My trainer: OK, next you’re going to do this back machine.

Me: OK.

My trainer: So you sit here…

Me: Yeah

My trainer: …and you hold these handles…

Me: Uh huh

My trainer: …and make sure that your chest is pressed against this piece here.

Me: OK

My trainer: And if you’re ovulating, like I think I might be right now…

Me: with a whiplash-inducing head whip in order to convey the very important message of, WTF?!

My trainer: …then your nipples WILL hurt.

Me: Um..OK, thanks. That’s good to know.

Name a sensory input(s) which trigger a mood change be it uplifting, depressing, poignancy or remind you of a past event or period in time.

For me that would have to be the smell of pine-every time I smell that it catapults me directly to Christmas, and the special holiday traditions that my family has built up over the years.

And if I were going to sum up the essence evoked by my own family’s holiday rituals in one word, that word would definitely have to be…”speed”. Here’s what I mean.

Take, for example, the cherished tradition of the Christmas tree. Sure, there are many people who go out immediately after Thanksgiving, comparison shop to find The Perfect Tree, lovingly position it in the best spot in the house, and then create beautiful holiday memories of decorating the tree filled with homemade foods, holiday music, warmth, and laughter. Not us. We prefer the thrill of the hunt. When Christmas trees are readily available at every home improvement store, grocery store, drug store, and church parking lot, well then we’re just not interested. Where is the challenge in that? But you just try and find a viable tree on Christmas Eve afternoon; that’ll get your adrenaline pumping.

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“Hi, I’m Mike. Please don’t trample me.”

-Mike Rowe, of “Dirty Jobs”, to a mule named Pat.

You know how when you’re attempting some sort of behavior modification, such as quitting smoking, or losing weight, or planning some sort of highly flammable, explosive revenge on all the spammers who insist on filling your inbox with their constant offers of mature grandma/teen/ebony/latino shemales, the experts advise that you never let yourself get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? Well I’ve found that that is also an excellent checklist for me to run through in my mind to determine whether or not I am in an appropriate state of mind to post something on my blog. Only for me my issue isn’t so much with hunger as it is with sadness, so my acronym is actually S.A.L.T.

I’ve developed a little pre-posting questionnaire for myself that looks like this:

Sad

1. Do you frequently find yourself using phrases containing the word “existential” when other people ask you how you’re doing?

2. When you last talked with your coach, did she use the words “skewed” and “not real” to describe the way you are currently perceiving the world, and then:

a. ground you from using any self-help tools for the next week

b. suggest that you immediately gag yourself with duct tape so as not to irrevocably f&*@ up every single one of your current relationships

c. suggest that perhaps it was not a good idea to experiment with getting off your medications and not tell anyone about it

d. all of the above

3. Are you about to post something that sounds like this on your blog for the entire Internet to read and wonder about:

“But whatever the reason suddenly the box flies open again, and instead of consciously acting as the rational, competent adult you are now, you’re unconsciously reacting as a 5 year old. Or a 12 year old. Or in my case, a 19 year old without the first f*&@3*^ clue as to how to deal with other human beings.

Yes, that’s right. Lately the Enormous Blind Spot of “Things I Never Resolved Back When I Was 19″ has finally overtaken The Car Of “Speeding Blissfully Down The Highway Of Jenny’s Life”, and smashed head on into the Giant Brick Wall Of “Hi. This Is Your Life. I’ve Been Trying To Get Your Attention Now For The Past Couple Of Years, But You Never Listened. So Unfortunately Now You Have No Choice But To CRASH.” (Self-judgment, much?)”

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Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

Matt Groening

A few blog posts ago JAM accurately noted that one of my answers to the Friday’s Feast questions, specifically the one stating that my husband is in charge of all technology in our relationship, was causing me to lose nerd points.

He is right, of course, when he says that “a true geek wanna-be would have answered with something.” That goes a long way towards explaining why I only scored as lightly nerdy on my quiz

So I was very excited to discover yet another nerdiness assessment the other day, because it looked at lots of different areas besides math and science, and I thought I had a chance to score a little higher (I know-it’s just sad, isn’t it, that scoring higher as a nerd is one of my ongoing personal quests?)

So here are my latest results:

Your Geek Profile:

Academic Geekiness: High Music Geekiness: High Fashion Geekiness: Moderate Gamer Geekiness: Moderate SciFi Geekiness: Moderate Geekiness in Love: Low Internet Geekiness: Low Movie Geekiness: Low General Geekiness: None

How does one handle work, home and family (or a combination thereof) without having a nervous breakdown?

I had to sit with this question for a couple of days, and then I ended up going back to my first, knee-jerk response which was, “I don’t.”

I have a very all-or-nothing personality, which was summed up perfectly once by a comment that my coach made to me.

“Jenny,” she said to me, “you do not have a dimmer switch. It’s like you’ll be sitting in a house, in the dark, with all the lights off. And then all of a sudden you’ll look around, notice that you’re in the dark, say, ‘Why the f*&# am I in the dark?!’, and then get up and flip on every single light in the entire house. So you’re either completely in the dark, or sitting there with all your lights ablaze. There’s no dimmer switch for you.”

That is so true. So to answer this question I will say that I don’t try to balance things, really. I’ll go all out on whatever catches my attention for a while-my blog, the house, Spanish lesson plans, etc. Then I’ll suddenly notice something else that isn’t getting done, drop whatever I’m working on, and focus on the new area full-throttle. I think the key for me is that I know this about myself, and I don’t judge it (so much ) anymore.

Something else that’s helped me is a new definition of balance that I learned from Peter Reding and Marcia Collins, founders of Coach For Life (the training program I went through to become a Certified Life Coach.) They said to imagine that you are standing on one leg, with the other leg lifted off the ground. You are balancing while you do that, obviously, but that balance is not a static, once-for-all, never-changing thing. It is constantly being adjusted, even if just in small ways, by your body. It’s organic, and flowing, and changes as it needs to. So that is the view I take of balance now.

The final thing that helps me is that I also have a very highly developed inner drama queen, as well as a great sense of humor. So when I do get completely frazzled I re-align myself by making up a highly entertaining, and completely improbably story about what’s going to happen to me (”…and I’m going to end up living on the street in a box, and then die all alone.”) Then I laugh at myself, and am able to get back to a place where I can better deal with my life. So, no matter what, I’m never bored.

Read more responses here.

Today at the gym.

My trainer: “OK, now I want you to go down into lunge position. And when you’re down I want you to stay down there and just pulse 20 times.”

Me: “We have a name for these at my house.”

My trainer: “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

Me: “We call these ‘Pure Evil’.”

As I’m getting ready to do the next set I see my trainer walking towards me with a set of free weights in her hands.

Me: “I wonder what’s worse than pure evil?”

My trainer: “Pure evil with weights?”

“The way I always prioritize is I say, ‘OK, What’s gonna kill me first’?”

(On a show investigating “Extreme Cold”, because of course I get up every day and immediately ask myself questions like, “Hm, I wonder just how cold I can get without actually dying?!”)