The Vacation that Wasn't

You can't enjoy a vacation if you're determined to torture yourself with worry, regret and recrimination every minute of every day, as I discovered this week.

See, I discovered that I made a huge boo-boo at work the day before I was planning to take a vacation. The error involved a contract with a hotel I signed on behalf of the office for a conference in another city. Through sheer ego, I didn't review the contract as closely as I should have. I've signed this sort of contract a hundred times before for conferences of up to a thousand people, and this was just a simple meeting of about 60. No prob. No sweat. But I completely passed over a certain clause about attrition of rooms, and on Monday, I received an invoice I wasn't expecting for many thousands of dollars.

I about had a heart attack at my desk. I could feel the hand of death grip my heart and squeeze. I would've puked into my trash can if I had eaten lunch. I saw my career flash in front of my eyes, my reputation burning and crashing. It was an intense moment.

My boss was on vacation so I had to go to her boss, and it wasn't an easy trip down the hall for me. He has the reputation of a recently-castrated-without-anesthetic pit bull, quick to bark, quick to gnash his teeth, quick to rip an arm off. I stopped off at every candy bowl along the hallway, stuffing easter candy in my mouth as fast as possible, gulping jelly beans in a futile attempt to experience one more good moment before my execution.

"Can I see you for just a moment?"
"Sure, come in."
"Well, I've really screwed up."

And then I tell the story. Bossman shows no emotion - no shock, no dismay, no disgust, no temper. He just says, "Well, see what you can do - call the hotel, and don't worry, so long as you learned something." I about hit the floor with relief.

I called the hotel and discovered that some of the rooms booked weren't credited to the block, so the number isn't as bad as originally presented, but it's still many thousands of dollars.

Then, before it was completely resolved, I left on vacation, a few days off just to enjoy the springtime, hang at the jacuzzi, move my furniture around, that sort of thing.

Trouble is, all I could think of was this horrible mistake, this trashing of my reputation, this financial burden, this moment of ego gone wrong. And I dreaded the reaction to the e-mail I needed to write to my boss, explaining everything so that she wasn't blindsided by my blunder first thing Monday morning.

I wrote the email today. Then I sat trembling on the sofa. Just to set the scene: my boss's nickname among her colleagues is a reworking of her last name to rhyme with Terminator. Let's just say she has a reputation. She's great with me, always thanking me and calling me darling, I love her forthrightness and work with her well, but then again, I've never been on the receiving end of her short temper, her frustration. I figured this was the moment when the tide turned, when I was no longer her prized assistant, no longer the Steve she seemed to brag about to one and all.

About an hour later, she called me, her familiar bark.

"Well, there goes your bonus."

Then she laughed.

She couldn't have been more kind and calming. She said we all make mistakes, all we can do is learn from them, that we can cover it in the budget no problem, that she should've looked the contract over herself, that I'm not paid to take that sort of risk, that she totally trusts me and relies on me, but that she is ultimately responsible and that I should remember that she's in my corner. And so on. She even confessed a gargantuan financial mistake she herself made many years ago to show me it happens to the best of us. In a word, it was a perfect response, better than I could ever have hoped, and the relief flooded over me to the point where I was giddy, dancing around the house afterward, floating on air, trilling like a Disney princess.

It was like fearing an attack from a lion and instead being licked and groomed, calmed by the loud purring. I never felt so supported in my life.

Now the rest of today is truly a vacation, a relief from self torment. And I realize, it's all right to make a mistake once in a while, I don't need to flagellate myself, even when it's a biggie.

And I could sure use another vacation!

I've been swimming lately

Fat Kid Successfully Avoids Ridicule By Swimming With Shirt On

. . . and I've adopted this boy's brilliant concept to avoid ridicule. So far it's working!!! I wear a black t-shirt, but whatever . . .

Oopsy doodley doo!

Okay, it seems monkey boy has been playing with the prosties. And another political wife has to endure probably the most painful moment required (next to a crawl over the hood to grab a piece of brain a'la Jackie K.) - playing the stoic, silent, miserable stand-by-her-man wifey at the podium while the bastard insincerely begs forgiveness for - get this - "Not living up to the (ridiculously) high standards I set for myself." If I see one more stoic wife made to endure this crap for the good of the man's future career, I'll shoot myself.

It looks like Mrs. Spitzer is gonna hurl the gumbo Mr. Spitzer is trying to swallow.

Then she has to hold his juice-covered hand as they step off the stage.

C'mon, ladies, it's time to stop this bullshit. Just say it plain, "My husband betrayed me and I hate his guts and I'm gonna drop the ass-licking tittie sucker as soon as I call my lawyer."

Enough.

Saccharine nightmares

I just about had it with the people at work this week. Make that the women at work. The secretaries, to be specific. My sisters, my teammates, my co-workers. Part of it was because it was Valentine's Day and all the little Martha Stewart wannabes pulled out all the stops to decorate the place with red and pink hearts and garlands and flowers and bowls of candy everywhere. Added to that the various bouquets of roses received on THE DAY, all ostentatiously displayed (as if it's impressive to receive a dozen roses from your husband - ho hum). Then there was a lavish dessert buffet set up with cheesecakes of the world, chocolate-covered strawberries and other pink, sticky, sickly sweet things. And, of course, today was the endless recital of the romantic evenings had by all, most of which centered around dinner at Applebee's and a late-night run to the Circle-K for a couple of razzleberry slurpos.

Well, sour grapes. Bah humbug. I'm damned sick of it. It's another plot shoved up our asses by society to congratulate/celebrate those who conform. Screw it. I'm not playing. I took my toys and walked off the playground years ago.

But this time it just got to me. I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed about the decorations and about people's cubby-holes being tchotchkeed up the wazoo with halloween-then-thanksgiving-then christmas-then valentine's-then st. patrick's-then easter-then cinco de mayo-then then then . . . I'm not in elementary school anymore. If I feel like weaving a placemat with strips of construction paper, I'll keep it to myself and do it at home, thank you very much. I will not foist upon others a tasteless, shameless need to slime the world with an oil slick of tacky crap. I'm just through, I'm telling you. Through! All week I dreamed I worked in a mahogany office with terrazzo floors and a severe dress code. Clean, quiet, professional. Not this joyless version of kindergarten with 40-year-old women romping around in red and pink snuggle-me outfits.

Somebody had the bright idea to keep the office's artificial christmas tree up all year and decorate it for each successive holiday. Oh goody. Goody goody gumdrops, y'all!! I'm sick, I tell you, sick of the endless parade of drugstore purchases, joyless plastic shit from China, invading my workspace and making me choke.

And I'm damned sick of being one of the "girls," one of the secretaries, one of the distaff staff, one of the handmaidens to the important people, who subjugate their second-tier status by becoming mommies to the men, by emphasizing everything that's been labeled feminine by the crap manufacturers of the world.

Four times, through clenched teeth, I was made to recount my Valentine's evening of haircut, grocery shopping and watching the DVD of Up the Down Staircase with my cat, as all of my office mommies tsked tsked at me like I was such a sad case, poor lonely Stevie who lives alone and doesn't have a widdle fwiend to pway with. Awwwwwwww.

Puke, I say. Puke on all the pink things, puke on all the sweet things, puke on all the misguided pseudo-mommies out there who feel the need to tie a happy ribbon on the world around them. That's it.

Okay, I'm done now.

Seal - Crazy

A total favorite from the 90's. How I loved this song. I used to drive around Palm Springs in my classic '62 Olds 98 convertible listening to this CD. Good times.

Caution - Construction Zone

It never fails: I start taking better care of myself, you know, in the Stevie sense: eating moderately, doing my laundry, trying to move around a little more - and I start to get restless, impatient, frustrated with the rest of my life. What the HELL am I doing working as a secretary when there's so much more I could be doing? What the HELL am I doing living in Albuquerque when I could be running a fish taco stand in Belize? Where the HELL is my boyfriend? What the HELL am I doing wasting my life? My normal (read abnormal) food use obviously keeps a lid on these disturbing feelings. Then KABOOM they're released from the Pandora's box of my soul when I eat moderately. No wonder there's an unconscious drive to reach for the Jarlsberg.

The hard part is not to comfort my restless self, to placate and mollify with food, when I know that the frustration I'm feeling is with myself, the limitations I've created for myself by being fat and the huge job ahead of me. This is the time to be gentle and patient with myself, to forgive myself for creating the conditions I rail against, and to take a deep breath.

In a sense I don't have to get on a scale to know that the "diet" is working - the reappearance of these feelings is a litmus test. I'm acidic. No doubt.

I'm a grand old decrepit coastal resort, shuttered and sagging, battered and beaten by winter storms and driftwood, riddled with wood rot and mildew, and I long to be renovated, brick by brick and board by board, from the foundation to the rooftop, into a bright, whitewashed, breezy, sun-splashed wonder of summer fun and frivolity, but there's just me, one crusty caretaker, with a tool belt and a to-do list a mile long.

Look past the grit and grime of the caretaker's craggy face into his eyes and you'll see a spark of determination -- and hope. By God I'm gonna get this place in ship shape or I'm gonna die trying!

Heath

Such sad news.

This was the moment in Brokeback when I fell completely in love with Heath Ledger - I already admired him so much for his acting, but this particular moment, when Jack Twist is remembering a long-ago fireside hug complete with gentle rocking back and forth, Ennis mumbling unintelligible sweet nothings into his ear, humming and rocking, rocking and humming . . and then Jack in the present day staring longingly at Ennis as he drives off in his beat-up truck . . it's a devastating moment in the movie and maybe the most tender, naturally loving moment ever filmed between two men.

I'll be better than I am . . . . .

It's been the strangest and most wonderful two weeks, ever since I moved to the new apartment on the pool. A feng shui expert would probably tell me that the energy flow in the new apartment is ideal, which would explain all the good things that are happening for me. It's true: the mountains surrounding Albuquerque form a bowl, and if you poured liquid energy down the sides of the bowl, it would flow like Vanquish in a toilet tsunami into the pool and then into my apartment. Flush! Whoosh! My life is working now!

So here's what's been happening:

I've lost 20 pounds.
I've been sleeping at least 6 hours a night, sometimes as much as 10 hours.
I've taken the time to shop for food and prepare all my meals ahead of time (hence the weight loss).
I've read three self-helpy books that have somehow made perfect sense and have been well integrated into my mindscape.
I've done ALL my laundry, including spot-treating stains and sewing on missing buttons, hung everything up, and color-coordinated the various shelves and racks in my closet.
I've completely unpacked, stored seldom-used items in the storage room, broken down the cartons and boxes into a nice stack, and made a run to Salvation Army with three carloads of goodies.
I've applied whitening strips to my teeth every night (although I'm still missing my upper front tooth a'la a distant cousin of Dolly Parton).
I caught up completely on assignments at work, including FILING and SHREDDING.
I watched the entire "Band of Brothers" series and read the Stephen Ambrose book.
I detailed my car.

These are just average self-care things to most people, but for me it represents a fundamental shift in behavior, due to the aforementioned flushing effect, and to my kindly, helpful life coach Mia, who has steered me gently to look at the big picture.

Yes, I'm a chronic, persistent emotional overeater; have been since at least 5 years old.

Yes, I haven't taken good care of myself, having followed in the footsteps of at least three generations of passive-aggressive codependents. Bright, witty, gorgeous, talented and engaging passive-aggressive codependents, I might add.

Yes, at 49 I am the sum total of my experiences as filtered through erroneous beliefs and expectations, and I understand how changing those beliefs and expectations gives me a fighting chance to achieve a different (better!) outcome.

As I absorbed these lessons, and as I worked concurrently to forgive myself for somehow not understanding (or assimilating) these things before, I didn't try to make dietary changes or anything else. I just let it all sink in. Pretty soon, the desire to do good things for myself started to bloom. Going to the doctor for the first time in 12 years; getting the sleep tests; working with Mia; making the decision to move nearer the pool; and in the last two weeks, things are starting to happen.

Now, I'm not so naive as to think it's all a slam dunk from this moment forward, but it does somehow feel easier, more natural, more comfortable; and in that place of ease, in that place of peace, I am ready to receive all that my come to me. Amen! Hallelujah!

I am changing, tryin' every way I can
I am changing, I'll be better than I am
I'm trying-to find a way to understand
But I need you, I need you-I need a hand

I am changing, seeing everything so clear now
I am changng, I'm gonna start right now, right here
I'm hoping to work it out, and I know that I can
But I need you, I need a hand

All my life I've been a fool
Who said I could do it all alone
How many good friends have I already lost
How many dark nights have I known

Walking down that wrong road, there was nothing I could find
All those years of darkness-can make a person blind
But now I can see

I am changing, tryin every way I can
I am changing, I'll be better than I am
But I need a friend-to help me start all over again,
oh-that would be just fine
I know it's fonna work out this time
'Cause this time I am-This time I am

I am changing, gonna get my life together now
I am changing, yes, I know how
I'm gonna start again, I'm leaving my past behind
I'll change my life-I'll make a vow
And nothing's gonna stop me now...hey

New Year's Revolution

Happy New Year, Everyone!!

I had a dream last night. I have a lot of dreams now that I'm on the CPAP machine and am actually getting all the way to REM sleep. The dream was simply this: I am a stone statue of myself as I am now, big and round and immobile, sitting next to a lake. It's dark and stormy and cold. Suddenly a humming sound riding a shaft of light comes tearing through the sky, illuminating the top of the statue's head and causing the whole statue to vibrate. As the sound gets louder and the light brighter, the statue cracks down the middle and with a huge thunderous bang, an iridescent winged merman flies up, does a Greg Louganis triple spin, and plunges into the lake, causing a perfect shimmering ripple in the water.

Man, if ever there was a wishful thinking dream, this is it.

Every year seems to hold promise. I honestly love the idea of renewal and rebirth that fills the air every New Year's Day. And every year I think, "This is it, this is the year I pull it all together and do what's right for me. This is the year I leave the shackles behind and rise, rise, rise."

So it's no surprise that I feel that way again today, that I can see the possibilities, that I can believe that I hold in my hands the tools of change, and that I deserve the effort and time it will take to make a lasting transformation in myself.

It is possible.
It is possible for me to love myself.
It is possible for me to forgive myself.
It is possible for me to accept myself.
It is possible that a fundamental shift in attitude can change everything.
It is possible that love, acceptance and forgiveness are transformative.
It is possible for me to be transformed by love, acceptance and forgiveness.
It is possible for me to love, accept and forgive myself.

I believe that it is possible.
I believe that I can love myself.
I believe that I can forgive myself.
I believe that I can accept myself.
I believe that a fundamental shift in attitude can change everything.
I believe that love, acceptance and forgiveness are transformative.
I believe that I can be transformed by love, acceptance and forgiveness.
I believe that I can love, accept and forgive myself.
I believe that I can love, accept and forgive myself.

I deserve to believe in myself.
I deserve to love myself.
I deserve to accept myself.
I deserve to forgive myself.
I deserve to make a fundamental shift in attitude in order to change myself.
I deserve to be transformed by love, acceptance and forgiveness.
I deserve to love, accept and forgive myself.
I deserve to love, accept and forgive myself.

I believe in myself.
I love myself.
I accept myself.
I forgive myself.
I am transformed by loving, accepting and forgiving myself.
I love, accept and forgive myself.
I love, accept and forgive myself.

And so a new year begins.

Moving to Poolside for 2008

I've been scouting out this one building at my apartment complex for six months, waiting for an apartment to come available, and it just did! The apartment is directly facing the pool with mountains beyond! I'm totally stoked - the main reason I moved here in the first place was to have access to the year-round-heated pool, but I'm just far enough away from it in my current place to come up with an excuse every day for why I couldn't swim. Mostly it was about being embarrassed about going out to the pool - "What if there's a gang of intolerant teenagers hanging there?" goes my scaredy-cat brain. From this new apartment, I'll be able to look out the window and see who's at the pool, then it's just 20 steps until I'm IN THE WATER!

I move a week from Friday.

Happy New Year!!!

Ticket to Ride - a Ski Lift?

Karen Carpenter works me, that's all.

Oh My God!

This is making me wet my pants for some unknown reason. Kristen Chenoweth at the Drama Desk Awards performing with a chihuahua. I especially love when the camera pans to the audience and the sea of 90-somethings aren't even paying attention. Oh my God! And poor Kevin Spacey has to follow THAT? No wonder his career is toast.

Meet My New Boyfriend

He's got everything I'm looking for in a boyfriend - lots of pucker power, the stamina to keep at it all night, and a very long hose.

Plus he's into bondage. Oh, and he's got teal accessories - very Southwesty.

We even met cute. I got a call last Monday at work - there was a last-minute cancellation at the sleep lab; could I come in that night to test out various CPAP machines? Shore could! So in I went, freshly showered and cologned and armed with brownies for the delicious Patrick. Patrick wasn't working that night, dammit, but the scrumptious Victor was at the helm and delightedly devoured the brownies. (Lots of very good looking sleep techs there; makes me think the hiring manager is gaygaygay.) All night long, when Victor hovered over my face to adjust things, there was the delicate scent of chocolate and walnuts on his breath. I'm talking heaven, right? Yumm!

First we tried on various masks and ended up with this one, a top-of-the-line miracle of modern plastics technology, with a complicated but effective double-decker gasket and a comfortable harness. Then we tried various levels, patterns and styles of forced-air pressure, and voila!! I SLEPT! I slept five hours!! I accommodated the mask no problem and had vivid dreams (evidently, when you've been deprived of REM sleep for a long time, there's a REM-rebound effect where you can expect your brain to catch up on the vivid dreaming!). In my first visit to the lab, I logged a total of 12.5 MINUTES of REM sleep the entire night. On this occasion, almost two full hours of REM.

I guess the biggest surprise was how quiet the machine was. The only sound is when you inhale, there's a little bit of an asthmatic wheeze, otherwise it's silent. I wouldn't call the mask comfortable, but it didn't prevent me from dropping off and staying asleep, so it's a champ in my book!

Did I feel more energetic and rested the next day? Damn tootin'! I'm kinda bummed that I have to go back to non-sleeping while I wait for the machine to arrive sometime this week, but when it does, I plan to log some major sleep time, like 12 hours a night.

Victor said that a patient of his, a woman who weighed over 300 pounds, started on the CPAP machine and dropped 75 quick as a wink, just because she was sleeping and feeling rested and more energetic. I did some research online and they say that when a person is sleep-deprived, their "I'm hungry" hormones increase and their "I'm full" hormones decrease, feeding the vicious cycle. Wow, a bed partner that's good for me!

My dreamy new boyfriend - I think I'll keep him!

Quote of the Day

"Richard Avedon once told me not to worry that I was fat. He said, "You look really great fat." And, in a way, he's right. If you want to lose weight, good, but you shouldn't do it because you think the house is burning down. If you're giving in to peer pressure, it won't work. You can live very happily in this world overweight; being thin is optional."

- - Isaac Mizrahi

Don't Try This at Home

So last Saturday night, appropos of nothing (I was bored and hungry, what the hell), I decided to see me some celebrity wang. You know, kick it off with Ewan McGregor, get a taste of Viggo Mortenson, maybe a shot or two of Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. So far, so good. Then I was scrolling through the latest on PerezHilton.com and saw some pics of Zack Efron, of whom Mr. Hilton seemed to be enamored.

Shockingly, I haven't seen High School Musical so I didn't know who the hell this Zack was, but he had the requisite dark hair/light eyes combo that sets my lizard brain a thumpin, so I innocently googled his dick.

Before I could say, "Nice one," my computer had been infested with the latest high-tech worm, virus, whatever they call it, and after a veritable Fourth of July fireworks display of pop-ups, my computer ground to a huffing, puffing death.

What follows can only be called computis interruptus, a series of attempts to turn off, restart, scan for viruses, etc etc etc., all the friggin night long. Finally, by church-going time on Sunday, my beloved PC coughed, said, "I'm dumping all memory now," and joined HAL in the cyberinfinite. Glug glug glug.

Crap.

I turned off my cable a month ago, I'm staying up late now so my sleep is more "hygenic," I'm not eating very much, my federal agency is off-line pending a multi-billion-dollar law suit so I can't slake my thirst at work, and there's only so much brushing my cat can take - I NEED THE INTERNET! I NEED MY PC! MUST HAVE! MUST HAVE!

Luckily for me, my friend Ande did some major Craig's List scanning today and found me a super bargain - well, I hope it turns out to be a bargain when all is said and done. The good news is, I'm back up and running, with a much faster, brand new PC some IT guy just sold me for three hundred can't-really-afford-it bucks.

Please, dear CyberGod, I've learned my lesson: celebrity schlong will do you wrong.

A Night in the Lab

I got to the sleep lab at 8:30 the night before Thanksgiving, and the beautiful Patrick greeted me at the back door. A few minutes later I was sitting in my pajamas on a chair while Patrick and Linda (also beautiful) affixed what felt like hundreds of electrodes to my body. I made small talk, cracked sleep-lab-appropriate jokes, and was finally taken to the bedroom, tastefully done in 90's Marriott. I got into bed, being careful not to tangle myself in the wires. Patrick connected a monitor to my thumb, shoved some tubes up my nose, and bid me goodnight. Linda came in, gave me some suggestions about visualizations, and then with a huge Mommielike smile said good night, turned off the light and closed the door. I lay there, trussed like the turkey I would be eating the next day, staring at the infrared camera aimed at me, and tried desperately to sleep. I learned later it was almost three hours later before I first slept.



All through the night various electrodes and tubes came loose, which necessitated darling Patrick to come into the room and try to reaffix them. It was very nice to suddenly have a sweet young lab tech hovering over my face, whispering to me, and adjusting things. If it weren't for the tangle of wires I would've enjoyed it.


I finally couldn't stand lying in the same position anymore, and heaved onto my side, causing all hell to break loose, along with about half the wires. Where the hell is the wireless technology for this?


It was too damned hot. The bed was too pillowtop/memoryfoam comfortable, if you know what I mean. The sensation of being filmed and watched and hovered over completely killed any chance I had to really sleep. Plus I had a John Meyer song repeating ad nauseum in my head ("I want to run through the halls of my high school , I wanna scream at the top of my lungs. . .") And so it went, interminably, until I was awakened at 6:30 am and told the experiment was completed.


I had all the electrodes ripped from my hairy parts, got dressed, and went to the master control room where I joined delicious Patrick, who by then was quite tired (the irony of working in a sleep lab is that you're exhausted all the time because you're up all night monitoring sleeping people). He showed me my "test" on a huge monitor, the screen striped like an american flag with feedback bars, and in the corner the video of me in bed. Each bar represented a breathing pattern or a heartbeat or a teeth-grinding pressure, etc. He fast-forwarded through until when I finally fell asleep, the little picture of me in the corner frenetically tossing and turning.


He showed me that, within a second or two of falling asleep, I stop breathing, and am reawakened by the effort to breathe again, 10 seconds or 20 seconds, even 30 seconds or more after I stop breathing. Then I lay there for a minute until I fall asleep again, and repeat the pattern. Hundreds of times. Getting absolutely no value from my sleep. Dropping my state of oxygenation in my body from the normal 99% to as low as 70%. Patrick said he really felt for me, can understand why I'm so tired all the time, why I wake up feeling more exhausted than I felt going to bed, why I'm addicted to coffee. He admitted he wanted to rush in and hook me up to an oxygen tank to help me breathe, he was so worried for me. Aww. Lab lovespeak.

So it's official - I have severe sleep apnea. I'll be returning to the lab very soon to test-run a PAP (positive air pressure) machine, which appears to be a miracle cure for peeps like me.

In a post-test questionnaire, Patrick asked me how I felt, and I said that, honestly, I was really delighted because now I have the potential to sleep well again, and that's something I've been (day)dreaming about for a long time. It would be such a vacation for me, to go to sleep and stay asleep, to wake up feeling refreshed. OMG, I'm sooooooooooo ready!!

Gobble Gobble Everyone!

THANKSGIVING GREETINGS to everyone out there in cyberspace!

I'm going into the sleep disorder lab tonight, so if my post-lab blog entries are somehow dull, listless, shallow and boring, I've probably been body-snatched by a pod. So please report it to the proper authorities (I'd guess we're talking federal violation here) and sleep tight knowing that, before I was depersonalized, I loved all of you and appreciated you. I am truly blessed and I am truly grateful for my beautiful, wondrous, glorious cybergalpals Sheila and Alex and Beth and Emily and Jackie and Tracey --- RAH RAH CISS BOOM BAH, GOBBLE GOBBLE HEIDY HO!!

Feeling or feeding - that is the question

I'm about halfway through an intense workbook my life coach recommended to me called The Food and Feelings Workbook, by a psychotherapist named Karen Koenig, and it's been a huge challenge to stay with it. Not because I don't completely agree with what she's saying; I do. Completely. It's just that the challenge of it is that, with each activity, I need to revisit my old non-felt feelings, feelings that were so hard to contend with at the time they occurred that I chose instead to eat.

Well, it's quite a list and it makes for an exhausting weekend to exhume some of these experiences and try to understand what the emotion was trying to tell me before I scrambled the lines of communication with coma-inducing food.

Koenig asks, "Are you drawn toward yummy when you're feeling crummy?" I've heard the expression, "It's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you," and scoffed. Hell, it's what I'm eating! But I reach for the food as a panacea for all that ails me. Koenig's point is that people who use (and refuse) food to contend with uncomfortable emotions need to start handling feelings the "normal" way, or else nothing will change, no matter how strenuously one diets or exercises, because the food-equals-emotional-comfort equasion will git ya every time. I know this is true. I also accept that I'm about 12 when it comes to emotional maturity.

Sometimes someone will say something hurtful to me and it'll take me hours of thinking about it before I finally come to the conclusion, "Hey, I'm pissed!" The pure feeling doesn't have a chance because it's intellectualized to death, while I use both hands to stuff my face in an effort to avoid the feeling from bubbling up. I eat food the same way some smokers smoke, to keep at bay a sense of free-floating anxiety/guilt/loneliness/shame that seems to be simmering always in my heart, in every cell of my body, like a low-grade fever.

Although I certainly can point to my parents' ways of coping with emotion (Dad simply discounted them and trudged on, while Mom slid down the food/shame/depression cycle) to discover the genesis of my own way, it was my mother's death when I was 17 that kicked everything into high gear. It just hurt too much. It just became the only way I could get through the day, with a surruptitious double cheeseburger and a boysenberry shake, or a chef's salad drenched in 1000 island dressing. I got all A's my senior year of high school. I also gained 100 pounds, going from a husky 220 to a soft, billowy Pillsbury Boyish 320 by graduation.

And all the time the relatives kept saying things like, "Steve's doing fine; I don't know how he does it; smiling all the time and getting good grades." I was learning how to be the jolly fat man, the happy, chuckly guy who acted as if all was well, when inside the depths of feeling were so painful as to require thunder, lightning and the very earth cracking open.

Making the connection to overeat was very simple - I felt hollow inside, my heart had broken and there was this huge space inside me, and food may not have filled it but it comforted me. My Dad's way of dealing with Mom's death was to pull a curtain around it, not talk about it, not talk about her, until she was an unacknowledged spectre in the house. My grandparents, who lived next door and who missed their daughter intensely, started and ended each sentence with, "Cookie always said . . . " and ". . . . according to Cookie." That was her nickname. I bounced between the two extremes, sometimes eating an early supper at Grandma's (where talk was all about how much Cookie loved string beans) and joining my dad for dinner later in the evening (eaten in silence).

I could've used some counseling but I was too busy being fine that it never occurred to anyone to offer it or suggest it, not the teachers at school or concerned aunts. It was a different era; you only got psychological help if you were crazy. I wasn't crazy; I was just utterly sad.

Now here I am, a grown man of 49, still mulling over the feelings I had 32 years ago, because they never got a chance to be fully felt back then.

I keep picturing a huge tank, a million gallons big, with a film of sulphuric acid coating the bottom. The only thing I ever did was to stuff cotton balls one by one into the tank, each in turn soaking in the acid but not doing anything about dissipating it. Now the tank is filled with acid-soaked cotton balls, placed there one by one over the years, a failed attempt to keep the acid from burning. The thing is, I'm out of cotton balls now. There's only one thing to do, and that's send in the Hazmat team. It would've been easier to clean up the acid when it was spilled to begin with, had I known how to do it. But now I'm learning how.

And the only reason I don't reach for the butter pecan ice cream is there's none in the house.

My Dad

I've told some stories on this blog about some of the things my Dad said and did, especially about his utter insensitivity to my mother's weight problem (and my own). There have been times when I hated him. He was judgmental, pessimistic, and distant by nature and by kneejerk reaction. The first thing out of his mouth would be a huge "NO you shouldn't!" no matter what great half-baked idea I floated.

But this was the thing about my dad - he would eventually come around. Sometimes 180 degrees in an hour; maybe it would take a week or two. It was just his depression-era, dustbowl Kansas, fatherless upbringing coming to the fore, always ready to rain on any parade that happened to be passing by at the moment. Stubborn. Sure. Cautious. To my frequent frustration and fury. And yet - -

He spent a lifetime reading books about wide-ranging mystical and spiritual subjects; meditated daily; did the course in miracles; went monthly to a channeler who claimed to be a spirit entity 4000 years old; knew all of the Krisnamurti and Joseph Campbell texts backwards and forwards; studied comparative religions and ideologies; built a pyramid out of copper tubing and placed it over his purified water supply; and wrote a daily journal entry, typed, for over 45 years.

He grew the most beautiful vegetables and flowers, all organically, all by himself, on the 5-acre property he bought when he was well into his 70's. In the middle of the property, which was in the middle of an island in Puget Sound, he built his dream house with soaring ceilings of whitewashed cedar planks and a pot-bellied stove in the center that was stoked with alderwood from trees felled to make room for the house (actually, he and I designed the house for years, fiddling with graph paper every time we came together, then when he found the property, he hired two ex-Rashnishis to build it while he served as the site cleaner-upper; he said that if you wanted to hire people with good work ethics, look no further than ex-Rashnishis). His vegetables were pieces of art and his psychedelically colored dahlias were famous for miles around.

He stank at painting but kept at it, getting out the oils every year or so and trying his hand at a landscape or two before packing them all back in their little wooden crates. To him, I was amazingly talented and artistic and musical, so different from the person he was.

He fell in love with a dog that was the light of his life the last 13 years he was alive, and when one day I asked him if he ever regretted denying me a dog when I was growing up, he teared up and said, "Son, I regret it with all my heart."

He sadly, dejectedly took the news of my coming out (he was already about 80), grappled with it for about a week, and in the depth of his despair called his best friend Forrest, who basically said, "What the hell are you talking about, Geoff? Steve is a good and loving son. Get a grip." And he did. He called me and said, "Son, I love you and I always will and that will never change." A few years later he told me had had been molested daily by the neighbor man for about six months when he was seven years old. On the way to and from school. The man moved away and the abuse ended. He had never told anyone. He finally told me because we were having this frank discussion about gay sex, and I said something like, "Just because you have gay sex doesn't make you gay." He agreed with me, told me calmly about his victimization, and that was the end of it. He had kept that secret for 73 years. There's not a picture of him smiling from the time he was seven until his high school graduation ten years later.

He would drive an extra ten miles to save 8 cents on dishwashing liquid, but he ALWAYS came to my aid financially when I needed it, which was infrequent, still . . . an unexpected dentist bill or a blown engine, or the time I lost my wallet in Europe - he'd be there, always with a word or two about preparing for a rainy day, but he was there. Helping. Supporting. Getting me through it.

He somehow accepted that I needed to do the foolish, foolhardy thing of leaving the federal government after 15 years of service, walk away from all that security and benefits. And he had had a stellar Naval career, serving as a Judge Advocate General (JAG, like the television series, which he loved) and a courts martial judge, retiring as a Captain with 31 years of service, and then living for another 30 years on the financial cushion of federal retirement payments. My snubbing of the cushy perch I had at the Justice Department, halfway through a career about which he was extremely proud, was very hard to swallow. But he somehow let himself be persuaded that it was the right thing for me to do. Oh God, how he dealt with that, I just don't know, it was so against his instinct for safety, security, financial support. And the fact that I chose to "recover" from my federal career by floating in a pool in Palm Springs for 18 months, financed by my cashed-out pension, well, he just couldn't understand, but he accepted it. At age 83. Because he believed in me.

He gave my mom the gentlest, most loving and respectful care in the last months of her life, and I will never know a person who could be so compassionate, the compassion welling up out of his shoulds and don'ts, his knee-jerk reactionary ways, until his sweetness pushed through and he was the loving little boy he was before the dust storms hit and the world became a sepia-toned hard hard place.

He never lied and he never cheated and he never stole. He was a man of great character who held onto his hopefulness somehow, his belief that there could be a better way to live a life.

For two years he dealt uncomplainingly with the ravages of a failing body, with the indignity of feed tubes and stomas and catheters, in constant pain, with no real pleasures left except maybe a drive through the countryside or his dog snuggled beside him in the recliner. He called it "dying by inches," and he hated it, but he gritted his teeth and beared it, like he had done with every challenge to ever come his way. "Life is a series of bitter disappointments, Son," he said to me once, and it was like a knife through my heart, because I knew that I had been the cause of some of those disappointments he had suffered. But it was the way he saw the world.

The book he was reading when he died in my arms, five years ago today, was, "How to Be Happy." He was about halfway through the book.

I do believe he found his happiness at last.

I love you, Dad. I miss you.

Mister Sandman, Bring Me a Dream

In anticipation of my visit to the "Chamber of Nightmares" aka the sleep disorder center, the good doctor in charge sent me a copy of his book on sleep hygiene (to be billed later at $10 if I decide to keep it - he couldn't throw it in under the $800 fee?). But it's been a help.

Apparently, We-who-don't-sleep have picked up a number of bad habits along the way which exacerbate the sleeplessness, of course. Like going to bed at 7:30 pm because we're hoping to finally catch up on our sleep, but instead lay around all night not sleeping. Or clock-watching. This is a big one of mine. Wake up, look at the clock, it's 2:45 am, that means I have less than 4 hours to go - - - fall asleep twenty minutes later, wake up, look at the clock, it's 3:56 am, just 2 1/2 hours to go - - - fall asleep, wake up, look at the clock, it's 5:48 am, 42 more minutes . . . . . and so on.

According to the doc, clock watching is an "alert" behavior - your brain wakes up to do it, because looking at the clock usually precedes action of some type - call your mom, go to lunch, leave for work, catch the plane. So all those clock-looking moments bring you fully awake, a flat no-no in the bedroom. Reading an interesting book - potential "alert" behavior - no-no. Watching TV - blurs the clear demarcation between awake and asleep - no-no. Lying around for hours getting some rest, if not sleep - no-no, because the poor body doesn't understand that your intention really is to sleep, not lie around.

The other bad sleep hygiene thing us non-sleepers usually exhibit is not knowing the difference between tired and sleepy anymore. We're tired all the time, natch, because we don't sleep, but we're not really sleepy. And the doc says, whatever you do, don't go to bed when all you are is tired. WAIT until you're sleepy, even if it's 2 in the morning or whatever, because then the "push" of sleepiness will carry you off to dreamland.

So I did a little sleep hygiene these last couple of nights - turned the clock to the wall, took the TV out of my bedroom, filled the bookshelf next to my bed with books I've read a hundred times before or more, and waited until I was sleepy to go to bed. Which means I've gone to bed around 11:30 or so, an hour or two later than I usually totter off to bed. And here's the thing: yes, I seem to be getting more quality sleep! Hooray!! But the time I used to spend lying around I now need to be doing something, and I stopped cable TV a few weeks ago because I was wasting too much time on drastic surgery reality series watchin', so I've got hours and hours and HOURS to fill now in the evenings. This probably sounds like bliss to some, and yes, I love to read and surf the net and brush my cat and make turkey soup, but I'm going crazy in this apartment!

I'm three days into my schedule and, honestly, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and - geeeesh - Go out! Get a hobby! Go swimming! Trim my nosehair! Do laundry! Sweep out the garage! Go see a - gasp - movie! FLOSS, fer gawdsake!

No question, if' I'm gonna be up sooooo late every evening, I need to expand my world a bit.

This is a good thing, y'all.