238 lbs...Where Did My Shoes Go?

Where did my shoes go? I mean, I know they're not in the closet. I can feel them on my feet, but really, where did they go? When I'm standing, I look down, and my view is blocked by...well...stuff. Extra stuff that doesn't really need to be there.

I don't really know when it happened, this extra weight thing. I could say it kind of snuck up on me, but that wouldn't be the truth. I felt it coming to visit AND stay for many years.

I was an active child, climbing trees and light poles (yes...poor mom), fighting with boys and not understanding why I couldn't join the boy scouts. Around the age of 13, my mom called it baby fat. I thought, yea...baby fat, not really coming to terms with the fact that I really was far from wearing diapers and am not really scheduled to revisit that until I'm 90.

It kept on coming, little by little through junior high and into high school. Around 8th grade, I remember being 160. Then when I graduated school and moved out of the house, I was 180. Still not 200. 200 would be BAD! I least I wasn't 200! Years later, it was a combination of a sendentary lifestyle, a bad car accident and more sendentary lifestyle wrongly blamed on that, followed up with my first cubicle day job that pretty much did me in with a whopping 247 lbs. That's a good football player there.

That was the kicker, that cube job. It started in the month of October (Halloween candy), then went into November (God bless people who cook pumpkin pie and are ok with sticking their hands up a turkey's butt...I'd kiss ya if I hadn't been stuffing my face and being grossed out at the same time), then the granddaddy of it all CHRISTMAS! I've never seen so many types of cookies and cakes in my life. I'm surprised with all I ate, that my arms didn't break off like a gingerbread man. I was so into eating (FREE!) snacks, that if it had, I'd just start putting my face down on the table, I wouldn't have cared. I'd figure, let a co-worker put my limbs on ice, so I didn't miss the feed.

Now, if my life was only the cube at my day job, it might not be so bad. I mean, I could just set a coffee table in front of my computer and let myself spread out, room for side growth! But, on the weekends, I am a diva in training, singing blues on stage at clubs and then at festivals during the summer.

I have been getting fatter on stage and now I'm ready to get thinner. A musician friend once told me with kindness, that people didn't come to the gigs to WATCH me sing, they come to HEAR me sing. That was sweet, but the diva deep inside of me wanting to get out, says HEY, I WANT them to come SEE me sing too!