I AM in shape. ROUND is a shape.

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Sometimes you have to slow down, turn off all the noise and hub-bub around you and just breathe.  Even if you don’t have the time to leisurely stroll through the rose-gardens of your mind to smell the blossoms.  Even if you have barely 10 minutes to sleep/eat/breathe/live between the responsibilities and pressures coming at you from all sides; please take a moment, however small, and remember to take at least one breath for yourself before getting back on that frantically-paced treadmill of activities we call life!

Or, the short version, if you’re not feeling so philosophical this morning, “Heehee!  Mice on wheel!  Maybe I should take a look around to make sure I’m not getting too caught up in the “what is getting done, has yet to be done, will soon be done, must be done…gah!” cycle like those mice!”

Just a mental reminder from your friendly self-acceptance promoter to take a deep breathe for yourself once in a while!

I found this to be very inspirational; a truly well-worded way to get you thinking of what knowing yourself (and learning to love yourself) can mean, how deeply you need to probe beyond the shape of our bodies to truly get at the person you are.  Understanding goes beyond the physicality of our bodies….

The Invitation (by Oriah)

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

As I sit here jazzing away to music making me think of bright Mardi Gras colors and Big Brass Jazz numbers ringing in the streets I can’t help but think of how very easy it is for one little shift in perception to make all the difference in the world.

This time I’m referring to food.  Namely, “Fake Foods“.  In particular, Smashed Cauliflower.  Now, as any other low/no-carb dieter or retiree from that full-time mental occupation can tell you, smashed up cauliflower (with a TINY smattering of butter and maybe spices) was intended to replace the texture and desire for good old mashed potatoes. And boy during my South Beach Diet era did I ever TRY to look at these mashed up white florets and BELIEVE that was the truth.  I mean, it was written down, others said it was so, it MUST be true!  Mashed cauliflower was JUST like potatoes…for those who had been denied actual potatoes for maybe 15 straight years. Living on an island that grows nothing but cauliflower. Devoid of potatoes. Or perhaps to someone never having tasted an actual potato….but I digress.

The point was that this tip was out there and Confirmed with Actual Confessionals (your results may vary) so I tried my damnedest to make these buggers taste like something they were not.  And you know what?  Not ONCE did this vegetable taste like a potato.  Not. One. Single. Time.  No, not even if you use enough butter (even more than that TINY smattering “legally” allocated in whatever plan you followed *gasp*) or if you whipped them beyond recognition so you could “fool” your friends at Thanksgiving.  Sorry.  No.  Still cauliflower in disguise.  Like a sad clown wearing his nose only half on and most of his make-up gone: it wasn’t foolin’ anyone. Yet I kept at it, determined that if I just tried HARD enough I would see this veggie as the potato it just knew it could be if I could just do it right.  But you know what, I’ve never been real good at those optical eye illusions either.

BECAUSE I was always forever trying to make this poor vegetable into something it was not (namely a delicious carb) I developed resentment towards its obstinate ways.  How it would just sit there; all mashed up and denying me potato flavor like that.   I never could appreciate how it DID taste because it would never taste the way I WISHED it would (you know, like a freaking POTATO!) Talk about never being satisfied; I was not at any point content with this cauliflower stubbornly refusing to alter its biological desire to REMAIN cauliflower and not magically form into a potato that I would be ALLOWED to eat on a low-carb diet.

SO. Now we come to today.  Or, rather, last night.  I had a  head of cauliflower in the fridge.  On sale.  I thought I’d give it a whirl again.  Let by-gones be by-gones and try to let this veggie redeem itself in my eyes.  I stared it down for a while, debating even making the attempt but I WOULD prevail.  I mashed it a bit after steaming, drained all the water.  Added a good few tablespoons of butter and spices and a bit of shredded cheese mix.

And then….I tasted heaven.  Pure, unadulterated food-porn style delight.  Creamy but with a bit of texture still, cheesy and spicy and so full of delicious cauliflower flavor!  It was in NO WAY a potato…but you know what, because I wasn’t trying to force it to mimic a food it would NEVER be I actually fully enjoyed each burst of amazing flavor it imparted into my willing mouth.  And now?  I look forward to when it will be on sale again so that this formerly Fake Food can again grace my palette with its Real deliciousness. Oh, and for the record, no it STILL did not remotely resemble mashed potatoes.

I’m in a Country Music Mood today and have been trying to still my “want to be elsewhere” mind with some fun tunes.  One song (Sara Evans: I keep looking) kinda spurred me to post because of one line in particular “They say ‘It’s only human to never be satisfied’.” A lot of the song is about having one thing and wanting something else: being blond and wanting to be brunette, that sort of thing.  And I have to wonder and found myself reflecting up this “human nature” to never find satisfaction.

Is that an axiom with which we so easily identify because we are taught that we should all strive for some sort of forever unattainable perfection?  Just as no matter WHAT you weight, you can always “benefit” from losing 10% more; is the entirety of life crafted around this idea that nothing can EVER be good enough?  That there will ALWAYS be fault to find and unsatisfactory compromises to be made?  I don’t think so.

Life is not so full of un-satisfying truths that somehow over-ride or invalidate any possible pleasure or satisfaction you might achieve. It is almost as though people hope to somehow capitalize from creating a general sense of malaise, a feeling that life is just never good enough. Sure, there are ways that we all dream of being different or of having different opportunities presented to us.  Some we can alter, some we can not.  What will forever puzzle me though is that desperate need to keep trying to always feel that there MUST be something more that what there already is; that the grass is greener on that other side.  I think we need to instead appreciate what there IS, what you HAVE or can DO or any number of things that are going RIGHT in life.  Yes there are always ways in which life could be “better” or “more” but if you spend so much energy focused on how good things AREN’T then how will you have time to enjoy all the many ways in which things ARE good and satisfying?

There are all sorts of sites and books and gimmicks that people are willing to sell these days to cater to this need to find satisfaction (with life, with love, with faith…); all promising in much the same way as any diet that CHANGE and IMPROVEMENT and a Better Life are just a few of your hard-earned dollars away in the form of their well-formulated secret method. But satisfaction is not something you find by meticulously following what has worked for other people.  It takes a lot of self-reflection and learning to understand your own needs.  Only when you really appreciate what it is YOU really want from life and the body that carries you through it can you (I feel) get the satisfaction you desire from all around you.

No diet will slim you into that perfect body to allow you to do all those things you wish you could do.  No amount of wishing you were something else; of looking for something more, will somehow drop satisfaction into your lap.  Stop looking for MORE and see what IS.

I’ve stopped looking, always peering over the fences of body size and satisfaction, dreaming there is something better if just there was a smaller number on my pants or a few more dollars in my account.  I’m still learning what I can appreciate in what I have; it is a bit of mental compromise to suss out what I really can find satisfaction in and what I still do want to improve upon (getting my Masters for example).

What I’m having to learn is that there IS no one “cure-all”; for ANYTHING.  We are all so different.  What is the “right” size for one person is NOT what will occur naturally for another.  What satisfies me may not satisfy you.  That is why I suggest that we all STOP looking towards others as if their lives are somehow the epitome of what we all want; when it might not be what satisfies THEM.  Perhaps we do always crave what we can’t or just don’t have;, maybe it is even human nature to always end up looking for something more.  But the key is in understanding that what “More” means varies from one person to the next. And if you realize that something going on in life DOESN’T satisfy you; that doesn’t make you a failure or invalidate your life somehow!

Diversity is the key.  I feel that by learning how your needs are different is the first step in learning what will satisfy so you CAN stop looking, and start FINDING.

I definitely feel like I blog about this topic a lot but perhaps it is just that I can’t enough stress the importance of finding out your own level of satisfaction with different aspects of your life; that key to loving ourselves is in finding the ways that life already provides us with satisfaction so that we can focus on how to encourage THOSE positive elements.

Be it a satisfaction that is physical, mental or spiritual in nature; may you find something that satisfies you today.

Anyone familiar with that awesomeness that is “Are you being served” might read the title to this post and get a giggle and flush of memories (or not).

I went shopping this weekend and tried to get another pair of jeans.  I have a good pair from Lane Bryant and wanted to see about getting another pair in a different color.  You know, so I had more than 1 to swap around during the week!  Well I was trying on a pair of Average length and realized that they were too long; remembering belatedly that I needed petite sizes for the length at LB or risk dragging 4 inches of pants around my heels.

I opened the door and there was a manager right there taking inventory so I kindly asked if she knew of any petites in my size for these pants. After explaining that NO I do not wear big heeled shoes, only flats, she still explained that I wanted the average pants because they ride up with washing.  Now I can appreciate someone trying to warn you about clothing that might alter after washing.  But seriously?  No pair of denim is ever going to raise up 4 freaking inches in the wash.  So just like I’m glad I bought the larger size of pant the LAST time I went to LB and was told I should get the smaller size because the pants will “stretch out” with wear, I’m thinking I’m very glad I didn’t try to buy a pair of extra long pants with the hope that enough washing and drying might shrink them so much!

So I guess the point of this post is just to mildly whine at clothing manufacturers in general with a wail of “Why?  Why do you think that once a woman’s weight creeps up over 200 that immediately her proportions run to 8′ long legs and huge breasts?!??!”  I should show you the size of the underwire that I finally broke down and pulled out of my new swimsuit…it would easily fit around my head.

I guess I’ll just never understand why clothing is made to perfectly fit ONLY about 3 bodies and the rest of us have to make do and “make it work”.  I wish we were in the age of tailors and custom made clothing; especially pants!

That said though I found an awesome 2X shirt from the Disney store (A self-admitted cartoon addict and lover of Eeyore!) that is pink and SOOO comfortable around the armpits (one of the hardest spots for me to fit shirts) and has Piglet in brown outlined on the side.  Fun shirt to make up for no pants.  Still need pants though….

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Not that I’d know, what with the crazy amounts of homework and getting-paid-for-it work and eating and cleaning and you know…life… BUT I have to agree with this little kitty that sometimes the best thing you can do for your mind, body and peace of …well Mind…is to just do NOTHING.  For even 10 minutes, for an hour, for a day, for a week, for how long you need to recharge those body and/or mind-batteries.  Resting and “being lazy” is no more a moral reflection upon your personal character than eating food in public is an automatic pass for others to judge you.

Despite the desperate puritanical striving of our culture to ALWAYS be productive, be doing something, be active and Never Sit Still or risk hellfire damnation (or catcalls about being lazy and whatnot); I really don’t think God is going to come down with anger in their stance and a cattle-prod in hand to move you into Non-Sin for daring to rest!  I mean come on, even God rested on Sunday after CREATING the entirety of the world as we know it folks.   Why then is it so ingrained into our minds that never can a moment of rest be had without overwhelming guilt, especially if we are created in the image of a Greater Being who had no qualms about taking some time to sit back and reflect upon things done and recharge those creative juices.  And all that discourse is assuming of course a Christian view of the world.  Yet even those who don’t even ascribe to such beliefs STILL find themselves sucked into this moral dichotomy of Action is Good and Sloth is Bad!

So as we in the Northeast of the US are seeing the first peeks of “HOPE” in the form of melting snows and glimpses of sun between gray clouds and are feeling so cabin-feverish I am prescribing for you a moment of relaxation.  I know that like those little birds starting to clear out their nests we might start feeling that need to rustle our home feathers and Clean! Organize! Act Now! but no matter how much of that spring cleaning mentality ends up taking over your mind (battling with the trepidation that still lingers in the fear that this winter is still far from over) don’t forget to take those moments, that day, that time to just STOP and do the sort of Nothing that can be Spectacularly Awesome.

Part of loving your body is learning to respect that it isn’t a machine capable of running non-stop at full swing without a chance to recharge.  Oh, and don’t feel you have to get “such and such” done FIRST either, that’s just a cycle that you know is bound to continue forever and never end with you getting any relaxation in.  I will be taking my own advice this weekend and be putting my own body’s relaxation first for a few hours at least too.

Oh and for you nay-sayers, for those of you who are convinced that any unoccupied moment is a sinful proof of moral ineptitude?  Well all I can say is:  May a Bird of Paradise Fly Up your Nose!

Maybe the gloomy weather has me down, especially frustrating after those brief spring-esque snaps of reprieve from the winter weather doldrums’s so tauntingly infrequent and yet so anticipated are over and things are back to grey.  Maybe I’m just fed up with trying to fathom the way people think of themselves and others.  Either way I found an incredible amount of sad disgust rising inside of me after reading this little “health” article.

determining why you overeat can be the difference between reaching your happy weight and hating your body for all the wrong reasons.

Emphasis is all mine but really, did I need to even highlight what part of this (okay, the whole thing sucks but really I’m pointing to that one part in particular) bothered me?  Putting aside the glaringly obvious assumption that the only reason that a person might have fat on their body is because they overeat (and finding out WHY will magically erase all of said “excess” adipose), what the HECK is the “Right Reason” to hate your body?!?!?  So wait, I do all your tips and reach my “happy weight” but then what….I’m then able to hate my body CORRECTLY?  For all the “right” reasons?  So then…how is getting to my “Happy” weight…going to make me…HAPPY!?!??

You know what?  Here’s my “tip” for today for anyone willing to listen.  You do NOT have permission to HATE your body.  Instead I give you full license to find ways to LOVE the skin you’re in.  Maybe there are parts of your physical make-up that you wish you could wish away or wish different but you know what?  If wishes were fishes we’d walk on the sea.

Focus on your Happy Body and not some magically ever-shifting “Happy Weight” at which it might some day rest if you do Everything Right.  Find that one physical attribute you love the most and expand from there and you know what, pretty soon you just might realize how much you can love every little bit, yes even THOSE bits, of your own body for just what it already is.

Love your hair?  See how well it sets off your neck? Look at how your neck glides into those strong round shoulders.  See the soft flesh of your arms and how it just seems to jiggle at all the right moments.  Caress your stomach and marvel at that buttony knob that once connected you to your invitro life-line.  Look at those wiggly toes and grin.  Love all those little hairs standing on end when a cold breeze enters the room and  you briefly wonder if ghosts are in the room.  Love the curves or flats of your rear and the turn of your ankles.  Find a starting point and just GO and see where it takes you.

Go ahead.  Love your body for ALL reasons.

Okay.  What.  The. Frick?  After reading a very thoughtful piece done by Sweet Machine over at Shapely Prose, I found this little nugget of an article on Yahoo’s main “Featured News” page: “Fresh Look at Martha Washington: Less First Frump, More Foxy Lady“.  That’s right.  And in case you’re leery of where the article might go or have some foolish hope that maybe the title is just a clever play on words, let me put your mind at “ease” with a direct quote of the first paragraph:

This just in: Martha Washington was hot. Or at least hotter than we thought.

Yup.  Now it isn’t enough to glamorize or fetishize or paparrazi-ize over the 5 pounds Jessica Simpson might have gained by not being a slave to an image standard.  Now we get to use “Technology” like age regression software to reassure America that our first First Lady wasn’t some “First Frump” as the article so lovingly refers to the images we’re used to seeing of Martha Washington; she was a smexy hottie!  I mean yeah she did all this STUFF too (She capably ran the five plantations left to her when her first husband died, bargaining with London merchants for the best tobacco prices.), but she wasn’t like FAT y’all and she was a human being with needs and stuff and liked to read silly fluff books and like… like…um….maybe she was really hot too!

Okay.  Come ON!  Now, from someone who hated the structure of almost every boring, mindless fact-regurgitating history class I every had the misfortune to get dragged through, I can certainly see the appeal in trying to make history interesting (gee, maybe less focus on memorizing dates and more focus on real people and passions and actions might affect that a tad, but what do I know).  What I don’t understand is this need to re-vamp the world’s image of this amazing woman, degrading her from the perhaps plump and amazing First Lady of America’s new system of presidency, to a “Va-va-vooom” 20-something who was “blessed” with more than George for suitors; one of whom seemed to indicate through their correspondences that he was sexually attracted to her!  Ya know cause us humans just can’t fathom ANY man, let alone a leader of a foundling country, being sexually attracted to a plump, dowdy old woman, the ” mousy, fat, rich widow that dashing and virile Washington married only for money.”

Perhaps the most head-shakingly crazy-making part (aside from the whole obsession with some purple wedding shoes) is the image that this article is trying to break out of our mindset.  THIS is what the renditions of a smoking hottie Martha are up against:

“Martha Washington was neither beautiful nor brilliant. She lacked artistic skill, except perhaps in fine needlework. The letters she wrote were an incoherent jumble of affection and gossip.” That was James Flexner, the preeminent Washington scholar of the 1960s and ’70s. He describes Washington’s marriage to Martha as an “escape” from the burden of his passions for Sally. The 40-year union, he wrote, “began badly.” Martha, he wrote disdainfully, was “diminutive and plump.”

That sets off revisionist historians such as Brady. Although it is true that Martha had borne four children by the time she met Washington, only two of whom survived, she hadn’t packed on the pounds yet.

Yeah.  Because, again, it is completely impossible to believe that even HAD she already come into the marriage with those pounds “packed on”; that any other human being, especially one with so much power, would like her, be attracted to her, love her.

I can’t decide what makes me sadder and just more confunded.  The reflection that this sort of drivel has upon our obsession with youth (we can’t be satisfied with having an old matronly First Lady, sh emust be YOUNG! BEAUTIFUL!), the clear and almost frantic attempts to assure us that she was trim and slim and not *gasp* 200 pounds (no one wants a fattie in the white house!) or the back-peddling done to convince readers that not only was/is history interesting and fun, but it is filled with SEXY LADIES TOO!

Though, perhaps it was a tad encouraging to read some of those comments because it is from them that I drew this gem, with which I’ll leave you and your thoughts:

This is an elitist attempt at commercialization of American history. A “hey look, Martha Washington was a size 4, attractive and wore silk sequined shoes!” Let the real history of the era speak for itself and let’s not try to market and reframe every aspect of American history for the sake of tourism.

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So I just went to my first set of classes this semester to obtain my master’s degree.  It is my second semester overall, and my first semester attempting two classes at once.  One requires what should end up being 10-12 hours of work a week; the other more like 20.  Combine that with a full time job, a part-time job, swimming twice a week, belly dancing once a week for 1.5 hours at a local 1 hour away, a 1.5 hour commute to these classes which sucks up the entirety of Saturday; trying to cook and clean and all that fun jazz along with maybe see my husband a bit before sleeping, and I’m starting to get the feeling that I might have taken on too much.  My head is spinning, I can’t find a direction…  “No one warned me there was a cliff ahe…oh look shiny new class…wait..wha…ahhhhh!”  *tumbles down cliff*  Luckily I’m well-padded so a fall wouldn’t bruise much more than my ego…

That said, I’ve always been an organizational trooper* so I know the current feelings of panicky overwhem-i-tude will pass in time.  I’m just hoping that this “time” is…well..was…yesterday.  Because if I don’t manage to get a grasp on what I’m doing it will all tumble down the hill after me in a haphazard fashion, ending up spinning around my dazed head like a row of unruly ducks in a cartoon.  I guess the short version to that is “Going back to school is daunting”.

But, like I try to tell myself on my path to mental self-awareness and self-acceptance (and would tell anyone who reads here); I need to shake myself off, find what is working and what is not and stop going around in circles.  Just like vicious cycles of self-hatred spurs dieting, which is followed by joyous “body-image rebirth”, which is only to be followed again by destructive body-hatred and further diets or “lifestyle changes”; if I keep my mind going in these mental loops (I can’t get a grasp on what I need to be doing, I’m confusing both classes, what is DUE?!, just start reading that article, yeah it seems to be a good one, but wait… is that even up for discussion next week?, GAH! I can’t get a grasp on what I’m DOING!!!) I will be just as stuck; going no-where fast.

Hence the quick body-blog post stop.  As my husband suggested a few hours ago, sometimes you just need to take a little break from habits (thinking in circles, staring at catalogs or articles in frustration, dieting) that are wearing you down, destroying your mind and ability to concentrate on things (classes, fun activities, life as a whole) and do something you enjoy to rejuvenate your spirit.  Alright, so that last part about re-juicing the spirit wasn’t his words, I may have added those in.

So, to all those who are also starting a new venture, be it a class, a job, a new book, a resolution that you’ve just geared up to begin for the mostly still-new year: don’t get so head-locked into getting THROUGH it that you forget to stop, take a breath and make sure you’re plugging along in the correct direction, and aren’t about to plunge off any cliffs!  This comes from one woman who has just looked up and realized she has been plugging away all afternoon in a huge circle, chasing her own mental tail, and now has decided it is time for dinner.

*As pointed out in comments below, this should read “trouper”.  Though I do suppose being an organizational trooper with some sort of offical “I organize, now stick ‘em up” badge might have its own appeal….