Picking Bones

I looked at my calendar today and realized it's July 27th, which means I have approximately 15 days to accept the fact that swimsuits are tools of the Devil designed to make any woman, whether she weighs 92 pounds or 300, feel like she's being stuffed into a sausage casing and paraded around on a conveyor belt while robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people peer over the tops of their oversized sunglasses and purse their lips as much as their collagen will let them, silently judging and making notes on scented paper before deciding who looks acceptable and who gets tossed in the bin of people waiting to be selected for The Biggest Loser, and that there's nothing I can do about that.

That sentence doesn't even make sense, does it. I can just hear Mrs. Wilcox, my 6th grade English teacher (back then it was called Language Arts) sighing and lecturing us about run-on sentences.

During the second week of August I'm going to Massachusettes with my Best for her bridal shower and while I could not be more excited to A) take a vacation, B) finally get to visit Boston, and C) spend some much-needed girl time with said Best, this trip will involve a trip to the beach.

I'd be lying if I said I've ever felt comfortable with how I look and yes, I know this is starting to read like a 'Cathy' comic strip, but it's true. My weight has gone up and down and occasionally sideways so much the past few years that I'm quite close to having a muumuu surgically attached to my body. Yes, it's shallow. Yes, it's pointless to obsess over something that you only have limited control over. And yet, here I am.

Part of this mental crisis is coming from the fact that ever since we've moved, my work-out schedule hasn't been nearly as strict as it used to be. Before we moved I was up at 4:30, at the gym by 5:15, and working out until 6:20 or 6:30. Now that I've moved 40 miles away from the gym, I've given up the membership and have started furnishing a small gym in my basement. I've let myself sleep in until 6, and have resolved to workout after work instead of before. It's worked, to a degree, but I still feel awfully out of shape. More so than I'd like to.

I guess what this all boils down to is that I'm stuck between wanting to be healthy and not wanting to fall victim to either an eating disorder or this nation's obesity epidemic. I've tried Weight Watchers, but when they started throwing around sayings more commonly heard on pro-anorexia sites, that kind of dimmed for me. I've tried methods that I'm not going into detail on and I'm afraid of getting into this destructive sneaky self-hate spiral.

It's all about choices in the end and as I sit here, re-reading this and trying to figure out if I spelled 'Massachusettes' right (I didn't), I am choosing that I'm not going to let robotic Anna Wintour-type insect people determine my self-worth. If I were meant to be waif-like, God would've made me that way. Frankly, who wants hip bones that stick out? All that does is make it really hurt when you get yanked off your feet and pulled across a high-school gym by a parachute. Don't ask me how I know this.

Frankly, the robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people can kiss my grits.

What Happens When You Build a Dam Over A Stream of Conciousness?

If I were to ever see Ben Bernanke on the street I can't promise I wouldn't try to hit him with my car or possibly a piece of construction equipment I have no business driving. I don't know if Mr. Bernanke is in any way, shape, or form responsible for the mortgage crisis going on right now but according to the AccuNet Mortgage commercials that I hear on the radio all. The time., he is somehow involved in my not being able to own a home. While the thought of chasing him down in my little 4-banger gleefully cackling out words that I can't repeat here because my mom reads this and then calls me to tell me she's worried about me is appealing, it's not the right answer and I know that.

I've been toying around with the idea of going back to school and getting my MLIS. I went to grad school once. For 6 weeks. I gave it the ol' college try, failed miserably, and have been living with a giant flashing invisible sign on my head that says Beauty School Grad School Dropout ever since.

I don't like failing or deferred sucess or whatever is considered politically correct to call it now. But at the same time, grad school costs money. And time. And look at me make excuses for not going back! What it all boils down to is this: I failed at it once, and I'm afraid I'm going to fail at it again. Failing at something once is appaling. Failing at it twice is downright un-face-up-toable, but is it worse than failing once and never trying again? This is grad school, not skydiving.

In other news, it's 2011 now which in itself is terrifying. What happened to pretty much every year since 1994? Is it still cool to make fun of O.J. Simpson and wear Zoombas? Ugh.

Being an adult is unavoidable and not always fun. You have to do things like make sure you don't go 8,000 miles without an oil change (which I haven't done since 2004, thank you very much) and change the kitchen calendar (which, for those keeping score, is still on May of 2010) and be responsible. I kind of wouldn't mind going back to kindergarden where boys had cooties and it was ok to glue your little history book with the ducks on the cover to your desk accidentally.

Acrobatics

One of the first things my husband and I did after we returned from our honeymoon (our first joint purchase, for future note) was to buy a bookcase for our living room. He loves putting things together; I love pretending our living room is about to be showcased in Better Homes & Gardens, so what better way to spend a Saturday than to go down to Target as moony-eyed newleyweds and make a our third joint purchase: A 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf that would look entirely too large in our living room? It seemed like a great idea, until we got it into the parking lot and to our second joint purchase: my husband's car. Chalk it up to the naivete of youth or just poor foresight, but cramming this 7-foot-tall espresso-colored pressed fiberboard bookshelf into a Mazda 3 with two full-grown adults was going to prove to be something of a Tetris championship of spacial management. We did it though. We popped open the trunk, laid down the back seat, wiggled the yet-to-be-assembled bookshelf in, and scooted the passenger seat up until we could close aforementioned trunk.

The only problem with this was that there was an occupant in the passenger seat: me. I am not short, nor am I particularly flexible, but I was determined to have this too-large bookshelf in our living room by noon, so help me God. By the time all was said and done, all the doors closed (mostly), the trunk closed (mostly), and I got to spend the mercifully short 8-10 mile drive home with my face mashed against the windshield hoping that we didn't run into any state troopers because if I'd have tried to put on my seatbelt I would've strangled myself. Of course, if we'd been hit nothing in that car would've moved. At all.

My point in saying all this is this: we're revamping our efforts to swap out some older, worn hand-me-down furniture and we still don't have a car capable of transporting it. I drive a Corolla that so far, knock on wood, has not tried to kill me by random acceleration. My husband's still got his Mazda. All I can hear right now is my parents telling me that we should really get a car that we can transport stuff in so there's really no need to say 'I told you so!' Mom and/or Dad. My car is recently paid off and I'm trying to think ahead as to what I'd like to replace it with Someday. Someday, by the way, gets a capital S because we've got a lot hedging on it. We're going to get a house Someday, we're going to have kids Someday, I'm going to remember that I don't like raddishes before I eat one Someday, but I digress. What's good out there in terms of a mid-sized car or smaller SUV? I don't need a Land Rover or tank (although that would certainly take the headache out of my commute), just something I can Someday put a headboard and new dresser in.