Greatest Hits: Farewell Sweet Maiden

 From the archives...

One thing I like to ponder is my own death. I have very specific ideas about how to achieve the funeral of my dreams. In our religion we're supposed to have these funerals that are uplifting, focusing on the fact that we'll be together again someday and making sure everyone knows all about that good news, leaving everyone feeling good.

And I know other people want their friends and family to have a big party, celebrating their life. That's so nice, I think.

But I don't want that. I want everyone to cry over me, a LOT. Because I'm DEAD. I'm FREAKING DEAD. I mean, come on. Party on your own time, this is my FUNERAL we're talking about. Show some respect, and by respect I mean, show everyone how you just cannot picture the world without my bright shining light of awesome lightness and how it will pain you to go on for even ONE MORE SECOND. Geez.

Unfortunately, when I tell my husband my final wishes, his response is usually to roll his eyes or laugh at me, or start muttering some more, so I thought I should post my final requests in a more public forum so that if I kick the bucket anytime soon he will have no choice but to obey my wishes. Accordingly, here are my FINAL WISHES:

1. I would like to give the eulogy, via a pre-recorded video. I think that would be really touching. Believe me, nobody will be more broken up over my death than me, you know? I can really lend it that air of gravitas and reverence, what with all of the incoherent sobbing I will do on the video. And also it might really freak a lot of people out which amuses me.

2. If that won't work because I die before I get around to making the video, I would like either my brother Mark or my sister Diana to give the eulogy, mostly because I'm pretty sure they would both fall apart and start crying on stage, which is always good for getting the audience going. Diana would probably get REALLY upset and fall into unflattering snorfle type crying (such is the sisterly love we share) which would be ugly but also super touching. Alternatively, my sister Wendy is an actress AND also kind of a wuss, and my sister-in-law Holly is an ultra-dependable public cryer.

3. If they give the eulogy, I'm at least WRITING IT. I mean gosh. How else will they know how to narrarate the powerpoint presentation I put together with highlights of my life? Besides, I've already spent a lot of time writing the dang thing.

4. I would also like to give the musical number, because hey, how touching would that be, having the dead girl sing at her own funeral. Not a dry eye in the house, that's how touching. I'm thinking I could sing something subtle and understated like My Immortal by Evanescence or Fantine's Death from Les Mis, something like that.

5. If I am in a bad accident, and there is some question about whether or not I am brain dead, I say leave the machines on. Because you never know. I might come back.

6. But if I do appear to be pretty much deadish, please give someone my organs. And then, after they have my organs, please send them a little picture of me to keep on a shelf somewhere, so that when they wake up in the night and look around with their donated eyeballs, they'll see me staring RIGHT at them, kind of like I'm haunting them, but in a nice way. Like that.

7. I hope my husband will remarry quickly. He's an affectionate sort and he would get far too melancholy without someone around to hug him a lot, plus the children would need a mother. Therefore, I think he should marry an old spinster type - someone completely unattractive but with a sweet spirit. If that won't work, he should at least (as I've mentioned before) not marry anyone younger than 25, or smaller than a size eight. (Seriously hon, a 19 year old might be hot, but she'd be REALLY annoying. She'd probably make faces at you if you decided to bake and eat a can of cinnamon rolls at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. ME? I don't judge. In fact, I care so much about your feelings that you can always count on me to sacrifice and eat them WITH you. I'm a giver.)

I think that's it. That's all I can think of right now at least. How about you?

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Truth In Advertising

(I'm still working on answering email and some of the comments from the parenting post. Some of them made me cry - in a good way - and so I haven't answered them yet. Thank you so much - I got some really helpful ideas and feel like I'm more able to help her than I was just a couple of days ago.  How awesome is that?)

I was twittering back and forth with someone the other day about the thing on Saturday and she said she wasn't coming because she was afraid she wouldn't fit in.

You know, because we're all so cool and together, whereas she felt relatively average.

(Commence snorting on my side of the screen.).

Oh dear.

If you've been reading my blog for longer than five seconds, you know that I am 1) not fashionable, 2) awkwardly awkward, and 3) ridiculous.

But in case you are a new reader, I present you with:

THE EVIDENCE OF MY GLAMOROUS, GLAMOROUS LIFE:

COME, let me show you around.

Here is the kitchen/dining room, in the house that we repeatedly nearly lose to foreclosure when I repeatedly lose my business/income/clients only to repeatedly barely sort of almost pull back out of our financial tail-spin, usually just-in-the-nick-of-time.  (It is a very exciting way to live, trust me.)  This is the normal state of it, crumbs on the kitchen table, dishes in the sink, papers stacked up willy-nilly. WILLY-NILLY, I say.

This is the bathroom doorway where I hang my baby when I am scrubbing toilets. (GLAMOROUS).

(Although really I just posted that picture to show you how cute my baby is.  Not convinced? PLEASE TO BE SHARING MORE CUTENESS:)

This is my room.  There are no pictures on the wall (or indeed, on any wall anywhere in my house).  I have no idea what to hang, and I have no budget for hanging things anyway, and so I hang nothing. Although my daughter did make me a birthday banner, which we taped on the wall.  (It will probably be there for YEARS before it occurs to me to remove it.)

There are always multiple cups and soda cans on the nightstands (and now I am sad that I dismantled my oh so impressive pyramid-o-soda on Tuesday), and the bed is never, never, NEVER made.  We actually use two comforters, because we both steal the covers and it just works out better that way. We don't have a bedskirt and we only have two sets of sheets total, because A) for real, king-size sheets are ridiculously expensive, B) I'd rather spend that money on cheddar cheese (which is ALSO ridiculously expensive), and C) that's what the washing machine is for. (Or so I hear.)

(But it IS the most comfortable bed in the universe. And I'm somewhat proud that we finally broke down and bought a headboard two years ago, after spending most of our marriage on nothing but a mattress and frame.  We're FANCY.)

This is my home office.  Yes.  It is a card table.  WHAT.

The 14 year old chair is also very fabulous, I know. (I like the cushion to be showing like that - kind of authentic-like.)  Also note that I am back on the DDP sauce.  (FOR SHAME.)

And then there is the Queen of the castle, truly a glamorous creature if ever there was one. 

If you knocked on the door without calling first on any given day of the week you would probably find me looking EXTREMELY cute, with no make-up on, a scrunchified ponytail in my hair, and some type of four year old hoodie stretched over my oh so svelte frame.

And let me say here - I'm not proud of the state of my appearance/fashion related affairs, I would love to hop out of bed and shower and blow-dry and pick out a fabulous outfit, but alas, I wake up, get the kids fed/dressed/ready/off to school, hand off Jake and Josh to our part-time sitter and then go shut myself up in my home office to work until 1:00, when I usually try to A) get dressed (maybe) and B) brush something.

So yes.  H-O-T.

And now, here is the part where I make the ultimate sacrifice and attempt to take an un-photoshopped, pony-tail wearing, no-makeup picture of myself that doesn't make me want to smash things:

OK, wait.  Flash problem.  Switch bathrooms.

OK, wait.  Baby related picture malfunction.

Let's get the five year old to take one, that'll surely work:

It is probably for the best that this is blurry.  (TRUST ME, you do not need that particular level of detail.)

In conclusion, this is me, who cares what the world thinks, take me as I am, we are all beautiful in our own special way, whatever whatever self-esteem boosting WHATEVER. 

NOW YOU KNOW.

(And now you may actually be able to recognize me on Saturday.)

So if you are not coming to the thing on Saturday (or to Storymakers or to BlogHer or to whatever function you wish you could go to but are nervous to go to because you feel you are less than whatever/whoever), feel comforted in that we are ALL a little bit lame and a little bit awesome all at the same time.

The End.


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I Hate This Part of Parenting

See this beautiful girl?

This is Megan.  She's eight.  She is, in my totally unbiased opinion, a wonder-kid.  She's smart, and kind, and sweet, and good.  Her teachers call her "incredibly bright" and "a joy to have in class."  She is helpful and loving and talented, a kid I can hardly believe sprang from my inferior genes.

And she is having a very hard time socially.

And I don't know what to do for her.

It isn't as bad as it could be - she isn't being picked on, she has friends to play with at recess, she has people show up to her birthday parties.  She is not an outcast.  It is not the end of the world or even close.

She is friends with a lot of little girls, but she doesn't have good friends who she plays with frequently. Inevitably, when she calls around for a friend to play with, everyone is either already busy with another friend or on their way to some activity. She rarely, rarely finds someone to play with.

She makes a few phone calls, then gives up and goes upstairs to hide in her room and cry.  Lately, she doesn't even bother to call unless she is feeling very brave. She falls apart now and then, whispers in my ear about wanting a special friend - a best friend - someone to tell her secrets, someone who will call her and invite her over and adore her.  I try to say comforting things, to hug her and reassure her - and then I go in my room and cry a few frustrated tears myself, because I can't stand seeing her hurt like this, and I have no idea how to fix it.

I've tried to analyze the reasons for her isolation, to determine if there is something in her behavior that might be contributing to it, but it seems to be mostly bad luck.  Most of her friends have activities every single day - gymnastics or dance or karate.  And when they do have time to play, they want to play with the girls who go to gymnastics and dance and karate WITH them, or they want to play with their own long-established best friends.  

Megan sits at the kitchen table and makes cards and bracelets for various girls who are friends-but-not-Best-Friends, in an effort to pull them closer, and I watch as these efforts prove fruitless.  Sometimes I wish she weren't so eager - I want to tell her not to like these other girls so much, that if they can't see how wonderful she is, then they don't deserve her friendship OR her bracelets. But I know this is wrong too. These little girls, the ones who are friends-but-not-best-friends? They are all perfectly nice little girls. There is no intentional cruelty, no crime in not picking Megan for their best, most special friend. And so I can't tell her not to try - can't teach her not to love people just because they might not love her back quite as much. I would hate for her to learn that lesson so early in life.

I am horrible at this part of mothering, the part where you help your children to learn to negotiate the waters of friendship, probably because I was never really very good at it myself.  I pulled out my eight year old diary the other day and looked at the pages where I wrote "I HATE KRISTA AND BETHANY," where I pressed the pencil down so hard it practically ripped the page, five or six pages of ugly, angry heartbreak over the fact that my best friend had found someone she liked better than me - someone with a canopy bed, a Barbie dreamhouse and a swimming pool.  I still remember how much that hurt, both at first and a dull ache for years afterward, even after I'd found a new best friend. So I don't try to pretend it isn't a big deal - that these hurts aren't just as substantial as those we suffer as adults.

I dread it when Emma and Jacob want a friend over, because I know that inevitably, they will find a friend and Megan will not, and she will get that dejected, sad look on her face. I try to keep her busy here at home so that she won't notice the lack of friends.  I take her to the library, I buy her new chapter books, I let her make cookies - anything to distract her. I tell her "you are wonderful" and "any little girl would be lucky to have you as a friend" and "you are so special," and she nods, but I can see that more and more she does not believe me, because the proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and there is no pudding to be found here, only day after day of solitude.

Two years of wishing for a best friend have left her a little overly eager when she does have a friend over, a little overly deferential and unsure of herself.  And this frightens me - I am afraid that in a few years her deference will cause problems for her - what will she be willing to do in order to make friends? 

A few months ago at book club we were tying a quilt while we talked and somehow the subject got on kids and activities and friends - I was saying a few things about this, about how I hated seeing her go through this, and my friend Jenny asked me, "Do you really want to shield your kids from ever feeling pain?"

I tried to say something but started choking up instead, leaning over the quilt, trying to hide the tears that were splashing down, waving everyone off as the conversation drifted, thankfully, into another arena.

Because the things is - yes.  I know it is an impossible wish, an impractical wish, possibly even a harmful wish, but - yes, I do.

Let them feel only happiness, forever and ever...

Amen.  

 
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This Is Me, Taking Back All Of That Stuff I Said About Twitter

(This is part of a new series I'm doing called Sometimes on Wednesdays I Like To Talk About Blogging.)

I was dragged into Twitter kicking and screaming.  KICKING AND SCREAMING, y'all.

(When I'm kicking and screaming I'm from Texas.)

I protested that it was a waste of time.

I was already doing too much online.

And besides it was {{stage whisper}} - Just Kind Of Dumb.

I emailed back and forth with a fellow Twitter hater, saying "it's nothing more than name dropping and virtual social climbing."  "140 characters of insipid nothing."

Ahem.

After about a month-and-a-half of ACTIVE participation I now have to admit that I was wrong.

Not just wrong, but OH SO VERY WRONG.

(Somewhere out in internet land Azucar is smirking, because SHE TOLD ME SO.)

I'm here to tell you that if you are trying to grow a platform because you're an aspiring author or life coach or a singer or dinosaur trainer or WHATEVER, or (probably far more likely) if you're a blogger who is serious about blogging and growing your readership - you might want to check into Twitter.

(If you're above things like traffic and readership then feel free to happily ignore me.)


Here is why you need Twitter...

Twitter is a great way to get to know other bloggers
This is the beauty of Twitter - you get a chance to talk to folks who are not already in your blogging circle (and who might not even be on your radar), and it can help you to get better acquainted with bloggers who you already know and love. I'd never read Natalie or Loralee until I met them on Twitter (tragic oversights in both cases), but now they are both must reads.  I read Kristy's blog for years, but had never had an actual conversation with her until I found her on Twitter and we bonded over babies and blog conferences. And where else can I have random conversations with Finslippy about easter candy and hero worship?



Twitter can help drive traffic to your blog
After only a month or two of active participation, Twitter is now my fourth highest source of blog traffic.  Kind of remarkable when you consider that I've been blogging since 2007.

Of course, you won't get traffic if you just sign up and lurk around.  You have to actually SAY STUFF and TALK TO PEOPLE and you have to have followers - because followers are the people who will click on the bright shiny links you post and who might share those links with others.

So how do you get followers?

WHY I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED.

Here are a few tried and true methods (and by tried and true I mean that over the ginormous period of time I've been on Twitter these methods appear to be working well enough):

• Friend of a Friend: People notice when someone they follow has a fun conversation with you.  Of course, since they aren't following you yet, they can only see half of the conversation.  Sometimes they'll take the leap and decide to follow you so that they can read the whole thing. (Twitter is eavesdropping HEAVEN.)

• Retweets: If you post a link to your fantastically clever blog post, one of your tweeps (twitter friends) might retweet it (basically reposting it for THEIR followers).  If some of those folks find it useful/funny/interesting, they might follow you.

• Introducing Yourself: You can have a conversation with someone you don't know.  If they enjoy the conversation, they might follow you.

• The Power of Suggestion: On Follow Friday (#ff) your existing tweeps might suggest that others follow you. 

• Following: If you follow someone, they just might follow you back. Or they might not.  Don't be offended either way, some people (AHEM) are just a little scattered and forgetful. 

The end result is that more people have a chance to get to know you, and to get to know your writing and your blog.  All good stuff.

Twitter gives you access to information you won't get anywhere else
Twitter is all about information - whether it's information you read on a link someone tweets, or information gained just by BEING IN THE ROOM when people are busy planning/plotting/organizing/befriending.


A few things to keep in mind:

YES, Twitter can be a massive waste of time
Just like blogging, Twitter CAN BE a massive time suck. You have to find a balance that works for you. I tend to keep a twitter window open while I'm working in the mornings, and will tweet sporadically throughout the morning - especially if someone like Beck or Stephanie is online. But when I'm done working, I usually try to TURN OFF THE LAPTOP and leave Twitter (and blogging) behind until my kids are in bed.

Twitter can be confusing at first
You log on and look around and think - um, what in the what what?  Nobody you know is automatically there.  It's just a list of strangers saying really bizarre things.



That's why you have to find people to follow. 

Then Twitter looks more like this:



There are lots of free applications that can help you to make sense of what's going on. 

I like HootSuite. There's a column on the left where I can see what all of the people who I follow are saying, a column in the middle where I can see what people are saying to or about ME, and a third column for private (direct) messages 'specially for me.   



So there you have it.

Mea culpa Twitter.

Please to forgive.

Next week, unless I forget/get too tired/run off and join the circus, I'll post my suggestions for how to get started on Twitter without making a fool of yourself (LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES, PEOPLE. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES).

Now get out there and tweet your brains out.

You can find me on Twitter at @suelikestoblog, overusing capital letters and emoticons.

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HOLD ME

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember when I posted about why I shouldn't have an iPhone:

I've somehow managed to divest myself of SIX cell phones in the last two years - all within the first three months I had them. I ran over one with the car, washed one in the laundry, dropped one in the bathtub and misplaced three.

I could totally see the iPhone in about a month, cracked under the wheels of the car, or beeping forlornly from inside a Big Gulp cup where I'd set it down whilst thinking about cupcakes (YUM).

Yeah, I wanted an iPhone, but I knew it was probably a much better idea to stick with my crappy seven dollar flip phone. 

But against all odds, my husband got me one for Christmas '09 anyway.

I LOVE MY HUSBAND.

Oh internet. 

OH HOW I LOVE IT.

A big girl phone. ALL MINE.

The love I have for my iPhone borders on unholy.

I've had it for 48 amazing days.

And now.....

BEHOLD:

That?  Would be an iPhone with completely shattered glass.  Glass that is Not Under Warranty.

I am not sure how that happened.

I'm guessing Elves.

(Evil ones.)

(I can still use it but it makes my fingers bleed a little.)

(I think I might be o.k. with that.)

{{Weeping commences now.}}


PS:  The Giveaway expires Friday at midnight, so go comment to win.


Related Posts:

• They Should Make A Fisher Price Version
• My Nemesis: THE PHONE
• Accidents Happen - Part II (This Time Not Fictional)

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Super Hopeless Rides Again...

In honor of Valentines Day, I'm continuing to share embarrassing stories about my romantic misadventures.
   
A few months later I was still wildly in crush mode, exacerbated by months of spending way WAY too much time with him.  My friends and I had an apartment and when we weren't out on the lake water-skiing, everyone was usually at our place. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my crush, running errands with him, lounging around the apartment with him, and sitting out on the lawn talking.

One Friday night he picked me up and we drove up to the base of Sunrise Mountain and parked next to the temple. "I love looking at the city lights from way up here," he said.  My heart was wildly fluttering as I tried to decipher WHAT THIS MEANT and WHAT COULD HE BE TRYING TO TELL ME.

(What he was probably trying to tell me: "I love looking at the city lights from way up here."  What I THOUGHT he was trying to tell me: "Soon we will be married.")

We talked for three hours about this and that and the other, I made him laugh as much as I possibly could, and the conversation was full of what I was sure were meaningful pauses and gazes.

By the time he drove me home I was positively GIDDY, even giddier when he gave me a big hug and said, "I'm so glad we're friends," because obviously what he really meant was "I LOVE YOU BUT AM AFRAID TO SAY IT."

WELL NOW. I couldn't have THAT.  Clearly what was called for was for me to go first, to tell him how I felt so that he wouldn't be afraid anymore.

Once I got home I was so completely stirred up and full of affectionate excitement that I did the worst thing a girl could do in the pre-text era:  I wrote him a LETTER telling him all about how I felt. ALL about it. (I'm groaning right now, remembering.) (OY.)

And guys?  I had a LOT OF FEELINGS.  I don't remember exactly what I said but I remember that there were a lot of exclamation points.

I raced over to his house, handed him the note and then ran away so that he could read it and process it (and have time to write me back with something equally thrilling).  I could barely sleep that night - I half expected that he would come knocking on the door, ready to carry me off into the sunset.  But I didn't hear from him that night. Or the next night.

He finally came by on Sunday with a note of his own - a very sweet, kind, I love you but am not in love with you note that cracked my heart into a million pieces.

I felt humiliated (obviously) but at the time I couldn't understand that the humiliation had been of my own making. I just knew I was hurting and it was all his fault.  How DARE he not reciprocate?

I can be very sarcastic when I'm angry, and for the next couple of months, every time I saw him I turned the sharp side of my tongue loose on him, mocking everything he did, the poor guy. Since I wouldn't sit down and talk to him, he wrote me a few more notes - very sweet notes saying how much he valued my friendship, how sorry he was that he didn't feel the same way. He tried that three times, and when he showed up the third time our apartment was full of people.  I snatched the note out of his hand, marched over to the sink, ripped it into about a hundred pieces and turned on the garbage disposal before glaring back at him.  I was such a brat.

He stopped showing up for a while after that.  UNDERSTANDABLY. 


Related Posts:

• LOVE, EXCITING AND NEW
• HA! HA HA HA! HA HA HA HA HA! HAHA!(And Such) (aka Nine Kisses)
• Speaking of Super Hopeless

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Speaking of Super Hopeless Romance....

In honor of Valentines Day, I thought it would be fun to share a few stories of my tragical romantic misadventures - and they are legion - so all this week I'll be posting about my ridiculous pre-marital love life.  (And when I say "love life" I am seriously stretching the definition of the phrase. My romantic life consisted of a series of hopeless crushes and dysfunctional relationships. It's a miracle that I ended up in a functioning marriage.)

When I was 21, I fell madly in love with one of my best friends, and in an effort to spend more time with him, I decided that it was important for me to learn how to snow ski. 

Of course, I didn't want to actually learn how to ski in front of him, what with the falling and the wobbling and the mockery.  I wanted to learn from OTHER people, and then the NEXT time, I wanted to swoosh in front of him, spraying snow in his face and impressing him with my sassy skills and general awesomeness.  

One chilly weekend we went with a bunch of friends up to Brianhead, this little ski mountain in Utah about three hours from Vegas. My crush headed off for the big slopes while my buddy Dave took me over to the bunny hill and showed me a few basic moves designed to insure I didn't plunge over the edge of a cliff. I'll admit I wasn't listening very closely to what he told me, partly because, HELLO, so many cute boys around and so I must bat my snow covered eyelashes in their direction as much as possible - and partly because I rollerbladed every day and I was convinced it was pretty similar, and therefore, his instruction was pretty much a waste of my time.

After a few minutes I waived him off and took off down the hill, all smiles, swooshing and swushing my little heart out. LOOK AT ME.  SO CUTE!  SUCH NATURAL TALENT!  SUCH FINESSE!  I waved at my friend Terri, who had broken her arm and was spending the weekend sitting on the ski lodge deck.  LOOK AT ME TERRI, DON'T YOU AGREE THAT I'M QUITE AWESOME?

Everything was going smoothly - really, really, really smoothly.  In fact I was sort of - um - RAPIDLY gaining speed and after a minute I realized WHOOPSIE, I didn't know how to stop.  I was tearing down the slope, panicked, sure that if I tried to slow myself down by deviating from my straight-down-the-hill path I would lose my balance and end up cartwheeling down the mountain. Helpful bystanders suggested that I "PLOW, PLOW, PLOW" and "TURN, TURN, TURN," but I ignored them in favor of careening my way downward, screaming and waving my arms until I finally glided to a rest out in the parking lot, humiliated but also strangely exhilarated.

Skiing was AWESOME.

Dave came racing out to the parking lot to make sure I was still alive (thanks Dave), and like a little kid after a roller coaster ride I proclaimed that I wanted to do it AGAIN, and AGAIN and AGAIN.  And I did, but sans Dave, who, after making sure I understood how to slow down and stop, skiied off to pick up on more rational girls.

I loved skiing.  It made me feel athletic in a way that I'd never felt athletic before, with my short stumpy legs and general roundness. I learned how to plow, and turn, and, yes, STOP, but I would still shoot straight down the hill, wanting to go fast, faster, fastest.  When I finally did go skiing with my crush, he was suitably impressed and from then on we were ski buddies.

We would go on group trips to Brianhead and Elk Meadows, or we would go night skiing together after work at the block-of-ice ski slopes up at Lee Canyon (45 minutes from Vegas).  We usually all went out together on Friday nights, and at midnight he'd pull me aside and say "let's go up to Brianhead tomorrow," and the two of us would meet up at 5AM and drive up, spend the day skiing and drive back.  We would talk and laugh the whole way and I thought things were going just swimmingly.  He never asked me out, but we would sit outside and talk (and sometimes we would sit there and NOT talk), and he would stare at me, a speculative gleam in his eye.

One evening, after three hours of night skiing up in the canyon, he drove me home, pulled up in front of my house and shut off the engine. He said he had something to ask me, something he'd been thinking about for a while. And then he gave me one of his patented warm smiles, the kind that made even fairly rational girls melt all over the sidewalk, to say nothing of NON-RATIONAL girls like myself.  I attempted to play it cool, but my internal dialogue was something along the lines of  "Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

He leaned forward and I assumed - well, I assumed he was making his move and so I reciprocated, leaning forward too, closing my eyes, the whole cliche bit.

Turns out I assumed INCORRECTLY.

When I opened my eyes he was giving me a rather alarmed look as he leaned around me, picked up a brochure off the floor of the car and handed it to me.  It was a brochure for a ski resort in California he thought we should all go check out.

But actually, now that he thought about it, it was probably too far away, too expensive and not really that great of an idea after all, and oh, OOPS, look at the time, he really needed to get going.

Oh, the humiliation.  I don't remember how I managed to get out of the car and up to the door, but I clearly remember stomping around the house crying and whispering "stupid, Stupid, STUPID."

To his credit, he managed to act like nothing had happened, and before the week was out he seemed to forget all about it, calling me as much as ever and jabbering on about our next ski trip.

But it was a few weeks before I could bring myself to look at him again.  And when I did, I made sure to be extra sarcastic and biting, just so that he would know that despite what had happened, I wasn't actually INTERESTED, in fact there was no way in Hades that I would ever, ever, ever be interested.  Probably he hallucinated the whole thing because clearly I was ONLY associating with him for skiing purposes. 

And that probably would've been fairly effective had I not - done what I did next.  But I'll save that for my next post.

(If you want to play along, feel free to post about your romantic misadventures - I'll have a McLinky up in tomorrow's post so that you can share your (hopefully equally humiliating) post with us.)

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I Have a Confession To Make

You guys.

I tried the HCG diet.

(I KNOW, I know, I know.  "Crash dieting never works."  "You have to make lifestyle changes."  "Moderation in all things."  I KNOW.  You don't have to tell me.)

But if I'm going to have to meet a bunch of people in February, I would prefer to be - not in the largest pants size I've ever owned.  That would be my preference.

If you haven't heard of the HCG diet before, it is basically - complete insanity.  Basically, you starve yourself  and you take HCG hormone shots, you can't use lotion or oily make-up or cook anything that would require you to even momentarily touch something fatty, and you - I don't know - spin around three times in the dark and whisper "please make me beautiful" until it all works together to make you lose weight. (Or else, as I suspect, it's just the fact that you are STARVING YOURSELF that is effective and the rest is all complete BS.)

You can't exercise, which means my running program went on a temporary hiatus.  The official reason for this has something to do with burning calories from the "wrong" fat stores, but really, I think it is because they know you would KEEL OVER AND DIE, and they don't want to be responsible for it.

The diet has phases - Phase 1, where you eat like a crazed hippopotamus for two days (this is called "Fat Loading" and it was my Very Favorite Phase); Phase 2, where you eat 500 calories per day for 23 or 43 days, depending upon how clinically insane your doctor is; Phase 3, which they call "Stabilization" and where you basically eat no carbs; and Phase 4, the maintenance phase, where you ease in a few carbs, gain everything back, and start all over again.

(Listen.  I know how crazy it sounds. I have read billions of nutrition/diet/fitness/healthy lifestyle books. I am very good about READING about how to get and stay fit, just not so good at the actual implementation. I know all about how crash dieting effects your metabolism, your muscle mass, etc., etc., etc.  I know about all of it.  I'm not fat because I don't understand these things.  But desperate people do desperate things.   And after viewing Certain Christmas Pictures That Have Been DESTROYED, DESTROYED, DESTROYED, I would say that desperate just about sums it up for me.)

I started reading The Literature (from back in the 1950s - so - Highly Credible), and it sounded vaguely convincing, if you squinted and really WANTED it to be convincing and were willing to ignore all of the other things you knew about nutrition, fitness and metabolism.  And I know a lot of people who have done this diet, who have done WELL on this diet - people who are NOT actually clinically insane, but rather rational, intelligent people.  So I thought - what do I have to lose (besides, as it turns out, large clumps of my hair)? 

I tried it.  For the two fat loading days, and then for eight days of starvation.

The Pros:

• I lost 14 pounds in 8 days. (I suspect 80% of that loss is water, since I look not a smidgeon different.)
• My carb and sugar cravings are completely gone.
• I am completely off the sauce (Diet Dr. Pepper)
• I wasn't hungry, strangely enough.

The Cons:

• The aforementioned hair loss
• Overwhelming fatigue
• Skin like an alligator
• The inability to form complete sentences
• Migraines and vomiting (A HA!)
• Lost work time (due to staring at my computer wondering what the little buttons with letters on them were for)
• Irritability (if by irritability you mean completely losing my nut twenty times each day) (my children LOVED this diet)

Yesterday I started blacking out, so - as of yesterday, I switched to a sensible low carb plan that will allow me to - not starve. OH, SWEET FOOD. SWEET EGGS AND SALAD AND CHICKEN.  SWEET NOT DYING OF STARVATION. SWEET BRAIN CLARITY.

So now here I am, 14 pounds lighter but still having vertigo today.  I'm going to jump back into my running / weights program tomorrow (or as soon as the constant dizziness goes away).

And THAT is My HCG story.

Please folks, don't try this at home.

(Do I win for the craziest crash diet story ever?)