Bidding adieu to 2011

There's my little guy crawling to the future.

I can't believe that I'll be going back to work in a couple of months. It's time though. He's doing well [touch wood] and well on his way to becoming his own little person. Although his birth was quite the ordeal, he was, and continues to be, my joy this year. Not that a kid doesn't bring stress - whoever gets pregs with the idea that it will bring her closer to her partner is fucking mental - but TM and I wouldn't trade him for the world.

Meanwhile, our condo issues are slowly getting sorted and our little zoo is all settled in. Surprisingly it is the Fur Snake that is the most tolerant of the baby. The dog is seriously jealous and growls if he gets too near. Unless the baby is eating... then the dog is his bestest friend ever. My other cat just stays away.

I have been exhausted this year and for the past three years have neglected all my friends. I will need to start to rectify that this year. In fact, I think that will be my resolution. I don't think I'm going to get serious about my waistline until I'm back at work. I carbed out yesterday.

Hugs to all and wishing everyone all the best for the year ahead.

Body image

Ah yes, the photo above seems to show what everyone believes women see when they look in the mirror. That seems to 1980s to me though as nowadays I think that many people have my issue - I've gained weight but still see the 'thin' me when I look in the mirror. Really. So reverse the above pic and you have more the Snooze perception.

Rationally I know I've gained weight and no, I'm not doing much to lose it. I have a two kilometre route every morning which I take to get my espresso and take the dog to the park for socialization with the other little doggies, and yes, I don't load up on junk food or fried food, but it's not like I'm keeping a food diary or doing enough cardio/weight training. Yet, I still think of myself as a thin person. And somehow I think that everyone else sees me as a thin person too. Because I was thin. Never skinny, and never following some weird diet. I was just active and paid attention to what I ate. And then I didn't. And I gained. And gained. I eventually stopped the increase, but I've never gotten back to what would be a healthier and more flattering size for me.

I'm not completely delusional. Unlike some of the people I see wandering the streets of Toronto* I do understand that stretch pants are a privilege, not a right, and that even if I could still squeeze into the bikini I had in high school, there is no need to ever appear in public in it. *here I'm referring to people who really should have some idea of what flatters them - not the city's marginalized people who are too busy worrying about where to get their next fix/meal to care what the rest of us think of their 'ensemble'

However, it's when I see photos from events that I am caught reeling by how much larger I am in reality.  We went to a wedding over the summer and I tried to get together a decent outfit. By the end I thought that I looked quite good. Not amazing, but good. Then we saw photos from the event... I felt like "Who attached that large leg to my shoulder?" Seriously, I couldn't believe that was my arm. Not to mention that the pearl choker I had added served only to completely hide my neck and morph my face into some completely round doughy thing (and add to that a greasy sheen all over it). I was suddenly in the biggest funk of ages.

Of course I later noticed that even my so-not-overweight sister-in-law looked a little chunky in some of the photos so I realized a lot had to do with what a I wore and my pose in the photos but sheesh, again, I am just surprised sometimes when I realize that I actually am overweight and am no longer a thin person. To clarify, I'm not obese and I also don't consider that extra weight is unattractive or anything like that, just that the photo above made me think that many of us are delusional in the reverse. My favourite is when people tell me not to worry because "you just had a baby". ???? Okay, first of all I had a 2-pound baby 10 months ago, and secondly, I am *below* my pre-pregnancy weight. And to clarify, these people are not being assholes. I laugh my ass off everytime I get a comment like that and think, "holy crap, I look like I just gave birth? WTF?"

I think that I either need to up my exercise routine and pay more attention to my diet, or just face facts that I am never going to be a thin girl again.


[and again, I feel obliged to clarify that the weight I would like to be is still 20 pounds over my high school perfectly-fine weight in case people think I'm unrealistic or going all anorexic]

Blogging block

I have not been blogging in a while. Part of it is the baby, and part of it is that so many people have stopped blogging now. I miss the days when there were so many bloggers. Facebook/Twitter are not the same. On FB I know all the people and the updates are so brief. It's great for remembering birthdays, but otherwise all it does is suck up my time on superficial updates.

Anyhow, back to blogging and the main reason that I haven't had the heart to write anything. A while back I went through my blogger list. I would check and see when the last post of a blog had been and if it had been a year or so before, I deleted the blog from my list.  Unfortunately there were many of those. There was one, my all-time favourite writer, who hadn't updated since the spring. I remember quickly reading his posts on my blog feed back in the spring but as it was right around the time that my son got out of hospital, I wasn't commenting. Anyhow, I missed his writing. He was, and is, the best writer I've ever read outside of a literature course. Many of us blog, some of us are excellent at building community, but this guy - this guy could write like no one else.

He was one of the few bloggers who I had ended up linking up with on Facebook so I went on there to see what he was up to. I planned to email him and say something like, "get off your lazy ass and post again." When I looked him up on FB, lo and behold, it was his birthday. I was going to join in all the birthday wishes until I noticed that several of them were saying such things as, "Hope you are partying with Saint Peter".  I almost threw up. My favourite blogger wasn't taking a break, he wasn't off doing exciting things... he had died unexpectedly. Probably just a couple of days after that last post I had read.

I have since reached out to his brother. I told him about the blog his brother had kept. Yet I felt so sick about blogging for so long. Sort of as if anything I tried to write or express was irrelevant. I still feel that way but I'm going to go on blogging and writing as a salute to my friend, who I only knew by his phenomenal command of the written word. Be well my friend.

*No one else who I know through blogging followed or linked to him so I have not linked his blog here. I'm explaining my head space - not trying to be overly dramatic and I want to respect his privacy, even if it doesn't really matter now