Yesterday, I was looking at a catalog that contains therapeutic socks.

Not just looking at it, but seriously considering the purchase of compression hose because, good gracious, I’m almost 40 and after cooking up lunch for hundreds of kids, my dogs are really barking.  So are my spider veins.

I went to a night club the other night with some friends and I wore a sequined sweater…and tennis shoes.  At one point, I had to step off the dance floor so I could clean my glasses.  Mmm hmm…go ahead and picture all of that hotness.

The bonus?  None of the skeevy men in the club hit on me.  Though, there was that elderly guy with the motorized cart who asked me if I was single.  I thought about saying yes just so I could get a ride back to my hotel room.  Note to self:  If you’re going to be walking a lot, don’t forget your orthotics.  Or, a scooter helmet.

But even though I paid for dancing at that nightclub with bruises to my shins and calf muscles strained so hard that it shocked me, I didn’t let it stop me from shaking my groove thing and having a whole lot of fun.

And, if that makes me consider support hose, then bring on the nylons.

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1.  You know how they say that everything is bigger in Texas?  They’re liars.  This is but one, tiny section of the most massive hotel I have ever seen.  Really.  Ever.

2.  Everyone from the south is just as sweet as pie.

3.  Which is probably because of the weather.

4.  Or, the whiskey.

5.  When you put hundreds of women together in one space, there is bound to be some crying.

6.  Add said whiskey, and there will be some massive meltdowns y’all.

7.  Old friends become your enemies when they keep you out too late and make you have so much fun that the next morning (really, the same morning) it will feel like your brain is oozing out of your right ear.

8.  And, there are razorblades under your eyelids.

9.  But, vendors handing out ice cream in the exhibit hall make it all better.

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On yesterday’s show Oprah revealed that, in 1963, her mother gave a baby girl up for adoption; which means Oprah has a baby sister!  It’s true.  There was a DNA test and everything.  A DNA test worth its weight in gold.

This is Patricia.  She is Oprah’s new half-sister.

Not to be confused with Patricia, Oprah’s former half-sister, who died in 2003.

Oprah, Patricia and her other sister Patricia, not to be confused with Larry, his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl…

…are all the children of the same mother.  Her name is Vernita.

Not to be confused with Oprah’s father, Vernon.  Though, this is not really Oprah’s father, it’s just his bust.

Not to be confused with breasts.

And, just like that.  We’ve come full circle.

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For the past 14 years, I have been in an ever-constant battle with my weight.  I blame a lot of it on stress and anxiety.  Those 14 years were full of home renovation, a high-pressure job, a husband who works solely on commission in the bursted bubble of a housing market and two premature babies…one of whom threw in congenital heart disease just for good measure.

So, yes, I’ve been stressed.   But, I won’t deny that a good portion of my jiggling thighs is because I love chocolate.  And beer.  The three of them together equals the perfect storm of cellulite.

The thing I have come to realize, as my 40th birthday nears, is that burdens don’t go away; they just change.  Life is never going to be easy.  It’s time to acknowledge that and work with it, instead of against it.  I don’t want to fight myself anymore.  I want to fight the fat.

Tonight, I completed my first of 36 boot camp sessions.  I was excited, but to tell the truth, I was scared of not being able to walk afterward. 

My friend Melisa is a group fitness instructor and I talked to her just before I went to class.  She told me that because I’m social that I would love the atmosphere, that I would have fun and that I should “embrace the pain”.

What she failed to tell me, is that I should also embrace the vomit.

Apparently, the instructor saw it coming when my beet-red face turned crisp-cotton-white, which is probably when I felt the room spinning.  She stopped the class.  FOR ME.  Which is really not embarrassing at all.  You know, if you’re made of stone.

After she got me a Gatorade, things improved.  Not a lot, but enough for the walls to stand still.  I fought through.  I did not quit.

Then I came home and started typing and searched the internet for a photo of the boot camp to insert in this post.  I typed the name of the workout facility into Google, hit images, and saw this picture…

Thank goodness for that Gatorade.

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