Et tu, scriba?

Took the kids to the dentist this morning. It's been six months since we were there. Last time around the receptionist and one of the hygienists . . . possibly two of them . . . and the dentist fussed over me because I'd lost so much weight. And it was very nice. Made me feel good. Allathat. I weighed about 210 pounds then. Which was, according to every height / weight chart I consulted, still in the overweight category--in fact, just a tad shy of the OBESE category. But it also represented a 50 pound weight loss, so obviously it was a pretty dramatic difference.

Now I'm weighing in at about 190 pounds. Which is good, but still on the high end of "acceptable" for my height. And, in fact, still puts me in the OVERWEIGHT category on some of those charts. (One says that I should weight between 136 to 178 lbs. 136 pounds?????)

ANYway . . . the receptionist said to me, "You need to stop losing weight now." Making her the fourth person to say this to me. And I know it's meant as a positive statement, as I've said before. It's meant to mean, "You've done a really good job. You don't need to lose anymore weight." But every time it happens I have a big struggle. For one thing, I start to worry about my appearance. I know that I'm not "skinny" (much less "too skinny"), but I start wondering if there's something about my appearance that is giving that impression. I was feeling pretty good about the state of my musculature, for instance, which might actually be better than it was when I was a fit young thing. But ex post scriba, I was thinking, "Maybe I don't look very good. Maybe my arms are looking scrawny." That sorta shit. And later that day I was in Kroger, and I really felt like buying a candy bar. Not that that would have been any disaster, but (1) I didn't really want one, (2) those things are just shit nutritionally speaking, and (3) when I have yielded to that temptation in the past, I've always regretted it because (a) it wasn't very good and (b) it made me feel queasy, like I'd just eaten shit or something. (I'm guessing--so far as I know, I've never actually eaten shit. Except metaphorical shit. I've eaten a lot of that. Hey, I've been married twice. And some of those "girlfriends" . . . yeah, I've eaten tons of that metaphorical shit.)

So now I'm trying to recover. Not working out so well so far, so I think I'll just jump on my Schwinn AirDyne and pedal my cares away.

Come on, people, now,

Smile on your brother.

And for fuck's sake, say what you mean,

& mean what you say. 

(They're NOT the same thing, Alice.)