Literally. Something smells like day-old tuna-and-mayo sandwiches ... or like the dumpster in back of Ivar's Acres of Clams ... or like a bloated whale corpse, washed up on a beach and left rotting in the summer sun for a month or two.
Let's just say it isn't exactly a *festive* smell.
David and I are late arriving for our wedding. (OF COURSE we are late arriving for our wedding!! This wouldn't be a true 'Wedding Anxiety Dream' if we were actually arriving ON TIME now, would it?!?) The guests, we are told, are already here, patiently waiting for us in the living room. David and I are sneaking in through the kitchen door, hoping to change out of our muddy football uniforms and into our wedding finery before anyone sees us.
And that's when we catch the unexpected whiff of putrid fish flesh.
"What's that smell?" I ask my mom suspiciously. She is standing in front of the stove, wearing an apron over her lovely Mother-of-the-Bride dress, a perky yellow oven mitt jauntily parked on each hand. The part of my mother is being played, in this particular dream sequence, by Captain Janeway from "Star Trek: Voyager."
"That's the seagull pie," replies Captain Janeway/Mom offhandedly.
Seagull pie?
"Why on earth are you making seagull pie?" I ask, disgusted by the very idea of feasting on something that has itself recently feasted on putrid fish flesh. I don't remember requesting seagull pie. I don't remember discussing seagull pie when we were planning the menu for the wedding.
As a matter of fact, I don't remember being a part of the wedding menu discussion at all.
"We decided that this would be a more efficient way to feed your guests," says Captain Janeway/Mom. "You weren't here to help us plan, so we went ahead and bought the seagulls at Costco. They were pre-stuffed." And she bends over and opens the oven door to check on the pie. The room fills instantly with the smell of warm dead seagull ... stuffed with putrid fish flesh.
End of dream.
Our bathroom scale has been stuck at 168 for about a week now.
I finally broke down and started weighing myself in the mornings, a couple of months ago. David was enjoying himself so much -- ceremoniously climbing onto the scale before his shower, then shouting out the daily results ("Yes! Yes! YES!") -- that I decided to join in on the fun. You may recall that prior to that I was relying mostly on the way my clothes fit (or didn't fit) as the measure of my weight loss.
I avoided scales like the plague.
Eventually, though, I gave in to temptation and hopped onto the ancient, creaky bathroom scale for a look-see. Much to my surprise ... it didn't hurt a bit. In fact, for a while it was really cool, getting on the scale every morning and watching the pounds literally disappearing, one number at a time.
Now I appear to have hit a wall.
But don't worry. I *get* it. I know that this is simply one of those "plateau" things they're always yammering on & on about in the women's magazines. Furthermore, I know that I am at least partially to blame for this latest hang-up in my progress. Although I rode my little red bicycle like a maniac, all three days of this past Memorial Day weekend -- plus a little weight-lifting and stair-climbing thrown into the mix, just for fun -- I also ATE like a maniac. To wit:
- Friday night: Rode 6.4 miles around the Alameda Navy Base after work ... then had two cheese enchiladas for dinner at La Piñata.
- Saturday: Rode 14.25 miles around Bay Farm Island ... then had a California Burger (guacamole/red onions/bacon) and about a bazillion curly fries at Barnaby's Gourmet Burgers in Albany.
- Sunday morning: 7.6 miles around the interior of Alameda ... followed by a Hot Pastrami at Togo's.
- Monday: Breakfast at Tillie's, early in the a.m. ... then 2 miles across the Golden Gate Bridge (I made it to the halfway point before excruciating pain/bazillion mph winds/snooty Spandex Cyclists forced me to stop) ... topped off with a large pepperoni/sausage/mushroom pizza at Giorgio's in the Richmond District.
No wonder I didn't make any visible progress this weekend. If I had just ridden my bike those 30+ miles and foregone all of the restaurant meals -- sticking to my usual fruit/Subway/Slim Fast regimen all weekend -- I'd probably be down a pound or two today, instead of holding steady at the same number I've been looking at for seven days now.
But then again ... I wouldn't have had as much fun.
And that's the point. As a career soldier in the Battle of the Bulge, I can tell you in all honesty that this is the first time in my life that losing weight has been fun. I LIKE doing this stuff with a partner! I LIKE having more strength and energy! I LIKE being able to look at myself on one of those stoopid Walgreen's surveillance cameras without wondering 'Who's the fat chick?' ... !
I LIKE rendering an entire closetful of nearly-new clothing obsolete!
In fact, I've decided that since I'm having so much fun, I'm going to give the effort an extra *push* over the next six or seven weeks. My new goal? To drop another ten pounds between now and the wedding. "I think that's totally within the realm of possibility," David said this morning, when I told him my plan. As a matter of fact, he says, he's going to join me in the effort.
Of course ... you know what this means, don't you?
It means -- for one thing -- that we're going to have to 'scale back' pun intended on the eating-out stuff. Five restaurant meals in three days (plus a couple of scones at Noah's Bagels, while we were bike-riding) is excessive, even for us. Of course this goes hand-in-hand with what I was saying yesterday, about cutting back on unnecessary expenditures, so it's something we need to do anyway.
It means that my wedding dress is probably going to hang on me like a fudking SOFA COVER by July 21st.
It means that *FootNotes* may become even more patchy and sporadic than it's been the past couple of weeks, as bike-riding after work and on the weekends and during any other available pockets of free time continues to cut more and more into precious journal-writing time.
And -- since I've gone out on a limb here and stoopidly proclaimed my intention to lose another ten pounds, right here on the website -- it means I'd better not fail, unless I want to risk very public humiliation. (Plus it means that when I do get around to writing the occasional journal entry, you're probably going to be hearing lots more about Slim Fast, stretch marks and saddle soreness than you ever needed/wanted to hear about.)
Stay tuned.
* * * Editor's Note/Disclaimer/Apology * * * I would like to state publicly, for the record, that my sweet, wonderful, incredibly-helpful, incredibly-considerate mother would never:
1.) Make an important decision about the wedding -- or about the wedding menu -- without consulting with us first.
2.) Serve stuffed fowl at a summer afternoon wedding.
3.) Wear YELLOW OVEN MITTS with her Mother-of-the-Bride dress, forcryingoutloud.My affectionate apologies to her -- and to seagulls everywhere -- for this latest nocturnal brain-hiccup.