My Best Body Ever....

That's what one of the many fitness books I've bought over the years is called. I read it, tossed it aside, nothing really changed. I have to say, I feel like I've been working out forever. I was active in sports as a kid. Got really into swimming there for a while. Started jogging a bit in high school and college. Lost a massive amount of weight after my sophomore year (after my father, god bless him, asked So how much do you weigh now?), and got a-little-too-thin my junior year when I focused on just smoking cigarettes and eating the occasional container of nonfat yogurt - but remained OBSESSED by food and eating. OMG, I was so hungry all the time, but I *did* get down to 105 pounds, which on a 5'7" frame is not exactly as attractive as you'd hope. But people would say, Wow! You look great! No one ever says that when you gain weight. No one ever says it when you're just your normal weight. They say it when you're going through a divorce and chain-smoking and never eating and you lose 15 pounds the hard way. You look great!

This is what my divorcing friends tell me anyway.

So, I continued to work erratically at fitness through my 20's. Sometime after the 105 pounds years, I boomeranged in the other direction. Gave up being a vegetarian, and began scarfing down cheeseburgers and onion rings and tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milk. Anyone see a healthy relationship with food in there? Me neither. I was also still smoking - which, despite my claims to the contrary at the time, really made engaging in regular fitness - and actually getting better at whatever I was doing - very very very difficult. Yes, i could smoke and still go jogging. But jogging was painful and unpleasant and a chore - never this cruising, flowing, meditative-inducing activity that it is (sometimes) now. My lungs strained with every breath, my legs never really got stronger, and I certainly couldn't get that endorphin rush everyone gushed about.

So, I continued through my 20's, living at the beach in San Diego, which is LOT less healthy than it sounds. There I was, chain-smoking, chain-drinking, smoking pot, popping pills, developed a nice little cocaine habit, popped a lot of ecstasy, gulped down phen-fen, rode my bike a lot, roller bladed a lot, drank and smoked more, and pretty much generally lived in this extremely unhealthy fashion. But, as my clients today usually point out, this is how ALL my friends were living too - so it was normal as far as we were concerned.

To be continued......

New Update

Well, hey, it's been a while. Hello handsome!

Things are good here. Busy with work - I've been doing better at managing stress but I still work to get in my cardio workouts during the week. I think I'm spending too much time at work - damn job is getting in the way of my waistline. Speaking of which, the personal training combined with 100 DoH has really started to show some results. My body fat percentage is down to 18, I've lost 3 inches on my waist since December, and about an inch everywhere else. I'm two pounds from my weight goal. The only thing that's really not going well is the cardio - it's just tough for me to get in 30-45 minutes each day. The real problem is that I have trouble sleeping, so I usually take a sleeping pill, but then I sleep too late the next morning and I have to rush off to wherever and I never make it the gym. I'm trying to get myself off the sleeping pills, but then I'll be tossing and turning until 4 am and that's REALLY frustrating. I've had sleeping problems for years and you know I do all the wrong things, have too much caffeine in my diet, eat too late in the day, read in bed, etc. And instead of changing all those things, I just pop a Tylenol PM, which is effective but also has its drawbacks.

Wedding planning seems to be in the final stages. I picked up my dress last week and I think it looks great. I'm really happy with it. I'm just sad I have no one to show it off to yet. I came home and begged eBoy to let me show it to him, but he refused (now he gets all traditional on me). So it sits in the closet. If he goes away next weekend, maybe I'll put it on and clean the house and then sit around and drink a glass of (dealcoholized) white wine. Anyway, we picked out our wedding announcements, which we'll hopefully be ordering this week. And I turned the rest of the planning over to eBoy, I just didn't have the bandwidth.

Work is better. It's still a totally evil pit of vipers, but I'm coping better. I really hope the interview with the PsyD program next week goes well though. I need to get back into school.

Ba hah!

Best line from SNL this weekend:

"50% of marriages end in divorce. The other 50% end in death. I hope you two die."

eBoy and I can't stop laughing.

My dress is ready!!!! I suck at my job!!!

Get to pick it up today. I'm thankful that laying on death's gray doorstep last week helped me lose that last six nagging pounds. Now I just have to continue starving myself until April.

what?

You may be asking yourself, but DrM, are you at least feeling better? And the answer is NOT in the least! Well, maybe a scoshe, since I can actually get out of bed. But by the end of the day, I'm pretty worn out. I feel like one of those delicate ante bellum southern women. I get the vapors and have to lie down a lot. Maybe I'll start carrying a hand held fan around and waving it around whenever the situation gets a little risque.

At anyrate, instead of doing actual work at group last night, I tried just sticking in a video on meth. here, watch the video, learn something, go home, stop doing drugs. And then one of my clients starts whining, waaahn, I'm triggered! I'm triggered, I want to use meth, bitch bitch bitch. And I'm thinking, God dammit, now i have to work. So there's an extra hour I have to put in with group, talking this guy back from the ledge until he was managing his cravings and ready to go home or go to a meeting or whatever. Get out, stop doing drugs.

I just wanted to go home, lay on the couch, and watch reruns of How I Met Your Mother. I've become the worst drug counselor in the entire world. Bleah.

Georgie needs a parade....

Does W's trip to Africa remind anyone else of that scene in Soapdish where Sally Field's character is so depressed that in order to boost her sagging little ego, she goes with Whoopie Goldberg out to a mall in Jersey so she can be "spotted" by clamoring fans who will ooh and ahh over how fabulous she needs to believe she is?

Just sayin.

There will be phlegm.

Doesn't really have the same ring, does it.

Going on a week now. Diagnosis: bronchitis. Prescription: Antibiotics and codeine. Result: not much. Although I have lost 5 pounds, and I can assume this is because everything now tastes like....shampoo.

This has been awful and I'm tired of it. I've missed an entire week of work, met with a counselor who informed me that it was my stress level that's been killing my immune system, and have left the house exactly twice, both times to go to Kaiser. It was sunny and warm today, and I was happy to work in the garden for a couple of hours. I might not be getting any better, but I have to get back to regular old life.

Cough cough, hack, choke.

When Cameron was in Egypt's land...let my Cameron go

I've been in bed for three days. I come down yesterday to find eBoy surrounded by piles of dirty dishes and empty boxes of pizza. Apparently, when I get sick, everything goes in the crapper.

The upstairs isn't much better. Empty foil packs of nyquil, wads of kleenex, rumpled up sheets, and the malodorous stench of human decay. Okay, perhaps that's a bit of hyperbole. But it could definitely stand to be aired out.

And now eBoy's gotten it. Nothing good can come from this now.

Vegas. She is Planned.

And so it begins again....

Another Monday, another thousand reasons not to want to go to work.

I'm sick again too. These fucking bastards at work that come in with their germs and infections. This is like the 18th time since i started there that i've developed some sort of nasty, germy, is-it-or-isn't-it pneumonia condition.

However, yesterday, before I started to feel like death on a cracker, eBoy and I went downtown to race in the Valentine's Day 5K. I did 26 minutes, which is my fastest, AND beat eBoy by a minute and a half. But to give you some idea, eBoy's cousin - who runs marathons like I eat cheese and crackers - does a 19 minute 5K. And the winner of yesterday's race did it in 15 minutes.

But still, it's nice to be able to do this, not feel like I'm dying, and also have no knee problems. Now, I'm signed up for a 15K on St. Patrick's day. This has me somewhat concerned considering that after I had finished the race yesterday, if you'd told me now, go do that twice more, I would have started crying.

So we have some work to do - but it's a little difficult to make it to the gym WHEN YOU HAVE TUBERCULOSIS.

Possible wedding hair: Opine.

Of course, I realize that I look nothing like Eva Mendes. And I can't decide if it's cute and fun, or if it looks like a rat's nest. I know which one my mother will say. (And this is another reason why we are eloping). Nor will I be naked, which she apparently is.

I will also be neither sullen nor skeletal like the other model. But the hair is a bit less....casual shall we say, without being too formal.

I must also take into consideration that it is apparently very windy in Aruba. I have this image of the fumes from all the aqua-net in my hair spontaneously combusting as I walk down the tiki-torch lined aisle. It will be a sight to behold.


At any rate, what do you think?

Another example of how eBoy is so goddamn funny.

I guess what's difficult to tell from the photo is that the area between the dryer and the furnace is where the cats eat and we've blocked it off with that piece of wood which has a tiny little entrance cut out in it that's just big enough for a cat, but too small for a greedy, bad dog that's developed a taste for Salmon Supreme. Then eBoy got creative and painted little arrows and "cat fud" on it - a la Gary Larson.

Yeah, I know I probably didn't have to explain all that to you but I just wanted to make sure that you understand HOW FUNNY IT IS. Goddamn, I love that eBoy.

It's what my clients like to call me...

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I'm not really allowed to QUIT my job yet, soo..

Have to put that YEAR in there before you can give it the old heave ho.

Anyway. Tired of never sleeping. Tired of hating my clients. REALLY FUCKING TIRED of the completely toxic environment in which I work. The back stabbing, the sniping, the gossip, the machinations. That's right, actual goddamn machinations. My boss gave me instructions on how to handle a client matter and the very next day reversed her instructions. After, of course, I'd already acted on her instructions. The head of the company pointed out to the entire firm who the counselors are in the company that are, themselves, recovering drug addicts/alcoholics. The HR person pointed out, again in front of the entire company, which employees had requested Cancer Insurance. If you try to address a challenge in group supervision, all the other employees talk about your lack of skills and understanding for days or weeks. One counselor, when I first began, mentioned that she had become irritated with a client. Our clinical director still calls her the one with "the anger problem."

It's fucking insane, and I stay up until 3 or 4 am tossing it over in my head, again and again and again and again.

Oh, and my first student loan statement arrived. They'd like $2200 by next Friday. Nice.

BOY I didn't last very long did I?

Meanwhile, eBoy's out of town for a week, I'm up till 4, so I sleep until it's time to go to work, I'm not getting to the gym, and my personal trainer went to Ireland for 10 days, which is going to translate into 10 days of sitting on the couch for me most likely, as i snort one Klonopin after another - But HEY I'm not drinking or eating cheeseburgers!

Gotta go. Leave the grammar alone. I could give a shit.