A Few of My Favorite Things

Okay so to those of you out there that might be reading I again apologize for not updating a bit more. Can I just say though, that my new little obsession when it comes to this blog would be the little counter thingy on the side bar? I don't know if it's just so that I know that it is not only me looking at this page from time to time, or just because it is always a pleasant surprise when it goes from 6 to 76 between my personal views, but thank you to all you random (or possibly not so random) people who are making my counter go up. It makes me happy. More later and soon I promise.

~The Singing Ginger

Selling My Body for $

Alrighty so here is what has been up as of late: I joined a crew team...okay well if i am being truly honest with myself it wasn't really a crew team it was more of a crew lesson. I am learning how to row. This is mostly due to the fact that, as previously stated, I am not so good with the whole stay on top of the work out thing, but this way I have to work out because i am in a class, and there are other people expecting me to be there. The end result in this particular class sign up is that I join the college club crew in the fall, and then maybe be a novice on their actual team at some point or another...and then maybe get really good...and get on a bigger team...and go to the Olympics...and win a gold medal...and get to meet the Hamm brothers...so yeah relatively realistic expectation i would think. :)
The other thing i have sorta been up to would be trying to figure out ways to make more money. I currently have a job working for a movie theater, which is great and all but I have been working there for two years and have yet to get a pay raise. So aside from the money trickling in from my minimum wage grunt work I have come up with a few other possible solutions to my cash quest:
*Get another job (tried to do this and it didn't really work out because no one wants to hire me because i am leaving in the fall)
*Sell my crap on eBay (this would make sense because my Dad makes part of his living selling slightly-cooler-than-crap on eBay; but i like all my stuff so I just sorta wanna keep it and make more money so i can buy more crap to keep the old crap company)
*donate plasma
Since the first two ideas didn't really work I figure donating bodily fluids would be the next best thing. So I have decided to donate my plasma for $15.00 and hour (the lady on the phone said it would be about 1.5 hours each visit and that i would get paid about $30.00....so yeah) I have been warned that this is a bad idea and that it is going to be painful and that i should think of some better way to make money, but I think I am going to give this a shot. I will make sure to keep all you special people out there updated on my adventure.
Last but not least i am thinking of volunteering some of my time at the hospital. I figured this would be a pseudo easy process and that i would just walk in fill out some forms, maybe get my picture taken and then some one in scrubs would hand me a baby or two and I would be set. Oh no my friends, nothing in this world is that easy any more. I have to fill out a application, get references, come in for an interview, complete and background check and then sign forms that commit my time for however many months. All of this and all I really wanted to do was hold babies. I didn't think that would be too much to ask but apparently a background check is needed before parents will trust me with their newborns...okay maybe they do have a point. Hope all is well in cyber land!

~The Singing Ginger

Jane and Jimmy

So have you ever had one of those problems? I am not talking monthly problems or family problems or even cash problems; I am talking weird feeling problems. The one you aren't 100% sure is even a problem until one day it hits you that it is. I have one of those problems right now and I can't say if I know at all what I should do about it.
Hypothetical situation time!

So my friend...Jane...is out of school and free for the summer. Jane is single and has been so for the past 7 months; before that Jane was involved in a wonderful two year relationship that ended mostly for the sake of Jane going off to find herself in college and...Jimmy...who was staying to finish his last year in high school. Jane and Jimmy eventually over came their heart ache sometime over the course of the school year and were able to start communicating again. Jane got back home and met up with Jimmy a few times just to hang out (Jimmy had a new girlfriend.) One night Jimmy told Jane that he had broken up with his girlfriend, and that he was looking forward to a blissful summer of singularity. Later that night Jimmy kissed Jane and everything went up side down. Jimmy and Jane decided it would be best to remain friends because Jimmy didn't want a relationship going into his first year of college and Jane thought it might be a good idea to mull this one over a bit before rushing into what would probably become a very serious relationship...again. So now needless to say Jane is very confused and doesn't really know what to do with herself. Both have promised to be honest with each other about other people they might fooling around with, which has yet to be a problem for Jimmy because Jane never gets asked out on dates, but which is proving to be slightly more difficult for Jane. because Jimmy is a big flirt and all the girls like him. Jane is not a jealous person, and I am not just saying that on behalf of Jane because she is one of those people who would say that and then go mug some chick who looked at her man. Jane doesn't do the whole jealousy thing...at least hasn't up to this point...The hardest part of all of this is that even though both Jane and Jimmy have promised to be cool and unemotional and unattached for the sake of their hearts, it just ain't going down that way.


I love the colors of this film but damnit sometimes I just wish it was a black and white feature!

~The Singing Ginger

BORED! (and it's no ones fault but my own)

I need to get off the computer and go do something outside. I need to pump up my bike tires and replace the tubes and take my lovely green wonderful out for a spin. I don't need to be signing on and telling my blog all of this instead of actually doing it. :D

~The Singing Ginger

The Envious Ponderings of Love Handles

So as promised we got to the summer and I stopped blogging as much as I was when this was shiny and new. No oaths on keeping this going but I will up date when I have something special to rant about into cyber space.
Okay so gyms: they suck. As of late I have been trying to reestablish going to the gym at least three or four times a week. This little sweat fetish of mine usually pops up once every six months or so right around the time I am feeling most bloated and lardy. Gyms, much like this blog, get me going on a entertainment kick for two or three weeks before they start to dwindle in interest and die away. Its like a never ending cycle that starts with promises and resolutions about as strongly based as those made by all your drunk friends around New Years and usually ends with a bowl of ice cream and some excuse about it being too hot/ cold/ windy/ sunny/ rainy or airy outside to possibly go to the gym. So right now I am in the first week of a new cycle. I have gone to the gym three times this week and have been refreshed in exactly why I do not like gyms, and also as to why I will not exercise without going to one.

What the purpose of a gym should be is so that over weight people, much like myself, can go and try to reach the unattainable body shapes they so desperately pine for from magazines. It should be a place where all those grotesquely large men you see in speedos around the pool can go to do society a favor by shedding a few pounds. What a gym should be is a place full of large, smelly, perspiring people coming together while wearing clothing that is entirely too tight for their abounding love handles, cellulite curdled thighs and just plain fatty ankles and trying to be more healthy. This is what a gym should be.

What a gym is: a place for those already perfectly sculpted people to come and socialize with other perfectly sculpted people and seemingly whisper behind the back of one chubby chick who dare be using the elliptical 2 secs passed the allotted 30min time limit. What gyms are is a walking steroid commercial complete with shirtless men flaunting muscles no amount of weigh lifting could ever give them...wait...or is that a woman? What gyms are, are a place full of staff that looks good, and people that look good who all smiling and happy together because they are so hyped up on endorphines that they can barely tell what is happening around them. That is what gyms are.

And please. for the love of all that is good, do not give me this crap about all women gyms. Curves is a wonderful idea, I think it is fabulous to have all women gyms, I totally believe that removing men from the equation does take a certain modicum of pressure off already stressed out women. But if you honestly think that having just women around takes off the stress for a fat person walking into the gym you are wrong wrong wrong. Not only will she then be worried about her particular gym outfit that day, but her hair and her shoes and why all the other women look better than she does, and how it is possible that the 50 year old on the recumbent bike next to her is doing like 60mph when she is only doing 20, and why the high schooler across the room is so perky looking in her tank top and short shorts, and if, indeed, that is the natural very orange, very leathery skin color of the yoga instructor.

To those of you who have already achieved the perfect body type/ a body type more then 75% of the population would envy: get out of my gym. You obviously have the tenacity and the willingness and the drive to come to the gym and stay healthy and fit and sculpted; which means I bet you have the tenacity and the willingness and the drive to exercise in a park on on the street or in your home. I don't care where you do it, just don't do it in a gym! I think gyms should have fats days; days when people who are really big can come in a use the equipment and if you aren't 45lbs or more over weight you can not come in for that day. This way it doesn't take every bit of strength a larger person has in their large body to step through the glass doors into a weight room only to see that they are surrounded by the magazine people they envy. This way bigger people don't have to worry about sweating or looking like a fatso or jiggling in all the wrong places while working out. I applaud every person who comes into the gym who is large like that because it is about 100 times harder for you to work out here than it is for people who are in shape to. Because they don't know what you are going through, because they don't know what it feels like to think that people are staring at you all the time. Because they don't know what it is like to have the idea that maybe you should go home and lose a few pounds before you even show your face in a gym. Have you ever wondered why you don't see horribly obese people at the gym? Part of it could be because they are horribly obese for a reason but the other part is because in our society we have crafted a place that should be welcoming to the largest of body types, encouraging and supportive even, into a place where those types are made to feel self conscious while being surrounded by people that have already achieved the goals they so desperately want.

Much love to those who have been able to work out and stay fit or get fit and be healthy. But it does give you something to think about.

~The Singing Ginger

OMG

I did not realize exactly how much crap I was able to accumulate within the tiny little hole in the wall room over the past year...I have so much cleaning to do!

~Singing Ginger

A Bitter Sweet Adieu

I sit here having hugged the last of my friends good bye and looking out onto the pouring rain and I realize how much I will miss this place when it is gone. I have moved all of my earthly possessions out of this tiny hole in the wall I have called a home, placed them in boxes, swept them under the futon, thrown them into the garbage room and must now return to a place that I love, but that has become more alien to me than I thought possible. This is the last wall between the “real world” and myself and it is times like these when the aging process and the reality of it grows heavy on my shoulders. I will age, my friends will come and go, places will come and go, and nothing will stay the same for any longer than it takes for me to grasp the edge of it. I sit in an emptied dorm room and look out onto the same damn pine tree that has been my unchangeable company for the past 9 months. I think about the memories of this past year and realize that my thinking on them in this room, with this storm outside, is a memory in of itself. That there is no true end just continuous living until we die, and who knows? Maybe after death is when the true living begins. I will miss my friends. But it is this time; the time knowing that I miss them even though we will all return, that gives a daunting foreshadow to a time in the not so distant future when we will leave without a round trip ticket, the time when I will say goodbye to those around me with no assurance that they will boomarang back into my embrace. How life changes every day. It makes me sad and yet it makes me happy to have been able to spend this time with the people I have grown to love over this past year. I thank you all for your amazingness, I will see you soon and will love you dearly till then.

~The Singing Ginger