Nameless Days

The Aztecs had a 365 day calendar, that had 360 days accounted for and the last five were nameless days. I read that in those last five days, people would all lay low and call as little attention to themselves as possible, because those days were inauspicious and bad things could befall them. I feel like I understand that, because that's kind of how I've been the last few days, not doing much and just laying low. Not such a bad thing.

Last night, I went out to dinner with a bunch of people from my therapy group. It was weird, standing en masse with them, and one of them smelled kind of like "old lady." I'm not really sure whom it was, but it was that weird sort of stale powdery smell that makes me think of Victorian times for some reason. I was thinking, how could someone smell like that, stale? Maybe they don't bathe or wash their clothes? I am hoping that if I ever start smelling like an old lady, someone will tell me. But perhaps I'll be too deaf to hear them. It was a fun dinner, though I think when you go out with people who are being treated for anxiety, you can expect some weirdness. Like "we have to read the menus before we are seated" and "did you tell them that it's eight people not seven? And did they hear you say that?" And this same anxious woman asked for separate checks, used a coupon for hers, etc.

I took a walk today, realizing that I just have a few months to go until my Spain trip and I gotta get in the habit of death marching. I felt better after the walk, which is a good sign, right?

I haven't really made any resolutions, haven't thought of doing any best of lists. The one resolution I made last year, finishing Rembrance of Things Past, well, I didn't do it. Not going to flog myself over that either, because I'll finish it at some point. I did read about 157 books last year, just finishing one today. So, not finishing Proust, I did finish some things. And I read the first two books, which is a lot.

Hope you all have a happy new year!

Seasonal Spirit

Tis the season for everyone being kind to each other, right? Or does that pass away once Christmas is over? I found yesterday when I went out to Trader Joe's, that some people were actually being polite, and making eye contact. Now, my TJs is not as bad as some I've heard of (like Heather's) and usually people aren't having loud phone conversations in the middle of the aisle, pushing their cart everywhere, letting their kids run around, but there was a little bit of that last night. But, being on vacation, I'm mellow. So I find the perfect line, only one person in it. Not realizing that the cashier is the slowest bagger in the world. Methodical doesn't even cover how long it takes this dude to put things in the bag. Since I bring my own bags anyway, I just started bagging my crap. Quite frankly, I don't know shit about bagging and mostly was just throwing stuff in the bags, but then was doing it quickly. Without conversation, the cashier started "helping" me by taking one bag I started and putting some stuff in it, then handing me stuff to put into another bag. It was just weird. And for some reason, it filled me with no holiday spirit, but a desire to not go grocery shopping for a while.

When I got home, my neighbor wished me a Merry Christmas. I felt bad because I just farted in the stairway, and didn't want to really say "excuse me" to a Merry Christmas, and was hoping that it could pass as like a random smell, not a random smell from me, but usually you can't get away with stuff like that.

Not The Same River

Lately, the quote, "you never step in the same river twice," has been on my mind a lot. I remember it first being attributed to Heraclitus, and it looks like on Wikipedia, they quote it ass:
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."

I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately first of all because I have a lot of free time. Being out of work (and being paid for it) is such a gift, but I find myself without much structure, and can sleep until noon if I want. Which I have done quite a bit of. But then I also am having a lot of time to sit around and reflect about what I'd like to, what it is I should be doing, and what I did at this time last year.

I've been at my job for about ten years, and every year I get this same break. In the years before I started dating my ex, I'd go down to LA a lot, or maybe go see my mom (though it's fucking cold where she lives this time of year). Then, I was with my ex, and all his family was in this area, and we always had some big Christmas thing to do. At first, it was charming, until I realized how utterly fucking nuts so much of his family was, how everyone would get wound up and drunk and rude. So much of what I value in relationships is being able to make a one-to-one connection, and that was so impossible with that drunken bunch.

The last Christmas with my ex was horrible. Lemme go check my archives and see if/what I wrote about it. Hrm, not much. This is what I wrote. I don't know if I was in denial, but in retrospect, that Christmas was really the nail in the coffin of our relationship. He was just such an asshole in varying levels for the last year or two of our relationship, but in that whole trip, he did nothing but make things more awkward for me. The whole Christmas was staged because it was going to be his stepfather's last (since he was dying of cancer, but he died early this summer, so I guess there was another Christmas in there for him) and so it was a big song and dance of fakery and annoyance.

I do think sometimes I'm just mad at his family because really, they knew that he was taking advantage of me financially, living with me and not paying half of the rent or really contributing, sleeping all day and not taking care of stuff, and they did and said nothing. I guess sometimes his mom would lecture him, but it wouldn't be enough. It's not that I blame them for his behavior, but I definitely think that he came from a family where he could get away with that shit indefinitely. If I ever tried to pull any of that shit that he did, well, I wouldn't get away with it. My parents were always insistent that I had to work, had to pull my own weight in life. I don't think my ex ever got the message.

But you know, sometimes I just miss being in a relationship. I don't really miss him, or any particular relationship I've had, but it's just easier sometimes. I don't think I'm particularly lonely but sometimes I really am so lonely, and I feel disconnected, misunderstood, without roots. In the last year, I've met people who literally have no family, few friends, no activities, and well, I've got way more that connects me. But that feeling of making that connection, being understood by people, I feel like I haven't had enough of that lately.

Coming back to the idea of never stepping in the same river twice, is this idea of that you can't really go back to whom you were, where you lived before, how you lived before, because both you and the river have changed. This holiday is nothing like past holidays, even though I'm hanging out at home and have a week off work. I feel sometimes like I'm on this long road, that being in therapy makes it go by both faster and slower, analyzing where I was, where I am, where I want to be. But I do know that I'm going in the right direction, and even if sometimes I feel lost, alone, afraid, confused, and even depressed, I can see that I've made progress.

Holiday

I am really enjoying this whole being on vacation thing. I haven't gotten up early in the last few days. I didn't end up doing too much on the 24th. I was kind of thinking that I'd do my holiday shopping that day, but ended up finishing early. The only real shopping I did was for the cats, getting them a new scratch post and then filters for their water fountain. Which I preceded to break within the cleaning process. So I went out and got them another one today. It's super expensive but it's nice having a new clean one, and I now have plenty of spare filters. I don't think I ever changed the filter on the other one, so it is probably better to do that every so often.

My Christmas was great. I ended up hitting up both Susannah's family dinner and Heather's friends dinner. It was good because Susannah stuck with the traditional turkey and side dishes and Heather went for the English roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, so I ended up with a really good balance of various meats and side dishes. I ate more food than I have in a long time, since probably the last time I was in Vegas. And I drank well too. And slept really well from all of that.

In Photographs

I hate the way I photograph. I can seriously count on one hand the number of photos of myself that I think looked good. That's part of the reason why I don't post photos here, but the main reason is just having some room for denial in case someone who shouldn't be reading this blog finds out about it. No, it's not ME. It's someone with a life similar to mine, but it's not me.

This weekend, I went to a few things and ended up being in photographs, and I was cringing when I saw them. I think the stuff about the camera adding ten pounds must be true, because I look like I haven't lost the weight that I have lost. Something about photography always makes my face fat look its fattest, no matter what angle it is taken from. And I just cringe looking at these pictures. And the thoughts start, the, oh you will never loose enough weight, never be attractive, never be loved... and it's all cognitive distortions, and I recognize that, but it doesn't really lessen the painfulness of it all.

So, I am going to make some effort to be kind to myself, to accept myself, to reward myself with positive feedback, instead of all this time of cutting myself down. Whenever the subject of how much weight I've lost comes up, I find myself negating it somehow, cutting myself down by making it sound like it's somehow minimal or easy. I mean it's not the most difficult thing in the world, but I'm actively working on it and I shouldn't negate my progress or my success.

Measuring Up

Thanks to Mommy Zombie who gave me this award. For some reason, I've been putting off writing this post, maybe because it requires some structured thought and I've been pretty unstructured as of late.

So there are three rules that one is supposed to follow in using this award, however, since I hate having to tag other bloggers, I'm just going to do the first two.

1. Say one nice thing to a man/woman in your life.

This is pretty unspecific, eh? I would like to thank all of my "real life" friends who read this blog, not only putting up with me in person but also keeping tabs on me here. Not like I'm horrible or anything in person, but it definitely requires a level of commitment to wade through the blog and all of that. And I love my friends anyway, they wouldn't be my friends otherwise.

2. List at least six ways that you measure success in your life (or for your blog).

1. Lessening the strength that depression bothers me, particularly in the winter months. I feel like I've been chipping away at this for years, but it's nice to have very few days a year where I actually do feel depressed. It's like the gift that keeps on giving.
2. This is probably going to sound banal, but paying my bills on time is a good measure of success to me. It means that I'm making enough money to pay my bills, I'm organized to send them out in the mail, and I'm dealing with day to day life issues.
3. Being able to accept those around me for whom they are, not whom I wish they'd be.
4. Checking my list of the books I've read for the year and getting a number 150 or higher. I am at 152 now.
5. Being able to listen to positive feedback from others and accept compliments without negating on them (and this one, I'm still working on).
6. Not backsliding into negative habits.

Step 3 is that you are supposed to tag six bloggers, but I am not going to do that. Instead, consider yourselves free to take this award and this meme and use it how you will.

Front Row Seat

I think I've discovered what is at the seventh level of hell. Being at the dentist's office, having your teeth being worked on when you are still kind of in general period-pain and then having to listen to Christmas music the whole time. Now, I like some of that nice instrumental stuff, but really, I just find that I'm already overdosed on holiday music by December 1, and here we are at the 18th. My overly enthusiastic hygienist was in there for what seemed like days, cleaning the parts of my mouth that I'm probably too lazy to really work on, while I'm trying to decide which is worse, sound of the cleaning gizmo or the music playing. What was funniest was when that "Do They Know It's Christmas?" song came on, because I remember Live Aid, remember buying that record. Okay, not CD, not even cassette, but record. One of those flat things. Yeah.

It was actually a good day, not the least of which is that I have three more working days of the year and I got to leave early (to go to the dentist but still it's leaving early). And I had a good weigh-in day, though the fact that we don't weigh in again until January 8 makes me slightly nervous. Oh and I got a nice holiday card from someone I helped earlier this year. That was totally unexpected, someone who appreciated me helping their department out. I got to show it to my boss and everything.

There's some stuff going on in the humane organization where I volunteer, and I'm starting to cast my eyes around to see if there are other places to volunteer that might have a smaller level of weird bullshit going on. I mean, I know there is crap everywhere, but it wouldn't hurt to keep my options open. So I casually volunteered to help out at something this weekend that a few of my other volunteers are working, and in fact, jumping ship to pretty soon. The thing that's funny is that if I did go elsewhere, I would miss the cats and the people. Where I volunteer now has given me so many great things, not the least of which was being able to adopt two wonderful cats of my own. We'll see.

What I've Been Eating

It's kind of funny how people ask me how the diet is going. I think in a way, it's nice to hear concern from people who are interested in my day to day life and making sure I'm okay, but in a way, it's a weird question to ask. I guess I'm not sure how to answer it. I mean obviously reducing my intake and eating more fruits and vegetables works. It's really a question of whether or not I'm doing it. Not to mention I'm at a point where it's really easy because I'm losing weight that I put on recently, so it's easier to get it off. I know that I'm nowhere near those hard days when I'm doing everything right, and the weight is not coming off. So yes, it's been doing well.

I made Cobb salad last week, with bacon, blue cheese, some sliced turkey, and tomatoes. This week it's all about spinach salad because I got a big bag of spinach at Costco. I also added some lite Swiss cheese since that goes well with spinach, some of the bacon, and mushrooms. It's a good combination. I got pre-cooked bacon at Trader Joe's because it just seemed easier to me. It's not cooked super crispy and I probably would try to toss it on the stove for a minute or two if I was eating it plain, but it turns out just fine on the salad.

My friend J at the humane society is very amused that I picked *this* time of year to start dieting. I don't think it's quite as hard as it could be, but I did have a holiday party during last week (and being sick, I wanted to eat nothing and just drink water) and then over the weekend it was Heather's annual holiday shindig, where I did eat, drink, and then eat some more to balance out the booze. I honestly don't totally remember what all I ate, which will tell you why I'm not a big drinker, because when I drink, the food just jumps into my mouth.

I've managed to avoid the large tin of cookies in the break room, a box of See's candy in the break room, the dessert table at a holiday party, eggnog ice cream at therapy, and will continue to try to avoid things that I will find a hard time fitting on my diet. Wish me luck!

Postess W/ The Mostess

Yikes, has it been a week? I did start feeling less sick by the weekend, which was good since I had a holiday party to go to. I will have to write more from home because I have some photos of my salads for the last few weeks that I need to upload and also ZM tagged me for an award and I have to figure that thing out. Also therapy was weird last week, so we'll see if I can write a summation on it later.

Sick

I'd love to write a new post about how therapy was different but cool last night, how I'm going to a party tomorrow and one this weekend, and all kinds of stuff, but I'm home sick. I just got felled by this cold in the last two days and I don't really know who I can blame it on. It's weird, after sleeping 12+ hours, I feel too tired to do anything but not tired enough to go back to sleep. I remember when I was younger, before I got paid sick time, pushing myself to work anyway and drugging myself up with over the counter cold formulations, but now I just feel like taking nothing and letting it go away on its own.

Finally Dishing

I wanted to write about my experience at Let's Dish for a while, but actually writing something factual, that takes a bit more effort than my usual stream-of-conscious entry.

Let's Dish is a really great concept. Basically, they supply you with the recipes and all the ingredients, and you put the raw ingredients together yourself and then take them home and throw them in your freezer. When you are ready, pull the bag out of the freezer and follow the instructions. Since I was there in November and the site is now moving onto December, you can see some of the choices we had in the ready made section on their website. I guess they only have a certain number of dishes, and at the end of the month, they package last month's choices for you in their freezers.

One of the dishes we made and I got to try was the Sage Chicken with Golden Rice. You can see here some of the raw ingredients. The sauce has some cream in it, and they also use a lot of chicken base in things with chicken, which is a sort of very cooked down chicken stock, and adds a lot of chicken flavor to everything. You can see here how everything is laid out at the station for this item. You start with a plastic bag tucked into one of these plastic canisters, and you glop all the sauces and ingredients together. What you end up with is this plastic bag filled with the chicken breasts and all the spices. Since the rice cooks separately, it ends up in its own bag.


All of entrees are made for 4-6 people but you have the option to do split meals, which are for 2-3 people. That's what we went for and I think that with maybe a salad on the side, they were the right size for dinner for three people. So we ended up with a gigantic pile of these plastic bags full of food. I do think from an ecological standpoint, it is a bit of a waste of packaging, and I'm sure if this place existed in California, they'd use some recycled packaging. The plastic bags are good for keeping the food sealed and fresh, and considering a lot of these are filled with sauce and whatnot, it's good to have it sealed and not leaking all over the place.

Once you are done at one station, you put your portions in a giant freezer they have, with a shelf for your stuff. We ended up making six dishes plus ordering a few ready made sides, and I think this is all the food we made. When you first put it in the freezer, it doesn't really seem frozen but when we got the Sage Chicken out a day later, it was frozen and flat, which is good for freezer storage. On the top left, you can also see the baguette slices that were for the Bruschetta with Chicken and Tomatoes which was the other dish I got to try. That was yummy even though my mom left the bread slices in the oven a little too long. You can kind of see the green stickers on top of each package, these including instructions on how to cook the food and also suggest what kind of wine or veggie side dish would go with the dishes.

Conceptually, these foods seem a lot more interesting and healthier than just getting takeout but also because the spices and times are calibrated for you, you don't really have to think about it too much. Also you can customize things, like leave out something you are allergic to. My mom had me put twice as much garlic in the dishes as they asked for, though I found it was a little too much in the Bruschetta; because you cook everything at the same time, the garlic ended up being a little raw and therefore more potent.

And if you are really short on time, you can pop in and get these already prepared ready meals. The only drawback that I could see was that they didn't have these split, and the 4-6 portion would really be enough for a dinner party or just provide you a mountain of leftovers.

I'm not totally sure if they opened something in my area like this that I'd go. I think that if I could create a quarter portion, maybe. The food choices were really good, and they have all the caloric (and points values!) on the website, and I think the food was generally healthy and the individual servings were portioned well. But even halving the recipe portions leaves you with many servings, that for a single person like me, you'd end up having three meals of the same thing. However, if I was going to have people over for dinner, I would get one of these packs and then probably take all the credit saying I cooked the food myself. Unlike buying a packaged ready-to-cook entree at the store, you see what all goes into it and can be assured that you are starting out with fresh ingredients.

Manticore Dreams

This week has been a double-therapy week because I had my regular group on Tuesday and then met my therapist today for one-on-one time. After reading The Manticore by Robertson Davies some years ago, I really thought that I would love to do as the character does, go in a few times a week for a few years for Jungian analysis. But just from typing that sentence, I know something like that is the past time of someone who is independently wealthy and doesn't have to drag their butt into work every day. And I now know from my own experiences with therapy, sometimes it's just like battering your head against a brick wall.

I realize I've been going to my group for three years now. I've been on anti-depressants for almost twice that, with a short (and painful) stint in the middle where I weaned myself off then got heinously depressed. But I feel like just now I'm actually staring to make some progress with my therapy. I feel like I'm not just open to change, but that I admit that I'm afraid to change, and still wanting to do it anyway. I am trying to change not just my overall mood (meaning, getting rid of being depressed) but also my outlook on my life.

When I was visiting my mom, she had me going through some random boxes in her basement, and I started looking through these old photo albums. I always thought I was so weird looking or whatever, but looking at old photos of me, I realized I was cute. I wasn't perfect by any means, and I certainly had even less sense of fashion than I do now and hadn't really learned the wonders of styling products and not washing my curly hair every day, but I was cute. And pretty normal looking, not really fat or thin, just normal. One of the exercises I'm doing in this Louise Hay book I'm reading talks about finding an old picture of yourself, so you tell your childhood self what you would have wanted to hear then.

Anyway, that reminded me of the end section of this amazing video from Joy Nash when she talks about accepting yourself right now, "live today like you wish you would have ten years from now."

Fava Beans

Guess what? Louise's butt!

It's been pretty rough being back at work this week. I don't really feel like I missed that much. Whereas, when I went to therapy this week, I felt like I had missed a lot. I guess last week when I was out of town, one of the women who never really opens up about her situation talked for a long time. I feel like I missed out on something. Then therapy was generally weird because there were too many people and we mostly ended up talking about procedural stuff and not everyone's problems. I'm seeing my therapist one on one this week, so we'll see how it goes. She gave me a ton of books last time, and I haven't read any of them. Oops.

I've been eating well. Thanksgiving at my mom's wasn't a challenge because she tends to make things pretty healthy and low fat anyway. And back at work, I'm eating salad every day for lunch. I made my salads this week with fava beans which of course reminds everyone of Hannibal Lecter. I think they are okay but I liked the lentils I used before more than the fava beans. I am thinking of trying something different next week, maybe putting some blue cheese and bacon on to go for a sort of Cobb salad thing. If it comes out particularly photogenic, I will take photos.

The Kind of Day I Had

I got a pear at Whole Foods last night to bring to work today, and I put it in the bag with my other lunch items, but then when I went to eat it at lunch, it wasn't in the bag. So I looked throughout the refrigerator at work, assuming someone took it. But maybe it was in my car? No, when I got to my car, it wasn't there. I was thinking maybe it fell out at home, but then when I pulled into my parking spot, I found where it had fallen this morning. It was run over. Probably by me.