Sam’s Ministrations on Life

So you all have seen the TV show the Biggest Loser… well I’m taking that as a life motto for the next few weeks. Not quite as extreme as having a group of judges, a boot camp coach, and a giant scale installed in my apartment… but close. So grad school did a doozy on me… late nights in studio, a lack of funds, and the devil’s own version of a 7-11, Wawa, located within the small circle that encompassed my life for three years. I wont tell you how much I weigh, but it’s more than most people would guess, and more than most guys I know… the one upside to having the double latina/eastern european background combo is that I’m built sturdy… my ass alone probably ways more than most pre-schoolers.

I eat decent enough for someone that is a professed baker, not cooker… I’m tellin you I can mess up rice… even when it comes in a bag. I ride every weekend… true it’s not an intense workout… and maybe sometimes I use Regina’s retirement as an excuse to “go easy on her”, aka go easy on myself. This fall I joined the gym with three of my guy friends at work. It’s a bit comedic as we all ellipticate for 15 minutes and then go upstairs and ‘throw some iron’. Mostly they just bench press a lot, while I actually work out (the benefit of having once been engaged to a personal trainer). So my issue now is that I am just a completely ripped, smokin’ hot, Shakira lookin chic… under a few layers of extra goods that is. The boys and I decided to make this a competition of sorts… so for the next three weeks we are competing to see who can lose the most weight… I know it doesn’t seem fair considering they’ve each got at least 50 pounds on me, and really we should be doing a percentage… but they are such whiney bitches that it just ended up being who could lose the most.

So we’ll see, tomorrow I start with a two day detox… as in I drink two gallons of citrus juice without food over the next two days. This is going to be interesting. I’m not so worried about having to pee every thirty minutes… it’s just the heinous medusa I fear might come out without caffeine for that long a period. I’m not going to tell you all my goal weight… cause then I’ll jinx it, but I’ll let you know how my progress is going.

Oh, and did I mention I’m going on a cruise at the end of February… perfect, just in time to gain it all back.

Okay, seriously though women need to get better bathroom etiquette. It may be said that guys are disgusting and all that, but women just have no clue. Now granted I give the disclaimer that girls of course, by their very nature, do not have bodily functions of any kind. I am merely bringing up the use of the bathroom to ‘powder one’s nose.’ There are certain rules to any bathroom and I just don’t understand why they can’t be followed. The following violations have occurred to me in the past week alone:

• Just as men have the ‘every other urinal rule’, women too have the ‘every other stall rule’. So this does not explain why anyone would need to pull up in the stall right next to me unless the bathroom is totally full (which it never is). I get that everyone has a favorite stall, I prefer the fourth one down, don’t know why I do, it’s just the one I always head to. But if your favorite stall happens to be next to my favorite stall, and I was in there first, maybe try out another one. It’s not like if someone else is in number 4 I go down and knock on it or just barge right in explaining to them that this is the stall I feel the most comfortable in.

• It is never okay to answer the phone while you are on the toilet…. NEVER. Not only would it make it awkward for you as you will then need to finish your business while talking. It makes it awkward for the person on the phone as the realization of your location dawns on them as the sound of flushing reaches their ears. But lastly you have made it awkward for me as I both have to listen to your conversation, and attempt to not interrupt it with the sound of my own flushing or hand washing. Either call them back or finish up as quickly as you can and move along.

• If you are going to primp in front of the mirror for more than the time it takes to wash your hands would you mind terribly leaving the water running. There is nothing I hate worse than a woman I think is leaving the bathroom, who in reality is investigating every pore on her damn face. Bathrooms can get eerily quiet, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but silence makes me anxious and gives me performance anxiety. (One solution I’ve found is actually plugging my ears… I know it’s retarded, but in my mind if I can’t hear you, than you can’t hear me… problems only arise when you meet someone that is in the next category).

• That’s right, it’s the bathroom talker. Now don’t get me wrong I head to the bathroom with my girlfriends all the time… I’ll even share a stall in a shortage… but that is strictly amongst friends, and preferably with at least one drink in me (performance anxiety is a mute subject when one drinks) My problem occurs with the coworker wanting to carry on conversation about expense reports, or their kid’s girl scout troop. Guys don’t like it, and neither do I. Worse than that I have had totally random people attempt conversation… “Um wait, are you kidding me, I don’t even know you, and no I don’t want to discuss the weather, you’d be the annoying person next to me on the plane and now you want to chat it up in the bathroom, oh hell no.” (As mentioned before the ear plugging only fails in this situation as you either look like a complete bitch because you haven’t answered them, or you have to pull your fingers out of your ears to ask them to repeat what they’ve just said.)

• My friends and I have discussed the issue of “The Waiter” before. This is of course the person that is already in the bathroom when you get there and has made the bold move to just wait it out until you leave. I get it, trust me, I just think it’s funny as anything when this person thinks that if they don’t make a sound I won’t know they are in there. “Dude! I saw a closed door and a pair of red boots under there. I can even hear you breathing.” This of course leads to performance anxiety issues and so it goes into an inadvertent dual wait-out, where no one can win. So I beg of you, if you are going to wait it out at least shuffle around a bit, play with the toilet paper roll, act like you have a sudden case of bronchitis… that way I can plug my ears, pretend you’re not there, pee, and get the hell outta there, as I had always intended.