1). To the guy who cut me off in the parking lot at Target – I was leaving and didn’t want that spot you viscously coveted. Thanks for almost causing an accident.

2). To the guy in Office Max who kept jockeying from line to line – if you stay put and everyone stays in the same line and waits for the next available cashier we all get out faster. Try it sometime instead of being a self centered jackass.

3). Note to merchandising – quit putting all that cheap crap all over the store floor and in the middle of the aisles – it makes it really hard to get to the good stuff.

Jeanne tagged me for this game. I am supposed to tag 5 others but I’m not going to do that. Here is what I was going to title ‘5 Things I Like About Me’ but then I wrote them and decided they are just ‘5 Things about Me’.

1). I was born in Ohio and although I moved from there when I was 10 I still consider myself to be a Buckeye. Don’t ask me why.

2). I took some time off after I graduated from High School to go to France and perfect my French. The only problem was that I didn’t know the first thing about traveling abroad, had no plans and didn’t bother reading any books or anything smart like that. I had no student ID and no Eurail pass. My mother, worried sick about my lack of plans found another person in town who had a daughter who was living in France and needed a roomate for a while so I went and stayed with her. We had nothing in common. I knew no one. I had no program, no traveling partner – nothing. I spent an entire month walking all over Paris in my Earth shoes and ended up with these horrible ulcerated blisters on my feet. Then I went to Germany to stay on the houseboat of a guy I met on the plane. He kept trying to get me to go to a doctor but I didn’t speak German and I didn’t have much money and I was too afraid. I never did get those ulcerated blisters treated but they eventually healed up and I lived to tell the tale.

3). While I was over there I ended up going to London (by myself) and getting a job as a chambermaid in a seedy Bed and Breakfast hotel in Bayswater. I lived in one Indian owned seedy B&B with a bunch of Egyptian kids and worked in a different one owned by the same people. I was propositioned by a drunk Irishman one day while making his bed. I just stared at him and muttered something with the word “NO” in it and he left. I was also courted by a Nigerian who gave me a very cool necklace. He was very polite and easily deflected I escaped London without assault.

4). After I graduated from college I drove from the East Coast to the West Coast all by myself (are we seeing a pattern here?) I visited family on the way and saw a couple of friends including the first love of my life. When I saw that he was still exactly the same guy he was when we broke up (albeit a father by then) I got over him instaneously. This was a huge relief as I had been pining and ‘what iffing’ over him for over 6 years.

5). I held my mother’s hand while she died. I’m planning on writing about it soon.

CNN.com – Police: Elderly sell pain pills for cash – Dec 12, 2005

Elderly people in Appalachia are increasingly ending up in jail because they are selling their prescription drugs to buy necessities. I could go ‘ugh’ at the idea that these folks have so little money they resort to a life of crime but what really makes me go ‘ugh’ is that the prosecution line up (cops, DA, Judge) would sentence these poor people to jail.

Since April 2004, Operation UNITE, a Kentucky anti-drug task force created largely in response to rampant abuse of the powerful and sometimes lethal painkiller OxyContin, has charged more than 40 people 60 or older with selling primarily prescription drugs in the mountains.

Imagine if the people on this task force used their considerable ‘do gooding’ energy and skills to solve the social ills that lead to the elderly giving up their own pain relief in favor of food.

Sickening

So I stuck a few extra zeros in there – so sue me! It’s just a blog, damnit!

I wish I could do that with my bank statement. It would make my ‘I’m never going to work again’ strategy so much more successful. As it is I continue to piss away my days not making sales calls, not building my business and not making any money – but I’m having a good time. So what if I wake up with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth in my sleep worrying about when I’ll have to sell my house and move into a cardboard box under a bridge? For now this is my life and oh how sweet it is.

So I stuck a few extra zeros in there – so sue me! It’s just a blog, damnit!

I wish I could do that with my bank statement. It would make my ‘I’m never going to work again’ strategy so much more successful. As it is I continue to piss away my days not making sales calls, not building my business and not making any money – but I’m having a good time. So what if I wake up with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth in my sleep worrying about when I’ll have to sell my house and move into a cardboard box under a bridge? For now this is my life and oh how sweet it is.

‘Tis the season and my email inbox has filled with eVites. One of them was to a sort of Open House party thrown by a whole group of young, socially conscious entrepreneurs from various walks of life. These people all have office space in a very cool building graced with lots of exposed brick, natural wood floors, high ceilings and progressive politics. I was probably the oldest person in the building – all of the business folks were in their 20s and 30s.

Walking through the hallways hung with contemporary and very hip artwork I became overwhelmed with the sense that I’d lived the wrong life – like I had throughly missed the boat and that my life was just a dried husk, as thrilling as white noise. How I came to marry a knee-jerk, conservative, anti-intellectual and hunker down to the utterly quotidian life we led together escapes me – but only for a moment. Then I remember that I was uninspired as a young woman having spent most of my inner resources just convincing myself I deserved a spot in the circle of life.

I had my youngest with me and it was so great to end up inadvertently exposing her to the zeitgeist of that environment. I was giddy with the idea that she and her siblings might live a more edgy, more interesting, more purposed life than the one I stumbled into. We talked about it on the way home and I told her that whatever she did she needed to find her passion and figure out how to survive while engaging in something she loved.

As I lay in bed that night I dove in to that feeling of absence – that sense of having missed something. I tried to think about what might have been, of what I might have done differently if, on the night before I was supposed to move in with my fiance I had followed through on our fight and changed my mind. I almost broke up with the guy because I could see, for split second, that it would never work. But then I buckled, picked up the engagement ring I had tossed across the room and calmed down. I did move in with him and I did marry him and I did quit graduate school and get a job and I did have 3 kids with him. Three perfect, spectacular, amazing kids. Imagining that I had taken any other turn in life is like dreaming I am falling over a cliff. People never hit the bottom in those dreams because if you hit the bottom you die. You wake up, instead. I woke up from the ‘what if’ scenario and I smiled. I didn’t miss anything – I done good.

I ran this morning. It was not a good run by any standards and really paled in comparison to my last run on the 2nd in which I managed to run 3 miles at an average pace of 9:54. This was a first at this pace and I was ecstatic! I believe I owe it all to my Heart Rate Monitor (HRM for short) and a completely distorted view of what my heart rate should be.

I had this idea that my max HR should be 180 beats/min. I have no idea where I came up with that but if you read about this stuff what you find is that the simple calculation is 220 minus your age (which would be 170 for me) and the more complex and perhaps slightly more accurate calculation is MHR=217 – (0.85 × Age) which for me would be 174.5 which isn’t that far off of 180 but still. You are supposed to train at some percentage of your maximum rate. I ran the super run at between 160 and 170 the entire time which is between 90 and 95% of my max. This is, perhaps, overkill and yet I felt great at the end!

This morning I decided that the sun was shining and it couldn’t be THAT cold so I went out in shorts and t-shirt with a long sleeved t-shirt over that. Fortunately I took the dog for a short walk first and realized that it was way too cold for that little outfit. There was frost on the rooftops and I could see my breath. I brought her home and added a hat and gloves to my ensemble and headed out to hit the pavement. I ran something over 3.5 miles (I had my Garmin turned off for a bit) but my average pace was 12:18. How much does that suck? My HR was up between 160 and 165 still but I do believe that if your thigh muscles are cold you just can’t bust a decent move. I guess it was naive of me to think that a distorted view of the temperature coupled with a distorted view of how fast my heart should beat would somehow add up to a great run. I think there is a life’s lesson in there – if only I could see it through all the distortion.

Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life
End over end neither left nor to right
Straight through the heart of them righteous uprights
Drop kick me Jesus through the goal posts of life.

Make me, oh make me, Lord more than I am
Make me a piece in your master game plan
Free from the earthly tempestion below
I’ve got the will, Lord if you’ve got the toe. – Bobby Bare

I never did get the Jesus thing so I’m turning to the internets for assistance, instead. Also, I actually yearn to be less than I am, not more.

If I had a dollar for every time I wished I were in better shape I could afford a personal trainer. I could looke like Teri Hatcher – terminally too sexy for my jeans (and ever in need of a good meal). Sadly, I get nothing for my complaints (although Terri and I do have really similar boobs so there is hope, yet) . I go shopping and while trying on clothes I curse my fat butt and swear at my thighs. They look like bread dough left too long to rise and I hate them! Apparently I don’t hate them enough not to go by DQ and get a vanilla soft-serve dipped in chocolate. I also hate my jiggly triceps and yet the weights I have in my bedroom are victims of my inertia – left there to rot while I whine about my aging physique.

I think these thoughts daily: “I will just pick up the weights before I go to bed and do 3 sets of 10 french presses….. I will do some crunches…. I will NOT eat a big bowl of mac and cheese and then have a second helping – I will just eat one tiny little bowl and then have a 2nd tiny little bowl…. I will eat salad for lunch… I will not go into the pantry 42 times during the day and eat “just a couple” pita chips…. I will ignore the dried mangoes…. I will eat fruit and carrots and drink miso soup when I get hungry. Hey, it’s easy! Just commit! Just Do it!” Hell, I ran a marathon. I understand committment to a goal and yet… and yet… and yet…..

Yesterday I decided to set some real goals. Some hard goals. Goals you can count on. I’m not just banking on some fuzzy ideas – I’m setting goals with real numbers. I am going to swim on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I’m going to run on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I will log 6,000 yards in the pool and I will run 10 – 15 miles a week. I kicked the new plan off by resetting my alarm to 6:30 this morning and NOT getting out of bed for the 5:30 work out. Way to go.

I also would like to give myself a Christmas gift. I would like to get on the scale Christmas morning and have the needle fall unequivocally below the 130 mark (which means a weight loss of about 4 pounds). It was with this gift in mind that I ate a bowl of cashews and raisins and, since I sitting down to write this entry I’ve gone through 1/2 a bag of dried mangoes and eaten ice cream right out of the container.

Left to my own devices I quite am hopeless and that’s where you, dear readers, come in. I am declaring my intentions here and now and there will be no excuses. Help me out people – I need watch dogs! I need whips! I need tough love. I’m no good at invoking Jesus (an unfortnate side effect of not being a believer) so I’m looking to you. Kick me – hard.

Thanks

Panthergirl, thank you for renting my blog.

(okay- I had to change this post or I will never get another tenant!)

I need your feedback, peeps. I left a comment over at Laid Off Dad’s and this guy ‘Prego’ leaves a comment in return. I can’t figure out if he thinks I used the word ‘aplomb’ incorrectly or if he is amazed that I knew how to use it properly in a sentence. I meant exactly what I said and there is nothing incorrect about it. He, on the other hand, wrote some really poorly constructed sentences and then used the word ‘sangfroid’ in a really odd way. I just can’t tell what he is saying.

So what do you think? I’m not going to start a debate on someone else’s blog so I’m bringing it over here.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.