Sorry for the long absence, folks. I don’t really have an excuse. There have been some structural changes at work, some homefront activities and a few travel days mixed in, but that’s no excuse for the lack of quality reading material. So I’m going to let loose with a little ground n pound here – I can’t really predict where this is going to go or where it’s going to end, only that it could be long, so I hope you don’t have anything to do for the next 15 minutes or so.
First of all – M and I have a paraphysical coming for our upcoming life insurance underwriting. We were informed that this was a minimally invasive process – someone comes in, takes some fluids and some measurements and we’re done. Then the monks get out the actuary tables and predict if they’re going to lose the monthly “We’ll bet you tons of cash that you’re not going to croak this month, and if you lose that bet, well you owe us $200. Every month. For thirty years. And then all of a sudden they don’t want to make that bet anymore. Check in with me when I’m 60 and ask how I feel about that one. There’s a saying that compulsive gamblers have –“The longer it doesn’t, the sooner it’s gonna”. I think the wisdom is that eventually, if you keep at it, your long odds bets will come home to roost. Based on the terms of this particular wager, I take it insurance companies also adhere to that wisdom. Going hand in hand with the poke and prod is the weigh-in. I haven’t been weighed officially in a few years. I think I was in at about 195 or so when a board certified physician last did one. Since then, I’ve jumped to a high of 208 and hovered in between those numbers, depending on the time of year and amount of physical activity I have been subjected to. At one point in our courtship, M and I were buying clothes and I had a pair of pants that I was ready to buy. M asked what size they were and they were a 38. What can I say? My existing trousers were a little snug and I had an eye towards the future. M didn’t approve of that message, so we cut back on the diner breakfasts and started making better lunches and magically I no longer needed the 38s. Then we were going to get life insurance soon after we got married. M found out that if I weighed 180 or in the area of that, we could save some serious money over the 30 years gentlemen’s agreement. 180 is a hard number (cue fuzzy focus and ‘going back in time’ music), I graduated from high school weighing 185 and I was a competitive lacrosse player and cross country runner who hadn’t had a taste of the outside world yet. By Christmas of my freshman year of college, I was well into the 200s, probably north of 210 and gaining momentum. Everyone around me was swelling like a barbecued bratwurst, so I didn’t really notice. It was a lethal combination of sloth, indulgence and experimentation that put me on this path. I don’t know where I peaked, but I remember only 2 pairs of pants fitting me and one of them was missing a button on the waist. I wore athletic shorts that entire spring because they had the fat man’s helper – the stretchy waist. That spring, someone in my family poked me in the belly like the poppin fresh doughboy I had become. Determined to get myself in beach shape for the fam’s annual Jersey shore adventure, I bought a jumprope and dusted off the old weight bench and got to work. I think most of the excess was malted hops and barley, so as soon as I wasn’t bathing in that, the weight dropped quickly. I had learned my lesson and stayed around the same weight for a while. A few years after that, there was a family feats of strength contest where my younger brother and I got into it about who could do more pushups. I had no idea how many I could do, but I suspect he knew his limits, because I crapped out in the teens somewhere and he powered through until I forced him with gravity and extreme prejudice to stop. I think he was trying to impress his new lady friend (now wife) and he succeeded in humiliating me. I immediately undertook a Rocky IV style regimen of secret pushups and pullups to get myself ready for the next contest, which sadly will probably not happen. I stuck with this unorthodox and irregular program for a few years and I always felt better after I did it. We’re somewhere in 1999-2001 at this point. I have moved away from home to experience ‘real life’ and experience it I did. It was freshman year all over again, except I had money in my pocket and one of my roommates was practicing for his future career as a chef. We never got the deep fryer, but I did need new clothes. My employer at the time was offering a gym membership for a reasonable price and the gym had many locations which were convenient from work and home so I decided to join. I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t have a regularly scheduled social life to speak of and it was better (in theory) than sitting home and playing Grand Theft Auto. The funny thing was, it was actually something I started to look forward to. The results were slow at first and I didn’t get on any supplements or shakes, but it was a great way to burn energy and stay somewhat active. Fast forward a bit and I had moved back where my parents live and the gym was at the end of my commute, so what better way to get rid of that work and commuter stress than repetitively lifting heavy iron weights? At this point though, I wasn’t losing any weight. The homemade meals were of the infamous ‘Mom’ portions and I wasn’t doing anything to regulate what I was eating or drinking, so I just started to swell up. My golf swing got all screwed up by the new geometry of my body. Not that it was championship caliber before, but this was an unpleasant symptom. I was teetering on the dangerous ground of no longer just pursuing this as an activity and making it a goal-oriented part of my life. Fortunately, I moved back to Boston to resume my sedentary lifestyle before I started wearing tight black t-shirts and going tanning. Fast forward another 18 months and I’m trying to buy size 38s. Having a serious relationship meant sharing my accumulated knowledge of the local eating establishments and then attempting to duplicate these at home with the requisite butter and cheese ‘improvements’. My better half did reign in our growth with the introduction of smaller plates (genius) and saving portions for lunch and leftovers (a novel idea). The big test was going to be the cruise we were taking. I had read all about the pasty Midwesterners fighting over endless macaroni and cheese and shrimp cocktail and I was worried that when confronted with unlimited food options, I would display my binge consumption abilities, but this was not the case. By now I was a food snob and mostly stuck to what wouldn’t make me ill. There was one huge development, though and that was the ship’s rock climbing wall. M and I went to the wall (really some fiberglass nubs bolted to the ship’s smokestack to hide it) to evaluate it and maybe give it a try. I watch some jabroni who brought all his own gear – seriously, who brings rock climbing gear on a Caribbean cruise? – scamper up the ‘hard’ section, then the rock wall helpers basically dared me to try, so I strapped it on and attempted the 2nd hardest section. I have no idea why this seemed appropriate, but I made it. Barely. Every muscle in my body hurt afterwards in a way that I hadn’t felt in since high school. I didn’t think I was in shape by any means, but this was a big red flag that I was definitely out of it. Time to resume secret workouts. It is a well established fact that M takes a nightly ‘constitutional’ in the shower just about every night. This leaves me with approximately 45 minutes to do whatever I want with. For a while, this became known as ‘Shower Snack time’, when I would raid the kitchen for whatever I could find. M knew this had happened by the chocolate or crumbs on my shirt after a pillaging of the cabinets. Shower Snack has been replaced by ‘Monkey Bars’ after the homemade rig I assembled from steel cable, half-inch steel pipe, athletic tape and a 4” hook screwed into a rafter in the loft. I suppose to the casual observer, it looks like a monkey swinging around, but it was really a super-secret regimen designed to get me into wedding/insurance shape. That and no longer loading up on free chips in the work kitchen. For the most part it’s worked. I had to replace the wedding pants I had originally purchased because they were hanging a little low. I even created a travel set of monkey bars consisting of nylon rope and some old belts. I figured going through the airport with 15 feet of steel cable and taped up pipe was a little suspicious. At least bundled rope can plausibly be described as a ‘personal interest’. I can now turn a small-sized hotel room into a gym in about 5 minutes. So the Monkey Bars phase has been in place for just over a year now and I weighed in this weekend at 188. I have a realistic shot at 185 by Thursday. I’m not going to go out and run 20 miles or anything, but it’s possible to get back to a weight that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years, which is remarkable. My dad was supposedly 155 when he got married. Maybe the cold-war food rationing was in effect or he was a nervous wreck, but 155 is real small. I don’t know what I would look like if I weighed 155. I think my chest hair and big toe nails alone weigh 9 lbs. Another 30 lbs would mean losing a leg or something and I am not ready to commit to that.
In a completely unrelated and different track, a lot of people I know are makin’ babies. I have been enjoying the post-wedding pre-kids phase very much so far. These people jumped past that and into advanced marriage right away. M is going to be a cousin once removed in a few months. One of my roommates from college just told me he’s having a little one in October, there’s my manager, next door neighbor, 2 friends I used to work with and at least 6 more here at work. I know I’m getting to that age, and this is what people do, but it is all a little strange for me. I have friends who already have kids, and they seem to be the same guys. But their kids will never know that daddy once (censored) or mommy used to (censored). I am thinking about starting a pool where M and I bet various household chores on who can guess the next announcement. I know a few people have us in their own pools, but once again, the wagon is for utility and it’s good in the snow! Not for hauling little B’s or M’s around… yet.
In Bandmeltun news, out in the exurbs – you know, the reason for the blog - we have created a list of household projects for the spring. We’re going to improve the herb garden from last year and even attempt some more aggressive vegetable growing. We’ve done the annual living room re-org and included the guest bedroom in a little furniture swap. There was a headboard project completed and there are signage and clock projects in the works. There will be some painting and possibly some acquisitions, but nothing from the G-town flea market. M and I went there last weekend, looking for some treasures like I see on Antiques Roadshow and we got a bunch of carnies and gas huffers selling Nintendo games (not even the n-64, but the old school 8-bit ones), moldy belts, ninja swords and scary cat-themed arts and crafts. Sometimes I forget how out there we have chosen to live. I joke about driving the Subaru on the towns’ existing dirt roads (there are a few here), and I enjoy driving on the back roads to see the cows and horses. I haven’t fully embraced that in areas where it is acceptable to raise livestock, the lower edges of the townie economy are going to be populated by some unusual characters. Needless to say, our treasure hunting days in town are limited. We’ve also got some trips planned – Italy and Greece in the fall and Germany around Christmastime. You’ll be sure to hear about and see some scenes from those adventures, hopefully in a somewhat shorter chapter. So if you’re still there, thank you for tuning in and see you again sometime soon…
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