Two Almonds With A Side Of Water

I recently signed up for a weight loss program. I've been thinking about it for a while. I have several friends who have recently gone through very big transformations in this area, and after setting my own goals at the beginning of the year and not even making a step towards them, I found myself contemplating my next step. What is the right plan? Is it safe? Is it supervised?

It can be a little overwhelming. And what's more, if you tell people about it, you have to explain yourself. And, of course, I tell people. I mean, come on. I can't shut up about anything. The only thing I don't share publicly is the who/what/when/where and how I do stuff with the opposite sex. I might spout off about singledom and vague representations of the past, but there is a line I draw around the men in my life to protect them. Sharing even that you went to coffee with them can cause major issues for men, and I know enough to know I don't want to be the one to put them in that situation. I might write about you like Taylor Swift does, in some pseudo-named, tragic love story on my single page, but before we went wrong? Oh heck no. That's on lock down. (Haha)

Back to things I can't shut up about...like my life. There are a few reasons I like sharing it, but I think the joy of writing is not only catharsis, and relieving one's brain of all the ideas floating around in it, but it's also about having an audience. If you directed a play, you hope someone will go see it. If you star in a movie, you hope someone will watch it. Sing a song, you want someone to listen. Take a picture, you want someone to look at it. If you write a book, you want people to read it. Etc, etc, you get the idea. Everyone has a something they offer to humanity, and it is good to recognize it in ourselves, and also in others, so we can be encouraged to keep doing it.

So, I write. I write about parenthood, singledom, moonlit nights, my family, my fears, thoughts, dreams, my tragedies, and my past. I write about God, banana bread, things that annoy me, yadda yadda yadda. It's really a crap shoot. Just like now, because today I'm writing about dieting.

Ahhhhh yes, dieting. It seems like everyone is on one, even if they don't know they are. Someone should tell them. "Um, excuse me, but did you know that your food has cancer-causing chemicals in it, that will not only preserve your organs like a 20-year old McDonald's french fry, but also cause you to die sooner? I didn't think so. Here's a pamphlet. You should really change your diet." Changing it means they already had one to begin with, so this is my belief - that we all are on a diet of some kind.

I started "dieting" (as in somewhat caring about what I ate) about 2 1/2 years ago after a family trip to Las Vegas. When pictures came out of the trip I was mortified. No, disgusted really. That would be more accurate. So I did something about it right then. I started a plan and went walking every night, and lost 20 pounds. Then I got depressed about some douchebag boy in my life, and stalled out at 20. Then I got over him and lost 10 more. Then I plateaued for about 2 years, teetering with the next 5 pounds like I was trying to win a yo-yo competition. Lose it, gain it back. Lose it again, gain it back.

Then my friends started losing weight, and I was like, "Gee, why can't I do that again?" So I set some goals, and then never did anything about it. Good intentions...too much "cheating". So here I am the 11th month of the year I said I was going to do something about my weight, and I'm finally doing something about it. Did I mention I'm a major procrastinator? Maybe not. I may have put it off for another time.

So, I signed up the other day, and I'm going over the (very) strict meal plan with my sister and my cousin-daughter (She's my cousin, but I'm one of her guardians, hence the name "cousin-daughter"). We were laughing about it, because that's what we do when we're trying to encourage each other. We make fun of something together, and it bonds us in laughter over something that may be depressing...like all the food you can't have, for instance.

I had no real rhyme or reason to the food prior to this, but I really like food, so I just ate it. Not the greatest plan in the world! Totally not healthy. Totally not doing anything about those extra pounds. So, I decided to follow my friends and pay some money to somebody who will babysit me (I mean, hold me accountable) to my plan, and supervise my weight loss, to make sure I'm staying healthy in the process.

I go home and tell my sister and cousin-daughter about it, we're looking over the food plan, and the joking starts in. "So, what CAN you eat?" I start detailing each meal and it comes to the afternoon snack where I get a veggie and a fat option. The "fat" option is, of course, healthy fat. Avocado, hummus, peanut butter, etc. And then there's almonds. I say, "If you do the almonds you can do 15 of them! (Said in an excited way that makes it sound like a lot.) My sister replies with something about how hard it's going to be this time of year, and what about when we go out with out friends, or eat at a restaurant, what am I going to order? I jokingly say, "Um, excuse me miss? Could I get two almonds and a side of water please? Thanks!" And we all laugh. Because this is how we encourage each other in the really hard decision of limiting food. We joke about what we can't have, knowing that it's going to be painful.

Three days later, my team at work is having a Thanksgiving potluck. I'm bringing homemade mashed taters and gravy. I dutifully keep to the food I signed up for, even though I know I can't eat any of it. The whole meal consists of absolutely nothing I can eat. I know this ahead of time, and I almost plan for it. Earlier that day, a friend an I go out for lunch. We split 3 sliders. I shouldn't have those either. And some sweet potato fries. Those are definitely not on my meal plan. Already I have broken the rules, so I figure in my head, I have one meal of the day already blown, I might as well make a day of it.

At this point in the week I'm a whopping 3 days in to my diet, losing 8 pounds in that time (which is mostly water weight), and practically "starving" (which I found out later was my own accidental fault). My will power to remain faithful to my meal plan is withering away by the minute - mostly because I'm hungry and want normal food. After the sliders and sweet potato fries, I happily down a banana for my snack, as if this somehow justifies the sliders and fries debacle.

By the time the potluck rolls around I've thrown caution and common sense to the wind, and have loaded up my plate with what consisted of carbs, carbs, fat, sugar, more carbs, topped only by sugar in a can (soda). I've gone all in, and it's beautiful. It tasted wonderful. "Real" food, finally. I savored every bite like it was my last meal, and stuffed myself until I was only pleasantly full (so not to overdo it, or anything crazy like that).

I walk away from the meal thinking, "I'll be able to lose this back. It's only one meal." My body, however, had gotten used to protein shakes and minimal eating over the last three days. The Thanksgiving dinner hit my stomach like a marshmallow in a microwave, bloating me up 5 pounds from the weight I had started with that day. I was uncomfortable, the waist on my pants making itself heard loud and clear, and the pain in my stomach, relentless.

Soooooo, this was a pretty dumb idea. And to top it off my weigh-in was the very next morning - my first weigh-in since I started the plan. I knew I had blown it. I got on the scale that night and nearly cried. All that hard work and one lousy day blew it. I knew I had still lost a few pounds, but not nearly as much as I could have if I had done what I was supposed to. I was paying someone to basically screw myself. Go me.

I went in the next day, knowing my doctor was going to look at my meal sheet for the week and do what needed to be done. That's what I'm paying her for, after all. I step on the scale and had still lost 3 pounds for the week, or technically 3 days, of being on the plan. Three pounds in three days is nothing to balk at, but still...I knew better. So did she.

At least I was honest on the meal sheet. I clearly stated what I ate, even when I cheated. I told her every single thing I had during "Thanksgiving dinner". At least I could be honest. She didn't scold me. I already knew what I had done. Already shaming myself for it.

As I'm sitting there in her office I start to get hungry. Old habits die hard, and all I could think about was Chick-Fil-A, and their stupid chicken biscuits. "I wonder if they're still serving breakfast right now. No, I can't have that! Marci!! You just crashed your diet and the very next day, while sitting IN the doctor's office talking about how you bombed it, and need to stick to the plan, all you can think about is chicken biscuits?!?! Okay, what could I have instead? I need something right now to hold me over until I eat breakfast. I'm SO hungry! Something on the list. On the list. On the list. Something healthy. Something small.........."

And almost without hesitation, as if I had come full circle in my demise, shame, desperation, and regained hope, the first and only thing that came to my mind was pulling into the nearest drive-thru and asking......"Could I get two almonds with a side of water?"

Haha
Still practicing :)

Jazz Me

I don't consider it coincidental at all when random awesomeness happens in my day. I was practically on the verge of tears today. Nothing seemed to be going right, and my day was full of awnry, angry callers who just wanted to argue and rant. Back to back calls of nothing but people screaming at me. There's only so much of that a person can take. I was trying to go to my happy place, but there wasn't enough time. I had just set foot on the beach when the phone would ring. I was contemplating pill usage, faking a sudden illness, or even pulling the fire alarm. Sure. Anything to stop the endless cycle of madness that was happening on the phones at work today. (I'm just kidding about the fire alarm.........'cause that's illegal.)

I had reached the "power hour" of my shift. One more hour to go before I could relieve my headache and head home. At this point I had resigned to having customer's bent on yelling at me. I almost felt this next call going that direction. It started out on what should have been a simple call, but seconds turned to minutes and I got stuck helping someone who had experienced identity theft from the "bastard Indonesians" (his words, not mine) apparently one too many times, to take my simple account resolution as an answer to his problem. I could feel this headed in the wrong direction. So before it went too far down that road, I put my big girl panties on and just dealt it. I was going to be on this call for way more than the 5 minutes it actually required for me to fix his account.

What should have been five minutes turned into forty. He ended up being very pleased with the outcome, but that wasn't the cool part. After we got on the right track and a happier note, and while he was supposed to be diligently working on account resolution, he decided to strike up a conversation about life in the states. It was the middle of the day in Sydney, but nearing the end of the night here. He started asking me about Phoenix and whether we had lakes nearby to escape the heat. Yes and no. Lakes yes, but not any like I was used to. I grew up in Michigan. I was used to lakes everywhere, and a giant one that was so big it was like an ocean...but with fresh water. 

The conversation continued, and by this point I had given up on this call being anything but endless. Why not just stretch this out for the remaining hour? This could be my last call!! :) Since I had given up on it being short, I figured I might as well enjoy it. He said something about how I got to head home after the call, and asked what one does when they get home at such a late hour. I told him I do what everyone does when they get home from work. I eat dinner, and relax for a while and then go to bed. Lately, I've been listening to jazz and doing some reading at night before bed. "You like jazz?"

The next 20 minutes were spent discussing my time living outside Philadelphia, the home of jazz. I told him that Philadelphia has several jazz radio stations, and he asked me which ones, so he could listen online. It had been so long since I had heard them myself, that I had to do a quick internet search. WJJZ...I remembered that one. Kind of a mix of newer stuff, but generally, at home I listen to the earlier stuff - the classics. Ella, Benny, Duke, Dean, Frank, Billie, etc, etc, etc. 

He proceeds to tell me about his eclectic music collection, and the stack of vinyls he was sitting next to. He's a sound guy...and a music buff. He's like me. He's got an eclectic music collection from everything from hard rock to jazz, but his favorite is jazz. He gives me some albums I need to listen to, and I tell him about WJJZ. I tell him about singing in the jazz class, and about jazz in Philadelphia. It reminds me of Ortlieb's Jazzhaus.

I swear that place was used in the Prohibition Era. Long and narrow, with a tiny stage in the middle. And to get in, you had to go down a flight of stairs from the street, and there seemed to be no sign for the place, whatsoever. If I hadn't mapped it on the GPS I wouldn't have known where to find it. I almost felt like I needed to knock on that steel door, and have a special password to get in. No special password needed, but a reservation was handy. There were so few tables, it was hard to get in. The music was classic. A simple band - a piano, string bass, sax, trumpet, drums and a singer. And they played all the good stuff. The bassist in the band also played for our swing singers' group.

It was a bit of nostalgia. Another jazz lover. There aren't many of us, but we're around. I feel like only the cool people like jazz (that's not really true...I guess). It's a special kind of love in music, and it's not for everyone. You can't tap your foot to it, sometimes you can't even dance to it (rhythmically, at least). You just have to sway, and enjoy it. It's a soul thing. And that is why I love it, and why I get so happy when I find other people who love it...because they're usually true music lovers like myself.

I spent all this time on this call just to fix a simple problem, but I feel like it did more for my spirit than anything else. A bright spot in my day. A trip down memory lane, and a stop at appreciation station...thankful for all the music lovers around the world connected by groovy tunes...and phone cables.

Cheers, mate.

:)

Oh My Stars!

If you know me at all, you know I love (as in really love) the night sky. It's tied with the beach for the place that I feel most centered and calm. Far better yet would be laying on the beach, spending a night under the stars. That would be complete heaven. But I would settle for a night in the middle of nowhere, away from buildings, telephone poles, or even roads, so I could see the moon and stars light up the night sky in a all its artistic perfection.

Tonight, after I got out of work, I stepped outside and breathed in the best, crisp Fall air. Earlier in the day I had seen the moon rising from my 3rd floor cubicle, even as the sun was still bright. I knew it was going to be a bright moon. I just had a feeling.

Midnight came, and I got out of the well-lit parking lot as soon as possible and headed home. The air was finally cold. The time since the last cold spell was here felt like twenty years ago. Surely we were due for fall weather, as it is now the beginning of November, but it had waited until now to finally show up. My Old Navy hoodie I had grabbed earlier in the day, seemed sufficiently warm while the sun was still shining. Now, it was hardly keeping up with the chill. Every breath I took was making my lungs contract, and sending cool air coursing through my insides. It was refreshing.

The sky seemed to match the air. I love crisp Fall nights. My gaze always goes to the sky on nights like this. I feel like if the air is that crisp, the sky must be crystal clear. And it was tonight. I stepped out of my car when I got home, only to be met with a sky plastered with tiny white dots, eery clouds, and a giant bright moon. It was perfect.

The stars were so clear and bright, even Vincent van Gogh would have wanted to repaint them. There were thousands of them, probably millions if my eyes had adjusted enough to see them, and I had been far enough away from city lights. The clouds were eery-looking, almost as if they were part of a Tim Burton illustration, a sort of dark pink color. The closer to the moon they got the more white they were, yet with the same outlining color, just to keep their creep-factor. And the moon - it was practically a spotlight. The shape of sunny side up egg. Not half, and not quite whole, but rounded enough on the top that it was almost pulling off being a circle.

My old friend the moon. I couldn't help but stare, standing there in the middle of my apartment complex parking lot, just taking it all in, those eery clouds, the millions of stars, and the big bright moon, and breathing in the crisp, clean, Fall air. The moon seems better in air like this, and accompanied by this many stars.

I took a long walk with the dog around the complex so she could enjoy it too. She was more occupied with the grass, which had a wonderful dewy aroma, and only made the night more perfect to my senses. That Old Navy hoodie was no longer sufficient at keeping me warm, and all those deep breaths of crisp, cool air had now filled my lungs and my body with a chill that wasn't leaving.

The only thing that would have made this night better was if it had happened in the middle of nowhere (or on a beach), and if it included the heat of a fire on my face. And possibly s'mores. :)

In the meantime, my knees were reminding me that I was nowhere close to a fire, so I walked back home, crawled under a blanket, turned on some Michael Buble, and wrote about my old friends, the moon and stars. I'll be back to visit them again tomorrow night. Sure as anything, they will look just enough different, it will give me something new to dream or write about.

The Great Face-cation Awakening

I could feel it coming for several months. Friend after friend had been taking these "face-cations", as they called them, and telling me how great it was to get off social media, spending time in real life fostering their real relationships. It's not that Facebook isn't real. I actually love it. I have friends all over the country, and the world, and social media is the easiest way to keep in touch with them. I get to read statuses, see pictures, and even comment on things. I get to read interesting articles, laugh at funny pictures, and have my mind challenged about things I might not have seen if it hadn't been passed around on Facebook.

But somewhere in the last five years, since I first started my Facebook page, it started becoming an hourly routine to check in on my news feed, or write back to people commenting on my posts. And those creepy, stalker-ish Facebook ads, and the lack of privacy was starting to get to me. I started feeling overwhelmed. But I loved keeping in touch with my friends, and I loved to write and blog, and Facebook was a great way to share those things. How else was I to disseminate information that easily?

I guess you could call it a kind of addiction. It starts feeding your insecurities, doesn't it? It did for me. Instead of seeking my affirmation in God, or spending time learning new things, or pursuing my hobbies, I was spending time responding to others, responding on the comings and goings of my life. Anyone can look good on Facebook. If you're good at certain things, you look even better. It's like a showcase of work for all your friends to see, like a portfolio of your best self.

One of the things I noticed most, was I was using Facebook to communicate with everyone. If I wanted to say hi to someone, I Facebook messaged them. If I wanted to invite someone to my house, or to something I was planning, I sent a Facebook invite. I didn't call them on the phone and say hi, or ask if they wanted to come over. I Facebooked it...all of it. I tagged people I wanted to see certain things. I posted pictures I wanted people to look at. I posted, re-posted, and shared anything and everything, for myself and for others. My Pinterest search for avocado ranch dressing even showed up on Facebook. Instead of sending pictures to my friends via email, I posted them on Facebook and tagged them. Facebook ruled my life, and I was starting to feel like it was all...fake.

Who am I, and who are these other people in my life? Am I a profile picture, a status update? Is the validation of my ideas, or my writings the sum of how many likes and shares I get on Facebook, or how many people comment? Are the friends in my life made more important by how much they respond to me on Facebook, or if they accept my Facebook invite or not? If I wasn't on Facebook would they still care? Would I hear from them if there was no Facebook connecting us?

I guess I'm about to find out.

I have struggled with depression and anxiety for several years, triggered by an accident I was in 10 years ago. It's something I wish my life was rid of, and for the most part, it is manageable. These questions about me and my friends started coming up, and I was finding myself going back to that insecure state...the place where nothing good comes from, and you end up doubting and hating yourself, and hating everyone else too.

My path had led me here. It was a progression, really. A progression of self. I would say to myself that I would rather have a small group of close friends, than a bunch of people who were just interested in liking my profile pictures on Facebook. But was that really the case? Did I honestly believe what I was preaching, or did I really care more than I thought, about those 700-ish friends I had accumulated on Facebook, and what their opinion of me was? The truth was a hard pill to swallow. I really did care what they thought. I cared too much. And that left me dealing with the ugly truth that my insecurities were stronger than I had let myself believe, and it was time to make some changes.

I started reevaluating the people I had in my life, and what kind of influence I let them have. I used the circle method of evaluation. The closest circle to me being the people I trusted implicitly. In looking at this group, I had too many people in there! I had given privileges to people simply because of their blood relationship to me, or the years I had known them, not the value of our relationship. The next group now had some new people from the previous ring, but were holding the people I trust, but not implicitly. They were close friends, but not the "inner circle". The last group was the fringe group, or acquaintances. I have a lot of these.

It's really no one's fault where they land in these circles. Some move around, but for the most part people are who they are. They either like you or they don't. You either trust them or you don't.  When it looked like I was going to be a substitute parent again, I summoned my closest friends to pray for me and the situation. Those people right there. They are trusted. They are few, but they are strong and close to me. I trust them to keep my private issues private, and to challenge my thinking if needed. I trust them to come to me and call me on the carpet if I'm totally screwing up, but I also trust them to love me without fail. That is a strong connection, and one I don't take lightly.

I'm a Cancer, so my friendships and relationships are extremely important to me. I am also fiercely loyal...and stubborn. If you lose a Cancer's trust, chances are you won't get it back. Burn them, and they're pretty much lost to you. They take relationships seriously. I take relationships seriously. So moving my friends from the closest circle to the next one down tore at my heart and made me feel guilty. Guilty for what? Protecting myself at the cost of someone else. Or so it seems it's costing them. In reality, it's not. If I have to set a boundary around them, they're probably using me in some way, which I guess in some way is costing them. But the cost is really mine. And I was feeling spent.

I've spent the majority of my life feeling like a walking carpet. I might as well have been wearing a sign that said, "Please, come take advantage of my available heart." Not really that catchy, but totally true. It was time for change. I was ready.

At least I thought so.

When one embarks on changing themselves, or setting boundaries when one has not done so before, one should be prepared for a battle. I was changing the rules. I was changing them for myself, but ultimately I was changing them for others too. I didn't ask anyone's permission, I just started making small changes.

Also, when one decides to start changing one's self, they should be prepared to make several mistakes. Changing myself was getting uncomfortable for me, and also for those around me. The old Marci wasn't going to allow people to talk to her "like that" anymore. The guilt trips, the pressure to be the one to pick up the mess, to fix the problems, to take care of everything, and then get used and have people resent her for being herself, and then feeling guilty for being herself. That was the old Marci. I didn't want to be her anymore. I was tired of being her. But everyone else in my life that I had let have these privileged positions in my life, REALLY liked her, and got used to treating her a certain way, and having her respond accordingly. And then here I went changing the rules.

Not only did I not like the old Marci, but now that these prize people didn't like the new Marci, I wasn't sure I liked her either! I was offending people. Maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe I should just go back to the old me, the safe me...the unhappy me. She was liked enough, and she didn't rock the boat. She might not have been happy, but at least she was comfortable.

No.

God was changing me, growing thicker skin on me because of where he was taking me, and I knew it. But inevitably in this process, I was going to lose people. Given how much I value relationships, and how much I needed their approval in my life, the release of them was the worst kind of pain. But it had to be done. And not because I was forcing it. I wasn't asking anyone to leave. I was just changing me, and people were leaving on their own. I was being abandoned for becoming a better version of myself. Talk about disheartening.

And then there's Facebook. It seemed to only complicate what was already happening in my life. Now I had 700 Facebook friends in the boat I was rocking, and it was getting a little crowded, and more than a little uncomfortable. It was a mixed bag of people. Some really involved in my life and encouraging these positive changes, and others who didn't appreciate the changes, and sought to misuse, misunderstand and misinterpret everything I said or did, and throw it back in my face, as they called me every name in the book..."in love".

There's nothing loving about setting your own standards for people, and then criticizing them for not meeting them. We hold no power over another person when it comes to changing them. That's God's work. And best to leave it to him, as he knows the whole plan, and has no questionable motives towards us. People, on the other hand, have plenty them, along with expectations of every kind. It is simply impossible to keep everyone happy. And if you have the least bit of insecurity about what people think of you, social media can be a breeding ground for a special kind of anxiety.

Being prone to anxiety already, the massive changes to my life in the last several months, and the new changes I was trying to make to my self, I started to feel my old friends depression and anxiety come creeping back. I have felt this feeling before. I knew where this was headed. I feel like my insides suddenly took on de-cluttering my life like Floridians take on hurricane preparedness...simply and quickly. Facebook seemed like that $5 vase bought from Walmart. When packing one's things for evacuation, leave the vase, take the photo albums. I hope you get the reference. (Leave Facebook, take the friends!)

One of the best ways to help deal with depression and especially anxiety is to simplify your life. Too many things complicate life, and feel so overwhelming it's almost impossible to function even with simple tasks. If you can put some things on autopilot for a while, and remove unnecessary stresses, your chance of making it through the storm of d&a is more probable.

I've been off of Facebook for 2 or 3 days now. So far, I've been able to have a conversation with my best friend and one of my nieces on my lunch hour. I've put diligent effort into the novel I'm reading, I've gotten back to writing. I texted a couple of friends, had a couple of meaningful conversations, spent some time showing my cousin how to read sewing patterns while we went through the stash of patterns I have saved up, tended to my flu-ridden kiddo, and have baked another pumpkin pie, a batch of m&m cookies, and made some homemade ranch dressing.

And although my floors still need to be vacuumed, laundry still needs to be done, and I never got to finish "Pride & Prejudice" still in the DVD player, I feel like I accomplished a lot in my few days off social media. There's still more to be done, more things that require my time, but I hope by simplifying my life a little for just a few weeks, I can regain my grounding, and push ahead on all the things are part of my great big world.

*still practicing*