Tuesday, October 22, 2013

A Real Live(-in) Boyfriend

So it's past 12AM on a school night, and my whole house smells like cookies. Why? Because at 10PM when my boyfriend and I were enjoying the first .5 seconds of time together in three days, I scadaddled off the couch to make cookies, like a totally normal, sane person would do at bedtime. I mean, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the pent-up anxiety that I have from his sudden pending move into my apartment.

And by sudden, I mean, I nagged him nearly every day for the past three months about moving in with me to save money, to spend more time together, every day access to sex, yadda yadda yadda. But then he actually said yes. And I was all, "Uh-huh. Well, if you move in, we're going to have to ______." And he seemed pretty cool about all my fill-in-the-blanks.

But he seemed to be dragging his feet the past month. As the ending summer months flew by and most college students found other apartments, I gave up hope and thought, well, a spring move-in will be fine. I'll have 6 months to really dig into all that herbal and essential oil treatments I've been getting into. I'll read books. Keep training for races. Pick up 15 new languages, learn to knit with cat hair, and take up whatever other hobbies lead my fellow 33-year-old women into insanity because they've driven away their boyfriends who won't "take the next step in their relationship."

After many-a bitchathons (a contest I need no training for), eventually, he said, "Stop saying 'if' and say 'when!' I AM going to move in with you! It's just a matter of time." Mmmmmhmmmmmmmmm. Eyeroll. Long sigh. "Yeah. Right. We'll see."

Then, on a random Tuesday afternoon, I get a series of calls/texts from him at work, which is totally abnormal for Old Nick With the Flip Phone With T9 Text Function but becoming more normal for Loves To FaceTime Nick With an iPhone 5c. He says to me, "How soon do you think I can move in?" I said, "Today, why?" Joking. Right? Joking. I'm joking here because clearly I'm a shrew and he would have seen this by now and wouldn't still be considering moving in with me. Right?

"Well, I talked to my landlord and they said people are looking for studios." I assume they are full of shit, they want him to move out before they show it to subletters but want for him to keep paying, so I back off the nagging maybe down to 85% strength, and go about littering our discussions with "If you move in...."'

And then he calls on Thursday and has me craft a write-up that night for Craigslist to see if anyone's biting, and four days later, someone's looking at the place, and he and all 13 of the items he can squeeze into a studio are moving in this Sunday. THIS SUNDAY.

SUNDAY. AS IN FIVE DAYS. Suddenly I'm gripped with a fear that he's going to find out that I'm really an ugly, disgusting monster unworthy of love and affection, and I'm a hoax and really not all that witty, and he should really run for the hills because I'm far too crazy to be loved, let alone lived with.

Aside from the typical self-deprecating, self-loathing mumbo jumbo bouncing around in my head, there's all the typical shit that flies around when people have to cohabitate. I have to suddenly stop shitting with the door open. No more eating cheese for dinner in my underwear on the couch while laughing with My Best Friend Mindy Kaling and drinking beer and ignoring phone calls because "my nails were wet" instead of "I had my mouth crammed full of a spoonful of stale potato chips and French onion dip."

Me in my reality:

Me in mind:

No more are the nights where I slide under the covers in the center of the bed, form a U-shaped fortress of pillows around me, and then use the cats as mini-space heaters for my frosty appendages, despite the fact I keep it a balmy 72 degrees no matter what. Now I have to share what is seemingly smaller and smaller of a queen-sized mattress with this giant. (He is 6'5" and I lurve it, but now there is no escape from Mr. Big in my bed.) He likes it 68 degrees maximum. He takes man-dumps, which I have to pretend are manly and I take girl-dumps which I have to either (1) hold in painfully until after he leaves for work or (2) pretend don't exist and that the cat just keeps farting or keep a good perfume in the bathroom which I will waste by spraying IN EXCESS after said poops.

It's not like we don't sleep together already a few times a week, but now it's like there's this infinite "ALWAYS" and "FOREVER" hanging over my head. The first sign of him hogging the bed (which is a joke because I EASILY take up 80% of the bed on any given night--his presence or not), my mind starts racing with "HE ALWAYS HOGS THE BED" to "FUCK THIS SHIT" and "I'M NOT PUTTING UP WITH THIS SHIT FOREVER."

And my mind shoots me right to where my depression/poor self-esteem/relationship drama/self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy of breakup bullshit wants to go.

So all this energy erupted when he came in, godforbid, to TALK TO ME WHILE I MAKE COOKIES. Ummmmm....doesn't he see I'm BUSY?!?! What? Comcast?!?! I don't give a FUCK about Comcast or renter's insurance right now. These cookies neeeeeeeeeeeeed me. Perhaps you didn't understand that. *melts boyfriends face with displaced anxiety directed in anger at him*

Fifteen minutes after he leaves the room and goes to bed, I realize that, perhaps, once again, I have lashed out in fear and turned into that shrew that Terrible Kerry wants me to be so I can be the victim-martyr in my own sob story. You know, kind of like most of the women in my family. (I digress.) So, I tuck my tail between my legs, realize that he is doing me a solid, and explain why I'm so crazypants.

I climb onto the bed with him. "Sorry I'm a shithead and yelled at you about Comcast. We will figure it out. And sorry we didn't *girates hips*." He laughs. This is a good sign. "Besides, we have everrrrry daaaaaaay together soon." He laughs again. I'm on a roll. "I'm just a little nervous about us living together, I guess. I haven't lived with someone I've dated in 9 years. NINE. YEARS."

"I understand. I am too, but it'll be okay."

"I love you and just don't want to mess this up."

"I love you too."

"Even when I'm a terrible meanie pants like tonight?"

"There are people who treat me way worse than you did tonight....on a daily basis."

"Give me their names and I will smash their faces." Klassy Kerry Keeps It Real.

"But seriously, babe. If I didn't think it would work out, I wouldn't be doing it."

And just like that, poof, most of my anxiety is quelled.

There's something about just hearing those calming words that say, "I'm scared too, but together we'll work it out" that makes everything feel like it's going to be okay. Like this isn't a fight against each other but some sort of lovey dovey journey we're taking together. And in my mind, we held hands and gallivanted over a hill to a castle in fairytale land.

I'm sure there will be more anxiety, and I will probably have a melt down when the last of his things have breached the threshold to my apartment, but alas, I'm done cooking now, and tired. And I have to go steal the covers from my sleeping giant.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Funny Depression Comics!

I know! The words "funny" and "depression" doesn't usually go together, but here they do! My friend Amy started a comic blog to explain the shit of dealing with recurring major depression, something I also deal with. (I hate saying "suffer with" because I think that dealing with depression IMPLIES suffering. It's certainly no tea party. Great now those Right-Wing assholes have even ruined that phrase. I digress...)

Anyway, she would love for folks to do guest features and for others to know that it helps them out. Check it out!

http://depressidentoftheunitedstates.tumblr.com/

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Fit or Fat....Is it about shape or strength?

This is a response to the following article :
http://reembody.me/2013/09/10/the-6-most-shockingly-irresponsible-fitspiration-photos/

Hmmm. I partially agree with my friend Winston. I've posted his response below, with his permission:
I totally disagree with this article. My reason is that you can place any of these arguments on any Fitspiration meme no matter who made the meme and what the meme says. This article is riddled with fallacies: the Existential fallacy, the Fallacy of exclusive premises, the Fallacy of appeal to common sense, Proof by verbosity, and so many more ...
To me this reads like a Glen Beck/Howard Stern/Rush Limbaugh/Bob and Tom writing style. Shock valued, morning circus to draw attention to the writer and not what they are actually writing about.

I partially agree with Winston, but I can also see the author's points. You have to admit, all the fitspiration memes focus thin women and cut men though. Rarely do they focus on the stockier build of strong people. I'm not saying that this is the meme creator's intention to further impose the "skinny is beautiful" agenda, but rather a result of the conditioning of society upon our belief of what defines "health."

There was a show....The Doctors or Dr. Oz or something like that, where a tall woman who was stocky was next to a smaller petite woman, and they were both on a treadmill walking at 3.0 mph. The taller woman exercised regularly and the petite woman never did. The heart monitors showed that the petite woman's BPM shot up fast and the larger woman's was slower and steadier. The audience assumed the smaller woman would be healthier because she had a lower weight and size. You know the rest. Petite woman struggles, eventually has to stop, and the stockier woman keeps up with a steady heart rate.

Another example, a friend, Zach Henn used to be a personal trainer and cut as all get-out, but his cholesterol was >400 because of his heredity. (His dad died from a heart attack at a young age and also had crazy high cholesterol.) Zach had to take cholesterol-lowering meds as a result. His diet wasn't always fantastic...okay, sometimes he ate like shit (Arby's. LOTS of Arby's), and used to drink like a fish, yet he is thin and lean so people would assume he was super healthy. I'm fatter with 31% body fat and my cholesterol is WICKED low. Genes suck sometimes.

I guess my point is that we're so conditioned to see shape as fit or not fit, but I barely look much different from a year or so ago when I was WAY less healthy.

I guess we should reinforce that exercise is the key and not the body's shape that it's in. That everyone starts somewhere....that it's not about where/when you start but that you recognize the importance of health and getting fit and that you take a step in that direction and keep moving.

I'll be the first to admit that too much of anything is bad. And that's the point about the anorexia/hypergymwhatever that the author points out. I guess it's all a balance, and toned fit bodies are healthy-looking and TYPICALLY healthier than ones with higher body fat and other obvious issues, but isn't the whole issue about health....not SHAPE? Again, it's not that shape isn't an indicator, but it shouldn't be ALL that we focus on. Just a piece.

I don't know. I may never look like the fitspiration pics I see, but I am happy to be headed in the DIRECTION of healthier me, and that is good. I can feel my body doing things it couldn't do a year ago. And that's great.

But showing a set of stairs that I've conquered instead of my still-albeit-less-flabby abs isn't as inspiring as a cut half-naked chick.

I think I'm just tired of the oversexualization of America despite our Puritan roots that tell us just how bad sex is. It's ridiculous. There was a good relationship book I read that I recommend. You should check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Captivity-Reconciling-Erotic-Domestic/dp/0060753633

But that's for another post another time! And on that note, I'm out!



P.S. More this: https://www.google.com/search?q=female+olympic+weightlifters&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=6whgUsPCFonCywHL3oEQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=732

Less this: https://www.google.com/search?q=female+olympic+weightlifters&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=6whgUsPCFonCywHL3oEQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=732#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=sexy+fit+females&tbm=isch

Thursday, October 10, 2013

2013 Fall-Winter Races

Anyone want to go running? I've picked these as potential runs for me to keep up with things, despite a bum knee. Let me know if you're around an 11-minute mile and want a friend to keep you company on the course!

Sunday October 27, 2013
10AM
5K
Schiller Park (west on Irv Park)
Chiller 5K and 10K Trail Races
Saturday November 2, 2013
8:00 AM
5K

Pilsen
UNO 5K - Carrera de los Muertos
Saturday November 9, 2013
7:30AM
10mi/10K
Chicago dwntwn lakefront
Chicago's Perfect 10
Saturday December 14, 2013, 9:00 AM
5K/10K
Peggy Notebaert area
Jingle Bell Run/Walk – Chicago
Sunday October 27, 2013
9:00 AM
               
6K

Evanston
Trick or Treat Trot
Thursday November 28, 2013
9AM
8K
Chicago dwntwn lakefront
Chicago 8K Turkey Chase
Saturday December 7, 2013
9:00 AM
5K
NA
Santa Hustle 5K
Saturday December 07, 2013
10AM
5K/10K
Schiller Park
Chiller 5k & 10k Trail Runs