Fatty Fatty Fat Fat

I'm not fishing for compliments. I'm seriously over weight. I have tried LOTS of diets. Counting Calories, Body for Life, the All Veggie Diet (pew), and Atkins.

The one that works for me is Atkins. Before I got married, I bought a dress and went on Atkins. I did yoga once a week and rode the stationary bike for 30 - 45 minutes once a week. I lost 30 lbs. I had to buy a new dress.

So I looked pretty good at my wedding. Wore a tankini on my honeymoom. I gained about 10 lbs back. Still 20 lbs down. Pfew. Then, I got pregnant. I ate EVERYTHING. I gained 60 lbs. Yikes. We got invited to Mexico and I decided to lose some of that baby weight. I made it back to about my pre pregnancy, post honey moon, November weight. I had another baby. Blew up. Shrunk back down a bit. Right now, I fluxuate between 15 and 20 lbs of my wedding weight.

I took up running, but found I get SO hungry, that I eat back any calories that I burn.

So I decided to try the low carb thing again.

As soon as I met my husband, my life became very food centric. I never had a problem controlling my weight before. I know part of that was having a 20 year old's metabolism. But the fact is, I have become obsessive with food. Sometimes I eat and eat and eat. I have had bouts with bulimia.

I HATE the way my body looks. I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself, And honestly the number of pounds I weigh is just a gauge. I truly am more interested in my health than my weight, but for some damn reason, doing the 'eat right and exercise' thing just doesn't work for me.

I need an obsessive approach to get results.

So Atkins it is.

I started a blog, its a food journal really, to record my progress. So you can follow me if you want to. http://carvingmeout.blogspot.com/ In the mean time, I totally splurged on breakfast. But I don't plan on sausage and bacon every day. I really just want to eat lean meat and veggies, get back to running and lose 30lbs in the process.

I'm so vain...

Vanity should have been my first name. I don't know where they got Carolyn, but I don't think it really fits. There are a few reasons to support my claim. And don't get me wrong I do not think I am one of the pretty people. I am weird looking at best, and it seems like those who do find my face pleasing are, well, just as weird as me.

I bring this up today because I just spent a considerable amount of time attempting to capture my newest facebook profile. Of course I was watching the kids, I made them spaghetti in fact! But during the moments when my hands were free, I was mugging for the built in camera.

I don't know why I am obsessed with my face. I know that I want to feel good about how I look. I wear make up almost every day. (Because I like it.) I do my hair every day. I put a modicum of effort into outfits.

I am terrible at exercising and eat entirely too much, but I do care about how I look.

So. When I take a bad picture... I take another.

And Another.

And Another.

And Another.

If I have any control over what people think I look like, I'm putting my best face forward even if it takes 67 digital recordings to capture it.

This one, my chin is huge, this one, my nose is too wide, my skin looks sallow, I have a double chin, I have chubby cheeks, my freckles are looking like age spots, my scar is gross, my eyes are crossed, my teeth are too small, my wrinkles look deep, my hair is flat, my hair is poofy, my fingers look like sausages, my fat roll is showing. I blinked. I usually get three good pictures out of at least 20. When I say 20 you can be sure I mean 67.

I just wish I had that kind of editing power over other peoples cameras. I just flipped though my sister in law's photos from Saturday night and they were down right depressing. My mother in law was nice. 'You could never look bad' But two things, if that is how I really look, its amazing people do not vomit when I come in the room and 2. I can't trust anyone who says I'm a nice looking person. Its a lonely world when you can't trust the people who think you are ugly AND those who think you're not.

One thing I've got going for me... I can be irresistibly sexy. And 'Sexy' and 'Good Looking' do not necessarily go hand in hand, look at, well pretty much any male rock star.

Anyway, its time to wrap this up. Hope you are all well. And here's to a generous photographer, next time you say cheese.

Cliche Much?

BONUS TIME

I have very nice inlaws. Brian's mom thought it would be fun to take the girls for haircuts and dinner. They got here to pick Dylan up and ended up taking Mason too! So right now I am using my bonus time to lay on the couch and journal a little for you.

I don't know what to write about. I'm too tired to be clever I think. I'm too cranky to write a feel good blog, but too restrained by that "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all" mantra, to show you the black spot on my soul.

I think I may start an anonymous blog for each of my personalities. Then I wouldn't have to check myself. I wouldn't have to hold back the mental vomit. You know, all my life I have put restrictions on myself. Silly things, inconsequential things I would not allow myself. The biggest yoke would be the one that fits my personality. From deep in my childhood the idea that I am an obnoxious pain in the ass was introduced and reenforced. Its ingrained. And even as I type this with a certain objective sensibility, the painful truth bites at the corner of my eyes. I was not liked, never accepted.

My mom, she might disagree. My father, he might disagree. But 32 years later, the indelible mark of their discontent resides in every fiber of me. I was a very unhappy teenager. If only my unhappiness had not been stifled by Catholic guilt and the fear of total emotional abandonment; if only I had the courage to really lose it then; if only I had invested in a full blown breakdown, I might not be filled with so much damn resentment now.

But, I'm a grown up. I have my own children. And once again, I cannot, will not fully indulge in my melancholy. But I can take steps to realize who I am supposed to be. I can actively pursue myself. I can stop looking for people to like me, to accept me. I can start liking and accepting myself.

Beauty Mark

I have this mole.

It's a beauty mark actually.

It is near my right eye.

I'm not sure if you have noticed.

I don't mind it so much. It is one of those signature imperfections that adds to my quirky cuteness, (when I don't look gross.) It is to me, as Jewel's snaggle tooth is to her, or Tina Fey's scar.

I think.

I haven't always had this mole, beauty mark, I mean. It is not in any baby pictures. Pictures of my childhood are a little grainy and I can't tell for sure.

It would make sense if it came about sometime during adolescence; hormones pinging off every cell in my body.

I'm not sure what to do about it, though. I don't mind it and it minds its own business. But I wonder if it will turn on me some day, kill me even. I admire it suspiciously from the corner of my eye.

Waiting.

It is just there.

I'm not sure if you have noticed.

The Worst

I am officially the worst blogger. I'm not referring to content. Thats decent. Its the actually finishing the blog that I suck at. Do you know how many posts I've started and not finished? 4. That includes the one where I talk about not finishing blogs...

Ug, so this is cheap... but its necessary.

This is my whole blog for the day.

I had a GREAT weekend. So, I'll tell you about that later. It includes food and tattoos!

OK Posting

I'm not going to tell you the make or model

I love my phone. When it dies, I will absolutely by the same brand, if not the same exact model. There are things wrong with it. Certainly, its not perfect, but for the price and my needs... I love my phone. The best thing about this bad boy is the slot for an 8 gb memory card. I have hundreds of songs, thousands of 2mp photos. I record movies of my adorable kids and kittens. Not so much the dog, because she is more a pain in the ass than cute, but you get the idea. I love my phone. And say what you will about pay as you go plans... I know exactly where every cent of my $30 - $50 a month goes. I never see a lame ass connectivity charge or some uninterpretable bill not even a professor in Sanskrit can translate.

One neato little feature on my lovely phone is the voice recorder. I know most phones come with one these days and lots of smart phones have some memory, but like I said before, for the price and my needs...

Now, if you know me, you know that I am song writer by hobby. If you don't know me, hey, I'm a song writer by hobby! I only grew the balls to do this about 2 years ago. Singing has been a part of me since I was wee. I grew up with my mothers motown and my sisters weird 80s pop and my dad's Wagner. (I'm imagining Devo in shiny suits and Viking helmets right now.) When in gradeschool, I tried keyboard, took 5 guitar lessons, mastered The First Noel on recorder, but nothing stuck.

I'll tell you something right now and save an intense revelatory moment for something I haven't discovered about myself yet. I'm terrified of failure. Terrified to the point that I won't try anything new until I am reasonably sure I'll reasonably succeed. It's a fear that has left me out of a lot of activities I might have enjoyed, really hindered my adolescent development, contributed to self medication of varying degrees and subsequent poor choices.

Gosh, you know this is a lot heavier than I anticipated! I only wanted to talk about my kick booty phone!

Anyhoosey, my phone rocks. Long story longer, as I get over my irrational fears and insecurities, I am taking hold of that musical part of me and learning guitar. I shuffle that together with a boat load of maudlin poetry and TA DA, I have a song. Isn't that grand?

I have days where I do nothing in the way of music, don't touch a pen or guitar. And then there are days where ideas and lyrics and melodies and bass lines and harmonies and hooks just ooze out of me. And, good grief, that is why I love, love, love my phone and its neato little voice recorder and the 8 gb of memory. I have hundreds of recordings and snippets; songs recorded 12 different ways, 40 different versions of 1 single idea.

Now, the suck thing about it is that unless I am diligent, the files save out as "Recording 1", "Recording 2" "Recording 857", and so, when I have time, I sit down and listen to each one and rename them. That is what I was just doing a moment ago. It's tedious, but a fascinating little demonstration of the evolution of a song and my guitar playing ability. (Thank god my guitar from February 5th, 2010 is better than that of June 5th, 2009, (THANK GOD!)) So I do this, I enjoy it, I rename the files, I make new ones. And as I listen to the struggle, I wish I had talent like Carol King and Cole Porter, and Stevie Wonder. Though, come to think of it, they're probably wishing they had my phone.

Blog

Time for blog. I promise this will get more interesting and then less, then more then not at all interesting!