Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I Said Salami

Tom was working late, so I decided to treat myself to dinner out.  I wanted a glass of wine, too, so I chose one of our favorite local places.  I sat at the bar, settled in with my book and ordered the red that they had on special.  I decided on their house salad, which is simple, but delicious.  Mixed greens are topped with shredded provolone cheese and thinly sliced hard salami.  The dressing is a balsamic vinaigrette.  As I finish my salad, I order a second glass of wine.  As I get to the end of the glass, I finish the chapter I’ve been reading right before the lights dim for the evening crowd.  It was the perfect amount of food and I am completely satisfied.  I don’t even want to drive home.  The meal has been such a pleasure that it makes me want to curl up in the back seat and just savor the moment.  It isn’t terribly often that a meal hits just that perfect balance, but when it happens, it is almost as good as sex.

Unfortunately, I was only able to savor that feeling for as long as it took for me to realize the impact that that much cheese and salami would have on my pants.  Yes, I’m going to complain about my weight some more.

My relationship with food has never been an easy one.  My mother dieted often and with mixed results, so I just assumed that that is what one did.  I remember being eight or nine years old, certainly not in need of weight reduction, making deals with myself about what I was allowed to eat during the day.  My menu would generally consist of an apple.  I had zero perception of calories or nutrition beyond the food pyramid, which had taught me that fruit was good.  By mid-morning I would be extremely hungry and eat the apple.  Twenty minutes later, I would be hungry again, so I’d have another apple, thinking that two apples instead of one couldn’t be that bad.  Shortly thereafter I would decide that one cookie wouldn’t hurt.  I would have an Oreo, find it delicious and eat six or seven more.  Once the Oreos were eaten, I would assume that there was no way I could consider the day a diet day and have a bologna sandwich and maybe a couple of Fruit Roll-Ups.  My metabolism put up with that nonsense for years.

In my early twenties, I put on forty pounds pretty quickly.  When I made up my mind to lose some of that, it only took me about a year to shed thirty pounds.  At that point, I did know a thing or two about nutrition and changed my diet.  I also joined a gym.  Hey, that was easy!

In my late twenties, I put all that weight back on.  Recently, I’ve added even more.  Part of my problem is that I’m just not active enough.  A larger part of the problem is the dinner that I mentioned above.  I just get so much pleasure (in the short run) from delicious food.  If Total with skim milk was even half as tasty as hash browns, I’d be in business.  I hate having to decide between delicious and nutritious.

I do cook a lot and enjoy doing so, so I know that you don’t always have to give up one for the other.  I made pork loin with apples, raisins and onions in reduced white wine the other night that was amazing and calorically sound.  Unfortunately, I don’t always have that kind of time to prepare for dinner.  I also have trouble finding that sort of thing on a restaurant menu.  Healthy menu items are either not healthy at all (grilled veggies actually do lose some of their nutritional value when they have butter and asiago cheese sauce on them, hmmm) or have no appeal.  I could grill a chicken breast and steam some broccoli at my house in less time for a fraction of the price.  Plus, it isn’t any fun to go out and watch other people eat their bleu cheese burgers and loaded fries when I’m choking on a dry turkey burger with a side of cucumber slices.

I don’t really know what else to say about a topic that I feel like I’ve already exhausted.  I can’t even wind things up with a resigned promise to myself to do better, show up at the gym and stick to those Weight Watchers points.  I either need to get used to me just the way I am or discover some new way of approaching my issues.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Jealous?

I really wanted to get the Gloomy Gus stuff shoved down a bit because I am no longer feeling so gloomy.  So, to lighten the mood around here, I thought I would remind everyone that Kiss jigsaw puzzles kick ass.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Oof

I keep thinking that today was a bad end to a bad week, but it is only Monday.  Perhaps my week started on Tuesday?  In any case, it has not been the most stellar several days.

On the bright side, we will be going back to the river this weekend.  Floating makes any week better.

Also on the bright side, 2 out of 3 Wisconsin girls will be joining us again this year.  Hooray for Katie and Kim!

On the not so bright side, Kate may not make it up from Florida for this float.  Really, won’t you leave your established life in Florida twice in five weeks for us?  Selfish!  (kidding, don’t let the hurricane get you)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Home Part 3: The Texas Years

Part I: The Wisconsin Years

Part II:  All In My Head

“Home” was June’s topic for NaBloPoMo.  It is obviously no longer June, but I wanted to continue the series.  Of course, the title of this post is misleading.  I don’t consider Texas home.  There is not a single house or apartment that I lived in that made me feel safe, comfortable or, well, any of the things that a home is meant to be.

In 1990, I moved to Texas with my mother and her significant other, D., who also happened to be my dad’s cousin.  This, you could say, was a little awkward, but I never once expressed to my mother that I thought so.  She had been dealt a pretty tough hand and I was just happy that she seemed happy.  Plus, D. was always one of my favorite relatives.  He was a musician with a great sense of humor and he always spoke to me as if I were an adult.  Unfortunately, he was also a long-time alcoholic.  Gosh, these trips down memory lane sure are jolly.  I’m just going to do a brief wrap-up of this part of the story, since I wasn’t living with them when this happened, but it is what it is.  They lived together a couple of years until the drinking became too much of a problem.  My mom kicked him out, it got worse and he died.  The end.

OK, so back to me.  I started my senior year in high school and met some fun people.  These fun people had a friend, M., who I thought was kind of a dick.  Then, this dick decided that I was the cat’s pajamas and I like the attention, so I moved in with him and his mother.  We managed to get kicked out of high school and celebrated by eloping.  We enrolled in a program to get our high school diplomas (accelerated program, usually for pregnant girls).  I did all of the homework for both of us and we graduated.  We moved into our first apartment, got a dog and fought a lot.  Two months in, I decided that it was the stupidest thing that I had ever done and tried to tell him that I wanted out.  He convinced me to stay and we bought another dog.

We hopped from one apartment to another, never leasing for more than a year.  I can pack and unpack your one bedroom apartment and have a modest housewarming party set up in fewer than 24 hours.  I was never attached to any of them and was so busy hating M. that I really didn’t have the time or energy to invest in my surroundings.

Finally, seven years into it, I decided that I deserved to be a happier person and I left.  I went to the bank, took out exactly half of our savings and rented my own apartment.  I went home, started packing and, when M. got home, told him that I had a new place to live and that he could go fuck himself.  He reacted by quitting his job and becoming a full time drug dealer.  I was obviously holding him back from his true calling all those years.

Shortly after moving out on my own, I met Tom.  He already had plans to move back to Missouri and I had already decided that I couldn’t stay in Texas much longer.  Serendipity, you’re the best.  You helped me find a home.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Pink Packages

Tom and I have been working our way through The Muppet Show DVDs via Netflix.  The puns, the celebrities, the absurd animal combos; this show really has it all.  What we didn’t realize was that The Muppet Show was also the go-to program for penises silhouetted in pink polyester.  Elton John and Lou Rawls both dress left.  Did you know?  The pictures below are stills from the Youtube videos, so the quality is not so good.  You can check out the full version of Groovy People by clicking here and the full version, with Miss Piggy accompanying, of Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart here..  If you do happen to watch the Elton John clip, please keep in mind that Miss Piggy’s puppeteer is kneeling precariously close to the bottom half of that jumpsuit.  I had never considered the awkward position that the dancing scenes put them in before.  I was unable to think about anything other than Elton’s shrink wrapped penis, so it finally dawned on me that if a muppet is in close, so is the person giving that muppet personality.

” />

Friday, August 08, 2008

It Starts With A Mullet

The first picture was taken in August before I started sixth grade.  I hadn’t yet started making the decisions where my hair was concerned, which is why I so obviously needed a haircut.  As was evident in the class photos that I posted a while ago, I always needed a trim. 

(click to enlarge, if you must)

I started to exert some control and insisted that a perm was exactly waht I needed.  Not a haircut, no, just add some curl to that mullet!

Please remember that my glasses were extremely stylish at the time.  They are very brown and very big, but my aunt’s boyfriend, the raddest guy I knew, had a pair just like them.  He was in high school and popular.  He knew what was cool.  I have no one to blame for the sweater vest or the gold zipper-pull necklace.  The only thing that could improve that outfit would be white suspenders worn OVER the sweater vest.  I know because it was my favorite outfit at the time.  Nothing makes a sweater vest more attractive than tucking it into your jeans so that you can clip your white suspenders to them.

I actually like this picture.  The big lace bow and flourescent pink sweatshirt make me happy and I will not apologize for that.

Fast forward to my freshman year in high school.  The glasses are the same, but different.  They are now made of clear plastic, just like the Swatch on my wrist.  Clear plastic is awesome.  I have discovered the beauty of the hairspray and curling iron combo.

Sophmore year, we are a very different squad.  We have abandoned the sweaters and Cheerleader brand shoes.  We have personalized our look and I still think it was the right thing to do.  What was not OK was the next big perm.  I was growing out my bangs and had moved away from the big bangs.  I was a couple of months from cutting the back off and entering the years of The Wedge that helped me express my angst.

I was in a hurry this morning and could not find a very good picture of The Wedge.  I am wearing a necklace as a headband in this picture (of course), so you don’t get the hair-in-my-face effect, but I think that my cousin’s gigantic hair is hilarious, so I couldn’t resist.

The Suspense

I was just going to throw the cheerleading pictures up here, but the hair and the glasses made me sort through several other old pictures.  I haven’t had a chance to pull everything together yet, but now they will be included in a very brief history of my very awesome hair style choices.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Crazy Internet...

My friend Molly urged me to join Facebook.  Because I love so many other time-sucking features of the interweb, I obliged.  Suddenly, I am chatting in the middle of the day with a girl (I suppose we’re aren’t really girls so much any more) that I have known since kindergarten, but who I had not really stayed in touch with since high school.  Hi Heidi!  We lived about a quarter of a mile from one another growing up, so we spent many, many days playing together, riding bikes and swimming in her pool.  When we were older, we spent a lot of time “watching movies” in her basement with our boyfriends.  We were wrestling cheerleaders together, so I have all kinds of embarrassing photos of us in our uniforms.  I may have to spend a little quality time with my scanner this evening.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Rummage Sale!

To raise money for my MS150 team, I’m holding a rummage sale on August 15 and 16.  I love rummage sales; going to them and organizing them.  I also like having the opportunity to go through all of our crap and purge some things from the “office” and spare bedroom.  There is a desk in the room that we refer to as an office, but there are also the pieces from every Halloween costume we’ve ever worn, my sewing table, an embarrassing number of dead Japanese beetles and every single thing that doesn’t have a specific place in the house.  It is really too bad that we don’t let the participants in our scavenger hunt start in that room. 

Under Construction

I’m slowly, as I figure out how to do things, making some changes around here.  I am sorry that the colors are funky and that things seem half done, because that’s exactly how I left things.  I expect to finish the cosmetic improvements this evening.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Heat Playing Tricks

It has, of course, been really hot outside.  We stopped at the grocery store earlier for meat & beer and I started sweating seconds after I stepped out of the truck.  I also noticed a really familiar odor, but I couldn’t immediately place it.  Suddenly, I had visions of the zoo in Madison and realized what I was smelling.  The black bed liner, which had been roasting in the hot sun all day, smelled just like the Mold-a-rama machine* that I used to get gorillas out of (my cousin often got the lion).  I do hate the heat, a lot, but I was grateful for the moment of nostalgia that it offered.

*Thanks to Mimi Smartypants for the link.  I would never have come up with the name of the machine if she hadn’t posted the link recently.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Off to a Good Start

I have locked my keys in my car many, many times.  I have locked my keys in my running car a couple of times.  This morning, I found a new and exciting way to trap my keys that I hadn’t even considered.  As I shut the truck door with the hand that held my keys, they got caught on the closing mechanism and became trapped between the door and the body.  I couldn’t reach them, the door handle was rendered useless by their position and nothing I had handy was thin enough to fit in the gap to pry the keys out.  I spent several minutes trying to figure out who one calls when one has rendered the door useless, when it occured to me to try the inside handle.  I let myself in the passenger side with the spare key that I always have on hand these days (I have easily spent $400 on locksmiths in the last few years.  I’m a slow learner), crawled over to the interior handle and it popped right open.  I don’t take this as a good sign that the rest of my day is going to go smoothly.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

This is Getting Embarrassing

I discovered Momo Fali’s blog just a short time ago.  I have commented a few times and all I can seem to say, in one fashion or another, is, “Me too!” I feel a little stalker-ish.  I rarely comment on the site’s that I visit regularly and I don’t necessarily have a lot in common with the people I enjoy reading the most, so it just feels odd to read post after post that make me nod and smile in recognition.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Lengthy List

I have updated my Blogroll and it is much longer.  Poke around and see if you can find someone you like.

Torn

My job is good, very good.  I love what I do and am getting better at it all the time.  I am slowly mastering the design software and am getting better at asserting my opinion when given a poorly executed design.  The downside is that I just don’t make enough money, so I’m thinking about getting a second job.  I don’t have a lot of free time as it is, so I’d probably have to cut back on some of my more entertaining activities to manage it, but I’m willing to make some sacrifices to keep gas in my vehicle and (new) shoes on my feet.  I guess it is time to check the classifieds. 

Branica Web Counters