Previously I noted that I was going off the grid for a while as my life was twisting and turning more than a rollercoaster. Well, I feel better, there has been some resolution, and I am ready to be among the living again, as they say.

Sorry for the multiple subjects in 1 post, but I figure this is easier than having 2,056 different posts to read.

Lose my Job

I was told 2 weeks ago that my new job, the one I was begrudgingly moved across the country 5 months ago for, the one I spent my savings on, the one I was so happy to get, the promotion I have been waiting for, was ending.

The cost was too significant to keep the project going.

I won’t get into the teeter-totter of emotions I went through that horrific Wednesday night, but I will tell you that my dinner was a stellar 1/2 lb of bacon, a small bag of chili cheese fritos, 1/2 a jar of pepperochini peppers, a single serve cherry pie–

and a diet coke.

Cuz you gotsta keep the calories and sugar down, right?

I found myself living in a city I don’t like, at an organization I don’t recognize after 7 years of organizational changes, losing a job and feeling depressed, fat, and hopeless.

My only hope was that the organization would be fair and equitable and move me back to Chicago.

Well, they wouldn’t– not right off the bat.

Let’s just say that last week was not a fun one and leave it at that.

But after long talks and LOTS of negotiation, they offered me something I think is very fair.

I will continue work in Atlanta until the end of October finishing my project, then move back to Chicago November 1st-ish.

Lose Atlanta 

While I am SUPER EXTATIC HAPPY BLISSED OUT that I am moving back to my home, I am sad to be leaving the friends I have made in Atlanta the past 5 months. It will be hard moving back to Chicago without a job, but I know I can do it.

Lose my Health

Guess what came back!?!? AGAIN!!!

Yep, Shingles. This time, it was in my face and in a nerve that went down my cheek and through my teeth. I was in horrific pain. I was put on a opiate after not sleeping for 2 straight nights, then finally got into see a new doctor after waiting over a week to get in. It was torture. Thank Jebus my old doctor in Chicago was willing to call in a strong pain med for me or I might not be here today. 

Let this be a lesson to me and everyone else, FIND A PRIMARY CARE DOCTOR WHEN YOU FIRST MOVE TO A NEW CITY! Don’t wait until you get sick!! Just, don’t!

She looked me over, and had me see a Neurologist to rule out MS and other horrible things since I have never had a full blown blister outbreak on my body (though I do have them in my gums). The ruled out MS and other things so I am about 90 percent sure it really is shingles.

I will go for more testing to make sure it is really stress that is causing me to get sick all the time, but they are 99 percent sure that is what it is. I believe them, since I have been nothing but a ball of stress for like 10 months.

I am feeling much much better after pain meds and shingles medication.

Lose the flab

Hello, my name is AJ, and I am an emotional eater.

When I was forced to leave my family to move across the country for my job, I was devastated. I cried alot, got really depressed and ate EVERYTHING in sight.

French fries, pizza, fast food everything, pasta, bread, chips. Also- read what I ate 2 Wednesdays above.

My portion sizes got bigger.

I returned to drinking tons of diet coke again.

Exercise? What’s that?

Over the last 5 months, I have gained 17lbs.

Yep, you heard it here first. 17 big ones.

I am bloated, my clothes aren’t fitting well, and I feel like the crap I have been eating.

I am frustrated that I let myself get bogged down in the emotional side of eating.

Food is not my friend. It is not someone who can hug me when I am feeling down or cheer me on when I have accomplished a goal.

Food is what helps me stay alive, or atleast it should; food is nourishment, that is all.

The crap I have been eating is not nourishment– it is empty calories.

After I made my decision to leave my job and return to Chicago, I felt the “funk” that was over me start to lift away.

I was smiling more. I wanted to get out of bed each morning. I wanted to make my dinner instead of running to Chick-fil-a.

I recommitted to 30 minutes of exercise today on Fat Bridesmaid’s blog. 

When I got home from work, I put on my (almost too tight) sports bra, my shoes, and while I was waiting for my dinner to cook, I walked for 30 min in front of the TV.

Did I walk far? No.

Did I push myself? No

Did I get 30 minutes of aerobic walking in today? YES, Thank you!

Tomorrow I will do more, but I am proud I did as much as I did tonight. I could have just sat on my butt the whole night!

 

I am off to finish updating my resume and start sending it out.

Please send me positive job vibes – I really need them!

Are you going? CUZ I’M GOING! Get your tickets here: www.fitbloggin.com

 

This week has been a horrible week. More on that later, but what I really needed was a laugh today, and I laugh is what I got. Go here for more: http://thisislifeinaustin.com/2009/08/20/and-this-is-our-generation/

 

Here is the post in its entirety- I hope you laugh until you cry (at your desk at work, no less) like I did.

 

• So apparently I have nothing to tell you guys as far as events this week, so I’ll post this hilarious email forward I got …
• UPDATE! These are the “All-Time Best” from the site Ruminations.com, meaning they represent the collective wisdomof our generation. Check it out here.
  
• Some Random Thoughts of the Day that really embody how “our generation” (who is that? Millenials? X, Y, Z-ers?) thinks and feels in general:
• I wish Google Maps had an “Avoid Ghetto” routing option.
• More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.
• Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.
• I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?
• Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.
• That’s enough, Nickelback.
• I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.
• The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.
• Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQs. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.
• There is a great need for sarcasm font.
• Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the f*ck was going on when I first saw it.
• I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.
• The other night I hit a new low at an open bar. I had already hopped on highway blackout when, inevitably I had to find a bathroom. Eventually I decided it was probably on the other side of the bar so I tried to walk over there, but ran into a guy coming the other way. We played that, Both go left, Both go right game to no avail, so I finally put out my hand to guide myself past and that’s is when I realized, yup, that’s a mirror I just tried to walk through. And the guy on the other side is me. Even cats can recognize their own image.
• How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
• I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
• I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
• The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.
• A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.
• Was learning cursive really necessary?
• Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.
• I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
• Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.
• My brother’s Municipal League baseball team is named the Stepdads. Seeing as none of the guys on the team are actual stepdads, I inquired about the name. He explained, “Cuz we beat you, and you hate us.” Classy, bro.
• Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.
• How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?
• I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!
• Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an attorney and said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)..ummm…Goonies”
• What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?
• While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it…thanks Mario Kart.
• MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.
• Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
• I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.
• Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
• I would like to officially coin the phrase ‘catching the swine flu’ to be used as a way to make fun of a friend for hooking up with an overweight woman. Example: “Dave caught the swine flu last night.”
• I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.
• Bad decisions make good stories
• Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!
• Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier & sluttier every year?
• If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring would probably just be completely invisible.
• Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I’m from, this shouldn’t be a problem….
• You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
• Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.
• There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.
• I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.
• “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.
• I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’
• While watching the Olympics, I find myself cheering equally for China and USA. No, I am not of Chinese descent, but I am fairly certain that when Chinese athletes don’t win, they are executed.
• I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?
• I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.
• When I meet a new girl, I’m terrified of mentioning something she hasn’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.
• I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.
• Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…
• As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.
• Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
• It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.
• I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
• I think that if, years down the road when I’m trying to have a kid, I find out that I’m sterile, most of my disappointment will stem from the fact that I was not aware of my condition in college.
• Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn’t know what do to with it.
• Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, hitting the G-spot, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…
• My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day “Dad what would happen if you ran over a ninja?” How the hell do I respond to that?
• It really pisses me off when I want to read a story on CNN.com and the link takes me to a video instead of text.
• I wonder if cops ever get pissed off at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.
• I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
• I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.
• The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimate d that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There’s nothing like being made to feel like a fat bastard before dinner.

It is 85 degrees in my house right now.

Obviously the air conditioning is not currently working in my house.

I just called the repair guy and they are (cross my fingers) on their way.

HOT. IN. HERRE.

HOT! HOT! HOT!

What other songs have hot in the name????

I just sucked up a whole can of wet cat food into the vacuum.

I cannot believe I just did that.

I was sucking up the little dried bits around the cat’s bowl and

SLLLLUUUURPPPPPUUUUUUUHHHHHH!

RIGHT up the vacuum.

The cat looked at me like I was bat sh*t crazy.

I was, but still.

Then he cried out like “THAT WAS MIIIIIINNNNEEEEEE!!”

I spent the last 45 minutes rinsing out the removable collection cup, and the (thank goodness) removable hose.

I then spent some time trying to clean out the non removable parts. I hope the food will dry and just flake off. Nothing is clogged, so that is good.

It has been a long day.

RIP John Hughes.

His movies defined my childhood. He will be sorely missed.

Go here for the most heartfelt tribute I think anyone could offer (and the reason why I lost a few more tears).