Filed under: Uncategorized
I recently realized that when I watch the Olympics, I’m not really relaxed. I sit there at the edge of my seat, chipping away at my manicure. The funny thing is, I’m not even really into the sports aspect of it. I’m honestly just really stressed out about the fact that one day I will probably be in the Olympics, and I’m not even sure yet how I’ll wear my hair. Will I be one of those girls with her hair slicked back in a really severe ponytail? Or will I wear a neat bun on top of my head? Maybe this is a moot point, because my swimming cap will cover my hair anyway. Ugh. So many things to think about.
The thing is, even if I were to think about training for some Olympic event, I don’t know what it would be. My neighbors, and my dog, could attest to the fact that I probably won’t ever be a big league runner. I can’t climb anything (hate heights), I can’t swim gracefully (goggles make me feel claustrophobic) I can’t jump over things (too hard), I can’t row a boat (really weak arms), and I refuse to play any full contact sport or anything that involves a ball (nose job).
When I was a kid, I was really into gymnastics, but I fully admit it was because I loved the sparkly leotard and the fact that when we had our meets I could wear glitter… all over my face. The second training got hard, or they asked me to do more than three cartwheels, I got a “really bad stomach ache” and had to sit down and spread more glitter all over my face and arms. Training can be really stressful. I guess gymnastics is out of the picture, too.
The thing is, all of this unnecessary analysis points to a much greater issue. This is why I’m so FREAKING stressed all the time. I watch a movie, and I think very seriously about the first movie I’ll star in. I pick out my Oscar dress, I write a speech! No joke. I know what I’m going to say in my Oscar speech. I think about my first novel. The sequel. The movie (starring Penelope Cruise as me… with an accent). I dream of my first invention. My first business venture. My first season on Real Housewives of New York. How my kids will handle fame. On how the crew of my spin-off show will deal with my crazy dogs! And I agonize over the fact that I know I will one day meet Matt Lauer, and on that day I will have to delicately and kindly explain to him that he’s a huge douche.
In general, I’m like really stressed about all of the things I know I’ll be when I grow up. I won’t have time to sit and have a glass of wine and write about my feelings. The paparazzi can be really persistent, and I have to concentrate super hard on being nice to them, otherwise they’ll tell everyone that I punched one of them in the face and I’ll get sued. I have no time for a lawsuit, especially because I’ll be really busy with training to be on the police force. OOH, wait! I have a really great pantsuit I can wear to the trial! Hooray! And at least I know what my opening statement will be. Wait. Did I not mention that I also think I’ll be a really famous lawyer someday? I have no doubt that it’ll happen. Just you wait and see.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The thing about Halloween is that there is a lot of room for human error. “Room for human error” is my kryptonite. Most girls are super good at coming up with costumes that are either totally hilarious or overtly and actually, in life, sexy. I’m not a person who is able to come up with concepts that others think are funny, nor am I able to be sexy without either looking like I have gas, or am starring in a low-budget pornography. The one year I attempted a sexy Halloween costume I was nearly ousted from a bar because I was in actual underwear. And bunny ears. What? No good?
Now, I will say, Jimi and I had one sincerely good Halloween.We were pretty bomb ass nerds:
Super Cute Nerds
So the following year, Jimi and I decided that it was time to step it up a notch, and do something that would blow everyone away. Do you remember the Nickelodeon show Doug? If not, you are certainly not alone. It was a cartoon that aired on Saturday mornings in the 90s. To Jimi and me it was a total comfort show. We have it on DVD and watch it as we’re drifting off to sleep.
Jimi and I tend to overestimate the popularity of things based on our own enthusiasm. Therefore, we were certain that dressing up as characters from Doug would knock people’s socks off. Doug’s love interest in the show is named Patty Mayonnaise. She’s this adorable, and super tan blonde, and in my mind, my excuse to look sexy without being thrown out of a bar. Patty Mayonnaise looks like this:
Pretty Hot
The thing about planning to be a cartoon for Halloween, is that you need to plan ahead a little bit. But honestly, I work much better under a tight deadline, so I waited until the morning of Halloween to get my costume ready. I made a trip to Goodwill and grabbed a blue skirt, and scoured the racks for a blue shirt with pink polka-dots, and when I couldn’t find one, I grabbed a plain blue shirt. I ran to the craft store and got some pink felt to make my own polka dots, then headed to a costume store to get a blond wig. Only they were out of blond wigs. I called my friend Julie in desperation and she promised me that she had a perfect blond, short wig, so I completely relaxed.
When I got home from my shopping trip, Jimi didn’t look so good. He gets sick once a year, and it’s a horrible, highest-fever ever murder fest for a few days, and then it’s over. But he’s a guy, and he didn’t want to admit that it might be happening. I forced him to take his temperature which came in at a whopping 102. But he INSISTED on going out to show off the costumes that only existed in our heads.
We decided that we’d put everything together at Julie’s, so I grabbed a glue gun for my polka dots, threw everything in a bag and headed to her place. Only when we got there, the wig that she handed me looked grey. Not blond, as she promised it would be. And as I started to glue the dots onto the shirt, I ran out of glue… so I had to settle for duct tape. Needless to say…. I did not look good. I did not look sexy. I looked…. like this:
?
!
OMG
And Jimi. Poor Jimi. Clearly delusional from the fever, thought that I looked just fine. And in his altered state, Jimi looked in the mirror and saw this:
Pretty Cool
But he really looked like this:
Inaccurate Representation
And yet, we still went out on the town, and needless to say, not one single person had any clue what our costumes were. Even after we explained them, and drew diagrams, and pulled up pictures on our phones. We suffered for hours with people staring at us like this clearly sick individual was doing his retarded family member a favor by taking her trick-or-treating. So we had a beer, which I’m pretty sure poor, sick Jimi with a 102 degree fever threw up later.
duct taped dots = lunch meat in dim lighting
I hate to admit it, but Jimi and I weren’t the only ones who suffered at the hands of our Halloween costume procrastination.
Clearance Costume
So Mad.
Yeah, it was a bad year for our little family. I’d like to say that we learned our lesson… but it’s October 26th, and I’m thinking of being an indian… and have yet to plan anything, which probably means that I will end up looking like a severely non-sexy, possibly mentally challenged, racist.
**This post is dedicated to Lisa Rollins… because when I hear random laughter coming from her cubicle, I know it’s because she’s thinking of me dressed as Patty Mayonnaise.**
I am utterly terrified of flying. And it’s not just that, I’m actually terrified of other people flying, too. Jimi is leaving for a conference in Houston on Friday, and I’m having agita over him getting on a plane. I know that I share this fear with quite a few people, but I’m not sure that everyone can trace the genesis of their fear like I can. I know exactly what triggered my intense fear of flying.
It was April of 2002, just months after 9/11. My family is from New York, but we were living abroad in London, so going home meant getting on an airplane for 8 hours. My mom and I had flown home to see my grandparents for a week just before I graduated from high school.
On our way back to London, my anxiety was intense. I had been flying for my entire life. My parents traveled heavily when I was a baby. I had been on more planes than most grownups by the time I was a year old. But not to sound cliché, 9/11 really freaked me out. Suddenly the risk of flying seemed super high, and the reality of evil in the world was all too much. Plus the news told me all day every day that terrorists were trying to kill me everywhere I went. Even the mall. And now we were leaving from the very airport where terrorists boarded and hijacked planes. My heart was racing, my eyes as big as silver dollars as we waited to board our flight. My mother looked at me and knew that she had to take my mind off of flying. She had to distract me, and she had to distract herself, because my anxiety was rubbing off on her.
“Ok, I have an idea!” she said happily, sure that she had come up with a game that would get my mind off of my sweaty palms. “Let’s look around at everyone, and pick out the scariest, most suspicious looking guy in here.”
“Wait….why the hell would we want to do that!????” I yelled.
“Because, once we pick him out and realize that he is thankfully not on our plane, we’ll feel so much better!”
Now, what you have to understand is that my mom’s ideas never make sense. She’s the type of person who loses her glasses in the freezer, gets lost in parking lots, and once locked a rogue Furbee in the dryer because she couldn’t get it to stop talking. But I was desperate, and terrified, so I hesitantly went along with her idea. Together we scanned the room picking out everyone who could possibly be a terrorist.
I don’t consider myself a racist person by any means. I’m afraid of everyone, no matter what color their skin is. In fact, many of my selections were lone white guys with coke bottle glasses and shifty eyes. I am ashamed to admit though, that the guy who won the prize of most terrifying was a Middle Eastern man who stood in the corner, talking to himself. He was a round man, hair askew, fingers fidgeting. He stood swaying, eyes darting around the room as he looked quickly, but intently at each person at the gate. I was so thankful that he wasn’t on our flight.
Only it turns out, he was on our flight.
He was sitting alone in a window seat in the middle of the plane. As I got closer to him, I counted the rows, and realized that he was sitting in our row taking up one of the three seats. As we got closer, my heart started pounding. He was sitting there, talking to himself, quietly rocking forward and backwards. Instead of taking the motherly route and sitting next to the scary man, my mom pushed me into the row, forcing me to sit next to him. My mom was panicking now. Hysterically waving down the stewardess, asking for a Pinot Grigio to calm her nerves. As we took off, she gulped the wine. And the more she drank to calm her nerves, the more she panicked, thus the more I panicked. The man who once looked like this:
Not Scary
Started to look like this:
Pretty Effing Scary
And then like this:
OMG
Seriously, the guy’s behavior was alarming. He muttered to himself, clicking prayer beads in his hands. He watched a documentary about volcanoes on a portable DVD player, laughing hard and loud as the volcanoes erupted on the screen. He was taking up the entire armrest, his arm grazing my body. My mom’s entire right side was on me as she inhaled slowly, peering over my head at the man, while whispering a play by play of his actions in my ear. I knew that I had a small pair of tweezers in my bag that came with the kit I used to wax my ‘stache… could they be fashioned into a weapon!? The sheer terror that I felt was indescribable. I was seeing white, my face was burning. I was pouring sweat, staring at the seat in front of me thinking that I was experiencing my last moments on earth sandwiched between a possible terrorist, and a woman seriously in need of a Xanex.
Two hours and four glasses of wine later, we hit major turbulence. The plane jostled and dropped. Dipping aggressively, shaking wildly. I started to cry hysterically, my mom’s nails dug into my left arm as she took one more sip in a futile effort to quell her nerves. The man touched my right arm, looked me in the eye and said in a shockingly high-pitched voice “Don’t worry. We’re going to a better place after this.” At that point, I nearly fainted.
My mom flagged down a stewardess and told her that we were certain that the man next to us was planning to take down the plane… which in effect cast suspicion on my mother and me. Two sweaty, panicky looking Jews can look a lot like drug mules in the right lighting. We spent the rest of the flight sitting silently in the flight crew’s jump seats, because my mom refused to continue sitting near the poor man. The flight crew stared at us, and we stared at them. My eyeliner was all over my face, my mom’s hair was disheveled, and we were both a little bit drunk. In hindsight the poor guy was probably just a nervous flyer like us. And the funny thing is, we were the ones walked off the plane by the flight crew. To this day, seeing an airplane brings a rush of sheer terror, cold sweat, and certainty that I am going to die.
Now that I think about it, I’m sure that Jimi will be absolutely fine on his flight to Houston. After all, he’s not flying with my mom.
I am horribly disturbed by what I have just discovered. I initially started surfing through pages of old photos looking for photo evidence of the horrible choices I have made with my hair over the years (blog post to come), and what I discovered is far more disturbing.
It turns out, I have been copying everything my sister does for years. Unabashedly copying all of it. Only it turns out that I am a horrible copy cat . You know those “M&Ms” that come in those plastic candy canes at Christmastime? Only they’re not real M&Ms and they taste waxy and weird? AND you know those unlicensed stuffed toys they sell at carnivals and in those game machines that are meant to look like cartoon characters, but they’re just a little off? Like Mickey with a super long snout, or Homer Simpson with a round head? That’s me. I am an unlicensed knock off of my sister Caitlin.
Observe:
Cait meets a guy in Mexico:
Hot
I meet a guy in Mexico:
?
Cait wears a hat:
Vogue
I wear a hat:
AARP Magazine
Cait is casual and giggly:
Casual Caitie
I am casual, confused, and possibly drunk:
Casual Disaster
Cait splashes in the surf:
Victoria's Secret
I do this with water:
Fruit of the Loom
Cait experiments with new hairstyles:
Elegant Up-do
I experiment with new hairstyles:
Epic Fail
And the list goes on, and on!!
Casual Dining
Hysterical Dining
Natural Beauty
Natural Disaster
Now, normally I would chew your ear off about a lesson that I learned from all this, but I’m too shocked at this discovery to learn anything real! Sadly, this makes me fear for my future daughter, who will, without a doubt, be copied by someone who clearly needs to brush up on her copy cat skills.
Filed under: family, growing up, Uncategorized | Tags: daycare, failure humor, fallback plan, fired, funny, jobs, kids
Have you ever wished that you had a fallback plan? A plan that would protect you if someday you actually did hurl a book at someone’s head or light your desk on fire and were subsequently black balled from your entire industry? Well, I never had one of those plans, and I certainly wished that I did in 2007 after a year working in the fashion industry almost gave me an aneurism.
When I decided that I wanted to leave my company, I went on a slew of interviews that I inevitably bombed because in my heart of hearts I didn’t want to continue working in fashion. In fact, my very last interview was with Ralph Lauren, and when they asked me “Why do you want to work for Ralph Lauren?” all of the blood rushed out of my face as I heard myself utter the words, “Well… actually…I don’t… but my roommate works here, so……”
Needless to say I was back on the pavement five minutes later and in a packed U-Haul on my way back to Boston within a week, admitting total defeat. But I needed a job, and I needed one fast. It was in an absolute fit of desperation that I applied for a job at a daycare center with zero experience and a mild fear of children.
It was late September when I found myself in a pant suit and my Crepe de Chine Manolo Blahniks in the lobby of Kinder Care. I was way overdressed, sitting next to a gurgling fish tank that contained one, very sad-looking fish. In front of me was a small classroom with the words “Infant Room” screened onto the glass door in purple. Through the glass I watched as children under the age of two teetered around playing with colorful toys. They giggled and sucked on their fingers staring happily at one another. I could hear classical music playing inside as one of the teachers who wore fluffy slippers swayed to the music holding an adorable baby wrapped in a billowy pink blanket. Compared to my job in fashion where I was once sent home to change because my outfit was “hideous”, this seemed like a dream.
I was beckoned into a back room by Mara, the “principal” of the school. She was a heavyset woman with freckles and frizzy red hair. She dressed like a professional—collared shirt, black pants, and small kitten heels. She was the type who looked buttoned up, but you could just tell drank a lot of Natty Ice on the weekends, and probably had a boyfriend named Sonny who had tons of tattoos and worked at Jiffy Lube. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
As I pulled my resume from my supple vintage leather folder, Mara stared at me like I was from another planet. She looked me up and down, and then at the cream-colored linen paper like what was written on it was in Sanskrit. “I’m not sure exactly why you want to work here. I mean, you the words I’m seeing on your resume hardly say that you are interested in childcare at all… I just don’t see the connection.”
And then I did the thing that you don’t do in interviews. I started to cry. Hysterically. I told her all about my job in fashion. Everything that I had done, all that I had accomplished, and all about the pressure, and how in the end everything I did seemed so meaningless. How it wasn’t fulfilling, and sometimes I was putting in 12 hour days, and for what? To help produce fashion shows that meant nothing. To show clothes on models who were too THIN!? I was yelling now, and I couldn’t stop. I told her about the partying and the late nights, and I may have mentioned a one night stand that I was horribly ashamed of. We can’t be sure. I was a train with faulty brakes hurdling towards certain disaster, but through the blurry lens of big salty tears, what I saw on Mara’s face surprised me. It was compassion and understanding; care and concern. She was nodding her head gently, signifying that she was genuinely listening to me. And much to my surprise, when I finished my diatribe, struggling to catch my breath between sobs, Mara hired me on the spot.
Just one week later, I started work at the tiny pre-school. Since corporate policy dictated that the student to teacher ratio was 3:1, I would be working with two other teachers: Miss. Gia, and Miss Kristy.
Fragile
I’m pretty sure that Miss. Gia was a bad person… and possibly a drug addict. She was about 60lbs overweight, and had about sixteen piercings on and around her face. She had dyed black hair that was always piled on her head making her look a little bit like a lawn gnome.
Miss. Kristy was mildly retarded. And by mildly retarded, I mean she was retarded. She had been working on painting a rocking chair for a contest that would take place at the airport, and that’s all she wanted to talk about, and she wanted to talk about it all the time. And in a classroom environment like this, you were stuck with the other teacher for an entire day. It was like prison; Miss. Kristy was my cellmate, and I was about to learn all about the mechanics of rocking chairs.
The children were adorable, and oh so sweet. And as much as I would love to talk endlessly about them, the one who has the biggest impact on this story is Jordan. Jordan was one of those kids who would never eat, but he was somehow still so heavy that you needed to lift with the knees when you picked him up. He was a spirited and wiggly baby, and he was always pissed about something. For some reason, I was the only teacher he liked, so when he was having an extra tough day, it was my job to make it all better. Jordan and I were BFFs, and I loved being the only one who could make it better when he was sad.
And despite being stuck in a classroom with a lawn gnome and Lenny (Of Mice and Men), I hit my stride, and actually got pretty good at my job. I graduated from a child development class, and became one of the school’s most popular teachers. Parents were asking me to babysit on the weekends, and I was cleaning up. I was teacher of the month in January having been nominated by Jordan’s mom, and within 6 months I was already next in line for a pretty sweet promotion.
One day in particular, poor Jordan wasn’t feeling well. He was sobbing hysterically and sweating profusely, but because he didn’t have a high enough fever, we couldn’t force his parents to come and pick him up. So we were stuck with him, and he was stuck with us.
I knew that he needed to eat something, so I went to the refrigerator, and pulled the bin with his name on it, opened his container of milk, made his cereal, and fed it to him. Jordan winced at the first bite, but by bite two he was wolfing this stuff down, which I had never seen him do. He was giggly and bubbly after, and fell asleep in my arms with a huge smile on his face. I put him in his crib, pulled up the side, and went to the break room leaving Kristy and Miss. Gia to talk about Kristy’s rocking chair.
Just moments later, Miss. Gia came to get me. She looked weirdly agitated, but she wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Mara was standing in the classroom with Kristy who stood with her mouth slightly ajar.
Mara looked at me, eyes squinted, “Alee, can you show me exactly how you made Jordan’s cereal?”
I walked to the refrigerator and mimed exactly how I had done it, picking up his bin, pulling out his bottle, unscrewing the cap, showing how I measured the cereal and everything. I was almost over acting, because I was certain that whatever happened was Kristy’s fault. And Kristy stood there watching, drooling ever so slightly.
“Look at the label on the bottle” Mara said.
I turned the bottle over, and looked at the label, which said “Jack” in green marker. That bottle had contained breast milk. Jack’s mom’s breast milk. Which I fed, to Jordan. In some countries that would have been considered bioterrorism.
Six minutes later, I was fired… and escorted off the premises.
At that moment, I thought that the world was ending. This little comfortable bubble that I had created for myself following the insanity that made up my time in New York had burst. It was completely devastating and horribly humiliating. But you know what I have realized since then? If you have a fallback plan, you’ll fall back on it. And the truth is that whether it’s irony, fate, God, Buddha, Allah, or whatever you believe in, the universe will always find a way to force you to do what you’re meant to do. I wasn’t supposed to be a teacher; I was supposed to be a writer with hilarious stories to tell. So thank you Universe for forcing me to commit accidental bioterrorism. It’s certainly one for the books.
**Names have been changed to protect the innocent
Filed under: family, growing up | Tags: big sister, bullies, childhood, exercise, funny, growing up, growth, Health, kids, mental health, sisters
Sometimes when I see someone holding a stack of papers, it takes actual self-restraint for me not to run over and smash the papers out of their hands. I also have insane urges to trip people every time I go to the mall. And when someone is skulking about, it’s my first instinct to say “Wow… someone’s a Grumpy Guss today!” even though I know that it’s a truly asinine thing to say. I laugh when kids fall down riding bikes. I laugh when someone falls up the stairs. And I cannot resist the temptation to play a little practical joke on the overly trusting. I know without a doubt that this behavior is derived from the fact that I am a big sister, and therefore spent my formative years as a horrible bully.
- Fear the Fury
When my mom told me that she was pregnant with my sister Caitlin, I punched her in the stomach. And no, at four I was not of the impression that a swift jab to the gut may kill the baby, I was just pissed. I mean, hello, I was the cutest child ever. I could do the best cartwheels, and I looked awesome in cargo jeans. And these ungrateful beasts weren’t satisfied, so they thought they’d take another shot at it? Without consulting me? Well, I wasn’t having any of it.
It didn’t help that when she was born, Caitlin was exceptionally cute. She had this perfect sandy hair that literally glistened like spun gold, these huge hazel eyes that looked blue-green in the right light, cheeks pink like cotton candy and these perfect little bee-stung pouty lips. And she was always happy, giggling away like life was perfect and beautiful just like she was. And I was a freakin’ nightmare.
I did everything in my power to steal attention away from the perfect little smiley baby. I hacked off all of my bangs with nail scissors. I used all of my mom’s blue eyeshadow in an attempt to fake a broken toe. I pushed Caitlin off of countless pieces of furniture, destroyed several of her favorite toys, and tried with all of my might to force the family dog to favor me by feeding him table scraps.
If punishment equals attention, then I got what I wanted, and in a house with liberal parents, there was no spanking. Our big punishment was being forced to talk about our feelings, and then sit on the stairs for four minutes.
The thing about the stair punishment, is that sometimes it backfires. Although it gives a child time to really think about why they’re mad, really sit there and deconstruct the reason behind their actions, once in a while it has the charming effect of throwing the child’s rage into overdrive. And on one night in particular, sitting on the stairs threw my anger from that of an angry kitten to that of a tiger whose toys had been stolen and given to a cuter tiger with better hair.
I had been banished to the stairs as punishment for stabbing Caitlin’s Cabbage Patch doll in the face with a fork. When the timer beeped, my exhausted mom parked Caitlin and me at our little Playskool table with a box of crayons and two coloring books. “Alexandra, please sit nicely with your sister for a few minutes.” she pleaded. “What you did before was unacceptable, and I know you get that, but please, please sit here nicely.” I nodded in agreement. My bangs stuck straight up, my eyes were wide. I was smiling sweetly, but inside my blood was boiling.
I sat there coloring my picture of Bert and Ernie as my mom cooked dinner. I was firmly planted on the seat, sweaty and stewing about the fact that I now had to spend all of my free time with this hapless moron. I stared at Caitlin as she drooled on her pile of crumbled up coloring book pages, her bright eyes glossy and big as she banged her fist full of crayons on the table, giggling softly… like an idiot. God, I hated her. Why was she so cute!? And she was wearing my old bib. Wait a minute… THAT WAS MY BIB!!! I colored more violently, until I was coloring outside of Bert’s sweater. Then off the page completely.
And then I blacked out.
When I came to I was scribbling on the wall next to the table. Scribbling hard and fast with an entire fistful of crayons. For a child, there is no rebellion greater than coloring where one was not supposed to color… and I was coloring about five feet away from an acceptable coloring surface.
What I did next was ill-advised. I put both of my arms under Caitlin’s soft mushy armpits, yanked her out of her seat, and put her in front of the wall. I crammed 3 crayons into each of her sticky little hands, and ran into the bathroom as fast as my little legs could carry me.
A few minutes later I heard my mother yell “OH my God, Alexandra!? Where are you!?” I emerged from the bathroom with a look of bewilderment so overly exaggerated that I ended up looking like I was faking a stroke.
As it turns out, Caitlin couldn’t actually reach as high as I could, and therefore couldn’t have possibly committed the crime of coloring on the wall… even though I made sure she was caught “red handed”. I did a lot of talking about my feelings that week… with a child psychiatrist.
Some say that you should always trust your gut instinct, because your gut is uaually right. But when your gut tells you to shake every soda can in the fridge, or throw a paperclip at someone for no reason, perhaps you should take a breath and decide whether the outcome is worth that instantaneous (and totally delicious) satisfaction. Sometimes it might be, and sometimes it might get you fired from your job. And that’s not something that I learned from the Dr. Capola. That’s something I learned all on my own… while sitting on the stairs.
Filed under: Diet | Tags: facebook, high school, pop culture, social media
I have always loved attention. As a child, the second I heard the rattle of my dad’s old camera bag, my inner Lady GaGa came out. I knew all of the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby, complete with a three-minute running-man dance routine. I also had sexed up versions of every childhood song ready and rarin’ to go. “I’m a little teeeeeeeeea pot” I sang, in what I deemed a sexy voice, while wearing a mini-skirt and faux-leather jacket from the dress-up box that all four of our cats insisted on using as a litter box. And when I was on, I was on… even though I smelled like cat pee.
I pee on outfit?
As much as I still love attention, I hate the fear of being judged. And now with the amount of shit that I compulsively post on Facebook, I can’t help but think about the fact that I have opened myself up to some pretty harsh criticism. And that’s what Facebook is about, right? Full disclosure with the distinct possibility of absolute annihilation.
Remember when we couldn’t wait until our ten-year reunion to see the beer belly on the once hot to trot quarterback? Now we can watch the genesis of his fat pocket. We see every beer he drinks with his idiot friends. We see snap shots from his drive to work at a Verizon Wireless call center. We see him go from “single” to “in a relationship” over and over, and each time it happens, the chick he’s committed to gets less and less attractive, and more and more desperate. And then we start to see pictures of a child. Is that his kid? He can’t have a kid. He’s not even “in a relationship” at this moment. Cue aggressive stalking which reveals that this is his painfully unattractive baby, and the mom is that weird girl who used to sell pirated DVDs out of her car trunk at lunch.
And it goes both ways. The good and the bad changes in our lives are totally public. I’m happy to admit that since high school, I got way hotter. Partially due to a not so secret rhinoplasty, and partially due to the fact that I now know that glitter does not have to factor into a successful daily beauty routine. I will never have the satisfaction of breezing through the doors of my high school gym, my now bouncy hair blowing softly as the music screeches to a halt, and everyone looks at me and says…. “Whoa, is that Alee?! She looks amazing!” Because they all know that I look better now, because I post a picture of myself every fifteen seconds. That amazing fantasy that everyone has while they run or diet, about shocking the shit out of the harsh critics of their past hasn’t disappeared… it’s become a normal part of our every day existence.
You’d be lying if you said that you didn’t post a picture once in a while thinking first about who you hope sees it. You think about your audience, and you cultivate an image that you’re proud of. If you were the kid in kindergarten who ate boogers, and you moved away before you got less weird, you no longer have to wait to run into someone from your old town to prove that you’re now an investment banker who eats filet mignon. You just plate your steak, sit it on a pile of money, snap a picture, and upload it straight to your Facebook page. Or if you had blue streaks in your hair, a nose shaped like a rhombus, and a face that could have doubled as a disco-ball you post…
I'm like so artsy.
- Mega artsy.
So artsy that I appreciate good tunes.
Unfortunately, to maintain that perfectly coiffed image, we have to be careful. Facebook gives us so much access to one another that it greatly increases the audience for our embarrassing slip-ups. Remember the days when a drunk dial was bad? Or a drunk text? Well now when you’ve had one too many, that girl who made your life miserable in high school is just a few clicks away. You can de-friend your best friend. Renounce your relationship. Tell everyone you just threw up in your fish tank. Declare your love for the IT guy in your office… or worse, your boss. Celebrities pay for public relations experts to spin their failures into stories of triumph and success, and we civilians are in no way qualified to fill that role for ourselves.
So, what’s the solution? Pair down, get rid of Facebook altogether? Just stop sharing things? Or maybe we just stop caring what people think all together, post what we want, and thank God that we don’t have to hear the snickers when people make fun of our muffin top. For me, that’s the solution. Haters be damned! I refuse to stop posting pictures of my dog, or of my feet pigeon toed in grass, because I’m afraid of what people think. I have to stay true to my inner child. It’ll be a cold day in hell when this little tea-pot stops using Facebook as the world’s biggest stage for the world’s most underrated play entitled “Alee, Alee, Alee”.
I'm like so skinny now....
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I am an insanely competitive person. Ironically, the pressure created by my need to beat everyone at everything breeds extremely intense performance anxiety. I am literally built to fail, solely based on the fact that I have within me antibodies that target success. I’m an editor who can’t win a game of Scrabble. I’m a runner who can’t win a race. I’m an American who was born in France, took 6 years of French, and couldn’t find you a bathroom in Paris if you really needed one.
Nowhere is my weird cyclical disorder more apparent than the gym. It’s always the same. A guy gets onto the treadmill next to me and instantly puts the speed up to 6.0. I peer over, and bump my speed up to 6.1. He’s just warming up. He bumps his speed up to 7.0. I bump mine up to 7.1. He goes to 8.0. I go to 8.1, and we’re coasting now. I’ve run this fast plenty of times before. I’m fine. I can make it for however long this guy can make it. Look at his shorts. They’re purple. I can beat him, no problem. But what if I can’t? My left ankle hurts. That’s the one I sprained in 6th grade. Oh my God it’s a relapse. It’s happening. My ankle is sprained. Am I going to throw up? I might throw up. What time did I eat last? Was it 3? Oh God, It’s 5 now! It’s too soon. I have a stitch. Help! I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I CAN’T DO THIS. So I stop. I’ve only been running this fast for 60 seconds, and I feel like I want to kill myself now. Not because my body hurts, but because I mentally just talked myself out of kicking this guy’s purple shorts wearing ass in a race that he didn’t even know he was in.
And yet, the next day, I’m at the gym all alone, and I bump my speed up to 8.1, and I can run and run without a single problem. I only stop when I’m bored.
I look really tan in this picture...
So this brings me to the crux of the matter, the real issue. It’s doubt that’s the catalyst for it all. It’s that nagging chatter in my head that prevents me from running my fastest, and lifting my hardest. It’s that question mark in my head that appears the second I feel challenged or pressured. It’s the very same thing that makes me shout “Hooray?” instead of “HOORAY!” when I think I found a place to play the infamous “za” on the scrabble board.
I have definitively decided to eradicate this voice within me, and replace “can I?” with “I can!” In the last few weeks, instead of allowing those distracting thoughts into my head, I have been repeating my accomplishments, reminding myself of what a fantastic vehicle my body is. So far, I think it’s working. I mean… I KNOW THAT IT IS WORKING! And I’m confident that I can get rid of the stupid doubt that eats away at my ability to win anything at all, ever.
So maybe, for now I’m just a runner who hasn’t won a race yet. And maybe I’m an editor who will get really good at Scrabble one day. And maybe I’ll suffer some weird head injury and start speaking perfect French, and we’ll suddenly realize where all that knowledge was. Clearly it’s been hiding way in the back, behind all of those useless facts about the Hanson brothers.
30-30-30
Usually when someone says something like “breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, it makes me want to never eat breakfast again. Most general statements like that are BS. Much like the generalization that I just made about generalizations.
That said, there may actually be some merit to this breakfast thing.
I’ve recently found myself eating delicious and healthy food, 100% due to Alee’s culinary and shopping skills. (We eat like royalty for less than $150 a week total, but that’s a different topic all together.) However, I’ve fallen into a cycle where I have coffee (a lot of coffee) for breakfast, nothing for lunch (by nothing I mean croutons at work, and a beer in between shifts) and then one mouth-watering and massive dinner. This is probably not good for me. It’s time to get back to a more balanced eating schedule, and I’m going to start with breakfast. The challenge to myself is to eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, for 30 days straight. Starting on September 3rd. Why chose 30 grams of protein over a bowl of cheerios?
Check out this video. Skip to 2:30, sorry for the Dr. Oz.
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/four-hours-your-perfect-body-pt-2
I’d like to think that I’m going to make eggs and black beans with spinach every morning, but I’m pretty certain that won’t happen. To make it easier on myself I’m going to get some protein bars, whey protein powder and also keep stocked up on eggs and beans for the days I actually feel like cooking. To hold myself accountable I’m going to tweet pictures of my breakfast everyday for the next 30 days. You can follow me at @jimianderson. Fat-loss is not my goal, but I do expect to lose some. For me this is more about getting the protein and eliminating the afternoon slump caused by bad breakfast… or no breakfast at all. Wish me luck!
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Dramatization
You’re kinda bored, and you start scanning your cabinet for little hidden treats, and even when there aren’t any viable options in sight, you SWEAR that you bought peanut butter a few months ago and it’s SOMEWHERE in there. So you dig, and you dig. You come across some chocolate chips that you bought last time you made cookies, which was… you can’t remember when. The bag is open, but only slightly, and chocolate doesn’t go bad… right? So you take out a morsel and it’s covered in some white stuff. It’s just like… dust. So you wipe it off and eat the chip, only to discover that chocolate does go bad. Very bad. And now that it’s in your mouth you’re going to swallow it. There are starving people in Africa, you can’t just waste chocolate. So you swallow it and feel nauseous for five minutes.
You’re still in need of a sweet snack. You eat a stick of raw pasta. You eat another stick of raw pasta. You eat one more stick of raw pasta… you reach for one more and realize what you’re doing. You open the fridge and the only viable options are a brick of cheese, eggs, some possibly expired beans, and some 1% milk. None of these options will satisfy your need to snack. So you’re back in the cabinet again… OOO FLOUR. You pull out the flour thinking that you have to be able to do something with it. You remember that in London there was a cart where this guy made crepes with Nutella and peanut butter and they were DELICIOUS. And I mean, that guy owned a food cart in London, and you went to college. You can make a crepe.
You use an egg and some milk and make a batter that looks like Bisquick, but it’s not Bisquick. You’re back in the cabinet again, covered in flour, and you’re determined to find the goddamn peanut butter. All you have are cans of BEANS!? Why do you have so many cans of BEANS!? You don’t even eat beans that much… which is probably why you have so many cans. And there it is. In the back, behind the weird backup cat food you bought that week you found a stray, it’s the peanut butter!!!! You knock everything off the shelf, but you don’t care. You’ve got the peanut butter in your hands… but you need chocolate. Ok, those chocolate chips weren’t that bad… you pull them out of the trash can. Yes, you take chocolate out of the trash. You dump the entire bag out and you find eight chips that don’t look moldy. You melt them in the microwave. You make a super thin pancake, but you forgot to spray the pan with PAM, so you have to slowly peel the thing off of the pan, which is nowhere near as cool as what the crepe guy used to do. You spread peanut butter on your crepe, fold it up, and drizzle the chocolate over it. You’re covered in sweat, and flour, and you take a huge bite of your crepe. It’s not so bad!
Fifteen minutes later you throw up. Your dog looks at you like he feels bad for you, and that makes you feel bad for you. And then you remember that it’s five o’clock in the afternoon, and you can get in your car and go to the store, or to drive-thru Dairy Queen, because you’re a grownup human being and not a dog lacking opposable thumbs. You vow to keep healthy, satisfying snacks in the house from now on… starting next week. This time you purchase Double Stuf Oreos, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and a can of kidney beans, because you’re making chili this week… and you really don’t want to be short one can.
What a Healthy Pair 