I hear reminiscence can kill you

Its a bad idea to re-read your own stuff. It just reminds you how enduringly pathetic you are.
And obviously I don't need reminding.
One of the holes the construction workers outside my window dug last week filled with water over the weekend and they have spent all morning pumping it out. Its about 18 degrees outside today so I can look at them and be really really greatful that it was never my life's ambition to be a construction worker, because it looks like today would be the kind of day that would kill an ambition like that.
And nobody really wants to live through the day their life's ambition is killed, do they? I don't anyway.
I have this half hearted ambition to aspire to thinness. I have never really experienced thinness personally, and from an outsider's standpoint, it looks like it could be nice. Those skinny girls always look so happy eating their nachos and batting their eyelashes at the big wide world that would appear to be theirs for the taking.
So I aspire. But really only half-assedly. Its sad really. But most anything approached with a lack of conviction are eventually sad.
I go along for most of a day (we're talking the awake part, obviously, so we can say between 12 and 14 hours in a stretch) thinking that I will be good and control my intake of calories and then put forth some effort in the form of exercize to narrow myself even further and I will win this battle and be able to stand beside someone sideways and disappear. Delightful idea, right? There are all sorts of pop culture images that recommend this approach on perusal. Who among us doesn't look at Angelina and think even as the headlines scream above her that she is wasting away that she looks damn good in that black dress? Yeah, I know. Its totally anti-woman and anti-strength and anti-feminist to believe so but I still wish I had a little more conviction. But I don't, as displayed by the following:
@ I crave chocolate almost constantly. Its horrible and it won't go away and I want to eat Milk Ghirardelli Chocolate Chips every day for a month.
@ I give in an annoying amount of the time. Sometimes I can go two or three days without having any, and then it gets a little easier, but most of the time I can reason myself into a small bowl of chocolate chips or something similar with embarrassing ease.
@ yesterday I bypassed the chocolate chips at the grocery store and resolved to stay strong, but last night as I was taking out the garbage I convinced myself I could go for it and bought some Chubby Hubby at the convenience store down the street and ate the whole pint
@ I can't seem to make myself puke it up either. I am that lame. I thought about it and didn't go through with it. I have no shame and I lack commitment.
@ I didn't even go running yesterday, because it was snowing. I might go today, or I might just continue to suck at life

So yeah, I pretty much suck. Its one of those you-know-better-but-you-just-can't-help-it sort of things: I have read enough stupid books on the topic that I should be attempting to change the bad behaviors and yet I continue the cycle, keep banging my head against that wall, and am frustrated with my lack of results. How ridiculous is that?
Completely. I know.

and she was

Home. Is where I want to be, lift me up and turn me round.

I listened to Talking Heads on the way in to work today, and it was so good--something to lift your spirits and make you think of things differently.

And then, of course, because this is a shitty year, I got pulled over.

I wasn’t speeding even! I learned my lesson last year, and got my one warning ticket. This time I got pulled over by an Officer Flint who meant business.

And he had noticed what I had been warned about--an expired inspection sticker.

It wasn’t my car, it was The Boy’s, and I should have known better I guess--I just figured that even though you imagine the worst happening, it doesn’t mean its going to happen that way. Only this time it did.

To the tune of $133. This is so not my year.

its not really a big deal. not really. just another setback. who would even notice, honestly? lately life is cluttered with them.
i'm trying to brush it off, let it go, get on with things.
so far, as you can see, that is working beautifully.
i did go to a really interesting lecture on happiness and coping mechanisms: apparently you can divide the world up into two kinds of people (can't you always?) one is strategically pessimistic (i.e. stressy about major/minor life events) the other strategically optimistic (i.e. totally laid back when it comes to the big &little stuff). and the woman giving this talk had done lots of different trials to try and make the stressy ones less stressy about things, and in the end it turns out: if the person is of such an inclination as to need to stress (imagine every possible worst circumstance, over plan and over prepare et cetera and so forth ) then even if you calm them down with soothing music or menial distracting tasks they will do poorly at whatever test you set them to because their physiology says they need to be stressing. i thought it was pretty interesting and telling--at the end she recommended ways to deal with each type (if you come from the other) and i loved that the main one for the strategic pessimist (which, hello, yours truly most likely falls into were the world to be divided as such) was give them more information so they can plan their doomsday scenerios in detail. yes please, i like my details. and i can also recognise that i have a habit of giving other people way too much information if they ask me for information (not in a TMI way--i do not share the gross minutiae of my life, but if you ask me for an article on lime disease you're likely to get three articles, a book chapter and a relevant web site).
Also today i ate lots of cookies and read about weight loss---hahahaha. i'll admit myself intrigued by this body for life thing which is similar and yet different from the fit for life thing i toyed with this summer. anyway all of my races are over for the season so perhaps i will make an attempt to shed the fluff instead of bulking up for the winter like i normally do.