Category Archives: Girly Stuff

gimme carbs

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It’s official, Atkins is over. I lost about 7-8 pounds, so I’m happy, but good lord it messed me up. Here’s the story: on Wednesday, I noticed that my legs were really sore like I had over-exercised them. Weird thing is, I hadn’t been working out at all. It got worse on Thursday. Then today, not only were my legs sore, but my right knee (which I sprained 3 years ago) was hurting, and I had this weird nerve in my right shoulder that was aching & shooting pain all down the right side of my torso. I called my mom & described it to her (she’s sort of the unofficial family doctor — if you have a symptom, she can probably give you a reasonable diagnosis), and she told me to go home & eat some carbs & see what happened.

I got home, and I had a piece of toast and some canned pineapple. Then I took a nice, long nap. When I woke up, my legs weren’t sore anymore, and my shoulder wasn’t doing the shooting-pain thing. My knee is still kind of messed up, but I was doing some strange twisting around (crawling on the floor in a tight space & whatnot) when I was re-organizing the network cables for a client of ours this week, so I guess that could be related.

Oh well, I did learn a few valuable things out of this — for one, the Atkins brand Banana Nut Harvest cereal is freakin’ awesome, and the s’more protein bar is pretty good too. So maybe I’ll just try to implement those types of sweets to replace some of the crap I was eating. But I don’t think I’ll be going hard-core low-carb again anytime soon.

Maybe I’ll try Sugarbusters next — at least you can still have fruit & whole grains with that.

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!!!!

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Ok, first the little things…. The vet narrowed down Teenie’s limping problem to one toe on her front left paw. He X-ray’ed it, but it showed nothing abnormal, so he gave me pain medicine to give her. I explained to him that I can’t give her pills, so he gave me liquid stuff and told me that he’d mix it with something to make it “not taste so bad”. I was still thinking that I’d probably end up with more of the liquid medicine on me than down her throat, but I said I’d give it a try. Turns out, Teenie LOVES it. She laps it off the end of the medicine dropper, and then when it’s empty, she starts biting on the thing like she wants more! My little narcotic drug-seeking kitty.

The other little thing is that I woke up this morning & my tummy was upset, which thoroughly annoyed me because I started Atkins so my stomach would stop being upset. I was thinking to hell with it, I was at least going to add in fruit or something, because it’s just not worth it. Then I got on the scale & discovered that I’ve lost 6 pounds in the past 4 days. Sigh. Ok, I guess I’ll stick with it a little longer.

Now the big happy news: I’m going to get to see Kris!!! My parents ok’ed this, so we made a plan. On Christmas Day, she’s going to drive from Memphis to Jackson , then she’s going to come with me & my family to New Orleans for the family reunion after Christmas. I haven’t seen her since May, so I am just so-so-so-so-SOOOOO happy about this! I’ve been really stressed about the family visit thing for a number of reasons, so this will make the whole trip so much more fun. I absolutely cannot wait. I don’t even care if my entire extended family thinks that she’s my lesbian girlfriend. (I have a feeling that they wonder about me since they’ve never met anyone I’ve dated, and most of my younger cousins have brought their respective boyfriends/girlfriends to at least one reunion by this point.)

Anyway, here I was all bummed that I didn’t know when the next time was that I’d get to see her, and it turns out that I’m going to see her in like 11 days. How cool is that?!?!! The reunion thing will be on the night of the 26th — afterwards, Kris & I will be going out to par-tay in the Big Easy. Awwww yeeeeeah….

Also, our friend Leslie is also talking about buying plane tickets for both herself & Kris to come visit me here in Seattle on the weekend of my birthday (January 16th, for those of you who are keeping track so you can send cards/gifts/money/etc.). So that would mean that I’ll get to see her twice in one month. WOOO-HOOO!!! I am so excited right now, I’ve been dancing around my apartment for the last half-hour. YAY!

Alright, I’ll stop before my enthusiasm starts to annoy people.

stress & eating (and stress-eating)

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Teenie’s going to the vet tomorrow. It’s now at the point where she holds up her front left leg when she’s sitting, as if she doesn’t want to put any weight on it at all. It’s freaking me out, so we’re going to find out what the heck is going on with her. I really hope they don’t have to do X-rays, I am so painfully broke right now…

The Atkins thing has been easy until tonight. I tend to munch when I’m bored, and since I’m pathetically single & have no plans on Friday night…. yeah. Anyway, I want something sweet, which isn’t really an option. The protein bars don’t do it for me, they’re kind of gross. I did find a legal treat that kind of works — cream cheese, heavy whipping cream, and a splash of vanilla extract and Equal just for taste. It’s kind of got a cheesecake-y element going for it. Not bad.

Ah, screw it. I’m taking a bath and going to bed.

Let the meat-eating commence

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Seems like lately I’ve been feeling kind of fat. Now, fat is a relative term in this case because I’ve actually dropped about 100 pounds since May 2002, but I’m still what you could easily call far-from-skinny. And I don’t mean to be one of those women who gripes about their weight when they don’t have a weight problem to speak of. Overall I’m really happy with my body and very proud of the weight that I’ve lost, I think it’s just that I’ve been eating too much junk lately — mostly sugar-oriented junk — and it’s just been making me feel kind of bloated and icky.

So, tomorrow, a new phase begins: I’m going to do Atkins for the next couple of weeks. I realize that this is going to be a very temporary crash diet, because there’s no way on earth I can stick to it once I go home for Christmas (turn down Mom’s sweet potato casserole with the melted marshmallows on top? I think not!). I don’t think losing weight is even the goal here, I just need a shock to my system to get me back in check. I need to stop the constant-sugar thing, and maybe get my body image issues under control somewhat. Of course, if I dropped a couple of pounds so that when my jeans come out of the dryer, the skin on my stomach above the waistband doesn’t look like a shar-pei puppy…. Well, that’d be ok with me too.

Anyway, to that end, tonight I fried up an entire package of bacon & stashed it in the fridge (I don’t believe in cooking something that messy in small quantities), I hard-boiled a few eggs, and I sliced up a block of cheese. What’s far more impressive is that I immediately cleaned up the kitchen afterward, loaded & started the dishwasher. I even scrubbed the bacon grease off the stove while it was still hot. That’s gotta be a first for me. I figure that this weekend, I’ll head over to the Lo-Carb Outlet store for some baked cheese chips and flavored soy nuts. Yee-haw.

Now we just have to wait & see if I can make it 2 weeks without booze. Especially with holiday stress looming in my future. Hmmm. Anyone happen to know how many carbs are in vodka?

thanks, Mom

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My mother has this tendency to send me little care packages every few months or so. It usually consists of one actual gift (typically make-up — Mom sell Beauti-Control cosmetics, so she gets it wholesale), plus some other random stuff. Here’s what I got today:

* The actual gift – a buckwheat pillow for my neck. Not sure how it works, I think you’re supposed to put it in the microwave to get it warm first.

* A bunch of comic strips, mostly “Dilbert”, “Arlo & Janis” (Mom loves the cat in that one), and “Boondocks”.

* An article she cut out of the paper about Bret Michaels of Poison’s solo album. Dear god, will I ever live down the fact that I liked hair bands when I was 14? It was actually kind of sad, the article was a promotion for his upcoming show at The Dock in Jackson. The Dock, by the way (as anyone who’s lived in Jackson knows), is a tiny depressing dive of a place that’s been stuck in a time warp since 1985. Not entirely inappropriate for Bret Michaels’ target demographic, I imagine, but still. What a miserable existence. (I’m not sure if I mean him or his fans. Maybe both.)

* An article she xeroxed (I can only imagine that since I didn’t get the original, this means that my brother & sister both got copies as well) about how “30 is the new 21”. I appreciate the thought, although it somehow doesn’t cheer me up about that 28th birthday that’s looming less than 2 months from now….

In other news, I’m leaving for NYC on Wednesday. I’m getting stressed, I hate flying. I like the part of traveling that involves getting to see new places, I just don’t care for the process of getting there.

Right now I’m listening to an MP3 that I just downloaded of Rufus Wainwright doing “My Funny Valentine” on the David Letterman show. Damn, that’s good. He’s going to be playing at the Moore next month and I can’t afford to go. Waaah!

go me

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I decided last night that I was going to start working out again. I haven’t been to the gym since…. oh who am I kidding, the last time I went was probably late August or early September. The crazy thing is that I’ve actually lost weight during this time, which I can only assume means that I’ve lost muscle mass. I’m not exactly sure what brought on this sudden inspiration for fitness — I don’t know if it was the fact that I went shopping yesterday & I wasn’t happy with the way most of the clothes fit me, or if it was the fact that last night I ordered Domino’s and ate 1 piece of pizza and the entire thing of Cinna-stix (which, as far as I’m concerned, is the only reason to ever order Domino’s, because their pizza pretty much sucks).

In any case, I woke up early this morning to go to yoga. Ok, technically the class starts at 11:30, so I didn’t wake up that early, but it’s early for me on a Sunday. Anyway, I get myself all psyched up for this, and the class is actually something they call PiYo because it combines pilates & yoga, and I knew it was going to kick my butt, but I was ready for it. So I get there, and there’s no teacher. Eh???? The guy who taught the previous class stuck around and did a 45-minute stretching class for those of us who were looking forward to yoga, which was cool because it was very similar to yoga, but it wasn’t quite the butt-kicking experience I had in mind. I figured that as long as I was at the gym, I might as well make it worth my while, so I did 20 minutes on the elliptical cross-trainer before I left.

Oddly enough, I noticed mid-workout that I felt more energetic than I had felt for weeks, so obviously this is something that my body has been missing. So that’s it, I’m going to make a conscious effort to get my lazy butt back to the gym on a regular basis. There’s a yoga class tomorrow evening, which I’ll be attending — I figure that if I write about it here, then I have to do it or I’ll feel guilty. But the teacher had better show up this time, dammit.

Oh yeah, I also cleaned my entire apartment tonight. Laundry, vacuuming, windexing everything in sight, the whole shi-bang. Overall, I think it’s safe to say that I had an unusually productive weekend. Strange.

the new 'do

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I got my hair cut today. I took some before & after pictures of myself just because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I was ready for a drastic change. I actually don’t think it’s that drastic, but I suppose it’s noticeable enough.

Funny thing is, I was going to wait a while before I got a haircut, but then I got this coupon in the mail for a salon that I’ve never been to — apparently if you give them a try, they’ll give you 50% off your first haircut. I figured what the heck.

Anyway, that’s all. Getting ready to go hit the town with Scott tonight (who hasn’t seen the hair yet, so I’m not sure what his reaction will be). Hope everyone is having a lovely Saturday night.