Hark, a challenge! (Why am I suddently entitling everything like it's from a Renaissance Fair?)

I realized that starting today, I have exactly 30 days entirely to myself. And I know that those of you with real jobs are rolling your eyes because YOU don't get an automatic 30 days to yourself at your job, but President Bush doesn't tell you how to do your job, and you don't also have to sometimes be in charge of scraping dried boogers off of bathroom stall handles, so you eye-rollers can go ahead and just suck it.

I can see this upcoming month going two possible ways: first, it's a disaster because I never leave my house and I end up sublimating my boredom and loneliness with a whole lot of ill-planned craft projects, online computer games, and of course food.

Or, I can actually get better, get happier, and maybe at least even out the dreadful farmer's tan on the tops of my feet where the sun has emblazoned burnt sienna latticework on top of my painfully white skin. I've also been thinking about the way I'm consuming SO much paper and plastic and water bottles by eating out almost every evening, and so I'm going to make sure that's a goal in this endeavor as well.

So here's my 30-Day Erin, Stop Being Such a Whiner Challenge:

Rule 1: Unless on vacation or showing up to a previously planned dinner date or get together, all meals must be taken at home, even on nights when I work late. I'd rather eat healthy food late and risk a slow digestion than shove a Baconator down my throat on the way home from work.

Rule 2: Food will obviously be of the healthful variety, with an emphasis on the principles of the G.I. Diet as a guideline for what to buy. Any snack food, frozen junk food, full-fat cheese product, or "heat and eat" type food will be thrown away as of Monday, July 9.

Rule 3: I will blog each day about food intake, how I'm feeling, what I'm planning for the next few days unless I am on vacation. On Monday evenings I will post my grocery list for the week.

Rule 4: I will have 128 oz. of water each day, but only in a glass/Nalgene bottle, and never from bottled water. (I reached the breaking point on my justification for bottled water consumption when I paid $2.50 for 16 oz. of Fiji water the other day at a coffeeshop. I can't abide by all the bottles we drink and then trash, especially when the majority of it is just purified tap water)

Rule 5: I will do 30 minutes of exercise each day starting Tuesday, July 10 and will blog my accomplishments each evening.

Rule 6: I will go out and do something that involves interacting with people at least once per day. There will not be a day when I spend the entire 24 hours in my house, having conversations only with my cats. (Even though my cats have gotten a lot more interesting and opinionated since they started watching The View)

Rule 7: I will go to church

Rule 8: I will clean something in my house each day

Rule 9: I will spend some time outside in the sunshine each day.

Rule 10: I will never make more than 10 rules for myself even though I loooooove making lists.


So, this sounds doable enough. If you'd like to follow along on your own challenge for the next 30 days, that'd be cool. Just email me if I'm not already linked to your blog or if you don't post online so we can keep in touch.

Last night after work I pocketed the money I receive for teaching the progeny of the various KC suburbanites who spend their "me time" hunkered down in the back seat of their Lexus SUVs with a grande half-caff marble macchiato and every mobile telecommunications and organization device legally available for purchase in the western hemisphere. Sometimes they fall asleep back there and it's darling when I have to escort little Chutney or Farnsworth out to the car so we can knock on the windows and rouse the parent to take them home. Seeing a member of the upwardly mobile wiping their drool off the tastefully beige leather seats of their luxury vehicle with a Kleenex hastily plucked from the depths of a Coach satchel makes all of this just a tiny bit more worth it.

I meandered over to the local sporting goods store to check out their swimsuit collection, where I was confronted with the reality that...duh...generally, retail athletics stores sell products for people who are ALREADY athletes. I pulled a size 18 exercise swimsuit off the rack and tried to pull it on over my thighs with absolutely no luck, and there simply weren't any bigger sizes available anywhere. I've always been under the impression that swimsuit sizing follows dress and pants sizing pretty closely, but apparently Nike and Speedo both cut theirs smaller. (Or else I'm really just that fat). I was a little disheartened, because I figured the only place that would probably have plus-size swimwear available for purchase off the rack was Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart seems to specialize in being purveyors of the ugliest swimwear you could imagine, and I wonder if conception of their plus-size swimsuit collection began with a deal brokered with Omar the Tentmaker and his rejected fabrics from the Fall 2007 Tent Season.

Nevertheless, I was a determined to end up with a swimsuit, so I went to The Mart anyway and confirmed that they had absolutely nothing worth buying. It seems like they would profit from at least a small rack of suits that women who actually want to MOVE in the water would wear, but the entire display was nothing but suits with tiny straps, no straps, those skirts that are supposed to hide your fat but instead act like beacons of obesity because they're ORANGE! WITH RUFFLES!, and those weird tank suits made out of ribbed material that always look promising on the hanger but seem to lose elasticity the exact moment the fabric hits your body. I bought myself a pair of goggles as consolation and left otherwise empty handed.

Right before I went to bed last night, I remembered I had an old racer back tank suit left over from when we swam a lot during my honeymoon and I fished it out from the depths of my armoire to try it on. I was close to fifteen pounds smaller when I got married, and the suit was marked "Large", so I was really expecting disaster from this encounter with Spandex. Oddly, the suit seems to fit everywhere it counts...nothing is splooging out from the armholes, and my ass is entirely covered by the seat of the suit. I can definitely tell that my stomach is nowhere near as flat as it used to be, and my thighs look like two pale pink bratwursts exploding out of their navy blue encasings, but I can live with that for now.

I'm excited. I'm going to move my body...and with any luck, when I move it in and out of the pool, there will be absolutely no one there to see me do it.

Trudging back in.

I had just one giant bitch of a week, and I decided to wait until I stopped lavishing in my own misery to write about it so I could at least look back with some perspective on things, and so now I'm back...2 pounds heavier but hopefully with some sort of plan for moving forward.

A very heavy depression descended on me this week...one of those where I'm honestly concerned about whether or not it will ever lift, and for awhile yesterdy while I sat in my car in the dark garage for thirty minutes because I couldn't will my body to get up out of it I really didn't think I was ever going to be able to think clearly again. Lots and lots of stress and exhaustion and tension and stupid adult problems with banks and cell phones and insurance companies sort of just kept building and building until I freaked and spent a lot of time eating various forms of fried chicken...chicken on buns, chicken dipped in gravy, chicken shaped into tiny balls and crammed into my gaping maw by barbecue sauce stained fingers. Somewhere in central Arkansas, dozens of Tyson Chicken employees just got laid off because I ate EVERY FREAKING CHICKEN in their farm. Sigh.

And I've spent a lot of time wondering what it takes to be brave enough to do all this. To just go and move your body and eat the right foods no matter how many chocolate cakes are shoved under your nose or how many time your brain says that the world doesn't need another obese person waddling down the sidewalk in sweatpants. I went from actually being sort of brave and hopping on an airplane for Chicago at the last minute to hiding in my bedroom because a picture taken of me standing on the beach at Lake Michigan finally revealed to me just how bad things had gotten. There were no artfully posed "Fat-girl-with-chin-down-quirky-smile-to-hide-the-jowls" shots, no pageant position standing to minimize the waist and obscure at least one hip from the lens, no black on black couture to hopefully detract from the rolls and the pudge...just me in my pear-shaped glory, squinting at the camera and trying desperately to shield myself from sight with my forearms. And if I were serious about any of this, my blogs should've revealed a steady progression of good choices and moderate weight loss every week since January. Now I just have fits and starts and big gaps in the entries where I became an utter fuckup and ate away my disappointments and washed it down with a large Coke.

I wonder what it takes to be THAT person...the one who swims and dances and does yoga in a big-lady Speedo and XXL workout pants and doesn't apologize for wanting to do any of it. The one who says the Curves gym is okay if you want to not do very much, but that I have a right to be in the real gym with the real people, so move over so I can leg press thank you very much. The one who jiggles her way around a few miles of town every morning, no matter what, until the jiggles stop jiggling and the flesh is replaced by muscle and suddenly no one is staring or laughing as she steps into the pool. Where does the self-possession to say "I don't give a fuck" come from, or does it never actually click until you've earned the right in the eyes of everyone else?

I wish I knew...I'd like to instill myself with at least a modicum of bravery and integrity before I end up threatening the entire poultry population of the Central Plains.

Usually if I've been gone for a week or more, you can be assured it's probably because I found myself lost in a junk food induced haze and I've only come out of it long enough to type a plaintive "What was I thinking?" entry before resuming my two steps forward/one step back trudge down the path to physical well-being.

So of course I'm true to form this time and am limping back into Fatblogland with my tail between my legs and a terrible sugar and fat hangover from ten days worth of indulgence. The last week of school is dizzying melange of ice cream socials, potlucks, long lunches at Mexican restaurants, and general hedonism on the part of the teachers and students. I think our PTA was even considering renting a vomitorium for next year's orgy.

Surprisingly, I haven't gained any weight--still holding steady at 221--but my body just feels beyond nasty. I was never sure if I bought into body toxins and cleansing the body, but boy do I ever now. I spent the entire day today languishing on the couch and flipping between Maury and Greg and wishing I were dead. There wasn't anything wrong with me--I wasn't sick and I wasn't tired--I just felt like crap.

I go to Chicago on Saturday, but tomorrow and Friday I'm going to see if I can flush out some of the thirty-seven tons of assy foods I stored in my intestines (lovely mental images, no?). A friend of mine who's battled cancer and gall bladder issues and kidney issues and all sorts of other awful things was given a bottle of that 48-Hour Hollywood Miracle Diet (I know, right?) to drink with foods off the Detox Diet and lots of water. So it doesn't do the harmful 10 lbs. in two days weight loss like it advertises...it just detoxes and lets you keep up your energy while you eat small amounts of stuff like brown rice and miso soup and vegetables and fruit.

I'll catch up with all of you tomorrow, hopefully. Have a wonderful Thursday and stay away from sugar cookies and Kool-Aid at all costs!