Grimy Window

I have been working every so hard at eating three, balanced meal, meals without too many refined carbohydrates, and not snacking. I have been doing really well. I was feeling almost smug in my ability to "stay with the program." Up until a few days ago.

Suddenly, it seemed, I was gorging on Almond Joys, shortbread cookies with strawberry jam, oreos, BREAD. I didn't know what the trigger had been and it all made me feel very powerless, like whatever I do, I will always be a slave to my appetite and always have an ass the size of the back end of a VW Beetle.

However, yesterday I figured something out. It all started with a bad breakfast. I had been eating oatmeal in the morning (with a little protein powder added for staying power). Then a few days ago, I was running late and had a peanut butter sandwich. I rationalized it - it was on whole wheat. There was some protein in the peanut butter. But then I was hungry before lunch, and when lunch rolled around I was ravenous. It was a downhill spiral.

I feel so much better! Maybe I have a little power over the situation after all.

Okay, that sounds sick, I know. But this morning I was thinking about an old Saturday Night Live skit – a commercial for a product called Whoops, I crapped my Pants!” I have been taking hormones to try to get regular and I am having the period from hell. Wait, worse than that – way worse than hell, actually. And I was thinking that I needing a different “product” than the one I am using. Something like “Whoops I Hemorrhaged my Pants.” I know, way too much information.

I have been about 50 pounds overweight for the last ten years. I have lost and gained in that period, plus had two babies, but the net loss/gain is zero and I sit here still on my enormous ass.

I have read recently about sugar addiction and I exactly fit the profile. So the bottom line is that my brain is fucked and I crave carbs like a herion addict. When I was reading, I actually got emotional because the author was describing me and my struggles so well.

The idea is, then, that addicts such as my good self should swear off sugar and white carbs entirely. Sugar, white bread, rice, and most disappointingly beer. I decided to do it, and it has been two days now. I have been eating plenty, not worrying too much about weight loss yet, but nothing that I really want.

I have recently discovered the joy of iced tea. It is so amazingly good, and I get a little jolt of caffiene without sugar and without all of the chemicals found in diet drinks.

As I former Mormon, I didn't used to be able to indulge.

Because some guy, nearly 200 years ago, said that we shouldn't drink "hot drinks" because god, peering down from his heavenly perch, who didn't give a rat's ass about all of the poor early mormons dying along the dusty roadside on their way to mormon mecca, did apparently care whether these same poor deluded bastards drank tea or not. And even more insane, somehow, this prohibition against hot drinks does apply to iced tea, but does not apply to hot chocolate.

So back to the original point of my post, I didn't used to drink iced tea. And if my mother saw me drinking it now, even though I am a forty year old adult with a very respectable job, kids, and I am NICE, she would burst into tears and think I have fallen into desperate sin.

Someday I will be brave enough to drink the dreaded sin drink in front of my zealously mormon family.

As I sat at my desk, trying not to think about the absolute fucking mountain of work I have to do, my boss called. She had yet one more thing in mind that maybe, if I have time, I could squeeze in.

“Oh my god!” I said, with pain in my voice.

Now of course, I am going to do the project. I am fairly high level administrator at a college, yet I do as I am told.

But, the point of this post was the giddy pleasure I had as I said “Oh my god.” I know it may seem crazy. It is just that since I was a Mormon for over thirty years, and taking the name of god in vain was a sin practically next to murder. And it feels absolutely and freakishly good to say it (and be normal.)

My son is obsessed with death. He is six. If he were sixteen, he might be one of those pale, gothy teenagers, wearing black and talking about philosophy.

Now at six, he just comes up with a question every couple of days, and often he asks the question while sobbing because he has gotten himself worked up with worry about his own eventual demise.

“Will I be able to see my skin when I am dead?”

“Will we eat food?”

One night he was inconsolable because he realized that I would die first, and he would be left alone. And of course at six the thought that he will probably be an adult and able to cope has no meaning.

A few months ago, when his birthday was getting close, he said that he wished he didn’t have to have a birthday because then he would be closer to dying. A bloody six year old, worried about getting old!

Now today, he has come up with something new. He says that being alive is like being in a video game. We have to play all the levels then, finally we get a game over and we are dead. Then, we get to go to a whole new game.

I hope that eases his angst.

I hope that he is a lot older before he realizes that there may be no new game.

The above is a quote from my three-year-old daughter.

She stated it in a matter of fact tone to my husband and me as we emerged from the bedroom on Sunday morning after about five minutes with the door locked. (It is amazing how having children makes one very good at quickies.)

It was as though she were trying to justify our actions, probably thinking to herself, "It is weird that they kicked me out and locked the door, but that is what big people do, I guess."