Why'd You Have to Run Your Game on Me? I Should Have Known Right From the Start You'd Go and Break my Heart

The cute guy from work and I had a fun time at lunch today! There was lots of laughter and witty banter. Yay!

Heartbreaker, You've Got the Best of Me, But I Just Keep on Coming Back Incessantly

I am having lunch tomorrow with a super-cute guy at work. Yay!

When It's Summer in the City and You're So Long Gone from the City, I Start to Miss You, Baby, Sometimes

I really miss The Only Living Boy in New York. Today, I was at such risk of emailing him that I chose to email a mutual friend of ours, bring him up, fill in the mutual friend on the details of the end of our friendship, and intimate to the friend that I miss him. I admit that it was a dubious choice to spew my crazy all over our poor, unsuspecting friend like he was a citizen of Pompeii, but I decided that it was preferable to spewing my crazy all over The Only Living Boy in New York himself.

I keep reminding myself (with the help of Miley Cyrus, that poetess, my patron saint) that I have to go forward, not backward. If I contact The Only Living Boy in New York, that is going backward because the absolute most I can hope for is that we'll go back to the way things were, and I didn't like the way things were. I want him to tell me he loves me, that he's changed his mind, that he's been missing me every day since the last time we talked, but if he wants to tell me those things, then he needs to initiate the contact. If he feels those things, then he will, but the truth is that he probably does not.

When we were still friends, he was the person I wanted to talk to about everything. Whenever anything happened, good or bad, I wanted to tell him first. His opinion mattered the most. I wanted him to be my real-life boyfriend; he wanted me to be his workplace girlfriend. That hurts. That aches. Missing him feels like dissolving from the inside out.

If You Realize What I Just Realized, Then We'd Be Perfect For Each Other and We'd Never Find Another

I miss The Only Living Boy in New York.

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News 2

I'm still at home, still uncomfortable, and bored slap to death. I'm catching up on my episodes of Myles of Style on HGTV, which I highly recommend. Kim Myles is five kinds of adorable (plus, she and I have some of the same clothes, so we need to start shopping together), and Anthony Gilardi, her carpenter, is equally winning. My mom said I need to do whatever I have to do to ensnare Anthony so she can get his help with things around her house.

Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

I survived my surgery. I'm sore and uncomfortable, not to mention tired, but my mom is here taking care of me as is Teh Doggeh. Teh Doggeh knows something is wrong with me, and he has refused to leave my side unless dragged away, kicking and snarling, by my mom or his dog walker. He will go only on the briefest of walks. The dog walker tried to haul him around the block but said that after Teh Doggeh pee-peed, he just lunged at the house until he was brought home.

He's Oh So Good and He's Oh So Fine and He's Oh So Healthy in His Body and His Mind

In honor of my surgery tomorrow, I bring you...Michael Phelps's 14-time Olympic Gold Medal winning abs. They are Diana Ross, Michael is The Supremes.

Blue Jean Baby, L.A. Lady

I got back into my thin jeans today. Hell yes.

Featherweight

This Weight Watchers program works, people. I am telling you, it does. I have lost 17 pounds since I started. I still have quite a ways to go, but I am very pleased with my progress thus far.

All My Friends are Vampires, Didn't Know They Were Vampires

I am super-excited for the new Twilight movie to come out in December. I keep waiting to get tired of those books, but it has yet to happen.

Nip/Tuck

My surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. My mother is coming to take care of me afterward, though I think she is overreacting.

I'm Not Coming Back, You're Taking Seven Steps Here

I went back to my previous city of residence from Sunday to Tuesday, and I found myself missing The Only Living Boy in New York so much that I almost started to cry. Even worse, I almost emailed him. The great poet Miley Cyrus helped me to avoid falling into that trap. I reminded myself that I could go back to that relationship but I didn't enjoy it before and there is no reason to believe that it would be different now. It would be disingenuous to go back in the hopes that he would change his mind. I gave him ample opportunity to change his mind, and he didn't. If he were to come to me, which I admit is a long shot, then maybe it would indicate the possibility of something different, but all I can do is keep pushing forward.

Welterweight

Wednesdays are my weigh-in day on the Weight Watchers plan (it's not Wednesday for everyone -- that just happens to be the day I started the program), and I was excited to note this morning that I have lost a total of 13 pounds since I started. I don't think anyone I see on a daily basis has noticed yet, but I can tell the difference in the way I look and the way my clothes fit. I'm proud of myself.

Honestly, Weight Watchers hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. They let me eat as much microwave popcorn (the 94% fat free kind) and Diet Coke as I want, and those are my favorite foods. I'm not crazy about all the water they want me to drink (at least 48 ounces per day), but I'm sure it's doing something beneficial for me. The only thing I really mind is that I'm supposed to eat two servings of fat-free dairy per day, and plain, non-fat yogurt is a vile substances and skim milk is not much better. I've discovered that if you mix the yogurt with applesauce (natural applesauce is permitted), it disguises the taste. You can also disguise the taste of skim milk with instant, fat-free vanilla pudding mix (note: pudding mix + yogurt = disgusto).

I have lost more per week than Weight Watchers recommends (meaning more than two pounds per week), which I assume is normal at the start of a new nutrition program because the body is shocked by new habits. It's frustrating to contemplate losing weight so slowly, but I have found that Weight Watchers' inspirational articles actually do inspire. One article pointed out that losing weight, even slowly, is better than gaining, and that is for damn sure. Another got at the idea of losing weight slowly to give yourself time to adjust to a new routine. That addresses some of my concerns about the psychological implications of losing weight. If it takes a long time, it gives me the opportunity to develop a new relationship with food and find new ways of easing the pain of boredom, loneliness or sadness. Plus, as another article pointed out, quick weight loss plans advocate unsustainable diets while Weight Watchers (and perhaps other plans, but this is the only one with which I am familiar) champions a more sensible and broad-based approach.

So far, I am happy with my progress, but I still have a long way to go.

Your Love Is Like a Shadow on Me All of the Time

I finished Breaking Dawn, the last book in the Twilight series. I could not state my feelings about the book more succinctly than this author, so I will just link to her post. Suffice it to say that I vastly preferred the first three books but that Jacob Black has ruined all other men for me. Jacob is the also-ran love interest in the series, but he is, to my mind, vastly superior to Edward Cullen. Jacob is tall, sexy, young and evidently allergic to wearing shirts in addition to being poor and having pretty hair -- all things that weaken my knees to the point that I am thinking about trolling our nation's Indian reservations for a reasonable facsimile. He is also kind at a level you usually don't find in men not afflicted with a gruesome skin disorder or an abiding love of Magic: The Gathering. If I have learned one thing from the Twilight series, it is that while the male characters in the book are idealized romantic figures, there is no reason to settle for a man who is any less sure of his love for me than Edward or Jacob is of their love for Bella. Life is too short and relationships are too hard to accept less.

My other takeaway point from the books is that I need to take a serious look at writing for real. Stephenie Meyer writes books that I enjoy very much, but she doesn't always do what I want her to do with the characters. If I write my own book, I can write the characters the way I want to. I'm not confident in my ability to write a fiction novel, but I should try to write something aside from just this blog.

O Canada

Montreal this weekend was not all that interesting. Maybe I don't really like traveling by myself, or maybe it was that Montreal, while beautiful, does not have that many things to do for a person on her own.

I couldn't get over the fact that in less than an hour of flying time, I was in a totally different country. I didn't really expect it to be so different from the U.S., but it was a lot more like Europe (the slogan I came up with for the Canadian Tourism Board was "Canada: It's Like a Whole Other Country," which narrowly beat out "Canada: Being a Superpower is Overrated" and "Canada: We're Just Like Americans Except People Like Us"). Also, after a lifetime of cursing Canadian pennies in my change, it felt weird to actually seek out Canadian money. Anyway, it was okay.

I'm About to Lose Control and I Think I LIke It

Yay, Breaking Dawn comes out tomorrow! Yay!

Here's what my friend had to say about the forthcoming fourth novel in the series: "Oh Jacob. Jacob Jacob Jacob. If you ruin this for me I will kill you. I will hunt you down in fictional book land and kill you. No, seriously."