I've been a bad bad girl

Not only have I not written an entry in way too long, but I also have not been working out lately like I should have been and promised myself I would. That's not to say I haven't been active. Apparently, something I've been doing lately has been working because I'm still losing weight, but I haven't gotten back on a cardio routine nor have I started yoga like I wanted to... yet. I will, just not sure when I'll be able to.

Things have been crazy. Not in a bad way for the most part, but definitely crazy. I got thrown off my routine big time, but I chose to look at it as positive. Only good can come of it really in the long run. So I still haven't reached my goal, but that's one of the reasons I didn't set a time limit on it. Right now I don't feel like I've failed so much as gotten derailed a bit. Which I can deal with. There's always coming back from that.

So present date I'm holding at 236 but down from 269. Laughter is not only good for the soul, it's apparently also good for my waistline.

In other news, I entered a short story contest on Goodreads last month and I won! There was a slight mix up, but I won a Kindle Touch and I should get it on Monday which makes me immensely happy. Writing that story was one of the funnest things I've written and also the only thing I've actually finished. Due to the rules of the contest I had to use a few key words/phrases so it was like doing MadLibs. Add to that the fact that is was late and I was exhausted, it amused me. A lot. Just for shits and giggles I'm going to post it here becasue well... I'm kind of proud of it as ridiculous as it is and feeling proud of things is not something I'm always use to. So without further ado, I give you my untitled short story.

Note: Words in bold are the ones I had to use for the contest.

Chapter One


This could not be happening. There was no way she was staring at a dead furniture store owner, who just happened to be her freaking boss, bleeding all over the showroom floor while the biggest freaking guy she had ever seen in her life pointed a gun at her. This kind of thing just didn’t happen in Vermont! She was going to freak out in five, four, three, two…

Felicia Cooper sucked in a breath to start screaming when the giant with the gun, put the weapon back in his shoulder holster and held out his hands in the universal sign of I’m-Not-Going-To-Hurt-You. He took a step toward her and she froze like a deer in the headlights. You know the ones that end up dead on the side of the road.

“Ma’am,” he said and she though, Ma'am? Who am I, my mother? “My name is Jeff McClure. I’m a police officer. I’m just going to reach into my pocket for my badge.”

She clutched her purse to her chest ready to flee while he reached inside his jacket. If she was smart she would have run while he was somewhat distracted getting out his “badge,” but it wasn’t like she would have gotten far anyway. She had learned that much from movies. The chick in the heels who ran always got murdered.

Felicia blinked when he pulled out what looked like a wallet, flipping it open. Really, though, what did she think that he was going to put the gun away to pull out a knife because shooting her would be too easy? Tentatively she held out a hand and asked, “Do you mind if I look at that?”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you, Officer.”

“Detective.”

“Hmm?” She glanced up from perusing the badge (it looked real, but how much did she know?) and caught him smiling at her.

“It’s Detective. Not Officer.”

Felicia blinked. Had he been that attractive earlier? Probably just didn’t notice it with the gun in your face. And the dead guy on the floor. She gasped. “Mr. Murphy! What’s going to happen to him?”

“That’s the name of the deceased?”

“Yes. He owns the store. He’s my boss. Poor Mr. Murphy.”

“I’ll call the coroner and the crime scene guys to come down here and I’ll need to ask you a few questions. We can do that here or down at the station if you prefer.”

The idea of staying where her boss had been shot made her shudder. If Detective McClure hadn’t gotten here when he had she might have been next.

“Wait a minute. How did you get here so fast? I didn’t even call 911!” She took a few steps backward, afraid all over again.

“I got an anonymous call that a murder had just taken place.”

She wasn’t sure why, but she believed him. “Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“It does, yes, but I can worry about that later. Why don’t we wait outside while I place a few calls?” His voice was gentle as were his hands when he took his badge from her numb fingers and cupped her elbow in his other to lead her to the door. Heat radiated from his hands through her body stopping the shivers that had just started. Just having him near made her feel safe.

Until they walked out the front door into hell.



Chapter Two

Jeff smelled them just as he pushed the door open thanks to a shift in the wind, but it was already too late. The door was ripped out of his hand a split second before he pushed Felicia back toward the interior of the store. He heard her gasp and thud to the ground but didn’t have the time to spare a thought. He turned his head a fraction of a second too late and the fist aimed at his temple hit him across the jaw instead knocking him back. Someone standing behind him put him in a choke hold and whoever had cold clocked him delivered a punch to his gut.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the puppy.” The growl rumbled out of his chest before he even thought about it, earning him another hit to the gut. “Still haven’t learned any manners, I see.”

“Still haven’t learned to do your own dirty work, I see, Tommy Boy.” This time the douche putting him in the choke hold tightened his grip, making his sentence trail off in a wheeze.

“You always did have a smart mouth. Why the Council thinks you’ll make a good Alpha I’ll never understand. But I’m about to rectify the situation.”

The reason you don’t understand is why you wouldn’t make a good Alpha, Jeff thought, but couldn’t say since his air supply was severely compromised by Jackass Number 1. Jackass Number 2 was currently winding up for another swing when Thomas held up his hand in a staying motion. “I’ll take care of this myself.”

Oh good. I’ll actually have a chance to wipe that smug look off his face. Or so he thought when Jackass Number 2 handed Thomas a gun and Jackass Number 1 relieved him of his service piece as he stepped back. At least now he could breath. His odds could be better. Three against one and they have guns. Still… He had faced worse.

Felicia chose that moment to remind everyone she was there. He groaned. “Everyone get away from him and put down the gun, I called the cops!”

Thomas and his cronies laughed. Then Tommy Boy pointed the gun at Felicia and a red haze covered his vision.


She was going to die. This was it. She should have bought those Manolos when she had the chance. Felicia squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the bullet, but it never came. Instead, a giant wolf jumped at her would-be shooter and ripped. His. Throat out.

For the second time that night she was staring at a dead body, but this time she did scream. Darting back inside she ducked inside poor Mr. Murphy’s office and locked the door, trying to drown out the screams. Where was Jeff? She hadn’t seen him after the wolf/dog/whatever showed up. Please let him be okay.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat huddled under the desk, but she screamed again when a hand touched her shoulder. She hadn't even heard the door open! “Felicia. Felicia, it’s me!”

“Jeff,” she gasped. “Oh my God, you’re okay!” She launched herself at him belatedly noticing that he was completely naked. She froze. “Uh…”

Jeff looked sheepish and a little sad. “You’re safe now.”

Felicia blinked at him when the realization hit her. “It was you! The… wolf.”

“Yeah.”

“You… you’re a werewolf.” The word felt strange on her tongue.

“... Yeah.” Jeff shrugged. “Are you going to freak out?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how good of a kisser you are.”

Jeff smiled, cupping her face in his hands. He brushed his lips across her, nipping at her bottom lip. Felicia pulled back. “How did you find me back here anyway?”

The grin her gave her was decidedly wolfish. “Honey, you’re my mate. I could find you anywhere.”

The End

Getting back on the proverbial horse

I got my not inconsiderable behind on the elliptical tonight. For somewhere in the range of an hour. I'm not really certain since I apparently leaned on something when I turned the page on my book and cleared the screen. Goddamnit.

But anyway! An hour (we'll estimate), with a 21.5 ramp and a resistance of 6 (so I can keep track for next time) and I burned 500 calories (give or take). Broke out the inhaler so I didn't asphyxiate and, man, did I forget how much this stuff makes me shake. But I'll take the shaking over the not breathing.

I had a not horrible day eating-wise, all things considered. Went to DD this morning for coffee since I'm stupid and I left my travel mug at work the day before and could not drink the perfectly good coffee I brewed at home. Grabbed an egg and cheese on an English muffin, too. Not the greatest thing ever to eat, but I needed the protein and it's better than a doughnut. My normal Chobani (strawberry today) for lunch, with blackberries thrown in and some baby carrots. As hungry as I was when I decided to go to lunch by the time I actually sat down, I was not so hungry anymore.

I did splurge and go to Starbucks for a chai and two chocolate hazelnut cookies, but resiting the craving to get fries after work evens it out... right? I am the queen of rationalization, by the way. Dinner was Quorn nuggets, mac and cheese and broccoli. I am loving all things Quorn brand with all my heart. Finding vegetarian meat substitutes that don't taste like crap is not easy. I might have a bowl of Special K red berry after I finish typing this post. I'm feeling a little peckish.

In other news, Amazon finally liberated my books that I ordered and I got one of them today. I'm on chapter eleven of Lover Reborn right now and... I don't know. I'm withholding judgement until I'm finished or at least a little further in. I was both anticipating and worrying about Thor's book since I was as heart broken as many BDB fans were when Wellsie was murdered. But there's about as much Thor as there is John/Xhex going on and only eleven chapters in, too. Mayhap this book should have been subtitled Lover Mine Revisited. Oh well. If I'm not done LR by the time Sacrificial Magic gets here, I might just stop reading it in favor of SM. WHICH EVERYONE SHOULD READ BY THE WAY. Just sayin'.

I am proud of myself, damn it!

 Haven't posted in a while and I don't have much to say at the moment, but I have to announce this becasue I am proud of myself and I should be able to say when I'm fucking proud of myself, right? Right!

I LOST FOUR POUNDS! Four! Might not be a lot, but I will take what I can get and I'm fucking proud of myself! I haven't been able to say as much about anything really in a long time. Will I still have bad food days? Sure. Will I still have days when I say "Fuck you, exercise" ? Hell yes. But I have to keep reminding myself that this is a long road to weight lose and the Hot Sexy Bitch Goddess inside of me I know I can be.

So one step at a time.

Not that I really think anyone except maybe four people read this crap that I write, but what are you proud of yourself for lately?

I can feel myself circling... circling...

After just getting on a scale for the first time since January, I want to cry: 260

I am now only 18 pounds away from where I was at my heaviest when I graduated high school. I never wanted to be at that place again. NEVER. Finding myself here makes me so angry at myself. One would think that this would make me more motivated to lose weight. But as strongly as I feel about this, weight loss for me is a tricky thing.

My relationship with food has never been the best. I was a pretty heavy child by the time I hit second grade thanks to an eye disease, copious amounts of steroids medication and a complete lack of information given to my parents by my many healthcare providers. My parents had no experience with steroids or their side affects. They didn't know what kind of questions to ask. My eye doctor never said anything because maybe he didn't think that was his place? And our family doctor was, let's face it, just an asshole who liked to tell me I needed to stop eating cake and cookies. Telling things like that to a child makes them feel like it's entirely their fault they're overweight. Add to that being made fun of by not only my sister and my classmates, but having to deal with my mother's insensitive comments contributed to my complete lack of self worth and started me down a long, dark road that took me many, many years to get off of.

I should mention at this point, to those who don't know me, that my mother is severely manic, my father worked all the time to support everyone since my mother couldn't work and my sister, I am convinced, felt jealous that I got so much "attention" because I was sick therefore leading to her harsh treatment of me. I did not have much of a support system when I was young. After my grandmother passed away when I was 11, I didn't have one in my family period. I love my family, don't get me wrong, but I never had the relationship with any of them, outside my grandmother, where I felt I could turn to them with things, except maybe my oldest cousin when we were older.

So, in my times of pain and stress, I turned to food. I turned to food and I hid it. I bet you can see where this is going. I progressively put on more and more weight, until I reached high school. I hit my highest weight to date and plateaued. When I was 16, my eye doctor moved his practice and I had to find a new eye doctor. She was the first doctor that actually stressed the dangers of having been on the meds I was on for so long.

Besides all the weight gain, I was at higher risk for glaucoma which could have made me GO BLIND. This scared the shit out of me. I had long since been given the responsibility of administer my own eye drops, my new doctor drastically dropped my dose since I hadn't had too many symptoms in a while and after about a year... I stopped taking the medication all together. And hid it.

I let everyone believe that I was still putting in the eye drops the way I was supposed to. And wonders of wonders, I got better. I had no symptoms. At all. For the first time since I was SIX. And over the year after graduation high school, I dropped a drastic amount of weight, somewhere near to the amount of 70 pounds. Doing absolutely nothing.

I felt fantastic... about that. Everything else in my life was kind of shitty, but that's another story. Around the same time my dad was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He changed his diet, which meant everyone else in the house changed their diet, and became more active and I joined him a lot when he took walks. I started walking to work, walking when I got home from work, walking before I went to work. Basically I was walking all the time and I was on my feet all day at work as well.

Right around my 21 birthday, I was at the lowest weight I had been in years, an almost unbelievable 193 pounds. I slowly started coming out of my shell and slightly believing that, Hey, I actually don't look bad.The summer after my 22 birthday, I got my first boyfriend. I know, I know, I give new meaning to the term "late bloomer." But I could never believe before that a man was actually attracted to me.

At first, it was great. He was nice to me and we had a lot in common and I thought everything was great. Without getting into to many details (cause let's face it this isn't the right place to discuss it), he turned out to be a dick and dumped me, I cut off all my hair, got super depressed and started feeling like shit again and putting weight back on, if not more slowly. It still wasn't too bad until recently.

To get back to my original point, I've gotten lazy and complacent over the last few years and fallen back into a lot my my bad eating habits. Making unhealthy choices becasue they're easy and "comforting." I'm not sure how to drag myself out of this again. I'm circling back into the abyss. For every healthy choice I make, I make three bad ones.

I'm trying to go vegetarian most of the time because I haven't been craving meat and for a while the mere thought of eating it made me nauseous, but it's kind of hard because I tend to fall back on bread and pasta when I don't eat meat. I've been trying out a lot of frozen vegetarian meal options because they're easy when I come home from work half dead and don't feel like cooking, but I need to get out of the habit of snacking on things like ice cream and chips.

I use to be that person who ate rice cakes and loved them! Where did that girl go because I can't seem to find her.

Give me pockets or give me death!

Point of discussion for today's post:
 -inequalities in men's and women's fashions and the things women (namely I) do to work around them

As I was getting up from the table in the break room after my 15 this morning, I picked up my phone and, as I always do when I'm at work, I placed it in my bra. A male coworker then commented that it must be a [place where I work] thing (I'm bound by a sort of nondisclosure agreement to not talk about my place of employment on the internets; it's really more to prevent trash talking, but let's just be safe okay?) because he had never seen it before he started at [the place where I work].

My other coworker whom I was on break with told him he was just jealous that he didn't have a bra to put things in. This was funny for so many reasons, the least of which being that she's in her sixties.

But I digress...

Explaining the reasons I put my phone in my bra or "in my boob" as I usually refer to it made me think about how ridiculous the clothing industry is... besides the fact that I work in retail. It has nothing to do with that. Seriously.

I can walk into most any store that sells men's clothing and as long as I know what size the guy I'm buying for it will, 9 times out of 10, FIT. Women's sizing on the other hand is completely and utterly JACKED UP. But my real issue? WHERE ARE MY GODDAMN POCKETS?

Has anyone else noted the lack of pockets in women's dress pants? "Pockets" that are only an inch deep aren't pockets, by the way. They're the cock teasers of pockets. And don't even get me started on the "decorative ones" that don't even open. Those are just cruel. I've bought dress pants before that have actual pockets not to mention belt loops (Gasp!), so I know they exist, but I'll be damned if I can find any that fit my ridiculously unproportionate body.

I use to be able to, but somewhere in the span of a year or two, the store I always bought them in that I was able to just pick up any pair of black dress pant in an 18 average and having them fit, they're now about two sizes smaller than the pair I still have from the same store.  Someone explain to me how that works? If it's a "cost of fabric issues" that is making them cut them smaller, I'd honestly rather pay a little extra for something that fits.

I would kill for a pair of dress pants that fit that had belt loops (for my keys) and pockets (for my walkie and my phone) so I didn't have to keep my phone in my bra since I don't have a job where I sit at a desk or am able to carry around a purse all day. If I did that (carry around a purse), they'd think I was stealing and I'd get tackled by security. Then again it would be more action than I've seen in about six years... Hmmm...

So, yeah, anyone else keep things in weird places to make up for the deficiencies of women's clothing? Or is it just me?

Bitchtastic

I can be a bitch. Bitch-bitch-bitchidy-BITCH. I know this about myself. Part of it comes from trying to put a wall up between myself and the world and just being all around cynical. Part of it is being passive aggressive.

What you say? Passive aggressive = bitch?

Yes, yes it does. My passive aggressiveness comes across most often as sarcasm and sarcasm most often enough comes across as being bitchy. I'm sarcastic because I don't like confrontation. It's easier to sarcastically agree with someone, say at work, than it is to contradict them sometimes. Most of the time.

My passive aggressiveness also means that sometimes I take out my anger on people I'm not really mad at. Which is another reason I'm a bitch. Sometimes I don't realize I'm doing it. If I do, I'll apologize, but if I don't, please someone tell me I'm being a gigantic whore and shut me up kthnx <3

Denial is not just a river in Egypt

I had originally started this blob with the intention of it being about books and how I love them, but as you can see I only made two posts and then certain personal issues made me push it aside. I've decided to take my blog in a different direction and instead of making another one, I'm just going to overhaul this one.

It's going to be part fitness blog in the future, but at the moment it's more a place to sort out my shit, make hopefully witty observations about life... and occasionally write things book related, even though lately it's been taking me a lot to write anything about any book even ones I love. But reading and writing are such a big part of my life it has to be included in there somewhere.

I don't want to be all whiny and blahblahblah. My life hasn't been by any means perfect, but I have things to be grateful for. Then again I also don't want this blog to be all my life is so perfect blahblahblah. But I do need to remind myself sometimes of the things in my life that are good. I'm content with my life and the direction it's taking, but I have things I'm still not happy with such as my self image, my weight and just generally my being out of shape.

My ultimate goal is not just reaching a goal weight and staying there, although I'll get into that down the road (ha! Pun), it's more so to get to the place where I can be happy with who I am, the way I'm living and how I look. I've gotten very good at introspection in my 27 (28 in a few weeks) years, but I am also very very good at denial...

I'm hoping writing things down will keep me honest. I'm not very good at expressing myself or my feelings and I bottle things up which leads to me doing stupid things. So here's to me not doing stupid things anymore!