Flattery will get you everywhere

Lizz at One Nerve Left has bestowed upon me! - (not so) little ol' me - this fabulous award.
With such great prestige and recognition, however, comes great obligation. Upon my acceptance of this award, I have been tasked with monumentous responsibilities. By the end of the week I must:

• Cure cancer.


• Reduce the national debt by 50% (Eliminate it, you say? Are you nuts? I'm not a miracle worker. Godssakes.)


• Lose 100lbs


• Clean my house

Yeah, I know. That last one is impossible. But, seriously... what I am really obligated to do upon acceptance of this honor is to list 5 of my addictions. Only 5? This is where the hard part comes in. Do I go all vague and general or do I get specific and list my quirky and sometimes embarrassing predilections singly and specifically? Wait, no. She only asked for 5.

(In no particular order:)

German Shepherds. As things are now, I have at my home, my mouthy and domineering, nearly deaf with and bowel-incontinent 14 year old female. I love her more than life itself. She fought like, well... cats and dogs, with my ol' boy Gunner for the 6 years they spent together with me. I have scars on my arms from separating them. Killed my cat - on a Christmas Day, no less. Her medications alone are good for an OT shift a month, and if it weren't for a kindly vet practice owner, I'm not sure she'd be doddering around on 2 repaired hind cruciates. Still, I love the old bitchy one and I know the day will come when I have to live without her. That is a void I am not yet willing to wrap my mind around. Despite her age and her ever-declining sphincter tone, she's still quite happy - those cloudy brown eyes light up still, every time she sees me ... and that's all that matters. The young'un resides at Dan's house and, just like the old crusty one who could be her grandmother, she is the light of my life. She locks eyes with me across the room and I melt. I am convinced she reads my mind (which is a scary place to be - she gets major brownie points for putting herself in such danger.) Any time she is near me, she leans her entire body against mine and looks back over her shoulder, her deliquescent brown eyes half-closed. This gesture of such complete trust never fails to set off a cascade of calm and contented vibes inside my jittery mind, opening the tension valve of my brain and letting the toxic steam cloud of bad juju out. Taking her to the lake and watching her plunge into the water, doing her belabored dog-paddle, is better than Prozac. As long as there is life in me, there will be a German Shepherd in my life.

My Blackberry Curve. If you'd have asked me a year ago, I'd have just said "my phone". I had a perfectly respectable LGVX8100 that I absolutely loved. After it survived a drop and submersion into a (clean, I swear) toilet, I went straight from love to cultish worship. But I've joined a new cult, and I gotta say, it's true: Once you go Black, you never go back. Email, Facebook, news, Google, IM, even blogging - all at my fingertips! One thing I do miss about the old LG is having my keypad committed to memory so that I could text without looking. It's just not possible with my Berry. There's just not enough room in my brain for all that information. However, it's a tradeoff I'm willing to live with, for the privilege of being able instantaneously upload any ridiculous or incriminating photo I may snap to Facebook.

The water. I am a person who is meant to live by water. I feel an almost gravitational pull toward any body of water. Streams. Lakes. The ocean. Even the filthy rivers on which we jetski... I love them all. Something about being near the water, hearing it gurgling over rocks or lapping against the shore ... it simply makes me happy; you know you're happy when you can't feel your blood pressure throbbing in your ears any more. You go fast enough on the Mon River, you can't see the turds or dead bodies anyway. I'm a Pisces in Aries clothing.

Coffee and the Queez from which it spews forth. How do I love thee, coffee? Let me count the ways: You wake me up. You make me nearly human. Suddenly the world makes sense again. You keep me safe from that horrible throb of caffeine withdrawal, and the headache that feels like a poisonous octopus on steroids has snuck up on the back of my head and wrapped its pulsing tentacles all the way around. You make me poop! Oh, do you make me poop. We poop so much together, you and me. You help soar to heights of accomplishment that I would never even glimpse without your hot, black, steamy goodness. Without you, I'd have to swim through piles of laundry to get upstairs. Goats and sheep, hearing of wondrous green pastures 20 minutes south of Pittsburgh (conveniently located off of I-79) would come from afar to graze the lush, high grasses of my yard. My toenails would grow unchecked, curling over themselves in sharp curlicue daggers. Never leave me, coffee. Never. Queez, oh Queez ... how do I describe your importance in my life? Before you came into my life, I knew only bitterness. Coldness. Coffee that tasted like it had been brought forth from an incinerated carafe found in the rubble of a house fire. Now, those days are over. If I want incineration, all I have to do is take a big gulp of coffee as it flows like molten lava fresh from your vast reservoir, and I'm guaranteed to have 3rd degree esophageal burns. But oh, it burns sooooo good. So good. Each cup as fresh and hot as the first. You're like the Groundhog Day of coffee makers. It's you and me forever, Queez. Forever, baby.

Food. /obvious. Yeah, I'm addicted to food, and if you've been reading my blog and haven't figured that out, perhaps it's time to go back to school and ask for a re-do on those reading comprehension skills. I don't know how or when it started. I haven't had some traumatic event that set into motion my compulsion to eat when I am not hungry and medicate myself with delicious yummies. Nobody ever forced food on me with the starving-kids-in-China scam, nor was I ever deprived. I just know that if I were left to my own devices, I'd probably be one of those people on a TLC show about eating 33,000 calories in one sitting... and then wondering what was going to be for dessert. With a little help, I am figuring out the triggers to this addiction - which, by the way happen to be just about goddamned everything. Happy? Eat! Sad? Definitely eat. Eat a LOT. A lot of bad stuff. For Godssakes, don't waste a binge on healthy food! Sad? Eat ice cream out of the carton like every stereotypical sad girl ever while you piss and moan and cry. Pissed off? Eat like a motherfucker! Don't forget to mutter some well-placed cusswords in between bites. Finding the triggers is the easy part. Riding out the irrational cravings, not so easy... but I'm learning. Every time I talk myself through and out of it, I'm stronger for it.

The runners-up that I wish I were addicted to:

• compulsive exercise


• calorie counting


• running marathons


• drinking water


• cleaning


• squat-thrusts


• excessive money-making/saving

All packed up and ready to go!

Yep, there's Ol' Red, my trusty (and rusty) mountain bike. We've been together for *thinks* geez, at least 10 years. Red harkens back to a time when they didn't think of making titanium-frame bikes for regular non bike racing folks. Times when they made the frames out of lead, or mercury, or something similarly and unnecessarily heavy. I figure between my ass, and Ol' Red's weight, and those packed up panniers, I'm getting a hell of a resistance workout when I ride to work.

Now that I've got a bike computer, I can stop deluding myself about how long the ride is to the station that's farther from my house. Of course I mapped it out on my car's trip meter, and then pretty much rounded it up in my head to 6 miles. Which at some point, like any good story, got exaggerated to 7-somethingish miles each way.

No. It's 5.8 miles. Not that that is anything to turn up one's nose at, especially considering it was done at 7am, and a good bit of it is uphill. And the fact that I'll be doing the same 5.8 on the way home tonight. Hopefully I'll get myself a little mo' goin' and get up early tomorrow morning and the next day to ride back and forth to work too. There's a sense of finality and inevitability once I make the right turn off my street and go down that first hill. This is it. There is no other way to get to work but under my own power, so get movin'. I need that sometimes. Hell, who am I kidding? I need that just about all the time.

One drawback to this whole process - heck this whole way of living - is the sheer amount of planning involved in all of this. Just like I have to cook healthful meals out of good, non-processed, non-adulterated ingredients, chop up a big salad each day and plan a good breakfast -instead of grabbing lunch money like many people do - I now have to make these meals bike-friendly, and make sure that I have all of my uniform stuff packed and ready. And a hair brush. Oh, and Naproxen, in case I start feeling decrepit. A claw clip for my hair. Contact lens solution, in case a rogue June Beetle who doesn't know what month it is flies into my eye. And of course, my travel mug of coffee for the road, safely housed in a ziploc. I mean, where does it end? Next thing you know I'll be strapping Queez, coffee beans, filters, and my coffee grinder on top of all that gear so I can have *reallyfresh* coffee when I get to work. Ol' Red'll look like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck when it's all said and done.

Yesterday's session:
I feel I have made a good bit of progress from my session 2 weeks ago to the one yesterday. I'm very happy with my new sense of what a portion is. I can tell I'm back on the losing weight and not maintaining track, though I try not to weigh too often because I start getting obsessed. I tried on a pair of jeans that hasn't fit for 3 years and they were tight, but they fit! Exercise isn't quite where I want it to be, as I know I can do more; more frequently, more intensely. I'm still getting more exercise than the Average American, so I just have to realize that it will come, and keep plugging away. I have the opportunity now to go to a support group instead of/in addition to my sessions. I'm kind of excited about this, as these are all people who are right now struggling every day with this stuff, just like me.

Exercise:

• Walk/jog around lake with little Girlie Monday
• Cut grass yesterday, then went road/trail biking with Dan. Trail biking is a horse of a different color. Never have I felt so timid and uncomfortable on a bike. Trails sometimes only marginally wider than the bike. Creeks to cross with big honkin' rocks in the mix to stop me dead in the middle because I couldn't steer around 'em. Deliberately placed tree obstacles everywhere. And downhills that, if made out of cement, wouldn't faze me - but made of hard-packed dirt with roots and rocks, terrify me. It was definitely out of my comfort zone. Something I would have loved when I was 12 (before I knew what a broken bone felt like - white hot unbelievable pain, in case you're wondering) but now just brings out the medic in me. I sit there at the top of this narrow-ass rutty dirt hill and imagine all the trauma that will befall me when I, well.. befall on myself. But I did it, and I'm looking forward to more. It was a really good workout.
• Today: ride back/forth to work. 11.6 miles round trip.
• Tomorrow, Friday - hopefully more of the same.