A Heavy Issue

We women are so twisted. Most of my life, I have been a normal weight. In my mid-30s I went on anti-depressants for anxiety over my impending divorce and a life long battle with low level depression. I gained 30 pounds in 2 years and a grand total of 55 pounds in 5 years. After having my youngest I had lost 25 pounds.
In my mind I am the normal weight person I was for 35 years. I get shocked when I look in the mirror and see fat and think that surely I must have some terrible charater flaw to look this way. I am eating well: lots of veggies, lots of fiber and water, low in refined sugar and processed foods. I take lots of vitamins, exercise 3 times a week and honestly feel better than I have on 10 years. I wear a size 12 or 14 pants which by the rate they sell out at the store is about average. I wear much bigger on top as I am well endowed and still nursing but am not shopping in the "women's sizes".
So why do I feel so guilty? Like I am letting everybody down. Those evil voices inside tell me that I am a bad person that deserves bad things to happen to them because I am overweight. I keep thinking that if I was thin I would deserve to be loved and have a happy life. Yet my rational mind knows that these are huge lies. My husband loves me passionately and wouldn't love me more or be more romantic towards me if I was thinner. I also know that during the many years I was thin I still thought was wasn't thin enough or was unhappy about other aspects of my appearance.
Why can't I seem to overcome this, especially since I see that I am passing this on to my oldest daughter. I will say that my mother worries about her weight although not obsessively. She has made subtle comments about my weight since I was a teen. I don't think she even knows she does it. Yet this is no excuse . I am an adult and not a prisoner of my upbringing. So why the fixation with my weight? I would like to think I am not so controlled by cultural expectations that I am influenced by that.
This is why I say women are so twisted. It is not just me that fights this battle. People are making millions of dollars selling diet programs because we are so obsessed with our weight. I read in other blogs about other women determinedly trying to beomce a "normal" weight. I wish I could rebel and shout how in other times and places no one expected a 40 year old mother of four to weigh what a 20 year old does. That a little extra weight was once a sign of health and prosperity. That my health is great, my marriage is exceptional, I am living a full life and my weight is not who I am. Instead, I agonize over the number on the scale and secretly visit diet plan web sites, and watch documentaries on weight loss. I am woman, hear me whimper?

On things that go bump or boo in the night

As a child I was terrified of ghosts. I beleived they were real and wanted to get me, especially at night in my bed. I was sure they lurked in the walk-in closet at my sister's end of the room and especially down the crack behind my bed. I had nightmares about their black shadowy hands reaching up tp grab me. I slept with a night light until I was in my mid-20s. You get the picture.
You can imagine how relieved I was when as an adult I was taught by protestant evangelical teachers that there were no ghosts, only demons, and demons have no power over Christians. Excellent, no need to worry ever again, and that reasoning worked for several years. Now keep in mind, I have no reason to worry. It's not like I was ever assailed by supernatural phenomena to explain. I can only think of one time something unexplained happened. I was 18 and newly moved in with a friend. I was home alone in the afternoon. I definitely heard a raspy voice call my name. Nothing more.
Yet I was told stories by people I knew and respected. Not the sort of people who are prone to flights of fancy or expecting something supernatural to happen to them, like my brother. My brother is 11 years older than me. He is a well read, biker type, think long hair scraggly beard, peircing beady eyes. He was with friends at a rented house, sitting around the kitchen. He looked up and saw a man in a brown old-fashioned suit standing in the hallway. As they watched he turned and vanished. No drama. No preceding conversation that would have prompted a mass hallucination. Then Mr Moo told stories from the Navy. (Mr Moo served on a submarine when he was in his 20s. He worked in the engine department but everybody on a sub must be able to do every job in a basic way. ) One time they were passing over an area where, during WWII subs or ships had sunk and they picked up voices speaking in German from under the water, calling for help. No ships were within hundreds of miles of them. The radioman who first heard them transferred out at the earliest opportunity, it shook him up so much. Then there was the time they raised the periscope and saw an 18th century ship complete with crew, up close. They even surfaced to look but it wasn't there anymore.
So if these were demon manifestations, what was the point? Demons don't just do creative or recreational things in their spare time do they? OK, I don't know for sure but it doesn't seem likely. So if the demons are in the business of pulling people away from God, most of the ghostly stuff just doesn't fit the program. Most of it actually gives evidence for the afterlife and the imortality of peoples souls. At worst it is neutral, like thumps and moving objects. So although I realized that demon activity was "the party line", it just wasn't matching the evidence.
Now comes the rational/logical/theological part. Protestants believe it has to be demon activity because souls go immediately to Heaven or Hell after death. No other options or it would throw their whole doctrine in to question. Now here I am becoming Catholic. Totally different view of what happens after death. Plenty of opportunity for interaction between the dead and the living. Yet no one has been able to show me if their is a Catholic position on the nature of ghosts. There is nothing in the catechism on the subject.
Thus I am left with no pat answer anymore. Do I think ghosts can "get me"? No. Do I think all "spooky happenings" are ghosts? No, I still think most probably still have scienctific explanations we just haven't found yet. Do I think some are demonic activity? Maybe leaning toward yes, definitely the menacing destructive sort seem like they could be. As for the rest, are they lost souls interacting with us? Might be, could be, but what sad souls they would be and where should they be? or better yet what purpose are they working out by being here if any at all? I will put that on my list of things to ask God when I get there.

A Catholic Conscience

I don't usually lie to my husband. Ok, I hate the whole idea of lying but I have been known to dissemble or avoid the subject if there is something I really don't want to tell. Unfortunately I was born with a highly overdeveloped sense of guilt. My husband says it is so overdeveloped that was born to be Catholic. Well, today it reared its ugly head once again. My husband had let me put $30 in my bank account for the co-pay to my daughter's chiropracter's appointment. Well, I was out of money for the week and wanted to get some things at the grocery store. I knew that my daughter would be canceling her appointment because of a schedule conflict. So I decided to spend it on food. I was standing in line agonizing because knew I didn't have permission to use the money this way. I was debating whether to just go confess to my husband or whether to be slippery and just say I had used the money and hope he presumed it was for the co-pay. Well, at that very moment my cell phone moo-ed. It was my husband. He said he had just felt like he should call me. I felt this just proved God was listening to my thoughts and I confessed immediately. In case you are wondering, he wasn't mad. he said he wasn't going to throw me out over $30. He did tease me mercilessly about how I was worried about $3o and yet had charged several hundred on my credit card. (I know he pays the bills but it is my credit card) Anyway, what is the point of this story? Was it God whispering to my husband to call me?? A freaky-weird coincidence? My own guilty subconscious calling to my husband? There is a truth but can I figure it out?

Once upon a time.....

Sunday night is family game night at the Moos. Last night was Little Penguin's choice of game. She is almost 15 and detests board games, at least in theory. She decided we would sit in a circle and jointly tell a story. I must admit none of us were terribly enthusiastic about this but we all have to play what ever is picked so we gave it a shot. We each could say one sentence to add to the story and we had to go in order. Pinky(age 11) went first. She started with, "Once there was a pretty, perky, princess." Already Little Penguin was plotting the princesses demise but it wasn't her turn next. It was mine. "the princess was taking a long journey by horse drawn carriage to visit her Aunt Griselda in the wilds of Moravia" I wish I had written down the enitre tale sentence by sentence but here are the highlights:
The pretty perky princess whose name was ingrid disappeared, because she had been to the town of topsey turvey and had been mistaken for Grandpa Joe and the sensible polite princess named Sarah went to look for her because the Royal Guard were all wimps and afriad to go into the wilds of Moravia. Sarah first found a dead camel which had been hung from a tree and wondered if it was her sisters body. A fellow named Tall little Johnny stepped out of the woods and announced it was his grandpa Joe. After some investigation it was determined that it couldn't be Grandpa Joe becaue he had 1 hump and couldn't be Ingrid because she had no humps and the body had 2 humps. For reasons unknown a deep-voiced Fairy came out of the woods. A knight from the neighboring country of Moronica arrived fresh from the crusades(Mr Moo's idea) and was promptly ignored. Tall little Johnny turned into a werewolf and stuck his tongue on Sarah's ear and she slapped him. The knight cut off his tongue. Strangely at this point, Jesus appeared and put the werewolf's tongue back on. Sarah was very nervous about the company she was in and asked Him to stay but he said his time had not yet come. Voldemort appeared and turned into a woman who was called Billy Joe Voldemort from then on.
Suddenly they were all in a barn and Jesus went back to Heaven. The deep voiced fairy told Sarah that if she kissed him he would turn into a prince. She did and he turned into a black musician(who this was supposed to be was totally lost on the kids). The werewolf ate him and then ran off. The farmer's son Edward came into the barn. He also kissed Sarah and was slapped.
Meanwhile Billy Joe Voldemort who had Alzheimers was plotting to take over the world and we found out that she had killed the camel and had Ingrid prisoner in her secret room. Sarah and Ingrid's father sent the royal army to find his daughter's including his millions of killer rabbits. The rabbits were battling the fuzzy but deadly kittens who were minions of Voldemort. Voldemort laced the woods with poison carrots to kill the rabbits but then her Alzheimers rose up and she forgot about what was going on in the woods. Ingrid took this opportunity to escape.
At this moment Jesus returned and the rapture started but then was interrupted with an apologetic "false alarm" from Jesus who left again. This left Sarah, Ingrid, and the royal army in the woods. Mrs Moldystew(from Johnny and the Sprites) then came out of the woods and told them to keep it down. The soldiers recognized that he/she was Johnny in drag and ripped off her clothes. Johnny then kissed Sarah. She DIDN'T slap him because she realized he was her true love(I must have a talk with Pinky about all this kissing and slapping). Billy Joe Voldemort arrived to recapture Ingrid but Spiderman and all his friends came to defend them. Billy Joe in an Alzheimer's fog got confused and took spiderman prisoner instead of Ingrid.
Everyone was transported to the middle of the ocean full fo sharks but they were all very good swimmers and made it to various shores. As our story closed, Johhny and Sarah were living on a desert island with their 6 kids and everyone else had gone home.

Whoosh

Funny how you end up places you didn't mean to be. I just wanted to comment on a blog I was reading and suddenly---WHOOSH--I was here typing trying desparately to figure out how to create something more than a blank page with print.
This really should come as no surprise to me considering how much of my life has had those "whoosh" moments. I was graduating from college in NY-whoosh-I was living in VA, delivering pizzas. I was married with 3 little girls, teaching at a private school for virutally no pay-whoosh-I was divorced, bankrupt and trying to support those kids on my own. I was finishing some graduate work, enjoying my life un-oppressed by a man and dedicated to enriching my kids lives-whoosh-I am remarried have a baby at age 38. I have been comfortably reformed protestant most of my life-WHOOSH- I am becoming Cahtolic.
Yup, kind of makes you a bit nervous about getting too comfortable. You just might slide into a whoosh.