A few things before the meat of this entry:
- When my anxiety began in May, I was pretty hefty. I could easily fold my hands over my stomach and rest them there without them sliding down. At one point, in August, when I saw the doctor again about all this, he said I had lost 10-20 pounds since the last time I was there. I must have been about 256 lbs.
I weighed myself on the scale in my parents' bathroom earlier this week. 216.3 lbs. I weighed myself last night. 216.9 lbs. I know what it was. Marble jack cheese (a combination of bleu cheese and colby jack cheese) from Sprouts, stunning deviled eggs my sister made for me, and I'm sure that's what did it. That's not to say I overindulged in either, but I had a little more than I should have. I'm not sitting in a corner somewhere in the house, bawling over slightly regained weight. I'm not that worried. My latest goal is fairly modest. I want to reach 200 lbs. by mid-December, but am hoping for somewhere in the late 190-range.
- Yesterday was an outstanding day. I received the revised cover of "What If They Lived?", as well as the proofs to look over, all in the .PDF format. Imagine if I had received the proofs in the mail and had to send them back marked up. These are the advances in technology I love, not iPods, iPads, iPhones and Kindles. I spent part of the day with the proofs yesterday, making sure that the words in there matched the words I wrote, and mostly they do. My writing partner did the editing, and I'm pleased so far. Some adjustments he made I'll have to rewrite to fit my own style, but I can live with what's there. However, I don't yet feel like working on the book this morning, since I want to shave off this crummy beard, and hopefully get in at least one basketball game today that's still sitting on the Tivo (amidst 4 or 5). I'll probably choose Phoenix Suns vs. Miami Heat. I tuned into the game last night when the Heat were beating the Suns at 114 to whatever, only to express my continued frustration with timeouts toward the end, because I have to extend the recording by half an hour to an hour, and I couldn't last night. So, reluctantly, I chose the edited midnight showing ESPN had of the game. Even though I don't like that they cut out some of the action in favor of moving the game along more swiftly, I'll take whatever basketball I can get right now. However, when the Lakers play the Timberwolves on Friday night, I'm making sure I get the whole game. Not so much because I'm a fan of either team (I prefer to float between teams), but because I want to see one from beginning to end, dammit! The last time I did that was during the NBA Finals many months ago. I want it again.
With all that out of my head, here we go.
Early yesterday morning, I had a series of "residual dreams" (what I call the ones you have while you're drifting in and out of consciousness before you wake up). The last one before I woke up was of a woman in bed, with an ass curved to look like Heaven. I'm a staunch leg man, but I consider the rear of the plane the bonus round. It's just lucky for me that it happens to be there, above two of my favorite pleasures in life.
So I thought, "Oh fucking great, another woman I can't have."
Remember, I'm waiting until we get closer to moving to Nevada before I start seriously pursuing the dating scene, whatever it is in and near Boulder City.
Well, a dream I had this morning before I woke up a little bit before 6 a.m. (I don't fight sleep anymore. When I wake up, I don't try to go back to sleep. My body tells me it's had enough sleep, depending on what I've done the previous day to either tire me out a lot or a little, and I go by that. It's fortunate for me that my body choose to get the day going before 6 now. That's enough for me, since I go to bed every night before 11 p.m.), made me think, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" much more than the previous dream.
I was in a plane, a smallish one, but one still with jet engines. However, this plane was apparently capable of flying at low altitudes, since it appeared to be a very local flight. I refuse to try to figure out why Sarah Palin and family were sitting in the row in front of me, though to my relief, they weren't involved at all in this dream. I attribute their appearance to having read her claim that she can beat Obama in 2012, a little while before I went to bed.
In the back were two girls. One was a blonde, but not a bubbly blonde. More of an I-can-kick-the-shit-out-of-this-day-and-get-exactly-what-I-want kind of blonde. Over the past few days, I've really been thinking about what kind of woman I want in my life, and I've hit upon one thing I will never compromise on: I want a partner-in-crime in life, someone with the same unseriousness about life as I'm rapidly working on to embrace fully. There's a scene in The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy where Nora Charles (Loy) says to Nick (Powell), "I read where they shot you five times in the tabloids." Nick replies, "That's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids." That's exactly what I want, and even though I want to date again soon enough, I will wait if that's what it comes to. I can easily learn about someone else's interests and perhaps become interested in those interests, too. I'm a naturally curious person. But I will not bend on that.
During the flight, this girl kept looking at me. Not staring, since she talked to her friend at various intervals, but she was looking at me. And I looked back and felt so strongly that this was the one girl I was looking for, and I needed to get up, sit next to her, and introduce myself. Not at all like Bud in Married with Children said to a girl in a movie theater in my favorite episode ("Movie Show," from season 7), "Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm your new boyfriend," but confident enough that she'd still be interested after I started speaking. I wanted her.
Lucky for me, she and her friend jumped out of the plane into a field of sporadic flowers. Yes, jumped. The back door of the plane was still slightly open, since the plane was flying low enough so as not to require pressurization (I'm not sure if that's how it works on jet aircraft, since I haven't been much into aviation lately), and out they went, picking daisies or dandelions. I forgot which and it doesn't matter. I asked someone nearby what had happened and she told me that those two are daughters of employees of this airline, and they do that often.
I had my chance. It was right there. And my shock at what had just happened transferred into my waking state where I felt, well, a little devastated, I'll admit. Just a little. But mostly disappointed. She was perfect for me.
However, I turned on NPR on my radio while resting in bed until my dad and sister left for work (which I always do), and I thought to myself, "Well, at least I'm getting a lot closer to figuring out completely what I want in a woman. This is a good start."
