Diet, Exercise and Freakishly Warm Weather

Well, I'm dieting, which is making me irritable but soon I will be thinner, yes, and able to fit back into my old jeans, and my glamour will be such that noone will be able to resist me. Also, I have to lose weight, so that on the off chance that someone wants to interview me for a job, I can wear my black suit. Hope springs eternal, I know, but I'll be double dog damned if I have to go spring for a new big old fat suit. There's no point in my owning more than one suit anyway. I am not a suit kind of gal: I am a sort of ragamuffin skirt and sweater kind of gal, or, actually, due to my multiple months of unemployment, I am really a pajamas and a sweater kind of gal. Every time I go to the laundromat I realize how pathetic my life has become as I dutifully wash and dry long underwear, three pairs of jeans and a bunch of pajamas. There's never anything more formal in there, but there are many layers, because despite the fact that it has been in the mid sixties outside all week, it's still a cozy 55 degrees in my house, and my hands get numb at the keyboard.

I'm exercising, too, or, well, I'm doing my Oprah weights in the morning. Last year around this time O magazine helpfully included these little orange cards, one for each day of the week, spelling out weight lifting and vaguely pilates-esque exercises you can do to make yourself all svelte and desirable and buff and also stave off osteoporosis, and, probably, help you reach enlightenment. My adherence to these cards has been spotty and intermittent at best; also, I lost Thursday, but I'm trying again, and now I'm on week two of doing them religiously every day. Except Thursday, which was a hard day anyway; as I recall, I had to put my feet up on a chair and do kind of reverse pushups, which meant leaving the sanctity of my bedroom for the living room and a suitable chair, thus making me far too visible to the other members of my household. M teases me mercilessly, because they're only 5 pound weights, and I do this kind of odd Lamaze/Pilates breathing while I lift them, and he thinks it's hysterical, particularly the stretching exercise he refers to as Pissing Dog. Sometimes I'm kind of glad he's gone back to school.

I'm also doing cardio, er, well, I'm walking the dog every almost every day. That's good for my heart, because it alternates between kind of lazing along while Theo sniffs at things and then sudden extreme heart rate elevation when a loose dog appears menacingly and starts growling and Theo starts lunging at the leash and a whole lot of scary news headlines appear unbidden in my mind. Usually I do something adult and dignified at these times, like leap into the bushes or try to back down the street hauling Theo on the leash. So far I'm happy to report that we have survived these encounters intact, and, thank the goddess, have not had a rabid coyote incident, but that's probably because I'm so completely aware of my surroundings. This morning I thought there was either a bear or a huge black dog getting ready to attack but on closer inspection it turned out to be a couple of dreadlocked hippies in the back of a pickup truck; I only saw them briefly, though, because there were two cats on the side of the street and so Theo and I were moving fast, yet again significantly upping my heart rate.