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… 

You’ll Find Me in Da (Strip) Club

This past week I finally went to my first strip club! My life has previously been bereft of strip clubs. That’s not to say that I haven’t had other strip experiences. I’ve gone to a few male strip shows. I also recently saw Magic Mike XXL and had a very similar experience as my friend Erin where people basically treated the movie like the strippers were actually there. Yet somehow I hadn’t made it to a real strip club. I’ve even been to Las Vegas MANY times, with guy friends, and they’re always like “no I don’t like strip clubs I don’t wanna go wah wah wah.”

I suppose most people don’t find it concerning that they haven’t been to a strip club, but I will readily admit that the more I can’t have something the more I want it. So when I found out last minute that I was now part of a birthday event involving a strip club, I was ECSTATIC.

And unlike many other things in life, the actual experience did NOT disappoint. Not only did I have a pretty epic time, I also learned several important things about going to strip clubs.

Let’s set the scene! This was a birthday event for one of my male friends. The night started at a bar downtown. I had prepared with a mutual female friend. We had gotten some cash, pregamed, and agonized together over what exactly one wears on a super hot night to go to a bar and then strip club. Our final decision was jean skirts and cute shirts. This was a bad decision, and I will explain why later.

Anywho, so we started downtown meeting our guy friend and one of his friends. I realize if we keep saying friend over and over this is going to get confusing, but I am also loathe to name people who may not want to admit they were involved in this madness, so I’m giving everybody code names. Female friend is now FF, bday friend is BDF, and his various friends are X1, X2, and X3.

X1-3 showed up at the bar as we were drinking and waiting for 10:15, when apparently a limo was coming to get us. I had never met any of the X friends before. They were all males, and all apparently familiar with the strip club life. All were quickly told this was going to be my first time. All begged me to get a lap dance, and I said I’d consider it.

At 10:15 our limo showed up, and this was when I started my learning experience. You see, I assumed somebody had rented a limo from some random limo place. You know, like little girls do for their sweet 16 or prom or whatever. No.

Lesson Learned 1:  Apparently, strip clubs have special limos you can get to come pick you up. You can tell it’s a strip club limo as unlike normal ones, there is a giant tv in the limo playing videos of the strip club. X1 kept recognizing people in the video. X1 may be a little overly familiar with that particular strip club.

We got to the strip club, and first thing I noticed was the ATM in the corner. Here FF and I were all concerned about making sure we had a bunch of cash, and they keep an ATM right in the lobby. I bet it charges a lot though, so maybe it’s still a good idea to bring your own cash.

We were quickly ushered to our table area. We apparently had bottle service, so there was a giant bottle of vodka at our table along with several mixers. We were barely there a minute before the swarm of women appeared.

Lesson Learned 2: If nothing else, this confirmed the age-old adage that everyone has different tastes. There was every possible kind of beautiful woman you could imagine, and the six of us had very different opinions on which were the most beautiful. Several times, all I could think of was the moment in Fired Up! when they're looking around at all the hot girls saying "it's like the hot-chick produce aisle! I don't even know where to start. Do we go from tall to short or blond to redhead? Maybe just iPod-shuffle mode."

Oh and the dances! Let’s talk about that. I ended up getting 3 lap dances over the course of the evening. When we first arrived X3 had spent a few minutes explaining some general rules of the club. A dance is determined by when the song ends. A dance is $20. Shortly thereafter FF decided to buy me a dance.

Lesson Learned 3: Strippers will cheat the dance rules. Okay maybe not all of them, but definitely that first dance I got was the worst. It was like 30 seconds, and then she charged both me, and FF, because neither one of us realized the other had paid. CHEATING I TELL YOU!

Dance 2 was shared with X1, and involved much more talent. Also this was when I realized that strippers smell AMAZING. I don’t know how they do that. I should have asked, as some of them were way more talkative than others. I also noted that the clever strippers took off their ridiculously tall shoes to give lap dances. Very smart of them.

I probably would have been quite happy not getting any more dances at that point, but BDF decided to buy me another one, and I figured it’d be rude to say no to the birthday boy.

Lesson Learned 4: Do not wear a skirt to the strip club. My third dancer was my favorite. She was super nice. They had told her it was my first time there. She led me over to the side and to my shock, pushed my legs apart. This was the beginning of some acrobatic feats my mind can barely begin to process. I probably would have enjoyed the experience more had I not been concerned the entire time that I was flashing the rest of the room.

This also brings up one of the things I never quite learned the entire night – what does one do with their hands? Are you or are you not allowed to touch the strippers?? I thought I wasn’t supposed to, but then I’d look around and people were straight up squeezing things I didn’t think we were allowed to squeeze.

Now I will say one drawback of being a girl at the strip club is you get to peek behind the curtain. I wanted to be dazzled by these women, and I was. But then I’d go to the bathroom and there’d be strippers in there clearly messed up and ruining the illusion. I don’t understand why the strippers don’t get their own bathroom. This is another unanswered question I may have my entire life.

Ooh, another question – what is the point of making it rain?? Near the end of the night one guy was just throwing tons of $1 all over the stage as the girl wiggled her butt near him. I understand that if you go up with money they come dance with you. Okay, I get that. Throwing extra money keeps them there longer. But this guy was just continually throwing the money. Like a $1 a second. Surely one can space it out longer? I will tell you now that stripper did nothing extra special for him (that I saw, on the stage. To be fair I have no idea if maybe she went to give him an extra dance later) than she had for anyone else. The sheer amount of money he threw boggles my mind. She couldn’t even pick it all up! They had to give her buckets. BUCKETS.

It seems like for every moment I learned something I just had more unanswered questions, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe one is never supposed to really understand the wonders of the strip club. Maybe it is meant to be a memory clothed in confusion and soaked in alcohol. If nothing else was gained from the night, I am a little more hesitant to ever quit my job and become a stripper. That shit takes skillz.

Princess or Pixie?

Thanks to my friend Erin, I’ve recently lost hours of my life on The Oatmeal. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a site with a lot of funny comics. My favorite though is actually a drawing summarizing the pros and cons to a pros and cons list. Considering I’m a sucker for a good list, I was highly amused. The punchline is that it’s a “clever way to rationalize a bad decision.” First I laughed about this, and then I had an existential crisis. Have all my decisions been bad? Am I incapable of making good decisions when I really take the time to think through them?? Since I’m in the midst of a big debate with myself, this was enough to throw me for a mental loop.

So here’s my current predicament: I’m seriously considering chopping my hair off. And this, for me, is a pretty big freaking deal.

Let’s have a little back story first. My hair is long. It has almost always been long(ish) since I was a kid. Now as it gets long I get antsy and want to cut it. Every few years something spurs me to actually cut it shorter (not short, shorter, that’s a significant difference), and inevitably I hate it and spend several weeks (minimum) being miserable with my new hair. Having said that, you’re probably thinking “why is this even under discussion then you flaming idiot?!” I hear you. Generally when I start getting in the mood to cut it, I distract myself with a new color, new wardrobe, or hell even planning a new tattoo is a safer bet. But generally, I cut my hair as a spur of the moment thing when the mood strikes me. This time, I’ve been debating it for about 3-4 months, and instead of making a pro vs con list, I thought I’d take a moment to really think about WHY. Why do I like my long hair so much, versus why would I want to cut it (don’t even tell me that’s the same thing as a pro & con list. I will find you, and slap you).

Here’s what this would look like on a superficial level, which in my opinion is about what I would get out of comparing pros & cons.

WHY LONG?

·       I can wash & wear.

·       I have a LOT of options: I can braid, twist, put up, straighten, etc.

·       It’s taken years to grow, so I should enjoy it while I can.

·       People like my hair.

·       It looks like princess hair.

·       There’s the possibility that I’ll have yet another emotional meltdown if I cut it short.

WHY SHORT?

·       It is freaking hot (I should probably clarify – not that short hair looks hot, but my current hair keeps me very hot in regards to temperature).

·       It currently takes a year and a half to wash.

·       At times I literally plan my life around washing my hair.

·       It takes extra money and a ton of effort to dye.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not really getting to the root of the problem. Here’s what this comparison would look like with all the deep internal stuff I would never admit to on a pro & con list:

WHY LONG?

·       Long hair is more feminine. I actually spend a lot of time questioning my femininity. I hang out with mainly men, I have yet to master makeup, I drink beer and eat junk, and I talk like my brother. In retrospect, maybe I should be doing a rant here about why it’s ridiculous that those are things I feel like I should base my femininity on, but I’m not that motivated today. Nonetheless, as a girl that’s frequently told she’s “one of the guys,” having long hair helps remind me that I am in fact a girl.

·       In high school my psychology professor told me I like to hide behind my hair. I thought he was referring to when I would literally put my head down and peek through it. However, I realized it’s more than that. I do not like my face. I don’t necessarily hate it, but I don’t like it either. When I’m having a day where it’s particularly bugging me for whatever reason, I keep my hair down. When I don’t want someone to read my emotions, I play with it. For Pete’s sake I had bangs for the last 2 years because I realized they better hid my eyes. It’s my safety blanket, and I super don’t want to give that up.

·       Without a doubt, my hair is my most complimented feature. In school, before we really learned social conventions, the other kids in my class used to play with my hair all the time (actually random people in bars still stroke it, but that’s a little creepy). When I babysat the kids would beg me to let them style it. People love the length, they love the thickness (yeah they do *insert dirty wink*), and generally no matter what color I dye it they love that too.

SO WTF SHORT??

·       In most aspects of life I am a practical person. The impracticality of my hair these days is starting to drive me mildly insane. Now in the past when my dad suggested I would find short hair more practical I disagreed because it requires styling, and I’m lazy. I’m starting to think though that if I cut it short enough that wouldn’t be an issue.

·       I’m also starting to think that far too much of my identity is tied to my hair. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I consider it worrisome. What if I had to have short hair (or no hair) for some other reason? Why have I let it define me? Why do I put so much weight on it? What am I like when I’m not basing my worth off something stupid like having long princess hair?

·       Being brutally honest, we already know I base a lot of my decisions off what I’m told to do/not do. As a teenager I was frequently told I would end up cutting my hair short like my mother, so I have specifically avoided doing that. Same thing, when I moved to Texas everyone told me I’d cut my hair the first summer because of the heat, and I liked the idea of proving them wrong. These are actually really stupid reasons to have long hair.

·       It has been suggested a time or two that I have control issues. One of the reasons I like my hair long is that it helps pull out the curl, so it’s more wavy. One of the reasons I don’t like my hair shorter is that it does what it wants and I’d have to put effort into styling it if I don’t want it to look a little crazy. I am absolutely not agreeing that I have control issues, but it might be a good exercise for me to go with a style that let’s my hair be a little wild and out of control.

·       I like short hair on people. Yes, I also like very long hair, but I often admire short cuts and wish I had them. The only thing preventing me really was a fear that I’d do it and then hate it, and be miserable. I hate the idea of not trying something just because I’m afraid. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize I had long hair the entire time simply because that’s what I was comfortable with, without finding out if I liked something different. And diving even further, I hate the idea that the length of my hair can so greatly affect my happiness. If nothing else, I think having short hair would force me to confront some of my (very stupid) hangups about my looks. I’m pretty sure if I could do that I could also be more confident in myself, which would be awesome.

Now having said all of that, I don’t think I have the guts yet to try short hair. I have an appointment to “trim” my hair this weekend, so I have all week to think about this more. And maybe make more lists. Or spreadsheets.

The Lady-Bro

Today we are going to talk about an elusive and fascinating creature, the lady-bro.

A few weeks ago my brother and some of his friends determined that I am a lady-bro. Since then I have been trying to figure out what is a lady-bro, why am I a lady-bro, and is that something I agree with.

I argued with them several times on whether or not I should be classified as a lady-bro. This will feed in later to the definition of a lady-bro, but part of the reason I argued with them was a question of their motivation.

See, they also have this game called “bull moose,” wherein if you are drinking using your right hand and someone sees this and says “bull moose,” you have to finish the drink. They had tried this on me several times but as I had never heard of this ridiculous reasoning I was ignoring them, and finally they explained it is a very important game for gentlemen as that way when you are introduced to someone and shake hands like gentlemen, your hand isn’t cold. This only fueled my determination to not play since I am clearly not a gentleman. Probably not even a gentlewoman. And this friends is how it came about that they declared me a lady-bro.

It’s not that I was offended at being designated a lady-bro, it’s that I don’t think I really qualify. So that’s brings up the question, what exactly is a lady-bro?

Urban dictionary has a few definitions, the one with the least typos and ridiculous spelling being:

“A lady-bro is, first and foremost, chill. She is able to hold her own in the company of all males. She can relate to conversation at bro-night and can even offer further stimulation to the gathering. However, this characterization is not sufficient for the definition of a lady-bro!

She is more than just a girl who is refreshingly easy to hang out with. She is the girlfriend of a bro who is ALSO easy to hang out with.”

So right there, I’m out, as I am not the girlfriend of a bro. Nor do I wear tapout shirts or have black & blonde hair as some of the other definitions mention.

But in my mind, a lady-bro is more of a Robin Scherbatsky type of person. She can drink whisky, smoke cigars, and shoot a gun. She prefers dogs over cats and doesn’t do the normal girl emotional thing. Also, she’s smoking hot.

I cannot drink whisky to save my life. Scotch and bourbon are also out. In fact the mere smell makes me want to vomit. I do, however, drink beer. I know a teeny bit about it (like I know the difference between an IPA and a stout and what to expect if you tell me it’s “hoppy,” which in my mind is like the bare minimum of knowledge for a beer drinker but apparently is impressive for a girl to know).  

I realized though that the idea of a lady-bro ties back into the constant debate on whether or not girls can be nerds.

See there seems to be this mental image of girls as cat-obsessed, needy, crazy, calorie-counting, football-hating creatures that spend thousands on clothes, wear makeup to bed, and can’t understand or appreciate anything that men enjoy. Certainly some of these may be true for some people, and that’s okay. I am not here to judge. I just don’t understand why the assumption is that girls can’t enjoy “manly” things.

It may feel like I’m beating a dead horse because I’ve talked about this a little before, but it still irks me. Especially the idea that girls aren’t nerds. Apparently we’ve developed a term, lady-bro, for girls that share some guy traits, but we can’t even acknowledge that girls can be just as much of nerds as guys?

Just the other day I was betraying my nerd tendencies by talking about how I really wanted to name a daughter Trixie Hobbitses. I had a room full of people staring at me because they didn’t get it. My brother is playing WoW again and on one of our phone calls was describing all the ways they’ve changed the game since we last played, which of course makes me want to play WoW again. That would be a bad life decision though.

So it made me wonder, was I classified as a lady-bro because of general deviation from the girl stereotype, and not necessarily because I engage in “bro” behavior?

I don’t know, partly because sometimes I can’t judge what is “guy” versus “girl” behavior. I know in the summer I love to prance about in dresses. That seems girly. I also know I love Archer, and I recently found out that is considered a “guy” show. Really? Why?

Am I lady-bro? I don’t know, but partly because I don’t know whether there should even be a lady-bro designation. Why can’t we just accept that there is no longer a clear-cut difference between “girl” and “guy” conduct? But since we seem determined to stick with those labels, would I be more of a lady-bro than a girly girl? I still can’t decide. All I know for sure is that if you try and call bull moose on me I will slap you.  

Dead Oxen & Potential Interventions

Almost a year ago now I talked about my diet pepsi addiction using The Oregon Trail to illustrate my issues. For today’s purposes let’s continue this metaphor.

I have an announcement. I tried to ford the river and my oxen all died.

What does that mean in pepsiholicism?

Rivers are those moments of temptation. You either cross successfully (and don’t give in and drink pepsi), or you flail around a lot and drown (but not literally, it’s not like you’re choking to death on pepsi, just you are in fact drinking it again). Sometimes a passenger in the wagon dies (you take a sip) but you still make it across (you don’t get back in the pepsi habit). When all the oxen die, that generally means the wagon is going down too. So are all the passengers (people traveling to Oregon don’t know how to swim, btw). You lost the game, and you need to start back over in Independence.

So basically what I’m saying here, as my friend Kevin puts it, is that I need to turn in my chip.

Not that I had a chip, which is a shame all in itself. Should I successfully get off pepsi again I want chips, or badges, or something. Somebody get on that.  

I’m not overly upset at myself. Every so often you come up to a river that you can’t ford. Sometimes you really should have just sucked it up and taken the ferry. Not that I have any idea what the ferry would be in this metaphor. I’m just saying.

For those that don’t know already, my cat died last month. That was my river. I came home and found a dead cat, and I’ll be the first to say I did not react in the best manner. In the course of events I ended up over at my friend’s house, where there just happened to be a 2 liter of pepsi in the fridge. I had a few glasses there to calm down (I entered the river), I took the 2 liter home with me (the oxen floundered), and once it was gone since I still wasn’t particularly happy about the situation I went ahead and bought myself more (oxen died, supplies were lost, passengers drowned).

I had plenty of opportunities to not fall off the pepsi wagon. I could have had a few glasses but left the bottle there. I could have finished the bottle but not bought more. I could have bought more for that week but then stopped once it was gone. Or, I COULD HAVE MADE IT SO THE 2 LITER WAS NEVER AT MY FRIEND’S HOUSE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

If anything about my relapse annoys me, it’s that. The presence of the 2 liter was entirely my fault in the first place. What happened is that the weekend right before everything went down a few friends gathered at Pietro’s to socialize and play games. We ran out for supplies. We had rum since we needed it for mojitos, we had beer because you always need beer, and we ended up getting some pop for one of the girls that didn’t particularly like mojitos or beer. We figured she could have rum & coke. As she grabbed the bottle of coke, I protested, because after all pepsi is so much better.

Did I drink any of it that night? No! I had no intention of drinking it. But such is my insanity that even though I wasn’t going to be drinking the beverage, I wanted it to be my beloved pepsi instead of coke.

And THAT’s why there was a 2 liter of pepsi in Pietro’s fridge. I believe this was the only time THIS ENTIRE YEAR there has been pepsi in that fridge, and it just so happened to be the same week I hit a river.

Le sigh.

Meanwhile I have not gone completely crazy about the pepsi thing (although that may depend on who you ask about it). I bought mini bottles of pepsi so I’m not drinking that much. I’m drinking regular pepsi instead of diet, because I can’t drink as much regular pepsi at one time without feeling sick. Every few days I try to have a day with no pepsi whatsoever (although I will admit I’m not in the best mood those days). I’m well aware I need to quit again, I’m just waiting until after our big work conference. Or maybe after my weird work transition thing ends in October. Or actually maybe it would best be a goal for the next year.

But do I really need to quit again? I mean who’s to say I do? Plenty of people all over the world drink pop. I know I’ve talked about being healthier this year and pepsi is not the healthiest thing in the world, but everything’s okay in moderation. One of my initial reasons for quitting was the effect on my teeth, but I’ve been brushing every time I finish drinking it. So why can’t I keep drinking it? Just because people think I’m “addicted.” Please.

I suspect I sound crazy again. My friend Jenn and I were discussing this yesterday and she told me I was crazy ranting. She also threatened an intervention. I said not yet. I can totally quit, just not yet.

Clearly a sign we should wait until next May

The good news is that Jenn is hundreds of miles away from me! Normally not good news, but in this case it means she can’t actually pepsintervention me (yes I made that all one word. Deal with it). Thank goodness. Because I think she was actually being serious about that idea, and I’m not ready to start back on the trail again.

Define "Nutritious," and Make It Include Bacon

Basically how I understand nutrition

This year, one of my goals is to eat healthier. Sounds easy, right? Especially since I never set the parameters, so it’s not like I have to eat a certain number of calories per day or cut out all fatty foods.

But I am finding it EXTREMELY challenging. To really get the depth of my struggle, you need to understand two things.

First, you need to know my typical eating habits. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I don’t actually believe in calories, and I do not follow any sort of healthy eating habits. I fully enjoy the eating process (again, Taurus here) so I eat things I like. What do I like? Bacon, cheese, meat, bread, and sweets.

When I like something, I want to eat it over and over and over and over again. And that’s all I want to eat. So a typical day of eating?

What I consider a balanced meal (balanced in deliciousness!)

Let’s see, if it’s a weekend I normally like to have bacon for breakfast. There was an unfortunate year where I was eating a full pound every time, but now I’ve been doing much better by limiting myself to only a half pound of bacon at once, and instead of eating it twice a weekend I’ll only have it one day (baby steps). So that’s breakfast. If I’m still hungry I’ll normally have some fried potatoes, or maybe eggs.

Later for lunch, I’ll go with one of my typical favorites of beef ramen. Now, prior to the ramen I won’t be very hungry because of all the bacon. There’s one thing you should really know in life though: food is a gateway food. Eating the ramen will make me want more food, so I’ll then have a snack of about 1/3 bag of buffalo pretzel bites.

Finally for dinner I’ll go with something simple such as boneless buffalo chicken, bacon cheese fries, chicken pot pie, or bacon quiche. Delicious. If I get hungry again later (which is very likely), I’ll eat a giant bowl of whatever ice cream I’m craving at the time.

So you may have already realized this, but EVERYTHING I eat is unhealthy. How have I managed to survive for years? Well as I’ve said before my metabolism is fabulous and still not dead. Plus, I have completely ignored all facts related to healthy eating. I’m sure I’ve heard things over the years like what one should eat and avoid, but I am super good at not wasting memory space with what I consider “irrelevant” information.

When I made one of my goals this year to eat healthier, I knew I would need to actually investigate and find out what that meant. I’m still not concerned about calories (I still don’t think they’re real). What I’m concerned about is not giving myself a heart attack at age 30 like everyone in my family has always expected.

But I’m busy, and lazy. Thus I haven’t done the research yet. Which means I’m just guessing what I think is or is not healthy.

You’d think I’d know, right? Well you’ve never heard me justify how the freaking delicious large white cheddar mac & cheese at Panera hits all my nutrition needs.

My first issue was at a pub in the Denver airport, trying to find dinner. I was searching the menu for something healthy, having recently been told that cheese is apparently not ideal for cholesterol or arteries or something (since when?!) I felt like fish is supposed to be good for you, so I went with that. Did I mention though it was fish & chips? Apparently once something is fried it loses all nutritional value.

Since it was now clear my own judgment was useless in this arena, I started bugging friends. We had almost a 10 minute discussion ordering lunch this week as I kept asking about the healthiness of various options like garlic bread and Italian fries. This process was so discouraging to me that for dinner I gave up and had potato skins, buffalo chicken, and boneless honey-chipotle wings.

Then at lunch two awesome friends tried to talk me through what type of food I might want to start including in my diet. This was a great discussion. We determined I could start making smoothies as a way to eat fruit. Brilliant! I need to go get a blender now, but I think this will really work.

Even better, at dinner Thursday night two other friends explained step by step things like “avoiding transfat” and “reading food labels.” They gave tons more suggestions on what to eat, and how to make the food more delicious.

This is especially helpful, because honestly most of the time I don’t eat because I’m hungry, I eat because I like the food. So when I have something in front of me that I don’t love, I struggle to eat it even when I’m legitimately hungry.

Like cheerios, but cuter

I’m very lucky that everyone else in the world paid attention to the health rules of life. Hopefully they stay patient with me until I get motivated enough to do my own research.

In the meantime, I did FABULOUS yesterday. I had whole hearts cereal for breakfast, a monkey bar, a frozen veggie pack thing for lunch, peanut butter crackers, and strawberry yogurt. Look at all that healthy food! All in one day! It’s a miracle.

The Slut Rule

It’s almost Halloween! Halloween is hands down one of my favorite holidays. I mean how could it not be?? It combines two of my favorite things – candy & costumes. Of course adults aren’t really supposed to go trick-or-treating, but that’s the benefit of having godchildren. You still get to dress up, and you can eat all their “bad” candy.

This year sadly I’m not taking the kids out since they’re a plane ride away as opposed to a 4 hour drive. Still, there are always Halloween parties to enjoy. But as much as I love this holiday and start obsessively considering costume as early as late spring, I also inevitably end up having a costume crisis at the end of October.

Why? Well simply put, because of the slut rule.

To understand what I’m talking about, you simply need to think back to Mean Girls.

As Cady explains: in the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.

The problem is I don’t WANT to necessarily dress up like a total slut. But on the other hand, I don’t want to dress like an old woman. I try to find some sort of balance between the two, and each year it gets harder.

I’ve had some success in the past. I created a whole round of costumes using various pieces I wear to the Renn Faire. The corset kept a hint of slut, the long skirts kept it classy. Then I found a Princess Leia costume I rocked 2 years in a row. It wasn’t the slave bikini one, it was the white dress. However, to sex it up they added slits in the skirt, which paired beautifully with my clunky boots I bought waaaaaaaaaay back in middle school.

This year I couldn’t make any decisions at first. Normally by the end of summer I have a pretty good idea what I want to do. This time around I was still hung up on the question of whether I should reprise a former costume or buy something new. Then last month when I had a friend visiting, we decided to go to one of the Halloween stores. I was starting to lean towards a flapper look (which, not gonna lie, was totally inspired from The Vampire Diaries flashbacks to the 20s in season 3). Then I happened to find a Wonder Woman corset type top. They only had one in the store which I didn’t think would fit me, but I decided to try it on anyway.

And it looked amazing. I was skinny and powerful with some serious cleavage but nothing too daunting. My friend was able to easily convince me to buy it.

It sat in my closet for a month while I fondly reminisced about how awesome it looked, and eventually went about getting the rest of the pieces for my full costume. I was pretty pleased with the decision. I like Wonder Woman. Not that I’ve read the comics due to my parents forbidding any comic purchases when I was a kid, but I remember Superfriends fondly, and watched Justice League for a season or two when it came out. Plus in one of my favorite author’s books they have a whole spiel with the women having a Wonder Woman party that amused me.

But even better! Eventually my friend Erin and I are going to make it to Comic-Con, and I could totally use the costume there too.

Since I’m a bit of a procrastinator, I didn’t finish ordering my other costume parts until last week so they’re all still arriving this week. When I got the bottoms I had finally decided on, I decided to try them together with the top.

And this is where the panic set in. The top is way tighter than I remember. It’s not serious cleavage. It’s freaking breast explosion. This is the issue with not owning or believing in things like scales and weight. I don’t recognize slight weight fluctuations, so of course I assumed the top would fit the same.

So now I feel overexposed on top. While I went for shorts as opposed to bikini bottoms, I’m questioning the exposure for my bottom half as well. Essentially, I tried for my nice middle line of sexiness, but instead I’m feeling that I ended up near the top of the epically slutty column.

Of course, it’s Halloween! SOMEWHERE out there is certainly someone with an even sluttier costume than me. But nonetheless I’m now torn over whether to fall back on an old costume or not. Why isn’t it easier to have that middle line where you’re not in underwear, but you also don’t look like Cady?   

Bad Life Decisions

Seriously, these are my crack

Every so often I make a Bad Life Decision. Now the good news is that my Bad Life Decisions are more along the lines of eating an entire bag of buffalo pretzels or buying too much at Target because it’s bright colored or mini. This weekend however I made a series of Bad Life Decisions.

Bad Life Decision #1 – I arranged to return my rental car “early” Saturday morning because I knew I wouldn’t be back in time Friday evening.

Bad Life Decision # 2 – I rented from the one place in town that doesn’t let you just drop off the keys in a lockbox, as I discovered Friday night. I left the rental car there anyways because I wanted my car back, but this meant I’d still have to go over Saturday morning and give them the keys.

Bad Life Decision # 3 – When a friend asked me to go out dancing Friday night, I agreed. Normally not such a bad decision but I was exhausted and this meant I’d be out late.

Bad Life Decision # 4 – Since I was exhausted, I’d worked a crazy week, and I didn’t get much sleep due to late night dancing and early car key return, I declared Saturday a Lazy Day. This meant I was free to lounge around, watching movies, reading, and eating all day. After a day of relaxation, I would then go to bed at a decent time, and I was allowed to sleep in Sunday before starting all my laundry and various errands to get ready for another crazy work week.

Now see by themselves, these were all harmless little decisions. The problem is that one decision led to another, then to the next, and so on, until we end up with

Bad Life Decision # 5 – While watching movies on tv, decide to turn on 28 Weeks Later as it’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen that movie.

This was without a doubt the worst decision of the weekend. You see, I have certain movie issues, revolving around horror movies and sad movies. 28 Weeks Later is a bit of both.

My issue with sad movies is just that I don’t like to be sad. I am thoroughly against being sad. I will not watch movies that I know will make me cry. I am thoroughly against crying. While 28 Weeks Later doesn’t make me cry, it does still upset me. It’s quite tragic really, and tragedy gets to me.

My issues with horror movies are more complex. I like horror movies. I have a perverse desire to watch them. But I also somehow lack that essential knowledge that IT’S JUST A MOVIE. While watching movies, I am totally and completely sucked in. It feels entirely possible to me that anything could happen. Thus, I get totally and completely scared. I am that screaming, jumping, obnoxious girl that everybody hates. I’m fine for a bit after the movie, but that night I will be endlessly plagued by memories of the movie, horrifying dreams, and a general fear of the dark. This happens even if by the end of the movie I’m no longer scared because it got ridiculous. For instance, after watching Perfume, that night I had to sleep with a trash can in front of my door.

Now generally, after watching a movie once it doesn’t scare me quite so much. But this is in large part too due to how I watch horror movies.

See at some point I will get so scared, I stop watching the movie. I cover my eyes, I hide behind pillows. I miss very important key parts. As I watch movies over again I start to see more, so for me it’s quite possible I might see new things every time I watch a horror movie.

Now this all comes around into me watching part of 28 Weeks Later yesterday.  And warning, there will be spoilers.

I first turned it on during the day. I had only ever seen it once, mostly behind a pillow, and it has Rose Bryne in it, and I love her. I watched right at the beginning, but stopped right after Don gets the rage virus as I knew the next parts scared me. Then I made a Wise Decision and switched to something way better and not scary like Batman Forever.

Except all of a sudden I had an insight. Oh my god, Doyle from the beginning was the same sexy soldier that helps them escape. It hints at the beginning that he has feelings for Scarlet. I totally overlooked it when I was hiding behind a pillow the first time, but if that’s true, and he’s the solder I remember, then he dies tragically.

And of course, this just intrigued me. So I decided to try watching it again when it replayed to see if that was true. Of course they didn’t replay the movie until after 8 PM, which meant I was now watching it in the dark.

SUCH a Bad Life Decision. I was right, and it is totally hinted that Doyle is interested in Scarlet and it’s all tragic and they die. So now not only is the whole rage-zombie thing in my head, so is the utter tragicness (wait, tragicness is not a word?? Oh well, it is now) of Doyle’s unspoken love and sacrifice.

So of course, I couldn’t sleep. I had to leave my tv on so there was some light in my room, but even this didn’t help. I’d have a bad dream, wake up, fall asleep eventually, and the cycle would start again. Around 6 AM I decided I could turn the tv off as it was starting to get light outside. I had my best sleep of the night between 7:40-10 AM as I started dreaming about The Vampire Diaries instead, but overall my planned sleep in day was RUINED since I barely slept all night. Sigh.

There is actually going to be a second part of this story, as I plan to go into a rant about Doyle in order to work out my sadness over his tragic death since there is a very upsetting lack of fanficion about this. Stay tuned for part 2!