I have my mother's toes, and other random thoughts

I have my mother's toes.  Not her feet, although I don't have my father's feet, either, but I definitely have my mother's toes.  They're not bad toes.  The second toe isn't longer than the first toe, they don't look like monkey fingers, and all of my toenails actually grow long enough to paint, if I was inspired to do something as girly as paint my toenails.  All in all, not a bad big of genetics.

I've noticed that in August, the first month I've decided not to have "blog" on my resolution list, is the month I've posted the most number of blogs.  And I actually have one that I started ages ago that I might just post as-is, because it actually needs a lot of clean up to make it decent and I'm not sure I feel like doing that.  And I'm sure my four avid readers really need to read a rough draft of some random musings I had a few months ago.  That's an excellent use of everyone's time. 

And now I'm going to try to tie these two ideas together.

Getting back to my mother and genetics, I also happen to be built just like my mother.  And I've inherited her good health.  Sister, who is six inches taller than I am, with about eight miles of legs, has, as I've mentioned before, more health problems than I could possibly imagine.  Once I asked Sister how she could tell the difference between food poisoning in general and celiac poisoning, and she said, y'know how you feel with food poisoning...? And I had to interrupt her right there because I've never had food poisoning.  Not when I was in Egypt, not when I ate expired yogurt in college, not ever (touch wood).  She looked me incredulously, as in, who lives in that world?

But, I've also inherited my mother's stature.  Once, before Captain America and I were even engaged, I took him home and he met Bia, my mother's mother.  I told him to take a good look at the two of them because if he stuck around, that's what he'd get in 30 and 55 years.  Apparently the view was fine, and we got married and lived happily ever after.  **Sigh**

Unfortunately, neither my mother nor Bia have any waist to speak of.  They also have what my mother calls pancake hinneys (okay, as a total random aside, blogger didn't like how I spelled this word, and Miriam-Webster wants me to buy their upgraded version before it will let me look at this definition, and google wants me to spell it "hinny" which is a cross between a donkey and a mule or something like that).  I've alleviated that second problem with running and lifting weights, but I can't seem to grow a waist.  This has been driving me crazy, because, in case you hadn't noticed, I've been trying to lose weight.  With a waist, you always seem thinner.  I have a wide rib cage and a short torso, so I have to be really skinny to look like I have a waist.

I realized last night that I've been trying to lose weight for over two years now, with nothing to show for it.  So I've been wondering, if, like blogging, I remove it from my to-do list (so to speak...it's not actually on any list), maybe I'll have better success with it.

I've been thinking back to when I was skinny, and when I was thinner than I am now.  When I was in high school I was on two swim teams, was a teenager (yay teenage metabolism!  why didn't I appreciate you more then?), and I actually ate two fundraiser-sized boxes of Reese's Pieces every day.  Somehow, I'm not sure that's going to help.  I could take up swimming again, but I'm not sure I want to.  I haven't actually enjoyed swimming since high school. 

When I was in college, I pretty much ate what I wanted, took some exercise and dance classes, and worked out when I thought about it.  I did gain a little weight in college, but I graduated weighting 120lbs, so I was still thin.

The last time I weighed 120lbs, I was on wellbutrin, and as soon as I stopped taking it, I gained the weight back, so that's neither a healthy solution, nor a long-term solution.

When I lived in Oregon, I was a semi-vegetarian (mostly because I lived with a vegetarian who liked to cook, or at least liked to cook more than I do), I lifted twice a week, and I drank less.  I also slept less, which seems funny because people who get enough sleep tend to weigh less. 

I have noticed that after age 26 my metabolism slowed down drastically, which is sad because I'm no less hungry, and while I have no issue eating healthy things like salad and steamed veggies, I still also want to eat tater tots and Hagen Daz. 

I'm currently training for a marathon, which is actually not a good time to try to lose weight because it's a ton of running, which means I'm going to be crazy hungry (this is actually pretty conventional wisdom--most experts don't recommend trying to lose weight while training for a marathon).  I'm pretty sure going back to the way I ate in high school and college is not the right direction to head either, so as far as I can see, my options are to fit swimming and another day of lifting into my schedule, give up alcohol, or just learn to accept that I have no waistline.  I'm not sure I like any of those options, but for the time being, I'm going to try to accept a more zen-ish state of mind.  My husband and my friends don't seem to care about my waist, I'm healthy, and I live in San Diego, for Heaven's sake!  My life is good.