I’ve been really slacking off this week and haven’t gone to the gym even once. I’m aiming to go tomorrow so that I don’t feel like a complete bum, but I thought about how my Fitbit is essentially tracking all my lazy days. If my Fitbit doesn’t have at least 16,000 steps at the end of a work day, it means that I didn’t go to the gym and was being lazy that day.

I can easily get to 10,000 as long as I take a walk during lunch that lasts about 20-30 minutes once I add in my walk to the subway in the morning, then my walk from work to Grand Central, and then from the subway stop to home. But I have to walk even if I didn’t want to since I take public transit. That made me think about how hard it must be for people who live in areas that are not walkable where people primarily rely on cars. How would they get to the recommended 10,000 steps a day without doing some intense exercise?

No wonder the obesity rates are increasing steadily in this country.

Chris and I got separated on our connecting flight to Salt Lake City this evening, as he got the last seat in First Class. So I sat next to a woman who is the president of the American Paint Horse Association, born and raised in a suburb outside of Tennessee. She and her husband live on a farm, breed horses, and are obsessed with corgi dogs. She showed me her endless photos of her friend breeding corgi dogs and told me a thing or two about American paint horses, which I knew nada about. She asked me if Chris and I were a couple, and I said we just got married this past March.

“Can I ask you something since you’re a Northerner?” she asked me in her strong Southern accent. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a great question, but I answered affirmatively. “Down here in the South, we have strong family values. So when we say ‘I do,’ we mean it forever, until the end. Up in the North, is that what you believe, or do you just think, ‘I do until something bad happens and I can’t take it anymore?'”

I explained to her that everyone was different, that we couldn’t categorize people in the North thinking “until the next bad thing happens” vs. “until death do us part,” but for the two of us, we were in it for the long haul (at least, I think we are).

“Well, that is lovely!” she exclaimed, smiling warmly. I really don’t think she meant any offense by it. She probably hasn’t spent much time interacting with us folk “in the North.” She proceeded to ask me how old I was. I told her I was 30, and she responded, “Wow, so you would have been working for eight years until getting married!”

I paused for a second. “Well, I’m actually still going to continue working. I haven’t quit my job… and I don’t plan to just because I’m married,” I said to her, looking her firmly in the eye.

“You will still continue working?” she said in amazement. “Wow, times have really changed since I got married!”

Yes, they certainly have… at least, for some of us.

I hate visiting the dentist. There’s really no health appointment I dread more. I might have even said this on this blog before, but I would truly rather have ten pap smears back to back than have two dental cleanings a year. There’s nothing worse than having sharp instruments prodded in your mouth with air and water pointy things going everywhere. It’s the worst when you have sensitive teeth and just want the torture to end.

The dentist is not happy with me because I still haven’t had my loose baby tooth extracted. His wife, who is also a dentist but now runs the front desk and does all the paperwork, said to me, “Are you planning to have children soon? You know you cannot have an implant done when you are pregnant, right? You don’t want to be a toothless pregnant woman, do you?”

I’m so good and anal with dental hygiene, but genes tend to trump hygiene in these cases. I can’t help that I was born without two adult teeth and needed to keep these two baby teeth for as long as possible.

Ever since I started working, regardless of what bonus or raise I got, I never really thought much of the additional dollars I was getting directly deposited into my bank account. Our society kind of brainwashes you into thinking that whenever you get a bonus or a raise or pay bump of any kind that you should reward yourself! Treat yo’self! Indulge more! You deserve it! Up until around 2012 to 2013, I barely bought clothes because I enjoyed the process of trying on new clothes or buying new things. Clothes were just for utility. Getting my nails done? Eh, what a waste of money! “Treating” myself hasn’t really been something I’ve thought that much about…. well, outside of traveling and eating.

So at dinner tonight, my friend who was in town from San Francisco for a wedding told me that she got some monetary prize at work, and everyone was asking her what she would spend the extra money on. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Whatever I need to purchase next.” No one really got her, and they were flabbergasted that she was being so practical about it all, that she wasn’t planning to buy herself a special new designer purse or some extravagant piece of jewelry or coat with the extra dollars.

Well, I get her. That’s exactly the way I operate. I got a raise or a bonus? Great. What’s next to buy or do that’s on my list?

Credit card companies hate people like the two of us. We pay our credit cards in full and never over spend, which means we never rack up interest payments. Take that, credit card companies.

In the last few weeks, Chris and I have been indulging on the weekends in watching several episodes at a time of Boardwalk Empire, the HBO TV series that explores the prohibition era of the U.S. in the 1920s… and elaborates on the crime, corruption, and bootlegging that was rampant during the period. The amount of violence and killing in the show is considerable, with the killings looking very real. I’ve developed a low threshold for watching things like this in recent years, but for some reason, this show is actually enjoyable for me to watch and even a little addictive.

It’s making me get nightmares, though. A few nights ago, I woke up from a dream that one of the prosecutors from the show had transformed into a honey bee and started chasing me around a room. The weird thing was that I knew she wasn’t just going to sting me; when she stung me, she would inject me with heroin and either get me really high or just dead. This is probably why it isn’t good to watch too much TV.

Because I cook a lot and have invested time and money into building a pantry that allows me to easily make dishes from many cultures, I oftentimes forget that I live in a city where it’s a rarity that people actually cook meals and have basic ingredients like salt, pepper, or garlic on hand. I’ve tried to give boxed meal companies the benefit of the doubt and be open minded about their offerings and value, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to test one out. Blue Apron and Plated are fairly mainstream, with companies like Purple Carrot coming out to capture those interested in the concept but geared specifically toward vegan customers. My main gripes are 1) each set only gives you a meal for two people, so if you spend 30-40 minutes on making this meal, you have only two servings to show for; 2) because everything is measured out exactly for these two meals, even down to the spices, this means that a lot of packaging is used, adding to excessive waste to the environment. Also, $10/meal per person isn’t that cheap to me if it’s made at home.

My friend, who uses these services, said that a better comparison is not to compare these boxed meals to buying all the ingredients yourself and making a dish since you probably won’t be spending $10/meal per person if you buy everything yourself and make it. It’s better to compare this to the cost of eating out, a situation that rarely has you spending only $10 per person, especially if it’s not a takeout spot and it’s not lunch time. That’s true, I conceded. But then I thought, if I am going to eat out, that means I won’t have to deal with food prep like cutting vegetables or cleaning up. So it’s not a completely good comparison, is it? I guess it’s the best comparison out there to be fair. When I cook, I want to have food for several days given the effort and time I’ve spent to make the dish, unless it’s something really simple and fast like eggs. I guess I will never be a customer, but at least I can see the value these companies bring in terms of getting people wanting to cook themselves and learn cooking and food prep techniques. That’s a big deal since we live in a society today that devalues homemade things and home cooking as an activity.

Chris and I went out for a long walk today and ended up in the East Village, where I finally got to try Oddfellows Ice Cream, one of the new ice cream shops that has been popping up all over the city. They are known for unique and interesting combination flavors such as miso cherry, raspberry red peppercorn sorbet, and buttermilk honey blueberry. I ended up choosing the passion fruit saffron; it was so good and so unusual to find passion fruit flavored anything in this city. Unfortunately, today I also started my period, and while the morning was tolerable with a slight cramp, the early evening exploded into the worst menstrual cramp I’d experienced since about four years ago. That passion fruit ice cream scoop did not help; if anything, it probably exacerbated my pain and made the train ride back home seem even longer and more agonizing than it was. I ignored all the warning articles about having cold and dairy at the beginning of your period because I’d never had a reaction like that before. I felt a combination of dull and sharp pain in my stomach, hot-flash-like sweats, and nausea.

We got home, and Chris prompted started searching for beddy bear, a bear he got that can go into the microwave and be warmed. The bear is filled with scented rice, and I used him four years ago to place over my stomach to calm my cramps. This bear works wonders. He finally found it after some digging, and I was finally at peace.

I know a lot of women use heated water bottles or electric blankets for these cramps, but what could be better than a soft and warm bear?

Americans have embraced Cinco de Mayo to a point where Cinco de Mayo has become a bigger celebration in America (at least, in major metropolitan cities from what I am reading) than in Mexico. I’m sure most Americans aren’t aware of what Cinco de Mayo is really about, the end of the Battle of Puebla, the victory of the Mexicans over the the French. In the U.S., it’s supposedly become a day that celebrates Mexican and Mexican American culture, or in other words, a day that gives us an excuse to eat too many tacos, burritos, guacamole, and get drunk off of margaritas and other tequila-spiked drinks.

At every company I’ve worked during during the last seven years, we’ve always had some Cinco de Mayo celebration. Tacos are catered, sometimes a pinata has been ordered, and almost always, multiple margarita machines are temporarily installed in a conference room so everyone can get tipsy together before they leave work for the day. It was fun and amusing for many years until I realized that we just use these “celebrations” as an excuse to drink and get drunk more. It’s gotten exhausting for me, and I really just don’t want to participate anymore. I sound like a Debbie downer, but what can I say? I love Mexican food, and I love, love tequila since it’s my liquor of choice, but the idea of using Cinco de Mayo, a holiday most of us have no clue about and don’t truly care about, as an excuse to imbibe and have tacos has just irritated me more and more over the years. I eat Mexican food and even make it when I want. I have my margaritas and tequila drinks when I want (and probably have more tequila than most people since for some reason, I’m realizing that people find tequila “deadly” aka hangover inducing. This is a little foreign to me). I don’t need a glorified drinking day to tell me when to have these things.

When you tell people you don’t really want to have tacos or margaritas on Cinco de Mayo, they make it seem as though you don’t care about Mexican culture (at least, my colleagues past and present have). Why is that – because they care more because they will have tacos and “margs” on the 5th of May?