I have much more to say, especially as it pertains to MD and this "new" addition to our family, but I have some chores to do, too, so I'll make this a l-o-n-g one punctuated with ========= marks as I do my chores and then write some.
I go see my new T next week on Wed. (oh wow! in only 5 more days!) and I can hardly wait to get started! I have decided that I no longer "have to be ugly" anymore. I never was "ugly"! Dear R remembers me how I was as a child and a teenager. (He is now 70.) Oh, he took a pic of me on Halloween '17 and showed it to me. I LOOKED
AWFUL! Tired and horribly fat and I really LOOKED like I was "circling the drain", an expression I used to explain how I felt to DS as I began Keto in late Nov. '17. I'm no spring chicken even now nor do I look like "Twiggy" (if you're too young to remember, google it), but she was the new standard (rail thin) and I was judged by her and not the Marilyn Monroe image of the 50s. (I'm no Marilyn either, but her more ample Sz. 12 figure was more relatable.) Even my BFs, the twins, were skinny, as were my cousins from my Aunt M who we were close to geographically. If they were to be considered "normal" (and they honestly looked like some starving refugee children from Bangladesh or something), then I was "FAT". I have pictures of me in a leotard doing a perfect handstand/walkover with one of the twins doing the splits and holding my leg in that pose - and there wasn't an OUNCE of fat on me!!!!! There's another one of me in a dress in front of our fireplace filled with Xmas cards - AND I WAS NOT FAT, DAMMIT!! I wish I could have appeared there magically and hugged and held me as the lovable and beautiful child that I was and whispered the truth of it into my ear. But to enable MD to feel better about herself, she was more than happy to destroy me and my own self worth and self confidence and introduce self loathing in its place!!
In looking up Twiggy myself (just to jog my own memory of her from the 60s), I ran across some news that the child of Cher and Sonny Bono, Chaz Bono, has lost a whopping 85 lbs! I wondered just how he did it, and the reply triggered vivid memories, exactly what I'm about to address with my new T:
Bono has admitted that his issues from food may have stemmed from his family’s attitude towards weight, however.
“There was a lot of pressure to be underweight growing up,” Bono has said. He explained that even though he “wasn’t an overweight child,” he was still “put on diets all the time.”
OMG, Chaz! I totally understand!!!!!!! And my self image and self esteem and even taking the "easier" route of being LESS THAN pretty and even doing all that I can to actually
BE UGLY to satisfy the mean and hateful urges that made up MD I am beginning to understand just how foolish that is. I am approaching the dreaded fashion industry with caution and fascination. My own hair has been a prime example of how I was mistreated and ridiculed and how I ultimately coped. I found that if I simply did nothing to my hair, it would grow (duh!) and since my hair was very pretty AND long, I got many compliments on it. So I avoided beauty shops and just let it grow. I do that to this day. When it gets "too long", I grab the scissors and just lop off several inches of it and that's it.
Back in 2009, I began to feel the same positive way about "dolling up" (as MD called it), so I went down and got my hair done, color and all (first time for the coloring). I really liked it! And my clothing was in those days a clean regulation bus driving uniform or a muumuu at home. I actually had a guy who did my hair every couple of months, and I liked it. And then I met N. Was it the hair? Who knows? By this time I was VERY fat (306.4 lbs in 2007) and a T2D (also in 2007 300-400+ blood sugars with an a1c of 12!!!), but started on "Atkins low carb" for two years (yes, I've been at this a long time!!). My doctor was threatening starting me on insulin, but a bus driver cannot be on insulin and still drive, so we opted for the highest dose of meds available instead. I was getting sicker and sicker. None of that changed until last Nov. and this Ketogenic WOE + intermittent fasting TOGETHER. I'm just hoping that I'm not too far gone to come back.
When I was a kid, MD did my hair.
AND purchased or sewed all my clothes, daily chose
what I would wear,
AND dressed me. [read: CONTROL FREAK!!!!! and NOT NOT NOT a good nor a nurturing mother!!!!!!!!!] She also chose my hairdo: the length of it AND THE NEATNESS OF IT! That's why the goopy smelly "wave set", slime in a bottle, was used. "Not a hair out of place!!" I was more of a dolly than a human being. And I was expected to "go outside but stay clean"!!! And of course, being a REAL human being and a child, that rarely worked. She would get VIOLENTLY upset with me, and WHAMMO! I'd get a beating. Behind closed doors, of course. From an infant to a toddler to a schoolgirl to a teen to an adult.
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This will be a BIG week for me. Grocery shopping this morning (yes, I'm still up!
) plus I need to swing by Home Depot for more box cutters (for front room cleanup and garage cleanup, too) AND swing by Sears and arrange for them to deliver my new stove (FINALLY!) on Thursday. I've got an electrician coming on Tuesday + it's ELECTION DAY here (voting is a big deal for DS and I). AND I have my first appt. with my new T on Wed. What a week! We had the daylight saving time change yesterday, too. Wow.
I'm beginning to get sleepy now (God forbid!) so I think I'll just get dressed and grab a cuppa coffee (keto style) so I can get started.
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Just had my coffee, but...still tired at 7:30am. I'm wondering if this reluctance to "get started" is just all in my head. Definitely going to talk this over with my new T on Wed. Perhaps I could just get dressed, walk outside, get in my car, and GO GO GO!!
Pondering on all this, I recall how MD would "greet" me in the morning when I was VERY little (18 months - 5 yrs.) - she would call me LAZY and ridicule me for "having sleepers in my eyes" - I mean REALLY GET UPSET about it. I remember thinking about how AWFUL it was that I "got sleepers", but if I tried to rub them out myself, she would become enraged, tell me how UGLY I was, and very often she'd slap me for it. (I know, I know...slap me for WHAT? It's just how she rolled at that time.) It was always so difficult for me to try to wrap my head around her insanity, but as a child, I just assumed that she knew what she was doing and that waking up with sleepers in my eyes was a VERY bad thing that "nice" people never did! She shamed me from the minute I woke up (♪♫ Lazy
my name, will you get up, will you get up today!? ♫♪) until she'd shove me into the crib at the foot of their marital bed at 6pm so she could have "fun" with my father, ALONE, in the front room. I eventually came to believe her that I was always "wrong" and "icky" and I got in less trouble if I merely sat there like a lump and did NOTHING - it got me in less trouble...usually.
I need to get dressed and get out to my car. I need to go to my favorite grocery store since we are out of everything (nearly anyway) and they have avocados this week for 38¢ each and NY steaks for only $2.38/lb and pork chops (my favorite keto meal!)
for 88¢/lb! God, I love this store! DS is hitting Costco today for his hamburger meat (which he uses to fill 6 silicon "Bubba burger" forms and toss those in the freezer) and with a list that I still have to write for him. Man, if I lay down to write it (on my iPhone to send to his)...I won't get back up.
Well, at least I'm conflicted about it. And it's not as bad as it was when I was 19, married, and going through my first "clinical depression". Now that was REALLY bad! NO energy
whatsoever! And I stayed up all night playing Yahtzee by myself and slept all day. Hm. Sounds like now. Sort of. If there were videogames in those days (1965-66), I'd have probably done that instead of Yahtzee. I
never bathed,
never dressed,
never cleaned our apt., never did
anything. What I am experiencing now is like "clinical depression
LITE". I still rarely dress (muumuus are comfy and efficient and EASY to wear), but take regular showers and cook and do my laundry and am SLOWLY cleaning my house.
BTW, old Spot's foot is getting better by the day, but Ms. T is just doing the best that she can. She gets lost in the garage sometimes (it's where she sleeps and sometimes eats) or gets tangled up in gardening supports out in the garden, but she just keeps on keeping on, plodding around the yard as she does, and I do not believe that getting old is a capital offense, punishable by death. We are as supportive of her as we can be. I think she is stone deaf by now, and her "doggy Alzheimer's" is definitely advancing. She never barks or makes any sounds anymore; she used to be my most vocal dog, and this breed is known for their "talking". We love her so much! It's difficult to watch her decline by the day, but it's still a comfort to have her around. She'll be gone a long time when she is finally gone.
I'm going to write that Costco list for DS now, and I will just go gently with myself if I happen to conk out, but I'll also try not to (which is why this is "clinical depression LITE" and not just plain old "CLINICAL DEPRESSION"). Plus 38¢ is an awfully good price for avocados! And I miss having pork chops and a nice crispy salad as my main meal. SERIOUSLY! I really need to love myself here, both by getting myself moving AND forgiving myself for just being human if I don't happen to..."perfectly"! I'm getting more comfortable with that by the day.
Honeybera
There was even one ADULT who reached out tentatively and actually touched my son's arm when my son jumped and growled LOUDLY and scared the pants off this guy! 
New friends and actual family? I sure do hope so.
Awwww!!!
On YouTube this morning I watched Dr. Eric Berg talking about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and how the liver can repair damage to itself 
It's getting late and I do NOT want to miss this election!!