Weighty Wednesday: Week 2~Marathon Queen

Published May 21, 2014 by Malia

I’m the queen of the marathon…the movie marathon that is.  As they say on How I Met Your Mother, if you don’t marathon Star Wars at least every three years, the Empire wins.  Personally, I think if you don’t marathon Lord of the Rings (the extended editions) at least once a year, then  Ring might as well have survived Mount Doom and be back on Sauron’s finger.  (I agree with the boy, there should be a statute of limitations on spoilers.  The books have been out over 50 years, and the movies have been out over a decade.  I refuse to put up a spoiler alert).

Here’s the thing, much as I’m into the couch potato marathon, everyone else in my age group seems to be into the marathon that requires actual running.  I’ll be honest, I don’t get it.  Everyone I know seems to constantly be going on an on about exercising and preparing for races and actually running races.  What’s really weird?  They actually seem to enjoy it.  It seems to make them feel good.  Now, I do get up and exercise five days a week.  I do it because it’s good for my health, and I’ve found that when I don’t exercise, joints start to hurt (I know that’s an old person thing to say, but it’ true).  However, I don’t enjoy exercising.  I don’t get any kind of high from the experience.  It’s just one of those things that must be done and so I do it.

So, I head into my second week.   I’ve worked on really keeping an eye on what I’ve eaten (helped that I had to have more dental work in the middle of the week.  Nothing like pain to make you eat less), and I’ve been exercising faithfully.  And…I’ve gained weight.  On the bright side, my t-shirts feel like they’re fitting a tiny bit looser (not my imagination, they totally are), so I’m going to rule this as a week where the scale doesn’t matter.  (Otherwise, I’ll start feeling super depressed and give up, which would be stupid, since I’ve only been at this a week).

Weight to Lose: 111.5 lbs.

Weight to Mini Goal: 12.5 lbs.

Let’s All Sing The Doom Song!

Published May 17, 2014 by Malia

So, last Sunday was Mother’s Day.  As I get older, I find the day is a cornucopia of mixed emotions for me.  On the one hand, I’ve been very blessed to have some incredible ladies in my life.  Mom, aunts, grandmas, friends.  These ladies deserve to be honored and celebrated.

On the other hand, I want to be a mom, and the older I get, the more I understand the sadness childless women feel on Mother’s Day.    Until I was twenty-two, I firmly did not want kids.  Absolutely not.  Kids terrified me, and I didn’t think I’d stand a chance of being a good mom.  However, something started changing in my heart, and the next four years I found myself in the mode of, “I do want kids, maybe not this instant, but I’m thinking I’d like to be a mom.”  Then, my brain moved to the point of, “We live in a psycho world, it’s an absolutely insane idea to want to bring children into this world, but I don’t care.  I want to be a mama.”  It’s true.  I don’t have the vaguest idea of how to be a mom, but women have been moms since the beginning of time; so there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be the worst mother ever.  And yes, I know you don’t have to actually go through pregnancy and labor to have kids and be a mom, but I find myself praying that one of these days I’ll get to go through that experience as well.

And, while I usually pep talk myself that should a miracle happen and God gives me a little rugrat, there are some days, like today, where I worry I’ll emotionally scar the future rugrat for life.

I’m an internalizer.  When something upsets me, I lock it inside, and let it fester.  It’s a totally “healthy” way to deal with things.  Unfortunately, when things fester, they tend to eventually explode.  Like I did.  Tonight.  The situation isn’t really that important.  Yes, something needed to be done.  Yes, I was just as good a candidate to deal with it as anyone.  However, I handled it wrong.  I fully accept the responsibility for handling it wrong.  I’m still not sure how I should have handled it, but I definitely should not have done so in anger.

Later, after I started to calm down, I got really sad.  Here I am, wanting to be a mom, and when a mothering situation came along I totally screwed up.  I found myself berating myself for asking God to let me have a go at being a mom when I struggle so much to handle even basic confrontation situations.  (As you can tell, I’m clearly emotionally mature.)  In the midst of this inner fight/pity party, I suddenly had the first verse of What a Friend We Have In Jesus pop into my head.

“What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”

Joseph M. Scriven

I’m not trying to get all preachy here.  In fact, I’m not one hundred percent sure why I feel compelled to share this sad little tale of my lack of emotional maturity.  I do know, though, that the more I thought about those words, the calmer I got.  It also occurred to me that I talk a good line about loving Jesus and believing in God, but I rarely take anything to Him because I don’t want to bother Him with my measly little problems.  After the disaster of today, though, it occurs to me that I really do need His help.  As long as I try to handle things without help, doom is inevitable.

Weighty Wednesday: Week 1

Published May 14, 2014 by Malia

Before I get into this post, I have to correct something from my last post.  I misremembered (and, yes, I’m totally going to pretend that’s a word) the conversation I had with the boy about Jar Jar.  He’s the one who suggested that they mature slower.  The boy pointed this out to me, and since he has the better memory,  I’m going to go with his version instead of mine.  However, all the supposition and thought put into the theory mainly came from me.

Okay, now I feel better.  No longer unintentionally claiming thoughts that aren’t mine.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole weight loss thing.  There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to losing the weight (at least among us bigger girls).  The first school of thought is that, “This is the size God made me, and ya’ll can just deal with it.”  The second is, “Love me the way I am, but support me as I work to get smaller.”  I definitely fall into the second group.  I know that those who love me the way I am now are people who genuinely love me.  However, I have a lot of respect for girls who are in the first group.  I know it’s not easy being on the bigger end of the scale, and it takes a lot of self-confidence to be able to stand proud and say, “This is who I am, and I’m not changing!”

So, I gave myself a week.  Kind of a last hurrah.  Ate junk food, didn’t really exercise, and started to try to do some mental prep for what I know is going to be a decently long journey.  In following weeks I’ll make sure my camera is actually charged and my hair isn’t gross, so that I can track my progress via picture.  For today, though, both of those things are working against me.  So, I’ll just list what my starting goals are, and next week, I’ll share my first week’s progress.

Weight to lose: 110.5 lbs.

Weight to lose until I reach first mini goal:  11.5 lbs.

And now I’m going to go wash my hair, because it really is gross.

 

Solving Jar Jar

Published May 10, 2014 by Malia

The other night I was with the boy, and we were watching The New Yoda Chronicles: Escape from the Jedi Temple.  For those that are unaware of it, basically it’s Lego Star Wars.  So, lots of humor and everything is Lego.  Which, some might argue makes it better than actually watching Star Wars, but I digress…

Anyway, in the episode there’s a scene with everyone’s “favorite” character, Jar Jar…and Jar Jar’s three children.  That’s right, Jar Jar apparently met some female Gungan and procreated with her.  I pointed out that maybe if Jar Jar’s significant other was as annoying as he was, they might cancel each other out, and their kids would be perfectly normal.  The boy disagreed since the kids were probably at least 30, and they acted like they were five.  Then, I came up with a solution.  Maybe, Gungan’s age differently than humans.  Maybe Jar Jar didn’t become a mature Gungan until several years after Revenge of the Sith.    Now, before you discount this theory, let’s look at the evidence (and keep in mind, this is all supposition.  I don’t know if there’s actually evidence out there to destroy my theory).

In The Phantom Menace, we first encounter Jar Jar.  He’s annoying, clumsy, and generally irritating.  He’s got more in common with the twelve-year-old Anakin than he does with any of the adults.  Plus, it’s never established that he actually is an adult.  The other Gungans dislike him, and when he’s brought before the leader, no one jumps to his defense.  This could easily be explained if he’s an orphan.  For all we know, Jar Jar was a preteen orphan Gungan, and the Gungans saw that shipping him off with the Jedi’s was an easy way to rid themselves of someone they didn’t want to care for.

When you think of it like that, then everything that happens becomes loads sadder.  Basically, no one checked his age, accepted that he was an adult because he was tall and could talk.  They let him be an ambassador and put the fate of the galaxy in his hands.  Seriously?  What kind of moron lets a kid make those kinds of decisions?  On the other hand, he did come from a planet that boasted a queen who was 14 when she was elected.  But still, there were plenty in the senate not from Naboo, and they should have questioned the wisdom of giving Jar Jar so much responsibility.

That’s it, I move for a vote of “No Confidence” in the representatives from Naboo.

18th Time’s the Charm, Right?

Published May 8, 2014 by Malia

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade trying to lose weight, and miserably failing at it.   But, for better or for worse, I’m giving it another go.  Yes, I do believe there’s a skinny girl inside me.  However, it really doesn’t help that said skinny girl simply adores cheesecake.  (And brownies, and nachos, and burgers, and, well you get the idea…)

There really isn’t much to this post, other than a general announcement that I’m giving weight loss another attempt.  I know Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try,” but I don’t think Yoda spent years fighting with a ton of extra weight.  However, if he did, that would be a movie I would totally watch.  I do know that the last time I saw any smidge of success with weight loss, it was when I was writing about it on here, so I’m going to give that another go as well.

The Dentist Curse

Published May 7, 2014 by Malia

I’ve not written in a couple of weeks because there hasn’t been much to talk about.  The most interesting parts of my life are work and the boy.

I would write about work, but there’s this whole “HIPPA” thing that I don’t want to be in violation of.  So, all the entertaining/irritating/funny/wtf moments that happen there are going to continue to remain confidential.

I could write about the boy, but I’m relatively certain most people do not want to read yet another post talking about how fantastically wonderful he is.  The fact that he puts Gravity Falls on the DVR for me so I can get caught up, and then willingly watches it with me (even though he’s all caught up) kind of makes me melt inside.  And that’s just the tiniest tip of the iceberg of how awesome he is to me.  He actually listens to me, even when I’m rambling on and on about something completely ridiculous.  He was even willing to go as the Dread Pirate Roberts for Free Comic Book Day just so I could go as a princess (I put in a showing as a very brunette Buttercup.  Realized to my horror, after the fact, that I was doing a better Sansa Stark cosplay than a Buttercup cosplay).  I’d be lying if I said I’m not feeling some very deep emotions regarding the boy.  But like I said, I doubt people really want to read another post about this kind, gentle, patient, sweet gentleman.  (In case you think I’m laying it on really thick, I’m barely doing the man justice.  He really is amazing.)

So, apart from those two things, life has been pretty quiet.  However, yesterday something finally fell into my lap that I thought, I should totally write about this.  See, yesterday I learned that I am apparently cursed when it comes to my dentist.  To begin, let me give some background information.

Back in 2008, I had a dental emergency, and found myself visiting a new dentist (the one I had gone to previously was absolutely awful).  The new dentist, we’ll call him Dr. G, was brilliant.  From then until 2010, I saw him anytime I had a teeth emergency, and he was always awesome.  Always worked with me and my budget, and did everything in his power to not make it such a terrifying experience.

In 2010, I had a tooth that needed work, and went to see him.  He came up with a treatment plan, and I needed to save some money before I could have the work done.  When I went back a month later, I learned to my horror, Dr. G had left the practice.  Another dentist ended up completing the work.  He was nice enough, but just not as good of a dentist.

In 2012, my parents needed to go to the dentist, and they actually found out that Dr. G had moved to another practice in town.  They went to see him and all was well.

When I had to have my root canal, back in March, Dr. G was who I went to see.  He did an amazing job (the root canal was over with before I even realized it had been officially started).  I had an appointment 2 weeks ago to have the temporary crown removed and the permanent one placed.  The day of my appointment, I showed up to the clinic, and was informed that Dr. G was out of town and Dr. S would be seeing me.  I was nervous about this.  Dr. S did a quick check and found that Dr. G did his crown prep differently.  Dr. S told me that since I wasn’t having any problem with the temporary, it would probably be better to wait until Dr. G was back in town to have the permanent applied.  He was concerned that since his way of setting the crown was different, I might start having problems with the permanent wanting to come loose.  I was okay with this, and really glad for the honesty.

Yesterday, I got a call to remind me about the appointment I had for today.  The call started with me being told, “Um…Dr. G has left our practice with no warning, so you’ll be seeing Dr. S.”  Fortunately, Dr. S had called Dr. G and found out how best to place the permanent.

So, if you’ve managed to follow all that, you’ll see that I have managed to have the same dentist bail on me twice now.  The boy referred to the situation as a sign.  And I’m afraid I have to acknowledge that he is probably right.  I’m going to just have to let Super Dentist go bye-bye (he really was the most amazing dentist I’ve ever encountered.  Even my parents would agree and they’ve had loads more dental work done than I have).  Fortunately, I really liked Dr. S, so here’s hoping he doesn’t quit the practice before he’s supposed to do my filling.

Otherwise, I’ll have to assume I’m cursed…

Difficult Anniversaries

Published April 18, 2014 by Malia

I realized a few days ago that the last time I attended Good Friday service was in 2011.  My aunt’s church was doing this living Last Supper thing.  It was actually pretty cool.  It was a drama, where the actors did a tableau of DaVinci’s last supper, and each character got to explain which disciple he was, and talk about his role in the story.

As usual, my grandparent’s were in town for Easter, and they went with us to the presentation.  I knew Grampa wasn’t feeling fantastic, but he was determined to go to church that night.  The next day, Saturday, he got progressively worse; and that evening,  my aunt took him to the ER.

I spent the better part of that Easter Sunday with my family in the ICU.  Grampa was in really rough shape, and we really thought that was the end of the road.  It wasn’t, but it was the definite beginning of the end.  He passed away in July of 2012.

The month and a half following that Easter Sunday, I spent a good portion of almost every single day at the hospital and then at the rehab center (after he was released from the hospital).  Looking back, it was a surreal, but incredibly educational experience.

Anyway, like I said, that was the last Good Friday service I went to.  Now, I love Easter.  Being a Christian, the holiday has a lot more meaning for me than just bunnies and chickens and chocolate (however, I never turn down chocolate).  This year I realized that I’ve made zero effort to try to get to Good Friday service since 2011, and I think I’ve finally narrowed down why.  That service in 2011, was pretty much the last time I saw my Grampa even be close to his old self.  Watching him get sicker and constantly waiting for the inevitable phone call was overwhelming.

It’s a weird to think of it as an anniversary, but it is.  And, this year, it’s not one I’m handling terribly well.  I’m really sad.  I miss people in my family being healthy.  I miss my Grampa.  I even miss being a pastor’s kid (although, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop thinking of myself as a pastor’s kid.  I spent 19 years as one, it’s a part of me that I can’t separate from).

Eventually, I’ll go to Good Friday service again, but not this year.

Can Buttercup Be Brunette?

Published April 11, 2014 by Malia

Every five years or so, I get this urge to go blonde.  It’s not a good idea.  In fact, in the realm of ideas of things to do to my hair, going blonde is pretty much at the very bottom of the list.  I’ll be honest, I make a terrible blonde.  I don’t have the complexion for it; plus,  I’m a natural brunette, and I’ve got just enough copper tones in my hair, that the blonde always goes really super fake looking.

Now, in a few weeks, I’m supposed to be doing my first couple’s cosplay, and we’re doing Dread Pirate Roberts and Buttercup.  I’ve got a killer dress, and while it’s not movie accurate, it will work.  I’m starting to get a little nervous though.  See, Buttercup is supposed to be this gorgeous woman, and every depiction I’ve ever encountered about her has her as a blonde.  I’m neither gorgeous nor blonde.  At best I qualify as semi-adorable and fairly eccentric.   So, y’know, there’s that.

I know that the whole point of cosplay is to represent something you love (and I really do love Princess Bride), so I’m not worried about that; my worry is more that I can’t do justice to this character.  I know I shouldn’t be worried or nervous.  Besides,  the important thing is that when it’s all said and done, fun will have been had.

It’s Not Worth More Than Life

Published April 3, 2014 by Malia

I have a lot of things I’m scared of.  Snakes, spiders, snakes, heights, snakes, anything in a scary movie, snakes…well, you get the idea.  However, the two all time scariest moments of my life actually took place while I was driving (and neither involved snakes).  One, of course, is when I went off the road in a blizzard.  Granted, I didn’t get scared until after being rescued, and I realized that I should have died.  The all time scariest moment came in December of 2009.

It was noon on Saturday, December 5th, 2009, I was with my parents, and I was driving on West Center (a main road here in Omaha).  Being the noon hour, traffic was heavy.  We were sitting in a long line of traffic waiting for the light at 120th & W. Center to change.  I remember looking up in my rear view mirror and seeing a car coming up behind me.  I could tell that it wasn’t slowing down, and even though my foot was already on the brake (because we were stopped), I put as much pressure into holding the brake down as I could.  Right before the car slammed into the back of my car, I saw that the driver was just chatting away on her cell phone, completely oblivious to the fact that she was about to cause an accident.  The impact came, our car was pushed up into the car in front of us, and then unexpectedly the car behind us hit us a second time.  It took a moment, but when no more impacts came, it was time to see what had happened.

Turns out, the woman who hit us wasn’t the only one on her phone not paying attention.  There was another woman in the car behind the woman who rear ended us, and she too was on her cell phone.  You read that right, both women were talking on their cell phones not paying a whit of attention to anything.  Not only that, but it ended up being a paramedic who witnessed what happened who called 9-1-1.  I didn’t have a phone at the time, and the gentleman who’s truck I got pushed into didn’t have one either.  Neither of the two women who caused the accident bothered to ever use their phones to call 9-1-1.

Miraculously, no one was killed, or injured; which considering the fact that both women were going at least 45 mph when they hit is pretty amazing.  (Although, the stress of the event triggered a nightmare medical situation with my mom over the next week, but that’s a story for another post.)

Ever since that nightmare day, I’ve been very anti using your cell phone to text or call while driving.  That accident should never have happened.  So, you can imagine the rage I felt yesterday when I got on Facebook, and saw one of my acquaintances had written that when a guy honked and shook his finger at her for texting and driving, she proceeded to flip him off and continue texting at the same time.  And to make it really great, she hash-tagged it “multitasking.”

Cue Seth and Amy, it’s time for “Really?”.  Really?  REALLY??????

Last time I checked driving is not the time to be “multitasking.”  A car is an incredibly dangerous weapon when used irresponsibly.  And yes, I consider texting and driving to be just as irresponsible as talking on the cell phone and driving.  If you don’t care about your own life, show respect and care for other people’s lives.  People in the cars around you are human beings.  Every single driver is someone’s daughter or son.  Every single passenger is someone’s daughter or son.  This isn’t “The Sims” where you can just recreate the character should Death come knocking.  There is no pause button, and the game doesn’t reset just because someone died.   Those other drivers don’t deserve to have their lives taken away or messed up badly because you don’t have the patience to wait until you’ve reached your destination to use your phone.

At the end of the day, life is too valuable to destroy so recklessly and irresponsibly.

Well, Today Happened…

Published April 1, 2014 by Malia

Sometimes, the best that can be said about a day, is that I got through it in one piece.  If today had walls, I’m pretty sure there would be fingernail claw marks on those walls.  And why is this?

Well, today was one week since I had the big root canal.  Woot woot.  I had a pretty bad reaction to the meds I got sent home on, so I’ve been treating the pain with copious amounts of  ibuprofen.  Now, if you know anything about ibuprofen, taking copious amounts of it for long periods of time is not exactly recommended.  So, over the last three days I’ve been working to wean myself off the ibuprofen, and today I decided to try to go cold turkey.  It actually went better than expected.  The pain is pretty much down to a dull ache, which is totally tolerable.  The only really rough moment came when I decided to try to chew gum.  Yeah, that was quite painful.  On the plus side, Dr. Pepper bubblegum actually does taste like Dr. Pepper.  Pain wise the day was okay.  Emotionally, the day stunk.

This always happens the first day I go cold turkey after being on meds.  I so rarely have to take meds, I really don’t handle them well.  Basically, the first day off, my emotions go completely bonkers.  Everything feels very extreme.  I always feel completely worthless (which I’m not).  I always feel like everyone one hates me (which they don’t).  I get really shaky and feel like I’m going to burst into tears any moment.  It’s a nasty cycle.  Fortunately, the first day is always the worst.  Tomorrow will be better.

In other news, today was the first of April, which means the first Camp NaNoWriMo of the year has officially started.  And I have officially written ZERO words.  Go me.  I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write about, but I’m sure something will come to me eventually.  It’s more about the exercise of writing than anything.   Although, I’m currently feeling like this when I face the blank paper I’m attempting to fill with words…