Where Are The Winchesters?

As a comrade has noted, there are shadow people around our town. Mostly looking homeless, carrying a garbage bag, alone, they are there and gone before your eyes.

Everyone close to me is going through some shade of Hell at the moment. I'd say walking instead of "going", but some can't walk anymore. Demons come in many varieties and shapes; some inhabit people's minds, others stand in shadow and watch. Sometimes that's all they need to do. However you encounter a demon, whatever shade of Hell you live through, if you live through it, it changes you. You can't not be changed by it. There are things humans should not have to experience, but we do. Some things change humans into shadows. Some make them act like demons themselves.

I don't know what's coming but it's in the wind. It doesn't feel like it's good, either.

Decades ago, when I was a little girl, my mother told me that where we are now is Hell. There is no pit or circles, just look around, it's right here.

I Predict!

Being a former runner, I perk up to hear running news. This morning on NPR was a story about running gadgets. All kindsa gadgets to tell you how long/fast you're going. So here's my prediction (and a declaration of First Authorship): in the near future there will be a gadget that you attach that will tell you how many calories you've burned and therefore how much you can eat, with menu suggestions.

You heard it here first, unless someone else is already in patent on such a thing. And I will sue! (or make a deal with anyone who wants to develop these things)

Perhaps we can call it "Earn and Burn"? Sounds infomercial-ready enough...

What a Lucky Girl I Am

The full moon has kept me up- but I'm sitting here with the headphones, blasting "Nobody Loves You Like I do" into ears that haven't been thru this for decades and friggin loving it. I figured out one thing I could do to help someone else today and woohoo!!!

It's only because of Cam and Birdy that I'm sitting here totally happy in life tonight. Birdy is to thank for listening to Greg Lake singing his lungs out, and Cam for the ability to sit here listening at all.

In the last few weeks, music has reentered my life in all kindsa ways, and I'm much happier for it.

However, my eyes are shot so I'll end for now. Remind me where I was when I get back.

9/22 Okay, I'm back. Another blessing is the time and ability to go back and investigate the bands I had no exposure to nor time to track down back in the day. King Crimson, for instance. Besides The Court of the Crimson King I had little knowledge of them. Incredible. And The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, which would've been my favorite band in 1968, if I'd gotten to know them. And The Nice. And Atomic Rooster.

My writing awaits, a nagging pen in my head, but I needed a short vacation...

What A Lucky Girl I Was

Another Sunday, another kidney stone, another day of watching rockumentaries on youtube. Seeing these (today I've watched the stories of Led Zep and Ozzy Osbourne), I just realized how lucky I was to grow up when I did. There was so much music, so much incredibly original and unique musical talent to grow up to.

Among the bunches of kids I grew with (we moved a lot and I made a lot of friends along the way) we all had older siblings. I had 3 older brothers who were all into music. So though I wasn't a teenager until 1972, I already had inherited Cheap Thrills, The Doors Live, lots of Beatles albums and scores of early folk and rock cuts on 45s. Really, until today, I never saw what an incomparable time it was in music.

In High School, when my end of the Boomers were coming into their own, genres within rock were already established. We loved David Bowie and Elton John, Yes, Floyd, ELP, Led Zep- some of whom had already been playing for a decade- and new bands like KISS and Fleetwood Mac (the reincarnation sans Peter Green) and the Eagles were just making it. Bands were playing huge venues like Madison Square Garden, and later, the Meadowlands arena and Nassau Colliseum. Going to a concert was a huge event for us, especially when there were several bands on the bill. Unfortunately we were all so often tripping and drunk we didn't get to keep vivid memories of the whole thing. I have a great memory of a MSG cop dragging me away while Chris Squires was fistpumping back to me. Or when the roadie for Twisted Sister threw me over his shoulder and ran into the dunes with me where we had wild sex. That's the sort of memory you keep, flashes of your life like that. It's a blur, a marvelous and wild time that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Watching these rockumentaries takes me back to those days. My god, what a lucky girl I was.

And Good News!!

Our Allyson is much better. They still don't know exactly what the hell, but the antibis are doing their thing and she's been back to work already (I wasn't thrilled about that, but she's a grown up and I have to shut up). Hopefully it's all on the way to being over, whether they figure it out or not.

So Thank You to all of youse who prayed and sent good thoughts and emailed me. She'll be fine.

Ah, The Smell of Death is in the Air

Quite suddenly, we seem to have plopped into Fall. It's delightfully cool and breezy. The air is fresh and even though humid, not sticky, at last. The A/C is off- hopefully for good- and my constant benadryl habit gone with it. Oh, and my landlord has offered to replace the 1974 GM A/C.... IF I sign a new lease (the letter actually said, "It would make a big difference next summer!")- really? Ya mean my electric bill to cool two rooms would be less than 200 a month? I'll sign the new lease, but chances are I won't be here next summer. The affordable housing folks have told me I'm on the list for disabled housing, so it could be any time now. And I can't be held to a lease where the facility endangers me, which this place does. But a new A/C for the next poor sucker who has to live here will be good - and they will likely pay 700 a month in rent for the luxury.

I love the Fall. Even now, I get that Back To School feeling when the sunlight changes and the first leaves gather in the gutter. The new school term was hugely exciting to me. Though clothes shopping was always a nightmare, new notebooks and Bics, a new pencil case, a new bookstrap were all delights. If I'd had my druthers, I'd lose a whole day wandering through stationery and office supply aisles in Woolworth's or McCrory's. Then the first day of school came (would've been this past Tuesday) - lining up in the schoolyard, catching up with all the kids you hadn't seen all summer, meeting the new teacher, going to the classroom you'd spend the whole year in for the first time, examining your desk for clues of who'd sat there before you... all of it was dear to me. Of course, by Halloween it was all old hat and I'd start playing hooky, but that's another story.

Fall has my favorite holidays that all lead up to the biggest deal of the year, Christmas. The anticipation, planning what to be for Halloween to begin with, was overwhelming to me. I obsessed on my Halloween get-up. Only twice in my Trick or Treating career did I have a store-bought outfit and there was a lot of competition amongst the dozens of kids around my block. The kids with older sisters who had a makeup edge, the kids from small families or whose parents had money were in another class literally and figuratively. Halloween costumes marked you for what you were in life and you could rise above if you were creative. It was serious business.

Thanksgiving, before I was part of the kitchen duty, was pure joy. I got to be with my brothers, even if they regarded me as a pest, and we watched the "Macy*s Day Parade". Then came the traditional movies..."Mighty Joe Young", "March of the Wooden Soldiers" and "Miracle on 34th Street". And then dinner, the one big blowout meal of the year. Even Christmas dinner didn't come close. And after dinner cleanup, peace and quiet while we all watched some holiday special or read books and I began planning my letter to Santa Claus.

So, while the Fall brings the end of life to so much around us; as greenery slowly dies off and the earth prepares for hibernation in our corner of the world; as the smells of decaying vegetation and the first whiffs of wood burning curl in our noses, I rejoice. Good memories come back and good celebrations lie ahead.

Disgust

The late summer cold is among the most revolting physical things human can have. There are only 3 things for it. Sleep. Drugs to make you sleep. Music for every lousy moment you are awake.


In the music category I am currently in love with a band called Mumford & Sons. Look them up. Eargasms galore. I heard of them the way I usually hear of good bands- by my Allyson.


And spare a prayer for my Allyson. The medics thought she had mono, but it's a heart infection- much more dangerous. It was very scary there for a few days but she seems to be responding to the antibi therapy. With a few weeks rest and antibis she should be good as new. It's all damn scary, though.

Speaking of scary, my friend Stevil turned 60. Jesus. How'd that happen?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my father, Poppa as we called him, would've turned 104 years old. My God. I hope he's enjoying a cold tallboy Rheingold, wherever he is.

Eureka!

Over the last 40 years I've been overeating, bulemic, dieting by every diet invented and quite literally starving myself. I've lost and gained back at least a ton over the years. Eating Disorders are tricky. Even the Pros will tell you that. Nobody has found a cure, and now I think maybe because it's got to come from the Disordered person. It may be one of those things that only you can do by yourself. There's no "way". If there was, maybe the US wouldn't be morbidly obese. And the diet/drug/bariatric surgery people would cease to make their billions per year. The bizarrity of a nation that's way too fat for its own good could only happen in the US. More than half the world is starving; we starve by choice, or eat like sharks.

Now, for the first time I can say I'm at peace about eating. I've found the thing that works for me; Eating To Live, I call it, after my HS math teacher. "You either live to eat, or eat to live," he said way back when. And he was right. So what "happened"? Well, I was in one of the starve modes, and my doc took a blood test that showed my electrolytes and pretty much anything else was dangerously low. Funny, I didn't think at all, until my PT had mentioned that I couldn't be getting enough nutrition with what I wasn't eating. For the first time in 40 years of dieting, and reading, and WW and protein fasts and calorie counting and nutrition books and being a professional cook- I thought of food as the fuel I need to be healthy and nothing else but that. Oh shit, I said to myself, I've been treating food as anything but what it is- nourishment. It's nice if you dress it up, but you don't wear your Sunday Best every day. You wear what you need to do what you're going to do. And one should eat with the same thought in mind. Good appropriate food makes a healthy body, period.

Also, my portion size was way outta hand. I was eating as they advertise- a bacon cheeseburger with almost an entire salad in it, with french fries, was normal. That's not normal. That's a huge amount of food. That's more than I eat in 2 meals now. The one thing I will eat in a large portion is veggies, and that's fine. As they say, nobody got fat eating carrots.

Since I'm eating so little (also part of it all) I have to make sure my food is worth eating. Otherwise, I'm taking up valuable stomach space with shit. With that primary directive, everything changed. It's not "what would go well with" whatever, it's, "where is the calcium, the vitamins, the fiber, the protein, etc." Then, within that context, it's "what do I like?" What my body needs is first, at last. And guess what? I happen to be losing weight without trying. In an effort to not screw with myself, I'm not weighing in again until January.

This, then, is my peace with food. It is my servant now, not my master. The horrifying shame and failure that goes with every friggin diet I've known aren't there. Nobody can tell me what I can or can't have- I eat what I want. It's what I want that's changed. Food isn't The Enemy anymore. I can coexist with ice cream living in my freezer and not be obsessed with its existence there. This probably all sounds mad to those who've never had ED. That's because It Is Madness.

That's why it's a Disorder, a dis-ease.

My priorities were fucked, I had tangled food into many issues in my life, as a junkie does with drugs. And nobody ever addresses what the path to sanity is for ED'd people. Why? Because there's no profit in cures. Shrinks will play their games and never tell you how to get sane. Diet coaches will cheer/lecture/exercise/create a codependent relationship with you for money- but most of them don't have an ED. So you do the meetings, tick off your daily colors, or squares, or calories. But food isn't something you can quit and bitch about forever after. One must eat to live. After a while a diet wears on you and the first stressor that hits, you go for the chocolate cake, or the meat loaf, or whatever your drug of choice is. And then the shame and failure come back with their wagging fingers and you say, "Fuck it, why bother?" But it isn't and shouldn't be about protracted responsibility to a coach or a group or a husband or anything. It's about you getting nutrition. That's all food is. It doesn't "love" you and you don't "love" it. It doesn't comfort, fill up loneliness, calm, cheer up, or help you sleep...and it's not meant to. It's Food. That's all. If you can get to that realization, I think your ED is over. It sure feels like mine is.