I post very occasionally on My Tomboy Kid. (Yes, even less than I post here – shocking.)

The Caitlyn Jenner story – plus Transparent, plus Laverne, plus Aidian, plus a few transfolks I know – has me thinking a lot about the gender spectrum. 

My kid is determined to live in the middle of that spectrum, identifying as female (pronoun wise), while presenting as male. I want to put labels on her, but she defies them. And that’s amazing.

Raising a Gender Non-Conforming Kid: the Desire to Label is Real

Just before Mothers’ Day, my grandmother died. She’d lived a long life (nearly 98 years), and only took a turn for the worse at Christmas. It was not pretty at the end, but the whole ordeal was short, and that was a blessing. I got to say goodbye, mostly. She was dozing, but responded when I talked about her grandkids and great grandkids loving her very much. (I was the sole representative of those groups – it was a weird and responsible feeling.)

Since she died, we’ve experienced a number of financial surprises. Turns out that she was a master investor. Having lived more than half of her life either retired or semi-retired, she was set to keep living comfortably for many more years. Crazy, but now I know why she was so determined to hit 100. She was sharp as a tack and financially set. Dang.

With those surprises has come a very significant (by my standards) inheiritance. Some is tied in investments that must sit for 12 months (to avoid capital gains taxes). Some is tied up in a home sale. But all of it is on the horizon, and it is Very. Weird.

We are used to living relatively close to the edge of the old bank account. We’re always up on our bills (thanks to Michelle’s responsible ways – I’m kind of lax with deadlines), we can splurge occasionally, but big things (like a new roof) keep getting put off. We take vacations, sure, and ‘happily’ paid for massive fertility and daycare expenses, but we do end up charging more than we’d like to. Our credit card bills are not small. Our retirement savings is reasonable, but not as robust as it could be. We’ve saved for about one year of college, but not the other seven we’ll need to get them through bachelors’ degrees. That’s how we’ve lived, and while far from ideal, it’s “worked” for the duration of our life together.

Suddlenly, we get to make different choices. The roof will happen without financing it. Our credit card debt will be  paid off and we’ll cut up the cards. Our every-four-years vacation schedule may compress into a two or three year cycle.

Faced with this suprise bounty (I anticipated getting about 1/6 of what’s actually coming our way), I am both grateful and scared. What if we blow it, and end up right where we started? What if we can’t be people who have nice things? What if our real problem wasn’t finances, but instead a lack of discipline or simplicity or even gratitude?

I am SO LUCKY to be facing these fears, but they’re real.

I hope we do this right. This is an incredible opportunity to restart and retool, and could positively impact our kids and grandkids. How weird and wonderful.

Since last August, I’ve lost just over 20 pounds.

While that’s slow progress, the biggest news is that I haven’t slid back up the scale, as often happens.

Instead – with the great help of the Fitness Challenge group on FB (ask me more if you want to join) – I’m eating my fruits/vegetables, drinking water, exercising, and generally thinking more about health. The challenge is on a brief break for June, and I won’t lie and say things are perfect, but I continue to slowly lose weight. My body wants to – it’s natural state of comfort/stasis is about 10-15 pounds away.

I know that I was initially willing to crash diet, take pills, anything and everything. That didn’t last long, although it gave me the inital shove I needed to start the ball rolling.

Now it’s all about slow progress and better habits.

I *did* come across a group that claims exactly that, then includes testimonies like, “I’ve lost 25 pounds in four weeks and it couldn’t be easier!” Because that group is sneakily selling Medifast, which I’ve known to be an extreme – and sometimes medically necessary but always tightly supervised – method. The fact that they’re pushing it on people who’d like to lose 10 pounds seems criminal. But I digress. I ran, not walked, away from that group, and I’m looking forward to the safe and sane approach of the Fitness Challenge, which restarts on 6/28.

I’d like to lose 10-15 pounds in the next… six to nine months. Pretty reasonable, if you ask me. 🙂

After <insert long time period here>, I am ready to write. I have many topics to write about, even. I KNOW. 

So I will.

So…

I’ve been quiet on the weight loss front.

I’ve discovered that every time I crow about my accomplishments, I immediately fall off the wagon. Don’t know what that’s about, but I’ve done it time and again.

That doesn’t mean I’m not still working on it. I’ve lost 12 pounds since August. Not quick by any means, but the part where I continued slow progress over the holidays feels like an accomplishment worth noting.

If it matters, I only used most of one bottle of Hydroxycut. I’m not opposed to it… I just decided it wasn’t for me at this time.

—–

In regular life news, it’s time to register the littlest guy for kindergarten, which is surreal. We’ll find out in April or May if he got in to our school of choice. If everything works out, we’ll have a kindergartner and a sixth grader at the same school – convenient for us and pretty great for both of them.

In other life news, there’s a possibility that a light rail train line may be built in our neighborhood. If that happens, our house (and the whole side of our street) will be taken by right of eminent domain. I hope it doesn’t happen, and will be vocal during the public comment period. That would be a huge bummer to lose our house.

—–

This post has officially lived up to its title. 🙂

203 – 193 = 10

Whoop whoop!

I’m at nearly nine pounds lost.

After what, six weeks? More?

D’oh! Not nearly as fast as I’d hoped, but it’s something: 5% of total weight.
—–

Thus far I’ve tried…

GNC Lean 7-Day Rapid Loss Kit

GNC Lean shakes

Hydroxycut Non-Stimulant Formula

Pilates

Trail running

Disneyland (this was both an exercise an eating plan – it consisted of just being and doing whatever I wanted)

GNC Super Green Women’s Active formula vitamins

Naturopathy (as of 10/2)

Removing cow dairy from my diet (as of 10/6)

Coconut oil – both as a food and as a beauty product

Agave (vs white sugar)

Slightly less wheat products

Slightly more fresh vegetables

More water

Naturopathic supplements (Gastrex, Gastrogest, REM, Sentra PM)

Removing Prilosec – it only suppresses acid, but doesn’t aid digestion

Continuing my usual mood drugs – Lamictal and Ziprasidone

—–

Next steps:

Avoiding cow dairy (except for butter) from 10/2 to 10/23 at least

I’m part of the IVP Weight Loss 8-week Challenge as of 10/6

Potentially removing wheat gluten from 10/23 – not feeling this one yet

A bit more Pilates

A bit more running or walking

{I briefly posted this on social media, then remembered how many of my FB friends are also my mom’s friends. Here’s the comment I posted, then took down. It’s about Janay Rice, whose husband Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely from the NFL after video of him beating her unconscious was shared with the media.}

——-

This whole thing hurts my soul.

 As someone who was regularly injured as a child/teenager, I know very well what it feels like to defend your attacker, and to remain in relationship with them long after the abuse “stops.”

As a 13-year old, I lied during a CPS investigation because I thought that going to foster care would harm my college chances. The fucked up thing is that I was probably right. Kids in foster care have a hell of a time going to college. I stayed, I played along with the charade that nothing had ever happened (even though it kept happening for two more fucking years after that CPS investigation).

I played along because I thought it would benefit me. I was the perfect kid – class president, captain of the swim team, the high school mascot… if there was a way to overachieve, I found it. I was a perfect kid who still got smacked and shoved and bitten (that was what triggered the CPS investigation – and the scars are still pretty prominent). But I DID get to go to a very good college (without loans), so there’s that… (gallows humor, sorry)

Even with my own background of childhood abuse, I still question how/why an adult DV victim stays with their abuser. I know that type of thinking is actually victim blaming, and I shouldn’t ever go down that road.

Janay lost parts of her soul to this man, and is in a living nightmare. Yes, she may have stayed in part because of the money. I get that, because I sort of did too.  Right now, though, I can’t imagine the humiliation she feels about this incident. This horrible thing happened and she stayed. And now the entire world knows about the secret she likely tried to keep – even from herself. Poor woman.

I hope that people of good will can figure out how to support and help her. Right now she’s paying the price TWICE for his transgressions.

—–

Are there other abuse survivors out there in blogland who would like to talk/write more about this? I very seldom talk about it in real life (mostly because I don’t want people to assume that I’ll repeat the cycle), but it seems like the right thing to talk about now.

For what it’s worth, my mom’s rages were the worst during menopause… a phase I can expect to enter in the next year or so. (The women in my family tend to ‘complete’ menopause by their early forties. We’ve also seen a pattern of insanity – no, really – during that phase, so I’m scared to death that I’ll snap.)

{This is where I’d normally write a positive sentence about the go-forward or some shit like that. This post doesn’t get one of those.}

This just in…

Per my fancy new scale, which was 100% sure I weighed 203 just the other day has started to show movement.

First 200, then today’s number… 198.5!

That’s 4.5 pounds in an improbable few days, but if I look at it as 4.5 over three weeks, that seems about right.

The only thing I’ve added to the already-elaborate regimen: coconut oil.

A not-ever-chubby friend of mine recently lost a lot of weight (guessing 5-10), which is weird to see with the already-thin crowd.

I know that she doesn’t starve herself or do anything wacky, but the other night she told me that she uses coconut oil for lots of fun things, including as a nighttime moisturizer. She suspects that the coconut oil somehow helped her body shed surface weight/water/fat, and even if it didn’t, she loves how her skin feels when she uses it.

I stopped at the natural grocery yesterday and picked up coconut oil, and I’m hooked already. It smells nice, absorbs very quickly, and adds a slight summer glow (although I’m already quite tan, so it might not happen in the “months of pallor” – November through June around here).

Man oh man, I guess this is what passes for excitement these days. 🙂

I’ve been at this for three weeks now. I had expected crazy quick results (based on previous weight loss), but instead I’m seeing a very slow creep. I’m beginning to suspect that there is not magic bullet, save a medically monitored program like Medifast or even a lap band.

My current system:

– Hydroxycut Non-Stimulant formula twice daily, taken 30-60 minutes before my largest meals

– GNC Lean Shakes to replace one or two meals/snacks daily

– GNC vitamin packs (GNC Green Ultra Mega Women’s Active) once a day

– 1,500 calories per day, logged in MapMyRun.com

– Pilates for 30-60 minutes, 3-5 times a week

– Some cardio, but not consistently yet (it HURTS with this much weight)

Progress to date:

– 203 lbs to start, 202 today. [One(ish) pound lost – I didn’t have a scale to start with, so I’m guesstimating, but I’m down .9 pounds from the last time I stood on a doctor’s scale.]

– I have been journaling my food pretty consistently (save for two days on Labor Day weekend – I think I kept in range on both of those days too – just didn’t journal)

– I got a scale. It even does body fat percentage, but it may need to calibrate for awhile. I’m either at 38% (eeps) or 49% (which I believe would equal dead).

– My ring isn’t too tight in the mornings.

– Disneyland is in a few weeks, and I have one more pair of functional shorts. Score!

– Michelle bought me a dress the other day (at Target for $12), and it’s actually quite cute. I think I’ll wear it like a Nuu-Muu after Disneyland. Looking cute during runs is such a good motivator!

– Despite all of this, my absolute favorite “outfit” all summer has been my red va-va-va-voom swimsuit/tankini from Torrid, Under Armour bike shorts (worn over a standard bikini bottom), and my wonderful red Keens. I’ve had the best time at Wild Waves all summer, have a great tan, and feel quite body confident when I’m there.

Current Feeeeeelings:

– Disappointed. I think I just believed that once I had the willpower, everything would magically cooperate. It’s not looking so hopeful.

– Kind of pissed at GNC. I’ve spent a shizton of money there already, and I doubt I’m done yet. It seems like this stuff shouldn’t be so expensive, but I keep reminding myself that it’s still cheaper than losing a foot to diabetes or some horror like that.

– A little horrified by pictures. I really don’t believe I look like I do until I see photographic evidence. Eek.

– See above about my swimsuit. I have no idea WHY I feel so confident, but it gives me hope that the right clothes (probably also from Torrid) could help me feel much better about myself as this slow process creeps along.