This season on the Real Housewives of New York City...

This season of the RHONY has been pretty darn good. The buzz on the interwebs is that the reunion show gets derailed with insanity and Andy Cohen (VP of programming at Bravo and host of the aftershows/reunion shows) loses his bananas with the ladies.
 

Why has this season been great? Well, for one, the cloak of mystery surrounding Sonja Morgan has come off, and we're left with a woman who is nothing short of an embarrassment to all those who know her. I mean, she flashes her underwear (when she deigns to wear any), fruitlessly tries to flirt with any man - no matter how old or decrepit - in an attempt to live better again by marrying into money, is exposed as being dead broke (and in the hole for like $17mm) and grasping at the last vestiges of her former life as the wife of a descendant of JP Morgan and John Adams, keeps the tags on all her clothes, name drops the Churchills (lol, yeah like Winston and stuff), hosts poorly themed parties in the Cipriani vault, and last but certainly not least, COOKS ALL HER FOOD IN A TOASTER OVEN.  

Every week I tune into Bravo for the shenanigans. And every week, it ends and I'm a little dumber than when it started. And consistently each week, Husband turns to me and says, "If you were given the opportunity to murder one of the RHONY, which one would you execute?" This question ALWAYS stymies me. No, not because it's insane but because I find it a really difficult question to answer. See, the thing about these women is that I find them all abhorrent in their own special ways. I certainly cannot empathize with any of them and I hate them all in equal measure. So, it's a tough question. But I usually end up saying "Alex McCord" each time.

Guess which one is Alex? Where are everyone's pants?

What's so special about McCord? Well she's the biggest social climber and her attempts at climbing are foiled by (1) her extremely unfortunate looks; (2) the fact that she lives in Brooklyn; (3) the fact that she is not wealthy; (4) the fact that her husband is a freak; (5) the fact that she herself is a freak; (6) the fact that she is boring; (7) the fact that she apparently went to Northwestern and didn't graduate (this probably doesn't hurt her social climbing but it I think it puts her attempts to act smarter than the rest of the ladies in some context); and (8) the fact that she breaks out in hives during confrontations. After the first season of RHONY aired, I ran into McCord on the subway in Soho where she was getting into the car and trying to hide behind a newspaper. See, that's the thing about Alex - she can't just own the fact that she is too poor to hire a Towncar to transport her around the city and wear her Metrocard like a badge of honor.

Husband doesn't even need to think about it. "The Countess." And then, "If I could pick another, that Kelly woman." Haha. Sorry but you can't kill two, just one. See, I can't hate on The Countess. For one, WE ALL CALL HER THE COUNTESS. I mean, we've bought into her title. No one calls her LuAnn. And the reason I don't get mad about her fakery in the same way as Alex's is because she wears it so much better! Like the other RHONY, she is not wealthy ever since The Count left her for an African princess, but that hasn't stopped her from pretending. And she just does it well. So all in all, I can't hate her. And the BEST moments from the season were when LuAnn and Alex faced off (twice!!) and each time LuAnn ran circles around the girl. LuAnn was irrational and illogical but she said her outlandish statements with such supercilious condescension like she was talking to some poop on her shoe that IT WORKED. And I think we can all learn a lesson in how to be a superior bully from those exchanges, which is an important skill to have.

Luann: You came to me in your Herman Munster shoes…

Alex: They were Louis Vuitton shoes.

Luann: Well, even Louis Vuitton makes mistakes.

And Husband has a longstanding hatred of Kelly because she's long been portrayed as the dumb one (haha) on the show. And, well, he just doesn't like dumb people. I frankly now love Kelly because of her handling of Alex in Morocco during the Luann v. Alex showdown:

"You have to come down in a normal way. You can’t just come storming down. It doesn’t look authentic. It looks weird. Alex, it looks weird. It looks weird. That was weird. No, it looks weird, Alex. It doesn’t look normal. Come on. We enter. It’s weird. It’s inauthentic.” Kelly pretty much had some of the best quotes this season.

Which RHONY would you vote to be given a lethal injection?

OMG I love Etsy!

Because I have apparently been living under a rock, I just recently discovered Etsy.  And I am IN LOVE.

I love that you can connect with local sellers.  I love that you can buy original art.  I love that you can find vintage easily.  I just picked up this bag ...  

Vintage 60s Italian Leather Speedy Bag

I love that there are just creative original artists putting their creations up for sale and offering personalized artwork and items.  I like that the seller and buyer can connect directly and there are not corporations behind the designers/collectors.  It's all independent.  And I love that they are NOT EXPENSIVE.

I am totally getting Ginger Jars decals for a nursery if I ever have a kid, and I love Dimdi's animal prints!  So many fun things to waste time looking through instead of BILLING to make my bosses richer (or keep me from getting fired, however you want to look at it).  Go ahead, check it out, waste some time...

You do not currently have any active or fully disbursed loans on our system.

Hahaha!  That's what it said when I logged into my Citibank student loan account.
That is because I DID IT.  I ended things with Vikram P.  It's OVER.  I will never take money from Citibank again.  Do you hear???  And neither should you.  They are BP of the financial world (or is that Goldman?).  Whatevs.

FAIL

So a little update.  On my New Year's resolutions.  It would appear that people have not been keeping me in check!  Yes, I am blaming it on YOU.  J/K. 

Yeah, I bought the alarm clock.  It's nice.  It buzzes.  Unfortunately, my sleeping habits have not really changed.  I went to lunch with two colleagues this week and we discussed our sleeping and waking schedules.  We all were night owls - none of us bothered to go to bed before 2 AM.  We all agreed that sleeping by 10pm may be feasible for the suburbanites or the elderly, but New Yorkers simply cannot do it.  There's too much energy and activity in the air.  I've done slightly better than my past habits this year.  I now try and sleep by midnight.  And I've also gotten up pretty early a number of times this year.  The alarm clock has not changed anything though. But a new alarm clock was long overdue, so no regrets there.

As for the diet/eating/working out business, well, again it would appear that I have already been neglectful of this resolution.  January was a disaster at work, and I stressed out and ate.  A lot.  Of bad things.  I also am not on schedule to do blood tests by the end of February.  Yeah, this would be what people would call a giant "FAIL."  The plan?  I don't really know.  Just try to get back on the wagon and stop beating myself up?  Or beat myself up more?  Who knows.  Ugh.  Blame it on the brain, a.k.a., prefrontal cortex.

As for the final resolution of breaking up with Vikram and William, that appears to be the only thing I am on track for doing, in accordance with the schedule I set.  So I guess I'll be an obese sleepy person with a net worth of zero come Dec. 31, 2010. 

Resolution 2010 - Progress

As I noted in the post below, I wanted a new alarm clock that (1) works; (2) has dual alarm function; (3) wakes me up to NPR or lady gaga.  I bought said alarm clock this weekend.  See picture below:

It works and is awesome.  It woke me up to both NPR and Beyonce (sorry gaga) this morning!

I also made my food plan for the week and spent a lot of Sunday evening prepping and cooking.  Go me! :)

Resolutions 2010

If you have a blog, you might as well use it.  Nothing is more motivating than the fear of public ridicule, riiight?

I always make resolutions every year.  That is because I tend to always keep them.  I have a running list of items that usually take most of the year to complete and by around August/September I realize I have made pretty substantial progress, which further motivates me to top off the list.  I don't think I bite off more than I can chew usually.  And I usually avoid making promises to myself that I have no desire to keep.

That's why I could relate to the following WSJ article on how to best keep resolutions (don't overload your prefrontal cortex with a lot of things at once) but also was afraid of its implications for me in 2010:  Blame It On The Brain.  The article states:

The brain area largely responsible for willpower, the prefrontal cortex, is located just behind the forehead. While this bit of tissue has greatly expanded during human evolution, it probably hasn't expanded enough. That's because the prefrontal cortex has many other things to worry about besides New Year's resolutions. For instance, scientists have discovered that this chunk of cortex is also in charge of keeping us focused, handling short-term memory and solving abstract problems. Asking it to lose weight is often asking it to do one thing too many.

The implication here is that making many New Year's resolutions may be asking our prefrontal cortex to do too much.  And also, something we probably always knew: "Willpower, in other words, requires real energy."

The real challenge for me to keep any of my resolutions in 2010 would be that my prefrontal cortex is usually overloaded on a day-to-day basis.  I am on at least 5 cases at any given minute, and I am constantly juggling a number of balls in the air at work.  If I'm not working or thinking for work, then I am thinking about work, or planning, planning, planning... to do more work.  My dear dear overworked poor prefrontal cortex.  The odds are stacked against it.  It may explode any minute now.  When I come home from work, I am exhausted as if I just ran a marathon, but the only thing that has been moving in my body all day has been the cholesterol that is moving into my arteries.

So, asking too much from my cortex in 2010 will likely not lead to success.  Combining that article with this other take-it-in-pieces guide to making and sticking to New Year's resolutions - A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Resolutions - it looks like I'll have to take a more reasonable and thoughtful approach to my resolutions this year. 

The Cheat Sheet also adds the following helpful advice (hence this blog post): 

Announce your intentions. After trying and failing repeatedly to build meditation into his routine, Mr. McGuinness raised the stakes on New Year's Day, 2008: He published his resolution to thousands of readers of his blog at www.wishfulthinking.co.uk. The public commitment has made the difference, he says. When he feels like shirking, he asks himself, "what am I going to tell my blog readers?" Clients and readers sometimes ask if he is keeping his resolution.

And you should also "get a little help from your friends" with resolutions.  So, it makes perfect sense for me to blog post my resolutions so that the world (my family) knows what I am up against and will help me by not feeding me truffles and ice cream.  Importantly, the article also advises one to "[f]igure out your attachment to bad habits" as a way of releasing them.
 
Ok - so let's apply that to me.  What is my attachment to gaining weight/being fat?  I can honestly say that nothing is better in my life as a result of having these extra layers on me.  It doesn't even keep me that much warmer in the winter!  It doesn't give me any flotation benefits in water either. 

But I think the biggest challenge to my losing the pounds is I am really tired by day's end from work and all I want to do is go home and eat and watch tv and relax and get ready for bed.  The normal person would respond by saying - "Ok - then make working out the first thing you do in the day!"  Truuues... but additional point, I loathe waking up.  To the point that I would stay up late just to wake up late.  I think the biggest problem for me is this.  If I could normalize my schedule (hello, decent alarm clock?  warm milk at night? go home earlier and eat dinner earlier? go to bed earlier? no jon stewart at 11?) then I could get up earlier and work out earlier in the day.  It could all be so easy if all the stars would align to allow me to rejigger my schedule!  I mean, leaving work earlier means getting to work earlier!  But I can't because I am sleepy!  See how that all is interconnected?

Resolution # 1 - End Winter Hibernation Sleep Patterns

1. Buy a new alarm clock in January 2010.  One that works.  One that has dual alarm function.  One that wakes me up to NPR or my ipod on those days when only Lady Gaga will do to kick my a** out of bed.
2. Rejigger internal biological circadian clock so that I feel sleepy at a time when normal people feel sleepy (when is that btw? 10 pm?).  Start going to bed earlier.  By mid Feb. 2010, I should be coming to terms with my new circadian clock.  This is particularly challenging to do in the dead of winter when it is dark when you wake.  This may need to involve the use of lightboxes. 

3. Keep proper sleep and wake patterns for all year long!  (This is huge and I want a ticker tape parade if I can stick with it.)  The added benefit is being up earlier in the day and ending my day earlier and hopefully giving me the energy to attack my other resolutions.

Resolution # 2 - Prevent Premature Death By Heart Attack

No joke here.  This is probably the most important goal on my list. 

Cholesterol, Total: 278  [Normal is 125-200]

HDL Cholesterol:  68  [Normal is >= 46]

LDL Cholesterol:  187 [Normal <=130]

In the spirit of oversharing, there you have it.  As of July 29, 2009.  I have certainly changed many of my eating habits but have also let things slide in the busyness of the holiday season.  So, it's time to climb back on that wagon.

1. Weekly food plans and grocery shopping for the week.  Feel free to ask me what my food plan for the week is.  When I say, "I don't know," feel free to ask me what death tastes like.
2. Use all my christmas-gift gadgets and cookbooks to help keep me on a non-take-out and no-pizza- except-rarely role.
3. Get back to packing lunch every day.
4. Figure out some healthy alternatives for my Bengali sweet tooth.
5. Revisit the good doctor for a followup blood test in the end of February. I will post the results here.
6. For every month I stay on the healthy food plan, I can get a cleaning lady to clean the apartment instead of having to do it myself (agree Boo?).  That's motivation.
7. Somewhere in this list involves getting a trainer, joining a gym, and getting me and my heart moving.  I am not going to set an arbitrary poundage goal but I think it would be nice to have shed 20 lbs by July 29, 2010.

This type of culinary discipline takes pre-planning and time, something that is relatively rare in my life.  But I suppose this is the most important goal of them all.  Don't let me forget that.  I think it is appropriate to see where I am on July 29, 2010, a year after my diagnosis.  These resolutions should be second nature to me by then.

Resolution # 3 - End My Relationships With Vikram Pandit and William D. Ford

Everyone's heard me talk about this one.  The only difference is that I can actually be in the home stretch this year if I sacrifice (and if Boo sacrifices too, as he has been doing already, for me).  I can break up with Vikram - slamming the door in his bailout-taking face by around mid-year, leaving me another half a year or so to plan my escape from Mr. Ford.  By Dec. 31, 2010, I should, at a minimum, have a net worth of ZERO.  Here's to my future!!!!

R.I.P. Tai

So sad. R.I.P. Brittany Murphy.



I will always remember you fondly from Girl Interrupted and Clueless, but less fondly when thinking of Uptown Girls.



You played the insecure overweight newbie girl in town who eventually accidentally becomes cool and turns on the one who made her with such awesomeness.  Tai is a classic character.  Roll on with the homies.