racing the sunrise

There is something about waking up with your spouse at 5:30 in the morning and carpooling into downtown Washington DC that either brings the two of you closer together or makes you both really hate 5:30 in the morning.
However, it saves time when carpooling into downtown DC.
Don't ask about the traffic. Washington, DC needs overhead signs on the roads that proclaim, "Caution: Stupidity Ahead."
Since Saturday and until Tuesday, there is a Girl Scouts conference deal happening at the Washington Hilton (also somewhat affectionately known as the Hinckley Hilton). Adam's company was hired to rent out and supply a bunch of printers and corresponding equipment. Not computers, just printers. Adam's company rents out and occasionally sells afforable computer services (conveniently enough, it's in the name), including desktops, laptops, parts, software, hardware, etc; as well as equipment like printers. Adam has become skilled at lifting and carrying 500-pound printers.Not easy, but doable. I admire him for that. Adam is one of the IT Project Managers as well as the head field technician. He gets tapped for travel a lot, hence always going around the country when important people want to hold conferences -- like, say, the White House, or the Pentagon.
But this time? Printers. For Girl Scout corporate meetings. We laugh, and he gets up at 5:30 to leave the house at 6:00 to be at the hotel at 7:00 to set up printers. His arms and legs ache.
I went with him because I work across the street from the Gallery Place metro station, which is a five-minute ride from the Dupont Circle station, which is a few blocks away from the Hilton. Besides, getting there an hour and a half early means I have time to eat breakfast and chill out before putting on my law firm library assistant hat. Which is what happened. He gets to leave at 4:00. I get off work at 4:30, so we'll work something out so we can carpool home. Afteroon rush out of DC is a psychotic bitch. Whoever decided to restrict an entire useable lane of traffic just for HOV during the busiest hours must have been on crack.

Now my arms and legs ache from running around the office, but I have a much lower pain tolerence than my husband, who is sometimes superhuman. Also, I have cerebral palsy and unspecified achy burny chronic pain, so ow and ow and ow again.

However, the Hilton is pretty. And well decorated. And intelligent-looking. Unlike the young lady who will soon inherit the vast fortune. Ah ha ha ha. (she's locked up in jail and she still won't go away, why why why?)

Oh...

On my friends list, a post by shadesong moved me to tears, because she said something that could have come from my mouth, my mind myself:

"Just one of the bits of damage the past few years have inflicted on me = I don't know what my body is supposed to look like anymore. I've never been able to judge my body as compared to the bodies of others - the curves I find attractive in other women would, on me, send that voice clear 'round the bend. And I can tell myself "This is idiotic - you find her beautiful, and you are skinnier than her, therefore you are not the baby beluga you think you are." But this is not a rational thing.

I don't recognize myself in the mirror. After years of hollow thin face and razor-slash cheekbones, my cheeks seem full, my face seems amorphous. There are layers of meat on my arms, my legs, my belly. I never really registered myself as being as skinny as I was at my lowest - pictures of me then shock me. That's not what I looked like in my head. But neither is this. So I can't really objectively tell if I'm okay."

Yeah.
Yeah.

Everything.
Everything.

gained

Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders

One of the reviews:
( Read more... )

Thinking:
She expands on the thinking that "genetics loads the gun and enrivonment pulls the trigger" in terms of biological predisposition and experiential triggers for those who suffer from eating disorders by writing about the position that genetics creates the gun, environment loads it and extreme emotional experiences fire the ED bullet.

Mmm. Yah.
I want to show this to my mother. It struck a huge blow to hear her say to my face that, in a roundabout way, it was partially my fault for not stopping the anorexia.