Fasting

Today was a day of low motivation. I've been torturing Yuan Yuan for the last two months by forcing her to exercise a bit every day, specifically do five sets of sit-ups. She gets one day a month off, plus one sick day for when her period hits. I noticed over a year ago that she doesn't exercise at all and I kept trying to make her start an exercise routine. I also wanted her to lose some weight, which is why she's currently on the Steve Ward diet where she's to lose 10 pounds in 2 months, a reasonable pace I think. Alas, positive reinforcement suffered a major defeat in the war against laziness and gluttony. So two months ago I came up with a particularly sadistic more-evil-than-usual motivation plan.

According to this plan, she has to do five sets of sit-ups every day. If some day she doesn't do sit-ups, I fast the entire next day. It sounds a little perverted and risky but it's been working so far. Then about a week ago, she didn't exercise one day and I was all set to not eat and make her feel guilty when she recalled she had one day off every month. I was pretty happy she remembered because the thought of fasting is the hungriest thought in the universe.

Then two days ago she got her period and had pretty intense cramps so sit-ups took another break. And then yesterday she skipped again, but this time out of pure laziness and sleepiness. So today I've had nothing but water, and occasionally boiled water, which is like a placebo for real water--no matter how much you drink, you never have to go to the bathroom, provided you know it's a placebo. Yuan Yuan's been feeling pretty guilty all day and has been periodically begging me to eat something. At one point she spent twenty minutes with her ear glued to my stomach, listening to the frustrated growls of an organ used to getting candy every five minutes. I don't know if the two things are connected, but after that she professed a desire to go jumprope and shattered the current jumproping record in our house. The new record stands at 650. Finally she couldn't stand my hungry company anymore and went back to the hostel early.

It's tempting to say "that'll teach her!" but I think I'll save my energy for the pushups.

The knot of the day is The Perfection Loop:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

If you want a little loop on the end of your rope that's in line with the rest of it, this is what you need. If you don't need one of those, you might need a life.