Desperately Disappearing

"Hey," said d yesterday morning as we lay in bed, at least one of us pretending the morning hadn't arrived yet.
"Mmmf," I said, which, as anyone fluent in Morning Guy will know translates as "My darling, my beautiful, my wonderful wife, I love and adore you with all my heart, but if you don't shut the Hell up right now, there may be a pick-axe in our short-term future."

"You're not even flat any more," she obseved, running what might, in less catatonic circumstances, have been considered an encouraging hand down the slope of my belly.

"Mmmf??" I said, which fluent Morning Guyers will know means "I have...absolutely...no idea what you're talking about now, but you've piqued my interest enough with that hand thing to mean the pick-axe can probably stay where it is. Do go on, but please forgive me if I snore. Listening, honest..."

"You're all sort of...concave," she said.
I blinked.
"Wha-?" I said, as my English language skills kicked in.
The hand sloped down my belly again. While in the horizontal position, it did indeed describe a concave, rather than the familiar bulging convex I'm used to.
"Ummf," I said, losing the language skills again - what can I tell you, they come, they go...
So that was a positive start to the day.

Later, we were out in the city - going to watch Harry Potter, since you ask. Yes, again. In 3D, actually. At the IMAX, no less. That's a big, big wand. Anyhow, we were standing at Cambridge Circus, waiting for a bus to take us to Waterloo, and d put her arms around me.
"Wow..." she said again.
"What?" I said.
"I can pretty much lock my fingers now," she said. This was progress indeed - when I started this experiment, d couldn't actually get both arms around me. A couple of weeks ago, she could jusssst about touch fingertips. So being able to lock her fingers around me showed improvement in those few weeks. It was lovely, being able to feel that again.

I should also mention - one of the sub-themes of this experiment is being able to see my own feet when standing up. I can now report the progress of being able to see the verrrry tippiest of my tip-toes. Course, it probably doesn't hurt that I haven't trimmed my toenails in weeks. Still, I'm taking it as progress, cos it's the kind of day when, as you might be suspecting from the valedictory nature of this post, I feel the need for progress. Fairly unconvinced that tomorrow will bring the kind of progress I'm looking for, so figured accentuating the positive was the way to go.

Last night, when we came home from Harry, I got on the bike, and d put in a DVD. It was Sunday night (you might have noticed), and just as Saturday night is Doctor Who night, Sunday night, traditionally, is Desperate Housewives night. In fact, last night we worked out that the show itself started the Sunday before our wedding in 2004. We both love the show for the strength of its writing, and d put on the very first episode. I tried to shut myself out of it, push rock music into my ears and pedal. But d waved to me, and told me there was a line coming up, the line that had first hooked her into the show. It was a line from one of the Housewives, whose husband had cheated on her.

"He actually said to me 'most husbands live lives of quiet desperation.' I said 'what do wives live, lives of loud excitement?!'"

Word to the wise - don't, don't, don't start thinking about the complexities and masks of ordinary relationships when you're trying to pedal, it'll really fuck you up. I started thinking that if husbands and wives were both living lives of quiet desperation, then surely they were just putting each other through misery, and should get the Hell away from each other as soon as possible. Then I started lining up relationships of the people I know, wondering what was mask and what was real, and who was more Desperate in each situation. And then, gods and fairies and flying spaghetti monsters help me, I started wondering whether, beneath the bullshit and the funny and the progress and the ruling of all and the vastly improved health and the everything else I've already dragged the lot of you through, I wasn't actually pedalling to strip away the mask of flab, to show myself and grow myself, stripped of all excuses for Desperation, finding the inner me, whatever that means, beneath the fat that's been so much a part of my psyche all these years...
At which point, it was important to stop thinking, get my pretentious ass off the goddamn bike, and join d for the rest of the episode. Sometimes, you can overthink this Disappearing lark.
Walked 4.5 miles this morning and the foot began to twinge. Heavy, delicious dinner tonight, and am about to get back on the bike. Tonight? No Desperation...Tonight, Hell's Kitchen. You can bike to Hell's Kitchen, this I know. But like I said, finger-locking is beautiful and progressive, but I don't expect positive results tomorrow. If I can keep it beneath the 18 stone mark, I'll be happy enough.