welcome to another edition of...

Do You Like How You Look?!?

[studio audience cheers]

Oh, god, not this shit again.  I was saying to my (virtual) weightlifting buddies the other day that I thought I'd lost some of the weight I'd put on over the summer just from being back to working out five or six days a week while tracking my food loosely on work days and mostly not tracking on weekends. And that if I lost a few more pounds that way, I wouldn't be complaining, but if I stayed where I am right now, I wouldn't be complaining either.  I really have no desire to be lean now and I certainly have no desire to go on a real diet.

And then I a.) actually weighed myself today and b.) tried to put on a pair of jeans I'd forgotten I had that I'd bought last spring when I made it down to 111 for that stoopid contest.  Oh hahahaha.  Ha.  It must be be self-delusion or something that I'd lost a few pounds because, no.

That made me feel temporarily all angsty, like maybe I should suck it up and commence weighing every morsel of food that goes in my mouth and start turning down free cookies.**  Luckily I came to my senses, which is why I'm semi-lying in my bed*** drinking a pumpkin beer**** while I type this.

Like that.

BUT I did make sure to be extra active today (yesterday, whatever). It was such a beautiful morning when I left work at 4:45 am that instead of heading to the gym, I took a four mile walk. Then later after I slept a (very) few hours, I did an errand, went to acupuncture, walked from there to the gym to lift, then walked back past a couple subway stops before getting on the train.  All that is to say that I had a total of 23540 steps on October 14. Which is 8.99 miles, apparently.  (What? I couldn't have walked another .01 mile? Goddamn.)  How do I know this? My new phablet told me. It's got some kind of free app that comes with it that counts my steps for me as long as the phone's, y'know, in my hand or in my pocket or in my bag.  I'm toying with getting a Fitbit since so many people I know have them now, but I'm not sure what it's gonna tell me that my phone doesn't. When I don't leave it sitting on a table, that is.

Anyway. I bet if I walked 9 miles everyday I'd fit into those jeans again. Without giving up beer. Though I'm not sure I wanna be 111 pounds.  All angsting aside, I'm pretty sure my middle aged face looks better with the extra poundage.  I dunno.  I wish I didn't care what my face or body looked like, considering it's all a downhill slide till death at this point, but vain people gon' vain.

Speaking of which, I was at the hairdresser last week, vainly getting my roots touched up, and another hairdresser and her 20-something client started discussing how women need to cut their hair short when they reach like 40. I felt like saying, "Oi! I'm sitting right here, bitches."  Instead I mildly said to my stylist, "I highly disagree with that."  She took my part. Which I'm sure is just good business practice, but whatever.  I was almost as offended at the conversation as I was at not being invited to go zip lining. Apparently I'm in some kind of easily-offended stage. Ahem. But maybe the hairdresser chick and her client *didn't think I was over 40* so that didn't know they were insulting me. Yeah. I'm sure that was it. (Oh, I kill myself.)

Finally, speaking of vanity and my new phone, I signed myself up for Instagram. But I haven't figured out how to use it.  I haven't actually figured out how to use the camera on my new phone yet either.  Shut up. I haven't really tried.  In any case, I am malevolent_andrea, just like on here. So if you use Instagram, follow me. Or what-the-fuck-ever it is, I don't know the lingo. (And get off my lawn.) Someday soon there will be pictures of my food and drinks and cat and hikes and the new clothes I buy and maybe douchey gym selfies.

You know you wanna see.

xoxo

**Both the night nurses on my unit and the people in the sleep lab next door always have food. Like, always.  Last week I was eating ice cream cake at 2 am because it was someone's birthday.  Monday I had a giant chocolate-dipped shortbread cookie left over from a sleep conference.  [A 390 calorie muthafucking cookie. I looked it up.]

***I'm not working tonight because I swapped a shift with a co-worker who wanted to be able to go see her kid's cheerleading comp on Saturday. See, I'm not totally heartless.

****I had a case of Wachusett Pumpcan last year, but this shiz is even better.  Dogfish Head, you are the best.