"And I never stepped on the cracks 'cause i thought i'd hurt my mother"

In the things I didn't expect to do department, this weekend was chock full. I bought myself an ice cream maker on clearance at Target. Do I need more reasons to eat ice cream, no. I bought it anyway. It's a lot of work so I won't be making ice cream all day/every day, probably. Although really it would be perfect if you had to make all your ice cream yourself and have like a waiting period...like with buying a gun. Safety first and all. Oh, and then Matt and I taste-tested the new (ish) pub in Bangor...and we tried a fried mars bar. The food was excellent, the fried candy was bizarre. We each had a bite and then finished off the whipped cream it came with. Fried chocolate! I dunno. I guess I expected the inner fat girl part of me to enjoy it more, like finding the holy grail of sumptuous foods.

The MDI marathon was this weekend. I thought about coming to town to see it, runner solidarity or something. But running, it's not really a spectator sport unless you're cheering on a friend. One of my sisters lived in Japan for the Olympics and the only tickets she could afford were for the cross country skiing event. She didn't go because pretty much you're paying to see people ski for about ten seconds until they're past you in the crowd. She spent her money in the bar after the events instead, a more worthy cause. I did, however, go for a very ill-advised run this weekend and it was awesome.

I am forever giving myself hell, in my head, about calling myself a runner. It's one of the many arenas in which I just can't seem to give myself the credit I am due. This weekend the weather was beautiful and crisp and I just wanted to run, so I did. I was careful of my knee and I walked the hardest hills. I'd say I ran about 2 miles of flat stretches. How many miles do you have to run to be a runner? I've given myself a glass ceiling on the subject. If anyone else said they ran for pure joy, I would call them a runner. Why not me? I need "give yourself a break" tattoed on my forehead.

Gin and tonic with a straw

Cheesecake for breakfast and pizza for lunch because I am dedicated to the healthy life. I'll be prostrating myself to the gods of the raised heart rate as soon as I get home tonight. Indoors, as it's pouring today and praise the lord for that. I need some water in the well so I can do some laundry and wash some dishes and run a bath without the devil on my shoulder. Everyone I know in the flesh remarks that Matt and I live a pioneer life. No cable, no phone, no internet, we are a modern day little house on the prairie. I made all those choices and took the distancing myself from the world in my stride, for the most part, but I just don't want to live without water. It's getting cold for the outhouse and it's a serious drag taking the laundry into town to wash. That would be the line right there, driving half an hour to do laundry. The line when crossed means that I lose my grip on sanity. Just so y'all know when I'm gone one day never to return it's because I had to take the towels on a joy ride to Ellsworth.

I've been thinking more and more that I need to do something about my un-interneted (un-internote?) state at home. Funny enough it was a topic of discussion at dinner with the SugarCrook. Funny because it's hilarious that I live the bulk of my life on-line and have no internet access at home. Hilarious as in not very smart and also a little bit ridiculous. So, ofcourse, I'm putting the cart before the horse and am shopping for computers. I don't have the ready cash for said purchase but there's no harm in looking. And drooling. And panting slightly if I were to be completely honest. I've got to learn all about wireless and Mac's and Air ports (do I even need one of those? I don't know, that's where the learning comes in). It would be good to figure all that stuff out before I go and make investments. It would also be good just to get dial-up and be satisfied for the short term, but that would be way too easy.

Another hilarious topic at dinner was the State of Maine and its' many eccentricities. It's such a card, the State of Maine. One of our favorite discussions is our lack of address and the unlikelihood of our getting one. I, being not on the deeds for the property, have less information about the address thing than Matt does. I hadn't thought about it for awhile but it does impact our ability to get trash picked up, saved in an emergency, and obtaining services like a phone line. I suppose if there was a fire they could follow the smoke, but why leave that up to chance? Like the guido death mobile parked on the back road. We don't have proof there is a body in the car so the police won't come and take it away (my imagination isn't proof enough, apparently). We'd have to pay to have it towed. Except we can't, because it's not technically on our property. So the mystery death car has property rights and we don't. And no one seems to know who makes the decision on what our address is. The state doesn't know, the town doesn't know. They're very close to having "Kiss our Asses Lane" coming off their state highway and then we'll see who knows what. Ahem.

Oh, and the scale...a whole pound down. It's a tenuous relationship we have. I have the feeling it's more accurate than I want, considering the number of brownies I ate this week. Still dropping though so that's something. Patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue...

"Send whips of opinion down my back"

I keep reading posts about de-lurking day and I'm ashamed to say that I completely forgot about it. It occurs to me that I'm a terrible commenter in general, I don't give good feedback as in I give no feedback at all most of the time. I was just talking to Holly (best friend, getting married, bridesmaid dress decision of doom) about the colors for her wedding and she remarked that the groom's mother was sort of ambivalent about it. Holly has a big greek family unto which ambivalence has never fallen. Nothing passes in her family without fanfare and hand gestures and much discussion at loud volume. I've always thought it was sort of wonderful to visit her family and be a part of it, it's like living in technicolor after stepping out of Pleasantville. So to her receiving a shades of gray response is automatically equivalent to negative.

Holly is one of those people who squeal with delight and gasp with horror and it's completely her natural state of being. I love the drama of her responses to things. I spent most of my youth honing my skills to elicit those responses, but I never learned to be that way myself. I know Holly very well, so well that I've adjusted my Pleasantville demeanor up a notch to almost pastel over a period of years whenever I'm with her. But my natural state of being is not effusive, more defused. I'm pretty much the same way with blogs and emails and comments. Is that too much like a bad break up? It's not you, it's me...and give me back my black t-shirt.

What I'm really trying to say here is Hello Lurkers! Did that come through before, with the rambling? No, you say? So I'm cold and obscure? Excellent. I know there is something special about each of the blogs I visit every day, something that brings me back click after click. When I check my stats and see so many of you who come here day after day I flatter myself you see something special here and whether or not I know you by email or in comments I want to thank you for stopping by and encouraging me to blog on. Happy lurking day to you all.

And in fat news, which you may have noticed I've been avoiding as if it were contagious, I hate my new scale. 170 freaking 5. I know it says you have to wait a few hours after you get up and have an empty stomach and be naked and apparently the moon has to be in line with the seventh house because that number is b.s. I hate it. I'm not getting up at 3 just so I can sit awake and not eat or drink and wait till I'm about to leave the house at six and then strip and weigh for an accurate reading. That's just not going to happen. I know I'm still losing, my damn pants are all falling off. I've had to shrink every pair of jeans and then I get one good hour of proper fit. I know it could be lean muscle and not fat and blah blah blah but mostly i'm embracing the irrational. If anyone has suggestions regarding their tanita scale I'm all over hearing them. Tell me I'm not alone, I'll wax rhapsodic for you I swear!

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sexy, Sexy Ramekins!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Fashionistas,

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

Thanks!

Love, Amy


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

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

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

damn jemima's witnesses

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

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

good things:

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

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

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

dear reader in chicago

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

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

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

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

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

not a paid advertisement

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

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

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

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

tough choices

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

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

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

a truth widely known

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

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

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

169, redux

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

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

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

rebel without a donut

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

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

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

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

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

wow, that picture blows

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

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

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

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

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

cathartic

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

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

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

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

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

little things make my day possible

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

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

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

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

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

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