Happy Birthday Mom!

I hope you have a good one and that you like the TV-B-Gone that I got you! Since it received an official mention from the New York Times I am sure you'll love it.

My mom's not an easy person to describe, and I'm not going to try today. But I'll leave you with two quotes, both of which I think in my mind will always pretty much say it better than I can myself.

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
–EB White, Charlotte’s Web

"Good writers borrow, Great writers steal" -stolen from TS Eliot, by My Mom.

Nebraska and I, We're Both Moody Bitches

Yesterday it SNOWED here, and today it's sunny and 60 degrees.
Which is really annoying, because if I would have known it was going to be HOT (based on my lowered set of Midwestern standards) I could have worn way cuter shoes than the ones I'm wearing right now.

You would think I should have something better to blog about than the weather.
We'll, you'd be wrong. I live in NEBRASKA. The weather and cattle are like, the only things our state does.

I guess I could try to divulge some personal emotions about my life or whatever. Maybe let out my Heart Feelings (tm Mr. E's mom). I don't know if I'm quite ready for that, but I will say that I am going on vacay in six days and I am already pissed off about the fact that when I come return home, it will be to someplace I'd rather not be coming back to. My goal for next year's vacation is to be excited and happy to be coming home.

We Screen for Felons and Married People.

-Tag Line from some dating web site that just caught my eye. To which I'd like to add:
We're Not THAT bad.
Elizabeth

Recipe for disaster

It's always a good sign when you're so desperate for a drink that you'll settle for the (not so tasty) concoction of vodka, pellogrino, and lemon. Any vehicle to get the vodka into your bloodstream at this point!
Ah, visiting the parents.
Also, who has lime chutney pickle but no limes? Jesus.

IN WHICH I USE THE CAPS LOCK WAY TOO MUCH

So yesterday, I was wearing my most cute, very gorgeous pointy toed Nine West camel colored heels that I got in San Fran for 17 dollars. Seventeen dollars everyone! Crazy. And so I decided that it was high time that I asked my lovely and talented and VERY coordinated friend Anna to show me how to walk in my heels. Anna's a dancer and shit, besides being very super awesome, and she totally showed me that MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE I HAVE BEEN WALKING WRONG. Seriously people. Did you get that? MY WHOLE LIFE I HAVE BEEN WALKING WRONG. And I am telling you, there have been people who have almost divorced me (Mr. E) because they think I walk to slow. But did they happen to mention that maybe it was because MY WHOLE LIFE I HAVE BEEN WALKING WRONG? Of course not! That would be too easy.

On the plus side, I am going to visit my mom this weekend, so now I can give her a lot of quality guilt treatments about how she never taught me to walk properly and how it has ruined my life and how that is why I am not famous and taller and generally how it is her fault that my life is so depressing and I live in Nebraska. And also I would like to add that this weekend when I called my step dad to remind him I was coming HE DID NOT KNOW WHO I WAS. Even when I told him my name. Lucky I called ahead of time. Jesus, people, don't lose your shit yet, I'm not ready to take care of ya'all right now!

In Memoriam

Last night Mr. E's dad called his cell phone a bunch of times, and when Mr. E finally answered, he got up and went in the other room. I could tell it was something bad but I wasn't sure what it was about. Then Mr. E came back in the room and told me that his little dog Kelly was no longer with us. Kelly is the dog Mr. E and his whole family grew up with, she was a complete and utter part of the family, and I think Mr. E loved her in a way that maybe even I can't understand. When he would go home to visit he would always say that he was really going home to visit his dogs, and you would see him and Kelly together and know that there was just something special going on there between those two.
After his dad called, Mr. E and I both sat and cried about Kelly. I couldn't believe how sad I was, but there was just something about Kelly. She was just a one of a kind dog. You get lucky if you have one dog like her in your lifetime. Now all other dogs will always be compared to Kelly and will probably never measure up. She was just the smartest, coolest, nicest dog. I could tell that and I don't even like dogs. Mr. E's dad said that he never thought he would do such a thing, but he paid an exhorbitant sum of money and got Kelly's ashes. He thought she deserved it. I thought that was pretty cool.

Then I started in about how Jack from Little House on the Prairie died and Laura asked Pa if Jack was in dog heaven and Pa said yes and he was up there chasing rabbits, we both said Kelly was up in heaven rolling around in a field of Snickers, and then I just sobbed and I had to stop talking about Jack because that just makes me cry like nothing else. And Erik told all his favorite Kelly stories, like the time she ate some chocolate mice his mom had made, with maraschino cherries and hershey's kisses, but Kelly didn't eat the cherries, she just licked those clean and spit them back out, and that was the part they found.

Anyway, then Mr. E played sad music and I think he felt better, but I don't know. We didn't have ice cream so I could not apply the full treatment.

I do think he felt also better because he held little Annabelle on his lap the whole time and he kept saying she could tell that he felt bad, but let's face it, I think we both know she's not the dog Kelly was. Although give her time, she is still just a little puppy. And if it were not for her I can guarantee you we would have some newborn puppy right now named Kelly 2, so for that I am grateful.

Here's to you Kells, you were some dog. I hope you are having fun up there with all those Snickers, but we miss you.

Everyone Needs A Goal

Right now, for those of you who don't know this, I am working very very very hard on losing 20 or 25 pounds. Over the past year and a half I lost 25 pounds and so this is the second half of what I want to lose to be at my goal weight of between 120-125 pounds. For my height this isn't crazy skinny or anything, but if I feel like I am losing too much I'll stop before then. However so far this hasn't been any sort of a problem as the last 25 pounds are refusing to budge. And I have to tell you it's really discouraging and incredibly frustrating to work so hard to lose and regain the same two pounds for months at a time. At this point I feel like I'm flying blind. All I can do is try harder. So starting RIGHT NOW I am going to renew my efforts. If the next three weeks don't bring some kind of loss, I'm going to have to do something else, as I think I'll be able to officially say that Plan A is not working. Until then, it's balls to the wall. So here are my rules/goals/official guidelines for the next three weeks.

1. NO FLEX POINTS
There is much debate about this in the WW community. But so far, I've been eating most of these, and I haven't been losing weight. Perhaps this is an extra 1500 calories I can't afford to eat and still lose weight. I wouldn't be surprised.
2. COUNT EVERY POINT
This means weighing everything, and basically no guessing at restaurant food or what 3 ounces of chicken is.
3. NO JUNK IN THE HOUSE
If I buy 2 pt mini snickers ice cream bars, I will eat them. If I buy a bag of baked cheetos, I will eat them. The whole bag. If I don't have them in the house, I can't eat them. I just simply do not have the will power to not do so. So basically, if it's not something I can afford to eat all of, I shouldn't bring it in the house.
4. NO EATING AFTER 8 PM.
This just seems like a good idea, and Oprah does it, and it will encourage me to work on my bad habit of not eating enough during the day in order to save up for eating too much later on.
5. WORK OUT SIX DAYS A WEEK
This can be anything, from running, to doing any kind of taped aerobics, to playing tennis, but I have to do it. This is my key, I believe, and it always makes me feel better, and it is changing my body, for the better, even if it's not making me lose weight.
6. MOON TIME
Plan ahead for my period. I have to stop using the excuse that I have to eat whatever I need to eat during this three or four day event. So I need some filling cereal, bars, and shakes or something I can take pills with, and I need to go back to the doctor for my pain meds.
7. VEGGIES
Keep a bin in the fridge with water and cut up veggies at all times. I need to get back to relying on fruit and veggies as my only snacks. This makes me want to snack less, and it reduces my reliance on "diet foods" that aren't actually helping anything, like reduced fat triscuits.
8. SOUP AND SALAD
I need to concentrate on having soup and salad at least four days a week. I have been really bad at both of these. These two things alone added into my food routine could make a big difference if they can become something I automatically go to instead of pasta or a bowl of cereal.

That's it, those are my goals. Wish me luck! Will report progress in three weeks.

Cheeseburger in Paradise

I've been in a crabby mood all day, and not even the BLT I inhaled for dinner could snap me out of it. And when you have a problem bacon can't fix, well, you know it's a bad one. Bacon should be able to fix anything.
In a totally unrelated matter, whenever I eat a BLT, it reminds me of the summer I spent visiting my grandparents in Vermont, the summer before I started high school. It was one of the best summers of my life, because I spent the whole time getting to know one of my best friends, my cousin J. She's so much like me it kind of freaks me out sometimes. There's something about knowing someone so cool who's so much like me that always makes me proud. But before I knew how we'd end up being so close, and how she'd be the MOH in my wedding, and how she's singlehandedly get me through every major crisis of my "adult" life by listening and understanding no matter what, well, before then I found her pretty damned intimidating. It was nice to spend a summer learning that well, yes, while she was intimidating, because she could take the train by herself and use her mom's credit card to buy red shoes and watched General Hospital, but that she was also such a cool funny kick ass person. I always felt sad that before my Grandma died I didn't remember to tell her thanks, for giving me that summer with my cousin, and thus one of my most valued friendships. And also, for all the BLT's. Every time my grandparents took us out to dinner, it was to Howard Johnson's, and I always ordered a BLT, and J always ordered a cheeseburger. Every single time.
I miss those days.

Friday Sucky Check In

So, no loss today, which SUCKS, and I am super hungry, and I just found out I have to go to a staff meeting I really don't want to go to as it's going to SUCK, and my knees hurt from working out so much even though I never lose weight so I don't know why I bother which super SUCKS, and new J Crew cashmere cardigan is covered with SUCKY SUCKY pills, and there aren't any movies out this weekend that don't SUCK, and I just opened a new bank account which they refuse to give me the account number for even though they have $100 of my money which SUCKS and btw why does everyone keep trying to get me to stay in Nebraska when it SUCKS so bad here?
However, I am wearing VERY cute shoes today. Which don't suck at all.

I will turn that dryer on as high as it goes because I can.

The other day Mr. E and I were standing in the laundromat growing increasingly irritable over the obvious suck of time and money involved in getting our clothes only marginally clean, when he looked over at me, read my mind, and said "let's buy a washer and dryer". I told him if he found one, and figured out how to pay for it, and got it into the house, I would totally do all his laundry, forever. Which sounds crazy, but really, actually, I love to laundry. LOVE IT. A washing machine is like crack cocaine to an anal retentive cleaner such as myself. And without one, I was not fulfilling my true anal retentive destiny. Anyway, we totally couldn't actually afford it, but that's what credit cards are for. And besides, I bargained them into delivering it for free, so at least I can tell myself we got a good deal, even though I am sure we didn't, as we are naive babies when it comes to the world of bargaining for used household appliances. Which, hello? Algebra class? Could I not have learning some useful skills during that time? Like maybe how to walk in really high heels or how to bargain for washing machines? Yeah, thanks for wasting thousands of hours of my life on Tuesday mornings from 8:15 am to 9 am, algebra, you bastard.

Here's someone who said it much better than I ever could...
For some reason this poem always reminds me of my mom.
Who also loves to do laundry, and has tons of awesome rules about it that we used to get in these huge fights about. And now I can break them with my own washing machine! Awesome.


SORTING LAUNDRY
Folding clothes,
I think of folding youinto my life.
Our king sized sheets
like table cloths for the banquets of giants,
pillow cases, despite so many washings
seams still holding our dreams.
Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,reserved,
we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.
So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.
All those wrinkles to be smoothed, or else
ignored, they're in style.
Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foamlike those creatures in the ark.
And what's shrunkis tough to discard
even for Goodwill.
In pockets, surprises: forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking on enamel;
paper clips, whatever they held
between shiny jaws, now dissolved or clogging the drain;
well washed dollars, legal tender for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;
and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold
you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt left by a former lover...
If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold only my own clothes,
the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,
a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fillthe empty side of the bed.
-Elisavietta Ritchie