Sometimes confidence doesn't work. It's true--you are supposed to fake it until you make it, but sometimes, there is a crisis of confidence, a moment of terror, a failure of will, and you are left feeling completely naked when you are naked and trying to be sexy. That's why I loved this Telegraph interview with our friend and yours, the ridiculously sexy and va-voom Dita Von Teese, on the right fit for your lingerie, on color and shape and the lighting that will help you feel like your gorgeousness is accented and any flaws you're panicking about are hidden in the shadows. And you know what I love the most? It's all just setting the stage and stacking the deck in your favor, in the end, when it comes to working on feeling you look as hot as possible in your sexy, lacy little numbers.

Look, I like makeup. I can spend hours in Sephora looking at shiny colors and rubbing things into my skin and using all the testers and piling things into an imaginary basket, which I imaginarily pay for and imaginarily take home and imaginarily apply and absolutely become an entirely different, insanely gorgeous creature. Makeup is magic! Except it's not. Except when it is, like when you find a lip color that is perfectly sheer and makes you feel instantly pulled-together and pretty, but is also moisturizing and has sunscreen (important! no, seriously) and tingles. I love Neutrogena MoistureShine Soothing LipSheers. I love the colors it comes in, the way it is shiny but not too shiny, how good it feels on dry lips, how full it makes my lips look. I dislike how it makes me feel a little bit like a commercial--I think I found the stuff via another blogger, who also gushed. But that's okay, because it's a whole staircase of steps of functional and pretty up from Chapstick.

I've learned a lot from my family, and by family I don't mean my mom and dad, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, I mean the ones that go way back. I'm talking great-great-grandpa Shlomy (yeah, I said Shlomy--you wanna fight?). This past weekend I visited my 92-year-old great aunt Ethel...shouldn't all great aunts be named Ethel? Besides being the most amazing and lively 92-year-old ever to roam New Jersey, she is also the keeper of all pictures family related. As I sat on her couch eating vegetarian chopped liver, she showed me six generations of pictures that started in Kiev in the 1800s and followed my family through Ellis Island to where they would eventually set up shop in the Bronx. Let's just say from a genetic standpoint it's a good thing that we left the shtetl and diversified the gene pool a little. I do not come from beauteous stock--sorry Shlomy.

It took a few days before I figured out what it was--why I felt so tired, why my legs were kind of sore, my ankles felt a little throbby, my butt was looking a little more taut, maybe, or that could have been wishful thinking, and I was so very, very tired all the time. The walking. All the walking I did. I haven't walked like that, and sometimes in four-inch heels, since, well, since I lived in a city where you can walk everywhere and to everything.

Bike riding is marvelous and it gets you everywhere quickly, but there is really nothing in the world like your own two feet, heaving your butt all the way through the world. There's a reason doctors recommend weight-bearing exercise as the most healthful and calorie burning, and that is because your carcass is a big damn chore to haul across the surface of the earth. Your legs have to not only pump and move and propel you forward, but they've also got to support you and keep you upright and balanced and provide finely tuned direction and steering. Your arms are there for stability and extra momentum, your ankles are taking on a lot of the weight and  much of the steadying chores, and your shoulders are moving and your entire body is engaged in the process of throwing you forward and out into the world and up the hills and down the street and it is hard damn work.

A month after starting the Lazy Waister's Triathlon, I looked back to assess my own progress, trying to keep my own typical sense of All Or Nothing from infecting my brain. I'm going to face it: there's no way that I can swim out my miles before the deadline. Not with all of the plans and planes and shark trip and craziness. I should have looked at the mofo calendar when I arbitrarily chose October 3 as the cutoff, but it didn't really click and honestly, it felt like a good stretch goal. It had to be a short enough time to make you feel a little nervous, you know? And I'm going to continue to strive toward getting as many laps in before then, so that I'll know exactly how much harder I have to apply myself next time, the knowledge that I just should have done the biking leg in the first place, because I have a bike sitting in my basement, not an Olympic lap pool. Regret is more painful than discipline, and sometimes, disappointment can be an amazing motivator.

So throwing out the idea of that finish line, I will concentrate on focusing on the miles I did complete, the fact that had I not had the spreadsheet looming in the back of my head, I wouldn't have gotten up extra early in the morning, laced on my spanking new kicks and huffed it out around the high school track two blocks away, something I've never done in the 11 years of living there. A minor win, but a win nonetheless.

I haven't been watching The Biggest Loser this season, but there were so many good takeaways from the show, once you got past the annoying product placement, the histrionics and the money shots of flab giggling on a Stairmaster. I know that my Girl Crush on Jillian Michaels automatically requires that I forget about Bob Harper (who used to be my boyfriend until he got all patriarchal and weird last season), but then I read this:

You're supposed to go to the gym every day. Okay, five days a week. Okay, three times a week--we know you're busy. And I think that too often we decide that if we don't make it to the gym, we fail, return to start and to a pair of pants that don't fit the way we want them to and a heart that will explode before we're drawing social security and so we might as well dip our spoons right into that bucket of lard anyway, right?

It's a trap I fall into every day. But, unless I've made very odd vows to very strange religious sects and should really be revaluating my social circle, I am not sitting perfectly still in dark rooms every day. I'm moving, active, using my body more or less every moment of every day, from my fingers on the keyboard to the march down the hallway into the kitchen for another glorious and life-saving cup of go-juice. We are all using our bodies the way they were built to be used, and we can't discount that energy we expend, and the glorious thing is that we can take that one step further, even, and make that movement count even more.

Imagine someone said to you, I have a way that you could make thirty dinners, one for every night of the month, each one different but each one based off the same very basic, simple recipe. Each one tweaked in flavors so that you feel like you're eating something entirely new and exciting, and all of them easy. You'd probably say "I love you!" and then you'd kiss them right on the lips, possibly with tongue. That could just be me, because as I clicked through each of Real Simple's six basic recipes-and-variants for a full 30 days, I gasped "Oh man, I could totally do this!" And I was filled with glee. So easy to make a plan, so easy to follow a plan, so pleasant, don't you think, to have everything on hand and simple and fun during busy weeks and tired evenings, and during life in general.

We're in the homestretch of the Lazy Waister's Triathlon and people are crossing the finish line left and right in the various divisions! So far, Alysha, Sue, Laura and Alice have completed their cycling legs, and Maureen has biked an amazing 216 miles for the double cycle option. Meanwhile, Jackie, Jennifer, Allie, Abby, Poppy and Steve all have the finish line in their sites. Names are being taken and asses kicked over on the Running board, with Jennifer, Sue, Steve, Shana, Maureen, Allie, Abby, and Alexia completely finished with the 26 miles or equivalent, while Laura and Alysha have completed a double circuit for a stunning 52 miles. Meanwhile, Hutch, Sara H, Lisa-Marie, Saturday, Beth, Jackie, Alice and Miriam have ten miles or less to go. You guys are amazing! Meanwhile, over on the Swimming board, Sue, Alexia, Alice and Allie have hit the showers, while Miriam, Saturday, Steve, Ghaleka, and Jennifer have less than a mile to go. Rock on!

If you're paying attention to the leader board, you'll notice that Allie, Alysha, Laura, and Sue have completely finished the Lazy Waister's Triathlon! Wooo! You guys are amazing!

aries (Mar. 21st-Apr. 20th)
Sure, opposites attract, but that doesn't mean they're going to have anything to say to each other while they're spooning after all that hot, opposites-attracting kind of sex. Write this down on a Post-It and stick it on your bathroom mirror, because we can't always be there to say, "I told you so"--no matter how much we enjoy doing so.

taurus (Apr. 21st-May 20th)
You like someone. Frequent the places where this someone hangs out. Make it look coincidental, not obvious. Fate is sexy, stalking isn't.

gemini (May 21st-June 21st)
Someone may try to push you to make a decision regarding a relationship. If you have to think about it, you probably aren't ready to move that fast. Then again, maybe you just haven't had your morning coffee yet and are feeling a little sluggish. Perhaps you have a head cold, or are hungover, and just need time to wake up and smell the roses of romance. Still, chances are you're a selfish, immature bastard who's afraid to grow up and won't commit. At least we'll still love you.