I had a shit day

That's a line from a Pink song, but it's twoo! So twoo! I had a terrible shit day.

And I guess I'd better say right now that if you don't care for profanity, you probably don't want to read any further.  And I mean foul filthy profanity. So if you keep reading, don't blame me if you're disgusted.

Wherein Faith Confesses What an Idiot She Can Be

Let me get the good stuff out of the way first, before I tell on myself. I hit two goals in one fell swoop today! My first two Weight Watchers goals involved (1) hitting my 5% goal (losing 5% of my starting weight) and (2) hitting 15 pounds. I thought I made 5% last week, but they round up, so I had to get to 14 pounds lost to hit the 5%. So when I weighed in today, I was blissed to find that I've lost a bit over 15 pounds! Woohoo! My next goals are to get to the 10% mark, and 25 pounds. I'll just keep taking it bit by bit until I get to where I want to go.

Now to tell on myself. I love music. I've probably already made that clear. And I've been listening mainly to 3 albums for the last 4 weeks: Lily Allen, Alright Still; Dee Does Broadway; and the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby.  I did have my phone on shuffle last Saturday at work, but that's rare just because I have been going from song to song to song until I find one that fits my mood, while these 3 albums have pretty consistently matched my mood of late.

Anyway, today for some reason I didn't put it on an album. I just plugged it into my car and let it shuffle and I passed over song after song after song, singing and dancing when one I was in the mood for came on, and then going to the next one.  One of my all-time favourite songs came on, a Billy Idol number, and I was singing and dancing and amusing myself at the thought of using the songs as Facebook statuses or texts to one of my best friends, when the horrifying thought hit me.

I called my sister. "Is Dancing with Myself about masturbation?"

Because you know how embarrassing that could have potentially been for me, if I'd texted just the song title to my best friend.  "Dancing With Myself."  "Oh really? Tell me more," or, conversely, "TMI." And I'd have been clueless.  Or announced to my world via Facebook status: Dancing With Myself. I have some incredibly filthy-minded friends who wouldn't hesitate to take the mickey out of me.

Thank the FSM that my sister loves me and tells me the truth.  She asked if I really thought that song was about dancing by oneself, and I confessed that I did. I guess maybe because I spend a good part of my life feeling alone in the middle of crowds or groups of people, so it's such a familiar feeling to me that I take it for granted.

So yeah. I was mentally imagining Billy Idol sneering at all the empty-eyed bimbos around him and dancing proudly by himself, showing his moves.  Because dude! That man can sneer! So sexy!

And I won't be texting that song title to anyone, or using it as a status, and I'll only sing and dance to it when I'm alone, you know, dancing by myself. Literally. Not masturbating--I'm not sure I could manage that while singing and dancing.

Feelin' Freaky

So I'm starting to think I may be in this for the long haul. I  may actually make it. And it's a freakish, bizarre feeling.  Sure, I've had plenty of daydreams where I was magically thin and svelte and slender and lean and luscious and all that good stuff, but the closest I got was back in '01 where I got down to 205 before the inevitable climb back up.

That's really embarrassing to admit, by the way, although I don't know why it should be. It's not like I look like I weigh 120 pounds and people would be surprised to find out what I really weigh. But there you have it. I weigh a LOT, and it's still over 40 pounds less than I weighed at my highest.

Anyway, I digress. Here's the dealio. Today at work I realized I have actually gotten into some really good habits.  I eat breakfast every morning (well, every morning except Sunday, when I sleep until 9:30 or 10 and then go have lunch with my family). And by breakfast I mean high protein, not sweet. This morning I was trying to figure out what I wanted, and I ended up getting an egg  mc muffin (kind of yucky, not really my thing) and eating about half of it before deciding I'd had enough and chucking the rest. And then when I got hungry before it was time for my lunch, which has actually gotten to be pretty rare for me, I meandered to the fridge at work where I have a bag with fresh veggies, edamame hummus, some lean meat, and some laughing cow light cheese wedges. I had some veggies and hummus and a little meat.  And that kept me nicely full so that when I went for lunch I just got some soup because I decided I'd rather have a relatively light soup instead of the heavy lunches they tend to offer at the work cafe.  And I actually checked the labels on the bags of chips (because I wanted a few tortilla chips to crush into my soup because yum), and about freaked out when I saw how fattening Fritos are. I mean, I realize they're hardly a health food, but I was a little shocked by just how greasy those things are. I got some lighter chips, and only ate about half of them, and halfway through my soup I was full so I stopped eating.  And so on and so forth. You get the picture.

And I told my sister that I think I might just make it this time, and she's feeling the same way, which is cool. We're either our best allies or our worst enemies when it comes to food. It's nice to be both on the same page at the same time.  I told her that I've had some times lately where I've been angry or frustrated and I wanted to eat, because that's what I do when I'm angry or frustrated and in a situation where I can't cuss like the daughter of a sailor that I am, but I couldn't because I either was full of good food, or I wasn't hungry.

If you've never been an emotional eater, that last sentence wouldn't make any sense to you. Well, okay, so you couldn't eat because you weren't hungry. Logical. But if you're an emotional eater, you know that hunger has absolutely nothing to do with emotional eating.  So anyway, now that I'm paying attention to how I feel physically, I don't quite know what to do with myself when I'm angry or frustrated and can't cuss like the daughter of a sailor. I mean, one day at work I had a particularly difficult customer, and when I hung up the phone I muttered--sotto voce, I thought--dumbass motherf***er. Fortunately the few people who heard me thought it was funny and laughed, but it's not professional and I don't like doing that at work. So I can't cuss and I can't eat. What can I do? I'm pretty much tied to my desk and phone except for brief potty breaks that I owe to the copious amounts of fluid I consume (all either very low calorie or calorie free, another lovely new habit), I don't really have the luxury of taking more than a 3 minute walk to the bathroom. Any suggestions are definitely welcomed.

Another thing: I have a bionic knee. It doesn't quite work like that of the $6 million dollar man, but it gets me around. Stairs are tough.  I always feel like I'm going to propel myself headfirst down the stairs so I usually elevator it, and I feel self-conscious about that. I always think people look at me and think I'm too freaking lazy to walk up one flight of stairs, no wonder I'm so fat. But it's not lazy so much as it is things not working well. But today I got my courage up, and I walked down the stairs at lunch and after work. I had to hold on to the rail, and get a kind of swinging gait going that must have been amusing had anyone been around to see me, but it worked! Woot!  I'm going to keep practicing the stairs, and maybe someday I can go down them without feeling like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine.

So positive changes are happening, and my daydreams are definitely getting more interesting. It's going to be exciting when some of those daydreams become reality.

And in other breaking news: I got some really cute lacy undies a few weeks ago, and wore one of them today. Super melvins did those things give me a wedgie from hell! Why the heck do people voluntarily stick fabric in those places? I just don't get it. Not comfortable. Not a sexy feeling, in my opinion, unless it comes off again right away. Painful. I'm going back to my decidedly unsexy although cute and very comfortable boyshort undies.

Naked and Unashamed

Yesterday I went into the office for a while. Normally when I'm working before 8, after 5, and on Saturdays, I've got my iPhone blasting music into headphones that I wear. It blocks outside distractions and keeps me amused.  But I didn't feel like wearing headphones, and my co-worker sitting next to me was happy to have the music going, even if she didn't like everything I was playing.  So I put it on shuffle, set it down, and went to work.

But I had to stop every so often and fast forward over a song. Hasa Diga Eebowai? Yeah, no. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces? Sorry (by Nerfherder, and it's awesomely funny). Detachable Penis? And so on.  Now I didn't mind fast fowarding over songs I thought might be offensive to her.

But it did get me to thinking.  The music I listen to is such an intimate expression of my personality that I'd almost find it easier to take off my clothes and stand naked in front of someone than to hand them my iPod/iPhone and let them go through my music. I would hesitate even to let Joe go through my music, and I've been married to him for almost 22 years.  I think the only person in my life with whom I could share all of my music is my sister. That's it.

It's so revealing. It tells things about me that I can admit to myself only in the wee small hours of the morning, when I'm willing to face my loneliness and admit my fears.

I have extremely eclectic tastes when it comes to music. There are few genres that I won't have at least a song or two from, even if I wouldn't list them as genres I like (for the record, overall not a fan of modern country or rap, although there are definitely exceptions). Jazz? Zydeco? World music? Samba? Ballads? Hair metal? Broadway? Pop? Classic rock? New Wave? Punk? Alternative? Blues? Yes, please.

There are the songs that make me happy when I'm mad at my husband.  Wherever He Ain't, sung by the incomparable Bernadette Peters from the musical Mack and Mabel. Could I Leave You? Please Don't Scream. Even the only Taylor Swift song I own meets this need. (I think it's called Mean).

There are songs that make me get up and dance. There are songs that sing to the blues I so often carry around with me. Songs that make me feel there is hope. Songs that make me feel I have no hope. Songs of joy, songs of pain, songs of sorrow.

It's the humanity in each song that sings to me.

And I'll tell you songs that I think you might like, and I may force you to listen to a song or CD that moves me, but don't be offended if I don't just hand over my iPod and tell you to have at it. Because I won't.

It's no secret that my marriage is less than happy, although I love my husband dearly and wouldn't hurt him for anything. But in those 3 a.m. wakeful bouts, I dream about true love and happiness. For me, the greatest sign of perfect trust would be giving someone my music and letting him listen to it and know who I am. I'm afraid that will never happen.

Growing Out Your Hair

Trying to get physically healthy is, I think, a little like growing out your hair.

It takes time.  Sometimes you're so frustrated, you mentally say fuck it and go tell your stylist to chop it back off. But before she even has the colour mixed, you realize how long you've been working on growing it back out, so you change your mind and tell her you just want a little trim.

But you have to shake things up, too. I mean, who wants to wear the same hair style all the freakin' time? (If you do, my apologies for assuming otherwise. I mean no offense.)  So you change the colour, and put in bright red streaks (at my next appointment 3 weeks from Saturday, I will be getting, yes, cherry red streaks) or blue or purple or whatever makes you happy.

I've been half-heartedly doing Weight Watchers for a couple of months. I've lost 10 pounds, a reasonably respectable amount, and I've definitely gotten smaller, as I'm back into some clothes that I optimistically had hanging in my closet. I've got a helluva long way to go, but that's cool. I told one of my co-workers at last week's meeting that I can't even think of my end goal right now. I have to just think about today. Now.

So we have a cafe at work, and they have good food, for the most part. By good I mean tasty, not necessarily the healthiest. Most days you can at least get a decent cup of soup. Some days they have an incredible salad toss, although for some reason they have no lowfat/reduced fat/nonfat salad dressings. (Note to self--take a little cup of salad dressing to work with me on the days they do the salad toss. N.B. if you like creamy, tangy dressings, I recommend the Bolthouse Farms yogurt dressings. Delicious, and only 1 WW point per tablespoon).  But take today--the entree was apricot chicken, which looked tasty but was probably full of sugar thanks to the jam glazing the chicken, served with rice (can't eat because of the lap band) and several different blends of veggies that looked like they were all soaked in butter and/or oil. The grill was a turkey burger with bacon, mushrooms, and Swiss cheese, an undeniably tasty concoction but not conducive to, well, figuratively growing out my hair. I didn't want hummus because I had it yesterday, and wasn't in the mood to eat it with pretzels (I like my hummus with veggies). So I ended up with a lackluster tuna sandwich, of which I ate half.

I have to digress for a moment, because one of the things we talked about in last week's WW meeting was emotions and how to handle them without eating. Invariably people talked about getting some exercise, or talking a walk, or even walking away from your desk. I was uber stressed today due to work stuff, and I got up and took a walk, all right. I walked all the way to the bathroom where I had a nice pee, and then I walked to the snack machine and bought a 3 Musketeers bar, and walked back to my desk and ate it.  I don't think that's quite the type of walk everyone had in mind, but it worked for me.  And it was a deliberate, conscious decision. I knew I could fit it into my day, and it wasn't a big deal.

Anyway, one of my hurdles when it comes to taking my lunches to work is time. I get out of bed at the latest possible moment that allows me time to go to the bathroom, brush my hair and teeth, put on deodorant, possibly slap on some makeup, get dressed, and get to the car in time to be at work as close to 6 a.m. as possible. (This won't last, but it's going to go on for at least another month, probably.)  That means if it's not ready for me to grab and go, I won't take it.  So today I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work and got a nice assortment of fresh veggies and fruit, a box of 4 mini-packs of hummus, a box of 4 mini-packs of cubed roast turkey breast, and 4 bottles of this really disgustingly nasty tasting Braggs vinegar drinks that I like despite the fact that they taste disgustingly nasty--they're so nasty I think they must be good for me, and I do feel better after having drunk one, so there you go.  And I also got a little bit of pasta salad and edamame salad to have for tonight's dinner.  Joe obligingly portioned out the carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and bell pepper into baggies for me, and then he made me 4 more little baggies of cherries and grapes. I made 4 lunch bags (Wednesday through Saturday), each containing a little tub of hummus, a little tub of cubed roast turkey breast, a bag of veggies, a bag of fruit, a nasty disgusting Braggs vinegar drink, and a little wedge of Laughing Cow light cheese. And they're all in the refrigerator, so I just have to wander through the kitchen on my way through the house in the morning, and voila, my lunch is all ready to go.

It took comparatively little time to do this, just a little planning ahead more than anything. Joe was impressed that I'm actually doing this (not that it's new--I've periodically gone on healthy binges only to spectacularly fall off the wagon) and was nicely encouraging. And I do feel better when I eat better. F'r instance, yesterday I had a cup of pasta e fagiole soup, a cup of cantaloupe and honeydew melon for lunch, with the aforementioned hummus and pretzel thins for a snack, and felt MUCH better than I did today after eating half a tuna sandwich and some Fritos (oh, didn't I mention the Fritos?) with a 3 Musketeers bar as a stress chaser.

It's all good. Today I figuratively told the hairdresser to chop my damn hair off short, and then changed my mind before she did it. Changed my routine a wee bit, and hope it takes.

You Know It's Bad

When you're making yourself sick.  I'm just sayin'.  Dunno why the tummy rumblies, but they're unpleasant. One slipped out at work, but considering I put in over 13 hours today, only having one little fart sneak out seems fairly miraculous.

Oy Did That Piss Me Off!!!!

Without making too long a story of it, a few years ago I left the religion in which I spent 30 years. It took a while to get up the nerve to tell my mother, and she reacted as one might expect.

She's written emails to the family that make it pretty clear that she's convinced I'm going to hell when I die, and that makes her sad, but she knows where she's going (cue harps).  Those emails sting, but I try to laugh it off.

I haven't talked to her  a lot lately due to my insane work schedule, so I gave her a call yesterday while I was stuck in traffic on the way home from work. No worries--the phone goes through my car speakers, so I wasn't trying to juggle a telephone. Anyway, we were having a reasonably decent conversation, and I'm not sure how, but we ended up on the topic of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Dorothy L. Sayers was the author of the excellent Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels. She did a superb translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.  Just a brilliant woman.  Anyway, I told my mother that every once in a while, Amazon will drop the price on a Sayers novel and I'll snap it up for my iPad. Recently they did that with Strong Poison. I then asked my mother if she'd read any of Jill Patton Walsh's continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novels, and she said she'd read two of them, and we talked about them for a few moments. The dialog is wrong, and they lack the sparkle that Sayers prose carried, but they're not bad.  My mother then interjected that she was glad Bunter (Lord Peter's manservant) got married in one of the books. I was glad, too, but as it turned out, for a different reason than my mother.

"There were some indications that Bunter might be homosexual," she said.

I was speechless, then made a hasty excuse to end the conversation.

My mother was glad that Lord Peter's manservant got married, not because she wanted this fictional character to have a happy and fulfilling home life, but because she was worried that he was gay.

Did she think that he was having fantasies about romantic liaisons with Lord Peter?

Does it even fucking matter?

People kill each other. People mutilate each other. There is famine. Disease. People stealing other people's livelihoods and retirement accounts. Parents abusing their children.

And my mother was worried because a fictional character might be homosexual.

You know what, Mom? I'll stick with people who are funny, smart, kind, loving, decent, honourable people. And I don't give a damn who they sleep with.

Yes, I'm Still Here

Blogging will be sporadic for a while yet.  I worked 60 hours this week, and the only reason it wasn't 70 is because they're moving our office all around. Everyone on the first floor will now be working on the second floor, and everyone who was on the second floor will now be working on the first floor.  So we had to stop work at 3:45 yesterday afternoon, pack up our desks, take our personal belongings to our cars, clean our desks, etc. And we couldn't go in today because that's when the movers are doing their deal.  Next week, though, is going to be quite the week.

Here's the dealio.  In my team at work, there are only two of us right now working the process I work. The other guy is a very likeable--for the most part--guy who has absolutely zero work ethic.  I've worked his queue twice before, once when he was out for a couple of days, and then 3 weeks ago when he was out for a day.  He left Thursday afternoon for vacation and will not be back until the 18th.  So we've got a new person on our team who is going to be working my queue, which should be pretty straightforward because I keep it clean.  I look at every account at least every other day, and I stay on top of things.  And I'm going to be cleaning out my co-worker's queue.

When I ran the report at 5:00 Thursday afternoon, he had 178 accounts. By the time I left the office at 7:45, I'd already closed 15. Not because I did anything particularly heroic, but because I did a quick run-through of every account. Some had already been closed on our vendor's website, and he just had to take five minutes to approve fees in one system, remove a code in another system, make a note in another system, and then close it in our database. Then yesterday I did documents to secure several vehicles that we needed to get picked up. I wrote up requests for 12 accounts that needed pre-charge-off letters sent. I sent at least a dozen pre-charge-off letters. If I'm on top of my game, his queue will be down to fewer than 100 accounts when he returns.

He's going to be really pissed at me.  I already know that. He didn't talk to me for 3 days after the last time I worked in his queue, despite the fact that I saved him from two lost liens and did the charge-off process for 15 of his accounts.   It's because he doesn't care about his work. He wants to coast on appearance and personality instead of actually doing his job. It pisses him off that I came onto the team in late September and our team lead and manager consider me an SME, and come to me for special projects instead of to him.

If he didn't talk to me for 3 days for working his queue one day, I figure I'm in for at least a week or two of the silent treatment after working his queue for a little over a week. That's cool by me. Frankly, I'd be just as happy if he decided he wanted to go work for a different department or even a different company.

I feel bad about this.  I want to like people. I want to respect them. I believe most people deserve my respect, even if I can't manage to like him.  After seeing how he mismanages his work, though, I don't have any respect for his work ethics. None. There's no reason for this state of affairs. Fortunately, in the rearranging of our group due to the move, I'll no longer be sitting right next to him, a state of affairs for which he is undoubtedly as devoutly grateful as I am.

I'm not doing his queue to show him up, and try to make him look bad. I'm doing his queue to help my team and my company. Lost liens cost us money. Charge-offs cost us money. Picking up cars that we should be charging off costs us money. Abandoning cars that we should be picking up costs us money.  Last year, the team to which I now belong was performing so badly due to being understaffed and having a totally burned-out team lead who retired, that our company would have saved money by picking up every car and paying fees without even trying to negotiate. That's a sad state of affairs.  We've made a lot of progress in turning things around. We're no longer quite the red-headed stepchild of our department, and I want to keep that momentum going.  We're not going to do it if we sit around and complain about our jobs and don't actually work.

So next week I'll be at work by 6 every morning, and will be there at least until 7, or later if my team lead doesn't chase me off at 7, and I'll be there on Saturday. Because like it or not, my co-worker will be back the following Tuesday, and within a month or two, his queue's going to be back up around the 200 account mark. I want to clean up as much as I can so that when I give it back to him, it's in the condition I'd like to have someone give me.

I take pride in my work. I remember once a professor I worked for many years ago telling me angrily not to correct his punctuation when I prepared his documents. I calmly agreed, but then told him that I would not put my initials on any of those documents.  He backed down immediately.  If my name is going on a piece of work, I want it to be as accurate and complete as possible.

I wish there were a way that my co-worker would come to that feeling. I know this isn't his ideal career. Hell, it's not mine. But as long as I'm there, I'm going to do my damndest.

So thanks for visiting, know that my search for meaning is definitely continuing, but right now I've got some immediate matters that require all of my energy.  We've got a few more people joining the team, and our team lead already said the overtime is going away once everyone's trained and we're fully staffed. So there's light.

Just What Am I Hoping to Find, Anyway?

Who the hell knows.

Peace of mind? Direction? Self confidence?

Only time will tell.

Hi. My Name's Faith. What's Yours?

I used to blog a LOT. But then I changed jobs and suddenly life got so busy there wasn't time for blogging.  I've missed it. Somehow, though, that old blog just isn't calling to me. It's there waiting for me, and maybe if the time is ever right, I'll go back and revisit it. For now, though, here I am.

So what's on my mind today? It's been boiling around in  my brain for a few days  now. I think I have a fairly healthy self-image, for the most part. I look in the mirror and most days feel like I look pretty good. Not great, but pretty good, all things considered. There are some people in my life, though, who just have to look at me a certain way they have, and suddenly I feel homely beyond all description. And, worse, every now and then I try to take a selfie. Some people can take the cutest selfies ever, and you see them and think, "how adorable!" Man, not me. I don't know if it's the angle, the lighting, or what, but when I try taking a selfie I first gasp in dismay, then laugh, then try to make the most ridiculous faces possible until I give up and delete (if I ever even saved it to begin with).

My point here is that what I see in the display of my phone or my tablet or on the face of someone I care about is so vastly different from what I see in the mirror.

Which Faith is the real Faith?  The laughing person who crosses her eyes at her reflection and admires her hair, turns sideways to see if her outfit is more or less flattering? Or the one whose green eyes droop down at the outer corners and whose bovine face is glowering (unintentionally, I assure you!!) at the camera?

I hope, and would like to think, that it's the former. I will guarantee you that the Faith I feel like inside is far more like the girl laughing at herself in the mirror.

But just realizing how differently I see myself makes me wonder how other people see me. Am I homely? I asked a trusted friend that today, promising that I wasn't fishing for compliments. She answered me straight up. I'm average looking. I've got gorgeous eyes that she thinks I should play up more. I've got the normal features, put together the way they should be. Nothing wrong with that.

Why this yearning for beauty? How much of it is because of what is inside of me, and how  much of it is because of what I see reflected around me? Baz Luhrmann famously admonished people not to read beauty magazines--"they will only make you feel ugly."  And I've looked at enough pre- and post-Photoshop pictures to know that even the images that are before our eyes every day don't necessarily have a lot of bearing in reality.

I also know that the more I  know and love someone, the  more attractive they are to me, regardless of what my initial impressions may have been. I'm thinking of someone now who, when I first met him, I thought he was really good-looking. As I've gotten to know him much better, I still find him attractive, but I see the goofiness that was always there. If I were to describe him to someone, I might say that he's kind of funny-looking, in a cute way. How much of that is his actual physical appearance and how much of that is attributable to the fact that I know him so much better is a moot point. I adore him. And I find him attractive because he is an attractive personality.

Don't get me wrong--I've got the guys that I figuratively drool over. David Tennant, anyone? Benedict Cumberbatch? But their hotness--for me--isn't just physical. It's again their personalities shining through their beautiful features.  I saw a photo just the other day of David Tennant hugging a kid dressed in a Dalek costume. How can that not be hot?

So boil it down to bare essentials. I've got two eyes. That's a good start. They're green, and I have dark eyelashes that never quite regained the thickness I had before I burned them off years ago (long story). I've got a mouth, two lips just like I'm supposed to have. I have a nose. Two ears. All the limbs are where they should be, fingers and toes, everything works mostly as it should.  I'm fat. Working on becoming less so, but there it is. My eyes droop at the outer edges, and I find it very unattractive. And my mouth is small. Crooked teeth.

That's all biology and genetics. That has nothing to do with who I am.

I laugh a lot, and I laugh loudly. I'm nerdy. I love to read, love to write, love to create. I love to hop into other people's lives and try them on like new suits of clothing, and then take them off and try on something else. I like to play. I like to cook and I'd rather do almost anything than clean. I'm Wonder Woman without the 22" waist and the mile-high legs. I'm awesome.

That's not bragging. How can it be bragging when it's the truth?

My point is, though, that I bet you're awesome. Most people are. Heck, I guess everyone is awesome, in his or her unique way. My life is full of awesome people who brighten it up every day. Thanks for being one of my awesome peeps!

Faith out!