Utils in Bat Country

Bottoms, accomplished

ish.

One of the sad consequences of moving with only some of my possessions is that many of my clothes are still in Michigan.  While I'm logical enough to not be all mah baybees about it, there must have been a bag mixup because the majority of my bottom pieces are of the older, run down, ridiculous type and not the professional, fitting, unfaded kind.

And, while all my MI coworkers were properly attired and we all cleaned up rather nicely, the amount of effort I had to put in to be the 'stylish' one in the office was relatively minimal. And now, things are different. The other girls in the office are all very put together and stylish.  There isn'tr a dress code per se, aside from presentation days, but the others in the office are pretty dressy.  Since my morning routine has dwindled down to deodarant and brush teeth, I'm pretty much the office hobo.

To try and redeem myself, I decided to set out for Old Navy.  Seemed easy enough to get to, no tolls, excellent.  And I had a return from online so I had a reason to go anyway. Even though I had looked on the map, I grabbed my gps because why not. Get my money's worth.  Hope in the car, try to look up Old Navy and the location I'm thinking of doesn't come up.  Fine. Go to plug in the address and it doesn't recognize the address and tries to send me to an entirely wrong area of I don't even know where. But! Am intelligent, it seemed easy enough, surely I can get to Old Navy without help of the robotic voice. Head out on the highway, promptly get stuck in annoying traffic.  No accident, no construction, just cars cars everywhere. Find the exit, and the map had said go a mile and turn on a street. Start driving and see that the first light is the street that the store is on.  Hm. I decided to flout the map and use common sense and turned. Drove down the road, don't see a sign, suddenly leave the store section of the town and get to the end of the road. Turn left, figure I'll turn around except the only road to turn on is some two lane road with no turnoffs.  I just want reasonably priced pants! Manage to turn around, head back down the road, figure I'll turn in at the barnes and noble and at least get some coffee while I figure out why nothing is simple and lo and behold, right next to BN, Old Navy.  Success!

And, in an odd turn of events, all the shirts I tried on, I wasn't thrilled with but the pants.. quite good. There was even a white denim skirt that made it to the purchase pile. Irritatingly, none of it was on sale. Was torn.  After the strife involved, do I really leave it all and wait for a sale? It is ON prices, so not totally unreasonable.  But, still. Full price is so hard to swallow.  Decided looking decent at work was worth $29.94 for black pants and checked out. Thought I'd press my luck and head over to Loft. Where of course, tops were on sale, bottoms were not and all I found was well fitting pants. Figured in for a penny, let's buy more full price pants!

And now the keep/return dance begins.

 

Just rub me?

I love massages.  Lovvvve.  For all my qualms about not liking my personal space invaded (this is why I love weddings because I can dance without worrying about who is touching me.  at a club?  stranger danger!) I'd get a three hour massage every day.

For Christmas, Mom got me a package of massages and because I am overwhelmed by life, I used one on both of the last weekends.  And after the second experience, I've come to some unfortunate realizations.

Shallowest of all - the shop seems to be operating the A&F business model.  Put the prettiest, most dreamy eyed boy out front manning the desk and have the actual therapists be...not up to par.  Some are older, some still have the look of living in Mom's basement but none match the Bop magazine poster worthiness of the reception man.  [Ah, Bop posters. I had a whole wall in my room covered, namely with Jonathan Brandis and various members of NKOTB]

I should note - the two guys I was randomly assigned were absolutely professional and I never felt creeped out.

I could easily overlook the lack of swoonyness, especially when you consider that most of the massage time is spent face down or eyes closed, had the technique been stellar.  Alas.

It must be a shop thing because both therapists I've gotten used the grab a section of muscle and pull to stretch versus the make massaging motions with the fingers on the muscles.  Nice technical descriptions, eh?  Rotating circles of pressure on my muscles transport me to the blissed out land of finger curled relaxation but the pull and stretch method...not so much.  The first therapist grabbed under my shoulder blade and rotated me nearly 45* upward.  Bizarre. And sure, they tell you that this will keep you feeling so much better for longer but because I have no control group of how I would have felt without  you pushing down on my shoulder while telling me to resist, all I know is how good/not good it feels at the moment of the massage and this was bland, bland, unseasoned, bland.

And! I usually go the undies on route during massages and the guy on Saturday used the hip strap of my thong to twist the sheet around when he went to work on my legs.  I mean, more power to you for working with the materials available, but really?  I was choking back the church giggles during that one.

I usually specify that I like to focus on my hands and feet and this guy started in on how the tea tree oil in foot massages reacts with his skin so he does a dry massage and thus does it through the sheet but it doesn't matter because his foot rubs are really good.  Uh huh.  Lies! As my mind was still whirling away instead of aaaah during my so-so foot rub, I began thinking.  I know you used lotion on the rest of me, why would you not use the same lotion when you're doing my feet? 

I cheated and went on the website to look at the therapist's pictures and there are a couple slightly more swoony.  If I give up on total relaxation, the upward rotations will at least be more enjoyable if I can sneak in some eye candy.  Ohmmmm.

Wordless Wednesday

And snow it begins

TV Ruminations

As I was trying to fall asleep last night after staying up far too late re-reading a book so I could read the other books that I hadn't gotten to yet so I could fully appreciate the newest released which I'm told is the best book ever (follow that logic?), my mind wound itself down thinking about TV.  Whatever works?

CMAs - My love of TSwizzle aside, I don't particularly get too much into country music.  But, I do enjoy awards shows, and I particularly enjoy reading about them the day after because whenever I don't watch, something gasp worthy happens, so the DVR was set and even though I started watching at 945, with my fastforwarding, I caught up to it in real time.  Dear Nicole Kidman, take a chill pill dearie.  Tim and Faith laughed about the Barbie comparisons, you can too.  Also, you got to be the Little Mermaid Barbie.  Lucky!

Parenthood - OH, SHOW.  Why do you give me an enjoyable hour every week and then wrench my heart out at the end?  Dear Amber, I get where you're coming from but not cool, sugarplum.  Loved the scene between Julia and Christina with the dress.  Would that I could sprawl across a bed so effortlessly.  Kudos Erika Christensen.

FNL - Am I the only one who still regularly re-watches the highlights of the final episode?  My favorite moment is when Matt is at the door and Tami is helping him say Julie and Coach is just looking back and forth all wtf.

HIMYM - I can't even muster up the energy.  Please recover from this downward spiral of horrible, show.  (Though yay Barney and Robin!!)

This whole fall finale thing is beginning to irk me.  I get that with 52 week and 22 shows, the majority of the time there aren't going to be new episodes.  However.  The logic seems to be that everyone is busy and traveling and partypartyparty from mid November to February sweeps and while I anticipate having several holiday events to go to, who are these people who are off gallivanting on every Tuesday between now and Valentine's Day?  Dear TV, in the winter, when it's cold and icy out, am sitting on my couch in fuzzy socks flipping channels.

Hmmph Day

This day. This day. This year week, really.

Rather than launch into a litany of whine, am seeking some things out to de-furrow my brow.

Southern Comfort Apple Pie?  Yep, I think I will.

November issue of Matchbook mag?  Step right up.

Witch's Brew spiced wine?  As soon as it's 5pm.

Sabotage

The worst I've ever looked/felt/been in life was at my brother's wedding in May, 2009. 

(I'm excluding middle school hell because everyone I've ever met considers it a miracle to have survived)

I look at the pictures and just cringe.  I look like a puffy goblin who had just gotten back from a month long bender.  And it's not even how terrible I look but I remember how I was feeling.  Not even 6 months after my wedding that wasn't, first time facing most of the family and friends who had made plans/spent money that had to be changed, feeling like a complete failure at life watching my younger brother get married and see how happy the parents were, on and on, woe and woe.

Time went on, I picked myself up, got better, got healthier, woo and progress.  And now I'm 23 hours out from landing in Orlando to celebrate another family wedding.  And I know it'll be great.  Super fabulous even.  But. I feel like I look like crap.  Between stress and being lazy and eating out more thanks to EH and then Tilly being sick and then me being sick, the last month has been one long eat all the things fest and exercise has dropped from a couple miles every day to maybe a mile ish once a week.

And it's only a few pounds.  [Six to be precise].  I know, I know, waaah poor me, I gained 6 whole pounds, am hippopotamus.  But.  It sucks.  Trejectory is going the wrong way. So instead of being in the 130s like I very reasonably could have been, I topped this morning at 149.5.  At this rate, am hoping the cost of food at Disney plus all the walking will at least keep me under the 150 mark for the weekend.

To add insult to heft, I was looking at my patient plan when I left the doctor's on Monday and my vitals were listed.  Remember how after my physical, I asked what range I should be aiming towards and she looked at my chart and said BMI is in the normal range so you're good.  Yeah, that's because someone input my weight as 137.5, not 147.5.  Ah, ha. It all makes so much sense now.  Am not done after all.

Did I subconsciously shove cookies in my mouth to provide an aesthetic answer to the why aren't you married yet question to head off people from actually asking it?  (Typically I don't really care.  No, I'm not married, yes, it's fine, but when I'm at a wedding for a younger relative... my cool is not so easily kept.)

And if that's the case, wtf, self?  Seriously.  You know better. You are better than this. So what if EH didn't knock your socks off.  There are greater tragedies in life. Get off your ass and walk around the block.

Maybe weddings are shocks to my system and this will be a much needed kick.  Because I'm not going to do this again.  I'm not going to miserably spiral down for a year.  Am being cliche and saying that the year of 30 is going to be new life focus.  Wallow for a bit (or in my case a post) and then figure it out.

I've let myself wallow.  Hopefully a pair of Mickey ears is all I need to stand up again.

Dis(turbed) Harmony

I know I said I'd come back and tell you about Butterfly guy coming over to the apartment but then I went and saw him on Sunday and things took a wild turn from oddly bemusing to flat out creepy as all fuck get out run away run away and so I can't really talk about anything that happened prior to that without feeling the need to shower and I'd like to avoid any Silence of the Lambs skin suit type scenarios so, yeah, moving on.

Except not! Because I still have to email him and get across my point of never wanting to communicate ever again.

A, if you're reading, it was SO MUCH WORSE than anything we came up with at the shoot.

[For the record, I know I'm being wildly dramatic here and THANK GOD nothing happened where I felt for my physical safety (he didn't attack me or anything) but there is definitely something very, very wrong and when I summed up events to both my charming co-author and my extraordinarily level headed co-worker, they both immediately said yeah, you need to not see him again, ever.]

But, like a good getting back on the horse type person, I have another date tentatively scheduled with G, he who I can come up with no nickname for, and who is boringly normal (No! There is no normal! They are all crazy! Aaaaaagh!!!!!) and another guy that I'm supposed to email to set up something with.  Clearly, neither is really blowing my skirt up. I hadn't checked my matches in a few days so I went through a couple dozen last night and sent out questions to 5 people.  Way to go, me.  Except! Two of them archived me.  And after all the crap of Sunday, it's really pissing me off.  I'm aware that I'm a bit left of center when it comes to sanity but I am nowhere near the level of crazy that seems to be coming my way via this stupid EH business.  I'm normal(ish) and most people find me amusing and charming and is it really too much to ask for a date with someone else who is normal(ish) and who I find amusing and charming?  Apparently, it is.

Over. It.

Alas, Alack

I went this morning to get my stitches out.  This should be my day of jubilee! Of course, the cat throwing up as I was halfway out the door and the dog growling at me since I deigned to sit down where she was sleeping to put my shoes on (she has some sort of sleep blindness or something, if she's sleeping and you wake her up she freaks out. If a noise wakes her up and you're across the room when you walk over she's all oh hai, I luff you wag wag lick lick) and not being able to find the shirt I was planning to wear all had me wrinkling my brow in less than jubilant glee.

I get to the dentists office and the assistant and an intern come in and poke around and she's taking notes and they chat about how I'm doing and I mention that hey, the prescription mouthwash turns my tongue BLACK and they're all oh, yeah, that can happen, no worries.  Uh, you might want to tell people that.

She starts to pull out the stitches and all is well and then they get to the bottom tooth and yank and pull and OW and they decide to leave one to see what the doctor wants to do about it.  In he comes and asks how the last two weeks were.  And then has the gall to look surprised when I respond with 'not fun'.  Dude, I'm sure you did a phenomenal job but you dug around in my jaw for an hour, it was going to be rather painful afterwards.

He pokes around, yanks out the final stitch and tells me to come back in 3 months for a final followup.  They give me a baby toothbrush but tell me to still be super gentle and remain on soft foods for another couple of weeks.  And to stay away from spicy, acidic things because after the stitches the site will be tender. Noooooo! Am supposed to have celebratory pizza tonight! All I want is pasta with meatballs and a nice boost of red pepper flake! I miss Grape Nuts!

I've been pretty good about figuring out how to chew with my front teeth and I definitely haven't been on soft foods only the last two weeks (no way was no chips or crackers or crusty bread happening, I just look ridiculous while trying to nibble) so I'm sure I can make it work awhile longer.

But I think this means I need to have ice cream for dinner.

Mission: wtf teeth?

(And I can't keep track of the letters anymore so using the real numbers. Drama! Cookies! If I know you irl never mention this at Starbucks/Coldstone in the Randall's shopping center where everyone I went to high school with inevitably goes when people are in town!)

Has been a little quiet round these parts lately, mission wise.  Stupid leg took me out of commission for awhile but things didn't regress too terribly.

Prior to stupid leg, had been tracking nicely down through the high 140s.  By the time leg mostly resolved itself and I was moving again had revisited the low 150s. Not terrible seeing as how the holidays were thrown in there too but not ideal.  Started walking the dog, doing yoga and/or cardio dvds, general dance marathons whilst brushing teeth, focusing on eating and....nothing, nada, zero change. Fine, I tell myself.  Am replacing the fat stores with muscle, could potentially be smaller but numbers will not change.

Weeks tick by and I oh so baby stepped back down into the high 40s.  148, 147, one glorious day at 145.5 but then right back up to 148.  Bah.  But fine, I tell myself. It takes time, is a slow process and hey, your wisdom teeth are next week, you'll be on a liquid diet for a couple days that should yield some movement in the proper direction.

Thursday Food Intake: soup in the morning, water, slimfast shake. Total calories - several hundred?

Friday Food Intake: small smoothie (yogurt, fruit), diluted apple juice, maybe 1/3 of a can of soup. Total calories - again, several hundred.

Saturday morning scale - 144.  Wee! At least this godforsaken throbbing has a silver lining!

Saturday Food Intake - applesauce, Panera soup and mac and cheese.  Not great for you but calorie total still clocked in at under 1,000

Sunday morning scale - 145.  Fine, probably all the sodium from yesterday.  Went on a 2 mile walk, ate more Panera soup and mac and cheese (only thing soft enough that I could taste!), water, rinse and repeat. Still under 1,000 calories.

Now, 1,000 calories is not life sustaining.  And yet, Monday morning, 146.  WHATTHEFUCK.

Every day this week, every when I've felt like crap, have walked the dog at least a mile.  Am eating soup (no crackers) for lunch, maybe sucking on a couple of Hershey's kisses here and there, eggs or something for dinner, basically everything I was doing before the teeth, just less.  Less exercise yes, but not by much, but definitely less food and especially less bad for you but delicious white flour carby goodness.

This morning? 147.5. Am clearly some sort of scientific marvel who doesn't adhere to the laws of physics. Calories in < calories out = weight loss except not for me, oh no.

I give up. Am going to eat a chocolate chip cookie even if it takes me 2 hours to nibble my way through that sucker.

ETA - And! I forgot the other crazy thing. I'd recently gone through my clothes and pulled out the ones that were too big for me.  Told Mom to try them on and take what she wanted.  She found a good half dozen tops, skirts, pants etc that fit her well.  Now, if these were the things I was wearing 50 pounds ago that am now giving away because they are basically falling off of me, you'd think that Mom and I would be relatively apart of the weight scale.  Except no, she was talking about how her bloodwork was great but she wanted to lose 25 pounds or so to get into the 120s and it hit me - while I am a couple inches taller than her, am only about 3-5 pounds lighter.  IDONOTUNDERSTANDSCIENCE.

Speshul

By looking at the volume of whine on my facebook page, I started feeling sick last Thursday.  D had been sick a few days prior so of course, I blame him.

Didn't have any sort of sore throat just cough, head fog, fever, etc.  Even my fever wasn't that high, hovering about 99.5.  Took me a few days to realize that I'm running a fever even w/ twice daily doses of Motrin for the stupid leg so actual unmedicated fever is likely more around the 102/103 range.  Ah ha.

Symptoms moved around as most illness does w/ me: head fog -> cough -> irritated throat because of cough -> congestion.  Also have some sort of mouth cut/irritation that just is not going away and is the most painful part of this whole illness. Was willing to let it run it's course but partly since I'm loathe to let anything that has the potential to irritate my leg go unchecked and partly since my aunts saw my fb updates and called my mom to ask if I was feeling better so she called me to ask if I was going to the doctor, decided to go.  Called, couldn't get it w/ my doctor, was able to see one of the others in the practice.  All fine.  Go to the office, get told my vitals are perfect (yay blood pressure and pulse ox!) but it is a bit concerning that am still running a fever.  Doc comes in, doesn't think it's pneumonia, runs a strep test just to be sure and I get what I expected: it's going around, rest and fluids, just have to wait it out.  I got one of the newfangled strep tests - has a double swab so you get results w/in a minute and they send the second culture out overnight.  Are these new?  Is my primary care holding out on me? Rapid response comes back negative, off I go to the grocery store.  Doc recommended teething gel for some mouth pain relief which was the best money I've spent this week.

Stayed home from work yesterday and spent the majority of the day lying about watching the Cooking Channel.  Was in today and trying to focus and my phone rang w/ a nice Blocked where the number should be (seriously medical professionals, I'm not going to sell your number on ebay, if you don't want to answer patients calls, don't answer, now it's just like a quest to find the number).  Answer and realize it's the actual live doctor, not the your test results are negative news giver.  Hmmm.  She tells me well, when we think of people with strep, we're usually thinking of people with Type A.  Your culture didn't grow that but it did grow strep so we'll probably want to treat that.  Me: so I have...special strep? Wonderful.  Mama always said I was a speshul snowflake.

Got myself a course of amoxicillian, fingers crossed that takes care of everything and there are no leg flare ups/relapses.

Come to me wonder drugs (and they're even in a nice springtime palette).