3-Day High-Metabolism Diet

This is January's "T'Do". Each time I've tried it, it actually worked. It's not terribly tough to adhere to unless you've got insanely terrible eating habits to begin with... which I realize most of us do. So...

According to the magazine article, this plan helps decrease hunger and increase calorie burn. And while I can 'feel' the calories melting off (via some random sweating episodes), that, in turn, can make you feel a bit hungry throughout the day. However, I'm usually always hungry. But that's just me... and me, all the damn time.

With this menu, drink at least 8 cups of water or green tea per day (I hear that speeds up calorie-burn), and it's always best to consult your quack before starting. I sweeten my green tea with Stevia, because it was suggested in another fad diet I'd read about. Also, it states that if using this diet for more than 3 days, to include 200 calories of 'healthy' food and a daily multivitamin after the 3rd day.

I found the coconut oil ($9 per jar, but it lasts for months!) and steel-cut oats by-the-ounce at the local health food store. That crud looks and tastes like lil tiny chopped, wooden branche and take a lonnng time to cook, so I prepare mine in advance and refrigerate 3 days worth. As awful and slimy as they are, they are pretty filling. Buy the hottest salsa you can tolerate, or make your own (I use diced grape tomatoes, onions, garlic and jalepenos with lime juice & cilantro) The 'capsaicin' in hot salsa really kicks your metabolism up, and I spike mine with tobasco sometimes. I also feel bad about wasting 3 eggs just to get the whites. The 'Only Whites' stuff at the store is probably more expensive. I'll have to nvestigate.

Oh yeah... waking up to apple cider vinegar water is some BULL! ! It tastes awful and boins ya stomach if not properly diluted. Go for the lemon juice instead if it's unbearable. Still awful, but definitely more tolerable in the a.m.

LOVE the salad with the homemade oil-and-vinegar 'dressing'. A dash of salt & pepper, or  Mrs. Dash Table Blend, and some green veggies (3 cups maximum? Pshtt!). The tuna/chicken is the  highlight of my day. *yawn*

Since I find low-sodium V-8 boring, I sometimes go a little overboard on the tabasco! Mmmm, niggadry! And I am QUITE the celery-lover too, so that's a bonus (for me).

Why isn't salmon cheaper? You can get a can of tuna for pennies! Why can't someone breed a bazillion salmon so they're not so expensive. Geeeez! I'm gonna start a salmon farm

And six almonds? Pshtt! What a tease! I don't even eat 'em whole. I nibble one at a time and bask in it's flavor. I imagine it's a small chicken wing.

A very very very small chicken wing.



In closing, I probably shouldn't complain! Lots of people would consider this a gourmet way to diet. But coming from someone who goes into extreme withdrawal from not having had a single crumb of fried chicken in the past 24 hours... this isht is killing me softly.

Oh YEAH! That's the GOOD sh*t right there! *licks the monitor*

Later, Gators!

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The Anti-Resolution

New Year's Resolutions are so pre-2010, so my goal is to write out a 'To Do' list of twelve personal goals and aspirations... one for every month of the year. Hopefully, the 30-ish days will give me more than enough time to complete the task, and surely the success rate will be greater than that of the typical resolution (which I usually forget about by mid-January). And obviously 30 days is a more reasonable goal than 365.

People change throughout the year. What's important in January, might not be as important in July. So I'll leave open the option to be flexible, and change my T'Dooz as I go along (I just made that up... "T'Dooz"). For instance: Naturally, if all my hair falls out, I'm gonna dedicate a month to growing that isht back.

If I'm lucky, maybe a single month-at-a-time of a healthy lifestyle change will be just enough to help me change my bad habits altogether... for good.

I'm already two weeks behind for January. I reckon I'd better get on it.


Outta here.

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Hello Music

I sat up until 4:30am yesterday watching American Masters honor Marvin Gaye on pbs. I'm sure I'd missed a great deal considering I just tuned in during the 60's era when Marvin was exiting the church choir and approaching the steps of Hittsville, USA.


It's tough to watch documentaries when you know the outcome. Everything seems to lead to the end:

Oh WOW! Marvin's daddy seemed so cruel.
Oh WOW! Marvin did so much cocaine he lost track of the millions he spent on it.
Oh WOW! Marvin had a lotta hoes.


I made the mistake of forgetting how much influence his music had on our lives. They don't make music like that no more (when's the last time you heard someone say that?). I'd made it through the entire documentary stifling my urge to cry and bucking my eyes wide open to fight the gravitational pull of my tears and allowing the air to dry any traces. And how many documentaries show the body lying in the casket as the finale? Yeah... gare-on-teed tear-jerkin' 'goings on'. I think there was snot too, but who remembers.

Yesterday I changed my twitter status update to the opening lyrics to "Wake Up Everybody" by Harold Melvin and Teddy Pendergrass and The Bluenotes (yep, all of em). Could've been some kinda weird psychic intuition. Who else was thinking about Teddy P at the same moment? Maybe hundreds. Maybe more.

There I was, December 2008, thinking that the worst was over.

Here I am, January 2010, convinced that '09 was as bad as it could possibly get.
As bad as it could possibly ever ever get.

And with the deaths of music's, movie's and comedy's most influential people, came the reality that we will never hear anything new, never see fresh creations... from them again. Only in their honor.

And as sad as it may sound, I imagined worse.
What if every artist that left us, took their contributions and our memories with them, and we were never able to reminisce and feel them in their absence? Yeah, that would definitely be worse. So I originally planned to entitle this blog "Goodbye Music", in honor of the last of the greats slowly dwindling from our grasps.

But not from our hearts.

Not ever.

*clicking on any ads by Google on this blog will afford me a tissue to dry a single tear*

Sporkette

After and between McDonald's and the return to big-people's school (college) came a memorable stint at Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits. Luckily, my high metabolism then, spared me from impending obesity...which came later on in my life.

Somehow, despite a regular 'lunch allowance' being deducted from our paychecks and the weird hours, I managed to make enough to buy a bus pass, and still have a little leftover to regularly attend Lil Louis and Frankie Knuckles parties on the weekend.

On our first day, they gave us a printout of the cash register buttons to study. McDonald's wasn't even that advanced/considerate. Two-piece, Wing-dinner, Single breast and a biscuit. Would you like rice, fries or mashed potatoes with that? Occasionally I'd slip up and ask if they'd also like a hot apple pie. The training manager quizzed us:

"What goes in a 2-piece White meal?"

"Two pieces of chicken" replied my fellow trainee.

"A breast, a wing, a biscuit, a side..." I specified.

"And...?" replied the manager.

"Oh yeah", I responded... "And a sporkette!"

To this day, it is true... I will never ever get tired of Popeye's Chicken. Proof lied in the fact that not only did I eat it EVERY day, but I volunteered to work weekends when the boss would force us to take the leftovers home (although it was against company policy). And it's true what they say... and I had begun to cluck and grow feathers on my upper arms.

Sexier people ate at Popeye's, for some unknown reason. Less sexy people worked there, so it was worth it just to show up every day to greet them, and fill their arteries with our special, intestine-lingering cooking oil.

By lunchtime, Popeye's was a chicken-lovers heaven. But in the morning, when opening the store, the mice scattered to their holes to avoid the bright lighting.

It gets worse...

Around noon, a customer, slightly disgruntled, brought her biscuit to the counter and peeled it open. Embedded in the biscuit was a large, dark, oddly shaped piece of cork. You'da thunk the other customers would've been a little thrown  by the incident, but they just paused, looked, and continued to place their orders:

"Yeah, uhhh... lemme get two wangs and a biscuit... without the f*in' cork, please."

I volunteered to work on a boring Saturday morning. The shifts are short and the traffic is slow. Unfortunately, we didn't get the nice manager, Vanessa. We got that short, round, balding chick whose name I purposely forgot. That day, we had no hot water, and the cooks resorted to boiling water in large vats, then hauling those vats over to the sinks to wash the dishes. But that didn't leave much hot water to mop the floors with.

I'd told the manger that there was NO way I was scrubbing chicken grease and buttermilk biscuit batter off the cookware in cold water, and the next 'vat' of hot water wouldn't be ready for another half-hour. Her reply was:

"Either you wash those dishes NOW, or clock OUT"... as in ALL the way out. And I knew that's what she meant.

Pshtt!!! I rolled my eyes and unknotted the apron. Folded it, then placed it gently on the counter as I walked out and never came back. Not even for lunch.

That same afternoon, the cook there, a 40+-year old woman, slipped on the oily biscuit batter residue on the floor... while carrying the vat of boiling water from the stove-top to the sink. Third degree burns I heard.

Shit... sorry for her. Glad it wasn't me.

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McTea

You didn't think I'd always had the pleasure of sitting comfortably behind the computer screen. Right?

My first job was at McDonald's on Randolph Street in the heart of busy downtown Chicago. With so many wonderful places to dine for lunch, it was a wonder so many people came to Mickey D's. Must've been the McRib.

During the job interview, Patricia, the manager, tilted her head to the side to get the Care-Free Curl tendril out of her eye. The meeting was 'informal' to say the least. Although I'm sure she'd been managing the joint for at least ten years, you'da thunk I was her first:


"So ummmm, are you Christian? You go to church?" Patricia asked.

Embarrassed, I replied "I'm a member. Definitely need to start going back."


Later on my mother informed me that it was inappropriate to ask religious beliefs in a job interview. I'd wondered if I'd told Patricia that I was an Atheist, instead... would I have still gotten the job.

I developed a fondness for McNuggets. So much so, that I'd pay the extra to upgrade my free 6-piece meal to a 9. Occasionally, one of my coworking snots would yell out "Oooooh, you stealin' nuggetttts".

Shut up... heifer.

The first time I served hot tea, no one had taught me about the styrofoam tea and coffee cups, so the customer's large tea went into a large, wax-coated, cold beverage cup. And yeah, I definitely depleted the entire supply... and no one stopped me. The lady tried not to laugh, as the paper cup was tempted to buckle as it melted from the mass of hot tea. I even gave her a straw... and 27 packets of Sweet-n-Low.

Connie made the salads. Each one pretty and looking like the other, and they were weighed and dated. She had a 3-year old daughter named Dorothy who often came by to visit. I like that her daughter's name didn't end in 'quita... or 'quanda. I could tell by the way she made the salads and named her daughter... that she was mo better than McDonald's. Maybe she liked it there. Wonder where she is now.

Eventually, I grew tired of being told that I was "too nice" to customers. It was concluded that 'being nice' was 'time consuming'. The star of the show was a girl who had gel'ed her 'baby' hair down on the sides with aloe vera, and talked so fast she averaged about 2 customers (greeting, feeding, dismissing) each minute. "Thankyouhaveaniceday" became a single word. THIS is who they wanted me to follow. A girl who, when drinking vinegar and throwing herself down a flight of stairs didn't terminate her situation... had, several months later, patiently ridden the El Train to the maternity ward when her water broke.

*cringe*

Strangely enough... Mickey D's days were some of my best. I made JUST enough to buy a bus pass to get to and from work. I just liked being there, in the middle of it all. Downtown Chicago... near the lake... near the restaurants... near everything fabliss and wannaful! Wait til you hear the story of my coworker "Camay" (that was her for-real name)... maybe one day. If I'm feelin' like it.

In the meantime... want some tea?

 

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My 'Animal' Magnetism - Chapter I

Okay, so I'm not a homophobe! Or a trannyphobe! (if that's a word) Still though, what is it about me that screams "Heyyyy you folks of a different lifestyle! Bring thine selves hither!" ??? I blame no one but myself. My own, magnetic, undeniably charismatic self...

(you'll have to click the screenshot to get the full effect)

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I liked a guy once.

A little man in big man's shoes.

The date was great. Movie, dinner, debate and some confessions. We crashed, sweetly, and fully-clothed on the couch watching Cat Stories on Animal Planet. I hugged him goodbye and the top of his head reached just to the curve in my underwire. I don't judge. He was cute... very cute, and the ultimate gentleman. I liked that guy a lot, but not. He was only the second guy (that I know of) who used the pickup lines that I used on him... on other women. He said it was because I was witty.

A couple decades ago, he was a sweet, timid and quiet guy. Self confidence was mediocre at best, or so I've heard. With a sincere but serious Wanda-from-in-living-color-face I thought... I'd Rock His World... if it was still 1994.

He once bragged that he'd brought a guy within minutes of committing suicide with his 'wondrous debating skills'. No, that is not something brag-worthy. In my eyes, that's just rude. Treat people how you'd like to be treated. But even that was overlooked.

Fast forward, present day. He said he'd put on this tall and ugly facade to disguise his past, short but beautiful  and totally acceptable insecurities and imperfections. Admitting to it makes it alright... right? He then took a liking to an old friend of mine, I think. Some things you just don't wanna know. It wouldn't be the first time a friend of mine made friends with my friends. I reckon I have awesome taste in buddies... a curse disguised as a gift. Can you believe the balls on that guy though? The teensy lil balls (...perhaps. I don't know... never looked... liked him on a much different level). He probably believes he's too good for me. I probably believe something else.

Beware of anyone who claims to have ever been excessively shy and insecure. Only the pompous ones are secure enough to admit to that. Even years beyond those years... of insecurity.

By the end of this blog,
I'm over it/that/all that time-and-effort consuming isht.
I'm sure of it.

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