For most of my life, I have been blessed weight-wise. I have been able to eat anything and everything, as much or as little, and I would not suffer from any negative ramifications. Food hasn’t really been a big ‘thing’ in my life-it’s not my friend, I don’t eat when I’m sad or happy, to celebrate or to battle depression. I have plenty of pharmaceuticals that achieve those things. So what I eat and my activity level have not been much of an issue.Until I moved here. As is known, I’m here, living a sort of controlled life in paradise, otherwise known as ‘getting back on my feet.’ Sitting around can really put on the pounds, I’ve found. Still, I’ve stayed thin doing less. I exercise. I don’t eat much. I don’t drink anymore. This should not be happening! Sadly, sitting here, watching the clock mark that my 20’s are becoming and ever more distant dream, seems to have also have brought my metabolism to a screeching halt. By nature, I’m something of a tomboy, so apparently nature thought it would be a funny joke if put all the weight I gained on my body would be just like if I were a guy. You know, the ‘apple’ shaped body, where the first place any ounce goes is right to the gut. Just like a guy. The only difference is a guy can put on a larger pair of pants, button up a bigger shirt, and he’s fine. Better than fine. He’s doing well! Just look at him-he’s not starving. A guy can be quite overweight and look just fine. They’ve got a LOT of leeway here. Women, unfortunately, don’t get off so easy. We don’t have that ‘just buy a bigger button down shirt’ option. The current fashion trends have been baby doll tops for the last several years, and they only exacerbate the problem. And you know what that does to a girl like me? It brings one thing: “THE QUESTION.”“When are you due?” Due? One look in the mirror and all of those extra pounds that makes your boyfriend/fiancé/husband a little pudgy but still cute and perfectly loveable and good looking only seems to do one thing for you. It makes you look pregnant. And for some reason, this seems to be a perfectly acceptable question for ANYONE to ask you. I know of no other question that can ruin your day so quickly. There is no good retort, no good comeback to put that person in his/her place. Really, your only defense is to say “Actually, I’m not pregnant,” and it makes the other person REALLY embarrassed. Still, it doesn’t do a whole lot for your self esteem, the masses of society thinking you’re pregnant, when the real truth is your genetic makeup just decided it liked apples more than pears. It sucks. And I’m not even overweight! I fit in the scales for my height and everything. Goodness, you’d think after the mind they gave me, all filled with who knows what but guaranteed ‘uniqueness,’ you’d think I’d get a break in the body department. I guess I did, for a while, and I’m glad in hindsight of how I looked back then. It would be one of my three genie wishes to look like that again.Oh well. It is what it is. After spending decades hating a perfectly good, useful and lithe body, I’m now here with my baby guy. Karma can be a bitch. I know I can deal with this, though. It’s not that big a deal.But still, for the sake of all apple shaped women everywhere, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE do not EVER ask a female when she’s ‘due’ unless she has expressly indicated that she is, in fact, pregnant. We have enough things to deal with; please do not automatically wreck our self-esteem on top of it all. It’s not nice, and, for the most part, it’s not our fault. We’re NOT lying around eating boxes of Krispy Cremes in front of the TV; we’re doing everything we can to rid ourselves of this ‘belly fat.’ We are not exactly thrilled about this situation either; however, please keep the inquisitiveness to yourself. I mean, it is a pretty nosy question to be asking in the first place, don’t you think? I am sure if one is really pregnant, you will be barraged with a discussion of due dates and stuff like that. Unless it really is that situation and we really are pregnant, however, no matter what tone you were trying to convey like ‘I was just trying to be nice,’ or ‘ I was just trying to have a conversation,’ please, just do not use it anymore. You’ll just hurt someone’s feelings and make yourself look like a fool.
Archive for the ‘Banging My Head Against A Wall’ Category
Duped
09.26
This all started because we went to a wedding expo a few months back. I’d never been to one, the word has come up in conversation, and honestly, we don’t do a whole lot on the weekends. One of the booths had this sort of vibration machine, and I tried it. I was impressed. Wow, you get in better shape just by balancing? 10 minutes of this equals 90 minutes of hard exercise? I was hooked. THEN a couple days later a commercial came on that boasted even BIGGER vibration machines. How could we pass this up?
I persuaded my boyfriend to go to this place, 5R Fitness (http://www.5rhawaii.com/), and the owner was very gregarious. He said it was a gym AND MORE. Above all, it was a gym, but it was also a place of HEALTH. He showed us the routine to health:  the drinking of oak vinegar infused water for detoxification, and then drinking several cups of high alkaline water because the average person’s is extremely acidic, and that’s not healthy. Then we were escorted to these infrared saunas, and ok, this part was absolutely AWESOME. You sit there for 20-30 minutes, sweat like hell, but you don’t smell because it’s kind of like a microwave so you don’t lose any of the salts or something. Then came the Vibrexer.
Now this machine made the one the girl was showing at the expo look like a toy. These ones were used by the NFL, we were told. And that first day, it was a challenge just to stay on it. There were a couple exercises to do, more oak and alkaline water to drink, and that was it. I was hooked! I walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. A one month membership cost about twice as much as an average gym, but hell, this one was going to get me in shape AND make my insides healthy. I’ll spend $125 a month on that.
Even better, this place was about a five minute walk from work, so I could easily do it on my lunch hour. And I did. Religiously. Five days a week I went, sweated, shaked, and drank smoke tasting water. At first I thought it was the best thing ever. I’m something of a sauna junkie, so that was a big part of it. For the first week, I walked out of that place feeling like a million bucks. I was even pushing it on my coworkers, who were surprised at my enthusiasm (come on, I answer phones at an engineering firm; for me to demonstrate any sort of excitement over this job simply never happens).
The next week, I was still there, Mon-Fri, but I started Googling ‘vibrational exercise,’ ‘5R Hawaii,’ and all variations thereof. My feelings were mixed; while there were a number of postings that said it was all a hoax, there were things that mentioned their benefits. Hell, it said Madonna used one; how can you beat that testimony? Also, there were so many different brands for sale. If so many different companies were selling these things, they had to work, or people wouldn’t buy them, right?Â
The place where I was going was really nice in that when we went on a vacation in the middle of this, they added the days we were gone onto the balance of how many days we would have had left if we didn’t go on vacation. I thought that was pretty cool. We were gone 12 days, which meant that when we got back, we had exactly two more weeks.
The trip was great, by the way. Man, just to DRIVE. You really get rock syndrome here in “paradise.” We had a good time even though nearly all of my hometown was on fire which altered our trip plans.
So back to work and back to the club. I’d been going there for three weeks now. I hadn’t lost any weight. My clothes weren’t any looser. Plus, they were yelling at me for increasing the temperature in the sauna. I always turned it back down when I got out; I don’t know what the problem was.
OK, now I’m getting pissed. One month and no results? I’ve worked in gyms before. I know that while you may not have guns of steel just yet, you’re definitely able to see and feel some results. Then one day came and I walked in, and two women walked in right after me. They were prospective customers. “Our focus here is on health more than exercise,” he said, “we’re kind of like a spa,” he says. SPA? He told us this was a GYM. There was no mention of spa. What was this? Turns out it’s this franchise that originated in Korea (oh so that’s why all the TVs were playing something Korean), there were a ton of them in California (oh so that’s what the ‘franchise opportunities available meant on the door), and they all proudly displayed the 5R motto: “Relax, Refresh, Reshape, Realign, Restore.”
I gave this place a full on chance. I gave them a month of my lunch hours. I tried to believe in this program, I really did. But if I’m going to look the same as when I began, I don’t need to give some theoretic ‘gym’ $125 a month of my hard earned receptionist money. For a quarter as much, I can go to a REAL gym.
And man, are my triceps hurting.
Anniversary
09.11
When you think of the term, you think of a length of time spent with another, spent apart, how much time has elapsed since you did or didn’t do something. When it’s a marker of something positive (like my parents recently celebrating having been married for 40 years), it’s wonderful. But what happens when it’s the anniversary of the passing of someone you loved? Then it’s treacherous.
The time had come. Cancer had ridden his body. He had lost a bunch of weight. He had had to have a toe amputated which was cancerous. But here he was,  Rufus Palmer, my golden retriever and most definitely the best friend I’ve ever had, the one who saved me from myself, the one who taught me what love really is, he was the one who was going through all of this suffering. We lived in a farmhouse in Vermont for many years, just the two of us. Every person who met him immediately fell in love with him, including my mother, who did not like animals at all; she ended up loving him almost as much as I had.Â
 Being my dog, I was given two decisions. Do I opt to have him remain here for my own selfish reasons, having him here at a fraction of who he was for a couple more months (which the vet said would be his maximum life expectancy) because I wanted him here at any cost? Or do I somehow find the strength to love him enough to be able to say goodbye forever, at least in this life?Â
All of this happened in the span of one month. In a way, I’m glad, because he didn’t have to endure eons of suffering, but it’s been really difficult to not place some of the blame on this rock of an island. Before we moved here, in Idaho, he was fine and in perfect health. We move here on May 8th, and he’s in this state by September 11th?Â
Dogs are lucky. If you love them enough and you can get your ego and what it wants to shut up for just a second, you can end their suffering, say goodbye, and let them go with dignity. Humans aren’t so lucky, being forced to maintain what most cannot barely consider ‘living’ at any cost.
It all came down to me. My spiritual beliefs are a hodgepodge of different traditions, but I firmly believe that the spirit is eternal and is with us always. If I believed this, really believed this, how in the world could I force the one who loved me so to remain just to allay my own fears? I could not possibly allow another being to suffer so when I knew he would be happy and peaceful in the spirit realm. So it was my decision to say goodbye to him.
 We (my mom, who had grown to love him as much as me, my dad, and my boyfriend) went to the vet. Rufus knew what was up and had grown to hate that place. They put him on a table. They gave him a shot. I sang him a song I’d been singing to him since he was 7 weeks old. And then he was gone.
Then came the hard part. I have never had to experience the death of anyone really close to me, let alone one of the most important people in my world. I bit my lip to keep from crying as I continued going to interviews. Tears came every time a thought of him came up. My boyfriend’s one primary dislike is crying, so this really sucked for him too.
Today marks a year since that all happened. I’ve managed to completely soak a handkerchief while writing this. The notion they tell you that it takes a year to get over someone you’ve lost is just bullshit to this sentimental Cancerian. The pain and the tears may not come as often as this time last year, but they’re still there. They always will be. And today it hurts as much as if this all happened yesterday instead of a year ago.
I always liked the way the Pet Psychic on Animal Planet would put it when talking about losing our fur covered friends. She said “We never ‘get over’ them. We just get used to living without them.” I couldn’t agree more.Â
So as I try to go on with my normal life today, try to keep my mascara from running, my mind lingers on one thing and one thing only: how lucky I was to have been given seven years to be with the most loving, kind, happy furry spirit that was Rufus Palmer. I was very privileged to have been his companion. He showed me a lot about the world. He gave me a reason to live when I couldn’t find one. And he taught me that unconditional love DOES exist, and receiving that gift is one of the most precious things I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Google Helps 30-Somethings With Getting Older
06.18
Hi, my name is Sarah, and I’m single, and I’m “30 Something.” Specifically, I have 13 days left before I can choose to be honest about certain numbers in my life (such as age) or I can go the route of Charlotte from “Sex in the City.” You know, where they’re all together discussing her birthday and she bravely says “I’m going to stick at 35.”Â
Yes, in less than two weeks, I am either going to be 6 squared, or I’m going to be 35 (wink-wink). Every year since I turned 29, without fail, the month of June has been incredibly difficult and dramatic and tragic for me as this whole cloud of “you’re getting older, you’re getting older, you’re still single, you’re going to lose out to your younger competition,…” starts going through my brain like a broken record. Oh, for those of you who were born later, a record is this usually black disc like thing with a hole in it where you would put the hole in the center of this machine called a ‘record player.’ The record player would spin around at a set amount of revolutions per minute-full records spun at 33 1/3 rpm, and for single records which tended to have a bigger hole, it was usually 45 rpm. Most record players’ needles were set to come off the record when finished, but some got stuck on a scratch, some were set to go right back to the start, but needless to say, there would be times when you’d hear the same line, verse, or even song over and over and OVER and OVER until it was so imprinted in your head that you thought you were going to die if you heard that song again.
So being born exactly six months into the year, the month of June approaches and the thoughts start coming. You’re single, you’re in a dead end job, you’re getting heavier, you won’t be able to compete with the younger girls (and you sadly reminisce about when you used to BE one of those lithe younger people. How could you have been so dumb as to think you’d stay that way forever?), and to quote Stuart Smalley from SNL, you’re going to end up being  ’homeless and penniless and  overweight with no one to ever love you.”Â
But not this year. If you have Google as your homepage, you can personalize it with iGoogle, which lets you make your own homepage from a number of pre-formatted things. You can get CNN and People Headlines. You can play hangman. You can see what stage the moon is in. You can put the dictionary in there. However, the coolest thing for me has been “Countdown.” With Countdown you enter a date of importance (say Arbor Day or Flag Day or they day you have scheduled to give your cat a bath), and it counts it down for you. So right now, I have 13 days or 303 hours, 02 minutes, and 18 seconds left. For some reason, I don’t know why, it has totally taken away all of the angst I usually feel about this time of the year. I’m not kidding. 36? Bring it on. I love numbers that are squares of other numbers. So if you’re one of those who gets relatively stressed out and sad about the fact that time is going by and there is absolutely NOTHING you can do to change it, get the Countdown add-on. It’ll give you something to cheer FOR rather than something to dread.Â