Monthly Archives: January 2009

For most of my life, my name has been uncommon. “Jillian with a J”, I say. “Long for Jill.” My mother named me after my Aunt Jill, but gave me the long form name to be more British. And in Commonwealth countries, most other women with my name spell it the British way, with a G.

But here in the States, I had a relatively uncommon name. The closest I ever got in the children’s license plate display rack was “JILL”. Suddenly, there are not one but two annoying C+-list celebrities out there with the exact spelling of my name. And it kind of creeps me out.

First of all, there’s Jillian Michaels, who seems to have jumped to fame through the Biggest Loser. And the women is everywhere. She has a Wii game that was obviously rushed to market, without any QC, for the 2008 holiday season. She has books and DVD’s and a workout in SELF last month. She’s getting her ten minutes of fitness empire fame.

The second, and FAR more annoying, is Jillian Barberi, or Reynolds, or whatever her current name actually is. I have no idea why this woman is so famous – I think she married a football player and was on local level TV for a while. Actually, I think she’s still on KTLA during daytime hours. But now she’s shilling Nutrisystem, and keeps turning up on MSNBC during commercials, looking for all the world like a cross between a morning show hostess and an Oompa Loopa. Seriously, she is ORANGE. It’s CREEPY. I don’t want my name associated with anyone who thinks that Crayola shade is an appropriate skin tone. And I can’t see how it’s good for Nutrisystem, either – I’d be afraid of the product giving me jaundice.

(BTW, from what I gather, those meals may be cheap – but I imagine, by the time the customer adds the fresh food ingredients, they’re more expensive than just cooking your own damn food. And cooking the same thing at home would help your body focus on losing weight because it wouldn’t distract your liver & digestive system with all the preservatives and chemicals those meals look stuffed with. They look more like M.E.A.L.S. from Good Omens than actual food)

On the plus side, I could probably pirate both paid & organic Google traffic from both of them towards a diet website, if I took the time to create & write such a thing. Which I likely won’t. In the meantime, could they both get off my TV? It’s disconcerting for me to hear my name coming out of it so often.

• 11:40 “confessions of a shopaholic” already seems nostalgic, a relic from a time when credit was available to be a shopaholic with #
• 16:37 this WW zero-point soup is actually extremely tasty (tinyurl.com/wwwivs) #

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The weirdest thing of all here is that I actually have time on my hands. And not the half hour while Ben naps, but whole days of time.

For the past four months, since I went back to work, I’ve only had weekends as the days when I didn’t have to work, or take care of a baby. And usually by the weekend, I was exhausted from work and taking care of a baby – and did I mention that breast feeding is tiring? It is. So I’d end up lazing about for most of Saturday, going out with my friends on Saturday night, and then maybe accomplishing some minimal stuff, like laundry or groceries, on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the house was starting to fall to bits. Books piled up in random places. My desk disappeared under piles of unopened mail. And my husband can only help so much when it’s my books, mail, clothes, etc. that are causing the mess. Plus, both of us are kind of slack-ass about housework. That, and absent-mindedness, are our big shared flaws.

Let’s add the house guilt to that my ongoing guilt about my weight. I’m actually right at my pre-pregnancy weight right now, thanks to breast-feeding (and some minimal diet monitoring). Unfortunately, that starting weight was twenty-five pounds heavier than I was when I got to L.A. in 2004. Now, I’m actually thirty-five pounds over my goal weight, since even when I got here, I wasn’t quite where I wanted to be.

Is it any wonder that my favorite shows on BBC America are about people with filthy houses and fat people? I like seeing shows about people who are doing worse than I am.

Ben’s in daycare until the end of the month. He doesn’t have to go, obviously, but it is paid for. So I have all these weekdays to get my act together, to catch up on what I haven’t been doing (cleaning) and get started again re-building better habits (exercise) This is a very good thing for me. I don’t like all this crap cluttering up what David Allen calls my “psychic RAM”. I like having a clean environment, so I can think and be productive in it, and not get bogged down or distracted noticing something needs cleaning or de-cluttering. I don’t like having nagging little thoughts about how I should be getting some exercise taking up space in my brain. It all detracts from my ability to focus on what’s important: my little boy, my husband, and all those goals and visions that we have as a tiny family and I have as an individual.

Plus, there’s a lot of slutty goth wear living under my bed in a storage bin that I can’t look good in until I lose some weight.

Now, I have to stop procrastinating & go work out with my new game for the Wii.

• 10:46 ok, 24 hour news networks, time to begin your two days of rehashing the inauguration! #

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• 16:57 Evaluating life now that I am no longer employed at the agency where I’ve been for three and a half years. Time to be stay at home mom again #

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