Repay - Do Not Forget

To make yogurt, you heat milk or cream or some combination thereof to a boil. You let it cool to between 120-115 degrees. All the time, you stir constantly. You add a certain amount of live bacteria to your liquid and put it someplace warm and clean overnight. There are a few details of proportion and storage but no mysteries involved in the making of yogurt. It's as natural as blinking an eye.

Many things are just as simple, though they may give the appearance of complexity on their faces. Over the past month, I put on a few pounds and can hardly bear to be near me. My clothing has become even more strangely ill-fitting than usual. The waistbands of two pair of pants in particular now fall across my stomach in a spot most women who've given birth will recognize as that spot I'd rather chew off my foot than think about. I find myself walking, leaning backward like Mr. Natural and trying to hold up my pants by sticking my stomach out. Keep on truckin'!

I fully expect to feel a breeze and find myself half-naked.

Currently, I feel fat because periodically I forget a basic truth of my Self: Exercise is always the answer. Am I restless and bored at work? Running a lap of the stairs will fix that. Am I not sleeping? More exercise, earlier in the day and mild stretching at night will make a dent in the problem. If I am stiff with arthritis, more exercise is the answer. If I have to wait for something and my mind is wandering, exercising is what I should be doing. Other than the occasional thing my internal organs do all on their own that tend to make all those gurgling, whoooshing and glug glug glugging sounds, I have the body I earn. It's really too bad we all grew up and can't resort to drugs with a straight face anymore. Personally, I can't think about diet supplements after 1990 without a mental image of that poor guy on a beach and Oh. My. God! He's got Anna Nicole Smith all over him! It's not rational.

It's not mysterious, either. I'm speaking for myself and no one else - because other people have problems we wouldn't trade ours for in a million years - when I say if I'm heavy, I earned it and if I'm thin I earned that. It's not as much fun as gulping Hollandaise out of a sippy cup, but it's as natural as blinking an eye. Sometimes, I forget. Well, now I've remembered.