If the Pants Fit

I envy men.  Not only because they STILL make more money for the same work as women, not only because the world is their bathroom, not even because men get distinguished as women get OLD, but mostly because no matter how much weight they gain or lose, their pants still fit. 

I'm fairly tall, so a pound gained or lost is distributed over more of me than if I was petite.  This is a double-edged sword, because I never notice one or two pounds of water (or double fudge cookie dough blizzard) weight.  But at the same time, I have to lose a good 20 lbs before anyone notices.  Ahem....13 pounds so far...HELLOOO!!!

But here's the thing:  There are 86 lbs between my low and my high weight.  And those 86 pounds involved SIX different pants sizes. There has not been one single minute since puberty when I haven't either been trying to get in to a smaller size or trying to get comfortable in the size I was wearing (and had no business in).

My dad wore square pants befores Spongebob made them cool.  Every year I could go to Sears and buy my dad jeans for Christmas.  Size 34 x 34.  Over the years my dad gained a lot of weight (from beer) and lost a lot (from cancer) but his pants size stayed the same.  The question was only how low they rode.  If they could sit at his waist or if they had to be tucked below his belly, it didn't matter to me or, apparently, to him. And the crack shone regardless.

As if the size and style wasn't enough to confuse us, womens pants come in three lengths.  Petite, average and tall.  As I said, I'm pretty tall, but I'm not near as tall as I used to be.  Pregnancy took an inch off me, but evoluation seems to have taken more.  I used to order tall pants from the Tall Girl catalog.  Now, anything marked tall would trail a foot behind me, but average is still, more often than not, too short.  Factor in the whole 'plus size' thing and the prospect of trying to find pants that fit is about as appealing as the idea of frying bacon nekkid.

Life would be so much easier if I could walk in to the gap and pick up size Y x Z size pants, then just wear them until they fall apart.

Men have all the luck.  Bastards.

The Man complains frequently about the "crap" in our house.  Through process of elimination I've learned that there are two defining qualities which differentiate "stuff" from "crap"....1) it is for my use only or 2) it existed before he came into my life five years ago.

Most of the clothes in my closet fall into BOTH of those categories.  But can you blame me?  Those jordache high-rise jeans fit me once!!!  Sequinz will be back in style someday.  The holes give it a sort of trendy, bohemian vibe.  Right?  I only need to lose 50 pounds before I can rock them.

So at this point I've lost 13 pounds, and I'm in the same pants I was in when I started.  The difference is that now I don't have to thread a rubber band around the button, through the button hole and back around the button to keep them closed.  I had NO business in them before, and some would point to my muffintop as evidence that I don't belong in them now...but I AM NOT buying bigger ones.  When these become a little more comfortable I will fight the urge to try to squeeze into the largest of the five smaller sizes that hang in my closet.  I will try really hard to wait until I BELONG in them to wear them, and hope they don't disintigrate from age before that time comes.

Unless, of course, there's a sale at Kohl's.

Today's Lunch:  6" Subway Tuna Sub with Sun Chips & diet coke.  I'm feeding a cold, or am I supposed to starve it until it turns into a fever?

A Moment of Silence

I can't write today, in honor of the latest Hyperbole and a Half blog entry.  I bow to Allie Brosh's superior blogging abilities.

Plus there are pictures.

And....I ran out of time to write.

Today's lunch...6" Tuna Sub from Subway.  Ooey gooey goodness.

Y Me

I have fallen out of love with my gym.  This is really REALLY not a good thing.  You have to understand that my default setting is sitting with my feet up, McDonald's Carmel Frappe in one hand, slice of pizza in the other.  If my gym were a place full of music and sunshine, constantly pumped full of the smell of fresh brewed coffee and staffed by muscular, shirtless men who wanted nothing more than to rub my feet one minute for each I spend on the friggin' elliptical trainer I would STILL find every possible excuse not to go.  I have never experienced the fabled "runner's high" (to be fair, I haven't run since 1974), I don't notice any discernable stress reduction from working out, and the only positive feelings I have post-exercise come from the blessed knowledge that I won't have to do it again for roughly 47 hours.

I've had gym memberships in the past, and the biggest problem (other than, you know, hating it) was caused by me comparing myself to the other members.  The muscular men are not a plus if they're not there to rub  my feet.  The 22 year girl wearing skin tight bike shorts and a sports bra is just lucky that I lack the upper body strength to chuck a freeweight at her.  I'm wearing a sports bra too...but I'm required by law to wear a giant t-shirt over mine and I'm sweating like a pig while she flits about, barely perspiring.  I hate her.

So when I toured the Y, one of the first things I noticed in the exercise area was that it was full of MY PEOPLE.  They are overweight.  They have gray hair (not that I do...as far as you know).  They sweat and they struggle and they are NOT in-shape, but they're trying to be.  Sure, there are a few Sports Bra Bunnies, but they're the minority and I LOVE that.  I don't feel like the fat, old chick in the exercise equivalent to a singles bar, I feel like this is MY gym and I belong.

Sadly, I only feel this way IN the exercise room.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go to the gym after work.  I get there about 5:30, when every single person in the Greater Cleveland Area goes to the Y to get their kid from day care.  I search for a parking spot within the same zip code.  Yes, I understand that I'm there to exericise and I should be happy to park as far as possible from the door, but the fact is that the distance walked TO the Y from the car is typically only about 1/10th of the distance that will be required to walk from the Y to the car after the workout.  It's a mystery of physics.

So after ten minutes of driving around, cursing, and trying not to plow any loose children over with my car (hold their hands for God's sake!!!) I trudge in to the Y.

I wait in line at the desk to get my card scanned, behind the lady trying to sign up for "Parent's Night Out" next month, behind the man trying to sign his son up for swimming lessons, behind all the other poor SOB's who just want to burn some calories.

Once I'm able to check in I head down the hall, pretty pink gym bag over my arm, water bottle in hand, trudging past the Family Changing Rooms, past the Girl's locker room, and I open the door to the Women's locker room, which proudly displays a sign that says that anyone under 15 should use the Girls locker room or Family Changing rooms and another sign asking members to refrain from using cell phones anywhere in the facility.

Once I get into the locker room, the next order of business is to find an empty locker.  There is usually ONE, and it's located between the 12 year old who is talking on the phone and waiting for swim team practice to start and the harried mother trying to get her twin toddlers ready for swimming lessons.

Even though I'm not the fattest or oldest person there, I'm still not comfortable changing clothes litterally elbow to elbow with other people, so I retreat to the bathroom to switch from office wear to workout clothes.  Come back out and lock up my stuff.

I have to go back through the day care crowd to go up to the exercise room, where I force myself through an hour of sweating and trying not to look at the clock. 

The rest of my visit is pretty much the same as my pre-workout routine...lots of "excuse me" and "pardon me, can I get through?".  Lots of interrupting tweens as they talk about who broke up with who.  I get my stuff from my locker, shower, get dressed in the shower because at least I can turn around without bumping into an 8th grader.  If I'm lucky enough to get access to a blow dryer that isn't being played with by a 3 year old I dry my hair.  By this time I'm just FREAKING TIRED....from the workout, from the schlepping, from the crowd.   I load my bag (which somehow weighs twice what it did on the way in) up on my shoulder, I fight my way back through the day care area, walk the six miles out to my car, and all I want to do is go home and ingest the quickest, preferably edible thing I can find.  By this point it's dark, usually between 7 and 7:30, but people are still picking up their kids, and they are still running to and fro, willy-nilly.  It sounds cute, but it's not.

So....maybe it's time to go back to the Big Girl gym.  Tomorrow I'm spending my lunch break visitng Urban Active here by my office.  I know there will be more Sports Bra Bunnies than there are people like me, but there will be fewer swim diapers and teenagers.

When did I become so crotchety?  I mean I DO like kids.  Even teenagers.  But I think again it comes down to the fact that this is my least favorite part of the day and any additional irritation is going to just put me over the edge. 

I wonder if they give foot rubs at Urban Active?

Today's Lunch: Amy's Garden Vegetable Lasagna.  Not one of my favorites, yet I keep buying it.  Hmm.

Bugging Me

I had such productive plans for this morning.  The UPS guy brought my BodyBugg yesterday, so last night I broke out the user's manual hoping to get it all set up and, of course, it had to charge for 3 hours before I could do anything.  The manual said to hook it up to my computer using the provided USB cable, so I naively did exactly that, and I snuggled into bed with a good book. 

Oh...the book.  Thursday night I finished What The Night Knows by Dean Koontz, which The Man bought me in hard cover.  I really love anything Dean Koontz writes, and this book was no exception, but ever since I got the Tablet/E-Reader dealio I've been just wishing I could get done with it so I could get my first eBook.

So last night I got Someone Will be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan from Amazon for my Cruz.  I've been a subscriber to O Magazine for years and Lisa's column has always been my favorite part of the every issue.  I've been looking SO SO forward to reading her book since it came out nearly a year ago, but neither Barnes & Noble nor Borders carries it in-store.  Bastards.

Anyway, my plan for this morning was to get up at the crack of 8, register my Bugg, pair it to my phone, strap it to my flabby upper arm, throw the Cruz in the gym bag and head for the Y.

But when I tried to mess with the Bugg, the battery was still dead! Boo, hiss.

It seems that the crucial piece of missing information in the extremely short and not-so-informative User's Guide is that simply plugging it in is not sufficient to begin charging.  Yesterday when I plugged it in nothing happened.  No flashing, no lights, no "Greetings Fatass. Thank you for plugging me in, I will charge my battery now".  Nothing.  But now that it's registered and the software is on my computer it is flashing red, indicating that the battery is critically low. Crap.  It's supposed to take three hours to charge and will flash green when it's done.  After that I'll still need to pair it with my phone before I can use it.  Since I have to have both dogs at the vets in 3 hours there is no chance of wearing it to the gym today.

Of course I could still GO to the gym...but yesterday I took the morning off work and did a fairly thorough cleaning of my kitchen and downstairs bath (I'm a wild woman, huh?).  To be clear, I LOATHE cleaning, but it does feel really, really good to walk through those two nicely clean rooms.  So I think I'll take advantage of what history tells us will be a short-lived burst of motivation and clean the living room and this disgusting office rather than going to the gym today.  Oh it would be SO nice if I could accurately calculate the calories I burn while I clean....if only there was a gadget that would do that....sigh.

Ooh ooh...it's flashing yellow now instead of red.  This is progress.

Since my dirty breakfast plate is still sitting here (I told you my office is disgusting) I can call this a Blog Over Breakfast and tell you that I had a sandwich consisting of two deliciously fried eggs, a piece of mild cheddar cheese, exactly one serving of olive oil mayonnaise on two pieces of whole wheat toast, with ten grapes.  Clearly I was planning to burn off some serious calories at the gym.

Dumpster Diving for Nutritional Information

Late lunch today.  That whole having to make a living thing gets inconvenient at times, I'll tellya.

I was going to skip posting as I already spent most of my delayed lunch reading other people's blogs, but then I went over to the office fridge to get a Diet Coke (cue angelic singing) and I saw something I didn't understand.  Someone apparently purchased "chicken tenders" from the prepared food case at the grocery store across the street.  This is a fried strip of chicken, and yes I totally understand the allure of the food itself, but here's the thing.....there is NO nutritional information on the package.  My immediate thought when I saw this in passing was "How do you count that???"

Now let me point out that this food was obviously purchased by one of the thin or clinically underweight people who work in my office.  I say this is obvious because it's in the fridge.  Any normal (read: food-obsessed) person would not put ONE chicken tender back in the fridge for later.  This seriously does not compute.

But my point is that I spent, I kid you not, almost an hour logging last night's dinner.  The Man made this amazing taco casserole which, after we ate, reduced me to digging through the recycling and the trash, cellphone in hand, scanning ingredient barcodes into my FatSecret account so that I could calculate my caloric intake.

I may be getting a tinch obsessive, yathink?

Anyway...the BodyBugg comes tomorrow!  Oh yeah, that'll do WONDERS for the old OCD.

Today's lunch:  Amy's Rice Macaroni & Cheese.  Kinda bluh.

Excuse the lack of photos & links.  On the run.

Normal

I wrote something here.  And it was stupid.  Trust me.

I tried to find something cute to post instead, but instead came across an essay I wrote about a year ago when I was in a particularly foul mood and, apparently, missing my dad.

I've been missing my dad a lot lately so I figured I'd post it here.  Be warned, it's not exactly a ray of literary sunshine, but it's true.

Normal

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on the floor in the living room of the house I had lived in all of my young life and watching as my dad moved our refrigerator out of the house. I clearly remember thinking that a refrigerator was a permanent thing. I didn't know before then that it could be moved.

We moved from Cleveland out to the suburbs when I was three. I have no memories of the old house except for the view of that moving refrigerator. I would love to go back and visit that home of my early childhood, but after we moved out it was torn down to make room for the ever-expanding airport.

My memories of life in that second house are many, as I lived in it for the next 17 years and visited it for another 13 after that. As a child, I believed my existence to be average. When I visited friends who lived in houses smaller or older than ours, my mind labeled them as poor. When I visited larger, newer homes, I saw the inhabitants as rich. But in my mind, the mint green split level on Monica Drive with the stay at home mom, only child and workaholic/alcoholic dad, represented all that suburban America had to offer.

My father was a fleeting, feared, vilified image in my youth. He left for work before the sun, my mother or I even thought of rising. My days started in the kitchen sharing breakfast (and later, coffee) with my mom and ended in the living room with her, watching TV and waiting to see headlights on the wall, which was my cue to run up to my room to hide from the fight that would surely ensue if my mom said the wrong thing. Between that daily beginning and end would be school, playing with friends on the cul-de-sac, making sure to be home before the streetlights came on.
I admired my mom for keeping our little family together and for putting up with his tantrums.

It wasn't until adulthood that I started to feel that my childhood was abnormal. Apparently everyone's mom HADN’T had a thirteen year long affair about which her husband, her teenage daughter and the entire neighborhood knew. Not every ten year old was expected to pack up the beer cooler for her mother's weekly dates with her boyfriend. Not every adolescent girl had chats with her mother that revolved around such "girl talk" as the preferred lovemaking positions of her mother's lover and the many shortcomings, sexual and otherwise, of her father.

Around the time I turned 30, it occurred to me that if I, as an adult, had to live with my mother, I would work three jobs and drink myself into oblivion just ad my dad did. I started to see him, not as the monster that my mother had so vividly painted in my mind, but as a man who supported a lazy, ungrateful, cheating shrew out of obligation to her and love for his daughter. I tried to be like him, tolerating my mom, albeit from a distance, out of obligation to her and out of love for my dad.

Then dad's health failed. He was sick for only about six months, mercifully short as the gruesome timeline of lung cancer can go. Of all of the memories I could have held from this time, one stands out: my father lying in the bed of his nursing home, where his doctor sent him because nothing else could be done. He was expected to live there no more than a week, so close was he to the end. I walked in to see him and found him crying. I said "Hey Dad, how ya doin?" a question I had asked so often in the previous months, always to receive an answer of "Oh, as good as can be expected". But this time he said "Not good. I'm laying here with no TV, no radio, nothing to do but think. And I'm dying".

Mom had dropped him off there and went out to dinner with her boyfriend, promising to return the next day with a TV.

That is a memory I will never be able to let go. It is sharper in my mind than the sight of him the casket four days later, or the looks of pity the mourners gave me when they realized that my mother had brought a date to her husband’s funeral. I think it stays vivid in my mind because that’s the moment when I realized, without a doubt, that most of my childhood memories were not based in reality, but were more a product of the twisting of truth that a child's mind can accomplish in order to feel normal and stay sane.

I sure am glad my life is normal now.

The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt

Yesterday I ordered my Bodybugg SP.  This is the only one of the three items I was hoping to purchase (as I wrote about here) that I'll actually be buying.  The reduction in my shopping list from three items to one was brought about by recent financial misfortune as chronicled here.  Are we caught up now?  Good. 

My logic is that if I am able to calculate, with numbers-geek accuracy, the calories I burn by vaccuming and mopping I will dislike these chores slightly less, cancelling out the need for the robotic vacuum cleaner and floor mopper.  And, of course, we know my logic is always spot-on, right?  RIGHT?  I thought so!

But here's the thing...the agonizing I went through before I allowed myself to purchase this item was fairly impressive, even for me.  I'm starting to realize that....well at the risk of seeming like a pompous windbag I'm going to quote my favorite author, in my favorite book, and say that "The chamber of unreasonable guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me"  - Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas.

I love that quote, I adore the book and I desperately await the next book in the series so that I can have more wonderful quotes like that one, and "Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded."  God please let there be another one soon!!!

Wow did I get off track.  Shocking, I know.

ANYway, why do I subject myself to all this guilt?  I work hard, I've had fairly impressive success in my career considering that I don't have a degree.  I make decent money, though I won't be hiring servants any time soon.  So I spent $209 on something I've been wanting FOR YEARS.  Something that will, theoretically, make me a healthier person.  Something that I have researched extensively and that holds the ringing endorsement of experts in exercise and diet.  So why do I feel the need to justify this over and over and over again, to myself, to you?

Sunday I did nearly nothing.  I got up, allowed The Man to buy me brekfast (because I'm a giver that way), we went grocery shopping and I did nothing but read, watch TV and nap from about 12:30 until 6:30 when it was time to go bowling.  If not for the fact that I felt like absolute crap I would have not been able to bear the enjoyment of it.  I would have had to get up and do something productive.  And even now, two days later, I still feel guilty because there is dust on my furniture, my hampers overfloweth and my taxes remain unfiled. 

I made an appointment today to get cortisone shots in my elbows.  I learned the last time I did this that I DO NOT want to go back to work after.  It's fairly painful in the hours that follow the shots, though totally worth it for the longish-term relief.   So I made the appointment for a Friday morning, because a Thursday evening wasn't available, and I put in for a vacation day.  And do you know what?  I'm actually LOOKING FORWARD to the time after, though I know I will be in pain, because I will be able to justify in my sick mind a few hous reading or sleeping during the day without feeling like I should be doing something else.


Let's be clear, I'm not a saint or a martyr.  I'm not saying, by any stretch, that I DON'T do nice things for myself....I do.  I just then feel guilty as hell about it. 

Seriously...what the FUCK?  When did it become a sin to be nice to ourselves?  Or is it just me?

I don't think it's just me.  I know too many people who suffer the same self-inflicted angst.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why are we SO FREAKING HARD on ourselves?  Why can't we be as good to ourselves as we are to others without feeling selfish?  Or, maybe a better question is...is being selfish necessarily bad? 

If I'm good to me, then I can be good to you?  No?  YES!!!

So....my BodyBugg will be here this Friday.  Saturday I will begin counting calories with the enthusiasm whith which I count hours and wages at work.  And then...you know what?  Some time this weekend, without being at death's door or anything, I will spend two hours reading.  I make this commitment to you, but do me a favor, make a commitment to me to do something nice for yourself too.  Ok? 

What will you do for you? 

Today's lunch:  Amy's Pesto Tortellini bowl.  Yeah, I know I'm repetitive.  But it's GOOD.

Your Cliche Cluster Moment of the Day

Good morning!  Again today I write over my morning coffee instead of lunch because today's lunch break will be spent at the doctor getting the results of the sleep test I had a few weeks ago.  Can't wait.

Yesterday, within a half hour, I got three pieces of bad financial news. All three will most likely lead to good things...for the people who delivered the news to me as well as, in an indirect way, to The Boy and will even make some aspects of my life better.  But basically people who have financial obligations to me, through no fault of their own whatsoever, will likely be unable to meet those obligations, at least for a while.  There are upsides.  No doubt about that.  But I have to wonder, why is it that everything that makes those around me happy has to suck money out of my pocket?

Shit.

I could walk away from this with a lesson...don't help anyone and don't count on anyone...becuase even when people really REALLY want to live up to their obligations, they can't always do it.  In neither of these cases did these people do anything at all wrong.  Shit just happens. 

But here's the thing....isn't counting on people...leaning on people....helping people.....isn't that a big part of what life is about?  Aren't our existences supposed to be weaved in with those around us?  Do I really want to be an island?   One of these militantly self-sufficient people who sotically goes about her own business, taking from and giving to nobody?  I've known some of those people...my impression was typically "Hard nosed, lonely bitch".  Not really an image I want to cultivate, yaknow?
So I'll deal.

But I have to admit, after punch number three I looked up and VERY nearly said "what next?"....then I remembered....

Five years ago I was going through a divorce.  As divorces go it was an easy one, we shared a lawyer, few voices were raised...but it was still a divorce from the father of my child, the man I had been with for 22 years, so to say I was devastated doesn't even come close to covering it.  I stumbled through work, I took care of my son, and I cried.  That was my life for several months.  And at one point I remember talking to a friend and saying "What next?  I mean come on God...is that all you got?  Pile it on!"

Yeah, it's not a good idea to taunt the higher power.

I lost my job.  A job I LOVED.  A CAREER.  And I had dear friends there...MOST of my friends were there. 

Oh and did I mention it was five days before Christmas?  My first Christmas as a single mom?  Good times.

So yeah, yesterday I sort of sighed and trudged on.  What can I do?

The end of the job/divorce story is that I ended up at a MUCH better job, in a MUCH happier relationship, and in a MUCH better life.  But boy that period sucked.

So here it comes.  Are you ready?  When it rains it pours.  I can take the rain and put it in a pot, light a flame and wait for good things to happen...but a watched pot never boils.  So I'll pour the warm water into a cup and make tea....and the cup will be half full.

This has been your Cliche Cluster Moment of the Day.

Today's lunch...I'm hoping to have time to stop on the way back from the doctor's at Wendy's and get an Apple Pecan Chicken Salad...who needs to make a house payment anyway?

Going International

Real quick before I have to punch the morning timeclock I wanted to say that I won't have time to write at lunchtime today.  The Boy has an an appointment which requires my attendance (this kid will be the death of me yet) and I'm going to follow it with what will hopefully be a stress-reducing double workout at the gym. 

But I just wanted to mention, in passing and totally calmly, that SOMEONE IN RUSSIA AND THE UK READ MY BLOG!!!

I have no idea how it happened but Blogspot says so and they wouldn't lie.  See??

Ok so it's only 2 pageviews in Russia and one in the UK but holy global audience Batman. 

I got back on the diet/exercise wagon yesterday, after a dismal 0.6 pound gain last week.  I ate very well yesterday and walked a half hour on the dreadmill last night.  Today I'm going to do my normal cardio workout (40 minutes on the elliptical) and then, if the pool isn't overrun with prepubescent swimteams, I'm going to swim a half hour. 

Today's lunch:  No clue. 

Cookies are Definitely Involved

Hello my friends.  I'm sorry I've been gone for so long.  Things have been especially hectic at work and my elbows have been especially sensitive which makes me not so writey.

It's tax time which means I have a new obsession...what to do with my refund.  This year I stand to get a decent chunk of change since it's my year to claim The Boy (The Ex gets him every 2nd year).  Sure, the smart thing to do would be to send 100% of my refund to my friends at US Bank, but honestly they pretty much own me now and the amount of this refund wouldn't buy back my little finger. 

So I'm thinking a compromise is in order, maybe 60% to the bank and 40% to me, to buy some gadgets that I've been admiring. 

First, ther's this little gem:



It's called a Bodybugg and I've been lusting after it for a couple of years now.  As much as I obsess about my caloric intake from food/output from exercise you'd think I'd be thin but sadly this is not the case.  I'm SUCH a numbers geek, seriously I've been known to keep elaborate spreadsheets and charts on net calories compared to the weight loss result.   This doodad promises to take the guesswork out of it.  It's supposed to work with my phone to tell me one of the following two things

I hope that cookie was good because you now have to spend three hours on the dreadmill to work it off!
or
Good girl, nice workout, now you may have a cookie. 

I'm paraphrasing, of course, but cookies are definitely involved.

The next gadget I've been obsessively researching considering is this:



It's the Neato XV-11, AKA "The Roomba Killer".  Of course I don't actually want to kill my Roomba, as I stated here it's one of my favorite things, but it could be so much better, and the Neato seems to have a lot of the features that Roomba lacks.  So I'd like to get one of these for downstairs (doghair central) and put Roomba upstairs where the dogs don't go and less debris is tracked.  Think of upstairs is sort of like Boca Raton for Roombas.

And, the third thing I really want to get is:



It's a Scooba 230.  It mops!  I had a Scooba 330 a few years ago and it did a decent job, but it was big, bulky, heavy, hard to clean and not very durable.  The 230 appears to have solved the first four issues, the durability issue will remain to be seen.

Sadly this new version isn't available yet....the website says "Soon"...rumor is it will come out in the spring. 

These three items combined will be roughly 1/3 of my tax refund.  They are individually extravagent and combined they're nearly obsecene but they will make my house cleaner and my body leaner and doesn't that mean something?

The first person who points out that I would be leaner if I incorporated mopping and vacuuming into my daily routine to burn calories gets their very own voodoo doll modeled after them.

Besides....how would I know how many calories I burned?  I rest my case.

Today's lunch:  Amy's Pesto Tortelini.  Yummy yumm yum.

Effing Ow.

I have Tennis Elbow.  If you know me at all you have to know that just the name of this condition, when it was first diagnosed, made me laugh.  Tennis Elbow?  Me?  I'd more likely develop, I don't know, Time Travel Toe. 

Muffintop?  Sure.  Couch ass?  Absolutely.  But Tennis Elbow?

Well it turns out that Tennis Elbow is the non-medical term for Tendonitis in the elbow.  And I'm here to tell you my friends that this condition sucks ass.

In my case a more accurate title would be Typer's Elbow.  I bowl, and it hurts like a sonofabitch, but my left elbow hurts as bad as the right which tells me that it is my occupation (and, oh yeah, this little hobby) which is causing this problem.  I could, theoretically, stop writing recreationally, but I have a good 15 to 20 years of typing ahead of me, if I'm lucky.  So what to do?

I went to the doctor and asked him, basically, What the Fuck, man?  I mean why now?  And why so suddenly?  It went from 0 to 9 on the pain scale inside of a month and I've been typing for a living for roughly 25 years.  He said, get ready for the brilliant medical opinion, "These things happen when we get older"

Great.

So he gave me a couple of shots in my elbows, which is EXACTLY as much fun as it sounds, and sent me on my merry way.  And it was GREAT....for two months.  At three months I went back for more shots, and it was GREAT.....for roughly six weeks. 

I've done a lot of reading online (because that's where all the really reliable medical information is kept, right?) and it does seem like this just...happens.  Why didn't anyone tell me about this before?  Is it really acceptable that pains just POP up....next is shit going to start falling off?  Can we start with my elbows?

If you've never experienced the comedy of Louis CK, check out this clip on turning 40.  If you're not there yet, get ready....this is actually how it is. 

Anyway I've been obsessing over this for a while, first of all because the pain itself never really lets me forget, but also I'm starting to fear for my ability to make a living.   I've had to develop a "work around" for putting my seatbelt on for crap sake.  I wear a brace on each arm when I work and when I bowl.  This is chronic, debilitating pain.  And I'm only 45!!!  And, here's the kicker, it's not caused by my weight.  It's not like I'm doing push ups every day (again...as likely as going back and visiting the soda fountain with Marty McFly).  This just....happened.  And I seriously don't know what to do, but something has to give because I can't live another 15 to 20 years like this.

I've asked my doctor to prescribe this new wonder-drug I've recently heard about (why do I have to hear this stuff through the grapevine?  Why didn't the doc say something??).  Crossing my fingers that it works....wait...crossing my fingers hurts.  Fortunately I can still flip the bird with little difficulty.

Today's lunch:  Braunschweiger again.  Don't make that face.  It's good.

Its Here! It's Here!!!

No time to write today.  The gift cards came yesterday so I spent today's lunch break buying my new toy!

But I did think my lunch was pretty & colorful, so here you go:

Today's lunch: Salad with "artisan lettuce" from WSM, with turkey, tomatoes, walnuts, dried cranberries, real bacon bits (just a few!) & balsamic vinaigrette.