You too can have a muffin top

Ah, the muffin top – the jiggly inner-tube of skin and fat that sits atop ones waistline and grows exponentially during unemployment. If you are jobless due to a layoff and interested in growing your own friendly little muffin top to keep you company during the long lonely days of job searching, below is my recipe. Enjoy!

• 1 pair of low waist jeans
• 1 pair of level 1 house pants
• 1 month supply of woman’s PMS (optional)
• 6 c pink-slip
• 6 c shock, anger and resentment
• 6 c booze (your choice; beer seems to add bulk quickly)
• 3 c economic recession
• 2 c bills
• 1 c stress and anxiety
• 1/2 c sleep deprivation
• 6 c comfort foods – chocolate, chips, etc.
• 1/4 c exercise

Upon receipt of your pink-slip, your body temperature will naturally increase slightly due to stress. Once it reaches 100 degrees, drop the pink-slip into a large bowl (toilet bowl suggested) and beat aggressively with shock, anger, resentment, economic recession, stress, anxiety and bills for about 2 weeks until the pink-slip mixture begins to percolate. Once it’s active, introduce booze and sleep deprivation over the course of one week until the mixture forms a tranquil pond of goo. DO NOT ADD EXERCISE JUST YET. For maximum puff factor in your muffin top, it’s imperative that these negative energies co-mingle long enough to successfully interact with the remaining ingredients. 

Over the next week or two, add in the remaining ingredients starting first with the comfort foods alternating as chocolate-salt-grease-chocolate-salt-grease until the mixture starts to rise over the course of another two weeks. If you have access to a woman’s PMS, add that now for the extra bloat factor. Once you feel that the pink-slip mixture has enough puff, begin to introduce exercise starting first with sit-ups to really build up the muscle underneath the fat. This will create that cute little jiggle in your finished muffin top.

Drop the mixture into your house pants and bake in bed overnight. That next morning, zip yourself into your low waist jeans and Mr. Muffin Top will appear. Be sure to wear a short shirt and show him off to everyone you know. My muffin top responds positively to zerberts* and enjoys long walks in the park.

 

 

Did I peak in kindergarten?

So, I was having brunch with my family about two weeks ago when my dad whips out my Pupil Progress Report from kindergarten. As I started to read through my progress report, I exclaimed “Oh look how cute this is! I am very good at walking a straight line, have a very good sense of humor and I have extensive language skills!” In fact, my teacher marked me down as being very good (VG), the highest mark, for just about everything, except those things that weren’t yet introduced (NI for not introduced) like “caring for toilet needs independently.” I digress a bit here, but I don’t think the toilet needs thing was being introduced at home yet either because I clearly remember yelling in a sing-songy tone “Mommy, come wipe my bum bum” when I did #2. Good times.

Anyway, as I continued to move through the report with a proud grin on my face, something dawned on me and I yelled “Wait a minute. How could someone who can’t wipe their own butt get the highest marks possible? I mean, it says here I have very good large and small muscle coordination, so if that’s really true, shouldn’t I be able to wipe my own rear? And, why did my teacher have to put ’very good’ for everything? Seems he was setting me up for failure and disappointment! I mean, according to this progress report, there’s nowhere to go but down from here!” My brother, being the oldest of four siblings and the only boy, suggested that I might have peaked in kindergarten. Hilarious, of course, but it also made me wonder whether or not he might be right?  

While we all want to think we’ve progressed as adults, let’s see how my progress report would look today*.

Physical Development – Large and Small Muscle Coordination

• Can I still hop or skip in rhythm? Now, what would possess someone my age to hop or skip? I mean, most adults work all day and when I did work in an office prior to my lay off, I don’t recall having a recess period where the hopping and skipping could take place. Instead, I sat behind a desk all day emailing people. So, I am pretty sure that if I were to start skipping around the office in between emails, my coworkers would be concerned. They wouldn’t be saying, ”oh, look at the fun she’s having!” And besides, I can’t afford another trip to the doctor for a thrown back or sprained knee. So, I guess I would have to change my progress report score from VG (very good) to L (limited progress).
• Can I still walk a straight line and manipulate stairs, alternating feet? Again, changing my scores here too from VG to G (good progress). I really can’t claim that I am still “very good” at either of these tasks . A lot has changed since kindergarten. For example, freshman year high school, someone introduced me to booze. And, because we don’t get recess at work, where I could have fun by hopping and skipping, I turned to booze as my fun maker (after work of course) and booze will, therefore at times, negatively impact my ability to walk a straight line and manipulate stairs.
• Can I still hold and use a pencil correctly? Barely. Because I type most of the time, I do find that when I try to write with a pencil or pen, my handwriting blows as does my spelling. So, guess I have to change my score yet again from VG to limited progress.

Personal Development  – Emotional and Social

• Do I still seek adult help when needed? Wow – I sure hope so! I mean, at my age, should I be asking a child who to call to fix the foundation on my house? So, I guess my score would remain the same, VG. But, if there were an option to get higher marks on this progress report (which there aren’t because kindergarten set me up for failure or non-progress with all the VGs), I would have to give myself a score of SUPER at this ”seeking help from adults” thing. In fact, my therapist told me that I no longer need to see her; that I was all grown up now! Ha! 

Health and Safety

• Do I care for toilet needs independently? You better believe it! This is one area where I have improved significantly since kindergarten, and my score today would be very good to super! Yay for me and more importantly, yay for you!!
• Do I generally appear to be well rested? If by well rested you mean, waking up with puffy purple and black bags underneath my eyes and jump starting my restorative sleep-deprived brain with enough caffeine to power a small car, then yes I appear well rested.  Never mind the fact that the media reminds me at least 3 times a day of being jobless in the worst economic recession since the 80′s and that my toughest responsibilities are no longer cleaning my room. I sleep like a child who’s dreaming of waking up to find that her entire bedroom has been turned into candy. So, if there were an option on this report to choose zero progress, that’s where I am at today. 

Ok, well…that was enlightening. The above proves that I have made little to no progress since graduating kindergarten and in fact, it seems I’ve actually digressed in several key areas. Thankfully though, the one area where I’ve excelled since kindergarten is “caring for toilet needs independently” and this is an important one if you think about it, so perhaps I should highlight that on my resume. 

*A note to my future employers. If you are actually reading my blog, thank you for stopping by and I hope you had a laugh or two. This post was especially self-deprecating, but it’s all in good fun. I am actually a very bright individual, who works hard and likes to have fun at work. In fact, if you hired me, I would love to hop or skip around the office just to make people laugh. This would of course only be done during my break time or at recess if that’s something your company offers. If you do,  we might be a match made in heaven!

5 steps to forced socialization

What is it? It’s exactly what it says - forcing yourself to get out of the house and interact with other humans vs. sitting inside all day feeling like an unemployed loser. Here are the steps to making that happen:

1. You start by peeling yourself out of the fleece Snuggie. While it is very cozy, you cannot leave your house wearing that thing or you will find it difficult to make friends. They may think you are an escapee from an insane asylum and that’s bad.
2. Choose to actually WASH your hair. Don’t just throw on a hat or spritz your hair with a dry shampoo like Psssssst to cover up the 2-day grease. Be considerate to the people you are about to run into and remember – you are trying to blend in like the other employed humans who wash their hair frequently.
3. Choose to put on a pair of level 5 house pants or higher. Higher than level 5 would be jeans, but if you no longer fit into those because parts of you have tripled in size during unemployment, then level 5 house pants are acceptable for public consumption. Also note that when when you are wearing this caliber of house pants or higher, you can also pretend that you are simply running errands on your “day off” before heading to the gym like any other employed person would do. You are a very efficient multi-tasker and people with these skills are usually employable!
4. Very important – brush your teeth people – do not just pop in a piece of gum! While your animals may enjoy your filth, this is a socialization effort and therefore you must try to blend in if you want to make human contact!  
5. And finally, equip yourself with things to make you appear very busy just in case your forced socialization efforts fail and you are rejected by these humans. At all times, you should probably be packin’ at least two of the following items: PDA, MP3 player, laptop, book, newspaper, pen and paper, and cell phone.

Hope you found this helpful. I must give props to a good friend of mine, a Croatian goddess, herself a victim of this declining economy, who coined the phrase ”forced socialization” and told me about ”Psssssst” dry shampoo.