It's all about to go south

Sometimes when I look in the mirror all I see is grey hair, crow’s feet deep enough around my eyes to plant seeds in, breasts racing against each other to see which will reach my belly button first, and the beginning of a double chin and turkey neck—and all of it makes me want to run screaming from the room.

To douse reality, I’ve thought about standing back from the mirror to the point where everything is blurry, but if I did that I wouldn’t know where I was, as my eyesight, too, is slithering downhill.

I’m going to Florida with my partner in 40 days, 39, 38, 37 . . . and something must be done to spruce up this 1960 relic before I step off the airplane and into a world of bathing suits and flip flops.

This I vow while picking potato chip crumbs out of my computer keyboard and grazing on another five of those delicious “Ferrero Rocher” chocolates from one of three large boxes of the little devils I bought from the discount rack after Valentine’s Day, as I draw in the physical evidence known as “Buddha.”

My fight with the “Buddha” has been dragged through the mud, stepped on, run over by a truck, and raked through the coals. I’ve sucked it in a million times over and tried to smothered it to death in body shapers.

My “Buddha” and I met head on just the other day as I bent over to pick something up off the floor from under my foot and became trapped by the fat of “Buddha,” which had fallen out the place where I usually tuck it in and thus prevented me from being able to touch my toes.

It’s like a really obnoxious neighbor who never leaves you alone—the one you envision burying in the back yard but can’t because that would be illegal, and so you put with it.

I haven’t given up trying to fix this burgeoning of my Roman goddess figure that I blame squarely on the childbearing years of my youth (and maybe chocolate).

It’s crazy I know, but this Florida thing has me focused. While sitting with my bag of Lays original wavy potato chips and dill pickle dip on the weekend, I pondered. What could I accomplish in T-minus 38 days to shed some of this indolence I’ve been carrying around like a sack of soft fluffy kittens?

For starters I dug out my treadmill from under a huge stack of chocolate recipe magazines (go figure) and climbed aboard.

I was five, maybe six minutes in to a fast paced walk up a mountain when I realized, sweating my face off, I had only burned 50 calories and still had more than 30 minutes of exercise left to go.

Oh brother.