The Age of Innocence

The elusive diplodocus.

I’ve lost 11 pounds within the last nine weeks, in spite of the Russell Stover chocolates I wolfed down over the course of two days. (On clearance at the drug store. The cream chocolates!) It’s a sad day when you buy yourself a box of Russell Stover chocolates.

I attribute the loss mainly to my Tuesday/ Thursday exercise class at the Y, where a masochist I’ll call Lynn inflicts pain of immeasurable proportions on a bunch of stay-at-home moms desperate to lose post-baby fat. She makes us do something she calls a “Russian Twist,” which is not an alcoholic drink, but rather something they make prisoners do down in Guantanamo.

The weight loss is good, as it is the start of my “social season.” (HA! That sounds so pretentious.) Yes, since John has involved himself in the political realm, I find I have a social season, much like characters in Edith Wharton novels. There are a number of balls, galas, dinners, fundraisers, etc. that I get to dress up for, and I am more compelled to go when I don’t feel like a hippopotamus.

We had such an event Saturday evening. My hair was a dreadful mess, so I decided to wear it up in an experimental hairdo that I called “an homage to the 40s.” John wasn’t a fan. He said I looked “like a diplodocus.” Big sigh.

My favorite events are ones with auctions. I’m a huge auction enthusiast. First off, it gives me something to do so I don’t have to talk to people. I walk around and intently examine the items up for silent auction. I find one I like, bid, and then skulk around in its general vicinity, shooting daggers at anyone who dares approach said item.

Last year, I lost out on a twelve days of Christmas ornament set to some elderly woman. It pretty much ruined the entire holiday season for me.

I’m a highly competitive silent auction participant.

We left the fundraiser right before dessert was served because we were to meet friends for drinks. At a wedding they were attending. That we were not invited to. And we would’ve gotten there sooner if my winnings had not been misplaced. Oh, it was an exciting evening full of glamour and intrigue.

So we crashed a wedding. Or rather, a reception at a very nice party house. We arrived late in the evening and ventured straight back to where the festivities were being held. It was an exceptionally loud party. The bride was boogeying to Tom Petty’s “American Girl.” John went straight to the bar and ordered a drink. We looked around for our friends, couldn’t locate them, so we called to figure out where they were. They were in the next room, at a completely different reception.

So we left reception #1 and went to reception #2, where we ordered more drinks and ate cookies and stole someone’s maple syrup party favor. We left after a half hour, and John crashed a third reception just to say he had. He ordered a third drink while I stood outside the doorway, feeling very nervous. Three receptions in one night? Someone was bound to catch on. And I was suddenly strangely cognizant of my diplodocus hairdo, as I was surrounded by gorgeous bridesmaids with long, flowing locks. So I stomped my high heels, shot John a dagger look, and we left.

I fully expect the police to arrive and arrest me any minute, maybe even tomorrow during my class with Lynn. If they do, I hope it’s before those damn Russian twists.

25 Pounds

I am sick! I’m not used to being sick. I have what they refer to as “the common cold.” I never get colds, a fact that I attribute to my drinking of copious amounts of green tea.

I love green tea! I love the diet Lipton green tea with citrus! Thanks to diet Lipton green tea with Citrus, I have a very low chance of getting cancer (antioxidants!), but (thanks to artificial sweeteners and other chemicals) a rather high chance of liver failure. So, I recently switched to regular old tea: I brew a bunch of organic green tea (Republic of Tea has some yummy flavors) and drink it over ice. It’s a little bitter without sweetener, but one gets used to it.

On a somewhat related note, I also use the bathroom about 20 times a day. (Tea’s a unsympathetic diuretic.)

The sickness came upon me suddenly and swiftly late Friday evening and began with achy muscles. So unused to being sick (this is a point of pride with me), I became very certain I:

1) was exhibiting the first signs of a degenerative muscle disease.
2) was coming down with a nasty case of fibromyalgia.
3) had inadvertently joined a fight club, and had so strictly adhered to the first rule of Fight Club (you do not talk about fight club) that I hadn’t even told myself.

The snot factory that has taken up shop in my nose made me rethink these diagnoses.

I feel slightly defeated. Especially because I am on day 6 of my diet. I’m on a diet! A real one! Because I KNOW THE SECRET to losing weight. The secret is- wait for it- to consume fewer calories than you expend. Shocking, I know. You have to burn 3500 calories to lose 1 pound of fat. During any given day, I expend about 2300 calories. My “diet” consists of eating around 1400 calories a day. If I do this, I should burn 900 calories a day. Which means I burn off one pound of fat in 3.88888 days. BUT if I exercise and burn off MORE calories, I can lose weight FASTER. And get a nice tight butt, too, which I feel is important for my self-esteem.

I’ve already lost 4 pounds. My goal is to lose about 25 more. They say that to motivate yourself to stick to a diet, you should post your weight in a public place, like Facebook or your blog or the scoreboard at the local baseball stadium.

I’m not doing that.

I am using CalorieCount.com, which makes counting calories like a fun game. At the end of the day, it gives you a complete nutritional analysis. Vitamin A? Too low! Carbs? Good! Fiber? Always too low. Someday, I’m going to have straight “goods.” Probably not today, though.

Anyway- despite feeling like I’d been trampled by an angry mob at a bagpipe concert (this actually happened to me once), I went off to the Y for the first time in too long. I spent a half hour on the elliptical machine until, fearing for my safety and the safety of those around me, I chose to get off. It was then I realized I’d turned into a jellyfish.

I’d promised the boys we’d go swimming. We changed into our suits in the locker room, though I wore shorts over my suit because I did not intend to actually get in the pool, myself. The stupid lifeguard MADE me get in because Ben was “underage” or some such malarchy. This was a shock to me, since I have not yet dropped the necessary poundage to feel comfortable going full bathing suit in a public setting, and also because I had not properly, um, “groomed” for the occasion. I’ll just leave it at that.

You have never seen a person remove their pants and get into a pool as fast as I did. I made Superman look like moving molasses. And the pool was, not surprisingly, a very nice place for a person who had recently been transformed into a jellyfish to be.

Now we’ve had lunch, I’ve calculated my calorie intake for the day, and I’m feeling pretty pretty good. Except that I’m a sick jellyfish. We’re going to Mario’s tonight with friends (the restaurant, not a random dude named Mario), so careful preparation is in order. I shouldn’t eat the bread. But I love the bread. I’ll probably eat it. But I shouldn’t. And then there’s the butter and the pasta.

Kate Moss said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

Kate Moss, my friends, is a liar.

Weight lost, weight gained

As I lay writhing in pain on the hospital bed, a nurse leaned over and listened to my heart. She looked at me quizzically and said,

“Do you workout?” My friend, who had driven me to the ER, responded.

“Yes, she does work out. Quite a bit, actually.”

“I can tell,” said the nurse. “You have a very strong, low heart rate.”

Through the intense pain, which easily rivaled labor pains but without the in-between contraction reprieve, I felt a glimmer of pride. I was an exerciser. I was lean. I could run three miles without breaking a sweat. I looked better-than-average in my one-piece Lands End bathing suit with swim skirt. I weighed almost as much as I did when I was first married, ten years and four children ago.

After they sliced me open and took out my gallbladder, I couldn’t go back to the gym for six weeks. (Something about my stitches ripping open or me hurting myself or some other such post-operation silliness.) Six weeks went by. I got the okay to resume my routine. Eight weeks went by. Ten weeks. Three months. Six months.

I feel like I now finally understand Einstein’s law of energy: matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The pounds I lost slowly came wandering back from their vacations in cool places like Thailand and Hawaii and re-adhered themselves to my stomach and upper-arms. It’s like they never even left. They were perturbed, however, when I tried to squeeze them into the new size four pants I had purchased last March in their absence. They require more room than that. A lot more room.

Last night, things got bad. We had a Super Bowl party and for about an hour, I posted myself right next to the bean dip. During the course of the evening, I ate guacamole, buffalo chicken wing dip, pizza, cake, brownies, and munched on one piece of celery. Just one.

I don’t even know who won the stupid game.

It is time to get my increasingly rotund derriere back to the gym.

This February, I am committed to getting back into a workout routine. I am also committed to giving up oatmeal cream pies for breakfast and my kids’ leftover peanut butter and jellies for lunch. I am committed to discontinuing the use of my treadmill as a storage rack and repurposing it as an exercise machine. I did it once; I can do it again. Finally, I am committed to making sure those pounds stay overseas this time.

(I don’t even want a postcard.)