Lycra Bike Shorts, Swimsuits, and Other Horrors

If you're a large woman in America, your whole life is an opportunity to feel self-conscious, embarrassed, resentful and way too big. You can hide in the corner or on the couch, you can go to therapy, or you can put on your lycra bike shorts and get out there and move.
—Jayne Williams, Slow Fat Triathlete

Jayne knows, she really does, how hard it is to put on those Lycra shorts or that swimsuit when you don't like the way your body looks. I love it that she understands; it means that she gives credit where credit is due. Bless the hearts -and backsides- of the people who need to exercise and DO IT and don't worry if said backside looks bad on that bike seat. Or they do worry, and they do it anyway.

The thing I need to do is move past the revulsion I feel when I look at my own body. The body I see has nothing -NOTHING- to do with the body that's in my head. This body is a new post-divorce artifact (artifat?), and it makes me sad and grossed out. Moreover, I'm tired all the time. Deeply, in my bones, exhausted. People will suggest that this is because I am doing too much. But seriously, I've felt this bone-deep thing before, and it's not physical. Fundamentally, it's emotional and spiritual. It's about whether or not I am lovable. Am I good enough? Do I deserve to be healthy and trim and vibrant?

But there's a time and a place when I do love my body. It loves to move and do things and exercise. I love to climb rocks, and do yoga, and ride my bike, and swim. I tolerate strength training, but do not love it. I loathe running, but could walk or hike, I suppose, since something in my fitness life ought to be weight-bearing.

So, where to go with this? I will start from that place of love. Actually, I will stay in that place of love. "I love my body when it does.... x (where x is a life-enhancing and health-improving activity)," suggests that I should do x. If an activity makes me feel less-than or not good enough, out it goes. For now, that means I will bike slowly, do modified yoga, lift baby weights, and swim as slowly as I need to. I will enjoy the activity for its own sake.

And if you don't like the way my backside looks, you shouldn't have any trouble passing me up and moving on to more congenial sights. Move along!

Sunday: bike ride, and gentle yoga
Monday: gym (which means weights and the treadmill) and yoga
Tuesday: swimming and yoga
Wednesday: gym and yoga
Thursday: swimming and yoga -and I'll ride my bike to work today (it's about a mile to work, so it's no real fitness work -just the principle of the thing)
Friday: bike ride and yoga
Saturday: yoga only

Metal Mouth

Brace yourself for a sort of puke-y TMI post.

It's been a year with a mouth full of metal.

I said, thinking that I meant it, that I would get braces right after college, when I had a job. That didn't happen. I got married and had babies, which I don't regret for a single second. With those babies came about a zillion other ways to spend money, but it's not as though my teeth were miraculously straightening themselves.

Well, a year ago it happened. I somehow sensed that I had a moment to get this done. Otherwise, it would be another 20 years, and I just don't have that kind of time!

Here's where we started:

Gruesome, huh? There were teeth perpendicular to each other.

One year later, we have this:

DUH, that didn't work. You can't see my teeth there, can you? For heaven's sake! Allow me to distract you with the pretty girl in green... I'm still waiting on the orthodontist's official one-year photos. My teeth are mostly straight now. My bite is still all catty-wumpus, but we're just now starting to work on that.

Even I can't turn this process into a metaphor. Filling your mouth with metal??? No, that doesn't take us anywhere interesting. Encasing one's troubles in metal? Spending staggering amounts of money when my parents had been willing to pay for this? Sadly, no. Those are not inspirations for creative thinking, either. It just feels good to be doing one of those "I always said I would" tasks. That's part of being a grown-up too, isn't it?

Brace Yourself

They lie. Dentists lie. Invisible braces are so very not invisible. I look ridiculous. But I'm committed now. For the next two years, I have a mouth full of metal and plastic -and if this weekend is any indication, discomfort. All in the service of a higher goal.

Which is what, again?

There's probably some metaphor here about gentle pressure across time to effect change, or bones and resistance to change, or the need for (or at least the inevitability of) discomfort when creating change.

Feh. Pass the ibuprofen.

Sentences Heard While Rock Climbing

"Just hook your toe on the roof." Does it bother no one else that that sounded like a reasonable suggestion??

"Don't let me die." Three guesses who said that, but you're only going to need one.

"You could climb around on Chuck Norris again." Somehow I think he might have something to say about that, as would I, come to think about it.

"This clip? Oh, it's for if you have to go to the bathroom while you're climbing." a) You do know there are no bathrooms up there, right? And b) I now know that harnesses were designed by men, because that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

And this sign pretty much tells the whole story:

Who Am I?

I'm Andrea Buford, that's who I am. I no longer want my ex-husband's last name. It makes me sad every time I see "Rusin" written anywhere with "Andrea" attached to the front. Who IS that person, I wonder.

Like any change, it's been a little more complicated than I would have liked. I'm working on it, though -one step at a time. A small thing has been to change the name and e-mail account that is associated with this blog, without losing all the content associated with the old name. I needed space, time, and patience to figure it out, but apparently I finally did -and without moving the blog to another server. So, I THINK that from the reader's point of view, nothing has changed, except that you'll see my new name attached to posts from here on out. If that's not true, please let me know. From my point of view, this is now one more place where the new-me (the old me?) is fully present.

Whew! That feels good!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 17 people with the name Andrea Buford in the U.S.A. How many have your name?