Well, I don’t feel too self-righteous about how I’m eating now. I get mad when people say “I could never do that,” exactly the way I got mad about the same thought expressed at me when I was Vegan/Vegetarian.

My unspoken response remains the same, “You could, if you decided it was important enough to you.” I don’t mean that it should be as important to everyone as it is to me. But don’t act like I’m a superhuman. I’m not. I’m a fat chick who refuses to eat the cupcakes, muffins, chips, chocolate and cookies you’re kind enough to offer.

And my only momentum right now is mostly the fact that I have momentum. I refuse things because I have been refusing things for months now. Which is good. Because I’m angry and what I want to do is knead some homemade bread, bake said bread (after it rises), and eat it with olive oil and herbs and cheese.  There is little I find more therapeutic when I’m angry than kneading bread.

But there’s an upside to dieting. I’ve gone down a size. So I bought some new tops. I wore one today to work. Everyone said it was cute. Than a coworker said, and your boobs are huge. And I felt really, intensely awkward.

See, losing weight isn’t attractive at every stage. Or maybe, even at most stages. One day a few weeks ago, I put on an old top and felt really awkward.  I don’t talk a lot about my body image, because I was kind of comfortable being fat. I was comfortable because I’ve honestly never been comfortable with the shape of my body, and if you cover something in fat it’s just a pleasant rotund shape and you can’t pick out anything.

It’s not enough to get comments and propositions and unwanted touching from boys, then other girls start commenting and mostly what you want to do is hide. I’ve always been an introvert, and mostly personal attention, especially in groups or in public, makes me extremely uncomfortable. Especially as regards my body.

Now fat jokes, I can handle. I haven’t heard a compelling fat joke in years. And once you hear them all, you end up with pretty good comebacks. But coworkers discussing the size of your tits (especially when the shirt shows no cleavage)… it’s enough to make you shrink into your headphones and listen to the downward spiral all day, like you’re 14 again. Only from the other side of depression, you realize the total accuracy of emotion on the downward spiral is unrivaled. Also, you’ve kind of let go of the fantasy of being a rock-star or doing Trent Reznor. Kind of. You may still have a poster of him on the wall in your bedroom.

But it’s cool. I’m a grown-up now. I don’t have to hide my body. Or my discomfort. But I do have to deal with them effectively. Without kneading bread. I’m looking at taking up a hobby. Right now, I’m looking at glass-blowing classes. But we’ll see.

1. Michael and I saw Weird Al last night. This is not an issue. Weird Al is fantastic; his band is fantastic. They’re all great performers, they put on an amazing show and it was a ton of fun. But I noticed something that I also noticed at the movie theater for Hangover II last weekend. No one can put down their mother-loving cell phones. Seriously.

I might understand taking a picture or two at a concert – they’ll turn out shitty, but maybe it makes you feel happier. But to take like 50,000 pictures? They’re NEVER going to look good — you can only take them from one angle, you have no idea what the stage lights are going to do and they’ll likely make your pictures trash, AND your phone’s camera really isn’t that great. You can’t control the focus, you can’t adjust settings for shitty lighting and anyway, no one wants to see your 50,000 pics from the Weird Al show.

As for the Hangover II, no one took pictures but goddamned if there weren’t idiots on their phones texting or some shit the entire movie. Not only is this distracting, but it really bugs me on a theoretical level.

Since when do we — by means of photographs and texts and facebook statuses — need to prove we’ve seen something, done something, been somewhere. I don’t need someone else to validate that I saw the Hangover II, or validate my feelings regarding it (definitely not as good as the first, Zach Galifianakis is still hawt). I don’t need pictures of Weird Al to remember the concert. I can remember most concerts I’ve seen, pretty well, without pictures or ticket stubs or t-shirts.

I understand having a memento, though. I really do. I understand saving a stub, or taking a few pictures. It’s the people who NEVER put their phones away who concern me. Mostly because they’re everywhere, and it has nothing to do with age.

I left my phone at home when I went to the concert. Not on purpose, but it didn’t bother me not to have it either. After having my personal space physically and audibly and olfactically (probably made that word up) invaded by the dude next to me at the show, I was pretty happy NOT to have to deal with peeps via the phone. Sometimes, you just want to see a movie or a concert and see it and enjoy it, in the flesh.

2. My best friend sent me an adorable letterpress card. I hung it up at work. An older male coworker asked me, “Is that from your husband.” And I scoffed and said, “My husband doesn’t buy me cards. This is from my friend.” So he asked me how long we’ve been married and then he said, well I always buy my wife cards.

I don’t know why people do this.  How do they expect me to respond?

“Oh you’re such a good man. I wish my husband were more like you.”

“You’re right, I feel under-valued and under-appreciated in my marriage because my husband doesn’t shell out two bucks for a card every once in a while. I must consult a divorce lawyer.”

I responded like this, “So long as he cooks for me every now and then and mixes me martinis when I ask, I really don’t care about cards.” Which isn’t exactly a true statement… but, you know.

I guess it gets to me because neither Michael nor I are the most showy romantic people. We never really were. We’re pretty private with our affection.  And you can’t very well tell an acquaintance, “What the hell do you know? Love isn’t expressed in cards, it’s expressed in being there for someone. I don’t need a card to show me that my husband is there. He’s always flipping there.”

Never mind, either, that Michael planned our last outing to Branson, that we stayed there in style and we did what we wanted to. Telling people Michael doesn’t buy me flowers doesn’t bother me. Michael and I would rather buy fun experiences to share.

I’m not saying either way is better. But Michael and I work the same way in this regard. I don’t feel stiffed if I don’t get a card. If I want flowers, I buy them myself. But if I don’t want to cook, Michael will offer and then make me something far more labor-intensive and tastier than I would make myself. If I’m stressed out, he reaches out and rubs my neck.  And if some dude be getting all up in my space at Weird Al, he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer to him. I’m not deprived and I’m not unhappy. I mean – I have a hubby who takes me to see Weird Al and a friend who sends me letterpress cards with an octopus on them. I don’t have anything to be unhappy about. I am surrounded with love.

1. If it bothers you enough to write a negative review, talk to hotel management. But not in adversarial way and do not mention compensation, with the one exception being covered in number 2.
2. If you paid above and beyond a room rate for amenities or services that have not or can not be rendered, always get your money back. There should be none of this, “I paid for nicer linens/ sparkling wine/ flowers but they weren’t in the room.”  When I pay for shit and it’s not in my room, I call up the front desk, alert them and tell them to refund the cost. If the cost still shows at check out, start off saying there must have been a misunderstanding, you spoke to whosawhat and those charges should have been refunded. Any argument after that point is worthy of a bad review.
3. Some hotels were not built yesterday. Yes, there will be stained carpets. Yes, there will be tube televisions. Yes, there will be cheesy pictures on the wall. Those things are worth noting in a review, but complaining about? What, you can’t watch crappy cable on a crappy tube television? Pay the extra moolah to stay at an ultra ritzy hotel.
4. If anything EVER bothers you so much that you can’t sleep in a room – ask for a new room.  Immediately. Don’t wait until midnight when you’ve been up for three hours in bed agonizing over it. When you walk in and the floor is soaking, or the lights don’t work – walk back to the front desk right away. I have walked into rooms that haven’t been laundered, rooms that were labeled non-smoking but clouded with smoke and I never even sat my luggage down. The sooner you get back to the front desk, the better your chances of getting a new room.

I’ve stayed in a variety of hotels in a LOT of different places. People who complain about a dated hotel that has a high rate are often missing the fact that said hotel has fantastic amenities, is in a great location, etc. Tell me why it doesn’t work for you, if someone was a jerk definitely say it. But words like “dirty,” “squalid,” (seriously, squalid. In a hotel review. That didn’t mention enormous rats living in the walls and chewing on their feet while they slept) THOSE WORDS MEAN NOTHING. Especially if you’re complaining, point towards specific issues that have specific solutions.

I blame the internet for giving us these forums to start whining about everyone that done us wrong. And in this society where we’re all freaking victims with no power to fix a damn thing in our lives, there’s a long list of everyone that done us wrong.

I am, actually, withholding a rant from last night about customer service. I’m withholding it because I reacted rudely and I refused to solve the problem the easiest way I could have – with direct contact. As customers, sometimes we have to step up in-person and let someone know we’re a little frustrated and give them the power to make that better. If you’re not willing to do that, you probably shouldn’t be complaining.

Also, folks, don’t go out if you done forgot to take your lithium. If you saw me angrily stomping around and loudly cursing last night – I apologize. I am a pretty despicable human being sometimes.

And hey – look at me, complaining about complaining. I’m like that Norman Rockwell painting of Norman Rockwell painting himself. Actually, given my command of the English language, I’m more like DuChamp’s Fountain.

After two weeks of decreasing health, we finally sucked it up and went to see a Nurse Practitioner at some local clinic in a Walgreens. She examined Michael, told him it was the worst sinus infection she’d ever seen, and promptly put him on a crap load of antibiotics. I got the same antibiotics and angled for some codeine cough syrup since I hadn’t slept in a few days because of coughing and was rapidly losing my voice. She basically told me to suck it up. Once again, screw the US government for not releasing codeine OTC.

For a few days, I was taking a crapload of antibiotics, pseudoephedrine, dextromethorpan, guafenesin and acetaminophen. I set like 12 alarms on my phone and slept all day, waking up only to load up on more drugs. They got me through the day. But one of the biggest reliefs was the nasal irrigation the nurse suggested.

You’ve most likely seen or heard about neti-pots. And you probably thought to yourself, what kind of nutty hippie uses that shit. The disturbing thing is: they work.

They’re not pretty to watch. They’re often downright uncomfortable to use. But they immediately push crap out of your sinuses. And all of a sudden, it’s easier to breathe. They’re not dangerous, you don’t have to worry about drug interactions, you can use them as often as you want to.  The goddamned government probably won’t decide to outlaw them because no idiot kids can use them to get high.

The nurse recommended I use this stuff every time I feel sinus pressure, to cut crap like allergies off at the gate.  I’d be willing to try it before I turn to inhaled steroids for allergies.

I think this hippie crap is dangerous if you use it and refuse to use crap like… penicillin… when you obviously need some damn penicillin. But if it can prevent sinus problems in the first place, that’s definitely beneficial. I recommend the use of the neti-pot or similar saline sinus-rinses for your sinus troubles.

Oh, and just let me put it out there. Please don’t share your nose pots with anyone else. Not only is that gross, it spreads nasties.

If you’re interested, I use the SinusRinse from NeilMed. I find the squeeze bottle a little less disconcerting than the nasal pots. I think I can control the pressure and flow better with the squeeze bottle.

If you’re interested in my views on outlawing otherwise useful things that kids use to get high, check out the South Park episode “Major Boobage“.  I don’t understand why people think kids will ever stop trying to get high. It’s HUMAN NATURE. Stick a bored human in an empty room and after a while, they’ll masturbate and then try to get high by choking themselves. And if you wouldn’t do that, who are you fooling? What else is there to do when you’re devoid of anything except yourself?

I don’t know either of you. However, I do know two traits that you both share. Bloated egos and a sense that you are just so damn deep and intelligent that the world just doesn’t understand you. Bloggers are some of the most self absorbed bores in the world.

I hope that the Mitchell Heisman post doesn’t read as “I am smart and Mitchell isn’t and that’s why Mitchell is dead” because that wasn’t the intent at all. But that’s not why I’m writing this.

I totally agree with what Steven wrote, except of course for the parts that say bad things about me. Bloggers are pretentious jerks. I started writing random crap and occasionally posting it online about ten years ago, when I first had a website. Ever since I converted to WordPress a few years back I’ve had this self-hatred about the whole thing. I read other people’s blogs and I think, “Who are these people that expect other people to be interested in what they have to say?” And then I remember about this blog and I think, “Oh. Right.”

I really don’t know what it is about the blog format in particular that’s so obnoxious. The comments? The layout? The dates on posts that kind of say, “come back tomorrow for more awesomeness”? I set up the gopher version of this blog because it was a niche, it was all about the content and less about “look at me”, and I do think it’s being read and enjoyed by a few people.

This blog’s become a lot more popular in the past few months, for no real reason that I can figure out, and that bothers me. It’s like we put up a big flashy sign, and I never wanted a big flashy sign. I am kind of a pretentious jerk*, but I’m a humanitarian pretentious jerk, and the idea of inflicting myself on upwards of 2000 people a month does not sit well with me.

Anyway, I guess the right response is to just ignore the comment, or delete it, or say “up yours, Steve, I was online before blogging was a thing, I run a charitable web hosting business, and this is my one online vanity.” But damned if I don’t agree with him. So effective immediately, I am on a self-imposed srs bsns moratorium. Instead of writing puffy stuff, I will be using this blog to post pictures of LOLcats that I have made.

* – I write blog posts with footnotes, for crissakes.