For someone who's dedicating a year-long experiment to transformation, I sure as hell hate change.
This is not a news flash. I mean, we are talking about someone who pitches a fit every time her mother threatens to change any single element of Thanksgiving dinner. (I'll never forget the year she added nuts to the stuffing ... blasphemy!) I'd like to blame my slavish love of routine and tradition on the fact that I'm a Taurus, but I suppose there might be more to it than that.
You can imagine my dismay, then, when George and I walked into our favorite local bowling haunt and realized the entire place had been given a massive facelift.
The whole reason we always went to the All Star Lanes was its old-fashioned '50s charm. It was a true joint, with rickety tables, overhead table lights to help you keep score by hand, sketchy lanes with years of wax buildup, and plain facades above the pins.
So much for charm. Today's All-Star Lanes has automatic scoring, fancy new lanes, and patriotic facades that were apparently stolen from a George W. Bush wet dream. There's a TV screen above every lane, where the score is recorded, and even worse, the screen editorializes after every frame. An exploding bomb means you got your spare. A squadron of ghostly pins rushing out at you means you didn't. The screen also suggests where your ball should be placed if you want to get your spare (Coaching? Is that even fair?). Halfway through the first game, I wanted to throw my ball right through the fucking picture tube.
A few beers helped ease my pain. So did George's bowling, which got particularly exciting in the second game. The lanky Buckeye managed five strikes in a row - five!! It was quite the stellar performance. I, of course, was helping the cause by loaning out my ju-ju - that's the only excuse I can find for my pathetic score of 86 (my high of the day was 90. I would have broken 100 in the third game if our time hadn't run out in the 8th frame ...)
Still, I missed being able to write my own strike Xs and color in my own spare triangles. I missed the waxy buildup. I missed the old-school simplicity the lanes used to offer. I missed the way it was.
(Okay, now prepare yourselves for a rough transition ...)
I like to think, however, that I wouldn't miss the way I was if I could just lose some fucking weight. I dropped another pound this week, but one pound isn't going to cut it. Not if I want this experiment to be a true success.
And not if I want to kick Jackie's ass in our three week bet, which ends next week. Luckily, Jackie is also in a tight spot - she's lost 2-1/2 pounds in two weeks, exactly half of what she needs to lose in order to win or break even.
Can I lose five pounds in seven days? I dunno. Not likely. Possible, but not likely.
This weight thing is killing me. It's hard. And I suck at it. I think I need a mental makeover.
Maybe I should call the folks at All-Star Lanes.
George scores five strikes in a row! It would have been way cooler, however, if he could have written all those Xs himself ...
5 comments:
beer might ease the bowling pain, but won't help the weight loss at all.. :)
gotta agree with the poster above. your body burns alcohol before it burns fat. if you're gonna drink, go for red wine or vodka & soda. at least you've eliminated the carbs that way.
You've put your finger on an interesting conflict in this post. You don't like change, you like the safety of the familiar, yet something inside you is driving you to seek change. This is sitting in the context that change is inevitable; nothing ever stays the same.
How do you resolve that conflict and just move on, living day-by-day?
M
For what it's worth, I lost almost 10 % of my body weight over the course of a year when I started seeing someone who doesn't drink. Although I would still have the occasional glass of wine, I was consuming a lot less alcohol than I had in the past, and still eating as much as I had before. Alcohol (even wine, sorry) has a lot o' calories, and cutting it mostly out of your diet might do you a lot of good.
Bowling sober? Jesus Christ on a swizzle stick, are you people high?
Post a Comment