So, I went to Catalina earlier this month, and while we were there, the guides took a pic of my wife and me on the beach. I was awful. My legs were ghostly white, I had a paunch, and my face is sagging and puffy. And uh, no, I’m not gonna post that pic. 

The sagging and puffy face is due to, well, some of the sagging is just age… but the puffiness is a side effect of the medicine I take for leukemia. While I don’t like my face being puffy, it’s better than being dead, so, I’m stuck with it.

The paunch is another thing. By October of 2018, I was around 70 kilos, roughly 155 lbs. Not a bad weight for me, even if I looked my best when I was still in shape and around 65 Kgs (143 Lbs).

But after I got the job, and especially during the early months of 2019 while I was living at my mom’s for a bit, my weight went up. And up. And up. By the end of summer 2020, I had hit 79 Kgs (174 lbs) and that was it. I decided I was gonna drop the kilos and get my act together. By early December I had dropped to around 71, but then Christmas season came my diet and I parted ways amicably. By the beginning of this month, I was back up to 77 Kgs. So I went to Diet’s house, clubbed her over the head and dragged her back to my place cave-man style. I’m now down a kilo to 76, but having nearly taken a mulligan on the entire last three months of 2020, I’m having to start over again. Anyways, I’m sick of looking tubby, especially when I was always trim and pretty athletic.

I’m hoping to get started with soccer again, having touched bases with a bunch of the guys at church who, like me, are jonesing to play. Hopefully, this means I can get back slowly into some semblance of shape.

 As for the white legs… geez louise… I have always been good in the heat and the sun, and have usually been reasonably tan. My olive colored Italian skin does pretty well in the sun, but I had lost some motivation in summer 2019 and then summer 2020 was, well, you know, a global pandemic with lockdowns etc, so… NO sun at all, at least on the legs.

Since I’m working from home today, I took the lunch break and laid out in the sun, so as to rectify the whiteness problem I’m suffering from. (Is that what they mean?) I’ll have to keep it up and lay out a day or two per week.

Next time someone takes a picture of me at the beach, I’m hoping to look a little better.