Now this is right

I talked it over with my surviving female relatives and, while noting the opinion of avitable, we agreed that retail lingerie is the right thing for me to do.

Who else but me could appreciate and sympathize with the issues common to those blessed with largesse?

and who can forget this photo??



Jeez I look almost flat chested in that one. Need to find more photos.

Why all the fuss?

OK so I finally got Google Analytics to work. It told me what I already knew, which is no one stops by here anymore, which means I need to start posting every day again - that even though (as discussed) the narrative arc has closed - there is more to say.I'll start with the obvious: what the hell is going on?

In August, after my last day of work, I made the decision to allow myself to be underemployed for a semester in the hopes of getting my mental and physical health back. From September through December, I have been doing just that, and you know what? It has been fucking great.

I feel so much better.

But now it's time to work, and though I am still teaching part time to keep a roof over my head, I need to do more work to make the financial part of my life function. Right now my choices are:

1) get a job in retail. I am thinking Bloomingdales, fitting gals for bras. I would be so good at that.

2) go to a temp agency and indicate that I am good at several office type skills and see if they can give me a job two days a week.

Please note: everyone thinks I should go with option 2 because it is far more professional. But I kind of want to help young ignorant women learn how to pick out a bra.

What say you?

PS another foot of snow to fall tonight. Yippee!

Yes, I care. I care a lot.

I can't get the snippet of code from Google Analytics to stick to the template of my blog. The error message I am getting is something like the XML code is unworthy or some crap like that.

WTF?

Was it always this hard?

The whole problem is enough to make me drink red wine and stuff my face with basmati rice.

And if you don't understand that, we really can't be friends anymore.

Um but honestly can someone help me make this work? Because I am reported to be smart and I am failing. FAIL, FAIL, FAILING.

I do love you though. I can't help myself, and love is all that matters.

(But I fucking want my stats). (Please).

Educate Me

Would someone please explain to me what is so great about Google Analytics? I tried to sign up for it, but it appeared to be telling me that on every single post, I have to plunk in a mile of code. Am I not reading the instructions correctly? Because if they really want me to plunk their special code into every single post I am not sure I can be their friend.

Also: whether this is true or not (and I'd like to know) is the information provided by Google Analytics worth all the (apparent) trouble???

One of y'all must know. Someone warm and toasty like Jane, or perhaps Adam.

Help. Please.

For Cath

It's snowing in New York City, and my, is it pretty.

Oh My Heck

So much has happened.

And yet nothing has really changed. I am the same underemployed college adjunct as I was and I have gathered no steam on the Phd front. I have only the most filmy vision of the future.

What's interesting is my total conviction that although things are not so great financially right now, they will get better. The getting better might be greatly facilitated by my getting off my ass and finding an additional job - but something (probably irresponsibility) is preventing me from taking that course. Something else seems... pending. I have started writing again suddenly, and it is not just a meandering trickle of over emotionalized clap trap about my hurt feelings or my wounded sense of entitlement. It is ever so much better than that - but I am not ready to share it yet. Soon.

I have missed you all. What happened? Well. What happened is that for a long, long time, this blog was fueled by a narrative. A story. A bad and terrible story, yes, but people want to know how it ended. Now that it has ended, good heavens what is left for us all to say to each other.

I really like to think that there is more to say. There must be more to say, because I think about you all so very much. Sizzle. LizB, KateP, LAS. All of you. But no one more than Adam Avitable. Adam, honey, I am trying to get my shit together and be a good friend. I am narcissistic and complicated and downright fearful that if you really knew me, you'd pass. But these are no excuse for my rudeness, and regardless of all other considerations, I adore you and your blog. And did I mention you?

The end.

What happened to me?

A lot has happened. I lost my job, and that turned out to be a good thing. As it turns out, I hated that job, and I don't miss it. I miss the paycheck a lot, but for $3126 per month? That much pain? Not worth it at all.

I have also been doing some, oh, mental and physical inventory in an effort to somehow get myself back to where I was before the Recent Unpleasantness*.

Guess what? At the moment in my life when I thought I was the most plain and dreary looking, I looked like this:



I was so terribly insecure. I actually thought having those hips made me fat. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. So not funny.

How are you?

* That whore my father married has sold our house, and moved back to the old neighborhood, and gee it's a good thing I don't have that horrible job anymore because she has been lunching with my former coworkers and telling them what a terrible person I am to have "done this to her." Whatever could she mean?

Help me decide

My brother has pissed me off by suggesting that my running days are over. That I can't handle it anymore. That my knees can't handle it anymore. Blah blah. In response I have decided to jog/walk/crawl, whatever it takes, another marathon.

I want a January marathon to mark my birthday. Top contenders are:

1) Miami Marathon - it's Miami, after all.

2) Carlsbad Marathon - San Diego is perfect weather and terrain.

3) Angel Marathon - Boulder City, NV (never been there - sounds cool).

4) Disney World Marathon - magic kingdom??

5) Ocala Marathon - again, Florida is great for running (crawling, too).


Anyone have an opinion on this? Oh and to be clear, I will stomp my brother on this issue. Nothing pisses me off more than people who don't believe in me.

Love,

Nina

Try this

Cossette is getting married soon, as you all know if you read the previous post --- also, I just told you. So she is trying to get more exercise so she will look hot in her dress. OH. In case any of you care about such things:



If you are a girl or a woman or a friend of a girl or woman, you know you need some tight abs to look good in that dress. TIGHT. ABS.

So we've been having a little contest. Each day we hit the floor and do as many crunches as we can without stopping and email each other the number.

Reader, give it a try. Get on the floor, do as many crunches as you can without stopping, and comment your number. (No fibbing!) Highest number gets a present from me.

Perfect, perfect

Item the first: Please go immediately to P's blog and lavish upon her the love and devotion that is her due. Heaven never dreamed up a more beautiful bride. I mean it. Go and give love to the most beautiful bride in the history of marital perfection.

Item the second: I had grand plans for my future. They included me never going on another date as long as I lived, vacationing every year with my friend Cossette, playing board games together until we both grew old, selecting the same retirement community and dying at precisely the same moment of some painless and unknown ailment. It was the perfect plan.

Cossette met someone. Two months ago. And guess what? She is getting married in Vegas on the 21st of September. This is not perfect for me, but I have met the man who has destroyed my life's agenda, and I must say he is perfect for her. And about that, I could not be more pleased.

So now I need someone else to grow old with. Anyone play monopoly?

Back to Black

Many of you said you didn't like the black background, and I agreed with you, mostly. But the blog started black and when I started messing around with the template, everything else just seemed all wrong. So now we are back to black, if not permanently, for now.

More on fasting: I decided to fast for a week in order to shrink my stomach and start the weight loss process. Boy howdy, was that a good time. I made it six days. And you know what? My jeans were every bit as unwelcoming as they were the day I started.

So now I am eating again... but not much. Because I bought a scale. And if you know anything about me and my issues with numbers, you know I will be in constant competition with that scale to force it to give me a lower number. Because the current number?? Inexcusable. Totally and in every way unacceptable.

People, I used to be hot. Granted, I was 23 when the hotness was occurring, but I don't think it is too much to ask, at 40, to be recognizable as the same person who was hot as 23. The great fun of this, of course, is that when I was 23, I thought I was ugly.

Young folks everywhere: no matter what nature gave you, you look great. Enjoy the hell out of it.

Anyone out there think I can lose 20 pounds in 40 days? Because right now, my obsession with numbers says that is the goal. Oh and advice on how to do it is always welcome. And yes, I know the basic truth about weight loss: eat less; weigh less.

Love,

Nina

Wonder

I wonder, too. Where is she? Where is that other, better voice who thinks all this is a story, rather than an merely a break down? Where is the person who makes all the drama into four paragraphs that end in a joke? Where is the person who makes all my problems funny? Where the hell is Nina?

Well.

Nina's here. The reason she isn't saying much is that her primary fuel is intensity - usually negative intensity; she talks when things are the most scary, the most painful, the most chaotic.

Note here the absence of these from my life: fear, pain, chaos. I don't have these things. All I have is sweet, uninterrupted calm.

Ever since I lost my job (last day: August 8th), I just haven't felt anything but completely serene. This makes no sense at all - considering the following:

1) I have no job (August 8th).

2) I have no money (OK, I have a little - but it is owed elsewhere).

3) I have no one to fall back on (no parents, no spouse, no trust fund).

4) I have no ambition (unless you count remaining calm - this I fully intend to accomplish).


I think my cousin Meg said it best the other day when we were having lunch. I listed all the reasons I should be feeling bad and she said, "Eh. You have misery-fatigue. You're just out of bad emotions the way you might run out of milk or eggs. You'll feel bad again someday. Probably just not any time soon."

Is that not about the smartest thing you've ever heard? I told her she was perfectly right. I just don't have anything frenetic and scary in my nervous system - so Nina has nothing to say unless I teach her to speak another language.

I didn't realize it at the time, but when I posted that picture of me in Iceland, I posted the last image of me ever taken before my dad got sick. That picture (2006) is therefore the last known image of me feeling good until very recently, when I started, due to misery-fatigue, to feel perfectly fine.

I'd take a picture but I've gained weight and - oh my God - did I tell you I bought a scale so I could see how bad it was?? HOLY BABY RHINO. I am going to lose weight even if it takes a chainsaw.

Next post will be about THAT. Or THIS (Nina looks down at her inexcusable breasts) and how much less (or is that fewer??? - Ugh, the grammar of them - there needs to be)) and how she plans to go back to normal. Hint: fasting causing hallucination and panic and sometimes just mundane hunger.

How are you?

(I feel pretty much awesome, in case that wasn't clear).

Three minute post

My flight boards in three minutes, so I have three minutes to tell you that my boss offered to write me a letter of recommendation and I now have until December to decide what to do.


This is welcome news.

Also, I am more confused than ever about what to do. But at least now I have more time to be confused.

Here is a picture for you:



That is me, Tex, and Tess in Iceland. Very overserved.

I love you because you are so beautiful, and I can't help myself.

I'm available

No. Not in that way. Stop looking at me like that.

As of eleven days ago, I no longer have a job. Oh wait, I do, but only until August. Then I will be most assuredly available (unless I want to move to North Carolina.) (Which I most assuredly do not.)

Everything but my wallet says I should not go there - that I should stay here and try to make my way, somehow. Any which way.

And y'all know what? I have no idea how to do that.

For starters, I don't think I want to teach anymore. I have been beyond burned out for a long time. People (almost everyone I know) say I should finish my doctorate. Ha! Those people think "getting my doctorate" is something as simple as running out for a jar of peanut butter. (IT"S TOTALLY NOT! IT'S A COMPLETE PAIN IN THE ASS!)

So what should Nina do? (She is open to suggestions.) (But maybe hold off on telling her to get her doctorate.)

While I Wait

I have about $200 worth of prescription medication being filled right now, and gosh I don't know whether to feel grateful that such medication exists or melancholy because the reality is I need all that stuff to keep me... alive. Well, let's go with gratitude, since gratitude is more attractive than self loathing.

Speaking of attraction, suddenly I am questioning my "celibate for life" policy based on nothing but the fact that celibacy now seems somewhat severe. Sometimes (often... always) when I am at the gym, I look at the men in the pool and consider whether they are my type or not. People, I haven't had a type since Bill Clinton was president. What to do about this? Should I start applying lipstick again? Should I try to get into my skinny jeans and attempt to be attractive? I really don't know. More on this later.

Oh! I moved. A block away from my job. Two days ago I got the worst performance review in the history of my career, but since I am focusing on the positive, we'll just not talk about that. Well, not today.

Caution! Here is what could happen to your apartment if you go to graduate school a whole lot:



Oh and I bought a dresser that fit perfectly into my apartment. (Please note that I had to buy children's furniture in order to accomplish this.)



One more! My bed matches the dresser. Maybe if I fit into my skinny jeans and start wearing lipstick again I will meet a man person who will tolerate a full size bed. Full beds are kind of small for two people. (What the hell am I talking about? Celibate! Forever!)





See you... next time.

Love,

Nina