ok of late

THings have been okay lately. I’m not going to go into any of the bad things. I’ve been avoiding spending a lot of time looking at myself or dwelling on anything, such as what does it mean that practically no one has commented on the fact that I cut almost three inches off my hair and had very blonde highlights put in it? The only comments came from my mother who said: the ends needed to be cut and something about oh now she sees a streak. The other comment was from a friend who said my hair looked redder. Usually when no comments are made about a change that I think is so obvious, I take it to mean the change is terrible and people are not mentioning it hoping I won’t ask.

I went to a ren faire this weekend with friends. Most of us partially dressed up in pirate-y gear. I wore a shirt I made with massively full sleeves that I put a cuff on, and they are nice and ruffled. Three of us love dressing up and were coming up with our wenchley persona since one has decided she has to come up with a new pirate persona and maybe playing pirate wench once in awhile is fun. I have a persona known as Madame and I will be making “her” a to die for jacket. which may never get done since I obsess over the details and things being perfect, then I realize once it goes on me it will not be perfect, it will be ridiculous and I have some sort of breakdown and never finish it because if I won’t wear it no one can.

Yeah, I was trying not to get into the poor pitiful me stuff.

But I did have fun at the fair. Even walked around alone for awhile, made eye contact with strangers, talked to some costumers, and had fun.

I had one grumpy day at work and considering this is Tuesday I guess that isn’t so hot. I didn’t have the shop open today. Found excuses other than it’s simply too damn hot to not go in. Yesterday this woman was really a bitch. I just ignored her. She asked the price of something. It’s this piece from the mid 1800s, very ornate, hand-carved, original finish, quite impressive, and when I told her the price, which is quite reasonable, she said something like ‘that’s just ridiculous’ or ‘oh come on now, don’t be ridiculous’, and in a really snotty tone too. So I just walked off, quit having anything to do with her and ignored her for the rest of the time she was in the shop. Sometimes when people are like that I get nasty right back at them. I’ll either say, wow, is that how you bargain? You must get great deals. Or I’ll wave them off toward the cheaper items and say “Go over there. Nothing over $150. That’s more in your line. Nothing hand-made or hand carved over there.” After looking at everything else she did go back to that big piece and start looking at it again, probably expecting me to come over and try to negotiate on the price but I’ve decided she can’t have it for any price.

I did lose weight! Yay! I was a little pissed off at the end of last week that I’d eaten so little and kept so busy and lost nothing, but today I got on the scale and it was 171. When I first started this blog and got on the scale it was 174. Last week it was still 174. Hopefully next week it will be below 170. The highest it’s been this year was 178. Probably higher I just refused to get on the scale because thinking about it getting any higher was like years ago when I was at my heaviest. I remember getting on the sale one day and it said 198 and I said no freaking way would I get on the scale again because I knew I’d gained weight and I did not want to see the scale say 200+ . So I just avoided it for months until I finally started exercising like mad and knew I’d lost significant amount of weight. But of course no one noticed and I honestly can’t tell the difference between what I looked like then and what I look like now.

This weekend I dropped by a restaurant because a friend called to say she was there bugging another friend who works there. The one who didn’t work there was sitting at the bar eating. The other was behind the bar talking to her. The waiter, who was too young for me, but really cute, would just sort of hover in the background, kept looking at me. I couldn’t decide if it was for good or bad reasons. His expression didn’t give anything away. And for once I didn’t convince myself he was staring at me because I’m a freak. He probably thought I was the one girl’s mother.

bad times of late

Self-fulfilling prophecy… I knew things would not be so good once my parents came back home. NOt just them being here, I mean, not just them making things worse, but because of them being home I wouldn’t be able to stay in all the time and would have to go out.

I was determined to make the most of it, went out to see friends more, have made plans to do things. SC, MJ and I are going to the Georgia RenFaire Sunday with JG and her daughters. SC, MJ and I will sort of dress up. Not in our full wenchly garb, but pirate shirts and a wee bit sexy. I’m already doubting it. Wishing I hadn’t been the one to instigate this plan.

Last night SC, MJ and I went out and did a little shopping. We were having fun in the fabric store, then on to a Party City, back where the costumes are, just trying on hats and goofing off. I went around an aisle, not realizing there was a full length mirror on a wall, because there was a lot of junk on the wall, and I got a long look at myself. First there was a glance and I thought I was seeing into the rest of the shop and I just thought there was some lady passing by the entryway as I was, then I realized it was me and I was like, damnit, I will not let this ruin my evening. I kept having to push my image out of my head. Otherwise I would have ruined the girls evening by insisting we go home then. how to explain to them that Oh, I have to go home now because I realized that I was mistaken that I thought i looked kind of nice today. That in fact I look like a dumpy middle aged woman with a horse-face, and I should be embarrassed that I’m hanging out with two 21 year old girls and acting like I’m your friend. So we have to go home now.

And until we went to IHOP last night I’ve hardly eaten all week and I doubt I’ve lost any weight.

Wednesday at lunch I just waited for my mom to make this comment that she always does. Normally I would have ordered the fried chicken wings. This day I didn’t. I got mac and cheese, black eyed peas, and okra. I ate less than half of each thing on my plate. I ate part of a wing because my Dad got a plate of them. Then finally the moment came when my mom looked at all our plates, shook her head, sighed, and said, “I won’t be making dinner. You’re on your own, not that I can imagine anyone being hungry after eating all that.” I ate less than a cup of food, probably slightly over half a cup of food, and she was making me feel like I’d just stuffed my face with fried fat wrapped in bacon and washed down with a milk shake made with heavy cream. And for break fast what did I have? My Dad had brought home breakfast and in it was a ham and cheese croissant. I cut off one tip of the croissant and ate that. In the 48 hours prior to it this I’d eaten two chicken pot pies, and drunk a cup of milk in the middle of the night when I couldn’t go to sleep and decided it was because my stomach was weird.

I did eat a good meal at Ihop last night. We all ordered the same thing. It was a big breakfast with pancakes, hashbrowns, bacon and eggs. I ate part of one egg, half the pancakes, some of the hashbrowns, and most of a piece of bacon. MJ kept looking at my plate and I remember thinking that she must have thought I was lying about not having really eaten anything that day other than two bites for breakfast, two bites of a banana, and a sandwich made with a piece of bread, a little bit of peanut butter and jelly, and that was all. Today I actually had an appetite. We had fried fish for lunch and I had some grits for lunch and ate a healthy portion for dinner. So tomorrow when I get on the scale and haven’t lost weight I’ll blame it on eating today.

But seriously, you’d think the way I hardly ate this week I could have lost something. I’ve got to start walking a lot and exercising a lot too. I can’t go on being fat. I got my hair highlighted today and couldn’t stand looking in the mirror.

I’m waiting for someone to ask my why I did this to my hair.