Dieting Again... Le Sigh

Dieting makes me feel terrible. I know it shouldn't, probably, but the way I do it does.

It's healthy to lose weight gradually, but I'm impatient. I set an unrealistic goal, then panic when it doesn't look like I'm going to make it, then bend over backwards to do whatever I can to make it. That's what happened last year. Middle of January I decided, "I want to lose 72 pounds by the time LeakyCon rolls around in July." That's crazy talk. That's would mean losing about 3 pounds a week! And in the midst of those six months I'd travel places with my friends and have events like birthdays or meals at restaurants where I couldn't get away with my 800-calorie-a-day thing.

Still, I managed it. When I went to LeakyCon I was actually something like 168, which meant I lost 74 pounds. Crazy, and kind of awesome.

I took a break. I eventually gained a few pounds back (maybe 3 or 4), but stayed in my 170 range the rest of the summer and into early fall. In October I gained 3 or 4 more. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas combined brought me up another 4 or 5. So all of the sudden I'm 15 up from the top of healthy weight range for my height and age (150-170).

So the thought is... I'm obviously going to fluctuate no matter what I do. But while I've got the drive to do this thing (and while it's in these doldrums months of January and February when there aren't a lot of events that involved eating), I want to get down to the bottom of that range. That way, when I gain back the weight I know I will I'll end up somewhere in the middle. And if I manage to make it all the way back up to 170, I can just work at losing 10 pounds or so, not 20 or 30.

So my new goal is to get down to 150 by the time the Hunger Games movie comes out on March 23rd. It's terrible, I know. Dieting. Hunger Games. But I needed a specific date, and that seemed like a good one. I can celebrate by having butter popcorn and a pack of Twizzlers or something.

Anyway, right now I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. I've got 70 days to lose about 31 pounds. But I'm trying.

But back to the first sentence. So far, I've been successful. I was 184 at the beginning of this week and now I'm 181, and that's even with Melissa's birthday on Saturday where we all had pizza and dessert at Amelie's. But what happens with this thing is I take in less calories than my body needs for fuel, and I burn more energy than my body's used to burning. So that's why it's eating up my stored fat faster, but it also means that I am tired. All. The. Time.

All I want to do is sleep. And maybe I should. But it makes for a rather boring life if all I do is sleep, work, walk, and be very careful about the things I eat.

I'm going to go read now. Maybe that will make me feel better.

Ginger-Who?

One thing I love about being a teen librarian is other teen librarians. They have so many awesome ideas, and are more than happy to share. One such way we do this is through an email listserv set up through the ALA where people post ideas or questions and others respond.

A couple weeks back, one librarian named Meredith posted about an event she's doing where they've decided to make gingerbread men and decorate them like characters from popular teen books. Another librarian named Joella adapted it into a display. I liked both ideas so much that I copied Joella, adding and changing some characters.

The idea is this: look at the display and try to guess which gingerbread person matches which character. Fill out a form with your guesses, and the winner gets a free gingerbread house kit.

Here's the display...



Can you guess them? Here are some close-ups...



(Katniss - The Hunger Games, Bilbo - The Hobbit, Cassia - Matched, Taylor - Beauty Queens)



(Top row: Cammie - Gallagher Girls, Harry Potter - duh, Stanley - Holes, Katsa - Graceling. 2nd row: Arnold - Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Karou - Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Brian - Hatchet, Jem - Clockwork Angel)




(Top row: Edward - Twilight, Jane - Shark Girl, Cassel - White Cat, Percy - Lightning Thief. 2nd row: Jace - Mortal Instruments, Mia - Princess Diaries, Will - Ranger's Apprentice, Lola - Lola and the Boy Next Door)

So far it's been really fun hearing people discuss while they fill out their sheets. Some favorite comments...

"They totally drew Jace's iratze wrong."

"Why doesn't that girl with the surfboard have an arm?" *peers down at list of titles* "Oh."

Girl: OMG! That's totally Cassel from "White Cat"! See? He's wearing gloves!!!! *scurries to fill out sheet*
Friend: Um, yeah. You know how I knew? The white cat...

"So if only some of them are wearing clothes, does that mean the rest of them are naked?"

I love teenagers. :)

Manifesto

If the path leading down through the woods in your backyard ever takes you somewhere unexpected, promise me you'll follow it.

The same with the doors opening into your house, or a closet, or an elevator. If they lead you somewhere that they didn't before, don't question it: just go.

If the highway numbers mysteriously disappear, or the signs switch to a language your online translator won't recognize, don't panic and don't put on the brakes. Go along for the ride.

It's the roads we take and the doors we open and the discoveries we make that should define our lives. Don't wear your world thin treading repeatedly down the same carefully-hedged-in pathways.

I'd rather regret having lived too large (a ridiculous regret, I assure you) than to be haunted by the dull pang of having lived too small, that swirling shroud of the ghosts of a million what-ifs.

Chance, opportunity, and eyes willing to look beyond the "merely probable," the "certainly possible" and into something more. These are the things you should grasp at and aspire to. Let your heart and your hopes grow as wide as the horizon.

I would like to truly see this world in what little time I'm in it.

Which means I will be watching for that odd turn in the path, for that strange light coming through the cracks in the doors, for the unsettling and unfamiliar to arrive at my doorstep.

And if - no, when - it comes, I will be ready.

I am ready. Are you?

The Man In The Moon

There's a man in the moon and he can't get out,
no matter how much he kicks and shouts.
But he dreams of a day when he'll roam free
and live his own life like you and me.

How long's he been there? Ages by now.
How did he get there? Magic somehow.
Can't he escape when the moon goes black?
He tries, but the night always grabs him back.

So if you feel trapped, like your world is small,
consider: at least you're not stuck in a ball.
Go out and live as only YOU can.
Think of the moon and remember the man.

How I Feel Right Now

I want to scream for as loud and long as I can. A wordless scream, the kind that rips you in half. I want the whole night to collapse with the force of it.

The Living, the Dead, the Undead

I found something I wrote about a year ago, shortly after the death of Esther Earl. I can't really explain why, but her death really hit me hard. In those weeks afterward, I was thinking about a lot of deep, heavy stuff: time, death, wisdom, despair... Anyway, this post is a bit emo (like most of this blog), but it ends on a decent note.

In my computer, the file was simply called "Esther."

--

I think the reason vampires aren’t scary to me is because despite all this nonsense about them being “undead,” they’re alive.

I don’t measure life by a pulse. I measure life in terms of… what, exactly? It’s hard to word it right. “Consciousness” was what I was going to say, but that’s not right. Life is being aware, awake. Having an identity. If our bodies are computers, being alive isn’t a matter of the power feed keeping the computer’s shell running. It’s the inner actions of the computer, the memory and data connections that keep the information processing. It’s the stuff on the hard drive. Even if the computer’s turned off, that stuff is still there, still inherently its own. It has an identity, a purpose, a unique quality of being itself.

That’s why, to me, zombies are scary. Not because they’re going to kill us all and rip off our flesh, etc. etc. But because they’re alive physically (or “undead” if you want to quibble), but they’re gone. Wiped clean. Whatever made them unique and special and inherently themselves is no longer there. They’re dead. They walk around like the living, but they’re gone.

That’s what I’m afraid of. That’s my biggest fear. Being gone. Not just me, though. That everyone I love and everything I’ve held dear, that everything from the smallest moments to the hugest lump sum of all our human experiences, won’t live on. That it’ll be lost. Time is the hugest enemy in this regard, because it erodes and erases and after a while it’s as if things that were once monumental and vast in their significance are mere grains of sand. Ozymandius, yeah, yeah, but more than that…

Death is a villain too. Death and Time, co-conspirators. One takes us away and the other slowly wipes our whole existence off the planet.

How, then, can there be any meaning? Why is anything that happens to me worth anything? Why do people matter so much to me, even people I’ve barely met? Why is the death of a girl from Quincy, Massachusetts who I’ve spoken to only a few times so hard to bear? Why is the loss so great?

Why do people tell stories? Those don’t matter either. As I wrote once in a poem about music, “I think we play to stave off the silence in our souls.” If, as Solomon so famously declared, “everything is vanity,” meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless, without purpose, without hope or value, then what else are we to do but distract and delude ourselves until Death and Time come and steal us away and render everything we once had or did or stood for as nothing but blank, empty, unimportant, void?

We’re very stupid animals, though, human beings. They tell us we can’t. The very Universe has set itself and its laws up so that there is ultimately and without doubt no chance whatsoever.

But we try anyway.

To hope.
To remember.
To stand for something.

To be truly wise is to live in a state of perpetual despair, because true wisdom is forced to acknowledge that everything is temporary and all things fail.

I’m going to be a fool. I’m going to walk into a hurricane with nothing but an umbrella and the sincere belief that I will make it to the other side.

To The Boy On The Ugly Brown Chair

I want you to kiss me.

I want you to kiss me, but you’re just sitting there in that stupid brown chair, the ugly one with the orange cushion that’s supposed to hide the stains but only makes them more noticeable. You’re sitting there on the chair, and I’m here on the couch, and there’s really only the space of a few feet between us, and it doesn’t have to be that way. In seconds there could be no space between us at all, and your face could be right next to mine, and you could kiss me.

But we sit.

Goddamn it all, we sit.

I didn’t understand until just now how you can be hungry with something other than your stomach. That it’s not just your mouth that has the cravings, or your throat that feels the thirst. This is in my bones, and in my organs, in my skin - every layer, every part. I didn’t know you could feel hunger with your body like this, and my mind is nearly numb with the fight for self control.

Your hair is doing this thing where it’s somehow springier than usual, like it has a life of its own. It’s begging for someone to comb their fingers through it. My fingers, my hungry hands! It looks so soft and dark. Your eyes are doing this thing where they crinkle at the corners, and you’re smiling this mischievous smile, and my eyes, my thirsty eyes, drink you in, and I can’t help it. I lean forward just a little, shrink the space between us by a fraction.

You say something wonderful, and I laugh.

Kiss me, you idiot. I don’t say it out loud, but it’s there, in the way I’m sitting, in the way I’m looking at you, in the way I’m nodding and smiling. Kiss me, you fool.

But that stupid brown chair. That awful cushion. This wretched air. There’s too much between us, and you’re standing like you’re going to say goodnight, and I hate the night, and I hate most of all the leaving. I want to punch something, but instead I pinch my thigh hard enough to leave a bruise. I want to scream, but I settle for a sarcastic comment as I lean in for a goodbye hug.

This is a good thing, at least. The hug. The space between us closes, your arms lace around me, hands resting lightly, briefly on my back. It feels good. Could I freeze this moment indefinitely? Your hands, that slight touch - the wobbly, tingly, unsettlingly-wonderful glow I feel all seems to stem from there. Or maybe it’s your chin on my shoulder, the way your rumpled shirt smells so much like you. Hungry. Aren’t you hungry the same way I am?

But we part, and you leave. The door shuts. I curse aloud.

I’m going to kick that ugly chair until it’s splinters and stuffing. I’m going to bite these unkissed lips until they bleed.