Day 9

From now on I'm going to just leave a link to my DailyPlate page each day for the Challenge end of day wrapup. That way I can save more room for the..ahem...weightier posts here and if you want to see what I ate or didn't eat or how I felt while I was exercising you can browse my account at your leisure.

Happy Wednesday!

Tuesday, July 17 Wrapup

Can't We All Just...

It is hot today, as it ought to be for mid-July. But it's that first wave of heat where everyone forgets it was ever hot in the world and we all walk around with fixed grimaces and schlumpy bodies and everyone raises their eyebrows in greeting in a silent, mass proclamation of, "Damn...it got hot."

And with that heat always seems to come that peculiar sense of irritation...the righteous indignation of stepping out of a shower only to find yourself sweaty and mussed again fifteen minutes later. The way no air conditioning can ever hope to compete. The children who suddenly find their twelve-week paradise of summer vacation to be tedious, endless, dragging on because it's too hot to play outside, and lounging in the climate controlled depths of a basement is ultimately every bit as boring as school.

I'm in a bit of this summer funk today, as my sweaty work clothes hang weirdly on my frame, the little wispy hairs escaping my ponytail curl up at the nape of my neck...things that might be romantic in the light of autumnal nostalgia, but right now are just plain annoying. My cats are even whiny...pacing between front door and patio door, meowing pitieously until I open a door for them to leave, and then refusing to budge when the first heat waves off the baking concrete tingle their whiskers. Even the Internet is sluggish today.

So I'm blaming the heat because I was reading several blog posts and forums this morning with my breakfast and now it's lunchtime and I'm still having a problem wrapping my head around the issue:

As a warmup to the Blogher conference in Chicago on July 27 and 28, Laurie Toby Edison, who writes at Body Impolitic announced a panel for BlogHer called "Our Bodies, Our Blogs".

Laurie describes on her site as such:

I’m planning to talk about body image in the broader sense. Obviously I’ll be talking about the issues of fat, beauty, power and health at any size - but body image (as folks who read us know) includes a lot more. When the beauty standard is young, blond, white and thin, it leaves almost all of us out. It leaves most women and men feeling “never attractive enough”, causes endless discrimination, and makes billion$ for the beauty and diet industries. There is so much we can talk about - fat/size, aging, ability/disability, color, “right” facial features, class, children.

Okay, cool. Had I gotten the cash together to book the transportation and a non-skeevy hotel, I would be there with pen and legal pad firmly in hand. I think it's an important subject, I think it's a great idea to bring women together under that particular discussion umbrella, but I'm really having a hard time justifying the motivation and some of the tangential issues with the panel and the movement at large (pun totally intended).

The panel was started by Laurie partially because it's an important and prevalent issue for most women, but also as a response to what she deemed "fat-offensive" items in the 2006 Blogher swag bags (fat free cookies, health water, etc.) And that's fine...I can understand how someone who devotes herself to disspelling the need for such projects would be bothered by seeing them in a giftbag from an organization who also claims to support her causes as well. But I also think it's important to remember that if an organzation like Blogher is going to build and maintain a presence in the online community, they're going to have to accept sponsorships wherever they can get them for awhile, and so maybe it'd be okay to pick your battles from time to time.

And now, for the other more important issue:

As usual, I was a little late in getting my thoughts together on this, so by the time I sat down to write this post, Jen had already read the same forum posts and the same blog entries and had also summed up her thoughts on it very nicely. I won't waste time pointing you to who said what since she already did it very succinctly http://yawwblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/do-i-really-hate-myself.html.

So basically the argument Jen is making boils down to this question: If you're currently attempting to lose weight, and if you blog about such issues, should be you be welcomed at a panel about self-acceptance and body image?

And of course the authors of the blogher posts and the prospective panelists all responded and said "Yes! BUT..." And then went on to explain that eating problems and the subsequent weight loss attempts to correct the eating problems all stem from self-hate, and so therefore aren't really aligned with the principles of the self-acceptance movement.

And this is where my mind started going a little haywire, trying to wrap itself around these arguments. And I need to preface everything I'm going to write from this point on with the following disclaimer:

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT. I am ignorant of body politics. I have never, ever studied feminism or feminist movements. I have very little knowledge of any acceptance movement at all. The following paragraphs are only based on my impressions of the above discussion on Jen's blog as well as my own impressions of the very little corner of the body-image acceptance movement I've read about or seen. Please, if somethign I write about here can be improved by a book or an article or another blog that you think I should read, leave it in the comments. If you think I'm an irresponsible female for never participating in gender studies in college, please let me know who I should start reading so I can become more informed. I would really appreciate that, thanks.

Okay, so.

The body image panel discussion, and Laurie's blog bothers me on two different levels: First, whether or not Wendy McClure should speak at the BlogHer panel because her participation in Weight Watchers was counterintuitive to the body image movement?

What?! This was Brain Explosion #1 for me today.

And I understand (at least I think) that the basic premise is that if you love your body, why would you spend time and money and effort to change it to meet societal expectations of beauty? That any sort of diet and exercise effort should be done for the sole purpose of improving physical well-being and that's it. In essence, if you're trying diet back into your Skinny Jeans, you're too self-loathing to join the ranks of the Body Image Warriors.

I sort of get it...yes. It's the same argument we've been hearing ever since Twiggy bumped out her more Rubinesque counterparts on the cover of Vogue: media puts too much pressure on women to look a certain way and society only values young, thin, white women, etc. etc. etc. so why should we concede that this is how it's going to be?

And you know that battle cry has reached fever pitch when a lingerie model is now telling us to embrace her fat self or shut up:

And so our new Patron Saint Tyra is telling us all to say "So What?" on her show, and she even convinced her audience of fawning women to don red bodysuits with individual body weights proudly emblazoned on each girl's chest (notice in the clips on her show that no one over 160 lbs. made it actually onscreen) and so it seems that the body acceptance movement is gaining momentum in the very arena that caused the problems in the first place. So what bothers me is that the rest of us, unassumingly counting points or writing about cravings on our online journals or slogging away on a treadmill each morning are now no longer part of that community. We're the enemy, we're the backslide to the body image movement because we hate ourselves enough to change how we look.

I absolutely do not understand why there must be a size acceptance camp and a weight loss camp and ne'er the twain shall meet. I think it's stupid, actually, because anyone who approaches this with an ounce of common sense will recognize that the healing process of losing weight, of accomplishing more things with your body than you thought possible at first, of being able to slip on clothes without worrying about what you look like...of those vast improvements in mental health far outweigh and often support the physical benefits of weight loss and a healthy lifestyle. Every single person whose life has been changed through weight loss has talked about the immense sense of freedom they attain while they're going through the motions of working off the fat. They talk about the broken relationshps they've been able to heal, of the new self-confidence, the sense of efficacy...and yes, they gleefully recount the times they've been checked out by someone at the supermarket, or the day that they managed to walk into a non-Fatstore and try on a pair of jeans without tears of shame. And I know the Size Acceptance movement says it should never be about the last part, but it is. It always is, and it always will be. Validation for one's successes, at least in some small measure, will always be an innate human need, and there's nothing that redefining how we're supposed to think about ourselves can do to combat that.

I also understand that another problem with weight loss blogging as a means of size advocacy is that it's a fairly self-centered activity (as Jen admitted in her post). When I write what I ate, what I was thinking when I ate, how I'm feeling, etc., I'm not doing it to inspire anyone at the moment. (Although when people say they draw inspiration from my words, it's a phenomenally gratifying feeling). I'm writing here because I don't have a support network in my own real life, and this is the best way I know to reach the widest variety of people going through a similar process. In my writing, I am not changing minds or effecting societal progress...I know this. But as I considered that, I also realized the other question I have for the size acceptance proponents:

If size acceptance is built upon the idea that you should be comfortable in your own skin, regardless of your weight or appearance, then why be political about it?

Laurie Toby Edison has posted a gallery of her photographs of female nudes entitled Women en Large. From an artistic standpoing, they are brave, bold photographs. They're unforgiving to the women's respective bodies, but they're also respectful, open, and even whimsical in some. But as I looked through each of these...thought about the strength it would take for women like that to strip down and pose and be open to thousands of people viewing their voluptuousness, their rolls of creamy skin, their stretch marks...the primary response in my head was "what is she trying to SAY with all this?"

Because if the purpose of the size acceptance movement is to tell women and men not to worry about what other people think of you, then why publish these photos at all? Or, is the purpose to desensitize the world to the stigma a fat body carries with it wherever it goes? In that case, where does the self acceptance come into play? Why didn't she just give the photos to the women who posed for them so they could enjoy their bodies?

And I wonder about this a lot...whether the size acceptance movement is going awry in politicizing their agenda. I thought about this as I caught a few minutes of the reality show America's Got Talent and watched a performance by the plus-sized girl group The Glamazons. I argue that The Glamazons have made it as far as they did not because of extraordinary talent (their ability to harmonize and exude stage presence is questionable in comparison to the other acts on the show), but because they were, in fact, all fat. The judge's comments were primarily geared towards congratulating the girls on their bravery for appearing in ass-baring lingerie and jiggling and dancing with abandon like the supersized Christina Aguileras they were obviously trying to imitate. So what is this communicating, that these women are being honored specifically for being overweight? It seems to me that size acceptance, in what I understand to be its original form, is completely lost when it's being used as the label for getting other people to accept individuals of size, rather than offering support for anyone who has a problem with their body to improve it and ultimately make peace with it in the process.

I suppose what I'm trying to say, in a very inefficient manner, is that I like the spirit of the size acceptance activists. I like what they stand for, but I do not like their politics. I'm angry that Wendy McClure was made to feel even a little unwelcome because she had the audacity to look for a tool that would help her feel better about herself. I'm angry that talented writers like Jen are told there must be something psychologically wrong for them to want to reduce their body shape and look better. I'm irritated that just because I want to feel that profound sense of relief when I walk into a store knowing that there WILL be something there to fit me, that I've been branded as superficial, body-conscious, shallow for wanting to look a certain way. If that's the case, then label me as such, but I'm fairly certain that in the last seven months of learning how to eat correctly, to vanquish bad habits, to move past all the hang-ups I have about how I am and what I can do, I've done more for my own self-acceptance through dieting than I ever would by simply throwing my hands up in the air and saying "so what?"

And now the cats and I must retire to the patio with a big glass of water and a fan. Because damn...it's hot.

Days 7&8 and Weigh-In

I kept sitting down the last two days meaning to get this entry done, but I got distracted by something shiny each time. I apologize.

Day 7 went very well. The softball game was a bit of a disaster, as my friend Jenny and I found out we were the only non-high school or college baseball players on the time, and we ended up playing our first game against a team who had played with one another for 3 years, and who were using this sort of beer league setup as a way to stay in shape before their next tournament season started. We lost 12-5, but it could've been worse because we were shut out until the 5th inning. I've found my contribution to this particular softball team is going to be as the "thinking man's player" who cannot hit, can't really run or field, but can definitely wait all day for the pitcher to lob balls at me so I can earn a walk and take my base. I have never received so much acclaim from my teammates as I do now when I refuse to swing the bat. So far, it's working for me.

I ended Day 7 at 1550 calories (had cottage cheese, 3 new potatoes, an ear of corn, and some tomatoes for dinner) and the hour of softball for exercise.

Day 8 was also fine, except our gym is still closed with no explanation, so my window of opportunity for exercise was blown when I drove out there and back. I also didn't get a full gallon of water down, and I'm a little surprised that I'm dehydrated this morning. I guess that's why I always felt so deathly worn out during the school year, because I usually only had about 20 oz. of water in a day. Had the usual cereal/fruit/tea for breakfast, black bean nachos for lunch (I am so beyond sick of black beans right now, but I had to finish the can or they'd spoil), and a veggie burger and baked kettle chips and ice cream for dinner. Not a very well rounded day, nutritionally, but I ended up at 1599 calories and 50 g. of fat for the day, so it's fine.

I weighed in yesterday morning at 221.4 lbs. which is a 2.6 lb. loss from my previous weigh-in of 224. I'm irritated I gained that much weight in June, but it's good to be on the losing end of it again.

Days 6 and the first half of 7: On Planning, Sleeping, and God.

On Planning

One of the nice things about the summer vacation teachers get is how very few things can get so easily stretched into much greater amounts of time. During the school year, I have approximately 45 minutes between the absolute last time I can hit my snooze button and still be able to shower and the deadline for when I should be racing into school, a coffee cup clutched in one hand and a shopping bag spilling over with pipe cleaners, clown hats, a Lean Cuisine, and an expression on my face that says, "If someone even glances at me this morning before I suck down this coffee, I swear to God I will quit and go to law school and I will leave the P.E. teacher in charge of Seussical the Musical and we all know how it sounded when he tried to karaoke to Kenny Chesney last September so BACK OFF." So in those dark forty-five minutes between blissful sleep and the moment that my veins are laced with sweet, sweet caffeine, there's not a lot of time for silent reflection and thoughts about the day and wholesome bowls of cereal and grapefruit.

But summer is obviously different, and completely abudant with opportunities to sort of stretch out activities. I wake up at 8:00 but lounge in bed until 9:00. Breakfast lasts through the last hour of Today and well into The View until Elizabeth Hasselbeck's voice starts making me grit my teeth and I turn it off. Cleaning and lunchtime are interspersed with breaks to read books, go outside and give pep talks to my mournful looking tomatoes, painting and repainting my nails...and the day just continues in this pattern of lazy idyll until I fall asleep with everything in its place and the smug knowledge that while my little brother is crawling out of bed into his car for his 7:00 am summer job, I will be able to ignore his morning phone call and crawl back under the covers for at least a few more hours before I start feeling guilty.

So I was surprised, after a bout of near perfection on days 1-5, that Day 6 sort of fell apart by a sheer lack of planning and foresight. Saturday is the day most closely resembling a typical school day for me, since I get up at 7:00 to make it to work before 9:00 with the commute. But since I had gotten used to staying up late and sleeping late, too, getting up with the alarm was way hard, which meant I didn't wake up in time to make breakfast which meant I was starving by the time I drove the hour commute back home which meant I didn't want to wait to eat lunch which meant that the leftover pizza and breadsticks came out of the freezer, made a pitstop at the microwave, and contined straight into my mouth. Strike one. Strike two was the small buttered popcorn and Coke at the movies in place of dinner. Strike three was the four pieces of dark chocolate at my desk while I tried to update drivers for a program that had stopped working. So yesterday, with the addition of no water and no exercise because the gym was inexplicably closed, was not a good day. I need to always remember to plan, plan, plan and make getting meals ready and breakfast set out and my clothes picked before the morning to be a priority or else all my good intentions will probably get pushed aside in favor of easier things or...gasp...fast food. And I don't want that to happen.

On Sleep

Despite all my opportunities for rest and relaxation, I haven't been getting the best of sleep in the past few weeks. I go to bed around midnight, wake up at 2:30 and then stay awake until 4:30 for seemingly no good reason at all. I've been having these bizarre hot flashes as soon as I get into the bed where my neck feels like it's 400 degrees and no amount of undressing or ponytailing or keeping a fan on my neck seems to help. So when I finally can't stand my fake menopause symptoms, I wake up and walk around and read and do stuff for a couple hours until I cool down and then it starts all over again, but at least by the time I can't stand it again it's time to wake up. We got a set of eight lovely pillows for the wedding three years ago, but I guess after three years those pillows couldn't take it anymore because they're all now roughly the consistency of heavy fruitcake and sleeping on one of them feels like being propped up on a concrete block. So I went to the store and got two different kinds of therapeutic pillows...one designed to keep my head at the right angle and one designed to wick away body heat, and I switched out my bedspread for a lighter quilt and everything seemed to work splendidly last night. So splendidly that I slept straight through my alarm and missed church by a good fifteen minutes this morning. At least I have one issue on my not being able to wake up for work problem fixed, though.

And On Church

Apparently my little requirement on my 30-Day Challenge about going to church raised some eyebrows, because I don't really seem like a churchy kind of girl. And it's true that I'm not, really. I got an email from someone who also pointed out how insane it is to say that showing up at church is somehow going to make me lose more weight, and if that's all there were to this challenge or this blog then I would entirely agree. But I've said all along that this stuff isn't just about fitting into a size 8...if it were I'd have 79 posts worth of food and exercise logs and careful measurements and all that good stuff. But I want to get better in a lot of different ways, and so for me going back to church is part of that.

When people say they were raised in the church, it's usually a figure of speech, but I'm at least 40% completely truthful when I say I was raised IN the church. I went to daycare at a church, I spent nights there at choir practice and handbell practice. I hung with my grandma and my great-aunt as they quilted and crocheted and glued and sewed every Monday afternoon for our annual bazaar. My mom worked as our church secretary for seven years, so I was there a lot even if I didn't want to be.

And when you show up to church more than once a week, and when the adults who go there parent you the same way your mom and dad do, and when you eat meals there and make your friends there and get married there, church becomes a vital part of your life even if Jesus doesn't. And that's kind of how it was for me; I loved the traditions and the liturgy and the music and the people at church, but I never quite bought into the New Testament. And I didn't know where I stood on Jesus and Heaven and how all it took was belief in salvation to actually get into Heaven.

So, since the OBVIOUS choice for anyone doubting their faith was to marry a minister of that very faith, that's exactly what I did. And so I became a minister's fiancee and wife and went to church every Sunday without fail. And as my marriage got worse and worse and we separated and I had to start telling people who asked, "I'm getting a divorce. He cheated. He's a minister. Yes, that's weird." And so in the process of getting angry at my husband and extricating my life from his, I started also really getting mad at all the other hypocrisy that existed in Christianity and the people who claimed to love God and do his work.

So basically, for me, going back to church is a way for me to figure out whether being mad at my husband needs to translate at being mad at God, too. Because I want to believe in something. I think you need to. The greatest people in the world...the Gandhis and the Mother Teresas and the Dalai Lamas all believe in something. I haven't quite figured out whether or not that something needs to also come with the Methodist potluck after the late service and The Bible and Jesus and all that, but I'm working on it. And I made sure to start attending a church that is working for social change as well as healing through faith, because that's important to me. I like being part of a body of people who want to work together for the environment, for gay rights, for urban renewal...all that bleeding heart stuff that really gets me excited and fueled to take on the rest of the week.

So do I think that praying to Jesus is going to magically reduce my ass? Nah. And I don't even know if reaching out to God as a way to gain strength to exercise and eat right is even a viable option for me like it was the first time I lost weight. I just needed something I could do that felt familiar but also is going to challenge me to interact and think and grow into a more responsible, proactive path in my life, and that's why I decided to go back to church.

Except not today because of the terrific therapeutic pillows. So since cleanliness is next to Godliness I'll have to do that to make up for it. Then our first softball game tonight, wherein I will prove that I am a horrible, horrible athlete.

Wish us luck!

Day Five

I sipped a cup of jasmine tea tonight, brewed the right way with loose tea leaves and an infuser and a little bit of patience. I'm not really a tea drinker unless it's something sturdy like black tea that I can drink with milk and sugar and pretend is coffee, but sometimes when things slow down, I like to make and linger over herbal tea.

The first time I'd ever had real jasmine tea was nearly two years ago, the first week after we moved to Kansas City in August of 2004. Some old friends from college were meeting up and invited me to tag along. I drove in from the far south suburbs, nervous about the way my JC Penney couture and boring haircut and equally dull life would clash with my friends and their bohemian, artsy roommates and acquaintances. And I thought it was funny, as I parked my car on the side of an oak-shaded road in the part of Kansas City where the gracious neighborhoods just begins to brush against the ghettos, how far removed I felt from a lifestyle that my friends still carried on...how I used to be so flamboyant, so crazy-wild in my own way, so utterly hungry for the future and how fabulous life could potentially be. I wished more than anything, as I walked up the stairs to the decrepit but still magnificent porch of the erstwhile mansion that now housed my college student friend and her roommates, that I was so ashamed of who I had turned into and what she would think of this quiet, mousy, dumpy woman who rang her door.

The evening was remarkable for me as a series of firsts: first taste of Middle Eastern cooking that would begin my lifelong quest for the perfect saffron rice recipe...first cup of French press coffee at the little Westport coffeehouse known for its flamingly unique clientele and the fact that it trumped the neighboring Starbucks for business every day it had been in existence...first tango lesson...first cup, then two, then five of jasmine tea on her leaf strewn porch as we wrapped ourselves in down blankets and watched an unexpectedly early autumn wind whip rainbursts and tree branches across the yard in the twilight.

And it was also the first time I admitted to anyone I was desperately unhappy about the way things were transpiring in my life. My oldest friend had just proposed to his girlfriend and asked me for marriage advice, and in searching for something wry and witty and helpful to say, I finally just broke down and told the truth...that I felt trapped, unfulfilled, terrified that nothing would ever change. That I had considered leaving him but was afraid he couldn't take care of himself. And as we sipped tea, and talked through that night, and assuaged our respective fears and concerns about the future, I remember thinking that this night was a truly extraordinarily bright spot in a long stretch of pretty dark days.

I don't know what I expected my friends to do after the night we met. Somehow I wanted us to form a bond over our secrets and insecurities--kind of a broken hearts club that we could use as an excuse to meet, to interact, to heal. Selfishly, I wanted a reason to drive up to Westport each week, wanted a buddy to push me into meeting interesting people, wanted to become interesting again myself. But as old friends tend to do, our promises of staying in touch and getting together often fell by the wayside; my oldest friend proposed to his girlfriend and went back to Austin for the school year, my college friend stayed busy and eventually moved to Switzerland to live with her boyfriend. And I didn't see another soul besides my husband and my family and my coworkers for seven more months, because it had just gotten that dark. Day after day after day of despair and unhappiness, with just that one bright spot--"the night I had jasmine tea", as I framed it in my mind--to illuminate my memories.

A few days ago, I walked into my county courthouse with the intention of filing for divorce. I had researched the process of filing a no-fault, no-lawyer divorce petition on the Internet, and assumed that walking into the circuit clerk's office with a driver's license, a checkbook, and a winning smile was all I need to have to start my path toward dissolving my marriage. The very unamused assistant at the front counter informed me that I should've also proffered the appropriate forms with the identification and the money and the smile, and when I asked her where I could get them, the numbers of eyes simultaneously rolling itoward the office ceiling probably would've challenged the Guinness World Record for bureaucratic exasperation.

"You'll have to consult with an attorney about the proper forms." Her eyes never glanced up from the fish tank into which she was irritably tapping food flakes.

"But I don't want an attorney, and the Internet said you'd give me the appropriate forms here."

I could hear my voice approaching howler monkey pitch like it does when I realize I look very stupid in front of a lot of people. I found out later that if an employee helps you find documents, or helps you prepare them, then they can be considered a contributor to the overall case and can risk being subpoenaed for the hearing or even sued for bad information by a litigious person. The pro se divorce FAQ I consulted included neither this information, nor the fact I had to show up with my own papers. I turned and walked out quickly, embarrassed and annoyed that something I thought would take thirty minutes, something that would be worth a pithy blog entry at the end of the day, actually required effort and seemed a little complicated.

So this morning at 8:00 I woke up, got online and peeled a banana while I looked for divorce petition forms on the Internet. I had a bowl of cereal while they printed out--all seventy-three pages of information. I drank a large coffee while I read the instructions. Three hours later I was ready to finally fill in blanks.

After seven years of college and grad school, countless term papers, research projects, technical writing portfolios, reviews, essays, and comprehensive exams, I can honestly say that filling out the paperwork for divorce was the most complicated thing I have ever done. The resources available for an individual trying to navigate the judicial system on their own are scarce, and the ones available for Missouri residents all linked to the same Missouri Divorce Code...a labyrinthinian mess of legalese, statutes, and absolutely no useful information at all. I finished the petition, the social security verification, the proof of residency, the financial affadavit, and the request for service at 3:00 pm, packed the last three years of my life into a manila folder and went back to the circuit clerk's office with what I hoped was the appropriate paperwork in hand. I handed her everything I had, sort of half-begged her to blink twice or tap a pen or something to let me know she had everything she needed to make the hearing packet (she didn't fall for that), and then was informed that I needed to come back with 120 dollars in two money orders and I would be partially on my way to a divorce. I went through six security lines, had my purse inspected four times (by the same security guard who recognized me EVERY SINGLE TIME but apparently couldn't bear the idea of not fondling the lid of my Chapstick as I went through). I wrote down Google search strings and website addresses for pro bono family law advocates for two women who had come in searching for help and advice and who were near tears and close to being kicked out of the courthouse for expressing their frustration in the loud, defiant way that low income people from the country get when they can't get the help they want.

And then I had to call my husband, because I had lost the apartment number for his address and he can't get served if they don't know where it is.

I expected things to go better on the phone than they did, because a month ago my husband called to ask why I hadn't gotten around to filing for divorce yet...he wanted to move on with his life and I was holding him back. So, you know, I thought he'd be glad, and he seemed okay when I hung up the phone after I thanked him for the address. Then he called a second time, and a third, and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth time, and with each call he got increasingly agitated and irrational, as is the pattern with my husband. He emailed three times, threatening suicide in one, proclaiming his loyalty and love in another, and demanding his scuba flippers and a set of music books back by the end of this week in the third. During his final phone call, he broke down sobbing and asked me how I got through the last year and what he could do to handle this better...that he wasn't getting any better.

And I really wanted to tell him that I hadn't done so great. I didn't have a secret, except that I failed most days and I was miserable most days, but that I had to start small and work on the tiniest things before I could even conceive of feeling normal again. It was a good day back in August after he moved out when I remembered to feed the cats, and it was progress in December when I could go out in public alone and not start crying at the couples and the lights and the intimacy and the hope of the holidays. I was proud of myself in January for starting this blog, and in March when I started making friends and going out once in awhile, and in May when I began to feel good about my job and the way I reached out to kids and other people, and in June when I got my hair cut and I remembered that I can be attractive if I try and two weeks ago when I finally...finally started not being angry at my friends or angry at my parents or angry at God and myself for all the shitty things that have happened. And then there was this challenge on Monday and how each day is a little better than the last one, and each day some part of me that got ripped open and was raw and scarred for so long finally gets to heal a little and that I can finally look at the future and not be too terrified of it to move...

And I really wanted to tell him all that, but he wouldn't have believed me. I wouldn't have believed myself if I had heard it last year. It's not my place to be his best friend or his shrink or his emotional support right now and I had to tell him that even though I just wanted to let him know that if he can forgive himself, it'll be okay. That he wasn't a bad person...that we both screwed up in our own ways. But I don't think it's possible to tell someone who's not ready to heal on their own that it's all going to be fine.

And so, for the food part of this entry, since I was at my desk all day assigning value to assets (few) and debts (copious) I forgot to eat. I had the breakfast and then at 7:00 when I got home after some errands and a run to the movie store, I didn't want to make anything. So I cheated, and I got a veggie pizza and some breadsticks. But it wasn't because I needed to punish myself for my life mistakes like I used to, or that I needed cheese and grease to fill some sort of emotional void; I just didn't want to cook. So I had two (okay, two and a half) pieces and a couple of breadsticks and I put the rest in the freezer and it was what it was. I had pizza. I didn't binge. I don't hate myself. I ate and I'm full and I'm satisfied. And tomorrow I will have oatmeal and weird Asian vegetables and whole grains and it'll all be fine.

A few months ago--probably a few weeks, even--I would've labeled today a "dark day". Maybe one of the darkest in awhile, because of the significance of the divorce filing and my husband's pain and my pain and the fact that it's only the first Friday of a month-long challenge and I already broke my main rule, but there were also good things about today, too. I opened a savings account at my bank, and I planned it so I'll have enough money to turn it into a money market account in a few months. I paid down a third of my outstanding debt with a little bit of money I saved up over the summer, and I doubled my payments for the rest of my contract with my debt people. My debt manager lady said she was proud of me and I think she really meant it when she said it. My mom said she was proud of me, too. My first statement from my mutual fund annuity came in, and my little 100 dollars in the fund is already chugging away at building interest. My loud, trashy neighbors have moved out and were replaced with a little family that's quiet, sweet, and who have children who bounce beach balls in the backyard and who like to hang wind chimes from the privacy fence. I think I'm going to bake them cookies.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that dark days do not have to be monumental if I don't want them to be. Today is just a day. Day 5 of 30, or Day 194 of 365, or Day 9,684 in my life so far. It had some bad things, it had some good things, but as long as it teaches me something to help make Day 6 an even better day, then it counts as a positive. I don't want to live a life where the good days are buffered by weeks or months or even years of darkness anymore. I don't want to sustain myself on pride or anger or self-pity. I want to be able to eat pizza and have it just be food. I want to keep learning lessons, and having After School Special types of moments where I get sheepish and realize the world doesn't have to be as difficult and upsetting as I'm making it. I want to just keep...breathing.

I'm sort of glad I drank jasmine tea tonight, even though I didn't realize the significance of it until I wrote this blog. It's finally time to let the old "jasmine tea night" from two years ago slip into the past, where it belongs.

Placeholder

Oops, I thought I had posted an entry last night, but it's floating around somewhere in cyberspace.

Day 3 was fine with food, exercise, and water. Saw people, went outside. Had a good day.

Day 2 Wrap Up

Food: Was excellent, actually. Daily Plate has me at 1551 calories and 52 g. fat. I really need to work on getting the fat down, but usually non-meat protein is higher in fat than, say, chicken or fish. Oh well.

Breakfast: 2 Kashi Go Lean Blueberry Waffles; 1 tb. peanut butter; 1 medium banana; black tea

Lunch: 1 c. whole wheat spaghetti; 1/2 c. basil and garlic pasta sauce with 1 Boca Italian Sausage diced into it; Salad w/reduced fat feta, veggies, and garlic and rosemary viniagrette; apple; water.

Snack: 1 string cheese; 1/4 cup pistachios; 1 handful blueberries

Dinner: Eggplant Stir Fry in a Citrus Soy Glaze (**see below for details); Brown rice; 1/3 roasted red pepper; diet cream soda; 3/4 c. Edy's No Sugar Butter Pecan; handful of raspberries; 1 square dark chocolate.

Water: 144 oz.

Exercise: Got my ass kicked by Turbo Jam and Turbo Sculpt. I heard people rhapsodize about it before, but I really had no idea....fantastic workout.

Saw People: Yup.

Went Outside: Yup.

Cleaned Something: Oh, yes.

**Okay, so my cooking philosophy usually involves staring into my refrigerator and thinking "What would look pretty on a plate? What's just about to rot that I can salvage? Hey, nacho cheese might taste really good on a bagel." I usually don't have a lot of luck with recipes, because I'm oppositionally defiant to them and in purposely not following the measurements, I create crap. So I do my own thing and sometimes it ends up pretty good, like the eggplant stir fry I made. The picture is below, and if you click here, it'll take you to a Google doc with the recipe I made for it. Bon appetit.