Mandajuice

Going back to Cali*

Right around the day I filed my tax return, I got an e-mail invitation to a family reunion on Easter Sunday in California. My Aunt didn't have my e-mail address and went out of her way to make sure someone would forward it to me. When my cousin, Amber, e-mailed it to me I was honored. There's been a lot of water under that bridge and I've been worried that I'd actually burnt it down forever.

Apparently not.

For the first time in a long time, I had the money to Say Yes. So I did! I'm taking the whole clan to California for Spring break from March 30 through April 9th. Actually, only the kids and I will be gone that long. Joel starts a new job on Monday so he only gets to take a week off. Liza will be with us for about five days.

For me it will be ten days in the state formerly known as home.

I'm going to need an extra pair of running shoes and a hip flask if I'm going to survive, but my grandmother is turning 90. NINETY! So I can't miss it. Which makes it that much easier to get over myself and Joel will be right there next to me. 

So I'm good.

Actually, I'm stoked. I can't wait to run the squishy rubber track at Los Gatos High and show Joel the house I grew up in and the beach where I gave my first blow job. Both of my brothers are down to host and I can't wait to see them. I wonder if I'll cry when I see my nephews like I did the last time I was in San Francisco. They seem to grow so fast when I'm not around.

My only promise is to take a lot of pictures and see my therapist the moment I get back.

*... I don't think so.

Comme ci comme ça

Things have been good around these parts lately. I haven't heard back about grad school yet, but my tax return came in and I was not only able to pay back some debts and catch up on my bills, but buy fun things like car insurance! and running shoes! and a phone that actually turns off! My iphone 3 (not 3GS, just 3...) had been on its last legs for nearly a year, so I bought a new one, switched to Verizon and added myself to Joel's family plan, which saves me so much money every month that the phone basically paid for itself.

Which only makes the Siri-related tomfoolery that much more fun! I'm glad the poor gal doesn't have much of a long-term memory.

Lest you worry, I had already bought another kindle weeks ago, but that didn't stop the children from starting a cage match over who got my old phone to use as an ipod. I think Genoa may have won. Mostly because she wanted me to set up her e-mail account and Alex was too busy playing Minecrack.

Baby's first e-mail?

To Joel: "You smell like dirty socks and armpits!"I beg to differ with her, obviously. Oh! That reminds me; did I mention Joel and I are officially back together? Because that happened. It's not without complications, no doubt, but dude, you guys, we're like magnets, yada yada yada, nothing worth doing is easy. And no, we're not moving in together again.

We sealed the deal with Valentine's day tattoos.

He got his Alfred Hitchcock Geek logo on his arm and I had him write, "Be who you are." over my heart. Not sure I'm exactly sure who I WANT to be yet, but I seem to end up being me in spite of myself.

Since it was my BFF, Terry's, birthday, I also did the tattoo thing with her. Because she's the most generous person I know, I had her write "Share" on my shoulder. She's also a chemistry teacher, so not only is mine written in mathematical symbols, but the tattoo she promised her students was this rad atom:

It was fun to spread the badassery around my little family circle. Speaking of challenging badassedness, my boy is doing well. He might have a hard time paying attention in school, but at least he found a new reason to love going to church every Sunday.

What else?

Work has been delightfully busy, I've been running five miles at a go, I signed up for my first race, and this week Joel and I are making a last-ditch effort to see all nine Best Film Oscar nominees before heading to our friend Rachel's house on Sunday for a formal-wear pizza party in front of a live television.

Never a dull moment!

Even better? My next post will be about how I'm booking a trip to California so all five of us can attend a family reunion on Easter Sunday.

Hold me.

mandajuice shared an Instagram photo with you

(I was hoping I could post directly from Instragram to my blog, but alas, I haven't figured it out yet...)

Thin Privilege

The running continues to delight, amaze and frustrate me. I feel SO GOOD after I'm done with a run, but man, the progress is painfully slow. Today I ran laps around the city water supply up at Mt. Tabor, which sounds dull, but honestly, this is Portland:

I'm having a hard time getting my speed up when I run outside and it's starting to piss me off. On the treadmill, I'm doing 9 or 10-minutes miles, but outside, it's 11 minutes or more. I really want that fucking tattoo! And yet the 8-minute mile goal seems just as far away as ever. Sometimes I wish I had a coach barking at me to go faster, but the truth is I have never been in better shape than I am right now. I have never run more than one mile without wanting to die. Today I ran over four miles straight, stopping only for a fraction of a second to adjust my sock so I wouldn't get a(nother) blister. I couldn't even do that as a teenager.

Which reminds me how I need to write about the box of old photos and journals my sister gave me. The photos were somewhat life-changing and I plan to dedicate a whole post to how they made me feel, but inside the box I also found the original cheer leading uniform my mother made for me when I was TWELVE.

It fits.

Which is insane. Especially since this body still feels so foreign to me. It's stronger. It goes faster. It's bendy! It has better orgasms and wears smaller clothes. But I still have no idea how much space it takes up. I just feel like ME. Not that I haven't been thinking about body size lately, especially since my little sister and I broke up over my inability to fully embrace the Fat Acceptance Movement. I LOVE the idea of body acceptance at any size and I'm proud of her for the way she has learned to love her body, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me I was even remotely healthy at 310 pounds. I was out of control. I played video games all day and ate fast food all night. Even walking was painful. I was miserable, but not because of how I looked. It was always about how I FELT and how being obese limited my ability to do normal things. Like conceive children. Or wipe my ass in a public restroom.

Now that I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum, it still isn't about how I look. I would have been perfectly happy to be a size 14 for the rest of my life and I never would have known the difference. But now I apparently have something called "thin privilege," which I agree, I do. It kind of annoys me, to be honest. Sure my inner fat girl loves being accepted as "normal," but my inner feminist wants to punch a bitch every time she (or he) tells me I look skinny.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think the real me, the one who is neither feminist nor fat girl, woke up this morning, put her running shoes on and KICKED SOME ASS. When I got home, I ate fresh berries with greek yogurt and a spoonful of crunchy organic peanut butter. My "diet" is the opposite of restrictive; in fact, it has never been more colorful. Running does this amazing thing where I can eat pretty much anything I want and still maintain my weight (food insurance, as my friend Donna puts it), but it turns out I only WANT to eat foods that make me feel good.

I no longer receive any kind of emotional gratification from food.

I eat because I need to. I only think about food while I'm eating it (or shopping/meal planning/cooking for other people). Food is fuel - delicious, delicious fuel - and it's my body that tells me when I need it, not my brain.

I'm not gonna lie - it's pretty rad. I never knew my body could feel like this and I never want to go back to the days of thinking about food 24-7. I'm not all the way there yet (caffeine and booze much?), but I feel like I'm really learning to take care of my body and in return, my body is taking care of me and my crazy, crazy brain.

This obviously hasn't been the path of least resistance. It took, and continues to take, some difficult decisions. So, much to the Fat Activism Movement's dismay, I feel strongly that if being this size affords me any privilege, it has only been earned through sweat and tears (and lots and lots of therapy). I should not have to apologize for it. Big or small, no one should have to apologize for their size.

I work best at the last minute. Not that I've ever tested that hypothesis or anything.

So I got my application submitted mere hours before the PSU deadline. All of my transcripts and references went through. Woot! Now I get to sit back and wait to see if they call me for an interview. Apparently only 400 people applied for the 60 spots, so it's not like I have any competition or anything. I clearly have nothing to be nervous about. Especially not this paragraph from my admissions essay where I talk about how my clients trust me:

This trust means there is approximately a six-minute delay between the initial handshake and the moment I’m inspecting naked genitalia under a magnifying lamp. The result of this just-add-water intimacy is that my clients (both men and women of all shapes, colors, ages and sizes) not only drop their pants for me, but their shields. They tell me everything. I hear about their broken marriages, their narcissistic mothers, their anxieties and self-doubt, their low self-esteem, their body issues, their sexual abuse, and, on a good day, their triumphs.  And while I constantly strive to be a good listener, I wish I had better answers, or, at the very least, better questions.

I'm in like Flynn, right?

The thing is, I could've written a very academic essay about my accomplishments and why I want to be a counselor, but I figured I'd just be me and write it like a blog post. I hope it works because the more I think about it, the more excited I am about going back to school. Even if it's not this year, it is a life goal I intend to pursue.

And for the record, I'm not doing it for the money. Did we not discuss this yet? I would like to live above the poverty line and some day help other poor, single mothers do the same. That's about it, though. I want to become a therapist because I think it's what I'm supposed to do. Something about me (my openness? my fearlessness? my utter disdain for judging anyone whose shoes aren’t on my side of the closet?) makes complete strangers comfortable telling me their secrets. They've done it my whole life. So pursuing this path just feels like I'm finally listening to what the universe is trying to tell me. 

So cross your fingers for me, will ya?