Hardball

Our family was thrown a little bit of a hardball this week, so I have had neither the time nor inclination to update my blog. Keep checking, though, I will come through for you soon.

Corsets and Getting Dressed

This last weekend I was dressing up for a wedding. Of course, I wanted to look my very best, so I decided to wear a corset under my dress. Now this sounds uneventful, except you CAN NOT put a corset on by yourself!!
First, there are approximately 500 hooks on a corset. Of course they are in back. For that reason, I employed my daughter to assist me as my own personal "Lady In Waiting."
She sweetly agreed to help me dress and grasped each side of my corset. Next, I heard grunting and groaning. Next, I hear grunting, groaning, panting and expletives as she tried to get the two sides to come to an understanding and meet somewhere in the middle. After several minutes of this, I feel her foot on my back as she leans backwards using all her strength and her body weight to maneuver the two sides to gether. "Man, ma, it's a good thing I've been working out!!"
After her 30 minute workout, the corset was finally in place and I tossed the dress over my head, only to find the zipper is on the side, under my left arm. How exactly am I supposed to zip such a thing up from that position?? Again, with a little assistance, I managed to zip my dress up.
After being completely dressed, I proceded to the wedding. What I had not considered was the actual WEARING of the corset through the ceremony. Being Catholic, the wedding was of course a bit longer than non-Catholic weddings. It also entails standing, sitting, kneeling, standing, sitting, kneeling, standing, sitting, kneeling. I'm here to tell ya, those are not easy to do wearing a corset. As I sat on the pew, I could feel my ribs cracking under the strain. Every time I moved from one position to another, the ribs of my corset would bunch and crack more of my actual ribs.
The good news is, my mom told me I looked very nice and thinner. I just nodded and smiled. My lungs were crushed and I could not breathe enough to talk.
Needless to say, I couln't wait to get home and remove the torturous device. Of course I had to take someone with me to get the horrid thing off.
I had a bon fire that night.

While I'm On A Roll...

Now that journaling your every bite has managed to suck all the enjoyment out of eating (and I didn't even get into figuring out complex meals like chicken alfredo and garlic toast, or Chinese food of any kind, or a burrito and those yummy sugar-dipped chips that you get at Taco Bell) I will continue to regale you with tales of my drab life.
Ok, while I'm on a roll, now lets talk about what to do if you go over your allotted number of calories. WORK IT OFF!!
Now that doesn't sound so bad, but you have to do like 30 minutes of cardio to burn 250 calories. WHAT?? My crappy sandwich took me like 30 seconds to consume and I have to work out for an hour and a half to burn it off? That's just wrong.
I go to the gym with my daughter (sometimes) and we try to work on our...stuff. She is in far better shape than I am and patiently tries to help me through a workout. My problem is, I hate to sweat. Sadly, when you are overweight, it takes virtually nothing to make you sweat. (Oh, I stood up. Now I'm sweaty.) Now, I am trying to find some form of exercise that is actually exercise that doesn't make you sweat. I think they call it liposuction, not exercise.
Another issue is that I am "athletically challenged." I know you don't have to be an athlete to work out, but if you are riding that stationery bike, it is really embarrassing to fall off. (Believe me, I know.) How sad is it to be riding your "bike" along a virtual path, then look up to find other virtual riders riding over your virtual body as it lays in the middle of the virtual path?
And adult beverages? They are even worse. One single shot of a kamikaze--100 calories. WHOA! To work off that kamikaze, I'm going to have to do some serious dancing. To get me on the dance floor, I'm going to have to do some serious kamikaze sucking. Life is a vicious circle.

Obsession

Recently, my obsession has been to lose some of the tonnage I have put on since taking a job where the only muscle I actually work is my brain (and if there is another human being in the room, sans boss, my jaw). Sadly, my butt remains firmly planted in my oh-so-comfy chair.
To that end, I have recently been visited with a nutritionist who gave me tips on how to change eating habits rather than dieting. Luckily for me, it involves eating virtually all day long, so there is no hunger or deprivation involved.
One aspect of changing eating habits is to be aware of the habits you have now. That means writing down every piece of food and every drop of drink that passes your lips. That doesn't sound too hard, right? Well, it's not. That's the easy part. Believe me, it gets harder.
After you write down what you ate, for example something simple like a sandwich and chips, then you have to dissect it into parts, i.e. 2 slices white sandwich bread, 1 piece bologna, 1 slice American cheese, 1 Tbsp. mayo, etc. After dissection (or science), then comes research. Finding out how many calories are in each part of your food or drink. After doing your "research" you find out that piddly little sandwich, which wasn't even that good and which didn't fill you up, is like 300 calories by itself. The chips you ate (about a handful), which were kind of stale and looked like they had been stepped on, are 500 calories because you learn chips are approximately 150 calories per serving, but a "serving" is only four chips. Who eats four chips? I mean Lays spent millions of dollars telling people that no one can eat just one. And no one can eat just four.
Okay, so now that you've done your math homework, you are left with a story problem. "If you are trying to keep your caloric intake to 1200 calories and you have already eaten 800 with a crappy sandwich and chips, what the hell are you going to eat for the rest of the day?"
Answer: Veggies! Lots and lots and lots of veggies. But not those dastardly canned veggies (can you say mass amounts of sodium?). No, they must be fresh veggies.
Okay, that doesn't sound so bad, but with fresh veggies come a four letter word. WORK. I mean, no one just opens the refrigerator, takes out a cucumber and just starts gnawing on it. (However, the temptation has been there.) No, you must first prepare the vegetable for consumption.
First, you get out the cutting board. If it's a cuke, you will probably need a peeler of some kind and a nice sharp knife. Now, none of this is any big deal if you think ahead and make these preparations before you are actually ready to eat them. However, if you wait until you are really hungry, that is another situation all together.
Since you are starving and your blood sugar has dropped to single digits (yet you somehow manage to remain conscious) your hands are shaking uncontrollably, drool is pouring from your mouth--you're getting the picture, right.
Next thing you know, you're in the emergency room, someone has your fingers in a baggie waiting for the doc to sew them back on. You glance over at the baggie and unbidden, the thought comes to you, "I wonder how many calories are in those?"

Dentist

In the last couple of weeks, I have had what I can only describe as a unique experience. What, you may ask, has she been up to now?
I now have my first official fake tooth.
Apparently there is a hierarchy of sorts in your mouth. If you have many teeth in a row in poor health, which failt to thrive and fall out, you get "dentures." This term, I believe, is to indicate they are like indentured servants. They do all the work in your mouth and depend solely on you to choose what you will to feed them.
If you have just a couple of teeth in your mouth are rotten, you get a "bridge" to help them overcome their hardships.
If you have just one bad tooth, it is considered royalty and receives a "crown."
The first day I went to the dentist, it was because after eating the always dangerous piece of TOAST, my tooth broke, leaving a jagged shard in my mouth. I got into the dentist the next day.
When I sat in the chair, the first thing is to check out the damage. After deciding I did, indeed, break the tooth, Dr. whipped out his two six-inch needles. The first went into the outside of the top left gum. While uncomfortable, I didn't really come up out of my chair until the second shot which into the INSIDE of my gum. After scraping me off the ceiling, I was tied into the chair and Doc got out his miniature oscillating saw. He begins the task of removing the offensive tooth from my head. I sit with my mouth agape as tooth shrapnel flys all over the room. I think to myself, "Has anyone ever impaled their throat with their own tooth shrapnel?"
After the shrapnel is successfully removed, some kind of foul-tasting mixture is made up which you are told to "bite down" on. After tasting it, I admit I was thinking something along the lines of, "you can bite me!" The mold being made, he prcedes to put cement in my mouth. For the final touch, a beautiful piece of silver bling is poked in my mouth.

As much as I loved my "grill" work, two weeks later I find myself back in the dentist's chair. This time, he uses pliers to remove the silver bling previously placed and procedes to his ball peen hammer where he nails the new crown in place. (This of course was after blasting my tooth with air and watching me leap out of skin, he determined I would be more comfortable after another six-inch shot was injected into my face).
I left the office $400 later looking very much like a stroke victim, mouth slack and drooling slightly. Just before he left he added, "Don't chew on that side and brush only in a downward stroke for three days. By the way it was great seeing you!"
Oh yeah doc, you too.