Spring! And things.

After several weeks of hellish coldness (heh.) today has a warm wind blowing. It is lovely.

I am doing some great Quaker reading that I hope to share about soon once I've done some more processing. Going to Business meeting has done a lot to re-invest me in my search, and I'm really glad that I started that again, though there are so many frustrations and heartbreaks to be had down those lines, as well.

One of the main reasons my blogging has been so sparse is that I'm just exhausted. I've always struggled with fatigue, but this no-sleep-without-pills or 12-hrs-of-sleep's-not-enough-with-pills cycle is pretty merciless. I have a good new doctor and I am hopeful that things will straighten out someday soon. I have already found my mood greatly improved, and I think the new medicines combined with the return of the sun are responsible for that. I haven't had a meltdown or any big Days of Darkness in months, and that's amazing. So, if I could just not be tired, that would be so great. Right now sleeping is my main leisure activity, before knitting, cooking, even reading. And that's not a great way to be burning calories.

Speaking of calories, thanks for the words of wisdom on the last post. One of the great things that came out of my foray into plain dress was a certain degree of freedom from worries about my looks. Though, as Cat says, simplicity may be cuter on a size 6 frame, I haven't been a size 6 in years and don't really expect to be again. Wearing one of three generously-cut, un-sized dresses every day made obsessing over pant-size irrelevant. I wasn't likely to notice small day-to-day fluctuations in weight. None of the three dresses "made my butt look big" and that was that.

I stepped away from traditional plain dressing because I grew increasingly uneasy with the fundamentalist politics the dress seemed to broadcast. Traditional plain-dressing, especially for women, came to seem inextricable from certain ideas about gender-roles and misogynistic sexual morality, wherein some man has care of rationing out a given woman's virtue. And to be honest, with a new desk-job, it no longer felt at all suited to my way of life. I didn't feel as though I was witnessing, I felt awkward and out-of-place. I could have just switched to wearing less distinctive plain dress, but instead I simply drifted back into regular clothes, though 99% second-hand.

I'm not blaming this switch, because I DID gain 60 lbs. And I am fairly content with my wardrobe as it is. But it is interesting to me how quickly I can fall back into freaking out about a pant-size. I know there is vanity involved, certainly. Not so much about the way I look, because I am tall and I don't look that different, especially in the still fairly-plain clothes I wear day-to-day (I'm not trying to fit into a mini-dress or hip-huggers.) But I think I am vain just about the "thought" of my weight. Maybe I was proud of the old one.

Still, I want to lose it, for health-reasons and for self-esteem reasons, even if there's some vanity involved. So it's something I am thinking about.

I've also been dealing with huge frustrations with my application to school. I've got my heart set on it more than I should, and I am trying to let go a bit and just wait and see if way opens. In the meantime, way is being continually obstructed by bureaucratic idiocy, not on the part of the school I want to go to, but on both a larger and smaller scale. The school I went to (where I flushed away my anti-depressants and then proceeded to waste the next three years of my life in a miserable abusive relationship) no longer really "exists" and getting paperwork from them is like pulling teeth from a chicken. I'm angry that I have to think about it so much. The process is reminding me of my divorce: the impossible paperwork, the indifferent and unresponsive other party, the dredging up of horrible memories, and the drawn-out aggravation. Also, the College Board has hung me out to dry for over a month as they do an "archive search" for my ancient (6 year old) SAT scores, which they wouldn't need if I had gone to a "proper" highschool with a "proper" transcript, instead of reading the Western literary canon at home while helping to raise a passle of children. Everything has to be official, ratified, signed, undersigned, cataloged, numbered, ordered, serialized and stamped by some Authority, and it's making me crazy. I am running out of time to get these documents and can't help feeling annoyed that I even need them. I am smart! I work hard! Why is that not enough?

/rant.

This is not ruining my life, despite my vehemence. I'm feeling pretty happy, believe it or not. But it's sure taking away a lot of my energy.

But then, I saw a crocus today.