From the front, this looks great!

It's that most wonderful time of the year again, boys and girls... REN FAIRE TIME! For the third year running, thanks to my wonderful friend TJ (all hail Laird Guard'n M'Crack!), I'll be tending bar at the NC Ren Faire. It's a really good time and I make a couple dollars that I will never, ever be more grateful to have ($8 an hour does not go far, boys and girls. I took about a half off paycut to come work at the comic book store and seeing how the economy is ravaging the food service industry, I'm grateful to have it. That's pretty much equal to the suck, boys and girls). The last couple years I spent it promoting the comic and getting pins and prints and things made. Not having that distraction this year, I'll be spending it straight on rent and stuff. If I think about this too long I'll get depressed.

But the Ren Faire is fun and exciting! Definitely a pick-me-up, even if most of the clan won't be there due to politics and bad social juju. Still I will go, I will get dressed up real cute, and I will sell expensive beer to people and let them shove dollars down my cleavage, which I will then spend on good things. While I'm there, people will fuss over me, tell me I look nice, drool over my cleavage and otherwise prop up my flagging self-esteem. This is all good.

So I'm getting my costume ready. I teased Adam, my lovely and talented boyfriend, into making me a pair of cute jagged skirts for layering. They come down just a little above my knee and they look very cute. I put on my knee-high boots, laced 'em up good. Put on my peasant shirt and then attempted to put on my really sexy tight black leather corset. (Hurr-rawr!)... I was faced with the undeniable fact that I have gained about four inches on my waistline since last year, when I bought the corset in celebration that I was petite and cute. A lot's changed in a year. I had just finished my Recovering From The Man diet where I lost about 6 dress sizes (from 10-11 to 4) in two and a half months or so (this is frowned upon my all health professionals. It's not something I did on purpose, it just sorta happened. I loved being slender but I hated the wonky side-effects and how screwed -up- my body was for ages after that. Also, I got really physically weak and had to take advantage of all the southern gentlemen around here) and I was still dating Trent. When I arrived at the faire, people stared and commented on my weight loss - to be honest, I think size 4 is pretty the bottom end of what my body type should look like. Some complained, some admired.

My skinniness didn't last long. When the relationship part of our relationship started going sour, Trent and I replaced it with food. He cooks beautifully and I love being fed. Going from a waiting tables job to a sedentary job meant I couldn't maintain my carefree attitude to my diet... which took some figuring out. By the time Trent and I broke up we were both getting a little chubby. I've been kicking that around ever since. I was keeping a 29" waistline steady and as long as my waist is below 30" I try not to get too wrapped up in it. I fail. And then over Christmas I started running and have continued running. This is good! And one of the things I told myself to keep huffing and puffing was that this will help. Running = weight loss, right? And everyone tells me I've lost weight. My roommate says he can see it in my face and legs but my waist is now a horrifying 30". A lot of people have given me a lot of reasons for why this might be - Sit-ups build muscle under the fat that hasn't had a chance to go away yet, Adam says I won't lose weight until I start getting some distance (two or three weeks from now) and then I'll start losing weight. I have even been told that fat expands before it starts going away*. So I try not to freak out about it more than twice a day. I even hit my measuring tape and settled to wearing my looser jeans while I wait to catch up with myself.

But... Here it is. I'm laced into a corset I bought 4 inches ago and it doesn't fit. Okay, it's a corset. I could tie it tight and tighter until the laces strain and the eyelets start popping off, but I gotta work and working involves breathing. So I've laced it snug enough to push my breasts up nice and high and from the front, it looks great! With my knee-high boots and my little layered black and blue skirts, my little white peasant top and my black leather bodice. To look at me, as the bard said, is to mentally order a pint of lager. No one is going to look at me and say, damn she's too fat. But the back of my corset is a gaping stretch of 4 inches wider than it was last year and god damnit, it bothers me. I've been running, and I've been paying half an eye to my diet, substituting apples for cheezits, drinking water more than diet coke, little stuff like that. But I've also still been paying court to the God O' Fries (a particularly greasy bugger) and the Muse O' Cookies becaue.. these are things that I love and any life that doesn't involve cookies is not the life for me.

But I miss my 25" waistline. I miss the saunter in my step when I felt good about the way I looked and I don't think just running and sit-ups and push-ups is going to get me back there until I'm running 10k's with gazelle like grace. So... I think it's time to try something additional. Time to start paying really serious attention to what I'm eating and how much of it I'm eating. Yarr, something like that. I must think on this. And unhide my tape measure. And magically lose 10 lbs before the ren faire.



*Like.. what, popcorn? It's gotta fluff up before it can fly away? I'm now being haunted with mental images of my fat reservoirs laying full and bloated in the southern sun, fanning themselves with tiny fans and asking for lemonade in thick drawls. I don't know why.