Long Bones

So I’ve had a really low bingy couple of weeks. And now I’m back up to 190 from a lowest low of 185.4. Okay. This is okay. It has to be okay because I have to get through this funk and rejoin the real world.

Good things:
A few weeks ago I lost a bunch of paid apps off my phone. Today I got them back for free.

Unemployment payments are dissapointingly low, but some money is better than none.

I served 7 papers last night and 1 so far today. $20 per paper.

Theoretically if I can’t afford to buy food I’ll lose more weight.

I don’t have to worry about March’s bills.

The lovely wonderful Aulika is sending me pants!

Flickerbrain is back from Hawaii and Ecker has been hanging out with me while I’m serving.

I really did need a break. Too bad it happened like this.

So yesterday I was hanging out with my buddies at Kromey and Nini’s place playing the New Super Mario Bros. on the wii when I looked down and my boob was hanging out. I didn’t panic, I adjusted my shirt and since everyone else was looking at the TV I don’t think they noticed – if they did, they were cool and didn’t say anything. I had to readjust several times that night but as Ecker is Ecker and never notices anything and Flickerbrain was sitting at a really bad angle to see anything it just leaves Kromey of the guys (Nini and Shondar can see bra – I dont’ care) who may have been exposed to my remarkably sedate lingerie.

So I went home and in a fit of pique posted of facebook that I’m not allowed to wear that shirt in public again. I’m serious too – it’s going straight into the consignment store/donation bag. I mean, my boobs are cute but my guy friends don’t have to see them. Not to mention the disaster it would be if they had crept out at work! 

On facebook the congratulations started rolling in. It’s cool – I’m really happy that everyone is so happy for me and inspired by me. It’s really cool – a couple days ago I got an email out of the blue from an old friend Yenta Jon saying that he knows its a touchy subject but he still wanted to say congratulations. That really meant a lot to me.

But the clothes thing. Damnit, that was one of my favorite shirts, and an integral part to my favorite professional outfit. It isn’t something that I can have taylored – it’s a really simple long sleeved Old Navy t-shirt with a great scoop neckline that really shows off my clavicles in a pretty deep teal color. I love losing weight but I’m really frustrated with losing all my favorite clothing and not being financially able to replace them the way I would like. And frankly even if I could afford to buy the nice clothes I love I shouldn’t until I’m done shrinking – take a look at the Joan dress I got in September from Torrid – fit perfectly then, far too loose now. That one I will have taylored though. Later.

In the meantime I will occasionally whine, whinge and complain about losing another favorite sartorialish peice. And then exhault when I find a stylish replacement. It’s a cycle.

I haven’t been around much lately. At all. In fact, haven’t even looked in at the blog in almost a week.

There was a tragedy in my life – I found out on Tuesday. I’m still trying to figure out how to cope – the horrible things that happen on the news to strangers are now horrible things that happen to people I care about. I’m thinking about going back to grief councelling. I don’t know, I don’t want to miss the work…

And then I got rejected by the cool guy who I was hanging out with a couple weeks ago. He apparently mistook something I said and thought I wanted a relationship or something. I don’t. Never did. So being rejected by him should really not matter at all. But somehow it does.

And my boiler went out this weekend – the very first cold weekend here in the banks. And because it was a weekend, even though I called the tech at 1:00 in the afternoon its still considered after hours. Far too much money later he discovered that I need a major fix beyond the major fix I already knew I needed.

So……..

…

When all things suck, what do you do other than endure?

I don’t know if I love or hate stretch jeans. It isn’t anywhere in the middle. I am definitely not ambivalent towards stretch jeans. On the one hand they tend to look really good because of the way they cling and lift the right places. On the other hand they feel like they don’t fit because the first time I put them on they haven’t had a chance to stretch yet and so are really hard to button.

In other news, right now, this moment I’m wearing the smallest jeans I have ever owned as an adult. I dressed up as a pirate to go to the office today because Halloween is on a weekend and I wanted to dress up at work sooooooo … yeah. Nobody at work is surprised at all that I dressed up. Nobody else dressed up. Of course, there is only one other person in the office today. (Posting on my break). I left my phone/camera at home today but Shondar is stopping by to get some measurements for my real Halloween costume which isn’t exactly finished yet and she’s bringing my phone so I’ll post a picture then.

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/ok-mr-lifshitz-why-must-models-be-so-skinny

The above is an article at DoubleX that I found really interesting. Well, I found the question really interesting and the fashion industry insider’s answer.

Models are long and skinny because clothes hang better on them. The clothing on display at major fashion houses and runways is all about art, about fantasy. Not about what a real woman wears.

Here is my corrolary question then: Why not design clothing that looks spectacular on curvy bodies? I’m not by any means an artist, but I did minor in art in college so maybe I have a smidgen of authority here. When I create a piece I am naturally drawn to rounded forms. I find the play of light and shadow more interesting on a sphere then on a plank. The commenter says “Quite frankly, any kind of buldge (fat, breasts, hips, a butt) distorts the line that clothing was “designed” for, particularly avante garde clothing.”

I find it a little bit lazy that designers don’t work with that. They have picked thier medium and their canvas is the female form. If fashion designers were truly interested in a sleek form with minimal bumps and curves they would design for men. After all, it isn’t about what real people really want to wear.

So its a cop out. I respect the creative skill of my favorite designers, and even the ones I don’t like, to not just compensate for but celebrate a woman’s figure. Fashion is about fantasy sure, but women with real bodies are buying into the fantasy. I don’t think its responsible for the titans of haute couture to present an unattainable, unhealthy ideal and then when women are making themselves sick to achieve this ideal (or sick because they can’t) they disclaim it because it’s all about the image.

That said, it isn’t entirely their fault. They don’t have any power we don’t give them. The subtle encouragements of a society which celebrates figures which are for the general population achievable by a rigorously enforced regimen of heroin and anorexia affect all of us. And we all, or almost all, enforce it. After all, we buy the glossy magazines, we gawk at cellulite. If we could secretly photoshop our family pictures, how many would resist?

I don’t have a solution. I’m still going to buy fashion magazines and I’m not going to stop dieting. But I am going to hit my healthy weight and not try and go further. I’m going to buy clothes that suit my body and not let it get me down when something looks good on the rack but not on me.

This article for instance: http://food.theatlantic.com/food-wire/fat-stigma-and-the-nj-governors-race.php.

I had a bingy day yesterday. Most of the time I’m the Mary Poppins of calorie counting – practically perfect in every way. For weeks I’ll go without busting through my allotted calories per day. And then I’ll have a day like yesterday.

To be fair, I think I may have been eating too little since I started exercising more frequently. Unfortunately the exercise tracker at www.livestrong.com says you burn way way way more calories than you actually do with exercise so I’ve been estimating. And I’ve been really tired lately (clue 1). And I’ve had these weird cravings which I don’t normally get (clue 2). And then yesterday I had a lot of chips and nacho cheese dip. As Nelly, Aulika or Jess could tell you – I hate fake cheese. Absolutely abhor velveeta, american slices or cheese whiz. Anything that has the phrase “Pasturized Processed Food Product.”

And yet I noshed on the bright orange monstrosity as if I was about to go into hibernation.

I believe the moral of the story is for me: eat more good stuff and you’ll eat less bad stuff. Pretty simple. I hope.

I really liked this interview with Crystal Renn from the Frisky. http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-frisky-qa-crystal-renn-interview/ I really really want to read her book but between the onset of winter and a cat with health problems (poor guy is probably going to need eye surgery!) and the fact that my dividend is going to be late (do not look gift horse in the mouth, most states don’t pay people to live there at all) I am really really broke. Good thing I stored tons of food for the winter. Sometimes I wonder if I’m part squirrel. Still, Crystal Renn is beautiful and damn inspiring, at least to me. I have kinda wanted to be a plus sized model in the past but my plus size was always beyond their plus size and I have dermatillomania and my face while very pretty isn’t shaped the way most model’s faces are (that is a weird way to describe it – I’ll post pictures one of these days soon) and now I’m 28 and live in Alaska…so probably no modelling career for me.

I also ran across an author on the Atlantic named Jim Fallows who has done a lot of writing on obesity…but I haven’t yet read any of his articles so I can’t say whether I recommend him to you or not. I promise to do the reading though and let you know.

The big news today – the big big big omg!! awesome news of awesome awesomeness that has me wanting to go out dancing in the streets (and it’s awful pretty outside today…) is that on this beautiful lovely late fall day I have officially lost 75lbs and I am wearing size 12 jeans for the first time…ever? Certainly since high school. Easily since I started paying attention. Maybe sophmore year of high school? Nelly, do you have any idea? Granted, these are hand-me-down jeans and stretched out from the previous owner and the brand new pair of size 12’s I accidentally bought when I was buying size 16s that I decided to keep because I knew I’d hit it eventually don’t quite fit yet. But these jeans fit perfectly and look sooooooo good on me. So I’m happy. Maybe I can have Shondar take a picture of my butt later for you.

I rock so hard sometimes.