Thursday, December 08, 2011

Jiggle Belly


Jiggle belly, jiggle belly, jiggle belly rock
Jiggle belly swing and jiggle belly sway
Bouncing and wiggling up farts of fun
Now the jiggle burp has begun

Jiggle belly, jiggle belly, jiggle belly rock
Jiggle belly bulges as jiggle belly gorges
Wobble and gobble at the local buffet
In a chilled parfait

What a hungry time, it’s always dinner time
To snack the night away

Jiggle belly time is a swell time
To go chowing a horse from a sleigh
Giddy-up jiggle horse, ingest all but your feet
Jiggle around the clock

Mix and a-mingle in the jiggling belly
That’s the jiggle belly,
That’s the jiggle belly,
That’s the jiggle belly rock!
I’ve been paying for my sins lately. My sin? Gluttony. And an uncommonly strong, masculine jaw line. But gluttony, that’s the main one. Starting in the middle of October, I kicked off a feeding frenzy that is only now just subsiding. We have no more food in the house. No Tootsie Rolls. No cheeses of any denomination. No beets. The curtains are missing chunks. My formerly quadrupedal dog is now a tripod. Great for positioning a self timing camera for our same-sweater-wearing Christmas photo but not so good for Frisbee catching. Ever eat a carburetor? Not without syrup. And where did the TV remote go?

I’ve hit most of my planned runs. Those that have been missed were wept over through salty Dorito tears. I even felt a little ashamed trying to catch the falling tears with my tongue. Gluttony, the most delicious of the Seven Deadly Sins…until it turns to LUST. That’s when you’ve got a problem. You know there’s a monkey on your back but you wonder how he’d taste lightly salted and deep fried. And then you wonder how that monkey would look in a little ensemble from Victoria’s Secret…while lightly salted and deep fried. Simians, so sexy -and low fat - with their progressively developed cerebral cortexes!

I knew I had put on a few pounds lately. One of the byproducts of being required to go to a doctor’s office every 8 weeks for a new supply of ridiculously expensive pharmaceuticals* is that I have a near constant update on my current weight and blood pressure. I’ve gained 6 pounds since the September half marathon. If pounds were like blog posts, that would be like 5 more funny ones than Ian has written this year. There’s some junk in my trunk. There’s some jiggle in my belly. I’m not ready to break out the elastic-banded wind pants – though, admittedly, I’m wearing them now – and flannel shirts but I have looked enviously at the motorized carts in my local grocery store. They may be primarily for the fatties and disabled but who says laziness isn’t a form of disability?

Really, it’s a sad state of affairs when my cholesterol is higher than my last two month’s mileage. Either I need to run more or eat less but neither seems appealing at the moment.

But press on I do. So it was no surprise at my track yesterday when I could physically feel my tiny little first trimester belly jiggling as I made my way around the track for some 800’s. It wiggled; I struggled. It wobbled; I stumbled. Sometime during the third interval I could feel that little fucking monkey biting me in the back of the neck. Ohhhh, the fisting beating he was going to receive!

After three meager intervals, I crossed the line, hit Stop on my Garmin and immediately, well, STOPPED. Usually, I slow up going into a turn, letting the heart rate ease gradually before coming to a complete stop. Not this time. Between the jiggle, the monkey, and the cold, biting wind that I had been gulping mouthfuls of over the last 8 laps, I needed to stop. Now. So I did. And then I came as close as I have all year to a nice puke. I heaved, my cheeks puffed out, and my neck convulsed but….I choked it back down. It didn’t come back up. It was like eating at McDonald’s. It’s mind over matter. But that matter almost splattered everywhere. Eight weeks worth of Halloween candy, cheap beer, pizza, and over indulgence nearly painted the track a vomitous brown.

Fuck that monkey. I need to get back in shape a bit. I hit the 800’s in my goal time but, damn, it shouldn’t have been that hard. And I shouldn’t have stood on the puke threshold to do it. The jiggle belly has got to go no matter how catchy of a tune it makes.

I ran home with a taste of vomit and peppermint candy canes in the back of my throat, grabbed some veggies for lunch, and manually switched on the TV. Then, I plopped down in a chair for some Yes, Dear reruns to console me. But the channels starting switching like crazy. So I got back up, returned Yes, Dear to my screen and flopped in the chair again. And the channels starting flipping. But only if I sat on my right ass cheek. I leaned left and Yes, Dear remained.

How many triglycerides in batteries?

Happy trails.

*Two grand a month to keep my joints from feasting on themselves. Plus, I get the fun of injecting myself. All the injections but none of the crystal meth! The least they could do would be to ring the medicine with a little meth, like salt on a margarita lip, to give it some kick. Damn, cut a fella a break. How 'bout a little taste?!?
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Programming Note: I won’t be doing an elaborate Christmas themed series of posts like last year. If you’re disappointed, well, it’s a good lesson. You should get used to being disappointed here. It’s really the engine that drives this machine. Read December 2010 for old time sakes if you want a “theme”. Now, get outta here.

4 comments:

David said...

Good post. I laughed. I cried. But mostly, I was deeply disturbed by that each and every monkey reference.

Maybe the doc needs to add a little thorazine to the mix.

Elizabeth said...

How well I commiserate. You know, we are all in the same boat so no one will notice your six pounds. Personally, I think it is cell-memory kind of thing where our cave-man cells are telling us to store up some fat for the winter, so we eat more without really realizing and put on a few pounds even though we are still running. So don't fret. Keep up the running and replace a few of those tootsie rolls with carrot sticks and you'll be right as rain and back to your slender, svelt, chiseled self by mid-Jan.

Jill said...

I wish I had a doctor to slap me along the side of the face every 8 weeks...maybe it'd keep me more honest about my intake.

Danielle in Iowa in Ireland said...

I gained some weight in the last year due to medication - as part of the biological warfare, I bet your RA medication is what is causing you to have a jiggly belly, not anything you did!