Hot People Find The Fire

I was supposed to go to the gym today. I have decided that I will not be doing so. Today was crap. So was half of yesterday, actually.

But it makes me worried. It doesn't seem to take much for me to want avoid expending some energy. Finding your motivation in February is difficult. There's no sun, and it's effing cold here. Back in September I had glorious notions that I'd be skiing and snowshoeing and skating...but now I mostly just want to curl up under a blanket and drink milky tea. In fact, if I could skip work to do that, that'd be even better.

So...how do I make sure that this isn't a permanent state of affairs? Well...I don't really know. But I've got a pretty good idea. Way back in September, when I was all dreamy about what a Great Canadian Winter life I'd be leading, I took some pictures of myself. They were meant to be "before" comparison pictures to illustrate exactly how successful I'd been with Plan Abtastic. Then, of course, that plan was an epic failure. I took another one today...an "after" shot...for comparison. Only, instead of the "after" meaning "after lots of exercise and sensible eating", it means "after overcommitting myself, being more or less sedentary, and eating a steady diet of microwave dinners, pizza, subway and candy for breakfast".

Before
























After











Now, I don't want to get into the fine details of the analysis of exactly what's happened physically. And I'm sure my eyes are exaggerating the differences between the two pictures, but I think we can agree that one is preferable to the other. And it's not the "After" shot. In fact, I don't think the jeans I'm wearing in the before shot even fit anymore. But THIS. IS. MOTIVATING. This happened over a matter of months, and, frankly, it makes me frightened about what a year (or more) could do.

Now, I know I'm not supposed to be motivated by fear. I've been to several seminars given by highly respected behaviour change specialists suggesting that it's a bad idea to use fear to get people to do stuff. But I'm pretty sure the only thing that's going to work is to burn these pictures onto the insides of my eyelids and resolve to go. That's the only fire that's going to get me there.


...but not today. Today was crap.

Hot People Clean Up Their Acts

Once upon a time, about a year and a half ago, I excused my drunkenness and the occasional resulting blackouts by saying that...hey, I remember the IMPORTANT things. I think I continue to excuse that behaviour in my slightly-younger-than-now self because it was occurring at a time in my life when I was emerging from a lengthy period of hazy mediocrity and the fun I was having on those evenings was bordering on legendary. And, to be honest, it was shortlived; I think that was the last (or at least, amongst the last) time that I blacked out.

Until last weekend. And for some reason, I'm not really inclined to excuse myself from that particular blackout. Perhaps because I'm slightly older...but probably not. It happened innocently enough. I accepted a few drinks made by a trustworthy friend (I say trustworthy to absolve him of any culpability here. Everything that happened here is my fault). I knew what was in them...including the sizeable shots of tequila. I also, in an effort to be gregarious, imbibed one or two shots of tequila. And then we cabbed to the dance bar. And then I don't remember anything afterwards. The rest of my night has been pieced together by a series of witnesses. And it causes me to shake my head. Vigorously.

A friend demonstrated my dancing (?) that evening. Face. Palm. I like to think of myself as a pretty good dancer. And when I'm in my usual state of comfortable buzz at the bar, I frequently enjoy myself by laughing at people who just haven't got it going on. Examples of this might include the cougars two-stepping to Will.i.am last Friday, or the trio of girls awkwardly grinding with each other when my boyfriend and I went to hear the final performance of one of the djs in the area we think is kinda fly. Those are the people I laugh at. And I became one of those people on that decidedly uncrowded Saturday night.

Also, I drunk-dialed my boyfriend who was sleeping soundly after a hard day of work while I pickled my liver and gyrated awkwardly. I think I did this from a snowbank I'd fallen in. I suggested that if he were awake, then he should call me. If he were not awake, then he should remain asleep and forego the phone call. Clearly, I'm a genius. I may have waited for him to call back for a few minutes. Thank goodness I gave up and walked home, because if I'd waited there all night, I'm sure the blue-haired biddies tottering off to church the next morning would have discovered a splayed-out Miss T Popsicle.

The pièce-de-resistance of the whole evening, thank goodness, was witnessed only by my cat. I vomited. But where? I'm actually too ashamed to say. Rest assured, though, that it was not in a garbage can or a toilet or any other receptacle appropriate for vomit. I don't remember the actual act of vomiting, but I was horrified to find it when I woke up. Ugh.

And this is what I KNOW happened. To whom did I speak? WHAT DID I SAY TO THEM? Gawd! When I was doing my undergrad, a guy I knew in residence produced a number of business-card-looking things. They were apology cards, with a generic apology to account for the usual amnesia associated with the binge-drinking. And I feel like I need a stack of them right now. And I don't think that's acceptable. Or hot.

Now, the general response to an evening like this is the ol' faithful "...and I'll never touch another drink ever again." I think we all know that would be false. But I think a certain amount of responsibility is in order so that I can maintain that comfortable buzz without the uncomfortable awkwardness I'm feeling every time I see someone who might have been there. I hate weeks like this.

Hot People Don't Eat Cookies

So I went to the mall the other day to buy a skirt because my summer job requires business casual attire, and until lately, I've been erring more on the side of extreme casual attire. Anyway...not a single skirt fit me properly. Not one.

Ok...one did. But ONLY one.

When did I get so fat? I can actually grab WHOLE HANDFULS of flesh from my stomach! It's RIDICULOUS!!! How did I not notice this happening?

One might ask how I could possibly let this happen. Well...I can certainly think of a few culprits (although there are fewer and fewer of them every time I go back to the box...hmm...).

At any rate, I've had a solution to this for some time, my bicyclette. In fact, I had resolved to ride my bike more often from the beginning of this hotness journey, but it was too cold, or my bag was too heavy that day, or the roads were covered (I shit you not) in SHEETS of ice. There's always SOMETHING.

Case in point: I'm injured right now. Seriously. Here's how it happened: I was coming out the library to catch the bus home (it was sunny that day...so I'm not sure what my excuse was for not riding my bike...), only the bus had already arrived when I got out the doors. This usually means (and it did that day) a one hundred metre dash in whatever unsuitable shoes I am wearing. So I ran. But when I was almost to the bus stop, the bus started driving away. "Fine," I thought. I just stopped running and decided to wait for the next one. Except then I noticed that the bus was slowing down. The bus driver was looking at me. The unthinkable had happened! A bus driver was being courteous to a passenger who had been a few seconds late for the bus (I've seen some drivers actually shake their fists behind them as they drive off into the sunset while some person who is clearly late for a job interview or the birth of their firstborn child kicks at the dust left in the bus' wake). So, not wanting to spit in the eye of unprecedented generosity on the bus driver's part, and in order not to delay the bus any further, I started running.

So, here's some important information. It's just turning into spring in Eastern Canada. This means that EVERYTHING is wet right now. This also means that the chances that I was standing in a flat of mud when the bus slowed down were very good. As it happened, luck was not with me.

So, I started running...or rather I started doing that thing the Road Runner does when it's winding up to speed away from Wile E. Coyote because I couldn't get any traction in the mud. Unfortunately, instead of speeding ahead in a blur onto the bus, I did a faceplant into the mud. The immediate result was that I was covered in mud and had to spend the rest of my day until I got home several hours later covered in a thin layer of muck. The end result is that I REALLY hurt my ankle and knee - injuries made inexplicably worse by a much less exciting bathtub cleaning incident a few days later. Seriously. I'm limping.

All this being said, hot people definitely can't grab whole handfuls of flesh from their stomachs (perhaps from other parts of their persons, but not stomachs), and the longer I stay off my bike, the more handfuls there will be. I cannot let my unending ability to come up with excuses (real or imagined) not to exercise to get in the way of my hotness. Therefore, in the spirit of bullheaded ambition, I'm going to ride my bike on Monday, come hell or high water!

But perhaps not if it's raining or something.