Life's a bitch and then you FRY...

“July 29, 2009 was one for the record books in Seattle, Washington as the Emerald City (known for its rainy climate) and surrounding areas struggled to deal with history making high temperatures. Seattle and Redmond reached 103, Olympia hit 104, Vancouver got 107, and Bellevue clocked in at a blistering 108 degrees.”...From Examiner.com

After spending the day in lovely air conditioning at work, I went home last night to a house that was 97 degrees. First thing hub said was “You’re taking me out to dinner in an air conditioned restaurant.” So I gave Buster a shower, left him wet, and put him in the bathroom with the fan on to keep him cool while we were gone. Hub wanted to stay away from anything salty (he tends to swell up in the heat), so a salad sounded good. By the time we got around to going, it was 8:30 p.m. We headed to Top Foods to the salad bar…too late, salad bar was closed. How about Stewart Anderson’s? Ooops, closed...permanently!! (Hmm, we didn't know that) How about Red Robin? Sorry, everyone had the same idea, even though it was late, there was not a seat to be had in the whole place and an hour wait. Applebee’s? Same thing…no room at the inn.

We ended up going to our local Chinese restaurant. We drank beer and ate salty food. So much for good intentions. But I really enjoyed that beer.

When we got home, our house was still 92 degrees inside. It was late, so I was really tired and wanted to go to bed, but it was obviously too hot to sleep inside. I told hub I was going to sleep out on the deck, but he insisted the bedroom would soon cool down enough to sleep (because it had the night before)...just wait a little while. So I fell asleep in a chair out on the deck. I woke up about an hour later, with a stiff neck, and told hub I really wanted to sleep out there, so let's set up a bed. He told me to wait just a little longer, he was SURE the bedroom would cool off enough, so again I fell uncomfortably asleep in the hard plastic chair. Next thing I knew, I woke up because both hub and B were walking (stomping) around on the deck, and now it was about 1:30 a.m. “It’s too fucking hot to sleep in that bedroom, I think we should sleep out on the deck!” hub proclaimed. Hmmm. Didn’t I say that a few hours ago?

So now came the great flurry of activity to:
*Find the air mattresses (in the attic, about 120 degrees still)
*Blow them up (fortunately we have an air compressor)
*Set them up with sheets and pillows etc on the deck

All this time, B is having a nervous breakdown. I can just imagine his thought process…Why are we up at 1:30 a.m.? Where is mom going...she's crawling up into the ceiling!? What is that weird noise (that the compressor makes)? Why is everyone running in and out of the house? WHY IS IT SO HOT?

Finally about 2 a.m., we all settled down. The outside air had cooled off quite a bit, but I still needed a fan blowing on me…outside! Knowing I had to get up early, I wanted to get right to sleep.

Hub (happy voice)…"Oh, isn’t this romantic? We can watch the sky... maybe we'll see a shooting star!"

Me (cranky voice)..."I’m not watching anything because MY eyes are CLOSED!"

So, today is supposed to only get to 100...Only?

Since when in PNW do we refer to 100 as "ONLY"!?!?

HOLY CRAP!

Sweet B sleeping on the deck this morning

Computer stuff

My internet at work has been crap lately. They did something technical last Thursday to improve something so of course it has totally screwed everything up. Ever since then my access has been awful. (“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”) I guess they had multiple issues right after the change, and they’ve been able to fix everyone’s problems except mine.

Sometimes I can only go about 3 clicks before it freezes up, and there is no rhyme or reason to what causes it to freeze. And once it does, I have to log out and log back in, and that takes forever. One of our IT folks has tried multiple things to fix it, but no luck so far. Apparently I’m even the topic of discussion at IT staff meetings.

So that’s been frustrating as hell. I do a lot of research on the internet, and the fact that it has been doing this for a week is maddening. I think I’m going to take my laptop to work tomorrow because it works really well there; I’ll just need to do permit work on my PC and other stuff on my laptop.

It actually got up to 100 degrees today. That's some kind of record for around here. It’s been SO hot in our house the last few nights, I didn’t even go inside until it was time to go to bed. We’ve had dinner on the deck both nights, something light each night (green salads and small steak last night, stuffed beefsteak tomatoes tonight…) It’s been kind of nice to not be inside watching TV as usual or on the computer...to be honest it’s even been too hot to use my heat-producing laptop outside. Instead I’ve spent some time reading a book I’ve been trying to finish what seems like forever… Atlas Shrugged. It’s quite a good book, but you really have to be in the right mood to read it for very long. I still have about 250 pages left, maybe I'll finish it before the heat wave ends!

I decided to make a quick post but this is all I’m doing computer wise tonight. Forgive me for not keeping up with everyone’s posts or commenting. If the weather cools down I hope to be back to normal soon.

B saw this bunny from the deck and barked to let me know it was there

He couldn't figure out what I was doing
while I was taking the picture with my blackberry

so I snapped one of him too. Look at this cute face!

Monday catch up

I’m getting used to my aligners. They’re not too uncomfortable anymore, and although it’s still a bit of production, I’ve gotten much better at taking them out. My teeth don’t hurt so much when I eat either. They’re still a bit sensitive so I still can’t eat crunchy things like chips…oh no, boo hoo. Like I need to be eating chips…Haha.

Boy, has it been HOT here lately. It was in the upper 80s this weekend, and it’s supposed to get up to 95 today and stay that way at least until Friday when it will get back to the 80s. Ah yes, what big wussies we are here in the Pacific Northwest. For those of you in Southern states, this would probably be considered a cooling trend. The difference is here we get this type of hot weather so seldom that almost nobody has air conditioning in their homes.

Yesterday our house got so hot that we decided to take an afternoon road trip just so we could ride in the air conditioned car. We ended up going south toward Tacoma to do a few little errands. Along the way, we stopped at a drive in called Pick Quick. This is an iconic little place that’s been in business since 1949. I think the whole building is about 400 square feet, if that big, but they have a beautiful outdoor seating area with big shade trees, flower pots, and a dozen picnic tables. Food wise, they have wonderful hamburgers and milk shakes. I don’t know what came over me...maybe I had it in my mind that if I was going to the trouble to take out the aligners, I was going to EAT something BIG. So I had a double bacon cheeseburger and a butterscotch malt. I gave B about half the cheeseburger but I drank the whole malt myself. It was delicious, but way too sweet. Talk about a sugar rush, followed by a severe stomach ache. I guess I just can’t eat that kind of stuff anymore without suffering some consequences. Today I still feel bloated, and until that feeling goes away I’m drinking water and just eating fruit and yogurt.

So, it’s another hot one today. Thank goodness I got to come to work this morning. *smile* Poor hub and especially POOR B…at home in our hot house. At least B can go swimming today… if Daddy will let him. The problem is B wants to swim, then roll in the sand, then come in the house. Anyway, I have no control over what goes on during the day at my house, so I’m just going to enjoy the air conditioning here at work.

Take care, everyone…I hope it’s not too hot where you are.

LUCKY

I am the luckiest person in the world. SO...What the F... am I whining about????

I CAN AFFORD TO HAVE BRACES…AND NOT JUST REGULAR BRACES…BUT THE MORE EXPENSIVE INVISALIGN BRACES…

(For those who asked…I will be in these braces for about a year. Piece of cake….)

Hub reminded me of the long-term reason I'm doing this. So tonight I’ve had a couple of cocktails and a good dinner. I’m feeling much better.

Life is good. So…I’m DONE DONE DONE complaining. I will NOT be complaining anymore about this wonderful procedure that is going to improve my life and appearance.

From now on, I'm going to show everyone what I have with a BIG SMILE!!!!

No Smiley Face Today

Does anyone out there remember the “wire your jaw shut” diet? I had a friend who had it done in the 1970’s. Invisalign seems to be the updated version of that diet.

1. I have to take the aligners out whenever I want to eat or drink anything besides water
2. Right now, they are difficult and uncomfortable (approaching painful) to take out
3. Once they are out, my mouth is sore and a lot of the “joy” of eating is gone

Right now I’m feeling edgy and headachy and crabby too. It just occurred to me that I’ve been thinking…”Boy, I’ll be glad when I can take these things out for good.” Then I realized…it’s only been one day, so I better adjust my thinking.

To be honest, I think the headachy feeling may be more related to low blood sugar from not eating, rather than the aligners. So I think I’ll eat some yogurt. Also I just took a dose of Tylenol...temporarily, I may need to just keep up a steady dose of that in my bloodstream as that seems to help some.

Other than that, I think I just need to stop being a whiner!

A Post with Some Real Teeth in It

I have been completely out of the loop the last week and haven't had a chance to post or comment on everyone’s blog…sorry about that. I’ve been super busy at work, staying late due to budget issues, personnel issues, safety procedure issues, blah blah blah.

If I didn’t have “issues,” I might actually get something done.

Then I've also been busy at home, plus it’s been too hot to get on the computer. I just want to sit in front of the fan and watch TV.

Today was a mixture of work and medical stuff. This morning, I had to get my annual mammogram & a few weird moles removed…I know, TMI. Then this afternoon, I got my braces!

I got the Invisalign type of braces…they actually call them aligners rather than braces, and they are totally clear...you can't see them at all. Today the orthodontist prepared my teeth for them. The most unpleasant part was he had to drill some space between 5 of my top teeth to give the teeth room to move. It was only about .2 mm …anyway it felt like he was creating a huge gap because it made my head RATTLE so loud, it almost made me want to throw up. But really .2 mm is so small you can’t really even see it. At least that’s over.

Now I have the aligners on my teeth, and although they don’t hurt, they feel kind of tight and uncomfortable. Supposedly they will be that way until the teeth start to move a bit. Then I start using a new set of aligners every two weeks. They showed me a whole computer imaging of my teeth now and how they will move gradually…it was really cool! The expected length of time for the whole process for me is 46 weeks, so slightly less than a year. That’s doable.

The orthodontist told me to wear the aligners between 20-22 hours a day, and to only take them out when I eat or drink anything (besides water) or when I brush & floss. Well right now, they are hard to get out, and I can see myself not wanting to take them out any more than is necessary. Who knows, maybe they will make me lose weight???? They certainly will keep me from casual snacking or even taking a piece of candy here and there. What a selling point that would be…”Straighten Your Teeth While You Lose Weight!”

I hope to be able to catch up on everyone’s blog in the next day or two. Right now, I’m going to take a Tylenol and hope it takes away this uncomfortable feeling in my teeth. See ya later!

"Eat whatever you want"

In order to get better, I always work hard at trying to do whatever Dr D suggests. When she told me I should eat whatever I want…well, the idea is kind of scary but exciting too.

Except I can’t figure out what I want.

That probably sounds weird. I’ve never had a problem deciding what to eat whenever I've wanted to binge. I’ll usually get a thought in my head about what I want, usually ice cream or candy like peanut butter cups. But now, since I’m actually giving myself permission to “eat whatever I want,” I’m having trouble eating. Because I don’t want to waste the freedom of eating whatever I want on just eating something for the sake of eating.

But when I was out doing some errands yesterday, I thought and thought about what I really wanted for lunch, and I couldn’t figure it out until I got way too hungry and ended up with a headache. I finally decided I really wanted a chicken burrito from Taco Time, but it would have taken me 15 minutes out of my way to get there. So I got a chicken burrito from Taco Bell, and I was a bit disappointed because it wasn’t exactly what I was thinking of.

I guess the point is, I got too focused on figuring out what I “really” wanted. Maybe the idea is not to “eat whatever I want” as much as it is to “not worry so much about what I eat.” There really is a difference. If I stop focusing so much on every bite I take (the serving size, the calorie count, the fat content, etc, etc), I’ll probably eat less. It might take me a while to get comfortable with the idea so I guess I just need to be patient.

Early this morning B and I took a 35 minute walk…it was already getting pretty warm, so I’m always a bit concerned about pushing him too hard in the heat. I’ll be working doing some chores outside in the yard today, so that will be good exercise.

My tomatoes are coming along wonderfully. Each day a few more are ripe enough to eat. Today there are about 10 ready, so it’s a trickle. Soon it will be a deluge. It’s amazing how sweet the Sweet Millions really are, and the Sun Golds too. I have a hard time bringing them into the house…I want to eat them as I pick them. Sorry, hub, I don’t know what happened…there weren’t any tomatoes today! (lol)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Enjoy the summer while it lasts!

The Definition of Insanity

Today I realized something....

I’ve kept records of my weight for the last 30 years. I was looking through my “weight file” today. Yes, I actually have a file that is just devoted to tracking my weight. It's two inches thick and contains charts, graphs, body fat percentages, BMI calculations, yearly average weight, yearly mean weight...on and on and on. The insane fact is…over the last 30 years, my weight is consistently about the same. The most I’ve ever weighed is 184 and the least is 156. The charts show that the vast majority of the time, for 30 fucking years, I have weighed between 172-174. Last Friday I weighed 172.

The one time in the last 30 years that I weighed 156 was in the early 1990’s and I remember that I literally starved myself for weeks to get there. I also remember although I thought I looked good, I was physically miserable every minute. Within 6 months I was back up to the mid-170's. My highest weight? A few times I've been in the low 180’s...typically right after a vacation when I’ve eaten and drunk whatever came along. But within a few weeks, I’m always back in the mid 170’s.

Still…I worry-worry-worry non-stop about what I weigh. According to various charts I should weigh around 165…or should I? I have big bones like everyone on my dad’s side of the family, and I'm very muscular for a woman 56 years old. Maybe I should weigh 172?

Sometimes I feel like a rat in a maze that has no exit. I just keep going around and around, up one dead end and down another, but I can’t escape no matter what I do. I might go further down one corridor of the maze temporarily, but then I always have to turn around and go back.

Dr D thinks I should just relax and enjoy life and forget about constantly trying to lose weight. It seems like I put an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears into losing weight only to end up at the same place over and over. She thinks that maybe if I stop trying, I’ll lose weight naturally and enjoy life at the same time. Is that possible? History seems to predict that I won’t gain much weight, if any. Maybe the constant food restriction that I impose on myself is partly responsible for my sporadic compulsive overeating, which causes me to never really "lose" weight permanently.

The thought of giving up the never-ending routine of food restriction, obsessing about reaching the “ideal weight”, and the constant pursuit of perfection (whatever THAT means???) actually makes me nervous…I think all this emotional activity is like a comfortable old sweatshirt. It's ugly and I'd be embarrassed if anyone saw me wearing it. But maybe I should throw it in the trash and get something new. Maybe, just maybe, I could get used to something new.

Evil in a Bag

I was doing very well today…feeling good, keeping to my food program. I took my car to the dealership for an oil change over lunch. It was gonna take an hour, so rather than sit in the lobby and watch TV, I changed into my sweats and went for a walk. Along the way, I stopped at a drugstore…I was looking for something like Rye Crisp or soy chips to take back to the office to eat with my string cheese. No luck. Then I found these “RITZ TOASTED CHIPS”…I looked at the calories, carbs, fat, and sodium...and they didn’t seem too bad, even kinda healthy?

14 chips =
Calories 130
Calories from Fat 50
Total Fat 6 g
Sodium 290 mg
Total Carbohydrate 19 g
Protein 2 g

What can I say… After all my recent blah blah blah about eating consciously, without guilt, without compulsion, etc etc. Blah Blah. Whatever. These things are addictive. I should have just thrown them away or put them out for the vultures in the office to eat. Waaaay too tasty, too crunchy…too freaking EVIL. Long story short…I think I ate about half the bag...4 servings. Real healthy, right? Tomorrow the rest of the bag is going away…not sure where, but these are f'ing dangerous. Let someone else eat them.

Tonight I was able to get a few things out of my garden to add into our salad…

A few more Sun Golds, sugar snap peas,
and green & red onions…
or are they red green onions?
I’ve never grown these red onions before,
they’re quite tasty, pretty too.

Weekend catch up

After 3 days of sunny, hot weather, we woke up today to cooler temps, overcast skies, and a bit of drizzle. Refreshing, really. We in the Pacific Northwest can’t handle too much heat…it makes us wilt (and whine).

My day with my mother was actually nice. We had a bunch of stuff to do, including taking her dog to the vet and seeing the lady about the photo collage. The one-on-one personal interaction was kept to a minimum, so I wasn’t feeling too stressed out by the time I left for home Friday evening.

She was very pleasant and only said one critical thing. I was wearing a lime green top even though I know she hates green in general…to be honest, I wore it on purpose just to see how she would react (lol), which is not something I would have ever done before. I usually try to wear something in a color I know she’ll like (blue) or at least won’t criticize. Not surprisingly she couldn’t resist commenting…“I hate the color of that shirt” but then she followed it up with a compliment “but it looks really good on you with your red hair.” I just smiled and said, “I really like this color, so thank you.”

All in all, it was a nice day. I did stop on the way home for a small Blizzard at DQ but before I stopped, I analyzed why I was getting it. And it wasn’t because I was feeling compulsive. I was just a bit hungry and that’s what I wanted. Dr D is trying to help me realize that it is okay to eat what I want as long as I’m not doing it for compulsive or self-destructive reasons. I know this logically, so we're working on convincing my subconscious mind, which is where the problem is. It’s an interesting experience to eat things like ice cream without guilt. I don’t know that I’ve ever done that before. Anytime previously that I would eat "bad things" (not that they were intrinsically bad, just that that is how I thought about them), I’d always feel anxious or guilty. It feels good to not ruminate negatively after eating something.

I’m still experimenting with all the things my Blackberry can do. Here are a few photos, which I sent to myself via email:

Two Sun Gold cherry tomatoes ready to eat...
I ate one and gave the other to hub.

There are a lot of tomatoes not too far behind,
but so far, it’s just these two.

Strawberry plant with one tiny strawberry...
more to come soon!

Heron on a nearby dock.
It's kind of fuzzy...I'm still working on how to zoom in.

B & I are going to the park for a quick walk. Grocery shopping later with hub.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Visiting Mom

Tomorrow, I’m visiting my mom to help her with organizing some family photos into a large collage for the hallway in her house. We have an appointment with a lady who does this type of thing professionally, so it actually should be kind of fun.

I seem to have crossed a threshold with my mother. I don’t have as much anxiety about visiting her as I've always had previously. I still feel an aversion to talking or being with her, but I think that’s just old tapes going around in my head. Since being in therapy I feel much more in control of how I react to her. She also seems to be sensing something is different…the balance of power seems to have shifted, so to speak. She’s being much nicer to me lately and she even apologized for a few thoughtless things she said recently. It may be because I’m keeping her at arm’s length on the advice of Dr. D. I'm not abandoning her or anything cruel like that...but I’ve just set a few boundaries in my mind, and that seems to have improved our relationship.

Tomorrow will be an interesting experiment to see how compulsive I feel after being with her all day. I didn’t get a chance to see Dr D this week, but I’m hoping with all the therapy I’ve done so far, the impulse to binge will be much reduced compared to how bad it has been in the past. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Blackberry ringing in the dead of night…

Take these broken fingers and learn to type...

Oh, I know that’s not exactly how the song goes, but I couldn’t think of another title for this post. Yes, I have a new Blackberry Storm.

It came this afternoon, and I’ll admit, when I took it out of the box, I was totally intimidated. The first thing I thought was…what the heck did I get myself into? Holy Crap…there are 50 pages in the “Getting Started” manual! It took me 10 minutes just to figure out how to open the case to put in the battery. I just kept thinking…thank goodness I have 30 days to decide whether to keep it or not.

Well, after I got my anxiety under control, I watched the on-line tutorial and started playing around with it a bit…and now I’m hooked. I love the touch screen and the brightly colored, extremely legible buttons and the way the screen changes from portrait to landscape and back depending upon how you hold it. It has 3 or 4 different ways to type, whatever you choose.

So far tonight, I’ve set up email, paired it with the Bluetooth in my car, taken some photos, used the browser, and set up separate alerts for the phone, email, and text messages…oh yeah I almost forgot, I made a few phone calls too. lol.

All this stuff is so amazing. It just makes me realize how many incredibly smart people there are in the world who can think these things up, much less design them.

I still need to get my contacts transferred from my old phone, and I’m sure there are a ton of things I don’t know about yet. But right now, I’m feeling a bit like a techno-nerd and it’s a good feeling. I’m already addicted…now I know why people call it a Crackberry!

An Explanation and a Story

After my post about aging, Patty at Fit by my 50th asked me a question…“BTW, what is that profile picture about? :-)”

As I mentioned in that post, my first hub was an artist, and he did lots of pictures of me. Some were beautiful, some were interesting, and some were kind of strange, including the one I use as my profile. Besides being a photographer, he produced many other kinds of art…jewelry, sculpture, multi-media, you name it, if it was artistic and fun to make, he would try it.

One of his other specialties was glassblowing, which evolved into neon art. So that profile picture was taken around 1983 and shows me with neon glasses and a neon halo behind me. I just remember the glasses were really hard to keep on while he took the picture. I had to hold really still and not move my face.

One amusing story about his artistic endeavors (well, it’s amusing now, it wasn’t at the time)…for a while he was in to making “life masks.” He would make a plaster cast impression of someone’s face, then he’d fill it with silicone which would result in a rubbery face that looked like the person asleep (expressionless with eyes closed).

I thought it would be kind of cool to have a life mask of myself, so in preparation to make the mask, we covered my face with Vaseline to keep the plaster from sticking, and also put straws in my nose so I could breath during the process. Then he piled plaster of Paris on my face. The first time we tried, he didn’t use enough plaster and the cast broke when we took it off. So…we decided to try again.

This time, he really piled the plaster on heavily. An interesting aspect of plaster of Paris is that it heats up as it cures. So after about 5 minutes, it started to get really hot on my face and since it was so heavy, I started to get a little uncomfortable and claustrophobic. We decided to remove it but…Ooops!…We had forgotten to re-apply Vaseline. Which meant that the mask was now stuck to my eyelashes and eyebrows and we couldn’t get it off. I just remember panicking and saying “get this f’ing thing off me!”

We ended up literally ripping it off…which included ripping off my eyebrows, eyelashes, and some of the hair from my hairline. The weight and heat of the plaster had also caused bruising across the bridge of my nose and two black eyes. The most interesting thing was that the rubbery face that resulted had… eyelashes and eyebrows and a hairline.

Ex-hub did use the mask to make some rather strange sculptures:















Meanwhile I spent the next few weeks trying to explain to co-workers what had happened to me. After all, I looked like I had been punched out...and my eyes looked really strange without lashes & brows. I’m not sure anyone believed the true story, but who could make up something like that?

The Morning After...

I want to thank everyone who made a comment on my last post. I sure had a major pity party going on. Fortunately, these moods of mine don’t usually last a long time, and reading all your kind and insightful comments definitely gave me an emotional boost. So, again, thank you.

Well, I’m glad that the 4th of July is over. Actually, the day was fun…it’s always the night of fireworks that is so stressful. Anyone with a dog knows what I’m talking about.

But I did enjoy the day. It was absolutely gorgeous weather. Our next door neighbors always have a huge all-day party and we just horn in, so it’s not much work for us. They always start the day with a fabulous breakfast that they cook on the beach…eggs, bacon, and pancakes. I don’t know what it is about eggs cooked over an open wood fire. They are so delicious! They always have mimosas, too, which I love…who doesn’t? The rest of the day is just casual, with a pot luck in the evening.

Independence Day is pretty much a free for all, in that 6 neighbors all share their yard and dock space for the festivities. No boundaries or property lines. So one fellow was using our dock to teach his 3 year old son Maddox to fish. I was out there chatting with him, and for some reason Maddox took a real shine to me. This was unusual since I have no experience and thus not much of a comfort level with children. But Maddox and I started fishing together…another unusual thing, since I don’t know how to fish either…lol. His dad ran out of worms, so Maddox and I went digging together in one of my planter strips. To be honest, I fell in love with this little boy. He was so smart and charming and good natured. I never knew there were children like that. I didn’t catch any fish, but I did have fun. After Maddox and his dad left for naptime, I spent the rest of the afternoon just drinking beer, talking with the neighbors and hanging out. Finally it got so warm that lot of folks, including myself, went swimming in the lake. Overall, it was a very pleasant day.

But night always follows day…so, about 6 p.m. I gave Buster a valium because people start shooting off fireworks about 8 p.m. (Our vet says that valium is really better than acepromazine, which is what most vets prescribe as doggie downers.) Even though fireworks are banned in our town, people all up and down the lake still do them, including the illegal, really LOUD kind that are purchased at the Boom Town reservation. Even with the valium B is still freaked out, just not as badly as he would be without it. We just huddle together on the couch with all the doors and windows closed to reduce the noise as much as possible. Poor B...late last night he threw up twice I think just from the sheer terror he was probably feeling. Things finally quieted down about midnight and surprisingly, we got a fairly good night’s rest. He seems fine today…dogs are so resilient.

So, today, hub and B and I are just going to relax...maybe we'll go swimming. Then hub and I'll probably go grocery shopping, and we'll be stocking up on healthy food. Starting tomorrow, life will be back to normal for the foreseeable future. I’m glad. Normal is good.

"Old Age Is Not For Sissies"

This quote from Bette Davis says it all…

As I progress through therapy a lot of stuff comes up. I feel a lot of sadness about not enjoying, or rather never being able to enjoy, my life as a young person and is something I’ve talked about a lot with Dr D.

It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to even publish this post, because it might sound as if I’m being boastful or vain. I’m not. No one who knows me would ever describe me in those terms.

But the fact is…yes, finally, at this late stage of my life...I’m gonna acknowledge it…I was a knockout when I was young. When I was a sophomore in college, I was even approached by a modeling agency…a real one, not a “weird” one. But I was considered "too fat" at the time…having lost my "freshman 20" that I had gained the previous year, I weighed about 145. But the agency said they wouldn’t sign me up unless I lost an additional 25 lbs. For me, at around 5’9”, this was a physical impossibility, even using the extreme measures of starvation, non-stop exercising, and bulimia.

Now I look back at pictures of my younger self, and I truly regret that I didn't realize what I had. I was pretty, but I didn’t enjoy it. I was so focused on my flaws and my angst about not being the “perfect weight” (as dictated by the modeling agency and before that, my mother).

Bette Davis had such an amazing look and such beautiful eyes…she was an iconic figure. Now, I'm not comparing myself to Bette Davis, but…Bette seemed to know she was beautiful in her youth. Then (this is just my impression) she didn't seem to mind too much when her beauty faded.

Bette Davis in the 1930's

I, on the other hand, never realized that I was pretty, and now I'm dealing with the regret of not appreciating it at the time. I was tall and thin and I had gorgeous curly red hair and porcelain skin and the most naturally straight, whitest teeth anyone could imagine.

And yet…I spent my youth criticizing myself and hating how I looked…because I wasn’t “perfect.” The modeling agency’s pronouncement that I should weigh 120 just added to my insecurity and low self esteem. And when I couldn’t starve myself or throw up enough to get to that proscribed weight, I considered myself fat and ugly and a failure.

Me in the 1970's

Now that I’m so much older, all I can do is look back at pictures of myself and say “WTF?” (My ex-hub was an aspiring photographer, so he took scores of what I realize now were artistic pictures of a beautiful young girl, someone I don't even recognize as myself.) Why didn’t I appreciate what I had??? Who the hell, besides myself, cared whether I weighed 120 or 145? Even when I became a firefighter at the age of 28, and I needed to be strong and fit and muscular and a “normal” weight, all I cared about was trying to be as skinny as whichever model was in vogue at the time.

And now…it seems like it’s too late for me…things are going downhill FAST. The latest insult? When I went to the dentist a few weeks ago, I mentioned to him that I had noticed one of my front teeth seemed to have grown and was now actually longer than the one next to it. (I guess that’s what the saying “long in the tooth” means.) Since I've always had nice teeth, this was kind of annoying, even a bit scary. So my dentist referred me to an orthodontist…Turns out our teeth grow and shift constantly throughout our lives, and that was what was happening. The crookedness is only going to get worse, so now I need braces. I’m 56 years old…and I need braces! DAMN!

I'm approaching my "twilight years"…and I need orthodontia…my skin is so dry I could compare myself to Lot’s wife… I have hot flashes and really crabby days (although these are better since I started HRT and anti-depressants)…and in spite of eating carefully and working out a lot, I’m a bit overweight and lumpy and flabby in a lot of places…and…my face is falling in like a jack-o-lantern in the middle of November...so saying I need a facelift wouldn’t be crazy and overly critical of my appearance.

I’m not fishing for compliments on how I looked in my youth. I’m writing this as a way to help me process what I went through, and to try to figure out why I thought I was so unattractive, especially when the hard evidence of photographs tell a different story. So I guess you could say that this is a story of regret…regret for what I had but didn’t appreciate. If I’d appreciated it when I had it, I don’t think I’d be so angry and depressed today…if I’d appreciated my looks then, I think I could more readily accept the changes in my appearance now. But instead I just feel pissed off.

I know it's not healthy to live in the past, and I don't most of the time (at least I try not to) but occasionally I just want to...punch someone? Scream and yell? I don't know what.

Yes, old age is not for the faint of heart. I want to age gracefully, but I don’t know how. Probably because I never knew how to feel beautiful when I was young.