Huh...will ya look at that!

Yep, that's me!  You should all go vote for me when the time comes (I'll let you know).

Tonight, the most fascinating thing this yoga teacher is doing is trying to decide on a cocktail.  I'm at that point in the school year where I've been contemplating what to drink for over an hour and I'm still thirsty--kind of like when you go to the grocery store starving and get nothing to eat because you have too many options.

Red wine?
Captain diet?

Do I have to choose??

Tomorrow is the last day of school....I....can....do....it...... :-)

Sunday is like breathing

Sunday morning I sleep in and snuggle with Gatsby.  He totally gets Sunday. Sunday is the day when the alarm goes off early, but no one moves for at least an hour.  Sunday is the day where I'm still home in the daylight.  Gatsby loves Sunday mornings.  

This morning was enhanced by a delicious pumpkin protein muffin from my new girl-crush, CleanEating Chelsey.  Then, it was further enhanced by a kick ass yoga class (yes, I taught; yes, it was kick ass if I do say so myself!).  There's something about the energy of that Sunday morning class--I love it.  Today there were 36 yogis in the house, ranging in age from teenage to retired and everywhere in between.  Body styles of all types, athletic ability of all levels.  Sunday morning yoga is the great equalizer.  

The afternoon is the bottom of the exhale. Sometimes I nap, sometimes I grade, sometimes I prep my food for the week.  Sometimes I do all of that.  Gatsby lays on his blanket and chews on  bone, basking in the amazingness that is Sunday.
Sunday nights are the inhale.  The laundry is done and put away, meals are prepped for the week (mostly), and I head to my favorite spin class.  When I get home, it's the final countdown, the big breath in, to get me ready and energized for Monday morning and the rat race ahead.  

 

Day 5 of Detox/Cleansing

Well, seems that I'm still alive after five days of no popcorn, no pizza, no fried food, no Chinese food, no diet coke, no coffee, and no french fries. No milk, no cheese, no steak, no chips. No pretty much anything that I normally eat.

Instead, I'm finishing day 3 of "fruit only." On Thursday when I was beginning FO, I couldn't imagine that I would make it through. And, truth be told, I didn't. I cheated a few times--I ate a package and a half of saltine crackers over my three FO days. I don't feel bad--I figure this was the first time I did a cleanse and I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with it the whole seven days. Though it's not done yet, I am through the toughest part. Tomorrow I can have some chicken and bread/rice. Then, on Tuesday, I could technically go back to "normal."

What have I learned so far?
1. I'm really not that big on fruit.
2. I love watermelon.
3. I don't need caffeine to survive (so long as there's an endless supply of fruit sugar at my disposal, that is).
4. It's very, very hard for me to not eat popcorn.
5. There are certain times of day where I will eat anything that is put in front of me.
6. Sugar isn't hard for me to miss--salt is.

There are a few more things I'll probably comment on when this is all done, but that's it for now.

Baron Baptiste said that as I began the fruit part I would start to feel "lighter". I wasn't sure what he meant by this, but now I think I understand. It's not a lightness that can really be defined...except as maybe "cellular lightness." I really feel sort of an all-over increase in energy that I wouldn't have expected. So, yay!

Two days and counting...

Day 2 of Detox/Cleansing

I've been working out of this fabulous book during my yoga teacher training (about which, I realize, I have been unusually mum). I decided on Monday night that I would begin the seven day detox on Tuesday, so I'm just finishing out the second day.

I'm hungry.

Day 1 was hard because of the lack of caffeine.
Today is hard because I'm really quite hungry. I've always been a much bigger fan of hot foods than of cold, so this whole "fruit and veggie" deal is kind of icky. Not as icky as it'll be tomorrow when it's fruit only for three days.......... oi.

Hit me with your best shot...I'll "signal" you in for a landing.

Yesterday I met at Redstone with Fabulous Friend Heather. We try to meet at least every six weeks to debrief on life and occasionally exchange writing for each other's feedback. Yesterday was no business, all pleasure. We sucked down our bloody marys and were very kind to the nice waiter who appeared very innocent the first few times he asked if we were ready to order. But then:

We called him over to the table because we were all set. He approached on my right, as he had done several times earlier, and touched my arm. My arm. Right below my sleeve. My bare flesh. I had enough time to think "He's touching me. His hand is on my arm. His hand is STILL on my arm." at which point he had made his way to the other side of me (with, I think, his hand still attached to my arm, though unless he was Waiter Gumby that would not be possible). "Are we ready to order?"

I ordered my calamari and Heather managed to order her flatbread without choking or bursting out into a gale of laughter, but once he walked away we turned into two teenage girls who assume that because the teacher has turned his back means he can't hear anything anymore.

"What the hell was that?" I screeched.

"He so just hit on you!" Heather howled.

I put my head in my hands. "What WAS that??" I asked again.

And we proceeded to giggle and marvel over this unexpected full-on show of affection for a good half hour. Heather suggested I give him my number, which led into a conversation about our "types"--and how I am so not a beefcake guy kind of girl. I said something about "you marrieds" because she was enjoying this whole thing all too much, and she reminded me about the need for married folk to live vicariously through their single friends in certain regards. Understood.

The situation would have been funny enough on its own but the additional irony of the fact we had just, not five minutes earlier, been discussing the "signals" women may or may not put out to the men around them. Damn me and my siren song!

We were also able to recall the last time we ate at the patio at Redstone where the server was very openly hitting on me, flirting away (he didn't, however, wrap his hand around my bare damn arm!) until I gave him a big fat tip, at which point he said "Yeah, my girlfriend and I ....blah blah blah." But that was a common type of hitting-on. Nothing like yesterday's kamikaze, suicide-bomber type of flirtation.

Next time I go to Redstone I'm wearing a wedding band. And a chastity belt. And sleeves.

Pretty please?

Maybe if I ask really, really nicely, the biggest annoyance in life as we know it will quietly go away. Maybe. Let's try it, shall we? Community effort.

Please, please, PLEASE. STOP. EATING. Everywhere I go, whether I'm in bio lab, in the classroom, walking down the street, walking in a hallway, people are eating. No wonder this country has a weight problem--people eat from the time they wake up in the morning until they close their eyes again at night. They never fucking stop.

Okay, you can eat. A few times a day, and in restaurants or areas where eating is an appropriate behavior. Classrooms are not an acceptable place. Let me repeat that: classrooms are not cafeterias.

To the girl who sits next to me in biology and smacks on her doritoes every day, please knock it the fuck off. Class is two hours long...you won't starve.

To the girl who sits next to me in fiction class and somehow, somehow, made blueberries a noisy food (not to mention the cherries, where I had to look at the nasty pits she'd spit out every time I turned my head to the right), please also knock it the fuck off.

People on airplanes with your onion-laden burgers and your Taco Bell, people in meetings with your smelly pasta salads, knock it the fuck off.

You'll die if you don't have food every hour on the hour? Hypoglycemic are you? Diabetic? Knocking on death's door? Haven't eaten all day and you're about to pass out? Hey, I have a heart, I can abide by that. Here's the solution: remove yourself from the classroom/meeting area (which is, let's say it together, 'not a cafeteria!') and go sit in the hallway and eat. What? You'll miss important information? Well, if your need to eat is truly that life-or-death, then you should miss some information so that you don't pass out/go into shock/die. Absolutely. But you know what? I bet you wouldn't leave. I bet you'd plan ahead and eat something in the five minutes before class, or at the 10 minute break, or you'd wait and let your tummy do its rumbling act until the class/meeting was done. I bet you'd do that. But why do either one--leave or plan ahead--when you can lay out a spread that rivals the Mother's Day buffet at the Holiday Inn and smack your chips, your berries, your soup, your carrots, in my ear? Maybe because you have a sense of respect for those around you? Maybe? Please?

Simple pleasures, the bad with the good, the silver lining, fate stepping in (aka my 32nd birthday)

The fates are really trying. They're gathering around, totally rallied, working together to try to outwit the badness (karma?) and make my birthday the best possible day. Here is the yin and yang that has been my first fourteen hours of 32:

+ Going out for fabulous drinks at my only official "party" which wasn't really official
-- I sometimes feel when I'm with the people that I was with that I'm a total outsider and kind of like they just let me tag along (I know all of the aforementioned people read this and we all know it's me and my brain and not you at all so don't flip out *grin*) and like I don't really know anything about books or music or any of the important things in life.
-- When I got to my car there was a glowing ticket there for $105. Thanks for the birthday gift, Hennepin County.

-- This morning I woke up crabby and hot and angry.
+ When I let Gatsby out there was a marvelous breeze that cooled me down (on all levels)

-- Had to teach summer school rather than sleeping in, and the kids talked non-stop
+ I had a great conversation with three kids and when I was walking out of school with my bag and my coffee I felt every inch of 32 in the best way possible: professional, together, needed.

+I studied for my bio quiz and felt like I knew everything there is to know about photosynthesis
-- I got a C on the bio test I took on Tuesday

+ I did not get an F on the bio test I took on Tuesday
-- I definitely failed the quiz on photosynthesis, which I had trouble seeing since I was literally wiping away my tears from the C on the test.

--I went to the vending machines between bio class and lab and realized I was 20 cents short of affording anything.
+ I dug deeply in every crevice of my purse and bag and found a quarter

-- I put all the money into the machine and found out everything in the machine is mislabled and I was five cents short. No food.
+ As the tears were threatening again 'Stay' by Lisa Loeb and the Nine Stories came on the radio. My karaoke song.

See what I mean?

My birthday has been a day of enjoying simple pleasures. It could have very, very easily have been a bad day. There was a time when I would have made it a bad day. But, the fates seem insistent that for every bad that happens there is a good right along with it, and I'm totally willing to go along with them on that. I stopped at picked up some chinese food on the way home from lab, and now I'm crashed out on the couch reading a shitload of messages from people who love me and don't mind telling me so on my special day. One of the realizations that comes with being older is realizing that a person has to pave their own way in this world, and that includes their happiness. I can dwell on the Cs and the failures and the expensive ticket, or I can be loved, eat Chinese food, pick up fresh dry cleaning, enjoy the gorgeous 78 degree, cloudless sunny day, and read the summer Tin House.

Happy birthday to me---here's to another year of learning, growing, and loving my friends and family. In the last calendar year I've met new people, some of whom are becoming very dear to me. I've also had some pretty staunch reminders that we aren't guaranteed anything but this present moment and it's important to make that moment special and surrounded by people I care about. Thirty-two years is thirty-one, -two, -three longer than a lot of other people get, so I'm incredibly thankful.

Ravenous

I'm absolutely starving. All the time. I'm doing that whole Meredith Baxter Birney-Lifetime movie-bulimia thing without the purging. I can only blame it on the fact that I've removed meat from my diet and therefore my body is always in want of the one thing it can't have. But, if I told you everything I ate today you'd hurl on your shoes.

So, what to do? Continue eating like a state fair hog and gain 30 lbs? Eat meat? (Isn't there a short story about a person whose hunger can never be satiated? I think there's meat involved there too.) Starve myself? Rest assured, I'm not losing any weight.

I think I may need to trot over to Whole Foods and find some good meat substitutes. I'm a little afraid to go in there, but it's either that or continue nibbling away at vegetables and fruits like a vegetarian Rainman until I eventually explode and go out and kill myself a steer.

Okay...going to make some popcorn.

"Mary Moo--oo--oon, she's a vegetarian"

So I'm on day whatever of being a vegetarian. Or, rather, I should say I'm on day whatever of not eating meat. I don't really consider myself a vegetarian because I'm guessing this phase will pass eventually....as soon as the memory of the uncanny resemblance between chicken and rat fades away.

But do you know what I miss? Bacon. I miss bacon. It doesn't appeal to me--like I can't imagine eating it--but I miss it all the same. I miss the crunchy greasy fattiness of it. Somehow tofu doesn't have the same appeal.

The biggest decision of my life so far...

...is what I want to have for dinner.

I went to Buca last night for dinner and ate salmon, lasagna, calamari, bruchetta, garlic bread, and, uh, I'm sure a few other things. I rolled home and spent most of the night digesting.

Today I had Buca leftovers. Let me say first that my lasagna the second time was absolutely delish. Then, let me say that Buca twice is a row is a little too much for my sensitive digestive system. So right now my brain wants dinner and my stomach is crying "No, please! Uncle!"

That said, here are my choices:

Chipotle
Papa Murphy's Pizza
Fabulous Asian noodles
buttered popcorn
Rice with Chinese noodles

Since I'm still off the meat, I'd prefer to skip the first two, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that some tacos from Chipotle didn't sound damn good. Meat-filled ones (just not chicken).

Hmm. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Mother Nature is a craaaaazy lady

I awoke this morning at 7am (I KNOW) to a white blanket of downy snow. And the wind, friends, is a force to be reckoned with. But, it's okay. I really don't mind. Frankly, I'm pretty happy it's crappy out because I'm heading into finals and if I had to balance Dexter (the rat formally known as Buddy George Van Gogh), finals, teaching, breathing, etc. with 80 degree weather and sunshine, I don't quite know what I would do. So, sorry people--the crappy weather is my fault.

In other news, Dexter and I have spent about 12 quality hours together this week, and I'll be showing his goods to my professor on Monday night in the form of my dissection card quiz. Thirty points, so I'll need to know 15 of Dexter's parts. Dexter has about a hundred parts, and I know them all like the back of my own hand. I also had to get to know Diane's rat's lady parts, because we're responsible for knowing both genders. I am still not eating meat, except for the pepperoni pizza I ate last night. Nothing in Dexter looks like pepperoni, so it's okay.

Salvaging Sunday

So I sat in my crabby pants pretty much all day and then decided that the best way to salvage what should have been a perfectly wonderful Sunday (blasphemy to waste them, friends) would be to make myself crabcakes for dinner.

I'm not going to lie--I make the best damn crabcakes this side of Maine. Thought I guess they'd probably make lobstercakes. Whatever--you get my drift. And it seems to be working. Though I am still put out a bit by the overall structure of the class, I'm not so pissed off that I can't savor every bite of my yummy dinner. And, though it's 7:20 and I teach in 12 hours, I'm okay with that.
I do have a huge test on Wednesday, a quiz tomorrow, and another huge test a week from Wednesday, but I will survive all of them. I need a study schedule, but I'll survive them. You bet yer sweet crabcakes I will.

Ahh, food...the war wages on...

I've spent the last 42 minutes looking for recipes for something to cook tonight for dinner. I could take the easy way out and go to Chipotle, but I figure with time and energy I should cook. Unfortunately, I can't find anything that I like, want to make, doesn't take six years to cook, etc. The old standbys keep creeping into my head--rice in chicken broth, rice with noodles and soy sauce, popcorn, pizza from Papa Murphys, a glass of V8, pasta with butter and garlic--but I want to try something sort of new. Like pepper steak or some type of chicken. Or chili, even, except no one makes traditional chili anymore, it's all full of crazy foods that I wouldn't even eat on their own.

Sigh. The quest continues. I will eat tonight, dammit.

UPDATE: Subway won out. At least it's healthier than Chipotle.

"Super Skinny Me"

Last night I watched Super Skinny Me, a documentary on BBC. It was...strange. A strange experience to watch. Basically, two women journalists agreed to "crash diet" for five weeks in an attempt to drop from a British size 12 to a size 2; size 2 is equivalent to a US 00. The two women were tested both physically and mentally to make sure they were healthy enough for the experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to track the health of the women as they attempted to become "super skinny" by using a number of popular diets.

One woman in her late 20s was married and did manage to lose enough weight to stuff herself into the 00 jeans she tried on. She spoke with a 15 year old anorexic girl and also did extensive research on "pro anorexia" websites. When she spoke about the websites on camera, she began to cry. She was extremely emotional throughout the whole experience--and was very honest and open about it. By the end, her BMI was too low to be healthy and she ultimately lost, I think, around 14 lbs.

The other journalist, Kate Spicer, was disturbing. She's 37 (or was at the time, probably 38 now) and single. She began on a diet of 250 calories a day and lost 7 lbs the first week. The next week she went to a detox facility and it was here that she began to "spiral." She was upset with only losing a small amount of weight, and became very emotional and agitated. She confided in the doctor that was checking up on them that she was experimenting with laxatives after a "binge" where she ate almost everything in her kitchen. She gained three pounds after that binge. After three weeks the doctor sent her to an eating disorder specialist. She was ordered off the experiment after the fourth week. During a follow up, after both women had begun to gain weight, she admitted to binging and purging two times.

Kate made me cry. I don't talk about everything on I Am Who I Am, and one of the things I don't talk about is my eating habits. Those who are closest to me know about some of the struggles I've had, and to say that this second journalist's story hit home for me is putting it mildly. The eating disorder specialist said that if she was allowed to go unchecked for a few more weeks she would develop a full blown eating disorder. She was well on her way after only four weeks, and it was shocking to see how fast a perfectly healthy, normal woman suddenly became so unhealthy and disordered.

I found myself wondering if part of the reason that the first woman didn't spiral so far out of control and the second woman did, was because the first woman was married. She ate her meals with her husband and had someone who was with her during the evenings and at night. He was only interviewed for a brief time, but his disgust with the experiment and with his wife's "new body" was pretty evident. I wondered if Kate would have done better if she had been with someone who kept her in check. She went out with friends after week two and they all told her how fabulous she looked, but in her flat she was able to do whatever she wanted without anyone giving her a second glance about it.

I've been thinking about the show, and Kate Spicer, all day...I can't get it--or her--out of my head.

Yeah, I ate it. And I'm not apologizing.

I stopped at McDonalds on the way home tonight and, between McD's and my house, consumed a large fry and ten chicken mcnuggets as if the plane was going down.

And it was good.

Kettle chips

Kettle chips are my latest vice. Plain kettle chips. I measure them out in one oz. increments, to go along with my diet (uh, excuse me 'new healthy lifestyle'), and it's impossible for me to eat only one oz. I always pour a second. If I don't, they bother me. They call me from the pantry. I am weak, sure, but those chips are damn bossy.