Jitterbug's Beat

Love, Food, Exercise, Football and Clothes. My Holy Cinquefoil.

Oh happy Friday, heading into a long weekend after a serious dry-spell of any time off.  Time off for some, I'm sure, means a break from it all - for me, a break from work is enough.  Any time not spent working I can spend with my great boyfriend doing anything or nothing at all, or at my great gym, taking my great classes, or on my great running trail.  Don't really need to go anywhere new or do anything crazy - just plain ol' not giving up myself to the giant work-machine will do fine.  Here's what's making me especially happy today:

 

Okay I love bagels, but those humongous family-sized dough lumps don't exactly jibe with this one-small-person-with-one-pound-left-to-lose-thing I've got going on, and I am thrilled now to be able to have my bagels AND cream cheese, and yes, you guessed it, eat them too.  The Fro Yo?  Well that just speaks for itself, does it not?

Now since the office closed early today, I got to spend my whole lunch hour in my most favorite step aerobics class with the craziest instructor I've ever loved.  She just got back from a big fitness convention in LA and brought back many new and wonderful fitness toys for us to experience.  Today we did a 20-minute interval set running from one end of the room to the other using mini inflated balls for jump squats, up-downs... I don't know if there are even words to describe some of those techniques, but I think they may have been developed as torture methods at Alcatraz.  You can just call me Kelly Stockholm Sullivan, 'cause I LOVE IT ALL, the pain, the sweat, the high!  And thanks Athleta and Nike for you're ever-wonderful gear, spokeswomen and ad campaigns.  They occupy my refrigerator door.

Next up, Fall = football.  'Nuff said.  Except that's not exactly 'nuff - with the lock out, and NO DAMN NEWS in the lock-out-off-season, I'm pretty durn (not a typo) clueless as to what's going on.  I spent some time today trying to get to know my fantasy team... a few old veterans, and a bunch of whoosy-whatsits I've never heard of.  Oh and thank you, Cedric Benson, for getting yourself thrown in jail... I know, I know,  you play for the NFL, you should be able to punch whomever you want, but life just doesn't work that way.  Apparently you're predicted to do horribly anyway.  Know what else?  Just ot add insult to injury, none of my Seahawk jerseys belong to current team members anymore.  What. Ever.

What else... oh September, beckoning fall wardrobe staples... what am I loving right now?  J Crew and Madwell, of course... what's extra sweet?  How about sizes 4 and xs??  Oh hells yeah. Dangerous, I know, but I didn't even remember how much I loved clothes until getting to a size where so much more is available to me!  Fast approaching, the lovely season of pea coats and scarves and hats and gloves and all things layered.  Pieces in every spectrum of the orange rainbow, from vibrant flame to pumpkin!  And yellow!  RED!  With all the beautiful blacks and grays, charcoals, chocolates and olives.  MMmmmnnnnn.  That's my deliciously-anticipating-fall-clothes sound.  I love the word "bundled."  

 
  

 

 

Phooey.

My friend Molly is always finding great things - cash money, awesomely-stocked and completely no-way-to-find-the-owner Ipods... she emailed me today to tell me she found a KATE SPADE purse at the law library!  WOW.  My green-eyed monster is speaking when I say: know what I found?  I found that when I climbed to the top of the stairs on the Morrison Bridge to get home, that the bridge was closed to pedestrians.  And at the top of the stairs? A pile of poo.  And I don't mean dog.  Complete with circling flies.  

I don't find neat things.

It's My Middle Name.

Was doing a little shopping today over lunch (I DO occasionally do something other than go to the gym) and while I was on the phone placing a store order, I was reading off my information to a polite, but rather dry, humorless phone attendant... 

"Name as it appears on the card?"

"Kelly A. Sullivan"

"And that's middle initial A as in Awesome?"

What's that you say?  A as in Awesome?  Why... yes, yes that's exactly right.  Awesome.  

Laugh If You Must.

Not only is this frickin' amazing, but come that pesky zombie apocalypse, you're going to want to be my friend once I move in to this house. What's that?  They want to eat your brains?  Look, sorry - the drawbridge is already up.

Best quote ever: "If you're prepared for the zombie apocalypse, a hurricane is just a storm."

A Little Behind...

On my 52 books in 52 weeks, but I'll catch you up:

1.  Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
2. Raven Stole the Moon - Garth Stein
3. The Killing Dance - Laurell K. Hamilton
4. Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
5. An Ice Cold Grave - Charlaine Harris
6. Your Heart Belongs to Me - Dean Koontz
7.  Place Last Seen - Charlotte McGuinn Freeman
8. Plum Island - Nelson Demille
9. Gone Baby Gone - Dennis Lehane
10. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 
11. Autumn: The City - David Moody
11 1/2. Hater - David Moody (got halfway through before I was so thoroughly grossed out I couldn't continue... and it takes a LOT for me to get grossed out).
12. The Virgin's Lover - Phillipa Gregory
13.  The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

More to come!  Stay tuned.  Read on.

 

My new desktop background. Admit it. You want one of your own.

All Things Weighty.

I've started writing this blog post just about every day for the last two years or so - me and the weight battle.  Kelly versus the bulge.  I should honestly start by posting a terrifying picture of me when I was deeply, deeply depressed and carried around almost 200 pounds on my bitty 5'3" frame.  I should.  Didn't say I was gonna - didn't say I'm ready to do that.  Most of the people in my life right now never saw me that way, and the girl in that photo is the monster hiding in my closet, and kiddies, believe me when I tell you, she is a HUNGRY MONSTER.  

So I took that monster down in a big way when I joined Jenny Craig, after telling my mom that it didn't matter how much it cost me, I had to fix myself.  200-lb girl, meet 157-lb girl.  Nothing to sneeze at. Then, a little later, 157-lb girl, meet 146-lb girl, meet Jenny Craig in conjunction with Weight Watchers, meet personal trainer that rocks... that 146-lb girl became a 127-lb girl totally in love with her new shape and her skinny jeans.  The sucky part, as all of you who've been through this know, is that sometimes when it takes everything you've got to get somewhere, you've got nothing left to stay put.  Say you used all of your oxygen to reach the top of the mountain... yeah, you might be at the top, but you'll still die.  Well my death came in the sneaky, pastel-colored, sweetly scented aisles of Walgreens when I had to wander in there after work, after a particularly difficult workout, hungry and tired... and there in all its chocolate-bunny-beauty, was the Easter candy.  That naive girl scout within me tried to shout: "NO!  Think of all the work you've done!  Look at yourself!  Do NOT pick up TWO white chocolate bunnies!  Damn you!"  She tried.  Then the big fat monster in my closet stomped on girl scout's face and, in a voice shockingly similar to Chris Farley's, screamed, "LAY OFF OF ME!  I'M STARVING!"  Okay so after a three month backwards bender, my head stopped spinning around and I got myself back together again, fortunately not TOO far away from where I'd left off.  Still that "little" distance seemed a long ways away, and finding the motivation to, well, work hard, again.  

So weight goes off, weight goes on, weight goes off... lather, rinse, repeat.  Makes for one sad, very frustrated girl.  Now I'll tell you right off the bat - I exercise like a crazy person.  But in the last two years I became even slightly more crazy (shut up, there was still room) and my exercise is now really a part of me.  I do everything I do because it makes me feel like a rock star - not because I'm not at my goal yet, or to punish myself for downing that whole jar of Creamy Jiff.  

Gonna say, the closer I get to my goal, which is now only six pounds away, the harder and harder it gets.  Suppose that's the whole thing about reaching the end of a long journey - of course, only to begin the next part - but still... if it were easy, no one would be obese.  The treadmills at my gym would always be occupied and I'd take at least four more elbows to the face during zumba class.  Us small, fit folks would just look like everyone else, just because - not because we poured our hearts and souls into a hard-fought battle with change.  I still use and love Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers.  I use one of these most awesome Bodymedia gadgets now, and am a subscriber to and huge fan of Shape, Fitness and Self magazines.  I've now dealt with that closet monster and defeated her many times - and bought a bigger padlock for that closet.  What it boils down to is change.  I have changed.

So.  Not all days are great, but all-in-all, I feel freaking fantastic.  The biggest bummer I've found so far is how little our bodies actually need to function - food-wise, that is.  Smaller we are, the less we need.  How is that fair!?  OH yeah and that I'll likely never again be warm.  Ever.  Me and my skinny jeans?  We're okay with it.

The First of 52 Books in 52 Weeks

My friend Molly is always full of good ideas, and she mentioned this to me today:  52 books in 52 weeks!  What do you think?  It seems to be all over the place at the moment, web-wise, so since I'm into making up my own rules, I'll just make up my own challenge. No restrictions, just that - 52 books in 52 weeks.  Check back - I read a s*itload of really good books, and I will be reporting back to you here!  Granted, I'm starting as a deficit seeing as how it's already January 10... oh no check that - last week I read Mockingjay, the third book in The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins.  That's a great place to start!  This is a great series, geared toward a young adult audience, but, like Harry Potter, entertaining for all ages.  An all-too-imaginable future, with a horrible dictator oppressing the masses, keeping everyone in check by rationing necessities and an event called The Hunger Games, where a two names are drawn from each district, and those selected go to the Capitol to be dumped into a giant tricky arena, to fight to the death. Our star Katniss get on the President's bad side when she consistently finds ways to metaphorically thumb her nose at the Capitol and the President's rules.  Nobody likes a malcontent, especially one that may be the voice the people are looking for.  Game on.  

Up next: Raven Stole the Moon, by Garth Stein.  Stay tuned.

Pea In a Big Crazy Pod.

So going "home" to Texas over Thanksgiving has become a bit of my own personal tradition. My brother and I run, a lot.  He kicks my butt and is 20 years older than me.  I like to think of my running more like training for the eventual zombie apocalypse (where you'll have to be very careful about pacing yourself).  

This year we not only did the 8-mile Thanksgiving day Turkey Trot through the middle of downtown Dallas, but we also did the Pineapple Classic that I mentioned earlier - now THAT was a difficult 5k obstacle course through cow-patty forest country. We scaled giant circular hay bales, way too many plywood walls, net-climbs, hurdles, tires... thank god the army-crawl obstacle wasn't a live-fire exercise, or I'd have gotten my poor excuse for a booty blown to smithereens.   I would have done much better with the really high sawhorse crawl if there hadn't been absolutely the biggest daddy longleg residing on my horse that I've ever seen in my entire life.  Anyway, the finish was a run-and-slide across a giant blue tarp covered in dish soap and really cold hose water... while waiting to start we saw lots of folks finishing, hesitantly crab-clawing their ways across, but I tell you, I was so grateful to see that finish line, I didn't think twice.  I ran and slid head first, got flipped around ass-over-teakettle and almost lost my pants.  It was awesome.  Note to self, next year, bring dry clothes.  

So Thanksgiving, with the whole family along for the ride, the house gets interesting.  I get claustrophobic because I'm usually here in Portland all by my comfortable lazy lonesome, and being thrown into the midst of a busy bubbling family isn't something I'm used to on a day-to-day basis.  Therefore when I'm there, I tend to resort to my role of complaining-selfish-too-told-to-be-pouting-self, whispering to mom when I think things aren't fair. Which is quite often.  Then I have those moments sitting around listening to the whole group and all their own personal crazies - the fights with the neighbors, the drama, the pointer-out of every horrible headline in the paper and online, the overstated opinions, the chatty kids, the angsty teens... the dogs and yes, the ferrets (I don't get ferrets, I'm sorry - why do people keep elongated rats as pets?) Anyway in the middle of sitting there listening to all the crazy, I had a very odd moment of clarity: We're all, in our own special ways, bananas. Our families are all their own brands of bananas. And this year I realized that I am so lucky to be a part of it all.  I am grateful for every single one of those nutjobs, and I fit right in.  It's what family is all about.  

 

I like to move it move it.

Okay now in actuality, I do not like to move it-move it, but with life comes change, with change comes the packing of boxes and hauling of crap.  Moving plus procrastination likely means we'll be renting a U-Haul truck this weekend and making one big well... haul... of it.  I have great friends who have offered to help, and I can't do it - I hate moving and I can't bring myself to make others suffer with me.  Now this move will be especially exciting, and challenging, because I get to learn how to live and play nice with another - another who I love very, very much.  Exciting, no?  I'm ready.  The future is wide open.

Despite having a million and one things to do right now, I have to say, I just found out that the Borders Books downtown is closing.  I'm terribly vexed.  They send out coupons, a lot, and every time they do, off I go to buy a book.  With coupons, without coupons, with a book in mind, with nothing more focused to do on my lunch hour, I go to the book store in search of anything, nothing, whatever.  I heart it there.  And I will miss it terribly.  Sorry Portland, I know you're all about Powells, but quite frankly, I remain unimpressed. Everything I've been looking for there in the last year has only turned up brand new full price copies, and I never have coupons there!  Now the computer-age...  I know it's not personal, and I know the idea of having a new book in an instant is great, but I have to slightly lament the creation of the Kindle... I want to hold my books, smell them, feel their weight, get ink on my thumb for propping it in one place too long when I'm especially engrossed.  Many believe that the publishing of books with pages and covers and spines will vanish in this lifetime.  Well, fellow enthusiasts, not in my house.  I will not go gentle into that good night.

Gotta go.  Boxes beckon.  Mostly boxes full of books.