Water Buffalo

I slipped a dainty hoof into the water for the second time this week, particularly aware of my reflection in the surrounding windows. I realized that as I took my place in one of the swim lanes, I looked like a glistening ham flailing about helplessly in the water. Not that I can't swim. I can swim just fine, but when it comes to doing laps, I'm not someone who diligently pushes forth using a butterfly or breast stroke... I flail. I just move my arms and legs and hope it gets me to the other side of the pool.
For the second time this week and more importantly, the second day in a row, I swam laps for a half hour. It wasn't earth shattering, but it was a start. It was something to get my heart rate going that didn't have the words extra cheese in it and my blood flowing that didn't have the word "accident" in it anywhere.
This is my new idea to get me motivated because I actually like swimming and the thought of it is much easier to bear than an hour on a treadmill where I always feel like I'm walking at a brisk pace and accomplishing a goal-- until I look in a mirror and see that it infact appears that I am barely moving at all.
It doesn't take Einstein (the genius, not the bagel brother) to point out that its only getting harder for me to have good, functional workouts since my health is on a rapid decline and my gut is trying to swallow the rest of me away.
Getting back into a routine is more than just working my way up to actually completing a workout session that will make me feel proud. For me, as a female, it is also about remembering to bring everything you NEED. This is a frightening concept for anyone who wants to work out in the mornings.
Work clothes. Shoes. Clean Underwear. Make up. Brushes. A decent hairdryer. Socks. A towel bigger than the ones they provide because, well. You know. Anything you need to bring to work that day. Cleaning products that include deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, body soap, a loofa, a toothbrush and toothpaste. I'm probably even forgetting something else.
Well, this evening, without even needing work clothes or makeup, etc. I forgot to bring a bra to change into after I was through swimming. Super. I put on my workout clothes anyway, since they were dry and looked in the mirror hoping that you couldn't tell. Unfortunately, my left boob had entered itself into a wet T-shirt contest and I knew that no hard-working, decent human being needed to see that.
Thusly ended my Monday evening workout. 30 minutes of swimming followed by 10 minutes in the sauna and a wet boob.

Now so far, this has been a boring story, so I wouldn't dare end it there. My fun at the gym continues. I flung my wet bathing suit onto a hook in the locker to keep it from getting my gym bag wet. Why that seemed like a good idea, I don't know. When it came time for me to get it down, I realized short people shouldn't hang things on hooks.

I couldn't get it to flip off the hook. I tried and tried. Panic started to ensue. After all, where else would I get a swimsuit that looked like it was trying to be a prom dress? Finally, I realized the benches weren't cemented to the floor so I was able to drag one over to the locker. My locker was in the corner, so when I stood up on the bench to reach over and detatch the wet cow frock from the hook, I had to reach as far as I could. So what do you suppose happens next? Well. My 800 pound body apparently was able to counteract the weight of the entire bench and so I went down... the bench went up... and surprisingly enough, I didn't end up in the hospital.

So. Narrowly escaping bruises and broken bones, I took my swimsuit, my wet boob, and went home.

I suppose I'll try again tomorrow.

The convenience of being fat

My poor mom. If she only knew my greatest shame...

Never one to eat lunch meat, for reasons that go much deeper than this story cares to delve, I was subject to either peanut butter and jelly or cheese sandwiches during my elementary school days. My mom would lovingly pack me a lunch with a sandwich, grapes, and a treat. Then I would usually trade the good stuff to Becky Cox for her potato chips. Frankly, I just wasn't a fan of sandwiches, plain and simple. I'm sure every kid did that kind of crap, but I can remember that even at such a young age, I was eating lousy despite my mom's healthy efforts.
She rarely took us to McDonald's or any other fast food establishment. She always cooked healthy meals and we didn't keep too many fattening treats in the house. My grandma also helped derail this by giving us bagels and cream cheese during those early summer mornings that we were dropped off there while my parents worked. We would always hit the area McDonald's before heading out for days of shopping and spoiling as grandmothers do. So I got my share of shit food there too.I don't even know how I was such a skinny kid. I guess its because of all the running around outside and swimming we used to do, but every time my mom's back was turned it seemed like I was eating horribly.

Enter phase II.

After moving to Illinois, I was now old enough to babysit myself and my sister. The trouble here is, I wasn't allowed to leave the house, basically. I was stuck inside, bored out of my mind until my mom came home from work. I learned to love the Price is Right and Small Wonder and devoured more potato chips than I care to recall. I even remember having guilt about it even way back then. This was three years worth of summer vacations. Ages 11-13. Finally a teenager, and a rebelious bitch, I took silent stabs at my mother's authority and dragged my poor ten year old sister with me. I made her ride bikes with me for what had to be several miles (I'm thinking about four total, two there, two back) into town or to my boyfriend's house. I got the idea when he and a friend rode their bike all the way to see me and it had never occured to me that I could actually leave the safety of my little neighborhood. That meant doing the unthinkable and crossing over the expressway-- something my mom would have had an absolute heart attack over. I did it anyway. The reward for my sister keeping her mouth shut about these little trips is that we would spend our change on candy. Tons of freaking candy. We could get whole candy bars at this place called White Hen for 10 cents. Down the street was Ben Franklin where it was dimes and quarters for Fun Dips, and Atomic Fireballs, and God knows whatever other junk food. Fortunately, there was no convenience here. I had to work for my flab and I maintained a very skinny figure, even still, leading me to believe that at this point in my life, I still had a metabolism.

Enter Phase III.

I would say that gaining weight slowly began around high school. Another move and a home in the sticks didn't help. I couldn't ride my bike here, there was no where to go. The roads were dirt and potholed. There was no one to hang out with. There was nothing to do. I got my license and became very involved in the school newspaper instead of my old basketball and softball teams. I didn't bother with breakfast or lunch during the day but with my new found freedom and a haven of fast food fortresses of every imagineable kind just across the street from school... I went there everyday. I would get some kind of "value meal" and go back to school to work on the paper. I'd get home late, eat whatever dinner there was and enjoy cookies or chips while doing my homework. And 'den...

A job. This was the straw that broke the elastic waistband on the pants. I made my career and second home of four years the Fenton Cinema. Free pop. Free popcorn. Candy you had to pay for. But we did. Our meals, twice a day, 6 days a week came from fast food places. There did not exist a salad in those walls the entire time I lived there. I did become more rounded in my ordering style, however. I learned Chinese culture from Moy Kong's extensive lunch menu-- and Taco Bell Sunday taught me that there was more to the Bell than just plain tacos. The last meal of the day there was generally around 6:00, so when I got home at 11:30, I would eat again-- left overs or junk food. Then off to bed...

Welcome to the jungle.

The final rite to my passage was here in Florida. I had lost almost 50 pounds, though I wasn't terribly overweight at that point and came to Florida to go to school just under 100 pounds and suddenly aware of bad foods and the unhappiness that being unhealthy and overweight could bring. I don't even know what brought about the change, but I had lost the weight with the help of diet pills, excercise, and extreme portion cutting. After only a year at the Ringling School of Art and Design, I had fallen back into an old trap, with an old crutch to bear. I worked two jobs through school. I was unhappy almost all of the time. This wasn't a place you could study and get an A, it was a rough and tumble competitve jungle and I wasn't at the top of the food chain. My meal schedules were disgusting. I would usually take a break between classes and buy some sort of bag of chex mix or even an ice cream cone at the gas station to take away the hunger pains. That way, I could just walk there and I didn't have to waste time driving anywhere. Sometimes I had a long break and could have an actual lunch at home, but not often. Most of the time, whatever 300-600 calorie snack I had would last until dinner, which I would have on my 10-30 minute break at whichever job. Sometimes I would walk down to the sub shop and get a healthy sandwich. Sometimes I would hurry to McDonald's and back, but mostly, I got the cheese flavored crackers out of the vending machine and washed it down with a coke.
The only time of day that I would actually eat a "meal" was after work. I would meet my soon-to-be husband at his job around 11:00pm and we would head to Taco Bell (sometimes eating a bag of cookies IN THE DRIVE THRU and order the largest things on the menu. The healthiest late night eating we did came in the form of a home-cooked version of slop called "mash." We had no money and no time, so we would fry up some hamburger, add some noodles and salsa and call it food. Soon, even that took too much time.

Despite all this, I tried to make time to excercise. I know I did more than the average person, going a few times a week to the gym until my senior year. The weight just kept packing on, though. It was like my metabolism had laid down and died.

I am now overweight. Infact, I don't even think I look as bad as I should to be honest. I carry most of my weight in the face and in my midsection. I live in a mecca of convenience eating as I have still not mastered the ability to plan healthy meals into my lifestyle. My apartment complex is pretty much in a Wendy's parking lot and the Domino's pizza man sells $5 pizzas outside my door. I'm completely serious. I work out on occassion but can't make it stick. The best I have done for my health has been to make juices so that I can be sure to get a proper vegetable serving. The only time I have lost weight since the sharp and steady increase, beginning 6 years ago was when I cut my caloric intake to less than 800 for all of three weeks and when I had a kidney stone. My health has deteriorated. I'm always tired. When I do work out, I'm in pain and misery within minutes.

Each day, I vow to be better. It can't that hard to cook healthy meals and work 8 hours a day with an hour and a half comute... So if you took the time to read all this, I vow to you, I will make it better... but the pizza just got here, so right now, I have to go.

Born of a jealous rage.

Okay, a jealous rage may be too strong a front for this, but what made me decide to do an actual "blog" outside of the world of myspace was an old friend. Not out of her support, but of her lack of it... or of anything. I've realized a lot that people don't try as hard to be nice as they get older. I don't know whether or not to be thankful for the honesty or mournful for the loss of decency. Either way, the situation is a former friend, a very close or even best friend who has "moved on." This is probably my fault but I can still think of all the times I was a good friend to her. I hadn't known her for too long but we had so much in common. We met while working the same job and going to rival high schools, found that we were both Editor-in-Chief of our award winning newspapers. We were both going to college for journalism, loved design, and movies and had similiar personalities. When she left to be a camp counselor over the summers, I made sure she had plenty of mail and gift packages with her name on it. When she left for college and I was still living at home, I made her a scrap book of all our friends. Without getting too detailed, I can say that I was most likely the one who messed up a good friendship, though the details are hazy now. I became so desperate not to lose this boy that I was seeing and ridiculously hooked on, that I didn't care who got in my way. I eventually moved to Florida and we lost touch for years. I found out through friends of friends that she was engaged to a mutual friend and co-worker. I was thrilled for her but when I tried to contact her through myspace she ignored me for a long time before telling me that we had outgrown a friendship that wasn't worth rekindling. I accepted this, hurtful as it was and watched as all of our former friends who had meant much less to her than I at one time made it into her circle of friends. Some of which even got invites to the wedding. It was really kind of a slap in the face and whatever I had done, I can't imagine it was worth this kind of pain. I've always been fairly sensitive to the feelings of others. From there, I noticed a comment regarding a column she was writing for the paper. Sure enough, I looked it up and there it was. She had a column writing about preparations for her wedding. It wasn't badly written, but it could have been done more humorously and good natured. After all, don't you choose to bear the burden of planning for a wedding? I purposely chose not to. Anyhow, it got me thinking that I had always wanted to have a column and I knew I could do better than that. I knew I could do better than her. It sounds terrible and it was even hard to type that sentence. We are in similiar fields and have similiar loves and interests so the fact that I feel so stepped on by her is the only reason I can even bring myself to feel a competitve streak in the matter. I have no intention of competing with her, contacting her, or anything again. I have gone out of my way to tell her how happy I am for her and offer my support despite her cold shoulder. I hope I can just forget it-- and with her, I would have to forget that portion of my life. Its all connected. So maybe its good that I want to make a "blog." Something for me. Probably few will read it, but at least I'll have an outlet. Hell, it feels good to get that off my chest- an ex-friend out of my head and heart. The reason I thought of doing this in the first place and the guilt behind it. This is my first post here, though I plan to repost several older blogs that I enjoyed writing and hope serve as a laugh or an insight into what I feel would be interesting stories to tell. Then maybe my degree that's only halfway finished in the journalism field won't go to a total waste. P.S. We're both professional graphic designers now, not journalists.

It's a BOY!... and a GIRL!.... and 2007 is the new 666.

I just have so much to say. Where to begin? Okay, let me start by going back in time to when I started at Florida Imaging. Literally, it was the first day there and I woke up with a scratchy throat and cough. I have weathered worse, so I went in and made sure to be very concious of my breathing area and should a cough escape, it was immediately contained and the entrails properly eliminated. By the time I got home that night (aka, my FIRST DAY) I was so sick I ended up going to the hospital and being out of work for a week with the flu.
I decided to keep this tradition alive, so now that I had started at Element, my white blood cells took a vacation and I was once again sick within the first few weeks. I'll never forget what happened next.
I was driving to my new job one morning with the strangest sensation in my stomach. Almost like hunger pains, but not quite... and I don't usually eat in the morning. So I stopped at a nearby Burger King because we all know that greasy, fried, grade E meat mixed with cheese cures what ails ya'. I ate my $2.00 cholesterol sandwich at my desk at work and literally as I swallowed the last bite, I got a pain so horrible and so blinding that tears were welling up in my eyes and I was pretty sure the temperature had risen a good 15 degrees. It was HORRIBLE. I immediatly went to webmd.com which didn't help at all. I didn't want to leave and look like a total slacker so I figured I would just gut it out for awhile. I sat there at my desk pretending like I wasn't seeing a bright light and tasting the bitterness of death for almost three hours before I emailed the boss to say I would be taking a long lunch. I went to the walk in clinic and was promptly told that I "probably had a kidney infection" and was given an antibiotic.
Several days passed. I was feeling okay... not good. Pains came and went and I was now at a day before my trip to Michigan to see one of my oldest and best friends get married. It was about 10:30 at night when the blinding pain drove me to the hospital where I met the most wonderful woman to roam the planet earth.
She put me on an IV and filled it with two vials of medicine. It could have been crack, it could have been antifreeze, I really didn't care. She was an angel because for the next two hours, I felt GREAT.
I went home with the news that I had a kidney stone. One little kidney stone. I was free to travel, given medicine for the pain and nausea and sent on my merry way.
By the time I had made it back home to Michigan (aka my mommy) the blinding, searing pain had changed and moved into my stomach. I would now say it was more of a gnawing, aching, hell. Since this had nothing to do with kidney stones, back to the hospital I went. It turns out that the antibiotics given to me by the walk-in clinic lady had created excess acid in my stomach. YEAH!!!!
To make a long story short (ha, you wish,) I spent my entire vacation sleeping and missed the wedding. I gave birth to a baby boy kidney stone and then was surprised to see his twin sister later in the day. The stomach pain lasted another week.So what does all this really mean? Really?
It means that 2007 freaking sucks. IT SUCKS! Instead of having a ball drop in Times Square for this year, it should have been a giant hairy testicle. I seriously detest this horrid, rotten year and all it stands for. Since it is June 1st and officially the halfway point OUT of this miserable shit-stew of a year, I think I should start an official tally of all the CRAP that has spewed forth from the bowels of this millenium + 7 hell.
List O' 2007 Follies and Fallacies.1. This year started with our Wayne moving away to Virginia. The last official member of our clan to take off and leave us cold and lonely in Whorelando, we miss Wayne and Mike and Julie each weekend- more than the last. There is no longer anyone to help me pick lunch meat out of my hair at parties or make me cheese dip when I'm down. I knew it was going to suck this year.2. The flu. Not one who is usually sick, I got the flu this year. I had forgotten how it feels like when your soul is being smothered by a giant mucus membrane. It was pretty awful. Dear 2008, remind me to get a flu shot.3. Then came good ol' February. As a Valentine's Gift, Florida Imaging informed me that since there was no work for me to do, I was no longer an employee there. I really appreciate that since I left a job that had a great benefits package to go there. Not to mention a crazy lady who cared for cats with STDs.4. Jenny goes on unemployment. I never, NEVER thought that would be me. Usually I am one of the top employees because I like to work. I like to be all that I can be. I would have gone to the army if the food was better. I then spent several weeks in a state of depression you could never truly understand. I felt like a drain on society and my family. All this time did for me was teach the dogs to howl like I was killing them whenever I slothed my way out of the house. I also discovered ABC daytime television and relived Full House, the younger years. Ehhhhhh. If it hadn't been for Michelle helping me to get through this time, I probably would have been become a fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.5. Adventures in Maya's Cornea. Maya had an eye infection that was being treated for about 3 weeks before I said "screw it" and took her to a specialist. She was immediately set up for surgery to remove a rogue eyelash causing her to get recurring eye ulcers. She has since had multiple problems with that eye. I blame 2007.6. The Great Roomate Divide of '07. Some people have terrible relationships with their roomates. Not the case for us. We liked our roomate, she liked us... but it didn't work out. That is all.7. It's Kidney Stoooonnnnnes. Nuff said.8. I missed Ryan's wedding. This is the kind of thing that will bother me until the day I die.9. Yep. We're still in Florida.10. What's next? What kind of festering boil awaits us for the month of June... I'll keep you updated.