It's a wet wet world
Well, as you can see, Max's pillow is not yet complete. I stayed up until two am watching Gilmore Girls and embroidering like a busy fat granny. Unfortunately I'm only (almost) thirty seven and need more sleep than I've been letting myself get lately.
It looks pretty good from far away. Up close you can see all the glitches. It doesn't matter. Max glimpsed me working on it last night and is now all worked up to see it. He doesn't care that my work is amateurish, what he might care about is that there are no flowers on it as he instructed me to include. OH WELL.I am soaked from my short bicycle ride to work. I don't care. Honestly. I don't look at all like a drowned rat. I'm much too big for that. I was marvelling on my way here how I don't at all want to smoke. I smoked heavily for a total of sixteen years. I probably quit almost as often as Mark Twain did. I finally, desperately, went to my doctor to ask for counseling (because I finally couldn't handle both my head AND motherhood simultaneously without help) and to ask her if I could try taking Welbutrin to help me stop smoking.
I've already mentioned what happened as a side effect of taking the anti-depressant: I stopped being depressed which was a monumental revelation. It also worked wonderfully well helping me not smoke. It literally takes away the urge to smoke. So I only had a couple of lapses since taking the meds. I stayed on them because I really enjoyed not needing to psych myself up for a half an hour just to take the trash out. Each time I lapsed on my second daily dose for more than a couple of days I would find, a week later, that the urge to smoke cigarettes would come on suddenly and overwhelm me with it's power.
It's been three years since the last time I smoked a cigarette. I've gone through fire, broken bones, marital stress, living with my mother for five months (with the spouse, the kid, and the cat, all living with my mom, her big dog and two cats in a twelve hundred square foot house), selling a house, buying a house, moving out of state, and starting a business from scratch with no back up options. The meds have certainly helped. But after not taking the full dose for three months I still didn't want to smoke. I never thought the day would come when I would not jones for a cigarette without any support.
You should all understand that if it weren't for the fact that smoking almost guarantees you a spot in the hospital somewhere down the road, I would never have felt it necessary to stop smoking. I loved it. The smell, the ritual, the whole deal.
Anyway, I was just thinking about how the real thing is that the meds supported my efforts to not smoke for a long enough period of time that I learned to live my life without reference to the next smoke, and to live through stress using other techniques to soothe my head and nervous system. I changed my lifestyle. Now I can't imagine picking up a pack of cigarettes and drawing one out, lighter in hand. Even without the magic medication.
The reason I was thinking so much about this is because I am still so unhappy with myself physically. I didn't stick with the Weight Watchers (and thank you for NOT asking about it, I wasn't ready to talk about it). I didn't stick with counting calories. All my efforts end up with me staying up until two in the morning drinking beer and consequently snacking on some sort of cheese arrangement. I have built a lifestyle around drinking way more alcohol than is healthy for me. Just like with the cigarettes, I wouldn't actually care except that it's getting in the way of my ability to lose weight. Which then reflects very negatively on the state of my brain.
I'm not going to say how much I drink. All you need to know is that I can keep pace with any drinking Brittish male. And not get drunk. All you need to know is that I have a very high tolerance that I have been painstakingly working on for years now. You should also know that the only days of the year I drink before five pm are Christmas and my birthday. (I suppose there are the rare BBQ's that start in the afternoon and I'll drink when others are drinking.) The point is: I'm not a drunk mom swigging the gin bottle from morning til night. I almost never get drunk at all. I don't drink the hard stuff.
I don't really feel shameful that I drink so much beer. I don't generally talk about this though because I'm not interested in inviting lectures about the evils of drink. I think of beer as being equivalent with soda. Except that instead of rotting your teeth and eroding your stomach lining, it can ruin your liver. I don't drink soda. I drink beer like it's soda. There are literally only two things that bother me about my heavy drinking: 1) it is preventing me from returning to a normal size and 2) it could potentially ruin my liver, which I value.
I don't need a diet. I need a lifestyle shift. I refuse to become a teetotaller. EVER. Beer and wine are two things that make this life sparkle. Drinking with friends is one of the best things in this world. If I can get to a point where cigarettes are no longer necessary to my lifestyle then I am just as capable of shifting my habits so that I am getting more sleep and drinking less so that I can get back to the person I was before I became rotund. None but my oldest friends know that wearing the same seven shirts from Ross and the same knee length pants every frickin' day of my life is not even remotely my style. I am so far from my sartorial roots I feel lost at sea. I feel like a fat poser.
No one knows that I was collecting and wearing aprons long before it became a hot trend. I can't wear many of them now because they all make me look like a giant talking yam with a ridiculously tiny piece of fabric tied around my waist. I was doing it before Rachel was doing it on Friends. The only person who might have been collecting vintage aprons before me is my friend Lucille. And I have a beautiful pink tulle vintage apron she gave me hanging in my closet against a day when I can put it on and not look like Divine.
It's important that I find a solution. Because self loathing is corrosive. I need to find a solution soon because the apron revolution won't last for long and I need to take my rightful place in the ranks.
This is the classic time of year to contemplate the things about yourself you want to change. I'll bet all of you out there have things you would like to do differently in your life too. Things about yourselves you would like to change. Things you may not be eager to share with anyone else.
One thing that I have never talked about with anyone besides Philip and possibly one or two friends over the course of my life is a habit I developed as a stressed child. I twist fabric around my index fingers or thumb really tight over and over. It is a compulsive behavior that has ruined more shirt hems than I can possibly count. It leaves calluses on my thumb knuckle and my fingers. During the year our life fell apart I couldn't stop doing it, all day long. I kept trying to control it, to make myself stop. I became hyper aware of it and it made me uncomfortable because it's the kind of thing crazy people do to self-soothe. It's the kind of repetitive activity that makes normal people nervous when they witness it.
What's weird is that I have hardly been doing it at all since I moved to Oregon. I mean, I still do it sometimes, but so much less often that I feel relieved. The hems of my shirts are no longer twisted up and stretched out. I wonder how many people in my life have witnessed the fabric twisting and wondered about it, been tempted to ask about, or were bothered by it? More importantly, how on earth have I gotten that instinctive soothing activity so much more under control?
Hey, I just wanted to make sure I keep the mood around here solemn, I don't want anyone getting so giddy with holiday cheer that they accidentally electrocute themselves on their Christmas lights. Discussing these issues is my public service for the day.
Though today's subject seemed solemn, I don't actually feel at all unhappy. And I hope that all of you out there are having a wonderful afternoon doing whatever it is you're doing! I have a pillow to finish!
HAPPY WINTER EVERYONE!