The Last Worthless Evening

For ten years, I have struggled to lose weight. Well, that is not entirely accurate. I have lost weight easily several times, but failed miserably at keeping it off. Since the turn of the millennium, I have lost over 100 pounds at different times, and put it all. back. on. every. single. time.

I’ve “attempted” umpteen diets and detailed them here.

I’ve learned to love my body, extra pounds and all, and detailed that here and here.

I’ve made peace with exercise and have come to actually enjoy it. I detailed that here, here, here and here.

I ran a marathon. (This was before I was blogging...)

I cooked healthy meals. (Glorious One Pot Meals)

But when push comes to “shovel,” I shovel it right on in. Put me in front of a bowl full of noodles and suddenly my arms are not long enough to reach my pause button on my fork. My mother calls this the “Hand to Mouth Disease.”

If you go to a Weight Watchers meeting, you will learn that this behavior is not uncommon… I should know. I’ve been around the block with WW more than once… some might call me a Weight Watchers floozie… I know all the tricks and tips and hot buttons. It is such a great program and easy to follow… until it’s not.

That is where I always get tripped up. I fizzle out and the “energy storage” (as I’ve taken to calling my excess body weight) creeps back on. I simply fail to make the necessary changes to my lifestyle.

When I say necessary changes, I don’t mean giving up carbs or becoming vegan or subsisting only on the chaff of wheat grown in Kansas… I mean simply journaling my food intake and exercise. When I journal, my angel of goodness who sits on my right shoulder will almost always beat the devil of temptation on my. But if I’m not keeping track, there is no angel…. and there is no devil either, because I probably already ate what he was tempting me with!

“Well, what’s new?” you say. This: I’m going public. I’ve always approached my weight loss journey in silence, sharing my successes and failures with few so that I didn’t have to endure the pain of failing in front of many… so that I didn’t have to be fully committed. But I’m thinking I need some support. I need for someone to reply to this post in October and ask me if I am still journaling my food… to see if I’m still letting the angel win. I need someone to share my daily triumphs with. THAT IS YOU!

I am not going to make this about the pounds. My goal is follow the WW plan and to make this about successes – both small and large. My ultimate goal is that this is the last time the yo-yo goes down.

What can you expect from me? Moment-by-moment success reports on my Twiitter feed. (Need to get on Twitter? Click my link on the top right of the screen.) I’ll also give periodic updates here.

I appreciate your support as I walk this journey, hopefully for the last time. Also, I’d love to hear YOUR success story. You can leave it as a comment, or if you prefer, you can e-mail me at salwonthewest@yahoo.com.

From me to you...

Going back in memory, Christmas was such a magical season for me as a child because of the promise of Santa's magical journey from the North Pole... new toys... family members laughing all around... going to church... being in a Christmas pageant... there was such a flurry of colorful and special activity... such a crescendo. With a child's limitless energy, I let this joy rain all over me, soak into my skin and fuel my light for the year to come.

However, early into this year's holiday season, I felt a little down and out. I wasn't feeling so much into the spirit. I was desiring to feel the magical childhood exhilaration... instead I was feeling the blah blah blah blues. As a Christian, I personally celebrate the birth of Christ not just on December the 25, but every day of every year. I celebrate by sharing kindness, loving strangers, reaching out to people who need me, whether I know them or not. In my opinion, THIS is the true celebration of the birth of Jesus, and it can't - MUSTN'T be confined to just one day a year. That's just the life I live... but it doesn't do much to brighten the holidays!

So this year, I made the magic. I looked to the light in my children's eyes as they experience the same things I did as a child. And as I opened my heart to let in some of their joy and light, magically my holiday lights turned on as well.

Please enjoy this little video of what has made my holidays... and all of 2009... special.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Love and peace to you in 2010!

Love, Swestie

Mantra for Times of Adversity

Tea and Sympathy

It's okay to have a sad day now and again, because feeling is healing!

Davidson Fine Arts School... beautiful crumbling pile of bricks and dust

This started out as a post about how much I love city life and urban decay. To start off, I was going to show you some photos of where I went to middle and high school. The school was very urban, very decaying. (It has since been condemed... asbestos and the like.) As I searched the net for photos to share, I came across some by JM House. The one at the top of the post is his. Please go look at them. When I saw these photos, I knew that I had to write about my alma mater: Davidson Fine Arts School.

The building in these photographs was built in the 1930s, I think. 1933 stands out in my head, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it served an elementary-aged student body until the 1970s when it was closed. I think it was 1981, when the school was re-opened as a "magnet" school, drawing artistically talented students from all over the school district. When the magnet school concept began there, the school educated 5th-8th graders, and each year grades were added until the school served 5th-12th grades. The first senior class graduated in 1986. This was around the time of the original movie Fame, and the school was a very cool concept.

Anyway, many instructors fostered an environment in which normal wasn't normal at all. The way to fit in was not to fit in... boys had earrings when people still wanted to "check which ear the earring was in, just to be safe," not that it mattered at Davidson. Students pushed the envelope in many ways, but were also expected to perform, not just in their chosen artistic endeavors but also academically. Davidson has been ranked the top public high school in the state of Georgia many times over. There were no sports - okay, there WAS Cross Country - but we did have a stellar One Act Play team and a highly competitive choral trio. Freeks and geeks were us... and we loved it.

Back to the photos... I don't know who the photographer is, but for me personally, it is uncanny how he (not a student of the school, as far as I know) captured images of so many of the things that defined the school for me:

• the beautiful art deco facade... one fall in the eighth grade, I sat and rendered every inch of that chalky, white-washed and red-bricked face for an entire six-week period... I still have that drawing.
• the crazy bathrooms... the toilet seats were raised up two-three inches higher than usual and there were no handles for flushing, so that when you stood up, the toilet flushed automatically... it nearly scared the living daylights out of me, a fresh-faced, 10-year-old fifth grader in the fall of 1983... I remember what I wore to school that day... painfully dark blue jeans and a purple polo shirt... not a real Polo shirt... I've still never had one of those to this day...
• Mrs. Walpert's class card posted in the window... I really can't believe those are still there! These were on the door of EVERY classroom, signed by our Principal, Beverly J. Barnhart... they looked JUST like that when I started in 1983, and to think, they still exist in the world... crazy. I wonder if they use these in the new building that students use now?
• The art... I remember watching the student who painted that serene landscape, afternoon after quiet afternoon... thank you Class of 1995 for rescuing it! I even painted on one, but I didn't like my painting and let someone else paint over it... those boxes covered the places where the gigantor, silver, old-school fire extinguishers once hung.
• The beautiful yet ever cold fireplace in the lunchroom... so evocative of a day when people NEED wood-burning fireplaces for warmth and not just ambience. The dance teachers kept thier splintery wooden desk in the nook of the fireplace, along with a squeaky old office chair that leaned w-a-a-a-y back.
• The auditorium/stage... how many hours did my girlfriends and I spend giggling in those chairs? If you were wearing a white shirt and were also sweaty (there was a good chance of this because there was no A/C in this part of the building), the brown varnish would come off on your clothes... how many hours spent rehearsing and performing on that stage, and, over the course of eight years, in how many capacities too? chorus... band... orchestra... drama... dance... spelling bees... Something about the light and the emptiness of the photograph reminds me again of that highly-impressionable first day: uncertainty, light, fear, hope.

If you didn't go to this school, these photos probably look like some pretty generic, peely, moldy old rooms. For me however, a proud graduate of Davidson Fine Arts , seeing these photos causes real tension right in the center of my heart that just balances on the borders of sweetness and melancholy.Perhaps this tension stems from dreams lost yet other dreams discovered. Perhaps it stems from nostalgia for old, familiar places and the carefree days of sunny, blurry teenage years. Perhaps it is just sadness that such a behemoth dowager must die so slowly... so solitary... as if all of the years of schooling Augusta's youth since 1933 never even happened... as if the rowdy spirit of all those kids, now grown, never touched the walls.

Was it even real? Did it all happen? Some say so... But what do you see? Is there evidence of the our laughter? our pain? our learning? our friendships? Does the sound of our music echo in the halls for old ghosts to hear? I say so.

SOMETIMES when you pray for signs...

...you get them!

Let the good things rain down!

So, like I was saying, the last six weeks have proved challenging for me. Within my life or the lives of immediate family there have been:

• home vandalism
• major health crises (2 - we're talking transplant lists)
• minor health crises
• schedule overload
• property theft
• marital strife (not mine - whew!)
• $3000 auto repair

Not that I've never experienced issue overload or stressful times before, but really.

So I began my day today, Monday, running late. Then, just as I went to enter the parking garage below my office building, I discovered that the key card I use to enter and exit was missing. Immediately, my head started spinning, my heartrate increased... Internal dialogue: when does it end? How much negative energy is coming my way? What else am I going to be asked to withstand? How strong does one person have to be?

I went up to my desk. I sat. I thought. Then I decided.

I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm done letting the tail wag the dog. From this moment forward, I will not waste my time allowing the previous six weeks define the next six. I will turn this around and allow the good things back in my life, giving them prominent status and star treatment. I will be open to the goodness of the world and let it rain down, washing over me again and again.

And then I checked in the car one more time, and I found my parking pass.

Today I will let the good things rain down on me.

What's going on down there?

I spoke to a friend last week on the telephone. We do not talk frequently, but she keeps up with me via this blog (Thanks Spook!). As I told her about each mini-crisis and minor catastrophe that I have recently endured (we're talking a week stressful enough to bring on a case of hives!), she said, "Hm. From the looks of your blog, you were having LOTS of fun!"

And I WAS having fun. But...

BUT!

Swestie has a lot-o-crap going on in her life these days. In the past, I would've "coped" with the crap by delving deeply into each emotional issue of my own and those around me, becoming so heavily immersed in people's drama that I could barely rush to the surface for a breath every now and then. But because I'm a The-Glass-Is-Half-Full-kind-of-girl, I didn't want to bring people down. So I would plaster a silly smile under my cheeks and giggle nervously much more than was necessary. This effectively tamped my feelings down creating one wound-up chick-a-dee, wandering through life with her shoulders around her ears.

That was then.

Now, the older, wiser Swestie has lots of ways of coping, including:

• not giving up exercising just because l am "busy"
• taking time for myself... reading a novel, blogging, knitting, Facebooking, meditaing, making a little photo video, yoga... whatever suits me in the moment...
• not allowing myself to get sucked into the drama (THIS IS HUGE FOR ME.)
• asking for help when I need it, instead of expecting people to know that I need it
• giving myself a break if all of the mundanities aren't always contained

Sparing you the sticky gore of my personal life, all I can say is that for the last month or so, I've had so many things happen to and around me, and I've been so detached that I practically feel like I'm hovering over my own life. The tenor of my mood is like a melancholy Joni MItchell tune played on some scratchy old vinyl... when the record needle gets to the end, it picks itself up... click....whirrrr... pop!scratch... and goes back to the beginning... over and over again. It isn't unpleasant at all.

In summary I've done a LOT of exercising, asking for help, giving myself a break and practicing detachment for the last eight weeks or so. The co-dependent in me screams to get more involved, but the part of me that is already stressed to the point of illness begs to remain lovingly indifferent. And the strangest part, co-dependent part aside, I feel completely fine (hives are gone...).

Is this okay? For this moment it is. And are we ever guaranteed more than that anyway?