No, I'm not Dead

Yesterday I went to the doctor--my allergy specialist--and he said he was delighted at how well I was coming along in my recovery. I didn't share his enthusiasm because of what the scales revealed at my weigh-in. Oh, I was happy that my reaction to Indiana's blistering soup of allergens appears to be less volatile than it was at this time last year, and I definitely am feeling a return of my 'oomph,' but I can't believe how much my weight has crept up.

Of course, for a year or more I haven't been able to breathe so my activity level has been very limited. I've had to make myself, with enormous effort, do the tasks that absolutely had to be done. My Holiday party shows were gruesome. I don't think my audiences could tell anything was amiss, but from my end I was in very bad shape.

Sp the news is now that I more or less have established some control over my eating behaviors, today I went over to the fitness center for the first time in over a year. I walked on the treadmill for 25 minutes, then worked with weights for another 20 minutes or so. I would have swam for a while but the pool was congested with a conglomerate throng of oleaginous single moms with their herds of kids in tow; or possibly nannies or housekeeper tending their runny-nosed charges. I don't know--at any rate, the pool was a simmering broth of germ-exuding desease vectors, no fit habitat for a convalescing rake such as myself. So tomorrow I'll try to arrive earlier.

My arrival today was delayed a good hour and a half simply because I couldn't locate the electronic swipey-card that allows us residents entrance to the fitness center (my apartments actually has a very good fitness center). I searched everywhere for it, up to and including decluttering my car (yes I was that goddamned determined) before I had an Eureka moment and figured out one of the cats--spawns of Satan--probably extracted it from my gym bag while the bag was next to the bed. Sure enough, I found the swipey-card next to the bed beneath a pile of used t-shirts, comic books, Subway sandwich wrappers, and mismatched socks. So now, completely accessorized, my plan was complete, better late than never. These cats make my life interesting. When I got out of the shower I was almost suffocated because they had slept on my favorite large towel and deposited several enormous wads of cat hair all over it, which zeroed in on my nostrils and covered my face like one of those face-huggers from the movie Aliens.

But despite these obstacles I completed a rudimentary workout, although a bit woebegone at how out of shape I've become I think I'll make up for lost time fairly quickly. It's a start.