Day of the Odd Bod

Two days ago was Norwegian Independence Day here in the Great Pacific Northwest, complete with a parade and those zany little Shriner guys in their fez's and little cars zooming about throwing them orange candy peanuts at all the little tootsies. Happy Lutefisk to you and yours.

Before that was Cinco de Mayo, more candy - and Mother's Day, more candy - and before that Easter, where that bunny that looks like Jesus rises from the cave and brings baskets of CANDY to one and all who shall not die but have everlasting life... ? And before that the celebration of the cocoa plant, St. Valentine's Day (see former post ).

Well I'm here to inform you that today has been newly dubbed as Day of the Odd Bod on the planet where I live. It's filled with fun house mirrors and bad posture, anything, ANYTHING to accentuate what we do to ourselves with all that flippin candy. This holiday was created on the day of New Releases at the bookstore where I work when the book entitled "Big Belly Fat Cure" hit the bestseller tables - and every kind of bod known to mankind hit the bookstore in search of this miraculous tome. I couldn't keep enough copies on the floor. It has a lot of pages and a special coating on the cover, along with a spiral bound spine so you can easily fold back the pages if you so happen to find a before and after picture that "does it" for you. And the basic premise of this cure is?:

KNOCK OFF THE SUGAR!!!!

In about 150 stunning pages.

Ugh. What a nightmare. I really couldn't live with myself if I went into detail on who came out of the woodwork in search of this cure, it would just sound too wicked and the karma fairies might come back at me with something unspeakable. Suffice it to say that I felt like Twiggy standing there by my little counter, and I'm up about 12 pounds right now myself.

No body wants to take responsibility for what they put in their mouths, myself included. We just want a free ticket to chomp with abandon, having no price to pay in the end. But there is a price indeed, and it's usually in that gut that we look down at in shock and awe, like, "where did that come from?" Well, it wasn't that bunny or Cupid's fault, right? I mean, would Jesus hold a gun to your head and make you eat? Surely not, I say unto thee.

Tomorrow, I'm going to take a hard look at this candy nest I've been digging for myself and see if perhaps there's another, less destructive way to find my comfort. I'd like to feel a bit healthier and more streamlined next year on Day of the Odd Bod.

But tonight I'm grateful that I still have Willy Wonka's Runts to finish off. Sigh...

Seemingly Slim Pickins

If fear burned calories I'd be anorexic.

Last two weeks condensed: Broke, stunningly bored and bewildered with idleness, after reaching out again to friends and former co-workers I finally landed a job. Back with my former employer of the retail nature, I find that not only are things there not the same, but I am not at all the same either. The last time I worked full-time retail I had a husband and another income coming in - and an overflow of coping juice in my lifetime supply pool to wash over me should I find myself in any situation that called for it. My pool ranneth over.

Today my little puddle be cracked and dry, and I pray daily not to have to cope with anything bigger than a bad hair day until the coping rains come back and fill my reservoir again. Instead I got a retail schedule that would leave me home only when Sasha's not here and at work when she is. Thirteen is hard enough, but 13 and still in the throes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is monstrous. Take that and add in the absence of any parental unit for over a week and what do you get? The emergency room on the evening of the fifth day in a row that mommy doesn't come home until after dark.

Poor Sasha was so agitated and desperate that I barely recognized her and I found myself in a fear that I have never experienced before. Kind of like the opposite of the day she was born, when I found myself in love in a way I had never before experienced. Holy crap, I have proven to myself that I can take just about anything, but when it comes to my kid - I become frightened and lost. No messing with my kid, Universe, I can't take it.

So she's been home for a week, flat on the sofa and I have attempted to show up for my job until today. This is simply not going to work.

If I could get away with drinking, believe that I would be wasted in a heartbeat. For certain.

But - I am 24 years clean and sober and supposedly have my wits about me, so I know that of all the choices out there for me, that is not one of them. Crazy, right? All that time and all I still want is my bottle to comfort me? And that freaking bottle is singing so rowdy right now that it's awfully hard to get around it to find whatever else my choices may be.

So what now? Hell if I know.

Today I'm grateful that it's Friday and I get to go to my home group and simply sit and take in other people's sprinklings of sanity. It may seem like a small thing, but it's the biggest and the best I got.