I Can’t.

There are some days when I manage to get by relatively peacefully in terms of disturbing, distracting thoughts.  Today is not one of those days.

I can ignore it and ignore it and ignore it, but the fact is, I am really unhappy with my body right now.  It makes me feel physically sick to look in a mirror.  If I didn’t have to go to work, I probably would never leave my house, because I am so mortified.  I never really looked that small, and now there is just no way for me to escape the fact that I have become exactly what I spent ten years clawing and kicking and screaming to avoid: I am fat.

I went to yoga yesterday for the first time in years.  I like yoga.  I did enjoy it.  But there was an underlying panic in the back of my mind the entire time because I was wearing leggings, in front of other people, and nobody deserves to be subjected to the horrors that are my thighs.

The worst part of this is that it is all self-inflicted.  Yes, I can “blame” my RDs for “making” me gain weight, but the fact is that nobody can make me do anything.  This is all my own doing, so if I’m looking to cast blame on anyone for it, I should look squarely in the mirror.  Though, as previously mentioned, I’m kind of having issues in that department right now…

The only reason I did any of this is because I want to run again.  And when I say “run,” I don’t mean “C25K,” when I am not even running long enough to stop focusing on the fact that I am carrying a disgusting, rapidly increasing mass.  I mean that I would give my eyeteeth to have been able to do the Jerusalem Marathon this year, or even the half.  I mean that I want to be able to roll out of bed in the morning, run six miles, and have it be my easy run of the week.  I mean that I want to run without being afraid that something will break on me.  I mean that I wish I could at least have the chance of being more than just mediocre at something, and not have it snatched out from right under my nose.

I haven’t gotten any of these things.  Thus far, all I’ve gotten is … fat.  And while I don’t know that I can say I hate myself because I am fat, per se, what I can say is that I hate myself because I knew it was happening, I watched it happening, I am still watching it happen, and I’m not doing a damn thing to stop it.

Needle Day

If I were afraid of needles, today would have been a nightmare.  Instead, it was just inconvenient and a bit annoying.

The first batch of needles was actually quite enjoyable; Thursdays are acupuncture days!  I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, so I don’t know how many needles were stuck in me, but there were a lot.

Then I had to go get my blood drawn because I’m seeing my endocrinologist next week, and it’s easier to get the labs done before I see him so that I don’t need to play phone tag to get the results.  Anyway.

Cute, right?  Well, I thought so, until I had five of them plastered all over me!  First two needles in my left arm, then one in my right arm, then a butterfly in my right hand, then a butterfly in my right arm.  At least two of these sites are now bruised.  Lovely.

Aching arms aside, some random outtakes:

Look, I found ready-made pizza dough I can actually eat!  The remainder of which has been frozen in individual portions, so it might be around for a while…

It doesn’t look so bad here, because it’s already been cooked, but when it was raw the dough kept shrinking in on itself, and I had to pile the sauce, spinach, mushrooms, and nutritional yeast in a precarious stack.  Guess I’m lucky it all worked out okay in the end.

Strawberry extract is an amazing thing.  Spurred by a container of strawberry yogurt with an imminent expiration date, I made pancakes using the yogurt as my liquid.

I really, really like this pancake mix.  I also really liked the addition of strawberry extract, so when I was faced with a container of nearly-dead strawberries a couple of days later, I added some to the almond milk and egg white mixture when I made French toast.

Success.

I stumbled across the new cappuccino Larabar today, and even though I don’t like coffee, I had to try it. It wasn’t so bad… considering I don’t like coffee! I still prefer the chocolate, though.  But what really irritated me is that I also stumbled across these über bars, which I cannot have, thanks to the dairy designation.  There is no dairy in them, so this is just stupid, and it makes me angry.  I can’t have Pure bars anymore, either, thanks to that, and I miss them.  (Same problem with Luna bars, and Clif bars, and … well, pretty much every bar out there.)

Well.  That was a random tangent.  But since I mentioned a new product, I can tell you about what happened when I used a product that is no longer new, but which I needed to finish: Near East roasted red pepper and basil quinoa blend.  I sautéed some rainbow chard, plopped the quinoa blend on top of it, and called it a lunch.

This could have been eaten cold, and since I burn my mouth every time I eat something hot, I should just stay away from hot food, but in addition to my own refrigerator, I now have my own microwave.  All I need is a shower and a stove, and I can move in to my office.  Not that I want to do that…

Anyway, I have the microwave, so I had to use it.  Except that Little Miss Genius here neglected to turn off the space heater which turns my frigid office into a steam room, and so after a minute, I found myself in eerie quiet — I tripped a fuse, apparently.  My phone and the overhead lights still worked, but the refrigerator, microwave, lamp, heater, and computer all went out.  Thankfully, the building manager was in at the time and he unlocked the fuse box for me, but I now know that it is stupid to run both the heater and the microwave at once.  Which should have occurred to me at the outset, but I am stupid.

So I will now go to sulk over my sore throat… true to winter form, my mom has a cold and she is generously sharing it with me.  I hope this is all I am going to get.

Apexes and Nadirs

Perhaps that is a bit overdramatic a title… but it does justice to the current state of affairs in these parts.  Said affairs will just flow more smoothly in the re-telling if I just do it chronologically, so I am backing up to Thursday night, when I was debating whether to ride my bike to work on Friday.  I don’t know why this is, but Fridays are my “ride to work” days.  Ergo, I was really annoyed that the weather forecast was being so bipolar: it was going to rain or it wasn’t going to rain, it was going to be windy or it wasn’t going to be windy… I mean, I know I’m indecisive, but the weather isn’t supposed to be that way!

In any event, I woke up Friday morning and checked the weather before heading out on my C25K “run”… supposedly, there were wind gusts of 52 MPH.  I’ve ridden in 40+ MPH winds, and it wasn’t fun, so I decided that 50 MPH winds were my cutoff point, and I wouldn’t ride.

Having made this decision, I started second-guessing it during the first half of my “run,” because it did not feel windy at all.  Then I got to my turn-around point and … oh.  I’m just glad the way home was downhill, because running into that wind and going uphill at the same time would not have been much fun.

Since I wasn’t going to have my bike with me, I decided to stop by the gym on my way to work for some strength training (doctors’ orders, after all), so I was rushing about like a crazy person.  But guess what I discovered in the midst of this frenzy?

I got my period back.

It’s a little insane how excited I was to find this out — I don’t think I even felt that way when I was thirteen!  I’ve since come to my senses and acknowledged that none of this is really fun at all, just the way I remembered, but still.

By then I was really rushing, which explains why my pancakes burned.

My whey protein expires on January 17, though, so I had to finish it.  When I am forced to pay nearly $50 a tub, not a speck of it will go to waste!  It is because of this that I discovered something I never thought I would like, but in fact do:

Millet puffs, Fiber One, blackberries, and almond milk mixed with protein powder.  My whey powder is unflavored, as is my almond milk, so I have no idea why the addition of one should make the other taste better, but who said everything has to make sense?

Anyway, off to work, which was oh-so-exciting as usual, and during which I learned via Facebook that my cousin got caught in the hail on her bike.  Made me glad that I had opted out.  Then back home again — where I ate one of the best kabocha squashes I have ever had.

The sticker on this squash actually said “abobora,” and I got all excited because I’ve never had that before, even though it looks just like a kabocha squash.  Yeah.  Turns out it just means “Japanese pumpkin,” AKA, “kabocha.”

<<insert weekend in which I did nothing but read, eat and sleep>>

Come Saturday night, I decided to try tackling my latest assignment for my photography course.  It is giving me an endless amount of grief — I live in a house, not a photo studio, and lighting conditions are less than optimal!  I ended up having to ask someone to hold the light for me while I put the camera on self-timer and dashed over to hold up a reflector board.  It did turn out in the end, but I will need to re-take them because I used a textured background, which was a mistake.  Oh, well.  At least I finally found floodlight sockets with clamps.  I’ve only been looking for that for two years!

Then, this morning, I opted to brave the elements to try and get some of the outside shots for this assignment.  Yes, it was 17° outside, with a -7° windchill, but what better conditions to try out my newly-acquired Bar Mitts?

I realize that this looks ridiculous.  However, when it comes to preventing death by frostbite, I don’t really care about such things.

Anyway, as it turns out, once you remove your hands from them to take photos, you’re screwed.  By the time I got home, my hands were so cold that I had to sit on them to get any feeling back at all, and they were still throbbing for hours.  And after all this, I don’t think I’ll even be able to use the photos I got!

I also think my chain is messed up, unless I did such a great job of lubing it last night that I just can’t hear it when I shift gears.  Uh huh.

So, to make a long story short, I am incredibly frustrated with this photo assignment, am thrilled that I finally got my period even though I still can’t run the way I want to, and I am generally grumpy because, well, I always am?  Or because I freaking hate winter and I want to move to Aruba and open my own dive shop.

Which brings me to the lowest nadir of all: I should not have been freezing my fat butt off this morning.  I should have been running the Bermuda Half Marathon.  Instead, I just gave them the money so that I should have the privilege of sitting around and hating myself for not being able to do it.

Life is, indeed, sometimes  a beautiful thing.

Randomness

So, so, so, so, so tired.  This “four hours of sleep a night” thing really isn’t agreeing with me.  Not to mention that I’m also getting totally slammed at work, and that would be rough under the best of circumstances, but these aren’t the best of circumstances (see: four hours of sleep a night, above).

On top of that, I am having the worst time with regards to body image these days.  I hate to whine about things like that because it’s stupid and pointless and it won’t solve anything, but there is no way to solve it anyway except for to get rid of all the extra fat I am accumulating, and supposedly that’s a bad idea, even though all I’ve gotten out of this endeavor is extra weight — nothing else has really changed.  (You see why I don’t talk about this?!  I don’t make any sense.)

All that aside, I think I am sick of therapy.  I’ve gotten pretty much all that I think I am going to get out of it for now, and since I need $80 a month to pay for this stupid estrogen patch, I have informed my therapist that for the next couple of months at least, I am only showing up every other week.

And like any sane person who doesn’t have spare cash lying around, I’m going on a vacation next month.  In my defense, this is sorely needed, because my cousin is getting married and my house is being invaded by relatives, and I am so freaking sick of it because this has been literally non-stop since August!  I just need to get away before I lose my mind.  And I need to do my Advanced Open Water dives to get my certification.  In any event, I’d rather spend money on diving than on therapy.

But in the name of frugality, I opted not to buy a dive computer.  I figured it’s not really the same thing as buying a Garmin — I’d use that all the time.  It feels very wrong to spend so much money on a watch that will only see the light of day every couple of months for an hour or two.  Instead, I got what I am calling The Poor Man’s Dive Watch.

Water resistant to 330 feet, as opposed to 50m for my FR60… and if it explodes, it’s only $30.  The Garmins are more expensive!  Besides, I don’t even have my FR60 right now – I sent it back to Garmin for replacement because the band is cracking, and I haven’t even had it a year.

I did, however, spring for a dive knife.  It seems stupid to pay a third of the purchase price just to rent one.

The gloves are to prevent me from leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime.  Ha, ha, ha.

As always, an exhibition of my complete genius:

I’m at the very bottom of my jar of sunflower seed butter.  There’s only about a tablespoon left in there now.  I wanted to make it drizzly.  So I microwaved it.  And it burned.  La la la.

In the world of “random creations which come about due to my being the sole person in this house who will eat anything green, but having packages of those green things which contain several servings,” this…

…turned into this.

Don’t even ask.  My randomness is mind-boggling even to me sometimes.  But it wasn’t bad at all, so who cares, right?

I was going to go for a bike ride tomorrow morning.  It is supposed to rain… so there goes that plan.  Eh, it’s all good, I’ll just sit around and get fatter, at some point I suppose it ceases to make a difference.  And oh, yeah, I need to go return the four fish I bought for my aquarium today, because they’re all dead now.  Surprise, surprise.

I really need some sleep.

“Busy People Get More Done”

For the record, I believe that is completely untrue.  Because if it weren’t, I would be doing something other than sitting on the floor in my bedroom, staring at my computer screen with glazed eyes.  Though sleep deprivation probably is a factor there…

Yesterday I spent an hour waiting to see the sports MD, who says it’s probably just that my muscles aren’t used to running, and that I should “just take it slow.”  How I could possibly take it any slower, I do not know, but okay, then… he also sent me for an X-ray, not really for my peace of mind (since the old fractures didn’t show up on the X-ray initially anyway), but “because of [my] history.”  Meaning, since I am prone to falling apart in truly spectacular ways.

The X-ray showed nothing suspicious on the right side, but it did show healing on the pubic rami fractures on the left side, which is exciting news, even if I already knew that, since it feels so much better.

I thought that I appreciated being able to run before: now it has been taken to an entirely new level.  I don’t care if it’s 13° outside with a -5° windchill, I am going out!!  Though I do have to say, that would be a lot more pleasant if I were actually running the entire time, instead of having to take regular walk breaks…

My base layer, over which I wore a fleece (which I’d normally never wear to run, but I was afraid of freezing to death)  and a running jacket.  And my magic pants, over which I tugged knee sleeves, over which I wore my winter cycling pants.  Mainly because they are deliciously warm, and coincidentally just a bit too baggy so they actually fit over another pair of pants.  It worked out quite well, if you can ignore the fact that running with a chamois kind of feels like running in a diaper.  At least, I imagine that’s how it would feel to run in a diaper.  I’ve never actually done it.

Add in a beanie, face mask, and mittens, and I looked like a crazy person.  But I was a lot warmer then than I was during the rest of the day!  My office was so. cold.  I think today would have been a nice day for them to turn up (on?!) the heat.  But maybe that’s just me.

I’ve complained a million times about how much I hate it that perishable products do not come in smaller packages.  I opened a bag of Daiya a couple of days ago, and yes, I like it… but I do not like that I have to eat it every single day for a week so that I can finish it before it goes bad!  I know, I know, I can freeze it, but my freezer is a bottomless abyss, so I might as well just throw it out.

Anyway.  To help myself out, I finally achieved semi-success in another arena:

I made a corn tortilla!  A very misshapen corn tortilla, but a corn tortilla nonetheless.  The last time I tried this, it was much too thick because I didn’t have a tortilla press.  I still don’t, but I do have wax paper and a rolling pin.  Though transferring it to the pan was quite an adventure…

Corn tortilla pizza!  I think the tortilla was good.  I really wouldn’t know, but it served its purpose quite well, so I can’t say I really care.

Also…

Would you believe that this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had ravioli?!  It was good, of course.  It has mushrooms in it.  It’s impossible for something with mushrooms not to be good.  Unless it’s smothered in cheese, which is just sad.

I have to spend a lot of money at LeisurePro tomorrow.  Well, I guess I don’t have to, but I prefer to have my own gear as opposed to renting.  Though I think I’m going to have to take a pass on the dive computer — it just seems silly to spend that much money on something I’m only going to use for a few hours every couple of months.  It would be nice to be rich and be able to buy whatever I want, but I’m not and I can’t, and I’d rather be able to pay to dive than to own equipment I can’t afford to use since I spent all my money paying for the equipment!

That was, quite possibly, one of the most convoluted sentences I’ve ever blogged.  I think it’s time for me to go to bed.

I Don’t Do Resolutions

It is probably quite fitting that this post will be all over the place: that is, after all, a perfect reflection of me.  It’s not in quite as random an order as it seems, though.  This is the order in which the accompanying photos were taken!

So, I’ve recently become very annoyed with my swimsuit.  I actually have about a dozen swimsuits, but I only really use two of them: the bikini I wear under my wetsuit when I’m diving, and the tank suit I wear to the pool.  The latter seems to have shrunk, or I seem to have grown, in the oddest way.  It isn’t too small, really, but it’s too short.  The straps don’t seem as long as they used to be, and it is not at all comfortable, and there is one spot on my chest that still hurts a little bit from my “broken rib,” and of course the strap puts pressure in that exact spot.  So, it was obviously time for a new suit.  And since this happened with my last stuit (the mysterious “too short” thing), I decided to buy it elsewhere this time.

It isn’t the color I really wanted, but when you can pay $20 for a $70 suit, you don’t ask questions.  The thing is, it feels like it might be a little too short already.  Two sizes up would be way too big, and one size up doesn’t seem to be available for purchase, either because it is a very common size and everyone else already bought it, or because it is a very uncommon size and infrequently produced.  I just can’t figure this out — I don’t have a long torso, so why does this keep happening?!

Not that it even mattered whether I had a suit last week — I actually wore my triathlon wetsuit to the pool.  I’m sorry, but I’m sick of freezing to death.  Just too bad that I had to stay warm at the expense of my ability to breathe… either A) I’ve gotten bigger, B) my wetsuit has gotten smaller, or C) I forgot how difficult it is to shimmy into that thing.  My diving wetsuit has zippers along the bottom of the legs, which makes it a little easier, but this one doesn’t.

I added the C25K podcasts to my MP3 player.  I only use this MP3 player for running, so until now, it didn’t have anything on it but music I’d use to run.  Which might explain why I don’t know how to create separate playlists.  The manual was of no help, since for some reason I have Italian and French versions, but not an English one.  And then I realized that something about which I thought wouldn’t it be cool if it existed, actually does exist, and I created a workout for each C25K workout and sent them all to my Garmin, so now I theoretically don’t even need the podcasts.  Since all that’s going to happen is I will be running merrily along, listening to music, and then that music will be interrupted by a podcast.  Ho hum.

I’m not actually “running merrily along” anywhere.  I went for a lovely 20-mile bike ride this morning — that is quite an odd thing for me to say, since I don’t particularly like riding my bike!  But this was more enjoyable than usual because I actually went somewhere, instead of riding in circles around the park.  That also meant I had to keep stopping for traffic and lights, but it’s not like I’m anything other than painfully slow anyway.  It’s just frustrating because there are a couple of New Years’ races I wanted to do, and I couldn’t do them since I’m so busy “erring on the side of caution.”  I’m pretty terrified of finding out what the doctor has to say, actually.

One of my tri teammates did the race I wanted to do this morning.  I wouldn’t know this, since I blocked her updates from my Facebook feed because I just found it too painful to see, but she randomly sent me a text the other day asking if I was near NYRR.  I’m not, so I told her that, but really, what would she want from there besides a bib?  Maybe I’m oversensitive about this at the moment, but I thought it was pretty obnoxious for her to ask me to do that for her… especially when I haven’t spoken to her in ages!

Because I don’t “do” New Years’ resolutions, there’s no need for me to make this post even longer than it already is — that can wait for another day.  But one thing I do want to accomplish is to finally perfect a recipe for seitan on a small scale.

That’s seitan in that sandwich; trust me, you don’t want to see what it looked like on its own.  I hate that all recipes for seitan seem to serve six, or eight; not being a fan of leftovers, I like to make single-serving recipes.  Three servings is the maximum.  This effort was too liquidy, so I guess I will have to keep trying.

Off to learn some more about Advanced Open Water diving… yay!

Good Riddance

I am not sad that 2011 is drawing to a close.

Sure, it had its good points, but this was its downfall:

As a result of this, I am getting fatter than I want to be (obviously, since I was perfectly fine with staying the size I was), which is doubly annoying because my clothes will fit and then I’ll have to buy new ones.  No, that’s not a typo; I hate feeling constricted, so I prefer to wear pretty much everything one or two sizes larger than necessary.  Gaining weight means that they’ll be the right size, which, in my view, is too small.

All this, and I’m still not going to have what I want, because what I want is to run long, and I’m not going to do that yet, since I have absolutely no desire for a repeat performance of the past few months.  I’m doing C25K instead, and it’s driving me absolutely insane; I don’t want to take walk breaks, I want to run and run and run!!

But the best part of this all, if you inflect the word “best” with the healthiest dose of sarcasm possible, is that my right side feels weird.  As in, I fractured my left pubic rami, and now my right side feels weird.  It’s entirely possible that I am now excessively — but justifiably! — paranoid, because I have been able to run on it and it doesn’t get any worse, but still.  I’m going to kick off the new year, then, with a visit to the sports MD.  Fun times, hey?

What really is fun: I’ve finally decided to just get on with it and obtain my Advanced Open Water Diver certification.  This, of course, means that I will have to go visit some tropical locale to complete the required dives.  Somehow, I think I’ll manage to get over the difficulty of that.

I was going to think about what to do with the blog in 2012, but I decided it’s not worth the technical / emotional hassle; I have too many things to do as it is.  Since it doesn’t matter to anyone but me anyway (which is the way it should be), I am just going to continue blogging whenever I feel like it… and lately, that just hasn’t been very often.  Too bad.

Happy New Year!

Family Math and I’m a Mess… but Happy Holidays

It’s another Cousin Invasion!  I actually tried to figure out my relationship to these people… my mom’s first cousin is their grandfather.  I think that makes them my second cousins once removed.  Which is getting a wee bit ridiculous, but okay, I’ll shut about that before my blood pressure gets too high.

But on the topic of family, one of my sisters-in-law had an absolutely adorable baby girl this past week, and I’d share a picture of her, but I’m not really into the whole “putting photos of other people’s kids online for all the world to see” thing.  So you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

And oh, hey, it’s that time of year again…

obviously not a photo from this year, since today is the third day of chanukah

…which means a family party!  Woo.  Hoo.

 

Anyway.

 

As for me being a mess — I know, way to overstate the obvious, right?  Too bad, I’m stating it anyway.

 

Well, the good news is, I guess, that I won’t be getting bone cancer just yet, because I’m not taking the injections that would cause them.  Which is nice, because they cost about a thousand dollars a month, and my insurance would probably cover about two percent of that if I was lucky.  What’s not so nice is that I’m using an estrogen patch instead.  Which costs me eighty dollars a month… and my insurance is paying about sixty.  Lovely.

 

While I know that some people deliberately set out to lose their periods, I was never one of them.  I’m not going to say I enjoy them, because I think anyone who does is probably slightly crazy, but I never really made the equation in my head that getting my period means I am fat.  And hey, since I always think I’m fat anyway, I may as well not have my bones falling apart on me too, right?

 

I just don’t think that this is going to solve anything, because until fairly recently, my estrogen levels were always normal.  So whatever.  I’m a freak of nature, apparently.  And I hate drugs, and I don’t want to be using this, but then again, I’m good at freaking out about things.

 

And even though I’m allowed to try running again, what I am doing (walk-run-walk-run) is not really something I’d call “running” — I so badly want to be able to just roll out of bed and go for a five-mile jaunt in the morning like I used to, but I am absolutely terrified of re-injuring myself, and I’m afraid that it might not really be healed, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle that.

 

As a totally unrelated side note, I need $1,350.  I compiled a little wish list for myself, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy everything on it at some point, but … it would be nice if the money just fell into my lap so I didn’t have to feel guilty about it!  Except that I probably would feel guilty anyway, so I should just do it already…

 

Oh, and happy holidays to all.  Bonus points if you can figure out why this tree made me laugh.

 

Kuh. Ray. Zee.

…That pretty much describes my week.

Sunday, I stepped on a treadmill.  I walked on it for five minutes, remembering how much it makes me feel like a hamster on a wheel, and then I ran for five minutes, during which I was so ecstatically happy I thought my heart would burst.  (Or maybe that was just my ridiculously high heart rate.)  I walked for another five minutes, and called it quits to see how my body would react over the next couple of days.

Monday, we (my mom, sisters, sisters-in-law, and I) went out for my sister’s birthday.  I also had an excruciating headache during this outing, which was to a restaurant with a menu which I would have custom-ordered if I was trying to find one with very few things I’d actually want to eat!  Pretty much everything was either A) fish or B) drowning in cheese.  Totally not eating disorder related: I have always hated both.

But I suppose I managed to eat way more than enough, anyway.

grilled balsamic portobella cap

the soup of the day was lentil soup -- hallelujah, something without cream!

cucumber roll, because... why not

the (very greasy!!) mushrooms from my mom's vegetable plate side

my sister-in-law wanted to order a mozzarella bowl for the table... somehow i ended up eating about a quarter of the bowl (the literal bowl, not the stuff inside it)

The most annoying thing about this was hearing everyone saying things like I shouldn’t get that and I need to be good and That’s too fattening… I wanted to stand up on my chair and yell at them to shut up already because you people sound like me!!

Tuesday was another oh-so-lovely day.  My sister is having the floors in her house re-done, and so she moved into my house.  With seven kids.  I love them, and all, but I really do need a couple of hours of peace when I’m at home.  Not to mention the fact that it drives me absolutely bonkers to have people stick their noses in my plate when I am eating, and I am not exaggerating, because a kid’s nose is pretty much level with the countertop.  Which I have to use as a table since the actual table is too laden with things.  It looks like a computer lab, what with all the laptops in the house!

I was, however, glad to finally be able to go swimming again — I couldn’t last week because of my so-called broken rib.  But since I renewed my membership sometime in June, and I do it in six-month increments, I called first to make sure it was still active.  I was informed that my membership expires in July of 2012.  And that the pool was closed!!  The silver lining here, of course, is that I somehow wound up with six free months, but… I didn’t get to swim.  Boo.

Instead, I went to my nutritionist.  Where I got verification of what I already knew: I am getting fatter and fatter and faaaaaatter.  Quite frankly, I’m not sure I can be bothered to care anymore.  I want to run again.  It seems I am destined to be a fat cow no matter what I do, so whatever.

I got some new dishware on which I’ve had an eye for months:

Of course, I had to use it right away… primarily because with all of the people in the house, these dishes are the most accessible since I didn’t get to put them away yet!

version one: rainbow chard, sprouted mung beans, butternut squash, green beans

version two: rainbow chard, sprouted mung beans, butternut squash, cauliflower, buckwheat

version three: baby kales, roasted delicata squash, kidney beans. with a dressing i created using apple cider vinegar, wildflower honey, and orange juice. which was surprisingly, plate-lickingly good.

Wednesday morning, I decided enough time had elapsed for me to try running again.  I hate the whole run-walk thing; it drives me crazy.  But beggars can’t be choosers.

Yes, I am easily amused, but I find these corresponding mountains and valleys to be rather entertaining.  I am so much slower than I was three months ago!!  I’m scared to try running any faster yet, though.  Especially because I still haven’t figured out whether or not this hurts.  It doesn’t feel like I’m being stabbed and dying, the way it did during the half marathon, but I’m pretty paranoid right now.  (Side note: see my insane heart rate?!  The weird thing is that it didn’t feel like I was working that hard.  You’d think I would be out of breath, but I wasn’t.  Then again, I am an anomaly.)

That night, I went to PT, where the orthopedist sent me for a general strengthening program.  Evidently I have a backwards tilt to my pelvis — I do everything with an arch in my back, all in the name of “good posture”!  It feels really, really weird to “tuck [my] pelvis in.”  I did say I have pelvic issues…

Thursday is always delightful because I get to go to acupuncture.  And my acupuncture “nap” is very necessary, considering my recent unfortunate habit of waking up at 3.45 AM and staying awake.

I told my acupuncturist that if I don’t get my period soon, I am going to be very pissed, because A) I am fat enough now, and B) look at my face!  I am referring to myself as Vashti, because I am breaking out like crazy.  Not.  Happy.

Is it weird that I find it easier to talk about things like this with my acupuncturist than with my therapist?!  Heh, maybe you really do get what you pay for.  Apparently, my body image needs some work.  No kidding.

Lesson in life: these delicatas are all different sizes, from long and thin to short and squat.  And they’re all equally delicious.

Now I just need to knock that concept into my extremely thick skull.

Stabby

Last week, after my acupuncture appointment, I went back to work and subsequently discovered this in my pants:

Uh, oops.  That was supposed to come out.  Explains why I felt like I was being pricked.  Though I didn’t really mind that much, because now my parents will stop driving me crazy about what type of needles are used in acupuncture — I just brought this one to show them!  If only all problems were solved as easily…

But I also learned a new word: costochondritis.  I had never heard of it before, but when I looked it up, it seemed to match perfectly what my GP explained as a “fractured rib.”  Evidently, it’s really difficult to break the first few ribs unless someone whacks you with a mallet or something, and I’m fairly certain that hasn’t happened to me.  Even if I do feel like my heart has been crushed into a million irreparable pieces.

So, now that I have a name for this “condition,” I’m not really any better off than I was before, since I still can’t actually do anything about it.  I guess it must feel better than it did last week, though, since I wasn’t able to wash out my wetsuit and booties until tonight, because it hurt when I bent over.  Kind of like my heart was falling out of my chest, and frankly, it’s welcome to do that.  Nor would I blame it, since it’s not fair to expect it to put up with this crap for so long.

I was a little surprised when the orthopedist told me I could try to run, because I thought it would be a lot longer — not complaining about that part, you understand — but I dutifully took inventory of all my despicable parts to see how they were doing.  And I was completely horrified to find this: the right side of my groin feels weird.  It doesn’t hurt, really, but it doesn’t feel normal.  This would be a lot less alarming to me if I hadn’t felt something similar on my left side before the half marathon, after which I couldn’t walk for a week.  Or even move without excruciating agony.  Pelvic fractures are not fun.  So, yes, I’d love to try running, but A) I am scared ****less, and B) my chest still hurts.

What I find extremely ironic is that I went for years without any such problems, regardless of whether or not I was eating, or how much.  And now that I’m eating more than I did when I was running, and probably more than I ever have in my entire life, even though I’m doing almost no exercise, I’m literally falling apart.

Seriously.  I don’t know why the hell I even bother.

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Contrary to photographic non-evidence, I actually have been eating.  And eating.  And eating.  But I think I already mentioned that.  I just haven’t felt like sharing the fact that I have turned into one of the world’s most gluttonous greedy pigs, but then I realized that this is old news, even if it’s just on a different scale now.  So.

I bought this sunflower seed beverage quite a while ago, but never got around to using it.  I finally opened it today because my jar of sunflower seed butter is nearly empty.  I know, that sounds completely unrelated, but it’s not.

I am nothing if not obedient, so I had to make these pancakes.  I used the buckwheat pancake mix that has been sitting on my countertop for ages (yes, I have a problem in which I accumulate products that will sit unused forever if I don’t consume them immediately).

Like I said, I am nothing if not obedient, so I had to add syrup, which I personally thought was a bit of an unnecessary addition.  I loved the pancake mix, by the way.  As for the sunflower seed beverage… well, it tasted nothing like sunflower seeds.  I double-tested that by using it in a bowl of cereal.  It’s fine by me, since I don’t actually like sunflower seeds.

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In a highly unusual turn of events, I slept fourteen (interrupted) hours last night.  That’s three nights’ worth of sleep, which is awesome, but what’s not awesome is that now I am never going to be able to fall asleep tonight.  Quite a vicious cycle.

And I really love the oblivion that sleeping gives me… because these days, I just don’t like to be awake.  I’m kind of in a “stabby and hating everything” mode.  Joy to the world.