Operation Miniskirt: -37.2 lbs.
Mental State: Relief. I've dropped 6.2 lbs. since Monday morning. Don't look so shocked. It's normal. I've been drinking water like I live in the Sahara, and I'm thinking of changing my name to Fountain Girl.
In her own spurt of Operation: Flo-Jo In A Mini, my sister made a big ticket purchase, and now there's a huge mother of a treadmill in our basement. I swear to all that is holy, the thing is so scary and creature-like with it's dark and stoic console and it's flashing lights that glare at me whenever I pass, I'm afraid it's going to rise up and attack us in the night if we don't use it to full capacity.
In an effort to turn my pasty twin sticks of obesity into lean, golden uberlimbs from heaven, I decided to approach the monster last night. Naturally, I loaded up with the appropriate weapons.
Water bottle? Check.
Diskman? Check.
Property of British Airways In-flight Entertainment headphones? Check.
I would conquer the monster!
And I was off... trying to make the bloody thing work! Oh, don't look at me like that. I read the instructions fully before trying to operate the machinery. Well, not so much read as casually perused. Oh ALL RIGHT! I fanned my face with them once while I flipped the pages under my thumb, and then placed them back in the handy-dandy bookrack that's built into the console. (How much do I love that book rack? How cool is that? Finally, I can read without bumping into walls.) Confident, I started pressing buttons. Remarkably, I retained enough sense to keep my feet on the side tracks, starting the belt before actually starting to walk. And because I'm me, I checked twice to make sure that the emergency stop thingy was firmly attached to my person. I don't even want to think of what could happen there...
Ok. Ready to roll! At first, I couldn't get beyond a crawl, walking in such slow motion that the Little Man in my head to who conducts my internal soundtrack readied the orchestra, and lead them in a resounding version of the theme to Chariots of Fire. I started to see everything through stop-motion photography; buds bloomed into full blown blossoms right in front of my eyes, and the two feet of densely packed snow that covered one of the basement windows melted completely away.
"Oh, I can handle more than this," thought I, the Wonder Woman of the new millennium. Press a button here, turn a knob there, and suddenly the Little Man signals the orchestra to stop. He turns around and faces my Internal Audience to yell, "Ruuun, Forrest! Ruuuunn!" My life flashed before my eyes, my Discman started to skip, smoke started coming out of my trainers, and I jabbed fingers randomly at the monster's gleaming face, trying to get the damn thing to stop before I bloody killed myself!
Eventually, I settled into a nice quick trot, enough to work up a lovely pleasant glow. After half an hour, I stepped off, satisfied that I had, if not conquered, then at least tamed the monster. I glanced in a mirror; my crimson highlights were damp with perspiration, and for a brief moment, I felt like Franka Potente in Run Lola Run.
Which is kind of a cool, don't you think?
7 comments so far