Making Things Right

For almost six years now, I've maintained that I needed a "redo" of the U2 concert I attended in 2011. 

Thanks to an awesome offer from the woman who was my boss' boss at the time, I'd ended up with two pair of list minute tickets. My parents were able to get there, and Birdman initially said he'd go -- and then called back to bail. 

And that was the night that I realized things with Birdman were very wrong. So although it was an awesome concert, it was also one where I sat there wondering what was going to happen next. 

Then he broke up with me the next day. 

So when U2 announced that they were coming back to Pittsburgh, I knew I had to go. And it wasn't that cost wasn't an issue -- cost is always an issue -- but rather that I was not going to miss this concert, and I was not going to see it from the 500s at Heinz Field. 

I take my redo events very seriously. 

It seemed appropriate that this appeared at one point during the concert. 

A brilliant rainbow, ever so briefly there at the end of the stadium. And over the duration of the concert, it was an amazing feeling to be part of something bigger -- and something stronger. 

I feel like my touch and go relationship with U2 is a tangible expression of my touch and go relationship with me over the years. Sometimes, something hurts, and you spend a stupid amount of time blocking it out and switching the channel. And then, sometimes, you get to the point where you can follow Bono's instructions and "Sing your heart out." 

You sing your rallying cries, and you let the music carry you to a place where you can rejoice -- or where you can cry. You get angry, and you kick ass, and you take names, and you wonder how the hell you can ever bounce back from something. 

And then you see that crowd of cell phone lights, and look at that rainbow, and hear that music again, and remember that it is all much bigger than I am -- and it is OK to not have it all figured out yet. 

Yes, I'm still running. 

Finish What You Start

I survived the spring of sleeves!

Although don't get too excited. I still need to seam the projects and do the finishing details. 

That takes them to full-pieced sweaters, though, so I decided it was totally OK to cast on my new project: Sylvi. And because Sylvi is done in bulky yarn, it's knitting up very quickly. 

One pattern modification to Sylvi (minus those rough starts in the cable that I'm now calling a design element). The pattern says to start with the sleeves. I'm not doing that to myself. So I'm jumping to the back panel, and then going to the sleeves at the end, like I always do. Because nope nope nope. I can't take more sleeves after just having done sleeves for months. 

Lesson learned: Just because something may be boring, don't skip it to get to the fun stuff. Because otherwise, in order to actually finish what you started, you're going to end up with lots and lots of boring stuff. 

It's Not Me. It's You. (Or Them)

This post got me thinking. 

And not in a bad way, in the way that some of the comments on the Internet often do. 

But rather, about how people can really be jerks in how they treat and speak to other people. 

I've always wondered whether I was truly just an awful horrible person who was incompetent at everything, or whether I've just had the misfortune of being around people constantly who truly suck. 

The post in question reminded me of a former colleague. She seemed to have a backhanded way of saying everything. "Look at you getting a sweat there!" she'd comment when she saw me after a workout in the building's gym. Or, talking about food habits, "Well, you always like to eat a lot of meat, don't you?" Because she'd picked up on the habit that I made a roast on the weekend... but she didn't realize that well, I then didn't cook meat at all during the week.

It took me a long, long time to realize that no, I wasn't a horrible person for making a roast once a week. And I wasn't fat and out of shape because she happened to see me put in a tough walking workout. (I mean, I was fat and out of shape compared to today, but I was in better shape than she was.)

To the contrary, she was just an awful person who liked to put other people down. All. The. Damn. Time. (I mean, admittedly she would also lie about where she was during the work day, so I probably should have realized that I was not the awful person here.)

An isolated incident with a bad person I could probably tolerate. But I've never been very good at separating the bad and awful people's opinions of me from my own perception. 

And reading that thread made me realize. Yeah, people are just awful. 

• The people who decided that I needed to be in remedial gym (protip: when you've got chronically tight hamstrings and it turns out that endurance is your thing, it doesn't mean that you just generally suck at athletics)
• The parental units who went along with it (and similarly, the paternal unit who told me girls in middle school didn't have "tummies," and the maternal unit who, this past Thanksgiving, told me she didn't want to hinder my meal habits...)
• The choir director who called me busty
• The tennis instructor at Wellesley who told me I had the hand-eye coordination of a toad (almost 20 years later, this one still doesn't make sense)
• The dietitian who cut me to 3 ounces of protein a day, with no supplementation in other areas ... and thinking that even though I was active, since I wasn't thin, it didn't matter 
• The dietitian who said that if I was serious about losing weight, I should restrict to under 1,000 calories a day, and consider meal replacement shakes (when discussing both of these with the Dietitian, she made a face and comment that basically came down to "Great, now I get to fix the problem these people created")
• The person who asked "who intentionally places grey hair"; corollary: the person who starts sentences with "I don't want to harsh your mellow..."

An interesting thing I've been experiencing over the past 18 months of therapy (wow, I've actually stuck with this now longer than I did the first go-round on U.S. soil...) is that I have less and less of a tolerance for people who bother me. 

I used to think that maybe I just had less and less of a tolerance for being bothered, and that that was a sign of weakness, but I'm starting to see it as maybe a reinforcement of boundaries. 

After all, why should I give people the space to bother me, and to let their intentionally hurtful words actually bother me?

It's not OK to be a jerk, and I'm not going to let the negative people in my life continue to act like jerks toward me. If that means that people exit my life in that process, I'm OK with that. 

Trying to Find a Beacon Through the Bullshit

The Internet can be really good at making you feel like a freak of nature ... or even worse, a giant fuckup. 

(You can tell I'm in a Mood about something when the expletives start falling like rain. I think that's part of why I realized that Dr. BIEL got it when she randomly exclaimed during a session,"What if you said fuck it, and walked away and let the building burn?" After similar outbursts from Therapist 3.0 and the Dietitian, and the fact that Dr. New Person looked horrified when I said "Crap!" I'm now also firmly convinced that a provider who doesn't let themselves swear in front of a patient likely doesn't get how my mind works.)

While trying to weather the perfect storm, and before getting to the point of frantically messaging providers because I was losing my blasted mind, I went down the rabbit holes of the Internet. 

Some day I will learn that the rabbit holes of the Internet do me no good. 

The Dietitian said that she doesn't think I accept or tolerate what my body wants to do naturally. That that's why I couldn't cope with the sudden increase, and why I started spinning.

That may be true.

But what's also true, and more prevalent, is that I don't trust or accept random acts. Give me data, and give me facts. 

So as I went down the rabbit holes, I got more frantic. Because everything I could find about sustained weight increases after an endurance event (because now, I begrudgingly accept Wikipedia's definition about endurance, even though I think that 5K is pretty darn short, since that's my short-run during the week now) that that the weight should come off fairly quickly. And if you were an athlete who gained weight that wasn't coming off, it was purely on your shoulders. That you were eating too much. That you were eating more than your activity. That you did something wrong, and that's why it was happening. 

And when you're like me, and you know precisely what you are eating, and you know that it's not what you're burning, and you can't find anything that explains the situation?

THAT FUCKING HURTS AND DRIVES YOU CRAZY.

The truth? That I'm going to post here because deity knows you don't find it on the Internet well enough?

THAT ISN'T UNIVERSALLY TRUE. You can eat at a deficit, and still end up gaining water weight that takes between three and six weeks to fall off. As much as it feels like a failure, and as much as other sites and bloggers tell you it's your fault, that's not necessarily true. 

Sure, that probably happens with some people. That you eat to your old training levels, and maybe are over slightly. But it isn't the sole truth and the sole situation. 

In my situation -- because while I want to put this out there, I'm also not going to be all "YAY ALL ATHLETES ARE THE SAME" -- the sports med doc explained it as my body getting really angry after the toe. That I went from lots of activity, to suddenly no activity, to suddenly running a half marathon, and then doing nothing. 

That the body likes status quo. And it doesn't like being tossed around that much. And that most people will retain for three weeks or so after a half, and six weeks after a full. (And, she noted, that maybe I'd want to think about that nutrition thing some more, and maybe considering actually fueling and hydrating during and after workout.) 

Sure enough, to her word, at week three, things started turning around. Still not perfect, but OMG so much better.

And you know something? Despite what the Internet told me, it wasn't my fault. 

What Does the Data Say?

I noticed the disconnect when I was trying on a skirt at Ann Taylor Factory. 

"I'm trying on a size 4. I think I'm fat. That's fucked up."

And then I realized why I still saw -- and still see -- myself as fat. 

• When you've got a woman at the Playtex outlet whispering at you that "we encourage women who are busty to go a size up" for a strapless bra (although HA, stranger. The size up was too big, and I needed my actual size)
• When as much as I try, my rib cage doesn't currently allow anything smaller than a fit and flare size 8 to actually fit... 
• When a size 8 is too big, and a size 6 is too small... yet the size 6 is still too big in the upper bust and the hips, so it's not like it matters anyway.
• When even the size 4 is too big for a pair of shorts ... but then you remind yourself that hey, in designer clothes you still need that size 8 dress. 

It's no surprise that women's bodies are up for constant narrative and societal ownership. And, everyone has their own story to tell. So you get lots of different stories about the same thing, and sometimes, it feels like how the individual tells her own story doesn't matter much at all.

But where things start to get challenging are when you look at one set of data, and try to reconcile that with another set of a data that you're getting. Where the numbers say one thing, but society's interpretation of the visual paints a different story. 

That's one hell of a mixed methods approach.

There's a reason I didn't do much mixed methods work in my MPH projects.

So society tells me that I'm generally considered small. But that my ribcage makes me larger. That hey, you can see that ribcage through my back. But that I'm busty. That you're supposed to eat, but oooh, you're being "naughty" or decadent if one of the few things you're eating that day happens to be a cookie or a slice of cake.

No wonder there's a disconnect in how I see myself, and how I start to tell my story. Even the societal observers don't know how to tell my story. 

Still Bitching About Popcorn

In things that surprise no one: I am a little bit opinionated. 

So it should come as no shock that after the popcorn drama at AMC, I proceeded to email AMC and ask why they'd gotten rid of the smalls -- that it was a strong factor in my deciding either to not buy concessions there, or (really, if they didn't have the classic nights, it wouldn't be an idle threat) to just go to another theatre.

Because seriously. No one needs a tub of popcorn that starts out at 600 calories and is large enough to feed two people. Unless you are buying it and sharing it with another person.

A senior manager responded, and apologized, and explained that they had streamlined their offerings, but did offer a Cameo size, and that I should request that the next time I am there. 

I thanked her, and said I wasn't aware, since no one had mentioned it to me, or to the others in front of me who had asked for a small. 

"It's our least popular option, because it is fairly small," she responded. 

And this is where I redirect my opinionated-ness, because the poor manager dealing with my email didn't deserve a diatribe. 

Of course it's your least popular option! 

I don't doubt that part of that is because it's small -- considering that when I ordered a small once, the concessions employee showed me the bag, and asked if it would be enough. But, when you don't tell people about the option, no one's going to order it. You would think that if a customer asks for a small, the odds are pretty good that they actually want a reasonable amount of popcorn -- so why, at that point, not say "Hey, we don't have that anymore, but we've got something close"? 

And hence, my Googling began. Because now I needed to know how many cups it was, what the calories were, etc. 

Surprise surprise. Nothing about it on AMC's site. Only on review sites, and even then, usually complaining about the size. Nothing about nutrition.

I finally found the ounce figure. It's about the same size as the previous small, but a little bigger -- not enough so, though, that I feel bad about it. And I certainly would prefer that over trying to estimate how much popcorn is 2/3 of a bag. 

So you've got a company maintaining that smalls aren't popular, while they don't actually market the availability of a small popcorn. I get that smaller sizes aren't profitable. I understand that line of thought. 

But this? This is exactly why we've got issues with over-eating in this country. Even if you try to make a more responsible choice, barriers are thrown up in your path. You're encouraged to eat more than you need, and finding the better options is next to impossible unless you bitch and whine about it.

Because it's really sad when a 600-calorie tub of popcorn is still one of the lowest-calorie options at a movie theatre. 

This is why the United States is fat. 

In Which I Admit that I Care

I always took pride in being unconventional. 

• In making do the best I could with what I had. 
• In making a lot of my clothes. 
• In not spending much money on makeup (honest, there really was a time). 
• In only outsourcing the tasks that truly needed to be outsourced because I lacked the knowledge or physical strength.

Somehow, I've started to feel simultaneously guilty, and simultaneously not guilty, for caring about things that I didn't used to care much about.

For going to barre and spending a stupid amount of money on fitness and studio memberships. 

For paying my stylist to wax my brows and dye my hair. 

In many ways, life was easier and cheaper when I just didn't give a flying fuck about as much. 

I used to say that well, I had more time than money, and thus I could do a lot of stuff that most people would outsource. Baking, home repair, gardening and landscaping, hair dye, fitness. 

At some point within the past few years, I came to the conclusion that yes, I could do this stuff, but that damn, it was consuming a heck of a lot of brain space. And if I could toss a little bit of money at the problem, even if it meant stretching my budget or carrying minimal credit card debt, that my brain suddenly had some space to decompress. Which I suppose has its own merits. Or so I'm told. 

And then, there was the stuff that I hadn't cared about, and now felt guilty about caring about. 

• Caring about actually wearing makeup every day. 
• Massages after a race weekend. 
• Waxing because it felt better than shaving (and more thorough). 
• Clothes that I didn't have to make because it turns out that buying clothes is a little less time consuming when you're on the slimmer side of things. (Although, sidenote, I've noticed that now I'm sizing out on the other direction, and that's just damn weird.)
• Nice matching planters for my container plants. 
• Actual plant trellises and supports rather than making do. 
• Not staying in the cheapest hotel just to save a buck. (Not going for the most expensive, either, but definitely keeping my brand loyalty and using Google Maps to determine whether the distance is worth it.)

It's a weird adjustment, to realize that not only I do care about some of these things, but that it's OK to care. 

I'm a girly girl, and that's OK. 

I like nice clothes, and that's OK. 

I like it when the vegetable garden and fruit plants look maintained and coordinated, and that's OK. 

And if I decide at some point that I don't like those things? Well, that's OK, too.