Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice
Much has happened. A lot is good. A lot is so-so. Some is just downright pitiful. Unfortunately, I have not had time to commit myself to writing it all down, each effort to journal it up being replaced with a much more immediate need like another Diet Coke or sleep.
When I pause to consider the fleeting summer, I cannot say with any legitimacy that it was anything but special, adventurous, and entirely too much fun. Not a weekend passed in which I was left without an activity. I pursued the outdoors. I ran in the rain. I ran with friends. I hiked (in a thunderstorm). I played sports. I swam in Lake Michigan. I saw the Mississippi. I wore shorts for the first time in easily 14 years. I ate burgers. Friends came in from out of town. I drank beer on my balcony to a symphony of explosions. I went to three White Sox games. I was challenged and elated and very busy in a very good way.
Then it simply ended, snuffed out by September and back to school sales and no fanfare to announce another season come and gone, but a whimpering morning in which the sun didn’t rise so early and an evening in which the sun didn’t set so late, and I simply knew the day dreams of hot pink inner-tubes and carnivals and red, white, and blue would have to wait another nine months. It’s time for scarves and sweaters and pumpkin flavored everything. I’m okay with this. I like wearing tights and heels and jackets and sipping hot beverages and rain and gray skies and Halloween decorations and crunching leaves, and all the stereotypes I look forward to in the summer, just crispier.
With September brought a move of our offices, a 14 month renovation displacing us into various separated quarters. It was stressful. People got ugly and petulant and behaviors were abysmal, pathetic, whiney, and egotistical. It took a strain on me, as I became the butt of everyone’s jokes and anger, as though it was suddenly 1960 and a woman working in an office of mostly men deserved ridicule for being the “weaker” sex. I was called a skirt. Instead of offering me an apology after I was mocked all day and had deigned to confront the person I was merely asked, “What do you want? A hug? Would you actually like a damn hug?” It was the trial of a century to not box someone’s ears in.
But I got through it. The men got through it. We have unpacked and settled in, and now for the next 14 months I have an office with big, bright windows and places to put all of my affects: black cat book ends, Chester Arthur’s head (not his actual head, mind you, but a cut out), various plants, White Sox nesting dolls and stuff bears that priests have given me, and I even found jack-o-lantern lanterns to hang come October.
My office also resides in a grade school. We share a floor with preteens, each with hair more swoopy than the next. One girl likes to wear a hot pink feather boa and by the end of the day, feathers dot the hallway as if a giant neon bird is in the midst of molting. I must confess I have a girl crush on one of the teachers, a golden haired, well dressed young woman with a keen fashion sense. She teaches math and the other day had her students convert feet into meters using the illustration of a frog hopping left to right. “How many times can the frog hop in a distance of one meter?” I didn’t know the answer. This morning she smiled at me and wished me a good day. I felt stupidly privileged to have evoked a smile and hello from her. Like any girl crush, I simply wish to be this woman: smart, well dressed, pretty and natural, and able to have a rapport with kids who are at an age where they are scariest.
Another perk of my new office is that I share it with a woman who is generally pleasant and well meaning in everything she does. The other day she was able to calm me from a frenzy of self-loathing brought on by my inability to run due to an injured ankle. In addition to not running, I’d been a spiral of stress eating which then led to shame eating, and it never ended the self-loathing. I happened to be standing in her doorway and she, in the middle of dieting, asked me a question about weight. (I have a lost a decent amount and it is, seemingly, the only thing the ladies want to discuss with me.) “You don’t intend to lose anymore, do you?” She asked this with a tone of incredulousness.
I paused, honestly unaware of how to answer that question. I’ve been dealing with a myriad of body issues lately, sometimes thinking myself gangly and disgusting, other times thinking of myself as a giant blimp floating around town. “Um. I don’t know? Maybe?”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “I mean, where, first of all?”
I shrugged, aware of how it all seems to an outsider, the skinny girl crying fat. My inability to find any of it complimentary is audacious, and my frustration over the vacant stares and nodding heads I sometimes get when I confess (with the exception of a friend who is quite skilled at discussing the matter at length with me in a patient manner that suggests she truly wants to understand and knows it is a mental problem rather than a self-esteem issue) how I’m feeling. I mostly don’t say anything.
“You know,” she continued. “I used to be like you. I used to be so skinny, I’d gotten down to 108 pounds, and at the time I thought I looked so good. I see pictures now, and I really just look too skinny, too sickly and I wonder why I ever put all that pressure on myself or why I thought I looked so good. Now I wouldn’t do that even if I felt I could.”
I walked away from that feeling calmer than I have this entire week. It was someone who understood the exact problem without pushing the issue, without offering suggestions or advice or insisting rather impatiently that I’m not fat, it wasn’t stories of someone she knew who did this or that or the other, but someone who had simply been there before, who wasn’t making a big deal of it now. That’s all I needed.
On top of that, my ankle is starting to feel better and next week I can get back to my half marathon training. Only three and a half months left until the race! In preparation, Pat and Colleen suggested a weekly Disney movie night. We kicked things off last night when they came over to watch Mary Poppins. When I was a child, I thought Mary Poppins was a bitch. I also thought the movie was 18 hours long. I’m glad to see that my impressions were correct, as I still think Mary Poppins is a bitch and the movie is still 18 hours long. But all the parts I loved as a kid were still loved yesterday, like the steps that appear out of black smoke over the roof tops of London, and the excitement of living in a sidewalk painting, and the hilarity of Dick Van Dyke as a one man band, the house boat, and the absurdity of Mr. Banks, and the scary, scary bankers. We laughed so much.
Next week we’ll watch Sleeping Beauty.
When I pause to consider the fleeting summer, I cannot say with any legitimacy that it was anything but special, adventurous, and entirely too much fun. Not a weekend passed in which I was left without an activity. I pursued the outdoors. I ran in the rain. I ran with friends. I hiked (in a thunderstorm). I played sports. I swam in Lake Michigan. I saw the Mississippi. I wore shorts for the first time in easily 14 years. I ate burgers. Friends came in from out of town. I drank beer on my balcony to a symphony of explosions. I went to three White Sox games. I was challenged and elated and very busy in a very good way.
Then it simply ended, snuffed out by September and back to school sales and no fanfare to announce another season come and gone, but a whimpering morning in which the sun didn’t rise so early and an evening in which the sun didn’t set so late, and I simply knew the day dreams of hot pink inner-tubes and carnivals and red, white, and blue would have to wait another nine months. It’s time for scarves and sweaters and pumpkin flavored everything. I’m okay with this. I like wearing tights and heels and jackets and sipping hot beverages and rain and gray skies and Halloween decorations and crunching leaves, and all the stereotypes I look forward to in the summer, just crispier.
With September brought a move of our offices, a 14 month renovation displacing us into various separated quarters. It was stressful. People got ugly and petulant and behaviors were abysmal, pathetic, whiney, and egotistical. It took a strain on me, as I became the butt of everyone’s jokes and anger, as though it was suddenly 1960 and a woman working in an office of mostly men deserved ridicule for being the “weaker” sex. I was called a skirt. Instead of offering me an apology after I was mocked all day and had deigned to confront the person I was merely asked, “What do you want? A hug? Would you actually like a damn hug?” It was the trial of a century to not box someone’s ears in.
But I got through it. The men got through it. We have unpacked and settled in, and now for the next 14 months I have an office with big, bright windows and places to put all of my affects: black cat book ends, Chester Arthur’s head (not his actual head, mind you, but a cut out), various plants, White Sox nesting dolls and stuff bears that priests have given me, and I even found jack-o-lantern lanterns to hang come October.
My office also resides in a grade school. We share a floor with preteens, each with hair more swoopy than the next. One girl likes to wear a hot pink feather boa and by the end of the day, feathers dot the hallway as if a giant neon bird is in the midst of molting. I must confess I have a girl crush on one of the teachers, a golden haired, well dressed young woman with a keen fashion sense. She teaches math and the other day had her students convert feet into meters using the illustration of a frog hopping left to right. “How many times can the frog hop in a distance of one meter?” I didn’t know the answer. This morning she smiled at me and wished me a good day. I felt stupidly privileged to have evoked a smile and hello from her. Like any girl crush, I simply wish to be this woman: smart, well dressed, pretty and natural, and able to have a rapport with kids who are at an age where they are scariest.
Another perk of my new office is that I share it with a woman who is generally pleasant and well meaning in everything she does. The other day she was able to calm me from a frenzy of self-loathing brought on by my inability to run due to an injured ankle. In addition to not running, I’d been a spiral of stress eating which then led to shame eating, and it never ended the self-loathing. I happened to be standing in her doorway and she, in the middle of dieting, asked me a question about weight. (I have a lost a decent amount and it is, seemingly, the only thing the ladies want to discuss with me.) “You don’t intend to lose anymore, do you?” She asked this with a tone of incredulousness.
I paused, honestly unaware of how to answer that question. I’ve been dealing with a myriad of body issues lately, sometimes thinking myself gangly and disgusting, other times thinking of myself as a giant blimp floating around town. “Um. I don’t know? Maybe?”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “I mean, where, first of all?”
I shrugged, aware of how it all seems to an outsider, the skinny girl crying fat. My inability to find any of it complimentary is audacious, and my frustration over the vacant stares and nodding heads I sometimes get when I confess (with the exception of a friend who is quite skilled at discussing the matter at length with me in a patient manner that suggests she truly wants to understand and knows it is a mental problem rather than a self-esteem issue) how I’m feeling. I mostly don’t say anything.
“You know,” she continued. “I used to be like you. I used to be so skinny, I’d gotten down to 108 pounds, and at the time I thought I looked so good. I see pictures now, and I really just look too skinny, too sickly and I wonder why I ever put all that pressure on myself or why I thought I looked so good. Now I wouldn’t do that even if I felt I could.”
I walked away from that feeling calmer than I have this entire week. It was someone who understood the exact problem without pushing the issue, without offering suggestions or advice or insisting rather impatiently that I’m not fat, it wasn’t stories of someone she knew who did this or that or the other, but someone who had simply been there before, who wasn’t making a big deal of it now. That’s all I needed.
On top of that, my ankle is starting to feel better and next week I can get back to my half marathon training. Only three and a half months left until the race! In preparation, Pat and Colleen suggested a weekly Disney movie night. We kicked things off last night when they came over to watch Mary Poppins. When I was a child, I thought Mary Poppins was a bitch. I also thought the movie was 18 hours long. I’m glad to see that my impressions were correct, as I still think Mary Poppins is a bitch and the movie is still 18 hours long. But all the parts I loved as a kid were still loved yesterday, like the steps that appear out of black smoke over the roof tops of London, and the excitement of living in a sidewalk painting, and the hilarity of Dick Van Dyke as a one man band, the house boat, and the absurdity of Mr. Banks, and the scary, scary bankers. We laughed so much.
Next week we’ll watch Sleeping Beauty.