Empathy

In medicine, we regularly tell our patients to lose weight.  If they've got diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease - whatever the consequence of being overweight - the advice is always the same.  Eat less, move more.  Calories out greater than calories in.  So simple in theory, and yet so remarkably difficult to achieve in real life.

I should know - I've been struggling to do it for four months now.  In the beginning it was easy, as I had been eating so poorly and exercising so little (i.e. not at all) that I couldn't help but lose weight when I started running and eating a more normal diet.  But after the first two months, there came a trip to Italy (all carbs, all the time!) and a seemingly endless series of dinners out that kept me regularly above my planned daily caloric intake and kept the weight stubbornly on.  Life has settled into more of a routine now, but I'm still struggling to lose the excess weight.  I'm finding myself getting tired of the calorie counting and healthy food choices, particularly when the number on the scale seems to be moving downward at a glacial pace.

And I miss the old me.  I miss the woman who would stop for a bubble tea on a hot day or gorge herself on breakfast at her favourite cafe after a long call shift or bring home a bag of treats from the Italian deli "just because".  I miss Friday night pizza and drinking too much full-sugar Coke and ice cream cones the size of my head.  And bacon.  OMG bacon.  I could write love poems about bacon, I miss it so much*.

The sad thing is, I have it about as easy as it comes with respect to losing weight.  I'm in generally good health, so I can participate fully in pretty much any exercise program I choose.  The weather is beautiful, and I live right on a series of running paths that go through some of the most beautiful areas in my city.  There's a gym IN MY BUILDING, for crying out loud.  And I have money with which to buy fresh produce and a car in which to drive said produce home from the nearby well-stocked grocery store.  My situation is as good as it gets, and it's still fucking hard.

So for all of my patients who don't have it this easy - who have barely enough money to survive and who live in the inner city where there are no grocery stores or places where it's safe to exercise outside - I'm sorry that I'm so glib when I tell you to lose weight.  I get it.  It isn't about weakness or laziness or excuses; it's about a difficult task made all the more impossible by a deck that's stacked against you. 

*For the record, I haven't actually eliminated any of these items from my diet, as I don't want to get into a mentally unhealthy pattern of self deprivation.  It's just that there's so much less room for bacon in one's diet when you're trying to lose weight.

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In other news, I know that everyone is wanting to know how things are going on the dating front, and I apologize for the silence.  I find myself not knowing what to write, given that there's a second person involved in the situation who knows nothing of my blog and whose privacy needs to be respected.  And then there's the inherently personal nature of the thoughts and emotions that surround dating, particularly when one hasn't done it in five years (and hasn't dated someone of the same sex in waaaay longer).  All of which translates into blogging silence from me.

What I will say is that I'm still seeing the same person* and that things are generally going well.  We haven't actually been on that many dates, as we seem to have done a remarkably good job of staggering our schedules so that we're never available at the same time, but we keep in touch regularly via text messages.  There's at least one date planned for the upcoming week, so we shall see.  I'll keep you all posted once I figure out what can and cannot be posted.

*She really needs a nickname for the blog.  Or maybe I should just call her my girlfriend.  But at what stage does one use that term?  I'm out of practice with all of the crazy things that accompany dating.

Dealing with the Crazy

My Mom is having a bit of a difficult time with the idea of me dating.  She was fairly tolerant of it when the dates weren't going well, but as soon as there was a second date (or god-forbid a "third date"), she got very awkward and uncomfortable about it.  Case in point was our phone conversation tonight.

Solitary Diner:  "Hi Mom."

Mom:  "Oh.....hi....."

SD:  "Hi."

Mom:  "What are you doing?"

SD:  "Sitting on my couch."

Mom:  "Oh.  Are you.....(lowering voice)....alone?"

SD:  "Yes."

Mom:  "Really?"

SD:  "Well, except for the cats, yes."

Mom:  "Just you?"

SD:  "That's what alone means."

Mom:  "Alone, alone?  Or...(lowering voice)...alone?"

SD:  "You're insane."

Mom:  "I'm just asking."

SD:  "What if I said that I wasn't alone?"

Mom:  "So you aren't alone then?"

SD:  "I already said that I was alone!"

Mom:  "But are you alone, alone?"

SD:  "I'm not talking to you anymore."

Mom:  "Ah-hah!  You're in quite the hurry to get off the phone.  I knew you weren't alone!"

SD:  "Is it too late for me to disown you?"

Who would've thought that my Mom would be the most awkward person in my relationship?

Transitions

For everyone who has been wondering (I'm looking at you Old MD Girl), there was a second date.  Having confirmed on our first date that she wasn't crazy, we went for dinner, and once again the conversation was easy.  I lost track of the number of times the waitress came by to ask if we needed anything else.

The following day, as I was cramming in a run amongst my usual weekend tasks of laundry and groceries and such, it occurred to me how full my life as a single person has become in the last few years.  I have more friends and family than I have time for; I'm about to enter the final stage of my training; and my limited free time is filled with a myriad of interests.  I am completely satisfied with my single life, and for a moment I was almost resentful of the intrusion of another person into the life I've worked so hard to create for myself.  For a moment, I contemplated removing my online profile from the dating site and going back to my comfortable life.

And then, upon arriving home from my run, I immediately reached for my cell phone to text her about our third date.

Well That Didn't Suck

Just arriving home from date #3.  Once again, a coffee date, but this time in a relatively quiet Starbucks with absolutely no one I know in the store.  Yay!  We chatted for over two hours, and it was a pretty easy conversation.  There is actually some overlap in our work lives, so it was nice to chat about common experiences and people that we both know.

It was also nice to discover that I'm not the only sane person on the dating site.  Who knows, maybe there will be a second date...

May Every Day be Filled with Sunshie

There are a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head, but none of them seem to be coalescing into a real blog post.  So here, instead of anything of substance, are a few random musings.

1)  In the world of online dating, I never cease to be amazed by the things that people leave out of their profiles.  Back in the days of dating men, I had one guy who failed to mention before our date that he stuttered (terrible, unable to get most of his words out stuttered) and another who didn't mention that he was a quadriplegic until we had been messaging for a few weeks.  Since starting to date women, I've now met someone who left out the fact that she was a post-op male to female transgender and another who decided against mentioning that she has a serious chronic medical condition.  I completely understand that people want to make the best impression in their profiles, but don't they realize that these things will become obvious if/when they meet someone in person?

Also, serious chronic medical conditions just plain suck.

2)  I've been messaging someone new for a little over a week, and I decided to be more bold and daring than I usually am and invite her for coffee this weekend.  The response?  "Yeah, sure."  Gee....try to contain your enthusiasm there.

Why do I even try?

3)  I'm taking an intermediate photography class right now, and I think I may have actually hit the wall when it comes to photography.  We spend the first hour or so of each class critiquing everyone's work, and I just can't muster up the excitement to talk about photos in that much detail.  Nor am I that thrilled by the assignments that could easily take 6-8 hours a week to complete.  Some of us have jobs!

Also, I'm one of the worst photographers in the class, so that may be a major contributing factor to my general crotchetiness around photography.

4)  Today is my birthday!  I've been feeling somewhat bummed out by this birthday, as I just feel so old...and, in particular, so old to be throwing myself into the dating arena again.  But then my nieces took me for gelato and gave me the cutest homemade card ever, and all the bummed out feelings disappeared.

Who can be unhappy when their life is filled with so much sunshie?

Edited to add:  Oh yes...and a question for you all!  My upcoming date (the unenthusiastic one from point #2 above) is actually a nurse who works closely with one of my very good friends, making it all the more likely that the fact that I'm dating women is going to start getting out.  I really want to tell my friends in person before it becomes a subject of gossip at work (as it will, because residents are all inbred), but finding time to get together with all of my medical friends (especially the surgical residents) is about as easy as alchemy.  So I was thinking of emailing the ones that I can't tell in person.  Am I insane to think that this is an okay way to come out to my friends?