IT'S IN THE JEANS ...

So I’ve been spilling my beans all over the place and talking about my journey down the often perilous but never boring road called WEIGHT LOSS.

It’s been no picnic, nor has it been a party, and if it was one, then I missed the invitation … but it has been a lesson in patience, stamina and gratitude,

It’s taken me more time than most people because of things like fear, hesitation and yes, even some neglect of self, but I am getting there … I’m plodding along…

RIGHT!!!

So that was my disclaimer … but I do have news to share – or should I say SHOW.

The photos that appear below, tell a story – the story of my waistline, my hips, my thighs, my legs!

Yes folks! I have gone from a size 26 pair of jeans to a Size 14 Tall!

And all I can say is THANK YOU GOD … THANK YOU LEE … THANK YOU EVERYBODY!!!













I’m not done yet … so please don’t leave me … I need your strength to continue this journey… so as always, journey with me.

The Changeling…

16 DIFFERENT WAYS TO SUNDAY ...

So here it is, I’m at the start again, and trying to make sense of this crazy lil thing hat shall remain nameless.

I know that people believe that they are being helpful. I know that they think that wisdom is the thing that I crave. What they don’t get is that the thing I need most is CONSISTENCY… and I need it in all things, particularly in things concerning MY HEART.

I’m constantly being told to turn myself around – as in reinvent myself. Everyone knows PRECISELY what’s right for me, and it’s all conflicting.

Be forthcoming … be mysterious; tell him what’s on your mind … don’t say anything; be shy … be bold…

WTF??! There’s only one of me; yet everyone is trying to break me into tiny little pieces. Am I really that naïve? Is it that the life I’ve led in the past forty-odd years has really left me so cloistered and unprepared for the world?

I don’t think that I’m seeking the impossible, and I don’t believe that I’m being unreasonable. I require very little to keep me happy … I want respect, trust, love, affection, honesty … consistency. I could demand these things, but I don’t. I TRUST that the man who wants to be with me will willingly give these things and give them abundantly.

It is still amazing for me to have to realize that as a WOMAN, I’m the one who has to bend myself 16 different ways to Sunday to please the male of the species. Question is, who is bending himself into knots and twists just to keep me happy? And is he going to do so willingly and be patient while I figure out what it is I really need?

Should you be strolling through town and you find one or more of these gems, would you kindly send him way? The fact is that I have found one of them … he just doesn’t know how wonderful he Is as yet … but he will! (Wink, wink)

WTF!!!

Friendship is a funny thing. There are times when we need to stretch to accommodate the baggage that might sneak in, and there are times when we need to contract in order to keep our perspective and sanity.

I’m trying to figure out where I am in a particular friendship, and I just had a WTF moment.

As the adult on record in this get up, I’m wondering if the age difference is causing a significant shift when it comes to things like translation and understanding. Maybe it is that I’m expecting too much from the individual, but the difference is not so insurmountable that common sense cannot and will not kick in.

Why is it so easy for some of us to be obtuse and hurtful to the needs of many of us? Is it just me or is it that it feels like paranoia has become the norm for some of us? Why is it so easy for some of us to be mean spirited and bitter towards the achievements of the majority of us?

I know that I’m asking a myriad of questions, and I know that many of those questions are rhetorical. By the same token, there are really some of us who can cause amazement to hurt the brain.

Example.

I’ve been attempting to pursue a particular course for the past few months, and someone whom I now recognize as a bandwagonist announced that they would come aboard and we would stay the course together, and use our ‘existing’ buddy system to lessen the ‘pains’ as it were.

I believed them when they said that they were ready. I made myself available to them, and I did what I could to introduce her to the tenets that she would need to follow…

Why then … at the end of it all … are they attempting to make me feel that this is somehow my fault?

Hindsight is 20/20 vision and I’ve put a few pieces of the puzzle together.

This isn’t about me. It is about them and their baggage, and I refuse to be the trash guy. It’s about their decisions and their priorities and until they come to the point of acknowledging that there are changes to be made, then they will continue to wallow in their ‘ignunce’, and that’s just the way it is.

I will do what I need to do for me and that’s it. When they are ready to handle their shit, they will do what needs to be done for them – plain and simple.

We all need to be adult enough to do what we need to for ourselves, and by the same token we need to be adult enough to take the responsibility for the fucked up decisions that we sometimes make, thereby avoiding the stupid blame game that we seem to always want to play …

And that’s my take!

Reasoning ...

Give me one good reason
Why I shouldn’t let you
Have your way …
Just leave you to celebrate
And fete your self pity
Tell me why I should
Bother to care enough
To want you to snap
The hell out of this
Foul funk
The stench of which
Is evident for miles around…
Has it occurred to you
In the midst of your wallow
That you are hurting me
When you hurt yourself?
Explain it to me…
Make me understand…
Help me make sense of
Your need to hurt yourself
Your yen for constantly wandering
Back to the people, places and things
That you intrinsically know
Will bring you pain…
Why do you believe yourself
To be so unworthy of the
Beauty that awaits you?
You are worthy –
You deserve the good
In this world, just as I do
You deserve me
As I deserve you
We deserve the love
The trust, the commitment
The happiness…
The Life that sits and
Waits in Limbo while you
Decide in a vacuum about
Your worthiness
Do you honesty believe
That I would waste
All that I was born to give
On a man unworthy
Of my treasure?
If it be so in your mind
You must not think much of yourself
And even less about me
And that right there is a shame!
Climb out of the hole
That you’ve dug yourself
And rejoin the rest of the living
Give yourself the chance
To love and to be loved in
The way that you deserve
The way that only I can love you
In just the same way that
I was destined to love you
Fighting has its place
And when done right it’s a wonder!
So darling if fight you must
Then fight --- but just
Remember to fight with all
You have in you
For us and not against us…

Goodbye to You, My Trusted Friend ...

John Bevan Foard … if you said that name to anyone in Maryland, they would look at you cross-eyed.

Punkey Foard … now THAT would get you one of two things – a grimace or a smile.

Punkey was known from one end of the state to the next. He was also famous in the farming communities in Pennsylvania … all over DC and the rest of the East Coast. They knew and respected him in Europe as well as South America, where he would go to shop for Valley View Farms. Then there’s the Trinidad and Tobago connection, as well as St Lucia, Belize and various other parts of the West Indies.

Those of us who knew of his passing on Sunday evening said goodbye to Punk’ this morning in just the way he wanted – simply, quietly, without fuss and fanfare.

We sat quietly in the Chapel at the Crematorium and reminisced about the man we all knew and loved.

I’ve always looked on Punkey as another father, so that finding out yesterday that he was gone hit me hard – perhaps harder that I was prepared to deal with. It honestly felt like I had lost my father all over again … so fierce was the pain in my chest.

I looked at the faces sitting in that little chapel. Most of us wore the same shocked and disbelieving expression. I listen as Kathy told us what were his instructions regarding his ashes and I realized that Punkey was really a romantic soul. That’s not really a surprise … I believe he honestly loved everyone that he met.

Yes there were times when he knowingly or inadvertently rubbed those same people the wrong way, but deep down he had everyone’s best interest at heart.

Today I said goodbye to my friend, my second father, my benefactor and someone who made it possible for me to laugh heartily and laugh often, even on days when all I really wanted to do was curl up and die.

Thank you Punkey for the privilege of being a preteen at many a lavish table at the Hilton, the Normandie, Chaconia and Holiday Inns. Thanks for New Year’s Eve parties at La Boucan or at home … for Sunday evening roof top dinners at fine restaurants. Thanks for the gift of knowledge given and the opportunities to explore beyond my comfort zone … for chances to witness new and different cultures and sights in my youth – both at home and abroad.

You got me into mischief, into trouble and always managed to get me out of it… Thanks for supplying me with a ton of ‘big brothers’ and additional cousins.

You threatened to ‘cuss down’ my ex-boss when you thought she had no respect for my ‘personal off time’ – proof yet again that you really were my persona protector.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is … Thank You Punkey, for making me a priority in your life when you really weren’t obligated to.

I love you, I miss you, I’m blessed to have known you…

Go with the angels and Rest in Peace.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH ...

I am a Literature buff from a ways back. I’ve always loved the written word, and have since developed quite the love for the spoken word as well. Words are soothing to me…

One of the books that I studied at examination level in ‘High School’ was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and one of the lines that has been stuck in my head since then is “Beware the Ides of March!”

I remember having been particularly offended the first time I heard that line because of my understandable affinity for the month of March. It is after all the month of my birth … and while my birthday is nowhere near the 15th, I happen to be offended by any reference to ill-will that may occur in the beautiful month of March.

Ah, the innocence of youth. How I long for the days when bad news, disappointment and – well – disgust came as such a shock to your system that it could actually shut you down. Now the jadedness of perceived ‘seniority’ may make you ill at such occurrences but they generally roll off of one’s back like so much water.

I must confess that my own encounter with the Ides of March could not have been prepared for … but then again it could have been. I suppose that I am just overly sensitive right now … who knows. Prepared or not, it’s always a devastation when the people that one has held closest to one’s chest turns out to be the ones that literally stab us in the back.

There aren’t many people that have had the privilege to be let into my inner sanctum, but it looks like I’m going to have to pull a couple ‘membership cards’ from some of the people in there. What good is it when one attempts to build up resources and those same resources have no problem spitting you out on Idus Martiae (Latin, Ides of March). Others have said to me that I need to ‘let it go’, that that is the way that they would handle it. I do so solemnly wish that I could just dust off and press on. It is a little difficult when the individual involved has cut so close to the bone. My mother has this saying that she uses from time to time that says that it is always worse when you’re bitten by your own flea. Well that is precisely the way that I feel right now. Oh I know that I have to put on my big girl panties and deal with it, and believe me I will. Right now on the other hand, I need to take this time to reconstruct my ‘fortress’, as there seems to be some bricks that may need to be chipped away.

And like Caesar, I was warned … I had my own seer, but like Caesar, I ignored the warning. Now, again like Caesar, I am forced to turn and look at that brick and ask “Et tu Brute?!”

I find it all so unfortunate, ironic and just garden-variety wretched that in this world, it could be so hard to find like minded spirits to share ones inner self with …

What happened to honor … what happened to actual friendship, and support? Is it that most people have now come to the point of being friends through convenience, and as soon as they have achieved their own Zen and Xanadu, they then disavow the others who have to this point been there for them? Should that be the case then yet again I am forced to hold tight to what little faith I have left in our Humanity.

The good news is that I am approaching the end of my own tunnel, but theirs is still waiting in the wings … and in true Pisces form I will probably be there yelling that they beware there own Ides of March.

That’s the way that I’m made up … it is a part of me that I love – my ability to love others no matter what … and it is another object lesson to me along the way, and I have learnt from it to I am thankful, and I will be more thankful as soon as I reach around and pull the dagger out that had been so firmly SLAMMED into my spine!!!

“Joy Cometh in the Morning”, and I will be the better for it.

The Future Is Liquid...

… and changes with every decision that we make…

It may sound strange but it actually does make sense. There is nothing about our lives in this realm that is carved in stone. Yes, the destination has been mapped out by the Master, but the journey will still be filled with twists, turns and plot changes.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you were 100% sure of the path that the path you were on was the correct one, only to be blown completely in another direction?

That’s what I mean when I say that the future, like a running river, is liquid. With every mind shift, every doubt, every affirmation and declaration that we make alone this journey, we change the pace, the players and the flow of the rhythm of our lives/futures.

We are the mapmakers of our lives, even though there are times when we need to be nudged back into place by celestial hands. The basic premise is that we are in possession of FREE WILL, and that’s what makes the difference between us and the other animals. We CHOOSE the paths that we walk; we select the peoples – for the most part – that we share our journeys with. Ours is a charmed existence, even when we don’t feel that way. We are the Chosen … the ones made in the image and likeness of our Creator … we are the creations with thought processes and common sense, even though there are times when we seriously need to wonder where the common sense has gone. It’s still there, just under-utilized.

Life is such a beautiful and priceless gift to us all; yet we find ways to make it all so difficult.

As I wrote to good friend this morning, watch the shifting tides and the waters, and you’ll see where you’re heading.

Live in the joy of the knowledge that life is a journey scripted by you but directed by your Creator…