Shopping Like an Heiress

The other day my friend asked me what I as doing and I said “shopping like an heiress”. It was a take off on the Party Like a Rockstar song and saying. Ever since then I’ve been napping like a baby, working like a short timer, biking like Pee Wee Herman and eating like a future weight loss surgery candidate. It’s just my latest spin to make my days more fun. Feel free to share some of your own creations…In the mean time I’ll be blogging like Julie & Julia.

Cat “Totally Dude” Cathy

On The Line...Still

I realized the other day that I’ve been using (on and off) online dating sites for the past six years! In some ways I like these sites since they give you access to many more choices and let you quickly cut out the guys who don’t meet your basic criteria. But in other ways they can be a pain since you have to weed through many generic cut and paste emails and offensive emails to get to the good ones. Also it doesn’t have the comfort of meeting someone naturally. But considering I’ve only had one date this past year that I met the old fashioned way, I better stick with the online option and be thankful for it!

As a joke I started thinking about what it will be like if I’m still online dating in my 80’s and came up with a list of criteria the sites need to include to help make senior dating easier:

-Health:
Walker? Yes, No or Sometimes?
Teeth? In your mouth or in a jar at night?

-Kids:
Grandchildren, Great –Grandchildren or Can’t remember?

-Income:
Social Security, Pension or part time job as bagger at Publix?

-Living Arrangement:
Live alone, live with kids or Golden Girls type arrangement?

-Hobbies:
Shuffle board, bingo or Complaining about your health?


I hope to be permanently done with the dating sites soon but in the meantime at least I get some humor from them.

Cat “I Like Long Walks on the Beach” Cathy

Sister From Another Mister

One of my new friends is from Estonia and has a bit of an unusual accent. It’s not uncommon for people to ask her where she’s from. She likes to tell everyone Hoboken New Jersey as a joke. Also her name sounds a lot like Cathy so when people ask our names it sounds like we both say “Cathy”. The other day she told someone we were sisters so I said “we are sisters from another mister”. I was so proud of myself with what I thought was a cute and original phrase. But then I ‘Googled’ and there was my phrase in an urban dictionary. I really thought I was original but maybe I’d heard it somewhere and it just didn’t register until that moment. Or maybe I independently ‘discovered’ the phrase just Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse independently discovered the electrical telegraph. (Yes I googled that too).

Anyway, I’m really happy to finally have the sister I always wanted even if she is from another mister. Next maybe I will find a cousin from another bosom and a niece from another priest. But I bet those are already in the urban dictionary too.

Cat “We Are Family” Cathy

Dear Diary

I recently started a food diary. I always thought they were a dumb idea. I picture writing things like “Dear diary, today I ate jelly donuts all day and now my pants don’t fit”. But I’ve been eating badly and I thought this might be a good way to see what I ate, hold myself accountable and provide motivation to improve my diet. Plus as an engineer I love data and this just gives me more of it to analyze.

To make myself more aware of the bad things I was eating I started bolding them. I thought this would scold me or something but it didn’t work. So then I started counting the number of bolded items I ate each day. The numbers were large with some approaching double digits but still this didn’t seem to deter me.

Finally I’ve come up with my push up plan. I have to do 10 push ups for each bolded item. This will help me burn some small amount of the calories I’m consuming but more importantly I’m hoping it will finally motivate me to reduce some of those bad food choices.

I’ll keep you posted if the push up plan works. If not maybe I will have to highlight bad choices in yellow and put an exclamation mark…Yeah that will definitely to solve my problem.

Cat “Eat this not that!!!” Cathy

Metta Meditation

In my recent Buddhist challenge I attended a Buddhist temple and learned about metta meditation. Metta means ‘loving-kindness’ and what could possibly be bad about that?

The one we were given was pretty simple:

May I be free from harm.
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I live my life with ease.

After saying this for yourself you are supposed to repeat it for someone you care about, someone you don’t really know well, someone you don’t like and then all people as a whole.

I find this meditation quite enjoyable. It puts me in a good mood thinking about myself being happy and at ease. Then I feel even better when I think about someone I care about being happy. Then it lets me see that everyone is important and has their own struggles by doing it for a practical stranger and helps me release any pain and hard feelings by doing it for someone I don’t like.

Besides putting me in a good mood I’ve found other benefits but they may just be coincidences. For my first metta med I picked my pharmacist as my ‘someone I don’t know well’. I’m not a big pill popper so I’ve only seen him twice but he very nice. It just happens that I ran into him a couple days after my metta med and he asked how I was feeling and was even nicer. Also I’ve seen some of the people I chose as my ‘someone you don’t like’ and they’ve been much nicer to me. Hmmm maybe there is something to this after all.

Worst case I enjoy thinking in a positive way and this meditation helps. May you all be free from harm, happy, healthy and live your lives with ease!

Cathy “A Stranger is Just a Friend I Haven’t Met Yet” Cathy

Salt

I know I’ve done a lot of movie and book reviews and that wasn’t really my blogging goal but I thought a review was needed for this movie. Salt staring Angelina Jolie as agent Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer/Russian spy/all around cool chick, is probably the best reason ever do go on a low sodium diet. If you haven’t seen it then I envy you.

As someone who was injured and has been out of commission for months from doing a simple split in aerial silk class I found it annoying that Salt could live through hundreds of fights, jumping from truck to truck on the highway and countless other endeavors that would have killed a ‘lesser’ person 10 times over.

The plot was basic and I was able to guess the end pretty early in the movie. The worst part is they left the movie ending open for a sequel. I guess that one will be called Salt and Pepper.

I generally like Angelina Jolie movies but this one was a big disappointment. I admire that she gives a large portion of her salary away to charity but I feel in this case she should reimburse us poor movie goers who had to suffer through it.

Cat “Push It” Cathy

These Boots Were Made For Wearing

The other day I googled “can I wear boots in March”. With the worlds knowledge available at my fingertips it seems like a waste that this is what I wanted to research. Plus I didn’t really like the answers I got anyway. There were suggestions like “don’t wear boots if it’s warm weather like over 50 degrees”. Well I live in Florida and I consider 50 degrees to be quite chilly.

So I decided to make my own rules. I like my boots and I’m wearing them to a concert this week even though it’s near the end of March in Florida and probably going to be a balmy 70 degrees. I don’t care if the fashion police give me a ticket and I end up in a fashion mag with a big black block covering my face. This is what I want to wear so I am going to do it. Plus it’s fun to be a little quirky, not worry about all the rules and march to your own beat anyway!

On a side fashion note, I remember going to the mall near downtown Orlando when overalls were ‘in style’. Almost half of the women were wearing overalls. This just seemed ludicrous to me, after all there aren’t many farmers in Orlando. Now that overalls are no longer ‘hip’ you’d be lucky to see one woman wearing them. (By the way if you do see one it will probably be me so say ‘hi’)

My opinion is we waste too much time worrying about fashion anyway. Sure it’s fun to wear a new outfit and feel cute and sexy. But to worry that you are not quite in style when fashion changes quicker than I can change my underwear is just not worth it to me. I just feel there are more important things to put my time and energy into. Plus I have a theory that men don’t really know or care what is in style anyway. They will notice a cute girl in overalls, boots or a moo moo all the same.

Cat “Polka Dots and Stripes” Cathy