My Bloody Valentine

Valentine's Day?

It is to laugh.

The only nod I gave the occasion was drinking a Bloody Mary.  (It's a reach, I know...it's supposed to be (at least in theory) a holiday about love...we feel love in our hearts...hearts pump blood...yeah.  I know.  Pretty lame.)

But get this:  the lovely Lola-Rose is doing a V8 Juice fast, and I've decided to join her...for a little bit, anyway.  And I suggested that she liven things up a bit, and I followed my own advice, and I ran out and got a bottle of lo-sodium spicy V8 and I've doctored it with wostershire sauce and a dash of horseradish sauce (neither of which are vegan, and the worstershire isn't even vegetarian, but a man's gotta know his limitations!) and a serious amount of freshly-ground pepper and, in what is truly Coloring Outside The Lines of The Juice Fast, a sprig of celery, a pickled okra, and a toothpick speared with a garlic-stuffed olive and a little pearl onion.   (As you can clearly see, I prefer my Bloody Marys to be like little salads.)

I just built one (my first ever Small-manufactured Bloody Mary, based upon years of drinking the damn things at brunches whilst hungover) and I must say, it is NOM NOM NOM NOM.  Good!  And good for you!  And I am being good, so I ixnayed the odkavay.

Big took a sip and he said (and I quote) (and yes it is superfluous at best to say "and I quote" when one is using quotation marks, but I want to be abundantly clear that no paraphrasing was done of Big here):

(now what the hell was I saying?  Damn ADD.  Oh, yeah.) (And might I add, parenthetically speaking (and yes, it is equally redundant  and superfluous to say "parenthetically speaking" inside of a bracket of parentheses, but there you go) that this is sorta like drinking cocktail sauce, if you happen to be into that sort of thing?)

So he said, "damn, that's good....you're going to drink these things night and day until you're sick of them, aren't you?"

LOL

Cereal Monogamy

I stay true to my food, peeps.  I get in the mood for something and I go shop for it and then I will eat said thing morning, noon, and night, as meals and as snacks, day after day after day.

This is partially due to the fact that I don't like to cook; partially due to the fact that food in general freaks me out and is hard for me to figure out/contemplate/decide upon; and partially due to the fact that Big and I have completely different diets, so when I get stuff, it's hard to get it in one portion.  So I get a bunch of something and then I just work my way through it, like a caterpillar munching his little fuzzy way through the leaves of an entire tree.  Day after day, meal after meal, until it's gone.  Sometimes the craving persists and I'll go get another batch of whatever it is and subsist solely on it for another few days, and another.  I've eaten my third generation vegetable soup, and nothing *but* said soup, for a week at a time.  This, in other universes (universi?) is considered weird.  In my world, it's also considered weird, but I embrace my weirdness.  (OK, now the word "weird" is starting to look like I spelled it wrong.  Does that ever happen to you?  Suddenly a word just looks wrong  for some reason?  Well, it's starting to look a little...weird.  Ahem.  Moving along.)

Like serial monogamists, I will cleave to my beloved and pledge devotion and won't even bat an eye at anything else.  Nom nom nom nom nom....and then, after a while, the bloom falls off the rose, and I'm finding little flaws there that I didn't see before...the thrill is gone, baby, and I'm off to find a new love to brush my lips against.

This week?  Sundried tortillas (a shoutout here to Ole Xtreme Wellness Tomato Basil Tortilla wraps:  70 cals!!! Low enough to overcome my nausea at the purposeful misspelling on the label, something that I normally hate, despise, loathe and abhor).  I fill these bad boys with pico de gallo, lettuce (with more lettuce on the side, lol), scallions, and a few sliced black olives.  A little hot sauce thrown in the mix for good measure.  Back up the truck because you can eat these until you are blue in the face and, coming in at 125 or so with tax, tag and title, the damage is minimal.

I am a fickle one and I have no doubt that in a week or so, I'll be flirting with a cute little package of facon bacon on aisle three.  But for now, love reigns supreme.

*kisses burrito*

This Morning

When I got on the scale this morning the heavens parted, I was bathed in a white light, and a choir of angels began singing the hallelujah chorus....

I WEIGH 99 POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!

So I stepped off, then on again.  Stepped off, got on again, slowly.  Stepped off, got on again, quickly.  Stepped off, moved the scale, got on again.  (You know the drill well, I have no doubt.)  It's official!  Yes, it's my first-thing-in-the-morning-completely-nekkid-all-jewelry-off-except-my-wedding-band-dehydrated-from-overnight weight, but you know what?  I'll take it.  Oh, yes indeedy.

*Small picks up scale and cradles it tenderly against her chest like it is an infant*

Nota bene:  O in the name of all that is holy, Small, do NOT SCREW THIS UP!!!!  Please.  I beseech you.  This does not give you license to go stark-raving batshit and eat half the universe.  Really.  You have to trust me on this one.

And:  in other wonderful news, I arrived home after an overnight trip and waiting for me was a package from the lovely Lou!!!!

It was full of goodies...music CDs and lovely bracelets and a pedometer!  And a recipe book with dishes made with Coca-Cola, which made me laugh and laugh and laugh laugh laugh!!!  Thanks, Lou, you are a sweetheart!  I <3 the goodies and I <3 you!!!!

I don't know how to turn this picture on its side so you'll have to turn your laptop :p

Thank you

I really appreciate the kind words and support, you guys.  You make me smile.

What a gift, this community.


Also:  an update for the January money thing:  I managed to send $250.00 to my Good Cause.  It's amazing, how one dollar here and three dollars there, etc., add up.  Sorta like calories.  I like shaving off  seven calories here, four dollars there.

Gradatim vincimus:  we conquer by degrees.

Lettuce Pray

Here at Small Labs, Incorporated, we are always working to bring you the very latest in cutting-edge ana technology.  Our mad scientists, decked out smartly in bespoke labcoats of cotton shantung winter white (belted around the waist and paired with lovely jewel-toned textured tights and black pleather mary janes) scribble formulae in notebooks and slave feverishly over bunson burners and rows of test tubes to find working solutions for the betterment of all anakind.  On the white expanse of granite countertops, glinting from the light of the afternoon sun, jars of loose-leaf tea compete for space with scales, cinnamon, bottles of hot sauce, and measuring spoons.  In one corner, under a lab chair, a cat arises from his nap to walk with a studied insouciance past the family of mice living in their glass box on a bookshelf (in between a dog-eared paperback copy of "Wasted" and a first edition  "Eve's Apple").

Look!  What is this?  One mad scientist works diligently in the lab today while drinking her lunch of black Earl Grey.  In reviewing past findings from our peer-reviewed double-blind studies (a/k/a old ana journals), she stumbles across a favorite technology, once utilized with great fervor -- until one day, for some inexplicable reason, it was abandoned (I'm not sure why -- in all honesty, I think I may have just gotten sick of it after a while, but it was a good thing while it lasted.)  The scientist has dusted it off and put it into service again, and it's really, for lack of a more rigorous scientific term, neat-o.

Are you ready?  OK, here it is..................

Lettuce.

Yup.  Lettuce.

1.  Get a hold of some lettuce.  (Preferably some good lettuce, such as watercress or arugula or baby boston or redleaf -- not that abomination known as iceberg, which is the gastronomic equivalent of a zoning ordinance, say, or a technical manual.  Yaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwn.)

2.  Put the lettuce in a pretty bowl and put the pretty bowl next to whatever it is you are eating.

3.  Take a small bite of whatever you are eating.  Before you begin chewing, pop a bit of lettuce in your mouth.  Chew.  Swallow.

4.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

And what do you have?  Half of what you've just eaten has pretty much zero calories.  You get full on much, much less.  And unlike some other ana technologies developed in various labs and tried by Yours Truly, this one is actually good for you. It's like eating a salad with your meal, but with no dressing (something I can't do, even in the most motivated at times.)  But when the lettuce is actually paired with the food you are eating (i.e., eaten in the same bite), it suddenly becomes entirely doable.  Pleasant, even.  This works with damn near everything (I haven't tried it with desserts, but you are supposed to stay the hell away from desserts anyway.  So there.)  Burritos.  Veggie burgers.  Scrambled tofu.  Flavored almonds.  Veggie chili.

So easy, a rabbit could do it!

The Mother of All Setpoints

I've been at 100 for a week now.  The line between triple and double digits is a big one for my body.  I mean, biiiiiiiiig.  As in, the gauntlet is thrown down and it is ON.  Anything below 100 causes my body to cling stubbornly, desperately, needily to every calorie it's given like it is the last one it will ever, ever see.  Picture a rotund, disconsolate Italian mother sobbing into her apron in despair as her only child walks out the door to move into her freshman dorm at college 200 miles away -- that's my body at 100 and below.   The calories are off somewhere else, playing drinking games and skipping class and my body is just sitting there with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, pouring over family photo albums and hoping for a weekend visit.  I wish there were some way to communicate to it that it's all good, that it needs to just chill and trust me on this one.  Of course, this is the same body that decides that it will be quite necessary to inhale an entire bag of doublestuf oreos in one sitting (oreos which, by the way, now come in a resealable bag?  Who are these people who think there could ever be a reason to reseal a bag of oreos once you've opened them?  I mean, are there people who actually put them away before the bag is finished???? Mind-boggling.)

I can't stay at 100.  It's enough to keep me from wanting to peel my skin off and be ok with sex, but it's not enough for me to flatten my stomach.  We all have problem areas:  for some of us it's hips, for others, thighs, for others, arms, for some, stomachs.  I'm ok in all areas except my stomach.  I want an absolutely perfectly flat (if not concave) stomach and it's the last thing to fall in line for me (even with lots and lots of exercise, including core work).  Going under 100 allows me to achieve that -- but just DAMN, it's like some epic battle.  Small And Her Metabolism, now showing at a theatre near you.  (Rated R for Restriction.)

Repairing the Damage

I am fasting today because I ate everything that wasn't nailed down yesterday.  (Actually, there were some nailed-down things I wanted to eat, too.  I thought that maybe I could claim the nails add a little iron to my diet.)

You know what the hell of it is?  The real hell of it is that we rob ourselves of pleasure, even in the midst of binging.  The feeling of guilt, of panic, overwhelms the taste of the food, dulls our senses to it.  We chew so quickly, stuffing the food down, working frantically to make the evidence of our sin disappear.

Sometimes it's just easier to starve.