The Pause Mode

Errr....yeah. So apparently it's Friday. not at all sure how that happened.

Been doing ok most of the week. Walking, biking etc, reasonable eating etc.

Last night though, couldn't get on the bike - was knackered and had too much work to do.
Likewise today, haven't walked or biked at all - spent the day at Starbucks, and have been sitting editing like a maniac since I got in, and suddenly it's nearly 8.30 and I have no idea how that happened. If I get on the bike now, we won't be eating till maybe 9.30, maybe later, and Friday's great and all, but that's too damned late. So yesterday and today have been a kind of pause button in the active Disappearing, when I've just been trying to eat as wise as possible.

Yeah, I know, I know, this was a buggerall kind of post. As I say, am on pause, with alllll kinds of stuff to do. Imagine, for a minute, this was funny as hell and deep as you please. Normal...ish service will be resumed...erm...sooon...ish...

The Blur

Errr....yeah. So that week happened.

Lots of Stuff, I guess, have happened, but Zhooom! - and here we are.

Let's see - at some point in the last week, we had elections and the whole freakin' country apparently went insane, voting for right wing asshat-parties. What surprised me about the ballot paper in my town - the oldest Socialist constituency in Britain - was the sheer number and diversity of asshat-parties. We had the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), who take asshattery to whole new levels, akin to the Tea Party, we had Britain First, which says pretty much all you need to know, we had the British National Party, basically fascists without foolishness. The only thing I could thing was "Where are we getting all these asshats from?"
A pal of mine, Joe, said it would be awkward that I called them names if it turned out some of my friends had voted for the asshat-parties. Bottom line, some of my friends probably did. I don't wanna know - you're free to be an asshat in your own time, and what passes between you and your ballot box is one of the groovier secrets for which people have fought, suffered and died in history. If you wanna tell me you voted that way, feel free. I'll call you an asshat, you can tell me to go fuck myself, and we'll move right the hell along.

Friday I got likened to Thrush by some Merthyr-Patriots in an online group (extremely irritating and hard to get rid of) for daring to say the town wasn't all goodness and sweetness and light. I gave some examples from my personal history in a discussion and was accused of using the group as personal therapy. I was about to explain that nono, I have a blog for that, when I was summarily banned for basically pissing on their Merthyr Pride parade.

Next!

Next was where the fun began. Next was Saturday. Spent the majority of Saturday editing a truly great book - honestly, if I had my own publishing house, this one would come hot off the presses. But I don't, so I'm just editing it. Oddly enough for a book I'm enjoying so much, it's taking for-freakin-ever. Might be a case of not wanting to get to the end of it. Great for personal reading, unecomical as an editing project. d and I were both knackered at the end of the day, so we got fish, and in my case chips, from the local chippy for dinner.
Sunday - Saundersfoot. The Great British Seaside in what was supposed to be - and I gather, elsewhere was - the pissing rain. All I can tell you is if it rained on you Sunday...ya should have been in Saundersfoot. More fish was had, more chips were had, even a double-scoop chocolate waffle cone with a flake was had. But, importantly, 9000 steps were also walked, pissing about in Saundersfoot, and Amroth, and Laugharne. Very nice day.
Monday - Monday was one of those quirky bank holiday days. d had an itch in the bottom of her being to barbecue, so barbecue she did - and grilled meat and veg-a-rama was had by all.

Annnd then it was today. Today was Tuesday, which meant weigh-in day. Did a little walking first thing - a couple of hundred caloriesworth, nothing special. Had a coffee, and eventually weighed in, at:
18st, 12.75 lbs.

Is that good? Well, no, of course not. But it's still four pounds better than last week. Imagine what might have happened if I hadn't had quite so much fish, ships and ice cream.

Better food day today. Weetabix breakfast, sausage baguette for lunch, and a steak and vegetable dinner, with a little bow-tie pasta.
Tomorrow, I actually get back on my diabetic meds (long story short, I messed up and have been without diabetic meds for a week). So here's being all sorts of weirdly optimistic for the rest of the week.

The Depressive Question

Hey folks. Apologies - another mad week. "Write Blog" has been on the List of Stuff To Do every day of the last week, but has never actually made the leap to the internet.

Anyhow - the write-off of the last entry spread into a full week of calorific debauchery, which is why at Tuesday's weigh-in saw me at a truly head-pounding 19st 2.75 - up about a half-stone, or seven pounds.

Two of my pals from different sections of my life who've spoke to me this week have said "I reckon you're depressed."
Could be. Don't know. Ultimately though, if I'm honest, I don't have time to be depressed. Said as much to Ma.
"Errr...yes," she said. "That's rather the point..."

Have been displaying what could be symptoms, to be fair - not tidying the flat, so living in a slowly-growing landscape of crap, and a beard that was supporting its own ecosystem, focusing on short-term gratification at the expense of longer-term trouble.

It's funny - comedian Craig Ferguson mentions my sort of person on his latest DVD. "People who say 'Oh yes, I'm an addict'...and you go 'Oh yeah, what's your thing?', and they say 'Chocolate.' Excuse me - you're not an addict, you're judt an idiot.'"

Now, far be it from me ever to deny my own idiocy. Let my idiocy stand as read.
But I have to take issue with Craig on this. Different substances have different impacts if taken to excess - alcohol, you fall down eventually and snore, cocaine, you tale like an ass for a few hours and look like you're on fast forward. Crack, your heart pretty much explodes. Weed, you get mellow and really hungry. Food, you physically ostracise yourself, probably get diabetes, heart disease, strokes and die. The symptoms of addiction differ depending on your substance of choice. But the wiring in the brain that urges towards self-harm - The Lemming Factor, as I think about it - is the same acorss the board. You're not actually addicted to the substance, but to the chemical and psychological changes the substance brings about.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that this week, I've looked more like an addict than normal, the flat growing shabby around me, my beard straggly, my compulsion towards personal hygeine weakened, my hermit-nature strong.

Sigh...

Went to the gym yesterday, for the first time in weeks. Hated it. Resented every second of it. But did it all the same. Came home and showered. Then went for a haircut and a shave. Then tidied the bejeesus out of the flat. Feel rather more in control now. Though that said, was insomniac last night, as I have been a few nights this week, so didn't crash till nearly 4AM. When the alarm went off at 6.30 to wake me for a Trail walk, I simply didn't have it in me. So now, instead of "Blog", the word "Walk" is on my Stuff To Do List for later today. Oxygen, exercise and the like. Hopefully that'll blow any remaining cobwebs out of my brain.

The Write-Off

Was gonna go down the Trail first thing this morning. Stood up.

Bastard! Blisters.
Did the sensible thing, and scrapped the idea. Went to Starbucks. There was a degree of creamy badness because Starbucks, damn them, has "Happy Hour" going on on frappuccinos. One of their newest buggers is over 700 calories, in what is nominally a freaking liquid. So fairly major unffage there. And tonight we went for an Italian dinner - pastalicious, but not the most sensible of things to do. But you know what? Some nights you just have to say "sod it," and enjoy the time of your life.

In which regard, d and I have signed up for a pasta-making class in late June.

Y'know...just cos.

Writing off today. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

The Fallen and the Crawling-The-Hell-Back-Up-Again Angels

Yesterday was just going ot be one of those days from the very beginning. Got up, got dressed (snazzy walking outfit - Sixth Doctor costume T-shirt, gym shorts (floppy, not lycra - I'm not that mad again yet!), clumpy walking boots, and made to head down the Trail.
Except...
d had a late shift yesterday, so she wasn't heading straight to work. I happened to mention that McDonalds was on the way to the Trail, and we went and shared breakfast (plain porridge and a frappe, since you're asking...Nope, still haven't dumped the frapps...).
"What do you call that?" said d.
"It's a frappe, innit?"
"No I mean, it's clearly not just a coffee...and it's not exactly a shake, is it? I suppose normally you'd call it a Shoffee? Or a cake, of course."
"Yes dear. Shush now, need to suck until my ears bleed."
To her credit, she didn't actually dignify that comment with the retort it deserved, but I fancy I saw a look in her eye...

When we were done, she said "It's 8.30 now. You'll be two hours late for work if you go down the Trail at this point."
"Holy buggering fuck!" I mentioned, casually. "Where the hell did the time go?"
"You were having a suckfest dear," said d, deadpan.
"It continues," I said, realising that she was right. Again.
"I'm on late shift, honey," she reminded me. You can do your day and walk at five."
Well...Right! Then...then, I will!" I said, having worked myself to a good solid grump and now no longer sure what to do with it. "That's...what I'll do then..." I said.

She went to work. I went to Starbucks. Came back in time to go walking. There was an email from d.
"I'm gonna need you to book me a cab to come home," she said. "Messed up arrangements or something..."

Now I know what every male reader (yes, I rather like to kid myself there are men out there who read this. I do however at least know I'm kidding myself) - "Who cut off your dialling fingers then, eh?"
It's modern corporate culture - we all know for instant that gmail in the US feeds private email contents to the NSA. And in the age when corporations are people too, they can monitor and discipline you for phone calls that dare to steal half-pennies per year off their massive bonus payments. And they do. So phoning from work wasn't an option.

I called a cab company, gave the address of d's office. "Where's that then?" the voice on the other end of the line asked, as though I was asking him to pick up from Phnom Penh. I tried again. "Nah, sorry mate, dunno where that is."

Bear in mind here that I am one of the world's great navigational fuckwits. And I... almost... know where it is. This was a taxi driver.

I called another firm. They didn't know where the hell I was talking about either, but figured a booking was a booking and they had two hours to work it out. I emailed d back. "They'll be coming for you at 7," I said, looking at the clock on my computer. "It's 5.30 now. No time to walk, I'll just bike instead."

"Walk!" she replied almost instantly. "Sounds like you need to hit some small children on the way."
She wasn't wrong. I hit the Trail. I saw an odd-looking pathway cut across the grass, and decided this was the day to Be Adventurous. I took the path, expending my fury on cutting what might reliably be described as a swathe through grasses and brackens.
I stopped when I came eyeball to eyeball with the horse.

Now, I've since been told that horses aren't territorial. If that's the case (and I have no reason to doubt the wisdom of random people on Facebook), then all I can tell you is that the horse looked to be having a worse day than me. We stood, eye to eye for about half a minute. Then I turned around and yomped most assuredly back up the pathway to relative civilisation. Went down the official Trail a little more, then realised d would be back soon, and I really didn't have the time to do the Trail as planned. I turned back and headed for home, muttering dread curses on cabbies, horses, stupid fucking pathways into fields, barbed wire (long story short, I'd had to climb over some. In shorts. Don't recommend it) and the day in general.

There's a dangerous precedent in our life, which is that when d works a late shift we get fried fish (and in my case chips) from the local chippy. She got it and brought it home. I ate some of it.

So all in all - yesterday, my angels of good intent were shot straight out of the sky like a Monty Python intro.

This morning, we woke up at 5.30, and didn't go back to sleep. At about 6.20, I got off the couch (Yeah, we sleep on couches now. Because we do, that's why) and got dressed for the walk again, but this time succeeded in leaving the house.
The Trail took a couple of hours, cos I'm hugely out of practice, but according to the Gestapo Phone, it took me over 13,000 steps, and burned some 842 calories. Which was all the Phone required of me to lose weight on any given day - assuming I didn't then consume more than 3000 calories, which I don't think I've done.

Resurrection of the Angels - yes!

Tomorrow, hopefully back down the Trail, back down to Starbucks and out for 'd's payday dinner'.

At least, that's the plan. Knowing my form this week, a cabbie on horseback will probably mow me down and steal the Gestapo Phone the minute I step outside...but let's see, shall we?

The Puddle Hover and the Demon Driver

O...K.
First thing's first - no idea how this happened, but the weigh-in this morning has me static, at 18st 9.5.
Soooo that's a bit weird. Not so much a puddle dive as a puddle...hover.

Second thing's second - for some reason at the moment I'm dealing with a couple of books involving angels and demons.
Sitting last night on Cardiff Central train station in a chilly, exhausting night, I recommended to one of my fellow authors that maybe the business of angels and demons, of good and evil, wasn't a matter of winged warriors and scaly teeth-factories, but simply humans, and the way they deal with life's mundane and monumental challenges. The way they deal with things - be it positive or embittered, open-minded or closed, determines whether they embody a spirit of angelic or demonic energy.

Now...granted, it had been a long day when I was typing this into my phone, and I'm not sure the author in question's gonna go for it anyhow, but firstly, it made a kind of analogue sense to me - if you're going to have the idea of angels and demons, this sort of things would be, to me, a logical way of growing them.

Then I started thinking about how this would apply to dietary life. It's too easy of course to think of all the lovely food we'd love to eat and shouldn't as being the "path of good intentions" and so on - dietary heaven being reachable on a Jacob's Ladder of celery stalks. But to me it's more a case of thinking of it in terms of reacting at this point in a negative way (a "demonic" way on the above scale) to food - a self-defeating, misery-generating, ultimately depressing way). I freakin' hate that. I hate to think I'm either a) not in control of my life, or b) in control of my life and purposefully self-destructive. What kind of sense is in that?
(I know, I know - it's not a sense thing, but this is my rational side talking here).
Tonight hasn't been terribly "angelic" - went out for Indian dinner with d. But I think, going forward, I'll make use of the imagery to think of myself breaking free from the mindset of self-indulgent "demonism", and re-establishing the control of my stubborn-bastard angel.

Right - away for the rest of the night. Back tomorrow. With wings on!

The Puddle Dive and the Trouser Failure

OK, so - Ani DiFranco has a song which has always pretty much described me. It's called Puddle Dive.
"If you're gonna do it, overdo it,
That's how you know you're alive.
Go ahead take yourself a coma-nap babe,
Take a puddle dive."

I take puddle dives all the damn time. S'probably something to do with not having terribly effective sensors to subtle change - only major changes register on my "doing this now" scale.

Well, either that or I'm just an asshole, one of the two.

This week has pretty much been a puddle-diving week. Haven't exercised in days. Have eaten things I shouldn't eat - chips, desserts, etc, etc.

Which means today was no surprise.
d picked me up a new pair of trousers last week. 40 inch, but no elastication. Tried them on today. Noooooo way of getting them done up, not even close. Normally, this would send me off on one, but I can hardly flap about going "Woe is me!" after a week like this. Sigh...

London tomorrow. So I guess we'll see what Tuesday brings - but most likely disaster.

The Two-Pound Pee

Am writing this on 11th May, though I started it a few days before.

Woke up one day last week, beggared about, did an unofficial weigh-in. Found myself at 18st 12.75, which was shocking.

Went for a pee.

I know, I know, should never have done a re-weigh after something so trivial. But then, behold!
18st 10.25.

That's 2. 5 POUNDS of pee. That was mental. Felt a kind of lightness of step for the whole rest of the day - I can literally piss away a week's progress, should the need arise! Witness my Ultra-Bladder, Ye Mortals, and Despair!

The Walking Cure and the Nigella Embuggerance

Humph.
Well, if last Wednesday was a disappointment, today was a positive fuck-you. This morning, the Nazi Scales told me I'd actually put back ON precisely the 0.75 that I'd lost last Wednesday.
Humph.

Not, I should add, that this is a surprise, except inasmuch as that's all I'd put back on. I met my pal Rebecca for coffee last Thursday and told her about the miniscule weightloss.
"Fair pay," she said, "that's a pisser. Think I'd want to be brought the finest chocolates in the land if that happened."

Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jest. Been a rather undisciplined week, it must be said. Though I have been walking fairly regularly with Ma, which has given me at least a start on the daily calorie-burn, this week has involved a couple of calorifically stupid moments too, including a fish and chip supper Friday night, and a Nigella Embuggerance yesterday.

The Nigella Embuggerance is what happens when, in between several hours of watching Masterchef New Zealand and The Taste USA, a foodie like d catches a snippet of old-fashined, cooking, Nigella Lawson, and picks up the idea of an "easy ice-cream".
As we were on our second bowl last night, I asked d what was in it.
"Oh, pretty much instant death," she said lightly. "Double cream, de-caff coffee grounds , sweetened condensed milk..."
"Good stuff the day before a weigh-in," I observed in a fairly neutral tone, before admittedly licking the spoon.

So as I say, not exactly a surprise. Been vaguely deadlined to death this week too, which is why you haven't had an entry from me until now. But clearly, better must be done.
"Oi!" called d up the stairs as I wrote these words. "Are you gonna bike or what?"
"No," I called down, just as casually.
"Oh. Thought you were."
"Nah."
"Oh well...I mean, dinner's got to simmer, so...y'know...there's time if you'd like to."

Good angel on the shoulder time, I think. So - gonna stop staring at an editing screen for a bit, and go and get sweaty in the least fun way possibly imaginable.

Ahem...Starbucks tomorrow...
Just sayin'...