I am absolutely positive that I am not the only woman reading this who's ever had that sickening "oh my god, these pants didn't used to be this tight around the thighs" feeling. I don't mean that it's sickening because I'm afraid of how I'll look if I'm 20 pounds heavier. I know how I'll look because I've been there, and my sweeties all still loved me and I didn't look that much different than I do now. But, dang it, I felt pretty good at that size that I was. In fact, including the coughing, I felt better when I was smoking than I do now with this additional weight. I'm starting to constantly feel uncomfortable.

Even today when I'm wearing my 40-waist jeans (most of mine are now 38s), they still feel tight, I'm aware of every section of my body that now feels bigger. I'm conscious of my belly flopping over my pants and my boobs feeling heavy and droopy. Bleah.

I think I only have one pair of size 40 waist pants that are suitable for work right now. The rest are 38s, so I'm looking at some major discomfort if I don't stop this weight train before it gets away from me.

So I'm strategizing. For a minute I was almost tempted to do some Metabolife thing just to make snacking constantly not feel so appealing. But, I went to a site where Metab consumers bitch about all the side effects and that swung me away from that path pretty quickly.

But I've got to do something. Yesterday I had a bagel with cream cheese, half a Baby Ruth, one of those big Tootsie rolls, a lollipop, a bunch of licorice twists, wings and celery with blue cheese dressing for lunch, hamburger (Brake Pad again) and fries for dinner, and a bowl of ice cream before bed. And most of a pot of coffee. And about 2 liters of water.

My new habits need to improve. Here's my game plan. I won't necessarily cut out the bagels, but I'll use less cream cheese. I found a recipe for big oatmeal raisin cookies from Cook's Illustrated in the hopes that I could eat a couple of these for breakfast when I don't feel like fixing anything and that they would stick to my ribs better than a couple of chocolate frosted Krispy Kremes, which has been my alternate breakfast of late.

Deb is also going to pick up a bag of grapefruit for me. I do this thing I picked up from a family friend where you take about six or eight grapefruits, section them and take the inner membranes out and then you pour orange juice over it and keep it in a container in the fridge. You eat it like a grapefruit-only fruit cocktail. But it takes about 45 minutes to prep the grapefruit, so there's effort involved.

I've also increased my walk distance lately, but I've started getting shin splints. This morning I did the route in reverse so that the big hill to go down was at the end of the route rather than the beginning, and the shin splints weren't quite so bad. I'm going to have to stretch out better, too, but that adds time to the morning routine. This takes my walking up to about 3 miles a day.

And finally�this won't take weight off, but it sure made me feel good while I was doing it�I'm going to try to get back into my Navy SEAL fitness routine. Yes, I'm a big military-fetish dork, but it really is a good workout. I bought this book called Navy SEAL Fitness, by Mark De Lisle, a couple years ago when I quit my old job. I had lots of free time and I got well into the routine. Then I started my new job and time became more precious, my routine started to slip, one of the cops Sara works with borrowed my book and didn't return it forever, and eventually the workout fell by the wayside. But for that brief period of time, I really felt better. I was stronger, more limber, and I could feel the progress.

Lesson learned: You really need to be unemployed to be physically fit unless you were born with those stupid "fit no matter what" genes that some people seem to be born with.

The most frustrating thing about the SEAL workout was realizing how much I lack in upper body strength. You'd think with all the sex that my arm strength would be fucking fantastic, but apparently I've only got the endurance part down. My goal: to be able to do one or two really good chin-ups. Now I can do about three-quarters of one. Possibly less now that I have to lift more. Dammit.

Wish me luck.

Now that I've thoroughly bored you with that ...

So Sara is back on the night shift again. And it really started off with a big night, eh? Sounds like they found our version of Patsy from AbFab if she lived into her late 60s�dead with a cigarette in one hand and a lighter in the other. Then a stabbing, armed robbery, and a major shooting. I know she's glad to be back on crime scenes.

Sara likes the 1500-2300 shift because she doesn't get bugged as much from the daytime responsibilities and people. But I don't get to see much of her except on weekends, and then Jake has dibs on her time. It's true that there's a chance for morning visits, but that depends on Jake leaving for work early, and she hasn't been much for early rising lately, so I'm not holding my breath on that one.

After Sara has been on night shift for a couple weeks is when I usually get the itch for an additional sex play buddy. Start prepping your resumes now.

I was going to write a bit on some scene ruminating I've been doing, but I need to get to work on my cookies.

Maybe later.