Darcy is the best.

This is Sara and I say it is true, so it is.

My Technology is Problematic

Wow, so I’m here on this new format and new website, and I can do a lot more – but everything is rebelling against me!  I did manage to get a few links up, all by myself.  AJ was the one who had to set up everything else, of course.  This is WAY better than my old site!   Also, my wifi isn’t working and I had to buy a new AirPort and now my mom is mad because I’m using the iMac (also known as MY iMac) and this is the time she usually gets online to play Pogo.

So how have I been, you ask?  I have been fabulous!  I got a new job at Embrace Pet Insurance and I love it so much that I actually look forward to waking up and going to work every day!  There are dogs and cats in the office, my co-workers and supervisors are all sincerely nice, drama free people, and I enjoy the job itself.  I haven’t made an ass of myself yet, and that is always a plus.

But really, no one comes here to read about how I’m NOT making an ass of myself, so here’s my adventure from today.  My dad and I went to a local huge ginormous farm like thing.  It’s a farm, but it’s not like, a guy growing corn and selling it on the side of the road.  It’s like a farm attraction, but it’s also a functioning farm.  I mean, they milk the cows, at any rate.  It’s like going to the zoo but with farm animals.  So there we are, petting cows (which are HUGE – do you have any idea how HUGE cows are??), and they say “Hey, we’re going to milk a cow.  Sit down and watch”.  So my dad and I sit with a bunch of other parents and their little children, and a cow walks up the steps, which I found hilarious, on to this platform.  My dad and I exchanged the following banter….”he he, the cow is going up the stairs” “HA, look at that!  He knows how to go up stairs!” “BUAHAHAHA the cow is walking up the stairs!!”.  I did not fall far from the tree.  Then a little kid decided to tell me that if they are going to milk the cow, it’s a she, not a he.  I ignored it (the kid).  So then a girl who looks EXACTLY like my friend Kira started talking about cow milking, and she asked “What do cows eat”?  Someone said “Hay”, and she said “Yes, but what else?  I’ll give you a hint – it’s green and all over”, and in the most spastic, special way, I bounced up and down and YELLED “Grass!!!!”  My dad put his head down and his shoulders were heaving from laughter, and I immediately followed my bellow up with “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry”.  The Kira Look Alike laughed and said it was ok, but did not stop laughing.  So that was my number one Special Moment.

Number Two Special Moment came when I found a cat in the horse arena area.  I sat on the bleachers next to the cat and pet him while my dad watched me.  Then a freaking HOARDE of children came bellowing their way in, and came straight for the cat.  This one obnoxious kid who I earlier caught banging on a chicken coop and saying “Ha, I scared them”, came straight up to the cat and said “Is that your cat?”  Now I’m a horrible liar, everyone knows this.  I just don’t lie.  But apparently when I think I’m protecting animals, I can lie like a mofo.  I said “Yes”.  He said “What’s his name?”  I said “Sam.”  He said “Is it a boy or a girl?”  I said “He’s a boy.”  He said “Where does he live?” and I said “In the barn.”  This is all going at the speed of light, and I’m answering as if I know what the hell I’m talking about, it was unreal.  My dad, meanwhile, is standing behind the kids laughing his head off.  The kid said “Do you live here?”  I said “No.”  “Do you take him home at night?”  “No, he likes staying here.”  “Does he chase birds?”  “All cats chase birds.”  “Why does he like it here?”  “If you were a cat, wouldn’t you?”  “Can I pet him?”  “Only if you are very gentle and quiet, or else he’ll bite you.”  Please note that this cat is the calmest cat I have ever seen, and the chance of him biting anyone seemed pretty slim.  So these kids are petting “Sam” and asking me more about him when an adult says “Ok, leave Sam alone, it’s time for pizza” and all the kids left.  I later found out that the cat’s name is PK, for Pig Kitty, because 18 years ago his mom left him and he was raised by a pig.

Number Three Special Moment probably should be labeled Number Two because this was when we were looking at the horses, and I was near the head of the horse, and my dad was near the back end of the horse (you’ve already figured out where this is going).  The horse was in a large, you know, horse container.  Like a house.  Those things they keep horses in.  A stable?  I don’t know, whatever it is he lives in, that’s where the horse was.  So there was a wall between us and him.  But I completely ignored this fact, watched the horse lift his tail up and then I leaped on my dad and yelled “LOOK OUT!” and “saved” him from the horse pooping.  This was ridiculous because a) there was no way the horse was going to poop on us;  b) I acted like I was jumping on a hand grenade which was a bit extreme given the circumstances and c) there was a freaking wall between us and the horse.

I am now going to attempt to put videos and pictures of things I saw today into this blog.

Temporary Dog

This is our Temporary Dog.  We have her because our neighbors got evicted, and they had nowhere for the dog to go.  We have always loved this dog, so on behalf of my parents, who I never consulted, I said “Of course we can keep her until you can get her!”  It was really no secret that “I’ll be able to get her in a month” was wishful thinking, as it’s been about 6 weeks, and there is no end in sight.  However, we don’t want there to be an end in sight.  We want to keep this dog.  

 

We’ve had some ideas as to how to go about dognapping this dog.  The first idea was to just pretend we didn’t know what her owner was talking about.  “I’ve come for my dog.”  “Dog?  What dog?  Who are you?”  We vetoed that idea pretty quickly, because no doubt the dog would run to the door to greet her people (she likes to greet everyone).  On to option two.  “The dog ran away.”  That might not work because I am actually friends with the dogs owner, and inevitably at some point, she’ll visit my house.  I could just send my dad out on a really long walk, and hide all the dog food, but I’m not good at lying, so I would end up blurting out the truth within minutes.  The last thought was saying “We gave her away”, but that’s unlikely as well, because why would you just give a person’s dog away after agreeing to keep her until they came back?  That’s stupid. 

 

Our only hope is that her owner forgets she’s here, or moves somewhere where dogs aren’t allowed.  Both are unlikely. 

 

I want my dad to keep the dog because at some point in my life, I’ll be taking my cat and moving out.  Do you have any idea how boring it will be in my house without me causing endless messes and without my cat attempting to kill my parents every night?  They will miss us!  So Temporary Dog is a perfect solution – she’s extremely sweet and non demanding, and my dad has extensive conversations with her that always result in him giggling.  He talks to my cat a lot, but it’s usually “Stop biting me, cat”, or “It’s not time to eat yet, Mr. Cat”.  His conversations with the dog usually go more like “What is that person doing out there?  Do you see him?  Is that a weed whacker?  Can you see?  Here, let me move this so you can see.  Ok, see him?  What is that?”  So yes, basically the dog has become an accomplice to my dad spying on the neighbors.  Not to mention, Temporary Dog is IN LOVE with my dad.  She sits in her chair and gazes at him.  When he sits on a couch, she lays next to him, upside down, with her head on his lap.  And when I say the dog has her own chair, really, she has about three of them.  Any chair that used to be my mom’s now belongs to Temporary Dog.  We have our priorities.  

 

The problem for now is that my beautiful baby Squishy Kitty, who is the epitome of grace and hospitality, hates Temporary Dog.  TD will be lying in the living room, and my cat will walk in and hiss at her, and then walk away as if the dog had done something horrible.  Squishy places herself in front of the dog’s bowl of food, and the poor dog is so scared of her, she just sits from a distance until my cat leaves and lets her eat.  There is the occasional bitch slap on behalf of Squishy, but usually not too bad.  The dog reacts with a mild interest and not much else.  One time my mom and I came home later than usual, well past my dad’s designated bedtime (10pm exactly), and found him sitting in his chair with a horrified look on his face.  “Oh my gosh,” we said.  “Are you ok?”  His exact words were “Dog.  Cat.  Terrible fight.  I can’t talk about it” and he went straight upstairs to bed.  The “terrible fight” turned out to be my cat hissing and making crazy kitty noises, and then finally going bat shit and leaping towards the dog, and the dog just sort of tried to play, and then backed away.  

 

This is the very sad part.  Temporary Dog is used to living in chaos – kids, cats, kittens, and other dogs.  She has no concept that a cat wouldn’t like her.  And after 6 weeks, she STILL has no concept that the cat doesn’t like her.  At least Squishy is toning it down a little and not attacking, just hissing and growling.  

 

We assumed Temporary Dog misses her puppy friend, and cats who let her chase them, so we’ve been trying to get neighbors to come over for playdates.  Neighbors dogs, that is.  Beatrice across the street came over a few times.  Beatrice LOVES chasing a tennis ball.  She will chase it until she drops over dead.  Temporary Dog does not understand the concept of chasing a ball, all she knows is “Chase Dog”.  So Beatrice chases the ball, and Temporary Dog chases Beatrice.  Once Temporary Dog realizes Beatrice isn’t playing the right game, Temporary Dog gets bored.  

 

My parents and I have both made asses of ourselves trying to show Temporary Dog how to chase a ball.  She sits nicely on the patio while we throw and fetch a tennis ball.  My mom is getting pretty damn good at it – I think I’m going to train her on frisbee next.  

 

So, cheers to Temporary Dog and everyone keep up the mantra, “Let Temporary Dog become Permanent Dog”, because we love her and don’t want her to leave!

You Gotta Know When to Hold ‘em, Know When to Fold ‘em, and Know When to Stand in a Corner and Rock Until Your Mother Finds You

My mom, in addition to having an online pogo.com addiction, is an avid gambler.  It’s not her fault.  First of all, she’s Irish.  She’s prone to drinking and gambling, anyway.  But also, I swear the woman has the attention span of a gnat, and if she’s not actively doing something all the time, she gets bored out of her mind and either annoys my dad, takes a nap, or goes gambling.  Or she redecorates the house, which is a blog post unto itself.

This time she decided to go to a casino.  From where I live, you have to drive anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours to get to a casino.  My mom goes about 5-6 times a month.  She also has crazy friends who encourage her to do this.  They will call on a random Tuesday afternoon and say “We’re leaving in 5 minutes, want to come?” and of course, my mom says yes.

So the other day, she was bored.  I happened to be home because AJ had plans with his dad.  My mom asked if I wanted to go to a casino with her and she would give me $100 and it would be Oh So Much Fun and we could bond and all this.  We both know that if we spend more than 15 minutes in the same room, we’re likely to try to kill each other.  But I couldn’t say no to this obvious attempt to bond with me, so off I went.

My mom could drive for 15 hours in a row and not get bored.  I get bored after 15-30 seconds.  Not literally, though.  Really, my drive time patience is about 20 minutes, and I can’t handle it after that.  So my mom is happily driving and I’m slowly going insane in the passenger seat, fueled by the ginormous iced vanilla latte I was drinking when I knew I shouldn’t drink it.  Coffee doesn’t make me alert or awake, it makes me completely nervous and spazzy.  Not a good choice for a long car ride.

We both lived, and made it to the casino.  My mom hands me some cash, says “These machines will only hit the jackpot when the jackpot is above $3,000, so we have to come back, because it’s close.”  Then we went our separate ways.  I found penny machines that featured animals doing funny things, and went through $100 in about 25 minutes.  I wandered around looking for my mom and couldn’t find her.  I also failed to realize that in the state the casino is in, you can smoke inside.  I’m not used to that anymore, so I am pretty sure I caught lung cancer while I was there.

After wandering for about 30 minutes, I got nervous, because I hate it when I can’t find someone and I feel that they should know I’m looking for them and make an effort to be found.  Plus, there was the coffee, so I was heading straight for a full out panic attack.  That’s when I saw the buffet.  I thought, hey, I really like eating.  My mom knows I like eating.  If I go there, not only can I eat, but my mom will find me because she knows that I will be where the food is.  So I go to the buffet, text AJ to make sure that I can, in fact, eat as much of whatever I want while I’m there, and I get my mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese and some other form of potato and sit down.

15 minutes later, my mom had not found me, and I wanted more food.  Specifically, I wanted the Glorious Island of Desserts.  I was allowed to take as many of those as I wanted, too.  But I didn’t know what I was supposed to do – leave my stuff at my table and go get desserts?  Wait for my mom and have her watch my stuff while I go get desserts?  Wait for someone to tell me what to do next?  All of this uncertainty added to the panic, and I sat at my table and rocked for another half an hour.  No one found me and no one told me what to do.

Then I hear over the intercom, “Darcy Lindner smoshmooshfoopdippitydoo”.  All I recognized was my name, I had no idea what they said.  So I froze in terror.  If I leave to go ask someone at some sort of desk what they just said, I may not get my desserts.  If I don’t leave, I may never find my mom.  I sat frozen for another 15 minutes.  I finally grabbed my purse, got up and ran to the big main atrium lobby thing, and I stood there and rocked in a very open space for another 20 minutes.  FINALLY, my mom comes out of the abyss of smoky slot machines and we reunited.

I expressed my concern over not getting dessert, so we went back to the buffet and my mom got food and I told the waitress what happened and that I really, really wanted dessert(s), and she said “Go ahead honey, you’re fine”.  That was all it freaking took.  I could have walked in 8 times and just taken all the desserts I wanted.

After my dessert consumption, my mom deemed it time to go to the “Triple Diamond” machines, because the jackpot was over $3,000.  We had to actually hover behind people who were already at the machines, that’s how crazy people were about these things.  We both got machines and my mom gave me another $80 and we were then going to win the jackpot.  It took THREE HOURS to go through all our money, because we kept winning more.  I was sitting next to a lady who was drinking, and very funny, and she smelled good because she was wearing Clinique Happy.  So she talked to me and I responded sometimes, and then my chair made a really loud noise.  I said “Crap, I think I’m breaking the chair” and she said “Honey, don’t, because I’m not picking your ass up off the floor” and then she smacked my arm and laughed.  I laughed, too, because it was funny.  She turned out to be an avid arm smacker, and then her family would come over and she would say “I keep hitting this girl!”.  Then, a guy 3 seats to my left won the stupid jackpot, all my time was wasted, I was bored and bleary eyed from staring at this machine, and I had lung cancer.  Thankfully, it was time to leave.

That was my adventure at a casino.  The end.

Damn it, I AM funny.

Do you see those people in the picture? They are laughing, and they are laughing because they think I am extremely funny. Actually, no, I have no idea what they are laughing at, I just found that picture on Google images. I’ll probably get sued for copyright infringement or something. But here’s my point – I posted on Facebook and said “I am taking applications for someone to take me on a ride on a motorcycle. Some things to consider: I outweigh you, I have a big butt, and I don’t want to flatten someone or their motorcycle, so you know, you’d need to be driving something big and hard core. And…go.” The lovely Ann Margaret Donato replied with “u r sooooooo freakin funny!” and I thought, hey, I am. I can be funny sometimes. And that, after all this time, is what finally got my ass motivated to write a blog post.

First off, HELLO to Kim and Michael (for the love of God, NOT MIKE) who I met at Flour and are hopefully reading this right now. Let me tell you about these two – we go way back. AJ and I were sitting at the bar of Flour, an Italian restaurant, stalking our friend Will, who is a bartender. Michael and Kim sat down next to us and proceeded to order Arugula. It’s possible they ate something else, or that there was something WITH the Arugula, but mostly I just know that they were eating a lot of Arugula. I actually think there was a pizza underneath the Arugula. I hate Arugula, just for the record. So that’s pretty much my relationship with them, and exactly how deep our relationship goes. I did find out that in their youth, they were forced to collect dandelions and eat them, which may explain some of their obsession with leafy green things in their adult lives. But they were nice and they were super fun, despite Michael accusing me of being 22 and loving Twilight (neither of those tidbits are true) so I want them to read my blog and say “HEY! There are our names!” and then go hang out with me and AJ at Flour again, because no one else really likes to hang out with us once they know us well enough. We usually have two, three visits with people before we never hear from them again. I mean, yes, I tend to drool and I sometimes shout things and interrupt an actual conversation because I wasn’t paying attention to it and I thought of something that I just REALLY wanted to say, and from what I’ve been told, that habit is off putting. I also comment on people’s food while they are eating it, and usually the comments are along the lines of “Ew, do you know that looks like what came out of an infection I had on my stomach once?”, and again, I’ve been told that is not something that makes people want to talk to me.

Back to the topic – and I’m not exactly sure what it was – check out the quotes section for some new quotes from Arugula night at Flour. Oh, hey, while you’re at it, check out the links page for some new links, too.

So anyway, I hate Chelsea Handler because she really makes me uncomfortable, and I love Lea Michele because she’s pretty and sings really well. Both of them are trying to get horse carriage rides in NYC outlawed because horses don’t belong in the middle of New York City pulling lazy people’s butts around for fun. I’ve been signing online petitions, and I have no idea if they are legit or not, to help them outlaw the horsey rides. I don’t ride horses. I love looking at horses, petting horses and all that, but I won’t get up on a horse because, similar to my feelings about potentially flattening someone’s motorcycle, I’d really hate to flatten a horse. I also really like feeding things to horses because they eat funny. I try feeding things to my cat, but she actually won’t eat most human food. She licks my yogurt spoon (and then yes, I continue using the spoon), and she licks peanut butter from my toast (and yes, I continue eating the toast), but it’s not like a horse where you can take a carrot and the horse sort of sucks it into his mouth, crunching it the whole way.

Oh hey, that “Book Talk” section – seriously, that’s going to be interactive at some point. AJ said he’d make it happen. There’s going to be some serious damn book talking going on here at some point.

I’m going to go play Snoopy’s Street Fair on my iPad now, because, hey, priorities. Hopefully this won’t be the last time you hear from me for another year.

Yoga, Me and Gravity

P90X is dead to me. I was not meant to do it. God himself tried to give me warning signs, and I ignored them.

I have been trying the yoga part of it. Well, not the DVDs, but The Boy shows me how. I’m getting mildly bendier, but any of the ones that require balance do not work in my world. I just fall down, that’s all there is to it. I have created an art form out of falling. I fall on my ass, I fall on my side, I fall on my face – I have even come to the point where I can sense I am about to fall (which is basically any time I’m standing up), and rather than being able to stop myself from falling, I have been shouting random words that mean “I am falling. Someone please stop me”. Then I hit the ground, and there is usually a nice “wumph” sound to it. The “wumph” would be all the air coming out of my lungs as I hit the ground. So one example was “SHIT…wumph”. Another was “NO NO NO…wumph”. The Boy tried to get me to start slowly. “Lift one foot off the ground, not high, and just stand there”, he said. The minute my foot came off the ground my arms started flailing, I started jutting out my hips in spastic ways, and eventually – you guessed it – I fell. This is all evidence that I have no clue where my body parts are at any given time, and if I am aware of their location, I am completely unable to control them in any way.

Then The Boy, who is not only doing P90X religiously, but has added in “Insanity Asylum”, which is just what it sounds like, and DVDs on Krav Maga and Jiu Jitsu, or as I like to call it, Ju Ju Bees. If you are not familiar with this form of martial arts, You Tube it. It is sweaty men, rolling on the floor, clinging to each other and occasionally sitting on each other’s behinds in a way I can only describe as “extremely suggestive”. However, these people can kill you. My advice is to not tell them they look gay. Anyway, I’m back to being The Training Partner, but now I wear enormous boxing gloves. For some reason I thought wearing these gloves would protect the bone on bone impact that happens when he says “Ok, punch me” and I do, and he blocks me with his bony arm. The gloves don’t help, but it makes it freaking hilarious when he does not succeed in blocking me and I punch him in the head with an enormous boxing glove. Plus, they are really fun to wear. I would also like a helmet and I have decided that August is Helmet Month. If I do not have one by the end of August, I am going to protest.

I actually did not mean for this blog to become about food and losing weight. I chose “myfoodisproblematic” because it is a line from one of my favorite tv shows. However, I just talked about exercise and now I’m going to talk about food. I came home at 2am from The Boy’s house with white, sticky goo all over my shirt, mouth and hands. GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER. I stopped at Walgreens and got Krispy Kreme donuts. I said “I’ll eat one donut, because I really want a donut right now”. Partially due to my excessive need to do things in a particular way, and partly due to the fact that I am a gluttonous whore, I ate more than one donut. We do not need to go into details, here. Suffice to say, I think there are donuts wrapped around my heart trying to kill me right now. And this is actually how I visualize the human body working. You eat something healthy, and your insides turn all pink and things flow smoothly and there are little people sweeping out dust and singing. You eat something bad, and it doesn’t even go down to your stomach, it immediately wraps itself around your heart. I have drawn a diagram to show what I mean.

So whether I’m shoving Krispy Kreme donuts in my face, or a cheeseburger, or something else encased in grease and fat, this is what I imagine happens. Then I start to breathe funny. Like, I can’t breathe. Logically I realize I’m panicking over the fact that I think I’m about to have a heart attack, but illogically, it is the donut wrapped around my heart causing me to not be able to breathe.

I’ll do yoga again tomorrow. I’ll fall some more. I’ll probably eat something, or many somethings, that I should not eat. And that will be just another day.

And since I figured out how to draw a picture and get it on here, here is a picture of a moose:

Oh, and I’m staying up till 6am to try to get into freaking http://www.pottermore.com and if I don’t, I am going to be MAD!

Thank you and goodnight.

I Do Not Like The Cone of Shame

Well, here I am. Here’s the thing – it’s not that I STOPPED P90X, it’s that I had to take a temporary leave of absence from it. It’s still my bitch, make no mistake about it. I am a powerhouse. Except that in real life, outside of my brain, I am not a powerhouse, I am an uncoordinated, clutzy person who does not know what various parts of her body are doing at any given time.

You see, it’s like this….I have deformed wrist bones. This is going somewhere and is relevant, I promise. It’s called Madelung’s Deformity, and it actually exists outside of my head and in the medical world. It’s not just me being a hypochondriac. You can Google it if you want, but the bottom line is, it appears (usually) in females in their late teens. That is when I started having issues holding a violin. The doctor said “It’s tendinitis!” and treated me for that. It never went away, so you know, this is me we’re talking about, I quit playing the violin altogether. Years went by, and I decided to join a karate class. In this class, I was forced against my will to do push ups. I can tell you the exact moment my wrists went bad and never came back – I woke up the day of my karate class and my wrists hurt. I went to the karate class, did push ups on my knuckles because I couldn’t bend my wrists, and my wrists hurt. It never stopped after that. On any given day my pain level is somewhere between “a lot of pain” and “intolerable, incessant, no relief, I want to cut my arms off” pain. I’ve become used to “a lot of pain” and I consider that my normal state. But when it goes beyond that, it can get really bad. I had wrist surgery on both wrists several years ago, but it did not do anything. The doctor did not expect it to. The only actual cure for Madelung’s Deformity is a pretty extreme surgery that doctors will only do in the most severe of cases, which mine is not. So I live with pain.

This is where it applies to P90X – remember way back to the blog I wrote about faceplanting when I tried to grab my ankle with my hand? Well, as you may recall, at the last minute I realized I was careening out of control towards the floor, and I stuck my hands out to catch myself. It hurt. At the time I thought, this isn’t so bad. But it IS that bad. My wrists have been extremely bad since then. And for those of you who have chronic pain, you may be aware of the fatigue, crankiness and lack of interest in anything that goes along with the pain.

I made a valiant effort – I brought the DVD from the Boy’s house to my house. And then I fell asleep on the couch snuggling my cat. The Boy came over and we did Krav Maga together, which was super fun for me, but not for him. Apparently I make a very bad training partner. You are supposed to NOT hit when you are doing the moves. I hit. I hit hard. Saying “In slow motion, without actually hitting me” means the same as “I’m putting a chocolate bar in front of you, don’t eat it” to me. It is completely meaningless and irrelevant. Put your hands around my neck, I’m going to do the full attack back on you, that’s all there is to it. At least after I’ve hit you, I stop really fast and get a big surprised look on my face and say “OHMYGOSH I’m so sorry!”, but somehow, I don’t think that made up for punching the Boy in the Man Bits several times. What’s worse is that I can never remember the actual moves, so I start with the right thing, and end by punching, kicking and biting whatever body parts I can reach. I spazz out. My defense is either duck and cover, or completely spazz out on a person. I mean, really, you try doing a standard martial arts move against someone who is flinging their limbs at you in all different directions, and biting you every time you come close. It just isn’t going to happen.

I also find it hard to work with the standard “training” method in martial arts. “You stand here, and I’ll stand here. Now put your hands around my neck. No, not like that, like this. Ok, now I will defend myself”. That doesn’t happen in real life! “Hi, I’ll be your attacker today. If you’d just turn to your side, I’ll place my hands around your neck now. Ready?” So when it’s my turn to attack, I run full force, in spazz mode, and attack. Beat that, Jackie Chan.

So Krav Maga, hey, that’s exercise! It also creates fun new ways for me to hit the floor at full force.

All this is to say, I AM IN PAIN! My wrists are beyond tolerable and I can’t do a thing about it. I went to pee at work the other day, and I pulled my jeans down and pinched a nerve in my neck. I can not even pee without adult supervision.

I am not going to stop P90X, like I said. I’m going to do it again. But I will be doing it sporadically and very, very carefully…..who am I kidding? This is why I am always injured, I don’t do anything “carefully”. I run into things head first and at full force, absolutely convinced I can do whatever physical feat I am attempting. My brain can not conceive that my body is completely incapable of even walking a straight line, let alone balancing on one foot. Oh, and the Boy tried teaching me some of the yoga parts of it – I might actually let him video tape me doing it sometime, that’s how funny it was. Literally, 1 second standing on one foot, and I’m down. Sometimes I’m not just down, but pitching forward face first.

To add to all of this, my reputation for injuring myself/getting poisoned/getting deathly ill is so great that when I didn’t post a blog on my third P90X day, my super awesome friend called and asked if I was still alive, or if I was in the hospital because I injured something. That almost made my epic failure worth it!

On a completely unrelated note, a customer came into my store yesterday, looked straight at me while a male employee was right behind me, and said “I’d like to see a male employee”. This man, to me, looked like a mailman. He was not a mailman. I sincerely thought he meant “mail” employee, like, someone who handles the mail. So I said “Do you mean m-a-i-l or m-a-l-e?” and he glared at me. Thankfully, the male employee behind me stepped in, and I stepped to the side. It turns out the guy had naughty books to sell and he didn’t think he should expose me to things of that nature. I’m not going to lie, I don’t want me exposed to that, either. There’s a reason we have a Not Rated D for Darcy rating. So Male Employee #1 reassured the guy that his buy would get done, but that he was going on break, so he’d pass it off to another employee. Here is where the customer, Naughty Book Man, glared at me again and said “Not her”. Male Employee #2 was behind our second counter, doing his best to pretend he didn’t hear anything that was going on. Male Employee #1 summoned him to do the buy, with much protesting from #2. I will also add that Male Employee #2 is related to me and rather than having mercy on my innocent mind, wanted to traumatize me by forcing me to do the buy. I think my next blog will be all about him. He is more accident prone and clutzy than I am, earning him names such as Thumbs and Crash, and he also got bit by a sea mutant of some sort in a lake. I have never been bit by a sea mutant. He is still allowed to bring in shipment, though, and I have been forbidden under threat of death never to touch shipment because I am dangerous to myself and others.

I Am Not Graceful

Day two of P90X. I understand why so many people quit during the “jumping” program. Today I hopped around and leaped for an hour. And I did squats. A lotta squats.

I believe I’ve mentioned how very Not Bendy I am, yes? Yes. Try to imagine a Not Bendy person jumping in the air and bending their legs. It just doesn’t happen. I tried again to analyze what my problem was. Am I too fat? Am I too short? Am I just really uncoordinated? Why don’t my legs bend? I ruled out “I’m too fat” because I know plenty of Bendy fat people, so that just can’t be it. I was pretty well convinced that I was just too short to bend, but I know people who are shorter than I am, and they are Bendy. The question plagued me throughout this bend intensive workout – why the HELL am I not bending? I can squat, so I know my knees bend that way. But I can’t bring my leg up and bend my knee, I can’t stick my leg out straight without my knee twisting in funny ways, and I can’t jump and pull my legs up towards me while I’m in the air. That last part could just be a matter of the space-time continuum. I have a vertical of roughly 1.48 inches, so my “air time” is about .000003 seconds. No one could bend in that amount of time and still get their feet back on the floor to land. It’s just not possible.

In particular, the move I can not do is pictured above. EVERYONE I know can do this – fat, skinny, short, tall, employed, unemployed, etc. Everyone. I can not do this move. I can not even come close to doing this move. The Boy attempted to help me do this move and pushed my ankle towards my hand until I was just barely able to grab it. When he let go, I became gravity’s bitch and I tipped, unable to connect my brain to my body to stop myself. Imagine in slow motion, a person grabbing (sort of) their ankle as they tip to the side. At the last possible second, that person realizes she needs to catch herself before hitting the floor face first. Then imagine that person landing on her wrists, bouncing, skidding forward and rolling over. That was me. And that was not the only time I tipped over during this workout, either. But the tipping I understand, I am not a balanced person. I tip over when I’m standing upright and not moving. I tip over if I turn my head too fast. So that was ok. It was the ankle holding that bothered me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no knees. I just don’t have them. I have something that is in their place, but they do not function as regular knees do. They are a trick to make me believe I have knees when really, there is a mass of paper towels and duct tape under my skin in an attempt to form a knee-looking structure that actually isn’t functional. And it’s a bad job at that, my knees don’t even look like knees. If I took pictures of my nose, my elbows, my foot, my fingers – you’d be able to identify all those bits. If I showed you a picture of my knees, you’d have no idea what you were looking at. “What is that?” you’d say. “My knees”, I would reply. Then you would double over in convulsive laughter at my non-functioning, weird looking, paper towel and duct tape knees. You would probably look at the picture again and say “Ok, really, is that a white meat turkey burger, or possibly cauliflower that is very poorly cooked?” (that was to emphasize the whiteness of my legs).

As I was driving home (in pain) from my hour of non stop squatting, leaping and jumping, I thought about other knee activities that I can’t participate in because of my deformity. Step stools. We have them at work. They are a foot or less off the floor. We step on them to reach higher shelves. I actually have to contort my body to step up on one because my vertical lift is less than the height of the stool. My knees aren’t doing their job and bending my leg properly to put it on the stupid stool. I have to twist and sort of hurl my leg up there without the help of knees.

I might set up a donations button on here to pay my way into Knee Freaks R Us and see if I can find others like me, like at a camp or something. They have camp for everything else, why not Knee Freaks? We can all gather around the campfire and sit on old lady chairs so that we don’t have to sit on the ground and potentially have something weird happen to our knees. We can sing songs about mythical knees who become heroes despite their inability to work properly.

Oh, and just for the record – no, I did not do every rep, but yes, I participated in every single jumping/hopping/leaping/squatting activity, and I did it for the entire damn hour. And I moved the entire time, I only sat down at a very desperate point about halfway in, and that was only for about a minute. I will not be defeated!! I stand for Funky Kneed People everywhere!

Nothing Tastes as Good as Being Skinny Feels

I’ve been fat for about 20 years.  In that time, I’ve tried every diet out there and I paid a lot of money to try them.  Weight Watchers at age 15?  Yeah, put me in a room with a bunch of 60 year old women and see how motivating THAT is.  NutriSystem?  Been there done that, and I’ve never experienced such unique forms of intestinal distress in my life.  Jenny Craig – check.  There’s nothing like having to meet with a condescending, never-been-fat skinny girl, who is almost always shorter than me and dressed nicer than me, telling me in a whiny little girl voice that I didn’t lose any weight that week.  Physician’s Weight Loss – I don’t believe anyone there was actually a doctor.  Slim Fast, Dexatrim, Hydroxycut, Green Tea Pills, and several that have since been taken off the market because they killed people – I’m not hard core enough to withstand the insane side effects they all had, almost all having to do with either acting like I was on speed or turning my intestines inside out.  Adderall!  Yay, we have a winner!  I was on Adderall for many years.  Sure, I acted like a completely spazzed out cokehead, and yeah, I sweated profusely even in the dead of winter, but damn, I got a LOT of stuff done.  I credit Adderall with my promotion to assistant manager, actually.  I was superhuman on that stuff.  And I lost the equivalent of an 8 year old child in weight.  But then it stopped working and just made me angry all the time.  No one likes a sweaty, fast, angry person, let me tell you.  But at least I was as skinny as I had been for about 15 years – which was still not skinny, but was less fat.  I maintained that for awhile, until I met my ultimate nemesis…anti-baby pills.  No one mentioned that yeah, you’ll feel great all the time because you won’t be moaning on the floor, doubled over because of cramps…but you’ll gain a pound for every cookie you look at!  This led me to my highest weight of my life.  Then I got pneumonia, thank God, and lost a good 30 pounds and there I have been ever since.

So now I’m trying Weight Watchers online (third time?  fourth?) and P90X (a masochist’s dream) to see what happens.  But you know what?  If anyone says to me “nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels”, I will eat them.  Of COURSE things taste better than being skinny, how do you think I got fat in the first place!?  I was skinny, but damn it, something tasted good.  Like, a lot of things.  I could start naming them for you, but I’ll spare you that list (Hershey bars with a jar of peanut butter, Ben and Jerry’s, fair food).  Ok, I lied about the list, but I did hold back, at least.

So back to the present.  I’m going to attempt to follow my cat’s example and lose weight (that’s right, Sabrina Von Squishy is not as Squishy anymore!).  I have no expectations or goals, and I don’t expect to succeed – I find that starting with zero expectations means I won’t be disappointed if I fail.  But let’s just say I succeed and I become a skinny person.  I am going to dress like a freaking slut.  I’m not even kidding – people will often mistake me for a stripper or a lady of the night, that’s how slutty I’m going to dress.  You know why?  Because skinny people can do that.  If I were TRULY a brave person, I would just dress like that now, but I’m totally not that brave.  Anyway, I’m seeing a lot of leather in my future, and super skimpy tops.  I’ll embarrass everyone I’m with and people will pray for me when they see me because they will think I’m a prostitute or heroin addict.  Skinny People can do whatever they want.

I am looking forward to reaping the benefits of a skinny person.  Going through turnstiles without turning sideways.  Not having to deal with chub rub and replacing jeans every two months when the thighs finally give out (if you aren’t familiar with chub rub, consider yourself lucky).  People will finally stop thinking I’m jolly, because like it or not, not all fat people are jolly.  I am not your fat best friend who is always laughing, got it??  Yeah, I’m always laughing, but that has nothing to do with being your fat best friend!   When I show people to the diet section in my store, and I say “Oh, I tried that one”, I won’t have to give them the “look at me, dumbass” stare when they say “Did it work?”  Well, ok, I’ll actually kind of miss that one.

Why am I telling you all of this, you may wonder?  It’s because I’m going to post a lot about this and my five readers will have the right to heckle me when I fail.  That will be my motivation.  No one likes being heckled, fat or not.

For today, I will tell you about P90X.  It’s an exercise program created by Satan to make skinny people gain muscle and fat people cry.  It’s an hour of non-stop weight lifting, push ups, sit ups, pull ups and God knows what else (I’ve only done the first one so far).  Then you get to add 20 minutes at the end to do crunches and sit ups in positions that cause you to wish you would just snap in half and die.  Positions which, even with the help of the Boy, I could not contort my body in to.  At one point I had my legs sticking out in front of me, off the ground, while I laid on my back, and my arms were pointing in the air.  I just sort of rolled over in slow motion and wasn’t able to do a thing about it.  I just rolled.  I was like Randy in A Christmas Story when he falls over, but he’s so packed tight with winter gear, he just rolls around on the ground and can’t get up.  That was me.

P90X has made me learn that my legs do not function in the same way that other people’s legs do.  Specifically, they do not bend very much, nor do they extend straight out, and they do not come more than 2 inches off the ground no matter what the rest of my body is doing to get them in the air.  It has also made me learn that from the waist up, I could probably kick someone’s ass, but from the waist down, I have the strength and agility of 10 or 12 infants.  It’s made me realize that I have ZERO concept of where my limbs are at any given time.  The man told me to hold my arm straight, and I did.  Until the Boy had to physically move my arm 45 degrees so that it was actually straight.  The man told me to bend to the right and stick out my left hip while doing something with my left arm, and I basically contorted into a pretzel because I am so not coordinated that I had no idea what any part of my body was doing in relation to the other parts.  He told me to bend in half, and I did…until the Boy had to come over and bend me about a foot further, because I wasn’t actually in half.  It also taught me that exercising in jeans and a tee shirt is just plain stupid.  I mean, seriously, jeans?  What the hell?

And if you are wondering how the Weight Watchers is doing (I’ve been on it for a week), let me just say this:  I have 38 “points” to use in a day, and my coffee accounts for 12 of them.  I use THAT much International Delight Vanilla cream.  And no, I will not be giving it up.  Also, they do not recommend eating spoons full of frosting at 2am, but I did that anyway.  Hopefully that part will get a little better.

But I have no expectations that it will.

So It’s a Little Late…New York Part II

Ok, I’ve completely failed at the blogging thing, right? I can admit that, that’s fine. Here’s what happened: When I have a commitment, I am incapable of doing anything at all towards it. For instance, I knew I was going to move home for about a week before I actually did. The very thought of packing in a timely manner freaked me out so badly, all I could do was sit, frozen, and not do anything. I’ve had appointments that if I am not early enough (not late, just not early enough), I will freeze and sit there until the appointment time has passed. So this blog, it was hanging over my head. “Darcy”, it said. “Your five readers want to know about the second half of your trip to New York. Tell them, Darcy. Tell them”. And I froze. I actually, and I am so totally not making this up, avoided the computer I use to write the blog on. If I’m on my laptop, well hey, I CAN’T write in the blog because I don’t have the program on there. So for the past month or whatever it’s been, my lovely iMac in my bedroom has not been touched.

I finally got sick of thinking “Wow, I wish I could sync my iPhone” (again, that only happens on the iMac, not the laptop), and I just sat down and used it. Then I froze and watched You Tube videos for several hours. Now I have finally faced my blog and, with the help of decaf coffee and peanut butter M&Ms, I am writing in my neglected blog.

So that second half of the New York City trip, ready for it? I don’t remember what order things happened in anymore, so this is just a random assortment of the events. I went to see The Lion King. I’ve never seen the movie and I’ve never seen the play. I do not watch animated Disney films because they always kill off an animal and I just can’t handle that. I’ve seen a few, and I’ve seen all the Pixar films, but most classic Disney I have not seen. Anyway, that theater is freaking HUGE. It’s pretty sweet. I decided I didn’t want to scrunch into yet another too small seat with my Uber Hoodie on, so I checked my coat and, consequently, my purse. That meant that once I was seated (45 minutes early), I got thirsty. So I had to go uncheck my purse, get money, and buy a beverage. I sat back down and was joined by a woman and her 6-7 year old daughter. We said hi and all that, but mostly I pretended I was busy doing something on my phone, which had run out of power, so I was actually staring at a blank screen. The show started, and it was super neat. Right up until this freaking HUGE giant elephant came walking down the aisle RIGHT NEXT TO ME. Ok, there were two French men between me and the elephant, but it might as well have been right next to me. Those of you who know me know that my startle reflex is, putting it mildly, sensitive. I got startled. I saw the elephant, grabbed the woman next to me and started crying. I am not even kidding. Ok, it wasn’t all out sobbing, it was just my immediate reaction. I stopped really quickly, I swear! Look at the freaking elephant in the picture on this entry – it was HUGE. But then I needed to take Klonopin, but guess what? My purse was checked. I’m no dummy, and I know myself, so I had multiple Klonopin pills in my pocket, which I promptly took. So the rest of the show was fantastic. At intermission, the woman next to me could NOT stop laughing with (at) me about my reaction. So we became the best of friends and she asked me to watch her daughter while she went to the bathroom. I’m not so great with kids, so I stared at her for a minute and finally said “So do you like it?” and she took it from there. I know where she lives, how old she is, how many siblings she has, all about her parents divorce and her new dad. I could have very easily kidnapped her, but I chose not to, because I don’t like kids and I certainly didn’t want one following me around New York.

One of the days I decided to be in the audience of Dave Letterman’s show. I got my ticket and was told to come back in two hours, and that the bar around the corner has really good food. I went there, and met my…I wouldn’t say ultimate fear…but something I don’t like. There was one seat in the whole place and it was at the bar, right in the middle. I sat there. I was brave. And I must be incredibly trustworthy looking because the guy next to me asked me to watch his briefcase and food while he took a phone call outside. Anyway, I had the best chicken fingers ever in the world there. Most everyone else had many adult beverages. By the time we all got back to the theater, most people were pretty drunk. We were instructed on what to do, how to laugh, what noises we COULD make and what noises we COULD NOT make (WOOOO was one of those noises). We were told that even if we didn’t get a joke, we had to laugh very loudly at it, because there is no laugh track, it just depends on us. So, we had to sit through Paul Schaeffer and his band playing music for a long time and we were forced to clap along with it. To every. Single. Song. Clap clap clap clap. It was horrible. Then finally Dave Letterman came out, and that was just surreal, seeing him that close (I was about four rows back, right in the center). He immediately zoomed in on a kid wearing a Michigan tee shirt, and the kid turned out to be from Germany, so Dave went with that through the entire “pre-show” thing. THEN he went with it through the show! The kid made it into the Top Ten List! It was very funny. Donald Trump was on, and he was such a strange color of orange I wasn’t sure if he was human. Vanessa Hudgens was also on, and she was super pretty and very cute. Then Oh Land (I think that’s how you spell it) performed and it was very strange. All in all, it was very fun.

After that, I wandered from theater to theater to see what kind of tickets I could score, and I think that was the night I saw Billy Elliot.

Oh, I should add, I tried the Wicked lotto every night, and every single night, out of say, 30 tickets, 28 of them were won by Asian people who did not seem to speak English. I was very amused that the actress playing Elphaba (the green witch) was named Teal in real life.

Ok, I’m done for now. I’m still working on figuring out how to make the Book Talk forum interactive.