Gwen's blog

Current Events

May 3, Houston: The big one -- the Inprint reading -- occurs at the Alley Theatre on Monday, May 3. Do not miss it or you'll be sorry. I'm not kidding -- I'm going to say the craziest, most intellectual yet hilarious stuff I can think of, and I'll be sharing the stage with the ultra sexy Oscar Casares, too.

June 24, Houston: I'm one of the peeps scheduled to read at Poison Pen, at Houston's famous Poison Girl bar. Besides me, everyone there will be ultra, *super* sexy. Come see me and drink!

June 26, Washington, DC: I'll be reading at the American Library Association conference. Come on down.

My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and make sure my kids won't resent me more than other kids resent their own parents.

Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend. Already did? Well, buy a few more for your friends, then. :)

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Toby update

Toby spent the night in my oldest son's room. Starbuck spent the night in the living room, instead of on my bed like she normally does. Was she guarding the whole house from Toby? I don't know. After I woke up, she went into my room, I guess. Moments later, Toby bounded in to say good morning. I petted him. Then I heard this ominous, "Er-r-r-r-r... ERR-R-R-R!" from under the bed. "Starbuck! Be nice!" I yelled.

Poor Toby, after apparently holding it all night, finally went to the bathroom... in one of our houseplants. "No-o-o!" I cried, scaring him across the house. But then he let me carry him back into the hall and show him the real litter box. I'd shown it to him yesterday, but neglected to scratch his paws in it, like you're supposed to. So I did his paws, and he made this face like, "Oh. That's why you showed me this box yesterday. Okay."

Poor thing.

I hope that, once the house is emptied of humans, Starbuck will get bored enough to be a good hostess. Maybe she'll give Toby a tour and let him share a seat next to her at the Bastard-Squirrel-Watching Window.

Avon: What's up with it?

At my work, in the room called Ladies, there's a new Avon catalog with something weird on the back. It says, "Rich, creamy goodness! Moisturizing body yogurt!" And it shows pastel, fruit-scented lotions in yogurt-carton-like containers, with a spoon dipping into one of them.

Isn't that kind of disgusting? Body yogurt? Not only does it sound like smearing food on your body, which is a practice best left to seventies porn, in my opinion, but it also carries the vague connotation of... I don't know. A cure for yeast infections or something? Okay, I'm sorry I said that. But I had to. It was there, in the back of my mind. I'm just not turned on to the body yogurt idea.

Plus, the ad copy: "Rich, creamy goodness." Doesn't that sound like early 2000s blogspeak? Like a phrase a blogger would use facetiously, on a blog called something like, "A Blog of One's Own" or "Randomized Thoughts," to describe Josh Hartnett in a shirtless scene?

You'll be glad to know that I finally found a pair of brown boots.

And I got them on outrageous discount, 65% off. I want to wear them every day. I'm wearing them today, in fact, with a dress they probably don't go with. They look sort of like galoshes with this dress. But I don't care.

Here they are. They look just like that, but darker. That picture is way bright/reddish on my monitor, for some reason.

And, normally I wouldn't link to something I bought in that way, but I really wanted you to see the boots, because I've been talking about looking for brown boots on this blog for, what? Nine thousand years now? And I know y'all have probably been worried about it. It's probably kept y'all up at night, your concern regarding my boot search... So I just wanted you to know you can lay the matter to rest now.

rich people annoyingness

There are certain web sites in this world on which the commenters annoy me with their snobbery. It's usually on sites about fashion or New York that a certain breed of blogsnob will show up and hate on people who buy cheap clothing. They'll be like, "Oh my god, I wouldn't be caught dead in Old Navy. People who shop at Kohl's should kill themselves. I use Banana Republic silk blouses to wipe my nose. I can't touch, share oxygen with, or live in the bourrough of anyone who browses the Barney's clearance racks."

And I always think, "Yeah, right." Who are these people, who brag about their wealth and discriminating taste anonymously, in someone else's blog comments? Who are they supposed to be fooling? Who would care, besides the other faux rich people commenting anonymously?

Then again, maybe they aren't fake. Unfortunately, I've met some rich people in real life who really do believe that either:
a) they're smart for being rich and everyone else is stupid for not being rich, or
b) they're better than everyone else, as evidenced by the fact that they were born rich.

Maybe people who were born rich are better than everyone else (or at least they were, in a past life). But I don't think so. And I'm not just saying that because I was born poor.

Some people think that we're all the same -- that no one is better than anyone else. I don't believe that, either.

I think that being a good person (good person, better person, best person) is based on your behavior. We can't all be born rich, smart, or attractive, but most of us can make the choice to be good -- to treat others as we'd like to be treated -- or to be assholes. And that's the basis on which I set a person's value, in my mind.

All that sounds super elementary and not worth discussing, I know. But I swear to gosh, I really do talk to people on a daily basis who believe that being born with money makes someone a more valuable person. Or that pretty people are more valuable. Or that smart people are. To each their own, I guess. But I hate it when people apply that value system to me. I hate it when someone quite obviously decides that I'm good enough to talk to because they find me attractive enough, or because I've published a book, or because I've pulled myself up by the bootstraps. Don't talk to me if that's why you're talking to me. Don't talk to me if you're an asshole.

(I know some of y'all reading this blog are rich, and some of you are Republicans, and that it sometimes seems like I hate rich people and Republicans. I know this because y'all write to me and say, "I know you hate rich Republicans, but I am one and I still like your blog." I don't hate rich people or Republicans! I know a lot of decent people of both persuasions, and I wouldn't judge y'all on that, alone. :) )

And that ends my rant for today. Come back next time for another petty, judgmental, evil rant.

overtraining

A while back, I was on this here blog pretending that I might take up jogging, and my e-buddy Mike gave me some advice. He said, "Don't overtrain." And he cited an example of his own overzealous exercise and self-injury.

I thought of Mike the other day when I was trying to break through my weight-loss plateau. I'd already walked a couple of miles that day and done a half-hour routine with Gilad. And I was so annoyed at not having lost any more weight, I decided to do some cardio an hour before bed.

And I pulled a muscle in my lower back, and Mike's words floated above my head like the Ghost of Overzealous Workouts Past.

And now my back hurts, and I can hardly exercise at all. And I've only lost 2 lbs this month, when I should have lost 5. And now I just have to eat less, I guess, if I want to meet my goal, which is to lose 20 pounds total by May 1.

If I can't meet that goal, I won't hate myself or anything. But it will be a little disappointing, and it'll set back my plans and my time table for deciding on a Halloween costume. And etc.

But, if all that turns out to be the least of my problems, then I'll be doing pretty well and I'll be relieved. :)

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5:30 AM #

Comments:

 If it's any comfort, I overdid it when I trained for the half-marathon I ran, and I've never been in the same shape since. I've put on ten pounds (that most people say I should have had, and I admit it's nice to not hear, "You're very... thin. We're very... concerned" as much any more), and I can't run nearly as often as I used to.

It feels like a total defeat, even though it completely isn't. I was up at a level where if my legs didn't hurt when I got out of bed, I wondered what was wrong with me. That slots into "fit but not healthy", I think.

Have you ever done the six-200-calorie-meals-per-day thing? You end up so full by the sixth one that you don't even notice you're eating 3/4 what you're supposed to in a day.


# posted by Blogger Mike : 9:57 AM  

 The description "Bastard-Squirrel-Watching-Window" slays me.

And, you're preaching to the choir about the rich people who think money makes them better than everyone else. My fiance is a plumber and he has to work in their houses.


# posted by OpenID pudding-monkey : 11:13 AM  

 I love those boots. I'd totally wear them with everything whether it matched or not.


# posted by Blogger Melis : 12:35 PM  

 Gwen, I'm sure you've heard this but I'm a gonna tell ya again anyway, you are lookin HOT the way you are, you do NOT need to strain muscles, skip lunches or do anything else dangerous. The idea is to get FIT not thin remember? LOL ok enough preaching but gosh be CAREFUL!
The boots are so cool! I LOVED the boots, love the beautiful cat and you cracked me up with Bastard Squirrel Watching Window comment.
thnx!
-Pixielyn
P.S> Rich people who are snobs are trained by their parents to be obnoxiously oppinionated. Poor people can be obnoxiously opinionated, but about other stuff.


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:33 AM  

 I run into a lot of those "I'm so awesome because I'm rich" people and I just keep telling myself that there are way more of US than there are of THEM and if need be, we can take up the torches and pitchforks and deal with them pretty quickly. Also, that they are probably pretty insecure and unhappy deep down inside if they need to talk about how rich and awesome they are all the time. That makes me feel better, before I go wipe down my Banana Republic blouse that someone just used to wipe his nose.

(Now I want to go rename my blog "A Blog of One's Own: Randomized Thoughts".)


# posted by Blogger jam : 8:50 AM  

 Mike: I feel bad for you. On the one hand, you shouldn't be anorexic, no. But on the other, I know how bad it feels not to meet the goals you've set for yourself. (Or to have people express that kind of concern when you feel you're doing well.)

The 200 cal, 6x per day thing sounds doable. It sounds better than my current method, which is eat 400 cal, 3x per day, then feel starved at 7 PM and scarf down 200 more, then feel pressured to exercise extra before I can go to sleep.

Pudding Monkey: You'll have to share some of your husband's stories with us. I'll be checking your blog for them in 5...4...3...2...

Melis: Thanks for your enabling opinion. (I'm wearing them again, right now.)

Pixie: Don't worry. I'm very far from "thin." All I want to do right now is get down to size 12. That's average, here in America. Don't worry. But thanks. :)

Jam: Heh. You're right...

I bet there *is* a blog called A Blog of One's Own: Randomized Thoughts, right now today. And I'm not saying anything's wrong with that. I'm just saying that, when the medium was new, there were lots of titles like that. Naturally.


# posted by Blogger Gwen : 10:08 AM  

 Oh! And here it is!

Though it's a Virginia Woolf enthusiast, so that takes the fun out of it.


# posted by Blogger Mike : 1:48 PM  

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