So... Hi... Again.

So, hi. It's been a while. No, I didn't make my Christmas goal of losing significant weight, or being in a 5K. Maybe sometime later I'll explore that some more, the whys and wherefores, and how much and if they matter.Too much to delve into as it is.

It was a rough Christmas season in some ways. I ended up working REALLY hard making presents and we were out of town unusually long, and our Christmas week schedule was crazy. Nuts. Insane by nearly any metric. For 7 straight days, we had a major party/event every single day. Oh, I tell a lie. There was one day, Monday, where we didn't have anything going on. If by that you mean trying to wrap half a dozen presents, split our time evenly between both sets of in-laws, whilst managing two small boys and knitting like a fiend.

There was a fair bit of "oh who cares it's Christmas" kind of eating. Cookies were readily available at all times. I made the mistake of taking down my new favorite kind of cookie (molasses cookies). There were also cheese balls, and my mom makes a pretty killer cheese ball. Oh and my mother-in-law makes candy. All different kinds. From scratch, yes. I am unworthy. Mostly, though, the consumption stayed within normal, acceptable limits. Except maybe when I got that second (huge) piece of standing rib roast at Christmas Eve Dinner (believe me, it deserves the capital) because it was AMAZING and come on this was definitely a once a year kind of meal.

So then we come home and lie around limply for a few days, recovering, enjoying the home-ness, eating a fair bit of cheese for whatever reason and a couple days after New Years the Husband gets a Call.

It's his grandmother. It's the end. Or at least now the end is coming. Any time in the next couple of days.

So we rush back down and yes. It is the end. We were both there. It was a holy time that I have a hard time describing. You have to use this sort of intense tone, where simple words like "good" and "breathed" and "left" are infused with so much more meaning than they usually carry around.

But much like a birth, it is holy moments interspersed with earthly, practical ones. We drift between her bedside and the kitchen table downstairs. What's for lunch? Has anyone thought about lunch? There are Belgian chocolates on the counter. A big box of them, someone's Christmas gift. I circle back to them every so often. I never took more than one at a time. I'm proud of that. On the floor, the kids chase the dog. Little Bit waves a sticky chew toy and squawks when it's taken from him.

We are grieving. Shouldn't that mean that calories don't count? Have they no decency? To show up at a funeral, after a funeral at the late lunch spread for the family with plates and plates of fried chicken and ten different desserts?

It shouldn't matter. I should be able to stuff my face if that's what my heart needs to do. There will never, ever be another Oma, and that is a loss that shouldn't be taken lightly. It should supersede petty weight loss issues. But the problem is, there isn't really an endgame here. This is not one bad day that I can cure with an over-sized bowl of brownies and ice cream. She is gone. She will be gone tomorrow, and the next day. She will be gone next Christmas. I know, I know that I will see her again, I know that she had been sick and in pain for a long time, but still - she is gone. I can't live on chocolate for the next year while we all learn to go on without her.

Somehow, I've got to separate how I process emotion from the experience of eating food. While we pick up the pieces, while I begin a challenging season at work, I have to make good, non-emotion-driven choices. I am still not good at this. My various "rules" from last year are sort of out the window. There is a large bowl of icing in my fridge that the Husband and I have been sneaking spoons out of. But.

But.

This morning I got up at 6 am, drove to a gym, showed them my shiny new ID number, and climbed up on a treadmill to run. I walked/ran for 29 minutes and 1.29 miles.

When I pulled into my driveway, there was a beautiful, picture-perfect dawn on my left. The blues, the golds, the wispy clouds - this sunrise was spectacular. And on my right, there was a rainbow. A beautiful, vivid rainbow that reached across the sky in a perfect arch of hope and promise.

I am not even kidding you right now.