I love you because you comfort me when I cry, and you happily help me celebrate when I don’t.

I adore you because we can breakfast together, you and me, me with my mismatched pyjamas and my knotty hair, morning breath and and dark patches smudged across my cheeks from eyeliner I forgot to remove the night before, and you don’t judge me. You don’t even hesitate to gently touch my lips.

I admire you for your ability to go anywhere and to be anything, to blend and to bite and to melt tenderly as the situation warrents. You make small talk over cocktails easy and an elegant seven course meal hard to forget, and for that I thank you.

I thank you for introducing me to a world I never knew existed, to places I’d never imagined, to smells and tastes that I never even dreamed could come true.

I’m devoted to you no matter where our lives lead, and I know that you feel the same.

I love you, cheese.

Let’s never break up.

Oldie but a Goodie | 2 Comments »

Down to 221.6 this morning, although that has more to do with a stomach bug than any virtuous new commitment to exercise.

V.’s gone for a month, and it’s particularly difficult this time around, for some reason.  Maybe it’s the lack of sunshine, or the presidential primary, or the extreme exertion of having to breath in and out, like over and over again, already, that has me feeling a little delicate.  Calling various physicians and gurus and voodoo whatevers in an attempt to get everything back into shape this week.

V., if you’re reading this, I’m fine, just tired.  Kotki say wazzup.

crumbs | 6 Comments »

• Pharmacies
• Anyone with the authority to “Approve This Message”
• Living in a small state with no political sway
• Freezing rain
• My metabolism
• Whichever piece of furniture keeps ripping off my Roomba’s arms
• The cat who is smart enough to realize knocking a water glass on my head will wake me up and eventually feed him, yet seems incapable of disposing of his own feces
• Hangnails
• Housework
• Single-paned windows
• The neighbor who keeps taking up two parking spaces
• The neighbor who keeps getting pissed off at the neighbor who takes up two parking space, and then half-parks on the sidewalk, making it impossible to parallel park on the other side of the street
• Living in a place with no storage so I feel compelled to disguise an artificial Christmas tree in a box as a piece of furniture
• The phrase “hard core”
• My scale

Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

I set up a meeting today, with someone I’ve never met before.  We’ll be having lunch at Panera next Tuesday at 12:30.  Lot of people at a Panera that time of day, and when she asked how we might recognize each other, I didn’t predict the clothes I’d be wearing.

“I’ll be the Overweight Brunette with a laptop” I replied.  She laughed and said we’d find each other.

A friend (we’ve got an open office plan, what a blessing for interdepartmental projects and office gossip!) laughed as soon as I hung up.  “I can’t believe you said that!” she exclaimed. But what was I supposed to say?  “I’ll be the brunette with two eyes sitting alone.”  “I’ll be the woman trying to figure out which salad is marginally more healthy than the others.”  “The person who really should have ironed her suit but couldn’t find the time?  That’ll be me.”

Short of finding the time to tattoo a peace sign on my forehead, about the only thing that will  set me apart from the crowd is the fact that I’m slightly larger than the rest of you.  I wear the same clothes, carry the same bag, eat the same food, have the same bags under my eyes.  But for a variety of reasons, I pack a few more pounds, which - rather than being a value judgment - simply gives me the option to use “fat” as an self-identifying adjective.  It doesn’t mean I’m weak, that I’m gluttonous, that I’m lazy, that I’m mainlining Oreos and snorting lines of bleached, white, carbohydrate-rich flour.  It means  I’m overweight, and I recognize the fact that you’ll recognize my fat.

My weight doesn’t define me, but it may help you find me.

I just hope we can both acknowledge that without me having to justify my health.  Or, you know, wear a red rose in my lapel.

I’m more of a daisy person, truth be told.

Navel Gazing | 4 Comments »

So let’s check in on mine, shall we?

I didn’t do an “official” weigh in again this week. Not because I’m not still chugging along, but because my husband is (again) going to Africa for (again) a month, and my scale was misappropriated to spend the weekend weighing Air India’s potential fines rather than the size of my ass. And it’s not like I could have just trotted on downstairs in my birthday suit (because all “official” weigh-ins must be done naked. First thing in the morning, after emptying my bladder, but before I brush my teeth just in case I accidentally swallow a pound or two of mouthwash.), because it’s one thing for my husband to see me naked in our carefully-lit bedroom, but quite another to find me doing suitcase dead lifts as the full morning sunshine highlights my neither-regions.

Anyway, V. is in West Africa for the next month. He left the afternoon of our 7th anniversary, which - to be honest - is a milestone that scares me more than my upcoming 30th birthday. (Yes, I was a child bride. Being able to announce “Hey Mom, I’m marrying a 40-year-old Polish sailor I, like, totally met on the Internet!” was worth every second of my premature adulthood.) Part of me worries that I’ll resort to boxed wine and KFC as my only forms of unsupervised sustenance (and it wouldn’t be the first time), but I also remember that it was during another long trip that I finally sucked it up and somehow flipped my brain’s fitness switch. He came home to find me 10 pounds lighter and blogging.

Then again, he also came home to find our two cats had turned into seven, but that’s another story entirely.

Maybe I need the time for self-reflection. I’m finally seeing a doctor again (whom I LOVE, even if she did have the gall to get herself knocked up), and we seem to be working out the blood pressure thing. (Quick update there - EKG normal after normal new dose of drugs, bloodwork being analyzed, and another appointment in two weeks.) The job thing is becoming clearer (the DreamJob shall not come to be, but my current boss is willing to work with me in my current job, in an attempt to avoid a major cardiac event and/or stroke. Here’s hoping it will also justify a salary that will pay my half of the mortgage). The Eating Healthy Things thing is doing ok, although I could probably cut back on the refined sugars a bit more, and the Exercise Thing may yet come to fruition.

I totally thought about considering an exercise tape the other day.

I’m also doing some guided meditation (as if you couldn’t tell from that last entry!) which seems to help with the whole mind/body total wellness thing. I don’t know how hippy dippy I’ll become, but I do feel healthier when I’m paying attention to my health (who’d of thunk?), so I’ll keep examining the color of my parachute and Osho’s philosophy and the total calories in a kitkat bar, and slowly get this working again.

Navel Gazing | 1 Comment »