Balls and Bubbles

It’s Saturday.  What have I done today?  Went to store… (check) went to farm to get corn (check)… picked up bread for my mil’s house tomorrow (check, check)… attempting to (seriously) do work today (no checky checky).

BAH!

Why can’t I get motivated to work?  I have a month left before I get to stand before my students and act like I know what I’m doing… and I have nottadamnthing for them.  *hmmpf*

Currently, for my own mental sanity, I’m making an outline of my text for my new class.  I will post the outline (which I took from the table of contents, so its a big DUH if they can’t get it)… and fill in my OWN notes, for which they will have to write.. write… and write some more.

I’ve gained another 3 lbs.  Nothing’s shedding, nor am I (really) doing anything to get it to go away.  I am now at my (unpregnant) height of fat-assedness.  I want to lose weight, but I don’t give a shit.  Is that a bad thing? 

Listening to: Queen Bohemian Rhapsody and singing along (door open and all, don’t care, let them hear me!)

Yesterday, I spent the day at my husband’s cousins’ house.  She’s about a decade older than us and her kids are about -10-15 years younger than we are… ish… After we had our hotdogs and hamburgers (a summer staple I’m really getting sick of), and had dessert (crumb cake for #3 son and cookies for the rest), the cousin starts to talk about weight.

Here we go…

She said, “#2 son is getting thinner, remember how he used to be so FAT?”  in front of #2.  I get ABSOLUTELY dumb-founded when people do that.  I like her, but she has this idea that everyone should starve themselves to be thin.  She’s thin.  Her daughter’s not super thin, but right for her body type.  Her son and husband have pooches, which she’s pointed out to everyone.

I blurted out, “Sorry?”  Ok, I had to clean out my ears.  She’s not a bad person, but grew up w/ a mother much like mine… one obsessed in everyone around her being thin, even if she wasn’t.  I can’t fault her for that, because I do find myself thinking things like that, but trying to catch them before they leave my mouth.  Of all of my husband’s cousins, we’re the closest to them. 

“Well, look at him,” and that’s when my husband jumped in… “Well #1 was like that when he was younger and he grew out of it, and so is #2.  He wasn’t fat… at least not to us.”

BRAVO husband… good show.  You were able to speak before I was able to untie my tongue and close my mouth out of sheer shock.  DO NOT do that in front of my middle son… he’s already having a hard time speaking to me and is very self-conscious about his body… he won’t swim without his shirt… (he’s not fat, let me clarify… between the ages of 9 and 14 he was a little baby-fattish… by no means fat… and I try super hard to not give my kids a complex about their weight… tho, I do make comments to #3 son about being “skinnier than a beanpole,” with “legs like sticks,” but you have to SEE him to understand.  I once showed friends pictures of him, shirtless, making a muscle alongside my older son.  Uh… my little one looks like he’s starving… so, my friend joked, “Feed him a cheeseburger.”

I’m not thin.  I have battled weight my entire life.  I was a skinny kid who was told by my aunt and mother (evil sisters) that I was thin, and everyone in the family was fat, and to not ever get fat.  Well, age 16 came along and puberty hit and I was stress eating because of my nutso parents… and moved quickly to a size 14.  I stayed there for a few years, then dropped to a 10, then up to a 14, then down to a 10… (got married in a size 11 dress)… gained weight and grew to a 16, then down to a 12, up to an 18, down to 16, up to 20, down to 14, up to 16, then 18… and so on.  Don’t you think that I’d LOVE to be a size nothing and wear things that showed my body off?  HELLS YEAH… however, I’d get uncomfortable with people looking at me… because what would they see? (“Oh that bitch is thin and she’s trying to make ME feel bad for not being thin… look at what she’s wearing… damn her!”)

What? I do that (mentally) to thin people.  I check them out as much as they check me out.  It is what it is, I guess.

So, what’s with my poor body image?  I can think of about a dozen and a half reasons why I’m a stress eating carb indulging person with poor self esteem.  Will I list them? No.  They are MY private demons…

I will say that age 14, when I was barely a size 8-10, my mother decided to enroll me in Weight Watchers, so keep me from getting “fatter.”

Every week that I walked to the meeting and walked up to the scale, the white haired women would grab me and tell me that I was fine… asking me what kind of parents would send their daughter to a weight trimming class when she was the right weight for her height and body type.  I’d strug and go on the scale, having the person write my weight on the card so that my father could see it when I got home.  If I lost weight, he’d give me the $6 for the next week’s meeting, and throw in an additional $2 for an allowance.  BUT only if I continued to go to the meetings.

I stopped and he took his money back.

I was NEVER obese as a teen, but maybe 10-15 lbs more than my doctor suggested.

Since then, I’ve been put on an all-liquid diet by one doctor who said if I didn’t lose weight, he’d be signing my death certificate in 20 years.  At the time, I was 50 lbs over my “perfect” weight… and had just had my 2nd baby.

I do not want to be a rail… I want to be happy and what will make me really REALLY happy is seemingly well-meaning people (like the cousin) or image-beasts (parents) who feel that I need to be a size 8, 6, or 0.

Who set these rules?  I don’t dine at fastfood joints (maybe 1 time a month or two or three depending on whether we’re on vacation or at the mall at lunchtime, etc..), I don’t order fries or to supersize my meal.  If I go out to eat, I eat 1/2 of my meal and eat the rest either for lunch the next day or if its big enough, lunch & dinner.

What causes me to gain weight is being unhappy, nagged with condescending comments like, “You have such a pretty face” and “Why have you let yourself go like that?”

The mother of all comments came from my mother, just before I married my husband, “If you gain weight and get fat again, he’ll not want you.”  Occasionally, my mother will ease it into the conversation, “If you lose at least 10 lbs, your husband will find you MORE desirable,” and then adds, “I could stand to lose 10 lbs myself.”

I have NO TOLERANCE for weight nazis.  If I try to shame myself into losing weight, or to make #2 son lose weight, then what service am I providing… what image am I demonstrating?  Not that being overweight is a GOOD image, but I do cook as healthy as possible (always with a vegetable… mostly salad, steamed or grills veggies)… we eat whole wheat bread, low sodium cold cuts (for those who eat sammiches), always have fruit, baked chips, and other essentials.

But, I get bored and stressed and fed up and grab at whatever IS there that’s NOT good.

And, for that, I blame my parents and their mothers, who poor self image has been pushed onto me, shaming me into not wanting to be what they want me to be, only to have my son, who everyone constantly comments about being “chubby”… it just pisses me off.

So, I said to my son, while driving him to his friend’s house to sleep over, “You are perfect in my eyes…”

His response was a snort-like-grunt. 

As usual.

*sighs*