why do i have so much trouble with ziploc bags?!?!?!

just wondering.

i came to the realization not long ago that i am severely deficient in my ability to "zip" ziploc bags. i don't know why. i guess i managed to avoid them for the most part until my current job (we have resealable tortillas in bags). i will stand and stare and struggle to zip a bag for what seems like 5 minutes before giving up. 9 times out of 10 i cannot do it.

i am clumsy, but i lack no more manual dexterity than the average-yet-clumsy person. and i definitely do understand the CONCEPT behind the ziplocs. certain hecklers (ahem....WES) like to suggest that i do not. i get it. i get that blue and yellow make green.

i'm carrying around a great deal of shame associated with this disability, and i'm only halfway joking. i am such a detail-oriented person that sometimes i get overwhelmed by things which are very simple to most people.

we'll just say i'm meticulous. we'll make it into something complimentary when it really isn't. when all is said and done, i cannot ziploc a ziploc bag.

healthiest versus unhealthiest restaurants

here are an interesting (and surprising) couple of articles:

america's top 10 (healthiest) chain restaurants:

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100235019&GT1=31036

and the 15 most unhealthy american restaurants:

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100235017&GT1=31036

it's shocking to read some of the calorie counts on the entrees at places like applebee's. also shocking to see that mcdonald's, taco bell, wendy's etc (who get such a bad rap!) are on the good list.

i am by no means a health nut, but eating THOUSANDS of calories in one entree or one shake or one appetizer is just plain ol' disturbing!

i'm really quite pro-fast food (like i always say, excess in moderation is a necessity for human beings) and i actually have to say i find it annoying when people blame fast food for all the evils of the world. if people are even a tiny bit as active as they should be, fast food won't hurt them.

anyway, i love food and restaurants and i thought these were interesting.....

it is national eating disorders awareness week....

this is an email i received nearly 3 years ago from the family members of someone i was hospitalized for a prolonged period of time with in 2005. i had only about 4 months of recovery at the time.



Laura ###### passed away 5/16/06‏

This is from Lar's Mom & Dad to let the folks within her e-mail address book know that she passed away from a massive heart attack this past Tuesday morning. As you know, Lar struggled with her eating disorder and it ultimately took her from us. Recently, she again lost weight and was about to give her two week notice at work, as her Mom was going to take Lar to our St. Clair farm for weight restoration this summer. Lar was looking forward to this.

We are told she did not suffer, that she was probably gone before she hit the ground. For that we are grateful.

Lar suffered enough the past six years and she is now with the Lord and at peace. Lar was committed in her faith and was not, at all afraid to die, in fact she knew and appreciated the thought of everlasting peace. She no longer is fighting the eating disorder (ED) demons.

This disease is still a mystery to many of us. I know that some of you receiving this knew Lar through this connection and to those of you that continue to fight ED, our thoughts and prayers go to you and your families. Never, ever down play the seriousness of ED. We wish each of you the best of luck, but it's not luck, but rather hard work, accountability and making the right choices to kill or control ED, and only you can do that.

Remember Lar and say a prayer for her. She was a very, very special person, friend and daughter. She will be missed, but she is in a place with eternal peace and happiness and no ED to be found. We both look forward to seeing her again some day and her beautiful smile.

Per Lar's wishes she was cremated. At this time there are no set plans for a memorial, perhaps sometime in the future.

a fun, creativity-brewing website i'm adoring.....

http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/

i just discovered this website, i was looking up baking soda cleaning ideas and one thing led to the next and......i discovered it. (not to sound disgustingly conceited/like it didn't exist before i laid eyes on it---i just mean i am happy to have found it for my own purposes:)

i haven't finished scouring it, but it seems to be quite fantastic. the crafty project "marble magnets" seems really really cool!

i feel rather luxurious....

today i somehow managed to motivate myself to do a little workout, and as i've heard others say, i feel refreshed and am trying to take a snapshot of this feeling in my mind so as to queue it when i need similar motivation.

i should clarify; 1) i have two days off in a row (rare) and i get so much exercise the rest of the time that i don't feel like a 'refreshment' sort of workout activity when i'm off work. i ride a bike 1.4 miles to AND from work most days. 2) i have unfortunately sunk into a slight hermit-esque existence lately which is a bad sign for me. i know when i cannot leave the house for fear of the outside world that i need to fix something. i went out in the 70 degrees for a little jog, which was hard for me to do but i think it helped immensely.

my friend allison came to stay with me last night as she had a conference in springfield this morning, and while i was far from entertaining, i tried not to dwell on that and just enjoy it. plus she gave me a gift of some luxurious expensive shampoo (she is a super duper hair aficionado). following my exercise i washed my hair and i feel quite fancy. :)

on a humorous note, when i first began part of the workout (i feel unworthy of using the "workout" terminology but it is MY workout which is all that matters) a month or so ago, i had interesting results. it is a butt/outer thigh workout thing. and the above mentioned bicycling gives me a heck of a lot of muscle/endurance.....so i was wanting to work on more obscure areas. so i tried the stretches on for size. i didn't do a lot of repetitions because i was just being casual about it. the next day the only thing that really hurt was my WRISTS. that's when you know you're doing something wrong. i think i've perfected the routine since then.

i have been listening to elliott smith lately, a LOT. he is my musical obsession du jour. for those who aren't familiar (which is probably most people), he died in 2003 (committed suicide). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_smith
the only cd i have is figure 8. i burned it years ago for my music library and am just now appreciating it. it is wonderful. i love music that sounds light but is actually quite dark and cynical. the happy-go-lucky melody is 2-dimensional, but the lyrics and song itself are really mutifaceted and metaphoric. so i'm listening to this right now. and at the moment it oddly feels empowering i guess just because (at the moment) i'm appreciating who i am and feeling proud of myself, just as i am.

this is a blog post....

i'm vowing to post more blog entries, as i really do believe it to be cathartic and creative and fun and various other things. i really love reading others' blogs too. i'm attempting to model mine after a very encouraging friend. in order to do that, i need to blog more. about big things. about little inconsequential things. about random daily things. about whatever. i think this will be a good outlet for me.

at the same time, i am currently trudging through a very mundane phase in my mind and life and work etc. (mundane yet strangely not at all peaceful)...i think i'm perhaps burnt out? not sure. but whatever the issue (the cause is definitely my work situation which i fear is very toxic to me and my job search), i'm not very thoughtful lately. so i'm going to do this blog thing, and i'm posting this one to get the ball rolling i suppose. the more i think of this as a journal entry the better it will be for me (and the more entertaining it will be for others who may glance at it on occasion.)

i'm a chronically analytical person so it shouldn't be that hard, right? unless i think too much about writing a blog entry and analyze THAT too much. which is probably what has stalled me thus far.

anyhoo. for now, this is officially a blog post....................

Confession of a Guilty Pleasure.....

i have to admit: i frequent the celebrity gossip sites. and by 'frequent,' i mean i look at them for updates whenever i am on the computer for any browsing length of time. and i apologize to humanity for this. i know it is wrong. i know it is trashy. i know i am part of the problem that these sites feed. i am adding fuel to the flame of unhealthy fascination with voyeuristic superficialities. but i have excused my behavior for several reasons (keep in mind they will be rambling ones).....

in a lot of ways, i feel sorry for those individuals who are plagued by paparazzi. the ones who aren't addicted to the attention. i guess i feel sorry in a different way for those who are. i am creating a market for that attention. additionally, if i rationally think of the concept of sneaking peeks at these gossipy photos and blogs, it turns my stomach. it would be something i would decisively oppose based on the concept alone. i have a friend (she used to be a much closer friend, now i should categorize her as a distant acquaintance as the years have passed) with whom i was hospitalized a few years back (eating disorder) that moved to Los Angeles about the time that my life started over, approximately 3-ish years ago. she was from kansas, but she met her future husband and they moved to LA shortly thereafter. for a couple of years after our long hospitalization together, we talked on various instant messengers very often, and were close. this kind of subsided around that time, and i reconnected with her only to hear she was moving west and planning a wedding etc. and of course i was thrilled for her. she had been in recovery for much longer than i had (i had only weeks under my belt, she had much longer so she had been a big support for me). long story long, she has lived in LA the duration of the time that my life has been wonderful--coming up on 3 years. she quit whatever communications job she had out there to pursue modeling and acting. i rooted for her, but IMMEDIATELY was terrified for her to even be in that sort of a social setting muchless pursue that career avenue. i haven't talked to her at length for probably a year, except to check on her. she is struggling very badly with E.D. and has been for quite some time.

all this being said, i am fervent about my distaste for that kind of a society and what a fungus it creates and how it hurts people. heck, i don't even ever want to watch big budget movies because of the implications. i always want to seek out the quirky artsy low budget/indie ones. so i have long since tried to analyze my fascination with the above mentioned fungus.

years back (during the same college years as the hospitalizations i touched on), i had dialup internet. my guilty pleasure (yet i am defensive of it because i had FEW trivial pleasures at the time) was looking at people.com at the picture slideshows of the gowns at awards ceremonies and fashion police-esque kind of things. i would never even glance at those magazines in the checkout aisle at walmart, yet i looked at them online. it was really enjoyable for me, in a distinctly GIRLY way. i have always had psychological qualms with not feeling like i was adequate in this department since i didn't have a lot of girlfriends all through school and whatnot. so i indulged, and sat and waited for minutes at a time for these pictures to load!

through the years, i have had trouble settling my mind. i definitely could never read back then. i could hardly watch tv and be at peace. so something calm and distracting and yet interesting to me was very valued. and it still is. in the three years since i have been happy and healthy and started my life over, i have instyle.com, people.com, perezhilton.com all bookmarked. truthfully? the boomark is entitled: "gossip crap/guilty pleasure". for real. and i am ashamed, but defensive at the same time i guess. i detest how popular they have become. i tend to intellectualize the whole thing, but i just have some sort of human, maybe even primal, urge to engage in gossip. and i do think it is very human.

speaking of theorizing (and i'm not trying to excuse the behavior, just understand it), i have kind of a funny theory that parallels a theory i have of my sweetness wes. he loves crime shows. he loves watching bios of serial killers. i'm using the word LOVE here. and it doesn't creep me out (although i have a hard time watching them myself) but it is hilarious for me to think of back when i first met him---he told me he liked watching these things, plus he is quiet, plus he is book-ish/intelligent-----it's a wonder i didn't think HE was a serial killer. but that is a different subject for a different and comical blog. getting to the point here: i think his strange enjoyment of this kind of subject matter is similar to mine with the gossip sites. it's sort of an ambulance-chasing kind of a thing (pardon the annoying cliche). although, i know myself and my morality and my uber-idealism and i can't believe i have this guilty pleasure and it seems like it should be an antithesis to all that i am.

hold the phone, serial killer bios and crime stories aren't exactly wes' "thesis" either. so i suppose it is an entirely human (nonetheless complex as HECK) issue.

i used to have a lot of vices. and things i did ritually to hurt myself. hurt myself deeply. SO, while it is not simply OK for me to posess this vice, i'm going to let it stick around. i apologize.

did i mention i no longer drink coffee? i have switched to decaf ONLY for my health, after so many years of THAT vice. and i couldn't be more proud of myself. COULDN'T BE.

i best be going, i have even more golden globe gowns to examine ;P