randomosity

As longtime readers and friends know, sometimes your blog hostess doesn't have (and cannot successfully fake) enough coherent thoughts about one topic to fill up an entire post, so she is forced to throw together a bunch of unrelated crap and pretend it kinda goes together.

Admit it. Deep in your heart, you look forward to this.

By the way? Before we move on from that Game of Thrones meme, how awesome/disgusting/awesome are these?  If I had any baking talent whatsoever, I'd make some.

Courtesy of Not Your Momma's Cookie

Where was I? Oh yeah.

First order of business, only very very loosely related to this blog's topic: the royal OB/GYNs.  Read a little blurb this morning that the two gentlemen who delivered the heir to the throne of Great Britain yesterday consisted of a.) the Queen's gynecologist and b.) the doc who did Camilla's hysterectomy.  How weird would it be to be the Queen's gynecologist?  Does she have to change into a drafty paper gown like the rest of us? Do you think she is still holding onto her little purse when she's in the stirrups?  (Did I just make you picture the Queen in stirrups? Did it then make you imagine your own little old grandmother in stirrups? I've got some brain bleach I can sell you...***)  Secondly, I dunno, but the knowledge that Camilla had her lady parts yanked out makes me feel a weird sense of solidarity with her I never thought I'd have.

Secondly, this post was linked to on Already Pretty yesterday.  I hadn't particularly heard of the Fuck Flattering movement/project/whatever before, but I will say that being 5'2, I have always had a fairly jaundiced attitude towards fashion articles suggesting I wear x to look taller and avoid y so as not to appear stumpy.  Who says I want to look taller?  I have never had any problem with being, like a candy bar, "fun size."  (Well, okay, I do bitch about not being able to reach the top cabinet shelves and, before the T was uniformly air conditioned, having my nose at other people's pit level during summer rush hours was fairly unpleasant, but those are practical, not aesthetic, concerns.)  Furthermore, ain't none of those styling tricks fooling anyone anyways.  Put me in 4 inch heels and I don't look 5'6, I look like a short woman in big shoes. Sometimes I wanna look like a short woman in big shoes, but that doesn't mean I think I look tall.  So I'm pretty simpatico with the "fuck flattery" thing. Wear what you like because dressing to camouflage what your body actually looks like is fruitless and silly.

However. That linked post made me sad.  Those of you who are regular readers will know this, but let me restate it to be plain: unlike a lot of "fitness" people, I do not demonize overweight people.  I don't think being fat is a sin.  I don't think being fat equates, necessarily, to being unhealthy.  I think there are some extremely attractive fat people, just as there are some extremely attractive muscular people, and extremely attractive skinny people, and extremely attractive average-sized people.  I push back hard against the idea that there's such a thing as a bikini body, that anyone should have to look a certain way in order to be entitled to wear a bathing suit at the pool, a shmexy dress at the club, or a pair of tight yoga pants in the gym. Fuck all that. Nevertheless that post made me sad, because it was plain as day to me that that young woman, despite her bravado, really does not feel positive about her body and appearance.  For god's sake, she calls herself ugly.  Now maybe she's reacting to other people having called her ugly at some point in her life. Maybe she's taking back the word.  I dunno. I do know that the whole tone of that blog post reeks of deep insecurity. The subtext is not that she's wearing a crop top because, shit, she thinks crop tops are so cute and fun and she thinks she looks adorable in it.  She's wearing it to say "I know you think I'm ugly, so I'ma wear what's gonna accentuate that *to you*, to look even uglier in your eyes, just to prove I don't give a fuck." Which proves she does give a fuck.  I can't see it as truly holding up a positive body image.  And I say that with great empathy as someone who's struggled with her own body image at many points in her life.

Finally, and we won't even pretend this is on topic (except that it is for people who like to run, walk, or bike outdoors!) meet my latest favorite thing:  wundermap.  OMG, you guys, I can look at real time radar down to the street level.  This just saved me from heading out for a walk to the CVS an hour ago when, though it wasn't raining and it actually looked like the sun was poking through, there was a huge patch of heavy rain heading right for me.  I do this all the time now.  If the weather says scattered thunderstorms or 50% chance of rain or whatever and I want to take a walk, I pull up wundermaps and see if there is in fact any rain coming towards me and how far away it is. Brilliant!  Stops me from inadvertently getting soaked and/or deciding to stay home when in fact it *isn't* gonna rain in my vicinity any time soon.

That's all I got!

xoxo

***actually, I saw my own grandmother's hooha quite a bit during her last year of life. Didn't really require brain bleach, 'cause face it, without it, I wouldn't be here, capice?

what i've been up to

Oh, like YOU care. Too bad. I'ma tell you anyway.

I started a new part time massage job at a place I will not name, but which I fondly (so far) refer to as the Evil Empire. That is to say, it's at one of those chain-type places that are driving the lil guys outta business (like a more zen WalMart) and driving down the wages for massage therapists in general.  Leading me to digression #1: if you get a really cheap massage (or any kind of personal service, really: facial, waxing, etc) either because it's at a franchise kinda place or because it's a groupon, PLEASE tip generously if your experience is in any way satisfactory. Um, and in cash if at all possible.  The reason it's cheap is not because the owners aren't trying to make lotsa money or because they're skimping on the amenities***, it's because they're paying the people performing the service crap.

Why work for crap pay?  Two part answer. One, that's where the jobs are, especially the more entry-level jobs. Two, because that's where the customers are. I'm not sure people who haven't worked in the spa business are aware--I certainly never thought of it before massage school--but your MT or esthetician is only paid when they're actually performing a treatment/service.  So, $15 + gratuity per massage hr for 4 or 5 hours a shift is preferable to making $40 + gratuity per massage hour if you're only getting one client a shift and spending the rest of the time sitting around unpaid, waiting for business.  Well, Andrea, you say, if you get $15/hr and then a $15 tip, that's $30/hr. That's not gonna make anyone rich, but it's a living wage. Um, well, yeah, except NO ONE can physically do 40 hours of massage a week. 20-25 hours of massage a week is a pretty heavy schedule. So divide that $30 in half and your therapist is back to making about $15/hr.  Just some things to think about if you or your child is considering massage school.  On the plus side, it can be very emotionally rewarding. That's better than eating, right?

Where was I? Oh, yeah, don't be a cheap bastard. Tip nicely if you are happy.

The upshot of the above is that what else Andrea is doing right now is attempting to find a second (well, third really) part time job not massaging people.  No one cares that I have my CPT, lemme tell you.  I shoulda been nicer, i.e. sucked up to that woman at my gym who yells at me for squatting barefoot 'cause she sure as hell wouldn't give me a job. But that's another in my long series of bad life decisions. I was never very good at sucking up to people (NO?!!??) and, believe me, I wish it were not so.  But anyways, things are in the works. Future updates will be available.

But to bring this back on-topic, my new massage job is three evenings per week and it is seriously screwing up both my workout schedule and my eating.  I get into work at 2:30 or 3:30 or 4:30, depending on the day, having eaten somewhere between 600-900 calories, which would be my usual at that point in the day, and then maybe depending on how my schedule goes, I get a 200 calorie snack in. Which means I'm home at 10 or 11 needing to eat another 1000 calories or so.  Which, obviously, I don't usually make it.  Being at work, and actually working, during what is my regular dinner time is screwing me all up.  I'm not hungry when I get to work, so I don't want to stuff more food in before I start, but I don't see another solution.  Suggestions from those of you with non-traditional work schedules happily accepted!  Right now, I'm just eating below maintenance on those days I work and making up (most of) the calories on days I don't.  If only I were trying to diet right now, this would totally be a dream****!

xoxo

***Actually, I had a groupon massage just last week at a local place where, um, the amenities? No chair in the room for the client, no place to put my clothes. No clock in the room for the therapist, so she had to keep checking her phone to see where we were at time-wise.  And a face cradle the therapist warned me was a little wonky.  Plus, they were right by the commuter rail tracks and it was rush hour, so the room shook a few times, lulz.

****Actually, when I graduated massage school and was working doing massage half-time, plus my non-massage job, I easily dropped 10 pounds over say three months for exactly the same reason. Which was fine, because massage school had made me, ahem, outgrow all my pants.

i don't believe it for one tiny minute

Happy 4th of July, Americans! In order to celebrate the founding of my free nation, I'm going to use my precious constitutional right to free speech to call bullshit. Really, it's all about that, not the fact that I'm procrastinating putting on pants because I'm using the constitutional right to be lazy (which I'm sure Jefferson and Madison totally meant to put in there before they were overruled by George Wythe**, a known killjoy).

What are you calling bullshit on, Andrea? you ask.  Well, kids, yesterday I was at the salon being made, if not beautiful, as presentable as I'm gonna be, and while the magickal chemicals were turning my gray hairs back to my preferred reddish brown, I was perusing a People magazine a prior client had left where I was sitting.  It was apparently some sort of bikini-body issue (sigh) with an article of the (predictably stupid) fad diets/eating plans various celebrities follow with critique thereon by (less predictably but still stupid) mainstream nutritionists.  (Example: one sniffed about some IF***-ish plan that he didn't like that there's no breakfast.  Dear lord, it's 2013. Are we still sticking to that outdated canard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day for everyone everywhere at all times against the abundant evidence that some people do just fine and feel much better not eating first thing?)

God, there's a lot of parenthetical asides in that paragraph. That's what happens when the writer isn't wearing pants, apparently.

But, anyway. What I really wanted to rant about was not that article, but the accompanying feature where four female--of course--celebrities shared their food diaries for a day. Did I find it surprising that some model-type claimed to eat 1100 calories a day? No. Was it unbelievable that some Real Housewife of Wherever ate 2600?  No, and bravo for your apparent honesty, Reality TV Person I Have No Knowledge Of.  No. What I call bullshit on is that Laila Ali, female boxer, daughter of Muhammad, eats 1330 calories a day.

Does that look like a woman who can/does/should subsist on 1300 calories a day?  Did she grow those muscles on, like, pixie dust and good genetics?  Granted she looks more like this now:

Apparently--and I didn't notice this till I just put those two photos side by side--a 1300 calorie a day diet lightens your skin tone by three shades as well as drops the pounds!

SMH. So much. People magazine, you suck.

Ms Ali's food diary was full of, like, salmon and veggies and a protein shake with coconut oil in it and all the other stereotypical Clean Eating faves. I have no issue with her claiming to eat that way.  Some people really do eat that healthily all the time, and bless them.  It's that calorie count I have an issue with.  I wouldn't even bat an eye, much, if she said, well, I have a 2 year old and I put on a bunch of pregnancy weight and now that I'm a media celeb, not a professional athlete, I had to go on a super hard cut and diet crazily in order to be in a bathing suit in a national publication.  It's the presenting that amount of food as what she eats, all the time, to maintain that body that I find a.) unbelievable and b.) toxic.  She's 5'10 and, at least when she was boxing, in the 160s.  I am sure Ms Ali can/does/should eat twice that amount to maintain the body above.  How refreshing would it be to read her saying, "Yeah, I'm a big girl**** and I work out hard and I eat 2500 calories every day to give my body the fuel it needs"?  Instead, she's just reinforcing all the mainstream media garbage that women need to starve to look good. Feh.

And, again, that skin lightening crap?  Double feh. Would your father have let them photoshop out his blackness, Ms Ali?  I don't think so.

xoxo

**I had to look up who was on the committee to write the constitution. I coulda guessed Jefferson and Madison and Paine and Adams, but I never freaking heard of George Wythe.  I blame my public ghetto high school.

Also, he probably wasn't a noted killjoy. Authorial license.

***intermittent fasting, if you're not up on the trendy nomenclature

****she refers to herself that way in the article, that's not my choice of words

cults and lifestyles and w.o.e.s, oh my!

Because there haven't been enough cat pictures in here lately or I think it's still 2008.  One of the two.

Oh, hi, kids.  Here's a question for you: do you have a lifestyle?  Or should I say, A Lifestyle?  Because apparently some people think that because they work out and pay attention to their nutrition, they do.  And ZOMG, not only are they living the Fitness Lifestyle, they're being persecuted for it!  People try to force them to eat cookies!  Their friends tell them they're boring!  When they bring a tupperware of chicken breast and broccoli to the movies (so they can eat during their anabolic window or some such shit), they don't get a second date!  No, seriously, that last one? My favorite internet message board thread of all time.  I think it's an example of Darwin's Law in action. If you think bringing a bro-meal in tupperware to a theater is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, it's probably best for the gene pool if you don't form a sexual/romantic partnership and, y'know, possibly breed.

So, yeah.  Every couple months or so, some super-enthusiastic newbie (usually) posts a whiny thread in one of the corners of the internet I hang around on*** about how they are so misunderstood and persecuted and how all their friends and family mock them for, or pressure them about, their eating and exercise habits.  To which the more experienced (or jaded, pick your term) among us usually respond, "Huh. Doesn't happen to me.  Maybe because I know to shut the fuck up about it when people's eyes start glazing over and I don't act like a weirdo in public."  My own response to a similar conversation this morning was that, um, I don't have a lifestyle and I don't remember joining a cult.  I'm just like all my other friends.  I just, y'know, spend more time at the Y. And look better in a tank top.  (Ha!)

I guess this sorta dovetails with the previous post. If you start bringing salads and lean meat to work instead of ordering out lunch with the gang, yeah, people will probably notice and maybe they might possibly make a stupid remark or three. But, honestly, they're not gonna make a big deal about it unless you make a big deal about it.  They're certainly not going to "persecute" you about it, unless you are so preachy and evangelical that you make people want to stuff cookies into your mouth just to make you shut up.

Okay, we're done with cat pictures now. I've got that out of my system.

xoxo

***I have this weird version of synaesthesia in which internet locations feel like physical places to me.  Many many years ago there were two boards on AOL (hahaha) that I read and when I left one to go to the one that was below it in the list of boards, I always thought of it/felt like I was going downstairs.  

Stop looking at me like that.

sloth...sin or not?

No, no, no. That title has nothing to do with the lack of blogging up in here. Get that idea right out of your head.  

As anyone who has ever worked in an office can attest, people's co-workers see what they eat and don't eat and they all a.) seem to have an opinion on that and b.) mostly aren't shy about voicing it.  And as anyone who has ever worked in an office primarily composed of women can attest, the average (American, at least) woman is either overweight or thinks she is and starts a new diet and/or fitness plan on the average of every second Monday.  Put these two facts together and your average fit female office worker is going to get some interesting comments lobbed her way.  And thus a friend who has lifted heavy for four consistent years, regularly jogs part of the way to and from work, and tracks almost every morsel of food that goes into her mouth (and has a stunningly beautiful body to show for it) was told the other day that well, the reason she looks like she does is "good genetics."  O-kay.

In the discussion that developed in response to my friend telling us about this little wtf moment, I reflected that I was fortunate.  My former co-workers saw me lose 15-20lbs from diet alone and then start working out seriously and become fitter and fitter-looking in the process. They were completely aware of the amount of work and effort and self-discipline that went into it.  Someone meeting me today for the first time might be under the misapprehension that I'm naturally on the thinner side or that I've always been athletic and thus athletic-looking or that the reason that I'm not overweight is because I'm one of those people who doesn't like tasty food and beer, and thus might make wrongheaded and dismissive comments. My former co-workers, having lived through my bodily (I hate this word, but) "transformation" with me, absolutely didn't.

What they did say--all of them at least somewhat overweight and all of them not happy about it and continually (like I said above) starting a new diet on Monday that usually crashed and burned by Thursday--was "I couldn't do what you do, Andrea."  And they were correct. They couldn't. Because they just didn't care enough to. They didn't want to enough.  Which is IMO absolutely fine.  As I reflected the other day when we were discussing this, my own immersion in getting really fit occurred at a time when my elderly dad who I had been taking care of passed away suddenly, my son who had been really ill for some time had reached a point where he was no longer in crisis at all, and I went through the break up of a relationship. Put all those things together and I suddenly had lots of free Andrea Time to go to the gym. Could I have worked out as much as I do now when I was caretaking two other people, working five days a week, and trying to carry on a romantic relationship? Well, yeah, I could have been one of those people who gets up at 4:30am every day to be at the gym at 5.

I'm not one of those people.

Yes, strictly speaking, no matter how little time I had, I could have made time for the gym. I did, however, not have the energy or the will to do so. And I think that's just fine. I don't judge myself or anyone else who doesn't shoehorn six+ hours a week of working out into their schedule. Sometimes there are more important things in life than having a quote unquote good body. Sometimes those more important things include lying on the couch watching baseball.  No one should feel guilty if they put other priorities ahead of losing weight or gaining muscle or becoming the fastest or strongest 45 year old on their block.  People are allowed to decide for themselves how much effort they want to put in to their appearance and their physical fitness. I firmly believe in that.

On the other hand--you knew there was a "but" coming, right?  On the other hand, I have a real problem condoning people who are completely sedentary.  I won't judge you if you never step foot inside a gym. I won't judge you if you have thirty pounds to lose but you don't really care enough about it to pass up the cannolis. Because, shit, cannolis, man, they're fucking delicious.  I will judge you if you get in the car to drive two blocks. And it's not raining or below freezing, okay? I will judge you if you sit on the bench at the playground watching your kids run around. More than 50% of the time, okay?  I will judge you if you let yourself get so completely out of shape that sprinting a few yards to catch a train makes you feel like you're gonna die or you're so weak that (like a friend's mom who's not much older than I am) you can't carry your own vacuum cleaner up to the second floor. People with actual medical conditions excepted, okay?

There's not making your body a priority and then there's neglecting it such that your actual quality of life is affected.  Two different things.

Please feel free in comments to tell me how full of shit I am. In either direction!

xoxo

a b c d e chromium

My history with taking vitamins and/or minerals is checkered.  Whatever they use to coat vitamin pills with generally makes me nauseated.  Taking them even on a full stomach has, historically, made me pukey.  I swear that a good 50% of my "morning sickness" was in fact a reaction to faithfully choking down those horrible horse-pill prenatals.  And then all those years that I was anemic or borderline anemic--long before my uterus actually tried to kill me, it was doing its best to cripple me, yo--and I was supposed to be taking iron supplements, I hardly ever did for more than a month or two running, because the nausea and world-class constipation they caused seemed actually worse than the weakness and dizziness and compulsion to chew ice (look it up!) that having no freaking red blood cells engendered.

Somewhere in my 40s, I discovered adult chewable vitamins and then adult gummies. For the first time in my life I could take a daily multivitamin without adverse effects. And they were yummy too.  Okay, it's a well known fact that I sorta have the palate of an 8 year old, other than the fact that 8 year olds don't like beer or Irish whiskey, but seriously. Gummy vitamins are delish. I am partial to these of late:

They're readably available at CVS and reasonably cheap, especially since they're frequently on sale and I always have xtrabucks.

Now, I know there have been studies recently suggesting that even taking vitamins is unhealthy and liable to lead to an early death.  I dunno.  I prefer the results of the recent study that said three cups of coffee a day are awesome for your health. I've got that one covered.  (Oh, hush, I never said this was a health blog. I drink alcohol, mainline caffeine, eat cake, am addicted to Quest bars, and still agree that kale tastes like "dirt and sadness". I just go to the gym and lift heavy shit a lot. It's a fitness blog. Also, a digression blog. Deal.) ANYWAY. Maybe I shouldn't even be taking vitamins, but I seriously am not convinced that they're doing me any harm and I feel marginally better when I think I'm making up for whatever's in kale that I'm missing out on.

To get to the point of this post, and there is one I swear to you, recently there was a thread on a message board I frequent asking what multivit everyone takes. A few of us were spreading the gummy vitamin luv.  I just checked back into the thread this evening after a few days to find there were a bunch of posts saying that gummy vitamins were crap and that you don't absorb the nutrients in them. (Which, if they're gonna kill me, that would be a good thing anyway, right?)  Furthermore, cheap vitamins are crap and you need to buy the expensive "quality" ones.  Further investigation proved this advice to come from, oh yeah, mainly supplement company reps whose employers sell expensive-ass "quality" multivitamins. Go figure.

But since I never let my natural cynicism get in the way of actually looking shit up, I googled "gummy vitamins inferior."  I got three pertinent results. One from what appeared to be a supplement company selling expensive vitamins.  One from a healthy living blog probably written by the sort of person who thinks kale tastes better than ice cream. And the third from a message board for people who've had weight loss surgery. Apparently these bariatric patients are at risk for malnutrition and thus must both take vitamin supplements every day and be frequently tested for vitamin deficiencies. All the people in that thread who took gummy vitamins testified that their blood test results were fine and that, no, they were not having any problems from taking gummy vitamins rather than pills.

Maybe it's just because they're telling me what I want to hear (coffee's better for you than kale even!) but I'm choosing to believe the bariatric patients over the supplement company shills.  Besides, I can't afford 45 dollar vitamins, I've got Quest bars to buy. God.

xoxo

i need a twelve step program, or possibly inpatient treatment

"Um, hi, I'm Andrea and I'm, uh, addicted to peanut butter and jelly Quest bars."

In unison: "Hi Andrea!"

Quest bars. Love 'em or hate 'em, they're the protein bar everyone on the interwebs has an opinion on.  In my own lil internet circle, the scale seems weighted towards luv. I had heard about how their macros were awesome and their taste was hnnnnngggg (by which I mean to say, delicious) long before I ever tasted one. Then I had my surgery and there--in a sweet care package sent to me by a friend I'd never actually met--they were, complete with helpful instructions to nuke them for ten seconds or so for maximum awesomeness.   The first time I tried this, I stuck one in the microwave without removing the wrapper. The foil wrapper. OMG I WAS ON NARCOTICS, WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT OF ME?

Ahem.

Well, when I had one that I didn't actually almost set on fire, I wasn't overwhelmed. I might have been slightly underwhelmed. At the least, I was whelmed.  I chalked this up to my taste buds being somewhat funky after surgery/anesthesia. Only certain foods appealed to me. (Hence the eighteen Chobani yogurts and the diet ginger ale in my first postop grocery cart.) I decided to withhold my verdict on the whole Quest bar experience till a later date.

Sometime this spring a later date came to pass. I was buying something else online and I needed to spend a little more money for some discount or free shipping or a gift with purchase or whatever other incentive the clever retailer had come up with to induce suckers like me to drop more cash, so I threw in a few Quest bars in different flavors.  Some were good. Some were meh. Some had sugar alcohols in them that made me unfit to go out in polite society. And then there were the peanut butter and jelly ones. OMG.

I don't know what it is about these things. They're the texture of playdoh, basically, and the color of a breastfed newborn's poop. They have so much fiber in them they're pretty much a rotor router for my colon. They look like something you'd feed the prisoners in a futuristic prison. Well, except in a futuristic prison they'd be made of people. Something like that.

They're delicious. I keep buying the boxes of twelve and eating them in a week. It's like my secret shame. A vaguely food-like substance that only marginally tastes like what the flavor on the label promises and I eat two a day till they're all gone.  But but but...20g of protein and 17g fiber each, yo.

Somebody help me.


Anyway! While I wait for my intervention, I'll share with y'all a recent pic I really love.  I have a couple of vintage dresses, one of which I particularly love because not only is it extremely cute, it has sentimental value.  Sadly, for the last couple years, they've both been too big and just living in my closet.  I tried them on again a couple weeks ago and to my shock, they're now wearable again.  I've finally grown enough lat to take up the space that used to be taken up by my boobs when I was ten-fifteen pounds heavier. Woo!  My friends asked for pictures.

Shoulders not looking too shabby.

Maybe it's the Quest bars.

xoxo