Up

I'm up in Northern Colorado for the weekend, and my internet connection is a bit slow, so I'll try to do the best I can. Today's post is randomness at best.

• We finally watched Up tonight with Mrs. Bump--very funny.  I am always wary of movies everyone says I must see, but everyone who told me that was right about this movie.  It's about time Ed Asner got back in the game. 
• Today was my day off and I didn't run.  There--I admitted it!  (I'm still working through the shame I've got all over me in the process, but that's another Oprah.)  I did, however, fill the car with gas, get the oil changed, do a Target run without purchasing a single item of clothing, bake a test batch of shortbread and go to a cake decorating supply store to pick up a bunch of cake boxes.  The whole store was fascinating, but probably only for someone who gets excited when s/he sees a kind of decorative sugar s/he hasn't seen before.
•  I do, however, plan on going for a run tomorrow morning on my way to breakfast.  I figure it's pretty failsafe.  I get up, I run there, I eat, I've exercised and I can have Mr. Bump get me back home in the car.  Yay!  I'll let you know how it goes.
• I promise promise promise to have some better content in the next few days.  Also some stories from our trip.  Things haven't been very fun, funny or fun to read around here, I know.  
• The only funny thing that happened today was that I was getting things ready to go to drive up north today and Ruby figured out what was happening.  I was coming up the stairs from the garage and she was standing at the top of the stairs.  She let out a sort of bow-wow-WOW! of joy, as if it was her only way of fully expressing how excited she was. 
• Also, I have been introduced to this website, which you must visit now and often.  This is totally my sense of humor--funny weird roadsigns.
• This is the last bullet point.  It is content free.  Goodnight.
  

the wheels on the horse go round and round

Sometimes it's hard to know what comes first.  It's that chicken vs. egg thing (which is just silly, really, because the answer is, of course, it depends).  But for me the question is did the poor eating cause me to have diminished energy, which made me feel like I didn't have enough energy to run or exercise in any way? Or does the lack of exercise reduce my energy, mess with my brain chemicals enough to make me feel crappy, which makes me want to eat?

At the end of the day it only really matters inasmuch as if I know what faltered first, maybe I can figure out how to get the wheels back on this horse.  And by wheels I mean exercise.  And by horse I mean my fat ass.  Look, I know that I've not really gained any weight, which is a good thing.  But I feel pretty squishy in the midsection, and I feel like I could see a backslide (slide, not side) from where I'm at right now.  I keep trying to recommit! and get back on track! and Do! Everything! Right!

Or maybe just one thing.  The problem is that I've just not been able to get any of those decisions off the ground.  And it's a vicious cycle (back to chicken vs. egg).  I don't exercise. I feel bad. I eat because I feel bad about myself and hopeless about my commitment. I feel bad. I don't have the energy to exercise because I feel bad and I've eaten poorly.  You can see how this isn't exactly productive.

I could easily blame all this on the trip to Africa.  If only I hadn't stopped exercising for three weeks, this never would have happened.  But I know that I was toast before I left.  I got so burned out on running while training for the half-marathon that I just wanted to finish. So badly.  I really got in the mindset that eventually I would be "done."  And so somewhere in my mind I think the moment I crossed the finish line my motivation stood up, shut the lights off, and locked the door.  And even before that, for months (maybe since March), my eating habits had been pretty much what I wanted, whenever I wanted it.  I was burning it all off with loads of exercise, so my consumption was justified, wasn't it?  And it did work.  I lost about 15-20 pounds from March until August.

But now that I find myself here, at a place that is emotionally and mentally similar to where I was a year ago, and I'm wondering what the hell kind of progress have I made in a year?  What has been the point of all this?  I truly believe in that last 15 pounds I have to lose.  They're real, I can point to them on my person, and I'm not having body dysmorphia about them.  But I also know that there is something really scary about losing all the weight, and being "done."  If I'm done, then what?  How do I deal with it?  How do I maintain "done"?  So maybe some of my self-sabotage stems from that.  Then again it may stem from just being worn out by weight loss.  Maybe I just need a maintenance break.

Which is all fine and good, but none of that means that I get to just stop running or working out.  And if I don't get to stop doing that, then I might as well just keep at it.  That's the bulk of the work anyway, isn't it?

I'm not sure what I'm going to do, which is very hard on me.  I need a goal, a purpose, something that I'm working toward.  I don't have that right now, and a physical goal is apparently very important to my successful weight loss.  So I can't sign up for the Nike Women's Marathon yet (they start the lottery in February, I think).  I need something closer to now to work toward.  It can be anything, I'm open to suggestion.  Just as long as it isn't the 30 Day Shred.  That crap starts to hurt my knees at about Day 13.

Help me!  I'd appreciate a plan, a suggestion, some advice.  I'm all at sea over this.  And the sea is filled with m&m sharks.  And they're circling.  Anyone?  Please?

no. 201

Hey how 'bout that?  Last night's poor me post was my 200th!  How appropriate that I would miss the opportunity to reflect on my last 200 blog entries because I was navel gazing at my own pity party.  But enough of that.

I went with a co-worker tonight to see Anthony Bourdain speak and do a Q&A at the Buell Theater. He was hilarious and had some nice comparisons to make between Sandra Lee and the Undead, but I'll leave you with the tidbit that's swimming around in my brain. Toward the end of the Q&A (and why do those things always have to have a creepy awkward stalkerish tone to them?) someone asked him for advice for their fifteen year-old.  He laughed and started to move on to the next question then turned around and said something like, "You want some advice?  If you say you're going to be somewhere at 8, show up at 5 minutes to 8.  You can either be the kind of person who says he's going to do something and does it, or you can be everyone else."

So I'm lying in bed, it's a half hour past my bedtime already, and I remember I haven't blogged yet today.  Eh, fuck it, I think.  It ain't going to happen.  But then comes that little gravely voice of Anthony Bourdain cursing like a sailor in my head and asking me what kind of person I am.  I said I was going to do NaBloPoMo, and I'm doing it.  So that's my bit of wisdom for today.  I'm trying to parlay that into some sort of sage dieting/weight loss wisdom, without actually having to go into detail or flesh any of that out this evening.  How am I doing?

Stick your bookmark right here. We'll come back to this tomorrow.

the Charlie Brown Effect

You know how some weeks you can just sail through, executing perfect pirouettes and smiling like a beauty queen?  Weeks where everything works the way you'd like it to, and each small success you achieve gets wrapped in a pretty ribbon and thrown on the Yay Me! pile?

Yeah, this isn't one of those.  I'm struggling this week, just to get through every day with some shred of sanity.  I have a Charlie Brown raincloud over my head and I just can't seem to shake it.  And yeah, I am aware it is only Tuesday night.

All I can say is I'm working on it.  And now that I've eaten the rest of the chocolate cake left over from this weekend, maybe working on it will get a bit easier.  It just wouldn't stop tempting me.  Now maybe we'll all get some sleep around here.  That chocolate cake was like the telltale heart, I'm telling you!

I will leave you with a lovely image of the baklava I made tonight, which is one thing that I can wrap a pretty ribbon around and check off my list.  I'll take what I can get.  This is not for me (see above re: chocolate cake--I've learned my lesson on that), but the fulfillment of an order for a co-worker.  I can't let you smell it or taste it, but it looks pretty good, right?

file this under: Oh Really?

So I'm into making my own granola bars lately.  That's kind of another story but since it has bearing on this I'll just say that they taste better if they're freshly made and I get to put in what I want, and leave out all the crap and especially all the raisins (again, crap) that are often in commercial granola bars.

So I'm looking for ingredients for my granola last night, and I have some dried blueberries, but not enough, but I think I have some down in our Millennium Rapture Food Stores (otherwise known as offsite storage) in our basement.  I end up having two different containers of them, and some feel softer, and therefore I assume newer, so I rip into the bag.  But they look, well, beat up.  Which doesn't make much sense for dried fruit, particularly when none of the other dried blueberries look bad.

I show them to Mr. Bump, who reviews the package and its contents and comes up with this

The blueberries must look nasty because they are "bursting with natural flavor" and must have just overflowed..."just like Mother Nature intended!"  Um, ok?

Then he turns the package over, just to see exactly what Mother Nature did, in fact, intend.  Mostly by checking the ingredients:

Apparently Mother Nature intends for the blueberries to include HFCS, Corn Syrup, and Sucrose.  Because Mother Nature intends for your dried fruit to be dried fruit plus some other added sweeteners, including some that are processed (and repeat after me kids) "Just Like Mother Nature Intended!"

Goodnight, and good luck with your dried fruit!  I'll hit you with that granola recipe later.