February 2022

It’s 6am.

I have been up since 4:44.

There are singing bowls on the Spotify right now and oddly that didn’t help lull me back to sleep either.
Almost time to switch over to something a little more lyrical.

I tried to quiet my mind and get back to sleep, but instead I changed a light bulb and made myself a cup of my precious Texas coffee. I have a bag and a half left so I am rationing it. But my boss is going to Austin and she said she would bring me some, I just have to make it to the end of March. This is every Canadian, every winter, in a nutshell, just gotta make it to March.

Last year I had just fled Mexico ahead of travel restrictions on the last flight out of Acapulco, so I didn’t have to wait too long before winter loosened her grip. Although my snapchat memories from today stated I had just dug my car out of 3 feet of snow. Today everything is melting and it is supposed to be warm and raining tomorrow. Sucks for my walk to the bus stop, but it is better than freezing to death.

Fuck, a lot can change in a year.

I used to get up at 6am at the beginning of the plague to write.
I guess that was 2 years minus 3 weeks ago.
Ex hubby gave me the mushroom capsules on March 2nd 2020 and I started writing that other book that I haven’t been able to get back to since I gave the mushrooms away, mind you I haven’t tried in a while. It was supposed to be about Wolf and I don’t know what to say about that anymore.
March 4th 2020 I was on a plane to Texas because tickets were insanely cheap and I sent a snapchat with panda eyes saying “I fucking miss you”. It is not hard to be nostalgic for those days, but fuck everything that came after.

I am actually happy to be awake. Technically, I wanted this. I have skipped too many morning work outs and lost too much writing time to the siren’s song of the snooze button. Mind you, I have been taking (non hallucinogenic) mushroom capsules and my dreams have been EPIC. Fucked Thor and Loki yesterday morning in the wee hours, and god bless my psyche, I remembered it vividly after I woke up. It’s the little things.

It was congruent sex, not simultaneous. Not that that matters, but Loki talked me into playing while Thor was away, we got caught and Thor wasn’t mad about it. I also was making cheese sauce on a rocky boat and spilled it. I was cleaning it up when I woke up. Not sure what that was all about but hey…I am not complaining.

My real life sex life has been…non existent. The Darkling still exists, but only in my phone.

Been down this road too many times already.
29th verse, same as…well same as the other ones who only lived in my phone.

I got an inkling mid January that he had started up something with someone else. I didn’t say anything, because honestly, I didn’t really want to know, plus retrograde was still happening. These are lessons I have learned and refuse to repeat. I think it was still the trifecta of Venus, Mercury and one of our more distant cosmic dads spinning backwards and causing discord. Uranus or Neptune. Not really sure. Doesn’t matter. The universe, or our corner of it, is spinning the way it ought to be until April. And I know, non believers will say it’s silly, but I have felt a lightness of being for the last lil bit. I am going to enjoy this while it lasts.

I enjoyed Darkling while that lasted too.
And I could be totally wrong here and just tainted by the ones who came before. But my gut is a pretty highly tuned instrument at this point and he just kinda changed, less attention and I haven’t seen him. I would prefer this conversation be face to face as opposed to our normal gif filled meme exchanges.

I am gearing up to ask the question I don’t really want the answer to. It isn’t exactly over yet, mostly because I haven’t decided that it is, but I am getting there. Too bad really. The sex was pretty fucking fantastic.

He was really good at giving me attention too. I needed that, still do really. I was weaning myself off Wolf. I guess that mission has been accomplished, somewhat.

The fact remains, I have a high IQ and an even higher sex drive and only one of those things is currently being sated. I am mildly astonished at how lackadaisical I am feeling about all this. I cannot tell if I am broken or fixed. That is a topic for another day.

I wandered off tik tok and fell into reels on Instagram. I don’t hate it. If I click on a plant reel I can fall into a rabbithole of monstrous monsteras and prolific pothos and propagation videos. If I look at yoga, same same. Meditation and manifestations galore. But somehow the other day, I ended up watching a reel about how for every 16 points above 100 a woman’s IQ is, she is some huge percentage less likely to get married, and the men that I am attracted to and would be content with only make up 1% of the population.

Awesome.

I am royally screwed. But not in the literal sense.

I mean, I am 47, almost 48. If it was gonna happen, it would have happened already and my two forays into common law marriage sucked so badly. The idea of getting married was never in the forefront of my mind. I remember watching Charles and Di’s marriage and the part I liked the most was the hats.

But, having not been laid in a month now…I dunno, I lost track, and my track record of the last 4 or 5 years of intermittent sex with a married dude from far far away and before that the jail bae being in jail for half of our time together, then more recently the fisherman who was away 3 weeks at a time and now this traveling salesman…just ugh.

It would be nice to have a person.

Maybe I will still get a repeat of 2017 as far as my sex life goes. That would be nice.

I probably have to go back on tinder. Although I would rather not. I kept Wolfling and Big Spoon on the backburner too long and they have slipped back into whatever part of the ether my lost boys go when they aren’t scratching at my door.

In the meantime, I have to buy a new car, one of my least favorite things to do. Horrible timing really. I am having massive financial insecurity with this new job. I know if I stick it out there will be a promotion and a pay raise, but the current pay decrease to half of what I am used to making continues to be jarring. I might need a second job. Unless all y’all want to subscribe for a dollar a month. Please?

At least my house is in order, for now.
I had to put a plant back at the store yesterday.
I wasn’t happy about it.
There is also a shelf I keep visiting to house all of my plant babies but it’s $300 and it is just not in the budget I now have.

I missed buying the giant bamboo during Lunar new year. By the time it got warm enough to carry it home, they were all sold out. I regret not driving there when I had a car to drive, but I despise underground parking and I am trying to get my steps in when I can, even if it means braving the arctic tundra of Canada in February. 15 years I have wanted that bamboo, and I finally found it, just to lose out due to a polar vortex that wouldn’t let go, and my own stubbornness. 

I am stubborn man. Like too stubborn for my own good. That is why I stuck it out with jail bae, married guy…why I moved to Newfoundland in the first place, stayed trapped at the farm, all of it.

Retrospect and her sister Hindsight are bitches man. 

The last 2 years I spent galavanting around North America I also spent a lot of money. 

And I don’t have regrets exactly, but I am shaking my head at myself.

Two grand on 2 rooms in Newfoundland that I will never go back to kinda sting a bit.

I will make it work, I always do.
Do what you can with what you have where you are. Theodore Roosevelt.

Life does have a way of working out for me. I always have what I need, I just have to work on getting what I want as well.

At least I am no longer wasting time. I am doing all the things I meant to do before, and they are working. My abs are starting to show through. I slipped and had a burger the other day and I will tell you with my usual blatant honesty, I didn’t enjoy it. It’s fine, I tried and now I know.

That is my life in a nutshell…I tried.

I don’t regret the burger, I just won’t do it again.

The last few years? No regrets. And again with the blatant honesty, I would do it again. Mayhap smarter, but I would rather live a life of trying and failing than just staying safe and wishing I had done something.

And hand to god, money issues aside, I fucking tried. My intentions were pure and my actions were profound. 

In the immortal words of Ani Difranco I never tried to give my life meaning by demeaning you, but I would like to state for the record, I did everything I could do.

Tomorrow is a day of magic. A cosmic palindrome. A mirror. Everything I put out there is destined to come back to me. Seems like a good day to reset and start over.

I have a new instagram account that I can’t seem to link to here.
bluecollarballerina2.oh if you’re interested.

It’s mostly food pics and memes and me documenting my life, same as it ever was really.

I decided in this last leg of the plague to do the things I hadn’t managed to do for the past 2 years. I used to do this all through school too, leave a project to the last minute, rush through it at the end and get an A. Nothing changes. This newest thing is ‘getting in shape’. It’s working.

We’re in the endgame now

I had a friend DM me and ask how I am losing weight.

Diet tips from an anorexic are probably as useful as travel tips from a shut in…am I right?

I don’t have a good relationship with food. Or maybe I do.

I see food as a necessity, as fuel. I have to eat if I want to move and live.

I want to do those things.

So I eat. Begrudgingly, mostly, but I am also a really good cook so that helps.
Funny enough, I absolutely love to cook, Always have.

I also don’t put gas in my car when it is already full, but I am not comfortable running on empty either. Especially since in my car, a quarter tank is actually empty. Found that out the hard way.

I like the act of going out to eat as well, but that is more about the pomp and circumstance.
I like getting dressed up and trying new things, or getting dressed up and revisiting my favorite things. I will go back to NOLA one day and eat that shrimp and grits again before I die.

When I was young, eating anywhere but home was a very rare occurrence and a welcomed change of pace, it denoted a trip or a celebration, so dining out has positive connotations in my head. Now it means brunches with the girls, road trips and dates. Still good things.
God I cannot wait to go out on a date again. Plague be gone already.
I wasn’t privy to fast food very often as a kid and I have been known to binge from time to time, or most recently, Newfoundland and the lack of time to prep and eat meals at home which had me skipping the dishes often and grabbing a Big Mary combo 3 nights a week for 2 years.

But going back to childhood…my mom is a spectacular cook, so is my dad. We ate very experimentally back in the 80’s even before watching Wok with Yan. My folks brought dishes from their childhoods into mine and we were friends with people from a myriad of cultures so my palate was pretty sophisticated, even when I was little. We had a respectable spice cupboard, I knew the difference between good feta and what we get at the grocery store here. My favorite thing about Christmas was the Welsh neighbor’s boozy traditional pudding with hard sauce. We stashed stacks of corn tortillas for tacos in the freezer on our trips to the states because we couldn’t get them here. And most of our pizza nights were both homemade and still unrivaled.

But there were things I couldn’t stand as a kid and still don’t like as an adult. Ground beef for one. I will devour a burger from A&W or Whattabuger without a second thought, but homemade hamburgers, nope. Meatloaf is just a huge no. I make amazing meatloaf, I just won’t eat it. Even something so humble and apparently delicious as a meatball, nuh uh. Cabbage rolls and shepherd’s pie too, I can make them and they’ll  knock your socks off, but I will not partake.

These were all staples when I was a kid, ground beef is cheap and feeding a family of 5 on a budget means ground beef. And growing up in the 70’s and 80’s (and probably before) you ate what was on your plate, all of it or you didn’t leave the table. 

It was a constant source of conflict and I think it coloured the way I view food. As a have to instead of a want to. I never want to eat, and I don’t ever feel ‘hungry’, more of an internal timer that says “too long since last time we had sustenance. Do the thing”

In my teenage years, after a decade of fighting to get me to eat and stay at the table, the option was given for me to make my own food and/or graze as I wanted. It was better for everyone really. A lot of the time I would just not eat and lie about it. Preferring the sanctuary of my room and my music to the traditional family suppers. It worked out, my sisters had tons of extra curriculars after school so meals became sporadic and I spent 90% of my time on the phone or brooding over some boy that I was too scared to call.

And at 15 or 16 I landed in the hospital because I fainted. I fainted because I hadn’t eaten in days.
I played dumb. Didn’t tell anyone what I had done and let them run in circles trying to figure out what was wrong. Plus I got out of school, so triple win really.

Unfortunately the connection was made that this
1. Got me attention that wasn’t negative attention
2. Was something I could control in a life full of things I could not

Number 2 is still a problem.

I know a lot of people who equate feeling full with comfort. I don’t, never have.

I know people who grew up with food insecurity and are the opposite of me.

I made sure my son didn’t have to deal with either. Never force fed, always given options and never being hungry. From the time he could walk and talk, the bottom crisper in the fridge always had healthy snacks he could access whenever he wanted. He has a good relationship with food. Parenting win.

Speaking of, I heard something once that makes a lot of sense so I am gonna drop it in here. If you feel hungry, eat an apple, if you don’t want an apple, you aren’t hungry.
There, that’s my pearl of wisdom. That’s all I got.

My roommate and I were having a conversation regarding my current war on carbs wherein she was saying I could cheat. I don’t want to. I retorted with the infamous Kate Moss quote “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Sadly this is still true, although I had a dream about an english muffin the other night.

I didn’t start my anorexic journey in my teens because I didn’t like my body, I mean I didn’t but I was missing a tit at the time, so that kinda overshadowed everything. I had a good body back then, no appreciation for it, but I was definitely very attractive. Still blinded by the lack of boob, but I can see clearly now.

Back then, and when my anorexia came back with a vengeance 20 years later, it was always about control. And coveting that empty feeling. It isn’t how skinny feels, so much as the power that comes with feeling clean and empty and in control. On the rare occasion that I do over eat, like a steak dinner or thanksgiving I literally cannot stand the way my organs rearrange and my stomach distends. I feel like a stranger in my body.

Which is how I started feeling lately.

Most of my friends struggle with weight, I never have. I don’t really engage in their conversations about it because I honestly couldn’t relate and they made a HUGE point of telling me how skinny I am.

But, the last couple years I have developed a pouch. Like a little pot belly that now lives where my flat stomach used to be. AND I FUCKING HATE IT. I can’t dress myself, I fixate on it, it makes me cry. It is not a cute pot belly and contrary to what she said in Pulp Fiction, it doesn’t feel good to the touch. Probably because it isn’t so much of a pot as it is a pouch. I am not a kangaroo ffs.

When it first appeared a couple years ago I just thought okay this is a “Newfoundland drinking a few bottles of whiskey a week and eating like shit” kinda thing. I can undo this.

And for a brief period, I did. The timing was immaculate. I was going to Florida for a month and vowed sobriety and no fast food or meat for 30 days. I did the thing. I ate beautifully and healthy, no red meat, one piece of chicken one time, no soft drinks and no booze. And I wore crop tops with low skirts, I walked 4 miles to town a couple times a week, I swam, I wandered theme parks and felt lovely.

Then I went back to St. John’s ate steak, got black out drunk and threw a huge sobbing tantrum because I was too inebriated to get my pink butt plug in and ya, that ended well. I did throw up the entirety of a $200 meal and $200 bar tab, so bye bye calories and dignity really.

We learned a valuable lesson about consent. Fun times.

I had to fly the next day with borderline alcohol poisoning.
Not the fondest of memories.

But it should be noted that I despise throwing up, bulimia, while popular in my high school was never my thing. Denoted a lack of control for me.

Then covid happened and life became both scary and sedentary, but I kept up with the healthy eating, long bouts of sobriety and for a while I was walking constantly. But…here we are 2 years later and my man pants don’t fit and I have a handful of fat where my waistbands used to sit, justy above where my hip bones used to protrude just a lil bit in the most delightful way. And 30 some odd years later my brain is wrestling with an eating disorder again. 

Eating disorders and addictions are never really gone, they just hibernate until we get thrust into survival mode and we revert and regress…or until we learn new coping mechanisms.
I am still learning.
Stress puts me in a cocoon goo state. Not much going on outside, but inside I am becoming.
It should be noted that my throat still closes up when I am stressed, I can’t even begin to navigate the mechanics of chewing and swallowing. They become foriegn things that I used to know but have lost.  But my old crutches of coffee and cigarettes don’t really exist anymore. I used to drink a pot a day, but now it’s a cup, maybe 2.
2 years of ‘nowhere to be’ kinda quelled my coffee addiction. Didn’t need an energetic boost to sit around and wait for the plague to end. I used to get hyper caffeinated and write, but I stopped doing that too.

It should also be noted that covid did give me a respectable booty. On my last voyage to the island, I showed up at Final Boss’s house and he had me spin around a few times and made good grunting noises about said booty and grabbed it often. Dat ass, I shall keep, and I never minded doing squats.100 a day lately.

I am going to skip over the part where 15 years ago I  dropped to 95 pounds during my marriage. I have seen the pictures, now you have too, I know what happened and I know my boss was the only one who said something and that is what stopped me. I needed someone to see what I was doing. I was fitting into child sized sweatpants ffs. No one said anything. 
I have better people in my life now and a better life. So there’s that then.

This trip on the skinny merry-go-round, instead of skipping meals completely which was so tempting, I cut out carbs.
I love carbs. Back in the day, if I ate anything in a day it was usually one piece of toast with butter. Or if they were around, one english muffin. I wasn’t counting calories, carbs weren’t the enemy. It was a volume thing. As little as possible to keep going.
This is still a control thing and a self denial thing, but at least I am eating.

I also added chia seed and lemon water to get rid of anything that wants to linger. Makes me feel cleaned out, so that is probably healthy/unhealthy, I never did get into laxatives, too scared of shitting my pants. And I started working out a lil bit. Just in my attic with my mat and free weights, I now have a bosu, like a half yoga ball thing that saves my spine during crunches. I went from 10 minutes a day 3 weeks ago to 30. 15 reps up to 25×3. I haven’t done it today but I will, then shower, then I get to go buy some plants. I need my dangling carrots.

When I don’t feel like working out, I shop online and see how I want clothes to hang off my frame again. And when I want a carb, I roast or mash some cauliflower. I am getting to the point where I might need a gym membership and a trainer because I have no idea what I am doing physically, just going off tik toks and memories of the time I dated a trainer and he had me working out 4 mornings a week, but he would fuck me right after, I am telling you, I need those carrots. We all do.

I also think some of us need to reevaluate our relationship with food and our bodies.

My body hurts more often than not. But it still gets me places. My step counter on the first game day at my new job had me clocked at 35000 steps in one shift. I had to really assess whether or not my legs were going to work enough to operate the gas and brake on my drive home, and I hobbled that night, badly, but I got up in the morning and I worked out. I also had a butter tart at work that night that tasted like a religious experience, but I also walked 9.7 kilometers fueled by nothing but a bento box of veggies and cheese so there is that then. I didn’t feel bad about the butter tart.

I don’t feel bad about any of it. Mostly because I don’t cheat. No one is holding a gun to my head saying I can’t have an english muffin. There’s actually carbs all over the kitchen. I just don’t want them. And when I do, I envision that flowy white skirt I found at a thrift shop in Texas paired with one of my plethora of cute crop tops and a sunny warm day wandering through Kensington market and skipping past the bakery.