150 Steps...In the Present Moment

I don't want my weight to be the central story of my life anymore. It seems as though for as long as I can remember I've worried about my weight and had others worrying about, commenting on and being concerned about my weight. As a kid, I was bullied and tortured by other kids because I was fat. Then I shot up in height and lost a lot of weight in high school. Suddenly I was thin and had no idea how to be a thin person. Boys noticed me, but for different reasons than when I was fat. I actually had boyfriends. And then over the years as I struggled with leaving home, college, jobs, and learning to become a grown up my weight went up and down and up and down and up and down. And then my weight went up and then up some more and then up some more after that. Until last year when I reached the heaviest I've ever been. And all along people have noticed and commented -  when I've been thin when I've been heavy and at all stages in between.  Truth be told....I&#

The whole "wearing my pants down around my knees" phenomenon among young guys (and some unfortunate young women.) I saw one the other day whose pants were just below his butt cheeks. Below his BUTT CHEEKS people. And he was wearing a BELT (apparently so the pants didn't fall off altogether?) What the hell is up with that??? Facial piercings and nipple piercings. Yeah. Just don't get that.  Ouch. And - as comedian Bill Engvall would say - people who "landscape the private property." DEFINITELY don't understand that at all. Eeeuuuwwww. People who are cruel to animals. The continuing trend in foo-foo-shi-shi restaurants to pile food in a single tall column on my plate. Why our cat Cecil wanders around the house with her favorite toy in her mouth MOANING pitifully and then when I actually throw it for her she just stares at me with a look of blank incomprehension.  Why I can only manage to keep my house tidy for a few days before it slides back int

I'm feeling kind of disconnected from the adoption these days with nothing adoption related to "do" except wait. Life has just kind of been rolling forward via its natural tendency to do so. Work, eat, watch  tv ,  Facebook , blog, ignore the basement, sleep, repeat. Yesterday, we spend the afternoon and evening with our little sister-in-law S while her parents attend a concert. We take her to see  How to Train Your Dragon  (we've all seen the movie already, but enjoy it just as much this time, especially S who sucks down a slushy and a good  portion  of a medium popcorn) and then out to our favorite Mexican food place (where 11 year-old S kicks my butt in our favorite card game and laughs at me when I sweat profusely through my enjoyment of a very spicy bowl of chili.) Arriving back at her house, S and I take her little dog J out for a walk. Despite J's petite size, he pulls crazily at the leash and we hurry to keep up with him in his quest to smell all o

This is me. This is me sitting on the couch. This is me sitting on the couch writing a blog post. This is me sitting on the couch writing a blog post when I should be getting into my gym clothes. This is me sitting on the couch writing a blog post when I should be getting into my gym clothes and going to the gym. This is me sitting on the couch writing a blog post when I should be getting into my gym clothes and going to the gym where I should be doing thirty minutes of upper body weightlifting. This is me sitting on the couch writing a blog post when I should be getting into my gym clothes and going to the gym where I should be doing thirty minutes of upper body weightlifting followed by thirty minutes of  cardio  on the bike. This is me procrastinating. OK. This is me. This is me ending this blog post. This is me ending this blog post and heading into the bedroom to put on my gym clothes. This is me ending this blog post and heading into the bedroom to put on

So the first e-mail I open this morning is from my sister. There is no text, just a link to a story from TODAY MOMS entitled  Our Adoption Story Was a  Facebook  Fairytale . In the story, the author, Seth, describes the tragic loss of his and his wife's twins when she went into labor at twenty weeks, their subsequent struggle with infertility and their journey into adoption. He writes: Feeling a little frustrated and trying to think of new ways to let people know we were interested in adoption, I put our adoption  flyer  as a  PDF  posting on my  Facebook  site late one night in early December 2008. It was more of a whim than a well thought out plan. My friend Jon took the  flyer  and put it on his site. On Dec. 8, 2008, his friend Jenny, to whom he  hadn ’t spoken in 20 years, saw the  flyer  and contacted me at work. They were parents by January 1, 2009. While we've told people that we are adopting, we have not shared our profiles with them. That part of the adoption w

A masked figure broke a window, slipped into the Paris Museum of Modern Art, and absconded with $100 million in art. He broke a window and walked in. From an area that local skateboarders knew wasn't really ever watched. And then walked out with five paintings. Are you kidding me? Isn't that a bit...well...mundane? I want my art thefts to be like something out of the remake of  The Thomas Crown Affair . Suave, daring, smooth, dashing. Breaking a window and climbing in? Sure, if you want to steal my blender but not when you're stealing $100 million in art. How disappointing. I bet the thief didn't even have a  really cool soundtrack .

13 dresses. No, that's not a movie. That's how many plus size dresses I find during visits to three different department stores this evening. That's right - THREE department stores! Macy's = No dresses (and nothing remotely dressy - just sloppy looking casual wear) JCPenny  = No dresses (just like Macy's...sack-y, sloppy looking sportswear) Nordstrom  = 13 dresses (13 really kind of sad looking, mother-of-the-bride-y looking, old lady looking dresses. Needless to say, I am not inspired to try any of them on.) How can two national department stores not have a single plus size dress in their entire stock??? And the one department store that does has the most pitiful little selection tucked away in a corner - UGH! Horrible! It's like the department store folks are just saying, "Oh, we're so sorry dear Fat Person, but there are noooooo nice dresses for you. Nope. Not here. We don't serve your kind. We don't actually need your money. Ju

I have always been one of those women who struggled with her weight, but also one of those women who - to my deep embarrassment and shame - quietly scoffed at other women. I scoffed at those women who said things like: I didn't  realize  that I had gotten  that   heavy  until I saw myself in photo X. I was so  shocked ! "How can you NOT notice that you've gained THAT much weight???" I would think  snarkily  to myself - feeling just a bit superior. "I mean really. How can you be shocked? You live with yourself everyday. Surely you must look in a mirror from time to time. Well, I guess you must have been in pretty serious denial." Guess what? I saw photos of myself today. They are pretty horrifying. I didn't realize that I had gotten that heavy. I was so shocked. There is no full length mirror in my house. Denial is not a river in Egypt. And...Karma's a bitch, isn't it?

The  BMI  ("Body Mass Index") calculator tells me that I am obese. Obese. It even sounds like a yucky negative word. But there it is. According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health) " BMI " is: a measure of your weight relative to your height and waist circumference measures abdominal fat. Combining these with information about your additional risk factors yields your risk for developing obesity-associated diseases.   For people who are considered obese ( BMI  greater than or equal to 30) or those who are overweight ( BMI  of 25 to 29.9) and have two or more risk factors, the guidelines recommend weight loss. Even a small weight loss (just 10 percent of your current weight) will help to lower your risk of developing diseases associated with obesity. Never thought that I'd get here. I mean I've always struggled with being heavy, but never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would ever get t

I'm usually fairly unproductive on weekends. A failing to be sure, but nonetheless true. Most weeks I'm so wiped out from my work that there's just no gas in the tank by the time the weekend rolls around. Hence, while Chris is often busy cleaning the kitchen or doing the laundry because he somehow manages to have an amazing energy reserve, I can barely make myself just straighten a little around the house before I have to collapse in a heap on the couch. Quite frankly, when I've had a busy week at work (which is just about always!) I resent having to come home to housework of any kind. Stupid, I know. But true. I just want to come home to recharge the batteries, refuel, re-boot, re-whatever I can so that I feel prepped and ready for work on Monday. How crazy is it that I resent my home life because it takes energy away from my work life? Shouldn't it be the other way round??? Yes! But then there are weeks where for whatever reason I actually feel kind

Four months after our profiles went live on three different sites managed by our agency...spent a little time today rereading our profile answers and birthmother letters with an eye toward updating and refreshing them. It was odd rewriting the sections where we previously discussed our three cats, two of whom sadly passed away in the time since we wrote our "birthmother letters" and other information. Other than that, not much else needed to change except a sentence that we hadn't written but our agency apparently inserted about watching snowflakes and building snowmen in winter, apparently to round out the seasons because we'd mentioned fall, spring, and summer. Yeah, that had to change. Not sure how we missed that one on the original review. Other than that, there was a phrase here and there, some other minor updates, but in the grand scheme of things, we're the same people with the same interests, ideals, and beliefs that we were when we wrote these docume

Life feels like time and numbers right now. 24 months since I started managing my health issues and became a much healthier and happier person. 18 months since I started realizing that I could actually be a healthy, happy and capable parent. 16 months since I began contemplating telling Chris that my feelings about parenting had changed. 13 months since I told Chris and we decided to adopt. 10 months since we started our  homestudy . 6 months since our  homestudy  was approved. 4 months since our profiles went live. 609 hits to one of our profiles as of today. The big countdown continues... As I mentioned in my most recent post...I seem to be hyper-aware of time. And to be truthful - it's driving me crazy. I look at other expectant mother and prospective adoptive mother blogs with their little "X days still waiting for Baby X to arrive" counters adorned with cute little accompanying bunny and flower graphics. Urgh ! I don't want to BE that pe