Simply FLAB-bergasted

“Unsubscribe” has been the watchword of late around here.  I don’t remember signing up for those Groupon, Amazon, and ShopRunner e-mails, but if I did, it was to receive deals on merchandise I probably didn’t need.

That hasn’t been the case and I haven’t once been tempted to pull out the old credit card.  Mostly, they’ve been for discounted services: winery tours…  massages …  footbaths…  pole dancing lessons….

When Amazon sent out a deal on a fat-blasting boot camp,  I was intrigued by the words “fat-blasting,” but then stopped cold by the accompanying photo:

Seriously, do you see fat blast-worthy in that line of Bony Moronies?  Where are the chin rolls…?  The turkey necks…?   Shouldn’t there be some bellies hanging low in there?   I think my big toes are bigger than a couple of those wrists and I don’t consider my toes to have a weight problem.

Not that I can’t picture myself being an asset to the class.  They could use my upper arms as starting flags.   After that, the vision gets murky.

That lineup and starting position wouldn’t work for me.  Even if somebody goosed me from behind, I’d be stuck unless somebody pulled from the front.  I’m pretty sure my feet would have gone to sleep by then, so I still wouldn’t be able to move.

I can’t blame the foot napping on my age.  Once I attended a women’s meeting where we sat in a circle of chairs.  Until everyone stood for the benediction,  I had no idea that my left foot had gone night-night on me.  I domino-ed seven women before someone solid enough to stay upright stopped the chain reaction.

When our energetic granddog Ivy came to visit a couple of weeks ago, as usual, Dearly Beloved took her for long, brisk walks of several miles.  He’d come back talking about how invigorating it was.  Since thigh-exposure weather is almost here,  I decided to walk Ivy myself.  After all, Ivy’s energy is boundless enough for all of us.

The first day’s walk brought on shin splints.  It’s hard to believe that such a skinny-necked dog could pull that hard.

The next trek injured the Achilles tendon on my right foot.  I’m still limping.

I’m thinking that my exercise walks should include props like shopping carts, preferably in a store and not wandering around sidewalks, of course.   Boot camp is not for me, even if the supplied footwear is leather and zippered.

I’ve got a girl named Bony Moronie.  She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni. - Larry Williams

Oh BroJoe, Where Art Thou???

We thoroughly enjoyed the 666 barbecue of my earlier post.   In fact, I’d give it a 9-9-9 (with a nod to Herman Cain) on a scale of 10-10-10.

Doctors don’t recommend The Southern Diet.  In fact, they recommend moving our appetites to another warm locale, say, with The Mediterranean Diet.

My brother, the health nut, has always turned up his nose at Southern-fried anything.  When our mother used to want to go out for “fish fried so that it curls up at the edges,” BroJoe would shake his head in horror.   Just the word “grease” could set off his gag reflex.  So when he sent this photo, I was surprised that he’d even gone inside any place that served this stuff.  I couldn’t imagine him bellying up to the buffet line just to take a photo!

What th'...?

(Take a guess.  I know what they are, but not how they taste.  I’ve never eaten either.)

I wrote back to BroJoe that the one on the right used to be one of Mother’s favorite dishes.  As a joke, I asked which one he tried.

Astonishingly, he answered, “Both.  I ate them for lunch.  Now they’re eating me.”  

Not a 666, though the aftermath does sound beastly.  Nope, I’d say this one was an o o, possibly an o o o o.

“In God we trust. All others must pay when they order.” – Sign at Southern barbecue joint

(Okay, Connoisseurs,  the pans hold fried chicken livers and gizzards–livers on the left.  Expecting something else?  Nope, this is a chitlin-free blog.))

High Fibe!

It’s been a rough summer in the old back yard.

With more days of 100+ temps than days of rain, only the hardiest plants even bothered to hang around for August.  The shaded areas fared better, except for the hostas.  The slugs around here have had hosta breath all season and it’s been Chipmunk Central underneath the large hosta leaves.  I hear the little rodents chattering constantly as they do gawd-knows-what under the that leafy canopy.. probably boozing it up with the beer I put under there to kill the slugs.

It was supposed to be the summer of heirloom tomatoes– Pink Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter.  But, when we stayed at the beach for several weeks and I wasn’t around to tend them, Mortgage Lifter grew into a tangle of spindly, suckery stalks and a tomato horned worm stripped the Brandywine so bare that the poor plant tried to hide behind the basil in embarrassment.  I let it watch the worm execution as therapy.

Still, we have a staggering tomato crop.  Oh, not actual tomatoes–not so much as one little green one–but we now have at least a dozen tomato plants in very strange places all over the yard.  Whenever I remove one of those suckers which bisect the right angle between stalk and leafy branch, I hang onto it, sniffing its distinctive, summery scent as I walk around the garden.  When I see something that needs my attention, rather than discard the sucker,  I poke a hole in the ground there and insert the leafy sucker.  I think they’ve all taken root.

One bear hugs a small, scraggly spruce, another dangles from the flower basket on the side gate…others grow among the rose bushes or lean against the gladioli.  A couple even str-e-e-e-etch from underneath the deck, trying to reach sunlight from the gardenia cuttings I’m trying to root there.

Not a chance we’ll ever see a tomato from any of them.

My favorite variety of annual salvia is Lady in Red and though I couldn’t find any plants this year, what must be her white and coral-blossomed cousins are delighting the bumblebees and hummingbirds.

The Black and Blue perennial salvia which thrives in the heat is one of the reasons I walk around sniffing tomato leaves when I’m working outside.  That stinky salvia smells like flop sweat.  The bees and hummingbirds love it, so I planted some in the narrow bed between driveway and fence, to keep it from spoiling the sweeter scents of the garden, but every time I open the gate, the plant reaches out and rubs against me, depositing EAU DE FLOP SWEAT scent on my clothing.

Annual salvia.

After I wrote the previous paragraph and thought how stupid it was to keep a plant I dislike, I set aside my laptop and took my camera outside to take a before photo, with the intention of yanking out El Stinko.  I had the camera to my face when this happened:

Pardon the blur, but Mr. Hummer came out of nowhere and buzzed me, almost giving me my own outlay of flop sweat.  I got the message:  

Don’t even THINK about it, Sister!

The plant stays, I guess.

Another insect favorite, the perennial swamp sunflowers, have risen to the occasion–seven feet tall or more.  They’re the bees’ knees!

 Having lost our peaches and strawberries to the damnsquirrels and rabbits, I was determined that they weren’t getting the figs.  I assembled an impressive arsenal.  Plastic newspaper bags cut into strips flutter on the branches along with battered aluminum pie pans.  I even tossed plant clippings on the leaves to camouflage the ripening figs from a bird’s-eye view. Finally, I hung the wind chimes there to announce any critters willing to risk the climb.  Not pretty, but it has been effective.

Most mornings I’ve been out there before sunrise, plucking and eating.  Unwilling to risk waiting for full, soft and sugary ripeness, I have eaten most of them when they were still bland and firm.  It was the principle of the thing.

The thing about figs is that they’re high in vitamins, so much so that it’s said we could live on figs alone. Plato encouraged Greek athletes to eat them.  Latex–that oozy white stuff that leaks from the bottom when they’re perfectly ripe–is said to be good for infertility and breast milk production.

They’re thought to lower blood pressure and, even with 60% sugar, aid in weight loss.  That’s possibly because they are not a fruit for the faint-hearted.  One fig has as much fiber as three dried prunes.

When I went for my annual physical a couple of weeks ago, I learned that my blood pressure was too low and my sugar too high.  Yowsah!

I suppose I’m lucky not to be pregnant and lactating.

Just Desserts

Dearly Beloved took me out for Mother’s Day lunch.

It was a buffet.  A very fancy buffet.  The problem with fancy buffets is that I feel I must eat enough to justify the price.  Being of  English ancestry, I pay for it in pounds.

Dearly Beloved eats like Jack Spratt, no matter where he is.  No fat.   After salads and a main course plate that would make Dr. Weill nod approvingly, he sat back contentedly, ready to leave.

There was an entire room filled with desserts.  No way could I leave without having dessert.   Call me Mrs. Spratt.

HERS

Strawberry-rhubarb tart, Crème brûlée. tiramisu

Even so, I passed an assortment cheesecakes, pies, tarts, triple chocolate cakes, cookies, truffles, and other tempting morsels.  I realized after I returned to our table that I hadn’t selected anything chocolate.   Dang!

HIS

That's IT??? Two blackberries and a cookie?

WAIT!  That’s not just a regular old cookie, is it?  That’s a brownie cookie with an oozing chocolate center.   I missed those.

Mind if I have a bite?

Dyson Dog Syndome

Yesterday I was looking through some old photos and came across this one of Miss Piggy and The Late Howard Lee.

Our scanner isn’t working, so this is actually a picture of a picture.  It is also a prime illustration of how looks can be deceiving.

Notice how Howard looks like a slob, spread out over the floor like an Akita skin rug, while Miss Goody Four Paws sits daintily on the rug.  Oh, so wrong!   Howard had nobility and dignity.  Miss Piggy ?  No, no, no, not one drop of either.

The same dog that won’t step in dewy grass and doesn’t like to lie on the bare floor,  gets down and dirty in other situations.

I’ve noticed, during my recent forays on the Trail of Turds (our walks), that Miss Piggy’s droppings have been liberally peppered with little black flecks.  Perhaps I watch too much NCIS, but couldn’t this mean trouble?  My curiosity was aroused, not to mention my gag reflex.

While granddog goldendoodle Ivy was here, we fed them identical amounts of kibble, eliminated Miss P’s table food scraps in the interest of fairness, and cut back on dog treats.  Because Miss Piggy lives to eat, I feared that she would go into a depression but, perhaps because she saw that Ivy was getting the same treatment, she handled it pretty well, concentrating on stealing Ivy’s rawhide chews during that period.

A visit to the vet confirmed that this new diet regimen reaped big rewards.  She’d lost almost five pounds.  Our trimmed-down cocker spaniel now has more energy and takes longer walks, so we have continued to maintain that tough dietary stance.  (Okay, there was the Boar’s Head wiener incident, but that was only one bite…!)

What SHE adds to her diet is beyond our control and she is disgustingly creative about that.   After she raids the compost pile,  she trolls the yard, looking for any poop that strikes her fancy.  Dog poop…rabbit poop… bird poop… and probably chipmunk and squirrel poop, too, although I can’t be sure of that.  What does squirrel poop look like?  Do they bury it in some of those holes they dig?

Back to the peppery poop….  I asked Dearly Beloved if he’d noticed it.  He had… and was confident that he had identified it.

Thistle seeds.

Our  bird-brained pooch is eating bird seed!  The seeds fall out of the feeders and she scarfs them down the ol’ hatch before the birds or the squirrels can get to them.

Not that her behavior doesn’t have an upside….  For one thing,  she wants to go outside more, so she isn’t leaking in the house now.  Too, the damnsquirrels are discouraged by the slim pickings around the feeder.  Is that why, after years of ignoring our feeders, the bluebirds visit regularly in surprising numbers?

All this time, we’ve been thinking she should to earn her keep by doing something about those tree rats, like chasing them, but her handling of the situation seems to be working.  She sniffs around the yard, making her piggy noises as she vacuums everything into her gut.

Are we about to have a diverticular dog on our hands?

She doesn’t appear worried.  And her solution is working.

She may not be noble, but she’s certainly making a noble effort.

Licking the Problem

Oh, you are a witty bunch!  I’ve exhibited a bit of dog-like behavior myself, howling with laughter at the comments you left.  Munching on chocolate-covered cashews at the time,  I probably gave a pretty good imitation of that “sh*t eating grin” Texas Trailer Park Trash described.

KG Mom reads some fascinating books, so she could offer this insight:

Now here’s a totally scientific unemotional response–dogs do not digest all the food they eat, so there still are nutrients in the waste product.
I know this from having read a book some years ago about the race to the South Pole. Eh? you might be saying.
Amundsen (the Norwegian who “won”) knew this fact. He built their permanent housing in such a way that waste products ran down into a lower area and he counted on the dogs being able to recycle waste. It cut down on having to procure food in a barren place where supplies have to be hauled in.
So, GO Miss Piggy. Your mom may be upset with you, but Amundsen would have taken you to the South Pole.

(Gotta love Murr’s retort that she’d have taken him to the South Pole and left him there!)

Why do dogs eat poop? offers over 200,000 entries on Google.  Although I still have a few left to read ( insert another sh*t eating grin here), many mention poop being a digestive aid as a reason.

Adding pineapple to the dog’s food seems the most popular cure for the behavior.  Is it because it makes the poop unpalatable or because pineapple contains a digestive enzyme–bromelain–possibly eliminating  the pupster’s need to eat poop?  Garlic, canned pumpkin, or meat tenderizer are other additive suggestions.  While these may keep your dog from eating his own poop,  every other dog’s is fair game, not to mention fairly gamey.

Odd, isn’t it, that rabbit turds are a doggy delicacy, since rabbits are herbivores.  Would Mary’s Boston Terriers eat lettuce and clover?  Probably not going in, but coming out… ?  Yum!  Cat food contains more fat and protein,  so that litter box  is simply a  Dr. Atkins diet, Patti and Pam.

Momma dogs commonly eat their babies’ poop.  Miss Piggy’s  penchant may harken back to her former life as a puppy mill breeding dog.

There may not be an app for all that,  there is a name for it:  COPROPHAGIA.

Now… on to humans!  I mentioned the 200,000+ entries about dogs eating poop, but there are over two million links about poop infusions for humans.   Who knew???

A  life-threatening infection  frequently plaguing  hospitals–Clostridium Difficile–is a diarrhea or colitis so severe that it can result in death.  It affects over a quarter million Americans a year.  Forget the Immodium, this strain even resists antibiotics and standard treatments by physicians.

Enter the poop transplant.

Yes,  doctors collect poop from a healthy donor, blend it with a little brine and give it to the patient for a speedy cure.  One method of introduction is by enema, although there are other methods, too… like the woman who received her husband’s poo cocktail through a tube in her nose.   Truly a woman for whom the words  “…if you get my drift…!” are best left unsaid.

An article in The Scientist pointed out:

At the heart of these transplants are the trillions of microbes that inhabit the gut and have a profound impact on the host’s biology — for better or worse. As Australian gastroenterologist,  Thomas Borody,  jokingly puts it, “we are 10 percent human, 90 percent poo.”

I knew that some folks were full of it, but it sounds like all of us are.  Research is ongoing about other ways this treatment might be used–for instance, an infusion of skinny person poo into an obese person.  Eat sh*t or diet.

Folks, this is some serious sh*t!!!

The human treatments  developed as a result of earlier veterinary procedures.  Dogs simply eliminate the middle man.

The Kitchen Witch asked if Dearly Beloved had witnessed Miss Piggy’s latest infraction,  knowing how  he used to open the back door and yell loudly,  “Quit eating sh*t!!!!” Yes, he did witness her latest poo picnic and surprised me by yelling, instead, “Go ahead!  Clean up the whole yard!”

That seems to be the standard recommendation to prevent coprophagia:  Clean it up.  We fell behind in our efforts during the bad weather and the period our back yard was turned into a dog park.  It’s still a smorgasbord out there.

Enough of that sh*t.  It’s Valentine’s Day.  Hearts and flowers to all of you.   AA, Kim,  Jerry, Boomer, Heather, Knatolee… thank you for stopping by.  Have a piece of unlicked chocolate:

Chocolate-covered cashews.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

No buts about it!

And Happy Valentine’s Day to you, DB.  Love your guts out!

Weighing In

Congratulations to my fellow North Carolinians.  We managed to eat our way up onto the Top 10 Fattest States list this year.   Last year we were only No. 12, so it took no small effort to heft our fat asses up there.

Having observed my fellow citizens in swimsuits at the beach this summer, I am certain this was no fluke.  We deserved this distinction!

On the other hand,  South Carolina still outweighed us, coming in at No. 9,  even after they tightened their belts four notches.  Last year they were No. 5.  That seems to indicate that some of them really were hiking the Appalachian Trail last year while the rest were eating boiled peanuts and she-crab soup.

Mississippi and Alabama are the reigning champs, holding fast to the first and second spots to edge out their neighbors once again.  Southern states dominate the list.  Anyone needing to put on a few pounds might find I-69 and I-81 from New Orleans to Baltimore a trip worth taking.

Maybe we can’t educate, but we sure can masticate.

It seems just plain wrong, though, that Wisconsin didn’t make the Top 10 after adding Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers to the State Fair menu last year.  Maybe next year, Cheeseheads.

Georgia dropped from 14 to 17,  an amazing feat with Paula Deen restauranting, magazining, teeveeing, and advertising calories galore non-stop.  If the pounds she’s passed along were money, we’d all be rich.

Oregon shrank 10 spots.  Amazing!   Could anything short of mass exodus do that?  Nike is headquartered there.  Maybe they said “Just DO it” and everybody did.

If you’re going to New England and are sensitive about your weight, eat and go to the bathroom in Pennsylvania and don’t get out of the car again until you get to Maine.  (You can stop in New York if you’re desperate, I suppose.)

Colorado was No. 51, the leanest state.  It took me awhile to see how they managed that.  I don’t mean diet-wise, but where that extra state came into play.  Seems the measuring committee included the District of Columbia on the list.  DC came in at No. 49.  Members of Congress must have emptied their pockets before they weighed in.

Colorado looks pretty skinny on the map and I think I know why.

New Englanders eat fish and chips and clam chowder, NC folks eat barbecue, Virginians love their ham, and Cajun food is big in Louisiana.   So what do Coloradans eat?  I did a little research and two foods popped up on several sites:

Green chili rellenos smothered with green chili (which probably runs through like the Colorado River) and Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Just how badly do you want to be thin?

A Yard of This, A Yard of That…!

Warning:  the first few paragraphs are rated TS for the turd sensitive:

Dearly Beloved and Miss Piggy still haven’t kissed and made up.   Well, the kissing part definitely isn’t going to happen because The Issue– Miss Piggy’s taste for tootsie turds–has not abated.    We must stand outside with her during her “last call”  before bedtime to watch that it’s all output and no intake.  Otherwise, we run the risk of having her hide something disgusting in her cheeks again to bring inside for a late-night snack.

DB has now refers to her as “The Little S— Eater.”   Miss Piggy is unrepentant.   That dog has no shame.

I’m not talking a mere Daily Double; it’s closer to Daily Double Digits.  When we take her on her twice-daily walks, we carry bagS.  There aren’t wimpy dumps.  A Great Dane would be proud of our fat little cocker’s piles.

The pricey,  prescription-only,  high-fiber, weight-control dog food we feed her (Hill’s WD) is the gift that keeps on giving.  DB says he’s not sure how to count her movements.  If she poops, eats it, then poops again,  does that count as one or two? At what point does it become poop neutral in the count?  We need to be accurate if we’re going for a mention in Ripley’s.

I now return you to our regular G-rated programming:

This week it’s springtime, but only a week or so ago we had snow in NC.  One day it snowed for almost 24 hours, but since the temperature hovered at 34 degrees, there was no accumulation when I went out with her at bedtime.

The next morning I looked out the sunroom window and our yard was still bare.  When I stood at the kitchen sink filling the teakettle a few minutes later, though, I saw a covering of snow on our neighbor’s back yard.

The yard on our left glistened with a thin layer of white, too.  Weird.

I looked out the sunroom window again.   Nothing except muddy green, but beyond the big magnolia tree, our back neighbors’ property glistened through the chain-link fence.  Take a look at the picture I took from the sunroom window.  That’s not a pond back there, that’s their yard.  Their snow-covered yard.

You know what they say about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence?  That’s us!   WE are the sunny side of the fence!

Oh, the headiness of realizing our house is the center of the universe!

Reality check:  Maybe it’s because dog poop is a heat conductor.

(sigh) Hand me that snow shovel.

It won’t be snow I’m shoveling.

The Muncher

Calendarphobia

I suffer from calendarphobia.

It manifested itself when I bought a calendar from Office Depot instead of the bookstore.  That meant my week began on Monday with Sunday tacked on at the end, sharing a square with Saturday.  It seemed logical enough, but my brain wouldn’t make the adjustment.  When I wrote down appointments, my brain counted squares instead of reading the day, so I’d write it in the wrong place, thereby showing up a day late for appointments.

I have now reverted to the calendars with Sunday at the beginning of the week.

Six months ago when I went to the doctor, she took issue with my exercise schedule (picture it written in the little triangle on Sundays) and wasn’t impressed with my weight, either.   (Please don’t try to picture that at all!)   She expected an improvement by my January appointment.

I’ve been dreading that appointment for days.  Even though I know I’ve lost a little weight, that may or may not show up on the scales. We’re talking numbers I can show on one hand here and they can be distorted by things like  fluid retention,  constipation…  you get the drift.  (Oh, add “gas” to the list.)

My brain has been stressing for days about the looming appointment,  telling me,  “ACK!!  Weigh-in on Tuesday!” and sending me into panic mode.

Panic mode is …well… constipating.   All day yesterday I swallowed Citrucel fiber pills with glasses of water, hoping for a record BM.  It didn’t happen.

Last night I didn’t have anything to eat or drink after midnight (as if we all drive through Wendy’s at 3 AM!) and set the alarm for 6:30 AM.  My doctor has moved to the suburbs, so what used to be a five-minute drive now takes 30.  I made it without so much as a cup of coffee, with ten minutes to spare.  As  I sat in the car until 8, my stomach began rumbling,  letting me know that the fiber pills had been noted and processed.

The notice indicated that the train would be coming through about 8:30 AM.

I figured that was about the time my doctor would be sticking her finger up my rear end to check for polyps.

Oh, dear gawd. . . !

There was no bathroom in the waiting room.  You may know that I have a history with doctor’s office bathrooms.   I waited while the woman ahead of me checked in.  The receptionist finally looked at me and asked, “Do you have an appointment?”

Of course.

She could not find my name on her appointment sheet.   She looked at my record and informed me that my appointment isn’t until Thursday.

Ducky.  Calendarphobia recurrence.  I must not have put that last loop on the 8 when I posted it in my brain.  I was so sure, I hadn’t even looked at the calendar.

By that time it was 8:10.  I figured I had about 20 good minutes.

“Could you do my bloodwork now so that I won’t have to fast again on Thursday?”

She shook her head regretfully. “No, because I don’t have the lab order yet.”

Ordinarily, I might have pushed that a little, but the clock was ticking.  If I hurried, I could get to a supermarket for pears, broccoli, and more fiber pills before  I broke into a cold sweat.   Hey, when you’re planning something–and I’ve got two days here– might as well dream BIG.   Dreaming about poop is not something I do, generally, but hey…!

Somebody alert Ripley’s, please.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

I’m one of those people who enters the codes from my Diet Cokes into an My Coke Rewards account.  I do it because they include some good causes to which points may be donated.  They’ve recently added the American Red Cross Haiti Relief as an option and they’ll donate two points for every point we do.

Poochie Poo Chi

Since it’s cold everywhere, I won’t whine about the weather.   During our winters in the Midwest, we wished for January days like these.   Dearly Beloved would go cross-country skiing and come back exhilarated and sweaty.  I stayed home by the fire.

Here in North Carolina, he takes brisk walks in this cold weather and comes back exhilarated and sweaty.   I stay home by the fire.

Today, however, I donned my Minnesota coat and took Miss Piggy for a walk. This coat means business– some kind of silky suede-y fabric outside, a fake fur kind of lining, hooded, ankle-length, all black.

While DB was taking down the outside decorations the other day, darned if Miss Piggy didn’t eat more artificial berries off a wreath.  When she did that before Christmas we worried, but the only effect was parti-poop for the next few days.   She hates walking in cold weather, but we’re trying to keep her moving in more ways than one.   More accurately,  DB walks her, but since I’ve been inside for days,  I donned my Nanuck Goth coat and volunteered for the afternoon shift.

Miss P and I headed down the sidewalk at a fairly brisk pace.  There weren’t any other walkers in sight.

I heard a noise almost immediately.  Ah, nature!  Birds?  Squirrel chatter?  I looked into the trees, thinking I’d see the source.  Nothing.

Perplexed, I stopped for a minute to look around.  The noise stopped, too.  Instantly, I had a terrible thought:

Oh, puh-lease, don’t let that racket be my thighs!!!!

I resumed walking.  The noise began again, too.

NIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTMARRRRRRE!!!

I walked a few blocks listening to that horrifying rasp, hoping it was at least coming from the bottoms of my jeans and not crotch territory.  I thought of The Kitchen Witch‘s Shrink My Ass Month recipes and vowed to print and try every one of them.

Swish…swish…swish.

Every year around birthday time I do a self-assessment, note the problems, then do nothing about them.  Swishing, however, is a serious problem.  I’ve already realized  that my knees aren’t what they used to be.  Looks like it’s crunch time!

(When I went to the movie last week and made my obligatory trip to the restroom, I could have sworn they’d replaced their toilet with one from a kindergarten supply store.  Surely, it hasn’t always been that low!  I creaked going down and grunted coming up.  The bathroom at that theater is on the second floor.  There is a small restroom on the first floor with a taller toilet, but it has a sign taped to the door designating it for people who can’t go up and down stairs.  I’m fine on stairs; I simply have trouble going up and down commodes.)

I took Miss Piggy (and my singing thighs) an extra couple of blocks this afternoon, berating myself with every step.  I have a physical later in the month and I’d rather have a shot than step on those scales.

Miss Piggy did her colorful poop and I stopped to pick it up, so the noise stopped too.  BUT, when I reached in my coat pocket to pull out a bag, I thought I heard it briefly.

Wait a minute! I wasn’t walking, so it couldn’t be my jeans!

We resumed our walk.  I began to swing my arm a bit slower since I now toted the load Miss Piggy had been carrying earlier.  The noise changed its rhythm, too.

Holy moly , it wasn’t my thighs, it was my COAT!  Just the sleeve fabric rubbing against the body of the coat as I moved my arm!  Swish, swish! Such a lovely song!

Even so, it wouldn’t hurt for me to participate in Shrink my Ass month.  Miss Piggy needs to lose weight, too, and is already on a weight control dog food.  If we keep the walks going in this cold weather,  we’ll be sleek in time for the Easter bunny’s chocolate eggs.

I checked my e-mails later and found further inspiration.  Friend Birdie (who also hates exercise) had sent me an exercise video.   Poo Chi, anyone?