loss

(this photo has no real significance with this post, except that I took it a week ago on a four-mile run and it looks like "loss', to me...)

So, as I've mentioned in previous posts (but never gone into full detail about), every year on my birthday I make a list of things to do on that day, as many things as I am old. Because I am so old now, sometimes it's hard to think of enough awesome things, but I'm realistic and write down even the obvious like "eat Lucky Charms for breakfast" (just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not special), so I can be sure and accomplish all of them, because a side-'thing' is to be able to finish the list. It's going to get really tricky when I start aging into triple-digits-- that's a LOT of things to do in one day, huhm. Especially as time goes faster, the older you get-- by the time I'm 100, what is a 24-hour-day to me right now will probably have shortened into about 16.3 hours. And 12 of those will be taken up by night-sleeping and day-dozing.

Someday I'll have to post one of those lists. They're pretty epic.

The other thing I do on my birthday, if I remember (read: if I put it on my to-do list), is write a list of GOALS for the coming year. Not necessarily as many as I am old, come on that's just ridiculous. But I do like to buck the system and write such on my birthday, instead of being a New Year's cliche... though, much like NYR's, I don't always reach the stars and achieve those dreams. In fact, every year, it seems, I have some recurring goals-- 1) learn the cello, 2) get married, d*#@ it--, 3) lose twenty pounds, and 4) avoid acquiring a litter of cats.

Worthy aspirations, all, but let's specifically look at number three of those four.

Doesn't every girl want to lose twenty pounds? At all times? Shouldn't writing it down as a birthday goal automatically make it happen, or at minimum as a Granted Birthday Wish in reward for blowing out all the candles? (and that's a LOT of candles-- I am very old, after all).

Well, here was the problem-- one day, a few years back, I turned 30. Here I am halfway through Thirty:

I know I look hunchbacked. I also know the date-stamp says " '89".
Both of these appearances are false. 

Hot, yes? Yes. At least according to some random film photos I scanned for something else last week. Ahh, so young, so fresh-faced... so free from earthly worries... (it helped, of course, that I was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean at the time, and had both a lot of sun and and an endless amount of Shirley Temples at my disposal.)

That (the apparent continuation of youth) was a trick, though. I hadn't yet realized that, not only had my skin suddenly started to lose elasticity around the eyes at the stroke of midnight on my first day of Thirty, but my metabolism was also secretly staging a coup which would turn to outright rebellion.  In the form of a big yawn as it went to sleep, because, after all, it had been working moderately hard for 30 years already.

So, in return, every ensuing year a few pounds crept up and took residence. I fought and fought, but the old metabolism and I were no longer on the same page. Rebellion, remember. I tried a lot of different tactics, but to no lasting avail.

Then, about twenty months ago, after the loss of my grandfather and encouraged/inspired by a recently-newly-svelte friend, I put my foot down and went to work in earnest. And lost 12 pounds.

Then I went to India for three weeks in the summer and lost an additional 6 pounds. Hurrah!

Then, I became RSP and was stressed and busy all last year and maybe fluctuated 4 pounds or so in the course of nine months. Booo.  But I knew I was going back to India for the summer, this time for 10 weeks, so I would automatically lose a ton of weight and come back really really skinny. Hurray!!

Then I went to India, and we had plenty of fruit to eat this summer, and as I kept getting sick from the campus food, I ate a lot of ramen, so-- I didn't lose the 20 more pounds I was hoping to. Boooo.

BUT-- I came home and it turned out I'd lost a few (the fun-house mirror in my room, plus the flowy tunics, had convinced me otherwise while there) and was at the exact same weight from a year earlier. Yay! And Boo. Not skeletal-skinny. But still good!

STILL, though-- the magic number 20 was eluding me. Since my return from India, I have been intent on eating little and exercising a lot, because I know myself and my idiot metabolism, but I wasn't going any lower. Couldn't get past 19.

*tangent*

So, I haven't blogged since I got back from India. I didn't blog very much during the summer, either, and that's because I just stopped caring-- all the stories I wanted to tell, I only really cared about a select few people (or one person) knowing. Same since I got back.

*return from tangent*

But now... I am at a loss. I no longer have that audience to listen to me, so back to the blog I go. And hand-in-hand with the sad loss of that audience has come the loss of appetite, plus an increase in the desire to run, which together happen to foster another (more desirable) kind of loss, so... there is a flip-side-bonus to all this, which is...

Goodbye, magic number 20. I've moved on to 21!! (and counting). Take that, Metab.

Gotta go run. :)