Today will be better

Yesterday I was in the throes of PMS

Yesterday I ate like a maniac, shoving down the carbs instead of pitching a fit -- justified or not.

Yesterday Scott went with me and we sold my father's car -- hopefully the last thing I have to do before the lawyer can finish wrapping up the distribution of stuff. I miss my dad. I've been an orphan for a while now, and while the grief has softened, settled in, it is still there -- still lodged in my chest.

Having Scott helps. He is so patient with me, when I need it. I really am lucky.

By the time we got home, I was out of energy. I watched Simone which had Pacino in it and some very cool visual stuff and some relevant commentary on acting and not acting and responsibility to the work and to the public. It sort of reminded me of the Truman Show and, I was pleased that when I looked it up on imdb it listed the same writer for both movies. Coolness. (Or uncoolness, depending on whether or not that leaves you thinking I spend entirely too much time watching movies on Jasminelive.online and not writing . . . shut up, you . . .)

Anyway, after that I took a double dose of Nytol and went to bed.

Today will be better. In fact, it already is.

Hello, PMS!

I haven't been anywhere near the scale since the Banishing, but my clothes feel loose on me, so I'm hoping that come measuring day at Curves, I'll have at least lost some inchese, if not some pounds. Either will be a miracle, considering what I just ate for lunch.

I'm soooo over that now

Ha.

Anyway, we're testing Adobe InDesign and XML importing at work today so I'm being productive. On the outside. On the inside, I'm grooving on the soundtrack from the Ya Ya Sisterhood -- some great stuff! And dying to get home and back to my collaging.

I've been pulling pages out of magazines, and gathering materials at Pearl and Michaels, etc., like a mad fool. Last night, for the first time, I sat down with a pair of scissors and the big piece of clear plastic cardboard (did I mention just how cool?!) and started going through stuff.

There were some things I'd pulled out that I could not, for the life of me, figure out why. So I put those aside. There was also some stuff that still struck me as super cool and I am relieved and thrilled to find that what's ending up on the cardboard is very close to what I have in my head.

I'll try to remember to get a jasmin live picture of it tonight -- so you can see the mess in process. I guarantee that it won't look like much to you, but to me -- ah, to me it looks like a book. :-)

And it's a LOT more fun than PMS.

Skinny Cows, Orange, and The Big Bad

So yeah, I didn't weigh myself this morning. I don't care who told you I did, they lied. :-)

No, really, I didn't. I DIDN'T. The Scalegod has been ceremoniously banished to the other bathroom and I didn't go anywhere near it this morning, I swear. I have no idea what I weigh today. (Why yes, it is making me crazy, thank you for noticing . . .)

And speaking of crazy-making -- just what the hell does Giant have against me? For over a week now, they've been out of the Skinny Cow fudge bars (90 calories) and the Klondike Slim-a-Bear ice cream sandwiches (130 calories) and six-packs of Diet Sunkist (0 calories)!! (They have Diet Sunkist in the big 2-liter bottles -- but I can't bring that to work -- it all goes flat before I drink it.) Next thing you know they'll stop carrying Lean Cuisine's Five Cheese Lasagna. Or the New York Style Texas Toast Lite.

I know, convenience food much?! But I almost always eat a humongous healthy raw-veggie salad for lunch and I try to get in at least one veggie and fruit with dinner. I'm not as consistent with that as I am with lunch, but I'm working on it. So don't think toooo badly of me, 'kay?

As far as writing goes -- I've been trying to catch up with the writer's list where I first met The Wonderful Cindy -- and where I picked up the fabulous collage idea -- and Cindy and one of my other favorite authors, Barbara Samuel, were discussing Second Draft of My Life.

Barbara said she adored that book and that it had one of her favorite lines "(paraphrasing): Everyone is always asking me if my books come from my adult cams life. Nobody ever thinks to ask how much of my life comes from my books."

Break my heart why don't you. I've been missing that. And the only way I know I've been missing it is that I used to have it. I used to have it, a long time ago, but for the last 6 years or so, in the place where it used to be is just this Big. Black. Hole.

I've managed, by hook and by crook, to pull together most of the rest of my life -- with two glaring exceptions: my weight and my writing.

God, just typing that paragraph sends shivers down my spine.

The only way I can describe the loss of my writing is to compare it to someone removing a color from my field of vision -- I can't see orange anymore and I don't even know that I can't see orange anymore because it's gone. I miss it, if I think about it, but it's easier to just not think about it.

So most of the time, I forget it's missing. Meanwhile, my weight just climbs and climbs. You look at me and see someone in trouble.

I stop looking at me.

Wherefore art thou?

It was weird this morning, not weighing. It's going to be REALLY weird tomorrow, since, for the last 8 weeks now, I've been updating my Official Weight on the sidebar on Fridays. But not tomorrow! I am resolved.

I do see a glitch in this, though, in that come the 22nd I'll be in lovely Nevada with my kidz and not at my Curves getting weighed. I'm going to ask them tomorrow if they could do it my last day in town, instead of after I get back.

And of course, no matter when they do it, I'm SCARED.

Yeah. Like I said, tomorrow morning's going to be really weird . . .

Bottom line

I need to lose weight. Even if the Scalegod's working with the Inner Fat Lady and I go weeks and weeks without losing an OUNCE, I can't give up. Because if I give up, I'll GAIN weight.

Makes sense, right? So why do I have to keep reminding myself?! I mean, it's not like I was at a stable weight before I started trying to lose. No, no. I was steadily gaining weight. So even if I don't lose another ounce and spend the rest of my natural days (Ye God, kill me now!) at 196.0 pounds, just by sheer virtue of not GAINING weight I'll have lost like, a hundred million pounds. Or something. You do the math.

Anyway. I have no choice but to regroup and attack this thing from another angle. This is my third week of Curves. I presume they'll weigh and measure me at the end of a month. I weighed in at 195.0 my first time on their scales. So I vow, here and now, before the Scalegod and the Inner Fat Lady and a jury of my peers, to not weigh myself again until the end of the month at Curves. I think that's the 22nd, but I'll check on that when I go tonight.

That's right, you read it here. I'm banishing the Scalegod from the master bathroom. Stupid stupid Scalegod. Other than that, I'm not making any big changes to my efforts. Although, I am seriously SERIOUSLY considering Weight Watchers. Again.

* * * On a Related Note * * *

Lee, Cindy, thank you for your encouraging words here. Keeping this blog has been good for me -- turning the power of my love for words against my problem with my weight. But the support and encouragement I've been getting is such an enormous BONUS. And Cindy, thank you, again, for going above and beyond with your private words of support.

* * * On Another Note * * *

I stopped by Pearl Arts & Crafts store on my way home yesterday. Did you know they sell crack there? Seriously. I went in looking for a base for my collage and wound up with 3 different base boards (one is plastic cardboard -- CLEAR plastic cardboard, I don't have words to explain how incredibly COOL this shit is); several (9, 10, whatever) sheets of cool paper (metallic, mesh, translucent), feathers; a rotary cutter; a mat . . . and just paging through magazines, cutting things out that catch my eye is dredging up all kinds of story-related energy.

It's been soooooo long since I felt story-related energy. This is so good, it hurts.

Love this?

You know what I'm talking about -- just about every weight loss guru, information site, etc. tells us to learn to love our bodies NOW. But this is the body that ate 1500 calories a day for 7 days in a row, worked out at the gym 3 of those days, and walked 8.5 miles 1 of those days, and didn't lose an ounce. Not one ounce.

And I'm supposed to love it? In a word, NO. In fact, I'm pretty actively HATING it right now. And that makes the struggle to get back into healthy mode even harder.

Yesterday I was mostly good. Went over my calories by about 300, but at least I entered them into the CK site (which I didn't Sat or Sun). And I did drag my ass to Curves yesterday -- even though that was just about the LAST thing I felt like doing.

Today I'm on calorie target and I'm drinking water. But I have no faith anymore. The Scalegod this morning said 196.0 and I didn't even question it. It'll take a miracle to get me back down to the dreaded 194.0 by Friday. And if I don't get back down there, it'll take a miracle to keep me on program. I just don't have whatever kind of strength that is -- intestinal fortitude or whatever. I need to see progress or I lose heart and stop fighting.

And this IS a fight for me. I mean, if I liked to count every bite that goes into my mouth and I exercised for fun, I wouldn't weigh 196.0 pounds.

Whatever.

A friend of mine, Elle, just got her doctor to prescribe Meridia(sp?). She's trying to lose weight for her wedding in October. She lost 5 pounds the first week and thinks it's The Answer. Is it? Drugs scare me -- particularly drugs that are mainly targeted at women because, from what I've seen, they rush to market without thorough testing and -- LATER -- they find out, Oh, yeah, it can eat holes in your heart. Sorry about that. But hey, you lost weight right?

And while we're at it . . .

We can pretty much throw today out the window, too.

I caved. I totally wimped out. 7 full days of hard work and no loss? I am not an animal! I'm a human being . . .

On the writing side, however, I find myself all caught up in a new project. (Picture me beaming here.) Bea, one of my in town writer friends, is also a member of a writing list I used to be active on, and some of the writers there were talking about doing collages based on their stories. So now I find myself collecting images and objects and putting together a concept and, the truth is, it's giving me a whole new perspective on a story that I've had percolating in my head for over a year now.