The Freezer Door Featherbrain

There is something so liberating about gaining wisdom and insight with age, especially into your 40’s.  I by no means feel that I know everything about anything.  I love to learn and relish the opportunity to do so every single day.  I consider all possibilities. 

I can’t help but notice those around me who seemingly thrive on attempting to make others feel Foolish while at the same time attempting to present themselves as superior in some way, shape or Form.  I always think, “What if it wasn’t that at all and was in fact X or X?” 

This week while shopping, I believe I encountered one of these Featherbrains. 

As I shopped in the Freezer aisles, I was busy and on a deadline trying to Fulfill an order paying great attention to detail when I heard someone behind me shut a nearby Freezer door while loudly proclaiming “Don’t *these people* know how to shut a door!?”  I am assuming at this point this exclamation may have been directed at me.  I’m not even sure it was.  I walked away laughing without ever Feeling the need to glance in said person’s direction.  I mean, I heard her shut said door, so what would be the point?

I know most everyone is Familiar with the Fact that most grocery store Freezer aisle doors shut all on their own upon just letting go and that every once in a while one can stay open. 

When *I* see an open Freezer door, I don’t think “What idiot Failed to shut this door!? gasp--put on huge display of disgust for whomever I’m with as I save the world by shutting it.   But apparently some people do just that, which I Find a little sad and yet comical at the same time--sad for obvious insightful reasons and comical when thinking of the situation from a more seasoned level. 

This is something an immature Freaking teenager would do because Freaking teenagers lack Foresight.  You see, their brains are still underdeveloped.  But upon encountering an adult behaving in such a way, it is a bit sad.  I wonder how sad her life must really be.  I marvel at how her obnoxious display and proclamation of such self importance (assuming someone else is lazy or stupid) makes her Feel better or superior in ANY sort of way.  

 

It’s sad because this person obviously suffers with some sort of superiority/inferiority complex situation and a lack of insight as to all the possible reasons that door may be open.  She obviously goes from zero to sixty from nothingness to assuming something horrible with no in between.

Hey, Featherbrain, I have some news for you.  It is a Fact that some Freezer doors just get stuck open when a person’s hands are Full and they have turned their back to it to place items into their grocery carts.  Just because oh so important, considerate, life-saving, Freezer-door-shutting you came along before they turned back around or before they noticed they hadn’t heard the telltale sound of a Freezer door slamming shut as they walked away, doesn’t mean you are actually saving the day or that you have a right to speak to someone that way, even in an obvious secondhand manner to the person accompanying lovely you.  I hope the person you were with who laughed at your awesomeness was super impressed and made you Feel Far superior to everyone else in the store. 

I wondered…had she ever helped a store employee stock some empty shelves?  Had she ever taken the employees treats to say thanks for all of their hard work?  Had she ever rearranged a shelf putting an incorrectly placed item in it’s correct location?  Had she ever helped anybody in the store at all?  I mean TRULY helped someone?  Hey, but great job on that lone Freezer door she caught there with accompanying criticism!  Here is that loud round of applause I Feel that she was seeking.  I wondered how many other people she may have tried something similar with throughout her day, week, or month.  Do you think she had similar encounters at work, at a gas station, at the movies?  Everyone must be rude and inconsiderate to people like her.  There are obviously no other possibilities to her.  

Thanks for the chuckles and thanks for making me even more grateful I am who I am…somebody who would have done one of two things, one being quietly walking up to an open Freezer door and quietly closing it without having to prove to someone else what a great person it made me, but most importantly having done so without attempting to hurt, embarrass or belittle another while believing that another person just didn’t realize the door was stuck open, and the second being an actual offer of assistance of "Hey, let me help you with that! I got it!" upon seeing someone with their hands Full.  

Confidence that doesn’t allow others to make you feel ashamed, embarrassed, or stupid  Freaking rocks!  And if it wasn’t directed at me and instead at another, I hope that person had that confidence too!  I can’t imagine living in Featherbrain’s world.

Confidence versus ignorance, immaturity or a dysfunctional personality complex…..what is the difference here with me referring to this person as a Featherbrain you may be asking and is something I actually considered?

A Featherbrain is a Foolish scatterbrained person, with scatterbrained meaning there is an inability to think clearly, so I chose to refer to this person as a Featherbrain.  Firstly, because it gives me an F word for today, but secondly because their obvious assumption that the ONLY reason that door was open was due to a lack of consideration on the part of another person makes her Foolish in my eyes with an underdeveloped ability to assess situations accurately at the very least.

Is there a better F word for this situation?  Let me know!

Weekly Weigh-In Post Vacation

Welp.....big ol' sigh.  I've just returned from vacation with my Family and my parents.  My mother is a cooking Fiend.  I expected what I Found on the scale this morning.  We ate Fast Food on the drive down and the drive back.

The drive down was better, as we ate a Chick Fil A dinner in which I had a chicken wrap, Fries, and a pop.  The Following morning I ate nothing, as I had driven us to Atlanta from Michigan and was Fast asleep.  The Dole Shakers that I packed for everybody didn't stay Frozen even that long, so that planned low-point breakfast was a Flop anyway.  I know that I said it would be easy to Find a grocery story to buy them when needed, but I Forgot to Factor in my obsessive husband....Mr. F wants to drive straight through stopping only for bathroom breaks and gas refills. I have no idea what the others ate since I was out like a light. We ordered pizza as soon as we arrived at our rental because we had to unpack and get organized before we could go grocery shopping.  However, my mom had brought all the groceries into the house because she travels with only my dad and has room in her car. We drive separately via two different directions, and they usually tack on extra travel and sightseeing in other states on their way down.

I tried to eat according to my plan.  I took my oatmeal and bought green smoothie ingredients so that I only had to worry about dinner, but my mom had other plans.  I had even taken a number of bags of the SnaPea Crisps I love for snacking, of which I didn't do a lot of. I was too Full all of the time. I made it through the First Few days saying no thank you just Fine, but then I ran out of what I needed and mom had taken control of the refrigerator.  I actually only cooked one of my own meals, Pig on a Stick, a couple of salads, etc.  I resisted her homemade Belgian waffles piled high with pie Fillings and whipped cream until one theme park day we returned to the car at 10 p.m. to eat the chicken Caesar wraps I had planned out to discover Mr. F had covered the packaged wraps in ice and they were ruined by the water. I was starving and therefore ate one of the nutty bars and Cheetos bags he had packed. That night, at 11 p.m. as we all showered park grime off of our bodies, my mom made us all one of her Belgian waffles, and I ate it. I was too tired, too hungry, and too sore from walking all day long to care. She had bought two different kinds of ice cream.  I have no idea what Flavors they were. I didn't care to look and therefore didn't have any of that. So, overall, there were nonscale victories and just plain diet Failures.

I'm really shocked at the condition of produce in Florida.  I just can't get over how poor it is in the grocery stores.  The apples I bought for my smoothies were brown in the middle, as if they were going bad from the middle out somehow.  The avocadoes, which we can usually Find down there were bad as well.  I've never seen greener bananas in my life anywhere, not even in Michigan.

We had three park days in which I packed our lunches and in which we ate dinner at the park one day. The other two park days we waited until we got home to eat a dinner, and the traffic varied, so one night it was 10 p.m. and the other 11 p.m., and we all know how eating a dinner at that time of night derails weight loss. I had originally planned to take salads with me for my lunch, but my parents liked my salads and ate them.  Just after mid-vacation, I threw in the towel altogether.  I didn't go all ham on anything. I just quit thinking about it and quit worrying about what number I would get to report to you today.

I, as of today, weighed in at 234.5 pounds, which is a 3.75-pound gain since the last weigh-in I recorded on the blog, but 5.3 pounds more than the last recorded weight on my tracker at the beginning of March. That isn't too bad considering it probably isn't all vacation related, and I ate enough Fast Food on that trip than I have in months and care to ever again. I haven't really tracked any calories via MyFitnessPal or counted my points either because I can't Find my points slider right now.

Prior to vacation I had been suffering from a wry neck for months.  It has now worked it's way down into my arm via tingling, but the last two days has included numbness in my fingertips as well.  I'm tired of waiting for it to be completely Fixed and plan to restart my two-mile walking routine again tonight, weather permitting. I'm just glad I can move my neck again. Maybe actual movement via exercise will help because sitting around waiting for it to get better isn't working. While on vacation, I got what I had been calling my annual theme-park rash.  My ankles are itchy and sore.  I'm hoping that is not the case when I set out on my walk this evening, but when I got out of the car to pump gas yesterday after being in the car all day, it was the case and I Found myself waddling and grimacing. 

So that's what I've been up to since the beginning of March.....the chiropractor visits for a wry neck, arm tingling, fingertip numbness, a theme-park rash, a vacation derailment, and a cooking-Fiend of a mother who cooks Southern style.

Some will consider a painful and debilitating wry neck and a vacation excuses, but I don't.  I consider them obstacles and challenges.  How are you doing?

Freakin' Word Games Bitches!: Are You "Fat"?

I can not stand word games.  I can not stand perpetually offended people.  I also can not stand people who search for things to be angry about, and the use of the word Fat is one of them.

As many people have read today, Target is taking some heat for labeling it's plus-size costumes Fat Girl Costumes.

C'mon ladies. Fat is fat. We need to Freakin' own it. I'm obese, and while the word Feels way worse than Fat, I know it's true. I just do not like to hear people say it about me.  I've heard that people have said I am Fat and Frumpy--Ouch!  It stung. I am not going to lie, but it IS true.  That saying, "The truth hurts." comes to mind, and that is true.  Because of my weight, I do not buy nice clothes.  I bum around all of the time.  I panic when I am invited to a social gathering trying to Figure out if I can even Find anything to wear, and it kills me to spend the money on those clothes that I do not plan on being able to wear Forever.


The word "Fat" can be either an adjective, a noun, and sometimes a verb (fatting).  I am going to Focus on the adjective.  The definition is:  (of a person or animal) having a large amount of excess Flesh.  The definition of "Flesh" is: the soft substance consisting of muscle and fat that is found between the skin and bones of an animal or a human.

I also Feel it is important to list some synonyms to the word "Fat," which include plump, stout, overweight, large, chubby, portly, flabby, paunchy, potbellied, beer-bellied, meaty, of ample proportions, heavyset, obese, corpulent, fleshy, gross, plus-sized, big-boned, tubby, roly-poly, well upholstered, beefy, porky, blubbery, chunky, and pudgy. 

Even the word gross can be misconstrued because it is used a lot in medical reports as an adjective in numerous ways. 

The actual word, Fat, as well as its synonyms, when used in a pejorative way, are wrong, but how is labeling costumes that Fit Fat girls as Fat Girl Costumes, pejorative, or insulting, in any way?  I don't even think it is insensitive when seeing what the actual definition of the word is.  It is what it is.  How is the use of "Plus-Sized" ANY different? It means the same thing!  

According to the definition, can you now be "skinny" with excess "Flesh?" You betchyer rolls you can, but chances are you are still wearing larger clothes because of that excess "Flesh" than you would be without it. Technically, I guess you are still "Fat," depending on what the makeup of that "soft substance consisting of muscle and fat" is between the skin and the bones. 

It's an adjective, just like blonde, tall, short, black, brown, pasty, and white can be.

I've also recently read a rant by someone online trying to tell people that Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass song is body shaming the "other side" of the weight spectrum with it's use of "Skinny Bitches."  Let's be clear here regarding the lyrics, that portion of the song clearly says "I'm bringin' booty back.  Go 'head and tell them skinny bitches that. NAW, I'M JES PLAYIN'."  So, I'm sitting here wondering how in the freakin' world people get upset about the word skinny, and when paired with the word "BITCHES", calls it body shaming, while completely ignoring the "Naw I'm jes playin'" part that immediately follows it. 

Yup, you read that right.  Out of the phrase "skinny bitches," it's been determined that the word skinny is body shaming--that's it. Nothing else wrong with that phrase at all.  It cracks me up.  "BITCHES." hahahaha

These people must have never used the word "bitches" before with their girlfriends or in humorous settings for a laugh.  Nobody is running around yelling about the Female population being referred to as "bitches" from what I have seen.  Some people may not Find the use of "bitches" Funny at all, but some people do.  Deal with it.

I, myself, may have or might in the future (can not say for certain) say something along the line of "We pasty bitches...." as I Frequently make fun of the almost Fluorescent color of my skin near the end of winter and it's perceived ability to actually reflect light, or ".....those tan bitches" for a laugh assuming everyone knows I am still making Fun of myself.  I could see a statement like "I'm bringin' pasty back and you can tell them tan bitches that." rolling right off my tongue in a certain moment of conversation. Again, deal with it. I may have used it once and have outgrown actually using "bitches" in sentences. I do not know, as I do not get out much. I know I have not outgrown the word "Freakin'" yet. Deal with it.

Do you have excess "Flesh" like I do?  Do you Fit the definition of the word "Fat" like I do? Then Freakin' own it ladies.  The world isn't here to make you Feel good or to protect your sensibilities, and if that isn't obvious in today's day and age, then, well.....--that is up to you, and I, alone.

Are you "thin" or "skinny?" As in, do you Fit into the actual Freakin' definition? Then Freakin' own that too. As the saying goes, if the shoe Fits...

Whatever you do, please, oh please, do not try to say the song above body shames anybody when that word is paired with the word "bitches." It is ridiculous.

And, Finally, you MUST know that people like me are out here listening to you and, at the very least, thinking "Reach much?"

Firstly

Firstly, I'm jotting down some F words that I will blog about in detail later.  Fat, Forty, Frustrated, Forgotten, Flabby, Frumpy, Forfeit, Forgone, Free-For-all, Flash, Fitness, Flop, False, Fallacious, Fallible, Folly, Free, Fabulous, Form, Figure, Fable, Fantasy, Fashion, Fault, Friends, Focus, Face, Fun, Fiction, Fairy tale, Fact, (list to continue later)