General follow-up but not a lot of follow-through

I had an enormous to do list before heading to the east coast. In fact I write this entry while on the first leg of the journey. It would please me no end to report that I had accomplished, even with great mediocrity rather perfection, all the items on my list. But alas, I cannot.

However, I did do many of the Very Important Things. And several more will be completed during my trip.

I thought we had a housesitter all set, but she backed out. Not that we were sad, as she would not have loved on our cats that way they need. Not at all. But that left us, as of August 8 without someone to watch the house and all the cats. Luckily and with the graces of the gods and goddess, Wyatt was all taken care of thanks to Piccolo's mom. In a few hours he will be staying with his beloved Piccolo for the entire time. Do we owe Ruth big time? Oh yeah. Even before this we have many times thought how lucky we are to have her and Piccolo in our lives, how much better Wyatt’s life is because of it. But this, this is just too incredible. Finally, on Monday as in just 4 days ago we had this wonderful, passionate, creative woman cross our threshold all set to take on the challenge of the cat crew. A deep breath of relief settled over both of us.

The cat crew has expanded it appears. As I hang my head in embarrassment, despite very solid efforts to find homes for Sanaa Bella and Marcel Dupree, they seemed to have claimed our home as theirs. What’s that you say, not only did we name them but gave them middle names, we simply cursed yourselves. Perhaps. The reality is we are both in love with them, with each of us having one that has especially placed a tiny paw print on our hearts. Besides Atticus would have been beside himself if they left. No really! Yes, he’s our jealous, very attached one who we were sure would hate hate hate the beasts. But he has totally taken on the big brother role – grooming them, playing with them, and sleeping with them. The positive take on them staying is Atty would have been beside himself with loneliness with us and Wyatt gone but now he will be just fine. Yeah, I know, keep telling yourself it’s all about Atty. But, but that is a factor. I swear it is!

I haven’t made any affirmations for around the house, but I found a cool bumper sticker whose image I have made my desktop image, so it’s a start. Also, once again, I have proved to myself that talking out loud and having things affirmed and validated go a long way. It could be that I’ve just been too fricking busy in the last 10 days, but I would swear I’ve been obsessing less. I know. It hardly seems possible. On some level it appears I took L’s directive to heart to be more compassionate with myself and haven’t been riding myself so hard around food choices, giving myself permission to just eat what I feel like, even if I’m not hungry and I just want it. It’s a little like what I tried years ago based on reading, hm, what was that book called? Overcoming Overeating? It’s by two women (I know, what a fluke). Damn, this must have been back in 1990-92, somewhere in there. Of course, now as then, I am worried I will gain weight – the last thing I want to do in all this – but hell I gained the weight back I lost 2.5 years ago while seemingly monitoring and limiting, so what the hell.

Sure it would have been better to deal with the stress of the last week another way than eating what I felt like but one thing at a time. So I am back to trying to decriminalize food, eat what I crave, concentrate on when I’m full, pay attention to how specific food makes me feel physically after eating, and not beating myself up over less than ideal choices.

So now it is late Saturday night and I am finally posting, that tells you something about the last 48 hours.