Oh … my … God. I think I may have died and gone to Heaven,
and I have a pilates class to blame for it all.
Well, sort of. It's all because
of being sick and fat and … Wait. Let me
start at the beginning.
I cannot get rid of my baby belly nineteen
years after the last delivery. Actually,
it was sort of gone, but something happens at age forty - Women wake up with a
little pot belly that never goes away.
As one pal said, "Honey, you just better embrace that thing and
give it a name because it's never leaving you.
Ever."
Forty has long-since come and gone, but
that belly, that little pouch of flab, is still hanging out. Oh, sure, sometimes in the summer it rolls
around back where there's more shade and hides out on my ass, but it never
leaves me, or so the scale tells me.
Now that fifty has come and gone (yes, it
has, or so my gray hair tells me). I
have two kids getting married next fall (not to each other -- this isn't
Arkansas, for crying out loud, and it's not Seabrook, NH, either), and I really
don't want bat wings and a poufy tummy in the pictures. So my bride-to-be daughter and I have started
working out at the Y and talking long walks (where she terrorizes me into
walking really fast, even jogging, and once she had me running, the little sneak).
Over the summer I took two grad classes,
though, and the workload cut into my gym time.
Then daughter and I both returned to school and work and have been
trying to juggle the gym. Mix in some
bizarre illnesses for me and you have:
BAT WINGS AND BELLY BONANZA! (If
only the fat would burn away as quickly as the TV show's map!)
Finally, weeks into recovery mode (and
shortly after the Save the Cheetah Dress Debacle), I make it back to the gym
and attend a pilates class. Pilates is
like non-stressful exercise that creeps up on you the following day. Right now my shoulder blades and back are
starting to scream at me, and they'll be broadcasting pain from my muscles for
several hours into tomorrow, as well, but it's worth every "inhale through
your nose and exhale through your mouth" moment.
The problem is - I went to the gym without
eating after a long day at work. When I
got in my car after pilates class, all I could think about was a tuna sandwich
from Panera. I was obsessed. There is a Panera within jumping distance of
the Y, so I got in my car and drove the ¼ mile there. The line was long, and I decided in the time
I was standing there that I desperately needed a bagel to go with my sandwich. An Asiago cheese bagel. Just one.
Swear to God.
And that's when I saw it. Yup, without any pomp nor circumstance,
without any warning nor sirens, without any gossip nor formal announcement,
there it was in a bin full of others just like it, a mere two bins away from my
beloved Asiago cheese bagels: The Panera
Pumpkin Pie Bagel.
Two bagels.
I needed two bagels, I decided, performing a quick on-the-fly menu
revision.
I looked at the marquee and calculated that
two bagels with cream cheese were infinitely more expensive that a half dozen
bagels with a small tub of cream cheese on the side. My brain fought to reason with me, but it was
too late; my stomach was already singing with great cheer. The line was long, but my taste buds would
not be deterred. Twenty minutes later I
was walking toward my car (which I parked far away in the Burger King parking
lot to get more exercise … okay, because the Panera lot was full) with two
bags: one holding six bagels - four Asiagos, one plain, and one coveted
pumpkin, and another bag holding my freshly made tuna sandwich with all the
trimmings.
If I had just gone home, if I had just
stayed later at my desk, if I had just gotten a little bit more lost on my way to
the cable company after work (which is, in and of itself, an entirely separate
story), if I had just embraced Flabella and not insisted she shake loose at
pilates, I never would've fallen victim to the Pumpkin Pie Bagel Siren
Call.
Damn you, Panera. Damn your evil pumpkin ways!
