silverai

Wedding rings and weight changes

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:00:14 GMT

I wrote this thing as a daylog write-up for another site, so it's less blog-like and more article-like, plus in the interests of narrative I played up some elements, omitted others to flavour the truth, and stayed gender neutral. It's all true though. Read on below for the thing.

A few days ago, I couldn't get my wedding ring off.

I take my ring off quite often; before showers, before massages, before particular kinds of exercise. This time was before a shower, so after a few attempts and methods, I gave up and showered with it on. I've had it off several times since then, but it was certainly a warning for the future, and so now I must make a decision.

I got married 6 years ago. At the time when I received the ring, I was 5 kgs* less than I am now. At one point, I successfully made an effort to lose weight by reducing carbs and dairy, going down to 22 kgs under where I am now. The ring was loose then, but still fit fine. I like pasta and cheese though, and decided I preferred the delicious food more than I enjoyed being slim. Now after a number of years of slowly gaining weight, I have regained what I dropped plus more, and I am the heaviest weight I've ever been.

Over the last six months, the ring has more and more often given me a little trouble to get off occasionally. Slowly I've watched the last couple of kgs adding on these last few months, knowing it was going to get to a point when my finger was too big for my ring, knowing I was going to have to decide to lose weight again or get my ring resized. For many, this would not be a tough decision. Socially, losing weight is the only answer.

I gained weight again because I consciously chose food. It was a decision I weighed up (pun intended) the pros and cons on before deciding about. It was not born of being lazy, of not being able to lose weight. It was literally because my happiness at eating a wide variety of tasty and delicious things was important to me, to be able to enjoy any food at any time in any amount without having to refuse things due to a diet. To be able to slowly eat another helping because the taste was amazing, even though I was already physically sated. These things are important to me, even though it is socially taboo to think that way.

I had just woken up, and due to time constraints I needed a shower straight away. My body was hot from sleep still, so my finger was swollen from the hot blood. Ordinarily, I get up and potter around with no purpose for a while, allowing myself to slowly wake up properly. My blood has usually cooled by the time I have a shower and I can easily take my ring off. Not that morning. I tried to ease it off, using tricky motions that can sometimes work. Sometimes it sticks a bit but then comes off still. Not this time, it stuck and stuck quite solidly. I pushed the ring back on my finger quickly before the blocked blood could swell my finger more and make it impossible to remove my ring without medical intervention. Next I tried running it under cold water. The water wasn't cold enough, and my finger was still extra swollen from having had the ring stuck solidly once already. I did not have time to wait for my blood to cool or to go try ice. I showered with it on instead.

I am loathe to resize my ring. As much as I have consciously chosen food over weight, I still did enjoy being slim. Liking one thing (food) does not preclude liking another opposed thing (slim). Now that the possibility of resizing my ring is staring me in the face and demanding to be seen, it makes me realise that despite my decision for food and lack of action for diet, there is still part of me hoping to get slimmer again, or at least drop 5kgs. That part doesn't want me to resize my ring. That part of me wants to do the socially acceptable answer.

It is one or the other, and a decision must be made.

*5kg is roughly 11 pounds.

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Musings on original songs with lyrics

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 14:09:58 GMT

Facebook not behaving, and anyway I don't feel like more computer tonight. Kinda feel like reading but it's late enough that reading would be a bad idea because I don't trust myself to put the book down after a short while and go to sleep, and since I'm on the mending side of being sick I want to make sure I don't stay up hours past when I should like usual. So! Seems like a good time to make a dreamwidth post.

Although, I'm doing it on my phone, and the formatting is such that the text continues past the typing box and all the extra info boxes then obscure what I'm typing, like this entire paragraph to this point. Cleared that area now though.

I made some progress on original songs recently. Normally, I sit down at the piano and just make shit up, and in the last few years I expanded that so that if I get together a nice little cohesive piece I will record it on my phone. That's as far as that goes. I have grand ideals that one day I'll do something with them, but after this amount of time I don't have much hope joined to those grand ideals. However! I had one piece with words arrive once, and I could imagine Jon English singing it, and I became enamoured of it and found myself singing it in the car trying to find stable lyrics. It was a while ago, I didn't record the first sessions, but I have a version 2 recorded on my phone dated October 2015. Revisited it every so often. Sometime in the last few months it finally came together with full lyrics, over the space of about a week. The theme of the lyrics is similar but not the same as my original intention, and I consider it a stronger song now. Still haven't worked out the accompaniment properly, it's got chords but I don't think the piano is the right instrument and I don't play guitar very well plus my guitar bag has spider web infestations stopping my access. My brain still has Jon English and his rock band perform it though.

I am proud of the song so far and have even sung it once in front of a small campfire crowd who didn't know it was mine and who thought it was good, and once to a friend without saying it was mine first and he also thought it was good, so yay! That one has had its title since its inception, and is called Shelter from the Storm.

A few weeks ago, while I was walking, I passed time by singing random stuff. I should do that more often, but it hasn't been my way for a while. Anyway, I was doing the random singing this time, and the majority of the song was done in the space of 10 minutes. Another few days and the two verses were added. I've been singing that one a lot too, I like it. It seems solid, but I didn't sing it for half a week and it morphed a little so maybe it's still in progress. I haven't sat down at the piano with that one yet either. It has a working title only, Spark.

I think finding something I like and then working on it enough so that it's cohesive and I'll remember it correctly long enough to record it without stuff ups definitely helps, as does the recording. Even if I never do anything with the pieces, it's comforting that there's a kept history of them instead of the pieces disappearing into the nether again from whence they came.

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Blast from the past

Tue, 16 May 2017 08:45:31 GMT

Just signed in for the first time in years, as a friend of mine has commenced a 100 day challenge and is using dreamwidth to track it, and I wanted to comment on a couple of posts. Then I trundled down memory lane on my own posts for a while, which was interesting. Looks like I need to update my journal style though, as either changes to dreamwidth have made it interact badly with mobile viewing, or it was always bad for mobile viewing and I never noticed before due to previously always being on my PC. Current style has a single word per line, which is painful.

Next I hit up my reading page, wondering if any of my friends still posted. Apparently they do, about things I am interested in, and I should totally attempt to remember to check back every week or so to keep caught up.

Edit: Found the thing making my journal style terrible, it was as simple as drastically reducing the value for "Size of left and right margins". Yay! I like the green and the left sidebar, so I'm glad I get to keep them.

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Just keep swimming

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 02:00:21 GMT

Hi Dreamwidth/Livejournal,

It's been over two years since I've posted, and I've not bothered to read my friends list much in that time either. I've been hanging out with the cool kid, Facebook. Except I now have too many friends there, diverse enough friends on Facebook that I feel trapped there, that I can't post a great majority of what I think, feel, have opinions on, and so forth for fear that a friend will know it's about them, or a friend will think it's about them even if it's not, that a friend will self-identify with something and then our friendship will be hurt, or even that different segments of friends will get the wrong idea about me which will negatively impact my ability to act and contribute within real life groups.

In desperation, I have come back here, just so I have a place to vent. All my friends here have probably also moved on too, I dunno. It's still kinda public though, while being hidden away from the main part of my public life and the only people I've friended here and therefore hopefully the only people who know about this journal, I'm happy to have know this stuff, so this journal will do.

I have too much on my plate. So many different things on there. Things that once gave me joy and are now just additional heavy weights of responsibility and obligation, full of joylessness. I am also failing at fulfilling many of those responsibilities and obligations, which in itself is another heavy weight. Furthermore, I cannot see anything that I am willing to take off the plate right now, it is all things that I feel must stay on there.

I am currently surviving with the mantra "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" because logically it's the only thing to do; keep swimming forward and doing what I can, because not doing anything won't help the problem. I feel like it's hopeless though, that there's no winning, that failure in multiple avenues is inevitable. I am working to clear things off the plate - in another week one thing will be clear, and another month a second thing will be clear. Regardless, I feel like no matter what I clear off my plate, I will simply discover other things underneath to take its place. There is too much. I have other things that I should be adding to my plate in order to get ahead in life, and I find myself reluctant to add those things. Even though I will long-term benefit from them, because short-term (one year, heck even six months) it's all too much. The plate is creaking and I stopped being hungry a long time ago.

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. But don't bother thinking it will all work out in the end, I'm tired of thinking that it will get easier or lighter. It's all a burden, and it sucks, and I'm tired of bearing the extra weight of making myself think it will be fine. It's not fine. It's hopeless. But I'm swimming anyway.

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Home Alone

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:08:08 GMT

About a month or so ago, Zig announced he was planning to go bushwalking for two or three days. So this week he took Thursday and Friday off work, and started out on the Bibbulman track from Mundaring Weir yesterday morning, planning to be picked up from Brookton Highway on Saturday evening. I wasn't too worried about him going alone because 1) he had a phone with good reception and GPS, and 2) Zig is resourceful. I was going to miss him, but I was also looking forward to some time at home alone. Last night, he called to say he was going to cut it short (the track had more 'hills for no reason' than he thought it would) and would get picked up this evening instead.

I found myself unsettled. I found myself less able to enjoy the time alone I still had left, instead dwelling on the time to come I would miss out on. I'm finding myself resentful. It's annoying to feel this way, but I feel this way anyway. Time alone occasionally can be rejuvenating, and I had settled into expecting it for two nights, only to have it, as it were, snatched away from me. I hadn't quite realised how important time at home alone was - before he left I was more missing him in advance, although there was still looking forward to time alone a bit.

Zig doesn't go out that much, and I'm often with him when he does, or out somewhere else myself instead. Time alone at home doesn't happen that often for me. I think I'm going to encourage him to be absent from the house for a couple of hours at night sometimes, visit his friends or family or something. Because clearly, if him coming home early has affected me in this way, it's something that matters more than I thought.

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Halloween 2011: Capes

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:12:39 GMT

Details for my Halloween party this year:

- When & Where. Saturday 29th October, 6pm on, at my house as per usual (Bassendean).
- Theme. 2011 is "Capes". Wear a cape and be fancy or plain with the rest.
- Dinner and beer provided (dinner aimed to be served at about 7pm)
- Friends allowed if you let me know for courtesy and catering purposes.
- Kids. No worries if they mix well in crowds, but our house is not set up as "kid-friendly" - please make sure they don't damage things/drink poison.

Anyone on my Dreamwidth or LiveJournal friends list is welcome, other people just leave a request comment but the answer is likely to be yes. - come and join in the fun :D Bring a friend for courage ;)

RSVP appreciated for judging food quantities, and so I have an idea of what's happening in general also.

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2001: a Revisitation

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:30:20 GMT

There was a Facebook meme going around semi-recently, where someone would give you a year and you'd write about what happened. Somebody sent me "2001", and I earmarked it for later, since I felt I would do it more justice outside of the restricted FB character limit. Finally got the motivation for a journal post...that particular motivation can be so slippery sometimes.

So, 2001: a Revisitation.

I was 19. I had been in a relationship with Zig since 1998, and so I was now currently living with Zig at his family's place - we were in a place called "The Studio", separated from the main house by an open-air passageway. We still shared the family dinners, and the bathroom in the house.
I was doing Year 12 at Cyril Jackson, having finally gone back to complete Yr 11 the previous year. It was good to be around all my friends who I'd met the previous year, and many of those friendships still persist to today. I was also on the student committee and the 4 or 5 of us on it organised a smashing medieval ball for everyone at the school, we did excellent work!

2001 took its rough turn about midway*.

Zig and I moved out together to where we are currently still living and renting, just a couple of minutes down the road from his family home. Spent the last of the estate money from Grandad on a washing machine so that we didn't have to keep handwashing (I'd dwindled the money down by living off it for the previous year or so)(oh, and still have that washing machine, yay!). Shortly after, the Yr 12 mid-year exams took place. I was in the middle of an English exam, staring at an essay, and I just got to thinking "why am I doing this?" over and over. So I collected my things, stood up, and walked out of that exam and out of Yr 12 entirely. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and was completely at loose ends.

Hm, and now I'm writing this, I think all this time I've been smooshing 2001 and 2002 together in my head. I went to write the second half of year 2001, and then remembered it couldn't possibly have happened in 2001 because I didn't get my license until half-way through 2002. So I guess 2001 wasn't so jam-packed as I was remembering. I guess I was just at loose ends for most of the rest of the year? I think I got onto Centrelink payments at some point too (and lost them the next year).

And that was 2001.

*Which wasn't as rough as I thought, since 2001 and 2002 are now separated in my brain again, heh.

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