The Best Day of My Life.

I use Twitter pretty much only to keep up with Australian goings-on via the rantings of Wil Anderson, Hannah Gadsby and Tony Martin. I never send anything myself, but today Tony Martin was tweeting about adding your own background music to old silent films. This prompted me to tweet him the YouTube link to the original '70s theme music for 'Monday Night Football'.

A few minutes later, this popped up in my inbox:

Tony Martin @mrtonymartin retweeted to 28,846 followers:

YoshiBoston Elena Cotto @mrtonymartin Try this truly amazing background music, courtesy of gridiron in the '70s: tinyurl.com/7fzl9xk Apr 05, 7:28 AM via web

Thank you, Interwebs.


XOXO

Tartling Tatties

A couple of new things have come to my attention recently.

One is the awesome and reassuring word tartle. This comes to us from the ingenious Scots, and refers to that thing that happens when you're introducing someone - someone whose name you absolutely know and have no right to forget - and completely blank.

This happens to me all the time. No, I mean: All. The. Time. Like, to the point that I don't even try to introduce people in a group anymore, because if there's more than three names involved I am guaranteed to seize up and have to pause in an awkward and completely unmissable fashion.

As useful as it is to have a word to put to that phenomenon, I am more relieved to know that it happens often enough to enough people that it deserved a word of its own. I Am Not Alone, you guys.


The other thing is lavender-scented potatoes. This is, apparently, a side dish that happens; it was brought to my attention by my friend Alison ('The Chef'). Last week she took over as Chef de Cuisine at a local restaurant that's been around for many years and is in need of a shake-up. When we were out to dinner the other day she was filling me in on her first week, and suddenly she started raging - with a fury I have never, ever seen in her - about the lavender-scented potatoes that were being served as a bed for an innocent piece of fish that had done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Cut to a totally separate conversation I was having with Caitlin today, in which I mentioned Alison's new job. The following exchange ensued:

Caitlin: Someone needs to take a stand against the scourge of lavender-scented potatoes.

Me: Comin' over here, stealin' our jobs....

Caitlin: Dude, if one more lavender-scented potato beats me out for a Middle East Program Associate job at a DC think tank, I swear...
Me: Actually, I think 'lavender-scented potato' would be a great term for someone who gets something undeservedly. Like, they seem fancy and decorated and whatnot (lavender-scented), but underneath are just plain and no better than anything else (potato).
Caitlin: I like it. Putting it that way, I think I really do get beaten out for jobs by lavender-scented potatoes.

me: Oh, I'm sure you do. There's no other explanation for it.

So yes. Two new entries in the Yoshi Lexicon. I would encourage all of you start using them as well. After all, I now get to tease Colleen on a near-daily basis for using Australianisms she's picked up from me, and I still take credit for the introduction of the word 'hoodie' to Sydney (no really... I do), so we might as well keep it going.


XOXO

P.S. A quick update I keep forgetting to give you: I mentioned a few months ago that I was going to be participating in the Climb for Air, a fundraiser in which I would walk up 789 steps - that's 41 stories - to raise money for the American Lung Association. Well, the Climb was almost a month ago now, but that doesn't mean I still don't feel a bit proud when I think about the fact that not only did I complete it, but I completed it in 11 minutes, 46 seconds - not bad for my first time, I reckon!

I will definitely be doing it again next year, when my goals will be to run at least part of it and to make it in under 10 minutes. It was incredible to do it, and even more incredible to get to the top and realise that I wasn't tired or even especially winded - the only physical side effect was that for the last 10 flights my legs had been a bit wobbly and I was really having to think about where to put my feet down; apparently your body gets a bit weirded out by doing something like climbing that many stairs in that short of a time and starts asking you if you're 100% sure this is the thing you mean to be doing. But other than that, it was actually fun to do, besides being incredibly exciting for me to know that I can do that stuff now. A win, definitely a win.

Tiny Triumphs

So you'll all know by now that I've been working to lose weight for a while. It's now been a year since I started, and I'm celebrating my anniversary with a new accomplishment: I am right this second wearing a brand-new pair of size 6 jeans.

Size 6, people. 6.

To be fair, I'll note that these are size 6 'Curvy' jeans from the Gap, which means I'd be an 8 in anything else. But when I left Australia I was struggling into a size 10 of these jeans, and when I started losing weight I had got all the way up to a size 14 - they was a bit big for me, true, but the 12s were too small so I wasn't far off.

I don't know how much weight I've lost. I never, ever look at scales because I worked out a long time ago that the numbers only upset me - in my head, I'm a 43 kg Japanese teenager and anything that contradicts that makes me cry - so I go by my clothes. I'm at least a size smaller now than I was at my previous smallest, which was back in 2004 after my IBS was at its worst and my weight crashed down because I didn't eat for two or three months (funny how that works), but I'm not sure what that equates to. I've looked at some websites to try to work out how much weight lost equals a size lost; the consensus seems to be that the smaller you are, the less weight you need to drop to lose a size, and for small girls 8-10 lbs (3.5-4.5 kg) will bring you down a size. I reckon it would have been more for me, certainly at the start; but I think it'd be safe to say I've lost 20-25 kg.

I'm still a big girl. I don't think I ever won't be. I have too much thigh for my size, and no matter how much weight I lose it seems that that will always be the case. (According to a maternity/pedi nurse I work with, the only time women really lose weight off their thighs is when they breastfeed. Not worth it, but thanks for the information.) And I have a big ass, and tits that enter a room about 15 minutes before the rest of me, and while they're both a bit more proportionate to the rest of me now I'm never going to be without them unless I undergo an extensive series of liposuctions.

But the weird thing is that I keep catching myself in mirrors and not recognising my body. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I swear it's true: I'll be in the locker room at the gym and I'll see a reflection out of the corner of my eye, and I will have to look again to realise that it's me. I look at the clothes I can wear now and I can't believe I can fit into anything that size. I still feel way bigger than I actually am, and I don't know what to do about that. And I'm worried that I'll get really big again, because it's so fucking easy for that to happen. I hope that the changes that I've made will stick, but I could undo all of this work in a couple of bad months, and that's scary.

For now, though, I'm feeling good. I have very few clothes that fit me well, which is annoying, and I don't have money to replace them, which is even more annoying, but apart from that I'm fucking thrilled. My original goal was to lose the size and a half I put on when I moved home; I then changed it to lose another size after that, to bring me down to an 8, so that I was into single-digit sizes for the first time ever; but then I wanted to come down to a 6 in the jeans so I'd be an 8 in everything else. I'm here now, and I think I'm okay with staying here... for now. My next goal is to complete the American Lung Association Stair Climb in February: 41 stories, 82 flights, 789 steps. It sounds like a goddamn nightmare, but I wanted something to train for; I can't run or cycle because they both fuck my back, and I already know I can walk for ages without a problem, so I needed something else and this seemed like a good place to start. It means doing a lot of stairclimbing cardio and endurance work at the gym, and I'm hoping that even if it doesn't help me lose more weight/inches off my thighs, it might at least help me build up more muscle there so I look more toned - which would be a nice thing to have in place for the weekend after the Stair Climb, when I'll be flying down to sunny Florida to try to catch a bit of sun... oh, and to meet The Lawyer's family.

So yes, some things are changing.

XOXO