So, I was excited. I finally met a guy (online, of course, because men run from me in the real world). Not just any guy, because they manage to message me on a regular basis. This guy was educated, tall and moderately attractive in the “conventional” way. He wasn’t an atheist but he wasn’t a minister. Best of all, his first message and requisite compliments were about how intellectual and ambitious I seemed. Not a peep about what position I liked or if I was interested in “FWB.” Not an unemployed high school dropout. So I took a chance.

We chatted for over a month via the site and text message. Finally, he asked me out to dinner. I accepted. This was the first proposal for dinner I accepted in over two years. BIG deal.

For the last year or so on Facebook, in addition to the idiotic “Repost if you agree” statuses that fly around like wildfire, once in a while, ladies will post random, not even remotely hilarious double entendres that are supposed to bring breast cancer awareness (to everyone in on the secret.) Last year these secret messages for awareness said “Post your bra color as your status” and “Where do you keep your handbag when you get home? Post your status as ‘I like it on [place]‘”. So, these women would post “Blue” or “I like it on the floor” as their status and confuse the hell out of everyone. At least, it was confusing the first time you saw it, and random friends would comment, “Yeah, I bet you like it on the floor, you dirty, dirty girl!” Then it just became progressively annoying. At least bra color had something to do with breasts. Then the departure gets worse…

“I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn’t know you had inside you. And it doesn’t matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends… you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he’ll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you’ll go somewhere new. And you’ll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.” – Iris, ‘The Holiday’

Sometimes, I feel like no matter how much effort I put into something, I get back nothing. Right now, I’ve been bouncing around in the same 3-4 pound weight window for a month. And I know I haven’t been eating right, or exercising. In fact, I’ve been eating atrociously.

I feel like a massive failure. That I’m going to forever be stuck in this body. And despite how much I feel like I both love who I am inside and out and appreciate myself even though most people I know would seriously kill themselves if they weighed what I do (especially when you see the “OMG! I’m down to 118!” posts on Facebook), at times like this, I find it really hard to love Laura, warts and all.

Have this song stuck in my head. It’s kinda one of those life theme songs, the only suckish part is that it’s connected to Twilight. I also played around with making a graphic, but without my old programs, mah skillz are limited. Click my “art” and it’ll take you to the video.

FYI: The alternate, less adorable titles for this post were “Same shit, different decade of life,” and “Asking guys out was way easier in elementary school.”

Ah, second grade. I can still remember beating everyone in the class at multiplication tables. Even the third graders. (Back in my tiny country elementary school, kindergartners and first graders were together, and second and third graders were together. This was in the nineties, by the way. The 1990s.) We went through the multiplication tables with daily tests. Everyone started with 2s and we went to 12s. If you missed any on the test for the day, you had to retake the same test the next day. So if you failed by missing 4×6=24, you had to take the 4s again while everyone else moved on to the 5s. I finished before anyone, without ever missing a single problem. I thought I was pretty badass.

Yes, even in elementary school I knew my destiny lay not in my good looks (haha) but in my intellect. But, one fine second grade day, in the coat and cubby closet in Mrs. Kelly’s room,

Less than 13 HOURS!

As a precocious little child, I played the card game Old Maid a lot with my mom and sister. For those of you who have never had the pleasure, the deck is made with special characters that come in pairs, and one character on her own that is called the Old Maid. The person next to you blindly chooses a card from those you’ve been dealt. If it makes a pair, the pair is discarded. It continues until all of the paired characters are discarded and only the Old Maid is left. Whomever gets stuck with her is the loser.

I am now officially eleven months in to my weight loss journey. I’ve lost 40.6 pounds as of this morning. I am at this point, though, where I both can and can’t believe that much is gone. As in, I know how hard I have worked (thus I can believe it) but I also can’t really tell much yet. I’m down a jeans size and, I think, about ready to go down another one. I bought a cardigan in an XL from Old Navy last Saturday, a size I can wear comfortably for the first time since my freshman year of college. But I haven’t had any of those, “Have you lost weight?” moments, which I would have thought I’d have by now. Forty pounds is a lot, although I’m nowhere near where I need to be.

I guess the reason no random family/friends/acquaintances have really noticed is because the loss has been incredibly slow. Forty pounds in eleven months is not exactly setting the world on fire. Which is about the speed I’ve been wanting to lose at anyway, because I’m hoping slow and steady will develop habits that will last me a lifetime. So, anyway, for my benefit and the benefit of the two people who read this, progress pictures with (gasp) actual weights listed on them—the numbers aren’t bad, Hurley… they’re just numbers.

Glee has been a major disappointment to me this season. Honestly, most of the end of last season too. Every once in a great while, there are episodes (“Theatricality” in Season One [aka Gaga Episode 1], “Britney/Brittany” and “Blame it On the Alcohol” in Season Two) where I am legitimately entertained for the majority of the episode. These are episodes that deal less with Finn/Quinn/Rachel/Sam/Puck (the pretty, straight, white-people-love-pentagon, which Puck and Sam seem to have thankfully removed themselves from) and more with the much more interesting background characters. Yes, I am a substitute teacher and I am blatantly aware of how high school kids swap boyfriends and girlfriends like drunken college students swap sexual partners (and STDs). I was also once in high school (shock/horror) but that is not all high school is about. Especially for those of use who aren’t/have never been/will never be part of a pretty, straight, white-people-love-pentagon.

I want more Santana struggling with her sexuality. I want more of Lauren Zizes’  backstory and more of her relationship with Puck. I want more of Tina and Mike’s relationship beyond “we’re both Asian and we love each other, yay!” I really love moments of character development like Sam being homeless. But these things never go anywhere, and we’re back to the pentagon. I loved what they did with Sue during “The Funeral” episode, but I fear a return to her usual one-liner quips for season three, where her character development stalls at “destroy the Glee club.” I don’t even want to begin talking about the steaming pile of failure that was the “Prom Queen” episode, which was the impetus causing me to want to jump off the Glee train.

*FINALE SPOILERS THE REST OF THIS POST*