It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.

My birthday is here.  I hate my birthday. They seem to be getting less amazing and more mundane. Let me explain. Six months ago I moved from the 50 mile radius that I spent 26 of the 27 years of my life in.

For the last five years I worked for a company that I put 150% of my effort into.  I kind of stopped hanging out with a lot of my friends because of this all-consuming job. I missed opportunities to go (for free) to Latin America, and things like that because this job was supposed to be my future, the all-encompassing EVERYTHING.  Two years before I started that job, I made and immediately spent thousands of dollars on going to more than 150 concerts all over the country in one year, therefore also blowing off some of my oldest friends to meet the friends that I had only for the concert-going period of my life.

As I became more and more overweight I set goals for myself, like "I'll surprise my old friends and show up when I've lost 20 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds, 150 pounds..." and "I'll ignore Facebook [which is where I keep in touch with some of my oldest friends] and suddenly put new and pretty pictures of the thin-me up so they'll want to see me again." "When I get a job that pays me well enough to travel, I'm going to ask some friends to go on a great trip!"

So much bad and worse had happened to and with me during the last two years of this so-wonderful-job that I was left with very few people in my life. I moved, and I ended up leaving the company that I dedicated all of my efforts to.  Subsequently, in the last six months of unemployment, it is as if the sh*t finally hit the fan.  Now, no one really contacts me on a regular basis, and in return, I have nothing new to contact them about other than "Hi, doing the same nothing today, the dog park was empty today, very unusual! The dog has gas, it's very stinky. How are you? Loving married life? Beautiful children! New boyfriend? Awesome!"

As I stated before, I can't stand my birthday.  It falls around father's day (I was a "Father's Day baby"), my father passed away years ago, since I've all but disappeared from all of my friends, I have nothing and almost no one around for my birthday.

My siblings and I never really did the presents thing for one another - for whatever reason it just wasn't like that.  Not to sound super selfish, but I received one (albeit very nice) gift from my mother, and Facebook 'Happy Birthday's" from everyone else.  It just seems kind of .... disappointing.  Then I feel really selfish for feeling like I even deserve anything for my birthday, because I know there are people who have even fewer people and things than I do.

I watch my sister call, text, e-mail, facebook all of her friends - she has dozens of them at home. My brother has the same thing - I watch him and his 'crew' that he has been friends with for literally 15-20 years and I just feel terrible. I finally told my sister the other night about how I feel about my birthday.  She had been giving me a hard time about not caring what we did on my birthday, not caring if we went out, not having an opinion on what to do. I started crying in the middle of the restaurant. It was horrible.  I'm crying again now as I write about this, and again as I re-read it.

So, as stated in my previous entry, I have pretty much just given up. I'm back to many of my old habits, I haven't given any thought to even doing Weight Watchers at all, I haven't been to the gym in weeks because of that stupid pedicurist. I just don't care.

My outsides are cool, my insides are blue...

I slipped quietly into the night a couple of weeks ago. I haven't blogged, I fell away from twitter and all of my accountability, and got lost in my own mind.  In this time, I also gained 2.5 pounds (awesome!!!!).

I was house/pet-sitting, as many of my twitter followers may know.  The first week was great - I was cooking and doing well with exercise.  The second week wasn't as great: I was running out of money and couldn't go grocery shopping, so my roommate ended up buying a lot of the food that we ate that week (I went home almost daily to take the dog out when she worked, then we hung out, etc). Therefore, we ate out a lot. I off-and-on followed my diet, half-heartedly ate on target with Weight Watchers. Ugh.

Week two of house-sitting was a disaster:  The puppy I was house-sitting for tore her Cruciate Ligament during an unexpected and unwanted (on my behalf) play-date with a rough player.  This then required a vet visit (with my rapidly depleting bank account ending up empty), and nearly constant vigilance until her owners came home. I didn't mind at all, she's SUCH a sweet dog, but I was so nervous for her, being 12 months old and having this injury. Thank goodness the owners were kind about everything.

In addition to that, during the second week away my sister took me to get a manicure / pedicure with her, because I've had a horrible six months.  How is this so bad, you ask? <this might gross some people out> When you get a pedicure they tend to shave some dead skin off of your feet with a razor blade that is made for doing this. My pedicurist straight-up cut my feet up, going way too deep and taking off good skin. I was literally bleeding in multiple places on the back of my heels, and it has been really painful to walk on my heels at all.  Two weeks later, today is the first day that my left foot is not painful to walk on, and my right foot is still sore.

So, this all kind of threw me for a loop and I ended up running back to old habits - eating out, eating junk, not exercising at all (partly not my fault).  I traveled too, and if I don't prepare, I generally don't eat healthily when I do. Staying with family up north I did okay, but those travel days can incur tons of calories.

So I came home from pet-sitting and visiting family, and my roommate told me that the dog has resorted to going to the bathroom in the house in protest of my absence. He is 6 and has not had an accident in the house since he was 5 months old: he's doing it to spite us - he's gone from having me 24/7 to being alone a lot. Literally, I was home yesterday, walked 50 feet down the hall to the trash chute and came back in to him having PEED ON THE FUTON in the time since I left!!  Then, I woke up today and he was suddenly pretty sick: according to the vet visit we had to go on today, he has colitis - probably from the dog park or the vet visit yesterday, where he had a check up from tooth surgery. 

I'm also starting a new job on Monday, and I'd be lying if I said that I was super excited about it.  As I've been unemployed, a friend of mine helped me get a job at a Fortune 1000 company where he works.  Now, not to sound whiny or selfish, but this job is in retail and I spent 5 years of my life trying to run as far as possible from retail. It has bad a history for me, I hate it. I am a great sales person, but I hate sales. These two things will be my job. I figured I'd take the job and start working (and hope for the best), but the stress has also added unwanted eating to my past two weeks.

In addition to all of the fun I've been having, my birthday is this month, and around my birthday I always tend to somewhat fall apart.  I've never figured out why, but I tend to go off diets if I'm on one, or lose myself. 

So, I'm "back."  Not fully, but at least I'm admitting to what I've done and what's happened. I really don't want to sound or come across as whiny, because I'm really not trying to be.  All of these 'reasons' are probably reasons for me to fight harder.  I just didn't. I don't know how to get back on track either...  I'm house-sitting again this weekend, then going to NYC M-F for the next two weeks, weekends at home.  Then, I'll be at home for a full week and back to NYC M-F again. The next month is going to be a huge test for me. I need to succeed. I'm at a make-it or break-it standstill. Who has thoughts, ideas?

<as I finished this, "Good Life" by OneRepublic came on. Having Biggest Loser 11 flashbacks. Happy thoughts.>