Manic Monday: Year Long Blogging Challenge (Oh My Gods I Am Awful At This)

I suppose I should just stop saying things like, “And THIS time I will DO what I SAID I would DO – ON TIME!” Because, lol really. Let us just go ahead and call it like it is: I have failed this challenge. Yet, I continue…

Week 7: What is the most important life lesson you’ve learned to date?

The most important life lesson I have learned is one I am still learning: to accept me and not compare myself to others. It is so easy to fall into mindset of wanting – more ambition or drive, a higher metabolism, a quicker mind – but the truth remains that I am nobody else but myself. To modify a quote from Wreck-it Ralph, “I am [me], and that’s good. I will never be [anyone else] and that’s not bad. There is no one I would rather be than me.”

Week 8: What Staple Foods Stay Stocked in Your Fridge?

• Skim milk
• Eggs
• String cheese
• Deli turkey
• Fruit/vegetables (right now: strawberries, apples, grapes, asparagus, green beans)
• Spinach or other salad greens

Week 9: If you could get rid of one thing from your daily schedule, what would it be?

I would love to be able to eliminate sleeping, or at least to be able to exist on less of it. My daily requirement for sleep is currently about 7 or 8 hours, and ain’t nobody got time for that. At least, I do not, with all the things I would rather, or should, be doing.

Week 10: Favorite Childhood Memory

This is a strange one, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. I used to spend several days each summer at my aunt’s condo in Pensacola, FL. One late morning I started to have typical menstrual cramps, and dealt with them in my typical way: by being sad about it. This was before I was comfortable swallowing pills, so I would just deal with it and be grumpy like a typical young teenager. My practical aunt would not stand for such nonsense, so she convinced me to take a couple of Aleve and lie down with her heating pad for a little while. After much self-coaching, I choked down the medicine and slid between the fluffy white down comforter and soft white sheets. Half an hour later, I woke up pain-free. This was the first time I had ever felt relief from my monthly pains, and it was the most incredible feeling ever. Even better, I was hungry, and the turkey-on-toast sandwich my aunt made me was the most delicious, satisfying meal I had eaten to that day. I still remember the incredible sense of relief and relaxation beneath the heating pad in that glorious cool bed, and how wonderful hunger felt in place of pain and nausea.

I am sure there are much better memories than that, but hey, I’m crazy! edit I did have a normal, healthy childhood. I just have a terrible memory, I guess. IT’S MONDAY, OKAY

Week 11: Describe a product that needs to be invented. What irritation or problem could be solved with a nifty new device?

Now that I am a real person and can handle taking pills… a capsule of some sort that satisfies hunger, cravings, and all the required vitamins and minerals for keeping a body alive. Food and a healthy diet are a constant source of stress for me. Making healthy choices is fucking hard. Though, I would really miss eating, as obvious by some of my other answers.

Week 12: What is your favorite restaurant in Huntsville?

Hands down, Below the Radar.

Week 13: What goals are you currently pursuing?

This is less my goal than my husband’s, but I support him entirely and it requires both of our efforts. We are currently working on becoming the owners of a local business. This has been his dream for years, and it is only a few more months of pinching pennies away.

Personally, I still am fighting towards a 50 or 60 pound weight loss, and reading 50 books by the end of the year.

Week 14: What is the most memorable meal you have ever had?

There are two of them, and they are both during the same week in 2011. I traveled to Austin, TX, for a work conference in August. The second night my coworkers and I arrived, we had dinner with some customers at Fogo de Chao. I had the rarest cut of filet I’ve ever eaten before, and it was unbelievable. Also, I tried grappa for the first time. Aside from excellent food (and drinks!), the group was amazing. We had such a fantastic few hours together.

Despite my hotel being 2 blocks from everything, I was completely exhausted mid-week. Long days of being on my feet coupled with it being Texas in August meant I just crashed one afternoon in my hotel. I woke up a little disoriented with a text from my boss inviting me to dinner with another coworker. After making myself as presentable as possible, I walked in a daze to Moonshine. At first I had no appetite, but my coworker insisted I have a meal, so I ordered baked rainbow trout (and yes, I only ordered it because rainbows) with a side of macaroni and cheese. This meal is my favorite meal in the history of ever, and I have eaten a lot of fucking delicious things. Just know that I ate the exact same meal twice the next year, and the crushing, bitter disappointment at not being able to go this August is 99% because I won’t get to eat at Moonshine.

Week 15: What is your favorite quote?

“What fun is there in making sense?” – Discord, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Shut up.

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I am not going to make any promises any more.  🙂

The Rocket City Bloggers are a diverse group of bloggers with at least one thing in common: writing from the Huntsville, AL area, otherwise known as Rocket City. This April began a Year Long Blogging Challenge, and I am attempting to participate. Clearly, though, this is proving to be more of a challenge for me than I initially believed.  Click the image below for more awesome people from the Rocket City.

(manic monday) Rocket City Bloggers’ Year Long Blogging Challenge: Weeks 3 – 6

Oh, dear. I really am behind. The point of a weekly challenge is to post weekly, so I suppose it defeats the point if I end up posting monthly instead… yet here I am, with four weeks rolled up into one post! This is kind of a manic Monday, isn’t it?

Week 3: Assuming the apocalypse is upon us, what do you stock up on?

Let us also assume this is a survivable apocalypse (zombie, holy) and not a nuclear one which would annihilate everything, including hope. In which case: I stock up on nothing because I would almost certainly not survive zombies. Is that a depressing thought? Totally. Do I curr? Naw.

In the spirit of participation, let us suspend all belief and say that the biblical apocalypse occurs, or that I do somehow manage to keep myself alive after a zombie-disease outbreak, and have reason to consider long-term supplies. This is what I would want:

• Weapons: a bow and many arrows, as they are recoverable.  An impressive collection of knives (for hunting and cleaning animals, as well as protection and other survival necessities)
• Books on the following subjects: generic wilderness survival and medicine, hunting & fishing (and how to clean animals for eating), plants, and first aid
• Rope
• Water containers and a large stock of purifiers (such as iodine tablets)
• First aid supplies, including antibiotics

Seeing as how I’ll be dead for all of this, my plans are moot. Next!

Week 4: What is your favorite joke/cartoon?

While I love many cartoons, choosing a favorite is easy: Adventure Time, because I am an adult, and seriously this show.  Fortunately my kids love it as well, so I have an excuse to watch it. Not that I would need an excuse if I didn’t have kids, because it is that awesome. Never growin’ up.

LSP forever

Because I have a rather dark sense of humor, all of my favorite jokes are the most inappropriate. I cannot possibly choose just one, but for the sake of the challenge, here is a (not so?) tame joke that never fails to make me laugh:

What is the hardest part of a vegetable to eat?

The wheelchair. 

I’m sorry.

Week 5: What are you passionate about? 

Reading. Writing. (Not arithmetic. So bad at math, tho.)  Photography. Art. Love. Learning. Those don’t require much explanation.

I am also passionate about mental heath awareness. Being bipolar and having many friends with different mental health issues, I know firsthand the difficulties of existing in a world unaccepting and ignorant. Even close family members can be hurtful without meaning to be: “Wow, you don’t seem bipolar.”  My disease is mild and under control, quite different than its frightening rap. Can I fault people for having no clue? Of course not. I can understand their side – give to them what they had not been able to give to me – and use my passion and knowledge to bring awareness to those around me. A flickering light.

 

Week 6: Are you a city mouse or a country mouse? 

I suppose you’d have to call me a suburban mouse. I love visiting both the city and the country, but my real home is right in the middle. That’s all I got to say about that. (What’s a good day without a Forrest Gump quote?)

Week seven coming your way – on time! On its own!

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The Rocket City Bloggers are a diverse group of bloggers with at least one thing in common: writing from the Huntsville, AL area, otherwise known as Rocket City. This April began a Year Long Blogging Challenge, and I am attempting to participate. Clearly, though, this is proving to be more of a challenge for me than I initially believed.  Click the image below for more awesome people from the Rocket City.

body hate

I repulse myself sometimes.

Months of being overweight have finally weighed down my mind. I’m sure another cycle of depression is starting, but I am beginning to loathe every part of my body. My sick brain tells me you are fat, therefore worthless. Instead of doing something about it – changing my diet, exercising more – I soothe myself with comfort food and shopping. Fuck.
And what’s a girl to do when even her own influences – other moms, people her age, popular bloggers, media coverage, “friends” – are openly hateful of “fat”? Completely unsupportive? Humble-bragging about adhering to cultural standards of perfection? This goes back to my insecurity and fear about putting myself out there. It has burned me in the past. As far back as third grade, when a supposed friend told me in gymnastics class, “I hate to tell you this, but you look fat in your leotard.” I never went back to gymnastics after that class ended.

For what it’s worth, she was always a bitch.

We shouldn’t let bitches get us down, but I do, and getting over it is a lifelong thing, clearly. Besides that comment, I was mostly exempt from a lot of physical disses from my peers (or maybe I just forgot most of them). A lot of the influential ladies in my life growing up openly despised their bodies, which is what was impressed upon me the most. In front of a young girl, women whom I saw as incredible would wax damn near poetic about their imperfect noses, their ugly hair color, their big thighs. Fad diets and exercise programs paraded through my life like boyfriends: exciting at first, then annoying, then gone.
I am so careful to avoid emphasis on my own daughter’s appearance. While I don’t feel that we should completely avoid telling our girls that they are pretty, that is not the only complimentary words she ever hears from me. Her creative endeavors, academic efforts, sense of humor, attitude, as well as her physical appearance all get equal praise.

Anyway, there’s no moral to this post. I’m just repeating what so many people have said before (and better than I have). Changing negative perception is fucking difficult. We all can certainly try, though.