Impossible is a typoRunning my pants off and loving myself along the way

Yup. I'm gonna get shanked

“You know Amy, one day, you’re gonna get shanked” says Lil Sis.

I just adore it when my tiny, curvy, blonde baby sister busts out with the gutter talk. She could have said “assaulted”, “stabbed”, “killed”. But no, she goes with shanked. Thank you endless Law and Order marathons.

So, I have a demanding schedule (translation: insane schedule) and I often find myself on public transportation and out and about town at odd hours (translation: I get home at 4am often). The good ole trusty Long Island Rail Road is great service for those living in the outer suburbs who want to come live it up in the Big Apple for an evening (translation: any train that leaves Penn Station after 1am is full of people who have had way too much to drink and aren’t wearing enough clothes).

Ah, the Drunk Train.

I find myself on the Drunk Train at least a few times a month. And ironically enough, I am rarely drunk. So picture this, you’re in a giant moving tin can with about 40 people who are loud obnoxious and ready for some action. Well, at least for the first 20 minutes until the gentle rocking sensation of the train induces sleep or puke.

Now, when I want to get all righteous and philosophical, I fancy myself a non-violent occasional Buddhist. Me and the Buddha are like, you know, Besties. The mysticism and mythology I find endlessly fascinating, and the core principles of Buddhism match nicely with my own world view. Besides, the Dalai Lama is just awesome.

You’ve got this image of the Drunk Train in your head, right? Now add a non violent occasional Buddhist to the mix and what do you get? No, not chanting. Try Drunken Frat Boy Fights with a non-violent occasional Buddhist in the middle. I don’t know what it is, but at least once a month or so, I find myself right smack dab in the middle of a tussle. Now, people are not getting aggressive with me (I’ll admit, some of you might find that surprising), but if I’m trying to get home after 1am, the chances are exceptionally high that I will encounter two or more knuckleheads wanting to throw down. I guess I’m just a lucky kind of gal.

So what’s a non violent occasional Buddhist to do in such a predicament? “Run screaming like a little girl” would be the obvious choice. I have the “retreat and while dialing 911″ move down like a pro. But every now and again, I find myself literally in the middle of the action.

A few months ago, I was on the Drunk Train, right in the middle of the car. I’m not going to dish the gory details of how the altercation began but let’s just say that one boy was rather offended when another boy questioned his manhood and sexual orientation. Naturally, they had to do the “I’m going to fight you now” chest bump thing, then OH NO, jackets were whipped off in a flourish which behavioral scientists will tell you is a sure sign some sloppy punches are going to be thrown. And naturally, they were both backed up by their rag-tag crew of best buds ready to crack some skulls. Now, this would be an excellent moment for the aforementioned “retreat and dial” maneuver. Except…

1. We were in a tunnel with no cell service.
2. They were standing right at the end of my row out my seats.

Retreat was not an option.

I knew if punches were thrown I’d be the one getting hurt. Drunken frat boys are not known for precision with their fighting skills after a 12 pack. So what to do? Well, my inner Fab Girl decides to break up with fight with the most powerful skill set known to mankind – sex kitten appeal.

I step right between them, all purring and licking my lips. I help one of them back into his coat, brushing off imaginary dust, all the while cooing in his ear about how sexy it would be if he just walked away because obviously the other guy is not as manly as he is. All the while, my hands are on his shoulders and chest, gently backing him up and putting space between the fighters. When there was about 15 feet of space and we were feet from the exit to the next car I said “God you know, its such a turn on when guy is so powerful and doesn’t have to prove it”. By that time, his friends had gotten control of the situation and were backing out of the car.

OK, fine, I was dressed in a plaid mini skirt with pigtails and there were like 30 witnesses in the train car so even a drunken frat boy has more sense then to beat down a school girl.

Upon telling the above tale to Lil Sis, she just shakes her head saying “you’re gonna get shanked”.

FitGirl travels

FatGirl says: Ooo la la! How fancy! How chic! We’re off to San Francisco for business. I feel terribly important! OMG isn’t there a big chocolate factory there? Oh oh and Chinatown is supposed to have the best food ever! Three days of chocolate and dumping and no working out because obviously you can’t work out while on vacation. I wonder how much room there is in my suitcase for chocolate souvenirs???

Oh FatGirl, you’re going to be terribly disappointed.

I’ve gained weight. About 20lbs. I’m not happy about it but I can’t seem to shift my behaviors around eating and working out right now. FatGirl keeps raging in my head about “starting Monday” and “we don’t have time” and “finish just one more project” and “you worked hard today, just have a chocolate”. That’s totally not working for me. It’s not what I’m committed to and it’s not who I am.

While I was packing last night, I made the decision the I was not going to bring sneakers and work out gear. I didn’t think the west coast is ready for a fat girl running. After all, California is supposed to be full of beautiful people, and well, I feel fat and unattractive right now, no need to show THAT off in spandex running pants.

Then it occurred to me – this is the life I want to live. I want to be jetting off to different cities and making deals and being fabulous. Am I supposed to ditch healthy eating and a work out schedule just because a plane trip is involved? Then I looked at a map of where my hotel is and lo and behold, there’s a running trail right there that follows the coast line. How could I even think of missing the opportunity of running alone San Francisco Bay?

So I’m sitting in JFK, sneakers in my bag, sunglasses in my pocket, totally looking forward to jet lag that will have me up for a morning run. Now, THAT is how FITGirl does the west coast.

You should love your inner crazy Fat Girl, but when she stops you from living your life, time to take action! And once Fat Girl is out of you dating life, get INto an outfit that will sweep him off his feet AND revamp your dating profile!

Here’s a Valentine’s Offer that with have your love life hopping!

Ginger Snap Works rocks Valentine's Day

SOPA should not pass through Congress.

Piracy is bad, censorship is worse.

So no blogging today, and I’ve got good content!

Call your Representatives. SOPA should not pass.

Even the boats are festive

FitGirl: I think we should go for a run.

FatGirl: What? I just poured myself coffee. It’s all hot and delicious. I ani’t going nowhere.

FitGirl: You can make the coffee hot again. There’s a magical device called a Microwave.

FatGirl: Nope. Got too much work to do. There’s email to read. Facbook games to play.

FitGirl: Tough luck. We’re going now

FatGirl: Over my dead body.

FitGirl: That may very well be the case…

So I went for a run for the first time in, oh about 2 months. I’ve been sick and busy and have totally used that as an excuse to be lazy and eat ice cream. Yay, I’ve won the game of gaining 15lbs. Gold stars for me. I’m really ok with having put on some weight. Well, that’s not accurate. I’m a little angry, frustrated and embarrassed about it. But what I’m not doing is beating myself up over it. I’m not all woe is me how could this have happened. I have the weight gain because I took the action that lead to it. Pretty plain and simple. And I know what to do to take that weight off and get back to my commitment to being healthy and running and achieving a healthy weight.

So as the neighborhood decks its halls, I’m be hitting the pavement and celebrating the holidays with a new pair of sneakers.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.
Muhammad Ali.

Shopping for me has always been filled with anxiety. The crazy Fat Girl that lives inside my head gets to live in all her glory when I step foot inside a retail clothing shop. One of my greatest fears in life is to be confronted by a sales person who, with mocking cheerfulness declares “Oh honey, we don’t carry anything in your size”. Can you just imagine? I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it.

I recently had the opportunity to shop completely anxiety free (well, mostly anyway). I’m doing some work for Cookie’s The Kids Department Store and they invited me to their Fulton Street store for a little spree on them!

I have three nieces whom I’m over the moon about. They are the brightest, funniest, prettiest girls on the planet, natch. S is 8, T is 7 and the Baby is OMG almost 2. And I’ll fess up right now, I’ve been a Lazy Auntie when it comes to gift buying. See, they’ve lived overseas for the past 5 years and I could never quite get the international shipping thing right so my gifts were always late. Yeah, that’s right, I was the Lame Auntie with the gift cards. Now that their back in the States, I can shop and gift like there’s no tomorrow!

Not only can I shop and gift, I can actually be in their lives rather than a voice on the phone. I saw them recently and T and S were running around like lunatics, jumping in and out of the pool, rambling about soccer, and swim class and gymnastics and if they were going to take karate. My inner Fit Girl BEAMED. Beamed I tell you, and mentally calculated if there was a soccer team I could join just to be with them in spirit. I was the chubby girl who got pick last for every team in gym class. It was right at this age that I started getting teased and dropped out of things like soccer and swimming. Inner Fit Girl declared in righteous Scarlet O’Hara fashion “As god is my witness, they shall ALWAYS LOVE FITNESS!”

I started thinking, besides the obviously role model stuff of, you know, not equating weight and self worth, how can I be a part of and encourage a healthy lifestyle for my girls? Hm. I live a bit far away to coach soccer or be at their games regularly. I could have them come to races I run. OMG I COULD SHOP FOR FITNESS FASHION! Fashion and fitness have been heavy in my mind lately, but that is another blog post, alas.

So, here I am with the opportunity to do some kiddie shopping and an opportunity to make a difference for the girls. Two opportunities collide! As I walked into Cookie’s, I had my plan – cute fashion to complement their fitness activities. Booya.

Cookie’s is in the Fulton Street Mall. It’s not a “mall” really, it’s not a giant enclosed building subdivided into shops but rather a whole street of just retail shops, blocks upon blocks of retail shops. There’s everything from electronics to high end clothing. And yes, even tho I was on a mission I had to pop into a few shoe stores along the way cause Holy Pumps Batman, there are some cute shoes out this fall.

must not get distracted by shoes. must not get distracted by shoes.

I used to live in this area of Brooklyn a few years ago and, boy, do I miss it. It’s very urban, bustling, noisy, full of energy. Prospect Park is close by, as is Brooklyn Academy of Music and the ethnic diversity, as reflected  in the restaurants, is staggering. You can get everything from vegan cupcakes to Southern BBQ.

must not get distracted by food. must not get distracted by food. oh look cute shoes!

I live out in the suburbs now, with big lawns and strip malls and I’m always struck by the difference between urban shopping and suburban shopping and walking into Cookie’s smacked me in the face with that difference. The store is packed!

Tiny aisles and product crawling up the walls to the ceilings. In a suburban mall, especially in the Big Box shops, there’s enough room to pitch a tent and tailgate with a couple hundred of your closest friends in the aisle between underwear and floor cleaner. That’s not the urban shopping experience. Aisles barely exist and you often have to suck in your gut to get through. I have no clue how you would shop in there with kids and a stroller.

Cookie’s is visual over load. There are puddles of color and texture everywhere. Splotches of pink, yellow screams over there, purple busts out on your left. I planned to do a few laps of the store just to get oriented.

Well, that didn’t work well. Cookie’s on Fulton is massive – the main room featuring Girls clothes spills into the Dressy section which leads to another section and OMG there is an upstairs? Wait and a down stairs too? Oh no. I feel a bit of anxiety creeping in now. How am I going to manage all this stuff? Then it dawns on me that I don’t know the first thing about shopping for kids clothes. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT SIZE THEY WEAR. Quick text to the sister-in-law and I’m saved.

I look around this massive labyrinth of fashion and I don’t know where to start. Then I notice that there are sales people about every 50 feet. When I shop in the burbs, there are never sales people. Never. Which is generally a good thing as I don’t want Crazy Inner Fat Girl getting activated by being called fat by a sales lady.

I get pointed in the right direction and stumble upon a Puma baby tiny track suit and OMG toddler sized yoga pants!

I’m just picturing babies in Child’s Pose. After about a half hour of pawing thru some of the cutest stuff ever, I realize I’m not even in the right section. I’m thinking that a 2 year old, wears “Size 2″ that would make sense right? But after checking with my text, I need to find “24 M”. What the hell does that mean? Helpful sales girl gets me headed in the right direction, again, when it happens.

FORMAL WEAR FOR BABIES?

Yeah, I know kids get dressed up but to see an entire wall of dresses and OMG SUITS just about had me falling over with the C-U-T-E. I mean seriously, is there anything more cute that a little man dressed up in a three piece suit with a tie for goodness sakes. And of course the girl dresses had to be cuter than the suits and I think I lost another 20 minutes ooing and ahing. The Formal Wear department went from babies to young ladies and is crazy extensive in choice of style and color. A few years ago I shopped for Easter dresses for the older girls and was really disappointed by the choices. During a major holiday season there were like 12 dresses to choose from. Here there seems to be hundreds.

STOP THE PRESSES!

Baby shoes as far as the eye can see. Is it wrong to want to have a baby just to buy baby shoes???

must not get distracted by shoes. must not get distracted by shoes.

I finally make it to the Infant section. And I have to be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the selection. Sure the stuff was cute, but the 12-24month section seemed to be the tiniest section in the whole shop. Nothing was really speaking to me. Until I found this mandarin collar hot pink faux leather jacket. Holy Smokes, it went right into the basket. I then took two steps and took it right out again. I did not want a repeat of the raised-eye-brow-horrified-look-what-were-you-thinking reaction like with I bought the Betsy Johnson romper when the oldest was born. Oy.

Then I crossed the aisle and rays of glory descending upon high spotlighting two whole racks of footsie jammies. Yup, I’ll admit it. I own footsie jammies in adult size. And no, I’m not posting a pic of that. After being disappointed that the piggie jammies did not come in the Baby’s size, I settled for penguins and frogs. Not as cool as piggies, but I don’t think she’ll hate me forever.

Now, back to S and T! I was really kind of expecting to find a fitness section for kids. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, you walk into any adult clothing shop and there is always a fitness section, of course there would be one for kids right? Apparently no. I guess you go to a sports shop for that? I’m going to have to investigate further. They had a really well stocked dance section, but the girls aren’t taking dance right now so, even though the tutus were calling me I moved on.

S and T are a year apart in age. They’re not twins obviously, but we do tend to buy them similar items. It cuts down on the drama and the “your stuff is cuter than my stuff” issue. Cookie’s just started carrying a whole line of Hello Kitty gear and I found sweat suits in two different colors that they could choose from. And they sparkle, and you can never go wrong with sparkle.

I also stumbled on two different soccer themed T-shirt that I thought would be a great way to tie fashion and sports together. I know they run around in leggings all the time and at $3.99 I wanted to snatch up a pair in every color they had, but settled on pink and black. No need to be greedy.

As I headed up to the register area (which was kind of untidy and confusing. There were pillars in the way so you couldn’t see each register. One of the check out girls kept yelling “NEXT” and I couldn’t see her or where I was supposed to go) I walked by racks and racks of socks, tights and undies. Silver Diva socks and Pink ruffles somehow found their way into my bag. I don’t know how that happened.

As I was piling up all the stuff on the counter, I got really nervous. This was a giant pile of clothes, and I’m kind of working on a budget here. When the final total flashed on the register, I was pretty shocked. $101.90. The last time I shopped for S and T I got like 2 dresses and matching tights for well over $50.

Cookie’s has a great online shop also with toys and school uniforms. I didn’t even make it off the first floor to check out that selection in the store. It’s totally worth a trip into Brooklyn for some power shopping, but I would recommend that you don’t come with the kids in tow. I have no clue how you’d navigate the store with a stroller and with its sprawling disjointed layout, you could lose track of your kids real quick. OH, and this was the most annoying thing ever. They had big screen TVs set up here and there with this video on a loop of a guy in a terrible Halloween mask repeating over and over and over “Come up stairs. We have all the Halloween costumes you need”. It went on and on and on and on. I’m surprised a customer doesn’t go all Texas Chainsaw due to irritation over it. That was as bad as non stop holiday music.

Cookie’s Kids is on Twitter and Facebook and run weekly online specials too. I found the Fulton store a little hard to shop being cramped, but the selection makes up for it.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #CBias  All opinions are my own.

And Fat Girl says:
Oh, you’re sick. Ice cream will make you feel better.
Poor girl, boss yelled at you again? Ice cream will make you feel better.
Happy Hump Day! Celebrate with ice cream.
Class is done! Celebrate with ice cream.
It’s Friday, Friday! That’s ice cream day.

It seems I can’t get out of the train station with out ice cream these days. All my reasons seemed perfectly justified and reasonable. I haven’t been feeling well. My boss has been yelling at me. Friday is very welcomed when it arrives.
AND I’m not running. And I’m not writing and weight is creeping back on slowly. I’m back into seeking out ice cream for comfort, and I don’t even really like ice cream all that much.
Everyday when I buy ice cream I always say to myself, “I’ll run in the morning” and it doesn’t happen.
I made it out of the station without ice cream today. I can’t say that’s an accomplishment because I had to run for the train. And yes, there was a brief moment when I considered missing the train so I could get ice cream.
This isn’t really about ice cream. It’s about dissatisfaction with my life. There’s some things that aren’t going as well as I’d like them to, and well, you can’t screw up ice cream. It’s a constant dollop of happy. I would rather eat ice cream then be in action to move things forward in my life. Eating is easy. Making tough choices is, well, tough.
The thing is, this ice-cream-eating-not-running-weight-gaining thing doesn’t work either.

On the train this morning, I’m happily chomping through my yogurt with GoLean sprinkled on top. I’ve forgotten my iPod so I have nothing to do but entertain myself by reading the packaging on the Yoplait Greek that is has been my breakfast for the past two weeks. I adore Greek yogurt. It’s got calcium, oodles of protein and all that good bacteria that makes a tummy happy. And its thick and creamy so its almost like you’re having dessert for breakfast. I am not a fan of flavored yogurts, especially not for breakfast. They just taste fake and wow the sugar is too much for me in the mornings. They can make a nice afternoon snack however.
Chobani is my favorite yogurt. Non-fat if you please. Occasionally I’ll get the peach or the vanilla as the aforementioned snack, but in the morning, I like my yogurt straight up. Fage makes a good yogurt too, but to be honest, Fage and Chobani are both rather expensive. At almost $2 a cup, that’s pricey. So imagine my surprise when I discovered Yoplait has a product called “Greek” that was right next to Chobani in the fridge case AND was significantly cheaper. Yay and more yay.
So, as I’m reading the package, I notice something curious, no where on the package does it call its self “yogurt”. So I look at the ingredient list, and color me surprised, its not yogurt. It’s made from cultured milk, milk protein and gelatin. Not a single live active culture to be found anywhere. Seriously Yoplait? Fake yogurt?

Not a billion degrees

It’s 6 billion degrees in New York City today. Thankfully I found this lovely indoor and sort of air conditioned public plaza to have lunch in. Lovely isn’t it? And its not 6 billion degrees here.