Moved

My new blog is justnesting.blogspot.com. I've got my first post up. Also I uploaded the wedding pictures from the proof album onto flickr. I didn't have a chance to write descriptions and I also want to put all the wedding photos into its own set so they are in order and can be viewed like a story. The ones I uploaded today are all over the place because I didn't have much time and scanning them took a long time (that's also why the quality isn't the best, it's not the photographer but the scanner I'm using at work).

I won't be posting over here anymore. Even if I resume dieting everything will go on at the new blog. I hope you update your links and visit me over there. Thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.

Identity Lost

I’m having a difficult time with my new name. Sure there was the hour wait in the crowded social security waiting room, greeted by a very warm guy congratulating me and saying I still had the married glow. Then there was the hour wait at the DMV (standing up) where I think I lost my glow. I didn’t expect a new photo and fuckall if it’s not the worst photo of me ever. Not even any lipstick. My mom would be horrified.

I tried practicing my new signature. I even had a couple that were passable and looked like I could pull off being Mrs. M that no one would know I’m an imposter, this singleton spinster, someone with a wedding behind her and a man who loves her unable to sign her freaking name. What I can do with letters very similar to my first name would make my third grade creative writing teacher cringe. I cringe. Oh god, they’ll think that one’s fake for sure. Or that I have some debilitating hand problem. Is this really my new signature? Is this mess of Os really what defines me now. Certainly this will get easier and I’ll have some flair to signing my new name as I did my old one.

Then there’s signing checks with my old name and being confused what to do with the check. Do I leave it, sign my new name behind it? Tear it up and try again. How many checks have been sent off unnoticed that it’s signed by the wrong person. Who knew all this could be so difficult. When will I feel like Mrs. M and not like I’m playing dress up in Mrs. M’s life?

In all these identity issues I continue to wrestle with the blog. It’s no longer what I set out for it to be. I was always told I’m a great writer and I know so much about dieting that certainly I’d make a great diet writer. When I discovered weightloss blogs I knew I wanted one. I wanted one for my adventure and it was an adventure and now I find myself here with this new life and its new set of problems and trails and the old problems feel like I’m being boxed in. I don’t fit the weightloss genre anymore and I can’t ride on the coattails just because I’ve made such a lovely home there. I’ve wedged myself so nicely in here, like a sturdy historic brick in a wall, I feel like I have purpose (though I wasn’t successful in completing my weightloss endeavor, maintenance is the true key to it all, but isn’t it great to be the voice of Still Here Though I Failed Again), and I feel popular and damn I’ve never felt popular so it’s hard to leave it, but this blog no longer fits my identity. And yet it’s scary leaving and starting in a new place because this is home. Just like my old name and my old driver’s license and my email address and everything that felt like me. I love being Mrs. M, I want to feel like her and I know I will one day. I need a blog, a future place that represents my new life and my new identity.

I’m leaving Tales but you can still find me writing about my life and being in this new place, a new place that will one day feel like home like this blog does. There’s still boxes and unpacking to do at my new home but I’ll post the link when I finally get it ready and it won’t be very long.

More Bodily Fluid Talk Because It’s A “Bathroom” Blog Afterall

Did you know when you use the ovulation predictor kits the directions tell you to reduce your liquid intake and have a 4 hour section of no bathroom visits (and not to do it first thing in the morning because that would be cheating) and test at the same time every day? Four hour forced no bathroom time. It’s difficult enough to remember to use the bathroom at 2 pm and stop using the bathroom until I can get home to test. It was 2:20 today when I panicked and realize, I have to use the bathroom now. Must go now!!! It’s amazing I can do any of this.

I thought for sure I had posted about my drug testing experience at work but I can’t find the post. See at one point at my old job it was bought by another company and that company had a drug testing policy. So we all took turns in pairs going to the Medical Place to pee into a cup to be tested for drugs. I have my vices but drugs are not one of them. The older I get the less interested I even am in drugs and even when I was young it was a fear/curiosity thing and anything that scares me I will not try without long talks or certain bribery. I’m saddened to say that but it stopped my addictive personality from getting a hold of something it would surely love.

So there’s no problem with drug testing right?

I couldn’t do it. I cannot pee on command. It’s horrible. I sat in the bathroom with my little cup and you can’t even run the water to help you and I think it was mostly that someone had to be able to hear you pee. I can’t do that. I can’t even pee in a bathroom that has one stall and a waiting area. One stall where you are alone is okay but if there’s a sink area where people line up and wait I’m a wreck. There’s actually a restaurant in town that I know I cannot pee in. Sometimes I try and get to the door and someone else walks in to queue and decide against it.

So I’m sitting there and sitting there and finally the nurse says through the door, “Would you like some water?”

I sat out in the lobby drinking cup after cup of water from the water cooler. It was a lot of water. People were staring. Finally I felt like I could pee. Also you have to fill the cup up to a certain level and that was a lot of pressure. I think I barely made it. The ride back to work we had to stop 2 times so I could use the bathroom and I peed most of the rest of the day. Awful, awful experience.

I can’t take the pregnancy/ovulation test holding the strip in my stream because you have to do it for 5 seconds. Too much pressure. I use the Dixie cup method instead and it makes it way easier.

And it feels good to use the tests. I had a faint pink line, which is no go, and matches my other symptoms. My temperature has gone up a little both days and all 3 days I’ve been testing I’ve had to get up at 6 am to shoo a kitty and/or use the bathroom. I try to do it very calmly and half asleeply as possible and gently fall back to sleep but I think I’m supposed to get 3 hours or so of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe I should change my temp time to 6 but then I’m sure I’ll stop getting up naturally at 6. Or maybe since all conditions are the same it will still show the variance I’m looking for, who knows. That’s the great thing about starting midmonth is by next month I’ll have all the kinks worked out.

I Just Feel So Confused

Okay, first off, can someone explain to me what happened on Oprah yesterday. I know I'm trying to rush 1 hour of show into 30 mins while reading mail but did they actually call someone an E bra size whose bra did not, I repeat DID NOT look like a E bra. Have you even seen an E bra? Me neither. I have seen a D bra and it's HUGE. It's like weekender luggage huge and you know I very well may be out of my mind thinking I'm a C and need to break down and buy a luggage bra for my over-amples but where did that mini E bra come from? No one has an E and if that little girl went to try on an E she'd get looks. I missed the beginning and I don't know where those bras came from but I don't get it, I really don't.

I've never felt more confused about ovulation. I used to get it, it's in the middle of you cycle. I didn't count anything last month and when my period came late I got a huge Grinch Who Stole Christmas smile knowing I was going to ovulate over the honeymoon. And according to plug your date sites I did ovulate on the honeymoon. Now I've got basal temperature readings and underwear monitoring and I'm totally dumbfounded. I should be close to ovulation but nothing else is reading properly. I suppose it would be helpful to know how long my cycle is supposed to be. I just feel so lost about it. It was so much easier before.

I've also been really bad about eating and keep saying I'll make a good go of it tomorrow and then I ruin tomorrow too. I think I just have to start midday right when I know this needs to stop, I'm completely out of control, and not wait until morning. The whole morning thing isn't helping. It sounds like a good plan really it does, but it's just a lie.

Yes, The Plug, Did You Know There Was a Plug, Because No One Told Me About The Plug

I was trying to figure out why I’m so into starting this chart on Fertilityfriend.com, so much so that I’m going to start charting mid-cycle, just for fun. And I realized that it’s because I love charts. I loved charting my weight (when it goes down anyway), it’s a blast to make the chart and study the chart, I love it. I love counting calories (when I feel I have some control over it). I think that’s why I never took to WW, I wanted more NUMBERS. Numbers makes it fun.

So I bought a basal thermometer last night and practiced on the couch while watching terrible television. Cool I can do this. The important thing to remember about taking your basal temperature is to a) not get up and move about before taking your temperature and b) you’re supposed to get a good chunk of sleep in before waking and taking your temperature.

Last night, or rather early this morning around 6 am Bella decides she can’t get comfortable and must sleep near my head. Which is fine, I don’t mind the feel of a cat on the back of my head and front really if it’s not the butt area in my face. She hops on one side of my head, then the other, unsure what side she wants to be in, back and forth about a half dozen times. Then she jumps down and starts chirping and I realize I have to use the bathroom for like the third time that night. I’m back in bed and Bella sleeps in the optimum spot between my legs, which Aidan decides is a much better spot than beside me where he ALWAYS sleeps. So he’s pushing her and bullying her and it’s just too damn early for bullying. I push him off the bed and she jumps down.

I wake up to the alarm, alarmed. I smack the alarm off and settle back in to rest. I realize I’m supposed to take my temperature and jolt up, way too much jolting for a basal reading. I manage to get the thermometer in my mouth, lay back down pretending to be still and rested, though my heart’s beating through my chest. The damn thing never beeps. I take it out turn it off, turn it on, put back in my mouth and wait. No beep. It’s been like 10 minutes. Brian’s stepping out of the shower and I’m embarrassed to have a thermometer in my mouth. I take it out, mark the temperature that seems way too freaking high and re-explain to Brian what I’m doing and forgetting really what it all means.

I’m supposed to watch it, record it, I don’t know. I think it spikes when you’re ovulating but that means it’s too late. You’re supposed to catch it just before.

Should I mention the mucous? I skip the mucous. I don’t want to track mucous. Who knew mucous contained such valuable information. I don’t remember that part in Sex Ed. And really, I think I’d remember. All the ewwwing and oh gross and wondering about the effects of yeast infections and sexual arousal (they don’t go together BTW). There’s no check off for dry as the desert sand. Is that a DS or DATDS? DATDS has to be bad. DATDS is always bad.

Lots of Good Stuff Today

Found this nifty site that will upload videos. I've been curious what to do since I took a little video, my first video, while laying on the beach at Truck Bay in St John during the honeymoon. Here's what I saw and miss, oh I miss.


Upload Video at JussPress.com


Because I'm not a above putting a ticker on my blog and sort of miss my wedding ticker, however tacky it was, I've put up a conception ticker, what next, I ask, what next, countdown to sex? I guess that's sort of what this is. I had to pick a length of cycle so I choose 35 days, though I don't consider myself a 35 day cycler, it's sort of what my body is moving towards at least around wedding time. I guess I'll modify as my cycle calms back down or I stay here, who knows what it's doing.

Go Veggies, Though I Forgot That I Hate Veggies

I’ve had 2 major diets in my life. I suppose this would somehow qualify as being diet 3 seeing how I’m flirting so steadily with 200 pounds and have been forced to delve into Lane Bryant and wish to god there was something I liked in there just so something, god, something would fit me, look pleasant on me, be of cotton origin, and be reasonably priced. Why are there no bootleg black cotton chinos in Lane Bryant? That should just be standard practice. I don’t get it. I don’t want to wear polyester pants. Fat people wear polyester pants for god’s sake, stop forcing me into a stereotype.

My first diet I was in my young twenties, recently broken up with from a 5 year rocky, unfair relationship. I was home, I was angry, and I was young. I did low fat - remember that one? I angrily walked the treadmill to My So Called Life on MTV. My breakfast was 2 chocolate snackwells and a can Coke. Hey, every morning I got my 2 favorite things so it gave a depressed angry young woman a reason to get out of bed. I lost 70 pounds from 200something and people started calling me anorexic when I started dropping into the 120s. I guess I have big bones. I kept it off a while and was an amazement to my family. The next bad relationship put me at 150 pounds and I continued struggling up 20 down 20 until I hit 199 pounds and started this blog trying to figure it all out, which I guess I never did, and now I don’t even believe there’s some deep dark mystery. I just believe I want what I want when I want it even if I know it’s going to make me fat and I don’t want to be fat, the short term of eating what I want wins out over the long term of wearing cotton fucking chinos, you’d think it wouldn’t and I’d be smart enough to know what’s going on but for some reason I’m really not, maybe that’s what I should concentrate on is why I’m such a dumbass about food. Also I really think my metabolism is fucked up, which I know is lame to say, just deal with your whiney ass low metabolism and move on, but it’s hard, whine, whine.

My second diet was low calorie and when I could finally get my shit together I was eating like 500 calories and happy and fed up enough to do so. Weight fell off pretty quickly the first couple weeks and then I stalled and had to add calories and exercise. My regime was pretty much a small breakfast, usually yogurt, a large lunch out somewhere usually in the 600 to 800 calorie range and a small dinner, exercise for ½ hour, and watch television and dream about being skinny to my little heart’s content. I got down to what 131.5 for like a day and started back up to where I am now. It starts innocently enough. I can eat Reece cups AND wear my chinos. It only becomes a burden when there’s no chinos to be had anywhere (and yet plenty of Reeces).

I suppose if this is diet 3 my goal is to switch my lunch and my dinner. Dinner is what is killing me and fuck if I can manage to eat 200 to 300 calories for dinner, it’s just not going to happen. So I’m trying to save 800 calories or more for dinner, small breakfast and small lunch. I’m hoping it will work. I did alright on day 1 and day 2 though 1800 calories is reasonable if I weren’t a binge gimme gimme eater and had to watch that tendency like a 2 year old. I did dip below 200 pounds yesterday, so it’s a start I guess. Today I had some issues with left over Halloween candy. If it would just go away from the office refrigerator I’d be fine. I’m over full size candy bars from the vending machine and over icecream after dinner and now I just have to realize that 6 fun sized candy bars, spread out at 2 at the time is WORSE than a regular candy bar and hey I’m not supposed to eat candy anymore anyway for the future B-A-B-Y. What happened to fruit and veggies and healthy stuff. STOP EATING CANDY!

I have put up another set of photos at flickr. They are the photos that my stepdad took at the wedding. He has a really expensive camera but it’s got a lot of color saturation to it, liked added yellow or something. I knew this especially from my candlelabras looking green and they are really aqua. Also I wear red lipstick, not pink but you can really see my pimples in full force. Thanks expensive camera! Flickr also erased my descriptions. I reput them in and it looked like it was taking them out again but I think they are there. This is the first time I had a problem with Flickr. I’m rather upset about it, I really like Flickr but now I can’t even trust it to post what I write.