8/1 - Nothing can bring down this good mood

This is what happens when I'm in long meetings where I don't have to take notes, just listen to someone talk for 2 hours. It is the doodle I've done pretty much my entire life, in all classes and on all school notebooks. It's not fine art, but I think it's pretty and it qualifies as today's creative outlet.
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In a complete and utter departure from my normal self, I woke this morning and actually liked my body. Specifically, I admired my core, which is the first (and usually only) place I look before I start hating. It's not like the belly has gone away. I still carry far too much weight. There is still a network of stretch marks and scars. For some reason though, it looked flatter - more toned - more attractive. I didn't believe the scale that isn't mine, which said I'm down a couple pounds. I don't believe, even if the scale was right, that it will stay that way. I don't know what is different about these days, few and far between, where I don't hate this vehicle I live in.

I like to think I live by Hunter S. Thompson's view:

so I don't know why I let it bother me that my body is not pristine. It has been broken. It has healed the best it can, and I am still working on the healing process. It has been used, it has given me joy and babies and strength and satisfaction. It makes me sad that I can only appreciate these things on the days when I don't see my belly protruding too far, or when I catch the view in the window only under a certain light.

I'm attributing today's perception to the gallon of liquid I drank yesterday. My theory is drinking that much flushed out the excess water I normally carry. I have no idea if this theory is based in any type of reality, but I'm going with it and shooting for a gallon a day every day. This may not be possible, depending on my saturation levels when I started yesterday, which were likely lower than they are today. It's a goal though, one I will achieve again today.
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I did not spend the entire day feeling like a sexy beast. Reality came crashing down and I no longer felt attractive and svelte. The glow remained though, enough for me to see myself without my normal shit-colored glasses. Reality is I am overweight and I have a belly. Reality also is that the excess weight does not turn me into an ogre. It does not make me ugly or unattractive.

-- heal --

yeah!

Nothing can bring down this good mood. 

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After walking in to work all confident on several levels, feeling attractive and intelligent enough to complete my Ruby homework, I proceeded to spin my wheels most of the day on my Programming homework. I did ask the instructor to help me narrow my focus, as I seem to have a tendency toward thinking too much about these assignments. I make them more difficult than they need to be. For some reason I resisted taking his advice, which was to create a stored procedure for a single unit order. I want to create one that can handle multiple products. I know it can be done, and have even seen posts on how to do it, but I haven't quite figured out how to write mine to successfully do so. Yet.

I also had a major attention to detail fail, where I completely missed the multiple notices that today's afternoon class required I read 3 chapters beforehand. I used to be a word processing reviewer, which means I'm trained and practiced in attention to detail. I've been floundering the last few weeks, finding time after time that my attention to detail is currently AWOL. I saw this notice in my calendar about 5 minutes before the class started. Yeah, not enough time for 38 pages. I had to ask to be pulled from today's class and rescheduled for the next one in several weeks time. This, after calling someone who's name I know by the wrong name, and showing up for a class half an hour early this morning. I can't even blame lack of sleep, because I slept very well last night, thank you very much.
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THIS made me laugh today. This is our cafeteria, and the guy behind the counter is known as "Dad." His collection started with 5 little duckies. One walked away when someone brought their kid in for lunch one day, so I contributed the big black one (who is now known as "Mother Ducker"). I came in today to find the brood has doubled in size! I was quite amused.