I found it.

I knew that I would find it. For years I've been browsing second-hand shops for this specific bible, The Children's Bible, because this bible, you see, was my first bible. This is where they started us wide-eyed, plaid-claid whelps at St. Margaret's in the 1970s, talkin' about God and George Washington with the exact same measure. I had questions then, and I still have questions. Now that I have finally gotten my hands on this book, I will be pushing up my glasses at you about some important bible-related stuff. ❌

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Breakfast, etc

Don't worry, Diary of a Low Budget Superhero won't morph into a boring food blog. I just need to remember this later for tracking purposes and I already have this platform, so: Breakfast was at 10am, and I made a bowl with 1/3c barley, 1/2c mixed berries, and a Chobani "less sugar" yogurt. And coffee with 1 tbsp powdered creamer, which at some point I'll omit because it's all chemicals, but I need it right now. Thank you. ∎

Update July 01 (9pm'ish)
I downloaded LoseIt, the nutrish app. This morning I linked Apple Health—that's what I use to track Steps—to Loseit. This has made me extremely happy. Here's the thing: I tried Loseit years ago, and I mean like on-my-Blackberry-years-ago. I must say I'm impressed at how much smarter Loseit has become to date. I have a ton of respect for balls-out splendid development and these guys rocked it. For example, I thought it'd be a one-way feed from Apple Health into LoseIt. Nope—better. LoseIt feeds back to Apple Health too. And Loseit integrates my Apple Health steps, meaning the Steps aren't merely visible, that data impacts the LoseIt data.That's a wildly smart innovation from a UX perspective. It could be game changing for a lot of folks, myself included, whose struggle includes being great at keeping tidy notes for six or eight weeks and then PPPPTTTHHHHhhhhhh. With Loseit's elegant features I can't see how the process could be any simpler. Plus, they're making it super-incentivizing to upgrade to Premium with extra features, including tracking blood sugar, whaaaat. Can't swing the upgrade right now. It's not too much $$ for people who work, but for poor-ass me battling PTSD and not working, it's too costly. My existing bills going unpaid contribute to my anxiety. But still. Game changer. ∎

Update July 03 (11:30am)
Okay MAYBE I will keep blogging about food, either here or I'll use another platform.
It's been five days since seeing a whole new kind of doctor, a miraculous unicorn of a nutrition expert, weight loss medicine scientist and counselor. I have lost six pounds since Friday. I told Jenny, I told Joey, I told my therapist all about it and together we marveled: this is amazing, why didn't anyone tell me. Next week (Wednesday) I start a new medicine that, did I say miraculous, I can actually afford. I specify that, because my endocrinologist has tried to get me on a med that'll help me along with weight loss, but it cost more than a car payment even with insurance. I have a different/similar prescription now. I won't need to be on it forever, just a boost to get me past the long-standing hurdle. If I can drop one pound every week, my goal is achievable, even now as I'm struggling with PTSD. I'm grateful, hopeful and cautiously determined. One pound a week. That's all I need to do. And I have a team now. These women (therapist, wellness/weight loss doc, and poor endocrinologist who has been so patient with me and all my problems) are the team I have needed and didn't know it. ∎

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"There used to be food at the grocery store."

I'm paraphrasing the late Spalding Gray. I forget which of his monologues contains the bit about trying to get healthy and eat right and realizing how much junk is in everything. Today I texted Jenny from the grocery store, tediously reading label after label, "Is there anything more despairing than the first Shop after a weight loss doc. FFS!"

Goals

So last month at my annual physical I asked my doc if he could refer me to our local Center for Weight Loss. He did. Last week I went and, to my puzzlement, that doc was a surgeon. Surgery wasn't what I was after...more like I was seeking a boost in some other way. Um, a magic pill maybe? I'm dealing with so much, I suck at this, never could sustain exertion, and these days I can't handle too much at once. 

There is no magic pill, but there's science

I guess surgery is the magic pill for lots of folks who've struggled with maintaining diet and exercise, but..."I go in here (pointing to my tummy) and here, cut away most of your stomach and off it goes to Pathology..." said this surgeon. His enthusiasm was almost macabre, but I believe he wishes the best for fat people who have been struggling to become fit. I told Joe about it when I got home and he said, "Um...that's not for us." Don't you love how he says "us." He's my favorite person in the whole world. And he's right. Though it seems to "work" quickly, it's not for me. I need to lose all this weight without a scalpel and all the problems associated with most of my actual stomach being literally cut out and thrown in the cremation fire. Though the surgeon did have a good schpiel about obesity and its role in myriad health issues, I knew all that and that's how come I am looking for HELP. Even so, his schpiel got me to go make an appointment with a different doctor entirely that nobody had ever mentioned before and I sure wish I'd known about her. That appointment was yesterday, and, long story short, it went great (of course I cried) and I'm on a program now. I have goals, and the continued help of a new doctor who knows her science. I'm thinking I can do this all of a sudden.

"There used to be food at the grocery store."

Food can be poison or it can be nutrition. There's a quote knocking around the web that goes "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." Basically the whole middle aisle section of the grocery store? There's scant stocked there that I should be eating. MY food is at the perimeter: the produce, the proteins. Today's shopping took forever because of all the label-reading, but I made it back home with my haul, the first with extra-tight focus on lean, fit and healthy foods. What's awesome is that me and Joey already love the Mediterranean diet, it's just that I have been lazy about portion control, and serving far too much rice or potatoes or corn, using too much sauce-y stuff and lately I've been too heavily reliant upon "convenience" foods like packaged, frozen stuff from Trader Joe's. It starts with a convenience food here and there, then before you know it, there's too much going into your body that was made in a factory or lab. My own Rule 33 says not to eat that. I got lazy. Deep breath. Making some changes.

Tonight I made pan-seared salmon with a barley salad. I did the salmon with ginger, lemon and balsamic (skin on), and the cooked barley I tossed with lemon juice, grape tomatoes, seeded/diced cuke, and five diced walnuts, and a couple handfuls of baby spinach, served warm alongside the fish. We were both full and Joey prescribed the plate "So summery and so tasty!"  I made the whole box of barley so I can just scoop it the rest of the week into salads. Technically a serving for me is 1/3 cup. Got my measuring cups out and will be using them for portion control. IT'S ON, DUDES. ∎

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I Cannot Tell These Two Women Apart

Sarah or Mercedes?

"This actress shows up in so many shows I like!" I said, watching re-runs of The Finder and Person of Interest...um...as it turns out I have been enjoying the TV dramatics of two different actresses entirely, whaaaat? According to the imdb, Texas native Sarah Shahi was born Aahoo Jahansouz to an Iranian dad and Spanish mom, and Swedish actress Mercedes Mason immigrated to the US at 12 and became a citizen in 2016 and she's married to that guy with the beard from that thing. They're not even from the same part of the planet.∎  
(Click here for Answers. How did you do?)

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Are Republicans Making Race-Centered Policy?

Yesterday on Deadline Whitehouse on MSNBC, race relations leader Heather McGhee was speaking on the inhumane conditions and the utter disaster that is the Trump border "policy." Host Nicolle Wallace said, "Who is the person who argues in court 'they don't need toothbrushes, they weren't supposed to be there for long.' Who are these people?" Heather McGhee agreed that's a good question. She had an answer. 

"This is the vision of folks like Stephen Miller." McGhee said that this is now the world we live in where white nationalist ideology is seeded, supported and spread by the President himself who ran on a campaign pushing the idea that "people who are coming to this country, aspiring citizens, are not human, that they're animals, that they're rapists, that they're gang members and criminals, basically that they're the enemy, that we should be on war footing with our neighbors to the south who are coming to try to live out the American dream." 

In a sudden surge of anger, I wanted to see what Fox News was airing at the same moment. I flipped the channel.Who is on but Ted Cruz, spewing his Texas brand of hate and vitriol, pushing his theory that children caged, crying and sick and dying, in the heat and stench, are probably kidnap victims because all the southern criminals know that having a child with you is a surefire way to enter the United States with drugs for sale. He said the Republican "policy" to detain everyone seeking asylum is common sense. He said they're not necessarily asylum-seekers, but criminals and gang members. See, to Ted Cruz, our neighbors to the south are most probably criminals so let's lock them in cages and throw away the key. Is the Republican ideology rooted in power of white elite? If there's any other information that you still need, then I can't help you. ∎

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Mood

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications
Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be all right
It's just overkill
Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away
Come back another day

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Depression: Code Red

One coping method I learned when my life fell apart five years ago was self-care. I'd lost everything in terms of normalcy after years of job-induced stress that eventually drove me literally insane, and that's when I found myself plunked into therapy for the first time. I'll always remember my therapist suggesting concrete things to do, such as "change your clothes, try a new lipstick." External, cosmetic things like that, no matter how bad I felt. The idea was to physically sort of nudge myself out of the depths. I loved my therapist's example. She said "I just got a hair cut. Whenever I get a haircut I feel like a new woman." For a moment, we looked at each other across her desk. A moment of silence. She wore a hijab. I'd never seen her hair. I'd have to take her word for it. In the moment, I understood that these self-care acts aren't for the world. It isn't vanity. It is for me. Just for  me. There is something to it, because five years later, when I'm feeling extra challenged, I think of her and I act on this wisdom. Today I got new hair. It's Feria Whatever-was-on-sale-red. I like it. It's something. 💇

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Sometimes I Make Playlists

Volume 2, Episode 1
Summer Sunday Series: Hot, Horny Amateurs
1:27

Mobile Home - Slide
Boo Radley - The Franc Graham Band
One Of These Days - Bourbon Princess
Way Down - Groovasaurus
You Get That - Slide
Tit For Tat - Asa Brebner
Gin & Tonic - Andrea Gillis
Blood - The Shelley Winters Project
Super Duper - Superhoney
I Wanna Be Ready - Thaddeus Hogarth
Coffee And Pot (LP Version) - Spookie Daly Pride
Shine - Slide
Stretcher - Bourbon Princess
Tornado - Mademoiselle
The Last Tango of Millicent The Innocent - onlyone
Marmalade - Sparkola
Taxi - The Red Chord
Mae Stay - Brownboot
Mr. Bartender - Andrea Gillis
Somewhere - Groovasaurus
Front Porch - Groovasaurus
Disappear - The Franc Graham Band
Cha Cha Ho! - Betty Goo

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Sometimes I Design Shirts

It Costs Too Much To Live Here For This Shit

 

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Asa Brebner (1954 - 2019)

"Songs are just sort of feelings put into words, a marriage of the emotional and cerebral. And that's sort of the best thing you can do—express in words what you're feeling, hopefully in a way that's not too trivial or stupid." - Asa Brebner

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Sometimes I Laugh

BOSTON. You know that fine line between funny and sad? I know that guy. Tonight I went to "The Gas" at Great Scott. That is the weekly comedy hosted by Rob Crean. Rob is possibly the saddest funny guy that I know. I'm not saying all of his material arises from a place of depression or anxiety, but I can tell you that Rob's act helped lead me from the darkness over Robin Williams' death, even if Rob doesn't know he did that for me. Maybe for others, too. Intelligence + writing + seeing the absurdity that we're all navigating makes for some top-shelf comedy. My take is that Fridays at Great Scott, enough of a good time for people who still have their mental health, also make a decent substitute for group therapy for those of us who need a fucking lifeline. It's usually just $5, unless special occasion, and 2x or 3x worth it.

↑ Restroom tampon box photo. If you think that I turned off my phone's snapshot sound first, you'd be wrong. What the other chicks in the bathroom thought was going on in my stall.∎

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Sometimes I'm Sorry

I needed some things so I went to the store. That's how I found out that there's bacon cotton candy. The package has a cartoon pig holding a thing of bacon cotton candy. So now I know that I am alive in an age where people thought of bacon cotton candy. Now you know this exists. I'm sorry.🤮

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This bus stop advertisement, tho'

I bet it costs a ton to pay for one of these JCDecaux outdoor, or "out of home" (OOH) displays. I guess I'm wired to wonder about the ROI on this car seat safety message at the bus stop. At the bus stop. Bus. ∎

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It is June. I am tired of being brave.

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

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