From that day on, I was running

I haven't mentioned it here yet, but Laura is getting married this year. I haven't mentioned it because I've spent the past couple of months getting used to the fact that she's engaged. It was a whirlwind romance (as in at this time last year she was still 3 months away from meeting him), and those darn whirlwind romances have a tendency to cause apprehensions. Add in the fact that she'll be moving to Texas as part of the whole getting married thing and you can see why it's not something I've wanted to talk about until I got my head on straight about it. (And really, my head hasn't been on straight about anything since July so that was not an easy task!)

ANYWAY.

We've had our drama and worked things out and now we're fine and excited and squeeful about bridesmaids dresses and showers and yadda yadda. But before she leaves, we're going to run at least one 5K race together. She's planning on running a half marathon in a month or two so she's already doing the running thing but that means I have to get my ass in gear.

Gear found, thank you very much.

Can I just say that the Couch to 5K program fucking rocks? Last week was week 1 for me, and I did it just fine. I even laced up my shoes and went out and ran on New Year's Day! This week was week 2, and I realized tonight that I couldn't do my planned Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule because duh, I have class on Thursday nights starting this week. So what did I do? Changed it to Saturday-Monday-Wednesday and bopped out tonight to start week 2. And it was still easy! And doable!

I'm sure it'll get hard eventually, and I'm sure I will be cursing myself and Cool Running and the guy who makes the podcasts that I listen to while I run at some point, but for now it's awesome and it's fun and I cannot wait to get out there and run with my best friend before she moves away.

Case Study #32957061

I have a very funny story to tell tonight, my lovelies. And it's nice and long,so enjoy it.

I've been jumping through a Byzantine maze of hoops trying to get all my ducks in a row for the surgery, and one of the things I had to do was go and be evaluated by a psychologist. A little chit chat, a couple personality assesment, nothing too big. So my surgeon gives me a referral to this guy we'll call Dr. D because his last name starts with a D and and I am not creative enough to come up with something else.

First of all, the dude is the same age as me. THE SAME AGE. Second of all, fucker makes $325 an hour doing this stuff. (And yes, I am now really starting to regret giving up on the whole being a psychologist thing.) So I went in there one afternoon after work, after having fought my way through traffic and trying desperately not to get lost. And I discovered that Dr. D's office was inexplicably in a pediatrics office. Seriously. It was very strange, sitting there waitig for a shrink in an office full of small, ill children and a bunch of toys. It was even stranger to find that this guy, this doctor who performs enough bariatric pre-surgical evaluations to be referred by my surgeon, had tiny chairs WITH ARMS that my ass would barely fit into. And you know, I have a big ass, but in the world of bariatric patients, my ass is on the small end. So if I had a hard time with it, I cannot imagine how other patients fit in there.

Anyway, Dr. D and I had a nice long conversation and he was enthusiastic about me being perfectly okay for the surgery. In fact, his exact words were "I see no problems here." So he shuffled me off to another room so I could sit and complete my required personality assessments, one of which was the MMPI. Now, I have a BA in psych and some master's work in education; not only have I seen the MMPI more than once, I've even taken it a couple times. And I was wondering what part I'd score high on this time; I had my money on anxiety, what with my worries about my ass getting out of the chair and all.

Fast forward a couple weeks to this past Monday. Dr. D calls to discuss my test results. And the conversation went something like this:

"Yeah, I got your results and they were valid but I wanted to clarify a few things with you before I write my report."
"Okay, what's up?"
"Well, you answered true to this question: 'I sometimes want to do harmful or shocking things.' Um, could you explain that?"
"It's mostly the shocking things. My friends and I are kind of exhibitionistic and we do goofy, shocking things around each other."
"Okay, well how about 'I am afraid of losing my mind'? Could you tell me about the situation that made you feel that way?"
"There wasn't a situation, that's just one of my general fears. Like, I'm afraid of being homeless. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of losing my mind."
"Oh, well that makes sense. But see here's the thing. Your test score came back with a really high score in the anti-social section. Like, REALLY high."
"Anti-social? Really?"
"Yeah, it was so high that I sent it back and asked them to rescore it because it just didn't jive with what I've seen from you so far."

Commence laughing, because apparently I scored high enough that on paper, I am the next Unabomber. Or as I told the lovely Suzanna Danna, my profile should now say I am a Unabomber trying to get skinnier so as to fit into a smaller shack. So yes, my MMPI score indicates an inability to have a steady job (wrong), limited social circle (wrong), limited education (wrong) and lack of close relationships (wrong). In light of the 5 years I've had with my current company, the almost five years I've been with my husband, my rather large social circle and my current volunteering activities, my actual life is a direct contradiction to my MMPI results. And it kind of broke Dr. D's brain.

I think that maybe, just maybe, Dr. D should write me up as a case study about how the MMPI can be totally, completely wrong. He could totally get famous for it I think.

Oh, and for the record, his report was totally favorable. We're at all systems go for the surgery.

Boredom sucks the life out of me

You know what's amazing?

Kevin and my one year anniversary is only 3 weeks (and 2 days) away.

Talk about your time flying fast. I guess we better start making some plans or something so that we don't end up celebrating with mac & cheese and reruns.

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Today was extraordinarily boring. I got in to work and there were only 3 new emails in my inbox. There wasn't a single voicemail on my phone and no one was asking me for anything. The only urgent work I had to do was 2 last minute travel plans and even those only took me something like 5 minutes. So instead I entertained myself with emails to far-flung friends who are much busier than me but seemed to welcome the distraction.

Boring days make it really hard to write a blog entry, even if you are trying to hold yourself to writing an entry every other day no matter what. When I get that bored I forget all about all the funny stuff that has happened lately (and I'm sure there has been funny stuff, there's always funny stuff) and it makes me too worn out to write an impassioned entry about all the stupid political crap going on so I just give up and write some meta-tastic tripe and call it an entry.

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Have I mentioned it's been sunny and in the high 60's/low 70's? No? Well, that's probably because I don't want you all to hate me.

But the weather's good for getting out there and walking, which oh my god, I need so badly right now. I had no idea what kind of horrible shape that 3 months of ass sitting did to me but I do now. It took me 45 minutes to walk almost 2 miles the other night. Not acceptable if I want to survive the 3-Day in November. So I've gotta get my ass in gear to get back up to my 15 minute miles.

Oh, and I need to register. And come up with fundraising ideas.

Maybe that will unbore me.