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vanillafluffyI'm feeling downright frisky today. Last week, the temps were in the high 80s-low 90s, now it's more like 70-ish, which for me is downright divine! At the same time, the humidity has dropped like a rock, so I've been drinking just as much as when I was sweating my butt off.
Speaking of the lack of butt, yesterday at church I got compliments from all of my cronies as to my weight loss. It's maybe, five pounds since they saw me last, which at my size isn't a vast percentage, IMO. They were all quite firm that it wasn't just what I was wearing (brown tank with brown sequins and bugle beads at the neckline, brown leggings, black flats and a stretchy brown jacket printed with sparkly metallic copper vines and leaves).
Don't get me wrong: I'm working at shaving a few pounds off, and it's nice to get compliments...it just tends to freak me out when people comment on my real or perceived weight loss. A lot of times, I've gotten compliments like that when I *know* I haven't lost weight, to the point that I've developed a theory. I'm tall---5'10"---and I think people "forget", if they haven't seen me in a while, just how tall I am---so when they *do* see me, their minds play tricks---they remember that I'm fat, but because they didn't remember how tall, they're convinced that something is different and that it must me my weight because they know I didn't magically get five inches taller. That's my theory, anyway.
I dropped quite a bit of weight back in the 80s, before my 10-year high school reunion. I went from 315 (or thereabouts) down to about 230, which was about what I weighed in high school. It didn't stick, for a number of reasons. Part of it was my own insecurity. I liked being a smaller size and having a vast wardrobe of fun clothes to wear, but I was really uncomfortable with the personal remarks that were directed my way by people I didn't know. Yes, they were being complimentary, but it freaked me out nonetheless to have random people---like a cashier at Publix or someone whose house I walked past on the way out of my subdivision---congratulating me on my weight loss. Excuse me, who the fuck are you and why have you been watching me?
Call it a paradox in my character: I freely admit, I have a lot of personality. When I'm "ON", I've got a lot of energy, can fire off retorts and one-liners, jokes and puns and dazzle an audience with my vocabulary and wit...when I'm "ON". When I'm NOT on, I'm the silent type, the wallflower, don't mind me, I'm not really here. So when I'm doing something like walking down the street or checking out with some groceries, I don't expect to be noticed and I certainly don't expect personal comments!
Mind you, the gals at church---I don't regard that as an invasion of privacy the way I would with a cashier somewhere. They know me, I know them, it's all good. And it may be that because they haven't seen me in a couple weeks, they're just now noticing that I HAVE lost a decent amount of weight over the last few months.
At this time in April, I was about 330...so, six months, -20 pounds---not bad! It means that an additional 10 pounds in the next 2.5 months isn't unreasonable. Especially since my loss so far has been through food choices---add some exercise into the mix and it should drop quicker.
When I was trying things on a couple weeks ago, I noticed that 26/28 on top generally fit, depending on the cut/fabric. Bottoms are at least 28, probably 30, possibly 32 depending on cut. (One pair of high-waisted pin-striped trousers was darling, but was not going to happen in a 28, which was the biggest size they had it in.) Considering the fact that a year ago, I automatically reached for 30/32 for tops and bottoms, I'm fairly pleased.
My goals are humble; under 300 by the New Year (less than 10 pounds away). And then to lose enough to get into a pair of size 24 jeans...presuming I ever get them. (I won a pair of free Brand X jeans at my previous job, but so far, there's no word on if/when I'll get them.) Eventually, I'd like to get down to a size 20 for the simple reason that there are a helluva lot more clothes available in a 20.
The last time I was a 20? Hell, after I got down to 230, not long after the reunion, Shit Happened. A lot of shit, and I was massively stressed out and I am a card-carrying stress-eater. I went from 230 to 330 in about 10 months---from a 16/18 to a 26/28---and spent the next decade with the scale creeping ever upward. Was occasionally OFF the scale (and my scale goes up to 350!), but was in the 340's when HWSNBN came into my life.
By the time I asked him to leave, I was fat enough that I had to be weighed on an industrial scale at the recycling yard. All-time highest recorded weight: 394.
The last half of 2003 and the first couple months of 2004 go down in my personal history as the Worst Time of My Life. It wasn't just the weight, it was the full-on crazy: I hated my life. I hated my job, I was terrified to drive back and forth---to drive ANYWHERE---because of an incident with HWSNBN, I'd gotten isolated from a lot of my old friends, and it seemed like he'd gotten custody of most of the new ones. (Not necessarily true, but it felt that way at the time.) Anything that bad happened made me want to die. A final notice on a bill, a reprimand at work, something breaking around the house---I wish I was dead, they'd be sorry then! Nobody loves me!
Two things happened almost simultaneously in early 2004: First, I got transferred to a different job within the company. This was huge. I'd been doing customer service for a medical billing office and getting screamed at 20 times a day by callers for the same stupid reasons. It was a totally no-win situation, and after four years of it I couldn't take it any more. I went into the boss's office one morning and begged, sobbing, to do anything else. I got moved---not immediately, but soon thereafter---to a private cubicle to do paperwork---for the first couple of months there, I didn't even HAVE a phone, which was a godsend, it really was.
The paperwork was nothing demanding. It was mostly checking and cross-checking insurance info, no stress, no pressure for instant results, no one screaming at me...my brain rebooted. That's the only way I can describe it. For a couple of weeks, just after the switch, I was convinced it was too late, that I'd completely lost my mind. My memory for things I knew I knew went completely haywire. "That movie---you know! The one with that guy? The one who used to be on that detective show? They were always blowing shit up? And having car chases? But this was a comedy, and it had that guy from those dog food commercials---"
And then the second thing happened---or started happening. With the eight hours of daily mental stress removed, and a job that any semi-literate wanker could do, all those neuro-chemicals that had me 57 varieties of crazycakes came to a simmer and started working for me. My "What if---?" came back.
I hadn't written anything in...years. A little dabbling, but nothing focused. Nothing finished. Nothing that made my creative juices start to flow to where I *had* to write it. None of those episodes where you sit in a chair staring at a screen and the next thing you know, it's three hours later and you're about to have kidney failure?
And then...along came Johnny Depp. Until I saw Pirates of the Carribean, my opinion of him was, "that 80's pretty boy with the hair and the attitude". Lo and behold, he had talent! Which enticed me to get ahold of Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which was a sequel to Desperado, which I'd loved, because I was raised on spaghetti westerns, and this was a modern-day take on that. OUaTiM is a smallish fandom, but it was fairly lively when I got into it, since the DVD was out for only a couple months at that point.
I started writing for OUaTiM, mostly very Johnny-centric stuff. I spent the next few months parked in front of my computer when I wasn't at work. (Why not, I had no other life.) Get home from work, sit down, write til 1AM. Wake up at 5 or 6, write some more, go to work. Skip lunch to write longhand on steno pad. I lost that troublesome 50 pounds I'd gained during HWSNBN's tenure without particularly trying....which is how we get back to where this post started.
Mind you, it's not completely off-track, because looking for a place to post that early fic led me to the Pit of Voles and made me a friend who said, "You ought to try this thing called 'Yuletide'---but you'll have to join something called Live Journal...." And here I am. Not for long, though, since I've been here for several hours maundering down Memory Lane and need to take care of some business before I go walk this evening....
Speaking of the lack of butt, yesterday at church I got compliments from all of my cronies as to my weight loss. It's maybe, five pounds since they saw me last, which at my size isn't a vast percentage, IMO. They were all quite firm that it wasn't just what I was wearing (brown tank with brown sequins and bugle beads at the neckline, brown leggings, black flats and a stretchy brown jacket printed with sparkly metallic copper vines and leaves).
Don't get me wrong: I'm working at shaving a few pounds off, and it's nice to get compliments...it just tends to freak me out when people comment on my real or perceived weight loss. A lot of times, I've gotten compliments like that when I *know* I haven't lost weight, to the point that I've developed a theory. I'm tall---5'10"---and I think people "forget", if they haven't seen me in a while, just how tall I am---so when they *do* see me, their minds play tricks---they remember that I'm fat, but because they didn't remember how tall, they're convinced that something is different and that it must me my weight because they know I didn't magically get five inches taller. That's my theory, anyway.
I dropped quite a bit of weight back in the 80s, before my 10-year high school reunion. I went from 315 (or thereabouts) down to about 230, which was about what I weighed in high school. It didn't stick, for a number of reasons. Part of it was my own insecurity. I liked being a smaller size and having a vast wardrobe of fun clothes to wear, but I was really uncomfortable with the personal remarks that were directed my way by people I didn't know. Yes, they were being complimentary, but it freaked me out nonetheless to have random people---like a cashier at Publix or someone whose house I walked past on the way out of my subdivision---congratulating me on my weight loss. Excuse me, who the fuck are you and why have you been watching me?
Call it a paradox in my character: I freely admit, I have a lot of personality. When I'm "ON", I've got a lot of energy, can fire off retorts and one-liners, jokes and puns and dazzle an audience with my vocabulary and wit...when I'm "ON". When I'm NOT on, I'm the silent type, the wallflower, don't mind me, I'm not really here. So when I'm doing something like walking down the street or checking out with some groceries, I don't expect to be noticed and I certainly don't expect personal comments!
Mind you, the gals at church---I don't regard that as an invasion of privacy the way I would with a cashier somewhere. They know me, I know them, it's all good. And it may be that because they haven't seen me in a couple weeks, they're just now noticing that I HAVE lost a decent amount of weight over the last few months.
At this time in April, I was about 330...so, six months, -20 pounds---not bad! It means that an additional 10 pounds in the next 2.5 months isn't unreasonable. Especially since my loss so far has been through food choices---add some exercise into the mix and it should drop quicker.
When I was trying things on a couple weeks ago, I noticed that 26/28 on top generally fit, depending on the cut/fabric. Bottoms are at least 28, probably 30, possibly 32 depending on cut. (One pair of high-waisted pin-striped trousers was darling, but was not going to happen in a 28, which was the biggest size they had it in.) Considering the fact that a year ago, I automatically reached for 30/32 for tops and bottoms, I'm fairly pleased.
My goals are humble; under 300 by the New Year (less than 10 pounds away). And then to lose enough to get into a pair of size 24 jeans...presuming I ever get them. (I won a pair of free Brand X jeans at my previous job, but so far, there's no word on if/when I'll get them.) Eventually, I'd like to get down to a size 20 for the simple reason that there are a helluva lot more clothes available in a 20.
The last time I was a 20? Hell, after I got down to 230, not long after the reunion, Shit Happened. A lot of shit, and I was massively stressed out and I am a card-carrying stress-eater. I went from 230 to 330 in about 10 months---from a 16/18 to a 26/28---and spent the next decade with the scale creeping ever upward. Was occasionally OFF the scale (and my scale goes up to 350!), but was in the 340's when HWSNBN came into my life.
By the time I asked him to leave, I was fat enough that I had to be weighed on an industrial scale at the recycling yard. All-time highest recorded weight: 394.
The last half of 2003 and the first couple months of 2004 go down in my personal history as the Worst Time of My Life. It wasn't just the weight, it was the full-on crazy: I hated my life. I hated my job, I was terrified to drive back and forth---to drive ANYWHERE---because of an incident with HWSNBN, I'd gotten isolated from a lot of my old friends, and it seemed like he'd gotten custody of most of the new ones. (Not necessarily true, but it felt that way at the time.) Anything that bad happened made me want to die. A final notice on a bill, a reprimand at work, something breaking around the house---I wish I was dead, they'd be sorry then! Nobody loves me!
Two things happened almost simultaneously in early 2004: First, I got transferred to a different job within the company. This was huge. I'd been doing customer service for a medical billing office and getting screamed at 20 times a day by callers for the same stupid reasons. It was a totally no-win situation, and after four years of it I couldn't take it any more. I went into the boss's office one morning and begged, sobbing, to do anything else. I got moved---not immediately, but soon thereafter---to a private cubicle to do paperwork---for the first couple of months there, I didn't even HAVE a phone, which was a godsend, it really was.
The paperwork was nothing demanding. It was mostly checking and cross-checking insurance info, no stress, no pressure for instant results, no one screaming at me...my brain rebooted. That's the only way I can describe it. For a couple of weeks, just after the switch, I was convinced it was too late, that I'd completely lost my mind. My memory for things I knew I knew went completely haywire. "That movie---you know! The one with that guy? The one who used to be on that detective show? They were always blowing shit up? And having car chases? But this was a comedy, and it had that guy from those dog food commercials---"
And then the second thing happened---or started happening. With the eight hours of daily mental stress removed, and a job that any semi-literate wanker could do, all those neuro-chemicals that had me 57 varieties of crazycakes came to a simmer and started working for me. My "What if---?" came back.
I hadn't written anything in...years. A little dabbling, but nothing focused. Nothing finished. Nothing that made my creative juices start to flow to where I *had* to write it. None of those episodes where you sit in a chair staring at a screen and the next thing you know, it's three hours later and you're about to have kidney failure?
And then...along came Johnny Depp. Until I saw Pirates of the Carribean, my opinion of him was, "that 80's pretty boy with the hair and the attitude". Lo and behold, he had talent! Which enticed me to get ahold of Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which was a sequel to Desperado, which I'd loved, because I was raised on spaghetti westerns, and this was a modern-day take on that. OUaTiM is a smallish fandom, but it was fairly lively when I got into it, since the DVD was out for only a couple months at that point.
I started writing for OUaTiM, mostly very Johnny-centric stuff. I spent the next few months parked in front of my computer when I wasn't at work. (Why not, I had no other life.) Get home from work, sit down, write til 1AM. Wake up at 5 or 6, write some more, go to work. Skip lunch to write longhand on steno pad. I lost that troublesome 50 pounds I'd gained during HWSNBN's tenure without particularly trying....which is how we get back to where this post started.
Mind you, it's not completely off-track, because looking for a place to post that early fic led me to the Pit of Voles and made me a friend who said, "You ought to try this thing called 'Yuletide'---but you'll have to join something called Live Journal...." And here I am. Not for long, though, since I've been here for several hours maundering down Memory Lane and need to take care of some business before I go walk this evening....
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-20 03:01 am (UTC)Mmmmm, Johnny. I remember talking you into LJ, but I didn't remember Yuletide pimping. I don't doubt I did though. I would. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-20 03:26 am (UTC)Yes, sweetie, you did. And on the whole, I'd say it's a good thing: I've written quite a few things for challenges, exchanges or prompts that wouldn't otherwise have been written. It was a certain LJ meme that led to *our* RL meeting, which was cool. (The amount of wankage I've expended---well, that's MY fault, not yours!)
Hey, speaking of fandoms, are you into Leverage at all? I'm trying to find a beta, any none of my usual suspects are panning out.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-20 03:38 am (UTC)