Not dead!

Hey y'all! I'm not dead! And I didn't murder anyone.

That last part is very, very important.

There's no possible way to tell all of the awesomely blog-worthy stories from the past week I spent at home. Plus, I've been told that I'm not allowed to tell at least some of the stories (especially the story about how I woke up in a hotel room one morning and looked over and there was a naked man in the next bed. Deffo not supposed to tell that story).

So, here's a list of memorable items, some awesome and others decidedly un-awesome:

• My sister (32) and I (29) stayed up past 5 a.m. two nights in a row. My sister and I realized without a doubt that we are too old to stay up until 5 a.m. one time, let alone two nights in a row. The day after the double-header was like walking around with a mixture of hot sauce and cement in my veins. Slow and painful. (How's that for a simile, suckas?!)

• One morning, I found myself walking in downtown Portland in last night's little black dress, practically bare-footed in my black tights,with my boots in one hand and a borrowed black purse in the other. No one would return my calls, so after leaving the most pathetic message ever on Roommie's phone (Wah wah wah I miss you wah wah these people are crazy wah wah wah I just walked by a used condom wah wah wah I think I'm still drunk), I decided to go for some breakfast, hoping that while I ate someone would call me back and come pick me up. The first restaurant I encountered was called "Pho and Toast." I tell ya, a steaming bowl of noodles is the BEST hangover cure ever invented. Well, maybe the second best. They didn't sell bloody Marys. However, they did sell diet cokes, and then they tried to charge me for a refill. You betcherass I marched up to the counter in my little black dress, smeared mascara and frizzball hair and complained until I got that $1.45 taken off my bill.

• I was confronted at my high school reunion by my first boyfriend -- a guy who really does not strike me as a blog reader -- for writing about him on DatingIsWeird.com. He quoted the post almost word for word. I was flabbergasted, because really, it had never occurred to me that he'd ever read it. But also, I was kind of delighted. He read DatingIsWeird! He's one of the smartest people I know! And, if you go read the post I linked to above, you might get why this is just so perfect: In his rebuttal to what I'd written in the post, he quoted Corinthians. Also, he's now dating the girl to whom I wept (in the high school girl's room, of course) when he dumped me. A girl I later made out with. Ah, beautiful world! How small you are!

• My sister and I made it SIX DAYS without fighting. Then we screamed at each other in front of the kids and stormed out of the room in separate directions. But we made up after that. And seriously. Six days is pretty effing good.

• Two days before my sister's wedding, took the kids for hair cuts. Imagine the embarrassment when one hairdresser approached grandma and said she couldn't cut the hair because of the schoolhouse scourge: Head lice. Then imagine the best auntie ever (that would be me, in case you're confused) hunched with her sister over a giant head of hair, painstakingly combing through the strands to remove all the lil bugs. I think that's when the pain in my neck (I'm speaking literally here) started.

• While I was in town, I signed up for a trial of Bikram yoga. I learned quickly that Bikram yoga doesn't suck, the BEND Bikram studio does. The instructors at my local studio are vibey as all getout. They talk shit to you, loudly, if you drink water before they want you to or if you modify a pose. In the studio in Portland (link here if you are interested, there's one in Beaverton and one in S.E. Portland. I really recommend them), the instructors were kind, encouraging, and understanding. Before my first class, they told me to listen to my body and be my own yoga teacher. They didn't wear little headphones, either. Oh, and one of them was super hot. However, be warned that if you go to Bikram yoga super hung over, you very well may pass out. And if you have arthritis and still go all out on the back bends, you might not be able to turn your head to the right the next day.

• The night before the wedding, Roommie arrived in town. But he didn't find the place I was staying at until 1 a.m. You see where this is going? It was an early afternoon wedding. I had to get up at 5:30 a.m. day of. That's right, I did the Maid of Honor duty (if you've done it, you know how rough it can be. If you've done it twice ((ahem)) my hat is off to you. At the rehearsal, my mom referred to me as The Wedding Nazi. I'm thinking about becoming a professional MOH. But I will charge exorbitant fees.) on four hours' sleep.

Oh, and the wedding? It was lovely. But with no wedding coordinator, you can bet your busciuts I ran my ass off all day long. Fetch grandma for pictures. Go get the wedding certificate. Go cut the cake. Where are the flowers? Can you find the photographer? Come kiss the baby! You have to dance to this song with your boyfriend! Where's my toothbrush? We're out of food?

My sister owes me. Huge. It's a good thing I love that beyotch more than my luggage (points if you can name that movie).

Now, here's something I'm ashamed to admit to y'all. I got caught, in a photo, in my MOH dress and crocks. It's on Bookface. I don't even feel like I should explain how or why this happened. I think I should just say my fifty hail Mary Janes and be on my way.

Final countdown

So this blog was supposed to be about my transition back into running. Specifically, I was thinking I'd have my stupid plantar fasciitis all cleared up and I'd get to running in time to do another half marathon, as I did last year about this time.

But no. Instead, it's been a place to document my failures. Failure to heal, failure to trim up before my sister's wedding -- now one week away, and with no improvements in ye olde waistline -- oh and my high school reunion's also this week. My 11 year. Yeah, I know. I went to an odd high school.

I'm close to considering the surgical option, though I hear that even that has risks, including flattening the arch in your foot, which can be an even worse fate than what I'm dealing with now.

Fuck. Yeah.

But I was thinking recently, as an ad for American Apparel came up on my computer, about skinny people. They're responsible for a lot of stupid trends. I wonder, if I became one of those skinny people, if I'd suddenly get cool and trendy and start wearing leggings. Or, worse yet, if I'd see these and think, "Oh, those are really cute formal shorts."



















OK. I know that's ridiculous. I mean, I don't like imagining the kind of brain trauma that would lead me to such insanity.

Butter

A little unsolicited advice for y'all: If you have ambitions of weight loss, don't date a southern boy.

Sunday was Roomie's birthday, and I think I went through a pound of butter cooking him his favorite things. And a quart of heavy cream, several cups of sugar, a half pound of bacon and about a third of a bottle of maple syrup.

The details? Pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Lunch didn't matter, because I finished making him two crack pies (Most of the butter went into the crack pie. It's a dairy-and-caramelized-sugary-goo pie in an oatmeal-cookie-crumbled-with-butter crust), and he decided because it was his birthday he could cut into a pie before we went to the movie and ate a tub of popcorn and just call that lunch. Dinner was Emeril's shrimp (with cream and peppers, garlic and cajun seasoning. Now, I think Emeril's kind of twatty, but if he knows how to make anything, it's southern-style shrimp) and Charleston-style grits (the grits contained two cups of milk, a cup of heavy cream and a stick of butter. it's really the only way to eat grits), which apparently in the south they serve with corn bread. After the cornbread came out of the oven, we frosted it with butter and honey until it weighed about a half pound per cube. I would've taken photos of some of this deliciously fattening food, but we were kind of busy stuffing it in our faces. (Exaggeration. He was stuffing. I was actually pretty restrained. One pancake. Half slice of crack pie. OK, I did hit the bacon pretty hard, but c'mon. Gimme a break.)

Since then, I've not let a carb pass my lips, and barely any dairy. It's been mostly egg whites salad and lean meats. A few nuts and avocado. I've walked the damn butte every morning and done pilates in the evenings. Too little too late? (Sleeveless maid of honor dress in little more than 2 weeks. gulp. thank fat jesus for spanx) Probably.

Oh, and in totally unrelated news, I went to see a new chiropractor, and hours after the appointment with the new guy, my old chiro called me to schedule my next appointment. It's like he knew I was cheating. But the new guy! He adjusts my whole spine! He doesn't try to rip me off by selling me $600 orthotics!

He also makes me take my shoes off in his office and frowns upon my prescription medication use, but, you know. Win some, lose some.

Confessions

I didn't work out this week, as I was too busy coughing up bits of green goo and taking the kind of sick day that you pay for later by working 2 of the 3 days other people labeled a "holiday weekend," but I did manage to write something. Not for this blog, but for an old pal, the newly remodeled DatingIsWeird.com.

In it, I confess that I committed the only unforgivable crime. I dated a cop.

Don't worry, I've already washed my own mouth out with soap.