Letters to everyone

I got this idea from Meno's Blog. She got it from someone else.

Dear "Friend,"

Thanks for waiting til I went out of town to trash me to other people. Did you think it wouldn't get back to me? Well, it did.

--Not your friend anymore

__________________________

Dear Neighbor,

Please get a job or get some headphones for while you practice your guitar. Our houses are really close together, and it is getting really old.

-- The woman in the back house

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Dear people who call me,

I really do want to talk to you. But my phone is buried in the bottom of my purse and I'm driving. Later.

-- The world's worse phone-answerer

_________________________


Dear Swimmers at the gym,

I know aqua aerobics is supposed to end on the hour. But sometimes we run 2 or 3 minutes late. Can you NOT begin swimming laps thru the middle of the class?

--The lady in the dark green swimsuit who flipped you off under the water because she is classy that way

_________________________

Dear person on my ass in the slow lane,

Yes, I am going 45. I WAS going 65 until you started tailgating me. Go around or I will go even slower. What is your problem?

-- Little Miss Passive-Aggressive

________________________

What do YOU need to say to someone?

Housekeeping

I admit that I am not good at the blogroll thing. I have gotten hopelessly behind and many of the blogs I read aren't even on there.

I sometimes wonder if it is just another cluttery sidebar thing, but then I remember that the way I have found most of my favorite blogs is by clicking around other people's (peoples'? English TOO HARD) blogrolls, so it stays.

I just went through and updated a little. Put in some "new" blogs (people I have been reading for less than 2 years, given how often I update the thing) and took off some blogs I don't read or blogs written by people who have been fairly jackassy to me (NOW aren't you curious? I will never tell. Unless you ask bwaa haaaa. But if your blog is there, you have the official Suebobian NonJackass Award of Merit).

If you aren't there and wish to be, seal 5 $20 bills in a #10 envelope and mail them to...no, just leave a comment. It will help me to get off my butt and add people.

If you are a lurker and suddenly want to be on my blogroll well hmph. Would it hurt you to comment every once in a while? Are your wrists broken? If all the other kids jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too? (Don't ask me what I am talking about here. Even I do not know).

How did it come to this?

Here I am in Washington D.C., in a photo taken by a nice Australian horse-trainer woman:

Wow. Nice big building, huh? And what a nice big girl.

It's shocking to me because I don't think of myself being that fat. I have managed to avoid full-body photos for years (I am tall! I will stand in the back!) and when I look in the mirror, there is obviously some serious selective mental editing going on.

Because. Wow. Fat.

And it's not like I don't know what causes it. Like every other fat person on earth, I can quote calorie counts in detail for every food item, even those I don't consume (Frinstance - soda = 120 calories a can. I haven't had a soda since I can't remember).

And it's not like I don't know the number. The scale at the gym still works, even when you have to push the big weight over 4 clicks til you get past 200 and then add more on with the little slidey part: 207 lbs yesterday.

I could have a list of excuses. The sedentary job. The time commuting and seeing my parents every day. The bad back. On and on. But I'm a little tired of excuses, aren't you?

The real truth? I have this weird rebellious streak. I hate being told how to be, what to do. So the more people tried to get me to lose weight, the more I had to be different.

And stupid. I mean, what the heck? "I'll show them, I'll be fat?" What kind of weirdness is that?

Fortunately some forces have converged in my life. Several of my overweight friends have gotten skinny healthy lately and they are inspiring me.

The other thing is that I am working on a Super Special Secret Project at work and my project partners are fully committed to getting and staying healthy and to helping others do the same. (One of them will be competing in the Ford Half Ironman today) I feel like I have 10 other people who are rooting for me and who expect the best of me.

So. Eating much, much better. Drinking less (which is key, because after a glass of wine, I lose all inhibitions about vacuuming that bowl of tortilla chips). Exercising more. Stretching. Checking in with my inspiring friends.

I have lost 5 lbs and that is good news. But the better news is that my mind is in the right place, at last, and I am happy to be on this journey.

Place smells

Today when I was getting out of the taxi at the Richmond Airport, I said "It smells like waffles."

The cab driver told me that the Nabisco plant wasn't far away, so I was probably smelling cookies baking by the thousands.

Mmmm arrowroot.

When I lived in my first apartment down by the beach in Ventura at 1160 Pittsfield Lane, the evening air was often scented by lemons being boiled down into lemonade concentrate. It was like a room freshener, but it was a whole neighborhood freshener.

The best smell of all was in Chicago near the Milk Dud factory. Boiling caramel and chocolate all together - I think that must be what heaven smells like.

Do you have experience with ambient smells?

Anniversary

My sister Laura died a year ago today. Conventional wisdom tells me that anniversaries are hard, but that wasn't the case for me. I had many, many harder days in the intervening time. It started to get better after January 1 because I had sort of given myself til then to be as screwed up as I wanted to be, and I was.

I didn't go out; I drank too much; I ate like a supermodel who has lost her Ford Agency contract; I zoned out at work.

But now it is May and I am surrounded by dogwoods and tiny bunnies frolicking in the grass. Every azalea that blooms has my sister in it - she is eternal in that way. The missing her has gotten as bad as it could ever get, I think, and that is a comfort in itself.

Growing up or not

When we were in our late 20's my friend Mike said "My ex-girlfriend wants to be friends."

I asked "What are you going to do?"

He said solemnly, "Oh, no, I can't. I'm not emotionally mature enough for that."

That made me laugh but I think of it often and use it occasionally. There are some things that it takes a long, long time to become grown up enough to do.

Normally I would not talk about this

I hate to read about dreams. I never, ever read dream scenes in books. I always skip them. The device pisses me off. Yes, author person, I know you want to say something deep and meaningful but you can't figure out how to say it directly, so you start with the italics. Well, screw you. Learn to write.

So last night I had this dream... No, bear with me - I will keep this short and it was a blogging dream, so that counts for something, doesn't it?

I dreamt that I was looking at the movie page in the newspaper and there was a movie called "Jonniker!" after one of my favorite bloggers, of course Jonniker but in the movie title she gained an explanation point.

I ran around telling all my friends about the movie and I even went over and got to meet Jonniker's family (they live in Los Osos, California, of course, in dreamland).

The only problem was that they got Molly Shannon to play the lead role and the movie sucked really bad.

I was all at once upset and happy. Upset because I wanted Jonniker! to do well, happy because maybe no one else would find out about her and it would still just be us cool kids in her comments section, which is one of the funnest places in Blogsylvania.