Coming up: Network of the One-Upper ADHD Starz! A harrowing journey through the halls of Fred Meyer's yields fruit (literally) and not much else. Will Adella survive the mad Fred Meyer wastrels? Will she ever find juice and a whole wheat bagel?? Will her insititutional review board meeting move beyond chipper massage music on Red Bull? And finally, one week after eating herself sick, the first reveal: Weight in Week 1. How much weight would a wrightchuck chuck if a wrightchuck could chuck wood?? More and/or less than you'd imagine!
Pandemonium in the Bread Aisle and Other Tales of Eating
It's a juicy autumnal Thursday and I'm ready to bite into like the last ripe nectarine of summer, hoping desperately that such a bite will not inevitably chip a cap on the pit inevitably lurking inside. I hear this may well be our last little respite of summery sun before the equinox heards in our regularly scheduled slate of stormy weathers. I will enjoy it mostly by ignoring it, but there will be moments walking here and there if I'm lucky.
+Andrew Wright had a special Wednesday edition of our date night last night. To celebrate, I took us to Diego's Mexican Grill, a Bellingham institution next to Boomer's (there's a theme of quick and easy college food along Samish way, yes). Diego's is, as advertised, a Mexican place, mostly specializing in no-frills gargantuan portions of burritos and their ilk. Everything is cheap, but extra accouterments must be ordered on the side for an extra cheap price. You order at the counter and your meal will wind its way through the modest dining room on a cafeteria tray or two. There will not be crysal or silver accompanying your gordita.
But my oh my, the burritos are immense! And they do not kid around with the margaritas. Having experimented with a stout at dinner the other day, I've come to realize that alcohol most pointedly disrupts my sleep, so I'm not saying I indulged, but I find it amusing that the food comes packaged as fast food, but the margaritas are worthy of a tourist trap in Cabo over spring break.
In line with my ongoing goal to stray from my cruciferous comfort zone, I even dared to let go of salady notions (fortunate, since they don't offer such a thing there) and ordered a side of black beans and another side of pinto beans. It turns out that "pinto" was code for re-re-re-re-reeeeaaaly-fried beans, I'm being adventurous, here, but I also know what food is definitely going to make me throw up. So I had the black beans. Andrew, apparently having saved some room after eating a burrito the size of your average dachshund, took my pinto beans.
It's a juicy autumnal Thursday and I'm ready to bite into like the last ripe nectarine of summer, hoping desperately that such a bite will not inevitably chip a cap on the pit inevitably lurking inside. I hear this may well be our last little respite of summery sun before the equinox heards in our regularly scheduled slate of stormy weathers. I will enjoy it mostly by ignoring it, but there will be moments walking here and there if I'm lucky.
+Andrew Wright had a special Wednesday edition of our date night last night. To celebrate, I took us to Diego's Mexican Grill, a Bellingham institution next to Boomer's (there's a theme of quick and easy college food along Samish way, yes). Diego's is, as advertised, a Mexican place, mostly specializing in no-frills gargantuan portions of burritos and their ilk. Everything is cheap, but extra accouterments must be ordered on the side for an extra cheap price. You order at the counter and your meal will wind its way through the modest dining room on a cafeteria tray or two. There will not be crysal or silver accompanying your gordita.
But my oh my, the burritos are immense! And they do not kid around with the margaritas. Having experimented with a stout at dinner the other day, I've come to realize that alcohol most pointedly disrupts my sleep, so I'm not saying I indulged, but I find it amusing that the food comes packaged as fast food, but the margaritas are worthy of a tourist trap in Cabo over spring break.
In line with my ongoing goal to stray from my cruciferous comfort zone, I even dared to let go of salady notions (fortunate, since they don't offer such a thing there) and ordered a side of black beans and another side of pinto beans. It turns out that "pinto" was code for re-re-re-re-reeeeaaaly-fried beans, I'm being adventurous, here, but I also know what food is definitely going to make me throw up. So I had the black beans. Andrew, apparently having saved some room after eating a burrito the size of your average dachshund, took my pinto beans.
And, really, as is often the case, I'd eaten only recently before. In a further head nod towards cutting back on my veggie-vices, I discovered a new little easy dish for myself: Teff stew, which wins for being microwave-friendly and spice-appropriate. I've long had teff in the morning with lots of cinnamon and soy milk (cocoa powder, vanilla, raisins, and ginger if available), but it's certainly amenable to savory applications as well.
Last night, I put 1/4 cup of teff and 1.5 cups of water in my enormous chili bowl. I covered, and nuked for a minute and a half. At that point, I added flax meal, garam masala spice, cayenne, onion, garlic, and nutritional yeast, and then nuked for another minute and a half. Because I can't not have some veggies, I added just a little frozen spinach and okra and heated for another minute and a half or so. It was really good! And appropriately autumnal.
It's interesting to realize how much my dietary habits have come down to laziness. Certainly there's a heavy influence of preference, but it's also simply that frozen vegetables are incredibly easy to make. It's taking a bit more mindfulness, but I'm enjoying the chance to experiment again and not simply default. As I say, it's all a base for my spices, seeds and nuts in the end tally.
But speaking of attempting to surmount gustatory habits, oh my god shopping off script is hard! I've got general ideas of higher calorie alternatives to what I usually buy, but nothing set in stone. My list is more like "juice! I should buy some juice!" Nevermind that I have this inbred disdain for juices that advertise themselves as cran-snazza-papay-ango-acai and are mostly just apple juice. Nevermind that my inveterate frugality makes me blanch at the cost of pure non-appley juices. And certainly nevermind that I'm looking for juice to fit in the office fridge, which is quite small, but feel totally incensed at the outrageous unit prices of beverages in smaller packaging. Anaaad nevermind that I'm totally emotionally unclear on what kind of orange juice is actually supposed to be good. I still should get some juice!
"Oh and like a whole wheat bagel type thing! That would be good! I should get that!" Nevermind that there are two bread sections in totally different parts of the store plus a bakery and although the general bready options are completely overwhelming, none of these locations appear to have the simple whole wheat bagel of my ideations. Of course if they did, my inner snob would unlikely want one chock full of preservatives while my practical side would be concerned about buying fresh ones just to get stale (and yes, trust me, if you think this is bad, you should see me try to buy clothing... it's usually punctuated by a minor panic attack and going on the lam).
Yesterday, I braved the wilds of Fred Meyer's, shifting land of the perpetual remodel - where your consumer goods are nomadic and you get the premium experience of having hunted your food personally with professional tracking gear and a lot of luck. Merely setting foot in the shifting sands of FM is already a baffling and a distressing experience these days. No section remains in the same place for more than two days, staff are actively mucking up the aisles moving sections around during the shopping experience, and a collective befuddlement exponentially echoes in a pandemic of harried panic. I often feel that when I'm there
In a sense, going into a shopping trip with a less defined map was perfectly amenable to the anomie ahead. In another sense, it merely compounded the consternation. It's at times like these that I remember agoraphobia literally means fear of the marketplace and find this painfully apt.I think I may have a touch of that these days. I'm sure there are some lovely medications I could take to make it through a trip in one piece with a little more to show for it than a few nectarines and some sweet potatoes (but as I pointed out, "I could have a yam, that's basically the same thing as a bagel!"). I'm only happy to have escaped with my purse and my vital organs intact. Given the general air of panic, this seems less than assured nowadays.
But hey, I've got my milk. I've got my nectarines. And I've got several tons of grains and fruit, with pinto beans (unfried in their entirety) soaking in the fridge. I think I'll survive.
Networking with the Stars!
Networking is really not my forte. I'm challenged enough to burst out of my happy introvert bubble and attempt to corral actual friends into a meeting that is not strictly and rigidly scheduled at repeating intervals (working out, dance events... that sort of thing).
I remember in my new lawyer orientation, I was even advised that the best kind of networking I could do would be to get involved in hobbies that mean something to me and this would get my word-of-mouthiness out there better than anything. This is true, although almost all of those word-of-mouthiness referrals have been in one of the following categories (1) legal issues that have nothing to do with family law, (2) cases that sound like family law but really are criminal/dependency/elderlaw, (3) the worst imaginable family law cases that probably are not even in our jurisdiction (thank god!), (4) pleasantly simple cases that people really can work out themselves, but maybe just want a friend to check things out and make sure. I like the fourth kind all right.
There is also a lot of encouragement, however, to get to know people in the community. The perennial favorite is going to coffee. And I approve in several instances. I like to try to get out with individual members of the Collaborative Professionals to get to know them outside the group context. And by "like" I ascribe a little less follow through than your average FB like.
Yesterday, I did my share of networking for the decade. It involved "going to coffee" with a colleague. Or, to be more accurate sitting outside the shop while I drank coffee and he twitched back and forth expiating his infinite virtues. He is somebody I've known for a long time and with whom I've successfully worked, but he can be a touch quirky in a way that rubs some people the wrong way. I don't always have the energy or patience for that particular brand of quirk, although I do genuinely recognize a good heart and intentions underneath it all. The particular quirk that really takes it out of me is his boundless restlessness. I am a fidgety person, and occasionally lapse into gleeful mania, but there's a certain quality to his energy that just exhausts me. His eyes dart about, his hands are always tapping (out of rhythm with his speech, I might add), his conversation careens through several motifs with disregard for any posted speed limits or marked avenues of polite discourse, and his muscles are set on spring.
Another related quirk, of course, would be the relentless narcissistic autopilot. A summary of our forty minute meeting: he is excellent at his job; he would be excellent at my job given the change; he is a brilliant networker; he loves to help people and really wants to know how he can help me, a question he repeatedly asks between long moments of soliloquy on his own virtues; and he knows everything there is about raising children, changing a tire, baking the perfect souffle, and saving money on your car insurance through Geico. He also really wants to know how I'm doing, except as soon as I start to say anything about myself, I guess it reminds him of something else he wanted to tell me about himself.
As you may guess, there can also be an air of one-up-manship in any conversation with him. A quote from Shirley Valentine sums it up well: "I'm not sayin' she's a bragger, but if you've been to Paradise, she's got a season ticket. She's that type, Gillian, you know. If you've got a headache, she's got a brain tumor."
Yesterday was a low patience day, apparently.After several moments of "well, I've got to get going," I just went ahead and packed up while he was talking (about how he also had to go). And, sweet and empathetic touchy-feely type that I am, I may have muttered some pejorative type exclamations of frustration as I walked away.
It may not have helped my professional patience that I'd spent much of my day fantasizing about going back to school to become a nutritionist. Obviously! I'm seeing one and she's pretty awesome, the work is super portable and meshes with an office-free lifestyle, and i'm obsessed with food... what was I thinking with this lawyer crap that hardly even ever involves food except when parents fight about whether you're allowed to get an ex parte emergency order restraining the other parent from feeding their child fruity pebbles (I'm sure red dye causes genetic mutations in cockroaches)??
Networking is really not my forte. I'm challenged enough to burst out of my happy introvert bubble and attempt to corral actual friends into a meeting that is not strictly and rigidly scheduled at repeating intervals (working out, dance events... that sort of thing).
I remember in my new lawyer orientation, I was even advised that the best kind of networking I could do would be to get involved in hobbies that mean something to me and this would get my word-of-mouthiness out there better than anything. This is true, although almost all of those word-of-mouthiness referrals have been in one of the following categories (1) legal issues that have nothing to do with family law, (2) cases that sound like family law but really are criminal/dependency/elderlaw, (3) the worst imaginable family law cases that probably are not even in our jurisdiction (thank god!), (4) pleasantly simple cases that people really can work out themselves, but maybe just want a friend to check things out and make sure. I like the fourth kind all right.
There is also a lot of encouragement, however, to get to know people in the community. The perennial favorite is going to coffee. And I approve in several instances. I like to try to get out with individual members of the Collaborative Professionals to get to know them outside the group context. And by "like" I ascribe a little less follow through than your average FB like.
Yesterday, I did my share of networking for the decade. It involved "going to coffee" with a colleague. Or, to be more accurate sitting outside the shop while I drank coffee and he twitched back and forth expiating his infinite virtues. He is somebody I've known for a long time and with whom I've successfully worked, but he can be a touch quirky in a way that rubs some people the wrong way. I don't always have the energy or patience for that particular brand of quirk, although I do genuinely recognize a good heart and intentions underneath it all. The particular quirk that really takes it out of me is his boundless restlessness. I am a fidgety person, and occasionally lapse into gleeful mania, but there's a certain quality to his energy that just exhausts me. His eyes dart about, his hands are always tapping (out of rhythm with his speech, I might add), his conversation careens through several motifs with disregard for any posted speed limits or marked avenues of polite discourse, and his muscles are set on spring.
Another related quirk, of course, would be the relentless narcissistic autopilot. A summary of our forty minute meeting: he is excellent at his job; he would be excellent at my job given the change; he is a brilliant networker; he loves to help people and really wants to know how he can help me, a question he repeatedly asks between long moments of soliloquy on his own virtues; and he knows everything there is about raising children, changing a tire, baking the perfect souffle, and saving money on your car insurance through Geico. He also really wants to know how I'm doing, except as soon as I start to say anything about myself, I guess it reminds him of something else he wanted to tell me about himself.
As you may guess, there can also be an air of one-up-manship in any conversation with him. A quote from Shirley Valentine sums it up well: "I'm not sayin' she's a bragger, but if you've been to Paradise, she's got a season ticket. She's that type, Gillian, you know. If you've got a headache, she's got a brain tumor."
Yesterday was a low patience day, apparently.After several moments of "well, I've got to get going," I just went ahead and packed up while he was talking (about how he also had to go). And, sweet and empathetic touchy-feely type that I am, I may have muttered some pejorative type exclamations of frustration as I walked away.
It may not have helped my professional patience that I'd spent much of my day fantasizing about going back to school to become a nutritionist. Obviously! I'm seeing one and she's pretty awesome, the work is super portable and meshes with an office-free lifestyle, and i'm obsessed with food... what was I thinking with this lawyer crap that hardly even ever involves food except when parents fight about whether you're allowed to get an ex parte emergency order restraining the other parent from feeding their child fruity pebbles (I'm sure red dye causes genetic mutations in cockroaches)??
I work in Collaborative Law right? That touts the use of "allied professionals" for "holistic" treatment of divorces. Forget the child specialists and financial planners... I think more arguments between parents are about what the other person is feeding the kids (could be an unspoken major cause of divorce from the little conflicts I've seen), and nobody eats well when they're going through a stressful period like divorce and OF COURSE that enhances emotional volatility and diminishes the capacity to make reasoned and productively self-interested decisions.
Anyone want some Skittles??
I am dj-ing at this month's Tango Experience. I have dubbed the event equinoctitango, because I still think that TE is a little lacking for something taking my deranged name and participation. Also it is autumnal equinox and all, which to my brain is the same thing as "daylight savings time" and therefore I believe quite strongly that sometime today or tomorrow we will have some bizarre time distortions going on. This is untrue, since I am pretty sure we "fall back" in November, but persistently believable to my easily addled gray matter (grey with pink polka dots!).
I love dj-ing, but I haven't really had a lot of time and energy coming into this one (justifiable reasons explicated to death - har har - in prior posts), so I'm hustling a bit to put something together. Now, I know I could basically just take any old playlist, change out the cortina (I insist on doing all the holiday tango stints, and so my cortinas are often holiday-appropriate), and nobody would be the wiser. But I care. And I have new music to share!
... somewhere
... I'm not sure where
I got an awesome cd for my birthday that was kicking around in my mom's Mazda for a while after I drove my sister to the airport last month. At some point it was returned to me, in theory. It is now, of course, MIA. As I currently have a playlist more or less cobbled together but for one single tanda-spot reserved for songs from this cd, I'm spending my dj-prep morning on a desperate Where's Waldo through the house and car. It's naturally been quite productive on every front but my main goal: my car apparently has not been cleaned since I moved into my old apartment. I still had proof of insurance from 2010 in the glove box. And I didn't own the kia in 2010.
OOOOH, I found some old Halloween candy! Apparently skittles definitely do melt given a good year in the trunk of a car. As do fun-sized 3 Musketeers bars, but this was pretty much a no-brainer. I think I may take this concept and start making skittles bars. They'd have about the same consistency and portability of your average power bar and probably not much more sugar all in all.
Speaking of colorful calorie bombs, because I am currently obsessed with my own ever-exciting eating habits almost to the extent of Andrew's love affair with his training calendar: The One-Week Weigh In!
So I stepped back on the scale today, an action full of misgivings from all directions.On the one hand, I'm secretly terrified that my metabolism will magically kick back into gear with a vengeance and I'll wake up morbidly obese and unable to stop eating until eventually, I will be homebound because I can't fit through the doorway. I'm also a little worried that I might not gain fat back in the same alluring distribution pattern of yore. I am banking on having some serious badonkadonk and an itty-bitty waist, but my mind frets that - just as hair coming back after chemo may suddenly by entirely different - I may just turn into a top heavy apple and my whole life will change in ways I am not anticipating.
For one, I might actually get a layer of fat over my stomach for the first time ever (even when I was overweight, I had no belly). And then - heaven forbid - I migh tactually have to do more focused ab work in order to look ripped. The advantage of being underweight is that if you have any muscle, it really POPS and you look far fitter than you probably actually are. For another, I might need a bra for reasons other than propriety in cold areas or to hold up the strap for my heart rate monitor! Granted, apparently it also means that my body munches freely on any of that muscle I might build, but ...
Ok, so gaining weight is still a little scary of an experience. On the other hand, I'm realizing now more and more that so many of my physical annoyances are classic symptoms of minor malnutrition. This morning was a pretty a strong indicator that just eating more, as I have been this week, could be altering my endurance and strength levels. I went on a run with Andrew today and sweetpea-ed off like never before. For every level of perceived exertion, my heart rate was higher and my muscles felt stronger. Granted, some of this could be the change in weather, but it makes me suspect I might have been feeling some of the symptoms of parasympathetic overtraining without the overtraining part exactly (well, technically overtraining beyond my body's capacity to restore itself given the nutritive resources available). And, I'm not getting any younger in that obnoxious biological clock kinda way, so it would be nice to eliminate a major obstacle in exercising my theoretical option to reproduce sooner than later.
In other words, panic if I do, panic if I don't. Which is about how it played out this morning. Hmmm... appear to have gained a pound and a half in the last week. Oh crap, I'm gaining weight. It's exponential, I just know it! I'll be two of me by next week!! But also oh drat, I was aiming for two pounds a week, my gyno says I might need to gain ten pounds and my nutritionist says it could be as high as thirty depending on my body's preferences... I'm never getting there!
I figure in this matter, ambivalence is probably a good temperance on either side of my tendencies to overdo things (just to give a little breathing room). And since I didn't bump my caloric load up to 3300ish until Monday evening, this probably does mean I'm on the road to about 2 pounds a week. At that rate, I will be shopping for new clothes (oh god, why did I bring that ordeal up?? NOOOOOOO! I finally gave up looking like a bag lady and bought clothes for my current figure and now I have to do it again???) in a month or two.
And the part of me that likes to please is glad I'll have something to report in back-to-back follow ups on October 2nd. I do want my professionals to be proud of me.
In the meantime, I'm having fun mixing up my non-veggie substitutes. I've so far toured through teff, kamut, rice, and beans as bases. I'm incrementally adding a little bit at a time to my morning breakfast and discovering the joys of concentrated juice and my very DINKY soda stream. And just in time for autumn, I'm redeveloping my urge to bake and cook (skittles bars, of course!)
But no baking before I finish this playlist. It sounds fine to me when I'm marginally listening to it, but I just know there's something awful that's going to pop up here somewhere as soon as I set foot at the studio.
I love dj-ing, but I haven't really had a lot of time and energy coming into this one (justifiable reasons explicated to death - har har - in prior posts), so I'm hustling a bit to put something together. Now, I know I could basically just take any old playlist, change out the cortina (I insist on doing all the holiday tango stints, and so my cortinas are often holiday-appropriate), and nobody would be the wiser. But I care. And I have new music to share!
... somewhere
... I'm not sure where
I got an awesome cd for my birthday that was kicking around in my mom's Mazda for a while after I drove my sister to the airport last month. At some point it was returned to me, in theory. It is now, of course, MIA. As I currently have a playlist more or less cobbled together but for one single tanda-spot reserved for songs from this cd, I'm spending my dj-prep morning on a desperate Where's Waldo through the house and car. It's naturally been quite productive on every front but my main goal: my car apparently has not been cleaned since I moved into my old apartment. I still had proof of insurance from 2010 in the glove box. And I didn't own the kia in 2010.
OOOOH, I found some old Halloween candy! Apparently skittles definitely do melt given a good year in the trunk of a car. As do fun-sized 3 Musketeers bars, but this was pretty much a no-brainer. I think I may take this concept and start making skittles bars. They'd have about the same consistency and portability of your average power bar and probably not much more sugar all in all.
Speaking of colorful calorie bombs, because I am currently obsessed with my own ever-exciting eating habits almost to the extent of Andrew's love affair with his training calendar: The One-Week Weigh In!
So I stepped back on the scale today, an action full of misgivings from all directions.On the one hand, I'm secretly terrified that my metabolism will magically kick back into gear with a vengeance and I'll wake up morbidly obese and unable to stop eating until eventually, I will be homebound because I can't fit through the doorway. I'm also a little worried that I might not gain fat back in the same alluring distribution pattern of yore. I am banking on having some serious badonkadonk and an itty-bitty waist, but my mind frets that - just as hair coming back after chemo may suddenly by entirely different - I may just turn into a top heavy apple and my whole life will change in ways I am not anticipating.
For one, I might actually get a layer of fat over my stomach for the first time ever (even when I was overweight, I had no belly). And then - heaven forbid - I migh tactually have to do more focused ab work in order to look ripped. The advantage of being underweight is that if you have any muscle, it really POPS and you look far fitter than you probably actually are. For another, I might need a bra for reasons other than propriety in cold areas or to hold up the strap for my heart rate monitor! Granted, apparently it also means that my body munches freely on any of that muscle I might build, but ...
Ok, so gaining weight is still a little scary of an experience. On the other hand, I'm realizing now more and more that so many of my physical annoyances are classic symptoms of minor malnutrition. This morning was a pretty a strong indicator that just eating more, as I have been this week, could be altering my endurance and strength levels. I went on a run with Andrew today and sweetpea-ed off like never before. For every level of perceived exertion, my heart rate was higher and my muscles felt stronger. Granted, some of this could be the change in weather, but it makes me suspect I might have been feeling some of the symptoms of parasympathetic overtraining without the overtraining part exactly (well, technically overtraining beyond my body's capacity to restore itself given the nutritive resources available). And, I'm not getting any younger in that obnoxious biological clock kinda way, so it would be nice to eliminate a major obstacle in exercising my theoretical option to reproduce sooner than later.
In other words, panic if I do, panic if I don't. Which is about how it played out this morning. Hmmm... appear to have gained a pound and a half in the last week. Oh crap, I'm gaining weight. It's exponential, I just know it! I'll be two of me by next week!! But also oh drat, I was aiming for two pounds a week, my gyno says I might need to gain ten pounds and my nutritionist says it could be as high as thirty depending on my body's preferences... I'm never getting there!
I figure in this matter, ambivalence is probably a good temperance on either side of my tendencies to overdo things (just to give a little breathing room). And since I didn't bump my caloric load up to 3300ish until Monday evening, this probably does mean I'm on the road to about 2 pounds a week. At that rate, I will be shopping for new clothes (oh god, why did I bring that ordeal up?? NOOOOOOO! I finally gave up looking like a bag lady and bought clothes for my current figure and now I have to do it again???) in a month or two.
And the part of me that likes to please is glad I'll have something to report in back-to-back follow ups on October 2nd. I do want my professionals to be proud of me.
In the meantime, I'm having fun mixing up my non-veggie substitutes. I've so far toured through teff, kamut, rice, and beans as bases. I'm incrementally adding a little bit at a time to my morning breakfast and discovering the joys of concentrated juice and my very DINKY soda stream. And just in time for autumn, I'm redeveloping my urge to bake and cook (skittles bars, of course!)
But no baking before I finish this playlist. It sounds fine to me when I'm marginally listening to it, but I just know there's something awful that's going to pop up here somewhere as soon as I set foot at the studio.
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