Enjoying these new bumps along the way
There I was, standing in front of the toaster waiting for it to finish my sprouted spelt bread when I felt it. A rock hard lump.
It was early in the morning and I was standing with my hand on my hip. There clearly was something there: A lump. Are you kidding me? I am spending much of my free time either working out, shopping, cooking all-natural meals, charting my food online, etc. and now I've got some clearly terminal disease destined to snuff out my now-healthy life? At least that's what I reasoned.
I panicked and felt around for details to tell the doctor — how large was it, did it hurt, were there any more? As I hurriedly went through a mental checklist of possible ailments I realized the lump was much larger than I'd thought and stretched from the back all around to the front.
That's when it hit me. It was my hip bone. HA! It had been so long since I actually felt it I forgot the sensation. OK, that's sad. But I couldn't stop laughing: it was one of the most absurd things that's ever happened to me. I didn't even recognize myself.
When “loser” contestant Mike White started talking at boot camp about the mysterious sternum bump he had recently discovered, (it was just his sternum) I could barely contain myself. Apparently I wasn't so unique after all.
People who are thin likely are used to coming across things like collar bones, elbow bumps and miscellaneous muscles. I'm sure I took that all for granted too — 30 years ago when I was thin enough to experience it. Now, each time one of those revelations manifests itself, it's like Christmas morning.
A few weeks after the hip debacle I was standing in front of the same microwave, waiting for my coffee to heat, when I ran a hand across my aching back (courtesy of a particularly draining workout) and had another jolt. Holy cow, there was a veritable canal going down the middle of my back with some steep walls on either side. Where did those muscles come from? It's really like a daily surprise.
Just last weekend, I planned to run out and pick up a pair of pants or two to replace the ones that now are increasingly too large. But when I discovered I've dropped two, and in some cases three sizes, I got sucked in to the experience. I hit one Goodwill (my all-time favorite store!) and then another where I scored what must have been someone else's perfectly-sized-to-me wardrobe.
You've got to work awfully hard to drop $200 on clothes at Goodwill. I almost broke a sweat. But now I've got all new window-dressing to go with this stage of my infrastructure-rebuilding project.
Ÿ Catherine Edman is the cooperative advertising manager for the Daily Herald. She spent 19 years as a reporter at the paper, frequenting many drive-through windows on the way to cover night meetings, before joining the advertising staff in 2009.