This weekend has been one of those revelatory weekends wherein I realize that pathetic isn’t even close to describing just how far I’ve let all things relating to myself go. I’m in a deep pit and it’s going to take a long time to claw myself up out of it.

I was watching a Tim Gunn makeover show recently and the recipient of the makeover was a 5’10″ woman. Ordinarily I don’t pay close attention to these shows but because the woman was exactly my height (and thus had the same problems as me in finding clothing to fit her elongated limbs), I settled in to see what types of things she purchased.

My conclusion? Don’t be tall unless you have boatloads of cash and can shop in uber-expensive and exclusive American stores carrying such high-end brand names that most people have never even heard of them before. Because, apparently, stores with non-exorbitant price points have never heard of the term “tall” before. In other words? I be screwed.

Anyway, back to the show. The first thing that Tim Gunn did was to ask the woman being made-over to go to her closet and pick out her top ten “can’t live without” items. And it hit me like a ton of bricks that I don’t have a top ten list of  ”can’t live without”  items. Because I don’t own ten items.

Well, unless you count the clothes that don’t currently fit me due to a combination of my hormones and my tendency toward slothfulness. (And even with those items you can still see the odd tumbleweed roll through my echoey closet)

Here is a list of the clothes that fit me right now:

1. One pair of Gap Long and Lean jeans (the “lean” part is a subjective term)
2. One bra
3. A set of five long-sleeved Old Navy layering tees (in white, black, grey, dark grey and green)
4. A set of four short-sleeved Old Navy layering tees (in white, grey, navy and brown.)
5. Several Old Navy layering tank tops
6. A grey, cable knit sweater
7. A brown, short-sleeved sweater
8. A pair of black dress pants that I haven’t worn since last Christmas and probably don’t even fit me anymore.
9. A bunch of not-pretty underwear
10. Several pairs of socks

So, yeah. I guess if Tim Gunn asked me what my top ten wardrobe essentials are, I’d have to say my whole closet.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something. That something being, “Damn, woman, you need to buy some damn clothes!”

I have decided to make some small changes in my life in order to slowly drag myself out of the hole I’ve created. I started by purchasing another pair of Gap jeans (same style and fit, different wash) off of eBay for a cheap price. (Firstly, because the Gap here doesn’t sell the jeans I’m looking for, and secondly because I can get them online for less than half price and I don’t plan on being big enough to fill out these jeans for long.) They’re marked as “shipped” so hopefully they get here soon. I’m excited, because the wash them, wear them, wash them, wear them cycle I’ve been on with my current jeans is exhausting.

The second thing I did was approach my husband about the prospect of bra shopping on a weekend. I planned ahead and came up with an argument that he just couldn’t refuse. Firstly, I suggested a trip to see Santa at the mall I wanted to go to, which Lucky agreed was a great idea. *

Secondly, I came up with an analogy of sorts to explain my dire need for another bra before he could launch into a tirade about hating shopping on the weekends/shopping before Christmas/shopping for clothes/shopping in general:

Me: Lucky, I need a new bra and before you say anything, let me tell you why.

Lucky: *eye roll* Okay, shoot.

Me:  Right now, at this very moment, my one well-fitting bra is in the wash and I have been forced to wear one that’s too small. Let me tell you how that feels.

Lucky: O-kay…

Me: Imagine for a moment that you are wearing a jock strap. And it’s too small. And, instead of the elastic serving to hold the jock strap in place, it’s instead pinning your tender bits to the inside of your thigh. And, every time you take a step, that elastic shifts around and squishes…

Lucky: *cringe*  *white face*  *full body “protect the junk” pose*  AAAHHH! Okay! Enough! Get a bra. Get a hundred bras! Let’s go right now!

Apparently, judging by the reaction my analogy received, I seriously underestimated the sensitivity of certain parts of the male anatomy. But it served its purpose and I have my new bra so, IGNORANCE WIN!

I still have a long way to go. The clothes I own are baggy and shapeless. I have an immensely hard time finding long enough pants. Not to mention long enough sleeves.  I may, in the future, need to look at what the lone “tall” store in town has to offer. For now, though, I am going to take baby steps.

I am slowly learning that even though I have plans to lose this extra weight, I have to dress the body I have right now in clothes that fit properly. I can’t continue to fall deeper into the pit as I let my life pass me by. I want to get to the point where, if I’m asked for my top ten wardrobe “must-haves”, my first thought isn’t, “I’ll get back to you after I’ve gone shopping.”

Don’t get me wrong: my smaller clothes are looking forward to their chance at a triumphant return. In the meantime, though, they’ll have to share their waiting room with some clothes that fit the body I’m in right now. I think I owe myself that much.

* After seeing Santa, Lily informed us that Santa said, “roight” instead of “right”, which prompted a conversation about how apparently, Santa lived in Jolly Old England before emmigrating to the North Pole.

* Logan seemed pleased that “This Santa was the same one as last year!” which leads me to believe that he’s trying to pull one over on us in terms of his Santa beliefs. Either that, or we were smart enough to have the “Santa can’t be in all the malls at the same time so he sends his helpers along” conversation with him at some point. Fingers crossed!

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me, Out of the Mouths of Babes, PCOS, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

So, you know how I get when I’m not “in the flow” of writing stuff down? How nothing is good enough to post? Yeah. I’m there now. So, even though I’m fairly certain that the following information is the most useless drivel ever (uh, enjoy!), I’m posting it anyway. If for no other reason than to get my poor, underused brain working again…
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In the car on the way to parent-teacher interviews:

Lily: My teacher doesn’t drive this fast!

Lucky: How do you know?

Lily: She has a goat.

(Duh.)

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Today, when I was walking barefoot across the carpet, each step I took sounded like someone was adjusting and re-adjusting a piece of velcro. Time for another self-pedicure…

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What they do when I’m cooking dinner. Lately, they do this whenever someone comes in the room. They want OUT.

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Next week, I am totally going to a sex toy party with the members of my Bible study group. The hostess? Our book leader. I can’t stop laughing.

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Last night, Lily was drinking water from the bathtub. I thought I heard my husband exclaim, “Don’t do that! You’re drinking dirty bong water!” and I was disturbed that he would speak that way in front of our young children. Then I realized that what he actually said was, “You’re drinking dirty bum water!” It turns out that I was more disturbed by what he actually said. Damn you, mental imagery!

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Me, Offspring, Out of the Mouths of Babes, Phoning it in, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 4 Comments →

So, you know how items mass-produced in foreign countries sometimes come back with issues like crazy levels of lead or other dangerous things in them? But most companies keep on commissioning jobs anyway because it’s cheap? And, because it’s done cheaply, the odds are pretty good that the working conditions aren’t great and the workers are likely miserable? And, even though most of us know that buying these products is only encouraging more of the same behaviour, we do it anyway because money doesn’t grow on trees and “cheap” has a tendency to trump everything? *

Well, I have a possible solution. Just send all your crap to me and I’ll get my daughter to make it for you. You’ll get high-quality products for a low price, made by a well-adjusted, happy *cough* child, *cough* living in a clean, warm environment, who is free to rifle through the pantry whenever she so desires. And with the money you pay me, uh, her, she’ll get lots of gorgeous clothes from a company who likely sends their work to foreign countries to be mass-produced.

Wait.

Crap.

Maybe I’ll have to rethink this a bit…

You’re probably wondering why I’d volunteer my precious baby girl to perform such tasks. Well, I’ll tell you. When I’m finished, you’ll be lining up to mail your stuff to her. Just trust me on this one.

SO. Lily received two mosaic-making kits for her birthday in October and has been begging me to work on them ever since. I’d been hesitant to open them because I figured they’d be extremely messy and labour-intensive but on Friday I finally broke down and opened the jewelry box kit for her. After briefly explaining the legend to her, she set up camp on the floor in the bonus room and went to town.

She worked steadily on her jewlery box from about 1:30pm until we had to go pick up Logan from school at 3:30pm. Once we got back home, she high-tailed it back upstairs and kept on working until dinner was ready and managed to finish the whole thing. Her jewlery box contains approximately eighty-six kajillion stick-on jewels of various shapes and colours and my barely five year old daughter sat happily for FOUR HOURS, deep in concentration, to stick each one on in exactly the right place ALL BY HERSELF.

And. And! After supper, she begged me to open the tiara kit so she could keep creating sparkly girl crafts. Between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, she completed three of them. I’m not kidding when I say this child has a better attention span than I do.

I’m sure you’re thinking that she just really likes glitter and sparkles and the attention-span thing was just a fluke. Well, check out the Christmas ornament kit I picked up just before Halloween:

It came with enough supplies to make 24 ornaments. I figured that I’d set the kids up at the kitchen table one afternoon in December and help them make one or two ornaments apiece to put on the tree. I thought we could hand out the leftovers to some of our friends with kids and let them make a couple as well. Lily had other ideas.

One morning, while I was upstairs, Lily got out the box and proceeded to mass-produce all of the ornaments in one fell swoop.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with them all.

The only problem I can think of with my mom and pop sweatshop venture idea is the mess that mass-producing can cause. Do you know where those eighty-six kajillion paper backings for the eighty-six kajillion jewels ended up? On my carpeted bonus room floor.

It’s moments like these where I am immensely grateful to whoever invented the Hoover. Amen.

* Please don’t lambaste me! I’m not making light of the reality of sweatshops. They’re hateful things.

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Offspring, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

When I was in grade seven, right at the beginning of the school year, I went for a haircut that would change my life’s course. It has since been dubbed “The Unfortunate Hair Cut Incident of 1988″ and I’m not going to lie: if I could go back in time and change that one thing, I probably would. Butterfly Effect be damned.

This is more-or-less the look I had been going for:

Only a touch longer and with the classic “claw bangs”:

I brought in a picture to my hairdresser, though I should have figured that any man pretentious enough to go by three names would be too cocky to actually follow someone else’s guidelines. He turned me away from the mirror (another red flag!) and promised that I would love the results. I could feel my long, heavy hair starting to feel lighter and lighter. When he turned me back around, this is what was staring back at me:

I was horrified. HORRIFIED. Because the haircut I asked for (with photo aids!) and the haircut I received could not have been more different. Obviously, the three-named butcher was on crack. I hated it. I was humiliated. It was so short that there was absolutely nothing I could do to mask it. I tried headbands (and you can see just how well THAT worked out for me), barrettes and hats. I cried. I complained. My family forced smiles onto their faces and boldly lied to me. “I think it looks cute.” “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Right.

Pre-haircut, I was a girl who had just entered junior high and had made a name for herself by being bold enough to volunteer to take the locker next to a cute boy. There were boys in other classes who “liked” me. Post-haircut, I was this girl:

I’ll take responsibility for the polkadot blouse and matching sweater/headband set. That craptastic ensemble is a product of poor taste mixed with the 80s. I will maintain until the day that I die, though, that the haircut was NOT MY FAULT. That haircut ruined my self-esteem. It traumatized me to the point where I tried to become invisible. That entire school year was a complete wash.

Thankfully, by the next year, my hair had grown past shoulder length and was back to being a normal girl’s haircut. The rest of my adult teeth grew in and I lost the space between my two front teeth. My life got progressively easier after that and I am profoundly grateful.

The lesson I took out of it all is that if you want things to go your way, you need to be assertive. Don’t be afraid to say what you want and stick to your guns.

Oh, and NEVER let your hairdresser turn you away from the mirror. Ever.

About three weeks ago, I decided it was time for a change. My hair was past my shoulders and was feeling heavy and bulky. As I flipped through a magazine, I found a picture similar to the one I had adored in the late eighties, modified for the twenty-first century. I brought it to my hairdresser (who only goes by two names, thank you!) and showed her exactly what I wanted. She erred on the side of caution and cut it a little longer than what I had asked for, claiming that she didn’t want to shock me. I ended up with this:

Don’t let the deer in the headlights expression fool you. (Also, try not to be too blinded by the stripey maternity-top-turned-nightshirt.) I LOVE this hair. It’s shorter than I usually go, but not so short that I feel as though I’ve been drafted into the army. The colour is darker than my natural colour, but comfortable. And, the piece de resistance?

It’s an inverted bob. It’s way shorter in the back than I have ever purposely done before, but I love it. LOVE IT. If I had gone to my childhood hairdresser with the words “inverted bob” on my tongue, I probably would have ended up with the “I have a dead animal on my head” look that is so popular with a particular TLC reality show personality.

Whew! Dodged that bullet…

Thankfully, I am in love with my haircut. Add some claw bangs to that sucker and it’s almost exactly what I wanted on that fateful day twenty-one years ago. This time, I asked for what I wanted and actually got it.

Better late than never.

Filed under: Confessions, Happy Happy, Keepin' it Real, Me, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

This is me. No makeup. Completely un-retouched in Photoshop. No product in my hair. Just me.

I’m fat. I’m cranky. I’m tired, as you can plainly see by the baggy dark smudges under my glassy, red-rimmed eyes. Being awake is hard. Being awake and present is nearly impossible. Part of it has to do with a medical condition. More of it has to do with the way I’ve been treating myself lately.

Going to bed late. Not exercising. Not caring. Feeling tired, lethargic and not at all myself. All of these things have resulted in the above picture as well as the travesty below:

It’s a far cry from the way I want to look. The way I always used to look. I haven’t always been this way. I grew up thin. That inner thin girl is just crying to get back out again. She’s been trapped under these emotional and physical layers for too long. Life needs to continue, but not the way I’ve been living it.

People ask me why I continue to torture myself by staying up late when I’m exhausted. Why I find excuse after excuse not to just drag my butt to the gym. Why, on any given day, I’d rather be napping than doing almost anything else. The answer, in short, is that I just don’t know. It’s self-sabotage but I can’t come up with a clear reason for why I’m doing it. I hide behind the fact that I have PCOS. That I really do have reasons for the weight gain. The fatigue and the erratic moods. But the truth of the matter is that I haven’t been doing a damn thing to change any of it. I want to change, but apparently not enough to actually do anything about it. Well, until now, anyway.

Last week, I saw my endocrinologist for a follow-up on my PCOS. She put me on a fairly substantial dosage of Metformin to help combat the main problems I’ve been having. I started with just half a pill a day and have been slowly upping my dosage, allowing my body to get used to it. It’s been just over a week and one of the things I’ve noticed thus far is that my appetite has decreased. Not only my appetite, but my food cravings as well. This is encouraging. Up until this point, I’ve felt enslaved by my sugar cravings. I think, with the help of this handy little medication, I can start to kick the habit. Baby steps.

Tonight, I dragged myself to the gym to work out for the first time in I don’t even know how long. The only reason I did it is because I have a friend who was counting on me to go with her. After sweating on the elliptical trainer and bike for an hour, I felt better. I was, as I always am after a workout, glad that I went. The lesson here is that you can never underestimate the power of guilt. I’m not above using any means necessary to get results.

So, while I have a long way to go to work through all of these utterly mystifying issues, I am starting to break out of my haze and try. I’m going to make a real effort to get out of my own way and do what I need to do. I am going to attempt to get more sleep at night instead of wasting my life by crashing out in the morning while the kids are at school. I’m going to try to force myself to become more active. And, I’m going to take advantage of the side-effects of my medication to eat a proper diet. It’s not going to be easy, but uphill battles rarely are. I’m just going to keep trucking, even if I stumble and fall a thousand times along the way. Who knows how long it’ll take, but one day, this will no longer be my rear view:

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me, PCOS by WWS (Lynn) - 3 Comments →