Skyscraping

I know a woman who takes every tiny offense life offers her--real or imagined--and trust me, if you keep the real offenses the imagined ones will start poppin' up like zits after a junk food bender--and whittles them down into little tiny toothpicks that she keeps. She could, most likely, build the Empire State Building out of them. It doesn't make for a very solid structure. Know what you had to watch out for the most on wooden ships? Not the cannonballs, but the splinters they made. Same with offenses. Keep them, rehearse them, and you just whittle them down to something that's only useful to get under your skin.

I talked to this woman this week for all of three seconds. Her frostiness was palatable and I couldn't help but recoil and lord, regret even picking up the phone. But she's family, and there's been a death she was never told about, and I was really nice on the phone although she didn't in the least deserve it. She's one of those people who you really, really wonder, "Why did I even try???" She leaves a taste in the mouth of hatred and bitterness that's not too far off from sticking your tongue to a nine-volt battery to see if it's alive.

On the fat front, I bought a pair of jeans from the Goodwill this week, and got a glimpse of them in the mirror at Lowe's. Wow, howdy, look at that! I got two sets of hips from the rear! What was I thinking! I tell you what I was thinking, I was steeped in denial that "this won't hurt." I "didn't hurt" all the way into sixty pounds. A good long look in the mirror that night confirmed my suspicion that I wasn't looking as well as I'd like.

So here's the short-term goal. I would like to lose ten pounds by Halloween. Any helpers? I start working out tomorrow (wanted to two weeks ago, but found the schedule impossible to manage first week and second week--an infection kept me out) and hopefully I can get ten pounds off. I want them off because when we moved, Larry accidentally gave all my good pants to the Goodwill. Now I only have the skinny stack--and it's a big stack--so I can't justify going out and spending the money on new pants when I am a) miserable with my figure and b) able to work out in a brilliant gym for free. And we have a Wii Fit, or as Aslan sooooooo appropriately calls it, the Wee Fat. He told me last week--while munching on McDonald's french fries--that he was skinny because he had the Wii Fit. I pointed out that maybe it was because he was five and ran around a lot like a crazy person, but he said, "Nah. It's the Wii Fit." (shrug)

I have to get moving. Someone poke me with a stick, huh?