Tetris Attack: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blocks

I've been playing a lot of Tetris lately. When I get up in the mornings, I roll over and check my phone—cycle through the usual Facebook/Twitter/Instagram feeds—and then I open the app on my phone that takes me to the game.

I've been a Tetris player for the last decade or so, ever since Tetris Attack! dominated the common room of my sixteen-roommate house for the better part of two years. I've become accustomed to closing my eyes and seeing little falling blocks—teal logs, purple hills, yellow squares. (I'm not alone in this: there's even a phenomenon called "the Tetris effecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect," which I'm sharing with probably a million people right now.) And while I never got into Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga, I totally play a lot of Tetris. It goes in waves: sometimes, I'll play a few times a week, while other times I'll play nine or ten games a day. Right now, I'm in heavy-play mode. Tetris all the time for me.

Here's the thing about this: I've started to win. My particular version of the game only goes up to level fifteen, so once I clear 150 lines of blocks, I'm rewarded with a screen featuring little dancing purple pieces. (It's totally cute.) I never used to win at Tetris. I didn't actually realize that I could win until the first time I beat the game. Now I win a lot.

When I first started playing this game, I would obsessively check the level counter and the "lines needed" box that told me how many more blocks I had to clear before my next achievement. I would panic as the pieces fell faster and faster, and make easily avoided mistakes. I would set aside pieces in the interest of "saving them for later," and then never actually use them. But the less I cared about winning, the better I played. As my wins continued, I learned things; for example, it usually takes me a game or two to warm up before I would win, and there's a point in every game at which past mistakes will come back to haunt you.

It's not hard to see the metaphor in this.

In life, as in Tetris, being in the moment is a valuable skill. When I learned to relax, and take it one line at a time, I became much, much more likely to move onto the next level. Feeling stupid for mistakes served me poorly; instead, accepting them and working my way out of them was a much better strategy.

I've spent a long time struggling with perfectionism. Often, I don't even start a project because I'm so freaked out by the possibility of doing it poorly. I don't ask questions because I don't want to seem dumb. And I constantly judge myself against other people's performances and choices—in work, in relationships, in appearance, in fitness, in lifestyle. It is exhausting and never-ending.

Weirdly, Tetris has given me a way that I can practice going easy on myself. I don't have to maintain a spot on someone else's leader board, or have each game trump my last. I can be more...zen. I can relax. And, much to my surprise, this zen feeling has translated into other areas of my life. I take it a bit easier on myself when I have to ask a question, or when a deadline I've set for myself sails by unfulfilled. I'm trying to keep what my teacher once called "beginner's mind," when every time is the first, low-stakes, we're-all-new-here time.

Deciding to not be a perfectionist is like deciding you don't have the flu when you're running a temperature of 104. It just doesn't work. People need to practice self-care skills, and practice them in a way that doesn't feel high-stakes. For me, it was Tetris. For someone else, it might be baking pies, or collage, or Lego. Or ax-throwing. Who knows?

But it does makes a difference when you have a safe, failure-friendly place to learn and make mistakes. This is especially true as an adult, when it feels like all our responses and habits are so ingrained as to be unchangeable. And, once you've experienced the thrill of learning, trying, failing and succeeding, bringing those feelings to other areas of our lives can make them that much fuller.

Uniformly Fashionable

For me, it's a black tank top atop a miniskirt and colourful tights, usually with a slubby scarf wrapped around my neck. My boyfriend favours black jeans, basketball shoes, and a concert teeshirt. Rachel won't leave the house without wearing something in a mustard shade, while Lindsay favours electric teal. Liz likes a silhouette best described as maternity chic: tight on top, and a flowing midsection. My sister keeps it simple: jeans and a sweatshirt.

GQ recently wrote about the power of a uniform in a man's life. These aren't military ensembles or garbage-man jumpsuits, but rather the colours, shapes, and concepts that makes these powerful men return to again and again to feel their best. It's an intriguing concept. The suit has been the de facto uniform of successful men for decades, with jeans and a teeshirt standing in for the double-breasteds on the weekend, so playtime is easy. Shrink the proportions, add in a hat, or subtract a tie, and bam: instant uniform. Replicable, portable, and memorable. Dudes at home can survey their own closets and quickly spot patterns; maybe a penchant for flannel, or a small but growing collection of wingtips, or a signature pair of sunglasses.

For women, our fashion terrain has been a bit more treacherous. Short hemlines? Long sleeves? Should we emulate the menfolk and don boxy jackets in the office, or attempt a softer silhouette? Bright colours, or a more muted palette? Some women (hello!) walk like T-rexes when we put on high heels, while others shudder at the idea of flip-flips anywhere but a spa. Can we wear linen a la Eileen Fisher, or do we have to wait until our post-menopausal granola phase? Not to mention that we can mine pretty much anywhere in the last eighty years for fashion inspiration, from the sleek CK-ish silhouettes of the 1990s to the crinoline skirts of the 1950s.  Look at your life, look at your choices!

Which is why the idea of a uniform struck me. Paradoxically, it feels freeing to ignore 95% of the fashion white noise and zero in on the few pieces that I claim as my own: black tank tops. Capris. Chunky scarves. Am I interested in a strapless bustier or a pair of high-waisted floral jeans? Anthropologically, sure, but I'm not going to put it on my body.

I brought up this concept at friend's recent dinner party, and one of the other guests shied away from the idea of wearing the same thing every day. "I don't want people thinking I can't do my wash!" she exclaimed. I hadn't thought of that: uniforms are still often a blue-collar reality, rather than a fashion choice. For many, the idea of wearing the same thing every day reek of McJobs, of aprons and smocks, of polo shirts with your name pinned above the nonfunctional breast pocket. Or maybe of only having one pair of pants, of only having one pair of sneakers, or of wearing socks until they're more holes than sock. While Alexander Wang might wear black pants every day, nobody really thinks they're the same black pants 365 days in a row. This is not a universal truth.

Even without formalizing it to the point of "having a uniform," I think most of us gravitate towards the same things over and over. Taking stock of my closet, I can see clearly that I like natural fibres in a muted gray/black colour family. Other women would dismiss this as boring. Occasionally I'll buy outside my wheelhouse, and you know what happens? Those things just sit there. My lime green teeshirt gets no love, while I've worn my best black tank top until it was see-through. I feel like an impostor in those clothes, while my favourites empower me, revealing my most confident and best self through fashion.

It would be easy to dismiss this as trite—after all, if you're not confident, clothes aren't going to change that—except that clothing is our armour in the world. Putting on something that makes you feel fantastic is a secret weapon, and figuring out shortcuts to that feeling is not a worthless exercise. If it comes by developing a uniform, a signature, or a favourite, then by all means, claim it as yours. There's no shame in returning to something that makes you feel great. As far as I'm concerned, too many black tops just isn't a thing that can happen.

Thanksgiving

Thank you to my parents, who are always there for me, and who encourage me to do weird, hard things because those things grow me.

Thank you to my siblings, who are a constant source of insight of my place in the world. You're so much like me, and so not, that it blows my mind.

Thank you to my boyfriend, who loves me in a way I've never been loved before. You make me feel all the feelings. 

Thank you to my friends, who keep me sane in times of uncertainty. And, often, fed. 

Thank you to my various bosses and editors this year: you've given me work and exposure.

Thank you to my therapist, because we're working some shit out this fall, and it's like mucking out the emotional stables except with more swearing.

Thank you to my pregnant friends, for helping me crystallize what I want and what I don't want.

Thank you to the doctor who told me I could have kids. That was a huge weight off my shoulders.

Thank you to people who put stuff out on the curb: I get so much of my awesome stuff from you.

Thank you to my neighbours, who have confirmed that we're not crazy and our water pressure really is terrible.

Thank you to Lorde, who provided an alternative to Robin Thicke's grating "song of the summer."

Thank you to whoever discovered/invented/made up the paleo diet: because of you, I've lost 37 pounds and I feel like a different person.

Thank you to Plastik Wrap: I feel like a rock star in your clothes.

Thank you to Rob Ford, because you've demonstrated exactly why it's important to vote.

Thank you to this place, this planet, this time, and these people: you are exactly what I need, even if you're not always what I think I want. 

Just a hometown girl, living in a lonely world

The problem with going back to my hometown is that it's not my hometown anymore. Oh, sure, my parents still live there, and it still has my favourite library and a couple stores that I like to browse. But the things, events, people and places that I considered my homebase growing up have mostly faded away.

Take, for example, Menrui. This was an Asian-fusion restaurant run by white owners, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. In reality, the cooks were chef's school graduates, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant was always busy with locals, and I worked there twice, under two different owners. Both times, it felt like a funky, smelly, tight-knit group where the focus was a tiny, hip room, and really tasty food. But Menrui is gone: the original owner taken down by the riptide of drug addiction, the second owner bamboozled by the challenges of small business management, and so poof—disappeared. When I walk by its old address, I get a pang of nostalgia. I'll never be able to stop in for a bowl of udon noodles with spicy peanut sauce, or an orange-date-banana smoothie.

This isn't unique to small towns—it's virtually impossible to walk down any street and return to the same one five years later. But the change is felt more greatly in small towns. The main street really is just that, and instead of a big city's hopscotch board of neighbourhoods, there's usually a single downtown core. Which businesses thrive, and which fail, can say a lot about a town.

For example, Stratford is a nice little town of about 30,000 people. It has two engines driving it: the factories, which ring the community like a necklace, and the Stratford Festival. The Festival, as it's always called, caters to tourists who come in for a day or a weekend, take in some theatre, eat at some restaurants, and then leave. These people come from Toronto and Buffalo, from Montreal and from Chicago, from Waterloo and from Nashville. At least, they did: because of the recession, the Festival is losing money. It seems that, in a time when food bank usage is up and mortgage defaults are an American rite of passage, people just don't want to pay fifteen dollars for a plate of tortellini before their $75-per-ticket performance of Tommy.

So there are two kinds of people in Stratford: those who cater to the tourists, who find themselves increasingly nervous as sales drop, and the blue-collar factory workers. My sister described them as "rednecks," and while she's being classist, Stratford is home to a high number of people with neck tattoos.

If you wandered into downtown Stratford, you would see plenty of little boutiques (although fewer now than in years past), plenty of empty storefronts, and a curious mix of well-dressed older couples, and teenagers sullenly pushing baby strollers while wearing unflattering pants and smoking. The two groups eye each other warily. The tourists are transient, coming for only a few months each year, but the town's unwavering devotion to their imagined needs and wants has coloured the whole town. There was a bitter and years-long fight to keep Wal-Mart out of Stratford because of the perceived threat to the tourist-centric downtown businesses, most of wouldn't dream of carrying anything in Wal-Mart's inventory in the first place. Meanwhile, for the people who actually live here, there remain very few place to buy things like baby bottles, or shirts costing less than thirty dollars, or school supplies.

Downtown, things aren't much better. There are lots of empty storefronts. And it's not just a storefront problem: there are a lot of amenities this town might actually benefit from that are downplayed or shoved aside in order to appease those transient tourists. There's a dearth of things like wilderness space, or youth-focused recreation (unless you count the head shop, which, like, I guess...?), non-stage-related adult recreation (unless you count the myriad bars, which, like, I guesss...?). The local movie theatre sucks. There are no live music venues. No wonder the teens in Stratford wear such heavy eye makeup; the local Shopper's Drug Mart is the only place they can go that's open until midnight.

This may explain why so many of my high school friends have left. The job market is poor, and the jobs that do tend to come available are in tourism or in factories. But more than that, there doesn't seem to be much to do. Unlike in many corporate arts towns, there's no thriving underground arts scene. The Festival is oppressive and everywhere, colouring even the most basic initiatives. (A Farmer's Market? Sure! That will drive tourism!) Stratford would benefit from a slight perspective shift: instead of desperately looking outward to retain its identity—Festival! Gardens! Dinner! Maniacal laughter!—looking inward at what the town truly needs. Why do so many people leave? What might make them stay?

When I come home, I don't see my future. Aside from visiting my family, there's nothing there for me. The town's insular worldview and drug problem make it unappealing to raise a family, and its lackluster job market and lack of stuff to do makes it unappealing as an adult.

No place is perfect, but my hometown needs to figure out ways to grow as we have grown. As it stands now, it's a parlour trick, a one-act play, a designated hitter: good at one thing, all the rest be damned.

Gilmour's Diss on Girls

When I was in school, it was a point of pride that I took damn near every genre literature class they offered. Science Fiction and Fantasy? Sign me up. Horror? Sure. Carribean lit? Uh-huh. The Canadian Short Story? It was only a semester, but okay! Wading through piles of weird, unusual, and non-canonical literature had the effect of elevating oft-ignored writing into something worthy of our consideration. And while it was a shame that each class existed in its own little bubble, the end result of taking many, many genre lit classes was that I had a broader understanding of what "literature" actually means.

Enter David Gilmour.

Yesterday, Hazlitt posted an interview with the author; it was a tour of his bookshelf, the one in his University of Toronto office. Gilmour, who teaches English and cultural studies at Victoria College, was being interviewed as a teacher and a writer; his novel, Extraordinary, has recently been long-listed for the Giller Prize.

As an interview subject, Gilmour was exceptional: lauding Proust one moment, then telling his interviewer that he only teaches "guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth." Roth, he explains, necessitates a late-semester introduction, because, you know, scenes of middle-aged men eating menstrual pads require worldlier students. "I save it ’til the very end of the year because by that point they’ve got fairly strong stomachs, and they’re far more sophisticated than they are in the beginning. So they can understand the differences between pornography and great literature." So sayeth Gilmour, who is also no great fan of women writers, Canadian writers, Chinese writers, and men who aren't strapping lumberjack-ish men—Proust aside, of course.

I never had the pleasure of sitting in a Gilmour classroom, although I did encounter my fair share of shoddy teachers at my alma mater. And he's since gone on record as saying his words were taken "out of context," that the interview was second on his mind to a conversation he was simultaneously having with a colleague (that started after the interview began), and that he teaches big, muscular writers because he identifies with them the most. (For what it's worth, Hazlitt's transcript holds up just fine in the face of Gilmour's blustery non-apology.)

The whole thing reads like a slick parody of dude-writer culture: from the women-don't-matter dismissal, to the pricky middle-aged sexuality, to the odd specificity of not teaching Chinese writers (are Japanese writers okay, Gilmour? How about Thai authors?), to the monomaniac belief that one's own worldview is the only one that could possibly matter.

I know that writers need healthy levels of self-confidence and self-belief in order to succeed. To this end, Gilmour is fine, if utterly obnoxious. If he wants to immerse himself in a literary culture that's a warm, wooly, just-like-me blanket, he can go right ahead. Never having read any Gilmour, I can't tell you if the effect of reading his library creates sparkling innovative, or derivative same-old.

But inflicting that same culture on his students is irresponsible. He says he can only teach authors that he loves, and he happens to love mostly male writers. ("Not my fault, bro! They speak to me!") But I don't think he's trying hard enough. As an instructor, he may feel most comfortable talking about books he likes, written by men he wants to emulate, featuring characters he identifies with. But teach those, and those alone? Laziness. Solipsism. Shameful.

Worse, it reinforces the notion that dude-writers (and by extension, dudes) are the only types that matter. When we repeatedly see, in media and academia, a narrow representation of existence, we assume that things outside that narrow slice are somehow not-good, or defective, or worthy of dismissal. See: size-ten women; women of colour; queer people of both genders; trans people of both genders; old people; immigrants; overly sexual women; asexual women; unattractive people; and people living unusual, non-rat-racy lives. Part of me understands what Gilmour is saying. It can be difficult to identify with people who are different from us. But that's how literature works: it connects us to people who aren't like us, and lifts us to a place of common understanding. How low-reaching do you have to be to only want to appreciate folks who are just like you?

When I was in school, my Contemporary American Literature class could have been populated with Roth, Emore Leonard, F. Scott Fitgerald—all of whom are name-checked by Gilmour as being particularly impressive—but instead was thick with unusual choices. The Book of Salt, by Vietnamese-American writer Monique Truong; "America," by queer poet Allen Ginsberg; Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, a deeply troubling short film about the singer "performed" by Barbie dolls; and many more. The literary landscape we worked through was varied and challenging, and my professor was knowledgeable about their various forms, authors, and influences. It was a difficult class to pass, since the writing was challenging and the focus was kaleidoscopic. But I still think of that as being one of the best, and most comprehensive, moments in my education. By exposing myself to a rich, varied, and unfamiliar territory, I became a better writer, a better student, and a better human. Perhaps Gilmour should check that class out. After all, it's just down the hall.

Let's Play Ball!

Cheering for a professional sports team is weird. Even the idea of professional sports — grown men and women who get paid handsomely to wear strange clothes and chase balls around — can only be the product of a society that has enough leisure time and money on its hands to spend some of it in rooms large enough to seat an entire small town, paying $10 for beers they wouldn't otherwise be caught dead drinking.

I'm not going to pretend to be anything other than some Jilly-come-lately to baseball. Oh, sure, I "played" baseball as a kid: slow-pitch softball, where I was terrified all the time that someone was going to hit the ball to me and I might actually have to perform. I struck out constantly in games, which confounded my relaxed (and therefore more successful) at-bats during practices. In my worry about messing it up for everyone, I stuck myself way, way out in left field, where no ball could possibly reach me. I could never muster the graceless talent of, say, an Amish ballplayer, who plays just for the sake of playing. Needless to say, as I got older, I realized that the pressure of team sports wasn't really my thing. I played squash, danced, and ran, and those solo or semi-solo pursuits were much better for my soul.

On the other hand, I do remember the 1992 and 1993 World Series of baseball, AKA the ones where the Toronto Blue Jays won and everyone went berserk. I remember the ambient excitement in my family: watching one of the games up at the cottage, where we dropped my great-aunt's place on some bogus pretext that was discarded as soon as my dad snapped on their TV. Having a team in the playoffs was a big deal, since Canada's baseball landscape was pretty arid. Plus, the Jays are my dad's team. I remember car rides with him up to the beach, when he would tune into the dense, impenetrable chatter of radio baseball announcers; or games watched at home, him alone in the darkened TV room, letting out gusty cheers when they did well and stomping upstairs to bed when they performed poorly. Just as golf is my grandfather's sport, baseball is my father's: they're experts in the art of watching.

For me, the thrill of the game is different. It's less about standing by the team (although, since the Jays are the only professional Canadian ball team, it would feel odd and turncoat to root for an American team; at least with the Jays, I can say, "I'm from here, what's your excuse?") and more about the ritual. Going to the SkyDome —excuse, me, the Rogers Center, barf — is a process: negotiating the throngs of people massing on Front Street, climbing the endless concrete ramp up to the 500-level, then settling down into the blue plastic seats. Listening as the announcer calls out each player's name with theatrical panache, saving his heartiest readings for the home team and coolly underplaying the visitors. Grinning as the Japanese fans behind us lose their minds equally for both the Jay's Munenori Kawasaki and the Yankee's Ichiro Suzuki, team allegiances be damned because one of their own is up at bat.

The gameplay itself is long stretches of time balancing between boredom and engagement as the teams glide through inning after runless inning. The sudden snap of excitement when something, anything, starts happening: a pitch beans a player! A bat breaks! A mini-drama of a runner getting chased down the baseline by a ball-wielding third-baseman, or the sudden heartbreak of a dropped flyball. The roar of the fans as someone expectedly smacks the bejeezus out of a ball and sails it over the fence, and their slow jog around the bases to score that point. Baseball, like opera, creates an air of general theatricality without a lot of actual action. It's perfect for summer, when just complaining about the heat is its own recreational activity.

Last night, we went down the Rogers Center, sat ourselves down in the cheap seats, and watched as the Jays beat the Yankees. It was a fine game: a few laggardly moves by the Yankees and a couple nice runs by the Jays meant the game had the slow, loping pace of a large savannah animal. The Jays are doing terribly right now, and so being a fan is basically just an exercise in morale. "Next year is our year," we said to each other, ignoring the rest of the 2013 season as so much administrative work to be filed. There was a baby there, a six-month old with a button nose who was grabbing at the man in front of him's blue baseball cap, grinning like a tiny maniac. The Japanese fans waved signed with the Japanese flag on side and a maple leaf on the other (my heart!). The Yankee fan to my left clapped futilely as the rest of the stadium booed A-Rod. We ate sunflower seeds and drank beers. It was the perfect time to be a sports fan.

A love letter to my pregnant friends, or: why getting fat is always hard

I've never been pregnant. I've never really wanted to be pregnant; wanted to have kids someday, yeah, but the few pregnancy tests I've taken in my life have all been accompanied by nervous stomachs, crossed fingers, and a three-days-late start to my otherwise clockwork-like period. But each time I've peed on those innocuous-looking sticks, I've gotten them back negative, and been much relieved.

However, much like pregnant women, I do have vast and varied experience with gaining weight. So I can talk about that.

In 2009, I was the fittest I'd ever been in my adult life. I was commuting twenty kilometers a day by bike, I was running three times a week, and lifting weights twice a week. In August, two friends and I biked to Guelph, a day-long trip that was challenging and exhilarating. I was also sticking my fingers down my throat to throw up meals I had just eaten, and I was taking laxatives to shit out what I couldn't purge, something I had been doing off and on for the past twelve years. I weighed 108 pounds. I hated my body, but I looked amazing.

In the fall of 2009, I threw a house party where I drank a bottle of wine for dinner and blacked out well before ten PM. I woke up the next day and I had no food in my house. My parents were coming over to take me out for dinner, and I spent the entire day shaking on my bathroom floor, trying to throw up and having nothing. When they arrived, I tried to stand up and nearly fainted. My disapproving mother found a bag of pasta somewhere deep in my pantry and made me cheesy macaroni. I was so embarrassed.

I got help. I never know what to call it: "rehab" sounds so dire, and "treatment" is what my sister calls the six-month period when she was receiving chemo. For eight months, I went twice a week to CAMH's Eating Disorders and Addictions program: once to a group therapy session, and once to meet one-on-one with a counselor. The program was successful enough, I guess; I stopped binging and purging, but I never figured out why I struggled with those problems in the first place.

I also started gaining weight. A little, at first: chalk it up to quitting my job and losing my commute. Then more: blame that on actually keeping my food down. Then more and more, until three years later, I was 158 pounds.

I was humiliated. My BMI was at 29.9; for all intents and purposes, I was obese. I was horrified. I was wearing sizes I had never worn before. I was bloated. My skin was gray. I cried every time I got on the scale, every time I tried on old clothes, every time I went to the gym. Nothing seemed to work. I wasn't bulimic anymore, but I didn't want to love this big body of mine. I felt like I couldn't.

Everywhere we go, we get messages about how we're supposed to look. We get them from the media, sure — pregnant and ballooning celebrities are a specialty of judgey tabloids — but we also get them from our friends, families, and partners. We hear from a friend about how cutting out Coke and fast food made them lose fifteen pounds, how going paleo made their skin clear up, about how they stopped losing weight once they figured out they were lactose intolerant. We hear from from our parents, who compliment us on weight loss ("I had the flu, mom."), or who offer diet advice followed directly by cookies. We hear it from our partners, who love our bodies, but who sometimes say boneheaded things about other women's bodies, either in admiration or in disgust, that we internalize.

Everyone knows it's hard to lose weight, but it's a little-discussed secret that gaining weight is also tough. It comes up in small ways (sleep positions change dramatically when you're carrying an extra forty pounds, for instance), and in large ones: emotional health, self-perception, self-love. I have nothing but sympathy for pregnant women, especially those balancing between the first trimester and the day when your bellybutton pops — the women who aren't always obviously pregnant; who might have just, you know, stopped running, or decided that cupcakes are an all-the-time food. Trying to remember that you're growing a whole other person inside your body is hard when you can't get your pants done up and you want to throw yourself down on the bed and cry. And, because the universe is a bully sometimes, it's the thinnest women — the ones who work hardest at keeping tiny and toned — who invariably end up showing first.

My weight gain was the result of some pretty bad depression, a total rewiring of the way I looked at food (friend! Not enemy!), and maybe some genetics. Your weight gain is the result of some cray-cray hormones, and the desire to make a family. I'm well aware that pregnancy comes with a host of other bummers, like nausea, exhaustion, constipation, and yeast infections, on top of gaining weight. There's also a certain pressure to pretend like every step of pregnancy is a moment of growth and gentle, maternal love, when I'm sure all some of you want to do is weep angrily while burning down your local fat-unfriendly LuluLemon store.

I don't know what to say except: I feel you, girl. I know that weight changes aren't easy, either going up or going down. I know what it's like to look down at a stomach that wasn't there a few months ago and despair, and to dislike the change even when it's a result of something positive. Hang in there: in a few months, you'll get to meet the reason for your new waistline, and something tells me it might be worth it.