Whatsa Happening Hotstuff

It’s not like things have not been happening.

I had another end of a long day sob fest in my car where MLG told me to come right over to his office. He approached my splotchy red face and endless warm tears with a smile with so much strength, so much solidarity. He told me, “You have a great life. At the end of the day we have each other.” And he was so right. This is incredibly weighing on me, incredibly trying, but I have him and he loves me. There’s no panic in his face, no eye rolling, just utter joy to be with me and sooth me.

In the car some day before or after I asked, “I wonder how much a bank teller makes.” I see bank tellers every day and they never seemed stressed out. They never seem ready to pull their hair out. They don’t appear to leave their jobs in heavy baby sobs. They work calmly and enjoy interactions. They get off holidays and can take breaks and stuff. MLG says he thinks they only make $8 an hour. Then he said you never know if they hate their boss or if the other tellers are catty.

Oh. True.

Later as I read the classified section in all of 30 seconds pointing out the want ad for a PT bookkeeper who must have a sense of humor (oh-kay), MLG says one day when he’s doing well I may have a job because I want to and won’t feel as stressed about it. I admitted it’s the trapped feeling that really gets to me.

Then work was good one day and I thought, this is how it’s supposed to be. Today I even have a moment to try to collect my thoughts. This isn’t so bad really.

Also, my little brother got married. My father’s son who’s 10 years younger than me. I had the audacity to use Yahoo maps to get us to the remote reception dinner. It gave me a road to turn down THAT DOESN’T EXIST. Luckily when there’s one restaurant in a 10 mile radius everyone knows about it so a local pointed us in the right direction. We were close and cuddly during the festivities and talked about what we wanted for our wedding (certainly not the harassing, obnoxious DJ). It was a sweet affordable wedding and it made me feel like maybe I could pull it off too without squandering a shitload of money.

Then last weekend MLG’s parents came down from NY to visit for the weekend. We stayed at his friend’s condo on the beach. His parents met my mom and her boyfriend at lunch on Saturday, and my mom and clan went over to his aunt’s for Easter dinner. It was a great weekend but I had little down time. I long for not having anything to do, no laundry, nothing to clean, and just watching television. I meant to do just that yesterday and got through 45 minutes of a taped Queer Eye when it was magically 7 pm and MLG was calling for me to come over. I hadn’t done a stitch of laundry or picked anything up around apartment. The cats had just settled in. But this is my life. The life I love.

Soon

Tonight while driving home I was explaining to MLG how I was practicing making up songs. He, on the spot, can change words to songs and as if that wasn't enough, make them rhyme. I was never more happy in highschool when I learned about free verse poetry - nothing has to rhyme. But in the interest of fun and jealousy that I can't do it, I've been practicing and I was telling MLG about it tonight.

This morning after leaving the warm bed and MLG's warm smile and driving home, greeting my kitties and getting into the shower, the inescapable grin left my face as I sang tunes about my job and how my morning happiness was about to be ripped from me. It's another one of those weeks where I start trying to organize my resume in my head and thinking how I need to google how to describe one job you had that was sold twice. You don't want to show it as 3 jobs because it looks like you keep quitting and really you left your last job with 3 weeks paid vacation, plus 6 sick days, plus holidays including your birthday and date of hire. Now 5 months into your new job you don't even get a lunch hour. You take a cordless phone with you to the bathroom. No one's said shit about having time off during Easter. I wish I could remember the reframe, it was very easy to rhyme to and I was thinking about posting the whole freaking song until I remember people hate poetry, especially sad demented poetry which is what my song was.

But it rhymed.

My resume has yet to leave the think about it in my head. Today ended up being an alright day and I get home and think can I really take a bank teller job at $10 an hour or whatever they get paid? Are they really any happier? Maybe it's not my job, maybe it's me. Maybe I dislike working and it has nothing to do with a job.

The last roomate is moving out of MLG's house next week. He keeps saying things like my next roomate will be forever. Soon is the new word of our relationship. Soon things will change. I don't really know when soon is but I hope it's soon. I'm ready for a shift, a new focus in my life. I need it. My blog needs it too but I really need it. I wish there was more to talk about but my life is in such a weird unwavering state right now.

Uncomfortable, Post Chocolate Pop Tart

The very fact that size L coats don’t fit me anymore, even when I’m naked (I can’t even be a flasher – damn), and the scale assaulting me with 184.5 pounds, do I really need to see 185 or 190 or 200, has led me to tentatively declare today, the first day of Spring as my first day of turning this around.

Poundy mentioned how fat people don’t like to draw attention to their fatness, like Kirstie Alley complaining loudly about not getting her fries in Fat Actress. Last night we were jamming through a large popcorn after the longest walk EVER with no historic houses or pretty blooms to look upon and between trailers MLG would cram his hand in the bag and I wanted to shush him so people wouldn’t be thinking, look at the fat chick eating popcorn.

I’ve been meaning to write. I even had a great post going in my head one day but was distracted by work and too emotionally drained to write once I got home. I often see my laptop on the floor by the bed and draw a complete blank just looking at it. I’ll paint or read a magazine or read a book, anything not to have to think of something new to write beside the fact that I still hate my job and I still wish I were engaged. I guess the naysayers are getting to me because last night after many weeks of no bad dreams MLG broke up with me in a dream. I woke up to find him sleeping soundly beside me, thank god, and was desperate to get back into the dream to finish trying to call him. I just wanted to call him to find out why. At a certain point despite all the words of love and talking about marriage, if he hasn’t asked me yet and made it official, you have to wonder WHY and what’s he waiting for. You have to think he’s still unsure, he still has doubts. I woke up from that dream completely uncomfortable and unsure and kissed him goodbye and he looked at me and told me he loved me, that I was his world, and I believed him. At least for that moment, seeing it in his eyes.

In any case, the goal at this point is to recognize my stressors, they are there and they aren’t going anywhere. Eating can’t be the answer any more. Growing larger will not solve anything. It’s still early in the day, I haven’t even had to make a decision about lunch or approach dinner too hungry to make sensible choices. I haven’t had to snear at exercise or sneak this or sneak that. My skin’s not crawling yet and that’s when it makes all the difference.

Just Pimpin'

I thought I'd share some kitty pictures with you. I haven't had a "Pimp My Kitty" Picture day in a while and finally had a chance to download photos from my camera. This is Bella, In a Ball.

And sweet Aidan being rustled from a nap by the crazy lady with the digital camera.

Caught ya in love.

Why

Okay. I’m not going to try to step on anyone’s toes here but I think it’s time to back up a second and give a little recap.

I am a child of divorce. My memory of my parents is as follows, my parents always fought, loud, aggressive, and often. Of the few childhood memories I have most are of them fighting, glass dining chairs being broken (it was the 70s), hiding under my bed, way under my bed. I was afraid of my mother. Afraid of her voice, afraid of being hit by her. I hero worshiped my father who I never really knew. I would find out later that he cheated on my mother consistently and constantly and had trouble keeping jobs. He has his own past and I recognize that. I wish he could break out of that and learn to really experience his only life as he truly deserves to.

My mother soon remarried. I learned the aggression that came from my mother’s arguments with my father were minimal compared to the rage of my stepfather. My preteen years were spent with my mom suffering acute post partum depression after bearing my half brother and trying not to trigger her or anyone else to go off. I was very quiet. My childhood was a very quiet life in a loud angry home.

I couldn’t help but think during these times, and this goes back to being very very young, when you’d pick the dandelions and make a wish before blowing them out, that somehow I could do better. I could grow up, fall in love, and be married and it would be a great marriage of love, safety, and compassion. Not like how I experienced but I suppose how I saw it in books I read and movies I saw. All my wishes, from dandelions to birthday candles, were to fall in love and get married. All of them, since as far back as I can remember.

Along with that I carry around this problem. This ever present problem of weight. Since the same age I dreamed of a happy marriage I was fighting a battle I’d continue to fight to this day. I battle of sure will and inner torment, to be thin. Thin means I’m not growing because you see there is no stabilization, that’s one thing I’ve never experienced. I’m either going up or I’m going down. Maintenance is the true battle when all is said and done. The rest is just a pilgrimage to the war.

When thin, I’m treated differently. I just am. Thin, for me, not how I think but how it truly is, equals beauty. And if you don’t know it yet, beauty gets you very very far. It makes life easier. There’s so much to say about it I don’t even know how to condense it into a paragraph. Because beauty, this outer beauty thing, is really like a mirage. It starts to flicker before you and you can’t help wonder of all things WHY. What makes me different now? What makes me feel different? What makes me treated differently? And does everyone understand that’s not really me.

This is me.

Right now. Somewhere in the lower 180s. Just outside a size 14. Frustrated that I can’t wear a fucking size 14. If you’ve never experienced it, if you’re a guy, I don’t know how to describe what that does to you. How you feel about yourself and how, really, you expect people to treat you.

But if you love me now, then I know you really love me. It’s not the mirage you’ve fallen for but me. The true me. Even when I’m thin, it’s still me, this me, on the inside.

This probably doesn’t answer the question why are you obsessed with being married. Why don’t you learn to love yourself first, but maybe it gives a little background. The most frustrating thing about a blog is certain judgments. Like that I don’t love myself. Or that I’m somehow unhappy. If I come across unhappy then that’s just my tone of writing, it is not the case.

MLG turned to me this weekend as we were cooking dinner together and said something to the effect of, “This is my life. I really love my life.” And I felt the same. I’m troubled over my job. I haven’t a clue what to do about my job. It tears at me and brings me down. I have to lift myself up from the disappointment of my job everyday. But I do it. This past weekend my job would try to push into my thoughts and I’d push them out telling myself on Monday I can worry, I will not ruin my weekend. And I did.

I want a home. I want my stuff. I want my cats. I currently have a very tiny earwig infested apartment that I shower and get ready from and house my cats where I try desperately to make sure they are getting enough attention during this transitional stage. I feel guilty that I don’t sleep there. I feel worried that the earwigs will come back with a stronger vengeance this spring. If it weren’t for getting back with MLG I would have already moved into a new apartment to spare myself from Spring in there. I still find earwigs regularly. It’s not pleasant but it’s no time to move if we are getting back together.

And that’s the other thing. I got back with MLG with the understanding that we would get engaged. I was not going to move back in until we got engaged. That was the agreement. It was not so I can live this nomadic life and “date” some more. We’ve done the dating thing. It’s time for the next level. As it stands right now we are exactly as we were right before we broke up. I was blindsided by the breakup. I was told I love you, you are so beautiful up until the day he told me he wanted to break up. When that happens it’s very difficult to believe the same words. There’s that part of you that says, yeah but you said that before, how do I know you mean it this time. The way you know you mean it is to move to the next level. You declare to someone you love that you want them to be your wife. You want to marry them. It’s then that you know, you can let the blindside past and move forward with the love of your life and truly believe all the miraculous things they tell you about yourself.

I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m frustrated that I can’t explain my life better. That I come off obsessed, and mentally unbalanced, and not loving myself. It’s not the case. If a person has struggles and tries to work through those struggles I don’t see how you can be any of those 3 things. Obsession is a one track thought. I don’t have that. Mentally unbalanced is unable to think things through and rationalize them. Not loving yourself would mean you give up, you shut down, you accept less than what you deserve.

I haven’t written much lately and it is my goal to return to writing more regularly. But it’s very difficult when you spend your time fretting over what people are thinking about you and the things you choose to share with them. It makes you not want to share.

I watched the Fat Actress show on my computer. I’m not really sure what I think about it. Am I the only one who gets annoyed when Kirstie pulls back her hair like all the time. I keep thinking they are padding her butt, that can’t possibly be her butt, is that really her butt. That just shows you if I’m in denial about her butt how easy it is to be in denial about my own.

I know it’s completely unrealistic but I wish there were just fat people, women, on screen, television, movies, whatever. I wish their weight wasn’t the main focus about them. Like they were just normal people. I wish they didn’t accentuate their boobs to hide their curves, it’s just annoying to me, maybe because my boobs don’t go over a small C, maybe because big lacey bras are distracting and mesmerizing. I wish that when I see a little hint of curvy flesh on the screen I didn’t have to think, look she has flesh and she’s still pretty and then think of the director thinking she’s fat and oh god another Hollywood actress having to look like a toothpick because god forbid I recognize anyone who looks like me even when I’m a size 8. Let me still wonder about my curves no matter what size I am because I’m not sure what they are supposed to look like.

The Scooper

Well darn. I just did my budget and I’ve been spending WAY too much money. So it’s a tight ship around here for about the next month. That sucks. I’ve been buying some really neat things for the house and was about to buy bath vanity lights from Pottery Barn. Sigh. Now I have to wait. And cut back on lunch money.

So I’ve been having these dreams about getting engaged and what ties them all together are the engagement rings. They are different every time and they are like no rings you have ever seen. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten what 2 of them look like. The last dream was last night and in the dream MLG drops to one knee and the ring goes on and I look at it, this time it was a ring with teeny tiny diamonds around it and then this plastic band that encircles it that says, “Planning the Wedding.” Don’t laugh, I don’t know how my mind comes up with this crap. And I think to myself, “Gawd, it’s not even one of those freaky ring dreams, this is the ring, I actually have to wear this FOREVER.” Then he admits he got it from a gum drop machine. I woke up quite relieved. The other ring I remember was a long ring that went all the way down my finger. I don’t remember if there was a diamond. I just remember it going all the way down my finger. So if I fisted my hand the ring juts out like a scooper. Weird.

This month was the first month I felt really stupid getting my rent money from the bank. Ugh. MLG’s roomie mentioned getting a blender last night and my insides went hot. What do we need a blender for? I don’t want a blender out on the counter. I’m a control freak and I don’t even live there. Can you imagine having to play with me when I was little. It was horrible. Horrible. I cannot share.

Well I guess I’m off to do some laundry. I just wanted to check in.