Lollipop train derailment

Where did my mojo go?

Have you seen it?

I'm half-afraid I ate the fecking thing. I've been eating everything else in sight these days, why not the lollipop train that's been chugging stupidly along the losing-weight-writing-a-novel happy track?

Picture a zombie. Mindlessly trudging along, a song in its putrefecating pustule that once was a heart, locomoting one asphalt-sucking galosh at a time until it finds some cardio-challenged fattie it can chow down on. Right? Get it? That was me, the zombie. Finishing NaNo was finding the fattie. I chowed down and now I'm at a total fecking loss at what to do next. I feel like I'm adrift in a sea of goal-lessness.

Yesterday was bad. I woke up feeling like a bear with a sore ass and I went to bed feeling like an ass with a sore bear. I had no reason for it, but there it was.

Losing 50 pounds was also like finding the fattie. Tonight I went to Weight Watchers and I am not proud to announce I gained four pounds. In one week! Feck! I came home and bawled.

Oh, I KNEW I was going to gain weight this week. I'm not making up stupid excuses – I just ate too fecking much. I ate out four times (once at the dreaded all-you-can-eat Mandarin buffet, henceforth to be known as the Mandarin Factor); I ate a wedge of chocolate birthday cake, not a piece, a wedge – it was so big you could jack up your house with it. Worse, I suddenly remembered why I was going to Weight Watchers in the first place: I LOVE TO EAT. Even now, right now, I am craving something sweet. Like Mr. Christie's Fudgeo cookies, the ones with Double Stuf (wishing there was Triple Stuf), or homemade oatmeal candy. Or my mom's shortbread cookies, the ones with the sprinkles on top. I have a Santa bowl on my kitchen table and all I can think about is how good it would look with ju-jubes in it. The really fresh kind. The ones coated in sugar. I saw someone eat a bran muffin today and I wanted to take it from him, forcefully, and stuff it into my own great gaping maw.

I'm on dangerous ground here. I know, I've been here before. I am at a crossroads of getting back on the zombie track or jumping the rails and saying "feck it" and gaining every single pound I lost and then some. You skinnies are going, "why in hell would she gain 50 pounds back?" But you fatties and former fatties, you know what I'm saying – it's a mad desperation that can grab us by the balls and send us howling back to the great buffet of life as easy and as fast as a wink of the puffy eye.

I need to find my way again. I need to find that light switch in my head that's currently switched to OFF and turn it ON again.

If I don't, there are bad times ahead and Christmastime is no time for bad times.

A new dress

I vowed I wasn't going to buy anything else from the fat ladies store.

I was going to wait (weight?) until I was skinny enough to just buy any old thing from any old rack. But hell, I just lost 50 pounds and I've got two, count 'em, office Christmas parties coming up and damned if I want to show up with some old dress hanging off me like yesterday's potato sack.

So yesterday me, Dave and Sam went down to Barrie to my favourite fat ladies store, Addition-Elle. They actually have clothes that look like they belong to somebody under the age of 85, you know what I mean? I had been stalking their website, eyeballing up their tasty collection of sequinned holiday dresses and drooling.

The thing is, I really didn't know what size I was going to need. The last time I went shopping for clothes I was buying size 24. Yeah, I know. A big old tub 'o lard, that was me.

I started picking out dresses to try on, getting two sizes of each: 20 and 18. I knew I had slimmed down but I wasn't sure how slim was slim. Because, honestly, I want to lose a lot more weight before I'm done.

I tried on the size 18 first because I was excited and optimistic, and you know what? IT WAS TOO BIG.

Sam and Dave and a saleslady were hovering outside my dressing room. The guys were like Richard Gere to my Pretty Woman and I was giving them a free fashion show. Both of them had looks on their faces like, I'd rather be dead, but I think they were having a good time.

I came dashing out from behind the curtain in the baggy dress and shrieked, "IT'S TOO BIG!" Everyone giggled, but nobody more so than me. Usually what happened when I went clothes shopping was I kept sending Dave out for bigger and bigger sizes until he found the biggest size in the store, the Omar Tent size they kept out back for visiting circus troupes.

Not this time! The saleslady went scurrying back into the bowels of the store for size 16 in everything while I danced around in the baggy-ass dress and high-fived everyone and boasted and carried on like the obnoxious fool that I am.

She returned with three dresses in size 16 and all of them looked really, really good.

I mean, I looked HOT.

I could see the look in Dave's eye, that he was appreciating all the sequinned junk in my trunk and I thought about sending Sam off to a babysitter's for a few hours, if you get my drift...

All the dresses looked so great. I couldn't decide.

Then the saleslady said there was one more I could try (it's the one pictured in the Addition Elle ad, above), so she went and got a black sequinned strapless number. I tried it on and it was fabulous – but IT WAS TOO BIG.

The saleslady said, "there's so much extra room in the back that, if I wanted to, I could look down the back of this dress and see your underwear."

Good thing I had on decent ones.

So she went and fetched a size 14.

"No way," I sez to Dave and Sam, "that size 14 is gonna fit me. It's going to be WAY too big."
"You never know," sez Dave.

I tried it on and IT FIT PERFECTLY.

SIZE FRICKIN' 14.

THE SMALLEST FRICKIN' SIZE IN THE STORE.

"I'll take it!" I hooted.

Then I went and got some fancy jewellery and some fancy high heels. I haven't worn high heels for YEARS.

Am feeling like the hottest thing on two legs, baby.

There is lotsa sizzle in my whizzle.

There's a train a-coming and I'm hotter than a two-pistol papa.

I'm a-putting the Cat back in Cathy 'cause I'm rocking the Sex Kitten.

MEE - YOW!

25,613 words and Fifty Pounds

I'm overwhelmed, honestly, just overwhelmed. Other than having a colonoscopy, this day was as perfect as any day ever has a right to be.
I wrote more than 4,000 words this morning, bringing my NaNo word count to 25,613 words.
Tonight I went to Weight Watchers and found out I'd lost seven pounds this week, bringing my total to an absolutely incredible FIFTY POUNDS.
I have no words but my heart is as light as a feather on a spring breeze.

21,263 words and I'm freakin' hungry!

I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon (YES, ANOTHER ONE) so I haven't been able to eat anything all day. Worse, the stupid procedure isn't booked until 3:30 p.m. so that's almost another whole day where I can't eat anything.

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO????? Doesn't my doctor realize how much I have to EAT? That if I didn't love food so much I wouldn't be going to Weight Watchers?

I think I'm going to die if I don't eat soon.

And – gak – as soon as I finish writing this I have to take the purgative that will ship everything I've eaten for the last week fleeing from my loins like it's hopped up on nitrous.

Feck, feck, feck I hate colonoscopies.

I just had one in the spring and all was FINE. I was FINE. But then I went and got sick a few weeks ago and now the doc wants to have another look. What does he think my colon is, anyway? A movie? With polyps as the starring role? With him as the director? And his probe-thing as, I don't know, Godzilla?

It doesn't help that I just wrote a chapter about corn roasts. Mother of all that is holy, I was drooling as I wrote this:

"Grandpa Bean set up several enormous pots over raging bonfires. They boiled hundreds of cobs of corn, picked fresh that day from his fields and husked by the entire family. They cooked hot dogs, too, big steaming vats of wieners bursting their skins. Grandpa Bean used a hay wagon as a giant table and it was loaded with plates of butter, buns for the weenies, all manner of condiments and bowl after bowl of homemade potato and macaroni salads, coleslaw and baked beans. Weezie loved all of it. She could eat six or seven cobs of corn at a sitting, on top of a couple of hot dogs and a can of orange pop. The butter and salt would drip down her elbows and smear all over her cheeks and she’d care not one whit. And despite being full to bursting she’d find room in the bottom of her hollow leg for a slice or two of homemade pie. Grandma Bean and her daughters and sisters all made pies for the corn roast. The hay wagon groaned with pie. Apple, lemon meringue, raisin, cherry. Just thinking about those pies was enough to provoke drooling in Weezie some 30 years later. "

 Yep, let's write about hot dogs and corn on the cob when you're eating nothing but popsicles and ginger ale.

Those of you who know me will realize that I was using my grandparents' famous corn roasts as inspiration. Hazel and Charles Hooper farmed in Buttonville, Ontario, where Grandpa was the Reeve of Markham and had a lot of friends in political circles. Every year they hosted a corn roast to thank their friends and colleagues and these parties were one of the highlights of my kid year, right up there with Christmas and birthdays. It was the best corn, the best hot dogs, the best everything. It was such a pleasure to remember it today, even though I'd give my left nut right now for even a slice of dry bread.

(No, I don't actually have nuts. That is just an EXPRESSION. Gawd, sometimes people take things so literally!)

The writing, as you can see, is ROUGH. I'm just laying it down, trying to meet my daily word count and not bothering about grammar or spelling or how many freaking times I used the word "big." Just getting the words down, at this point, is good enough for me. The last few days I've been in a bit of a funk. One day I didn't write anything at all and yesterday I only pumped out a few hundred words. Thank goodness I was able to crank out 2,000 or so today. I feel like I'm back in the game.

Still, the halfway mark is coming up tomorrow and, by rights, I should have 25,000 words under my belt. That's 3,737 words by tomorrow night if I want to stay on par.

Is that possible? When my arse end has a date with Dr. Prong? We'll see. Or he'll see... he's the one with the scope.

Gotta go... have to go drink some really disgusting crap now.

(I hate my life sometimes.)

14,235 words, 43 pounds and the hunt

I was all worried about gaining at the Weight Watchers weigh-in last night but I was down a pound and a half, bringing my total to 43 pounds.

I have a sort of losing buddy at WW – she has lost the same amount as me and has about the same to lose so we've made a bit of a pact. Both of us aren't even thinking of our big goal – it's just too depressing to think about. But we've got our eyes on the 50 pound prize. I was thinking last night, wow, only seven more pounds and I hit the big 5-0. Remarkable, really.

It's like participating in NaNo – I can't possibly think of writing 50,000 words in one month, but when I focus on the present I know it's possible to write 1,667 words in one day.

One pound, one word, one step at a time.

Here's another quote from my new favourite book The War of Art, in which author Steven Pressfield compares his writing day to going hunting:

"The sun isn't up yet; it's cold, the fields are sopping. Brambles scratch my ankles, branches snap back in my face. The hill is a sonofabitch but what can you do? Set one foot in front of another and keep climbing. 

"An hour passes. I'm warmer now, the pace has got my blood going. The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it's human, the proper role for a mortal. It does not offend the gods, but elicits their intercession. My bitching self is receding now. The instincts are taking over. Another hour passes. I turn the corner of a thicket and there he is, the nice fat hare I knew would show up if I just kept plugging."

12,112 words and 40 million calories

What is up with feeling ravenous while I'm writing?

As you know I've been going to Weight Watchers for a while and I've been doing pretty good, if I do say so myself – and, of course, I do. Last week I broke the 40 pound mark – down 41.5 pounds in total since the end of July. Which is awesome, I know. But I was starting to feel I had this diet thing licked. I knew what I was doing.

Unfortunately since I started National Novel Writing Month last week I've been so hungry I could eat the arse end out of a skunk. Maybe two skunks. Those two up there are looking pretty arse-a-licious.

I sit down to write every night and, about halfway through, I am craving carboyhydrates so bad I run out of the kitchen and find the most fattening thing we have on hand. Fortunately, that's only melba toast, but still. An entire package of melba toast is not On Plan.

I thought that maybe heavy duty thinking burns more calories but, alas, apparently that's not so. I did a quick Google search this morning and found an interesting article on the Scientific American website –Science of Snacks: Why Thinking Makes You Hungry.

It's a terrific article – funny, too. But here's the money quotes, for me:

A study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine contends that intellectual work—that’s right, I’m calling writing this stuff, ya know, intellectual—induces a big increase in caloric intake. The research had 14 Canadian students do three things at different times: sit and relax; complete a series of memory and attention tests; and read and summarize a text. After 45 minutes at each task, the kids were treated to an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. Because Canada has a truly advanced code of human-subject research ethics.

Each session of intellectual work required the burning of only three more calories than relaxing did. But when the students hit the buffet table after the text summation, they took in an additional 203 calories. And after the memory and attention tests, the subjects consumed another 253 calories. Blood samples taken before, during and after the activities found that all that thinking causes big fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels. And because glucose fuels the neurons, a transitory low level in the brain may signal the stomach to get the hands to fill up the mouth, even though the energy actually spent has gone up just a hair. The researchers note that such “caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic.”

Crap, eh? 

And here I thought I'd be all skinny when I went to my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, because my brain had burned all these calories. In all honesty, I'm not expecting any miracles on the scale tonight. This might even be the first week I've gained. I hope not, but those melba toast do punch a wallop when you're practically inhaling them.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Momma Bear, the eff word and other crappy subjects

Maybe eating Fibre 1 for breakfast isn't the best idea when you've had the poops for two weeks.
I'm having a Crohn's flare-up, or something. I can't get through the day without a fistful of Imodium. I know. You don't want to hear this. Trust me, I don't want to live it. Life is just shitty that way sometimes.

Speaking of stink, it's raining like stink outside. It's been raining for two weeks solid. The only good thing about this much rain is it makes you appreciate blue sky when you see it.

Just got off the phone with the vice-principal of my son's high school. I had a mouthful of Fibre 1 when I answered so I was all muffley and "bl-hell-umph-o," like that. He sounded confused at first. But it was 7:45 a.m. and I'm still in my nightie, the pink one with "Best Mom" on it that I bought for myself because my children are boys and they wouldn't set foot in a women's lingerie department. So there was a big hullaballoo yesterday morning. I was in the same Best Mom nightie (no, I never wash it, never), drinking my coffee, recovering from my latest trip to the bathroom, when I spotted this boy talking trash to my son on Facebook. This Grade Nine person must be an english major because he used the eff word extremely creatively as he invited me son to the high school parking lot at high noon to show how effing tough he is.

I'm sure he just wanted to have tea with my son. Maybe discuss the use of the eff word in modern literature, something like that. Because he insisted, in a later FB blurb, that he had no plans to beat the crap out of my son.

Apparently my son, who I love but who isn't perfect, much like his mother and the entire rest of the human population, said some very mean things to a young girl. My son said she had said mean things to him first. So we had a big discussion about not saying mean things to anyone, anyone at ALL, but especially not to a girl because, well, if you ever hope to have a lasting relationship with a woman, talking trash to them is not going to win them over. So this other kid was coming to the girl's defence, like a knight in shining armour, ready to take a round out of my son to defend her honour. Which, you know, is admirable in a way. The girl probably really appreciated it. Hey, if my husband wanted to take a round out of someone for talking bad to me, I'd appreciate it. (In a big way. Like, he'd be smiling for a week afterwards.) But I really couldn't have some kid beating up my son in the parking lot, could I? I mean, I'm his mother. It's my job to defend my children. Not just my job, my calling. I love them and, while I respect the knight in shining armour's decision to defend the girl, I can't have him laying a thumping on my offspring.

So I copied the entire conversation onto a text document and e-mailed it to the principal and then the vice-principal had both boys in for a separate visit and straightened them out. At least, I hope it's straightened out. The last thing I want is more anger, more retribution. The thing about kids today, the thing about Facebook and texting, is it's all there for the record. It's not like the old days when you could threaten someone verbally and then deny it ever happened because there was no evidence. When you threaten someone on Facebook, it's there for the world to see. You can delete it, sure, but if someone (like me) has already copied it and pasted it somewhere else, you're euchred.

And the way kids talk on Facebook? Unbelievable! The things that come out of their mouths is reprehensible. Why do they talk like that? It's disgusting! Is this something they're going to grow out of or is this next generation going to live life verbalizing like sailors? When they're grandparents, are they going to talk to their grand-babies that way? "C'mere you effing cute effer, sit your effing arse up here on your effing grandma's effing knee, you effing effer-snapper."

Anyway, that was my day yesterday. The vice-principal called this morning just to catch up and fill me in on the details, which was nice. And it was nice that he caught me in between trips to the bathroom. Tomorrow I go to the hospital for my Crohn's treatment, which is a very good thing. Cause life is too short to be this shitty.

27 Pounds!

Five-and-a-half pounds lost this week!

Twenty-seven total!

Me, braggin!

ME, DANCING!

Diet Tip#1: Be Prepared

That there was last Tuesday's lunch.

And that huge pile of food on the counter doesn't even include the fat-free salad dressing, two apples and a banana I threw in the bag when I was ready to go.

Well no, it was my lunch and my dinner because on Tuesdays I work late. So to prevent my ravenous self from raiding Crunchie bars from the vending machine, I packed two meals. Truly, being prepared is the biggest thing you do can do to lose weight.

Oh, but it's a gawdawful amount of work. Peeling, chopping, boiling, rinse, repeat.

I feel like I'm running a diner.

Take this morning, for example. I boiled a chicken breast for lunch and an egg for breakfast. I washed and chopped strawberries, which I added to a bowl of Fibre 1 bran cereal and then added non-fat, no-sugar yogurt. (Delish, by the way.) Then I chopped half a head of lettuce, a couple of carrots and the chicken. I peeled the egg, and ate it, then grabbed a pita from the freezer. I packed the chicken separate from the salad so the lettuce wouldn't wilt, threw it all in a bag and added a banana and an apple.

It's a lot of work! But it's SO worth it – I have a healthy, well-balanced breakfast and lunch, with fruit to nosh on for snacks, and I feel full and satisfied and totally immune to the charms of the vending machine.
Part of my problem before is I never ate breakfast and never made time to pack a lunch so it was a regular thing to go out and grab some kind of greasy fast food.

You're probably also thinking, holy mother of all that is hungry, is she EVER eating a lot!

Yeah! I am! But more on that later. For now, be like the Girl Guides: Be Prepared!

Oh! And I was down another two and a half pounds this week, for a grand total of 21and a half since the beginning of August.

I. Feel. Fabulous.

Happy Birthday, Sam!

Sam-I-Am,

That Sam-I-Am.

How I love my Sam-I-Am.

I could eat him up with jam.

Happy Birthday, Sam-I-Am.

No secret, I've been going to Weight Watchers* for seven weeks and one of my biggest supporters is my now-11-year-old son, Sam.

I hadn't seen him for three weeks because his father was on holidays and had the kids with him on the weekends I normally would have had them. (Missed them fierce, by the way.) Sam never forgot that I was on a diet, though, always remembering to ask me, "how much did you lose this week, Mom?"

When I finally saw him on Friday he said, "You even LOOK skinnier."

Fine words, those. Of course I had to milk it. "Oh yeah?" sez I. "Where exactly do I look skinnier?"

He looked me up and down, analyzing, then said, "Your outline is skinnier."

(I got him a really, really good birthday present.)

* There was no meeting here on Monday, which is my WW night, because of the Labour Day holiday so I haven't been weighed for almost two weeks. Except for Sam's birthday cake, a hot dog at the drive-in (that wasn't even very good - does that count?) and a pot luck last Sunday, I have been on plan. I'm hoping for a few more pounds down the drain to make that outline of mine even skinnier.