January 2008 Archives

It’s been just about two years, give or take a week or two, since my doctor first said “I think you might have diabetes” and my whole life changed. I do a lot of things differently now – take medication, count carbs, think about eating in a whole new way, and most importantly, I think anyway, I exercise regularly. Two years ago I went to yoga classes sometimes and every once in a while did a workout video, and occasionally went for a hike in the woods.

Tonight at spinning class, I had a moment – one of those moments you are convinced are just a myth when you first start exercising – when everything came together and I smiled through my sweat and thought “Sometimes it just feels so fucking good to work out!” I was cruising along through a six minute stretch long interval in my class tonight to the sounds of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle and it just all clicked. Later on in that six minute stretch my attention wandered a bit. Bizarre Love Triangle always throws me back to the late high school/early college years, and every time the instructor plays it I start feeling like I should be wearing a baby doll dress, black tights and boots, clutching some sort of fruity cocktail like a Sex on the Beach or a Fuzzy Navel, and dancing with my friend Laila and a bunch of guys who hadn’t admitted they were gay yet.

But I digress, sorry. The point I want to make is this: No matter how far it feels like you have to go to get fit, you can do it. I still have plenty far to go on my personal fitness journey, but I’ve made so much progress over the last two years. And all the advice that you read in magazines and hear from doctors and fitness experts is really very good. If you want to get in better shape, just start working out. The first time you hop on a treadmill or take a class or even just go for a walk, you may have a really hard time with it. Heck, the first 25 times you do it will be hard. But the more you do it, the more it pays off. You could start today, and in three months, you’ll find it has gotten easier, you feel better, and you can do more and more every day. And then it will be two years later, and you’ll be talking about crazy stuff like running 10 miles!

Stuff that actually worked for me:

Build up slowly. I work out most days, but I still have days where I take it easy. In the beginning, I had a lot of those days. The first time I ever got on the elliptical machine (which terrified me for some reason) I was on it less than 10 minutes. I didn’t start running until a good five or six months in to working out. Now, I could have done it sooner than that. I was just trying other stuff first, because I thought I wasn’t a runner.

Get a workout partner. I know having my friend Becky working out with me made a HUGE difference at first as I was building the habit of exercising regularly, and she continues to be a big factor. We challenge each other to try new things (ok, she challenges me more than I challenge her), and there have been plenty of times when I might have wimped out and gone home except that I knew I was meeting her at the gym. Best of all, our friendship has grown and gotten even better since we see each other so much.

Do the cross training thing. I love being in a rut. Love it. But it really is better fitness-wise and staying interested wise if you change your exercise plan up regularly. I now run, take a weights class, use the elliptical, and go to spinning classes, as well as doing videos at home. When the weather is nice, we go for regular hikes with Seamus. I’d like to find a way to work yoga back in to the rotation, but it just doesn’t fit my schedule right now. I want to try kick boxing and horseback riding, and maybe get back in to playing tennis.

Don’t be afraid to say to friends and family “this is a change I have to make for me.” I thought people might make fun of me for my grand plans, but everyone was and is really supportive. That made it much, much easier.

Above all, believe in yourself. If I can go from couch potato to feeling joy in the middle of a workout, you can too. Seriously.

I left work tonight at 8:55, which sadly was only because they were getting ready to shut down the network for maintenance. See also: So hungry I was about to start gnawing on my own arm, zombie-style. I have a big deadline looming on Friday, so there's been a lot to do lately. I may be just a wee bit stressed out about it all, which is manifesting itself in delightful 4 am wake up calls where I just lie in bed listing off all of the stuff I still have to do in my head. I'm tired and cranky and overloaded during the day which I'm sure is making me a joy to be around. By the time I get home at night all I'm good for is sitting on the couch and staring at the TV. And I'm sure Becky is enjoying my slightly hysterical texting during the day. (Sorry Becky, but it really does make me feel better!)

I am pleased to say that major progress was made today, and the end of this stage of the project is in sight. Soon all of the cool and fun parts of this project that I've been looking forward to and telling people about since last March will start and I'll actually feel like I'm accomplishing something. Once I make it to Friday, that is.

Three things I'm very psyched for that are getting me through the week - 1) hitting the deadline and crossing a whole bunch of stuff off my list 2) the premiere of Lost on Thursday and 3) getting a manicure and pedicure on Saturday. You gotta have goals!

I have a deep and abiding affection for Williams Sonoma. I’ve picked up many a bargain at their outlet store in Leesburg. I’ve been lured in to buying their fancy cake pans (one Easter Bunny, one train set). They successfully converted me from a loyal Maryland girl McCormick’s Vanilla buyer to one who is convinced of the superiority of their fancy-pants vanilla. Their Emile Henry ceramic pie pan changed my pie crust life, and I’ve gotten tons of good recipes off their website. So clearly, I like their stuff.

In fact, and it’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but I treat the arrival of the Williams Sonoma catalog like an issue of a magazine. I sit down and read it cover to cover in a little consumeristic greed fest. There have been plenty of items I’ve looked at and dismissed as being too ridiculously expensive, from the $1,000+ vacuum cleaners and irons to the $400 toasters to the $69 Provence Salt Keeper . Yes, it was really pretty. It was also a little tiny ceramic box. Unless it is continually refilled with salt by magic, I can’t imagine that a little tiny box could be worth $69. However, in the latest catalog they’ve managed to completely surpass themselves in terms of ridiculously overpriced merchandise.

You can get a whopping nine cupcakes from some bakery in California for $59. $59! That’s $6.55 per cupcake. And I bet they charge you shipping and handling on top of that! Do you have any idea how many delicious and gourmet cupcakes I could provide for $59? A whole boatload more than nine, that’s for sure. At the same time, I’m almost tempted to order them, just to see what $59 cupcakes taste like. I mean, I can’t quite imagine how good they would have to be to make them worth that much money. I’m not sure that it is physically possible for a cupcake to be tasty enough to justify that kind of money. But no, I haven’t completely lost my mind, so I’m not actually going to buy them. I will wonder though...

Listen, stock market, we need to talk about your attitude. You’ve been a real bitch pretty much since last July, although it has gotten much worse since the start of the new year. It’s really starting to wear those of us whose livelihoods are tied to your actions down.

And yesterday was the worst one yet! Your vertiginous (like that? I learned a new word. One of my coworkers said, “Hey, would you describe today’s market as vertiginous? “ “I might, if I knew what vertiginous meant.” And there it was on her word-of-the-day calendar, the perfect fancy word to describe your behavior. Vertiginous, meaning dizzying, I guess like vertigo.) activity yesterday really crossed the line.

While I am glad you decided to end the day in positive territory, you really complicated my life yesterday. You changing your mind on direction every 15 minutes meant that I kept having to rewrite copy – the markets are down! The markets are up! The markets can bite my shiny metal ass!

Pretty much everyone is saying that 2008 is going to be a crazy volatile year for you no matter what happens, so you’ll have plenty of chances to act up, but just for today, how about you give us a break? Think about it, ok?

Thanks,
Your pal,
Bad Penguin

Enjoyable parts of my weekend:

• it is Sunday night, and yet I have one more day off of work. And I got all my errands done yesterday and today, so tomorrow I can be lazy.

• my friend Becky and I went to see 27 Dresses, which was cute. Definitely girly, but a fun and sweet movie.

• I bought some really pretty pink and yellow tulips to remind myself that spring will come.

• the usual good time hanging out with John and Seamus. So far this weekend we have covered nutrition, affirmative action and nature vs. nurture, the lameness of that movie The Terminal (fine actors, poorly written), and the awesomeness of a good belly rub (with Seamus). Oh, and John would like the world to know that the phrase is “the devil is in the details” not “God is in the details.” Tomorrow I will probably get my ass kicked at chess, but I will have fun doing it.

• two good workouts in a row, although no running.

That which I have not enjoyed:

• it is insanely cold here. I know I bitch about winter all the time, but this is ridiculous cold for DC. Tonight, to walk Seamus I wore jeans, an insulated shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, a full length heavy wool coat and scarf, a padded running cap with ear flaps, socks, winter boots and gloves. And I was still cold! Even Seamus (in his sweater) was like “hey, I know – let’s not stay outside for very long.” I am very fortunate to have been born in the time of central heating, or I would have spent a chunk of my life as a miserable human being.

• waking up at 4:30 am for no apparent reason, and then not being able to get back to sleep for an hour.

• taking down the Christmas tree. Yes, I know it is mid-January. Whatever. It’s nice having a tree in the house. I broke a brand new ornament that I really liked, and then came this close to chucking the tree with the lights still on it, declaring “LED lights are more environmentally friendly anyway. We should just get those.” I don’t know how the hell we did this, but the light strands were practically braided on to that damn tree. I eventually prevailed, but it took forever and now my hands are covered in scratches.

• I failed at making bread again. I don’t understand why my bread always sucks. I’m good at baking just about everything else, but my bread is reliably craptacular.

Now, that may sound like the most boring weekend ever, but I like my life just the way it is. I got to thinking about that after having an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers on Friday. We’d made an emergency run to Starbucks in the afternoon, which I never do, but I was really tired and I had a lot to accomplish before the weekend. I suppose that caffeine may have been why I woke up at 4:30 in the morning on Saturday, but I’m doubtful. I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep, just staying asleep. Anyway, the barista had numerous tattoos and piercings, and my co-worker asked me if I ever wished I could do stuff like that, to which I replied, “I would dye my hair blue in a second if I could.” Which led to a discussion of being a non-conformist in a corporate universe, and how that doesn’t have to be a square peg/round hole type of experience (although in my particular company, it does exclude the possibility of blue hair). I know that friends I had when I was younger would look at the life I have now and sneer at it.

I have a mainstream job and career ambitions and a townhouse in the outer suburbs. I don’t live in a cool loft somewhere, publishing my own magazine while hanging out in art galleries and traveling to LA, London and Paris on a regular basis – or whatever the alternative, punky version of “keepin’ it real” is. My brother likes to tease me and call me a yuppie. I’m not a yuppie, but I have to admit, I never saw myself being the one of my friends who ended up going the corporate route, and even more, liking it and being good at it. But here I am. And I’m happy, and still a creative, non-conformist person even without blue hair, tattoos or multiple piercings. So, even including Christmas tree scratches, botched bread making attempts and single digit wind-chills, I’ll take my life just as it is.

I had one main desire for my dinner tonight – that it include guacamole. I bought three small avocados on Sunday, and I was sure that they’d be ripe by this evening. I gave them each a thorough yet gentle squeeze before heading out to work this morning, and I was full of plans for delicious, nutritious guacamole. But I was sadly mistaken, and thus thwarted by unripe fruit. Stupid sneaky avocados.

I know I should be grateful that I can even get my hands on avocados in January, but damn it, I really wanted guacamole. And don’t tell me that I should go buy guacamole. No one makes it as good as I do. Actually, that’s not true. My friend Julie’s mom makes better guacamole than I do. Otherwise, though, I make the best. My dinner was fine, but it guacamole-free.

On a completely unrelated note, John and I have spent the last two nights obsessively researching hotels in London for our trip this spring. We were looking at this special British Airways promotion where you supposedly got two nights free in a hotel, but it turns out most of the hotels you can get for free are the crappy ones that do not meet my standards. So the researching continues, and we can’t seem to agree on a hotel. I want to stay some place fancy, and John wants to worry about not spending too much money. I’m not trying to book us in to the Ritz for crying out loud! Anyway, if you have a favorite London hotel, we’re looking for recommendations.

I read this horrible article on MSN recently, which freaked me out quite a bit. It made two main points:

1) There is a huge zone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is full of old plastic crap – plastic bags, plastic rings, plastic containers, plastic nets, plastic everything. This is bad for the animals in the ocean, and bad for the ocean itself, and on top of that, bad for the planet overall.

2) Plastic may be a hormone disruptor, contributing to fertility problems, and health issues for babies and children.

Naturally, I found this article pretty disturbing on a bunch of levels. I mean, of course I care about the environment, and yes, the fertility thing made me perk up my ears. Plastic is everywhere, and in everything. Food, beverages, toiletries, packaging, hairbrushes, my keyboard, my car, my toothbrush, my TV remote, my everything. I can sit here in my living room and spot like 50 things with plastic in them. How are you supposed to know when it is ok to use plastic and when it isn’t? Is it bad just to be near it, breathing in plastic fumes? If you store your food in plastic, is that worse that using shampoo that is in a plastic bottle? And what about my massive Tupperware collection? I have a friend who’s mom has a Tupperware distributorship, and she usually hits me up to come to a party once a year or so, and I always get a bunch of stuff. I love Tupperware. It is bright and well made and allows me to store things in a variety of convenient sizes.

And would it be more wasteful to chuck (or recycle) all of my Tupperware stuff and switch to glass? If I knew for sure that the plastic stuff was bad, then that would make it an easy decision, but the article was kind of vague on exactly how the mechanics of plastic causing health problems works. Instead, I can’t quite tell how much energy I should put into worrying about and trying to change the level of plastic usage in my life. Now, from an environmental standpoint, trying to cut back on plastic makes sense, and I am going to work on doing just that. Although does anyone have any good ideas for dealing with dog poop without using plastic bags? Because I’m coming up dry there.

John went to Colorado this weekend for a brief visit so he could attend our newest niece’s christening. We didn’t have much notice, so he had to keep the trip short. He left Saturday morning and came back this afternoon.

Things I learned while John was gone:

1) When you get up at 4:45 am, it is possible to get to BWI and back before dawn. At one point, I had the highway all to myself – not another car in sight.

2) Also, when you get up at 4:45 am, you will think it is lunchtime at 10:15 in the morning.

3) I can get a lot done when I’m home by myself all day. I vacuumed the whole house, reorganized the kitchen, filed a bunch of papers, redid the closet in the spare bedroom, and more. Apparently John is more distracting than I realized.

4) Seamus can focus on pining for the human who isn’t home just as seriously as he can focus on food. He was fine for a few hours, but then the lying in front of the door, staring out the window and the sighing began.

5) I am so used to having John around, that it is hard to sleep without him in the house. As I lay in my bed not falling asleep even though I was exhausted, I realized that John has not traveled without me since we got married. I’ve gone away on business, and for weekends with my girlfriends, and to see my brother, but whenever John has hit the road, it has been with me. We never go to bed at the same time, but somehow, just knowing that he wasn’t downstairs was enough to keep me restless. At one point I got so tired that complete irrationality set in, and I started worrying that the house would catch on fire and I’d have to get Seamus and our valuables out by myself. Seriously. Then I told my brain to shut the hell up, and finally fell asleep.

6) While it was fun to hog the computer, eat whatever I wanted for dinner without having to ask “what do you feel like eating?” and watch a movie I knew John would have mocked mercilessly, 32 hours apart was plenty of time for me to miss him, and to be delighted when he returned.

I've been sort of lurking on my own blog this week. Every night I come home, look at my laptop and think, eh, I'd rather chat with my husband...snuggle with my dog...read my book...watch TV. I just haven't had anything interesting to say about anything.

Actually, I'm having similar problems at work this week, where I've been churning out line after line of uninspired dreck every time I sit down to write something. It's getting kind of annoying actually. And on top of that, I've been so busy that I haven't even made it to half of the blogs I usually read. You've probably all gone and gotten new jobs, new hair, announced you're getting married or having babies or moving, and I have no idea.

But then I heard from Chris that he was going to bring back de-lurking day and thought it was just perfect timing. I will make the rounds today at lunch and comment my little heart out. Who knows, maybe I'll even pick up a few ideas along the way. And if you happen to stop by here today, please feel free to say hi in the comments.

Duh. As my brother pointed out in the comments on Miserable, SCT is Scotland, as in the country a chunk of my ancestors came from, which I could have figured out if I had given even three seconds of thought to the Burns Night (SCT) holiday listed on the calendar for later in January.

Boy do I feel dumb now.

If you’re ever using a knife, and you think to yourself, “I should be using a smaller knife. This one is too big” you should do yourself a favor and switch knives. If you don’t listen to that little voice, you’ll feel like even more of a dumbass when you take a chunk out of your finger. And it will HURT, too. I love my knives, because they are good and they are sharp. That's very useful when chopping vegetables, but not so great when my clumsy finger gets in the way.

Oh well, at least I didn’t bleed on dinner.

According to my fancy new Beagles 2008 calendar, today is a holiday called Day After New Year's Day in New Zealand and some mysterious country abbreviated as SCT (right now all I can come up with is South Connecticut, which was not a country the last time I looked). Now, I don't know why the day after New Year's Day qualifies as a holiday in these two places, unless they are all such prodigious drinkers that everyone in those countries gets two day hangovers, but I think I need to consider relocating. Going back to work today did not go well. I had a horrible day, and frankly, I don't want to go back tomorrow.

Seriously, this day sucked the life out of me. Yes, I've been off for eleven days, but four of those days were weekend days (and I actually put in a full day of work on one of those weekend days), and three were holidays, so technically, I only missed four days when my company was open for business. I have to say, I don't quite understand how so much stuff happened in what is typically a pretty quiet week. 15 different people jumped on me as soon as I walked in the door with questions and meeting requests and problems and new projects and I got absolutely no time to ease back in or even get caught up. While I was out, I got something like 1,700 emails which naturally I still haven't managed to wade through completely. Oh, some people were glad to see me back in the office. Pretty much everyone else seemed determined to make me start fervently counting down the days to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Plus, it was ridiculously cold and windy here today. You all know how I feel about cold and windy weather.

Tomorrow had better be better. I am determined to find a way to make tomorrow better, if only through sheer force of will, but I don't see this as a shining start to my new year. Hope your day was better than mine!

John and I celebrated New Year’s Eve in what is becoming our new tradition – I made a mini-appetizer feast, and then we hung out in front of the fireplace, enjoying the fire, watching TV, and snuggling. It was a lovely evening, but I actually cried a little bit right at midnight. 2007 was a tough year for a lot of reasons, so part of me was thrilled to say goodbye to it. At the same time, somehow, there was good stuff too, and it was hard to believe another whole year had come to an end. And on top of that, it felt like the year ending made Nora’s death even more final. I know that’s not logical, but that’s what was going through my mind.

But time marches on, and the new year is here, which for me means it is time for a new list of resolutions. I had a big, long list of pretty specific resolutions last year. I kept some of them and missed on some others. I don’t think I’m going to be that specific this year, with one exception. I absolutely, 100% intend to run the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler in under 2 hours. Other than that though, I think I will be more general. This year I’d like to:

1) be a good diabetic and keep my blood sugar under control. Ideally, the blood sugar I had this morning will be the highest one I had all year.

2) focus on being consciously kind to others, from people who are closest to me to people I don’t know at all

3) keep changing up my workouts, and reach my goal weight, finally

4) find that elusive and tricky work/life/workout balance

5) take a fabulous trip to Paris and London with my husband

There. That should be a manageable list, right? Everything else will comes as it comes, and I’ll deal with it then. What’s your philosophy for the new year?

Happy New Year! Now I have to get ready to go back to work tomorrow. Hey, it's an opportunity to work on resolution number four, right?