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I can’t believe it’s been over a week without NRT. Granted, I don’t think I’ve been doing myself any favours with the sugar-free gum, but if it gets me through it, I am willing to deal with the side effects.
I haven’t “cheated” (eaten offplan, blown my diet, whatever) for over two weeks, but I am still having problems losing weight. I might be down a pound one morning and up two the next. It’s all very frustrating because I still have so much to lose. I am going to switch plans in a month or so if things don’t change (not off low carb, but something that sort of changes what I am eating entirely).
After I finish this post, I am working on the book again. Two hours, non-stop. I can aim for that, I suppose. How realistic is up to debate, considering my reaction to sugar-free gum.
I have a Twitter now, because everyone needs to know what I am doing at all times. I am not sure why I really signed up for it considering my family won’t bother getting one, and my friends don’t bother with the net as much as I do. Still, now everyone can read about my life’s minutiae. Damn it, I am going to Twitter hard core.
Send help now…
Actually, it’s getting better, but controlling my apetite is really hard. I think in some ways, I was depending upon the gum to help kill some cravings. I do chew regular sugar-free gum now, but it is hard not to over do that.
It’s saving us a significant amount of money to have me quit the gum. Plus, I don’t like the idea of being a gum junky. I am just afraid of the weight issues. The last time I went off it sucessfully, I gained quite a bit of weight. I mean, I was fat before I quit smoking, but I was really fat before I started smoking again out of desparation.
So here I am. I feel as if I’ve lost my security blanket.
Mr. Y and I went to Kensington Palace last weekend. Can you believe people are still leaving cards and flowers 11 years after she died? The gate was covered.
So far, this is the biggest let down of all the Royal Palaces: not that much to see, the audio tour sucked. We had a relatively good time though. Great to get out and do the “touristy” stuff.
I have finished a chapter in my book. It’s kind of weird. Sort of a relief. Like I had “slow literary productive transit” and I drank some “Booktamil”.
Other news: Mr. Y got a new position. Our cat has adopted an old brown shoelace and bugs me constantly to play with him with it. I have been losing and gaining back the same 10 pounds for 4 months.
Some days here are so gorgeous, it makes up for any rain, cold, or general dampness. It’s a beautiful day, a little breezy, but sunny, warm and dry. The clouds float by my window like starchy cotton balls, and most people are carrying their jumpers.
England does have some weather, but not as bad as it would seem. What makes it horrible in my estimation is the price of heating fuel and a general lack of insulation in many homes. Sometimes it feels like there’s no place to escape the chill. I wore gloves and a scarf indoors last year, and I am not looking forward to breaking them out again.
I think I bore people in the States with my talk of the weather. I bore myself with it sometimes. “Yes, yes, it’s cold and damp. Just like last time we talked.” “Oh, raining again? Not a surprise really. It’s England.” “Humid and in the 70s with an afternoon drizzle? Sounds like you don’t need a weatherman to tell you your summer forecast.”
When my husband would come during the winters back home, he rarely went outside. Inevitably, when he’d go out for his once or twice a week venture outside our little studio apartment, it would snow. Or he’d be met with heavy winds. Sometimes nature would be decidedly cruel and both would happen.
At the time, I thought this had to be the coldest he’d ever been, and excused his seasonal agoraphobia. Having wintered in his parents’ flat with the single paned 8 foot windows, soaring ceilings, outdoor (flush) loo, and the boiler that only comes on a few times a day, I know now that he knew cold. Maybe he just never knew what it was like to be snugly warm when it was absolutely grim outside.
London doesn’t allow you to have a fireplace or fire-stove. It’s meant to keep the air clearer, but I am beginning to question the wisdom in it. Wood can be a carbon neutral fuel source, and can be a great boost to meagre gas boilers in buildings designed to be heated with fire (albeit a coal grate). I am hoping we can move somewhere in the UK where we can freely burn wood to keep ourselves warmer and drier in the winter.
It’s a little telling that on such a beautiful day I am thinking about winter and being cold. Maybe it’s just the slight autumny smell to the air the past week or so that has made me realise it’s coming quickly, and a lot sooner than I am used to.
Mr. Yumicho has the day off today, and even though it’s 1:20 here on the island, he’s not awake. I’m not complaining or anything, but I am treating this like a regular day, just a bit quieter.
I want to apologize for my lack of metre in my poem. I am not a poet. Poetry to me is often beautiful to behold, but beyond my abilities to compose in anything but formless semi-prose form. It’s not that I don’t like writing it. I do, and I often see it as a puzzle to fit things together. Mr. Yumicho blames my metre impairment on my (likely) tone-deafness. I think it comes from the same place my general klutziness and inability to dance comes from: my total lack of rhythm. Recognising my total lack of talent, I still jump on the chance to write it, and use silliness as a cover.
Weighing myself this morning, I hit a new low. Well, to be fair, I’ve been lighter than this before. I mean I was only 6 pounds 8 ounces when I was born…and there were all those other weight loss successes that gradually turned into weight gains. Sometimes I do doubt that this time will be it, but I think the fact that I’ve pretty much stuck with it for well over a year really works in my favour. Maybe it’s not the slow weight loss that does the physiological change needed for sustained maintenance, but the change in thought. No, not good habits. Weight loss isn’t a habit you want to learn. Ideally, you shouldn’t need to be on a diet your whole life. After writing a comment on another blog, I realised I am really good at losing weight. I suck at maintaining weight loss. I’m talking more about the ability to recognise that we can’t have everything everyone else is having, that indulging in food isn’t a reward, and no matter how unfair it is, I will likely have to monitor my weight and adjust what I eat for the rest of my life. Those sort of lessons sort of cross the weight loss and weight maintenance transition.
Janey had a tummy that grew and grew
Dieting for her, though, was nothing new
Before giving up, she tried The Atkins Diet
Soon her kidkneez asploded
And caused quite a riot
Xavier had always been a bit fat
The “Freshmen 15” added to that
To low carb he turned to solve all his woes
But his bones soon all crumbled
From his jaw to his toes
Billy had a panniculus that waved in the wind,
After South Beach his fat pants went into the bin
Ignoring those who were so much smarter
For all those lost inches and pounds
Were all made entirely of water
Danielle wasn’t that fat or even chubby it seems
But she wanted to fit into the dress of her dreams
She skipped bread, rice, potatoes, and sugar too
Soon her doctor had to break it gently
Her arteries were clogged up with goo
Brett thought he’d be more fit by eating just meats
He used to lift weights and do other feats
I say “used to” because he can’t any longer
His muscles were all eaten away
By his reckless quest to grow stronger
If you eat too much meat you will be filled with regret
But on what to eat you really needn’t fret
Ornish has some answers to be had
As does Weight Watchers and Oprah
Which are never a fad
Remember that low carb is just a cheap trick
You eat fewer calories before your body gets sick
All that fat and protein will soon catch up it’s true
It happened to Aunt Sheila
And it will happen to you!
Usually, Mr. Yumicho wakes before I do. Not always, but on most weekdays. If I don’t wake while he’s getting ready, he kisses me goodbye and we exchange “I love you”s. When I do wake (usually not that long afterwards), I rush to the bathroom and pee.
Back in the bedroom I strip and weigh myself. This, of course, can influence my mood either way depending on the number. I then brush my teeth and drink a huge glass of water. I might tidy things a bit, do some washing up, and make the bed at this point.
Next up is forum and email checking. I usually put a pot of coffee on. Since we have the coffee pot from hell, I have to babysit it to ensure the basket doesn’t fill up with water and damp grounds, piss over the side, and spread sludge over our counter and floor. When it works, it makes a brilliant pot of coffee. When it goes wrong, it’s pretty grim.
If I have a big project scheduled, I might start it. This can range from housework to paperwork. I like to keep Kitty Yumicho guessing, so I vary when I feed him, sometimes waiting until afternoon. If I don’t have too much to do, I might play games or read. If I am feeling industrious, I might write a bit.
For a while I tried to get into British soaps. I like them more than American ones, but I just couldn’t get into them. TV at first was pretty novel, but DIY, Big Brother, and game shows get a bit old after a while. Don’t get me wrong, I love some things on British TV, but I rarely watch daytime TV here. It’s probably a good thing.
When weighing this morning, I was up a pound from yesterday, and back into a different “decade” of weight (you know the second number in your weight). It might have been Nobby’s Nuts from a few nights ago, because yesterday I IF’ed until dinner (intermittent fasting). Maybe I just ate too much at dinner.
It’s times like these I have to avoid my own ability to sabotage my weight loss. It usually takes a while, but if the scale doesn’t move for a few weeks (or even worse, goes up), I get doubts about our way of eating. It inevitably ends up with a trip to Pizza Hut, me with sauce from a profiterole on my chin, and the two of us rubbing our bloated carb guts.
Maybe my body knows this and really wants profiteroles. That’s why it’s doing this crap with the weight gain. Ugh.
I promise I will write more. I guess my intention to break back into building a portfolio didn’t exactly do wonders for my desire to write here more. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write (of course), but when I add the stress of thinking about getting things approved for publishing, the added stress turns me off of anything I consciously think of as writing.
I think I may have bruised my spine on Saturday when I fell up an escalator. It doesn’t bother me until I start walking about or if I bend over for a while. Then it feels like someone is gripping my spine, and my lower left ribs start to hurt. Mr. Yumicho (I really need to come up with a better name for him) caught me. He strained his shoulder, but says he’s feeling a bit better than when it happened.
Oh, high drama on the internets. I belong to a community of American expats in the UK. Really, I don’t want to implicate the whole community, so I won’t name the place to protect the innocent (and the slightly guilty too I guess). Besides, it’s a great place and even great online forums have their flaws. So this weekend the proverbial crap hit fan when one of the moderators there posted a thread in which she seemed to think that the idea that the community was insular and cliquish would be put to rest. That the accusations that long standing members are rude to members who are having problems adjusting to the UK would suddenly go away (and if they didn’t, there’d be no more discussing it because this was the “once and for all” topic).
It began with denials that people weren’t rude (and when they were, they were quickly dealt with), the assertion that people who thought there were cliques and it wasn’t a welcoming place were crazy (mad I tells ye!). It ended with admissions that people did gossip, not only on their blogs and journals, but there were exclusive LJ groups (two to be exact) that contained only members from the forum in question. One of these groups is about, what else, gossip and is named appropriately. The other was named after a thing that many newcomers to the UK post on our forums about (and invited its members to come vent there). The gossip group is made up primarily of moderators from the forum in question.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that an online community has to expect that its members will likely express themselves elsewhere. But you can’t have it both ways. If a group of people have exclusive membership groups where the sole purpose of that group is to gossip or complain about the community at large, then they can’t deny that they are cliquish. That’s what a clique is. They also have to realise that (especially when the members of those groups hold moderator powers) the existence of the sub-groups may start to flavour the community at large. I mean, before I found out about those two LJ groups, and I probably could have named their members pretty easily. Well, to be fair, some of them were being the most adamant that there weren’t any cliques on the board so if you asked after the start of the “discussion” thread, my job would have been super-easy.
Yes, it is like primary school all over again. But what makes it interesting is how friggen neurotic some of these people were behaving. And with a little prodding, you can make them dance and squirm. I wasn’t that involved in the thread, and I am not condoning how strongly some of the dissenters came off, but even with reasonable, calmly worded posts, I suddenly felt like a troll because it set them off so much.
The sad thing is that at least two members have left over the bruhaha. The entire thread is now deleted. I am not sure what sort of good keeping it around would have done except prove we are all human.
I should restate that. We are all human. We are entitled to our flaws. I guess in a way, we are entitled to dishonesty about our flaws. But dishonesty doesn’t change the fact they’re there.
I decided to blog on this not to gossip (although I recognise even in an open blog with no names mentioned and no known readers from that community that this could be seen as gossip), but because online communities really need to balance moderation with expression. Moderation can sometimes protect a community, but it can also compound the problems. If you insist a community has room for everyone, and the best you can offer for those with issues is to leave if they don’t like it, you aren’t being inclusive, but being a hypocrite.
A forum maintainer and the people he or she appoints to assist with the day to day business do indeed have the rights to set the rules and maintain the standards. But that doesn’t exclude our right to judge those standards. We might not be able to point out where the mistakes of a community staff member might lead to the death of the community. When we are involved in forums, we devote a bit of ourselves to those communities. It’s truly unfair to forum members to not recognise that contribution, from a newbie to a poster that’s been there for years. “Like it or leave it” might be a great comeback, but in practice it doesn’t lead to a welcoming community. Nor does it lead to rich debates or diversity in the forum population. Which is fine if you recognised the fact.
I also wrote this because I felt during the thread there was a challenge to do so elsewhere. I found this invitation very appealing, even if I think there wasn’t an expectation that the people having the problems would be able to manage to do so. There was also an invitation to start our own forum. Which I am considering.
But during this, it was asserted that expression outside the forum was not to be a concern for the forum itself. We will see if it will be, and I will be sure to update this if I am removed from that community for this post.
It’s funny. Before I started writing this, I felt sorry for most of the people involved. Now I sort of feel angry at their behaviour. I did vacillate from feeling embarrassed for many of the people involved to feeling a bit disgusted. I did consider just not visiting the place for a few weeks, but in a way, that would mean the terrorists would win.
On this rock 
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