Shrinking Shelli

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.~ Jim Rohn

I think that I can say with certainty that I have changed my fitness habits. It has been 6 months since I vowed to do this. In the last 6 months, I have gone to the gym and worked out at least 12 times per month. That’s 3 or sometimes more times per week. I feel good. People tell me that I look good and are frequently asking me how much weight I’ve lost. Truth be told, I haven’t lost that much, but it must be shifting around or toning up or something. My clothes fit differently. I feel happy and well.

There’s a couple of characters that I like to watch at the gym. First there’s a guy I call Cappy because he wears a kind of black skull cap on his head while he works out. I probably should call him Stevie because of his crazy antics while he’s working out. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the bike or the cross-trainer or whatever, he sways back and forth like Stevie Wonder on the machines. He looks so weird. Like every move is difficult for him and he has to throw his whole body into the machine to make it work. But he works hard and I guess that’s the way it works best for him.

Then there’s the guy I call Dan. He looks like this guy that I went to high school with whose name was Dan. Hence the name I gave him. Dan was a track jock. This guy may even actually be him. I’ve never asked or approached him at all. He’s thin and wiry like track jocks. He works hard, too. They are both there almost every time I am there. I wonder if they notice me and have a name for me, too. Something like Fat White Girl With the Goofy Headband Who is Always Watching Me. Or maybe White Girl Who Walks on the Treadmill With Her Eyes Closed. Who knows.

I love my time on the treadmill or the cross-trainer. I love to just veg out and listen to my music or read. I love to read. I have read so many books in the last 6 months while I get my move on. Mostly I listen to Nickelback while I’m reading and walking or moving in whatever other way. I love my Nickelback. I wish they would come out with some new music.

I meet friends there on Wednesday nights. I even got my one friend to join the gym. Her husband had been unemployed for awhile so I let her use my guest passes. Then I suggested she check into the low-income scholarships just to see if she qualified and she did, so I felt good that she was able to get a membership.

It was extremely busy right before the New Year, like everyone wanted to join before the New Year so they wouldn’t look like they were the cliche New Year resolutioners. It’s pretty busy right now, too, but I suspect it will die down a little in a few weeks. I’ll still be there. Working out my heart, lungs and body. It seems to be doing me some good. If nothing else, I only gained 0.6# over the last 2 holidays. That’s worth something.

This is a little story about a girl I know. She’s kinda funny in a laugh-at-her-because-she’s-like-Lucille-Ball kinda way.

It was a chilly Saturday morning and our friend, let’s call her Lucy, was on her way to her weekly Weight Watchers’ meeting. (Yep, that’s where I know her from. Ahem.) She has a beautiful truck that she was driving that, in the past, had always given her at least a 15-30 mile warning as to when she would need some more gas. On this particular Saturday morning, it had only been a couple miles since the “low fuel” light had come on so she, of course, thought, “I have plenty of gas to get to the meeting, back home and then have my husband [let's call him Ricky] go put gas in my beautiful truck.” So, she forged onward. For about 2 miles. To the left turn lane of a sometimes busy intersection. That’s when her beautiful truck laughed at her and said, “Ha, beyotch! I fooled you. You are screwed with a capital F!”

The girl wisely reached into her over-sized bag for her cell phone, which she was never without. She reached some more. Then she looked into the depths of the bag. Then she dumped the effin’ thing on the seat next to her. No goddamn cell phone to be found. (So she told me, anyway.) The one time she forgot her portable brain at home had to be this day. Maybe that explains why she ran out of gas…wait, that was the truck’s fault. Ahem.

She sat in the left turn lane of this sometimes busy intersection with her hazards on for a few minutes, hoping some nice person in this extraordinarily nice town would stop and help her push her truck to the side of the road and then call her husband to come get her. But no. Apparently all the nice people were still at home sleeping and all the grouchy, bitchy people were out and about. Assholes.

She left her car in the left turn lane of this busy intersection and began to walk back home. She was thankful that she had stumbled on her mittens while she was digging for her cell phone and she quickly put them on. However, it was at this time that she realized that she had worn her slippers, sans socks, to go to her Weight Watchers meeting. This is something she always did because of some sort of superstitious type feelings about them and, besides, they were the kind of slippers that people can wear inside and outside. (They looked kinda like this.) It didn’t take long for her to realize that her legs were going to fall off and die before too long and she was ready to lay down on the sidewalk and cry at her stupidity misfortune. Inside her head she was screaming ESP-like to Ricky, “COME AND PICK ME UP!” He did not hear her ESP calls for help. Stupid ESP dropped calls.

She walked 2 miles back to her home, with her legs screaming at her and her feet both freezing (remember, no socks inside the slippers) and burning up at the same time. She tried to distract herself by counting shit along the way. For instance, election pamphlets on the ground–6, cracks in the sidewalk–850,976,253 (or so), people that she crossed paths with–1, cars that went by with people who stared out at this idiot walking in slippers carrying her over-sized bag and coffee mug (NO, she WAS NOT going to leave her coffee to get cold in the truck, dammit!)–50 (or so), pennies she found along the way–1.

She finally arrived home. It only took her about 45 minutes. Her feet and legs were throbbing. She was that sweaty kind of cold that you only get when it’s 35 degrees out and you are doing some sort of exercise outside in the chilly air. She let herself into her garage and then into the house where she screamed, “Ricky, you better get dressed!” (He was sitting at the computer desk in his satin smoking jacket fleece bathrobe.) To which he, of course, replied, “Lucy, you have some ‘splaining to do!”

After all was ‘splained and he was dressed appropriately, he gathered the gas can and drove her to her beautiful truck where he put a little gas in it and then he followed her to the gas station to make sure she made it to the gas station without running out again. She put gas in her car and went home to find she had blisters on the bottoms of both of her feet.

She learned 3 important lessons. Never trust your beautiful truck’s gas gauge again, carry your slippers with you to Weight Watchers while wearing sensible shoes and NEVER, EVER, forget your cell phone at home.

Or so she told me.

Long before Alan Jackson wrote the song Remember When, I wrote a poem for Jason with the same (or similar) title. Each line started with, “remember when…” and then something that we had experienced together. Of course, it had our experiences and not the experiences of Mr. Jackson and his wife, but it was very similar. So similar, in fact, that years later when the song was released and went to number one on the music charts, I felt like he had stolen the words right from my heart and put them all out there for the world to see. Alan and his wife were also high school sweethearts who went through their own share of troubles and came back to love each other more. You can see how “their song” would become “our song”.

In October, Jason and I will have been together (off and on, but mostly on) for 28 years. 28 years! Today, however, we have been married for 20 years. 20 years! So, for my husband, my best friend, my lover and my soul mate, I love you so much and I remember when…

Remember when I was young and so were you
and time stood still and love was all we knew
You were the first, so was I
We made love and then you cried
Remember when

Remember when we said when we turned gray
When the children grow up and move away
We won’t be sad, we’ll be glad
For all the life we’ve had
And we’ll remember when

Happy anniversary, honey.

(If you have time, go watch the video. It’s so beautiful and will give you goosebumps. That’s his wife with him in the video.)