Oh, admit it

You miss me when I'm not here.

The truth is, I miss being here. My brain has been full of thoughts these last few months. The election made me so crazy I couldn't even write about it.

Someone told me that everyone should think of a gratitude statement for each day in November. I was slow to get started, but I came up with a list I'm thankful for.

First of all, today is World Toilet Day. That should be a pretty big deal, but aside from CNN, it has been mostly ignored by mainstream media. If you want to know what it is and why it matters, click here.

I am thankful for toilets. Not just for toilets, but for toilets that function well and for good water pressure and for sewage systems that work without a glitch. Amen.

I'm thankful for 

• corrective lenses, 
• modern dentistry, 
• antibiotics,
• gas stoves,
• extra-firm mattresses, 
• unscented lotion, 
• Breathe Right Nasal Strips, 
• 27-gear Campagnolo derailleurs, 
• cinnamon flavored toothpaste, 
• Coolmax fabric, 
• Kleenex, 
• supportive insoles, 
• Nike Dri-Fit socks, 
• albuterol, 
• books, 
• low VOC paint
• tampons
• adult formula Clearasil, 
• Advil, 
• Xanax, 
• SADD lights, 
• 49-strand jewelry wire, 
• birth control pills, 
• the Jeep Liberty, 
• Tronex pliers, 
• red wine, 
• cheese,
• sun, 
• calculators, 
• traffic lights, 
• Q-tips, 
• wheeled luggage, 
• self-adhesive stamps, 
• Costco,  
• olives,
• Polartec fleece,
• pedicures
• hardwood floors,
• clean water,
• And the automatic transmission.

 This is not an exhaustive list by any means.
 

It sucks being a girl

My vajay-jay hurts. I've been battling this problem for awhile. I haven't been to the doctor because there's a very good chance there is no infection, no anomaly. I know the difference. It's probably the return of pelvic pain syndrome. I try to ignore it, but damn. Ow. My vajay-jay is not happy.

TMI? Probably, but it's my blog so I don't care.

Not so dreamy

What do you dream? Do you know? Do you remember?

I remember many of the dreams I've had throughout my life. Some are terrible, but most of those that I remember were happy dreams.

For at least a decade, I don't think I've had any "good" dreams, the kind that leave you disappointed by the interruption of waking up. My dreams are anxiety-filled, confusing, serious, and full of confrontation. The settings and topics vary widely, but they are never, ever good dreams.

It's not that I have nightmares or night terrors. Those do come along, but infrequently. There was a time about six or seven years ago when I would often wake up during the night, terrified from a frightening dream, but eventually my mind calmed itself and those dreams stopped coming.

Sleep itself is a problem for me, but I know I've finally slept when I wake up from a dream. The dreams I have now--and I dream vividly every night--would best be described as dark, disturbing, and overwhelming in their detail.

I don't believe that dreams have representational or clairvoyant meaning, but I do think that dreams tell something about the mind of the dreamer. What do my unsettling, anxiety-filled dreams say about me? Maybe I'm just disturbed.

The wrong diagnosis question

I often wonder how many adults with ADD/ADHD are walking around blasted out of their minds on the wrong drugs because they were incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I would imagine there are a lot.

Surprise!

The changes caught you off guard, didn't they? Did you think you were in the wrong place? You're not. Same old brain full of nonsense empties itself here.

Repeats

I haven't said this in a very long time, but most days, I really just want to blow my fucking brains out. I thought I should clarify that this seemingly never changes.

Thinking that maybe

Thinking that maybe the title of this blog should be "Solipsistic." Or not.

My body and my mind

Exercise is supposed to be good for the mind. It's supposed to make moods better. Maybe that's true.

I don't like exercise very much. In fact, I hate it. It's a lonely, self-contained experience. And it's really hard. And I get hot. Sweating is so...unpleasant.

I've been exercising a lot, about eight hours a week, but sometimes more. My workouts start with either 30 or 60 minutes of cardio done on an elliptical trainer, a Concept 2 rower, a treadmill, or a wave machine, or a combination of any or all of those. Following the cardio session, I do at least 30 minutes of strength training with weights.

Since I started this self-improvement effort in July, I've lost seven pounds. I was hoping to have lost 20 by now, since I had it in my head that if I ate a calorie-restricted diet and diligently worked out, I'd lose weight at a rate of two pounds a week. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be more like a half-pound or less per week.

Exercise is boring. Don't get me wrong--I work really, really hard at the gym. It's just that the task at hand poses no intellectual challenge nor is it stimulating. My workouts are an act of both mental and physical endurance. The physical is obvious, but the mental challenge lies in not becoming so bored that I just walk away from what I'm doing.

This gives my mind a lot of free reign to roam. My thoughts fill my head, swirling around to the beat of whatever is on my iPod and whatever set of reps I'm counting to. I think about myself. I think about the situation at work. I think about the election. I think about how awful people become in a political year. I think about drone strikes, refugee camps, the horrors and bad behavior caused by religion. I think about human trafficking, forced child labor, the erosion of abortion laws and the travesty of that considering that a woman's right to an abortion is constitutionally protected. I think about the evangelical wingnuts who are trying to cram their religious zealotry and conservative views down my throat and up my crotch. I think about the truly awful people who comment on stories online. I think about how Ted Nugent wants to murder Barack Obama and he isn't even afraid to say so. I puzzle over all of the other people who hope to help him do that and I worry a lot about the president and his family. I think about money. I think about loneliness. A lot. I think about how I would kill myself if I felt bad enough and it came to that. I think about the futility of being a good person in a world largely ruled by mean rich people.

I push through the mechanics of exercise, I breathe, I sweat, I think and I process and I write long, articulate blog posts in my head. Eventually, I come home, but I'm so exhausted the blog posts have evaporated in the ether of my thoughts, and most of what I want to say goes unsaid.

My thoughts may not be recorded here, but they are still filling the Brainucopia.

Plant update

At the beginning of this summer, I posted a photo of what had become of my banana leaf plant over the winter. In an attempt to revive the plant, I gave it some new soil, fertilized it, and put on the back patio where it would get full sun exposure for months. Click here to see the picture and read the post.

I am pleased to report that after a summer of constant nurturing, the plant did, in fact, make a comeback. Here's the photo I promised so many months ago.

This again

It's 12:30 a.m. and I'm wide awake. When I started working out eight weeks ago, it occurred to me that one of the supposed benefits of regular exercise is improved sleep and mood. I have yet to experience either.

I have a really long week ahead of me, so I'd appreciate it a lot if those exercise perks would kick in. I could use a good night's sleep. And a better outlook.

Oh, I'm fatter than that

Today was a weigh-in day. Forget what I said yesterday. As it turns out, I didn't lose a half-pound; I actually gained weight. Now I weigh more than I did before I started working out and really honing the finer points of my diet.

I thought about bagging the whole healthy lifestyle thing, but I went to the gym anyway and worked out for almost two hours. As I left the gym, I kept thinking about how much I hate--seriously loathe--exercise. I thought about how hard I've been working. It's so frustrating to have no tangible results.

I walked out the door and burst into tears. I sobbed the whole half-block trek to my car and the whole way home. Because yeah, the reality feels that bad.

I came home and had some fat-free, sugar-free yogurt and a little watermelon for dinner. I've lost my appetite, if not my will to live.

May by the numbers

• 51: My age
• 61.5: Number of inches of my height
• 173: My weight
• 39.2: My body fat percentage
• 32.2: My BMI
• 39: Waist measurement in inches
• 45.5: Hip measurment in inches
• 14/16: My clothing size
• 105/75: My blood pressure
• 67: My resting heart rate
• My cholesterol is normal. 
• 1200: number of calories in a normal day for me
• 4: Number of days I usually make it to the gym
• 75: Average length in minutes of my workouts

So, I am clinically obese, fucking enormous--embarrassingly so. My body holds almost 70 pounds of fat squeezed under the skin and around my organs. After the first month of working out (which included two weeks of going to the gym almost every day for three hours a day to jump-start the process), I lost a sum total of a half-pound. I've since lost another half-pound.

Based on the metrics above, I am in the high-risk health group for my age, despite the fact that I don't smoke, I don't have high blood sugar or high cholesterol, my resting heart rate is good, and my blood pressure is just fine. I eat a low-fat, very low-cholesterol diet, and other than drinking red wine on a daily basis, I limit sugar. Doesn't matter. Nope, if you're fat, you're doomed. I keep reading it again and again.

Yesterday I spent my morning at the gym. I did an hour of cardio, a full leg and butt workout, plus a lot of situps. I was there for two-and-a-half tedious, sweaty hours of very hard work. I am no slacker at the gym. Trust me on this.

I suppose at some point, my body will respond. My pants will fit. I know I should really work on slashing that calorie count, but it's hard. I figure, the human body requires 700 calories a day just to run its systems. I burn about 400 calories per workout. That leaves me with 100 calories unaccounted for, so if I want to finish each day having burned all of the calories I took in, I either need to work out longer every day or eat even less. Neither option appeals to me, but since I hate how I look, I really need to choose one of those solutions. And if that doesn't work?

I don't know. Here's what I know: The knee I had surgery on is killing me and has been since I started working out. Everything I do makes it worse, but like they always told me in physical therapy: "Pain is weakness leaving the body." That and it's really unacceptable to cry when you're exercising. That's a problem because I cry during my workouts at least twice a week. It's usually brought on by frustration and the overall loathing I have for being in a gym (or realizing that I am consistently the fattest person there). I just don't get how people enjoy it. It's so painful and tedious. It's hard to believe that something that feels so overwhelmingly awful is actually good for you.

They tell me it is good for me, so I soldier on. No pain, no loss. I'm all about the loss.

I had hoped to hit my goal of 108 pounds in a year, but at a weight loss rate of a half-pound per month, I'm unlikely to meet my goal before 2023. Sigh.

Maybe that nice Chris Powell from Extreme Makeover Weight Loss Edition could come and stay with me for a few weeks and help me because although I believe I'm doing the right things, apparently, something is very off.