Friday Night Recap

It's been a frustrating day.

Suffice to say, I did not make it through the day without succumbing to the temptation of the cookies. To my credit, they were really fucking awesome cookies. But I admit, I probably didn't need to eat four of them to figure that out.

So when my husband IM'd me asking if I was amenable to "corndogs and fries for dinner?" I probably should have said "no, thank you." However, I had just read an email sent to my department by our managing partner, which said something to the effect of "someone told me you're all standing around talking instead of sitting at your desks working, do I need to come up there?" and I was sorely tempted to type in "sure, big fella, why don't you come up here and spank me, I've been ever so naughty" and hit send. Instead, I IM'd my husband back and told him to save two corndogs for me.

I spent the drive home in silence, thinking. Why I have to work in a field where the divide between haves and have nots is so incredibly obvious and wide, and why the haves feel such a need to treat us have-nots like we've never really stopped being 3 years old. Honestly, I'm a grown-ass woman. I have a bachelor's degree, a mortgage and two children. I don't need someone to send me an email reminder that the firm dress code doesn't disappear just because the temperatures outside are rising. I don't need someone to stand over me and track my every move 24/7 to make sure I don't let my work suffer in favor of idle chit chat. I don't need nursemaiding, for fucking out loud. And I'm getting damned sick and tired of people who seem to think I do.

Then I wondered why it bothers me so much. Why there are some people who take that kind of bureaucratic bullshit and let it roll off their backs like so much water. Why I can't be that way, just go about my business and be secure enough in my own self-worth to not let things like that offend me so much. Who's right--those of us who want to slap the shit out of the condescending asshats, or those who really don't take it to heart? Who's winning?

And then, will I ever be happy in any job I take? Really, when am I at my happiest?

The short answer: weekends, when I'm home with my kids. Holidays, days off, when I'm taking care of my house and doing shit with my kids. The days when I'm not stretching myself irreparably thin laboring in a modern-day sweatshop and trying to cram the rest of my life into an obscenely short time period.

So you can imagine the frame of mind I was in when I picked up the older boy from school and he told me he'd gotten into a fight on the playground. After I gave myself a time out (mostly to prevent myself from beating him senseless), I let him give me the whole story, and in a nutshell, some girl complained another boy was being mean to her, so Bob went to open a can of whoopass on the boy, only to discover said boy and said boy's friends had every intention of opening a can of whoopass on Bob. Oops. I asked him if he'd learned anything from this experience, to which he replied "don't get involved and take care of myself." Good call, kid. Good call.

After dinner, the older one and I went to Target--I've had my eye on some rubber boots and decided today was the day. I love them. And the next rainy day, I will wear them to work. All day. Because the dress code doesn't say shit about rubber boots.

After we returned, this guy:
decided to ride this:down these:
Fortunately, he was mostly scared (like his parents) and after many hugs and kisses, all is well. I suppose he's learned something today, too.

What have I learned? I have no idea. And I'm too tired right now to figure it out. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some time to think during my and Bob's Awesome Bus Adventure.

Thurs., 29 April 2010

What I Ate: almond milk iced latte (90 cal); maple brown sugar oatmeal with 1/8c granola and 1/2 tbs honey (210 cal); big ass salad: spinach, baby lettuce mix, roasted chicken breast, dried cherries, walnuts, goat cheese, Ken's lite raspberry walnut vinaigrette, alfalfa sprouts (~360 cal); small Fuji apple (60 cal); 1 tbs "peanut butter spread" (95 cal); oven-baked fries and beef/mushroom/muenster sandwiches (hard telling).

What I Did: treadmill (walk/run), 22 minutes.

I learned some stuff:

(1) "Peanut butter spread," or the stuff most people consider peanut butter, is gross. I've been buying only natural peanut butter for the past several years (the kind that contains peanuts and salt and nothing else). Today, however, I was at Target on my lunch break, and I didn't want to have to try mixing a new jar of pb with a plastic fork (we don't have real silverware in the office), so I settled for a smallish jar of "reduced fat peanut butter spread." Suffice to say, I won't buy it again. It's gross. And it has considerably more on the ingredient list than "peanuts, salt." Not that that stopped me from smearing a tablespoon of it on my apple a while ago, but I didn't enjoy it. As much.

(2) My watch is really old. I bought it at a vintage shop about 10 years ago for about 10 or 15 bucks. It's a tiny little Bulova wind-up job with a cheap stretchy replacement band, but it was cute and dainty and old and I liked it. I wore it until I was pregnant with Bob and developed carpal tunnel and couldn't stand to have anything on my wrists. Then I lost it because it was in my lost jewelry box, which just resurfaced last week while I was cleaning out some shit in the basement. When I found it, I wound it up to see if it still worked--voila, it sure does! And it still keeps accurate time.

I've been thinking I should get a new band for it, because the existing band is really, really tight. I took the watch off and started looking at it, and noticed the serial number on the back. Google is awesome--within seconds, I knew my watch was made in 1962. (Other than that, I don't know much--our desk computers are very firewalled so I don't have access to many sites.)

So now I'm even more enamored of my watch. :)

(3) I am not nearly as efficient or productive an employee when I am not overwhelmingly busy. I haven't missed anything, but I've let a couple things slip my mind (I caught them before any fires were started, but still). Sadly, that's the nature of the beast in my line of work--either you're so busy you can't breathe, or you can't find enough to do in a day. If I were a model employee, I suppose I would put out that "I'm available to help you" APB, but I won't, and here's why--every job I've had, I've been the person who got work done quickly and without any difficulty. Which means I always got stuck picking up the slack of the slow and the stupid. After about 15 years of being taken advantage of in this manner, I am DONE. I'll do my work, you do yours, and we'll all be just fine. I don't ask for help, and I'm damn sure not offering. Maybe this is a bad attitude to have, but all my assisting others in the past ever got me was...well, extra work. And it kept people in jobs who probably shouldn't have been. So it's just my policy not to do it anymore. So there. :P

(4) My husband is awesome. Well, I knew that already. But now he's made himself even awesomer. The local paper he used to write for went tits up, so now our little suburb has no local news source. And trust me, the big city media couldn't give two shits about what happens north of the river. So my husband created GladMo.com, a web collection of news feeds referencing our municipality. It's pretty cool, even to a non-techie like myself. Of course I'm most impressed by the pretty pictures he has on the banner (which he took himself). I'm simple that way.

I also learned an important lesson about the power of negative thinking. Well, it was a lesson I already know well, so I guess I didn't really "learn," but was reinforced. My plan was to try to bust out 25 minutes on the stairs and then 20-25 minutes on the treadmill. I was especially eager to have a decent workout because we took the boys to the park and then for ice cream afterward, and let's just say I didn't say "oh, no thank you, I really shouldn't."

When I got to the gym, the stairs were all taken (DAMMIT), so I hopped straight on the treadmill. I walked for about a minute and then cranked it up to 6.0. And I thought I was going to die, but I forced myself to run, and keep running, until I hit the 1 mile mark. And the whole time, I kept thinking, why is this so fucking hard? Why can't I just run, like this little 20-something skank next to me? Maybe because she might weigh 97 pounds in the rain and most of that is her fake tan and her long, luxurious hair, and I'm hauling around 15 pounds of spare tire. Why can't I do that? Why can't I just stop eating? Why can't I be thinner and younger and hotter and tanner and faster and fitter and have better hair, dammit???

Yeah...it was pretty much a downward spiral from that point. Every time I'd catch a glimpse of my humidity-screwed hair, or the bulge created by my shorts waistband cutting into my gut, or my pasty skin, I'd immediately throw a mental dagger at myself for not being 25, tan and gorgeous. Ridiculous, yes, but it is what it is.

So I made my 1 mile, and then I forced myself to do another. But self-loathing makes for a heavy load, and after 10 minutes (and only .86 of a mile), I quit. By that time a stair climber had opened up, but my heart wasn't in it, so I didn't bother. I went back to the locker room to weigh myself, and finding the scale missing, nearly had a panic attack. So I went back to the floor and climbed on an elliptical, where I spent another 6 minutes before deciding I was sweaty, exhausted, depressed, and my t-shirt had been left in the washer too long and had a mildewy stench emanating from it--time to call it a night.

Ah, the roller coaster ride of emotional overeating. I am depressed. I eat because it makes me happy. I eat too much, and then I'm depressed. So I eat. And so on, and so forth.

How do you stop it?

Today: the plan is simple--Stop. Eating. So. Damn. Much. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Go to the gym and just do it, dammit. And while you're at it, stop beating yourself up for not being 25 because dammit, if we were all 25 forever, the world would be a really stupid place.

It's already not looking good for me. We just got an email that there are 5 million cookies in the fucking conference room downstairs, free for the taking. And already I'm rationalizing with myself...if you eat it, you'll feel like shit. Yeah, but you'll feel like shit anyway, whether you eat a fucking cookie or not, why not just have a fucking cookie?

Argh.

The Bitch is Back

***Note: originally, this blog was intended to be primarily an entertainment venue, with little to no actual association to my "real" life. Since that fell to the wayside after I drained my free time resources dry (and stopped being funny), it's more or less sat dormant for several months. In the meantime, I've been wanting to start blogging in general again (because I am a narcissist and therefore my favorite thing to talk about is me). I've also wanted to start a diet/food/exercise/health/fitness blog (because there are a lot of those out there but jolly few, I've noticed, written by women who have both kids AND a full-time job). Since I haven't had the time to bring those two separate entities to fruition, and this blog is just sitting here, free for the taking, I've decided it's going to have to serve as a temporary home to my ventures. Ta-da.

Wed., 28 April 2010
What I Ate: almond milk iced latte (90 cal); cinnamon spice oatmeal with 1/8c granola and 1/2 tbs honey (210 cal); spicy pumpkin soup (leftover from Tuesday, probably only about 2/3c) (100 cal); small Fuji apple (60 cal); roasted red pepper hummus, lettuce, cucumber, goat cheese, and alfalfa sprout sandwich on Orowheat multigrain sandwich thin (160 cal); Ghirardelli 60% chocolate square (60 cal); SunChips (140 cal); chicken fried rice, white steamed rice, beef and broccoli and pot stickers from our favorite local Chinese takeout (too many cal to count).

What I Did: 30 min walk at lunch; 30 min walk after dinner (while pushing the toddler in a stroller).

Okay, so, not the best day. I started with the best of intentions, but I started feeling all snacky in the afternoon. And it was Wednesday. Ben and I have been doing "Chinese Wednesday" since I don't even know when, and even though I initially told him we were NOT having Chinese for dinner, he eventually wore me down. So much for my iron will.

Since it was Wednesday, and I had to leave to fetch Bob at 7:40, I didn't get to the gym. I did take a nice long walk with Ben, the toddler and the dog after dinner. And I took a leisurely stroll at lunch, as our office participated in the "National Walk at Lunch Day" or whatever it was. So I wasn't a complete sloth. This is an argument in favor of purchasing the Polar F4--I have no idea how many calories I spent yesterday, but the F4 would have told me, and I'd like to know because I obsess. Much.

When I picked up Bob, I realized (1) I had no evidence of the good day at school he claimed and (2) he had already had ice cream with his father, so I decided against getting him a malt at Winstead's. Further temptation avoided, we headed for home and stopped to drop off a prescription at the pharmacy.

As we were preparing to pull out of the pharmacy, I noticed the bike shop across the street had changed their window display--and there, gleaming in the storefront, was the cutest bike I've ever seen. A pink and white cruiser with a big fat seat, a chain guard, and a wicker basket on the front. It was cuter than a toddler in a baby porcupine costume. So we had to go across and get a better look. Even better, it's a NEW cruiser, so it doesn't weigh 500 pounds, and it has gears with handlebar shifting!

I'm crazy in love with this bike. And the cutest thing was Bob saying he could get it for me for Mother's Day. I told him that was sweet, but the bike probably costs close to $200 or more, and I appreciate the thought just as much.

All the same...if I had that bike, I'd be the happiest girl in puppetland. :)

Today: Despite having no plans for what to wear to work, I managed to pull a pretty cute little outfit out of my ass this morning. I even put on my old watch, which was missing until I found my old jewelry box in our basement last week. I did notice, however, that I'm sporting a bit of the dunlap disease--so I'm going to spend the day sucking it in and displaying the best posture ever. I'm going to stay true to my food plan (having my goatmeal right now), but I'm not sure what to have for lunch--I have salad stuff here but I'm getting kind of tired of salad. I need MEAT, dammit. Dinner WILL BE steak and mushroom sandwiches (no exceptions). And the gym will be graced with my presence tonight--I think I'm going to try 25 minutes on the stair climber and 20 minutes on the treadmill. We'll see what happens.