Waiting

I feel like everyone in the world is waiting. Waiting to catch covid, and/or for covid to be over, or over enough for things to more resemble the “normal” we knew last spring for what seems like a minute. 

Theo’s class is half empty. Bobby’s teacher is absent for a week - for what I can only assume is covid. And yet, kids are going to school each morning and returning each afternoon. They were tested yesterday. I’m going to assume anything they would have caught the day before wouldn’t have showed up by the next day, so I don’t know if we can trust those results. But as of this moment, Thursday night, we’re all a-symptomatic and in my mind, don’t have covid. Knock wood. 

I’m in that weird in-between of having called and emailed and messaged everyone I can about every conceivable topic, and am now just sitting and waiting while no one gets back to me about anything. I’m bored and frustrated and anxious. Still no estimate from the new contractor even though we met almost two weeks ago. I’m not sold on shelling out $5000 right now on a storage container; I was thinking about having this hulking monstrosity on the property and am questioning if that’s really in keeping with the small footprint we want to keep out there. The F wants to put it smack against the cabin and re-route the wash behind it; this is all starting to sound way over-complicated, when all I wanted was a little classic outhouse. I found a wedding venue that looks absolutely amazing but they haven’t answered my emails. I’m trying to coordinate visiting five different places this weekend, and just this morning the F was shocked we’re leaving tomorrow and not Saturday, also shocked that it’s a three day weekend and no, we’re not returning until Monday night. Even though we’ve talked about this several times. I’m always amazed by people who have no concept of when national holidays are. Still not sure if he’s going to be able to take work off for when I want him to. We may end up leaving Saturday and missing the one day we had free to hang out in the park. Boo.

For this new year, with everything being so unpredictable and out of control, I wanted to learn one new thing that might make me feel better about myself, so I bought a flat iron and have been attempting to learn how to style my hair. So far it’s going kind of ok. It’s definitely something that takes a lot of practice and technique. I think I’ve been trying to use the flat iron when my hair is too damp. I’ll spend maybe 20 minutes-half hour on it only to feel like my hair looks pretty much the same as it did before. It’s a huge effort for very little results. Still determined to keep trying, though. I think next time I’ll try bone-dry hair and see if that helps. 

Speaking of huge effort for little results, I’ve been having some thoughts about weight loss. I had started the 5:2 diet in January of 2020 when I weighed about what I do now, and lost about 13 lbs in the weeks before everything went to shit in March. I stuck with the fasting until about November of last year, and was pleased that, despite nearly two years of pandemic, I only gained back about 5lbs. However, after slowing down exercise and stopping the 5:2 entirely, I gained another 7 lbs by Christmas. And I thought this would just keep going, as I’ve been eating whatever I want and exercising intermittently ever since. However, it’s now been 3+ weeks and I haven’t gained a pound. Which goes contrary to my previous theory that if I stopped fasting I would just gain weight forever. It really makes me think that, unless you do something extreme, like severely over-or under-eat, your body just picks a weight it wants and sticks there. Unfortunately my nearly 50-year-old ass has apparently decided this is its happy weight. And I’m not mad about it - I’m enjoying snacks and treats and not counting calories and not fasting and yet still think my body looks ok and can fit into most of my clothes. My sister said, when I was bemoaning my ten pound weight gain since two years ago, “be kind to yourself”. She’s right. I’ve been so hard on myself to try to stay skinny, and for what? To be a lousy ten pounds lighter which barely makes a difference? Is it worth starving two days a week for weight loss that doesn’t even really look like anything? Everything is awful - there’s no gigs or social activities on the calendar; even for my wedding I’ve wisely chosen a non-form fitting dress so I don’t have to feel pressured to lose weight right before. And I’m old and smack up against menopause and it’s really fucking hard to be girl-skinny at this age. Do I just give up? Do I just accept myself at this slightly overweight weight and throw up my hands and say, “I guess this is it”? No matter what the long term answer is, the short term answer is yes, yes I do. I need my small comforts right now, things are very stressful, and I just don’t have it in me to try intermittent fasting again right now (especially when I was only losing and re-gaining the same three pounds over and over again for the last 22 months). Maybe at some point later I’ll be motivated to suffer for two months straight just to lose the lousy 7-8 lbs I gained over the holidays. Or maybe I’ll just say the hell with it.