The Post I've Been Avoiding Writing

I'm losing some weight.

I'm losing some weight, not in an eating-healthy-staying-active way, but in a running-on-anxiety-and-adrenaline-not-eating-enough way. In a not-taking-great-care-of-myself way. I've lost enough weight that people who haven't seen me in a month or two notice it and comment on it. I've lost enough weight that the other week, the mother of an old friend of mine told me I was too thin and should be eating more.

Mind you, I'm not trying to lose weight. Having grossly enlarged kidneys creates a sort of unintended lap-band situation: my stomach is under constant pressure and I rarely feel hungry. Normal meals are out of the question -- I can't eat a bagel without getting heartburn and feeling uncomfortably full for six hours following. So my eating habits have been constrained to grazing throughout the day, eating small amounts at a time. This works well enough when I have the time and mental energy to be thoughtful about what I put in my mouth, but when I'm working 13 hour days without a break, planning six small meals throughout the day goes out the window.

And here's the part that hard to write about, hard to admit: I love it.

I love that all of my pants are so big that even wearing a belt barely makes them wearable. I love looking down and seeing my pre-baby waistline. I love that my collarbones are sticking out and that I feel thin enough to buy a new, teensy bikini to wear on the Mexico beaches in five-days-and-counting.

I love the old familiar light-headed feeling of running on fumes 70% of my day, the endorphin high that comes from knowing that I'm managing to conquer my body's needs. Reminiscent of surviving freshman year of college on Juicy Fruit gum, roasted soy beans, and diet Coke, I imagine that this endorphin rush is much like the high that marathoners experience, having pushed their bodies to their outer limits. It hurts so good. And I'm ashamed of the rush, knowing that my body needs all the healthy it can get right now.

February was National Eating Disorders Awareness Month and it seemed like getting over myself and posting about this was the right thing to do (even in mid-March). It's been (omigod, so many) years since I've been actively eating disordered, but like a recovering alcoholic inhaling vodka fumes on a friend's breath, I can so easily imagine slipping back into the previously-tortured relationship I had with my body and food.

Instead, I'm going to Cancun with my husband for five days. I will sleep, I will recharge, and I will eat as much guacamole as I can, all while wearing my new teesy bikini. When we get back, I have another month of pedal-to-the-metal at work, but I'm going to recommit to a healthy eating plan. I will not obsess about gaining back any of the weight I've lost. (Maybe.)

I'm going to try.

Possibility

Tomorrow's the hair appointment, and it's decision time. What do y'all think of this?

Burning Question

I am seriously considering a pixie cut at my next hair appointment. The last time I had a pixie cut was when Michael and I met in 1988 and he almost cast me as Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as a result. (He came to his senses and cast me as Hermia, and we fell in love while rehearsing that most magical of plays.)

What do you think? Is 43 too old to pull off a pixie cut?....

Things About Which I Have Not Blogged

My New Haircut

On good days, I feel like Louise Brooks, minus the bangs.




















On bad days, I feel like Willy Wonka.








Our April Beach Trip

An empty beach is a thing of beauty. I slept 16 hours per day.
















The Wonders of a Cold Frame

We've been harvesting Swiss chard from last year's plants since April 15. For realz.
















Garrick's Birthday

He now goes all the way to eleven.



























My Last-Ever Elementary Chaperoning Experience

The mud in the Stone Harbor wetlands is super-strength.





























































My Neglected Garden

Is giving me peonies and strawberries. We're picking almost a quart per day. NOM.

How to Start

losing the weight you gained last year:

Finally break down and buy clothes in a larger size.

************

A few weeks ago, I was really quite anxious about discontinuing the physical therapy for my back. I'd made such good progress with the twice-weekly appointments, and I was afraid of losing my momentum. And the only way to retain the benefits was going to be keeping up with the exercises and stretching on my own -- a daunting proposition.

As I am easily distractable and prone to procrastination, I have never been good at exercising in my home, preferring gym memberships to provide the impetus (if I'm paying for something, I'm damn well going to use it!). Somehow over the last few years, though, we've managed to put together a very creditable little exercise area in our basement -- recumbent bike, 593-in-one weight machine, stability balls, a couple of hand weights, and a cheap DVD player -- and I knew that armed with a couple of rubber therabands, I could easily replicate all of my physical therapy moves at home.

The trouble is, my full, formal physical therapy cycle took me 90+ minutes to complete, and the prospect of trying to carve out that kind of time at home on a regular basis made me panic. I finally came up with an idea, though: I'd chop my full routine into three portions of roughly 30 minutes each, and do them on subsequent nights. The fourth night, I'd take a break.

With my therapists' blessings, I bid them farewell and I embarked on this plan a couple of weeks ago. Here is what is working for me:

• Day 1 is for stability and strength work.
• Day 2 is for cardio (which I always shirked at PT, because it's SO FROCKING BORING).
  
• Day 3 is for intensive stretching.
  
• Day 4 is for homemade blueberry sorbet and reruns of FLIPPING OUT on Bravo.

I like the four-day cycle, as it means that for every week-long period, I'm usually getting 2 sessions each with the strength training and the cardio. And amazingly, at 2.5 weeks into this program, I'm adhering to it MUCH better than I ever thought I could, thanks to some mind games tricks I play on myself:

• The way I've structured this, Day 3 feels like a freebie. Don't get me wrong, the stretching is critical for my continued pain-reduced state, but it's not like working. Plus, it feels great.
• If something comes up (like drinks with my lovely friend Maureen after work) and I miss a night due to drunkenness, I can call that day Day 4 and just hop back into the cycle the next day without feeling like I've completely fouled up the schedule.
• Our weekday evenings are pretty highly structured: the kids bathe between 7:45 and 8:15, Michael reads to them at 8:30, and they read to themselves between 9 and tuck-in (around 9:45 for the summer). Which pretty much gives me between 8:30 and 9:45 to fit in my roughly 30 minutes of exercise.
• The DVD player is key, as are discs of SPORTS NIGHT (the Aaron Sorkin TV series, not actual sports) and LA FEMME NIKITA (the TV series, not the movie).

What's fascinating to me is that even when I'm feeling whiny about it, I find that if I just get started, I do actually go through the entire evening's routine and feel good afterward. And I'm not above tricking myself into getting started by telling myself that I'm only going to do the mat work tonight, or that I'm just going to do a quick stretch and then go fold the laundry. But once I start, the psychological hurdle has already been cleared, so I keep on truckin'.

My back continues to improve bit by bit, and my waistline is reasserting itself. (Hi, obliques! I've missed you!) I seem to have dropped a few pounds, probably because I'm doing more cardio each week than I was with PT. Interestingly, I'm having fewer pains and pangs in my kidneys and liver, as well. And I just plain old feel better, in general.

************

To recap:

How to Start: buy new, bigger clothes, and then trick yourself into starting small.

How to Keep Going: be sure to have DVDs of old TV series on hand. And take the time to realize how much better you feel when you Just Do It.

Signs

1. ... that it's been too long since we've used the grill:

Mice, mice, baby.

2. ... that I had three minutes to breathe over the weekend:

Red toes make me happy.

3. ... that Michael still loves me after 18 years:

Instead of sulking at my working late on our anniversary, he feed the kids, did all the dishes, and scrubbed out the scunge that the plumbers left behind in the bathtubs.

Patsy Cline Has Nothing On Me

Have I mentioned how much crazy I'm amassing as a result of organizational nonsense in my company's new Mexico branch?.... So much crazy, in fact, that I almost missed this lovely gift from HG.



If you haven't already, go visit her -- in addition to being smart and funny and an excellent blogger HER OWN SELF, she's a Sondheim fan. A winning combination no matter how you slice it. Thanks, HG!

April Foolishness

THE GOOD

Audit is over, sweet merciful heavens! I can actually sit at my desk and get work done. (Or blog. Whatever.)


THE BAD BITTERSWEET

My first-born turns twelve this week. And has a mustache. How did it come to this? I can still feel the phantom pangs of his foot wrapping itself around my left hipbone while in utero and now he's got pimples.


THE UGLY

I've decided that this recent haircut was a tragic mistake. Too long to be short, too short to be long, and too many layers that frizz out into a crazed nimbus at the first sign of humidity and in complete defiance of hair products. The question is, can I grow out the layers by June? If not, drastic steps will be taken.

How to Kill Your Metabolism in Five Easy Steps

1. Take night classes for a year and study during your all of your lunch hours, meaning that
2. you never get to the gym any more, so you cancel your membership, while
3. you eat lots of lousy salads from Au Bon Pain for dinner during your year of night classes, and
4. don't resist the bags of chips placed conveniently near the cash register.
5. Then turn 40.

(For the record, two weeks before Thanksgiving is a crappy time to learn you've gained 10 pounds over the last year. Damn.)

Mama, I'm a Big Girl Now!*

Peep this -- it came in the mail yesterday, framed and everything.

I am inordinately pleased with myself. I worked hard, I learned a lot, I got terrific grades (much better than my undergraduate grades, lemme tell you). Plus, it's Wharton. Sex-ay!

I'm going to hang it in my office next to my certificate from The French Pastry School.

*Extra credit for naming the Broadway show this song title comes from.