ALL THAT GLITTERS IS OR ISN’T…

Today, I tried on WAY too many glittery things.

Think, glitter-mania in a dressing room with blaring non-secular Bloomies-tunes in the background.

Oh, and it’s Hannukah.

How apropos. A festival of lights bouncing off my body as if there were 8 million days without oil instead of eight.

Flash back to Friday’s “Festivus” celebration with colleagues-turned-friends and I find myself marinating on the elusiveness of “glitter.”

Snowflake table décor became an instrument to sparkle ourselves silver as we lured in fellows for a dose –three friends, three strangers dusting each other with table flakes as if it were fairy dust.

What is it about the holiday season and glitter? Sequins. Sparkles. Something that shines bright under light?

What is it that happens to me when time and time again, season after season, I buy random sparkly tops that I wear ONCE a year and then spend hours in a dressing room the following year trying on additional unflattering sparkly garments that reflect nothing of my personal style and in actuality make me look like one big ass ornament. But seriously.

I had a theory once that bridesmaid dresses were really for women to serve as real life floral arrangements, you know, to decorate the wedding venue—hence the color of the dresses like periwinkle, coral, and shimmery taupe. I was a “flower” of the aforementioned colors and then some --so I can almost prove this theory. But that is neither here nor there.

Now I am starting to think that holiday fashion much like bridesmaid dresses has a hidden agenda: to turn us all into inanimate objects—glitter balls resembling those hanging on a tree. “Ugly-sweater” parties to boot though mocking the tradition of “the Xmas sweater” also substantiate this point as they turn us into those twinkled up post cards you get in the mail from distant cousins or college friends you haven’t seen in ages. Glitter balls and post cards. Inanimate objects.

So as not to sound like a Grinch, I should actually share that I kind of LOVE glitter. In the late nineties (wow, I am getting old); glitter was a-plenty in my make-up cabinet. For reals. I used to pepper my brow line with sparkly colors a clown might wear – green, purple, and hot pink. And I would shimmer up my chest with bronzer and sometimes, SOMETIMES, I would even place a rhinestone in the corner of my exaggerated lined eyes.

This is true. Who was that girl?

My college roommates can testify that painting my face was a past time, one that may have started as some sort of skewed artistic expression, but one I owned nonetheless and have ever since repressed.

It is true I have minimized the body bling. The silver glittery nail polish has turned “minimalistic” (the real name of the polish color!) and my attire has faded. I am not sure if all of this was a mere consequence of adulthood, or the byproduct of studying gender studies in graduate school, but either way, I shut it down. It has been squashed.

Well, kind of.

Every year I try on those dresses (as I said earlier), I laugh at myself when I imagine my face dangling from a tree or my body drowning in red sequins. Every year now, I huff out of the department store feeling defeated because the holiday dresses make me look like I belong in a Saturday Night Live skit. And every year, I cloak my defeat in sarcasm by teasing the masses in my mind at parties for their lack of originality or ingenuity in their holiday wardrobe. I mean, I learned in college that “fashion” is a way of constructing our identities…so what does it mean if we all go to holiday parties glitter? And what’s more, why is it more fashionably correct to wear a sequin top in December, for example? I mean, what if I decided to go to a spring BBQ in a gold sequin top? Or a green sequin dress? Why do the bells ringing, the snow glittering, the sweets sprinkling need to be superimposed unto our bodies?

What am I really getting at anyhow?

In an attempt to find an outfit for a holiday party this weekend, I tried on way too much glitter. I came home in holiday overload and acknowledged that I might just have to wear one of my many black party dresses – however they may fit since I have a ways to go on this darn challenge. I came home, frustrated, ready to surrender to jeans and a black lace top. My uniform.

When I found one. I found one.

I found one that didn’t fit me three months ago. (Thank you, challenge). I found one that is very party-appropriate with a little chiffon. I found one that is a year or two old but still fashion-forward. (Or not, the host will tell me).

Importantly, I found one that will look fabulous with my glittery gold heels. Or my pewter sequined heels. Or my nude heels with rhinestones and spikes.

 Wait, what?

WERE WE BAD GIRLS THIS T-DAY? A TEXT-FEST BETWEEN FRIENDS

“If you do something physically active tomorrow (60mins or longer) you can write off Thanksgiving dinner as a zero. Yup...you read that right! A big fat zero!!” –said our coaches to us via email, before T-day.

So we wrote off Thanksgiving dinner. I totally did. As if it were a tax “write off.” Nothing deducted. Nothing gained. My girls did too. We all exercised. We all felt good. Like we earned the meal. For almost two weeks of conscientious eating and exercising. It was all good. We were being good. And we felt good.

Until it felt bad.

Until we realized Thanksgiving, or “Turkey Day” or “T-Day” was more than one meal. Or one day. It was like, like, two days, a weekend, a three-day weekend even, a season. Oy vey.

So it started with texts:

Me: Um, I am baking…with a beer. Shit. Well so much for coaching.

Partner: LOL

Partner: It’s the season, what you making me?

Me: I am gonna complain, where are our coaches, HAHAH (as if a call, email or text from one of them would save me from the urge to bake or finish the beer I reluctantly opened.)

So I text the girls a picture of the bars I am baking.

Partner: Yum

Partner: What is it?

Me: Make-shift magic bars. I was missing ingredients so I was getting creative. Graham. Butter. Condensed milk. Chocolate chips and coconut. I didn’t have coconut or chocolate chips. So I used dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses and granola.

Friend (new on the thread, but also in the Challenge): Just got back from 2hr bike ride with the family…think I should eat one.

Me: Come get’ em, hahaha.

Friend: Save my fat ass one (P.S. her ass is hardly fat!!!)

Me: Will bring to “Power Hour”…if they are good.

Friend: Yeah!!! We will have to be incognito (at this point I am in tears laughing as I imagine handing a bag of baked goods to my friends in the Challenge—in the parking lot of the Function Factory—as if it were a drug deal or something.)

The texting went on for days (the whole weekend actually) on the topic of wine and beer, mint liquor hot chocolate, and Phil’s BBQ. And how we needed our coaches. Or how the challenge was on hiatus. Or how the challenge just got off the rails. Or went. The challenge, a looming concept that sort of hung over us, or me, as I relished the cheese from my friend’s store, or the chocolate cookies I chose to nosh on over “pumpkin pie.” The choices we made, or I made, that made me feel a tickle of that age-old guilt I felt as kid—sneaking candy from the freezer per say. The choices that made me feel like a bad girl. Ugh.

But then I let it go.

I let it go when I recalled a book I lent to my partner many years back, “The Good Girls Guide to Bad Girl…” the last word to remain absent. The book and specifically the topic of  “a good girl gone bad” and I thought to myself, “This is the Good Girl’s Guide to Bad Girl T-DAY.” And I smiled. I laughed. And, I stopped feeling badly. Because I don’t like feeling badly. I am not sure anyone does. And to be quite frank, it might just be OK to be “bad” on occasion. Good girls deserve to be bad sometimes, at least I think.

In a squelching hot 75 minute yoga class on Sunday night my instructor with the fittest body ever, said, “I love pizza, I ate a whole one last night, by myself. Pizza gets a bad rap.” And in that moment, I sealed my practice with a message to myself.

Maybe we were bad girls? Maybe we were just girls. Maybe a little badness is good. Maybe to be good, to be truly good, you have to know what it means, what it feels like, to be bad. To be a little deviant. To be naughty. Good, bad, naughty, nice. Oy, the holidays…talk about messing with our minds. And this Challenge. Namaste.

TOP 5 TIPS, TRICKS, WAYS TO OR REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD OR CAN SURVIVE A SIX-WEEK CHALLENGE

Ok, everything has been illuminated.

Social media and online news sources have reduced everything to a “top something” or “a number of tips, tricks, ways, reasons to do “X” or a “How to…” or the latest, per EL James: “50 Shades of…X”—the latter the most disturbing of all as I read puns like “50 Shades of Green” or “50 Shades of Success.” There is something wonky to me about conflating Disney-like erotica titles with trends in living a green lifestyle. Although Alicia Silverstone did just endorse an eco-friendly vibrator which made the New York Post last week. But that’s neither here nor there.

I am not sure how and when news sources became so numbers-oriented. So dictatorial. So self-help-like. So narrow in scope. Or why?

Or more so, why of late it is bugging the bejeezus out of me. Perhaps because there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the number choices? Logic please. Or, perhaps because I was hired to write a blog post about the “Top 5 Funding Sources for Nonprofits” and well, frankly, eighteen million like-posts already existed. Which in turn, turned me off of the project—for any insight I could have or would have produced would simply have been regurgitated or repurposed.

Seriously though—

If you pay attention, it’s kind of crazy how many of these titles swim through our newsfeeds:

Top 4 Reasons Employees Quit

9 Slimming Best Dresses

15 Actors Who’ve Played Roles For Over 15 (Or More) Years

The 10 Largest Homes in America

10 Ted Talks About Being Creative

How to Create an Enchanting Platform

The 3 Most Effective Strategies for Driving Sales Through Social Media

3 Reasons Why Your Company Should Pay Employees To Use Social Media

6 Tips for Making Friends

5 Reasons Why A Coupon Is Not A Gift

5 Tech Shifts Changing Our World, Work, and Potential

4 Keys to A Successful Exist

The abovementioned are real articles (they came through today!) and for whatever reason, they have bombarded my eye sockets (and consciousness) so much so that I almost glossed over the best title of the day: “How Kale Took Over The World.” And, I do love me some kale. In an effort to understand this new mode of communication, I decided to apply it to my challenge. Please note, these are real experiences and real people are involved, so forgive me, if I embarrass you. Know this, I embarrass myself more.

TOP 5 TIPS, TRICKS, WAYS TO OR REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD OR CAN SURVIVE A SIX-WEEK CHALLENGE

1.     Eat Green Smoothies (At Least Two Hours Before You Train): Green smoothies are loaded with vegetables and fiber and give you a sensation of fullness. They are also gross in color (resembling snot and weird paint colors you mixed in elementary school)—which combined with circuits, think, a full belly, gross colors, burpy-like activity in the gym, well it makes for a worrisome time working out. I thought I was going to hurl. Or something.

2.     Surrender to the Clause “This is JUST for the challenge:” Look, I believe rice crackers and whole grain bread are healthy. Even peanut butter that has no sugar. In many cases I think these things are healthier than some that are on the recommended meal plan. But I don’t get any points for eating them. And yet, I would get points for eating ham with four eggs (which I don’t eat, and no it’s not because I am Jewish, I just don’t like ham). But I have to surrender. Surrender nonetheless. It’s just for the challenge.

3.     Text Pictures of Your Food to Your Girlfriends, The Good, Bad, and the Ugly: Spinach salads, half eaten apples, granola, and ice cream pics amuse us throughout the day, but also serve as a constant reminder that we are on some kind of challenge. I ate some weird wheat chips today (lost a point even if they were organic) and the empathy of my friends made it all somehow, laughable. Lose a point, gain a point. At least I have my girls.

4.     Accept That You May Have An Apple, Pear, Peach, Banana or Some In-Describable Body Type: It’s so strange to me that women have somehow learned to associate their bodies with a fruit. Who thought of that one? Which man J (Ah, the feminist in me). I was joking about it in the gym the other day and when asked: “well, what fruit are you,” I simply paused and said, “Well, are there any fruits that are top heavy.” A true, but somewhat dispiriting remark. I have accepted that I just might NOT be a fruit.

5.     Embrace the Burn: Our stomachs burn, our quads burn, our calves burn, and our brain burns (from all of the tracking!). If it weren’t for the burn, we probably wouldn’t feel like we were on any sort of challenge. But when the burn gets unbearable, stock up on the following: ice packs, probiotics, advil or something like that that kills pain, acidophilus, or an acid reducer, heating pads or heated water (like a bath). Be prepared. We are only a little over a week in. Listen, it is no coincidence that I am on the Challenge with my girlfriends who made me an “Advil” birthday cake when I turned 15. We are embracing the burn together. And sharing pills. 

KEEP ON ROCKIN' ME BABY

Aww, Steve Miller Band, every time I think about capturing the last three days in words, I am called to your song, True, Fine, Love. I laugh as I catalogue my thoughts—and I sing in my head—because ever since Tuesday evening I have found myself constantly qualifying everything with, “I aint complainin’ but…”

“I aint complainin’ but…” It’s like playing on repeat on my ipod.

My partner on this challenge, she and I incidentally have a steep history with Steve Miller Band. “The Joker” comes to mind specifically and I flash to a high school video I made for her birthday, silly images spinning to his quirky beat. Nearly twenty years later, we are still bound by Stevie; in the gym, through texts about what to eat for lunch, and in dialogue about what we looked like back then: she, nicknamed “Scrawny,” and I fighting genetics on the other end of the continuum.

In anticipating a new post, I never thought I’d call upon a late 60s band to help frame my piece. But as is everything these days, it seems oddly meant to be. Scrawny and I giggled at the gym Wednesday night about how I loved hanging at her house as a kid—an escape from the Snack Well-mania in my own home and the pursuit of Star Crunches or Nutty Bars in her cabinets. There was something excitedly forbidden about those Sara Lee sweets. A taste so satisfying in my memory, but one that today, I would readily relinquish for a glass of red wine. 

Gone are the days. Ugh. Anyhow. 

So on her way to the gym (to back-pedal in time) my partner texted me in jest:

“You ready for my first complaint?”

She proceeded to grumble about headaches, stomach pangs, and not being able to work out without a hair tie, in the same vein that she’d send me emoticons of string bikinis. She has always made me laugh—her ability to conflate bitching and comedy. I keenly remember lagging with her in 12 minute mile runs at high school soccer practice, even back then, the two of us padding our deflated egos with caustic wit.

In any case, while my partner contemplated complaining the whole way to the gym, and I continuously dissected the “cans and cants” of this darn challenge, I realized how much more profound this experience was certain to be. I realized however bound we were, to each other, to whatever parameters, that our experience of it was sure to be quite individualized. That is, what is challenging for me may not be for her and vice versa. And the obvious goals for some aren’t really as obvious for me. So I realized, I needed to set my own. I needed to clarify my goals.

Important note: I have an aversion to scales. Something about a fourth grade nurse’s office experience that made me imbue it with some kind of power that took twenty plus years to undo. The truth is, today, even when I go to the doctor, I say, “don’t tell me” when they ask that I step on the scale. And yet, I almost routinely ask them in the same breath, “shall I leave my shoes on?” As if my heels would significantly affect the digits on the scale—the digits I already said I didn’t want to hear.

So appropriately so, my goals aren’t about weight, or fitness for that matter. As I already have about 30 plus years of conditioning to keep me on the wagon. So what might those challenges be for me? How can I repurpose this Challenge to my benefit? It’s taken some thought, and negotiation, and re-framing. And so I have decided to share some ideas in print:

DRAFT 6-Week Challenge Goals

1.     Alcohol consumption limited to once a week (with one exception a week, like a date J)

2.     Try a new, healthy recipe a week (and cook it myself; Whole Foods doesn’t count)

3.     Physical Activity EVERYDAY even if it is just a stroll (although commit to five good works a week—hot yoga included!)

4.     Stay true to myself and do not compromise the growth I have experienced over the years after studying the body and the mind; that means do not get consumed with points, competition, or being right!

5.     Nurture the soul while nurturing the body daily! As my brother in law said, “Watching Reality TV may not be considered healthy living.” So, read, watch films, roam around a new neighborhood. Today, I went to the zoo for example. For the first time in like 20 years.

I am not sure if these goals seem overly ambitious or under ambitious, but it’s sort of sad to think that hardest of them all for me is #1 and #5. Anyhow, I am still plugging away at this. And I could use thoughts. Adding one date a week may be unrealistic unless I have an unknown matchmaker in my reading audience. And six-weeks wine free is simply setting myself up for failure. Cause look, I already lost points last night for a social outing that involved vino at a hot foodie spot, called: 100 Wines. And now, by simply stating the former, I am already breaking #4 and planning to work out twice today or tomorrow to compensate for it. Such is the joy of goal setting; sometimes you just have to tweak them along the way. 

To abrubtly end this post on a Saturday eve as I head to the gym, I wanted to share that our team name is Rock-R-Tushies. Or Rock N’ Tushies. Or something like that. And there is no doubt—in the spirit of Steve Miller Band again—that this challenge will Keep On Rockin’ Me. Rockin’ Me Baby.