gategrrl

Hey there!

Let's see...my 48th birthday was on Friday! I wasn't exactly thrilled to see my age edging closer and closer to the big 5-0, but, hey, that's what life is. Right? Thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday here and on Facebook. You're all super, and even tho I've been distracted I still love you all. It's been over TEN YEARS since I've met many of you either online or in person, and I'm wowed by that. My life would be much less rich without my LJ friends (many of whom are also OS veterans). Just being here online with me for so long has been and is a tremendous gift.

What happened on Friday? Mermaid was all secretive and stuff, and had a surprise planned for me. Unfortunately, my car's battery died while I was at the gas pump filling up the tank! We sat in the car for about 40 minutes waiting for the tow truck guy to arrive. I thought for sure it was the starter motor, but luckily (?) it was was only the battery. He jump-started the damned thing. I dropped Mermaid off at home, and without turning the car off puttered over to Pep Boys (the nearest place I knew of to get a battery) and dropped about 45 minutes and $150-ish on a new battery. Ugh! But it ended well enough. Mermaid baked a fantastic Reese's Peanut Butter chocolate cake (I'll drop the recipe in at the end of the post) that was UBER CALORIES but WHO CARED?!! It was awesome. And we went out to eat at the Pizza Cookery where the Guy found a website with creepy Easter Bunny & kid pictures with the most hilarious captions ever, and we all just about died laughing at some of them. Brilliant stuff!  At least it was memorable, eh?

In other news, two years ago I weighed in at about 186 pounds (more or less, depending on whose scale I was weighed on, my own or the doctor's scale). These days, whatever I've been doing has been slowly working; I've been hovering at around 166. Luckily, I'm not getting "skinny-fat", which is what happens when you lose weight, but have no muscle tone whatsoever. I'd ideally like to go down another ten pounds or so, but really, I'm more focused on tightening and toning up my core and back muscles at the moment.

I found a fantastic DVD by Karen Voight which incorporates mainly Pilates moves (killer stuff, people, killer stuff!). The first time I used it, my sides, rib cage/lats, triceps, and abdomen felt the burn for two or three days! It's not so bad now--I do the routine about once a week. And there's another 50 minute routine on the DVD called Total Body, but what it really is, is an exercise in "torture" that works your butt and your *inner thighs*. I sure felt that the next day! Voight is an excellent teacher, gives great cues, reminds you to breath (yeah, you can forget to breath), and tells you where you should be feeling it AND what not to do so you don't injure yourself. Highly recommended:
Click on the image, it should take you to the Amazon page. And no, I'm not getting points from Amazon for this: I seriously LOVE this DVD. Oh, you can go to Collage Video, which specializes in fitness DVDs, to see actual clips from the workout.

What else...omg, yesterday Mermaid's boyfriend came over and they watched Sinister. Since there aren't many places to go in the house if you don't want to be either in your room or in the computer den, I stayed. I'm not a huge horror movie fan (gives me nightmares), this one...holy crap. While not huge on the gore and slash, it's atmospheric and has more than a bit of disturbing voyeurism in it, with these mysterious and horrible Super 8mm films being discovered in a house's attic portraying bit by bit, who and how the families in these films were murdered.  And now, of course, my mind is gnawing away at it like a distressed mouse. See, THIS is why I tend to avoid scary or horror type movies, because the images stay with me for a long time afterward (whereas books, *I* can control what I see in my mind's eye).

And for now, that's all that comes to mind. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Ugh. Lately all my clothing has become snugger. Part of it is I've gained a few pounds over the holiday season (ugh) and the other part is clothing shrinkage, which sucks. I'm a "just throw it into the dryer" type (when the dryer isn't broken). And today was about the worst because I hadn't realized I was also getting that wonderful once-a-month bloat courtesy of female biology.

What's a girl to do? Well, both pairs of my jeans are getting ratty and holey at the same place (my left hip, for a weird reason) and the holes are larger now and I can see the color of my underwear through them. The t-shirts I do own aren't hanging right because my er...weight gain is also happening in my chest. The two pairs of capri/shorts that I wear constantly are wearing out and getting too tight, too. I don't have a heavy turn-over for clothing. I tend to wear them until they die. Or shrink and get too small or start fitting differently. Luckily, I found a pair of irregular Levis on sale for $10 and some decent shirts for under $10 each (with PATTERNS! I almost never wear patterns) and a couple pairs of new capris/shorts. All for under $80. 

Trying clothing on? Sucks. It sucks because I can see my body is all sliding down as if it were magma from Pele in Hawaii...only, not in Hawaii, and not Pele. And not hot. Oh no. Sure, I have more curves than a mountain road. Sure, the view is okay from certain angles, but honey, you wouldn't want to admire it with that magma coming down at you. You'd get the hell out of there!

I think...yes, I do think I need to go back to the gym and start working out again, if I can figure out a way to do it without breaking too much into my schedule for school. This semester is going to be a lot tougher, and for some reason, my brain is having a harder time absorbing the stuff I need to learn. Could be I'm not getting enough sleep. Yeah, that would do it. I slept for an hour and a half this afternoon when I realized my lesson was sliding off my brain cells like skaters on ice.

And I blame it all on a local radio station that's been playing Peter Frampton's hit songs from his 1977 album--Baby, I Love Your  Way, Show Me the Way and Do You Feel Like We Do. I feel like I'm living Ground Hog Day. Seriously, this station plays these songs at roughly the same time every morning, and now I can't get them out of my head!

That is all. And I'm heartbroken. 

Note: I was away this past weekend, and only saw an announcement on a forum (not OS, btw) about it just now. Sorry if this brings up "old news" but I'm shocked. I had NO idea.