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

Thursday's Thoughts

Since last Thursday's thoughts I've put a lot on my mental plate, so to speak. I watched an Oprah show about obese teens and their families that really affected me - odd since I was never obese as a teen.  I have no doubt that I would have been, had I not been swimming about 2 miles per day during the winter and walking nearly everywhere I needed to go. As I watched that show - at times sobbing so hard my breathing came in gasps -  I came to realize I've been hanging on to a great deal of anger since my teenage years.  A lot of stuff happened from the ages of 13-18 that no kid should have to deal with, so I simply didn't. Deal with it, that is. I pushed it away and saved it for later.  This is how people become junkies. Seriously. My dope of choice just happens to be food. I really wish there'd been a similar kind of intervention around when I was a teenager, though it's never too late to intervene. Every day, every moment - hell, every choice ... is a chance to get it right. 

Which brings me to my next point.  This article sort of encapsulates everything I've been trying to learn about how to cope and recover from my self-defeating behaviors. I found this to be very compelling:

People tend to think that urges will escalate infinitely if they don't yield to them — but in fact, like a wave, they rise to a peak and then fall. That is, even if you don't give in, the urge dissipates.

Indeed, because of the way the brain is wired, each time an addict lets an urge pass without engaging in the unwanted behavior, it weakens the neural connections that underlie the desire; each time he or she rewards the craving with the bad habit, the brain pathways, and the addiction, are strengthened. It helps for people to remind themselves that if they can resist an addictive urge once, it will become easier and easier to do it again in the future.

How powerful is that? I mean, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm sure I know that every time I do something good for myself, that I will tend to keep doing things that are good for me. But to see it there in print, that every time you make a good choice for yourself rather than an unhealthy choice, you actually change how your brain works. That is powerful. 

I did something that made me proud of myself yesterday and reinforced that all this work I am doing is having an effect. I had given myself permission yesterday to skip my scheduled run. I had had a long night at work, and I just don't function too well when I have to day-sleep. Add in some hormonally-based fatigue and a slight case of the fuckits, and I pretty much had myself talked out of it. Later in the day, just a couple hours before I had to go in for my shift, I got myself really worked up and po'd over something.  Today, that something is totally insignificant, but yesterday it had me irritated to the point of feeling jumpy and shaky. It was dinner time, and I was hungry. I was just about to heat up my dinner and sit down in front of the news with it. Something made me stop and realize I was in a really negative frame of mind, and did I really want to cement that in my neural pathways associated with food and tv? Believe me, that path is already there, and it's more of a 10-lane freeway. So I did something I rarely do: I went upstairs, still irritable and shaky, put on my workout clothes, and banged out 2 quick miles on the treadmill. A new and healthy little footpath tromped down in my brain. It's never too late to try a new path. 

Last thought: I've been having trouble motivating myself the past week. I wish desperately that I could be the kind of runner that blissfully zones out and before I know it, look! I'm done! Well, I'm not that runner. I'm the runner that covers my treadmill display with a towel so I can't obsess over it. I have a few requirements that, if not met, can cause me to torture myself during an entire workout session. I have to have music. Gum is a big plus. It keeps my brain occupied a little. Doesn't matter how cold it is outside. The heat in my house has to be turned off while I run. Bedroom window is open. One thing I had been overlooking, however, is the power of the playlist. Sure, I give props to my playlists all the time for giving me that push to finish. The problem is, I get accustomed to playlists quickly, and soon start to obsess about which song is next, what song is starting to bore me, where I was in the playlist last time I ran - was I ahead or behind?  The answer? Change the playlist! Don't ever underestimate the power of a new playlist to motivate and inspire. 

Yesterday: 2

Today: 3

Tomorrow: Off!