Jesus/Gertrude/Beautiful

In order to fully understand this post, you should be aware that I often give rides to strange women and money to street beggars on the assumption that they are Jesus in disguise.
You should also know that when I speak of Gertrude, I am referring to my uterus.  She is an angry German fraulein who is rather impatient with not being able to carry out  her purpose of fetal enrichment.  Every month, Gertrude promises herself that she WILL nurture a baby this month and builds a nursery, despite my objections.  When she sees that I might not meet her ovulation deadline, she makes every man around me smell like candy and tells me that I'm such a pretty lady, and that it would be perfectly fine if I allowed a pretty man to come over and "watch movies" on my couch.  But I'm onto you Gertrude, you whore.  I know better than to believe that allowing ANY man into my apartment that isn't a close relative is good idea.  She thinks she's slick.  But I'm smarter than her.

"Stony-face" Gertrude.

So, anyway, as I walked around outside yesterday-- trying to slowly incorporate exercise into my life without going overboard, hating my life, and subsequently giving up this fitness journey-- I encountered two men walking in the same direction ahead of me and who stopped to ask me for directions.  The more assertive of the two smiled and asked to know my name.  I told him and proceeded to make a show of ignoring him as i placed my earbuds back into my ears.  Then I thought, what if that dude is Jesus? I just totally dismissed JESUS! CRAPTASTIC! So i took the earbuds out of my ears and flagged the two men down who had already crossed the street.  I gave the more assertive one (Antwon) better directions and tried to walk away but he was quick to ask me for my number.  Rude.  A polite man would have offered to give me his number so that I could contact him at MY earliest convenience.  Ugh..Men today.... So i was stupid enough to allow this man to have my number after a thorough inspection of his face and teeth which seemed to be symmetrical and well cared for.  Once i was back in my apartment, i realized what had just happened.  Either Antwon preys on unattractive women who don't think they can do better than him or I'm at least moderately attractive.  I went into my bathroom and looked into the mirror.  Is it just Gertrude lying to me again for her own nefarious purposes---- or am I freaking gorgeous?!?!

This lovely woman can totally pull off
walking down the street with no pants.
And, damn it, so can I.

Its not just Gertrude.  I really AM quite lovely.  But you wouldnt know it if you saw me on a regular day in Walmart or on my way to my mom's house, or even on my way to a restaurant or a random church activity.
Which leads me to my next realization.  I've become rather sloppy.  A few years ago, I was supa-fly.  Wore pretty dresses and always had on makeup and well-kept wavy hair.  Then i gained weight and instead of buying new clothes in bigger sizes, i said "EFF IT" and just wore sweatpants.  All day.  Every day.  I stopped wearing makeup and kept my hair wrapped in a scarf.  FOR YEARS.  No wonder, I have such low self esteem.  I see tons of big women who are much larger than me and still have the wealth of confidence that i used to possess.  So here's ANOTHER New Year's resolution: Stop Being Sloppy.  Skinny chicks can be ugly, pretty chicks can be fat. But if you are either ugly or fat, you absolutely CANNOT be sloppy.  So I'll be getting dressed every stinking day as though I have to be somewhere important.  My hair will be in place, my makeup immaculate, my perfume enticing, my clothing pressed, my teeth bleached and gleaming. Gertrude will be so happy.

2013 Resolution

So i decided that this year, i would actually get fit. I don't usually make fitness resolutions for the New Year, I just think "it would be nice if i lost ____ lbs" or "i hope this year, i'll be able to change my eating habits and fit into a size 9- maybe...we'll see" But I never actually resolved to DO anything. The only reason why I wanted to be a runner last year was to be able to outrun the inevitable zombie hoards. But now, I want to lose weight so that i like myself more. I find that I'm often envious of the bodies of others, constantly finding fault in them to make myself feel better (textbook envy) while wishing they'd choke on their own saliva. And i know that i cant do as the Lord asks and love my fellow man as myself if i don't love myself. When I initially recognized this problems within me, I chose to just stay home. If I'm not out and about with skinny people everywhere, I wont be envious of the attention they get (or LACK of attention I receive) and I wont be guilty of envy, jealousy, or backbiting. So I end up staying in my house for days and weeks at a time, because i don't want to get dressed and think I'm pretty just to have the guys that i want hit on my friends. I don't want to sit at a restaurant or a church activity all angry and upset at a friend who did nothing wrong except want to spend time with me in a public setting.

And i know that its just me because when my fatter friends say or do stupid things, i have no problem ignoring it. But when the skinny chicks get even a little weird, I'm quick to call her out. If she were fat, I'd think it was funny and awesome. But bc she's skinny, I nitpick at everything. I know this about myself and it disgusts me. I want to actually LOVE my friends. I want to actually LOVE myself and have confidence that if some guy doesn't want me, its because he isn't ready for a an amazing spiritual goddess. At the moment I'm stuck in a place wherein everyone thinks I'm ugly and gross. I don't want to be in this place. I don't want to be this person. I didn't used to be this person. So this year... I wont. It's as simple as that, really. I realize that all of the self-doubt and jealousy came about because of MY actions. So MY actions can stop it. In the same way that i decided that i would cook most of my meals from scratch and that i would cut off all of my relaxed hair and love my naturally coily hair, I decided that i CAN and WILL eat clean nutritious foods. I already started last year by cooking from scratch so that i know exactly what is in my food and can count all the calories. Then I just had to research the topic to understand weight loss and healthy lifestyle choices. Im a BIG researcher so for the entire month of December, that all i did... research. I experimented with keeping a food journal and counting calories. I even exercised a few times with the express purpose of losing weight instead of being able to keep my nieces from other desperate zombie survivors. Now that its 2013. I'm committed. I HAVE to do this. For myself, for my friends, and for my God who loves His children dearly and doesn't appreciate how critical I am of His daughters.

So today, after doing 10 girly push-ups and walking outside in the freezing cold- after counting out exactly how many calories are in everything that goes into my mouth- after reading motivational quotes like “I hated every minute of training, but I said, don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life a champion.” – Muhammad Ali..... I have kept the promise to LOVE myself today. and it felt damn good.

Death By Treadmill

FML

I vividly remember the first time Merritt tried to jog in downtown KCMO, she called me really PEEEEEEEE’d off and complaining about how stupid, painful, and pointless running is. But she’s a glutton for punishment and decided to do it again but this time she did the “couch-2-5k” program. Its pretty much just going from being a bum on the couch to alternating between walking and jogging until you can either jog 5k or for 30 mins straight. While she was in the process of killing herself, she began to really like jogging and being on the treadmill. Now Merbish Nicole Watson-almost-Benson considers herself a “runner” (although she routinely injures herself because she refuses to stretch, warm-up, or cool down) and the proof is in the medal-shaped pudding


I decided a while ago that I was going to try and get fit but never really kept it going. I would try to go to the gym every day and then quit because I got busy. Or I would try to play a sport with the Polys like volleyball and discovered that I have little to no coordination. I didn’t have any real weight loss goals, I just wanted to be able to run around with my nieces, nephews and future children. I wanted to participate when my friends played Xtreme Spoons for FHE.

And, let’s face it- don’t we all wish we were able to outrun the zombie hoards when the apocalypse comes?



I’ve also been trying to consistently underachieve. It’s something that I read about in one of Robert Kiyosaki’s books- he says that you should have lofty goals but not at first. You should learn to build confidence in yourself and have a lot of small victories as you try to accomplish your goal instead of having some lofty goal and feeling like a massive failure when life gets in the way and you cant achieve it. For example, if I’m in the habit of waking up at noon and I want to develop a habit of waking up by 6am- I can’t just keep all of my same habits and get up at 6am. I’ll be too sleepy and go right back to bed. When I finally wake up again at noon-30, I’ll feel like a failure bc I wasn’t able to get up when I wanted to. But if take Kiyosaki’s advice, my overarching goal is to wake up at 6am but my goal for the week is to just wake up ANYTIME BEFORE NOON. Even if I wake up at 11:59, I feel like a winner and I get into the habit of keeping promises to myself. The week after that, my goal is to wake up ANTIME before 11:30am, and so forth until I get to 6am.

I’m applying the “consistently underachieving” principle to working out- so my overarching goal is to run a 10k at some point this year. But my immediate goals, since January 10th, has been to just put on my workout clothes for a week and stretch. And then the following week, I put on the workout clothes, stretched AND did core exercises (100 crunches).


Today, I started the actual program….. and it almost killed me. The first week, I have to alternate between 60secs of jogging with 90secs of walking for 20 mins. I was only on my third rep of jogging when I thought my heart would explode and had to stop. I went back to my apartment and neglected to stretch because I was too busy dying. Once I caught my breath, I stretched bc I was afraid of feeling any worse that I did right at that moment and realized…. my shins and feet hurt…. But it hurt soooo good. I think I may be a little masochistic- because once I was all stretched out and I caught my breath, I wanted to go back to the gym and finish. I know its wrong but it feels so right. My roommate’s friend took pics of my abject misery… and my super creepy “let’s go do it again” face. It scares me a little.