All dressed up and nowhere to go

I forgot what a damn girly-girl I can be (and I mean that in the best of ways) when I put makeup on and pay attention to my hair. Particularly now that I'm small enough to look like I think I look (if that makes sense) and wear cute clothes. I get all crazed for reflective surfaces and I strut past them and preen. It's embarrassing. I also feel the deep need to dash off clutching my credit cards and buy every outfit ever, and shoes, and get a haircut and a manicure and and and--

I'm not sure if I need to play dress-up more often, in order to de-sensitize myself to it, or whether that would be too dangerous. Eee. Then again, you think this is bad, you should have seen me at my wedding. Complete girlathon. I'd forgotten I had it in me, back when I was heavy. It still takes me by surprise.

Today I'm getting my driver's license renewed, and since this makes the first time I've done so since losing weight, I feel the need to look damn good in my license picture. I know it's silly, but... dude. I want to mark the fact that I Am That Girl Now, and to hell with the past.

Race to Taste is this weekend. That was my first 5K, just one year ago, and I came in just under 40 minutes; this time, I'm planning on blowing that out of the water. I am going to program a kickass playlist into my iPod Shuffle tonight. With that sort of rockin' and rollin' going on, I think I could match my time from April's 5K.

Taste is also this weekend. For those of you who haven't experienced it, Taste of Chicago is Chicago in a nutshell-- a hell of a lot of food, blocks of booths, food food food. My first years here, before I stopped doing that kind of thing, I spent so much money at Taste it's not funny, because I ate EVERYTHING. Repeatedly. It may be a sign of my encroaching maturity that I'm looking at the food list this year and saying "eh." Most of the stuff there are things I don't eat much anymore, and I've had it all before. Hell, now that we know almost every restaurant in the area, I no longer feel like much of it is a novelty.

Still, there is cheesy bread to be had. And if I can no longer stomach the chocolate-covered frozen cheesecake on a stick (alas, last year it made me violently ill... farewell, old friend!) there are still crab legs and watermelon and cheesy bread and gourmet pavillion fun to be had. And the Race to Taste! Strange how that's turned into the most fun for me...

In other news, I have now had crap chocolate from last week's meeting in my possession for more than a week. In fact, it has been sitting in my office all week. I have not eaten it. I'm rather proud of that. I'm starting to get all "BRING IT ON" about challenges like this, and at the moment I'm not even going to do the pessimistic thing where I admit that it won't last forever. Maybe it will last forever if I don't admit that I can't. What the hell, I can be optimistic. I have makeup on!

Speaking of which, I must go freshen up. Love y'all.