Enabled

I wonder if it’s possible to be a self-enabler?  If so, that’s me.  I could talk myself into, and out of, any problem or want I could have.  Want a Snicker bar or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s?  Okay, no problem, it’s just one little sweet treat.  Don’t want to clean the house?  I can always do it tomorrow.  Ha.  I’m the worst.  I self soothe, I convince myself it’s okay, I promise myself tomorrow will be different.  Tomorrow is never different.  I’ve always been like this.

It occurred to me earlier, though, that my husband is, too.  He’s an enabler.  If I want a candy bar or a burger, all I have to do is say so and he’s more than happy to get me two.  If I want something, anything, he’s there to give it to me.  I used to smoke.  Not much, but I did, and then I quit.  Cold turkey, I just stopped doing it because I didn’t want to anymore.  Still, every time we go to the tobacco store here in town, he asks me if I want anything.  I know it’s at least partially his desire to see me happy.  If he could get me something, anything, no matter how small, he will.  It’s always been like that with us, but to some degree it’s unhealthy, too.

If I enable my naughtier habits, like chocolate, and so does he, who’s left to say that it might not be a great idea?  The answer, of course, is no one.  The problem is, he can’t say no, or tell me not to, out of fear that it might be taken wrong.  When I was much, much lighter than I am now, my ex told me that I needed to see a doctor or get counseling for my weight.  That really hurt. Yes, I was a little overweight, but not so severely that he should say something so mean.  It wasn’t a good approach, he called me fat without coming out and saying, “You’re fat.”  He was mean, Hubby’s not.  He can’t do that, he loves me the way I am, and it keeps him from helping me resist the urge to have what I want, when I want it.

He loves me the way I am.  God, all this talk about Snickers and I want one.  Someone save me from myself.

Needing change…

I tell you, I have been slackin’ lately.  Slacking on everything, not just the blog.  Slacking on Plurk, on housework, on reading, on paying the bills and getting groceries, I’ve even been slackin’ on World of Warcraft and that’s a freaking video game.  Mostly, it’s because I’m feeling somewhat down lately.  With all the illness and death that seems to be going on in my family, I’m feeling sort of blah.  Add to that the fact that being flat broke means I can’t go see my mom, dad, sister and nephews, who are actually in TX, about 6 1/2 hours drive from here.  The whole thing is just yuck.  Most of all, I can attribute my generally feeling of blah to the fact that I need a lifestyle change.

I’m back in school, that’s helping, but I need something more.  I need more exercise, I need to eat three square meals a day, I need to shed some pounds.  Don’t we all, I know that’s what you’re thinking, but I have more to lose than most people.  I need to be able to look in the mirror everyday without saying, “my god, is that really me?”  Every single day, every day, I see myself and wonder what the hell has happened to me.  How did I gain so much weight?  How did I get here, looking so old?  The actual answer is that I have no earthly idea.  No… that’s not true.  I’ve let myself go, been completely neglecting myself, and that is how I’ve come to be like this.  I’ve eaten what I want, when I want.  I’ve been eating one meal a day for the last nine years.  One meal a day is not enough to sustain a human being, my body is stupid and thinks I’m starving and is storing away for the freaking winter.  Ugh!  I have to eat more if I want to weigh less.  That sounds like such an oxymoron, but it’s true.

So, starting on July 1st, I am going to try to dedicate myself to eating better, getting more exercise, and finding a way to have a more healthy sleep schedule.  According to my psych book, I have so much sleep debt, they should be hauling me off to debters prision –thank god they don’t have those anymore, I’d have been working it all off along time ago!  I’m also going to start taking Alli.  My sister is taking it and it’s helped her.  She has some of the same problems I have, notably a difficult thyroid and she says it works.  I read up and apprently it used to be perscription only.  Now it’s OTC and the only diet pill approved by the FDA that is widely available now.  I need something to help me, this is it.

I figure that I have to do it now.  I have to get in better shape because losing weigh in your 30’s just get’s harder and harder.  I have a long way to go.  According to sparkpeople’s site, It’ll be June 2009 before I’ll be done losing, if I lose 2.5 lb a week.  Add that up.  I’m so tired of being disgusted with myself.  So tired of wondering if I’m going to look like this forever.  Time for a change.

I’m also going to start trying to get more exercise, which is going to be tricky.  I am very out of shape.  I took walking a few summers ago and thought it was going to kill me.  Since then, I’ve actually gained 15 lbs.  I didn’t lose a pound in the whole 6 weeks, but when I stopped walking 4x a week, I gained weight.  Stupid “fitness” class.  I want to do yoga, but I have a husband who’s generally unsupportive of that plan.  He sort of scoffs at the idea of yoga.  We talked about it the other day, because I’m extremely self-conscious, so much so in fact that the idea of working out in front of him makes me want to shrivel up and die.  I’m very private about some things, this is one of them.  Taking walking, where we had to work out around other people, was absolutely terrible for my anxiety!  Anyway, apparently he doesn’t consider yoga exercise.  I tried to explain to him that it’s a matter of toning and breathing, but he just gave me the flat glare that said he wasn’t buying it.  Well, I’ve decided that I don’t care what he says, I’m going to give it a shot and if he want’s to laugh at me or scoff at yoga as exercise, I don’t care (which is a lie, but I’ll deal with it).

He’s usually so supportive.  He tells me I’m beautiful, he tells me he loves me the way I am, but it’s difficult because I know it makes him uncomfortable when I talk about needing to lose weight.  I have no idea why, I know it’s not insecurity on his part, but my god… I need support or I won’t make it.  He always says, “Okay, just don’t go overboard” and I have no idea what that means.  I’m pretty sure it means, “don’t talk to me about it, or mention it, or act like you’re dieting.”  I just don’t know.

Either way, come Tuesday, I’m striving for a lifestyle change.  Wish me luck and I’ll try to be more diligent about posting. Blogging is a big part of my life, I need it to feel normal.  Maybe, if I can get back to blogging regularly, everything else will pick up too.  Best to you all.

Trying…

It has been one heck of a bad week, I must say.  Forgive my short disappearing act, I’ve been somewhat down with all that’s been going on.  Today, hubby and I went out of town for his step-grandmother’s funeral.  She was 96 years old, she died of old age.  She’d been in nursing/hospice for a year now, her health gradually deteriorating all the while.  Her passing was no surprise not anyone.  Sad, yes, but not a surprise.  She was a lovelly lady, very charming and friendly.  Going out of town was a tiring experience, I have to say.  Hubby and I were up at 3:30am so we could be ready to leave at 6am, so we could get there in time to be there to ride with the immediate family in the limosine.  I’ve never seen this done until today, I didn’t even realize you could buy that as part of the package.  Apparently you can.  The limo was a caddy, a beautiful car, very comfortable.  It would have been lovely had I not ridden on the seat facing backward and gotten sick… not once, not twice, but three times riding backward.  I get terrible vertigo, which doesn’t help anything.  Luckily, I’d not eaten yet at that point, lucky for everyone involved.  As I write this, I’m still feeling vaugely nauseous.

We got back into town about 3:30 this afternoon and I can say with all honesty, I was never so glad to be home.  I’m quite sleepy, so when this entry is done, it’s off to nappy town for me, at least for a few hours.  I hope this post makes sense.  All of hubby’s family was there, save for his uncle, who had had surgery for a torn retna that didn’t fix the problem, so he was at the doc today.  His step-siblings (the only siblings he had) were there, though their spouses were not, and it was all quite nice.  Hubby and I left to come home before lunch.

Also, my grandmother is very sick.  She was found to have overian cancer that spread, she had surgery, she went home, she got very sick and had to go back.  Yesterday, she had surgery again to fix the absess infection that was making her terribly sick.  Her white blood cells are too high, her potassium is too low, and she’s going to be in the hospital another week, at least.  She’ll also be starting chemo soon.  We’ve been told that even at her age (74 years old, I believe) and in her current state of health, she has an 80% chance to respond favorably to the chemotherapy.  80% is very good odds with cancer.  My mom told me yesterday that my grandmother’s cancer is stage 3.  Apparently, if it had gone any longer, if she had reached stage 4, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything for her.  We’re all so glad that they caught it in time to help.

My parents are going to be in TX from Friday to Monday, but TX is so big, and Plainview is so far from us, especially with the current gas prices, that we’re not going to be able to go see them.  I just hope they have a safe trip here and back and that my grandmother starts doing better very soon.  It’s been a very trying time for my family.

On that note, now that we’re all caught up, I’m going to go take a nap.  I’m exhausted and not used to waking up at 3:30am.  Hell, I’m usually going to sleep at 3:30 or 4am!  I hope everyone is doing a bit better than I have been.

Firefox 3

I reported a few days ago that I was taking part in Firefox download day.  I asked my husband to do the same but he, true to form, managed to forget.  Though their site was down for part of the day with some serious traffic and server issues, Firefox is still reporting more than 8 million downloads of Firefox 3 over 24 hours.  It’s more downloads than they’ve ever had in one day, hopefully enough to claim their sought after world record.  I have little doubt that they’ll suceed in their effort.  How, after all, could Guinness turn down such a fantastic world effort?

Did you download on World Download Day?  I did.

So far, I’m finding Firefox 3 absolutely delightful.  My only problem thus far is that many of the addons I was using previously aren’t working because they’ve not been updated.  I’m sure that in time they’ll all be up to date, most notably the StumbleUpon toolbar and Del.icio.us user tools.  I was also using a non-standard theme because I found the Firefox 2 theme to be, well, boring.  The Firefox 3 standard theme, however, is actually quite fun, and so far, I’m not feeling the desire to chage it up.  Their security features have also been updated and are less obtrusive than they used to be, which is quite nice, actually.  All in all, firefox 3 is proving to be as charming as they promised.

Hypothetical?

Some friends were over to the house a few weeks ago to play 7th Sea.  We got to chatting, as we do, and never got around to the game.  The chat, however, proved to be rather interesting and worth the time we lost gaming.  We began discussing “hypotheticals,” which for the most part weren’t exactly hypothetical.  The discussion was all over the place by the end, so many questions and possible situations were put on the table that I’m pretty sure none of them got any sort of answer at all.  My friend and I would agree on some things, her hubby and mine would agree on others.  It was almost a battle of the sexes… almost.  There was, however, one or two situations I’ve been thinking about quite a bit that I wanted to run past y’all.  So, here’s the first situation and this one is hypothetical…

One party to a relationship is doing something that the other disapproves of or that makes the other unhappy.  It is absolutely in the power of the doer to make their partner feel better by immediately ceasing said behavior.  Should they do it?

Between the four of us the hypothetical was never actually answered.  The situation just brought up more questions.  Questions like, “What if it would make the doer more unhappy to stop said behavior than it’s currently making their partner?” and “How can the doer know that it’s actually their behavior that’s causing their partner’s unhappiness?” and “What if the partner is just blowing the doer’s actions or behaviors out of proportion and that’s what’s making them unhappy?”  No resolution.

The second hypothetical was related to the one above, but somewhat different, it went like this…

One partner to a relationship has a friend that the other partner absolutely does not approve of.  What should happen?  Should the partner who doesn’t like the friend suck it up?  Should spouses have the right to dictate to one another who they can be friends with?  Is it the responsibility of a married person to form responsible friendships that in no way danger their relationship?  If one partner feels threatened by the others friend, should the partner consider his/her’s partner’s feelings over that of the friend in question?

You can clearly see how the two hypotheticals could be linked.  Yet, like the first situation, this one could come to no firm resolution… hell, it could come to no resolution whatsoever.  And, like the first situation, more questions came of it, questions like, “If one partner doesn’t like the others friend, perhaps they’re misperceiving the friendship, especially if said friendship is with a person of the opposite sex” and “If one partner has a friend of the opposite sex that their partner want’s them to discontinue seeing and the partner refuses, why is said partner considering their friend over their partner if in fact ‘nothing’s actually going on’ like the partner said?”

It’s easy to see, in hindsight, why we couldn’t answer the questions.  This one came down to women on one side, men on the other.  My friend and I were both fairly resolute in the idea that it is the responsibility of a person in a relationship to form friendships that are responsible.  That is, that married women should never form friendships with single men, and vice versa.  My hubby and her’s seemed to think it was perfectly okay to spend time with a person of the opposite sex if they were single and their spouses and partners shouldn’t care.

So tell me, what do you think about our hypothetical debacles?