Planting a Stake

Two things of note today.

First, although it's a Saturday morning, and I don't usually swim on Saturdays, I decided to put in a little pool time because I'm leaving tomorrow morning to bring my daughter to college and I'll be gone for two weeks, with limited opportunity to swim. Accomplishments: I swam a 100-yard freestyle, and more importantly to the challenge at hand, a 50-yard fly.

Not great. But I've only been back in the pool 3 or 4 times since my surgery. Before the surgery, I couldn't swim for about a month because the pain was too intense; I couldn't find any way to make it fun. About a month after the surgery, I felt better, but I had to wait until the wound healed completely before I could swim. The doctor didn't want me to risk infection and I decided that since he was a brain surgeon I should probably listen to him.

So I've been hanging out in the "therapy" lane, swimming 25 yards at a time, focused on form, then resting, then another 25 yards. Today's accomplishments are significant because both 50 and 100 are bigger numbers than 25. Not as big as 200, but still...

Second noteworthy item of the morning. On a whim, I swung by WeightWatchers, which I joined about 4 years ago to lose weight after my mother died of complications from diabetes. It was a miserable death, complete with dementia, and I thought it might be nice to try something different. At any rate, I stepped on the scale this morning and the numbers that blinked back at me from the digital readout were 182.2. For perspective, when I weighed in at my first meeting, the blinking numbers screamed 212.0.

I did a quick calculation. "So, wow, I've lost 40 pounds since I started," I said hopefully to the woman behind the counter, waiting patiently for praise while she tucked my 12 dollars, a 5 and 7 singles, into the cash register.

"Almost," she said sympathetically, apparently not a fan of round numbers. "And thanks for the correct change. You're the second person today with correct change. You can come to my meeting any time."

I guess I should have left my wallet out of my pocket while I weighed in. It probably would have been good for at least two-tenths of a pound.