Weekend Recap
I rarely do a weekend recap, but here it goes...
Friday: after work, Ron and I went to pick up our wedding bands and my engagement ring which was being resized for the 58th time. Both my rings were perfect, but Ron's ring was still too small. So we'll be going back again within the next couple of weeks, which is fine with me, because I love window shopping in that store. On the way home, we stopped at Ron's parents' house for dessert. Mellow evening--perfect.
Saturday: power yoga with my new love, Norah. I have no idea whether she spells her name with the "h" or not, but since I prefer it that way, on this website, she does. She had us pretending to be the 4 different elements: fire, earth, water, air. I did my very best not to giggle. At one point we were envisioning a fire burning in our chests. I have no idea how one would envision that without freaking out. I mean the thought of something inside your body bursting into flame isn't exactly comforting, even if you follow it by envisioning water filling your lungs to put out the fire. Regardless, I was so energized afterwards that I lifted and did about 25 minutes of cardio. Nearly forgot that I needed to get home and shower to meet my friend Meg early that afternoon.
Meg and I went to see
Brokeback Mountain. I've heard a lot of conflicting things about it. Meg was lukewarm about it. I liked it. Does it deserve Oscar gold? Since I rarely see any movies in the theatre, it's hard for me to say. Like another of my friends pointed out, it's probably being so well received more because of the fact that two popular, straight actors are playing characters in a same sex relationship than because of the content of the script. I will say that within my limited realm of moving-viewing, I have never seen anything quite like this. On a unrelated note, lots of people in the theatre were talking back to the screen, which I found funny. Like when Michelle Williams character, Alma, left the house to go to "work" and her husband is yelling for her to serve dinner, women in the audience were yelling "That's right, you keep walking, girl."
I actually didn't think Michelle Williams performance was quite as fabulous as everyone said. She had like 5 minutes of dialogue really. I had read somewhere that her character knew as soon as Jack showed up that her life would never be the same. So I had imagined that she somehow intuitively knew that something was up with Jack and her husband--like she would put all the pieces of this puzzle together. Instead what actually happens is that within seconds of Jack showing up, she sees he and Ennis making out. Not much left for her to figure out really.
Certain aspects of the plot didn't quite add up for me (why
did his daughter show up at the end to invite him to her wedding?). But I did find myself thinking about the two main characters quite a bit for the rest of the weekend. I could feel their pain. It was haunting--can I say that without sounding cliche? Perhaps I was intrigued because these two men weren't exactly forthcoming with their feelings--it's not like they spilled it all out there. At least for me, it was hard to tell the lust from fascination from obsession from love. I guess it was all those things. I think there was love, although they never said it. Since I don't know what it's like to be in a same sex relationship and I certainly don't know what it's like to be in one during the 1960s, I'll just leave it at that.
Afterwards, Meg and I went to the Continential for margharitas and fries. Okay, well, I got the fries, she got a salad. But whatever.
Sunday:
My one soon-to-be niece has officially entered the terrible two's. She refuses to try on anything resembling a flower girl dress. She's stubborn, that one. And I resorting finally, to "being mad at her" for not trying on the dress. So now she and I are not on speaking terms. She's not pleased with this development and begged me to hold her and play with her, but I held my ground. She held hers. She knew I was "sad" that she wouldn't try on the dress, and desperately wanted me to not be mad at her, but wouldn't cave in. She can't even be bribed. Her older sister got a treat for trying her dress on, but the little one was unaffected by the fact that she didn't get a treat. She's a tough nut. I'm well on my way to be a mean aunt. Ridiculous that I'm in a stand-off with a two year old.
And that was my weekend.
Oh You Wishy-Washy Woman
So not more than two weeks ago, James Frey was interviewed by CNN's Larry King about the accusations that he lied in his book. Oprah called in to
voice her support, saying that even if parts were made up, the message still rang true.
Yesterday, apparently,
Oprah ripped James Frey a new one because she's received so much criticism for supporting him. It's okay to be okay with this fabrication of a memior, and it's okay to be outraged by it. It's not okay to be okay with the fabrication and then do an about-face because your fans say you should. Have a spine, Oprah.
The V-Spot
The squeamish might not like this post.
I went to the OTHER power yoga class last night. Oh, how I longed for hippy-dippy Nora from the Saturday morning class. This instructor was no Nora. It's the first time I've never been truly scared in a class, in a holy-shit-I-could-really-hurt-myself sort of way. This guy, thankfully didn't wear a microphone headset, but that didn't make him any less hardcore. Handstands (which I opted out of), headstands (which I also opted out of) and poses that required two people connecting to do. I enjoy yoga as a soliditary thing, not a team sport with someone I don't know. The instructor was also a big fan of poses that result in blood rushing to one's head, a sensation I don't particularly enjoy. I thought my sinuses were going to explode all over the gym floor.
At one point, I was....well, I don't know how to explain it. Well, I do, it was a shoulderstand. The back of my head was on the floor and the tops of my shoulders were also on the floor. I had raised my legs into a line perpendicular to the floor and then lower them towards my head so that I was looking at my kneecaps. The instructor then told us to lower our knees to either sides of our heads, near our ears. I was pretty convinced my body wouldn't do that, but it did and after I did, I was pretty sure I had paralyzed myself. We stayed like that for a few minutes and while I suppose I could have closed my eyes, I had nowhere to look but the seat of my crotch, a mere 3 inches from my nose. It occurred to me that if I wasn't wearing clothes, I'd be staring into my own vagina.
That's just not right, people. A woman shouldn't be flexible enought to put her vagina 3 inches from her face. It sort of freaked me out. Thankfully, just as I started to hyperventilate, the instructor told us to change poses. Strenuous, not-fun poses. I don't like to think I'm one to shy away from a challenge, but I got the feeling I was in way over my head in this class.
When I got home last night, I told Ron that there was a good chance he'd be taking me to the hospital later. It didn't come to that, but I don't think I'm going to go back to that class either.
Snow!
By the time I finish typing this, it will probably stop, but right now it's flurrying. I love snow.
Rights
I'll be the first one to tell you that I do not understand the concept of illegal immigrants' rights in this country. They're here
illegally. I do understand that this is a very complex issue. They say illegal immigrants "do the work no one else wants to do", an argument I find ridiculous. Show me an unemployed, impoverished person (legal citizen) who wouldn't do a job an illegal does. I mean it is plausible here, right, that with the unemployment rate what it is, that illegals are taking jobs that citizens would do. Oh, but then companies would actually have to pay citizens at least minimum wage and we all might have to pay alittle bit more for our canned goods or something.
Anyway, since I don't believe in punishing children for their parents' actions, I do think the minor children of illegal immigrants should have access to education and healthcare, but I that's about where the rights end.
But the thing I really don't understand is why the Catholic Church has decided to voice its opinion on this matter. I think it's fair to say that the Catholic Church has other things it should be conscentrating on.
Oh, That's Why They Call It "Power"
So it's been 3 days since my first-ever power yoga class and my ass still hurts. Signs of a good class. I had always shyed away from power yoga. The word "power" and "yoga" didn't go together well for me. Also the class was taught by a dude who wore a microphone headset. Also unsettling.
I had promised that I would try a class right after the new year. One thing after another kept coming up and I never made it to a class until Saturday morning. As I put my mat down, I overheard the other ladies in the class saying that microphone headset dude was no longer teaching the class. It was fate.
I couldn't be more in love with this new yoga instructor. She's so hippy-dippy and the perfect yoga instructor. She's round with long, long hair that she wears in a braid and she wears long, dangly, Native American-inspired earrings. She talks about being one with the earth and wind and loving yourself and all that shit. I love her!
So I knew all the poses, you just do them at a much faster rate in power yoga. I definitely worked up a sweat, but didn't think the class was particularly difficult. Until about Saturday night when my legs started to ache. By Sunday morning my thighs, ass and biceps were screaming for mercy. But in a good way. Turns out that class kicked my ass. I'm going back every week.
Wednesday nights there's another power yoga class but it's taught by some dude. I'm going to check it out, but if he's wearing a headset, I'm leaving.
Conversations
It must be nice to live in fantasy-land.
R: Arrrgghh! The laundry! I forgot about folding the laundry.
Me: Oh yeah, me too. I separated it, we just need to fold it and put it away.
R: You do too much laundry.
Me: (
sighing) We've been over this before. I do it twice a week so I can carry it.
R: You do it more than twice a week, it's ridulous.
Me: (
annoyed) I do it twice a week. Believe me, no one knows better than
me how many times
I do laundry.
R: (
equally annoyed) I'm sick of having to fold and put all this laundry away. I spend all my time putting away laundry.
Me: Am I hearing you right? Are you kidding me? I lug it down there, around the corner, do it and lug it back. You're
COMPLAINING that there's clean laundry? Laundry that you don't have to do? Clean laundry that miraculously appears that you simply have to put away? Are you serious?
R: Yes, I'm sick of folding laundry twice a week. You should only have to do laundry once a week.
Me: That's too much laundry for me to carry at once.
R: I told you that you don't have to do my laundry. I'll do my own.
Me: But you wait weeks to do yours and I can
not take it when there's dirty laundry everywhere.
R: Laundry should only be done every two weeks. When I lived alone I did mine once a month.
Me: Are you kidding me? We can't do laundry every two weeks! You just said one week, now it's two weeks. You know, if we ever have kids, you do laundry like every freaking day. You know that right?
R: No, no laundry every day. Just buy them more clothes.
Me: I'm not even justifying that with a response. I can't believe you're complaining about CLEAN laundry.
R: (
opens dresser drawer) Look at this! This is underwear I never even see, because I never need to go into this drawer because I never can use that much underwear. You're always washing the other pairs, so I never even get to this drawer.
Me: I SO wish I had a tape recorder right now. I would love to play back this conversation to other people. Next time you go out with the guys, I want you to complain to them about how much laundry your fiancee does. About how many clean clothes you have. I'd love to see what kind of sympathy you get from them.
The end result of this conversation is him having his own hamper in the back closet that can get as overfilled as he lets it. He will do his laundry, I will do mine. And he better not dare come to crying to me when he runs out of underwear.
Boob Update
Okay, not really a boob update. A bra update. Since my last post about
Victoria Secret's IPEX demi bra, I've purchased a second one. Both are holding up well to regular washings in the regular washing machines. So far, they're not totally stretched out and are holding everything where it's supposed to be.
I found a bra I like. This is monumental.
Tomorrow
Well, not a whole lot going on. Spent the last two days doing pretty much nothing.
Tomorrow I'm going to see Nana. That should be interesting.
Wedding responses are pouring back in. All "yeses" so far.
Weighing In
I did it. After riding the bike, I stayed on the treadmill for 25 minutes this morning and ran (well, jogged) for 18 of those minutes. I've really been working on my breathing and it's worked. I still get a slight cramp while power walking for the first few minutes, but strangely, it disappears when I start jogging. But I do need to consciously and somewhat obnoxiously breathe in and out. It helps to envision sending breath to the area that's starting to cramp. Slowly but surely, I'm conquering the treadmill.
I went to the doctor yesterday and she confirmed what I already knew: that my weight has been steadily decreasing for the last two years. I'm officially 20 pounds lighter than what I was 2 years ago, back to the weight I was in college. I like hearing it from an official source though, like a medical scale instead of the crappy scale I have in my bathroom.
That's probably going to be the last time I see any tangible proof of progress. My body likes the number 135. Since I've started working out, I can vary a couple of pounds in either direction, but my body always seems to settle back to 135. I'd really like to get to 129. I know this is where I sound totally unhealthy but there would just be something cool about being under 130. Now, before you start jumping all over me, I'd still be in a good BMI range. I've learned that as a thin person, you need to justify your weight loss for some reason, because everyone jumps to the eating disorder conclusion.
For my height, I wouldn't be underweight until I hit about 120lbs and trust me, that's never going to happen and I don't ever want that to happen. But 6 pounds, losing that wouldn't be bad. Hard though, because I'd really have to diet. Which I'm not really inclined to do. Like I said, my body seems to like 135. This whole working out thing has really put me in tune with my body, another unexpected perk to being in shape. So I know my body is saying 135 is nice. But I still sort of wish for a couple of extra pounds to come off.
Right....
So I'm sure it was official way before this, but now it's really official. Mayor Ray Nagin is crazy. He wants to make New Orleans a "
chocolate" city, because that's the way "God wants it." And then there was a whole tirade about the hurricanes being sent by God because he's mad at America for going to war in Iraq.
Holy crap, Nagin, get yourself together. You can't just going around saying stuff like that. Can you imagine what would happen if NYC's mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he wanted to make New York a "vanilla" city? The city would be burned down along with Mayor Bloomberg at the center of it, tied to a stake. That's what would happen. That's right, I'm saying it. If a white man made similar comments, it would be front page news for days. But today, it's a 2 minute blip on CNN. People should be outraged that Nagin made such comments, but in the end, it'll be glossed over, frankly, because he's a black man.
Nagin did try to put a different spin on it when questioned. He explained that you make chocolate by taking white milk and mixing it with dark chocolate and it makes "a delicious drink." WHATEVER, DUDE. That's chocolate milk, you idiot. We know what you meant by "chocolate" and, even if you did mean a mix of black and white, that's not exactly diverse, is it?
He'll probably get re-elected.
MLK
I'm a little bitter about having to go to work today. I feel that anytime all governmental offices decide to shut down, that should be a que to the rest of the country to shut down as well. It's a little presumptuous for My Institution to think it's more important than the government. I'm pretty sure that Martin Luther King's dream had nothing to do with people having the day off from work, but since almost everyone does, I feel I should too. It's all about equality.
Baggage and Snot and all the Other Things Little Girls are Made Of
It's official. I don't think I'm programmed to have children.
We took Ron's niece to the Please Touch Museum and kept her overnight on Saturday. Kids come with a lot of baggage. And by baggage I mean no fewer than 6 bags for 1 overnight stay. There was her monogrammed overnight bag, her Tinkerbell sleeping bag and backback, her Tinkerbell pillow, two bags with games, one bag with an assortment of fruit drinks and snacks and another bag of DVDs. The kid travels with her own set of 5 DVDs. I don't even own 5 DVDs. Kids also come with their own language, and over the weekend I learned to become bilingual. I'll put those kid words and phrases in quotes for those of you who are as retarded with kids as I am.
The good news was that she was super well-behaved all day Saturday. She loved the Please Touch Museum and played well with the other kids. She had her "listening ears" on all day too. She honestly seemed to have a lot of fun and while the Please Touch Museum is sort of a low budget operation, it is quite educational and the Niece seemed to learn a lot. When she seemed to get tired, we took a break for snacks, which consisted of "bunny rabbit juice" (read: strawberry milk) and m&m's. Niece got a second wind and did every activity at the museum about 2 more times. We spent about 5 hours at the Please Touch and let me tell you, for the most part, I was bored to tears. Is that awful? It was fun doing some of the activities with Niece for alittle while, but I realized about halfway through the day that for the most part, Ron was playing with her and I was just watching them play.
And can I tell you about the abundance of boobs at this place? Women around every corner whipping their boobs out, just breastfeeding at will. The Please Touch Museum needs to apply for some sort of governmental grant to build a lactation room. Seriously.
Another thing kids come with? Snot, otherwise known as "boogies". Niece was getting over a cold and since all her congestion had reached the breaking up point, Niece had a nice build up of thick mucus that was never-ending each time she blew her nose. The poor thing had no idea what to do, it was like she had never seen so much stuff come out of her nose, so I would help her get rid of all the "boogies". That the mucus was rubberband-like proved to be a particular challenge, but in this regard, I won out over Ron--who basically gagged every time the tissues came out. Great. Ron's good at playing and I'm good at fetching boogies. We make a good team, I suppose.
At the end of the day, I was convinced that Niece was not going to want to stay over, as she usually gets whiny for her parents. But her mother had apparently pumped her up for a slumber party at Uncle Ronnie's, so when we got home, she popped in a DVD, spread out her sleeping blanket and settled in. She and I baked chocolate chip cookies before bed, an activity she thought was "neat".
She slept through the night and in the morning, we found her in the bathroom, brushing her teeth with her Spiderman electric toothbrush and Dora toothpaste. All by herself. She woke up in a strange house and the first thing she did was go brush her teeth. She's 4.
Anyway, I went to the gym and by the time I got back an hour later, Niece had hit the wall so the speak and wanted to. go. home. NOW. The rest of yesterday went downhill. There was lots of crying and whining and Lord only knows, there were a lot of boogies. I was plenty happy to drop her off at her parents' house and watch the meltdown occur with them there to deal with it.
A couple of things are clear from this weekend, namely that I'm going to be the disciplinarian if we ever have kids and Ron's going to be "fun dad". When kids throw a temper tantrum over NOTHING, I see no need to plead with them, I'm fine with locking them in a room and letting them scream. I also believe in giving kids choices, i.e., "You can either take your medicine and then play with your new Cinderella activity book, or you can refuse to take your medicine and go to time-out. Your choice."
One thing is for sure: overall the weekend was fun, but I am very, very happy it's over.
Judge
These "judging Alito" hearings bore me to tears. I know I should be more interested, but I feel like real information never comes out of these hearings anyway. Good to see the Democrats finally strapped one on and asked some tougher questions yesterday. Seeing Alito's wife cry though probably shouldn't have been the highlight of this thing.
Nana
When Ron first proposed, I said I wanted two things: to get married in a church and for my grandmother to be there. Ron wanted to fly to the Caribbean for a destination wedding. We may have been able to find a church in the Caribbean but there was no way my grandmother was getting on a plane. So I won.
Well, sort of. As it turns out, my grandmother has recently entered into end-stage senile dementia. She's been going senile for quite some time now, but mostly it was forgetting people's names or days of the week. She still lived on her own in Brooklyn until two weeks ago. She lived in Brooklyn her entire life. She rarely left that area except for visits to my parents' house. I think it was hard for her to imagine what life was like outside of the city. When I was a little girl, she used to play with me in my parents' backyard. One of my most vivid memories of her is when we were galloping around pretending to ride ponies--I must have been about 6. In fact, my first memory ever that I totally remember on my own without the aid of photos is her holding me in a pool on vacation. My brother wasn't born yet, not even on the way, so I must have been about 3. I remember I was in one of those swimmy tubes and I was throwing pennies to other, older kids in the pool who would dive to get them and bring them back to me.
Anyway, something set the dementia into overdrive recently. She still recognizes my parents, but that will change eventually. She would probably still remember me. But she's lost all bladder and bowel control because her brain most likely doesn't register those signals anymore. She all of a sudden can't walk, she who until two weeks ago, lived on the 3rd floor of a walk-up building. The tests show nothing wrong with her legs or feet, but she claims she's in too much pain to walk. Who knows if that pain is real or a figment of her imagination. She's being sent to a rehab facility this week, one connected to a nursing home. Pending any insurance issues, she'll likely never leave there. Things could change in the next two months, but chances are, Nana won't be at the wedding. She'll turn 87 next month, so it's not like it comes as a surprise that she'd start to fail somewhat. It's just that we are so close to the wedding, I really thought she would make it.
But even if she is there, she won't really be there, if you know what I mean.
Hmm
Rumors about this have been swirling for awhile, but I still find it hard to believe that
it's true.
SAHM
Days like today make think being a stay-at-home mom wouldn't be so bad after all.
Good Eats
I think we're going to my future in-laws tonight which is absolutely fantastic because it means one thing: good food.
Bad
Last night, I enjoyed a drink after work with my friend, Christy. I had every intention of going home after that and working on rehearsal dinner details, but as it turns out, Ron has set up meetings for us with each of the banquet managers at the two locations we're considering. So it doesn't make much sense to decide anything until we talk to them. Gotta love having a fiance who takes care of stuff.
I've had an "off" morning. I didn't go to the gym (what else is new lately?) and then I accidently overslept a bit. I'm a woman of routine and being off my routine by 20 minutes in the morning irks me. And I'm tired--coffee isn't cutting it today.
But, as I was watching CNN this morning, I started bawling because of
this. If you scroll through the photos attached to the article, there's a picture of the note, which is what they were showing on the news when I started my cry fest. Stuff like that, notes or evidence from people who were dying and who
knew they were dying, that just rips my heart into a million little pieces. I'm always deeply affected by those scenerios--situations where people knew the end was in sight. That sounds strange, I guess. I'm not talking about people who are suffering from a long, terminal illness. I'm talking about relatively young healthy people who are minding their own business when one day death shows up and stares them in the face.
The image of that note is just burned in my head. "It wasn't bad." That was the part that really got me.
I Want That!
I would very much like to win
this, please.
Sago
When I was a little girl, we would occasionally go to upstate New York for long weekends in the Fall. While we were really going there to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, we also would visit the Catskill Game Farm and Howe's Caverns. I love Howe's Caverns. The idea of underground caves did and still does fascinate me. In fact, a few years back, I dragged my ex-boyfriend there for a weekend trip.
I went to college in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania. Most of Lackawanna County has been in an economically stunted state since the coal mines closed back in the 1960s. During my time there, I visited the
Lackawanna Coal Mines. It was a moving experience.
I seem to have an affinity for coal miners. I'm not sure if it's because of my fascination of all things underground, or because miners seem to be built from a different stock. They do dangerous work, but unlike police officers or firefighters, they aren't hailed as heros. It appears, at least on the surface, that miners haven't changed much in the last 100 years. While I'm sure there have been advances in their technology, a miner exiting a mine today doesn't look much different from ones in the beginning of the last century. Still wearing coveralls, still strapped in, still with a latern (albeit electric now), still dirty. I have great admiration for these men, because to me, they are reminiscent of a different era. Remember old photos in school textbooks of men who were laying railroad across the country? It's kind of like that. That in today's day, men would still have to go underground and mine for a power source seems a bit odd and outdated. But that's what they do, and I respect them for that. By and large, these seem to be hardworking, family men.
After a bad decision to go out last night to watch the Penn State game, bad only because it kept me up past my bedtime, I was glued to CNN until about 2 a.m. News had broke during the game that the 12 miners were found alive and the crowd had burst into applause, so when I got home I watched more coverage. Even then something didn't seem right to me. Why weren't reporters closer to the scene? Why was only one ambulance leaving the site? Regardless, I was very pleased that these miners were alive--earlier reports had made the likelihood of that outcome seem impossible.
Of course, I awoke this morning to hear that 12 of the 13 were actually dead. The governor of West Virginia said it best this morning "We thought we had 12 miracles. It turns out we only have one."
How sad for them, for their families, for that community.
Further Proof That I'm an Idiot
I think everyone wonders at some point, what kind of person they really are, what they're made of. Like in life or death situations, what would I do? What type of person am I? At work, I've dealt with emergencies several times. I think I've dealt well. I think I falter for the first minute of so, but once I realize what's happening, I take charge and get things done.
As it turns out, I'm a spazz.
I was making that chipotle chicken tortilla soup I was telling you about--I put oil in a saucepan on a low flame, or what I thought was a low flame, and proceeded to finish chopping the chicken. I was silently fuming because of Wachovia. That's right, the bank. Ron and I finally opened a joint account a couple of weeks ago and for some reason, Wachovia also decided to open credit cards for us. Not check cards--we already received our check cards. These were credit cards. Thank you, no, I don't want or need another credit card. Who the hell told you I wanted another credit card? I'm pretty sure I didn't. I called to close the account, but I was still pissed at Wachovia as I was chopping my chicken. And more time passed than I probably realized. And then I smelled something funny. Like...something burning.
So I spin around and the saucepan is on fire. I'm not saying it's smoking, I'm talking full-on fire.
I totally and completely panic.
Well, that's not actually true. A million thoughts run through my head within a millisecond. Like, "I don't know where the fire extinquisher is" and "I don't know where the lid to this pan is". I know those are the things I need. It even occurs to me that the fire will burn itself out when the oil is burned up. Yet for some reason I take the pan, throw it in the sink and turn on the faucet.
WHOOSH!Yeah, really I do know that you don't put water on a grease fire, but for some reason that didn't matter at that moment. Frantic that the now 3 foot flames that were shooting near the ceiling were going to catch to the cabinets or walls, I grab the pan again and start screaming for Ron. All I could think of, all that was running through my head, was that if the flames caught to anything else, that was it, we weren't going to be able to contain this fire. So I decide to put the pan at the furthest point from everything else in the room.
Are you ready for it? It gets better.
I put the flaming pan on the linoleum floor. Smack dab in the middle. Right about the same time, Ron gets to the kitchen and I for some reason decide to leave the kitchen. In hindsight, I must have realized the flames were out because Ron says they were by the time I got there and I was waving a towel in front of the smoke detector. Because GOD FORBID the smoke detector went off. That's
definitely the worst that could happen. Come to think of it, that smoke detector must need batteries because there was a lot of smoke. I have no idea how the flames were extinquished. Maybe the oil burned off. Maybe by grace of God, because I imagined He looked down on me and thought "Well I
could kill her in a house fire, but that's just too damn easy."
For those that don't know, fire melts linoleum. So, while I am thankful to still have a home and I didn't burn my face off, I also currently hear the sound of my security deposit being forfeited.
Un-Comcastic
We're giving serious thought to getting rid of our digital cable. We toy around with what premium channels we have, yet we can still never find anything we want to watch on TV. Ron always reverts to ESPN. I always go to HGTV (my obsession), VH1 or the Style Network. All of which you can get on regular cable.
So why should our cable bill be $105 a month, really?
Okay, Really I'm Jumping Back On the Bandwagon
So, while I don't really make New Year's resolutions, I am in a constant state of wanting to do better as it relates to my overall fitness. I'm never "bad" per se. Like I exercised almost every day over the holidays. I'd be lying however, if I said that these workouts were of a significant quality. I'd do about 30-40 minutes of cardio and occasionally lift weights. But there were some days I skipped, either because I was out of town or because the gym was closed. Also most classes were canceled during the last two weeks, so no pilates or stretching for me either.
I didn't get up at 6am and do my morning workout. In my defense, I didn't sleep well last night and for the sake of my staff whom would have to deal with me today, I decided to sleep in. I didn't sleep well because the windows in my bedroom decided to open and then slam closed at will--the wind in between my buildings and the ones on either side was wicked. The end result was a cold wind blowing on my face and waking me up, or waking up thinking I'd been shot, because the window slammed shut so loudly. Could I have rigged something to prevent this from happening? Of course, but do you not know that I am lazy? I am.
Tonight I'm back at my pilates class. And it's going to hurt, as it always does when I miss a week or so. Additionally Ron and I agreed that we're going to eat healthier... until at least the wedding. The last two weeks, we ate nothing but delicious, fried, fatty foods. While neither Ron nor I are particularly disciplined at eating healthy, it's important for Ron that we do. His schedule does not allow for him to have a set workout routine, so eating well is important if he's going to drop this 10 pounds he's set on losing.
Unfortunately for me, Ron's idea of eating healthy is having grilled chicken every night. I have nothing against grilled chicken (other than wishing it was breaded and fried) but I can't have it every night. My taste buds would actually wither and die from boredom if that was all I ate.
So I've raked through old issues of
Cooking Light and come up with some relatively healthy alternatives. Most of which Ron won't eat because they involved things called vegetables. Ron's been on a vegetable strike since he was about 6 years old. Drives. Me. Nuts. So most likely, I'll be making grilled chicken for him and other fun, exciting things for me. Tonight is chipotle chicken tortilla soup. Ron and I made our semi-annual trip to the grocery store and we are STOCKED. I love it.
Here's to a healthy year!
Resolutions
As usual, I forgot about new year's resolutions. I never make them.
Unfortunately, a bunch of other people do, including those who are going to make my gym very crowded for the next month or so. Crowded gyms make me cranky. It means for sure I'm going to have to go at 6am every day until things die down.
2006
Happy New Year!
Ron and I stayed in this year and rocked in the new year at home with Dick Clark (how sad was listening to him talk by the way?).
It's the year I'm getting married! Ron unfortunately has to work, as he has the last 3 New Year's Days. So I'll be watching the Mummer's on TV. And eating pigs in a blanket.
