Profit from loss

OK, about three years ago, I scored something interesting at a thrift store in Laurel, MD: a pair of jeans that were exactly like my favorite jeans from high school. Those jeans were Girbaud, size 10. They were comfortable and flattering, and I loved them dearly, so of course I snapped up the ones from the thrift store.

Now, when I came back from Seattle, I was smaller than I had been when I left. I had lost a lot of weight out there on the black coffee and stress diet, which I wouldn't recommend to anybody; but the jeans were even a little big. However, in time I regained my previous level of body fat and the jeans ceased to fit.

While I could wear them, it was a twisted point of pride for me that I could fit into jeans just like the ones I wore in high school, even if I thought I was fat in high school. (Catherine and I used to joke about the "teenage-middle-age-spread," which seemed much funnier when we were 15.)

Well, OK, over the past two years--through two bouts with pneumonia, my kidneys giving up the ghost, dealing with dialysis and everything else I've been through--I thought I'd gained a lot of weight that I was never going to lose, so I packed up most of my jeans to send them off to Goodwill. I wasn't ready to buy new jeans, though; I hate new jeans because they don't feel good.

Yesterday I was going through a pile of stuff that is destined for Goodwill, and found several pair of my old jeans, including the Girbauds. I put them on, and they fit; they're not even tight.

Early this year I had a portrait done by a wonderful photographer in Toronto. I wasn't entirely pleased with the results, although that wasn't Lloyd's fault: all he had to work with was me and the lighting. In retrospect, I should have recognized how sick I was by looking at the pictures he sent, which didn't look like me at all. At the time, I described myself as "puffy" and "overfed" and thought I needed to go on a diet.

Please join me in a happy dance. I look like myself again. I may come to look better than my old self. I think that may have already come to pass if the whole Beauty Comes from Within thing is true.

I think I will sit for Lloyd again the next time I am in Toronto. I'd like to see what he could do with lighting and what I'm supposed to look like.

before - after