Indecisive Peach

I have never dieted before and I started one today, one of a name brand quality. When I hit about 25, I realized that my metabolism was slowing down. What I could do at 19 or even 22, was not something that my body was comfortable allowing me to do anymore. As much as I didn’t so much appreciate the former, I cared only marginally more about the latter. In a way, my body has become my governess, chiding me from a corner. I expect that she will look on in pity when I hit 35 when I can’t drink the way I used to either.

I have had somewhat of an indifferent attitude toward my body my entire life. After the scoliosis phase, the gangly tall-for-my-age phase, and the awkward pimply phase, my hopes were simply that I would find someone who would actually love me for myself. Because, sure, you can love yourself and your flaws, but really, it’s finding that other person who says, “Oh, that strange rosacea on your cheeks you have is quite endearing.”

I feel that my body has become my manifestation of a thematic life lesson for me, namely control. I lost a lot of control of my sense of being in this “temple” that housed me after I had my spine fused and debated as I grew older if it was a way to keep me still in to live my life…placidly. I’ve also debated if I would have been a pilot or sports fanatic had I not had the surgery. I wondered if these thoughts dulled a innate desire for being competitive. Or have I always been this way; it seems blurry.

It felt like pushing myself with a fused spine already set my limits somehow. I feel like I was for once selfish at the use of my body during the birth of my child and I now question my faith in something that I really never had faith in before. I had a thought earlier today that I can’t quite think of a time where I’ve used my stubbornness directly at my body, in order to push through…or, with what fills me with regret, even to push out.

It’s come time for me to push myself physically and mentally too. I had set my mentality next to a road block that I could in fact have likely toppled over; I never directly tried. There are many road blocks I currently need to topple, but have faith that a certain tenacity might be a way forward.

No real post due to training my cat to hunt cockroaches. He now has a taste for blood. Rar! This is Sparta!

When I went to S’s confirmation on Easter of this year, GS and I stopped at a gas station between Albuquerque and Amarillo. It wasn’t Clines Corners, a semi-famous ueber large rest stop full of random trinkets, but a bleak, small, and empty gas station before or after the commercial monstrosity. For the size of the the place, it contained something that made it large with beauty.

Posted in the women's bathroom

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I heard him grab the orange out of the bowl on the dining room table. He plopped down next to me and started slurping away. I first glanced over, then quickly turned to face him. “What…what the hell are you doing to that orange?”

A few weeks earlier we had bought some kiwis during our weekly shopping trip. After we had settled our food into the fridge and the pantry, I grabbed a kiwi from where I left it on the kitchen counter. I proceeded to take a knife, cut the kiwi in half, and then plucked a spoon from the drawer. I heard a “Whaaa…?” and saw him staring at me intently from the dining room.

“What are you doing with the kiwi?”
“I had planned to eat it…”
“But why cut it in half?”

I tilted my head quizzically. Saying nothing, I carved out a piece of kiwi with the spoon and popped it in my mouth. His eyes widened. I suggested he take the other half. I told him this somewhat explained his fancy kiwi peeling process I had seen at breakfast a while earlier. I thought it was quite fancy.

I watched, similarly awed, as he slurped at his orange, cut in half with the rind still attached. He pulled the meat of the orange out with a bite and replied in mid-chew, “I’m eating an orange?”

These are the small things that I enjoy when I notice our differences and how we learn from each other. And while I have not tried this methodology yet, I aim to with some flair that I was told about later.

“We actually put chili powder on top.”
“Of COURSE you do.”

It was going to be Dairy Queen, but then was moved to Vani. Haven’t heard of? Neither had I, but then I got involved with a southern wind. More and more I’m understanding the winds, but among people my age, with the slang, you sit between understanding and assuming. For me, it’s led to fading in and out of the conversation.

“Are you following it?” GS asks and his brother throws me a half smile. I hadn’t. A lot of introspection happens in the silences created when I weary of straining to pull a conversation apart. I had been enjoying the silence which has been rapidly filling with another language. And I’ll start missing the days I could opt out and sit happily listening to the meanings I hear inside myself.

The building I now work in is structured so that women from various offices can use their lunch hours to put on their tennis shoes, tight stretch athletic pants and throw on the old “1994 Gardening To Live” shirt to power-walk in the circles. Coming out of a meeting that left me questioning whether or not the power-coffee for the morning was a good idea, both myself and a coworker power walked to get quickly to the same destination on the other side of the building.

“You too?” I asked with a laugh.
“Oh my, I was about to burst,” she said leaning against the bathroom door. “I was about to stand up and walk out because I couldn’t hold it anymore.”
I laughed and we walked in separate stalls.

Suddenly, I heard retching in the stall next to me and small, painful gasps. I see a black skater shoe with purples laces brace against the tile adjoining our two stalls. The first thought was simple – freshman, day two of first-time-alone campus life… Those Jäger bombs can really be a killer going back the other direction.

I finished and was washing my hands as the girl trudged out of the bathroom. She had short-blonde disheveled hair, dyed green a few spots, an oversize black sweater, black glasses, and a lip-piercing. She bent over to wash out her mouth and stood back up with a bit of a sway. She reminded me of me when I was 19 and I somehow felt a nostalgia.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She blinked in surprise. “I had a kidney stone that passed last week and it’s really painful right now still.”

I did a bit of a motherly breath inhale, “Oh man, maybe you should go to the Health Center.”

She grimaced, “I’m on a whole bunch of medicines right now but it’s not helping.”

We move to the door and she says, “I’m even on an anti-nausea medicine, but I don’t think it’s helping.” She rubs her stomach slowly.

“Damn, irony is not fun,” I murmur.

I go left and she goes right. “Take care,” I added.

She calls out and I turn, “Hey…thanks for the concern.” Taken aback, I say, “…Of course.”

I briefly wonder then why this just isn’t common place and why you have to be thanked for it… but I still know exactly that it isn’t.