2010, GTFO, TYVM

Not that it was as bad for me as 2009.  OH NO, NOT NEARLY.  I'm not sure anything could have outdone the year of YHGTBFKM.  But 2010 managed to hold a candle, or possibly a torch, alongside 2009.

Anyway, I've got a wee bit of tawny port, some noisy neighbors, a softly snoring husband, and a hot date:

Let the New Year's subdued revelry commence.

Christmas List

I've got to let my thoughts on Christmas marinate for a few days.  In the meantime, some predictable bullet points:

• The instant I served my pear-walnut upside-down cake, my mom said, "Look, walnuts are good for ya!" to my dessert-averse father-in-law.  He immediately muttered, "Yeah... Good for you..."
• My mother still eats the way she did when I was growing up: getting several tiny helpings that total to one "normal" sized helping.  Somewhere along the way I seem to have omitted the "several" part in my "how to eat appropriately" instincts.
• I actually baked with butter and sugar instead of Smart Balance and Splenda.  Predictably, the results were much more enjoyable and satisfying, in that it was easier to eat an appropriate amount.
• I don't really know the calorie density of venison, and eff you if you tell me because I don't really want to know.
• That newfangled china you can pop in the dishwasher is pretty much the best thing ever, especially for a Manhattan-sized kitchen.
• My dad was telling a story about the Great Recession and said, "It'll be something I can tell my grandchildren - if I ever have any - about.  It's been that big of a change for me."  It is hard to accurately describe the stab of feeling I had, but there is probably a German word for it that might translate to PanicOfOnlyChildGuiltAndFrenziedOvarianWanting.  I want a child.  I really do.  But my eating disorder is the first of only several Big Issues that have got to be tackled before we start trying.  I'm turning 29 in January and my mom was 32 when she had me, so since I measure Everything I Do against my mother (trufax), I'm starting to feel like I am Running Out Of Time to choose between being as thin as I want to be (not really what it's about) and being able to procreate and possibly raise a girl child (not to say that boy children can't have bodily hangups) in a physically and mentally healthy environment.

That seems a good bullet point of excessive parentheticals upon which to leave the list.  Actually, forget the marinating.  That's really all I'd like to think about Christmas.  2011, here I come.  GTFO of my way.

December Deaths

I'd kind of like December to stop stripping away my family.  In December '07 my cousin Sara, not quite a year older than I, died.  Last December, just short of her 89th birthday, my Nana died.  The wake was on her birthday.  She had been ready since my Grandpa passed in '98, but... you know.  She was the grandparent I was closest to, without a doubt.  She was a hugely formative influence on who I am as a person, and any time I appreciate some of my favorite things - tea, fairies, literature, history - I am grateful for her and I miss her.

On Friday my oldest cousin, Billy, suffered a massive stroke.  Yesterday afternoon he died easily.  The last time I saw him was Nana's funeral.  Despite the fact that we were fairly different in beliefs and priorities, we always shared...  I don't know.  I don't really know how to put it.  I loved him.  I really did.

He was planning a trip, and his last Facebook status update read, "Got two tickets to Paradise!"  He would have been only 42 in January.  He leaves behind my aunt and uncle and my cousin Elizabeth.  Also, the twelve-year-old daughter and ten- and four-year-old sons.  You know.  Because that's fair.

As I told one of les Comtesses yesterday, December begins to be on my shit list.

Thinking Disorderedly

After working from a home office since mid-2006, today we started looking at actual office space.  That's a stressful, high-risk proposition.  Imaginary friends, you know I live in New York.  And you, my imaginary friends, are smart.  Being smart, you know New York is expensive.  Being smart and intuitive (did I mention you're attractive, too?), you can see why looking at office space is a stressful thing.

So even if I were eating three square meals a day and in no way mistreating my own body, I'd have known I wasn't out of the eating disorder woods as soon as I stepped into these offices and started simply thinking.

The first place I went to was food:

How will I eat what I want to eat for lunch if I have to plan ahead?  Sometimes all I want it apples.  Sometimes I can handle a salad.  Sometimes all I can stand is string cheese.  This week I had soup for lunch for the first time in about a year.  What is going to happen to my acrobatic routine of snacks and noshes?  If I stray from my carefully calibrated comfort settings, I get irritable or angry or just quiet and sad.  Not necessarily conducive to working efficiently.  If I accidentally open my palate up again by having temptation in my face at delis and cafes, am I going to end up just eating and eating and eating and....?  Working from home, I've slowly whittled down my food choices to what I know I'll feel comfortable with throughout the day, both in substance and quantity.

It didn't help that earlier in the day I'd only had a chance to consume a banana and some Goldfish crackers and walnuts; and two small apples and some string cheese.  Also, some tea.  This is between waking and 6:00 p.m.   When you're hungry, you think about food.  When you're hungry and you have an eating disorder, you think about food disorderedly.

After food, I went to body:

That woman who just stepped out of that office is really thin.  Am I going to be around her every day?  What does she eat?  Am I going to compare myself to here every time I see her?  I don't know how I fit here, literally.  I felt everything, every bulge over my bra, every jut of my hip bones as I walked, even every tired, dry blink.

Not eating much earlier came into play again here.  The immediate mental association with missing meals is losing weight.  If you're theoretically losing weight, then that's theoretical weight you could theoretically regain by one stupid move.  When you're in a stressful situation, you can feel out of place.  When you're in a stressful situation and you have an eating disorder, you feel out of place disorderedly.

Now it's 6:30, so I've been awake for twelve hours, and haven't managed to add to that list of today's vittles.  I psyched myself out, what with one thing and another on a tense, stressed-out day, and I'm sitting here with diet ginger ale and pretty much no desire to eat.  And I'm feeling blasé, proud, sheepish, stupid, angry, excited, accomplished, ridiculous, nervous, and sad all at once.  Most people don't get much of a chance to eat on a given day, they say screw it and forget about it.  Right now, I have a lurking feeling - and I know it's patently dotty - that my self-worth rests on my decision of whether or not to have dinner.  And I could make a case for winning or losing at life either way.

The interesting thing will be to see what happens when I do, inevitably, eat dinner.  Will I have decided that's winning or losing?

Let's Ponder Some Disturbing Things

Disturbing Thing #1

This is Scabior, the Snatcher from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as brought to life on screen by actor Nick Moran.  Scabior, we must understand, is a nasty, evil villain in both the book and the movie; the movie ups his creep factor by having him sniff Hermione's hair and generally be threateningly suggestive.  Nick Moran, we must understand, is an empirically attractive actor.

Here's the Disturbing Thing:  People are shipping Scabior and Hermione.

Which just goes to prove (again) if you make it pretty, no matter how Bad it is, people will like it.

Update: Disturbing Thing #1a, to go with Deathly Hallows Part 2


Disturbing Thing #2

Hospitalizations for problems caused by eating disorders grew 18 percent from 1999 to 2006, with the steepest rise among children under age 12 (up 119 percent)

Fabulous!  Great news!  The obesity panic is working!  And it's exciting to see mental health treatment in this country be really prioritized!  Nothing helps someone with a psychological disorder get better like taking away all their treatment options by not reimbursing for them!  Awesome!

You know, I think those are the only Disturbing Things I care to deal with just at the moment.  Carry on.

Life Is Inconsiderate Of My Borderline Reading Addiction

There is too much I desperately want to reread right now, but there's also too much I want to read for the first time right this second now, but there's too much work to do, but I feel too frenetic to focus on work, but I can't just read because I'll feel guilty, and also I don't know what to pick to read and oh you guys, my life is hard.

The constant low-grade nausea of anxiety isn't helping with my appetite, which means that I am in an equally constant and low-grade state of shaky low blood sugar.

Also, I have a cold.

I need a teleportation device so I can go cuddle sloths in Costa Rica.  They can use their awesome claws to turn pages for me.  Do they have otters in Costa Rica? Maybe a baby sloth/otter pup rescue.  The otters can sit on my tummy while the sloths read over my shoulder.  And it doesn't have to be in Costa Rica; I'm not that picky.