I know I've been talking about the weather a lot lately but the thing is, I just tend to notice and be affected by the weather a lot more since I moved to the cubicle by the window. Even right now, the sun is streaming into my cube and I am soaking it up like a cat napping on a window ledge.
My tiny little corner of the world
On Sunday, I finally got one room in the house to a fully livable state. It's a three bedroom house, but you have to actually go through one of the bedrooms to get to the back bedroom, so it doesn't really count as it's own bedroom. Anyway, lately that has been the room where we stick piles of things and forget about them, plus it's where we were keeping the litter box, so there was a fine layer of litter dust, cat hair, and just general grossness on everything. It took me several hours, but now the room is actually an office instead of the assorted-piles-of-things room. I moved the litter box out of there too, so we can now walk through that room barefoot without cutting our feet open on errant shards of litter. Fabulous! The problem is, now that room makes the rest of the house look extra-messy. Maybe I can just move the sofa and the tv in there and pretend the rest of the house doesn't exist...
I think I'm about to come back around and focus on the jewelry-making again. Usually I'll be super-focused on it for a few weeks, make some really beautiful pieces and then kind of get tired of it and focus on something else. Then eventually I will get bored with the jewelry I've been wearing, will go digging through my box of finished pieces and come up with a million more ideas for new stuff. See, maybe that's why jewelry will never be much of a business for me, because I just make stuff for myself. Though frankly, would it really be the end of the world if I just made jewelry for myself? Is it less of a worthwhile enterprise if I'm not planning to sell what I make? Maybe I should just focus on making the stuff I want to wear...at the very least I will get a killer jewelry collection out of it.
Goodnight friends...tomorrow=new drama, I'm sure.
Okay, so it's definitely a nicer day today and I'm not nearly as stressed, even though (unnamed web-based document review tool) is bearing down on me with the speed and intensity of a freight train. It helps that the issues our client is having with the database turned out to not be my fault. I always appreciate it when that happens.
That whole episode from my last entry is such a distant memory now. There is part of me that doesn't quite trust my friend as implicitly as I did before, but I'm sure that will heal itself over time.
I was having a doozy of a day yesterday. First of all, on Tuesday my boss caught me using AIM at work like an idiot. I came by it honestly, I swear. I was testing an open source chat client called Pidgin because we might use it in the office for instant messaging. Anyway, nobody was around for me to test it out on, and Pidgin will also connect to AIM and let you chat there if you tell it to, so I just kind of connected to AIM without thinking and sent a message to a friend of mine. He happened to be around and I haven't talked to him in a loooong time, so we just started chatting about what was new. Wouldn't you know it, 30 seconds later my boss walks by my desk and catches me red-handed. Okay, so that was stupid. Then yesterday, still stewing about getting caught chatting, I managed to be 20 minutes late to work. Of course my boss just happens to be in the breakroom getting coffee as I pass through on the way to my desk. Also, as luck would have it, I was supposed to have my annual performance review yesterday! Well, at least we would have plenty to talk about... Fortunately it got postponed until next week, so I have some time to distance myself from these latest debacles. This (unnamed web-based document review tool) stuff will help, since I'm the only one who knows how to do it.
I've decided not to talk about my latest exercise venture here until I'm well on my way to making it a habit. This time it's just going to be between me and me. I'll let you know.
I came across the coolest blog the other day: Fat Girl on a Bike. It's written by a lovely fat triathlete who is a complete and total badass. The best thing about her is that she is doing all of this with her body as it is, she's not waiting until she has gotten down to a certain weight before getting out there and racing. Sometimes it feels like a ridiculously overwhelming thing to have to lose a bunch of weight before I can run or bike (or swim) and it is so incredible to see another fat girl out there just making it happen. If she can do it then so can I.
I had another creep accost me on the Max again. This time it was an older "gentleman". Apparently this guy is a fan of the "big girls" and had wanted to know if I would like to "get with him". Who are the women who say yes to this approach? I told him my muscle-bound, imaginary boyfriend (Biff) might have a problem with that, and he backed off. Then he asked me for money to buy a hamburger at Wendy's. What a charming fellow! It didn't really bother me, actually it gave me a funny story to tell when I got to work on Monday, but I wish I knew why I keep attracting these skeevy guys. Maybe I just look like I've got some extra hamburger money...
Oop! Buckle your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen, it's (unnamed web-based document review tool) time! Better get back to it...
The weather outside is super-gray and dreary and today, I am in a mood to match. This morning has been incredibly busy and on top of that I am having a bit of a falling out with a friend of mine. Basically, he said something insensitive on his blog and when I commented on it, he got very defensive and basically told me that if I didn't like what he had to say then I should just piss off and not read it. Which, okay, sure, I could understand 100% if he had that reaction at some schmuck who he doesn't even know in real life, but I really thought that he and I were pretty good friends. I can't even imagine acting like that if he told me something I said upset him. I would fall all over myself to apologize and I would feel terrible about having said it. The thing that sucks the most about the whole thing is that I was just beginning to feel like I could really trust him...like we could really be good friends for a long time. And maybe we will anyway, once we both get some perspective, but right now I feel like maybe I don't know him as well as I thought I did and that feeling sucks.
On a positive note, I did manage to find two more old friend easter eggs out there. One is my first girlfriend ever and one is a guy I went out with for a little while, both when I was in college. Neither were on MySpace, but they were out there on the interweb, so I tracked 'em down anyway...no one can hide from my incredible powers of searchery! :)
I still have to replace the front brakes and pump up the front tire on the bike I got. Right now I am itching to take a ride on it, but I am also a little intimidated about riding it in front of people. I know the guts will eventually win out in this battle (as they usually do), but the shame is putting up quite a fight.
More later...maybe
I realized something interesting about myself today. When I'm in public, I am always looking to the people around me for subconscious approval. I'm constantly evaluating their facial expressions or body language or whether or not they sit near me on the bus or whether they smile or frown at me. Then I process that information all together and use it to decide whether I'm okay at that moment or not. It sounds ludicrous but it's true. That's what's going on in my head when there are other people around. Not as much when I'm among friends or family, but on the bus or the train I am definitely caring way too much about how a bunch of strangers are subconsciously acting towards me.
Once I realized that on the bus this morning and I found myself doing it, I had to remind myself repeatedly that my worth was not dependent on what this random person on the bus thought of me. When I got to work, I was able to extend that idea to some of my coworkers. There are a few who just aren't very pleasant people and I always feel a little crappy about myself when they cross my path. This morning once I realized that it didn't matter what they thought of me, it was like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I never realized just how much energy it takes to care about what everyone thinks of me. It will be interesting to see if I can keep being conscious of these internal thoughts and evaluations.
In other news, I bought a bike on Tuesday. It's just a mountain bike and I think they only sell them at Target or Wal-Mart or something so it probably isn't the best quality ever, but it was only $45 bucks so there you go. I think I am going to have to replace the front brakes and maybe get some road tires instead of mtn bike tires, but still it should end up being a pretty cheap investiment. I don't want to break the bank getting a bike yet because I'm not sure if I'm even going to enjoy bike riding as an activity. I haven't ridden a bike in many, many years. Like swimming, I have no idea if my muscles even know how to do it anymore. Luckily we have a fairly large patio in our backyard so I can get on the bike and ride around a little in complete privacy before risking falling off in front of my neighbors. There are a lot of kids and kids make fun...that's all I'm saying.
I've been fairly successful at the whole quitting the internet at work thing. I have slipped up once or twice but on the whole, I have been able to pretty much stay away entirely. Honestly, it never even occurred to me just how much time I was spending on the internet until I decided to quit. I thought it was no big deal, but I can imagine if I had an employee who was online as much as I was, I might be a little pissed. Anyway, I have a one-on-one meeting with my boss today so we'll see if he noticed a difference.
T has been cooking again, which I love, because she is so f-ing good at it. I lost those few pounds I had gained back last week so everything is pointing in the right direction again. I'm still working on how you can love yourself as you are but then also strive to change yourself. T and I had a long talk about that over breakfast last weekend and I realized that I definitely have things that I would like to change about myself, like the internet thing or how I seem to be late all the time or how I care too much about what other people think of me, but those things don't mean that I just across the board suck. I can deal with the fat in the same way. It's just a thing about me that I am trying to modify. Actually, I can't control the fat itself...the only thing I can change are habits that contribute to the fat, like being afraid of exercise and not eating as well as I would like.
The thing about diet culture in the US is that it is sooooo patronizing, especially to women. I was reading a blurb about some former contestant on 'The Biggest Loser' and it said something like "so an so eats carbs from time to time but she knows never to eat white rice. Good girl!" I'm sorry, what? Is she five years old? Are they talking about her dog? First of all, there's nothing wrong with white rice or any other type of food, for that matter. Certain foods have more nutritional benefit than others, but this whole good food/bad food thing is just a false construct perpetuated by the diet industry. Secondly, who the hell has the right to talk to a grown woman like that? Good girl? Really? That kind of thing just pisses me off. Honestly, I think maybe that's why dieting fails so often...because a woman can only suppress her self-respect for so long and then she has to just say 'fuck that shit' and do what she wants for a change. Problem is, women are not exactly trained to figure out what it is that we want, so she ends up eating whatever is advertised the most aggressively and is the most readily available, which is usually crappy food.
That's just my theory. Hey, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe every woman who has dieted and stopped really does just have crappy self esteem issues, can't possibly control herself around various food items, is just a 'bad girl' who should be ashamed of herself because she chose twinkies over celery. No, you're right. I'm sure fat women are just universally greedy and lazy and gross and selfish and stupid. Let's do believe all of the messages fed to us by the media. I'm sure they're correct and unbiased and without agenda.
Yeah, it pisses me off. But it's so easy to just slide into that mindset, that thin equals good and fat equals bad, that somehow my body size says all of these negative things about me and that all of them are true. So THAT is my struggle...changing my habits while reminding myself that I'm doing it because I want to and not because I am all these negative things that need to be fixed.
More as it happens...
C
My tiny little corner of the world