Sweet Sixteen

Blood yesterday was 6.0, whereas this morning it was 5.8...and that concludes this edition of Vampire's News... Woke up this morning with the distinct bodily determination not to move again...pretty much ever. d on the other hand. Got up, pootled about and generally got her shit together. When I finally stumbled out of my pit, scratching myself and farting, I observed her togetherness with envy and not a little bitterness. "'m comings withya..." I mumbled, meaning to accompany her to early morning Aquacise. "Yes dear," she said, "Of course dear...it's ten to eight dear, see you later. "Mmmph," I agreed. When I'd cleared the fluff out of my earholes, I decided to feel good about myself, against the odds of the day. Decided that, on such a positive-feeling day, even the Nazi Scales would be nice to me. They weren't. I mean they really weren't. I decided to not feel good about myself after all, but to rail and rage against the unfairness of a skinny universe and the tribulations of the Disappearing Community. Funnily enough, that changed absolutely bloody nothing. I emerged into the world for 9AM, and grunted my way over to the leisure centre. Christine, our instruct rests, saw me waiting, and called me in for my 16 week appraisal on the GP Referral Scheme. When d dutifully emerged from the changing rooms after Aquacising her ass off, she came and joined us. Turns out that in the space of the last 16 weeks, I've lost a net smidgen. This is little more than an ogrefart of actual weight in four long months of whining and bitching and working and sweating and gymming and swimming and whining oh my. d too has lost a smidgen over the last four months. As I bitched about yesterday to the point of inducing nausea and vomiting in what I somewhat pathetically think of as 'my public', the interpretation of this is all in the perspective of the thing. Yes, technically, it's a smidgen lost while on the scheme. But on the other, altogether heavier hand, I've actually lost so much more than a smidgen during this time...it's just that I've put so much of it back on over the last few weeks! Also of course, this was dreadful confirmation that the Nazi Scales don't have it in for me...I really have put on half a shed load of weight over these weeks. But, on the upside, we have now both graduated from the scheme, which means we can both use all the facilities of the leisure centre, any time day or night, for one simple, small monthly fee. Given the palaver in the States over socialised healthcare, I imagine this would be viewed as a fairly Communistic idea, but this is a gym run by the local authority, for the benefit of everyone. I'll just leave I to ponder that one for a while, shall I? Anyway, with our graduation from the scheme, not only does our exercise life become far less rigid and regimented, it opens up to whole new vistas of pain and humiliation - we were given brand new timetables, to replace the scheme-only ones we'd been using up till this point. Proper Zumba classes...proper Aquacise classes, come to that. Spin classes. Pump it up classes, whatever the hell they turn out to be. Kettle bell classes. Tai chi,yoga, sucking ourselves up through our navels, all that kind of caper. Plus endless access to the gym, the pool, the sauna and steam room...you name it, we can now do it. Pop quiz. How would you celebrate passing a health check and opening up a whole new world of exercise opportunity? If you didn't say "with a McDonalds' breakfast, of course," go away and go away now, Because I clearly haven't taught you anything. We had a proper greasy breakfast, on two bases - firstly, dammit, if I'm gonna tip the scales at bugger-it stone on Tuesday, I'm gonna bloody well deserve it, and secondly, I now havew a LOT more opportunities to work that sucker off. In a similar spirit of optimistic recklessness, we went down to Cardiff, to do some indow-shopping. Didn't GET any windows, as it happened, but that's about all we forgot. Came back with a couple of bag fully of assorted Stuff, none of which was technically necessary, but all of which helped maintain the spirit of the day - the spirit of the world being our lobster (we're not keen on oysters, what can I tellya?). Bottom line, might tip the scales at 16 stone again come Tuesday. Am sort of resigned to this, if I'm honest. Sort of making my mind up to having the whole of the 15s to do again, after what has been an extended period of either backsliding or, as d put it when she ad the word last night, "making conscious choices to be bigger." At the time I thought that was harsh. But today has been pretty much exactly that - doing things with consequences, knowing about the consequences, and determining to deal with them in due course. The only way that works of course is if you convince yourself that there's been a fundamental change in your world that makes those consequences easier to deal with...which today, there really has. I'm supposed to be going running tomorrow morning, but as I have a delivery deadline for my first editing client tomorrow too, I don't see that happening. But I genuinely think that, to misquote Scarlett o'Hara...next week is another week. Change has come, the spiral will be addressed, and a normal Disappearing service will be resumed.