DESPERATELY SEEKING

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a lot of different things. Things I want to do. Things I want to write. Things I want to buy. Things I want to change. Things that may be too expensive for me to keep. All of this is surrounded with questions. Should we get another dog? Should we try to rehab the chicken coop? How do I get someone to repave my driveway for a reasonable price? Can I remove the bushes in front of the house and have a porch installed? Am I ever going to do something about my kitchen? Should I enroll in electrician school and learn how to rewire my own house? I think I should teach a yoga workshop about shoulder anatomy and straps?

That last sentence doesn’t really read as a question, but when I say it out loud I tend to illicit a questioning tone.

I am restless. Truly, restless. Even when I am supposed to be sleeping and resting, I am lost somewhere in my own thoughts. Just last week I was so lost in my own thoughts while on my morning building walk, that when I made it back to the first floor I didn’t know what floor I was on and could not remember walking all of the second floor. I am now up to three different wake up times in the night. Sometimes it is because I had that dream where I have to use the bathroom in an unconventional bathroom setting but mostly it is because I heard a noise and then I have to spend the next hour trying to go back to sleep while thinking about the noise. Before I know it, Josephine is tapping me with a paw and it is almost about time for my alarm to go off. Last week, Josephine started tapping me exactly one hour earlier than the alarm in anticipation to the time change. I am sleeping. I am just not sleeping well.

This is probably why I have finally fallen for one of the many hormone treatment ads that I am bombarded with on a daily basis. I poked around on the company website and then I went in search of some non-sponsored reviews. As a result, I discovered a community of women who all had similar stories of restlessness, no sleep, scattered thought and mood swings (I didn’t really mention those but…). This community had some very insightful and helpful reviews in regards to the product I was considering and after reading through many discussions, I was convinced. I filled out the survey, had a very brief chat with an online doctor and am currently waiting the arrival of an estrogen body cream along with a dietary supplement of DHEA. If I see some significant changes, I plan to contact my regular doctor to see about getting this stuff through my insurance.

I’ve been slow to admit to myself that my symptoms were not all in my head, a perfect example of how the medical industry has been gaslighting women since there was a medical industry. It doesn’t help that perimenopause is the great unknown of medicine with confusing symptom descriptions like “frequent or infrequent periods.” Perimenopause and Menopause are the epitome of Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to dole out grant money to research it. No doctor wants specialize in it. No one cares about a woman’s body unless it is still capable of reproduction. Perimenopause is that gray timeline where a woman could still have a baby. While there’s a whole lot reasons why a could is not a should, no one’s going to do anything that would exclude the possibilities. Women in America do not have rights to their own bodies.

I’ve had four periods since the start of the year. Yes, that’s two a month but so far zip all nothing but an occasional right ovary cramp for this month. I don’t think I’m having hot flashes, but experience moments when I feel hot. It’s nothing dramatic. I get hot, take a layer off and five minutes later I’m so cold my teeth start chattering. I have no energy yet I still do all of things. And since I have no idea what forty eight is supposed to feel like, I chalked it all of this up to seasonal depression and inefficient heating and air systems. Honestly, for all I know those things could be the problem. I guess I’ll find out soon enough once my prescription arrives.

I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here looking at puppies.

SPIRITUAL RETREATING

Here’s what I thought would happen. I thought I’d spend Sunday, sipping mushroom broth and apple juice and being hungry. I thought I’d sit on my yoga mat and meditate and then journal about my hunger before starting to drink the medicine that would clean out my guts. I imaged that the clean out part would be like the beginning of one of those spiritual retreats where everyone drinks a psychedelic mushroom tea that makes them vomit profusely before seeing visions of the person they can or want to be. Except instead of vomiting profusely it all comes out the other end. The next day, I would euphorically walk into the GI Diagnostic Center ready for my first colonoscopy.

That’s not what happened. Well some of that happened. I drank mushroom broth and apple juice. There was no yoga or meditation. No journaling and certainly no vision quest. I drowsily walked into the GI Diagnostic Center, not euphorically. When I walked up to the receptionist, she called me Penelope and I said “yes!” At least two more times before the procedure, I was addressed by the wrong name. Then my nurse couldn’t find a vein for the IV, which is not surprising. Nurses have struggled with the veins in my arms on good days. IV in, a run down of what was going to happen next confirmed and they wheeled me to another room for the colonoscopy. The anesthesiologist explained that he was putting something into my IV line and that it might burn. I said “Ouch.” and then I woke up in another room with a different nurse asking me if I wanted to wake up now.

I almost told her “no.”

Ten minutes later, I was walking out the door and Michael and I went to brunch. Michael dropped me off at the restaurant door with instructions to put our names on the wait list while he parked the car and then remembered that I was still high and groggy. So he added “Just don’t do anything crazy." to his instruction list. I must have put a recognizable name on the list because eventually we were seated and I rested my head on the table while we waited for food. My plans for the rest of the day was to eat and then go back to bed and sleep for four hours, but I only ended up eating. When we got home, I crawled into bed and closed my eyes, but I didn’t sleep. Instead I listened to Rosie (robot vacuum) bang around the house. She never gets to do my room because I shut Josephine up in there during the day. This time, since I didn’t close the door all the way, she managed to break into my room. While she clumsily moved around my floor, I thought about the time I was under anesthesia. The thing is, I don’t remember even closing my eyes. I didn’t see colors flashing behind my eyelids. I didn’t dream. Seriously no concept of time because when the nurse asked me if I wanted to wake up, all I could think was I just closed my eyes. All I could tell you about the mere seconds I was under is that it was if I was wrapped in a weighted blanket and placed in a room devoid of light and sound.

And I want to go back to that room.

I want to spend more time in that space. The nothingness of that space was soothing. This part of all the above was the only thing that matched my idea of spiritual retreating, not because of profound visions, but because of the lack of visions. In those seconds of time I was nothing and even though I felt heavy, the idea of being nothing for a little while was freeing. I wasn’t a caregiver. I wasn’t a career woman. I wasn’t a yoga teacher. I wasn’t a photographer or writer. I wasn’t a daughter. I wasn’t living up to other’s expectations of who I should be. I wasn’t living up to expectations of who I think I should be. I don’t need visions of the person I want to be or can be. I need to be nothing. Now, I’m not saying that I could have stayed there forever, but what a relief it was to be nothing for that short amount of time.

I never ended up going to sleep. Michael came in to check on me later in the afternoon and I was watching garbage TV. He asked if I’d slept at all and I shook my head no. “Not at all?!?” he asked. “Not at all.” I replied. Anyway…cancer screens have all been completed. Colon is fine. The dermatologist this morning said that my skin looks fine. The consensus for everything is three years. In three years, I get to repeat all of the tests and scans.

In three years, I get to experience nothingness.

I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES ABOUT HOW MUCH I WEIGH

For many of you, this is back-to-school time. You move back into a routine of getting the kids out the door and onto the bus in the mornings. Your schedules shift to accommodate after-school pickups and activities. That happens a little bit with me too because of Michael, but for the most part it’s not a big change. This time of year for me means annual health check-ups. In the last three weeks, I have been probed by my gynecologist, had two vials of blood taken from arm, and consulted with my general practitioner about the results of that blood work and preventive screenings that I need to consider for my current age.

I dread this time of year just as much as every kid going back to school.

I go to these annual check-ups expecting to hear the worst like abnormal cells, crazy glucose levels, and high cholesterol. High blood pressure is now something I get to the add to the list of hereditary conditions along with diabetes and brain disorders. Every visit, I wonder if this the year that the doctors decide to add a new medication that I must then adjust my life around. Aging is a glorious yet, medically lucrative, process. It’s great. I highly recommend it. This year, all of my tests came back looking good and healthy. My blood pressure was excellent and almost perfect. My cholesterol levels are holding at a moderately okay level. Overall, both doctors were pleased with how I am doing and neither one of them said anything about my weight. In fact, when I brought up the subject with my primary care physician, she brushed it off and said “You’ve been on vacation. It’s probably all water weight.”

WHY AM I THE THE ONLY ONE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT THE NUMBER ON THE SCALE SAYS?!!?

In the last three months I have not been as physically active as I was this time last year. I just wrote that sentence and started to write about the things I am doing, when it struck me that I am as physically active as I was this time last year. What the actually fuck, Cindy!?!?! I get almost 12,000 steps a day. I do a twenty to thirty minute strength training class Monday through Friday and I get on my yoga mat almost every day for about an hour. I stand half the day at work and often have dance parties at my desk. I’m eating ridiculously healthy meals and less of it because I set a timer for twenty minutes and force myself to slow down and chew my food. I am a moderately healthy individual.

So why am I so obsessed with what the scale says?!?!

I have no memory of a time in my life where I wasn’t thinking about my size.

THE SELF

A few weeks ago, I had to get new headshots taken at work. I dressed a little bit nicer than usual, put on some makeup and tried to have a nice hair day. I really needed a haircut at the time, but that wasn’t on the schedule for another week. Anyway, I thought I looked nice enough. I smiled for the camera man, took directions from the camera man and when I got my prints to review and choose my favorite two, I fell over dead. I didn’t like any of the pictures of myself. When did I get so fat and puffy?!? Why does it look like I have a sunburn? Why didn’t I take the camera out of that man’s hands and take the picture myself? I chose the two least horrible pictures and plan on never needing to use them for anything.

When Kelly was putting together class introductions for camp, she emailed me asking me for pictures of me teaching yoga. I scrolled through all of my pictures in storage and came up with zero pictures of me in the act of teaching yoga. I finally sent her a picture of me sitting in meditation and said “I don’t have any pictures of me teaching yoga, but I promise that I am a yoga teacher.” Kelly responded with “how is it even possible that you do not have pictures of yourself?!?” She mentioned it a few times during camp about how there are no pictures of Cindy, please take pictures of Cindy. Which she did. About fifty percent of Kelly’s pre-camp setup pictures are of me making faces at the camera.

It has come to my attention that I have gotten into the habit of never stepping out from behind the camera.

It’s been a while since I did a 365 Day Self Portrait project and thinking about starting up another round of this makes me cringe. I do not have good feelings about my body right now and the internet knows this. I am inundated with ads on weight loss and hormone replacement drugs targeting women of my age. I reached my peak of puffiness at camp and immediately put Michael and myself on a cleansing diet for the next ten days to sort of reset our bodies. Self Care Circle meeting happened a couple of days before we left for camp and one of the things Roze talked about was spending at least twenty minutes to eat your meal. It did not take me long to figure out that even though I was eating healthy meals, I was eating way too much of that meal in one sitting because I was swallowing my food whole. Twenty minute meals and cleansing diets are baby steps in my anti-puffy plan and do not have overnight results. So yeah, I am still reluctant to step in front of the lens (or onto a scale).

The value in doing a photo a day of one’s self is not lost on me. The first year I did this project, I learned to like myself or at least to stop cringing whenever I saw a picture of myself. I weighed the same or even a little bit more than what I weigh now. I was less fit then and didn’t do near as much exercising as I do now. I have gotten out of the habit of seeing my own face. I don’t even really study it in the mirror as I’m brushing my teeth. So the few times I see myself in photos, I am shocked by appearance. I only half the feel as tired as my face and body look in pictures. Maybe the part that shocks me is how much a photo of myself reflects how I am feeling physically. My brain might be all raw-raw-ree, but my body has some aches and it no longer jumps up and down. I can see a lack of enthusiasm in the photo version of me.

And I don’t care for it.

I can see a few fixes for this. The easiest fix is to keep doing what I am doing, but get out from behind the lens and in front of it more often. I need to get a good look of my unenthusiastic self so I can recognize the moments where I can see real authentic enthusiasm on my face. Because I think I’ve been faking enthusiasm for longer than I’d like to admit in a whole Fake It ‘Till You Make It kind of way.

BUTTERNUT KNEE SOUP

Today is the first day of Fall and Kansas City has done what it does for every season. It flips some ginormous switch to the name of the season and the weather behaves accordingly. The switch has been flipped to Fall, so now it is a cool crisp temperature outside. Whoever is in charge of this switch has yet to figure out how to coordinate the temperatures with the colors yet, because the trees are still green (mostly). Mums and pumpkins have been available at all markets now for weeks and at least two houses on my street have their Halloween decorations up and ready. This is lovely and a nice change of scenery and all, but I am never ready for the cooler temperatures. Nor am I ready for the end of this month, but here we are rolling right on into butternut squash season.

Most people are all gagga for pumpkin spice. I have no feelings. I just know that I get more butternut squash recipe ideas this time of year and Michael is not a fan.

Next week, I go back to the doctor to discuss my options in regards to my knee. I had the MRI on Monday and as soon as I got to work, I loaded those images into our image processing software and made 3D views of them. We’ve all defied some HEPA laws geeking out over the inside of my knee at work because this is what scientists with random MRI data do. Except we are all cell biologists or physicists and don’t really know anything other than basic human anatomy. I’ve scrolled through my knee pictures with the group looking over my shoulder, all of us saying things like “ooooh” and “wooooaaa” without being able to point to any real problem. The nurse on the phone with me this morning told me that I have a torn ACL, so of course the first thing we did was revisit those pictures to look for anything ‘torn’.

When I got the news about my knee, I had a serious moment of pulling myself together. All I wanted to do was lay my head on my desk and cry. I didn’t want to talk about it. When I did talk about it, everyone was surprised because I’m moving around so well. It’s true. I’m not in any real pain unless I try to pull my heel to my rear end, which I think is normal for a lot of people. Josephine and I are walking every morning and I’m walking at work. I’m teaching yoga and with the exception of some minor adjustments, it’s going well. The nurse encouraged me to continue doing those things. No sudden twists from the knee or side to side basketball moves. No jumping. Probably no roller skating. I didn’t ask that one on purpose for fear of a ‘no roller skating’ order. It’s my options that range from physical therapy to surgery that have me near tears.

Maybe I can put surgery off until Christmas break?

Seriously, all I can think about is how to live my daily life while recovering from knee surgery. I am calculating in my head that if I take a week at Christmas, I would be more mobile by the New Year and I could teach yoga on crutches. That’s also a whole week where I won’t need to be driven to work or have to do the grocery shopping. I can throw our dirty clothes into the basement and then sit on my butt and scoot down the basement stairs to the laundry. It is possible that I could also reverse this scooting action while dragging a laundry basket of clothes up the stairs with me. Rosie the robot does all of the vacuuming now, so there’s that. Really if I think about it and plan correctly, I can teach just about all yoga poses from a chair. The weather will be too cold for dog walks or scooter rides by then. Hell, maybe we will even have a new couch for me to lounge on.

I am very very very aware that things could be so much worse for me right now.

METABOLICALLY READY

I skipped lunch on Sunday because I was driving home from a weekend at Mom’s and once I’m in the car, I am reluctant to stop until I get home (Dad trait). Also, the food options for me on the road between Tulsa and Kansas City are not great options. When I got home, Michael said he wanted bbq. He made us a dinner reservation for Jack Stack (one of KC’s most popular bbq joints) after checking the menu for Jack Stack, who has a surprisingly decent amount of fish options. We shared an appetizer of fried mushrooms. Then, when my order of bbq trout with loaded (no bacon) baked potato and garden salad arrived at our table, I ate all of it. I left half the garden salad because Jack Stack’s ‘dinner’ salad is truly dinner sized, but still. Michael only ate half of his sandwich and sides, while I just continued eating on a giant plate of food until I felt ill.

That night, I’m not really sure what was happening in my dream, but someone who felt like my brother gave me a hot dog from Katz’s Deli. When I unwrapped the hotdog from the wax paper, I discovered a perfect New York hot dog, but a vegetarian hot dog, not a meat one. I was overjoyed and hugged this brother like person with all my might. I woke up wanting all of this to be real. It is not. The only thing I can eat at Katz’s Deli is the egg salad sandwich. It is the most superb egg salad sandwich I have ever eaten and now I want one with a gallon container of their pickles. Then I want to consume tomatoes and mozzarella cheese until my stomach bursts and ohmygod I do not know what is happening to me. It’s like I am a hibernating breed of animal that just looked at the calendar and realized that winter is not all that far away and is now saying to itself “Oh no! I’m not metabolically ready for winter!”

For some reason, I found myself watching the first episode of the Fantasy Island reboot on FOX. One of the guests was a news anchorwoman who had been depriving herself of food for fear of getting too fat for TV, but it was a habit she formed in her early teens. The result of this was that she always felt hungry, always felt empty inside. On the island she was able to eat anything and all that she wanted without gaining an ounce. She immediately sat down to elaborate meals, full of all of the things that she never allowed herself to eat, but with each meal came a memory and an interruption from her step-dad, the man who planted and watered the seed of her idea of food and her body. Each time, she pushed the memory away and the more empty she felt inside. It wasn’t until she finally confronted the memory that she felt full and content. She left the island with an intent to find more joy in her daily life and that sometimes that joy comes in the form of a cupcake.

I wonder what memory it is I am suddenly trying to push away. What is nudging me that I need to confront? Where did this sudden space come from that I feel needs to be filled up with something such as more cheese?

The August session of Camp Wildling starts this week. I am not going, but I still recieve all of the updates and newsletters regarding camp and it makes me wish I was going to camp. Yesterday, Kelly posted a list of last minute suggestions for the campers. Number seven on the list was in regards to an impromptu grief ceremony at the ancient Indian mounds that are in the camp. She was floating it out there for other campers because sometimes sharing what is in our grieving hearts can help us heal. It was a ceremony that I participated in when I was at camp and seeing this posted on the list made me tear up immediately. I had not expected to have any part in this ceremony. Then Kelly approached me and said that she and another camper where going to the mounds for a grief ceremony and invited me to go. It was very last minute. I had nothing prepared to share. I didn’t know what this grief ceremony was going to look like and was not prepared for any of it. Kelly started by sharing her story and then she “Cindy, will you tell us about Chris?” Maybe two words came out of my mouth before the rest of anything I had to say was taken over by a rush of sobs. My body made sounds of grief I had not heard since Chris’s death. I lost complete control of myself and I didn’t even know I had that kind of sobbing left in me after all this time. It was like a black sticky tar ball lodged between my kidneys had for some reason chosen this moment to wiggle itself free.

Am I trying to fill that space back up with food? Unintentionally maybe.

It is the habit that once you clean out a space, to fill it up with new stuff. It is as if one cannot handle empty spaces. Except if we take some time, if we just let ourselves feel unsettled with the empty space for a few minutes, I think we will eventually get used to the emptiness. I’m good with this concept of thinking outside of my own body. In fact, empty spaces are my Xanax, but internally is a different story. For one thing, I come from a family of non communicators. We internalize all thoughts and feelings. This is why I am better at writing about it then talking about it. My grief for Chris is just the easiest box or boxes to reach in this attic of internalized crap, but getting rid of some of those boxes, makes room for sorting through others. So, I’ve curbed my appetite.

I’m leaving space for more mental sorting.

WHAT I'M READING

I am currently reading two books at the same time. Well… really three because yesterday Amazon was having a sale on Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folk Who Eat and I bought it with the intent of having it on reserve, but I’ve already read through the first chapter. I am somewhere into chapter four of Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, a book I should have read a while ago, but am only just now getting to for a book club. This book club that may never actually become a book club because none of us seem to be able to find a clear moment in our current schedules. You should read my latest texts to Robin about planning an OKC visit. My inability to nail down some dates for that trip was embarrassing. The third book, which I’m only five pages into, is Michael Pollan’s This Is Your Mind on Plants. I actually picked this one up for research purposes and should be setting the other two books aside for this week because I have plans.

I’m just going to leave that last sentence openly vague.

It kind of feels like I’m back in college because I am usually not a person that reads more than one book at a time. I must finish the book, no matter how terrible of a read, before I can pick up a new book. This has always been my reading method with the exception of college. Then I would be reading multiple books at a time, but not fun books. In fact I didn’t read any fun books between 1997 and 2000. As soon as I turned in my final revision of my master’s thesis, I started devouring books. I was going through books so quickly that Chris had to put me on a book budget. He was all “look, I love books too and I love that you love books, but we need to pay the light bill.” After Chris died, I couldn’t even get through a magazine let alone a whole book for at least a couple of years. It was like I had to teach myself to read again. I am nowhere near the devouring book level that I was before Chris’s death, but I am reading and finishing books again. Though still mostly reading and finishing one at a time. Three books at a time is not my normal.

I think what’s happening here is that I am putting myself back in school in a sense. I am majoring in the Inner Workings of Cindy. I did not necessarily pick these three books up for pleasure, not that I don’t enjoy reading them. It’s just that they are kind of serious, need to be studied kind of books. I am already regretting that I bought the digital copy of Daring Greatly because I want to put sticky note tabs in places and write in the margins. Because of course, if I am ‘going back to school’, I want to be the valedictorian. I probably need to add The Gifts of Imperfection to my reading list while I’m at it. The truth is that I have put myself back into the classroom because I am craving (and probably in need of) some internal changes. It’s all part of that making space for myself thing I’ve got going. Cleaning out my closet and my brain.

Maybe I’ll write a post some day about openly vague sentences.

GOAL WEIGHT

I am currently reading Phoebe Robinson’s Everything is Trash, But it’s Okay. Phoebe Robinson is a comedian/writer that if you haven’t read any of her essays, you should be reading her essays because she is smart, insightful and hilarious. I read You Can’t Touch My Hair last year and felt like this is one (of many) of those books you give to that one ‘friend’ who just doesn’t get the concept of white privilege. Phoebe Robinson is definitely on my list for that imaginary dinner party. She is also adorable and just might make my ridiculous Life List as Hug Phoebe Robinson. I am not far into Everything is Trash. Actually, I got stuck on page four for way too long because I couldn’t get past the idea of a Google search involving David Bowie and pets and if I too should try that Google search. I eventually made it to the essay titled I Was a Size 12 Once for Like Twenty-Seven Minutes where she talks about body confidence and the first two sentences grabbed ahold of me so that I nodded my head in understanding as I read the whole essay.

Since I was fourteen, my brain has been consumed with the ways my body is not good enough, meaning not attractive to straight dudes and/or failing to meet fashion-industry standards. Even now, at thirty-four, and with a deeper understanding of how we’ve been conditioned to have unhealthy relationships with our bodies, I still remember what I weighed eight years ago as if that’s important information.

I had some birthday money to spend at Anthropologie. They were also having a big 50% off sale items sale, which I can never resist. I didn’t really need anything, but if you tell me the price is going to be FIFTY PERCENT off an already marked down price, I am going to find something that I suddenly desperately can’t live without. In this case, it was a pair of pants, but because of the sale, the only sizes left were those that were not really my size. I bought the closest to my size and just hoped it might work. When they arrived, I immediately ripped open the package and tugged them onto my body. I struggled with buttons and the pants felt snug. I frowned, but then put them in my closet with the idea of making them ‘goal’ pants. Later on, Michael asked me about the pants. I told them they are a bit snug, but that’s okay because they can be something to aim for. He gave me a questioning look and said “Really? You think you need to lose more weight?” I shrugged and said something about losing a few more pounds. Then he asked me “What’s your goal weight?” and I couldn’t give him an answer. I don’t have a ‘goal’ weight because in my head, I can always stand to lose a few more pounds.

And that is FUCKED UP.

That says to me that no matter what, I will never be the “right” size or weight and the fact that this is in my brain, makes me furious. I should know better. I do know better! There are long stretches of time when I do not think about my weight or the amount of cheese I’ve eaten. I don’t step onto a scale everyday or even once a week. Last week, I missed two days of exercise because I had a sore throat and felt icky and I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt for skipping the rowing machine or the barre class on those days. I do feel bad about cancelling my yoga class, but I’d rather be at my best when teaching yoga, than sickly. The thing is, my weight is not forefront in my mind. The awareness of my size is just hovering in my periphery, waiting for just the right moment to swoop down and make me feel like shit. I know I’m not alone in this way of thinking because all women have had to grow up in this male set/fashion industry standard.

Here’s where Phoebe Robinson’s essay really resonated with me. She went on to talk about how all of us have these feelings, but then she goes on to talk about how we do not support each other outside of our own feelings. Phoebe listed some statistics from a study that shows how obese women are less likely to be hired for jobs, even though they are well qualified to do the job. She went on to write about how often obese women are dismissed and ignored just because of their size and that is some straight up trashiness right there. It got me wondering if I do enough to support those around me. When was the last time I expressed my beliefs that all bodies are yoga bodies? Reading Phoebe’s book of essays forces me to look at my own problems and issues while reminding me that all of us are struggling and how we can lesson each others struggle by supporting, hearing and encouraging one another. That means doing more than just ‘liking’ someone’s Instagram photo. For me, this means creating a yoga class where every body feels welcome. The Zoom yoga space I am creating hopefully does this.

I put those pants on Saturday and there is absolutely nothing wrong with how they fit my body. Have I lost weight since the last time I tried them on? I don’t know. I don’t think so and I don’t care. Whatever my current weight is at this moment? That’s my goal weight.

PRIMA DONA

Prima dona

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The only bit of exercise that I have managed to be consistent with during this time of isolation has been yoga. My yoga practice has morphed into a beast of a practice. My teacher training is in Samatva yoga. Samatva is sanskrit for balance and the idea is that your yoga practice should be a balance to your daily life. Ooh boy have I ever taken this to heart. My daily life has become one of sitting at my desk in front of a computer all day. As a result, my yoga practice is all moving parts with many many rounds of sun salutations. I incorporate some mindful, isolated movements to transition between poses. My favorite sequence is one that has me flowing from a standing split to a squatting balance pose that looks like a Russian dance move. From there I move to my sit bones and roll down to my back. Then I roll up back into the Russian dance move and then back up into standing splits. I high-five myself every time I manage to do this sequence with smooth transitions.

With the exception of an occasional dog walk, I have not been doing any kind of cardio type exercises. I used to spend thirty minutes on an elliptical machine or a treadmill at least three times a week. Twice a week I attended a class that incorporated cardio with strength training. Every day I would walk the whole building and the outside before getting my first cup of coffee. I got at least 10,000 steps in a day and always took the stairs. Now, the only time I’m taking stairs is to the basement to do laundry. I kind of let the whole idea of doing a cardio exercise slide while we were building our retaining wall. Digging and hauling dirt is a cardio strength class all on it’s own, but the wall is done and I’m still sitting on my ass most of a day. The dog walks have become inconsistent due to weather and meetings and I have even stopped pacing around the house. I have to do something before my heart seizes in my chest.

Since advertisers now have the ability to read your mind, I kept seeing an ad for a streaming fitness channel that offers an Xtend Barre class (as well as ads for onesies because they know I have a thing for them). Every day I would see this perky blond woman, cheerfully doing ballet inspired exercises and it completely sucked me in. It doesn’t really require equipment and I don’t have to wear shoes. There’s a cardio aspect and most of the classes are thirty minutes. Plus, I can pretend to be a ballerina. One thing I noticed was that this class doesn’t require a large space. I can probably do these exercises in my cubicle. This is important because when I go back to work, things are going to be a lot different. The gym will probably stay closed and I will be restricted to my floor. No moving between floors or running up and down stairs. I can still walk outside but again, this is limited by weather. I had been considering signing up for Disney+, but decided that my $8 a month would be better spent on a channel that encourages me to adapt to the changing landscape. There are fitness classes other than Barre that Michael can do or would be willing to do, so we can all benefit here.

So, every morning for the last two weeks, I get up and do thirty minutes of Xtend Barre, a mix of ballet with light weights. I do not have a chair that is tall enough to be my barre. Instead I use the heavy tamper we purchased for the wall construction. If I need to prop my foot up on a barre, I use the TV credenza. The women on the screen are all using one or two pound weights. All I have are five and ten pounders. I use the fives until my arms feel like their going to burst into flames and then I set the weights aside and just move my arms around. Sometimes in the middle of my hundredth pleat, I start to have flashbacks to my days in dance class. I am no more gracefully suited to the ballet barre today than I was at age three, but I persist. I do feel like my thighs and arms are getting stronger and if I use the wide angle lens when I take a selfie, my legs look really slim. The other thing that I really like about this class is the diversity of women taking the class in each video. There are all shapes, sizes, colors, and fitness levels represented, which is so not often the case in workout videos or gyms or yoga studios. This diversity creates a more welcoming environment and makes it easier to show up to class.

I may not be the Prima Dona on the stage, but I think I could probably bench press the Prima Dona. And I did go ahead and sign us up for Disney+.

UNDER

Saturday

8 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Saturday"

January first most people jump into a workout/diet routine in an attempt to start the New Year off right. I buy new underwear. Usually. This year I’ve been dragging my feet a little on this because I used to buy my underwear from Victoria Secret. I don’t really feel comfortable supporting that company any more, but here’s the thing. I know what sizes to buy at Victoria Secret. You would think those sizes are universal. Nope, they are not because that would make sense. So this left me staring at the wall of underwear in Target with no clue of what to get or what size was the right size. Then the Cabbage said “why don’t you take one of them out of the box and try them on over your pants.” And for some reason I thought “hey, that’s not a bad idea.” So I did and I was all “okay, these size sevens fit.” and I tossed a package of four into our cart. Then I walked over to the bra section where I squished and felt every bra looking for something soft with some padding, but not too much padding. Michael pulled out one and said “what about this one?” It had wide side panels that reminded me of an ace bandage, which I commented on. Then Michael said “It’s supposed to hold in your side flab.” Then I punched him in the face.

Not really.

I’m doing my best to believe that he doesn’t really think I need something to ‘hold in my side flab’ except it isn’t the first time he’s mentioned my side flab in that last two weeks.

The most discouraging and depressing part of this experience was the overwhelming selection of underwear advertised to hold in your rolls. Any and all of them. Back rolls, hip rolls, belly rolls. Women are not supposed to have any illusion of rolls. We have to smash ourselves into shape wear that promises to give us a universal slim shape so that we all have the body of the mannequin in the store front window. Women have been raised on the idea that their rolls are ugly and shameful. I felt like maybe instead of underwear shopping, I too should be jumping into a workout/diet routine. Then I got mad because the double standard is ridiculous. Where is the shape wear for men? Why isn’t there a wall of under garments in Target devoted to smashing the dad gut? Where’s the section for man bras? Why doesn’t society dictate that men have a ‘smooth silhouette’?

I wear a padded bra, not because I want to give off the illusion of having larger boobs, but solely so my nipples are not visibly poking through my shirt. I used to wear plain old t-shirt like bras that were soft and comfortable, but on one too many occasions ended up with my arms crossed over my chest after some guy pointedly stared at my chest while saying “Cindy must be cold.” When Michael wears padded underwear it’s for comfort while riding his bicycle, not because some woman might point at his crotch and say something about the weather. A friend of mine recently posted about how tired she was of wearing a bra everyday and she only wears one now because men would stare at her. Dear Men, in case you were under the impression that women wore bras for the sole purpose of support, you are wrong. We wear them so you won’t blatantly stare at our boobs. Except, bra or no bra you still do it because bras are no longer designed for just support. They’re designed to lift and enhance and give cleavage. They are designed to encourage men to stare at our boobs. It’s a Catch 22.

I’ve waisted years of my life wiggling into shape defining pantyhose. I wore oversized t-shirts and refused to tuck a shirt into anything in order to keep my belly covered. I also spent a many a meal, carefully pushing food to the side of my plate to make it look like I ate it. As if that one bite of mashed potatoes was going to keep me from acquiring that so called perfect silhouette. It has taken me so many years to learn to love my Buddha belly, to be proud of my hips, to not be ashamed of this body. For the longest time, I felt like I couldn’t even walk around my own house without a bra on because what if I had to answer the door? Fuck that. That’s all bullshit and this is my year to get rid of the bullshit. I have rolls. I have had rolls since the day I was finally big enough to come home from the hospital as a baby. I eat healthy. I do thirty to forty minutes of cardio five days a week. I get on my yoga mat for an hour or more five to six days a week. You want to talk about my side flab? Let’s talk about my side plank instead and how strong and beautiful it is when I hold that pose. Shape that.

I will say, though, that I am now the proud owner of four pairs of underwear that fit well above my belly button and are saggy in the butt because one probably should not take sizing advice from an eight year old.

I ATE THE CANNOLI

Naked

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Naked"

She jogged past me as I sat waiting for the light to turn green. The woman was wearing a pink tank with matching tiny pink shorts. A giant contraption on her wrist, held her phone. Maybe the contraption only looked giant because of her ultra skinny arms. The woman was all bones and muscle. I had been watching people happily running along the Trolly Track Trail up to this point in my drive. I looked at each one of them while thinking that maybe I could do that and maybe it just doesn't look like something I want to do. Running is such a big thing here. I see people running all the time. I think about it and my heart sinks a little. I don't see any joy in the action of running. 

I watched Mrs. Bones And Muscle cross the street and jog on. The light turned green and I continued moving forward while still running thoughts around in my head. Maybe I should make year forty two the year of lean? What if I added an extra thirty minutes or hour to my cardio and maybe started lifting some weights? I should stop eating dinners and take the dog for more walks. I thought about that roll I noticed I was sporting in the leggings I had on the day before. Then, I arrived at my destination, a Saturday morning yoga class I've started attending. The teacher is silly and she makes me laugh. It is an advanced class, meaning all the students know how to modify without cues. Not everyone can do Hanumanasana with out blocks. It is a good place for me because it lets me challenge myself without the feeling of being in a competition. Failing at yoga 101. 

I move through the poses in class and I as lower my body to the floor for salabhasana, I can feel my ribs pressing almost painfully into the mat. I come into Hanumanasana and I feel like I am this close to being fully into this pose with out the blocks. I feel long. I feel okay about being more than bones and muscle. For now. Tomorrow I will put on a pair of pants that are the tiniest bit tight around my waist or I'll step onto the scale and see that there is no change from the last time I stepped on the scale and I will be back in the old spot of self loathing. I will be forty two years old in about six months and I am still struggling with liking this body, being proud of this body, not being disgusted by this body. I am the only one who thinks I am fat. Well..me and maybe one other person. 

I know that Mrs. Bones And Muscle looks in the mirror on some days and thinks the very same thing about herself. I know that this is a universal feeling. We are all caught up in the same tornado of mixed messages. Size ten here is a size twelve over there. Clothing stores still use 'plus' size to label clothes and lump them together in one section of the store, usually in the back. You find that section only after you have walked past skinny mannequins sporting slim and fitted outfits. At the same time we are being told that all sizes are beautiful and being healthy is more important than being skinny. Being healthy doesn't sell magazines as well as articles on 'how to lose ten pounds in ten days' or 'five easy exercises to bust belly fat'. Then there are all the scientific reports on calorie restriction and mice longevity. By all accounts, healthy is skinny and there are as many companies out there making money off of selling this idea as there are people willing to buy into it. Lowering peoples' self esteem is a very lucrative business. 

God, I hope we are doing a better job of teaching the next generation that healthy really is more beautiful and what healthy really means. Hell, I wish I was doing a better job of setting a good example that healthy is beautiful. This is what I really should be doing. Not adding more cardio or weight training. Maybe I should be setting a better example, at the very least to myself. Stop feeling guilt for the rare occasion when I eat something not so good for me. Maybe I'll eat more cannolis and bread. 

SHE BAKES A PIE

Kiss

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Kiss"

Yesterday was my annual women's wellness visit and mammogram. I took the day off because I never know how long the waiting for the exam and the actual exam will end up taking. Plus I had some errands I had been putting off that I figured I'd actually do, like taking in the giant box of records and books that has been taking up the trunk of my car for the last three or four months to Half Price Books. Let's face it. That box has probably been in my car for five months. I'm living like a bag lady. Any way, I knew that I would have to step onto the scale at the doctor's office. Mondays have become my weigh in day at home, so after getting out of the shower and before getting dressed, I stepped on the scale at home. 176.4 pounds. I frowned at the number, but think "Okay. That's fine." It's fine because when I started the whole diet thing, that scale read 180. The frown was because just last week, that scale read 174.5. Weight fluctuates. I get it.

I'm trying to not be obsessive about the numbers. I am consistently about 200 calories short of my daily calorie allotment (except for that one crazy Friday when a veggie burger and fries put me over by 875!). I'm eating lots of green things and very few grains. I'm sweating on the treadmill now. I keep telling myself that I am healthy, which feels like a total bullshit lie, but what ever. I finally make it into the doctor's exam area and the nurse tells me to step on the scale. I cringe, but I know what the scale should say. I prepared myself for this. It should say something around 178 because now I'm wearing clothes. The number 180 pops up on the digital readout and my heart sinks. I frown my way into the exam room and pout while the nurse takes my blood pressure and checks my heart rate. I am not cheered by the fact that the numbers for both of those things are perfect. All I can think about is how I've got to be doing something wrong. 

My doctor comes in and we discuss life and changes. I tell her things are pretty normal except my weight. She looks at the numbers and starts to tell me that it's not a big deal, but then she sees the past numbers and then makes a face and says "well..." I tell her how I'm exercising and tracking my foods and I just don't know what to do any more. She looks at the food I've logged and says "here's the problem. You're not eating enough protein." She goes on to tell me that she knows how hard it is to get enough protein in a vegetarian diet. My doctor is respectful of my choice to be a vegetarian and she doesn't push me to start eating chicken or anything like that. Instead she tells me to eat more yogurt and cottage cheese. She finishes up the exam, declares that everything looks great and sends me down for my mammogram with something new to obsess over. 

I rummage the internet for women and protein and vegetarian protein options while I wait for my boobs to be smashed. Side note/rant: It is the year 2017 and we don't have a better way for screening for breast cancer other than to smash a boob as flat as a pancake and x-ray it?!?! I was offered the new 3D imaging option. I don't know how those images are taken, but my insurance doesn't cover that (more effective) option for breast cancer detection. And I have super good health insurance. But screening for breast cancer and insurance and women's health deserves an entry of it's own. Instead, I'll tell you about sitting in a half shirt that snaps down the front in a waiting room panicking about the idea of having to eat chicken and looking back at all the food I've logged in the past few weeks. It distracted me while I clung to the mammogram machine with my boob sandwiched between two plastic plates. 

Afterwards, I wandered around Half Price Books, waiting for them to go through all the records and books I had brought in. I ended up in the health section, scanning book titles for inspiration or insight or something. There's nothing wrong with eating chicken. It's just that the whole idea of eating it, is unappealing. I eat fish. I looked up the amount of protein in a can of tuna and considered eating a can of tuna a day, like a cat. I could eat a can of tuna a day. Maybe. Not really. I continued to look at things I've been eating and the amount of protein in each thing. I'm going to weigh 200 pounds by this time next year. I feel myself sinking deeper and deeper and all the ugly voices win out. I'm fat. I'm always going to be the fat one. I'm doing everything wrong. I'm so lazy. I should be running half marathons every day. If I was more athletic, more fit, I wouldn't have this problem. If I were better, smarter, enough. I suck at life. 

Finally, I hear them call my name to come to the front desk and collect my money. I check out and head over to Target where I buy cottage cheese, Greek yogurt and some organic peanut butter. I think about buying tuna or protein powders, but I don't even pick any of those items up off of the shelf. Small changes. Get just enough to curb the full on freak out for this moment right now. That's what I did.

And then I went home and made a lemon meringue pie from scratch because fuck you diet. 

EYE SEE YOU

The eyes have it

4 Likes, 2 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "The eyes have it"

Last week, I finally went to the eye doctor to see about getting a pair of glasses that I would actually wear on my face. I only put on the pair I own now when I am going to seminar and I need to see the screen. I forget to take them with me when we travel and the results are that I am the last person to see a license plate or a street sign. This is bad because we always try to collect all fifty states when traveling and I am also the navigator. Looking down at something up close through my current lenses makes me want to throw up. I'd probably wear them more maybe if I wore them on a fancy chain around my neck, yet more proof that I am eighty, but I don't.  So I went to the eye doctor and told her that I wanted bifocals and the biggest frames they had. 

I figured that if I had giant frames, I wouldn't notice that I'm wearing glasses all the time. Then I discovered that I could get trifocals which would allow for an intermediate focus between up close and far away and I fist pumped the air. Golden Girls, here I come! I also found out that I have a scar inside my left eyeball (probably from changing and aligning a mercury bulb on a microscope). The scar is not a problem because it's outside of my field of view. Some times, science is dangerous. Did you know that Marie Curie's notebooks and diaries are still radioactive and that you have to wear a protective suit and gloves to read her stuff? Dangerous. 

The woman helping me pick out frames was very patient as I tried on practically every single frame in the office. She showed me one brand that allows you to pop off the sides and swap them out. I said "Oh! They're like the Swatch of glasses!" and then she looked at me funny. I asked "Did I just make a reference to something not many people get?" She said "No, I get it. It's just that you're not old enough to get it." Then we had an argument about how old I was and I was like "LOOK WOMAN! I am here for TRIFOCALS!" She looked at my chart and then at me and said "I never would have guessed that!" I told her she was very sweet, but the birth date on my chart is, indeed, correct. Then we had a nice chat on growing older because she's several years older than I am.

I decided to go with the very first frames that I had tried on. They're big and kind of clear with a slight cat eye shape. Hopefully by this time next week, I'll be sporting a new pair of glasses that makes me look like my Mom circa 1978. Too bad I won't be as skinny as she was then. 

THE FACE OF A TEENAGER

Friday

11 Likes, 2 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Friday"

My face has decided to break out as if I am fifteen years old. For the last two weeks, I've been using a mixture of ground flax seed and tea tree oil to wash my face with every night. I was going to tell you all about how it's doing wonders for my skin, but I woke up this morning with a giant painful zit in the middle of my cheek. I've sat at my desk all day thinking about how I was going to pop it when I got home from work. It will be the second thing I do when I get home (the first is to let Josephine out and baby talk to her about what a good puppy dog she is). The pimple could be the result of a clay max I used on my face the day before, ironic since it was marketed for acne prone skin. 

Two weeks ago I woke up with large welty bug bites all over my body. There's a bite on my neck that I at first thought was a hickey. I got kind of thrilled about that since I'm forty one years old and I've never had a hickey. It is a bug bite. Not a hickey. Since I was the only one being bit, I decided that I had scabies or bed bugs or both. This was also around the same time that we found two ticks on Josephine and I washed one tick off my body in the shower. I treated the dog with her flea medicine, washed all of the blankets and vacuumed my mattress. I've started coating myself in lavender oil before going to bed. I smell like someone's crazy old spinster southern aunt. Her name is Aunt Myrtle and everything in her tiny bungalow is floral print and covered with lace doilies. There's a vase of dead roses on the side table in the foyer.  

The bug bite thing happens to me every Spring, even before I had a dog sleeping in my bed. If you look back through my Google chats with Talaura, you will come across multiple conversations where I fret about bed bugs and Talaura talks me off my psychosis ledge and assures me that I do not have bed bugs. Or scabies. I am just that blood type that bugs find to be delicious. It might be because I've avoided DEET products for years because DEET on my body produces a wicked itchy rash. My skin has been sensitive since birth. The acne thing though is fairly new. I mean I've been known to get a pimple here and there and I sure do love those Biore strips, but the current version of acne is new to me. Oh, I am fully aware that this is a thing that starts to happen at my age. It is just one symptom of a few others that started showing up about a year ago. 

I know what this teenage brand of acne is signaling and it doesn't include a ticket to prom.

THE STATE OF THIS BODY

Do I need to go on a diet?

"Do I need to go on a diet?"

I had my yearly women's health exam the other day and no, I still haven't made an appointment to follow up on my cholesterol. I did get the regular blood pressure/height/ weight vitals and all of those except one looked good except one. I bet you can guess which one made me cringe a whole lot. Let me tell just how dumb it is that I am slightly depressed about my weight. I now weigh what I did when I was with Chris. Exactly. When I reached a hundred and seventy five pounds after being one ninety, one eighty, I thought this was the smallest I would ever be and I was happy. I was content with that weight. I was even comfortable in that weight. I felt good about myself. Now I go to put on a pair of jeans and the either won't button at all or they are tight and uncomfortable and I get mad because those jeans were not cheap. 

I've taken to wearing pants I can do yoga in all the time. In fact, I was in Target the other day looking at pants and the first thing I asked myself was "Does it have an elastic waste band?" The second thing I asked myself was "Can I do you yoga in them?" The answer to both of those seemed like a yes, so I bought the pants without trying them on. They're wide legged pants made of a light denim. I tried them on when I got home. Then I realized I'd just bought the most unflattering pair of pants for my body. I said "fuck it!" and put on a flowing top, which just made me look like a beach ball. I don't care because I got on my mat and they were very comfortable while running though all the sun salutations. 

Which brings me to my next point or tangent or gripe. I'm not sitting around like a lump all day. I've been wearing this Up band, tracking my steps and sleep and sometimes even my food, for over a year now. The goal is ten thousand steps and for the most part I crush that goal with over twelve thousand steps a day. I am on my yoga mat daily and I even push myself to do things like forearm plank for a whole sixty seconds at a time. I do four of those at least! I can walk up four flights of stairs without wheezing or something on my body hurting. I don't know about five because I never have a need to go up to the fifth floor. The point is, this body is fit. It's strong. It can bend itself into a pretzel. There is nothing wrong with this body. Except for the ten extra pounds of fat centered around my belly button. 

When I told Michael about my weight, he said it's because I'm no longer single. "What? You want to go back to eating like you did when you were single?" He's under the impression that all I ever ate for dinner where sleeves of crackers, which isn't true. I cooked evening meals for myself so I'd at least have a healthy lunch the next day. Really, that hasn't changed. The only difference I can see between eating when I was single and now is that I probably eat more than two meals on Saturday and Sundays. I don't understand how not being single means adding ten pounds to my body. Maybe I'm just fooling myself into thinking that I should be any smaller. Maybe it's time to let go of the things in my closet that are too small and just accept that this is the size I am. I was happy there at one point in my life. The whole "I was happy" part sort of echoes in my brain. Then, because I am my own worst critic, I call myself a loser for giving up. I fit in those clothes once! By golly, I can fit my ass into them again. And if I toss them and go up a size, what's stopping me from going up another size and another? What if I finally manage to get it all under control and I tossed all my size smaller pants? Then I have to go buy more pants. it is the dumbest slippery slope. 

I hate pants and I'm just about over this Upband tracking device. 

I DON'T WANT TO CHEW MY VITAMIN

Thorny

"Thorny"

The alternative title for this post was The Noise My Nose Makes, because, holy goats, I kid you not, the other night it sounded like someone was dialing a rotary phone inside my right nostril every time I inhaled. The next night, as I rolled over onto my other side, I felt all the snot in my face shift over to the new side. It made the kind of sound that I image glaciers make as they gouge their way slowly across the earth. I am currently breathing through one nostril. That's actually progress. Wednesday morning I woke up with a sore throat and my right ear aching. I spent the day on the couch mindlessly watching TV. Thursday morning, I got up thinking I might go to work, only to have my body slam back into bed and declare otherwise. Friday morning, I got up, showered and dressed for work only to have my body slam me back down into bed again and say "Not yet." 

So for three days in a row, it has been just me on the couch with sometimes the dog, sometimes the cat or sometimes the cat and dog. I'm kicking myself now for not setting up a camera to do a time lapse. I'm sure it would look very cinematic with me laying in the same spot with the same blank stare while the animals moved around me. Sounds like a scene from a depressing Bridgette Jones kind of movie.  I've been watching a lot of TV. A lot of TV. In three days, I've watched the series finale of Mad Men (Which I don't recommend watching on the anniversary of your husband's death just because of that scene with Birdie and Don talking on the phone about her cancer), five movies, all of season one of the Lizzie Borden Chronicles, and a partial Designing Women marathon on LogoTV. I have also witnessed countless of ads for all of the things a person doesn't even know they need. For some reason the ads for adult gummy vitamins seems to have made the most impression (implantation?). 

Now, when I was a kid, I had Flintstone chewable vitamins like most children of the 80s. I ate them by the handful like candy because they were delicious. When Mom realized we were going through a jar of vitamins a week, she got a bit more diligent on monitoring my vitamin intake. But for a while there, I was eating a handful of sweet tarty yummy multi-vitamin goodness with my breakfast every morning. Ten million strong and growing. What did they expect? The Bayer company made them taste like candy and for a kid who didn't get candy unless it was a holiday, they might as well have just declared a serving size of ten or twenty. One vitamin. Ha! What a joke. Then I grew up. I learned to respect and appreciate my parents decision to limit our candy exposure. Thanks to them, I am not a big candy eater. I eat a bite of candy, think "Oh that's lovely." and then set it aside and forget about it for a month or so.

While I was growing up, I also learned to swallow pills and take grown up vitamins. I have been happily swallowing my multi-vitamin ever since. Not to long ago, I ran out of vitamins. I went to the vitamin section of Target and in the one hundred days (or so) since I last purchased vitamins, things on that isle had completely changed. All of the usual pill form vitamins had been replaced with gummy vitamins. Rows and rows of bright colorful gummy vitamins. It was like some Twilight Zone geriatric candy shop. I did not want a gummy vitamin. I take my vitamins in the morning. Gummy fruit flavors do not mix with toothpaste. I don't need to chew my vitamin. I don't need my vitamins to be gooey and stick in my teeth, but there's a little more to this than just eating a vitamin.

Gummy vitamins feel slightly insulting.  Kids get gummy vitamins because they're kids. They like eating chicken pressed into the shape of tiny dinosaurs.  Broccoli is a spoon for cheese or ranch dressing. Kids have to be tricked and bribed into eating things that are good for them. For God sake, they put yogurt in tubes with crazy colors because kids think that its fun to slurp their yogurt and as parents we totally buy into it because it's hard enough getting them to eat anything. I am not a child. I don't need to be tricked or bribed to take a multi-vitamin. I don't need my vitamin to be hip, cool, or sexy. I just need to take a multi-vitamin, preferably one I don't have to chew. I know. I sound curmudgeonry. Like maybe taking a bright pink chewy vitamin would make me less cranky. 

Breathing out of both sides of my nose would make me less cranky.    

RESOLVING

Ridiculously dumb, but it's making me laugh

"Ridiculously dumb, but it's making me laugh"

I know I said I was going to sit down and create a Vlog about all the things I want for 2016, but the idea of my face and voice on camera right now seems really unappealing. Note: there's nothing wrong with my face or voice and truth be told it's more about being too lazy to put together what I want and edit it in video. So it looks like I'm kicking off 2016 with a bout of lazy. Also, I'm still recovering from our trip to OK and the tense drive home through ice and snow. I feel like I'm shaped like the inside of my car. It's making me grumbly and not very pleasant and this post is not about that (or how I watched an egg boil while crying because weather cancelled plans to see friends, the holidays can be hard). This post is about the good things I want to see happen in 2016. 

If I were to do a video post about good things for 2016, it would start with a shameful video of my basement. I would expose the awful truth that is my basement and I'd do it mostly to shame myself into finally taking care of the mess. I don't need video evidence to be ashamed of the state of basement. Michael built some really lovely shelves (from pallets!) in one back corner area. Tuesday, I packed up all our Christmas and then we put those boxes on one of the shelves and it felt so good and organized and I have a plan for the basement. I will take off work during Michael's Spring Break to clean out the basement. The plan is to create four piles: things we're keeping, things we're selling, things we're donating and things we want to throw away. I will then call the Girls and Boys club to come get the things we're donating and I will call the Junk Guys and pay them to take away the trash. Things we are keeping/selling will all go onto the shelves. This is happening. It is happening this year. Cleaning out the basement is imperative if we are going to stay in this house. I know I said that cleaning out the basement was something that would be done in 2015 and I totally failed except for five bags of garbage. Yes. There's more than five bags of garbage down there. I'm telling you. The basement is BAD. It's embarrassing.  It's worse than behind the fridge, behind the couch and under the kitchen sink. Cleaning out this space would be the best good thing we could do in 2016.

The next part of that video post would be about garden stuff. I've had The Backyard Homestead on my Amazon wish list for a really long time. I finally gave in and bought the book a few weeks ago. This purchase came shortly after the arrival of my Bakers Creek Seed Catalogue. You guys? We can grow peanuts! See? See what happens? Every year I get that catalogue and I go insane. I buy things that don't grow. I buy things that grow like gang busters that we don't end up eating. Every year, I tell myself "Cindy! You're only going to plant what you'll eat!" The problem is I end up planting a lot of things I think we'll eat instead of things we actually eat. For instance, this year I planted fifty (exaggeration) squash plants. After eating squash four days in a row, we realized that we don't really eat squash. Squash is good, like every other week good, but not every single day of summer. One squash plant. That's really all we needed. Maybe two in case there are squash bugs. But a whole box and side bed devoted to squash was completely unnecessary. I need structure and discipline and a plan that's going to keep me from growing rows of miscellaneous veggies. At first glance, The Backyard Homestead makes me believe that I can have it all from goats to bees in my backyard. Once I started reading though, the authors made it clear that I do not have the space for having it all. They reached out of the page and slapped me in the face. "Snap out of it! You can only do this much. So do it!" I will spend these winter months putting together a list and a plan for the garden so that one of those good things for 2016 will be fresh veggies we actually eat. 

The basement and the garden are my main focus of good things for 2016. That doesn't mean I won't let myself be distracted by other things. I want to be more creative in 2016, maybe even start up a selfie 365 day project. A year of 40. Michael totally spoiled me this year for Christmas and my birthday with a new camera along with a fancy scarf styled camera strap that I'd been coveting for ages. I have no excuses. The lens isn't wonky. I actually have two lenses to choose from. Hell, the flash doesn't even make me mad. I want to use this camera. I want to be so comfortable with this camera that it's like an attachment to my body. It's part of my be more creative in 2016 plan. Michael and I want kayaks and envision early Saturday mornings kayaking down a river before breakfast. I want more bike to work days than drive to work days. I want scooter road trip adventures. I want more time on my yoga mat. The thought of teaching again has been tickling the back of my brain. I want to like this body again. I want to be healthy. I want to drop guilt and doubt. I want to be the best person I can be even when I'm in a room of negative people. 

I want good things for you in 2016. Here's to a wonderful, safe and happy New Year!

WHAT'S UP?

Snowball #365

"Snowball #365"

 I haven't really talked to much about my Jawbone Up since I got it. Someone asked me weeks ago if I liked it and I just kind of shrugged and said "sure". I really only use it to track steps and sleep.  I'm doing well over the recommended 10,000 steps a day and I mostly get in eight hours of sleep a night. There's an option to enter extra workouts and food, but mostly I don't bother. My extra exercise is just more walking and I forget to put in my yoga time. I never track my food or water. It just seemed too much, too time consuming. Also, I didn't care. I eat super healthy most of the time and I'm not a big snacker. I eat three good meals a day and that's it. Sometimes there's ice-cream or a cupcake, but to be fair that happens few and far between. 

Last Thursday, I received an email from Jawbone talking about how easy it is to enter your daily food now because they'd made some improvements. I shrugged and decided to enter in my Thursday food intake. By the end of the day I'd eaten 750 calories. I thought that seemed kind of low and the next day I was talking to Talaura about it. I told her that I was pretty sure I'd entered it in wrong. Then I told her all of the things I'd eaten and she said "no....that's about right." Walking just 10,000 steps a day burns about 2,000 calories. I am not eating enough calories. This explains why I have not lost any weight. Well, three pounds. I've lost three pounds. I smacked myself on the forehead for being so dumb. Then I started thinking I might have an eating disorder. Has my obsession over clean eating morphed from healthy to dangerous? And why does it always come down to food with me?

I mastered the art of pushing food around on my plate as a teenager, thinking that if I just didn't eat, I wouldn't be fat. Then in college, I didn't care what I ate because someone was always ordering a pizza and I always wanted to eat pizza. Also, every time I ate something in the cafeteria, I'd get sick to my stomach. Eventually this started happening with some of the fast food places we visited on a regular basis. I figured it didn't matter what I ate then as long as it stayed in my gut for more than ten minutes. Things got a little better when I had access to a kitchen and did more cooking, but we were also poor. That meant lots of spaghetti, anything I could do with a whole chicken, chili, and stews. Chris and I both gained a lot of weight entering graduate school. My answer to this was more exercise and less food. Still eating the same stuff, just less. I lost some weight. I thought this is as good as it will get and moved on.

Cut to the Food Revolution where documentaries like Food Inc. changed the way we looked at food all together. I dropped animals, with the exception of seafood, completely from my diet and ingredient lists couldn't go higher than the number of fingers on one hand. Organic all the way. Our grocery bill was astronomical, but I didn't care. I would bankrupt us in this new obsession to not eat poison. And this led to more weight loss and eventually I was a size I never remembered being before. Suddenly I was determined to stay at this weight no matter what. Then I didn't and gaining ten pounds this time was more emotionally devastating than the fifty pounds I had gained in graduate school.  How could I possibly adjust my diet any further? Maybe I wasn't exercising  enough? I AM DOING MY WHOLE LIFE WRONG? Those ten pounds might as well have been fifty.  It might as well have been a hundred pounds. 

When I turn forty, I want to be the kind of woman who doesn't care about this stuff. I don't want to stress and worry over every bite taken or not taken. As I sit wondering where all of that comes from I realize that we are constantly being bombarded from the minute we are born with what we should or should not eat. Eat this. Do not eat that. Today the best thing you can eat is this. Whatever you do never eat that. It will kill you. You eat that roll and you'll get fat. Julia Child died at the ripe old age of ninety one and she ate butter all the time. Calories be damned. I want to be able to say the same. Right now I'm working on balancing and finding that sweet spot of getting enough calories while eating the right things. I've added greek yogurt to my oatmeal and a snack of nuts between lunch and dinner. 

I'm still waiting to see what kind of woman I'll be at forty.

THE COLUMBIAN PEANUT

Hey Dad.

"Hey Dad."

We found a used ticket to Columbia and an old wrinkled map. The three of us: me, Randy and Janell. We were confused by our find. "When did Dad go to Columbia?" "Why would Dad go to Columbia?" None of us ever remember Dad traveling further south than Tijuana Mexico. We decided to go to Columbia and retrace Dad's steps and figure out why he had been in Columbia. The wrinkled map had a couple of towns circled and some lines drawn from here to there, which gave us a start. We flew to Columbia and then rode on a crowded bus through the jungles and up into the mountains. We came to a place where they had carved benches into the side of the mountain and there was a narrow twisty road running down the side. The nearby villagers would all gather on this mountain on Sundays after church to watch car races down the side of the mountain. It was crazy dangerous and slightly illegal, but officials can be bribed. We walked through the crowd, showing people Dad's picture and asking "Have you seen this man? Do you recognize this man?" There were many head shakes and down cast eyes. People were suspicious. Finally we showed Dad's picture to one man and he said "Peanuts! Get your fresh Peanuts!" Dad had gone to Columbia to sell peanuts.

This was the dream I had the other night, a few days after receiving the results of the blood work I had done recently. I have high cholesterol. Yup. You read that right. I have borderline high cholesterol. Ever since I got the news, I've been looking at everything I eat with suspicion. Veggie burger. Zero cholesterol. Slice of cheese that I put on that veggie burger. 30 mg. The USDA recommends consuming no more than 300 mg of cholesterol a day. Last night Micheal looked at every label in the fridge. "This block of cheese? You can eat this whole block of cheese. You could also eat most of this jar of mayo and three packages of this goat cheese." We both figured that I maybe eat 300 mg a week. Maybe. I sent a text to Katrina telling her that she needed to make Randy go to the doctor and then I sent a text to Janell telling her to get her cholesterol checked. I did this for a few reasons. First there have been several studies linking high cholesterol to Aß-amyloids. Aß-amyloids are the peptides that show up in plaque formations on the brain in Alzheimer's patients. Secondly, I am obviously living proof that you can't change genetics. It's quite possible Dad's high cholesterol had little to do with his frequent consumption of chicken fried steak.

When I sent out that first text to Katrina, I felt I was sending out a call to action of sorts. "Here ye! Here ye! All of those children born of the Peanut Man! You must be tested immediately for high cholesterol!" Fine. Then what? Well..for me it means fish oil. My doctor wants me taking two fish oil pills a day. Then, in three months, we test again. If the fish oil doesn't do the trick, he said something about a generic cholesterol fighting drug that isn't as bad as some of the other statin drugs we all hear about.  I'm not too thrilled about that happening. I'm too young to be on statin drugs and it's a pill that I'd have to take every day. I already do that with my birth control pill. One should be enough. Part of me feels a little gypped. We've always been told that everything would be fine as long as you eat a healthy diet and get some exercise.  Not necessarily all lies. I suppose I could have actual high cholesterol as opposed to borderline high cholesterol. It's also one of those pull your head out the sand moments, when you realize that you can't ignore things just because you're doing all of the so called right stuff. Frequent check ups and tests are important for more than just babies. 

I'll swallow the pills because I'm just not changing my diet. I guess I could take out that tablespoon of cheese I eat once a week, but some times that tablespoon of cheese it the only thing that's keeping me from stabbing someone. Further change to my diet would just be sad and ridiculously restrictive. I'll swallow the pills because I may have Dad's high cholesterol but maybe I don't have to have his brain disease. 

AND THEN I BOUGHT A SWIMSUIT

What I feel like I looked like trying on swimsuits on Saturday

"What I feel like I looked like trying on swimsuits on Saturday"

I got up early Saturday morning. This is not unusual, but I used the time to treat myself to a good cup of coffee and perfectly toasted bagel from the Coffee Girls Cafe. I sat there lingering and sketching out the garden, making a list of plants I wanted to buy. Then I headed over to Target and Trader Joe's to buy the general stuff that one buys at these stores. It all sounded like a decent plan. I was out and about before the crowds of people showed up. Essentially I knew I would have the shops to myself. But then I stopped in the swimsuit section of Target. 

We are almost a month away from our vacation that involves a beach. I have looked at swimsuits online, but I just don't trust myself to order the right size. Also I feel like $100 is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on swimwear. All of the cute suits I've seen online are about that price. I decided that I would just smash my body into something cheap and be the only person holding a camera while on vacation. I pulled three suits from the rack and headed back to the dressing rooms where I removed all of my clothes under the cold glow of fluorescent lights. I tugged on one of the latest one piece styles that had the doily part on the sternum and cutouts on the sides. I watched as that doily stretched out across my belly and then cringed at how the color of the almost white fabric blended in with my skin. I peeled it off without even attempting the ties. I tried on the next one piece with a ribbed front and thought "OK". It wasn't too bad. The color didn't clash with my skin. Then I turned to the side to look and realized that my body is shaped like a bean. I am a human bean. 

I ended up with my third option, a retro black and white polka-dotted one piece. I felt like the dots distracted you a little from my bean shaped belly. I put my clothes back on and finished my shopping. Then I sat in the car and cried for about five minutes. This is it. This is my body right now. I suppose it's true that you are what you eat and I do eat a lot of beans. I am a round bean with decent legs and gangly arms. I eat kale and mung beans and walk over 12,000 steps a day. And I weigh 170 lbs. I posted that picture of my bean figured portrait not for reassurance that I do not look like that. I don't need to hear that I am beautiful. I certainly don't need to be compared to a 31 week pregnant woman, but I don't need to hear that my body is perfect. These are things I don't need. Because I hear them. I hear all of you telling me that image is not a true representation of me. What I need is to believe that my body is fine and good and beautiful just the way it is right now. I need to look in the mirror and not cringe at this shape, but see it for it's unique beauty. 

I don't know why I am struggling with this or why this has always been a struggle for me. I can remember that summer between being preteen and teenage years when I'd finally lost my baby fat. We were in swimsuits, walking down to the lake and one of our close family friends mentioned that it looked like I'd lost weight. I said "thank you, but I'm still going to try to lose some more." She was adamant that I didn't need to lose anymore. In fact she said that I was skinny enough and that if I lost any more weight, I'd be unhealthy. I looked down at my bean shaped belly with confusion. Was she looking at the same body I was looking at?! Because my body certainly didn't look like any of the  girls that graced the cover of Seventeen. Looking back now, I think that was the only time any one had ever told me that I was skinny enough. I was raised on the idea of thin and wispy and the older so called wiser women in my life warned against eating that second roll. Their advice for removing the bean shape of my belly was to just not eat, making food the reward, a treat. 

I've moved past the food being a treat thing. I eat the way I eat now not because it's healthy, but because it's food I want to eat. I like mung beans and kale. Now I need to move past the idea that there's something wrong with the shape of my body. Hello. My name is Cindy Maddera and my body is shaped like a bean. No, I am not pregnant and if you ask me if I am, I will verbally abuse you so hard you will wish that I had just punched you in the face. Not all women have concave bodies. Beans are beautiful. 

And so is my belly.