Fuck. This. Month.
I’m guessing my mind weighs 1.6 pounds. Because that’s what the scale at Weight Watchers says I’ve shed since last week.
Normally I stay the same. I do gain a few ounces here and there, or lose an ounce or two. So, for Thanksgiving week — and two vats of Mom’s wonderful stuffing balls — to come and go and still lose weight, dude. I’m pretty overjoyed.
We got to talking at our meeting about planning for the holidays. Not just Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or Christmas or Kwanzaa or whatever holidays those tiki torch Nazis celebrate or condemn. But what about the days leading up to it, and the recovery days afterward?
I do talk at meetings. (I waxed poetic about how I REGRET NOTHING after eating my weight in stuffing balls, while others boo-hooed that they drank too much wine or whatever. DUDE. Suck it up and move the hell on. I promise. You’ll lose those extra pounds when you’re meant to.)
But I was silent on the subject when Leslie asked what events we have to face this season.
Everyone else was yapping about office parties. Meanwhile my head was screaming MUST BE NICE TO HAVE A JOB AT CHRISTMAS. Or a company that hadn’t downsized so freaking much in the past few years that you know NOT to count on any kind of raise, bonus or holiday gift even though YOU BUSTED YOUR BUNNY ALL YEAR.
Ahem.
In any event, you know what events I have this year, other than not stress-eating every time someone else walks out the door for good? Happy hours and going-away lunches. Not company-sponsored of course. But drowning sorrows as another one bites the dust. Self included.
I always wished I were one of those people who lost weight from stress. Hoo boy, not me. Give me ALL THE LENTIL CHIPS. And I have three bags sitting two feet from me right now … and a half-empty one in front of me that I WILL polish off because GODDAMN IT my attention span is short these days and this, at least, I can finish.
If I can make it through this, I can make it through anything. But Jesus Christ, I love my job/field so much and yet EVERYONE ELSE has offers and interviews. Why don’t I? Is the universe just saving the best for last? Or does everyone expect that, because I know everyone and everything in the field, I’ll be fine and don’t need any help?
I know it can be — and has been — worse. I also know that believing in Santa Claus has kept me going this long. I’ve had some pretty good luck along the way too.
I just hope what’s left of my Christmas spirit … and it’s not even December yet … can sustain me for a lot longer. And that it can pay the bills and then some. And that I at least go dead inside if I must, so I can’t eat my feeling because I won’t have any of those anymore.