emsk

I got dropped in performance and my neck hurts and my feet are bruised and my ribs ache like they’re bruised and if I wear my glasses my head pounds worse but I can’t wear contacts 24/7 and wah wah wah. I’m tired and feel like I’m cold although that’s very unlikely so I’m sitting here in track pants with GEEK on the arse and a hoodie with shitty faux fur in the hood to keep my neck warm.

And the sodding dance teachers forgot the official makeup so, because I’m that sorta girl, I ended up going out and buying the appropriate makeup for the girls MYSELF. Maroon and gold, neither of which are colours I’ll be able to wear!

The weekend started on a kind of hilarious note. A, J and I carpooled down to the festival of the weekend, as the festival is in my hometown, where mum lives, so I was going to chill with my family while the girls did ALL THE DANCE, then I was just going to party at night.

About 30 mins away from our destination? A’s car died on the side of the road (J was travelling with her). I belong to a roadside assistance scheme which includes free towing. A does not, because her dad is a mechanic. So after some back and forth I eventually told her to STFU and accept the free tow the remaining 30 minutes to my mother’s place. The person I ended up speaking to could not locate me on a map, so eventually I just told her in painstaking detail where we were (it helps to be a local) and she relayed the wrong info to the towie. Sigh.

However, the towie did arrive, and started chortling when I relayed the destination address. Much to my amusement it turns out he’s towed my Mum in the last two months twice.

Anyways, A’s car gets on the tow truck, we trundle off towards Mum’s and we blow past a friend’s car (containing four dancers also en route to the festival). They’re all out of the car 10 mins from town.

We go “yeah, having a break.”

“… maybe we’ll call.”

I pulled over. We rung. Yup, dead car #2….

So I turned around, went back, piled two of the passengers & their gear into my car. While we did this, the towie blew past & honked.

Because it was the same towie who would be returning shortly to collect K’s vehicle.

Then I got ID’d at the bottle store buying wine, by a young man who apologised PROFUSELY for checking my ID = “oh my goodness, I am SO SORRY. You are THIRTY.”

So, jump forward to Saturday night – Mum’s in the audience of the showcase (which I was performing/got dropped in.) She’s sitting next to some people from Napier who are chatting to each other cheerfully and talking about the weekend’s curse on vehicles. Mum cracked up.

As it turns out, A’s dad (the mechanic) was in $nearby_town dropping off $things the next day – so they did an extra ~90 minutes driving, put A’s dead car – the auto transmission shit itself – on the back of the truck & drove it the three hours home. It worked out.

Honestly, I’m still grumpy & sore and such. But I can indeed see the funny side.

Funny one from rehearsal last night. S (my partner / instructor) had not had anything like enough sleep, and we were practicing tricks. The one in question involves a lift.

We successfully did the lift, he put me down, and gave me a very tiredly puzzled face.

“You are lighter.”

“Yes?”

“Lighter?”

“About 12kg lighter than when we started, yes.”

Frown, tired, steps back, looks me up and down.

“Actually you look really good! And I can feel that you’re lighter. Huh.”

Honestly I just wanted to give the guy a hug, he looked so utterly shattered.

For the first time in ages, I didn’t come home with sore feet. I found some cheap, but nice, lyrical teaching sandals and oh MAN they are the most comfortable dance shoe I have EVER had on my feet. They are like heaven and I will be buying more at some point.

I also scored a red bra for twenty bucks on special. In my size. This is like finding actual powdered hens teeth. When paired with the racktastic red dress, I look amazing; Tobermory has threatened to tattoo “PROPERTY OF {NAME}” on my arse, just in case anyone gets ideas.

Congress is three weeks away. I am so excited.

WTF. I cut out soda (Coke, etc) this week, on top of the rest of the diet I’ve been trying to maintain.

I’ve been steadily losing about half a kilo a week, one kg some weeks.

This week I dropped 1.5kg.

WTF.

It took me a long time to get into the right headspace to actually work on losing weight. And I finally worked out what the magic change was: I accepted myself as I was, first.

I’m not one for Internet rhetoric. But the ideas behind “health at every size” resonated with me. After all, I was fat, but I maintained reasonable-ish fitness and strength. I was always able to do what needed to be done – carry heavy loads, move equipment at work, clean and move furniture at home. I could walk wherever I needed to. I was healthy, and I had to accept myself as I was before I had the correct motivation to change.

I know that sounds counter intuitive. After all, if you’re trying to change yourself, you don’t actually like yourself as you are, right?

Prior to this, my attempts at weight loss failed. They failed because I was doing it for the wrong reasons, other people’s reasons. “I’m too fat!” “I’m ugly!” All the usual image-based horseshit. I’d lose a bit of weight, and promptly think “I hope other people are pleased with me”. Not “I’m pleased with me”, but other people.

Then I’d dive head first into a tub of icecream and attempt to feel better about myself that way. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.

Six years of wavering around later, I finally got into a headspace where I liked myself enough to accept myself as is. Having done so, I can now work to actually change what I am – because I WANT TO. Not because of what other people think of me, but because I want to.

I’m not saying my motivations are wholly internal. I am a dancer, and I want to be a better dancer – and realistically that involves having a smaller body. But I’m OK with that. It’s not “my dance partners want me to be thinner”, it’s “I want to be smaller for dancing”. The distinction is … small, perhaps, but important.

Both the scales and my trousers confirm that I’ve lost an entire dress size. I’ve gone down a bra size. And when I was getting dressed this morning, I realised I’ve lost a little wobbly bit at the back of my arm that had been irking me. Then I did a quick recce into KMart last night, to pick up a pair of harem pants for a performance this weekend; picked up my usual pants size, and realised upon a try-on that if the elastic falls right off your hips, you should go down a size.

When I look in the mirror, I have discernible stomach areas. I find that incredibly entertaining, because it’s actually the fat layer setting itself up in a mockery of a sixpack.

I’ve lost eight kilograms since the end of November. I’m quite proud of that.

I have another video of myself dancing, now. Today’s, from rehearsal. I feel better about things; I’ve had some pull-head-out-of-arse time, I went out dancing Thursday, rehearsal Friday, then dance partying Friday and Saturday nights, plus had today’s (Sunday) rehearsal – what WAS I thinking seriously, my poor feet.

The point of all that is that I’ve shoved the warghle into some sort of box, and am periodically aiming projectiles at it so that it gets progressively uncomfortable and hopefully dies in there.

On Saturday, a woman that I’ve never met before came over and asked where I learned to dance zouk. I gave her my teacher’s details, and she said “thanks! Because you are AMAZING”. Ego: boosted. And I got to dance with a whole bunch of people, the music was amazing, the performances were amazing, the crowd was lovely and warm and welcoming, I had fun, and came home at 1am on Sunday on top of the world and ended up playing Torchlight II for an hour until I wound down enough to sleep.

Rehearsal today didn’t go terribly well for me, for tiredness reasons, but in the video I have improved on Tuesday’s efforts. That makes this a win.



Tuesday did start me thinking, though. I did a bit of navel gazing, as you do, and I came to the conclusion that I’ve never really had a good body image. This is NO fault of my mother – I doubt she ever had any awareness of my self image.

I remember being bullied because I had dark arm hair, and detesting that as a child. I remember detesting my short sight and my stupid glasses, detesting the ill health that made me breathless and unable to keep up with the other kids in sports. (Undiagnosed asthma, eventually diagnosed in my teens.) I remember constantly wishing that I was a bit taller (youngest in my class), a bit faster, a bit fitter, a bit more tanned. I distinctly remember sitting in church with my mother, thinking about how exotic I’d look if I was the colour of the hymn book. I wanted to look different, to not be me, even back then.

Then I went through the inevitable teenage-girl-body-hatred, with a side dish of “not-eating the year I was sixteen”, fucked my metabolism quite thoroughly as a result, packed on thirty kilos in three years, settled at my present size and weight for the subsequent six, and here I am.

It’s no particular wonder that the idea of body acceptance was new and novel, when I ran across it in my early twenties. I’d never accepted my body as it was, and it had never occurred to anyone around me that I had such a problem with myself. It had never occurred to ME that it was unusual! As always, the retrospectocope is a powerful device.

Progress is being made. I guess that’s the important point.

Yesterday, I wore my harem pants to work. Black harem pants, black tshirt, my favourite yellow heels (which my lovely husband calls my banana shoes) and a dark pink merino shrug.

The receptionist oohed and aahed at me, and told me I was a real glam queen.

Server admin colleague (female) – “it’s not that I was looking at your bum, but those pants are fantastic.”

Dance teacher / friendly acquaintance out dancing – “where do you find such amazing clothes?”

It was a good day.

Also, about half of my bras are getting uncomfortable. I finally realised that it’s because they’re too big – I’ve lost circumference at the rib cage. So the straps are sitting wrong, so my shoulders hurt, because the band isn’t taking the weight it should.

I realised last night that my stamina for social dancing is much, much improved. When I started out, I couldn’t do two songs back to back – my ankles and legs would hurt too much. I’d be out of breath. I’d also be panicking a little, owing to my general inability to follow a lead. I also couldn’t do zouk and salsa on the same night – it was too hard to rewire my brain. I had to pick one style of dance and do only that.

Stepping off the floor after song five last night, gasping for a drink of water, I realised that hey, I’ve come a long way. Zouk, salsa, bachata, one after another after another, and the only real reason I took a break was thirst. I wasn’t even short of partners! I go regularly enough that the men know I’m … well, they know what level I dance at, and while I might not be skilled enough for the epic spins and so on, I’m reasonably competent. I even ask men to dance these days. The ones I recognise as regulars, anyway.

It’s nice, driving home late, contented with the night. Getting up the next day, in no pain (other than mild dehydration occasionally!).

I went to a zouk party last Friday. They had a social competition, and I entered – at intermediate level. Didn’t win, of course, nor did I expect to! But I had fun, and I had friends cheering me on from the sidelines (not just my teachers!) and it was a fantastic night. I crawled in the door at 2am, having been awake for 20 hours on the run.

This makes me happy.

I’ve gone back to zouk classes, starting last Monday. I’m getting sloppy, I’m not working as hard as I should. As hard as I can. It’s time to step it up.

One of the things that Tobermory and I want to do this year is get smarter with our money. We’re both impulse-buyers, and inclined to go for instant gratification. Obviously, that has to change. We’re adults, allegedly, and frankly we’ve bought all the conceivable junk we could need, and in fact far more than we could need. I know I haven’t read all my books, he hasn’t played all his video games, I haven’t sewn all my fabric… you get the drift. We need the money more than we need more crap, given our grandiose plans for the house. Built in floor to ceiling shelving. A new roof. A new kitchen…

One of the obvious and easy money savers is bringing lunch, rather than buying. That shouldn’t be any hardship – I love to cook, and we nearly always have leftovers. I don’t intend to go completely mad to the extent of making bento boxes, but you know what? They are pretty awesome. Plus, home-made’s gotta be healthier than takeaways, right?

So far this week, I’ve made lunch for us. I have one of these, and T uses more traditional plasticware.



Monday was salad, corn chips, canned fish, and frozen fruit. Tobes had leftover chilli. Yesterday, I had potato salad, canned fish, salad, and juice; T had (leftover) grilled chicken, rice, and salad with a pottle of mustard dressing because I couldn’t find the Hellmanns. Today he has the same, and I have chicken, rice, home-made sweet chilli hummus, and dipping sticks of carrot and cucumber. It takes maybe five minutes in the morning to bung it all together out of the fridge – hooray for a well supplied fridge and a little forethought when packing leftover dinner the night before. We’re even packing a can of fizzy each – it’s cheaper than the vending machines, and frankly, we’re not going to give up the Sprite/Coke. (Yet.)

We’re going to be sensible about it. If we try and live like complete paupers, we’ll both have stupid breakouts at some point. So we’re budgeting spending money, which neither of us has to account for to the other. And once a week, we buy lunch and/or have takeaways for dinner. It works for us.

So. Tobermory is on his fourth course of antibiotics in five weeks. He shared one of his bugs with me, so I had nearly a week off work, which was complicated by a really bad reaction to the first antibiotic my doctor prescribed and holy shit, I do not ever want a drug to put me in that much pain again in my whole life please. Ow.

I was grumpy as hell because I missed the first of my new series of salsa lessons, meaning that when I went back this week? I sucked. A really large amount, although thankfully all the men in the room were patient with me. And I did mostly get it together by the end of the lesson and feel less shite about it generally. In fact, I came home really happy with myself.

I intend to work up to doing Sunday and Monday and Thursday classes / salsa social thingies in the next month or so. I really enjoy this, so much, and it’s also good exercise, which is handy.

On an unrelated note; I’ve been a nailbiter all my life. I’ve managed to stop a few times – about six months before the wedding, Tobes had a dreadful migraine and I bit all my hard-won nails off with stress. Never grew them back right, wore fakes for several reasons and then finally destroyed my nails with the fakies I wore to look pretty for the wedding. Well, I finally managed to grow out all the nail damage WITHOUT resorting (much) to nailbiting, so I treated myself to my first ever manicure on payday.

I’ve also taken up having regular haircuts. I’d never had my hair washed at a hairdressers before, having patronised the $20 haircut bars in malls, mostly, but splurged on my birthday. And oh, having the thorough head massage is just bliss. I’ve dozed off twice, which gets me giggled at by the hairdresser and her assistants, but it’s so nice!

It’s funny, that whole mall is full of scarily efficient little Asian ladies, and I feel dreadful every time I go in because most of the customers are European. It feels like I’m being inherently racist, but… then I feel like I am being racist for thinking it in the first place, and hell they’re right near work, and convenient, and cheap, so…