Wine, Weight, and Marionettes

I learned something new today! One of the ladies at the café’ where I take my morning coffee is not Italian, she is from Albania and is the cousin of the beautiful lady at the ceramic shop. I hadn’t realized that, so it was quite a surprise to me. They are both very, very pretty, but I would not have thought they were related.

Today’s forecast is for very hot weather, so I went walking at 8 AM this morning and still came back drenched in perspiration, my jeans stuck uncomfortably to my legs like a second skin. I now wear my most revealing shirt with no camisole because it is just too warm to wear it any other way. Heat can remove all modesty!

I am reaching that critical point in my fitness and weight loss that usually defeats me. I have lost weight, feel much healthier, and can wear smaller clothes; however I essentially still look the same. People who see me daily cannot tell I’ve lost weight and the same funny face looks back at me from the mirror each morning. I really haven’t changed at all. After all, what’s a weight loss of 20 pounds when you need to lose 80, 30 pounds when you need to lose 130? I begin to ask myself if the pain, sweat, and hard work are really worth it. I think anyone who has lost a moderate to large amount of weight has asked themselves these questions. Is saggy, stretched out skin really any more attractive than puffed out cellulite? I’d all like to think that a beautiful butterfly will reveal itself when the cocoon of fat is shed, but really, it could just as well be a drab, gray moth which emerges. I wonder if it’s different for men, for whom society has a more relaxed standard of beauty, and who, by virtue of their superior muscle mass, are able to shed weight so much more quickly.

My weight loss has caused a problem: my wardrobe. In spite of some dear friends sending me some new clothes, I still have little to wear. It’s too hot to wear some things, and I need cotton for exercising, which has severely restricted my selection. I have several items to grow in to, but they don’t really help me now. And let me tell you, I am so tired of a few of those shirts I’d like to burn them! I have three pairs of jeans I can wear, but only 1 of them actually fits and looks nice. The others are all baggy in the legs and seat, and will have to be retired soon.

I am going for pizza with a friend tonight. The second friend cannot join us as he must work. I had a drink with both of them and a third person last night. I had a glass of wine and proceeded to get a major case of the giggles. The one man in the group shared a story about his mother, who was hiking in the mountains of Wales with his sister and their Border Collie. Now, Border Collies are sheep dogs and this one did what sheep dogs do; ran off and tried to herd a flock of sheep. The ram of the flock was having no part of it and chased the dog who promptly made a beeline to its mistress for protection. The ram continued to charge and in doing so brushed this man’s mother and snagged her handbag on his horns. She spent the next two hours chasing the ram, and the handbag, all over the countryside. I found this story hysterically funny and proceeded to giggle and cackle with an unnecessary amount of enthusiasm whilst my companions gaped at me in alarm. I really shouldn’t drink.

The marionettes reared their ugly heads’ yet again. As I walked to the park the other day to read my book in the shade, one of them popped out of a bush and threw a nice, hot, sticky wad of gum under my left shoe which I failed to notice until I sat down on a bench and discovered that I had about a pound of pea gravel firmly affixed to the gum on the bottom of my shoe. Because the park was busy and I didn’t want anyone to see what had happened I tried to scrape my shoe surreptitiously on the cement near the fence with no success. I finally had to resort to dragging my foot against the pavement making this hideous scraping noise all the way back to via Nazionale. Incidentally, that hunk of gum refuses to come off my shoe despite the application of myriad cleaning products and a scrub brush specially purchased just for that purpose. The horrible pair got me good that time!