Siddity in the City

I have finished my taxes.

I am calm! I am zen! I am happy these days!

Let’s look at my tab, eh?

Federal taxes owed: $11.

Whew! Dodged that bullet! I was afraid I’d owe more, even though I hardly made any money last year, what with temping, limited freelancing, moving, and general povertitious behaviors.

Adopted-home-state-Illinois taxes owed: $162 refund for 7 months of resident employment.

CHA-CHING! Yaaaaaay, monies back, yaaaaaaaay! I love Chicago!

New York taxes owed, with exactly 12 days of non-resident employment accumulated in 2007(hey, if I’m crashing on someone’s floor during weekdays, and at my folks on weekends? I’m a fudgin’ migrant worker, okay?): $251.

Twelve.

Days.

Two hundred and fifty-one dollars.

This muhfu…

Zen!

Happy!

I’m not there anymore!

I have a spacious cheap apartment in an incredibly vibrant neighborhood, and a job I enjoy, and am surrounded by people I like! Hahahahapppppy!

I will not sacrifice my contentment and health to that soul-sucking vortex again. Ha!

(Have you ever wanted to plot the downfall of an entire land mass? Because I do, right now. I want all of New York City to fucking toss my unwashed salad…ugh. UGH.)

Dear New York,

STOP. FUCKING. RAPINGMYWALLETIDON’TEVENLIVEINYOURHELLACIOUSPITSANYMOREWHYAREYOUSTILLBLEEDINGMEDRY!?!?!?

That’s okay. I mean, between the IL refund and the $600 tax rebat, I’ll be able to cover it. But honestly, and this is a rare emotion for me these days, I COULD CHOKE someone right now. Unbefuckinglievable.

In other news, I have made my first mac and cheese (fatty as all get-out with four cheeses AND bacon crust), I have an honest-to-god bed and several chairs scored at a thrift shop, I continue to inexplicably lose weight despite minimal gym attendance on my part, I have looked evil in the eye (and lost), and I am happily three chapters into Dorothy West’s “The Living is Easy.”

Oh, and I signed up for eHarmony, for what that’s worth.

How are you?

I’ve just spent the last 8 hours chortling, chuckling, guffawing and teasing. And working.

I’ve been this friggin’ happy at work.

Shocking. Maybe it’s just a Friday thing. Or some sort of karmic refund for the previous few years of misery. Maybe it’s just the fact that the sun has been streaming in on all of us, full and strong, and it’s reset our internal happy clocks after months of winter gloom.

Whatever, man. I’ll take it.

And just because I cannot get my mind off the nest right now, here’s a link to Jonathan Adler’s eponymous design site. His book is rather appropriately (and cheekily) dubbed…My Prescription for Antidepressive Living.

Love!

Like the fact that there is no way I will be able to furnish an apartment from scratch, eat fabulous things on occasion, do my BFFs wedding this fall, and hit Edinburgh for the festival this summer on my budget.

But by golly, someone should take advantage of this BMI fare sale to the UK.

or whatever we’re calling it these days, someone pulls you back in.

Late last year, I was trying with what felt like all my might to lose weight.

Frozen diet meals, 100 calorie snack packs, five-day-per-week workout plan. I lost some weight, but then I reached a plateau, hovering around 192 or 193, and nothing I did would get me below that point for more than a day or two.

It made me nuts.

“Fine,” I thought. “Maybe this is my new ‘as-good-as-it-gets.’”

Then the new year rolled around, and my birthday, and my move. During all of this time, I eased off the prepackaged meals. My workouts fell to four days per week by my birthday, then three, and now, sometimes even two.

Around the birthday, my weight fell to 189, but I attributed that to a particularly hectic period in the office that kept me from doing little more than swallowing soup at my desk one-handed. I was sure it wouldn’t last, especially since I seemed to be having a harder and harder time of talking myself into heading to the gym after work instead of home to my little box. I try to make up for it on weekends–I average 4 or so hours of walking each weekend just to handle all my shopping and errands and whatnot. Still, how can that bit of walking compare with five nights per week of 45+ minute cardio sessions, and strength training, and 45 minutes per day of commute-walking?

I hopped on the scale after my first workout of this week (while I know some people consider this cheating, I always check my weight at the end of the day, post workout–I started tracking it that way, and so that is how I will go on). 186.5.

On one hand, hooray! I am officially NYC weight again. On the other hand, what the hell? How is it that when I tried, I stopped losing, but when I stopped trying, I started again?

In other news, I had my annual physical today. I chose the doc on a coworker’s recommendation–she was close to my office, and the coworker had great things to say. I had to wait several weeks from the scheduling to the appointment, but I figured, heck, I’m in no rush to be poked and prodded. When I walked into her office, though, I realized I was lucky to have gotten onto her patient roster at all. She’s got a bunch of “Best Doctors in America” write-ups, apparently. She completely deserves it, too. I liked my doctor in Manhattan, but she also had a busy practice, and I always felt she was rushing through my exams. New doc took all the time needed to discuss my health and history, listened well enough that she was able to elicit bits of history I hadn’t considered as relevant, and was generally good humored, soothing, informative and attentive. Human. (Arguably exactly what a good doctor should be, I think, so why is it so difficult to find?)

As a bonus, my blood pressure is normal again. Last summer it seemed to have stabilized, but by fall/winter, it was reading high, I imagine thanks to a series of stresses including a month of HR drama, too much PBR, a doomed fling, and apartment hunting uncertainty. My body in this sense is so closely attuned to my overall satisfaction, it’s astonishing. For instance, I was never before as cosmetically fit as I was in NYC in early 2006. I ate clean for the most part, worked out like a madwoman, and looked better than I do now, but I was miserable with the rest of my life, and it was written all over my suddenly 140/110 BP readings.

Now I make less money, have less spare time, and hover around 3% fatter, yet am somehow still more satisfied, and healthier than ever. It’s a stark reminder that I have to manage my environment, my personal satisfaction, quite carefully as a part of managing my health.

And on that note, I’m off to bed. Adequate sleep, I am acutely aware, is one of the factors most crucial to my general well-being.