Apr
4
April 4, 2007
There has been a Mysterious Odor wafting around in my kitchen the last couple days and it’s driving me crazy. I’ve scoured the dish disposal and sinks and peered around in the refrigerator shelves but no culprit has yet revealed itself. It’s like something vegetative and partially rotted crawled down the drain to die (cue Barney Gumble: “It didn’t die!”) and has been periodically releasing gaseous blasts from its bloated corpse ever since. I need a specially trained rescue dog to come in and find the offending broccoli particle or long-expired rodent or whatever in HELL it is. Also, I’d like JUST ONCE for a Mystery Kitchen Odor to be a good one, a sort of lingering warm delicious vanilla or something, and when we looked for the source we would find—hooray!—a giant basket of just-baked cookies, left by magical elves, and the cookies would have no calories and they would be chewy and crispy at the same time.
Also also, ALSO, I am thoroughly tired of my hair. Yesterday I was so frustrated with its general crappitude and the flat, dangling bangs I had stupidly trimmed myself a couple weeks go (leaving them just as bad as before except with less symmetry), I made a last-minute appointment at the same salon I swore I would never visit again after they bumped me for being a few minutes late. They’re just down the street from my office, so convenience won over morals, sort of like our home recycling efforts.
The lady who cut my hair tut-tutted the whole time over the last cut I got, which reminded me of how much that stylist had tut-tutted about the cut I had before her. Yesterday’s stylist also bashed my original stylist who used to work at the same salon (“Vanessa and her razor cuts. Whatever.”), besmirched my lovely Bumble & bumble Gentle Shampoo (“You need to drop that mess and get the Seaweed, girl”), and ultimately left my hair lopsided, the right edge of the bob hanging down below the left, which of course I only noticed after I got home.
So I’m sick of trying out stylists and I’m sick of fussing over my hair. If I had any fuzz on my peaches I’d shave my damn head and buy a festive selection of wigs, not the trashy Britney wigs but luxurious head-pelts made from chinchilla and the belly fur of Angora rabbits.
What? The pelts would be harvested humanely, jesus, what kind of rabbit-scalping monster do you think I am?
Speaking of agonizing deaths and all, I would like to heartily recommend against reading How We Die. I started reading it and thought it was interesting, then I got all wigged out by an account of a child’s murder, then I thought it was interesting again, and then I read the chapters on AIDS and cancer deaths, and now I’m wondering what the fuck my problem is that I would read a book like that. I am of course also obsessively scrutinizing my body for malignant tumors. Just a nonstop funfest, that book, as long as you consider reading about the inevitable end of life and all the horrors it may cause in its painful, dwindling process to be fun.
Instead, you should read Plainsong if you haven’t already, because it’s just lovely and wonderful and I re-read it recently and it was even better the second time around.
Well, what do you have planned for the upcoming weekend? I would normally ask you later in the week, but I’m bored NOW. Plus, we’ll be on the road tomorrow for another pilgrimage to Coos Bay for some grandparent-time, and that’s our weekend: hanging around JB’s parents’ house, maybe going to the beach if the weather doesn’t suck, and hurtling along I-5 singing “Old MacDonald Had a Brain Seizure Because He Had to Sing This Goddamn Song Again”. How about you?
Apr
3
April 3, 2007
I see by my own handy web journal that I’ve been doing this dieting business for a little over a month now. I’ve also been dutifully exercising for nearly the same amount of time. My result to date as measured in actual pounds lost is fairly depressing—there has been annoyingly little progress on the scale. I weighed 139 this morning. AGAIN.
The good news is that my body has changed quite a bit. I can fit into all kinds of clothes that I haven’t worn in, well, years. It’s like having a brand new wardrobe! One that’s admittedly a little on the stale side of the fashion spectrum, but ask me how much I care about that. I shop at Goodwill, for crying out loud.
I bought a couple pairs of pants at Old Navy on Sunday, and I was eye-blinkingly pleased to find that a size 8 now fits perfectly. (Well, except for that one pair of jeans that I couldn’t even tug up past my knees, what the fuck, why must there be those anomalous styles that are sized using no discernible logic whatsoever? It’s like they exist specifically to make you hurl yourself to the dressing room floor and bray like a wounded donkey.) And here’s another dieting milestone: my belt is too big on its normal setting! I now wear it cinched one notch (a good-sized gap, maybe an inch and a quarter?) tighter, can I GET a hallelujah.
A couple weeks ago I just sort of stopped counting Weight Watchers points because I felt the initial process of analyzing everything I ate had served its purpose; I had figured out a rotating menu of meals and snacks that fit within the whole WW spectrum and I was sick of obsessively entering data into that slow-ass web tracker. I don’t know if I’d see different (faster?) results if I were adhering to the points-counting, maybe I’ll go back to it if I feel like I haven’t seen any progress for a while.
I think the biggest challenge so far has been letting go of the notion that losing lots of pounds is a requirement for getting in shape. It’s obvious to me now that I can make significant changes to my body without dropping a significant amount of weight (shout-out to Turbo Jam and its muscle-building, fat-burning workouts!) and yet every time I step on the scale I feel a little pang of discouragement. I know I should really ditch the scale altogether or at least squirrel it away in some unused closet for a while, but I can’t help myself.
I’ve also been doing the Inhale yoga workouts nearly every night, and I’m really liking how that’s going. When I first started I could only angle down a little bit while doing the butterfly stretch, and now I can put my goddamn forehead on the ground. Also, I can’t be completely sure about this but there seems to be some muscle in my ass now. Did you know the ass can contain muscle? I had no idea.
Those Inhale shows are a good workout but they’re a little annoying because 1) the host is kind of a dork, and 2) they seem to have paid for the copyrights on all of 5 songs, so they recycle the same music over and over and over. I’ve heard “Shy Guy” so many times I can actually tell you what the lyrics are:
But I don’t want somebody
Who’s loving everybody
I need a shy guy
He’s the kinda guy
Who’ll only be mine!
I don’t want to know this song that well, nor do I want to be intimately familiar with the smooth stylings of Marvin Gaye or Barrington Levy. So if you have a good yoga DVD to recommend, please do so. It would be nice to have some other home-yoga options, preferably without the easy listening soundtrack.
JB asked me what my end goal was for the dieting, and I said that I wasn’t sure but I hoped I would know when I got there. I had thought it would be tied to a number (125-130 lbs), but I’m less sure about that now. I can see where improvements can still be made (hi, saggy belly! WZZZZUP) and I like the feeling of getting stronger and healthier. My plan is to keep on with what I’ve been doing (although there’s a worrisome period coming up next weekend where we’ll be visiting JB’s family and all my familiar routines will be gone aaiiieee) and see what happens. If I’m not knocked up by summertime, then by god I want to be rocking a hot swimsuit. Maybe even a TWO PIECE.
-
My product review site:
[