Sometimes, even when I'm trying to work at work, it still doesn't happen.

I have a lot of strange conversations in my head, partially because I'm strange and partially because Captain America works at night and so there's no one at home for me to talk to. Also, there's no one at home to tell me I shouldn't post things like this.

At work today, I accidentally asked excel to calculate a fuck-ton of data, when I only wanted a shit-ton calculated. And so the whirly blue circle of aggrevation whirled and whirled and whirled for over an hour. And while all of this was going on, I caught up on my bloggess reading. And so I read her bit about the death of Alan Rickman, which still cracks my heart just a little every time I think about it.

And in it, her husband reminds her that she had sort of created an Alan Rickman fan club, and also included him on a list of hot men that husbands don't understand why women think they're hot. So of course I HAD to go find this list, but unfortunately she wrote it for her sex blog, which is some sort of community publication for a sex toy company.

All of which is fine with me. I don't care what two (or more) consulting adults do. But I'm at work, and so I'm blocked. (Sometimes the things that are blocked are so random. I was totally able to see nudy pics of people that were part of an artistic project a photographer friend was working on, and it wasn't like some of the pics were nude and some were not. FULL FRONTAL OF EVERYONE! But to see a list of hot men, that's a problem? Corporate America is so weird sometimes.)

And so I came home and searched for it on our home computer, and it was still a bit of a struggle to find, but I managed. But I'm now working on my work computer and so I can't find it again. But there was also a list of people who men assume women will have sex with but women don't actually want to, like Tom Cruise.

And this reminded me of a Tom Cruise-ish conversation I had with a guy friend who insisted that every woman on the planet wanted to have sex with Nicole Kidman's new husband (is he still her new husband? I can't  even keep track any more)--the one who is from Australia but is a country music star. As if that makes any sense.

And the coversation went something like this:

Friend: Chicks dig [whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is]

Me: Nope. I can't handle that terrible hair.

Friend: Chicks dig the hair.

Me: He does have amazing blue eyes, but that haircut is awful.

Friend: You don't know what you're talking about.

Me: He has terrible hair. And he's kind of skinny. I do not want to have sex with him.

Friend: You're wrong.

Me: The only vagina in this conversation is mine!

Friend: Then why is he so popular with the ladies?

Me: I can't fucking figure it out either. Maybe because he has a shit-ton of money?

Friend: Women want to do him.

Me: You're fired.

And as I was reliving this conversation, I was growing increasingly annoyed that some guy thought he could tell me who I was and was not attracted to. And then I remembered that I rarely see this friend anymore (not entirely because of this conversation), and then I wondered if my husband would care at all that I totally want to join the Team Rickman fan club.

Probably not. He's probably worried about what my company is going to do when they realize what's in my search history.

Getting rid of stuff that's not working

As part of my Transform campaign, I'm working on making some changes in my life. But this process is largely trial and error. After reading Gretchen Rubin's book about habits, Better Than Before, I learned that the reward system largely does not work (e.g. If I lose 10 pounds, I can buy myself those cute shoes). Nonetheless, I still harbor the idea that if I do all of this hard work, I should get some sort of treat. I really don't know why this is.

I did learn that I am motivated by external sources, not internal (this was a bit of a surprise to me, too!). This doesn't necessarily mean other people--I love watching the little arrow progress around the treadmill's track signaling that I'm closer to completing another lap. But, this is also why I'm doing a sugar-detox diet with friends. Left to my own devices, I think I'd only be eating scrambled eggs and veggies. And I'd be doing a lot of crying. And I'd probably give up after about 5 days.

Part of this Transform journey is figuring out what works, but another part is figuring out what doesn't work. As it turns out, I really don't like exercising in the morning. When I lived in Oregon, I could manage it because I would work out with friends who lived in the same apartment complex, and we would use the complex's gym. Convenience, it turns out, is super-important to me. I am more likely to exercise at work, even if they don't have all of the equipment I'd like to be using, than I am to drive to my local gym. Mostly because I'm already at work.

I'm more functional when I have time to get up slowly. This morning I got out of bed at 6:40 am and left for work at 8:40 am. I'm pretty sure most people do not spend two hours getting ready to go to work, but I like to sit at the kitchen table and read while I eat breakfast, and whenever I don't do this, I feel sort of off-rhythm all day. Sometimes I do productive things before work, like pay bills, but most of the time I just read.

I've discovered that meditation does not work for me, at least not right now. It simply became another thing for me to do, and while I was meditating, I really, really struggled to turn off the "monkey mind." In theory, that's sort of the point of meditation--to be able to turn off the monkey mind, but I actually found my pulse speeding up while I meditated instead of doing whatever it was I needed to do IMMEDIATELY AFTER I FINISH MEDITATING. So I decided to stop trying to meditate. I might try again in the future, but right now, it is not a good fit.

As it turns out, this Transform project is also a project of self-discovery!

This is why I get nothing done at work, even when I don't spend the day in meetings.

I show up at work this morning and immediately attend a meditation session (yes, I work for one of those kinds of companies).

Then I get back to my desk and I sit down to finish listening to the Excel training I started yesterday (by Jeff Lenning--he's crazy enthusiastic about excel. I'm crazy enthusiastic about anything that automates my job and therefore makes my life easier. Or at least allows me to spend less time at work. Unlike writing this blog post.)

Except, I have a friend who's looking for a Conservation Biologist to talk to a high-schooler with leukemia about what her job is like. And I know a Conservation Biologist. So then I spend some time connecting the two of them. The C.B. is currently driving across the country, and may or may not be headed through Spokane, WA, where Cody makes Disney-themed drinks. (I can't make this stuff up. As far as I'm concerned, this might be the only reason to go to Spokane, and I haven't even had one of his drinks.) So, of course, it is basically my civic duty to inform the C.B. of this.

But my new manager wants me to look into getting a company-issued phone, so I start to research that, and I reach out to the woman I'll be shadowing to see if she actually has a company-issued phone, and we get into a whole conversation on when I'll be moving to my new location so I can actually be of some use to my new team.

At the same time, I coordinated a women's group lunch to make sure all of the attendees understand that we have two lunches this week--one with our group and one with another group. Then I had to remove an attendee who TOLD ME LAST MONTH that she wanted to be part of the group, so I added her to everything, and then TOLD ME TODAY that she is too busy. She's an administrative assistant. You'd think she'd have a better understanding of scheduling.

Meanwhile, I'm also taking a Facebook class or something on becoming a Beach Body Coach--which I am killing, by the way--today we are supposed to 1) Make a healthy choice. Meditation it is; 2) Reach out to a friend--nailed it! I've reached out to, and connected, two of them FOR PHILANTHROPIC REASONS, and it's not even lunch; and 3) do something to grow yourself. I guess I could count mediation for this one and then do something else healthy, like not eat out of the snack drawer. If only I could get paid to be this awesome! But, tragically, this isn't really my day job. It's only what I've been doing at my day job.

I might be turning into Marlon Brando. Or not.

Basically this is a post with a lot of pictures. So it's a lot like a children's book, but even more random.

I've lost my voice. Which is generally sub-optimal, but even more so since my instant message communicator at work was causing my Outlook to crash. So basically I had to learn morose code to communicate today. It's a lot like Morse code, except you can also use it to communicate with Grumpy Cat.

(It's a good thing I can entertain myself, since I'll probably have no friends left after I force them all to learn morose code.)

Anyway, a coworker said I sound like Marlon Brando. When I try to talk. With my non-voice. Which I suppose is a step up from yesterday when I sounded like a drowning Muppet.

At any rate, I told said coworker that I was going to take a class at our gym taught by an incredibly enthusiastic 62-year old. This is him playing the role of Cupid on Valentine's Day. Obviously he suffers from low self-esteem.

Coworker says, I don't have the energy to take Cupid's class.

I say, I haven't worked out in a week. I might be turning to mush. Sort of like Marlon Brando when he got old.

Young Marlon Brando was hot. Old Marlon Brando looks like everyone's great-uncle Nelson. Which is fine for the great-uncles of the world, but not so much for a woman.

Energy Drain

At least once a week, you'll see an article on Facebook about getting rid of "toxic friends." But I have sort of the opposite of a toxic friend.

I had a friend who was nice, and sweet, and generous, and always up for anything. When she asked "how are you?" she actually wanted to listen to an answer, instead of just exchanging a brief greeting.

And somehow, I found her exhausting. I would spend a day with her, and I would come home completely depleted, despite the fact that everything that had happened had been fun and pleasant and nice and enjoyable.

For a while, I felt guilty about avoiding this friend. I couldn't pinpoint what the problem was, and I felt bad about not wanting to spend time with someone who was so nice.

In the end, I decided it mattered less WHY this particular relationship was exhausting, and more that it simply was. I would never suggest to someone else that they should spend time with someone they found exhausting, even if that person was nice, so why should I?

I haven't seen this person in over a year, and sometimes I still feel like I should tell her why I "broke up" with her, although to be fair, she hasn't contacted me, either, so maybe the feeling was mutual. In the end, the conclusion I came to, was it was exhausting for me to be around her because I always felt like I needed to be patient, and sweet, and nice, and basically not me. Pretending is exhausting.

Be Gentle with Yourself

My life is in shambles. I haven't made it to CrossFit all week, with the exception of Yoga on Wednesday. Yes, this is what constitutes "shambles" for me. Which I realize is highly melodramatic. I mean, my husband and I both have good jobs, we have a nice house, our friends and family are basically happy and healthy. We have really good lives.

And yet, every time I have a week or so of not doing something consistently, especially something I enjoy, I feel like my entire world has fallen apart.

This week, some of the problem has been due to scheduling--I've had a lot going on after work, which is  my fallback position for when I don't make it to CrossFit in the morning. Also, we spent Sunday celebrating a cousin's birthday, so none of my usual Sunday routines to get ready for the work week happened.

It occurred to me while thinking about this post that many people probably have a thing like this--a thing that they enjoy doing that they just haven't managed to get to for a while because there are other things going on in their lives. Or maybe that they haven't felt like doing, even though they also feel like they should be doing it.

This is especially problematic for me because I suffer from (am living with?) chronic depression. I suppose in the whole scheme of depressed people, mine isn't that bad. I've never been in a position where I couldn't get out of bed. I don't know if that's because I'm strong-willed, less depressed than others, or because my depression started in about 6th grade and there was no way my mother was going to let me lie in bed all day instead of going to school.

Anyway, the problem with not feeling like doing something when you have depression is that it's very hard to tell if you don't want to do something because you're depressed, which would indicate that your depression is worsening, or your medications have stopped working or whatever (I'm not a doctor, this is just my experience). On the other hand, I'm sure non-depressed people have weeks where they don't feel like doing something and all it means to them is that they need a break from it.

I had a boyfriend once who, when I was in the throes of negative talk about everything I wasn't getting done, would say to me, when you beat yourself up like this it makes me sad, because you're beating up my sweetie.

While that relationship is long gone, I try to remember those words. Because it's helpful to remember that even when you're not happy with yourself, chances are good there's someone else who loves you just the way you are. Look at yourself from their perspective: do the people who love me care that I've missed a week of CrossFit? Probably not, or at least not in a way that they're disappointed in me about it.  Do they care that I missed out on my Sunday get-ready-for-work routine? Again, probably not (honestly, they probably can't even tell).

We all have busy, messy lives, and I think it's important to remember to be gentle with our selves when we're not doing everything we thing we should be doing, or even want to be doing. Don't beat yourself up
over something you didn't do today because there's always tomorrow to try again, and no one is perfect.

Marathoning, in retrospect

I recently ran a marathon. And it was terrible. It was the worst run I’ve ever had, and it was the slowest marathon I’ve ever run, second only to the marathon that I stubbornly ran despite my torn calf muscle.

A marathon is 26.2 miles, and a lot can happen in those miles. Runners twist ankles, fall, bleed, and acquire new and mysterious injuries. Professional runners die running that distance. Marathoning has become increasingly mainstream in the last few decades, but it is not for the faint of heart.

My running partners and I set a goal of running a sub-4 hour marathon. A sub-4 hour marathon is a 9:09 pace. It’s a good clip, but not impossibly fast. This was to be my fifth marathon, and I felt confident it would be my best. I knew my weaknesses, I knew how to train, I knew what it felt like to push myself, and I knew how long those last 1.2 miles were after already having run 25 of them.

I created a training plan, and bolstered by my enthusiasm and the promise of blueberry pancakes, my friends and I proceeded to knock off mile after mile. We ran up and down hills. We ran in the fog. We ran in the sun. We ran past beach volleyball players with hateable bodies. You know—those tan women with sun-bleached hair who make wearing a paper bag look like couture. Yes, even distance runners hate those people. To be fair, the lone male among us loved running past the volleyball girls.

At mile 14 of the race, my last running partner dropped behind me. I thought as long as she could see me, she’d keep up, but after the race was over she told me she developed severe thigh cramping—something that’s never happened before. At mile 14 I was about two minutes ahead of where I needed to be based on the meticulously plotted racing strategy developed by my sister, who is a 2:55 marathoner. (That’s the insane pace of 6:40 per mile. I sort of hate her, too.)

Two minutes was a nice lead, but not enough that I could sit back and relax. I wasn't worried that I had gone out too hard—my sister and I anticipated this and figured any lead I had was padding for when something unexpected happened up ahead. I just didn't expect it to happen in the next three miles.

By mile 17, I was behind schedule. By mile 20 I was running 12-minute miles. And by the time I saw the finish line, I was just glad to stop running.

My husband and I have a code: he watches me race, and when he sees me, he says “You’re doing great! See you at the finish line!” and I answer “Yes!” This exchange informs him that I’m fine and planning on finishing this run, no matter what. As he says, “You better show up.” Not finishing this race didn’t even cross my mind.

When I look back on this race, all I can say is that it got very hot and very humid very fast. My training was great and I didn’t suffer any unexpected injuries. You can only do so much planning for the weather. The week before the race, my friends and I knew it was going to be hot. We drank extra water every day to stay hydrated. But you can’t train for a marathon the week before the race. By that point, if you haven’t done the necessary work, it is already too late.

It is disappointing to set a goal and not achieve it, but this marathon wasn't a failure. I finished the damned thing, and I did so with the support of my husband, my sister, and some good friends. It was okay that I didn't meet my goal, because my family and friends were still proud of me, and I was, too.

In the event of a zombie apocalypse...

In the event of a zombie apocalypse, you're going to have to kill some people, or at least former people, in order to survive. This is what every zombie movie ever made tells us. And this was my first thought when Captain America told me that a box had been stolen off our front stoop.

My second thought was that the fucker who stole it probably wasn't even going to use the DVDs, and that's just really wasteful. (But then I realized that all theft is wasteful.)

So here's what happened:

A while ago, upon the advice of some friends, I purchased the Insanity set of DVDs. I did the first month of workouts faithfully and noticed NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER. So I decided to stop. I didn't loose weight. I didn't loose inches. I didn't even gain stamina. And according to my heart rate monitor, I burnt only about 50% more calories in an hour of Insanity than I did in an hour of yoga, and about a third of the calories I burnt in an hour of running. I decided that it was simply not the workout for me. It took up too much time, and was producing no results.

But I kept the DVD set because I paid for them, and I figured I could take them on trips or something and watch them on my laptop if a gym wasn't an option. Or maybe I'd try them again later and have better success.

So fast forward to a few days ago when a girlfriend asked me if she could borrow them. Of course I said yes. I told her I'd leave the box on the stoop for her and she could stop by whenever and pick it up. (I realize there is always an inherent risk that something will be taken off your stoop by local delinquents.)

All day long the box sits on the stoop. Captain America comes home from work. I come home from work. I leave to go to yoga. A few minutes after I leave, Captain America comes around a corner in our house and sees the back of a woman walking away from our house carrying the box.

The back of the woman doesn't look like our friend, but it does look like our friend's best friend. So Captain America assumes that our friend was busy or tied up at work or something and sends her friend to come get the DVD set for her. (In hindsight, of course, this is a little silly, but the mind can invent fantastical scenarios when needed.)

I come home from yoga and notice the box is gone, and figure our friend stopped by, like she said she would.

Captain America says, "I don't want you to be mad at me. I'm mad and you have every right to be mad, but I don't want you to be mad."

Captain America frequently gives such prologues before delivering news of any sort, but especially bad news. He is also a bit of an overexplainer. There are worse people to be married to.

Anyway, he proceeds to tell me that the Insanity DVDs were stolen, and how he's mad at himself because he saw the person who took them, but because he had assumed it was our friend's friend (now a seemingly odd mental concoction), he didn't stop her. He's mad at himself for being so trusting (again, there are worse people to be married to). He says our friend showed up about an hour after the theft, rang the doorbell and asked for the DVDs. Which of course, we no longer had.

But I didn't get mad that the DVDs were stolen (apparently it's been that kind of week where thefts from my front stoop just go along with everything else). My first thought, evidently spurred by Captain America's comment on being trusting, was that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, he'd have to shoot some people. You CAN NOT trust zombies. They WILL eat your brains. My second thought was that the person who stole the DVDs probably wouldn't even use them. Of course, when the zombies come for her, she's going to regret that bad choice, as she won't be able to outrun the zombies.

Oh, karma will get even with her...eventually.

The other day, a coworker I'll call David (who is not, in fact my coworker who is actually named David), asked me if I had any upcoming 10Ks or if I was taking the summer off.

It was nice that he remembered that I'm a runner, although I really don't run 10Ks. I told him no, that my next race is the Carlsbad Marathon in January, so while I'm not actively training this summer, I'm still running.

I explained to David that last year, my running partner and I ran the Portland Marathon in October, so we did all of our long runs in August and September when it was miserably hot here in San Diego (yes, I realize San Diego is really far south and basically a desert, but it is rarely miserably hot here).

Here's what a typical Saturday looked like for me last summer:
4:30 am: Get up and eat a bowl of cereal (For those of you who are not distance runners, you CANNOT do long runs without eating first. You're going to be out there for hours.)
5:00 am: Leave my house to meet my running partner at the predetermined designated location
5:20 am: Arrive at the predetermined designated location. Debate the usefulness of putting on sunscreen BEFORE THE SUN IS UP. Decide to put it on anyway. The sun in California is out to get you. And you. And you.
5:30 am: begin 16, or 18, or 20, or 22 mile run.
sometime around 9 am, on your return trip through Torrey Pines, observe that you've burnt 1,642 calories. Have a random stranger say in astonishment, you've burned 16-hundred calories?!?! (It is only 9 am, after all). Respond, yeah, we just bench-pressed a whale. Because this somehow seems a more logical explanation than the fact that your 22-mile run started at 5:30 am when weather.com told you it was only 74 degrees out (we actually considered starting to run at 4:30 am, but weather.com told us it would be 73 degrees, and we decided one degree wasn't worth an hour of sleep) AND that you still had 5 more miles to go. And it's now 95 degrees. Let me tell you, the Torrey Pines park water was the most delicious thing I have ever consumed in my entire life.

The cool part of this was...oh wait, nothing was cool about this. The sun god was all, I hate you bitches. I'm going to turn your running playground into a sweltering death zone. It's going to be awful when you start running, and then I'm going to peak my rays up over the rest of the country and hone in on you so that all of your sunscreen has melted off well before I reach my zenith. So not only will you be hot and miserable, but you are now almost certain to die of skin cancer. BWAH-HA-HA-HA!

So what did we do this Saturday? We ran approximately 5 miles and then went and ate doughnuts and walked around the convention center, admiring the amazing people watching that is comic con. And I even got a Captain America doughnut to bring home to Captain America.

Is this how life is supposed to be?

Or, I'm crabby because I don't get enough sleep because I like to do so many other things.

Someone once commented that "I don't have the time to x" is really just an excuse, and what you actually mean is that you're not willing to make the time. I don't disagree, but it always seemed to me to be a half-thought. It implies that you're doing a bad job of managing your time, and you would completely be able to fit in a new activity if you had your priorities in order. What this further implies is that someone else's priorities should be yours. This drives me crazy!

Example: studies indicate that people who volunteer are happier and have more fulfilling relationships than those who don't volunteer. This suggests that we should all spend some time volunteering. Except, I don't like volunteering. It always feels like one more thing on my to-do list, one more obligation, and I don't come home feeling fulfilled or better about humanity or anything like that. I come home tired and crabby and feeling like I now have to squeeze whatever else I need to get done that day into even less remaining time. And I have pretty incredible time management skills.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what's a time priority for me, because for me, and probably for a lot of other people, time is the biggest limit in their life. Like most people I know, I work hard, so when I'm not at work, I don't want what I do with my precious free time to be hard. For me, volunteering is hard. It's unpleasant and unrewarding, and I always wish it didn't take up so much time. Of course, we all have to do unpleasant stuff in our free time sometimes, and we have to spend time doing emotion-neutral things like laundry and grocery shopping, but I don't want to spend what's left of my now decreased free time doing things I don't enjoy.

Here's what I enjoy doing: reading, spending time with family and friends, writing, baking, exercising, and watching movies.

I'd love to do more of all of these things, but then it would be at the expense of, well, some other of these things (I could read more and exercise less or vice versa), or at the expense of sleep, which I already don't get enough of. I suppose I could work less, but that would likely mean a lower-paying job, and that's something I'm even less willing to compromise.

So this has all been slogging around my head when a friend of mine invites me to a Landmark Education open house thing she's hosting. I originally thought Landmark was like Bridgepoint, or National University, or any other for-profit school. Then I read more about it an thought it sounded suspiciously like a cult. Then I did a Google search to see what I could find out about it from any other source than it's website. Mostly, people  have been saying it only appears cult-like, and it's really a program for figuring out how to get the most out of life. It sounds self-help-y/inspirational speaker-y, but it's apparently all about you.

But I still don't get it. I don't understand specifically what it does. There's no clear cut definition of what the program means by "living an extraordinary life," and the syllabus doesn't outline specific steps or actions. So while it sounds like the kind of thing where everyone would say, of course I want an extraordinary life, of course I want more fulfilling and deeper relationships, it still feels a little bit like a scam to me.

So, on the one hand, if this is helping my friend be happier and have a better life, I want to support her, but on the other hand, I don't want to go to her open house and be the one who's all, but I don't get it. I feel like that would make me even more of a target for all of the Landmarkians, because clearly I'm in even greater need of this program, since I don't understand it at all.

But what it really comes down to is, I don't want to go. I like my friend, but I don't really feel the need to meet a bunch of her other friends, and I'd rather spend my time reading, or sleeping.

I feel like my life is already very full, and at the same time, I'd enjoy it a lot more and be less crabby if I got more sleep, but then I'd have to cut down on something I enjoy doing. Who came up with this system?

Stuff I discuss at work

Or, how yoga leads to world domination

My friend: I am so sore. Yoga works!
Me: I know.
My friend: But I might try the 'gentle' yoga next time
Me: Gentle yoga is after spin on Friday
My friend: Haha. Although I am totally fine with not knowing what I am doing.
Me: There will be no stealth ninjas in gentle yoga. That alone might be worth sticking with power yoga. Of course, you could do both, like me
My friend: Haha! I did enjoy the ninjas. Well, watching others be ninjas.
Me: Yes. I dream of the day I become a ninja. It's a goal.
My friend: Yes, indeed. In the meantime I'll work on trying to touch my toes.
Me: I was supremely unflexible last night. Usually I can touch my toes. When I got to Pilates, my trainer told me my back was all jacked up. That might also explain my un-ninja-ness.
My friend: Haha! I am extremely inflexible. This is why I'm interested in yoga. I am so inflexible I'm not sure how I get around sometimes.
Me: Haha! my sister is totally unflexible, too and she exercises like crazy. Her idea of flexibility is as long as someone can touch her toes, it's all good.
My friend: Same here. It really is something you have to practice. You and Bob [another coworker...names have been changed to protect the innocent] are definitely on your way to ninja-ness!
Me: Usually that someone is the person giving her a pedicure.
My friend: Hahahaha!
Me: I don't touch her toes...she totally has runner's feet.
My friend: Well, one step at a time I guess. 1) touch toes 2) do ninja stuff
Me: That sounds incredibly similar to an outline for world domination!
My friend: Haha! You're right!

Resolution follow-up

I'm either organized or crazy!

So, as you know, I made eight resolutions for 2013. Because I'm a firm believer in the mantra, if it can be measured, it can be managed, and also that if it's scheduled it gets done, I made a giant chart for my resolutions, breaking things down into two-month increments, and then sometimes breaking them down further into monthly or bi-weekly tasks.

For the January/February period, under number 6, read all of the books I've borrowed from friends, I was to read the books on my bedside table (including the books borrowed from Voracious, T), and also finish World Changing. Not only have I not managed to read the books on my bedside table, but I have not touched even one of the four books I've borrowed. I did manage to get through a bunch of magazines that were on the bedside table, and finish World Changing, though, so it's not like I've been doing nothing.

Because I have eight resolutions, and because apparently this is how accountants think, I have to complete two resolutions every quarter to stay on track. I've completed one already, number 1, consolidate my reading lists.

I broke down goal 7, lose weight, into two-month tasks. The January/February components were to burn 600 calories a day (when my sister saw that I had listed simply "600 calories," she was concerned that this was what I planned to eat every day), and to not eat stuff I don't bring to work (we have amazing snack drawers at work). I burned at least 600 calories on 23 days in January and February (note that there were many days where I exercised but simply didn't burn 600 calories), and I didn't eat stuff I didn't bring to work 23 days (also note that I was on vacation for 4 working days in January). (These were not necessarily the same 23 days, although sometimes they were.)

Not actually on the resolution list, although on the giant chart, but because it causes Captain America a lot of stress and otherwise our DVR would be completely full, I broke down watching all of the recording I have into monthly tasks. Combined, for January and February, I was supposed to watch all of my 30 Rock and Dirty Jobs recordings, as well as four movies. I managed the four movies, and a lot of both 30 Rock and Dirty Jobs, but not all of them. Additionally, because, like I said, I like to measure stuff, each month I need to watch enough recordings to have 8.5% of the DVR free (cumulatively getting to 100% by the end of the year...Captain America relaxes at about 70% free, so around September or October he'll be able to chill). The good news is, as of last night, I had 34% free, while I only need to have 17% free by the end of February (so I'm 200% successful on this non-resolution, despite not watching all of the assigned shows).

Finally, while I haven't accomplished any of my financial goals, I have made a spreadsheet (of course I have), detailing how much I have to pay out of each paycheck to meet these goals by the end of the year. The schedule is updated monthly for the number of paychecks remaining and the changes in the balances.

I realize this is already a fairly long and wordy post, and I'm just going to add to this by continuing, but I've also been giving a lot of thought to why accomplishing these things and being neurotically organized about it is so important to me.

I've been watching the new season of the biggest loser, and one thing that's constantly reiterated by the show is that there's a reason the contestants gained all that weight, that food is something they've turned to as a substitute or solution or excuse for something else. The contestants just finished a "face your fears" week, and a lot of the fears are common to everyone...fear of heights, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of sharks, fear of close spaces, and fear of talking (or singing) in front of others.

I think, for me, the fear of failure resonates the most. It's one of those things that's really rather illogical...I mean, if you look at my life, I clearly haven't failed. I have a good husband, a good job, two degrees, a house, a retirement account. I'm not saying that there haven't been mistakes or problems along the way, I'm just saying that really, they didn't lead to failure. And honestly, when I try to think of something that I really failed at, I don't come up with much (except for maybe an occasional cooking experiment or two), but still believing that who you are is enough is really, really hard.

I think I also have a concern that I'll look back on my life and discover that I haven't really done what I've wanted to do, that I haven't really found meaning in my life, because I've been too busy doing a whole bunch of other stuff. I think making and scheduling resolutions helps keep me on track for what I want, whether is silly or fun or practical or a Big Important Accomplishment. And even if I don't accomplish everything on the list, I can still look back and see everything I have accomplished, which is pretty awesome, too.

Do we all just live in a perpetual state of anguish?

This isn't Cicero.

Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to. --the character Cicero in the movie Gladiator.

I was on the phone with Captain America the other night, complaining about how busy I am when it occurred to me that it's all my own fault that I'm busy. The problem, in a nutshell, is that there are so many things I'd like to be doing, or doing a lot more of. 

For instance, I love to read. Probably more than I like to do anything else. And I read a lot, but not nearly as much as I'd like to. I feel like I am so far behind on what I want to be reading that it's actually stressful trying to figure out when I could fit more of it in. But I also feel like I'm so close to getting to a point where I could read as much as I want...like if I could just get caught up, I could stay caught up. 

I feel the same way about exercising. When I'm unemployed, a trip to the gym can take me four hours, door-to-door. That allows me 15 minutes of driving each way, an hour of ellipticalling, 40 minutes of running, 40 minutes of lifting weights, 40 minutes of stretching and the like, 20 minutes in the sauna, and 10 minutes to deal with things like peeing and filling up my water bottle and changing my shoes to use said sauna (don't get me started on how stupid I think that rule is). I get that four hours is a lot of time at the gym, and obviously this would be the long day (the short workout is the alternative days when I don't lift). In real life, I do get to spend about two hours a day at the gym, but then I have days where there is no way I can fit in 30 minutes of cardio. Which, for me, is a stupid amount of time. I have to spend the same amount of time wrangling myself into my sports bra, and the same amount of time stretching, for a whole lot less exercise. I realize this sounds like an excuse, but somehow 30 minutes is just where I say, I have better things to do with my time. If I know I can get in 45 minutes, though, it's worth it. 

So, I'm perpetually feeling frustrated because there are SO MANY THINGS I WANT TO DO, and instead, I have to spend my time at work, or even worse, commuting to and from work. (I am aware that all of my problems are first world problems. As I was discussing with a friend the other day, isn't that sort of the goal? I mean, how awesome would it be if everyone's problems were first world problems?) Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my job. The pay is good, the company is good, the people are nice, the hours are even reasonable. It's just not nearly as enjoyable as reading or exercising.

What I was wondering aloud to Captain America the other night, though, is whether or not everyone else lives in this same perpetual state of anguish that I'm in that I'm not doing what I want with my life, or if everyone else has managed to grow up and accept it and I'm still the teenager raging against the world. 

Good Lord, I hope not. 

What do Homer Simpson and hobbits have in common?

Donuts! At least in my imagination, they do!

I learned about Hobbit Second Breakfast Day from my friend, Tracy, over at Tracyfood. And I really wanted to celebrate. But I had to go to work. And then I forgot. I even meant to get a donut (to eat at promptly 11am) when I was getting coffee (sshhh! Don't tell Captain America I was getting coffee!), but I forgot to do that, too. I have no idea where my mind has been. I mean, who forgets about donuts? That's a new one for me. I LOVE donuts. And Blogger apparently also loves donuts because it's very confused about the singular donut. It thinks it's not a word. Like, why would you stop at one? If I were a hobbit, I certainly wouldn't. Because there really aren't any fat hobbits. There aren't any skinny ones, either, and I'm pretty sure girl hobbits don't have to wear bikinis 10 months a year like you do here in SoCal. Because it's mandatory.

And then Tracy did a rockstar job of celebrating with scones and Gaffer's eggs, the recipe for which she found on the...wait for it...official hobbit recipes website. On the one hand, I'm not sure the world could get any better (unless of course there was an official Harry Potter recipes website and it taught me how to make butterbeer and treacle tart), and on the other hand I'm very sad that I somehow missed everything completely. I'm sure this is a sign of the coming Armageddon. And on top of all that, I have to eat vicariously through Tracy, which is decidedly un-hobbit like (I meant eating vicariously is un-hobbit like. However, Tracy is also not a hobbit. In case there was any confusion there. I'm sure I just cleared everything up.).

So many different things, I don't know where to begin

I have such an unbelievable amount of stuff to say today that I've actually begun five different posts.

First of all, somehow the rest of my life is so much more interesting than what I do at work. I'm actually quite glad of that because I'm an accountant. For the most part, I don't mind being an accountant. The pay is good, I know what I'm doing, I work in a nice climate-controlled office; all-in-all, I can't really complain. Except that today there was a brown grasshopper dying in the corner of my cube. I'm pretty sure it was a grasshopper, although I always thought they were green, but it had that body type. I didn't want to touch it in case it was more alive than I thought and jumped down my shirt or something. I didn't think that kind of hysterics was appropriate on my second week at work.

Anyway, this post is not supposed to be about grasshoppers. It's supposed to be about how much more interesting my life is outside of the office. However, I do have one other office related story. While I usually attempt to keep other people's internet profiles low, I really don't know how to tell this story without revealing this person. So I work with a woman who's first name starts with an S and who's last name is Slover, which means that her login is sslover. Like a boat. When I saw her type that in, I almost told her that's what she HAD to name her yacht. But I caught myself before saying anything because I wasn't convinced that she'd appreciate that kind of thing. I mean, if that were my name, I'd tell everyone to call me S.S. Lover, but that's just me.

So back to my interesting life.

As you may or may not recall, I've been training to run a marathon. I've developed my marathon training program partially from a program I used years ago and partially from trial and error. However, just for fun, my running partner and I like to mix things up a little bit. Last weekend, we added in some cetaceanus fun. (How do you like that adjectification?)

Last weekend, Running Buddy (whom I shall now refer to by her Jersey Shore name, Mo-Scream, which, further paranthetically, is a tool she told me about because for father's day she renamed her dad G-Train. How cool is that!?!?). Anyway, Mo-Scream and I were on our final long run before we begin our taper. We were doing 22 miles and had started running at around 5:45 am because it was supposed to be balls-ass-hot out by about 9am. This run was intentionally designed to be suckier, albeit shorter, than the actual marathon.

On our return trip, we stopped at a bathroom in a park to refill our water bottles. I was reading our stats off on my watch: we'd been running for 3 hours and 22 minutes, we'd traveled 16.9 miles, and we had burnt 1543 calories. At this declaration, a fellow park-attending dude whipped his head around and proclaimed, "You just burned 15-hundred calories?" I'm still shocked that he didn't get whip-lash from his sudden interest in our athletic prowess.

Yes, I responded, we bench-pressed a whale.

If you Google an image of that, you get 152,000 image results, and yet, no one took a picture of ME doing it!

Park-dude looked both astonished and baffled, but I had another 5.1 miles to run, so I couldn't really hang out explaining all of the details involved in accomplishing such a feat, but it looks something like this:

Eating happily...inspired by Tracyfood...inspired by Julia Child

About two weeks ago, a friend (whom I've known since 4th grade if you can believe it...from this program we were in called ALPS...which stands for Advanced Learning Program...I guess the "S" should be lower-cased, which really just proves that we have been brilliant and fabulous our entire lives, or at least since 4th grade). I think it's time I just start that sentence all over again. A friend of mine published a blog post in tribute to Julia Child, who was all about eating happily.

Just the other day I had the realization that no matter how good something is for me, if I don't like it, I'm really not going to eat it, no matter how much I think I should. I know that's a super-obvious realization, but as I mentioned above, I'm brilliant and fabulous, and therefore don't have much time for the mundane realities of life.

Except that I'm trying to lose weight. So I've been trying to figure out foods and meals that fill me up without breaking the caloric bank but also leave me feeling satiated. Because it's really the worst when you finish a meal and still have that feeling of not being satisfied. Which is why I try to balance my calories in such a way that I can always end my day with a hot chocolate.

But the other challenge is trying not to be too obsessed with anything. And for someone who may or may not have OCD tendencies, but is totally type-A, obsession is an easy path to dive down. For a short while I was on a Skinny Bitch and Beauty Detox kick, until I realized that I was always hungry, irritable, and all I thought about was food. ALL OF THE TIME.

There are times when a mild obsession makes sense. My sister has celiac disease (she's had it for years--since way before it was trendy to not eat gluten, which BTW, for those not in the know, is a royal pain in the ass, so I don't recommend that you jump on this bandwagon just for the hell of it). Yes, we upend the kitchen for her. Because otherwise she ends up in the ER and my mother moves in to supervise the healing of her baby and my husband leaves me because my family is insane and life as I know it ends, and I'm pretty sure baby penguins are massacred somewhere in there just for good vengeful measure. Because penguins are my favorite and my mother would be THAT mad if I poisoned my sister. Which I have never done (knock on wood) but does nonetheless happen every now and then. Gluten is EVERYWHERE! However, if, for example, you're a normal person and you just don't like tomatoes, I am not upending the kitchen for you--you can put your tomatoes in the tomato graveyard on the edge of your plate like Captain America and I will come save your life from potential tomato zombies (or whatever tomatoes turn into in your fear-of-tomatoes-imagination).

Going back to being obsessed with food, this is a great article that I must have found by way of Tracyfood because I can't think of how else I would have stumbled upon it myself. And I love Insulin Sensitivity Man and his sidekick, Hormonal Disruption Boy. They are my two favorite Action Non-Heroes.

So, see if you can follow my brilliant and fabulous train of thought another step further. I read somewhere that people like stuff that meet at least two out of the three following criteria: fast, easy, and cheap. For example, anything Apple: fast and easy, but not cheap. The article I read this in had nothing to do with diet or nutrition or food in any way, but I thought that for the most part it applies. For example, I don't like carrots. I've tried (I read somewhere else that if you eat something long enough, you taste buds get used to it, and then you'll like it. I tried carrots for MONTHS. Nope. I just don't like them). However, we do have pre-cut baby carrots in my house because they're fast and easy (and low in calories but nutritious). They're reasonably cheap, but not cheaper than buying my own carrots and cutting them, which I am not going to do. BECAUSE I DON'T LIKE CARROTS (which is actually a great reason for me to do it, since I'd get to spend my time stabbing the bastards).

Maybe my fast, easy, cheap idea doesn't transfer well to all food, or maybe it needs some tweaking (for example, most people I know don't love Starbucks coffee, but it's consistent and easy, although not cheap). But if I'm going to eat food that makes me less-than-happy (although not truly un-happy), like carrots, they better be fast, cheap, and easy!

Random conversations

Every Saturday, my running buddy and I go for a run and then out to breakfast. Last Saturday, we tried out a new place...Mission Cafe and Coffee House. We were seated at one of those half-booth things where one person has a booth seat and the other person has a chair. I usually elect the chair because booth seats tend to be too low for me and I always feel like I'm heaving my boobs up onto the table. Running Buddy doesn't care, so she gets the booth seat. Which she insists is more comfy on her butt anyway. So, she's facing into the restaurant, and I'm facing out the window. I see a girl ride up on a bike cruiser and get off. She's wearing a black tank top over a pink bikini. I don't know how comfortable it was for her to ride the bike in just bikini bottoms, but she's braver than I am.

I point out this girl to Running Buddy because I think her bikini is about two sizes too small and because her butt isn't nearly as good as ours. Clearly she didn't run up Mt. Soledad that morning. Breakfast is served and Running buddy turns the discussion to Accent Day. The week after father's day, she and her parents had Jersey Shore Name Day. Her dad became G-Train, her mom, M-Woww, and she was H-Funk. This Saturday's theme was apparently accents.

I don't do accents. I don't even do a Jersey accent well, and I'm from there. I credit this to the speech therapy I had as a kid. Although, as my aunt points out, my mother had speech therapy and she has a Jersey accent. But not much of one.

So Running Buddy proceeds to go through the types of accents I could have. English, Australian, Hispanic. Meanwhile I'm watching Pink-Bikini-Girl, and more specifically, I'm terrified and fascinated by how her bikini keeps getting more and more lodged in her butt, and she doesn't seem to notice at all.

Running buddy insists I should at least try out a New Jersey or Brooklyn accent.

How about Boston? She asks me. You can say pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd. Which I repeat, as demonstration of the limits of my accent skills.

Then I notice that the bikini bottom is completely missing! It has been entirely consumed by the butt cheeks. It's gone! It's as if the butt cheeks got hungry while waiting for a seat at Mission Cafe and just decided to nosh on the bikini!

I point this out to Running Buddy, who is still working her way down the lists of accents. We're still on accent day? I ask her. Then I suggest pirate accent, which she thinks is pretty cool, but only if I'm willing to give it a shot. Which I"m not. Then I ask, When is accent day?

Today, she tells me.

Me: Wait, don't I get to practice. Like maybe get some language CDs at the library or something?

We're walking to the car now, and she's been somewhat less fascinated/appalled by the missing bikini bottom than I was, partially, I think due to the fact that she's been preoccupied with accent day, and partially because she wasn't witness to the entire consumption of the bikini.

RB: No, that's part of the fun! You have to try out new accents, and it's funny when you get them wrong, but every now and then, you do a good one, and you're like, I just did an awesome Southern Accent.

Me: That sounds really embarrassing.

RB: It's not embarrassing, it's just fun.

Running Buddy is now driving me back to the jetty, where my car is parked. We're sitting in a bunch of traffic on Mission and I observe, I wish I could apparate.

RB: What?

Me: Apparate, you know, like Harry Potter, apparate, or disapparate, so we don't have to sit in all of this traffic.

RB: What! I totally thought you were trying to say operate with a Boston accent and that you were finally embracing accent day.

Me: I think we've just discovered why you're still single.

RB: You're weird and you're married.

Me: Yes, but I tricked Captain America into thinking I was normal for the first year, and then we lived in different states, and he thought I was only weird around my weird friends, and it wasn't until I left my weird friends when we got married that he learned he'd have to bear the brunt of my weirdness until I found some new weird friends.

RB: But I have a really good Russian accent!

Me: Just don't tell your potential husband til he's signed the marriage licence.

Running Buddy proceeds to demonstrate to me her Russian accent.

Me: Yup, we've hit the nail on the head. This is why you're still single.

RB: Surely there's a guy out there who's goofy like me.

Me: You're still going to need to trick him in the beginning.

Catching happiness

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
--Benjamin Franklin

I just watched a documentary called Happy that was given to me by my Pilates instructor, and while the movie didn't really introduce anything new to me, it was still interesting. My Pilates instructor and I discuss happiness a lot. We're both trying to figure it out. And for the record, both of us are actually happy people. We're trying to figure out who we are, we're trying to eliminate bad habits and cultivate good ones, and we're trying to figure out how to fit in everything we'd like to do and find important to do with going to work. Both of us like our jobs, but they take up so much time that everything else has to be crammed in.

One phrase that the movie introduced to me was the hedonistic treadmill, which is basically that cycle we're all on where we want something new, and when we get it, we lose interest in it and then we want something else new. I don't consider my friends or myself to be particularly materialistic or egocentric, but I know we all do this. I recently attended a rehearsal dinner and wedding where everyone had separate outfits for each event. This isn't particularly unusual, but when you think about it, I have two distinct outfits for special events that don't get worn on a regular basis, don't qualify for work attire, and that require special accessories to be complete. I mean, really what have I got to complain about?

The movie talks about extrinsic happiness and intrinsic happiness. Extrinsic happiness is like what I talked about above--it's based on money, self-image, and status. The movie doesn't say this is bad, it just says that this is at odds with intrinsic happiness, which is based on friends and family, feeling good, and feeling a connections with the world. Just like yin and yang, you probably need both, but I'm having a very hard time figuring out how to balance the two.

I had something else I wanted to talk about here and I was going to jot it down before I lost it and then I lost it before I could jot it down so there you are. You may or may not get to learn about it at some point in the future, if I can remember whatever it was.

Ah yes, on a maybe-only-related-in-my-mind sort of way, I've read that kids can really only handle three things. The article was in reference to after school activities and basically said that you have to count school as one thing. So you can sign your kid up for soccer and scouts, but if you try to add in piano, that's where the meltdown will occur.

I have a theory that the same is basically true for adults. I can go to work, exercise, and read, but when I add in taking a class, for example, everything else suffers a little. Obviously this sort of counting eliminates things that have to get done--laundry is not a thing. Grocery shopping is not a thing. You're an adult. You do laundry, and grocery shop, and pay the bills, and a million other things that can't be a thing.

I wish I was good at clip art or something, because I really think a picture would help me explain this. So back to my Pilates instructor and me. Both of us are struggling to lose some weight. Neither of us are fat. We're just not fitting into our respective pants, and we're not happy about it. My Pilates instructor concedes that she can't claim ignorance. She knows she eats a little too much. But, as she points out, it's no fun to go out with your friends and watch them eat burgers while you have to have your grapes or whatever. And she doesn't want to sacrifice her social life.

Figuring out how to be thin is in the extrinsic camp, while having a good social life is in the intrinsic camp. What's a girl to do? The thing is, neither of us feel like we look as healthy and fit as we actually are, which is just frustrating. And what's doubly frustrating is that we both are making healthy changes but are no closer to closing the top button on our pants. Ugh!

So yesterday, I went to the gym for about 3 hours. (This is a luxury for me--I don't normally get to go to the gym for 3 hours.) However, that means that I was more tired AND got less work done, so there's that. I know I need to get more sleep in general, but I can't figure out how to do that without doing less of something else.

I feel like I've talked about how I'm training to run a marathon about a million times already, and you all know I love to read. Typically, I actually enjoy working. Okay, the getting up and getting dressed thing maybe can be annoying sometimes, but in general, I like working. Except lately. I'm just not that into it. I just saw a quote (probably on Facebook) that caught my eye. It basically said, we can't wait to do something until we're inspired to do it because very few people are truly inspired and they're already really busy.

The obvious follow up, is so quit complaining and just go and do it. However, while I wouldn't normally say I'm inspired to work--my job is not particularly inspirational, I'm also generally not uninspired to work. And that's a big difference to me. So it has me thinking about where I am in my life and what I want to be and where I'm going and where I'd like to be and what I have to do to get there. As I'm sure you realize, all of this thinking has gotten me exactly zero answers. What I'd like to do is to take six months or so and just sort of figure things out, and then come back and have all of the options I currently have now still available, if I want to pursue them.

But the reality is that we've all got to figure things out while we're doing a bunch of other things. So I have no advise to offer other than good luck!

Analyzing the Data

It should come to no surprise to you that I love data.

I just received a heart rate monitor/GPS watch for my birthday that is AWESOME!

I can track how far I've run, what my fastest mile is, what my average heart rate is, how many calories I've burned, and probably other stuff I don't know about yet!

Today, for the first time, I wore my heart rate monitor while doing my Insanity workout. I burned 167 calories in 37 minutes. This is very sad, but I'm going to give Insanity the benefit of the doubt and guess that my caloric burn is so low because it was a recovery workout. However, when I log this info into Sparkpeople, it predicts that I've burnt (vt?) 269 calories! I realize there are a vast array of differences between my heart rate monitor and the algorithm in the website, but this is a difference of 102 calories (or, in other words, Sparkpeople thinks I burned 61% more calories than I really did). Ugh.

When I'm in Oregon in July, I'm going to a clinic that a friend goes to to have a VO2 test done to determine my optimal fat-calorie burning zone. In the mean time, I've identified the following four areas of my diet that need work:

1. Consume fewer beverages that have calories. As much as I hate this, I'm going to have to cut out juice and just eat real fruit. I've decided that on days that I've run more than 10 miles, I'm allowed a glass of orange juice (because it just tastes so good!) and a bottle of vitamin water (because it really seems to help with recovery). The jury's still out on whether or not hot chocolate counts as a beverage with calories. I know I drink it, but milk is actually digested as a solid. I am also allowing myself one cup of tea a day because when I tried to give up tea, it made me really sad. The conundrum is, I have open bottles of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages in my refrigerator. Should I consume these and just not replace them, or should I toss them to more quickly align with my diet? I hate wasting food, but I also want to lose weight. (I would like to point out right here that I know I'm not fat. I'm just outside the weight limit of my wardrobe and I'd like that to change.)
2. Consume more fiber. Hopefully a lot of this will be managed by cutting out juice and eating real fruit. I've also discovered that I really like raw veggies dipped in ranch (although ranch isn't exactly diet-friendly). I'm going to see if I can find a DIY recipe for ranch that uses Greek yogurt or something. I still don't really like to eat salads, but there's a soup/sandwich/salad place right across the street. Is it worth the money every day to buy a salad? (One of the big problems with salads for me is that it takes so freakin' long to make a good one, and it's impossible to use up all of the ingredients at the same time, so you nearly always have something random in your fridge that's just about to go bad.) Also, when I lived with The Vegetarian (now The Vegan), she'd cook up a whole pot of veggies, and we'd eat them all week. I should get on that.
3. Burn more calories. I'm running a marathon in October, and I've yet to actually get serious about my training. Somehow, I'm failing to make a consistent exercising schedule. I have a schedule, and I keep updating it as I learn what is not working, but I have yet to discover what will work. 
4. Eat more protein. This is questionable. According to Sparkpeople, I only consume enough protein about half of the time. (This is actually the pro argument for allowing hot chocolate.) How much protein a person needs is a frequently debated health topic. Americans tend to overindulge in protein because we're such big meat-eaters. I am, in fact, the worst vegetarian in the world, but I don't actually eat a lot of meat (this is probably more due to the fact that Captain America gets home around 10pm and cooking dinner for one person is just a waste of time). I do drink milk, eat yogurt and cheese, eat mushrooms and avocados, and eat eggs. I'm going to try to add one hard boiled egg a day to my diet and see what happens. I know that when I don't eat enough protein, I don't have as much energy, but I have yet to figure out what "enough" actually is. I guess I'm going to need more data points!

I've had a day, and it somehow disintegrates from there

I am having one of those days/weeks/months/quarters (yes, I'm an accountant...I think in quarters) where I just can't seem to get things to happen. My April was totally disorganized, my May was insanely busy, and my June has somehow managed to be both disorganized and busy. I have no idea how this happened.

Don't get me wrong. I have a great life.

I'm just going through a period in it where I keep asking myself how did THIS become my life?

I'm feeling very much like I can't MAKE things happen, and this worries me. In addition to the fact that I'm not actually getting anything done, I'm worried about the language I'm using to express my feelings. Whenever I feel like I can't MAKE things happen, it is inevitably tied to my chronic depression. For anyone who's not in the know about chronic depression, it's a lot like any other mental disorder...you always have it...you just learn coping skills to deal with it/keep it under control. And for me, medication helps a lot. I have a physical chemical imbalance in my brain. I'm not imagining I'm sad and I'm not a hypochondriac. You wouldn't tell someone with high blood pressure not to take their medication, would you? Also running and reading help a lot. For me. I'm not a doctor, so I can't prescribe this combination for you.

So anyway, today I tried to go to a massage appointment. Except I could not get there. I'm not kidding. I left work in plenty of time. But then the gas light came on in my car. I have no idea how far I can actually drive with the light on because I've never tested it (and I don't plan to), and while I thought I had enough gas to get there if I was driving, as it turns out, I was driving in SoCal, so I was mostly sitting. In a shit-ton of traffic (Hey, Voracious, I know you love this magical measurement, so I threw it in just for you!). And I wasn't convinced I had enough gas for an hour of sitting. (As it turns out, I probably did). And just for fun, my gas light came on in the only 10 mile stretch of I-5 that doesn't have a gas station you can actually get to before you run out of gas because...wait for it...the fair is going so the traffic situation in SoCal is exponentially bad!


So, I got off the freeway, pulled over, and just waited for traffic to die down enough for me to actually get SOMEWHERE USEFUL.

So in the process of delivering this rant, I found this blog post that made me laugh out loud a lot. And of course, I facebooked it. Yup, I'm verbing facebook and verb. It's been that kind of day. Who knows what wild and crazy thing I'll do next, so watch out.

So anyway, back in my world where I'm not managing to get anything done...which of course is not actually true. I get a lot of stuff done. I just never get to the point where I feel like, aahhh, I've gotten a bunch of stuff done today and now I can relax BECAUSE THERE'S STILL MORE STUFF TO DO!! Which is sounding an awful lot like this amusing blog. So maybe that's the real problem. Not that I'm not getting anything done, but that there is so much to get done.

And then I got distracted by showing Captain America the words with friends game in which I beat the Professor by 7 points in the last move, causing me to text him (the Professor) Boo-ya! in my excitement. Because the Professor blew a 50 point lead. Because I'm awesome. And clearly in the Double Unicorn Success Club.

So it seems like now is a good time to have some hot chocolate and read about women in jail.

P.S. I realize that this blog post sounds a lot like I have ADD. I don't. Seriously. I've had that tested. (I'm also not schizophrenic or manic depressive, in case you're curious.) This whole ADD-thing is another manifestation of my chronic depression. Really. This is one of those things that acts up before I really feel like I'm losing control and go into a full depressive state. And for those of you who are now beginning to get worried about my mental health, relax. I'm really not to go off the deep end...I don't suffer migraines, but from what I understand, for a lot of people, there are signs that they are going to get one...and if they get rest or hydrate or whatever their migraine trigger is, they can cut it off before it happens. The feeling like I can't get anything done and the ADD-like behavior are both signs for me. But unlike when you're about to get a migraine and should probably do something ASAP, this state for me is fine for a while. (Obviously, since it's been going on for three months). My prediction is, given the events and tasks in my immediate future, that this state will exist for about another month and then it will resolve itself and I'll go back to being my more normal self.