Picking Bones

I looked at my calendar today and realized it's July 27th, which means I have approximately 15 days to accept the fact that swimsuits are tools of the Devil designed to make any woman, whether she weighs 92 pounds or 300, feel like she's being stuffed into a sausage casing and paraded around on a conveyor belt while robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people peer over the tops of their oversized sunglasses and purse their lips as much as their collagen will let them, silently judging and making notes on scented paper before deciding who looks acceptable and who gets tossed in the bin of people waiting to be selected for The Biggest Loser, and that there's nothing I can do about that.

That sentence doesn't even make sense, does it. I can just hear Mrs. Wilcox, my 6th grade English teacher (back then it was called Language Arts) sighing and lecturing us about run-on sentences.

During the second week of August I'm going to Massachusettes with my Best for her bridal shower and while I could not be more excited to A) take a vacation, B) finally get to visit Boston, and C) spend some much-needed girl time with said Best, this trip will involve a trip to the beach.

I'd be lying if I said I've ever felt comfortable with how I look and yes, I know this is starting to read like a 'Cathy' comic strip, but it's true. My weight has gone up and down and occasionally sideways so much the past few years that I'm quite close to having a muumuu surgically attached to my body. Yes, it's shallow. Yes, it's pointless to obsess over something that you only have limited control over. And yet, here I am.

Part of this mental crisis is coming from the fact that ever since we've moved, my work-out schedule hasn't been nearly as strict as it used to be. Before we moved I was up at 4:30, at the gym by 5:15, and working out until 6:20 or 6:30. Now that I've moved 40 miles away from the gym, I've given up the membership and have started furnishing a small gym in my basement. I've let myself sleep in until 6, and have resolved to workout after work instead of before. It's worked, to a degree, but I still feel awfully out of shape. More so than I'd like to.

I guess what this all boils down to is that I'm stuck between wanting to be healthy and not wanting to fall victim to either an eating disorder or this nation's obesity epidemic. I've tried Weight Watchers, but when they started throwing around sayings more commonly heard on pro-anorexia sites, that kind of dimmed for me. I've tried methods that I'm not going into detail on and I'm afraid of getting into this destructive sneaky self-hate spiral.

It's all about choices in the end and as I sit here, re-reading this and trying to figure out if I spelled 'Massachusettes' right (I didn't), I am choosing that I'm not going to let robotic Anna Wintour-type insect people determine my self-worth. If I were meant to be waif-like, God would've made me that way. Frankly, who wants hip bones that stick out? All that does is make it really hurt when you get yanked off your feet and pulled across a high-school gym by a parachute. Don't ask me how I know this.

Frankly, the robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people can kiss my grits.

Looking Glass

We've been in our house for about 5 weeks now and we love it. I love pottering around the inside of the house, trying to figure out where the best place for a 10-year-old sentimental Orangina bottle really is while my husband is waging his own personal war against our weed-ridden lawn outside. I love coming home and knowing it's ours; that we can do whatever we want to it instead of being able to do nothing because our landlord was...well, a landlord. Just try and stop us (well, me really) from painting the garage fuchsia, Landlord. Just. Try.

People have told me it takes years for them to be truly unpacked and settled and whatnot. Frankly, as someone who's been swimming in boxes and stray, cat-chewed pieces of packing tape since the middle of May I will not have it. I have goals, and for once in my life they will be met. The house will be unpacked before the end of August.

Gosh. What else is going on...oh, right. It's almost August, which to some people means the start of back-to-school shopping, the NFL pre-season, and inexplicable Christmas shopping. To me, it means that every single weekend from here until Labor Day is booked. Between having company over, going to Massachusettes (which remains the only state I cannot consistently spell correctly), my Best's bridal shower, my husband's birthday, parent's anniversary, and my nephew's guaranteed-to-be-awesome pirate-themed 4th birthday party, my schedule and memory are going to be weeping. I've already decided that come Labor Day, I'm not doing a blessed thing except reading whatever book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series I happen to be in. And laundry. Probably laundry.

I'm looking forward to autumn and winter. We actually have trees now. Mature trees that will, with any luck, turn gorgeous colors in a few months and will retain a stark kind of beauty come winter. Oh, winter. I miss you and all your dark turns.