Spending Friday night calculating last year’s mileage makes me make bad choices

You know how everything will be ok if you can just reach 120, 150, 200?  That random, elusive, magic weight-number.

My number has always been what it says on my driver’s license, so I can stop living the lie I’ve been living since I was sixteen [well, I got down below it a couple of years ago.  For seven minutes].  Re-attained today!  180.  178.8 in fact.  Which is great.

But.

I was at Target on Friday.  Healthy healthy week.  A good week.  A bit stressed at the end, with my CPA tax-meeting looming [and I never wish self-employed, home-business, 1099s from a bazillion different companies taxes on anyone!] thus having to get all my financial papers in order, plus walking away from a great-paying job because the client has been a huge source of stress for months, plus having a really important part of my current baby Fear Experiment [FE], crumbling and potentially being a disaster, plus having tons of editing and teaching projects to do, the projects that actually pay my bills, yet spending most of my time on FE which nets me enough to buy a venti latte.  And so I went to Target for Kleenex and shampoo, and left with those things and a bag of Hostess donuts.  My nemesis.

I waited to check-out behind a thirty-something woman, who looked to have just come from the gym across the street.  Black leggings, ponytail, flushed face, sweat-spotted t-shirt.  And oh my, such a healthy selection in your cart [I love looking in people’s carts!].  Yogurt, GoLean, bottled water, greens, mushrooms, Cliff bars… I could tell, she meant business.  She power-walked out of the store.  Those quads, that ass.  <—— jealous.  I put my stuff on the belt and hoped the cashier wouldn’t guess I was going to inhale every one of those donuts as she swiped them across the scanner.

I got in my car.  Groceries in the trunk.  Except for my nemesis.  She sat in the passenger seat.  I got a couple of blocks away.  Pulled up to a red light in front of Diversey Rock ‘n Bowl.  Stuffed a donut in my mouth.  The. Best. Ever.  Ate another one.  And another one.  Looked over to my right.  There was Athletic Lady from the store, in her fitting SUV; I bet she hikes on the weekends.  Ugh, she’s so perfect.  But then, oh no, oh wait… you’re not…

She cracked her window, inhaled deeply, and let her hand hang heavily on the glass, cigarette ash falling to the street.

There I was, making such wonderful choices all week, with my salads, whole-grain bread, green tea, and daily sixty-minutes of cardio.  There she was, filling her cart with longevity, clear skin, and light-yellow pee.  Yet there we sat, undoing all that goodness that took so much effort, in just a few seconds.  With donuts and cancer-sticks.