Simplifying

Looking forward to trying this, starting this weekend...with my job, it's impossible to pull this off during the week, but it's definitely feasible one day on the weekends. Only read about it this week, or else I would've started it sooner. Just unplugging for one day, steering clear of the TV, computer, stereo, etc., finding other ways to distract yourself (if you find you need distracting, and that alone would be a lesson)...doesn't mean you can't drive to the store or have to swear off the microwave (though given how close we live to the stores, and the fact that nuking food probably gives people third nipples if they stand too close, probably wouldn't be a bad thing to shed other forms of technology on my one day...) Because the simple fact is that I too often turn on the TV just to distract myself, just to have something to focus on a bit, to detract from the Kirby-the-Pinball trains of thought that shoot through my head...and it's ALWAYS on in the other room as well, because Husby is the type of guy to fall asleep with it on, rather than shut it off. Probably the only reason I don't get a little snotty with him about all the TV he watches, is because 2/3rds of what he watches is educational (History Channel, Discovery, Science Channel, NatGeo, etc.), and his retention of history and science is just sickening. If only we could get him back in school...

The folks who came up with this, Elements in Time, also have idiot-proof instructions on making butter this week in their blog (I just won't believe it's that easy until I try it myself), so I'm thinking of giving that a try this weekend...love having excuses to use the Kitchenaid...and make stuff from scratch...and get all domestic :) Thinking of using those fat quarters I found at Joann's for the lining of the felted bag, so I'll felt it this weekend, and measure out how I could piece it together, maybe give it pockets, etc. Last night wasn't bad; I'm feeling a bit better, I relaxed, read (picked up Maya Angelou's Caged Bird the other day...will probably plow through all four of her autobiography books just for a change), filled out the paperwork for my ortho appointment next week, and did a row or four on Husby's sock. I seem to rally a bit midweek, and we won't go into how it pisses me off that I allow the turning of the clock or the calendar to dictate my mood. I'm obsessed enough with the passage of time as it relates to my ovaries...the good news is I'm shedding some of my paranoia and getting inspired exercise-wise again. Watched the first hour of The Biggest Loser last night, where the folks who'd been previously tossed from the show were given the chance to get back on...some of the numbers those folks pulled off for weight loss in a 10-week period were borderline dangerous, IMO, but you couldn't deny the buoyance of spirit that they were experiencing as it became evident that their hard work was paying off. I turned it off as soon as the reality show BS of personalities started back up (never been a reality show fan...I like my drama the old-fashioned way: written by someone with half a brain, not invented by producers to make regular people whores to the ratings), and did some stretching and yoga. When you're as big as I am, it really takes on a "journey of a thousand miles..." feeling, starting exercising...ideally, I want to lose about 80 pounds, and that still won't put me in the average charts (I'm shooting for what I weighed and held when I worked at the theater; I felt really powerful back then, even though I thought I was fat), but remembering the before-and-afters of those folks, they really stand as testaments to what's possible. There's absolutely no good reason, even with my knees, arthritis, and lithium deficiency, why I can't accomplish that goal; even with the physical concerns that've cropped up in the last year (which I'm 95% certain are all due to the frickin' weight)...it's the same old broken record: the only thing standing in my way is me.

I dreamed I was pregnant last night. I wasn't prepared well enough for things in the hospital, it was far too clinical a setting for my liking, and I felt pushed around by people. While I certainly don't see myself as one of those folks who rents a birthing tub and pushes one out at home, it was a metaphor for how "at loose ends" I feel at this size. I'm on a footbridge over a chasm, and the damn thing can't hold my weight, but if I was lighter, I wouldn't be nearly as at risk to plummetting to the rapids. Yeah, I know, sounds dramatic, but the point is: you lose your grasp on so many little things when you're this size, and you adapt and change your behavior, until one day you look up and realize that those adaptations have become your normal, and that just ain't right (especially when you realize it in public...like crouching down in the library to look at something on a bottom shelf, and then wondering how the hell you're going to gracefully get up from that position, because your knees still aren't 100%). And you finally (finally, finally!) realize that you're tired of being this way, and your spirit somehow converts that tiredness into energy, into power and inner strength, and you start...