I am blocked, and that annoys me to no end, because I'm not lacking for things to write; I just don't really feel the need to expand them beyond a topic sentence and a couple of paragraphs that ultimately lead to nothing even remotely resembling a conclusion.

I am not out of money right now, I have food in the cupboards and social engagements on my calendar. Nothing is hurting, or infected. My car works. Work isn't challenging in good or bad ways. My cats are still adorable. My eating habits have been acceptable, though not stellar. My gym membership expired yesterday, but I didn't renew it because I have a subscription to an aerobics class right now. I went once and have neglected to go again, but I probably will this week. I don't expect to lose weight this week, but I also don't expect to gain anything big. Frankly, I don't care.

I have never, in my entire life, been at a point where I would admit to being bored and disgusted with who I am and what I'm doing, but I think I've finally gotten there. I was cleaning out old Rubbermaid containers of stuff I've carried with me through college and grad school and my last job, and I found a pile of legal pads from five, six years ago stacked neatly in a corner. In my cramped, precise script I had written out shopping lists and meal plans, all perfectly enumerated on a weekly calendar that looked like I had drawn out with a ruler. And like every shopping list I have ever written since I stopped sponging off my parents, the food on it was fresh, healthy, low-fat, no sugar...hopeful, ambitious, and probably wasted in favor of takeout and ice cream. I have been pulling the same bullshit for five years and all the gorgeous lists and tables and entries I made have rendered me enormous, unhappy, and positively lavishing in my own torpor.

I am so, so tired of this holding pattern I've been in since college, and I am so very sick of people who helpfully offer suggestions to make me feel better. "Take a dance class!" "Find some interesting friends in the city!" "Get season tickets to the ballet!" "Stop shopping at Wal-Mart if the sight of braless women in muscle shirts depresses you!" Great, thanks. But the problem is everything seems to be dependent upon everything else in order for me to make a clean break from this malaise...I can't go into the city to do things until I can afford to lose a quarter tank of gas with each jaunt northward, and Iget a fuel-efficient car, but I can't get a car until I pay off my debts, and I can't make substantial payments on debts because I have to eat and stuff, and I can't get the things I need because I'm always paying off debts, but I can't use a credit card to get the things I need because I have to pay off old credit cards, and I can't move into the city because I can't afford the rent, but even though I pay a smaller rent on a bigger place outside of the city, I can't get into the city to make upf for the fact that I live in the flabby, warty backside of the Universe because I can't afford the gas...

And it just goes on and on and on.

And it's not like I haven't tried to find a loophole out of this cycle of not being able to move forward. I'm not just sitting on my ass and complaining about my life. I really have paid down a ton of debt in the last two years, I have researched bank loans for people with messed up credit, I have considered getting a third job just to make car payments, I try to find substitutes for expensive yoga or Pilates classes by doing my own on video or teaching it myself to the kids at school. I research grad schools and make contacts with other people who could help me in the future and try to do research and write and do whatever I can to pad my resume for the time when I can apply in four years. I feel like every day I square my shoulders against whatever battle I have to fight in order to retain some dignity, some footing in moving ahead, and then I go to bed with a clenched jaw and regrets about whatever I screwed up or didn't accomplish enough of during the day before.

I do all of these things...but for what? I'm still supersized, I'm still poor, I'm still the tired, wan girl who might've been pretty at one point but who isn't worth the second look in the grocery line or the bookstore because whatever spark she used to have has since extinguished under a mountain of bills and stress and self-doubt.

And now I've just realized how incredibly stupid my problems must seem to someone who actually has to deal with real issues, and I'm sorry for that.

Anyway. Back to the food, because that's what this is about:

Breakfast: Banana, Iced latte (5 pts)

Lunch: Broccoli cheese soup: (6 pts) Garden salad w/FF dressing: 0 pts

Dinner: Probably Pei Wei

Sometimes I hate my rotten life, especially when I realize it's not even interestingly sucky.

I have had the distinct pleasure of contracting strep for the fifth time this year yesterday, and as my tonsils were staging a mini Central American revolution against the rest of my body I had plenty of time to languish in my bed (I am SO in need of a Victorian settee...and maybe a bustle and a fan...much more dramatically effective for languishing) and think about how good my swim/walk workout was on Tuesday and how great it'll be to get healthy so I can actually try to move my body more than once a week or month at a time.

Anyway, while my pain sensors stop being such grumpy poodles and my left ass cheek heals from having a giant needle of antibiotics plunged into it, I'll tackle Laura's meme, since she was kind enough to tag me.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING TEN YEARS AGO?

Ten years ago I was 16 and getting ready for my senior year of high school. I think I probably would've been at this three-week long fine arts camp where I had a wonderful time but was egregiously misinformed as to the idea that one can make a viable living off one's passions.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING A YEAR AGO?

Hmm...last year I was not in my best form. I was a part-time professional towel folder and disgruntled employee at Wal-Mart until I walked out and never came back, I was in the process of packing up my husband's possessions in the hopes that putting his toothpaste in a hard to find box would actually prompt him to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE (It didn't until the tail end of July. The man's tenacity is extraordinarily impressive.) And I was finishing a long, slow slide into the worst physical shape of my life...infections, weight gains and pains, and general illness that's only just now working itself back to normal. I am SO glad it's not 2006 anymore.

FIVE SNACKS YOU ENJOY
1. Chips and salsa
2. String cheese
3. Almonds
4. Fruit
5. Kashi Cookies

FIVE SONGS TO WHICH YOU KNOW ALL THE LYRICS
I have a problem with not being able to remember the lyrics to any song I hear on the radio, even if I've heard it a zillion times. I'm that person that sort of half-mumbles until the chorus and even then I'm a half-second behind the music because I'm waiting to hear the words so I can confirm I have it right. My brother won't even let me sing in the car with him because it's so annoying.

I do know pretty much any song you would've sung in any elementary music class by heart, although having an intimate knowledge of "Skip to my Lou" never seems to help me at parties.

FIVE THINGS YOU WOULD DO IF YOU WERE A MILLIONAIRE
1. Pay off all my debts
2. Buy a truck for my dad
3. Pay for my brother's college
4. Buy a house
5. Buy a fuel-efficient car for me

FIVE BAD HABITS
1. Eating my feelings
2. Not saving money
3. Being extremely hard on myself
4. Being messy
5. Putting on too much nail polish on purpose and peeling it off, Bonne Bell style

FIVE THINGS YOU LIKE DOING
1. Watching movies
2. Writing
3. Painting and drawing
4. Dancing
5. Teaching kids stuff

FIVE THINGS YOU'LL NEVER WEAR AGAIN

1. A Wal-Mart smock
2. Tapered legged capris
3. My wedding rings, unless I reconstitute the engagement ring into a solitaire necklace
4. Fake nails
5. Suntan panty hose (my mother used to insist there was no such thing as nude hose, so I spent the better part of my adolescence looking like I had just come from the Swingin' Senior Dance at the Boca Raton Retirement Ranch)

FIVE FAVORITE TOYS
1. My cell phone
2. My computer
3. My iPod
4. My thingy that turns my iPod into my car stereo
5. Hmmm...I'm a bit of a neo-Luddite. I do think it's cool my TV has a DVD and a VCR built into it. Does that count?

"INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so."

1. Tam's Fitness Journal
2. Lose Weight With Me
3. Kathy Calculates
4. The Pursuit of Healthyness
5. Minx, Redux

"Next select five people to tag:

1. Brenna
2. Lori
3. Abba
4. Luna
5. Lukos' Mom

ALSO: I'm getting referred for a tonsillectomy this summer (Ice cream! Excruciating pain and hemorrhaging!) and I'm getting mixed stories on whether or not it'll require a lot of down time, etc. If you've had a tonsillectomy as an adult and can comment as to the nature of the surgery, could you leave a comment please? Thanks.

Trudging back in.

I had just one giant bitch of a week, and I decided to wait until I stopped lavishing in my own misery to write about it so I could at least look back with some perspective on things, and so now I'm back...2 pounds heavier but hopefully with some sort of plan for moving forward.

A very heavy depression descended on me this week...one of those where I'm honestly concerned about whether or not it will ever lift, and for awhile yesterdy while I sat in my car in the dark garage for thirty minutes because I couldn't will my body to get up out of it I really didn't think I was ever going to be able to think clearly again. Lots and lots of stress and exhaustion and tension and stupid adult problems with banks and cell phones and insurance companies sort of just kept building and building until I freaked and spent a lot of time eating various forms of fried chicken...chicken on buns, chicken dipped in gravy, chicken shaped into tiny balls and crammed into my gaping maw by barbecue sauce stained fingers. Somewhere in central Arkansas, dozens of Tyson Chicken employees just got laid off because I ate EVERY FREAKING CHICKEN in their farm. Sigh.

And I've spent a lot of time wondering what it takes to be brave enough to do all this. To just go and move your body and eat the right foods no matter how many chocolate cakes are shoved under your nose or how many time your brain says that the world doesn't need another obese person waddling down the sidewalk in sweatpants. I went from actually being sort of brave and hopping on an airplane for Chicago at the last minute to hiding in my bedroom because a picture taken of me standing on the beach at Lake Michigan finally revealed to me just how bad things had gotten. There were no artfully posed "Fat-girl-with-chin-down-quirky-smile-to-hide-the-jowls" shots, no pageant position standing to minimize the waist and obscure at least one hip from the lens, no black on black couture to hopefully detract from the rolls and the pudge...just me in my pear-shaped glory, squinting at the camera and trying desperately to shield myself from sight with my forearms. And if I were serious about any of this, my blogs should've revealed a steady progression of good choices and moderate weight loss every week since January. Now I just have fits and starts and big gaps in the entries where I became an utter fuckup and ate away my disappointments and washed it down with a large Coke.

I wonder what it takes to be THAT person...the one who swims and dances and does yoga in a big-lady Speedo and XXL workout pants and doesn't apologize for wanting to do any of it. The one who says the Curves gym is okay if you want to not do very much, but that I have a right to be in the real gym with the real people, so move over so I can leg press thank you very much. The one who jiggles her way around a few miles of town every morning, no matter what, until the jiggles stop jiggling and the flesh is replaced by muscle and suddenly no one is staring or laughing as she steps into the pool. Where does the self-possession to say "I don't give a fuck" come from, or does it never actually click until you've earned the right in the eyes of everyone else?

I wish I knew...I'd like to instill myself with at least a modicum of bravery and integrity before I end up threatening the entire poultry population of the Central Plains.