Argh, I hate this. You keep a blog/journal/online writing project thingie kind of thing like this and you start to feel a responsibility to post fresh content for all eleventeen of your readers but then time gets away from you and now it’s been a week since the last entry … and then two weeks … and then three … and etc. and now you’re digging a hole you’ll have to explain and write your way out of when you finally do start writing again and that makes the prospect of writing even more daunting and so another week goes by and it gets harder and another week and etc.

And then you finally figure “Fuck it” and just dive back in with a long, lame, limping run-on sentence that magically erases all the time you haven’t been writing and your readers never notice it.

Or at least you pretend that’s so. And you push on.

I’ve been working on a personal project for the past month: shrinking. I’m just trying to do my part to make the world a better place; there’s no need to thank me.

Back in my high school glory days I wrestled at 169 lbs. 23 years and 84 pounds later I grew up to be a giant fat fucking slob, 253 lbs of Tub o’ Chuck. So about a month ago I said “No more” and started working that disappearing magic. I changed my eating habits and joined a gym and started shrinking. I’m 30 days into it and I’m down 10 pounds now, to 243. It’s a start.

I’m fully committed to this, it is not a passing phase. I’ve done the dieting thing before with the inevitable falling off the wagon, but this time it’s different. I feel it. I know it. This is the same feeling of finality and resolution I felt when I quit drinking 19 years ago, when I quit smoking five years ago. Whatever I’m quitting stays quit when I feel this way.

So there’s going to be less me in the world. And this is the last mention I’ll make of it until I hit my initial goal of 220 in two months; I’m not going to bore you with Suzi Homemaker reports of how I lost half a pound this week and resisted the temptation to finish the Sarah Lee pound cake I used my Weight Watchers Flex points on! I hate those and so do you. So that’s it on this topic for now. You’re welcome.

Another development since I last wrote is that I’ve become a person you’d want to have a heart attack around.

(Ha. This is me resisting the temptation to just let that sentence stand with no further explanation.)

I got myself certified in doing CPR and using a AED defibillator. So if you drop and start looking dead for some reason, I can probably keep you going until the paramedics get there. After that you’re on your own.

The CPR class was actually part of a Christmas present Beth gave me: a Rescue Diver course. It was an excellent gift that will make me a person you want to drown around, too, and it’s further proof that my wife does indeed rock. Actually, this class is part of the reason I started my shrinking project — I want to be in decent shape when I take the class because it’ll be relatively strenuous, and I also don’t want any classmate paired with me to have to haul a fat-ass tub of lard out of the water. I’m a giver. (And, really, that’s the last I’ll say about the shrinking thing. Honest.) I’ll do the dive portion of the class in a few months when something I’m not talking about is further along.

In other news, I own the Most Expensive Cat In The World. Our cat Gable, given to me something like 10 years ago by ex-girlfriend Kelli (my favorite reader from Northern California — Hi, Kel!) has had a checkered medical past. First there was the Fever of Unknown Origin, where he spent something like a 10 days in the animal hospital over multiple visits to the tune of something like $2,000 and they had no idea what was wrong with him until he started shitting out of his left thigh. Seriously. It turns out he had an “anal abscess” that created a fistula from his rectum to his flank. They figure he got in a fight and got bitten in the ass and it abscessed and, well, you know the rest. So that was fun. And expensive.

And then a few years later there was another Fever of Unknown Origin that cost another couple hundred bucks because ol’ Gabie needed some serious tooth-pulling dental work.

And then he turned up a few weeks ago in really bad shape. He was breathing really strangely, like he was trying to hack up a furball (one of his favorite activities, usually performed on carpeting) but couldn’t get it out. And he was looking pretty shaky. So I rushed him off to the vet, where they rushed him into the back to get him some oxygen, and he died right there two minutes after I brought him in. Just stopped breathing, end of story. So they revived him. Cha-ching!

It turned out he’d been watching ER or something and decided that pneumothoraxes were so popular on TV that he wanted one for himself. And so somehow he ruptured one lung and it kept leaking into the chest cavity and compressing his lungs so they couldn’t expand and he’d stop breathing and cha-ching! So they put in a chest tube and he lived at the animal hospital for the next four days, in the $150/day oxygen cage, and I had to sign a DO resuscitate order for him that clearly spelled out that every time they brought him back it would cost me $150. And just for fun, it also pointed out that “the prognosis is grave for animals that require resuscitation.”

Fucking cat.

But we’re suckers for our pets. So we paid all the insane charges that came to something like $1500 and now he’s okay and back at home again and ornery as ever. As it should be.

But, damn, I wish he’d stop with the vet stuff and the using up his lives. He’s on something like Life #-8 and counting. He’s a tough old bastard and we love him, but we really can’t afford him. But we do anyway. Somehow.

And finally, in sartorial news, Beth is having a laugh at my expense, but I know she’s secretly thrilled with my news that I’m going to start wearing a kilt.

Yes, a kilt. No, I’m not Scottish.

It’s an idea that has seized my fevered brain and I am obsessed with it.

I stumbled across a new blog recently, The Moronosphere. The title was right up my alley, so I clicked over to read it. The tagline “Elvis lives” was right up my alley, so I started reading it. And now it’s on my list of “must read” blogs. Karl sounds like somebody I’d like to hang with if I lived up north. And he wears a kilt. (And I just noticed tonight that I’m on his blogroll, too. You have to admit, the man has taste.)

I followed his links to Utilikilts and I was hooked. Those things are too fucking cool and I must have one! I’m going to start with a black Original model and then maybe an olive Mocker. I’m hooked without even wearing one and the thing is, I know I’ll look damned good in a kilt.

I’ll provide pictures when I get it. Until then, please begin wondering what I’ll be wearing under it.

Okay, fine. That’s all I got tonight. Does it make up for a month of no entries?

Big Daddy says “yes.”

Beth got herself a new toy today, Apple’s new iPod Shuffle. She’s named it “Binky.” It’s pretty cool, but it does have one significant down-side. Beth is in her office across the hall from me now, wearing earphones, putting together a playlist to load onto it, and she’s singing along with all her favorite songs. Badly. I mean really badly. American Idol badly.

Sigh… Technology truly is a double-edged sword. As is marriage.