Absentee blog owner

I have been absent, a rookie blogger’s move, I suppose, but I’ve been too busy dieting to worry much about anything else.  I’m hoping tomorrow for 14 lbs!   Of course, that means I have only 6 weeks left to lose 16 lbs before my deadline of 7/2/10, but at this point, if I don’t meet the magic number, I don’t care.  I feel SO MUCH BETTER.  I actually have gone out with a friend two weekends in a row and didn’t feel like I had to hide myself under a coat or a big sweater.  Overall, I’ve lost 12+ inches and am almost back in a size ten (I think 5-7 more lbs will do it).  If that’s as small as I get, so be it. 

I’ve learned a lot.   Most specifically, I’ve learned that the chemical crap frozen diet foods I was trying to live on were actually leaving me so unsatisfied that I whenever I had the chance to eat normal food, I overindulged like a starved person.   Everything I’ve eaten for the past six weeks  has been a single ingredient.  Chicken.  Steak.  Vegetables.  Fruit.  I’ve even started buying free-range chicken and eggs (I’m still working on going organic…it’s so expensive).  I’ve also been largely gluten-free and I think it’s done wonders for my energy level.  I’m not saying I’m going to give up bread and pasta altogether, but I see now how they should be savored as treats and not lived upon for days or weeks at a time.  One thing I’m looking forward to, though, is the day when I don’t have to eat any meat!  I never thought I’d say that, but I kind of like my flexitarian lifestyle, eating meat less and less frequently (oh, except for bacon, of course).  I am definitely going to give myself a full week away from meat when I’m done with this experiment. 

Wish me luck on my weigh-in tomorrow!

P.S.

I’ve lost 9 pounds!

Toxic Co-workers

I had a pretty crappy day at work.  I ended up having to come home because I just couldn’t get my head together.  I’m very lucky to have a boss who is so understanding of my emotional travails.  What set me off was a co-worker who, while dripping honey from her mouth, I think may be trying to railroad me and make me redundant.

In the space of a one hour meeting, she not only relegated me to admin status (“Oh, Jaime – you know who to call in Document Administration – you can help, right?”) but also began to undermine a project of mine that I have perfected over the last three years (“I just never know who to call in Washington, <provider service representative>, but now I can call you!”).  It’s all so very difficult to explain while keeping everything basically anonymous, but suffice to say that with one side of her mouth she extols my virtues to our boss, and with the other side tries to make me unnecessary.  Never in my twelve years in the department have I felt so useless and demeaned (and I’ve been demoted/re-org’d, so I know from useless and demeaned)…and in front of network execs!  People whose trust I have worked hard to earn over the last three years…I feel as if they will no longer come to me with the issues that keep me working all day long. 

I’ve worked with people I don’t particularly like.  Or who are just stupid.  But I’ve never had to work with a vile snake like this woman.  She is an ass-kisser, which is hard enough to watch on a daily basis (earlier this week, she brought flowers to our boss), but she is a user who is looking out only for herself.  I had to be very honest with my boss today – I don’t trust this woman, she values my opinion only when it serves her, and I don’t think she is interested in administering our contract but instead looks for short-cuts.  When the shit hits the fan, I’m not going to take the fall for her. 

What I have done, though, is allow her to make me feel less-than.  That’s on me.  People don’t treat you badly unless you allow them to do so.  And I think my boss agrees with that…she has asked me to take a week or so to really think about how I feel and then to have a face-to-face conversation with this woman to tell her how her actions and words have hurt me.  Normally, I push that down.  Normally, I just deal with it and wait for it to go away.  But looking down the barrel at 40?  I think I have to step up and do it.  I think if I’m going to continue to grow as a human being and as a strong woman, the discomfort that comes with the confrontation has to take second-stage to being seen as valuable.  I know at this point in my life, I wouldn’t let a man treat me this way.  Why should a co-worker be any different?

Left behind?

One of my exes got married.  Ok, that’s not such a big deal because as it turns out, pretty much all of my exes are married, except the unmarriable ones.  But this particular one…ugh…if even HE can get married, it makes me start to wonder if the problem really ISN’T me?  This guy was emailing me to try to get back together for the umpteenth time a year ago…and somehow, even though we have no mutual friends, he came up in my Facebook friend suggestions, and when I clicked on his profile, he’s married!!  How is that possible?  Ok, so a lot can happen in a year, but this guy was so picky, so wishy-washy, so about using me only for an ego boost, that I just assumed he’d remain forever unmarried.  And from what I can tell from his wife’s page (ok, here’s where I turned into a cyber-stalker), they started dating not terribly long after he was emailing me (and now I’m REALLY thanking God that I decided yet again not to get involved with him), and were married about 4 months after our last communication.  AND she doesn’t appear to be pregnant. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-a64OwOYqU 

So I’m wondering again…what makes ME undateable?  I know I’ve got some extra padding, but that has nothing to do with my personality.  I like to think I’m fun to hang out with, but then again…I’m maybe too much of a quiet homebody to be exciting enough to date.  I know I’m smart, but I don’t follow politics or world news so closely that I have totally informed opinions – not because I don’t think it’s important, but because it’s usually too depressing.  Anyway – I’m not going to sit here and outline my shortfalls.  I just wonder why it is that even someone whom I considered to be more lost than myself as far as relationships can manage to find someone who wants to marry him.  I imagine it started with him actually making himself available for dating, but that’s not the point.  I stopped dating because I got tired of putting myself out there and ending up hurt and disappointed.  Now, two years later and with his marriage screaming LOSER at me, I’m even less inclined to want to try – which is actually the opposite of the reaction I should have – I should be screaming at the top of my lungs:  “I’m better than that!  I am better than your ego boost!  You are not better than me because you got married! ” 

I’m pretty discombobulated by this piece of news.  I’ll have to chew on it for a while and see what direction I am moved toward.

Attention, attention whores.

Ok, I realize the irony in calling out attention whores when I have a blog that documents that non-profundity of my life, as well as being one of those people who updates their Facebook status with random comments like, “Hello, English muffin.  In 24 hours, you’re gonna get in my belleh.”  I get that I really have no right to rag on fellow-attention whores, and I am not gearing this toward fellow bloggers or Facebookers who talk to their toast. 

There are two people who’ve instigated this rant. 

Person one:  Lives what many would call an alternative lifestyle, including but not limited to self-admitted “vampirism” (which has nothing to do with blood-sucking) and seeking out open, non-traditional relationships.  In her late 30s, she constantly posts as her Facebook status lyrics from 80’s unrequited love songs and complains about her lack of “cuddle partners.”  Recently, she found a “cuddle partner,” but has been crushed in the past week or so by the fact that his wife must not really like them sleeping together.   I’ve tried for many moons not to judge her.  To each her own, I like to say, because I certainly wouldn’t want anyone judging me for my lifestyle choices, which include gluing my ass to the couch and complaining about being fat but not really doing anything about it.  But the brazen cry for sympathy when things don’t work out as this person plans is really starting to chap my hide!  I mean, really.  If you want to stop getting sleep-induced headaches, go to bed when it’s dark out, not when the sun is coming up, and sleep the way your body intends!  If you don’t want men to love you and leave you for their wives, don’t date married men!  But pleeeease:  recall that you made these choices.  Complaining about the bad outcomes of  bad choices is just redundant.  And seeking out the sympathy of your friends in a public forum?  Well, geez, why not just get your own cable-access reality series so we can at least WATCH the train wreck. 

Person two:   Has not really fully formed as a human being (ok, she’s really just in her early 20s).  Posts as her Facebook status bon mots about her fabulous editing job, her career as a fabulous protestor and how she has no time in her busy busy life because she is just so fabulous.  Ok, the fact is that I may be a teensy-bit jealous of her because, clearly, I am no longer in my early 20s with my whole life ahead of me.  And I don’t have a fabulous editing job.   What got me about this one is that …well, full disclosure, she’s my second cousin and when she posted on Facebook that my aunt had a heart attack, I got angry with her because that’s how I found out about it.  When I asked her not to post family emergencies on Facebook, she accused me of censoring her.  So I’ve been irritated about that for a while now.  When she started updating her Facebook status with how fabulously she had participated in a recent protest, and felt so “pushed down by the Man” that she was incited to write an op/ed about the event (which she so fabulously shopped around), I decided she was really just an attention whore who must, at all costs, make sure everyone knows how fabulous she is in every moment of her life.  Who knows.  Maybe if the internets and blogging had existed twenty years ago as they do today, I might have been as much of an attention whore as she.  I mean, for crying out loud, in MY early twenties I was dating and then married the bipolar freak from hell!  I could have milked that for years! (Ok, just because I didn’t have a blog then, doesn’t mean I didn’t milk it a little, but that’s beside the point.)

A few minutes ago, I thought about asking my mother if I was that obnoxious when I was in my early 20s, but I realized I didn’t want to know the answer.  I guess in my cousin’s case, I’ll just have to wait for her to grow up and become as jaded as the rest of us so she can realize on her own what an attention whore she once was.  

Hey, at least I admit to it.

The men of my dreams.

I don’t know if it’s because I went off my birth control pill or what…but my dreams of late have been filled with the men of my past (they’d have to be from the past, wouldn’t they, Ms. Terminally Single).  Two in particular have been most prominent…one of them a wonderful man who inspired poetry from me; the other a man-boy who let his libido rule his life and brought out the tart in me. 

Neither of them were my future…one I’ve lost to the world, the other to marriage and fatherhood.  I’ve dreamed of both of them over and over for weeks and I can say this with all honesty…they are the reasons I’ve not wanted to leave my bed much lately.  In sleep, I’ve felt wanted and worshipped, exhilarated and exalted, beautiful and brave.  

I am guessing that these men are visiting my dreams so that I can remember the good things about having them in my life and maybe, just maybe, that might push me back into the dating game.  It must be the universe trying to tell me something.  Otherwise, it’s cruel and unusual punishment to relive those memories night after night, knowing neither of those men are available to me, and waking up alone yet again.  I realize that I isolate myself, making dating impossible, but I’m so frightened of giving back the independence I’ve gained in this two-year dating hiatus, so frightened of being hurt, so frightened of failure. 

I know these dreams can’t sustain me…but really…it’s rather enjoyable cruel and unusual punishment…

Facing facts

I have a food addiction.  It doesn’t matter how much I work out, I’m sabotaging it all by being obsessed with food and not having the sense to stop eating when I’m full or to not eat just because I’m bored.  It really is just like a drug addiction (although I suppose it’s not causing me trouble at work or interfering with relationships).  I am delusional to think I can lose even ten pounds by my birthday, let alone 20, and 30 was always a pipe dream.  And knowing all of this…I still continue to look to food as the way to solve any problem.  Feeling down?  Have a bowl of pasta.  Hard day at work?  Make a big casserole.  Lonely?  Eat some Chinese food while you watch the Oscars.  Celebrating?  Go out to dinner.  It’s Sunday?  Better make sure to hork down some bacon. 

In the midst of this epiphany, I have still managed to get a good amount of exercise in, until today.  Today I woke up and decided to go to the gym after work, and then I worked later than I planned, and then I took a nap (probably because I ate a boatload of potato chips right after I finished work – obviously should not be buying chips, but that’s a red herring – I’d have eaten a huge chunk of cheese if the chips hadn’t been here). I think the time has come for a real intervention.  I think I’m past the services of a nutritionist.  I think I need behavior modification or hypnosis at this point.  I lack the power in myself to “just say no.”   Part of me wonders… I no longer want to date, I no longer want to be fit…what else am I going to stop wanting?  Where is this apathy coming from?  Have I really just given up on myself?

Someone…

…please inspire me.

Not much too update except…

I’m.  In love.  With the Wii.

How did I ever live without this timesuck???  Actually, it’s so much more interactive than I thought…I’d only ever played the bowling and the golf.  The tennis and the boxing are aerobic!  My Wii came with a Jillian Michaels workout and she’s already disappointed in my effort – she actually said so.  I haven’t been to the gym since Friday morning, but I don’t feel too badly about that – I’m pretty sure I had my heart rate in the fat-burning zone for about 60 minutes today.  And I’m sore (my fault – who stretches before playing a video game???).

Bread fast has been a breeze so far.  No birth control has been pretty uneventful.  The last few days I’ve been a bit on the hormonal side but I’m coping with a lot of sleep and a lot of work.  Still no weight loss but I have noticed a marked decrease in my appetite, so that can only be good.  Though it’s doubtful I will achieve the full 30 lbs of weight loss by my birthday, I’m thinking 20 is definitely doable. 

I know this was a boring entry, but I’m kind of happy at the lack of drama this week, ya know?

More on friendships

Do you have one of those friends who you know you can count in tough times, who you have a ton of fun with whenever you’re together, but somehow that person, whether or not she does it on purpose, finds any excuse to put you down?  How can she be your friend if she takes potshots at you?  Especially when no matter what, you try to lift her up, steer her in the right direction when she asks your opinion, and are there when she needs you.   I can only think that it comes out of her own insecurity, and that while you might not be the girl who turns heads, snowboards, fixes engines, has all the fun toys and great shoes and is the flame that moths are drawn toward…somehow she is jealous of you.  Not for anything tangible, but maybe because you have it together pretty well and she is fighting to maintain her status quo in a world where everyone else is moving forward.    And putting you down is her way of making her world ok again.  Otherwise…if it’s anything else…people suck and you need to re-evaluate your relationships.