OK, time to sing some praises. Kudos to this old carcass for being not-overweight anymore. Feels like a big achievement today, especially at my age (and sex). Since the beginning of 2009 I've been writing down what I eat, counting calories, and staying near 1300-1500 per day, a bit more on weekends, and so far I've lost about 17 pounds of ugly fat. On my 5'5" frame, that's a lot!
So yay, me.
It doesn't feel like a diet anymore, just the way I eat, and I have no intention of going back to my old over-eating ways. I've substituted low calories snacks for high-cal, added more salads and soups to my meals, broken a few bad habits, said goodbye to the bags of dried fruit and nut mix in my work's snack machine. It works. I feel SO much better.
You tend to gain and lose fat in different places in middle age. Like, I still have some unattractive fat on my lower and upper back. What's up with that?! I hate it! But I did lose most of the fat that accumulated on my middle front and that's a huge plus in terms of comfort and looking OK in my clothes. I have narrowish hips so an increase in my bust and middle area gives me a top-heavy masculine look that was making me very sad. I have twice had to buy several pairs of new pants!
Sadly, I have almost no ass anymore. It's like a pancake back there. Don't get me started.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
One More Thing To Worry About
Old Lady Hair.
Not gray hair, not by itself anyway, but a condition I've called Old Lady Hair for years and dreaded and swore I would be vigilant against. Now it's here.
What? Of course I color my hair! Are you nuts? I went gray in my 30's, and I find myself in the job market more often than I would like. I do not want to look ready for the ash-heap so I color my hair. So sometimes I have roots. Not a huge problem where I can see it, but the condition I call Old Lady Hair ("OLH") is where your hair parts all on its own somewhere on the back of your head, either because of the hair's natural growth patterns or the way the wind is blowing. The hair parts in some weird place where you'd never on-purpose put a part and the gray roots are gloriously apparent, fanned out from the part, behind your back and you walk around completely innocent of the OLH going on behind you. It bespeaks Old, old, old. And sad. And now I am a victim.
I was feeling around for bald spots one day and found a place that felt, well, thin. I took a hand mirror to check it out and saw one of my worst nightmares back there. Why, Lord, why me????
Not gray hair, not by itself anyway, but a condition I've called Old Lady Hair for years and dreaded and swore I would be vigilant against. Now it's here.
What? Of course I color my hair! Are you nuts? I went gray in my 30's, and I find myself in the job market more often than I would like. I do not want to look ready for the ash-heap so I color my hair. So sometimes I have roots. Not a huge problem where I can see it, but the condition I call Old Lady Hair ("OLH") is where your hair parts all on its own somewhere on the back of your head, either because of the hair's natural growth patterns or the way the wind is blowing. The hair parts in some weird place where you'd never on-purpose put a part and the gray roots are gloriously apparent, fanned out from the part, behind your back and you walk around completely innocent of the OLH going on behind you. It bespeaks Old, old, old. And sad. And now I am a victim.
I was feeling around for bald spots one day and found a place that felt, well, thin. I took a hand mirror to check it out and saw one of my worst nightmares back there. Why, Lord, why me????
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Breaking a Bad Habit
This post concerns something that is not a function of old age and it is nobody's fault but my own.
Confession: for the past 5 years I've had a terrible habit of chewing my cuticles. So much so that there are times I have 4 or five fingertips bandaged. When the chewed parts are healing, they feel thick and tight from the dead skin or scarred skin, I dunno. I hate that feeling! So I chew off the dead skin. I get infections and it looks gross.
A prime time for chewing is the mornings while I read the paper. I am distracted by all the little bits creating roughness around my nails. Some of the fingertips have a touch of eczema. Lovely, right? And I was keeping "tools" beside me on the windowsill...
This is really disgusting and I don't blame you a bit for not reading on!
Anyway. The tools are a cuticle "trimmer," a pointy tweezer and a metal nail file. But I've decided to break this bad habit. The tools are now banished to the bathroom. And I found a great and inexpensive cuticle cream, a nice thick cream that moisturizes beautifully. When I feel the urge to chew, I rub it into my cuticles instead. They are healing nicely!
I am a work in progress.
Confession: for the past 5 years I've had a terrible habit of chewing my cuticles. So much so that there are times I have 4 or five fingertips bandaged. When the chewed parts are healing, they feel thick and tight from the dead skin or scarred skin, I dunno. I hate that feeling! So I chew off the dead skin. I get infections and it looks gross.
A prime time for chewing is the mornings while I read the paper. I am distracted by all the little bits creating roughness around my nails. Some of the fingertips have a touch of eczema. Lovely, right? And I was keeping "tools" beside me on the windowsill...
This is really disgusting and I don't blame you a bit for not reading on!
Anyway. The tools are a cuticle "trimmer," a pointy tweezer and a metal nail file. But I've decided to break this bad habit. The tools are now banished to the bathroom. And I found a great and inexpensive cuticle cream, a nice thick cream that moisturizes beautifully. When I feel the urge to chew, I rub it into my cuticles instead. They are healing nicely!
I am a work in progress.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Welcome!
From Merriam Webster--
Carcass:
1 : a dead body :corpse; especially : the dressed body of a meat animal;
2 : the living, material, or physical body;
3 : the decaying or worthless remains of a structurei.e. the carcass of an abandoned automobile;
4 : the underlying structure or frame of something (as of a piece of furniture).
I think it's fair to say that I fall between definitions 2 and 3.
Full disclosure-- I am a woman, 57 years old, used to be quite beautiful, now not so much! I thought it might be more fun to fall apart in public. Nobody likes to laugh at me as much as I do, so let us begin.
Catalog of ills:
My knees are weak and periodically "blow out," usually one at a time. The treatment for that is you go to a knee guy who sticks a big needle in the swollen area and draws out a beaker full of disgusting yellow liquid that looks like chicken soup. Some knee guys do it well and you get instant relief. Some knees guys don't take much care and make sure the procedure itself is very painful and leaves you feeling worse before you feel better. Yes, I am talking about you Dr. Arsht! You dick!
Anyway.... the latest old-age related infirmity that is driving me crazy is my impending marionette lines. They really call them that! You can Google it. So I noticed a few months ago that the corners of my mouth had developed cracks in them which were painful and annoying. I tried to heal them with lots of lip balm. Yeah, right. They they got more annoying, especially on the right side. So I googled around and discovered cracked-mouth-corner FUNGUS. Yes, fungus, folks. How gross is that. And some joker is selling an e-book on how to get rid of cracked-mouth-corner fungus for sixty-seven frigging dollars! Can you fucking imagine!
Information wants to be free, so I googled some more and found the answer (sort of) on Cure Zone. The darling kooks on Cure Zone know everything about do-it-yourself medicine and I love them for it. I much prefer to take matters, especially embarrassing, personal matters into my own hands. And in the Cracked Mouth Corner forum, one sweetheart was kind enough to summarize the information contained in the $67 book! For realz. Are you ready?
There's a bunch of stuff about sterilizing your work area, which in my house is impossible, and then some stuff about pouring the water and dish soap into clean containers-- but this just seems like another opportunity for contamination so I skip that-- and here's what you do: you wash all around the affected area with strong liquid dishwashing soap, then thoroughly dry it, then slather Vaseline from a NEW container all over your lip corners and around in a broad radius. That's it. It works, sort of. The fungus keeps coming back. Now I think it's attacking my lips. Also, these line creases that are making me look like a sad clown, I don't know if they are because of the fungus, or if the fungus is there because of the creases. The fungus has something to do with wetness from, like drooling in your sleep, so having lines etched in your skin could fascilitate the drool, I can see that.
Anyway, this is what concerns me now. When I look in the mirror, all I can see are those damn lines which are no more than a quarter inch but damn, they are harshing my vibe!
Carcass:
1 : a dead body :corpse; especially : the dressed body of a meat animal;
2 : the living, material, or physical body;
3 : the decaying or worthless remains of a structure
4 : the underlying structure or frame of something (as of a piece of furniture).
I think it's fair to say that I fall between definitions 2 and 3.
Full disclosure-- I am a woman, 57 years old, used to be quite beautiful, now not so much! I thought it might be more fun to fall apart in public. Nobody likes to laugh at me as much as I do, so let us begin.
Catalog of ills:
My knees are weak and periodically "blow out," usually one at a time. The treatment for that is you go to a knee guy who sticks a big needle in the swollen area and draws out a beaker full of disgusting yellow liquid that looks like chicken soup. Some knee guys do it well and you get instant relief. Some knees guys don't take much care and make sure the procedure itself is very painful and leaves you feeling worse before you feel better. Yes, I am talking about you Dr. Arsht! You dick!
Anyway.... the latest old-age related infirmity that is driving me crazy is my impending marionette lines. They really call them that! You can Google it. So I noticed a few months ago that the corners of my mouth had developed cracks in them which were painful and annoying. I tried to heal them with lots of lip balm. Yeah, right. They they got more annoying, especially on the right side. So I googled around and discovered cracked-mouth-corner FUNGUS. Yes, fungus, folks. How gross is that. And some joker is selling an e-book on how to get rid of cracked-mouth-corner fungus for sixty-seven frigging dollars! Can you fucking imagine!
Information wants to be free, so I googled some more and found the answer (sort of) on Cure Zone. The darling kooks on Cure Zone know everything about do-it-yourself medicine and I love them for it. I much prefer to take matters, especially embarrassing, personal matters into my own hands. And in the Cracked Mouth Corner forum, one sweetheart was kind enough to summarize the information contained in the $67 book! For realz. Are you ready?
There's a bunch of stuff about sterilizing your work area, which in my house is impossible, and then some stuff about pouring the water and dish soap into clean containers-- but this just seems like another opportunity for contamination so I skip that-- and here's what you do: you wash all around the affected area with strong liquid dishwashing soap, then thoroughly dry it, then slather Vaseline from a NEW container all over your lip corners and around in a broad radius. That's it. It works, sort of. The fungus keeps coming back. Now I think it's attacking my lips. Also, these line creases that are making me look like a sad clown, I don't know if they are because of the fungus, or if the fungus is there because of the creases. The fungus has something to do with wetness from, like drooling in your sleep, so having lines etched in your skin could fascilitate the drool, I can see that.
Anyway, this is what concerns me now. When I look in the mirror, all I can see are those damn lines which are no more than a quarter inch but damn, they are harshing my vibe!
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