The Lyorn's Den

although it is extremely irrelevant in the larger picture...
( cut for food/body issues )

Or, things to get rid of, and not.

( Read more... )

Clutter: I finally got rid of the ten metres of chicken wire which had been filling half of my junk room. And sold a Levis jeans throuh ebay. As long as I have boxes and packing paper to get rid of, ebay seems cost neutral, when the boxes and the paper are gone I'll return to donating the stuff as donating won't lose me money. I also have an appointment at the second hand shop to see if the clothes I brought in June have sold.
It seems that the great liberating blow against clutter cannot be done (the flea market thing left me with more clutter than I had before), so I now go at it one item at a time, but at least two a week.

And I'll be baking cakes on the weekend. Which might coincide with the return of hot weather. We'll see.

I cannot comment on this without creating a google account, which I do not plan on doing.

So I'll just sit here and bang my head on the desk.

OK, I give up. Clothes shopping is breaking the budget this year. I hit the stores again today. My feeble excuse is that my jeans have now gone from a casual look to a circus clown one, and my last "looks kind of OK, I guess" blazer might make a good overcoat in autumn. I'm going to put it into the budget as an emergency. Also: Jeans. Size 40. 40. I mean, 40. WTH?

Today was the Friday after a public holiday (Ascension/Father's Day), which many people use to take a day off. (So did I.) Accordingly, the city had planned some stuff, like extended shopping hours, markets, food stalls, this kind of things. But as it was cold (12°C) and drizzling (the sky always looked as if it would stop soon, but it never did), the town was not as busy as I had feared. On the square behind the New Town Church was a French (and Swiss and Belgian) food market, which sold cheeses, sausages, olives, wine, butter cookies, Belgian chocolates and freshly-made Alsacian "Flammkuchen" (imagine a thin pizza bottom, cover with creme fraiche or sour cream, put onions and lots of bacon on, bake in wood stove over flame). I spend a lot of time sampling everything and trying to remember bits of my French as most of the sellers did not speak much German. I don't speak much French, but I enjoyed hearing it.

The one thing I still did not get anywhere was coriander leaves. I've had enough, I'm going to make that potato-lentil curry that I've wanted to try out for four weeks now without them. Maybe use parsley instead? Or coriander seeds?

I also did not get or order K___'s book, because the book store had a computer breakdown and could not look up or order anything.

Yesterday I went clothes shopping, and today I went through my wardrobe, doing the usual spring decluttering: Removing everything that does not fit, that is too damaged to wear it even in the house, that I'm tired of, or that I just don't wear anymore.

Both went well. I got everything I was looking for: Green jeans, a light summer jacket, and a red top for the choir. I also bought a role playing game sourcebook, some chocolate Easter eggs, a jean waistcoat, and three bras to fit my new shape. Decluttering produced three boxes full of clothes that do not fit me anymore, and that need to be given to charity, or to people who will like them.

Three boxes. All my smart trousers? Drop when I am not holding them up with both hands. The wide summer shirts? Fall off my shoulders. The woollen winter coat that I rarely wear? Large enough for two of me. Most of the jeans, fortunately, still fit, thanks to the habit of buying them so tight that I can just barely squeeze in, and the fact that I found a belt in the back of the wardrobe that will do as soon as I punch two new holes in it. The linen trousers from last year have drawstrings. Most of the tops are now really loose, but it looks like it's intended that way.

I do not feel three sizes thinner (though not "thin", not even the prescriptive "average"). I feel just the same, only, I'm not. Being fat had become a part of my identity, a part that I didn't especially like, but trained myself out of the habit to freak out about. It was just The Way Things Were. And now they aren't.

People notice. They noticed at my party, they notice in the choir. I cannot lie convincingly anymore and claim that it's an illusion, a good day, a trick of memory, well-fitting clothes, or heels. Everytime someone says, "wow, you've lost weight" I want to swamp them with my self-doubt and issues, but I always remember my manners in time, and only say, "yes", or "yes, I've been doing a lot of strength training last year".

So I'll swamp my LJ instead. Maybe it will declutter my brain.

( Cut for a swamp of TMI, old history, and angsting )

This is a little embarrassing, but I'm so frustrated that I need to whine.

I have this secret and highly ambitious goal of being, one day, able to jog one whole kilometre without intervals of walking to catch my breath, regain control of my balance and wait for the pain to go away. I could do it when I was eleven -- before puberty, chocolate and the lack of sports bras made 100 metres long-distance for me.

So I check the internet for advice on how to best get from here to there without keeling over dead or something equally unpleasant. And every one, every single page says, "don't run so fast that you would not be able to carry on a conversation", and "start with running for two minutes, then walking", and "keep your pulse in this-and-that range."

Which makes me go, WTF?

There is literally no jogging speed so slow that I could carry on a conversation doing it. When I was 16, jogging two kilometres took me 35 minutes (walking would have taken 20), and I would not have been able to carry on a conversation for any part of it. (That was in gym class. I got sent home afterwards for coughing my lungs out. Took me days to get my breath back.) These days, to keep jogging at any speed for two minutes, I need a good day, and four weeks of training beforehand. And going by the pulse frequency I get on a crosstrainer on half that effort, it's probably forty to fifty over what is recommended.

Well, one plan says, "start with walking 30 minutes". Yeah, I can do that. I can walk 30 minutes, or 60, or 240, or the whole day, no problem. I just cannot run.

This sucks.