Saturday, February 9, 2008

It all leads somewhere

Over the last few weeks, I have spent a lot of time reading and watching TV. Oh yeah. And spending time with the cats. Oh, and plotting new craft stuff. Well, the craft stuff is an old idea. I just finally located the materials that clicked. Maybe it had something to do with that post in which Fluffycat mentioned doing the things you enjoyed when you were young. And sewing? I can lose myself completely when sewing. For up to 12 hours. And I mean lost in the way that I suddenly realized that I've let every cigarette that I've lit burn out in the ashtray. And hey, I'm hungry. Because somehow I've forgotten to eat.

But that's not the point of this post. This is one of those posts I had to let marinate in my mind because there was so much going on. And sometimes it's hard to find a starting point.

Maybe the weather hasn't been of much help recently. But we've had a week of sun now. I went to the dry cleaners Saturday to pick up the stuff I had dropped off last week and to drop off some more. The woman said, "You have a lot of skirts." And then she peeked around the counter to see what I was wearing. "Just like last week, you're not wearing a skirt. I don't understand." But I did. First it was cold and wet and I didn't want to wear a skirt for fear of freezing to death. Then I started to feel bloated and I just wanted to "hide" like I did in high school. Back then I lived in baggy pants and sweaters. Once a year I would wear a dress or a skirt. Seriously. Well, except when I had to do things with family.

But let's go back a day. Friday night I got home from work after taking 2400 mg of ibuprofen over a nine hour period and I was cranky and still in pain. After feeding the cats, I went to do what I always do -- put on a pair of pajama pants. But the first pair I put on were way too snug and what's the point of wearing pajama pants if they're uncomfortable? So I cursed the water retention and found another pair that were actually comfy. Then I curled up under the comforter with the remote control in hand. I was probably asleep by 8 since the combination of things makes me really sleepy.

I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a Tyra rerun. My first reaction was to turn away immediately but Mary J. Blige was on. And she was talking about the hell of hormones and periods. And I had to watch. She said that there's only one week out of the month that she's happy with her body -- or something along those lines. And I knew what she meant. Because there's only about one week each month during which I feel like I can reach into the closet and wear whatever I feel like wearing. And then they moved onto other topics so I changed the channel.

But I thought some more for the next 24 hours or so. I thought about how much I love the show "How to Look Good Naked." And about some of the stuff that I have been reading about women and body image over the last few weeks. (And in my mind, I don't think that a woman's size matters much as long as she's healthy. And I'm not so I've also taken up working out over the last few weeks. Because even though I'm still relatively small, I'm not in as good of shape as I was in the past.) I go through at least a five pound fluctuation of weight over the course of a month -- sometimes more. And as BWB has pointed out, that can be a change in a size for me. And I was left with the thought of, "No wonder women have such issues with body image. Our bodies go through all of these changes over which we have little control."

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