Love is in the Air

by Michael on 22/06/09 at 2:04 pm

It’s the start of Gay Pride week here in Toronto and there’s a spring in everyone’s step. Unfortunately, the City of Toronto workers have walked off the job. They want more job security, like having ten men standing around a hole watching that eleventh man dig isn’t enough, or the 18 paid sick days they get ever year that they want to cash in upon retirement. Anyway, the garbage is going to start piling up, and with a million people poised to come to Toronto on Sunday, whether we want them or not, this could make for an interesting week. Let’s hope we don’t start hitting the 90s with humidity, that’ll make for nasty aroma.

Pride Week generally is a tough one for me. I’m reminded every year that I didn’t do what I vowed I’d do last year. Every Pride I feel badly because I’m still fat and I didn’t spend the previous year working on getting a great body. I promise myself that, this year, I’ll do it for sure. The last couple of years I’ve had as little to do with Pride as I could. But the problem is that my apartment overlooks the whole event. So I couldn’t ignore it if I tried. Quite truthfully, the whole event is a bit of a bust anyway. A million people walk up Church Street to just south of Bloor Street, at which point they turn around and walk back down Church Street, and they repeat this all day long. If you’re so inclined, you can stop by one of the sound stages and hear the lesbian, paraplegic, feminist rock band or you can crowd into one of the many beer gardens and get tipsy under the afternoon sun; but by and large, there’s just not that much to do – except people watch.

Look at me, I’m busting with pride, aren’t I? But I need to remind myself that this year my goals aren’t so fixated around weight. My goal is to find, meet, and get reacquainted with the 17-year-old boy I left back in high school. So I’ll have to think of a couple of things I can do this week to celebrate how far I’ve come since then and to honour how much things have changed. It’s the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City!

This morning I honoured my commitment to my coach by getting up at 5: 30 a.m., and while I didn’t go to the gym, I did go for a brisk, hour-long walk. It was such a beautiful morning that I couldn’t bear the thought of being in a smelly gym; besides I hate the elliptical trainer and I love walking. It’s such a peaceful time, too. There’s not much traffic and I can put on my MP3 player and listen to Jillian Michaels talk about health, fitness, and well being. It’s a great way to start my day. I love it. I have also had my breakfast, which was a chore. I’m sure my body will start craving breakfast in a couple of weeks, but right now, I gag at the thought of it.

I also committed to checking my blood sugar every morning. My coach wanted me to look for other measurements of progress besides the bathroom scales. So I’ve been testing my blood sugar every morning and it hasn’t been great. I stopped talking my pills a couple of months back because I seemed to be having issues in the other direction (low blood sugar) and the pills seemed to make my skin itch. And quite frankly, I just didn’t feel like being a Type 2 diabetic. But since testing my blood for a few days now, I can see that I need to be on the medication. It’s the responsible thing to do and it’s a part of my goal to look after my overall health and not simply obsess about a number on the scale.

The morning walk was great. It was beautiful and sunny and now I’m ready for my day. Have a good one!

By the way, a couple of weeks ago someone posted a comment on my blog. It got deleted. The comment was posted on the exact day I was moving my server. When they fired up the new server, the comment was gone. So my apologies to the poster.

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