April Showers bring May flowers; what do May flowers bring?

When I was watching the Biggest Loser, I had no sympathy for Max, brother of contestant Mike/son of contestant Ron. But, I was reading an article about the contestants the other day, and I read that Max is only 17 years old. That certainly explains a lot. I assume he's still in high school and probably harrassed every day. His jealousy of his brother's success makes so much more sense now that I see they are only a year apart. I commented on someone's post about this, although I can't remember whose, but my opinion of the kid has certainly changed, even though I still think he should have given his dad and brother their props.

I am feeling like a big failure right now myself. I swore I would get back on track with exercising this week during the cybercruise, but I haven't done a damn thing yet. What the heck is wrong with me???

Poor Josh...still a funnel-headed dog. Turns out my mother did not give him the right amount of antibiotic, so he's got to wear the elizabethan collar for at least another week and a half. He just keeps giving us the sad puppy eyes.

Quote for the day:
"The world's favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May."
-- Edwin Way Teale

Addiction

I have an addictive personality. My dad was an alcoholic and my mother was a binge eater. I am a compulsive overeater. But that's not the kind of addiction I am talking about today.

I want to come clean about my other addictions.

I am addicted to Etsy.
I blame it on Laura S. Before she actually had an Etsy store, she had a section on her home page that said something like "Check out my Etsy shop." Shop??? I went to look for her shop but of course could not find it. But Etsy...wow is that my kind of place. Millions of one of a kind items. The coolest jewelry ever.
All Laura's fault. :-D

I am addicted to tweezing. I am obsessed abou my eyebrows to the point that I now have half brows. This must stop before I look like like Whoopi.

I am addicted to magazines. I subscribe to TVGuide, Entertainment Weekly, O, Ladies' Home Journal, Reader's Digest, and People, yet every time I go to the supermarket, I seem to bring another home another one. Even though I know I am unnecessarily killing trees, I can't seem to stop myself.

I am also addicted to: reality television, reading, Facebook (that's a new one), blogs, and makeup.

One thing I used to be addicted to, and am hoping to pick up this addiction again:
EXERCISE!!! I vow to start exercising again, even if it's only 10 minutes at a time, while participating in the cybercruise.

Quotes for the day:
"Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding." Harvey McKay

“We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely… change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.” George Sheehan

Hiding from the Sun

Oh my gah! What a gorgeous day it was today...sunny and 72 degrees. I went out to get my hair done---got it colored and trimmed. I left with my jacket on, but soon realized I wouldn't need it. I felt so uncomfortable. I like winter, except for the cold part. I can be covered up from neck to toes. I was tugging at my t-shirt all day, trying to cover up my fat. As if I could. I hate this so much.

Funnel-headed Dog

Took Josh to the vet yesterday because he's been limping for a couple of days. He cried once when he was "playing" with Heidi, so we thought maybe she had hurt him when jumping on him. Turns out he has an infected toe. Actually he has TWO infected toes. It turns out this is common in German Shepherds. They get some weird toe fungal infection. Yuk! So since his licking the foot constantly has made it worse he has an Elizabethan collar on. He does. not. like. it. Heidi has this habit of licking his ears (the vet said his ears were really clean! LOL). When we got home she ran up to him and started licking the plastic. She couldn't figure out why she couldn't get to his ears.

Someone at work asked me if I was losing weight. I don't know...haven't weighed myself. My eating has been considerably better, so it is a possibility. But I am not going to jinx myself by getting on the scale (yes, I have a scale phobia). Yesterday at work I had to do an environmental walk-through. It took over an hour and a half (actually I had to leave before it was over to take Josh to the vet). Everything hurt! My knees, ankles, back. I still haven't started exercising, that has to be my next step. I know that when I exercise it really helps my back and knees, so why do I hesitate? I think maybe it's the commitment. Once I start I know I really need to do something every single day. If I skip one day, it makes it somehow easier to skip 2 days, then 3, then 3 years. When I think that it has been 3years since I exercised regularly I am ashamed.

Things have been okay at work. The new manager and I are working well together, so maybe I overreacted to what happened last week. We'll see.

A quote for the day:
“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” -La Rochefoucauld

Sabotage/Flabotage

Summer over at Mommy Needs Coffee wrote a great post about how we sabotage ourselves in our weight loss journey. I started to reply in her comments, but I then I thought it would be a good subject to blog about myself.

I have sabotaged myself so many times. In 1994 I lost a hundred pounds. I didn't see any difference in the mirror for the longest time. It took seeing pictures of myself that were unrecognizable to realize how far I had come. My best friend at the time took one look at a picture of me on a field trip with my class and blurted out, "Wow, you look normal!" And she was right, I did. Even though I was still over a hundred pounds from goal, I looked really good. I managed to lose a bit more weight before my first Cruise to Lose in 1995, but once that was over, I slowly began to gain the weight back. By the time I went on my next cruise in 1996 I had gained about 30 pounds back. It seems that whenever people start complimenting me and paying attention to my weight loss, I sabotage myself. I lost between 80 and 100 pounds several more times, only to shoot myself down again.

There is definitely some kind of fear there...but fear of what? Why am I afraid of losing weight and being healthy? Is part of it fear of disappointing people who believe in me? I do think that part of it is that when I was very young, like 12 to 14 years old, I looked older than I was (and I was quite thin at the time) and I received a lot of confusing, scary, and inappropriate attention from men.

My mom was a fat kid who got teased a lot, and she was determined that I not be fat. She had me on diets from the time I was seven. When I look back at the pictures I wasn't a fat kid. She will say this is because she controlled what I ate. I don't blame her anymore. She was doing what she thought was best for me. Although I do think that in the past a lot of my eating was rebellious, I can't blame it on that any more. In one of Geneen Roth's books, she says, in essence, "I will never have a happy childhood." It's time to get over that and get on with my life. I was beaten as a kid, but I long ago forgave my father for that, and he has been gone for almost 18 years, so there's no need for fear there.

But yet, still the fear persists. I wonder if I will ever understand the fear or if I will just have to combat it for the rest of my life.

****************************

After what happened at work on Thursday, I feel my days there are numbered. I need to prepare myself for finding another job, and one of the first parts of that, for me, is getting some weight off so I feel more comfortable and more confident about meeting new people. I know they will keep me around at least until June, because that is when our audit will be, so I have a couple of months to get a good start on making the lifestyle changes I need to make.

Ms. Undastood

Warning: This may be a very whiny post.

I got in trouble at work today.

My boss called me into her office and said that I was too negative, rude, and asked me if I was passive aggressive. She then brought up all these other times that I have apparently been negative and inappropriate. What do I call the fact that she saved all this up instead of speaking to me the first time she felt this way about what I said? This was in reference to meetings with other departments in the same agency, where I felt I was being honest, not negative. I don't really remember what I said specifically, so I don't know what she construed as being negative/rude. I can be very blunt, so I can see how this might be seen as being rude to someone who doesn't really know me, but, damn, I felt so ambushed and soooooo frustrated. I tried not to be defensive, but really didn't know how to respond. I felt tears welling up, so I just concentrated on not crying. Just kept nodding. I don't know what to do now. I am going to be afraid to open my mouth. I always felt it was okay to voice my opinion, but obviously it's not.

On the plus side, I managed not to cry until I got in my car and off the property.

Calling Dr. Doolittle!

My old dog, Jake, when it thundered, would curl up back by the closed bedroom doors. It was like a little cave where he would be protected from the lightning. This was only a problem when I needed to leave my bedroom and he refused to move. Climbing over a 75 pound dog when I had to pee was not easy. Josh, however. cowers by the stove--the place where the most electricity comes into the house, as far as I can figure. It's really hard to work around a 95 pound dog shivering in the middle of your very small kitchen. Sigh. The girl dog, on the other hand, could not care less. We think she's not the sharpest tool in the shed, so is she too dumb to be afraid???

The late, great Jake "helping" me exercise, circa sometime in the '90's---






The cats are not allowed on my sheets or up near the pillows. I am mildly allergic to cats, so I really cannot be inhaling cat dander all night. Now they are both smart enough to know I don't want them on the sheets or at the top of the bed. How do I know this? Because as soon as I walk into the bedroom, they get up and move off of the sheets (if I have left the bed unmade--this can happen in the 2 minutes it takes me to, again, pee) or move down to the bottom of the bed. Beyotches. Sigh...