Time to change.

I went for my annual today. I was not happy about this. I knew they would put me on their evil scale and then prod my lady parts with their devil tools. Truth is, the worst part was the weigh-in. I'm at my top weight. This is not good.

When I asked the doc about birth control (even though I smoke), he told me that he'd give it to me not because it's a good idea, but because even though I'm a smoker, I'm under thirty-five.

In the end, he essentially told me what my last doc told me at my last annual exam in 2002 (albeit in a more polite manner): I've overweight, don't exercise enough, have blood pressure on the high side, and really need to take better care of myself.

The summer before I went to law school, I got in shape. I went to Curves with my mother. Yeah, I know, Curves is for old folks and out-of-shape losers. That was my thought, too. However, last time I went, I also quit smoking and lost twenty pounds in two months. The best part about it is that I actually, you know, go to Curves. When I had gym membership, I never went. The lack of structure at the gym puts me in an amotivational state. The time commitment is too much. Curves, I go, I spend my thirty-five minutes, get my exercise, and but for the awful music (which I secretly enjoy, in a We Built This City sort of way), it's painless.

It's time. Again. It's time to get myself in better shape. I have an appointment for my weigh-in and measure-in tomorrow at 5:30. I am quitting smoking when my current pack is finished, or on Monday, whichever comes first. I am going to eat better, particularly at work. No more Dunkin' Donuts sandwiches for lunch. Time to change. What excitement.

The perfect crime.

Saucy Vixen will go to jail for ... Carrying around a gun shaped like a penis 'What sexual activity will you go to jail for?' at QuizUniverse.com

A guy with a shaved head and tattoos is hot.

A guy with a shaved head and tattoos and a motorcycle is hotter.

My best friend, Mike (who happens to have a shaved head and tattoos), drives a pickup truck that doesn't go over fifty-five miles per hour (sixty at best). He paid five hundred dollars for it this past winter after his Neon got totaled and Geico decided not to pay for it. To add insult to injury, he's still making payments on the no-longer-functional Neon.

Unfortunately, Mike and I have not seen enough of each other lately. But we'll be seeing each other a lot more often coming up. And why? He's getting a motorcycle and I'm gonna be his bitch. It may only be a crotch rocket, but it still rocks.

Sure, it's a foolish purchase. Sure, the money would better be spent on, you know, a car that runs. But it's not for me to tell him how to spend his money.

Speaking of foolish purchases... I gotta get me some chaps.

Thoughts from the Ladies' Room.

Every now and then I walk into the public restroom in my office building and think to myself, wow, it smells like shit in here.

And then I think: Well, at least it's the appropriate place to smell like shit.

I'm not a nerd!

I totally stole the following from Chris's LJ.





I am totally not a nerd, y'all. This comes as a bit of a surprise. Of course, it was all computer and science based. If they had word nerds, though, I may have scored higher. But then again, I believe that Scrabble is the worst game ever. So I guess I'm not a nerd after all.

Judicial discretion?

I am not making this up:

Authorities are investigating allegations that now-suspended Mobile County Circuit Judge Herman Thomas periodically removed prisoners from Mobile County Metro Jail and spanked them in a room at the courthouse, according to courthouse sources involved in the inquiry.

Once inside the room, according to the sources, the judge would ask the young men to drop their pants and prepare to be spanked with what they described as a wooden or fraternity-like paddle.

I can tell you don't believe me. But I'm sure you'll believe MSNBC.

The worst game ever.

I had never played Scrabble before.

"But Saucy Vixen," my friends would tell me. "What with your penchant for words, you'll rock at Scrabble."

It never seemed like much fun to me, though. It seemed like work. But not wanting to completely dismiss it, I decided I'd try it out.

Saturday I had some friends over. Chris cooked dinner. I bought a cake. And we played Scrabble.

And you know what? It's the worst game ever. When I say, it's the worst game ever, what I mean is: Scrabble is the WORST game ever.

You know what happened? Guy From Work won. He won. This is not surprising unto itself. What is surprising (and downright irritating) is how he won. At this point, I must take a slight digression: I don't like the challenging part of Scrabble. It's stupid. I lose a turn if I challenge the fact that Chris chose to spell the word "null" with only one "L"? Not cool. Not cool at all. So instead of taking the chance that I'd lose a turn, I kept a list of words I thought were bulltwaddle so I could look 'em up afterwards.

Guess what word Guy From Work used. Oe. What the fuck is oe? Spell check doesn't even pick it up! It's not even a word! (I apologize for offending the delicate sensibilities of my readership by using the f-word. I generally don't do such things, but this oe nonsense really cooks my goose.)

Oh, but it is. It's a damn weather formation off the coast of some African island. Even though you won't find "oe" on dictionary dot com, it was in the Scrabble dictionary. Total bull. Oe.

I hate you, Scrabble. Damn you. Damn you, Scrabble, to the Hell I don't believe in. Die, die, die. I hate you.

Part II: God?

My current boyfriend is into the God thing.

He's not pushy about it, would never demand that I share is his religious or spiritual beliefs, doesn't chastise me for the way I act in this regard, or for my feelings on the matter. Once, in the beginning, he announced that I do "believe" in God, I just don't know that I do. Since that time, he hasn't said much, other than the fact that he doesn't wish to discuss God or religion or spirituality with me.

This displeases me, if for no other reason than I don't like people to unilaterally decide for me which tops are and are not off limits for discussion. Just because I am dispassionate about the matter (or even passionately against the active practice of religion (for me, not for others)) should not disallow me from speaking intellectually about something. In short, I don't like being told what to do, and declaring an issue off limits is a form of telling me what I am allowed to speak about, what is acceptable to speak about.

But wait. There's more. As much as I hate to admit it, I am a bit resentful. Not of his relationship with God. (As an aside, I cringe when writing the phrase "relationship with God." I find the concept of a personal relationship with something called God so egomaniacal. As if this Thing Called God has time to develop relationships with all of his believers.) It's not his beliefs I resent, it's merely what I perceive to be his sense of spiritual entitlement, if you will. A sense of religious superiority. As if I am somehow less compassionate, less good, less of a person because I don't subscribe to a definite belief in the Almighty. As if he (and others who are steadfast in their beliefs in God) is somehow more "right" than I, "better" in some way.

This is, of course, likely my own issue, developed by past relationships and past dealings with people more religious and God-fearing or God-loving than I. It's not that I disbelieve in God, per se. It's more that I don't care to think about it. And I am resentful of the fact that most religious folks are haughty in their beliefs and arrogant in their humility.

"Finding" God isn't going to make me better, or more capable, or happier. I depend on myself to achieve what I want in and out of life. Why isn't that enough? Why does there have to be more? Why must people insist that I cannot be a healthy and vibrant person on my own?

I am a baker's wet dream.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I was at the doctor's office for a urinary-tract-cum-kidney infection. Doc gave me a ten-day dose of Ciprofloxacin. It's the anti-anthrax antibiotic. It's some serious stuff. It made me tired, it make me woozy, it made me feel like poop. But it cleared up the the infection.

Merely a day after the ten days were up -- Saturday -- I began to feel a tad itchy. I began to get that not-so-fresh feeling. I ignored it, convinced that the Powers That Be wouldn't be so evil as to throw another infection my way.

I was wrong.

The antibiotic killed nearly all the bacteria in my body. If I'd been exposed to anthrax, I'd have been set. But it killed the good stuff, too. Antibiotics: Our friends, our enemies. As it happened, it killed the bacteria that prevents an overgrowth of yeast.

So today, I finally went back to the doctor. "I have a yeast infection," I said, explaining my previous course of treatment.

He swabbed the delicate folds of my nether region and came back thirty seconds later. "You have a yeast infection," he said.

I could bake bread in my lady parts. I have a brewery in my pants. I am not happy.

God?

I've never really been big on the whole God thing.

When my parents made me go to shul with them on Rosh Hashanah -- long after I'd turned thirteen and they'd promised that religion would be my choice -- I became irate. Why did I have to go? I didn't see the point.

I remember trying to feel something during services. But all I got out of it was a lot of standing up, sitting down, reading along, and boring lectures made by Rabbis who didn't have a very good grasp on proper grammar. It was boring, really. I didn't feel some overwhelming sense of community. The dogma was bothersome. I could (and still can) recite the Sh'ma, but it's wholly rote; it means nothing to me.

For a while, I dated someone who is very involved in spirituality and personal growth. When I told him that I sold my soul on eBay, he insisted that despite that, I still do have a soul. When I spoke of my refusal to believe in some higher power, he pointed out the fallacy of my thinking in ways that I could understand. And so I became interested, and even hopeful, that there really is a something out there, something more, something bigger than us.

I tried to be spiritual. I read a lot, I learned a lot, and I talked a good game. I developed personal philosophies and pontificated on them. I talked about nonduality as if I had a clue. I professed to be uber-learned about earth-based spirituality and polytheism. I developed my own mores, and was often told that I had an extremely skewed moral compass. I relished that.

At the same time, I began to loathe all organized religious acts. I had a visceral reaction at weddings, at the recitation of Hebrew words, and the empty acts of Jewish tradition (not empty unto themselves, but empty because the people partaking in them had no clue why they were doing what they were doing, but followed the tradition blindly). At work, I would listen to people talk about their relationships with God. I would abstain from comment, holding my tongue, lest I say something offensive and and awful.

These days, I don't really have a set of beliefs. I abhor dogma in any form, including some of the tenets of Judaism. The mysticisms are fascinating, but I know so little about them. I can't stand blind faith. I don't look to God for the answers. I don't trust that everything will be "okay" because God will make it so.

Instead, I have faith in myself. I know I haven't lived that long, but I have gotten through everything that's been thrown my way thus far. I am strong and I am confident that everything will be okay. In fact, it's not even so much that I'm confident that things will be okay: I know it. I know that no matter what happens, things will be, well, fine.

I wish I believed in something more, something greater. I wish I could have that sort of faith in anything. But instead, I have to be content with knowing that I make my own decisions and that I am what makes me happy, or sad, or successful, or not. That will have to be enough.