I bought myself a *&%$* bikini yesterday!!!!!

And I'm going to wear it, DAMMIT.

PDX Fit has begun!

**This photo is actually from the Valentine's Day 5K back in February.

So I've joined this marathon training program and our first run was yesterday. An easy three miler, or so I thought. Nice that I woke up to SNOW and sleet. What a craptastic morning. It was freezing and windy and one of the most unpleasant runs I'd had in a while. You're supposed to run at a training pace, which means slower than your racing pace (I don't think my running has really differentiated itself yet to the point where I have different paces aside from walking vs. running - although this is probably progress from my former paces that consisted of stop vs. go). At any rate, it's a little difficult to maintain a slower place when everyone is zipping past you. Kind of makes you want to speed up a little. At the same time, my brain is screaming NOT SO FAST, OW, NOT SO FAST, you're going to end up having to train with all these speed demons and then you'll be sorry!!

I needn't have worried. I ended up being placed in the second to slowest group (red group - THE BEST GROUP, the coach shouted at me). That's fine. I thought I would have been placed in a bit of a higher group, but this is okay. I'd rather be one of the faster people in my group than one of the slower.

But I was pretty proud of myself for getting out there on such a blustery, cold day with, hi, a lovely mixture of sleet and snow raining down on me. And now I have a running schedule for the week, and another long training run next weekend. I'm very excited about all this.

And today? sunny and beautiful of course. god dammit.

Things are in a holding pattern,,,,

It's that time of life when everything's about hurry up and wait. Wait for Aruba. Wait for summer. Wait for school to start again. And as i'm busy waiting, sometimes I forget to focus on what's happening right now.

Well, right now, I've got to continue to focus on work. The latest scuttlebutt is that a number of the other counselors are looking for work because they're unhappy and feeling unappreciated at our agency. Since one of these under-appreciated counselors is one of the most toxic elements in our agency, I practically want to offer to pass copies of her resume around to the city. We had a staff meeting yesterday, and the management was kvetching about no-shows for intake appointments, and I suggested an idea. It probably wasn't the best idea in the world and it would have meant some extra work for counselors. But, hey, you know, it was just an idea and I didn't hear anybody else offering possible solutions. Anyway, this particularly angry, vicious, unpleasant coworker of mine rolled her eyes back into her head (like a shark does before it rips you apart) and snorted. Well, whatever. But then, an hour later, I run into her in the hallway, and she's laughing about my idea to some other counselors and talking about how stupid it is. Hi seventh grade. Yuck. She really is very unpleasant. So if she's looking for a job, hallelujah.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Gotta run now. Off to the gym.

That reminds me - I downloaded some new songs this weekend and totally revamped my workout playlists. Is it sad that this has been really exciting for me? Considering that a lot of the music I workout to has been the same music that I worked out to in 1987...well, this sort of change really keeps things spicy on the stairmaster.

To spanx or not to spanx...

Let's face it. All the crunches in the world are not going to give me Carolyn B. Kennedy's body. I'd like to thank my ancestors now for my chunky, healthy, built-for-lugging-bales-of-peat-across-the-Irish-hillsides frame. When I try to suck in my stomach now, it sort of folds in on itself and gets this wrinkled-fabric, too much loose skin look.

TMI?

Anywho, as i've mentioned before, I've purchased a ridiculous, though beautiful, dress. And yes, it has fuschia sequins on it. Who would have thought. And it is, as they say, body conscious.

Which brings us to the above topic.

The problem I see with spanx is the overflowing, muffin-top, or sausage-casing effect that it has been known to create. I would hate to walk down that aisle with various, ahem, bulges, in places where bulges should not be necessarily.

Anyway, I'm going in for my fitting today. They advised that I wear my wedding undergarments. There we're in a gray area. As in charcoal. Because I've procrastinated and avoided this topic. I ventured into Nordstrom's lingerie section, but those 60 year old Romanian Wacoal ladies always scare the bejesus out of me and I went yipe-yipe-yipeing back to my car pretty quickly.

The waify 22 year old bohemian-chic salesgirl that works at the bridal salon has already advised that I probably don't need to wear more than a g-string and strapless push-up bra. Have I mentioned her waif-like boho chick qualities? She's cute as a button; very Portland. But let's get serious here. I think my best plan might be to take an Ace bandage and wrap it tightly around my various parts a la gwenyth paltrow in shakespeare in love or Barbra in Yentle. you know, just to secure everything to its post, as it were.

Dammit. I knew I should have gotten a corset with boning and straps and levers to hold things in and push things up. I'm going to look like a beached manatee with IBS.

I have become all-wedding, all-the-time.

I've commenced freaking out. I realized it's only a couple of weeks away. I have no shoes, I have no veil, I have no vacation-type clothes, I have no wedding band picked out (um, not 100% true), I do not yet even slightly resemble Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. And you know who is not exactly supportive of my current freaking out state? The groom. The groom who is far more concerned about, I don't know, getting our taxes filed or something dumb like that.

Sigh.

I'm turning into my friend's mother. I'm feeling the need to come up with a list, a plan of the possible enjoyable activities that we can all do together in Aruba. I am working very hard at restraining myself from coming up with A Schedule of Fun. So far, I've just ensured that there is a blender at the house in which we're staying. I'll just leave it at that for now.

Stocks before whores means we're all poor.

- Jon Stewart

Um, either I'm watching the news too much, or this whole Bear Stearns thing is bad bad bad.

Conversation with eBoy last night:

Me: What if the value of the house drops to, like, $25,000?

Him: Then we don't sell the house.

He's very calm about all this, but Jim Lehrer et. al. are scaring the pants off me. Dollar is worth less than sparkly beads. China's about to float their currency. The Fed's just printing money and tucking it under everyone's windshield wiper. And W is dancing around on the rose garden steps saying everything's JUST FINE.


Studies have shown a direct link between people's levels of depression and anxiety and the degree to which they watch the news. People with higher levels of optimism and lower levels of realism tend to have less depression, while those with higher levels of pessimism/realism also have higher levels of depression. I'm just saying that perhaps I should take a valium and go work in the garden for a while. Like for the next seven years.

Not too shabby for drM!

Ran the Portland Shamrock 8K yesterday in 44 minutes! Hurray!

I'd originally signed up for the 15K race, but then got sicksicksick and didn't run for about two and half weeks, so I was ohmygodsofuckingglad yesterday that I had switched to the 8K.

At one point towards the end, we rounded a curve and all the 15K racers came out of nowhere and were practically stampeding over us. Mind you, they started a half hour before we did and had already run a 10K by the time they were whizzing past us little slow pokes. Those people are monsters. Da-yum.

Portland Fit starts in two weeks! woot! portland marathon here I come!

in which i actually become a doctor or something.

I got into the doctoral program. Yes. I have it in writing. lots of people go to school for seven years.

Good lord, it HAS been a while hasn't it?

You'd almost given up on me, hadn't you?

I'm here, just whizzing around like a hummingbird. Leave the house at 6:30 in the morning, get home at 9 or 10 at night, and then, a quick half hour of the news with Brian Williams (tivoed), and then to bed. You know, I've tried watching Jim Lehrer on PBS - because you get more real news and less, "hey - gee whiz, it turns out that EXERCISE is good for you, even if you're an old coot that doesn't look good in a speedo," and then 10 minutes of commercials. I don't know, maybe I just watch Brian Williams so I can listen to Michael Douglas announce the beginning of the show. That's still so weird to me. Like Gordon Gecko bought NBC and decided that one of the perks would be to get to play with the announcer's machine.

I'll tell you, Jim Lehrer's better than a klonopin for zonking me right out.

So...Vegas. Hee! I was that chick who insisted on running around all night wearing a bridal veil. Damn straight. Ctrl-freak noticed that other women (traveling in packs by night) were glaring at me. When I used to glare at annoying brides to be, I thought it was communicating to them, as a staunch feminist, how stupid and irritating I found them to be. Look at you, selling your identity and independence for a sparkly rock, a bit of tulle, and years of servitude. Instead, being on the receiving end, I can now safely report that it just conveys petty jealousy (nyah nyah!!!), and I freaking rolled around in it like hay.

At any rate, Vegas was EVERYTHING I'd hoped it would be, I had a grand time, and I can't thank My Boys enough. Although I do have to send a thank you note. We had two fine dinners (at Hachi, and whatever Alain Ducasse's place is called), and played Spot-The-Hooker quite a bit. That game has gotten waaaay too easy there. It's not so much about spotting the slutty looking girl (they ALL look that way) -it's about Spotting the Guy who could never get a slutty looking girl to talk to him otherwise. Fun for the whole family!

the most entertaining part was watching folks' reactions to the three of us: now, what's their relationship? Who is the bride with? She's a bride, right? why is she with two guys? is one of them the groom? then why does the other guy have his hand on the groom's ass? tsk tsk... Poor confused small brained mouth breathers. (One particular idiot: I'm Irish Catholic, I don't want to know! Eew. Some day, I would like to learn El Jefe's perfect gaze of drop-dead loathing disdain. it's spot-on, as they say).


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I had my interview at the clinical psych doctoral program last week. I think it went well. I interviewed with the dean. Then I had to give a writing sample, which was basically a case presentation and how I would go about treating the individual. Interesting. I approached it from very therapeutic alliance/motivational interviewing standpoint - not from a diagnostic one - so I'm not sure how much a clinical program will go for that, but my master's program would have creamed itself. Anyway, I should find out this week they said.

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In other exciting news, eBoy showed up at dinner last night with the application for our marriage license! heee - I didn't even have to nag him to go get it. So we filled it out and signed it, eBoy breathed into a paper bag for a while, and we'll go turn it in. Goodbye autonomy! Goodbye independent thought! Goodbye sex!


(just kidding, right?)

Weekend update.

Went for a great run yesterday. Actually, scratch that. I went for a run, not that great, but it was sunny out and it was the first long run I'd gone on since I'd gotten sick. So it was nice to be outside. Well, everything was nice except for the SNAKE that I had to jump over on the trail. Well, it was more like a snake but I still squealed pretty loudly.

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Okay, I started that post on Sunday. Now it's Thursday. Things are a little busy. I know you're all on tenterhooks about my self-referential fitness story (yeah yeah, the whole blog thing is, by definition, self referential and benignly narcissistic). I'll get back to it, I promise.

Anyway - quick update. Today I have my interview with the doctoral program. I'll let you know later how exactly I blow it.

Over the weekend, a woman came to our door and said, "hello, I lived here back in 1960, but I can't remember where I live now. Can you help me?" That was an adventure and let me say this now, I hope I never get old.

Went to the dentist today - still no cavities! Dentists love my teeth and always call over other people to look at them. Seriously.

We have created a "wedding website" - although some of the details are still lacking. But if you want to see how it's shaping up, just go to wedding channel.com and put in either my name or eBoy's.

Okay, it's probably time for me to start getting dressed for this interview. Wouldn't do for me to show up in yoga pants.