A Landslide….with cheese!

You’re about to tune out on this blog, aren’t you? You’re thinking to yourself “Oh hell, another boo-hoo for me I had bad things happen blog”. Well, give me one more entry to prove you wrong. Of course bad things happen to people all the time. But that isn’t what my main focus is here. I mention the bad things, not as an excuse, but simply so that you can see how I got to the “passed out and bleeding” stage. So I’ll make the transitional-bad-thing short and sweet:

After a long battle with AIDS, my Dad died. And then my husband and I both were laid off from our jobs.

So, as our incomes went *poof* and our meager savings dwindled, we discovered the wonders of cheap food. And even better…bulk cheap food. Five burgers for five dollars? Brilliance! Cici’s pizza? Why didn’t I think of that? Oh…and potatoes and pasta week!  Oh…and even off-brand foods taste awesome with enough imitation cheese sauce! Cheap and filling, yes? Filling is gooood. Filling makes you happy. More is better, and certainly makes me feel better about having less and less…maybe just a little. There were many swaying bridges crossed and many treacherous mountains climbed over the years after “the bad things”. I will not bore you with the details. It was bad. Food stamps, hospitals and almost homeless bad. Let’s just say we survived, mostly intact…and certainly with more to love.

We eventually got new jobs and started to put it all back together. Having to buy new wardrobes…yet again a bit larger…was a stretch. No more cute clothes for me. Remember, this was before Plus-sizes had made a peep in the mainstream. I shopped with an eye for dropped waists or billowy A-lines for my office job. More and more, when at home, size XXL men’s pajama bottoms and sweats were my attire. “I just don’t like things that bind!”, I would declare, implying that anyone who wore tight-fitting clothes was an idiot. “The dryer is shrinking my clothes again!”, I would shout from the laundry area on the back porch. Actresses and models became the target for my increasingly famous barbed comments. “Nobody is that size by choice!” I would stomp and snort, “They starve themselves to look like that and are in a conspiracy with clothing designers to make women feel bad about themselves!”

I was a joy to be around, I’m certain.

Looking back, the women I was shaking my fist at were simply of normal weight. I wasn’t as mad at the Kate Mosses…as I was at the Jennifer Anistons and Sandra Bullocks. I was secretly mad at my husband’s daughter, who was slim and beautiful. Her mother was suddenly tiny and exotic. How in the hell could I live up to that? This wasn’t rational by any means…but neither was the way I was gaining weight, or what I was doing to cause the gain. Even less rational was my gift for finding multiple targets to blame my fatness on. Thyroid issues (unfounded for most people, duh. Hyperthyroidism causes people to be unable to gain weight). I’m from a Viking background…and part German….so I’m big-boned! My knees/ankles/hips hurt…so I can’t exercise (No surprise there…my ankles were carrying ME around). I’m too tired from working so much (see previous parenthetical remark). My excuse list grew longer and longer as I grew bigger.

Desperate attempts at diets soon became a regular part of life. No carbs. No meat. All meat. All veggies. Miracle pills. Supplements. As Seen On TV sure-things that tasted like battery acid-spiked lime-ade. I tried them all. Every single last one of them. They all were either a hoax, or so strict and complicated that I gave up. But I kept trying and kept throwing my money at each and every item that even suggested easy success. Certainly the regular-sized people in this world didn’t go through this crap! Why in the hell couldn’t I find the trick THEY had?

This…brings us back to me. On the floor. In size 20+ overalls. Dizzy. Bleeding from a coffee-table-induced head wound. And sobbing like all the “bad things” had suddenly come home to roost.

Pretty picture, huh? Pathetic. Right?

Not so fast….

Lip-Smackin’ Love

Yeah….real, honest to goodness love. Like some sort of phantom speeding bus, it hit me right when I entered the cross walk between one of the worst dating experience I’d ever had and my realization that…hey, I’m pretty damned cool and comfy being single. Sure, I thought I had been in love before. You know…that “can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t stop mentioning his name four hundred times a day and god help anyone who gets between me and the phone because he MIGHT call” kind of love? This, was totally different.

I wasn’t even interested in dating. Having, some months back, ended a “relationship” with the equivalent of the world’s largest adolescent I had gotten really comfortable with just being me. Me and my cats and my job and my friends. No stress (outside of work) and I was totally over that whole “gotta have a boyfriend/fiance/get pointed toward the walk down the aisle” rat race. I didn’t even see a reason for marriage. I had friends who had taken the plunge and from what they were saying, it wasn’t all the romantic comedy movies made it out to be. Some people were just meant to be single, and I had come to the conclusion that my long list of failed relationships was solid evidence that I was one of them. But then this guy asked me out to dinner and a movie. What the hell, right? It would be more entertaining than dining out alone, and I hadn’t been out to the movies in quite a while. Creepy people sit next to you when you go to a movie alone. So I said “Yes”…and three days later found myself leaning against the inside of my front door after returning from probably my most interesting date ever saying “Holy crap!” to myself…over and over and over.

This real love thing was awesome. I didn’t worry constantly about what he thought about whatever I did or said. We had both agreed that no matter what happened…we would always be exactly who we were. No pretense…no trying to be who we thought the other person wanted us to be. Just the raw goods, as is. This was especially great because I didn’t have to play the femme fatale who orders a small salad and a glass of water on a date (and then goes home to eat a real meal hours later). Nope, my guy and I both loved food. In short order we were living together. Me with my two jobs, and him running his own business. Again, eating out or take-out became the norm. The people at Popeye’s Fried Chicken knew us by name, as did the pizza delivery guy and the little Asian woman with no eyebrows at the Chinese take-out place.

My new guy was divorced with two small children that came to stay with us on weekends. As it is hard to cram a bunch of quality family time into one weekend, and there are no two siblings on the planet who admit to liking the same foods…we discovered all-you-can-eat buffets. The kids could get whatever they wanted and we didn’t have a pile of dirty dishes to waste time on when we could be watching the kids growing and learning and enjoying them just being kids. Very noble of us…right?

Things progressed, birds sang, kids laughed, rainbows and fireworks burst across the sky, love blossomed into a full-scale extravaganza. The “L” word had been exclaimed…and we decided that we were in this for the long haul. No piece of paper or ceremony needed. My guy’s first marriage had been, among other things, not good. I was a child of divorce…and totally got where he was coming from…and was totally fine with his position.

Then he up and proposed. Six months later, on Valentine’s Day 1990, my guy and I got married. Everything was wonderful. We were happy, healthy and suddenly we were a family. Not much changed outside of my last name. We both still worked like slaves, ate like kings and had a grand old-time.

That we had to up a size in clothes was not that big a deal. Clothing manufacturers are always jacking around with the sizing guidelines anyway. And I was entering into my quest for the miracle-diet…which had become a hobby of sorts. If it cost $29.99 and was offered on late night TV…well it just HAD to be great. And all my friends were joining Jazzercise groups….so I did too. That we went to a Mexican restaurant after class, to scarf up their free appetizers and two-for-one drinks, made sense to us. Well, at least to me. I had just flailed about, pumping my fists and jiggling my jiggly parts for a good, solid hour. And I hadn’t passed out. This was reason to celebrate! And then, of course, I went home to shower and have dinner with my husband. Life was GOOD!

Then…I got the phone call I knew would come someday…but nothing could have prepared me for… and everything shattered.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

So, let’s back up a bit. I didn’t arrive on this planet in the state that my last entry described. I had a pretty normal upbringing. I ate fairly balanced meals, or as many as a working Mom with two very active kids can pull off. Plenty of running about in the outdoors activity. I was a competitive swimmer, cheerleader and took riding lessons. I romped about through the fields around our house, playing king of the mountain (O.K., it was a pile of dirt at a construction site…but you work with what you have here in Florida), climbing trees and having dirt-clod fights like any other normal kid. I was always tall for my age, but drifted in and out of the weight-gain/growth spurt phases of life along with my friends.

College arrived and my eating habits stayed pretty much the same…with the exception that I was attending school in the heart of Everythings-better-cooked-in-bacon-grease-ville. But yeah, weight drifted on and off a little slower. I think my discovery of beers and student-discount-pizza may have helped a little. By the time I graduated my frame was carrying an extra ten or fifteen pounds. Nothing life threatening, but I noticed the need to go up a size when I bought my outfit for graduation, was weighing in around 140, and promptly joined a gym once I was settled in my first place.

Here’s where I think things may have started to go a bit wonky. The gym that I joined was a tad intimidating. It was in a high-dollar, somewhat snooty area which, being raised to hold the title of Gloriously Spoiled Princess, wasn’t a big deal. But, the social competition to look like all of the society-wives and their daughters (most being the proud owners of assorted new and surgically improved features, and prize-winning eating disorders)…along with the “lifters aren’t LOSERS!” barking of the trainers, was probably not the place for a twenty-something woman during her entry into the adult world.

So yeah, I quit.

I had it covered, though. One awesome crash diet of nothing but salads (no meat, no cheese, no croutons)….gallons of water…and a now-illegal diet aid and I was back to where all those workout tapes said I should be. Easy-peasy. Big deal that I was dizzy. A lot. Big deal that I was more wired than a six-year-old mainlining Mt. Dew and meth. I was SKINNY!

So…those who know me are aware that I am not Paula Deen. I am pretty much a disaster in the kitchen. But that’s cool. There were tons of handy options for nutrition right there on the frozen food aisle at the grocery store right up the street. Every week I’d cruise up there, load up my cart with all the frozen goodness (even vegetables! With extra yummy cheese sauce! Mmmm.) I’d need for the week and then stop at the ice cream shop I always parked in front of for a chocolate malt. This was my reward for getting everything on my shopping list and using coupons, thus staying on budget and proving to my family and myself that I was totally a grown-up. And the nights I didn’t want to “cook”, I could always pick something up. Every fast food and pizza place I could ever crave was just minutes away…and some delivered! I SO had this surviving on my own thing worked out.

But you know…buying frozen food and eating out isn’t cheap. Certainly not as cheap as buying the actual makings of a meal and cooking it myself.  I know this now, but back then…well, as I’ve pointed out, I was a bit spoiled. Eating out with my friends or tossing a french bread pizza in the oven before heading out to a club was what EVERYONE was doing. Duh!

So I got a second job.

Now I was working a fulltime job and a part-time job. I was too busy and important to cook. So…take-out, delivery and dining out became my routine. I ate on the fly between jobs, or late in the evening after working a twelve-plus hour day. Excercise? Are you kidding? I was certainly moving around enough to equal the excercise of a marathon in my evening and weekend job as a bartender/assistant manager. And the stress from my paper-pushing/phone answering daytime job had to be eating up any excess calories I might be taking in. It was fast and furious. Work, eat, work, eat, eat while working, sleep, eat in car, drink and eat, dance then stop to eat, work, eat, rinse, repeat.

Then, when I least expected it….I fell in love.

It started with chipped polish on my toes.

This is where I had my moment of clarity. Now, seeing as I do not have a photo of my feet prior to the current version (circa 2011), please imagine these feet one and a half sizes larger…and topped by a 247 pound, 5′ 9″ woman in her mid thirties. Yeah, I know, I’m tall…so I “carry it well”. O.K….maybe I did. But, and please note that I am not a fan of Oprah, it was these toes that gave me my “Aha Moment”.

As the story goes, one evening I had decided that my chipped toenail polish was making me cranky. I hauled out all my mani/pedi tools and potions, and plopped myself down on our living room couch to correct the situation. After a small struggle to removing the polish, I put my foot up on the giant butcher-block style coffee table to begin applying polish. I leaned forward, straining a bit to reach my toes. My overalls, which were my most comfy ensemble (and, to be honest…a really snug size 18), strained against my midsection and pulled at my shoulders. But damn-it, pretty polish was my goal…so I sucked in my stomach, held my breath and tried to lean closer so that I could get to my toes.

Feeling a little dizzy…but hey…I had great lung capacity, being a big and hearty girl. Sucking in more I… almost… could… reach.

Then everything went black.

I woke up on the floor covered in spilled polish with a gash in my forehead.

My size 18s (which apparently needed to be size 20s) had cut across my waist as I bent, and I had passed out from lack of oxygen to my noggin, smacked my head on the coffee table and ruined a perfectly good throw rug…trying to do something as simple as painting my damned toenails.

I sat on the floor..pissed at myself…and the coffee table…and things started to shake into place. I had knee problems and a chronic ankle issue. I couldn’t eat a meal without intestinal distress shortly thereafter. I couldn’t find the cute clothes I liked in my size. My skin had begun to act up, something that had never happened, and I got tired really easily. Running toward or away from anything would be a very darkly comedic moment.

This…I took as a sign. Do something now, or end up as one of those awful stories on the news where a forklift and paramedics are involved. Do something now, or you will be The Fat Grandma. Do something now, because this is one thing in your crazy, free-fall, stressful life that you CAN control. Do it now…because age 40, when it is rumored that everything starts slowing down, is right around the corner.

The list grew longer and longer. A drop of blood from my head-cracking moment dropped on my overalls. I noticed I was crying. Big, gulping sobs. And my nail polish was still chipped.

This…was not the me I wanted to be.

I went to the computer, looked up a phone number and made what was probably the best phone call of my life.