Ten Pound Tuesday

This past weekend I was reminded of why I live here. Why I endure freezing winters spent standing on windy snowy train platforms waiting for trains that never come. Why I endure slush, snowplows and high gas bills to heat my house. This weekend was the first real breath of spring, and I spent it at the beach. It was glorious.

I spent most of Saturday harried and aggravated, a result I think, of knowing how beautiful it was outside and being pissed I couldn’t get my butt into gear fast enough. Finally though, seamonkey and I were both napped, dressed and fed and ready to go by 3:00. I went outside with the boy and started packing up the truck for a ride to the beach, planning to walk the boardwalk. Hot and sweaty, I hoped the walk would improve my mood. Just then BT returned home from doing a beach cleanup he organized with his fishing club, and I coerced him into joining us even though he was dead tired. The cool breeze and sunshine revived us both as we drove.

We strapped seamonkey into his big fancy off-road manly man jogging stroller (No sissy strollers for THIS SAHD), loaded it up with water bottles and off we went. Our beach has a wonderful boardwalk that hugs the shoreline, providing a spectacular view of the waves and dunes. The boardwalk is also touted as a “Health Walk” and has markers along the way to tell you how far you’ve gone. From end to end, the walk is exactly 2 miles. In case you can’t do the math – that’s a four mile trek round trip.

Our walk was an exercise in diversity. Old wizened faces and little pink cheeks. Short and fat, tall and thin. Jogging, ambling, strutting. Walkers and strollers, wagons and wheelchairs. Kites and seagulls and perfectly blue cloudless skies. Smelling hotdogs, French fries, tanning lotion and sea water. High heels, running shoes and bare feet. Airing of differences, sharing of problems, fervent gossip, easy laughter, contemplative silence. All of us sharing the same stretch of sunbleached planks. Did I already use the word glorious?

Seamonkey thoroughly enjoyed himself. We took off his shoes and socks, and he babbled merrily as we bobbled along…playing with his toes and graciously accepting any and all compliments from passersby. We stopped along the way to sit him in the sand. He would touch the ground and pull his hand back fast – totally perplexed by this new mysterious substance. We buried his feet and he wiggled his toes to find them again. We can’t wait to bring him here for a proper visit. We came back to the truck after our four miles, glad that we were able to take advantage of the weather.

So what’s with title of my post, you ask? Well I am really trying to lose weight. It seems that we loved the food in Colombia a little too much (empanadas-worth it)…plus all the big holiday dinners when we got home didn’t help. Besides the fact that I just need to look and feel better for the usual reasons, I have a high school friend coming to visit in June, we have an agency social that month, and the 4th of July (beach party) is closing in fast. So yesterday BT had to help a friend with something, so I had seamonkey all to myself again. So back to the beach it was for another four miles.

After the first 2 miles I was feeling so good that I started to do a very slow jog. To keep my motivation up, I would pick a landmark and tell myself I would stop when I got to it. When I got to it, if I still felt okay, I would pick another one farther up. At first I was picking landmarks too far ahead, and the whole time I was running towards it I would think “I’m never going to make it that far” and I would start to get discouraged. But, if I picked something close, I would get there in no time and be on to the next one. I eventually jogged an entire half mile! So I started thinking. I need to lose like 50-60 pounds, but losing even 40 would be huge for me. When I think of that goal (landmark) it seems too far away to be feasible. So I need to pick something closer. Like 10 pounds. When I lose 10, I’ll think about the next 10. So every Tuesday, I’m going to tell you how I’m doing toward my first 10. I weighed myself yesterday, and after I went through all seven stages of grief*, this is the game plan I came up with. Who knows if it will work. Lord knows, I’ve got to do something.

Okay, got to go fill up my water glass again. My tonsils aren’t quite floating yet. Now if I can only get out of this chair without using my ass muscles. They’re freaking killing me. Who knew you had so many muscles in your ass?




*Shock, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance