Feeding My Boobs

You thought I was kidding, right? But I told you I was coming back. Today’s topic is off-kilter, I know, but it is fact.

It is a common misconception in the fashion world that large-chested women must inevitably desire that the bodice of their clothing be cut low enough to reveal their ample bosom. While in some instances, it is entirely desirable (such as when I’m trying to get out of a ticket or when I was a waitress trying to cajole an extra tip out of a customer), most times it can be downright annoying, especially when it comes to eating.

I find that my boobs only serve as catch-alls to anything I consume. I have effectively coined this as “feeding my boobs,” and I have found that they have very distinctive palate.

1. Peanuts: Anyone who knows me really well knows that I have an aversion to most nuts. No, I’m not allergic to them; I just don’t like the feeling of chewing twigs in my mouth. However, there are two types of nuts for which I will make an exception, and those are pecans and peanuts. Neither of them are as dry as the other species of nuts, and they taste really good wrapped in some type of sugar, which is the only way I generally eat them. I never worry about my boobs having an appetite for pecans since they are generally wrapped in chocolate AND caramel (that’s right Turtles®). However, peanuts are a different story: yes, I mostly enjoy them in Snickers® and Peanut Chews®, but occasionally when I back on my hardcore weight loss determination (you’ve seen the blogs about my constant battle here, here, and here), I buy peanuts to solve the craving, but not plain salted peanuts. These too are usually swimming in sugar, whether it the honey roasted brand or my latest obsession, toffee peanuts. Regardless of which one it is, my boobs often have a say in their consumption.
2. Fried chicken: I’m not going to lie; in this case my boobs have very good taste. And because I generally deprive my entire body of fried foods for extended periods, all of them come up in arms and rejoice when I make a trip to Royal Farms (who must have crack among its list of herbs and spices). Inevitably, the crumbs from fried chicken end up dropping into my bra.
3. Liquids: Hey, after all that good food, my boobs get thirsty! Luckily I haven’t scalded them too much with hot coffee, but they love water, and strangely enough, apple martinis as I found out last night. To explain the water, I have this very large travel mug that I drink out of. I’ve had it for years, and it is truly one of the best insulated cups out there since I can put ice in it in the morning and still have ice three hours later. And the cup is supposedly spill proof. Except for when it’s not. I can’t explain it, but somehow, there are just days when my boobs bribe the cup into spilling just the right amount of ice-cold water.

The worst thing about feeding my boobs is that sometimes they’re sneaky eaters on the verge of being hoarders. There have been more than a few occasions where I have taken my bra off at night, only to discover a piece of some mysterious food dislodge itself. But my boobs are also billy goats with pica because there are a few instances where a stray earring back from the day has tumbled out.

So should I starve them with high-neck shirts and turtle necks? I think that would be cruel. Even if they sometimes make life difficult be obstructing my view, they’ve been my bosom buddies (yeah, I had to do it) since puberty. So they deserve an occasional treat.

Gesundheit: What Financial Health Means to Me

I used to tell a running joke about my childhood: “I was so po’ I couldn’t afford the last two letters of the word.” In my post-graduate years when I first started paying back school loans, I would tell my friends another joke: “Not only am I broke, but I actually owe broke. Being broke would actually be a step up.”

I’m happy to say that far better off now than I was back then. If debt is a sickness, then at worst I have seasonal allergies, not a raging fever and vomiting. However, there is always a healthier me to be had, and I’m always looking for that miracle cure, even though usually the most I’ve succeeded in getting is an allergy pill that provides temporary relief.

Financial health to me is living virtually debt-free. I say virtually, because realistically, the American Dream now requires American Express, or Visa, Mastercard, or some sort of established credit to prove that you are a biped and can purchase a bicycle. In addition, very few people can afford to pay outright cash for things like a house, a car or a college education. In plotting my course toward financial health, here are some valuable lessons I’ve learned:

• Pay your bills on time, every time. Nothing is as critical to good financial health as being a good steward toward your bills. Paying bills on time establishes good credit and good relations with the creditors, and by creditors, think of any good or service that you pay on a regular basis, whether it is revolving credit or utilities.
• Get a yearly printout of your credit report. To get an idea of where you want to be, you need a baseline to know where you are currently. Once items appear on your credit report, they stay on there for seven years, which is both long and short—long if you’re trying to establish credit, and short when you look back and see how far you’ve progressed.
• Get rid of the store credit cards. You were probably offered an incentive to get them—10% off your current purchase. Think about this carefully: what can a store credit card get you that a regular debit card can’t?
• Pay credit cards off each month. As a general rule, if you cannot afford to pay an item off in 30 days, don’t purchase it. The only exception I would make is for those finance options that give you a grace period with no interest. Pay whatever you purchased off prior to that 6-month period, then follow the general rule to the letter.

Financial health means that I can have essentially just my mortgage payments and educational loans to pay off along with the regular monthly household expenses. I’m not there yet; I have a few years before I gain the type of financial freedom I truly desire. Yet I know that continuing to keep a steady pace and not racking up any more bills will keep financial sickness at bay.

Repeating Myself…Almost

So I started writing this blog about my hiatus from writing and right when I started the second paragraph of my long drawn-out explanation, I experienced a strange surge of déjà vu (no, not the Beyoncé song, although that is now stuck in my head). So I looked to my blog, and yup, I’d already poured my heart out and begged forgiveness. And that was a month and few days ago. So now I’m at it again. So let me tell you a little bit more about my freelancing gig. You read the previous blog and found out a little about how I stumbled across the job. It is truly a part-time gig and it pays merely pennies, but the experience I’m gaining has been pretty helpful. While I don’t have an exact count of how many articles I’ve contributed to the world wide web so far, I can tell you that I have submitted content 64 days this year. Considering that we’ve had 186 of those days so far, that means I’ve submitted for roughly 35% of the days of the year. (I’ll do a full tally of articles and words in the coming days so that you be in awe of the full magnitude of what I’m saying). But for now, bear with me as I catalog some of the lessons I’ve learned:

Accountability in Writing. Writing for this company means adhering to deadlines. If I pick up an article or multiple articles, I have 48 hours to complete them (additional hours if I pick up a block [the term for articles]) on a Thursday. Sure, 48 hours may seem like a large range of time, but after you factor in things like work, sleep, husband, dad, son and the rest of the huge laundry list of life that gets in the way, we’re talking 5-10 hours at most. And while the company editors pretty flexible if you are a little late if you let them know in advance, it’s not something I take for granted or abuse. This accountability forces me to focus, and to finish, while at the same time to recognize my limits. If I’m tired, my writing and typing for that matter are garbage, and I put it away for the next day. After I’m done, I send them in and someone else reads and critiques them, which leads to my second lesson.

Humility in Writing. I’ve always considered myself a pretty decent writer. I can turn a phrase. But then I turn in my articles and for the first month, I’m getting feedback on every article, and at first the criticism stings like alcohol on an open wound. Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am. Or maybe I am, but I’m careless and I rush through pieces. Teachable moment! Isn’t this the same shit I’m telling my grown college students in my English 1010 class? Double teachable moment, because then I started telling my students that even the more experienced writers—the ones that know better—make mistakes, and that it’s only by taking the time with something that we get better, which endears us to each other even more because now I’m with them and just telling them. And this of course leads me to my final lesson. But before I get to that let me add on the importance of proofreading as part of that lesson in humility. I was at the end of this blog and proofreading when I realized that I’d neglected to add this. No matter how good you are, or think you are, look over your stuff. As a result, I now only get periodic quality checks and received a 4.5out of 5 two weeks ago. But I still have to remain humble, since I just received a 3 out of 5 today.

Improvement in Writing. The purpose of all this is so that I can be better. As I sit here typing this, I am toying with the idea of setting deadlines for myself with this book. Sounds simple right? And just like I learned to set small increment goals with my weight loss (totally another blog), I should probably set concrete ones with this writing thing, not just for my gig, but for my book, which I did pick up again in May. I gave myself a general deadline that by the end of the summer I would review the whole thing, but I can tell you that in the past month, I’ve only picked it up three times.

Another overarching lesson that touches all three of these areas is conquering my own fear of writing, or more accurately that of letting people read my writing. Isn’t that what I’m doing this for, you may ask, and the answer is both yes and no. Yes, I would love for others to read my finish work and enjoy it, but I don’t write expressly for others. I write for the same reason so many other writers do: because at any given moment, there is a story swimming around in my brain and the characters are crowding my head.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another. Tomorrow’s blog is totally different and for commercial purposes, but again bear with me: you might learn something.