Category Archives: Specifically Steff

Of Walls, Waits, and Wistfulness

It was a warm and spring-like evening when our heroine sat tapping away at her keyboard, clad in unsightly short shorts and a 15-year-old concert t-shirt that never would live to see the streets again.
Tom Waits wailed in his gravelly splendour as a breeze softly batted the bamboo blinds. She peered over the rim of her glass at the words before her, unsure where the fuck any of it would go.

But with the right music on the right night with the right drink in the wrong clothes with the tapping toes, well, who needs luck? She shrugged. Continue reading

Why I Don't Follow You On Twitter

I tweet incessantly on Twitter. Most of us know this by now.
I also, inexplicably, will hit 1,300 followers probably before the weekend is through. I follow little over 300, quite a few of whom don’t follow me. Whatever.
So why don’t I follow you? Well, it’s not about you, is it? It’s about me getting the most out of the experience for me. It’s about me enjoying my time on there. Not making you happy in Nantucket or whatever. This is my gratuitous fun time, nothing more. Continue reading

So, How'd I Lose 70 Pounds? MY Weight-Loss Secret.

THIS POSTING’S DEDICATED TO ANYONE WHO THINKS THEY’RE STUCK BEING FAT. It’s not all hand-holding and gentle. I cut through the bullshit. You want your reality check? Start here. Oh, and I’m not selling a fuckin’ thing. I’m just trying to help you do what I’ve done, because it’s WORTH it.
I get a lot of people asking me how I lost my weight. Like there’s some magical store you can walk into, point, and say, “I know, I’ll do it THAT way.”
After a lifetime of being fat, trying shit, and finally figuring it out, you know what I think? There’s only one way to lose weight. Continue reading

Occam's Razor

Denis Leary was on Letterman the other night and was joking that he’d gone through five marriage counsellors that “sucked” before he found the sixth, who was awesome, but then he said that once he accepted he was wrong, everything went gr-r-r-reat with counselling.
I had to laugh.
I’ve been having the same epiphany of late.
For five straight days now, my back has improved every day. This doesn’t sound like much to you, but to me, this is life-altering. I have not had *two* days in EIGHT MONTHS where my back has improved each day, let alone five straight days. I’ve had a couple days where my back’s “felt good” here and there, but feeling good and improving are distinctly different experiences.
What changed? Continue reading

The Trouble With Writing

I have this longstanding love/hate relationship with writing.
I love the articulation of thought, the solving of ideas, the expressing of inner qualities.
The trouble with readers is, what they see is what they get.
You people, you read my blog and you somehow think what I put up here is some finite guide to the divinity of Steff, or some such.
Unfortunately, it’s not. Continue reading

The Daunting Power of Love

Our young protagonist, involved in an unlikely affair with a considerably older woman, one that all outsiders would state an “obvious fail”, just shrugs at his dubious confronters and says, “I know what I’m doing. I’ll be all right.”
skeletonsdm060207_228x304And me, there on my sofa, I scoff and chuckle, “Oh, sure you will.”
Because I know. I know that, no matter how old we are, love makes bitches of us all.
Whatever your age, power status, social stature, or financial means, when love comes knocking and your heart starts racing, almost every one of us knows the cloying struggle between terror and exuberation.
My god — someone I like? Someone I need to be vulnerable for? Someone who’ll require me breaking free of my thou-shalt-not-enter comfort zone? Someone else to be responsible to?
I know all about the terror and the desire to run. Been there, done that. Yet it happens every time.
Why? Because I’m too fuckin’ smart for my own good. Continue reading

Tube or Not Tube, That is the Question

It’s Monday and my weekend has vanished. My place isn’t a complete disaster, but I won’t be inviting any company over just yet.
I’m all right with that, though, because I enjoyed my downtime. I caught up on some TiVo and accomplished a few little things. Most importantly, I met cool new people and had some fun in the sun.
It was such a contrast to the holing-up and hiding I’ve been doing so much of for so long. Oh, sure, call it “me time” and it seems so deliberate and purposeful. Most of the time, though, it was really just hiding. Not because I was scared of anything, but just because it was easier. Continue reading

Taking a Moment to Appreciate a Moment

It’s Friday morning. I should be leaving for work. Instead, I’m enjoying the dregs of a French press of black, black coffee, and smiling rather enigmatically as I appreciate the changing daylight as thin clouds waft in front of the sun, toying with the quality of light seeping past my linen curtains.
It is a fine, fine morning. For the first time in… I really can’t tell you how long — I feel better this morning than I did at the start of my work week. My back feels great, I’ve got energy, I’m happy, I’m looking forward to my day, and I’m relatively stress-free.
It’s been a long, long time.
So I’m smiling a lot. Big! Continue reading

About A Girl and Her Scooter

It’s 5:27am. I woke up at about 5ish, just lying there and thinking.
About my scooter.
It’s funny, my scooter technically runs better than it has in its entire life. Completely rebuilt engine, yada, yada. Looks like shit, since The Kid* cracked and broke the hell out of its shell, but what are you gonna do?
All winter, however, my scooter has languished in the corner of my parking lot. Continue reading