18.6

While I don't write much about it anymore, my quest for physical fitness, good health, and looking at least OK in my clothes carries on in full force these days. I'm taking Zumba classes at my gym in addition to my weight circuits (40,000+ lbs a pop these days), elliptical hamstering, rowing, recumbent bicycling, and free-weight lifting, and for the last week I've even been swimming (at another gym that we have to drive to, but at least it's a Y and therefore free). I've been eating a salad and vegetables and fruit for lunch every day for several months now, and while my clothes aren't exactly falling off me, I'm feeling more comfortable with the way I look in real life if still not in photographs. (Because I still feel like I look TERRIBLE in photos.)

Last Thursday, I bit the bullet and signed up to have someone pinch my fat in various parts with scientific calipers in order to determine my body fat percentage. It's something I've been curious about for a while, since I haven't had it tested at all in a few years, and haven't had it tested with calipers since I was 22 years old and had just started going to the gym I frequented in San Francisco the year I worked there. The other body fat tests I've had done in the interim were with some sort of hand-held electric gadget that had questionable validity (especially since I always guesstimate my weight, as I don't weigh myself at all ever.) I was really, really not looking forward to the pinching and the judging and the inevitable disappointment at the result that I was sure would happen, but I figured that since it was free and since it had been several years I should probably just get it done. I've got a body that builds muscle like crazy so BMI and weight aren't necessarily good indicators of my health but I knew a body fat test would tell me something that just going by clothing fit wouldn't.

I did my workout and then went into the little room with the scary lady trainer whose classes I will never take because the ropes on her neck freak me out and she pinched me a bunch of times in seven different places - back of my arm, two places on my back, above my knee, next to my belly button, below my ribcage, and someplace else I am forgetting. She had a hard time getting a reading in some of the places, maybe because I had just exercised, I dunno, and it hurt more than I was expecting it to. She plugged each number into a calculator on her computer and then pushed the button.

"18.6", she said.

Internet, that cannot be right. There is no way on this green earth that my body fat is that low. I think that either she didn't measure in the right places, the measurements in those places are not indicative of my overall body fat profile, or the fact that I worked out beforehand skewed the results. There is no way in hell that 9 years and 15ish pounds after my first caliper test that my body fat is the same. While it was a bit thrilling at first, because I was expecting to hear a number in the mid-twenties at the lowest, I've spent the last several days thinking about how there's just no way it can be right. I have come to the conclusion that I just carry my fat in different areas than the 7-point test measures, because the only place she measured where I have obvious chub is next to my belly button. But if she'd done something on my upper thigh, my ass, or my hip/side area, there would have been plenty to pinch.

At this point I'm considering asking someone else to redo the test, or asking if I can be tested with the handheld gadget, to get some additional data. I did the math, and if my body fat really is as low as this test indicates, it means that my overall lean mass (i.e., the part that isn't fat) is more pounds than I weighed for most of college. And if that's the case, I don't think there's anything I'll ever be able to do, short of a wasting disease that makes me lose lean mass, to get any smaller than I am right now.


* * * * * * *

I mentioned the results of my test to a few people over the weekend, with mixed reactions. Most people agreed with me that it's likely the test was inaccurate, but one person suggested that I cut all sugar and carbs for two weeks and I'd be pleased with the results.

You know what?

No.

No, I will not give up an entire food group. I have been reading various bloggers write about their experiences with various eating plans and lifestyle changes and I'm happy that raw food or vegan or raw vegan or gluten-free or casein-free or GFCF or low carb or no carb or sugar free or paleo or caveman or fasting or WHATEVER works for you. But please do not suggest that I partake in it.

It is possible that if I stop eating X thing for Y amount of time that I will lose some weight, or my shape will change, or magical unicorns will fly out of my butt. But it is also possible that it will go from a change in my eating habits to an obsession and spiral into another eating disorder, which is something I'm just not interested in. And you know what? I *like* food. I like to eat. I like vegetables, and fruits, and chocolate, and nuts, and hot food, and cold food, and protein in various forms, and legumes, and grains. I like bread. I like dessert. I like cheese. I like alcohol, including hard cider. I like all sorts of ethnic foods, and I like all-American foods, and I'm not going to spend my life depriving myself of eating things I like in moderation. I've had times when I cut my food intake pretty severely while continuing to exercise excessively and it turned me into a raging harpy. I'd prefer not to be a raging harpy, and it's taken me years to get to the place where I am in regards to food. It's fuel, it's entertainment, it's good. I do restrict things like simple carbs (stuff made with white flour and white sugar) but mostly I do it because I feel the most healthy when I'm not eating that stuff. My heart doesn't race, I don't end up with blood sugar crashes, and I feel healthier. That said, there are times when I do eat junk (though it's rare, and I usually pair it with some sort of protein in order to stave off the blood sugar crash).

So. I may have 18.6% body fat, or I may not. (I'm guessing not.) I may eat junk sometimes. And I refuse to let other people attempt to coerce me into doing something I don't want to do: namely, give up eating things I enjoy for an elusive, likely unattainable, and unrealistic goal of looking like women's magazines say I should. My body is strong and healthy and I can use it to swim or bike or climb a mountain. I've made my peace with it, for the most part, and I don't want to let the experiences of anyone else drag me back toward body dysmorphia.

Sobering

Last weekend, I flew down to San Antonio to help my mom handle some necessary in-person business that had to be conducted surrounding the care and condition of my great aunt. She's had some recent health issues that necessitated moving her (temporarily, we hope) into the nursing care facility associated with her assisted living place, and nobody in the family had been able to get the answers we wanted from the care givers (the rest of the close family being in China and Canada), so my mom flew from California and I flew from here and we spent four days visiting my aunt and speaking to her caregivers.



The visit wasn't easy. It was difficult for a number of reasons, both logistical and emotional. I did all of the driving between San Antonio and New Braunfels, where we stayed in my aunt's empty house, and navigating strange freeways while dealing with crazy drivers wasn't exactly relaxing (especially when we got lost or when I almost hit a dog that ran across the road). But really, it was the difficulty of seeing my aunt, always so active and healthy, depressed and so unhappy she only wanted to lay in a bed all day.


Over the course of the four days we were there, we brought her to her apartment a couple of times and even got her to take a shower, which perked her up quite a bit. The last day we were there, we sat with her while she ate her lunch in the dining area rather than her bed, and she went to physical therapy, someplace she'd insisted she'd "only been once" (in reality, 5 days a week for a couple of hours a day). (I think she prefers to remember things she enjoys; clearly she remembered we were coming to visit from one day to the next, but in discussing topics she didn't like, she'd forget in just a few minutes.) She gets into mental loops even worse than she did last fall, and it takes a lot more effort than it used to to get her to talk about something other than how she's had a great life, a great childhood, a great adulthood, and now she's ready for the next thing. I think that her caregivers have equated this "I am ready to die" talk she does with "I'm going to intentionally self-harm," which is not the case at all. While she's currently weak because of her recent health issues, I don't think she'd ever do anything to actually try to kill herself.



And that, right there, was the hardest part of the trip. To hear my joyful, full-of-life aunt talk about how she's ready to go anytime was, quite frankly, depressing as hell. But there are so many things she can't do that she always enjoyed (socializing, dancing, swimming, etc.) because she can't see very well. And a recent ear infection has left her completely deaf in one ear. Even reading and writing are difficult for her because of her vision. So I don't blame her for being depressed and miserable. And her short-term memory is completely shot, and I think she knows it, and we're wondering whether there's some dementia going on as well.



While we were at Edy's house, I got stung by a paper wasp on my left arm. I took this photo in the bathroom, and now, over a week later, I've still got the pink circle (though the actual bite site is less itchy). I got about 20 mosquito bites as well, trying to steal wireless from a neighbor in the backyard. It was surreal, staying in Edy's house with my mom, which is still full of her things and her dolls, both of our minds elsewhere, and a wasp bite to add insult to injury.



I woke up each morning to a herd of male deer in the backyard. (The first morning, one of them was uabashedly peeing right by the window). I thought about the years she spent in the house with her husband, and the years she spent in the house alone. I thought about the end of life, whether it happens due to an accident or due to an illness or due to just plain wearing out. Knowing that when people get to a certain point, generally either the mind goes before the body or the body goes before the mind isn't at all comforting, and I found myself wishing, like Edy did aloud, that there was just a button one could push when one was ready to go.



It's hard to know what the right thing is, for someone who is maybe no longer capable of making their own decisions or caring for themselves. My aunt may live a few more months, or a few more years, or a decade. My mom, who lost all of her parents before she was in her mid-20s, has to go through end-of-life care with a person who is, for all intents and purposes, a surrogate mother to her. It's hard to know how to put into words everything I feel about death and dying, about the end of a long and well-lived life, about how I want to live my life and how I'd like the end of it to go. I spent nearly a week working on this post, and it still doesn't say the right things. This sort of thing isn't easy for anyone.

Goings-on

* My brother-in-law came to visit over the weekend. He prefers to go incognito. (The weather in our part of Colorado was not especially warm on Saturday, hence the hooded sweatshirt.




* I got a haircut.



* Robin spent a not inconsiderable amount of time walking on the floor this week. Yes, this is progress.

Yep, that's about it. What's new with you, internet?

Twenty eleven

My third birthday, of which I remember some vague images and feelings, was at a local Chuck E Cheese. My mom made a cake in the shape of a butterfly, and a few friends (and their parents) were in attendance. Here you can see me with my mom (pregnant with my sister, born 4 months later) and dad.



My mom made me a new pink skirt with suspenders and two matching hair barrettes. I loved them. It was my fifth birthday, and we went roller skating. 3 out of the 5 people in this photo are still in my life - Scarlett, Oldest Friend, and Brian Foster, all of whom (like me) still look like they did in this photo. Brian's hair is a little darker. Also pictured are Kristina and Megan, preschool friends of mine.



I had a big party for my 16th birthday, and, in going through the photos I have, I found quite a few of all my friends and hardly any of me. Which was just as well, because my face looked like a pizza. I had a great time, though. The shorts in this photo were a size 2, and I sewed the blouse myself. Also pictured are my friend Julia with a mouthful of cake and Laurel, who was about 8. I think I'd just opened a gift, which was a necklace from one of my friends that tragically broke after only a few wearings, but I liked it so much I saved the beads.



Here's Joey with me on my 21st birthday. I had a big party for the first time since my 16th, and I had an amazing time. I think it was potluck; people brought or made all kinds of food and drinks, and my college ex made my chocolate-raspberry birthday cake. I only have a few photos from the evening, and this one was the best of them. So many of the people I was closest to came to help me celebrate, and I couldn't have asked for a better 21st. (Also: Holy shit was I skinny.)

Today is my 31st birthday. It was both good and bad: good, because I went to the gym and had a tasty breakfast and a tasty lunch and expect to have a tasty dinner. I've found a new drink I enjoy (whiskey sour!) and I have 2 kitties. And Dan's making me a birthday pie. Bad, because I'm so far away from most of my friends and family, and I'm so far from where I want to be in life. I think I'm hardest on myself during times when I reflect on how much potential I once had. I was 3, and 5, and 16, and 21. Now it's 10 years later than the last photo, and the only difference between then and now is where I live and who I live with. Sometimes I feel like my relationship with Dan is the only thing I have going for me. I don't own a house, or a graduate degree; I've not gone on nearly as many trips as I expected and I want to be something completely different in my career and I'm still practicing my parenting skills on small felines.

Here's hoping that, sometime during this next year, the things I want to help move my life forward happen. And that I somehow contract the serenity I need to look back at 3-year-old me and 5-year-old me and 16-year-old me and 21-year-old me and realize that where I am at age 31 really isn't so bad.

Schroedinger day

On my way into the gym today, I passed by at least 3 people who didn't see me and who ran right into me. This all occurred within a less-than-five minute period. It made me feel invisible.

I'm not small. I'm wearing a bright red shirt. But that few minutes made me feel like I don't even exist, today.

* * * * * * *

Over the weekend, Dan and I watched two movies that had, on the surface, nothing in common, but when I thought more about them I realized that there was quite a bit of similarity in some of the themes. The two movies were Big Fan, starring Paton Oswalt, about a man whose entire life and identity and self revolves around his fandom for the New York Giants, and The Hurt Locker, about a bomb squad serving in the military in Iraq. I very, very, very much disliked Big Fan, and in fact it left me completely cold and kind of disgusted; I didn't like any of the characters or the story and mostly I just felt a vague mix of nausea and pity for the man who had no selfhood outside of being a Giants fan. In contrast, I very much enjoyed The Hurt Locker, the main character of which is kind of crazy and whose identity is completely wrapped up in being The Guy Who Does Crazy Shit Like Diffuse Bombs In Iraq While Taking Unnecessary Risks. Perhaps the difference, aside from Hurt Locker being a much better movie, was that the main character didn't garner pity. The main characters in both movies were portrayed as being at least somewhat lost when unable to participate in The Thing That Makes Them Them, and I found it interesting that in one case I really appreciated it while in the other I just wanted to throw up in my mouth a little. In any case, though I'm not generally a fan of war movies, I give The Hurt Locker two enthusiastic thumbs up.

* * * * * *

Sometimes I wonder about these things, what makes people who they are. Is the definition of a person what he likes? What she does for money? What he fears? What she wants? What makes me who I am? And why do some people seem to have no doubts whatsoever about their identity, while others change theirs up over and over again? Is a person truly who they think they are, regardless of anyone around them? Or must someone be observed by someone else in order to truly exist? Do people get married and/or have children, in some small part, to have people that MUST notice their existence? What about people who are older, have lost friends and family, shut-ins? What about people who go days or weeks without seeing or speaking to another human being?

I don't have the answers to any of these questions. But I will say that feeling like one does not exist when one seems to go unnoticed by those around one is a very lonely and bizarre feeling.

The blahs

As you may or may not have noticed, for the three of you still reading this, I haven't been posting much. I think it's because I have the January blahs. For the past few years, we've gone on a fun trip in January. Not this year - the double whammies of Petra's illness/death and Christmas, coupled with the furlough (unpaid) days I have for work now, meant that we couldn't afford to do any of the trips we talked about.

So here I sit, in the blahs. The sky is gray. It's cold outside, not horribly cold, but not pretty and snowy either. I'm still not over my mild cold. I want to go snowshoeing, but we have to buy snowshoes. I feel as though I'm once again stuck in a rut, unable to move in any direction.

We've had friends and relatives over the last couple of nights for dinner, which has been a nice change from the usual routine of computer-staring and TV-watching. I haven't yet mustered the energy to start any new projects. At least the house got cleaned over the 4-day weekend I just had.

I think January blahs are normal; however, in recent years there's been a trip to look forward to and/or go on, and this year, nothing. We have a new little kitty, growing daily, who has helped to bring some laughter back into our house of Dead Kitty Sadness, but even that isn't enough to get me out of the doldrums. I continue to go to the gym nearly every day, trudge to and from work, and wonder when I'll feel inspired again.

Synchronicity

Sometimes I get a kick out of little things that other people might not notice.

The other day, I was at the gym, listening to my ipod, doing a cooldown crunches/leg lifts sort of deal after the cardio workout. On my ipod was a medley of Sublime songs. As I started my 100 crunches, I thought to myself how funny it would be if the song that were on, Jailhouse, happened to play the line "Had the '89 vision" when I did crunch #89 (I count them in my head). Then I forgot about it until I got to number 80, when I realized it might happen, and then it did. I did the 89th crunch just as that line played.

It's the little things in life that make me happy.

Because it had to be said

Current commercials I have a problem with:

Bud light with lime. So everyone is playing in the water, right? Except the water is yellow (I assume it's supposed to be beer?). Mostly it just looks like everyone is playing in a bunch of pee, and I don't dig on urine.

Cialis: Someone please tell me what outdoor bathtubs have to do with dysfunctional penes. I don't understand what a four-hour boner has to do with bathing outside. For that matter, why the hell would anyone put a bathtub outside anyway? This is similar to the problem I have with a mattress commercial, in which the bed is outside. This strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea, unless you live someplace where it never precipitates.

Prius: The ones that have people dressed as plants or whatever and they all move when the car drives by freak me the eff out. I think it's the creepy stepford music that plays during the commercial that really sends this one over the edge.

Just about every commercial for any sort of prescription drug. It's bad enough that they all have to list all of the possible negative side effects you might experience while taking them, but some of them strike me as infinitely worse than the problem you're trying to get rid of in the first place. Lyrica for fibromyalgia, for example. Now, I understand fibromyalgia can be debilitating, constant chronic pain as I understand it, but "may increase likelihood of sucicde" !?!?! Hm, do I stay in pain, or do I take pills that make me want to kill myself? And I am always amused at the ones that are "not for women who are pregant or may become pregnant" because most of them are things that I can't imagine a woman who is still young enough to be pregnant would end up needing to take, anyway. "I had a heart attack at 57," one commercial goes, and I think it's for some medicine that keeps plaques from building up in your arteries. Thing is, how many women in their childbearing years are going to be taking heart attack prevention meds? I understand that they're just saying what's required by law or to keep from being sued or whatever, but still. Really? It's my understanding that if you're pregnant just about any prescription drug is going to have to be OK'd by your doctor, so most of the time this just seems ridiculous.

Friday Faff: Not so faffy edition

Last night we had dinner with a work friend and her husband, who are amazingly like us in interests and intellect, down to the same exact tattered copy of The Chronicles of Prydain on the bookshelf. We played some Zauber Cocktail and ate homemade pizza and strawberry shortcake and played Cranium and had a generally wonderful evening.

The interesting part was that they're quite religious and completely opposite us politically.

Luckily, it didn't stop us from having a great time. But I did think it was interesting.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've been friends with someone who had very different religious and political views. Joey, for example, was Catholic and pro-life and I think I opened his eyes to the fact that someone doesn't have to be religious to be a good person.

Then there was my Christian Republican cowboy country singer travel friend, with whom I got along like peas and carrots, but with whom an actual relationship would never have worked for any number of reasons.

I find myself wishing that people who have opposing viewpoints would be willing to see the similarities between themselves and people who disagree with their viewpoints. Everything does not always have to be how one side or another is right. How about how both sides can work together to make things better for everyone?

What might have been

Do you ever look back on decisions you've made over the course of your life, big or small, and wonder if you'd made a different choice, what might the outcome have been?

It never ceases to amaze me how life seems at once to be a series of happy (or not-so-happy) coincidences and also a series of meaningful events. If I had not done this, if I had not gone here, if I had not gone to that party or written on that message board or applied for that job, life might have been so different. When I was a little kid, I loved to hear the story of how my parents met: at a party on Valentine's Day, at the home of mutual friends, when each was dating someone else. My dad dated 3 women with the same first name; the 3rd was my mom. If one or the other of them hadn't gone to the party, I never would have come into existence! How mind-blowing is that when you're five, or even when you're 30? If Dan's brother had never told him about the message board, if I hadn't IM'd him, if I'd been seriously dating someone else, if if if. So many choices, so many possibilities, so many futures that could have happened but didn't.

As I mentioned before, we saw 500 Days of Summer this past weekend, and while I don't feel talented enough to do a movie review that could actually do the film justice, there are a few bits that keep sticking with me. The theme of choices and how certain choices lead to certain outcomes, whether they be coincidence or whether they hold actual meaning, whether things happen at random or whether something is meant to be, whether you have a soul mate or whether any number of people could work out to be a good long-term partner, is explored in ways both subtle and profound throughout the film. Some people I know met their partners in unusual ways, while others knew each other for years in some fashion before ending up together. Either way, one might argue both sides of the meant-to-be vs. happy coincidence debate. Regardless of how you meet your SO, what really matters is what you do with the relationship once you're in it, whether you turn out to be compatible long-term or whether it will be a finite sort of thing.

It's not just relationships that this applies to, though, since the jobs that you apply for and the places you go and the daily decisions you make (salad or cheeseburger? gym or veg out on the couch?) all have influences on your life, long-term, even if taken individually they might not seem that way. You meet people and make friends and have adventures. People come in and out of your life. People you happened to become penpals with when you're a teenager turn out to be good friends despite living on the other side of the country 15 years later. People you think are going to be single-serving friends turn out to be far more important than you would have ever imagined - my aunt's best friend, for example, she met while in the hospital giving birth to my cousin. The best friend was in the next bed over, and they've been friends for nearly 31 years now, and though she was then the lady giving birth the same day, she and her son are family members now. Sometimes I wonder what people who were once in my life but no longer are might be up to; someday I'll write the story of my cowboy friend from Michigan. But that's a tale for another time.

Speaking of blasts from the past, I'm facebook friends with my College Boyfriend's brother. He just joined and last night put up photos of his two daughters (whom I've never met). The older daugher looks like her mom (CB's bro's wife). I had to do a double-take when I saw the photo of the younger daughter, as she had inherited her uncle's (CB's) eyes. I looked into the face of that baby and saw what my baby might have looked like had I had one with College Boyfriend. I never had more than a slight pregnancy scare during the 3 years College Boyfriend and I were together, and had I gotten pregnant during that time I would have been in no way ready to have a baby, let alone be tied for life to College Boyfriend. Things didn't work out with him for very good reason. Maybe it's because babies are on my mind these days, wondering how Dan's and my potential progeny will look. But seeing College Boyfriend's eyes in his niece's face gave me a little glimpse of what might have been, had accidents happened, had different choices been made. It was a little bit freaky.

We've come a long way, baby, but we're not there yet

Four recent stories I read on Jezebel:

Men escorting women through protestors into Planned Parenthood and other clinics where abortions are provided are sometimes greater targets for violence than the women themselves, admonished by anti-abortionists for "letting your woman kill your child" and "not being a man and protecting your child."

The deaths of four young women in Canada, all related and of Afghan heritage, may have been "honor killings" performed by male relatives. Whether Islamic or tribal Afhan in nature, the possibility that men might murder their daughters or wives for living in a more autonomous way (as Canadian women do) is really disturbing.

Women who are followers of the Quiverfull movement are more likely to have unassisted home births (as in, no midwife or doula or any other sort of medical professional). It is unclear as to whether this is actually the choice made by the women themselves or by their husbands.

"Cankles" are the new muffintop, and women are having surgery to "correct" this "problem."

So what do all of these things have in common? Each story has an underlying element of the idea that women's bodies are not their own. I find it really telling, for example, that abortion protestors (while purporting to be concerned with the life of an unborn person) seem to be particularly displeased with men "letting" their wives, girlfriends, friends, what have you, have abortions. As though it's up to the men what should be done with a woman's body. Whether or not the murder of the four women was a family "honor" killing, we know that such things happen, and they happen as a result of women wearing clothing or behaving in a manner that their male relatives don't like. I guess it's up to the men to determine what a woman should be able to do, wear, or think, even in Canada.

As to the choice made by some Quiverfull women (the movement the Duggars belong to, a belief that it should be "up to God" how many children you have, so eschewing birth control completely), I think every woman should have the right to choose how to give birth, even if her choice is, in my opinion, misguided. Would I want to give birth at home with nobody to help? No way man. But if that's what someone wants to do, more power to her. What concerns me in this case is that the Quiverfull movement is also all about women submitting to their husbands, and whether women who are unused to making any autonomous decisions are actually deciding to have homebirths or whether their husbands are deciding for them. If that's the case, I have a big problem with it, because it's dangerous for both the mother and the baby, especially if the mother is unprepared or afraid of giving birth unassisted. Another example of someone else having power/control over a woman's body.

And finally, we have the big new no-no in women's bodies (because there always has to be something, right?): Cankles. As I understand it, cankles are the slang term given to women with large ankles, where it appears that the calf and the ankle don't have any division. I've always associated the term with pregnant women and older women with edema, who essentially have cankles because their ankles/feet are really swollen, but apparently society is now an arbiter of what is acceptable when it comes to the ratio of ankle size to calf size, and if your ankles and calves don't have a large enough discrepancy, you're supposed to seek out a personal trainer or surgeon to help correct the "problem." What I want to know is, WHAT PROBLEM? This is a matter of gross anatomy. People can't help the size of their bones and all the calf raises and ankle circles in the world won't change that. I find it offensive that there always has to be SOMETHING that women are supposed to hate about their bodies. Muffintops, for example, are easily "fixed" by wearing clothing that fits right. Cankles are not a problem. People's bodies are different, and not everyone has the same shape (though Hollywood and trashy magazines keep doing their best to convince us otherwise). When I was talking to Dan about the new media emphasis on the horror of cankles, I realized (and mentioned) that the concept of vanity being a bad or negative thing has pretty much disappeared in American society. It used to be that people who focused too much on their own appearance were considered shallow, but sometime in the last fifty years, that has changed, and now if you DON'T fixate on every little detail about your appearance (especially if you're a woman), you're unattractive at best. Has this obsession with women's bodies needing to fit into a certain mold of male- (or female?-) determined acceptableness turned us into a nation of narcissists?

Recently, Dan and I have been devouring Season 2 of Mad Men, an excellent show set in the early 1960s with a fascinating look at the sexual politics of the day and how men and women interacted in both workplace and social settings. It's about a lot of other things too, and has fantastic writing and acting so you should all watch it. (Season 3 starts in a couple of weeks, so now we are all caught up!) To me, one of the most interesting things about the show is that we're supposed to be shocked and appalled at times at the way women are treated by men (particularly in the workplace) and how women view and judge other women. But after these stories, after thinking about it and talking to Dan about it, while things may not be as blatant as being called "sweetheart" by male coworkers or being overtly hit-on on a regular basis, the differences between 1962 and 2009 aren't nearly as wide-apart as one would like to think. When society still feels that women's bodies belong to anyone other than themselves, when women are told to be concerned with yet another body part fitting a certain acceptable mold, and women's decisions and behavior should be dictated by their husbands or male relatives, this country (and this world) still has a long, long way to go.

Goings-on

Life suddenly got busy.

I am playing on a work softball team. We had two practices and our first game was yesterday evening, wherein the mercy rule was invoked after the 4th inning (this is when one team is up by more than 20 runs) and after that we just played for practice, but I got an RBI in the 5th! And another hit after that!

I am voluteering with an organization that my cousin is involved with. The main purpose of the organization is a focus on women's rights in countries where that is not always easy, and my responsibilities are primarily to help facilitate ESL-type communication via chat room between women in Afghanistan and native English speakers in other countries (most of whom have ESL or EFL teaching experience).

Dan is finishing up final projects for school and will be graduating on the 17th of May. Because of this, I'm planning a graduation party for him for Saturday the 16th and because my family will be in town for his graduation I'm planning a belated Mother's Day brunch the morning of the 17th in honor of my mom and his mom. That's two parties and a graduation in one weekend. Hold me.

My Iron Chef battle #2 is underway. This time there isn't a theme ingredient but a theme theme, and the theme is PICNIC. There are a lot of restrictions on what we can do (no cooking at the picnic site, have to assume a significant amount of time between food preparation and consumption, etc.) so I am finding it to be challenging. Interesting, of course, but challenging, especially since so many typical picnic-type foods don't involve a lot of cooking or recipes. I myself am fond of simple things on picnics: breads, cheeses, fruit, and wine. But I have some ideas and will post them like I did last time when they are finished. My deadline is tomorrow (Saturday) at midnight my time, so if anyone out there has suggestions for picnic foods that are interesting or unusual or just even want to tell me your favorite things to have on a picnic, I'm all ears. Or eyes, since this is primarily a written form of communication.

I'm in the middle of judging the scholarship applications for the 6th year in a row. It's going more slowly than in previous years; perhaps I'm jaded or maybe I'm just too far out of high school to be impressed by some of the accomplishments listed by the kids.

Also, there is some work stuff. I won't get into it. Maybe later.

This weekend, I will be:
Preparing my Iron Chef submission
Cleaning/organizing/purging the house
Party prep/planning for the graduation party and brunch
Sleeping (I hope)

Dan and I are heading out pretty soon to go see Star Trek. If you haven't been reading his blog this week, he's been posting some Star Trek- themed Top 5 lists. Go check them out!

A bolt from the blue (or the yellow) (or the green)

Oldest Friend hired a professional photographer to document her birthday ball last month, and she's spent this week posting the photos on her facebook account. I looked through them, happy to see so many of her having a good time, remembering what a good time I had, and honing a critical eye on the job the photographer did of capturing the evening. Luckily, I think he did a fantastic job, especially considering how dimly-lit everything was.

Unfortunately, I found virtually every photo I was in (and I was in a lot!) to be unflattering in the extreme. One of them actually made me wince when it popped up on my screen. I thought I'd looked good in the dress, in the heels, with my hair curled and my makeup done and my dead grandma gloves, but damn did I look terrible in that photo. It may very well be the most unattractive photo of me in existence.

I was chatting with Oldest Friend about it the other night, and chatting about my current gym habits and eating habits. I told her about the swearing off of chocolate at work, and about how much I'm working out these days (a lot, especially with the snowshoeing we've done on the weekends). I told her about how the only ways I seem to be able to lose weight are a) exercise compulsively and obsess about what I eat, which is what I did to lose weight for my high school reunion in 2006, and b) travel to another part of the world and spend a few weeks walking around (I lost probably 10 pounds in 3 weeks when we went to China, and even lost a few pounds when we were in Italy last January despite the weather).

Oldest Friend, being even more into fitness and health and exercise than I am, she of the Iron Man finish last August and multiple triathalons a year, she who posts daily about her 30 and 60 mile bike rides and her training runs as FB status updates, said to me that it's possible I'm working out too hard.

(cue sound of record scratching)

Whuh? was my initial response.

Yeah, she told me. Some bodies are more likely to lose weight when doing long periods of low-intensity exercise, rather than shorter periods of high intensity exercise. Do you have a heart monitor? she asked.

No.

Thinking about it though, it kind of makes sense. If I'm walking around for 5 or 7 hours a day, for a couple of weeks, I lose weight without even trying. I can eat whatever I feel like eating (and our eating habits in China weren't great; lots of processed white flour stuff, lots of oil, and lots of sugar and not enough fresh veggies; because of the risk of hepatitis, all veggies we ate the whole trip were cooked), and I still lose weight. I'm not thinking about it, not trying to do anything except enjoy myself, and I lose weight. Every time.

However.

I live in a world where I earn my keep by sitting on my butt for 8 hours a day in front of my computer. I don't have time to walk for five hours every day. And what kind of exercise do I do in my daily life? Without fail, it's usually high-intensity stuff because of the limited amount of time I have in a day to exercise. I walk to and from work, which is relatively low-intensity, but that's only 15 minutes in each direction. I take the stairs at work sometimes. At the gym, I don't feel like I'm doing much unless my heart rate is up - bike, treadmill, elliptical, strider, weights class, cardio/weights class, all of them get my heart rate up pretty high, according to the machine heart rate monitors. I live at a reasonably high altitude, and my heart rate is usually somewhere between 160 and 180 for the majority of the time I'm exercising. As soon as I'm finished, however, it goes back down to my resting rate in a very short period of time - which leads me to believe my cardiovascular fitness is excellent. (Also a good sign: I can do snowshoe hikes uphill for hours at very high altitudes.)(The corollary to this is that when we go down to sea level I have to work like crazy to get my heart rate above 140. It's seriously difficult.)

But honestly, I don't do a lot of low-intensity stuff. The pools around here are mostly outdoor (and therefore not open this time of year). I haven't done much bike riding, again because of the season/weather. I don't do a lot of weight lifting outside my classes because I feel like weights twice a week is enough since I'm not looking to bulk up any more. I haven't been doing yoga anymore because every time I do it my neck hurts for days afterward. So what can I do?

I'm going to try some new classes at the gym, probably add a few pilates classes since the pilates instructor I like came back. I'm going to try some spin classes, where I can control the amount of difficulty. I'm going to cultivate the habit of walking for an hour or so after work now that it's light so late into the evening. (YAY!) And this weekend, I'm going to buy a heart monitor, and I'm going to do what Oldest Friend suggested - spend a month doing only (or mostly, I'm not giving up my cardio weights class!) low-impact activity and see what that does to this body of mine.


This is what I looked like when I was 22. A friend of mine posted this photo for me today, and I'm glad he did, glad someone caught an image of what I looked like back then. I didn't appreciate the body or the health I had then, and I probably don't appreciate the body I have now as much as I should. But I'm glad that body was captured for posterity, and here it is for the world to see. I'll probably never look that good again, but that's OK, I'm not 22 anymore. (Also, I prefer being a c-cup to an a-cup). I do think I can look better than I did at the birthday ball, though.

Deaths, weddings, births, and ploofs - four life milestones

Things that are on my mind recently:

How I am far more bothered by people dying relatively young in accidents (Natasha Richardson, of course) than by people dying of old age or dying of diseases. Accidents are unpredicatable and scary, but there's not much you can do to prevent them. I do my best to prevent illness and disease, but short of encasing myself in a bubble for the rest of my life and never being able to experience the world again, I'm just going to have to chance it. I'm really sorry for her family, though.

How even people who consider themselves to be nonconformist and easy-going can get all worked up about wedding planning, especially when looking at other people's wedding porn (tm Ariel of Offbeat Bride). I confess to being this way myself to a small degree, but knowing the constraints of time, budget, and space, I never let myself get too worked up over stuff other people were doing for their different and/or unusual weddings. Ours, quite frankly, ended up being far more traditional than I expected but there were enough quirky touches to make it our own, I think. I remember posting on Hillary's blog while she was still working out the last kinks of wedding planning, trying to reassure her that honestly, nobody will notice if the flowers aren't exactly what you were hoping for. And you won't notice, either. It's hard to look back and think that reassurance from anyone who's already gone through the whole wedding rigamarole would have helped matters for me, because you don't really know until it's all over. I hope my comment way back then helped Hillary, and I hope that in the hypothetical future when I am hypothetically doing things for weddings, I'm able to impart a bit of serenity.

That I know a whole lot of people who are currently in the last stages of gestation and will be giving birth soon. (JT, holla!) Am currently working on yet another blanket for an April arrival, and will probably do a hat and booties or something for a friend due in May because I just don't think I'll want to be doing blanket knitting once it really warms up.

That we just went through the warmest, dry-est winter I can remember since I moved to Denver. We've hardly had any snow at all and it's been mostly in the 50s and 60s for all of February and March. What the hell, Colorado? Where's all my snow? I only got to see ploofs ONE TIME this year. ONE TIME ploofspotting is not enough for my necessary ploof quotient. WHERE ARE MY PLOOFS? (I do realize that having written this, the universe will hear my hue and cry and we'll get another March blizzard that dumps 2 feet of snow downtown or something.)

And tonight, we're having an out-of-town friend over for dinner who we haven't seen since New Year's Eve of - 01 to 02 I think? Should be fun!

Long distance relationship

As I may have mentioned before, I had quite a few pen pals in high school. These were all people who lived in another part of the state, or another state, some of whom I'd never actually met. My first real boyfriend was one of them; he lived in the Bay Area and though we were "together" for a year, we only saw one another about six or eight times during that year. I didn't have a lot of friends at school or in my town, so most of my socializing was done through letters or over the phone.

Many of my current friends are people I met through the internets. I married one of them a few weeks ago; you may have heard me mention it? We spent the first year and a half of our relationship living in two different states, seeing each other about once a month or every other. It was a difficult thing to do, maintaining our relationship primarily through IM and phone conversations a couple of times a week, but we managed it.

I say all of these things because I want to make it clear I'm no stranger to long-distance relationships, whether those be friendships or relationships of a more serious nature. My Oldest Friend and I haven't lived in the same state since we were 17 years old, yet we manage to maintain our friendship across distances, sometimes truly great ones (she's lived in Belgium, Germany, Mexico, Australia, and Washington, DC in the last ten years, and she currently resides in Southern California). Quite a few guests at our wedding were people we hadn't seen in person for years because we all live in different places. Luckily, these days it's easier than ever to maintain relationships with people across great distances, what with blogs and email and such.

But.

How do you maintain a relationship with another state? Our 10 days or so in California for the wedding (during my favorite time of the year, mind) brought up all these feelings I've been bottling up for a while, about how much I miss the Bay Area. It was really difficult for me to leave in some ways, because I know we won't be back until August (well, late July for me). We have a trip to Southern California in June during which time we'll be seeing some friends and family, but it's not the same. The wedding was an amazing, glorious day capping off a week of festivities, but since then I've felt like I want that day back, I want more time to spend with all those loved ones who I rarely get to see, and never all in one place at the same time. And while I can maintain relationships with friends and family, I can't "stay in touch" with an entire region, with a season, with that feeling of belonging and familiarity.

During my five plus years in Denver, I've gotten to know Colorado pretty well. Thanks to my job, I've traveled all over the state, seen some beautiful and amazing things, climbed mountains, and stayed in brothel-like hotel rooms. My preconception of what Colorado was like (as in, before I became more knowledgable about the geography of this part of the country) was very different than the reality. Colorado has a lot to offer, both in things to do and see and in opportunities. Yet every time we go back to California, I feel like I'm coming home - to my family, to where I grew up, to the place that feels like ME. My sole coworker we invited to the wedding was unable to attend, but I sent her the links to the flickr photos because she wanted to see them. Her remarks afterward, in addition to being so amazed by what wonderful photos everyone took, was that the pictures looked like ME - like the wedding was in a place where I looked and felt like I belonged. I'd never talked much with her about my decision to leave California or how much I miss it, but I found myself with my jaw hanging open a bit when she said that.

Of course, California isn't my home anymore. My home is with my husband and my kitties, wherever they happen to be. Right now, and for the past five years, that's Denver. I like Denver. But it isn't California.

Much of our disposable income over the last few years has gone toward traveling, primarily to California. Luckily, there are cheap airfares between Denver and the Bay Area offered by a few airlines (and I hope this continues). But we want to be able to do other things with our money someday. We'd like to buy a house. We'd like to go on more big trips. And every trip to California, even when we have free places to stay (thank you, people who let us stay with you!), costs a big chunk of change. There have been times when I've wanted to throw caution to the wind, to just buy a last minute fare to California for a weekend. And then I remember that we have other things we have to think about, like paying rent and bills and eating. And when we do go to California, we schedule our time down to the minute in some cases, making sure we make plans to spend time with as many people as we can during the few days we're there. I think it will be better now that we don't have to do wedding planning while we're there, but there are still a good 20 people we'd like to see (friends and family members we both have in the area) when we come out to the Bay Area and there's no way we can see everybody each time.

Someday, I hope we can afford to live in the Bay Area. We often talk about what would happen if we won the lottery that we never play, and our stock answer is always the purchase of a house in the Berkeley hills, first thing off the bat. Because if we could afford to, we'd move there tomorrow. Well, not really, we'd wait until Dan was done with school, but then we'd go. Unfortunately, we'd likely never be able to buy a house if we did that. So instead we talk about moving places like Portland, with more affordable housing that are closer to California. And I dream about the Berkeley marina, and eating Specialty's chocolate chip cookies in San Francisco, and spending Quality Time with so many people I love.

Stolen from Monkey, who has a birthday tomorrow

The Rules:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you. Thanks Monks.

2. Post these rules on your blog.

3. Share six unimportant things about yourself.

4. Tag six random people at the end of your entry

Unimportant thing the first:
I can only sneer with one side of my face.

Unimportant thing the second:

I have been known, on occasion, to put hair clips (the jaw kind) on the tails of my cats. Yes, I know this is not nice. I do it anyway, but the cats manage to remove them relatively quickly so it's not too much of an issue. I also laughed at Loki and called him Gimp Whiskers for a few weeks when he singed them on a candle in the bathroom.

Unimportant thing the third:
I am super excited for four more events happening this year, three of which involve my family (a graduation, a wedding, a major birthday) and one of which involves friends (giving birth to their very own baby). These things will happen in June, August, October, and December, respectively.

Unimportant thing the fourth:

I am also very excited that I am getting $900 back from state and federal taxes this year. I'm strongly considering buying a couch because our futon really sux.

Unimportant thing the fifth:

After many years of resisting, I finally joined Facebook and threw a chicken at my cousin.

Unimportant thing the sixth:

I'm wearing my wedding shoes at work today. That's why I bought the shoes I did, so I could wear them again (and I liked them, of course).

Not going to tag anyone; if you want to do the meme, consider yourself tagged.

(still working on part 3 of The Wedding)

A bout of randomness

1. BM dress #4 was finished last night. Hooray!

2. It is Oldest Friend's birthday today. She is 29, which makes me go EEP because that means I turn 29 one week from today. And I haven't even thought about what I might like to do for my birthday, because all I ever think about anymore is wedding crap.

3. Except last night, when we went over to our friend Julie's new place (she moved in with her boyfriend!) and had Game Night, meaning everyone except me played with a wii and some other game system and I visited with people and finally got to see the necklace Julie made me for the wedding with green pearls I bought in China back in November of 2005. It was nice to have an evening where I hardly thought about wedding at all.

4. I am really annoyed at my skin. Like, really really annoyed. I hope this doxycycline stuff works soon, because my skin looks the worst it's been in about 3 years right now. Good thing I have makeup I can cake on if I need to!

5. I wrote out 18 thankyou notes today for the work shower gifts. When it comes time to write our wedding thankyou notes, I am NOT writing them all myself.

6. Fridays are the best days. I hope it's nice this weekend.

7. Petra has taken to sitting in a small cardboard boxtop that has some weird poky cutout bits (one of the shower gifts was a glass creamer/sugar bowl that were stuck in this thing). I don't know why she likes it so much. You'd think the cardboard poky bits would be uncomfortable, but she can't be dissuaded.

Wednesday Wedding Day: A budget wedding in an age of excess

For anyone out there who has planned (or been involved in the planning of) a wedding in the last five or ten years, you know the woe that is the wedding industry. The WIC (Wedding Industrial Complex) thrives on telling people they aren't good enough, and if they just spent money on this or bought that, their weddings would be better than all the other ones and ooh isn't that pretty? Weddings these days are EXPENSIVE, no matter how you look at it, especially if you want to have an actual party and not just cake and punch. Large costs and small costs add up to a whole lot of cost, and people in big cities or popular destination sites (NYC, Boston, SF, Sonoma County (where we're getting married)) get taken for a ride because everything costs even more there. When we first started talking about getting married (this was a good year before the official engagement) we did a little research into possible sites in both Colorado and northern California, and ended up with sticker shock. The ideas I had to keep things affordable in terms of site fee turned out to be just as espensive as or more than a hotel. Sites used as weddings can charge huge fees - for example, the winery where my sister used to work charged a $6000 site fee just for the privilege of getting married on site (this fee didn't include tables/chairs/etc or any food - just the site fee) back in 2001 and I'm sure the price has only increased.

And that's just for the site! You add in catering (dinner usually costs more than lunch, sit-down costs more than buffet, and the costs of renting things like linens and plates and paying for waitstaff), booze (usually you have to buy it through the caterer), and the wedding dress (it's hard to get away with spending less than $700 on an actual wedding dress these days, and even bridesmaids dresses can be expensive if you ask for white or ivory), and that's a great big chunk of change. Florals are spendy. Live music (band) is more expensive than a DJ, but even a DJ costs money. In order to have a wedding (meaning, ceremony plus reception) just a step up from making all the food yourself, you pretty much have to shell out some dough. And then there's photography! If you want a seasoned professional who will take photos that don't look like they were taken in a portrait studio in 1982, photography can cost many thousands, depending on location and how in-demand a photographer happens to be. All in all, just the basics for the reception (location, food, beverage, photography, music, flowers) often add up to huge sums, especially in places where the WIC has a firm grasp on What's Done. And I haven't even begun to discuss the costs of invitations or that of an officiant, church, organist, etc. for many people who want their nuptuals to take place in a house of God (even if it's just for the pretty factor). Really, if you read the magazines or The Knot or any number of wedding-planning resources, you'll discover that someone needs to shell out buckets of cash to have even a halfway-decent event.

Luckily for us, we're not interested in What's Done. When we truly started planning our wedding, we thought about what was important to us (our guests, and the comfort/entertainment thereof) and decided to spend money in those areas, and save money on the things we didn't care about. We were really lucky in that my Oldest Friend/Best Woman's parents offered to sponsor us at the neighborhood club where we're getting married, and the member rates for what we get (ten hours time, including set-up and clean-up time, tables, chairs, dishes, glassware, flatware, picnic tables and benches, use of kitchen/grill, etc.) turned out to be a complete steal when you compare it to other places, especially other places in Sonoma County. Of course with that came the stipulation that we had to buy event insurance and have a licensed caterer (so no food trays from the deli, must have waitstaff and licensed bartender), which added to our cost. We both decided it was better that our friends/family not have to work, so we're willing to pay people to do these things for us. Again, we were very lucky to find a caterer we loved, willing to make the kind of food we wanted at a price we could afford, and our only rental cost is linens. I thought about making them myself, but ultimately decided it would be worth the extra money not to have to worry about that (plus, buying fabric and making them might not have been much cheaper). We're also paying for a tent to keep any possible bad weather from bothering our guests as the main room isn't big enough for everyone to sit at tables at once. We decided it's better not to tempt fate and be prepared for the worst, so were willing to pay for some peace of mind.

Our caterer is also awesome in that she has a lot of ideas for how we can save money. She was perfectly willing for us to provide our own beverages of all sorts (both alcoholic and non), for us to find our own cake, and where we might get wholesale flowers. We could tell from the first meeting with her that she understood the sort of wedding we were interested in having, and worked with us to come up with a plan that was agreeable for everyone. The cake(s) are coming from local bakeries and Costco, wine/beer may actually be purchased here and driven out to California, and we have a hookup with Glaceau products so people will be drinking smartwater and vitaminwater that we got for free. And flowers will come from my mom's yard (if anything is blooming), Trader Joes, and/or the wholesale flower place.

I didn't start out wanting a real wedding dress - I was trying to find a bridesmaid's dress that would work, or really any other sort of dress, but couldn't find what I was looking for (green) so settled on the next best thing (white with green). My dress was relatively inexpensive as far as "wedding" dresses go, and my mom really wanted to buy it for me. I'm not wearing a veil, bought my shoes for $30 at DSW last June, and a friend is making me some jewelry from pearls I bought in China. Dan has always wanted to get married in a kilt, so he found a place that rents full Scottish dress for a not-too-bad price in his family tartan, so we'll be renting those for Dan and his best man and groomsman. Rather than make my bridesminions buy dresses they may never wear again, I'm making them and they can wear again or not as they choose.

Since neither of us was interested in getting married in a church, the ceremony will be at the same site as the reception and we don't have to pay any associated fees. Music is ipod playlists and some rented/borrowed equipment. And our rockstar officiant was already ordained by the Universal Life Church. Dan designed/drew/etc. our invitations himself, and we printed them at my work so that only cost us postage and envelopes. And we found a photographer who is just getting started in the business, so we're getting everything we wanted (plus an album!) for less than half of the low-end rate for decent photography in Northern California.

Really, in the grand scheme of things, our wedding is going to cost a lot of money - more than I'd initially wanted to spend, in fact. But when you compare it to the average cost of weddings in the county, our wedding pales in comparison (the average for the area is about five times what we're spending). We could have done it for less - found a restaurant with a catering license and done setup/cleanup ourselves, made our attendants pay for their outfits, foregone the tent and just hoped for sun. But the areas in which we decided to spend money were what we felt are the important parts of a wedding - our friends and family are traveling (some for great distances, some not so much) to be there to support us and celebrate with us, so we want to make sure they had a good time. We certainly plan to do so.

Wednesday wedding day: All the crap we have to do in California

So, we'll be in California for about 10 days before we go to Italy. While we're there, we've got a whole lotta things to do and a whole lotta decisions to make for the wedding, because (as I mentioned yesterday) it's the last time we'll both be out there until we drive out a week before the Big Day.

Here's what we have to get done while we're out there:

1. Meet with tent rental company at the venue to figure out what kind of tenting we need in case of rain. Luckily, they are a) local, b) have worked there before, c) it's off season, and d) I went to preschool with the kids of the owners of the company, so I'm hoping we get a good deal. It's not like a whole lot of the space will need tenting (and it's already a patio, so we won't need a floor and will only need walls if it's actually raining).

2. Dress fitting. I'm hoping the dress fits perfectly and it doesn't need hemming so the only alteration it will need is a one-point bustle to lift up the almost non-existant train for dancing purposes. The store will press it and store it for me until the wedding. It's a little nerve-wracking knowing I won't be able to gain or lose much weight after I have the dress fitting but have to stay pretty much the same size until the end of March. I guess I can lose a little, but I can't gain any. I think this is currently the most stressful thing on the list. Why am I so worried about it?

3. Meet with caterers to do our menu tasting. I'm loking forward to this one. I think our food will be yummy!

4. Meet with photographer to do engagement shoot. We'll probably take photos in the redwoods/at the ocean, though not sure exactly where yet.

5. Stop by the wholesale flower place to see what flowers they'll have in March as back-up for my mom's yard. We might just buy flowers from Trader Joes, too.

6. Find a place to get a cake! Neither of us needs anything frou-frou and we've gotten a recommendation for a bakery in the area who will do sheet cakes for not too much $$. So I guess we have to go eat some cake. Darn.

7. Find fabric for bridesmaid dresses (with assistance of bridesmaids). Because yes, I am insane, and plan to make them myself. One of the things on tap for this weekend is to make the dress for myself out of fabric I already have to see how difficult the process is. I'm not anticipating it being all that difficult; in fact it's quite similar to a costume I made several years ago and this time I have a sewing machine.

8. Trip to IKEA for more decor possibilities.

9. Meet with someone about maybe doing my hair. I haven't decided if I'll have someone else do it or do it myself, but since I've never had my hair professionally done (I did my own hair for prom etc.) it might be nice to splurge on something like that. My only concern is the cost of having someone open up the shop (or come to us) really early in the morning since the ceremony's at like 11:30 and we're doing photos ahead of time.

These are the things I can think of right now, though I'm sure more stuff will come up either before we go or while we're out there. Everything else will have to wait until the third week of March.

So what am I forgetting?

100 more things about me, part the second

51. I really hate having my hair in my face. That, along with my 3.5 head, is why I haven't had bangs since age 6.
52. Another way to squick me out is to force me to stick my hands in dirty cold slimy dishwater. UGH!
53. I have only for a brief period of time ever lived in a place with a functional dishwasher (I'm not including the co-op here, which had an industrial dishwashing machine thingy).
54. Dark chocolate and red wine are two of my favorite things to consume together.
55. I've always liked the name Sam for a boy, but Dan doesn't like that name. Sniff.
56. My sleep is generally restless if I wear socks to bed. Which is unfortunate, because my feet are nearly always cold.
57. Sometimes it is difficult for me to determine my opinion on a controversial or political issue because I have a hard time not seeing both sides.
58. A very small part of me would like to get a tattoo, but I've never been able to think of anything that I would be OK having on my body permanently.
59. I think it would be really cool to get mehendi (henna tattoos) for the wedding but I wouldn't want anyone to feel like I was inappropriately co-opting someone else's cultural tradition.
60. After a bad bout of stomach flu in high school, the first solid food I felt like eating after two weeks of being sick and drinking soup was a grilled cheese sandwich with pepperoni in it.
61. I didn't like fish or most vegetables until college, when I had them prepared in different ways than my mom prepared them. Now, there are very few types of either that I dislike.
62. During the one taekwondo class I took in college, I advanced to yellow belt with green stripe.
63. Someday, I would love to pick and eat a ripe green fig again. I haven't tasted one of those since I was 10 years old.
64. Once, in seventh grade, I fleetingly wished to be 5'10 and thin with gorgeous skin so I could be a model. I got over that pretty quickly.
65. Also in seventh grade, I had a pretty high bowling average.
66. There used to be four moles on my neck, but one disappeared so now there are only three.
67. My toes are somewhat prehensile.
68. In middle school I won the geography bee, beating out a mean-ol' 8th grader. My prize was a globe. They gave me a test to see if I was good enough to compete on a more area-wide level, but I was not.
69. The next year, I lost the geography bee to a 6th grader. I am still somewhat ashamed.
70. Sometimes I wish I weren't so practical. You know those people who buy things on a whim, spur of the moment, hang the budget? Yeah, not me.
71. "Fart" was considered a bad word in my family (meaning, we weren't allowed to say it), and it's probably the only "bad" word I use on a daily basis.
72. I used to eat wild oats off the stalk. It's a lot of work for not very much food, but when they are ripe they're really tasty.
73. I also used to eat raw oatmeal with milk, sugar and cinnamon. Kind of like one might eat a bowl of cereal, only it was rolled oats.
74. Mostly now I just eat steel-cut oats.
75. Another fond childhood food: eating apricots fresh and ripe and sunny off the tree. MMMM.
76. One year I wore these friendship anklets someone made me at camp until they rotted off. Shaving around them was kind of difficult.
77. If I had to classify my religious beliefs/tenets/etc. I would probably put myself somewhere between agnostic and secular humanist.
78. Sometimes I miss going to church, just a little bit, for the community aspects. Not the God stuff.
79. I don't miss it enough to actually go.
80. The least sexy song (to me) is the Sesame Street theme song.
81. I used to meditate in high school, but I haven't done it in a really long time.
82. Overall, I consider myself to be a pretty well-adjusted person (aside from a few specific issues)
83. If given the choice, I prefer even numbers to odd. If odd, they have to be easily divisible by 3 or 5.
84. I cannot imagine thinking in pictures. I am words all the way.
85. If presented with written material or music with lyrics I will read the writing or listen to the lyrics. I am that drawn to language. I can't even study listening to music that has words I understand.
86. I dropped my little sister on her head when she was a baby. Yes, it was an accident. No, she doesn't have any lingering issues. I don't think.
87. Memorizing my times tables was probably the most difficult hurdle I had to overcome during my school career (not counting that awful chemistry class in college).
88. Someday, I would like to live in another country, even if just for a little while.
89. I skipped second grade, and while I don't regret it now, sometimes I think it would have been a lot less stressful for everyone if I hadn't. It took until I was about 16 or so to get past the social and emotional drama that created.
90. They say that having a lot of money can create more problems than it's worth, but I say let me have the opportunity first and I'll give you my opinion on that subject.
91. However, I'm really not interested in trying to become rich. If it happens, sweet. If not, oh well.
92. I really really wish I were more photogenic.
93. I also wish I had straight, white teeth.
94. My sister is both photogenic and has naturally straight, white teeth, but I don't wish I were my sister.
95. My best dreams are the ones where I am flying.
96. Once I spent an entire March 17 looking for a four-leaf clover in our backyard. I didn't find one.
97. I acquired a pen pal in high school by answering an ad in a Piers Anthony newsletter. We wrote letters for years but didn't meet until 2004, ten years after we started writing to one another. He and his girlfriend are coming to the wedding!
98. Of saunas and steam rooms, I am not really a fan.
99. My favorite class in college was about the brain and drugs.
100. Though I like the smell, lavendar makes me sneezy and wheezy and itchy.