Thunder Thighs

A few years ago I had a less-than-awesome experience at one of those laser hair removal places that involved:

1. Being told my thighs were so big that they'd need to reschedule me for more time because of how big my big, fat thighs were and PS, your thighs are huge with a side of giant.

2. Me saying UM WHATEVER GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.

3. Them ignoring me.

4. Me calling the freaking ABC TV station and getting their consumer guy involved.

5. Them ignoring him.

6. Him getting his feathers ALL kinds of ruffled.

7. Them finally, after several months, giving me my money back and then telling me I was no longer welcome at their facility.

8. Me writing a bad Yelp review.

And for whatever reason, when a new company (BriteSmile) bought the old company (Pure MedSpa), all the old company's Yelp reviews followed the new company so the new company is understandably motivated to get those old reviews fixed up. Soooo, guess who got an e-mail from the new company asking me to contact them so they could rectify the situation and maybe I'd be so satisfied I'd be willing to rewrite and/or delete my old review?

ME!

I called the lady back today but she wasn't there so I'm interested to see what they're gonna offer me and it had better be something more exciting than a bottle of moisturizer or whatever.

My Job is a mixed bag.

Things I Love About My Job:

1. The fact that my boss thought it was HILARIOUS when I told him that the only thing on my calendar today was the application of lip gloss. He has since referenced the lip gloss a few more times. Like, "I know you have lip gloss to apply tomorrow, but could you also do blah blah blah?"

2. I can get a delicious tuna melt in the cafeteria for $2.95. If that's not a value, I don't know what is.

Things That Make Me Nervous About My Job:

1. Sometimes my job sounds like something I can totally do and sometimes my boss uses words like "strategist" to describe my role and I'm like Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shit.

2. I have to be on teleconferences, which is like this fancy video conference where it looks like the other people in the meeting are sitting across the table from you but in reality, they're in Toyko or London or whatever. My main problem with this? I don't have time to lose 100 pounds between now and the first meeting on December 2nd.

Things That I Hate About My Job:

1. The fact that the guy in the cube right next to mine makes little grunty coughs ALL DAY LONG. This means that, in addition to my HATRED for him and his cough, I have to plug my earphones in whenever I am at my desk and then the hot married guy walks by and doesn't talk to me because he thinks I'm hard at work and don't want to be distracted. But whatever, right? I mean, he's SOMEONE ELSE'S HUSBAND and I shouldn't give a crap.

Plus, who ever thought I'd be attracted to a young Jack Nicholson??? I'm going with Sassy Sarah's theory that he's just warming me up for when I find a non-gay, non-married hot guy to make eyes at.

YES, seriously!

So I have this new job, right? It's 50+ miles from home and the traffic sucks and gas prices may have fallen but until they fall to 1990 prices and I can fill my tank for $15, they're eating up my disposable income like we're at a money buffet. But hey, the internet is a great place and you can sign up for a carpool matching service and after a few clicks and this and that, BADA BING! I found a list of matches.

"Matches" is kind of a loose term though because while technically, I may live within 4 miles of everyone in San Francisco, that does not mean that I'm interested in hauling my cookies to the Outer Sunset or North Beach or whatever to pick these people up. But I did find one who lives a mile or so from me in a direction that is not technically in the direction of the freeway, but is still easily accessible and he works a mile or so from me so I e-mailed him and it seemed like a match made in Heaven -- he already has one carpooler who lives near him and who works near him but they were looking for a third. They both have very flexible schedules and they've been working things out on a day by day basis. Want to go home early today? Sure! Awesome!

So all that is great. I warn him that dude, I drive a Jetta so whoever gets stuck in the backseat might not be up for a comfy ride. He replies and says OH HAI NO PROBLEM, I DRIVE A TWO-DOOR HATCHBACK and that my Jetta is probably bigger than his car.

And you see, the way it works is that we trade off driving. And really, I'd rather not drive at all because my car has seen better days and I spent half my commute wondering if that rattle is supposed to be there or if I'm about to stall out in the middle of the freeway during rush hour.

So this backseat of a two-door hatchback thing? For two hours a day? It's a deal breaker.

I e-mailed him and said that I was going to pass because I didn't think I was up for the back seat of a two-door, but good luck and blah blah blah.

He wrote back and was all "Seriously???"

And I just don't get it. YES, seriously!

How many adults out there actually want to sit in the backseat of a freaking HATCHBACK for two hours every day?? Not me!

Except that now I can't decide if this is an unreasonable request because I've lived my whole life in a fat suit and maybe I just don't know what normal is?

Or maybe it's that he's a 20-something European-of-some-variety male and he doesn't get that a lady all dressed up for work probably doesn't want to pack into the back seat and bag out her pants because she had her knees up to her chest for the 50 mile drive or flash the world when she climbs over the front seat's seat belt while wearing a skirt?

Or maybe it's our two extremes meeting in the middle...I dunno. But YES, SERIOUSLY.

Bridesmaid dresses, revisited.

Okay so the rest of my road trip updates are coming, but first let's jump in my bridesmaid dress time machine! I was house-sitting for my parents while they drove back from Iowa with a bunch of Sarah's stuff (because when she left Iowa just over a year ago she didn't expect to immediately meet my brother and end up moving to California permanently) and the wedding presents so I decided to dig up all my old bridesmaid dresses to see if they still fit. AND THANK THE SWEET BABY JEEZUS, THEY DID! Well, mostly. So here you go, Internet...a trip down memory lane (and just so you know, most of these pictures were taken in my parents' basement...we do not live in clutter-filled squalor, I assure you):

The first wedding I was in was in 1997, I was 20 years old, I didn't think anyone would ever, ever, EVER ask me to be in a wedding and I was SO EXCITED when my friend Stacey asked me. We went to West Valley College together and we were friends for sure, but were we bridesmaid-worthy friends? Not so much. In fact, she moved to Colorado like two days after the wedding and I haven't seen or spoken to her since. BFFs 4 --> ? Yeah. We still exchange Christmas cards though. But anyway, I wanted to be in a wedding and she asked so I said yes.

We went to order the dresses (and I'm just now realizing that I know she had three or four bridesmaids but I have NO memory of who they were) and it was your standard polyester, floor-length bridesmaid dress. The sample and the one in the picture were kind of an eggplant or plum color so when she said they'd be "amethyst" I thought that meant "purple" or at least the same color as the one we'd seen.

No.

Turns out, "amethyst" is code for "Barney purple." Like, STRAIGHT UP Barney Purple.

Exhibit A:



Exhibit B:



Except DAMN IT, the picture of the dress is looking much more regular purple than it actually is. It's Barney purple, I swear.

It would be less linebackery if I had someone to secure the shoulder thing in back, but you get the gist of it. And HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THE SHOES:



WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING?

I shudder even thinking about those shoes.

Ooh, and look at the strap lines across my ankles in that picture -- that's where the straps from bridesmaid ensemble #4 wore off the spray tan. Ha. But anyway, I think it's safe to say I've made great strides in footwear since 1997.



Dress #2 was worn for my oldest friend Tamara's wedding eight-ish years ago. It zipped when I tried it on but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Internet...it wasn't pretty. Like REALLY not pretty. I was bummed about that but then I remembered that it looked like crap on me at the time and I looked like a freaking SAUSAGE in this icy lavender column dress with a chiffon train and butt-bow:



I wore two girdles to suck my shit into that one and since this time I was trying it on with my pajama pants still on, I think it's okay that it looked bad.

Poor Tamara though...we all looked bad in that dress and not because it was a bad dress (I mean, it wasn't an awesome dress, but I get what she was going for) but because nobody had it altered. It magically fit her sister really well but I was the fat and sausagey bridesmaid and her two other bridesmaids were stick-thin and they were swimmmmmmmmmmming in their dresses. Those pictures are fantastic. And by "fantastic" I mean "HORRIFYING." So horrifying, in fact, that even if I had electronic versions of them, I wouldn't share them with you Internet.

OMG AND THE SHOES!!!!!!!!!!



I don't remember them being this horrible and chunky but maaaaaaan. I'd GUFFAW if you suggested I wear those those today.

Dress #3 was for Christa's wedding three years ago:



It was the highest quality dress of them all and despite the complaints that it was unflattering on everyone, I actually think it worked out well. I mean, it's not a dress I'd pick for myself, and it would have been better if it was shorter, but it's a freaking WEDDING and all things considered, this dress was pretty good.

That said, no dress is so good that I don't look stupid when I dance:



Dress #4 was worn a week ago today for my brother's wedding:



This dress had to be custom made for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because Jessica McClintock is a hater and doesn't make fatty sizes. Despite the dressmaker making me feel like a fat tub-o-lard, it turned out well. It stretched out like crazy though so I was a mess by after-party time, but those pictures have since been BURNED.

BONUS PROM DRESS:

Back in the days of yesteryear I figured that since Lane Bryant didn't offer prom dresses, fatty prom dresses just didn't exist so I recruited my aunt, a former seamstress, to make my dress for me. I was a tenter back then so I picked a design that was big and dumpy and unflattering:



But don't worry, Internet...I didn't wear that to the prom. I tried it on and went OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD and my mother promptly took me to the mall and I ended up with a much more flattering dress that I felt pretty in, even though I wouldn't be caught dead in it today.

Why keep all these bad dresses that I'll never wear again?

It's 100% for size comparisons. Like, even though I'm not feeling like my sassiest these days, dresses I wore at 17, 20, 24 and 29 still zip. That's a victory, yo.

Picture Post with BONUS bridesmaid dress whining.

I'm one of those asshole iPhone users. I'm also one of those asshole iPhone users who is experiencing technical difficulties. I have an older iPhone though so my issues are different and special and I'm not holding my breath that they'll be fixed anytime soon so my previous feeble attempts at moblogging are nixed until I can stop the same picture from posting SEVENTY FIVE TIMES. Or, three times, but still...nobody wants to see pretty pictures of me getting my hairs did AT ALL, much less multiple times.

But there are still pictures I want to share with you, Internet! So you know what this means, right? It means we're going old-skool: Picture posts with unrelated pictures. Variety is the spice of life.

Off we go!

I had dinner with my east coast gbf and his bf last week. He was like "How come whenever I look at your Flickr pictures, there are always pictures of food?" I'm not really sure why I like taking pictures of stuff I make, but I think it's similar to the ol' "If a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?" thing. Like, if I'm the only one who gets to see how delicious my dinner looks, is it still delicious? I don't know. Roll with me here.

So anyway, here's how pretty one of my dinners from last week looked:



It was coconut curry chicken and it was daaaaaamn good, but the sweet smell of the sauce stuck around for four or five days and no amount of candle lighting or window opening could get rid of it and OMG I WANTED TO DIE. So no more coconut curry chicken for me, but thanks for the recipe, Rachael Ray.

Soooo, if you happen to be following me on Twitter, you know that yesterday's bridesmaid dress fitting made me cry. The dress itself is perfectly fine, but it still depresses the hell out of me because of the arm situation. YES, I made my bed and now I have to lay in it, but I can't even begin to tell you how torturous this whole thing is for me.

And BLAH BLAH BLAH STFU to anyone who says "wear a wrap" or "I'm sure your arms aren't THAT bad" because I swear to God I don't want to hear it. #1, YOU'RE WRONG and #2, even if you were right (which you're not), it wouldn't matter because my pride is stronger than well-intentioned people trying to make me feel better about it.

So anyway. Back to the crying. I had to have my dress made so Sarah bought the fabric and the pattern and I took it to a local dressmaker and got measured and was told to come back six weeks later.

I was supposed to go back last week but the DREAD was sooooooooo overwhelming that I put it off and put it off and put it off and finally forced myself to go in for a fitting yesterday. It was seventy different kinds of humiliation (like the lady having to lift my arm fat up to get a pin under there) but I was able to maintain my composure most of the way through the fitting. I didn't lose it until she started telling me that she wanted to bring up the waistline into more of an empire waist because it looked better. Yeah, I agree, but this dress is not my choice. I have to have the same dress as everyone else and that means I have to have the waist riiiight about the same level as my spare tire. She points to the picture and in her broken English tells me that it won't look good because the people in the picture don't have "this" and she pokes my fat.

For reals. Seamstresses aren't a breed to hold back on the criticism and this wasn't the first time a seamstress has told me that a bridesmaid dress would look better on me if I lost a few pounds, but maaaaaaaan, I wasn't expecting the poke.

But she's totally right. I knew full well that the waistline in the picture would look horrible on me, so we split the difference and hopefully the sash that Sarah is making will disguise the fact that my dress is slightly more empire-ish than everyone else's.

So blah, blah, blah: My arms and the dress TORTURE MY SOUL.

But here's the bright spot in my ensemble:



I picked my shoes up from being dyed and I kinda love them. I don't think Sarah is all that hot for them, but the other day we were looking for earrings for her to wear for the wedding and we established that we have the exact OPPOSITE taste in accessories. She's into tasteful and I'm into PIZZAZ!

So, at least my shoes make me happy, which is a big deal since I was initially disappointed that I couldn't wear gold ones.

Speaking of Sarah, picture #3 is from Monday when I took Sarah and her friend Hillary on a tour of SF:



Hillary is visiting from Iowa and really, it couldn't have been a more beautiful day.

Sarah wanted to check out the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park so we did:



I don't get what the big whoop is about that place, but neither did Sarah, so we crossed it off the list of things to do with tourists from Iowa.

Hillary was the third Iowan I've shown around town and so far they all love Alamo Square:



And there you have it: A light picture post, but with lots of words.

To summarize: Curry stinks, I like my new red shoes and San Francisco is beautiful.

Pretending I'm an Olympic marathon runner.

According to Weight Watchers' eTools, morbidly obese exercisers like me earn 10 activity points in a 40 minute step class. This has always seemed high to me, but step class isn't easy, so maybe it's true. On the other hand, I figure I only earn 5 activity points at boot camp, but I feel way more SPENT at boot camp than I do after step class, so I don't really know what's what.

Inspired by watching yesterday's Olympic coverage of the men's marathon, I decided to see how many activity points I could earn by, say, running a marathon. I searched for "running" and found a variety of choices, all specifying mile times. My 14 minute mile was not represented, but as soon as I eek my time down to a 9 minute mile, eTools can help me calculate my efforts. But since I'm an OLYMPIC MARATHON RUNNER in this scenario, I picked the 5.5 minute mile, which is still slower than the winner's pace (GO KENYA!) and entered in 126 minutes of activity (the winner's approximate time) and guess how many points he would get??

Go ahead, guess!

125?

74?

58?

LOWER.

33.

THIRTY-THREE MEASLY POINTS for running 5 miles an hour for over two hours?!?

That's crazy talk.

That's the equivalent of a fat person's WW points for the day (I specify "fat person" because my friend Big D gets something insane like 15 points because she's borderline too skinny for WW but I admire her for taking care of 5 pounds before they turn into 50...and I wish I could rewind back to 2nd grade and get rid of the first five pounds when I had the chance). I don't know how many calories are in 33 points, but I'd guess about 1800, which doesn't seem like enough ESPECIALLY considering the activity point calculator is assuming MY morbidly obese ass is the one running the marathon. I'm sure the 112 pound Kenyan winner would earn less than that.

Anyway. There you have it: My nutritional analysis of Olympic marathon running.

My, you're looking very obese these days.

Earlier this year, when discussing our resolutions for 2008, a friend of mine said that one of her goals was to be overweight. Well that's a twist, right? Someone who actually wants to be overweight? Yes, because according to the charts (and you can keep all your BLAH BLAH BLAH'ing about BMI charts and what bullshit they are to yourself because I KNOW, but it's not a mystery that I'm fat and I don't use them to measure my value as a human being or anything so RELAX) she was currently obese and she decided that she'd shoot for overweight.

YAY, OVERWEIGHT!

Me: Hello, Anonymous Friend! Myyyyyy, you're looking overweight today!

Anon Friend: Awl, thanks Elizabeth...that's the nicest thing I've heard all day!

So if her goal was to be overweight, then my goal would be to achieve obesity. Huh? Now listen little children, I'm not going to get cut out of my house anytime soon (have you SEEN those shoes on TLC? Like the guy who sneaks Chinese delivery through his bedroom window with a pulley system??), but according to the charts (BLAH BLAH BLAH), I am morbidly obese. So my goal: ACHIEVE OBESITY! WOO HOO!

(Incidentally, I was recently pleased to discover that I weigh less than Yao Ming, but of course, he's a foot and a half taller than I am. At 32 (!) a growth spurt is unlikely, but YOU NEVER KNOW!)

So all of that is just a lead up to the fact that this morning at boot camp I shaved 21 seconds off my timed mile. I'm not a big "let's gather around and cheer each other on" kind of boot camper but I couldn't help but exclaim that OMG THAT'S 20 SECONDS FASTER THAN MY BEST! and I was kind of caught off guard by the OMG THAT'S AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! response from the crowd.

Damn those girls for getting me choked up before 6AM.

But anyway, I'm proud of myself. Really ladies, it's the best $210 I spend each month and I really hope that getting a job doesn't mean I can't keep going, particularly since employment will mean that I can actually afford to go and won't need to keep financing it through the Bank of Mom & Dad. I haven't lost much weight, and on a good day I can squeeze into a smaller size jeans, and I really wish I had lost a lot more weight, but the fitness test results are the inarguable proof that I'm doing something good for myself.

At the beginning of my first session I could do the following:

8 girl push-ups in one minute
10 second wall-sit (where you lean against a wall and pretend like you're sitting in a chair)
10 second modified plank (on the knees & forearms)

And I couldn't even run a whole mile at the beginning. I did a run/walk that clocked in around 15 minutes and at the end of the first session I could run a whole mile in 14:30. I know this is a snail's pace (and sometimes when I go to the track there are walkers who are lapping me) but I'm proud of it anyway.

This morning's results:

23 girl push-ups in one minute (my goal is to graduate to non-pussy push-ups)
90 second wall-sit
35-ish second (I can't remember exactly) REGULAR plank
14:09 mile...still a snail's pace, but the 13's are within reach!!

All of this is awesome and it makes me feel happy and strong (except I'm kiiiiinda bent that I couldn't hold out a few more seconds on the plank because as soon as I dropped, two others dropped right after me and if I had KNOWN they were waiting for ME, I would have been waiting for THEM and a sweaty, quivering plank-off would have ensued). Still morbidly obese, but also happy and strong. Of course, it isn't without a whole new crop of problems that I didn't have when I was alternating couch-sitting with a few weekly step classes or bouts with the elliptical machine. Like HELLO, RIGHT KNEE! I never knew I had knee problems before, but good gawwwd it's a bitch. Plus, I have overall aches and pains (and not in that good aching muscle kind of way) and I feel like an old lady sometimes, but USE IT OR LOSE IT, ELIZABETH!

I'm even kind of thinking that perhaps boot camp is the cause of my recent hermit lifestyle. See, wearing heels has become somewhat uncomfortable but I'm going to hang on TOOTH AND NAIL because once I give up on heels it'll be a slippery slope to crocs and SO HELP ME GOD I'd rather die. D-I-E. Dead.

So boot camp = bad knees = sensible shoes = I'd rather just stay home.

That said, boot camp also = me kicking your ass in ways I never thought possible.