So, I don’t know if I mentioned my own illness (fever, cough, sneezing, etc.) this week. It kept me home from work — I worked from home — all week. And now, this weekend, my son has come down with the same thing. And I’m not yet over my case. So we’re quite a household. Two runny-nosed coughing individuals, wearing the most comfortable thing available and mostly sitting on our butts. Tissues are everywhere. I’m barely keeping the kitchen clean enough to avoid disaster. Eating is going a bit downhill but it’s not terrible.

And today, the capper on the whole strange intense week. I have pretty good reason to believe I’m pregnant. Yep. Totally hasn’t sunk in yet. I think we have to name it “N.”

P.S. Don’t tell anyone as this is very very early and obviously not public information.

For the first few years of our time together, N.’s place, at night, was with me in bed. He’d curl up between my legs, so regularly that I was conditioned to carefully lift my legs and reposition them around him when I flipped over from back to front, or vice versa. Now, that comfortable presence, once so close to me, is gone forever.

It seems he had internal bleeding after the surgery, and he just kept losing blood. I even gave permission for a cat blood transfusion, to no avail. I’m going through the regular stuff: anger at myself for taking him in for surgery; anger at the surgeon for somehow screwing up; anger at my family for not appreciating him enough. But, at the bottom, there’s deep sadness, and love, and a hint of acceptance. He was a good cat and I did the best I could to help heal him. But it just didn’t work.

Now, how do I tell my boy that we no longer have a kitty cat to taunt, to brush, to feed? I suppose, in some ways, it’s a blessing that he probably won’t understand. But it also depresses me that he doesn’t comprehend the significance of the passing of this family member. He’ll just blithely go about the business of demanding 100% of mommy’s attention, while mommy just wants to cry.

(I just went to get a tissue and started sobbing when I saw an unopened box of cat litter from a recent shopping trip. Who would have thought cat litter would get me emotional? And I can still hear his little cat fountain tinkling in the other room. I don’t have the heart to go pull the plug.)

Well, it’s late… 1:21 a.m. P.T. I’d better do something else for a little while, so I can try going to sleep soon.

Before I had the boy, there was the cat. We’ll call him N.

N. came into my life as a loudly mewling presence outside my window at around 2 a.m. I wasn’t going to go wandering behind my apartment complex at that hour, so I forced myself to go back to sleep. The next morning, I discovered my neighbor, a cat owner, had been adventurous enough to retrieve the pathetic little creature. The little orange tabby cat was pitiful, and covered with fleas, and could meow at the top of his lungs. I’d been thinking about getting a cat anyway, so when I discovered he was headed to the pound, for certain euthenasia (he was too young to adopt), I decided to take him in. Just a few weeks old, he’d apparently been abandoned by his mother (surely an inner city crackhead cat) and he would have died from his flea bites, I found out from the vet later.

Over those first few weeks, I had to come home from work every few hours and feed him cat formula with a bottle. I had a camping trip planned, so I took him along with me — I couldn’t leave him — and he slept with me in my tent. He was my baby…

Then he became my adolescent, and my adult (but always my baby), and he traveled with me from Houston, to New York, to California. He sat on my lap, slept with me at night, and comforted me when I needed it. Somewhere along there, my husband (allergic to cats) came into my life, and the boy (attention hog) came along. N. has been neglected far too much recently.

And now, he’s at the veterinarian’s office awaiting surgery, and I’ve been crying on and off. In part, it’s because I feel the burden of loving this cat is all on me, and I’ve been falling down on the job. My husband can’t pet him because he’s allergic, and my son is mostly jealous (and also scared) of him. But he’s a very loveable and sweet cat, and he’s going through such a hard time right now. I guess by writing about this, I’m hoping my vast Internet audience will send a little bit of love N.’s way. He needs it just now.

UPDATE: Just left N. at the emergency vet center. The first vet said he came through the operation fine, but they thought he should have overnight monitoring, so asked me to take him to the emergency pet place (where they have someone on duty 24 hours). When we arrived and they took his vitals, they said he was in shock; they couldn’t get a blood pressure reading; and his temperature was 10 degrees below what they would expect, even given his being post-operative. The prognosis was pretty shaky. This after the other place had led me to believe he was doing OK. I guess things changed…

Before, I left, though, I got to go in to say good night, and stroke his little head (between fits of bawling). The technician there said they were able to get a blood pressure reading and it was better, so things were looking a little up. Here’s hoping. It’s going to be a long night. Thanks for your kind thoughts, Mia and Shauna.

This afternoon, I did my usual coaxing and physical manipulation to get the the boy into the car at his day care center. I’d spent the day working from home, because I’m feeling really ill (upper respiratory infection-like, plus body aches and feverish) and also because I had to take the cat to the vet this morning. He (the 13-year-old cat) has been undergoing various types of tests the last week or so, after he started acting strangely — like falling off the couch. Something was obviously wrong.

So, we headed to the veterinarian’s office to pick up the cat. While we waited, the boy caused all sort of havoc, crawling on the floor, wandering down hallways, and barrelling into offices and waiting rooms where he didn’t belong. I chased him, tried to corral him, and gave him a stern talking to. Nothing made a difference. Finally, we got the cat, after I found out he needs surgery estimated to cost around $3000. So, I trundled outside, cat carrier in one hand, so relieved to get the boy out of the office. I held his hand tightly, because we were about to cross a parking lot and a street. Once across, I let him go, and he took the opportunity to run off toward a 7-11 parking lot.

Keep in mind, I’ve got a very distressed sick cat in a carrier in one hand. I was furious. And ill myself. And stressed and worried over the cat’s illness — both its impact on the cat and on our finances. I couldn’t chase the boy because I was holding the cat carrier. Doesn’t this kid have any empathy for my feelings, and can’t he understand that running away just isn’t very fun, or funny, to me? Nope.

—

It’s this kind of stuff that drives me crazy on a daily basis:

• The glass the boy knocked off the bedside table, and broke, while I was away (in bare feet) getting him some milk. “Stay on the bed,” I shouted, hoping he’d actually obey, for once. (He did, thankfully. Of course, I’m still stepping on small shards of glass beside my bed.)
  
• When I try to get him dressed in the morning, he scoots from one side of the bed to the other, so he’s always just out of reach, giggling all the time — while I keep glancing at the clock to see how late I’m going to be to work.
  
• Whenever I try to get him into the car — whether it’s going to day care or coming home — he never fails to run away down the sidewalk, giggling, looking back to make sure I am chasing him. Yesterday, someone saw this behavior and suggested I get a leash. It’s worth considering. He’s putting himself in danger by running away so much, and I know chasing him only encourages him.
  

Everything — getting dressed, eating, getting in the car, going to day care, turning off the TV — is a struggle. He’s just a typical 2-year-old, I know, but sometimes I wonder if I have the strength.

—-

BTW, I’m really just letting off steam here — something I desperately need to do. Eating is still good, despite illness, cat surgery, frustrating boy, etc. Not exercising due to illness. And now… must sleep.

Yesterday, I had my best treadmill workout in ages. I felt strong and confident, and ran the first five minutes, then alternated 5 minutes walking and 5 minutes running for 30 minutes in all. I took it up to a 2 incline, so it was challenging on the legs as well as the heart. Not quite up to my marathon or triathlon days, but I certainly feel like I’m making progress, fitness-wise.

The most pleasing part is that I feel my body better these days. Even as I’m typing here, I feel my triceps and my biceps. When I walk, I feel how my abdominal muscles are holding me upright. That niggling back pain I’d been feeling occasionally — it’s gone. And my knee feels more secure, too. I guess the muscles I need are being strengthened. Thank goodness. I’ve also been enjoying my workouts. They’ve been of 3 varieties: the treadmill workout (similar to the above), the The FIRM workout video, and a pilates video. The FIRM is pretty intense, with weight lifting, stepping up onto boxes, and dancing-like moves. And I still have a long way to go before I can do all of the moves without alteration, so that workout should see me through for some time.

I think I’ve been pretty successful in changing my view of things to “eating healthy” rather than “dieting.” I’ve also been trying to explain it to my husband, so he can help support me, and participate, as well — especially where it comes to helping our son gain healthy eating habits. So far, so good.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my history of being fat, and being not fat, and being fat again, etc. ad nauseum. This has been on my mind because of a couple of posts I’ve read recently. And I suppose because there’s some part of me that thinks that, by looking back, I can figure out who I really am — whether I’m genetically and profoundly and at-the-heart-of-it-all a fat person, or a skinny person. (Which is probably completely bullshit because The Power of Now taught me that hanging onto the past as a form of identity is just stupid and self-defeating, but anyway…)

I wasn’t a fat kid. In fact, I have a picture of myself from maybe second grade in which I was the skinniest, gangliest thing ever. It was a team photo from my first ever softball team, and I recall being the smallest girl on the team, and also trembling with fright every time I went up to bat, hoping against hope that I’d be walked. That was the first year. The second, I grew into a star player. I eventually became a pitcher and played first base. In soccer, I was a forward and a goalie. In short, I was pretty darned athletic, and very competitive, and confident, and I loved it.

Flash forward a few years when, in junior high and high school, no athletic options were open to me at school (I failed to make the couple of teams I tried out for). I ended up joining the marching band, and my physical activity dropped to nil. Participating in marching band meant one could opt out of gym. I’d once entertained the idea of trying out for the drill team, but there was a strict weight limit, and I was already over by that time — and I wasn’t even fat, I see looking back, until late high school. Of course, I’d believed I was fat since at least elementary school, when we endured annual public weighings, and I discovered I weighed the exact same amount as a boy I had a crush on — how unladylike. (Through my school years I spent lots of time at Weight Watchers and at Overeaters Anonymous, and in therapy, some of the time in the company of my mother.)

I didn’t begin to re-discover my inner athleticism until after college, when I started trying to lose weight and became a gym rat. That led to taking up running, and taking up with a group of runners. Then I did a marathon and some triathlons. We had amazing times training, and drinking beer post-training, and traveling to do races. Then I moved to New York, and never did quite find a group of friends that matched my previous set. Those people had known me as a runner; running was what we did for fun together, and that was just the way it was. Ah, for that society now.

I’m working now on building myself up again that way. One key, I think, is making time for it, even if my son wails and screams for my attention while I’m exercising (like grabbing my leg while I’m doing an exercise video, or wanting to get down from the jogging stroller). It’s important, I’m saying to him (and showing him), that Mommy exercise regularly. Mommy is an athlete, or at least takes care of herself physically, and doing that requires a commitment to exercise. So long as he gets his running-around time, and his park time, and his Mommy-attention time, all’s good, as far as I’m concerned.

When I was growing up, neither one of my parents exercised much. When I was a teenager, or so, my mom joined a gym and started doing Jazzercise or aerobics or something like that, but never consistently enough for me to feel like it was just a normal part of life. My aunt, by contrast, never let a day go by without making it to the gym or going for a run — it was easier, for her, because she never worked full-time like my mother did. Anyway, all this to say that more’s at stake now than just my own perception of myself as a runner, or an athlete, or someone who takes care of herself. My kid needs to learn that this is just how it is… you exercise, because it’s fun, because it helps keep you healthy, and because it makes your body feel good. That’s just the way it is.

The last few weeks have seen a pretty big transformation for me, in some ways. I am pretty consistently eating the good stuff (the stuff that’s good for me) whenever I can — exceptions include work functions where no other food is available, and, uh… my birthday. (BTW, I am now 39 — totally “pushing 40″ — which leads me into a lot of thoughts about further reproduction, but that’s another entry. )

I’ve also been exercising a LOT more than before. It still isn’t super-intense, but I’ve definitely done 2-3 times a week, 30 minutes each time. Now that I am back to being a (temporary) single parent, I’ve worked out a couple of ways that work for me to exercise: wake up at 6 and get on the treadmill, before C. gets up at 7 (this only works when he sleeps that late); or put him in the jog stroller and walk/run with him to the park, where he gets his exercise.

I think I need more variations in here. I’d love to get on the treadmill while he’s watching TV or otherwise occupied, but I’m afraid he would get too close to the treadmill and get injured (is he old enough to know better by now?). He’s not so great at letting me go about my business without hanging on my legs, sitting on my lap, etc. So I am still thinking about that. (He is sitting on my lap now.)

The other thing I need to work on is portion size. If I eat the good stuff, but way too much of it, I still feel bloated and yucky. So I’ll be thinking about that in the days and weeks to come.

I need to edit the few entries about feedback I’ve gotten from Adam (TBT), because, upon further reflection (and it being pointed out to me), I see I haven’t put things completely into context. I look at this place as a way to let off steam, and I posted my initial emotional reaction to what was going on. But it was wrong of me to repeat what he had said, without completely detailing what he knew about my situation, and what he didn’t. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry. I know Adam is trying to develop a business, and I think it’s a fantastic business idea - or I wouldn’t be a client. I don’t want to sabotage that simply to let off steam. Anyway, I’ll be editing those entries to add a more detailed explanation of where he was coming from.

I’ve had two pretty terrible days, diet-wise, and I’m not feeling the love from TBT. Example excerpt from e-mail: “Ya had a cupcake, a muffin, and a cookie…these are treats…not entitlements…there’s a reason people are overweight b/c they eat these kind of treats…it’s not good for our body’s or else it wouldn’t make us gain weight…I Need to know WHY. We’ll overcome this…”

Why? [Update: TBT didn’t know the following when he wrote the above.] Well… It was my birthday? That’s part of it. I was also at a work conference and didn’t have control over what food was available. I am also down because my husband is back in NYC, after spending a week with us. A week was just long enough to imagine what it’d be like to be back as a family again — but an idealized version, because he didn’t have to work during that week. Anyway, these aren’t valid excuses, really. I’m OK with having that stuff on my birthday or occasionally. But, that’s over now. Now what?

I need to get back on the horse, on the wagon, or follow some other Western-type metaphor. The shift that really needs to happen, long term, is that I need to stop thinking of cookies, cupcakes, etc. as “the good stuff” — as in, the stuff that’s universally acknowledged to taste best, and which I want. I need to think of it as “the bad stuff” — as in, the stuff that makes me feel like crap (and not just psychologically, but physically, too). But that’s tough for me. Is my body-to-brain feedback loop missing, somehow? Or does it just take the feedback a LONG time to make it from body to brain?

So far, I’ve done great getting back into “regular” eating. I passed up a bagel this morning, in part because I’d already had (cereal) breakfast. But now there’s a damned company barbecue for lunch. Hot dogs are NOT what I need to be eating. The defeatist POV is: “the deck is stacked against me.” The positive POV (which I will adopt) is: “thank goodness there are good choices for me, even at a BBQ.” Hopefully that will be prove to be true. Someone’s walking around saying “BBQ, BBQ, BBQ” and clapping her hands, so I think that means it’s time for lunch.

When we went to the Starbucks drive-through this afternoon, I automatically started considering my options. Something with no sugar. Something with low or non-fat milk. I settled on a non-fat latte.

Just a few days ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the “no sugar” or “low or non-fat milk” requirements. Yet, it wasn’t hard to abide by them, at all. It’s like a switch flipped in my brain and I’ve started to make decisions based upon my healthy eating goals, rather than making decisions based upon a whim or a desire to treat myself. What’s changed? Nothing, really. Just this switch in my mind.

And now, instead of thinking “can I squeeze in an exercise session?” I’m thinking “how can I fit in some exercise?” and envisioning strategies by which I can accomplish what I’ve set out to do. I’m also eating less, generally, and I feel lighter and more energetic, not weighed down by the extra food I don’t need — so, it’s easier to envision exercising, even after a meal.

—

Because of the recent fat-blog-land controversy over the merits or detriments of dieting, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the subject. Yes, I want to lose weight. Mostly, I want to take care of my body. This involves a few things:
*Eating healthy things in moderate amounts, until I’m satisfied.
*Exercising on a regular basis.

All going well, I’ll acomplish a few things:
*Lose weight to take some strain off my joints. (I have been feeling creaky with age and my knees have been a little unreliable lately.)
*Reduce my risk of type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related diseases (including heart disease).
*Feel more energetic and strong, so I can take part in activities (running, hiking, biking) that I enjoy, more easily.
*Increase my life span, so I can be around for my son’s growing up.
*Reduce my likelihood to experience depression.

So, am I “dieting” or changing my eating for all the wrong reasons? I really don’t think so.

I definitely want to expand the range of clothing that I’m able to wear, and feel better about the way I look, fashion-wise, but I feel like treating myself right (eating well, exercising) will naturally produce that result. After all, my diet has really been crap. I’ve not been abiding by anything resembling “health at any size.” I’ve been eating doughnuts and McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches (+ hash browns) for breakfast. I’ve been eating huge sandwiches of salami and ham, on French bread, for lunch — with potato chips on the side and a chocolate bar for a snack. And then I’ve been topping it off with pizza for dinner. No, that isn’t necessarily a representative day, but it gives you an idea of how much room there is for improvement. Plenty!