Welcome April

March went by very quickly, it seemed to me, and although we had a few inches of snow on the next to last day, the snow melted almost immediately. As you can see in the picture, the pavement was too warm for the snow to stick (I love snow you don't have to shovel). It rained heavily before it snowed, so it was a very wet snow, but nothing's in bloom yet, so nothing was damaged. Anyway, I guess you can say March went out like a lamb, but kind of a wet lamb.

I read 9 books in March, for a total of 39 for the first three months of the year. It's tempting to try to maintain an average of 13 books/month, but that would add up to 156 books for the year, which isn't going to happen. I read 2 memoirs, 2 mysteries, 2 adult novels, and 3 children's books. I think the book that made me think the most was the last one I read, The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America by Tommy Tomlinson. That was an interesting book, especially for a fat person, i.e., me. I found it amusing that the book made me feel thin, since Tomlinson starts the book weighing 460 pounds. Yowzers, that's fat. But he's also taller than I am. In fact, he's the same height as Rocket Boy, 6'1". Rocket Boy weighs 150 pounds. Imagine adding 310 pounds to Rocket Boy. Crazy.

In some ways the book is a diet book, because he loses some weight during it and explains how he does it. But mostly it's an exploration of how he happened to gain all that weight and what prevents him from losing it. He and I have very different favorite foods -- at one point he says, "It always makes me laugh to hear people say fast food doesn't taste good. They are obviously trying to convince themselves. Fast food tastes FANTASTIC." I couldn't agree less. I used to enjoy going to McDonald's, like maybe 30 years ago, but now I only eat fast food if there's absolutely no other choice. I think it's gross and it gives me reflux. Sorry, Tommy.

On the other hand, on the weekends I often buy myself a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream (the best ice cream there is) and eat the whole thing while watching a movie with Rocket Boy. That's probably my major indulgence these days. Years ago, before I was married, I used to eat a pound of M&M's every night. Every. Single. Night. I would buy them from different stores so the employees wouldn't realize what an addict I was. In the first few months of our marriage I used to lie to Rocket Boy that I needed to stay late at work, and then after everyone else left I would lock my office door and stuff myself with M&M's. Committing to being married meant giving up that habit, but I did still sneak them sometimes when he wasn't around. What really ended M&M's for me was taking the diet drug Contrave, which blocked the effect of chocolate on my mind. I've been off Contrave for about two years now, and it no longer blocks chocolate, but I still am not interested in M&M's.

However, I'm still fat, fatter than ever. Right now I think I weigh almost as much as I did when I went to the hospital to deliver the twins. I spend a lot of time thinking that this isn't fair. I compare what I used to eat with what I eat now. In my M&M's days, I also ate a lot of Ben & Jerry's. Many nights I'd follow my pound of candy with a pint of premium ice cream, while vegging out in front of the TV. I was fat, sure, but I deserved to be a lot fatter. It's like I'm making up for it now -- the junk I ate in my 20's and 30's has somehow come home to roost on my 58-year-old body.

Anyway, I didn't mean to write a blog post all about food and weight, but the book has really made me think. What Tomlinson does in the book is make "a searching and fearless moral inventory" of himself and his relationship with food -- he's not in a 12-step program, but that's what this reminds me of. He goes back through his history and looks at everything he did to get fat, everything he continues to do, all his triggers, all his lies. His history is quite different from mine, but I realized while reading his that it would be worthwhile for me to write my own -- for myself, not the blog necessarily. Something to think about for the future, since I'm obviously too busy right now making little drawstring bags. I've only made 26 so far. How will I get to 50 by next Wednesday?

Of course, I keep wondering what my relationship with food will be like after Rocket Boy moves to St. Louis. Will I go back to eating chocolate in bed or will I actually eat better, when I'm totally in charge of what we have for dinner? He's quite a healthy eater, so I'll have to remind myself to buy more fruit and vegetables. But he's also a very big eater, so until the twins start eating more, we'll be able to have smaller dinners without him. Hmm.

Everything these days comes back around to that: how will life be different when Rocket Boy is gone? It's only about 5 weeks until he leaves. Still trying to take it all in.