Mar
21
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:
Mar
20
March 20, 2007
Let me just take a moment to give a shout-out to Mucinex, the disgustingly advertised product whose mascot is a giant anthropomorphic glob of snot. If like me you often find yourself clogged and stuffed and generally a blocked-up mess of sinus misery, Mucinex will clear you right out. And not by acting as a decongestant and drying out your mouth and giving you little rubber-cement boogers, either. No, Mucinex essentially allows you to blow your nose in the most, er, productive way possible. Twenty minutes after taking a Mucinex, you will blow three-quarters of the contents of your entire head out your nose, including the little piece of your brain that remembers where the car keys are. Sure, it’s slightly disconcerting the first time you feel your hippocampus dislodge, but I figure losing just a few mental faculties is a small price to pay for the ability to breathe through my nose without sounding like a mating walrus.
Say, thanks for the movie suggestions, you guys. We should have no excuse for a crap-laden Netflix queue now, although I see JB has already added “The Devil Wears Prada” which he insists is not supposed to be a chick flick—my theory is that he’s got it confused with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” which was on the soundtrack to “Coyote Ugly”. Boy, won’t he be surprised when Meryl Streep appears onscreen instead of Piper Perabo.
I was glad to see so many zombie movie recommendations, I’ve seen them all but I’m happy to know I’m in good company with my fellow Shaun of the Dead fans. I love that one, only slightly more than the deliciously creepy 28 Days Later (definitely not to be confused with 28 Days). You know what makes 28 Days Later so goddamn scary, is that the infected humans are fast. They don’t come ambling toward you with arms outstretched—they run like hell and come bursting through windows and shit. The Dawn of the Dead remake is a good one, too, although it was much scarier for me in the theater than on DVD.
Zombies! I seriously can’t stop thinking about them. I finished World War Z and I feel woefully unprepared for the zombie onslaught that I am now CERTAIN will be occurring soon. I live in a one-story house! We don’t have a boat! We’re fucked!
JB said in the event of zombie attack we could simply drive down to the remote section of Oregon where his family has property but the man is a FOOL. Then we’d just be in bum-fuck nowhere fighting off redneck zombies. The key is getting out in the middle of the ocean in a vessel that has provisions for at least a couple years, or traveling above the snowline so the zombies freeze—although take note that freezing does not kill them, it merely keeps them immobile until the thaw.
GRAH. ZOMBIES.
Well, hopefully I will soon be in better physical condition to run screaming from the undead, which I can only pray are the slow-moving, staggering-and-moaning variety, because let me tell you I have been doing that Turbo Jam workout again and again and again. I even bought a new video, which boasts the slightly humiliating name of “Fat Blaster”, and when I started it up I found myself ridiculously pleased that it’s not only the same instructor—the unusually likeable Chalene Johnson who JB piggishly declared a “milf”—it’s the same group of people doing the workout. There’s the always-smiling girl who looks like Sandra Bullock, Mindy the low impact girl, the lone dorky guy in the back. Ah, sweet familiarity. I can almost pretend I’m going to a class at the gym and seeing my fellow 9 AM classmates. Except I have the invaluable benefit of being in my own home where no one can observe me blowing my nose after each “Turbo” interval.
I’m leery of thinking that I can maintain this exercise commitment long-term, given my propensity for slacking in the past, but I’m really enjoying it right now. I actually look forward to the morning workouts when I can squeeze them in, and I do weights and stretching each night. Could this be a new leaf, a life change for the better? Or simply another flash-in-the-pan obsession (see also: zombies)? Only time will tell. I feel more motivated this time, so I am hopeful.
In other news, here is our current choice for kitchen remodel materials:
The granite is Giallo Veneziano, which we’re planning to use for countertops. We have such a small kitchen it won’t be much in the way of square footage. The cabinet color we’re liking is the darker sample on the upper right, kind of a cherry. The cabinet style will be “Oslo”, which looks like this:
We also picked out some stone floor tiles (by the way, if you’re in the market for new flooring, I highly recommend visiting a ProSource shop if you can)—neutral, cream-colored—and now we have to settle on a wall color. Sage? Warm brown? Light tan? Pink with purple polka dots? Illustrated silhouette of oncoming zombie attack, just to keep me on my toes?
-
My product review site:
[