irritated – Sweat & Sparkle

Yesterday was a horrible, frantic, stressful, irritating, poo-poo day. I arrived at work to find a heap of crap that needed my attention, and of course all of it was time-consuming and frustrating to complete. And the entire day, it was like I had an office full of toddlers, endlessly chanting my name: “Mommy, Mommy, my email doesn’t work! Mommy, Mommy, is there something wrong with the Internet? Mommy, I have this weird pop-up on my computer!”

Okay, my co-workers don’t really call me Mommy, but they may as well. It would be flattering how much they rely on me if it didn’t impose on my time and cause ceaseless interruptions. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them rushed to my office because they couldn’t tie their shoes, or because the receptionist is lookin’ at them funny.

All I wanted to do at the end of the day was get home. I wanted to see my husband, joke about my rotten day, and leave the day’s stresses at the door.

Instead…I couldn’t get home. I grit my teeth as I inched along in traffic. I could have crawled home on my hands and knees faster! It ended up taking nearly an hour and a half to get home. I found out later it was a car accident that closed the major road, but all I knew at the time was that I wanted to be HOME.

When I finally pulled into the driveway, I was so irritated that I could have yanked off the steering wheel and slung it like a frisbee. I took a deep breath…then another…then about a million more, because I didn’t want to go inside and snap at my husband and stepson or take it out on them. What I really needed was a well-stocked bar and a personal masseuse, but I had to settle for deep breaths, then I finally went in.

I wanted to comfort eat. I wanted to guzzle soda, much on sweet snacks, curl up on the couch next to my husband, and let the hassles of the day melt away. God, it was so tempting. I came very close to caving.

But I knew I would be upset with myself for doing that. I would wake up the next day knowing I had given in to stress and pigged out just because I had a rough day. Sissy!

I put on my workout clothes, announced to my husband that I was going to work out, then proceeded to do just that.

Yay for me, right? Well, mostly. I wasn’t 100% angelic. My stepson, in an effort to be sweet and helpful, went to the store and got drinks and snacks for the three of us. I normally don’t like potato chips, but something about barbecue chips just calls my name like they are fortified with crack. I ate way more of those than I should have, then made myself reluctantly close the bag and put it the hell away.

The good: I didn’t binge. I worked out.

The bad: the damn potato chips

Bottom line, though, after such an annoying and stressful day, I typically would have overeaten and not worked out. So the evening wasn’t perfect, but compared to what it could have been, it was a vast improvement.

Searching for motivational weight loss images and quotes today, I came across this:

Crap

I am not sharing this because I like it. Quite the opposite. I think it’s pandering, trite, asinine bullshit.

What is the main message to this crap? That I should lose weight so that I don’t lose my easily straying man, who, according to the creator of this steaming pile of excrement, is so busy ogling other women that he won’t notice if I lose weight anyway?

In a nutshell, this image and its accompanying wordy (and un-proofread) text boils down to: (1) all women are petty, jealous bitches ferociously competing in a global beauty contest of epic proportions, apparently launching into cave-woman style MMA matches to declare ownership of someone’s man, and (2) all men are immature assholes constantly and hopelessly on the prowl for another woman, any woman but the one he is with, to check out and caress hungrily with his lusty eyes.

So, to answer the oft-repeated question above: no, I’m not okay with it. With any of it. I am not motivated by the concept of alluring other women’s dates to eye me up, thank you, and quite frankly, if my husband felt the need to “check out” other women as regularly as is implied in this moronic image, then he would not be my husband for very long. Luckily, I didn’t settle for an immature boy-child.

Maybe this image is the end-all, light-a-fire motivation for someone. Not me. Too insulting and catty and high-school-drama-ish for me. But I don’t like images or quotes, in general, that assume all women want to lose weight just so they can wear bikinis, meet society’s approval, and preen and hope everyone is staring at them and deeming them tiny enough. I prefer an emphasis on being strong, being fit, dominating, conquering, overcoming. Making yourself proud. Proving you can do it.