my list: 101 things in 1001 days

1 learn to play the guitar
2 re-learn french
3 finish my novel
4 finish my poetry book
5 graduate with my mfa
6 see disney world
7 go to ireland
8 get my third tattoo
9 pierce my belly button
10 pierce my upper ears
11 bungee jump
12 sky dive
13 snow board
14 weigh less than 200lbs
15 learn to drive a stick
16 fly first class
17 get out of credit card debt
18 buy a house
19 visit seattle
20 become a sophmore burner
21 learn to swim
22 get my passport
23 become an expert at reading tarot
24 complete the breast cancer 3 day
25 visit vermont (completed 12/30-31/06)
26 go to canada(completed 12/31/06-1/1/07)
27 go roller blading again
28 visit & return from mexico
29 write a song
30 see the salt flats in utah
31 have a spa weekend
32 finish my bartending classes
33 make a quilt entirely by hand
34 celebrate mardi gras in new orleans
35 go skiing
36 go to italy
37 make my own candles
38 take swing dancing lessons
39 go scuba diving
40 get my 4th tattoo
41 get my 5th tattoo
42 go to the garlic festival in gilroy, ca
43 enter the pillsbury bake-off
45 make my own spaghetti sauce from scratch
46 spend a week in alaska
47 complete NaNoWriMo (@ least 50k words)
48 pull taffy
49 spend a year being selfish
50 learn another lanaguage (other than french)
51 do a past life regression
52 have at least one end game character on WoW (completed 1/14/07)
53 practice palmistry
54 play in the ocean
55 see new york city (not by plane)
56 go the grand canyon
57 tour hoover damn
58 invent a cocktail
59 try a REAL martini (not-a-freakin-fru-fru-it-ends-in-tini-so-it's-a-martini)
60 find my spirituality
61 become ambedextrus
62 run for more than a minute
63 become lost
64 find myself
65 finish my james dean collage
66 read "the inferno"
67 write a fan letter to stephen king
68 write a thank you letter to stephen thayor
69 send my mom flowers for no reason (completed 02/27/2007)
70 take my dad to a movie for no reason
71 surprise my grandma with lunch/dinner
72 get up to enjoy the sunrise
73 watch the sunset
74 get to at least 30 states on my list
75 go to hawaii
76 make home made chili
77 rollar blade around lake phalen
78 win a game of cribbage against jenn-jenn
79 drive to california
80 dance on myrtle beach
81 make my parents proud of me
82 forgive grandma ginger
83 talk to my dad about vietnam
84 go to the top of the empire state building
85 have my dad teach me glass etching
86 make kuchen with my mom
87 have matt teach me how to change the oil in a car
88 help matt restore my dad's mustang
89 save $5,000 & keep it in the bank
90 write my dad's story
91 learn to lucid dream
92 create a garlic recipe to enter in the gilroy festival
93 take a photography class
94 become a pool shark (ok, reasonably good at pool will suffice)
95make a new year's resolution that i stick with for one whole year
96 go to a wild game with my dad
97 see a cirque de solel performance
98 interview grandpa caruso for a west 7th street book
99 do 10 real push-ups without dying
100 let myself write at least 30 minutes a day
101 finish this entire list in 1001 days

meet my newest pet: gwennie

adopt your own virtual pet!

care bear philosophy

it's been said by too many people in too many ways, that the ending of one thing should be thought of, not as an ending, but as the beginning of something else. also, when god closes a door, he opens a window. yada yada yada. it's a tired & worn out phrase, ideology, something warm & fuzzy to wrap ourselves in when something in our life goes awry & we need to feel better about our past & where we still have to travel in the future.

fuck. that. shit.

sometimes a girl needs to wallow. with a long island. or a big mother-effing bottle of tequila.

i won't say that i regret anything that's happened in the past two years, because to say i regret it is to say that, if given the chance, i would change it, & i wouldn't change it. because that's not the way i roll.

like everything in my life i'm trying to look at the opportunities that are being presented to me now instead of what i'm losing. & it's hard, because, well, the afore mentioned long islands &/or bottle of tequila for starters. but beyond that, 'cause i hate saying good bye. & i hate admitting that i'm wrong.

& most of all, i hate failing, at anything. & i feel like i failed. big time.

no matter what anyone says, it's how i feel. & i won't apologize for how i feel. it cheapens you, & your emotions, to apologize for them.

& that's all i have to say about that.

holiday hangover

i think i ingested five & a half pounds of sugar over the past two days. my tummy is pretending it's a sailor & tying itself in knots, my blood is slogging through my body laden down with the sugar crystals, & my head is heavy & fuzzy, & all i wanna do is sleep.

oh holy hell i feel like crap!

& here i swore i'd never do that to myself again. never again would i stuff my face so full of food that i felt hung over the next day from the excess, & yet, oops, i did it again. except without the pop soundtrack, skimpy clothes, or suggestive dance.

what is it about christmas, or any holiday for that matter, that makes us not only feel it's ok to over indulge, but makes us feel entitled to gorge ourselves past our limits?

i won't do this to myself on new years eve, i guar-en-tee it.

merry christmas!

it's december 25th again & all over people are celebrating christmas. for each person christmas means a different thing. for some it really is a true religious celebration. for some it's all about the gifts & getting that perfect gift (how many people elbowed old ladies this year to get their hands on a wii?) & for some it's just an annoying day that all the stores are closed & you can't even get a big mac at mickey d's.

for me, christmas is about family. unfortunately, most christmases my dad has to work, 8am-4pm, which sucks, a lot. then again, there have been quite a few years that i had to work on christmas day also. the gifts are nice, don't get me wrong. but in a way i'm more excited about giving to my family, seeing their faces when they open those packages that i put so much time into picking out, & not so much time into wrapping.

right now it's 2:30pm & all over america kids are blissed out from playing with their new presents, tvs have wii controls embedded in them, & adults are half schnockered from too much egg nog. & here at my house, we have tbs' 24 hours of a christmas story on the boob tube, the dog is wandering around looking confused, my brother just woke up & is in the shower, my sister is plotting her day after christmas sales plan, my mom is making a sandwich, & i'm curled up with my laptop & my cleo cat. all of us waiting on four o'clock when my dad will be home & we can really start enjoying the holiday.

my fondest memories of christmas from when i was young is the look on my dad's face when my mom would show up at his work, with all of us kids, bags stuffed with sandwich meat, dollar buns, chips, cookies, kuchen, cans of pop, & vhs tapes with our favorite christmas movies. & we'd invade my dad's work for a few hours, eating a christmas lunch, talking, watching movies, drinking hot cocoa. & it made his day just a little bit better.

no matter what you are doing today, i hope your day is good, that you get at least a small christmas miracle.

good bye, travel well, mnboy

a friend of mine has an "activity partner" that has been nicknamed "minnesota boy," shortened to mnboy for the purpose of text messages. i have yet to meet the infamous mnboy, he seems to dodge every chance to make my fabulous acquaintance, but it still seems like the polite thing to wish him a fond farewell.

he's decided that minnesota is played out, has nothing to offer him, (though, personally, i would beg to differ). so he's packing his jeep & heading off, to the south, to the west, i guess where ever the feeling moves him. georgia has been mentioned, so has the fabulous bay area. & though i've never met the boy, up close & personal, i do wish him the best.

it's been said that he's a blog fan of mine, so why not wish him well on his future travels, & at the same time, make him blog famous? he already is semi-blog famous, anyone remember the august post let's hear it for the boy? mnboy was the misfortune's mike in the story, who stacked shit from his garage on top of his car to fall into his apartment with his junk hanging out? yeah, i still smile a little when i pull that one from the archives.

to send mnboy into blog fame we'll resurrect mike & suzy from their aliases of august to give the most recent, & last installment, of their adventures.

on sunday i was over at suzy's place picking her up for a christmas party, & i see this rather delish boy walk out of her apartment building wearing pj bottoms & a hoodie & i mentally say "oh baby" & then a part of me thinks, "i bet that's mnboy." no reason, i just think that. then the delish boy goes over to a jeep, gets in, sits there for a hella long time, making me think that cutie wasn't the famed mnboy, just someone who lives at suzy's building, then the jeep reverses, i see the plates in my review (florida i note....which IS where mnboy's parents reside) & suz is running terribly late so i think "BUSTED! she was getting some sunday boom-boom & that's why she was late."

& i really was going to call her out on it, but she came out to my truck after i'd been sitting there for a good twenty minutes apologizing & looking all rushed & harried (& she had christmas pressies for me) so i felt bad & decided not to call her out on it.

fast forward to wednesday morning. i pull up to her apartment building & see the same jeep with florida plates in the parking lot. hmmm. & she admitted that mnboy was still there asleep in her bed. double hmmm. so she gets in my truck & i ask, ever so casually, "is that mnboy's jeep?" & she says yes & i did the whole ah-ha! thing.

which led to confusion. suzy wanted to know what in the hell i was talking about. i thought she was playing it super cool, acting like she didn't know anything about the cute boy in the pj bottoms strolling out of the building & getting into the jeep in question. & then we discovered, she wasn't being coy, playing sly, or anything. he hadn't really been warming her bed saturday night or sunday morning. she hadn't seen the boy. & from my description of the apartment cutie he sounded like i did indeed see the elusive mnboy exiting the building.

& suzy was mad.

& got madder through out the day. she kept popping up over my cube wall & asking me, what did the pajama bottoms look like? could i see the dude's arms? did he have tattoos on them? hair color? style? was i for-absolute-cross-my-heart-&-swear-to-die-super-positive that i saw that jeep? & i answered the questions until i was blue in the face. & i didn't read the plates, but i saw the jeep, saw the florida plates, & even (quite lamely & half heartedly) put forth the explanation that it could be that there are two identical jeeps with florida plates not only in minnesota but chilling at that building in minnetonka.

through out the day suzy texted mike to get his version of the story. & we, suzy & i that is, not mike & i, came to the conclusion that no boy would be dumb enough to have two booty calls in the exact same apartment building when he doesn't even live in said building. & mnboy mike maintained his innocence, & i maintained what my brown eyes saw, & suzy wound up confused but knew i wouldn't lie to her.

& suzy was just going to write the whole thing off, mnboy would be moving & no longer a mnboy, he'd be a caliboy or gaboy, but someone else's boy anyway. until we pulled up to her building after work. & what do we see parked right across from the front door, almost in a mocking way, if cars could mock. yup, the jeep with florida plate. & suzy looked at it & asked if it had tinted windows, which it did.

what happened next was both hilarious in the moment, & after, & slightly terrifying at the same time. suzy flung open the door of my truck, nearly fell out of it, actually. grabbed her gym bag & keys, as she was trying to shove my crap back into the truck. she yelled that she'd call me later as she slammed the door & ran into her building. first off gang, i have never seen suzy run, i was in straight up shock over that one. & then i thought she just may kill him. & then we'd have a dead mnboy to deal with. which can be fine in the summer, but it's winter, the ground is frozen & i didn't have a hole prepared anywhere.

so i sent her a text:

don't kill him! you're too pretty for prison!

she didn't kill him. mnboy told our little suzy that he loaned his jeep to a friend to get a christmas tree & that he had his friend's car. & my description sort of fit him, & other cute boys with dark hair, hoodies, & green plaid flannel pj bottoms. but he still claims it was the other cute guy with the jeep with florida plates (is anyone thinking this sounds like the fugitive....i swear it was the one armed man!) at the apartment building sunday evening. & considering the other jeep with florida plates is still in the parking lot, still covered in melting snow, & supposedly mnboy is at his own apartment.

& from all of us here at beckah's blog, meaning just my bad self, we say "bon voyage, mnboy. so long, & thanks for all the fish."

PeNoWriMo

i didn't do as well during NaNoWriMo as i would've hoped. i made it to about 8,000 words, i know it wasn't into the 9s, but somewhere in the 8s. about 16% completion is what i reached, not spectacular at all. so i decided i'll do it again, in january, & i'll hold myself accountable online. yes, the ticker does say exercise, but they didn't really have any other ones that would work for this.

currently i'm in the process of changing the spare room in the basement from jack's room back to an office for myself. yeah, the room is kind of dark & does have the horrid brady-style paneling on the walls. but it has a door & it's all mine, so it's a pretty good start.

i'm still trying to finish my novel for my thesis. wish me luck gang, the official countdown begins on january first, but i'm taking the last 12 days of december as my gearing up & getting ready time.

surgery on the horizon

i had my last meeting with christine this morning, the dietician at hcmc. she said that i was doing really well & that she was going to pass my information onto the people that do the scheduling for the surgical team. she also said, again, that if it wasn't for my insurance requiring me to meet with her three times that she would've passed me right away on the first appointment, that feels good, i will admit, to know that i was doing everything possible to lose weight & that someone in the medical community supported me & said "yes, she needs our help to get to lose weight." it's also an odd feeling of defeat & shame. that it really & truly means that i'm failing/failed at the weight loss battle.

the psychiatrist also had good things to say about me. so the next stop on the fa(s)t train is the surgeon. at hcmc they do the meetings with the surgeons every other week. the way it was explained to me is that the surgeons alternate weeks, the meetings are on friday mornings at 8am, the surgeon meets with several people as a large group, discusses both roux-en-y & lab band surgeries, & then after the "group" meeting, the surgeon meets individually with each patient to discuss the specifics of the surgery they are interested in getting, any personal questions they have, & all of that. the surgeon writes to the insurance company including notes of the dietician, psychiatrist & all the information they have to show why this person should be approved for weight loss surgery.

the timeline is looking something like this: it'll be some time in january that i meet with the surgeon for the first time, then about 15 days to get the response from my insurance, after that is a go, then we'll look at scheduling the actual surgery, which is looking like possibly february at the earliest, depending on when all of the rest of this is going to take place. it's really odd to think that by the time spring is here that i may have surgically altered my body & the way it handles digestion meaning it'll alter the way that i interact with food.

to quote joey: WHOA!

yeah, pretty heavy stuff we're dealing with here, pun possibly intended. then again, there is still hope for me. i did lose some weight on the challenge that i did with jenn this past fall. it wasn't a total success because she won (yea jenn!) which means that i lost. the competition. some weight, but not enough. & we're starting another challenge on january 5th. that will be the starting weight day. & then hard core from there. it'll be me, jenn, & angel again. we'll also be joined by a few other coworkers. so i need to just get my ass dedicated & do what i need to. i hate to lose, ya know.

& this last competition, since it's right before the (possible) surgery, is my very last chance to do it on my own. yeah, maybe this seems a little odd to try to push myself to lose a lot of weight before i intend on getting weight loss surgery. but the thing is, if i postpone the weight loss surgery path right now, it'll take me that much longer to go through the process again if/when i fail (again) at this on my own. i really don't know for sure where i stand on this. i know that i really wish that i could do this all on my own. but i also think that i've really reached the point where i cannot do this on my own, i need some extra help. & i need to realize that there's absolutely no shame in admitting that you need someone else's help. sometimes being strong really does mean admitting that you're weak & need intervention to get yourself to the finish line.

it's all about the motivation

it's been said over & over that a lot of life & what you accomplish with the time that you're given is about the effort you put in, & related to that, about how motivated you are to achieve. what is often lacking in that whole description is the fear part.

trying to succeed at anything is scary. because you may fail. & no matter how many people believe in you & cheer you on, there's still that little itching of doubt in the back of your brain. that voice that sounds like (your over critical grand parent-abusive ex-second grade teacher-FILL IN THE BLANK) that voice that gets stronger sometimes the harder you try. the voice that tells you: you aren't talented! what do you think you're doing? no one is going to want to read anything you write. you're a loser. you're a failure. don't even try because you'll fail big time. give up, it's easier. give up, because you'll never, ever, EVER make it.

& it's hard when those voices are in your head, competing for your attention. so what happens when you're motivated, but you're terrified? i have the drive, i have the desire, i have the will, but i'm petrified. not so much of success, but of failing. & i'm told, by several people, i have nothing to fear. i have IT, whatever that may be. but i'm still scared.

dismal results: weigh in #22

so, my last weigh in over the weekend was 267.4. not the best, but i guess also not the worst either.

original weight: 323 lbs
last week's weight: 273.5 lbs
this week's weight: 267.4 lbs




PS: ticker has changed, so i can't have more than one per post, i'm not even sure if the accurate results will be displayed each week.

it's been pretty quiet around these parts. . . .

yeah, so i haven't been much in a blogging mood lately, & to be honest, this is probably the time when i should be blogging. i have a lot of stuff rolling around my head, having to do with weight loss, my (canceled) wedding, my parents, my job, my thesis. . . .just basically everything in my life!

what i have noticed is, that in general, it's been pretty quiet out there in blog-land. most of the blogs that i check on a daily basis have been averaging one update a week, some even less than that.

even though the end of the year is busy for many different reasons, i think that i need to make this blog one of my top priorities. not just because jenn has been not-s-subtly letting me know that she wants to read more blogs, but also because it keeps me writing something & it helps me to sort out some of those marbles rolling around my head by throwing them out into the universe.

so i'll try to do better at this. i have a bunch of blog ideas floating in & out of my scattered subconscious. yeah yeah yeah, i know, per the great & powerful yoda there is no try!

& for the record

happy twelve-twelve!

weigh in #21: BLECH!

i have gained, back in the 270's, i hate this. where's the cheesecake?

original weight: 323 lbs
last week's weight: 265 lbs
this week's weight: 273.5 lbs

um, yeah, so seriously guys, how can a few cocktails equal an 8 1/2 pound gain in one week?!

can you tell i'm bored at work, yet?

Your Personality Is Like Acid

A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict. One moment you're in your own little happy universe... And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

& i couldn't reisist this one

Your Stripper Song Is

Barbie Girl by Aqua "I'm a Barbie girl in the Barbie world Life in plastic, it's fantastic You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere Imagination, life is your creation" You're hilarious and cute - yet you still pull off sexy!

What Song Should You Strip To?

shortest personality test, ever

Your Personality Profile

You are dignified, spiritual, and wise. Always unsatisfied, you constantly try to better yourself. You are also a seeker of knowledge and often buried in books. You tend to be philosophical, looking for the big picture in life. You dream of inner peace for yourself, your friends, and the world. A good friend, you always give of yourself first.

The World's Shortest Personality Test