It’s nice that the heat is free in this apartment but we can’t turn it the hell down either. We have eight histrionic radiators which make a big hot fuss several times a day, which is great if you are a Sonoran lizard or a fondue or some other kind of heat-loving thing, but not so great otherwise. It gets worse as it gets colder outside, so if you’re cold in your apartment you should come on over, and open your pores and stay awhile. And then we’ll put some of that hot in a Ziploc baggie for you to take home.

Anyway. How are you guys? How about those Bear people not winning that super thing last weekend? We seem to recall hearing something about this.

I’m still doing This Thing I’m Doing, though the week after we hit the hundred-day mark last month Chris and I took a little break. We had Santullo’s and ribs and burgers oh my, and this time my stomach didn’t protest as much as it did over the holidays, so apparently I haven’t completely transformed into a lily-livered herbivore. I’ve been back on the wagon for a couple weeks now, so to speak, but I haven’t made much new progress yet. (Of course, the vegan wagon is probably not a terribly speedy wagon, you know? Because it’s not like you can use oxen to pull it.)

However, in totally old news that I have neglected to tell you, we made it through the “holiday survivor” challenge at our gym. That’s where they give you a nice little gym bag for not gaining several pounds of festive butterfat between late November and mid-January. We also got t-shirts for trying six new classes. I hope we get a chance to earn pants next, since the ones we bring to the gym were simply bought, with dirty old regular money and everything, and how can you expect to have a decent workout if you’re wearing pants you can’t respect? But whatever.

I was freaking out a little by the end of the challenge, because it was happening right around the time I had to fly to Albuquerque again. I wanted to do my final weigh-in before I left on the trip but the perky gym staff kept telling me, “Oh, that’s okay! You can just do it when you get back!” I wanted to tell them that no, they didn’t understand: I signed up for the Holiday Survival Challenge, not the Death Of A Loved One Endurance Challenge. But I got through them both somehow.

A few days after I got back, both Chris and I came down with some kind of buggy stomach thing that compelled us to sleep straight through dinnertime and most of the next day. When I could finally get myself out of bed I padded over to the scale. If I believed what the scale told me, I could say that I’ve lost twenty pounds since October, but of course I was dehydrated and the moment I actually ate something again, that number flitted back into purely hypothetical territory. It’s going to be awhile before it comes up again. In the meantime, though, we’ve been getting back to our Weights/Hateful Pop Remixes class (now with new remixes to hate!), and I swim whenever I can talk myself into it.

Plus, it’s so hot in here that whenever I shift around on the couch it totally counts as Bikram yoga.

Yes, still counting towards a hundred days of This Thing I’m Doing. The days didn’t stop for the Christmas season, though of course there were a couple days when my sense of purpose sort of got lost in all the tinsel. I figured that would happen. But for once, I didn’t hit an arbitrary OFF switch for the holidays. I didn’t want to do the I’m-just-not-going-to-worry thing, because what does that mean, that I worry the rest of the time? That I spent the last three months being such an asshole to myself that come December I get to eat a whole cheesecake and give myself a hug? Fuck you, Holiday Self-Entitlement! I thought. Up yours, Ghost of Christmas Present! I tried to just stay the course as much as possible.

(At the same time, though, it’s not like things were normal. How the hell could they be? It’s the time of year when everyone puts huge light-up inflatable crap on their lawns and listens to Lite FM all day and buys Chia pets for each other. Suddenly all the food comes from Swiss Colony instead of from nature. The world goes bugfuck crazy for about two weeks, so what can you do? Try some of that toffee, that’s what.)

Anyway, when the (sparkly, glittery, sugary holiday) dust settled, I was okay. Well, except for the stomach cramps I got from eating too many things I don’t usually eat now. Some of this was probably due to stress and travel, but it was definitely also from things like plowing into a stack of belgian waffles at full speed. I have mixed feelings about suddenly being a delicate flower when it comes to this kind of food. On one hand I’m dismayed that I can’t quite enjoy the stuff the way I used to, and on the other hand I feel sort of validated, because hey, all that sugar and white flour and shit really does do a number on me and throws off my senses and leaves me staggering around belly-blind. Yes, I totally just made up “belly-blind.” Because that’s how it feels—like my stomach is a young Helen Keller, all crazed and confused, and let’s say that something went horribly wrong so that instead of learning how to say W-A-T-E-R she only knows how to spell out the signs for S-N-A-C-K C-A-K-E. I know that’s fucking nuts but it’s the best way I can describe it. Anyway, as uncomfortable as it was, it all helped to remind me that This Thing I’m Doing feels better. And it feels normal now, too. Less of an effort and more of a relief.

The new year doesn’t feel like an empty slate to me. I guess can understand how it must feel like that to people, especially after all the holiday clutter gets cleared away. But this year—maybe this one in particular—already feels chaotic and stumbly and difficult, but at the same time, I feel like I’m up for it. The stars don’t have to be perfectly aligned this time.