Lose a Fatty

Dear Ankle, I won't mince words. You started acting like a jackass in October. I know, you hate yoga. But it's supposed to be good for me. FOR US. You and I, we're on the same team. But no. You're all "Ha ha. This chubby lady is trying to get healthy, find her lost flexibility and chill the fuck out. I'll show her." I heard your message loud and clear, buddy, so we went to the doctor and got that stupid brace with so many laces and velcro that I felt like I was putting you in bondage every morning. My birthday. Christmas. New Year's. Valentine's Day. They all came and went, and you stayed angry and inflamed. And I stayed chubby and miserable. Well, no more, ankle. No. More. You'll no doubt notice that we recently began rising at the ass crack of dawn to engage in physical therapy, where you're required to do stressful things. Things that make you scream in almost-but-not-quite-so-it's-not-really-hurting-you pain(ish) and that ma...

Anyone who's read this blog knows about the Email Dumper. Don't worry: This story isn't about him, it's about me. (No one wants to be that person still talking about heartbreak more than two years after the breaking. I get that.) But the one thing I actually enjoyed about my time with Email Dumper was going to stuff — concerts, lectures, shows, movies, dinner. I liked having a partner at events, someone who didn't mind driving downtown and wasn't flummoxed by tricky parking situations. A person to commiserate with after the performance. To chat with during intermission. To deal with the post-event traffic while I waxed eloquently on whatever topic popped into my head. It's not that I didn't do things before him. But while we were together, most of the people with whom I did those things paired off and got married. They had kids. So when the heart-breaking happened, I realized that if I was still going to enjoy all of the amazing things Pittsburgh has...

As far back as I can remember, the Winter Olympics* have meant one thing to me: figure skating. Maybe it was the movie "The Cutting Edge" that did it,** or that one dude who did backflips. Nancy and Tonya? I was all over that. I loved Paul Wylie and wanted to have his sit-spinning babies. When we pack up my parent's house this spring, I'm sure I'll find the VHS tapes labeled "BRIAN BOITANO OLYMPICS: DO NOT TAPE OVER." Clearly I have an addiction. While I was busy being a figure-skating obsessed tween and teenager, my mother raved about ... ice dancing. BORING. SNOOZEFEST. BOOOO. I had no interest. It just seemed like a bunch of skating around. No jumping. No falling. No gossip and scandal. 16-year-old me was simply not interested. But 24 years later, I think I know what my mom saw in ice dancing.*** Sex on skates. And I'm not talking about wardrobe malfunctions either. When it's done right, and not by a brother and sister pair, it's HOT...

Or, Change Is Hard, Yo. Detoxing your mind and your body at the same time ain't easy, folks. In fact, I wonder if I might have bitten off more than I can chew this year. Last year, I just gave up Facebook and had enough trouble with that for the first few weeks. This year, I'm dealing with mad junk food cravings on top of it. So I can't neb around on people's social media accounts and I can't eat away my worry that everyone's out there having fun without me. Good times. To deal with that, I'm going to tell you what I would have posted on Facebook today, and then I'm going to tell you what I would have eaten these last few days had I not made this commitment to Making a Better Me. Facebook Posts I Didn't Make Because Facebook Sucks and I Don't Need It <Photo of order that arrived from Penzey's today> "Squeee! So many new spices to try. It's like Christmas all over again!" <Photo of air-fried french fries> ...

Or, I Have More Important Things To Talk About Lent begins today and with it, my second year of Facebook detox — when I write for my fan(s) and get right with myself so I can enjoy the abundance of spring, the smell of flowers, the bright green grass and the fancy rope pattern my hammock swing leaves on my pudgy thighs when I read in the breeze for hours on end. Before that: reflection, writing, respite from the world. Those first two goals are admirable, I think, but I can't write this tonight as if the world doesn't exist. I stumbled on a video on Twitter (which I still allow myself) of students huddled on the floor in terror as gunshots echoed through their school. Their screams will haunt me for days and weeks to come. "Another school shooting,' a friend texted me, as if it were a rainy day or an accident at the tunnel. 17 people dead. My soul cries out in the darkness and grieves for our country. How can we keep going on? How do we live like this? I had the...