Having completed my Victorian period show, I have now put the blonde flash back in the front of my hair. It's amazing how familiarity breeds contempt. When I first started doing it myself, I was terrified. You're doing something permanent! To your hair! OHGODWHATIFITGOESWRONG. Now I mix up a couple of tablespoons of bleach in the lid of a discarded peanut butter jar and smoosh it into my roots with a travel toothbrush.

It became a lot less nerve-wracking when I realized that my hair is virtually unkillable. Lifting to level 9 involves 45 minutes in 40V bleach, wrapped in cling film and jammed under a hat. (I've no idea what level I start at. About 6, maybe? All the sample cards I can find run blonde to brunette, which is unhelpful. My natural hair color is Titian red, almost dead on young Jane Seymour.) The idea of letting it marinate that long is probably making some of you twitch, but nothing really happens, aside from all the color coming out. Might be a bit more fly-away, but not so's you'd notice, unless you were the one in charge of spraying it smooth.

The point is, I've now fixed my hair so it looks the way I think it should when I check the mirror. Less so the rest of me.

I have lost a great deal of weight since this time last year. Or, at least, girth -- I don't own a scale, but I've got several tape measures. I had some vague idea that had happened, but the extent of it wasn't apparent until I put on the ball gown I wear for some of the Mrs. Hawking shows, and it was so loose the wardrobe mistress double-checked to make sure it was zipped all the way up. My leotards are all fitting funny around the middle. Although not at the top or the bottom. Apparently I am going to be blessed with T&A no matter what size I am.

I don't think anything's specifically wrong with me; I just haven't been stuffing down enough calories to account for the amount of running around I do. My portion sizes are off. A cup is much bigger than I think it is. So is a tablespoon. Intuitive eating doesn't appear to work very well for me, as my intuition says 'no, finish the thing first before you go eat, otherwise you'll lose all your momentum'. If I don't manage to get to food within an hour or so, my stomach gives up and just goes 'eh, fuck it, we'll fix it later'. And then I don't fix it, because there's a limit to the amount of food I can eat before getting nauseated. There's food at home, but I'm often not at home, and I don't have the money to just stop off and buy something pre-made wherever I am.

I don't eat much when I'm home either; the people with the car and the bigger income do most of the grocery shopping, and it all has this aura of... not mineness to it. Most of my diet these days consists of things that have been in the fridge long enough that it's apparent no one else is going to eat it, but not so long it deteriorates into rat food.

It has occurred to me that both other roommates specifically told me when they made a colossal pot of curry because they have noticed that I've dropped a lot of weight and think that perhaps I would like to stop doing that. It has also occurred to me that this would require them to be paying more attention to me than they probably are, and that they were just being generically nice. They did make about a gallon of the stuff. They probably wanted the refrigerator space back.

I may have evaded comment on the shrinking because I look fairly athletic now. Most people who lose weight and build muscle at the same time are doing it on purpose. Anyone who notices probably thinks I'm on a self-improvement kick. It's nice to have obvious quads, I suppose, but I'm also developing obvious clavicles, and sitting on the floor feels cold and bony.

The other reason I am losing a lot of weight is because I'm dancing very seriously again, and I'm doing that because frankly I don't know what else to do with myself. I'm trying to justify it by putting together curriculum for some workshops, which theoretically would make money. Unfortunately, I need to have some money up front before I can do anything about that. I'm not allowed to use banked time on for-profit ventures, so room rental would be $35-40 for an hour, plus a $50 deposit (which can be refunded or carried over to the next workshop rental, should I continue). I also work with props, and not very common ones either, so I'd need to buy a bunch in order to lend them out (or sell them) for classes. Five sets of the cheapest fan veils I can find, including shipping, would work out to about $80. It's not a lot of cash, and it wouldn't be difficult to make it back, but I don't have it to front.

The last time I dropped weight like this was the year before I left Flagstaff. I lived in an apartment complex that had an exercise room, and had a therapist who suggested that working out would make me feel better. It didn't; I think treadmills and elliptical machines are the physical manifestation of ennui, which doesn't do anyone any good. I made myself go every damn day anyway. I had to quit when I realized I wasn't keeping up with it despite the unpleasantness, but because of it: If I were such a failure that even things that should have been making me better weren't working, then being bored and miserable was the least I deserved.

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