On jewelry

Luther M. Siler5 Comments

On the right there— and holy hell, does hi-res make it clear that I need to polish my rings– is my wedding ring. I got married in 2008. On the left is my class ring, which I probably acquired in 1996 or 1997. I almost never take either of them off, so it’s not unfair to say that that class ring has been physically on my finger for nearly 100% of, at least, the last 24 years.

I think it’s probably time to admit that my class ring is too small now. And that was the original impetus for this post, that I’m hitting the point where this ring is getting harder to move than it really ought to be and that I wasn’t super excited about the idea of not wearing it any longer, and yes, I’m aware that I can lose weight and I absolutely should lose weight but that’s not going to happen instantly. And then I got on this kick where I started looking around for men’s rings on the Internet (because not wearing a ring on my right hand is not an option; I just want one that allows blood to travel through my fingers) and I found a ring size chart and printed it out.

And I discovered that near as I can tell, my wedding ring and my class ring are exactly the same size. Which means that somehow my right ring finger is considerably fatter than my left ring finger, or maybe that “comfort fit” thing I vaguely recall the wedding ring people talking about makes way more of a difference than I thought. Because it is a lot easier to remove my wedding ring than my class ring. Or maybe it’s the shape? The class ring does have more surface area touching the finger.

So, two questions, I suppose: has anyone out there got experience with resizing rings? I feel like it’s a bad idea, because this size was good enough for nearly 25 years and permanently altering the ring rather than taking steps to make my fingers less chunky seems like a poor decision. Also, am I a sucker if I order a new ring from Etsy? Because there’s a lot of cool stuff on there, but they all look too cheap to be real.

On my priorities

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

Priority.jpgLeft work tonight hungry as hell and decided I really, really needed some tacos.  Which is an impulse that I ought to curb anyway, frankly.  I ordered a certain number of items and paid for them and drove away.

I started eating the tacos on the way home, because I am a fucking animal apparently, and it immediately became clear that the young woman behind the window really was in her first few days on the job (I had a hunch) because half of my food was missing.  Realistically, I probably should have noted that the bag was way lighter than it ought to have been.

I ate what they gave me, didn’t go back, and haven’t called the restaurant to complain, because the thought of doing any of those things exhausts me and fuck it it’s five bucks or whatever that I wasted.  I just cannot be fucked to complain to a fast food restaurant that they screwed me out of $5 worth of shitty soft tacos.

So: am I a pushover, or is it OK that I value my time that much more than my money?  And possibly my health, since the food they gave me turned out to be enough anyway and I didn’t really need the extra tacos?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Fat Man III: The DeFatManification

Luther M. Siler6 Comments

So all last year I worked at a job where I was too fucking lazy to bring my lunch to work 95% of the time and so I spent a shitload of time eating fast food every week.  Then I got sick in September or October or whatever and I’ve basically been sitting on my ass at home for the last five months.

I have lost substantial amounts of weight twice in my life.  In grad school I got down from 240 to 200 pounds through a combination of diet and exercise.  The exercise?  Swimming.  I love to fucking swim.  I don’t even care that it’s exercise.  So I will do it.  Daily, if necessary.

A couple of years ago I dropped from 260 to 220 through, almost exclusively, diet.  Why no exercise?  No pool.

I weighed three hundred and four fucking pounds when I got on the scale this morning.

swimming-pool-lap-lanes-26847247.jpgI have been laboring under the mistaken notion that South Bend lacked an adequate lap pool.  There are two that I am aware of in town: one is at the YMCA and another is at a local neighborhood rec center called the Kroc Center.  Both have, to put it mildly, hours for lap swimming ranging from inconvenient to “why the fuck are you even bothering?”

Last Thursday I discovered the existence of a heretofore unknown third pool at a facility that has been here for the entire time I have lived in South Bend but which was previously somehow hidden from me.

I am deeply angry that this place has been out there being all perfect for my needs and this is the first that I’ve heard about it.

Their lap pool is open the entire time the facility is open and, at least for my hours of activity, the facility may as well be 24 hour.  On Friday I took a tour of the gym.  This morning, after a meeting with my doctor (believe it or not, this place waives the enrollment fee and drastically drops the monthly rate if you can get your doctor to claim there’s a medical reason you need exercise.  I’m very very fat!  I need exercise!) I signed up.  And I went swimming.  I made it 10 laps in a 25-meter pool; at my most fit I could do a mile without stopping.  I then spent ten minutes in a hot tub and went home.

I’m done with this bullshit now.  I’m so fat, at this point, that buttoning my pants can get me out of breath, because I have stupidly short arms and the way I have to shunt my gut out of the way to deal with my pants actually compresses my lungs.  There is a chair in my house that I occasionally avoid sitting in because getting out of it again can be so obnoxious.  I have other stories, some more embarrassing; I think you get the idea.

I’m done with this bullshit now.  I turn 40 in a few months.  I can either get control of my shit again or I can be dead by 45.  Those are my fucking choices.

Enough.