It's My "Party" and I Won't Have It If I Don't Want To

To quote Cher from Clueless, “I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation and all…” but I don’t get weddings. I don’t. Marriage? I guess I can understand that. It’s not something I need, but I get it. I’m totally okay with people wanting to spend their life together, and wanting a way to signal that commitment.

You may be asking right now, “well, isn’t that what a wedding is, you giant, hypocritical ignoramus?”

Friends, in my opinion, it really, REALLY, is not. Hold the phone and read more before you start yelling at me.

Let’s start with the history of weddings. You probably just went through a few, because, ya know, SUMMER WEDDINGS!! Do you know why summer weddings are so popular? June is the month associated with Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and childbearing. Weddings in her month were considered especially fortuitous and fertile. Considering how many layers the wedding party’s attire typically consists of, I find summer weddings a curiously sweaty decision, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m also not a big fan of Juno (the goddess, not the movie), but that’s because I neither like ancient Romans nor women who let their man cheat all over the place.  

Did you read pay attention to that last sentence? The ancient Roman goddess of marriage was most well known for getting to be “that wife” that continuously watched her husband cheat on her.  That’s actually pretty common in ancient mythology because the thing is, old-time marriage sucked. Women got the shit end of the stick. If they didn’t get married they were a burden to their parents. If they did get married, they were the property of their spouse and basically had to go along with whatever the man wanted. In most societies they had no legal rights. In many cases, they were trapped in the marriage with no end in sight unless the guy died.

Here in the United States, marriage today isn’t that bad. For starters, no one is forced to get married, it’s a choice. Legally, both parties are equal. Either party can dissolve the marriage. Yay for progress!

But did you know that almost all of our common wedding traditions stem from this history of marriage being sucktastic for women? Here are just a few, A FEW, examples:

·         The whole reason the bride’s family gets the fun job of paying for everything? Because way back when, women were such a HUGE inconvenience to life that a family literally PAID OFF THE GUY to marry their daughter. This was called a dowry, because that sounds nicer than something like “FUCKING TAKE THIS BITCH FROM US bribe money.”

·         Why is there a bridal party? Because even further back in time, the way you got a wife was to go kidnap her. For realz. So a guy would round up his buddies (the groomsmen) to go attack the family with the hottie daughter and steal her to be his treasured babymaker.

·         The tender moment when the father gives away the bride? More property-tradition in action! It reenacts the exchange of property, that the bride no longer “belongs” to her father, and now is the glowing goods of the husband.

I swear friends, I’m not trying to be all super-feminist here, but seriously? You want me to be excited for these things?

And that is probably the main reason I don’t get weddings. Marriage is fine and dandy and has progressed, but somehow, not only have weddings stayed steeped in really stupid traditions, but they are sold to little girls as THE THING WE WANT MOST* (until we start craving babies, that is). It is the BIGGEST DAY OF OUR LIVES! It is the day that THE BRIDE COMES FIRST! ALL HAIL THE BRIDE!

…but why?

If you are getting married and you treat your wedding as what it is – a celebration of two people committing to each other, that’s great! I am totes on board!

But instead, it’s treated as this massive achievement by the bride. Not the groom, it’s looked on for him as an ending. The end of fun, the end of freedom, etc. But for the bride? Huge achievement! She locked that dude down! Woot woot!

Wwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?  

There are many things about weddings that frankly, I just don’t like, and that is my opinion and very likely different from yours. I think though that the main issue I have with weddings is that they are the perfect example of the utter impossibility of being a woman. Sure, the institution of marriage may be better for us these days, but weddings still suck out the bride’s soul.

We treat them as this amazing achievement (as I already said and you may have guessed I’m not really thrilled about that fact either) for the bride, but we’re not there celebrating her. Oh no, we’re there to judge. That’s why she needs to look her best, why which china is used actually matters, and why the baker damn well better not f*** up the cake or shit is going to get real. Because the bride knows as she’s planning this “party” that for the rest of her life, people will remember and judge her based on how she looks, how she acts, and whether or not she played to their preferred traditions. They will complain if she doesn’t serve the drinks they like, or have their favorite dessert, or *gasp* if she bans children. No one will care that it’s her wedding. Oh, they’ll smile at her and say she looks nice, but you better believe the minute the ceremony is over everyone is gathering and comparing what they thought about it (i.e. complaining. There is a shocking amount of complaining at weddings).   

It’s not a celebration of marriage. It’s Day 1 of us judging this woman as a wife. And the best part for her? EVERYBODY gets to get in on the judgment. It’s not like Day 1 of judging her as a worker, which is limited to people at her job. Or Day 1 of judging her as a friend, which is limited to her social group. You don’t need to be married to weigh in on whether you thought the wedding was a flop or a hit. Hell, you don’t even need to have gone to the wedding to feel entitled to tell her that the dress is outdated and throwing rice is so passé. YEAH, BECAUSE SHE CAN CHANGE THAT NOW.

All in all, I’m surprised more women don’t turn into brizezillas and/or maim someone during the course of the wedding.

I’m sure I’ve ruffled a few feathers here and if I’ve been to your wedding, I swear it was lovely. No offense is meant. All I’m really saying is let’s be real and acknowledge that weddings are a ton of work, a ton of stress, and a matter of preference, and ya’ll need to stop trying to shove this idea down my throat that having a perfect wedding is the goal of my existence.

The Cake (And Everything Online) Is A Lie

A pretty common saying is “don’t judge a book by its cover,” yet we seem to all forget that particular wisdom tidbit when it comes to the internet. This can range from trusting a Wikipedia entry to believing that chick from high school is really as perfect and happy as she seems to be on Facebook. I’m not going to go all moral-high-ground ranty on you, but rather share a silly example of yet another thing not to always trust online – recipe gifs.

There is a subreddit devoted entirely to these things, and they’re popping up on my newsfeeds more often than not. It just so happened that one for a cherry recipe showed up right after I bought a bunch of cherries. The video, which you can see here, made it look super fast and easy to throw together. Since my boyfriend is a huge fan of cherry pie it seemed like fate. I hurried to the kitchen, eager to begin my gif recipe journey.

I had watched the video a few times, but had also grabbed the written instructions as that’s how I roll. I gathered my ingredients and my baking wine and turned to the first step with glee. Here is where things quickly fell to pieces.

Let’s back up for a second. Ya’ll know I bake. I do. A lot. Despite my tendency to never follow the directions exactly, everything normally turns out delicious. What I do not do though is bake pies or too many fruity desserts. I don’t really have a reason for this. I mean I’m not a huge fruit fan so that could be part of it, or it could be that I prefer time savers like jarred/canned ingredients and everyone always stresses how fruit desserts are better when they’re fresh fruit. I dunno. The point is that I’ve only ever made one or two pies in my life, so I am in no way a pie or fruit expert.

This became very obvious very quickly, as the first thing I needed to do was pit my cherries. The video showed a hack involving a bottle and a chopstick. I had both of these things. I washed and de-stemmed my cherries and got ready to pop out some pits real quick.

I’m not going to say this hack is a lie, because it technically works to get the pit out of the cherry. But the easy and clean way they present it in the video? FALSE!

I screamed a little when the first cherry pit exploded in a gush of juice. It was horrifically reminiscent of a certain Game of Thrones scene involving the Mountain. Yes, the pit was out, but my cherry was also rather deformed instead of the perfect looking one in the video. I thought maybe I was doing it wrong, so I tried a few more. Same result. I googled cherry pit removal tips and found several entries about the fail process I was already trying, and then another one involving a frosting tip. After several large gulps to harden my resolve, I switched to that method.

Eventually the cherry pits were removed. Almost all my cherries were basically torn in half, and my kitchen looked like a murder scene. There was cherry juice on the counter, on my wine bottle, and ALL over me as well.

I was a little discouraged that the first step had proven to be more difficult than the video indicated, but I continued on. The rest came together easily enough, and I popped my creation into the oven. I think it was the smell as it finished up that first alerted me that something was off from my expectations. While the recipe was called “pie” it obviously lacked a crust, and the description had called it a cross with a cake. In my mind, this translated as actually being a cake. In my boyfriend’s mind, this translated into being like a cheesecake. The actual end product was neither of these things.

Did it look pretty? Well, yeah. After an hourish of hot, sweaty, and mildly terrifying efforts it was nice to see it turn out looking good. As for the taste… NOT my cup of tea. It was neither cake nor pie but almost more like a flan, which I do not enjoy. I took it into work and thankfully my coworkers liked it so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Moral of the story? Do NOT always believe what you see online!

#TheCakeIsALie #NoReallyItWasThisTime #DontTossWordsLikeCakeOrPieAroundIfItDoesntTasteLikeFreakingCakeOrPie

The Perfect Movie Drinking Game

I have a deep love of drinking games. Really, what’s not to love? Drinking is great, games are fun, and combining those things results in hilarity. My family shares my appreciation, and as such many family events (including weddings) have been known to spontaneously erupt into Kings or 9-or-Not-9 parties. Even better though are movie drinking games. Those are my favorite by far.

In fact, I think movie drinking games are highly underappreciated. Disagree? Well, here are just a few reasons for why they’re the best kind of drinking game:

• They’re simple. You normally have a few rules and someone reminding the room when to drink. Games with far more complicated rule sets (like Kings) can be intimidating to drinking game newbies.
• They make up for crappy movies. Not everyone has the same movie taste. You may love The Departed but I hate cop movies and am overly fond of funny horror such as Cursed. It’s much easier to sit through a movie that you find otherwise uninteresting if there are drinking consequences on the table.
• They don’t require a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played The Lord of the Rings drinking game with a bunch of friends and that was a blast, but at the end of the day you can get away with only two people playing. Hell, if you’re comfortable with drinking solo, you can play drinking game movies by yourself (although I still say if you’re live-tweeting Sharknado with your friend and brilliant writer Erin at the time, it doesn’t count as being by yourself)

A good drinking game can make a movie. A bad movie drinking game doesn’t ruin it exactly, but they’re annoying nonetheless. While movie drinking games seem simple, I have come to the opinion that there is an art to crafting the perfect movie drinking game (MDG as we will call it from here on out). Since I’m generally a nice person I thought I would share my revelations with you, dear readers, so you can better suss out the best MDGs on your own.

It really all boils down to four principles. The ideal MDG is simple, virgin, consistent, and understood. That seems pretty easy, right? You’d be surprised. To further illustrate each principle, I will describe a MDG that failed at it. Bonus, I’ll even include links to the specific movie drinking game I played!

Simple – Speed Racer

I actually really, really liked this drinking game. We played it on a Thanksgiving morning and everyone had a blast. Of course, that’s because we modified it. The game actually has 13, yes, ***13*** rules. That’s far too many to keep track of! Especially once you’ve been drinking!

And actually, I think if you played with all 13 rules you might die. There is a ridiculous amount of drinking. The reason we enjoyed it so much was because we split the rules. So each person only had 3 individual rules they had to follow, and we all drank for the 13^th. A game doesn’t need to be limited to 3 rules, but I think anything with more than 7 is too much. 13 is excessive beyond all reason.

Virgin – The Room

Again, I had fun playing this one, but that’s because with The Room I didn’t really care about spoilers. Oh FYI, there’s about to be spoilers.

An ideal MDG should be okay for a virgin audience - not actual virgins, but people who haven’t watched the movie before. I had two large problems with this game. A lot of the rules state specific character names, such as “whenever Lisa and Claudette have a heart-to-heart.” Claudette is Lisa’s mother, but I don’t think she’s ever actually introduced with her name. At least not at first. To be fair, they might have said it later and I was too drunk to notice. The only reason I knew to drink was because my boyfriend had watched it already.

The other problem is that one of the rules is to take two shots when Johnny dies. Oh okay, we all now know that Johnny dies. Oops.

Consistent & Understood – American Pie 2

Occasionally you have rules that are tied to a certain scene, and that’s fine when they call it out. What doesn’t work is to have a rule that only shows up maybe 3 times in the entire movie, and you’re left trying to figure out if you missed instances, were playing it wrong, or if it was a stupid rule.

With the American Pie 2 game they either made a stupid rule, or didn’t explain it well. The rule is to take a drink when someone “mentions Tantra.” They literally only say Tantra 3 times in the entire movie. There are scenes that show things related to Finch’s Tantra obsession, but they don’t actually say it. Were you supposed to drink when anything related to Tantra happens? Because the rule says mention. Either they done messed up or it’s the worst rule ever. 3 drinks throughout an entire movie? Please, what is this a drinking game for your mom or something (note I said your mom, because my mom can crush any kind of drinking game)?

For the record, I fully support creating your own MDGs as well. I do it frequently. If you find yourself in a place where you need to make up your own rules, keep the simple, virgin, consistent, and understood requirements in mind and you are sure to succeed*! Success being measured by having fun and getting drunk, obviously. And while it goes without saying, you may want to make responsible decisions both on your drink of choice, and the number of movie drinking games you play in a row. Take it from someone who tried to do Jurassic Park right after The Room. Poor life decision right there. 

Have the perfect movie drinking game that meets all this criteria? Share it in the comments!

To Count or Not To Count

You can normally break weight-loss down into a pretty damn simple equation. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in. Seems easy enough, right?

Well, yes and no.

It can be incredibly hard to accurately track your caloric intake versus outtake. Yay for apps and #science and all that, but human beings are not robots that always have a standardized caloric burn rate set at the factory. There are averages, and they can be generally calculated by your height & weight, but those are still estimations. Think about those friends you know that can eat WTFever they want and still are skinny as a rail. Unless they have a stomach worm (ew) they probably have a higher metabolism, meaning they are naturally burning calories faster than you. Lucky bitches.

Before we start yelling at all the skinny people though, the point is actually that not only does caloric burn vary by person; it also varies for the same individual over the course of their life. Basically, it’s inconsistent.

Even if you can narrow down your daily caloric burn to a fairly accurate estimate, there are still external factors. What food you eat can rev or slow your metabolism. You can also burn additional calories through exercise or really any sort of activity that gets your heart rate up.

But let’s pretend that you figure that shit out pretty well too, and you start counting calories to make sure you’re falling under that caloric burn each day. You can eat whatever you want, right? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.

If your only goal is to lose weight this actually isn’t false logic. That’s why people can do ridiculous things like only eat Chipotle for a year or go on the Twinkie diet and not gain all the weight in the world. I really think it should go without saying that this doesn’t mean it’s actually doing your body good. Most apps that offer caloric tracking also show you the macro calculations, so that you can make sure your calories aren’t all falling under the FAT portion of the chart. Different diets suggest different combinations of fat, protein, and carbs, but it’s pretty easy to edit your goals to stick to the diet you’re following.

So having said all that, assuming you have the knowledge and approach your caloric tracking the right way, I should be in favor of it. And hell, if it works for you, woot! Congrats! You do the thing!

But I don’t think it works for me.

What’s weird about this is again, if your only goal is weight-loss, I have to say tracking my food works in the sense that I LOSE WEIGHT LIKE A SONNABITCH! I first noticed then when I added food tracking to my jazzercise routine, and the pounds FLEW off. It was miraculous! It was justification! I looked great!

I felt awful. My perfectionist crazy went, well, crazy.

Here’s why I find calorie tracking problematic:

•  It’s a fun sucker. There is nothing better at killing the joy in life than to realize that your favorite macaroni and cheese is LITERALLY MORE CALORIES THAN YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO EAT IN A DAY. #TearsForYears
• It’s hard to be accurate, which makes it frustrating. Especially when you’re eating out. While restaurants are generally getting better at including calorie counts, you need to read the fine print. They rarely include the calories for additional parts of the meal. If you prefer to eat at local restaurants, good luck! And figuring out the calorie count for home-made meals is enough to ruin* the fun of cooking (I assume, I don’t actually find it fun in the first place so it’s really a shitty situation all around). In desperation you may turn to pre-prepared meals that gleefully announce their calories and nutrients on the package.  Your heart dies a little each day from the excess sodium. 
• It’s addictive. If you like lists (which clearly I do), tracking things, or are a little competitive, please do me a favor and don’t start counting calories. Staying under that daily goal becomes the new purpose of your life. Every time someone offers you food, all you think about is what it’s going to do to your count. In a few weeks of tracking I got to the point where the app I was using would give me alerts for eating too FEW calories in a day (oops).  

It’s all well and good to want to lose weight, and I think the best way to do so is an effective lifestyle change, but you should still be having a LIFE. Eat the delicious goodies occasionally. Have some wine. Enjoy your friend’s birthday without being *that* person asking to switch restaurants so you can get a certain salad with lean protein.

If you can do that while counting calories, as I said, more power to you! For me though, it’s a little too all-consuming. Really, this post is mainly a reminder to myself of why it would be a bad idea to bust out my app again and knock off those 10 pounds I want gone for the summer. General healthy eating and exercise when possible is the way to go!

Probably. I mean at the end of the day I’m not a nutritionist, just a gal that really likes to read fitness articles and post diet memes. 

Important Things You Vaguely Remember – American Pie and The Fappening

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Little Bit Brad Pitt

Have you watched multiple Brad Pitt movies? Have you noticed yet that he has the obsessive need to have something in his mouth at all times? Whether he’s eating in a scene, chewing gum or whatever it is that men chew (is it called chew? Is that a thing? I could google it but I’m lazy), or sucking on a spoon, his mouth is always in use.

I get it, Brad Pitt. I do. It’s called an oral fixation, and you are not alone.

But for those of you that think oral fixations are all memes and blowjob jokes, it’s more than that. Let’s start with the facts.

The oral stage is a Freud thing. Do you remember Freud? He’s the guy that thought your personality was developed through psychosexual stages.  An oral fixation occurred when one was weaned too early or late, and could lead to issues with eating, drinking, smoking, or nail biting. Now that’s an awkward conversation to have with your mom (Happy early Mother’s Day, thanks for weaning me early because you popped out another kid right away, amiright??!).   

Unless you’re trying to get free drinks at a bar, you probably don’t want to admit to an oral fixation. You can’t move forward until you recognize a problem though, so let’s talk again about my on-again, off-again relationship with Diet Pepsi.

Some of you may have wondered why I have such a hard time giving up Diet Pepsi. Why I can’t just switch to coffee or some less toxic form of caffeine, and move on with my life. Well, I’ve decided it comes down to three things:

1.     Similar caffeine amounts

2.     Ease of access

3.     Hydration issues/Oral fixation

I actually tried recently drinking coffee instead of Diet Pepsi in the afternoon. What I very quickly discovered is that there is a HUGE difference in caffeine between them. I thought I was pretty baller when it came to caffeine because I drink a ridiculous amount of pop and it doesn’t affect me. I ordered an Americano at Starbucks because I didn’t know what it was but saw that it didn’t have a lot of calories. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls per se, but I was literally bouncing everywhere I walked and talking like a crazy person for the rest of the afternoon.

So when it comes to caffeine, I find tea or iced tea a better substitute, until you start talking about ease of access. We don’t have iced tea that I like at work. We don’t even have regular tea that I like at work. So if I want tea of some sort, I either need to bring it or go run and get some every day. I don’t always have that kind of extra time in the workday to make a caffeine run.

But the real deal breaker is my hydration issue, which stems from my oral fixation. See, drinking is how I keep my mouth occupied. You can’t snack all day without gaining weight and I’m not a huge gum fan because I don’t want to necessarily be chewing, so I drink something.

I drink more in a day than you. I am absolutely confident in this statement. Because not only am I drinking Diet Pepsi all day, I’m drinking water too. Oh, and I normally start my morning with shakeology for breakfast, so I’m also drinking that. And maybe a glass (or two) of wine in the evening.

Let me put this in numbers to make this more understandable. I recently read a Thrillist article about a man drinking a gallon of water every day as part of a challenge. I read it and laughed, because I was pretty sure I already drink a gallon of water a day.  So I tracked my intake for a few days, and guess what, I drink around 130 ounces of water EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY without even trying. Weekends I do drink less, but I’ve only been out of bed about 3 hours and I’ve already had about 35 ounces of water and 20 ounces of Diet Pepsi, so there’s that.

The thing about drinking so much is that it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. You get thirsty far easier than your dehydrated friends. If I’m not given something to drink for a 2 hour period, I almost die. Forget hangry, thrangry is the real struggle. You’re also hitting the bathroom constantly.  I’m always convinced that people think I have a bladder problem. I don’t, I swear. If you drank the same amount of liquid you’d be in and out of the bathroom all day too.

That’s why I like Diet Pepsi. It doesn’t go through me as quickly as water, so if I have a long meeting I can focus on drinking Diet Pepsi and don’t need to run out to the bathroom halfway through. That doesn’t work with coffee because the cup quickly runs out, and then I’m drinking water. When I don’t drink Diet Pepsi, I find myself drinking EVEN MORE WATER THAN USUAL. Surely there’s a point at which you get overhydrated (I’m purposely not googling this one because I don’t want to make myself paranoid)? 

So I feel you, Brad Pitt. People may laugh at your oral fixation, but I get it. If you read this and want to have our own private support group, I’m totally in.

24 Symptoms of a Fitbit Addict

I realized something. I have well and truly become addicted to my Fitbit. I was walking to the breakroom and hit the button to see how many steps I already had, when I saw the alert. The Fitbit was DEAD. There would be no tracking of steps that day. There would be no heart rate monitoring.

I went into a full out tizzy.

Now thankfully it happened that one of my coworkers had their charger on them. I immediately sat at my desk, stopped all movement, and plugged in my Fitbit. Then I thought about it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I didn’t wear my Fitbit other than the 30 minutes each morning when I take it off to shower (yes I am aware that I take long showers) and charge it. The only reason it was dead was because I am in the midst of moving and kept forgetting the charger at the wrong apartment.

Yet I don’t have many of the typical signs of Fitbit addiction. You see, I have given up on my step goal. Most Fitbit addicts plan their life around hitting that 10,000 step high each day. While I fell into this category when I first got my Fitbit, the past two years of struggle with my freaking busted knee of death and pain have completely changed my perspective. Somehow though, I’m still addicted. How do I know? Here are some signs of Fitbit addiction that have nothing to do with a step count:

1. You recognize other Fitbitters by their gear.
2. They recognize you too, because you never take your Fitbit off. Step count > fancy parties.
3. You can both do this, because even if they don’t have the same Fitbit as you, you have eyed up the other options on the website so many times that you can recognize any Fitbit model at a glance.
4. This is why you are also prone to long conversations with other Fitbitters about why you each choose your specific model and the pros/cons of each.
5. You actually open every email you get from Fitbit. Every. Single. One.
6. Because you NEED to know what new models and/or features are coming out.
7. Even if you’re not planning to buy a new Fitbit anytime soon, because remember, YOU ALREADY OWN ONE.
8. Actually at some point, you may have owned more than one Fitbit when you made the life-altering decision to switch models.
9. You’ve also have tracked your water intake.
10. You’ve tracked food too.
11. You have even logged exercises when Fitbit doesn’t recognize them. Cleaning DOES count because it’s an option.
12. You have planned your life around when you take your Fitbit off to charge it.
13. You do this to make sure the Fitbit NEVER DIES.
14. Because you know that if your steps/sleep/stairs weren’t getting registered, there would be no point to the day.
15. Which is why if you ever forget to put your Fitbit back on after charging, the whole day is ruined.
    
16. EVEN IF this was during a lazy day when you weren’t getting in a lot of activity. It doesn’t matter. You still want to know. Because charts.
17. You have used said charts as evidence that you didn’t sleep well and people should give you more caffeine/stop sucking at life.
18. If you have heart rate monitoring, you have used said charts as evidence that people are STRESSING YOU THE F*CK OUT.
19. Which speaking of f*ck, you have totally checked your charts to see if sex registers on them.
    
20. And if you have heart rate monitoring, you have looked to see if particularly noteworthy experiences have higher peaks. Giggity.
21. At least once you’ve shared a milestone on social media. To be clear, one of the badges Fitbit awards, not a sex-related-tracking milestone.
22. You get unduly excited when friends then get their own Fitbits.
23. You then proceed to judge them based on their weekly step count.
24. You also identify which friends you refuse to do challenges with, because those bitches would always win. 

1.