Soured, No Sweets

You guys. Today I’m just a little…. edgy…disappointed…maybe a tich on the grouchy side. For no good reason, sometimes the mood just settles and now it’s become my job today to shake it off and lift the fog and have a good enough day (no advertising here, just a simple little trademark-in-progress statement!)

I did have a harrowing nightmare last night, one that had me muttering in my sleep to the point My Mister awakened me to relieve me from my thrashing around and mumbling distress. I’m a very vivid dreamer, and a good dream remember-er, which can also be a fault when it’s bad dreams and they hang around. It was a haunting dream – where there were bad spirits in an old home and I opened a bathroom door and it was trying to suck me in to it’s bad spirit world and in my dream I was trying to grab a hand and screaming “help me……..”  from being sucked in to the bad spirit world.

So maybe that’s part of it. And while I’m feeling edgy I may as well drag you down with me, because misery loves company, right? Hey, Reader, I never promised you a rose garden.  Here’s what’s on my mind lately.

#1/  Back at the end of May I squeezed in a doctors appointment before I started my new old job and had a full tune up. Remember, this is when I was deemed officially morbidly obese? Well, as a result of treating my body like a dumpster for the past oh, say ten years, I was treated to a diagnosis of Type 2, and now I can’t love cake anymore. I mean, I can still love cake, I just have to love it from afar and not with my mouth. Which frankly is hurtful and rude towards cake.

I debated to share my medical information with all dozen of you, but I usually operate in a world of transparency so why stop now. It’s not a super-high Type 2 situation, but it’s enough that I’m on a pill and really watching what I’m now shoving in my cake hole.

Which leads me to the next thing I’m annoyed with.

#2/ For about three weeks now, I’ve been strictly monitoring what I shove in my cake hole. Ever since we came back from our Bermuda cruise, as a matter of fact. I’m attacking this Type 2 head-on, like it’s my job. And I lost seven pounds, which is a drop in the deep bucket, however it’s also 28 sticks of butter!! And when I have a visual of 28 sticks of butter, it is much more motivating than seven crappy pounds.

I’ve had more salads. And passed up breads. And have climbed more stairs in the past month than I have in the past ten years. And got onto my pilates reformer machine and did some stuff. And been downright hungry, Reader. Not starving – that’s a term I eradicated from my vocabulary as it is complete hyperbole compared to little children in Africa – but I’ve had pangs and growls.

And then this morning I was three pounds heavier than I was last week. I mean, W. T. F!

#3/ As a result of Type 2 and weight loss efforts, I made the drastic switch and gave up my much beloved flavored coffee creamer.  Reader. I have struggled with this in the past.  But now it became more of a necessity, as I do not want to switch to sugar free versions of things because I’m not a fan of artificial sweetners. I do use half-n-half, as opposed to 2% milk, because comeon, but it’s certainly not my delicious Almond Joy. I miss you, flavored creamer, but have adjusted to the half-n-half for the most part. It still has sugar – I was surprised, all milk does! – but every little cutback counts. You’d think this concession would at least equate to a pound of weight loss per week, because of the sheer sacrifice alone, but nope. Just one more reason to be mad and want to kick the scale.

#4/ My new department has played a cruel trick on me starting at the beginning of this month. As a way to keep things peppy, they have deemed Fridays in July as “Cake Fridays” and someone is bringing in a new and delicious-looking giant cake every Friday.  The first week was cassata. The second was yellow with fudge frosting. This past Friday was homemade chocolate on chocolate.  I have walked by it week after week. I have said, “No thank you,” when they have walked to my cube and asked if I’d like a slice. Let me repeat: I have said NO THANK YOU. The girl who has never met a piece of cake she didn’t like is saying NO THANK YOU to cake, and then she turns around in her chair and drinks her non-almond-joyed cuppa coffee and whimpers a little in the corner of her cube. You’d think that saying NO THANK YOU to CAKE would net a 1 lb weight loss per week, from the sheer effort of saying those words! You’d be wrong.

#5/ My poor dead Girlie cat is ready to be picked up from the vet’s office. The month I have had to deal with Type 2 and a dead cat. Those two reasons alone allow me to be a little cranky, Reader.

#6/ Facebook. I mean, I get it. We can all post whatever we want on there. and I love keeping up with what my peeps are doing, if the best we can do is from afar. I feel like I can at least check in with folks who I may not see very often. And no, it’s not replacing those visits, or phone calls – they just didn’t happen in the past. If I called everyone on my FB page that I comment / send a message to, it would be a full-time job. No one has time for that.

But. There are also so many Go Fund Me requests,  I can’t even. I find myself ignoring those in need because everyone seems to be in need. Not necessarily my friends directly, but shared stories, etc – it can show up in my newsfeed from all over.  And then I feel bad because I judge some of the need requests, and also I can’t afford to even send $10 to every one or I’ll be broke, and when did we start asking everyone to pay our bills for us?? I am still sitting on my own medical bills from the awful spider, as I had a $5000 deductible and worked for a start-up and now I have new Type 2 bills adding to the stack, and it wouldn’t even cross my mind to ask anyone to send me $10.

I know, this is super sour sounding, it is. I don’t like to not help people in need. But maybe I’m not as generous as I like to think I am. Maybe I’m really a stingy asshole. I don’t know. I guess I can afford to get the occasional manicure, I should be sending that money to someone I don’t know. I am fortunate to have had jobs that have paid well enough, even if some times were leaner than others. And I am fortunate that I haven’t had a bigger crisis, except I was unemployed with a big-ass mortgage and skrimpy unemployment and guess what, I racked up some credit debt and also took out of my retirement to pay my own bills, which snowballed into penalties and owing the IRS a shit ton of money that I paid myself, a little at a time, the old fashioned way. I’m just being honest. I don’t want to pay for everyones needs, especially those who have jobs already which probably pay better than mine does. Those requests are the ones that I judge. I basically run a cat rescue, which let me tell you does not come cheaply, just on the monthly food and litter and flea-medications fees alone. Add in a dead-cat-anyway emergency room visit at 1 a.m. and an unexpected hunk outta my paycheck is gone in a flash.

It also galls me a bit when I know that the people setting up the accounts are pro-Trumpers. And anti-Obama-he’s-a-socialist crusaders, but if everyone on my friends list chips in $20, we can raise the funds. It makes me question how many of those folks walk past the homeless person on the street without putting a dollar in the cup, or they guy who stands at the top of the exit ramp with a God Bless sign, hoping that while you’re stopped at the red light you don’t fiddle with the radio in an attempt to ignore him. At least those folks are working for it, in some respect. Go Fund Me has become the modern age tin cup – with a lot more lucrative results – where you don’t even have to go out into the heat and ask people to hand you money. Maybe I’m a Republican now.

Reader, I get it. I sound like an asshole. Possibly I am an asshole, and not the generous Liberal Libby I sometimes think I am. Let’s blame the lack of sugar in my diet for making me sour vs. sweet. It’s the only explanation I can offer.