Mar
22
This and that
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March 22, 2007
MUSIC
Andrew Bird’s new album is out, and it’s wonderful. I could listen to “Fiery Crash” over and over and over. Oh wait I am listening to “Fiery Crash” over and over and over. Sorry, officemates!
The other song I can’t take off repeat is Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity”. Here, have a listen:
Lovely, isn’t it? It’s hard as hell to sing along to, though. It breaks my hear-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar-arrrt . . . ow. I think I just pulled something.
WEB IRRITATIONS
1) I can’t properly express how grateful I am that the obnoxious Comcast ad—the one with the severed ear that scurried around enticing you to, in my case, drop Comcast immediately and sign up with Qwest—on the blogs partnered with Federated Media seems to have completed its run. No fault of the bloggers, but jesus I hated that animated ear. Did you notice how it chased your cursor, without even providing a weapon with which to stab it repeatedly? Gah. Congratulations, Comcast, on coming up with a web advertisement even more annoying than those blinking WINNER! banners from 2003.
2) People need to stop setting their links to open in new windows. SERIOUSLY. Yes, I can tell my browser to open them in tabs so it’s marginally less sucktacular, but for the love of god, knock it off.
3) While I’m being all curmudgeonly and nitpicky and like Andy Fucking Rooney over here, can someone explain the purpose of the “jump” in a blog post, where you must clickety the little “continue reading” link to get to the remainder of the post? Why must I make with the clickety? My mousing hand, it is tired.
BABY TALK
Lately Riley is obsessed with trying to jump. He gives it the old college try by heaving upward and flinging his hands in the air, but his feet don’t actually leave the ground. Then he comes over to one of us and holds up his hands in the classic Pick Me Up Now Goddammit position and makes little whiny “eh, eh, eh” noises until we grab his arms and help him pogo up and down. This is fun until we decide we’d like to do something else, at which time Riley has a giant flaming meltdown complete with choking sobs and dramatic wall-poundings.
This five-minute cycle of pure joy to abject misery is the perfect little microcosm of parenting. Everything is unbelievably wonderful! Everything is kind of boring. Everything sucks, sucks, sucks, all to hell! Repeat.
THE UNDEAD ARE EVERYWHERE
I’m sorry to be bringing up zombies yet again, but there is something weird going on. The other day I was talking about zombies with JB, then we started watching American Idol and the chubby guy was singing a song by . . . The Zombies. Then? Then? A Diet Coke commercial came on, and it featured, wait for it . . . zombies. And then I found out about this musical (thanks, Christine) and I stumbled onto this t-shirt and at lunch today I bit into a piece of deli roast beef and for just a moment it dangled from my mouth, all fleshy-like, and I don’t know, man, I think the universe is trying to tell me something.
AND NOW AN IMPORTANT QUESTION
Tomorrow is “Parent’s Night” at Riley’s daycare so JB and I are going to try and see a movie. Both 300 and Zodiac look good to me—can you weigh in on this? Whichever one we don’t see will have to wait until it comes out on DVD, so I feel we must choose wisely.
Mar
21
Affirmations
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March 21, 2007
Since March 12 when I weighed 143, the scale has dropped to 139. It’s been a long time since my weight has been under 140. A looooong time.
The more dramatic difference in my eyes is how I look in the mirror. There are some changes happening, there really and truly are. My jeans are fitting more loosely, my shirts no longer cling to a sausagey roll around the middle. My upper arms are firming up, and they appear to contain a few actual no-shit muscles. My legs look stronger. My stomach isn’t so poochy.
I feel cheesy about posting a photo but I’m going to do it anyway:
Okay, I know it’s not that illustrative (note to self: try a full length mirror next time, jackass) but those jeans used to be too small. And so was the shirt.
They fit now, and I know this because I have been obsessively trying on all my too-small clothes over and over. Those size 8s still don’t fit, but I can by-god pull the zipper up now. Next goal: being able to sit down in them without cutting off my circulation and triggering gangrene in one leg.
God bless Turbo Jam, friends. I hereby pledge my undying loyalty to Chalene Johnson and the entire Beachbody™ franchise for getting me off my ever-widening ass and motivating me to hurl my sweating, panting self around the living room several times a week.
I’m feeling really good about all of it, the exercising and the dieting and the progress I’ve made. I know this isn’t on scale with running a marathon or climbing Everest, but I’m just . . . I don’t know, proud, I guess, that I’ve maintained the willpower. I always think of myself as such a slacker, so weak-willed and self-indulgent, but right now I feel like hey, I can do this.
Also, there is less farting lately. Maybe our bodies are finally adjusting? The other possibility is that there is so much farting, we don’t even notice any more, but that is such an alarming theory I refuse to believe it might be true.
In other news, Riley smashed his head at daycare yesterday and now he looks like an abused child. I took him with me to the grocery store this morning and I kept thinking people were glaring at me. I need one of those “NAOMI HIT ME” shirts for him.
Oh, and on the off chance Riley’s head-bump caused permanent brain damage affecting the motor function in his arms, we taught him some backup drawing methods:
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