if food=love & love=all you need, then food=all you need

Okay, I've got this bad hand, but I've been thinking about how food and love and sex (even!) are all tangled together in this rather uncomfortable triangle (perhaps a three-way, really). So with my bad hand unable to let me type on at great length, I will toss out the following observations:

single and self-aware gets her shit together, learns some good eating/exercising habits and finds a happy balance to life. Food is good, but so is balance. There is of course, a certain hunger for love, sex, etc.,but the hunger creates a kind of energy, a fire that burns and keeps things warm and lively. Then SASA meets Mr./Ms. Right and after a brief or prolonged courtship, lands 'em and in-love. There's this nervous tension between I and WE and there's some sex and edgy to keep the fire going, which balances all the going out to eat and (potentially) indulging in drink. Yes, there's a lot of food, but let's face it-- there's more sex. Eventually, the WE eclispes the I, and all considerations become a bit more complicated. habits are broken, new ones are formed. The merging of self and other maybe yields some new habits: you like to watch TV on Sundays? I like to walk...hmmmn, will I perish if I walk without you? yes, I certainly will. I love love love you. Love is a celebration. What better way to celebrate than with food? I food food food you! Sex makes me hungry. Let's have sex and then eat cake. Oh, you don't feel like having sex? DO you still feel like having cake? Me too. Sometimes eating cake together makes me feel like we're having sex-- I mean, this cake is that good. This cake is sacred. We don't need sex as long as we have cake. nothin says I love you like cake. My love is deeper than sex, but it may not be deeper than cake.

that's all for now. This is based on a true story (or two).

Baby as Giant Sucking Sound

So what do I know about being a mother?

Nothing.

Absolutely nada.

But I can say this. I have watched my friends have children and then have a series of small nervous breakdowns subsequent to the birth, most of which are precipitated by myriad factors: lack of sleep, eating whatever whenever, lack of sleep, being a feeding trough for the little bean, no personal space, lack of sleep, existing on a diet of doritos and diet coke, lack of sleep...
The worst, though, are the ones who become exercise demons as soon as that incision on their bellies (most of my friends had cesereans) looks like it's actually going to stay together and not dump their lower intestine onto the jogging path in the middle of a run.

Why can't we just love our bodies? Especially post-partum, especially when we just huffed and sweated our way thorough nine months of no wine and hips that sometimes felt like someone had taken a match to the socket? Where's the prize? Certainly it can't be the giant sucking sound (commonly referred to as "the baby") that's eeking the life out of us. Certainly it's not the alien that makes alien-like sounds and can't sleep for more than three hours at a time lest the space ship leave for the home planet without it. Where's the love?

It is popularly said that one cannot truly love another until one loves oneself. So what happens with those women who hated themselves ( read: their bodies) before they got pregnant and then proceeded to watch their bodies become something that would have incited daily purging had they not been carrying a child? If one has to love oneself before truly loving another, what happens when a kid robs you of your perfect abs, your toned ass, your perky breasts? You tell me there isn't resentment. You tell me that there aren't mothers out there who, in the dark of night after days without sleep, catch glimpse of themselves in the mirror, naked, and think "I take it all back. I want my life back. I want my body back. I want this baby gone."

Mother's can't say any of it. If they do, they're bad mothers, or they're on the verge of taking their baby to the pier and dropping him into the sea. There's no patience for mothers in this culture. And, consequently, they don't have much patience for themselves. They need to be back in tip top shape--pre baby weight--in record time. Look at Catherine Zeta-Jones! Look at Kate Hudson! "You'd never know that she just had a baby." Grrrr. God forbid we should ever look like we just spent nine months with a parasitic-acting thing growing inside of us, altering our every move, changing our lives forever. Effortless is the name of the game. Effortless and without evidence that it took any energy at all. It's like: we were here, this is the product, and look, Ma, I'm the same person on the outside!

Trouble is, no matter what you look like, no matter if you can fit back into your wedding dress after baby #3, chances are that you still look in the mirror and hate what you see. Bulges where only you can see them. Lines where only you knew there was once smooth skin. We seek out the imperfection because we don't know what to do with acceptance of self. It's weak. And boring. And someone might find out that the packaging looks the same, but the contents are completely, totally fucked up, broken in transit and uninsured.

and here I be

I'm back from a long walk in (not so) scenic Seattle. The not-so parts are mainly along main thoroughfares, between neighborhoods. So as I came up into Phinney Ridge is was nice, then as I dropped down into Ballard it was not-so. I went out walking because I'd really rather have torched up a lil' something and ate rice cakes until they resembled chicharrones. The pork/torch feelings came on because I fucked up my wrist/hand yesterday (most likely when I insisted on carrying both of the wooden signs for the shop in at once-- but then again it could have been when I scrubbed the hell out of an old sheet pan with an SOS pad) and it's been killing me and making me hum a little number I call "V is for Vicodin."
But I walked. And I smelled fastfood and I wished that I could somehow deprogram the program that was laid in place back in the early 70's when we went to McDonald's and I learned what luv felt like. I will henceforth refer to stuffing my pie hole mindlessly (or even not so mindlessly) as gettin' my luv on. So on my walk I had a couple of times I wanted to get said luv on, but I kept on trudging along, because I just paid my rent, and there's no way I'm gonna pay for luv right now.
And it occured to me while in the store that I make some differentiation between some of the foods I eat when I'm "on program" and other food, which I consider "real." I'm saying this because I bought one of those little yellow containers of "egg product" and I always do so with great shame, but it's this little place where I cut corners, I guess, and yet I've never quite gotten over feeling like a whore for it. You know, if I weren't so ashamed of the fake egg thing, I might go to the daily recipe exchange on WW and exclaim "ONE POINT OMELETTE!!!" and then share my recipe, which entails nothing more than a buttload of beansprout and some scallions then a little soy sauce and it's one of those things that walks this very uneasy line between delicious and disgusting, satisfying and sick. And you know what? It's a makin' me hungry.

missing pix

Hmmm...my pix didn't load with that last post... ahh there they are!

confessions of a visitation junkie

Forgive me Weight Watchers, for I have sinned. It's been four days since my last confession, and five days since I was on an elliptical machine.

So I re-started Weight Watchers about a month or so ago, and I felt like I was doing pretty well and feeling in control of things. I had lost about 8 lbs., was feeling less famished all the time and had an exercise regimen in place and I was actually DOING it.

Then the Thriller landed.

The Thriller is my best friend from college. I will refrain from using her real name here so as to protect her identity, but suffice it to say that she and I have had some WILD times together. This was a quick visit, her first trip away from home since having her daughter 14 months ago. She needed the break and I needed the company of someone who truly knows me--someone besides the person with whom I nightly share my bed.

So this is how it went, food wise. I may be a little fuzzy here as I'm still recovering.

Friday: Pick up T. at airport. Drive to favorite neighborhood watering hole. Proceed to drink four pints of stone pale ale, eat two fried spring rolls and a half a veggie panini. Another friend, K, shows up. Around 11 we head back to my house to see our new kitchen. Another pint, this time a Moose Drool (my fave) brown ale. Quick nachos with salsa reds and chedder melted in oven. Occasional chip with hummus. Smoke fatty. Smoke cigarettes. Bad bad bad. But oh so good. Bed at 2 a.m. I am NEVER up that late. Never.

Saturday: Up at 9. Begin making famous whole wheat banana bread (no white sugar) with chocolate chips on top. Once in oven, T. and I head for the bagel shop. Baker's dozen, two tubs of cream cheese. Back at the house, mow (rhymes with sow) on said bagels, onion and chive cream cheese, smoked salmon that T. sent for christmas. Scramble eggs, add green onion and mozzarella. We are FULL. Banana bread cools on rack. Run errands, including grocery store. Buy fixin's for pork green chili, which I will make with the roasted chili peppers I bought last summer and froze. Fresh (evil) flour tortillas. T. makes a huge vat of guacamole. Finish off bottle of Tinto 2002 while cooking--T. gets in the beer again. Watch Dave Chappelle's first season (highlight: R. Kelly spoof and the song "Piss on You") and eat bowl of chili with tortilla, side of refrieds (does the fact that they're veggie count?) and guac. Dessert: thin mints. Flashback to grocery store earlier in the day-- little girl scouts in their kelly green sashes chanting "girl scout cookies, three dollars a box!" over and over again. Note to self at the time: this is prime found sound to be dubbed into a horror film. Also might make great Moby tune when mixed with deep groove. T. buys five boxes when I'm not looking.

Sunday: Up at 8. T. can't sleep in because her biological clock is set to baby time. Breakfast: more bagels, more cream cheese, more salmon. Slice of banana bread with one of four cups of coffee. T.'s plane leaves at 3:20. We lounge. T. begins her first beer at 11. She drinks that and close to 3 more before we leave the house at 2. I imbibe in a pale ale just for kicks around noon. We drop off T. then head out on a sunday drive adventure--me with topo maps in my lap, S. driving, Daisy Mai Pickles in the back. Stop at Barn Store in Hudson and buy beef jerky, pretzels, and some of that sweet hot trail mix with the boston peanut-y things in it. Drive aimlessly for miles. Take lots of pix, like the two here. Get home around 5...by 6:30 we're ordering chinese. Moo goo gai pan for me, because it's listed as "on the lighter side" on the menu and I like it...brown rice...oh, three veggie (fried) spring rolls and two crab cheese wontons. We watch The Constant Gardener. It's sad. I'm full. Dammit.

A little backstory

Hey there.

Well, this is a joint effort between my palio 'stine (rhymes witih spleen) and myself as a means to discuss lots'o'things, but mostly to chew the proverbial fat re: weight loss and weight loss related issues (dubbed onion peeling by some, but heretofore known as tectonic-plate shifting).

Here goes somethin'.

C.lvr