Another Sleepless Saturday...

I got all of five hours of sleep this morning. This always happens to me when I work nights; I come home at 7am (though I got home at 8 today because I stopped at Wegmans to pick up some more boxes - apparently the trick to getting good boxes is to get there early), usually fiddle around the apartment because I can't fall asleep the minute I get home, then go to bed. Today I woke up around 12:30; I'm hoping I'll be able to get in a nap before I go in tonight.

I have one more week left here in the Cuse before I hit the road for Florida. I have my route pretty much planned out, and it takes me through Georgia, where I'll be passing some old friends from Richmond. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with them (I'm confident I'll be able to meet up with at least one for reasons I won't disclose).

This will put me in my final destination sometime on Tuesday. One thing I need to do next week - along with finish packing - is get out more resumes. My aunt says she might be able to get me a job that pays rather well, but as we all know nothing is guaranteed in life.

Getting a job is one thing on my agenda. I'm doing other thing to get my life back on track. First of which is to lose weight. Virtually my entire family down there is skinny, and frankly I want to look (somewhat) like them. I know I'm not going to look like them mainly because I'm big boned (but I'll willfully admit there's a lot of meat wrapped around those bones, too). If I can get down to 275 I'll be happy, though I'm shooting for 250. I had a body fat test done, and if I have five percent body fat, the bare minimum allowed by the NCAA for wrestlers, I'd weigh 235. I learned a long time ago not to measure weight in terms of how much gravity is holding me to the earth, but in terms of body fat. According to the BMI scale I'm supposed to weigh between 148 and 185 (I'm 6'2"). The only way that's going to happen is to get to zero body fat and to cut off limbs. As far as my weight goal goes, I'm trying to get to "Vince Vaughn". Vince still has a little bit of chub on him, but he's still a good-looking guy. I don't think I'd look good as a skinny emo, and my large physique compliments my personality.

I already have a plan in place. Thankfully my family in FL eats very healthy and works out, so I hope that influence will rub off on me. I theorize that while I was growing up, my mother was trying to keep me fat. My mother was a larger woman, and she had no qualms about it. While I certainly applaud her for her confidence, she tried to create me in her image. As a child, I wanted to be active. I took an active interest in sports, but Mom would not let me play anything; her excuses to keep me from playing sports ranged from "your asthma will flare up and you'll die (in her eyes any action ranging from running in the sprinkler to watching TV flared my asthma)" to "You'll get hurt". I was shocked that she allowed me to wrestle in high school. When I was 17, I weighed 260 lbs. I decided that I wanted to drop a weight class for wrestling, so I was going to drop down to 215, which I exceeded; by the time leagues came around I was weighing 200, and was even considering cutting to 189. When I told my mom that I wanted to lose weight, she became upset and concerned for my health. When I look back, I think to myself, "what the hell are you worried about with my health? My blood pressure was high, my liver enzymes were off, and my cholesterol was elevated." I began to eat right and worked out. I lost 60 lbs like it was nothing. I managed to keep it off until I moved to Virginia in 1999.

Fast forward to 2005 - I just left my wife and I was ready to date again, so decided to join Weight Watchers. I was again very successful, losing 50 lbs, but Mom again chimed in with her objections. Her response was that I'm a "Chubby Cubby." My response was "yeah, a chubby cubby from a family with history of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease". I have a plan in place. First, I found a tennis and yoga group on Meetup (I lettered in tennis in high school). I am also going to try out the Couch to 5k plan that was recommended to me by Em. I'm going to be serious about this; I want to feel good like I did when I was at a healthy weight at age 18.

I talked about how Mom tried to keep me fat. My mom passed away in 2008 at the age of 50. The last eight years of her life were in poor health, with the coup de grace being renal failure in 2004. She, of course, was put on dialysis, but she did not take it seriously. She would rather argue with the people in the clinic and get off the machine early than have her full session. When she went into the hospital for the last time, her phosphorus level was 8.2 (a healthy person has phosphorus levels of 0.8 to 1.4). I remember sitting by Mom's bed in the ER at Chippenham Hospital and hearing the doctor yell "holy crap!" when he read her blood work in the other room. Besides the dialysis issue, her diet was poor. Anyone who either has or knows someone with renal failure knows they have a closely regulated diet. Mom, unfortunately, did not follow those rules. Even before the renal failure, she did little to regulate her hypertension or diabetes, always eating sweets or other such foods that you're supposed to avoid. I often wonder how long Mom might have lived if she did live a healthier lifestyle of diet and exercise.

Third, I want to enter into a meaningful, healthy, long-term relationship. I eluded to my divorce earlier in this post. My ex-wife and I were together five years before I walked out on her. Ever since then, I've been unable to keep a relationship longer than two months. In all but one occasion, I'm the one that gets screwed, and only one of those occasions do I feel the other person was justified in their decision. A couple of times, the other person and I had instant chemistry, and we were ready to give our lives to one another, only to have it explode in my face. One ex, Katherine, was instantly infatuated with me, and I with her. We were very much in sync with each other, the sex was great, but when I look back on it, I realize we got together at the wrong time. I was fresh off my divorce, and she had just left her fiance. In a course of two weeks, she went from telling me how she'd put her hand on her stomach and try to imagine what being pregnant felt like to being annoyed by me because I was overweight, had a big head, wore flip-flops, and the list goes on. I used to be mad when this happened to me and I would be mad at that person quite often for years, but in recent years I decided it wasn't worth getting mad over. It's their loss - not mine, and they were getting in the way of me finding my soul mate.

Here's the thing: I'm 31, and most of my friends are getting married and having babies, and I see what they have and I long for what they have. I can pick up women without a problem. My friends and family all think I'm a player, but I don't want that label. Sure I've mastered the art of picking up women, but I do it in hopes that she's the one for me. The problem I have is being able to segue into a relationship. When is the right time? How do you know? I wish they'd offer these types of classes at the community college, or someone would tell me things. I want to be ready the day I see "Ms Right" at the grocery store while knocking on melons.

On a personal note, I started a new novel yesterday. I'm already 40 pages into it. I feel like this one flows much better than my first one, and I think that might be because the story is more linear and not jumping all over the place like my first book. I'm submitting the first chapter for review with my writing group. It'll be interesting see how this one goes.

That's it for now. Catch you on the flip-flop.