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.      

A Question of Workouts

I am experiencing a crisis of faith. Not in religion or politics or those other silly things people spend all their time debating, but the real important area of my life – jazzercise.

For those who don’t have the pleasure of seeing me in person, it may shock you to know (especially since I used to talk about it all the time) that I haven’t been consistently going to jazzercise for almost two years now. This is because of my knee. It is a fail knee. It should not have passed inspection.

Back in April 2014, while at jazzercise, something went horribly, horribly wrong. I stepped out for a lunge and immediately felt something in my knee hate me. Being me, I finished class. I could walk at first, but the more I tried to power through the evening  the stiffer it became, until eventually the entire knee locked up and I could no longer bend it. This continued for a few weeks with the knee doing better in the morning and consistently getting worse as the day went on. Eventually, I went to a doctor, and per their suggestion did MULTIPLE MONTHS of physical therapy. This didn’t really fix the problem so I went back to the doctor, and they basically said stop doing stuff and rest. And thus began a cycle of me “resting” my knee by doing literally NOTHING for a bit, then trying to strengthen it up, and then just merely walking too much in a day would regress it back to being locked up and sucking at life.

It has been frustrating. And while at this point it’s doing the best so far since the initial incident, that’s because I have pretty much changed my entire lifestyle to avoid doing things that irritate my knee. That includes driving. I now drive entirely with my left foot (don’t worry, I’m really good at it by this point. It’s not illegal, right? I have yet to investigate).

Workouts have been one of the most frustrating parts. When I injured my knee I was at my peak. I was going to jazzercise 4-7 times a week, walking to hit 10,000 steps each day, and starting to do some ab routines at home as well. I looked and felt great. During the first year of injury I tried doing other workouts like swimming or walking that are low impact and were recommended, and I still ran into problems if I tried to do as much as I wanted. I purchased PiYo during one of the good periods, but found that the intense schedule of several days of working out in a row was doing more harm than good. My goal throughout it all was to find something I could do in order to build up the muscles and get back to jazzercise.

I’m kind of at that point now, but it’s still not ideal.

I have been able to walk or do workout videos at home for a few months without setback. Buoyed by this success I went to one jazzercise class in November, and one again this past weekend.

The great news is I could make it through the whole class and didn’t hurt myself. Yay!

The troublesome news is that it wasn’t very satisfying. In order to not hurt myself, I had to modify a LARGE amount of the routine. I thought it would be okay, because as any good jazzerciser knows there is typically both a low-impact and high-impact version of the song. But I’ve never done the low-impact before, so I don’t immediately know what it is. While the instructors will show you the low-impact version, what I found is that several times they do it halfway through the song. I totally understand that with pacing and whatnot this may be necessary. It doesn’t really help me though. I spend the first half of the song rambling about like a buffoon, and mainly just doing side steps because I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.

The other problem is that jazzercise is now focusing on several different class types. This last weekend I ended up in a Strength class. This class doesn’t really have the cardio aspect but rather uses the routines you normally have at the end to strengthen muscles. Almost all of the routines were standing. And guess what? Standing legs consists mainly of squats and lunges, NEITHER of which I can do more than a few comfortably.

I suppose I could have tried and figured out something to do on the floor, but that would mean I’m completely messing up the room to go try and come up with my own routine. At which point, why am I even at jazzercise?

What I used to love so much about jazzercise were things like the music, the dancing, the camaraderie, and feeling accomplished with myself for working out. On Saturday, I liked the music and seeing some old friends, but that was about it. I felt more frustrated than anything because I couldn’t do so much of the routine. I felt the same even when I was in the normal class in November, so I’m not sure that’s going to change.

Am I over jazzercise?

I truly hope that at some point my knee will be more stable and I will be able to fully participate again, but for now (and possibly months or *gulp* years to come), I’m wondering if jazzercise IS NO LONGER RIGHT FOR ME.

This feels so wrong to say, like I’m renouncing the beliefs of my childhood.

But here’s the thing, if I don’t feel good about exercising I’m not going to do it.

I know what works for me. I need a routine to follow. I need to be able to modify when necessary without feeling like I’m throwing others off, and I need to have a routine that I modify sparingly, not something where I’m changing basically the entire damn workout. Because I am so unexpectedly social these days, I also need to be able to fit my workouts in when I can instead of going to a dedicated class every night.

I’ve found all these things by staying in and using a combination of walking and workout videos I enjoy (Tracy Anderson to name one, which targets all the muscles physical therapy really wanted me to focus on). I still get motivated by talking to others or doing online challenge groups. I was doing this as a placeholder to returning to jazzercise, but at this point, do I even want to return full time?  

And I swear to god if one more person suggests weight-lifting as an alternative, I WILL HIT THEM. OH, YOU THINK NO ONE HAS EVER MADE THAT SUGGESTION BEFORE!?! IN WHAT WAY IS THAT ANYTHING LIKE JAZZERCISE OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT IT IS EXERCISE? WHILE WE’RE SUGGESTING RANDOM ASS EXERCISE OPTIONS, WHAT ABOUT WATER BALLET?!

Oh hold up, that one might actually be interesting… 

The Plagiarism Paranoia

I’m not sure how many of my readers are aware of who AmySchumer is and that she was recently accused of stealing jokes, because let’s be honest, you don’t all have my Buzzfeed addiction. For the purpose of this post it actually doesn’t really matter if you know the whole spiel or not except that this was the catalyst for bringing up yet again one of my semi-constant paranoia’s. I live in very frequent terror that I am going to be accused of stealing creative content.

Not jokes, because I am not a funny, joke-telling person. This really applies to two of my creative outlets: writing and nail art.

Since I started posting fanfiction back in the day (which speaking of, I super need to finish that story I added three years ago and never finished the last chapter. Oops. Any fanfiction readers will know what a bitch move that is) I have been dreading the possibility that someone is going to scream PLAGIARISM. To be clear, I have not plagiarized. I do not steal ideas from people. AS FAR AS I KNOW.

Because in my opinion, sometimes people have very similar ideas, maybe even stemming from the same source. It is near impossible to prove whose idea happened first. This became even clearer when I started getting into nail art. I have a few Youtube personalities I follow, and they often have very similar design. There are SO MANY COMMENTS from fans going back and forth claiming Person A made the video first and Person B is stealing and yada yada that it gives me nightmares about posting something of my own.

But for example, a month or two ago (or maybe longer, time perception is not one of my strong suits) everyone suddenly heard of the glass nail trend. Within like a day, both of my favorite nail people had a video showing how to do glass nails. Do I think they stole from each other? No! I think they saw the trend and created their own version, just like WE ALL DO. How many ideas are wholly and completely original, with no basis whatsoever on any other existing content out in the world? NOT THAT MANY. THAT’S WHY THERE ARE A MILLION MOVIES WITH THE SAME PLOT OVER AND OVER.

One of my designs

I have been debating whether or not to enter a nail art contest recently, and honestly, half of my hesitation is that I don’t know how “original” any of my designs are. They wouldn’t be deliberately copying anyone, but most of my techniques were learned from watching other nail art videos. There would be similarities, obviously. What if there already exists a design that DOES match mine that I don’t know about because I clearly haven’t seen every nail art design out in the world!?!  WHAT THEN?!

Actually, on a smaller level I already worry about this with my instagram account. I’ve been posting some nail pictures and while I tag the artist if I followed a tutorial, again, some of my “original” ideas are loosely based on things they’ve done that I then changed up.

Another set of my nails!

Is that copying? Is that plagiarism? Am I an idea thief? If I don’t even remember a video but then a year later the design re-emerges in my subconscious, am I a bad human being? Is there a magic ratio where if 40% (or more, or less) of the creative content is new, it’s okay?

In case you’re curious, the other half of my hesitation on entering the nail art contest is that it has to be a video entry and I’ve never made a video before other than work stuff. This is despite the fact that several of my coworkers want me to start a video channel for my rage-baking, nail art, and/or retelling of movies as they claim it is hysterical. I will neither confirm nor deny my level of entertainment value. 

Weight For It. No, Don't

I struggled over whether to make resolutions this year. Last year I didn’t, I just tried to cook more at home and eat healthier. I figured since this was more of a general life change and less of a random “I’m going to lose 10 pounds!” resolution I’d stick to it better. Guess what? It’s now 2016, and I am yet again planning to work on cooking more because I totally stopped doing it for the last few months of 2015. So my theory may have been flawed.

But I don’t want to make resolutions that are negative. Thinking things like “I won’t eat out” or “I’ll stop drinking diet pepsi all the time” aren’t particularly healthy mindsets either. After much debate, I decided I am making resolutions for January. At the end of January I am going to see how I’m doing with them and evaluate for the next month, and so on, and so forth. My resolutions are simple:

1.     Cook at least two recipes a week.

2.     Workout at least two times a week.

These resolutions will come in handy since my family’s weight loss competition is starting once again. My goal with this competition actually is rarely to lose weight, but rather to stay accountable to myself for making healthier choices, because I know for example that staying in all weekend and eating nothing but leftover Chinese food tends to show up on the scale. More importantly, it’s also doing horrible things to my body and organs, but that’s not so easily visible. The scale is.

Which brings me to my real topic of the day. Weight.

I normally avoid talking about anything I know people have strong opinions on, because I like to avoid conflict. But I am getting FUCKING SICK AND TIRED of weight shaming.

Notice, I did not say fat shaming, although that’s deplorable too. I said weight shaming. Because here’s the thing boys and girls. Pay attention, and you’ll notice it’s going BOTH WAYS.

The entire idea of body weight in general is an interesting concept. I say interesting, because basically we’re taking one measurement of a human being and using it to define them. What’s even more interesting about this concept is the fact that weight can only tell you so much. The composition of each person’s body is unique. 140 pounds on me can look completely different than 140 pounds on another girl, even if we’re the same height.

Using a cooking example (since by god I’m going to cook more, just you watch), let’s say a recipe calls for 1 pound of squash. You’re hardly ever going to see that, because, spoiler, THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SQUASH. If I use a pound of butternut that’s going to be a very different recipe than if I used a pound of spaghetti squash. Does that pound include the original squash, skin and seeds and all? Is it just the cubed portion? What does that even mean?

So when I’m reading a book and it’s says “she was about 100 pounds soaking wet” as some kind of compliment, I get angry. What does that tell me? Is she short and taunt, with a lot of that weight coming from muscle? Is she taller and looking rather unhealthy? Why does one characteristic mean so much?

I understand that weight IN COMBINATION with other factors can be used to get a general idea of a person’s health. It’s an easy measurement to get, so a lot of times it becomes the defining factor. That’s wrong. Now if you’re over or underweight and have OTHER UNHEALTHY WARNING SIGNS or live a GENERALLY UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE, that’s something to worry about. However I do believe it’s entirely possible to not fall exactly in the category that stupid ass chart says your weight should be, and still be healthy. So suck it.

 Sadly, people take it a step further and use weight to judge

people in general. This is wrong. Fucking duh this is wrong. What people to seem to get that’s even more wrong is to combat this by DISPARAGING THE OTHER WEIGHT GROUPS.

The thing is, we are so used to judging ourselves in comparison with others, and we see things in black and white. Either being skinny is good, or being curvy is good. So in order to feel good about being curvy, we put down the “skinny bitches.” In order to feel good about being thin, we put down the “fat hoes.” What the flying fuck?

I understand this feeling. I get it too. I’m working on it. It’s all tied in to the problem with women accepting their beauty, which we’ve already discussed. With weight, it can be even harder, because while there is no firm definition of beauty, weight is definable. Being a size two versus ten is definable. And if we’re being told that one of those sizes is better, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing it.

Please don’t. Please don’t for one second think that your weight makes you who you are. If you are using 2016 to make weight-loss related goals, do it as a general part of BEING HEALTHY and for the love of whatever god you believe in, be careful. It is so easy to start with good intentions and become too focused on that scale, so that you’re now easy prey for unhealthy ways of losing weight, body dysmorphia, or an eating disorder.  

It can be a struggle to change this mindset. Watch out for yourself. Watch for how certain media forms or people in your life make you feel. If it’s negative, get away from it. Make 2016 the year you really start to care about and take care of you.