Nostalgia

When Michelle feels out of control, she eats (that's her own confession). When I feel out of control, I clean. It's amazing that during layout, when I should be absolutely glued to my computer chair, my house is the cleanest it is out of the entire month. You should have seen it Saturday night. I can't control getting all of the stuff in for the layout--articles, ads, pictures--but I can control how clean my house is, so I clean it. Well, everybody cleans it when I'm in that mode because I don't give them any other options. My kids suddenly have a chore list that's fifteen items long and we all go at it with cleanser and toothbrushes.

So, Saturday I was feeling out of control and I cleaned my house. (The previous paragraph is simply an extra self-disclosing introduction to this single fact.) And as I was cleaning, I dusted a shelf full of old journals/albums and picked one up and started to flip through it. Well, the journal really isn't that old, just a few years. But the significance of this is....

I was hot!!!

I have been missing my body. I knew when I got pregnant I wouldn't magically still have a six-pack, and I knew I would have to work hard after the baby to get back into shape. But I didn't realize quite how fit I was until I didn't have it anymore. I was, for the most part, pretty satisfied with my body. I worked out hard and didn't worry about what I ate and I looked pretty good. But I still got on myself every now and then about another five pounds or so off of my butt.

For some perspective, here's a sample of the butt I couldn't be satisfied with:

My new perspective is that I looked so good I should have been on billboards. Well, okay, maybe I need another ten inches of height or so to qualify in the model range, but the heels help. My point is that I looked good and I couldn't fully appreciate it because I think in this society we're programmed to think that if losing fifteen pounds is good, losing another five or ten must be better.


I don't plan on making that mistake again this time. I feel pretty and basically in shape after having lost fifty postpartum pounds and weighing in at 185 (oh, what's that you say Carl? I'm down to 183?). Another twenty pounds from now, at 165 or so, I'll probably even feel a little sexy, and when I get back to 145 or 135 or whatever, I'll be smokin'!


I will not take it for granted this time! I will get in shape and it will be good enough and I will not worry about a stupid five more pounds. I will buy expensive jeans because they WILL be the jeans I plan on wearing for a long time, not just a pair of jeans on the way to losing five more pounds. And I will accept that I am pretty and sexy and woman enough.


Yeah!!!! Time to go see Carl...