Take a good look at the woman in this picture. And take a look at the size of the meal she's about to eat.
This is typical fare for when I visit my family, either here in the Bay Area or in San Diego.
Take a look again at the woman. She's fat. Can't imagine why. Jeebus.
This is first time I've ever been fat and unemployed. When I first arrived in California I was woefully out of shape and my brother took me to Chinatown my second day here, and nearly gave me a heart attack on the uphill streets. I lived in Sunnyvale but traveled to San Francisco as much as I could and climbed all kinds of whacked-out streets--California, Telegraph, walking from Caltrain station to Golden Gate Bridge's cafe called the Warming Hut. I gave myself blisters on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Then, after I lost my first job to downsizing, I found myself also with a broken heart at that time, and swam one to two times a day in Sunnyvale and took up running to avoid thinking about the asshole that walked away. I was in the best shape of my life. And the second time I was downsized I was already thin, so I just continued the quest--and the torch burning for the heartbreak.
When I started working at Grainger I spent those four years forgetting about the asshole and moved on to other assholes (all of which are happily out of my life at the moment), but I abused the crap out of my body due to lifting things without having help available. That didn't change until my last year there--where I was relieved of my physical tasks most readily under the leadership of the Airman--and, without a broken heart, with the physical break from breaking myself in half, I gained weight hand over fist.
Shortly after I quit I tried walks and runs to the ocean, frustrated by the fact that it took me the entire morning to work out. So then I started the hill next to my apartment, finding that I had to shower twice a day with that goal--seeming a waste of water. There are a million reasons not to climb that hill or go outdoors for a walk or climb a hill and then there's the pressing need to write at all times. So I'm a fat and somewhat happy writer, or I spend the whole damn day climbing hills. The other times that I've been unemployed I was not in the mindset to write, but now I'm not in the mindset to work out.
The thing is, though, it's now difficult to climb the hills I love. When I look at that picture, I don't see an ugly woman, by any means. My brother and I have this overwhelming programming that if you drop a severe amount of weight you must be sick--which is why when he came home to see my dropping of so much weight during that first heartbreak he took me to Thanksgiving in Yosemite and fed me Dramamine to give me an appetite. It worked. Now I eat anything and resent it, like Liz Gilbert's sidekick in Naples in "Eat Pray Love," and I don't want to have that relationship with food. When I look at that picture, I'm not blown away by the size of the meal in front of me--which I suppose is abnormal--but I look at the woman and say, "Well, no WONDER she's tired all of the time. No wonder she can't climb hills."
No, I'm not going on a diet. I know a lot of people would love that. I instead see that fat suit as possibility--I'm drawn back to the hills. So let's go back to climbing. My quest is to do as much climbing as I can. I'm taking it easy at first (after all, I have a summer cold today that makes everything seem more difficult), but my goal is to climb Telegraph more than once a week without gasping.
That's the next quest. Now that I've found my other mountain climber (Abbey). :)
Onward, dear reader.
*Photo courtesy of my sis-in-love's friend Nid, who joined us for breakfast. My dish that you see there is fried mush, or, if you're from anywhere other than the Midwest, fried polenta loaf. It was delicious. The restaurant is Hash House A Go Go in San Diego, and they also have a location in Las Vegas, which is where I first tasted fried chicken and waffles.
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