Battle Kitten: Ascension

[Bookish Badger]

1 hour ago, Sylvaa said:

Epic Uniboob

Yes! The perfect name for a sports-bra company! Along with the sister-line of outerwear, Mega Funbags.

[Severine]

FWIW this is the best sports bra I've ever owned. It runs a wee bit small - normally I am a 38D, but for this bra a 38DD is the best fit - but other than that it's perfect. Boob lockdown for sports and hard physical work, comfortable, flattering, smooth back with no bulges, and lasts a good long while.

[fleaball]

2 minutes ago, Severine said:

FWIW this is the best sports bra I've ever owned. It runs a wee bit small - normally I am a 38D, but for this bra a 38DD is the best fit - but other than that it's perfect. Boob lockdown for sports and hard physical work, comfortable flattering, smooth back with no bulges, and lasts a good long while.

Noted! I will bookmark that for later.

[petefeet]

10 hours ago, fleaball said:

 

You mean the pilot light on the water heater that likes to go out from time to time? Landlord is aware of it. Even warned us of it when we moved in. Is it something we need to be concerned about?

 

I guess not, I'm just concerned about gas building up, but I'm assuming the shutoff is working correctly. Since a big part of my job is making sure the boilers at my work don't go BOOM, I'm a little paranoid about things like this.

[RES]

On 8/22/2016 at 7:25 PM, petefeet said:

 

It's been my experience that Mom's suck at knowing what to say. I should my Mom a pic of the engagement ring I put a down payment on for Red Knight/Cardinal, and all I got was "Oh". fml.

I know this is late (for this thread) but OMG Congrats Pete!!!!!!

[petefeet]

Just now, RES said:

I know this is late (for this thread) but OMG Congrats Pete!!!!!!

 

Well she hasn't said "Yes" yet, plan on asking her at New Years with everything works out.

 

If people would like to see the custom ring I designed (lightsaber, she wanted a nerdy engagement ring), send me  PM.

[Tamesis]

5 hours ago, petefeet said:

 

Well she hasn't said "Yes" yet, plan on asking her at New Years with everything works out.

 

If people would like to see the custom ring I designed (lightsaber, she wanted a nerdy engagement ring), send me  PM.

A lightsaber engagement ring?! That actually sounds really awesome!

[fleaball]

12 hours ago, petefeet said:

I guess not, I'm just concerned about gas building up, but I'm assuming the shutoff is working correctly. Since a big part of my job is making sure the boilers at my work don't go BOOM, I'm a little paranoid about things like this.

Well it's gone out twice in March and we haven't been exploded yet, so I'm going to say it works lol. The biggest problem is dipshit downstairs not even bothering to check it. Which I am still bitter about 5 months later but whatever. 

 

I'll wait to see pictures of the ring when it's on her finger. =P

[fleaball]

Well this is fucking cute. There's no parking on my street on Saturday. (I'm guessing that whoever knocked on my door an hour ago was coming to tell me this? I ignored them thinking it was just UPS delivering yet another package for Captain Fuckface, who apparently only orders one thing at a time from any of the several websites he orders things from.) I assume it's a block party because several fliers showed up in my mailbox about planning one over the summer, but I haven't gotten any other information about it. I'm irrationally pissed off regardless of the reason, because of all the fucking Saturdays for whatever this thing is that's apparently shutting down my entire street/block, it has to happen this Saturday? Come on. 

 

And now my phone just stopped working in the middle of updating. Arrrrrgh.

[Sylvaa]

10 hours ago, fleaball said:

Well this is fucking cute. There's no parking on my street on Saturday. (I'm guessing that whoever knocked on my door an hour ago was coming to tell me this? I ignored them thinking it was just UPS delivering yet another package for Captain Fuckface, who apparently only orders one thing at a time from any of the several websites he orders things from.) I assume it's a block party because several fliers showed up in my mailbox about planning one over the summer, but I haven't gotten any other information about it. I'm irrationally pissed off regardless of the reason, because of all the fucking Saturdays for whatever this thing is that's apparently shutting down my entire street/block, it has to happen this Saturday? Come on. 

 

And now my phone just stopped working in the middle of updating. Arrrrrgh.

 

Solution:

 

We'll map a route and find somewhere you can drive to (like a mall or something) to meet up for the race. Car will then not be on the street at home and you won't be driving all the way down by yourself!

 

Problem Solved.

[fleaball]

5 hours ago, Sylvaa said:

 

Solution:

 

We'll map a route and find somewhere you can drive to (like a mall or something) to meet up for the race. Car will then not be on the street at home and you won't be driving all the way down by yourself!

 

Problem Solved.

Womp, just noticed this. If you're still cool with driving 10 minutes out of your way, that works better for me. I can move my car today while all my neighbors are at work; there's plenty of space. I'm just generally inconvenienced by other people living their lives. (Also the parking ban is 10a-10p so mostly I'm getting bitchy over "if this is a block party and you keep me awake when all I want to do is pass out post-Spartan I will pee on everything you love.") 

[Sylvaa]

Just now, fleaball said:

Womp, just noticed this. If you're still cool with driving 10 minutes out of your way, that works better for me. I can move my car today while all my neighbors are at work; there's plenty of space. I'm just generally inconvenienced by other people living their lives. (Also the parking ban is 10a-10p so mostly I'm getting bitchy over "if this is a block party and you keep me awake when all I want to do is pass out post-Spartan I will pee on everything you love.") 

 

Works for me!

[Owlet]

5 hours ago, fleaball said:

Also the parking ban is 10a-10p so mostly I'm getting bitchy over "if this is a block party and you keep me awake when all I want to do is pass out post-Spartan I will pee on everything you love.") 

Haha omg please do. That would be hilarious. Although I'm guessing you might be too tired even to rage pee. Good luck and have fun! Can't wait to hear all about it  

[petefeet]

6 hours ago, fleaball said:

(Also the parking ban is 10a-10p so mostly I'm getting bitchy over "if this is a block party and you keep me awake when all I want to do is pass out post-Spartan I will pee on everything you love.") 

 

I can front the bail money if needed! <g>

[fleaball]

Jesus Christ. My mother called and as we were getting ready to hang up she asked, "So have you noticed any difference yet?" Meaning has the pill that I've taken for a week had any impact on the anxiety it's not prescribed to treat. I told her again that a) that's not what it's for and b.) even if it has an effect it's going to take a while for it to happen. The next time she asks I'm going to find a way to punch her through the phone, I swear to god.

 

Brain dump under the cuts. Mostly cut for length. Also because word vomiting onto the interwebs instead of my journal makes it feel like I'm talking about these things, but no one is required to respond to anything.

 

Things I am currently anxious about:

Spoiler

• Spartan:
  • not getting enough sleep tonight 
  • all of the vague possibities for ~something to go wrong~
  • fucking up burpees, weirdly enough, because I've never been able to do pushups or pushup-adjacent things well (I get about halfway down and then freeze like if I go any further I'll never be able to get back up)
  • fucking up my shoulder and/or ankle
  • vague unnamed disasters that will ruin everything
• How to deal with Spartan anxiety:
  • not sleeping well will suck but I'll survive
  • I've got my paperwork printed and will be packing my shit soon; Sylvaa's already done a bunch of these and knows how to navigate the chaos; this is the kind of thing I know won't go away until we're actually at the starting line so I'm just preparing what I can and acknowledging the presence of the anxiety and then moving on
  • I highly doubt everyone is going to have perfect burpee form; I've done some to practice and there's a lot of awkward flopping around but really it's not like people will be judging me on them
    • I will admit I kind of laughed at the waiver where it said something like "I certify that I've properly trained for this" because oops 
  • orthopedist repeatedly told me I'd be okay; I have plenty of ibuprofen and my weird not-sex toy and two ankle braces; don't make stupid decisions
  • this is just anxiety grasping at straws; I will acknowledge it and send it on its way

 

• School/internship stuff:
  • I gained weight instead of losing it over the summer and look terrible and people will judge me
  • I have to go clothes shopping and dress professionally; I hate shopping and I hate fancy clothes and I don't want to spend so much money and buy huge sizes
  • Emailed new research prof about my schedule and haven't heard back
  • Did basically nothing over the summer and people will judge me when I tell them this
  • omg never going to have any time to do anything rawr
  • impostor syndome/gonna fail at everything
  • I should be graduating in May and still have no idea what the hell I'm doing
• How to deal with this shit:
  • people do not spend their free time thinking about you, chill out; maybe buy clothes that fit better
  • hit up thrift stores/Ross next week to see if there's anything decent before going to buy expensive stuff; I can't get out of shopping so try to go in with a plan and just get it done
  • that's on her, not me; it will probably turn out fine but I can't do anything about it til I hear from her anyway
  • I'm sure I care more about this than other people do
  • I've survived shittier/busier/more fragmented schedules; I can plan my time better once I get syllabi next week and will fall into a rhythm soon enough
  • other people have taken these classes and done this internship before and survived; I wouldn't be doing them if people hadn't thought I could in the first place so time to start pretending
  • start thinking about this shit instead of panicking; talk to profs/career center/therapist, be proactive in googling things, stop being an ostrich

• General anxiety stuff:
  • I need to make friends; I need to get out of the house more often; ugh dating; I feel like I'm not doing anything with my life
    • all of this is simple enough to remedy: google stuff to do (meetups/volunteering/etc) and try to work it into my schedule gradually; spend some time thinking about what I want to do and the kind of person I want to be and the kind of people I want to be friends with - I'll get there.

 

Other random thoughts:

Spoiler

So I've talked about this before and I touched on it with my therapist this week, but I have no idea what kind of goals I need to be setting in order to make myself actually focus on working out and/or eating well. Obviously I have weight to lose but I don't want to aim for a certain number because at the end of the day I don't care what my weight winds up being so long as I am healthy and happy. And I don't have a reference for what weight might give me that because the lowest weight I've achieved is 153 pounds / 69 (heh) kg. That was both the beginning of my junior year of college and freshman year of high school. I was a size 10 and not in any kind of shape. In college I was pleased with myself because I'd lost 25-30 pounds to get there but I still wanted to go lower because there was definitely fat to be shed. I'd lost all that weight by eating 1200-1400 calories for about 10 weeks and not exercising at all, and none of that is something I'd like to repeat. Part of it was also a) I was living in an on-campus apartment with a kitchen, so I had the novelty of essentially living on my own (despite roommates and it being a dorm) and b.) one of my roommates and I went grocery shopping together and cooked together and made healthier choices together, so there was not only accountability but also someone to do it with. I don't have that with my current roommate and wouldn't even if she were home every night because we have wildly different tastes in food. So that's not an experience I can replicate.

 

I lost a decent amount of weight when I was in Jordan, but that was a combination of fresher and healthier food being available and just being too lazy to go out and buy junk food when it was so damn hot. Also no exercising except for a few weekends where they took us on trips (Petra and other ruins). It's funny because I was anxious and kind of unhappy for a lot of it but this picture is from there and I really love it and really want to be that girl again. It was toward the end of the trip, I'd just gotten my hair cut(?!) and dyed and my eyebrows done and was just really happy with how I looked in general. I was probably 160-165 and my stomach was bigger than I wanted it to be, but I definitely remember being happy and feeling invincible when I took this photo. (A billion times to get it right lol) 

 

 

So basically I am stuck. I don't know where to go from here. There are definite reasons to lose weight and be healthier but none of them feel very immediate? And unless I get addicted to OCRs tomorrow there's no great fitness goal to reach. Like, it would be great to do a pull-up, or run a full 5k, or a handstand, but there's no concrete reason that I need to do any of those things. And clearly between the 5k I did two years ago and the Spartan fucking tomorrow, just being registered for something doesn't mean I'm going to train for it the way I should. (In cases like these I just resign myself to the miserable experience basically as a punishment for not following through the way I should have. It's not intentionally a punishment but essentially boils down to "welp, it's your own fault. that's what you get.") The novelty of cooking for myself/attempting vegetarian/vegan food has worn off so even though I clearly need to get my shit together for this semester, it's not something I'm super excited about or motivated to do.

 

I feel like I have all these "reasons" not to do things (ie goal setting) and they're really just excuses. I avoid planning for the future like it's my goddamn superpower. And motivation is not reliable and sometimes you have to suck it up and do the thing anyway, but how do you even start doing something without a good reason?

 

 

 

In tangentially-related news, my therapist asked about dating again. Which is fine because it is a thing I want to do and she keeps bringing it up because when I started seeing her a year ago I mentioned it was a thing I was super anxious about and wanted to work on. I still can't get past "none of these people look interesting to me, why would I ask them to get coffee?" She's suggested just going out with people as practice dates, essentially, and I'm just like, why would I waste my time and theirs? This is all on top of feeling inferior because of my weight and how out of shape I am, and because I haven't had a real job in 2 years, and I have no real goals for my future. (And this is DC and all of those things matter.) I know you can't wait for the perfect time to do anything and definitely not like, "Once I do X people will love me." I guess I'm kind of having a hard time thinking I might have something to offer people? Which intellectually I know is crap because you're not reading this just because you like reading long rants on the interwebs; something's making you stick around. But there's that, and it's complicated by the fact that I've never been on a date (I might have by accident my last semester in college? I didn't think it was but a bunch of my friends were creeping on us so maybe?) and aside from the disaster of that girl kissing me at that bar haven't done anything with anyone, so there's low-key terror that no one will ever want to date me or do anything else because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm 28 (and a half on Sunday) and I don't want to be that girl who's 40 and never dated and ugh. I know there are unrealistic societal expectations going on here but it's so rough because I'm torn between like "fuck yeah I do actually want to date people and try the relationship thing" and "I am inherently unworthy and should just adopt a dozen cats." I'm not sure where I was going with this because I've stopped and started several times while doing laundry, packing for tomorrow, etc. But now it's all out of my brain so at least there's that.

 

Okay speaking of the need for new friends, I texted a friend a tl;dr version of the above dating issues and the response I get is "lol. i'm so tired of mom bitching about cat litter on the floor." ??? Really? Great. Thanks.

 

Oof. So in the several hours since I started this post, Spartan posted a course map on their Facebook page. It's 4+ miles with 24 obstacles. They named 16 of the obstacles and there are at least 3 I'm not even attempting. But I'm thinking I might not necessarily be skipping/failing as many as I thought? We'll keep y'all posted. And I'm slightly disappointed that I can't bring my phone on the course because I would absolutely be that person taking snaps of each obstacle and giving them obnoxious captions and making ridiculous faces. Maybe the world is better off. 

[fleaball]

...same friend I complained about at the end of the second spoiler just asked "Do you need someone to practice flirting on? I probably won't even notice, so it'll be just like 75% of human interaction."

 

??!! What is happening right now? Also thank you but no because I can't fucking figure you out. She's hinted several times in the past that we should have sex and I'm just completely thrown off idek. Kill me.

[fleaball]

I'm so nervous. I think I got like 5 hours of sleep, which is better than I expected. I need to eat something but even the thought of it makes me want to puke. Which I might do anyway. 

[Lara]

On 24/8/2016 at 2:11 AM, Sylvaa said:

Examples:

"Next time you come visit, you won't see your cat, because we put her to sleep"

"Your grandpa died" - via text

 

My mother texted me my old cat had died, but she did even worst with my grandfather. He had been ill for a long time, and we all knew he was going to die. I was living in another city, and one day I called to ask about him and her answer was, and I quote because I have never forgotten the words "your grandpa? He died 2 days ago! We have even buried him already!" And her tone, oh, her despising tone.

It still took me some time after that to take the decision, but some years after I cut my relationship with her. It was too painful to keep it, she is a mean and cruel woman. 2 years ago we started seeing each other again due to my brother's pressure, but I never call her and I only visit her once or twice a year. She's not allowed to visit me, and I have never fallen again in the trap of talking about anything personal. She knows where I live and work and she knows my boyfriend. That's all. My life improved so much after I took those decisions.

 

I guess I can't join the club because I don't have to put up with her anymore...?

 

[fleaball]

41 minutes ago, zenLara said:

I guess I can't join the club because I don't have to put up with her anymore...?

You can be an honorary member if you like.

[Lara]

19 minutes ago, fleaball said:

You can be an honorary member if you like.

That would be an honor.

[fleaball]

We made it. No one died, including me. NTB has photos I assume will be posted eventually? I hope. You might not hear from me for a while bc I'm sore and need to recover for a week. 

[Owlet]

2 hours ago, fleaball said:

We made it. No one died, including me. NTB has photos I assume will be posted eventually? I hope. You might not hear from me for a while bc I'm sore and need to recover for a week. 

 excellent 

[Bookish Badger]

Yay for surviving and not dying!! Yes, we want photos. ALL THE PHOTOS!!

[Lara]

Yay!

[Dagger]

Awesome!

 

My calfs have been tight/sore for the last two to three days. My hiking/walking vacation is going good.