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‘All about me’ Category

  1. I am … Super Woman

    February 15, 2012 by Marissa

    GIRL POWER!

    Yes­ter­day pre­sented a seri­ous chal­lenge for me as a lab man­ager. When pro­moted, I told them, prior to accept­ing the posi­tion, that I was NOT a mechanic. You see, short of com­plete rebuilds, we do our own main­te­nance and repairs on the equip­ment used in the lab. In our employ was a gen­tle­man who could fix just about any­thing. He retired leav­ing me with my own resources.

    Ugh.

    Since he left the com­pany in late Decem­ber, noth­ing ter­ri­bly chal­leng­ing has pre­sented itself. Light bulb replace­ment; cal­i­bra­tions; fluid refills. Noth­ing major. That is until a vital piece of equip­ment was dis­play­ing signs that a com­plete break­down was immi­nent. With­out this machine we are ren­dered use­less and a lot of cus­tomers would be tremen­dously upset that we couldn’t deliver the prod­uct in a timely manner.

    I admit that the part was ordered two weeks ago and that I had been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. But the noise given off from the machine was deafening.

    Wear­ing my son’s cargo pants and a shirt I cared lit­tle about get­ting greasy, I reported to work two hours early after see­ing the den­tist (that’s for another post). Hav­ing spo­ken with a tech­ni­cian at our diag­nos­tics office, I felt less than con­fi­dent in pulling this repair off. How­ever, noth­ing ven­tured; noth­ing gained!

    Ugh.

    I knew 3 mas­sive bolts had to be loos­ened. The first one broke loose eas­ily. Hooray! The sec­ond one not so much. WD-40 to the res­cue. While that was seep­ing into the crevices and doing what­ever the hell it does, I replaced a rub­ber col­lar that had a split in it. Of course, out of 16 hex-screws, the last one would NOT budge. Bloody hell!! With a lit­tle inge­nu­ity, I made the part fit. Neener neener, stu­pid hex-screw!

    Twenty min­utes later I returned to the bolts I doused with WD-40. The sec­ond one budged with a lit­tle elbow grease.  The third one was in a spot that didn’t allow me to cre­ate enough torque with the hex wrench and pry bar. Dou­ble ewww tee EFF!!! The flip­ping hex wrench kept fly­ing off and drop­ping to the floor. Already posi­tioned in a tight spot between the ginor­mous machine and the wall, I bashed my skull into the cor­ner of our safety unit that holds the Health and Safety Man­ual and MSDS binders. Ironic, don’t ya think? With a win­dow nearby that gives cus­tomers access to see­ing and hear­ing what is going on in the lab, I attempted *cough* to be aware and not shout exple­tives. I may have failed mis­er­ably. At one point I saw stars and thought there would be a trickle of blood on my fore­head. Yes, I nailed my nog­gin that hard. I was too angry to cry.

    I kept lament­ing loudly, “I AM STARTING TO FEEL DEFEATED!” toward my co-lab tech. While she couldn’t help me phys­i­cally, she did cheer me on with words of encouragement.

    Var­i­ous posi­tions were attempted to break the bolt free from the hous­ing. This included stand­ing ON TOP of the machine, back on the floor but prop­ping my left foot against the swing arm while, with all my strength, yanked on the makeshift lever. FAIL!

    I must not go fur­ther with­out point­ing out that I am right handed and my right arm has reduced strength due to ten­donitis or some other sort of itis that induces pain and the inabil­ity to fully unbend the arm.

    Finally, with a ham­mer in hand and the hex wrench in place, I used the claw and an edge of the bracket to pry it as if it was a nail in the wall. It worked.

     

    lunapic 132935005546642 12 219x300 I am ... Super Woman

    I swear to you at that moment a choir of angels sang. Just the removal of the bolts took me about an hour and a half. That’s about how long I had hoped the entire process would take. Remain­ing was dis­man­tling, replace­ment and reassem­bling. THEN, calibrating.

    It was all down­hill once the 27 pound part was pounded out with a rub­ber mal­let and a lot of grunt­ing, pri­mal yelling etc… It was VERY therapeutic.

    By 1:20 PM, the deed was done. My body was drained, but my con­fi­dence was soar­ing. While I do NOT ever want to have to do this again, the action of doing it leaves me feel­ing extremely empow­ered. It also puts a feather in my cap as a sin­gle woman. I’ve been the home car­pen­ter, mover, spi­der killer, mouse trap­per all while putting on make up, get­ting pedi­cures and wear­ing pink glit­ter lip gloss.

    I DID IT! In fact, an email was sent to my regional man­ager express­ing just that. “I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF!!!”

    427669 10150607147679508 788529507 8601884 876054648 n I am ... Super Woman

    The beast above is what gave me such trou­ble. It’s a about a foot long and heavy as hell.  Above it is the mal­let which allowed me to make that cylin­der my bitch.

    And now, a musi­cal ded­i­ca­tion to my inner Super Woman. I’m stand­ing on my own two feet!  They say behind every great man is a great woman. Well, I stand with myself and my sis­ters who are doin’ for themselves!!


    • My Hollywood Startlet Discord

      January 24, 2012 by Marissa

      I make no apolo­gies for my opin­ions and how cer­tain peo­ple grate on my nerves. I’m sure the feel­ing would be mutual given the oppor­tu­nity. And that makes me happy.


      • Another Rissue moment

        January 6, 2012 by Marissa


        • 30 Things Hath Meme-tember

          January 1, 2012 by Marissa

          HAPPY 2O12!!!! Here’s hop­ing the Mayans just had a kooky sense of humor rather than a fore­bod­ing knack for know­ing the world’s end, eh?

          2012 joke 240x300 30 Things Hath Meme tember

          This new year was started with me sleep­ing in. A rare thing. It could be due to stay­ing up long enough to usher in 2012 watch­ing the movie PAUL with my son. It was quite a feat since this week kicked my tuchus all over the place at work. BUSY barely describes it. You would’ve sworn we were giv­ing away the store with the num­ber of peo­ple crowd­ing in our doors. Seri­ously, do NOT wait until the final week of the year to take advan­tage of your vision care ben­e­fits. Why do peo­ple do that? Do y’all sud­denly get tweaked vision after Christ­mas? Just some food for thought from an exhausted lab manager.

          My 17 year old is still snooz­ing and it’s nearly 10. Oh wait, that’s not unusual over Christ­mas break.

          So, here comes the real rea­son I logged onto Maris­sol­ogy to present you with a new blog post. It’s a meme. In blogger’s terms, this is also known as a cop out, writer’s block jog­ger or sim­ply an easy way to get a post up for read­ers to “enjoy.”

          Thirty Ques­tions

          Thirty ques­tions that require a sin­gle word answer. It’s tempt­ing to prat­tle on and on — so unlike me — K.I.S.S. it no mat­ter how tempting.

          1. Where is your cell phone? Console

          2. Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend? Nonexistent

          3. Your hair? Espresso

          4. Your mother? Gone

          5. Your father? Passed

          6. Your favourite item? Droid

          7. Your dream last night? Void

          8. Your favourite drink? water

          9. Your dream car? Free

          10. The room you are in? Living

          11. Your ex? Assclown

          12. Your fear? Abandonment

          13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Living

          14. Who did you hang out with last night? Mancub

          15. What you’re not? Fakel

          16. The last thing you did? Wrote

          17. What are you wear­ing? Clothes

          18. Your favourite book? Que?

          19. The last thing you ate? Biscuit

          20. Your life? Adventure

          21. Your mood? Mellow

          22. Your friends? Faboo

          23. What are you think­ing about right now? Future

          24. Your car? Saturn

          25. What are you doing at the moment? blogging

          26. Your sum­mer? Working

          27. What is on your TV? Candle

          28. When is the last time you laughed? Often

          29. Last time you cried? Thursday

          30. School? Finito!

          If you’re into it, blog your own!


          • The end is near!

            November 27, 2011 by Marissa

            326940_10150301027059508_788529507_7436984_5989248_o

            The End Is Near!!!

            The end of 2011, that is. With that in mind, I felt it com­pletely appro­pri­ate to pre­pare and get a head start on the num­ber one res­o­lu­tion year after year after year: Get fit. Oh, you might call it los­ing weight, but I pre­fer to look at it from a long term per­spec­tive. After all, what’s the point in chang­ing your eat­ing and exer­cise habits if you’re not going to keep at it?

            The photo below is posted as full dis­clo­sure. I’m 5’10″ and even after a 32 pound weight loss (orig­i­nal loss was 40, but seden­tary lifestyle due to injury, I gained back 8), I sill look bot­tom heavy and, as many may call it, quite fluffy. As a side note, on this day I was feel­ing quite fetch­ing and thin. I look bet­ter from the side, as demon­strated in the sec­ond photo.

            326940 10150301027059508 788529507 7436984 5989248 o The end is near!

            333531 10150301028939508 788529507 7437014 2399621 o 282x300 The end is near!

            P90X is my weapon of choice this time around.Yes, I have attempted it before, but then Tur­boFire came into my life and I got hooked on that. How­ever, if you recall, danc­ing like a maniac at my niece’s wed­ding in Sep­tem­ber did quite a num­ber on my left knee. After more than a month of lay­ing off stren­u­ous exer­cise, it became appar­ent that my body relied upon work­ing out to keep the weight off. I gained a few pounds back as I hadn’t changed my eat­ing sans exer­cise. EEP!  It’s such a devil to lose, but in the blink of an eye it returns.

            Egads!

            Tur­boFire proved to be too much with all the twists and turns even though I’d been mod­i­fy­ing. Scratch­ing my head on what to do, I won­dered if strength­en­ing the knee would be the ticket. After a week of doing the P90X Lean plan, I am happy to report my knee feels incred­i­bly bet­ter. No longer stiff and pained in the morn­ing after a night of sleeping.

            How excited am I? Ridicu­lously, I say! Plus, I feel stronger after just a week. It is a very empow­er­ing work­out. When you see the informer­cials, I hope it isn’t a deter­rent due to the obvi­ous inten­sity of the pro­gram. It is. I won’t lie, but trainer Hor­ton insists you mod­ify and pause. “Do YOUR best and for­get the rest” is his repeated mantra. That doesn’t mean slack off. Push it to the brink of fail­ure. It’s a great feel­ing when you do more than you think pos­si­ble in your mind. Instead of “I can’t do a push-up” I say, “I will try to do a push-up and tomor­row I will be stronger.” I focus on form instead of how many reps I can do.

            To get me over the hump I imag­ine myself on video telling my story of suc­cess. Until that day when it is pro­duced, I give you another suc­cess story of a mom who thought she was stuck with the body she’d been dealt after hav­ing three children.


            • ABCs of Gratitude

              November 24, 2011 by Marissa

              Armed Forces — With­out the self­less­ness of men and women who choose to serve in America’s mil­i­tary branches, I wouldn’t have free­dom as I know it.

              Beach­body — With­out the amaz­ing group of peo­ple and pro­grams made avail­able through this com­pany, I wouldn’t have man­aged to lose weight with­out a gimmick.

              Cof­fee — Mir­a­cle elixir of the morning.

              Dop­pel­ganger — I love the word. I’m not so sure I’d ever want to meet mine.

              Estro­gen — I enjoy being a girl! OK, not ALL the time, but I’m grate­ful menopause hasn’t hit me yet.

              Food — Seems rather basic, huh? There’s always food on my table and in my son’s belly… and a bit too much in mine. It’s a love/hate relationship.

              Girl­friends — Every woman needs close-knit female friends. Mine are diverse and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

              Hum­mus — It’s deli­cious and good for you! Think the kids won’t like chick-peas aka gar­ban­zos? Have them try Hummus.

              Idioms — I use them freely. They are fun and add color to conversation.

              Jump­ing Jacks — Two years ago I couldn’t do them. Today I am able to thanks to los­ing weight and increas­ing my strength and mobil­ity. YEA!

              Kit­ties — I love my feline friends. They may be aloof and annoy­ing at times, but I love ‘em.

              Laugh­ter — Yours or my own. It’s the world’s best medicine.

              Man­cub — He is my world and rea­son for get­ting up daily. He teaches me lessons daily.

              Nean­derthals — The jerks who haven’t evolved. Why am I grate­ful for them? It helps me teach my son what NOT to be.

              Open minds — We need more of them in this world.

              Patience — It is a virtue and not some­thing I typ­i­cally pos­sess. How­ever, when it counts the most it’s with me.

              Qual­ity — In this world of excess, I have learned that qual­ity of time and prod­uct is the bet­ter partner.

              Resilience — My par­ents blessed me with the abil­ity to be resilient. Try to knock me down and I bounce right back. A proud fam­ily trait.

              Sis­ters — I have four fab­u­lous female role mod­els. Each one has offered amaz­ing lessons in my lifetime.

              Tech­nol­ogy — This blog brought to you by Apple.

              Uncon­di­tional love — Best feel­ing in the world to give it and receive it.

              Ver­nac­u­lar — OK, it’s an unusual thing to be grate­ful for, I guess. Wel­come to the melt­ing pot! Plus, I’m cur­rently watch­ing Swamp Peo­ple on His­tory Channel.

              Water — Basic. Sim­ple. Not avail­able to every­one on this planet.

              XX — chro­mo­somes that make me a girl! This makes me think of a Sein­feld episode when Elaine declares to George and Jerry, “I don’t know how you walk around with those things. ”

              Zip­pity Doo Dah! — Yes, I sing it when I’m happy. I sing it when I need to get happy. I sing it when I’m being sarcastic.


              • Borked

                November 19, 2011 by Marissa

                Borked

                Per the online Urban Dic­tio­nary BORKED has sev­en­teen def­i­n­i­tions that range from down­right vul­gar (no sur­prise! This is the Urban Dic­tio­nary we’re talk­ing about) to what appears actual def­i­n­i­tion. I’m tak­ing num­ber two to best explain how things have been for me lately:

                Some­thing is “borked” when it doesn’t work cor­rectly or mis­be­haves, gen­er­ally due to neg­li­gence by the person(s) that are respon­si­ble for it.

                Ety­mol­ogy: Com­bine one part “bro­ken” and one part Swedish Chef and you get “borked.”

                 
                This web­site is borked.
                That mechanic borked your car.

                Dili­gence does not describe me as of late. Well, unless you con­sid­er­ing get­ting up and going to work being dili­gent. Since I get paid to be there, I don’t let my respon­si­bil­i­ties slide.

                Take this blog, for instance. No new posts for a week. Nary a photo or blurb. What gives, eh? I’ve felt for awhile that I’d lost my muse. Every writer (seri­ous or not) needs a muse. Some­times it is a per­son or per­sonal mantra … a state of mind. The lack of gen­uine idea for blog entries is reflec­tive of my lack of deter­mi­na­tion on my weight loss goal. That drive has dwin­dled down to thoughts of con­sid­er­ing my cur­rent weight being com­fort­able. Although, I am not ‘com­fort­able’ at my cur­rent girthiness.

                So, what the heck gives?

                Where, oh where, has my deter­mi­na­tion gone? Where, oh where, can it be?

                 

                Frustration Relief Borked


                • Back at the beginning

                  October 17, 2011 by Marissa

                  Argh!

                  After a month of nurs­ing a knee injury and, then, nurs­ing myself back to health after a week of suf­fer­ing the flu (and sus­pected caf­feine with­drawal), I worked out. The last time this body endured an offi­cial work­out was Sep­tem­ber 17 in the hotel gym in Spring­field where we stayed for my niece’s wed­ding. Even though I knew I’d be danc­ing the night away I wanted to get a real work­out in. Maybe it was too much, but the fol­low­ing day I was limp­ing about. Full mobil­ity returned after my bout with ill­ness. I guess being laid up is just what my ail­ing knee required.

                  So, what was my weapon of choice today? Some­thing easy-ish. Slim in 6 with Deb­bie Siebers Start It Up! It’s the intro­duc­tion dvd. It juiced my joints (as Leslie San­son of Walk Fit says). Along with nearly every move­ment, I snap! crack­led! popped! Rice Krispies has noth­ing on me. Do you ever expe­ri­ence that or is it just me?

                  Along with joint stiff­ness, I am cer­tain that I’m still recov­er­ing from dehy­dra­tion. It seems I can­not get enough flu­ids. The best bev­er­age is still water — unless, of course, I’m run­ning a marathon … which, I am not.

                  This is another begin­ning for me. I’ve not really kept you up on my health and fit­ness quest as I had cast it aside. No rea­son. It just hap­pened. Lack of focus. But I am hearby stat­ing pub­licly that my goal has been reset to lose 30 pounds by the end of 2011. I can do it. I will do it. Help to keep me on track by pop­ping on my per­sonal Face­book wall, Maris­sol­ogy Page or drop­ping me an email me wildhair65@gmail.com . Find me on Google +, too. I’m every­where! Tweet me if that’s your method of check­ing in. Together, we can get healthy and stomp out obe­sity. It begins at home!


                  • Pass the Kleenex

                    September 17, 2011 by Marissa

                    Man­cub and I have trav­eled to Spring­field for a wed­ding. The bride is my niece; one of my broth­ers daugh­ters. This excur­sion marks the third wed­ding we’ve attended in 2011. Third, but not last. The fourth will be in Octo­ber when a friend weds. Truly the year of commitment.

                    Here’s a lit­tle known fact to peo­ple out­side of my fam­ily cir­cle: I have been the offi­cial wed­ding crier since my first flower girl expe­ri­ence in my sis­ter Karen’s wed­ding a bil­lion years ago. All of 6 years old, I sobbed uncon­trol­lably at the altar. Talk about a pathetic sight. To fully grasp what it is about wed­dings that makes me cry so much is fod­der for the psy­chi­a­trists couch. At that age my esti­ma­tion is fear that my sis­ter was being taken away from me for­ever! Of course, that the­ory doesn’t make sense when you con­sider the fact that I can cry at the nup­tials of some­one who is a rel­a­tive stranger. 

                    After sev­eral years of see­ing myself in wed­ding pho­tos with smudged eye make up, shin­ing bright red nose and gen­er­ally look­ing as if some­one beat me up, I had to do some­thing. c31fc4f9c3ab40fa4cc2b21fefd652fc 700x550 Pass the KleenexWith FOUR wed­dings to attend in a year, I didn’t want ugly mem­o­ries of myself for the lov­ing couples.

                    It is bizarre.

                    As I have matured, it has become a smidgen eas­ier to stop the tsunami of tears. That is not to say I do not cry at all. Even though I got teary eyed at my own wed­ding in 1990, I didn’t sob. I should have RUN, but that’s for another day. So many things went wrong on my wed­ding day and the days lead­ing up to it I think I was just relieved it was finally com­menc­ing. Another instance where I didn’t lose con­trol was recently at my sister’s civil union. Tak­ing delib­er­ate steps to main­tain con­trol dur­ing the cer­e­mony was exe­cuted. I fol­lowed these three sim­ple steps:

                    1. When music plays or some­one sings (before or dur­ing the wed­ding), start run­ning through a men­tal to-do list for work. A gro­cery shop­ping list or a tally sheet of all the peo­ple you believe to be morons are options, too. Just keep your mind preoccupied.
                    2. Scan the other guests and find some­one who is cry­ing and laugh at them (men­tally) for being an ugly crier. If no one else is cry­ing, seek out the worst dressed woman and pick apart her ensem­ble as if you’re Stacy and Clin­ton from What Not To Wear. Yes, it seems cruel but you’re try­ing to save your­self from hideous wed­ding photo ops.
                    3. Hum the theme song from The Fam­ily Guy any­time you feel the burn­ing sen­sa­tion in your eyes, nose or throat indi­cat­ing you are about to lose it.

                     

                    The last one is the hum-dinger of no-fail tech­niques for me. Shar­ing this infor­ma­tion may make me appear to be a lunatic or I’ll be given high praise. Oh, this is just for the cer­e­mony. Ask me to make a toast and all bets are off. Have you ever tried to men­tally sing some­thing while read­ing a heart­felt ded­i­ca­tion to the happy cou­ple? Nia­gra Falls, baby.


                    • Begin Again… again.

                      September 8, 2011 by Marissa

                      You may have noticed that my posts haven’t revolved around my weight loss efforts. That’s due to me hav­ing less focus on it. I’ve not gained, but in the grand scheme of things that pro­vides no solace. With a goal of 100 pounds to lose and only being 40% of the way there after a year and a half, that is not progress. I don’t know exactly WHY momen­tum was lost about a year ago. Yeah, that’s right. In six months I lost the weight I’ve man­aged to keep off for a year. For the aver­age per­son that is some­thing to cel­e­brate. How­ever, with the way my mind works it is not.

                      Refer back to the real goal of 100 pounds to lose. With that all being said, I have begun again. Since the clock has already ticked away the days; months; year, I can’t go back, but what can be done is look back to see what worked for six months in 2010. The work­outs that I’ve pur­chased through Beach­body all have great aspects. I started out with Power 90 and Turbo Jam (loaned to my niece), it seemed nat­ural to move on to their next level work­outs: P90X and Turbo Fire. They are both very chal­leng­ing. It felt good to push my body, though. Yet some­thing hap­pened and I can’t put my fin­ger on it. Lazi­ness? Bore­dom? Old habits? What­ever the rea­son, I couldn’t stick with the pro­grams. Rather than fol­low the pro­vided work­out cal­en­dars, I devi­ated and did other work­outs from Beach­body. Lack of con­sis­tency would prove to be my health and fit­ness demise. At the time, mind you, it wasn’t real­ized. Since it seems to have dawned on me that the prob­lem was about account­abil­ity and con­sis­tency, a return to what worked a year ago is what will be done. The cal­en­dar for Turbo Fire is up on my refrig­er­a­tor. Auto-Schedule in WOWY Super­gym is set for TurboFire.

                      Now, when I do my work­out I can post it on Face­book and Twit­ter — it will help me be more account­able. Announc­ing that this is my new path makes it known to all who read this blog (all 4 of you — thanks). For the past two days I’ve done Turbo Fire. Egads! I for­got how it works every mus­cle in my body. I’m sore. A good sore. Unlike some of the other pro­grams I’ve been toy­ing with, this one charges me and isn’t so bor­ing that I count­down the sec­onds. It suits MY work­out per­son­al­ity. Yes, we all have one. Some times it takes sam­pling and explo­ration to fig­ure that out. Fol­low me for the next 12 weeks as I com­plete Turbo Fire. Mes­sage me if you’re inter­ested in being a vir­tual work­out buddy. I could use the encour­age­ment icon smile Begin Again... again.

                      300x250 V1a Begin Again... again.