Guilt, Blame and Letting Go...

There are days that I am consumed in and with guilt...

Guilt for eating too much...guilt for not eating...guilt for being fat...guilt for not being angry that I am fat...

Guilt for having arthritis pain directly related to my weight so I don't take medication to make the pain ease...because I don't deserve to not hurt...

Guilt that I was not a good mother...

Guilt that I knit too much...guilt that I think about knitting and crafting and food literally all the time...

Guilt that my house is not clean...guilt that my carpets are stained, they came that way when D bought the house...

Guilt at being called a slacker and lazy because the house is not spotless and that I might still be in pj's at the end of the day...

Guilt that I haven't been able to find a job...

Guilt that money is extremely tight now...

Guilt when I grocery shop because I want something just for me, but that would be selfish...

Guilt that I want to spend money on yarn and books and fabric and food...

Guilt that I was not a good daughter...my mother left when I was 6 months old...I was 13 when I met her...my father sent me to my grandparents and for the last 2 or 3 years before he died he didn't speak to me...my grandmother, who raised me kept my ex-husband instead of me...Obviously...I have done something wrong or I am a bad person...

Guilt that the glasses that I wore for 2 years, and yes, occasionally fell asleep in, broke on Mother's day and it cost my family $238 to get me glasses...

Guilt for everything....

There are also days that I am flooded with blame...

Blame for our finances...

Blame for our weight...

Blame for the co-dependency of children...

Blames for aches and pains...

Blames for the inability to sleep...

Blame that we don't do anything...

Blame that me being lazy is why no projects get completed in our house...

Blame, BLame, BLAme, BLAMe, BLAME!!!!!

Today...I am going to start letting go...

Of the guilt...

And of the blame...

I'm done...

I've had enough...

I give...

Today is the day that self forgiveness begins...

One tiny, tiny step at a time...

For the Record...Week 2

I am proud to say...

For the record...for the second week...

IT WAS NOT ME!!!!!

Addictions and realizations

Has anyone out there been watching the show on OWN "Addicted to Food"?  I have...and it scares me a bit...I mean, really scares me.  When these people came to rehab all of them were talking about thinking about food constantly and about eating all the time. Even the two women that are "skinny" but still ill talk about thinking about food constantly...

I can relate to everyone of these people on this show...I think about food constantly...some days the smell of something sets me off in a crazed...I need that NOW!!! I was talking to D the other day and I was describing a coconut cake to him...All of a sudden he looks at me and says, "that's not right...it's only food".  Apparently I was getting way to excited about the idea of this cake and was a bit to passionate in my description...

I mean there is a reason that I'm as round as I am tall. I love food, good food...I have more than once sent things back that didn't taste good...Life is too short to eat bad food if you don't have to.

I mean, I have known for years that I turn to food for comfort, for solace. The experience of my hands getting sweaty around certain foods depending on how good or bad I felt at the time...

I have been wondering lately how a person, ok, me-could go about just stopping. Just stop all of it...

Stop the binging...stop the purging...stop the not eating...

I mean how hard can it be to develop a healthy relationship with food? Bwa hahahahahahaha!!!!!

Yeah right...a healthy relationship with food...I'll believe it when I see it.

I would like to be one of those people that don't live to eat, but that eat to live...you know to eat high quality, well made food...

I would really like to try...

Longing For The Past

At least that is what this quiz says.

I find that lately I have a longing...a desire for things of the past...

I want to put in a garden...to feel the warm soil on my hands...to smell the loamy smell of rich fertile soil...to raise food to put by for my family and maybe to gift the neighbors...

I want to make jams and jellies and to can...to sit down after cleaning the kitchen in the evening to knit and hear the "pop" of the jars sealing...to wipe the jars, tighten the lids and see the beautiful things that I have done for my family's comfort and well being...I feel this need deep in my soul...Like the call of sirens from days gone by...

I want to make bread and rich, thick stews from the bounty I have put by...to smell the bread baking and the stew cooking and know...I did this...to care for my loved ones...to nourish their bodies as doing it nourishes my soul...

I want to have chickens for fresh eggs and to see them scratching in the yard...to have a hen sit eggs and roosters for frying...

I want to card wool for spinning...

I want to spin wool into yarn for knitting warm things for my family's comfort...

I want to spin wool for wharp and wheft to weave cloth to make blankets and rugs to warm my family's beds and feet...

I want to make quilts to decorate my home and cover my family from the winters cold...

Somehow...somewhere...deep in my very soul...I miss these things.  I miss them as if I had just done all of these things just yesterday...I need to do these things as surely as I need to eat and breath...

I feel these things missing from my being...The need to reconnect with the old ways...to simpler times...

I feel the need to simplify...to have better quality and less quantity...

I...am...restless...

Time to tend the dragons...

For The Record...

I will admit that most times I am the bad influence on my group of friends that knit together on Wednesday nights...

But tonight...

Let the record show...

IT   WAS   NOT  ME!!!!!!

Everything All At Once

For the last two days I have been contemplating this post...

After 10 years of terror and fear...Osama Bin Laden is dead.

For survivors, family who lost loved ones, rescue workers and those who lost someone in 9-11...while it doesn't bring them back...I hope that you can begin to, or continue to heal. To know that this person will not be causing such horrific acts again...

For our men and women in uniform and their families...I thank you for the job that you, and your loved one does...I rest easier at night knowing that they are there...

For the ones left behind after loosing someone in the fight against terror...I'm so sorry for your loss and for what little it is worth, thank you...

To our President, I wish in your speech that you would not have said "I" so much...it was terribly tacky...had you been in the Middle East, in uniform and carrying a weapon with our men and women that are there, I would feel differently...

I was talking to my oldest girl R and she said that as a child she always thought that when Osama Bin Laden was killed/died it would be such a feeling of relief...but it isn't...now it seems like almost holding your breath to see what is going to happen next...

One final thing...let's remember that we should never rejoice at the death of someone...regardless of how bad or evil this man was...

Karma is a bitch...

My Aura and Other Things

This morning I was watching an old episode of a travel show and the hosts "aura" was brought up. She sat in a chair and things were done and a photo of her aura was taken. Fortunately, her aura was all rainbows, a very good place.

I am pretty sure that my aura at this moment in life is NOT a rainbow. I would lean very toward a very black aura. I have been very blue and working on trying to get out of being blue. I don't want to take medication for this because I don't understand how a serotonin blocker works, especially when serotonin is what is supposed to make us feel happy. I also don't like the fact that you can't just stop taking it. You see, I have taken such meds before and all that has happened is either I'm a zombie or I feel worse.

I know why I'm blue. I'm 40, morbidly obese, I ache (due to the obesity issue) and unemployed. I realize that in the grand scheme of things, these are not that big of an issue. People all over the world have it much, much worse than I do...I feel somewhat selfish by "voicing" my blueness, but I need to get it out. To purge myself of the blueness in a sense.

40, well this is out of my control. I'll reconcile this.

Unemployed, with the job market so flooded with people looking for a job, it's a horrible thing trying to find a job. R my daughter has suggested that I start and etsy shop, and I may. I need to get something out on Craigslist about teaching knitting, crocheting, sewing ect...Needless to say the job hunt continues...

Morbidly obese...such an ugly term...Morbidly obese...hmmm...this one, this is in my control. I am proud to say that I have been drinking more water. I have a terrible addiction to soda and I would really rather drink soda as anything else. I have been drinking a non-calorie soda, but I really thing that in the volume that I have a habit of drinking it, the artificial sweetener in it is causing part of the aching that I am experiencing. I need to start weening myself off of soda. Seriously, I imagine the CFO of a certain red and white soda company panicking at the thought of me cutting back on my soda intake, tee!

I need to try some of the carbonated waters on the market and see if they take care of the addiction. I also need to pull out the sun tea jar. Combat the soda with unsweetened ice tea with either lemon or lime.

I have been doing some exercise. Big plus...I am in hope that using the joints that ache will make them not ache quite so bad...or something else will hurt and I won't notice it. I have been working in my flower beds, my mail man approves. It's really comical to see this huge woman out in the yard, floppy hat, long sleeves, gloves, a wagon for the waste to take to my compost pile sitting on a stool working in a flower bed...Glad I can add humor to someones day.

I am going to "audition" the space I'm going to turn into my tomato bed. Basically, I'm going to go lay wet newspaper over the grass and weight them down to kill the grass so it's easier to get up. Then the fun begins! Digging, double digging and getting a nice loose soil created to plant my tomatoes. 6 plants, I have hope!!

I have been knitting. Crazy Train is coming along nicely. I am on the blue central motif and really enjoying the knit. It's moving along quickly and it's really a lot of fun showing it to people and seeing the look of confusion when you explain it's going to be a baby blanket...right now...it's a tube. :)

Once I complete the knitting the pattern calls for you to steek the whole thing and add a backing.

As I have never steeked anything, I am terrified, but in a really good roller coaster ride kind of way. I will post pictures. I have hopes of having this completed by mid May. I have remarkably been quite faithful to this project. Mind you, I do have a whopping 27 other things started...no really, 27...I counted. Hmmm...maybe I should list them for all to see! Maybe that would motivate me to finish up a few things.

Of course though, I sorted a few boxes of my stash the other day and discovered a shawl pattern that I now have and overwhelming urge to start. I have the yarn in stash! I have the needles! I wouldn't have to buy anything!!! Of course, casting on 992 stitches...bit of a hmmmmm moment.  Got to think about this for a minute.

S and I have been playing with the ball winder that D got me for my birthday. Lots of fun! S also started a new scarf of her own design...I am so proud of her!

I am still spinning the orange that I have been working on for what seems like a lifetime, this isn't helped by the fact that I have two new bags of roving I want to spin...

Well, I have dishes to do, clothes to wash and a tomato bed to create...

Not to mention dragons to tend...TTFN