Mortaine’s Blog

Yes.

I did it.

Look closely at my userpic. Wait for it. Waaaait.

Oh, my god! The horror! The HORROR!!!!!

I ordered a DDR bundle (red octane pad, pad cover, and DDR Konamix) today. I’ve decided that I’m going to die if I don’t do something about the weight and ill-fitness. So– play video games with my feet! Hey– marathoning was a bust– I’ve gotta do something!!!

Okay, here’s a goal. After the game arrives, play for 30 minutes every night for a week. See how I feel. Then, 40 minutes every night for a week. See how I feel.

Ideally, I think it would be great to dance for an hour each night and see how far I get. I think, though, that it will be important for me to play the game as a game and not as an exercise. If it’s a video game, I can be very focused towards winning/achieving a goal.

I kind of wish that more “regular” video games used a DDR pad. Like Baldur’s Gate– how wonderful would it be if you had to actually walk/run/jump in order to move in the game? I’d be walking/running/jumping for hours at a time, probably without even realizing it!

Things I worry about regarding my health:
I worry when my heart does this weird fluttery thing. I can’t tell if it’s just a flutter, or a murmer, or all the cholesterol churning through my veins, if it’s low blood pressure or even high blood pressure.
I worry when my right calf hurts. I think I have a varicose vein there– there’s a little vein that hurts sometimes up on the top of my calf. What if I have a deep vein blood clot and don’t even know it?
I worry that I will wake up in 2 months with diabetes.
I worry that I will fall and seriously hurt myself this time.
I worry that I’m in such bad shape, I wouldn’t be able to run away if something really bad happened.
I worry that my vision will fail, I’ll get glaucoma, and I will go blind. I’m inactive enough as it is– it would be terrible to be limited by a disability as well; I would certainly let such a disability ruin my independence.
I worry that my knees ache– are they grinding? Are they in bad shape, or just weak?
I worry that I can’t get out of the couch or deep chairs sometimes because I have no abdominal muscles.
I worry that my back hurts all the damned time.
I worry about my hair and scalp, and the way I’m always picking at it.
I worry about my hands and wrists, which are always a little “tight” and sometimes tingle.
I worry about my butt– I sit at this desk so much, I think I’m getting the “H” stuff.
I worry about my “sex parts” and the health problems I’ve had with them (and no, I don’t wanna talk about them, thankyouverymuch).
I worry about my self-esteem and what being fat is doing to it.
I worry about my sex drive and what being fat is doing to it.
I worry about my stress levels– someone who strains her jaw from grinding her teeth is not as un-stressed as I seem to be.

And no, I don’t need anyone to offer “helpful advice” on how to deal with this shit. I know how– get my ass in gear, work out, eat better, and generally take better care of myself. Changes like that don’t happen overnight, though– at least I’m at the point where I want to do something about it. For a while there, I was kind of like “So I’m that fat girl. So what? Fuck off and leave me alone with my brownie.”

Well, yesterday’s work frustration resulted in a resolution that is a compromise at best, but a compromise that everyone can live with, which is the best kind of compromise of all.

Of course, I missed a meeting this morning about it– why do people always schedule meetings for when I’m out of the office? I left at 1 yesterday to participate in a history careers panel at UCSC. Which was… interesting, to say the least. Two extroverts on the panel and another one moderating– it was a recipe for waaay too much chatter.

I stopped to get gas this morning, only to discover that I had left my ATM/debit card somewhere. Tracing back, I think it was at the sushi restaurant on Tuesday night. I hope so. After filling up, I drove back over to the bank and cancelled the old card and ordered a new one. If I find the card tonight, I can call and come in, show my ID, and have it re-activated. That would be way more convenient than waiting 2 weeks, but eh. I can live.

Anyway, I got in a little late this morning to find the tech writers all in a room holding a meeting without me [the tech writers never hold meetings-- we're forbidden to do so formally]. And then they made all sorts of jokes (as one does to the person last in to the meeting) about how they’d assigned me to do everything. I pointed out that my sense of humor was nonexistent this morning, and they more or less dropped it, thank goodness.

The word of the day on my Forgotten English calendar is “chunter,” which means to growl, to grumble. As in: “Yesterday, I chuntered around over these stupid fucking part numbers all day long.”

John is deciding which language he wants to learn. My proposal is that we should both learn a language, even if we never do end up travelling. He is considering Japanese. Now, I have something of a mental block about Japanese because of Sean (uh….. a boyfriend when I was 15 who was very into Japanese culture who dumped me for a Japanese girl after he’d gone to Japan with her family for a month). Yes, this has made me rather anti-Japanese culture (though not people– Sean wasn’t Japanese, he was just a dick), for the last 13 years.

Well, no more. I’ve decided to “get over it” and, if John wants to learn Japanese, then I will wholeheartedly embrace it. There are a lot of good things to come out of Japan– like Aikido and sushi and even anime (even though I don’t watch much of it). And though my primary criteria for learning another language is “What would be fun to learn?”, John’s criteria is much more “what would be useful in business?” because John is a workaholic who can’t ever stop working ever.

If would be so kind as to tell me exactly what “oyachumi” means, then I’ll laready have one word added to my Japanese vocabulary. After all, I already know “kappa maki” and “arigato.”