Austerity Measures

Are, in fact, No Damned Fun At All.

E and I stick to them occasionally, like any couple does, I think--reminding Oneself, or possibly, if in a crabby mood, Ones Partner, when One of us has just looked at the bank statements--that we are, in fact, broke.

And Ones who are broke have no call or reason to be out buying dinner in restaurants when we could be eating at home, on beans and rice and cheap wine studded with fruit-fly carcasses, which we should be damn grateful about getting for free because they have protein in them.

The OTHER thing about eating at home, as everyone knows, is that it's a lot better for you. E and I have both been slowly gaining weight over time, and although we both started this gain so underweight that our various friends and parental units were genuinely concerned about us, it turns out extra fat WILL make its presence known even if it grows on you so slowly that you have to take stats every four months or so, (because every the change every two months will be still unnoticeable) and eventually you have to do something to reverse the trend. The FASCINATING thing about the timing here is that E and I are suddenly seeing ourselves On Camera a lot, not because we've suddenly become movie stars (I wish) but because we are Doing Social media, i.e. Generating Content for our social media pages, and a lot of that ends up with One being, as it were, On Camera.

I saw myself on camera four weeks ago, wearing stretchy clothes (I had just come from the gym) and thought to myself, "Who's that fat girl? ...OH SHIT."

And E, bless him, had the same reaction to his OWN image, captured on camera just a few days ago. He watched some recently taken footage with me, and somewhere in the middle of watching himself load a bike onto a display he said, "I need to start losing weight."

I think an important distinction might be addressed at this time: that, as athletes, both he and I are acutely aware of our body shapes and conditions. It's not that I think I'm FAT, necessarily, ignoring my comment above. It's that I know I'm carrying weight that isn't making itself useful. My body is not performing up to Standards. And it Should.

So: more roast chicken and salad. Less happy hour fried food at Stadium Lodge. Yay.

Talking About: Surviving the EVIL Frat House

aka "Out of the frying pan and into the fire", only with correct Title Capitalization, which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

For seven months in 2012, I lived with a very hostile environment. The weirdest part was that I lived in TWO SEPARATE very hostile environments, so moving out of one fixed the problem temporarily, and then it got much, much worse. So in a way I sort of...moved backwards? I'm still not sure. I would certainly rate the entire experience 0 stars on Amazon, if that was possible, but we all know it's not so I suppose I'll have to rate it 1 star, which is perhaps appropriate in spite of itself because I certainly did learn something, so perhaps there was some value after all.

Note: when someone uses the word "perhaps" twice in the same sentence, they are not ready to...

You know what? Fuck that. I'm not really ready to talk about that yet. (And I didn't even realize it until I wrote "perhaps" twice.) Everything is fine now, and that's...well, maybe not the important part, although it certainly is A, or maybe AN, important part. That's not the ending. There's a lot of mini-endings, or arc endings, that are wrapped up in that story--how E and I met, and how we merged our lives in a crucible, forged them together because we had nowhere else to go, how we therefore ended a lot of other people's stories, or at least killed the bonds connecting THEIR stories to OURS.

It's hard for me, in my lesser moments, not to hold that against him. To not imagine how awful those months were and then, if I'm angry at him for some small reason (see "microwave door", below) to try to push all my decisions off on him. To avoid taking responsibility for the choices I made. To decide, as I think many people do, that my life sucks, and it's my PARTNER'S fault for taking that job/moving us here/buying this house that I hate.

(E and I have started referring to this unfortunate avoidance shortcut in the human mind as the "microwave door" shortcut, after my own desire to have him close the microwave door when he's done with it, and deciding that his tendency to do so, after I've specifically asked him not to, is OBVIOUSLY proof that HE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT MY NEEDS AND HAS PROBABLY NEVER LOVED ME AT ALL. Many couples have "the toothpaste cap" shortcut, or possibly the "left out the cheese again" shortcut.)

Because the long and short of it is that E and I have decided to be partners, both now and (we plan) forever, and so I HAVE to accept my partner just as he is with all their faults or else drive myself crazy, because he probably won't change and doing anything else is completely illogical. Yes, that DOES sound rather sanctimonious, doesn't it? I'm sorry. It seems accurate, although maybe not phrased very well. The point is, I'm learning that the human mind has all these shortcuts that try to FORCE you to be unhappy, and part of being an evolved human is to spot those and avoid sliding down them like Life has suddenly become some sadistic version of Chutes and Ladders, where the Chutes are lined with razor blades and the rungs of the Ladders melt into gooey drips as you attempt to climb them.

Did I mention I have vivid nightmares? I drink to avoid them. Sometimes it works.

ANYWAY.

I fell in love with E on the night we met, and there has never been another option for me, realistically speaking, but that in itself is a kind of weight that he gave me to carry around. And another thing that I can hold against him, if I choose to. Sometimes it's hard not to. I didn't want to be in love and I hadn't planned on it, and now I AM and maybe the whole thing would be easier if I just ran away, moved out, got my own apartment, suddenly pulled the trigger on a whole different life and exploded my current one to shreds so small that they couldn't be pieced back together with an electron scanning microscope (ESM) and several hours of an extremely sharp-sighted grad student and a pair of minute tweezers.

No end to this one.

Well, Hello!

Hello there! Yes, it HAS been a long time, hasn't it? How have you been? Yes, I've been doing well too. You look smashing. Oh, yes, I know I do, too. Oh, you. Oh, you're making me blush. No, really, stop, so I can please get a word in edgewise?

WELL. Now that we've gotten that out of the way. It HAS, in fact, been some time. Only three months since I last posted, but really, more like a year since I posted with any sort of regularity at all, and before that I'm scared to look at my record, and I pray that you are, too.

Let's just get the stats out of the way in a fairly boring manner so we can swallow them all at once like a mouthful of broccoli we never intended to eat:

1. I live with my boyfriend!
2. In a warehouse!
2a. Not the lofty sort, either, but a real warehouse with NO light and, worse, NO EXPOSED BRICK. I know. I had the vapors.
3. I left the Lazy B!
4. So I could work for my boyfriend's business!

And with that, I really WILL have the vapors now. WHEEZE. WHEEZE.

Still with me? Not passed out in front of the mirror? (Is that just me?) Whew. I'm glad we all survived, and to that end, I'm going to have another glass of wine.

*swallows*

That's better. Writing always makes me so THIRSTY.

And it's to this end (not the wine drinking, because I can do that with no excuse at all, but the writing habit) that I'm starting (I hope, no promises whatsoever) to blog again, at least with some kind of regularity. To be honest (which I hate doing, much like sucking in my stomach to look skinnier, but I do that with EVERY KIND OF REGULARITY and so why not attempt honesty while I'm at it?)...where was I?

Oh, yes: I am attempting to write regularly again.

Writing has always been my therapy. And for some years there, more than I like to admit now because I feel completely stupid for not realizing this earlier, say, TWO! YEARS! AGO! that a lifetime of typing at the computer has taken its toll on my nervous system, I created less and less and I listlessly scrolled through the internet more and more.

Call it nerves (which I have--and so do you, for that matter) or call it Drift or call it whatever you want, but I had starting creating less and less and drifting through life more and more. There was a time...in which I decorated my apartment enough to be featured in Apartment Therapy's Small Cool Contest and had a piece published in the Seattle PI's blog. (Which I will have now linked.) But. That was a long time ago. But! I can reacquaint myself with the medium!

Because writing is important to me, and I miss it. And sometimes it hurts me, now, but really...I'm living with my boyfriend in a WAREHOUSE and trying to RUN A STARTUP! If there was EVER a time to blog, it is now. I will not piss away these years of my life. I will focus.

And writing = focus.

Want to know how to survive without a shower? In the middle of a frat house? In the middle of an EVIL frat house? Want to know what it's like to live with your boyfriend for the first time? To think, for the first time, that you'd ever have a long term relationship again?

Stay tuned, my lovelies. And get yourself a refreshing beverage while you're at it.