30 lbs

I don't really know quite when I started losing the weight.

Guess Your Weight by marmal8

When I started West Coast Swing, in April 2011, I had one pair of jeans that fit. They were my favorite jeans, the ones I found for $30 that usually retail for $100 or more, fancy Parasucos unlike any jeans I have purchased before or since. So unique they required a special belt.

In June, at my "I've lost my job; let's run all the tests" physical, my physician remarked that I'd lost weight since my previous visit, which was probably in January since I go every 6 months to monitor my medication. Or I was going. I should go.

Sometime in the summer I started cinching the belt closer and closer to the actual ring that was supposed to be used to close it, holding up the Parasucos by sheer force of my affection for them. I dug out a pair of Luckys that had been in the back of my closet and hadn't fit on my thinnest days.

By Adains [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Around September I had to admit I'd lost weight and bought a new pair of jeans. Size 8.

Then it got cold, I got awesome boots, and I needed skinny jeans. I could actually wear skinny jeans. Size 6.

It got warmer, and the 8s were looking ridiculous. My size medium belts didn't have enough holes to hold them up. Size 4.

And then last week, the 4s were feeling baggy. I hoped they just needed a good washing, but then I actually weighed myself (I don't own a scale, but I was at J's house and she has one so I figured why not) and saw another 9 pounds were gone. I thought I'd stopped. I thought I was done.

Not for a moment do I recommend my weight loss plan, which was something like

1. Lose job
2. Sleep 12 hours a day
3. As a result, only have time to eat 2 meals
4. Not really care about food anyway
5. Dance at least once a week
6. Yoga twice a week

Actually, numbers 5 and 6 I do whole-heartedly recommend.

This is all coming to a point, I promise.

In preparation for my Great Floor Adventure, I am packing, packing, packing. There are many clothes in many sizes that include "Large" and "10." These clothes do not fit me, but I cannot bring myself to put them on my body and prove that they do not fit so that I can let go of them.

I can't let go of the body I used to have and the clothes that used to fit it.

I can't let go of the idea that I might fit into them again.

I've got a whole basement where I can store these clothes, these past skins that no longer serve me, but that's just carrying baggage around, isn't it?

I never know what's going to happen.

Holding on has to do with fear. Fear has to do with not being able to trust. Not being able to trust has to do, maybe, with the world not being solid. With the world changing all the time. With people changing. All the time. With myself, and my relationship to myself. Changing. All the time.

On some days that change is beautiful. It is what is exciting about being alive. It is looking around the corner, the first flowers of spring, hearing from a friend who has been silent, unexpected opportunities.

Somehow my body has gotten caught up in both fear of change, and expectation that there will be change. That the weight will come back as mysteriously and effortlessly as it left. That the annoyance of having to buy new, smaller clothes will be replaced by the annoyance of having to buy new, larger clothes, along with the realization that I had those larger clothes and gave them away.

My body doesn't let me down. It stays healthy. Its bones don't break. Its muscles, though sore after a weekend of yoga, continue to move it in amazing and new ways. It rarely gets sick; it has no chronic diseases. But it does like to change size and shape.

When the floors are done, when I've moved into my bedroom, when I unpack: that is when I need to start letting this part go.

Hell yeah you can do yoga!

Cool thing about getting to know someone: I am now an expert on something.

All of a sudden I'm an expert on yoga (which I'm not) but to him I am, because it's totally outside his experience. I'm sure he's an expert on something too. We all are.

So I'm trying to explain what yoga is.

When I teach I start with breathing and the physical practice. That's what they signed up for (maybe). I start explaining here, with posture and alignment, things that make sense because everyone has a body.

Because he does want to get to know me, and because anytime the question is "What did you do today?" the answer is going to include "yoga," we return to this again and again.

He says, "I don't think I would be good at yoga."

 Source: fridgedoor.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Can you breathe with awareness? Can you be here, now? Can you pay attention to what your body and your life are telling you? Hell yeah, you can do yoga. You've probably done it a hundred times already. You just thought you were dancing or playing or fixing something or falling in love.

Antici...

In just about two weeks, I am getting my floors done. I am so stinking excited. And, so stinking not-ready. As with all things, there is never enough time. I've been scrounging boxes out of the back room at work (no one ever recycles anything, apparently, but at least they don't throw things away?) and lugging them home (they're quite big and it's been quite hot) and packing up clothes, books, and dishes.

I never really finished unpacking from moving in, so you can imagine how this totally feels like going backwards.

And yet it is going to change everything about my home.

No more fur-encrusted carpets.

No more coffee and cat stains.

No more ugly light green.

So easy to clean. So elegant. So much more me.

It also means I've got some crafting to do.

The problem with hardwood floors, of course, is that they are hard wood and easily dinged. And not very warm, but I will worry about that later. Still, I do want some floor prettiness to break up the brown.

Jess over at East Coast Creative made these great floor cloths.

I love the totally geeky silly pictures these fine ladies take of their, um, creative process.

Source: eastcoastcreativeblog.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Of course I need fabric. Jess found hers at Joann, but Joann is a huge time-suck for me; I find myself spending 2 hours there and not buying a single thing. Fortunately I can sort their fabric online by color. UNfortunately I'm not seeing a whole lot of patterns I like, so that means MOAR WEBBYSITES.

Oh wait, someone, probably Jess and Monica, told me about this:

Source: spoonflower.com via Katherine on Pinterest

And hey, tablecloths! Oddly, finished fabric is often less expensive than raw fabric. And then it can just be repurposed.

Source: hayestone.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

The T-shirt surgeon in me likes this, even though it's not at all classy.

Source: etsy.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Painting rugs seems to be all the rage on Pinterest. (Once again it's Mon & Jess who made me aware of this trend...see, something did come out of working at The School That Shall Not Be Named!)

Source: mysimplehomelife.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

I'm not totally sure how non-DIY that will look, but I'm expecting that simpler is better. The Pinterest world seems to say that sisal absorbs paint really well; I think I'll try it for the porch rug first.

Hmmm ... time to contemplate, experiment, and see what happens. 

Why mantras

A little over two years ago I walked into my first Kundalini class with K, and things have never quite been the same.

My yoga practice was mostly just a physical practice at the time, something we friends did together, and went out to eat after. Sometimes it seemed like there was too much breathing. Savasana was the hardest pose. When there was a substitute I would be irritable, impatient. Why are they so slow? How long are we going to hold this pose? I wanted "my" teacher.

Then I was on spring break. I had my days free, and the studio was doing a lunchtime series. I had been curious about what this "Kundalini" was, so J and I went.

The first thing K had us do was get up and dance.

I love to dance, if that isn't obvious. I was taking Afro-Modern dance, and sometimes I went to the Yogarhythmics at the studio. We noodled about for a bit. We did some sun salutes. And then we did these kooky exercises that we had to do for set amounts of time.

And there were reasons we did them.

We chopped through the negative thoughts and experiences, we pushed away the debris, we surrounded ourselves with protection like giant butterfly wings.

And all the while she spoke words that I had no recollection of ever hearing. Words that, if I ever heard them, never stuck.

You are light; you are bright; you are beautiful. You are kind. You are strong. Wahe guru.*

It couldn't have been much more than a week later that the guy I was seeing wrote me an e-mail explaining that he just didn't have anything to give right then. I was far from home, administering standardized tests for the state, staying in a room with three other women I barely knew. I read this e-mail while the kids were testing. We came back to the B&B after testing, after lunch. I curled up on the couch, covered myself with a blanket, and repeated the mantra until I fell asleep.

When I woke up, it wasn't okay but it was better.

Three days later I was back at home. I called my realtor.** I found my house a few days after that.

For the next year and half, K was "my" teacher. I went to her class weekly, rarely missing unless I was ill. She became my close friend, my guide, tried to help me as much as she could when I lost my job. Through teacher training, I've been able to let go of the idea that I have one teacher or one practice. But I still make it to her class as often as I can, and I still find that insight comes to me through meditation and through mantra.

Today as we were chanting Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo*** I remembered.

I don't have to be anyone but myself.

I don't have to do anything that is not true to who I am.

It's hard, sometimes, to do that. It's hard sometimes to know who that true self is. And when I come up against something that's new, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, my instinct is to run from it, because it's not what I know. My instinct is to resist.

So now I'm getting to know someone new. Someone who is not like anyone I've ever dated before, except the very first person I dated. Someone who doesn't fit in with my idea of who I date, at least not as far as I know at this point. I don't know what to do. I feel it's important to negotiate this situation honorably, without creating tension for myself or him, because this person is part of the dance community, and I've only just gotten that to be a not-awkward place for me to be.

But there is a teacher inside me. There is a self that knows what to do. I will try to be still and listen.



* Wahe guru means a lot of things, depending on who you ask. Wonderful teacher. Hooray for existence. A greeting. A name of God. A guru, or teacher, takes a student from darkness into light.
** ...whose name was given to me by another guy who had separated himself from me for similar reasons three months before.
*** I call upon Divine Wisdom -- again, among other things. I listen to all the teachers in me and around me.

Do or do not

I'm exhausted today.

I had a list of about a billion things I wanted to get accomplished between this weekend and next but I'm modifying that list, because my body absolutely rebelled and forced me to take a nap so I would stop trying to do things.

Things coming up:

Floor refinishing
I do need to finish packing away 3 rooms and 2 hallways, but I do not need to rip up the carpet myself. I do need to call and establish that they are ripping up carpet and I am paying for that and times and key exchange and cat containment procedures. I do not need to relocate the cats. I do not need to have this done while I am away, and have that added stress of someone coming in to check on cats while floors are being done. I do not need to shop for rugs and DIY supplies.

Knitting projects
I do not need to finish any of these right away. Babies stay small for quite a while. I probably will finish them, though, because knitting involves sitting still, which I do need to do.

Teaching a yoga class on Thursday
I do need to put together a sequence, but I do not need to come up with the best yoga class ever. I have enough 20-minute sequences from training that I can pull something together.

Yoga retreat
I do need to ask someone to take care of the cats. I do need to prepare by doing some reading. I do not need to do all the reading I haven't gotten to yet. I do need to see about carpooling. I do not need to drive alone, which I find stressful and boring.

Guy on the horizon
I do need to be kind, communicative, and honest. I do not need to move everything around in my schedule to cram him in.

Job hunt
I do need to apply to another job. I do not need to do it today, because I am tired.

Garden
I do need to plant that rudbeckia. I do not need to do it today. I do not need to weed today.

Really the only things I need to do today are buy food and eat dinner.

9 probable fallacies

1. If he knew my secrets, he would find me too complex.
2. If only one person is interested, that means I'm settling for the only thing I'm being offered.
3. Similar education, politics, and religion are indicators of compatibility. (Extra bonus example of fallaciousness: Whether these things are similar or different is unknown.)
4. Once something is started, it can't be stopped without bitterness apparent for all to see.
5. Having a large group of strange-quaintances know about my personal life is bad.
6. My friends will think he's not good enough.
7. He won't be able to relate to my friends.
8. He won't be able to relate to me.
9. Letting someone care gives him the power to destroy me.

Here I am: jumping the gun.

3 reasons I'm sad today

1. I've filled up my life with things and this doesn't seem to leave enough room for people.
2. I don't want to give up any of the things (dance, yoga, house-fixin', yardwork).
3. I know that I need to add another thing (job-applying) if I'm going to avoid a major fall after this job ends in August.