Eating Disorderly Conduct

I had one slice of apple pie a la mode after dinner and now I’m thinking about putting on my heart rate monitor and jumping on the bed until I burn a slice of pie’s worth of calories.

Jesus, these are some serious issues.

Eating has always been a sensitive subject. I love to eat, and while I have a generally healthy diet, I also have a sweet tooth and the periodic inability to stop putting food in my mouth. Add in all of the training (which increases my appetite enormously) and the pressure to be competitive on the bike (the more I have to carry uphill, the slower I go), and I struggle constantly with my eating. Am I eating enough? Am I eating too much? Am I feeding my muscles or overstuffing my gut? Am I actually hungry or am I just craving? AM I OUT OF MY MIND?

The answer is most certainly yes.

Within an hour of getting an iPhone a few weeks ago, I had found the Fitness Tracker app that allowed me to track every calorie consumed and burned. Fitness Tracker and I went from zero to sixty instantly; within a day, I was logging every nibble, avoiding restaurant food because the nutritional data was harder to find, and working out extra hard just so I would be allowed to eat more calories for that day. On the days where I ate more than the application said was permitted, I was miserable.

Bobby finally asked, “Why are you so mean to yourself?” and it made me want to both laugh and cry because it was so true. I am really mean to my body; every time I eat too much or eat something I shouldn’t, I berate myself until the next workout. It feels like shit and I can’t stop.

Lest you think I’m starving or Karen Carpentering myself into an early grave, I will say that my core diet is both healthy and sufficient to meet my body’s needs. I’m not withering away or skipping meals – I just devote far too much head space and guilt to this topic. I had a wonderful dinner tonight with a dear friend, but because I had an extra piece of bread and a big dessert, I feel like I need to go ride or run or carry around a sack of bricks. Hey! This guilt is a dead weight! Maybe it will burn some calories.

It is very difficult to change my thinking process when it comes to eating. Fitness Tracker and I finally broke up a week ago when Bobby put his foot down (for the third time), and I was willing to concede because the application said there wasn’t enough left in my calorie budget to afford the tacos I wanted. Sadly, dropping that insanity doesn’t seem to have fixed the underlying problem.

My new job may be willing to help in this area. In the words of my new colleague, “I try to get to the gym, but during the week I’m too busy with work and by the weekend I’m just too exhausted. However, I think the stress of this place keeps me thin.”

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August 24th 2010 | Posted in Biking, Bobby, Employment, Life

Because I’ve already spent the past 24 hours talking about this bug.

Yesterday, at an hour early
I arrived at Amy’s, feeling surly.
My Posse friends weren’t even near
When, look, behold, what’s standing here?

Bug 1

So green, so cute, so freaking bright
Standing on my car, this sight!
A bug of some exotic flavor
Upon my car bestowed his favor.

Bug 2

I was filled with joy and so delighted
Surely he had just alighted.
No passenger just clinging lightly
Would survive me taking turns so tightly.

Bug 3

He stood there cleaning his antennae
Crap, words that rhyme with this aren’t many.
I snapped pictures; he seemed so chill
Despite a camera up in his grill.

Bug 4

After photos, I went inside
For all I know, he baked and died.
But later on last night his kin
Chose my outdoor dinner to drop in.

And led to the sharing of this story
About a green bug and all his glory.
But now I think I’ll take a breath
This horse is officially beat to death.

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July 4th 2010 | Posted in Friends, Life, The Log Posse

Lies! All Lies!

Five reasons I am currently VERY tired:

1. We fell asleep lying upside down on the bed with the lights on shortly after midnight. Sometime between 1-2am, Bobby turned off the lights. At 3:11am, Bobby woke me up to tell me to turn around so we could actually use the pillows and covers.

2. Kobe started pacing and grunting around 5am and did not take my attempts to ignore him seriously. He switched to growling softly and endlessly until I relented, got up, and took him and Scout outside. Commence gastrointestinal distress episode THREE MILLION. DOG! Why can you not digest your kibble!

3. Sometime around 6:30am, a piece of shit car parked in the spot directly outside our window and started blasting the best of Hispanic radio. This went on until Bobby peered out window and saw the driver leave the car, silencing the music.

4. This was short-lived. The music began again, followed by the enthusiastic DJ shouting god knows what with far too much enthusiasm. Apparently the driver was back and was reclining in his seat. I lost my mind; it was 6:58am on a Saturday. I put on sweats, stormed outside, and banged on his passenger window. He got out and stared at me. I explained that it was 7am on a Saturday, he was parked outside of people’s bedroom windows, and his music was too loud. He stared at me and got right back in his car without a word.

ANGER. ANGER. FURY.

I yanked open the door and snapped, “You could try being less rude,” and then slammed the door and walked away. A moment of silence and then MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC.

KILL. KILL. KILL.

I opened the door again – he had the decency to look startled, although not nearly afraid enough for my taste – and I snarled, “The alternative is that I call the police.”

Clearly the language barrier was not an issue; the music did not come back on. Instead, he drove away and I mentally congratulated myself for handling this situation better than the last one, in which I may or may not have called the neighborhood tow truck driver a “fucking douchebag” and possibly spit into the open door of his truck.

5. Sleep was no longer an option. We got up for the day so that I could write a post about how the local Chinese restaurant told us a dirty, dirty lie:

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April 10th 2010 | Posted in Bobby, Life, The Pups

Updates that probably warrant their own posts.

1. I am getting married in several months.

2. Evidently, I have anxiety regarding racing that has phobia-like qualities.

3. Despite several recent bouts of nice weather, I cannot bring myself to stop using the trainer for all rides.

4. The mice are still alive. They run on their wheel for approximately 75% of each day. The wheel squeaks loudly 100% of the time that it is in use. I am down to 0.01% of my original desire to own mice.

5. I am leaving my current job this Friday and starting a new one on Monday.

6. For the first time in my life as a dog owner, I wished fiercely that I would come home to a pile of poop on the floor today. No luck.

7. These are my new favorite shoes: http://boutique.vanillabicycles.com/product/the-pit-boot

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March 23rd 2010 | Posted in Biking, Bobby, Employment, Life, The Mice, The Pups

Happy (It’s) Valentine’s Day

I am tired of people complaining about Valentine’s Day being a commercial holiday invented by Hallmark to make people spend money. Not celebrating Valentine’s Day because you want to ‘stick it to the man’ or you want to prove that your loved one loves you ALL 365 days of the year is stupid.

There are only a handful of holidays that people actually celebrate by changing their daily routines and behaving differently. On the 4th of July, Americans fly the flag, have barbecues, and set off explosives. On Halloween, people dress up, find ways to scare themselves, and give/collect candy. On New Year’s Eve, people celebrate the beginning of a new year by getting festively drunk with their friends. And so on. But these “special” days make up only a tiny fraction of an otherwise completely normal year where you get up and live each day ordinarily.

Today is Valentine’s Day – it has a name and a theme and associated colors – and if you aren’t too busy being against this day, it’s a chance to break from your normal, boring routine. You don’t have to buy flowers and chocolate and jewelry. You don’t have to go on a fancy date or even have a significant other. It’s a day about love and surely there is somebody you love, be it your wife, your kid, your best friend, your mom, or even just yourself. Valentine’s Day is a chance to pay a little more attention to that love, even if you do it every other day of the year as well.

It’s your call. If you’d rather pretend today is meaningless and stupid, go for it. Personally, I like days that are supposed to be a little more significant than all of the others on the calendar. I don’t want to shortchange myself a holiday because I’m busy trying to prove that today is just as ordinary as all the others.

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February 14th 2010 | Posted in Life

Mice Capades

The mice are alive and well. They spend the majority of their time running around underneath the bedding in a network of shifting tunnels and burrows, but occasionally venture out to play and eat. And eat and eat and eat. Those two little rodents eat a few tons of seeds every week. It must be why their ears have grown so big. Like little elephant mice.

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At least I have a back-up plan in the event that I lose interest in the pet mice:

IMG00728-20100128-0911

That’s only a joke. To be honest, I’m such a stupid sucker for little animals that I already feel sad when I think about either of the mice reaching the end of their short lifespans. I almost wish it would turn out that I have a male and a female, and thus an unending succession of baby mice to love, but that would create its own problems. Two mice are cute; two to the Nth power mice sounds like something that would put me on the evening news. “The smell became so overwhelming,” Lindsay’s neighbors told CNN Reporters, “that we finally had to call the Health Department. They carried out cages of thousands of mice, while Lindsay chased after them pulling at her clothes and screaming, ‘My babies!’”

In other news, my dreams of them spending hours running on their wheel have been crushed. They are too small to make the wheel turn.

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January 30th 2010 | Posted in Life, The Mice

Heard today:

“Remember when I texted you last night to say ‘I can’t sleep and I miss you’? Yeah, what I meant was ‘I can’t sleep and I have really bad gas’.”

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January 25th 2010 | Posted in Life

Open Book

It was finally time for a much overdue haircut yesterday. I don’t have a regular stylist, mostly because I am not regularly styled, but I went back to the girl who has cut my hair a few times over the past two years. She’s nice and nothing if not interesting. For example, last night she covered my head with conditioner and then announced that she was going to the restroom. Then she disappeared into the bathroom for five minutes. I felt weird about the whole thing at first, but then it sort of amused me. I’m used to a world where women (primarily at my office) pretend that we do not do anything in the bathroom except fluff our hair and examine our teeth. We do not poop, and if anyone comes into the bathroom while we are doing anything other than fluffing our hair, we universally fall silent and pretend to not exist. So having my stylist announce that she was going to the bathroom and then making it clear what she was doing by being gone for more than thirty seconds was interesting. Honestly, it was somewhat refreshingly honest and human. And I just described someone going to the bathroom as “refreshing”.

This is not the only time she has left me briefly speechless. There was the time she was talking to a neighboring stylist about their mutual friend’s herpes, at which point she included me in the conversation by sharing that she has HPV. Last night she told me that she got a DUI this past summer and chose to pass on the restricted license because she didn’t want the breathalyzer installed in her car.

These are not things I normally share with strangers.

But I like it. It fascinates me in the same way that the Total Honesty movement fascinates me; I can’t imagine doing it myself, but I imagine it would be deeply freeing to hold nothing back and share every thought and detail and feeling. Some people even think that what I say here is a version of being overly open about my life, but I think that’s more of a generational gap than a true assessment of how bluntly honest I am.

I’m rambling. I think I’ll stop and go to the restroom.*

*Strictly to fluff my newly-cut hair.

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January 22nd 2010 | Posted in Life

Bobby wanted to write this title, but all of his suggestions were terrible.

Discussing meats over a lunch at Whole Foods: “I’m very particular about my meat. Gristly, fatty, weird stuff just freaks me out. I think it was the way I grew up – my mom always bought the nice, lean, high-quality stuff and it spoiled me. A few years ago, I bought a big package of store-brand chicken breasts and they were gross. I had to throw them out.”

“Really?” Bobby replied. “Chicken is pretty lean.”

I grimaced. “Nope. These were bad. For me, it’s Perdue or die.”

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January 21st 2010 | Posted in Bobby, Family, Life

Whiner.

I feel kind of over writing this blog. Maybe I’m just being an irritable shit today. Probably, actually, but I still feel like quitting anyways. Sometimes I think it would be awesome to just drop off the Internet entirely; kill my Facebook account, unsubscribe from any mass emails, stop checking blogs and websites regularly. An analog existence actually sounds refreshing a lot of the time, and it certainly would help me avoid times like Monday afternoon, where I lost several hours to pointless surfing while avoiding a ride on the trainer.

But then I’d miss the latest post on fmylife.com and then I’d probably catch fire.

I’ve been grumpy for the past few days on and off for no discernible reason. It’s annoying because I know I’m a drag to be around (I’m around myself all the time and it sucks), but I can’t change the problem if I can’t identify it. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s the same problem I’ve been facing for the past few months: I am discontent, dying for a change of some sort, but unable to choose a step to take in any direction. Be a pro cyclist? Go to law school? Try being a writer? Reproduce? Pierce or tattoo something?

This is probably a quarter-life crisis. It makes me want to fill my ears with cement when I realize that saying that calls to mind a John Mayer song I used to love when I enjoyed generic, boring music. When I made my mom listed to Mayer’s album back when I loved it, even she was like, “Meh. It’s boring.” I didn’t know any better at the time. Now I listen to generic, ‘trendy’ music by bands with names that start with “The” and I feel superior to my former, John Mayer-listening self.

I just choked on the gum I’m chewing while being completely sedentary in my cubicle. FML.

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January 20th 2010 | Posted in Family, Life, Ye Olden Days
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