"Well baby I've been here before, I’ve seen this room and I've walked this floor"

It sometimes appalls me how very little I do with my time. The Matt will be working ridiculous overtime this week, and then in his spare time setting a foundation with his brother, moving rocks for our future foundation and also cutting a winter's worth of firewood. I am baking cookies tonight and going out to dinner tomorrow. Those are my strenuous plans for the week. I'm also scheduled to Pilate this afternoon. Is that a verb? That should totally be a verb. I'm going to Pilate my ass off. And then bake cookies.


Matt suggested I bake him cookies: a. because he likes them and b. because it warms up the house. My mother used to have a lot of unwritten rules for our house growing up. No one ever opened a box of cookies before she did, we never had soda except for pizza night, and she never turned the heat on before Thanksgiving. That was always the big one, no heat before Thanksgiving. They call them sweaters and you wear them, layer upon layer, until the end of November come hell or hypothermia. I used to think it was just a stubborn New Englander who feels no cold thing but apparently for a house to be warm you must pay for the oil or the wood or god forbid the electricity. Funny how growing up and paying bills gives one such clarity.

Long story, completely new paragraph...I've been freezing lately. FREEZING. Cannot be warmed, immune to heat, clinically dead except for the breathing. I think my blood circulates like three inches before it's like "dude, it's cold out i'm going home for cocoa". It's really very annoying. Particularly as it's induced Matt to sarcasm. He's the most completely sincere person I've ever known and I've driven him to sarcasm with my whining. "Maybe it's the weight?" my ass. Ofcourse it's the weight, chubby is the ultimate layering. 30 pounds is the sweatshirt you never have to tie around your waist. I've become one of those girls who is always cold and I'm not even at goal. Imagine how acerbic I'll have my partner by then...maybe he'll start reading the New Yorker.

"You're just the torch to put the flame to all our guilt and shame"

I am right now trying to think of something to say. The weekend was sort of crappy. Uneventful when it should have been all business. What can you do. I'm trying really hard to roll with the punches. The scale is a bit up, but my twelves feel even larger than usual and my ring is about falling off. It should be tighter given the suspected water gain, but it's not. I'm starting to worry it'll just fall off one of these days. I'm almost wistful about that, though I really don't want to lose my school ring. Hood girls are weird about their rings, it's so much more than just a bit of gold to us.

I spent the weekend making Christmas crafts and baking. Because I'm 26 going on 80. I also pulled out the Halloween decoration, as Matt described it. The one and only. Last year I bought a plush Hello Kitty candy pail and I got to re-visit my neuroses when I came across it Saturday as it had the tags and the receipt still in it. PastaQueen compares compulsive shopping to compulsive eating, where does a compulsive returner fit in?

I've always been a returner. I had thought that I was getting better with my decision making but I guess not because I did a lot of returning this weekend. The skirt from Target that didn't go with the boots I bought and the boots I bought at Macy's that didn't go with that skirt, both returned. The dress from the Gap that I only bought for the skirt but then couldn't find anything that worked to cover the top, returned. The best one and the one that made Matt the most insane, which is always a bonus, was the scale. I bought the scale originally two weeks ago and I meant to buy it with my Discover bonus card thing-y. Only I tore through my bag and accidentally removed it before we left to go shopping. So I bought it with said Discover and Matt who is so good at rolling with the punches said "gee, you buy cooking crap all the time...don't worry about it". Which is totally normal. I could use it another time, but then I couldn't obsess over it like a freak. Obviously, I had to go back and buy another one with the card and then return it with the old receipt. Obviously.

Sometimes I think I could cure cancer with the brain power that goes into thinking about crap like that. Crap like if "I use this coupon at the store that doubles and I do it on a sale day then the carry the savings to the 11th power....." is always running through my head. And again I'm looking into lobotomy. It's a theme.

Sexy, Sexy Ramekins!

"Just because this is never going to work, there's no need to be negative."

Remember when I wrote about being twelve and locking myself in my room to do push-ups and sit-ups to the tunes of fuzzy local television? I remembered a tidbit about that era recently, something I had almost forgot about. I was flipping through another of the new Pilates dvd's and on the back Ana is doing this sort of inverted pedaling a bicycle in the air thing. Hello, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman! Remember 1993-1998 when Jane Seymour was huge and her babies were Gerber babies and she married Sully and lived on the wild frontier? I do! I don't remember being obsessed with her, per se, but apparently at some point I watched some kind of biography/interview of her where she talked about her figure and they taped her exercising. I definitely remember her doing the inverted bicycle thing, although I didn't know it was Pilates. And I probably didn't care anyway because I was thirteen and I just really wanted to be tiny like all the other girls. I really believed the bicycle thing was the secret because Jane Seymour was tiny, and rich, and she played a doctor on tv. Jane Seymour wouldn't lie to me.

I added the bicycle thing to my daily repertoire of sit-ups, push-ups and the three mile bike ride I took on the dangerous back road with no helmet on. And then I'd come home and have a bowl of spaghetti with no sauce(fattening!) but plenty of cheese(protein!). It's a shock I didn't wake up one day Kate Moss, what with my unflinching dedication. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I was so young and smaller than I ever knew because now I know how dangerous it is to randomly do a Pilates move you saw an actress do on tv that one time. I'm lucky I never hurt myself. Or got run-over. I couldn't say if I lost weight because of all my efforts, we never had a scale that worked. I have no idea what I was measuring against, or how I gauged my success. I have this vague feeling that it didn't matter because no matter what I did it wasn't going to be good enough.

I really hate thinking about that time in my life. I suppose puberty equates to years of self-loathing for a big chunk of society and we've all grown because of it but I'd really rather have the memories surgically removed. Liposuction of the brain. Lobotomy is so under-rated.

'I'll be fine. I think I've figured out how to steer by gesturing emphatically."

Saturday night Matt took me shopping. I needed interview clothes, kicking ass and taking names clothes. I bought a lot of things with the knowledge that I couldn't really pop back to the mall before Monday, not having a car and all (which is getting very, very old now...point of fact). I picked up a shirt and tights and a dress, and a skirt and a very expensive bra (of course it wasn't part of the sale...of course) and more boots. I tried on some pants too, size ten pants. They fit! Not well enough for an interview, but they buttoned without hassle and it looks like I'm getting very close.

The interview, it went very well. The nice man said I was personable! That's good right? Personable. I'm crossing everything I've got because I think that job could be a really good fit for me. That's the last I'm going to think of it so I don't completely jinx myself or go completely insane when I don't get called for a second round. Positive, Positive, Positive.

Hey, I got the new scale. I already hate it. I mean, it's honest and it says I weigh 173.something. Bastard. That's the kickster with getting a new scale, so much to learn about the new regime. I guess my new starting point is 173. Which I'm trying really hard not to think about because hello, size ten. I couldn't button a ten the last time I thought I weighed 173 so I'm going to keep it positive in this arena too. I just need to keep up with everything I'm doing and eventually I'll get where I want to go.

Everything I'm doing is pretty much pilates 'till I just can't pilates no more. I tried another of my new dvd's on saturday, it's like a pilates sample platter. The latest one is actually the first one I bought, the Body Band Challenge. Ana always does this little intro before the program starts and I always listen because I've learned a lot from the previous intros. On the Body Band Challenge intro she says all the usual stuff about working your core and breathing and yadda yadda "this is the most challenging workout I've ever put together". Say what? I know I've been saying that every new dvd/tool kicks my ass but this time I feel particularly validated. I sort of wish I had gone into it thinking "this dvd is for wusses" rather than "most challenging ever" but I think I did pretty well. I couldn't do everything, I did a lot of watching with trepidation but I think that's an important part of the process. When I master it won't I be smug?

"Now, we can do this the hard way, or... well, actually there's just the hard way."

To err on the side of caution, how these words haunt me. I mean, I totally get it. I understand err on the side of caution very well. Like lived my whole life by those words kind of very well. I mean no offence to Fat Runner Girl at all because that is exactly the advice I would have given, wear a suit and conservative shoes and an understated bag and also sit up straight. Those are all the things everyone says about interviews and for very good reason because a good first impression is just that important. It's just that I'm finally getting tired of living in fear. I have sent out many, many resumes in the last five years. A slew of resumes, possibly a murder of resumes a month or even a gaggle. I like the bird references because I feel like my little birds of hope printed on high quality bonded paper fly off to sing my praises and then get caught in a storm and end up in Paraguay, and I've heard the commute to Paraguay can be a bitch.

What usually happens is that I get an interview and it's such a shock that I don't have to go to Paraguay that I immediately search my wardrobe for my most conservative outfit, shine my most conservative heels and put a sensor on my brain so as to permit zero of my actual personality to leak out. After doing this for so very long and having such hopeless results I had nearly convinced myself that what I have to offer isn't good enough. Only I realize now that I haven't been giving my all to this process. Trying to find a new job in one of America's most depressed local economies is sort of, err, painfully difficult. I've been insulating myself against what I see as the innevitable: failure. There's so much insulation that no one can see me and the air is getting thin.

I've been examining this for awhile, my complete innabilty to take a risk and have some faith. Yesterday Mackenzie left a comment and I hit up her site, the top post is about being afraid to take risks. Hello, that is me, I'm afraid of everything and I always have been. Some of the biggest errs I've ever made have been on the side of caution. I've been insulating so many areas of my life for so long I hardly know how to live another way. I've decided that I can't go on saying "I'm not happy" and making no changes and expect to get happy with no work.

It's a bit ridiculous to pin my happiness on a pair of boots. It's also a bit ridiculous pinning it on a job. One job in a sea of jobs that I may or may not ever get. I guess I just want to get them or not get them based on the real me. I'm tired of hiding out and trying to sneak into a coveted position. Honestly, I wouldn't be excited to hire me, with my insulation and black clothes and personality squashed into nothing. I think of myself as a creative, innovative person and I've been presenting myself as washed-up and desperate. So the overall point is not the boots, it's the me shining through that I want to convey while sitting straight and speaking clearly and directly. With eye contact.

Normally I'd end there but I have more news, the car is still broken and we haven't heard about it because Matt's mechanic has been searching the junkyard for a new part. Or a junky part, but it'll be new to the car. So I'm carless and the Matt will have to take me to my interview, and the grocery store and clothes shopping to the tune of endless "does this look okay?" and "can I wear this?". His excitement is palpable. His dedication is palpable too and I think it will be interesting to see how he does all the things I do, with me. It's the end of the month which means it's use up the worthwhile coupons time and I know he wants to spend his saturday night comparing tuna prices between Target and Shaws. We also get to hit Bed, Bath and Beyond for the new scale, since I just got my rewards card. Whoo! Now I just have to decide what to get. This one seems to be a favorite, any other suggestions?

"you have acres of time, in which to plant crops"

Dear Fashionistas,

I have need of your exalted wisdom in a very important matter. Is it appropriate to wear boots, calf height and mid range heel, with a skirt to a job interview?

Thanks!

Love, Amy


I'm just really not sure. It's for a museum, not a drab office, so I feel there is a little wiggle room but I don't want to wiggle myself out of an opportunity because I look a touch too bohemian. I also don't want to dress how I think someone who wants a job should dress. I'm not sure how to explain that. It sort of reminds me of college when I took a summer art class with one of my best friends. We could take free classes at the community college, as pampered private college ladies, so we did. Ours was a class full of characters: our teacher was flambouyant gay artist guy, we had a bottle raven haired goth guy, and generic athletic guy #5.

Generic athletic guy #5 was really very nice, nice in that he didn't ever beat us up or call us dykes to our face and in my experience you can't ask for much more than that from generic athletic guy. He would come in to class and talk about drinking the beer, watching the sports, doing the chicks and he was majoring in general studies and athletics. Hello generic athletic guy! Anyway, I feel like when I'm getting ready for an interview I look like Desperate Job Seeker # 8. I do not want to be Desperate Job Seeker #8. I want to be unique individual with talents and skills that dazzle and awe.

Can I dazzle and awe and wear boots? And a skirt? Because seriously, none of my pants fit right at the moment. Obviously I'm going to be shopping 'till I'm dropping this weekend, but I've found that desperate need is shopping kryptonite and I need a back-up plan. Or twelve. I'm seriously tired of shitty job interviews and I'm thinking that I need to be myself to sell myself. So, you lovely style mavens, help a girl out. To boot, or not to boot?

damn jemima's witnesses

i just ordered from the oriental trading catalog and now i'll never know peace again. my mailbox won't anyway. but you see, they had the goldfish i needed and no one else did...and i had to get those rubber bendy pencils for my nephew because uhm, i had to. i want to make these cute things for all the kids for christmas and i needed plastic goldfish. i'm buying them now because if i don't do it right when the impulse strikes i'll never do it and it'll be january and i'll say "i really wish i made those things for the kids, i'll do it next year" and we all know that's bullshit.

right now i'm blogging because there's this scary thing i have to do and i don't want to but i really have to do it today. and i really don't want to talk about it because i need to not dwell. there will be time to dwell, dwelling is innevitable, i just want to keep it really positive right now and also fluffy. i don't know if i've been projecting a very glass is half full attitude on the blog lately, or anywhere really, but i'm making an effort. even though my car has been taken ill and i'm still not in a job i want or taking any classes ($$$) to make that happen i'm trying to focus on the good things.

good things:

matt and i went to the common ground fair and there are so many things i can't wait to plant and grow. we went to look at apple trees, which we want to start next spring, and i fell in love with all the flowers and all the agricultural plants. i have an intense desire to grow my own beans, is that weird?

i'm definitely seeing a difference in my clothes, fark the scale.

the balanceball is way more hardcore than i gave it credit for and i love it. we had bleacher seats for the concert last night and i learned that sitting straight up like that really works your thigh muscles (ow) and it just made me feel so validated that all the things i do really do have an impact whether or not i'm always aware of it.

dear reader in chicago

every once in a while there will be some really great questions in my referral log and i feel compelled to answer them. does trader joe's take discover? yes, they do bless them. how to make shirts for fat people? i don't know but i hope you find out, it's a worthy cause. is eating mouldy cheese bed for you when you're pregnant? uhm, i don't know...cheese is mold right so it's probably more gross than lethal. what does bad fat do to you? with short sentences: i think. it gives you. heart disease. but i'm not a doctor.

the one thing someone searched for specifically on this blog was before photos. there aren't any. not before, during, or after(not yet atleast). it's a photo free zone. photos of me anyway. it's not that i don't sympathize because i like photos too. i always scan to the first days of the blogs i read to see where people started out and watch how they change, the same reason everyone likes photos so much. so i really do get it and i've thought about it, it's just not for me at the moment.

i have some very practical reasons for not having pictures of myself up. practical one, i've made too many personal things public here to want to add a photo. practical two, like most people who haven't always loved the way they look i have very few fat pictures of myself. practical three, i live in the dark ages with no scanner and no internet service at home so even if i had a photo of every day of this process there is no way i could post it. i do hope for all of these things to change. if i change jobs i'll be less candid and much more able to post a photo. i intend to take more advantage of recording my life in pictures before i wake up at 40 with no photo albums to bore visitors with. someday, if i ever have disposable income again, i will have internet and a new computer and a pony to round it all out.

so, that's not at all what i was going to write about in my second post of the day. i meant to say a little something about the dumb thing i did this weekend. saturday i took one of my handicapped customers shopping. she just moved and she needed shelves and there is just nowhere to make that sort of a purchase in town. it was extremely spiritually fulfilling and the longest day i've had in a very long while. there was traffic everywhere and it's just not that easy to get around target with a walker. do you think the stock boy with the giant cart would move for a handicapped person, no, he won't so don't be silly. but that's not the dumb thing. the dumb thing was eating breakfast at 7 am and then not having anything else to eat until 3 pm.

i usually only abstain from eating for that length of time while i'm sleeping. you're shopping with someone who has MS and you're going to whine because you're hungry...no, you're really not going to do that. and it was fine really, it wasn't an emergency and i had a snack in my bag incase i started to feel faint. i never felt faint, which used to happen to me all the time, so i didn't pull out my granola bar (or one of my nut bars which would have been perfect on this occasion). and then it was three o'clock and we were at the olive garden and i was eating my salad and my teeth were chattering. not from cold, from some sort of blood sugar famine. that has never happened to me before. it continued through the meal and afterward for about an hour. has anything like that ever happened to you?

not a paid advertisement

but i did get free samples! someone nice asked me to try out some stuff and tell you about it and i'm all down with nice people giving me free stuff (see previous post re: discover) so this is me giving product reviews a try. i'm a big fan of the nature valley chewy granola bars so it was neat to try their roasted nut bars. they're completely different. really not a granola bar after all. the peanut bar is roasted peanuts and sunflower seeds in a thin salty sweet coating to hold it all together. the almond is the same, uhm...but with almonds too.

my taste testers (read co-workers) really loved them, they called it a salty peanut brittle. they both really love salty sweet and they liked that it was all nuts. i liked that too, and i liked the sunflower seeds. one of them says if you check the target website you should find a coupon to test them yourself for free at target. there was another coupon in this weekends' paper if you like them and you want to stock up.

i would totally have published that yesterday if my car wasn't broken. actually, it's not broken, it just didn't start when i needed it too. apparently it starts just fine when the mechanic turns the key. hehe, the irony. matt is very worried and had it towed so they can do diagnostics on it, the one thing he can't do himself at home. so i was home and carless all day yesterday and i spent the whole day watching heroes on dvd. how adorable is hiro, he's my favorite.

i had to do some exercise since i spent the whole day in the house so i tried out the balance ball. the dvd that came with the beginner kit is really just a sampling and not that taxing overall but some of the exercises were pretty hard. i didn't think it would be that hard to sit on the ball, arms up and lift one leg and i was very wrong. that easy thing was really hard to do without rolling over and i'm realizing today that i used a lot of muscles to stay stable while sitting. i've got to try it a few more times to decide whether i want to advance and get the full length workouts on dvd. right now i don't like it as much as pilates, but i think it will be good to learn a few of the exercises to do while i'm sitting around or watching tv. just sitting on the ball and balancing uses more muscles than sitting on the couch so why not make the most of it?

tough choices

i pay every single one of my bills with my discover card. everywhere i shop, if they take discover, i use my card there. when i made my original get out of debt budget i forced myself to use cash for everything because that is what you have to do. you really have to see the cash leaving your hand to take control of it. so it was a hard decision to switch to the card. i made myself a deal that i could use it if i paid it off every single month and for two years now, i have. what's the big deal? well, the cash back is the big deal. i earn about 20 bucks every month just for paying my bills.

where the hell am i going with that, somewhere really see because i always upgrade to the gap or borders or bed bath and beyond gift card for 25 dollars. an extra five free dollars. i know i'm their pawn playing their capitalist consumer game but since i shop at those stores anyway, why not save the money? those pants i was whining about yesterday, i should shut the hell up about it already because i didn't actually pay for those. it's bad karma to whine about free pants and as it stands i need to save like 400 kittens to break even on my pants karma build up.

i've been trying to decide what to do with septembers bounty...the gap for new size tens or bed bath and whatever for a new scale? i'm leaning toward a scale because the one i have is crap, and yet i can't seem to stop using it. if i had a new one i can hit the old one with something heavy, which seems would be very special for all of us. matt offered to run it over with the back hoe, now that would be a great video, but i don't think it would be as a thoroughly theraputic as hand to hand. i'll have to get some gangsta rap to play in the background too because i'm feeling the office space copier scene as inspiration.

a truth widely known

it is a sure thing that mere weeks after you breakdown and buy more size twelve pants, you will very slowly become an eleven. which sucks because there is no such thing as eleven, not really, and so you will wear your brand new twelves and they will get baggier and baggier. they will be especially baggy in the rear and you will think "but why not the waist? why always the ass? WHY?" and you will be irrational and hypocritical because you've been whining for ages about being in a rut and you should be GLAD that your ass is baggy. glad, i say.

since my cooking class went awry i've decided to really cook atleast once a week. something just for me, as in not meat based, and something new that takes me out of my usual vegetarian side dish rut. so i've been spending a fair bit of time here. it's a website called eat better america and i'm digging the vegetarian section. i think i might have mentioned the site a while ago, a long while, it's been in my browser for ages mostly unused. this, looks awesome and so does this. and they both use up things in my cupboard so it works for my grocery list too. i like seeing recipes that are close to something i'd make myself on the fly but with more guidance. and i like having a nutrition panel to refer to aswell because at home that's not something i think about when i'm cooking. i tend to classify things as either good or bad and i know i'm not always right.

the excellent news on the cooking front is that i'm slowly turning the boyfriend into a vegetarian too! on monday i made a stirfry and threw in some shrimp because traditionally matts need meat for dinner and he said "it's just as good without the shrimp, you can leave them out if you want to save money". it leaves a protein gap i'll need to figure out but probably he gets enough meat in a day that one meatless meal won't be a problem. i've also got him hooked on my pizza margherita, which was pretty damn good if i say so myself, and he requested that recipe for every pizza night because it's so much less greasy. of course it's less greasy, you usually put bacon and pepperoni on your pizza...but i'm not complaining because it is a lighter recipe and it's better for both of us. now i just have to trick him into eating tofu and the transition will be complete.

169, redux

how do you tell someone that things will change, get easier, if they just hold on a little while longer? i'm actually refering to dieting here but those words are maybe a bit too wilson-phillips suicide hotline. what i'm thinking of is a comment i made recently (hi!) that sort of drove me crazy. the writer is going a little nuts on her diet, hating every minute of the healthy food she's making herself eat and was looking for suggestions. it made me think how important it is to experiment and play with your menu because forever is a very long time.

i can't imagine how awful it sounded to be hating your salads and have someone come along and say by the way you know you have to eat like this forever. put that way it's a red carpet to mcdonalds. i wish i had better words at the time. actually i wish i had better words now because the forever part is still true but i don't want it to sound like a prison sentence. there is no way to explain to someone that dedicating yourself to this lifestyle changes you inside as much as out. with every day that passes i find myself becoming more and more the person i never believed i could be. and worse still i have this burning need to talk about it all the time with poor grammar and too much out of date slang. dude.

i never thought i'd like eating salad and i never thought i'd be able to pass up dessert and not feel cheated. i was one of the masses who was willing to work hard for a little while and get skinny but ultimately go back to the way i lived before, and uhh still be skinny because i worked so hard that one time. heh heh, the old days. the laughter, the tears, the utter stupidity. the cold hard truth is that it doesn't work like that. that's why it's important to like what you're doing and that's what i was trying to get accross with such very little success. you owe it to yourself to find things you like, food, exercise, a hobby for when all you can think about is cake and you really don't want to eat a whole cake. it's not reasonable to hate every day of your life just to have a smaller clothing size. every body deserves more than that.

rebel without a donut

this morning i couldn't find my favorite belt. i'm still a little sad about it because the one i'm wearing instead does nothing for the outfit and i'm trying to wear my clothes more effectively. the missing belt is perfect, especially for slimming, because it doesn't have holes. it's a cinch buckle (it sounds like it could be the technical term for it) so you just move it where it should be and in a cinch, you're belted. it suits my current mood for using my wardrobe more effectively and i'm going to tear my house apart looking for it when i get home.

i'm going through a belt phase, especially the wide hip hugging belts. i have a few of those i bought on the cheap in various places and i'm slowly trying to build a season one bones look (i can find no pictures of the gorgeous belt/skirt combos from the series, i'm all for hearing about it if you know what i'm talking about). i've had one or two that i love for months that i haven't worn. whenever i put it on i feel like i'm not projecting the emily deschanel image in my mind and i end up changing. but then last week i decided that i need to wear the things i buy and enjoy them, or get rid of them. i wore two belts with two skirts and got belt specific compliments each day. i'm very slowly learning to get over myself and just be what i want to be and wear what i want to wear, the confidence is what shows more than the clothes and it only took me 26 years to figure that out.

i've been going through my wardrobe a lot lately because i'm feeling cluttered. the clothes really don't take up that much space, but the volume is keeping me from wearing my best things because i simply forget about them when they're at the back of the shelf. last week, in addition to belt week, i made a very serious effort to wear my "bare leg" skirts because time is against me weatherwise. i'd love not to fit these sizes next year so i'm trying to get the most out of things, but to do that i have to wear them. that thirty dollar skirt from the gap that i've worn five times, yeah, i need to wear that every day this week to get my moneys' worth.

speaking of money and worth, remember that cooking class? i was so excited about that and it started monday without me. i pre-registered like the good student i am and somehow they lost me. but the story doesn't end there because i called and they immediately let me enter the already full class. and then, friday, as i checked the time and place i noticed the fine print fee of $40 per class. i'm astonished that i missed that the first time around because my life is all about money and fine print, but miss it i did. so i lied, made up an excuse and got myself taken off the list. i just do not have an extra $200 right now. matt was upset that i didn't talk to him about it first, he wanted to make it a birthday gift for me.

the truth is that neither of us has that money hanging around and i especially need to be making good money decisions right now. i'm not feeling great about my money situation at present. in reality things are fine and i'm not headed for debtor's prison, but i'm feeling stressed about it and that's not good for any of my current goals. it's a very real fear that i could be broke and sad and fat again if things get too out of control and it's taken me a few weeks to work through it. i'm not completely off the cliff with it, but i'm feeling better. saying it out loud makes me feel better. i couldn't do that two weeks ago, i was literally too afraid that i would be tempting fate and things would come crashing down. i'm just not sure how much more living in a holding pattern i can take this year.

wow, that picture blows

the thing about the camera phone is that it sortof sucks. it's not a camera and it's barely a phone and i would really hate it if i didn't on purpose spend so much money on it with the premonition that i would regret doing so almost immediately. i just can't give myself the satisfaction, if you know what i mean. but here is my ever-increasing pilates library. can you tell that there are six ana caban dvd's there. what you can't see is the toner ring and balance ball that i also bought. i'm single handedly keeping gaiam in business, or my employer is anyway.

this is not the toning ring set that i have, but hell if i can find it. i pulled it out on saturday to see what it was like. i did my usual weights and stepper workout* too just incase i didn't go the distance with the toner ring. i didn't go the distance with the toner ring, incase you were wondering, but i did love it. it kicked my ass. i estimate i got about 20 minutes into the 40 minute program. i only did half and it still kicked my ass. yesterday my thighs burned as i walked up the mountain and today my arms are still sore. it's awesome.

i've missed the way my muscles feel when i really exercise them. i stopped stepping every day when i started running every day. when i stopped running every day i didn't start anything new unless you count whining. i did the same pilates, the same daily walks, ate the same more or less careful meals and i maintained. and somehow that surprises me. i've been trying to re-establish the mindset that i had when i started out and it's required a hell of a lot of thinking. more than i thought. deeper than i thought. ironic that the deep thinking is deeper than i thought the thinking would be.

i spent this weekend alone because matt is having a fantastically busy period at his job. it was a little lonely but it was a good opportunity to see what choices i make when i'm completely on my own. they were all awesome choices. i make really great choices 95% of the time and i have to accept that it is not enough. i've been living a maintained life with a maintaining mindset and hello, i'm not ready to do that. it's a lot fun and it's comfortable but it's not getting me what i want. it's time to start pushing the envelope again. it doesn't matter what used to work or what works for other people. i have to find the combination of diet and exercise that will make me lose now. the person i am now needs to find a new combination of efforts to meet my goals. it's a lot like starting over, but with higher expectations. i hope they don't hold me back.

*what, weights. i never talk about weights. one of the other things i realized i haven't been doing like i used to is to hit ye olde stepper machine every day. i used to do that every day with co-ordinating hand weights. hehe, and i wonder where my ooomph went.

cathartic

i don't actually have any idea what this new thing is that i'm going to do. i just know that i need to stop trying to put the round thing in the square hole and going batshit when it doesn't work out. i do, however, have a great desire to toss my scale. part of me is convinced that if i had a new one it would show me a new and improved truth and i could go blithely on. in reality, if i bought a new scale, it might be more accurate but probably it won't give me a magically skinny number. probably it will be a lot higher and make me very sad.

getting a new scale is something i've been considering for a while, getting rid of the scale all together is something i didn't consider until last night. i'm a little nervous about the prospect. on the one hand it would be a really good shake-up and give me a chance to see just how well i maintain in my natural environment. on the other hand i won't have the data that keeps me in certain parameters. i just might need that data to keep going.

you see, before 2006 i didn't have a scale and hadn't set foot on one for years. i went years without knowing the numbers and can track my weight through history only by the clothes i was wearing at the time. when pq did her driver's liscense post it was the first time that i considered what i put on my own liscense in 2004. i guessed at 185 and now that i think about it, i guessed pretty damn high as i was wearing the same sizes i am now at about 15 lbs less. it's ye olde adage that how we feel about our bodies doesn't always reflect reality. but the moral of the story is that when you don't pay attention on such an epic scale it's very easy to wake up one day and weigh 40 pounds more than you thought. whoops! and i really don't want that to happen again.

i wrote most of the above yesterday and then i left it. i really feel nervous about the idea of ditching the scale and i just wasn't ready to put it out there. i think it's been very good for me to put a number on the various stages my body has been through lately. 175 was when my doctor commended me for losing 20 pounds, a very validating moment. 170 is known as the age of compliments, they've been coming in daily the last few weeks and that's good validation too although it sometimes makes me uncomfortable. i'm ready to know what 165 will bring and it's well beyond time to make that happen for real.

the idea behind going scaleless is that it's the one thing i haven't tried. i have never tried to let go and just be healthy and exercise how i want to and not have expectations every morning. that might be a good thing all around, just letting go. and also i feel like introducing my 5 dollar scale to one of matt's big ass sledgehammers would be very cathartic. and calorie burning.

little things make my day possible

today hello kitty helped me pack my lunch. if i hadn't had my lunch bag and freezer pack i would have scriggled out of my usual yogurt for lunch and ordered thai food. but then i ate a kit kat so i guess i'm at a draw, err, with myself. but i totally had to have that kit kat because apparently i'm supposed to be looking at bridesmaid dresses. did i mention that? the my best friend's getting married and i'm going to be a bridesmaid and i'll be contractually obliged to wear a dress thing? well, she is and i am and i will, be. obliged, that is.

i have known for as long as i've known my best friend that i would be in her wedding. you know the way you know something in it's total finality without it ever being discussed. she will get married and i will be there and i will do everything in my power to make sure it's the day of her dreams. that's it, it's one of those things that you know and accept and never think of again. and then you realize you have to do all of those things in a historically infamous dress and you get a little light headed. me, taffeta, fainting couch. end scene.

she is adamant that we choose the dresses ourselves and have what we want and be comfortable. it's not by chance that my bestest friend is so easy going. what i hadn't considered is how difficult it is going to be to choose a dress, the ramifications of which are so vast and far reaching. so many things to consider, walking, standing, photos and yet more photos, dancing, and of course, weeping. and that's without the very practical "will i be able to enter public in this dress sober" question.

i'm a little worried about that last part. i'm not huge on marriage for myself, not to say i don't appreciate the good job so many people make of it, but i really never ever ever wanted a wedding. the thought of any number of people coming to an occasion where i was more or less the sole attraction makes my skin itch. the great thing about being a bridesmaid is that it's a window dressing job. bridesmaid = curtains, beautiful view = bride. at least this is what i'm trying to convince myself of to make the venture possible in my mind. i have just about a year to come to terms with wearing a fancy dress and getting in better shape for it. even though i've been waiting since the fourth grade, a year seems unbelievably short.

it's funny that i'm using curtains as a metaphor for the dress nerves. very scarlet o'hara. very still picturing my physical appearance akin to parts of a house. it reminds me of something that sort of works into how i'm living my life at the moment. my mother had these curtains for ages and ages that she kept remaking a la gone with the wind. first they were huge drapes which was much before me and i've only seen pictures. later she used parts of the drapes to make these giant padded valances and smaller window curtains when the moved house. then she had it all sewn in to a sofa and used trimmings on new curtains to retain the frighteningly matchy hotel lobby quality of the living room.

why am i writing about my mother's bizarre depression/victorian/hilton window trimming fascination, i really did have a reason. i feel like this is what i'm trying to do with my life and my continuing efforts to reform my body. i'm trying to use the same fabric clipped and re-arranged to form something new and better and it's really not working. it worked well enough to help me change from a person who needed to lose fifty pounds to a person who needs to lose 20 pounds, but it isn't helping me get any closer to goal and/or to feel any more fulfilled. it is genuinely time for something new.

do these cookies make me look fat?

today i am eating some of the cookies i baked specifically for matt. which reminds me of this. i tried to craft a response that was both honest and didn't make me look like a be-pearled june cleaver fembot but it can't be done. atleast not by me which was sort of the point which is why i need a whole post to sort it out. maybe my brain couldn't get around the irony of saying that yes, i do have to keep cookies for the boyfriend and usually it's not a problem but right now i'm eating three that i stole. heh.

that stole is causing me a problem too. i baked the bastards, i even quasi-invented the recipe (because i lost count on some things and had to do some "fixing"), and still i feel like i stole it from him. not that he'll care. or notice. i know i don't need them so they're stolen, my subconcious is telling me that i'm stealing from my own good health. or something deep like that.

i've lost my point which is, my food issues have nothing to do with him. that was what i really wanted to convey in the comment i never wrote for that post. we have ice cream and some sort of baked treat in the house pretty much every week and it's hardly ever a problem for me. i don't feel like i have to keep it out of my house to protect myself. sure there are foods that i choose not to buy because i will eat all of them and i don't need to. like i could have an apple pie because i could have one piece and leave the rest for matt but he doesn't like pumpkin pie so it would be all me or all trash can. both of those choices stink so generally i don't buy something that i alone like.

in the comments on that post a lot of people were saying adults can get their own cookies, or whatever, they don't need to be cared for. that's all true. but aren't we dieters adults too and responsible for our own decisions. it's more difficult to keep trigger foods out of a house with two adults living in it. if i had extreme issues with the foods i keep around for matt, we'd have to talk about it. there are things i could do, i could bake him his treats and send them all off to work with him on day one. he could buy his own treats and leave them at work. there is just nothing i could do about his nightly ice cream. it's not reasonable that he shouldn't be allowed to have something he likes around for his convenience. we don't live in the sort of place where he could pop out for an ice cream in less than an hour and anyway that would cost a fortune. if i was constantly eating his ice cream it would be a problem i wouldn't be sure how to solve.

obviously that post got me a thinkin'. i don't know if i would be better off diet wise living on my own, or not. living with someone, whether or not they're paying close attention, keeps me accountable. i could spend all evening eating ice cream or meat or whatever and he probably wouldn't notice, but it is still in the back of my mind the same as it always was that i'd rather no one see me do that. in the end it's up to me to do the right things for myself. the only way i will succeed is to change how i do things and react to things because there is only so much i can do about my environment. and i'm ending with another cliche, cat sweatshirt here i come.

back from vacation and longing for the bread baskets...

there is an indefinable something about canadian bread. we bought a few loaves to take home, we're so fond of edible souvenirs. the customs guy thought we were nuts but he let us take it home so that was cool. it seems we ate our way accross new brunswick. but we also walked 5 miles a day so things evened out. i bought tea, which is way better in canada, and brown sugar cubes. i had been looking for the brown sugar cubes in every market on all our trips to quebec, and alas, they've been in st stephen the whole time. if you count the buckwheat we picked up at king's landing it was more like an international grocery shop than a vacation. it's no secret i have a weakness for supermarkets.

the weakness for chocolate was less of a problem. it's sort of a bummer at the moment, but we missed the chocolate museum. now i'll never know the gnawing possibilities. pretty much matt and i did the same thing my mom and i did when we tried to go five years ago. we walked around the retail shop for half an hour thinking "this museum bites" and then as we drove away we saw the entrance. we didn't turn around because we're lazy bastards, but it's only an hour away if i ever get an uneradicable urge. overall we had a very good time walking and eating and visiting a ton of historical sites. they're marked with beavers, how cute is that? who doesn't like a beaver? i wish i took a picture.

i'm regretting not taking pictures of our room too. it was a motel on the edge of st. andrews. fake flowers taped to the wall, doilies, a distinct grandma scent and of course what would a motel be without ant traps? very chez memere. but it was quiet and the shower was awesome and i think we might have gotten it half price. it did have cable tv, which i'm sure my meme doesn't have, and we watched a lot of news. they have, like, facts on the news in canada. and the elected leaders say "nuclear" correctly. y'all are so lucky.

we only spent a few days in canada because we're not just lazy, we're also cheap. the rest of the time i spend with my family, shopping and trying to use up my company perks. i went eye glass (es, i'm not sure) shopping with my sister because it's nice to try frames with someone who will tell you the truth about how you look. matt always says "nice" so he won't get in trouble and now he's banned, not that he minds. anyway, i picked out two frames and could i buy them...no. my precription is out of date. they wouldn't even sell me the empty frames. they're an accessory, not oxycontin. that was in new hampshire. will the lenscrafters of maine care that my precription isn't new, i seriously doubt it. so i had them ship the frames back to maine and the bastards sent them to portland. south portland. the very kind and thorough south portland lenscrafters called me three times while we were in canada using premium cell prices to tell me my frames arrived. bless them. when i called them on our return to free nights and weekends the man said "why did nashua send them to portland when your last purchase was bangor?". i don't know sir, i just don't know. it's only, what, a 4 hour drive from my house, i'll just pop over shall i?

it seems i'm not over that yet and i may still have to hit the optometrist if they stand by the rules. it less crappy news i bought a bunch of fancy pilates stuff with my fitness stipend. i've been meaning to try the balance ball so i got one of those, i got a stretch band set and another toner ring leg thing. it seems i'm either all or nothing on the pilates front and i'm in a definite on stage. i memorized the moves on the new dvd and i did it alternating days while i was off work. and don't i feel smug. i love knowing i'm doing good things for myself and i don't care how cliche that sounds.

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i'm officially on vacation. expect photos of the chocolate museum. there just might be homework.

"She worked really hard to look that good, and people just don't appreciate that kind of effort."

still 170 with no respite in sight. how despressing. but i look adorable today in my new shoes so i guess i'm happy and depressed. 'course buying expensive ass shoes means you need to, like, pay for them. it's not that i can't afford them, it's just sort of a bad time for affording. instead of a fancy vacation i'm getting new shoes and two nights in beautiful new brunswick. this makes it an excellent time to play a round of "no more groceries!". especially since we'll be away for part of next week. i'll pick up some meat for matt and some veggies, but otherwise i'm buying no groceries. i'm going to try to make it last two weeks, if not longer. cutting down the food budget always saves me a fortune.

one of my co-workers asked me yesterday if i've noticed a change in my spending habits since i've come so close to being out of debt. am i spending more just because i can. answering is sort of difficult, it's a yes and no thing. i'm not completely out of the woods yet so there is a certain amount of ingrained restraint. the place i'm least restrained is the grocery store. one of the things i avoided most when i was my brokest was fresh fruit, it was too much of a luxury. i bought some vegetables because my mother taught me that i would die of scurvy without them. i didn't buy the amount of fresh vegetables i buy now, you know, enough for every meal. i wonder why i didn't look into frozen back then but i think i had a theory about spending the least possible time in the store. the less time i wander, the less i spend. it must be true because i take my sweet time now and i spend plenty. it is very safe to say that i spend more money on food than i used to. i didn't buy organics, i didn't buy meat, and i had pasta for dinner about 9 out of 10 nights. i have no desire to go back to that way of life so i don't worry over spending more on food.

then there is everything else. i recently upped my netflix subsription and i now pay about 25 dollars a month. less than cable, less than a dish, less than a phoneline and still every month i think "is that too much?". as far as spending habits go i guess this means i loosened my grip on the entertainment budget a little, one point to the big spender column. i always thought i would definitely add the landline and the internet service as soon as i could afford it but now i'm not so sure. that i'm putting in the "still a tightwad" column. that one evens out i guess.

the one spending habit i don't feel great about is how much i spend on clothes. i know i spend more than i did last year. 80 percent of that is because my clothes got too big and i had to replace out of necessity. the rest of those percents are vanity. i'm feeling particularly spendy in the clothes department lately because this has been a huge month for clothes buying. you know how some seasons the clothes suck and you can walk through store after store and then you get ice cream and go home. this season has been an i love everything i see season. i probably bought more than i normally would because i don't feel as pressured not to spend. i also bought more because everywhere i went things we 50 percent off and why should i pass up 6 dollar shirts only to buy them full price out of need in two months?

so, my spending habits are definitely changing. my life has changed too. i have very some different priorities now. two years ago i would never have bought organic yogurt to eat everyday, i couldn't have afforded it and i wasn't thinking about a balanced diet either. i definitely spend more on things that are worth my money. my goals are still the same though. i never want to be in debt like that again. i never want to live beyond my means and still have a crappy life. i want to be in control of my life and my finances and my future and i know i can't do that by spending all day at the mall or eating out or driving a flash car. i learned that lesson the really hard way. the way that changes your whole life and how you look at money and pretty things and dealing with stress. i think more about what i'm buying and why and i'm sure i always will.

"Vampires. Always thinking with your teeth."

i didn't bring my scale in to work today because i forgot and not because i'm embarrassed of the cameras. a few more weeks and i just might remember. things from my list that i did do include, but are not limited to: keeping my bi-daily pilates date, ordering new and cushionier running sneakers (and also some new day shoes because hey! i wear my knees all the time, not just when i'm running!), and i changed up my diet to be a little less regimented. why be bored and hungry? i also signed up for that vegetarian cooking class which wasn't on my list but i'm still proud of myself for getin' 'r done.

i'm very happy about the cooking thing. i need a hobby, and i don't know if cooking counts as a hobby because you have to eat to survive, atleast it'll get me out of the house. the writing class was on the same night and i had to choose, so i chose cooking. i've also picked up some vegan cookbooks from the library. i'm not really thinking of going vegan but the recipes looked great and i can always use real cheese if i feel the need. there's a winter term for adult ed. so i can always do writing then, or stained glass art...it's a toss up.

i'm a little sad about the shoe thing. i love the shopping part, no doubt, but i have to replace a lot of my favorite shoes. it now seems obvious that i can't wear heels all day and complain about my knees like it's solely the fault of healthy exercise. it's so me to think a problem is caused by the one healthy thing i do instead of the many unhealthy things i do. i crack myself up. so, err, i'm ditching my shoe collection. ditching in the sense of not getting rid of them at all but just not wearing them very much. one of the things i liked about getting my skinny on was that i could wear heels all day and not have to saw off my feet of an evening. i have to accept that it's not healthy for my body and it doesn't help me to do the things i want to do. especially if i want to walk when i'm 60.

i was thinking it would save me some money if i kept my ass out of the shoe department. i thought that for about 8 seconds while i filled my zappos basket with earthy orthopedics. funny how i won't pay thirty bucks for flimsy heels but i'm all over hundred dollar squashies. these are the days i know for a fact i'm channelling my mother.

"Okay. I'm not panicking. I'm not. I'm not. Stop looking at me like I'm panicking!"

last week i started a post about all the pople who have been commenting on my weight. this is a snippet:

this week more people have commented on my weightloss than ever before. when the season started quite a few people i hadn't seen since last year made comments about it. some of them were run of the mill "you've lost weight" and some had the "you look great" addendum. i personally prefer the addendum because it's easier to be gracious. you receive a compliment, you say thank you and then it's all over. when someone just says "you've lost weight" it can be awkward. like it's a challenge and you're expected to defend it. it's at the weirdest when someone you see every day says something. this morning i was told i've lost a lot of weight, and it's not that i'm offended because it is a fact and in its way a compliment, it just makes me think "what, since tuesday?".

good times, good times. the next part was about how in reality i had gained a wee pound since my exciting 166 pounds weigh in. that was my favorite. oh, the one pound gain. the tears, the laughter. what larks! in the middle of writing that paragraph i wrote something along the lines of "gee, i wonder if it's only up because the dial isn't set to zero". and then i got busy and it never got published. when i went home and saw that no, the dial wasn't set to a perfect zero, i fixed it. and this, i think, is the funniest part. the part where the next time i weigh myself it's 173. that scale, such a card.

so, can i say now that last week was an extraordinary week. i have never so effectively followed a meal plan, deflected salacious chocolate advances, and actually exercised. and, it seems, all for naught. on the one hand i'm glad i had the start of this post to read this morning and remember that there is a visual difference to the naked eye. the naked eye that isn't mine anyway. the other hand is really pissed off about it. intractable even.

i'm toying with a few things. one of them is not doing anything. keeping my habits and my goals and continuing on the path to righteousness. another is to try something new and switch things around, putting some focus back on trying to run in the mornings. maybe try a new knee brace, maybe new running shoes as the doctor suggested. the third, and i'm leaning very hard on this point, is getting a new damn scale and possible keeping it at work.

not because i want to obsess at work, but just in case the floors are more level here. that would mean some changes, because i couldn't weigh in naked, 'specially with the cameras, and i would have something in my stomach which i don't when i do it at home. a new scale and a new frame of reference for the numbers would be a pain, but probably a worthy pursuit. accuracy didn't bother me before, as long as there was a trend, but it's starting to bother me now. i don't want to walk into my physical next year thinking i've lost another 20 pounds, or 10 or 1, and find out i'm maintaining to the ounce.

so, yet again, i'm re-thinking things. i suppose i should be glad that i'm still trying and not yet giving up. every day i can say that is a victory. it's not just about going forward, it's about not going back too. i forget that at times when all i do is mourn the body i don't have yet. i should have kept a pair of 16's in my closet. i had good reason to get rid of them but i think one really horrible pair of fat pants that i could pull out at times like these would be helpful. i'll have to stick to reading my archives to remind myself of where i could be.

"Someone else's loss is my chocolatey goodness!"

i just did a scary thing. i went to the sports store again. even when i have a legitimate reason to be there, i feel like i don't belong. i broke down and bought a neoprene band that goes around your elbow, like a tube top for your arm. i tried on a bunch of sizes, after having a fat girl panic attack when the first band wouldn't reach my elbow at all. that would be when i noticed they came in sizes and the one i tried on was a small. a very small small. i took a large after that and thought it was a little roomy which sort of defeats the purpose of a pressure band. the one i bought is a medium. it was very tight, but it came up my arm with no problem and it felt nice. like i maybe should have started wearing something last friday when i left the doctor's office.

i was typing up a very different account of my morning at the sports store when i started to lose feeling in my hand. tingly, would be the word. and also swollen. you know how your arm looks in a blood pressure cuff when it takes them a little too long to get a reading? that's what it looked like. my right arm was noticeably fatter, and tingling and very cold. so i'm going to go out on a limb and say that the medium is a little too small. i'm going to be a radical and look for something adjustable to bridge the medium/large gap.

and not speaking of being a radical at all, i tried another luna bar. you know i only bought them because they were on sale and you know i had to buy two to get the sale price and it would never occur to me that i could buy just one to test when in fact two was a bargain. i tried the caramel nut brownie one today for breakfast. i'm much more impressed today. it didn't really taste like a brownie, but it didn't taste bad. i haven't felt hungry or munchy and it's practically lunchtime, so i'm calling it a good proteiny breakfast. it's still not real food. it's not something i cooked myself and know where it came from. but it's better for me than a chocolate croissant when i feel like something different. i think they could come in handy on a road trip, or in an emergency kit (no, really, i can't turn those thoughts off). i won't make it a staple of my non-diet but as an alternative to crappy breakfast foods i'm happy with it as an option. and the part of me that says "eat more protein, eat more protein" is satisfied that i'm trying things to get more protein in my diet. try, try until i get it right. you can't do better than that.

"I'm eating this now. It's not lunchtime, I don't even care."

167 and holding. which makes me feel like a greasy worker in the engine room of a submarine. not the weight, using the words "and holding". you know, like in the films. and then the captain says "good work" and you feel all validated. probably like one of those insurance honchos that get 15 billion dollar bonuses for denying children and old people healthcare. i imagine 15 bil would be very validating.

i usually only use this much imagery when i'm in a bad mood, but i'm actually not today. i'm perky. i'm thinking about taking a cooking class. and maybe a writing class. the cooking class because it's vegetarian. that would be awesome. i always want to do those kinds of classes and then i realize they probably cook a lot of meat because lots of people eat meat. it's totally reasonable for adult education i just don't want to pay to cook meat when i can do it at home for free. the vegetarian class sounds pretty awesome though. i can always use ideas to kickstart a veggie proteiny dinner and i have a serious desire to learn to use lentils. i feel like that's the thing to do, eat more lentils. i have a lentil calling and i'm going to embrace it.

the writing class is less about desire and more about me needing a push. i might hate it. i'll probably hate it. and i'll have fabulous excuses as to why i stop going the third week in but i think i might sign up anyway. living the easy, pointless life is well...easy. but more than a little bit dull. for 45 dollars i think it's worth it to kick start my brain. at the very least i can mock the other students which proved very amusing in college. it probably means that i'm at heart a bad person, but there's just no way i can take people who say "if they had the bible, why weren't they christians?" seriously. if that's your world view in a class labeled "cultures of india" you deserve to be mocked five years later on some anonymous fat blog.

what comes after petty and mocking? more job news. the new folks pay 100% of our health insurance. that's awesome. if i last that long i'm gonna get my knee checked out left, right and center. i feel very not sure about my decision to put that off. i have a feeling it will end badly. if i don't go now and pay for it myself, my knee will fall off. if i spend a few thou and get it checked now, it will be fine and they will prescribe advil when it's "uncomfortable". advil is the one thing the doctor said i should do for my arm and i haven't done it. i got the b vitamins and i use the ice. i don't want to take 16 advil a day when it doesn't hurt that much. to which she said it's not for the pain it's for the inflamation. i can dig that, it's just so much drugs. i don't want to take so many drugs if i'm not in dire need. is this me being stubborn for no good reason? i'll have to re-read this in a few hours and see if i dis-agree then. and i'll keep my advil handy.

"A doodle. I do doodle. You too. You do doodle, too."

167 this morning which really makes me wish i'd made a bigger deal about an official rounded thirty pounds lost yesterday. or maybe not because then the itty upswing would be like, dissapointing. i'm sort of eh about it, atleast at the moment. i'm wearing one of my hot new five dollar and sixty two cent t-shirts and i feel very good about it. hot even. smokin' maybe. i guess i'm just having an attractive day. it's an "everything i need is right here in my hands" day.

you know how sometimes it's just impossible to see past the bad? i was getting tired of that. it's very tiring being negative and it's not like you're always in the driver's seat. some events, some emotions, some...err...hormones, get the better of you and it takes a while to make your world right again. it's all good to take it in stride, or power through and never mention it again. but it's not very human. not all the time. no one is top of their game at every moment. if they were oprah would be out of business. i can't say i'm looking forward to my next slump very much, but i won't be surprised. you can't have highs without lows and yadda yadda yadda. i guess this is me documenting that i feel better lately. for posterity.

and moving on sans segue, how do we feel about protein bars? i picked one up the other day, one of the luna ones because i'm a sap for gender-based marketing. apparently. and i'm just not sure. it wasn't horrible, i didn't want to die while i was eating it. i ate the whole thing and i sort of don't know why now that i've given it some thought. i don't normally finish things that i'm not enjoying. i wasn't in danger of starving to death in the middle of bangor with a fistful of credit cards. i'm going to try another one, maybe a different brand or flavor. i think they would be a good thing to have on hand in an emergency way. like the power is out and you're tired of canned beans. it makes me think of firefly and the molded protein any which way you want it. i wonder if i can keep a few in the car?

it's come to my attention lately that i think about survival situations A LOT. i bought cat food this weekend and i ended up double bagging it for emergencies. that could be emergently forgetting to buy some but i know i was thinking the rapture. apocolypse. doom. it's one of my many re-occurring thoughtwaves that makes me think valium would be a good idea. and really who would want to survive the apocolypse on luna bars and cat food? what would be the point. there'd be no one to read you blog about it.

"I swear on my mother's grave... should something fatal happen to her, God forbid."

166 this morning. it's like birds singing and pearly gates and all that. i'll be a happy girl if i can hold on to that for a bit. i'm a little surprised as i spent the weekend in the car and shopping. i met my sister in kittery and we did the outlet thing with her babies. i can no longer say that i have nothing to wear. i think i've done more clothes shopping in the last month than i have in the last two years. i had been all careful for so long, trying not to have too many fat clothes to get rid of and now that i'm losing again i'm shopping more. that doesn't make great sense but since it's all receipts under the bridge now i guess i just need to make the most of it.

it's sort of nice to wear the outfit you like instead of the one that's clean. we're trying our best to look fancy and professional this week since we're expecting an inspection...err visit...from above. we're getting more and more information from the bank gossip grapevine. apparently the new folks are lean and mean and have the fewest employees of any bank their size. interesting. whatever. i'm so going on vacation of we get severed. somewhere awesome. somewhere hawaii. until then it's put out applications and plan a somewhat closer vacation. we're taking labor day week off and i think we're going to canada. hawaii of the north. anyway, i'm excited.

we're looking at st. andrews, new brunswick. i've been there before and i just remember it being beautiful and peaceful with great huge fabulous tides in the bay. i'm pretty sure that's where we're going. our big plan is to show up and veg all week. i saw some pretty hiking trails and i know there's a beautiful coast to walk and a fort to explore that matt will love, but i think sitting and also eating are going to be our main focus. focuses. foci. that and not being at work. every minute will be wonderful because it will be a minute not spent in maine. and i think there's a chocolate factory on the way which will be very educational.

"What are you eating?" "It's a delicious biscuit?" "It's a coaster." "Is it, do we have anymore?"

of all things, it's tennis elbow. repetitive motion tennis elbow. i'm very glad it's not carpal tunnel, surgery would not be fun. what is bound to be a ton of fun, is dealing with the worker's comp. i bet hr will be really thrilled too because what better time to have an issue than when you're in the middle of a merger. which, since i brought it up, is starting to get interesting. we're expecting a visit next week from the new powers. we're not sure if we should hope to be busy or not, or if we should clean from top to bottom in preparation or because it'll made a cleaner getaway.

in other news i really want a sandwich. as i was walking back from the hospital everyone had these gorgeous deli sandwiches. they were also sitting on park benches and definitely on vacation and free of cares but the sandwiches are what stood out so i guess i'm hungry today. i could go get one but i'm just not hungry enough to justify it. i can wait till i am. sandwiches aren't exactly going extinct.

what might be going extinct is my non-illustrious running career. she's sending me to a specialist to check out my knee click. the one thing i casually threw out there she was the most concerned about. atleast i'll have some reassurance that things are ok or reassurance that it would be better if i just stuck to walking. i got the feeling she really didn't want me to stop running. like i'd weight six ton by october if i took it down a notch. i suppose it's her job to encourage active life styles, it's probably me on the fat defensive. like i have any reason to defend being fat when i couldn't have run a mile to save my life thirty pounds ago. anyway, she gave me some exercises to strenghten the muscles around my knees to keep the knee cap on the right track. which makes sense. i like thinking that i can fix the exercise problem with exercise. it's very circle of life.

Hello Cupcake!

this photo was supposed to be all about the cupcake but mostly i'm thinking "gee, i have really crowded counters". matt took a lot of grief over the size of the kitchen he built himself. his family thought the number of cupboards he built was ridiculous. too many. i think it's ridiculous too because there's still not enough room. he was putting dishes away last night and he had some serious issues with the bakeware. there's just not enough room for every cake pan to live with us. do i make a bundt every week? no. so why do i need it within reach.

it must be a very late spring cleaning bug that has me tearing my house apart to build it up new. the same bug that seems to have picked up where i left off in my actually wanting to set a new goal. i'm pretty much certain that when my hormones ride off in to the sunset i'll be back in the 160's. well in to the 160's. there's something about the last week that has made me all "i'll go for a run, and then i'll have some water, and look watermelon!". it's nice to crave vegetables again. to be the person who chooses fruit over junk and doesn't think twice about it. size ten is very much in my sights and nearly in my grasp.

in completely different news, i've got a call into the doctor about my wrist. and it just ocurred to me that i can ask her about my knee problem aswell. the wrist is mre of a concern though, as it's job related. if there's an issue with worker's comp i want it dealt with early and often and before we get bought out. 'course then i'll be damaged goods. better unemployable than unable to use my arm though, or maybe that's a bit dramatic.

"They tell you never hit a man with a closed fist, but it is on occasion hilarious."

i seem to have lost two pounds of late. which is awesome. i'm pretty excited about it. i think my re-newed efforts are finally paying off and that's good for the moral. cookies are also good for the moral. i don't mention it very much on here because it seems a little too outwardly ridiculous for this kind of blog, but, i eat a lot of cookies. and cupcakes. and ice cream. and on occasion...chocolate. except for some very short periods in this adventure i've never gone completely sugar free. or sugary fatty treat free, which would be more accurate. if i want something i have it and i think it's much better for my over all emotional health and my diet to operate that way. i don't feel bad about having two cookies yesterday, or the soda i drank half of and forgot. when i obsess over the things i "can't" have the outcome is always worse than eating the ice cream and taking a walk would have been.

work is interesting, but mostly i'm too low down to worry much. middle management will be the ones with the cushy severance packages. atleast so we assume. not that i would mind, i'm always trying to jump ship so who am i to complain about job loss. it would just be a kick in the ass to try something new. and since i'm so optomistic i'm sure i'll be here 'till i die. it's a very "there's nothing to worry about until there is" situation.

in the meantime it has come to my attention that i have $125 of fitness spending money i might never see again that i had better spend. do i spring for the treadmill or do i get 12 cardio dvd's? i just can't decide. i wonder if they'd let me buy sports bras. i'll have to check it out. even if i leave soon it would be foolish not to use the perks while i could. my new motto should be make the most of things. i think that's a good way to carry on for the transitions to come. little suzie sunshine, i am.

"I think you have a problem with your brain being missing."

do you think if i mention the merger online and i get fired i'll still get a severance package? guess we'll find out. it's been a super interesting day, very busy. and there have been lots of cookies and an entire 20 ounce coke. but i think i'm burning it off with the yapping at the mouth about my livelihood getting upheaved. think how skinny i'll be when i can't afford to eat!

"ten percent of nothing is, uhm, let me do the math"

in a word, pissy. last week was unpleasant. but diet wise it went very well. i didn't actually lose any pounds but i didn't buy an entire cake and eat it myself so that's awesome. right now i'm much less pissy. the birthday party went very well and there were plenty of chairs. and plenty of pie. and everyone had a good time. and later i was able to hand off a dozen cupcakes and half of the infamous yellow watermelon to matt's mom. i really don't need two dozen chocolate and cream cheese frosting cupcakes in my house, i just don't.

i had some kind of cleaning revelation and i gutted my closet yesterday. i have this tendency to forget about all the gorgeous clothes i have and wear the same 5 shirts all week. i hate that. so i'm de-cluttering. i have so many things that i pull out and say "i love that!". you know what, i love it so much i haven't worn in in 7 months. that's how much i love it. so now i have a last chance saloon shelf. if i can't choose one of those shirts over the many white v-necks i wear like a uniform they have to go. i'm not worthy. 'course i also did a lot of shopping this weekend. i think i bought one of everything old navy was selling. i haven't liked a shred of their clothes for most of the last year and all of sudden this season i'm enamored. it must be magic.

this is officially supposed to be a free for all week, diet wise, but i think i worked it all out of my system with shopping. we have enough soap and toothpaste and infusium to last FOREVER. i had a lot of coupons and the cute old lady who rung me up rang one of them twice and if she's not there next time i go i'm going to feel terrible because i didn't tell her and if she's fired it's all my fault. i feel like i should call, but i didn't even notice till i had left. it's grating on my soul. i can hear my mother tsking from beyond.

bizarre yellow watermelon in all its' glory

"insert quip here"

no no, my favorite part about the network being down is when they send us emails telling us the network is down. that's the super helpfullest. when they do that. and then when the network is back up you have an inbox bursting with letters saying "the internet is not yet working, please be patient." and you thought you were frustrated before but this, this is new. this is eleven on the frustrat-o-meter.

i didn't get here yesterday because of inner frustration and today it's all about outer frustration. i've been a grump-a-holic all week and i don't really have a great reason. this morning i phoned in to order zz top tickets for matt and all i could think was gee, i really hope this doesn't work. i don't want to go see zz top. but he really does. maybe he'll find a boyfriend to go with him and i can sit home and frown instead. that would be awesome.

he also suggested a trip to baxter state park this weekend. which normally would be awesome too because usually when i ask him if he'd like to do something he says he has to clean the garage. but it's not awesome. it's a long way there and a long way back and while i'll totally get to sit on my ass there's no tv in the car. damn it.

i seem to be drowning in dis-satisfaction with my life and i'm really not sure what to do about it. or is a week too short to actually be drowning. am i jumping the gun? am i merely spluttering on my dis-satisfaction? coughing on it noiselessly behind a polite hand.

back to the regularly scheduled fat on monday. probably.

"hip-hop-popotamus"

today i have to make a dinner reservation for a party of nine in a restaurant so small i'm pretty sure eight is the number of chairs they have. i'm a little worried about it. it's matt's birthday dinner, much belated because everything interesting that could happen to me happened last week. maybe that's why this week seems like such a downer. back to yogurt for breakfast and work everyday as far as the eye can see.

and that's as far as i got before my brain died. don't you hate when that happens. my enthusiasm lasted about 15 minutes into the working day and now i'm here slobbering and babbling and directionless. with that in mind, i'm off to make tea and read the deathly hallows until it's mercifully time to go home.

"you're so pretty, you could be a 1960's air-hostess"

it has come to my attention that i have almost a literal ton of chocolate in my house, but no chocolate chips. i tried to make cookies for the boyfriend last night and whooops! no chocolate chips. i have three bags of walnuts and 7 or 8 bags of white chocolate chips and 6 bags of mint chocolate chips, but no actual chocolate chips. it was less a baking quandry than an episode of shock. i don't live the kind of life that runs out of chocolate chips. i ended up chopping up a dark chocolate bar. ghirardelli. and the boy complained. actually i guess he didn't but he requested genuine chips next time when the chocolate i used is so much better. i'm going to have to beat him with a copy of gourmet when i get home.


i'm sort of thrilled with the amount of chocolate in my house. in the way that it's behind a cupboard door and i forget that it's there 99% of the time. i love that. when i was home this weekend i noticed myself doing something that i hardly do at my house. opening the fridge and every cabinet just to see what's there, what you could eat if you just reached in and took it. it was a pretty horrible eating weekend with my sister wanting all her favorites you can't get in slovakia. i always know that going home screws up the way i eat, this weekend just felt particularly bad. particularly gross. eating pizza and chinese and ben and jerry's all in one day really made me feel ill. to no one's surprise. the surprise is that no one else felt ill at all. either my family is used to feeling ill or they're used to eating gross food. or both.

it was a good lesson at a good time. i haven't been trying very hard lately. my knee still clicks and i haven't run for weeks and weeks. the meals i prepare are still healthy 90% of the time but i've definitely had more snacks around lately. a cookie here and there, caramel popcorn, regular popcorn. much more "junk food" than i'm used to and i really don't feel that great as a result. tired and lazy. it's also hot, and sticky and things have been a little crazy. i think it will be legitimately worth my while if i get my shit together and eat real food. i can't say i was proud of the choices i made this weekend, i had the power to eat different foods than the rest of my family. i had money and a car and a kitchen to cook in, i just didn't. i am a little proud that we don't eat like that. i'm proud that a weekend with my family made me feel ill. woohoo! it's times like these i know i would benefit from psychiatric intervention.

"you'd be the prettiest girl on the street...depending on the street"

it is with great sadness that i have learned i no longer get email for every new comment. it sort of fizzled, and now it's stopped completely. google must be getting tired. and i'm totally out of laundry detergent. and milk. it was a long weekend in NH. "who's taking her to the airport?" "i've never been to the airport." "it's just off 93." "but don't you have to go through a tunnel?" "no." "well yes, but you don't have to get off 93." "where do you get off, the garden?" "no, you don't have to get off, you stay on till the airport and then you just get off there." "but what about the garden, don't you turn there and go through the haymarket?" "no, you stay on 93." "so who's taking her?" a very long weekend. if they would just leave boston alone for five minutes all the generations of my family could have a consensus on how to get to logan.

i think matt was a little bewildered by our way of carrying on. we had a good time with the staff at my brother in law's pharmacy. "where is the benadryl?" "benadryl caplets? right over here." whisper on stage left "what if i want tablets?" "what if you want a powder so you can huff it?" "where's the injectable benadryl?" and so on and so on. he also got a second birthday cake which my sisters ate before he got a piece, very my family. he wasn't raised in a get it before it's gone atmosphere which i think is a huge factor in his ability to eat like a normal person without any emotional baggage. but it means he missed out on cake, and the one person who really needed it. i suppose in a regular world with eating and guilt and bingeing our background hasn't prepared us well, but we've got a full skill set for survival of the fittest in a famine. i'm a glass is half full girl, can't you tell?

so, now that i'm back, i really have to go grocery shopping. we bought an absolute ton of freezables at trader joes. fish and meat and some mushroom alfredo which sounds so good i'm glad i can only buy it five hours away. but i didn't get any of the staples like milk and lettuce and ice cream for matt. although i'm thinking if i withhold the ice cream he can work his way through the ice cream sandwiches and then it won't be me eating them. if he only knew how much plotting goes into a weeks eating. i wish i could be happily oblivious like he is and not be thinking about the content of so many meals. but then we'd end up eating out and eating crap or indeed eating nothing at all. and now i'm off to do the meal plan and the shopping list so i can be like the wind at shaws. i will shop so fast it will be like the grocery olympics. and it will be efficient. and the coupons will line themselves up alphabetically and by food group. le sigh...

"I tell all the tourists from New Zealand to avoid crowds and use back alleys and still there's a New Zealander mugged every day."

when i was in college i met a very adorable girl who was my dear friend and roommate and who went through four years being gay by association because i could not stop touching her ass. weirdly, and great for me because i never forgot, her birthday is the same as my very best friend from highschool. and you'd think i'd write this soppy start of a post on her actual birthday, both of their birthdays, which were in may. and i'm late, no. i started this post this way because there is nothing that reminds me of frosting like sarah's birthday.

i stayed at school every summer during college. paying rent and working and taking classes. because i am a moron. if i had the sense to realize that i would be paying rent and working and taking classes for the entirety of the next five years i would have gone home and sat on my ass. and appreciated it. hindsight and all. but anyway, one summer sarah stayed at school too. i must have talked it up really well because maryland isn't that much fun in the summer. what with the heat and hotness and the humidity. i must have felt really bad about duct taping her to that chair and making her stay with me, so i baked her a cake for her birthday. a white cake with chocolate frosting, which is purported to be her favorite.

it was a big damn cake. i think our choices for pans were pretty bad because sheet cake really doesn't seem appropriate in retrospect. it wasn't appropriate at the time either because the cake split down the middle like the grand canyon. it would have been great if we'd had tiny plastic donkeys and goldminers but at the time i was batshit trying to make the cake look like something you'd want to get up from your tape chair for. and she said "just fill the fissure with frosting". we did and it was fine and she still talks to me so it can't have been that bad. not like the rice, but that's a different story.

since then i'd like to think that my baking has improved. i'd like to think that my expertise has flowered into one of those solid sugar wilton roses my sister mainlines. so you know who had a birthday yesterday? and you know for whom i was baking a cake yesterday? yeah. can i just say fissures and donkeys. the cake stuck every which way, it stuck to things it never touched, never thought of. things in rooms i never entered were covered in cake like a martha stewart buttermilk conspiracy. if he'd been home i'd have been weeping into my batter bowls.

fortunately he wasn't home. i made a double batch of buttercream (blue for a boy!) and assembled the cake bits. it would be safe to say that 83% of the cake is blue frosting. it's a really good cake.

"Strong, successful males say 'giddy'?"

i'm bored out of my gourd. and i can't think of another sentence that rhymes. i had something with a fyord but it just didn't feel right. and i think the milk in my instant breakfast has past it's prime. and i totally didn't bake matt's cake last night. so i have to do it tonight with all the other things i've procrastinated and i really hope the recipe doesn't call for milk.

on the upside i look really cute today. all the clothes i bought this weekend are perfect. the sort of things that only pop up once in a while and are exactly what you're looking for and mysteriously come around all at once so you feel like a jerk spending so much money in one go. i'm trying really hard not to feel like a jerk. surprisingly not one thing is black. i passed up about 20 perfect black skirts because i just don't need 20 perfect black skirts. it's very mature of me i think, not buying a bunch of stuff i don't need just because it fits. clearly, i'm growing. the bargain bag of hello kitty lunch bags not-withstanding. (and wow, i have no idea how to punctuate that. tres sad.)

"Okay, at this point, you're abusing sarcasm."

per the usual i was all in a dither for no reason. pretty much our talk was "mistakes happen, try to be more focused". which we sort of figured out since we really don't like making mistakes. so no big. it's a relief that it's over and i can enjoy atleast a few more months of a regular check.

it's been sort of a busy week with the shopping and the un-packing the shopping, which i still haven't actually finished yet. and tomorrow is matt's birthday. wonderfully his present has already arrived, i just have to wrap it and bake his cake. i forgot that i had meant to make it in the shape of a truck or something. i was thinking big last year i guess. however, the odds on me getting a cake like that made without him noticing are going to be minute. it might be better to go the lazy route and fill the bed of a toy with cupcakes. but since we're not having a party with 15 toddlers maybe i should just make a grown up cake. he's not all that excited about his birthday. something about feeling old. he is going to be 31 and since that's practically dead, he needs an appropriate confection. maybe i'll bake something and then put it through a blender. that would strike just the right note.

it's sort of amazing how little i get done in an evening since we moved. i was thinking last night, while sitting on my ass, that i used to atleast step while watching tv. i slowed my stepping when i was running more and then i lost the habit completely. right now i'm completely habitless exercise-wise. it never ceases to amaze me how well i maintain when i'm not exercising or eating carefully and it never ceases to piss me off that i'm not doing more in order to lose. it's a circle with no end. atleast until i get myself completely together. which seems a truly elusive concept. most of the time i think i'm not together only to find out that i can get even less together and then think wistfully of the prior weeks.

before they found the very last body on our road i was running every morning. it was a crime with no relation at all to the area, it was just a dumping ground. but still it makes me nervous. even with the myriad defenses i mustered i don't really want to face running on the road. i'm officially out of the habit and it's going to be a pain in the hole to get back to it. wouldn't it be easier to just get a tape worm?