Posted by beth on May 16, 2012
I still don’t own a scale, so I still can’t tell you if I’ve lost any weight. However, I went to Jonya’s (JBeau+Tonya’s) wedding on Saturday, and Sharon told me I looked like I’d lost weight, so there’s that. It could have just been the effect of my new under-dress casing, a fabulous item I picked up at Kohl’s, which, incidentally is basically paying me to take things off their hands at this point. Thanks, Kohl’s! And let’s talk about this casing for a moment. I call it a casing because that’s exactly what it’s like – the casing of a sausage. I shimmy myself into it, and it holds all the jigglies together. I bought this one for three reasons.
- It doesn’t have an underwire. It has sort of a shelf bra, so if you’re looking for something to strengthen the force of your bazooms (on high ground, close together for double the power), look elsewhere. But if you’re looking to make them less likely to fly out of your strapless dress, boom. Done.
- It doesn’t have any wires or plastic piping forming a constrictive cage around my torso and making me hope no one asks me to dance and then puts his hand on my back to discover I’m wearing a brace.
- On the tag, it said, “Fat Free Dressing.” I couldn’t resist.
But back to the topic at hand. I don’t know if I’ve lost any weight, and I’ve honestly not been doing the best job of keeping track of my calories, and I’m not exercising in the classical sense, but let me tell you about my day today.
I taught for four hours, and then I changed classrooms, taking all my crap with me, which means I:
- did about 15 squats while holding foot-high piles of textbooks.
- walked up and down at least 20 flights of stairs.
- stood up for about 5 hours.
- rearranged furniture.
Then I came home and chucked old fruit out into the woods. I mean, this is like a baseball player’s normal workout, right? I’m totally eating an Oreo.
Posted by beth on May 9, 2012
I got a massage today for the first time in I don’t know how long. Years. It was a 90-minute massage, which I’ve never had before, and honestly, y’all, it messed me up. I’m so out of it. When you get a massage, they always tell you to take it easy for a little while. They say not to do anything strenuous for the rest of the day, and to give yourself plenty of time to get up and running again after you get done with the rub down. But usually after a 50-minute massage, I’m pretty set. I’m relaxed and feel great, and I need a few minutes to get off the table, but once I leave the spa, I’m good to go. But it’s been two and a half hours now, and I still feel like a wet noodle. I think I could go to sleep right now for the night, only I can’t do that because I have community group tonight. Bah.
The other thing is she used suction cups on me. Have y’all ever had this? They were silicone cups that she suctioned to my back and then pushed around. It’s supposed to create space between your skin and your fat and muscles or something because it pulls your skin up. I don’t know about all that. All I can tell at this point is that I have like three hickeys on my back from where she left the cup on while she re-lotioned me, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sore tomorrow.
Also, I’m starving and a little feverish, and I’ve peed like four times since I left the joint. Whether or not this was a beneficial thing remains to be seen, but she shonuff got something moving in there. You know, circulation and mess. We’ll see.
Posted by beth on April 29, 2012
I am 32 years old, and I played my first drinking game yesterday. It was also my first time creating one, and having never played one before, I’m not really sure how they’re supposed to go, but W-Josh and I were watching the second season of Downton Abbey, and we thought we’d make it more interesting. After two rum-and-Cokes apiece, we both tapped out, which was definitely for the best because the end of the season is really good, and based on when we started playing the game, we wouldn’t have remembered the last episode if we’d carried the game out through the whole season. Plus, I’m too old for that mess.
So like I said, I’m not really sure how these things are supposed to work, but from what I’ve gathered over the years, it seems like the only point to a drinking game is to find as many reasons as possible to drink, so here’s what we came up with. Feel free to add rules and tweak things any way you want should you be inclined to play. And if you make improvements, I’d love to hear them!
When watching any episode of Downton Abbey, take a drink whenever:
- anyone says, “Mr. Bates.”
- Mary and Edith exchange cattiness.
- there’s a close-up of anyone showing signs of inner turmoil on their face. Take two drinks if this person is Mary.
- there’s a long camera shot of the house.
- a woman makes a non-verbal utterance.
- the grandmother says something sassy.
- Mr. Bates takes the fall for something that wasn’t his fault.
- Thomas and O’Brien make an evil plan.
- anyone overhears or eavesdrops on something.
- Daisy gets fussed at.
- Sybil and the chauffeur have a conversation in or around the car.
- Mr. Carson comments on the inappropriateness of maids serving dinner.
- anyone mentions or alludes to the incident involving “poor Mr. Pamuk.”
Posted by beth on April 23, 2012
Although my goal-setting to goal-achievement ratio is…quite bad, I am not discouraged. If you could have seen my room before Sunday and then see it now, you’d give me bonus points for the transformation. I found a bag in there of things from my Christmas stocking. No joke. And I chucked a whole big trash bag of stuff. I’m wondering now if I could do that every weekend. That would definitely be one way to simplify. Hmmm…
Here’s how the list stands now:
- Sidewalk chalk a driveway.
Salsa dance party in my living room.Swing! (aka play on a playground)Story telling night.- Four square tournament.
- Random dress-up night.
- Photo scavenger hunt.
- Iron Chef: Cookies (bake cookies using ingredients found in the kitchen).
- Beach trip! (complete with sand castle contest).
- People watch – make up stories about the people.
- Public craft night (invite passers-by to join in).
Picnic.- Make a friendship bracelet/mail it to a friend.
Stargaze.- Kickball game.
- Field Day!
- Segway tour.
- Rock/Wall climbing.
- Progressive dinner.
- Offer to do people’s caricatures in the park.
Send a silly package.- Spend a day in a podunk town just looking around.
- Finger paint.
- Bake cupcakes and give them to my neighbors.
- Let a child pick out an outfit for me at Goodwill. Wear it to work.
- Buy a plate from Goodwill, paint it to commemorate my Awesome April Adventures, and display it on my mantle.
- Set up a free face painting table downtown.
- Ride a horse.
Go somewhere after hours.- Ride the carousel at Pullen Park.
I’ve still got the plate ready to go. I just need to come up with a design. And I have a plan in place to go horseback riding this Friday! Plus, there’s sidewalk chalk in my car, so that can happen at any moment. And let me just tell you about the swinging. I went on Saturday night after seeing Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, which is really good despite the fact that it sounds really weird and stars Emily Blunt, whom I’d like to hate (because she’s married to John Krasinski and I’m not) but just can’t. And furthermore, who knew it was the Yemen? That was new for me.
Ok so as it turns out, I didn’t want to tell you about the swinging at all, but about the movie, which I’ve done now. Go see it if it’s playing near you. It was delightful.
In unrelated news, I’m sort of on a diet. It’s not terribly strict or anything. I’m just watching how many calories I eat with a goal of losing a goodly amount of weight by this time next year. I’ve been doing it for a couple of weeks, which means theoretically, I should have lost a couple of pounds by now, but since I don’t own a scale, there’s really no way to know, and that’s ok. It’s not about the number, just about paying attention to how much I’m eating and hopefully fitting into smaller clothes in a year. I’m using a Nook app called “Lose It,” which I’m told works sort of the same way Weight Watchers does: You’re allowed a certain amount of calories each day depending on how much you weigh, how tall you are, how much weight you want to lose, how quickly you want to lose it, etc. If you exercise, you’re allowed as many more calories as what you burn doing the exercise. Pretty simple, really. I’ll let you know how the smaller clothes thing is coming along in a few months, but it might help me stay motivated if you tell me I look thinner the next time you see me. I will have forgotten by then that I wrote this, so it doesn’t even have to be true. Thanks, friends!
Posted by beth on April 14, 2012
So I’m sick. This is like the 5th cold I’ve had this year, which is ridiculous. I generally get one cold in November and maybe one in April or May and that’s it. This is just out of control. But I don’t want to let it get me down. There comes a point when you feel like another episode of How I Met Your Mother would just be a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. For the record, that point comes after eight episodes (plus one episode each of The Office, Up All Night and 30 Rock). So eleven. Eleven episodes. A dozen is one too many.
And also, I feel like today is already a success on the adventures because Donald E. Miller (E for Effing) CALLED ME ON THE PHONE. Rang me right up. Said, “Hey, is this Beth?”
And I said, “Why yes, yes it is, and who might you be, Mr. Sultry Voice?”
And he said, “This is Don Miller,” to which I laughed, “Oh Don, how lovely of you to call! I got the peonies you sent, and they are simply breathtaking.”
“I’m glad you liked them,” he demured, and I could hear the blush in his voice, but he cleared his throat at that point, and I sensed him manning up for the real purpose of the call.
“The reason I called,” continued Don, “was to ask you a question.”
“I’m all yours. I mean, I’m all ears, Don. Go ahead.”
Deep breath. Pause. Muffled encouragement from his buddies in the background. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
“Why Don, what a surprise. I thought you were in Tennessee.”
“I am. But I thought maybe we could Skype it?”
And that’s why I have to get off the couch now. I have a Skype date with Don in five hours, and I don’t have a thing to wear.
OR
He called to thank me for going to see Blue Like Jazz last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Both the movie and the phone call, I mean. That is the true story.
But since “Talk to long-time quasi-celebrity crush on the phone” isn’t on the list of Awesome April Adventures, I feel like I should at least make a friendship bracelet or find a park and swing. But both of those would require me to get off the couch. So off the couch I must get.
The truth is I don’t know what to do with myself. I thought my life was going in a particular direction, and I was all geared up to do what needed to be done for that, but now it seems that I’m headed a different way – a way I didn’t make a plan for – so I don’t know what my next steps are. And in the absence of a plan, my default is to sit on the couch and watch TV. But that doesn’t help things. What I really need is to just start moving, like when you get into a cab and say, “GO!” and figure out your destination a few blocks later. Ok, so I’ve never done that. You know who does that? The people on How I Met Your Mother. Apparently, for all my talk of hating to plan, it turns out I need at least a rough outline. But in the absence of a rough outline or even a next stop, I still need to get off the couch.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I should probably start by changing out of my jabambas.
Posted by beth on April 9, 2012
Well apparently I don’t really have time for all the awesomeness I set out to do this month, but it sure is fun trying. At this point, the list looks like this:
- Sidewalk chalk a driveway.
Salsa dance party in my living room.- Swing! (aka play on a playground)
- Story telling night.
- Four square tournament.
- Random dress-up night.
- Photo scavenger hunt.
- Iron Chef: Cookies (bake cookies using ingredients found in the kitchen).
- Beach trip! (complete with sand castle contest).
- People watch – make up stories about the people.
- Public craft night (invite passers-by to join in).
Picnic.- Make a friendship bracelet/mail it to a friend.
Stargaze.- Kickball game.
- Field Day!
- Segway tour.
- Rock/Wall climbing.
- Progressive dinner.
- Offer to do people’s caricatures in the park.
Send a silly package.- Spend a day in a podunk town just looking around.
- Finger paint.
- Bake cupcakes and give them to my neighbors.
- Let a child pick out an outfit for me at Goodwill. Wear it to work.
- Buy a plate from Goodwill, paint it to commemorate my Awesome April Adventures, and display it on my mantle.
- Set up a free face painting table downtown.
- Ride a horse.
Go somewhere after hours.- Ride the carousel at Pullen Park.
Not too shabby. I’ve also purchased the plate to paint, but I haven’t painted it yet, I have located children to pick out my outfit, but we haven’t gone shopping yet, and I WAS going to do the sidewalk chalking of the driveway, but that plan got rained out. Oh well. Y’all, even if I only get half of these things done, this is so much fun.
Also, in unrelated news, I’m exercising again. Today I did 30 minutes of an aerobic dance workout in my living room. If you ask really nicely, I might show you my hott new moves. But you have to say the magic word (and it’s not “please”). I also bought a Shake Weight, and while I might tell you I got it instead of the dumbbells because one Shake Weight was cheaper than two dumbbells, let’s be honest, that’s really just the excuse I gave myself. Fun times with that are on the horizon. Without a doubt. Just as long as I don’t give myself a black eye with it.
Posted by beth on March 29, 2012
Well, with just a couple of days left in March, I’ve been hard at work on my list of Awesome April Adventures. Thanks to all of you who made suggestions, the list is really quite superb. Now, they are numbered so I would know when I had enough for each day of the month, but the numbers do not in any way correspond to the dates on which I will do them. Some will clearly need to be done on a weekend due to the time they will require or the time they will require me to go to bed, but the others could happen at any time. Please let me know which ones you’d like to participate in, and I will get up with you to plan. Refer to the actual activity and not the number. You know I don’t do well with numbers. So excited, y’all! April is going to be awesome!
- Sidewalk chalk a driveway.
- Salsa dance party in my living room.
- Swing! (aka play on a playground)
- Story telling night.
- Four square tournament.
- Random dress-up night.
- Photo scavenger hunt.
- Iron Chef: Cookies (bake cookies using ingredients found in the kitchen).
- Beach trip! (complete with sand castle contest).
- People watch – make up stories about the people.
- Public craft night (invite passers-by to join in).
- Picnic.
- Make a friendship bracelet/mail it to a friend.
- Stargaze.
- Kickball game.
- Field Day!
- Segway tour.
- Rock/Wall climbing.
- Progressive dinner.
- Offer to do people’s caricatures in the park.
- Send a silly package.
- Spend a day in a podunk town just looking around.
- Finger paint.
- Bake cupcakes and give them to my neighbors.
- Let a child pick out an outfit for me at Goodwill. Wear it to work.
- Buy a plate from Goodwill, paint it to commemorate my Awesome April Adventures, and display it on my mantle.
- Set up a free face painting table downtown.
- Ride a horse.
- Go somewhere after hours.
- Ride the carousel at Pullen Park.
Posted by beth on March 24, 2012
There’s been a lot of talk in my life lately about adventure. Basically I want one. All the time, always. And I’m willing to go to great lengths to get one, which often means I leave the country. It’s almost like a drug, and my addiction to it started in high school with small things. I grew up in a small town that did not offer much in the way of wholesome entertainment for adolescents, so we had to make our own fun. They were silly things really – go to K-Mart and take pictures of each other inside big trash cans (clean ones they were selling, not dirty ones they were using), put weird things in friends’ mailboxes, sidewalk chalk friends’ driveways in the middle of the night, throw a frisbee onto the roof of the church, compile elaborate and precisely designed medleys and choreograph lip-sync routines for them. And this may come as a surprise to some of you, but we did all of these things totally sober.
The silliness continued into college, but as I got old enough and started making enough money to go on grander adventures, that is what I wanted to do. Ringing and running people’s dorm rooms just wasn’t as fun once we realized we could be at the beach at dawn and still get back in time for our 11:15 classes. Then it was driving through the night to catch a concert in Virginia Beach, a wedding in New Jersey and another concert in Raleigh all in about a 36-hour period. And before I knew it, I was on a plane to Honduras, then I was living in New York, backpacking through Europe, sleeping in airports with strangers, working at a community college in Raleigh…
Wait. Did anyone else just hear that record scratch?
The thing I love about adventure is that you come away with the best stories. I’m learning, though, that you can go on a big trip and not come away with a single awesome story, or you can stay right where you are and make your own adventure. When we were in high school, we didn’t even need to leave the neighborhood to do something we’d still be talking about fifteen years later. Shoot, when I worked at Caswell, we didn’t even have to leave the camp.
The secret is to find or make the fun wherever you are, and it can be as simple as doing something totally out of the ordinary. G.Lover and I were just on our way home from Durham, and we started talking about The Hunger Games. She hasn’t read the books yet, and I told her she could borrow my copy of the first one, but I thought it was at work. I work in a church building, and if you can believe it, those suckers gave me a key, so I suggested we go over there and get the book out of my cabinet. It was 10:30 on a Saturday night, so of course there was no one there, but we were both sort of nervous that there would be an alarm or a security person or something. And even though I’m at this place every day of the week, it felt completely wrong to be there on a weekend night. The red light coming from the exit signs was alarmingly bright, all the shadows were different, it was eerily quiet, and I was sure that the police would show up at any moment. On top of that, the book wasn’t there.
Another way to make your own fun is to develop your sense of curiosity and amusement. When I lived in New York, I was always fascinated by the people – who they were, how they became that, what they wanted, where they were going, why they were doing what they were doing. It was a never-ending source of entertainment. I miss that about NYC. I feel like people here are blander than there (friendly for sure, but nothing like this guy), but I’m starting to wonder if I came with that preconceived notion and therefore set Raleigh up to be boring before I ever arrived.
What if I spent more time out amongst the masses? What if I did more people watching and made up more stories about them? What if I made riskier mischief? What if I chose to be amused rather than annoyed? What if I spent less time watching Netflix and more time watching cloud formations or kids at the park or couch-to-5k-joggers at the lake? What if I were less concerned with my to-do list and more psyched about my karaoke song list, less worried about losing 20 pounds and more excited about salsa dance parties in my living room, less afraid of what people might think of my writing and more curious about what my characters might do? What if I had more fun on purpose? This sounds pretty awesome.
So here’s what I propose: For the month of April, I will do something creative, out of the ordinary, borderline crazy or just totally different every day in the name of fun and adventure. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I’m not promising I’ll do all the suggestions, and I will not sacrifice my morals or my sleep for any of them, but other than that, I am open to taking risks. And if you want to join me for any of them, I’d love that. Love it. Please join me.
Suggestions can be little things I can do it five minutes or big things that’ll take me a whole weekend. Whatever you’ve got, shoot.
Posted by beth on March 19, 2012
We all have those days. You know the ones. You just feel…blah, and you don’t know why. Well I’m here to help you figure it out. So the next time you have an icky day, ask yourself these questions:
- Am I tired? If the answer to this is yes for me, nothing is really going to help me except a solid nine hours of sleep.
- Am I hungry? I tend to get myself into trouble with this one because rather than figuring out what the problem really is, I sometimes just eat. And that’s not helpful at all
- Do I need to poop? Seriously, if you need to poop, please make that happen. Even if you’re still tired and/or hungry, you’ll feel much better.
- Am I dehydrated? This is a sneaky one, but not getting enough water really throws me off.
- Do I need a hug? The answer to this is always yes, by the way. So the next time you see me, just remember that. People need to be touched. And cuddled.
- Have I been staring at a computer screen for more than an hour? Or whatever your limit is. If your eyes are dried out and crossing, go outside and look at trees.
- Am I dirty? There are not a lot of worse things, in my opinion, than being able to smell myself. Grimy teeth, gritty hands and a greasy face are right up there too. Soap.
- (For introverts) Have I had too much people time? You know what I’m talking about.
- (For extroverts) Do I need more human contact? You definitely know what I’m talking about.
- Do I know that I’m loved? I know, I know, I went and got all serious on you, but seriously, this is important.
I am currently deficient in a few of these areas, so if you have an extra few hours lying around that I can borrow for some extra sleep tonight, or if you want to come over tomorrow afternoon and snuggle, please let me know. I’m going to drink some water.
Posted by beth on March 8, 2012
Ok first of all, I’d like to point out that I’ve blogged more this week than I have any week in the past, what, year? In Europe without constant internet connection, borrowing other people’s computers, I’ve had more opportunity to blog than at home. Europe is good for me. So here’s a quick update:
I arrived in Madrid on Saturday morning, where I was picked up by Jorge and taken to the train station. I got on a train and rode to Caceres, where I was picked up by Tim and taken to Betsy’s apartment. I spent the rest of Saturday, all day Sunday and Monday breakfast with Tim and/or Betsy. They introduced me to lots of fun people, I got to go to church on Sunday with them, and we went up a big hill to a chapel where you can see the whole city. It was lovely. On Monday morning, they put me on a bus to Bejar, where Craig picked me up. I stayed one night with him and his lovely (Spanish) wife, Ada. Bejar is tee-tiny, y’all. Like I think I could walk the whole thing in about ten minutes. They were cool, though, and one of their sons force-fed me bananas all day. I definitely got my five that day.
On Tuesday, Craig put me on a bus back to Madrid, where I found AMARIS!!!!! waiting for me at the Ibiza Metro stop. I am not sure that Madrid was ready for us together, but I think it handled the situation quite well. We traded bags and headed out to meet Chris and Paul, two guys she’d met through her classmate Kent, who was staying in the same hostel with them. Are you confused? Welcome to Amaris.
The four of us (later five when Kent joined us) walked what seemed to be a large portion of the city looking for a restaurant that had vegetarian paella, but by the time we found it, it was closed, so we went across the street to a market that had absolutely delicious mozarella concoctions among other things. Then we hit up a bakery our friend Adam had told me about. Amaris bought me an empanada de dulce de leche that was aaammaaaaazziiiiiiiiiiinnng (I sang that) for my birthday, and then we made a video that I think she put on facebook. After that, we went up to a park that overlooks the city, where we took super silly photos. Super.
Jorge picked me up around 8:30 and took me back to his house, where I had dinner with him and his wife Elisabeth. They are both German but have been in Spain for 20-some-odd years. Jorge has actually been there longer, and the story of how Elisabeth got there is both hilarious and insane, so ask me to tell it to you later. I spent the night with them, hung out with them the next morning, and around 3 in the afternoon, Jorge took me back to the airport. As I sat on the plane, exhausted, I took comfort in the fact that I would only be in one city in Italy. One city! For two and a half whole days!! What joy! What bliss! I fell asleep.
When I woke up, y’all, we were flying over the Alps. If you have never done this, you absolutely must try to. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was really cloudy, and I couldn’t really see anything. Then we broke through a cloud, and holy crap there they were. Like RIGHT THERE. Like we could have dropped a skiier. I took pictures, but they don’t really do it justice or properly show just how close we were. I’ll show them to you when I get home anyway, but seriously, you need to do it. I just kept imagining the Von Trapps crossing them on foot (even though I know they weren’t the same mountains they crossed), and I was amazed.
Ok, so. I got into downtown Milan around 8:15 last night, where Daniel picked me up and took me to Ron and Amy’s house. They had prepared a delicious meal for me, and we chatted for a bit. Then Ron brought me back to Joi and Daniel’s, where I’ll be staying while I’m here. Bless their hearts, they had made up the sleeper sofa and turned down the corner of the bedding. All it would have needed to be a fancy bed and breakfast was a mint on the pillow. Oh but this morning…
Y’all, no mint is necessary with a breakfast like that. Joi made pancakes and homemade apple sauce. They had peanut butter, maple syrup, honey, bananas and walnuts to put on top. It was absolutely amazing. Then they drove me up to Lake Como to hang out and walk around. I will show you pictures of this too, but I’ll just say this: cute town + serene lake + snow-capped Alps + risotto alla parmigiana + knowledge that all this is accessible by train from Milan = Spain Who?
That’s been about it. On the way back, we stopped by a health food store so Joi and Daniel could get oatmeal. Joi said they sell it in regular grocery stores now, but they used to only sell it in health food stores and pharmacies. Yes, pharmacies. Because it’s a health food. I think they really just wanted me to see all the amazing vegetarian options available here. For the record, there are many. We came back to their place for a snack of dried figs, apples, walnuts and cheese.
Now we’re resting a bit before I go over to Ron and Amy’s again for dinner. Actually, I think we might be going out with an Italian guy from their church, but I’m not 100% sure about that. We’ll see.
Okie doke. That was your “short” update. If I have time again before Sunday, I’ll try to give you another one, but I don’t know if that will happen. I would love to tell you more when I get home, though, so please ask me lots of questions if there’s anything you want to know.
Love y’all!
Exercise Log
