Naked in the mirror after 40

If I'm going to get screwed, I'd like to be in on it.  I'm not generally a passive participant.  I don't just lie back and think of the Queen.  If I'm getting well and truly screwed I want to enjoy it.  I want to scream operatically with release when it gets really good.

Naked in front of the mirror, on Saturday morning, I came to the stark realization that I had been royally screwed and I had no recollection of it ever having happened.  It was like I'd been given GHB when I was 12 and woke up when I was 45.

The first time a doctor told me I needed to lose weight was when I was 12.  I was 5 foot 4 inches and weighed a whopping 120 lbs.  Which is pretty much what you're supposed to weigh when you're 5' 4" tall.  A little less or a little more, but I was definitely in the general area.   I had boobs and hips and I'd already begun to hate them. If I didn't have THESE nobody would bother me.  At the age of 14, I was put on an extra cardio routine to meet my rec coaches' expectations of a gymnast's proper body type.  I wasn't even  a competitive gymnast.  I went to the gym twice a week, my big trick was a back walkover on the balance beam.

In my late teens and early 20s, I wouldn't ever rest my full weight on someone's lap, believing that my considerable heft would cut off their circulation.  I was too round, too fleshy.  I look back at pictures from my early 20s and I was neither.  I looked healthy.  Yeah, I had curves, (see boobs and hips from above), but I was by no means fat.    And yet, at that time, even without a full-on eating disorder, I didn't see my body as something healthy or attractive.

I didn't dip my toes into bulimia until my mid 20s.  I wasn't a card-carrying member - I was more the binge until I felt sick and then throw up to get rid of the nausea kind of bulimic.  Probably only happened about a dozen times, she types dismissively.  But it still happened.  Because I despaired when saw my armpit pudge or my inner thigh fat.

Many women spend much of their early lives (pretty much until they partner up) worried about how they look.  The mating dance is very important.  We buff, we preen, we diet - usually to attract a mate.  (Rarely, in my youth, was I the focus of my efforts.   I am wearing this to look good for me.  I am becoming healthy for me.  It takes a loooooong time before women do things for ourselves.  Some women never do it.  We tend to be so blind to our own wants and needs and even physical appearance that we never emerge from our personal cocoon and spread our wings for ourselves.) 

I hate to say it, but most women are all about snagging the mate.  We are, after all, still mammals, even if our 'higher minded' intellect would prefer not to recognize it. When I was younger, EVERY SINGLE SPRING my body wanted to meet the biological imperative of mating.  Really a lot.  A whole bunch.  And then when I was on the cusp of peri-menopause, I morphed into a 17 year old boy with a sex drive that would rival Casanova's.  Gotta use ALL these eggs up before they go bad!  

Even though society is shifting, that marital urgency is still present.  We'd love to think that we in North America have moved beyond that - but 'partnering up' is still a big freaking deal.   But what happens after you've snagged that mate?  What happens when most of your life has been spent wanting to be seen as attractive to potential partners, what happens after that?  Do you just wake up one morning and not worry about it?  For that first year after Rissa was born - I was not a sexual being.  I was revelling in motherhood.  I really didn't care.  I was too exhausted to care.  It's only now, when I look at photographic and video evidence of that year that I find myself completely horrified.  What had happened to me?  Why was I dressed in sweat pants and baggy shirts?  Did I have no clue that dressing in larger clothes to camouflage baby weight just doesn't work?  I hated myself for caring.  My psyche probably should have shifted - except it hadn't.  Because I'd been conditioned for almost 2 decades to worry about how I looked.  And apparently you can just let that shit go or at least I couldn't.

And even though now, at the age of 45, I'm probably the most fit that I've ever been, I still worry about the extra 20 lbs that I should lose to be at my 'healthy' weight.  I look at my boobs in the mirror - noticing that the left one is slightly lower than the right one - I do my 'mock hunchback' to make them even.  My thighs, my strong and flexible thighs with their extra stores of fat at the top, would probably ensure my survival if my plane went down in the Arctic, but I don't care about that.  I CARE that when I wear stockings, I have  freaking huge bulgy divots in my thighs.  Sadly, it appears that I haven't evolved. Society doesn't tell us how to evolve from sex object to madonna.  In the new millennium, youth is where it's at.  You're not allowed to look 40 when you're 40.  You're not allowed to have lines on your face - smile lines are crow's feet.  Now you have to be a MILF - you have to be vital and sexy and desirable.  WHY?!?  My Mom didn't have to be a MILF.  Until last weekend, she didn't even know what a MILF was.  Thing was, my Mom still got dressed up, made an effort, was still sexy without even really working at it.  Why did it seem so difficult for me to do the same thing?

33 years.  From the age of 12 until now.  I have spent 33 years worried about how I look.  I have focused on what is deemed attractive, to the detriment of health and emotional well being. I have been brain washed by the beauty, fashion and media industries... and by... me.   I think that it's time to snap out of it.  Don't you?

I am a crash test dummy.

I have friends who don't share with their kids.  They don't want their kids to know that they used to smoke up outside the back entrance of their high school around the dumpsters.  They don't talk about pregnancy scares.  They omit the drinking an entire mickey of tequila before heading to a dance and then spending most of the evening getting up close and personal with the porcelain altar. They don't admit that they had to have "peace of mind" HIV testing.

From Scribblenauts

I'm Rissa's Crash Test Dummy.  I do all the stupid shit so that she doesn't have to.  I got the nose piercing that would never quite heal because I changed to the prettier nose ring too fast.  (You really do need to wait more than 3 weeks.)  I have had the painful tattoos. (The one on my lower back which had me singing operatically at the tattoo party while holding several peoples' hands to deal with the pain.  The 'just to say I had one' crappy psychedelic flower on my thigh that now looks like a mistake.)  I had the elective surgery. (Tummy tuck in 2009 - do you know how many pieces of camouflaging lingerie you can get for what it costs for a tummy tuck?)  I gained 50 lbs with my first pregnancy. (Let's do the math folks - an average baby + placenta + amniotic fluid + blood amounts to about 12 lbs - that meant that I still had to lose THIRTY-EIGHT lbs!!  I had to lose a freaking toddler!!).

I share with Rissa.  A lot.  I don't embarrass easily, so it makes the sharing easier.   It is my sincere hope that Rissa will learn from my MANY mistakes.  I'm frank with her because life in the 21st century?  It ain't as simple as when I was 13 in the 80s.  Sure, I had to deal with a pack of feral girls in grade 8, but that pack of feral girls didn't take photos of me and then post them on Facebook and then tag it with "SLUT" when my string bikini top disappeared in the pool while swimming.

I want Rissa to know stuff.  I want her prepared.  Sometimes that means saying things like: "Okay you need to listen to me for 5 minutes."

Already wincing, she usually asks "....Why?"

"Because we need to discuss eating disorders."

"Mummy!"

"I'm serious!  Five minutes!" And God bless her, she usually gives me that five minutes.  Because she knows that I'm old and I know stuff and that I want to make her life easier, not harder.

Turns out I'm addicted to crack...

One of my absolute favourite things in the entire world is movie theatre popcorn.  With extra butter salt.  It's pretty much like crack to me.  Our local theatre has a shaker of butter salt that they leave out for the patrons.  I shake it on and delight in my sodium intake.  Having popcorn at the movies is akin to having an orgasm during sex...  what's the point of going if you don't have one?

I did something really stupid today.  I looked up the calorie and fat content of movie theatre popcorn.  I don't know what I could have possibly been thinking.  There's no way that it ever could have been good news.  I just didn't figure that it would be such monumentally BAD news.

Turns out a large popcorn, which I could totally eat all by myself, has around 1261 calories and over 70 grams of fat -  and that's without adding the edible petroleum product that theatres like to pass off as "butter."  That's like eating two Big Macs at the movies.  And seeing as I feel sick after having just a single McDonald's cheeseburger, when I read that comparative, I threw up a bit in my mouth and then had to swallow it.

I wept for a few minutes while I was reading the numbers.  Because why?  Because now I can't, in good health conscience, eat movie theatre popcorn.  A large popcorn plus a regular drink at the movies is what I should be consuming in calories in a day.

"It's over!" I wailed.  "We might as well NEVER go now!!  We're going to just have to watch movies in in our stinky basement with low-fat microwave popcorn... FOREVER!!!"

David patted me on the back.  "Sweetie - it's not like you eat the whole bag yourself.  We usually share it between at least the two of us and then if Rissa's there - the three of us."

I wiped at my tears and did some quick math calculations.  1261 ÷ 3 = 420.333333   I let out a great whoop of relief.  420 calories??  That's what I try to eat for dinner.  "If we go to the movies at dinner time from here on out and only eat real healthy food the other major meals of the day, popcorn is totally doable.  I'll get a tap water instead of pop, and we can still get a small bag of M&Ms and that's only 500 calories that I'll have ingested!!!  Boo-freaking-yeah baby!!!"

Begin Happy Dance!

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem...

I'm not a 'half-measures' kind of gal.  If I'm doing something, it's usually at full tilt.  I'm very 'event oriented.'  I go on a blitz right up until an event starts.   One year for Rissa's birthday party,  my Mom couldn't believe that I was sewing slipcovers for the our patio cushions 5 minutes before arrival time.  I make curtains the night before our Christmas tea.  I plant flowers moments before a garden party. If people are supposed to arrive at 7:00 p.m. for a party, that means I have until 6:59 p.m. to bake, sew, clean, organize and get dressed.

This week has been a bit over the top, even for me.  I got it into my head that we would 'decorate' our big summer event.  I have spent a full week up to my ass in ancient lath corners, tissue paper, glue and moss.   I blame Pinterest.  I saw these ginormous tissue paper peonies on Pinterest.

Ginormous tissue paper peonies

They had major WOW factor:  Triffid-like size, soft colour and beauty.  They looked SO easy to make.  Which I'm sure they would be if you only made a half dozen or so and had all the supplies at hand. 

Canada, it turns out, doesn't have the exact same drywall corners... the wire ones that look like chicken wire. And if you think you can use regular chicken wire and cut it into long swathes of wire that you then shape those into ginormous flower stalks, you would be wrong.  After a certain height, the chicken wire loses its erection.  Even with copious amounts of tape.  Whereupon your idea of fabulous ginormous tissue paper peonies seems out of reach and you might start crying and drinking a bit and then your husband has to calm you down and take you to the local Home Hardware and explain to the very patient and friendly staff exactly what it is you need for this ridiculous ambitious crafting project.  Thank God for Home Hardware!  Instead we found these rusty metal lath corners that had been just sitting in the back shed of our Home Hardware Building Centre.  I got them for a song - on account of the fact that no one has used these in decades.  That and because they're so rusty that you might get tetanus just from looking at them too hard.  But they would serve the purpose, could be molded (sort of) and held their shape up to about 7.5 feet.

Looking at this is what confirmed my insanity for David.

The little ones didn't seem to freak him out as much.

Each leave had to be molded from 4 pieces of wire, covered
with 4 sheets of tissue and then Papier Mâchéd to within
an inch of their lives.

The flower stalks needed to be covered by at least 4 layers
of tissue paper to cover the lath and the masking tape, which
turns out, really should have been done vertically, so that
you can't see the horizontal lines, and your flowers, when
covered, don't look like weird-ass lime green barber poles.

 

I don't know why the large pliers are there.
I didn't use them for anything.

Does it look like I'm giving birth to these flowers to anyone else?

I'm making 33 of them.  Because I didn't think that 18 would be enough and that's the number that the plastic beer cups (that you fill with quick-set cement for the bases), come in.  I would have been making 36 of them - because really, the phrase is GO BIG OR GO HOME - but we'd been using the beer cups to shovel the quick-set cement into the other cups and we ruined three of them.  So we're down to a measly 33 flowers.

Don't know if you notice in the glamour pic earlier on, but the gal there, is standing in front of maybe 8 of those flowers.  But what it means is that when we, and I do mean we, because I have been using Rissa's friends as slave labour all this week, finish these flowers, the sheer amount of beauty will be (she says with mad eyes and a maniacal laugh.)  FOUR TIMES AS SPECTACULAR!!   And then they'll sit in the basement in our rec room and we can pretend that we live in Oz.  See?  Dual purpose decorations!!

Love means having to say you're sorry...

WARNING: Adult language in this post

I know, I know... That's not what what's-her-face says in Love Story.  Ali MacGraw.  The correct quotation is "Love means never having to say you're sorry."  Which I think is a shitty quotation.  What kind of douche are you if you don't apologize for the shit you do?  The bad stuff.  The unsupportive and biased things you do because you're blind to your own perspective and maybe don't have all the information, kind of things...  What?  Are your loved ones just supposed to divine that you feel remorse?

If you say mean-spirited things...  apologize!  If you hurt someone's feelings... apologize!  If you dissed a friend's new partner thinking you know all the facts, but the truth is you don't... you need to... APOLOGIZE.  And not just if you feel like shit afterwards.

Basically when you realize you're wrong... about ANYTHING - you need to fucking regroup and own up to it.   I'm not saying that you should just lie down and be someone's doormat when you know, deep down in your heart of hearts, that  you're right, but if something suddenly becomes clear to you and you know you fucked up?  You've got to own that.  You need to grow a pair and take ownership of your misguidance.  'Cause hurt feelings can create a chasm between you and your loved ones, which, if neither one of you moves beyond, will grow wider and wider until you can't even make out who's on the other side of the divide.  Life's too short to write friendships off.  Trust me.  Apologize.

Your kids are watching it... what are you doing about it?

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Taken prisoner... Send painkillers...

This morning I awoke to the mother of all migraines.   She looked like this:

Meg Mucklebones from Ridley Scott's Legend

The 1 inch of sunlight from beneath the blind - that tiny amount of light - was akin to having good ol' Meg use her lovely fingernails to gouge out my baby blues.   I popped as many pills as I could * and crawled down the stairs, clutching a set of earplugs.

Why, one might ask, would I need earplugs when Rissa is away with her grandparents for the week and David works in near silence at his computer all day?  Because our roof is being re-roofed this week and there are 5 men on it, with stompy steel-toed construction boots and generator-powered air-nail guns.  Don't get me wrong, I love these guys, they're doing a freaking amazing job at putting what must be (given the cost of the project) gold-encrusted shingles onto my roof and they seem genuinely thrilled when I bring them lavender lemonade (which if you haven't tried, you have to) and key lime squares, but when the pain in your eye sockets makes you puke - construction noise doesn't help.

I staggered to the couch in the family room, pulled the blanket over my head and told David to wake me up in an hour and a half so that I could get ready to go to work.  At 9:00 a.m. when he woke me, I was  insensible from the drugs and speaking in tongues...  or so he says.    He brought me a sleeping mask and called into work for me to let my boss know that I wouldn't be in until the afternoon.

My Mom always knew when I was really sick - by how much I would sleep.  There were many a day when I would get to the end of the sidwalk on my way to school, clutch my abdomen and inform my mother that my spleen had to be removed, but when I was really sick?  I just slept.  Like the dead.  All pale and clammy and barely breathing.

This morning was one of those sleeps.  I was out for HOURS.  And when I finally awoke from the sleep coma, I was delighted to find one of the cats snuggled protectively into the curve of my body and daylight had ceased to make me want to hurl.  The worst was over - but I had the residual raven's claws around my eyeballs - just holding on, you know, to remind me that at any moment it could sever my optic nerves for fun.  Like say, if I caught the gleam of a piece of cutlery bathed in sunlight in the sink at the wrong angle - it'd be all over.  There are times when I have to wear sunglasses in the house or at even at night to stop the glare of headlights from... wait a second!  I can't believe that I didn't realize this before!  Corey Hart must suffer from migraines!   Just like me!  Just like JK Rowling!  Poor bugger was suffering from the pain of migraines and nobody knew because he was hiding it in his lyrics all poetical-like.  I feel so much closer to him now. 

*Yes, I am a pill-popper.  But I'm not a moron about it.  I'm not downing 6 extra strength Tylenol with 4 Avil migraine gel caps.  I take the absolute top limit of what won't a) erode my stomach lining b) destroy my liver c) put me into the hospital for a drug overdose.  Don't be stupid folks - take the recommended dosages - your liver will thank you for it.