The Junk Drawer

My friend Jason showed me a ridiculous item in a cheapo catalog he got in the mail a couple weeks ago. It illustrates just how fat our country has gotten.

I give you The Easy-Fit Waistband Stretcher

From the Heartland America website,

If you’ve added on some winter weight, your favorite pants have shrunk after washing, or you’ve had a temporary weight gain, don’t go out and buy new clothes. Easy-fit waistband stretcher to the rescue! Gently widen your snug jeans, skirts and shorts by putting the device inside the waistband and adjusting until you find the most comfortable size. Works on waist sizes 21-50. 1-year limited warranty.

Don’t go out and buy new clothes?!?!? What? That’s too humiliating? It’s any better to stick this stretching machinery into your jeans, thinking they’ll fit properly? I imagine when you’re done using this device, your pants will be the perfect size and shape to fit Homer Simpson. Not a flattering look.

Oh, and if this works on "waist sizes 21-50," you have bigger problems. You do NOT need to make your pants larger. You need to make your gut smaller.

I haven’t heard of such an idiotic device since the FloBee. You know, the vacuum cleaner that happens to also cut hair. I’d like to say I can’t believe there’s a market for pants stretchers, but I absolutely can believe it. Our country would rather jam our sausage bodies into too-tight pants than get on a treadmill every once in a while.

If nothing else, this discovery makes me more motivated to get out and exercise. I may not get down to my "skinny jeans" weight again, but you can be sure I won’t be ruining any of my clothes to make them fit. Homer Pants aren’t a good look for me.

Today I hit my first roadblock in an effort to lose weight. Not because I snacked on candy (I didn’t). Not because I didn’t take the stairs enough (I have). And not because I’ve lost my will already (no chance). Hell, even I can keep a resolution for at least one day.

So why am I having so much trouble today? I smell like cookies and now I want to eat a whole package of cookie dough. Raw. Right out of the package.

I know you’re probably thinking "Oh, poor Kathy. I realize she’s struggling to lose weight and I wish there was something I could do for her to encourage her to stay motivated."

Or maybe you’re just thinking "Why does she smell like cookies?"

Lemme ‘splain. I was working on a client’s PC fixing a problem one day and my work was lasting longer than I expected. I was supposed to have lunch with my sister and it was looking like I wouldn’t make it since I was stuck with this PC problem.

I called her to let her know we’d probably have to postpone, and while talking with her, I noticed my client had a bottle of Bath and Body Works hand lotion on her desk. I picked it up to smell what kind it was. The "flavor" was Warm Vanilla Sugar and it smelled exactly like sugar cookies.

I told my sister what I’d just done and how much I loved the aroma of fresh baked cookies. In a hand lotion! She made a mental note of this and gave me a bottle of it for my birthday shortly after.

What I didn’t realize is that if you use cookie-scented hand lotion, like I did today, it makes you hungry. Very hungry. Eat your fingers right off your hand hungry. This is not helpful.

I know there are freak scientists in the world whose job it is to make chemicals smell like food. I watched a rather disgusting movie this weekend, Fast Food Nation, in which a chemist whips up an additive that is used to make a barbecue burger smell like a barbecue burger. Believe me, you don’t want to eat anything off a Micky D’s menu if you watch that movie. What you think is burger is more like something that only smells like burger. Well, maybe there is some meat in there, but you can’t be too sure. They can make anything smell like anything they want. Eat at your own risk.

There is a lesson here. If you’re going to go on a diet, do not use a product on yourself that smells like an item you’ve just crossed off your acceptable foods list. It’ll drive you insane. Dieting is hard enough without wanting to eat your own fingers.

I just got a copy of the pictures taken of me at Dorney Park last weekend. It’s glaringly evident that the time has come for me to get serious about losing some weight. So here I am again, trying to get mentally prepared to do a workout several times a week. I figure if I write about trying to exercise, I’ll be held accountable somehow. I’m taking all forms of encouragement, guys. And to those who work with me, throw bricks at my head if you see me at the candy dish. Aim high and don’t miss.

One of the few things that keeps me pumped up while working out is listening to music and only one kind will do — late 80s and early 90s funk and dance. Contrary to popular belief, a 40-something woman can get down and get funky. You may not want to see it, but it does happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Look away if you must.

Here’s my Top 10 List of Best Workout Music:

1. It Takes Two — Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock
2. The Power — Snap!
3. Word Up – -Cameo
4. Get on the Good Foot — James Brown
5. The Glamorous Life — Sheila E
6. You Dropped a Bomb on Me — The Gap Band
7. Gonna Make You Sweat — C & C Music Factory
8. Bust a Move — Young MC
9. Everybody Everybody — Black Box
10. Push it –Salt ‘n Pepa

I’m off to do a workout. Funk out.

Dave and I have been struggling with the layout of our living room since getting the new furniture. Our challenges are many:

1. We want to keep the couch and chair as far away from each other as possible to create an open flow.
2. The coffee table is getting butchered by the cats. Since the first scratch, two more have gone on. And one is nearly a foot long. We decided to put the TV on it to keep it from getting damaged further.
   
3. Moving the coffee table from the middle of the room really opened things up, but now it’s too open. The carpets are also looking dingy from years of spills and cat accidents.
4. I put down this oriental rug to minimize the open space, cover stains and create a visual bridge between the chair and couch.

Now — we can buy another rug, but don’t know what color scheme would work well with the furniture. We don’t want to overdo blue. This rug is 10 years old and has been in storage since our now deceased cat, Calvin, started clawing at it. For now, it’ll do, and we almost don’t care if the cats destroy it. At least we can enjoy its beauty for the first time in a decade. Better to be on the floor than in a closet.

We really want some opinions now. If you’ve never commented on my blog before, now is the time to go nuts. The future of our living room depends on it.

There are a few pretty cool things you can do as a kid, and one of them is breaking a bone. All the better if you get a cast for your efforts. See that innocent looking swing set in the picture? It’s the reason I broke my left wrist when I was 10 years old. Why was it a good thing? Because it could have been my head.

The accident took place one Friday night when my parents were out grocery shopping. It’s the one time of the week they could get away from us kids for an hour or so. All they had to do was let an older sibling take charge and make sure nothing bad happened while they were gone.

As soon as they left, something bad happened.

It was wintertime and a blanket of snow covered the backyard hill. An excellent place to take the sleds out for a spin. We never settled for sledding on mere snow. We insisted the best way to experience high-octane thrills was to throw buckets of water down the hill to form a nice sheen and add 30 mph to our speed. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Sister Ann and I prepped the death slope with about six or seven good bucket tosses and waited until it froze up good. We grabbed our sleds and set off to fly down the hill with the greatest of ease. Until….

I sat down on my trusty wooden Flexible Flyer at the precipice of our freshly-made, glassy goodness and gave myself a mighty heave-ho. Heading straight down the middle, I must have leaned too far to the right and began to veer directly toward the left legs of the swing set. In a flash, I’m thinking I either stay put and crack my skull open when I hit that thing, or make quick work of leaning the other way to shoot toward the middle of the hill.

There is a 10 foot open swath between the swing set and an old rusty laundry pole. I’m shooting for left of the swing set, but overcompensate and now I’m heading straight for the pole. I’m back to square one in the skull-saving, decision-making department. Do I split my noggin on the pole? Or do I try and brace myself with my arm and break that instead?

I opted to save the skull and stick my arm out to protect my face and head. My hand hit the pole and snapped all the way back as the rest of my body followed behind and landed in a rumpled heap at the bottom of the hill. I saved the skull, but my wrist doesn’t feel too good. Not good at all.

I can’t remember who came running first or how I got back up to the house. I’m sure I was blubbering like an idiot and screaming how "Mom and Dad are going to kill me!!!" They apparently can’t go anywhere without some trauma befalling us kids. But at least we never set fire to anything.

Once in the house, I’m sobbing on the couch and my brainiac brother Michael is yelling at me.

"It’s not broken if you can move it. Here. Let me see."

He flops my hand back and forth, over and over.

"Oww!! OWW!! Oh my God, OWWWWW!!!"

"OK. Yeah, it might be broken."

"Idiot."

So we wait until Mom and Dad come home from the store and then promptly announce that now they have to take me to the hospital. The one thing that made our accidents so much more bearable was that the hospital was located only a block away. I wonder of Mom and Dad, knowing they’d someday have a houseful of imbecilic kids, told their real estate agent "We need a house next to a state-of-the-art hospital with a band of qualified ER doctors. We’re going to be spending some time there. Can you do that?"

As we trek over to the hospital, I’m getting really angry. Not because I broke my wrist. And not because I got in trouble for sledding in the dark on an ice-encrusted hill. It’s because now I was going to miss the Brady Bunch. Back in the day before VCRs and DVRs, you absolutely needed to be planted in front of the TV when your favorite show came on or you would miss it forever.

As I sat in the ER waiting room, I watched as it approached 8:00 and then 8:30 and then 9:00. I mourned the loss of getting to watch the fanciful antics of my beloved Brady Bunch kids. The only bright spot was knowing that none of the Bradys ever broke a bone and they don’t get a cast and they can’t show it off to their friends at school. So there, take that!

Here’s a lesson for the kiddies — if you have a choice between breaking your skull and breaking a bone, go for the bone. Brain is so much more worth keeping in good working order. Besides, having a cast on your head is just not as attractive.