Seuss

I’ve had Barenaked Ladies on the brain recently. The band. Not actual bare-naked ladies.

They’ve been the common theme to my earworms lately. “Pinch Me.” “One Week.” And their new one, “Odds Are.” Because, well, odds are….

You know how sometimes things fall into place in ways that make your intended path in life just absolutely crystal clear? There’s been a lot of that lately, but it seems the fates, or God, or kismet, or whatever you want to call The Great and Powerful Oz of Our Lives (I tend to go with God, personally) are as indecisive as I am lately. Just as I have that clarity that, yes, this is exactly how things are supposed to work, something changes, someone backs out, some kink is thrown into the plot, and I’m left just as aimless as I was before.

The result has been a lot of push and pull, a lot of false starts. I kind of feel like a tether ball recently, whipped around by a couple of insane, ping-pong paddle wielding children dead set on destroying the entire toy store with a tennis ball tied to a string attached to a pole.

Getting back to school is enough of a beast when things are sane. This year, it’s simply been a feat. Earl is in this really weird space in her own brain and body lately, trying to sort out who she is personally and socially. It’s a hard thing to watch, but comforting to know from Jupotato that I was much the same at Earl’s age. I went through all of the mental craziness most kids go through in middle and high school when I was in elementary school. All the kids my age thought I was absolutely batshit. I vividly remember thinking the same thing about them, because thinking it about myself would have meant admitting that, yes, in fact, they were right. The trick with Earl, though, is going to be taking what I know now from where I was when and somehow guiding her through it. Yesterday, that path was laced with mines and nuclear meltdowns and tears, the tears being mostly mine as I have been on edge enough lately that we could be talking about what a beautiful day it is outside and I would have tears streaming down my cheeks FOR NO REASON AT ALL. No lump in my throat, no anxious feeling, just rivers of tears.

I have come to the stark realization that uncontrollable tears and excessive face sweat have doomed me from ever having any normal interactions ever again. Or clients. Or a job. Or new friends.

Although somehow I managed to make a friend, which was unexpected.

Lately with all of these signs and yearnings and gypsy feet pulling me in 15 directions, adding actual people to the mix is dicey. Even people I consider my friends have been keeping their distance because, hi, landmine here. But this year, I’ve made myself a goal that I’m going to walk Earl home from school every day it’s possible. I usually try to get there a bit early so I can claim my spot on what I have come to call “The Anti-Social Curb” and read (Kathy Reichs, of course, if you’re paying any attention the sidebar over on the right). I’ll wave and smile and say hello and exchange niceties, but I try to stay mostly to myself.

Yesterday, however, there was another mom there extra early. After kind of blindly walking around in circles for a moment, she wandered over to me. “I’m sorry, but this is the first time we’ve walked. Do most of the parents stand over there (on the school side of the street) or over here (where my curb is)?”

In my head, I said, “They stand over there if they want to talk. They stand over here if they’re anti-social or have dogs with them, or if they’re just cliquey and don’t like someone standing over there. I sit here to read my books and play with the dogs and wave at people because when I talk to them, the face sweat and verge-of-tears usually turn them off.”

I was braced for the conversation to be awkward and stilted. Instead, before I realized it, the kids were out. We’d laughed and lamented over being big girls trying to run and swapped stories about bubble life and exchanged phone numbers. And she didn’t even snurl at the face sweat! Awesome!

The encounter did one big thing for me, though: It made me realize I’m not really as insane as I feel at times. That, really, despite the crashing tides of whatever it is the universe is trying to tell me, the waves that tend to drown out that sensation of normalcy and even keel, I’ve still got it pretty much under control. We will survive. Odds are, after all, we’re gonna be alright.

When Earl was a baby, there was lots of shuffling back and forth between our home in the Carolinas and our families in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. TechPapa did heaps of traveling with work in there, too, so there were times when, for whatever reason, my mother, Earl, and I would drive one vehicle to one destination, meet TechPapa at some mid-point and do a car swap – his car for mine, mine for my mother’s, his for my mother’s, whatever.

On one fateful trip, TechPapa was working a football game in Knoxville, which meant we’d all met up in the Tennessee mountains then figure out where we were all headed and swap cars if needed. This particular time, it was decided that my mom and I would take Earl with us to Alabama to visit my grandmother in the van which TechPapa had driven over while he would take my mother’s car to Atlanta to visit a client.

Now this particular client isn’t a typical, everyday client. This particular client has full vehicle searches and bomb screenings and pat-downs. In other words, my husband took my mother’s car to the CDC. Which was great. All good, right?

Until the federal cop dude at the CDC asked my husband those fateful six little words: “Do you have anything to declare?” My husband, wonderfully blissful in my mother’s pimp-white Chrysler 300 stands confidently and says, “No, sir!”

At which time a second federal cop dude, who had been searching the car, appears from his search of the driver’s seat compartment and holds his bounty by it’s wooden handle above the roof of the car: “Then would you care to explain this?”

My husband gives the agent a look I can only imagine and, realizing the gravity of his possible situation – I mean, in their eyes he’s essentially smuggling a deadly weapon onto federal property – quickly spouts the first thing that comes to his mind.

“It’s my mother-in-law’s!”

You can imagine the chuckle that gave the guys at the gate. After a thorough search and checking the registration to insure that this is, in fact, not his vehicle but possibly one belonging to a maybe mother-in-law, they let him through, giving him a receipt to retrieve the item on his way back out through the gate.

My husband calls me in a hushed panic. “Tell your mother she nearly landed me in federal prison today! An AXE?? REALLY???”

“Um…oops?” was the best I could do before I nearly keeled over laughing. “We forgot! I swear! It’s been there forever and we don’t even think about it anymore.”

“Your mother ALWAYS carries an AXE in her car?? Should I be worried about this??” His whispered voice had jumped a couple of octaves.

“It’s not an AXE! It’s a HATCHET! She used to travel the river road all the time, and it’s there in case she has to cut down a tree or break out a window or something. I swear, that’s it!”

“A head’s up would have been nice.”

“But you’re not in jail, I assume. Since, you know, you’re calling me from your cell phone?”

“No! But I’m pretty sure I’m the laugh of the CDC today.”

Which was just about right. As he left, he pulled back up to the gate and before he could even hand the claim check to the agent, the agent grinned. “Mother-in-law’s axe, right?”

Funny. That was the last time we played car roulette when he was going anywhere but home.

And today, when he had to drive back to ATL to visit the CDC, I had the passing impulse (which I squashed, thank you) to plant the hatchet back under the seat of his pickup. You know, just to see if the boys at the gate remembered him.

I am not a dresser-upper.  I mean, I do Thai Yoga bodywork, for which my wardrobe consists of layered tanks and tees with yoga pants.  I knock around town and have legs whiter than a Cullen, so I wear jeans.  And, and, I’m a blogger, which everyone knows all bloggers wear pajamas all day.  So I’m kind of doomed.

When I started my occasional runnings with HAM and TPO, I began to feel a little lot under-dressed, but, you know, body image issues and dear LORD, I do NOT want to go clothes shopping.  I’d really rather drink lava while sitting in a bathtub full of rattlesnakes, thanks.  I can do cute when I need to, but daily?  Meh.  Add to that that I’m a Mary Kay consultant and, well, I’m a giant big ball of dressy/slouchy, occasionally made-up but usually not conundrum.

Not that any of this is anything new.  My mother used to tell me I had two modes of dress:  Goodwill and Kay Free (the latter being a reference to an always perfectly coiffed, typically rhinestoned, on top of the trends and proud of it, great friend of hers).  I was that awkward kid growing up who had a perm from 4th grade on (I grew up in the 80s, back off), who insisted on wearing my mother’s way-too-big clothes to school in middle school with the pants literally safety-pinned to my bra because I thought that was just AWESOME.  Are you ready for a taste of extreme awesomeness?  Do you think you can handle it?  Behold, my third, fifth, and seventh grade school pictures.

I have put them out there, therefore they cannot be held against me by any of you because I just beat you to the punch. Neener.

This morning, I was dutifully getting Earl ready for Second Grade Awards Day.  We were standing in my bathroom as I was flat-ironing her typically unruly hair.  She was admiring her sparkly dress in the mirror when she glanced at me.  In my haste to get her up, I’d thrown on yesterday’s jeans, skipped the bra, and hadn’t brushed my hair or my teeth.  “Mom,” she started, her eyes still slid sideways toward me, “Parents need to dress up today, too, you know.”

Well, I had planned on gussying up a little more than usual.  “Oh? I can’t wear jeans?”

“No, you can wear jeans,” she quickly tossed out. “You just need to wear a cool shirt.”

I begin mentally flipping through my ‘cool shirt’ wardrobe – a quick flip since I have maybe two. “Like which shirt?”

“Like your Cornbread Ted shirt. That shirt is VERY cool.”

I do love this shirt.

Now that request, my darling, sweet, loving, brilliant child, I can handle.  For that, I will even put on make-up.

My ear has suddenly started ringing.  Isn’t that supposed to mean something?  I know burning is someone talking about you, but what is ringing?  Someone singing about you?  Lord, I hope not.  Laughing at you?  Perhaps.  The voices in my head?  Ooh…

I did a Very Brave Thing on Friday.  My husband took a break from his workday to come play photog while I convinced a dear friend of mine to come play demo dummy so I could take some pictures of me doing Thai massage.  Because, honestly, every time Thai massage comes up in a conversation (which with me being the kind of person who will go all awkward and beg someone to let me work on them), I get weird looks and a “Whuh?”  It’s at that point that I haul out my schpiel: It’s a form of passive yoga that uses stretches and compressions to open up the joints, free the muscles, and work key acupressure points to relieve pain and help the body heal itself.  People catch on “yoga” usually and say, “Oh, cool!” but, honestly, they don’t have a lick more of an idea of what it is than they did when I started.

Well, it’s high time I got my website up and running, and I’m doing a little marketing campaign for the teachers at Earl’s elementary school, so I decided to face the inevitable:  Someone is going to have to see my fat ass doing these crazy poses to even begin to understand what exactly it is I do.

I. Hate. Having my picture made.  And that’s made up and dressed up and hair done and tummy reeled in by 15 layers of spandex and Spanx.  Strip most of the make-up, throw me outside on a mat in my front yard on a nearly 90 degree spring day in full sun so that both model and I are slippery with sunscreen and sweat, and tell me to do Thai, and I would typically run away screaming, never to be seen again.  Only this time, I couldn’t.  This time, it had to be done.  So I bucked up and did it.  And while I’m thrilled with the results, it still left me with that weird ringing in my ear.

Hello, Fatniss Everdeen. And, oh HAI, body image issues much?

Six years ago, I had a doctor look me square in the eye, the results of copious hormone testing and an ultrasound visually confirming PCOS in his hands, and say, “You know what?  Don’t even worry about losing the weight.  It’s not going to happen.  Just worry about stabilizing as best you can.”

To some women, that would be a (sideways) good thing to hear a doctor say: “Hey!  Here’s your Get Out of Fat Jail Free card!  We’re not going to wail on you for not losing weight.  Let’s just try to keep it where it is and we’ll be all good!”

To me, I heard: “Abandon hope, all who enter here.”

I don’t LIKE being this size.  I’ve never liked being this size.  Yes, I’ve worked out.  Yes, I’ve dieted.  Before I had Earl, I lost 30 lbs in 3 months on Weight Watchers.  After Earl, after the PCOS reared its ugly head, I did Weight Watchers for 3 months and lost THREE POUNDS.  I spent a month at Duke Diet and Fitness Center and, yes, I lost 10 pounds, but the moment I stepped out of the facility, I stopped losing.  I’m still at essentially the same size I was when I left there.  I never even got to buy new clothes.

I have a new doctor who’s working with me on the weight thing from a chronic Iron/D/B12 deficiency standpoint.  He has me off of ALL grains, eating more steak, and has given me permission to experiment on myself.  My weight has not changed much cumulative, but I’m down 2.5″ in my waist, which is his sole measure of “success” – that and how I feel, which is “BETTER!  YAY!”

But I look at those pictures and that 2.5″ seems so insignificant.  When will it move faster?  When will my fingers stop looking fat?  When will my ass not begin mid-thigh and go all the way up to my lower rib?

And I realize, sitting here this morning, that that’s the ringing in my ear – the negative self-talk and the voices of others in my past.  What I should be hearing is that despite my size, I can do this amazing practice.  I am training for my first 5K.  I do have more energy.  I am in more control of my destiny, and I’m actively making decisions that will lead me down a path more of my own choosing rather than leaving me feeling like fat flotsam in a foamy flow.

I’ll never be a size 6.  I likely will never be a 10 or maybe even a 12 again.  My body just simply will not allow it.  But, dammit, I can shoot for the stars.  I may only land on the moon, but you know what?  That’s not a bad place to be.  At least maybe up there, my ears won’t ring.