::Voluminous

Last weekend, I signed up for a gym. Because I knew that I needed to get healthy. I have an office job now, where I park my pudge in a grey-walled cube and stay quite still. Desperately unlike my last job, where I climbed, heaved, threw, stomped, and wailed all night long. In no particular order.

And my pants were starting to fit funny. Which is bad.

So, I decided to start slow – a little treadmill, a little gentle weightlifting – just to get into the swing of things. And I’ve been twice this week, and I’m going to go again tonight.

I thought that I ought to have a starting point – so I could make a little wall chart and award myself every ten pounds that I lose. And I got on the scale at home and damned near shit myself in fear.

Yes, abject, gibbering fear.

I weigh fifteen pounds more than I expected. I weigh the most I have ever weighed in my entire life. I probably weigh more than two of you.

I weigh what my father did, who was grandiosely obese – if nine inches shorter than me. And I think that is what frightens me the most of all. My father died a horrible, messy, gurgling death after five years of cardiac-related misery. It all started when he was 45 years old. And that’s not THAT far down the track for me, anymore. Not far enough at all.

So, abject, gibbering fear. Something about THAT number on the scale was more real to me than my pants fitting a little tighter.

I’m hoping that fear is a good motivator; I mean, I was going to go to the gym anyway – I had planned on three days a week. But maybe once I get my breath under control, I can do four or five.

And I’ve got plans to shift my diet a little bit at a time. If I try and go all salad-and-sunlight at once, I’ll go crazy and rob a Cheescake Factory. Or camp out at Burger King eating $1.00 cheeseburgers until they have to lift me out with a crane.

At least I’m coming to my senses about it while I can still walk, run, fuck, and otherwise enjoy life.

You know, I originally came here to write about spring fever and mating season, and how I’m always an inordinate horndog when the leaves start popping out and the grass starts growing – and how I want to grab the lot of you (or at least, all the ones of you with bewbs) and have a great big romp in the mud.

Maybe that can be my reward when I’m skinny. (Snerk.)

I have goals, yes I do.