serenade

Since I'm always talking about all the negative things that happen on the el, I thought I should mention it when something sweet happens. And sweet things DO occasionally happen. Like last night.

I was on the el when this man with two little boys got on the el. He was carrying the one year old. And told the other little boy to sit down in the seat he pointed to. But instead of sitting there the little boy went and sat next to this older man with a guitar. He put his hand on the older man's leg to help himself get up in that adorable way that only toddlers with their wee little hands and their sweetness can do.

Everyone who saw it said, "ahhh." And so seeing that the boy was interested in the guitar, he took it out and gave him an impromptu concert.



After the boy got off the el, the man was putting the guitar back inside his case, which was lined on the inside with lots of old photos. He pointed at one of them and told us that it was his wife back when she was 13 years-old. He told us that he wrote a love song about her that went something along the lines of "I first met you, when you were twelve years-old..."

And then he stopped singing and said, "Even back then she had 38 DD's and that was the first thing I noticed about her!" A fitting note for the ride to end on, because, after all, this is still the el, people.

swimsuit season

I hate it. I hate being bombarded with these ads and catalogs and magazines that make you feel crappy about your body.

I know that they sell better when they put their bikinis on these gorgeous, airbrushed women. I get that. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. Not with the amount of women that I know that have body issues. We need it to change!

I received two catalogs in the mail last week. One was from Victoria's Secret and the other was from Athleta.

This is the Victoria's Secret ad:



The women in all the ads are beautiful. And they are probably all a size zero. But look at the arms of the models in the Victoria's Secret catalog. Gross. They look anorexic. And while the models in the other catalog are also skinny, at least they have some muscle on them so that you can imagine that they got to be that thin in a healthy way instead of just starving themselves to death.






Obviously I like the Athleta catalog better simply because the women look more natural and aren't doing these sexy little pouty poses. Do you notice how the VS models have to really jut out their hips to give the appearance that they have some curves to their body?

Can we program ourselves to really tune this stuff out? What if we didn't have to see this all the time?

What if instead, we were constantly bombarded with things that made us feel better about ourselves?

this is what goes on in my head

When I ride the train, I see a lot of people reading the Bible. Somehow, that lead to me thinking of this...

the early bird...

... wakes me up!

I know some of you have heard me complain about the ridiculous birds outside my window at 4:47 in the morning. Yes, I know the exact time that they start.

Here is the view from my bedroom window and a small taste of what I get to hear. They wouldn't perform on my command!

But seriously it sounds like some sort of jungle!

quiz night!

One of the perks of living in the burbs is doing little cheesy things like "Quiz Night" at the local bar. Not only are drinks incredibly cheap- I got four glasses of wine for $20!!! But the people are soooo nice.

Except for when they are kicking our butts and laughing about it!

My team was actually doing quite well until we got to the special neutralizer round. During that round, you don't HAVE to answer all the questions. You still get a point for each question you get right. But if you get a SINGLE question wrong, you get zero points for the whole round. Well, we got a single question wrong, and it is hard to bounce back from that.

The best thing that happened last night is that they actually asked some questions that I knew the answer to. Like they asked what the name of the mountain range that separates Spain from France is- well it helps that I lived in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains for four months! Cha-ching!

Emily was a little bit late picking me up so I was reading "Useless Knowledge: Answers to questions you'd never think to ask" while waiting for her. I only read about three pages. And I was on the section about insects.

The most interesting factoid that I learned from the book was, "Spiders never spin webs in structures made of chestnut wood. That is why so many European chateaux were built with chestnut beams- spider webs on a 50-foot beamed ceiling can be hard to remove."

One of the questions on the quiz just happened to ask which type of insect has the most species. Luckily, not an hour before seeing this question I had read, "There are more beetles on Earth than any other type of creature. Within the beetle family, the number of species alone is nearly a quarter-million." What are the chances that I would have just read that?!?!

I love little things like that.

My team came in second to last place, by the way! But we had a damn good time doing it! :)

hot!

It's too hot to wear clothes. I'm wearing shorts and a sports bra and if it weren't for public decency, I wouldn't even be wearing that.

When I was out running I saw a girl wearing jeans and knee high boots. Don't you people check the weather report before leaving the house?

Anyways, with so little clothes on, I am showing a fair amount of flesh. I'm still not rocking quite the body that I want to be, but the contestants on The Biggest Loser would die to have my body. And that's my happy thought of the day.

I've been hypnotised!

I had my first hypnosis session the other day. I didn't know what to expect. But I ended up loving it.

I arrived at the hypnotist's apartment and she plopped me into the comfy chair. The magical comfy chair that once you sit in, you never want to leave.

Then she sat across from me with her notepad and we talked about my life and the things I want to change and what I wanted to commit to doing.

As I talked to her, she helped me realize that I don't want a new job. About 90% of the time I am thrilled with my job and my life. What I wanted was to not let other people make me feel bad about my lifestyle choices.

That's when I get sad and depressed, when I let other people's attitudes get to me.

So not letting other people get to me was one of the first things.

Controlling my eating. Not eating from boredom. Not eating to make myself happy. Not over eating. Not eating crap.

I usually do this for a while and then slip. So we were working on the not slipping part.

Motivating myself to write was the third one. Every time I force myself to sit down and write (even when I'm not feeling inspired) I come up with something. So, really, I just need to force myself to do it. She told me about how these professional writers do the same thing and how looking back at what they had written, there was no real difference between the writing they did when they forced themselves and the writing they did when they were feeling inspired.

These are very simple things to work on with hypnosis because they all require a change in thinking, which is what hypnosis does.

I asked her how hypnosis works and she gave me a very clear and articulate answer which I will now butcher.

Basically, she said that hypnosis gets the body to a super relaxed state and then the brain waves slow down and she is able to get to my subconscious better. At that stage I am more open to suggestion.

However, I still have free will. The hypnotist can not suddenly make me do something that I don't want to do. I am awake and conscious the whole time, just very, very relaxed.

There was no swinging watch. There was no hocus-pocus.

I sat on the chair and basically she led me on a very personalized guided meditation. It starts by relaxing all the different parts of your body starting from the top of your head down to your feet. There were a few of the cliches that you would expect like "your eyelids are getting very heavy" and "I'm going to count down from five and as I go you are going to fall deeper and deeper into a state of relaxation."

But I felt motivated and great and happy afterwards. Like nothing could touch me.

It isn't a cure all. And she gave me homework to do and a mini ten minute self-hypnosis routine to do to myself daily to help continue the process. It is similar to massage where the more work you do yourself, the better the results of the massage will be, i.e., if you stretch after sitting at a computer for a few hours, you will not getting nearly as stiff and tight.

I would recommend it though. It is hard to say how much it is working but I haven't craved a cupcake or cheddar cheese in days which in and of itself is a miracle!