Large and in charge

I can't hear the phrase "Large and in charge" without thinking of my grandpa. What a character that man was! In my family, we often quote him, and laugh at the funny way he would say things.

I got to spend the last two years of his life living with him, and in that time I certainly brought him new experiences. I taught him how to "yoink" something if he wanted to steal it from me (mostly licorice), we did "Kateflix" where I would leave DVDs for him to watch on top of his tv which he would then put on the hallway divider when he was ready for more, and I brought the term "large and in charge" to his attention. He could never quite grasp the fact that the term was really just something dumb to say and didn't mean anything on a deeper level. So he would ask, and I would try to explain.

Grandpa: "Large? And... In Charge??? What does that mean?"

Katie: "It doesn't really mean anything. Just like, if something is big and commands attention, you might say that."

Grandpa: "But... IN CHAAAARRRGGGEE???" (long, drawn out emphasis on "charge", like saying it in that way would bring some clarity or something)

Me: "ummm, yeah, it's really just more of a saying than anything. Because it rhymes. It's really just kinda dumb."

Grandpa: "But WHAT does it MEEEAAANNN???"

Me: "Nothing, Grandpa."

See, I wish that my Grandpa was alive today, because I would tell him about the new jacket that is my early Christmas present from my parents, and I would say that it is large and in charge. Inevitably, he would ask, "But what does that MEEEAAANNN???" and I would answer, "it means that this jacket is a size large. And it is in charge of making me incredibly excited!" And then I'd probably add a "Boom!" for good measure, because that's how I roll.



Now to make this jacket too large...

Downsizing

Downsizing one's wardrobe is a complicated matter. Especially when one is aware that one will be in one's current size only temporarily before further downsizing is required, and one does not have massive amounts of money to spend on clothing.

Okay, enough with that ridiculous formality. Winter is here, and I am facing an interesting dilemma. All of my jackets and sweatshirts, with the exception of my very thin pink one that I bought and flaunted in this post: Out with the old, are hilariously big on me. I keep this huge pink snow jacket in my car for emergency coldness, and had to bring it out the other day when my aunt and I were having a garage sale and freezing our butts off. It was a 3X, and really looked quite comical. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. I think I need to go hunting around at the Salvation Army and the Goodwill for some cute used jacket that I can spend a minimal amount of money on and then do the same thing when I need a new one next winter, until I am the size I want to be, and then I'll splurge and spend money on something I know I'll be able to wear until it's unwearable.

I have, however, been thinking about investing in a good new sweatshirt that will maybe fit me snugly now and then be a decent looseness in the future. I've been eyeballing different sweatshirts here and there, but on Friday at Disneyland, I found the one. I had a coupon for 20% off, and they have a Jack Skellington sweatshirt that I had admired for quite some time, so I was able to save some money on something I love! My friend Andrea (whom I call Andreawesome... because she IS!) has the same sweatshirt, and wore it that day, so when I bought mine that night, we matched. I might be a dork, but I still think it's fun to match with my friends sometimes.



I love my new sweatshirt, but the best part of it is the size. I used to have to buy men's sweatshirts in XXL. Well, this is also a men's sweatshirt, because that was all they had, but the size? A SMALL!!!! I was expecting to fit into the Large, and when that was too big, I tried on the Medium. I was a bit incredulous that even that one had some room in it, so I tried on the small, and then I tried on a different small just to be sure. But it fit! Small was the right size!

I am fully aware that I am not a size small in women's clothing. I am also 100% content with the fact that my body will never be a women's size small. My build is large and muscular, and I am perfectly fine with that. It's not about comparing myself to other women and what sizes their bodies are. I look only at myself: the way I looked in the past, the size I know my own body to be capable of achieving, and the way I feel. I know that I still have a lot to lose, and I will work on losing it until it's gone, but I am happy with my body for now. And every pound I lose makes me feel better, which is the real goal anyway!

Collarbone check and that jacket again

I need to talk about my collarbones again. I love them. It has been so much fun watching the definition increase over the last several months, and I constantly catch myself touching them. I just did a side-by-side comparison picture with the picture I posted back in November:



And maybe I went a little crazy on the picture taking and the goofy faces:



Excuse my insanity.

Another thing I would like to revisit is my post entitled Why do I want to eat crap?, in which I lament the craving of sugary items and other healthfully detrimental habits. I was re-reading this post recently, and I suddenly became aware of just how far I have come. While I definitely still have a desire for sweet things now and then, it is no longer something I think about all the time, and beyond that, if it is sitting in front of me and I am not hungry, I don't automatically start to eat it anymore! I also stop eating before I am full, every single time. I know when I have had enough, and I no longer have an irrepressible urge to keep eating. I also now tend to favor the taste of more healthful foods.

This is a GIANT breakthrough!!! Food has become a non-issue for me! I can't even remember when that was the case before, and it doesn't make sense to me why it was the case for so long. Why, when there were issues to deal with on the inside, did I turn to food? I don't get it, and yet, it ruled my life for the last ten years or so. But food always masked whatever problem arose for a short time before just adding the misery of being fat and self-conscious, and not being able to control my eating. How could I have let that deceptive "comfort" be what I ran to instead of relying on God to bring me through? As I have deepened my relationship with Him, I have come to depend on His comfort and grace to get me through life. Not that all of life is hard... a lot of the time it is quite fantastic! But there are always difficult times to deal with, and they will continue to occur.

For instance, my biggest struggle is the fact that I am still single. More than anything else in this world, I have wanted to be married and have a family since I was a little girl, and I never imagined that I would still be single at 31. And I also don't understand how I hear from a large majority of the people I know how awesome I am and what a great wife and mom I'll be, and yet, here I am, alone. That was a huge driving force in my eating in the past, and not only did it not help, but it made the situation worse as I became incredibly unattractive and miserable. Nobody wants to be with a miserable person! At some point, I started turning to God instead of the food, and that has made all the difference in my contentedness. I know that He has an amazing plan for my life, and as He is the one that made me the way I am, with this incredible desire for a husband and family, I believe that He will bless me with that in the future. And I'm guessing, since God has been filling my heart with a desire to go visit different countries to work with orphans, that the man God has for me will have a similar passion, and that is so exciting to me! I wonder how much of my life I have wasted, when I could have being working in that field already, all because I was focused on myself and food! Being miserable really sucks the life out of a person. So now when I start to get overwhelmed with sadness that I am not married yet, instead of having a pity party complete with a mound of junk food, I pour my heart out to God and let Him deal with it. And I have peace. And visible collarbones.

So to lighten up this suddenly heavy post, I will end with a fun story and my new favorite picture. You know my green jacket that I wrote about here? Last Friday it was pouring rain, so I wore it. I was at my brother Brian and his wife Sarah's house, and when I put the jacket on to leave, I zipped it up and pulled it away from my body to demonstrate how much extra room there was. I said, "I feel like Sarah could almost fit in here with me!" so she tried. At first she wanted to see if she could get in while it was on me and closed, but she shimmied up as far as my waist before there was a pause followed by, "Oh. I forgot about your boobs." We all cracked up and we tried again, this time by opening the jacket. I believe there was only a space of about four inches that prohibited the closing of the jacket, and it used to fit me perfectly. Now that's what I call progress!