GOOD BIRD

I've been wrapping, folks. Wrapping and wrapping until my fingers are bone dry and split, cracked and bleeding. That's how committed I am to giving...of myself, my stuff and my finger juices...this Christmas season.

Just had to honk my own horn, (it's french, because it's Christmas) as apparently everybody else has been too busy thinking of Baby Jesus and peace and love, to do so for me. Good thing I'm shameless.

And speaking of shameless, my eating/lack of exercising is out of control. I know. Not whopping news knowing me as you must by now, but shameful all the same...as well as difficult to ignore, after my near fainting experience bellows it as thunderous as a batch of boys playing X-box.

So my dear friend asks me to go for a walk with her yesterday. And we both know that she isn't the one requiring this brisk trot, (hatefully thin) therefore, she is pulling the cunning, "Hey, the woman across from me has a bat in her cave, (flapping wildly every time she breathes in and out) and it will embarrass her if I tell her about it, so I'll just ever-so-slyly swipe at my own schnoz, and see if she mirrors my action." Hence, "Hey, Lis, wanna go get some exercise?" And she nods her head yes. Which I parrot.

Good bird.

So we go and I am immediately out of breath and trying to talk, but can't seem to fully enunciate a single word, leaving off the endings of everything, because I'm dying and it's just not worth the effort to articulate. Sounds something like this, "Oh, I...kno...cuss...I...di...tha...mysel...an...i...mae...me...si...to...see...mysel...i...th...mirr...(the dots are breath sucks and wheezes, with not one single draw actually filling my lungs.)

Lucky for both of us, shapely friend realized my failing health and carried most of the conversation, which kept her from having to carry me.

Finally, we arrive home and stop in front of my house, finishing our chat as now I can stand fully upright without grabbing my side in pain. I answer her first couple of questions clear and concise before the nausea sets in. You know, the nausea that accompanies insufficient supply of oxygen to a brain? Yeah, that nausea.

And then the background starts to fade out and close in. And I'm too stupid to actually acknowledge this quickly but instead, go right into the denial sector of my brain. (It's huge in there. Hardly leaves room for intelligence.)

"Surely she can't tell that I'm not making sense."

"I wonder if I can finish this conversation, distracting her with eye contact, before she notices my lips are blue."

"This too shall pass."

Yeah, totally daft.

Mid-sentence I interrupt myself with, "Yes, and then when we dropped him off~hey, I think I'm passing out. Yeah, I'm passing out. I'm going to lean up against this here mailbox. Hold on just a sec." And I stagger over to the mailbox as sweat gathers on my upper lip, trying to keep talking, waving away her concern, "Oh, sha. No. I'm totally fine. It's going to pass, cuz I'm~yeah, nope, it's not passing. I can't hear anything anymore." (I smack at my ears)

Shouting~"I think I'm going in probably, before you have to heave me out of the snow drift. OK? Yeah, okay." I answer myself.

Trying for a casual wave, which comes off as more like a swatting at swarming bees, I lurch up my walk with my hands on my knees~into the front door, dropping onto my bed before my eyes rolled back inside my skull.

Good times.

WHICH SCREAMS TO ME, AND PROBABLY YOU, TOO, PEOPLE, that I have REALLY let myself go. (I'm howling, leaping and lunging, as the balloon vanishes into the atmosphere) I mean, really, REALLY, if a gal can't go for a simple little saunter without swooning, then REALLY, there has GOT to be SOME room for improvement. No, really.

And just like a (someone else's~not mine) horribly spoiled child, the shrew will eventually have to be tamed, or suffer the consequences of a not-very-approving public eye (think full-length mirror.)

And maternity undergarments won't fix it. Dammitalltohell.