You Might Need Two Days to Read This

Wow, I didn't realize it had been almost two weeks since I last wrote here. This semester is kicking my butt a bit more than I thought it would. I have one class that requires a really intense synthesize-all-of-these-articles-and-outline-the-key-ideas 5 page paper every week, and I'm finding that I'm using an entire day of work each week just to do the reading and writing for that class (seriously, it's taking 6-8 hours, an ENTIRE working day). I also decided to heavily front load my semester so that I get my required class presentations out of the way before spring break, and while I think that was the right decision the prep on those takes a lot of time, too. Throw into the mix a major independent study project a couple of friends and I are doing which requires us to meet 10 hours per week right now and the fact that I'm teaching my advisor's undergrad class for the next two weeks while he's galavanting around in Denmark or somewhere and, yeah. That's all the not-so-fun stuff that is keeping me busy.

Fortunately, there are a ton of good things, both big and small, that have happened in the past two weeks. So I will now give you Things That Have Happened Lately:

First, the most exciting thing that has happened this month: Penn bought me a bicycle for Valentine's Day!!! On Monday night I was puttering around cleaning the apartment when he mentioned he was going out for an hour. When I asked what he was up to, he wouldn't tell me (actually, what he told me was, "I'm going to visit my other girlfriend"). When he came back I said, "So, where were you really?" and he said, "Close your eyes and come outside and I'll show you." So I closed my eyes and he led me out into the stairwell, and when I opened my eyes I was looking at a bike! At first I was really confused. He has been talking about getting himself a bike ever since he moved here so that he can use it to ride to work (currently he walks fifteen minutes to his office), so I thought it was his bike. I said, "Oh, you got your bike! That's great!" and he said, "No, it's your bike! Happy Valentine's Day!" And then I noticed that the bike was black with pink lettering and my macho man doesn't do pink, so I suppose I should have known right away that it was for me. It's a Specialized Rockhopper, which means it's technically a mountain bike, which is pretty cool.
I'm so excited about having a bike. I haven't ridden a bike regularly since I was about 12, but when Penn mentioned that he wanted to get one to ride to work, I started thinking that I would like to have one, too. I've been taking the subway to campus once or twice a week since I moved to my new place in October, but part of the reason I don't do that every time I go to work is that the station is a mile from my condo, so it's a 15-20 minute walk each way, and the subway ride itself is almost an hour long (I have to go into the city center, change to a different line, and then go back out to the suburbs) so it makes for a really long commuting process. The thing is, I actually really like riding the subway to work. First of all, it just makes me feel virtuous that I'm doing my teeny tiny part to help the environment by not using my car. Second, I don't have to deal with traffic (which occasionally turns the 25 minute drive to campus into an hour-long one). Third, I do some of my best reading on the subway because most of the ride is underground and there's nothing interesting to look at and I don't have the option of distracting myself with the internet. So yeah, it's a much longer commute than the 25 minutes it usually takes me by car, but it's so much more relaxing than driving. So since I already like taking the subway anyway, I figure I'll take it twice as much now that I can use my bike to get to the station in five minutes instead of twenty. Of course, I can't actually start riding as part of my commute until I get a couple of good bike locks and a backpack to carry my stuff, but soon I plan to join the ranks of the bike commuters.
I have a bit of a learning curve in front of me. I have to get comfortable on a bike again, both physically and mentally. I went out for my first ride yesterday. There's a great park less than a mile from our condo that has 40+ miles of trails, so I rode over there and did a 6.5 mile loop back home. I had so much fun, zooming along and checking out new scenery. I had no idea how freakin' hilly my neighborhood is until I got on the bike, though! I walk the dog around here all the time and streets that don't even feel like an incline when I'm walking had me puffing and panting and (at one particularly pathetic moment) getting off the bike and walking it uphill. So I learned that I really need to work on my stamina and on getting into the habit of using the momentum of downhill stretches to give me a boost on uphill sections. I figured I rode at about 10 mph, which I think was decent for a first ride. My butt is a bit sore today, but I was anticipating that and everything I've read says I just need to keep biking and work through it, so that's the plan.
So physically it's about breaking in my seat and building up my stamina. I can do that. Mentally, I have a bit more of a block to work through because it turns out I'm sort of anxious about riding anywhere near traffic. I actually wanted to ride further yesterday, but I stopped where I did because the path was going to cross a busy intersection and I thought, "Nah, I don't want to deal with cars." Obviously, this is something I'm going to have to get over if I want to use the bike to go anywhere other than the one park by my house. And I do. I have all these lofty ideas about biking not just to the subway but to restaurants or to run errands. I really can't think of anything I could need to do that's not within biking distance, and I love the idea of becoming more and more car-free. I HATE driving. Seriously, all capital letters, HATE it. Plus once Penn gets his own bike there are all sorts of fun places around town we could ride together. The idea of being a serious cyclist is really appealing to me. But if I'm going to do that, I need to learn to cross intersections. So, yeah. I tried to read one of those bike traffic safety guides online but it only served to freak me out by showing me approximately a dozen ways I could be hit by a car that I'd never have thought of on my own. Current bikers, please give me some confidence. I'm content to just be a recreational park and trail rider, I guess, but I'd really like to take more advantage of my new mode of transportation.
So, yes, I love the bike! Talk about a Valentine's Day gift that beats the heck out of chocolate and flowers! (Which, incidentally, I would have been perfectly happy with. I told him to just get me a chocolate bar or some sexy underwear, which was why the bike was such a huge surprise.)

Anyway, that's my big exciting news. Other than that, here are some little things of note:

• After slacking off a bit on exercise and tracking my calories in November and December, in January I went back to tracking my eating on sparkpeople.com and really working out (as opposed to walking the Meatball at his pace for thirty minutes and counting that as my workout...which is fine sometimes, but not for ALL of my monthly workouts). They say people generally put on weight when they get into relationships, and that was true for me. I was maintaining my weight well until Penn and I moved in together, but then I started eating too much like him. We were doing things like cooking an entire box of pasta for dinner (That's 8 servings! And Penn was eating twice as much as me, but still!), or eating an entire bag of Tostitos over the course of a Football Sunday, or drinking two or three beers just with Saturday night dinner. Then I went home for Christmas and ate and drank non-stop with my family, and by the end of the holiday binge I was feeling gross. I judge my body by whether or not my clothes still fit, and, okay, things were not dire. I hadn't even gone up a full size. But some of my smaller clothes were starting to feel a bit snug. And my mom gave me a bra for Christmas (what, your mother doesn't buy you Christmas gifts at Victoria's Secret?) in my usual cup size and when I tried it on, well, my cups runneth over, so to speak. I tried to blame it on the fit of the bra, but I knew that it was actually just proof that I had put on a few pounds. So when I got home from vacation I went to work. Skiing for five days straight was a good kick-start, and then I spent all of January doing a lot of Exercise TV routines (the 30 Day Shred program is awesome) and a lot more strength training and I've been eating healthier. Now I'm back to honestly tracking my food, and I've realized that I just can't eat like my boyfriend does and expect to stay slim. Fortunately, he's really understanding and although he occasionally says, "Are you sure you don't want another delicious beer?" he doesn't make fun of the fact that I immediately portion our pasta into eight separate servings now or count out my portion of chips. After all, when I met him and he fell in love with me, I "sold him" a certain package and that package includes being thin. I feel like I owe it to him to maintain my physical shape as much as possible throughout our life together (just like I feel he owes it to me to maintain the fit body he has now, baring any health complications, of course. I realize this is sort of a controversial attitude and maybe I'll elaborate on it sometime in an entry that isn't already 200 pages long). Tracking what I put in my mouth seems a little obsessive, I know, but I promise I have a very healthy attitude about food and my body. If anything, I'm more vain and prideful about my body than I probably should be (even when I'm a bit heavier than usual). I have a very good friend whose life has been an ongoing struggle with disordered eating, so I know a lot about unhealthy eating habits and I'm very careful about making sure I never stray into that territory. (For one thing, I don't even own a scale). But this is how I think about it: I am not a dieter. I never will be. I like a wide variety of food, I think eating is one of life's great pleasures, and I don't believe in depriving myself of anything I want. So what works for me is portion control, and tracking what I eat helps me do that. If I know I'm going to drink four beers when we're out on a Saturday night, I'll enter that into my food tracker in the morning and then plan accordingly, eating one less tablespoon of peanut butter at lunch or drinking only half a Coke at lunch. I always give myself what I want, I just do it in the proper portions. It really is that easy. I try to be mindful of portion sizes and of eating a more protein-heavy dinner if I had a particularly carb-heavy lunch just to balance things out, but ultimately I eat what I want and I don't beat myself up if I eat "too much" on a given day. In fact, some days I don't track at all. But overall it puts me on the right track, and I feel so much better physically now than I did in December. Incidentally, the bra my mom bought me for Christmas? I own 30+ bras so after being worn a few times that one ended up at the back of the drawer until last week, when I went, "Oh, I haven't worn this one in a long time." I put it on and, what do you know, it fits! No more spillover fat!
  
• I heard from a contact that I need for my dissertation. Of course, we haven't actually managed to set up a meeting yet, but at least the ball is sort of rolling.
• I'm going to Russia a month from tomorrow! I got my tentative itinerary yesterday, and there is more free time for vodka drinking than I thought. Hooray!
• I can't stop playing X-box. Or, rather, I can't stop wanting to play the X-box. I do manage to drag myself away from it and do my schoolwork, but that doesn't mean I'm not staring at it longingly the whole time. Rolling things up in Katamari is so much fun, and Penn introduced me to another game that I call The Car Smashing Game, although I think it might actually be called Burnout. Whatever it's called, you get points not for winning the race but for crashing into as many cars as possible in the process, and, let me tell you, that is satisfying!
  
• I successfully managed to get Penn addicted to The Sopranos. We started watching the first season when we were in Maine, and now we'll sometimes watch four hours straight at night. In a month we've made it all the way through season four. We're at a standstill now, though, because I don't own the fifth season yet and my budget this month is tight and doesn't really have much wiggle room for buying DVDs. I fluttered my eyelashes at Penn and told him he could buy it for us, and he said, "No, that's okay, I'll wait until you can buy it, that way the whole series belongs to you." I was like, "Why does that matter?" After all, we're together now. I asked him if he is envisioning a future in which we have an acrimonious break up and in the process of dividing up all our possessions we engage in a ten minute argument about who gets to keep the Sopranos DVDs. He assured me that no, he isn't at all worried about whose stuff is actually whose, he just wants me to have the satisfaction of completing a DVD set on my own. Goof. So, yeah, I may be breaking down and buying the fifth season sooner rather than later, because we're on a roll and I really want him to see the rest of the series. Of course, I don't know what we're going to watch at night when we're done with the series. How can anything top The Sopranos?
• Watching The Sopranos every night was leading to some bizarre dreams. I never really remembered them, but I was waking up every morning thinking about Paulie or wondering if there's any significance in the fact that all of Tony's mistresses are brunette when Carmela is blonde. It turns out that I'm kind of a crazy sleeper, which I never realized until I started sleeping with someone every single night. Penn says I sleep with my hands in loose fists all night long and that a lot of times when he's holding me at night I punch him in the chest! Not hard, thank goodness, but who knew I was a sleep puncher? And when I'm not punching, I'm apparently a tickler. He said a lot of times he wakes up because I'm flicking my fingers over his chest. And I very rarely remember my dreams in the morning, but Penn says he has to wake me up at least once or twice a week because I'm whimpering and thrashing around like I'm having a nightmare (I never even remember him waking me up when this happens). On the other hand, I obviously have some good dreams, too, because one night a couple of weeks ago I woke both of us up because I was laughing in my sleep! We had just fallen asleep when I let out a single resounding, "Ha!" and woke both of us up. It was so funny. I couldn't fall back to sleep for about ten minutes after that because I kept laughing thinking about laughing. Good thing Penn is such a patient guy and holds me all night anyway even though I'm a punching, laughing crazy person.