fox

After two years away, I expect to be back in yuletide this year, so I am watching the new mods learn the modding ropes with a certain degree of interest.

( Clothes, body shape fussing, etc. )

Tonight I am going to make the cinnamon apple honey cake I've made for the past few Rosh Hashanahs, and bring it to work tomorrow. I thought about making it in muffin tins instead of cake pans, but then decided that won't work because the apple slices go in the bottom of the cake pan and then the cake gets inverted, and having apples at the bottom of your muffin cups wouldn't be the same. Putting the apples on the top of the muffins I think they'd get dried out. So regular cake pans it is.

So I wonder: ( are there programs of the Jenny-Craig-et-al sort for people who feel like they need to gain weight? )

Dear person driving behind me on 295 tonight:

Okay, tailgate me and then swing around and zoom past me if you like, but I think you should know the stretch between the Pennsylvania Avenue and Howard Road exits is a speed trap.




Today, while shopping with sanj and lightgetsin, I tried on a suit in size 8.  (Actually I tried a couple; I am speaking now not of the fabulous 3-piece "tuxedo" thing I tried in the fitting room, but the also fabulous long-coat thing whose coat I tried out in the store.)  And while the sense in which it fit was more technical than actual, it must not be denied that I did put on a size 8 suit jacket and button it in the front -- that is to say, it fit over my shoulders and around my waist -- with no contortions of any kind.

That's a single digit, y'all.  And it'll be the right size by the time I hit my birthday.  I kind of don't know how to process that fact.  Seriously.  A little bit freaking out over here.

a member of my section, on the steps on the way in to rehearsal:  Good evening.
me:  Hi.
her:  Wow -- you've lost a lot of weight!
me:  Well ... yes, I have.
her:  But you haven't been sick or anything, have you?

Several hours ago, I went down the hall into ellen_fremedon's office and sat down on the floor and curled up against her filing cabinet so I'd have something to lean my head against. A few minutes later I said maybe I should scoot over and sit in the corner, "huddled up as if someone were attacking me with a firehose" -- because when you want to feel safe you make yourself as small as possible, right -- and pretty much since then have been trying to work out what is going on in my head that I have such a need to feel safe that I'm going and cowering in other people's offices.

( Health? )

( Work? )

( Family? )

( Oxford? )

Leaving music and weight-loss, both of which I am realizing are huge self-image things for me at the moment. Viz:

I am in fact losing weight. Go me! I've lost 10% of my body weight in the past, oh, eleven or twelve weeks, and that is awesome. I really am very pleased. My clothes are variously roomy and actually too big, which is starting to pass the point of nifty and reach the point of yeah, my clothes don't actually fit; this is less pleasing, because one wants to look more pulled-together than one looks in ill-fitting clothes, and I can't afford to replace the quantity of things I'd need to replace for this not to be an issue. Still less can I afford to do this when at the rate I'm going I'd just need to do it all again in another three months.

My cheekbones are, hmm, prominent. I've always had a bit of a hollow between my cheekbone and my jaw, on each side; it's the place where the peel-off masque doesn't ever really dry, for instance. It's just there. Made it easy to do my highlight/shadow makeup in high school, because on my face the lines already existed. It never really occurred to me that other people noticed it until the time at curling when I went to join Skip R in the house and she said "Oh my god, what happened?" and I said "Um, what?" and she said "You have a bruise on your face! -- oh, wait, no, hang on -- wow, it's just a shadow. Okay." And I've been noticing lately, as I lose weight, that the round bits of my face, which is the jowls, really, have been sort of falling away. The hollow there is becoming more visible, and the cheekbones are standing out further. Not a lot, I expect, but enough that I can see it, and dudes, last night I looked in the mirror and for a second I didn't know myself. It was kind of startling. Have I reached a point, this early in the process, where I've lost enough weight that my face is no longer my face?

Meanwhile, the Agnus Dei (a vocal setting of Barber's Adagio for Strings, set by Barber himself, so it's okay) begins with the sopranos on the B-flat in the treble clef two beats ahead of everyone else coming in on the chord. The dynamic is no louder than mp, I think, and of course the music is for strings, so it's very interlocky and it's important to keep the lines smooth. That B-flat is a difficult note for a lot of us, because it's right in the break between the lower and higher register. So we're being careful not to start off too loudly, too roughly, too warbly, etc., and also to be bang on the pitch, and we opened our mouths and started to sing and S the Associate Director stopped us immediately and said "Okay, but if it sounds like high school choir at this point, the whole thing is done." And he demonstrated with a timid sort of 'ah'.

Okay, so I've mentioned before how I am a soprano who sounds like a treble. I can control it, of course -- I can sound more like a grown woman or more like a youth pretty much at will, and I can even fake it either way and sound actually like a warbly soprano or actually like an actual child, though neither of these is precisely a good idea -- but in its natural state, my voice has the sort of tone usually described as "bright" or "clear", which is characteristic of younger voices. I've never been especially touchy about that, because I've always found it easier to warm up that tone than it seems to be for other people to straighten out their "colorful" voices -- but it turns out that "high school choir" crack really stung. He wasn't speaking directly to me, of course, but I know this about my voice, and the more I thought about it today, the more it bugged me.

So that's two things. On the second point, I sent the following ( e-mail to T the Chorus Master: )

And he responded fairly promptly with No problem, here's a list, I recommend this person, we can talk more at rehearsals -- very pleasant, if plagued by comma splices. :-) So I was glad I'd identified what was bugging me and taken a proactive step toward fixing it. Go me. [pats self carefully on shoulder]

The not-knowing-my-own-face thing, though, I don't know what to do about.

A post about boobies!

( So two years ago ... )

( So I went to ... )

( So I sent a 'help, help!' e-mail... )

Ultimately, though, this means that in two or three years I've gone from 38D (which did, once, fit properly) to 34DDDDD.  I do think this is because Fantasie is on some sort of crack, because like I said, 34 what?  But still.  5D?  [looks at them]  Guess so.  Who knew.

Sometimes I make an effort to look around and see if I can see people approximately my size, so I can see how they dress.  This is not for scoffing-at-them purposes, although that's sometimes what happens; it's for getting-ideas purposes, because I can't see a window display and have the first idea whether the outfit advertised would suit me or not.  (Okay, I can have the first idea, which is probably not.  But I can't get accurate specific reads from mannequins, is what I'm saying.)  Do people do that?  And then the trouble with this practice is, one, it's very difficult for me to tell if another woman is approximately my size or not.  I can easily identify people who are very large or very small or even sort of normal medium-sized, but among the people who are on the small side of large, or on the large side of regular, I have a really hard time.

We're supposed to be everywhere -- we keep reading that the average American woman [granted, I'm not in the USA now, but I have the same trouble when I am] is a size 14; I'd be a size 15, if such a thing existed, I'm 16-with-a-belt, and I can't see my fellow sufferers anywhere.  It must be that when they say "the average American woman is a size 14" they mean "the average size worn by American women is 14", which is quite a different thing.  A sample group in which half the women were size 8 or below and the other half were size 20 or above would yield an average around 14, without a single actual size 14 in it.

Anyway, it's hard for me to identify people my size on sight.  Sometimes I think of myself as smaller than I turn out to be -- notably, when I see pictures of myself and think, My god, I don't remember being that size on that day (because the other people in the pictures look the size I remember them looking, so one is forced to conclude that the picture is accurate).  But other times, I've been aware that I think of myself as bigger than I turn out to be.  Anecdote:  one time The Boy Who and I were walking someplace, and I had to ask him to slow down because I was having a hard time keeping up with him, especially in my three-inch heels.  He apologized and tried to walk slower, and I said something about how it's not quite fair that heels make a person taller but don't lengthen her stride.  (In fact of course they shorten the stride a bit.)  Not, though, I said, that even if the extra three inches were in my leg rather than strapped to my foot, they'd have made much of a difference in the area of keeping up, because he'd still have been nine inches taller than me. -- But before I could get to "you'd still be nine inches taller", he'd said "Well, right, because I'm just bigger than you."  [/anecdote]  I remember being surprised to hear that -- because it's true that he's a foot taller than me, but he's fairly athletic and lean.  I suppose I had tended to think of myself as being a woman of, say, 5'10", but only having 5'4" of vertical space to work with.*  So the horizontal dimensions had to, you know, compensate.  But thinking about it, you know, I guess I know that (for example) my brother is bigger than me, because I know when I buy men's shirts and sweaters I buy them at least a size smaller than he does.  (And I've got this chest!  -- Things fit me differently in the chest than they fit him, obviously, but even taking that into account, the things are a size smaller.)  And I know The Boy Who is about my brother's size, maybe a little bigger.  So, transitively, he must be bigger than me.  How strange, for a person who is accustomed to thinking of herself as Bigger Than Other People, to say nothing of seeing those pictures mentioned above, to have that sort of realization.



*This is another thing.  If I do see people who I feel like might be about my size, they're invariably at least four inches taller than I am, so I can't take style cues from them anyhow.

last spring i created a filter where i'd be talking about "weight, size, exercise, that sort of thing" without bugging people who don't give a damn.  there've been some new people on board since then, so here's another invite.

thought #1:  hey!  i seem to have lost weight since i bought this dress.  rock on.

thought #2:  hang on.  does it NOT FIT, now?

(it does fit, and probably better than it did before, but in a way i'm not at all used to.  oy.)

went to the gym today!  half an hour on the eliptical, and hung out at about 126 strides per minute the whole time.  w00t, but why can't i ever keep moving like that when i have someplace to be?

also got some work done!

also, in a completely fortuitous move, sold a book i've never even opened to a new student in my department!  bought "a history of old english" last january and almost immediately changed my thesis topic, but not so immediately that i could still return the book.  had just noticed it on the shelf the other day, and regretted the £20 i'd spent on it, because while books (and books about old english) are good, books i may eventually consult but only out of curiosity are evidence of money that could have been better spent elsewhere.  but then my department "daughter" mentioned that she was off to blackwell's before it closed to get this book on old english, and i said Oh, i have a book on old english i'd be happy to sell you if you want it, and didn't it turn out to be exactly the book she needed!  and i mean it was in mint condition, so she gave me the cover price for it!  go me!

did in fact send a letter to the washington post:

A couple of things concerned me in Maria Glod's article "A Hop, Sprint and Jump Beyond PE" (October 17).  The article describes Cindy Lins, a PE teacher at Spark Matsnaga Elementary School, as "[cheering] every student who rounded the edge of the schoolyard to complete a lap" in preparation for the Darcars Young Run -- but then goes on to describe her encouragement of one student:  "'How in the world can you be pooped? I don't understand that,' she teased when another girl jogged by slowly."  In my experience, elementary school kids do not find it encouraging to be "cheered on" by teachers who mock them.  "I don't understand how _____ can be difficult for you" tends to come across as "There must be something wrong with you, because _____ is easy."  It's bad enough to hear that from a classmate; they shouldn't have to hear that from their teachers.

A few paragraphs later, another teacher, Anne Collins (and is there any connection to http://www.annecollins.com?) is noted as  going from a size 18 to a size 4 in one year.  Granted, the article doesn't talk about the specific weight loss involved; that nevertheless seems like a really startling change in a frankly very short time.  Assuming the sizes given are correct, and there are no typos, one hopes the teacher concerned is going about her "wellness program" under some kind of professional supervision, and not holding up this dramatic weight loss as necessary or even always desirable.  In a position to influence eight- and nine-year-olds (a group particularly vulnerable to eating disorders), a teacher should emphasize the importance of being healthy rather than necessarily being thin.  Children are never too young to learn that their results may vary.

and, finally, today's bpal, which is hellcat:

A soft, sensual, luxuriant blend with a wicked bite:  hazelnut, buttercream, honey mead, rum and sweet almond.

it shouldn't surprise any of you by now to hear that i can smell the almond a lot more when the stuff is wet than when it dries.  as it warms up and the almond fades, i can smell the buttercream quite a lot, and what must be the honey mead and the rum -- and then when i move my wrist away from my nose (to type, for example), the hazelnut comes out quite nicely.  as if the hazelnut has a longer wavelength, or something.

don't know if i'd order this again -- i wouldn't refuse to (see 'wrath'), and it does get a serious push from the name :-), but it's just pleasant; it doesn't really sing to me.

so following sebastienne's recommendation, i went and got myself fitted at bravissimo, and sure enough!, it appears i've been wearing the wrong bra size all this time.

changing clothing sizes never seems like a big deal, but this is a weird adjustment to make.  it's like being told that i should buy jeans in a smaller size and with longer legs.

looked at the clock about ten to nine and realized i could still go the gym if i hurried.  (okay, didn't have to hurry, but the last entry is at 10pm.)  freezing out, and i didn't want to, but i went.

tweaked the controlly things on the bike so it was better.  will have to tweak some more next time, though.  also lifted some things and was generally Virtuous, and today's 1K time on the erg:  4:40.

anyone who can make up sixteen seconds in a day was doing something wrong (read: lazy-ass) on the first day.  and the thing is i wasn't even pushing -- er, pulling -- that hard today.

le sigh.  who would ever have thought i'd be annoyed to be in better shape than i thought?