Size 4 Jeans

It’s rare that I pick up a fashion/beauty magazine these days. I just don’t have the time for it, and don’t get much out of them anymore anyway. Once in a while (like once a year) I’ll pick up something like Elle if I’m traveling by plane and just want some fluff to read on the way. I used to read them all the time; Seventeen, Cosmo, Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair. They all found their way into my mailbox at one time or another when I was younger.

I remember feeling like I wasn’t pretty when I was younger, and I had really poor self esteem from the time I was a teenager until I was in my early thirties. I have to say that I think the media and magazines contributed to the problem. Looking at all those perpetually beautiful people in magazines and movies and on TV, I thought I’d never measure up. My mother never understood what the problem was, and never tried to as far as I could tell then or now.

I don’t remember ever having the kind of conversations with my mother that I have with my own daughter about why the magazines and movies and TV aren’t real, and how those people don’t really look like that off the camera, because the photos are all airbrushed and Photoshopped to make perfection seem real. Frankly, I think my mother was jealous of me because I was thin and she wasn’t, and she never wanted to have children anyway (so she’s repeatedly told me), so maybe that was part of the reason for her attitude.

I never thought I was fat when I was younger though, not even when I looked at all the models in the magazines. I was at least sensible enough to realize that “fat” just wasn’t anything close to what I was. In fact, I wished for more curves, because “sexy” to me was a Victoria’s Secret model, and I had bones, not curves and no breasts to speak of at all. I was a stick until I had kids, and I didn’t have any breasts until I could afford to fix that problem with a trip to the plastic surgeon when I was 30. Read the rest of this entry »

Volunteerism is so important in today’s world. I can’t even begin to think of all the people in the world who would suffer were there no volunteers to give their time and skills to help. Some organizations wouldn’t exist at all if no one stepped up to lend a hand and others have volunteers that do the work of twenty because there’s no one else and the need doesn’t go away. Why then, do more people not give their time?

I can give you one major reason: because some people out there think it’s okay to treat volunteers like dirt on their shoes, to be walked on and wiped off at the first opportunity. I’m all for doing your absolute best when you say you’ll do something, whether you’re getting paid for it or not. That being said, everyone makes mistakes, and there is usually more that needs to be done than anyone has time for, but the people who are not volunteering to help in any way at all have very little right to criticize anything, and no right to any non-constructive criticism.

Most importantly, if you have constructive criticism that you think will help the organization or the process, presenting it to the volunteer privately is the best way to go; sending your complaints out in a mass email to everyone in the organization is sure to alienate people, and will probably make you look the fool in the long run. Part of the issue may be the fact that it’s far easier to go off on someone in an email than it is in person. In an email, you can say what you want, and the fear of how they’ll respond is diminished, if it was ever there at all.

Volunteers aren’t always asking for gushing praise and thanks, though that never hurts either. But if you’re not willing to pitch in and help out, don’t tell the volunteer how to do the job (that they’re doing for free, remember), and especially don’t do it in such a way as to be obvious about the fact that you are trying to make that volunteer look stupid. It’s put up or shut up time, folks.

“Did you miss us?” This from my husband when he comes home after an absence of three whole days. He took my oldest daughter on a weekend holiday and I stayed home with the youngest. Frankly, no, I didn’t miss them, and I said exactly that just as he said “lie.” In other words, he knows perfectly well that I didn’t miss them, but expects me to lie about it, like it’s some sort of abnormality that I didn’t miss anybody. After I said “no,” his voice dropped and octave and his face fell. What the heck?

You know, this has nothing do do with whether I love them or not, because everyone can use a break now and then without feeling guilty about not missing someone because they’re not around. I thoroughly enjoyed their weekend absence for various reasons. Let’s see, the kids weren’t arguing because only one of them was here, I didn’t have to fix big meals because he wasn’t here, I had the bed to myself sans the oh-so-soothing symphony of his snoring, and I had a break from teenager attitude and demands. What’s not to enjoy?

We go through this every time one of us is out of the house overnight which is just ludicrous. It’s not that I don’t like being around my husband and family, but I certainly don’t pine away for them when they’re not around, even if it’s for a couple of weeks. Maybe if I could ship the kids off to grandma for the entire summer, or if my husband would take a job in Singapore for a year I might get to the missing point, but probably not too quickly. I mean, you miss people when they’re gone, like moved away or dead or something like that, not when they go on a jaunt for a weekend.

Sometimes I feel like he must have married the wrong girl, because I am sooo not dependent enough to suit him. I like being alone, thinking my own thoughts, and I don’t get much of that alone thing these days. My creativity levels were soaring this weekend, and still are for that matter, though I wonder how long it’ll last now that life is “back to normal.” And of course, if he decides that I’m irritated because he’s acted like a sap because I said that I didn’t miss them, then he’ll just say he knows how I am, and it doesn’t bug him, it’s no big deal and all that. But we both know which is the real lie here, don’t we?

**P.S. I had planned a different post for today, but then this irritation came up and the whole post was running screaming through my head, so I finally let it find its way to the screen. I’ll get to that whole “Size 4″ thing later…

Let me be completely clear at the outset: The title of this blog says exactly what I mean. Size 4 Jeans, ’til death do us part. Put simply, I fully intend to be wearing size 4 clothing when I die. I wear a size 4 now, and I expect that it won’t change.

This does not, however, say anything as to why I would call my blog that. The title is a result of a fair amount of convoluted thinking that started when I woke up yesterday morning. It’s difficult to reconstruct the exact stream of consciousness at this point, but in the interest of back story, I’ll give it a go:

I woke up thinking “damn, I really should try to exercise, but I really HATE it. Being 40 probably means that I can’t skate by much longer on metabolism alone, and every year it gets harder to keep my weight where I want it. And yeah, I may be thin, but I’m not fit. But I HATE exercise! Maybe if I started a blog to keep track of the ups and downs, maybe interact with some readers who had the same feelings or could share some new fitness activities, that would motivate me.

“Of course, then there are all the people that look at me and say ‘what do you have to gripe about? You’re thin, you look great!’ like I have less of a right to be conscious of my weight than they do, or the people who say ‘yeah, right, where from?’ when I say I need to lose five pounds if the subject comes up in conversation. That kind of thing really pisses me off. I’m not obsessed about my weight, I’m just conscious of it, and if I’m conscious of this five pounds now I won’t need to lose 20 later. I should be able to say what I like about my weight, without being quiet because I’m in a room full of people who have more to lose than I.”

And that set me off on a whole round of things that I sometimes don’t say because of someone else, things I get irritated about, things I wonder about or have to get out of my system, or things I just want to chat about. I spent an hour or two brainstorming about these types of things, so there’s lots of content waiting to get put on the screen that I won’t talk about on my other blog. No, I’m not telling where that other blog is, because nobody needs to know that. Read the rest of this entry »