One of my favorite blogs, Living~400lbs, did a wonderful post yesterday about a recent article in Oprah’s magazine.
If you’re raising kids, you might want to check it out. Actually, if you come into contact with kids at all, you should check it out.
The road to hell is paved with misguided intentions, people . . .
And then go to ~400lb’s archives and read all of her posts, ’cause she’s awesome.
A while ago, I pared down my wardrobe to the absolute limit—meaning that if I sent any more clothes to the consignment shop, I would have to do laundry more than twice a week or take casual day at work to its embarrassing extreme.
My hope was to fill my empty closet with clothes that made a statement about who I am, which meant that I had to do some thinking about who that might be. Now that time has passed well into November, I have indeed discovered something of my true self.
I am cold.
Not all the time–my department at work is very close to the boiler room, so when it’s cold outside and the rest of the library is desperate to crank the heat, it’s tropical on our floor.
So I am also frequently overwarm.
The solution is obvious–layers. But how do I make those into my own personal fashion statement?
With colorful layers–actual colors that are actually not black. As my family can tell you, this is a big step for me.
Another big step is to wear sleeveless tops—we’re talking sleeveless stretch tanks with lace trim and shells. I’ve spent decades hiding my arms above the elbow and telling myself that next summer, I’ll go bare-armed up to the shoulder. I don’t even believe me anymore, so I’m making the leap early. Getting used to the idea at home and in the back office before revealing myself in public.
Elsewhere, I’m covering up with a series of sweaters or cardigans. Or maybe a faux-layered number or two (yeah, the linked example is black–but I bought a similar one in deep teal).
I actually found a lot of nice things at my favorite consignment shop, which has just expanded (no pun intended) from children’s clothes to adult sizes. I drop off a bundle and pick up a bundle and drop off more . . . Recycling is fun! I suspect that there are three or four of us plus-sized ladies swapping wardrobes around, and I hope that whomever passed along her Catherine’s stash likes my Junonia from last winter.*
So I am content and temperate in my new (to me) layers. I thought perhaps that my fashion statement wouldn’t be so close to Librarian Classic, but then, that is certainly part of who I am.
‘Course, this classic librarian wears a couple of earrings in odd places and tends to stick black pencils printed with pastel skulls behind her ear. . . so perhaps there’s a layer or two still left to explore . . .
___
*So if you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey! I just dropped a lot of sweaters at my local consignment shop near 53rd Street!” I’d like to say that you have excellent taste.
Older Daughter had a piano concert two weekends ago. Each student–in order from newest to most accomplished–played a regular piece and a Halloween-themed piece, which made for a fairly long time for those who had already played, and their younger siblings.*
Near the end of the concert–while I was trying to keep Baby from singing her newly-learned ABC lyrics at the top of her lungs and keep Older Daughter from asking every two second how many songs were left–an accomplished young lady sat down and played something I recognized.
It was a spooked-up arrangement, but the base piece was something I’d played, and loved, in high school. In fact, it was my party piece, the one I’d memorized and played at every opportunity, until time and neglect had erased almost everything but the first eight measures.
I’d always wanted to get the music for it again, but I’d forgotten the title and the composer, so over the years I would occasionally play my four measures, or hum them, for various people who might know. But though many thought it sounded familiar, they couldn’t help. So I finally let it go.
And here it was–sort of!
After the final bow, I leapt for the piano teacher and said, “What is the original piece to the arrangement that so and so played? I’ve been looking for that for a long time!”
“Oh, that’s the Solfeggietto by one of the Bachs.** I have it at home, if you want to make a copy.”
Did I! I accepted immediately and told her I’d played it at my last high school recital, memorized it, etc.
“Oh,” she said. “Would you like to play it for the spring concert?”
She was obviously joking. It’s been about twenty years since I actually played the piano, and about 16 since I played anything in the treble clef . . . Maybe I should take a couple of lessons first, I said, grinning.
“Well, I don’t usually teach adults–they don’t practice. Would you practice?”
She nailed me with a look, this women who was an estimated fifteen years younger than I, and I was suddenly twelve again. Music is supposed to keep one young, but this was taking things too far.
“Um, I think I could find the time, but I wasn’t really–”
“Tell you what. I’ll send the piece home with your daughter, you copy it and start practicing, and we’ll get together in a few months to see how you’re doing. It would be fun to have a parent playing at one of these!” She smiled at me and turned to the next parent.
I wandered away, wondering what the hell had just happened.
The music arrived a few days later. It isn’t the exact arrangement I knew–there appear to be many, many more notes. And a couple more flats and a few unexpected sharps. All spaced for someone with a wider handspan and faster fingers–my muscle memory is sluggish, now, and the notes on the page have to pass through my brain, poor things, on the way to the keys.
But those first eight measures are exactly how I remember them, and they flow. That gives me hope. Plus, they repeat throughout, so that’s, what, half the piece down already? And I did manage to pick the rest out without too much confusion. . . though some of the notes above the treble clef are still a matter of guesswork.
So if the teacher really wasn’t joking, I might actually get up there, at my age, and play my party piece at the spring concert. And regardless, Older Daughter is getting a charge out of reminding me to practice and handing me a pencil to circle the wrong notes.
I suppose it’s good to try new things, or things so old they seem new again. I’ve learned to hula-hoop and returned to the swimming pool this past year–why not try a piano recital?
Of course, playing the piano has nothing to do with my size or appearance, but my ability and perseverance. Can’t blame the fat if I can’t pull this off. But then again, getting up in front of people–being the sole focus of attention, if only for a couple minutes . . . that brings up a few issues for me. Less than there were before I walked out of the locker room in my swimming suit, or made myself an extra, extra-large hula hoop, but still. . .
We’ll see . . .
—
*But, as one of the other parents said during the reception, there may be some wrong notes, but at least there aren’t any tuning problems.
**I love how she said this–one of the Bachs. Because there are actually a remarkable number of them. There must have been Bachs who were grocers or laborers, or whatever, but I’m suspect they all composed, or at least arranged, in their spare time.
I came home from work the other evening, went to change into something a little more comfortable, and found that I needed to do laundry. I had no clean workout pants or pyjama pants, and my jeans were at the bottom of the laundry hamper, where I don’t care to forage.
After I loaded the washer, I decided to go hunting for my winter clothing stash—I was pretty sure I had a pair of sweats stored away. I didn’t find the sweats—didn’t actually find the winterstash, though I’m sure I had one—but I did find a pair of jeans. Actually, I found The Jeans.
The Jeans are the ones I bought back when I hated myself for being so fat. They are the ones I tried on every week as a measure during the two major diets I tried between their purchase and now. And they’re the ones I kept so that I would have a reminder to never get that fat again.
I looked at them, shrugged, and tried them on.
They fit. Not loosely.
I’m back where I started, size-wise. Nine years, and nothing to show for it—except that’s not exactly true, is it?
I have two kids now. New friends and neighbors. A much healthier endochrine system. A better haircut. A fun exercise routine. A couple of manuscripts that may not be complete dreck.
And a completely different attitude toward fitting into an old pair of jeans.
I won’t say it wasn’t a bit of a shock—that I didn’t think, “Holy crap!” when the waistband fit clean-jean snugly. That it didn’t occur to me that I must be about the same size I’d been when I was so ugly and uncomfortable and ashamed.
But the part of me that immediately sunk into what the hell did you do to yourself was dismissed by the part of me that said, “Interesting–I’m not ugly or uncomfortable now. I sure wasted a lot of time hating myself.”
And I went to help Baby set the table, because not all of us like to eat with plastic infant spoons and forks, however colorful, and to mention to Older Daughter, who was practicing her piano, that tempo isn’t a measure-by-measure decision.
But I think I will be getting rid of The Jeans. Not because they hold dubious associations, or because I’m embarrassed about how I used to proudly hold out the waistband like in those irritating commercials.
It’s because their fashion moment has passed. Pale, faded blue? So nine years ago . . .
. . .kind of like my self-loathing.
“Mommy? Why are you so fat?”
“Because that’s the way I’m built. We have a lot of large, strong women in our family. . . And I also dieted a lot when I was younger, and dieting can make you even bigger.”
“Did you like how I did at the recital tonight?”
“Yes. You played really, really well! I’m so proud of you! Will you play for Grandma and Grandpa at Thanksgiving?”
“Sure. And Daddy said I didn’t eat too much at the redemption.”
“Reception. You don’t have a tummyache, right? Then you did just fine. You do know that the reason we told you to choose only two special things is because we didn’t want you to get overheated and excited and overfull–like the reunion?”
“I didn’t throw up this time.”
“Exactly. Good job taking care of yourself.”
“Thanks, Mommy. Can I have a lipbalm kit for my birthday, like I gave Holly for hers?”
“Let’s see how she likes it first. If she thinks it’s really great, then we’ll put it on your list.”
“Okay. Night, Mommy.”
“Good night, honey.”
I haven’t had a single sugary food item for two weeks. No cookies, no candy, no ice cream, no chocolate, no desserts.
This isn’t a matter of willpower or virtue or whatever, and I’m not saying this to get pats on the back or be added to the “Good Fattie” list. And I’m not eating any less, just different foods. No diets. No self-flagellation.
It’s just the way I’ve been eating lately. Really.
I’ll understand if the people who started out with me on this blog are a little skeptical. I’m a little skeptical. Am I just following what I want to eat, or am I actually restricting? Is this HAES, or some kind of coping mechanism?
I mean, I’ve been trying to follow my body cues for a while now, but my past motives for dietary changes make this one suspect.
Dr. E suggested that I try not to overthink it—which is the kind of ridiculous, closing-the-barn-door-after-the-neurosis-has-escaped statement that makes me feel ever so sarcastic—but if I get tense or shaky thinking about, say, a bowl of ice cream, than I should mindfully eat some. There’s a difference between not eating something you aren’t hungry for and not allowing yourself to eat something you are hungry for.
I haven’t felt tense about the stuff I’m passing up—at least not in a bingeing, deprivation backlash kind of way—but something odd has happened: I’m lying about it.
My MIL made apple brown betty one day last week. I didn’t feel much like dessert and said I’d have some later. Later went by, and she asked me how I liked it. Instead of telling her I still hadn’t tried it, I told her it was delicious.
Instead of telling my husband that I didn’t want any ice cream, I told him that I’d had a lot of it after lunch.
I told my kids I didn’t like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—and may God spare me for such a lie—but thank you for wanting to share.
I mean, I’m not even deliberately restricting—I’m not, am I?—and I was back to hiding what I’m eating, or not eating. And I was justifying it by telling myself that I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to lose weight, or be good, or healthy, or anything. I didn’t want anyone making a big deal about it . . . so I was. Secretly. Doing my little patented, pathological food dance. . .
So, last night, my MIL asked me about my favorites out of the kids’ Halloween candy this year. I said, truthfully, that I tried to leave their candy alone unless it was freely and spontaneously offered. Then I added, again truthfully, that I hadn’t been wanting to eat much sugar lately, that it didn’t feel right to me.
She blinked at me and said. “Oh. Your body is probably telling you something. Maybe you should get checked for pre-diabetes.”
Thunk. Huh?
Now, if there’s one thing the fatosphere has done for me, it’s to give me a thorough education on the myths and mysteries of diabetes. I opened my mouth to deliver a few pointed facts when she asked, “Do you have any diabetes in the family?”
No. No we don’t. We have cancer. And many delightful psychological idiosyncrasies.
“Oh . . . Well then you probably don’t have it. But you might want to get a checkup anyway.”
So part of me is thinking, wow, some people actually do know actual facts about diabetes. And isn’t it interesting that she’s worried that I’m not eating a group of foods that many people classify as junk?
Another part is kicking me for once again defensively assuming that she thinks I’m unhealthy because I’m fat. Which once again makes my fat my problem and not hers.
The rest is wondering how much sugar she thinks I actually consume, or consumed, on a daily basis, if she think it’s a major life change—with medical implications—that I’ve stopped. Which is as counterproductive as any time one finds oneself worrying about what one looked like before.
So here I am, still preferring fruit to homemade snickerdoodles—which might be proof of a sort that I’m under the weather—and wondering why, when I could care less what this is does to my size or weight, that I’m making such a big deal about it.
And whether I should eat a Three Musketeers bar, just to make sure.
Sure of what, I don’t know.
Watch this and tell me what you think:
Don’t know about you, but I feel far less alone than I did before . . .
Saturday at the gym, two humongous guys were monopolizing the EZ barbell contraption I usually use for squats, because it keeps my back straight. I kept my eye on them to see if they were going to move, but I probably didn’t have to–you could hear them all over the room, grunting in time with their reps:
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
That’s it, Dawg, that’s it, push it, push it!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
It occurred to me later that this is exactly what it might sound like if a man ever gave birth.
I’ve been known to make some sounds of effort myself—usually variations on “ouch”—while I’m lifting, but there’s a certain type of lifter, in my experience usually a guy in a pair or group, who needs to broadcast their efforts.
But that’s not all. One of them had a laugh exactly like Salacious Crumb—you know, the little rat-creature in Jabba’s lair—in the third Star Wars movie: AH-HAH-HAH- hah-hah-ha-he-he-he-he. I kid you not—the exact pitch and everything.
It was the kind of laugh that made every single person in the room look over to see if he was laughing at them. And as anyone who reads this blog should know by now, I’m not immune to that kind of thing, even when the laugh is a pleasant one. So I gave them a wide berth and did the rest of my workout as far away as possible.
But I needed to do my squats. So I ventured into their corner and decided that as they appeared to be staying for the day, I’d use the other EZ rack–the one I don’t like, because you have to keep the bar turned so the spotting hooks don’t grab it on the way down–or worse, on the way up.*
So I was doing the math in my head—45 pound barbell, so I need 35 more, which is a ten plate, a five, and a 2.5 on each side—which I do slowly because math involves numbers.
And I heard one of the Grunting Twins say, “Dude, I’m lifting like a girl today.”
I glanced over and grinned because this is patently not true—most girls might not be benching 225, but on the whole we’re quieter. His partner, the one with the laugh, saw me smiling and elbowed him.
“What?” said the Grunter. “Oh. She’s not a girl. She’s a regular.”
I snorted, chose my plates and caught Salacious Crumb’s eye. We shrugged and giggled together—AH-HAH-HAH- hah-hah-ha-he-he-he-he—and I loaded the bar and did my squats.
The thing is, officially I’m offended. Because girl equalled weak, here, which is wrong as a blanket statement, even when it comes to physical strength. Because this guy didn’t think I was weak, so I was no longer a girl—granted, I left my girlhood a long way back, and perhaps my ability to attract random gym rats,** but not my solidarity, or being female. ***
I like being a regular at the gym. It’s giving up my gender to become one that I don’t care for.
But considering the source, I doubt one could ever convince him that he’d put his foot in it. Maybe I could have tried . . .
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
C’mon, Girl, you can convince that guy! Keep pushing! Keep pushing!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
Hrrrrnnnnnggg!
AH-HAH-HAH- hah-hah-ha-he-he-he-he.
___
*I realize this isn’t a great description . . . picture yourself with a barbell across your shoulders (along the back of your neck). Picture yourself bending at the knees, as if you were sitting on a chair, and rising up, one-two, one-two, on-two, nice and easy. Now, picture yourself bending, moving your grip just a little and hearing a click, rising up–and jamming your shoulders up against an unmoving bar. This is why I hate this machine.
**Can I get a Hallelujah for that, please? I don’t lift with my wedding ring on—that’s a good way to hurt myself and the ring—but so far no one appears to think I’m scoping. It probably helps that I wear comfortable clothes, no makeup, and move around enough to sweat.
***The fact that my boobs occasionally get in the way should be a clue.
After taking a day off from work, I not only seem to have kicked the last vestige of headache, but am now the proud creator of a clown costume—one that actually fits its intended two-year old, thank you very much.
Grace and I had already free-handed the pattern (based on one of Baby’s body suits) and cut out the pieces, so it only took me about four hours, not including the final run to the fabric store to get buttons—buttons are Baby’s new love—and some velcro.* In retrospect, I should have gone with the self-sticking velcro—and purchased a new seam ripper. But you live and you learn.
And I loved every minute of it. It’s been a long time since I was able to sit down at a sewing machine and make something without worrying about children underfoot or leaning in too close and grabbing thread or poking fingers under the–gaah!
Sorry, mommy nightmare.
But the kids were in school and day care, respectively, my husband was teaching an early class, and my MIL was volunteering at her church. So I was able to sit down, plug in my sewing machine and the first dvd in my new Nero Wolfe collection,** and start filling bobbins. Two dvds later, I had a blue, full length, one-piece clown suit with a tummy ruffle, three oversized primary-colored buttons, elasticized wrists and ankles, and, for that all-important diapering convenience, velcroed inseams.
As long as no one examines the inside, it looks pretty good. At one point, I hit the wrong knob and knocked the fabric guide out of whack, but didn’t know it, so I ended up dragging the fabric under the presser foot by force which put too much strain on the thread, which kept breaking. I finally figured it out, but it’s a little . . . thready in there. A little askew. Maybe verging on random.
In other words, perhaps just a little too homemade.
But Grace, who has truly amazing needlecraft skills, has this great story about a workshop instructor who stood up in front of the class and said (I’m paraphrasing), “No one has the right to look at the underside of your work. If someone is looking at one of your pieces and turns it over to check the back without asking first, you have my permission to slap them.”
This is not only a great comfort, but may be my new philosophy of motherhood.
I mean, I pack my kids’ lunches every weekday, check homework, help with piano, read to and with them, and play Barbies\school\computers\artists\secret agent fairies vs. the Giant Baby.*** And make Halloween costumes. My kids play well with others, mostly, and neither seems to be a parenting-induced psychopath (knock on wood).
So what if their rooms are a perpetual mess, there are toys everywhere, I don’t make beds as often as the Manual of Perfect Motherhood dictates, breakfast is sometimes peanut-buttered tortillas eaten on the way to wherever, and I let them watch Mythbusters^ with me. That’s the underside.
As is the undeniable fact that the one-way pattern of that adorable clown costume is upside-down. Upside. Freaking. Down.
But Baby loves it. I got a big hug and a kiss on the cheek when I lifted her onto the bathroom counter to see herself in the mirror and she didn’t want to take it off . I’d go another six hours over a hot sewing machine for the grin on her face.
I’ll put up an image once she’s all clowned-up for Halloween.
And I promise I won’t photoshop the seams . . .
____
*Plus some interfacing and elastic for a clown hat that I’m not sure I’m going to make, because I’m not sure Baby will wear one. And gum.
**The A&E series. I admire Timothy Hutton almost as much as I love Archie Goodwin. And Conrad Dunn is a great Saul Panzer, whom I also adore perhaps more than is strictly healthy. I have many literary crushes . . . occupational hazard.
***The series of Giant Baby™ games was invented so Older Daughter would allow Baby to play with her before Baby could actually play much—the giant baby has been either the enemy, the petwalker, the nanny, the cook, or the demolitions expert. It’s weird, but it works.
^Not every episode . . . but most of them. Critical-thinking skills are very important, even if it involved duct-taping a car to a crane.
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