clickmom

more hang ups

The first anniversary of my mother's death is coming up.  I am completely in a funk.

Here is my take on death and it's effect on me.  

Someone with whom I have a less than satisfying relationship (hello, mom) dies and I struggle with the fact that now I will never have a mother who shows me love and my kids will never have a grandmother that does the things that I think grandmothers should do.  It sucks and I can't move on.

Someone who always "got me" and loved me with all her heart  (hello, grandma) and also tried to the point of being ridiculously pathetic to do sweet things for my kids, dies and I sit around missing her terribly, my heart totally aches from it all, but it isn't the same kind of emotional torture (for me at least) as losing the someone who never gave me what I wanted and needed.

This weekend there was a special service at synagogue that I should have gone to for my mother, but I just couldn't bring myself to sit there and cry my eyes on front of everyone.

Next Sunday I have to light a memorial (Yohrzeit) candle for my mom, and the thought of it is bringing back a boat load of last summer's agony when I came back from mom's funeral, got Matt and Ev off to camp and slept walked through the rest of the summer like the zombie that I was, right up until grandma died in August.

Damn.  This sucks, and my eyes are swollen shut from all the crying.

possible barrier

I dropped Matt off at school the other day and as I was driving away I noticed a (not size zero) athletic looking girl walking into the school.  I thought to myself "Did I ever look like that?" and the answer was yes.  Suddenly, I started thinking about a time when I was 14, in my first year of high school when my mother brought me to a "doctor" who put us on an orange juice and tomato juice fast and gave us "vitamin shots" twice a week.  

Yup, I was 14, eating no solid food at all and letting some quack doctor shoot me up with something.

First pray that whatever was in those shots was not the cause of mom's peritoneal mesothelioma. 

Second, it's too late to call the authorities.

I had a dental cleaning toward the end of that "diet."  The hygienist commented on how clean my teeth were and I told her that was because I hadn't had solid food for three months.    Her eyes got real big and she told me that it wasn't good for me and I told her not to worry because my mom was taking me to a doctor for vitamin shots. Then she left the room and ran off to tell the dentist.  He did nothing.

Anyway, I stayed on that "diet" until I got so weak that I couldn't climb stairs without nearly passing out.  In school it was less of a problem because I could sneak onto the handicapped people elevator when I had to go up the stairs.  But I was a city kid and I took the subway to and from school every day and there was no other way onto the train other than stairs.  Eventually I got dizzy going down stairs too and I just gave up on the whole fasting thing I missed chewing so much I would chew things and spit them out and throw them away)  and naturally I immediately gained back every pound plus some.

I think there might be some residual fear of not being heavy related to how scared and vulnerable I used to feel and how weak I felt back then when I was actually skinny for a couple of months.

rehabbing old righty

Had my first official physical therapy for the sprained ankle from HELL today.  I got evaluated last week and naturally, the dude who happily accepts my co-pay and efficiently bills my insurance company thought I was an ideal candidate for physical therapy.  Something about torn tendons and ligaments.  Whee!  The chiro keeps telling em that most people would have broken their ankles.  Also that torn stuff hurts more than broken stuff.  Yay me again!

So, it seems that in the two months since the original stair bob sledding on my back incident my injured ankle has gotten weak weak weak.  Stuff they made me do today:

Stand on one leg at a time for a whole minute.  Three turns each leg.  Injured ankle very tired the third time around.  

Stand on one foot on a board with a ball sized lump on the bottom side.  Had to tilt foot back and forward 10 times for three sets.

Then I had to stand on toes up and down 10 times for three sets.  booooring.

And because I have especially tight achilles and hamstrings I got to stand on a slanted step with my toes about 6 inches higher than my heels.  It was so painful I teared up.  

Also, because that other calf stretch wasn't torture enough, I had to lie on a table with my butt against a wall and my legs straight up the wall and here is the worst part- with my feet flexed.  I had to do 20 second intervals for 5 times.  I didn't tear up because I amused myself by imaging taking a nap since the PT gal left me alone to work on the elderly lady in the next stall.

There was more ultrasound on my ankle.  How I wished there could have been a tiny little smiling face in there to shock the PT gal. Next week I am going to draw one onto my never ending inflammation.

There was more electrical stim. Except this stim was set up under an ice pack.  Brrr.  I had to ask for a higher level of stim half way through because macho stair sledders like me get used to the electric current running through our injuries, and then I asked again because I thought I was so incredibly stoic that I thought they could turn that mother up again, so I told the PT guy he could turn it up again, except the machine had actually turned off because my time was up.  ooopsy.

Walking out of there with one foot (frosted like a beer mug)  a full 20 degrees colder than the other foot was an interesting sensation.   

They tell me that next week I'll get to use resistance bands!  I can hardly wait.

why commercials for prescription drugs might not be the best thing

Situation: We are in the truck going over to join the family of one of Evan's camp friends for his communities holiday bbq dinner.  Just like us, the other family happens to have a summer house not far from utopia.  

The hitch: We have been invited to our favorite utopian friend's house for a bonfire and would way rather be at our own lake with this friends and her other guests.

me: Evan, we have to eat with them but when you are done the signal to go will be you telling me so the other mom can hear that your stomach doesn't feel good, and then I'll say "You know, he didn't eat much lunch today, I better bring him home."

evan: Okay, and if I want to stay and Matt wants to leave Matt can say "Mom, I think my genital herpes is flaring up."

pound decades and weight perception

On my journey up and down the scale, I think of my weight in decades.  Every ten pounds represents another decade, and naturally, time and time again, I welcome with delight the new decades on the way down and sneer in disgust as the decades mount on my way up back up the scale.  Some decades slide by, wether it is up or down, without too much fanfare, but other decades somehow seem more meaningful more symbolic, more emotionally challenging.  It doesn't have anything to do with round numbers, or where I was before or after kids, (since I never saw my pre-pre-pre-pregnancy weight in the 16 (plus 9 months) years since before Matt anyway) or even where I was at some other point in my life, because to be honest, my weight has fluctuated at such a rapid speed up and down and up and down and up the last 10 years or so that I couldn't keep track of what I weighed when without some sort of complex kind of graphing software.  Or maybe I just don't want to remind myself of the ups, and how they out number the downs as far as time spent at that particular weight (or pant size) goes.

I've been on a down trend lately, and I was just on the cusp of a new decade, and it happens to be one of those more noticeable decades.  For some reason this was a scary decade.  I think maybe because in this decade there is a noticeable change in my face fat.  My features become much less bloated from here on in.  So scary, was the prospect of dipping into this particular weight decade, that I ended up bingeing first on corn chips and then granola bars last weekend.

So I sat down and I asked myself WHY??  

********This is the part where you can either pull up a chair and commit to the long haul or click over to gofugyourself and enjoy something lighter and maybe more uplifting. (If to you uplifting means making fun of fashion challenged celebrities- which it totally does to me.) *****************

And I came up with a whole potpourri of triggers that happened the week before the weekend binge.  Honestly, I don't think one outweighs the other, I think I was set up by the powers that be and I succumbed.  What is important for you to know here, before I even begin, is that I am back on the wagon.

First thing I paused and took notice of one day last week was my apparant lack of invisibility.  I'm not even sure what day it was, but one day last week I felt like where ever I went people asked me if they could help me and store employees acknowledged me and even cars stopped when I needed to turn left and waved me right on through.  Now, one who does not have a weight problem might assume that as a larger than life person I would be even more visible than most, but oddly enough it is the opposite that is true.  As a larger than life person there are certain situations where I barely exist at all.  And I take great comfort in the invisibility of obesity. 

My first attraction to invisibility came as a senior in high school when I got my first ever knee length coat.  I could hide the pounds I was putting on while all stressed out over the whole applying for college debacle that would end up in the unfortunate and bizarre story of me, nice jewish girl from NYC spending my freshman year at Georgia Tech, of all places.  I shiver from the memories.  What a trip that was.  shiver.

Then I came home to NYC (dropped out, but just temporarily) and discovered the art of dressing head to toe in black.  As a kid my mother wouldn't let me have black clothes because she thought they were too dreary, but as a drop out I was in charge of my wardrobe.   Between my long coat and my invisibility black clothes I was in heaven.

So, anyway, this one day people were greeting me left and right and I felt (totally altogether naked)  like I had this big old aura (exposed) and it scared the shit out of me.  Seriously.  I wasn't prepared for it.  So I sucked that aura right back in (it's gone like the wind) and now it's a teeny tiny (easy to ignore) aura and to prove it just today I pulled right out of a gas station (indignant!) when the emo teenager pumping gas didn't at least make eye contact with me to let me know he'd be right with me while he took his sweet time filling up Mr. Mercedes Benz/stupid looking overpriced sun glasses.   My relief in being invisible again was palpable. 

I got an expresso at the Bucks and the lid was covered in sugary sweetness. Instead of removing the sugar coated  lid I licked the lid until every last drop of sweetness was on my tongue and the lid just tasted like plastic again.  Addicted much?  Who me?

Then it was the (hooray!) last day of religious school and I was so relieved and happy, but sad because I Luh-OVED my students, and I wish I could hang out and enjoy them (you know, once a week but on my weekends which I totally have to reclaim as ME time) without having to prepare lessons for them or be responsible for cultivating their brilliant minds.  And I brought some snacks for my kids because it was the last day and the other 2nd grade class, which I will not miss in the least, ended up joining us for the "party", and I wasn't too thrilled about that.

Then the religious school director announced to the congregation that me and the other volunteers who were not coming back next year were only taking a year off and would be back after that.  And I was like WHOA THERE NELLIE!  (on the inside) and I just sat there grinning and trying to force a smile when all I wanted to do was bitch slap her.  After services the rabbi herself came up to me to persuade me that I should come back and teach again, and really, of all people, the rabbi knew my parents and she even did the ceremony at grandma's funeral, so if anyone on this planet knows I need a break I would think it was her, but NO, as usual I am the only one looking out for my best interests and it KILLS me to say NO, but finally in my life I summoned up the courage to do it over and over this spring and dammit!  Leave me alone with my non-volunteering self people!  I hate the pressure. Hate hate hate it.

In there was a whole lot of deep fried corn chips.

Then I tossed the kids into the truck and we headed of to utopia.  And when I got there I was totally exhausted.  And the husband had forgotten to get some OJ for the kids , but he did manage to get the party sized bag of fritos, and friends, if I ever had to order myself a last meal, fritos would be the appetizer and the dessert. I was all over that big 3 pound bag of fritos.  And then, you know the rest, there was a soda (my personal biggest red flag of binge indicating doom), and granola bars, and even a juice box from the kid's lunch stash.

Then I got all passive aggressive angry when the husband slept in on Sunday and I did some around the house chores that would have technically been much easier with help, but in reality were probably easier for me to do alone, as I wanted them done, to my (anal retentive) high standards, but that did not stop me from being hostile towards the unsuspecting husband when I went back upstairs and found him lying in bed watching television while I had done all the heavy lifting by myself.

It wasn't pretty.

So then I went to therapy on Tuesday and I told my new new undead therapist about the bingeing and the triggers and he said "Why didn't you call me?" and I said that I didn't know I could call him for that and he said that if it happened again I should.

And that just blew my mind.

PS It looks like the whole frito/granola bar binge thing caused a short term water retention issue, and this morning, with all that behind me, I was -2 into the new scary decade.  I'm okay with it now.  Really, I think I am.

tit rattle is scary stuff

So, I'm still going to the chiro all the time for this ankle (going on two months now) of mine.  I have to admit that it does feel the tiniest incrementally better week after week and the chiro does like to remind me that I have not even for a day (but I do think there was one day right in the beginning) stayed of off my severely sprained ankle during the past almost two months, but right about now I very badly need a break from the chiro.  I'm at that point where I want to wring his neck when I can hear him chit chatting with another patient in the next room and I am waiting for him.  And sometimes I have to fake polite because DAMMIT he isn't as miraculous as I very spastically need him to be.

Although, I do have admit that in the last almost two months the chiro has attended to things other than my ankle.  There was my mysterious vibrating bosom, for example.  One day while sitting quietly in my car I got the distinct impression that my cell phone was vibrating from inside my right boob.  Stop laughing at me!  It was scary!  Then I realized that the non cell phone induced boob vibration happened on the inhale.  So I had all sorts of lung related panic going on.  I made an appt with the good doc.  Then I got the mail and I kid you not there was a giant postcard from a distant hospital that said "Lung cancer is curable" in two inch big font across the front, and that is not a good thing to send to a girl who has hypochondria believes in omens and happens to have a vibrating right breast with each breath she takes.  But fortunately I had an appt with the chiro later that day for my ankle and when I asked him if ever cured tit-rattle he did some checking and told me that my ribs were off and my diaphragm was locked.  He did something to them and I have been still breasted since.  Whew!

Also I told him that my stomach has been upset for days.  At first he thought it had something to do with a chakra (I have no idea what that means) and he told me (swear to god) to wear a yellow shirt.  

Okay......

But you know I did it because it couldn't hurt right?  The thing is is I prefer colors like black, and faded black, occasionally brown and also very dark gray.  Yellow?  Not so much.  It's totally a New York thing, do not for one second think that Sex In The City got it right.  New Yorkers are the dreariest dressed people on the planet.  Don't even try to argue that with me.   

I did happen to have two yellow shirts, (one I had to take back from the pile 'o stuff for charity) which were pretty much unworn, since they are not black, and I did wear LOOK AT ME!  them, and if you must know LOOK ! I felt like big yellow neon sign the entire day LOOK AT MY BRIGHT YELLOW SHIRT! and wondered if maybe I could perhaps wear a yellow accessory, such as a tiny yellow bead, but in the end I stopped by Marshalls and now I have two more yellow shirts (the others were either too big or too short) and they WOO HOO!  OVER HERE! make me feel self conscious even though the neck line isn't so stretched out my bra is visible and the hem isn't so short my lower jelly roll is out on full display.

But I went back today and told chiro that the yellow shirt isn't helping and he changed his tune and decided that I need to take some digestive enzymes which he happens to sell right in his very office.  How $$$ thoughtfully $$$ convenient $$$.

Before I left today I asked him how much longer he estimated until my ankle issues were a thing of the past.  he said he thought maybe I'd be full speed in another month.   Jeeeeeez.

about my weight....

So this winter has been interesting in terms of how all over the place my weight has been.  For the most part, after taking one step forward and two steps back for a while last year, I spent the past 9 months going two steps forward and one step back which (if I can't weigh the same weight for more than a week) I suppose is preferable to the aforementioned reverse method because winter is over (YAY!) and the jeans that I broke a sweat and crushed a hip bone to squeeze into last September because I was determined to loose a hunk of poundgae this winter not only fit now, but the other night I managed to wiggle out of them with out unzipping or even unbuttoning them.  So a sweet little success, a hard fought up and down battle of a weight related winter.

The past few weeks have been more smooth sailing than ever and that's because I finally finally finally did some hypnotherapy with my new new undead therapist.  You see about a year ago when I first started seeing him he told me that he has to do a few therapy sessions before hypnotizing me because he doesn't read from a script, he tailors each person's hypnosis to their own specific needs, and being an old pro at the therapists couch I said "Sure!" and I bounced in there all happy and stupid and said I'd like to be hypnotized for weight loss and he asked me to tell him what has been going on in my life and first I told him how my mother and uncle wouldn't care for my 95 year old grandmother so I moved her to NJ and was taking care of her except she wasn't doing too well due to a prolapsed rectum and also how we had just had to amputate her toe and how she was in a nursing home for rehab that was just a nightmare, and oh yeah, both my parents had terminal stage 4 cancer and had just been living with me for 6 months, cause my mom's cancer was a rare form of a rare cancer, except my mom went into kidney failure from the chemo and then my parent's went home and I had no idea if and when they were going to come back because of the dialysis and everything.  But would he like to hypnotize me for weight loss now?

And he said we might need a few sessions first. He was ever so tactful about it too. And then before I knew it mom and grandma went and died, and I had to deal with that, and finally we were going to get down to business with the old "Your eye lids are getting heavy, you feel sleeeepy..."  when dad passed away and then I was at the point where I just had nothing left to say about the suckitude of the last year when my new new undead hypnotist therapist finally grabbed his pocket watch and did some hokus pokus what I had been waiting a whole year for and it was just great.

Folks, I am ridiculously easy to hypnotize.  I told myself it's a sign of intelligence.  I could swear I heard that somewhere, but you know, I maybe sometimes confuse that other voice inside my head for television news casts.  Just kidding!  I'm not really crazy!

Anyway. I got hypnotized and then like freaking magic I stopped eating every second of every day and now I just eat when I'm hungry and it's a meal time or something, like people in normal relationships with food.  It's all so freeing and guiltless, and also my pants aren't too tight to continue wearing at the end of the day.  I like this hypnotized behavior.  I think I'll stay this way.

So about the weight thing, I hesitate to put my actual poundage down because I hate when people get all astounded over the number and tell me that I don't look like what I weigh, because, duh, I've seen the pictures folks, and I do.  So what I will tell you, is that I am in total 30 pounds less than the poundage I have been floating around at and from now on all weight declarations will be in relation that number which is burned into my head for all of eternity.  I am so looking forward to the day when I can declare "Can you believe I used to weigh XXX?" and the people's eyes bug out and they say that they cannot believe it and they accuse me of exaggerating or something.  And maybe just maybe I'll whip out one of those bathing suit photos that I have but do not intend on ever showing until maybe Oprah and I get together for our prime time weight loss special or some other equally big event.   Yeah, Oprah doesn't know it yet, but she needs me.

diagnosis

me: Josh has had a headache right in the front of his head for a day and half.  I think he has a sinus infection.

Evan:  No, Mom, clearly he has some kind of a growth in his frontal lobe, which in case you don't know regulates your personality and that would make total sense because nobody in his right mind could possibly be that freaking happy all day long.  

me: I saw that episode of House too!

I had to wait a week to complete the thorough and not at all scientific testing (no bunnies harmed here!  I test on humans!) to really declare this verdict, and now, in the case of "YES there is one deodorant that fights odor and does not give me the itchy pit" the winner is Nature's Gate roll on deodorant (Advanced European formula (which could have completely scared me away, I mean really, have you gotten a whiff of certain europeans?)) in Summer Spice (aka: my husband's shaving cream) which is why the husband totally gave me the hairy eye ball one morning when he kissed me goodbye and I said "Aww, you smell like my pits."  And that, dear readers, for a welcomed change, was a good thing!

necessary slap

I've been fighting off a bit of a funk this week.  It's my first motherless mother's day, and my first grandmotherless one too.  And just for a little bit more salt in the wound, mom's birthday this year?  On mother's day.

So pretty much I have been trying very hard to ignore the fact that it's sneaking up on me, which was hard to do since the husband has been suggesting mother's day activities all week, and also, bless his generous over spending heart, he wants to buy me something I can use to do what I did in that printing class in my home studio, which is an etching press, and holy cow those beasts are expensive!

So I told myself, I would not give IT a thought until the actual day of mother's day came around (except when I remind the kids 3 times a day that the only thing I want from them is a special hand written letter of appreciation from them to me) and I will be very gracious and grateful that day and then before I know it I will wake up on May 11th and the whole ordeal will be over and I'll have three (hopefully) proof of all my hard work letters of appreciation to show for my tireless efforts and endless patience (hey, they are all still living aren't they?) and best of all, no more reminders of my current state of orphanhood until father's day.

Then I picked up the mail today and there was a card from lil sis.  And I had no idea what the card from lil sis was going to say since I am forcing the thought what the card companies have deemed this sunday to be out of my mind.  Then I opened the card and it was a sister to sister mother's day card and once again, I got that metaphysical slap upside the back of my head that reminds me that there is a whole big world outside of my own personal self inflicted torment and also that I am responsible for my junk and I can choose to travel beyond it. 

So I am opening myself to celebrate the mothers of the world for the next two days, taking my cue from Kitten, not only is mother's day upon us, but some might also call the next 2 and a half days Mother's Day Weekend.  From this moment on until I drop into bed on sunday night I will be wishing every female I see a happy mother's day.  And I will mean it.

Have a great mother's day weekend, whether you are a mother, or have a mother, or know a mother, or prefer to spend the weekend under covers in bed with the Sunday Times , 3 pounds of celery and a pitcher or three full of bloody mary.  Which is totally my second choice.

Happy Mother's Day Weekend!! 

pits

Because being me totally rocks, I seem to have developed some kind of sensitivity or allergy or something to the ingredients in all the deodorants that work.  What happens is that my pits get itchy and eventually I wake up in the morning having slept clawed away at my pit area all night long and I have long red bleeding lovely scratches all around.  Then I have to go without any odor protection for 4 or 5 days while I heal and de-itch and then I try another brand.  And the pattern seems to be no itchiness goes hand in hand with no odor protection, some of these products are worse than wearing nothing because at the end of the day I smell like pit and perfume.  Today I tried yet another new brand (after almost passing out from the scent of myself the last few non-itchy days)  and I thought when I put it on it smelled familiar but I couldn't quite put my finger on what the familiar scent was, and then it hit me!  It smells like the husbands shaving cream!  And that was kind of weird to have smooth man cheek smelling pits, and every time I lifted my arm today I thought the husband was sneaking up behind me.  But no such luck, however,  the good news is that it's been 15 hours since my morning shower and I might still be fresh as a daisy.  That said it was also 53 degrees cold and rainy today and I didn't even come close to breaking a sweat at any given moment, but still, I am a glass half full gal and I have high hopes for the shaving cream scented brand.