Twisted Spinster

Just heard now from a couple walking their dogs past my apartment: “Come on, Gigi! Turbo, come on!”

I didn’t have to look at the dogs to know what sort they are.

It’s not easy losing weight when you’re broke — those boxes of mac-‘n’-cheese are so much cheaper than fresh fish and vegetables — but I’m going to try. I’ve already started eating more fresh fruit, which fortunately I love, and my next step is to cut back on the pasta and bread and eat more lean meat and veggies. I notice that when I eat better I feel better — really, it’s true! — and also those cravings for sweet desserts go down. I think that a high carb intake (like, pasta and rice every night) makes you crave more carbs, so you find yourself stopping at the Little Debbie shelf. Or at least, that’s how it works for me.

I tried to up my protein intake with eggs, since they are cheap, but either the eggs have gotten bad lately or my tolerance for them has dropped. After the last upset stomach I tossed the rest of the eggs in the garbage. I do real well with fish, and there are brands of frozen filets that aren’t too expensive. Protein for breakfast is more difficult — I really can’t eat much right when I wake up, all I can do is drink my coffee. I’ve started eating fruit and this breakfast bread Publix sells which has dried fruit and nuts in it. That might be a little fattening but it lasts me a long time so I don’t really get hungry until much later. I also have oatmeal (I prefer the Irish or Scottish style) but it’s such a lot of trouble for me to make in the morning I don’t have it every day. Really it’s the best I can do to turn the coffee pot on when I get up.

The main thing I need to lose is this gut of mine. I am really beginning to feel it as an actual weight.  I don’t know if I’ll ever have the flat stomach I had when I was younger, but I can at least get rid of some of the belly fat, I hope. I won’t even worry about my massive thighs — that fat is supposed to be even harder to get rid of than stomach fat, I think. Anyway, despite the fact that I used to be skinny elsewhere I always had substantial thighs. I am, or was, rather gourd-shaped. (Now I am starting to even out, but in a way I don’t want to.) I haven’t gone up a pants size yet, and I don’t plan to, believe me. And now that the weather is nicer I can go for walks.

I finally dyed my hair — I just don’t look good with my natural gray, just old. I guess I’m getting vainer as I get older and less attractive (not that I was ever a bombshell, I just used to be contemptuous towards the very idea of caring about my looks). It also occurred to me that it would be easier to get a job if I didn’t look so old and clapped out. The other day I looked at my reflection in the mirror and it said “one step from lady pushing shopping cart down the highway and muttering to herself.” Not exactly what employers are looking for. I might also get a haircut, though it’s not at the uncontrollable stage — yet.

Anyway, that’s my shallow me-post for the day.

(Blows dust off keyboard.) Well, that was a longer hiatus than I meant to take. Don’t know what happened there.

Anyway, yesterday when I was out and about, it was hot and humid as if it were still September. But it was also very windy. This morning when I stumbled out of bed and went to wash my hands I noticed that the water was freezing cold — this is usually a sign that the temperature has dropped considerably. And according to the weather report it’s currently 55 degrees, and the high is supposed to be around 63. So naturally I have my sliding glass door open and have already had to rescue two sluggish lizards from my cat. (One lizard did not want to let go of my fingers when I tried to set it down outside. “Nooo! Your hand is so nice and warm!”)

Anyway, it’s such nice weather I don’t know what to do with myself. I really should clean this place up, and sort out all the stuff I want to get rid of before my move in a few months. But who feels like working? I could work on the novel I said I was going to write… Hahahah!

I watered and fertilized my pot of edible goodies today. The one tomato is now as big as the end of my thumb, and there are more blossoms. I will have tomatoes for Christmas! Or maybe even earlier.

I wonder if I should set up a store and sell my stuff that way. My hosting company has web store software — I might set up a site and give it a try. I’d sell through Amazon or something like that but they make you pay to use their site. Ebay is the same — also I can’t remember my Ebay password. I have books, furniture, clothing (not much of that is sellable, though). But I need to do something. Money is scarce around my house and now that we have a Carin’, Sharin’ Messiah in charge of the country I don’t see my monetary situation improving. I’m currently on unemployment again, but that will be for only a couple more months or so and then it will run out. And it’s not much — just pays for the bare minimum. I’m probably going to get rid of cable tv and just keep the internet part, no more eating out (not that I will really mind — the last couple of times I ate out somewhere my bowels made me pay), and so on. I need to find a job, but this job market down here continues to suck — I’m still getting nothing but come-ons for sales positions. I guess I need to rewrite my resume to downplay the “customer service” aspects and up the office clerk duties. Also I need to write a snazzy cover letter and I haven’t actually felt inspired about myself. And all this is just so temp agencies will notice me, for God’s sakes. I don’t want to get into anything too permanent as I am moving. I could lie and accept a permanent position and then quit, but I’d feel dishonest. At least the unemployment pays more than part-time positions. Salaries aren’t worth shit in Florida.

Agh. Still down with sinuses. They’re a little better today, but not perfect. I’m out of decongestant too. I may emerge from my cocoon and go to Walgreen’s for the hard stuff (you know, the kind that works, that you have to give your ID and all sorts of info to buy) later.

In other news, I think I may have my first tomato developing on my huge vines. So far I have a lot of buds, but only one developed a flower, which is now withered and that’s where I saw the little green round thing that just might be a baby tomato. I can’t wait — I bought some tomatoes at the store the other day and they tasted like cardboard.

Sorry, folks, for the virtual silence all day — I woke up with one of my sinus headaches and it still hasn’t gone away. When I have one of those I’m no good for anything.

Hmm. My usually quiet apartment complex parking lot is full of: police cars with flashing lights, cars going through the parking lot (possibly detoured off the street and through the lot — there are two street entrances), and people standing and staring. And there was quiet a bit of “party noise” coming from outside before that. I wonder if people waited until the weekend to celebrate — or something — the election results, because as far as I know November 8 has no significance as a holiday.

I was reading this thread of Doctor Who fans cranking on about the excess Jeebus imagery in the new series (yeah, tell me about it — it almost makes me wish they’d go back to the hippiefreak Buddhist-lite garbage of the old series, at least of the Tom Baker and Peter Davison years) and my thoughts wandered, as they tend to do on a couple of glasses of merlot, to things Scottish, and for some reason things Eighties (update: I thought I’d just add that my thoughts on merlot or any other kind of wine don’t exclusively wander to the Scottish and the Eighties, that’s just what they did tonight), and how some people on my side of the pond are probably crying in their beers right now about the Reagan years, so I thought I’d give you a present of a video from the Best Band in the Universe, Simple Minds. (Better than U2! And Scottish — because if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!) Here ya go:

Or click if the embed doesn’t work.

An update for Doctor Who nuts: this is an even better fan critique thread of the intrusive religious imagery in the current Doctor Who series. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if that’s one reason David Tennant decided to leave the show. He probably will never say so, since admitting to any sort of Christianity-based qualms is a career killer in showbiz, but he was raised in a religious household (his father was a Presbyterian minister). So I wonder if the Messiah stuff ever made him uneasy. I can tell you that to me it looks like in stills of some of the scenes — for example, the ones where he’s all I-forgive-you to his archenemy the Master at the end of “Last of the Time Lords” — he looks like he can barely keep from laughing, and in the scenes they are discussing at the above thread in “Voyage of the Damned” the “WTF am I doing here this is stupid” expression on his face is almost worth sitting through the whole silly episode. (It’s not one of the series’ best. There is one scene where he gets to show real distress that breaks through the cheese, and a scene where he’s struggling against being restrained by two strapping members of the ship’s crew. We take what we can get.) Anyway, four more episodes and he’s well out of it, and maybe Moffett will restrain the holiness in 2010. Then again, he’s the one who came up with a secular version of Heaven for the Doctor’s girlfriends, so I don’t know. I just want a show that’s about aliens instead of humans and their neurotic preoccupations with having sex with the most exciting person in the universe. If I wanted a show about humans, I’d watch The Gilmore Girls or something like that.

For Halloween, Ace is having a scary movie thread. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be anything all that scary on tv tonight (I’m thinking of traditional scary like old Dracula films or Vincent Price movies, not the tedious slasher flicks that people think are what horror should be these days) — just stupid things like that dumb “Ghost Hunter” program on Scifi. Note to today’s entertainment producers: fake “reality” junk like “Ghost Hunters,” which consists of some people pretending to scare themselves in underlit abandoned buildings even though we know they are surrounded by a production crew and no self-respecting supernatural creature would allow itself within five miles of all that hubbub, are not scary — just annoying. How do these things stay on the air?

I do happen to still have that unwatched dvd of Shaun of the Dead, as well as a dvd I bought in the bargain bin of White Zombie (the old Bela Lugosi movie, not of the modern-day rock band), so maybe I’ll watch that. Boo!

Here’s something for the soundtrack.

And here’s something truly frightening — where did Donna keep her Tardis key?

Second update: okay… maybe this is even more frightening. Or maybe just kind of disgusting. Though he does make good “labor” faces.

Next day update: I watched no movies! I went to bed instead. I fail at Halloween.

I propose that the scariest animal in the known universe is the water bear. Not for the following reasons:

They are unique in the animal world for being able to tolerate and sometimes even thrive under such conditions as: 303 degrees F (151 degrees C), altitudes of over 6000 meters, oceanic depths below 4000 meters, both poles, the equator, cold approaching absolute zero, 1,000 times more radiation than any other animal, and even the vacuum of space (a very useful trait for those water bear cosmonauts). They are found everywhere.

No, they are terrifying because… they’re just so darn cute. No really, I want a plush toy of one. Christmas is coming!

(Title of the post changed! for more silliness.)

The cold weather is here! The cold weather is here! As I write this at 2:21 PM, it is 62 degrees outside, sunny and clear. I have the sliding glass door wide open. It’s supposed to go down to the low forties tonight. Folks, this is what I wait all year for, those few nice crisp days in Florida that don’t make me feel as if I was wearing an extra layer of heated slime. I actually feel like a human being instead of some sort of swamp-dwelling amphibious creature. (“Florida is a witch! She turned me into a newt!”) I can’t wait until I move up north. Oh sure, summers will still be dire in the Mississippi Valley, but the wonderful cold weather will last longer, I will get a real, authentic autumn, and then I’ll get snow!

Oh well, off to the store for food. I feel like homemade beef-vegetable soup.