Part 3: Chubby and Proud!

Having just scoffed some of last night's tortilla (i.e. not the pancake, but an authentic Spanish omelette but with a Lisa-twist: instead of King Edward potatoes, I used sweet potato and bacon, laced with garlic and chopped, fresh coriander) for breakfast in front of my laptop while checking email, I realised I hadn't written for aaaages on this blog, and couldn't really think of anything specific I would even want to write about. Why? With only 5 months to go until we are back in our magnificent South Africa, I am so focused on preparations that there's simply no time for brooding on things 'Soutie'. Obviously, the discrepancies between my homeland and this land of a 1/8 of my ancestry are still glaringly blatant on a moment-by-moment basis, but I've just got no energy to try and metabolise them through writing. (Other ancestral input? Norwegian, Sicilian, Dutch and German... 'n Regte-egte pavement-special, as we say in South Africa!)

A couple of days have passed since the sudden full-stop of the last paragraph. (There was even a bit more writing that happened last night but was interrupted, and made no sense this morning, so I deleted it: and instead of allowing myself to become angry about this constant state of interruption and the fact that my writing never seems to amount to more than these little blog posts, I've decided to let go of my quite selfish ambitions and focus on the source of interruptibility: my Layla. Before too long, she won't need me and I will be the needy one! Besides which, there is no point in fighting something which feels impossible, at this stage, to change. i.e. asking for some time to write, or paint (or catch up on sleep) is just not something my better half can quite understand from my point of view, no matter how hard and eloquently I try to explain. (I know I am not alone, ladies...) Conclusion: 1. My time will come (both senses of 'time' intended.) 2. In a roundabout way, I have illustrated 'What is healing but a change in perspective' with another real-life scenario, without ever having actually successfully explained my first scenario.

To go back to that, because I knew that sugar was my main problem, I decided I needed something to radically alter my perspective on it. Googling 'why sugar is bad for you' was enough to detrimentally sober my addiction to it forever! Besides a list of 146 things sugar does to your body, including myopia, my biggest spook was that when sugar is metabolised, alcohol is released as a byproduct, giving you a high not dissimilar to that given by my beloved vino. And, as alcohol is a mind-altering substance, I could see how I was *ab*using sugar to get me through the day both physically, in terms of energy, and emotionally/psychologically. The crunch? I was an addict. It was this that was the trigger for me: I did NOT, under ANY circumstances,want to be an addict - especially not a fat, (even more) myopic, constipated etc addict! Perhaps the biggest wake-up call for me was realising that an addiction to sugar is a precursor to alcoholism. (And that is another whole set of blog posts altogether...)

And so, suddenly, my perspective on my health, the food I was putting into my body and the reason why, underwent a shockingly swift change: that milky, sweet coffee that reminded me of my mom and our family home was suddenly not so nostalgically innocent. (Puts a whole new spin on sweetly sentimental, doesn't it?) Here I was inducing a high every few hours throughout the day to ease the homesickness. (Oh *&$@ - I just realised: I got my two blogs confused!!! May I blame it on not having slept the last two nights please?!) It suddenly became so easy to switch that sugary coffee for an unsweetened mug of rooibos tea. And now, every 3 or so days, I will make myself a 'Mommy-coffee' - but then I savour it, sip by indulgent sip, mindfully enjoying it for all it represents - instead of mindlessly glugging back mugfulls of it every day.

(A quick note before I head upstairs to fold some laundry: I was only drinking about 2 or maaaaybe three of these cups of coffee a day (1 heaped teaspoon of sugar), but it was also the biscuits I had WITH the coffee that contributed to my escalating addiction -- and widening hips!)

In the pipeline is a book I may be writing on my own or co-writing with an expert in the chosen field, as well as my own Etsy shop (though I am still looking for the perfect name to work under...) which I may or may not be sharing with my darling mom. (We've been dreaming about this for absolute YONKS, but we both allow mediocrity to distract us. Maybe this'll be the year, hey Mommy?)

{PS. Wishes vs Resolutions, I cheated and Part 1 and 2 of Chubby and Proud are on my other blog.}