From: Batty
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009
To: Boss
Subject: Office Kitty




you need to have a chat with your cat about micromanagement.

i am now about 90% a lakewood resident. IT jay, conner, and D busted some butt for me over the weekend and my stuff is now in the same place i am, save for some clothes, dishes, and wall decor. our "master suite" upstairs is looking pretty cool, i gotta say. spent the day getting boog's room together. i am now just happy that he has enough room to get to his toybox. he now has my bed, so i needed to get him some new bedding. we're repainting the kids rooms, so i'm basing everything off the bedding i bought:



it will be fabulous...and temporary, as we're going to get a one family house sometime next year.

i will kinda miss my cave in royalton. it's where i grew up. you'll either get that or you won't. but, my woods understood and they wished me well because it knows i'm off to bigger things and the next chapter of my life. thank you, woods.

now that biking is sporadic at best, i've worked back into the strength training. P90X did me just fine last year, but this is me and we all know that i gotta outdo myself. so i've dived into heavy lifting.

i hate gyms, and i dont like to make my own routines up, i prefer to follow programs. so, i grabbed a copy of the new rules of lifting for women, and i am loving it so far. i think i actually read the entire book in one evening. there's a lot of good insight on nutrition - a lot i already knew from frequenting the livestrong forums, but some of the info helped me be a bit less....spazzy about my food intake. also a lot of good stuff about cardio vs. strength training, and how women are usually pigeonholed into thinking all we can do are the little pink weights and the treadmill. F that, i say.

one of the truly amazing things it has helped me with is my self doubt. rewind: riding the sweet corn ride over the summer, i got too gung ho up the first climb and i bonked pretty hard and it was pretty fucking scary. that taught me a lesson, but now i think i've gone too far the other way, not wanting to relive that incident. so, i underestimate myself. maybe i'm too scared to fuck up, who knows. but sometimes you need to push yourself to the fucking up point so you know just how far you can take yourself, and 9 times outta 10 how far you can go is a zillion miles father than your mental estimate. this is actually touched on in the book as well.

so i'm on week 2 of this. barbell squats are one of the major workouts in stage 1. so i'm thinking to myself "ok, my legs are pretty strong, i can put some weight on there" so i slapped 65 lbs on there, did my reps, and felt nothing. ok, i can put on more. slapped on 10 more lbs for the next bout and felt it a little but the afterburn was not there. then i reminded myself that i need to break free of this restraint - just go for it. so, i slapped on 20 more and proudly exclaimed to facebook "HEY! WOO ME! I SQUATTED 95 LBS!" and facebook was all "pffft, you can do more" [thank you, colleen] so i did. and tonight, i did 15 reps at 120 and yet another set of 15 at 125.


now if you'll excuse me, i totally gotta hydrate.

not that my opinion is worth a damn, but...





i am surprised i have not seen this comparison anywhere.

i mean, its a damn fabulous phone, but why the gotta make it so ugly?

root canal completed. it took all of like 45 minutes and i didnt feel a damn thing. br0d: they gave me the mouth prop without even having to ask. back to the dentist for the crown and various other bullshit.

crap: DONE. seriously, i'm through it. i now return myself to my regularly scheduled life. that is, once my face stops doing its best impression of bill murray in caddyshack. like, i REALLY WANT TO DRINK THIS COFFEE but half of it is ending up on the counter.

one thing i realized over the weekend is that my local 'inner circle' is changing. some of it not by choice, others because i do realize that i dont really have to expend that energy anymore. i mean, i do realize that i can be a flaky, socially awkward git at times, but i am totally not a jackhole.

this just indicates that my life continues to go in new directions, and i'm not complaining. ive got some lovely, shiny new sparklies joining my circle, and then there's the nuggets of awesomeness that have always been firmly planted in the center and will remain there. for all of you, i am thankful.

on that front i begin a heavy lifting program tonight, and i'll probably keep on it until bike season begins again for my first ride of the year jan 1 in the spring. looking forward to the new routine.

this morning, boog came upstairs to say bye to the kitties, and he said "bye, kittykat." and i asked him if he meant what he said and he said yeah. thinking he's seeing ghosts or something, i asked him where she was, and he pointed up and said "in the sky!"

and that touched me a lot.

happy halloween.

kittykat's ashes came in today. she made her last car ride on my lap, because that's where she always was when we were in the car. the vet sent me a sympathy card with her pawprints and a lock of her fur.

i had a little personal moment right there that i don't really care to relay.

i just want to thank you all for your sympathies and comments. dealing with this shit has been really, really hard.

to add shit to the shinola, i have to have a root canal on monday.

i am on vicodin right now. with the week i've had, i think its best for all involved.

the kitty gargoyle sitting on top of my bookshelf at work was given to me by an old friend, who said it reminded her of kittykat. it was an ongoing inside joke amongst those who knew kittykat that she had some form of invisible wings because of all the shit she got into in her younger days.



i had boog over yesterday so he could say goodbye. he was sad but he understood. he said that you need a parachute to get to kitty heaven because it's up in the sky. i told him that kittykat could do a pretty good job of flying by herself, but we'll give her a parachute too just in case.

dennis came in this morning with a giant bouquet of flowers and a huge chunk of tuna from the seafood counter. the kitties ate that all together in the makeshift bed they've been sharing in the closet. i spent all of my morning just being around. rozzy gave her one last schmoo and cray gave her a final grooming.



dennis came with me to the vet's, and i did not let go of that baby until the end. she didn't stop purring. she never stopped purring, really. one of my college roommates joked that if you blew on her, she'd purr. i tried it once and it worked.



i've purchased a small urn pendant which some of her ashes will go into and i won't take it off, ever. i know a lot of people think i'm some crazy cat lady or whatever, but kittykat was really more than just a cat. she was seriously a major part of me for almost half of my life. she was almost human and she took care of a lot of people, and her personality was larger than life.

i am very numb and am trying to deal. stuff like 'she lead a long, full life' and 'it was her time to go' don't really help me right now. she didn't want to go, i know this. she wanted to stay with her herd forever. its just that the vessel in which she was contained could not sustain her spirit anymore.

i am also getting this necklace [first one] because if there isn't a more fitting icon of kittykat, that's it.

you're now free, kittykat. be at peace. you now have those wings we always thought you had - use them. use the parachute that boog gave you too if you need it. wait for me and i will see you again when it's my time to cross over. i know i will see you again. it was truly an honor to have my life blessed with your furry spirit and i will cherish that always.



please watch out for my dad, though. he's a big cat lover too and is big on the mild cat torture.

one summer morning in 1993, i was headed out to my engineering co-op job in cincinnati. i kept hearing this REALLY LOUD MEOW and i was all "omg someone let their cat in". i had to go back to the house because i forgot something, where i found the source of the REALLY LOUD MEOW. there stood a really small, dirty, no more than 3 months old kitten just MEOWING at me. REALLY LOUD. the weird part was that she was the spitting image of my childhood cat, who my mom had to put down the year before. i took this as a sign and i immediately put her in my bedroom with a makeshift litterbox and some bologna, cuz that's all i had at the time. and she's been with me ever since.



i had to take her to the vet today, and long story short, its looking like cancer. she's got fluid in her chest thats preventing her lungs from going to capacity. if it were in her lungs it would be easier to take care of, but its not. vet is drawing some of the fluid to see what it actually is, then we will decide on the next steps. he has a treatment that might help draw out some of the fluid to help her breathe easier. bottom line: i dont want to euthanize tright away, but i do not want her to suffer, either.


with boog in


with boog out

16 years, 3 cities, two states, a plethora of boyfriends and apartments, and a boog. she had graced the laps of so many of my friends i cant even begin to count. she has not stopped purring, ever. hell, she was purring at the vet's. she is me in cat form, with our short hair and stubby legs. she loves riding in the car. i taught her how to sit on command. she bonded with my first ferret ever and they used to sleep curled up on the couch together.

this is the beginning of the end, really. i know we've had a really long, good life together but it doesn't make this shit any easier. so much shit going through my head right now. i've spent like $400 i dont have in the last 3 hours. i need to be able to make sure boog can say goodbye. i worry about rozzy because he considered her his mama for so long. right now he's pacing around wondering where she is.



i am hoping that i can at least have some time with her after today so that i can love her for just a little while longer and say my goodbyes. this shit is hard and i am not doing well with this.



i have to bowl tonight, so i think i will have to drink myself into oblivion.

video conferences about your company's website go much better when the IT director takes the form of the moon.

a cranky moon.

must be that time of the month.

mommy sees what ur doin there, boog.

the powers that be have granted me this obscenely long streak of good karma that i am not totally taking for granted and stop to appreciate on occasion. this time it came in the form of a new [to me] mountain bike. i took advantage of the good weather today and tore up 25 miles from the parkway to wendy park, on and off road. with the weather, decreasing amount of sunlight, and my work schedule, i gotta take advantage of this when i can.

he is black and orange. his name is 13.

mrs. guaderama was my high school spanish teacher. she was rather eccentric. actually, at the time we all thought she was really weird and a lot of kids pranked her a lot. she liked me because i had a knack for memorizing spanish and pretty much sailed through the 3 years of it i had with her.

the govt teacher at the time was painfully conservative, and gave me a hell of unnecessary flack for having my own liberal views. i mean, i can take a little ribbing but his shit got a little low, and i had mentioned something to that effect to my mom. my mom, being one of the most connected people in my hometown, told mrs. guaderrama. she, in turn, gave that government teacher some major holy hell and it caused him to apologize to all of his classes.

at the time, that was really goddamn embarrassing, because i was an awkward teenager who felt she didn't really fit in in the first place. now, not so much. its one of those classic personal stories i will tell people from time to time.

my mom told me that she ran into mrs. guaderrama the other day. she now lives in oberlin. she has MS and uses a wheelchair. her sight is bad, but she still sounds the same, my mom said. my mom told her of my ride and she was happy to hear about it.

i never really thanked her for what she did for me. i am hoping that what i did makes up for it, if just a little bit. had i known earlier, her name would have been on my bandanna, too.

i finally managed to save up some money and get my RMR tested at the cleveland clinic this morning. for the past year or so i havent reached any breakthroughs in the weight loss department, and instead of guessing, i wanted to see some actual numbers.

my results actually surprised me, and my guesstimations have been off by about 200 or so calories. my RMR is 1681, and with my current activity level, which is not soo much as active now that its a bit colder and not so much sunlight, i should be eating *2500+* just to maintain. which i know i havent some days. my body is getting 95% of its energy from my fat stores, which is right where i need to be.

i suspected i wasn't eating enough. i was right.

she asked me if i was looking to lose weight, and i said that i thought i could lose about 20 lbs. she then threw in a body fat % measurement for free for me to see exactly where i was at. and i think at that point i about shit myself.

my body fat % is *18*. eight-freakin'-teen. i don't think i've been below 25% is my life. the clinic recommends females do not go under 16%. so, basically, i don't even have 20 lbs to lose unless i want to lose the muscle mass too. so really my issue isn't my weight, its where my fat is distributed. [i pretty much suffer the butt and gut syndrome]

this really opened my eyes for me, and helped me snap out of some thinking that i swore up and down wouldn't get back into, but you do anyway because everyone else thinks these things and it rubs back off on you.

you need to eat. if you think eating as little as possible is going to do you any favors, you are wrong. it is fucking your metabolism up. if you are going to exercize like a motherufcker, then you need to eat like a motherfucker, too.
the number on the scale is not the ultimate measure of your health or success. throw the damn thing away. buy some good calipers or pay attention to your clothing size.

feel free to think i am full of shit if you want. i am currently 159 lbs and a size 6. my weight fluxuates +/-7 lbs depending on the time of the month, and it has stayed like this for the past two years or so. i did not achieve this by thinking that eating 1/2 head of lettuce and a handful of cherry tomatoes is gonna do it for me for the day.

conclusion: i need to do more strength training, which i have not been doing enough of this summer because i've been wanting to be out on the road as much as possible. this will start up again as it gets colder. next up: consult a sports nutritionist.

more weddings should involve rocket cars.

this is a public apology to every one i've blown off or dropped out of touch with. it seems that there are a number of things in my life that are garnering my attention and need to be confronted. nothing bad, mind you - but i need to take care of these so that my life continues with the stability is has been, and to figure out new directions in places where it hasn't been optimal.

bear with me. as always, you can IM or text me. and i'd really, really like to thank D [dunno if he'll read this, but i'll credit regardless] and my internet boyfriend goth_poser_guy for pointing out the good in me. it truly means a lot.

boog rides the big kids rides now. he also pwn3d the tilt a whirl but the camera died and therefore have no photographic evidence.



i don't know whats going on here. i tried on his lego batman shirt last night and it fit me.

"mommy, does this say yoga?"

sure enough, boog was pointing to the yoga show i record on the DVR. i was going to praise him for recognizing the word when he asked if he could do it.

"you wanna do yoga?"
"yeah! i like yoga."

so he pulled out my mat, spread it on the floor, and followed along for a good 10 minutes or so.



the commercial came on and told me this wasn't the one i do, he wanted the one i put in the DVD player. so he spent a little time with dennis doing the P90X yoga. the P90X one! that shit's hard.

i am just thrilled that he expressed an interest in something that i do. i am going to sign us both up for some yoga classes at a local studio and we will do that together.

this totally counteracts jeremy setting boog up his own WoW character last week.

boss asked me to order a jersey for him. it came in today. he asked me to frame it with my picture, how much i raised, etc. and hang it in the lobby. to say that i am flattered would be an understatement.





ive been compiling a list of rides i am going to do in 2010. i have at least one a month, raising money for 6 charities, and next year's challenge will be 200 miles.

my first ride of the year: 24 miles on january 1st.

that should be epic.

this weekend was chock full of setbacks but otherwise pleasant. one setback being my car. i could let my personal economic frustrations send me into an emotional tizzy, but that's not going to solve anything. i will say, though, that i have a very loving and supportive SO who i am glad is there, otherwise that tizzy would probably be happening right now.

another silly setback was my money card. i have this stupid habit of absent mindedly putting my money card not back in my wallet. i'll put it in my pocket, or throw it in another area of my purse under the guise of "eh, i'll put it back later" and then with my awesome short term memory, i'll forget what i did with it.

much like i did over the weekend. i spent a good few hours searching the same pants pockets, purse, and other areas and racking my brain trying to remember where i used my damn card last. accesed my account online and there was no activity posted, so i knew it wasn't stolen. drove from lakewood to royalton, scoured my apartment, and considered driving to beachwood to see if i dropped it in my office. in my frustration, i just absent mindedly said to boog "buddy, have you seen mommy's money card?"

"i found two cards. when i find cards i put them in your wallet."

...

sure enough, there they were, in my wallet. cept he had stuck them in the pocket where my license is, behind the license, so i didn't see them.

two things i have learned:

1. my child is the awesomest, smartest kid on the face of the earth, and
2. i should just always ask him first when i misplace shit.

coincidentally, he also does this with my bluetooth headset. i have yet to put it back on its charger myself.



buy my stuff.

clothes and shoes. images are REALLY lightened to show detail because the lighting sucks in here and my clothes are black. any red spots on the images are from the flash.

( tripp, lip service, new rocks, and more )

paypal only, please, unless you are local to me [cleveland]. everything will be shipped USPS priority with tracking. no holds - you either can buy it now or you can't. reasonable counteroffers on anything will be considered.

any herbal remedy i could help with sharpening memory/mental alertness? something other than ginkgo, please. over the last 6 months or so, my short term memory has been shot, and i'm forgetting a hell of a lot of stuff. i'm not stressed. i hardly drink. i don't know wtf is going on, but it is pissing me right the hell off.

suggestions are welcome looking at you, deb.

typing this out now so i dont forget. i fell asleep at 4:30 yesterday and i am just now waking up. i am sore and my hands are having extreme difficulty performing tasks that involve fine motor skills. and its kind of amusing me. i couldn't even tie my shoe yesterday. i am having trouble operating my phone and tying this is kinda hard. but i digress.



( Read more... )
its kinda funny to think that my longest ride last year was only 38 miles.

thank you guys for your support and encouragement. it remains deeply embedded in my heart.

i am f'ing spent.

first century travel time: 6hrs 15mins.

in a little more than 24 hours, my spandex covered ass will tackle my biggest challenge for the summer. my brain keeps going in between overcalulating and overthinking to being excited. i just gotta keep myself in the latter world.

plan is to be on that route at 7am. tonight its packing up my crap and giving the blue monster some last minute fixes, and getting names on my bandana. and eat my face off.

again, THANK YOU for all of you that donated. i managed to raise over $1400 and i seriously never expected that at all.

also, even though he wont read this because he's on his way to TN for a family reunion, i gotta give props to d who has given me endless support and encouragement, and watching boog for a few hours here and there so i could keep training. there is nothing better than finding that one person who gives you the energy to take on the world just by being with you.

also props to my mom, who has put up with my crazy ass ideas my whole life.

gnat and kevin, both of you have been an inspiration.

anyway. should you be on the intertubes over the weekend and think to yourself, "huh, i wonder how batty is doing?" well, now you can check up on me:

http://batty.us/p2p/

the top map is where i am currently, the other two maps show the routes for the weekend. these routes are approximate, as i found them on an emergency volunteers website, but its close enough, you'll get the idea.

thank you.

seriously.



props to sqrt_joy for the vid

i quit smoking this morning.

i like smoking. i enjoy having one or two with my morning coffee, or with a beer. i dont really want to quit. however, certain things have come up where i do not really have a choice.

so, bear with me. not like any of you see me in person anyway.

just...don't tell me how much better i will feel, or how food will taste better, or give me a 50K comment on how i should deal with quitting. right now i'm going through a huge sulky phase because i want to smoke but i can't.

back into the hole i go.

well, forst off: if you happen to stumble into wal mart and squee at the oceans of leopard print clothing currently available to you, and you blindly snatch up a pair of skinny jeans [i think i might be the only one over the age of 35 who wears skinny jeans. i am in denial.] and take them home. just do not bother looking at the name tags on them, for you will have MILEY CYRUS emblazoned into your retinas for all of eternity.

just saying.

d and i spent the weekend camping at willow bay in the allegheny national forest. if you are looking for places to go, i highly suggest this one. it was really clean and beautiful, and the bath houses were just immaculate and decorated with fake flowers. our site was a lovely 10 feet from the river. it was pretty much damp all the time, it was either from being so close to the river or the rain that had just come through. d found a small hill to set up the tent, so that was good.

crap, d has most of the pictures on his camera which currently is dead so i guess this will have to be in installments.

we arrived friday afternoon and set up camp, i started the dinner fire and we did a whole lotta nothing. i made fire pit pizza with spinach, onions, and sausage. saturday morning was more whole lotta nothing with sausage and egg sandwiches with the previous notght's leftovers, and after the 125403216506th pot of coffee, we climbed one of the mountains nearby on the north country trail, which is where that sign was. i dunno, i find little things like that cool, especially when you are out in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden there's a sign that tells you that you're about to go into another state.


this is somewhere near the beginning. there are a lot of bear here. we didn't see any, much to d's dismay. not even in the dumpsters.


water.


a shitty photo of ghost pipe, which are some of the coolest plants ever

throughout the summer, the naturalist of the park holds little educational tours to give you insight on either the wildlife or the history of the area. so, saturday night we learned about the history of the kinzua dam, the reservoir, and chief cornplanter WHOSE NAME IS NOT CHIEF CORNHOLE AS D WOULD LIKE YOU TO BELIEVE. on the way to the cemetery, the naturalist asked us all to stand still and he did a little bird call. after a bit, about 3-4 little birds - further research indicates they were some form of warblers - showed up on the tree branch over his head. it seems that these birds are dramamongers, and the particular call he was doing lets the other birds know that there are a couple in a fight and they should come watch.

that ruled.

d took over the grill that night and we had garlic stuffed steaks wrapped in BACON. i took the the remainder smores stuff and made smores pie and we ate it straight from the pan. i also rejuvenated my yuengling supply. the folks at the camp next to us were leaving, so they gave us their leftover firewood. we had a nice, huge fire that night.

it started raining about, oh, 11pm and did not let up all night, but we still made a fire for breakfast anyway on sunday. we were going to bike up the mountain that morning, but the weather was shitty, so we just did a quick trip around the reservoir. we packed up camp and did a little touring.

we stopped at the awesome disaster of kinzua bridge, which is seriously phenomenal in person. just scroll down to 'destruction' on that page, that's the best part.





then a gander at the kinzua dam:



and then home. i think i could have stood another day or two out there.

now if you'll escuse me, i need to go thwap D because he just sent me a hannah montana video in celebration of my new lifestyle choice.

turd.

this week is fundraising week for the MS ride. so, if you were perhaps considering donating, this week would be good.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/ms.batty

it ends friday.

seriously, thank you again to those of you who have donated. i'm honestly really deeply touched by the generosity.

bee and dawndawn: i would like to add your respective loved ones' names to my bandana if that is ok.

lemmetellya, after a 4 hour nap, i feel pretty damn good. actual travel time: about 3 hours 50 min. i had a large mental block when it came to tackling hills, and i gotta say, this ride not only gave me a lot of confidence i needed, but it taught me a lot of lessons. the first major hill we came to, i was way, way too ambitious, and i paid for it. i learned. the rest of the ride i just totally pwn3d and it might not be a lot for some, but i'm really proud of what i did today. the last long climb we did - which was, i dont know, REALLY GODDAMN LONG, i just nailed, had no issues, and i passed more people than i thought i would. about midway up one guy told me to quit making it look so easy. so i had that goin for me.

i walked my bike briefly twice - once on the first major climb because i was too ambitious, i walked half. then, at mile 50, you turn a corner and BAM HELLO HILL and i wasnt really mentally prepared. so, i walked maybe 1/4 mile there. but the rest of the time, my butt was firmly planted in my seat.

here is the route, and the elevation map is ( heeeeere )

i am excited to do this one again next year. and no, rob, we are not hitting the century yet :P