Don't Try This at Home

So last Saturday night, appropos of nothing (I was bored and hungry, what the hell), I decided to see me some celebrity wang. You know, kick it off with Ewan McGregor, get a taste of Viggo Mortenson, maybe a shot or two of Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. So far, so good. Then I was scrolling through the latest on PerezHilton.com and saw some pics of Zack Efron, of whom Mr. Hilton seemed to be enamored.

Shockingly, I haven't seen High School Musical so I didn't know who the hell this Zack was, but he had the requisite dark hair/light eyes combo that sets my lizard brain a thumpin, so I innocently googled his dick.

Before I could say, "Nice one," my computer had been infested with the latest high-tech worm, virus, whatever they call it, and after a veritable Fourth of July fireworks display of pop-ups, my computer ground to a huffing, puffing death.

What follows can only be called computis interruptus, a series of attempts to turn off, restart, scan for viruses, etc etc etc., all the friggin night long. Finally, by church-going time on Sunday, my beloved PC coughed, said, "I'm dumping all memory now," and joined HAL in the cyberinfinite. Glug glug glug.

Crap.

I turned off my cable a month ago, I'm staying up late now so my sleep is more "hygenic," I'm not eating very much, my federal agency is off-line pending a multi-billion-dollar law suit so I can't slake my thirst at work, and there's only so much brushing my cat can take - I NEED THE INTERNET! I NEED MY PC! MUST HAVE! MUST HAVE!

Luckily for me, my friend Ande did some major Craig's List scanning today and found me a super bargain - well, I hope it turns out to be a bargain when all is said and done. The good news is, I'm back up and running, with a much faster, brand new PC some IT guy just sold me for three hundred can't-really-afford-it bucks.

Please, dear CyberGod, I've learned my lesson: celebrity schlong will do you wrong.

A Night in the Lab

I got to the sleep lab at 8:30 the night before Thanksgiving, and the beautiful Patrick greeted me at the back door. A few minutes later I was sitting in my pajamas on a chair while Patrick and Linda (also beautiful) affixed what felt like hundreds of electrodes to my body. I made small talk, cracked sleep-lab-appropriate jokes, and was finally taken to the bedroom, tastefully done in 90's Marriott. I got into bed, being careful not to tangle myself in the wires. Patrick connected a monitor to my thumb, shoved some tubes up my nose, and bid me goodnight. Linda came in, gave me some suggestions about visualizations, and then with a huge Mommielike smile said good night, turned off the light and closed the door. I lay there, trussed like the turkey I would be eating the next day, staring at the infrared camera aimed at me, and tried desperately to sleep. I learned later it was almost three hours later before I first slept.



All through the night various electrodes and tubes came loose, which necessitated darling Patrick to come into the room and try to reaffix them. It was very nice to suddenly have a sweet young lab tech hovering over my face, whispering to me, and adjusting things. If it weren't for the tangle of wires I would've enjoyed it.


I finally couldn't stand lying in the same position anymore, and heaved onto my side, causing all hell to break loose, along with about half the wires. Where the hell is the wireless technology for this?


It was too damned hot. The bed was too pillowtop/memoryfoam comfortable, if you know what I mean. The sensation of being filmed and watched and hovered over completely killed any chance I had to really sleep. Plus I had a John Meyer song repeating ad nauseum in my head ("I want to run through the halls of my high school , I wanna scream at the top of my lungs. . .") And so it went, interminably, until I was awakened at 6:30 am and told the experiment was completed.


I had all the electrodes ripped from my hairy parts, got dressed, and went to the master control room where I joined delicious Patrick, who by then was quite tired (the irony of working in a sleep lab is that you're exhausted all the time because you're up all night monitoring sleeping people). He showed me my "test" on a huge monitor, the screen striped like an american flag with feedback bars, and in the corner the video of me in bed. Each bar represented a breathing pattern or a heartbeat or a teeth-grinding pressure, etc. He fast-forwarded through until when I finally fell asleep, the little picture of me in the corner frenetically tossing and turning.


He showed me that, within a second or two of falling asleep, I stop breathing, and am reawakened by the effort to breathe again, 10 seconds or 20 seconds, even 30 seconds or more after I stop breathing. Then I lay there for a minute until I fall asleep again, and repeat the pattern. Hundreds of times. Getting absolutely no value from my sleep. Dropping my state of oxygenation in my body from the normal 99% to as low as 70%. Patrick said he really felt for me, can understand why I'm so tired all the time, why I wake up feeling more exhausted than I felt going to bed, why I'm addicted to coffee. He admitted he wanted to rush in and hook me up to an oxygen tank to help me breathe, he was so worried for me. Aww. Lab lovespeak.

So it's official - I have severe sleep apnea. I'll be returning to the lab very soon to test-run a PAP (positive air pressure) machine, which appears to be a miracle cure for peeps like me.

In a post-test questionnaire, Patrick asked me how I felt, and I said that, honestly, I was really delighted because now I have the potential to sleep well again, and that's something I've been (day)dreaming about for a long time. It would be such a vacation for me, to go to sleep and stay asleep, to wake up feeling refreshed. OMG, I'm sooooooooooo ready!!

Gobble Gobble Everyone!

THANKSGIVING GREETINGS to everyone out there in cyberspace!

I'm going into the sleep disorder lab tonight, so if my post-lab blog entries are somehow dull, listless, shallow and boring, I've probably been body-snatched by a pod. So please report it to the proper authorities (I'd guess we're talking federal violation here) and sleep tight knowing that, before I was depersonalized, I loved all of you and appreciated you. I am truly blessed and I am truly grateful for my beautiful, wondrous, glorious cybergalpals Sheila and Alex and Beth and Emily and Jackie and Tracey --- RAH RAH CISS BOOM BAH, GOBBLE GOBBLE HEIDY HO!!

Feeling or feeding - that is the question

I'm about halfway through an intense workbook my life coach recommended to me called The Food and Feelings Workbook, by a psychotherapist named Karen Koenig, and it's been a huge challenge to stay with it. Not because I don't completely agree with what she's saying; I do. Completely. It's just that the challenge of it is that, with each activity, I need to revisit my old non-felt feelings, feelings that were so hard to contend with at the time they occurred that I chose instead to eat.

Well, it's quite a list and it makes for an exhausting weekend to exhume some of these experiences and try to understand what the emotion was trying to tell me before I scrambled the lines of communication with coma-inducing food.

Koenig asks, "Are you drawn toward yummy when you're feeling crummy?" I've heard the expression, "It's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you," and scoffed. Hell, it's what I'm eating! But I reach for the food as a panacea for all that ails me. Koenig's point is that people who use (and refuse) food to contend with uncomfortable emotions need to start handling feelings the "normal" way, or else nothing will change, no matter how strenuously one diets or exercises, because the food-equals-emotional-comfort equasion will git ya every time. I know this is true. I also accept that I'm about 12 when it comes to emotional maturity.

Sometimes someone will say something hurtful to me and it'll take me hours of thinking about it before I finally come to the conclusion, "Hey, I'm pissed!" The pure feeling doesn't have a chance because it's intellectualized to death, while I use both hands to stuff my face in an effort to avoid the feeling from bubbling up. I eat food the same way some smokers smoke, to keep at bay a sense of free-floating anxiety/guilt/loneliness/shame that seems to be simmering always in my heart, in every cell of my body, like a low-grade fever.

Although I certainly can point to my parents' ways of coping with emotion (Dad simply discounted them and trudged on, while Mom slid down the food/shame/depression cycle) to discover the genesis of my own way, it was my mother's death when I was 17 that kicked everything into high gear. It just hurt too much. It just became the only way I could get through the day, with a surruptitious double cheeseburger and a boysenberry shake, or a chef's salad drenched in 1000 island dressing. I got all A's my senior year of high school. I also gained 100 pounds, going from a husky 220 to a soft, billowy Pillsbury Boyish 320 by graduation.

And all the time the relatives kept saying things like, "Steve's doing fine; I don't know how he does it; smiling all the time and getting good grades." I was learning how to be the jolly fat man, the happy, chuckly guy who acted as if all was well, when inside the depths of feeling were so painful as to require thunder, lightning and the very earth cracking open.

Making the connection to overeat was very simple - I felt hollow inside, my heart had broken and there was this huge space inside me, and food may not have filled it but it comforted me. My Dad's way of dealing with Mom's death was to pull a curtain around it, not talk about it, not talk about her, until she was an unacknowledged spectre in the house. My grandparents, who lived next door and who missed their daughter intensely, started and ended each sentence with, "Cookie always said . . . " and ". . . . according to Cookie." That was her nickname. I bounced between the two extremes, sometimes eating an early supper at Grandma's (where talk was all about how much Cookie loved string beans) and joining my dad for dinner later in the evening (eaten in silence).

I could've used some counseling but I was too busy being fine that it never occurred to anyone to offer it or suggest it, not the teachers at school or concerned aunts. It was a different era; you only got psychological help if you were crazy. I wasn't crazy; I was just utterly sad.

Now here I am, a grown man of 49, still mulling over the feelings I had 32 years ago, because they never got a chance to be fully felt back then.

I keep picturing a huge tank, a million gallons big, with a film of sulphuric acid coating the bottom. The only thing I ever did was to stuff cotton balls one by one into the tank, each in turn soaking in the acid but not doing anything about dissipating it. Now the tank is filled with acid-soaked cotton balls, placed there one by one over the years, a failed attempt to keep the acid from burning. The thing is, I'm out of cotton balls now. There's only one thing to do, and that's send in the Hazmat team. It would've been easier to clean up the acid when it was spilled to begin with, had I known how to do it. But now I'm learning how.

And the only reason I don't reach for the butter pecan ice cream is there's none in the house.

My Dad

I've told some stories on this blog about some of the things my Dad said and did, especially about his utter insensitivity to my mother's weight problem (and my own). There have been times when I hated him. He was judgmental, pessimistic, and distant by nature and by kneejerk reaction. The first thing out of his mouth would be a huge "NO you shouldn't!" no matter what great half-baked idea I floated.

But this was the thing about my dad - he would eventually come around. Sometimes 180 degrees in an hour; maybe it would take a week or two. It was just his depression-era, dustbowl Kansas, fatherless upbringing coming to the fore, always ready to rain on any parade that happened to be passing by at the moment. Stubborn. Sure. Cautious. To my frequent frustration and fury. And yet - -

He spent a lifetime reading books about wide-ranging mystical and spiritual subjects; meditated daily; did the course in miracles; went monthly to a channeler who claimed to be a spirit entity 4000 years old; knew all of the Krisnamurti and Joseph Campbell texts backwards and forwards; studied comparative religions and ideologies; built a pyramid out of copper tubing and placed it over his purified water supply; and wrote a daily journal entry, typed, for over 45 years.

He grew the most beautiful vegetables and flowers, all organically, all by himself, on the 5-acre property he bought when he was well into his 70's. In the middle of the property, which was in the middle of an island in Puget Sound, he built his dream house with soaring ceilings of whitewashed cedar planks and a pot-bellied stove in the center that was stoked with alderwood from trees felled to make room for the house (actually, he and I designed the house for years, fiddling with graph paper every time we came together, then when he found the property, he hired two ex-Rashnishis to build it while he served as the site cleaner-upper; he said that if you wanted to hire people with good work ethics, look no further than ex-Rashnishis). His vegetables were pieces of art and his psychedelically colored dahlias were famous for miles around.

He stank at painting but kept at it, getting out the oils every year or so and trying his hand at a landscape or two before packing them all back in their little wooden crates. To him, I was amazingly talented and artistic and musical, so different from the person he was.

He fell in love with a dog that was the light of his life the last 13 years he was alive, and when one day I asked him if he ever regretted denying me a dog when I was growing up, he teared up and said, "Son, I regret it with all my heart."

He sadly, dejectedly took the news of my coming out (he was already about 80), grappled with it for about a week, and in the depth of his despair called his best friend Forrest, who basically said, "What the hell are you talking about, Geoff? Steve is a good and loving son. Get a grip." And he did. He called me and said, "Son, I love you and I always will and that will never change." A few years later he told me had had been molested daily by the neighbor man for about six months when he was seven years old. On the way to and from school. The man moved away and the abuse ended. He had never told anyone. He finally told me because we were having this frank discussion about gay sex, and I said something like, "Just because you have gay sex doesn't make you gay." He agreed with me, told me calmly about his victimization, and that was the end of it. He had kept that secret for 73 years. There's not a picture of him smiling from the time he was seven until his high school graduation ten years later.

He would drive an extra ten miles to save 8 cents on dishwashing liquid, but he ALWAYS came to my aid financially when I needed it, which was infrequent, still . . . an unexpected dentist bill or a blown engine, or the time I lost my wallet in Europe - he'd be there, always with a word or two about preparing for a rainy day, but he was there. Helping. Supporting. Getting me through it.

He somehow accepted that I needed to do the foolish, foolhardy thing of leaving the federal government after 15 years of service, walk away from all that security and benefits. And he had had a stellar Naval career, serving as a Judge Advocate General (JAG, like the television series, which he loved) and a courts martial judge, retiring as a Captain with 31 years of service, and then living for another 30 years on the financial cushion of federal retirement payments. My snubbing of the cushy perch I had at the Justice Department, halfway through a career about which he was extremely proud, was very hard to swallow. But he somehow let himself be persuaded that it was the right thing for me to do. Oh God, how he dealt with that, I just don't know, it was so against his instinct for safety, security, financial support. And the fact that I chose to "recover" from my federal career by floating in a pool in Palm Springs for 18 months, financed by my cashed-out pension, well, he just couldn't understand, but he accepted it. At age 83. Because he believed in me.

He gave my mom the gentlest, most loving and respectful care in the last months of her life, and I will never know a person who could be so compassionate, the compassion welling up out of his shoulds and don'ts, his knee-jerk reactionary ways, until his sweetness pushed through and he was the loving little boy he was before the dust storms hit and the world became a sepia-toned hard hard place.

He never lied and he never cheated and he never stole. He was a man of great character who held onto his hopefulness somehow, his belief that there could be a better way to live a life.

For two years he dealt uncomplainingly with the ravages of a failing body, with the indignity of feed tubes and stomas and catheters, in constant pain, with no real pleasures left except maybe a drive through the countryside or his dog snuggled beside him in the recliner. He called it "dying by inches," and he hated it, but he gritted his teeth and beared it, like he had done with every challenge to ever come his way. "Life is a series of bitter disappointments, Son," he said to me once, and it was like a knife through my heart, because I knew that I had been the cause of some of those disappointments he had suffered. But it was the way he saw the world.

The book he was reading when he died in my arms, five years ago today, was, "How to Be Happy." He was about halfway through the book.

I do believe he found his happiness at last.

I love you, Dad. I miss you.

Mister Sandman, Bring Me a Dream

In anticipation of my visit to the "Chamber of Nightmares" aka the sleep disorder center, the good doctor in charge sent me a copy of his book on sleep hygiene (to be billed later at $10 if I decide to keep it - he couldn't throw it in under the $800 fee?). But it's been a help.

Apparently, We-who-don't-sleep have picked up a number of bad habits along the way which exacerbate the sleeplessness, of course. Like going to bed at 7:30 pm because we're hoping to finally catch up on our sleep, but instead lay around all night not sleeping. Or clock-watching. This is a big one of mine. Wake up, look at the clock, it's 2:45 am, that means I have less than 4 hours to go - - - fall asleep twenty minutes later, wake up, look at the clock, it's 3:56 am, just 2 1/2 hours to go - - - fall asleep, wake up, look at the clock, it's 5:48 am, 42 more minutes . . . . . and so on.

According to the doc, clock watching is an "alert" behavior - your brain wakes up to do it, because looking at the clock usually precedes action of some type - call your mom, go to lunch, leave for work, catch the plane. So all those clock-looking moments bring you fully awake, a flat no-no in the bedroom. Reading an interesting book - potential "alert" behavior - no-no. Watching TV - blurs the clear demarcation between awake and asleep - no-no. Lying around for hours getting some rest, if not sleep - no-no, because the poor body doesn't understand that your intention really is to sleep, not lie around.

The other bad sleep hygiene thing us non-sleepers usually exhibit is not knowing the difference between tired and sleepy anymore. We're tired all the time, natch, because we don't sleep, but we're not really sleepy. And the doc says, whatever you do, don't go to bed when all you are is tired. WAIT until you're sleepy, even if it's 2 in the morning or whatever, because then the "push" of sleepiness will carry you off to dreamland.

So I did a little sleep hygiene these last couple of nights - turned the clock to the wall, took the TV out of my bedroom, filled the bookshelf next to my bed with books I've read a hundred times before or more, and waited until I was sleepy to go to bed. Which means I've gone to bed around 11:30 or so, an hour or two later than I usually totter off to bed. And here's the thing: yes, I seem to be getting more quality sleep! Hooray!! But the time I used to spend lying around I now need to be doing something, and I stopped cable TV a few weeks ago because I was wasting too much time on drastic surgery reality series watchin', so I've got hours and hours and HOURS to fill now in the evenings. This probably sounds like bliss to some, and yes, I love to read and surf the net and brush my cat and make turkey soup, but I'm going crazy in this apartment!

I'm three days into my schedule and, honestly, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and - geeeesh - Go out! Get a hobby! Go swimming! Trim my nosehair! Do laundry! Sweep out the garage! Go see a - gasp - movie! FLOSS, fer gawdsake!

No question, if' I'm gonna be up sooooo late every evening, I need to expand my world a bit.

This is a good thing, y'all.

Whew!!!

Got my various test results and, as the nurse practitioner said, "People would die for your numbers." Odd thing to say, but still, I'm a 49-year-old, 450-pound man who hasn't gone to the doctor in 12 years, and this is what they told me today:

Cholesterol - 79. Seventy nine! Impossible.

BP - 130/80. A week ago it was 165/110 and I've been on low-dose meds for one week. And now it's in the normal range. With my arm as big around as a football.

Triglycerides - normal.

Lung capacity - greater than normal.

Circulation - normal.

Liver and kidney function - normal.

Diabetes - no. Not even borderline.

Then they strapped me to the ECG and - absolutely normal.

It's very weird, because any medical professional would tell you that, as a profoundly morbidly obese man with a huge round belly, it was highly likely I was at death's door, certainly just moments from a stroke or heart attack, and certainly suffering from sky high cholesterol, BP and full-on diabetes. Because fat is so damned unhealthy for you. That's why they call it morbidly obese, not cheerfully chubby.

So what do I attribute such encouraging results? Well, there's four things that come to mind.

(1) They gave me some other guy's results. I actually started to doubt it could be me, so I demanded to see the lab papers, and sure enough, it's my blood and urine they tested.

(2) Genetics. Except for my mom, who died of cancer at age 52, everyone else for three generations topped out in the upper 80's, mid-90's and a few made it to Willard Scott land, up over 100.

(3) Water. I drink lots and lots of water every day, it's about the only thing I love that doesn't have calories, and I always have been a water fiend, even when I was very young, preferring it to sodas, etc.

(4) Aerobics. You laugh, but every damned time I move it's an aerobic activity for me. Walking down the hall at work, across the parking lot, up and down the aisles at the supermarket, through a gallery, even standing - my heart's pounding away, sweat's pouring down my face, and it's a workout. Sounds strange, but I get in 10 or so short 5-minute aerobic sessions a day just going about my business, hauling around all this weight.

Now all the problems that come with being my size that AREN'T a part of the results today - aching back, desperately unsteady knees, painful feet, chafing, sleep disorders, emotional agony, the sheer effort of being so big, the humiliation and embarrassment and shame, the fact that there's never been and never will be someone who loves me - well, those are still in full force and effect. I'm still a crippled, compromised person in a fat suit of my own devising, a sad clown, a diminished man, a figure of disgust.

But hey, my cholesterol is 79!!!!!

"We've received your test results and the nurse practitioner would like to see you right away."

I can deal with anything! So here goes.

Tomorrow I go in around lunch time for another dose of (probably) bad news - cholesterol? diabetes? voracious ravenicitis?

I've been on the blood pressure medicine for a week and I'm even more run-down feeling than before, which doesn't seem possible. Is it just that my "I'M JUST FINE!!!" inner script has been slashed to smithereens and I'm finally feeling all the aches and pains and exhaustion I always had but was able to distract myself from? When I mentioned to my life coach that I had taken myself into the doctor for the first time in twelve years and how I was dreading the results, she said, "Well, but, what is the alternative?" Yeah, all right, I need to know and I need to deal.

Whatever that means.

I made myself a sign today and put it on the back of my ID badge. It says, "I can deal with anything!" And by God, I can! So here goes, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

Uhm, could someone please bring me a pint of Haagen Dazs butter pecan? NOW!

Freedom and Liberty

I'm a tolerance guy. If you wanna do something, go ahead, so long as it doesn't impinge on other people. Live and let live. I wanna be free to enjoy what I want, when I want it, and I also accept responsibility for how the choices I make affect my life.

Americans have tapped into a belief that freedom and liberty equals a good life. The more we have, the more freedom from financial worry, time-wasting effort, chores and responsibilities, the happier we will be. Well, yes and no.

Liesure time spent laying around, being entertained, munching on snacks - it's freedom and liberty incarnate, isn't it? To choose the food, beverage and DVD du jour, to flop down on the sofa and let life wash over you, remote in one hand, a series of sensory pleasures, available without much cost or effort, financially or emotionally, to self-medicate and self-comfort - THAT'S freedom. That's liberty. But the consequences for any given individual may impinge on future opportunities for that person to enjoy freedom and liberty. In other words, the choices I make with my freedoms and liberties today will affect my opportunities for freedom and liberty tomorrow.

Freedom is not free. I sound like a politician.

Freedom to indulge in self-destructive behavior is all-American. And we pay for our indulgences, not in hellfire and damnation but in future limits on our individual freedom. I engaged in self-destructive eating. I am now not "free" to run and jump. As a fat man, I am a walking billboard for the concept that this is a cause and effect world we live in. Consequences. Karma. Chemistry. Physics. Duh.

I have a huge distaste for constraints - and consequences - placed upon us by religion and government and society and expectations and patronistic superiority. I also have a distaste for the sanctimonious way a lot of people approach self-constraint. It's at the heart of my "rebellious" behavior - I'll be and do what I damn well please. I'm re-BELLY-ous by nature.

I HATE to conform. Frankly, conforming is impossible for me. I'm left-handed, for shit's sake. Growing up, it seemed that everything about me, when compared to "normal," was nonconforming: my body, my brain, my abilities, my life experiences, my sexuality, my hunger, my taste, my sensitivity and vulnerability. I was white and male in a white male-centric society, that is true. But whether from inevitability or purposeness, I didn't conform. Somewhere along the way I embraced my nonconformity and now I rebel at the slightest indication that I'm conforming. "It's good for you." No thanks. "Everybody loves it." I hate it.

Anyone who tries to constrain me has met with resistence. And anytime I've tried to constrain myself has met with failure.

Well then, what is a diet if not self-constraint?

I'm trying to circumvent the standard approach to losing weight - denial of hunger, denial of taste, denial of impulse, denial of pleasure - by creating core beliefs that ALLOW me to indulge my desires. It's just that the desires themselves are different because the fuel that incites the desires is different.

Let me explain: if I have a desire to be self-destructive, then I'll indulge that desire by eating too much or not moving around or wasting time or not helping myself. If I have a desire to be self-constructive, then I'll indulge that desire hy eating healthy foods, engaging in active pursuits, and spending my time wisely.

At first I thought I could change the core belief that I'm a nonconformist.
And maybe I could change the core belief that I'm a self-indulgent person.
But now I realize that I can embrace my nonconformity and self-indulgence by finding ways to express them that are health-giving to me.

As for nonconformity: these days, not eating sugar, fat, salt and flour is a very nonconformist thing to do. In fact, being physically active is a nonconformist attitude. If 60% of us really are "overweight," then being overweight is conforming. Hmmmmm.

As for self-indulgence: if I fully embrace the belief that I am a valuable person, that I have self-worth and deserve love, respect and approval, from myself and from others, then maybe my desires will be to indulge in self-loving and self-respectful behaviors such as preparing and consuming healthy meals and enjoying the sensory delights of a brisk walk. Hmmmmm.

I guess I'm realizing that I won't constrain myself because I should, no matter what the reason.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

"Do you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool, Clarisse?"

I just finished all of the intake questionnaires for my life coach.

It was quite interesting, and as is usual for these things, it's a struggle for me somehow to be honest and forthright without trying to impress. I mean, I know I'm a compassionate person, and I'd like to list that as one of my strengths, but I also want people to THINK I'm compassionate, but not that I'm conceited about my compassion, or that I'm more compassionate than the next Tom, Dick or Harry. You know.

Mostly the themes of my life seem to be "I wanna be understood" and "I wanna understand myself."


And, of course, I wanna be rid of my weight issues - to leap over and leave behind a lifetime of struggle with being fat. I wanna be thin, damnit. I wanna be active and healthful and energetic and sporty and fun and normal.


I also wanna be the true Stevie, it's my mission in life, it's all I have - there's no kids, there's no great career accomplishment, all I have is being as completely Stevie as I can be, and like it or not, being Stevie has been about being fat, at least from the time I was 5 years old. It's like being gay for me, or being white, or being left-handed. It's the only thing on that list, of course, that I can change (hopefully). But it's been an innate part of me for 45 years. I acknowledge its undesirability. I wanna be through with it. And I know intellectually that my Stevieness is not in the fat, it's in the brain and heart and soul and inner thin body. But you know what I'm talking about: Santa Claus is not Santa because he's fat, but it's a part of his Santaness.

I truly believe that we exist in order to exist. I guess I'm an existentialist. I don't really think that we're here for a reason, a purpose. Granted, it's great if we accomplish something, if we touch a few hearts along the way, communicate an insight or express a point of view, maybe rescue someone from a burning building, love deeply and completely, cause an orgasm, crack somebody up, or procreate. But grass is grass in order to be grass. It exists in order to have the experience of being grass. What we see at the purpose of grass - to serve as food for buffalo, maybe, or to synthesize chlorophyll, or to vibrate at the frequency of green and undulate with its brothers and sisters in huge expanses, to inspire - is not the purpose. The purpose of grass is to be grass. I'm just delighted that I have touched people's lives along the way, and implemented filing systems, and expressed myself, and when I'm cremated one day the flames will warm the morgue technician's hands and my ashes will contain minerals that will enrich the dirt. But that's not really my purpose. I'm not soylent green. I'm a human, being. I'm being Stevie. Dust in the wind. My purpose is to be me.

Being fat has its innate value because it's an experience, like anything else - being fat, being tall, being blind, being poor, being sick, being brave, being powerful, being paraplegic, being stupid, being brilliant, being Julia.

I am prepared to give up / put away/ relinquish this aspect of my being - fat Stevie. I know there will be other components of Stevie that will be able to be expressed - tennis Stevie and oodles-of-energy Stevie and live-past-60 Stevie. And that's a very good thing.

"Tommy Ray: It's me, Tommy Ray, it's Daddy!"

Okay, I'm scheduled to spend the night in the sleep disorders clinic in a couple of weeks, and I'm just a little freaked out. I keep thinking about the movie "Dreamscape," where Dennis Quaid gets trained to infiltrate people's dreams and help them deal with their demonic visions, etc., but there's this other guy - Tommy Ray - who is Christopher Plummer's personal flunkie, trained to kill during dreams. There's a plot to kill the President because his nuclear holocaust nightmares have caused him to back away from war-mongering policy, etc. Oh, it's a good movie, and there's loads of scenes where people are in their green hospital gowns, sensored up the wazoo, sleeping - but being screwed in their dreams by a maniac. So sign me up for that, please!

First of all, the directions the sleep lab give you are creepy: "Please take a shower before you arrive." Why, because people with sleep disorders stink? No, because your body needs to be grime-free so they can attach all those millions of sensors everywhere.

"Don't put on any oils or unguents." How about a tincture or two? Would a hydrating toner be acceptable? Because I don't go nowhere without my hydrating toner. Nothing. Again those pesky sensors need to stick.

"Remove at least one artificial nail." So they can clamp one of those oxygen-measuring devices to your fingertip. It's all so ritual-bath-in-milk, so Aztec preparation-for-eviseration. Love it.

"Bring the things you need to help you sleep." Um, like a fifth of scotch and two filched Ambien? Or do they mean my widdle fwiend Boo-Boo the Bear and the latest Bel Ami video? No, it's things like pillows and your favorite blanket. Schroeder is ready for the sleep lab, apparently.

"Bring a change of clothes for the morning." I'm sleep-deprived, not stupid. But the idea of going to work the next day in my jammies and scuffies, trailing a tangle of sensor wires, seems quite appealing.

This whole thing supposes that I'm actually going to be able to fall asleep while people (or worse - CAMERAS) are watching me, and I'm connected to various pulsating data collection devices. I suppose if they want a record of how crappy my sleeping is, then they'll hit the jackpot. Of course, they wanna catch me having sleep apnea, where I stop breathing and then fight back to the surface, gasping for breath, two hundred times a night. I'm pretty sure that's me. I've had a few occasions in the middle of the night where I actually feel myself struggling to rise up to the surface of the murky depths of some creepy lagoon, fathoms deep, and I think that's the apnea thing.

I guess it's inevitable - my evening routine will be to take a blood pressure medication, hook up to a clattering machine blowing air up my nose, insert a mouth guard, apply herpes ointment, and - - what other tortures does Western Medicine have in store for me?

An Exceptional Halloween

Today I dressed in full Dumbledore regalia - hat, hair, beard, and flowing velvet cape - and I was so damned hot all day! Course I expected I would be, but with the wand-waving and spell-casting ("Expelliarmus!!") and the pirouetting to show off my purple cape, I was one hot, hairy bastard! I have upper lip rug burn from the moustache.


But here's the weird thing: today at work I got my yearly performance appraisal (yes, it's been almost exactly a year since I started the job). Imagine having a discussion about your performance while wearing a dumbledore outfit, and your boss, a mid-50's lady - has on a big orange Jack O'Lantern t-shirt. I kept having out-of-body experiences, like, "She's talking to me about how I need to be more conscientious about filing and I'm pulling long white hairs out of my mouth." The review went very well, by the way - it's official: I'm exceptional. That's the federal government rating. ExCEPtional. Which is higher than Superior for some reason. I got all exceptionals. Like straight A's. I'm a 49-year-old hypertensive man in an outed fictional character's hot-as-hell costume, and I'm getting a review from a pumpkin. Odd and happy moment.


Then later the big boss calls me in and tells me, all sincere and serious, that he's sorry they weren't able to sign me up for the big important training class this week, but they will definitely put me in for it the next time it's offered, because, well, "You're exCEPtional." Again, Dumbledore head to toe, called into the big boss' office for the first time, door closed behind me, and I've got a notepad in one hand and a wand in the other. What am I gonna do, take notes with the wand? It's not Tom Riddle's diary, it's a steno pad. But again, lots of positive acknowledgement - and I'm wearing a jaunty little tasselled cap.


Then a party is held, and much frivolity and sugar is had, and a girl in a spiderweb dress shyly looks into my eyes and asks me to wave my wand at her boss and make her nicer. Ah well, you see, it's just a costume, dear. But I get your wistful wish. It's a common one around here. We comiserate for awhile over the chocolate cupcakes and then "the gang" from the front office pulls me aside (one prisoner, one bee, one Martha Stewart and one bandilliero) and tells me that I'm not just exCEPtional, which everyone knows, but that I'm practically single-handedly responsible for the improvement in the office attitude and positivity overall, just because I'm sooooo, well, you know, me. ME! Glorious me! Jesus! I'm already hotter than hell, now I'm blushing, too? Holy shit, get me to the emergency room!


I suppose I should just accept this avalanche of acknowledgement, costume or no, but it was surreal, I mean, how often do you hear so many good things about yourself in one day? It started to feel like everyone knew something I didn't know. It just so happened that my fullsome praise day and Halloween happened to coincide. AND I'm glad I was dressed like a fruity wizard, fergawdsake! Added a filligree of piquancy to the whole mishagazz.

I'd say it was a pretty damned exceptional Halloween.

What a let-down tomorrow will be :)

Doctor, Doctor, (Don't) Give Me The News

Oh man, I'm going to the doctor (well, actually the Physician's Assistant Certified) for the first time in 12 years this morning, and of course my imagination has taken me through the gamut of dire possibilities, all the way up to and including being rushed to the emergency room for a triple bypass after a simple blood pressure check goes horribly awry.

God, I hate doctors! Aside from the shoddy care my mother and father received as they approached death, I just hate the idea of people in power who know more than I do about something very important to me. I get the same feeling at the car repair emporium, when they say, "It's the mandibular manifold," and I stare in blank incomprehension, wishing I had taken auto shop in high school instead of world history.

Ugh.

A Good Weekend

I made it through the weekend and it feels good!

I watched about ten lose weight-feel great videos just to get in the mood, and made a big pot of chicken soup with all sorts of veggies and beans. It was delicious. I had a bowl every couple of hours or so, which did a lot to quell the just-starting-a-program hunger/panic.

And I'm prepared for tomorrow with little meals I'll bring with me to work. So good job, Stevie, hang in there, it'll be better soon!!!

Today I Started

Past tense.

I am soooooo past tense. I'm bejangly intensively nervous and excited.

Had the oatmeal for brek.

Will have the chicken thigh and steamed broc for lunch.

Will pace around my apartment like a caged animal all weekend, segregated from the outside world full of burgers and burritos and baked apple pies.

Will groom myself like Suzanne Pleshette before a big meeting with Lou Wasserman. We're talking strategic hair plucking.

Will have a lovely veggie soup for dinner with exactly 10 rigatoni and a bay leaf in it.

Will go to bed hungry (this is the hard one) tonight and probably the next few nights, until old Mr. Tummy lowers his expectations ("Send down the pork roast, I'm ready!").

Will sleep hardly at all.

Will wake up tomorrow feeling all sprightly and coltish, light as a feather and ready to float on the blue and gold day!

And so on and so on and so on.

I'm currently cooking chicken, steaming rice and cleaning my bathroom bowl! How about you?

Happy Saturday!

Um, the hat was a dead giveaway

"Was there a moment when I cut you down? Played around? What have I done, I only apologize for being, as they say, the last to know, it has to show, when someone is in your eyes . . . . . . ."

Go, Dumbledore, go!

Okay, here's my Halloween costume. Just kiddin'.

But I am spreading my wings a little. I had a good talk with my new life coach the other day and we are working to set a plan of action. This is a big deal for me. I'm not usually comfortable asking for help, from a combination of "don't want to impose" and "what the hell do they know that I don't know?" - but Mia is different. I had the opportunity to observe her at various staff retreats and conferences over the last few months and was taken with her combination of sensitivity and pragmatism. We struck up a conversation or two along the way, and she had genuine compassion for me, so we talked about life coaching, which she does, and here we go!

The thing is, although I'm accountable to her for the tasks she will assign me, this is about me doing the work, me setting goals, me being honest with myself.

It starts with a huge sheaf of "tools" for me to fill out and ponder over. Once I get those to her, Mia and I will have a one-hour conversation every other week, structured around a short list of statements/questions such as, "My major challenges have been . . . " and "I overcame the following obstacles . . . " and "I could use help with . . ." It's all quite touchy-feely, yet results oriented. Mia said that we would be focusing less on diets and exercise plans, which I will be doing myself, and more on the underlying reasons why my life isn't working for me as well as it could. Oh my. She better read this blog, eh? Speaking of, I plan to blog every other day at least, even if it's just the boring "I ate this" and "I went for a walk" stuff, because I know my life runs a lot better when I'm taking the time to process it.

One of the other documents is a personal inventory of yes/no statements like, "I floss twice a day" and "All my bills are paid on time." The idea is that the more of these statements are true for you, the better your life is. My eccentric heart immediately took issue with this list - I mean, I understand flossing is good, but . . . . I think it upset me because I can check so few of the 100 things. At least I got my apartment cleaned for Sheila's visit, so if I just vacuum again I can check the "My apartment is clean and tidy" box. Whew! I'm sure I'll have resistance to lots of the tools Mia shares with me, if only because it'll be hard to face some of the realities. But I'm committed to telling the truth and letting the hard work help me.

In other news: I just made an appointment to see a - gulp - doctor. Kids, I haven't seen one since 1994. Can you imagine the laundry list of ailments and issues I have? But it's been since then that I had insurance, and besides, I have a general skepticism about western medicine (coupled with classic fat person fear of embarrassment and humiliation at the hands of wee little doctors and nurses all eyeballing my exposed voluminous flesh, counting the stretch marks and marveling at the rippling layers of adiposity - and no, that puny scale doesn't go up far enough to weigh me, thank you, nurse).

It helps that my best friend works at the top hospital in town. Ande is, of course, just delighted that I am seeing a doctor - she's been trying to get me to go for a year now, ever since the insurance kicked in. I called Ande with the list of potential docs and she ran them by some of ther trusted co-workers, and the scoop on my doctor was he's fabulous and beloved, so I called, and it turns out he's an MD and a holistic health practitioner, believing in the combo plate approach to things, like Deepak Chopra. Which is GREAT as far as I'm concerned, because I'd much rather meditate than have some extreme surgical fix, if that's the choice.

Mostly I just wanna be able to sleep. I pretty much haven't slept for more than a couple of hours a night for ten years. A lot of it has to do with being so big - there's not really a position I can get into that is comfortable and that I can maintain. Plus I've always been a super light sleeper, so it's been hell.

My friend Paul is advocating a combination of sleep aid and anti-depressant, and who knows, that might be a good idea. We'll see. I'm certain that with some good sleep I'll feel more upbeat. But of course depression runs in my family (Mom, Dad, Grandpa, etc.).

I don't want to go in there with a shopping list of drugs. I'm open to anything the good doctor might recommend (so long as it's covered on my plan), but I sure would like to get some sleep!

One more newsworthy item - my friend MJ, whom I call the queen of AA (she's been sober 23 years!) is going to Weight Watchers and we've agreed to have a weekly call so she can share the things she's learned at WW and AA (cue Helen in The Miracle Worker) with me. See, another reaching out for me. Quite astounding.

But I'm no fool - it takes a village to prepare the virgin for the volcano. And with my supportive cyberpals, I'm READY READY READY!!!!

Just as soon as I finish this enchilada plate.

Truth Time

I’ve slipped and slid for a year now, gaining back 70 pounds of a 120-pound weight loss. Yes, I’ve had my stressers during that period, but really, “There’s nothing to it but to do it,” as Jean Stapleton said in Damn Yankees. Thirty of those bastards came back, Little Sheba, during my job hunt, when the self esteem was dangling by a thread. The other forty were Thank-God-it’s-over comfort pounds once I actually got a job and could breathe again. I get it, that’s me. But okay, now, Stevie, it’s back to it.

I’ve carved out a life for me now (thanks to the cash infusion of a little thing called steady income) and I have everything in place for me to be well - sweet apartment, gorgeous swimming pool, easy job, great co-workers, reliable car, rice cooker – it’s all there. I realize, though, that I’m a guy who needs time to adjust, to people, places, apartments, jobs, weather, whatever. Although in essence I’m a go-with-the-flow type, at the slightest increase in anxiety or stress I reach for the cheddar, mayo and artisan bread. This is especially true when I’m living alone and there’s nothing standing in the way of me doing exactly what I want, no societal disdain or a disapproving glance from a housemate. So it’s been a party in my pantry here these last three months, and my gleaming new stainless steel toaster got a workout. But now it’s time.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

We’re talking chicken breast, folks. Expensive chicken breast now, because I just read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (it’s outstanding) and will eat only the breast of certified happy, healthy cage-free grass- and worm-eating birds executed with dignity in an open-air abbatoir, thank you very much. We’re talking $7.95 per pound minimum, honey. At that price the chickens better have been raised at a Ramada Inn with access to 24-hour room service, nome sang.

We’re talking a veritable panorama of veggies and fruit, which fortunately I love.

We’re talking a lumpy, cholesterol-reducing, filling sea of Quaker Oats, simmered to perfection and studded with toasted sunflower seeds, craisins, and a slog of lactose-free yogurt.

We’re talking bye-bye white flour, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, saturated fat, and Cheeses of Nazareth, not because it isn’t possible for people to eat these things in moderation and be healthy, but because it appears to be impossible for me to do so.

We’re talking swimming when I think I’m too tired to go swimming.

We’re talking allowing the feeling of hunger to sit gracefully in the pit of my stomach instead of triggering a lot of rash behavior to quell a natural sensation that is NOT to be confused with a feeling of loss, of emotional emptiness, of loneliness, of missing my mother and dad or the nameless, faceless stranger who never fell in love with me.

We’re talking about flipping the switch on the top of my head back to ON.

I was remembering a comment my dad made about my mother. She was fat. Years and years after she died, Dad and I were looking at pictures together and we came upon a particularly unflattering one of Mom. Dad shook his head in bafflement and said, almost to himself, “And she knew I didn’t like fat women.” Excuse me? As if my mother chose to be fat. As if my mother wanted to be fat.

But maybe, just maybe, she did. Maybe she was consciously or unconsciously rebelling against the conditional love my dad gave her; maybe she was saying, "I'll give you exactly what you say you don't like and we'll see if you still love me." Maybe she was testing him, testing herself. Maybe she was rebelling the only way she could against him without telling him to fuck off. Maybe he had found the key to her insecurities and used it to hurt her, to make himself feel more important. Maybe they were caught in a painful tarantella, spinning faster and faster (fatter and fatter) until one or the other dropped dead.

And maybe I've been dancing this same dance, only alone, like a deranged gypsy fortune teller in tattered rags, spinning and banging a tambourine, sweat and drool flying in the air, panicked eyes searching in vain for the disembark platform.

I know exactly what makes me fat: eating too much of the wrong foods. Yet I choose to eat too much of the wrong foods. Can I really hide from myself the fact that, in choosing to eat like that, I am choosing to be fat? Okay, heredity, environment, conditioning, habit, addiction, cross-purposed results, yadda yadda yadda. The truth is, it requires a disconnect to eat as I do, knowing that each mouthful, each choice is a decision to be fat but not "seeing" it as it's happening. It’s like sticking your hand down the drain when the disposal is on, and then lamenting that your fingers are all cut-up and bloody. OF COURSE they are. You put your effing hand down the disposal!

All right, Stevie. It’s time to be honest with yourself.


(1) You know that eating too much makes you gain weight.

(2) You eat too much.

(3) Therefore, you choose to be fat.

No person wants to be fat, right? To be hobbled and burdened with a body of your own devising is downright nuts. To be subject to ridicule and disgust because of what you do to yourself is pure psychosis. To punish yourself - to be self-destructive - to have the biggest, ugliest excuse in the world, to impact every moment of every day with the logistical nightmare of weilding around an enormously heavy body - to be a failure, purposefully - this is mental illness.

Sisyphus was compelled by Zeus to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he reached the top of the hill, the rock always escaped him and he had to begin again. The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to the mortal's belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus, but Zeus put him in his place by binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration.

At what point in Sisyphus's toils did the boulder turn from a burden into a comforting friend? How long was it before it just felt right, somehow, to spend every moment contending with the rock? Why would such an abhorrent condition become familiar, acceptable, even strangely satisfying?

I'm a dung beetle, rolling around a huge ball of shit wherever I go.

I'm a hermit crab, hidden inside an unwieldy discarded shell that chafes and scrapes me.

I'm a homeless man with a grocery cart full of scraps of plastic and newspapers.

I'm a conjoined twin.

I'm a Senegalese woman with a huge basket of taro balanced on my head.

I'm a soccer player forever passing the ball from foot to foot, never kicking it, never letting anyone have it.

I'm a dog with a huge, slobbery chew toy that I adamantly won't give up.

I'm Paul Bunyan, with my ox Blue on my shoulders.

I'm Sisyphus - and Zeus.

It's commonly believed that trying to lose weight, especially hundreds of pounds, is a Sisyphean task (the new conventional wisdom says there's a 10-20% success rate). I think that being fat is the Sisyphean task, and that losing weight is certainly a formidable job but it can be done, and there is a boulder-free future possible for me. Maybe it's a good thing that the road to health and self-respect chips away only a grain of sand at a time from the boulder I haul, leaving a trail of dust behind me. Much as I wish I could just "go somewhere" and have the boulder magically gone, it's a one-fat-cell-at-a-time process.

Like Gringotts bank, each vault contains a little something held in storage for a rainy day and must be unlocked and emptied purposefully by a goblin. Each fat cell must be unlocked by the need to expend stored energy, the lipid transported by a red blood cell to the liver (or whatever) for processing, and, one by one, as the vaults are emptied, the walls are pushed together, and the whole cave shrinks.

So now I'm in the vault-emptying, boulder-sanding business. At least it's steady work.

Hopi Birthday to Me

Sorry, couldn't resist! Tomorrow's my birthday! I've already experienced a plethora of social activities this week in honor of the big four-niner, lunch every day, drinks every night, and more fun to come (including a trip to the Indian casino and buffet with the wild and crazy women I work with). My friend Ande gave me a HUGE turquoise and silver bolo, honestly it's the size of a sausage mcGriddle; it says, "Look at MEEEEE!" Which is nice, because it gives people something other than my enormous belly or gap-toothed smile to focus on, a definite plus. I've worn it every day this week and plan to never take it off. It weighs about 10 pounds. Okay, not that much, but still - at the end of the day there are rope burn marks on the sides of my neck. One day they'll slice right through to the Karotid arteries, but that will be nice because turquoise and red look so smashing together :)

Indian casino buffet aside, I'm doing something really really REALLY important tomorrow, and that's recommitting to healthy eating (ho hum, bo-ring, I know). But this is what my life is: I go along all distracted and depressed and eating too much and moving too little, and then something happens, chemical/physical/spiritual/intellectual/emotional, not sure, probably a complex combination of all of them, and then it's ON again, the switch is pulled, and it's time to buckle down again. For reals.

Every time I get to this place I think, "This time it's different; this time it's for good, this time it's for always." But now I know that every time is the same, and it's different, because I'm older or wiser or sicker or happier or less happy or whatever.

This time, though, I'm going to work with a life coach. That's new for me.

I met her at one of many conferences I've attended and/or planned for my office these last few months. Mia did the "change management" piece at each of these events and I was really taken with her authenticity and empathy, not the usual rah-rah motivational speaker type but an intelligent and compassionate real person who has figured out there are some decent tools out there to help you deal with change and growth. We had brief conversations along the way and I was even more impressed, so at the last conference I pulled her aside and mentioned about getting some coaching, and she seemed genuinely interested in helping me, working with me. So we start early next week. I am delighted and have a really good feeling about this.

Now one thing I know is that journaling is an important part of succeeding with this sort of thing, so you'll have to pardon me but I'll be doing that journaling here on the blog. Please bear with me since the posts will be boring as hell, lots of uplifting self-talk and "today I had a tuna salad" stuff. Feel free to breeze on past the journal entries. I'll label them as such and, unless you want to hear about my grapplings with hungers and desires I still don't quite understand, then come on in and join the party, but like I said, it's sure to be tedious.

Nevertheless, breakthroughs do happen and moments of enlightened understanding occur, along with other benchmarks related to losing weight ("the seat belt fits!" etc.), and I'll be sure to talk about those. There will be slip-ups, too, slides down into the abyss, frantic clawing to get back to ground level, harsh self-talk and destructive behavior. At least I know this and can be more realistic than in the past ("I'll NEVER NEVER have cheese again as long as I live!!!").

So here we go. If I play my cards right, by the time I'm 50 I'll be a lot healthier and happier and more active and more joyful than I am on my 49th birthday. Bring it on!!

- Love, Stevie

S'marvelous, S'wonderful Sheila!!!

About three years ago I stumbled across the most consistently thought-provoking, interesting blog - The Sheila Variations - and truly, I felt, for the first time, that I was not alone in the world. There were others out there who were just as obsessed with Cary Grant, Norma Shearer, George Cukor, Katherine Hepburn, Laurette Taylor, and Louise Beavers as I was. How many times had I mentioned Ann Southern to someone and been met with a blank expression, how many times did I have to explain who Irving Thalberg was? Sheila and her hard core friends/commenters, with their enthusiasm and discernment and brilliant analyses, may not have realized it but they were applying balm to my aching show-biz heart. Suddenly, I wasn't the only torch-bearer out there, and the burdensome task of keeping Laurette's memory alive was shared.

But it didn't end there.

Sheila's wide-ranging interests - yes, obsessions - travel so many tangents and rocket in so many directions that I frequently pause while reading her blog pieces and say to myself, "One person knows all this, loves all this, and shares all this in a brilliant way that conveys such insight and wisdom . . . " Sometimes I am breathless at the sheer quantity of her always high-quality postings. Surely she has a platoon of Oompa Loompas clackity-clacking away on scores of keyboards. Tina Brown in her heyday couldn't get the entire staff of the New Yorker to produce as much as Sheila turns out daily, weekly, monthy, consistently and reassuringly pouring forth her ideas, comments, grandiloquent theories and touching high-school journal entries for us lucky visitors to her site. Sooooo lucky.

Sheila came to New Mexico last week and we met in person for the first time. I felt exhilarated and more than a little bit nervous. After all, Sheila is a celebrity to me, maybe one of the most multi-dimensional people I've ever heard of, and I was meeting her!! But I also knew that she knew me, because I've posted things here and in her commentary that expose me - flay me - as assuredly as a scalpel. It felt like I was Erin Brockovich about to meet Julia Roberts.

I drove around the airport a couple of times and scanned the face of every redhead (I've never seen a picture of Sheila except when she was portraying Edie Sedgewick at a Halloween party), but on the third time around, there she was, illuminated like a beacon of light made corporeal, a smile that somehow I absolutely knew, and then she was in my VW beetle, and we were screaming and laughing, and it was as if we had known each other forever and were just reminding ourselves what we looked like, sounded like, talked like . . . it was sooooo comfortable and sooooo glorious.

Just being with Sheila was a life-altering experience. I posted a couple of weeks ago how I wish I were a better person, just 'cause I'd like Sheila to see the best of me. Well I still feel that way. I want to read a book a day. I wanna be thinner and more active and more energetic. I want to get out into the world and have more adventures so I can share them with her. I want to absorb life in great big gulps, filling my lungs with the pleasure of being, because life suddenly became more wonderful to me, more full of possibility, as seen through Sheila's eyes.

Thank you, Sheila. Thank you for everything. I'm crazy in love with you.

And now, bring on the troops! I'm sending an all-points bulletin to Alex and Beth and Mitchell and Jackie and Chrisanne and Emily: come to Albuquerque and rock my world! My sofa awaits!