The Gift of Exercise

For Christmas I was given two yoga mats. Yes, TWO yoga mats, and both are the exact same shade of “I hate exercise” purple. I can take a hint, so I spent January going to yoga class…twice. What? It was a REALLY intense two classes and it seemed fitting, given the two yoga mats.

Since February I’ve been to yoga a few more times, but only because I now have a plethora of yoga mats and I need to determine which one is the best so that I can do something totally ridiculous with the others. After testing it out, I’ve realized that one of the new purple yoga mats is skinnier than I am and the last thing I need is my yoga mat making me feel like a doublewide on a narrow country road. The other new purple mat is quite nice, although it lacks the necessary squishiness to make me feel buoyant and light while downward dogging. And my other yoga mat is my old yoga mat, and it’s, well…it’s old. So I guess each mat has its own flaws but it doesn’t matter which one I keep, what does matter is what I decide to do with the extra two. Here are my ideas:

1. Send one to my sister, who will hate it and yell at me: “Whoa, bitch! Are you calling me fat?”
2. Use them as napping mats. Remember napping mats from kindergarten? I had one that was blue on one side and red on the other side and it folded up into a little rectangle. I miss nap time so hard. If yoga was more like nap time I would go everyday.
3. Watch Aladdin and sing “A Whole New World” while pretending the yoga mat is a magic carpet.
4. Use it as padding in the dog’s crate…for five minutes or until he chews it to shreds.
5. Pad the coffee table edges because it keeps attacking my shins in the dark.
6. Fashion them into a pair of riding chaps. Then find a horse to ride.
7. Make placemats. Then figure out why people use placemats.
8. Cut out hearts and cover them in glitter to make Valentine’s Day cards.
9. Freeze them. Whenever I don’t know what to do with something, freezing it always seems like a good way to not make a decision.
10. Donate the two extra mats to Haiti because that’s apparently what earthquake victims need. Forget about silly things like food, water, shelter and money - the people of Haiti need yoga mats!

Whatever I decide to do with the extra yoga mats I’m going to keep going to yoga, at least until my new student special runs out next week and they're all, “hey you can’t come to class unless you pay!” and I’m all, “watch me steal your yoga!” and they’re all, “we’re calling the cops!” and I’m all, “namaste, bitches!” and then I run away and find a new studio who accepts me and my napping mat.

I'm Super Busy and Important...

This title is true if it is opposite day, which it is not.

I know that the 25 people following this blog, and the three people who actually read it, have been tossing and turning because I have been seemingly absent from my blog for quite awhile now.

It's been 20 days. That's almost three weeks.

Given these numbers, I understand why you might be mad at me, why you might decide to give up on this blog, and why you might want to send me hate mail (I've never received hate mail before, but it seems like something important people tend to get - so, naturally, I'm expecting some very soon.). But before you start fashioning grammatically incorrect protest signs about Quinnterruption, please know that I have every intention to turn this blog around. No, it will not be a 'glob', but it will be more regular, kind of like a bowel movement, only prettier, and less...er, um...smelly.

This new promise of regularity should be taken as seriously as all of my other promises, which I have upheld completely to not at all. So, if you gave up on me, please, come back. If you feel as though I no longer deserve your loyalty as a reader, then I urge you to reconsider your obviously stupid feeling. You can't quit me. You can try, but you won't be able to because that will just make you a quitter at quitting and nobody likes a quitting quitter.

In an effort to suck empathy from you via distraction, I'm sharing a few of the things that have been occupying my productive time over the last 20 days:

1. By browsing this site, I've become an expert in the field of child psychological by identifying why some people (read: serial killers) grow up to hate their parents:

2. I've been attempting to contact my long-lost group of BFFs after finding this picture of our last reunion:
Needless to say, we had a falling out over what constituted as "liquor." Of course, it might have also had something to do with the fact that I was always drunk - but, hey, hindsight is 20/20, am I right?

3. As usual, I'm always busy learning about how to call on magical unicorn powers:

4. This sentence: "My passion for you grows like mold: unavoidable due to exposure and neglect."

5. I've been rejoicing over the fact that someone has finally sought revenge on Subway's "Five. Five Dollar. Five Dollar Foot Long." campaign from hell. (Whether it was intentional or not hardly matters.)

6. I'm also very busy increasing my hair-esteem on daily basis:

7. I can't stop listening to people sing the dirty words I type. So neato! (Beware: You may lose hours of your life to this website.)

8. Also cutting into my productive time: Regularly giving into my very large Etsy obsession.

9. Okay, I'll admit it - my latest career kick has also contributed to my lack of posts. Here's the deal: I think I should get a second job as an official wedding guest. Oh come on, not an escort - get your mind out of the gutter! - I'm talking about something I could actually make money doing, like, entertainment in the form of unintentional comedic relief. I've attended nearly a dozen weddings this year and managed to embarrass myself in one way or another at all of them. This usually works in the favor of the bride and groom (I'm like the free side-show circus that came with the band). But last weekend a wedding in Santa Fe proved once again that yes, I can injure myself by tripping on flat surfaces and red wine does in fact stain white wedding dresses. But seriously, most of the time, I'm a big hit at weddings - invite me to yours and I promise I won't bring a gift, but I will embarrass myself for the sake of your entertainment.

10. My camera broke and it wasn't my fault. WIN!

11. I had to stop everything I was doing and read this beautiful insomniac rant.

12. If you want to know the real reason why I haven't blogged, see #13.

13. Made you look. See #14.

14. Ugh. I guess you really want to know. Fine. Let's just say someone built a damn in my writing brain and broke my funny bone. I'm still in the ICU, but the doctors have high hopes and expect me to fully recover in no time, which is really good news considering how I've had my head up my ass for three weeks.


There you have it. All 14 excuses, I mean, valid reasons, for my blogony. I should be a politician; or maybe I should just be David Letterman. Anyway, I hope you'll understand, and stay tuned for more Quinnterruptions.

My Reflection is Stalking Me

I’ve been really busy avoiding mirrors after realizing that my reflection doesn’t do anything to inspire me, in fact, it has the opposite effect because what I see is everything I don’t want to be (unemployed, unhappy, malnourished, out of shape, and desperate – the last one is what did me in). But apparently avoiding mirrors only causes your reflection to appear more often. From the sliding glass doors at the grocery store to the tinted car windows in the parking lot to the ceiling-to-floor windows of an office building to extra shiny silverware to the rain puddles on a sidewalk—everywhere I go my reflection follows.

I used to be one of those people who couldn’t help but gaze at their reflection as they walked past a storefront window. Call it vain, but it was more about catching a glimpse of how other people saw me, how I looked to the rest of the world. When I get dressed and stand in front of a mirror at home, I know what I see is different from what other people see because I have a mirror pose: I purse my lips, bite the insides of my cheeks, suck in my gut, jut out my right hip and put my hands on my waist. This pose is something I only do when I am alone and standing in front of a mirror, I never look like this in real life. As a result, catching a reflection of myself doing something other than my mirror pose used to be interesting (back when the reality of my appearance wasn’t so…so…sad?) because it gave me a more realistic vision of myself.

But given the current devastating nature of this realistic vision, I find accidental reflections torturous. The worst is when the dark outside turns the windows into mirrors inside—I can’t see beyond my reflection, but in the darkness outside I imagine someone starring in at me and wondering if I am aware of just how unattractive I look when I make that scowling face. Now I scurry around the house right after the sun sets to make sure all of the blinds are closed so that my house isn’t full of mirrors that people can look in through. It’s become clear that I could throw away every mirror in my house and still never go a day without seeing myself. Whether I am walking the dog, running errands or eating dinner, I end up face to face with my reflection, which always reminds me of some weird combination of Eeyore and Britney Spears during her (on-going) “rough phase.”

I suppose I could attempt to drag this post out into some snarky, pseudo-philosophical observation on how my path to self discovery led me to run away from myself, but I made a promise having to do with brevity, so...I won't. Instead, I'm just going to say that when you feel like shit, you’re going to look like shit. I am working on feeling less like shit so that I can stop running from my reflection (because continuing to run from my reflection might make me more vain than if I were to linger in front of it lovingly...plus, I hate running). That being said, don’t be surprised if the next time you see me I am wearing a blindfold and being led by a seeing-eye dog.

From the Other Side of Brevity

I’ve never been good at being brief. I talk too much, interrupting perhaps for the sake of hearing myself talk; I write too much, smashing words into a sentence the same way I smash potato chips into my mouth, stopping only when I feel full, which is almost never. My writing has a style, a tone, a voice, and an attempted depth, none of which would have developed if it weren’t for a blatant disregard for brevity. I don’t have beef with brevity; in fact, many of the writers I admire are those who are famously skilled in the art of brevity. For instance, when Hemingway was challenged to write a story in under ten words, this is what he came up with: “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” It’s only six words, but it’s a story with a beginning, middle and end. The same professor who told me this Hemingway tale also told me that I would be a much better writer if I cut every other word I wrote. But this professor didn’t understand that my lack of brevity was something I was born with, much like his lisp, which would require many years of therapy for me to correct.

You see, my gene pool is populated with verbose people; I come from a long line of talkers, the kind that start and don’t stop. Take my grandfather, Pop, for instance, who my dad and grandmother lovingly refer to as “ol’ windbags.” Sure, he’s talkative, but it’s more than that because he likes to hear himself talk, but it’s still more than that because he likes to tell animated stories which he draws out with dramatic pauses, characters and voices all because he just likes to entertain. One could age a decade while listening to him tell a story. Although, this is not to say that Pop’s stories aren’t great, sometimes the first few minutes, or hours, seem to drag on, but no one can deny that the man knows how to close—whether it’s a perfectly timed punch-line or a musical number with jazz hands, Pop knows how to end a story with a bang, so much so that you walk away hardly aware of the two hours it took him to tell the story.

While he isn’t quite ready to admit it, my dad has the same windbag gene as Pop. It’s something he’s been growing into for at least the last 25 years. Usually, it comes out when we get into a philosophical, “this is what life is all about” type of conversation, but other windbag triggers I’ve discovered over recent years include, but are not limited to: golf, Jayhawk basketball, his political beliefs, why he disagrees with my political beliefs, the corrupt government, business practices, the corrupt government affecting his business practices, pool maintenance, vacations he took as a child, a few instances in which I performed well at a sporting event, things Tori and I did or said when we were little, and wine* (*easily substituted with anything that he can feign a truly believable expertise in, such as boating or irrigation). Although he is sensitive about his windbagness, he is willing to admit to being a “talker.” But just like Pop, dad knows how to end a story, or an impossibly long joke, in a way that almost makes you want to hear another.

People who know me know that if you don’t keep me on track during a conversation I digress into a story about a story that leads to another story. I learned early on that I have the windbag gene, which is one of my many genetic gifts among bad knees and high blood pressure. While there are many forms of the windbag gene that do not harm one’s ability to be brief, I believe the windbag gene I have has actually mutated with other genetic “issues” (A.D.H.D.), thus making it the strongest brevity-preventing strand yet.

Nevertheless, I have decided to use this blog as my windbag therapy. Here I will practice, and eventually learn, the art of brevity. I will rise above the windbag gene that has been passed down through so many generations in order to perfect a briefer writing style. So, in true Hemingway fashion, here is my six-word story:

Wanted: Brevity, long posts unread.

(Okay, that’s five words…not that I’m trying to one-up Hemingway, I’m just saying…)

Unemployment: It Does a Body Bad

Horrific Unemployment Realization #1,525: My professional, interview-worthy clothes do not fit because unemployment has made me fat.

So I've gained some weight since I lost my job, but what is most disturbing about it is that since I’ve been unemployed (going on 90 days now), I’ve been expecting to lose weight. Right after I was laid-off, I made a list of all the pros and cons of losing my job. One of the items on the pro list was that being jobless might inadvertently make me skinny (less money = less to spend on food, drinking, etc.), sort of the same way getting mono can make you skinny (although I gained weight when I had mono, so I should have known better). Needless to say, the pro side of the list was depressingly short so I had to reach a little. But now I have to remove “unintentional weight loss” from the pro side and add “unemployed weight gain” to the con side.

Since unemployment hit (sometimes I find it comforting to refer to it as a natural disaster akin to a tornado or hurricane), my wardrobe has been reduced to three or four things: pajamas, skirts with elastic waistbands, dresses without waists and pajamas with tennis shoes (i.e., workout clothes). Pro: there is no dress code for unemployment. Con: elastic waistbands nurture denial when your middle starts to get thicker.

I don’t know how much weight I’ve gained since I’ve been unemployed. I don’t own a scale because I don’t care about a number I care about feeling good. And right now I feel like a McDonald’s Big Mac—heavy, off-balance, sloppy, over-indulgent and oozing cholesterol. But when I consider the way I’ve been living the past 90 days, this makes sense—actually, it makes me feel lucky I haven’t been hospitalized.

There are things I wouldn’t do while I was employed that being unemployed has granted me the freedom to not only do, but also not care about later. For instance, I ate ten tacos in 30 minutes on Cinco de Mayo because they were .75 cents and someone bet me that I couldn’t do it. I also find myself wandering through Quick Trip, picking up a Snickers or maybe a Krispy Kreme on my way out, because apparently I think a glazed donut will fill the void of not having a job.

I have also determined that this weight gain, which I will continue to think of as a gift I don’t yet understand, is directly related to my lack of daily exercise. When I had a job, there was structure and far less time to waste, so exercise was part of a daily routine. Now I sit at my computer for ten hours everyday dressed in workout clothes (the real kind, not just pajamas plus sneakers) and when Steve gets home he says, “looks like you worked out today” and I have to say, “I didn't, but I thought about it,” which I kind of think almost counts.

While this extra weight has been a comfort to me over the past 90 days, I am physically ready to say goodbye to the Unemployed Quinn and become Employable Quinn—job or no job. I’m ready to embrace exercise and a healthier lifestyle so that I feel less like a Big Mac and more like a celery stick - yeah physical fitness! So I'll get started just as soon as I finish eating this giant chocolate chip cookie...

Blogony - From The Real Quinn

For months I've been agonizing over this blog: What will it be? What should I call it? What is the theme? Purpose? Direction?

I still can't really answer these questions. But I am okay with that. 'Quinnterruption' doesn't need to have an end goal, all it needs in order to exist are interruptions.

There will be a series of characters who will post on this blog. Of course, these characters are essentially me. These are the people who roam around in my head and interrupt my thoughts and scream at me to put them down on paper. (I realize this makes me sound schizophrenic, but I'm not. I'm just a writer. I think the two are commonly confused.)

Here are my momentary goals for Quinnterruption:

1.) Expect nothing (don't conform).
2.) Learn to see it for what it is (i.e., a place to write, freely).
3.) Write everyday (no excuses).
4.) Don't be serious (because, seriously, everyone else is).
5.) Enjoy it, you interrupting cow--Mooooooo!

Okay so there are five, well really four since number five was just filler, noncommittal, uncompromising goals that I can live with, at least until tomorrow.