so i did it. at least, i did 2/3rd of what i wanted to do. i lost 40 lbs last year.

in the process i’ve learned a pretty big lesson. the fact is even though i lost about 6-8 inches off my body more or less and i’m wearing dresses 4 sizes smaller than i was a year ago, almost no one has commented on it. not people i see regularly, not people who i’ve seen over the holidays who i hadn’t seen for quite some time. it’s possible that they’re just nervous to mention it - weight can be a pretty touchy subject with a female, i know, but i think it’s something else. i think that people haven’t been mentioning it because they never noticed how big i was then or how big i am now. because i think that most people don’t think it’s a big deal. and that is a huge revelation for me. because my whole life i thought for sure that my weight was the first thing that people saw when they saw me, because it was definitely the first thing i saw when i saw myself. and i thought for sure that everyone judged me, because i judged myself.

all these years i thought that people could only see my pounds and it wasn’t the case at all. what a revelation.

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wow, this blog has stayed dormant for many a-month. in fact justin said just the other day that he was thinking about deleting our “personal” blogs since we never really use them, but now i feel like i’ve discovered a use for my blog again.

i’ve never been a crafty person, mostly because my mom wasn’t a crafty person and both she and my dad both scoffed at people who did crafts as being less academic than themselves. ok, mostly my dad. my mom, i think, just wasn’t very interested, although she did try quilting briefly in the mid-nineties. and by try, i mean she bought all the materials and then never did anything with it.

that being said, i’ve always wanted to make things and never really felt like i knew how. i’ve wanted to learn how to knit since i became a teenager. i guess i just want to make something for my kids so that they can have a piece of me to hold onto, the way that i was able to with my grandma and now am not able to with my mom. i wish i had something she had made so that there could be a connection with her grandchildren beyond the photos and the stories that i’ll tell.

so i learned how to knit and crochet this last year. and for christmas i got two knitting books:

i’ve spent the past couple of days pouring over them, and i guess right now i’m a little overwhelmed. for the most part the patterns are currently over my skill level and i want to make them all, right now, and have them turn out perfectly right now. however, i’ve learned that the only way to get better at things like this is to work at them and so i’m going to start small and work my way up.

my first project is going to be this pixie cap from vintage knits for modern babies:

if it turns out well i’m thinking that i’ll give it to izzy bea (but only if you like it, amanda) and if it doesn’t i’ll give it to monsieur trash-can. but either way it’ll be good practice.

knitting! let’s do this!

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i feel discouraged today.

for the past 3 months i have been on a diet and exercising. i’ve not really wanted to talk to anyone about it because it is embarrassing to me and i don’t really want to hear anyone else’s story or tips. this has been one of the biggest struggles of my life and it is so personal, but today i just need to let it out. i’ve been trying to change myself physically and it has been so hard. for 3 months i haven’t missed a day of exercise (except sunday, the day of rest from my physical labors LITERALLY) and while i feel a difference in my body and i feel healthier sometimes the scale and the measuring tape just aren’t my friend today. i work and work and work and then i see the numbers and it’s so hard to stay motivated. it’s just such a slow-going, up and down thing.

on a good day i do 45 minutes of this tracy anderson dvd, 45 minutes of bollyrobics, and a 2 mile walk with elliott. on a normal day i do the tracy anderson dvd and either the walk or the other dvd. on a bad day i only do 20 minutes of tracy. but, i do something. i carefully monitor my calories - 1500-1700 a day, depending on how much i exercise. and 3 months later there is undeniable change, but did i mention it’s just. so. slow?

today i feel like i’m walking up this mountain and it is stretching forever in front of me and behind me and i feel like i will never ever reach the top. and i just want to sit down and stop. and eat an entire box of dark chocolate klondike bars.

i know that what i’m doing is working. i know that there are no quick fixes, that the only thing that works is permanently changing your lifestyle and that it took me 26 years to get to where i am and i can’t expect to turn that around in a month. i know all this and still here i am discouraged, wanting to quit.

but.

i don’t. because the other thing that i know is how badly i want to make it to the top of that mountain and i know that i’ll never make it there if i stop now. so tracy, do your worst. i’m ready.

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when i was a kid if you asked me to describe myself i’m sure one of the terms i would have used would have been “environmentalist.” i was so gung-ho about saving the rainforest, fixing the hole in the ozone layer, saving endangered species. not that i’m all about burning the rainforest or clubbing seals now, just that when i was a kid i was kind of over-the-top about it - thought about it every waking moment, wrote letters to politicians about it, you know.

however, no matter how much i loved the rainforest i was never dumb enough to ever want to go there. i saw the pictures of the giant bugs and creepy plants and said “uh, i can save you all from right here.” the years have only strengthened my resolve that i am a city girl. i have a healthy respect for nature and i believe in live and let live - i let your dark, freaky jungles thrive and you give my my little patch of concrete jungle far far away from man-eating spiders and the like.

nowadays we live in what i would call the country even thought it’s considered part of the d.c. metro area and living here has been an experience for me. there are swamps and forests within a mile of my house. i go outside and i get covered in bugs and spiders have turned my little laundry room into their house. blech.

don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty from afar, but it’s funny how jaded i’ve already become to the beauty. i was describing where we live to my friend samantha in an email and she wrote back saying “where you live sounds really pretty.” that kind of struck me because it IS pretty, however i’ve gotten to the point now where i look beyond the beauty of all the green, rolling hills and forests to the spiders, snakes, and other various nasties that make their homes therein. for example, over the weekend we drove out to the shenandoah (the closest “mountains.” hah!) and on our drive i started to notice what looked like giant spider webs in the trees. like GIANT, thick webs. turns out they’re cocoons for some kind of moth around here, but when i first saw it i thought to myself “that’s it, if there are spiders around here that can make that i’m not getting out of the car.”

the thing is, i’m not really a girly girl - i like the outdoors generally, i like camping and hiking, but back here i am just not down for it as much as i was in the west.i think i realized that what it comes down to here and with the rainforest is the humidity - i already feel like i’m covered with slimy things since i’m sweating out every ounce of liquid in my body when i’m not outdoors so if i do go outdoors and an actual slimy thing gets on me it’ll be even worse? i don’t know. all i know is that i’m pretty happy watching nature out my window from my couch right now.

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well, the doctor’s office never contacted me. after a week with no word from them i contacted my guy at the department of licenses and practices who emailed me back promptly with this email from my doctor:

“As per our discussion on the phone. I agree the utah law says a contact lens prescription is valid for 2 years unless there is a medical reason to shorten that time. I only saw Sara Bytheway one time so I do not have a long term history of how her eyes have done with contact lenses. The reasons that I shortened the prescription is because 1)she was pregnant at the time of the exam and pregnancies can cause prescriptions to change and 2) because I fit her with a different type of contact lens (She went from a Focus Night and Day lens with a permeability of 170 to a O2 Optix lens with a permeability of 138). I did not know if her corneal health would still be good with a less permeable lens. As a side note the patient did not seem to upsent when I was able to fit her with a contact lens that cost $ 25.00 per box from a lens that cost $ 60.00 per box.

I have contacted her and after explanation extented her prescription to two years from the exam date.”

such lies! i was told over the phone that the reason my contact lens prescription was no longer valid was because it was a year old and that was the ONLY reason given. as for the little dig at me about how ungrateful i am for not kissing his feet for his changing my lens to a cheaper one i’m giving the largest eye roll humanly possible. you got caught, dude, deal with it. and you got doubly caught because you just lied again about ever contacting me. lying liar with your lies! ARGH!

but, whatevs, lens.com contacted his office again, my prescription was verified and my lenses are on their way. justice prevails!

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worst. blogger. ever. does anyone still read this? sigh. i’m going to have to rebuild my small readership from the ground up. and then lose them again when i inevitably get lazy yet again. it’s a vicious cycle, friends.

so, i pretty much hate optometrists. it all started when i worked at 1-800 contacts, which was a horrible job and a horrible company, but i digress. i learned when i worked at 1-800 contacts that optometrists make the majority of their money by overcharging for contact lenses knowing that most people will just buy it from them and avoid the hassle of searching for a better price because most people have insurance that will cover the majority of the price of the lenses. guess what, this overcharging leads to higher insurance costs for everyone. optometrists hate it when people try to buy their lenses from someone else and many of them will do pretty much anything to hold your prescription hostage in order to prevent you from doing so. i can’t even tell you the number of irate, horrible optometrists i had to deal with at my job who were angry because they couldn’t fleece their patients any longer. can i just tell you how much cheaper it is to go online? more than half the cost usually. it’s such a huge scam - and the same holds true for glasses, although the buying of glasses through the internet is a newer problem for the optometry industry and so i don’t know if it has experienced the same vitriol. the main laws that optometrists try to avoid obeying: giving you a copy of your prescription at the end of the exam (this is a FEDERAL LAW) and making the prescription expire in a year or less so that you’ll be forced to come back for another exam.

anyway, in my many years of wearing contact lenses i was very happy to say that i had never experienced this problem. my optometrists had no problem with the fact that i’m a smart consumer and i always always price shop, this is especially true when i don’t have eye insurance, which is more often than not. however, i have now had that experience with an optometrist in utah, one who has worked with my husband’s family for many years, which is what makes it all the more sad to me.

i tried to order some new lenses from lens.com, who had the cheapest price by far. now how it works is the company you order your lenses from will contact your optometrist to verify the prescription because it is illegal for them to sell you lenses without a valid prescription. lens.com tried verifying my prescription 3 times and each time this particular optometrist refused to do so. i had my eye exam almost a year and a half ago, but according to utah law my prescription should be valid for two years. finally i called his office where i was told that my prescription had expired and the best they could do was give me a free trial pair. i told them that i knew that according to utah law my prescription was good for two years. i was told that that was only the case with glasses. i responded that i just read the law the day before (which i had, to make sure i had all my ducks in a row) and my prescription was still good. the office worker responded back that “well, dr. so and so only guarantees his prescriptions for one year.” so i told him that i would be filing a complaint with the better business bureau to which he said “okay” and hung up.

i ended up filing a complaint with both the better business bureau and the utah department of licenses and practices, and both places got back to me within a day. the doctor’s office is now supposed to be contacting me so that we can “resolve the issue.” the thing that frustrates me more than anything else is the fact that i hate being a tattle-tale. i hate it when people just refuse to obey the law and i’m forced to go to a third party to make them do so. i understand that if this doctor allows me to refill my prescription when it is over a year old then he loses money from another check-up (although he wouldn’t have gotten that from me anyway seeing as how i live in virginia) and if he allows me to do so through another place then he loses money on the lenses - but really, isn’t it his own fault for overcharging for the lenses in the first place? it is my right as a consumer to go to the place that offers me the best price and it is unfair for this person to hold my vision hostage just because he can.

ugh. it just makes me so angry.

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today has been one of those days where i just don’t want to do anything. i think it’s because elliott’s been refusing to nap for longer than a half hour, twice a day for the past 3 days and an hour break from 8 am to 8 pm is not enough time for either of us. little boy has been CRANK. Y.

last week i felt really good and really productive and like i was making a difference - i met with the sister missionaries and an investigator 3 times and it was just such a nice feeling. it reminded me of all the best teaching experiences on my mission, the rare ones where the spirit was so strong and powerful and the person was listening intently and you feel like “yes, this is the reason i’m here, this is what i’m supposed to be doing.” this week, though, the investigator isn’t feeling it and that’s that. this week i feel a little less purposeful.

i’ve felt a drive to create lately, but i don’t really know where to start. there’s that quilt i started over a year ago, all the pieces sitting up in my linen closet just waiting to be assembled and there’s also the bajillion other quilts i’ve sketched out in my mind and in my journal that i want to make. and then i’ve been playing with my camera, trying to figure out how to take the pictures i want to take with it. i’m an old dog, i learned photography on a film camera and i hate digital cameras. however, i understand that digital is the wave of the future (blech) so i’m trying to get with the times. i’ve taken some shots that i really like and i feel inspired to take more. so sewing, photography, and also i’ve been thinking more and more about that art class that i’ve been dying to take for the past 15 years and i think this might be the year. we went to the hirschhorn museum on monday and i saw a few things i really liked and that made me think “i want to do this. i want to make something.” and so since i don’t know where to start i don’t start and i waste my precious time instead. boo.

elliott takes up most of my time, then the house takes up some, and justin, and then, amazingly enough, there’s time for me and i have to figure out what i want to fill it with.

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when i was on my mission my trainer (first companion in italy) taught me some pretty important lessons. one of the things that i’ve remembered the most is the idea that every so often you’ll be blessed with the opportunity to see a person as christ sees him. i’ve had it happen to me a few times in my life and it’s true, it’s so special to see someone with the eye of unconditional love and to see deeper to his or her eternal potential.

well, this week has been a tough one for me and elliott. justin left tuesday morning for “camp school” in new jersey and he won’t be home until tomorrow night. whenever anything is even slightly out of kilter at home elliott can sense it and becomes extra clingy and needy. he doesn’t nap, he barely sleeps at night, which makes him cranky and he constantly needs to be in my arms. it makes sense, but it’s hard for me. i miss my husband, i don’t get any sleep, my arms and wrists are sore from carrying elliott all the time, and i have a headache from his constant crying. my patience has grown in leaps and bounds since my little boy was born - i don’t get angry when he’s like this, i just feel so bad for him, and so incompetent because nothing i do makes him happy.

well, today i put him down for an afternoon nap and he was fine for about 10 minutes and then i heard crying coming from his room. being a good sleep trainer i waited another 10 minutes to go into him and immediately tried to put his blanket on him and give him his pacifier, which calmed him down until i started to walk out of the room again, at which time his cries grew more panicked. i walked back over to his crib and saw this look of fear in his sweet blue eyes and right at that moment it hit me again - the biggest surge of unconditional love and a small glimpse into my boy’s sweet eternal soul. i picked him up and immediately he calmed down, and tears streamed down my face as i realized that this amazing spirit with so much potential needed ME, of all people, to help him through this life.

being a mom can be overwhelming, it can be frustrating, it can be exhausting, but most of all, from time to time, it can be really really REALLY wonderful.

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i feel like i have so much to say at the moment and yet when i get here to my computer i can never remember what it is. i think the fact that i’ve been unable to exercise consistently for almost 2 months contributes to my lack of clarity. my body is slow and thus so is my brain. that doesn’t change the fact that deep inside i feel like i have a need to get something out and it’s just so frustrating to not know what exactly that is.

i think, though, that ultimately what it is is that i just miss my mom. she’s been gone now for a little over 4 years (which is so unbelievably long) and while i miss her every day in the background of my life her ever-present absence comes to the foreground during my big life events. this move is one of those moments and the lack of mom is made more acute from the inherent loneliness that comes with moving to an entirely new place. my dad is off living his parisian life, and while i love him, and he’s my father, he’s a terrible listener and i can tell his interest in what i’m doing is superficial when we talk. luckily i have justin, and i thank god for him every day, but he’s living this experience with me and i can’t exactly tell him what we did today when he did it with me. sometimes you just need someone to be interested in you, really interested in what you’re doing, who really wants to listen to you talk about every little thing going on in your life that isn’t hand and hand with you most hours of the day.

anyway, i could go on and on about the reasons why i miss my mom. however, as time goes by i start to think that besides the fact that she was needed someone else, or her mission on earth was over, or any other of the trite phrases we say in the church when someone dies, i start to think that maybe she was a crutch and having such a great mom who was such a great friend and a great listener stopped me from really developing my relationship with my heavenly father the way that i should have. i’ve never been very good at prayer because talking out loud without someone responding to me has always frustrated me and as i am with everything that doesn’t come naturally i just haven’t done it as much as i should. so i guess that instead of wallowing in self-pity that i am the loneliest girl in the world because my mom was taken from me way way too early i’m going to take this opportunity to develop my relationship with my heavenly father, who is always willing to listen and who is never waiting for me to finish so he can say something about himself. growing, always growing.

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i’m feeling pretty discouraged at the moment. i’m still living in a stranger’s basement instead of my own place and i’m bored and i don’t even have a d.i. to distract me during the day. thus, to cheer myself up, i need to make a list of all that is positive.

-i’m surrounded by history. (and also maybe ghosts, but that’s scary, not positive)
-justin’s job is starting off slow so we still get to hang out most of the day.
-i still have cable.

that’s all i can think of at the moment. kind of pathetic, but it’s a start. i feel a little better.

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