A Species Lost...

If you have ever watched a nature show or attended an elementary school, you're probably aware that there are certain animals out there who go to extreme lengths to protect and provide for their young. The kangaroo carries her baby joey around in a pouch, birds regurgitate food into their babies mouths-- come on, if I had to regurgitate anything, it wouldn't be pretty. Where I'm going with this is that it seems to me that sometimes the animal world has surpassed our human integrity....

Mike and I were leaving Borders last night and it had just begun to rain. A mother had blocked the entire door with her stroller and didn't mind in the least that we had to squeeze in and step over it to get out the doorway, which was entirely blocked. She didn't volunteer an apology or make the slightest effort to move it. More disturbing was the fact that her baby was IN the stroller IN the rain! As she waited for someone to pull the car up for her, the baby was getting wet. "Make way for mother of the year!" She definately has the mom who casually sipped her drink while her children did flips on the metal railing beat. Those kids got rewarded with balloons for their potentially lawsuit inflicting acrobatics. Maybe it was my parents who were crazy lunatics, but my sister and I didn't act out in public and I'm fairly certain that we were never used as a doorstop.

It makes me feel old that I seem to be the only one bothered by society's allowance of manners and basic decency to fall by the wayside. I'm seriously in the minority that it bothers me that people act so self-centered. Most other people I know, don't even notice it, but I just can't believe that I'm being too uptight. Eating at a small Chinese restaurant during my lunch hour today, I got to be a silent observer of the other people who shared this small space with me and I made a mental laundry list of things that I was surprised by or considered rude. I'm open to the possibility that my standards for manners are high and involve old-fashioned language such as "May I please have," instead of "gimme a," or thanking a waiter rather than ignoring them and continuing a conversation.
As I arrived at this great little restaurant there was only one other group of people there, a mother and her two daughters. As I was seated and the waiter was taking my order, the mother called out to him that she was ready to order now as well. To me, this is taboo for a few reasons. The first of which, the man was already talking to someone, there was no one else in the restaurant. Waiting her turn wouldn't have taken more than 15 seconds. Secondly, even if the waiter wasn't already engaged, I would probably wait for him to return to me since I had made him wait in the first place. Obviously, she couldn't have been in a dire hurry.
As he took their order, another woman came into the restaurant and was seated a few booths behind me. She immediately whipped out her cell phone and had an extremely loud conversation in Italian that lasted the entire duration of my time there. Again, I know I am in the minority in thinking that cell phone use in public earshot is rude and annoying, not to mention she was practically shouting. The fact that you are speaking in another language doesn't make it okay and if you ask me, it probably makes it a little worse.
Within moments, a second woman arrived and was seated across the room from us. She proceeded to speed dial someone on her cell and it became absolute conversational warfare in there. I literally couldn't concentrate on the book that I was reading, which didn't matter because my food arrived so quickly.
As I began my meal, I was actually impressed that the two little girls and the mom were able to hold a normal "restaurant-style" conversation that wasn't overly loud or screaming for the attention of the other patrons. We both had our meals delivered and only moments later another mother and child arrived and joined the other family. They brought bags of food from Subway. Call me crazy, but bringing your own food to a restaurant is a little over the top. When they got up to leave, they left their Subway wrappers all over the table. Disgusting.

I know I am no angel either, but at least when I get up to leave, I stack my plates and silverware, leave a large tip, and say "thank you." If only we could be more like those stupid animals...

There's Always Tomorrow

Garfield taught me at a young age to never trust a Monday... so as far as Mondays go, today wasn't too bad. My logo was selected for one of our accounts, which is always a good feeling. I accidently worked a half hour of over time so I have a half hour of extra time for the week if I want to leave early. Even the traffic on the way home was the thing candy-coated dreams are made of. Despite an all around decent day, however, I haven't managed to break out of my funk just yet. A rather out of character move, I had a screaming war with a helpless victim who dared to talk down to me on the phone regarding a late payment to Visa. It took me awhile to cool off from that one. I decided that I wasn't going to go to the gym. I've eaten lousy... why not just make it a lost cause and try to go to bed earlier to go tomorrow.
How often do you say: "I'll start tomorrow," when trying to lose weight or stop swearing or anything else. I've always believed it is a pathetic excuse and that if I'm really going to "start" it will be now. Despite this, I still hope to start tomorrow and carve out a healthy pattern of eating smart and excercising. Wish me luck.

It was the best of blogs, it was the blurst of blogs...

To answer the question of the only person who ever reads my page (Gosh darn it, I love you, Amanda!)

Why do you blog?
Give five answers for why I blog?

1. I love to write. When I was in third grade, I wrote what was probably the worst thing to ever see a printed page, but it was 27 pages long and included a whiz kid computer and four pages naming everyone in my class and where they sat in relation to each other. When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a 97 page and unfinished science fiction epic, detailing the misadventures of a scientist, Dr. Boxooker and his faithful assistant, Edward (to be played by Keanu Reeves when made into a movie.) I was the first female in my middle school to make the newspaper staff in 6th-8th grade, ending my career as an editor and did an encore performance in high school where my school paper won several prestigious and state-level awards while I was Editor-In-Chief. Half way to a degree in journalism, I realized I would never be happy detailing the drunken adventures of Paris Hilton or the local 4H's risky idea for fundraising involving barn animals.... I was left without an outlet.
2. I write as a way to laugh at the things that would otherwise upset me or make me angry. A lot of people think that I'm complaining, but I love to find the humor in it and hope that others can enjoy things from this perspective as well.
3. I sat down to sketch a design the other day and realized my finely tuned drawing hand was leaning the way of stick figures and scribbles again-- rusty from misuse... or unuse. I feel my grammar and language may be slipping in the same direction. I was smartest when I made the time to read for fun. Use it or lose it.
4. I love to make people laugh. You may never know this about me if you don't get to know me as I tend to be quiet, but writing is my secret confidence. I have received, and am thankful for, much support for what I write. It makes me happy to think that I made someone smile at some point in the day.
5. As of late, I am writing more about my flaws and faults. Its not as interesting as writing about the man dressed as a cow running down the road that I happened to see today, but its important. I have a hard time letting go of my pride to put in black and white the reasons why I struggle where I do in life, so this blog is more private. Few people were invited to read it and fewer do-- therefore the people who read it, I either trust enough to be myself or are strangers. Its theraputic to be so thankful for the gifts and blessings I have been given in life that it makes me want to try harder to be a better person. Seeing where I fail in my goals and dreams written down will hopefully bring me close to succeeding the next time around.

Thanks for reading!

Aortic Massacre

Have you ever seen the movie Kill Bill? Imagine the most gory, gruesome, brutal scene and that's how any part of my body striving for health and well-being was brought to an untimely death. Capillaries carrying anti-oxidants, vitamins, and minerals had their heads violently lobbed off by three cheese pasta given free reign while I slept and held the endorphins at bay. Why would anyone release such an attack on their body? Why would anyone want to make themselves a victim and treat the very vessels that carry us from place to place, day to day, making life worth living, as if it was a flesh colored hefty bag of crap?
I haven't figured out the answer to that question. Maybe that's why Lindsay Lohan is a cutter and Johny Knoxville plays with poisonous snakes.
I had a pretty good week of walking a mile during my lunches, swimming laps or walking on the treadmill and eating fairly decent food. By the time the weekend rolled around, I was actually feeling pretty good. The slip up started slowly and I'm not sure which is sitting heavier on my heart right now, the guilt, or the glut.
I had known Friday was going to be a "free day" of sorts for me as that is the day that we officially ran out of all edible food in our apartment so it would become dinner and a movie night.
I could have left it at that.

It started when I didn't eat the cereal I had measured and packed for my lunch. Instead, I went out to Chik-Fil-A to celebrate the end of a photo shoot in which I walked back and forth with a clothing rack. The shoot was a blast and lunch was fun. It wasn't completely horrible that I did that. I could have done better elsewhere, but when dinner rolled around, I was "gnaw off my own arm" starving. We arrived at Roadhouse and my recent love of peanuts was satiated, but then we also got an appetizer... loaded with cheese. My meal of choice? The Rattlesnake Pasta, a certain creamy death with a dash of jalapeno spice. It was excellent, of course, but we still got a large soda and popcorn at the movie theater. In my defense, we didn't really eat any popcorn. Still.The plan was that the next day, we would replenish our fridge and I would cook a meal that didn't land quite as close to an early grave. After taking the dogs to the dog park, making a lunch of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (are we seeing a trend here?) we ended up doing a whole lot of shopping that had nothing to do with groceries. SO. Pizza for dinner. In a vane attempt to not be a glutton, I got a thin crust mushroom pizza- small. But I polished that off with a few buffalo wings.

My only saving grace for Saturday was my dedication to going to the gym. I spent 35 minutes swimming laps and an hour on the treadmill- burning over 500 calories and obliterating my fried cheese lunch sandwich and soup. I ended up feeling that Saturday had actually been fairly successful...

Sunday, bloody Sunday. If I could just go back to that morning and redo the mess that I made, I would be so happy. First of all, I didn't work out at all. We didn't even take the dogs to the park. We got up and both polished off the remaining pizza, which we didn't even enjoy to begin with, and headed out for more shopping. We finally had food and supplies and all the other things we had been needing for way too long now and after a late night Saturday, we got in fairly late Sunday. We swung by the Wendy's that's practically an extension of our apartment on the way home. That alone was all I really needed to eat for the rest of the night.... but we ended up going out to "dinner" (squared?) at Applebees around 10:15 at night. I haven' t been to an Applebees in a long time and I wasn't sure what I wanted, but the waitress was ready to take our order so I spit out the first thing that I would have chosen if I didn't need to worry about my food slowly killing me and sucking out my will to live--
Wait--would have chosen? That's what I did choose.
Sigh.
Then I went to bed.

I started my week this week no better. I actually thought that I wasn't doing too bad. I got up earlier than usual. Not early enough to work out, but early enough not to go to work looking completely haggard. I walked a mile at lunch-- but I didn't eat my cereal. I waited too long to eat and was too hungry so I went to Subway.
I entered all of my dinner information into the computer to calculate how much I needed to eat to save myself from that mistake. But I just ate whatever I wanted from our tostada platter, anyway. I polished off almost two small bags of cookies while answering emails and writing to friends and ate way too much of the bad stuff (aka sour cream) during dinner. I topped the night off by skipping the gym and watching "Hell's Kitchen" on the Food Network. Seems fitting somehow, doesn't it? I told myself that at least I would do better tomorrow. I would go to bed earlier, get up earlier-- tomorrow is fresh with no mistakes in it...
Except now its 10:53 and I won't be making it into bed until 11:30.

Oh heart and arteries, I am so sorry. Veins and bones and organs, forgive me! I need to stop the madness. I'm not in school anymore, I'm not working two jobs-- and even those were shabby excuses for not allowing myself to live healthy and enjoy the fruits of what I worked so hard to achieve.

I suppose all we can do is try harder tomorrow and thank God if its not too late.
Sombering thought.