Wrinkled.

I prefer to face my double-chin away from the camera.

This weekend, out of curiosity, I decided to try on my ‘jolly’ green gown. This is the first gown I ever draped. I did it on my ‘duct tape double’ that I made. Although it remains one my favourite gowns, I don’t wear it too much. As you can see, it’s pretty wrinkly, but I just yanked it off its hanger and put it on sans shift or petticoat. I just wanted to see how differently it would fit me with 23 pounds lost. The only problem is one I already anticipated and was aware of and that is my newly sewn stays; they have gotten almost too small. They close all the way and the sides lace together and touch with very little effort. I hope they’ll last through the Pittock Mansion picnic because I don’t want to make new ones for a bit, at least until it’s closer to October and also, December.

The construction process.

I’m still a .. um... plus-sized girl, no argument there, but I noticed two marked things when I put the gown on. 1) the sleeves weren’t quite as sausaged as they used to be and 2) the tightness across the back is completely gone. In fact, there’s even room for a bit of a ripple there in that picture. If only my neck ‘hump’ would go away, but daddy had one too and his never did. ::yurgh:: The really cool thing is that the gown is a Bib-front, and I’ve put this gown on someone who’s no more than a 12/14, and it fit her (except for her lack of stays made her a tad droopier than she should have been)—so that means I don’t have to get rid of this dress for some time, I can still iron it up for the retreat and save myself having to sew too many gowns.

The hat is my new hat acquired from JAS Townsend. I shaped it and beribboned it and added a little white feather for interest. I have shoes in that very same blue. Those, with my stockings, and my soon-to-be-made pantalettes, petticoat and shift will go with my new white gown to the Pittock Picnic this year. It’s the first time in a very long time where I’ve felt this excited about a costume event. Besides, I get to hang with my homettes, which is always good for the spirit. To top it off, I may be assisting in the construction of a tiny gown for a nine-year-old this weekend, which is very exciting.  My dearest BFF S-II has found herself a Beau who came packaged with a couple of free little munchkinettes that she gets to sew for now, which makes me so green with envy! I want to have a little girl so I can make this:

And this:

Precious!!!!

The WeightWatchers front: My weigh-in day is on Tuesdays to today’s weight loss is still at 23. Maybe I’ll have progress for the next post, who knows? I was still at 23 yesterday, but barely, almost rolling into 24. We’ll see what the next 24 hours bring.

I’m off the Lupron officially today. I’ve been jabbed with a dose of Progesterone (which still stings, damnit!) to get my girly cogs and gears kick-started and given a double-dose of Clomid. I would like to do a shout-out to my DO, Dr. Nancy Kahaner and her wonderful staff Sue and Talana... this is the best DO I’ve ever had. If you are near Sellwood/SE Portland and really want someone wonderful and trustworthy and thoughtful, I strongly recommend her. Seriously.

Sue, her nurse is also an author, so we have a lot to chitty chat about whenever I go there. It’s a tiny office, they remember your name, they treat you wonderfully, and they watch your kid while you’re in the exam room. They are good ladies, and it’s the kind of doctor’s office a small-towner like me can appreciate. I like a personal relationship with anyone who is dealing with the equipment south of the equator, let alone being in charge of my health in general.

Aaaaaaaaannnyyyway.....

The horns and gnashing teeth usually retract on beach-days.

I took Satan out this weekend. It was ostensibly for her to visit my brother; who she never asks about when in my presence, but when in the company of others; she accuses me of never taking her to see him. ::Eyeroll:: The last two times I took her, she spent less than ten minutes there before she was ready to go. This time, my brother was dead-to-the-world asleep on his chair, and my mother stayed much longer than usual (a full half-hour), taking this time to profess a litany of her tremendous parenting skills to the caregiver—telling stories that she had blatantly pulled right out of her ass. She told some outrageous lies that I had to bite my tongue to keep from either laughing or just flat out correcting her. Her primary aim on Saturday was to go spend money willy-nilly at a local nursery, Fabric Depot and at Ross. So as soon as we left, that’s where she pressed me to go. I usually do not buckle to this, and take her to see John only, but Dan was downtown slinging burgers for a charity barbecue and I figured what the hell. I took the old lady shopping.

The woman will buy anything; and she will buy it faster and in multitudes if it’s on sale. I kept having to make her put stuff down. “Mom, do you even use those? Mom, don’t you already have some of those? Mom, So-and-So doesn’t need that... Mom, that’s really ugly. Mom, no, I don’t want that, do you even *know* my tastes? That’s awful. Mom, I don’t need that, we live in a tiny house. Mom, are you sure you need that?” There is no wonder her house had turned into something like those houses on that hoarding show, and I have always had a clear image of where my father’s hard-earned money went. It was piled in store-bags with receipt still with them in her trunk, crammed in closets, left in the corner of bedrooms. My mother shops recreationally. She shops for the rush. And since she’s stopped drinking and smoking, it’s compounded into a serious issue. She dropped $300 on Saturday IN SPITE of my efforts to diminish her unadulterated spendathon. If I hadn’t intervened, it would have easily been a grand. I’m not kidding. By the time I dropped her off at the assisted living facility, I was emotionally (and physically) spent.

Being around my mother is such an exercise in restraint these days. Having to sit there and listen to her spew all the lies, the delusions, direct accusations and bitterness, the showers of praise for someone who hurt me very badly as a child, to listen to her vilify one daughter, and try to say things that one might have said in order to get me angry at them. We’re all so programmed to this sort of duplicitous and manipulative behavior that it’s hard to just sweep it under the carpet, it’s hard not to wonder just *what* sisters did say. I have to sit there and listen to her verbal assault about how horrible we all are for not wanting her living with us (I’m sorry, I don’t really want to live in a garbage dump, thankyouverymuch). She’s super angry right now because cowgirl sister is moving to eastern Oregon next month and she didn’t make any arrangements for mom to move in with her... HOW DARE SHE, THAT SELFISH GIRL! ::hahahahahaha::

It’s always astounding, even if we all know her all too well, that she does not see even in the remotest way, how she could be repugnant to us, after all her abuse, her manipulations, her neglect and her lies. She cannot see past her own nose as to why we would in any way be angry with our mother. She is in her own eyes, a saint. A martyr. She’s thrown herself to the wolves for us. My husband knows my childhood very well, and when we were in the Certification for Foster/Adoptive Parents training, he listened to all the reasons kids were taken from their parents and put into foster care, and he turned to me one of those nights and said: “It’s amazing that you guys never got taken away from your parents.” That’s the thing; some folks just hide it better than others. Some folks just never draw the necessary attention; and when the school counselors came to me, and tried to pry the truth out of me time and time again, I wouldn’t trust them to do anything they promised to do, because all my life the adults who were *supposed* to look out for me failed again and again to do so. So when Dr. Derrell sat me down and promised to help me, I never, ever gave him what he wanted; and that was the truth of my family situation. He was an untrustworthy, lying, neglectful adult after all. All I had to rely upon as a kid was me.

All those things come back to me as I drive alone with Satan prattling away beside me. She talks about the past as seen through her cartoon lenses, where she sees a world where she flew about with a cape and saved everyone from themselves, where she threw herself into burning volcanoes for us. Walking through Ross, I mentioned this one time when she did do something mom-like, it was one of the few fond memories I ever had of my childhood, and she said: “I used to be your hero. I don’t know what happened...?” I didn’t reply, because glancing at her watery, angry little eyes, the frown lines her bitterness has burned into her face, I could only feel sorry for someone who’d dug herself such a deep, dark hole with her family, and who could not even begin to see why nobody wants to pull her out of it.