10 More Things About Me

November 26, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I couldn’t think of a good post for today, so when in doubt, go for a list!

1. I can sew, but only by hand. I’ve made pillows, pouches, and costumes, but none with a sewing machine. I can’t work a sewing machine at all. My grandma tried to teach me when I was a kid, but I didn’t really want to learn. In the years since, I’ve tried a few times to learn how to use it, but it thwarts me every time. I think that’s karma from not paying attention when I had the chance to learn from a master.

2. I have trouble with names and faces sometimes. Sometimes I can ran remember someone after meeting them one time. Sometimes I can be around a person for years and still not remember who they are. Ask my sister. When someone we went to school with friends me on Facebook, she’s likely to get a text from me saying, “Who is this? Why do I know them?” She’s my name-face memory bank.

3. I like trivia about movies more than I like actually watching them. I like useless knowledge in general, but for whatever reason, I love movie trivia. I’ll read facts about movies I’ll never watch in a million years.

4. I used to be able to do a really good impression of Saddam Hussein from South Park. I’d recite his dialogue from the movie for laughs.

5. I’ve never been to Disney World. My only trip to Florida was tagging along with my grandparents on a business trip. We drove there and back. Twenty-two hours one way. And it rained every day at noon while we were there. I wasn’t that impressed with Florida and I no longer have much desire to go to Disney World.

6. I like organizational stuff. Bins, folder, cubbies, labels, all of that jazz. I like the feeling of being organized like that. Ignore the fact that my dresser is covered with stuff I haven’t put away yet.

7. I’ve only had two ear infections in my life. One when I was three and one when I was eleven. My sister, on the other hand, had them all the time.

8. I don’t like Kool-Aid. Another thing that drove my mom nuts because I wasn’t like other kids (she ran a daycare so the more kids she could get to eat and drink the same things, the better). I would only drink one flavor called Rainbow Punch and when they stopped making it, I never drank any Kool-Aid again.

9. I’ve got a scar on my nose from being hit in the face with a ceramic humming bird. I was working at Wal-Mart at the time, standing on a ladder, rearranging a shelf with gift items, most of them various kinds of small ceramic figures in boxes. The shelf I was working on broke, several boxes slid towards me, and one with a humming bird hit me in the face, splitting open the bride of my nose and nearly knocking me off the ladder. I then ended up helping a customer while holding some tissue to my bleeding nose because I didn’t have time to properly doctor myself before the guy came up to my counter. He didn’t seem to mind that I was bleeding, though.

10. I’ve been told that I have a great voice for phone sex. So maybe I wasn’t asked to do all of those in-store announcements at Wal-Mart because it would be easiest for me to do it as opposed to someone else.

Writing–Generating My NaNo Idea

October 31, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I wrote before how I was stuck on what to write for NaNo this year. I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and writing novellas instead, but even then I wasn’t too moved by the idea. I really wanted to stick to my November guns and go for my usual goal of 60,000 words before Thanksgiving. But I had nothing.

A NaNo buddy of mine whom I also follow on Twitter and also has a pretty rockin’ blog, Trinae Ross, told me that she was stuck for her NaNo idea, too, until she just started writing random words down on a piece of paper and then asking the usual questions of who, what, where, when, and why. It took her about four days for things to start to come together, but she ended up with something of substance that she could get to the point of outlining. She had a story.

At her suggestion, I decided to try it. Sitting and thinking wasn’t helping me any. The blank I was drawing was just getting blanker. So I grabbed one of my plentiful notebooks, flipped to a blank page, took pen in hand, and wrote down the first things that came to my mind.

“Guys like him aren’t very good at staying dead.” The 70’s. Nighttime. A face in a window. A room full of newspaper articles. A missing girl. An attempted abduction. Two teenagers.

And from there I started asking questions. Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he stay dead? Why this decade? Who is this face? Who are these kids? What do the articles say?

The page filled up pretty quickly with my answers and other scribblings. More importantly, I was pretty happy with what I was jotting down. Just like what happened with Trinae, my story started to come together.

Even at the eleventh hour going into NaNo I still have some work to do (I’ll get into the details next week), but I’m feeling so much better about this project than I was a week ago when I didn’t even have a project to work with. At least I have a place to start when the clock strikes midnight.

I am horrible at networking and socializing. I don’t work very hard at including myself in the writing community because there’s a still a chunk of me that doesn’t think I belong because I don’t have enough credits to my name. But through NaNo and through Twitter, I’ve met some pretty cool fellow writers that don’t hold me to the same high standards that I hold myself to when it comes to inclusion and for that I am grateful.

Without Trinae, I’d still be spinning my wheels.

30 Things About Me

July 30, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

This is one of those Twitter trending topics, like 50 things about me and 100 things about me, that clogs up my Twitter stream like an unfortunate accident on the log flume ride at Six Flags. And while I’m egotistical enough to want to share 30 things about myself, I’m conscientious enough not to cram it all on my Twitter timeline.

Besides, someone might miss one.

30 Things About Me

1. I still have my tonsils. Despite repeated bouts of strep throat and tonsillitis, I never had them out.

2. I can touch my tongue to my nose. It’s a family trait. My mom and my cousin can do it, too.

3. I broke my dad’s index finger pitching to him when I was a kid. I played little league fast pitch and Dad insisted that I pitch three or four times a week. When your kid can hit 60 on the gun and you don’t have a proper catchers mitt, you sometimes get your finger broken.

4. I also broke a window and put a few dents in the siding while pitching. Mom was surprisingly okay with the broken window, considering she was standing right next to it, doing the dishes, when I broke it.

5. I taught myself to write left-handed. I practice by writing things on my day planner with my left hand. Pretty soon, my writing will be just as legible left-handed as right-handed (in other words, not very).

6. I prefer things in three’s or multiples of three. I don’t know where or why this fascination started. I wear three rings, prefer to wear three bracelets, wear three earrings in each ear. I had three eyebrow rings at one point. I eat little things in multiples of three (example: I’ll eat nine crackers, three cookies, fifteen chips, etc.). It’s not a have-to, but it’s definitely a preference.

7. I wrote my first story at the age of six. I made it look like a book. I folded the paper in half, drew a picture on the cover, and wrote the story inside. The story didn’t get finished and the spelling wasn’t that great, though I’m pretty pleased at the number of big words I used. I still have it.

8. I gave serious consideration to being a meteorologist and a marine biologist when I was in junior high. I’m still fascinated by tornadoes and sharks (the two things I wanted to focus on in those careers). In high school, I also gave some consideration to pursuing acting.

9. I “majored” in English, sociology, and psychology the three times I went to community college.

10. I’m a natural shot. I was eleven the first time I ever shot a gun and I was scared to death. Once I realized that I hit eight out ten at seven yards, I wasn’t scared anymore. I’ve shot several different kinds of guns including an AR-15. My favorite gun to shoot is my dad’s Argentine Colt .45.

11. I fractured my ankle when I was seventeen. Despite having insurance, I refused to go to the hospital because I didn’t want to listen to my dad bitch about how much fixing it would cost. I wrapped it up and gimped around on it for the rest of the summer, including working at my cousin’s daycare.

12. I’m terrible at remembering anniversaries. Not just romantic ones (one boyfriend had to remind me of our anniversary date because I could never remember it), but all of them. When I started a job, when I quit smoking, when I joined Twitter, when I joined Livejournal, how long I’ve known someone, the date of my first Cubs game at Wrigley, none of it sticks well in my head.

13. My scream is broken. I seem to only be capable of screaming if I’m really terrified, and even then it doesn’t always work.

14. The first movie I saw in the theater was E.T. The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was Return of the Jedi.

15. I’ve been thanked in the liner notes of a CD and in the dedications of a book. I’ve also had my picture in the liner notes of a different CD.

16. I don’t like hot dogs. Despite repeated attempts to like hot dogs, they make me gag (mind out of the gutter, kids). The last time I was successfully ate a hot dog that wasn’t a corndog (for some reason, that’s the exception), I was a senior in high school and the hot dog in question had been burned over a campfire and dropped in the ashes. Not kidding.

17. The first horror movie I can remember watching was Poltergeist. I was probably about four or five at the time.

18. We didn’t get a CD player until I was in 7th or 8th grade. The first four CDs my sister and I owned were Janet Jackson, Salt n Peppa, The Cranberries, and Warrant.

19. When I was a kid I could do a pretty good impression of Ursula from The Little Mermaid, particularly while singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls”.

20. I started a correspondence course in creative writing the summer before my senior year in high school. I finished it not long after I graduated.

21. I won second place in a state in a poetry contest my sophomore year of high school. I’m still bitter that my teacher made me change one line of that poem so it would have more “devices” in it. The poem that won state and ended up winning 2nd in national? Written by the girl’s mother. I’m still a little bit bitter about that, too.

22. I drive left-handed. It just feels more comfortable to me. When I smoked, I did it left-handed as well. Smoking while driving got interesting.

23. I’ve got a scar on my right shoulder that I have no clue how I got.

24. I share a birthday with a great aunt on my dad’s side and a second cousin on my mom’s side. I also share it with Kirstie Alley, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, Rob Zombie, Oliver Platt, and Marian Hossa. Yes, January 12th is a questionable date.

25. My high school graduation present was a 1974 American General mail Jeep. It was flat black, had sliding doors that locked open, no heat or A/C, and was right-hand drive. It cost my dad 200 bucks.

26. I’ve worn the same winter coat for over 15 years.

27. I once burned macaroni and cheese. Despite the vast improvements of my culinary skills, my sister (to whom cooking comes naturally) won’t let me forget it.

28. Kansas City, Missouri is the farthest west I’ve ever been.

29. I have a lot of trouble pronouncing some words. I can read them and can pronounce them in my head, but when I actually say them, they come out completely different and completely wrong.

30. I’m a fatalist. It’ll either kill me or it won’t and I don’t have much say in it no matter what I do.

It took a couple of hours to come up with 30 things. Thank goodness I didn’t pick 50.

The Many Faces of Kiki

June 18, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have this weird single-minded aspect to my personality.

I like to think that what other people think about me doesn’t matter, but in a way it does. Not so much the harsh criticism and insults often hurled my way, sometimes verbally, sometimes only mentally. I mean if you bother to think that I’m a fat, ugly, stupid bitch of a human being, I’m pretty sure I’m not associating with you much for that to be a really big issue.

I guess I’m more concerned with what people think about me in terms of how people think of me in relation to the way I present myself.

If you ask me what I am, I’ll tell you that I’m a writer first and foremost. That’s me. That’s my career (as unsuccessful as it currently is). It’s a big part of my identity. But it’s not my ENTIRE identity. I know that. I’m sure other people know that. And I don’t think that way about other people. But for some ridiculous reason I’ve got it in my head that if I present any other aspect of my identity, then people won’t take me seriously as a writer.

Crazy, right?

It’s like this. I know that most people don’t consider writing a real job. I don’t get a regular paycheck. I don’t go to an office. Hell, I don’t even have to put on real pants. Because I can’t support myself, it’s not real work. It’s hard enough already to be taken seriously as a writer because I’ve yet to publish a book and/or I’m not a best-selling author (yet).

Now, you take that insecurity and couple it with my other interests and I’ve created a great dilemma for myself. For example, I make and sell jewelry. I like jewelry. I like to make jewelry. It’s another creative outlet for me. Selling it gives me a little more money towards making the ends meet every month. But I’m afraid that by promoting the jewelry I make and sell people will think I’m not serious about my writing.

And thus a big part of my identity is negated.

I hate that.

Now, I realize that most of this is all in my head. Not everyone makes their work such a big part of themselves. Most people don’t think of themselves as one thing, so they don’t think of other people as one thing. They probably don’t even bother to break it all down. They don’t think of me as a writer and a jewelry maker and a fat girl belly dancing and a rerun junkie and a baseball floozy and a t-shirt enthusiast and a lover of horrible things. They look at the sum total instead of the parts and it either makes up someone they like or someone they don’t.

It’s my paranoia at play. I know that and I do my best to shove that squirmy thing back into it’s aquarium and lock the top and just let it go and be all of those things. But it’s not always easy. I’m not always able to do it.

Ah, the joys and pains of being a constant work in progress.

Venting Explosions Safely

May 21, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

When I had a bout of major depression about 10 years ago, the therapist explained to me a line that I heard on an episode of M*A*S*H, but didn’t give much thought to. Depression is anger turned inward. And I was really good at holding all of my anger, stress, and frustration inside. The key to my recovery (if I didn’t want to go on medication and I didn’t), was to vent my anger, stress, and frustration in a safe, constructive way.

It was long after this, my mother gave me a journal for the now defunct Aunt Kiki Day. That journal became my outlet and it kept my anger, frustration, and stress from building up inside and poisoning me. It was a life saver really and it’s still my go-to way of relieving that kind of tension.

But there are times when I want to vent to an actual person. Like screaming into the void, sometimes I’d rather hear the words of my frustrations rather than just see them written down. Sometimes I’d rather let people know where I’m at and what my deal is.

Sometimes I would like a little support, even if it’s just someone listening.

The problem with this is that I don’t always have someone to vent to. The people in my life don’t always have time for such bullshit. They don’t care, don’t want to listen, and I don’t blame them. They have productive lives of their own. Why take time out to listen to me?

Not to mention that it’s such an established trope that I’m self-sustaining and I don’t NEED any support (that’s a post for a different day) that they don’t really think about me needing that sort of outlet. I’m the one THEY got to when THEY need to vent.

I used to vent on the Internet. Shouting into the void. The problem with that is now with social networking it’s getting harder and harder to vent without the people I’m venting about reading it and then getting offended.

Why not talk to them directly? In a perfect world, that sort of open communication would be nice. However, the reality is that people get offended by that sort of thing. I know from experience. I get pissed at people and the shit they do. I get annoyed with people and the shit they do. I’ve talked to people about the shit they do. And the reality is…nothing changes. In the end, it’s my fault for getting pissed or getting annoyed, they don’t change a damn thing, and the whole argument isn’t productive.

Venting is what I do because I can’t change them. And sometimes (getting more frequent), I can’t vent the way I want to so I can avoid opening a whole can of worms.

Which just adds to my frustration.

It’s a vicious cycle, one that I’m having a tough time escaping, partially because it’s one that’s partially of my own creation. And making the changes I need to make on my end doesn’t completely stop it.

It’s a bitch for sure.

It’s time for me to be a bigger one if things are going to change.

Hey, Stupidhead!

March 26, 2012January 21, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

In my early 20’s I ran around with a group of mostly guys that worked the pro wrestling indy scene in Chicago. One of the guys had a fun nickname for me. He called me Stupidhead. It was a childish thing, not meant to be insulting. It was great fun, particularly when he shouted it across crowded establishments. The odd silence that followed it was always good for a laugh.

Now, I know I’m not stupid, but I have to admit that I live up to that nickname a little more often and a little bit better than I’d like.

Mistakes happen. I don’t like to make them, but I do. However, it’s the stupid mistakes that really get to me, the ones that make me go, “Why did I do THAT?”

And sometimes it feels like I make more than my fair share.

I am my own worst enemy. Even if there are other factors at play, the blame lays on my own shoulders for not doing everything I could, everything I SHOULD, to prevent these mistakes from happening. It comes down to not following up or reading the fine print. I KNOW better.

I made two such mistakes in the same week. Talk about banging my head against a wall. Both mistakes were my fault. One was not following up and paying attention. I should have read the fine print. It was one of those things that I let go because I figured it’d be okay and that attitude got me snake bit. The other mistake was a product of not thinking. Period. I forgot to consider a big piece of important information when making a decision and as such, it could cost me in the long run.

Of the two mistakes, the first one was the most immediately costly and the one I’m working to rectify right now. The other one might actually not pan out to mean much in the end. There are other variables out of my control that will contribute to the outcome of that decision. The point is that neither are mistakes that I should have made had I been thinking and paying my due diligence.

Why am I being vague about these two mistakes? Because I’m embarrassed to have made them. Talking about them in general terms is as detailed as the burn of shame will allow.

I wonder why I do these things. I’m supposedly intelligent person, but I’ve made some dumb decisions in my life. Blatantly dumb. Now, I don’t count anything before the age of twenty-five because I’ve got the great biological defense of my brain not being fully formed yet. However, that defense doesn’t hold up now that I’m past thirty and I’ve got the advantage of not only a fully formed brain, but also experience on my side.

Part of my problem I know is laziness. I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to follow up or read that fine print or dig a little deeper. So I just let it ride and hope it turns out okay, which is unbelievably dumb of me as my life is a perfect example of what happens when I give the Universe a choice for things to go okay or to not okay. Unless my life is on the line, the Universe tends to prefer things go pear-shaped for me than not.

Part of my problem is forgetfulness. I used to have a great memory. Now it’s suspect at best. I forget to follow up on things. I forget key pieces of information when making decisions even if they are in some way a key reason why I’m making the decision in the first place. It’s like I get focused on an angle of a picture and it’s only until I look away and look back that I see the huge barn that’s supposed to be the focal point.

It’s a frustrating thing to be dumb in this particular way. Bad decisions made with all available information I can live with. I paid my money, I takes my chances.

Sloppy thinking that leads to glaring mistakes are a little harder for me to swallow.

I really need to stop doing that.

Writing–Slowing Down

March 14, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

At the beginning of February I was all fired up to take on my short stories and get them all revised and polished up and sent out. About ten days in, the whole thing blew up in my face.

I didn’t want to look these stories anymore. I felt like even though I was spending a whole afternoon one one story, nothing was changing. The stories weren’t getting better and worse, they weren’t getting done. It was some weird limbo state in which I banged my head against the words and the words kept winning.

So I took a weekend off and didn’t look at the stories. When I came back to them on that Monday, I came back with a different approach. Instead of trying to sprint through the stories and rush to get them done, which did little in the way of progress, I slowed myself down. I only allowed myself to revise two pages of the story a day and worked on two or three stories at a time. The result? Progress.

By working on just those two pages of the story, I was able to focus my efforts. I blotted out the big picture and focused on just the details of those two pages. It worked. Oh, I still didn’t get as much done last month as I wanted to, but I did get things done, something that wouldn’t have happened if I had kept up with my frantic, flailing pace.

This is something I struggle with. I get in a hurry because I want to be done. Writing isn’t a sprint, but I sometimes treat it like one. I think I SHOULD be done by a certain time and then rush to make it happen. This sort of approach might work for NaNoWriMo or the first draft of a short story, when the brain just needs to dump the words on paper. But when it comes to revisions, that’s not something I should rush myself through. That’s when I need to take the time to focus and do it write. That’s when speed is my enemy, not my friend.

Right now I’m so desperate to get things going that trying to push myself along is really holding me back. I feel like I’m so far behind everyone else and can’t catch up, but I have to remember that this isn’t a race. This is just me. And I need to do my best.

Slowing down (and more importantly focusing) will help me do that.

Now I just have to remember that.

Tornado Dreamer

March 12, 2012January 21, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

I dream about tornadoes a lot. I suppose that stands to reason since I live in a cornfield located in the eastern portion of tornado alley and have been ducking and covering all of my life.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I fully admit that I’ve only ever taken cover during a tornado warning at school and at Walmart, the only job I’ve had that made me. The only other time I was at work during a warning was when I worked at Taco Bell and then we were slammed and I couldn’t take cover if I wanted to. A lot of people wanted their last meal to be a gordita, I suppose.

I haven’t taken cover in my own house since I was a kid (and I was the only one that did). My parents, hell everyone on my block, would go to the window or go outside whenever the sirens sounded. We still do. Twenty-five years ago, when the warning system wasn’t the greatest, false alarms were the norm and a seeing-is-believing attitude was adopted. It’s become so normal to me that if the warning siren goes off and I’m told to take cover, I get anxious because I can’t SEE what’s going on.

I’ve been on the computer playing Word Whomp while a tornado touched down a mile from my house. I’ve grilled during tornado warnings. I drove through one on the way to a bar (in my defense, I didn’t know there was a tornado; I just thought it was a really bad storm and didn’t learn differently until I got to the bar). The only precaution I take it putting on my shoes because I’m convinced a tornado won’t hit my house unless I have to climb out of the rubble barefoot.

Despite all of this, I’ve never actually seen a tornado (like I said, I drove through one without actually seeing it). But I dream about seeing them all the time. In the dreams, I’m almost never concerned about being hurt. In most of them, if I haven’t taken cover, I usually have an easy time of doing it. And then as I’m watching the twister do its thing, I tell myself that this time it’s not a dream. This time it’s real. I’m really seeing this tornado.

Inevitably, I wake up and spoil it for myself.

According to dreammoods.com, dreaming about tornadoes could symbolize extreme emotional outbursts and temper tantrums. It could symbolize volatile situations or relationships. It could symbolize feeling overwhelmed and out of control. I suppose it could, for a normal person.

But, the wonder and awe I feel during these dreams kind of cancels those interpretations out, huh? To me, tornadoes are beautiful, amazing things, yet I don’t discount their ability to destroy anything that gets in their path. However, I feel like (particularly in my dreams) that they won’t hurt me.

It’s like swimming with sharks. They’re beautiful, but potentially lethal creatures and you have to have some confidence that you’ll emerge from the water unscathed if you’re going to get into the water in the first place.

Did I mention that I dream about sharks a lot, too?

Writing–When the Brain Has Other Plans

February 22, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

I have trouble with my brain sometimes.

Here’s an example:

Last month, I got pretty tired of rewriting Spirited In Spite. It turned into quite the slog that I couldn’t wait to get through. And while I was doing this slog, all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to work on my short stories. In fact, towards the end of the rewrite and the end of the month, I did start working on my short stories as a kind of reward for getting through the rewrites.

It was easy to come to the conclusion that I was going to spend February working on my short stories.

About a week and a half into the month, I was tired of looking at these short stories (to my credit, I had three of them ready to submit and one of those I DID submit) and wanted to work on something else.

For some reason, that happens. My brain acts like a spoiled child. It gets what it wants, plays with it a minute, and then immediately wants to play with something else. It’s ridiculous and frustrating and clashes with my stubborn self and need to adhere to the goals set for me.

This time, though, I decided to compromise. After submitting one of the short stories, I took a break from them. Instead, I took the weekend and read one of my novel manuscripts (A Tale of Two Lady Killers), making some notes on it. On Monday, I went back to the short stories. The break helped me avoid the feeling of slogging. It helped me to avoid resenting the goals I’d set for myself and in the long run, accomplish them.

I have to remember that my pig-headedness is an asset only when I use it correctly. I also have to remember to be flexible with my goals. Sometimes my spoiled brat brain has a good point and maybe a day or two spent indulging it is for the best.

It’s more cooperative when I compromise.

Food Math

February 6, 2012January 21, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Being fat most of my life, I’ve been made aware of most diets. I know a few people that have lost their weight by counting calories or through Weight Watchers by counting points and it always made me wonder why anyone would want to turn a meal into math?

Now I find myself doing that exact same thing.

I’m working on trying to lose the forty pounds I gained after I lost it the first time. This, of course, involves exercising, but it also involves me trying to change the way that I eat. Actually, I don’t eat too poorly compared to some people, but I could always make improvements.

In my quest for better health knowledge, I stumbled on a site that calculates how man calories you should consume during a day given your activity level to lose weight. I thought it might be a good guideline for me, not that I wanted to obsessively start counting calories or anything, but if I had a general idea of how much I was consuming, it might help me lose weight.

At first, it was an interesting educational experience, especially when it came to serving sizes (really, how many people use 1/4 cup of syrup on their pancakes?) and just how much you could eat on a certain number of calories a day.

Now understand, I didn’t exactly limit myself. I just adjusted my choices to a point so the math would work out. It all worked out for the most part.

And then the guilt started creeping in.

Guilt attached to going over my “limit”. Guilt attached to still being hungry after I finished my serving. Guilt attached to that second cup of coffee.

I have a good relationship with my food. I’m not much of an emotional eater (though I will eat because I’m bored, but because I’m aware of it, it doesn’t happen very often). The self-esteem issues I have with my weight (which are intricate, complex, and contradictory) are separate from anything that has to do with food. Food tastes good. Food gives me energy. Food nurishes my body. And that’s it. I am on good terms with my food.

Which is why when the guilt started creeping in, I put a quick stop to food math. I’m not going to have a bunch of numbers ruin my relationship with food for the sake of fitting into a smaller pair of pants (or turn me against algebra). Food is not math. Food is food and needs to be treated as such.

I’m still looking at the calories and serving sizes (Really? A 1/4 cup of syrup?) of what I eat, but in a very different way. It’s not just how many calories I’m consuming, but what kind of calories I’m consuming. You know what? Sometimes I want 250 calories from a sandwich. And sometimes I want those same calories from two cookies. Neither choice is wrong and I shouldn’t make myself feel like I failed a pop quiz because of it. Being conscious of the choice and the reasons why I’m making it is more important.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a cookie now and then. There’s nothing wrong with having one.

The numbers can still add up.