Four days until Hair Appointment #1. And I just bought a second set of hot rollers. I must have a pumpkin head because one set wasn't sufficient. It was only enough to give me party in the front and business in the back. I need party all over. 

I had a meltdown today. How do people handle the daily flux of emotions without a daily dose of chocolate? Seriously...how do people deal with stress and anxiety without a crutch of some kind? I don't know. I feel like I've been left alone in a chocolateless vacuum to deal with one raw emotion after another.

I played the crying game all day today. Except there was no surprise ending. It was one of those days where you lock yourself in your office and quietly weep about anything and everything, including the fact that the stapler ran out of staples, and then tell everyone you have a rogue eyelash...in both eyes. It started with a brick. Texas Tech sent me a letter about their alumni center expansion. If you donate a certain amount, they inscribe a brick with your name on it and place it permanently in the ground. To remain until the end of time. Considering how much I loved that place for seven years of my life, I couldn't pick up the phone fast enough. I turned on my Texas accent, dropped a few y'alls, and bing, bang, boom, I had a brick. PS...Most people get bricks with their spouses. My brick will read "Elizabeth & Astro Jones, BS 1997, MS 2000."

I couldn't tell you what happened next. I felt like Linda Blair just before all hell broke loose (literally). Maybe it was because I was waxing sentimental about the happiest years of my life. Maybe I was sad because I may be the only person in Tech history to share a brick with a pek-a-poo. Or maybe it was because it brought up memories of that very pek-a-poo, the love of my life for 18 years and 20 college semesters. He wrote some of my best research papers.  

Thank God for BFFs, is all I gotta say. I called Kara in her office. I knew she was with someone because her voicemail picked up almost immediately. That means call three more times. When she finally answered, I was just an incoherent, blubbering, bawling BFF. Who knows what I said. Luckily, Kara speaks the language. 20 minutes and some very cloudy contact lenses later, I was feeling much better. It also helped that she texted me a few hours later to say she'd almost thrown up after a super hard workout with her trainer. Kara knows I approve of and am very impressed by any workout that makes someone hurl. And the mere idea of the head of the science library at a prestigious university tossing her cookies in the middle of a bunch of sweaty jocks...had me rolling on the floor. She would be horrified!  I am pulling up the image on her face right now...you should see it.

The good news...I'm still Diet Coke, aspartame and sugar free. I didn't cry into a bag of brightly colored M&M's. Kara didn't toss her cookies. And I am immortalized with a pek-a-poo at Texas Tech University. I guess the day wasn't so bad after all.

PS...In 20 years, when Love of My Life #2 goes, I'll be counting on all of you to help me think up the perfect Shih Tzu memorial.  

I have been thinking about my last post and the whole idea of re-entering the dating scene. I have convinced myself and several people around me that I will be dating no more. But, let's face it, dating and weight loss have a strong inverse relationship. As the weight goes down, the number of men knocking on your door definitely does up. 

Why have I sworn off dating, you might ask? Trust me, it's not because I'm a man hater (or eater, as Hall and Oates would say) or because I have a "He done me wrong!!!" story to tell. It's that I've never been as happy or at peace in a relationship as out of one. Let me be more specific.

When the person you can't trust in this world is you, when you continually make and break promises to yourself and feel completely at the mercy of food, you tend to look for ways to micromanage other parts of your life to give yourself some feeling of control. You see it happen with eating disorders all the time. Only, in this instance, you feel unable to keep yourself from eating, so you find ways to control your environment and everything in it.

Over the past few years, I have become a newrotic scratchophobic. It's not a typo. It's true. I hate...HATE...scratches on things. And it's not one big scratch...I'd be more okay with that. It's the little scratches on things that drive me crazy. So when my friends go shopping with me, they get to see Elizabeth play "Let's find the most perfect whatever it is" as I pull each item off the shelf for a close inspection. It's not like I go Rain Man or anything. I don't fall to the floor and start rocking myself while screaming "Hot water burn baby!!!" It just has to be perfect or I don't buy it.

A scratchophobe. And a newrotic. I'm also obsessed with keeping things new. Pristine. Undefiled. Mint condition. We're talking everything from my Prius to the storage bins that go in my closet. I am not making it up when I say I have things plastic coated. I've had most of the Prius covered with a 3M film I have installed at a local dealer (auto accessory, not drug). And my laptop. And my luggage. My retro mint green sofa is covered, not in plastic, but a sheet. And, did I mention? I'm also a carpet nazi who makes people abandon their shoes at the door.

SO you can see how this could drive anyone besides Monk (not Gregorian, but Tony Shalhoub) crazy. And I'm happy this way, so what to do? There are dating websites for Jews, Christian Scientists, born-again Christians, boys who want to meet girls, girls who want to meet boys, boys who want to meet boys, girls who want to meet girls, people who only want to hook up, people who only want to get married, and people who like to fly fish. But is there a dating pool for people who color coordinate their closets and alphabetize their pantries?  

Have you ever heard of something called a turducken? It's a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. While I've never partaken myself, I sure wish this was a menu option when selecting potential life partners. Personally, I'd like to see a Tony Shalhoub stuffed into a Bill Rancic stuffed into a Will Ferrell. 

A Willanoub...Check, please! 

The cable guy gave me his number. In my living room. On a post-it note I politely but reluctantly forked over. I knew something was up the minute he set foot in my apartment. Something about the way he was smiling. And the fact that he shook my hand. But when he asked me more than one time..."it's Elizabeth, right?"...I thought "oh, no...this guy is not going to try to pick me up in my house!" But here's what sealed the deal. The cable guy noticed a workout DVD of mine and sat back, patting his barely-there belly, complaining that he could use a workout himself. And before I could stop myself, I quipped back "Shut up! You could not!" Translation: How dare you, skinny, sinewy man! How dare you tell a chubby chic YOU need to work out! Puleazzz!" But what cable guy heard was obviously something completely different, because he flashed me a cheesy Joey Tribbiani smile and said something to the effect of "Oh, yeah? You like what you see? How you doin?"

Doesn't he know that I've bubble wrapped myself in adipose tissue for a reason?!? Doesn't he see me squirming in obvious discomfort?!? Apparently not, because he hands me his number and says there's no reason I shouldn't be having fun in Los Angeles, as if he's just the one to show me a good time. Yikes.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I don't know. And don't care, really...as long as my eggs are scrambled well. But I can't help but wonder, as I shed the weight, unpack the baggage, and pop one inch of bubble wrap after another...which came first? The body image? Pop. Or the pounds? Pop. Pop. Sure, I can lose 60 pounds, but how long will it take for my self-esteem to catch up? Will I ever be able to flirt without feeling like I'm about to spontaneously combust? Don't get me wrong. I'm a shameless flirt. When I'm in public and flanked by a wing man or two. And with waiters...because I am Sally in When Harry Met Sally and don't want them to spit in my unsweetened iced tea with extra ice, a straw, and lime instead of lemon. But take me to a one-on-one flirt fest...and I'm 15 again. Standing in the parking lot. Kissing my boyfriend for the first, most incredibly awkward time.   

I went knife shopping on Monday. Only it turned out to be more like a machete. A veggie machete. It all started when I decided to eat clean. Some of you are wondering "what the heck is eating clean?" Well, as most of you know, I've been slowly but methodically eliminating one vice after another from my diet. First, it was the Diet Cokes. Well, carbonated sodas of all kinds, actually, but Diet Coke was my afternoon lover for the last 10 years. Goodbye, lover. Then it was refined sugar. If Diet Coke was my afternoon lover, refined sugar (and by that, I mean all things chocolate) was my mother, my father, my best friend, my husband, my partner in crime and my god. I feel like Kate Winslet prying away Leo Dicaprio's frozen fingers in Titanic. I'll never let you go, Ja---I mean---chocolate. And the last vice to go was the artificial stuff. Somehow my brain thought that eating an entire box of sugar-free Eskimo Pies or a bag of sugar-free Oreos was okay, especially considering artificial sweeteners have a way of cleaning out your system, if you know what I mean. My penance for sugar-free sin, I suppose.

And now I'm left with the daunting task of eating clean. For those of you who have not heard of this movement, it is not only the elimination of all things white, refined, and chemical (as in flour, sugar and sodas), it is also the ixnay of any food you can get in an oxbay, basically. (That's "box" for those who don't speak Pig Latin. And my mother). That means no more Lean Cuisines for me, friends. It's food in it's purest form...lots of lean protein, fruits and veggies. That's where the machete comes in.

If you haven't met me, let me introduce myself. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Jones and I hate to cook. Or, as they say in the South, I hayte it. But here's the funny part. I love love love going to kitchen stores. Love. Shopping for clothes is my idea of hell. But mention a kitchen store and I can't get to the car fast enough. Just the sight of all the latest and greatest kitchen gadgets in their purest, most undefiled form...still in their boxes...not yet tainted by the wear and tear that awaits them. No...everything in the kitchen store is exciting and new...like The Love Boat. And I want to come aboard!

But here's where my plan falters. Have you ever read the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? Well, let me read an excerpt from my book If You Give an Obsessive Compulsive a Cookbook. I go to the bookstore to find the Clean Eating series (by Tosca Reno if you're interested). Ooohhh, pretty, new books that sparkle on the shelves, begging to be taken home so they can change my life. Three books and $60 later, I'm on my way. I pour through the books, filled with beautiful photos of roasted garlic, stuffed pumpkins, and peach cobbler smoothies. And realize I am going to, for the first time in my life, have to cook. Not only cook, but plan, prep and find the answer to world peace.

So I go to the kitchen store, a place in Pasadena called Sur La Table. Is it pronounce Sir-La-Tobla or Sir-La-Tob...no one really knows. But it is the most fabulously fu-fu kitchen store around. And the knife selection is vast. I pick out a 7" Japanese work of art...a Shun knife. I guess you could say I've been Shunned. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm going to hang it on my wall and recreate the Body Guard scene with Kevin Costner someday. Kidding, just kidding. Kevin's married.

So, here's where the OCD part comes in. I've got the cookbooks, got the knife. Now I'm going to need to make a grocery list. After I read the three Tosca books in their entirety. But I've got a day job and can't read them in their entirety today. Ok...so I've got to make a list. And go shopping. But before I go shopping, I need to clean out the refrigerator.  Not just the one gallon of Simply Grapefruit, the single pear, the newly opened package of turkey bacon and the can of dog food. No...I need to scrub the fridge from head to toe if it does, in fact, contain the secret to enlightenment. It's like the Ark of the Covenant, apparently.

If I'm going to scrub the fridge inside and out, I probably need to clean out the cabinets, too. After all, they house the dishes from the fu-fu kitchen store that the secret to enlightenment is served upon. And I'll need to mop the floor. And I should probably call the guy to have the carpets cleaned while I'm at it. And clean out the bedroom closet. Oh...and scrub the bathroom. Where was I? Oh yeah, making a grocery list.   

Lean Cuisines are looking better by the minute.

I have created FIRE! At least it feels like fire. If I weren't so exhausted from creating fire, I'd be pounding my chest in victory right now. OK...it's not fire. It's a rollover button. But 14 hours ago, I had no idea what a rollover button was. It all started this morning when I asked my creative director, Nancy (AKA my coworker and fellow office prankster), to take a look at my blog and see what she thought of the links I spent 12 hours working on yesterday. Nancy, being a graduate of the prestigious Art Center College of Design, knows EVERYTHING about graphic design. She is also full of random information, like the fact that squirrels have occasionally been found with their tails tied together, a dilemma that requires veterinary attention. I am pretty sure she makes things up but I confirmed the squirrel tale (no pun intended). 

But squirrels or no squirrels, Nancy knows graphic design. And she made the suggestion that I design my links to look more like buttons. And not just buttons, but rollover buttons, so when readers rolled over them with their mice (This may be the most rodent-filled post to date), they changed colors. She started to type furiously and then...bing, bang, boom, she'd pulled up a list of online rollover button generators. I smiled and thought "there's no way in you-know-where I'm going to do this, crazy woman.

But I couldn't stand it...knowing there were buttons to be had in this world. So, 14 hours, a nap and some low fat szechuan later, I have created the elusive rollover button. If you want to see it, it's on the right hand side of this page, under the arrow, and links to Cathe Nation. Notice the other "buttons" are just wannabes for the moment. Sure, they link to the correct sites, but they don't change colors yet. Give me another 56 hours, though...

PS...Anyone who tells you you can create a website in just a few easy steps or short minutes is LYING. To your face. I thought losing the weight and writing about it would be the hard part. But no. I was using an abacus before starting this blog. OK, I'm lying. I was using a sweet, mint condition Mac Book Pro. But my knowledge of all things blog design was truly prehistoric. And now I feel like Chaka in Land of the Lost, forever trying to escape from those damn sleestaks who use terms like "RSS, widget, ping, blog roll," and "rollover buttons."

Of course, there's definitely something empowering about creating fire. And blog buttons. And more good news...instead of the late night pigging out I was so tempted to do, I opted instead for a long, hot shower with a new bar of Dove. The original white version. So, after brushing my teeth, I'm soft, minty AND empowered.

On the next episode...I went knife shopping. I'll have to tell you all about it. Stay tuned!