changing your name is hard

Everything about changing your name is hard.  It's emotionally hard, letting go of an old name and taking a new one, which means a little bit of letting go of an old identity and taking a new one.  It's physically hard, especially if you have to get discriminated against in the process.  But it's also just logistically hard -- sometimes even impossible. 

There's the social security card, then the passport, and the diver's license, and work, and the bank, etc.  But yesterday I encountered a particularly surprising difficulty when I tried to change the email address associated with the blog.  Not being Erin R. anymore, I tried to switch my log-in credentials over to my shiny new Erin H. email address.... only to discover that it was impossible.  You just can't do it.  So, through several backbends and contortions and a lot of signing out and back in, I finally managed to add my new email, even if the old one is still lingering, attached to the account.  Which hits on one of the weird things about changing your name.

In a lot of ways, you become a whole new person, with all your history wiped out.  I don't have my email history, I don't have any history on blogger (although you can see from my profile that I reserved my new email address shortly after getting engaged, way back in February).  In almost every way, it seems like Erin R. has to get erased for Erin H. to spring into existance.

And so.  If there is a bit of funkiness during the transition, where I appear to be two different people at the same time, rest assured it is not just you.  I actually am two different people at the same time. 

(Erin R.)

(Erin H.)

south beach

So, my doctor put me on a diet.  Not a weight-loss diet, although I may lose some.  But a sugar diet.  It turns out, it's actually not completely normal to feel shaky, light-headed, nauseated, and head-achy every 2-3 hours.  Which is how I felt.  Sometimes, if I went 4-5 hours without eating, my vision would start to tunnel every time I stood up.  So a few months ago, I went into the doctor to find out what the heck was wrong with me.  She listened to my symptoms, did a physical, and told me without much hesitation that I was hypoglycemic. 

"Ok great.  What do I do?" I asked.

"Well, you need to change the way you eat."

"Ok, fine.  Do you have some kind of hypoglycemia diet I should follow?"

"Really, the best thing you can do is follow the South Beach Diet."

(the book)

I knew all about the South Beach Diet, because various family members had tried it about a decade ago.  There was no way I was interested in giving up every bread.  I am not a low-carb kind of person.  "Oh, don't you have a handout or something?"  I wanted her to tell me to eat more fruit or something.

"No, not really, but you could look at the South Beach Diet."

"Ok.  Are there some general guidelines I could follow?  Just sort of, you know, generally?"

"Yes.  The South Beach Diet."

OKAY.  I get it.  South Beach Diet.  But this was a month before the wedding, when we had bitten off way more than we could chew in terms of work/fixing beach house/wedding planning/family visiting/etc., so I decided to just table it for the time being, and gave myself permission to just eat when I was hungry without worrying about what it was.  I gained roughly 10 pounds in as many weeks.  And was still miserable, and hungry all. the. time.  (I feel as though I should clarify here -- I am actually not a big junk food eater.  Usually I was eating a salad and bread for lunch, and crackers mid-afternoon, and then cheese and more crackers when I got home, and dinner. Or something like that. I don't really eat sweets because I don't like them much. So when I say whatever I want, it's not like I ate three cupcakes a day or something. That's why the 10 lbs. in 10 weeks was so shocking.)

I am no doctor, but the theory is that ironically, if you have low blood sugar, you need to avoid sugar, because it triggers your body into overproducing insulin, and drives your blood sugar lower than it was in the first place.  It's like a sugar roller-coaster.  Avoiding simple sugars makes it so the insulin production is slower and more level, so the blood sugar doesn't dip dangerously low.  So finally, after much resistance (and in lieu of buying all new pants) I decided to try the South Beach Diet.  I went and bought the book.  This was Monday.

in which we are Discriminated against

Well now, it has been a while since I've written.  We are married, in the state of New York, anyway.  Today, we went to the Social Security Administration to officially change our names and become the Mrs. Hs.  I will spare you the gory details (although I am not sparing the Social Security Administration complaint box or the poor soul who reads the email directed to our beloved President), but suffice it to say that I have not been treated with such indignity in a long while.