Cactus Juice

Bunday: A Sad Day in Bunland

Brewster passed away early Saturday morning.  He was four years and one month old.

Thursday afternoon he didn't eat his pellets, which sometimes he does.  By Friday midday he wasn't drinking and he turned down his favorite treat.  Rabbits have to eat continually or they get a condition called GI stasis and die.

Off to the vet, who found an eye ulcer and diagnosed GI stasis.  He may have had the stasis for its own reasons, or he may have had it because he was upset about his eye.  Then, like an episode from House, a second ulcer developed while Brewster was being examined.  He also didn't seem able to keep all four feet under him, though it was so subtle the vet wasn't sure what to make of it.  He was such a laid-back bun that it wasn't that different from his usual behavior.

I went home with pain medication, eye medication, and a product called Critical Care which is pureed hay and vitamins to be fed through a syringe.  Overnight his "floppy bunny" got worse and he couldn't really hop and sometimes tipped over.  I decided I would do little one-hour walks all day while taking care of him, so I got up at 5AM to get him fed before leaving for the first walk.  I fed him a syringe of water and then he wanted to hop into his litterbox but couldn't quite make it on his own.  I helped him into his box and then went to mix up the Critical Care, and when I came back he had died.

So, there was nothing else to be done about that and I left on my walk.  As I walked I prayed to have a sense of his spirit, because when I had left the house he had looked very dead.  I realize dead is dead, but I've had three pets die so far in my adult life and none of them looked quite that dead.  What came to mind was this tiny grave:

 

This is my grandfather's older brother, who died when he was 9 months old.  In my mind I had remembered the stone being one of those little hearts with a lamb laying on top, which wasn't exactly right.  It is difficult to see in the picture, but the stone is very tiny, perhaps 12 inches high, in a grave yard full of adult stones.

Brewster was such a fabulous rabbit in all ways and could be guaranteed to put up with anything and not bite, so I loved sharing him with children.  He met a few in real life, and --I am now hearing-- even more on the internet.  I like to picture him off entertaining some babies now.

I always said that Brewster had more friends than I do, and the outpouring of kind comments from our different internet communities has been overwhelming.  I think I've gotten about 20 times more condolence messages than I got when my Mother died!  The kindness truly does make things better.

I have a few pictures and one video of Brewster that haven't made it onto Bunday yet.  I'll post those over the next little bit, and then bunday will probably be about other people's buns for a little while.  I think there will be another bun in this house soon enough, but for now the cat is enjoying his bun-free zone.

Fatday: Being Here vs. Going There

Yesterday when I started the 16 mile loop that was the first part of my walk, I had a brief moment where I felt like it wasn't possible to get to the end.  The thought behind the feeling was that it was so very far away that I couldn't get there.  In other words: I couldn't get there because I wasn't there already!!

When I started ww'ers, I had no interest in the actual numbers because I was merrily distracted by walking further and further each week.  Consequently, I missed the panic that many newbies express that they can't possible ever be thin because they aren't thin already.

We live in a world where we are constant distracted by not being there yet.  One of my favorite bloggers, a Prior in New York State, wrote a post this weekend about the meaning of the term "leisure."  I get a little short with people who create lives that are barely livable and then complain on the 100+ board that they don't have time to take care of themselves.  Um, duh.  I walk, work and sleep and I can barely manage that.  It's called a lifestyle change partly because, yah, you might have to give up some hobbies and even some "important" stuff in order to create a lifestyle that is livable by an actual human.

Those changes don't come easily.  When I first started walking, I had to wear an iPod at all times.  I wasn't capable of actually paying attention to my walk because I lived fully in the world of going somewhere.  Gradually I have settled down to the point where I never use an iPod because it would be a distraction from being here.  When someone talks about walking being boring, I don't know what to say.  My walk yesterday was the same route as the Saturday before, yet with an overcast sky everything looked completely different.  Walking is like watching a TV show that is never predicable.  The only way that could be boring is if you aren't really there.

So, I'm down another pound to 246, and my new goal is 245.  It's going to be a challenging week.  I'll be writing 245 in permanent marker on the back of my hand.  I'll post a picture next week.

Nice Girl Walking: Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom

Ever since the distress of the last few months began, I have had nightmares about living in tiny houses --think travel trailer-- trying to cram in bizarre and inappropriate selections of furniture and belongings.  After writing "No Gated Communities in the Blogosphere" I dreamed again of living in a very tiny house, but a perfectly designed and decorated one.

For some reason, almost two years ago now, I decided I wanted to be nice.  Not ethical, but innocuous.  I'm not entirely sure where it came from.  I made an effort to date, and it may have gone along with or seemed like a prerequisite for that effort.  I ended up with someone who super-specialed me as the one kind woman on the planet.  Chicken or egg is unclear, but I nonetheless ended up in the nice girl trap.

Oh boy is it a trap!  The only way out is to be not nice.  But, no, that's not the point!  The only way out is to develop ethical integrity.  The nice girl is left biting her nails and tapping an inward turned toe: Can't I do that and still be nice?  Maybe, but mostly not.

I walk in public a lot and frequently my interactions with the public are disappointing.  Actually, frequently they are puzzling- no sir, I usually cannot understand what you are screaming out your car at me.  But sometimes the "you're fat" "you should go to Weight Watchers" (that one makes me laugh) and "go back to Mexico" (now we're back to puzzling) is recognizable English.  At this point in my life it has almost nothing to do with me and, unless I feel particularly threatened, I ignore it.

When I didn't ignore it, when I don't ignore it, the purpose of my actions is not to re-educate or improve the idiot that is yelling at me.  The point is to show me that I can defend myself and my space and I can go out in public.  The point is to remind methat they are stupid and that I am healthy and loud and well.  Ethical integrity is ultimately about freedom- it cannot be achieved by one is who is willfully handing over her own freedom.

Handing over freedom is what we do.  It is feminine, yes, but also the first effort of every human on the planet is to escape their existential responsibility somehow.  It is, shall we say, God given, and we would rather not have it.

Responsibility

This weekend I walked my standard "big loop" for the first time since last summer.  It is a freedom I can barely describe.  When I talk about it in celebration, I fear it sounds like I am bragging about my walking when in fact I am amazed.  A little over three years ago, I could barely walk far enough to handle facing a large parking lot and a box store.  Today I can walk further than I can see, a huge mark of freedom, but I can also walk further than I have a tether.

Let me explain: you always have some tether to your own personal "hidey box", to steal a term from the rabbit people.  It might be your car or your house.  You go on a trip and it is your hotel room.  How I handled living on the road for five years was having a very versatile tether- it could be my airplane seat or wherever my suitcase was at that moment.  People who have lost their freedom cannot get very far from their hidey box.  Walking 20 miles or more is about enough to lose the tether completely: it is just you directly in the world.

I mentioned in the "No Gated Communities" post that the electronic world has increased my sense of existential isolation.  It pains me, and at night I look at the cross on the wall beside my bed and wonder why I couldn't have the sense of love and oneness toward God that I so recently experienced toward a man.  As a somewhat committed single, if one does not have a relationship with God one is truly at sea.  It is so easy when one loves an individual or family to feel that one has a purpose: I give for him, I sacrifice for them.  In fact, it is so easy that I have questioned the meaningfulness of paired relationships, although I think The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm neatly answers those concerns.  Anyway, I am at sea: I do what for God?

This was resolved for me quite a bit this weekend.  Sunday morning started with an emotional walk and then a fairly tearful mass (just for me, objectively it wasn't anything that special).  Perhaps the rare person feels close to God in love (Didn't Joan of Arc?  And some of the saints?), but most have that emotional sense only in their suffering.  Somewhere Mother Teresa is nodding an "I told you so."  But most importantly is that I understood that this is what I do: I walk.

I have been thinking of the different kinds of valiance for God we demand of certain people.  Though valiance is uncommon, there are certain afflicted people for whom we are only willing to consider them even passingly moral if they portray valiance.  It makes you want to slap the unvaliant "fortunate" passing out the judgment, but that is a topic for another blog post.  For this blog post, there is the fact that overcoming obesity and creating physical freedom is valiance enough for me.  For whatever reason, it is what I am here to do.

Bunday: I like this toy!

 

After four years, the very first time Brewster has liked a toy.

 

Cletus can't have it.

Fatday: Looking at the Numbers

I've been thinking about the day that I'll be able to change these once weekly posts to comments on maintenance.  Of people who lose as much weight as I intend to lose, fewer than 1% are able to maintain the loss for five years.  Consequently, everything in weight loss has to be conducted with an eye toward maintenance.

In consideration of that, observant ww'ers may have noticed that I changed my goal weight to 162 and added a comment about the bottom of my healthy BMI range to be 120/130 (120 is the weight that is supposed to be the most athletically efficient for my height; some research suggests 130 is the lowest optimal weight for my height in regards to health and longevity).  Here's what I'm thinking: I have in my head a goal to weigh 132.  That is what I weighed in college when I felt really good about how I looked.  But that number doesn't mean anything really.  My activity is very different, I have more than a decade of aging on me, there is no telling what weight will make me look the same.  Also, the fact that I liked to buy pretty dresses and take pictures is of zero importance.  What is important is that I have a healthy functioning body, and that is what 162 is supposed to give me.  So 162 is the right place to draw the line for maintenance.

I started these fatday posts after a 44 pound re-gain.  When I was losing prior to the gain, I rarely knew what I weighed.  When I had to guess for extremely small airplanes or doctors, I would sometimes accidentally write a weight 10 or more pounds over my current weight.  I was just living my life, the weight loss was happening in the background, and everyone once in a while when it entered my consciousness I was amazed at how big the numbers were adding up to be.

Since I've gotten my head back in the game, the exact opposite is true.  I know exactly what I weigh today.  My goal is the next pound down.  Today I weight 247, and so what I'm watching for is 246.  I have almost no big picture sense- what I weighed a month ago, what I might weigh a month from now.  All I'm looking for is that next number.

No Gated Communities in the Blogosphere

 

(Cactus and friends met on the WW'ers 100+ board near Camp Lejeune.)

I didn't know I had a policy against reading blogs where I'm not allowed to comment.  Strangely, within the last six weeks I've come across this situation twice.  First an ex-friend, um, ex'ed me.  No, I don't think I'll be reading that blog.  And then Hugo Schwyzer requested that people who don't agree with him not comment on his blog.  If my policy were previously in effect, I would have stopped reading his blog some time ago as about 75% of my comments there never see the light of day, but now is a good time to stop reading it too.

The reason Schwyzer gives is an abomination in the internet age: "I get tired of having the fundamental premises under which I blog questioned."  Here's a solution for that: write a book.  Or make a password protected space where you and your compatriots cackle privately about the backwardness of the rest of the universe (Schwyzer's questioners are relegated to their respective dunce boxes as "unthoughtful, anti-justice, etc.).  There are all kinds of intellectual masturbation that can be carried out in private, but if you have your conversation on the street corner (although a blog is more like the street corner conversation, with mega-phones), passers-by likely have something to say about it.  And that is the entire purpose of the internet; indeed, it is the only way the internet can be justified as a meaningful advance in communication.

It is possible on the internet to only communicate with people exactly like yourself, I am told.  There are grave concerns about this kind of electronic solipsism.  However, I have not experienced that kind of inwardness and Schwyzer's complaint suggests that advertisement of the possibility may exceed the actuality in the electrons.  My main social interaction on the internet is my Weight Watchers group, where I have met a whole range of people that I would have never met "in real life".  There is no hope that you'll get the response you want to your post: you'll get the response you get and you'll be happy about it!

Even on Facebook, I'm exposed to a broader range of the thoughts and behaviors of my  "friends" than I would experience in the limited scope in which they present themselves to me in real life.  It takes a greater range of tolerance to interact with people in this unbounded electronic format.  I have also found it somewhat disheartening to be confronted by the existential reality of individuality: the more I learn about people who I do think are like me, the more I realize that no one group holds or defines me.  Before the internet you might think you got to walk away from the 2 cent whore without a backwards glance, but with the internet you have to go home and say hello to mummy and then turn around and see that the 20 other customers she had that day are really kind of gross, and then put her as a friend on Facebook for at least the next 365 days (until you can unfriend without anyone noticing) and that is kind of embarrassing (or should be, heaven help us).

The argument is made that a blog is like a living room, or a car- you own it and it is your space.  On a purely mercantile level, that is correct.  This space here is exactly what I want it to be, and if I choose to remove the furnature of your comments I have the power, as owner, to do that.  However, socially, that is not a power I find it appropriate to exercise.  I don't believe in liberal democracy (small l, small d) theoretically, I believe in it actually.  I have a friend who lost 100+ pounds and maintains a standard BMI goal weight.  She gets comments on her blog calling her anorexic and this kind of thing, and she has chosen to leave them.

I have never received an abusive comment on this blog, but I have received comments that I don't like.  I know I have readers that I don't like.  As much as this is privately owned, it is also something that by its very existence trades upon the ethics of being a public space.  I'm not sure what it would take for me to delete a comment.  Perhaps if it were abusive of another person in a way that maintaining the public comment would be harmful  (if it weren't harmful and the other person were a "big-panties" person that could deal, it would stay).  Ex-ed friend that doesn't speak to me in public would be deleted, because that is an issue that needs to be dealt with privately first (I would have the same standard for meeting in public, and God help the person who tries breach that line in real life because one thing I can do is take on an identified cad.)  But aside from that, the ethics of the space are that you indulge me by reading, and in exchange I don't get to pick and choose my readers and I don't get to pick and choose their response.  That's what it means to interact in public.

Parting Note: Cad in Real Life

I cannot find the right words to express what I think of the court-ordered conservatorship of Britney Spears.  Doesn't it go without saying that just as one doesn't make whores of one's friends, one doesn't make a whore of one's daughter?

Bunday: You again?

 

I'm supposed to get blackberries for this. 

Fatday: Times and Seasons

Somehow I missed that one of my weight loss heroes, Lynn Berring, had started a new team blog with Refuse to Regain author Barbara Berkeley.  It's good stuff, and one thing I learned from reading it is that I had been taking statistics about maintenance and turning them into rules.  One in particular is that about 75% of successful maintainers never take a holiday from their food plan.  Okay, well that means that 25% of them do.  The battle between different kinds of maintainers is captured in the comments on Lynn's blog.

This all comes up as I am, for the first time, hanging out with a bunch of people that recognize Lent.  I was amazed, as I learned the details about the tradition, at how closely it follows typical addict behavior.  There is the last meal, the expected cheat days, and finally the intended end date.  Lent is not meant to be forever, but rather it is a period of pause and control between celebrations.

In America, of course, the party never stops.  One interesting thing about recognizing Lent is that it takes you out of the majority of the secular Easter celebration, which ends the day after Easter Sunday.  At one point in college, just on general principal, I quit eating chocolate for several months.  The day after Easter Sunday I was disheartened to have missed having a Cadbury egg and skipped a Monday morning class in order to find one.  This soon turned into missing Monday afternoon class as I drove all around Los Angeles County trying to find a Cadbury Egg and never did find one.  If one paused just for Lent and Advent, one would miss the largest portions of celebratory eating in American culture.  Adding another pause into the year, a concept I heard a priest discuss recently, and you've got yourself a year you can live with.

This is a 2,000-year-old tradition, with cultural predecessors that go back to time immemorial.  Once again, the behavior and structure of addiction isn't that far off from what is normal for human culture.  And this is in exact contradiction to the "abstinence" model of 12-step programs.  Although I never completely swallowed the abstinence cool-aid, I don't like the people who make a show of contradicting abstinence.  One thing I've learned about addiction behavior is that handing control of it to something outside of yourself, even if that something is a corporation like Weight Watchers, is a valuable decision.  Making a lot of noise about how you are going to manage your own life just points to the fact that that hasn't worked very well thus far.

And yet.  Abstinence is not health: it is still the food controlling you rather than you controlling the food.  And I've seen some cases of "abstinence" where the food was very much in control.  Here I am, walking huge amounts every day and I have a goal at the end after which I'm going to have to find another project.  There is an end point.  Today I really wanted to go to The Carolina Cafe and have a sandwich and pastry.  It is rainy and awful, and I doubt I will go the rest of my life without eating there again.  But it is Lent and I didn't want to disappoint myself right now.

I used to have a co-worker who lost five pounds every October, so she could gain it back through November and December.  Normal people do stuff like that.  I think I am going to look at the calendar and look more closely at what I want my year to look like, and what celebrations I can schedule simpler eating around.  And then when I celebrate, I am going to celebrate.  But not every day.

Oh, and: 249.5

Bunday: You do not merit my attention.

Fatday: Not So Special

I was really happy when I saw this picture.  All the walking... my body has changed a lot since the beginning of the year.  Down 3.5 pounds to 250.5.

One of the things I know fatties need to be careful of is "super-specialing."  One of the side-effects of 12-step groups is that it kills off the super-specials: you're not that special; you're an awful lot like everyone else.  This effects everything from reasons not to lose weight (work at home, live on the road, have children, don't have children, have a spouse, single... all super-special reasons why the excuse maker is the only person in the world that can't lose weight, stay sober, manage their money... whatever), to reasons why they don't need to follow the same kind of program (I lose weight easily, I've got this pill that is going to make me lose weight, etc.).

I've pretty much got those under control.  What I don't have under control is the idea that I'm a super-special person that can behave better than anyone else at all times.  In fact, perfectly, even when there is no possibility of a tick-box for "perfect" in that particular situation.  It takes a lot of eating to be that special.  Today I wasn't that special.  A daily insult that a perfect person could ignore, I called the person out on.  Sometimes, I'm going to be territorial or foolish or less-than-perfect.  Life is complicated, might as well go for a walk.