The Funk Verses the French Toast

I have been in a funk lately and have not been getting anything done.  It has been as if I have been glued to my couch or bed and couldn’t find my way off.  I haven’t been feeling well, but more than that, I have just been feeling lazy and blah. 

So, it is time to make a true effort to be productive in all areas of my life, starting with a good breakfast.  I woke up this morning and made French toast for my husband and myself before we drove into work together.  I NEVER cook on a work day, but it made the day start off so well!  Not to brag, but we even had fresh orange juice.  Now to tackle these work assignments… take that Crohns and laziness! 

Beauty comes in many weights, colors, heights, hair types and even shoe sizes. I want us all to be represented!

Open any woman’s magazine and you will likely find at least one article dedicated to helping you “fix” whatever hideous flaw you have that is troubling you.

To minimize a large bust, wear this Jacket.  To maximize a small chest, wear this top.  To make you look like you have a butt if you don’t, do this.  To hide your too big butt, do that.  If you are too skinny, here is how to fake curves.  If you are too curvy, for Gods sakes girl! Cover up with this!   

So basically the rule is, whatever you look like is wrong and you should change it.  Also, the perfect woman is the one who has no defining features at all. 

Then there is the ever popular article telling you to be happy with what you got, right next to the article on how to drop 10 pounds fast without dieting!

What the hell?

Of course the answer is to stop reading women’s magazines, but I love clothes!  Not that I can tell what the clothes I see in magazines would look like on my 5’ 4”, size 8 body from looking at the 110 pound, 5’ 9” models that they will inevitably use to showcase the newest trends. 

Once every two years (if we are lucky), a magazine might feature a so called “plus sized” model, but even then they will fail to put her in an outfit that actually fits.  She will more than likely be busting out of the sample size, looking uncomfortable, with the zipper visibly unzipped to accommodate for her overflowing fleshy bits (this is unfortunately actually something I have seen more than once in a spread featuring a model that wasn’t considered a “strait size”).

“But that is fashion!”  You say.  “Surely you can find inspiration in other media!”  Think again. 

At least models come in more than one color!  Pick any movie or TV show (made for women in particular) and you will find that the plucky heroin is a skinny white girl with long hair.  There are very few exceptions.  Her best friend might be Asian, black or white, have short hair, and may even be above a size 2, but probably not above a size 4.  The heroin may be above 140 pounds (or have a skin color other than white for that matter) only if that is part of the story (think: Wacky “fat” girl finds true love! Or, Black family goes to dinner with white family and chaos ensues!). 

I am unfortunately painfully aware of this problem and it has bothered me for years.  I am not saying that curvy is better than slim, but I do strongly believe that different ideas of beauty need to be represented in the media.  It makes me sad, and it also makes me angry that they are not.  Even more so that it has become so the norm, that no one even seems to notice. 

I’m not asking for the moon here people!  Just give me one article in a magazine that truly celebrates the beauty in different types of women (just as they are, thanks) or give me just one movie that has a bigger girl in it, or even a leading lady who is (gasp!) a size 8 without even mentioning her weight.  And please wardrobe department, don’t make her wear an unzipped size 2 when it finally happens! 

Who we are, we were, and will be

My ten year high school reunion is coming up this summer.  There is no way in Hell that I would go to that, but it does make me think about how far I have actually come since those days.  If I could talk to 17 year old me, if she could see my life, what would she think?  Honestly, I think she would be amazed that I have come so far.  I am happy with the decisions that have gotten me to where I am and I am proud of my life.  That is a good feeling. 

It is so strange to see how your own life can be blocked off in stages.  I was a happy kid who went to the beach and played with Barbie’s and had no idea that anything worse could happen to me than my parents getting divorced.  Then I was a miserable, sick teenager who needed desperately to get away from her life.  Then I was in college, and getting part time jobs and trying to become an adult. Then I met the man of my dreams, and thank goodness, he met the girl of his dreams in me.  Looking back, it is almost like there is no overlap between each neatly wrapped up portion of my life.  It makes me feel crazy to think that this could be yet another piece in the puzzle, rather than a place that I get to stay forever.  But I am so happy here! 

So where do I see myself ten years from now?  That is a scary question.  Hopefully my husband and I will have our own house.  I would like to have learned French and seen Paris by then.  I really, really hope that I am a mother.  Most of all, I just hope I am even just half as happy and contented with my messy, imperfect life as I am right now.

I think it would make that 17 year old happy to know that this place exists somewhere in time waiting for her.  I bet it would make 38 year old me happy to remember that a time that felt this right ever existed at all.  I hope. I hope.  I hope.   

Dear women:12 Beautiful Rules to Live By

1) If there is something you do not like about yourself, looks wise or otherwise, either be willing to change it or accept it.  Life is too short to obsess about the bump on the bridge of your nose or the exact circumference around your thighs.  If you hate your stomach and you simply cannot learn to love it, live with it or ignore it, then do something about it.  Work out.  Eat healthy.  Figure out what you need to do to get to the place where you are happy, or at least happy enough, with what you have.  Complaining about your muffin top will never make it go away.  If you know yourself well enough to know that you are never going to start exercising or eating better, then realize that a tight tummy must not be as important to you as you thought and get over it.  You are probably the only one who notices it any way.  You are most definitely the only one who obsesses about it. 

2) Realize that focusing on your looks makes you less interesting to others.  If all you think about or talk about is your weight, your hair, or your lumpy fill in the blank, then all you think about is YOU.  Even if you are putting yourself down, if the only thing on your mind is your flaws, then you spend way too much time concentrating on yourself, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for anyone or anything else.  Being self centered is not attractive to men or to other women.  Which leads me to number 3…

3) Do not complain about yourself to others, and do not buy into others complaints about themselves.  Stop playing the, “no I have a worse body then you because…” game.  When a friend constantly talks about her double chin she is looking for reinforcement.  She is expecting you to say “no you are lovely.  At least you don’t have these stumpy legs and fat thighs!”  This is a dangerous game.  Do not play along.  It may feel like bonding, but it is actually a way for us to continue to perpetuate self doubt in ourselves and others.   Eventually your friend will stop coming to you for reinforcement if you refuse to give it to them, and you will have more time to talk with them about your respective life goals, and all of the other things that really matter.  Which leads me to…

4) Recognize that if you constantly point out your so called flaws to others, they will reinforce negative thoughts in you while also making the things that you do not like about yourself more and more obvious to others.  Worse, it may even convince people that the flaws that you see really are as disgusting as you make them out to be.  When you say, “my eyes are too close together,” you make it your friends job to say “oh no they aren’t,” but what they are really thinking is, “wow, how did I not ever notice how fish eyed Janis was before?”  If you constantly tell people how terrible looking you are, they just might start to believe you.   

5) Putting someone else down will not make you any more attractive.

6) For some reason, no matter what you do or who you are, some people are just going to not like you.  Sometimes people really do hate you because you are beautiful.  Sometimes people really are just jealous.  Sometimes people just don’t like you for no reason.  Then again sometimes people don’t like you because you are a mean crazy bitch.  Learn to tell the difference. 

7) Recognize that men are not all the same any more than women are all the same.  Just like not all women are looking for a tan, muscle bound meat head, not all men are looking for a tall, thin, blond with huge jugs.  Of course, some men are looking for a tall, thin, blond with huge jugs, so you girls are covered too!  There is someone for everyone.  Possibly a lot of someone’s.  I know I sound like your mother talking, but honey, there is someone out there who is looking for someone just like you.

8) Any woman anywhere no matter what can find someone to have sex with at any time.  It’s just the truth.  You might have to have really, really low standards, but it can be done.  This is not true for men.  That is the reason that men who sleep around are called studs while woman who do the same are called sluts.  Men are just jealous because we don’t have to work as hard for it.  Also, before you call someone else a slut, you might want to make sure that your house isn’t made of glass first. 

9) There is no one way to be beautiful, and there is no beauty without so called flaws.

10) Don’t forget that your daughters can see and hear you.  They are learning to be women by watching you. And don’t forget that your sons can see and hear you too.  They are learning how to treat women by watching how you allow yourself to be treated (by yourself, and by others).

11)  Don’t forget that chances are, your daughters are going to look something like you when they grow up, and so when you put yourself down, you are putting them down too.

12) Lastly, have fun with fashion, your hair and your looks, but realize that in the end the way you look is not the most important or the most interesting (hopefully) thing about you. 

Fear of the Tiger

When I was learning to drive, I assumed that the horrible fear that I felt behind the wheel of a car would eventually dissipate, and I too could become one of the billions of people who mindlessly get in their cars each day, and get from point A to point B without much of a thought about the process at all. 

In my imagination, other people get in their cars, and a feeling that the car is one with their body comes over them.  It is a parasitic relationship in which we as the driver have become a mind controlling parasite that temporarily takes over the brain of the car until we no longer need it.  When a person wants to turn left, the car goes left.  When we want to go really fast, the car goes fast and when we want to stop, it stops.  Simple.  Lovely. 

No such luck for me however.  Yes, I can get a car to go from point A to point B at varying speed over varying distances, but in no way do I feel the comfortable, mindless sensation that I was hoping for.  Even after all these years, my car and I feel like separate beings who have to work together, but we sure as Hell aren’t going to like it.

And unfortunately, instead of gradually getting more and more comfortable in the driver’s seat, I seem to becoming more and more afraid.  I live in constant fear of changing lanes, getting lost, or somehow accidentally getting on the freeway, having to change lanes, and then getting lost.

Recently I actually did accidentally get onto the freeway (this can happen only to someone who is as spatially unaware as I am), and as soon as I realized what was happening to me, my armpits got all itchy and I felt my whole body begin to shake.  I thought to myself, “What am I going to do?  I can’t do this!” but the answer came and it was, you will keep driving of course.  You can do this because you have to do this.  The only alternative is to slam on the breaks and kill someone behind you, which doesn’t sound like a good alternative at all, now does it? 

So I drove, got off at the correct stop, and kept driving until I reached my destination where I existed the car and went on with my day as if nothing horrible had happened at all. But it had, I tell you!  It had!

Although I know that the rest of the modern world sees my fear of driving as an irrationally one, comparable to a fear of puppets or overly fluffy clouds, I’m afraid I have to respectfully disagree.  In my opinion, it is the rest of the world that is crazy.  A car truly is capable of killing several people at once, at any given time out of the blue.  It is capable of maiming and causing catastrophic harm.  Honestly, when I think about it I am surprised that I have let the rest of the world peer pressure me into driving at all.  It is so much more likely to kill me than drugs, or smoking or even skydiving (All activities that I have never had any interest in ether, but my point is still just as valid). 

Worse yet, my fear of killing myself is wildly eclipsed by the fear of killing someone else, especially when I am forced to have a passenger in my car (horror of horrors!).  Cars are horrible death trap time bombs that we pretend are fancy mettle pets that we have ultimate control over.   Never forget that Siegfried and Roy felt safe around there tigers too, and look where that got Roy. 

I do however wonder what it is in me that will not allow me to be blissfully ignorant, just go with the flow (of traffic), and be just like all of the other people in the world who say to themselves, “yeah, I could kill someone with my car, but I probably won’t.  I need me a Big Mac,” and off they go again, risking their lives and the lives or others for greasy fast food.

I wonder too, why two of my three sisters share my fear to varying degrees, when nothing but our obviously (some might say overly) fearful bloodline to connect us in our plight.  It is true that each of us possesses an unusually horrible sense of direction which makes the fear of getting ridiculously lost on a trip to the grocery store never to be seen again a very real possibility for us.  But I do wonder if our issues go deeper.  Are we simply a family of weenies, afraid to make a move that might be out of step, or are we really just more highly advanced than the general population making it impossible for us to turn off our highly in-tune sense of very real danger long enough to join the unwashed masses on the roads of our respective cities?

All of that being said, I do recognize that my fear paralyzes me in many ways, keeping me from experiencing things that I want to experience (unless I can talk someone else into driving me).  Also, I believe that it doesn’t say anything good about me that I would rather let someone that I know is worse driver than me drive for me rather than take the responsibility on myself.  I don’t want to let anyone else control my destiny, let alone how early or late I have to leave a party.  I do know that letting fear control you is never a good thing, no matter how justified, and it might be time that I figure out how to finally concur mine. Easier said than done of course, but if I know one thing it is this: everyone should be the driver in their own life.   

Beautiful Scars

Look who else had a scar on her tummy!  She had just had her gallbladder removed before this picture was taken. Unfortunately, this was not long before she died.  Somehow this picture is so sad, beautiful and strong all at once.

Chronic Illness and Work

Here’s a symptom of chronic illness that the Drs will never warn you about.  Being chronically ill means that you will most likely get labeled as lazy, irresponsible and someone who can’t be counted on to be able to get things done in the work place.   It doesn’t matter that it isn’t fair.  It doesn’t matter that it isn’t true.  It is what it is no matter where you work, or how hard you work while you are there.  There will come a day, a week, a month, when you will need surgery, hurt too much, or just be too run down because your body is constantly fighting itself, to go to work, or to be able to “just do your best” while you are there going through the motions.  Or more accurately, you will do your best; your best just won’t be all that great. 

The first time it happens, they will send flowers.  They will tell you how concerned they are, and how you need to take care of yourself, and just get better.  The second time, they will try not to be annoyed, but the little signs that this being sick thing is getting old and it is about time you cut it out, will start to show up on their faces if not in their words.  By the third time your disease has the nerve to affect your life and consequently your ability to do your job, people start thinking, “yeah yeah yeah, we get it.  But it is time you just get better already.”

You want to shout, “What part of ‘Chronic disease’ don’t you understand? “  But instead you say, “I’m sorry if anyone was inconvenienced by my absence.  I am feeling much better and I’m sure I will be okay from now on.”  You say these things because you feel grateful that you still have a job, and you know that nothing good can come from yelling at your boss.  It doesn’t matter that it isn’t your fault. It doesn’t matter that you want to be there working and earning your paycheck just like any healthy person can; it is just that sometimes your body doesn’t let you.   

For me, trying to work and keep a job is the hardest part of this illness.  It is harder than missing vacations, harder than hospital stays and harder than any other symptom this disease can throw at me.  Having to explain myself again and again makes me feel weak and embarrassed.  Having to apologize for being sick makes me plain old angry. 

I am not an unhappy person, and most of the time I don’t feel sorry for myself.  I accept that there are things beyond my control, and I am grateful for the gifts in my life.  I know that everyone on this planet has their cross to bear, be it physical or mental illness, the passing of a loved one, childhood trauma, or any number of things that we can’t see just by looking at someone.  I know that I am well loved, and therefore better off than most.  I am just sick to death of having to prove myself again and again, or feel guilty for something that I would gladly change if it was in my power.  

Still, I know that I cannot dictate how people react to me or my disease, or any other aspect of my life for that manner.  All I can do is pick myself up, try again, and try to live the best way I can, in and out of the office.  I cannot stop anyone else from judging me.  But I can control how I judge myself.  I am proud of what I have accomplished in my life, professionally and other wise, while dealing with this disease.  I work hard, and I do my best to stay well.  I am a good person.  I am doing the best I can.  That is all anyone can do. 

Being Sick Sucks!!!!

I'm having a hard day.  I haven't been feeling well, so I have been working from home and I let a ball fall on a project at work.  I feel terrible.

When you are sick, you are ether not taking care of yourself, you are letting others down, or both.  As long as I am sick and working, I will always be letting people down when I unfortunately and unavoidably get sick and let a ball fall.  I don't know what the answer is, but I just can't live this way forever.

I'm not sure what to do, and I hate grown up decisions.  I feel very sad and stuck.  So, welcome to the pity party, leave your presents in the comment section and make me feel better!

Dog Day

It's a good thing that dogs can't die in place of the people that they love, or no person with a dog would ever die!    

My dogs look at me with so much love, I know that they would do anything to make me happy.  I have the best little mutt butts in the world, and they have been keeping me company and loving on me all day.  I haven't been feeling well today (Crohn's sucks!), but it has been a good day thanks to them anyway.  :)

LOVE

After my first surgery last year, I went to Alaska to visit my parents and heal, and my husband went with me to help take care of me.  It was my first time dealing with my ostomy out in the world.  It was hard and things did not always go as smoothly as I would have hoped, but Jer was always there to remind me that everything was okay, and that he loved me so much.

One of the days we were there, we went to the coast with my folks, and when I wasn’t looking, Jer wrote this is the sand.  I don’t know why it touched me the way it did, but it was lovely.  I love my husband so much.  I think that part of the reason that I love him so much is because of how much he loves me, and vice-versa.  It is wonderful to know someone who thinks you are so great, for whatever and whoever you are, especially if you feel the same way about them.  Every moment we have together is a gift, no matter what is going on around us. 

Scars

I know it is an odd thing, but I really like my scars.  Even the ones on my face.  To me, they are a badge of honor.  They show that I went through something once, and I was strong enough to get through it and keep going.  I am especially proud of the ones on my tummy, because I feel like I earned them.  I know it is odd, and a lot of people might think they look ugly, but to me they really are kind of beautiful.  It took some getting used to, but even my new funny belly button that is off center and sort of making a little cave to the right is okay with me. 

Hard to tell what is going on in this photo, but it is a bloated post surgery tummy upside down (all photos are after my reversal surgery and taken with the camera on my phone).

Here is when my wounds started to heal.

Here is several months ago.  I had already gained about ten pounds since my surgery. 

Here is a few days ago, ten more pounds on (funny what happens when it doesn't hurt to eat!).  Totally healed. 

Meeting the Unicorn

I meet another girl with Crohns disease this week.  She also has an ostomy.  We met up near my work on Tuesday and we meet near her house on Thursday (both public places since we meet on the internet). 

It was very refreshing and wonderful for both of us to actually meet someone else with such similar experiences.  We kept looking at each other as if the other one was a unicorn or some other mythical creature we had only read about in fairy tales.  I have never met another person with Crohns before, let alone and ostomy, and it was nice to find her to be so regular and normal.  It made me have more faith that when people meet me, I seem regular and normal to them too.  I have never been sure of how it must feel on the other side of this. 

What struck us both was that neither one of us seemed sick to the other one, although we know from talking to each other that we are both going through some things right now with our health, we wouldn’t be able to tell from looking. 

It also struck me how similar our experiences, not only with this disease but in our lives, have been.  Although I believe that this disease was always with me, I have often wondered if perhaps I hadn’t had certain emotional and environmental triggers in my life, if the disease may never have presented itself at all.  Of course, I will probably never know for sure if the stress in my childhood, or my eating disorders triggered my disease, but it is something I think about. 

You never really know how you are supposed to deal with a disease, or how others would feel or what they would do in your situation.  I was in and out of the hospital a lot last year, and sometimes I felt very weak willed for having to go back in.  Then one day I asked the ER staff if they saw many people come through because of Crohns disease and they told me that people with Crohns have to be admitted to the ER all of the time.  Knowing that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t “just deal” with the pain all of the time made me feel sort of free in a way.  It wasn’t just me.  I wasn’t weak, and I wasn’t alone.

As you can imagine, actually meeting someone who had been through things I have been through with this disease and had felt the same ways I have felt, had an even stronger impact on me than hearing about people like me from the ER staff.  Hearing my new friend tell me about her surgeries and her pain made me see her as strong, and it helped me to see how strong I have been too.  Although we have both gone down our own path with this disease, it was kind of amazing to realize that there was someone out there who was like me.

It was an added bonus that my new friend seems like a very nice person and someone who I would want in my life, sick or healthy.  I hope that she and I stay friends for a long time.  I have lots of supportive people in my life and I am thankful for every single one of them, but sometimes it is nice to just sit down and talk to someone who has been where I have been.  Sometimes I think I just need to be face to face with another unicorn. 

A Very Brief Introduction to my Eating Disorder History

Of course, my relationship with my body is far too complicated to really ever put down on paper in a perfect way that would explain it all quickly and neatly, but here is a first attempt to explain one facet of it that explains a great deal about who I am based on who I used to be.  I used to be an anorexic, and as is the nature of the disease, while I was an anorexic, I wasn’t much else.  There is no room for anything else when your thoughts are so plagued with self hate that the idea of people looking at you makes your skin crawl. 

As a child and a teen I felt that my life was completely out of my control.  I felt weak and useless, and I longed for one thing in my life which I could have some tiny power over.  I chose my body.  Although I had thrown up after eating and gone without a meal or two on occasion starting around age 12, and had thought of myself as fat starting around age 8, I don’t consider my eating disorders to have really started until I was about 14.  This was around the same time that my Crohns disease was diagnosed, and I felt my life spiraling even further out of my control than it ever had before. 

Of course, I did not consider myself anorexic at the time.  Even though I was routinely starving myself, anorexics were girls who were skinny but saw themselves as fat.  In my eyes, I actually was fat, so I didn’t fit the mold.

In order to be good at anorexia, there has to be some part of you that wants to die, or at least is willing to die in order to be skinny.  There was a time in my life when, if anyone had asked me if I would have rather been thin or happy, I would have said “happy,” but I would have thought, “how could you possibly be happy if you weren’t thin?”  Of course, if I had truly succeeded at anorexia I would be dead now.  There is always more weight to lose, no matter how thin you get.  There is always some little bit of skin you can grab, call “fat” and hate yourself for. 

The turning point for me came after three days without eating or even drinking water.  I didn’t brush my teeth because I was afraid that the taste of tooth paste might make me hungry and I would give in and eat something.  When I got on the scale and saw the final number, even I was shocked. At 16 years old and only 72 pounds, even I could see that I wasn’t going to live much longer if I kept doing this to myself, and to my surprise that scared me enough to stop.    

My eating disorders weren’t over however.  Once I realized that I was actually going to die, and maybe I wasn’t ready for that after all, I turned to my anorexia into bulimia, which allowed me live and also to be a slightly more highly functioning human being.  Still, anorexia felt better than being bulimic.  If you are anorexic and you are able to not eat and see the number on the scale go down, then you feel that you are winning at something.  Throwing up after you give in and eat means you were weak.  You couldn’t stop yourself from eating, and you just lost again.  So, for me at least, anorexia felt good, bulimia felt bad, athough I didn't give eather disease a name when it came to what I was doing to myself.  Also, you can gain weight and even be chubby when you are bulimic.  I myself went back and forth between being chubby or being in a healthy weight range, which helped hide my disease from my loved ones.  I still saw myself as disgustingly fat however, and went back and forth between the two disorders for years. 

My eating disorders continued for a total of seven years, until at the age of 21, I just didn’t want to live that way anymore, and I decided it would be better to be fat and have some kind of a life and some kind of respect for myself, then to be the thinnest girl on the planet, but be alone hating myself.  I’m not quite sure how I found the strength to stick with my decision, but little by little, I began to heal my body and my mind.  It wasn’t easy, but somehow I was finally brave enough to try to live my life, and stop using my eating disorders as a way to hide from the world. 

So, I gained weight.  Perhaps even too much weight, but it had to happen and I tried to let it go and not let it be the focal point of my life.   I had to re-learn how to eat when I was hungry, and also re-learn what it felt like to be hungry, which is oddly something you can forget when you try to ignore what your body needs for so long.  I didn’t have to just teach myself how to eat; I had to teach myself how to think both about food and its relationship to my body.  None of this was easy, but nothing that really matters ever is. 

It took a few more years after my turning point at 21 for me to become comfortable in my body for the first time, and like every other living being on the planet, I am still a work in progress.  But, I work at it.  I find things I like about myself and try to learn to like the things I don’t, or at very least accept them and not obsess over them.  I am still a woman, and I am still subjected to the same  poison every other woman is that tells us we aren’t good enough because we don’t look like the airbrushed hanger on the glossy page of some magazine.  But I am a grown woman now, and I know how to say to myself, “No.  You will not give into this.  You are better than this.  You won’t let your mind be that sick again.”

Of course, all of our fears about our bodies and ourselves come from somewhere, and at the root of mine there is my mother’s voice that I can still hear telling me that I will never be thin, that I am ugly, stupid and not good enough.  The difference now is that I recognize these opinions as hers and not mine.  Those thoughts may eat at me from time to time, but they are not mine.  They are not mine.  They are not mine, and I am no longer hers.

My weight still goes up and down, but it is in a healthy range, and I am at peace with that.  I am okay with myself inside and out.  I belong to myself, my body belongs to me and my thoughts are my own.  I have finally found my power.    

Taking Up Space

Is it weird that I sort of like taking up more space in the world?  When I was supper skinny (and supper sick), I felt like I was almost not there.  Like I might be fitting into a certain type of mold that would be accepted by everyone, but not really noticed by anyone.  Now that I am a healthy weight, with all of the lumps and bumps that go with that, I feel like I have more of a presence; that I am more of a real person somehow, moving through the world curvy and pretty and happy.    

If I pick myself apart, each piece looks too big or too squishy or too imperfect, but if I look at myself as a whole, I think I look really beautiful and soft.  I don’t feel like I look like just any girl trying to fade into the background, I feel like a lovely woman who doesn’t look like anyone else; who just looks like me. 

It’s not like I suddenly think I look more beautiful than anyone else, I just feel like I have my own sort of loveliness that is only mine and not like anyone else, so why compare?  I don’t think I am perfect, I just think I am myself, and I am more than just okay with that, I am happy about that.  Maybe some people think I looked better before.  Some people cannot understand that not everyone is happiest when they are restricting their bodies.  That is fine.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But I read a quote once that really stuck with me and it goes something like this:  Other people’s opinions are none of my business. 

So I am going to stay on my quest to be the healthiest, happiest version of myself, and I am going to realize that part of being healthy is accepting yourself for whatever you are, and loving yourself for it too.  I am a part of this world.  I am supposed to take up space in it. 

Just a Little Rant for the Day…

It is a tragedy to go through life never really liking or accepting who you are. To always be in a state of waiting to be the person you really wish you were is unacceptable. Unless I am very sick, I will never be the kind of girl whose thighs don’t touch in the middle, and yeah, my belly is a little soft, but thank goodness, the rest of me is soft and round too! I have lovely breasts, and a lovely round butt, and although I might not be considered waif like or delicate, man can I pull off sexy! And while we are on the subject, since when did the word “healthy” become a synonym for "fat"? I want to take back the word and share it with every woman who may not be a stick insect but still manages to look herself strait it the mirror and say out loud, “dang! I look good!” Yes, some girls really are naturally thin, and they can be lovely too. But there is a big difference between someone who is naturally skinny and someone who starves themselves to be so. There is nothing less sexy, in my opinion, then a woman on a permanent diet. Ladies come on! We are not meant to fit our jeans! Our jeans are meant to fit us! So I say, eat healthy, yes. Take care of yourself, sure. But don’t for one minute tell yourself that you would be better, happier and finally be worth something, if you could just lose those last five pounds. Life is too short to spend hating what you see when you look at you.

The way it goes…

So I got this special strong soap to clear up my acne, which it seems to be helping with, but it dries out my skin so much that I have to use extra thick lotion to keep my skin from falling off, and it works, but it clogs my pores so I have to use the supper strong soap to clear up my acne…

Coffee is my Friend

Thank you pretty barista at Hasting's Hardback Cafe for being so pleasant and genuine seeming. I also liked your red lipstick and long dark hair. I hope that everyone is nice to you today, and no one forgets to tip.

Blah day

My jeans feel very snug today and my bangs look stupid. Plus, I am having problems with my teeth. Why me?!?!?

Trying to Stay Healthy

I try pretty hard to do everything in my power to be as healthy as possible, but because of my Crohns I take autoimmune suppressing drugs, which basically means I get every cold, virus and flu that I encounter pretty much guarantied. Right now I not only have a cold (ether the same one for weeks, or else I keep getting re-infected), and the dreaded pink eye, which my husband lovingly refers to as "stink eye" (horrible, but almost all gone thank goodness). I have been working from home all week, but have finally ventured back into the office today. I am hoping that my glasses distract from my still slightly red eye ball and that none of my coworkers are too grossed out by me. Just call me the human Petri dish!

My plan for the day is to work hard, eat healthy, and just try to be the best me possible. I have my Zumba class today, so hopefully I get off my lazy bum and actually go. I haven’t gone in two and a half weeks because I have been so sick and it is always hard to get back into exercising when my routine has been interupted. It is going to kick my butt the first time back but I gotta start some time so it might as well be today. I have two new sports bras so at least that will make me a bit more excited to go. My old sports bra was way too small, and a real pain to get on. In the trash it can go!

I eat pretty healthy most of the time and for the past couple of months, I have been bringing healthy snacks to work so that I can make good choices rather than having to go to the snack machine like I used to. Snacks that I brought to work today include: pumpkin seeds, carrot sticks, plain low fat yogurt with frozen blueberries to mix in it, and a cranberry Kind Bar from Trader Joes (so so good!). This is a pretty typical snack list for me lately. Sometimes I mix it up with grapes or fresh blueberries. Looking at that list, I feel pretty proud of myself actually. It is also kind of cool to think that this time last year I wouldn’t have been able to eat any of that stuff without feeling pretty terrible. I was pretty much down to broth, and even that hurt me. Remission wasn’t even a thought back then. I just wanted to be able to stay out of the hospital!

Besides eating healthy and trying to get a moderate (very moderate) amount of exercise, I also take a ton of different vitamins now including Vitamin D, Iron, fish oil, and a bunch that are supposed to be good for your skin. Before I went into remission, I had such a hard time eating that I wasn’t getting enough nutrients so the vitamins were vital. I also try to drink a ton of water at work, since I tend to forget when I am at home.

Anyway, even though I am not feeling my best today, at least my Crohns is in check and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am doing everything within my power to be good to my body. I have a lot to be thankful for, and a lot to feel good about.

Shopping Trip on a Cold, Wintery Day in the Desert…

It was negative three degrees out this morning and I am not happy about being at work (or anywhere other than my warm bed really). The coolant in my car froze last night, so after we gave up on trying to make it in to work in that vehicle, we drove in to work in the truck two hours later than we had expected. Besides that debacle, I spilled coffee on the sleeve of my white cardigan and I am also not feeling great today. I am feeling a bit grumpy right now.

The shining light at the end of the tunnel is that I am going shopping with my sister after work. Since I have become accustomed to ordering everything on-line, I rarely actually go out to shop and I am really looking forward to it. I do not need anything clothes wise, but I wouldn’t mind finding a pretty new top to wear to my friend’s birthday party this weekend. Other things that I would like to get are some new perfume and a sports bra (since I am trying to get myself to the gym a few times a week these days).

Besides whatever I impulse buy today, what I am really looking forward to getting is a new pair of glasses (or two). I am hoping that I have time for an eye exam next week so that I can start looking for some cool frames. I am interested in getting a pair of cat-eye style glasses if I can find them, as well as a pair of bold rectangular frames for every day. The nice thing about that is that I got eye insurance this year so I think at least one pair should be covered by that.

Happy hunting!

Goodbye Bravo

We had to put one of our dogs to sleep yesterday. He was 12 years old and had a very good life, but it is still hard. He was such a good dog. RIP Bravo. We are going to miss you so much.

How It Feels; a Love Letter to My Husband

How do you write about love? How do you make someone else understand a feeling that is so big and ever expanding? How can you share with the world how it feels to be loved so completely by someone that you love so completely?

I know that I am special. I know that not everyone gets to have this. Still, even after all of this time, I am afraid to be too happy or start to feel that this could last forever. I am afraid to touch something this beautiful. I have learned in my life that, just as the bad times eventually pass, everything good can also be taken away with time. Things that feel so real can slip through your fingers like burning hot sand until it mixes you up so bad that you can never recover. I don’t want what we have to be that way. I need this to be real.

For someone who believes in nothing for certain, I feel that I have known you before now. I want to believe that a person has many soul mates who they are destined to find again and again in each new life. There are people that I do not want to let go of, even in death. People who I love who have loved me. I do not want death to be the end for me and them, and I do not want it to be the end for us.

Sometimes when I hold you I want to cry because even if I have you until the end of this life, our time together will be too short. I want to keep meeting you again and again in the next life and then the next forever and ever. I want us to always find each other. Maybe next time I will be your mother, or your sister or your little baby. I don’t care if we are snails as long as I can find you and feel this way again.

From a very early age I expected to be alone. On my walk home from school in sixth grade I had to pass by a forlorn looking old house with an over run yard filled with too many cats. When I passed this house, I always thought to myself, “I will be like the woman who lives in that house, or even that house itself. I will always be alone and I will never know what it is like to have someone really love me enough to stay with me and belong to me.” I knew with every piece of me that I would never let anyone in, and I never did until there was you and suddenly I was someone else; someone who could love and could be loved. I never saw it coming.

Despite my fears, there is nothing I know as surely as I know that I will always love you and you will always love me. To lose your love would surely mean that love can never be permanent or real. I know that you are not only my one chance at feeling that real love exists for me, but also that it exists for anyone.

I love you so much. I love us so much. You and I together are far better than you and I apart. I am still myself without you, but I need you to be us. I will never leave you. I will never hurt you. As long as you want me, I am yours. The best part about loving you so much is that I know in my heart that you feel the same way about me.

You are so easy to love. You are my home. You are my most precious gift.

Buy, Buy Love

Having very few bills (especially now that my hospital bills are paid off and I don’t have to spend money on ostomy supplies any more), not having any children yet, and having a pretty good steady income is the perfect recipe for becoming a very self-indulgent person. Being someone who loves good food, beautiful clothes and basically spoiling myself, I have become quite accustomed to spending every last penny of my paycheck almost as soon as I get it (and loving every minute of it, thank you very much!).

My clothes buying really got out of hand last year because I got so sick. I was home by myself all of the time, and on-line shopping was a fun and easy way for me to forget about my troubles. Also, I rationalized that I needed to buy new clothes every month because my weight was dropping so quickly and I wanted clothes that looked good and fit well. Then, when I got my ostomy and was able to eat better my weight went back up, so of course I needed new clothes again. Shopping became my therapy.

In 2011, I plan on being the best me possible, and unfortunately, I think that is going to mean that I take a good hard look at my vices and see what needs to be changed. One thing that should help me with this is the fact that my husband and I are combining our finances. My new “allowance” (my husband gets the same amount as well) is $150 a pay period (every two weeks). That is to cover clothes, movies, and non-food related fun. The rest of my paycheck will now go into a joint account with my husband which we will use for rent, bills, medical, food and all other expenses. If possible, we would like to be able to save a little bit of money too.

Of course, this is a perfectly reasonable way to live, but it is making me a bit nervous since it means that I will have to cut down on my clothes buying quite a bit, and that is pretty much the most fun thing in my life. In fact, it is very hard for me because I have become very accustomed to buying what I liked when I wanted until my paychecks were gone and I was forced to cool it for a while.

My first plan of action is to go on a little clothes diet. This is pretty much being forced on me by the new budget plan. Honestly, I am not happy about it, but at the same time if I don’t start looking at this issue now, it is only going to get worse.

Secondly, I am going to try to replace spending with exercise. I have never been very athletic, but ever since my second surgery, I have felt better than I ever have in my life and no longer have any excuses not to get in shape. I have got a good start already, as I have been walking or doing Zumba several days a week for the last few weeks. It would be nice to get in shape before the summer anyway, so that I can spend the summer in a bathing suit without being overly self conscious.

Over all, I am ready to make some changes, but I know it is going to be hard. I am already feeling the withdrawals.

A New Start

2010 was all about hospital beds and wedding bells for me, and while it was a year I will never forget and probably the most important year of my life so far, I can’t say I’m not glad to see it go.

I have started this year with some new scars but I am pain free and ready to try life as a healthy person for the first time since I was 13 (I am 27 now). I have goals and I have dreams, and for the first time in a long time, I can actually begin to hope that they might actually have a chance at coming true.

This year my husband and I are going to try to purchase our own home. We are looking for a small three bedroom house with a nice sized garage (for my husband) and a nice sized yard (for our dogs). We need three bedrooms so that I will have an office for my writing and so that we will have an extra room in case we decide to have children down the line. Until then, out extra room will be a guest room. I also need a bath tub (I’m a bath girl!) and a big closet (although some of my clothes might have to live in the closet in my office).

I am very excited about the idea of decorating our very own place. I can’t wait to buy couch covers and curtains that will reflect my husbands and my own taste. I also can’t wait to use some of the lovely gifts we have been saving since our wedding, such as the couch pillows my sister and her boyfriend gave us. I am also itching to put up the prints (and a few original pieces) of art we have collected over our four years together. In my head, I can see each perfect little room.

Another one on my major life goals for the year is to take a French class. I am not very good with languages but I have this lovely idea that I will go to Paris for my 30th birthday and I want to have some sort of grasp of the language before I go. I figure two and a half years of study will at least allow me to get by while I am there.

I am also trying pretty hard to keep myself healthy for as long as possible. Of course, I do not have total control over that aspect of my life, but I want to know that I am doing everything that is in my power. I have been eating as well as I can (not always easy for a person who has Crohn’s) and trying to exercise as much as possible. I walk a lot, and I am also trying Zumba. In fact, I have my third class ever in about two hours. So far I am enjoying myself, despite my lack of coordination and ability to follow simple directions (please oh please don’t ever make me try to do the electric slide again!).

My last big goal is to get something published this year. If last year taught me anything it is that time is precious and you need to make your own dreams come true while you have the chance.
Over all, I am very excited to start a bran spanking New Year with a clean slate. I really feel like this is going to be a great year for me and all of the people I love. Happy 2011 self!