totally buzzed.

it’s no secret that i love me some free stuff. now i’ve proclaimed my love for vocalpoint many a time… as i have long considered it the king of the product testing/free shit sites with their seductive full size samples and fistfuls of high value coupons. except that lately, vocalpoint has left me a little cold. i mean how many boxes of kashi cereal can one girl really eat? oh, and the bounce dryer bar was just about the stupidest invention EVER. but i suppose even like 100 lame lowes coupons are better than a completely barren landscape.  i had tried kraft first taste and pssst! but got a big fat delivery of BUNK. even myblogspark has forsaken me!

but a few months back, i saw a post on ilovetogossip regarding a service i had never heard about… bzzagent. basically it was the same old song and dance where they say they’ll send you free products, in exchange for tweeting that shit up, or writing about it on your blog.  but then, all they offered me for like months and month was a crappy free redbox rental. boo! but a couple of weeks ago… THEY FINALLY SENT ME SOMETHING THAT I WANTED!

last week my coupons & “press kit” for thomas’ bagel thins arrived in the mail. a $4/1 coupon, 5 $1/1 coupons, some educational materials, and of course, not 1 but 3 bagel shaped magnets. it’s no secret that i’m in a perpetual state of vaguely trying to lose weight. i also have a deep and unquenchable lust for bagels. thus, a free bag of 110 calorie diet bagels seemed like an awesome idea. and in many ways, it was. here are 5 things i learned about bagel thins from my recent quality time alone with them:

the jumpsuit chronicles.

so it looks like i’ll be contributing more regularly to the goodwill of northern new england blog with my second hand fashion exploits, and i’m SUPER EXCITED about it. not only is it a chance to write for another cool local blog (especially one attached to such a super worthy cause as goodwill), but it’s also a really fantastic excuse for me to expand my ailing wardrobe.  in case you haven’t already heard the story a thousand times, i gained 30 lbs. 2 years ago, and have been exceptionally reluctant to buy bigger clothes. even when faced with the persistent reality that this is just the size that i am now,  i still  just can’t bring myself to invest in a wardrobe in a size that feels like it belongs to someone else. this is very stupid.

anyway, this new goodwill gig is a great way for me to ditch the unhealthy body image game, support a great cause, and remember why i love clothes shopping in the first place (and still maintain my budgetary goals). basically, it’s a win, win, win (with a side of win) situation (FTW).  i have a new post up today about an legendary sweater shopping weekend (OMG CASHMERE), but instead of just straight up posting links to my goodwill stuff, I thought it would be fun to give you guys some super secret outtakes from my horribly awkward and poorly lit fashion shoots (anyone out there want to take pictures of me- the boyfriend is a willing but unable photographer!).

so this week at goodwill, i  wrote about 3 awesome j crew sweaters that i bought, but what i didn’t mention is that i also found this most amazing 80s jumpsuit for $2.50 (way to go red barb!)! it’s totally ridiculous, and kind of makes me look preggo (or that my just be some post-xmas salt bloat), but i love it anyway. thinking about wearing it this summer with really tall platforms and some sort of giant gold belt. please note the button detailing on the sleeves and pants cuffs.  if only i had an animated gif of me operating the full frontal zipper.

weekend pickthrough- fatty resurrection edition.

what, i didn’t even manage to pull out the weekend pickthrough during the actual weekend? even after i promised that i would try harder? yeah, on the surface, it looks right now like i suck pretty hard (and it’s true, i probably do). BUT, what i did do this weekend instead of writing the pickthrough was to resurrect an old corpse i had lying around the house (just in time for halloween)- my old diet blog being bess marvin.  since i am again attempting to take off the 30 divorce (and subsequent lazy-ass cheese whore) pounds, it seemed like a good idea to resuscitate ole bess, as it is a proven fact that people who write down what they eat lose more weight. now, i won’t be boring you with the details of my daily meals (unless i happen to eat something really extraordinary), but imagine how many pounds i can lose talking about blowing the crotch out of my spanx!

i can’t promise you that i will lose any weight, but i can promise you this:

1. grisly and detailed recountings of my frequent dietary failures.

2. i will continue to catalog every time that nancy drew took a cheap shot at bess marvin’s weight (that bitch!).

3. i will kick this shit off with a giveaway. ok, it’s a little bit lame- but it is free candy, a big boxy t-shirt, and a diet journal to write about how ashamed you are for eating all your candy in one sitting.  but if you want the goods, you do have to go over to being bess marvin and leave me a comment about the food that throws you off the diet wagon with both hands. or, if you’re some smug bitch who has a healthy relationship with food, you can write about that too.

if you made it this far and have actually noticed that i didn’t technically have anything to pick through this week, i apologize. maybe you could just toddle over to youtube and watch this a few times. it should pretty much make you forget your irritation, and just about anything else you have on your mind. 35 million people can’t be wrong.

the hot pockets diet.

i talk a lot about the post-divorce chunk that i gained last year. roughly 30 lbs. of chunk. 2 pants sizes of chunk. realization that i’ve become the “fat friend” chunk. devastating. i’ve tried and failed all manner of diets and strategies and regimens. hell, i even started a blog about it. and i failed that shit too.

well, march at shaw’s is frozen foods month. buy any 10 participating products, get a $10 catalina back toward a future purchase.  as i was perusing the smart ones selection, i remembered that the last time i was this big, and coincidentally the last time i really managed to lose any weight (post-college gravity bong and cap’n crunch chunk), it was on weight watchers. to0 bad that the smart ones were $2.50 each and with very very limited vegetarian options and dismal coupons ($1/10!). but it doesn’t really matter if the food comes in a little red box or not. as i recall, the point was to limit calorie intake by paying attention. they called them points instead of calories, but the conversion was really just an extra step.

i hate doing this. weighing and measuring food. keeping a journal. being hungry. i think where i failed before was by trying to find a scheme that would work around this basic principal.  no dairy. no sugar. no wheat. all of which i might add are ridiculously impossible to hold up for more than a few days. regardless of my past failure ratio, i kept trying to avoid the inevitable torture that would be weight loss by calorie counting.

saturday morning i woke up at 164 lbs, my heaviest ever. and as i scoped out the smart ones in the freezer case, i realized that it was time. as much as it is my dream to eat organic and unprocessed foods, i have a bigger dream to not be a fatty tatties. i enjoy eating processed crap, and if it can help me lose weight like it did before, maybe it was time to give it another go round. hot pockets were on sale for $1.99 each, and i had a bunch of $.75/2 catalinas. at 240 each, and totally delicious, i decided that they would be the perfect cornerstone of my rekindled relationship with calorie counting. sadly, there’s only one flavor that’s vegetarian (broccoli cheddar), but my mind was made up.

and that concludes the story of why i have 7 identical boxes of hot pockets in my freezer (never you mind the ice cream in the foreground). will they make me skinny? possibly not. but i signed up for a 5k in 2 months, and i better by trying something. anything.