If You Belonged Here

Not Tonight, Josephine...

I am plum worn out.

I've got a pile on my desk that has never completely gone away since the birth of Secret Lulu. I've got two books to mail back to people who haven't forgotten they lent them to Mr. Poppins. There are invitations to send. And a babysitter to call.

I wouldn't want to forget that.

Today I ran all around town, procurring stamps, mailing stuff, depositing checks at two different banks, parking illegally so I could place my dessert order for the party. Not to mention the breakfast and lunch I cooked, the dishes I washed, and the cake I just put in the oven to bake. I should mention that the cake is not from a box. I made it from scratch. It's chocolate-cherry coffee cake and it will be fabulous. Not that I'll be eating any of it--at least not tonight: I've reached my calorie quota for the day.

Once, in high school, prompted by a girl I loved but who was a very bad influence on me, I crank called another girl, a girl I not only did not know but had never seen. It is important to mention this because when she answered the phone, I said in a very deep voice: you have very large thighs.

This little excerpt may seem to have not the least bit to do with the thread of this post so far, but I assure you, it ties in nicely with the calorie quota from the paragraph prior. Because right now, I am sad to say, I have very large thighs.

Thighs.

Sigh.

Thighs are the bane of my existence. Well, those and oversized jugs but people have trouble feeling bad for me when I complain about my rack, so I'll stick to the thighs. Why not? Everything else does.

My thighs will never be thin. I am positive that I would die of starvation before that happened. I have way too much Eastern European peasant stock in me. But they have been thinner. Much thinner. And I am of the opinion that they could be again. So let's add that to my list of things to do this week: trim thighs.

Worse than that, is the fact that I only got three minutes into my yoga video before Secret Lulu interrupted with a serious howl. Secret Lulu likes my thighs the way they are. All the more cushy for sitting on my lap.

Two years ago this coming May, I started a liquid diet. I lost about fifty pound. Rather quickly, too. But it seems that twenty of them have found their way home and I am not, I repeat not even remotely interested in reuniting with a single additional pound.

Really, people, I want to be able to not think about what I eat (i.e., eat anything I want, in whatever quantity I want, whenever I want) but I am just not that girl.

Geneen Roth, author of the fabulous tome, When Food Is Love, says I should be able to do it. I believe her, too. So much so that I tried it for the majority of this past year, with the exception of one week when I reverted to my liquid diet and dropped five pounds, and let me tell you, people, miracle no happen. But food for me is not love. Food for me is fuel. I eat when I'm hungry and while I would like to eat in a relaxed, focused manner as Geneen claims I deserve, I simply cannot manage it so long as Secret Lulu remains a toddler. She won't let me.

So I get super hungry and then I eat fast before the window of opportunity flees. I eat too fast for natural hunger cues to work. And many times, gasp, I eat out, where a meal's calories seem to always multiply themselves by three on principle. So now I'm eating only when I can procure a calorie count for what I'm eating and I'm stopping for the day when I've reached a preset quota.

I am going to be keeping a food journal for the rest of my life.

Now some of you were probably expecting fireworks for this post, but there are no fireworks here, people. All that has happened here is that I have admitted aloud on the internet that Geneen Roth is not the answer to my prayers. All that has happened is that I have typed away about something that I think probably has the interest value of lint to anyone but me.

I don't care. That's why this is posted in navel gazing.

But now, let's talk about Oprah. I am so disenchanted with Oprah. She keeps convincing me that she has found the answer to permanent weightloss and then she keeps falling off the wagon. Last I heard there was talk of a thyroid problem. Okay, that's a shame. But really, with all that money and access to the best medical care in the world, including my beloved, if only a little dorky, Dr. Oz, you'd think the woman could have gotten diagnosed say twenty years ago.

I think it's a ploy. As long as Oprah's weight keeps fluctuating she can keep buzz going without actually having to engage in any behavior more reputation-blemishing than eating a Dairy Queen soft-serve vanilla on her roadtrip with gal-pal Gayle.

Let's just say that you're hearing it here first, people: Oprah and I aren't friends anymore.

Besides, unless there's a bra-fitting segment or a Q&A with Dr. Oz, I really don't like her show. Sure, she's finally found her hair stride (love the curls) but I just can't see another person reclaim their power by confronting the person who sodomized them relentlessly for twenty years. Nope, Oprah and I are done. She can lose half her body-weight and I might tune in but I'll never trust her again because it's coming back. It's always coming back.

At least until she retires, which may never happen, but if it does, I bet you her weight stabalizes. Seriously.

So tonight, what was it about tonight? Oh, yeah. Tonight I am just plain old tired of thinking about my thighs. I mean, I am a smart, capable woman with tons of creative energy and where do I choose to focus that energy: on a freaking random part of the my female anatomy that I have scrutinized into complete and total distortion.

No more thighs! Although, in honor of Josephine, I will continue to bath regularly whether Mr. Poppins likes it or not.

Taking It to the Next Level

About a year has past since I first began this blog. Sure, it hasn't been that long since I first migrated over to Typepad, and certainly, it's been even less time since most of you found me dancing by myself over here. But, beginning to end, it's been about a year.

Over the course of the past year, I've tried to speak my mind without actually being intentionally offensive. I allow that there is a good deal about my mind that is offensive regardless of my best intentions but even so, I've tried to be respectful. More respectful than I actually feel. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, regardless of any appearance to the contrary, I've played nice.

Let's give some examples:

1. I avoid giving direct insults to anyone, even deserving celebrities and public figures.
2. I only review books I love and write the reviews in such a way that if I had to read them aloud to the author, I would not risk getting punched in the mouth.
3. I generally try to live up to my claim of "constantly cranky, eternally optimistic" and so do not indulge ad nauseum in tirades unless I am fairly certain you will find them amusing.

Fantastic.

What a wonderful way to begin year one. But now I'm onto year two and I cannot help but notice that I'm just not in love with this blog anymore. I'm tired of Kokology. I haven't resurrected anything in weeks. I'm not interested in doing yet another review on a MBTI book (at least not right now). And I've generally run out of polite Polly-truisms and cliches to exploit.

We've become friends, people, but the truth is that I've been holding back more than just the details of my personal life. True, I've no desire to share the particulars of my love life or my relationship with my mother, but I'm certainly ready to peel back another layer of the onion. Not that I've ever seen the point in that metaphor, because really, one layer pretty much looks the same as the layer before and after it, people, but that's neither here nor there.

What is here and there is the fact that I'm going to start blogging about other stuff now. Stuff that might be more offensive or, even worse, more boring. But I'm going to tell you all about it. Starting tomorrow.

Or the day after.

Tree Day

I do so love Tree Day, which is the title I've given the day after Thanksgiving because, traditionally, it is the day my tree goes up.

Now, I've already told you that I assembled and lit my trees. I even decorated the tree in the front room--the one the neighbors see and also the one Mr. Poppins refers to as my department store tree. That tree is easy. There are varying sizes of red, gold and silver balls; some shiny, some burnished, and some in between. There is very little sentiment in that tree but I do love to see it glowing in the front window and it is, if I do say so myself, awfully pretty.

In the family room, we have our family tree. I'm not talking about genealogy, people. I'm talking about the tree that has all of our personal ornaments: the tree with all the sentimental value.

Every year Mr. Poppins and I exchange a new ornament. Sometimes we'll get an ornament as a souvenir. And now that we have Secret Lulu, she gets an ornament in her stocking every year, too. We have quite the collection.

I may have started decorating early this year but I have yet to put a single ornament on the family Christmas tree. Nope. I've saved that for Tree Day.

Tonight we will throw a log in the fireplace, mix up some homemade hot chocolate, turn on the Christmas carols, and get to tree trimming. Tonight we will officially start celebrating the season.

Years ago, I would get a live tree. I gave that up after one particularly rainy season that culminated in a live tree that didn't smell. Not even a little bit. Besides, once I was out of an apartment and into a house with plenty of storage, I didn't see the point of littering the house with pine needles. And, the Dol would be quick to point out, artificial trees make it so much easier to space the equidistant bows.

Not that I have bows anymore. I outgrew them. Right about a second and a half after Mr. Poppins said that when they were backlit, they looked just like little bats. I like the Nightmare Before Christmas and all, but that was not the look I was going for.

Tree Day really is my favorite day of the season. It seems like morning skips over afternoon and jumps straight to dusk these days and there's nothing like a little sparkle and twinkle to take my mind off of those long, lovely summer afternoons.