Random Question of the Day

How do you eat your M&Ms? Any special way?

If they're peanut, I tend to bite off part of the shell and then eat the rest. In terms of color, I eat them in this order: brown, orange, blue, red, yellow, green. Green always go last. I will also often make it so that I have an even number of each color (e.g. 1 of each, 2 of each) when I eat them.

I am strange. I know this. Who's with me?

Stolen Time is Good Time

Well, my class got out an hour early, and I'm waiting for my sister to take a shower before we go to dinner, so I've got a few minutes. Been CRAZY busy and woefully neglectful of my blogging duties.

I think the biggest life change is that we finally dumped my trusty old Daewoo (referenced in the bizarre and funny movie Pineapple Express) and went to Indiana two weekends ago to take my grandmother's even trustier Buick LeSabre off her hands. We haven't officially gotten rid of the 'Woo yet--because it's technically a salvage (damaged in the October Storm of 2005 and fixing it cost more than the value of the car, which tells you something), the dumb DMV never sent me my title back, so I will get it in six to eight glorious weeks. Hooray. At this point, we'll take any money we can get for it.

So we flew to Indianapolis and stayed at my grandmother's retirement place, which in my eyes is pretty nice, though she says the construction is a little bothersome. She's 91 and sharp as a razor--man, with my two grandmas as lucid and together as they are, I am SET. We had a lovely weekend despite the fact that the brake line was rusted through and my thankfully charming husband managed to find a mechanic who was 1) semi-open on a Saturday afternoon and 2) willing to help us. Truly, they didn't have to and they fixed our brake line for $100. Oil-covered angels they were, and I mean that. Thus we had a friggin' palatial ride home--lots of room, cruise control, and it didn't feel like the slightest gust of wind would blow us off the road, which I have too often felt in the 'Woo. T is a little envious of my sweet ride, but I'm not giving it up. Plus she sold it to us for $1 because she had to have us pay something--I don't think you get a better deal than that. All in all, we had a hugely successful visit on all fronts--lovely visit with Grammie and a nice car to boot. Not a bad weekend, all in all.

Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street

A complete staple of my childhood, I just wanted to quickly share a few of my favorite clips, although there are too many to count. I dare you to try not to sing along. As far as I'm concerned, it did nothing negative at all for me; it did not hinder my attention span, make me eat too many cookies, or anything else. It taught me how to be a good friend, to say "open" and "closed" in Spanish, to count to twelve, to not be scared of monsters, and countless other important skills. What a brilliant, wonderful creation.

Who's your favorite character? I always loved Grover the most.

- Opening

- Oscar singing "I love Trash"

- "C is for Cookie"

- Ladybugs Picnic

- Counting to ten (I had totally forgotten this!)

- One two three FOUR FIVE, six seven eight NINE TEN, eleven twelve!

- Orange sings "Carmen" (totally odd, but I always remembered it as a favorite)

- Elmo's song

- a little Spanish

- a loaf of bread, a container of milk...

- The Twiddlebugs!

- Typical Bert and Ernie

- Prairie Dawn reciting

- Kermit and Cookie

- Super Grover!

- Big Bird deals with the loss of Mr. Hooper (I know it's sad, but I think it's beautifully done)

- So here's a happier Big Bird and Snuffy

- And we'll end with one that everyone knows (hint: it's about something that makes noise when you squeeze it....)

The Weight of Weight

I mentioned this a little while ago, but I thought I'd get going. Sometime over the last year or so, my weight has crept up. It hasn't been anything drastic; otherwise, I would have noticed. (OBVIOUSLY) Oh, sure, I've observed that things that used to fit did not fit quite as well, but I could still get them on and thus continue the denial. I've never had to worry before. Don't despise me for writing that; I just got lucky that until my mid-2os or so, I had a great metabolism where I could eat more or less what I wanted.

Cut to over 30: No longer the case. Plus I can no longer exercise for two weeks and retransform. Ah, aging. For me, it's a combination of denial and poor habits. I don't eat badly, but I do eat too much of things. I've watched T deal with it for as long as we've been together, supporting him while silently, secretly thinking I was glad I didn't have to deal with all that. Well, I do.

The final straw came when I went to put on a pair of pants from the winter wardrobe and could not close them. I burst into silly tears, though T assured me that I wasn't being stupid or silly. He was lovely. Fortunately as well, we have many Weight-Watcher friendly cookbooks and recipes that I will now utilize in terms of portion control. Plus I have a great friend who's a personal trainer and she gave me suggestions and showed me all kinds of tummy and butt moves. She also suggested this wacky "no carbs after 1pm" idea, which I know is wise and right, but it's sooo hard to do. I didn't realize how many of our dinners, albeit Weight-Watcher friendly, have carbs in them. EVIL CARBS! So I have attempted to not eat as many carbs after 1pm, which is total crap and I need to step it up. I've gotten better about exercising and writing things down, which, I swear, is the key to stopping overeating. Seriously, if you know you have to write down everything you eat, you actually, shockingly, think about what you're eating before you simply shovel it into your mouth-hole. I'm also trying to do the whole smaller-meals-more-often thing, and with my 10:00am lunch period, that's working out quite nicely. Then I eat the rest at 2pm. I think my problem, too, is that I do wait too long and then I'm RAVENOUS and I overeat.

I haven't been 100% diligent for various reasons: I got sick. I had grades due. I wanted to sleep past 5am. Those things. And I swear, every time I start a new exercise kick/routine, I get sick. Is my body trying to tell me something? But I've done more, exercise-wise, than I have in the past, which is good.

I think it's all about control, and I'm also fortunate in that this is something I can control, if I so choose. In fact, my jeans feel a bit looser today than they have. I don't care if it's all completely in my head; it gets me motivated. I don't feel the need to get back to my college weight or anything; I just want to be healthier and to fit into my clothes because, as I've said and written before, I don't have money to buy all new clothes.

I realize you might not be super-thrilled to hear about my exercise habits, but it's just one more way I'm trying to keep myself healthy and gain control over a certain part of my life. It's a reality face-slap, and I'm willing to take the slap if it means I can get healthier than I've allowed myself to become.

Thus, when I go out to dinner tonight with Mom, I'll take care in what I order and skip the bread. Happy Friday, folks.

Sookie, My version

As promised, here are the pictures of me as Sookie Stackhouse, or, a vampire-bitten waitress. T is the Buffalo Bills' offensive coach; hence the clown nose because the guy's a joke.

See the vampire bites? (You can see them better if you click on the picture. I got the bruising and everything!) I also had to wear jeans because it was 40 degrees out and I was outside a lot, so I couldn't do Sookie's little shorts she wears. I do NOT live in Bon Temps, Lousiana.

OK, if you don't watch the show...

I was Sookie Stackhouse from the dark HBO show True Blood. If you don't watch it, I was a vampire-bitten waitress. Apparently I did a good job on my vampire bites: I walked into my brother's house and he and his wife gasped, "Oh my God, what happened to you?!" The trick: dark red nail polish surrounded by small circles of dark purplish-blue eyeshadow to look like bruising.

Feathernester, you will go CRAZY when Season 2 comes out. You won't believe what happens! Let's just say I have a newfound respect for Jason Stackhouse. And I haven't read all of Eclipse yet, so I may switch from Camp Jacob back to Edward. We'll see....

Guess who I was for Halloween?

Originally uploaded by kfclark

I'm trying this from Flickr--guess it does work