raining cats and poodles

there's nothing like a rainy day to make you realize your pants are getting too long. i've been doing this coquettish holding them up thing that's really best reserved for wearing skirts or living in 1893. since i've had these pants for years, i was confounded that they're too long when they were perfect last winter. and since it's me i'm speaking about you'll understand that my first thought was "oh my god, i'm shrinking". and then i took some tums. for the calcium. so my osteoporized bones might hold out a bit longer.

it wasn't until i reached work that i realized that it's not my bones that are shrinking. it's moments like this which make me glad i keep my diploma on my wall (like a dentist) because i'd never believe someone gave me such a thing if i didn't have proof. what would i do with my time if i didn't spend so much of thinking the worst. idle hands are the devils workshop.

so, pants. is there anything more complicated than dressing a changing body? do i hem them or do i buy new ones that may or may not be replaced in the next months? these are tricky questions for me because i'm really tired of dressing like a student. i hate making clothing choices out of necessity rather than pleasure, but i love that the same clothes i was worried would be lost because they were too small are now too big. i have to remember that i could be needing new things like seatbelt extenders rather than smaller pants. it could be so much worse.

i feel like i write this post every other week. hey, i'm fat and my clothes don't fit. that should be my new title. guaranteeing repetition with every post! i can't deny the truth universally acknowledged that you can't feel good about yourself if you think you look like shit all the time. in the vein of choosing things that will work with me along my "journey" i'm thinking skirts. short ones. it'll be good for the morale, the boyfriend's, if nothing else.

a timely discovery

check me with my two posts in one day. almost two in an hour. that's how hot i am today. hot and burning. want to know where? it's better than porn, i'm burning my face off. i've been under the impression that i have had a fever the last few days. since last week. my face is all pink and flushed and burning with the hotness. since i'm too cheap to have a thermometer i've been using the boyfriend-o-meter to guage whether or not i'm fevered. not that i've been home from work or resting, anything that normal sick people might do. but hey, i'm not sick at all. i'm just burning my face off. with my clean and clear dual acids which burn facial moisturizer(c).

i got a trial size with my last purchase of their pore scrub (i'd liken it to proactiv for the desperately thrifty) and i tried it while i was at home last weekend because it was tiny and easy to pack. i noticed a tingling sensation and i loved it. if it tingles it has to be working on pimple eradication right? that's logical, right? so i've been using it every morning. and every day i feel the burning. the you have a cold, flu, ecoli, thing has been going on for almost two weeks and i just put it together half an hour ago.

my boss' son just acquired a boxer puppy, cuter than should be allowed, and he licked all over my face. when they left i washed my face of puppy slobber and lo and behold, no more burning. it's a good thing i forgot to buy a doomsday supply of that stuff when i was shopping this weekend. i had planned on it. my skin looks great. if a little like i got too close to a fire.

a few good things

i just got my monthly martha. so many things i want to cook. so many things for thanksgiving. i love the holidays, if only in theory. i always look at all the wonderful recipes and ideas that are around and plan this crazy fabulous menu. and then it turns out i'm not hosting a big family meal..i'm always someone else's guest. that's the difficulty of holidays in your 20's, you have no control when it comes to holiday meal planning. it's hard if you're on a diet, or you're vegetarian, or if you're just really OCD like i am.

i want the creative control but i'm not certain i'll want the responsibility of doing it every year. that's a lot of turkeys. the one saving factor for me is that matt doesn't care at all about holidays. if we never celebrated thanksgiving or christmas it wouldn't bother him a bit. we could easily get away with staying home and making spaghetti, whether his family would forgive us i don't know.

but i have dreams. dreams of setting a martha table of antiques and serving a gorgeous dinner and all the side dishes and desserts that make you drool on the page. the mini cranberry meringue pies in particular would look lovely on my yardsale bought table. but it's not a great idea. i'd be better served to indulge my need for finery on the boyfriend alone, or when my nearest and dearest visit from lands afar. i would rather put my heart into cooking for people i love being with than because it's required of me on the last thursday of the 11th month and everything else is closed.

i've been a lazy cook lately, making blt's for matt and eating a lot of high fiber* cereal for dinner. the stupid thing is that i like to cook. i just have to re-think it. take my enthusiasm for holiday dishes and use it whenever i want to. set the table like someone who actually eats at a table and use the right silverware instead of the clean silverware. and maybe then i'll really understand what matt means when he says he'd rather enjoy an ordinary day instead of being expected to rejoice on demand.


*trying to stress the good carb thing there with too much detail, does it work?

the stand

i bought a carrot cake last night for no other reason than that it was there. at the grocery store. with the rest of the cakes. just sitting there, taunting passersby. forces were aligned against me. and today we're having an ice cream party. with monster cookies. and bags and bags of halloween candy. it would be easier to turn it all down if the party weren't being thrown by people whose presence makes you want to chew through your wrists to end the pain. or have a snickers. or 7.

i keep thinking about it and there's just no reason for my life to be this stressful. i'm not a brain surgeon. i'm not an accountant at tax time. there's no reason for my job to effect the success of my day to such a degree. it's just silly. i've got to find a way to rise above all this daily stuff so a bag of nasty ass snickers doesn't sound my downfall. wish me luck.

181: the final frontier

i took an extra day off on tuesday. apparently i have some vacation time left and i'll be damned if i don't take it all. so, ofcourse, i went shopping. i have no other pass-time, and no other love. that's not true, i just feel dramatic today. i had the strongest urge to title this post "i shot jr" but it just didn't feel right. maybe next time. so, shopping. while i was in the car i heard the craziest thing. some radio drones were talking about a study that concluded that women dress more attractively when they're most fertile. wow. just like on the discovery channel. the conductees were noting the lack of fertility signalling in humans and lo and behold, they found it. darwin would wet himself.

what do we think of it though. it's totally subconcious so how would we know. if anyone out there practices the rhythm method and notes shorter skirts on ovulation days let me know. i think it's fascinating. hormones make life so much more interesting, don't they? it's nice they make us prettier aswell as cranky. it's only fair.

i ended the post here originally because we got wicked busy and it was either a half arsed post or no post at all. so i went half arsed. which i do alot. i'm the queen of half-arsing. i never even finished my shopping rant, and i had a good one. i bought the best fat girl belt ever this weekend. it's not the normal loop and holes and all that, it's like a fold over with knobs. whoa, that sentence makes no sense at all. but really, it's great. you can get super fat or super skinny and it still fits. it's the best 6 dollars i ever spent.

i love things that still look good but can be worn at different weights. i'm still trying not to invest too much money in clothes at this stage, except for a few things that do work with different weights. so i'm working on my accessory collection. belts and shoes and handbags. why save money when i can have red mary janes and leather tooled by children in mexico? writing that sentence makes me wish i was wearing a god bless america t-shirt with a flag on it. but that's not in my budget. maybe when i reach goal!!!

"i don't know if her ass was good, but it was huge so there was this tremendous sense of value for it"

i talked myself into a perfectly sinful lunch today, instead of the healthy low calorie one i had planned. but i totally skipped the fries because i have morals and also they were cold. cold fries are the worst, better to be virtuous. so far my exercise has been walking in three inch heels. which i'm convinced burns more calories than flats. i don't have any proof or anything, it just seems like it should. i'm a believer anyway.

i'm also a believer in columbus day if only because we get the day off. bank holidays are beautiful things.

audit who?

we got audited this morning. surprise! it was cool though, we do everything as we should so there isn't any reason to worry. we're just tense because even though we know we do everything right, there's some ingrained thing about scrutiny causing tension. my boss was smiling so hard i thought i heard her jaw crack. but it's all over now.

being tense is a tiring process. my teeth hurt. i went for a long walk to relax and now i'm worn out. one stressful morning kicks my arse. i have the strongest desire to get a pizza for dinner so i don't have to kick. it'll be one of those evenings where you flop on the couch and the most activity you entertain is punching the remote and kicking the empty pizza box to the corner. i'll have to check out the will-o-meter before closing and see the consensus. wait with baited breath.

"is mel gibson in this movie?" "braveheart? yes. he is."

i'm very bummed that i've now seen all of the project runway seasons netflix has. but the "daniel franco where did you go" song is prefectly stuck in matt's head so the magic isn't all lost. the worst part is i keep calling it "fashion runway". which means i am officially my mother. god help me.

not to get off track or anything, but, speaking of god help me we had a big ass earthquake last night. it's the third big-ish one in two weeks. it's just not right. we get sub-zero temperatures, feet on feet of snow, ice storms, hail storms, hurricanes, forest fires and now earthquakes too? it's a smorgasbord of natural disasters and we got the early bird special. you know what the next season is? locusts. and i stole that from lewis black because it is the fucking gospel. locusts are next. i have this intense desire to buy bottled water and canned beans and an all terrain cat carrier. fear based consumerism is the wave of the future.

i called matt because i couldn't think of anything else to do and if my 17th century farmhouse is going to colapse on me damned if i want to be alone. so he came over. stopping out to his property to check on things. he didn't tell me last night what he was checking, but now i know. while we have tiny little earthquakes (4.2) we have big ass granite boulders. perched on mountains. there is one that has remade the guardrail at the tarn, having rolled down a mountain. guess who has a ton of boulders perched on the precipice of route 9 (important road to canada)? matt. that's what he was going to see. how many of his boulders done rolled into the highway. he didn't spend hours on the road with the backhoe so i'm guessing nothing happened. but the rock at the tarn is pretty cool.

but back to fashion runway. i really miss it. i'm not that excited about my netflix now that season 2 is all done (but i am getting a kick out of calling my sister and saying "designers, rock the casbah"). i'm not that excited about shopping either, which is just plain weird. especially as it's %10 off tuesday at the gap and my pulse is barely racing. but i lost four pounds in a day. so that's cool. it's not realistic but it's a great panacea. if i just stay off the scale till i get my diet on for a bit i might even have, like, genuine success. maybe.



*if miss pinky is reading i love the discs you sent me, i just haven't gotten to putting them on the computer to see which are my favorites. i just listen to it like a soundtrack. you should rename yourself jammastah pink!*

he thinks my garlic bread is sexy

it's supposed to be south beach week, but i had toast for breakfast. and i have spaghetti for lunch. this is called serious lack of planning. but tonight, i will go to the grocery store and i will buy vegetables and i'll start being skinny tomorrow. what? i'm a slacker you say. ofcourse i'm a slacker. if i wasn't i wouldn't need a diet blog. it's the circle of life like in the movie with the singing lions.

project skinny

i just realized that i didn't do the scale thing this morning. it's customary for me to torture myself with daily numbers, i guess it slipped my mind this morning. i was all busy getting dressed. it's always hard to get dressed after watching project runway but lately my clothes situation bites. i'm at this stage where all of my clothes make me look fatter than i am. all of my walking and stepping has indeed eradicated my ass and it's not the promised land i was hoping for. now i'm just a chubby girl with no ass. getting what you ask for doesn't always make you happy.

and that's why i'm back to the drawing board and taking another look at diets. exercising day and night rocks, and i love it and i'm glad i got to know what my body can do, it's just not enough to give me what i want. i think the hardest part is getting to a place of contentment. i'm closer than i've ever been, but still not there. so i'm setting a ten pound goal. since i lost ten with the south beach thing, i'm going back there. two weeks starting monday. or as soon as it takes me to eat the market's worth of organic yogurt i bought this week (on-sale). waste not, want not.

black and white

the worst thing you can ever do is eat cheesecake at 9 am and then go to the anthropologie website. cruel and unusual. i didn't have to order dessert at all last night, the culminating meal of my dad's visit, but you don't go to the restaurant with 14 home-made desserts and not get something. it wouldn't be right. the whole weekend made me realize that i am an idiot, i do care about losing a few more pounds, and we hardly ever order dessert. i wish that i was one of those people who ate cake from dusk till dawn because it would be easier to pinpoint the problem areas in my diet.

god help me i'm considering south beach again. i look longingly back at the dedication i had then. i have been lucky to keep it off. but not dedicated. it's been months since i've had a consistent loss and it depresses me. you can only celebrate and console over the same 5 pounds for so long. and then your head explodes. tragic.

if i start today do i have to count the cheesecake?

"how big is the anchor?"

today we've had earthquakes, the qe2 and adorable elderly british ladies learning to use an atm. somedays i like my job.

the chocolate barn

my idea for a bakery and chocolate shop was so good, someone else used it. they have a bad location though. suckers. i'll still stop in and buy something, just to see what they did. it doesn't bother me that much, because i really wasn't ready. it's just the day late dollar short thing is getting old. none of my shiny new job possibilities panned out but hey, atleast i didn't spend 30 plus hours in labor. there's always a silver lining. the baby and mom are fine, but damn was that an ordeal. too many hours. we'll get a nice puppy. it'll be great.

i've been off the wagon for awhile, but i haven't gained any weight. that's a plus. i did however make macaroni and cheese the other day so it's probably a matter of time. i haven't made macaroni and cheese since january when i started this whole healthy food thing. you'll be shocked to know that a meal based on white pasta and cheese isn't all that healthy. the 1/4 cup of onions just doesn't pull it's weight in the vegetable arena. there are things i could do to make it healthier, but i think anything you cook bi-annually you might as well enjoy.

i've been slacking. i haven't planned a meal for months, and i got too lazy for the daily salad production. lazy, lazy, lazy. but i've kept up my exercise. hell, i even like it. it's the only thing standing between me and accelerated fatness. i do feel less inspired lately. less inspired to watch my snacking and make sure dinner is full of vegetables every night. it just doesn't seem all that important lately. maybe it would if i were getting fatter. but since i'm not i guess i'm getting complacent. ofcourse i know if i prepared a salad for lunch every day and served lean protein with vegetables for dinner i'd be a lot skinnier right now. and then i'd have to do it for the rest of my life. maybe i'm just not up for the commitment.

i'm getting more and more happy with what i have and less focused on what i want. i can't decide if that's a bad thing or a good thing. part of me still wants to reach for that limited skirt. not being able to wear the things i want to is the biggest factor right now. i'm just not sure how bad i want it. enough to change a few things, sure. whether it will be enough i'll have to wait and see.

accidental wisdom

the best way to avoid eating a tray of cookies all by yourself is to burn them. it's almost foolproof. until you start picking out the bits of chocolate that survived the fire. wisdom with limits maybe.

my co-worker with the errant breast tissue is having her baby today. i think i'm spending more time routing birth news than working. it's nice to be busy in a good way.

"you think if i pee first that skirt will fit me?"

i know better than to google things like "weird bump". it turns an innocuous bump into any number of flesh curdling diseases. the worst is when the prognosis for your bump has a list of symptoms so general that you start thinking "yes, i did have a headache the other day...and gee, i do experience frequent urination". you know what, if you drink 2 liters of water a day, as we're told to, you're going to urinate with frequency. and since i horrified myself a few months ago googling the eye thing, i try to convince my friends to avoid it. but we have a lot of spare time and when you're pregnant you want to know why your arm is all swollen and bumpy.

we didn't get much love out of google. all the bump diseases seemed pretty unlikely. and then she went to see her doctor and found out what it was. and, wow, it was so much worse than google. not dangerous, but icky in a way i didn't conceive of. the baby belly is pushing her breast tissue in to her arms. IN TO HER ARMS. the doctor isn't worried, apparently this is common with larger breasted women. holyshit. if i didn't want to have a baby before i really don't want to have one now.

so, my co-worker isn't too worried about the breast tissue in her arm. she has lived her whole life knowing that sooner or later she will have to get a reduction. i'm on the cusp of this. i always believed that if i lost weight and kept it off, they'd shrink too. enough so that i wouldn't have to have surgery. it's the surgery i want to avoid, not smaller breasts. i hate the idea of surgery. thinking about it for any length of time makes me pass out. in the words of kirsten wolle, i'm the softest cookie.

now it seems i'm trading fat for muscle and there is no change in this one department. i'm torn between being grateful for a slow loss preventing the extra skin problem and worrying that they're never going to get smaller. i really don't want to have to go under the knife unless it's necessary. like a tumor kind of necessary. but i can't stop thinking about it lately. except for all the pain and bills and work time lost, it would be amazing to wake up one day a few cup sizes down. it's probably easier to cut out some calories but if i get to be skinny everywhere else and i'm still this size, hell yeah i'm taking some action. is it sad that the thought of being able to buy a button down shirt makes me weepy?

what happened to the other half of the chicken? oh, yeah, me.

four hours ago i watched a lady from new jersey park in the 15 minute section in front of the post office, she still doesn't have a ticket. this speaks to the genius of jersey because they must know that the parking police don't bother with the 5 spaces of 15 minute parking in the vast sea of two hour parking offenders. i think in new jersey you must be born with indemnity over the mortal sordidness of parking issues. a gift at birth.

speaking of gifts at birth, i watched the first season of project runway last night. two years late. that's how hip i am to that jive. it's still fun though, even though i know jay wins. it still makes me want to sew. and more importantly, to exercise. i spent most of the first disc on my stepper and the second on my bike. you can't watch that many hours of heidi klum and not want to learn how to exercise in your sleep.

it's less good to watch that show and then go to a job interview because 1) you're outfit has no style or innovation and was poorly executed and B. you're waiting to hear someone with a german lilt say you're out! the number one reason i don't have tv is to protect myself from unnecessary paranoia. i used to think that law and order was the impetus. when i had tv i always thought someone was going to break into my house. why? to steal my pink depression ware? please. so it's nice now to have a genuine worry, my ever failing fashion choices.

clothes have been more trouble than usual for me lately. i'm having way too many naked banker moments. but it could be more existential crisis than fat. it's getting harder to tell the difference lately because, uhm, i'm skinnier and i'm not happier and according to everything we see and hear everyday it's the emotional equivalent of saying the earth is flat. my ass is smaller and i'm still dejected. what the fuck?

and did you notice the "i'm a dictionary with the fancy words" thing i have going on today, it's to remind myself that sometimes i can craft this language. just not this morning. but the english, i do speak it. uhm. sometimes.

circle, slash, cows

i knew there was something i meant to write about but i got busy burning the memory out of my brain with a laser. LARD. in my jiffy cornbread mix. not that people on "diets" should be making and eating cornbread anyway. but, i was on vacation. and it has corn in it. a genuine vegetable. i was reading the ingredients so i can make the healthful concoction myself and the third ingredient is LARD. and the fourth is partially hydrogenated lard. not one, but two kinds of lard because one does of lard just isn't enough.

how it took me so many years to read the ingredients, i don't know. so i spent the afternoon complaining to the cat about the lard and then threw out the perfectly innocent cornbread i just made. and then matt came home and i complained to him. that's when i remembered i had another box of the stuff and made to throw that away too. that's when matt took the box and scratched out the lards and wrote "no cows" on the ingredient label. i saved the box, but the mix went to his mom. you won't be surprised to know it took another hour for me to realize that the pie crust mix i buy is also jiffy. and, wait for it, also contains lard.

lard, the hidden menace. i hate full disclosure labels, i'd be so much happier not knowing i've been eating lard all my life and loving it.

oooh, tastes like maine!

i've returned from vacation. no pounds lost. very few pounds gained. negligible, hardly noticeable, very tiny pounds. there's some job stuff going on, which i'll elaborate on when i know, but it might be really cool. my week was extremely low key, and i didn't leave the state. i'm not calling it lazy, i'm calling it relaxing. i needed to re-group and i did. and i cleaned. i spent most of the week throwing away relics from my youth. there's no room for my sixth grade show program. there just isn't. so it wasn't a very exciting vacation, but necessary if i ever want to move and fit my life in matt's apartment.

because all i did was read paperbacks and nap, i don't have much to report. i almost joined a gym but i got distracted. by the new job possibility. suck to join a gym in bar harbor and work in ellsworth and live near bangor. i don't see me driving half an hour to use the treadmill. i think the word is silly. next week things should be clear in all concerned departments. it'll make a nice change.

rats!

ooooh, bummer. i officially can no longer upload photos at the library. it seems they must have had some trouble because all you can do now is check your email. i'm not ever sure you can write word documents. god damn tourists. i had like a whole post written at home for easy installation. it had capitals. and it was funny. fucking hilarious. but you'll have to take my word for it because i can't open the damn file. you know i wouldn't lie to you.

to sum up that post in two words, size 14. jeans, gap. no ass. size 14. brilliant.

you'll see how long i can stand queing for my tax payer rights by how many posts i get in this week. i really need to break down and get dial up. how bourgeois. (pretend i spelled that right, as a favor.)

i hope everyone has a great week!

Live Nude Bankers!

have you ever had a day when you just couldn't get dressed? when you have no idea who bought all those horrible clothes in your closet and it sure as hell wasn't you because wow, everything sucks. it took me 30 minutes to find a set of clothes that didn't make me want to weep. that's a lot of off stage changes. my room is a damn mess. i ended up dressing more for a day at the beach than a respectable banker. but it's friday and i'm on vacation next week. vive la beach. who says flip flops aren't conservative?