in the mirror
Didn't like what I saw one little bit. Shocking white. Forgot how totally white, and pink I really am. January evening turns the aquatic center windows into mirrors from which I semi-consciously divert my eyes. Don't mind the pallor so much but the girth is a different kettle of fish. Upstairs in the weight room, I can pretend the loose-fitting tee shirt hides the worst, but in the pool, all I got is swim trunks riding too low under the fold. Lucky MJ told me not to get the form-fitting spandex like all the master swimmers wear.
Working out and swimming these past eighteen months may have improved strength and stamina, but I haven't lost a single pound. Two pounds up last week as a matter of fact. Too many strolls down the ice cream aisle on the way home from the Y. Few things in life more satisfying than holing up in my room with a tea towel wrapped around a pint of carmal core.
Gain a pound a year. Carl, the guy I bought the Shirley B from back in the winter of seventy, old man having trouble crawling around the fish hold showing me how to work things made that comment. Silent voice in the back of my head vowed that wouldn't be me. Guess not. Gained sixty pounds in fifty years.
Already wrote about good numbers going bad, but this time another rationalization, harder to counter, chimes in when the ice cream freezer starts calling my name. Faces of friends, John and Greg, even Ian and Terry appear before my eyes. Each of them started losing some weight and they looked good. Must be working out. Then news comes through the community, weight loss first signs of terminal illness. Four guys my age laying dead up at the graveyard gives a guy pause. Wonder if cousin Phil was right when he told me his mother died of stomach cancer because she didn't eat enough ice cream.
One one level I realize that my friend's weight loss was a symptom not a cause of their final decline, on the other hand, maybe a guy should go ahead and have an extra treat once in a while just to be on the safe side.
Working out and swimming these past eighteen months may have improved strength and stamina, but I haven't lost a single pound. Two pounds up last week as a matter of fact. Too many strolls down the ice cream aisle on the way home from the Y. Few things in life more satisfying than holing up in my room with a tea towel wrapped around a pint of carmal core.
Gain a pound a year. Carl, the guy I bought the Shirley B from back in the winter of seventy, old man having trouble crawling around the fish hold showing me how to work things made that comment. Silent voice in the back of my head vowed that wouldn't be me. Guess not. Gained sixty pounds in fifty years.
Already wrote about good numbers going bad, but this time another rationalization, harder to counter, chimes in when the ice cream freezer starts calling my name. Faces of friends, John and Greg, even Ian and Terry appear before my eyes. Each of them started losing some weight and they looked good. Must be working out. Then news comes through the community, weight loss first signs of terminal illness. Four guys my age laying dead up at the graveyard gives a guy pause. Wonder if cousin Phil was right when he told me his mother died of stomach cancer because she didn't eat enough ice cream.
One one level I realize that my friend's weight loss was a symptom not a cause of their final decline, on the other hand, maybe a guy should go ahead and have an extra treat once in a while just to be on the safe side.
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