Tightening The Belt

Nope, this one is not about finances, people, it's about weight loss and how when I put my pants on this morning and buckled my belt, I discovered that I could tighten my belt down by another notch!

Hell yeah! This is exactly the motivation I needed to continue with my workouts. This is fucking awesome! I just measured and I've officially lost another 1.25 inches from my waist.

Oh I feel good...and now not nearly as guilty as I did yesterday morning while I was macking down on that oh so delicious doughnut that my evil coworker brought in and placed on my path to my desk.

Yes, I ate the whole thing. I even licked my fingers. But I have been working out and this just proves to me that even if I have a weak will power when it comes to doughnuts, french fries, pancakes, potato chips, Dick's burgers and milkshakes, I can still lose weight and make progress if I just do my best to eat healthy ninety percent of the time.

Besides, I have to give myself room to cheat or I'll never stick to my diet. I know that of myself starting off. So why torture myself and everyone around me by becoming a total bitch just because I want to eat a bag of barbecue flavored chips and I'm depriving myself?

Yeah, no point unless losing friends and ruining my relationship is my ultimate goal. Since that is not my goal, I am eating some goddamned food when I'm craving it (sometimes).

Hey, it's working, so I'm going to keep doing it!

To tattoo or not to tattoo

I have been lazily looking at tattoos now for a little over 20 years trying to figure out which one I want. I love frogs. They are amazing creatures able to adapt to nearly any climate and change their DNA to survive nearly any pollutant.

It is their adaptability to change that I respect.

I have known that I wanted a frog tattoo ever since I thought of getting one when I was a teenager. Where to place it and exactly what design to use has been my ultimate conundrum.

See, I want to honour my roots. My issue is that I have varied roots: Irish, Scot, French, Pennsylvania Dutch and Cherokee. It is the Irish, Scot and Cherokee I would like to integrate into the design somehow. So I need a sort of Celtic/Tribal frog.

Sounds easy enough as Celtic and Tribal designs are similar, right?

Well, it would be easier if I could figure out where I want to put it.

I've recently started thinking that an armband might be the perfect solution. I could do a small frog in the Cherokee style and flow a Celtic band out from it on both sides creating an armband.

When I lift weights, my arms get defined just enough so they look strong and healthy but not muscular (eew), so it wouldn't be showing off flabby arms.

But then I think about how it might look when I'm old, decrepit and do have flabby arms. And that's where I begin to hesitate. Do I want to be an 80 year old with a wrinkled up version of what used to look like a frog? Will it look like it's attempting to jump away while I wash the windows?

I do want the tattoo. I always have. I don't want it on a hip (I have stretch marks there so that would look bad). And I don't want it somewhere I can't see it.

At one point, I thought of getting it in white on the inside of my left wrist. That would be subtle yet the skin there is thin and I'm a sissy. And white is supposed to be a difficult colour to work with. Sooooo?

I still don't know.

A friend of mine just suggested that I do the frog in my tartan colours. Hmm, I'd never thought of that before. So, I look up my tartan colours (since I had never done that) and I find that they are cobalt blue (one of my favorite colours), red and black. That might actually be an idea!

I'm still stuck with where to have it permanently etched on my skin.