deeper at my profile may not have been such a smart move."

Wow, I really let a catch slip through my fingers! Um, the "Wisdom of The Ancient Ones?" Is he a Scientologist? And here's what you really want to do to someone who has just politely declined your advances: tell them they're dumb. And that you didn't even INTEND to get a date when you signed up on a dating site and SENT ME AN E-MAIL!! Yeah, that'll show me. Lordy.

Number two:

"Hi, I see from your profile that you are intellegent. I too, am very smart. I enjoy quoting Shakesphere and reading poetry. You definitely don’t want to get into a debate with me, though! No offense, kiddo, but you’d be in way over your head! "

Where do I begin? In 5 sentences he manages to misspell Shakespeare and intelligent (that one always slays me), and insult me! What is it with the patronization (is that even a word)? The mind reels.

And my all-time favorite:

"WoW! U R SEXXXXXXXY!!!!!! aM I UR tYpE?? WoULd LoVe It If I wErE!!! WhAt Do YoU tHiNk? Am I HOT???? oR NOT????"

After I politely said thanks, but I’m not dating at all, he replied:

"Hm. busy schedule, I understand. But we r both adults with certain NEEDS, and I was wondering if u might want to meet and get to know 1 another on ANOTHER LEVEL, if you know what I mean?"

Subtle, don’t you think? Me, too. At least he StOpPeD wRiTiNg LiKe ThiS!!!!!

Kill me now.

Changing my perceptions

2006-05-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it funny how sometimes one person’s opinion can make you take a second look at your own perceptions? And sometimes after reevaluating those perceptions you start to think that maybe you were mistaken, or at least that your perceptions have become outdated?

I have this crazy aunt. She hasn’t had an easy life, and she carries a lot of bitterness. A LOT. Lots of anger and rage. And sometimes, as you can imagine, she’s hard to be around. She is a master at saying things that make you go, “Wha . . . ??” As an example, she was mad when her sister came to stay with my grandparents and brought her dog (please bear in mind that Crazy Aunt doesn’t live with my grandparents). Not because the dog was a nuisance, or in the house, or any of those things (he’s old, doesn’t bark, doesn’t jump, and is an outside dog). No, she was mad because we had to close the driveway gate so the dog wouldn’t get out. Which meant we had to get out of the car to open and close the gate when we drove in and out. It was INCONVENIENT, she snarked. Didn’t I agree? I finally said that I figured that the dog wasn’t smart enough not to wander off, so I (as the smarter of the two) had the responsibility to watch out for it. I further observed that if I was running so late that I couldn’t spare 2 minutes, well, I was already too late and should have left 15 minutes earlier. That wasn’t the dog’s problem. But my aunt was still annoyed. She’s like that, bless her heart.

(Tangent: I LOVE the saying, “Bless her/his heart.” My Southern grandma used to say it, and it basically means you can call someone every horrible name you can think of, but if you bless their hearts at the end, you’re golden. No hard feelings and all that. LOL)

Anyway, this aunt had a big blowup with one of my grandparents’ in-home nurses, and a couple of other sisters came up to referee, hollered at Crazy Aunt and generally tried to smooth things over with the nurse.

Subsequently, my aunt was at some family gathering, talking to my mom, and the subject came up. Crazy Aunt said to my mom, “You know, I know I have anger issues, and I’m really trying to rein in my temper and learn more constructive ways of dealing with people. I’ve always had trouble communicating with others, and I’m really working on it. And in that situation, I really didn’t feel like I had been unreasonable; I even left the room because I was getting really mad and didn’t want to start yelling. But I was really hurt that my sisters came up and didn’t even ask me what happened; they just talked to the nurse and then yelled at me. I understand why they did it, why they assumed I was automatically at fault, but it still hurt.”

When my mom relayed that story back to me, it sort of took hold in my consciousness. It made me see Crazy Aunt with slightly more objectivity than before. And you know, she isn’t nearly as crazy as she used to be. I was so wrapped up in my old perceptions that I hadn’t seen what was really happening right in front of me. Don’t get me wrong, now: she’s still a nut, she still thinks she shouldn’t have to close the gate when she and her sister happen to be visiting at the same time, she still thinks bartenders are contributing to alcoholism and should all burn in Hell (it went over really well when I worked as a bartender for a while!).

But . . . when my other aunt needs a babysitter for her hellaciously ill-behaved child, Not-So-Crazy Aunt volunteers – and is incredibly patient. She called me today just to wish me Happy Birthday. When she gets frustrated she leaves the room until she can calm down. She knows that her frustration isn’t usually the other person’s fault – that’s a huge thing, right there! She’s calmer, she’s . . . . I don’t want to say “happy,” but certainly less UNhappy.

I wouldn’t have noticed any of this but for the conversation I had with my mom. I feel a little bad, and like I got a good reminder about clinging to old perceptions. I needed to remember that. So thanks to my Not-So-Crazy Aunt.

The Adventures of Spydra

2006-05-26T07:44:00.000-07:00

The All-New, Totally True Adventures of Spydra, the Spider-Catching Queen of the Amazon!!

It’s 4AM. Yes, Virginia, there’s an AM. My alarm goes off, and I hit snooze, wondering what in the hell possessed me to think that getting up at 4 would be a good idea. I hit snooze a few more times, and finally drag my ass out of bed at 4:45. I stagger into the bathroom still bleary-eyed and sit with my head in my hands, wondering AGAIN why I thought this would be a good idea. As I reach for the toilet paper, for some reason I glance over at the roll. I don’t usually look at it – it’s not like it’s going to be in a different place from before, and I use the restroom often enough to know where the paper is without double-checking the location – but this morning I look. And thank God, because my hand freezes about 3 inches away from A GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDER half-hidden under the first sheet of paper on the roll. I half-successfully stifle a scream (I’m staying with my grandparents and I don’t want to wake them at 4:45 in the morning), and immediately lean as far away from the roll as I can without actually getting up from the toilet. I remain in this remarkably uncomfortable position for a minute or two, contemplating my options, none of which are terribly appealing. FINALLY I remember that I had stashed an extra roll behind the toilet the other day for God knows what reason, so I lean around, grab the roll and get the hell away from that spider as fast as I can.

Now I am standing in my bathroom, buck naked, contemplating the GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDER that has taken up residence on my toilet paper roll. Squashing is not an alternative: I hate the sound, I hate the mess and as a general rule I really do try not to kill things. I consider letting it live in the bathroom, but I wouldn’t want to step on it barefoot by accident, and frankly, it looks (in the admittedly poor light) like it might possibly be a black widow, which are relatively abundant in sunny SoCal. And there is NO WAY IN HELL I’m sharing space with a black widow. If push comes to shove I will have to kill it, just in case it IS a black widow, but I’d really rather not. I back slowly out of the bathroom, praying it’s not a jumping spider (which are harmless, except for the heart attack they give you when they JUMP AT YOU), and go looking for a “Spider-Catching Kit.”

(A Spider-Catching Kit is a Tupperware, a piece of paper and a thin hard piece of something else; a clipboard for instance, or the back of a notepad. You put the Tupperware over the spider, slide the paper underneath, then the hard piece of whatever, hold it all together really tightly, carry it outside, set it on the ground and remove the hard piece and the paper. When you can see the spider on the ground, you lift the Tupperware off of it and (this part is very important) RUN LIKE HELL.)

I find a wide-mouthed water bottle, and immediately discard it because I am too damn chicken to give myself that little “mess-up space” in case the damn thing runs. I find a slightly larger container, but I’m not sure it will fit on the roll without leaving a gaping space for the GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDER to run through – probably toward me. I test it out on the other roll of paper, and sure enough, there’s a good 2 inch gap for that thing to laugh at me right before it eats me. I head back into the bathroom to reconnoiter. Spider’s still there. Hasn’t moved. I really don’t want to kill it, but I really can’t tell if it’s harmless or not. ::::sigh:::: I throw on a pair of pants and a shirt and go looking for the Raid. If I can spray NEAR it, it might run, and then I could catch it. This is NOT what I want to be doing at 5AM.

Of course, it takes me ten minutes to find the Raid, and when I get back, guess what? That’s right. No spider. Fuckety-fuck-fuck. I check the floor, the walls and the ceiling (always my personal terror, that last one), but nothing. This is very bad. I can’t afford to let it live in the bathroom, and I’m now getting later and later for work. I consider the possibility that it is BEHIND the roll, but there doesn’t really seem to be that much space. The thing is, my grandparents live in an old house. It was built in ’29, so it has all kinds of features that you don’t see on houses out here anymore. One of these features is that all the toilet paper rolls are built into the wall. There’s a half-circle-shaped depression in the wall, and the paper is set into that, so that only about half the roll sticks out from the wall. It’s very cool. It’s also a great spider-hiding place. Fuck.

There is no way in hell I’m reaching over to spin the roll and risk having that thing launched through the air at me. I don’t think I could stifle that scream. Suddenly, I remember that my Grandma has 3 or 4 canes in the hall closet, because of her bad knee. I could use one of those to spin the roll! So I trot out to the closet and select the longest one I can find. I sneak back into the bathroom, contemplating the fact that my morning has been reduced to sneaking around a spider, stand as far from the roll as I can, reach waaaaaaaaay out with the cane, and spin the roll. It’s a pathetic attempt, but it’s enough to scare the spider, which runs out from the top of the roll, and down underneath it, back into the bottom half of the hole before I can grab the Raid. Dammit.

I look at the clock. An entire half-hour has elapsed since I got up. Jesus.

But now I know it’s in the roll-hole, and at least that’s something. I use the cane to lift the hand towel off the bar, because it’s RIGHT NEXT to the hole, and I don’t want the spider to run out and onto the towel. Then I spin the roll again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. These are much less pathetic attempts, and now I’m worried that it really ran somewhere else, and I missed it. Spin. Nothing. Spin. JACKPOT!!! Thereitgoesacrossthewall,getit,getit,getit!!!!!! FUCK!!!! I lost it!! I check under the sink, and behind the OTHER towel. Nothing! DAMN! As I stand up, THERE IT IS!!! ON THE WALL! IN A PERFECT PLACE TO CATCH WITH MY TUPPERWARE! WHERE DID I PUT THAT FUCKING TUPPERWARE?!?!?!!?! OO, OO! RIGHT THERE!!! ON THE SINK!!! I grab the Tupperware, and slam it down over the spider, which thankfully is neither a jumping spider nor a very fast runner (as spiders go). Under the Tupperware goes the back of the notepad, and I peel the whole shebang away from the wall. I can see the spider better now, and I’m almost disappointed that it is not, in fact, a black widow. It’s some brown and black thingy, although I don’t think it’s a recluse. I’m not in a desert-y enough area for those.

I carry it outside and let it go, all the while sternly admonishing it for scaring me and warning it just how close it came to a Raid-induced death. I'm sure I made quite an impression and it was probably very sorry. :P Then I race back upstairs to get dressed before I’m really late for work, since it's now almost 5:30, which is when I need to leave.

I did wait till I got to work to use the bathroom again, though. Just in case.

This "Ranting Post" is sponsored by PMS

2006-05-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

When I joined WW I told them I didn’t want them to say anything to me about what the number on the scale was, not even if it was up or down. Not because I didn’t know; I have a scale at home, so I pretty much know what my weight is (the scale sits on carpet, so I figure it’s probably one or two pounds off, but it’s in the general vicinity), but because I know how my body works. Here’s the thing: when I start working out, my body puts on muscle really fast. Not bulky muscle or anything like that, but I get really strong. Now as we all learned in science, muscle weighs a LOT more than fat. So usually, in the first couple of weeks on something like WW, I GAIN weight – generally between 3 and 7 pounds, which is a pretty significant amount. During that time, my measurements drop, so I know I’m doing ok, but I go to those meetings and the well-meaning weigh-in people say things like, “Don’t worry, you’ll do better next week.” It makes me NUTS!!! I want to scream, “SHUT UP! YOU’RE NOT HELPING, HERE!!! I’M LOSING FAT, DAMMIT – STOP PATRONIZING ME!!!!” Ahem. So if they can’t say anything to me about it, they don’t patronize me. I know they know. And I know that I know (although they don’t know I know – still with me?). But this way I can deal with things on my own terms.

I know better than to get on the scale more than once a week, though. If I get on once a week, I’m pretty ok with life. Twice a week is ok, too, but much more than that and it gets ugly really fast. But the scale is like a little siren on the bathroom floor, calling out: “Heeeeeere I am . . . . maybe you’ve lost weight since yesterday (or even since breakfast . . . or lunch . . . . or ten minutes ago . . .) . . . . Wouldn’t that be a loooooooooovely way to start the daaaaaaayyyyyyy??????????” Of course, I read the stories about sirens. I know that that scale is just waiting to dash me on the rocks of my self-esteem and laugh while I drown, but do I remember that from the LAST time I got on the scale (which may only have been an hour or two ago)? Noooooooooooo. So I get on the scale, and *GASP, CHOKE* I’m the SAME! Or worse yet, POINT 2 POUNDS HEAVIER!! Oh, the shame of it all . . . :P Jesus Christ.

And the more I weigh myself, the more I WANT to weigh myself. I rapidly spiral down from once a week to twice a week to every day to twice a day to (sometimes) three or four times a day. I think it’s some sort of bizarre irrational mixture of hope and self-flagellation. All I know is that as of Monday, I had lost 5.4 pounds, and as of today, I regained 2.8 of those pounds. I know that’s not really possible, and here’s the kicker: I’m PMSing like a mother-fucker. I was watching TV the other night and there was a cat-litter commercial with a kitten in it, and I was sitting there CRYING, for God’s sake! I didn’t even cry when Bambi’s MOTHER died, so if I’m crying because “That little pooping kitten is so cuuuuuuuuute (sob, sob),” I know I’m deep in PMS-town. Either that or I’m sick, because when I have the flu I cry at everything.

But does the knowledge that I’m about to start my period make ANY difference to the irrational part of my brain? Of course not. Rationally I know that I’m retaining water, and so the scale is higher, plus I’ve started a martial arts class, which has a lot of strength training, which equals weight gain (for me), and of course the scale is on carpet, which means Monday’s weight might have been higher (really) and today’s weight might have been lower (really). Does any of that matter to my self-esteem right now?? HELL, NO!

I fucking hate PMS.

Staying on the path

2006-05-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

I had an audition on Sunday for a theatrical production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I went, but didn’t end up auditioning, which was really hard.

First, in order for this to make sense, you have to know that I am Queen of the World when it comes to sabotaging myself. I will pick a goal, start down the path, and immediately get sidetracked. (“Hm, this other path looks interesting. I wonder what’s down here? I wonder if it leads to the same place as the one I started on? Let’s find out. I can always come back to this spot if the other path doesn’t take me where I want to go.” Of course, six months later I’m back at the initial place I started, I take 3 more steps and oh, look! Another interesting side path! Wonder what’s down there . . . I’m like a damn 5-year-old! LOL) On the other hand, the times I have really focused and stayed on track, the force of my will became something fierce to be reckoned with.

So I made some goals from that list I had. The first two, which I put a fairly quick time frame on, were to get an agent(s) (commercial and theatrical), and my SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) card. Here’s the thing: a lot of people have trouble getting their SAG card. Not everyone, certainly, but there are more than a few people who struggle for a year or two before they get it. And agents aren’t generally terribly enthused about seeing people who have no card, because it’s MUCH harder to book jobs that pay well if you don’t have it. So those two goals are big ones, mostly because of the time frame I put on them.

So here’s what I have to change in order to accomplish those two things:
I need to take a commercial class – badly. I’m really good at dramatic readings, but I really, REALLY suck at commercials. And agents generally sign you for commercials first, to see if you’re marketable and committed.
I also need to do a mass headshot mailing to various agencies. That means that in the next couple of weeks, I need to get my headshots and resumes printed in large quantity (100-200 of each), staple them all together, buy manila envelopes and postage, print a hundred (or so) labels, revise my cover letters (different versions so that when you mail to more than one agent in an office, it doesn’t look so much like a form letter), stuff the envelopes, label them and get them in the mail. It’s not hard; just time-consuming and expensive.

So those are the two major steps I need to be taking. I already started on the headshots, and the commercial class I’m going to take starts the first Saturday in June. I’m a busy kid. :)

Now. The audition. I submitted online, but there was no rehearsal schedule posted. Most of these things seem to rehearse in the evenings though and I knew I would be tired if I did that, but figured I could manage. When I got there, the rehearsals were most of the day on Saturdays and Sundays. Right in the middle of my commercial class, which I really need to take if I want to get an agent. There were also a couple of other things that gave me pause and I just had the overwhelming feeling that this was NOT where I was supposed to be. Here’s the thing, though: I’d been so excited for this audition, because ALL my training is theatrical, and I finally felt like I had an audition that I KNEW I could knock out of the park. I wasn’t nervous but I WAS excited. And now I felt like it was the wrong thing, and I didn’t know WHY I felt that way!

It suddenly flashed into my mind that doing theatre was not anywhere on that list of goals I had set. Getting an agent and going SAG were on the list (which this show would interfere with), but doing a theatrical production wasn’t. Especially since I have CRAZY theatre credits on my resume already; it’s not like I need any more of those. All of a sudden I had this visual in my head of standing at the top of that path saying, “Maybe this other path will get me to my destination, too!” So I went over to the coordinator, introduced myself and thanked him and his partner for calling me in. I explained that I had some major schedule conflicts, so rather than take up their time, I was going to excuse myself, but that I really appreciated their invitation to audition.

And I left. It was the hardest thing I’ve done in a while, but I know it was the right thing to do. I felt like I’d achieved some huge turning point or passed some test. But you know what? I HATE getting tested by the powers that be!

Random story (to go with Random Bitching, below)

2006-05-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

(Story ahead!) When I was 19 I ruptured a disc in my back, and the idiot doctor (at Kaiser’s, where I usually had good experiences) DIDN’T DIAGNOSE IT CORRECTLY. She told me I’d probably pulled a muscle and to go home and rest. Now, I was dancing 30 hours a week – I knew damn well what a pulled muscle felt like, and it did NOT feel like this. I hadn’t even been able to get off the floor the night before (where I’d been watching TV), and it had taken me an hour just to get to the doctor’s office, which was 10 minutes from my house. The other 50 minutes were spent easing myself into and out of the car, into the doctor’s office, into the exam room, etc. Pulled muscle, my ass. Grrr. I finally told her I was not leaving without at least getting some painkillers, seeing as how I COULDN’T WALK. She got very huffy with me and said, “Well, if you’re asking for painkillers, I’ll have to put a note in your chart about that.” It was a good thing for her I was in too much pain to leap across the exam room and rip out her eyeballs with one of those wooden tongue depressors on the counter. Instead, I smiled what my sister calls my “serial killer” smile, and said tightly, “Fine. Put a note in the damn chart. Hell, give ME the chart, and I’ll SIGN it! But if you want me out of this room and you don’t intend to do anything about my back, you better write me a prescription or call security, because I AM NOT LEAVING without something to help this pain!!! And I swear to God I will sit here all fucking day if I have to!!!!” She wrote the prescription. :P

So for two years my back hurt. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but pretty much all the time. When I was 21, I finally went in (for the fourth or fifth time) and they told me (for the fourth or fifth time) that before I could see a specialist, I had to go through “physical therapy” (for the fourth or fifth time). I don’t know if you’ve ever been to physical therapy, but let me tell you, it’s pretty much a crock. They make you watch boneheaded videos where you “learn” things like, “lift with your legs, not your back,” and “hold heavy objects close to your body, not away from it,” and my personal favorite, “don’t stand in one hip – distribute your weight evenly between your two feet.” No shit, Sherlock. They told me my hamstrings were probably too tight, because that causes many cases of back pain. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it,” I answered. “No, no,” they said, “That’s almost always the problem. You lay on this table, and we’re going to check your flexibility.” At this point I was definitely laughing on the inside, because I knew what was coming and I was about to enjoy this immensely. I lay down on my back, and they took one leg and started lifting it. Remember, I was still dancing, so that leg went up, up, up all the way over my body and toward my torso. When it hit the vertical point, the therapist started repeating, “Let me know when you feel a stretch!” “I will,” I answered. My leg passed vertical, descending toward my face. “Let me know,” she said, sounding worried. “Don’t worry, I will.” Here comes my leg, right toward my face, and alllllllllll the way down. Now my foot is on the table and my knee is next to my head. “I still don’t really feel a stretch,” I offer helpfully. “Do you want me to move over so you can push my leg past my torso on the table?” “Um, no, no that won’t be necessary,” says the therapist, wide-eyed. “I don’t think the problem is with your hamstrings.” “I know,” I comment (always helpful, that’s me).

After that session, I walked back to the front desk and announced, “I know I’m supposed to have another 6 visits with the therapist before I can see a specialist, but this is dumb. I know all the stuff they’re telling me, since I’ve already gone through these classes, I know it’s not my hamstrings, it’s not my muscles, it’s not general soreness, dammit! I’m LYING ON THE FLOOR in classes at school (thank God I was an arts major, where no one cared if I laid on the floor!), and I WANT TO SEE A SPECIALIST NOW!!!! My insurance will expire in 4 months when I graduate, and I don’t have time for this therapy bullshit, so I’m not leaving until I get an appointment – with a SPECIALIST!!!”

For some reason, when I have tantrums, I get results. Maybe that’s true of everyone, I don’t know, but it works for me. The receptionist stammered for a minute, pushed some buttons on the computer, and voila! A specialist appointment!

So I trotted my placated little self back into the office 4 weeks later, and saw an orthopedic surgeon who listened to what hurt, where it hurt and for how long it had been hurting and promptly sent me for an MRI, where they discovered – guess what? A ruptured disc. The specialist was livid. Not at me, but at the fact that other doctors had misdiagnosed it for 2 years. Apparently, it was fairly obvious on the MRI (he even showed me, and I could see it). It wasn’t a “normal” rupture, which was how I was walking at all: it hadn’t exploded completely, but had basically sprung a leak. So I had a hole in a disc that was leaking spinal fluid about as fast as my body could replace it. That meant that although there was never a point at which I had NO disc cushion between my vertebrae, there was also never a point at which I had ENOUGH cushion, either. Hence, I was able to walk around, but not without varying degrees of pain.

Now this doctor was very cool, and kind of funny. He told me, “Well, I’m really supposed to suggest surgery, but you’re awfully young, and back surgery is far from a sure thing; half the time it works, a quarter of the time nothing changes, and a quarter of the time, it’s worse. Sometimes much worse.” Well, I’m not a fan of cutting my body open anyway, so I’m looking at him expectantly. “Um, well . . . “ he hedged. Finally he spit it out. “How do you feel about alternative medicine?” I could have hugged that man. He was Asian and as it turned out he was first-generation American, and had grown up in a family that put as much credence in Eastern forms of medicine as Western. Woo-hoo! So he told me to go get a bunch of different minerals and take them in various doses several times a day.

I also got a couple of exercises to do and a new way to crack my hips that wouldn’t put my back out of alignment. (My back was so bad that my hip joints would lock and I couldn’t walk unless I cracked them. Unfortunately, I had apparently inflamed a bunch of tendons and nerves and ligaments by cracking my hips the way I was doing it, and that was making my back WORSE, which of course made my hips lock, so I had to crack them, which made my back worse . . . you get the idea. :P)

Anyway, his theory was that since the rupture was really more of a leak and I was young, that if my body was given the tools to repair itself, it would. So I took the supplements and did the exercises (mostly because the looming specter of back surgery terrified me), and lo and behold, it worked!!!

He also had told me in no uncertain terms, “I never told you this. As a doctor here, I’m supposed to just tell you that you need surgery, and the supplement course, although researched, is NOT an approved method in this health care system. So if you tell someone I said this, I will lose my job.” Poor guy. But I was so glad he gave me the option of not having surgery. He was awesome. Sometimes I drive by the freeway exit where his office was (is?), and I always wave out my car window and say, “Thanks, Dr. ______!” My sister thinks I’m nuts. :D

But now, my back hardly ever hurts. Here’s the weird thing, though: if I’m worried about my finances, or if I’m hating myself for being fat, my back will hurt. A LOT.

My mom does a lot of energy medicine, and the lower back aligns with the 2nd (pelvic) and 3rd (stomach) chakras, which represent (among other things) your financial support and your self-image, respectively. I learned that AFTER I’d made the connection about when my back hurt, so I was pretty amazed. Our bodies know more than we think they do. Interestingly, it’s usually my self-image (3rd chakra) problems that throw my back into a tizzy. And apparently, my rupture was higher by 2 or 3 vertebrae than is normal. The doctor checked the MRI twice, and kept commenting how weird it was that I had such a high rupture. Aaaaaand, it was during the worst of my eating disorders and self-hatred that it ruptured. Craziness.

Random bitching

2006-05-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post. Sorry ‘bout that. :P The last few days have been CRAZY-busy!

I went to the Tae Kwon Do class Thursday night, only to find that it had been cancelled till tonight! Geez. So I’ll be there tonight with bells on! Well, maybe not with bells. That would just be silly. :) So I went home and did my yoga DVD, which I love anyway, so it was all good.

I ran errands with my mom on Saturday and we had lunch, which was nice. And I started PMS-ing BADLY, but I didn’t order a burger and fries and chips with salsa and a margarita at lunch, all of which I wanted! LOL I had one of those BBQ chicken salads, although I did ask for extra dressing . . . mmmmmm, SALT! I figured as far as WW points were concerned, it was probably just as bad as the burger and fries, but nutritionally it was at least a LITTLE better, right? I mean there was lettuce and tomatoes and various other vegetables . . .

I’m going to have to really watch it the rest of the week, though; when I’m in the middle of PMS, I crave salt like nobody’s business! Sometimes I feel like I could just salt a stick of butter and eat it! (I’ve never done that, but the thought has crossed my mind.) So for this week I purposely made food that is good for me, but way too high in salt for general consumption. But (much like the BBQ salad rationale) I figure that salty marinated chicken and Asian veggies is better than the McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich with a French fry chaser and a dessert . . . um, chaser-chaser? We’ll see how this goes. ::::wry grin:::: And yes, I know that McDonald’s food is gross, but I remember eating when I was little, so it’s comfort food. Especially those Fish thingies, which I LOVED when I was little . . . It was always such a huge decision: a fish sandwich or a Happy Meal? The fish sandwich didn’t come in the Happy Meal, you know, but the TOY didn’t come with the fish sandwich. Serious consideration had to go into that decision. Life was tough when I was 6 or 7 years old. ;)

And my back has been hurting. The short version is that several years ago I had a ruptured disc in my back, but it was an unusual kind of rupture that was treatable with holistic medicine instead of surgery. So now it’s all better. Except. For some reason, if I am worried about either my finances or if my self-esteem about my body-image is low, my back will hurt like a mother-fucker. Recently, although I’m not necessarily feeling WORRIED, I’ve been working on changing my attitudes about those two areas of my life, and it’s bringing all kinds of emotional crap to the surface, which in turn is causing my back to hurt. I don’t have the financial wherewithal to leave my desk job, but after the first hour or so, I’m in a pretty fair amount of pain. And I have a high pain tolerance, so for me to be having problems, it’s pretty bad. ::::sigh:::: I’m not going to STOP changing my attitudes about my weight and my money, so that’s not a solution. But there has to be a better solution than just gutting it out. I wonder if my mom has any homeopathy meds for this . . . :P

I get to dance AND hit things!

2006-05-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

I decided to go to the gym the other night, but I split the difference; when I came home, I showered and then ate some sardines and crackers (everybody who’s never lived in the Midwest or the South, now is your moment to gag – LOL). So I got some food in my system, even if it wasn’t a “real” dinner and I got some exercise, too.

Can I just say that I had forgotten how much fun that class is? I love dancing. And I’ve been doing all this work on my self-esteem and everything else, so I didn’t get in front of the mirror and spend the whole class thinking about how fat I was. I just had fun. And there was another girl there that I remembered from when I was going before, and she’d been gone for a while, too. So I felt like slightly less of a slacker and a “BAD PERSON.” :P And nobody pointed at me and laughed because I’d gained 15 pounds since I’d been to class (which is a ridiculous scenario, I realize, but it was my secret fear). So I jumped around and tried to dance hip-hop, which is always funny, because despite all my dance training, I am the whitest white girl who ever lived! LOL But I’ll get better.

Aaaaaaaaand . . . . I’d been wishing I could afford to start taking my Tae Kwon Do lessons again, because I LOVE it, but I really don’t have an extra $150 a month to throw around right now. (Some places are a little less, but I also don’t have an extra $80 – especially since the $80 place doesn’t offer classes that work with my schedule! :P) But guess what they’re thinking about offering at my gym????

That’s right!

TAE KWON DO CLASSES!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m a little excited. :D And not the aerobic / kickboxing / fake martial arts kind (although those can be fun too); the REAL kind with uniforms and belts and everything! Eventually there will be an extra charge for those classes, but right now they’re free because the gym is trying to see if anyone is interested. ::::jumps in air, waves hand frantically:::: Oo! Oo! Me! Me! I’m interested! Me! Me!

So tonight there’s a class at 8, and I’m going! Yay!! I’m not crazy about the time, but I’ll take whatever I can get – especially if I can get it for free! Ha! I’ll just take a nap before I go, and hey, I love naps too, so it’s the best of all worlds, as far as I can tell! ::::beams and hums happily::::

Decisions, decisions . . .

2006-05-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

Dammit. I thought that Weight Watchers meeting started last night at 5:30, but when I got there, I found out it started at 5. Grrr. I am NOT missing another week, though; I’m not going to start sabotaging myself now. :P So I looked up the meetings for tonight, and there’s one – get this – at 5:30. So I’m going tonight. The only thing that sucks is that I kind of want to go to a dance class at my local gym, and it starts at 7:15, which is PLENTY of time to go home, change and get to class, but doesn’t really allow any time to cook dinner and EAT. Minor details. :P And I won’t eat after class, because it makes me sick to eat right after I exercise. ::::sigh::::

So . . . dinner or exercise? Why do I feel like no matter what I choose, this isn’t the healthiest choice to make? Crap.

One more thing

2006-05-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Because one of the things the woman at the finanacial workshop talked about was that you should write down everything you might possibly EVER want to do . . . This is my list, which I will update from time to time (if I can find it in the archives).

Things to do in life:

Start a non-profit for foster children to put them through college and help them become successful, productive, HAPPY adults.
Become an Oscar-winning, famous, wealthy actress (hey, I might as well dream big).
Get an agent
Pay my bills with nothing but acting: commercials, films, television, etc.
Become a SAG member.
Take only roles that I enjoy because they are fun or challenging.
Book a major film role.
Book a leading film role.
Book a leading film role that pays at least $1million: $1,000,000.
Book a leading film role that pays at least $5million: $5,000,000.
Book a leading film role that pays at least $10million: $10,000,000.
Book a leading film role that pays at least $20million: $20,000,000.
Have a 26-28” waist; whatever is smallest and still healthy.
Skydive.
Learn to ride a motorcycle.
Fall in love and live with that person forever.
Go rock climbing.
Have limitless energy.
Stop drinking more than once a week (‘cause it’s just not healthy, dammit).
Exercise regularly.
Get enough sleep.
Meditate every day.
Write each family member (Mom, Dad, Middle Sis, Baby Sis) a check for $1million.
Pay Middle Sis’s bills for a full year, or till her book gets published.
Pay for Baby Sis to travel the world.
Pay for Mom to have whatever she wants.
Pay Dad’s bills for a full year, or till his poetry makes money.
Adopt a preteen (or several).
Donate $10million to Smile Train.
Become a public figure to advocate for foster children.
Get out of debt, permanently.
Pay off all my debt in the next year.
Get my pilot’s license and fly my own plane.
Become a good swimmer and swim in the ocean.
Learn to surf.
Become a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Learn to shoot a gun expertly.

FYI: That was kind of fun. Just to make the list. I highly recommend it. :)

Weight, money and self-punishment

2006-05-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I went to this financial workshop, and let me tell you, it was GREAT! I’ve been to other ones, but a lot of times the people leading them seem so aggressive, so in-your-face, that it puts me off a little. I don’t WANT to be one of those obnoxious people. But this one yesterday was something I went to on a whim; it was free, which is to say they took donations (they called them “love offerings”), but no one stood at the door and took $100 of my money to tell me bone-headed things that any fool already knows.

Tangent: my mom went to a workshop where they were preaching the gospel of, “cut up your credit cards, and pay them off with every spare cent you have,” and my mom asked, “So, if I’m not supposed to put anything in savings or anything else till those cards are paid off, what do I do when my car breaks down? I won’t have money in the savings account to pay cash for it, and I need a car, so my only option is to put it on a credit card. Now THAT seems dumb, if I’m trying to pay OFF my cards!!” The guy didn’t have an answer. Ha! So my mom split her extra cash between a savings account and paying off her cards; took her longer to pay them off, but she didn’t have to put emergency expenses back on the card! I love my mom . . . :D

Anyway, back to this workshop. The woman who ran it was so cool – she was up front and practical without being mean, and I just really liked her. She also had some interesting ideas (which I’ve heard elsewhere, and think are valid) about why people go into debt. She believes it’s a (socially acceptable) form of self-punishment, and that if you are in debt, you haven’t forgiven yourself or someone else for something. So she starts with forgiveness.

I thought that was really interesting, because the last couple of weeks I’ve been feeling like I was making really good progress with the compulsive eating (another form of self-punishment), but suddenly my spending is out of control. Seriously. Not anything major, but those little things add up. For instance, I have very full lips. Not Angelina Jolie-full, but close. So there’s no reason on God’s green earth that I need a “lip plumper” for $30 from the makeup counter. But guess what I bought the other day? Mm-hmm. Ridiculous. And that stuff adds up really fast. Suddenly I’ve spent a hundred or two that I don’t really have on crap like makeup and new shoes. I DON’T NEED THIS STUFF!!! Geez. And I’m trying to pay OFF some credit cards, so putting more stuff ON them doesn’t make a lot of sense. :P But for some reason, I just buy it compulsively.

But . . . if it’s a form of self-punishment, then it makes sense that if I’m not punishing myself with food, I have to find another way to punish myself. Apparently my inner brat thinks trinkets are a good way to do that. Grrr.

Anyway, all that to say that this is some interesting work I’m doing here. Who knew that wanting to have more energy (and hopefully lose some weight in the process) would really entail all this emotional spelunking? Ok, well, I knew, but I was hoping I was wrong. :P Oh, well.

WARNING: Shameless product plug ahead! :)
If you want to check this lady out, go to her website: www.prosperityproducts.com or you can find her book at any bookstore: “The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity.” I think that’s the right title, but her name is Edwene Gaines, and I KNOW that’s right. So if you’re interested, you should be able to find it under her name, even if I jacked up the title just now.

Warning: long post ahead!! :)

2006-05-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

Not that I know how to write a post other than a long one . . . Im trying to learn, I swear. :P

::::hums happily::::: So, I had a really good week overall, and a really good couple of days, in particular.

I got to see my mom today. I LOVE my mom. The family joke is that if you’ve met one of us, you’ve already met the other one, because we’re so alike. Good thing I like her, otherwise I’d be offended by that comment! LOL We met at a mall that’s about an hour from each of us, which means it’s right in the middle of our respective homes. It’s a really pretty mall, although it’s a little creepy. It’s one of those “new urban” environments, where everything is brand-spankin’-new, but it’s been distressed to look like an old downtown. So out in the middle of suburbia, there’s this mall that looks like it’s been there forever. Except there’s no dirt. And there’s music piped in everywhere. Sort of like Main Street in Disneyland. Yeah, it’s a little creepy: a little “Stepford,” if you know what I mean.

So we spent the day alternating between walking around at the mall and driving around to find model homes to look at. No reason for the homes; we just like to look at the interior designs. :) ::::hums happily again:::: It was a good day.

On another note, I have GOT to go back to the gym. I joined this gym last August (or September – somewhere right around there), and for a while I was pretty good about going. Of course, when I came home from the gym and ate a whole bag of chips, that pretty much made the time I’d just spent at the gym moot. :P But at least I was going, and I figured that was better than nothing, right?

Here’s my problem with gyms: they are depressing. Really. I always walk in the door, and I feel like I’ve been hit with this wave of grim determination that everyone’s giving off. Sort of like they’re running on the treadmill with clenched teeth, thinking, “I . . . WILL . . . look . . . good . . . naked . . . “ (Ellipses because they’re out of breath. Yes, in their heads, too!) Plus, it’s a meat market. I always feel like screaming at the guy checking me out, “STOP LOOKING AT ME!! I’M HOT AND SWEATY AND UGLY AND TRYING TO CONCENTRATE ON MY WORKOUT AND YOU’RE MAKING ME SELF-CONSCIOUS!!!” Now, he might be staring because I’m so stunningly beautiful (Ha!), but in my head, he’s thinking that he can’t believe this fat cow can even get up off the couch, and should definitely not be uglifying his gym with her presence. You can see why I hate the gym, right?

But one day in the paper, there was this whole section about different gyms in the area, and what they each offered that was cool or unusual. And this one offered these great classes, including DANCE classes!!! I love dance classes. They’re way less boring than aerobics classes (“Only 349 more leg lifts, everyone! Come on, you can do it!” Yuck). But the guy who teaches these classes has danced in a bunch of music videos, and they have Pilates (which I also love; I own one of those machines, even!), and kickboxing and all kinds of cool stuff. So I went down to pick up a free one-week pass, and there was NO GRIM DETERMINATION in the air!!! This was promising! Everybody seemed happy to be there, and people knew each other’s names (insert “Cheers” theme here). So I ended up getting a membership. It was on the pricey side, but I figured actually GOING to the gym for 60 bucks a month was smarter than JOINING a gym for 20 bucks and never going.

And then I stopped going. You know all the reasons: it was the holidays, I was really busy, I was spending time with family, blah, blah, blah. And after the holidays (this is the kicker, folks), I didn’t want to go because I had gained weight and I was embarrassed. How fucked up is that???? It’s a GYM, for chrissakes. Where people go when they’ve, oh I don’t know, GAINED WEIGHT!!!! Geez . . . So I’ve thrown a set of workout clothes and a class schedule in my car (well, I haven’t yet, but it’s on my list for tomorrow, I swear), and now I will have no excuse not to take those fun dance classes (they have hip-hop and African!) again. Maybe I’ll even renew my membership. Maybe.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2006-05-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Ha! See my Shakespeare quote up there? I'm really tickled by it. I know it's lame, but it made me laugh.

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway . . . .

Here I am at work. Not working. At 7:30 in the morning, which feels like a totally god-forsaken hour of the day. Actually, the funny thing is that this is when I normally come to work. But the last couple of days I’ve been freakin’ EXHAUSTED. There doesn’t really seem to be a reason for it, either. I’ve been going to bed early (well, earliER, anyway), I haven’t been eating or drinking crap right before bed the last couple of nights (which I’m reasonably proud of), so I’ve been sleeping well. Beats me.

In truth, I think it might be the fact that the last couple of nights I haven’t been eating and drinking loads of junk. Stopping a couple nights ago directly correlates with how tired I’ve been the last couple of days. I don’t think the junk food helps me sleep better in and of itself; I just think it sedates whatever is going on in my psyche. I say this because the last couple of nights, I’ve gotten more sleep than usual, I’m MORE tired than before and I’m pretty sure it’s because I’ve been dreaming. I NEVER dream, at least not that I can ever remember in the morning. But the last couple of nights, I know I’ve been dreaming. I still can’t remember them when I wake up (which makes the suggestion, “Write them down” a little hard to execute), but I have this feeling like I’ve been busy all night. Not physically active, just mentally active. So I staggered out of bed at 6:15 the last couple of mornings, when usually I’m up and perfectly fine around 5:30 or so.

::::sigh:::: I guess this is a positive. It means that whatever it is that I’m trying to hide from by eating and drinking myself into a damn stupor is finally surfacing. I just wish I could not be tired while it surfaces. :P

I may post again later today; I’ve got to start going back to the gym and I feel the need to rant. But I also feel the need to go to work, since, oh, I don’t know, THEY’RE PAYING ME TO WORK, NOT BLOG. Just a thought. I can rationalize spending 10 minutes on the computer; much more than that gets a little tough. :P

Sabotage

2006-05-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

Fuckety-fuck-fuck. Last night was not good. ::::sigh:::: No, I take that back – I’m trying really hard not to think in terms of “good” or “bad,” just “different.” But I’m not feeling so great today. I did ok yesterday; I even had allotted points so I could have some popcorn and a glass of wine. As it turned out, I had enough points for two glasses of wine. I was actually really glad because I had opened a fairly nice bottle the other night, and wanted to be able to drink it rather than throw out the remainder. Problem is, 2 glasses is just enough alcohol to make me think that another drink would be a GREAT idea! So normally, if I want a glass of wine, I have one. ONE. But last night I had two. And then the margaritas and chips were calling my name: “Maaaaaaaaaaarsteeeeeeeee . . . . we’re over heeeeeeeeeere. And we’re so taaaaaaastyyyyyyyy . . . ." You get the idea. So I had another drink (just one, but that made 3, which was 2 more than I should have had, and 3 more than I needed), and most of a bag of chips. They were baked, but still. Craptastic.

And the thing is, I had a moment before I started on the margarita and the chips, where I actually thought, “This is why you always hate yourself in the morning. You should just go to sleep and call it a day.” But I didn’t want to go to sleep because I was reading a good book. And then I got all “You are not the boss of me!” and ate and drank myself silly. Can anyone say, “cutting off your nose to spite your face?” Jesus.

So today I am dehydrated, I feel like shit (not quite hungover; just general white-flour/alcohol induced shittiness), I am alternately beating myself up and trying NOT to beat myself up, and just generally feeling low.

And somewhere in the last week I started playing the “weight loss” game, instead of the “more energy” game. There are different rules, you know. The “weight loss” game says, “Hey! I have extra points left over! I could have chips and margaritas! And if I exercise, I’ll even get some EXTRA points to spend!” The “energy game,” on the other hand, says, “Hm. I know I have extra points left, but I’m not really hungry. But I do have some time before bed, so maybe I’ll take a bath or do some yoga, go read for an hour and then go to bed early. That way I’ll feel great tomorrow.” Now let me see . . . which one of those games is healthier? ::::makes thinking faces::::: Oh, could it be . . . I think it’s . . . oh, no wait! Wait . . . Maybe . . . . is it . . . I think it’s . . . oh God this is so hard to decide . . . I think . . . YES! Definitely game number 2, Bob. Definitely.

For fuck’s sake. Why do I do this to myself? I KNOW what the outcome will be. (Definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results!) And now I’m feeling all pouty and “poor me” and I HATE that! Aarrgghh!

Missed the meeting :P

2006-05-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I missed that WW meeting tonight. I’m kind of bummed, because I actually like the meetings with this leader. In the past I’ve gone to meetings and wondered why the hell I was wasting my 12 dollars to hear stuff I already knew. I might not have been doing it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know it. What I wanted to know was how to get myself to do it. But I kind of like this leader. She’s a little nuts, but in a good, entertaining way. :) But . . . I’ve only been to this meeting once, and I remembered it as being on ONE street, when it was actually on ANOTHER street, and I was already late starting out, so by the time I realized I was on the wrong street the meeting would have been ½ over by the time I got to it. And it’s not like they’re long meetings, anyway: 12 bucks for a half-hour, which at that point would have been 12 bucks for 15 minutes. I don’t think so. So screw it. I came home. :P But I did pretty well on the points thing this week, all things considered and I have one of those little books, so I can just keep doing it.

Actually, I kind of felt like a fool yesterday. I only started the meetings in the first place (this time) so that I could get the sliders and the books, which I had thrown away in a fit of pique last year. But yesterday, I was cleaning out some stuff, and guess what I found? Well, not the books, so I’m glad I have those, but I did find both the food slider and the activity slider. ::::sigh:::: At least I don’t have to go for 3 weeks just to get the activity slider again. But I do have 2 food sliders now, so if anyone reads this and wants one, I’ll give it to you. I posted that on the WW board, too, so hopefully someone will need one. I really don’t need 2. And I REALLY don’t WANT 2 of them staring me in the face.

Nothing much else going on at the moment. I had a mini-binge last night, but I planned it, so I’m not sure if it really counts. I think it might have put me over 1 or 2 points for the week. Ask me if I care. Actually, the nice thing is that I really don’t care, at least not in the, “Oh my God, I’m such a horrible person who has no self-control and no willpower and will probably be overweight forever because I’m a worthless piece of shit who can’t even ignore baked Doritos and crappy bottled margaritas!!!” sense. I care that it wasn’t the BEST choice I could have made, but you know what? It’s not the end of the world, and my eating habits were better this week than they were last week, so I’m doing ok. I won’t weigh 125 by the end of the month, but who am I kidding? I’m not going to weigh 125 EVER, so I might as well be glad for the small victories. Like 2 mini-binges in a week instead of 5 major ones. It’s progress.

Fun with "Points"

2006-05-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

I knew this would happen. I prepared for it and everything. Now I’m really glad I did the Weight Watchers program last year, because I knew going in this time how my brain would respond. So I decided 2 things up front: first, that I would not get angry with myself if and when I binged. I would decide that I’m a grown-up, and eating a bag of chips (or 10) is a choice that I am allowed to make. The second thing was that I would, come hell or high water, eat a certain number of points per day. I’m damned if I’m going to be starving myself for days on end because I binged at the beginning of the week, and now I’m trying to “make weight” for the next meeting.

Before I start, though, let me give you the Points info so you know what the hell I’m talking about. Here’s the quickie rundown on those things: You get a certain amount of points based on your weight. (I get 22 points per day.) You figure out how many points something has by either consulting the WW book to find the product, or you can figure it out with a tool they give you by counting calories, fiber and fat. In addition to your daily points, you also get 35 “Flex points” (FPs) which basically allows you to eat junk food in limited quantities, so you don’t “fall of the wagon,” as it were. On top of THOSE points, you can earn additional “Activity points” (APs). The general idea for those is that you get a point for every 100 calories you burn. Still with me? There is great debate among WW groupies whether you should eat your APs, your FPs, all of them, some of them, none of them, etc. How will you lose weight faster? What rules can you bend, break or get around? What if you eat ALL your FPs but NONE of your APs? Or vice versa? You can see how all this counting can make you a little obsessive. You can probably also see where I’m going with this. :P

I went to a meeting Monday night, so I officially started counting points Tuesday morning. Tuesday night my inner brat kicked in, screaming “You are not the boss of me!” and I binged on half a bag of potato chips. (Kettle Chips, salt and pepper. They are my FAVORITE chips, and the only ones I can’t ignore.) Wednesday night, same thing, even worse. I forget now what it was (and I’m too damn lazy to go find that journal right now), but there was too much wine and dark chocolate involved. Mmmmmm . . . Anyway, I was still within my weekly amount, but now I had no points left for margaritas and pizza with my girlfriends. Bummer. (Not that it will prevent me from HAVING margaritas and pizza, just that it would be nice to figure out how to do both: have the fun and stay inside my points.)

Thursday was good; I was under my points, meaning that I only ate 20 of my regular points, and none of my FPs. Now here’s where it got a little sticky. WW does not recommend eating less than your daily points, which means the fact that I was under by 2 points isn’t so great. I rationalized Thursday by figuring that I had “earned back” some of the points I’d lost in my binge the night before. (Yeah, I know that’s not how it works. Shut up.) Additionally, I should mention here that technically, I should be eating 24 points, not 22, but I’m only 5 pounds away from 22 points, and I don’t want to have to recount everything in 2 or 3 or 4 weeks when (theoretically) I will have lost the 5 pounds. Basically, I’m lazy and don’t want to be bothered. But NOW, it’s kind of a problem that I’m really 4 points under for the day. “Oh, well,” I think flippantly. “At least if I do this for a couple of days, I can have my pizza and margaritas and still be within my points for the week! Yay me!” :P

Did I mention that I love logic games (this is not a random subject change, I swear)? Really. I go to the bookstore and spend money on those damn Mensa game books, because even when I have to look up the answers, I think they’re loads of fun. (Yeah, I’m a nerd. Laugh at me, I don’t care – actually, that is probably the one thing I really DON’T care about getting laughed at for!!)

Now I ask you: what are those fun little points if not a logic game? How much food can you eat for as few points as possible? Hmmmm . . . . So yesterday, by the time it was 6 o’clock, I had eaten 11 points for the WHOLE DAY. I’d guess I was somewhere around 700 calories, maybe 800. And don’t think I wasn’t hungry, but now I was trying to WIN THE GAME. I like winning things. A lot. And I wasn’t unbearably hungry, so I could deal with it. (Actually, I kind of like being a little hungry; it makes me feel calm. Luckily, I have the good sense to know that’s fucked up, so I usually just eat anyway.) Plus that buzzing little eating disorder voice was already kicking in with the constant calculations, figuring out how far under I would be for the week if I ate 11 points a day. I could have pizza and margaritas and STILL “make weight!” This was great!!!!!

ANYWAY . . . Somewhere around 7:30 or 8, I realized that I had promised myself to eat 25 points per day. All of my regular points, plus 3 FPs, just to make sure it got through to my psyche that I am not going to starve myself to lose weight. “But!” cries the little buzzing voice in my head, “We are so close! We could WIN! Everyone will admire us when we lose 7 pounds the first week! Screw pizza and margaritas! We could be THE BEST!!!!!” Those who have heard this voice know exactly what I’m talking about. Those who haven’t, think it’s insane – and they’re right. But it’s also seductive. So . . . I “cowboyed the fuck up” and ate. I had some fat-free popcorn, which was gross, so I added olive oil and salt and fresh pepper to it. That helped a lot, and added a few points. I had 2 glasses of wine and some eggs (figuring that I probably shouldn’t round out my points with ALL junk food). When it was all said and done, I ate 26 points yesterday. And when I went to bed, the little buzzing voice was quiet. Thank God.

The Backstory

2006-05-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I started this blog as sort of a journal for myself. But I guess I should mention something about how I got here, so when people stumble across this, it has some continuity! :)

I have been worried about my weight ever since I can remember. I see pictures of myself when I was 7 or 8, and I’m always surprised that I was NOT a fat kid, because I even then I felt like I was. I guess it could have been caused by any number of things, but I think most of it probably had to do with wanting so much to be a ballerina. God I wanted to dance, but I really didn’t have the body for it. I wasn’t fat, but I sure as hell wasn’t a teeny-tiny little thing. Even at 12, I was more Salma Hayek than Charlize Theron. And lemme tell ya, Salma Hayek is beautiful, but she’s never gonna be a ballerina. :P

Basically, I was a really smart, really angry kid. I read before I was 2, finished high school (through homeschooling) when I was 12, started college at 14. As an adult, that’s impressive, but when you’re a kid, everyone else hates you for it. So all my friends were dance and theatre friends, mostly because they either didn’t know about where I was at in school, or because my admittedly mediocre (at best) dancing ability canceled out the “stuck-up intellect” thing!

By the time I was 17 or 18, I knew I wasn’t ever going to dance professionally. I’d had too many injuries by that time to be a good investment for any company, and I wasn’t very gifted. I worked hard, but it wasn’t enough to make up the difference. So I switched to acting, and frankly it was the best thing ever. I liked it better, I was better at it – it just worked out all the way around. Sometime in there though, I stopped dancing because I loved it, and started dancing because it was a way for me to control my body. I could make my body do things the human body was never meant to do, and that level of control was really gratifying.

When I transferred to an art school for acting they made me quit dancing, and that was the beginning of my major weight obsession. A friend of mine once said that eating disorders are almost always about either punishment or control, and in my case, they were always about control. I had been able to eat just about anything when I was dancing, although even then I was pretty obsessive and weird about it. I lived one summer on nothing but carrots and pasta salad, then went back to school and resumed my diet of nothing but Diet Coke and chocolate malt balls. It’s amazing what you can eat when you’re working out 40 hours a week! Ha!

When I left dancing, though, those malt balls caught up with me pretty fast!!! I put on the freshman fall-semester 20 (screw 15; why do anything half-assed?), and then the spring-semester 15 in addition to the 20! That summer was the first summer that I started to get really out of control with food. I would eat 4 pieces of pizza, then nothing for 4 days (1 day for every piece), then an entire half-gallon of ice-cream, then nothing for several more days. I finally managed to knock that off, but when I went back to school that year, I settled in to a steady diet of chicken and broccoli, all steamed, all the time. Better than pizza and ice cream, but still not exactly a balanced diet. I didn’t care. I was LOSING WEIGHT. I alternated the chicken-broccoli diet with a “cleansing” diet that I heard about: 3 yogurts a day for a week, 3 apples with cheese a day for a week, 3 bananas a day for a week, nothing at all for a week, then back the other way: bananas/week, apples and cheese/week, yogurt/week. I liked that one because it lasted a long time. :P (I have to say here that I now realize the lunacy of listening to your anorexic friends tout something as a “cleansing” diet!! ::::cough::::: stupid ::::cough, cough:::::)

So I continued starving, obsessing, bingeing, etc. though most of college. My last year, I blew out my knee and was totally unable to exercise for about a month. Needless to say, I gained a significant amount of weight, and after that, the pendulum swung the other way. I figured, screw it, I’m never going to lose this weight, I’ve always been fat, fuck the world, I don’t give a shit anymore. Except of course, I did.

So: from uncontrollable deprivation to uncontrollable bingeing. I gained a fairly significant amount of weight over the next 3 or 4 years. (No, I’m not going to tell you how much. I’m not that enlightened yet.) My real low point, my “bottom” if you will, came when I was living on my own. I’d gone to the grocery store that day and done my weekly shopping. That night, I was sitting on the couch watching TV, eating chocolate swirl ice cream from the container. I became obsessed with eating the WHOLE swirl, which of course meant I had to eat the ice cream around it in order to get to the swirl. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the kitchen, several hours had passed, and the kitchen was EMPTY. Seriously. Somewhere in the intervening hours I had consumed everything in my kitchen, including (but not limited to): a dozen eggs, a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a pound of butter, a pound of pasta and sauce, 2 bags of chips, 4 apples, 6 bananas, a box of Kraft mac’n’cheese, 2 cans of biscuits, a pound of bacon . . . the list doesn’t end there, but you get the idea. God, it makes me want to cry just thinking about it again. There were dirty pots and pans everywhere; I had obviously been cooking, and I COULDN’T REMEMBER DOING IT. I still don’t. I staggered upstairs in tears and into the bathroom, where I realized why I didn’t feel full: I had obviously been sick more than once. Whether it was self-induced purging, or my body rebelling, I have no idea. I spent the rest of that night on the floor in the bathroom, curled up in a ball, crying.

At that point, I finally realized that I was totally out of control. I tried OA, but it wasn’t for me (I’ll save the “why” for another day). I was at least well-read enough to know that it wasn’t food that was the problem; it was that I was using it to anesthetize myself against the rest of my life. So began the long road back. I started seeing a therapist, I started journaling, I started doing whatever I could think of to purge my emotional self of whatever demons I was carrying.

Now it’s 4 (?) years later. I’m a lot better, but still not finished. I haven’t binged like that night since then, but God knows I’ve had whole-bag-of-chips days, and not that long ago. (I had a half-bag-of-chips day the other night. Better than a whole bag, I guess. :P) I started this in the hope that I might keep it a little more reliably than I keep a journal, but that it would accomplish the same thing. We’ll see.

Ridiculousness and Gratitude

2006-05-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days I’ve noticed that my biggest tendency to binge is between 3 and 5, and again between 7 and 9 (or so). I can knock out the first one: just come home, wash my lunch dishes, change and work out. By the time I finish working out and shower, it’s already close to 7. Then I can eat dinner, wash up and (knowing me) head upstairs to read until I go to bed. Except that somewhere in there I have to remember to check my e-mail for auditions and stuff. And it’s this damn computer that kills me. I get settled in, and suddenly nothing will do but that I have something to eat while I sit there. I finally got out of the habit of eating in front of the TV by learning to knit; it kept my hands busy, so I wasn’t munching constantly. But on the computer I need to type! It’s a little hard to knit and type at the same time. Strangely though, it’s not at all hard to eat and type at the same time. I still haven’t figured that one out. :P

I should probably just set myself a limit. I get sucked into this computer and my internal monologue goes like this: Oh, I’ll just check my e-mail for auditions. Oh, I should also update my blog. Hey look, someone e-mailed me on that dating site (even though it says that I’m really busy right now and am just hanging out to talk to friends that I know), so I should check that. While I’m on it, I wonder if my friends have posted in the forums at all. Oh, I have to check My Space; it’s a pretty good networking tool for actors. I wonder if anyone responded to my question in the Weight Watchers boards? I’ll check that, too. Hmmm . . . now that it’s so late, I might as well play a couple of games of solitaire. It’s so relaxing (ha!). And then I look up and realize that I’ve spent 2 hours on the goddamn computer!!! A friend of mine once referred to her TV as “that great pirate of my time,” and that’s how I feel about this computer. (Well, not THIS one. I update this blog on my breaks at work, so it doesn’t count.) And 2 hours of sitting on my ass usually means that I think I have to eat at the same time. For fuck’s sake . . .

So I’ll be working on that the next few days . . . In other news . . .

On the way in to work today, there was an accident. Now, I live in Los Angeles. And every time I pass an accident, I try really hard not to look. I figure it’s none of my business and besides, if I were bleeding out my eyeballs in the middle of the road, the last thing I’d want would be people leaning out of their cars, staring at me. Get a life, for God’s sake. HOWEVER . . . this accident was on the other side of the freeway, with all 3 right lanes closed. There is a freeway onramp right there, and at the top, on the surface street, the onramp was totally blocked by the back of a semi trailer. I say “back” because the front of the truck was HANGING OVER THE SIDE OF THE ONRAMP – DANGLING OVER THE FREEWAY. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. It couldn’t really dangle, because half the front had come OFF and was spread across the 3 right lanes of the freeway itself. The other half of the front was still attached to the truck, although it looked ready to break free and fall any minute. The ambulance had already come and gone and the police and firepeople were standing around, trying to direct traffic and contemplating the mess above/beside/around them.

I have to say, I looked. (Hello, Pot? My name is Kettle.) Actually, I let out an involuntary, “Jesus Christ!” and STARED. And I have to say, I prayed for the driver of that truck. I don’t pray often, but I prayed for that person. And I’ll be praying tonight.

In that light, worrying about what I might or might not eat tonight seems more than a little ridiculous. Seems like maybe I ought to just be grateful that I get to go home alive and in one piece. So I’m grateful. And still praying.

Back to square one

2006-05-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

So here I am, back on Weight Watchers. I tried this last year, but quit for a number of reasons. I think that this time I’m just going to go to the meetings for long enough to pick up all the supplies, and then I’m going to switch over to the on-line version. Mostly because the weigh-ins make me crazy, and I’m finally at a place where I’m trying REALLY hard to focus more on doing things that give me more energy, as opposed to doing things that will make me thinner. :P (Of course, I’m also secretly hoping that as I get more energy, I’ll also get thinner! LOL)

Part of the reason I quit last year though, was b/c of those damn weigh-ins. I had a mild eating disorder in college (a “mild” one! Is that like being “a little” pregnant?! LOL), and I pretty much had the behavior under control by the time I got to the meetings last year, but those weigh-ins felt SO humiliating that suddenly I found myself bingeing and starving and bingeing and purging and bingeing . . . ::::sigh:::: If I lost weight, I should have lost more; if I’d gained weight, then fuck it, I was obviously bad and defective, and why bother trying?

So when I went to the meeting this week, I just told the lady, “I don’t EVER want to know what I weigh. I’m not doing this for my weight, and I used to have an eating disorder, so knowing will make me nuts.” She was very nice about it, actually. My mom pointed out that this is Los Angeles after all, and it’s probably not the first time they’ve encountered this! So she didn’t even give me the little book (the one where they write your weight in it every week, and theoretically you take it home and happily chart your progress!); she stuck it in the file and said, “When you come in, don’t even get it out; just let your weigh-in person know, and have them go get it for you.” I LOVE that lady!!

So now I’m counting points and trying to stay within them. The hard part is that as soon as I feel like I “have” to do something, I will immediately do the opposite. So I keep reminding myself that this is just a choice, like anything else, and anytime I want to I can choose not to do it. If I eat an entire bag of chips, it does not make me a bad person; it’s just a different choice that I made. Not good, not bad, just different, with different consequences. (I actually thwarted a binge yesterday by thinking that over and over as I ate. I still ate too many chips, but it was twice as many as I should have eaten instead of 10 times as many! LOL Baby steps and all that . . . )

So now I’m starting this blog back up with the idea that (sort of like those WW weigh-ins), I can chart my progress. Except now I’m charting mental and emotional progress. My body will respond to whatever state my mind and emotions are in and obviously working from the “outside in” hasn’t gotten me very far. So now let’s try working from the “inside out.”