I'm on a cranky, bitchy binge. It's been like two weeks now. It's starting to make me crazy - I hear myself saying awful things and cringe, or I lie in bed and want to cry because I'm so ANGRY or UPSET and I don't know WHY. Or what to do to make myself happier. Blah.

Saturday I went on a hike. Sort of. I went on the first 25 minutes of a hike and then turned back when it was apparent that I would not be able to keep up with my friends. I went back to the car and had lunch and finished my book. Went for a walk for an hour. Spent most of the time meditating on how short, fat, and slow I am. Fun times.

This happens almost every time I go hiking, and I feel like shit every time, but I keep going, probably because when I don't I hear about how awesome and fun the hike was. I don't know what the deal is, other than I'm shorter than everyone else. I can keep up on the flat, but as soon as it's uphill and broken country I need to take 3 or 4 steps for every 1 my boyfriend, say, takes. Although when he's along it's not so bad, since he's willing to go at my pace.

Not every time we go, I guess. When a lot of people show up then there'll be a few who are slower that I can keep up with. I never know until we all meet up in the morning, though, and even if there's no one else slow I'm all "denial, denial, denial." I'm in good shape, right? Run all the time, lift weights! Well, my fucking body isn't built for speed I guess. I will never be able to outrun my couch potato friends, no matter how many miles I log a week, and I will never be able to keep up with my sedentary programmer buddies on a hike how matter how many squats I do. I can pick them all up and carry them, but forget going for a walk and not seeming like a lazy fat slug.

Bleah, bleah, bleah. I am so stubborn and I want to think that things I can't do well now I can do well with enough practice. I'm not doing well in gym class? I'll join every sports team and spend so much time at it that I get straight As. I don't understand physics? I will do so many problems that I ace the final. I'm bad on the phone? I will bend my nature and become the most cheerful secretary anyone has ever dealt with.

But I'm slow? I will run and run and run ... and I improve, and it's gratifying, but my curve of progress is so far below everyone else on the graph that it doesn't even matter. I am so much faster and better than when I started. And I am the only one who will ever notice. God damn it.

-------

I'm sick of this diet too. I want to eat cheese, fresh cheese, 3 times a day. Er. Okay, ew. Actually things are going well, especially since it's so hot I'm not hungry, so I spend half my points on chocolate cookies and half on popsicles and cucumbers and seriously, we need a slurpee machine. I just bought two big bags of beef jerky, my secret lurve from alberta. Bizarrely beef jerky is low fat and kind of good for you. It's such a gas station mesh hat mullet pickup truck twinkie cheeto kind of food that this seems fantastically out of place. Anyway.

I'm gonna get an electric guitar. It's time to rock out. Our hypothetical radiohead cover band looks like it's going to be an /actual/ radiohead cover band, and I'm the only guitar. Hah! This is not going to sound much like actual radiohead. I've been promised radiohead lead guitar lessons from boy's rockstar brother, so I'm gonna go rent a baby amp and an electric sometime this week.

Tomorrow perhaps my cranky woe will end: I am having a stitch'n'bitch at my house, and some 90% of the girls I am on speaking terms with have enthusiastically RSVPed. Hrm! Apparently our geeky subculture has left a giant gap of unfulfilled girly crafty urges. Anyway: sweet. I can't decide if I'll work on my sweater, my wedding dress, the superhero cape I owe a churchlady, or the t-shirt quilt I promised boy. I'm practically in craft debt here.