Where in the World is Rimarama

. . . and why is she neglecting her blog?

There is no compelling reason. We needed time apart, the blog and I. But my hiatus was actually more or less an accident that quickly morphed into a way of life.

It was a languid and delicious way of life, and I am a little loathe to leave it. I'm feeling the itch to write here again, but this time truly without guilt or obligation. It's the only way I can re-enter the fray.

After I finished my big project, I kept meaning to post, but found that I had misplaced my writing groove. Sitting down to write was like trying to start a letter to an old neglected friend, and I didn't know quite how to begin, what to share, what to leave out.

Then we (finally!) moved.

After unpacking, I obsessed a bit about furniture and decorating choices and when that got old, I just meandered about my kingdom in a happy daze, pausing every so often to fluff a pillow here, nab a wayward piece of lint there. Sometimes I would simply roll around on the sun room floor, purring and batting at dust mites.

I invested some time in taking care of myself, eating better, exercising. I lost seven pounds on We1ght Watcher$, which doesn't really sound like that much of a feat, but it's more than five percent of my body weight and makes a considerable dent in a pygmy frame.

I've been trying to lose ten pounds since after the V-meister was born and could never quite get there until I started counting those stupid points. I always thought I was eating fairly well (EggBeaters, anyone?), but what WW taught me is that I can pretty much never have bakery bread or seconds, even if we're just talking about a dadburn piece of boneless, skinless chicken breast that's cooked in olive oil spray. Also, I cannot haz cheezburger.

I hate WW and I love it. Sometimes I resent counting POINTS so much that it makes me want to run around in circles and punch a wall. I have a little POINTS angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and the two of them are waging a war right in front of my mouth.

But. There is this one pair of jeans that I just couldn't get rid of when purging my closet of Things I Will Never Wear Again In This Lifetime, even though I hadn't been able to zip them even halfway up in years. I hung on to these jeans as a kind of benchmark for what I knew had been a healthy and attractive weight for me, although I was beginning to lose hope that I could ever get there again. And now they fit me, like a glove.

I interviewed a few new pairs of jeans again in the Gap dressing room yesterday evening and while I don't yet have an opening for a pair of size zero Long and Leans, I'm happy to announce that I had to dismiss my old nemesis, Size Six Boot Cut Ankle Length, because they were too big.

I've had a lot of anxiety lately, too, I guess I should say. It has to do with moving here, my conflicting emotions about undeserved bounty, karma, the state of the nation, all that. I'm guessing it's also been triggered by the old North Wind and the information packet we got from the V-meister's school about pandemic/avian bird flu preparedness.

This is the sort of thing that can put me into a tailspin for days, cause me to pick my cuticles ragged, snap at my family in spite of myself, and arrange my books in their built in cases according to size and color.

But here is a little piece of information I'm not sure I've ever shared with you: I have a little voice in my head that dictates my blog posts to me! I can only write when she's around. I call her, "Rimarama," and, frankly, I don't know where the hell she's been.

But lately I've heard her trying to come through and I think she's saying that she feels like writing again. Even though she's getting kind of sick of the cotton candy pink header with its playfully depressing implications, the blog's general tone of insouciance, and also regrets the pseudonym she assigned her son. (She wants to start calling him the little J-Bomb instead).

She's writing this catchup post in hopes that the act of writing itself will engender inspiration.

If not, it's back to the sun room floor.