upper arms and other inadequacies

i don't think i've been exercising enough lately. probably some of it has to do with being busy and such, but i also suspect that plain old laziness probably plays a pretty significant role as well.

a bunch of us went out for dinner last night, and one of my friends was wearing a shirt without sleeves---god only knows why, seeing as it was pouring down rain outside, and the clock on the bank said it was like 8 degrees out (centigrade; i'm too lazy to convert). now, he's not stupid or anything, he wore a jacket and scarf and stuff too, but hung them up once we were inside. in any case, he looked _really_ good (probably that's why; he certainly must have realized that it flattered his physique), and i felt the claws of the envy fairy dig deep into my shoulder where she stayed for the rest of the evening, whispering nasty demeaning words of discouragement into my ear.

jon explained to me, when he was here in august, that i really should try putting a little more effort into my wardrobe. i knew it made sense, and of course he was right, but i don't think the full force of it hit home until last night, looking around and seeing everybody dressed casually, and yet still somehow appropriately, and just plain _nice_. then i thought about what i had thrown on earlier, which suddenly struck me as little better than a burlap sack or a wooden barrel, and i wanted nothing more than to turn around and run home, and climb back into bed.

okay, let me try to be fair about this. none of my clothing is spectacular, by any stretch of the imagination, but i'd like to think that it hasn't always been quite _this_ bad. i'm hoping that most of the awkwardness is due to the fact that i could probably fit two of me into any given article in my closet---after all, in the past year, i have lost nearly 50 pounds (incidentally, according to the doctor, that brings me back down to ordinary "overweight," as opposed to "obese;" a step in the right direction, to be sure, but my god the eventual goal seems so far away sometimes).

so, yeah, i need to go buy some new things, and hopefully that will help, but i still don't think i'm quite ready for the kind of stuff jon was talking about. i agree with him that form-fitting clothing looks good on other people, but my opinion is that this is because the other people in question actually have a good 'form' to 'fit.'

like i said, i'm doing much better now, and it's no longer a physically painful ordeal for me to look in the mirror, but that's not to imply that i approve of what i see there. i still hate my body most of the time, but at least now i can occasionally catch a brief glimpse of the potential for this to not have to be the case forever. i just wish "not forever" would end sooner rather than later. i mean, when you think about it, i suppose a body really is like a house in some ways (notice how i strategically and deliberately avoid the word "temple"). you have to live in it; the primary difference is that you can't sell it and move to another one (lord knows i would have done it long before now, were it possible). and unfortunately, just like real houses, it seems prone to clutter, filth, overcrowding, and basically all other manner of disorder and disarray imaginable. having finally escaped the veritable landfill that my mother transformed my parent's house into, i've come to appreciate a certain 'organization' in my living spaces, small though they may be, seeing as i currently live in europe. keeping my apartment reasonably clean isn't nearly as difficult as i would have thought, given the environment that i grew up in, but trying to expunge the residue left over from a lifetime (well, my lifetime, so 20 some odd years, at least) of being trained to habitual overeating and all around lethargy is turning out to be quite possibly the most difficult task i've ever attempted. and it's so easy to get discouraged.

(aside: unlike psychiatrists, i don't blame any of this on my parents, or even see them as directly responsible for it, even though i may sound a little bit like it at some times. rather, i just strongly resent the fact that i absorbed basically all of their [moderately destructive] lifestyle habits simply because i didn't know any better, or for that matter, any other way.)

right, so where was i, before all these tangents within soapboxes within digressions? i seem to remember it having something to do with enno's biceps being unbelievably disproportional to his otherwise 115lbs-and-27in-waist self. no, no bitterness there---just pure unadulterated jealousy. (call a spade a spade, right?) maybe i should start my own rowing team, too. or i should probably try to find something original. the copycat thing isn't generally becoming. not even if you still believe the spiel about "imitation being the highest form of flattery." i already occasionally feel like his 'tag-along' (though i admit that this is likely entirely due to my neurotic paranoia), the last thing i need to do is exacerbate the situation (even if it is only in my head).

and one more random thought for today: how can anyone use this many parentheses (and not be glaringly schizophrenic)?