Wednesday Weigh-In No. 10

Previous Weight: 165
Current Weight:166

Yeah, OK, it's been a bad week. No exercise. Pizza in times of crisis. A few glasses of wine here and there. And no exercise. One thing about gaining weight two weeks in a row: it has helped me to identify the catalysts in my life and the behaviors they cause that result in me gaining weight. Isn't the first step to recovery from any problem recognition that there's a problem? Well, that may or may not be true, but I'm thinking that in this case, knowledge is power. I know what I'm doing to myself and perhaps that'll give me the power to change it.

Whatever. I know what else I need to do: Quit having family crises!

That's one of the big reasons why I'm not getting in what little exercise I was getting in earlier in the competition. Like last night, I was on the phone most of the evening with my mother talking her down from whatever crazy conspiracies she had decided were leveled against her (this time it was the United States Postal Service that was in on it, but that story will have to wait for another day). It's not like I can hang up on her. Getting a phone call from my mother is an unusual and unavoidable event, considering she lives in the Sonoran desert of Arizona 100 miles from the nearest town and cell phone tower, and I'm not exaggerating, so taking her phone call and letting her say her piece is a necessary evil in my life because god knows when it'll happen again.

But I figured, no big deal, I'd just exercise this morning. Well, I forgot to set the alarm, and once I did wake up, there was another little problem to deal with: the cable bill came and someone ordered something they weren't supposed to on our cable pay-per-view, which required an hour on the phone with a idiot improperly monikered as a "customer service agent" who could not and would not help me resolve the problem.

I know what the bigger problem is. I have too much stress and no way to relieve it. I know what the solution is: Don't get married; never have kids; and ignore your parents.

Since the solution is, well, ridiculously impossible, I'm going to have to be creative in figuring out a way to make this work for me. Aside from divorcing my husband, shipping the kids off to California to live with distant relatives and moving to the mountains where my cell phone doesn't get reception, what can I do to make this work for me? (And trust me, all that stuff I just listed is always in the back of my head as a possibility.)

Yeah, OK, I could eat more fruits and vegetables (but, for those of you who have never moved from the breadbasket of the world - central California where all green space is taken up by fresh farms - to the backwaters of the earth where no fresh food can be found in any local supermarket for less than $3 a pound, I tell you this is harder than it sounds). I could rig an elaborate pulley and weight system that kicked my ass out of bed at 6 a.m. to do calisthenics. And I could buy a pit bull and pack some mace to go for a walk after I put the kids to bed at night. I could also start snorting crank. It's about as likely as any other plan (but guaranteed to make me lose weight ... and hair ... and teeth ... and my self respect).

So, I'm still looking for the magic cure. I'll figure it out one of these days. I really will. And then I'll blow everybody away. First and foremost, myself.