Murphy's Law Meets Gigi's Law

Hello fellow bloggers!  It's been a while since my last post - my sins are....Oops!  Wrong venue.  But then again when you've been forced to your knees by Murphy's Law, it's easy to get confused as to why you find yourself in a kneeling position (and I mean that in the best possible way, of course.  This is a family blog.)

So what was so awful, you ask?  I'm embarrassed (but relieved) to admit that no one is sick, mangled or otherwise in compromised health.  Nothing was devastating.  It reminds me of that TV ad for Stamps Online, or something to that effect, where one of the people giving a testamonial states that "there is nothing worse than standing in line at the Post Office."  Really?  I know it's just an ad but somebody really needs a venti-sized cup of perspective.

In my case, it was just a little death by a thousand cuts: 
- My laptop crapped out and needed a new hard drive (all email addresses are now floating somewhere in the ethersphere, along with some files)
- Our will got lost and when we called our lawyer for a copy because we wanted to make some changes, he discovered he'd lost it too.  A new one is available at half his usual fee - $750! 
- The "waterfront, oceanview" cottage we're renting at the end of the month turns out to have another cottage right between us and said waterfront - which we never actually found out from the owner herself - only from Google Earth-ing it ourselves - unfortunately too late to do anything about it.  The ad, in our opinion, was fraught with deceptive language and photos, always careful never to show the cottage in context.  Lesson learned.  And while I have a very difficult time biting my tongue on this one (because I'll probably want to rent her actual waterfront cottage next year!), I have no problem with running her a/c with the windows open for the entire week; carbon footprint be damned.  Passive-aggressive?   Who? Moi?
- I had my physical and my doctor, whom I've had for 15 years, suggested I try bariatric surgery - not as a first option, she said to soothe my ruffled feathers, but because she knows I've been struggling with the weight for so long.  Gulp - I never considered myself big enough for that but I seem to have reached the outer limits (in more ways than one, apparently!!).
- I just turned 55 and wear a size 22.

Bleh!

But the good news is there's nothing here that can't be solved.  That's where I turn Murphy's Law ("Anything that can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment") into Gigi's Law ("Sh*t happens but is also biodegradable").  In other words, the bad times don't last forever (even though they may sometimes feel like they do!).  In spite of life's little unpleasantries, I have kept my spirits up with my nightly reading of my affirmations book and my umpteenth reading of Geneen Roth's Women, Food & God.  I've really been focusing on improving my inner workings and not allowing life to grab me by the tail and swing me around the room so much.  In the not too distant past, I was the one who would fall apart at the slightest sign of trouble.  No - check that.  I may have gone to pieces on the little stuff but, man, I can tough it out for years on the nitty-gritty, long-term stuff like chasing down every expert, resouce and remedy possible for my kid and my mother to improve their lives.  But the little things?  Remember Alien 2, the movie, where the stuff start hitting the fan and everyone's keeping their cool except for this one Marine who starts shouting, "Show's over, man!  Show's over!!"  That was me.

I wasn't liking how I felt on the inside so I'm working on changing it.  I think feeling bad on the inside is directly related to looking bad on the outside.  I'm giving myself a breather on "dieting" because it's such a toxic word to me now, but will still eat sensibly, knowing that each meal is most certainly not my last so I needn't eat like I'm going to the chair anymore.  Exercise is still in the mix too.  But the most important work I'm doing is dealing with the emotional hunger that's landed me in this hole.  Why do I eat when I'm not hungry?  Instead of my knee-jerk reaction of running to the kitchen when that urge suddenly grabs me by the tail, I sit quietly and try to identify the feeling or emotion that is driving me to behave this way.  It has been a mixed bag so far - but I've only just started.  I expect to get much better at this now that I'm focusing all of my energy on it.  I expect to trust, know, like and forgive myself more than I ever have before.  Fingers crossed.