Close Encounters of Another Kind

I've come to an uneasy truce with the revision of Angry Fat Girls. I do as much as feels fresh and right and then I either quit or do something else and go back to it later. Certain days, usually Wednesday through Friday, I may not write at all. I'm busier with dogs and tired in that interim so I try to do something to ease my life around writing then -- a load of laundry, chopping salad greens, paying bills, whatever.

Today was thirteen pages. I gave up when I saw my editor's long note about addressing something or another in an epilogue. Epilogue? You mean, I have to write more on this subject?

Dusk is late now, by New York standards (I miss the lingering dusk of the mountains), and I decided to walk Daisy down to the Remsen Street entrance to the Promenade to see if a fine patch of bearded iris was in bloom yet. They're just starting to come out & I'll go back this week to smell them. Each kind has a different, ineffable scent.

As we began to stroll down the Promenade, a young man asked me to take his picture against the skyline. I did and he told me how much he loved New York, as much as Venice, which he lives near. I told him about my first night in Venice when, jet lagged, I walked across the Academia bridge and saw a full moon rising from the lagoon beyond San Marco. He was off to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge so we walked together, talking of how nothing in Italy works (him) and how nothing in the U.S. works (me). Daisy stalked a chocolate Lab she'd never met and had a drink from the water fountain and we ended up walking up Cranberry Street to Clark where I pointed him on his way to a diner and Cadman Plaza where the Bridge path begins.

I realized at that moment that I could have taken him home with me.

We didn't exchange names.

I was wearing clean floppy clothes and must have been a Curiosity to him. His English was quite good ("one thousand and two hundred dollars") & he was cute. I find myself enormously relieved that we didn't tell each other even our first names, although another part of me thinks it would have been cool to hook up on Facebook. But somehow that long walk we naturally evolved into needs to be just what it was. Chatty, comfortable, a little intimate, natural. It was like the scent of a brick-colored bearded iris. Light & reminiscent of childhood & sunshine, a reminder that men don't have to be work & don't have to be wham-bam.

For whatever reason I feel like telling this story. I stepped out of my usual tense self & just was. It was a connection after a day of wrestling with points-of-view & crying through The Warden.

Remind me I'm capable of it from time to time.

What Am I???

This is the most wrinkled weekend in New York City. We all knew we were in for the usual April blast of unseasonably warm weather but we couldn't quite believe it. I think everyone had to dig into boxes and bags to find something to wear & no one did it in time to actually iron. It will be 87 degrees today but by Tuesday we'll have highs in the 60's -- & mornings in my down coat which I want to throw away.

Because I'm on the street a lot, I get complaints every day about the cold. "It's cold for April." Well, no, I say. Easter two years ago fell in April & I wore snow boots to dinner & there was snow on the magnolias. "This is unbelievably warm weather for April" & I think of how every year, we have a heat wave & the movie theaters haven't gotten their air conditioning running & all the flowers pop out at once.

It's most distressing for people like Us. Not only are our bodies now much more public, but we have to go through summer clothes for what fits.

For my part, this was an exceedingly pointless waste of time because I had one three-quarter length white t-shirt still in its virgin bag & a pair of linen pants in the closet that I only remembered after opening four vacuum-sealed bags, creating an enormous stack of wrinkles & having to try a lot of things on. I looked OK until we got to the barbecue & Daisy jumped up on my perfect white shirt with garden-muddy paws. (Shoes continue to be a problem because my foot is still slightly swollen & I'm wearing a nifty thingie that compresses the metatarsal bones. It's not cumbersome but it's one more filler between me and whatever hard-soled shoes I have for summer. I had to wear my wool Heflingers.)

I'm sticking too close to a plateau of 240 for my comfort right now, although I have forsaken my scale again after a couple of days of disbelief that I didn't weigh a little less &, finally, a two-tenths loss yesterday morning. That way madness lies. Still, I'd love to lose enough weight to have a field day with all those bags. (And the bags buried deeper.) My winter Rat Clothes -- how I designate my dog walking duds -- are pretty droopy after 30 pounds but I'm not quite into the next size down in my summer clothes.

I wonder if my body is resisting leaving 240. I'm pretty good for a 30-pound loss but have traditionally in the last few years stalled out there & then regained it & some more. I'm desperate not to do this again. In revising Angry Fat Girls, I hit a spot about why I can't settle into Fat Serenity & it was a bolt of electricity I needed.

Or maybe my body, having lost 30 pounds, simply needs time to rest & reorganize.

& then let's remember that I've had three weeks of favoring my right foot. I began walking Hero last week but the biggest walk is the better part of a mile to Henry's. Not only did I feel last week that my foot wasn't ready for four miles, but the last several blocks are brick and cobblestone streets, very picturesque but scary as hell for someone who, every six months, is obligated to trip over nothing & skin her knees.

Until I started walking Hero again -- almost two miles round trip before excursions -- I was having a hard time with dinner. I wasn't hungry, which made me not want to mess up the kitchen or go to any trouble. At the same time, I want to eat. It didn't feel natural not to. Had I simply gone to bed without supper, I'd be having 800-calorie days & that's just stupid.

A dangerous spot for someone like me. H'mmm. Convenience. No convenience foods are good for me. Sweet immediately sounds right. So I'd go out & get Fage yogurt & have that for dinner. It's delicious, abstinent, calorically on target, expensive, & very very dangerous.

I've come to the conclusion I can't have yogurt in the house for a while. If I'm going to have it for dinner, I'll have to walk the three or four blocks to get it.

I'd like to blame my yogurt habit for this stall-out as I pack up most of the clothes & hose them small enough for storage. Many of those clothes fit but many more need me to lose another ten pounds. But I don't think it's only the yogurt. I think it's a whole lot more wrinkly & complicated than that.

Day 72, by the way. 30.2 pounds lost. Anything between 20 - 22 is fair game.