Saturday, February 3, 2007

Double the workout, NOT double the fun

Whew. It's been a long week. I took on a rush editing project because I need the money, but I'm beginning to regret it. This author uses 4,237 words to say what most people can say in 385. In one chapter, he's trying to set up a hypothetical company as an example, and I swear he spent three paragraphs describing the company and a problem it's having. After taking my editing axe to the description, I boiled it down to four sentences. Holy unnecessary words, Batman!

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I feel a little guilty about poking fun at Kevin's forgetfulness in my previous entry, especially because I'm not exactly the Queen of Short-Term Recall. He's so darn cute in his absent-mindedness, though, that I can't help myself. I wish my memory lapses were as amusing, but walking into a room to get something and forgetting--in the 10 seconds it took to walk into the room--what I needed to get isn't quite as endearing. Sometimes it seems as though I spend half my day standing in the middle of a room and mumbling to myself "What did I come in here to do?"

The other half of the day I spend doing things backward. This morning I was making corn muffins and carefully put the milk jug and egg carton in the oven and the muffin tin in the refrigerator. Fortunately, I realized what I'd done before I created a HAZMAT accident in my oven. I don't even want to think about the stink of melted egg carton wafting through my kitchen.

There. Now I feel less guilty after confessing my memory inadequacies.

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I haven't mentioned my progress with better eating and exercising lately. For the most part, I think I'm slowly incorporating good habits so that I don't have to consciously think about food choices or constantly persuade myself to exercise. I have setbacks, of course. Some days I get busy with work and forget to eat lunch, so at 3:00 I'm suddenly starving and want to eat an entire birthday cake (but I don't--really!). Occasionally, I have to force myself to go work out when I'm so tired that all I want to do is collapse on the couch and watch Seinfeld reruns.

In spite of those bad days, I'm still getting results. I've lost another five pounds for a total of 28, I think. Or maybe 30. I have the damndest time remembering the total amount, and I keep forgetting to ask the nurse after I get weighed. I'm just so excited to see any loss; that's all I can focus on at the moment.

I did remember to get measured at the end of January at Curve$, though. I hate getting measured no matter who does it, but when I went in Monday, the one Curve$ employee I actively dislike was there. She's always making little digs about my weight, which is strange for two reasons. One, the other employees never do that; they go out of their way to be encouraging and positive. Two, she's a big ol' husky girl who probably outweighs me by 50 pounds. Granted, I'm short and weigh too much for my height, but she doesn't have much room to talk. Usually, I grit my teeth and ignore her, but I'd finally had it Monday.

She was taking my measurements and bitching about having a hard time finding my waist. I tried to be nice and said, "Yeah, I'm very short-waisted--I have about half an inch between my rib cage and my hip bones!" I'd lost 1.5 inches from my waist (despite the suffering she went through to FIND my waist) and 1 inch from my hips, so I was happy. Then she went one step too far. She measured my bust and reported I'd lost one-fourth inch. I thought that was kind of funny, compared to my other measurements; it's like I can't get rid of my excess knockers, you know? I made some kind of lame joke, laughing about it being only a fourth of an inch. She said nastily, "Well, if you really want results, you have to come three times a week! You've missed some days, you know, and you have to work hard because of all that extra weight."

When I get really mad, I turn beet-red, and my face felt like it was on fire. Honestly, I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel. I snapped "I AM getting results, and I HAVE been coming here regularly. I missed a few days a couple of weeks ago because I had NO FREAKING CAR. Is there anything else you'd like to say, or can I go exercise now and get the hell away from you?"

She started sputtering indignantly, but I didn't want to hear it or waste any more time on her, so I just walked away and started my workout. I've decided there's no point in trying to deal with rude people. Telling them they're rude doesn't work; either they don't believe you and think you're being oversensitive, or they just plain don't care. One good thing came out of that incident, however: I didn't have to exercise very long to get my heart rate up! Who knew getting mad is an aerobic activity? I think I'll stick with exercising instead of throwing hissy fits to get a cardio workout, though.