Work Out Wednesdays: The Pantry

On my mission to live healthier, the first step of the journey was organizing my diet. I swear I've read somewhere that weight loss is 85% diet and 15% exercise, so it made logical sense to start with diet.

When it comes to food decisions, I can behave for breakfast and my packed lunch for work, but I instantly derail when I get home everyday. I'm always starving and, even in the amount of time it takes to microwave a Lean Cuisine, I start grazing on the snacks in the pantry.

In order to combat my cow-like tendencies, I organized the pantry. My logic was that once it was organized, I would be able to easily find the healthy snacks and hide the destructive ones from my line of sight without having to sadden my husband by throwing them out. I have no will-power and if I see something good, I'll eat it. I was gambling on the fact that if I couldn't see it, I would forget it was there.

This was our pantry before. It was a mess. I tried to develop a system when we moved in but that instantly dissolved. Because of the odd shape of the pantry (who builds a triangular pantry?) and not knowing our routine and eating habits at the new house, everything became perched on the very edge of the shelves and you could never find anything easily.

The Pantry: Before

To battle this, first I went to Target and bought some large cereal tupperware. The cardboard boxes don't fit properly on the shelf so they end up in odd places and block off the healthy snacks. Then, I pulled absolutely everything out of the pantry. In the laundry room, I divided things into piles based on similarities. I didn't create categories until they emerged from grouping similar items, but it quickly became baking, cooking, snacks, breakfast, and random staples (mainly things that needed to be refrigerated once opened). Next, I chose shelves for them based on health and use. The cooking stuff was put at eye level so I would be motivated to make dinner rather than to eat four handfuls of Goldfish. Staples went on the bottom shelf and baking on the top since they don't get used that often. Also, once snacks went on its shelf, the cookies and brownies were hidden in the back corner.

The Pantry: After

This system has worked pretty well so far. I had to sit Dan down and explain to him where everything was and threaten the safety of his kneecaps if he dared screw it up. It'll probably need maintenance every couple of months, but it is lightyears past where it was originally. I know it's not that impressive, but it's a start, people!

So, onto the more important part of this post: my weight loss progress thus far.

My graph shows my weight for every day over the past week as well as the trend. I've gone from 147.6 to 145.6, so a loss of two pounds! It's not much, but it's a start. I keep telling myself that it took a long time to put it on so it's going to take a long time to get it off.

One observation from this graph: I eat a lot of salty foods over the weekend. I ate relatively the same amount of calories, but I ate so much more salt that my body acted like a sponge. Fortunately, most of the bloat disappeared quickly, but I've got to start being more careful about my salt intake.

And hopefully, over time, the graph will look less frantic as the hills and valleys smooth out. This time, I'm refusing to let one or two bad days kill my spirit. And I know I'm going to really have to stick to that philosophy this weekend as it's someone's birthday and I plan on feeding him very well.

My Very Worst Date

Lately, I've been obsessed with the website My Very Worst Date. It's incredibly entertaining reading about these situations people got themselves into and what some people think is acceptable behavior. Most of the stories have a couple of things in common: they are first dates, they haven't met before the date (internet or a blind date), and after the date someone becomes too clingy and all communication has to be cut off. My very worst date was none of those things.

My very worst date happened with my ex. We had been dating over four and a half years and things were quickly unraveling. Summer was approaching and since we were both working out of state (on different sides of the country), I just tried to suck it up and naively thought things would be better after the summer was over. We were fighting every single day but we put that aside to have one more date before we went separate ways for the summer.

Some of the details really stick with me, like the fact that I drove and that we went to Macaroni Grill for dinner. We had been seated at a table in the middle of the restaurant, surrounded by other diners. We had ordered and were picking at the rosemary bread when everything shifted.

A little bit of back story is necessary here. A couple days before this day, I had been inducted into an Honors fraternity for engineers. Inductees were chosen based on their grades and we all went through an initiation process, culminating in an initiation ceremony. I was very proud to be a member, even though it wasn't much beyond resume filler, but I was one of the youngest members and I was excited to be part of it.

Anyway, sitting in the middle of this kind-of Italian restaurant, he asked me about the initiation ceremony. And like any good initiation ceremony, it had been a sworn-to-secrecy sort of event. So, naturally, I made some sort of joke about how it was a secret and I had sworn not to tell (which was true). And suddenly, it was like some sort of switch flipped in his brain.

He starts talking about how, in relationships, you shouldn't have any secrets from one another. Thinking this was still some sort of light-hearted discussion, I responded with how absurd I thought that was. I don't think you should actively try to hide things from one another, but some stuff you just shouldn't HAVE TO tell each other.

Things start to get more tense as he begins to lose control of the volume of his voice. While he's not yelling, it's quickly heading that direction and I become very aware of the people around us glancing over. He starts going on and on about how we have different views about relationships and how he can't believe that I would WANT to have secrets from him and how it isn't healthy.

Now maybe this was my mistake in thinking there was any room for debate in this conversation, and that it was a conversation rather than an excuse to yell at me for something yet again, but I kept trying to argue my point because there was no way in hell I was going to tell him everything. Although I didn't say it, but if he thought I was going to, he was crazy.

This initiation ceremony has now become a huge symbol in our relationship and neither of us were going to back down. He was insecure because he had never been invited to join the fraternity. His grades weren't good enough and it was just another slap in the face as to how his younger, female girlfriend was better than he was. To me, I was protecting everything I had never told him. To this day, I can think of dozens of things I haven't told my husband, not because I'm hiding it, but because he just doesn't need to know. And if he ever did, I would tell him. And there's no way anyone could expect to make me feel bad for this belief.

Anyway, people are starting to stare and I finally realize this isn't a debate or an argument. No matter what I say, no matter how correct or how rational, he refuses to listen. After yelling his point home a few more times, he quiets himself and tells me that either I tell him what happened at the initiation ceremony or we're done.

It felt like the air was being knocked out of me when I realized he was giving me an ultimatum.

I excused myself, with my purse, to the restroom. Once inside, I just started sobbing, panic stricken, because I had no clue what to do. Once I calmed down, I called my mom because I was so lost. She told me she couldn't tell me what to do. To this day, I'm still a little bitter that she just didn't tell me to hide in the ladies room until she came to the restaurant and took me home. I just wasn't strong enough to walk out on my own. I was only 20 years old and we'd been together so long that he was all I knew.

This is the thing that bugs me most, thinking back on this story, is that I should have just left him. I should have just snuck out of the restaurant to my car (because I drove!) and left him in the restaurant. When he would have finally gotten ahold of me, I would have told him that I choose the option where we're done and ended things.

But I wasn't that strong, so I went back to the table once my eyes went back to normal. It wasn't brought up again and we ate our food in awkward silence.

Once dinner was over, I drove him back to his parent's house to drop him off. But before getting out of my car, he wanted an answer. In a great twist of irony, I had one of my greatest ideas to date. I knew what his grades were. I knew he was never going to be asked to join this fraternity. I could tell him about the initiation ceremony, but he'd never have any way of knowing if it were the truth. No one else in the fraternity would tell him.

So I lied. I created an elaborate, fake ceremony and he bought it, hook, line, and sinker. He wanted to know one of my secrets and all he did was create one more.

After that, I did my best to avoid him until I left for the summer. We managed to have one more gigantic fight before I escaped, preventing me from saying good bye to my mom, and I finally realized that I couldn't handle all his drama anymore. Fortunately, the summer work experience introduced me to a wonderful group of people and they helped me realize how strong I could really be.

And for all the crap he'd given me, I dumped his ass over the phone two days before he came back to town. People ask me sometimes if I feel bad for dumping him the way I did, but I think back to times like the one in the Macaroni Grill and I really don't feel bad at all. At least I understood that I should probably feel bad, he never showed any remorse for all the bullshit he put me through. And once I was free, you cannot imagine how good it felt to twist the knife whenever he tried to weasel his way back into my life.

My Poor Car!

Wednesday night I was in a car accident. Luckily no one was injured, it was not my fault at all, and the other person completely accepted blame. All that aside, it was an incredibly weird experience.

I had stopped at the Verizon store on my way home from work because I finally got a new phone the day before and needed to switch my contacts over. After the transfer process took over half an hour, I was itching to get home.

About a mile from my house, I made a right hand turn after this red 2010 Camaro. The Camaro pulled into the middle lane to make a left hand turn into the Walgreens and I thought to myself, There's a sign there saying left hand turns are illegal because it's so close to the intersection but who cares because she's not hurting me?

She missed the turn into the Walgreens and was kind of just slowly driving in the middle lane now. She must be slowly creeping along until a gap comes along and she can get back into traffic. I'll just continue past her, legally, in the correct lane.

Nope. Didn't wait for a gap. Decided to run into the rear left portion of my car instead. Geez, I don't know how I reacted so quickly, but the damage was pretty minimal. We both pulled into the nearest parking lot (which ironically was the parking lot for the grocery store I had planned on getting groceries at later that night) and assessed the damage. Her car actually took most of the damage. Who would have bet that in a battle of Chevy SS Camaro versus Volkswagen Beetle the Beetle would walk away the victor?

I decided to call the cops because that's just what I've always been trained to do. I didn't realize how badly my hands were shaking until I tried to use my new phone. Try adding another layer of stress when your worried your hands are shaking so badly that you'll drop your brand new uninsured phone onto the pavement. Ugh.

Well apparently, the cops don't come out to accidents in Tucson anymore unless someone is injured or you're blocking traffic. While it was kind of a relief, it also complicates things. With a police report, I can go to the insurance company and clearly demonstrate that the accident wasn't my fault.

So without a police report, I knew getting photos of the damage and the scene would be that much more important. And have I mentioned that I have a brand new cell phone that I don't know how to use at all, especially the camera? I called my mom and asked her to come down and to bring her camera. The other woman called her son and we just attempted to exchange information without really knowing what we were supposed to do (it's so much easier when the cops just come!)

My parents finally show up and assess the damage. All of a sudden, the woman starts asking my mom where they know each other from. At this point, it was pretty funny because my mom was pretty pissed off but still trying to be polite, but she had no idea who this lady was. After a couple of failed attempts, we all realized that I went to elementary school with her son. The son that was now working his way to the scene. And we were more than friends. He was my kindergarten boyfriend and we used to kiss everyday at recess by the watering fountain. Everyone says that Tucson is a small town because somehow everyone knows everyone else, they just don't realize it most of the time. Kind of a cruel time to rub that one in my face, Tucson.

Actually, it probably made things easier because the tension between everyone melted at this point. I calmed down and let it sink in that this actually was an accident and that being angry really wasn't going to help anything. She accepted full blame to insurance company over the phone in front of me so at least I'm not as worried now that she'll suddenly flip a switch and try to pretend it was my fault. And, since I'm friends with her son on Facebook, I know I've at least got a back up method of getting in contact with her if things start to go downhill.

And the damage to my car is pretty superficial. It's still drivable and the tire she hit appears to be fine, but we need to have it looked at just to be sure. A couple of the panels will need to be replaced and I'm going to need a new hubcap, but it could have been much worse. I just don't want to drive around a scarred Tick (I named my car Tick because he's a little red bug. And yes, he's a boy car). I want to clean him up as soon as possible so hopefully the insurance adjuster can evaluate everything pretty quickly. My poor baby!

Please ignore the ridiculous look on my face. This stupid candid photo is the only digital one I have of Tick.

This Makes Me So Sad and So Happy at the Same Time

Meet Winky the Spur Thigh Tortoise. She was donated to an English safari park in 2002 because she was depressed. She was depressed because she only had three legs! So her keepers developed an artificial limb for her: a plastic wheel mounted to her shell. After quickly wearing through the first design and the more robust second design, a third design involving an air-filled tire and a suspension system. She now has no problem navigating the ever-changing muddy British terrain of her habitat.

This is the kind of thing I wanted to do when I told my advisor I was interesting in zoology applications of mechanical engineering. And to think he just looked at me like I was crazy.

Apparently I Am Love Bilingual

I'd been meaning to take the "Love Languages" quiz for quite a while. When communication breaks down between Dan and I, it's always something I think about. Maybe we just aren't on the same wavelength and we're really just saying the same thing.

So I found this quiz online and it really wasn't that revealing: I like being told I'm pretty and presents. Here's the break down of my scores:

• Words of Affirmation: 7
• Quality Time: 6
• Receiving Gifts: 7
• Acts of Service: 6
• Physical Touch: 4

It's such a convoluted test. Trying to choose between which makes me feel better faster, hugs or praise, is totally subjective and after answering 30 questions like that, you just want to get it over with.

Anyway, so here's what this quiz thinks about me.

     Words of Affirmation: Actions don’t always speak louder than words. If this is your love
     language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, “I love you,”
     are important—hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can
     leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten.

I'd believe that, especially the insults part. I remember everything and things like that I wish I could forget but just don't know how.

     Don’t mistake this love language for materialism; the receiver of gifts thrives on the love, 
     thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. If you speak this language, the perfect gift or 
     gesture shows that you are known, you are cared for, and you are prized above whatever 
     was sacrificed to bring the gift to you. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty,
     thoughtless gift would be disastrous—so would the absence of everyday gestures. 

And given the number of pieces I've written on how to give gifts and romance, this seems very fitting.

Now to just trick Dan into finding my results and creating his own...

Fan of Friday: Week of 11/4/2011

Yesterday, I just felt icky. That was really the only way to describe it. Icky. I was exhausted and crampy and had failed to bring any ibuprofen to work so I was miserable. Since Thursdays are my long days due to the lack of meetings, by 1 o'clock I was going insane. Head on my desk, trying not to breathe too loudly as to scare my coworkers, miserable.

Then brilliance struck: I would work from home. Since I had no more meetings and wasn't needed in the lab, why not work from home. And let me tell you, working from home is like the greatest thing ever! I've only worked from home once before and that was basically ordered by my manager when I returned from England (ahhh, jet lag). Anyway, once I changed into stretchy pants and was sitting on a sofa, the misery just melted away. And I'm not going to lie, I turned the volume up loud on my laptop so that if I *happened* to fall asleep on the couch, someone messaging me would wake me up.

It was just a little cat nap. Hahahahahahaaaha (Psst. I'm hilarous!)

And I wasn't a complete slacker, I managed to get every done that I needed to. But it's just so much better getting things done while "Ellen" is on in the background, sprawling on a sofa, with a snack in hand. I can't describe how upset I was this morning because I knew I needed to come into the lab. I've already adjusted to this fabulous new lifestyle...

I highly recommend it. It's the little things in life people!

Let's Just Call This An "Outline"

Just a couple of random things on my mind recently.

First, on a blog I frequent, one of the fellow commentors, JK, gave me a shout out and hits have gone through the roof.

     I clicked through to your blog, I loved it!! The Minnie Driver entry was funny. And I´ve
     bookmarked the recipe for peanut butter nutella cookies, they look amazing.

Woot! I ab-so-lute-ly love when people compliment this weird little thing I write. Totally made my day. Thanks!

Second, apparently November is National Blog Posting Month, aka NoBloPoMo. Meaning  that for this ENTIRE month, I will post something every day. Thankfully November only has 30 days so only 27 more posts to go. And hopefully, a couple of them will be more interesting than this babble.

Third, with the holidays quickly approaching, I'm stepping up my health routine and I'm declaring it to the internet so I might actually stick to it for once. My life has changed so much in the past year (from being a college student to a primarily desk job, from living alone to being married to a man with the metabolism of a hummingbird) and I've gained the jiggle around the middle to prove it. I plan on posting my progress every Wednesday in a series called "Work Out Wednesdays".

Currently, I've puffed up to 147.6 lbs. It's still a normal BMI for my 5'6" frame, but it's slowly creeping toward the unhealthy range. My goal is to get down to 130.0 lbs. I've been there before and while it's a couple pounds lower than my former default weight but, really, what else do I have going on right now? I even took a 'Before' picture in my bikini so that when I'm in awesome shape, you'll be able to tell how hard I really worked. I thought about posting it now, but if for some reason I fail to get in awesome shape, then there's just a picture of the pudgy version of me floating around on the internet.

(I did a Google search for images of being healthy and an amazing amount of pictures of women eating apples popped up. I like this one better.)

Kermit is my Spirit Animal

This is how I feel inside (and sometimes outside) when I'm happy.

Hopefully it made you smile, too.

What I Learned From Spying on Minnie Driver

On my grand business trip to England, one of my coworkers upgraded us to business class and it was one of the greatest things ever! We were in the admiral's club before our 12 hour flight boarded and I tried to sneak some pictures of the swankiness. Only then did I realize that although I had remembered to charge the battery in my camera, I had forgotten my memory card. D'oh!

Luckily for me, airports now have these crazy kiosk/vending machines that sell electronics and accessories and I had found access to a new memory card. I stood there, waiting for the repairman to finish working on the only one in the concourse and I turned around to see how many people were also waiting and BAM!

Minnie Driver is standing right behind me.

Although she hasn't been in many movies lately, she was in my favorite cult-classic romantic comedy "Return To Me" with David Duchovny centered around a heart transplant (If you haven't seen it, you should. It's not terrible and it's got a great cast.)

Anyway, she was playing with her son at the terminal and I figured it made sense for them to be on a red-eye flight from LA to London since she's British. Assuming this would be the last I would see of her, because she would probably be in first class, imagine my surprise to see them sitting across the aisle and two rows up in business. I was able to sneak this picture of the back of her head.

I SWEAR that's her!

Maybe it's because I'm from Tucson and I consider seeing one of the local news anchors at my hair salon a celebrity sighting, but I feel like I learned somethings from stealing glances at Minnie Driver for 12 hours:

• You couldn't tell how expensive her clothes were. So many magazines publish articles on how to get the designer look for less, but this kind of proved how mute the designer ones are in the first place. She had an amazing pair of mid-calf brown suede boots on, but from afar, they didn't look like anything that would cost more that $75 at DSW. Unless you want something covered in logos or brandnames, can you really tell if it's designer?
• Her hair wasn't done. She didn't have these perfectly styled ringlets that effortlessly bounced every time she moved her hair. It looked like normal, curly hair that would probably inflate if she tried to brush it out. I don't know if she usually has a stylist do it or didn't feel the need to do it for a flight, but I'm kind of reassured that my own messy mane is acceptable celebrity standard for a airplane ride. As hard as I try, I just can't stay looking put together when I'm traveling.
• She has to entertain her kid when she's flying with him. Her son must have been about 3, had the cutest blond ringlets, and was remarkably well-behaved. I think we were all a little nervous when we saw him running around the terminal that we would be in for a long and loud flight, but aside from pretending the airplane was a rocket ship at take-off, I don't think I heard much from him until morning. And it's nice to know that all celebrities don't rely on nannies to watch their kids. She pretended to blast-off with him, she snuggled up with him when they went to sleep (I did some more spying when I got up to go to the bathroom), and she made sure he said "please" and "thank you" to the flight attendants. Apparently not all celebrity's are bad parents and not all celebrity children are brats.

I know these revelations aren't anything grand, but it helped me realize that these celebrities I see so often on gossip blogs are just human. They aren't any better than I am because they can actually afford business class and have people who do their hair.

And they aren't any worse either.

I Feel Like a Hobbit

Have I mentioned before how awesome my job is? I work with robots and when they need to be upgraded in the field, I get sent to do it. It's just so hard working in amazing places like New York City and London. You heard me right, I just got back from Jolly Old England. Three days of travel for three hours of work and one day of sightseeing? Yes, please. Technically, we were stationed in a town about an hour south west of London, Basingstoke, but it gave us a great jumping off point to visit Stonehenge and Windsor Castle.

This is the Portsmouth Arms Pub. We ate here twice. It was such an authentic countryside pub: thatched roof, dogs running around inside, thick wood ceiling beams, and old, deep fireplaces. It felt like something out of 'Lord of the Rings' and the food was so comforting.

You couldn't see anything for miles around Stonehenge. The wind was blustering and the sheep were grazing like a scene from a Thomas Hardy story. While Stonehenge was impressive, it was still hard to get a sense of scale when you're 30 feet from it. I would have loved to be able to walk through it.

By the way, sheep are awesome. This one had a bird.

Who says the food is bad in England? Imagine trying to eat lunch when this is right behind you. Yeah, we stopped back on the way to the car to get a couple of pieces to go. Mmm, double chocolate gateau...

This is Windsor Castle, the castle the royal family still uses. We went on a tour through about 1/6 of the main part of the castle and it took over an hour. The place is GIGANTIC. One of my favorite documentaries is 'Windsor Castle: A Royal Year' and it shows how truly awesome this castle is. Rent it if you haven't seen it. I think it'll go on my Christmas List this year.

This guard kept giving me the stink eye. I don't know what his problem was, could he not figure out that I wanted a picture with him? I'm pretty sure that I was like the 400th person to take a picture with him that day. My sister called him paunchy and he might want to consider a bigger coat.

Next time I'm taking London by storm. I may have to go back in early December and I'm already plotting out all the sites I need to see.