Tuesday, August 12 HBD, RIP

Post 1254, Day 224 of 2014
- 1,320 days since I started this blog -

Aug 2, 2014

Daily Comment

It didn't take long, when I moved out of my parents' house, for me to connect with a woman going to the same school, who liked many of the same things I did. Somehow, even though she was better-looking, more worldly, experienced, confident and mature than I was, she found me attractive enough to hang out with.

At the time, that was exactly what I needed. 

I learned so much in the time we were together. I turned seventeen six months after she turned twenty, but while the age difference was not a factor for us, the life-experience gap, while rapidly shrinking the entire time of our relationship, was significant.

I learned a lot. Besides the obvious things that inexperienced boys learn from 'older' women, she taught me a lot about joy and appreciation: how to enjoy things, how to enjoy yourself. She taught me to examine and, in some cases, establish my values. In fact, today, those values that took hold back then remain with me; few that I dismissed then are held now, and fewer modified.

When I first met her, hanging out and getting stoned at the CCNY students center (south campus, where the cool kids were), she was dating another guy. The attraction between us was immediate, and mutually acknowledged, although nothing came of it until she broke up with him and showed up among a group of friends at my apartment. Before that, we hadn't said more than hello to each other.

From that point on, until I broke us up, we were inseparable. We had adventures, we had fun, we were pretty uninhibited. I was right out there, with little real-world experience, but a shared love of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll kept us rolling. 

I'd never known before then what it was like to trust someone - my parents hadn't proved trustworthy, my friends hadn't really been tested, and what confidence I had in myself wasn't based on much more than fantasy. 

As young as I was, it was a growth experience for me. Not all the confusion was swept away, but a lot, and much of what remained is still confusing me forty-seven years later. 

There were so many firsts: acts, events, discoveries, insights, they are beyond count. Firsts are so memorable - no experience after is the same as the first, right? We were young and in love.

Back then, that became a problem for me. One of my roommates began to complain about her to me - she was always around, everybody did what she wanted to do, she wasn't cool, she was controlling me. At the same time, she began making long-term plans for us. I wasn't into long-term thinking (I was eighteen by then). 

I got scared, and soon, my immaturity and my intimacy and commitment issues led me to break us up.

Meanwhile, she was broken-hearted ("Heart-sick", she said) by the split, tried to figure out what the problem was, but stupid and stubborn, I wouldn't give us another chance. After a bit of recovery, she dated a couple of my best friends, then moved out of my circle, retaining only a mutual-friends connection with me for a quite a while. 

It took a while after the post-split crazy period for me to realize (too late) I'd made a big mistake. 

Later we re-connected. She got married, and divorced. She continued loving the music and drugs, and even as I was moving into a different path, we could get together and have fun - we still liked a lot of the same things. I got a little stuck in the music, she kept moving. 

When I moved out of the City to start my corporate career, we had once again become close (platonic) friends. But when I moved to North Carolina, we lost track of each other again.

Only to find each other more than twenty years later through Facebook.

One phone call was all it took to re-connect. That phone call lasted almost four hours, and was full of stories about the in-between times. She'd had a breakdown, been diagnosed as bipolar, moved to Atlantic City on disability. I'd divorced twice, gone through a few career changes, had just moved to Syracuse. 

There were some revelations about old times (like my roommate's treachery: after a months-long campaign of bad-mouthing her, he hit on her the day after we broke up) and a lot of laughs.

Plans to get together again kept coming undone; one or the other of us cancelled a half-dozen dates. The phone, then, was our medium, and we could easily talk to each other for hours at a time.

She died early in 2013. Facebook reminded me that today would have been her birthday, and sparked this little reminiscence. RIP, Patti.

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 Food and Diet Section

2014 Daily Weight

Today's Weight:          210.8 lbs

Previous Weight:         209.2 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:       + 1.6 lbs

Diet Comment

After a day of being faithfully on-plan, a rather big weight gain. Why? Normal variation, I guess, but I was surprised.

Food Log 

Breakfast
A cocoa-hemp-kale protein shake (coconut milk, kefir, kale, large organic egg, whey powder (24g protein), hemp seeds, hemp protein (7g protein), raw organic cacao powder, chia gel, moringa leaf powder, celery, cinnamon and stevia-inulin blend).

Lunch

Roasted turkey breast on baby kale, baby spinach, chard, black beans and cole slaw mix with balsamic vinaigrette.

Snack
Celery with homemade mayonnaise.

Dinner

Hot capicola and scrambled eggs in spicy tomato oil.

Snack
Protein bar.

Liquid Intake

   Coffee:  30 oz.   Water: 104+ oz.

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