now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

I have been worried, the past few months, about one of the farmers at the market. He is a kind man, humble, surrounded by the passel of his children. I know he is a man of faith- and moreover, a man of a faith profoundly different than mine- but he is one of the few here who exudes only an aura of grace, and not a whit of judgement. This summer he is thinner, grayer, the lines deeper in his face and a worried look in his eyes that hasn’t been there in summers past.

Sean always wants to eat whatever we buy from his stand immediately- a pint of berries, a peach. This week’s peaches were too hard for him to eat right away, so I asked if they had a riper one in the back buckets I could swap one of our ‘ready on Tuesday’ ones for. He pressed the fruit into Sean’s hands and waved off my attempt to swap. “Your coming every week is a blessing,” he told me.

Would there was more of that grace in the world.

Running log of the last 2 minutes:

“I’m smashing for cars! I am a police car and will bump smashed cars out of the way no you’re doing it backwards MOM my car is doing it backwards ZOOOM oh I am being quiet I won’t wake daddy mommy when daddy is awake he will be the orca and you and I will be the giant octopuses you do remember how to be a giant octopus, right?”

If you’re not in the mood for a post about body image, please to move along. I’m not wanting a cheerleader here, so please don’t feel you have to comment with some perky you can DO IT! kind of thing.

I both love and hate my gym. I love the convenience (24/7, baby! And $5 a month for childcare!), I love the sheer breadth of choices. I love that I can go in there, rip off a 40 minute set, and 7 minutes later be back in my house collapsed in a chair with my legs quivering.

I do not, however, love the banks of mirrors. I do not love the too small towels. I do not love that I am surrounded by women so incredibly waifish they cannot be above a size 2, by women who are mothers of teenagers no less, and have the buffed, smoothed, bronze finish of a co-ed. They have tiny cute outfits, and kicky heels, and itsy bitsy jeans. They have immaculate hair, and the shine of microdermabrasion and facials and lasers and botox.

I have a pair of black track pants and a white CIA t-shirt, which is the perfect thing to wear because anyone who starts to talk to me sees it, gets terrified, and backs right the fuck off. I have threads of silvery-white in my hair, and laugh lines and crow’s feet, and acne at the same time that I have wrinkles. I also have many, many excess pounds. I have fewer than I used to; even with the fallin-off-the-exercise-wagon at the beginning of summer with the wrist and all, I am still down 2 sizes in jeans, I am still wearing off the rack shirts from old navy which is a bloody noveltyto me. I am back in the gym and I can feel it having an effect.

Talking with a friend about it- also the mother of a small fry- she couldn’t find herself agreeing with everything the other women were doing, but she hypothesized, “Well we’re in here trying to lose weight. How is it different?” OK, fair point. But something struck me, as I looked at all those 40 year olds. They’re trying to look twenty. They’re dressing like they’re 20. They’re dressing like their high school aged daughters, in some cases. And it’s not that I’m horrifically old fashioned (please), but well. I earned this. In the case of the weight, it’s reaping what I sowed from yeeeeears of poor food choices and lack of physical activity, but hey, I’m making an effort to be healther- not, thank you, to be thinner per se, but to be healthier. I need to be able to run after my kid and have a hope in bloody hell of keeping up with him; continuing to be the weight I was just wasn’t cutting it.

But in the case of the rest of my body- the stretchmarks and the hips, the silver threads and the laugh lines, I earned this. Through 9 months of pregnancy, through dreary school years and frustrating work situations, through illnesses, through drunken pub nights and evenings on the balcony with G&Ts absolutely incogent with laughter, I earned this. This is the body of someone who’s lived, and embraced it. Why would I want to erase that? Why would I want to eliminate the evidence of nights of hilarity, of things survived and triumphed over? I am 34, damnit, and I am proud to have made it here.

When I started this, I wanted to be down to a size 12 because I could tell that would mean a level of weightloss which would equate to being significantly healthier. That goal- which I thought would take me at least a year to get to- is within striking distance (at least in jeans! Shirts, I may never get there. I am simply too, as Matilda puts it, blessed with Crazy Stripper Boobs and linebacker shoulders to boot), and my cardio health has improved dramatically. Come October, I may assess where I am and decide if it’s healthy and right for me to keep going the way I am, or if I need to adjust my workouts and such. But wherever I wind up- 8, 10, 12, whatever- I do know one thing.

I’ll have grey hair and wrinkles.

You know, I hate that feeling of walking outside and simultaneously bursting into flame and dousing myself with my own sweat. Everything feels heavy and hot, the air itself is like a stifling blanket. Minds move slower, tempers are much, much shorter. So my natural response is deny deny deny. I’m finding myself flipping through knitting books and dreaming of winter, and in my PMS food rage wanting not a typical summer salad thick with curls of salty stravecchio, but instead a leg of lamb and my biggest baking pan burbling over with a yukon gold potato gratin. It’s so damn hot out the 4 year old- the one who usually it requires a crowbar and some serious ‘right now or no good listening ears sticker!’ parental mojo to drag bck inside- was heard to whine this morning, “Mommy, I want to go home. I am super sweaty. I want to go home and lie on the air conditioning thingy”, by which he means the floor vents in the kitchen, which he has been known to lie down on and give a deep ‘aaaaaah’ of satisfaction so primal even Barry White would nod in admiration and give the little man a Peace Out, brother fist thump.

In the completely confusing way things work here, ’summer camp at school’ lasts one more week, and then we swing into ‘real school…at school’. He’s now a Pre-Kindergartener (please excuse me while I go have a moment) and so his school will actually be a little more like school- he’ll have his own folder and journal, and they’ll be working on sitting, and attention span, and following directions in prep for kindergarten. The Lad’s school resumes about a week after that, and he’s of course teaching this term. So it’s all Back to School! and Fall Fall Fall! and explaining to the kid that ice cream days at school are coming to an end because summer’s almost over, and as I patiently explained this to him for the 8 gerbillionth time this week he stared up at me, a half eaten peach dripping down his arm, and then told me in a tone of voice I really wasn’t expecting to hear until he was oh 13 or so- and for bonus, he reached over and wiped sweat off of me- “Mom. Summer is so not over. Summer will not be over for at least another 45.”

He has no idea how right he is.