Eat of my grapefruit and be sated

Since this is, optimistically, a weight loss blog and I'm trying to be all pro-calorie range at the moment why not discuss it in some length? So, the deal according to Spark is that I'm supposed to consume between 1200 and 1550 calories a day. It's based on my current weight and 5 hours a week of exercise, at a minimum. Safe to say I haven't had that much exercise in the last few weeks so I'm trying to stick to the lower end. Yesterday came in just under 1600 and the day before was about 1400 although I might be over-estimating those two licks of chocolate mousse. I have input all of the proposed choices for today and have come to only 730 calories. Which has me thinking "Ooooh, what can I eat?".

It's probably good for me to mull it over here since I sort of hate it. Part of me feels like I haven't given it enough time to know if I really hate it. It might turn out that I hate it but find it works really well in the end, in which case I'll have to suck it up. The other part of me is hoping I hate it and it doesn't work because then I could be fat and justified in my anger. I've only had two half-assed weeks of logging food and counting calories and it burns.

I've been trying to be positive about it, looking ahead and all. In reality most of the time I look to the next damn meal which is not healthy. I find I think a lot about what I should eat, and what I could eat instead and in the instance of today what can I eat to fill up my calories. I'm not loving it. I miss the old way I used to eat, when I would have a day like today and end at 730 calories and be completely satisfied because I didn't know any better. It brings up a lot of questions.

I worry about how many days I ate less than 1000 calories and exercised for an hour. Even though I didn't get super skinny, could I have been damaging my health and not know it? On the other hand, under the old regime, I never went around feeling hungry. If I was hungry I ate something and didn't have long philosophical calorie conversations with myself over it. I just ate something and went on with my life and didn't have to think about it for hours and hours.

HappyBlogChick linked me up an article on flexible restraint, and while I was reading it I was like Hello! this is what you used to do that you really loved. Really loved and had very slow success with. Early December I decided that I needed more exercise, that I had reached an exercise plateau and that's when I added kickboxing. I love Pilates and how strong it makes me feel but kickboxing makes me sweat like in a health club commercial. Then the holidays came and then I got sick and somewhere along the way I decided to do this Spark thing. I don't know that I gave the increased exercise much of a chance to do it's thing, not in the optimal conditions anyway.

I have to admit that this test period has been sort of crappy too. I haven't been doing anything to par if I'm really honest, not since before my birthday. I don't know how long I need to keep it up before I can tell myself it's ok to quit and go back to what I used to do. In the end I have no one to answer to except myself so why am I dithering? If I want to eat oatmeal for breakfast and instant breakfast for lunch, a cookie out of the oven when I'm baking and pizza for dinner every few weeks why shouldn't I? I should definitely add a salad and some fruit but I don't need spark to tell me I should have half a banana and one cup of melon balls.

I don't know if it's good for me or not to be talking myself out of this. I always feel like I need more structure and then when I undertake it I'm always compelled to rebel. I don't know what that says about my capacity for lifelong success.

''I was busy shoveling coal into my styrofoam factory. Enjoying some roast penguin.''

Do you ever have a day where your perfect horoscope would read: You will be unreasonable today, probably because you're high on sugar. You'll also want to avoid operating heavy equipment or logging into sparkpeople.com because it will make you cry. It's probably the excess of the guilt as I mentioned in the previous comments. It's filled up my body and is drowning my brain right now. What would Jesus eat? Jesus would not have chocolate mousse cake for breakfast and then follow it up with Thai food for lunch. Jesus is much better at tracking his spark food than I am and Jesus prefers Chinese anyway...'specially the crab rangoon. Loaves, fishes, cream cheese...excellent.

Clearly I'm a nutcase today, an overfed crazy person with a strong desire to nap. I had all these awesome plans for today, awesomer than napping. I was all into kickboxing tonight. It's kickboxing night you see...it's on the calendar. It's set in stone and sturdy sneakers. I'm trying very hard to be the person who has a list and who does all the things on her list every day. It's actually working out very well. I love writing things down and crossing them off with a flourish like eating breakfast is an accomplishment. I suppose now it is an accomplishment, as long as it's not cake fulfilling the requirement.

I'm feeling a little guilty over the choices I have made today. I re-rigged my day on spark so that my calories are pretty darn close to the top of my range. It's not reasonable to expect that I won't eat anything for dinner and I can't start my day over so it will just have to do. And you know, my range is well below a normal 2000 calorie diet so it's not like I ate 42 cheeseburgers for lunch and am trying to pass it off as normal. Today is a little high in calories but yesterday was low and maybe I don't need the inner "you suck" dialogue all day. It's not a co-worker's birthday every day and I didn't spend all last night baking and whipping and melting to not have half a small piece of cake today. Three bites of chocolatey deliciousness and a tofu stir fry have my brain spinning like I ate three meals at the Golden Corral meat buffet.

I didn't need to eat cake for breakfast but I don't need to over-react. It hardly ever helps when I freak out over one thing. There's most of a cake left back there and I so don't need to have any more, better to just get over it and look forward to my kickboxing to dig myself out of this deep ass calorie hole.

"you know what the next season is, locusts"

I'm back to wearing my sexy, sexy long johns today. I was getting used to the mid-thirties, I even took a walk yesterday in the out of doors. Friday we had a really interesting and bizarre thunderstorm and now it's snowing again and we're supposed to get 14 inches. Weird, weird, weird. It was a good weekend though, particularly for exercise for which I was rewarded with 174.8 this morning. Slow and steady wins the frustrating as all hell race. Better than nothing, that's what I keep telling myself, better than nothing.

The clothes shopping was pretty horrendous though. I was unprepared in the way that you are when you know you're fatter but you don't really know how fat you are and whoa! then you go shopping and get the dread dressing room clarity(tm). Dressing room clarity syndrome symptoms include thoughts like "wow, the twelve has gotten smaller" "this must be a mislabeled ten" "all the sodium in that yogurt smoothie I had for breakfast must be making me fatter and is certainly only temporary". I did know I was fatter, I was hovering nearer 170 when I bought and zipped and danced in that pair of size tens. Behold the power of 5 extra pounds, its' heart is cold as ice.

That five pounds is probably why I hate all my clothes in the first place. If it wasn't for Old Navy and their 75% off clearance I'd have never considered buying clothes at this stage. I'd be sitting here blissfully in my ignorance, possibly drooling with complacency, and now I have all this stupid reality to think about. Selfish bastards. I really wish I could do all the healthy eating and sweaty exercise and not need the sorry ass self hate for inspiration. I'm just realizing that I lose the most when I genuinely loathe my appearance the most, I'm not so sure I should be inspired that way.

I heart Target clearance

Matt has contracted the virus that time forgot. I keep thinking about the damn cold like it's been around since the dawn of time, harassing would be dieters and dinosaurs and the like. I'm picturing a pair of Pterodactyls flying over a Brontosaurus, and then the Brontosaurus sneezes and falls over dead and the Pterodactyls say to each other "he should have used those disinfectant wipes" and the other one says "yup" and then they fly away. Which is why I had to go to Target and get "Puffs Plus, the ones with the lotion" for my boyfriend. And it was just the best Target run ever. Everything I wanted was orange tagged and rang up at less. It was like fate that I be at Target today. It's so wonderful to be better, I scarce have words. Not only to go shopping and not need a nap but to be able to plug in some kickboxing and be able to do it.

I wasn't going to do kickboxing yet but I just felt like it and I figured if I got tired I'd just stop or take it easy or whatever. I didn't have to, it was great. I'm hoping to have a much better numbers week now that I can exercise for real. That'll add to my inspiration since clothes shopping really sucked today. I stopped at Old Navy to get some reallllly cheap tank tops for working out and tried on some painfully cheap pants that I couldn't buy because they did not fit, not even the twelves. I mean, they buttoned but they didn't look good. They looked like the pants that you try on that make you go on slim-fast, not the ones you love to wear after 2 years of weight watching.

That could be how I got through kickboxing, sheer post shopping desperation. Works for me. Next up Pilates after I've finished some house cleaning...just like a normal saturday before that Brontosaurus coughed on me.

Feeding Suggestion

Whoops! I came back in to edit again my totally screwed up post from this morning and lost it, which is probably fine because it was a stinking mess. Update from yesterday, I totally agreed with Sarah and didn't try to eat a day's worth of protein in one meal. I would have had to eat an entire cow to catch up and it was easier to just eat my damn salad and get over it.

I had written before that I hate all my clothes and am super determined to get to the next size so I can go shopping. I think vanity really is my impetus and why not take advantage? If that's the thing that lights a fire under my ass to stick to my plan and my journal and get some serious exercise every day, why not be vain? Right now I should be taking a walk but it's raining, freezing rain raining. It's got me feeling very housebound and maybe I'll feel like working off some steam when I get home. I know I'll sleep better for it. It'll be nice to feel exhausted from hard work as opposed to just being ill.

Since I couldn't take a walk at lunch I did my grocery shopping instead. I spent the least I've spent for a week of food in months. Funny how when you plan things work in your favor. And seriously if my windows crash again I WILL GO INSANE. At home I keep losing my screen, it just keeps going black...but with all the programs still running. It's great fun, like windows roulette. I almost had a weigh-in roulette too but I guess I was just distracted. I always do the weighing thing after my shower and today I did it wearing my towel. Wet terry cloth is damn heavy. Sans towel I had a weigh in of 175.6 which is fine considering the vast amount of sugar I ingested yesterday.

That reminds me of how I ended the post I lost, the twenty cups of tea thing. I did the math and realized that I could have had twenty cups of tea for that damn bottle of orange soda. I'd probably have to seal my teeth with the stuff they use on driveways but still, that's value for money. I decided that I need to look at all bottled drinks that way, do I need to waste that many calories on a beverage? While I was killing time at the grocery store I poked around in the breakfast aisle and sort of spread that epiphany around. Long ago and far away I used to get myself strawberry frosted poptarts for breakfast. Not all the time, because I was broke...not health conscious, but enough that now looking at the calories makes me sort of want to cry. 200 calories per tart. And you know you're going to eat two because they package them that way. How many people take the superfluous tart and wrap it up for tomorrow? Exactly, no one does that. Makes my pre-sweetend instant oatmeal look like it's wearing wings and a halo. Which is what I was after, validation for my choices. It's good to have perspective when you're teetering on the edge of a snack attack.

Sunkist is the Devil!

I've been living the whole day like it's the 9th and apparently it's the 10th. Which means that I needed to use two pints of whipping cream, yesterday. I guess I'm making ice cream tonight and hopefully it won't kill us. It's been a little strange and a little good that I haven't had the energy to bake a damn thing in weeks. I really don't need to face a fresh plate of cookies every night right now. I have to admit I'm having a bit of difficulty with my Spark plan thing. Case in point, I just finished off a bottle of sunkist orange soda. My throat was scratchy and I just wanted bubbles and the orange label makes you think it's all citrus-y and healthful. Healthful, I must be brain dead. One bottle has 2.5 servings. Each serving has 130 calories. I just drank 325 calories because I was too lazy to make myself a 15 calorie cup of tea and get over it. Of all the horrible things to think, I would have been better off with a can of coke for half the calories.

Then we got the gift of thai food for lunch. I don't want to say that today is pretty much sunk, but it pretty much is. I'll have the salad I made for lunch for dinner and I can account for the calories in the soda but it leaves me nothing left to add some protein to my day. Is it better to eat some protein and go over my calories, or stick to my guns and run low on protein? Part of me thinks that I used to make no allowance for protein in a healthy diet so what's one day? The other part of me thinks it's better habit-wise to eat all the healthy food I'm supposed to eat like nothing happened and just take the hit on the scale if it comes. I can't decide.

Is it cheaper without the novocaine? 'Cause that's the deciding factor.

I started my day with sparsely medicated tooth drilling, how y'all doin? Seriously, how cheap can I get. It really wasn't that painful, I just kept chanting about savings and having these Scrooge McDuck fantasies about rolling in piles of gold. I was really thinking that this isn't all that different from getting ink drilled into your skin for a tattoo, and I did that on purpose without drugs, so what's to complain about. It's over now and I can add it to my littany of suffering tales in case I ever have children.

What else, what else...oh, yeah, 175.4. How much do I love that? A lot. I lost a whole pound and that was before I got all that heavy, heavy tooth decay drilled out of my head. It's wonderful because I was thinking how depressing losing 27 pounds would be, and then how slightly less depressing losing 26.4 pounds would be, and now I'm fumbling toward depressed but medicated and going to therapy. I feel less like I've lost ground while being sick. I felt really bad about that, it's hard to accept it was out of my control, which makes me feel worse about goofing off when I'm not sick. Too late to do anything about snacks of yesteryear, I can only plan better in the future.

I spent a lot of time last night thinking about goals and looking around my house for things I can improve. I'll be a Target wet dream this weekend when I go and clear out their home organizing section. I'll need some spackle too because some of my wall art choices leave a lot to be desired. Funny how things you have that were "so cool" hanging in your dorm room just don't translate after a few years. In to storage it all goes, before I snap and start a bonfire in the driveway. Which would totally melt the ice and be very cathartic but I'm just not crazed enough yet. Maybe monday when I realize that removing the clutter from the shelves means so much more dusting. Another deciding factor.

News I can't help but link to

New Hampshire is running out of ballots in Democrat strongholds, suck it Romney.

Girls who think they're low on the social ladder more likely to gain weight?

Grammar mistakes are more than just annoying to blog readers, unfortunately.

"Thin line between heaven and here."

This is the fourth time I've started to post today and the first time I'm doing so while eating past date organic yogurt. That could be the secret to my success right there. Buy expensive ass food, let it go way past date, and then eat it at work so when you die there are witnesses. Oh, and blog about it. December 28 2007, that wasn't actually that long ago and those dates are really just a suggestion. I'll eat it fast so I can't think too much about it.

I'm having one of those evaluate all the foolish things you do sort of days, but I'm doing it at 176.4 so it's like .6 of a pound less demoralizing. That sort of sounds harsher than I intended, I'm feeling very positive about what I want to do this year. I'm trying to be objective in identifying the things I want to change and work on. One of those things is that I don't want to be a pseudo religious militia freak hoarder anymore. I'm going to try very hard to buy only the things on the grocery list that are needed for that week and use coupons/sales only for products that can be used in the near future. I'm not so broke anymore that I have to count pennies like that, not for everything anyway. You don't save any money when you end up tossing things later on. And it'll free up space in my house and cupboards so that's always good.

At some point I guess I need to compile a list, a genuine goal list that I can refer to through out the year. I've already entered "check house for piles" at the end of every month in my day planner. I'm going to add "watch stockpiling" right below it. I said I wanted goals that went beyond skinny/not skinny and that's what the list will be. Somethings don't work as well on a calendar, things like "make your house more stylish".

I'm always talking about the apartment like it's so temporary it's barely worth washing the floor. We'll be here for at least another year and at some point I decided I want to like it. I sort of forget that it's under my control. If I hate the bookshelf I can get a different one, or if the lamps and tables drive me crazy I can take them to goodwill and start over. I've been thinking recently that maybe I don't have to have every book from college at hands reach in my living room. Maybe that doesn't meet my needs anymore. 'Course Matt will die when I come home with 200 rubbermaid tubs full of books for him to store but he loves me and I'm confident he'll suffer that injustice in silence if it makes me happy enough.

Fur reigns supreme

Chairman Meow can now sleep on unsuspecting chests everywhere! Thanks Kirsten!

Monday, it happens every week

Maybe I'm just a wimp, that's probably it. I thought I was all better and I was just holding myself back so I did about 8 seconds of Pilates on saturday. I got through three breaths of the hundred and that's it. I completed not another thing, I'm officially still trashed. This damn virus burned my village and salted the earth and I HATED it.

That is officially the last I am going to say about this evil, horrible virus. I'm going to move on to whining about the evil, horrible scale that read 177 this morning. Bastard has no compassion. It seems I'm only a gold medal maintainer when I can exercise during the week. Whatever, it's over. I'll take a nice relaxing walk at lunch since it's extra warm out and I'll be back to kickboxing soon enough. And, of course, I have a pre-packed, measured out lunch and snacks all ready to roll, it feels a little I'm heading to my first day of school.

To take my stepping out of my comfort zone just a little bit further, I added a food journal of sorts. Actually it's more of a list. I wrote down all the things that I plan to eat today, all the calories and protein and yadda yadda are already calculated elsewhere...it's just a long list of food. It seems like a very long list for someone who's supposed to be "dieting". It's a little weird, to look at my day in food and think it's too much. It's a little worrying that I'm looking at a normal healthy day of calories and thinking it's too much. I think maybe my comfort zone was a little disordered and it's probably good for me to re-evaluate things.

I need my forever plan to be healthy as well as reasonable and do able. This is very much a work in progress.

"I throwdown in the kitchen, amongst other places"

I cleaned my house last night. It's so clean, in fact, that Matt said he didn't feel at home. He's pining for the junk. Or maybe it's because I put all his stuff in a box and burned it. No, not really. I told him to eat it because it's taken me 10 months to get the house to have a semblance of the order and cleanliness to which I aspire. As much as I like stuff, I like space more and I'm just plain tired of living between piles of crap.

In the way of what to write on your weightloss blog when you're waiting for your grandiose start date (which normally is bullshit and I'd like to think I'd call myself on it but this here is a genuine icky, mouth-breathing, must rest necessity) I've been pondering what I want my life to look like, you know, in the future. I want to be the person who just washes the two plates and a pot instead of saying I can do that tomorrow. I want to be the person who just opens the bank statement and files it instead of making a pile six months high first. Those seem like little do-able things to me. Actually, have any of you seen the movie Proof? I want to be the anal retentive sister with the list in her day planner but I think that might be too much to ask for.

How can I exercise every night and be too lazy to wash dishes and sort a days' worth of papers? It's the sort of laziness that makes more work for you in the end, which makes me wonder what kind of laziness doesn't make more work for you in the end. I have no answer so I guess I should just stop being lazy because it's illogical. Ha. The truth of the matter is that I trained myself to be a person who exercises every night and not to eat every cookie I bake and I can train myself to be a person who works tasks as they come. I trained the goldfish to eat off my finger, I can train me to throw away old receipts. The IRS will not care that I bought soymilk and yogurt in June of '06. If I could write that off I'd have found a way by now.

It seems to me that I've had an epiphany of late, possibly since my birthday, that maturity isn't going to come find me and tap me on the shoulder like Ed McMahon or the Grim Reaper. I have to, like, make the decision to act on it all on my lonesome. I've been waiting for my life to fall into place when, uhm, I've been the one at the wheel the whole time. Little things big things, I put them all on the backburner for no real reason. I'm not curing cancer in the interim, I'm twidling my thumbs thinking about what I'll do someday. Screw that, this is a year of doing and acting even if it is just a year of having a neat house I'm proud of. I'm out of debt, I can change jobs if I want or take a trip, start a business or write a spy novel. I want to do something for me this year that isn't just about getting into shape. Something in addition to that. Something to further my petition for adulthood. In my own mind anyway.

Yeah, that was me

Welcome PastaQueen readers! I've never been prouder of falling on my ass so many times that I had to resort to crawling on my hands and knees! Little did I know the fame embarassing myself publicly could bring. Actually, it should read more like a public service announcement. The moral of that story is for heaven's sake wear boots with traction, or spikes. And that time I got my bare hand stuck to a doorknob a la Flick in The Christmas Story? The moral there is to wear mittens when it's -20. How about my boss' husband just called to say he broke part of his mustache off after wiping his face while shoveling. I don't have a moral for that one, or a mustache. Maybe he shouldn't either.

You'll find my whole fat history here. Thanks for coming by!

Circle Slash Whining

I feel better today, gamboling kittens and rays of sunshine better. It's awesome because I was getting tired of my sorry whining ass. I was getting tired of sitting on my sorry whining ass too. The evening stretches long before you when all there is to look forward to is coughing and Nyquil. I really missed my hour of exercise every night. I can't even believe how much of a cliche I am right now, but, making and achieving that goal every night adds to my life. I feel a little bit lost out of my routine, more than I would have expected. Another thing to add to lessons learned in 2007: I like my life better when I'm exercising.

'Course that doesn't mean I'm going to pull out my Pilates mat tonight. I think I'll stick to doing dishes and bathing myself for hardcore heart racing cardio. At least until this weekend, it'll be a see how things go sort of thing. I'm looking forward to tracking my week with Spark, which I had meant to start last weekend. I picked up a lot of their meals and snacks and I made myself a good plan for next week. I have out all my measuring tools and tupperware and I'm going to pre-package a week's worth of food. It sounds so dorky and sad typed out like that. Honestly though, do we think Jennifer Aniston looks like she does because she pours an overflowing bowl of fruity pebbles for breakfast? No, she really doesn't and who should? Exactly. So I shall be a measuring freak, dorkyness be damned.

I guess I'm feeling more like giving it my all. I suppose we all feel like that the first week of January and then we get back in our old grooves. A few weeks ago I wrote about prodding myself out of my comfort zone. That's what the Spark diet is all about. It's not that I think they have an answer, a magic pill. It's a tool to use to make me switch things up, to treat food as a fuel and exercise as a way to burn it. Prod prod prod. I have to realize that if all the things I do, and like to do, worked to help me lose weight...err...I wouldn't still be a grumpy fat girl. I maintain excellently and when the time is right I'll kick some life maintenance ass. To make the time right I have to work harder and plan harder and be accountable and willing to change. No more excuses, in the end they only hurt me.

Not a tough cookie

I'm so tired of being sick. So tired that I should be taking a nap right now instead of typing. Or two naps. It's not getting worse but it's not getting better either. I'm stuck in the hellish middle with only my martyrdom for company. I'm not even losing any weight from my tea and ice cream diet which is frankly shocking! The virus must weigh 6 pounds. Atleast. There's no way that I sneezed myself up to 176 snot forsaken pounds. Moaning burns calories, fact, so there can be no other explanation.

I keep thinking I should be doing a year in review but traditionally, or the one time, I do that at the end of January for my fat-i-versary. Which leaves me with nothing. Actually, not nothing. Feeling like this gives me a deep and sobering appreciation for the good health I had in 2007. I stopped taking care of my body during a very stressful time of year and I got wallopped. The rest of the year I ate well and exercised well and felt extremely well. I need to be more appreciative of how good my body feels every day, you know, after I get better.

I know Matt is more appreciative of me already, having to do everything himself and there being err...no food in the house. He'd never whine about having to cook his own dinner but I know he'll be happier when the old cooking/baking regime returns. It's nice to know your contributions are noticed and missed.

So overall I'm starting the year feeling appreciated, fat and more ready to exercise again than I'd ever have thought. It's not so bad. I could be mourning a new perm or something.

"like the Russian Secret Police if they were really into shoes"

I can't believe I'm one of those women who owns a craft and wrap copyright of rubbermaid. And you know, it doesn't even fit 4 of the rolls of paper I bought because they're too long. I love wrapping, I really do, but I don't have of the room for that crap and yet it seems feeble beyond reckoning to return 4 dollars and 700 square feet of wrapping paper. Matt was very whatever makes you happy about it all. Which is great but sometimes I wish my wrapping paper buying habits gave him the same spriritual grief they give me. I wonder if he wonders what it would be like to live with someone less neurotic.

It might be because all I've consumed today is soda and half a lemon yogurt but everything around me is very irksome. The customers who walk in and say "beautiful sunny day huh?" when in fact it's snowing like a bastard and someone decided that since it's almost a holiday they don't have to plow the damn roads, they're irksome. The FBI agent on Big Love with the extra horrible Boston accent. She sounded like a sheep. Why didn't they just say she was from Philly? What are Polygamists to Boston? I don't get it and frankly it made me mad that the same producers who dazzled me with the care of detail to have westerners put whole lobsters in tupperware would have such a terrible fake ass Boston accent on their show. Passed irksome heading toward aargh. And also bits of my cellphone keep falling off. Which just isn't right.

Clearly I'm a cranky sick person who spent her whole weekend under a blanket with netflix. It's one of the many things that's not as satisfying in practice. I like being able to do the grocery shopping and cook nice food and, you know, get off the couch if I want to. I suppose the real beauty in watching tv all weekend is when you have the option to do something else and you choose not to. It's great that tomorrow is a holiday because I feel ripped off of my weekend and surely if I'm feeling better tomorrow and I have to scrub a toilet I'll be really pissed off about it. I can't be pleased. Good thing Matt brought me unsolicited Haagen Dasz or this whole New Years thing would be a bust.

It was the fever

I didn't get the stomach virus, I got the killer cold instead. With a sore throat so atleast I can't swallow and that's a plus. I blame the fact that I bought 7 rolls of 75% off christmas wrapping paper on the fever. 7 rolls, that had to be fever induced. What am I going to do with all that paper? If I stop taking the Advil I might think that's a good idea again. I also bought myself a tape measure finally. 'Course, now I can't find my previous and very much screwed up measurements but it gives me a place to start for 08 that isn't scale based. Which would be good, I think. Non-scale is good. Still not exercising is bad but then coming up the stairs is winding me. I'm so tired of being sick, I actually want to get better so I can do pilates. My back is killing me and I'm sure that's the difference...it's been ages since I've got my mat out and I miss it. That and swallowing.

Brought to my attention

Apparently it's not very nice to laugh until tears after your boyfriend narrowly escapes a Mack truck death but I can't seem to help myself. They call it hysteria for a reason. And there didn't happen to be a Mack truck coming down the road, or even a Hyundai, so really it wasn't so bad. Should I tell the whole story, I guess I sort of have to.

Going back David Copperfield style, we have this driveway. It goes up a mountain. It's not terribly long, not miles long, maybe a quarter mile. There's a wicked steep part, then a turn, then an ehh not that steep part. Until this weekend it's been packed snow, perfectly manageable packed snow. Then it rained. Apparently "rain" + "packed snow" = "oh my god that's a lot of ice". We got home from home on wednesday and Matt was very sick and since we made it up the driveway even with the "oh my god that's a lot of ice" we didn't go fetch sand. Then yesterday it snowed again. "Snow" + "oh my god that's a lot of ice" = "you will never make it to your house".

It was slippery beyond slippery, it was slick to the power of six gazillion. The car made it to the top of the big hill. This is traditionally where Matt takes over and I hot foot it to the house so he doesn't run me over going a million miles up the hill. Only last night I fell on my ass and couldn't get back up. I thought I was going to get run over but I got lucky and Matt got the car stuck in a snowbank (in my opinion better than sliding down the driveway into traffic but he was pretty mad). I was all happy not to be run over but I still couldn't get vertical. It was like when you wash your hamster cage and you put the hamster in the sink and they try and try and try and can't climb up the porcelain. I proceeded to crawl on hands and knees to the garage with very little success. Matt, with more four letter dialogue than I've ever heard before, proceeded to fall on his ass in the perfect middle of the driveway so that when he started to get up...he slid down the entire driveway on his knees.

He landed in the road and if there had been a car there he'd be dead. He still got up the driveway and to the garage faster than I did with my hamster crawl, a testament to his rage if anything. We had to pull the car out with the plow truck and made it safely, though sideways, down the hill this morning. He's decided that he needs to carry a claw hammer in his pocket and that also the car needs chains. I'm going to have the most hardcore luxury sedan on earth with snow tires, chains, and a hundred pounds of sand in the trunk. That's the story of Matt and the Hello Kitty band-aid.

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Hello casualty. This is what happens to a man who slides down the driveway on all fours.

Why can't I have the debilitating stomach virus?

Christmas was great, even with the puking. I, personally, would rather clean up sick kids than listen to people fight so I'm calling Christmas '07 a success. Matt, who was the girls' best friend all weekend and thus was violently ill last night, might not agree. It seems unfair, cruel even, that the skinniest person got the bug. I wanted that virus, it would've made my December goal. It's very upsetting to me and there's simply no sympathy for my plight. It's all "hand me a bucket, move the cat so I don't puke on her." SELFISH!

Technically, Christmas wasn't a big gain. I actually lost a pound but not a real pound, you know what I mean. We were too busy to eat like fools and there really wasn't anything I was dying to have, but I didn't do a lick of exercise. Tonight I have to grocery shop and tomorrow is dinner at a friends'. I've no idea when life will return to normal, I'm shoooting for Monday. We're not huge on New Years so unless we get an invite from said friends, we'll be hanging out and catching up with things and putting a roof on Matt's brothers' house. The house that was supposed to be done, oh, last summer. It's a kerfluffle and I really hope we don't do our house in the sort of stages where you have to shovel the living room before building the roof.

I feel like I've been gone ages but the time went very quickly. I wasn't ready for Christmas and now I feel like it hasn't happened. I got a lot of money for my computer that has gone to other bills which makes me feel like a lot of time has passed with little progress. And on so many fronts. I have to remind myself that everything is fine. Things happen slowly and I have to remember that December isn't the best time to lose all the weight you meant to lose the previous 12 months or to buy yourself expensive things and pay all your bills at the same time. I haven't had to go up in clothing size, I have been able to pay every single bill and with plenty of room even though I was a dumbass and bought myself a gaggle of dvd's I didn't need.

If I can't afford a new computer this month it's because I spent my money on other stuff and next month I need to remember that corrollary. Also, it's stupid to pin your year's weightloss success on the last two weeks of the last month of the year. What were you doing since last January eh? If you were a slacker 11 months of the year it might not be December's fault that you didn't hit your goal. I'm trying to be a realist. Optomism is really great and all but I'm finding it hard to face the fact that I meant to be done by now and I'm not. How many years do I want to face that reality come New Years?

If I make a goal to really be done by next year is that more or less credible than last year's goal? I know I have more tools and more money and more guilt this year, is that enough? Do I want it more than last year? How do you measure such a thing? If it's measured by success I guess I didn't want it so bad. It sort of reminds me of art classes in college. You can work really hard and produce lots and lots of work, but if it's not good in the end you still get a c for your efforts. That could be taken as a cop out, if you're not good enough just give up and be an accountant. I've always believed that anyone can do anything if they practice long enough. Anyone can learn to cook, or draw and paint but you have to work hard and you have to be willing to change and try things, experiment. I have to be willing to experiement and work harder if I really want skinny as a goal. If I don't really want that, if I don't really want to work that hard forever...I have to be willing to accept that. I can't keep saying I want this and then do something in opposition to making it happen. It's not good for me.

In a Public Forum

IKEA on Christmas Eve day was awesome. Not a soul was there. We parked so close with the children we didn't lose a single one before we got there. It was so perfect we thought we might see the virgin weeping in our swedish meatballs. My sister was right and we were all wrong to think it would suck and on this very special day I apologize for the week's worth of mocking I did in anticipation. Amen. Merry Christmas!

Every time

Home, eating chocolate, going to IKEA this afternoon with my sister and three children. Expect to return ragged and in pieces and still eating chocolate. Merry Christmas Eve All!

Putting the D in Disorder since 1980

I am in the camp of unbelievers. I can't seem to wrap my head around this Christmas in five minutes thing. It's just crazy. My boss and I have been discussing it and it makes no sense that we don't feel Christmassy because there's snow and cold and music and boxes of chocolate as big as antelopes. Ehh, maybe this weekend. We have Christmas on Saturday with Matt's family and I'm most excited about what the womenfolk will think of my wrapping. I'm an ocd present wrapper at the best of times but Christmas is like the olympics of wrapping and I WANT gold. At Matt's company Yankee Swap two people said our gift was beautiful and that was pretty much the highlight of my evening. It was a good dry run because all of the gifts I wrap have to match, same paper/same ribbon or a pre-approved theme. Now I know that this years wrapping will make middle-aged women swoon and that box didn't *even* have the personalized Christmas bauble gift tag.

It should be obvious after my ode to wrapping paper that I'm bored to the core today. Apparently most people don't want to bank the friday before Christmas but they do want to bring us cookies and chocolate, and more cookies and more chocolate. We almost scored a Siam Orchid Gift Certificate but Hatsana is on vacation, rats! It's always interesting this time of year assessing what gifts we can and cannot accept. Being that we handle money and loans we aren't supposed to accept any gifts at all, ever. Are we gonna tell old ladies to take their gingerbread men bribes home? no, that would just be mean. Do we have to tell the gentleman who wanted to give us cash that no, we can't accept that? yes. It's a shame you can't tip your banker in cash and keep the moral high ground, it's just a shame.

I'm off home on Sunday to return on Thursday probably. Unless I contract a tape worm (fingers crossed) there is absolutely no way I will make my 170 at the end of December. Alas, not weighing 180 at the end of December is my new goal. I'm nothing if not flexible.

Starving with the hungry

That title didn't seem to weird in me head but I'm going with it because damn, I'm too hungry to think of something else. I can't seem to decide what to have for lunch because my plans, you see, are all for weeks that are not this week so I guess I can't eat again until January. If I add some raunchy juice I can call it a cleanse and make a million dollars off the concept. The concept of indecisive starvation. I have to go the the grocery store shortly, that's going to be interesting.

Nope, actually, it wasn't interesting. I guess there's only so much you can pull out of buying bay leaves and lemon extract. Atleast I didn't come home with 50 bags of Milanos. I do have to bake cookies tonight but ones I don't like, Spritz, but which are apparently Matt's favorites. So he won't mind eating them all. I'm pleased to see that my weight has gone down a little bit every day and also that my pants are roomy again. Roomy pants are awesome because I am a hundred years old and I need to fit my long underwear under my dress clothes. One of the times Sarah visited me during the winter it was extra cold, in the negatives every single day and I got my hand stuck to a metal doorknob a la she described it as survival panic inducing. It's like that now, about a month early. 9 is not enough degrees, not for December anyway. I keep trying to put a positive spin on it, cold burns calories. We'll see how that goes when it's March and it's still 9 degrees.

"Can you vague that up for me?"

Ok, when I was fat. That was the note I made for myself for a post. Yeah, great, I have no idea where I was going with that. It's maybe a little broad. There are so many things I could say about when I was fatter like I had no idea what I really looked like and I still don't, I had no idea how to take care of my body exercising and stretching, I had no idea what was an ok treat and what was a continuing nutritional problem. I'm going to roll with that last one because it's part of my current project.

Every once in a while I pop into Spark and see what my calories and protein and fiber all look like, it's educational. I don't go every day and maybe I should but sometimes when I'm there I check out their menus. I almost always look at them and think no way, no way could I do that. Yesterday I printed it out, a week's worth actually, to see what I could do with it. It's set to be 1200-1500 calories and most of the days look like too much food to me. I've been thinking about that and I don't think I was under-eating calories all this time, I just wasn't eating the right calories.

Take last night for instance, we're having a sort of a brownie overstock problem at our house so I've been feeding them to Matt four at a time. I was heating one up for a sundae for him and I remember the last time I made brownies I made myself a lot of sundaes. It didn't make me fatter so I sort of let it go like it was ok. Eating 1000 good calories and a brownie sundae or a cookie or whatever maybe isn't the best way to go. I think I let myself get comfortable. Using the Spark menus makes me a little uncomfortable but I don't think doing it for a week will kill me. I think it will be good for me to plan satiating meals at regular intervals as much as I've liked intuitive eating in the past. Intuitively eating cake and brownies wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. I want to think it was great fun to eat like that but actually it sucked so maybe doing the thing I think will suck will rock and I'll be a changed woman after that week.

The thing is which week? I'm working out the kinks and substitutions this week. I went all around my house writing down calories and fat and protein for the products and foods I actually eat, putting in the organic yogurt for the Yoplait and the like. Some of the things I can implement now like throwing half a cup of chickpeas in my salad, that's easy. Next week being Christmas I think it might be too difficult to do all of these things at my dad's, I'll just have to do my own best thing. That leaves the week of New Years to actually give it a whirl. The dread week of resolutions yet to sour.

I always think I don't like structure but the truth is that it's never not worked for me and when did having a plan and sticking to it become an unworthy goal? I'm feeling all rutty so it's time to do something different. Actually do it instead of just saying I will. I always keep a little notebook with me so I can write myself indecipherable notes for blogs posts. I think I'll make a list every day of meals, exercise, errands and see how things really look at the end. If anal is how I need to be to get'r done then that's what I should be.

I didn't eat it, I'm just pissed off about it.

I didn't buy any Valentine's day candy, I only binge in season. I'm just apalled that it's out already. I get pushing up Halloween candy sales, I hate it but I get it...there's a long way between pushing Easter candy and Halloween candy. A vast expanse of time with no socially compulsory colored tinfoil themed displays of raw gluttony. To push the candy schlepping a season forward at Christmas seems to make no sense. People are so pre-occupied with red and green I want to know who Hershey's thinks is going to buy Valentines candy in December.

I have had no candy for, uhh, well since whenever I said I was stopping. Except for the teaspoon of sugar in my tea I've been clean. I still don't feel completely better yet but I'm down two pounds. I did Ana Caban's most demanding workout and some kickboxing and it was a pretty good weekend overall. At the moment I'm working up a plan to get sweaty every night and fit in my Christmas baking which I might nix all together. Does the world really need more cookies? Does my kitchen?

No, no, no, no, no,no

Last night, Rite Aid, Valentine's Day Candy. Not good.

Yay for Friday

I'm so excited it's friday, I scarce have words. I'm having this magic faith in the new beginning thing starting this weekend. I'm so tired of this week and feeling all over the place. Is it the food, the commitments, the wow I hope I have a job next month...I guess there's more on my plate than I thought and I need to pay attention to that. Slow down and be present, if that's not too much of a cliche.

Four days of being a moron and now I feel like I have to re-learn everything. I'm not even frustrated I'm just tired. I think I might be too tired to tackle any of the things that will come this month and lose the 4 pounds that I gained in four days of not even eating that badly at all. I keep thinking "wow, I didn't eat enough to be this fat" but I did, I really did. When you arrange your life to eat few calories and burn many and then you two slices of cake a day for two days, well, then you have a lot of extra calories. Unless you exercise another five hours or something there's just no-where for those calories to go. It's not like I didn't know that, it's just that for two days I didn't care and now I have more work to do than I thought. All of my other transgressions pale by comparison making me think that a little extra cake wouldn't be so bad. A lot of extra cake though, apparently that's a problem. Fox news article in ten, nine...

Only Fox news

A list of "healthy" foods that aren't so "healthy". I have always hated Fox news and now I hate them even more. Organic foods aren't healthy because potato chips can be organic. And tuna with mayo, like that's the only way to eat tuna and health conscious person would automatically drown their chicken of the sea in hellmans. But pizza, please, putting pizza on a list of healthy foods is just beyond all reckoning. You know you're dealing with American media asshats when pizza gets on a list of healthy foods.

"Okay, when I'm marveling at the immaturity, be scared."

All right, I'm over it. Whatever was making me queen of the sugar with yet more sugar on top is officially gone. I feel like I've been hit by a train. I never ever want to eat cake again, or cookies or fudge or whatever. I guess I'm glad I got it out of my system so early because I'm perfectly happy now to go on to Christmas sans treats. That's how bad I feel. When things are good you don't always appreciate how good they are, good becomes the status quo and you take it for granted. And then when you crash it kicks your ass. I'm making myself a commitment to lay off the sugar (literal sugar, not carbs as a whole) until atleast after Christmas. I don't want to be the person who eats badly and feels bad and then spends their whole life on their ass because they don't feel good enough to exercise.

Per the above, I'm going to plan my ass into subservience for the rest of the month. I'm working on my meal plan right now, for this weekend and next week. I can't remember the last time I put that down on paper. Granted, until this weekend, everything was fine. I feel like it's extra important to have a plan and the right food to execute it so nothing goes awry. I really want to remember how crap I feel so the next time I think I don't need to worry about moderation I tell myself to shut up.

And so it begins...

We got three boxes of candy today, a bag of homemade cookies and a tin of fudge. It's only December 12. I had a cookie, I had a piece of fudge and I'm the one who opened the Whitman's sampler. Their candy isn't even that great. This week has been sort of a mess for it to only be wednesday. Must pack giant salad for lunch, eat a breakfast that does not consist of cake and stop thinking that I have to get my share of gift food. It's just stupid to pine over that stuff, anything you really need you can get. I suppose the upside is that I've completely forgotten about doritos.

Oprah made me do it

The purchase of the Angel set is weighing on my mind. Funny how whenever I feel like this I just want to write "petty bitch" on my forehead and have done. I've cancelled and re-ordered it once already today because I am a maniac. It's not exactly that I can't afford it, it's just not a planned purchase and clearly not necessary to my life function. I'm uneasy about it as I always am when I buy something because it's cheap. It's not like "hey, there's this thing and it's cheap now, buy it" I'm clearly a dedicated fan. It's been in my amazon cart for ahwhile, waiting and lonely and steadily getting cheaper. I'm all "Should I wait, will it be cheaper next week?" probably, yes and then my brain will explode.

In order to distract myself I've been playing with the Oprah Debt Diet today, particularly interesting is the shopping section. One of the psychologists on the site recommends keeping a card in your wallet to remind you to ask yourself whether you really need something. If you clicked through you'll see they are really good questions, helpful above and beyond whether or not I should re-cancel my David Boreanaz fix.

But, back to those questions:

Why am I here?
How do I feel?
Do I need this?
What if I wait?
How will I pay for it?
Where will I put it?

With the possible exception of the last two (although where will I put it could work) they're really great weightloss questions. The other day I had the most bizarre craving for doritos. I've never been a dorito person, not particularly. Oh, I'd eat them if they were around but I wouldn't go out of my way. I almost bought some, a tiny one serving bag of no consequence. Doritos of no consequence. Carbs covered in cheese and salt and god knows what and I regard it like breathing air. I went through a process just like above and I decided that I didn't need them, I didn't even really want them and if I decide I do...they only sell them everywhere.

That process is working less well with my birthday cake. It's the best cake ever and half a slice is more than enough. Which means I'm going to be eating this cake till the end of days and yet I couldn't bring myself to take it to work. I'm having a ridiculous kindergartener "mine mine mine" episode over it. I know I'm going to regret keeping the whole thing and/or having to throw it out because I don't want to share. It's weird because normally I can't wait to give away the things I make for other people. I wonder if all bakers are this insane over things they didn't have to bake for themselves or only the lucky ones with issues as complex as mine.

"If you havent noticed, my right boob is way up here in Maine and my left boob is danglin' down here in Florida."

Not much is happening in the weight department. Except fat. Massive amounts of fat are happening. But, whatever. That is so what happens when you go home and eat a lot and then bring back half a platter of baklava and then eat all that too. I took yesterday off and got my self and my house together. Especially the refrigerator. I don't even remember making baked ziti, that's how bad it was. Now it's full of vegetables and soy milk and yummy stuff like that. I discovered yesterday that although it was my birthday and I was all "do whatever you want, it's your damn birthday" I didn't want to eat anything stupid or spend a lot of money or anything I normally refrain from. I knew I was cooking dinner so I considered buying lunch out but I just wasn't that interested. It was so good to feel on track like that, like I could get a pizza but ehh I just don't want it enough and that's fine.

I did buy myself some earrings while I finished up my Christmas shopping, fifteen whole dollars spent on myself. I was feeling very proud of buying myself a tiny treat that wasn't food and won't be outgrown until just now when I ordered the Angel box set. Amazon keeps lowering the price and I gave in while I bought the new Harry Potter movie and a build your own robot for my nephew. I guess it wasn't as chaste a birthday as I thought. Absolutely must kick box through all five seasons.

In other things I've bought with varying amounts of regret I give you Nivea Firming Lotion. I've been testing it out for a few weeks and so far I'm disappointed in the lack of miracles. I bought it in case it was awesome and I needed to be moisturizing anyway what with the winter. It might still be miraculous but I feel a million years old using firming moisturizer. I read the whole bottle and they seem to be marketing it to the older set instead of the fatter set and somehow I'd prefer to be fat than old. I compared it to the Dove and I think next time I'll try theirs with the "tested on real curves" pledge. I have the feeling neither will give me the perfect skin that will only come with patience and exercise, I just feel like I'm trying harder using the special lotion. Putting my best dollar forward, if you will. I'll keep y'all updated, if there's a miracle lotion to be had I don't want to be greedy.

"You're an inspiration to us all"

Today I'm quoting my dad, who was not praising me. The family cat has lost a ton of weight and daddy couldn't be more proud. My sister got me a baby ipod for my birthday and now I'm trying to figure it out. Wish me luck.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, it sucked"

My day sort of sucks. The least annoying part is that the scale was 173 this morning. That's the part that pisses me off least. Grumpy Mcgrumpanator, am I. I have a little link action for you though. There's a wee discussion on a friend of mine's page about whether or not Snow White is the fat Disney Princess. Born in 1937 she's the oldest of the princesses and drawn in a time with very different ideals, short hair and fair skin. Do you think she's chubby too?

It pays to lose weight, heh.

Check me and my two posts in one day. I check Slate every week for Dear Prudence, no namby pamby advice in that column. Today I have a lot of time to kill so I wandered around and found this, the story of an Italian Mayor paying his neighbors to lose weight. It's a really interesting article about behavior above and beyond the government cash incentive to lose weight and keep it off.

The most interesting part to me was when they discuss how addicts see the future. According to the article, a non-addict when asked to think about the future thinks a few years ahead and an addict thinks only a few weeks. That was the part that went clicketty click in my brain. Somedays I can look ahead and be happy with what will come if I work hard and take care of myself, other days I can't see past the next snack. I think it might be helpful to identify that behavior as part of an addiction, rather than loss of willpower.

The article also discusses how helpful financial incentives are to people trying to lose weight or quit smoking. It makes me think of all the folks out there with a defined set of goals and rewards. I never had the money to do that, not really. I had to buy new clothes as the old ones fell off but I never had something really decadent like a massage for ten pounds lost. I sometimes wonder if I should have done something like that, if I would have been more focused. They go on to say that eventually cash rewards are usurped by physical rewards like not being winded going up flight of stairs. The author contends that those type of rewards are, in the long run, the things that keep people on track. I have to agree. Health, in the end, is it's own reward.

It's a reward for our employers and our insurance companies too. My employer offers cash for fitness products and gym fees which in the end save them money caring for healthier employees. To that end they also offer cash rewards for choosing high deductible health plans and participating in health programs. I know I'm always going on about the high deductible health plan like it's made of gold. Living in a country without national healthcare you have to be savvy, atleast as savvy as the businesses providing you healthcare and insurance. I think our government could learn a lot from that chubby Italian mayor and private business, if you put money into preventative care you save in the long run. That's what I tell myself when I don't want to shell out 5 more cents for organic produce, it's a small price to pay for a healthier future.

"You can put your arms down when you get to school" or winter exercise for your inner child

I wish I knew exactly how many calories shoveling burned because we had two and a half feet yesterday. I'm trying to be all pro-active about it because you can't get better incidental exercise than shoveling heavy wet snow. I might clean up my paths a bit tonight to get some more muscle burn. And then build a snow fort. There's SO much snow SO early that I just have this need to be one with the snowball army. I know I can take Matt, I didn't study battle strategy for four years for nothing.

I'm pretty excited about the snow this year. Last year it pissed me off because it meant I couldn't run anymore but now I can't run anyway so I might as well shovel. I was just thinking that I need to find ways to be inspired to exercise inside because of the cold but hello! I had forgotten about snowball fights. And sledding. Nothing like dragging a hunk of wood up a snow covered hill for cardio.

I'm all positive thoughts and sunbeams today. I even have to hit the grocery store later and I'm not annoyed about it. Wooh! Buying lettuce and shoveling and pants falling down all make me happy. I must have been replaced by a robot in the night. Obvious. No other explanation.

I hope the robotics stick around because I have to make a bakery's worth of goods for tomorrow's party and I need to not eat it all. Or any of it. Despite popular belief, cupcakes aren't necessary to maintain life. Unlike chocolate.

"It's my favorite of all my current bruises."

With all the new shiny snow outside I have to find exercise that inspires me that I can do inside. There is a very special something about watching Buffy while practicing your kickboxing. There's an innate ROARness to it. The faint notion that if you kicked and boxed for every second of all seven seasons you might end up with Sarah Michelle Gellar's body. Faint, I said, very faint. It gives me hope though. Maybe if I added the five seasons of Angel it would be a bit more solid.

I'm not so thrilled with the upward mobility of my scale numbers at the moment, 169. It's not a good way to start a month full of eating when I want to end no more than 170. We have an open house at work this week and it occurs to me now that I should have volunteered to bring salad instead of cupcakes. If you pretend to want to be a baker though it's better to actually bake stuff and make people wax rhapsodic about your frosting rather than make salad. It's also, you know, completely up to me what and how much of something I eat. I can test a cupcake. I can also cut it up and test a small piece instead of a whole. I can also pack a salad for lunch so I'm not tempted to eat 37 cookies for a mid-day meal. There are plenty of things I can do to keep myself on track if I choose to plan and think ahead. In addition to exercising like crazy.

I am dedicating December to things I can do, instead of things I can't. I can't be Sarah Michelle Gellar by January 26th but I can make choices I'm happy with. That sounds so lame. I already re-wrote this post after publishing because UGH I just feel pathetic all over. I did some scale math adding five pounds to all of last years weights and goals and I just can't figure it out to my satisfaction. Last year today I posted 175 which I now know to be 180. At that point I thought I had 20 pounds to lose, 155 brings me to the top of healthy for my height. Now I'm 169 and I guess that means that I have 14 pounds to lose to be a healthy BMI. I know that in fact those numbers are all screwed up and I actually lost 11 pounds and not 6 but it still pisses me off. I have this fear that I'm always going to be the person whining about those last 10 pounds only it will be 20 and therefor twice as annoying. I can't seem to help being annoyed by the numbers today, especially as I had to return some comically small size ten jeans to the Gap last weekend. The original pair still fit as they always have but it still makes me feel like a fat ass that those had to go back. Fat ass, can't help it. What a statement to sum up exactly how I don't want to feel about myself.

"God, using candy for evil!"

I ate a literal ton of chocolate yesterday and two bowls of fruity pebbles pretty much because my head hurt. It still hurt this morning but it's slowly dwindled. I've decided it's Matt's fault and that maybe he was accidentally poisoning us with his welding and the new storm windows. The good thing about drafts is that they bring in itty bitty amounts of oxygen. When you seal them up, it is warmer, but also a bit carbon monoxidier. Not only could it kill us and all, I could gain a pound from all that pathetic "my head hurts" snacking. Geez.

Apart from being poisoned, it was a very low-key weekend. Cleaning and shopping and another vow to not go to the mall again until january. We'll see how that goes. And now it's snowing. I found my winter stuff just in time. When they cancel school the week before the storm you think to yourself "maybe I should find my boots...and my hat". I found them after almost minutes of looking. I also found a few more bags that didn't get donated in the last big clean up. A few as in like five. I wouldn't think of myself as a purse person but all the evidence to the contrary will be seeing goodwill next weekend.

When I was a kid I used to hate having a December birthday because you always get Christmas crap for your birthday, or one present conveniently between them. What can I say, I was a greedy kid. I'm terrified of it now because there will be an influx of stuff in my house this month. I love my dad, but I do not need more cat pajamas. It's the worst because you can't give away the crazy gifts your family give you, you have to keep them forever and then get buried with them. I'm so glad that Matt and I don't do Christmas gifts because his brain would explode if he had to give me two gifts in one month and in the end it would just be more stuff in my house.

Random act of naked

I just got up to help a customer and as I reached into the filing cabinet I realized that my pants were undone. Today I'm wearing khaki's that have a tab closure like on sans-a-belts instead of a button. They are so loose that they untabbed themselves. I'm glad these 12's are so big but I really wish I'd remembered to wear a belt today.

"In America supermarkets are cathedrals"

I'd been thinking that my new giant tub of organic strawberry yogurt was yummier than the last. Creamier, strawberrier, betterer. Today I figured it out. It's lowfat instead of my usual fat free. The package isn't even the same color. I don't know where my brain was when I bought it but now I know why it's so much better than what I usually get. It's not that I'm upset about the yogurt except that sometimes it's better to enjoy the restrained version without knowing what you're missing. I'm more made that I'm such a horrible shopper when I'm in a hurry. I end up with cherry coke and butter flavored maple syrup and garlic flavored tomato paste when I want plain. I don't really see the benefit of adding false flavors to things. I'd rather have real butter on my pancakes and real garlic in my sauce and of course a real cherry whenever possible. Which is why I'm still battling 15 or so pounds almost two years later.

Having talked about my sister and weightloss yesterday it was very weird that she called me last night to tell me she just went to weightloss hypnosis. She never mentioned it before she went probably because I'm the cynic who would say "you know how much lettuce you could buy with 95 dollars?". I'm trying to be open minded about it because her problems are hers and mine are mine, if something works for her I should be happy about it. I can't think of any way that it could be harmful, not like starving herself harmful.

Apparently they talked about goals and other things like that and whenever she sees the color red she's supposed to focus on her goals. When she said it I thought it meant that bingeing was like seeing red in an emotional way and she should stop and breath and think, but no they meant it literally. Whenever you see something that is literally red you're supposed to think of your goal. I've been playing at home and there is a lot of red stuff in my house. I suppose it's a new way of being mindful of your goals and that's not so bad. I just can't help thinking that it's not a life long solution. Not a healthy one anyway.

"Ass-kicking makes a solid Plan B."

Even though it kicks my ass I'm totally in love with home kickboxing class. It's actually a lot like the self defense class I took in college only without the ennui of liberal arts students being forced to exercise at 8am. I'm sort of amazed at how much I remember about using the body's natural motion and twisting to get more power. Self-defense was the most popular gym class and since it was a requirement (morons) you wanted to take a good class and not two semesters of general conditioning or something. It strikes me now, five years later, that it wouldn't have been the worst thing to have taken aerobics and actually burned some calories. It's a little late to be righteous now.

While I'm on the path of righteousness, what is the deal with the capri-sun flavored water product? Matt and I did end up doing some grocery shopping last night and the mom in front of us had a giant pack of this capri sun water. The website says "from borin' to roarin'" because there's nothing worse than giving your kid water for lunch. Why have water when you can have 35 crap calories instead? Something about it just struck a nerve. Some kids don't have clean water to drink and we have to give ours flavored sweetened water to convince them to drink it.

There was an article on fark this morning about sugar in Maine schools. It's the usual blame the vending machines for our fat children stuff but there was one good line about adults leading by example. What are we teaching kids when they can't have candy in the vending machine but teachers can have bowls of it on their desks? I don't want to put the blame on teachers because they take enough of the brunt of raising children but all adults who have an impact on children should be on notice.

"Did I mention this is a rant? Sense really has no place in it."

I just broke my shoe because of a can of soup and if you used a feed reader you will see the bizarre half title that got posted only because I can't type for crap. I just had to call Matt and tell him our night's plans have to shift because I'm not really into walking the length and breadth of shaws to get on sale ice cream and yogurt in broken shoes. I love that I can say something as crazy as "blah blah blah because the soup broke my shoes" and he just says "oh, ok". I'm secretly hoping that some day in the far far future he brings out this list of random shit I've said and asks "how did the soup break your shoe exactly?".

Meanwhile, my damn shoe is broken. I'm pissed about it even though they're too big and over five years old. They're expensive ass Danskos and I would have worn them forever, too big or not. I have the hardest time saying goodbye to shoes, even when they're broken and don't fit. I would have thought I'd feel justified in some online shoe shopping but I'm more sad. Maybe tomorrow.

Cats and dogs living together

"Today the sun was up at 6 when we left for work and it shouldn't have been, clearly the earth is now revolving backwards. Time to stockpile canned peaches and buckshot." I pulled that from an email this morning. It's one of those days when my brain doesn't stop humming and right now I'm thinking about what I should put away in case of "disaster" this winter. Pretty much I have cans of tuna and beans and tomatoes, and bottled water. I'm more or less of the mind that if things were that bad we'd freeze before we'd starve to death. Why bother with all that extra shopping?

There's something about this time of year and grocery shopping that just makes me insane. My parents were so thrilled when I got my license because they could send me to the store a hundred times a day when they forgot ingredients for their entertaining. I'd call from the checkout line and still I'd get home and have to turn around. They loved every minute. I didn't even host Thanksgiving last week and I went to the market FIVE times. I've been thrice this week already and we have to go again tonight. It's only wednesday. I expect I'll go to the store tonight and on friday discover I need a waterbuffalo or something for a very important recipe.

I hate going grocery shopping more than once a week, I always buy things I don't need and spend too much and eat too much as a result. Mostly it's baking things I need. The one good thing about still feeling a tiny bit sick is that I haven't been wandering down the cookie aisle and drooling so much because it cuts into my napping time. However, looking at my calendar and all the cooking engagements I have in there...there is going to be a lot of eating in the name of testing in December.

If I taste one of everything I have to make the next month, it's atleast two days of calories. TWO DAYS. I need to keep that at the top of my mind next month. Do I want to burn an extra two days of calories or not eat every cookie that comes comes off the production line? I'm not sure which I'm likely to choose right now but I'm determined not to start next year over 170. I'm not asking myself for any more than a 6 pound loss for the year. If I can't do that I'll never get to a healthy BMI.

It's Alive!

We had the internet at home last night and were able to operate without breaking anything just long enough to make one tiny post and order apple trees online. We got a Baldwin and a Winesap and 2 Canadian Strawberries because apparently we only like the freaky rare apple trees. Doesn't Canadian Strawberry sound like a good apple, apparently they're pink with stripes and I'm very excited about that. We ordered a few normal varieties too, if normal can be described as super yummy and withstanding of extreme cold. They come home to us in April and will bear fruit in like 10 years or something...which is why we had to start now if we want to eat a home grown apple by age 50.

In other things I want to do before I'm 50, I'm dressed like a grown-up today. The new folks have a much more strict dress policy, in theory anyway, so I'm trying to dress the part. I've been dressing pretty badly the last two years, trying to get the most out of one or two pairs of pants and a few too big tops. Wardrobe minimalism to be sure. I need to re-develop my own style and joy in clothes, I feel like it's been turned off a little too long. When I look back on it I can't help think I dressed so much better when I was fatter. I guess it seemed more important to dress nicely when I thought I looked so awful. And then there was the compulsive spending. It's easy to look great when you buy your clothes with a lot credit and very little sense.

I know I'm always connecting money and weight and I know that combination of evils is not particular to me. The two are so connected and they're both problems you have to fix from the inside out. I had to stop believing that I deserved macaroni and cheese for dinner because it was a rough day or that I deserved to wear nice clothes like the skinny girls did. There's no deserve about it. Macaroni and cheese is never going to be a healthy dinner and no matter how many fabulous clothes I bought with plastic it was never going to make my body smaller. I also had to stop believing that I couldn't do something because of my body, or couldn't do it until I was smaller. I'm still not sure which was harder to do, saying no or saying yes.

Sometimes when I look at a month or a few months worth of posts and see how very little my numbers have changed (back up again today, damn!) I get caught up in feeling like I'm not going anywhere. I have to remind myself how much I have changed. Yesterday I bought SEVEN bags of candy because there was a massive sale at Rite-Aid. Amy of, say, three years ago would A: have never admitted that, B: have opened and eaten at least one bag, C: would have left at least one bag at work for snacking. Amy of yesterday took it all home untouched and shoved it in the cupboard to bake with (Matt has this thing for M&M cookies lately). I was hungry yesterday and I never even considered hitting the chocolate. I just wanted more yogurt but I didn't have anymore so I waited until dinner. That's a big damn change in habits and choices and I need to give myself some credit for that. I forget that what will make a lifetime of health and happiness for me is keeping up a long string of tiny, good choices. I have to believe that if I keep up the little things, eating well and enjoying exercise, in a few years I'll look back on this time and think it's exactly what I needed to do.

Ooooh, it works!

We have a very slow internet connection, but it works. Something to work with anyway. It's pretty exciting!

Newfangled technology

I never, ever had my own room growing up. The third girl of a big family in a small house never gets their own room. It wasn't a problem though because I worshipped my sisters, especially their stuff. Stuff, which, all became mine when they went off to college. One of the things I wish I still had was the rotary style princess phone that was in one of those bedrooms. It was gorgeous and antique and it made me feel like Katherine Hepburn when I used it. I have no idea where it went to. It stinks that I can't find it in particular today because I just found out why the phoneline isn't working. After Matt slogged through a million miles of phone line, moved walls, held flashlights in his teeth in cold ass temperatures trying to fix the box outside...we learned from the phone company that we don't have touchtone on our line. If I'd had my antique phone we would've figured this out weeks ago. That, or you know common sense, could've solved the whole problem in a jif.

Every Thing Hurts

Do you know what is the stupidest thing to do when you might, maybe, kindof are still a little bit sick? That would be kickboxing. Kickboxing in your livingroom is the stupidest thing to do when your carcass is still harboring of the virus. Not only do you get the immobilizing muscle burn like you were kicking and boxing in quicksand and the nasty sweaty fever like Beth in Little Women that time when they thought she was gonna die, not just those! there's more! Remember the sniffles that were snuffed? not so much. The sore throat you thought was gone? it's back! with friends! and they're cranky!

Clearly, I'm dying. I should not be at work, and I should not be eating chocolate, and I should not go to the grocery store at lunchtime and haul back 70 pounds of vegetables. I should also, probably, not be so excited that my scale keeps dipping. I bounced between 168 and 169 all weekend and rested at 167.8 this morning. It might not be there tomorrow but right now I'm pleased. And nauseas. Hope y'all are having a very wonderful Monday.

Not that into you

Mr. Thai guy promised us on wednesday that he would be open for lunch today. We called four times and got four recordings before we settled for grilled cheese from the Whale. Then he sent his little brother over to face the music. It's hard being a fat girl in a small town.

Lost weight over Thanksgiving, must have been the prayer

Down another .2 of a pound from yesterday. It's much easier to be careful when you don't eat half the things on the table. Weight loss by vegetarianism. Unfortunately there was no actual turkey in those cupcakes and I ate one. I have another with me for after lunch, if I can hold out. Unlikely.

I'm at work all day today to help the two people that actually know we're open. So, obviously, I'm doing a bit of shopping. So far it's all for me, but the discovery channel store does have a rad robot making kit I might have to get for the nephew. I've been buying myself a lot of clothes. I picked up some workout gear wednesday which has been the worthiest purchase so far, the rest has been jeans and t-shirts and other things that I can't wear to work but apparently have to have to sustain life. Nothing like mass returns to the Gap in the holiday season. If they didn't love me before we'll be bffs after this nonsense.

So I opened with my tiny loss of .2 pounds but I want to bring it up again because it seems weird to me to lose so much and not have exercised at all this week. My dream thought is that all the excellent muscle I gained the last few weeks is doing it's magic and burning lots of calories. I think my cold is gone so I'll definitely be working out tonight. Should I be alarmed of the facts? I never had a scale so detailed as to know how much I lost in a week, exactly. It's about a pound this week, which is well under the recommended danger zone of 2 pounds a week. After so much stagnation I guess I'm just skeptical. Is my month of hardass work finally paying off? Will I now be screwed because I didn't workout this week? Will Matt eat the rest of the cupcakes before I get home if I ask him to? Life is so full of unanswered questions.

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Happy thanksgiving!

Feed a cold

When I was gone for two whole days Matt was really sick. He said he thought it was because I was away and he was worrying about me. Awww. But now I'm sick too and I'm thinking his nostalgia was a by-product of the virus. He just wanted points to make up for when he said he'd get me a meat thermometer for my birthday and I said I'd stab him with it. Young love!

I'm feeling like crap except that I'm another .2 pounds down. Woohoo for starve a fever! In lieu of exercising last night I built my bookcase, I'm calling it cardio on Spark. Pick up the piece and pound in the dowel, pick up the next piece pound in that dowel, it was just like aerobics without the perky instructor. I don't know how I got it done, just typing it makes me want to take a nap. Which I can't do because tonight I have to take a bath in bleach and do my Thanksgiving baking, so as not to infect the family.

I'm making turkey cupcakes, which I think will be the funnest, and a pumpkin cheesecake to impress Matt's mom and grandma. If you hit the cupcake link you'll see that it's a whole wheat, low fat recipe. I've never tried it and it's not in my plan (I'm making chocolate) but it might be worth a shot if you like pumpkin and whole wheat baking. Let me know if you do, I love pumpkin anything...but I thought two of the same dessert would be overkill.

Now I'm off to look dolefully at my soup until my lunch break is over and then pour it down the sink. Maybe I'll just make some tea. I don't think I'm sick enough to be so repulsed by food but it could work to my advantage tomorrow. A reason to not be glutten that has nothing to do with dieting and guilt and body image would be like Christmas come early.

"Irony's kind of ironic that way."

It seems as though I actually lost weight while I was away being a glutton. Which is unusual, historically. Das scale read 169 even. Slow and steady wins the race of making me completely insane. I guess blind frustration burns a lot of calories. Speaking of which, I have a bone to pick with New Jersey and their bastard of a highway system. If the blue sign says gas .4 miles right, traditionally there is gas .4 miles on the right. Not, say, no miles on the right as in doesn't exist at all. I didn't set tire in the state of Maine until 4, I've never been so happy to be home.

I didn't exercise at all while I was gone, unless you count power shopping and lifting that giant box from Ikea. I bought myself a big ass bookshelf. My house is overflowing with the books, it's an avalanche of literature. We're also overflowing with the bookshelves so I thought 1 huge shelf instead of 72 little ones. If it comes out looking in anyway reasonable, I'll be pleased. Matt will be having guests this week so I'm a little wired on getting the house ready. I also, randomly, bought a ton of wrapping paper. The one I picked for Christmas is black and white, you reckon our families will burn me at the stake for it? Maybe if I get red ribbon they'll just glare instead of the burning.

Have you noticed I haven't mentioned the purchase of clothes? Is it conspicuous? I should have known that placing an online order would screw my chances of finding something worthwhile in the real world. The only garments purchased were for my nieces who are going to be a whirlwind of pink again this year. Shoes however, I got three pairs. Which is insane. Unnecessary and insane. I don't know though, I really don't want to take any of them back. Shame I can't pass the winter in only plaid buckle ballerina flats from aldo, pants are so over-rated.

Sleepy in New Jersey

I'll be leaving in about two hours. Trying to avoid the worst of the NYC traffic. Have a strong urge to sell my car for a plane ticket, but there's no way it's worth that much money. And then how would I get all my crap from Ikea home? It's not a practical solution to not having to drive 9 hours. I have the feeling my master plan of avoiding the New York traffic will land me right in the middle of the Boston traffic. I have to admit I feel more comfortable traversing Boston at rush hour, atleast in Boston I can figure out the drivers. I had assumed that people in Jersey drove faster and had less patience but I'm wrong. I, with the pine cone and tassle plate, was the only one moving along wondering what the parameters of criminal speeding are in this state. In Maine if you go 25 over the limit they just arrest you, but then it's not like we have a lot of crime.

Whoops!

Missed yesterday and therefor no more nablopomo. C'est la vie. It's sort of a relief. Now Matt doesn't have to kill himself replacing our phone lines. If I don't "have" to post every day I'll settle for a pace that merely maims.

The thing about pants

So pretty much I'm going away this weekend with the express intention of spending a ludicrous amount of money on clothes and I just placed a gap.com order. I hate it when I do that. I have this "I can always take it back" thing in my head. I am painfully short on clothes, but I didn't order anything that would be really helpful...like pants. Which was silly. I guess I know what I'll be buying on vacation.

I sort of hate buying pants. Pants are very annoying when your weight is changing. Should I be saying slacks here? I probably should but it makes me feel like my dad. "Those are nice slacks, don't you look sharp", which you have to pronounce shaahp if you want the full New England dad effect. And then you have to go to Easter at my cousins house and freeze your ass off because they always have their thermostat set to morgue. You'll wish you were looking shaahp in a parka and Uggs. But that is not the point of this post.

Too large pants are really inconvenient. They fall down and you have to pull them up all day. And then while they're falling down you catch your heel on the hem and then you have to sew the hem. But you're not going to spend your valuable cupcake eating time fixing a hem on pants that hardly fit you, so you use stitch witchery. But you keep wearing them because you can't find another pair of pants so you have to wash them and then the stitch witchery which *promised* to be *magic* comes apart and your hem falls again. It's just innevitable that you look like crap because your pants don't fit. So you have to go shopping.

I bought a bunch of shirts and sweaters today because it appears that I don't have any. I'm so efficient at giving away my clothes when they're too big that now there's nada left. I always think I look like crap when my pants don't fit, but you know what? I look like crap when any of the clothes I'm wearing don't fit. I have to keep telling myself it's ok to buy clothes that fit. It's ok to move from XL to L to M. I tend to maintain when I splash out on clothes, like I hate to get value for money. I could just keep working and get skinny and sell them on Ebay like everyone else if I'm that worried about "wasting" a discount sweater from the gap. I'm going to try to remember that when they're too big in a few months but for now I'm raising my proverbial glass to wearing clothes that fit and losing weight at the same time. The audacity.

"Sugar and spice and everything useless unless you're baking"

"I've never seen so much mayonnaise in my life" said my boss at last night's work meeting buffet. I can't think of a better way to describe the experience, it was a mayonnaise extravaganza. It's weird to me because we were there discussing our health benefits and the dinner they provided was, well, nasty. Finger sandwiches, potato salad, potato chips and cookies does not a healthy dinner make. There was not a single bit of green, not even decorative parsley. I chose two sandwiches and potato chips because at least I'd know what I was getting a bag of Lay's. I also had a few cookies and I'm sure somehow they put mayonnaise in them too, I have my suspicions. One of the sandwiches was pretty obviously egg salad, so yay for protein. The other could have been anything. I'm pretending it was tuna over chicken because I eat tuna and not chicken, but honestly I couldn't have told you what animal it had been before the Holiday Inn got a hold of it.

So the meeting was pretty awful diet-wise but the benefits are awesome. And I think I'm still going to do the high deductible insurance thing. I know, I know I wasn't going to do it because of my knee and the expensive possibilities there...but it's just so alluring. They're giving extra super incentives to do the high deductible and it makes a lot of sense. Data shows that people who are responsible for their own medical bills (up to a deductible) take better care of themselves. Of course it's the insurance supplying the data but it makes complete sense to me. I do take better care of myself knowing that I'm paying for it out of pocket. I also don't go to the doctor for nothing which accounts for a big chunk of rising medical costs. I don't mean to advocate never going to the doctor but I don't think taking an antibiotic every time you have a cold is the best thing for anyone. It's no coincidence that antibiotics are becoming less effective when we consistently over-use them.

So, that was a ramble and it sounds like I've made up my mind but I haven't yet. I have this feeling that whatever I choose I'm going to be pissed about it come January. I'm also pissed about the brown and serve rolls I had for breakfast but it's just too late to undo it now. There's something about this season that makes me lust for brown and serve rolls, I bought a whole pack for Matt's chicken dinner. We had fakesgiving all on our own. It was nice but I didn't need to cook a whole pack of rolls. I just have to hope I have a backbone attack next thursday and lay off the butter soaked little vixens.

Last but not least I'm going to Philly this weekend and it will be a time of gluttony. I'm packing my pilates mat and a metric ton of healthy food. I just know it's going to be all shopping and eating and laughing with Holly, which is going to be awesome. This is me getting over myself to enjoy one weekend with my best friend. I don't want to be too disappointed when I get back though, maybe that thought will keep me ordering salads. Thank god they don't do tofu cheese steaks.

Super Magic Skinny Diet!!!

Ooops, do over. So I tried to fix that post I just wrote and it done got deleted. Our computers died and whooops, it was all gone. I thought it seemed, like, a little mean. Now I'm just about out of time to fix it. Instead, I can report that I bought a package of cookies today and I'm a little pissed with myself over it. I got ginger lemon instead of chocolate calorie explosion, but they're still cookies and no real replacement for lunch. Tsk tsk to me.

Never, never, never

I thought it would be cute to look up quotes about "chicken diseases" for a title. You know what happens when you put "chicken diseases" into google? You don't? Trust me you don't want to. Makes a girl glad she eats tofu. A girl is also glad to know that Matt won't die of chicken tonight. I've been framing those thoughts in my head all day. Only it's funnier if it's a live chicken and not a dead stone-cold chicken. And also if the chicken is wearing leather and possibly is a veteran of 'Nam. It's been a very long day.

Every minute I think "this is as bored as I could get" and then another minute passes and "Nope, I was wrong, this is boringer.". I have 15 transactions. That's not even 15 people. That's like 10 people and and half of them had multiple deposits. One just wanted two tens for a twenty. My boss keeps staring out the window like a caged animal and I'm starting to feel jealous because atleast she has a window. This is going to be one long ass winter in Maine.

"How can women be as thin as we are? We have personal trainers to work us out. We have specially prepared meals."

I was doing my daily troll for Buffy quotes when I found this one from Sarah Michelle Gellar. I really like it, it's so honest. I hate it when starlets confess eating whatever they want and having crazy amounts of food like the properties of science don't exist in their bodies. In their world eating a whole sandwich is a crazy huge amount of food, and then they go and work for 14 or 20 hours a day. That's not a fair comparison, that's not a real world scenario. It sort of makes me think more highly of the Oprah's and the Kirstie Alley's of the world. It's your job to be skinny and you failed, admitting that takes some balls.

I'm really relieved that it's not my job to be skinny. I stink at it. Or, in other words, we had waffles for dinner last night. Waffles and high fructose fake ass maple syrup. It's not really my fault, you see, there's this chicken. I pulled a whole chicken out of the freezer last saturday for a nice warm dinner for Matt on Sunday. The chicken, it was not thawed. Fair enough, we'll do it Monday. Monday, it was still hard as a chicken shaped glacier in my fridge. I've been having salads for dinner so it's no big if the chicken is still on ice, for me anyway. Meanwhile, Matt is starving to death. I fed him everything we had that wasn't also frozen. Last night was supposed to be chicken night, 4 days later it was still frozen beyond all reason and there was no Matt food left. So we had waffles. I could have had a salad, a very cold salad, but I didn't...I had waffles and butter and syrup.

I'm banking on that chicken being defrosted tonight. Can you die from eating chicken that was cooked while still frozen? Will this very post be used against me when Matt's family sues me for conspiracy to commit murder? Aggravated assault with poultry. I think it was more dangerous when it was solid, and hurling it would burn a lot of calories. Anyway, I'm tired of this chicken, making me eat waffles. I'm going to enjoy roasting his ass.


*edited to add that I need not fret over the chicken because Matt is bringing home Moose meat. E. Gads.

"Peachy with a side of keen"

i know i'm going to hate myself for saying this, probably tomorrow or in five minutes, but it's almost easy now. i felt like this before, i think in january or there abouts. like things were coming together and the pounds were falling off steadily and it just felt easy. i haven't gotten the falling numbers yet but the process is coming more and more easily. as long as nothing even remotely interesting happens between now and the next ten pounds...i'll be all set. i'm going to take it ten pounds at a time, work at maintaining it and go from there. i don't want to kill my easy breezy feeling with the more, faster, thinner thoughts that pop up so often. so i'm not going to think beyond 160. which is 12 pounds technically, i know. but it's my blog, i can be a hypocrite if i want to. it's in the constitution somewhere, practically verbatim. fact.

I've been looking for that practically all day. It's from last April. Thoughts like that kept popping in to my head this weekend, this whole healthy thing feels really easy lately. I thought it would be great to remind me of what happened when I mentioned things being easy last time, because it's been so easy since last April that I'm now 0 pounds! It's amazing!

Actually, it is amazing. I feel amazing. I want to be doing Pilates right now, I'm a teaser junkie. I just have to figure out how I can tape up my knee without ripping all the skin off. I like passing up the left over (still!) Halloween candy and being able to think "geez, even if I wanted chocolate I don't want that crap". I feel really powerful right now. Cliche'd, but powerful. Aslong as I can keep in mind that I weigh exactly what I thought I weighed in April when everything was sunshine and roses and look how that turned out. If my scales are five pounds apart, I've lost only five pounds since then. FIve pounds in eight months is not earth shattering. I haven't even hit that ten pound goal yet, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I do feel really great. I need to remember that too.

NaBloPoMo from home-o

I hate updating by cellphone. The problem with building the house yourself is that when there is a problem in a hundred or so feet of phone line, there's no one but yourself to blame. We have service, we have a dialtone, but you can't actually dial out. It's like a really boring horror movie. Which segues nicely into me having to go to Walmart this weekend. SuperWalmart, for bigger horror for your buck bonus.

I was only going to go to the grocery store. What with the early christmas shoppers (was there a Canadian holiday this weekend?) and the parades I wasn't going to do all my housewifely stuff in those crowds, cat litter just isn't that important. So I was on my way back when Matt needed something and the only place to go was Walmart. W can appreciate this when I say every spot was full. It was full on Christmas insanity. And ofcourse they didn't have what he wanted, heaven forbid, but I got myself some athletic tape for my knee.

Holly, my best friend/nurse/athletic trainer, told me months ago that they used athletic tape on their athletes. Five months later I tried it and it's awesome. Until you take it off. This was totally my fault, it felt so good even after I did my exercise thing, that I kept the tape on. For HOURS. Yes, I'm an idiot but I'm way less worried about my knee now. Knowing that I can fix it with the right amount of pressure in the right places is awesome. Maybe not fix it, but work with it and live with it. I should have learned to do what she says a long time ago. She's a goddess.

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Athletic tape above and below the knee. holly is a freaking genius.

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Messages from my mom i found today, never thought i'd hear her voice in my house.

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Almost connected! 170.2...the bastard.