Red Dress Photoshoot

Here are a sampling of the photos from my red dress photo shoot. My wonderful photographer, Trisha Fisher from Trisha Fisher Photography. It was a beautiful early spring day and I was so glad that Trisha welcomed Zac at my photoshoot.

My red dress was lovingly donated as part of the Red Dress Project (I'm not sure if she wants to be named here). The dress has already been advertised and will soon be passed on to another woman to continue the cycle of empowerment, beauty, and mystery. The basic premise of the project is: sometimes you just have to wear a red dress for no reason, just to be, for one minute or one hour, the embodiment of the person you want to be.

The day of my red dress shoot, I was definitely challenged. My friend Seven and I had a brutal fight and we stormed off the phone swearing we were never going to talk again. I was fighting back tears when I put on the dress, which had been described to me as "a stretchy size 12". Well, it was looser than the first time I tried it on, but basically very, very tight. It also had skinny straps, so I decided to wear a short-sleeve black sweater. Then to stave off any feelings of being in drag, I decided to wear my casual Merrill shoes, which I'm pretty sure Trisha frowned at when she saw. I ended up taking most of my photographs bare foot.

Zac was there the whole time, usually playing on the wooden bridges and pavilions, constantly asking, "Is it my turn to take a picture". He forced me not to take myself too seriously, especially since my hurt was still hurting from the fight I had had just minutes before putting on the dress.

Did I feel powerful, beautiful, and sexy? Did I feel like I was celebrating losing 50lbs? Yes and No. The old insecurities still plague me. Most of the photos I'm looking up because I was sensitive about my double chin. In every photo, I ask myself, "How do my arms look in that? They don't look too big do they?" But it was fun. It was fun being with Zac at a park in the late afternoon. It was fun playing with all the props that Trisha had brought in her huge duffel bag. It was fun when she would take a photo and be so happy with the result that she would show me with this knowing smile in her eyes.

I don't want the back story of the photos ruin the photos themselves. They are beautiful and have more to do with my talented photographer than me. Some of the photos thought, where I'm looking directly into the camera lens, belies some of the strength in my eyes that has come from seven years of trial. Seven years of living as a single Mom, struggling in my career, getting a masters degree, trying to make a life for myself. That shows in my eyes.

Then in contrast, there are the pictures with Zac. The pictures where I look so happy and Zac is so happy and we are such a family. It's he and I, taking on the world and we love each other so much. 6 1/2 has been such a good age. I'm so lucky to have Zac, even when his love for me astounds me, I've tried to never take it for granted. Even when I was sick and thought he would get over the loss of me and be better off with another family, I knew, deep down, that the love we share was and still is a powerful force.

He's silly and funny and charmed Trisha with his jokes about the evolution of dinosaurs. Man I love that kid and I'm so happy he got to celebrate the red dress with me.

Will This be in the Blog?

Back when I wrote on my blog every day, sometimes multiple times in a day, one of my favorite/most annoying questions was, "Are you going to write about this? Will this be in the blog?" I would usually scoff, sigh and little bit, and reassure whoever asked that contrary to popular belief, I don't post a minute-by-minute detail of my life and my thoughts on the Internet.

Then I thought, well, that would be fun. Because I am a sick blogger. I just goaded my friend Dee into writing a blog post about her new baby because I'm sick. She told me to back off which I respected because the sickness has not yet spread to my conscious. I'm only mildly ill. Anyways, I digress.

Since I can't talk about my actual work interactions or the name of where I work or even that I am affiliated in anyway with this company that may or may not be in finance (because the Lord knows, when my Compliance officer googled me, I thanked a deep sigh of relief because: 1) I don't blog about work and 2) My blog did not come up on the google search). (As a second parenthetical aside, who google searches someone while they are on the phone with them? It was like being in a weird game show with the announcer droning on, "Ladies and gentleman, let's see how many sites Google will take us to NOOOWWW with our finance professional!! Of course, I googled myself simultaneously to their google, so at least I wasn't completely surprised).

Jeez, that was such a long aside that I had to go to a new paragraph to distance myself from it. I clearly can't go by minute by minute because that would take too long and have to include horrible minutes where I picked my nose or pulled my undies down. It would be unpleasant for all of us. Here is what an hour-by-hour look at what tomorrow holds for me, with some minutes thrown in to make it spicier:

11pm - 6:30am - Sleep!

6:30am - 6:45am - Shower

6:45am - 7:20am - "Zac, stop playing around. I'm serious. We are running late. Are your socks on? What do you mean you only have one sock on? Where did the other sock go? Your Nintendo DS is in your bag. Yes, I'm sure it is fully charged. Can you please put your other sock on before I lose my mind. Hurry!!! I see the bus up the street.

7:20am - 7:40am - Get ready for work

7:40am - 8am - "Commute" to work. It only takes 20 minutes because of all the stop lights and traffic. It could be under 10 if I had a straight shot to my building.

8am - 9am - Read online news, figure out who I'm going to be calling, figure out who I called yesterday, catch up on any administrative tasks that I didn't do the day before because I got tired.

9am - 11am - Call as many strangers "cold call" or semi-strangers "warm call" as I possibly can. That can range anywhere from 40 to 150 dials.

11am - Leave for lunch seminar. Begin freaking out that no one will come to said lunch seminar.

12pm - 1pm - lunch seminar

1:30pm - 2:30pm - Finish the on-site administrative paperwork for the seminar and drive back to my suburb.

3pm - 5pm - Call as many cold and warm strangers as I can. Return phone calls from while I was out of the office. Check e-mail.

5pm - 6pm - Meet with a prospective client

6:15pm - Leave for home

6:35pm - 8:30pm - Hang out with Zac, even if he would rather play computer games than talk to me.

9pm - Read

10pm - Read some more or catch up on my favorite blogs.

11pm - Sleep

I don't usually blog too much because I've become the most boring kind of workaholic imaginable and I can't even write about my work interactions or my feelings about work. I've officially used the words "blog" and "work" too many times in this post. I'm going to end it now before I start throwing around terms that google might pick up on. Good night!

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

I got back in the car today after my Toastmasters meeting and looked in my rear view mirror. I had pinned up part of the sides of my hair because all the rain and humidity turn my once reasonably complaint, straight hair into a mass of fly aways and bad flips. My hair looks like Farah Faucett in her hey day, but without actually giving enough of a crap to go for the full out look.

Then I looked closer into the mirror. I remembered seeing a picture of myself in Seattle last week when I was in high school. The photo had the same straight, brown hair, but there was so much more of it. Then I realized I've lost most of my hair and almost started crying.

For the uninitiated, let me just say this as a disclaimer: hair is a fickle beast. There are many things that cause hair loss, including a radical change in diet, rapid weight loss, vitamin deficiencies, hormonal changes, and straight-up "I'm going bald". Unfortunately, gastric patients often experience hair loss for one, or many, of the reasons listed above. I just didn't feel like I fit that category. I knew that I was losing a lot of hair in the shower and wrapped around my volumizing brush, but I always kind of shrugged and knew deep down, "There is more where that came from".

Then one day I woke up and I can hold up all my hair with two small clips. I have a short, bob-length cut and now I realized that even when I wear all of my hair down, you can see my neck and chin when looking at my sideways. You know. Through my hair. Because there is nothing there but the strands that have decided to stick it out with me.

I have been in denial about this for a while I think. I feel like the 40 year-old man that goes to the store to buy Rogaine because one day he woke up and his forehead had tripled in size. Last time he remembered, he was swooping his hair sideways to stay out of his eyes. Only his hair loss was infinitesimally slower than mine. His took 15 years and mine has taken just 1, but I swear I sympathize so much more now. This whole year I've been fighting a losing battle to grow my hair out. It would get to a certain length and no matter how hard I tried to pretend that it was ok, it just looked horrible and I would cut it. Let's be honest, thin hair responds to a layered bob because all the layers add volume, particularly when blow-dried and moussed and tousled.

I called my doctor's nurse today and I'm hoping she returns my call tomorrow. I'm not sure how I'm going to put in words, "I've been losing hair for the past 12 months, but now my hair is all gone and do you think you can help me?" but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. After all, my follicles deserve another chance, right? If this doesn't work, I'll be reduced to a nightly chant to my scalp, shouting, "I think I can! I think I can!" to my scalp and no one really wants that.

Six cc's and full of vigor

After the drama of the last post, I have very little dramatic news to announce. Six cc's is...shockingly normal. Not "I can eat a bacon double cheeseburger with a large french fry" normal (and all of you with a stomach that can hold a full 6 cups of food, spend a little time tonight thanking the sweet Lord that you can enjoy not one, but TWO cheeseburgers simultaneously). I'm more like, "I just ate some sweet and sour soup and a couple of beef kabobs and I don't feel like I'm going to die". THAT kind of normal.

In other, perhaps more exciting news beyond my gastrointestinal track, I finally had my red dress photo shoot. I'm waiting on confirmation from my wonderful photographer to see if I can use her name here. Until then, if you are anywhere in the Houston area, I would highly recommend her. Just e-mail me or send me a message on Facebook and I'll send over her info. At the photo shoot, I ran out of steam before she did AND she brought a duffel bag full of props. I held things. I hid behind things. She had towels at the ready for when I had to sit down on slightly damp grass next to a river. The woman thought of everything. Then there's the part where she kept saying, "You look like a model" and murmuring to herself, "Beautiful". There's that part. There is also the part where she made Zac kiss me approximately 20 times while exclaiming, "That's so great! Keep doing that Zac!" so he did and we both giggled.

I'll write more about the experience when I get the photos in a couple of weeks.

Until then, I'm neck-deep in GLBT volunteering and I'm not sure I can see the white light at the end of the tunnel. Delegate you say? Why, I would if I knew where to start. Delegating might be new favorite word. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate. Yes, it does feel good.

Not quite as good as that egg roll I just ate, but you can't have everything.