What I Also Did for Love - Part 1

Don here .......

One morning, while recovering from my foot surgery, I arose before the sun came up and lummoxed into the bathroom. Closing the door ever so gently so as not to awaken my Sleeping BEauty, I turned on the light and beheld a most gastly sight staring back at me in the mirror. I thought "What happened to me? Did I look like this yesterday? I look like I've been exhumed! I'm in a state of total disrepair! Argh!"

As the first glimmer of sunlight pierced the darkness of my odd sanctuary, I began to realize that I gotta start doin' somethin' about this. I would not want Joanna Mei to see this appalling visage entering her room to 'soothe' her as she is awakened by a bad dream.

With a little one coming in the very near future, I had to get my zippadeedoodah (is that the correct spelling, Catherine?) going again. Shortly after Christmas, I challenged the limits of our 250 lb bathroom scale - the springs groaned and the numbers bounced around left to right and landed on 249. Oy! I'm carting around a lot of baggage which is quite unnecessary not to say detrimental to myself and my family.

So, the walks in Shadow Bay Park have increased in their intensity and duration to the point where Diva is saying "Could you slow it down, Boss?" I'm wearing hiking boots to add to the resistance and using the primitive (sand) trails instead of the paved ones, and today - we add ankle weights.

Last Thursday, I took a big embarassing step in humility and ------- I joined Weight Watchers. My head was sweating as I stood in line as one full figured woman after another stepped on the scales during their weigh-in - I heard the voices in my head - "The door is ONLY 8 feet away. Maybe they won't see me if I bolt. Won't happen. I'm the only guy here. Are there any guys inside? Are the chairs in there reinforced?" "Next!" It was the woman with the high hair and multiple plastic surgeries. I stood frozen. "Next!" - "Hi. I'm new here." She looked at me as if to say "Like I couldn't figure that one out, Jaba." After 10 minutes of waiting in line and claiming victory over my deodorant, she pointed to some clipboards sitting on a radiator (I do believe it was the first radiator I had seen since moving to Florida) and barked "Fill out one of those." "Do I have to stand on line again when I'm finished?" "No. Just come back to me." "Oh, joy. Oh, rapture" I thought to myself as I hung my head and walked over past the line of ladies to the radiator.

After filling out the registration form (hate those things), I slinked back over to Fraulein Nazi Lady and fished out my credit card while she wrote out my weekly pass and mercilessly slammed a rubber stamp on some documents, totally missing one of them and leaving the imprint on the face of the folding table. "Step on the scale ....... 243" she announced to the room. Beads of salty sweat now stung my eyes. I looked at her and the image became distorted as if I was looking at her through a fish-eye lens. Her voice now slowed down and began taking on the characteristics of the demon voice in the movie "Ghost". "Somebody help me! I'm in a real life horror movie!" The woman with the pulled back face finished her 'Dance of the Rubber Stamp' and made the proclamation "There. You're finished. Welcome to Weight Watchers. You're going to have a lot of women mad at you. Men lose weight a lot faster than women." As she tried to smile while handing me my 'packet', her surgeries relocated her eyes to the back of her neck. I walked over to the door. "Oh, Mr Don, that door goes out to the parking lot." Time stopped as I took in the icy stares of the ladies in the room. "Yes. I know. I'll just go out here for a while and thaw out."

To be continued .........