June 16, 2024

🪞A Most Unreliable Narrator 👗 Issue #191 The Perfect Breast Club

Also this week: the mirror scene, #lisamas, OA, and getting back into training

Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

Thanks to all for the birthday wishes this week; it was a B+ day! I went swimming in the morning and then volunteered in the afternoon at my library. They are now offering me a paid position! It’s not many hours and it’s not a lot of pay but it is something on my resume if I do wish to get into working in libraries again. The director wasn’t happy with what I was getting but I told him I didn’t go into the library business to make a fortune. For my birthday dinner  that night, Mr. Lisa and I went to a fancy Italian place we love. Dessert was an in-house made lemon pound cake with in-house made cream and local strawberry glaze. It was fucking delish. We were stuff from dinner (they do three courses) but there is always room for dessert.

Sara sent me a birthday card, which she always does every year and I love her for it. My social media and texts blew up. It’s always feels good that people took the time out of their day to give you well wishes on an event. When I was younger, being reminded that I was getting older put me into a tizzy but since I turned 50, it’s been fine.

(The reason it was a B+ and not an A day was we had local electricians come in and install data jacks and extra outlets in Mr. Lisa’s office and wires literally got crossed. The electrical company out did themselves on support and resolution so I would still recommend them. Mr. Lisa is now happy, and the world has been righted.)

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Speaking of dessert, I have not made my food plan for OA yet and despite buying sugar free or low sugar items as subs, I’m still bingeing on sugar. It went well for the first few days and then my birthday hit, and my attitude was “fuck it” and we ordered the delish dessert and I drank a Coke (good fountain btw). The rest of the week fared no better and I’m back to feeling like shit again due to my decisions.

OA teaches you bingeing, purging, restricting, or anything related to an eating disorder is not a weakness but a disease. For me, that is something that is hard to work through because I’ve been on a diet of some kind since I was 8 and looking back at those pictures of me when I was young, I was not remotely fat; I looked like every other kid. Granted I was a head taller, but I shouldn’t have been on a diet.

That behaviour, that you’re less than because you don’t fit an accepted societal idea of beauty, was, and still is, drilled into my head, to other’s heads. I was so upset for many years in my youth because I was not willowy, blonde, or blue eyed. Instead, I was curvy and had brown hair and eyes. I was not the ideal and therefore, I was going to fail at life.

The switch in my brain about being lesser than as far as my looks go started happening in my mid-20s when I saw the ideal move from the blonde blue-eyed archetype to different hair color and skin tones. I decided that I didn’t want to look like everyone else and I went on my merry little way with changing hair color, getting tattooed, and pierced. I defined my own sense of beauty and I’ve been happy about it for decades now.

So even if I could overcome how my face looked, my body is a whole ‘nother matter. You may think that they are one and the same, but they are not. I’ve always appreciated my face and hair even when I had triple chins. But coming to terms with my body and loving my body will take a lot of hard work.

They tell you before you have fat girl surgery that the surgery is a tool, and you must make changes to how you approach food and health. But for many, and I’ve seen this repeated across support groups, there is still a lot of pressure to preform to match what they think the doctor wants and what society expects of them to look like. When the weight doesn’t come off in an expedient manner or they don’t hit target goals, the response is despair, self-hatred, and failure.

I have enough friends who now have had the surgery in various forms and heard about their experiences with before and after care and not one is the same. There is not a generalized or even widely accepted idea of how care should be. It is beyond frustrating looking to get support when barely any exists.

(I also have a lot of friends on the GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc) and it’s the same mentality: it’s to be a tool but that isn’t enough support as many are still eating the same shit and doing the same things just in smaller amounts.)

My point in all of this is I need to learn to accept that what I have is a disease and I need help. OA gives that help and it does offer the tools and support (aka meetings, sponsors, and literature). I don’t feel like this is my last shot, but I do feel it’s going to be a long haul of a getting better.

Enough of the pontificating. This week I’ll write up my OA food plan.

The M/W/F meeting group I met a few weeks ago continue to be fantastic. I’ve committed myself to one meeting a week, two if my schedule allows. I’m treating each day as a lesson learned and not as failure. I’m trying to learn to not give myself grace.

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Last week I attended an aquafit class that took place in the deep end of the lap pool. The previous two classes before that were in the therapy pool.

I remain the youngest by over 25 years.

For the deep end class, we wear waist flotation device to keep you upright and then you do cardio. I traveled all over the place and put myself in the shallow end to keep up. Boomers are going to last forever, man.

This week is another aquafit class in the therapy pool but this time it is core work. I’m going to give that one a go to see how I like it.

I picked up swim lessons and signed up for four more. My first lesson was in the therapy pool but it was overtaken with kids and parents with babies so we agreed that moving back to the lap pool was more appropriate.

Last year, I would begin each lesson by doing a free style lap (50 yards) before we begin. I pushed off the pool side and went as fast as my little arms and legs could take me. I made it about 13 yards before I had to stop from exhaustion. I did not get why I could swim laps last year and not feel so winded. Surely, I could not be that out of shape from swimming? Later in the lesson, I did laps, slowly this time, and it was fine. As Mr. Lisa would say, I blew my load out the first time around. Slower is better.

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This week also kickstarted going to my trainer and I’ve missed him. I laid out what I was doing in Kentucky, and we started building my work out plan. Also, Mr. Lisa and I have started walking a 2.66 mile loop around the sub-division after work.

I was pleased when the trainer asked me to do leg raises while laying on my back and I cranked out about a dozen with very little effort. I know before I started the training months ago, I couldn’t do it.

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I was telling Whisky Karen this morning that with my schedule is busy enough, I have no idea how I would be able to do all of this with a corporate job. But I did and have in the past!

A senior leader at the library doesn’t have a college degree but yet out librarians most librarians I know. It just continues to illustrate that having an MLIS is not worthy of the paper it is on.

If I knew in my late 20s what I know now, I would have finished my undergrad and gone into a trade like electrical or welding.

I proposed this to my brother recently and he commented I was too old because the process can take years and I would be near retirement age when all is said and done.

Even with all the changes over the years, there is very little I would change about my life.

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Wonderful Thing

Bridgerton Season 3 Episode 5: The mirror scene

Well, if Shondaland and Julia Quinn can’t help themselves, who are we to argue? Episode 5 brought on the mirror scene which is much discussed on the interwebs due to a bootleg of the episode. I, your humble narrator, did not search for the episode but I did a quick scan of the written summary and moved on. I wanted to savor each moment. And boy, were there moments.

Mr. Lisa is not one to not give commentary but he made it through part two with aplomb. And his comment about the mirror scene? If it makes gets you off, who am I to judge? (Paraphrase)

I’m as titillated as the next person on sexy things but what really made me hot is that Pen is a Reubenesque girl aka she’s fat. She’s gotten a lot of rude reporters asking about being brave in doing the love scenes and her response was #chefskiss.

Am I finally going to stop talking about Bridgerton? Probably not.

signed,

a member of the perfect breast club,

lisa x

(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)

You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator: the slice of life newsletter from the GenXer about town, Lisa Rabey. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky if you're so inclined. I am everywhere. Copyright © 1996 - 2025 by Lisa Rabey