Caterwauling

I was just about to type a list of all the things that irked the fabulous fuck out of me today, but I will digress.

I will say, when everybody else “Chooses Themselves,” who’s left to pick up the slack?

Anyway, I look toward the north to my lovely friends who went from a “couple” to a “family” in just one weekend, and I realize, they’re doing something that counts. They are taking a break from everybody and everything else (minus the house full of loving grandparents and great-grandparents) and they are investing in what matters. Their future. Their present. Their NOW. Their insanely cute little boy. Their relationship. Their family who dropped everything to rush to their side. Investments that will more than pay off when this ephemera wears off.

What am I investing in today, except for a few pennies that got thrown into my 401(k)? What relationships did I build? What texts/e-mails/Faceypages messages did I answer? What connection did I make with my mom, my friends or basically any other human who either wasn’t asking me for something or avoiding my requests for something else?

I forgot how exciting it is to have cute boys checking me out in public.

Mom says they do all the time, but I noticed it twice this weekend. She caught it a third time that I missed.

Never considered blonds before, but hey, it’s Florida. Maybe I need to stop limiting myself to the dark-haired boys, with early hints of silver, these days.

I never settled when it comes to men. I’ve had a few feed me lines and outright lie to me. Mostly they were bosses. But still. The guard is never down and even for as pudgy-wudgy as I’ve been throughout most of my life, I NEVER took that as a reason to settle in the man department.

Anyway, I’ve been disgusted with an online dating site that promises guaranteed results. OMG. The hell, man. They all want people under a certain weight, and I can’t say I’ve seen anything attractive about any of them.

I wised up and put income restrictions on my respondents. And I’m not getting any respondents. Mostly because they all want some young, Skinny Minnie looking for a sugar daddy who is probably 10 years older than his lone photo (of himself — plenty of boat photos) conveys.

Such a shame that I’ve always been confident in myself but it takes melting off 15 pounds for others to see it. Of course, the shorts I wore today that haven’t fit in two years really DID look damn cute!

Two people I’ve known forever … from being a part of their very first date to their wedding to seeing them live the happily ever after … have brought into the world today their first child.

If you thought I was homesick for D.C. now, just DON’T talk to me if you are in any way keeping me from being there right now.

It all happened because two people fell in love. Amazing what can result when that happens.

Welcome, little one. I think you hit the parental lottery. Can’t wait to meet you, and to see your amazing parents again, and to spoil the shit out of you in any way I can.

After all, tonight you gave me something I haven’t had in a long time: peace. And hope.

I haven’t talked about my pudgy pork roast ass in two weeks since I lost 3.5 pounds (which, rock), but I’m still plodding along the journey.

Maintained last week and dropped 1.6 today. Again, rock.

Today the leader decided to have a conversation with me while I jumped on the scale. Which, eek. Because, I barely tracked my food this week and I knew a surprise to the upside could very well be in store.

Oh, sweet Jesus, hallelujah.

I took a minute and welcomed a brand-new member today. Something I wish anyone would have taken the time to do for me. I also thanked my leader for taking time to have a real conversation with me about my journey so far.

I do different things every week. I eat whatever I want. I eat whenever I want. I never abide by my daily points and I stop eating whenever I decide I am done.

Back in the day your points value changed every time you dropped to a new “decade” in weight. If you went from 190 to 180, you lost a point. The new system is different, and even though I am certainly between numbers, I lost a daily point.

Again, not that I adhere to them because I have “bonus” points, if you will. So I presume I won’t even notice. Although, perhaps maybe I should.

My tweaks to my life have been small. For instance:

• Powdered coffee creamer 100% of the time. And no skim milk or my fake milk if there isn’t any — go for the half-and-half and enjoy it. Otherwise skim milk means it will suck and need two packets of asparteme, and asparteme gives me headaches and possibly causes cancer.
• Whole wheat is just as bad as white bread. And if my local bagel joint’s nutritional page is to believed, it’s actually worse. So, multigrain whenever possible, when it comes to starches.
• Egg whites are terrible. Says she who has consumed gallons of them. Real eggs only now. With yolks. Fuck you nutritional studies that say they’re good, then bad, then good again. Done listening.
• Light beer sucks. Give me a Magic Hat, a Purple Haze, a Guinness. I will drink less and enjoy it more.

And that’s the key — when you eat or drink something that doesn’t fulfill you emotionally or physiologically, you won’t stop till you find what might … no matter how many points you’ve already consumed.

We all just want to go to bed happy, I think. If I “cheat” per se but DAMN IT WAS WORTH IT, those are the weeks I lose weight. And more of it than just three-tenths of a pound.

My boss gave me a book on how to “Choose Yourself” and I have been reading it. Funny to get that from a workplace that I give 60-65 hours of work, eight hours/300 miles of commute, five Advils, three nightmares, two tanks of gas and one night of lost sleep every week, and it’s still not enough. But, you know, I appreciate the thought.

But really, choosing to get healthier IS me choosing myself. Because as the book says, you can’t have success if you don’t have your health. Just look at my mom, whose health has declined so much that I can’t even look at her anymore. (And yes I hate myself for it.)

So fuck you GOP for blocking Obamacare and fuck you Michele Bachmann for “earning” an $80,000/year pension for life for contributing NOTHING to this word and fuck you everyone who sees us decreasing humanitarian aid overseas and worrying WHAT ABOUT THE OIL TANKER STOCKS because there’s less caaaarrrrrgoooooooooo. And everyone like them who would rather let us die on the inside and the outside when it wouldn’t exactly kill them to throw us a lifeline. Ted Cruz and your goddamned Goldman Sachs healthcare plan. Fuck you most of all.

Anyway.

Down a pound and a half. This week in my life counted for something. Hooray.

Just a quick sanity break before, well, my sanity breaks.

I appreciate that people set deadlines, or else nothing would get done. I can appreciate that they set aggressive deadlines, so that we can do more and sooner.

Because in my business, every moment you’re not making a sale, you’re losing business. Period, end of story.

But setting aggressive deadlines on maxed-out workers isn’t a good strategy. Because some of us will literally kill ourselves trying. And I’m not just talking about myself … I have a friend I have to remember every time I’m ready to throw yams, who has to produce on command like I do.

And that’s the thing, our jobs ARE deadline-driven. We already have plenty. The extra stuff thrown in there cannot, then, be as urgent as the urgent stuff. And that’s the problem — it’s usually MORE urgent. Or, at least, it becomes a crisis because Urgent is Everywhere and Nothing Can Be Moved to the Non-Urgent List.

What irks the fuck out of me more than the deadlines themselves is that at least once a month, I stay awake all night to finish something that is Beyond the Realm of the Job. Whether I’ve worked all night or I only got two hours of sleep because of the stress, I bust my ass to turn my shit in.

And then there’s always someone I have to go through who doesn’t share that ethic. Who not only goes to lunch but who dares to take a vacation day or work on other stuff, stuff that is NOT what I ran my health into the ground for.

I don’t get to take time off. And I have a lot of non-job-related functions that HAVE to take priority, too because KEEPING money is just as important as making it. So I’m lucky that nobody really gives me too much grief when I miss their occasionally lofty deadlines.

But man, just once I would like to not be operating in a state of absolute and utter crisis, every minute of every day.

Angry kitty is no longer angry

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn

A long time ago, as part of Fat Kid Syndrome no doubt, I gave up caring whether people were talking about me. Which, I know they are. But I like to think my awesomeness is so blinding that they cannot see anything else, and they simply marvel at my deity-ness.

Anyway, I passed two people in the hallway today, and when they thought I was out of earshot, one said to the other, “She seems like one of the sweetest people ever put on this earth.”

That made me so happy. People I don’t know, who I just say hello to in passing, having a kind word to say with absolutely no motive or even reason for saying it.

I realize I don’t get invited a lot of places because I’m not part of a “couple,” nor would I ever dare bring a male around my friends who was anything more than a friend.

Because, you know. married/coupled-off women don’t trust single gals and men are too scared to ask for their balls out of their wives’ purses to have a normal conversation with someone who isn’t their betrothed

And because well, I’m “couple” enough on my own, you know? I have a big enough personality that I don’t need to bring someone around for conversation or moral support when I’m perfectly capable of providing my own.

But boy would it be nice to have folks feel they’ve got me “figured out” so maybe I could hang out at the grown-up table with the wine instead of being let home with the babysitter and a sippy cup.

Or maybe being coupled-off still wouldn’t elevate me in anyone’s eyes. I don’t know. I guess when I find out that someone found someone else to love them, I figure they have to have some redeeming qualities I might not be seeing.

Which is why I love when I get complimented just for being me. I think it’s harder to be yourself than to try to be something or someone else. I’ll count this as an “I totally succeeded” kind of day, in that case.

1. Pumpkin bombs
2. Two of them
3. Apple pie moonshine
4. Old friends and new
5. People being classy enough not to wonder where my party date was.

Even though I had the excuse ready, it was really nice not having to explain anything that shouldn’t be my problem in the first place.

I have SO MUCH WORK TO DO tonight it isn’t funny. I’ve been trying to leave every night between 7 and 7:30, so it’s my own fault for not just moving in and burning myself out more.

Sometimes I assume everyone knows what’s running through my head; other times I say it.

I often think it’s the little things that drive me crazy. The “oh hey we should all do lunch tomorrow” and everyone does lunch without you.

But they become the big things. Rather, when you have no control over the big things, the little ones can drive you BATSHIT.

Or like another time when they said let’s meet for lunch and they all met outside and nobody thought that information would be relevant to me.

Not that I get lunch out more than once a month anyway. But still.

And I know people have their favorites. Like, when three of you are in a room and one can only look at the other person even when I am trying to impart my wisdomy pearls, I notice these things.

I often dismiss it as the other person just being clueless. I also often entertain whether they DO know what they’re doing, because I’m all too familiar with those kinds of intentional antics.

And today as I was looking up passages about suffering fools gladly, the phrase “Fat Kid Syndrome” rained down on me. That is, the expectation that everyone should love me because I’m the smartest person in the room. But the understanding, as it were, that nobody gives a shit whether you live or die if you’re not the skinniest person in the room.

Today one of my boys was mad at me because I didn’t rush his 20,000 word project out the door within an hour of receiving it. Between editing, proofing, layout, design, photo editing and posting to the Web (all me, baby), it took a little while WHAT WITH OTHER FULL-TIME-PLUS work.

So OK fine, judge me on my performance there. It was a communication snafu, anyway, assuming that because I regularly pull off miracles that I had an extra miracle in me this week. That’s not Syndrome-related.

But feeling like if someone else would have done the same thing — or worse, as I’ve seen myriad times — and not heard a blessed peep about it, that’s the Syndrome in action.

I’m not saying I’m suffering it directly. But every time someone prefers someone else’s company or opinion or face to look at, whether in a group of friends or colleagues, there’s always that tiny voice that wonders … if I just looked different … would they recognize that I am freaking amazing?

Or do they realize it and prefer to ignore it, whatever excuse makes the most sense to them, whether it’s disapproval of size or fear of not measuring up if my measurements were different?

And will I ever shake it, no matter how many pounds I lose?

People need to stop pretending they’re going to prove me wrong … and then willfully proving me right.

I really need to start writing some of this stuff down again. Because I wouldn’t believe it if I remembered it EXACTLY AS IT HAPPENED without written proof.

So, I miss D.C. so bad I can’t stand it. And that makes a day like today, with the terrible shooting at Navy Yard, break my heart for the city where I left that heart behind.

I’ve been going back and forth about some stuff at work that has gotten me upset. I try to stay quiet and keep the peace, remembering that Things Could Be Worse. After all, at least a disgruntled ex-employee didn’t return to shoot up the place. At least we’re not on furlough. Insert every “at least” you can after today’s tragic events.

But I don’t want to die sad and hurt, either. I just keep thinking that if I stay in peace, remain quiet and pray to God to take care of me, He will. But I also know that staying quiet and pretending certain things don’t absolutely ruin me, well, ends up being what ruins me.