Misery

Every morning, the other mom at the bus stop and I talk about our weight and what to do about it. This has been going on for years now. Several times we've had temporary success, which makes it worse: how can we have success, and feel so encouraged by our success, and then still fail again? We've tried different approaches, different attitudes, different plans---nothing works for long, including "trying something new every time the old way stops working."

This morning, though, we've had a fresh insight. The price of losing weight, for us, is misery. And we are already miserable with our constant failure and constant weights. So perhaps instead of being miserable about our weight and about our failures, we can commit to the misery of weight loss. We will be miserable either way, but one of those ways results in smaller clothes.

We'll see. It is very hard to believe or hope, when experience shows such a consistent lack of reason to do so. It's easy to say "Keep trying! Don't give up!"---but goodness, that certainly sounds foolish when it's been decades.

Superstition

One of the things that drives me most nuts about my religious mom is that she refers to people who follow other religions as "superstitious." Her religion = true. All other religions = superstitions. Raising your eyes skyward to thank "the one true Christian God" = true/normal. Raising your eyes skyward to thank another god (even if it claims to be the same God as the Christian God), or to thank "the Universe" = superstitious/crazy. I once told her that to me they all looked the same, superstition-wise, and she was appalled. APPALLED.

Re-Postponement

Remember how Mike's pre-Snip appointment was postponed three times (postponing his Snip appointment each time), and then when he finally had THAT appointment, his Snip appointment was postponed because the doctor's mother-in-law died the day before?

This morning was the morning the Snip was postponed to. It was for 10:00, so he'd need to leave our house at 9:00. He took the day off of work. He shaved. Last night I thought, "So. Tomorrow is the day." I drank gin.

We woke up in the morning, and I thought, "So. Today is the day." Mike got into the shower. At 7:30, while he was in the shower, the phone rang: it was the urologist's office, canceling the appointment. The urologist hasn't taken a sick day in the entire ten years he's worked for this office, but this morning he was too sick to get out of bed.

No Pity

This Friday is The Snip. Mike said to me, without context, "So. I need to...shave."

Me: *questioning look*

Mike: *significant downward glance* *significant downward glance* *high eyebrows* SHAVE. *significant downward glance*

Me: *sustained laughter*

Mike: SO ANYWAY. I was thinking you might know how to...?


So I told him that I personally had much less information about "how to shave Boy Areas" than he did. But that if I were a boy, I thought I might prefer an application of Nair over blindly swiping around with sharp metal. I made vivid swiping motions to demonstrate my point. He winced.

He asked in re Nair, "Does it...sting?" I refrained from making comparisons to any sufferings brought about by hormonal birth control, shot-based birth control, annual Feminine Exams, pregnancy, and childbirth. Instead I speculated aloud about the difference in pain levels between, say, a slight stinging sensation and, say, the sensation of misplaced sharp metal.

This weekend I bought him a container of Nair, which is pink and features a pair of girl legs.

I don't feel even one tiny bit sorry for him.

Progress is Slow and Painful

I am happy to report that my parents (because it turned out that my father was also involved) were unable to use their influence to thwart the adoption of a child by a same-sex couple. And also I would like to say that I had to take an actual, literal tranquilizer (as opposed to a jokey "I need a valium!" kind of tranquilizer) to deal with the fall-out, which involved words such as "agenda," "politically-correct," "sabotage," "subterfuge," "lies," and "knew it all along."

And the thing that bothers me most, I think, is that my parents are good, intelligent people. They're not crazy pineholes, despite acting as such on this one subject. And EVEN THEY have been making gradual progress: for example, after a couple of days of both of them talking krazy talk (including referring to a legally-married couple as a "couple," with air quotes), my dad told my mom that she needed to stop calling the child's new parents "the lesbians." And when she asked what she was SUPPOSED to call them, he said, "How about Lindsay and Sarah?" And to HER credit, when she told me this story she laughed uproariously at herself.