The MOVE IT! Challenge - Week 2 and 3 - Dec 17-30

Two more weeks of not-brilliant-but-not-atrocious results, after four infections in two weeks. Gah.

Week 2:

Monday - 75 mins
Tuesday - 250 mins
Wednesday - None, jaw is AWFUL
Thursday - 120 mins
Friday - None
Saturday - 150 mins
Sunday - None

Total: 595

Despite not even taking a walk on three of these days, I did quite a lot. It's all that bloody Christmas shopping and walking to and from bus stops.

Week 3:

Monday - 120 mins
Tuesday - 90 mins
Wednesday - 90 mins
Thursday - 90 mins
Friday - None
Saturday - 60 mins
Sunday - None

Total: 450

I'm a little worried that each week has been worse than the last. I'm still averaging a little over an hour of exercise a day (obviously not counting all the walking around the house - I can do that when I get a pedometer, but for now I only count stuff outside or at the gym unless I'm actually working out at home with a routine or a DVD) so perhaps I don't need to worry too much yet. Also, I suppose a person can be expected to be less active when they're sick. But I don't feel like I'm getting enough exercise. I need to step it up next week.

Hopefully next week we'll have a scale for a weigh-in and we can include that data!

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 12 Through 21 - And Just Barely Feeling Alive

Freaking infections.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say the other F word on MFP, so we'll try and keep the language to a minimum, at least until I'm less worried about getting kicked off. But seriously. F that S. Or something. 

The infected jaw hung around for about ten days. The amoxicillin I got for it hung around a lot longer. The ear infection (right ear) that I got the day I came off the amoxicillin has had me deaf, dizzy and in a crapload of pain (although not as much as the jaw), the ear infection (left ear) that feels like it might start up tomorrow doesn't hurt yet but feels full and weird, and the thing that I assume is an abscess that's above the top left molar that I had filled, or maybe root canalled, two years ago, is giving the most disgusting sweet rotten taste in my mouth that I've ever had, and makes me want to keep shoving food in there just to kill the taste.

No, brushing and using mouthwash doesn't work. Two minutes after the Corsodyl  - which is about the strongest one you can get in the UK, and is miles better than Listerine, or so I'm told by both my dentist and my third-year dental student BFF - the taste is back.

Luckily I have an appointment with the dentist on Jan 3rd, so in the absence of any real pain, I think I can hang on till then. Even if the taste makes me feel eulgh.

Oh, and on top of that - there was Christmas to deal with. Right?

Christmas was fine. The family dinner on the 23rd was fine. Christmas Day, just mom and me at home, was fine. Christmas shopping was fine. I'm in that post-infection, post-antibiotic downer place where nothing quite feels right or makes me jump for joy (not to mention the fact that my normal meds aren't working so my muscles are killing me, and I'm constantly swinging between baking and freezing which is enough to get any person down) but nothing went wrong. My family didn't eat each other. Everyone seemed to like their presents. My mom gave me a totally awesome Imperia pasta maker with attachments for ravioli and gnocchi, as well as some books (which I have already read, all 900-some pages; I've stayed in bed a lot since I've been feeling so rotten) and other incidentals. Papa and Stepmama sent me a nice check, with instructions to spend it on something really nice that makes me happy - so as usual, I will spend it on this semester's tuition. I can't help it, I'm horrendously practical, and tuition makes me happy. My brother's family gave me the textbook I need for school this year, which I'm thrilled about - no more working off photocopies. All in all, presents were great. Everything I got is stuff I asked for and can use - candles, writing paper, kitchen equipment. Don't get me wrong, I love it when people buy me pretty things to store away for when I have a place of my own, but I'm starting to run out of places to keep all the boxes of stuff I have. It's really nice to have stuff I can actually use now.

I did some sale shopping, and was fairly restrained, buying things that I NEEDED rather than pretty things that I liked and decided I had to have. Earrings were my one frivolous indulgence - they're sprays of shooting stars on long chains, from Kurt Geiger. There's several more things in the KG store that I'd like, but I'm running out of money. I bought ridiculously beautiful, ridiculously expensive calf-high leather boots from Jones - £75, down from £150, down from some price I don't want to say - and even though they took most of my non-tuition Christmas money AND most of the money I had left in the bank after bills and Christmas shopping, I'm thrilled with them. I haven't had calf-high boots for a decade or more - because of the amount of walking I do, and also probably because of the ballet and cheerleading as a kid and teen, my calf muscles are ridiculous. There's hardly any fat on them, and even when I'm slimmer I look like I'm packing cantaloupes. So I haven't found any boots to fit since I was about 17 - but Jones had a pair that I could ALMOST do up. When I got them home, I panicked for a day and a bit, because they'd weatherproofed them for me and it had made them shrink a bit. I couldn't get the zippers done up at all, and I was a wreck. But then I discovered that I was trying to pull them too far up my legs, and if I let them crinkle a bit at the ankle - which, I'm told, is a perfectly acceptable way to wear boots - they zip just fine. They feel good on, too. I need to write about the boots in detail, because they affect my mental state so much. All I'll say for now is that it's damn good not to have cold, wet feet - here in England it rains all the freaking time, and I've been wandering around with wet feet for two winters now, ever since I started relying on public transport.

I do need to see if I can do some exercises to slim my calves a bit, maybe lengthen the muscles. Or at the very least, stop walking on an incline all the time - years of hiking mountains and cliffsides, followed by years of walking and jogging on a treadmill at a 40-degree incline, are probably as much to blame for my calves as the ballet. :)

I've been under my calorie goal all over Christmas (although I still haven't found the recipes mom used for a couple things on the family dinner day, so I haven't logged them yet) but I've been basically eating crap. I don't eat well the majority of the time anyway - too much sugar and simple carbs, not anywhere near enough protein or fibre -  but over Christmas a lot of it has been sandwiches and junk food. In theory, staying under the calorie goal should make the difference in my weight whether I eat crap or not, but it's not doing my body any good.

I won't know, though, until my scales arrive. I bought some really nice ones from Amazon, and I'm hoping they arrive tomorrow (Monday) - if not, then it'll be after New Years Day.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 8, 9, 10, 11 - And Stuck in Bed

Oy veh. What a week. Monday went reasonably well - I wasn't feeling quite right, so I wasn't very active, but I helped to clean Mom's room and took a walk. And ate several hundred calories of cheese balls, which made me feel like shit, so I've made a mental note not to buy those again.

Monday night my jaw started acting up for the fourth time. I broke the jaw - well, we *think* I broke the jaw - during a difficult tooth extraction six weeks ago. The socket gave me extreme pain for a week, which I stupidly didn't get sorted until five days after the extraction. I recognise that I have a huge problem when it comes to seeking medical help. I do it, I just don't do it quickly enough. I was sick throughout my childhood - I have almost no immune system - and when I got fibromyalgia when I was 12, the stock response that I got from a lot of doctors, a few teachers, and my parents, was that I was either making up the pain and tiredness to get attention, or more likely that I genuinely didn't feel well but was greatly exaggerating it to get off school. It didn't help that the illness was so unpredictable; I might have no energy for a day or a few days or a few weeks, and then I'd perk up and feel almost normal for a while. Things are better now (not perfect, but better); more doctors see fibromyalgia as a legitimate illness, and I've come past the teen years where everything I said was automatically suspect. (Somewhat unfairly, I must say; I was a ridiculously responsible teenager in most respects.) But it's left me with this wait-and-see mentality, where I avoid seeking medical care until I'm sure that a problem is serious enough to bother a doctor (or dentist) about.

Having nearly died fourteen months ago from strep throat that went systemic during the time I was waiting to see (although I was waiting for other reasons then) you'd think I would have learned my lesson. But as my doctor back them told me, even heavy-duty antibiotics can't cure stupidity.

So after the extraction, I didn't see the dentist for five days. Partly because they don't work weekends, partly because I'd never had a tooth extracted and had no idea what degree of pain was normal (the fibromyalgia has also left me with a tendency to think that I'm overexaggerating my pains, although in reality I'm probably understating them. Regardless, I don't have a reliable yardstick for what kind of pain is normal pain and what kind needs to be investigated) but mostly just because I'm an idiot. I kept checking for a dry socket (which I thankfully did not have) but it turned out I had a nasty infection instead. She packed it with antibiotic / anaesthetic gauze, gave me a prescription for metronidazole and sent me home. The metronidazole was harsh on my stomach, but the tooth cleared up. Until the day after I finished the 7-day course, I went to eat a sandwich, opened my mouth a little wider than normal, and screamed in pain. Of course, it was Friday lunchtime and we couldn't get a dentist appointment for love nor money. Tried all day Friday and all day Saturday, by which point my face had swelled up like a chipmunk, and finally got an emergency dentist who said to come in on Sunday morning.

Sunday I woke up and it felt fine. Go figure.

A similar thing happened two other times, both at times when I couldn't get a dentist, both after I opened my mouth to eat solid food. In the normal order of things, I eat small bites, and I don't open my mouth very wide when I'm talking. The only times I open wide are to eat baguettes or burgers or hot dogs (a fairly rare occurrence) or to floss my teeth - which it turned out was what caused the pain to start up again the last three times. I was told not to floss for a couple weeks after the extraction, but what with the jaw pain I haven't been able to floss properly, right to the back, in six weeks, and it's driving me mad.

Luckily the two times before this, the problem righted itself within a day or two, as long as I kept the jaw immobilised. The socket's been oozing pus for weeks, but without any real pain, except for when I pull out bone sequestra (which, I'm sorry to say, are green. Yuck). But then this started up Monday night, just mildly at first, and I thought it would sort itself out...but it didn't.

Tuesday, Mom and I went to the Galleria, a shopping mall in Hatfield (the next town over, and home to my university). We don't have a mall in my town, only high street shops and a couple of outdoor parades, so I'm always happy to get some mall time. It was a bit sad - all the malls around here look pretty empty since the economy tanked - but it still would have been fun if the jaw hadn't totally taken over. I thought that if I went out and distracted myself I'd notice it less, but I actually seemed to notice it MORE. I walked a lot that day - three hours, plus the time walking back and forth between bus stops - so it wasn't a total loss as far as exercise was concerned, even if I did eat McDonalds for lunch. (I eat McDonalds three or four times a year, but boy do I love it.) And I bought a present for my sister, and one for my nephew, and two for Mom, so I only have my little sisters left now. (I saw some things in Kurt Geiger that they'd like, but the problem is actually going out to get them when I'm on the verge of screaming half the time.)

Wednesday and today I slept for the majority of the day. I ate crappy food. I stayed under my calorie count, but both Tuesday and today (Thursday) I went over my fat allowance. Only by 2 or 3 grams each time, but considering that most days I eat between a third and two thirds of my fat allowance - I am not someone who's really into greasy food - it was a bit of a bummer. Oh well, I'll live.

I'm not sure I'll survive the jaw, or the aches in my body from not exercising, but that's another issue. :)

I saw the dentist this morning. She couldn't see a break on the x-ray, but she only did a tooth x-ray instead of a whole head. If the problem continues, I'll have to push for a full head one, but I don't think my reduced fees will cover it and it'll cost me ￡150. Hopefully they'll let me pay in instalments if it comes to that, because any money I get for Christmas has to go to paying next semester's tuition; I only have three weeks left in this semester after we go back after Christmas. I think the next semester starts the first week of February.

She gave me more antibiotics - amoxicillin this time - bringing my total to three courses in two months. Hell. I always feel depressed during a course, and for a couple weeks after, since they seem to mess with my brain chemicals. I've only just got happy again after the last course five weeks ago.

I wish Curt were here. My BFF is in his third year of dentistry at Bristol uni, but he also works full time, drives between Bristol and London on Fridays and Sundays, and has a wife who requires much time and attention. I need him here for moral support and cuddles and to talk me through the medical side of things, but it'd be selfish to tell him that.

On a slightly happier note, mom has volunteered to buy me one of the dresses I want, that have now gone on half-price sale. (The one I really want is not on sale, natch.)

I just have to lose the twenty pounds it'll take for the first and the fifty pounds it'll take to look good in the second and third. :)

Contraband

Because she loves her daughter, and she loves breaking the rules almost as much, my mom spent the last couple days scouting out traders of illegal and restricted substances. Person after person couldn't help her, but for a smile and a Christmas cookie (to be fair, she does have a great smile, and bakes great cookies) they gave up the names of these illicit purveyors. It finally paid off, and she came home triumphant. We are now the happy owners of two packs of old-style, 100-watt, planet-killing lightbulbs.

To compensate, I may have to give up the idea of ever having a dog - according to QI, the carbon footprint of a large-dog owner is equal to that of the driver of a 4x4, although I don't know how much of that is bunk - but it's worth it to see bright light for the first time since August. I feel safe for the first time in four months.

I'm not scared of the dark, per se, because I'm fine in outside dark. I can happily walk the country roads from San Luis to S'Algar in almost pitch-black, with only the stars to guide me. I walk at night in my neighbourhood, in all kinds of weather, including night fog. I'm fine at bonfires, fireworks displays, Halloween parties, séances. But there is something about murky half-light that makes me highly uncomfortable. Since I was a child I've had these nightmares where not much really happens, except that I know that something's after me. I snap on my bedside lamp, and I wonder if it will come on. It does, but the light is dark orange and seems to get darker and redder as the seconds pass. Oddly I am reminded of redshift, and there is this sense in the back of my head that the light is dark and red because I'm moving further and further away from the world. I try to escape the house, because I instinctively know that outside is safer, and I make it outside. Sometimes there are people there, and I cry out to them, asking why everything is so dark and none of the lights are working properly, but they tell me that the lights are the same as they always are. And he's still coming, whoever or whatever is chasing me, and I try to run but even with my best efforts, what should be a sprinter's pace feels like I'm running through chest-high treacle.

I still sleep with the light on. I'm not sure when I started - a couple years before the rape, I think. Definitely before, anyway, although it was at some point after I moved out of Tony's, so sometime between 2002 and 2005. But now I have light. Real light. It's so tempting to just lie there and bathe in it. I've put a 100-watt bulb only in my overhead light, which I use very rarely, but it's enough to know that I can walk over and snap the switch if necessary.

Mom, of course, hates bright lights. If she has to use electric, she likes 40-watt pearl bulbs, although she prefers 20-watt when she can get them. And never overhead lights, but lamps with darkened shades strategically placed around the rooms to cast shadows and create "atmosphere". At last count, we have six small darkened lamps and two uplighters in an eight-room house. I honestly think she'd use the paraffin lamps from Menorca if they wouldn't require such an amount of effort and time to clean. In Menorca, her house had no electricity or running water, and she loved it that way.
But she went to the trouble of buying 100-watt bulbs for me. Even if I'm only to use them in my room.

Oh well, at least not being able to see anywhere in the house - especially the kitchen - gets me out of doing dishes.

The MOVE IT! Challenge - Week 1 - Dec 10-16

After signing up for the MOVE IT! Challenge - a pledge on the forums to do at least 180 minutes of exercise a week - I have my first week's results.

Tah dah!

Monday - 72 mins
Tuesday - 35 mins
Wednesday - 125 mins
Thursday - 45 mins
Friday - 195 mins
Saturday - 40 mins
Sunday - 180 mins

Giving me a grand total of...692 minutes of exercise this week.

I am astounded. I said at the beginning of the week that I could handle 180, but didn't think I could commit to 360. Evidently I'm a lot more active than I think of myself as being. :)

Now, if I don't see at least a pound or two's difference when I finally buy those scales after Christmas, I'm going to be pretty irked! 

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 7 - And Pondering the Crossed Wires Between Head and Heart

I don't make my food diaries public - or at least I haven't yet - for a couple of reasons. The reasons being that a) some days I feel like I'm eating too much, and b) some days I think I'm eating the right amount until I look at the figures and they don't look good.

Today's diary, as of 8pm - although I will go eat something now - reads (for calories):

Goal 2190
Food 787
Exercise 971
Net -184
Remaining 2374

I expect to get yelled at for that (and probably rightly so). Intellectually I know that these numbers are really bad. Viscerally, they feel good. To me, denying yourself things - whether it's food, sleep, companionship, sex, love - has always felt good. I wonder if this is what anorexia is like for most people.

Yes, I have an excellent therapist. Yes, we're working on it.

It's not as simple as that, of course, because having things also feels good, in a different part of my brain and heart. Having food I enjoy, having love, having great sex, having friends - these are all things that fill me with joy. I often feel like I'm a split personality: part of me revels in the world and all it has to offer, and part of me shuns it entirely, much like a hermit in the old days. I'd have done well as a self-flagellating monk in the Middle Ages, or maybe a warrior in ancient Japan.

I have phases of each. Sometimes I love people and brightness and life, and I soak up energy from the city and the world; I feel the vitality around me and I feel rejuvenated by being around others. And then I have periods where the world baffles and angers me, not because of anything that's happened but just because my brain chemistry messes up. When I feel like this, it's not irritation or anger with any kind of focus; it's not because I hate the government or the weather or racism or homophobia or Mitt Romney or the banks or consumerism. I just hate people, hate the fact that human lives take so much maintenance, hate that we have to eat and drink and brush our teeth and exercise and go to work and sleep and clean houses and talk and breathe and then the next day we have to do it all again. When I'm in a phase like this, I find it monstrously unfair that we have to keep eating and sleeping and breathing and we never get a moment's rest to just stop; I hate that people are constantly scurrying around like ants, rushing from Big Important Thing to Big Important Thing and yet never really getting anything done, and I just want to turn myself into a mountain and sit and ignore the ants for the next twenty thousand years.

This split-personality thing has been going on since I was brain damaged in an accident six, nearly seven, years ago. My brain works in funny ways now. I'm not ACTUALLY a split personality; I don't believe that I'm two different people. I just have different personalities that come out at different times.

Or perhaps just one strange, complex personality. :)

For all that, I'm a fairly cheerful person most of the time. When I feel like a mountain, I shut myself in my room and read for a few days, and then I'm okay. It usually happens when I'm recovering from a bad illness or infection, and my serotonin levels - low at the best of times - are running on empty.

As for the food - I know I have to eat, so I do. I don't hate food. I like food. I just feel guilty eating it. Since early childhood, I've felt that things like food and sleep are indulgences rather than necessities - things that you can have on occasion, but that you must always be grateful for, and not take for granted, and ensure that you're not greedy with them because you don't really NEED them. I have no explanation for where this idea came from, although Dr Chris and I are working on it.

With some things in life, I've learned that you have to divorce your intellectual knowledge from your gut feelings. First with the head, then with the heart - but if they're at an impasse, go with the head. My instincts tell me I don't need to eat or sleep - or sometimes even breathe - but my rational brain tells me that I have to. So I do. Not always well, but I do.

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 6 - And Extremely Lazy

I so nearly had a useless day today. I fell asleep at 8am, finally feeling okay after a night of allergies and overactive libido (sorry, TMI) and figured I'd sleep until 12ish...and woke up at 6pm. I guess I needed the sleep. I don't set alarms when I'm recovering from an illness unless I have something pressing to do, and I'm free from now until New Years. 

Oh, not FREE free - I have to clean my room and the bathroom, buy six more presents, wrap all the presents, write another half dozen cards for family, write the rest of mom's cards or she'll forget, bake three or four things, make herbal bath stuff for my sisters, make cough medicine since I just know I'm going to get a cold any day, buy food, and try to arrange a trip to Somerset to see my Da and Stepmama. And I'm contracted for 3 12-hour shifts a week, with possible overtime during the holidays. But none of those things are tied to a particular day or time, and I can arrange my schedule as necessary.

Which is helpful on the days that my inner vampire takes over and I sleep until sundown.

It's funny, when I was a teenager I used to be obsessed with vampires. Particularly the L.J. Smith variety. There was a vamp-rush in teenage literature when I was in primary and secondary school, from about 1992 until 1998. Then nothing until they came back into popularity in the mid-to-late 2000s. I loved them when I was a teen because the brooding tortured soul thing seemed so romantic. Now all I can think is how CONVENIENT it would be to have vampires running all-night gyms and shopping malls. I don't know how things are in the US, but here in St Albans, England, we roll up the sidewalks at 10, aside from bars and clubs. Even restaurants close at 10 or 11. There are superstores you can go to for shopping 24 hours Mon thru Fri - if you have a car - but no libraries or gyms or swimming pools or leisure facilities. London is better, but not by much, and you certainly can't go and exercise at 3am, except for a couple places like Liverpool Street. Winter nocturnals like me find daily chores hard going. Summer is fine, but during the winter I mostly sleep days.

So what was the point of this? Oh, a useless day. Or nearly useless. I was going to clean my room, but the whole thing takes four hours - six if I do the closet - because my allergies won't allow me to do a half-assed job. I was craving crazy amounts of sugar too - I ate eight cookies (little cookies, maybe 30 calories each, but still) and a slice of Pandoro and coffee with sugar and cream. My sugar intake is something I need to seriously look into after Christmas; my daily diaries have been quite pleasing aside from the sugar. On most days I'm eating half of my daily fat and sat fat, and am well under my calories - and no yelling about that, please; after a lifetime of eating disorders I'm doing the best I can on that front, and I can't (financially) afford to eat more protein than I do - but I couldn't figure out why my sugars were so high, even on days when I don't eat cookies or candy, until I learned that a glass of orange juice (with no added sugar) has my RDA of sugar in it, and a carton of probiotic yoghurt puts me right over. I need to do more research on this and find out how much fruit sugars count, because I'm really not happy to give up orange juice unless I have no other choice.

In any case, I'm not changing too much until after Christmas. I want to see what I eat normally, and find out exactly how bad my diet is for a few weeks before I start changing it. And the scales at my gym have disappeared, and I can't afford to buy a pair for home until after Christmas.

Excuses? Perhaps, but still true ones. Losing weight is always easier under optimal conditions, but we make the best of what we have, and what I have is a minimum-wage job and a disabled mother and not enough money to go and spend ￡30 on a decent pair of scales for myself until I've bought presents for everyone else. :)

It's okay, though. I'm still exercising, still trying to get healthy - I'm just not going as hard as I'd like to be.

So yeah, a useless day. I did take a walk this evening for 40 mins. It's 7 Celsius outside - much more comfortable than the -5 that I was walking in on Tuesday - but the damp really gets to my bones, and makes me feel rotten. I don't function well in damp, either warm or cold.

I'm still pretty happy with the overall exercise this week, though. I signed up for the MOVE IT! Challenge - a pledge to do at least 180 minutes of exercise a week, preferably 360 or more - and I thought I wouldn't be able to commit to 360, but I've already managed 512 minutes this week with a day still to go. Running for the bus adds up, I guess.

Recipes - Tuna-Pasta Salad

Tuna-Pasta Salad

WARNING: Must be made the day before you plan to eat it!

Ingredients:

1 can John West tuna chunks in sunflower oil (234)

1/2 medium onion (23)

1/4 cucumber (11)

2 tbsp Hellman's mayonnaise (180)

300g (dry weight) farfalle pasta (1071)

1/4 tsp dried oregano (1)


Method:

1) Cook pasta until as preferred. I like it soft (but not soggy) for this recipe; you may prefer al dente (firm).

2) Drain tuna. Press out as much oil as possible without cutting your fingers on the can.

3) Pick over the tuna to remove the black scaly bits. Only necessary if you're a fusspot like me.

4) Dice veg. Size is not really important, although I usually make 0.5cm x 0.5cm chunks.

5) Chuck everything in a bowl. Mix around.

6) Season with salt and pepper as needed.

7) Cover and leave in fridge overnight. This is very important. It doesn't taste right if you eat it the day you make it. I suppose you could probably get away with making it early morning and eating it for a late dinner, but I'd strongly suggest making the day before.

Serves 4...or one person four times. :) 380 calories a serving (according to My Fitness Pal).

You can reduce calories (a bit) by using tuna in spring water instead of oil and light mayonnaise. I don't like light mayo, and am allergic to most kinds of tuna, which is why I've specified the ones I have. You can use any brand, though.

You can also mess around with ingredient quantities. I often use less pasta and two cans of tuna / twice the veggies if I feel like I need more protein and vitamins. I think it's yummier with less pasta, personally, but it does make it quite a bit more expensive, and I'm on a budget. As this recipe stands, it costs about £4 / $8 - so £1 / $2 a serving.

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 3, 4 and 5 - And In The Weeds

I knew that I'd fall behind with exercise Wed through Fri. After all, I'm behind with everything else. :p Tuesday night / Wednesday morning I didn't sleep well - I'm not sleeping well at all right now, and I'd hoped that eating better and getting more fresh air would help, but so far I'm not seeing a difference - and I spent the morning from 10-2 in bed asleep, after doing paperwork most of the night. Then I started rushing around. I did some Christmas shopping - the only way I can see to get it done this year is to go for an hour or so every day that I can, since I don't have the stamina to stay out for too long - and bought groceries and had my hair cut.

The girl who'd cut my hair three or four times had left the salon, and I didn't get the voicemail message they left me, so I have a new stylist. And I have to say, I'm quite smitten with him. Usually when I get my hair cut I read a book or just close my eyes and enjoy the feeling of having people do things to me, but he made it a very interactive experience. It was fun. And not scary. Usually I find beauticians of all types to be a little intimidating, perhaps because they've made a career out of doing things where I struggle with the basics. But Sam was awesome. I have a total platonicrush. He made me feel pretty. And he taught me how to do some of it for myself - not that I can guarantee I'll remember - and ordered me to bring in any styling aids I have next time I see him, and he'll teach me how to use those too, and "we'll have a girls' night in." His words, not mine.

It's funny, I swing between loving and hating this girl thing. My mom doesn't do hair or makeup, and both my parents have the traditional intellectual's bemused condescension for anything to do with beauty and appearance, so I grew up clueless. I dabbled with hair and makeup in high school, because the other girls did, and I've always liked pretty clothes. But for the most part, I've done the bare minimum that would keep me looking like a girl instead of a northern rocker (I do pluck my eyebrows, or I end up with Liam Gallagher unibrow) or an old English sheepdog.

But now and then someone will do my hair or my makeup or my nails and I'll realise, hey, I do actually have some potential under here. And then I'll think that the girl thing might be fun.

Thursday I had class - the last before Christmas - so I spent the morning baking for the Christmas party. That was a challenge. I made applesauce-spice squares, and had a panic when I couldn't work out why each square appeared to have 200 calories in, until I realised that someone had entered Colman's applesauce in the database as having 3000-some calories in a jar. WTF, even in my eating-disordered brain, where every food other than water and steamed vegetables is trying to give me heart disease, applesauce does not have 3000 calories in a jar. Turns out that the squares are 86 calories each, which is just fine, although the sugar content's high.

I also made chocolate chip cookies, but didn't end up sharing them out since Julia brought the same. (Turned out I COULD have shared them out, since hers were more like shortbread and mine were more like thin crisps, but oh well.)

The party was a bigger challenge than the baking. My cake squares, Julia's cookies, Andrew's Christmas cake and Wensleydale cheese, Sam's battenburgs and jam tarts, Takana's Doritos, Toni's Pringles...yeah. I ate one cookie, half a piece of Christmas cake, one mini battenburg, three Doritos, three Pringles and two pieces of the most beautiful sushi I'd ever seen, prepared by John. I have to say, I'm happy to find that I can eat and enjoy sushi, at least if it's vegetarian. With my immune system, I have to avoid raw fish (actually, I avoid most cooked fish too, I get allergies) and even the vegetarian stuff you find in supermarkets tastes to me of nothing but seaweed. I loathe seaweed. Although I have eaten at Nobu before, and some of their stuff is good. John's sushi, however, was incredible. It looked amazing, too - he'd made pink hearts out of rice that he'd dyed with beetroot juice, and green rice cakes with Christmas trees on top made of mange tout beans. Unfortunately the only picture I got was horribly blurry. I was going to take another one, but then I went to the bathroom and when I came back, most of the sushi was gone. :D

And wasabi...*drools*. There is never enough wasabi in the world.

Today was much like Wednesday, minus the haircut. Groceries. Post office. I ended up writing half a dozen cards and envelopes for a little old Chinese lady who approached me when she was having trouble writing the western letters. This happens more often than you might expect - not necessarily little old Chinese ladies, but strangers needing help. I guess I just look approachable. Anyway, she had ten or twenty words of English, and I have far less than that of either Mandarin or Cantonese - Japanese is the only Asian language I speak at all these days, and I don't speak that very well - but I think we managed. Either that, or some very surprised people are going to be getting Christmas cards.

The plus side of not having access to a car is that you have to walk everywhere, and walking burns calories. The minus side...uh, there are a lot of minus sides. One of which being that it takes forever to get anything done, so you're on the go for much of the day and you still manage to complete far fewer chores than your four-wheeled - or even two-wheeled - friends. Curt often asks me what I've done today, and when I tell him, he's like, "Is that all?" Uh, yeah. It's a 5 1/2 or 6-hour round trip to go to my 2-hour class. It's usually an hour each way, 45 mins minimum, just to get to the gym.

Another minus is that in the winter, your feet constantly feel like they're about to drop off. I need to buy boots, but it's taking me forever to save up the money.

Hopefully I can get back to the gym tomorrow - even with having to get there and back, the thought of running in a warm, bright room is much more tempting than walking for an hour or two outside.

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 2 - And Trying Not to Panic

No gym today - my work schedule is keeping me up nights and then I sleep from 10am until about 4, sometimes later. 6 hours is really not enough sleep for me, but it's all I can justify taking. I did walk briskly - almost a jog - for 35 minutes, although that was sort of by default; mom borrowed and misplaced the NYPD hoodie I wear to run, and when I went to the garage I had to wear the lightweight cotton spring / autumn one - not nearly warm enough when it's -5 Celsius.

There won't be any gym tomorrow or Thursday either; tomorrow I have to go to the post office, buy Christmas presents, get my hair cut and bake something for the class party we're having Thursday. Fibromyalgia is a bitch. When you have quite a nasty version of it, the way I do, it's often all you can do to get the necessary things done, and a lot falls by the wayside. You have to prioritise. In my case, my exercise schedule and my social life have been smashed to smithereens. If you have six things to do and only enough energy to do three of them, your energy goes on things like looking after mom and bathing and grocery shopping and school, and the stuff like exercise and dating and keeping in touch with friends disappears. I don't really have many friends anymore. They all vanished when I was dying last year. I just didn't have any time or energy to offer them - it all went on taking care of mom and staying alive.

I spent a miserable day today staring at nutrition labels. I used to go by the mantra that if it needs an ingredient and nutrition label, I probably don't want to be eating it, but that was back when only processed foods were labeled. These days, everything has labels, so I actually have to read them.

Early in the morning I discovered that the pizza I like to eat once a week or so - my main food indulgence - contained nearly four thousand calories in a pack. Four thousand! For cheese, flour, eggs, butter and marinara sauce! Even a mouthful would have more calories than I like to eat in a MEAL. Pizza had to go. (I didn't actually throw it out; I've been poor my whole life and still can't bear the thought of throwing food away, but I did put it in a bag to offer to the neighbours tomorrow.)

Tonight I was struck down by killer PMS - making this the second time in five weeks, after almost six years of my mirena coil making periods almost nonexistent; clearly the hormone has now run out - and found myself staring mournfully into the freezer to see if there was some chicken or something I could oven-bake. We're almost out of food stores in the house, so no chicken. On the plus side, when I looked at the pizza box again I realised that tiredness and stupidity earlier had caused me to read the kJ instead of the calories, and that there were 800 kCal in a pack rather than nearly 4000. At 800 calories, it's still not a food I can eat often, but I don't have to ban it from the house upon pain of death either.

I cried. I blame the PMS, since I am not aware of ever having cried about food before. Then I ate some pizza.

My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 1 - And Already Floundering

Sometimes you need a thing in black and white in front of you if you're going to believe it at all.

I joined My Fitness Pal yesterday, after the shocking discovery that my Christmas skirt - which previously needed to be pinned to stop it falling down - wouldn't zip up. It's supposed to be a good site. It's set out well, and it's easy to enter your food and exercise either on the site or the iPhone app (and I assume android, BB and tablet apps), and track your progress. In fact, I'd say it's a brilliant site.

Except that I'm flummoxed by what it's telling me.

I have it right there in front of me. At my weight, assuming I have a normal metabolic rate, I need to eat 2190 calories. I don't know if this is to maintain my weight, or to lose a pound a week (my goal) or what; it certainly can't be to stay alive.

In one (short) gym session - walking to the gym, 25 minutes of various cardio (each bit of which I put in individually: 10 minutes of walking at 4.5 mph, another 5 minutes of walking interspersed with jogging 7.5 mph, 7 minutes on the crosstrainer, resistance 8 at 10 rpm), 3 minutes of cool-down walking), getting home from the gym - I burned off 525 calories. That's a baby-step session, the kind I do in the first week back after being sick in bed. And it's a low estimate for calories, because I couldn't input the 15 minutes of stretches, or the fact that the first 10 minutes of walking was on a 40-degree incline.

If I eat the sandwich and fruit that I got for dinner - which I'm currently not hungry for - I will have eaten 705 calories today, netting me +180. The app is telling me that this means I'm running at a 2010-calorie deficit.

I'll admit I don't understand this calorie thing. I was always told, stay under a thousand and burn off more than you put in. I've only burned 525, so I still have 180 more to burn if I'm just to break even, right? But now I'm told that bodies burn off 1000-2000, depending on weight, just to keep the blood pumping and organs working. I'm not sure if you're supposed to figure that into your output or not.

The site seems very sure that I'm running at a deficit, but if that's happening - and this is not an average, but also not an unusual day, and I don't think I eat much more than 1000, occasionally 1200, on most days - then I don't understand why I'm not thin. Half the people I talk to talk about starvation mode, and the other half say it's a myth.

I've never believed it myself, but considering that I eat less than a thousand and currently weigh 264 lbs, maybe there's something to it.

I get that I have an eating disorder. I've had it 23 years. I understand that. The fact that 700 calories a day seems normal to me is proof of that. It'd be easier if the world would agree on whether I need to eat more or eat less in order to lose weight, but whatever, that's not the world's responsibility. It's my responsibility.

I dunno, I guess I need to talk to a dietician. And to Hot Personal Trainer Guy - who I'm not dating, but have occasional liaisons with - and see if he can help me set up a better exercise regime that'll get my metabolic rate up. I've been doing the interval thing - walking with brief intervals of running - because it's supposed to increase your metabolism, and I'll get back to weights in a week or so, but I need something else.

Sigh. It's a long road. I think I'm hungry, but then I've thought that I'm hungry since I was five. I don't even know what's real and what's in my head nowadays.

Edit: I ate two chicken fajitas and the bag of grapes I bought, and two pieces of puff pastry with cream and jam (why did I start this thing two weeks before Christmas?!) but not the melon or the sandwich. It's now 1.40am, and I've realised that the site will automatically add anything after midnight to the next day's food, so I'll have to consider a day to be from midnight to midnight rather than bedtime to bedtime the way I've previously done. Anyway, I had fajitas, grapes and napoleons for dinner, bringing the day's calories to 1036 - meaning I'm running 1679 behind.

I guess I need to go look at sugars, general carbs, fats and proteins now.

This whole thing is overwhelming.

Christmas Recipes - Muddy Orgasm (Sati's Christmas Cocktails)

A signature cocktail from my bartending days. Sorry there's no photos - my cupboard is bare, and I don't have anyone to buy alcohol for so it seems silly to waste the money. I'll add a picture in the future if I remember.

Ingredients*:

1 shot vodka
1 shot amaretto / disaronno
1 shot Kahlua
2 shots Baileys
Double or single cream
Cinnamon or powdered chocolate

Equipment:

1 glass, any size (if larger than 250ml, you'll need to scale up)
1 cocktail shaker (optional)
2 tablespoons
1 straw (optional)

Method:

1) Measure 1 shot each of vodka, amaretto and Kahlua and mix well using cocktail shaker. Decant into your glass.

2) Measure out 2 shots of Baileys. Holding a cold, clean, dry tablespoon above the glass (but as far inside as you can get without touching the contents), gently pour the Baileys over the mixed spirits. If you do this gently enough, you'll end up with two distinct layers of colour.

3) Repeat step 2, using second tablespoon (cold, clean, dry) and cream until the glass is as full as you wish. You should now have three layers, going from darkest (bottom) to lightest (top).

4) Dust with cinnamon or powdered chocolate.

5) Mix if around you want, now that you've presented it nicely. Or don't. I personally like the three separate tastes.

6) Get extremely merry and drunk so you don't worry about the fact that you just consumed a third of your day's calorie ration, give or take.

You're welcome. Merry Christmas.

*Substitutions: other cream liqueurs work in the place of Baileys - Amarula gives it a nice fruity twist. Tia Maria or gingerbread syrup can replace Kahlua - I make one with Amarula and gingerbread syrup called a Frosty Orgasm. :) Vodka can be left out, although I prefer to include it.

Can You Burn Bridges Without Ending Up Covered In Ashes?

Last night, I deleted my ex's phone number from my phone, and all of the messages he'd sent me over the past year.

I thought this would feel better than it actually did. Other women, the ones who are into symbolic gestures - which I am not, and I'm not judging, it's just not my thing - have spoken of how good it feels to finally delete the messages, or burn the photos, or say goodbye in some other final way. They talk about catharsis and closure and all those things. It's never had that kind of effect on me. Instead of feeling free, or triumphant, or empowered, burning ties to the past - literally or metaphorically - just makes me sad.

I still have to do it sometimes. I just don't hold a party afterward.

I went to sleep sad, but I had a nice dream, about a man who made me feel the way he did during the best times, a man whose face I couldn't see.

Interestingly enough, he texted me today. The ex, not the dream man. I hadn't talked to him properly in a month or so, since we met up when he was on a business trip. For the last month I've been wondering if things are over - either "over again" (because there have been breakups, some of which lasted more than a year) or "over totally" - but never quite wanting to ask. Strange that he would pick today to get in touch. It's not like I told him I was deleting him; that falls under the scope of grand gestures for me.

It was wonderful. He was funny and goofy and flirty and all the things that he was in the good times, the times that I always miss. We flirted. He wanted to see me. I wondered if this was an eleventh-hour reprieve. God's will, or the universe gently directing my plans. I do believe in that stuff, you know. I feel the hand of - something, call it God or fate or whatever you like - in many of the things I do. There've been so many things in my life that feel like too close of a call to be coincidence. Like the time that I was supposed to be on one of the trains that exploded during the London bombings in July '05, but I'd been fighting with the friend I was going to meet - a totally stupid fight that came out of nowhere, with both of us acting totally out of character - so I stayed home instead.

I digress. As ever.

So we talked. It was wonderful. I remembered how much I missed him, and I said so. He said he wanted me in his bed. I said I wanted to be there, but with conditions. We both put our cards on the table, and said what we wanted from each other.

I was willing to agree to his terms.

He was not.

Everyone has the right to turn down an offer that doesn't suit them. I don't feel that this should be a cause for recriminations. People want different things. We're not all compatible.

That said, what I wanted, as negotiating points, were a) occasional friendly conversation where we talk about our lives and share a little of ourselves, like any other two friends do; and b) some affection during and after sex, rather than to be ignored. Not romance, not exclusivity, not a girlfriend-boyfriend thing, but just to be treated like a person and a friend instead of a semi-functional sex toy. This is the absolute MINIMUM I expect in any other relationship or encounter, whether it be platonic or sexual. It's what I expect from any other person in my life, as a matter of course, without even thinking about it.

So yes, I find it sad that someone who I've known as long as I've known this guy, someone who's always worried about me and tried to take care of me, is unable to give what I feel should be the minimum to expect.

But them's the breaks. And like I said, everyone has the right to turn down an offer that isn't right for them.

At some point I do need to delve into the reasons why we love the people we do. It's a thing that's always puzzled me, but never more so than today.