This Mysterious Diet Thing

So last week I teased you with my Fun Diet Time thing, and then promised that I would talk about it on Monday... but when Monday rolled around I didn't quite feel like I understood it well enough to be able to explain it, and it's really taken me about a week to get the hang of it. Because it didn't so much make me change lanes as much as travel down a different highway entirely.

At the moment, I am going to the Austin Wellness Clinic and am participating in their wellness program. I'm doing it with my mom because I know that she is always looking for a healthier lifestyle, but for me it's more that I want to lose weight and get back on track.

For the first four weeks, I am on a cleanse, and almost immediately I saw the results of eating healthier. I felt more awake, I slept better, I had more energy, and I just feel better about myself. I've effectively eliminated all processed sugars, wheat products, dairy, and basically anything that I saw as delicious before and replaced it with a ridiculous amount of fruits and vegetables and water.

As part of the cleanse, I have to take this dietary supplement in the form of a smoothie at varying doses for four weeks. At the moment, I'm having to drink three of them a day, but over the weekend it increases to five. I'll be honest - I am not a fan. It tastes like vanilla chalk and the only way to make it suck less is get it over with and drink it quickly. But I've been drinking it dutifully because I truly want to make a change in my lifestyle. I want to be skinny again and wear a bikini. I want to be healthy. I want to be able to go to the gym and not freak out about not feeling comfortable in my own skin among all of those people who seem to be comfortable in theirs. (Also, I would like my boobs to shrink to a reasonable size... please?) (Yes, I understand I may be the only one in the world who actually wants this.)

And aside from generally feeling better about myself, I have already seen a result today after week one. Bye bye, five pounds. Hello, new me.

Oh... What's this?

Oh, hi there.

You're, uh, well, really pretty.

I don't really talk to new cars that often.

I love the color you're wearing.

It really sets of your headlights nicely.

How 'bout you and me go for a drive?

The keys? Thanks!

You're a Mazda, right? Zoomzoom?

Oh, a 2007 Mazda3 Hatchback. I see.

Well, you don't look like you're a 2007.

You're much prettier than that.

Friends?

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Yes! I drove my pretty new car off the lot yesterday morning! I need to think of a name... Suggestions?

Getting inventive

So, because "Fun Diet Time" starts for on Monday for me (more on that soon, perhaps on Monday?), I have been resisting going grocery shopping recently so that I can stock up on all of the Fun Healthy Stuff when I actually start my diet.

(As an aside, and while I don't know if it will work or not, I keep calling the diet 'fun' in the hopes that maybe it will be fun and not as hard as I think it will be.)

This has made me get a little inventive in using up what is available in my kitchen. And it turns out, inventive is a lot more delicious and easier than I had thought it would be. Knowing that I only have what is on hand in my cupboards and in my freezer makes me really analyze what I have and make stuff from there.

So this week, I've made some pretty delicious food for myself... like last night, I made DFC (My dad used to make my brother and I the most delicious chicken nuggets, and we dubbed it fondly "Dad's Famous Chicken") for my roommate and I (Kris loved it. I am a little smug.) and the other night I made the most delicious creamy tomato chicken concoction I have ever eaten (I had chicken breast, chopped tomato and sour cream on hand).

I guess the point of this blog is that I am proud of myself for knowing how to cook something delicious with what is just on hand. And without looking at a recipe. (Thanks, Dad!)

An Attempt to Understand Alejandro

While watching the video for Lady Gaga's latest single, Alejandro, I became intrigued as I always do by her bizarre and hardly straightforward approach to her videos. The 8-minute video is full of images of love and war, sex and violence, and as usual to me, the dichotomy begged to be understood. I find that I think best when as write, so I wrote out my reaction to the music video, expanded it, and eventually decided to post it. I took screen shots of the video to make it easier to visualize to those of you who haven't seen the video or don't want to.

If you are unfamiliar with her, Lady Gaga is a pop artist with some strange songs and an even stranger wardrobe. Being a fan, I wanted to figure out what her message was, and, being an English major, I tackled it in the manner I knew best.

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I’m trying to figure out what Lady Gaga’s latest music video is about.

While watching the video, the words that have occurred to me over and over are these: love, war, regret, and control.

To me, the song itself is about leaving behind mistakes, be they her own or other people’s. The chorus suggests that they are the mistakes she made with men - Alejandro, Fernando, Roberto… and while I think it could be that, I think the song could also be about be her fight for control over the things they have done to her. Her fight, it seems, is for control over her life and for her solitude.

There are some pretty strong religious symbols in the video, but she doesn’t seem to be using religion as the sole answer as I have heard suggested. I think she is using it as the front to her solution; it is her crusade to escape or get rid of the men, and perhaps other figures of dominance in her past who won’t let her go and live her own life.

I believe that to her, the solution to her problem, to the regret and the mistakes in her life lies in war and aggressive, proactive action. The soldiers that surround her seem to corporeally represent the violence, aggression, and control that she employs in order to escape these men and her past with them.


Clearly the men are unwilling to let her go and she has to resort to a swift break in order to return to her normal life. The sexual imagery (the sexual dominance, holding the ropes tied to the bed frames, etc.) implies throughout much of the video that she is regaining that control and could potentially win her war for her independence and solitude.


But is she successful and does she return to a normal life? The last minute or so of the video perturb and intrigue me and it suggests to me that she is unsuccessful in her attempt to regain control of the situation.


First, the images of the fire and war suggest the beginning of the end of her fight - the fire destroying anything that could have been a victory for her. She loses control as the images get more and more violent against her, and as the fire continues to burn, she loses her sexual dominance and begins to struggle against the men who she had previously dominated. Then, she is thrown between the men and stripped of her white ‘crusade’ robe - the men win control over her body.


The last scene of the video is her still lying on the bed, immobilized and suspended as she was earlier on, the man at the foot of the bed holding onto the ropes and a golden gun, controlling her with the violence that she had previously employed against the men earlier.


The final evidence of her defeat is when her face seems to be eaten up by disease-like holes and I believe that it represents the finality her defeat. She cannot try again. It has clearly all gone wrong for her, she has lost her battle, and she has succumbed to the loss.

In Some News

For some reason, I seem to think that my life gets extraordinarily dull during the summer, I forget to blog, and when I remember that things do, indeed, happen to me, I'm usually snuggled in bed with a book and absentmindedly pledge to blog tomorrow. It's like the tomorrow diet, except the blogging version of it.

Stuff has INDEED happened to me!

Stuff like summer school! I'm only taking one class, and I am glad of it! I am taking French (my third of four semesters), and it is requiring a lot of catch up. Not only did I last take French a year ago, I took it at UTSA, which, as it turns out, covered the same material but not nearly as in-depth as they do at UT (which, I guess, is to be expected!) I am catching up, but it is requiring a lot of outside work. I'm doing it, though. Even though the summer warrants a lot of naps.

Last weekend, Dad and Pippa took Duncan, Tom and I to the Hill Country Hyatt, where I blissfully spent two days lying about in the sun and tubing around the lazy river! It was the most relaxed I've been in a long time! I had so much fun spending time with my family, and it was quality time, too. I got a little pink, but not sunburned! I have definitely begun to acquire my Summer Off-White ('Off-White' because it's definitely no suntan). (As an amusing aside, Duncan, Dad and I were hanging around in the hotel room putting sunscreen on and we ended up comparing how white we were. We were all REALLY white on our stomachs and legs... but Duncan definitely won the title of 'most tan'. He tans like a god... not that I'm bitter.)

One night at dinner, Duncan ordered the Chicken Fried Steak, which is one of his favorites. What he got out of the kitchen might be more appropriately as a Chicken Fried State. (His pun, not mine.)

And now, a picture of Emma I took the other day.

She's been sick a lot recently (poor baby!), but she's acts pretty normal, playing, playing the "Bah" game (She points, and I say what it is), and being generally completely adorable. When she is sick, she usually gets really snuggly (which I love) and will go fetch the toy that she wants, turn right around, and plonk her butt into my lap. It is so cute!

While I've been babysitting her recently I've been making my way through their collection of Disney movies. Stuff like Sleeping Beauty (my favorite Disney Princess movie), the Lion King (my favorite 'general' Disney movie), The Little Mermaid (which apparently my favorite movie as a child), Aladdin (For a long time I remember not being able to watch it past the scene where the sand tiger swallows that thief... That was just too scary!) Emma doesn't care much about the movies, but she loves that I sing along to all the songs!

So with all of this World Cup stuff going on (I, um, don't really follow soccer, so I am less excited than some of my friends) a lot of websites that I frequent (such as Youtube) have World Cup-related ads floating around. My favorite has to be this one:

England v USA. It just amuses me...

(In case you're wondering, I'm probably going to support England tomorrow.)

In other news, Blogger has a lot of new blog design themes... so I'm thinking of changing my design soon. We shall see...

In other, other news, Siobhan bought her tickets to Texas! She'll be here for almost three weeks in July! I am still taking suggestions of things that we should do while she is here! (Thanks, Annie for all of your ideas!)

In (the last) other news, I've read 21 books since the beginning of May. My goal is 60 by the time school begins in August. I am also taking suggestions of what I should read!