Dear Reader:

Well, I feel like I remained vigilant today.   The whole family (four kids, four adults) went out to lunch and then my kids, me and Grandma went out to dinner.   Could have been not so great on the calorie front, but my mental control was in evidence today.

Calories consumed:  1247
Calories burned:  353

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Dinner:

Snack:  A Dixie cup of Goldfish and 10 fat free Pringles

I also went on an hour long walk at 6pm in my hometown:



Yes.  I'm totally up to my creepy picture taking of other people's houses.  Also, I love these old Appalachian farmhouse style houses with the brick and the triangle pediment-style roofs. 

I realized tonight that I lived exactly 1/2 of my life in this town.   21 years.  And, it's quite possible that I will be back to visit this town only a handful more times since my mom is contemplating a move closer to me and my brother in southern WV.  Since I graduated from college, I've lived in Michigan, Louisiana, other parts of WV, Illinois, Iowa, and Virginia.  But, the impact of this place on my life is incalculable.   I loved taking this walk tonight, but couldn't help thinking of the fact that I usually took such holiday walks with my Dad.  I do miss his quiet, reassuring presence at holiday time.

I'm a big fan of night-walking.   I have several good memories of night time walks in far-flung places: several years ago on the river banks in Prague with my friend Robbie, on the streets of Edinburgh (of course it was December and the sun set there at 3pm...) as I made my decision to try to conceive with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, in Manhattan for the first time just last summer, trying my first banana/Nutella crepe on the streets of Paris from a food cart on a rainy night during my summer study there.

But, I digress.  I was going to talk about my judginess tonight.  (Totally made that word up.).  So, I have always felt as though there was no earthly reason that I should be judgmental about other people's life choices, actions, personality quirks.  Mainly because I have always had something of a thin skin (it's thickened a bit over the years, but I am still ultra-capable of being wounded by others' judgments in areas that are vulnerable for me) and I figured that I didn't want to do to someone else what would just crush me.  In fact, I even regularly worry about what I put on this blog, because one stray, innocuous comment about my body image or other issues could, potentially, send me into an obsessive tailspin - I mean, not to be dramatic or anything.   :)   But, the response has been totally supportive.   And, those that may have other thoughts about it are keeping silent or just not reading.  That's a win for me, and warrants my continued bravery, I think.  Thanks, dear reader.   The other thing about judgment is that I feel like there is no way for me to know what kind of battles other people are fighting to just keep it all together - personally or professionally.   So, for me to judge would be to presume that I know, somehow, what they are facing.  Which, I don't.  So, BRAVO to all of you for getting out of bed in the morning and putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to exist.  BRAVO.

But, and here's the punch line - I apparently do not extend that compassion and non-judgment to myself very often.  I totally try to suppress and/or pound uncomfortable or what I imagine to be inappropriate feelings into submission like I'm wielding a meat cleaver.  Seriously.   This whole Zen Buddhist ideal of noticing the emotion/feeling without judgment, staying with it, and then letting it go naturally is NOT A NATURAL STATE FOR ME.  Dude, I have to work really hard at that.  

I think it has something to do with some ingrained habits of mind that I developed in childhood about what "good" people "think" and "feel"....  Notice all those air quotes?  Yeah, it's probably ungrammatical, but you get what I'm saying, right?   In fact, I've always self-identified as a person who is trying to be a "good" person -- whatever that really means (sorry, philosopher friends, I'm not going to go too deep into it...).   I remember very vividly a conversation that I had with a very drunk, extremely tall, extremely attractive colleague from New Zealand (when I lived in Illinois) about how he couldn't ever think about having a relationship with me because I had a "golden nugget of goodness" in me.   I was above all that, apparently.   Also, my high school boyfriend was relieved that I was so studious and "good" because it kept him from having all sorts of thoughts/feelings that would distract him from his AP classes that would get him into a good college.   What?    Anyway, this is TMI (yet again), but it serves to show you that I've somehow taken on this - I need to be a "good" person and there are very specific ways in which I can be a "good" person - known, apparently, ONLY TO ME, but recognizable by other people?

The thing is, as a wise friend recently told me, feelings are neither good or bad.  They are just feelings.   And, if I try to suppress such feelings - for instance, feelings of shame about my body or about my abilities or about my attraction to particular people or about my parenting skills, etc., because I intellectually know those feelings to be unlikely to get me to a happy end result, I just obsess over them and make them bigger and more important than they need to be. If I allow that "good" and/or "bad" people have all kinds of feelings, then maybe I don't need to worry that having these feelings is wrong.   Better yet, is it possible that I do not, in fact, have a "golden nugget of goodness" in me?  That I'm just a complex, confused, alive person like everyone else who is confronted with a series of choices every day and every minute?  That there is no good or bad about that?   I will tell you that I often get a lot of comments about how amazing I am to be single parenting twins.   And, while I deeply appreciate that these comments come from a genuine and kind place, they make me feel isolated and overwhelmed by a need to appear as though I am actually amazing and competent and capable when 88% of the time I. Have. No. Idea. What. I. Am. Doing.  :)   So, trying to suppress the uncertainty, the crazy, the sometimes negative has the opposite effect to what I want...

Before this becomes a Barbra Streisand rendition of "Feelings,"  I am going to stop.   And think.  And allow some feelings to swirl around.   I hope you will, too, dear reader.

I'm off to more adventures with other family members tomorrow. 

Thanks for reading.