And I? I am full of prickly venom, wrath, and scorn.

I am also full of a sense of irony that I am blogging about how I hate reading about dieting on other blogs.¹

Time out for a bit of a backstory. If you’re short on time and attention span, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs to where all the cussing begins:

My relationship with dieting began in high school, when I decided I needed to shed the pounds I had collected during a bout of middle school misery. From there it was a long, strange trip from utter nutritional ignorance to fairly balanced wellbeing, with stops at every dietary fad, trend, and wives’ tale along the way.

Oh, I knew all the tips. Eat slowly. Drink lots of water. Exercise regularly. Use a smaller plate. No snacking between meals. Serve smaller portions. Substitute this for that. Never eat after 8 p.m. I studied. I kept a diary of my calorie intake for so long that I knew exactly how many calories were in what amount of food item just by glancing at it. I went vegetarian. I went raw. I tried Atkins. I avoided all fats. I cut carbs. I cut dairy. I cut processed foods. I juiced. I ate “negative calorie” soups, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I downed spoonfuls of fish liver oil. I swallowed weight loss pills. I got up at 5:00 in the morning to go running before work and school. I ran again at night; ashamed that I’d broken down and eaten a cupcake someone cruelly and thoughtlessly left in the break room.

I wish I was exaggerating.

The saddest thing? This epic struggle, this ferocious battle? It was all over 5-15 pounds. I never would have described myself as a chronic dieter during those years, but I was. Sure, I’d indulge here and there, on a weekend or during holidays, and occasionally I’d slip into more prolonged bouts of indulgence. But on the average I was never not dieting. I always, always thought I had more to lose.

Then, something happened. Something deep inside my psyche finally snapped.

[Note: cussing begins below! Yay!]

Somewhere approaching age 30 I decided: you know what? I’m fine with my body after all. AND I DO NOT. WANT. TO DIET. EVER AGAIN. Talk to me about a diet and I will punch you in the face. This is the latent rage I feel at having lost the last third of my life to guilt and misery. This is the blind fury I feel at the very thought of restriction and abstinence. These two giant middle fingers waving in the air? They’re for YOU, dieting. Fuck you up one side and down the fucking other. Diets ain’t shit but hoes and tricks. Food up, diets down. We poppin’ champagne like we won an anti-dieting game.

Just so we’re clear: dieting. It makes me angry. It also makes me rap.

So… what does a diet-hater do when she realizes that she kiiiinda needs to go on one?

Apparently, she writes a blog post about it, so she can spread around her discomfort about facing her fears. Here, gentle readers! Squirm with me! Don’t we all enjoy anxiety? DON’T WE?

The other day a thought hit me like a semi truck: I have spent the last two weeks feeling pissy about other people’s weight loss goals because I am perturbed at the state of my own weight. It’s not a dire situation; it’s just a little of the usual holiday padding. But since the very idea of dieting — of returning to those old restrictions — gets me so agitated that I want to claw my face off, other people’s personal goals turned into an affront. I temporarily became one of those people who can’t stand encountering someone who does things differently from them, because they feel like that difference equals direct criticism. Really. As if their choices are a scathing indictment of my own lack of resolve.

Eating is a lot like spirituality: it’s highly fucking personal. Food evangelists will try to tell you different, but there is no one right way of eating. Yes. I said it. It has been said. People’s needs are so vastly different. Some of us have specific health conditions or aversions. Some of us have ethical beliefs or religious restrictions. Some of us are “all or none” personalities and need to absolutely avoid trigger foods. Some of us have deep emotional ties to food we can hardly begin to unravel.

If someone wants to go on a juice fast for the next eight weeks, bravo. Huzzah! Go in peace, my healthful friend. I will continue to eat cheese, just… maybe not so much of it. Because that’s the kind of “diet” I need right now. Me alone. Because I may have reached a point of no return with dieting, a point where I’ve accepted the way my body is — but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally need to make adjustments to it.

I just don’t think I can call it dieting, though. That’s too much, too soon. Instead I’m going to call it something else. I’m going to refer to it as “paying interest.” That’s what I need to do. A little at a time. Because the interest on those holiday food loans I took out are coming due, and no one wants to get hit with those late fees.

Womp, womp.

What’s your take? Are you getting on or falling off the New Year’s weight loss bandwagon?

¹ Not your blog! Never your blog. I love you. Let’s get married.

First, I’d like to congratulate you on your influence. Thanks to you, nearly every hotel that has ever dreamt of being regarded as “hip” and “chic” and “sleek” and “quotational” has remodeled its bathrooms in accordance with your trendsetting vision. And thanks to you, nearly every single one of those bathrooms now follows an open concept treatment of the shower: a wide expanse of floor-to-ceiling stone tiles fed by an overhead waterfall fixture and shielded with a little bitty strip of glass. Sort of like this:

Except, you know, not split in two and actually following the rules of perspective. Sorry, dudes, I couldn’t fit the whole thing in one shot.

I have to admit I’m drawn to this style of shower because of its attractive minimalist design, and because it provides me an unobstructed view of anyone who might be sneaking into the bathroom to murder me. Not that I could really DO much about it, you know, but at least I get a few extra moments to shriek bad words and toss mini bottles of shampoo in the direction of my killer, which is really all I could hope for as an epitaph: “She died as she lived; cursing and hurling parabens.” Take that, sucka!

On the other hand, I do have a number of concerns about this style of shower, which I will outline here using AS MANY ITALICS AND CAPITAL LETTERS as I damn well feel like using:

• I’m not sure how to put this nicely, so I won’t, but it’s glaringly obvious that these showers are designed by men. Why? BECAUSE THERE IS NO PLACE TO PUT MY LEGS WHEN I SHAVE THEM. Oh, I know. I know. It sounds ridiculous. The widdle woman wants a widdle pwace to shave her wegs! Aw, look at her bowing to the demands of the patriarchy! IT IS SO CUTE WHEN THEY DO THAT. But I’m serious. I’m dead serious. Look me into my eyes. I WANT A PLACE TO PUT MY LEGS. In a tub, it makes sense. You turn around and hoist your leg on the back ledge and merrily shave away whilst the warm water flows gently down your back. But what can I do with a shower like this? The safety bar is too high for me to hike my leg up on without possibly straining a muscle, and its placement under the shower head also means I risk getting all the shaving cream washed off my leg the second I apply it. And the tiny rack for the soap is too flimsy to support me. This leaves me with two options: either I can brace my leg against the wet shower wall, down which my foot will continually slide; or I can simply stick one leg out in the air, grasp my ankle firmly with one hand, and frantically hack away with the razor in the other hand all while balancing on one foot, which sends me lurching and hopping around the shower like I’m half lit. Which, since I’m on vacation, YEAH. I AM. Which is all the more reason for you to make it easy for me, Mr. Shower Designer Man! You fucking prick.
• Since I already brought up the tiny soap rack, I may as well just ask: WHY. IS IT. SO. TINY. One little triangular corner in the bottom third of the shower? Great. Now I get to crouch down while searching for the conditioner amongst all the little toiletry bottles crammed in next to each other. ALSO. I understand it’s fashioned out of gapped wire to allow water to flow through it. I get that. But did you ever stop to consider that things will fall through a rack with large holes in it? THIS IS CALLED GRAVITY, MR. SHOWER DESIGNER MAN. I’m not sure if they taught you about that in shower design school. In fact, I’m sure they didn’t, because I kept losing shit through that thing. It never failed: I’d find the bottle I needed, unscrew the cap, look around for a place to put the cap, give up and put the cap in the rack, the cap would drop through to the floor, I’d curse, pick up the bottle and squeeze some soap out, put it back in the rack at the wrong angle, it would drop through to the floor, the soap would go spilling everywhere, I’d curse profusely, and my husband would timidly peer into the room to see if I was fighting off a would-be killer or a sudden case of Tourette’s. Repeat on infinite loop. RELAXING AS FUCK, as you can imagine!!!!1!

• Not to mention the fact that the very structure of the rack caused the bottles to sit unevenly, which drove the part of me that compulsively requires logic and order ABSOLUTELY UP A WALL. Crookedness is the number one killer of PEOPLE LIKE ME, and dear God, I feel like I’m going to die JUST REHASHING THIS TRAVESTY.
• Speaking of travesties! The shiny waterfall shower head is one. Oh, I know that sounds crazy, because at first glance it looks nice and welcoming. Luxurious, even. A guest could even get excited that this isn’t the same lime-clogged, rusty, dribbly little whackadoodle $5 plastic shower head that her landlord installed at eye level in her home shower. A guest might even do a little dance of joy when she opens the tap to find good solid water pressure issuing forth from above. A guest might start to change her tune, though, when actually gets in and finds herself caught under the mighty and thunderous torrent of the Niagra Falls, choking and sputtering, frantically clawing at her head to check if her hair is still there or if it’s already been washed down the drain. And therein lies the downfall of the “waterfall” shower head: you’re either in or out, baby. It’s all or none. There was no way I could soap up while standing under this thing, which is unfortunate indeed because 87% of my shower routine consists of some form of soaping up. So for 87% of my shower time I stood outside the water, soaping away, feeling CHILLY and AWKWARD and DRY. Which is everything every lady dreams of in a bathing experience, ISN’T IT?
• Aha, that’s what the other shower head is for! you say. Oh, that? That hand-held thing mounted on the wall there? Right. Yeah, I tried using that a few times instead of the overhead, and all it got me was a one-way ticket on the Sad Train. Because you have to hold it to use it, right? So I’d pick it up with one hand and then I’d just stand there uselessly, utterly incapable of scrubbing my scalp or soaping up my back with the just the other hand. So then I put the thing back in its little wall mount, and rotated it so it could spray me, and quickly discovered that it was mounted at just the right height to shoot a sharp jet of water directly into my boobs. SO. Just to recap for those in the back, allow me to reiterate the basic shower needs:
  • I don’t want water gushing ALL OVER ME at ALL TIMES.
  • I don’t want to be completely waterless, either.
  • I need to use both! Of my hands!
  • A stream of water in the boob doesn’t make me feel particularly special!!!1!
• AND ABOUT THAT STREAM OF WATER. I couldn’t help but notice you went against your stylishly minimalist tendencies, Mr. Shower Design Man, and installed an actual shower curtain in this thing. A good thing, too, because GODDAMN. Even with the curtain, the bath mat was already a sopping, soaking mess at shower’s end. I had to use a towel to mop up half the floor after I was done. Even with the curtain, yes. And let me make it perfectly clear that the curtain almost wasn’t even there, because I was continually on the verge of ripping it from its hooks and flinging it out the sixth-story hotel window. Why? Well, it was SCIENCE, Mr. Shower Design Man, which is yet another thing they didn’t teach you in school. See, all the gushing and rushing and splashing and thrashing water created a great draft of air which lifted the curtain and sucked it straight in towards the poor unsuspecting shower occupant. Pretty soon it had me cornered against the far wall, flailing and cussing and kicking valiantly, yet it still advanced, chasing me relentlessly like the Great Ghostly Shroud Of Disgusting Nastiness That Has God Knows What From Who Knows Where On It. CAN YOU MAYBE BE BOTHERED TO PUT SOME WEIGHTS ON THE DAMN CURTAIN, MR. SHOWER DESIGN MAN? Many weights??? BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING! There is nothing quite like doing the drunken Hokey Pokey with a razor while a filthy shower curtain attempts to make sweet love to your entire body. Nothing.

STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID DIE

Look, okay. I get the concept. This shower is fashioned after luxury. It’s supposed to be fancy and spa-like. But it sure as hell didn’t treat me like a fancy spa. Every single time I walked away from that thing exhausted and bedraggled, feeling like I’d just spent thirty-seven minutes wrestling a rabid raccoon in a water park. WHICH DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE. Which is why it’s an apt metaphor for this shower. Why should it be like this? Why? Why?

I see your style, and I raise you some goddamn functionality.

Kindly, and with many bad words,

The Shower Avenger

Because, guys! I went to the hair salon today, and I think looking at angsty self-portraits from back when I had short hair really influenced me, because the first thing I did when I sat down in the stylist’s chair was say, I HATE IT CHOP IT ALL OFF. Just like that. It’s been a real capital-letters-and-no-punctuation kind of day, if you’re wondering.

And so just like that, the hair was gone.

The first thing I did when I got home was announce to the beau, “I want to show all my internet friends!” Because apparently I have no actual in-person friends anymore. Congratulations, I have advanced to the next level of nerdom.

So for my internet friends, here is my hair. Sorry about the shitty flash photos. It is night and I am indoors, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME.

The right side. Nice touch that the beau has my blog post from Monday on his computer screen. IT WAS FATE.

The left side! And Huron Avenue!

The back. And the fact that I still have a string of Christmas lights hanging over the mantel STOP LOOKING AT THAT.

I like to call it my reverse-mullet hair: all party up front, all business in the back. Actually, no. I don’t like to call it my reverse-mullet hair, because I came up with that term just now, as I was typing. So a more accurate statement would be to say that from this point on, I will take great enjoyment in calling it my reverse-mullet hair.

And believe it or not, this small handful of photos required that I take about 13,000 less-than-desirable photographs first. For example, this:

Yeah, I can believe that.

What else is happening? Work is stupid busy right now, which means I haven’t had time to write here. The company buyout was supposed to be finalized last week, which means I had dreams of being unemployed and in my pajamas¹ this week, but then the whole thing got pushed back for yet another month and so now I’m rushing to get all the work done that wasn’t done before because we all thought THERE WOULD BE NO MORE WORK FOREVER. And I’d had a job lead that I thought was solid but now they’re not returning my calls or emails and I’m starting to do that thing where I gaze at myself in the mirror and ask why? Why don’t they like me? Was it something I said? Was it the length of my hair? What? And maybe just in case it is my hair I should send them one of the pictures above and be like see, no really, I HAVE CHANGED, PLEASE TAKE ME BACK.

Also, tonight I made a casserole. This is significant, because I never cook anything that can’t just be heated in a toaster oven or liquified in a blender. I am just trying to be a good wife! Because thanks to ALL OF HISTORY I can’t even make a simple caretaking gesture for my family without smacking my head on some low-hanging traditional gender roles. And I can’t even do the simple caretaking thing all that well, because I RUINED THE FUCKING RICE, ALL IT WAS WAS RICE AND MILK AND SOME CONDENSED FUCKING SOUP AND I FUCKED IT UP.

And with that, I have met my weekly limit of swearing and capslock abuse.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go design something based on the instructions to “make it look like NASCAR.” This is exactly what I had in mind when I decided to get into the graphic arts.

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¹ Sorry, I meant “solidly employed and earning a steady paycheck like a valuable member of society.” That one.

“Yes. Yes, she did,” I replied.

“Fucking Jersey. At least they have a place where they can congregate,” he muttered.

Two years after everyone else first furrowed their brows and uttered WTF? at their television screens, we finally watched Jersey Shore for the first time. I told you I’m slow to adapt to pop culture. I will say this: that show boasts a very high number of people I would be horrified to actually meet in real life. Like, as in all of them. Clearly, I’m going to have to start recording it.

In much more timely news, I AM ON THE COVER OF THE FEBRUARY ISSUE OF ESQUIRE MAGAZINE!

Oh, her? Ignore that chick. I am talking about MY NAME!

This is huge. You don’t see many Lyns out there, guys. As evinced by some of my coworkers’ steadfast refusal to learn how to spell my forename. Whatever. My parents couldn’t afford two Ns, okay?

TRUE STORY: I physically leapt in the air when I saw this cover. I may have even shrieked in glee. I mean, picture me opening the door to a camera crew, a bouquet of flowers, and a giant check from Publisher’s Clearing House. Picture me holding the Vince Lombardi trophy, tears streaming down my cheeks, as I yelp joyously into the microphone, “I’m going to Disney World!” It was like that, but with a magazine cover instead. I was elated. Me and Lyn Decker, whoever she was, we were finally making solid advances towards casting off the oppressive yoke of totalitarian Lynn rule! Together, we were going to make the world safe for all one-ENNed Lyns everywhere.

It wasn’t until half an hour later, when I went online to look for an image of this cover to use in this blog post, that I noticed the “BROO” hanging out on the other side of this lady’s naked bod. Turns out her name is actually “Brooklyn.” That doesn’t fucking count as “Lyn.” I’m sorry. NO DICE.

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¹ Wikipedia tells me Snooki and I were born on the VERY SAME DAY in different years, which clearly means that we have some kind of soul connection. Insert unfunny joke about my burgeoning bronzer addiction here.

If only I had me a sharp knife, I wouldn’t have to go downstairs to the main kitchen at work to prep my food. Slicing tomatos, apples, avocados, rinsing lettuce — all that could be done up here on the second floor, at the semi-abandoned coffee bar near my desk.¹

And the most important part of not having to go down to the main kitchen for every single meal, of course, is that I wouldn’t have to experience… my coworkers.

My coworkers are the bane of my existence. Coworkers? They come up to you in the main kitchen where you are minding your own damn business slicing up some vegetables, and they say things to you like: “WHATCHU EATAN FER LUNCH?” Oh, yeah. These people talk like that. Definitely in my grossly exaggerated imitations of them, they do. They talk weird and they are maybe 1.5 times the size and height of normal people and their features blend together into one lumpy mashed-potato-like mass and they probably inhale through their mouths. I don’t know, I am usually too busy trying to desperately hold myself together to really notice.

Time slows during these moments. The moments where you frantically try to appear intensely engrossed in the task at hand in hopes that they leave you alone, but no. You sense that they’ve sighted you, and now they are moving closer, and now they are hovering just over your shoulder. My breathing gets shallow, the world gets fuzzy at the edges. The knife in my hand moves of its own volition, rising up and then sinking down again, like a seesaw or one of those oil pumpjacks you see perpetually pecking at empty fields. Up. Down. Chop. Chop.

“THAH SHURE LOOKS HELTHY!” they chirrup brightly. These coworkers do not know anything other than blind optimism. They have never felt the cold grip of reality tighten in their chests as they sit up in bed in the black of night, bitterly confronting the smallness of their own existences. They remain eternally surprised by ordinary occurrences, especially as they relate to meteorological phenomena. And their worst infraction of all, perhaps, is that they speak only in all caps.

“KIN YUH BUHLEEVE HOW CHILLY IT IS TODAY!” they shriek, grins permanently clamped in place, guffaws echoing across the room and back again like boomerangs. “BOY IT SHURE IS CHILLY! I HEAR IT IS SPOSED TO BE CHILLY THROUGH TOMORROW! IZ THIS UHLASKAH OR IZ THIS CALIFORNIA! HAW HAW!”

Haw.

Yet despite their outwardly friendly and welcoming nature, my coworkers remain inherently suspicious of anything they do not immediately recognize. “WHAS THAT?!?” they inquire, leaning over my lunch plate like they are examining evidence at an anthropological dig site, or maybe just absorbing a particularly compelling panel of a Cathy comic strip. Through gritted teeth I manage to choke out: “A tomato.” This causes them to furrow their brows at the purply-red heirloom fruit below. “UH TOMAYTO!” they snort derisively. “AH NEVER SEEN UH PERPLE TOMAYTO!”

Never seen a purple tomato.

All the things I want to shout in return come flooding through my head.

Stop breathing on my goddamn purple tomato, motherfucker!

and

You think I’m so goddamn healthy? You don’t know me! I had macaroni and cheese for dinner last night, motherfucker!

and

Of course it is chilly outside! It’s almost goddamn winter! Motherfucker!

But no. No. I can’t say any of that, of course. So instead I just show them my teeth in what I hope passes for a smile, and say weakly: “Yeah, it’s a pretty weird tomato, huh? Maybe it will warm up soon.”

I really, really, really need to get me that sharp knife.

Maybe tonight.

***UPDATE: I did. I got a sharp knife tonight. Badow, how you like me now?

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¹ It has a sink, a counter, and a coffee maker. Brilliant.