Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Gods and Cakes and Things You Won't Believe I Did.

I bought a scale. Bought it and then, even more impossible, I got on it. I stepped on to the vile, evil thing and it had the nerve, the utter GALL, to tell me terrible things. Terrible things! Oh the things said to me by that damnable scale, it’s a wonder that I didn’t hurl it Frisbee-style out my window (though my bathroom has no windows, so that would mean going out all nudesque to the first door that opens and that would be cold and I don’t like to be cold so that could be a discourager…). And yet?

And yet, if it weren’t for the scale and the things that it said to me then my BFF wouldn’t have been able to tell me the lovely things that she told me, like that I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last bunch of months. Wow! That’s a double-digit number and double-digits are a good thing; a thing I don’t think I’ve seen in forever, actually.

Now the other thing that the scale did yesterday which I very much appreciated was it told me that the amount I weighed was the same amount it told me I weighed LAST Monday. That might seem like a bummer after working out 4 days in that week, but honestly I found it to be a mitzvah. Because although I worked out 4 times I also ate fourteen million cheesepuffs and my own bodyweight in cupcakes. The fact that I could do that and not GAIN double-digits of badness is kind of miraculous. I’m not kidding there. If some gun-toting nutbag put his toted gun to my brainpan and demanded that I cite three things that proved that his deity, or any deity, weren’t imaginary but instead actually existed I’d point to the tremendous tonnage of cheesepuffs and cupcakes eaten and yet not reflected on my evil, evil scale as item 1. (I’d point to the existence of the Snickerdoodle Cupcake as item 2, and the third one would have something to do with this thing that T.E. can do with… ok, never mind. But it’s the best of the three. No kidding.)

What was I talking about? Oh, right – the scale and the miracles it has helped to reveal. And gun-toting religious nutbags, although I think I’ve exhausted that third thing.

So I’m doing all these things. Because here’s the other shoe dropping after the good news from The Queen. 25 pounds is great, but I have to confess that I suspect all of those were lost by about November. And that since November I’ve lost hardly anything even though I keep working out and WORKING OUT and I believe it to be just plain rude of my body to not lose more weight even with the working out I’ve done. Rude and also unkind.

So now I’m punishing it.

I’ve changed some things specifically so that I’ll lose more weight, but I would be lying if I said I’m not enjoying the idea of taking things away from my body. Things that it loves, like many cans per day of Pepsi and pasta for dinner and Cap’n Crunch WITH Crunch Berries. (my mouth especially misses the Crunch Berries.) I’m drinking things like massive glasses of milk for dinner and I’ve cut out carbs after lunch and do you have any idea how hard it is to find dessert that isn’t carbs? Cookies! Brownies! CAP’N-FRICKIN’-CRUNCH!

I’m also changing up the workout to not be just my biking, but now including time on a thing that is officially called an elliptical, but which I think was originally called an “Wow, it’s really only been 7 minutes on this thing and yet already I want to never, ever do it again!!!” I also think that it was originally engineered as a method for milking water from human beings for that time when we’re going to run out of water on the planet. It’s gonna be kind of salty, my friends, but thanks to this “elliptical” torture device we’ll never want for some kind of watery beverage. After only 30 minutes on this thing I’m a festival of cold, terrible sweat drips.

So I should damn well hope that I lost weight and will lose weight and didn’t gain weight. (even after a diety-affirming personal body weight worth of cupcakes.)

Monday, April 19, 2010

Time Management

Yeah, I suck. Sorry about it.

Here’s the thing: I either don’t have anything to write about or I don’t have time to write. I mean when I have the time I have nothing meaningful to say. Do you want to read about how I cleaned off the balcony of my apartment so I could sit there on the nice days? Or the fact that today was a nice day and I sat out there? Or the fact that I need to get a little table so I can sit out there more because even though they call it a laptop if you keep it on your lap for something along the lines of four hours it will melt your leg skin into a single sheet of leg? (God, I really hope you don’t want to read about that stuff, because honestly I’d really rather not write it. I am so not kidding.)

Why don’t I have other stuff to write about? Because my life has, of late, become a fairly two-dimensional existence. There’s work, which takes about 10 or 11 hours of the day (if you count the hour in the morning where I’m getting up and showered and dressed and stuff. And I do. Because god knows if I didn’t have to be someplace at 7am to do the work I’d definitely NOT be up at 6am to get ready.) There’s sleeping, which should take 6 hours but sometimes only takes 5 and a half hours, (which then leads to my needing to find an additional 45 min. for my best friends to all give me grief on how I don’t get enough sleep, which frankly eats into the sleep time because what other flexible time do I have to give up, people?) and there’s working out which is taking about an hour a day or so. Doing the math (and by the way, I have a standing rule where I don’t DO math on the weekends, people, so I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I’m making right here!) That leaves around 6 hours of time. And in that time we must carve out about 4 hours. For T.E.

That sounds bad. Like he demands four hours, or like I’m doing it out of obligation or doing it for his enjoyment only. It’s 4 hours (sometimes more!!) of time for he and I to talk and laugh and he sometimes sings to me (no, he’s not a great singer, but he sings to me anyway and I think it’s just so cool that he does, so you can just shut it, Mr. Fourth Tenor!) and we watch stuff together through the wonder of the interwebs and we have those gooey moments where one of us just spontaneously tells the other that we think they’re pretty close to perfect and we kind of can’t believe that we got lucky enough to connect and stuff… These things are all wonderful and lovely and excellent. And they all take time. Time I’m happy and eager and lucky to spend, but time none the less.

But then, at the end of the day, that’s all there is. Sneak in dinner and the odd load of laundry or changing the litter pan and I’m done! I don’t have time for other cool things, much as I’d like to. I’m living a bit of a hermitted experience despite both T.E. and I having said on a few occasions that we really don’t want either of us to become socially stunted. (look at my fancy head-shrinky terms -- heard about them on Oprah.) It doesn’t help that these four hour windows are between the hours of 4:30 and 8:30pm, so it’s a nice little chunk of the day earmarked for being at home and comfy. It’s hard to be motivated to go out and do other things, especially given that the end of our conversations are pretty much just me listening to him sleep and trying not to do the same thing. (you think it’s hard not to yawn when hear someone yawning? Try not sleeping when sitting next to someone who is cuddled and breathing that long, slow rhythm of the totally asleep…)

So when I squirrel away some time with my laptop and my thoughts and my quick little tippy-tappy fingers and want to write to you guys I’m honestly stuck more often than not for what the hell to say.

So today? I cleaned off my balcony in my fancy big-city apartment and made a place to sit and watched the sun set while I talked to T.E., my laptop slowly burning a rectangular patch on my lap. If I’m lucky I’ll get to do it again tomorrow. If you’re unlucky, it’s what I’ll write about. Bear with me for just a little while…