Karen Heaps, my yoga teacher, was a little tongue-tied in our class this morning. “Tuck in your ebs,” she instructed. “Ebs? Abs. Your ebbing abs.” Cute, and oh so true. They’re ebbing. Maintaining my body at this age takes more work than I often want to do.
The camping photo above was taken last May when my weight was where I like it, around 175-180 pounds. Yesterday I weighed 192. It’s been up and down for decades, ever since my metabolism began snoozing. And like my weight, my determination to stay in shape yo-yos.
The laptop has gravitated from the treadmill desk to the dining table, where I’m sitting right now in a comfy faux leather office chair. The approximately two hours a day I spend maintaining this blog is time I had been devoting to brisk walking – about 3.6 mph – on the treadmill while I watched The National, Netflix and tennis tournaments.
On the plus side, I’m still going to racquetball and yoga twice a week and tennis on Fridays, although this morning I brought my tennis gear to racquetball and had to borrow a racket. A brain snooze. Nothing against snoozes though. I nap pretty much every day, usually after lunch when the blood gravitates to my digestive system and I begin nodding off.
Today I didn’t nap until after dinner at home of a tilapia burger and salad. I knocked off for a half-hour before heading downtown refreshed to meet my Tuesday movie buddy. This week we didn’t agree on a movie to see. He wanted the Filipino film “Everything About Her” and I wanted “Room”. Instead we met for coffee and got into our usual subjects, such as journalism, politics here and the Mideast, and the futility of Internet dating.
Making a match seems near impossible. He dates almost exclusively Asian women. I seek out women with an active spiritual life (if they have to ask me what I mean by spiritual, they don’t have one). A friend asked me yesterday what my deal breakers are. I responded: Smoking, not available to eventually merge lives, more than a little overweight, needs to drink every day, lives more than an hour away.
I don’t make it easy. Maybe I ought to take more to heart the reading from Saint Thérèse of Liseaux (1873-1897) that Karen offered at the end of yoga class this morning:
“May today there be peace within. May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith in yourself and others. May you use the gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content with yourself just the way you are. Let this knowledge settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us.”