eating is an option.

1. There is a little red ring around each of my eyes that has been there since December. I’ve been to the eye doc inside his Walmart cubicle three or four times, but the red ring is still there. I wear thick black glasses every day. Maybe I am hiding. But I am seeing—I’m blind as a bat without those lenses, you know. Plus the Walmart eye guy creeps me out.

2. A couple weeks ago we went to the Tulip Festival, me and my mom. We whirled and ran all around with our winter jackets and our souls on fire—I LOVE THIS WOMAN. She fills me up whole. We talked about the temple, addiction, God, marriage, getting a job after 23 years of full-time motherhood. My mom is so dang comfortable with who she is, she simultaneously gives other people permission just to be comfortable. And who else can do that for you? She hates shopping and her makeup bag consists of three or four tubes, the same kinds as always. She always looks fabulous. My mother lives alone now, with four other boy-men, and doesn’t complain. She just sets boundaries. She is assertive and never overbearing. She is so down to earth and sensible I wonder often how she birthed a wild-child crazy woman like me. I sure miss her a lot.

3. We painted everything white on Saturday—front door cabinets closet doors. EEEEEEEEEEEEEk I love paint with a fervor undying.

4. I started a little writing group. It was very scary because I didn’t know if any of them would want to commit to it and it was a big idea brewing inside my head. But we make each other feel safe and we take risks. And we write! It’s amazing! Something about just scribbling away with people you know will care about you no matter if your writing is dirt or gold is so freeing and just absolutely thrilling. Tuesday nights give me jitters of creativity bugs, flying around in my area like uncaged birds. I have a very firm testimony about creating. It’s the lifeblood of us, even though it’s hard to pay attention sometimes. It’s easier not to create, because we’re functioning well enough in the world as is, working our day jobs and watching TV and getting worked up talking pop culture every once in a while. And adding one more thing to that overflowing plate sounds like an emotional explosion. Plus writing makes everything more complicated, at first, and who in the planet wants that? No. My life is worth complicating to get lifted. I re-decide this fact every time I pick up my pen and paper.

5. I am going to be a real biker person. I’m getting a bike soon. Jared’s is in Florida in the mail. Then we’re gonna bike all over this state, pro, yo.

6. I bake stuff this summer. Yesterday I baked lemon almond pull-aparts and homemade wheat bread. Two days before that: magic coconut squares. Two days before that: brownies with nutmeg and banana and raspberry-chocolate frosting. Four days before that: oatmeal raspberry bars. I’m feeling like I should get into cooking instead of baking. But alas! No I will not until I am good and ready BECAUSE:

6a. Intuitive Eating. Is a book that every woman should read up and down and all over. BECAUSE IT IS REVOLUTIONARY THAT IS WHY! Here’s what you do: you give yourself unconditional permission to eat. Whatever you want, whenever you want. You don’t feel guilty when you’re hungry. You don’t put off eating as long as possible. You don’t tell yourself you don’t deserve to eat this or that because you didn’t exercise. (And now that I’m enumerating these unwritten rules of womanhood, how silly do they seem? Sometimes, I want to quit this whole female world because it is just downright weird.) You listen to your body and you don’t keep eating when you’re already full because you know that you can eat again whenever you want! And never, never do you go on a diet. You just listen to yourself and eat normally. Eat when hungry. Stop when full. No scales or calorie counting or points or grams of what-the-freak ever. YOU JUST EAT. So right now, when I’m baking up a storm, I’m just experimenting with my unconditional permission to eat. I don’t restrict foods and I don’t label foods ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ I focus on how each food makes me feel, and I eat whatever sounds good right that minute. I eat mindfully and taste my food so that I don’t eat a ton and then feel overstuffed and uncomfortable and grumpy and mean.

Gracious, I can’t even talk about it any more because I’m just getting too worked up because I am just frustrated that nobody ever told me that this was an option. that JUST EATING was an option. Here goes: EATING IS AN OPTION. Let yourself be free. The end.

7. I hate tangled sheets almost as much as I hate cold feet and, ironically, socks.

 

I needed to say all that. kthanksbye.