The Very Hungry Kimmerpillar

In an effort to get back on track with my life after months of house-based neglect, I decided to go to my doctor and get a physical, because:

a) My body is a finely honed machine that needs maintenance like any other other superbly-crafted apparatus

b) Secretly, I constantly believe that I have contracted some sort of horrible disease, like typhoid fever or lupus

c) I've been having a lot of trouble breathing through my nose lately, which is turning me into a slack-jawed yokel.

So since I was going in for a battery of tests anyways, I figured it would be a good idea to have some bloodwork done to ensure that my cholesterol and sugar levels were okay (and that my blood had not been replaced with concentrated amounts of Hawaiian Punch, which would be disgusting, but tasty).

Blood work, of course, requires you to fast for twelve hours to ensure that your tests aren't tainted by any of the sugars or fats from food that you eat (and since my diet consists almost entirely of sugar and fat, this seemed especially important in my case). So while a normal human being would schedule their physical for eight in the morning, requiring very little actual fasting, I chose to go at 4:15 p.m.

Why? Partially because I wanted to be able to leave work early, because a little blood-letting is always preferable to suffering through late Monday afternoon at an insurance company. But partially, I imagine it was also because I enjoy constantly informing people of any agony I may be in, and fasting offers a multitude of opportunities to remind people that you haven't eaten in fourteen hours. You're going to Chipotle for lunch? Sorry, I can't-- I'm fasting.

You'll note that I never actually tell anyone why I'm fasting, thus giving off the false impression that I am on a hunger strike for the people of Tibet. Not that I am particularly known for my symbolic acts of dissension, although I have successfully managed to never see an episode of Navy NCIS in protest of the fact that it stars my arch nemesis, Mark Harmon.

Ultimately, though, the fasting was less impressive to my co-workers and more of just a giant pain in the ass for me, as I apparently require food every thirty-seven minutes in order to remain functional, like a rusted-out car with a gas leak. At one point I attempted to fill my stomach with water in an effort to feel full, but this merely resulted in me being really, really cold and full of pee. I also worry that I might have incurred a mild case of water intoxication, as I have never really found auditing so funny before.

But I persevered and made it through to the blood-letting, after which I crammed my face full of crackers to hold me over until I made it to McDonald's, where I ate enough food to tide the US ladies' gymnastics team over until the closing ceremonies. Full of chicken and soda and potato-esque product, I drove home, a crumb-covered testament to good health.

We are the champions

Please note! This entry is not entirely about the Cleveland Cavaliers. Only partially. So please read it, because I am bleeding readers due to my Cavs obsession. But dammit, I cannot help the love!

I don't know if you've heard, but Cleveland kicked all of your cities' collective asses at basketball (except you, San Antonio-- not yet, anyway), which makes Cleveland better than all your cities, using my false logic, even those cities that don't have basketball teams at all, and therefore can't even participate.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are now, officially, the Eastern Conference Champions, which has never, ever, ever happened before, and are going to the NBA finals, which, if they win, will cause this entire city to erupt into a chaos the likes of which has not been seen since Old Testament days. I, for one, plan to turn some people into pillars of salt. I won't tell you which people. But they'd better be ready.

This is something that the people of Cleveland have needed for a long, long time. Approximately since the time that our river caught fire. Which hasn't happened since, all right? So shut up about it.

But there is one major downside to this-- the Cleveland Cavaliers are eating up pretty much all of my free time. If I'm not staking out a table at a restaurant so I have a prime seat to watch the game, or actually watching the game, or discussing the game for hours on end with Ben and the people at work, then I am frantically running around doing errands that should have been done on the nights when I was watching the game.

Bike riding? Gone. E-mail correspondence? Spotty, at best. Blog posting? Pathetic. (Although Pen and M, I think you have to admit that even though I'm ONLY blogging about the Cavs, I feel that I should be upgraded back to normal blogging status.) I have only two modes: Game mode, and Doing The Bare Minimum of the Rest of My Chores In Order To Survive mode.

Not only that, but the Cavs are single-handedly forcing me to gain weight! Because why make a salad at home, when I can enjoy this tasty burger and three beers at Panini's while watching the game? I tell you, I went to try on my dress this weekend for the first time, and it felt as if all my vital organs had been squeezed into a small knot at the center of my abdomen. And, I had back fat. Not good.

So Cavs, I love you. I love you more than any non-athletic, book-reading trombone player really has the right to love you. But please, just hurry up and beat the Spurs in four games so I can bask in your reflected glow just long enough to eat one more plate of onion rings at Panini's and then return to my regularly scheduled life events.

I am herbivorous

Just as an update, I totally ate the salad. I added some sunflower seeds and a few slivers of grilled chicken, and it was fabulous. I even passed up a trip to the much beloved Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat* buffet to enjoy it. I am so healthy, it's scary.

The best part is, having eaten such a healthy lunch, I am now free to eat a ginormous celebratory dinner this evening. With dessert. Because I earned it through matchstick carrots.

*For the longest time, I did not know that AYCE on a restaurant's sign meant "all you can eat." I thought it was some sort of weird code, or the name of a group, like the BPOE (I don't know what that stands for, either, but it seems sinister). But then I thought, why would the AYCE (which I perceived, for some reason, to be like a religious organization) eat wings at Hooters? That's when it all came together for me...

Baby's first salad

Behold! I made a salad!

Having never actually made a salad before in my entire life (more on this in a moment), I obviously also made a really big mess. And no, there is no Febreze in my salad. But the point is, I did it-- I personally assembled a salad with more than five ingredients, for the sole purpose of my consumption at lunch tomorrow. Since I figured that no one would believe me (particularly Ashley, with whom I was on the phone during the assemblage of said salad), I thought I would photograph my triumph, even though it reveals the embarrassing fact that, as I did not know how to properly toss the salad, I just transferred it to a bigger container and shook it up and transferred it back.

Those of you who are relatively new to this blog will not realize the significance of this event, and walk away shaking your head, oddly vexed by my salad retardation.

But those of you who have known me for awhile, I hope you appreciate the sheer magnitude of this situation. I made a salad. And I'm going to eat it. Unless I panic, throw it out, and go to Long John Silver's. But I'm hoping Healthy Kim prevails. Especially since this salad took me like 20 minutes to make.

Dear Euclid Neighbors,

Why do you keep throwing rib bones into the grass around the school across the street from my house? Why? Why are you even eating so many ribs? I swear on all that is holy, I probably haven't eaten ribs in seven or eight years. Not one rib. And yet, somehow, you're all eating them like they're going out of style, and the unceremoniously throwing them into the lawn in front of the school (which means you also often eat outdoors, which is again weird, as I never actually see any of you eating outdoors, and I'm out there quite a bit. Are you throwing them from your car? Are you eating ribs in a moving car??).

Don't you understand that every time my dog finds one of these discarded rib bones, she has to pick it up and eat it-- I don't mean chew on it, I mean she eats the entire thing, and it makes sickening crunching noises, and I just can't stop thinking, my dog is eating something one of the neighbors already chewed on.

So please, please, please, please please stop doing it. There are enough obstacles on my morning walk-- renegade poo bombs, mysteriously dead-of-apparently-natural-causes squirrel carcasses in the middle of the sidewalk, kids who set fire to things in the school parking lot-- that I don't need your rib bones adding just that much more evil to my day.

Love,
Kim

Eat these, or you are dead to me

This one goes out especially to Ashley, who originally introduced me to the Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites back in aught two. We had them at a Christmas party, I believe, and I never stopped believing in them, even after every grocery store from Wilmington to Ohio seemed to have stopped carrying them. How could any supermarket worth its salt believe that cheesecake and graham cracker crust, coated in chocolate, would not be worth its weight in gold? But sure enough, the other day I was at Giant Eagle, having just picked up a vastly inferior (but still quite tasty) tub of Edy's Caramel something something, when I backtracked to buy more Uncrustables (as they still retain their crack-like quality for me) and instead found, lying on its side and covered in cooler-frost, a single package of the infamous and elusive Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites, which I immediately snatched in a Gollum-esque fashion, unceremoniously ditching the Edy's in the totally wrong cooler. Ben and I have eaten two each so far, and I already live in fear of the day when we run out, which should be three days from now, given our rapid Cheesecake Bite consumption.

Listen, I'm not saying that if you don't eat these cheesecake bites you're less than human or anything. I'm just gently suggesting that your avoidance of this particular foodstuff might just make you a Communist of the Kim Jong Il, Everyone Must Have The Same Dorky Haircut vein. Just saying.