Wii-tastic!

It's amazing how good I feel after one week of really trying. I have been following my food plan and working out on my wii fit. And I'm losing weight. And I don't feel like I'm a failure!

Who knew that weird japanese games would change my life?

I actually pulled an arm muscle playing that weird chicken game, so I'm steering clear for a while. Wii can be dangerous apparently. I'm sticking to the hula hooping game.

The one thing I'm not feeling proud of is my writing. I made a commitment when I started this blog to write everyday. I wanted to write in this blog, write my stories, write write write. And I also wanted to lose weight. Maybe I just can't tackle that many goals at once. Maybe I needed to get the eating and exercise thing under control first. Or maybe, my exercise and dieting foibles are more fun to write about.

I've been seriously considering grad school lately because I want so badly to be writing more and have it be my life. And I know that only I can make it my life, but I can't deny that all the other things (money, jobs, travel, family) get in the way. And in graduate school, no matter how hard it was, I'd be there to write. All the time. I'd live it.

Ok, I won't lie, as good as that sounds, it also terrifies me. What if, in that environment, I was finally found out. What if everyone realized that I'm a theatre major posing as an english geek? What if everyone realized that I wasn't really much of a writer? What if I didn't even get in anywhere?

Oh self doubt, what a terrible web you weave. Keeping me in my place. Only I'm not loving this place I'm currently in. What's wrong with pushing the boundaries a little?

On that pensive note, I think I might write a little on this lovely Saturday. Maybe writing will help me get my head on straight. And then tomorrow I can tell more funny stories about me falling off the wii balance board (which may or may not have happened.)

One thing leads to another

My family acquired a wii fit this past weekend and things are really looking up.  Isn't it funny how one good thing leads to other good things?  This silly little video game burns 100 calories an hour doing piddly little low intensity workout games.  That's really not that many calories.  And yet, I feel unreasonably proud.  Today was day two of my new wii fit regime.  My little wii board guide congratulated me on sticking with it two days in a row.  And I felt like I was a fitness guru!  I felt so skinny!!
And because I feel so active and fit, it makes me want to track my food and eat like the fitness guru that I am.  Suddenly I'm planning meals and eating carefully and day dreaming about how I can't wait to beat my step aerobic score when I get home from work. 

So instead of watching an hour of house hunters international, I'm up and moving.  Which is this tiny tiny change.  But it might be the tiny change that leads to a skinny new me.

Could this be the start of me actually achieving some goals and losing some weight?  Will this be the obsession that lasts?  Could we finally see some progress?  Am I finally choosing my own adventure?  Turn to page 83 to find out! (aka, check back in a month or so and we'll see.  I've had promising weight loss epiphanies before, and look how they turned out).

On a sadder note, when I weighed in on my wii fit, my little mii character grew a belly because I am overweight.  So now my mom's wii is skinny and fit and mine is chubby, like me.  And my animated trainer is obsessed with posture.  Is that what they worry about in Japan?  Posture?  No one is overweight there, so it's about focusing on standing up straight?  Oh Japan... at least the wii fit games aren't as bizzare as cooking mama....

The deviiiil is heeeeeere!  She's here and she's angry that you can't saute!!



 

You may have noticed that the look of this blog has changed a bit. I felt it was time. I wanted something new. I haven't found it yet.

I'm going to keep tweaking. For a blog titled "Life is Awkward" it's looking a little...zen. Spa like. It needs to look more like me. I'm working on it. I'll get there eventually. I just couldn't stare at the polka dots anymore. They were coming to get me I tell you!

Tonight my family and I played a board game (called Wits and Wagers) that involves guessing the answer to a bunch of obscure questions. I won't get into the details, but to make the game work, all the answers to all the questions are numbers of some kind. It turns out that when it comes to numbers, I don't have a clue.

One question asked what the record for most snowfall in one day was, in inches. I said 12 inches. The answer was 152*. Another question asked how far the longest recorded long jump was, in feet and inches. I said 6 feet. The answer was 48 feet*. My family looked at me sadly and said, it's ok, we still love you. My mom said, "I think even I can jump 6 feet." Thanks mom, thanks for not ridiculing me. And how was I supposed to know that we changed the voting age to 18 after the Vietnam war? I stand by my answer of 1902...I mean I would stand by it if I didn't now know that it was wrong.

But I was so right about Braille being invented in the early 1800's and if Brady had listened to me**, we would have won the whole game. HAHA! I was right about something! Thank you 4th grade report on the deaf and blind. (Speaking of which, that was an awesome report. I got to visit guide dog puppies at the guide dog training facility, learn the braille alphabet and learn sign language. I made big posters of the braille and sign language alphabet to use as visual aids and showed pictures of the puppies for dramatic effect. Was I an overachiever...yes. But did that report rock and help me years later in family game night? Yes, yes it did.)

Oh family game night...why must you tear families apart? I mean, we just don't play RISK at all anymore. It broke my family about 6 years ago, and we've never really healed. (For the record though, if we had defended Australia like I said, we wouldn't have been killed so viciously. Whoever said you can't win playing defense was not talking about the game of RISK.)

This has been a completely ridiculous post. Thank you for listening. I apologize for the lack of finesse and writing skill in this particular entry. I'll strive for better in the future.

*This is a completely rough estimate and should not be taken as fact.

** Brady, and everyone else in my family, thought that Braille was invented in the 1940's for some reason. This makes no sense to me, but apparently they all thought that Hellen Keller invented it. This is not so.

Choose your own adventure

I went to San Diego this past long weekend and managed to do nothing but eat and drink for three days straight. It was, as you might imagine, my dream vacation and I wish that there were more 3 day weekends each year. Oh if only every weekend were three days. But I digress.

I used to love those choose your own adventure books. I hear they don't really make them anymore and I'm sad to hear it, although I can see why they might stop making them. I will sort of forever be haunted by the Apollo 13 choose your own adventure book in which I died in space more than once.

Did anyone really read those books the way they were supposed to be read? I never committed to a page choice until I had read ahead to make sure that page 14 was not the one where the space ship crashed and I died. I always held my finger on page 37, just in case I needed to jump back and make a different choice. I always felt it wasn't a real choice until you let go of the previous page. Sometimes I had my fingers holding several pages open at once so that I could try all the possible options.

Actually, come to think of it, those books made me really nervous. It brought a whole new possibility of failure to the reading experience. Instead of being guided by an author to a logical conclusion, danger lurked around every page turn. And choices that seemed like the right one often led to a hole in the space ship that killed you instantly (can you tell I was really hung up on the Apollo 13 book?)


I was going to say that the way I read those books is a great metaphor for how I live my life. But in fact, life IS a choose your own adventure novel. It's not even a metaphor. We DO choose our own adventures. And if you keep your finger on the earlier page you can't really move on to the next choice. Deep huh?

Anyway, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. The way we need to choose our own paths. I've been feeling like I'm at one of those turn the page moments and I'm not sure which page to turn to. The old anxiety is back...which choice leads to a happy ending and which one leads to certain death??!!

You are feeling fat and unmotivated. Your commute is stressful. Your weight watchers membership comes with great recipes and food plan ideas, but you've been watching your favorite TV show, and the lead female makes you want to work out and get toned. However, you aren't sure you can make time to exercise on top of your busy schedule. You also feel like perhaps graduate school would be a good idea before you get too old. Plus then you would have more time to work out. And you keep looking at apartments online, thinking that if you live closer to work, you will feel better about life in general.

If you choose to start tracking your food and eating extremely well despite temptations, turn to page 13.

If you choose to start exercising with your library of exercise videos each morning, turn to page 42.

If you choose to reinstate your gym membership and start going to the gym each night turn to page 12.

If you decide to forget about weight loss and apply to graduate creative writing programs, turn to page 45.

If you decide to find an apartment first, turn to page 34.

What to do? Perhaps no choice at all....

Picture this

Yes, it has been FOREVER since I wrote. I know. I've been too busy eating poorly, not sleeping and watching bad TV to write. I'm such a winner.

I have a bit of a cold that is sapping ALL of my energy right now, so I feel like a truck hit me in the head and I've been drugged to dull the pain. Luckily my boss suggested I work from home today, so I am trying to beat this bug before it begins. I need to write a fabulous write up of the Merola Gala on the Merola Blog, but I thought I'd just check in here first. Yes, I am alive, yes, I am almost back to my old self and yes, I finally have a picture of my ballgown.

Just ignore my fat arms and the fact that I did not lose any weight in time for the gala. Oh well. :-P

The brightest crayon in the classroom

I meant to go to bed early. And I also meant to blog earlier. Ah well, the best laid plans...

I actually can't remember how the rest of that phrase goes. I think I always sort of trail off meaningfully at the end and never finish it. As if to say, conspiratorially, yes, you know what happens to the best laid plans. I needn't tell you. But really I'm thinking, I hope you know, because I have not a clue.

Sometimes I think the key to life is pretending, really hard, that you know the end of the phrase. Er the metaphorical phrase that is. Actually, if you're me, there is also a lot of pretending to know the end of literal phrases. I'm sort of lacking in that department.

For example, I am not....
The sharpest tool in the....shed? toolbox? scene shop?
The brightest bulb in the... shed? chandelier? hardware store? house?
The brightest crayon in the... kindergarten classroom? box? child's mouth?
Or could we even go with the sharpest crayon?

Or, take for instance the time I tried to have a serious conversation with my mom about my future:
Me: It's just, I keep waiting for the other foot to drop.
Mom: The what?
Me: The other foot to come down?
Mom: That's not a phrase.
My Sister: Yeah, Alex, that's a weird phrase.
Me: Wait, I'll wikipedia it...see! Waiting for the other shoe to drop!
Mom: Well that's completely different.
Me: No it's not, it's like you see one foot, or shoe, and you know that there are two feet so you are waiting for the other one to come step on you.
My sister: That's weird.
Mom: Yeah, it makes no sense.

And Brady's favorite phrase that I apparently made up:
"Oh, don't wait dinner for me." or "I'll wait dinner for you."

Regionalisms or just me being weird? The world may never know.

Anyway, I need to get some sleep so that I can be the sharpest saw on the construction site tomorrow. Or maybe the heaviest concrete block in the pool?

Introspective blabber

Do you ever have days where you completely question everything about your life? Days where you wonder what it is you've been waiting for? Days where you realize that your whole life is about waiting for things to be the way you want them? Do you ever think, on days like those, that maybe life is too short to be waiting around for things to fall into place? Maybe things never will fall into place the way you think they will. Maybe you are waiting for people to catch up to you, and they never will.

On these kinds of days does it break your heart to think that it might be the people and the circumstances of your life that are making you sad. Maybe it's the people and things you love the most that are keeping you from achieving your dreams?

Not that I'm feeling that way or anything. I just wanted to know if you had ever felt that way. You know, out of curiosity. Informal poll kind of thing......

On July 20, 2006, I wrote in my journal:
Does anything really change? Do we always remain the same? Will I spend my whole life feeling like I am finally on the brink of something, never really discovering what it is that I am on the brink of? I feel like change, self recognition, something, is just around the corner, just out of my reach.

It terrifies me to know that I still feel exactly the same way.

I'm sorry for the introspective post tonight. I just feel like I was going somewhere and I could see it, clearly in front of me. I had a map. And then someone told me I had the map upside down and took it away from me. So now I'm forced to face the fact that my path has been wrong from the start and I don't even have a map to lean on.

How long can we wait for others to see the same map we do? How long before you admit that they've been using a different map the whole time, hoping that you'll notice and switch to their path? When do we accept that people can only see their own map, and that it's wrong to try and change their view, even if we think our destination is better?

I think I'll put this overused map metaphor to bed now and get some sleep. I know things will be brighter tomorrow. And hopefully my post will be too.