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.