August 16, 2010

 

Alas, I have decided to come out of hiding.  Rather than bore you with the mundane details of the past year and/or so, I'll give you a quick overview.  I currently live with my boyfriend, Matthew, who moved here from Maine to be with me and attend graduate school for historical preservation.  There were some rocky points, ups and downs that go with any relationship, and we are working through those things now.  I feel as though we've recently come to a more mature point, where the other's feelings are what's most important, as it should be in a healthy relationship.  Matthew and I went to Reykjavik, Iceland for four amazing days.  The sun never goes down, really this time of year.  For three hours a day, it drops just under the horizon, so it was daylight all the time.  And I can't sleep when there's any light in the room.  Add to that, my cell phone didn't work there, not even for clock purposes, so I ended up harassing the reception desk non-stop for the first couple of days, asking what time it was.  "It's 3:25AM, Sir."  "It's 4:37 AM, Sir."  Finally I went to a souvenir shop and bought a cheap-o tacky watch so we could know.  But still my internal clock was so messed up.  We would be walking down the street in what seemed to be the middle of the day, and I was disappointed that none of the stores were open.  I couldn't understand it.  Then Matthew pointed out that it was almost 2:30 in the morning.  I guess they probably don't sell a lot of thimbles at that hour.  So we came back to the states with our pictures and piles of souvenirs and enough debt that it would take me two months to break even.  I recently started working at the same job Matthew has, doing work for a bank.  It's a very easy job, and the people are nice, for the most part.  There is a lot of overtime available, and I've been trying to work as much as I can.  But then UVM called me up and asked if I could cover a couple of classes, also, which added about thirty more hours onto my week.  Luckily I'm not one to burn out too quickly, but there have certainly been times when I was nodding off at one job or another, and all of my friends sitting around me keep hissing at me to wake me up so the bosses don't catch me.  But that was just the first week or so, and I honestly think it had to do with the medicine I've been on for my back pain.  By the way, that's been a pretty major event in my life.  I've seen four different specialists, all of whom have told me that there's nothing they can do to help me.  Because of my disability, crawling on my hands and knees as a child, and with all of my previous weight, and even with what I'm still carrying, the cartilage has worn down on one of my lower vertebrae, and the column has shifted and is pinching the nerve down my left leg, and sometimes my right.  Once in a while I won't realize I'm sitting in a bad position, and the entire leg will go numb.  The specialists I've seen have all agreed that surgery is technically an option, but none of them believe it would help, and there's a huge possibility that it could make it worse.  So they put me on a regimen of pills consisting of Ibuprofen, Gabapentin, and strong doses of Vicodin.  On top of that, they said that going to the gym and getting into as good of shape as possible is about the only thing I could do to make it stop hurting.  And I think they're right.  A couple summers ago, when I was working out all the time (about five hours a day), and I got down to 183 pounds, my back stop hurting completely.  But I was pushing myself to the limit every single day.  Now I've backtracked a lot, gotten out of shape.  I just started a new program yesterday.  It's kind of weird, because it's so hard starting when you've been out of the loop of fitness and nutrition for about eight months.  This is the unhealthiest I've been since I had gastric bypass.  I'm on all these different drugs, and I've been having hypoglycemia attacks all the time because I eat junk.  When I'm not taking drugs, I drink too much, quite often.  I can't seem to get my weight back under 200 pounds no matter what I do.  So I came up with a plan.  It's the Emaciated Douchebag plan!  It's modeled after Christian Bale's diet for when he practically starved himself thin.  I'm modifying it to be healthy and to maintain muscle, but essentially it's the same thing.  He had an extremely restricted diet of tuna fish and apples, and did several hours of cardio every day.  Now I plan to eat lean proteins, and clearly more than one meal a day.  I'm also working in vegetables.  But I'm determined to do this.  Even if the skin is all flabby on my torso around them, I want abs.  I want them so fucking bad!!!  I don't need to have them forever, but at least once in my life, after all of this suffering and hard work to come this far, I want some friggin' abs.  I don't think that's so much to ask.  I really just need some fortitude and the right attitude.  I am cutting out all junk food.  That includes cheese, alcohol, candy, and anything else with tons of calories I don't need.  I pushed fourteen miles in my wheelchair yesterday, and I'm about to go do the same thing again as soon as I'm done writing this.  I also need to start finding healthier ways to sleep, because as of this moment I've only slept an hour and a half in the last two and a half days.  Ok, enough talking about it!  Time to get my fat ass on the pavement!